[To Die For 01] - A View to Die For (2012) (28 page)

I ran into the media room and disconnected the bass speaker from the surround-sound system. Returning to the surveillance room, I removed the back cover of the speaker cabinet to expose its heavy magnet. I then ejected the removable disk drive from the recorder, removed it from its caddy, and passed it over the magnet several times. After returning the drive to its caddy and inserting it back into the recorder, I tried booting the system. Perfect, the hard drive would not boot. I had erased the boot sector and hopefully all the data on the drive. Now anyone would think the system simply malfunctioned.
Not bad for a novice burglar
, I thought. Then the phone started to ring while I was putting the speaker back in place. I froze.
Should I answer it and pretend to be Hal
?

“This is your captain calling. You have won two free tickets to the Bahamas; however, you must return our call within the next twenty minutes to claim your prize.”

* * *

When I pulled into its parking lot, The Pig’s Roast was a welcome sight. Though I had made a pact with God to walk the straight and narrow after leaving Hal’s house, I didn’t think that included a drink to calm my nerves. The dreaded call from the security company never came – at least not while I was in the house. My escape had been uneventful, except for tripping over the garden hose again in my haste to get away.

Linda’s replacement was on duty when I took my seat at the bar next to Tonto. “What can I get you, Sweetie?” she asked. Her outfit was skimpier than anything Linda ever wore.

When I answered, I tried my best to look her in the eyes. “Coors please. And could I use your phone? My cell doesn’t seem to work out here.”

She bent down to get my beer from the cooler under the bar. I felt like a pervert, but I couldn’t help but stare when she leaned down. She opened my beer, wiped the wet bottle with her bar-towel, and smiled as she handed it to me. “Sure, Honey. It’s at the end of the bar. Over there by the cat’s bed.”

Maybe she saw me blush when she caught me looking at her ample breasts. But the light was dim, so I acted like nothing happened and went to the phone. Megan picked up on the second ring.

I was still nursing my beer when Megan walked in. The barmaid had left me alone, so she could wait on the lunch crowd that was already starting to fill the tables in the dining area. Except for Tonto, Megan and I had the bar to ourselves, so I told her about my adventure. Tonto didn’t miss a word.

Megan seemed to light up the dim bar when I told her the garden hose was a perfect match to the one found in Mike’s truck. “Then Mike didn’t kill himself,” she said. “Do you really think the DVD will show who did it?”

Before I could answer, Bennet walked in with two other deputies.

Bennet and his deputies took a table toward the front and acted like he didn’t recognize Meg or me. It was just as well; I would have confessed before he could read me my rights.

The waitress saw the deputies, too. She quickly finished taking an order at one of the window tables and headed toward the deputies. Bennet and company had already selected a table close to the bar. “Well hello, Handsome,” she said when she made it to their table. “You’re late this afternoon.”

Bennet smiled at her and took the menu she handed him. “Had to check out a false alarm, Jen. Those boys in Kansas City think we have nothing better to do than play nursemaid to their security systems.” He gave her back the menu without looking at it. “Can you make me a quick burger? I’ve got to be in court this afternoon.”

Megan poked me in the ribs. I turned on my barstool to see why. “Don’t stare at them,” she whispered.

I ignored my sister, turning back in time to see the waitress pretend to pout before addressing the other deputies. “How about you fellas? You want a burger too?”

When he looked up at the waitress, the deputy facing me saw me watching. “Miss, could we have our check when you get a chance?” I said, hoping he would think that’s why I had been looking in their direction.

“Be right with you,” she answered in an irritated voice without looking at us. My ploy must have worked. The deputy ignored me and picked up the conversation with the waitress.

* * *

Fred was waiting for us in the driveway. I couldn’t remember a time when he had been so happy to see me. “Did you miss me, Boy?”

He answered by catching me off balance, knocking me off my feet, and planting a wet kiss on my face.

“What about me, Freddie? Don’t I get a kiss too,” Megan said between laughs.

Fred stopped kissing me long enough to turn his attention to my sister. It was enough to get Fred off me, so I could get to my feet and brush myself off. “Looks like the boys forgot to let him back in again,” I said, looking at Kevin’s empty parking space. “I wonder how long he’s been out here?”

