Caruso 01 - Boom Town (5 page)

Gibson shrugged. “No, I don’t.”

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Tony moved uncomfortably close to Gibson. “Heard they liked to do it with other people, while the other one watched.”

Gibson jumped to his feet. “That’s total bullshit! Get out.” His long skinny finger pointed toward the door, his face red and his jaw clenched.

Slowly rising from his chair, Tony went to the door. He stopped and smiled at Larry Gibson. “Where were you the night Dan and Barb were barbecued?”

Calmly, the red from Gibson’s face finally cleared, and he said,

“I don’t have to answer shit!” Pause. “Home. Asleep. By myself.”

“When I find out both of them were murdered, I expect to collect a percentage of their policies from you. How much are you willing to give up?”

The man’s jaw dropped, speechless.

Tony nodded his head, tapped his pen against his notebook, and drifted out the door. “Have a nice day,” he said over his shoulder.

On his way out the front door, Tony smiled at the receptionist, and went out toward his truck. He thought about alibis. Being single like Larry Gibson, he guessed he was without an alibi six out of seven nights a week, drinking beer and eating pizza. He couldn’t hold that against anyone.

Thinking about the morning, Tony guessed it had gone better than expected. He had managed to get bruised ribs, and followed that up with bruising Gibson’s ego. Maybe he was a little too hard on the guy, but that’s the way Tony liked to work. Piss them off early and appologize later. It was the Navy way.

♦

Squeezed between two cars in the back row of the parking lot, the driver of the black Ford Ranger pickup truck cranked over the engine and put it in gear.

The driver looked into his rearview mirror, ran his hand across his flattop, and then settled his eyes for a moment on his fat lip.

“That fuckin’ bastard’s gonna pay for this,” the man said to his
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friend in the passenger seat.

“Just keep your eyes on that F-Two-Fifty,” the man with the goatee said. “You’re just pissed cuss I got ta whack him a few times with my night stick.”

The driver turned out onto the side street, keeping way back from the Ford.

“Dude, next time it’s my turn to crank on his ass.”

They kept far back. With the light Saturday traffic, it was no problem following the F250.

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It was almost noon. Whereas it was somewhat surprising to find Larry Gibson at the office on a Saturday, the opposite was true in the case of Melanie Chadwick. As a real estate broker with any desire at all to make sales, she would work the weekends when most people were off to look at houses.

Three Sisters Realty was located just two blocks from Deschutes Enterprises in a new log and stone structure on a landscaped precipice overlooking a rapid part of the Deschutes River.

The outside plants, juniper, manzanita and various natural sagebrush, were positioned precisely along a curving cobblestone sidewalk. Landscaping had to be a booming business in Central Oregon, Tony thought.

Tony stopped in to see if Melanie wanted to do lunch, but a young receptionist told him she was hosting an open house from one to three. She gave him the address.

On the way to the house on Bend’s westside, Tony picked up a couple of sub sandwiches at a downtown deli. He parked on the street and started toward the door, stopping to check out the sell sheet attached to the real estate sign, his eyes glancing sideways up and down the street.

“Shit,” he mumbled softly. “Four hundred grand for two thousand square feet? Hope that comes with a live-in maid.”

He got to the door and knocked. All he could hear was the bay-ing of beagles from the neighbor’s yard.

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Finally, the door swung in.

“Hey, lady, does this place come with the fuckin’ beagles?”

“What are you doing here?” Melanie asked, as Tony walked past her carrying the paper bag lunch.

“I figured you’d be too busy getting ready for the open house to remember to eat lunch.”

She was alone in the place. It was a newer house in a hilly section of town nestled among a grove of two hundred year old ponderosa pines.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she said. “See, I have cookies and coffee.” She waved her hand elegantly like a game show babe. At five-nine, the two of them looked eye-to-eye. Wearing a conser-vative gray skirt that hugged her hips, she obviously kept herself in great shape by doing all things physical. The two of them had sparred in martial arts a few times in the past couple of days at the gym, and she had held her own.

