Chapter 45
Jojo’s uncles had gone to church on Sunday morning and would not be home until mid-afternoon. Amish church services, which were conducted in high German, could last four or five hours. There would be a meal at Sam Glick’s farm, where the women would provide mountains of food.
Uncle Levi had told her last night, “I’ll bring you home a plate if you want me to.”
“I love you, Uncle Levi!” Jojo’d said. Truth was, the Sunday communal meals were occasions where every woman in the community wanted to put her best foot forward.
Oh, they didn’t compete with each other to see who could bake the most tasty apple pie or serve the most sumptuous pot roast … except yes they did!
She said, “I’ll be happy if you can just manage to get me a piece of Margaret Blesser’s chocolate pie.”
“Consider it done.”
She was making herself a sandwich for lunch and salivating over the prospect of a piece of chocolate pie when her phone rang—Conor.
“Just spent an interesting half hour talking to Sheriff Carter Bridges in Fayette County.”
For a moment Jojo didn’t know what he was talking about, then she remembered that the man who was supposed to supply an alibi for James Whitman lived in Fayette County. Conor had called the sheriff there yesterday and asked him to check out the alibi.
“And he said …?”
“He said that Ogden Hasbrow absolutely verified that James Whitman spent the entire evening on the night of the shooting at his house playing poker.”
Jojo sighed. “Another dead end.”
“Until the sheriff leaned on him, that is.”
“Leaned as in … How?”
“Leaned as in Sheriff Bridges called it ‘strategic use of intimidating truth.’ He just told Mr. Hasbrow that before he signed a legal affidavit swearing that James Whitman’s story was accurate, he might be interested in certain information.
Then he pointed out the penalties for ‘obstruction of justice,’ and described how getting convicted of accessory after the fact to seven murders could result in …
Sheriff Bridges called it ‘significant curtailing of personal freedom, for a very, very long time.’”
Jojo smiled. She had met Sheriff Bridges a couple of times and was impressed by how effective he was at getting information. And his “toe-in-the-sand, aw-shucks, I’m-just-a-good-ole-boy” routine was remarkable at convincing criminals to underestimate him.
“And suddenly Mr. Hasbrow remembered that it had been Monday night when he’d played poker with James Whitman, not Wednesday, said he hasn’t seen him since.”
“Sounds like we need to have another conversation with James Whitman.”
Conor knocked on the door of Whitman’s double-wide trailer and when Whitman opened it, they could tell by the look on his face that he knew why they had come.
He invited them inside before blurting out, “Og called me. He said the sheriff came and asked him about whether I’d been there playing cards with him on Wednesday night like I told you. He said the sheriff threatened him, made him say I wasn’t there.”
“Made him say you weren’t there?” Conor said.
Whitman ran his hands over his head in a gesture like running his fingers through his hair except his was too short.
“Give it up, Mr. Whitman,” Jojo said. “Why did you lie to us?”
“And where were you on the night of the shooting?”
“I didn’t do it. Surely to God, you don’t think I climbed up on top of a house and shot my brother and a whole bunch of other people just because I was pissed off.”
“I don’t know what you did or didn’t do,” Conor said. “But I do know nobody lies to the police unless they’ve got a really good reason. What’s yours?”
“I was in a bar.”
“What bar?”
“Forbidden Fruit.”
“Why didn’t you tell us that to begin with?”
But Jojo knew why. “Forbidden Fruit. That’s a gay bar, isn’t it?”
Whitman didn’t speak, just nodded. “Look, nobody knows, okay. I?—”
“Nobody cares anymore who’s gay and who isn’t,” Jojo said.
“My father cares!” He stopped and amended. “Cared. If he’d found out I was … he’d have cut me off, wouldn’t have given me another dime.” He barked a sardonic laugh. “Not that it matters now, since Charlie stole the whole estate and left me and Ed penniless.”
“So why are you still hiding it?” Jojo asked.
“Once you start hiding … it’s hard to … face the people you’ve lied to your whole life.
I’ll come out … when I’m ready.” He took a breath.
“I know this looks bad, saying I was at Og’s when I wasn’t.
But you can ask the bartender at Forbidden Fruit.
He’ll remember me. We talked about Pittsburgh Steelers football. Ask him, he’ll tell you.”
Jojo could tell Conor was weighing whether or not to take the man in.
“You had better be telling the truth this time, Mr. Whitman. If this is another lie, I will come down on you?—”
“It’s the truth. I swear. Just go ask.”
Conor and Jojo got back into his cruiser and drove to Forbidden Fruit. It was a Sunday late afternoon, and the parking lot was mostly empty. They went inside and asked the bartender if he knew James Whitman.
“Can’t say that I recognize the name. Why?” he asked.
“This is him.” Conor pulled out Whitman’s driver’s license photograph and showed it to the bartender. “Recognize his face?”
“I can’t say that I do.”
“So you’re telling me that he wasn’t here on the night of the shooting?”
“No, I ain’t telling you that. I don’t know who was here that night. Al works Wednesdays so he’s not here today.”
“Are there other customers here who might have been here on that night?”
The man had been wiping the bar with a wet cloth, and he stopped, looked pointedly at Conor.
“I keep my mouth shut about who’s here and who isn’t here.
If you’re asking me in an official capacity if this James Whitman was here, I will tell you that I do not know.
If you want to go out and see if any of those fellows want to talk to the police about someone who may or may not have been here, you go right ahead. It’s a free country.”
The man went back to polishing the already clean surface of the bar.
Conor looked at Jojo and gestured to the right side of the open room. “You go that way, I’ll go this way.”
Jojo and Conor met back at the bar a few minutes later.
“Any luck?” she asked him.
“Nope, not a soul.”
“Me neither. I couldn’t find anybody who could remember him being here that night, but then I also didn’t find anybody who would admit that they were here that night either.
” She shrugged. “They figure it’s nobody’s business when they were here and when they weren’t, who they came with and who they left with. ”
Conor turned to the bartender and handed him a business card. “This Al person who was working the bar on Wednesday night, would you give him my card, please, and tell him to give me a call?”
“Sure,” the bartender said. He picked up the card, slipped it into the pocket of his shirt, and smiled, and neither Jojo nor Conor believed for a New York minute that he would do anything but throw it away as soon as they left.