Caught in the Middle (19 page)

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Andy.

Andy who?

Andy walks with me and he talks with me.

“Andy?” I whispered.

“You came!” His voice, heavy with relief, came eerily out of the thick night air.

“You asked me to.” I stared as hard as I could through the grayness, but I couldn’t see him. Still, the voice was right, the one I’d heard last night by the lilac tree.

“Pull your car up under the overhang so the cops won’t see it,” he instructed. “They keep driving by all the time. And leave your purse and cell phone in the car.”

I did as he asked and the car was swallowed in the fog and shadows. I felt somewhat naked without my cell. Not that I expected to need help. Not really.

I walked to the door again, and he said, “Come on in.”

I’d assumed he was just standing in the shadows, ready to reveal himself dramatically when he chose. For the first time I realized he was inside the building.

I slid through the door he held open, and immediately the acrid odor of cordite and grease hit me.

“How did you get in here without setting off the alarms?” I asked.

“I work here,” he said.

“Sure, I know that. But not everyone who works here has access to the security codes or keys or whatever you use.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but not everybody’s family owns the place.”

“Your father owns Brandywine Steel?”

“My mom,” he said. “Her father started the company, and Dad married the boss’s daughter when he was a welder like me. Made Grandpop furious because he wanted Mom to marry better than a high-school dropout.” I could sense rather than see Andy shrug his shoulders. “He got used to it in time. Now Dad runs the place, but Mom still controls the money. I guess Grandpop never completely forgave Dad.”

So Dad, who felt Andy had shamed and ruined him, had risen above his origins. And Mom, the boss’s daughter who had believed in a welder once, now believed her other welder was a good boy in spite of the hard evidence. And she still controlled the purse for both of them.

Now the phone conversation I’d had with the Gershowitzes made more sense. My only questions were how did Mrs. Gershowitz plan to get her money to Andy and how did she think she’d get away with it without being detected? And what did he plan to do with the money? Where did he plan to go?

Andy started walking across a cavernous space, a small flashlight pointed at his feet. Several night-lights shone at intervals from the steel struts that held up the roof high above, but they shed little light. I decided their job was to create shadows, and they fulfilled their purpose quite well.

I followed Andy closely, uncomfortable in the vast, echoing expanse. If my lilac tree could hide a gang of bad guys, this place could house a whole army.

“It’s spooky in here,” I muttered as a great piece of machinery loomed up beside us.

“That’s just a large lathe,” Andy said, becoming my tour guide. “And that’s a roll bedding machine and that’s a portable welding unit. Those—” he indicated a pair of cylinders that looked like miniature rockets “—are the gas tanks for the welding. And over there’s the overhead crane and that’s a grinding unit.”

I made impressed noises, not telling him that to my unsophisticated eye all his undoubtedly wonderful and highly technical equipment looked like black blobs with scary shadows. I just stayed close to his light so I wouldn’t trip over the cables that snaked across the floor like silent reptiles slithering from shadow pool to shadow pool.

Suddenly he jogged slightly to the right. “Watch it,” he said, the penlight shining on a wooden pallet about a foot off the floor. On it were three slabs of steel waiting to be made into something useful. I carefully stepped around it.

“That shouldn’t be there,” Andy said, disapproval sharp in his voice. “It’s sticking out into the safe area.”

“The safe area?”

“See those lines?” He pointed his penlight at worn yellow lines that went down each side of the area where we were. “They mark the walkways where it’s always supposed to be safe to walk. OSHA requires them. Whoever left that pallet there is in violation.”

I made an understanding noise.

“We don’t take safety lightly around here,” he said. “If the shop were operating, you’d have to wear safety glasses and a hard hat. You can’t be too careful with dangerous equipment like we’ve got.”

I listened to his little lecture on safety and wondered how he had learned these secondary truths so well and missed the primary ones about human relationships. Don’t let a pallet stick out over the yellow lines, but go ahead and bash in the head of an innocent guy who gets in your way.

I decided, wisely for once, that this was not a good observation with which to begin our conversation.

