Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 01 - Lickety-Split (17 page)

“Whatever you’ve got,” Truman said. “He’s starting a church here in St. Pete. Bought a retirement hotel, going to turn it into condos for his members. We’d like to know what kind of ministry he ran in Scottsdale. Any problems.”

“Let me just call up his file on the computer,” Miss Peters said. “Looks like there’s a couple hundred citings here. The first entry is, um, late 1991. You want me to start that far back?”

Truman thought about it. Yvonne could come back at any time.

“No,” he said regretfully. “I’m on deadline. Could you just hit the highlights? I’m looking for dirt, scandal, the usual stuff.”

“You want the highlights of two hundred entries? No way. Look, all I can tell you off the top of my head is that these guys built a big church right out by the mall, and before you know it, the place is full almost every night of the week. And the funny thing is, everybody who goes there, it seems like, is retired. Senior citizens. That’s their specialty, their ministry, they call it. I’ve got a couple of neighbors who think Jewell Newby is the second coming. That church must have two dozen schoolbuses. They’re always running the old folks out to shopping or to the doctor or on outings. Is that the kind of stuff you’re looking for?”

“It’s a start,” he said reluctantly. “What about the dirt?”

“Just a minute. Let me cross-reference the church with lawsuits. Maybe we’ll find something that way.”

Truman heard typing. The clicking of computer keys instead of the old clacking of the typewriters they’d used in his day. Still, having computers do the research work in the morgue was an amazing time-saver. No more little brown envelopes full of torn, dusty clippings.

“Okay. Here we go,” Miss Peters said, a note of excitement creeping into her voice.

“A family named Sowers filed suit against the Reverend Newby and his church in 1993. They claimed that Newby acted to defraud four family members out of $825,000 from their mother, a woman named Arthurene Sowers.”

“That’s what I need,” Truman said. “Could you read me the story?”

“The full text? It’s twenty-six inches. Why don’t I just fax it to you?”

“Can’t,” Truman said quickly. “Our fax is out of order. They’ve had a guy in here working on it all day. How about just reading the important parts?”

“Well, okay,” she said, “but if the other line rings, I’ll have to get it. I’m the only one here today.”

“No problem.”

“All right. Looks like this family, Jeffrey C. Sowers, his brother Marvin J. Sowers, and two sisters, Christine Sowers Carter and Annette Sowers Skinner, were the sole surviving children of a Scottsdale woman, Arthurene Sowers, who died here in September of 1992 at the age of eighty-seven. The family, who all live in El Paso, filed the suit. And their mother, Arthurene, had been living in Scottsdale, at a retirement community here called Isla Del Verde, since 1979.

“Some time in the early nineties, our story says, Reverend Newby befriended Mrs. Sowers. She was a loner, not a lot of friends. She’d lived alone here since she retired years ago from a job as executive secretary to the vice president of Arco Oil. And although she supposedly lived pretty simply in a two-bedroom villa at Isla Del Verde, which is pretty posh, by the way, the family claims she was loaded. Forty years’ worth of Arco Oil stock options and shrewd financial advice from her old boss.”

Truman was writing as fast as he could.

“Let me guess,” he interrupted. “Reverend Newby becomes the son Arthurene Sowers already had.”

“Close confidant, spiritual adviser, and, eventually, executor of her estate,” Miss Peters said. “After she died, the family discovered that over the course of two years, Mama Arthurene had signed over a large chunk of her real property to both Newby, personally, and the church, including the Isla Del Verde bungalow, which was worth $225,000, and some undeveloped land out by the Phoenix airport that the heirs claim was worth $600,000. In return for having the property deeded over to him, Newby signed an agreement that stated that he would help her maintain the villa and make himself available to her to take her to the store, to the doctor’s office, church outings, or any other place she desired to go.”

“That’s close to a million dollars,” Truman cut in, “just for doing what a compassionate pastor would do for a member of his flock for free. What happened to the lawsuit?”

“Let me scroll the other entries and I’ll see.”

Truman kept writing notes while he waited.

“You there?” Miss Peters asked.

