The Red Scream (39 page)

Molly felt a little tingling buzz in her arms and hands—that old feeling when she got close to some truth that had previously eluded her. “When people barter or pay in cash, you mean.”

Jo Beth nodded. “And Louie Bronk strikes me as an underground economy sort of guy.”

“When he paid at all,” Molly said thoughtfully.

“Yeah. But this is a service you can’t steal. He’d have to pay to get his car back.”

Molly felt like she was just emerging from a fog. “Jo Beth, when businesses like that don’t report a transaction, do you think they keep any records on it at all?”

“Well, they certainly wouldn’t keep them with their legitimate records, where the IRS could stumble on them in an audit, but I’ve seen lots of businesses that keep private records. They might want to keep them for their own use, like sometimes when there’s a guarantee involved, that sort of thing. Or they just want a record of the amount of business they really did, in case they want to sell the business sometime.”

Molly tried to recall the conversation with Nelda Fay Ferguson the previous day. She pictured the sharp, tense face with the scarlet lipstick. The mouth moving, talking and talking, and Molly barely listening, her head throbbing, her bites itching. Once she’d established
that the records were all burned up and that the woman didn’t remember Louie, she’d paid hardly any attention to her, to that endless chatter about perfect records and what a clean business her husband had run and the IRS.

She said, “I must be losing it. That woman did nothing but protest about what a clean business her husband ran; she was clearly worried about any inquiries into her records. I must have been comatose.…”

“Getting hit on the head can do that.”

Molly scrambled to her feet. “Jo Beth, I need to give her a call. Right now. On the outside chance she’s got something. I’ll be right back.”

Jo Beth smiled. “Glad to see that love hasn’t turned you to total mush, Mom.”

“You too, sweetheart,” Molly said, patting her on the head.

Molly eased off the ledge and swam to the ladder nearest their clothes. She shoved her wet feet into her sandals, and as she hurried around the pool, she wrapped the towel around herself like a sarong. She stopped to get her hand stamped at the gate and pushed out the turnstile. The patrol car was still there, double-parked. She lifted a hand in greeting to the young cop who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world. Baby-sitting the daughter and ex-wife of a homicide lieutenant was clearly not his idea of a good way to spend a Sunday morning.

When she got to the truck, she flipped through her notebook until she found the page where she’d jotted down notes about Nelda Fay Ferguson and Sam’s Body Shop. Instead of using the little speaker clipped near the visor she picked up the receiver; that way there would be none of the echo effect you got from a speaker phone that tended to make people think a whole roomful of people was listening in to the call. This conversation would definitely require a delicate touch and a feeling of privacy. As she punched out the number, she felt thankful for her ingrained habit of always getting a phone number; there was always something she forgot to ask in an interview or some piece of information she discovered she needed later on when she was writing.

Leaving the truck door open, Molly perched on the side of the seat and punched out the number.

The phone rang eight times. She was about to hang up, consoling
herself that it had been a long shot anyway. But on the ninth ring, a dispirited voice said, “Ferguson residence.”

“Mrs. Ferguson, please.”

“This is her.”

“Mrs. Ferguson. I’m so glad I got you home. This is Molly Cates in Austin. I talked with you at police headquarters yesterday.”

“Oh … yes.” The voice came flat and reluctant, the auditory equivalent of a dead fish handshake.

“You remember we talked about the records from July 1982. I told you I was looking for a white Mustang that got painted blue?”

“Yeah.”

“Mrs. Ferguson, lots of businesses do some cash transactions that don’t get reported, you know, for tax purposes.”

There was dead silence on the other end.

“Now no one’s interested in that here. If your husband might have done some of those cash transactions back then, it’s not anything anyone would get upset over. Not in the least.”

“I wouldn’t know nothing about that. See I—”

Molly cut her off in midwhine. A good way to get people to cooperate was to give them a sense of participating in a larger cause, something that had some heroism to it. “Please listen, Mrs. Ferguson. This is so important. Remember I told you yesterday about the man on death row who says this car business could prove he didn’t do it? What I didn’t think to tell you yesterday is that he was a drifter who never had a checking account in his life or a credit card. He would have paid in cash. If you could find any record of a cash transaction on a Mustang for that July third to eighth period, under any name, it could be very, very significant.”

