50. The Rundown
FIFTY
The Rundown
Lillian
T here was a lot to go over.
So here’s the rundown:
We’ll start with Willie.
Harry was right, he was going to see a lot of prison time in a lot of different prisons.
First, he was tried for so much stuff in Seattle, I lost track of all the charges (though, I did that because I wasn’t really keeping track in the first place).
Even though Rita got him a high-priced attorney, he was found guilty.
For all of it.
He was then extradited to Fret County, and the same thing happened.
After that, he was extradited to Vancouver, and yep, you guessed it, the same thing happened.
So he’d start in federal prison, and when he was done with his sentence there, he’d do time in a state prison, and after that, he’d head up to Canada.
By the time he finally served all of his sentences, even if he was granted early parole along the way, Willie would be in his fifties.
I thought I should feel badly for him or at least feel something.
I just didn’t.
Surprising everyone, the Monday after Karl Abernathy was gunned down on Main Street, Albert Tremblay came into the station and confessed to shooting his neighbor, Terence Dinklage.
Harry told me he suspected Tremblay got antsy, knowing there’d been a case audit, and after Sean started asking questions, then the Dietrichs were arrested, and Karl was shot dead, Harry deduced Tremblay saw the writing on the wall, and he was next.
Tremblay had no idea they didn’t have enough to pursue.
Time in the pokey before he got bail, and perhaps his attorney sharing his fees, made Tremblay rethink things and he recanted.
It was too late.
They had his confession. They had his gun. They had the ongoing dispute and argument earlier that day, which was witnessed by Dinklage’s wife and was reportedly heated. And they had witness after witness testifying about Tremblay’s animosity to Dinklage, with two of them sharing Tremblay had stated, “I should just shoot the sumabitch and be done with it.”
He was found guilty by a jury of his peers.
His wife sold the house.
And word was, the Dinklages got on with their new neighbors splendidly.
Leland Dern didn’t fare too well in the courts either.
After two of his former deputies testified he’d ordered them to harass women (and one woman’s ex-husband) who were not accepting his advances, he was found guilty of three counts of criminal stalking, fined fifteen thousand dollars, and he did another three months in prison.
Lamentably, these deputies testified so they could avoid their own charges, and as they were the only two who were Dern’s go-tos for this kind of thing, outside Abernathy, those were the only consequences they faced.
Though, both of them moved out of Fret County pretty damned quickly after Dern’s trial was over.
When Dern got out, he sold his A-frame and moved to Florida.
With Abernathy dead, we would never know if Dern was involved in what happened to my parents. If he chose them, or if it was just Abernathy thinking that Dad had seen him at the Dietrich’s.
I would admit, part of me would like to know.
But I never would.
So I let it go.
The situation with the Dietrichs became known to citizens of MP as The Infernal Dietrich Folly.
Yes, they vamoosed the second they heard Harry was doing an audit of Dern’s files. They’d lived mostly in Seattle for a year, doing it keeping a low profile, and doing it living in the rental of another friend of their son, paying cash so there was no record of where they were staying.
The low profile was a thing for them, after they got their hands slapped by Abernathy proving they weren’t omnipotent. They’d genuinely lived in fear of being found out since their insurance scheme took a turn for the very worst, and not just Abernathy maybe blabbing, but my parents being found, or someone like Harry taking an interest and reopening the case.
One could say, Gerald Deitrich Senior was beside himself with fury his wife screwed the pooch so deeply by talking to police without counsel to the point she inadvertently wrote out and signed her own confession, implicating both her husband and son.
At first, she attempted a united front.
But apparently, Gerald kept writing her letters (when they were both incarcerated) and then saying it to her face (after they were bailed out, though they both had to wear ankle monitors seeing as they were definitely a flight risk), telling her what a fool she was and placing their current predicament squarely on her shoulders.
As such, she stopped feeling the unity.
She also got smart and hired her own attorney.
In the end, she gave testimony against her husband in return for a reduced sentence. She was fined a thousand dollars and would serve one year and be on probation for another one.
Gerald pushed it, claiming his innocence to the bitter end, which was probably why he was also fined a thousand dollars and given the maximum of five years.
Though, both his and his wife’s behavior during his trial probably didn’t help, since it seemed, even while she was testifying, Gerald thought he could snap things at her, and she thought she could snap back. Twice, they got down and dirty into it, to the point the judge told them he’d arrest them for contempt if they didn’t stop it.
So, yeah, the deposed king and queen didn’t know how to behave like mere mortals.
But they were going to learn.
