Chapter Thirty-Three
Irving had been ejected from the hospital the previous evening after insisting that he’d had enough of overcooked peas and too solicitous nurses. Apparently, he was convinced that they hovered due to his advanced age, and because they expected he had a foot in the grave, exacerbated by his wounds. One nudge and they’d be sending his carcass down to the morgue.
After he explained—quite loudly—that he intended to live well into the next decade, or two, the doctors finally signed his release, and the nurses sighed collectively as Alvin wheeled him out to the curb.
For all his sweetness, he made a terrible patient.
Being home overnight had smoothed out his disposition immensely, and after making Alvin take him to work, he was his old sunny self.
Jess was about to change that.
“Are you sure you shouldn’t be home sleeping?” she said as she took a seat on the corner of his desk. She’d resisted feeling his head for a fever and taking his pulse. Alvin sat in a chair by the door and Sam went to look out the window for Olive and her rifle.
“If one more person asks me that today,” Irving grumbled. “I’m shuttering this building, moving to Tibet and buying a yak farm.”
Lifting her hands, palms open, Jess said, “Fine. We didn’t come here to lecture you about taking it easy and not pushing yourself. Or to make sure you take your pills.”
Irving’s eyes narrowed, but there was humor there. “Funny, that sounds just like a lecture.”
She smiled. “I don’t know what you mean.”
A frown ended the topic. “If you aren’t here to bother me, then whatever it is must be important. Summer ran out of her office like her tail feathers were on fire and I know she was in the basement with you. I assume you’ve made a breakthrough in our case?”
There was no point asking how he knew about Summer and the basement. The man had eyes everywhere. Hopefully not in the grope-fest she and Sam had undertaken earlier.
She’d have to use one of his gadgets downstairs to sweep the place for hidden cameras.
“We have.” She unrolled the printout. “We’ve discovered the sniper is a young woman named Olive Pyle from Minnesota. I won’t bore you with the details, but we think we’ve found our link to you.” She held out the photo. “It turns out you know her grandfather.”
Slowly, Irving took the page while Sam and Alvin watched. Her boss took a cursory glance at the old photo then adjusted his glasses and pulled the printout closer to his face. The wall clock ticked for a good twenty seconds before he laid the page on the desk. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“That’s what Summer and I thought.”
The chair squeaked as he leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “I thought that old bastard was dead.”
Although Irving never confessed to his true age, Jess and her friends gaged it at somewhere in the mid to late eighties. For an octogenarian, he had the energy of a much younger man. Spending half of his life on the golf course kept him fit. To call Albert old meant something.
“Well, he isn’t,” Jess said. “At least as of about a month ago. Now he’s gone on the lam with Olive the Sniper and I suspect he’s the leader of their band of two. Would you like to explain why a man from your past wants his granddaughter to snipe at you and me?”
Silence filled the room but for the tick-tick of the clock. Irving closed his eyes and for a minute, Jess thought he’d fallen asleep. Or died. Alarmed, she glanced at Sam. He shrugged. The ticking went on.
Finally, Alvin rose halfway out of his seat.
When Irving did finally speak, Jess startled, and Alvin dropped back down. The big guy really did care.
“I guess you’d like the full story,” he said.
“Yes, please.” Jess nodded. His eyes closed again.
“It was nineteen fifty-five and I’d been living in New York in the years after high school and trying to find my fit. That Christmas, I’d gone home and discovered that Eileen Pepper, the youngster who lived down the block, had grown up. She was eighteen and a real beauty.”
A smile crossed his face. He opened his eyes. “It was love at first sight.”
Jess had seen the photo of Irving and Eileen on his bookshelf many times and knew her boss had married way up. Eileen had been what seniors called a ‘stunner’. She was Marilyn Monroe to his Joe DiMaggio.
“What I didn’t know was that Albert Grimes, who lived next door to her, also had her in his sights. They’d had one date. Eileen wasn’t interested, but he was determined. Eventually, he gave up. By the time we married, I thought he was happy for us.”
“I take it, he wasn’t?” Sam said.
“Who knows now? By then we’d become friends and everything appeared fine. He must have been hiding secrets.”
“He held a grudge?” Jess saw a clearer picture evolve. If Albert let his anger fester for all this time, the man had serious issues. “Holding anger over a broken heart for sixty plus years seems extreme.”
Irving nodded. “That isn’t all. In nineteen sixty-three when that photo was taken, he and I had started a construction company. By then he was married with young kids of his own. For several years we struggled to get a footing in the business. I wanted to move from residential to industrial construction but he said no. He asked to be bought out and I mortgaged everything I owned to scrape together the money.” He paused and the smile returned. “Eileen and I ate a lot of tuna sandwiches in those days.”
The porcelain smile seemed a little sad. Jess wished she’d known Eileen. She must have been something else.
“The business took off,” Alvin said.
“It took another five years, but yes, it took off.” Irving brushed gray hair off his forehead. “Highways were being built and cement pipes were needed for drainage. We also sold other construction materials for multi-million dollar projects. I got in early and made a killing.”
“Albert resented your success,” Jess said. She noticed Summer standing in the open doorway, listening.
“He accused me of stealing the company from him. By then, he’d been out almost ten years when he showed up at my door. Thankfully, the deal was legal and my lawyers shut him down. I haven’t seen him in over forty years. I’d assumed he’d died.”
She slid off the desk. “Love and money are two powerful motivators when it comes to revenge. In his eyes, you took both his woman and his business from him.”
Irving put his golf shoe covered feet up on his desk. He was wearing green and blue plaid pants and a green shirt. “But why now? Why come back for revenge now that Eileen is gone and the business sold? We’re too old for this crap.”
“That’s a good question,” Sam said. “Something must have set him off. The mystery is what.”
“And he’s using his granddaughter to do his dirty work,” Jess agreed. “They’re two apples from the same crazy tree.”