Silence.

Molly lowered her voice. “Please, Mrs. Ferguson, if there’s any chance you might have some slip of paper or entry in a notebook, anything, it could help so much. And I can promise you there will be no trouble for you as a result.” She held her breath.

“I’m feeling poorly today, Miz … uh … Cates,” Nelda Fay whined. “And I surely don’t know what you’re talking about here.…”

“Just tell me if there’s any chance some other records were kept,” Molly persisted. “At home maybe.”

Again there was a silence.
Slow down
, Molly thought.
You’re pushing too hard; back off.

Nelda Fay said, “No. All them records were at the office and got burned up. You was there, you saw what a mess it was. Now I’m not well at all. Sorry.” The phone clicked.

Molly put the phone back in the cradle and counted slowly to sixty. Then she dialed the number again. The phone rang three times before it was picked up. The voice sounded even whinier this time.

“Mrs. Ferguson, Molly Cates here. I think we got cut off; it’s this mobile phone of mine, damn machine doesn’t work right half the time. You were talking about feeling poorly and I can sure identify with that. You know where my face got all bruised yesterday when I was attacked on your property? Well, it’s sure giving me a bad time today and I’m wondering if there isn’t some bone damage on the cheek or maybe even some damage to the eye.…”

“Miz Cates, I’m sorry to hear it, but my doorbell is ringing. I—”

“I may go to see a specialist tomorrow,” Molly continued. “Now you shouldn’t worry about that. Not for a second. It wasn’t your fault it happened. Lord, I know how long it takes to get people to do things. Even something simple like boarding up a hazardous building like yours there on the Mansfield Highway. I mean you can’t expect it to get done the day right after the fire. Although some folks might say—”

“Miz Cates.” Nelda Fay’s voice became anxious. “What is it you want me to do again?”

Bingo. She got her. “To look through the records your husband kept at home for anything that mentions a car being painted in July of 1982.”

There was a lengthy silence. Molly actually had to hold her tongue between her teeth to keep from saying more. Silence was often the best persuader.

Finally the woman said, “I surely would like to help you.”

“That’s real kind of you, Mrs. Ferguson.”

“Now that I had a chance to think about it, I remember that my husband did from time to time take pity on someone less fortunate who had trouble paying the usual prices. He might have given a discount for cash. Since there was almost no profit, he might not have put it on his tax return. Not often, mind you. But it happened
sometimes, and I believe he did keep some of them records at home.”

Molly felt like she was walking on a narrow bar and could tip either way. “Mrs. Ferguson,” she said evenly, “could you look through those things now? I’d be happy to wait.” Molly felt an absolute certainty that the woman, motivated by curiosity, had gone home yesterday and searched through the old off-the-record records. Now the box—a shoe box maybe, or one of those cheap metal lock boxes—was sitting on the kitchen counter and Nelda Fay was probably staring at it right now as she wavered. It was a hard decision: trouble with the IRS was specter enough to discourage anybody from being a Samaritan.

“I’ll have to do some rummaging around. Couldn’t I let you know in a few days?”

“Mrs. Ferguson, the man’s going to be executed tomorrow just after midnight. There is no time. Please.”

A long exhale went into the phone. “Just a minute.”

Molly could picture Nelda Fay standing with her hand over the phone counting under her breath so a respectable amount of time would pass by.

Waiting had always been painful for Molly. Keeping the phone at her ear, she reached into the back seat and pulled a pen from her bag. She began to doodle on the notebook page headed “Sam’s Body Shop.” Without planning it, her fingers drew a rough sketch of a car, blocking in a door and making little crosshatches over it to indicate the door was a different color from the rest of the car.

She let her sandals fall to the ground next to the truck, and leaning back into the seat, she swung around so she could put her bare feet up on the dashboard.

