Web Digest Weekly/Fiction

Fiction
www.webdigestweekly.com

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"The Secret Keeper"
(Chapter Two)
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By
Dorien Grey
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Photo courtesy of D orien Grey

    I’d mentally tuned out the sound of the TV and concentrated on Jonathan, who’d gotten up from the
floor and stood like a statue staring at the set, impervious to Joshua’s vigorous attempts to get his attention.
    “Joshua,” I called, “why don’t you go get out of your pajamas? We’ll be having breakfast soon.”
    “But we’re playing!” he objected.
    Jonathan looked down at him and put a hand on his head. “Uncle Dick’s right, Joshua,” he said. “We’ll play
later.”
    Reluctantly, the boy turned and went into his room.
    The news moved on to other stories, and I flipped the set off. Jonathan came over to sit beside me on the
couch.
    “I’m so sorry, Babe,” I said.
    “I think we should call the police.”
    “Call the police? Why? I don’t understand.”
    “Mr. Bement would never kill himself!” he said firmly. “Never! He loved life too much, and he knew he didn’
t have very much of it left. He didn’t want to waste a day of it. We were making plans for the garden for next
year. He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t intend to be here. He never would have killed himself.”
    “I’m sorry,” I repeated. “But sometimes—well, people do unexpected things for reasons we can never
know. And you said that his best friend had just died. Maybe that hit him harder than you realized.”
    “He didn’t kill himself,” Jonathan insisted.
    “I tell you what,” I said. “I can check with Marty Gresham Monday to see what he knows about it, okay?”
Marty was a police contact with whom I’d become friendly. I took his hand. “Let’s see if they say anything
more about it today or tomorrow.”
    At that point, Joshua came out of his room, more or less dressed, and we went on about our day.

    It helped that Saturday was our family chores day. With Joshua always present and so much to get
done, Jonathan didn’t have the time to spend on worry. I knew he was saddened and upset by Bement’s death,
but he was very careful not to be anything but upbeat around Joshua.
    In addition to the chores, there were several phone calls - by me, since Jonathan wasn’t in a very social
mood—to the gang and to Cory and Nick about Sunday’s get-together. It was to be a potluck, and Jonathan
had planned to make potato salad, but Cory volunteered to bring it, so we opted for the buns and chips and
dips, which was probably just as well under the circumstances.
    We also arranged to meet Cory and Nick at the MCC.
    Though Jonathan usually drove to and from church, I decided I could take them, and when I picked them up,
Nick and Cory could follow us to Bob and Mario’s.

    The barbecue on Sunday was, as always, a great success. Jonathan seemed to be emerging from the
initial and understandable shock of Chester Bement’s death. As I suspected they would, Nick and Cory fit right
in.
    Mario, I found out for the first time in all the time we’d known him, had a deaf cousin and was fairly fluent in
sign. Tim worked with a deaf lab technician at the coroner’s office and also had picked up a fair amount of sign,
and two of Jake’s construction employees were deaf. I found it amazing that not only had so many of our friends
had contact with the deaf community but that I’d been completely unaware of it. Cory was, as always,
spectacularly good in effortlessly carrying on a running interpretation of everyone’s conversation.
    While the grown-ups talked, Joshua alternated running around the yard looking for the tortoise Mario and
Bob had found alongside a road some time before, trying to play with
    Pancake and Butch, their two cats (Pancake was pretty cool about it, but Butch wasn’t at all sure he wanted
to be harassed by a five-year-old boy) and frequent trips to the main group for attention and something to eat.
We’d made a rule before we arrived he had to clear all food and drink requests through Jonathan to prevent a
“no” from one of us sending him running over to try to get a “yes” from the other—usually, I have to admit, me.

    We checked the TV news when we could, but there was nothing more about Bement’s death. The
newspapers all carried small items but had no information other than the death was an apparent suicide and that
there would be no formal funeral, only a family memorial.
    So, on Monday, as I’d promised, I called Marty Gresham at police headquarters to ask him what he knew
about Bement’s death. Luckily, I caught him in.
    “Clarence Bement?” he asked. “Did you know him?”
    “No,” I said, “but Jonathan worked for him, and he is absolutely convinced Bement would never have killed
himself. I was just wondering if there's any possibility he might be right.”
    Marty sighed. “A lot of people friends think could never kill themselves do,” he said.
    “But how many ninety-year-olds kill themselves?” I asked.
    “True,” he admitted, “and all suicides are considered possible murders until proven otherwise, though a lot
more people kill themselves than are murdered. So, unless there’s some reason to suspect otherwise, the
investigations are not as extensive as they are in obvious murder cases. Dan and I don’t have the case, and I
don’t have any information, but I can check for you, if you’d like.”
    “I’d really appreciate it, Marty.”
    “No problem. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