“They must have put him out for this,” Megan said, waving a business card at me that she had found by the lock box. “It’s from one of Sam’s investors. He says he’d like to make an offer on the house.” It was like someone flipped the mood switch. Her cheerful smile turned to a frown. She put the card in her purse, fished out the keys, and let us in the house.

I went to straight to the kitchen with Fred at my heels while Megan went to her office – presumably to call the investor. I busied myself with filling Fred’s water bowl and getting a couple of beers from the refrigerator, all the while trying to listen to Megan’s conversation through her open office door.

“Let me think about it.” I heard her say. “I’ll call you back tomorrow and let you know.”

“Well?” I asked when she joined us in the kitchen. I could see she was on the verge of tears.

“Let’s go out on the deck and drink those, Jake,” she said, pointing at the beers.

I followed her out the sliding door, and Fred followed me. He must have sensed the change in her mood; his tail was no longer wagging. “The offer is less than what I owe,” she said after taking a long drink. “He says I can probably get the bank to do a short sell, whatever that is, and at least not go into foreclosure.”

“It’s where the bank agrees to take less than what you owe and not come after you for the difference. I believe it’s a black mark on your credit but not as bad as foreclosure.”

“Who the hell cares about my credit rating? The bastards can foreclose for all I care before I walk away losing everything I put in this place.” She started to cry.

Fred was as upset by her outburst and tears as I was. He laid his head on her lap, as if to say it would be okay. He couldn’t talk, so I found the words for both of us. “Just tell them no, Meg. I still have my life insurance I can borrow against. It should keep the bank off your back for a few more months.”

My words of comfort opened the flood gates. I would never understand women if I lived into the next century. “What’d I say?” I asked Fred as Megan ran to her room.

Instead of running after her, like I used to with Natalie, I decided to let it go and check out the DVDs I stole from Hal. Fred and I were in the kitchen, watching the surveillance video on my laptop, when Megan rejoined us half an hour later. I was in the process of watching Nixon cut the garden hose. “Are you sure it’s the same hose?” she asked while looking over my shoulder at the computer screen.

“No doubt about it. Watch this,” I answered and clicked on the fast-reverse icon. When it reached the point where I wanted, I clicked on the forward button. We could see all six camera angles, each in a different frame. Nixon and Mike were seen on the deck camera, and an SUV could be seen coming down the driveway in another frame. My computer didn’t have the right software to select individual frames, so we couldn’t hear the audio on any of them. Mike was pointing a shotgun at Nixon, and the two seemed to be arguing. Megan and I watched Linda leave the SUV, and then we saw her on the deck camera. Mike must have seen her, too. When he turned to look, Nixon grabbed the gun out of Mike’s hands and hit him over the head with it. The deck camera captured it all in high definition color video.

Because she was behind me, I couldn’t see Megan’s expression, but I heard her gasp when we saw Nixon dragging Mike’s limp body to the minivan and putting him in the passenger seat. Then we saw him go to the side of the garage and cut the hose. The camera kept recording, for nearly a minute, after Nixon had driven off with Mike slumped over the minivan’s dash. The time stamp on the next video showed that half an hour had passed. This time, we saw Nixon and Linda return. He got out of her car and went around the house, out of the camera’s view. Then she left. A few minutes later, we saw Nixon at the dock, leaving in his boat. It had the words ‘Bass Tracker’ written on the side in letters only a blind person could miss.

Oddly enough, that was all the video there was. I had expected to see Hal show up, but I couldn’t find it on any of the DVDs. He must have destroyed any trace of his presence to protect himself.

I turned around to say something to Megan. Tears quietly rolled down her cheeks. “We should give this to the sheriff,” I said. “I could send him an anonymous copy from a ‘concerned citizen’ or something like that. I don’t relish spending twenty years in a Missouri prison for burglary.”

* * *

I spent the next day getting ready for my trip home, and Megan went into town to take our mother to church. Or maybe it was the other way around. Megan wasn’t much of a church person, but it was easier than listening to our Mother nag. It also gave me time to think things through. The next morning, we took the DVD to Rosenblum.