He raised the bag. “I got you a six-inch ham and cheese, no onions.”

“I wish I didn’t have to settle for six inches,” she said, running her hand to the back of his neck. “And I was hoping for Italian sausage.”

“This place has three bedrooms.”

She checked her watch. “Damn. People always show up early to these things. Let’s go out tonight. The Riverfront. A little wine.

We could go back to my place. Or the condo. Your choice.”

“Sounds good.”

They ate the sandwiches without saying a word, and washed it down with a glass of water.

“Do you know a developer in town named Cliff Humphrey?”

Tony asked.

Her head bolted up. “Of course. I know all the developers in town. He has an office in Bend, but he’s from Portland. Why do you ask?”

“What do you know about him?”

She gave him one of her serious quizzical looks. The kind she
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did when her mind was racing fast to keep up with her words.

“Humphrey and a few other Valley developers bought up a lot of land around Bend more than a decade ago,” she said. “They must have known the area would start growing like this. They’ve put in subdivisions all over town, including the place you’re staying.”

He already knew most of this. “What about Cascade Peaks Estates?”

She thought for a second. “Yeah. That’s one of theirs. I understand they’re getting ready to build a new destination resort on five hundred acres a mile west of here. The home-site views will be spectacular. There will be a championship eighteen hole golf course. Olympic pool. Stables. Tennis courts. Fitness center. The lots alone will go for two fifty. That is if they can get the land use permit.”

“Is that a problem?”

She laughed. “Usually nothing is a problem for Humphrey and his friends. But this time they’ve run into a couple of snags. They need to buy an easement from Mount Jefferson Drive, and they need water rights.”

“That’s a problem.”

“Why do you ask about Humphrey?”

He wasn’t sure if he should involve her in what he was looking into, but she had lived in Bend for nearly ten years, so she was his only real friend there. And he had only known her for a couple of days.

“He hired me to look into his son’s death.”

“You’re kidding, right? You heard his son Dan killed his wife, Barb, and then blew himself up.”

“That’s the story.”

“You don’t believe that’s what happened?”

“I don’t know. I told Cliff Humphrey I’d look into it. Did you know the two of them?”

“Is this an interrogation?” She smiled at him and crossed her arms over her chest.

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“Of course not. You just called them Dan and Barb like you knew them.”

She hesitated. “I sold them their house a few years back. I’d see them around town. Didn’t really know them well. They hung out at different places. A little wild from what I hear.”

There was that word again. Wild. “Wild? How so?”

“Nothing I can tell you first hand. Just rumors. I heard they liked to have clothing optional Jacuzzi parties.”

“Interesting. Anyone you know attend one of those?”

“Actually, Barb asked me to a few of them. But I was always busy. My acupuncturist mentioned that she had been to one. Said if I was into the multiple partner thing I should give it a try.”

“Acupuncture?”

“Yeah. It’s great. Mostly for my injured knee. But she’s helped me for a lot of things.”

Tony thought about his ribs and wondered if she could heal the bruises around them.

He wanted to talk with her more about Dan and Barb. Find out if they had any other mutual friends. But people started showing up for the open house. She was right. They were at least fifteen minutes early. Would have been right around mid-coitus. Tony got the name of her acupuncturist and reminded Melanie they were on for that evening, before heading back to his truck.

Bend was a small town. It turned out the name Mrs. Ellison had given him as Barb Humphrey’s best friend, and Melanie’s acupuncturist were one and the same.

He’d always wanted to get poked by a thousand needles just for the hell of it.

Sitting out in his truck, his cell phone rang. Tony thought about letting it go to voice mail, but not many people knew his number, so it could have been important.

“Yeah,” he said into the phone, his eyes scanning his rearview mirror.

“That’s the way you answer your phone?” came a rough voice on the other end. Sounded like an old football coach.