    He called back shortly before lunch. Having friends in the police department definitely has its advantages.
“I’ve got a copy of the report on Bement’s death right here,” he said.”His housekeeper said he had been in ill
health for some time, and very depressed. She said he had just lost a close friend—his lawyer, Eli Prescott.
    “Apparently, he was pretty much estranged from most of his family, but those the investigating detectives
talked to agreed he’d been seriously depressed ever since he was confined to a wheelchair after a fall this
spring. The housekeeper says he’d often talked of suicide, but like I said, the rest of the family weren’t in close
contact.”
    I’m not sure why, but for some reason I detected the faint aroma of fish.
    “The housekeeper found the body, I understand.”
    “Yeah. She’s a live-in, but she has every Tuesday and Friday afternoon off. She went to church, did some
shopping, and returned home to find Bement dead. The doors were locked, there was no sign of forced entry,
and nothing was missing or out of place.
    “The gun was his, and was lying beside the body just where it would have fallen when his hand relaxed after
the shot. The prints on the gun were his, there was gunpowder residue on his right hand—he was right-handed—
and what we call ‘tattooing’ on his temple, indicating the gun was pressed against the skin when it was fired. No
suicide note, nothing to indicate a struggle.
    “The only thing out of the ordinary was that it took him two tries—the first shot missed and went into the
wall. The second did the job.”
    “Two shots?” I asked, incredulous. “How can someone miss shooting himself in the head the first time?”
    “Well, it’s not unheard-of. The bullet entered the skull just forward of the right temple, above the right eye
and exited just above the left eye. Most aim farther back, nearer the ear. But a ninety-year-old with a shaky
hand, with the barrel aiming toward the front of his temple, could well miss the first time. And the fact he made
sure to press the gun against his head for the second shot might support that.”
    “So, what more can they do?” I asked.
    “They’ll be checking more closely with the family, to see if they can find something suspicious—where
everyone was at the time of the death, whether any of them had, or knew of anyone who had, a particular
reason to want him dead.
    “Of course, the fact he was a multi-millionaire certainly can’t be overlooked. But unless they can find some
definite indication of foul play—and there’s none so far—there’s only so much time and manpower we can
afford to expend. Still, they know what they’re doing, and they aren’t likely to miss anything, if there’s anything
to find.”
    “Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have a hard time selling that ‘no foul play’ to Jonathan. He swears Bement
would never have killed himself, and he never once mentioned Bement’s being anything but positive about life.”
There was a slight pause before Marty spoke again. “With all due respect to Jonathan, how long and how well
did he really know Bement? I understand he worked for him, but—”
    He had a point.
    “Yeah,” I said, “you’re right, of course. He only worked for him for a month or so, and then only a couple
hours three times a week. But apparently they talked a lot while Jonathan was working in the garden, and he
feels they got to be fairly close. He said Bement confided in him, and I’d think if he were suicidal, Jonathan
would have picked up on something. He’s pretty perceptive.”
    “I don’t know what to tell you, Dick—I’m afraid he’s outnumbered on this one. But let’s see what else we
can find out. I’ll let you know if there’s anything.”
    “Thanks, Marty.I appreciate your looking into it for me.”
    “Glad to do what I can.” There was a slight pause, then: “So now I’d better get back to work. I’ve got a
desk full of cases.”
    “Understood. Thanks again, and we’ll have to get together for lunch before too long. My treat.”
    “Sounds good. See ya, Dick.”
    I hung up wondering yet again how, shaky hand or no, it could take two tries to shoot yourself in the head.

