4 The Marathon Murders (6 page)

Phil had called for a wrecker to haul Sharkey’s car off to
the tow-in lot. As soon as he left, I suggested Warren and Kelli get their cars
away from Blair Boulevard and meet us at our office. On the way, I told Jill
about my conversation with Adamson.

“Sounds like you did a pretty good
job of defusing the situation,” she said.

“That remains to be seen. You can
be certain Phil’s going to do a lot of digging. And I feel the same way he
does. I’d sure as hell like to know what Harold Sharkey was up to, who he was
working for.”

“How about this,
Greg?
What if whoever was after the Marathon papers hired him to make
sure Kelli was away so they could search her grandfather’s house? Then he came
back to see what else he could learn from her.”

I nodded. “Good scenario. Of
course, it assumes someone is after the papers, which we have no proof of as
yet. And if they’re the same people who killed Bradley, it would mean they
didn’t find the papers on him or at his house.”

“
Which means we’d
still have a chance to recover them.
”

I reached over and patted her knee.
“I like your positive attitude, babe. Let’s try to keep it up when we talk to
our clients.”

It was well after six when we swung
onto I-40, headed for Hermitage. Rush hour traffic had slowed and the only
bottleneck was perennial construction between downtown and the airport. We
tuned in a weather report, getting the usual August forecast for tomorrow—hot
and humid, possible afternoon thunderstorms. At least for the moment the sky
was being swept blue by a steady southerly breeze.

“I need to get a little flying time
in during the next day or so,” Jill said. “Anywhere we need to go?”

I shrugged. “I hope not.” Flying
wasn’t my favorite mode of transportation. I used it when necessary and knew
I’d have one of the best pilots in the business. Still, every time I made it
back to terra firma, I vowed I’d never leave again. Maybe it all stemmed from
my parents’ death in an airliner crash on the way to my graduation at the
University of Michigan. Maybe it’s just some kind of weird hang-up. Anyway, I
preferred to keep my four wheels and my two feet on the ground.

By the time we pulled into the
parking area, the evening crowds were beginning to pack the restaurants near
our office. I unlocked the door and we headed for our desks. The answering
machine light winked as though burdened with a nervous tick.

“I’ll check the calls,” I said.

There were two messages. I played
the first one. It was a real shocker.

“Mr. McKenzie, I’d appreciate your
giving me a call. This is a fellow
PI.,
Harold
Sharkey. We’ve never met, but I’ve heard good reports about you. I’m sure you’d
be happy to give a little professional courtesy to another investigator. I have
a question about your interest in a certain woman visiting here.”

Jill looked at me with a raised
eyebrow as he rattled off his phone number. “Did I just hear what I thought I
did?”

I pressed the repeat button.

“How did he know about us?” she
asked.

“I’d guess he came by Liggett’s
house while our car was parked in the driveway around noon. He checked our
license number. The call was made around one-thirty.”

“Did he think we would tell him
what we knew about Kelli?”

“I’d say that’s exactly what he
thought, stupid bastard.”

“Greg!”

She didn’t care for my four-letter vocabulary.
Seven letters, either.
“Sorry, babe.
But that’s the
most descriptive term I have for him. Though I guess I shouldn’t talk ill of
the dead.”

“Right.
But it still doesn’t tell us anything about his interest in Kelli, does it?”

“No. Let’s check the other
message.”

This one was from TBI Agent Wayne
Fought. He left a cell phone number where I could reach him.

“What do you suppose he wants?”
Jill asked.

“Probably for us
to come in for a formal statement.
I’d better give him a call before
Jarvis and Kelli
get
here.”

Fought answered on the third
ring,
and I identified myself.

“I need to come down to Bureau
Headquarters in the morning. I want to see what the crime lab boys have come up
with on that Jeep. I need you and your wife to meet me over there and give us a
statement.”

“Sure. What time?”

“How about eleven o’clock?”

“We’ll be there. Did the wound on
Bradley’s head appear consistent with a blow from the walking stick in his
living room?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss the
investigation at this point, Mr. McKenzie.”

“Did you find anything at Bradley’s
house that looked like those Marathon Motors papers we mentioned?”

“No, but I can’t tell you
any more
.”

“Think about it, Agent Fought. A
little discussion between us might prove quite fruitful. There’s a good
possibility of a tie-in with Pierce Bradley’s involvement in this case we’re
working in Nashville. Cooperation could benefit us both.”

“We’ll talk about it in the
morning,” he said and hung up.

I had just relayed his request to
Jill when Jarvis and Kelli walked in wearing solemn faces.

