Chapter 5 #2
“I suppose then that my tenuous connection to Mickie could be a reason for the phone call. But why me? Why not call Casey, or Mickie himself?” Gabe shrugged at Richard Nixon’s nose.
“I guess I don’t know that Mickie wasn’t called first, do I?
And let’s face it, everyone in Twana County knows that Casey errs on the side of law and order.
” He nodded, considering the few facts they knew.
“Nah, I think you’re right. Elton. But I’m still going to have to tell them both what happened.
Mickie, so he’s prepared for LEOs possibly showing up and asking him a bunch of questions about a parent he may or may not know anything about.
And Casey, so he doesn’t freak out when the LEOs start asking Mickie questions. ”
Gabe retrieved his laptop from his bag. “Time for some more research.”
Mickie Lundin, who’d started life as Mickie Babe Wilson, had recently turned forty-two. At least that’s what FactChecker claimed. Gabe was not up to visiting Twana County Records in person.
“Babe?” Gabe wrinkled his nose, frowning at the screen. The word did not morph into Bart, Bane, or any other B name he could think of. Babe. “Anyway, moving right along.”
He typed Royal Wilson and Westfort into the search bar.
He couldn’t stop thinking that Wilson had been twenty when Mickey was born, which was young, but Leia O’Conner had been a mere fifteen years old. Gross.
“What is it with adult men and girls?” Had anyone been watching out for Leia? “Fifteen is way too young to be a parent.”
Elton grunted something he assumed was agreement.
The Lundin brothers’ relationship with their mother was complicated, full of potholes and blind corners, but Gabe had a lot more sympathy for Leia now than he had had five minutes ago.
“What the fuck do they put in the water around here?” he muttered under his breath.
His own mother had been maybe nineteen when he’d been born.
Still too young in his opinion, but she’d at least been considered a consenting adult.
Gabe’s sperm donor had obviously taken advantage of the age gap, and his memory was widely given less regard than pond scum by Gabe’s two half brothers.
At forty-four, Gabe still felt too young to be a parent.
Keith-the-cat was about as close as he planned on getting to raising a kid.
“I need a piece of paper.”
Elton handed him his phone message notepad. “Here you go.”
Gabe noted the faded Westfort Whale Museum logo at the top of the pad and held out his hand again. “And a pen, please. Deputy Choi wouldn’t let me keep hers.”
Pen in hand, Gabe quickly jotted down names and dates, although he doubted they were something he’d forget.
One disastrous trip to the grocery store, when he returned home with baking powder instead of baking soda, and Casey now insisted Gabe write things down.
So here he was, obeying instructions, even when his Ranger Man wasn’t there. Gabe smiled.
Wilson’s government name being Royal said a lot more about his parents than a kid who ended up with that type of name. Gabe felt there should be a period from age fifteen to twenty-one when kids could change their names for free if they wanted to.
Next, Gabe navigated to the Westfort Abundance of Light Church page.
“Royal. That’s the name of a third-rate racehorse. But also, not Babe,” he commented while waiting for the little circle to do its thing.
“Babe Ruth,” Elton said, condescension oozing from the words. “He was a famous baseball player. You may have heard of him.”
Gabe chose to ignore his comment.
Finally, the church page was loaded. Gabe scanned through it again, his mind re-boggled by what he was seeing. Heidi had always said pre-grift research was one of his best skills. This was post-death, but same same.
“If the word abundance doesn’t scream scam, I don’t know what does.” More than once, Heidi had told him that, if a person had the balls, religion was the most profitable grift around. Royal Wilson must have had the balls but was now dead.
The photographs of Wilson were fairly recent if Gabe was any judge. He paid closer attention this time. In life, Mickie’s father had had poofy, thinning, white hair and a smarmy smile. He’d given Mickie his nose and fortunately not much else.
The Abundance of Light building looked as if the church could double as a casino.
Or a Costco. Who knew, maybe it operated as a Spirit Halloween on off days.
Gabe didn’t have an issue with casinos per se, but a church that looked like a place where the house always won was pushing significant boundaries in his humble, ungodly opinion.
The home page was dedicated to an apology for the current remodel and shots of the work in progress.
Drop-down menus indicated there were more worship locations across the state, and a carousel of photos at the top displayed a significant number of smiling white men and their happy families.
So. Much. Smiling.
“Anything?” Elton asked.
“Nope.”
If he were a churchgoing man, Gabe would have felt more comfortable at one of the ratty strip-mall congregations, the ones that used to be noodle houses or discount lingerie stores, than what he was currently looking at.
“You too can be happy like these Fabulous White Guys,” Gabe grumbled to Elton, tilting his laptop so he could see what Gabe was looking at. “I think not.”
Elton took one glance and shook his head. “No, thank you.”
As a white man and lifelong grifter, Gabe was personally offended by this kind of horse manure.
They gave grifting a bad name, as well as the decent organizations that truly wanted to help people and be part of a community.
Grifters gonna grift and churches were often the worst, especially since they could avoid paying taxes in so many creative ways.
Sure, nothing on the site claimed that Wilson’s organization had the recipe for the elixir of life or gave believers access to wealth beyond their wildest dreams. But if grift had a scent, he would have been able to smell it from the website alone. Gabe could almost hear Heidi’s derisive sniff.
What had Roy Wilson been selling on the side? And was this an important question?
He looked at the shots of the church building again, a few of which were drone shots from above.
The structure sprawled like a teenage boy on a crowded public bus after school, as if God themself needed to see his crotch from space.
The design reflected an as-yet-unnamed geometric shape, not a square but not quite a circle, and the outside walls were painted an extra-bright white that glowed brighter than spring sunshine—easier to blind their God on a daily basis.
“Well, what’s the plan?” asked Elton.
“What’s the current dirt on Wilson? He didn’t just decide to turn over a new leaf one day. No fucking way, nope. What’s that saying about leopards and spots? Do we know anything?”
Sitting forward, Elton set the crossword he’d picked up to the side and glanced at his phone again. “Knute will have an inkling, he always does, and I’m coming along for the ride once he gets back to us.”
“Elton, someone is already dead, and we have no idea what Wilson was involved in that precipitated being murdered with a golf club.”
Elton crossed his arms defiantly, both shaggy eyebrows raised.
You’re not going to win this, Chance.
“Fine.”