    About two-thirty that afternoon, I got a call from Jonathan saying someone had called him at work for a
quote on a small landscaping project out near Prichert Park, a forest preserve on the edge of town. Since he
was without a client for his freelance work at the moment, he had agreed to run out there after work, and asked
if I’d mind picking Joshua up at daycare.
    I’d had an appointment with a prospective client scheduled for three o'clock, but luckily the guy had called
just before Jonathan did and rescheduled. Still, much as I hated myself for it, I felt a little less than happy by
another last-minute notice.
    It was nearly six o’clock when Jonathan got home, and I’d started dinner. Even before we finished our group
hug, I could tell something was bothering him.
    “Something wrong?” I asked.
    While I fixed my evening Manhattan, Jonathan took a Coke out of the fridge, pouring Joshua a small jelly-
glass full, remembering to put a maraschino cherry into it. We then went into the living room to sit down.
    “I drove all the way out there,” he said, taking a swig of his Coke, “and I must have written the address
down wrong. I was sure he said Woods Road, but there’s no such address there. As a matter of fact, there’s
not a single house on that whole stretch of road.
    “He didn’t give me his phone number, so I don’t have any way to call him to explain. He’s probably mad at
me for not showing up.” He sighed, then added, “As if that wasn’t bad enough, I drove all the way to County
Line Road then turned around and came back. Just before I got to a stop sign where some dirt trail crosses the
road, I had to swerve to avoid a pothole and a stone broke my windshield! I haven’t any idea where it came
from—it’s a gravel road, but nobody was in front of me, and nobody passed me. I must have kicked it up
myself somehow. Anyway, I’m going to have to get it fixed.”
    “How bad is it broken?”
    “Not bad, really, just a hole with a few small cracks around it. But the rain will come in, and—I just hope my
insurance will cover it.”
    I was fairly sure his deductible was higher than the cost of a replacement windshield would be—contrary to
their ads, altruism is not an insurance company’s primary motivation in selling policies—but I didn’t want to say
anything. He was already unhappy enough.

    Maybe I’ve been in the PI business too long, but something about the broken windshield niggled at me.
It was not until I’d gotten home Tuesday—Jonathan’s chorus practice night—that I realized why.
    I’d stopped on the way home to pick up a bucket of chicken, since time was a factor in his being able to get
to rehearsal. In deference to time, I forewent my usual pre-dinner manhattan.
    “How was your day?” I asked, setting the sack on the counter and transferring the bucket of chicken and
tubs of mashed potatoes and cole slaw to the table, which Jonathan and Joshua had just finished setting.
Jonathan took a gallon of milk from the refrigerator and filled our glasses. “Did that guy call back?”
    “No,” he said as we sat down, “but something kind of strange happened.”
    The muffled sound of alarm bells echoed through my head.
    “What’s that?” I asked, as casually as I could.
    “I think someone was following me when I left work.”
    The mufflers came off, and the bells were impossible to ignore.
    “How do you know?” I asked, feeling rather stupid the minute the words left my mouth. Jonathan may be
naive, but he’s certainly not stupid. If he says he was followed, he was followed.
    The conversation was interrupted by Joshua’s nearly knocking the bucket of chicken over in search of a
drumstick.
    “About half an hour before we got off work,” Jonathan said, ladling out scoops of mashed potatoes and cole
slaw onto Joshua’s plate, “I had to go out front to bring in a couple shrubs we’re going to be delivering
tomorrow. I noticed a black Mercedes just up the block. You don’t see many Mercedes in that neighborhood.
It had tinted windows, and the driver’s window was rolled down. I’m sure I saw someone sitting in the driver’s
seat, but I couldn’t be sure.
    “Anyway, as I was pulling out of the lot, I noticed that the Mercedes was still there. And then, about two
blocks from work, I looked into my mirror and saw the same black Mercedes several cars behind me.
    “I turned on Froberg, like I always do, and sure enough, the Mercedes did, too. Why would anyone be
following me? It doesn’t make any sense.”
    “Coincidence, probably,” I said. I was lying.
    “I don’t think so. Just to be sure I was right, when I was the last car through the green light at Kling and I
saw he was stuck there until the light turned again, I took a quick left onto Kling and then, as soon as I couldn't
see his car, I turned into the alley right behind the row of stores. I watched in the mirror and sure enough, he'd
turned left on Kling, too. I saw him drive past the alley, but I don't think he saw me. And then I came on home,
and didn’t see him again.”
    I was impressed, but didn’t want to add fuel to his concern.
    “Well, like I say, probably just a coincidence,” I said, not believing it.
    He looked at me with a slightly raised eyebrow. “Do you suppose it was that guy who called me, and he’s
really mad at me for not showing up?”
    “I doubt it,” I said. Damn, I hated lying.
    I had little doubt it was whoever had made the call that had lured him out onto a deserted road on the edge
of town, and I was sure the guy wasn’t concerned about Jonathan’s not having shown up. I was rapidly
becoming convinced
    Jonathan had shown up exactly as he was supposed to—but that whoever it was had just missed the chance
to kill him.
    I was suddenly very interested in having a look at Jonathan’s windshield.
    “You know, if your windshield is broken maybe you should take my car to practice tonight and to work
tomorrow. I can take your truck in to get the windshield fixed. We might as well get it taken care of right away.”
    “Would you mind? It isn’t a very big hole, but it goes all the way through, and there are a bunch of cracks
around it. They’ll only get worse.”
    “Consider it done,” I said, and we finished our dinner.

