She was at her most irresistible when she was alive like this, at turns funny, indignant, insistent, and brilliant, enriching her beauty, masking her fears and insecurities, making me forget about mine and the flaws in our relationship. It was a moment filled with promise and pain and one that I had to let pass.
“Westport Flea Market. Best burger in town. I’ll call Lucy and Simon and tell them to meet us there.”
It took twenty minutes to get to Westport, a midtown collection of bars and restaurants, some more downscale than others. The Flea Market was the only one that counted a serial killer as one of its vendors back when it was just a flea market. Bob Berdella, who kidnapped, tortured, and killed at least six men in the mid- eighties, sold trinkets at the flea market. He died in prison of a heart attack, the Flea Market switched from trinkets to burgers, and the world became a better place.
The restorative power of the Flea Market’s cheeseburgers, fries, and rings may never be documented in a double-blind, peer-reviewed study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, but that’s only because the editors do not understand that holistic nutrition means eating the whole thing. While stuffing our faces, we traded notes.
“Ellen Koch is a mess,” Lucy said. “She alternates between blaming herself for what Adam did and insisting that she had no way of knowing there was anything wrong with him and that, if there was, it was all her ex- husband’s fault.”
“Besides playing dodgeball with her, did you learn anything we didn’t already know?” I asked.
“Nope. I had a hard time getting her to focus. I pushed her as hard as I could about the morning the kids disappeared. She finally admitted that she suspected Adam had spent that night at Peggy’s. She said she woke up during the night and couldn’t get back to sleep. She checked on Adam to make sure he was home. He was gone, but his truck was in the driveway. It wasn’t hard for her to figure out where he was.”
“Did she see him come home?”
“She says she didn’t. Says she tried to wait up for him but fell asleep and didn’t see him come in.”
“What about Peggy? Did you talk to her?”
“I tried. She hasn’t stopped drinking since she found out about Adam, and she’s not a clear-thinking drunk. She won’t be any help until she sobers up and dries out. While I was at her house, the doorbell rang. It was a couple of the neighbors that had contributed to the fund Ellen started to raise money to hire me. They wanted Peggy to give them their money back.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I told them that Peggy was broke and that I’d be happy to write them and anyone else who felt the same way a check, but that I’d keep looking for Evan and Cara because it wasn’t the kids’ fault that their parents were so screwed up. One of them started to cry and said she was sorry and the other one got mad and called me a bitch, but neither one of them took me up on my offer.”
“Did you take another run at Jimmy Martin?”
“Not yet. Thought I’d try him this afternoon. How’d you guys make out?”
I explained about Nick Staley and Eberto Garza and how much flak I was getting from Roni Chase. Kate summarized her impressions of Lilly and Roni and Terry Walker. Simon repeated what he’d told me about the robberies of the gun dealers, adding that he’d had no luck getting a line on Cesar Mendez.
“Short of standing on a corner in his neighborhood with twenty-dollar bills sticking out of your pockets and a sign around your neck saying you’d like to buy drugs, I’m out of ideas,” he said.
“At this point, it all comes back to Jimmy Martin,” I said. “He’s the only one left who knows what went down.”
“And he’s not talking,” Lucy said.
“Then I’ll have to give him a reason.”
“You have one in mind?” Lucy asked. “Because it better be a good one. Finding his kids hasn’t done the trick.”
“Best one left. Talking to me may be the only way he can stay alive.”
Chapter Sixty-four
The Municipal Farm felt like a summer camp gone to seed compared to the Jackson County Jail with its two- person cells, barred slits cut high in the cell wall masquerading as windows, armed guards, and body cavity searches. I left my driver’s license and gun with a sheriff’s deputy, pocketing my claim check, and followed another deputy to a room where Jimmy was waiting. The room was not much bigger than a closet, with a wall-to-wall table and glass panel subdividing it and a phone we could use to talk to one another, someone else listening and watching, sight unseen.
He was shackled, hands and legs, his face bruised, his nose bent, probably broken, the down payment he’d made for attempted escape and assault with a deadly weapon. Twice before when I’d seen him at the Farm, he had carried himself with a swagger, relishing his defiance of the system, certain he could do the time and thumb his nose at his wife, the court, and anyone else who tried to tell him what to do. That was gone, the chains and the beating he’d taken bowing his stiff neck, leaving him tense, looking over his shoulder even though we were alone. He sank onto his chair, cradling the phone on his shoulder, anxious and jittery.
Adrienne Nardelli had questioned him and gotten nothing. Kate had tried manipulating him, then trusting him, and had a bandage on her neck to show for her trouble. It was my turn.
“You don’t look so good,” I told him.
“Bad night.”
“Escape and assault aren’t exactly good career moves.”
“Like mine was going anywhere.”
“Well, if it makes you feel better, Frank Crenshaw and Nick Staley were in the same boat, career-wise, that is.”
He flicked his eyes at me, then down at the table. “I wouldn’t know nothing about that.”
“’Course you wouldn’t. How do you see this whole thing working out for you now?”
“What’s it to you?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. I won’t lose any sleep over you. I’m just wondering how you see your options now that you’ve tacked two big-time felonies onto your theft charge. Your lawyer might have been able to get you a decent deal on the theft, maybe even probation, but now you’re looking at a serious stretch. And the whole thing with your kids, you not helping with finding them, the judge is going to screw you down tighter than tight.”
“I did what I did. Can’t do nothing about it.”
“True, but doing the time is the least of your problems.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying your biggest problem is living long enough to do the time. Nick Staley is dead.”
He squirmed in his chair, his color up and his eyes wide, then narrow and wary.
“Too bad.”
“You interested in how it happened?”
“Make a difference?”
“Not to Nick, maybe to you because he didn’t die peacefully surrounded by family and friends. He was shot to death in the middle of the night at his store.”
He sucked in a quick breath, pushing it out, fighting to stay calm. “Dead is dead. Got nothing to do with me.”
“Actually, I think it does. See, I’ve been piecing this together, trying to figure out what was going on between you and Nick and Frank Crenshaw.”
“Nothing’s going on. I knew them, that’s all.”
“A lot better than you let on. That’s the way it is in Northeast. Everybody knows everybody, at least that’s true for the families that have lived there a long time and you’re third generation.”
He jolted forward in his chair, the phone falling into his lap, fumbling with shackled wrists to pick it up.
“What if I did, so what?”
“So you lied about your relationships with them or at least you tried to make it sound like you hardly knew