And this didn’t take into account the fact they’d both stand trial for fraud, which Harry shared that theirs was considered a Class C felony and could include restitution, a ten thousand dollar fine and up to fifteen years in prison.
So, yeah.
They were oh-so-totally going to learn.
Gerald Junior pled out. Accessory after the fact was dropped, he pled guilty to obstruction, got a year’s probation and a two thousand dollar fine.
He also lost his lobbyist job.
Evidently, helping your parents evade police and knowing they’d committed felonies and keeping silent after knowing they’d inadvertently caused two people’s murders was frowned on in that profession.
So he had to leave DC, and last I heard, since it was hard to find a job practicing law when you had a felony conviction, he was in Texas, doing what, I didn’t know.
And I didn’t care.
Gerald Junior further sided with his mom and threw his dad right under the bus.
Then again, both his parents came from money, she just came from more.
Why they didn’t ask their parents to help them way back when was another mystery that would never be solved.
They didn’t.
But (understatement of the century) they should have.
I didn’t want to, but I attended the trial, and every day, Ronetta was beside me. Some days, Jenna or Molly or Kay or Janie were with us. Harry also showed occasionally, when he had the time.
I went because I wanted the judge and jury to see me, and if that swayed them in any way, I was all for it.
I went because I wanted the Dietrichs to see me.
Sure, Gerald took pains to avoid looking at me.
But Michelle didn’t, and she flinched every time she laid eyes on me.
Gerald Junior’s face got soft, and he was decent looking (though, I knew he thought he was a lot more), and I suspected he figured for some reason that would move me.
When I just stared him down, he took the route his dad did.
And last, and most importantly, I went to represent my mom and dad.
I didn’t know if me being there held any sway over the judge and jury.
I did know that my victim statement—one that was not directed at any of them, I just told everyone how great my parents were, how much they were loved, how much they loved me, how very, very much they loved each other—left few dry eyes in the courtroom. Even the judge seemed to get choked up.
So I did the last thing I could do for them.
And it was done.
In November, two weeks before Thanksgiving, two hunters in Umatilla County in Oregon called into the police sharing they’d found a body in the woods.
It was the remains of a female, buried in a shallow grave that had since been disturbed by animals.
What couldn’t be disturbed was the bullet hole in her skull.
She was identified as Cheryl Ballard.
Now…
Karl Abernathy.
Not that there was any doubt, considering both the senior Dietrichs pointed the finger at him, along with his subsequent spree, but even so, the motel owner in Idaho was shown a picture of him, and he said he was “relatively certain” it was the same man he saw in his parking lot that night long ago.
Karl’s stolen SUV was found in the alley behind my house, and a bottle of sedatives with a few little blue pills left in it was found in that SUV.
And the gun Karl had was absolutely the gun used to kill Cheryl.
However, even if Cheryl Ballard could no longer talk, nor could Clifford Ballard, or Roy Farrell, it was without a doubt he was my parents’ killer, along with it seeming pretty obvious he was Ballard’s and Farell’s.
There were so many things we’d never know.
But I could guess.
Karl told my dad he had me.
Karl told him he and my mom had to go to the side of that mountain to get me.
That was the only reason why they would leave that motel room.
How he managed to convince them of this, and further kill them both, I had no idea, but I suspected Dad went first. He would never stand there no matter what and watch Mom die.
Then again, she wouldn’t either.
Again, I’d never know.
After he took their lives, he’d taken anything that could identify them easily, like Dad’s wallet and Mom’s purse, and tossed them. Those items were probably disintegrating in some landfill.
This didn’t upset me, thinking it was me used to lure them out.
It was just them. It was who they were. What they’d do.
If I was in danger, they’d put themselves in danger to free me.
And that was simply that.
In the end, Karl Abernathy was a forty-two-year-old man who never married and never had any children.
He hadn’t been tall, but he’d been fit, and some might’ve found him good-looking.
Why he came after me was also anyone’s guess. Maybe he had a thing against Harry and heard we were together. Maybe he thought, after all these years, I knew what he did.
Or maybe he knew his time was up, considering Jason and Jesse Bohannan had found the abandoned hunting cabin several counties south he was holed up in, doing this chasing down reports on stolen vehicles, and they were ten minutes behind him as he made his way back to Misted Pines. And because of that, he got it twisted in his mind that my parents were to blame for his predicament, and he wanted to go out doing something to make them pay.
He was very dead, so that was another question that would go unanswered.
This one I didn’t mind not knowing.
This one, it was a matter of all’s well that ends well.
