“Hmm. So they would both have a lot to gain by taking short-cuts on the project.”
“True. Depending on how much of the corporation they own. And here’s something else of interest. Detrich comes from
New Orleans
, as does Ollie O’Keefe, the just departed draftsman from Tim’s company. Think that’s a coincidence?”
“I seem to recall my gumshoe mentor saying coincidences raise a red flag to a criminal investigator.”
“You remember well, babe. Let me see if Mr. Detrich is around today.”
I called the Tidewater Construction office in
Biloxi
and asked for him.
“I’m sorry,” said the same person I had spoken with yesterday, “but Mr. Detrich won’t be in today.”
I decided to don my actor’s hat. “Yesterday I was told he would be there today. Where is that old dog? I was one of his best buddies years ago. Haven’t laid eyes on him in a coon’s age. Now I’ve got a chance, he’s out fiddle-faddling around somewhere.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Where are you?”
Not knowing if she had caller ID, I decided not to lie. “In
Pensacola
. But I’m headed that way.”
“Well, if you really want to see him, you might drop in at the Gulf Royale Casino here. He stays at their hotel. I suspect you could find him at the slots or around the tables. Particularly after dark. What did you say your name was?”
I laughed. “Didn’t say. I want to surprise him. Thanks.”
I hung up quickly. Then I recalled what I had heard about his size and his reputation. I hoped he did not take too unkindly to surprises.
23
I parked in an empty slot in front of the low white brick building promptly at
. A business called Maintenance Plus, which offered no clue as to what the firm might maintain or what the Plus might add, appeared to occupy most of the structure. A larger than necessary sign that proclaimed
BF INSPECTIONS
flanked the door at the opposite end. Parked nearby was a bright red Corvette.
After last night’s storm, the morning sun was putting on a full court press. The glare would have made a welder squint. I straightened my sunglasses and stepped onto the asphalt, which already felt slightly mushy from the heat.
“I’d bet that’s dad’s place,” Jill said. She indicated the acres of cars, trucks and SUV’s lined up with military precision at the big auto dealership next door.
I nodded. “You’d probably win. The sign says
DF MOTORS
. No doubt it stands for Denton Farnsworth.”
I had called Bosley Farnsworth to make the appointment, which he had grudgingly granted. He sounded a little too dangerous to try approaching with a crafty story, so I had calmly explained my mission to look into the facts surrounding Tim’s death. Opening the door, I followed Jill into a room with barely enough space for a small desk, unoccupied, and two gray metal office chairs. The walls were covered with framed photographs of a tall, tanned young man in various poses—wielding a tennis racket on a clay court, leaning against a Corvette (an earlier version, not the one outside), standing at the helm of what appeared to be an expensive yacht, looking through an opening in a concrete wall that might have been The Sand Castle at an early stage. He had wavy blond hair and blue eyes that conveyed a look of either amusement or scorn. Considering the young man was Boz Farnsworth, I felt relatively comfortable with the latter.
“Mr. McKenzie?”
I turned away from the photographs to face the genuine article, standing in the doorway of a larger office to one side. Dressed in a light blue knit shirt and dark blue slacks, he wore the same ambiguous look as the man in the photos.
“Yes,” I said. “This is my wife, Jill.”
He gave a nod toward Jill. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Please come in.”
We followed him into a room that looked fit for the prince he apparently fancied himself. Plush red carpet, matching window drapes, large curved desk of teak wood, leather chairs, wall photos of building projects he had likely worked on. A tennis racket and can of balls stood in the corner beside the desk, reminding me of what Harold Nixon had told us.
“Please have a seat,” Farnsworth said, moving behind the desk. “Now what could I possibly tell you that you don’t already know?”
“Considering that I don’t know very much,” I said, “probably lots of things.”
“Such as?”
“I’m interested in anything you can tell me about the accident Friday night. You were there, weren’t you?”
“Yeah. My date and I got there early. She’s thinking about running for the legislature and likes crowds where she can talk to people. It was quite a party.”
“What time did Tim get there?”
He cocked his head to one side. “He must have come in around eight-thirty. We ran into him right after he got there.”
“How did he seem to you—upbeat, excited, depressed?”
Farnsworth shrugged. “Not depressed, but not excited either. Like maybe he was preoccupied with something else.”
“The accident happened around
?”
“Right.”
“Were you near the balcony when it fell?”