    As soon as Jonathan left for practice and Joshua and I had cleaned up from dinner, I said, “Let’s go take
a walk downstairs for a minute. I want to take a look at Uncle Jonathan’s truck.”
    Joshua, who never passed up an opportunity to go somewhere—anywhere—waited impatiently by the front
door while I rummaged through our top dresser drawer to find
    Jonathan’s spare set of keys.
    Since Jonathan always backed the truck in, the minute I unlocked and opened the door to the garage and
switched on the light, I saw the hole, almost directly in the center of the windshield, just to the left of the driver’s
seat as seen from the front. I moved up for a better look. Though it was warm in the garage, I felt a definite chill.
    “Where are we going?” Joshua asked.
    “Nowhere,” I said. “I just want to look for something.” Wanting to keep him from getting into any mischief or
wandering into the alley while I was about it, I said, “Tell you what—why don’t you sit in the driver’s seat while
I look.”
    “Can I drive?” he asked excitedly.
    “You can pretend-drive,” I said, “but don’t touch any of the buttons, okay?”
    "Okay,” he said, unconvincingly.
    I let him in the driver’s side and moved around to the passenger door, stepping partly into the truck to check
for what I was afraid I was going to find. And I found it—a small round hole in the upholstery about a foot to
the right of the driver and in line with but slightly lower than the hole in the windshield.
    Luckily, the truck had a split seat, so I was able to pull the passenger’s side forward without disturbing
Joshua. He couldn’t reach the brake or clutch pedals, or anything on the dashboard, without leaning far forward,
which of course he tried to do until my loud “Ahem!” stopped him in mid-motion. He returned to moving the
steering wheel rapidly back and forth and making “brrrmmmmmmm” sounds.
    Returning my attention to the issue at hand, I saw a dent in the back wall of the cab and, searching the floor,
spotted a flattened blob of metal—obviously, a bullet.
    Leaving it where it was, I put the seat back, got out of the truck, closed the door and went back to the
driver’s door.
    “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”
    “But we just got here!” Joshua observed plaintively. Reluctantly, he turned to get out of the truck, and I lifted
him down to the floor.
    “You’re a good driver,” I said, tousling his head, and he beamed.
    We then left the garage, closing and locking the door behind us.
    When we returned to the apartment, Joshua ran off to his room, and I went right to the phone to call Marty
Gresham’s number at police headquarters. I knew he wouldn’t be in, but left a message for him to call me the
minute he arrived in the morning.

