The Chase for the Mystery Twister (9 page)

“I'm surprised the newspeople believed it,” Joe said.

“Terry Clark will go to any length to get a sensational story,” Jansen told him.

“But would Greg Glover stoop so low as to create a fake tape?” Frank wondered.

“If it meant he would beat me to it and grab the headlines, I think he just might,” Jansen said.

“Could the anonymous photographer be Kanner himself?” Phil guessed.

“That's what I was thinking,” Frank replied.

“Do you think it's a doctored tape, Phil?” Joe asked their technologically gifted friend.

“Possibly,” Phil replied. “But for it to look that convincing, someone must have been up all night working with state-of-the-art equipment.”

“Where would someone find equipment like that around here?” Frank wondered.

“Oklahoma Tech,” Diana said. “They have a multimillion-dollar computer center.”

“If you could supply me with some tornado footage and get me into the Tech computer center,” Phil said, “I could see if I can re-create what they did on the tape.”

“No problem,” Diana said. “I have a student pass.”

“And I've got a library full of tornado videos,” Jansen added. “The big storm front we're waiting for has stalled in the Gulf of Mexico, so we won't have any weather until at least this evening.”

“Great. Why don't you, Phil, and Diana head over to Oklahoma Tech?” Joe suggested to Frank.

“Where are you going, Joe?” Frank asked.

“To jail. I want to talk with Henry Low River again. I also want to see what Sheriff San Dimas has found out about the owner of that black wig,” Joe replied.

“We'll meet up at Windstormer headquarters at three o'clock,” Frank said. The others agreed, and everyone trooped off the red bus, heading in two directions, eager to begin investigating.

•  •  •

“Framed, baby!” Henry Low River muttered, pacing in his cell in the Lone Wolf jail. “Someone's nailing my hide to the wall.”

Joe nodded. He felt bad for the man. “Have they found the body?”

“What body? There's no body,” Low River railed. “Gill is alive.”

“Deputy Klement said they pulled a forty-five-caliber slug out of Gill's car seat,” Joe said.

“But I didn't fire it!” Low River insisted.

“The lab report said your Colt revolver had been recently fired,” Joe replied.

“I wasn't even at my house yesterday afternoon,” Low River explained. “I was hunting for deadwood in the forest. Someone slipped into my house, took my gun, shot Gill's car, and put the gun back.”

“What about the knife Snowdon found in Gill's office?” Joe asked.

“Planted there. I didn't even know I was missing it until Snowdon brought it to me last night,” Low River told Joe.

Joe raised an eyebrow. “So you're saying someone broke into your house
twice
to take things—without your noticing?”

“They wouldn't have to break in,” Low River moaned. “I don't lock my doors.”

Joe studied the man's face, looking for any telltale signs of deceit. In spite of what the sheriff thought about Henry Low River, Joe firmly believed the man was telling the truth.

“And you're certain Gill is the same man who ripped you off in Texas?” Joe asked.

“I'll never forget Todd Allan Miller's voice,” Low River said in a low tone, nodding. “That's what Gill called himself then.”

“And when you followed him around the back of the truck stop that morning, he disappeared?” Joe asked, reviewing the story. “Did you notice anything unusual?”

“Nope,” Low River responded. “Just trucks.”

Joe rose from his chair. “I'll find out what I can,” he said.

Joe walked down Main Street, trying to make sense of the string of strange occurrences that seemed to him unusual for a small town. He looked across the way at Gill's insurance office. The front door was still marked off with bright yellow police tape.

Joe knew he was breaking the law, but he had to get another look inside Gill's office. Finding a window ajar, Joe opened it, then climbed inside. He could see that all the surfaces had been dusted for fingerprints, but many of the articles in the room were still in place. He was looking for something—anything—that might give away Gill's true identity or shed light on his sudden disappearance.

The insurance policies Gill had written were all gone, but in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, Joe found one blank form and read the letterhead: “K-State Insurers, Kansas City, Missouri.”

The name struck Joe as familiar, but he could not remember where he had seen it before.

