Fire Lake (30 page)

I leaned forward on the car seat and stared at the
jeep. There was no question that it was the same car I'd seen parked
outside the Encantada bar on Thursday and Friday nights.

"What?" Karen said when she noticed me
staring through the windshield.

"Maybe it's a good idea we came out here, after
all," I said.

"What is it, Harry?" she said excitedly.

I nodded at the Jeep. "I saw that car parked at
the motel on the night I picked Lonnie up and on the night that
Jenkins was murdered." I glanced over at Levy. "Who does it
belong to?"

"Leanne or Jon or Leanne's folks, I guess,"
he said, looking distressed.

A second car, a sparkling new Buick Regal, was parked
at a distance in front of the jeep. A black man in a brown parka and
khaki pants was leaning over its hood, polishing the chrome bumper
with a rag.

When we pulled into the yard, the black man stopped
polishing the car and looked up at us balefully. He was a tall,
spare, gray-haired man, with a proud, forbidding face, runneled and
fleshless as nut meat. He watched us closely as we got out of the
car.

"What do you all want around here?" he
roared in a booming bass.

Sy Levy waved a hand at him from behind the
Studebaker. "It's Sy, Dr. Gearheart. Remember me? Sv Levy?"

The black man's look softened a bit. "Of course
I remember you," he said, as if he'd been accused of forgetting
things before. "Leanne isn't here. She won't be here until after
work."

Sy glanced at Karen and me. "What do I say?"
he whispered.

"Tell him Leanne invited us out here."

Levy picked up my cue.

"Well, I don't know," Leanne's father
replied uncomfortably. "She didn't say anything about it to me."

"She doesn't have to tell you everything,"
a woman called out from the front porch.

The woman stepped off the porch into the yard,
sighting over at us with a hand at her brow. She was a pretty,
whitehaired woman, with a tanned face and those same slanted,
oriental eyes that I'd found so attractive in her daughter. She was
wearing a heavy cloth coat over a blouse and slacks.

"Hello, Sy," Mrs. Gearheart said, dropping
her hand and coming out into the yard. "Who are your friends?"

"I'm Harry Stoner," I said to the woman.
"And this is Karen Jackowski."

"Karen Jackowski?" Mrs. Gearheart said,
glancing at her husband. "I believe Leanne was talking about you
last night at supper, honey. You came to see her at work, didn't
you?"

Karen nodded. "We were looking for my
ex-husband."

"Now I remember," Mrs. Gearheart said, not
looking entirely pleased by the memory. "Leanne used to . ..
know your husband fairly well, didn't she?"

"They're old friends."

"Friends," Mrs. Gearheart said with an
empty look.

"I'm surprised you remembered Karen's name,"
I said, trying to smile at her winningly and to change the subject at
the same time.

"Oh, I have a good memory for names and faces,"
Mrs. Gearheart said, pleased with the compliment. "Are you a
friend of Leanne s too?"

"Yes," I said. "Although not quite as
old a friend as Karen or Sy."

"Leanne is always making friends," Mrs.
Gearheart said. "Well, come on in the house and I'll get you
something to drink. Maybe I should call Leanne too. She may have
forgotten she invited you to visit. She's forgetful sometimes."

We started across the yard, walking past Gearheart,
who didn't even look up from his polishing. When we got near the
Jeep, I told the others to go on ahead. "I'd like to look around
if that's okay? Leanne told us so much about the place."

"You go ahead," Mrs. Gearheart said
sweetly. "But there's not much to see in this weather. What with
the duck pond frozen over, and the garden covered with snow."

She guided Sy and Karen into the house. Gearheart
looked up at me suspiciously as I walked over to the Jeep.

"I used to have one of these myself," I
said, throwing him a cheerful smile.

"Piece of junk," he said acidly. "Jon
only uses it to tear around these fields. And to go into Milford. He
doesn't keep it up worth a damn. Hell, it hardly runs."