    I had just come out of Joshua’s room after Story Time when Jonathan came home.
    “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Practice ran a little longer than normal. And we ran through my solo tonight!”
    “Great,” I said. “How did it go?”
    The forthcoming concert was to feature a selection of songs from Disney movies, and Jonathan had been
given a solo on “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes,” from Cinderella. I’d found it odd that, excited as he
was, he didn’t practice it at home. In fact, he almost never sang at home. I'd asked him why, and he said, “I
know it sounds funny, but— well, I don’t have any trouble singing around other people, but I’d get embarrassed
singing around you.”
    “Embarrassed? Why in the world would you be embarrassed?”
    He'd shaken his head. “I don’t know. I just would be. And besides, I don’t want you to get tired of hearing
the song. I want it to be special when you hear it at the concert.”
    I’d learned Jonathan had his own rules of logic, and not to question them. So I hadn't.
    “Whatever you say, Babe,” I'd said, laying my hand on his leg.
    Now, we sat on the couch and switched on the TV to catch one of Jonathan’s favorite PI shows, Riptide,
which I always viewed with a certain bemusement for the ease with which the cases were solved. Jonathan was
convinced the characters played by Perry King and Joe Penny were romantically involved. I didn’t quite
understand how he reached that conclusion, but it was an interesting thought and probably another example of
Jonathan-logic, so I didn’t argue with him.
    During a commercial break, I broached the subject I’d been thinking about since Joshua and I left the garage.
    “You know, I’ve been thinking. Maybe now’s a good time to make a trip back to Wisconsin to see your
dad and your sisters.”
    We’d talked several times about his desire to take Joshua back to visit family. He hadn’t been back since he
came to us, and while he spoke to his grandfather and/or aunts every month or so, Jonathan didn’t want them to
become just voices on the phone.
    “You deserve a little time off,” I said. “You said the other day that work was a little slow at Evergreen. Your
boss would probably be willing to have you take some time off. You’ve got some vacation time coming, and
now would be a perfect time to go, while you don’t have any freelance jobs.”
    He was quiet for a few moments, thinking. “It would be nice to go back home for a while,” he said at last. “I’
d like you to meet my family.”
    I smiled. “I’d like that, but I think I’d better stay around and hold down the fort. Besides, this is a family
thing.”
    “You’re family,” he said.
    “I appreciate that,” I said, “but this will be your first trip home with Joshua, and I’d just be a distraction. I’ll
go with you next time.”
    “But it won’t be a vacation without you,” he objected.
    “You’ll have another week coming,” I said. “We can all go somewhere together then.”
    “Well, I don’t know. I just don’t like going anywhere without you.”
    “I know, and I’ll miss you, too. But I definitely think you should go.”
    The program resumed, and we went back to watching.
    At the next commercial, he said, “Yeah, I suppose now would be a good time to go home. When do you
think we should go?”
    “The sooner the better,” I said. “How about this Thursday?”
    He looked at me suspiciously. “The day after tomorrow? Are you serious? No way I could leave that soon!
I have to clear it with my boss, see if Dad will be able to pick us up, pack, let the gang know. All sorts of stuff.
Maybe Saturday, that way I won’t miss more work than I have to.” He turned to face me full-on. “Something
else is going on here. Tell me.”
    He deserved the truth. My trying to protect him with evasions and half-truths hadn’t worked, and he was
right to resent my trying.
    So, I told him.
    “Look,” I said, trying to appear as casual about it as I could, “if—and that’s a big if—you’re right about
Clarence Bement’s not having committed suicide, that means somebody killed him. And if whoever did it knows
you and Mr. Bement talked a lot, it’s not impossible he may think Mr. Bement told you something he shouldn’t
have.”
    “But he didn’t!”
    “You and I may know that, but the guy who called you to come out to a deserted stretch of road doesn’t.”
    “So, it wasn’t a stone that broke my windshield.” It was more a statement than a question.
    I shook my head. “Afraid not.”
    “And if I hadn’t swerved to avoid that pothole—”
    I reached over to take his hand, entwining our fingers.
    “But you did,” I said, “and that’s what matters.” I squeezed his hand. “Look, we can’t be sure about any of
this. The window could have been an accident and your being followed a coincidence.”
    “But you don’t think so.”
    “Hey, I’m a private investigator. I see bad guys lurking behind every tree whether they’re there or not. But
just to be safe, I want to look into it further, and I’ll be able to do that a lot easier if I don’t have to worry about
you while I’m doing it.”
    “You’re doing it again.”
    “Doing what?”
    “Trying to protect me. I do appreciate it, but I really can take care of myself.”
    “I know you can, Babe, and that’s not the issue. It’s not even a question of just you and me. We have
Joshua to think about now, too. Just in case there is a real problem here, we can’t let him be involved. I can’t
help but worry about you and try to protect you—that’s what I’m here for. So humor me. Look on it as my
being selfish—by protecting you, I’m protecting myself. You’d do the same for me.”
    He smiled. “Of course I would. But I’d try not to be so obvious about it.”

    We watched the late news in relative silence, and I could see, glancing over at him frequently, that he
was thinking about everything that had been going on. I was very im- pressed that he seemed to take the
possibility someone might have deliberately taken a shot at him and then followed him as calmly as he was.
    As the news ended, he looked at me and said, “You’re right. We really should go. I’ll check with my boss
tomorrow then call Dad to see if it’s okay with him and if he can pick us up in Rhinelander. I’ll have to miss
chorus practice next week—I’ve never missed a practice before.”
    “I’m sure they’ll understand.”
    He was silent a moment, then said, “I’m glad you suggested this trip, but I’m really going to miss you.”
Picking up the remote to turn off the TV, he stood up. “Want me to show you how much?”
    Oh, yeah! I thought, but said nothing and merely got up from the couch, took his extended hand and let him
lead me toward the bedroom

