Daddy's Gone a Hunting (18 page)

Lottie paused, her eyes brimming with rage. “Gus was their finest craftsman. Everybody knew that. The market was dwindling, but no one could copy a piece of furniture like him. He put loving care into every piece of furniture. Then that miserable Jack Worth replaced Russ and in a few months Gus was gone.”

“How well did you know Jack Worth?”

“Personally, not very well at all. The annual Christmas party was usually it. Gus told me that Jack was always hitting on the young women who worked there. That was why his wife divorced him. And he has a nasty temper. If he was in a bad mood, he lit into anyone around him.”

“Under those circumstances I would think Gus might have been glad to leave Connelly’s,” Nathan Klein observed.

“Gus loved what he was doing. He knew how to stay out of Jack’s way.”

Frank Ramsey and Nathan Klein were sitting on the couch. Lottie was sitting in the wing chair. Frank leaned forward, his hands clasped. He looked directly into Lottie’s eyes. “Is your daughter still staying with you?”

“No. Gretchen went back to Minnesota yesterday. She is a masseuse and has a very active clientele.”

“She told me she is divorced.”

“For many years. Gretchen is one of those people who is naturally single. She’s perfectly happy with her job and friends, and she’s very active in the Presbyterian Church out there.”

“From the pictures we have seen, she has a very beautiful home,” Klein remarked. “I would say it’s probably worth at least a million dollars. She told us that her father had bought it for her around five years ago, a few months after he was fired. Where did Gus get the money for that?”

Lottie was ready for the question. “If you examine our checkbook, you will see that Gus ruled the roost as far as money was concerned. He paid the bills and gave me cash for groceries and incidentals. He was very thrifty. Some people would even say that he was cheap. Five years ago, around the time I was in the hospital, he bought a lottery ticket and won three million dollars. I forget which state the lottery was in. He was always buying twenty dollars’ worth of lottery tickets every week.”

“He won a lottery! Did he pay taxes on that money?”

“Oh, I’m sure he did!” Lottie insisted. She began to explain: “Gus was always worried about Gretchen, that when something happened to us, she might go through any money we could leave her. When he won the lottery, he did what he thought was the best way to make sure she would be okay. He bought her that house and she loves it. With the rest of the lottery money, he bought an annuity for her so that she’ll always have an income to keep it up.”

Lottie looked directly at both marshals. “I am quite weary, as I
think you can understand.” She stood up. “And now may I ask you to leave?”

Silently the men followed her to the door. After she closed it behind them, they looked at each other. They did not need to exchange words. They both knew that Lottie Schmidt was lying.

Then Frank said, “No matter where he supposedly won the lottery, the state would automatically keep part of it as a tax payment. We can easily check this. But I predict that we’ll soon find out that Gus Schmidt never won any big lottery.”

40

A
t the crime lab, both the interior and the exterior of the wrecked van were methodically examined for evidence that might lead the police to the vagrant who had spent so many nights there. The empty bottles of cheap wine and the stacks of yellowing newspapers were brought out and methodically dusted for fingerprints. Ragged pieces of clothing were studied for stains of blood or other bodily fluids, as well as identifying labels. The padded floor and walls of the van were scrutinized under special lab lamps to make sure that no possible clue would be missed. Strands of human hair were placed in plastic bags.

Of enormous interest was the family picture in the battered silver frame that had been found in a corner of the interior, covered by a shabby sweater. “That picture was obviously taken decades ago,” Len Armstrong, the senior chemist, commented to his assistant, Carlos Lopez. “Look at the way those people are dressed. My mother wore her hair like that when I was a kid. The father’s shaggy haircut, with those long sideburns, are like the pictures I’ve seen of my uncle in the seventies. And this frame has been around for a long, long time.”

“The question is whether the picture has anything to do with the guy who was squatting here, or is it something he found in the garbage,” Lopez replied. “The marshals might want to try posting it on the Internet to see if anyone recognizes it.”

They were nearing the end of the stacks of newspapers. “We’re going to get enough prints off these to keep the FBI busy for a month,” Lopez observed. Then, his voice suddenly crisp, he said, “Wait a minute. Look at this!” He had uncovered a spiral notebook in the midsection of one of the newspapers and opened it.

The first page contained only a few sentences: “Property of Jamie Gordon. If found, please call me at 555-425-3795.”

The two chemists looked at each other. “Jamie Gordon!” Len exclaimed. “Isn’t she the college kid whose body was dragged out of the East River about two years ago?”

“Yes, she is,” Lopez said grimly. “And we may have just found the place where she was murdered.”

41

A
fter his lunchtime meeting with Nick Greco, Mark Sloane stayed at his desk until after 6
P.M.
, trying to put off the moment when he would call his mother to ask her to have a DNA swab taken to help in the search for Tracey. Talking to Greco had brought back so many memories for him. He had been only ten years old, but he remembered his mother’s heartbroken crying when she learned that his sister was missing. He had stayed with neighbors while she went to New York. She had stayed a week in Tracey’s apartment as the intensive police search went on.