“Cheer up,” I said, strolling over
to give the colonel a
pat
of encouragement. “I think
Phil Adamson is going to push this thing as purely an accident.”

“That’s not what’s
borthering
me,” he said. “I was against it, but Kelli
insists if you’re going to be our advocate, we should level with you.”

I frowned. “What the devil does
that mean?”

Kelli spoke up. “I’m the one who
made the tackle that killed Mr. Sharkey, not Warren. He took the blame in an
attempt to keep my name out of it.”

They took chairs as I perched on the edge of my desk.
“Frankly,” I said, “I wish you hadn’t told me. I may be a personal advocate,
but not a legal one. There’s no client confidentiality that would stand up in a
courtroom.”

“I’m not concerned about that,”
Kelli said. Her face showed the strain of an agonizing decision. “You and Jill
have put forth a lot of effort on this. I want to keep everything above board.
If there is anything else you’d like from me, just say the word.”

“I think I can speak for both of
us,” Jill said, leaning forward on her desk. “We really appreciate your
feelings, and we’ll let you know if anything comes up where we could use your
help.”

I just hoped Phil Adamson didn’t
ask me anything else about the episode on Blair Boulevard. I didn’t want to
cause our clients any more problems, but I would have to answer with the truth
if questioned.

“Detective Adamson told us this
Harold Sharkey character was a private investigator,” Kelli said. “Is there any
way to find out who he was working for?”

“No. That’s something Phil wanted
to know, too, but he won’t likely find out.” I moved around to sit at my desk.
“Are you sure this couldn’t have any connection with your work?”

She gave me
a you
’ve-got-to-be-kidding
look. “The
kind
of people I have to deal with rely on
their own resources. They don’t hire PI’s.”

“Just thought I’d
ask.
Now, I hate to bring up more bad news, but you won’t be getting a
visit from Pierce Bradley.”

“Why not?”
Jarvis asked.

“Mr. Bradley is no longer with us.”

“You mean—”

“He’s dead,” I said with a nod.

They looked at me in shock. Kelli
recovered first.
“How?”

I told them about the Jeep in the
lake, what we had learned from Pierce Bradley’s sister, our visit to Bradley’s
house, and the information Sheriff Driscoll had given us concerning the former
A-10 pilot.

“Jeez. Sounds like any number of
people could have wanted to do him in,” Jarvis said.

I gave a dismissive wave of my
hand. “That was my initial reaction. But there’s still the issue of the missing
papers. Maybe I’m grasping at straws, but my instinct says this is all tied
together somehow. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is handling the murder
case. Jill and I are meeting in the morning with Agent Wayne Fought.”

Jarvis looked at me with renewed
interest. “Will he help you look for the Marathon papers?”

Jill spoke without a trace of
humor. “I think he’d like us to fade into the sunset.”

She was right, but I thought it
best to put a little more positive spin on things for our clients’ benefit. “I
hope we can convince him there’s a link in our cases. It would sure help if we
had something more tangible to go on.”

I saw Jill glance up at the clock
across from her desk. “I move we adjourn this discussion to a nice restaurant
across the parking lot. It’ll soon be eight o’clock.”

“Damn.” Kelli grabbed her handbag
off the floor and stood. “I promised Grandpa I’d come back over there and fill
him in on what we’d learned. I’m going to omit the part about Harold Sharkey.”

“Good idea,” I said, standing
behind my desk. “Don’t forget Detective Adamson’s warning to stay out of sight
if you want to avoid the media.”

“I’ll check into the motel where
Warren’s staying. You have my cell phone number if you need me.”

“I plan to keep a low profile,
too,” Jarvis said. “That’s what the duty officer I talked to advised. I haven’t
been able to reach my immediate superior yet. I think I can arrange to take a
few days leave when I explain the situation.”

After they left, Jill and I were
gathering up our things to head home when the phone rang. I checked the Caller
ID, saw the newspaper identified and let the answering machine pick up.

“Hey, Greg,” said Wes Knight’s
voice. “I didn’t expect to find you in, but give me a call when you get this
message. A reporter turned in a story about an accidental death out beyond
Hillsboro Village. And guess what? That woman you asked about was identified as
a witness.”

Jill just looked at me and shook
her head.

After a full day of dashing back and forth across the countryside,
alternately baking in the sun and chilling out in the air conditioned depths,
Jill begged off the promised “something good” concoction for supper. We stopped
at the restaurant across the parking lot and dined on their seafood special.
Before getting to the main course, I had a sudden thought and called Kelli’s
cell phone. She had arrived at the nursing home a few minutes earlier.