The framed photo of Toby Gill caught Joe's eye. The smiling man with the upturned nose,
blond and balding, looked so sincere and honest. Then Joe noticed something on his shelf in the background of the photograph. The penholder that had been found wedged against the gas pedal of his car! Odd, Joe thought, that a kidnapper would think to grab something off his victim's shelf to use to drive his car into a river eight hours later. He decided to borrow the picture to show Frank and Phil.

The drawers of Gill's desk were filled with appraisals of customers' homes and businesses but nothing of interest. Stuck behind the top left drawer, Joe found a check for $450 from Andrew Parlette made out to Tamco. Joe figured Andrew Parlette must be Snowdon's father. The memo on the check read: “Six-month tornado insurance premium.”

Joe knew that a premium was the payment a customer had to make to an insurance company.

Why is the check made out to Tamco if the parent insurance company is K-State Insurers? Joe thought. It suddenly struck him where he had seen the name before. He double-checked. On the office wall, he found the Certificate of Excellence awarded to Toby Gill by K-State Insurers.

If anyone knows about Toby Gill, it would be them, Joe reasoned. Picking up the phone, he found it was still working and dialed the phone number listed on the form.

“K-State Insurers,” a man's voice said.

“Yes, hello,” Joe said. “I was just curious whether you have a salesman named Toby Gill working for you?”

“Yes, we do,” the man answered.

Joe dropped his shoulders and sighed. Toby Gill was for real.

“Can I help you?” the man asked.

Joe thought quickly. “I was calling to let you know he's been missing for the last two days.”

The man on the phone laughed. “No, he isn't. I know exactly where he is.”

“Where?” Joe asked, stunned.

The man laughed again. “Toby Gill is sitting right next to me!”

“That's impossible,” Joe said into the phone.

A second man with a deep, robust voice spoke to Joe. “This is Toby Gill. What can I do for ya?”

Joe explained who he was and where he was and what had happened, concluding with the question, “How did someone in Lone Wolf, Oklahoma, assume your identity, Mr. Gill?”

Gill thought for a moment. “About three years ago, an arson fire gutted our office building. I thought that certificate and all those official insurance documents had been burnt up, but it sounds like the same fella that started the fire stole all my papers!”

“Weren't you suspicious about the claims you had to pay out to customers in Lone Wolf?” Joe wondered.

“We never paid out anything. We never even processed any forms from Lone Wolf, Oklahoma,” the real Gill insisted.

“I'll let the local sheriff know about this—pronto,” Joe assured him. “Oh, by the way, are you connected to a company called Tamco?”

“Tamco? Never heard of it,” the real Toby Gill replied.

•  •  •

“Tamco?” Deputy Klement repeated the name Joe had asked about and leaned back in the sheriff's leather desk chair. “Sure, that's a subsidiary of K-State Insurers. I write my checks for my car insurance to them.”

“K-State Insurers has never heard of Tamco,” Joe told Klement, showing him the check from Andrew Parlette. “My guess is Tamco is Toby Gill, or, rather, his impostor.”

“But Toby's made good on a couple of claims this year,” Klement argued. “Jed McPlat, for one.”

“He paid Jed in cash, probably out of the money he had collected from his other customers,” Joe guessed.

“And you're saying Henry didn't kidnap Gill, or whoever he is?” Klement asked.

“Right,” Joe replied. “The impostor collected as much in insurance premiums as he could. But he knew once tornado season came, he was going to have to start paying out big time. He knew you
would suspect Mr. Low River, so he framed him to throw us off the track while he escaped.”

“Probably on the other side of the world by now,” Klement remarked. “Say, Henry, where'd you see this fella last?” Klement called down the hallway to the jail cells.

“Behind the Dust Bowl, where they park the trucks,” Henry's voice called back.

“The trucks,” Joe said to himself as something dawned on him. He began connecting the dots, linking the events of the last two days. “The impostor isn't on the other side of the world. He's still in Lone Wolf!”