“You liked working here, didn’t you?” I asked instead.

He nodded. “I do. Someday it’ll all be mine.”

Oh, boy,
I thought, catching the difference in the verb tenses he and I had used. He certainly wasn’t letting reality interfere with his plans for the future.

The safe area became a sort of aisle between dividers that looked ragged and insubstantial even as they flashed Andy’s penlight back at me. I reached out and touched large sheets of some kind of polyvinyl tied to tall metal poles balanced in old tires.

Suddenly Andy cut left between two of the dividers. I followed him around the corner and found myself in a good-size cubicle, not a neat, clean one like in an office, but a work space formed by the polyvinyl sheets and littered with tools and equipment lying in organized disarray. At one end of the worktable sat a laptop, open and operating, its electronic gray light adding to the eeriness of this place.

“This is my welding area,” Andy said, unmistakable pride in his voice. “Those are called welding shields.” He pointed to the dividers. “They block the arcs of light when we’re welding. Some of the sheets are yellow or light blue, and they block the light okay. Some are black, and they do a real good job. I have black ones around my area.”

Nothing but the best for the heir apparent.

“Each of the welders has his own area?” I asked.

Andy nodded and flashed his light to show me his work space. I saw his welder’s mask and an acetylene torch lying on the large worktable. Other tools I couldn’t identify lay here and there. A large, stationary fan rose like a basketball backboard on a long pole in one corner.

“So tell me,” I said, deciding it was time to get down to business. I had more than enough information to set the scene for my readers. “Why did you ask me to meet you here tonight? What do you want from me?”

“No, you got it wrong. I don’t want anything
from
you. It’s what I’m going to give
to
you. But first I gotta know something.” He hesitated. “Do you pay sources? I know the cops pay for information. I see it all the time on TV. I thought maybe you could pay me, too.”

I thought of the ten dollars in my jeans pocket. Somehow I didn’t think that was the amount he had in mind.

“It’ll be worth it, believe me,” he assured me.

“Oh, I believe it will be, but we don’t pay for stories, Andy. I think the cops sometimes use confiscated drug money for expenses like that.” Talk about getting your information from TV. “But we don’t have drug money lying around the office. And if money for informants is in our budget, no one’s told me.”

He swore and let out a great sigh.

Suddenly I got worried. “You’re still going to tell me whatever it is, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “Yeah, ’cause I’ve got to get the cops off my back. It was worth a try for the extra money. I like extra money. Especially now.”

“Why?” I asked, trying to sound all innocent and eager.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he said, and his voice suddenly dripped anger.

“I would like to know,” I said, not backing down. “It’d be a great part of the story.”

“Well, it’s not a part you’re getting.” And I could tell by the tone of finality that I wasn’t.

“So what do you want to tell me?” I asked.

He looked at me across the dark shadows of his cubicle. “Remember when you were driving home Wednesday night on Oak Lane and you almost hit someone?”

I looked at him sharply. “Of course I remember. It scared me to death. But how do you know about it?”

“I was the guy you almost hit.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. He liked surprising me. “That was me.”

I recalled the image of the man standing ready to cross the street and felt a flash of the terror I’d experienced when my car had slid uncontrollably toward him. I waited for a spasm of recognition, one of those
aha!
moments like I’d had in line at Pat’s funeral, but none occurred. The blurry image of memory remained just that. If he hadn’t told me he was the one, I’d never have known.

“What were you doing out there in the sleet and rain?” I asked. “Do you live around there?”

“No. We live outside town on a gentleman’s farm. At least that’s what Dad likes to call it. Our house is big, bigger than Grandpop’s.”

Obviously beating Grandpop was important. I suspected beating everybody was important. “So you still live at home?”

“Sure do,” he agreed easily. “I’m not crazy. I know a good deal when I see one. And when Hannah and I get married, I’ll build a house for us on the farm.”

I decided not to touch that piece of denial with a ten-foot pole.

“Do you have brothers and sisters?” I asked instead.

He shook his head. “Only child.” He grinned. “More money for me.”

