“What are you basing your assumptions on?”
“For starters,” he said, “Frankie, it turns out, was living in Butler, Pennsylvania, a year and a half ago. We been going through Old Man Hunt’s phone bills for the past five years–saves all the shit in case he gets audited, right? Turns out that during the time Frankie was in Pennsylvania, the Hunts received five collect calls from Butler. The year before that it was collect calls from Dover, Delaware, the year before that there was half a dozen or so from Hagerstown, Maryland.”
“The calls were from Frankie?” I asked.
“We’re still running it down. But me, I got a strong suspicion Frankie was calling Al Hunt from time to time, probably told him all about what he done to his mother. That’s how Al knew so much when he talked to you. Hell, he wasn’t no mind reader. He was reciting what he knew from conversations with his sicko pal. It’s like the crazier Frankie got, the closer he moved to Richmond. Then, boom! A year ago he hits our lovely city and the rest’s history.”
“What about Hunt’s car wash?” I asked. “Was Frankie a regular visitor?”
“According to a couple of guys working there,” Marino said, “someone fitting Frankie’s description was down there from time to time, apparently going back to last January. The first week in February, based on receipts we found in his house, he had the engine in his Mercury overhauled to the tune of five hundred bucks, which he probably got from Al Hunt.”
“Do you know if Frankie happened to be at the car wash on a day when Beryl might have brought her car in?”
“I’m guessing that’s what happened. You know, he spots her for the first time when he delivers Harper’s bags to the McTigues’ house last January. Then what? He spots her again maybe a couple weeks later when he’s hanging out at Al Hunt’s car wash begging for a loan. Bingo. It’s like a message to him. Then maybe he spots her again at the airport–he was in and out all the time picking up lost bags, doing who knows what. Maybe he sees Beryl this third time when she’s at the airport catching a plane for Baltimore, where she’s going to meet Miss Harper.”
“Do you think Frankie talked to Hunt about Beryl, too?”
“No way to know. But I wouldn’t be surprised. It would sure help explain why Hunt hung himself. He saw it coming–what his squirrelly pal finally did to Beryl. Then, next thing, Harper gets whacked. Hunt probably felt guilty as shit.”
I shifted painfully in my chair as I shoved paper around in search of the date stamp I’d had in hand but a second ago. I ached all over and was seriously contemplating having my right shoulder X-rayed. As for my psyche, I wasn’t sure what anyone could do about that. I didn’t feel like myself. I wasn’t sure what I felt except that it was very hard for me to sit still. It was impossible for me to relax.
I commented, “Part of Frankie’s delusional thinking would be to personalize his encounters with Beryl and ascribe profound significance to them. He sees Beryl at the McTigues’ house. He sees her at the car wash. He sees her in the airport. It would really set him off.”
“Yeah. Now the schizo knows God’s talking to him, telling him he has some connection with this pretty blond lady.”
Just then Rose walked in. Taking the pink telephone message she offered to me, I added it to the pile.
“What color was his car?”
I slit open another envelope. Frankie’s car had been parked in my drive. I had seen it when the police arrived, when my property was pulsing with red strobe lights. But nothing had penetrated. I remembered very few details.
“Dark blue.”
“And no one remembers seeing a blue Mercury Lynx in Beryl’s neighborhood?”
Marino shook his head. “After dark, if he had his headlights off, the car wouldn’t exactly be conspicuous.”
“True.”
“As for when he hit Harper, he probably pulled his ride off the road somewhere and went the rest of the way on foot.”