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“Uncle Bruno. How the hell’s it hangin’?”

“Don’t ask. Hey, you need to get your ass home for Christmas this year.”

Tony didn’t want to admit to his uncle that he didn’t still consider Duluth his home. “You’re still a crazy bastard,” Tony said, his eyes focused on the road behind him. “What’s the weather look like?”

“Fuck the weather, Tony boy. We got furnaces, you know. We got shit we need to discuss.”

Uncle Bruno had two daughters. One married an Air Force doctor and was living in Japan. The other one was a federal prosecu-tor in Minneapolis, married to her two cats and struggling with her sexuality. Neither, as far as Tony knew, wanted anything to do with the family businesses.

“Uncle Bruno. I don’t know shit about running a restaurant, a bar, or an import business.”

“You’re a quick study, Tony. Besides, there’s more to it than that.”

He had guessed there was, but maybe that’s as obscure as he wanted it to be. “Let me think about it. Right now I’ve got a couple of lost puppies that might need a good ass whipping.”

“See. That’s what I’m talkin’ about, Tony. Think it over.”

With that, the phone went dead and Tony threw it to the passenger seat. He shook his head and turned over the engine.

Pulling out slowly, he glanced back and saw the truck do the same thing.

BOOM TOWN 39

Dawn Sanders lived in an older two story house a block from downtown Bend. It was a part of town where most of the original well-to-do had settled. Many of the houses had been converted into small businesses. Law firms. Accountants.

Property managers. Quaint.

In the short time that Tony had been in Bend, he had learned that George Putnam, son of one of the New York publishing giants, had lived a few blocks away almost a century ago, and had run the local newspaper before moving on and eventually marry-ing Amelia Earhart.

The streets were narrow with cars parked on both sides. Large oaks, maples and pines shaded the yards. It was one of the only places in town where the cedar shake roofs actually had moss growing on them, since the sun rarely poked through the tall pines in the summer.

There was a modest sign out front of the white house that read,

“Naturopathic Clinic.” Below that was Dawn Sanders’ name, followed by “Licensed Acupuncturist.”

Tony had called her from his cell phone on the way over. Said he was a friend of Melanie Chadwick, and asked if she could see him on short notice. She had an interesting form of speech. Sort of a cross between unsubdued enthusiasm and laid back indifference. She said she wasn’t open after noon on Saturday, but since he was Melanie’s friend, she’d squeeze him in. He hoped she
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wasn’t talking about her needles.

He got to the front door, unsure if he should knock or just walk in, since it appeared she lived there as well. He settled on a light knock.

Dawn Sanders answered the door wearing a flowered kimono.

They shook hands and introduced each other. She had a firm shake. And she seemed to study him through her little round John Lennon spectacles. She looked about thirty-five, but could have been anywhere from twenty-five to forty. She was five-six with curly red hair spiraling to her narrow waist. As she walked away from him, ushering him through a waiting area, he could see she had nothing on under the draping kimono. And from his quick observation through back lighting, he could tell she worked out.

The inner room was part sterile doctor’s office and part hippie smoke room. The lighting was subdued. The walls held framed posters of everything Asian. Landscapes of Chinese mountains.

Peasants working flooded rice paddies. There were also charts of medicinal herbs and references to ancient uses for animal body parts. Tony’s eyes settled on a diagram of the human body with pins poking from it like a giant voodoo doll.

“What ails you, Tony?”

Before he could answer, she put a CD into a player and transformed the room into the Far East. It reminded him of so many little shops he’d gone to in Singapore and Hong Kong. Then she lit some incense and turned back to him.

“Well?” she said.

“My neck has been giving me a lot of problems,” he said. This wasn’t a total lie. Ever since his accident on the aircraft carrier, where he had been blown to the catwalk, his neck had given him problems, especially when it rained. “And my back.”

“Have you ever been to an acupuncturist, Tony?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ve never had a friend like Melanie who recommended one.”