When I got back to the police station, I saw Bennett and his son coming out the door. Bennett was blinking in the sunlight, like he had been working in a coal mine all morning.
I caught up to them before they got into Ham’s car. “Bennett, are you all right? Where’s Jackie?”
“Jackie and Gill already left,” he said. “I think I got the extra-special treatment today.”
“They made bail already?”
“The judge was already here,” he said. He looked at the residue of fingerprint ink on his fingers, and then wiped his hands on his pants. “He arraigned them and set ten-thousand-dollar bonds. Mine was twenty.”
“Did you have a lawyer here?”
“Why would I need a lawyer?”
“Because you got arrested, Bennett. That’s why you need a lawyer.”
He kept looking at his hands and then wiping them on his pants again. It wasn’t doing much good. “I don’t need a lawyer to tell them they’re full of shit. I can do that all by myself. Alex, I could really use a beer about now. How about you?”
“Let me just ask you a couple of questions,” I said.
Bennett looked over at his son. “More questions,” he said. “Just what I need.”
“It’s important,” I said. “I’m just trying to help out here.”
“I know, Alex. Go ahead.”
“What did the police ask you about?”
“I seem to recall my Explorer coming up in conversation,” he said. “Like about seven hundred times.”
“Did they tell you why they were so interested in it?”
“They gave me the general idea. It sounds like my car had just as much fun as I had that night. It’s impounded, by the way.”
“What about your house? Did they find anything there?”
“No,” he said. “They just took the car.”
“When Jackie and I got to the game, your car wasn’t there. Am I right?”
“That’s right.”
“How did you get there?”
“Usually, Gill comes and picks me up. But that night, he called me and told me he might be a little late. So I said, no problem, I’ll have my wife drop me off, she was coming over this way anyway. Gill was still planning on giving me a ride home afterwards.”
“You never drive to poker games yourself?”
“No, Alex, not if I can help it. My night vision isn’t so hot these days. And if I happen to have a drink or two while I’m playing, well…Let’s just say as a bar owner I’ve seen enough people with no business getting behind the wheel.”
“All right, that makes sense,” I said. “It explains a lot. Now, is it possible that somebody else was driving your car that night?”
He looked at his son again. “Yeah, this is what I tried to get across to those guys in there,” he said. “I’m not sure if they bought it or not. You see, my wife and I have this bad habit of leaving the keys underneath the driver’s seat. We used to have two sets of keys, but we lost one of them. Which was a pain because we’d both be busy doing stuff around the bar, and one of us would have to run out and get something, you know, so we just started leaving the keys in the car.”
“You go to the hardware store,” Ham said. “They make you a copy. It takes ten minutes.”
“Thank you, Mr. Smart Guy,” he said. “I didn’t know that. They can actually copy keys, huh?”
“I’m just saying.”
“I know I should have gotten a new key, okay? I just never got around to it.”
“All right, all right,” I said. “Did anybody else know that you and your wife were doing this?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I suppose I’ve mentioned it to people before, you know, friends in the bar.”
“How about the poker gang?”
He thought about that one. “Yes,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I did. I remember, because somebody told me that was a great way to get the car stolen, and I said something like, fine with me, I wouldn’t have to make the payments anymore.”
“Okay,” I said. “That could be important.”
“Are you thinking…” he said. “Wait a minute, are you thinking that somebody else from the poker gang used my car that night? Or else they got somebody else to use my car that night? ’Cause obviously they couldn’t have used it themselves, not if they were there. Except for Swanson, I mean.”
“What about Swanson?” I said.
“Swanson? Are you kidding?”
“I’m just asking. You tell me. Could he have done this?”
Bennett put his hands on the hood of Ham’s car, staring at his reflection in the finish. “Swanson?”
“Watch the car,” Ham said. “You’re gonna get that ink all over it.”
Bennett took one look at his son and then tuned him out. “Swanson set us up?” he said.
“ Somebody set you up, Bennett. You and Jackie and Gill. I’d like to find out who did it.”
He looked up at me. “How are you gonna do that?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “But that never stopped me before.”
“I really need that beer, Alex. Come on over to my place, we’ll talk about this.”
“I’m gonna take a pass right now,” I said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Okay, Alex, you do that. But make sure you stop by later, you hear me?”
“I will, Bennett. You guys go on home.”
He looked up at the building. “You heard the man,” he said to his son. “Let’s get away from this place.”
I sat in the truck and watched them leave. I stayed there a while, thinking everything through. It seemed like a high-risk move to add to the whole equation, “borrowing” Bennett’s car for the getaway.
Or was it? They knew Bennett would be at the poker game. They knew his wife would be covering at the bar. They knew that the keys would be in the car, or at least they knew it was a good bet. With Bennett’s car, not only do they maximize the setup, there’s nothing to trace back to them, no danger of their own car getting stranded at the scene if something goes wrong. Hell, Leon had almost done that himself. Imagine coming out and seeing your getaway car blocked in the driveway?
But damn, the whole thing still sounds so professional, like somebody who really knows what he’s doing, covering all the bases.
No kidding, Alex. Think about the way they acted in the house. The coordination, the disguises-they did have a master plan, and they executed it perfectly.
Now all you’ve gotta do is figure out who made it all happen.
I took out the piece of paper Leon had given me, with the phone numbers for Douglas Swanson and Kenny Heiden. I tried Swanson’s office number first, got his secretary and found out he’d be in court most of the day. I told her I’d call back later. When she asked me for my name, I hung up.
Then I tried Kenny. There was no answer at his home number-no surprise at this time of day. I told him I wanted to ask him a couple of questions, and to please call me when he got in.
Finally, I called Gill, and left the same message.
It actually occurred to me to call Chief Maven, ask him about that Canadian license plate. That’s when I knew I was going overboard. Just take it easy, I told myself. If you get impatient, you’re gonna drive yourself crazy. You’ve done what you can so far. Let the rest come to you.
One more call, I thought. Thank God for cell phones, even if you only use them once every two months. Even though I knew I’d be seeing him soon, I called Jackie’s number. Jonathan answered.
“How’s he doing?” I said. “Is he there?”
“He left, Alex. He said he was gonna go walk on the beach.”
“Walk on the beach? Since when does Jackie walk on the beach? Since when does he walk anywhere?”
“Hey, that’s what he said. I figured he had a tough enough day, he can do whatever he wants.”
“Did he say anything about it? What happened at the station?”
“Not a word.”
“Did he happen to mention what they found in the house?”
“No, Alex. He’s not talking about it.”
“We’ll see about that,” I said. “When he comes back, tell him I’ll be there in a little while. Don’t let him go anywhere else.”
“If I tell him that, he’ll go back out again. Just on general principle.”