I opened the passenger door of the jeep and glanced
inside. "Looks the same as mine, except I had a three-speed."

"Don't you go nosing around there,"
Gearheart said, starting toward me. Before he could get to me, I
flipped open the glove compartment and looked inside. Lonnie's
dog-eared photograph--the one of Karen and her kids in front of the
Christmas tree--was sitting on top of an oily jeep owner's manual.
Shocked, I pulled the picture out of the compartment and held it up
in front of my eyes, squinting at it through the white glare of the
winter sun.

As I stood there, Gearheart came up beside me.
"What's that?" he said, pointing at the photo.

"Something I found on the seat," I said. "A
picture."

"Let me see it," he said, holding out his
hand.

I handed him the picture. "Why, it's that girl,
isn't it? The one you came with?"

I nodded.

"How did it get inside there?" he said,
looking confused.

"It belonged to Lonnie Jackowski--Karen's
ex-husband."

"I remember the son of a bitch from back in the
sixties,"

Gearheart said with disgust. "He was a dirty
hippie creep." I was getting a little sick of his irascibility.
I'd known a number of older men who put on the same act. But in his
case it wasn't an act--his bitterness went all the way to the bone.

"Could I have the photo back?" I said to
him. "Karen might want it."

He handed it to me reluctantly. "He never cleans
that damn truck up," he said, shaking his head. "It's
probably been sitting there since he came home on Saturday morning."

"Lonnie didn't come home with him, did he?"
I asked. "How the hell would I know?" Gearheart said. "Jon
didn't get back until dawn. Probably high on something too. I can
tell. I am a doctor, you know."

"Good for you," I said. He glared at me.

I turned away from him and walked across the frozen
snow to the porch. Before I went inside, I stuck the photograph in my
pocket.

Karen, Sv, and Leanne's mother were gathered in the
living room, off a short entry hall to the right of the front door.
It was a handsome room, paneled in oak and decorated in
masculine-looking leather furniture. A few hunting trophies were hung
on the walls, along with a gun rack full of shotguns and deer rifles.
A huge stone fireplace occupied one side of the room; a couple of
logs were burning colorfully on the andirons. Through the windows I
could see Gearheart polishing his Buick in the front yard.

"I gave Leanne a call," Mrs. Gearheart said
as I walked in. "She was delighted you and Karen are here. She's
going to drop the children off with Jon's mother and come right out.
Jon has some work to do, so I'm afraid he won't be with her."

I glanced at Karen, who gave me a look as if to say,
"What could I do?"

I sat down beside Karen on a tuxedo couch.

"How do you like the farm?" Mrs. Gearheart
asked.

"It's very pretty," I said.

"Expensive to keep though," Mrs. Gearheart
said, shaking her head with rueful amusement. "As I was telling
Karen, Jon has spent a fortune renovating this house. He's planning
to landscape the entire grounds as well. He likes playing the county
squire. Sometimes I wonder where he finds the money."

After coming across Lonnie's photo in Silverstein's
Jeep, I had an idea about where Jon found some of his money, although
I couldn't say anything in front of Mrs. Gearheart.

"Sy tells us that Jon has invested heavily in
real estate out here," I said to her.

She nodded. "He's been picking up old farms for
a song and then leasing them for industrial use. I think Jon really
enjoys wheeling and dealing, and he's very good at it. He just has a
way with people. The mall you passed on Wooster Pike, outside of
Milford--that is one of Jon's properties. And he has part-ownership
of the land that the Miamiville Cinemas are on."

She gave me a sidelong look to see if she was boring
me with her chatter. I smiled broadly and rocked forward on the
couch, as if I were deeply interested in what she'd been saying. She
obviously enjoyed talking about her son-in-law. And was just as
obviously avoiding any talk about her daughter.

"Are you an investor, Mr. Stoner?" she
asked.

"I've done a little dabbling in real estate,"
I said.

