The Yellow Packard (41 page)

“I’ve heard the gossip,” Johns shot back. “There are a lot of folks who seem to think I had a hand in the missing cash.”

“And,” Meeker continued, “even if you didn’t help plan her murder, you might have been after Abbi’s money. Even lawyers struggled in the Depression. The year Abigale Watling died was about as tough as any in the 1930s, so maybe you needed to get your hands on that cash. Janet Carson trusted you. It wouldn’t have been that hard to pull the wool over her eyes. And you seem to be a pretty big spender. That desk in your office probably costs more than most cars.”

“Are you serious?” the man roared. “How dare you question my integrity!”

She smiled. “Well, when I visited with you in your office you did expose something that would put any professional investigator on alert. It sure set off warning bells.” Glancing over at Reese, she paused.

As Meeker considered her next words, Johns was deflating like a balloon on a winter’s day, and though he surely wanted desperately to defend himself, he seemed at a loss for words. Finally he asked, “What did I say or do?”

“You knew which seat in the car the money was stored under,” she explained. “When we gave you that scrap of information, you told us it was the backseat that was uncomfortable. We hadn’t told you that our lab found the evidence in the backseat. We just said a seat.”

“But,” he argued. “I tell you I’m innocent.”

“We’ll see,” Meeker replied. She paused for a moment, her eyes falling on George and Carole Hall, before noting, “Of course it seems even more strange that a trained officer of the law like Sheriff Atkins missed indentifying Burgess.”

“I thought the sketch looked something like Mitchell,” he admitted. “But I wasn’t sure. I’d have looked stupid if I was wrong.”

“You look pretty stupid now,” Meeker solemnly noted.

“You know what many at the FBI are saying?” Reese added.

“Yeah,” the sheriff mumbled as he folded his arm. “Some folks in town are, too. They’re saying I worked with Burgess or Barton or whatever his name is and I took some of Abbi’s money.”

“It’s not that far-fetched,” Meeker said, “that you and an old friend like Sam Johns would be in this together. After all, you were the ones who supposedly searched the Packard after Abbi died.”

“I swear—” he said.

“Not right now,” Meeker cut him off. “Save swearing until your hand is on the Bible in the courtroom.”

The dinging of the bell over the door caused everyone to turn. Dressed in a gray coat, Janet Carson stepped in, clutching an envelope in her hands. Her gaze moved from person to person in the room until her eyes finally locked onto Meeker.

“Are you Helen Meeker?” Carson asked.

“Yes, I am,” Meeker replied.

“Here is what you asked for.”

As Meeker took the envelope, Janet unbuttoned her coat, revealing a nicely tailored olive-green suit that matched her pumps. She pulled the coat off her shoulders and laid it down on an empty bench.

“If you’re going to point fingers,” Atkins barked, “then you need to look at her.”

“Miss Carson?” Meeker asked.

“Yes,” he growled.

“Why?”

“Well,” the sheriff said, “she must have money. Look at the suit she has on. I bet it cost a pretty penny. Doubt if she could buy that on a schoolteacher’s salary.”

“But her aunt’s money was going to her anyway,” Meeker pointed out. “What reason would she have to take it?”

“Maybe she wanted to avoid paying taxes on it,” Atkins said.

Meeker cast an eye toward the late arrival before moving to the center of the room and pulling a small scrap of paper from her pocket. “The missing piece might be right here. It’s a phone number I found in the billfold of Mitchell Burgess. It’s pretty old, as you can tell by the faded ink and worn paper. But it was important enough that he kept it. Why?”

She gave the paper to the sheriff. “Does this number mean anything to you?”

He glanced at it and shook his head. “It’s not a local exchange.”

“No, it’s not,” she agreed. “For those of you who can’t see what is written here, does Jupiter 7-2673 mean anything to you?” No one answered.

“What about the rest of you?” she asked.

After a few moments of silence, Bill Landers spoke, “I know of a Jupiter exchange in Ohio, but it wasn’t that number.”

“That’s the problem we have,” Meeker noted. She took the paper back and waved it in the air. “Whoever wrote this number down didn’t add what city or state it was in. Since Burgess knew whose number this was, he didn’t need to record that information. Yet we need it. Without it, we can’t arrest the person that I’m pretty sure was behind the theft of the money from the Watling estate and the kidnapping.”