“Still here.”

“It looks like the Sowers family dropped their suit. There’s a story here saying that they requested the district attorney to investigate Newby for criminal charges, but after a two-month investigation, they couldn’t find enough evidence of criminal intent.”

“Too bad,” Truman said. “But this is good stuff. You got any more lawsuits against him?”

He heard more tapping.

“It doesn’t look like it. Hey. Here’s a note appended to the file, though. Somebody from Austin, Texas, requested a copy of some of this Sowers file.”

“Another newspaper reporter?”

“It doesn’t say so,” Miss Peters said. “The name is Leda Aristozobal. Address is the Texas Department of Revenue in Austin.”

“Tax people,” Truman said. “I wonder why they’re interested in a lawsuit against Jewell Newby?”

“I don’t know,” Miss Peters said. “Oops. There’s the phone. I’ve got to go.”

She hung up before he could thank her.

Truman tried to figure out the spelling of Leda Aristozobal. A tax lady in Texas. Hadn’t Jewell Newby gotten his start in Texas? Truman would have to check the notes in his file. He reached for the phone again. He wanted to call information in Austin. See if he could find a home listing for Leda Aristozobal.

“I’m back,” Yvonne Sweatt chirped. She was clutching a grease-stained paper sack in her arms, and she was out of breath.

“Any calls?” she asked, obviously waiting for him to vacate her chair.

“Nothing important,” he assured her as he vacated her chair.

He was standing waiting by the elevator, feeling just the tiniest bit smug about the scam he’d just pulled.

“I saw that,” a voice hissed in his ear.

He jumped a foot in the air.

“Jesus, Jackleen!” he exclaimed. “You startled me. Saw what?”

“Saw you tricking Yvonne into leaving you alone with the switchboard,” she whispered. People were beginning to straggle into the lobby now, so she had to keep her voice down. “Pretty slick work for an old-timer. What’d you find out?”

The elevator dinged and the doors opened. He gestured for her to enter. “Come on-a my house and I’ll fill you in.”

“Hold the elevator, hold the doors!” a woman demanded. Truman stuck his foot out and the doors closed on it, then slowly parted again.

Sonya Hoffmayer trundled aboard, holding KoKo in her arms.

The little dog had a good memory. It pricked up its ears when it saw Truman, bared its teeth, and let out a low, menacing growl. Jackleen backed away from Mrs. Hoffmayer and the dog.

“KoKo!” Mrs. Hoffmayer said, pretending to be shocked. She kissed the top of the little dog’s head. “We’re not ourselves, are we, precious? No, we’re not. We’re certainly not.”

Mrs. Hoffmayer turned to Truman, pretending not to see Jackleen. “One of those awful painters got paint on our little hiney. We’ve just been to the groomers, and we’re not at all happy, are we?”

“Latex, I hope?” Truman said innocently.

“Oil,” she said gloomily. “There was nothing the groomer could do but shave.” She took the dog out of the basket it was riding in and held it up for inspection. It was wearing a tiny white diaper.

Mrs. Hoffmayer got off on the fourth floor. After she was gone, Jackleen sighed. “Now I know somebody’s got a job worse than me.”

“What’s that?” Truman asked.

“Whoever had to shave that dog’s butt,” she said.

He’d just begun to fill Jackleen in on the results of his research when there was a knock at the door.

Pearl Wisnewski stood in the hallway, her arms piled high with men’s clothes, coats, slacks, and shirts on hangers. Beside her on the floor was a plastic laundry basket full of more neatly folded garments. Pearl’s eyes were red- rimmed, but she looked resolute.

“Hello, Jackie,” she said. “Here.” She thrusted the arm-load of clothes at Truman. “I talked to Mel’s doctor this morning. He says Mel’s not going to get better. It’s a degenerative disease, and he says the advance is rapid. Mel wears pajamas all day in the nursing home, that or a couple pair of those loose elastic-waist slacks. I want you to take these clothes.”

Truman transferred the clothes from her arms to his bed. She followed him inside with the basket.