•  •  •

Frank checked his watch. Phil had been at work in room 136 of the Oklahoma Tech Computer Center for nearly three hours. Finally, the door opened. “Come on in,” Phil told Frank and Diana.

Frank stood over Phil's shoulder while his friend cued up the tape he had created. “By editing together various tornado footage and using computer imaging to delete, enhance, or otherwise manipulate certain static background elements, I've created a five-point-nine-second tape.”

“Huh?” Diana asked.

“Would you like me to expound?” Phil asked, turning his swivel chair toward her, delighted.

“No, Phil, we don't have time,” Frank warned.

“In three hours, you've created five point nine seconds?”

“And I rushed,” Phil said. “There are numerous imperfections. If Glover created the tape we saw this morning, it would have taken him all night to do it.”

Phil pressed the Play button. The image on the screen was of two grain silos beneath a dark thunderhead, with a partially formed funnel cloud behind them. The tornado touched down, tore apart the first silo, stalled for a moment, then began rotating in the opposite direction, continuing to move forward and hit the second silo.

“That's it,” Phil said, pausing the tape. “Five point nine seconds.”

“But enough to prove that the mystery twister tape could have been doctored,” Frank said, patting Phil on the shoulder. “Good work.”

As Frank, Phil, and Diana were passing the sign-in desk at the computer center, Frank stopped to talk with the student on duty. “Excuse me, who was at this desk last night?”

The student looked to Diana, uncertain whether to answer.

“It's okay, Erin, he's a friend of mine,” Diana assured her.

“Actually,” Erin replied, “I was here. The other guy who does this was sick.”

“Can I have a look at the sign-in sheet from last night?” Frank asked. He skimmed through the
names, but none of them seemed familiar. “And you checked all their student ID cards?”

“I always do,” Erin answered.

“Was there anyone in the computer center last night whom you didn't recognize?” Frank asked as he handed her back the roster.

“No,” Erin replied. “Wait. Yes! The new janitor.”

“What did he look like?” Frank asked.

“He was tall,” Erin replied, casting her eyes at the ceiling as she thought. “He had a mustache and black curly hair.”

“The mystery man who attacked Joe!” Phil exclaimed.

“We now know more about what he's been up to,” Frank said. “But we still don't know
who
he is.”

Frank, Phil, and Diana left the computer center and headed across campus to the student parking lot.

“What now?” Diana asked.

“If we can prove Glover's tape is a fake, then we'll have Kanner,” Frank replied.

“That's easy,” Phil said. “Give me thirty minutes in the computer center with that videotape, and I can tell you whether or not it's been doctored.”

“That means we'd have to sneak into Glover Laboratories and take the tape from right under his nose,” Frank pointed out.

“Right,” Phil replied.

“You call that easy?” Frank asked.

“Glover has been trying to hire me away from Jansen for months,” Diana said. “And I'm friends with Jed McPlat. I could at least get us in the door.”

“Sounds good. We'll take Diana's Jeep,” Frank said. “Meanwhile, Phil can take the Blue Bomber to Windstormer headquarters and let Joe know the game plan. We'll all meet back here at the computer center at five o'clock. Hopefully, with the mystery twister tape in hand.”

“Wait!” Phil said, grabbing Frank by the shoulder. “What about Bixby?”

“What do you mean?” Frank asked.

“If your hunch is right about Bixby, and he's working with Kanner, he's going to get United Insurers to issue that check for one point seven million dollars
today,”
Phil reminded Frank. “By the time we prove they're crooks, they may be long gone.”

Frank crossed his arms and leaned back against Diana's Jeep, thinking. After spotting a pay phone outside the school cafeteria, he hurried to it and dialed information.

“Could I have the number for the main office of United Insurers?” Frank asked the operator.

“What are you doing?” Phil asked as he and Diana caught up to Frank.

“Thank you, operator,” Frank said into the phone. He hung up and dialed another number,
covering the mouthpiece with his hand. “Remember when the cassette deck got stolen out of the van? The insurance guy was going to reimburse us. Then Iola Morton said she thought that cassette deck had been sold to her brother, Chet.”