Sheriff Walt Neelie was sitting in his car outside the entry door to the Miller Engineering and Fabrication factory when Ted arrived. “Talk about keeping banker’s hours,” he said to the youth. “Aren’t you afraid your ol’ man will sack you.” “He wouldn’t do that.” Miller smiled at the officer. “He’s got to keep someone around to do the grunt work.” “Have you got a few minutes to sit and talk before you have to report for duty?” “Sure.” Ted frowned, trying to remember if he might have stepped out of line at some time. “You know Ed Hall, don’t you? He was the owner of Hall’s Department store before it was bought by Ward’s.” Walt showed the youth a smile. “He cashed in for a pretty good hunk of change. Used some of it to built that big house up on the hill” “Yeah. I know who he is, but I don’t know him personally.” Young Miller continued the frown, wondering where the conversation was going “Why, what’s he done?” “Nothing, as far as we know, except disappear.” If the sheriff was waiting for Ted to show surprise, he didn’t need to wait longer. “Disappear? You mean like just vanished?” “Like smoke in a hurricane,” Neelie said. “I got a call from Ed’s old cronies—the guys he plays golf with. They told me they hadn’t seen him, or heard from him in more than two weeks. That was really unusual for Ed not to let them know when he expected to be out of town. One of them called his house and talked with Elverta, Ed’s daughter. Now there’s piece of work, Elverta—the devil’s mother-in-law. She told whoever-it-was- that-called that Ed was off on a trip and didn’t know when he’d be back.” Walt hesitated and took a few deep breaths. “At this point I have to stop and fill you in on some background information. Two or three years after Ed and his wife moved into that new home, Ed’s wife, Georgette, died. Cancer, I believe. Anyway it really tore Walt apart. They were very close. For a while after that he hardly ever went out. Just stayed in the house, grieving, with only his maid, Maria, to look after him. “Finally his buddies convinced him that he should come out and start playing golf again. He did and started to come back to life. Then his daughter got in touch with him. They’d been estranged for years. As I’ve indicated, she wasn’t a pleasant person. She suggested that her and her husband, Ham—Hamilton Colms is his full name—should move in and take care of him. After all it was a big house with lots of bedrooms that were going to waste. I guess they caught him at a weak moment and he agreed. Maybe he was getting lonely. “Well, they didn’t do much taking care of Ed as they did in taking him for a ride. At their urging, he hired a cook and another maid because Elverta, the poor thing, couldn’t work—arthritis or something—and Ham wouldn’t work. All they did was spend his money, or try to. But old Ed was pretty cagey. He knew what they were up to, so he doled it out very carefully. This has been going on for seven or eight years. I suppose the Colms were just waiting around for Ed to kick off so they could inherit a pile, but he was just too stubborn to die. It must have been really frustrating for them, to see him walking around, day after day, healthy as a horse.” The sheriff displayed his grin again. “And now, suddenly, Ed turns up missing. Strange, isn’t it? Except for an odd coincidence. He disappears at about the same time that Roberta Pedersen thinks she saw a car go into the lake.” Ted couldn’t hold it back. “Wow! That does make you wonder. So what have you been doing about it?” “I went around and talked to the Colms. I told them that Ed’s pals think something bad had happened to him. They were shocked as all get out that his friends didn’t know that Ed often took off on these jaunts alone. ‘He went to places he’d never seen before like Hoover Dam and Mount Rushmore and Glacier National Park. We never knew where he was going or when he’d be back. He always brought back a lot of pictures to show us,’ they told me. “I asked if he traveled by train or plane or bus, and they told me that he always drove his black Mercedes. “Then I decided to throw them a curve ball.” He chuckled. “I told them that there had been an eyewitness to seeing a black car driven into the lake—I made up that part about the car being black. That really shook them up. They were sure it couldn’t have been Ed. He was always such a careful driver. Like a caring, loving daughter and son-in-law, they wanted to know how they could help find Ed. I suggested they should have missing person posters made and distributed. Also a substantial reward should be offered. When they asked how much, I told them at least $10,000. That amount or more would get the kind of attention they would want to have Ed located. I could tell they weren’t too pleased with my suggestion, but they couldn’t argue against it.”
|