I had decided to give him the original and keep a copy for myself. The thought of being tracked down by some hidden electronic code on the DVD had kept me up most of the night. I remembered reading that was how they caught the BTK killer a few years back. He had sent them a floppy disk that was traced to a computer at the church where he did some volunteer work – or something like that.

At first, Rosenblum was a little put out when we barged into his office unannounced. But his attitude quickly changed after we managed to get him to watch the video. “And all this time, I thought it was Hal,” he said, when we saw Nixon drive away in his boat.

Megan had been watching the lawyer watch the video. “I’d like to see the insurance company claim Mike killed himself now,” she said, grinning.

Rosenblum returned her smile with a frown. “I wish it were that easy, Meg. Until I can get the coroner to change the death certificate, they won’t give you a penny. And he won’t do that based on what I’ve seen here. How do we know Nixon didn’t take Mike home to sleep it off? We don’t see him actually kill Mike, do we?”

Megan’s quit grinning. It looked like she might start crying, so I jumped in, “Come on, Ira, you know how the system works. Put a little pressure on those guys, and you’ll have a confession before the sun sets.”

“You watch too much TV, Jake,” he answered. “But you do have a point. I’ll ask the DA to have the sheriff work on Linda. I think she’s our best bet. Now all I need to do is find a way to give this to Bennet. I know his first question will be where did I get it from?”

* * *

Rosenblum didn’t have to answer any of Bennet’s questions after all. The crafty lawyer went to his friend Simons, the judge, and Simons called his friend, the sheriff, leaving Bennet out of the loop.

The sheriff checked the phone records then put out a warrant for Nixon and arrested Linda at her grandfather’s house. When the DA threatened to charge her as an accomplice to murder, Linda confessed. The DA pointed out that any handwriting expert would show Linda wrote Mike’s suicide note. Her confession confirmed my suspicions. Mike had gone to Hal’s to sell him the coins, and Nixon had somehow found out about the meeting and got there first. That beautiful cursive script of hers was her undoing.

Linda claimed no knowledge of how Mike ended up in the lake. The last she had seen him or Nixon was when Nixon put Mike in the minivan and drove away. She suggested that Nixon must have put Mike in his truck and then staged the accident. Rosenblum told us not to worry. He was sure the DA wouldn’t press charges against our mother if the truth came out when they caught up with Nixon.

It didn’t take Rosenblum long to have Mike’s death certificate changed. Fred and I, shortly after, left for home in our motor home. We took the long way back by traveling the old US highways and avoiding the freeways. There wasn’t much waiting for me back home. I just had to make it before Allison’s birthday; that wasn’t until December, so I got the idea to take our time and travel the blue highways.

The blue highways were, according to a book I had read several years ago by the same name, the old US highways that were the main roads across America before the freeways. The author of that book, William Least Heat Moon, had made it seem like a trip back to when life was not so hectic and dog-eat-dog. I would have to cross Kansas again to get back to Colorado and anything was better than the boring trip over Interstate Seventy. Like most of my hair-brained ideas, this one came to me out of nowhere, so I changed my route for no reason other than it sounded like a good idea at the time.

My first mistake was in trying to use modern technology to take me back sixty years. My GPS had us traveling down US 50 toward Wichita. Highway fifty shared the road with I-35 for over a hundred miles. Mister Moon would have been very upset.

After turning off the GPS in Emporia, and consulting the map given to me at a Kansas rest area, I saw Highway 50 would give me a clear shot to Colorado without passing through any large cities. It wasn’t until I was back on the road less-traveled that I realized I was being followed.

Whoever was following me had been clever enough to stay far enough behind that I didn’t notice him on the busy freeway from Kansas City to Emporia. I only realized he was following me because of his Missouri plates. I had seen those plates before. The first three letters were my daughter’s initials, AEM. I remembered seeing the plates back in Sedalia when I first had the stupid idea to take US 50 to Colorado.

“We’ve got company, Fred. Should I try to shake him?” My furry traveling companion looked out his window and barked. I thought for a moment that Fred actually understood me until I saw I had just passed a McDonald’s.