“Two-ten, maybe,” Helen answered with a frown, “but that’s probably ten or fifteen pounds less than he’s weighed most of his adult life. He was always concerned about the way he dressed. I noticed that his suits were getting baggy, but he didn’t seem to care.”
The Roger I’d seen earlier in the day, the guy in that pair of oversize pajamas, couldn’t have weighed in at one-seventy soaking wet. If he’d dropped forty pounds between the end of September and now, that meant he’d undergone a precipitous weight loss. It could be the result of radical dieting or indicative of some underlying health issue, but now I was wondering if it might be due to something else entirely. With that prenup in effect, maybe the easiest way for Shelley to lay hands on her husband’s money would be for him to cork off. What if she was actually starving him to death?
“How exactly did Jack Loveday die?” I asked.
“He was in a plane crash,” Helen answered. “EMTs rescued him and airlifted him to a hospital in Anchorage, where they amputated both legs below the knee. He committed suicide a few weeks after they released him from rehab.”
“Who took care of him once he was released?” I asked.
“Shelley was there, of course, but I believe a visiting nurse came by every day to help out,” Helen answered.
“A visiting nurse, as in a regular RN?”
Helen nodded.
“So Jack didn’t share his wife’s Christian Science beliefs?”
“Evidently not.”
Suddenly I found myself wanting to know a whole lot more about Jack Loveday’s death.
“Was Shelley Jack Loveday’s only heir?” I asked.
Helen shrugged. “As far as I know,” she said. “He and his first wife, Lois, never had any kids.”
At that point Helen glanced at her watch and rose to her feet. “You’re going to have to excuse me now,” she said hurriedly. “If I don’t leave right this instant, Mrs. Santa Claus will be missing in action.”
Given everything she’d just told me, I wanted to ask a whole slew of additional questions, but those would have to wait.
“By all means don’t let those kids down,” I told her, “and don’t worry about me. I can show myself out.”
I stood on the porch for a moment, pondering what I’d just learned. If divorcing Roger was a nonstarter and if hanging around long enough for him to die was the only way for Shelley to make good on the years she’d invested in the man, I had the disturbing feeling that the poor guy was in the care and keeping of someone who might not have his best interests at heart. That left me with only one question: What, if anything, was I going to do about it?
Chapter 20
I paused on Helen’s front porch and punched Todd’s number into my phone. He answered, but only briefly. “I’m on another call,” he said. “Hang on. I’ll get right back to you.”
I was prepared to stand there and wait for Todd to come back on the line, but at that point the Travelall’s horn blared and Twink waved for me to get moving.
“What’s the rush?” I asked once I was in the car.
“I ran out of smokes,” she explained. “I thought for sure that I had another pack stowed in my purse, but I didn’t, and if I don’t get some soon, I’ll explode.”
Still holding the silent phone to my ear, I told her, “By all means let’s go get some.”
The Travelall had just started moving when Todd came back on the line. “What’s up?”
There I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Either I could tell Todd what I needed with Twink listening in on every word or I’d have to wait until she went inside somewhere to buy her smokes. What the hell, I told myself, and opted for the former.
“I’d like whatever you can find on two people—Shelley Hollander Loveday Adams and her deceased first husband, Jack Loveday. I also need to know if Christopher Danielson was ever issued a U.S. passport.”
“And you need this information immediately if not sooner, right?” an exasperated Todd wanted to know.
“Absolutely.”
Twink stopped at the first convenience store we saw. While she went inside, I scrolled through Todd’s e-mails, looking for the three remaining unaffiliated boys—the ones who still lived in Homer. The first of those was a guy named Alex Walker, who according to Todd’s notes was married, had three kids, and managed the local Firestone franchise.
When Twink returned with a cigarette already clenched between her lips, I told her that’s where we were going.
“Do you think the manager will be there on Saturday afternoon?” Twink wanted to know.
We drove straight to Firestone. Surprisingly, Alex Walker was at work. When I introduced myself, the man was pleasant enough, but it turned out he remembered nothing about Chris Danielson.
“We might’ve had a class or two together,” Alex said, “but nothing stands out. From what I remember, he was kind of a loner. He lived with his grandparents for some reason and didn’t have many friends. Why are you asking about him?”
“He went missing a dozen years ago, and nobody seemed to notice.”
“I guess I heard about that at the time, but that’s pretty much all,” he said. “Wish I could help.”
In the course of the next two hours, Twink and I tracked down the other two Homer guys—Ron Wolf and Phil Bonham. Like Alex, they, too, had vague recollections of Chris, but neither had had any close connections with our missing person. Phil’s place was a long way out in the boonies. As we headed back into town, Twink asked, “Where to now?”
“Back to the barn, I guess,” I told her, “although I’m not all that sure where the barn is.”
“I believe that Chad, my brother, knows Shelley Loveday,” Twink said, apropos of nothing a mile or so later.
Obviously she’d been listening in on my conversation with Todd. Even so, I was flabbergasted. By now I was beginning to think that the state of Alaska was very much like an oversize version of the small town where, as the old joke used to say, even if you dial a wrong number, you end up chatting anyway.
“Really?” I asked.
“At one time everyone in Alaska knew of Shelley Hollander even if they didn’t know her in person,” Twink said. “She was a looker, all right. Shortly after she got her pilot’s license and went to work for Jack Loveday, she entered the Miss Alaska beauty pageant and walked away the winner. Everybody was so surprised that a bush pilot could end up being Miss Alaska. I thought that was a crock. As far as I’m concerned, women can do any damned thing they want.”
Twink paused as if giving me a chance to respond to that. When I wisely declined to take the bait, she continued.
“Anyway, Jack was a big gun in the bush-pilot world, and once Shelley got her claws into him, she didn’t let go. He ended up divorcing his first wife and marrying Shelley. She probably thought she’d made herself a pretty good deal, except for one thing. In airplane circles everyone knew that Jack Loveday made money, all right, but they also knew he was so tight his farts squeaked. According to Chad, when it came to spending money, he kept Shelley on a very tight leash.”