Just in case you were wondering…
Kimmy did shoot Karl Abernathy when he came into her store.
She said it was clear he wasn’t looking for the back door, but instead a hostage, and “There’s no hostage taking in a holiday shop!”
She’d become kind of a local celebrity because of this, something I thought she’d like, but she detested it.
“If one more person speaks of it to me, I’m shooting them ,” she told me and Harry (loudly) one morning in Aromacobana.
Considering she’d already discharged her weapon, and she was more than a hint crazy (in a lovable way), no one mentioned it.
At least, not to her.
Even so, Harry took her out to dinner one night at the Double D to have a chat and take her pulse.
Kimmy might be a bit loopy, but she was good to the bone, and Harry learned she wasn’t the kind of person who could shake off shooting a man, even if he was a bad man, and what she did, she did to protect other people.
She and Harry had a couple more dinners before she told Harry he was off the hook, and she was good.
Harry still kept an eye on her.
So did I.
As far as we could tell, she told no lies. She was good.
We still did it.
Harry told me Clifford Ballard’s mother came to visit him.
Harry closed that case, certain that Ballard was murdered by Abernathy.
She sat in his office, weeping and thanking him for giving her answers.
“And that’s why you do it,” I whispered after he was done sharing, knowing this already, because he gave the same to me.
“That’s why I do it, sweetheart,” he replied.
I knew it was more than just that. Much more.
I was simply glad Harry got a win.
And Mrs. Ballard got answers.
Mom and Dad’s suitcases and the letter Mom wrote me were released by the Idaho police.
I also got their wedding rings and Mom’s engagement ring. They were in the grave with them.
Make no mistake, I’d wondered where they were, but I thought Abernathy had taken them.
So I was beside myself they were returned to me.
When they were, they were clean as a whistle, bright and shiny, courtesy of some woman named Lynda.
I sprang for an expensive gold chain that dangled low, close to my heart, and wore them around my neck every day.
I also got Mom’s journals back, of course, but I didn’t read them.
I told Harry enough people were privy to her private thoughts, so for now, I wasn’t going to become one of them.
I also told him I’d read them later, for the sole purpose of making sure they weren’t too private, and if they weren’t, when the time was right, I’d let our kids read them so they’d know how much their grandma loved their grandpa…and me.
Just to say, Harry and I took a trip to Coeur d’Alene so I could meet that woman named Lynda, and Harry could take her out for a steak dinner.
He’d made arrangements before, and at that dinner was not only Sergeant Lynda Westwood and her husband, but the husband and wife who had retired from the motel business, and their daughter and son-in-law who took it over.
I’ll admit, I cried just a little when the man looked at me and said, “God, you’re the perfect combination of those two lovely people.”
But after I got over that, it was a nice night.
They’d asked if I wanted to see the room Mom and Dad stayed in, but I declined. We didn’t even go to the motel.
Though, I discovered Coeur d’Alene was an insanely gorgeous place, and weirdly, I felt some peace that Mom and Dad rested in such splendor before they came home to me.
That said, I told Harry I never wanted to go back.
I knew he thought it was gorgeous too.
But he agreed.
By myself, I went through their room and picked a few things I wanted to keep.
Once I’d done that, I let Ronnie and George, Shane and Sherise, and a few of their other friends make their selections.
Then Harry, Ronnie, George and I donated what we could, sold what we could, and got rid of the rest.
Rus and Doc came over, and they and George helped Harry paint the room.
(Painting, by the way, was also “man’s work,” and that was okay by me, considering, while they did it, I hung in the kitchen with Ronetta, Cin, and Doc’s very pregnant wife Nadia, with Maddie, and Doc’s son, Ledger, out back, playing with the dogs.)
I left all my stuff in my old room and created a cozy, cottage-y space that was a whole lot more unisex in taupes and soft mushrooms with a fun pouf at the end of the bed and fluffy dried grass instead of flowers in vases on the nightstands.
Harry’s dad had been an electrician before he retired, and he installed two droplights covered in wicker shades on either side of the bed. And there were lots of fluffy pillows for lounging (and other).
We did this because Harry found an architect who was going to design the blowout of the back of the house, and he said, if we didn’t mind some dust and noise, he could do it while we were still living there.
This thrilled Greg and Josh, and they moved forward with the sale of Harry’s place (though Amanda and Caroline had already had the old kitchen gutted before that even started).
The detritus of the burnt down stables were removed, and a large, attractive garage/storage building was going to be put up.
I was excited for them, and for Harry.
Same place. Same people.
But a fresh start.
And he’d always have the home his mom and dad gave him.