After several minutes, Nelda Fay Ferguson came back on the line. “Miz Cates?”

“Yes.” Molly made herself jump with the loud eagerness of her voice.

“There
is
something here.”

“Yes?”

“It’s looks like a carbon copy, kind of blurred and messy, but it’s a receipt and it’s in my husband’s handwriting.”

“Could you read it to me?”

“Just let me put on my other glasses here. So I can try and make
this out. Darn these old carbons. Sam was always economizing. All right-y. It says, ‘150 dollars p-d,’ you know short for paid, and the date is 7/6/82. Then it says, “ ’72 Mustang, total body, grabber blue,’ that’s the color, you know.”

Molly found herself short of breath. “Is there a name on it?”

“Well, let’s see. It’s kinda hard to read. These carbons always seem to get more worn out at the top when they been used too much. But it looks like the name is L. Bronson. Is that the one you wanted?”

Molly felt like someone had whacked her in the chest with a two by four. L. Bronson was the name Louie had told her he had used.

So it was true. There was no escape from it now. It was true.

“Miz Cates? Is that right?”

“Yes,” Molly said, “it’s what I was looking for.”

“Are you sure this isn’t gonna bring me no trouble, Miz Cates?”

“Absolutely. I promise it.”

Molly stopped here; she hadn’t planned for this. She really had no idea what to do next. “Mrs. Ferguson, are you going to be home for a while?”

“Well, I
was
planning on going out later.”

“Well, I need to figure out a way to get this from you today.”

“Get it from me? What are you going to do with it?” Her voice was shrill with alarm.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Ferguson. It’s just to show his car was blue after July sixth. For evidence.”

“Oh, golly, I—”

“Tell you what, I’ll call you back in a few minutes, after I’ve arranged it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Molly put the phone down, leaned her head back into the seat, and closed her eyes tight. Why had she done this? She could have let it rest after making the trip yesterday. But now there was no going back.

That painstaking research she’d done—all lies. Her beautiful book—all lies. She felt a flush of hot thick blood flooding into her chest and arms. She’d been duped by Louie Bronk. So had everyone else, it was true. But hers was so public. Would she have to print a retraction? Recall the book?

Everyone would have to know. Or would they? She was the only
one who knew about this, except for Nelda Fay Ferguson, who wasn’t about to tell anyone. She could just let it go. It probably wasn’t going to make any difference anyway; it was hardly the kind of evidence that would get the Bronk decision reversed. She could call Nelda Fay back and tell her it wasn’t what she was looking for after all. And she could tell Louie it had just been too late. Too late. Too bad.

She opened her eyes and saw her face reflected in the dirty windshield—wet hair stuck flat to her head, the discolored cheek puffy, the rest of the face very pale. God. She certainly looked like the kind of person who could conceal evidence and present a lie to the world.

At the very least, she was the kind of person who could let her own petty concerns overshadow the fact that a man was about to die for a crime he did not commit.

She picked up the phone and called Grady Traynor’s number. He wasn’t in, but she got hold of Caleb Shawcross and got him to agree to call Fort Worth immediately and send a detective in plainclothes so as not to upset the lady to Nelda Fay Ferguson’s address to pick up some evidence. Then she talked him into having the detective put it on a Southwest flight to Austin and sending a man over to pick it up at the airport that afternoon.

Molly called Nelda Fay back and told her to expect someone within the hour.

She got down from the truck, stuck her feet in her sandals, and walked back to the pool. Jo Beth was doing laps again. Molly walked fast along the edge so she was waiting for her at the deep end. Jo Beth stopped and grabbed on to the edge of the pool. She looked up, studied Molly’s face, and said, “She found something.”

Molly nodded. “A carbon of a receipt with the name he was using on it, the date, the type of car, and the color of paint used. It set him back 150 bucks. I shudder to think where he got the money.”

“Now what?” said Jo Beth.

Molly dropped her towel and sandals where she was and tucked her keys under the towel. Then she dove back into the water. When she surfaced, she shook her head to get the water out of her ears and said, “Damned if I know.”

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