“No, Mr. Garber. Do not make that call. We’ll have a word with Mr. Pinder ourselves.”
Ken Wang phoned me.
“Hey, boss, Stew and I are ready to get to it, but there’s nobody here,” he said in his Southern drawl. “Where’s Sally? She usually opens things up.”
“Sally’s with me.”
“What?”
I could picture the eyebrows going up. “She had some trouble in the night. And I don’t think Doug will be coming in, either. Listen, Ken, I’d rather have this conversation in person, but I’m going to have to ask you this now.”
“Sure. What’s on y’all’s mind?”
“I need you to step up. I need you to be Doug. My second in command.”
“Shee-it. What’s up with Doug?”
“Can you do it?”
“Sure. I get a raise?”
“When I see you, we’ll talk. It’s your show today. Figure out what needs to get done and do it.” Before he could say anything, I ended the call.
When Stryker returned, she wasn’t interested in answering our questions, but we did manage to learn that Theo had been shot. Three times, in the back.
Sally tried to hold it together, but wasn’t having much luck.
“Who shoots someone in the back?” she asked me.
I didn’t answer that question. Instead, I asked, “Has Theo got family around here?”
Sally managed to tell me he had a married brother in Boston, a sister in Utica who’d recently been divorced, and his father still lived in Greece. Theo’s mother had died three years ago. Sally figured, where notifying next of kin was concerned, police should start with Theo’s brother. He was someone who could get things done, who’d make the funeral arrangements, empty out the trailer, that kind of thing.
“Do you want me to call him for you?” I offered.
“Won’t the police do that?”
“I think so.”
“I can’t do it,” Sally said. “I can’t.”
“Listen,” I said, “if there’s anything else you need, tell me.”
She looked at me with wet eyes. “I’m sorry I freaked out on you.”
“It’s okay.”
“I know you did what you had to do. It’s just, I thought he was my one shot. I mean, he wasn’t Mr. Perfect, but I think he loved me.”
We didn’t talk for a few minutes. There was something on my mind. It had been there since before I’d fallen asleep, and even in the midst of the horrible events of the last few hours, it had never been far from the surface.
“I need to ask you something,” I said to her.
“Yes?”
“This is going to sound totally crazy, but I need to bounce it off you.”
“This is about Theo?”
“No, it’s about Sheila.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever, go ahead, Glen.”
“You know Sheila’s death, it’s never made sense to me.”
“I know,” she said quietly.
“Even though I’ve never been able to get my head around the fact that Sheila would get behind the wheel drunk, I’ve never been able to come up with any kind of rational explanation for what happened. But I have one now.”
She tilted her head, curious. “What is it?”
“It’s so simple, really. What if someone forced her to drink?”
“What?”
“Maybe the tests the forensic people did are right. Sheila was drunk. But what if someone made her drink a lot, against her will?”
“Glen, that’s crazy,” Sally protested. “Who would do such a horrible thing to Sheila?”
I squeezed the wheel. “Yeah, well, I don’t know exactly, but there’s been so much strange shit going on lately. It would take forever to tell you all of it but-”
“Like your house getting shot at?”
“Yeah, that, and a lot of other shit, too. There’s this guy, Sheila was going to deliver something to him the day she died. It was all part of the purse party stuff Ann did. Belinda was into it, too. And not just purses.”
“I don’t get where you’re going, Glen.”
“It doesn’t matter. The thing is, Sheila never met up with him, never made the delivery.”
“Okay, I’m on information overload here,” Sally said. “First Theo, then this theory of yours about Sheila. But, Glen, Jesus, what you’re saying-that someone forced Sheila to drink because they wanted her to have a car accident? I mean, how could you even know that would work? She might fall asleep just turning the key, or drive into the first ditch she passed. You couldn’t count on her driving up some ramp and doing what she did.”
I let out a long breath of exasperation.
“Sorry,” she said.
“I know what you’re saying,” I said. “I do. But for the first time, I’ve got a theory. A real, honest-to-God theory about how Sheila might have died. Maybe… maybe she was already dead before her car got put on the ramp. Someone got her drunk, knocked her out, put her in the car and left it there.”
I looked over at Sally. She had such a look of pity on her face, I felt embarrassed.
“What?” I said.
“I just, I just feel so bad for you,” she said. “I know how much you loved her. I mean, if I was you, I think I’d be doing the same thing. I’d be trying to figure out how something like this could happen, but, Glen, I mean…”
I reached out and took her hand. “It’s okay. I’m sorry. You’ve got enough on your plate right now without my dumping crazy theories on you.”
When the police were done with us, and it took nearly until noon, I walked Sally to her Tahoe and made sure she was belted in behind the wheel. “You’re sure you’re okay to drive?”
She nodded and took off down the road.
I got in my own truck, and set out to find Doug Pinder, if the police hadn’t found him already.
I tried his cell first but there was no answer. I didn’t have a number for Betsy, or her mother’s place, so I decided to just drive there first. When I pulled up out front of the house around one, there was a police car parked across the street. The only car in the driveway was an old Chevy Impala, which I guessed belonged to Betsy’s mother.
As I got out of the truck an officer got out of the police car and said to me, “Excuse me, sir!”
I stopped.
“May I have your name please?”
“Glen Garber,” I said.
“I need to see some ID.” He was closing the distance between us. I dug out my wallet and slid my driver’s license out of it for him to examine. “What’s your business here, sir?”
“I’m looking for Doug Pinder,” I said. “That who you’re waiting for, too?”
“Do you have any idea where Mr. Pinder may be?”
“I’m guessing he’s not here, then.”
The officer said, “If you have any idea, you need to tell us. It’s important we speak with him.”
“I know,” I said. “I just came from the Stamos place. I know what this is about. I made the 911 call. Is Betsy in?”
He nodded. He didn’t seem to want me for anything else, so I walked up to the door and knocked. A woman in her mid-sixties answered. Several cats gathered about her feet as she opened the door, and three of them scooted outside. “Yeah?” she said.