“It could have been Burgess working alone,” Johns interjected.

Meeker crooked her right eyebrow. “Do you think he was smart enough to do all that was entailed in this deal?”

“I don’t know,” the attorney admitted. “But to me, that is what makes the most sense.”

“Of course that’s what you want us to believe,” the sheriff snapped. “You’re afraid they’ll link this mess to you.”

“Jed!” Johns barked.

“Well,” the sheriff yelled, “if I didn’t do it, then you seem to be the next logical choice! You were Abbi’s lawyer. You knew about the money. Burgess worked for you after Abbi died. Your tie to him is stronger than anyone’s! Maybe our search was just to make you look innocent and throw suspicion elsewhere. Maybe you already had the cash safely tucked away. Maybe you knew that others knew about the money and you were just covering your trail.”

“I don’t know why I ever voted for you,” Johns shot back. “You’re an idiot!”

Meeker smiled, waved her hand, and cut the men off. “Let’s get back on track—what about the number? Does it mean anything to anyone?”

No one answered.

“Rose,” Meeker gently said, moving over to where the two children were playing. The little girl looked up. “You said that there was a second man who was involved in taking you. Would you stand up and look around this room?”

The little girl pushed up from the floor and took the agent’s hand. “You take a very close look at the men in this room. Are any of them the other man you told me about?”

Rose slowly moved her eyes from Atkins to Johns to Landers. After she studied each of them, she shrugged, “No, the mean man’s not here.”

The trio of men breathed collective sighs of relief.

“Of course,” Meeker said, “there could have been a third man—the brains behind this deal. So you men don’t need to relax too much yet.”

“That leaves me out,” Atkins barked, “because everyone here seems to think I’m stupid.”

Meeker wryly smiled before turning back to the little girl. “What did you tell me the man looked like?”

“He was kind of fat and frowned a lot. He had a whiny voice. He was not as old as those men.”

“That could be a hundred people I know,” George noted.

“Yeah,” Johns added. “That description fits several people I’ve represented. We could go to Danville and see ten people who fit that description in five minutes.”

Meeker nodded in agreement. “And because I don’t know where the telephone that goes with this number is, the one Mitchell Burgess had in his billfold, I can’t connect a man fitting that description to this number. And besides, it might not even be a working number. I’ve called it in every Jupiter exchange in about a dozen different states and have gotten nothing. The office is still checking the states I haven’t called.”

“So this is a colossal waste of time,” Atkins growled. “I’m going home.”

“Not yet.” Reese held up a hand to stop the man.

Meeker motioned for the agent to talk privately outside. They stepped out the door. It was time to up the stakes.

Chapter 84

F
or almost two minutes no one moved. Except for the two playing children, all eyes were locked on the front door. They each had to be wondering where Reese and Meeker had gone. What were they doing? What surprise did Meeker have next?

When the door opened and the bell rang, those gathered saw a complete stranger walk through the door. The small, slight man with the crooked nose was dressed in a prison uniform. He had shackles on his feet and hands. He looked anything but happy to be a part of the proceedings.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Meeker said, “this is our special guest for the evening. His name is Jack McGrew.”

“Pistolwhip?” the sheriff asked.

“Don’t call me that,” the newest guest growled. “My name’s Jack.”

“Why is he out of jail?” the lawyer nervously demanded.

“I had a friend”—Meeker smiled—“who made this possible.”

“You must have friends in some pretty high places,” Landers said, awe evident in his tone.

“If I told you how high,” Reese chuckled, “you wouldn’t believe it.”

Shaking her head, Meeker turned to face the convict she had single-handedly captured. “I trust you understand the need to give the complete truth here tonight.”

“As long as you don’t throw me over that yellow car,” he replied, “I’ll pretty much do anything. You are one scary broad.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Jack, you don’t know these people, and none of them know you. But you were good friends with a man those gathered here all had contact with at one time or another. They knew him as Mitchell Burgess, but when you met him he was a prison guard at Joliet named Burton.”

“Yeah,” McGrew quickly admitted. “I knew him.”