Then, taking the sympathetic advice of the police, she had flown home. Her face ravaged with grief, she had told him that the police thought that something bad had happened to Tracey. “I’m going to hope and pray,” she had told him. “I still think that maybe Tracey had some sort of memory loss. She was working so hard and taking all those classes. Or she may have had a breakdown.”

His mother had even continued to pay the rent on Tracey’s apartment for six months. Then, no longer able to keep it up, she had gone to New York again, that time to pack up Tracey’s clothes and other personal items and bring them home. For another year she had stored Tracey’s furniture in a warehouse but then had told the owners of the facility to give everything to the Salvation Army.

All of this was running through Mark’s mind before he finally
made the phone call home. To his surprise and relief, his mother told him that she had already been contacted by Detective Greco. “He was so nice,” she said. “He said that you were going to call me, but he wanted to first assure me that this was an important step to help the process of bringing Tracey home someday. I told him that I remembered how kind he had been all those years ago and that I’ve always been so grateful.”

She changed the subject to ask about his new job and his apartment. When their conversation ended, somewhat heartened by having spoken to her, Mark left the office. He had planned to sign up at the gym in his neighborhood, but instead he decided to go straight home. In the lobby, again waiting for the elevator, he saw the tall, attractive redhead who had been with Hannah Connelly when the marshals had arrived.

She gave him a brief smile, then turned her head away.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that she’s terribly upset, he thought. “I’m Mark Sloane,” he said. “We rode up in the elevator together the other day. Since then I’ve read the story of the explosion at the Connelly factory. How is the sister who was injured doing?”

“She’s developed a fever,” Jessie said, quietly. “Hannah is going to stay overnight in the hospital and asked me to pick up some of her personal things.”

The elevator arrived and they got into it. Mark fished out his business card and handed it to Jessie. “Look, I’m Hannah’s new neighbor. If there’s anything I can ever do to help out, I hope she or you will call on me.”

Jessie looked at the card. “Jessie Carlson. And I’m a lawyer, too. You read about the explosion, so I guess you know that Hannah’s sister, Kate, may be accused of setting it. I’m representing her.”

The distress in her expression gave way to a look of fierce determination. “She is innocent and can’t defend herself.” Then the elevator stopped at Mark’s floor and reluctantly he got off. The lawyer
in him wanted to know more about how strong a case was being built against a gravely wounded young woman. The thought of the pain that her sister, who was now his neighbor, was undergoing reinforced his own personal grief about Tracey.

He had no way of knowing that the answer to his own sister Tracey’s disappearance would be found in the rubble of the Connelly complex explosion.

42

O
ver the weekend, Jack Worth had called Douglas Connelly every day to inquire about Kate’s condition and had received the same answer: “No change.”

On Monday evening when Jack made the call, Doug’s new girlfriend, Sandra, had answered. “Kate has a fever,” she explained. “Doug is staying there with Hannah for a while. We’ll have a late dinner. The poor man is so upset and, between you and me and the lamppost, I think Hannah is being rotten to him. I’ve seen it. You’d think she was the only one heartsick about her sister. I told Doug that he should out and out tell her that they should be emotionally supporting each other.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Jack Worth said, even as he sarcastically raised his eyes. “Douglas Connelly loves his girls to death.”

“I mean he told me that he never remarried, because he was afraid that a stepmother might resent them. Now, I ask you, wasn’t that a big sacrifice for a handsome, generous man like Doug to make?”

Sandra’s voice had become indignant.

He couldn’t have had a carload of bimbos all these years if he had been married, Worth thought. Just the way I got stuck, he’d have been divorced and would have had to split his assets. Doug was
never going to do that. “He made a great sacrifice for his girls,” was his answer to Sandra, his voice dripping with sincerity.

When he hung up, Jack Worth felt uneasy. It was all very well that Doug had figured out a scenario where Kate had been lured to the complex by Gus Schmidt because Gus intended to let her die in the explosion, but would it hold water? And if Kate came out of the coma with all her senses, would she go along with that story? If she did, everything would be A-OK. But if she didn’t, Doug would be out the millions in insurance for the antiques, to say nothing of the value of the rest of the complex. He’d be left with a piece of land that was worth lots of money but nothing compared to the total value of the furniture, the buildings, the equipment, and whatever else he could throw at the insurance adjustor.

But Gus Schmidt’s wife had practically admitted that she thought Gus and Kate had planned the explosion. The ironic part of what Lottie had said is that if Kate recovers and can wiggle out of it, Gus will be blamed. And Lottie’s mouthing off about how bitter Gus had been at the Connellys will end up helping them collect the insurance.