“We were standing near the combo—they had a keyboard, a guitar and a bass set up in the middle of the room. They were playing some Spanish song and people were dancing on the balcony. Then we heard this loud crunching noise and people started screaming. It was really scary.”
“I’m sure you spoke with Tim after the accident. What did you talk about?”
“We were all very concerned about what had happened,” Farnsworth said.
“What ideas did he offer on what could have gone wrong?”
“I think he said something about a concrete failure. That was obvious.”
“What did he say regarding why he thought it had failed?”
Farnsworth leaned back in the heavy executive chair and twirled a pencil between his fingers. He had that Mr. Cool look, the big cheese, completely in control. “Tim knew the rebars hadn’t been strong enough to handle the load. It was obviously a flaw in the design. His design.”
“Did you think the rebars were too small when you saw them being installed?”
There was a flicker of uneasiness in the blue eyes. “It wasn’t my job to question the design. My responsibility was to see that the plans were being followed.”
Right, I thought. And you would feel no responsibility to report a murder about to happen if you saw it, would you?
“Walt Sturdivant spoke with you yesterday,” I reminded him. “He said your set of plans was a copy. Where is the original of the plans?”
“I presume Mr. Baucus has it. He gave me the copy when he hired me as Threshold Inspector. That’s all I’ve ever seen.”
“So you don’t know if they might have been tampered with?”
His look became a definite sneer. “That is highly unlikely.”
“But not impossible.”
“You’re getting into stuff that has nothing to do with me,” he said, raising his voice. He sat up and leaned his elbows on the desk. “You’d best take questions like that to Evan Baucus or Claude Detrich.”
I was reminded of the way some high-ranking officers had acted when I questioned them on criminal cases. They tried to get me out of their territory by suggesting other places to look. I would merely shift my focus and come back at them from a different angle.
I smiled. “I plan to talk with them. Tell me about Mr. Detrich.”
“What about him?”
“What kind of problems have you had with him?”
“None at all. He was always very cooperative. Readily corrected any minor glitches I pointed out to him.”
I remembered Walt’s description of Detrich as a tough guy who didn’t like criticism. I suspected Farnsworth was embellishing the facts.
“What about Evan Baucus, how did you get along with him?” I asked.
“No complaints as far as I was concerned.”
“What instructions did he give you when you were hired as inspector?”
He shrugged. “Just see that it’s built right, according to the plans. He paid me, but my reports went to the county and the state. They don’t have the manpower to put someone fulltime on a project like this. I served as their eyes and ears.”
“Are they pleased with the job you did?”
“You’d better ask them.”
He obviously wasn’t interested in providing me with any significant information. I clicked my ballpoint pen, which I stuck in my shirt pocket. This was a prearranged signal for Jill to do her thing.
“Mr. Farnsworth,” she said, “what can you tell us about the relationship between Tim Gannon and Sherry Hoffman?”
Caught off guard, he snapped his head to the side and stared at her. “Sherry and Tim?” He hesitated as if searching for an answer. His voice shifted out of the self-assured, at times condescending, tone he had adopted earlier. “I don’t know that there was a relationship.”
Jill gave him an innocent look. “We understood they had been close since his time at the Naval Air Station.”
“Oh, that. Yeah. Well, that was in the past, you know. A long time ago. They were just friends.”
I wasn’t certain, but the part about wanting to run for the legislature made it pretty clear Sherry Hoffman was the date Farnsworth had mentioned taking to the party, the real estate woman he had talked about with Harold Nixon.
“Do you know if she left The Sand Castle with Tim Friday night after the accident?” Jill asked.
Farnsworth sat back, folded his arms, took a deep breath. His look hardened. “No. He left before I did, shortly before eleven. She wasn’t with him. You’ve talked to her, of course.” His tone was returning to normal, and the message was clear—he knew. He had already talked to her.
“We visited with Miss Hoffman yesterday,” I said, nodding. “She was quite forthcoming.” Let him stew over that one, I thought. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Farnsworth. We may be back in touch later.”
He didn’t offer his hand as I got up. Jill and I headed for the door.
24
On the drive back to Perdido Key, we were overtaken first by a fire truck screaming by on the way to God-knows-where. Then a boxy ambulance of the Escambia Emergency Medical Service raced around us, its siren wailing. About the time we departed the
Pensacola
city limits, a sheriff’s patrol car appeared in the rear-view mirror and stayed on our tail all the way to
Blue Angel Parkway
. I began to wonder if Sergeant Payne had called out the reserves to keep watch on my wanderings.