"Then you really ought to sit down with Jon and
talk. He knows any number of properties around here that are good
buys." She laughed suddenly, putting a hand over her mouth, as
if she'd made a rude noise. "Although even Jon makes mistakes.
He once bought a farm up the road from here because of its water
rights, and the well ran dry. And then there's that motel in
Miamiville."

Both Karen and I must have bolted a little on the
sofa, because Mrs. Gearheart got a startled look on her face.

"Did I say something wrong?" she said.

"No, we passed a run-down motel on the way over
here," I said. "On Wooster Pike."

"The Encantada," Mrs. Gearheart said with a
laugh. "That's the one! It's a disreputable-looking place, isn't
it?"

Karen and I nodded.

Mrs. Gearheart shook her head. "I don't know why
he hangs on to it. He says he likes owning a bar. He goes to visit
there a few times a week just to sit. It gives him a kick, I think,
to be a barkeep."

A teakettle began screaming somewhere in the house.
Mrs. Gearheart got up from her chair. "That's the hot water,"
she said. "Is coffee all right with everyone?"

"We all nodded.

"I'll just be a moment, then," Mrs.
Gearheart said. She walked off through the living room archway,
leaving us alone.
 

42

As soon as Mrs. Gearheart had left the room, Karen
turned to me with a triumphant look on her face. "You heard
that," she whispered. "It's Jon's fucking motel. It was
Jon's dope that Lonnie was carrying."

I nodded. "I was wrong. There is a connection."

"What connection?" Levy said looking
confused. "So he owns a motel? So what?"

"It's the motel that the drug transaction was
supposed to take place in, Sy," I said, trying to explain it to
him. "It's where Lonnie was ripped off and where Jenkins was
murdered."

"In Jon's motel!" he said, shocked. "But
what makes you think he knew about it?"

"Of course he knew about it," Karen
snapped. "Lonnie didn't pick that place out of thin air. He was
told to go there by Jon. It was all arranged."

"Saying so isn't proof, doll," Levy
persisted. "Where's the evidence? Where's the connection between
Lonnie and Jon?"

"Here." I pulled the photograph out of my
pocket. "I found this in Jon's Jeep."

I didn't try to explain what it meant. I just handed
the photograph to Karen.

She stared at the picture for a long time, then
dropped it to her lap. "Oh, God," she said in a heartbroken
voice.

"Karen?" Levy said with concern. "What
is it?"

"It's a picture of Karen and her kids," I
said to him.

"Oh, yeah. Lonnie showed it to me on Wednesday,
when he came to the studio. How did it get in Jon's Jeep?"

I glanced at Karen, who was staring into space. Her
eyes were filled with tears.

I sighed heavily. "Silverstein must have had
Lonnie in that Jeep sometime on Friday night, Sy."

"But I thought you said that Lonnie ran to
Norvelle's house on Friday night. How did he end up in Jon's car ..."
Sy's voice died off as he made the point for himself. "You mean
Jon was involved the scheme to rip Lonnie off?"

I nodded, keeping an eye on Karen, who was still
staring emptily into space--a blasted look on her face.

"Jon," Levy said, shaking his head
mournfully. "I don't think I believe it. Why would he do such a
thing to an old friend?"

"You'd have to ask him," I said. "But
the answer is probably money. Real estate is a high-profile business.
It takes a lot of working capital to create the right impression.
Maybe Jon needed the bread from a drug deal to finance some of this."
I waved my hand around the luxe little room we were sitting in.
"Maybe he wanted some revenge too. Leanne apparently never
forgot her first love--or let Jon forget him. And from what you told
us, Silverstein had one other pretty good reason to remember Lonnie
Jackowski."

"You mean Leanne's habit?" Levy said.

I nodded.

"But Lonnie," Levy said. "If Jon was
working with Norvelle and Cal, what happened to Lonnie?"

"They killed him," Karen said hoarsely,
shaking herself as if she were waking from a bad dream. She wiped her
eyes with her fingers. "Lonnie's dead."