“He was your friend,” Meeker continued, “wasn’t he?”

“Sure, he was a good friend.”

Meeker took a step toward McGrew, cutting the distance between them to five feet. “I know the last time you saw Burton was at the farmhouse on the night you were captured. In the couple of years before that, did you see him at all?”

“A few times. We met, had drinks. Nothing big, just two friends getting together.”

“And did he talk about his life?”

“Yeah,” McGrew replied. “Friends tell each other what’s going on. I told him about my deals, and he told me about his.”

“Did you know about the kidnapping and the reasons behind it?” Meeker asked.

“Sure, he told me. It was all about the money. They wanted to get their hands on the old woman’s loot.”

Meeker smiled. “You said
they.
Did he tell you who
they
were or how many there were?”

McGrew nodded. “Since he’s dead, guess it doesn’t matter if I squeal some. It was a two-way split.”

“Who was his partner?” Meeker demanded.

“He didn’t give me a name. Just said he was a louse he had to deal with. He also told me the guy was heartless and ordered him to kill the kid. But he couldn’t do that. He might have been a bit strange, but murdering a kid was not his game. He didn’t have the stomach for it. You have to be pretty sick to do that. So he gave the kid to some woman who had lost her own daughter.”

“That all adds up,” Meeker replied. “Clara’s daughter had been killed. In fact, the girl had been murdered. You have any information on that?”

The con shrugged. “I only know that she saw something she shouldn’t have when her dad was dealing with the mob. It was to teach the old man a lesson about crossing them on a deal. I heard it tore him up so bad it killed him.”

“That gives us a bit more information about that unsolved crime. But let’s return to this one. Did Mitchell tell you anything else about the partner?”

“No, but that’s not unusual. I never told him about the guys who worked with me, either. It’s safer that way. What I didn’t know couldn’t come back to hurt him.” He shrugged. “Now if you don’t need anything else out of me, I’d rather not be here.”

“Only a couple more questions,” Meeker assured him. “Did Burton, as you knew him, or Burgess as the others called him, mention Samuel Johns?”

“Yeah, he told me that guy skimmed money from people whose investments he held.”

Meeker turned around and stared at the attorney. “Maybe that’s why you didn’t want to recognize the sketch. He knew too much about you.”

“But I didn’t take Abbi’s cash,” Johns quickly replied. “Jed and I looked … we looked hard, but we never found it.”

“But what about your dealings with Miss Watling?” Meeker asked. “I think we can prove you”—she glanced back to Jack—“what was the word you used? Oh yeah,
skimmed
some from her during her regular business dealings. Maybe she found out. Maybe you needed to get her out of the way.”

“I’m not saying anything more without an attorney,” Johns replied.

Meeker nodded and looked back at Jack. “What about Sheriff Jed Atkins? Mitchell say anything about him?”

“Oh.” McGrew laughed. “He talked about him a lot.”

Meeker glanced over to where the sheriff was standing. The color had completely drained from his face.

“What did he say?” Meeker asked, her eyes never leaving Atkins.

“He said he was stupid. I remember his words exactly, ‘Dumb as a rock but honest to a fault.’ ”

“Thank the Lord.” Atkins sighed.

Reese opted to get in a quick jab, “Never heard a man take being called dumb so well.”

“Might be why he didn’t recognize the sketch,” Meeker added. “Reese, you can take Mr. McGrew out to the boys for his ride back to the Big House.”

“Can’t wait to get out of here,” the convict replied. “I hope I never meet you again. You are one scary lady.”

Chapter 85

M
eeker waited for Reese to return before she picked up her questions. As soon as her partner had settled into his place against the wall, she waved the large envelope Janet Carson had brought with her. With absolutely no fanfare, Meeker opened it. After pulling out a single photo, she set the folder on the rolltop desk and walked over to show the black-and-white image to Rose.

“Is this the guy?”

“That’s him,” the girl sneered as she replied. “He’s mean!”

Meeker put the photo back in her pocket and studied the faces around her. “The man in this photo was the man Burgess called.”

“But you said the number didn’t work,” Carole noted.

“As it’s written here, it doesn’t,” Meeker admitted. “But if you dial Jupiter 3-7627, it does.”