    Assuming for the moment that I wasn’t being paranoid in thinking that the shooting and Jonathan’s being
followed were related and did have something to do with Clarence Bement’s death, the most logical explanation
for it was that somebody for some reason thought Jonathan knew something he shouldn’t. What that might be, I
had no idea, and doubted if Jonathan did, either.
    From what he’d said, only two other people had seen him with Bement—the housekeeper and Bement’s
grandson. Since I couldn’t imagine the housekeeper luring him out to an isolated road or driving a Mercedes,
plus the fact that it was a man who had called him that, the surface at least, narrowed the field down quite a bit.
From what I’d gathered, Bement had a pretty dysfunctional family, and the lure of money is always a strong
motive for murder. Then again, that raised the question of how anyone else in the family could even have known
about Jonathan.
    Jonathan had told me Bement said something about his housekeeper spying on him. If he was being serious,
that might open the door a bit wider. I made a note to definitely have a talk with the housekeeper, and also with
the grandson, Mel—Fowler.
    If it was not the grandson, there was the possibility that whoever took a shot at Jonathan might not even
know exactly what he looked like. Since he drove a rather easily- identifiable pickup truck with “Evergreen” on
the doors and tailgate, and it had been parked frequently at Bement’s home, it wouldn’t be necessary to know
what the driver looked like to target it. At least, that’s what I hoped. It was a weak theory, but it was also
another reason I wanted Jonathan to take my car to work the next day.