“Isn’t this kind of drastic, Pearl? Mel is going to want some of these clothes, I’m sure.”

She set the basket on the bed beside the other things. “No,” she said simply. “For months now he’s only wanted to wear the same clothes over and over again. The doctor says it’s a symptom of the Alzheimer’s.”

She ran her hand over a blue blazer with gold buttons at the cuffs. “Some of these things are like new, Truman. If you can’t wear them, give them to somebody else.”

“Why the hurry?” Truman asked.

Pearl bit her lip and put her left hand over Truman’s. Her wedding band, loose on her hand, clicked against her engagement ring.

She looked ten years older than she had last week.

“He’s not going to get better. I’ve got to face facts. Every time I open the closet I think of the things we’re not going to do together any more. The places we’re not going to go. I’ll feel better if his clothes are put to use.”

She smiled weakly. “I’m German, you know. A Bierbohm. We don’t like to see a bit of waste. Didn’t you know that?”

“Sure,” Truman said, nodding. “I’ll take care of it.”

He gestured toward the easy chair by the window. “Have a seat. I was just going to tell Jackie what I’ve found out about that Newby fella. The one who’s buying the hotel. It’s not a lot, but I think he might be involved in something sticky out west where his church started.”

But she was already moving toward the door. “No thanks. I’ve been with Mel all morning. I’m exhausted. I think I’ll take a little nap before I go back over there to give him his supper.”

When she was gone, Truman stood and looked at the pile of clothes.

He shrugged himself into the blue blazer. It fit all right through the shoulders, but the sleeves were two inches too long. He held up a pair of worn corduroy slacks. Miles too big and too warm for St. Pete anyway. He started working his way through the pile, separating out the few things he thought he could use from the majority that wouldn’t fit.

“How about you?” he asked Jackie. “Don’t you have a boyfriend? Somebody tall? Some of the stuff’s not too bad.”

She snorted. “Boyfriend? That’s a good one. The last man I dated was like Mr. Mel. He had memory problems too. He kept forgetting he had a wife and two little babies waiting at home for him.”

Jackleen got up and went over to the bed. She fingered the fabric of a plaid jacket in Truman’s discard pile. “Mr. Mel was wearing this last week when we went to the track. Remember?”

Truman shook his head. “I guess I wasn’t paying too much attention to what anybody was wearing. I was too busy worrying that Mel would get lost.”

She stroked the jacket. “Lost. Huh. Funny to think about it. Him in a nursing home, hardly knows any of us. So what did you find out while you were minding the switchboard this afternoon?”

He filled her in. “I’m gonna call that Leda Aristozobal person. Even if I have to pay for it myself. But I guess I’ll wait till tonight. After the rates go down.”

“Hope you find something out,” she said fervently. “There’s an architect walking around downstairs in the kitchen right now. He’s got a clipboard and I heard him telling Cookie they’re gonna close the coffee shop in two weeks so they can start ripping out.”

Her eyes glinted angrily. “I’d like to rip out her skinny little ass, that’s what I’d like to do. Her sashaying around like she runs the place. She saw me coming in to clock out. You know what she said? ‘Girl,’ that’s what she called me. ‘Girl, could you get a cup of hot coffee for our architect?’”

“Ignore her,” Truman advised. “We’ve got to concentrate on other matters.”

Jackleen slipped into the plaid jacket. The hem hung nearly to her blue-jean-clad knees, and the sleeves hung loosely, three inches from her fingertips. She pushed the sleeves up to her elbows and flipped the collar up. There was a full-length mirror on the back of the closet door. She stood in front of it, turning this way and that, preening really. The jacket gave her a jaunty, boyish air.

“Look,” she said, pleased with what she saw. “Annie Hall.”

“Who?”

Jackleen laughed. “Never mind.” Her smile faded. “You know, I keep thinking about that dead girl. Rosie. I never saw a dead person outside a coffin before.”

Truman had. He didn’t bother to tell her you didn’t get over it quickly. “I’ve been thinking about it too. One of those cops came to see me, you know.” He snorted. “Thought maybe Mel told me something about why he did it.”