I looked in wonder at this man/child, this mass of contradictions and wishful thinking, and returned to our topic for the evening. “So why were you near Trudy McGilpin’s?”

“I was going to go see her.”

He’s surprised me again. “To see her? At that time of night?”

“I knew I needed a good lawyer, and she was the only one I knew about.”

I rubbed my forehead. “You knew you needed a good lawyer because you’d killed Pat Marten?”

“Yeah.” I barely heard the word. “I still can’t believe it, you know? We were talking, him and me, just talking about Hannah. And suddenly there he was, lying on the garage floor, his head all bloody.”

I sighed. It was all so very sad,

Andy looked sharply at me. “You aren’t going to write any more about Pat, are you? He’s gotten enough glory already, and that isn’t what I want to talk about. Besides, I’ll deny the whole conversation.”

My hand found the tape recorder and checked the On button. It was properly depressed. He could deny all he wanted. “The police already know all about what happened, Andy. You know that. They have the wrench.”

He set his penlight down on his workbench and picked up a wrench of his own. “The big thing was just lying there on his workbench with all this other stuff.” His voice grew whiny. “Why’d he have to put it where I’d grab it? Why couldn’t he have put a screwdriver or a pair of pliers there? Then I’d just have a guy who was mad at me for popping him one instead of a dead guy.”

He sounded genuinely miffed at Pat.

“What did he say that upset you so?”

“Well, I told him he had to leave Hannah alone. She was my girl, and he actually thought he was going to marry her!” As he talked, the whine left and the volume rose. “Can you believe that? My Hannah! Everybody knows she’s mine. She’s been mine since ninth grade. She belongs to me!”

“Maybe she didn’t want to belong to you anymore?” I suggested softly and unwisely.

He turned on me and grabbed my arm, frightening me for the first time.

“Don’t you start with me too, lady!” he hissed. “Remember, that’s what Patsy said, and you know what happened to him.” He glared at me to be sure I understood what he was saying.

I understood all right. My mouth was dry, and I worried that my knees were about to go on strike. But I wasn’t a member of Brenda Starr’s sisterhood for nothing!

I cleared my throat and asked, “What exactly did Pat say to you?”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to belong to you anymore,’ is what he said. She doesn’t want to belong to me? Of course she does! Why wouldn’t she?”

He stared at me fiercely, and I thought for one awful moment that he actually wanted an answer. I was searching for something to say that wouldn’t make him madder when he continued.

“He shouldn’t have said that! It was his fault, what happened! His fault! ‘Andy, it’s her choice, not yours,’ he said. Like she’d choose Patsy over me!”

“Easy, Andy.” I struggled to make my voice soft and nonthreatening.

“Easy, Andy,” he mocked.

I put my hand gently over his where it painfully squeezed my forearm, trying not to look at the wrench clutched in his other fist. “Andy, you’re hurting me.”

He glared at me through slitted eyes, then pushed me away, spinning me off balance for a minute as he turned abruptly to his welding table. He swept his arm, the wrench still clutched in his fist, across the surface, sending the mask, the torch and other tools spinning like pieces of shrapnel. I noticed, though, that he took care not to damage his laptop.

As the crashing noises echoed around us, I thought I heard another clatter beyond the welding shield. I glanced at Andy, but he’d obviously heard nothing besides the din he’d created.

He stood with his back against his table, and his voice shook as he said triumphantly, “Well, he didn’t get her, did he?”

EIGHTEEN

“N
o, he didn’t get her,” I repeated softly. “You’re absolutely right.”

We stood, silent for a minute. I had no idea what Andy was thinking, but a great pall of depression wrapped itself about me.

“Did it ever occur to you that if you love someone, you want to make them happy?” I asked.

“What?” He looked genuinely confused.

“If you love someone, you want them to be happy.”

He stared at me, waiting for more. “So what’s your point?” he finally asked.

“Maybe you could have made Hannah happy by letting her marry Pat.”

He laughed, a short, staccato burst. “That’s funny. Hannah happy with Pat? That’s really funny.”