Considering all this, I was somewhat envious of the shipshape conditions in Nick Wallace’s private domain. He could have given Rachel Miller and her sister lessons in housekeeping. There wasn’t as much dust visible in all of Nick’s garage as there had been on Rachel’s collection of salt and pepper shakers. The shiny concrete floor had no telltale grease spots. For that matter, the place didn’t even smell like a garage. There was only the mildly pungent odor of some kind of cleaning solvent.
At the moment, there were just two vans in the shop. One of them was obviously in for a tune-up. Its hood stood open, and a new set of spark plugs lay on the rolling mechanic’s chest nearby. The other van sat in the far corner with both front doors wide open.
Nick Wallace went back to the one van and stopped dead in front of the open hood. “Whoever designed this sucker never planned on changing the plugs.” It was a complaint aimed at the universe in general, not at us in particular. Once he had voiced it, however, Nick resolutely bent over and began resetting the plugs.
“What is it you want to know?” he asked without looking up.
“Which van is it?” I returned.
He jerked his head in the direction of the van with the open doors. “That one,” he said. “I’m still trying to dry it out.”
I’ve seen a few carpet installation vans in my time. They’re usually dented and dinged. Mostly they look neglected, like they’re lucky if somebody bothers to feed them gas and oil occasionally. That, however, was not the case with the Damm Fine Carpets fleet of vans. Not if the two currently parked in Nick Wallace’s garage were any indication.
They were several years old, but they still looked brand new. The outside paint was waxed and polished to a high gloss. If they had ever been dented or scratched, the damage had been carefully rubbed out and repainted. On my way to the one van, I walked past the other and managed to catch a glimpse of what was under the hood. The engine had been steam-cleaned. It could have come fresh from the factory that very day.
When we reached Larry Martin’s van, the one with the open doors, we found that the cleaning solvent smell was emanating from there. It was industrial-strength carpet and upholstery cleaner.
The entire interior of the van had been custom carpeted. I guess that shouldn’t have surprised me. After all, it was a carpet company’s vehicle. The outside of the van looked perfect until I walked around to the other side and discovered that the door on the rider’s side had been badly smashed.
“What do you think happened here?” I asked.
Nick Wallace poked his head out from under the hood of the other van. “You talkin” to me?“ he asked.
“Yes. I said what do you think happened here?”
“Looks to me like he ran it into a post of some kind. Not only that, the stupid son of a bitch bled all over it like a stuck hog without ever bothering to try to clean it up. He just parked it out there on the lot and took off. It was hotter’n hell around here yesterday. The sun cooked it up real good. It was a real mess when I opened her up this morning.”
“Did you clean it up yourself?”
“Some. But there’s a detail place down on Westlake that’s got a steam-cleaning process that’s better on floor mats and upholstery than anything I can do by hand. I took it down there first thing.”
“Did anyone tell you to do it?” I asked.
“Tell me? You mean like order me to get it cleaned up?”
I nodded.
“Look,” he said. “When it comes to the trucks, I’m the boss, see? I got it cleaned up, and I’ll straighten out the door, too, when I get half a chance.”
“Didn’t it cross your mind that with all that blood maybe you should report it to the police?” I asked.
Wallace left what he was doing and walked over to us, wiping his hands on the towel dangling from his hip pocket. “Why should I?” he asked.
“Why not? If one of your vehicles shows up covered with blood, it seems reasonable to me that you might think it would be of interest to us.”
Al nodded his head in agreement.
“Look, fellas,” Nick Wallace said, drawing himself erect. “I got myself a fine job here, understand? Mr. Damm pays me a fair amount of money to keep all his trucks running and looking good. He don’t pay me to butt my nose into other people’s business, no-sir-ee. The trucks come in broke down, I fix ”em. They come in dirty, I clean ‘em up. I don’t ask no questions, I don’t hassle nobody, and I get a paycheck every single Friday.“
That speech probably comprised more words than Nick Wallace had ever strung together at one time in his whole life. There was no point in antagonizing the man. We needed him. Since both the exterior and the interior of the van had been washed, and since we couldn’t see the bloodstains in the van for ourselves, we would have to depend on Nick Wallace’s recollections and goodwill for details about the condition of Larry Martin’s truck when it was found that morning.
“Would you mind telling us a little more about it, then?” I asked, in my most conciliatory manner. “Detective Lindstrom and I are here investigating a homicide. We have reason to believe that this truck was somehow involved.”
“There was blood all over the seat,” Wallace answered.
“Both sides?”
He nodded. “Both sides, driver’s and rider’s.”
“What about the door handles?”
“Both of them were bloody, too. Beats me how he managed to make that much of a mess without ending up dead himself.”
I looked at Big Al. “Maybe there were two people in the van,” I suggested.
“Could be,” he agreed.
I turned back to Wallace. “After Larry Martin brought the truck back here, how did he leave?”
“In his car, I guess,” Nick answered. “I mean, it ain’t here this morning.”
“What kind of car?”
“A VW bug, ”68 or “69 probably. Runs real good for as old as it is.”
“A bug? What color?”
“Red. Bright red. I helped him repaint it just a few months ago.”
“You wouldn’t happen to remember the license number, would you?” It was a hopeless question. I knew it when I asked. Nick Wallace shook his head in reply.
“Got enough trouble remembering my own,” he said.
“Was there anything unusual in the van when you opened it up?” I asked. “Anything out of place, or anything there that shouldn’t have been?”
“Well, the tools were missing. I went straight in and reported that to Mr. Damm. I figured he ought to know about that right away.”
“Anything else?”
Wallace shifted uneasily from foot to foot as though fighting some private interior battle.
“I don’t suppose it matters none,” he said at last. “Even if Larry shows back up here, Mr. Damm’s sure to fire his ass.”
“What doesn’t matter?” I asked.
“It’s against the rules to have anybody who doesn’t work for us riding in a company truck,” he said.
“And you think somebody who didn’t belong there was in Larry Martin’s truck?”
“You said so yourself.”
“But I didn’t say it was someone who wasn’t authorized,” I countered. “You’re the one who said that.”
Nick turned and walked away from us, picked up something from his workbench, and then came back, holding a small brown object in his hands. He gave it to me.
It was a plastic card case, the freebie kind they give you with business-card orders. Under the clear plastic laminate inside the cover was a Washington state driver’s license with a woman’s picture on it. I didn’t recognize the picture, but I recognized the name-LeAnn Patricia Nielsen.
Without a word, I passed the license to Al.
“Where’d this come from?” he demanded.
Nick Wallace looked down at his feet. “I found it in the van. Under the front seat. On the driver’s side.”
Nick Wallace’s terse words put a whole new light on the case. If LeAnn Nielsen had been in the bloodied van, there was a good chance that she and Larry Martin were somehow involved together. Maybe together the two of them had plotted to get rid of her husband. Permanently.