    “I think you should take Joshua to Happy Day and pick him up until we leave,” Jonathan said as we
dressed in the morning. “I don’t want him with me.”
    I understood and shared his concern. “I can do that,” I said, “but assuming whoever it is doesn’t know what
you look like, it’s your truck he’d be watching for so it’s best that we keep Joshua away from it. You’ll be
driving my car, which he won’t recognize, so I’m sure you’ll be okay.”
    He thought a minute, then said, “I suppose.”
    I was tempted to follow him to work, but if I was right about the shooter only recognizing the truck, it
wouldn’t be the brightest move to follow Jonathan around in it. Instead, I left the house when they did and
arrived at work a few minutes early. Though I knew Marty wouldn’t be at work yet and would call me as soon
as he could, I left another message for him.
    I didn’t want to tie up the phone by calling the airline for reservations until I heard from Marty, so began my
customary coffee/newspaper/crossword puzzle ritual more as a matter of habit than with any real interest.
    At eight-thirty, just as I was only halfheartedly paying attention to the crossword puzzle and struggling to find
a three-letter word for “unworldly and vague” (fey), the phone rang.
    “Hardesty Investigations,” I said on picking it up, though I hoped it was Marty. It was.
    “What’s up?” he asked. “Two calls—it must be important.”
    “It is,” I replied, and quickly told him what had happened. “I know it could just be a freak accident,” I said,
“but I wouldn’t be calling you if I didn’t think there was some validity to Jonathan’s belief.”
    “I understand. Where’s the truck now?”
    “In the parking lot right across from my office. I had Jonathan take my car today.”
    “Better safe than sorry,” Marty said. “I’ll send somebody over to take a look at it.”
    “You want me to meet them at the truck?”
    “That won’t be necessary. Just give me a description and the plate number.”
    “I don’t have the plate number, but you can’t miss it. It’s got ‘Evergreen Nursery’ on the doors and tailgate,
and I’ll run down and unlock it and tell the lot attendant.” I then reiterated my belief that Jonathan might be right
about Bement’s death.
    “One thing at a time,” he said. “For now, we’ll have to handle it as a routine police report, since we don’t
know that it has any relation to Clarence Bement’s death. They’ll want to talk to Jonathan to find out exactly
what happened. He works at Evergreen? The one out on Hollister? Do you have their phone number handy?”
I gave it to him. “They’d better call first. Sometimes he works in the yard and sometimes he goes out on jobs
with a crew.”
    “Will do,” he said. “And I’ll be sure to pass the report on to Howie Garland and Dave Angell—they’re the
team looking into Bement’s death. You want to catch lunch? Dan’s got a dentist appointment, and you and I can
talk a little more about all this.”
    “That’d be great,” I said. “My treat. Sandler’s okay? You name the time.”
    “Sandler’s is fine. Say twelve-fifteen?”
    I called Evergreen to make sure Jonathan would be there and to give him a heads-up.
    Leaving the office, I went downstairs and across the street to the parking lot to unlock the truck and alert the
attendant that the police would be showing up at some point. I left my office phone number with him in case the
investigating officers might need something then returned to my office.
    I called the airlines for reservations. American had a nine a.m. flight to Chicago Saturday morning, with a
connecting commuter flight to Rhinelander, getting them there at three-fifteen. I scheduled a return flight for the
following Friday, getting them back here at two-forty-five p.m.
    If I’d had my druthers, I’d have left the return date open and kept them away until I was absolutely positive
what was going on. But Jonathan had pointed out, rightly, that he could only take so much time off from work,
and that Joshua shouldn’t miss more time away from school—it might only be kindergarten but it was
important—than was absolutely necessary. I reluctantly agreed.
    The rest of the morning was spent on paperwork and paying bills and general office puttering. At around
eleven forty-five, I took the bus to Sandler’s Restaurant, about two blocks from police headquarters in the City
Annex building. I didn't worry about the police showing up while I was gone; I figured they'd be taking their
lunch at the same time.
    As usual, I was early and was able to get the last available table. The waiter was just on his way over to refill
my coffee when Marty appeared. We shook hands as he slid into the padded bench opposite me.
    After the usual small talk, the pouring of coffee, the looking at menus, and the ordering, he got right to the
point.
    “So. I’m really sorry to hear about Jonathan, but do you really think someone deliberately shot at him? And
that it had anything at all to do with Clarence Bement’s death?”
    “Odd as it may sound, yes and yes. Exactly why and what I don’t know.”
    He took a sip of his coffee before saying, “Well, Al Pardue and George Stein have been assigned to
investigate the shooting, and I think they were planning to go see him today.”
    “Why aren't—Angell and Garland?—looking into it? Having two sets of detectives on the same case is
bound to be confusing.”
    He shook his head. “Yeah, but that's just it—we aren't sure it is the same case yet. I ran into Howie and
Dave after I talked with you and asked them if there were anything new in the Bement case.
    “Howie’s a great guy, but he’s up for retirement in a couple of months, and he’s pretty much just going
through the motions. Dave’s been on the force for eight years, but only recently made detective. He pretty much
takes his cues from Howie, and Howie says there’s not much doubt but that it was a suicide. They said they
were going to talk to a few more of Bement’s relatives, but it sounds like they’re pretty much ready to pack it
away.”
    I knew Marty well enough to tell he wouldn’t have gone into the detectives’ backgrounds unless he had a
reason.
    “But you’re not so sure they’re right?”
    The waiter came with our food, and we devoted the next few minutes to eating, until Marty said, “Well,
unless Howie and Dave decide to consider it a homicide, there’s nothing much I can do. But if you do come
across a solid link between Jonathan’s incident and Bement’s death—”
    “Yeah, I definitely do plan to do a little poking around,” I said. “Somebody took a shot at Jonathan, and
whether it was accidental or deliberate, I want to know more about it.”
    Marty grinned. “I figured that’s what you’d say.”
    Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d been churning over something Marty had told me when he first
described the report on Bement’s death, and suddenly it all gelled.
    “You know,” I began, putting my thoughts into words for the first time, “something about that report on
Bement's death has really bothered me.”
    “What’s that?”
    “The fact that it supposedly took him two tries to kill himself. The report said he had a contact wound on the
skull and residue on his hand, right?”
    “Yeah. So?”
    “Well, if the killer had come up behind him, put the gun directly to his head and fired, it would cause the
powder/contact burn at the site of the wound. But in order to get residue on Bement's hand, the killer would
have had to put the gun in Bement's hand and use it to fire the second shot, the one that went into the wall.
That’s why there were two shots—to cinch the suicide theory. And because Bement was ninety, nobody
questioned it as they might have done if he were thirty.”
    Marty just sat there staring at me, then slowly raised an index finger to his temple and tapped it. “Good
thinking, Detective Hardesty. How many people would have thought of that? If it walks like a duck—I can't say
that's what happened, but you can bet I’ll have a talk with Garland and Angell.”
    We finished lunch and went our separate ways with promises to keep in touch and let each other know what
was going on.