“Just so we can rule out everything
else,” I said, “how about asking your grandfather if he’s had any major
disagreements in the past, something that might prompt a retaliatory trashing
like you found today.”

She hesitated a moment. “Are you
suggesting it could have been a spiteful act rather than the work of untidy
snoopers?”

“Not likely, but possible.”

“Very well.
I’ll ask. If I learn anything, I’ll call you at home.”

I snapped the phone shut and waded
into a large helping of grouper with a savory sauce.

“Quite good,” I said, brushing my
lips with a napkin. “But not nearly as good as what you’d have fixed, I’m
sure.”

Jill gave me a skeptical look.
“After a day of slave-driving, you’re trying to butter me up, huh?”

I chuckled. “I told you some days
it would be like this. Then it gets worse.”

She paused in the midst of
buttering a roll. “After we wind up this case, let’s take a week or so off and
go down to
Perdido
Key.”

We owned a condo on the narrow neck
of sand that lay just off the Gulf coast southwest of Pensacola. I hadn’t been
all that thrilled about the place until our best friends sent us down there to
solve a murder. That was the energizing experience that had prompted Jill to
suggest, and me to accept, the idea of opening a private investigation agency.
The attitude adjustment had also mellowed my view of the Florida barrier
islands.

“Sounds fine to me,” I said. “We
should be due a little R&R.”

“Rest and
Recuperation.”
She sighed. “I could use a bit of that when we get home.”

“I will be at your beck and call,”
I said.

“We’ll see about that.”

It was almost nine when we arrived
at our cabin in the woods, actually a large two-story log house not far from
the county line. I had installed motion-triggered floodlights that bathed the
outside. On the inside, a sophisticated burglar and fire alarm system warned of
intruders. We’d had a couple of nasty experiences in the not-so-distant past,
so I always checked the place carefully on arrival.

Finding everything in order, we
went in and prepared to unwind.

“You are off duty, I presume,” Jill
said with mock gravity. “We have a new bottle of Riesling just dying to be
opened. I’ll go up and wriggle into my nightgown, then we’ll pop the cork and
indulge in a little pacification program.”

“Yes, I’m off duty, thanks.
Which means I get to watch you wriggle.
” I gave her a
lecherous grin.

She waved me off. “Save the
wriggling for later.”

I started toward the room we used
as a home office, calling back over my shoulder. “I believe pacification refers
to peaceful submission. That’ll work.”

I dropped my briefcase on my desk,
was about to turn and walk out when the ringing phone stopped me. It was Kelli.

“What do you have?” I asked.

“It seems my Grandpa is a bit more
of a
hardass
than I was aware. He told Warren and me
several tales of run-ins he’d had over the years. I don’t know that any of them
would result in the sort of thing that happened today, but who knows?”

I sat on the edge of the desk.
“Run-ins with
who
?”

“One was the head of a medical
equipment company headquartered in Nashville. Seems Grandpa nixed a
multi-million-dollar deal the company had arranged with the hospital shortly before
he retired. The man tried to get Grandpa fired and appears to have had him on
his list ever since.”

“And there’s more?”

“Well, he got the Teamsters Union
and the truckers association all riled up a couple of years ago when he went to
the governor and state legislature complaining about some of their activities.”

That brought a grin to my face. I
admired the old guy’s spunk. He apparently thought a lot like me. He had no
intention of letting anybody run over him, ignore him or push him around.

“House trashing sounds like
something the Teamsters might pursue,” I said. “But they would need some
current dispute to provoke it.”

“Probably so.
That’s all I was able to come up with at the moment, though. Have you heard
anything else?”

“I hate to tell you this, but
you’ll need to check the newspaper in the morning. There’ll probably be a story
about the accidental death on Blair Boulevard.” I didn’t want to explain how I
knew, since it was an outgrowth of my inquiry into her past.

“We expected that. Hopefully it
won’t be too detailed.”

“I’m sure Phil Adamson did his best
to keep it low key. Anyway, thanks for the information, Kelli. Let’s compare
notes tomorrow after Jill and I meet with the TBI agent.”

I hung up and found Jill standing
in the doorway holding a wine bottle and two glasses.

“I thought you were off duty,” she
said.

I walked over, took the bottle and
glasses from her, set them on my desk, threw my arms around her, and gave her a
monstrous kiss.

She leaned her head back and
grinned. “That was an off-duty kiss if I ever experienced one.”

“You’re right, babe,” I said,
pulling her closer. “Duty is only skin deep. We’ve got lots more pacifying to
do.”