I changed my hair color to red. One more reason not to change it back.
I wished I had added a little more eye liner and lip liner like Cora Mae had shown me. Someone used a remote to increase the sound. A cute TV6 newscaster was warning all of the upper peninsula that two women were wanted for questioning in a Stonely death. A suspect was behind bars. The escapees might be armed and dangerous.
Grandma Johnson must be swallowing her uppers over this. She never missed the news. It gave her something more to crab about. I could just hear her.
Some wiseacre next to us said, “They sure look deadly, don’t they?”
Someone else tittered. “That big one could do some damage.”
“The little one looks like Aunt Em.”
“Those are the most dangerous ones.”
“Hey,” Laura said to me. “I think I saw one of those women on the beach in Gladstone.”
I pulled my blond curls over my face and strode along on the tread mill at an easy pace. “No kidding,” I answered.
“Really. I was walking with a friend when that smaller woman tried to approach us. My friend started running, saying let’s have a race like the old days. But she looked frightened.” Laura’s forehead crinkled in thought.
“So,” I said, eager to redirect her. “Are you new around here?”
Laura DeLand was one of those people who shared easily. Within a few minutes I knew that she had graduated last spring from DePaul University in Chicago and had landed a job as a reporter with the
I slunk a little more under my hair when I heard that. Geez. A reporter! Why couldn’t she work at the paper mill or the Dairy Flo. Just my luck.
I increased the machine’s pace by pressing a button and walked faster, thinking hard. Maybe this whole situation could be turned to my advantage.
As an investigator I have to take what comes my way and put a spin on it, just like a newspaper reporter might do when she’s writing a piece for the paper. “I have a story,” I told her. “If you answer a few questions, I’ll give you something to get you a big raise.”
Laura looked interested.
“Meet me outside when you’re through,” I said, getting off the machine by letting go of the rail and sliding off the back end. It wasn’t the most graceful landing I’ve ever made.
Chapter 20
I KNEW HOW LONG IT could take a young woman to finish a workout and gussy herself up, because I went through the process when I raised my own girls. I had to wait through Laura’s shower, blow drying of really long thick hair, and a fresh makeup application from a tote bag full of supplies. After checking on her progress several times, I hung around outside with a cup of coffee from the cafe next door.
“Big Ma,” I said into my radio while sitting on a street bench. “What’s happening over your way?”
No response.
“Big Ma, calling, Big Ma.” Maybe information about the radio’s capability had been exaggerated. The range was supposed to be twelve miles. Kitty was seven away. I was ready to give up on raising her when I heard her voice.
“Hunh?” she said. Not exactly the fancy vocabulary of a woman taking an online legal course.
“Were you sleeping?” I asked. “You were. I can’t believe it.”
Kitty snapped to and denied it, but I could hear confusion in her voice that heavy sleep brings when a person is startled awake.
“Where’s you-know-who?” I asked, realizing we had forgotten to give Angie a code name. Kitty better know the answer. Here I was risking bone-breakage and ripped muscles while she sawed lumber.
“Our target’s standing still,” she stuttered a few seconds later like it was fresh news to her too.
I signed off and waited some more.
Finally, Laura appeared and we agreed to slide into a back booth at the cafe, just like in the movies. Laura had paper, pen, and a recording unit that she set in the middle of the table.
“No taping,” I said, then remembered my own little unit. I secretly rifling through the purse on my lap, found it and turned it on.
“You said you had a story,” Laura began.
“I do, but no taping. And I ask my questions first.”
“Okay.”
“You protect your sources, right?” I’d watched enough crime shows on television to know the drill, but she was young and might not understand all her professional ethical duties.
“I won’t reveal your identity, if that’s the way you want it.”
“Ready for your first question?”
“All right.” A waitress brought coffee for Laura and gave me a refill.
“Tell me about Angie Gates?”
“Who?”
“Angie Gates?”
“I’ve never heard of her.”
Then I remembered. Angie Gates wasn’t really Angie Gates.
“I mean Shirley Hess,” I said. That did the trick.
Laura had met her in college. Shirley left school after her freshman year. They kept in touch and Laura had offered Shirley a temporary place to stay. Shirley had decided a few days ago to make the move to Lower Michigan. She had been at Laura’s house since yesterday, finalizing plans.
She had told me she was taking the week off to decide what to do next. What about the teller job? Had she given her employer any notice?
“When’s she moving?” I wanted to know.
“She’s still packing up her things and she’s waiting for a delivery. A week at most, she thought. Why are you asking questions about my friend?”
“I can’t tell you that, and you’ll be better off if you don’t mention our conversation to her. What kind of delivery is she expecting?”
“Some items she bought on online. She doesn’t have an address yet where she’s going, so she’s having them shipped to my house.”
“Has she ever mentioned someone named Tony Lento?”
“Not that I recall.”
My purse started speaking.
I turned the radio off as Laura retrieved my recorder from under her seat. She took a long look at it. “You recorded our conversation without my permission?” she said, a little anger in her voice. “At least I was above board with my intentions.” She opened the unit and removed the tape. “If you want this back, you’ll have to let me record your story.”
Who knew someone as young as Laura could be so tough and street smart? I had to give her credit, she had me cold. Now I had to decide how important the tape was. Then I remembered that my conversation with Angie in the bar’s parking lot was on it. And the female voice in the woods where Tony had his secret little love nest.
“Deal,” I said, reaching out and turning on her recorder. “Let me start at the very beginning. You better get a refill on your coffee. We’ll be here awhile.”
I had to take off the wig to convince her that I was Gertie Johnson, the one who had every cop in the U.P. searching for her. Laura stared at me with big, round, eager eyes. To a cub reporter, I must be a gift from heaven. I told her almost everything, even information that had been kept out of the newspapers. I told her about the robbery and the pillowcase filled with pretend dollars, about real money missing from the credit union, about the dead guy