Greg wasn’t only an electrician, but like Harry, he was handy, and he liked to be busy. So when he was in town, he helped me with my properties, and my owners paid him for any electrical work that needed to be done, not to mention installations and repairs.
He liked this so much (along with being close to his boys, his grandchildren, Amanda, and…well, me ), eventually, he was up in Misted Pines more than he was down in Phoenix.
Though, part of this might have been because Caroline’s daughter pitched a fit when Caroline asserted she did have a life outside of unpaid babysitter and daycare duties, and she was going to live it.
This caused ongoing dissension because Caroline was hurt, Greg was angry, and as such, Misted Pines was a more peaceful option.
They got ATVs and a speedboat, and Josh and Amanda and the kids came out all the time, even if the drive was quite a haul.
Though, I noted Josh and Amanda didn’t have the same relationship Harry and I did.
I noticed this around the time they got in a huge fight over Josh not wanting the living room changed and Amanda demanding it be changed (I didn’t weigh in, but I thought Josh was right, sure it was semi-kinda dated, but it was still attractive and hella comfy).
To let them have at it, Harry and I took the kids to Double D for sundaes (and Harry’s adorable niece Eugenie got hot fudge and ice cream all over her face and even in her hair, but what was more adorable was watching Harry dunk a napkin in a glass of water and clean her up).
Greg called when we were about ready to head back, telling us not to because, “The fight is over, and from the sounds of it, they’re busy making grandbaby number three for me.”
I could hear Greg’s laughter over the phone.
I could also see this information made Harry throw up in his mouth a little.
So my laughter joined Greg’s.
Oh, don’t think I missed Greg’s ploy.
My dad was a handyman.
And Greg pretty much gave up on retirement in order to horn in to be my handyman.
Honestly, the more I got to know all of them, it was no surprise Harry turned out to be all that was Harry.
No one could replace my dad (or my mom).
But straight up, there was nothing but beauty adding Greg, Caro, Josh, Amanda and the kids to my life.
Yep.
Nothing but beauty.
Yes, Harry did close down our street so that everyone who showed (and so many people showed, it was amazing!) would be safe as they wandered the Halloween extravaganza, the kids got their candy, and the adults were offered wine, beer, cider or hot cocoa.
We one hundred percent gave out full-size candy bars.
A few weeks later, Harry went with me to Indiana to spend Thanksgiving with my grandparents.
Ronnie helped me find them, and I gave my grandparents pretty little boxes with some of Mom and Dad’s ashes mingled inside.
There were tears. A lot of cooking. Wholehearted approval of Harry.
And I learned Harry was a sucker for my gram’s pecan pie.
So it was good I had the recipe.
Things changed at our house, and I didn’t mean just Mom and Dad’s bedroom becoming Harry’s and mine.
Primarily, Harry lifted the ban of no human food for the dogs.
So, okay, it wasn’t like we fed them rashers of bacon every morning.
But we both knew there was a good possibility Harry would have returned home from work that day to find me dead or dying of gunshot wounds in the backyard if those pups hadn’t intervened, which would be a different but no less tragic repeat of something he’d already endured.
And that left one puppy daddy both proud…
And very, very grateful.
Ronnie and I talked, and she shared the touching information about where George was at that he shot a man.
“That was about you, darlin’, but it was also about Sonny. I think he feels better now, more at peace with the whole thing, because he was there when Sonny wasn’t, and he got to look after you.”
A chat with Susan gave me much the same thing.
Had I mentioned how much I loved my neighbors?
Well, I loved them.
With my whole soul.
Though I knew someone else saved me that day.
My dad.
If he hadn’t put in that door, those bullets would have hit me.
So I treasured that moment, as crazy as it sounded.
And that door.
Harry had wanted to switch it out.
I refused.
Since it still would (Harry’s words) “stop a tank,” he left it.
And Dad left something else behind. Something he was always so good at.
His protection.
What didn’t change was that work was work, and Harry’s work was a lot .
Along with the day-to-day grind, he still had eleven more cases he and his team had to look into.
But those were other stories.
Maybe.
Though lots of other stuff changed.
Sherise introduced her man to all of us, and although Ronnie never gave up, they got married and lived their child-free lives saying yes to every adventure that came their way.
Not long later, the love bug hit Shane too.
And Ronnie got her grandbabies.
But just to say, those also came from Harry and me.
However, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let’s go back.
And I’ll let Harry finish the tale.
Oh!
One last thing.
Harry did give boba a try.
We also finished We Are Lady Parts .
And just like me, he loved them both.