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Lyle Hobbs glanced back at Albert’s house. Clete’s Caddy was parked in the shade. A large raven was standing on the convertible top, cawing at the trees. Hobbs touched at his mouth and widened his eyes, as though trying to see more clearly into the shade.
“I could hear him talking loud in Mr. Wellstone’s office, all wired up, like he could deal with somebody like Mr. Wellstone on equal terms.”
“Seymour Bell went to the Wellstones’ compound? That’s what you’re telling me?” I said.
“Mr. Wellstone has an office upstairs. Bell went straight upstairs and told Mr. Wellstone he’d propositioned his girlfriend, what’s-her-name.”
“Cindy Kershaw,” I said.
“She worked as a janitor at the health club where he was getting therapy for his sciatica. Sonny Click tried to get it on with her. She came up to Swan Lake to tell Mr. Wellstone. Except he tried to put moves on her himself. When she didn’t go for it, he must have got a little rough, maybe feeling her up or something. Or at least that was what Bell was saying to him. Mr. Wellstone told him to file a report with the Sheriff’s Department, because he knew the kid didn’t have diddly-squat to support his story. That’s when Bell tried to one-up him.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“He told Mr. Wellstone the girl had a digital recorder in her purse, that she had turned it on and caught the whole thing, everything about the ministry and Click seducing young girls and Mr. Wellstone trying to get into Cindy’s pants. I heard a chair scraping. I think Mr. Wellstone must have gotten up and tried to push the kid out of his office. Except it didn’t work out that way. Bell said he was gonna dime Sonny Click and Mr. Wellstone and show them up for the frauds they were. Then he shoved Mr. Wellstone down the stairs. He looked like a pile of broken sticks at the bottom of the steps.”
“When did this happen?” I asked.
“The same day those kids got killed.”
“Who did it to them, Hobbs?”
“Not me. I drive people’s cars. That’s it. You tell that Asian cunt what I said.”
“I think maybe you’re still working for Sally Dio. I think maybe Sally is still alive. One guy survived that air crash. It was Sal, wasn’t it? Where is he, Lyle?”
“Sally always said you were stupid.”
“Could be,” I said. I smiled at him, my thumbs hooked on the sides of my belt, my eyes roving over his face. “Just a footnote to all this. If you ever refer to a woman like that in my presence again, using that particular word, I’m going to pick up a ball-peen hammer and break out all your teeth.”
I WALKED UP to the main house and told Clete of Hobbs’s visit. Then I got Alicia Rosecrans’s cell phone number from him and went back to the cabin and called her. I told her everything Hobbs had said, excluding the i
nsult.
“Where’s Hobbs now?” she asked.
“Probably headed for Reno or Vegas.”
“Seymour Bell told Ridley Wellstone he had recorded evidence against both him and Sonny Click? That the Kershaw girl had a digital recorder in her purse?”
“That’s correct, at least according to Hobbs.”
“But Bell was bluffing?”
“That’s right,” I replied.
“Ridley Wellstone couldn’t figure that out? Kershaw came from a poor family. She worked as a janitor to go to college. Where would she get money for a digital recorder? Those kids died for nothing.”
“Yeah, they did,” I said.
“I thought I had more objectivity about this case, but this really pisses me off. Hobbs wouldn’t say who abducted Bell and Kershaw?”
“No. But Quince Whitley has got to be a player in this.”
“How about the California couple? What’s the connection?”
“I’m not sure.”
“That’s a long way from ‘don’t know,’ Mr. Robicheaux.”