    I stopped at the parking lot across from work to see If the police had been there, and was told they hadn’t,
so I went on up to my office to see if I had any phone messages. There was one from Jonathan.
    “Hi, Dick. I’ve got to get back to work but wanted to let you know the police were here and I talked to
them. They wanted to know everything about how and where it happened, and I told them. They said people
were always shooting off guns in the woods, and it was probably just a stray bullet.
    “When I told them I thought it might have something to do with Mr. Bement’s death, and said I thought I’d
been followed the other day, they didn’t seem impressed. Maybe they thought I was just being paranoid. They
took down the information and said they’d pass it on to whoever is looking into Mr. Bement’s death, but I don’t
know if they will or not. Anyway, we’ll talk when we get home. Oh, and did you call the airline? Bye.”
    Considering that two separate sets of partners were looking into what they all probably considered two
separate incidents, it was unlikely they would have the time or the inclination to exchange speculations. I wasn’t
overly confident that much would be done.
    I’d had occasion in the past to drive out Woods Road several times and remember noting that the few signs
along the way were riddled with bullet holes from being used for target practice. So, I didn’t feel overly
confident the police would assume it was anything other than a stray bullet that had hit Jonathan’s truck.
    I waited another half-hour then decided to go back downstairs to check with the parking lot attendant to see
if the police had been there yet. As I walked into the lot, I could see an unmarked police car—I don’t know
why they don’t mark them, I can spot them a mile away—parked in front of Jonathan’s truck, with one guy
standing beside the passenger door and another inside.
    I walked over as the guy inside got out and joined his partner at the front of the truck. I introduced myself,
telling them I was a PI, which sometimes helps and sometimes doesn’t. They did not introduce themselves.
    “Yeah,” the one who’d been inside the truck said, “your buddy told us.”
    “And you are—Pardue or Stein?”
    They seemed surprised I’d know their names.
    “Sorry,” the one who’d talked said, extending his hand.
    “I’m Al Pardue. This is my partner George Stein.” We exchanged handshakes, and I asked if they had come
to any conclusions after talking with Jonathan and looking at the truck.
    “Well, we found the bullet under the seat,” Pardue said, “but I can’t see it will do us much good. Looks to
be a twenty-two. But the angle from the hole in the window to the hole in the seat indicates it was fired from
slightly above. There’s an old railroad bridge that crosses Woods Road just inside the city limits, and from what
your buddy said, we figure that’s probably where the shot came from.”
    “Why’s that?” I asked.
    “For one thing, it’s just the place some idiot teenager out to scare the shit out of somebody would choose.
For another, if the shot had come from ground level, it probably wouldn’t have penetrated the windshield.
    “Most people don’t realize it, but most bullets fired head-on will bounce off a windshield. It has to do with
the angle of incidence, the slant of the windshield, and a bunch of other technical mumbo-jumbo. A shotgun blast
at close range would have been a different story, but a small-caliber rifle fired from a distance—”
    “So Jonathan was lucky to have swerved just before the bullet hit,” I observed.
    “Depends on which way he swerved,” Stern replied. “If the shooter had seen the passenger’s side of the cab
was empty and aimed there, the swerve could have moved the bullet closer to the driver.”
    Well, that was a helpful bit of information, I thought. But I still chose not to dwell on what might have
happened if he hadn’t swerved.
    “There’s a couple of teenagers who live around there who’ve been in trouble before for this sort of thing, and
there’s a crossroads with a stop sign just beyond the bridge and right near where your friend described being
hit. The city has to replace that particular sign just about every year, it’s so riddled with bullet holes. They might
have been aiming for that.”
    Uh-huh, I thought.
    “We’ll check those teenagers out,” Pardue said.
    “What about Jonathan’s belief that it might have something to do with Clarence Bement’s death, and the fact
that someone was following him yesterday?”
    “We don’t have the Bement case,” Stein said. “But we took down the information, and will pass it on to
whoever has it.”
    “Howie Garland and Dave Angell,” I said.
    “Ah, okay. So we’ll pass it on to them. But frankly, it seems a little unlikely that there’s any real connection.
He said he only worked for Bement for a short time, so I can’t see why someone might be after him.”
    I could certainly see their point. “Well, I appreciate your letting Garland and Angell know about it anyway,” I
said. They left shortly thereafter, giving me the okay to take the
truck in for a new windshield.
    “You might ask them to give you the old one, just in case it might be needed as evidence somewhere down
the road,” Pardue said.
    As soon as they’d gone, I returned to my office to call the auto glass company.


(To Be Continued...)

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