Legwork (9 page)

He disappeared back into the woods, his figure blending instantly with the colors of the forest.
I was pretty sure he had been lying.
But about what?

I pulled away from the bank, uncomfortably aware that my ankles were now covered in bug bites.
I moved quickly downstream, anxious to put room between me, the killing spot, and Ramsey Lee.
Besides, I had a whole barn to muck before I could go home.

It wasn’t until I was a couple of miles up U.S.
1, headed back toward Slim’s farm, that I remembered something pretty damn important I’d picked up from scanning the back pages of the N&O: Thornton Mitchell had been one of the developers involved in the subdivision project that Ramsey Lee had been convicted of sabotaging.

He was in for an SBI rousting supreme.

I have the kind of answering machine that blinks once for each new message.
At the moment, it was strobing like a disco from my distant youth.
I counted the lights and fixed myself a large Coke from one of the two-liter bottles lining the bottom of my fridge.
Between paddling and shoveling, I was exhausted.
It was time for a caffeine jolt.

Hmm…
six messages in six hours.
What a coincidence.
That meant they were probably all from Bobby D.

What a pleasant surprise.
The first message was from Mary Lee Masters.
Perhaps she had even dialed the number herself.
It gave me a warm glow to know how important I had become in her life.

“Goddamn it, Casey.
Where were you today? You said you’d call me with an update.
What’s going on?
Who did this to me?” There was a pause while she took a deep breath.
“It is very, very important that I know who was behind this.
Fast.
For both professional and personal reasons.
I can’t afford to have this hanging over my campaign.
Please, I’m begging you.
And I’ll give you triple your hourly rate if you get it cleaned up by early next week.”

See what a tough negotiator I am?
All I have to do is sit and listen and my opponent comes crawling.

“I’m begging you, Casey,” she repeated.
“Get these guys off my back.
And hurry.
I need you back.
I’ve been getting those obscene phone calls again.
Plus I hate my new bodyguard.
I can’t pee with the big goon standing there waiting for me to finish.
It’s killing me.
He listens.
I think he has a tinkle fetish.”

She hung up abruptly and I marveled at her self- centeredness.
Her bladder was more important than justice. But then again, whose isn’t?

The next three messages gave me more to think about.

“Casey, what did you screw up now?” Bobby’s accent was unmistakable.
He sounds like a garbage truck backing up, only with a drawl.
“You’re not content to have lost your own license, are you?
Now you want to go and lose me mine.”

Oh, that Bobby D.
He’s always getting things mixed up.
That’s why he’s a lousy detective.
I never had a license. You can’t lose what you don’t have.
Except for your virginity, of course.

“You’re great for business, doll.
Really great.
Two of those SBI jerks came to the office today.
I lost a customer when he saw them coming.”

Poor Bobby.
Having to sit on his duff in an air- conditioned office telling two polite men he doesn’t know a thing while his slimy bail client slips out the back.
No wonder he was traumatized.

“I don’t want to resort to threats, babe,” Bobby was saying.
“But if you don’t call me back in an hour, your fat ass is tossed right out the door.”

I would lose little sleep over having my fat ass tossed out his door.
The next message represented a slight change in his attitude.
It began with a greasy chuckle that escalated into a nervous laugh.
“Casey, babe.
Jonesy, Jonesy, Jonesy.
I was kidding about what I said before.
Har.
Har.”

Yeah.
Har.
Har.

“Listen, babe, I just got a call from that lady politician you’ve been guarding.
She says she’ll pay us triple if you can wrap things up by early next week.
I told her it was no problem.
You were a star.”

Yeah—a superstar.
But I didn’t get far.

“Take your time getting back to me, babe.
If I don’t hear from you, I’ll know you’re hot on the trail.” His greasy chuckle faded as he clicked off.

I sat in the old armchair I had fished out of some garbage pile and considered my options as I scratched the four thousand bug bites on my ankles.
Let’s see.
I could bust my ass for Mary Lee.
I could tell Bobby D.
to take a hike.
Or, I could confess to the murder myself and seize the opportunity to throw myself on Bill Butler’s mercy for an hour or two.
Hmmm .
.
.
now that was a concept.

But the horses weren’t through running yet. The next message was from Bobby.
Again.
His voice was starting to give me a headache.
I found an old Darvon molding on the window sill, no doubt a memento from a previous attack of mega-PMS, and popped the tranquilizer while I listened.

“Hey, babe.
Just checking in to see how we’re doing.
We have some big bucks on the line here, know what I mean?”

We?
What was he planning to do that would help?
Sit on the suspect once I caught him?

Screw Bobby.
I fast forwarded the message to the next one.
Him again.
Sorry, wrong number.
Four down and two to go.
Come on, Bill Butler.
Pick up that phone and dial.

“Casey, babe.
I’ve got a really great idea.”

So have I.
Go stick your fat head in the can.
Please.
And leave my answering machine alone.

“I’ve got a contact at the N&O who would kill for an exclusive on the inside track,” Bobby said.
“In return, she could hook us up with Hard Copy when we’re done.
We could make a little more scratch and get a lot of publicity.
There’s no reason not to plan ahead, hey, babe?”

No reason at all.
If you have no qualms about ethics.
And if you have no qualms about ethics, then why aren’t you running for senator yourself?

I fast-forwarded the rest of Bobby’s babbling.
There were more important things on my mind.

I’m not superstitious.
I make my own luck. But I did cross two sets of fingers plus both my legs when the last message announced itself with a beep.

“Casey?
Bill Butler here.
Just called to see if you could meet me for lunch tomorrow.
I’ll be here late.
Give me a call when you get in.”

Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.

My headache was gone.

I called Bill Butler back to confirm lunch at one o’clock in a downtown Raleigh diner that had gone upscale and had great crab cakes if you could stand the four-minute description of everything on the menu delivered by the earnest waitresses.
He had a great voice on the phone.
I was really starting to like the man.
I wondered if he knew it and was trying to use it.
I hoped not.

The next morning, I decided to get an early start on tracking down just who had lured Thornton Mitchell to the lonely banks of the Neuse and why.
I was hoping to uncover a tidbit or two before lunch so Bill and I could swap something other than saliva, which regrettably was unlikely to happen.

I knew just where I would go first.
I’d let others explore lofty theories and political conspiracies.
I had been through a divorce myself.
I know who knows where the bodies are buried.
I was going to visit Thornton Mitchell’s ex-wife and pump her for everything I could get.

Apparently, she had done the same to good old Thornton.
Adriana Mitchell lived in Oakwood, an historical neighborhood half a mile from the governor’s mansion.
Real estate prices had skyrocketed there in the past decade and a lot of the old timers had taken the money and run, leaving the gentrified neighborhood to an eclectic mix of lawyers, real estate and finance professionals, professors, former hippies, and an occasional politician.
I was pretty sure Stoney Maloney also had a house there somewhere and, being a detective, I suspected it might be the one with ten of his yard signs sticking out of the shrubbery like warnings.
I slowed but saw no one home.

Some of the Oak wood houses were small mill homes, left over from manufacturing days.
Nowadays they call them charming bungalows and charge a fortune for them but they are still dwarfed by the stately Victorian mansions, all lovingly preserved, which dotted the neighborhood.
Adriana Mitchell had one of the nicest.
It was big and white with green shutters and a huge porch that wrapped around three sides.
The porch intimidated me.
When I was growing up, big porches like that were for rich southern folk. I’d never lived in a house with a porch.

A maid answered the door, her round face scrunching in on itself when she spotted my black roots and attire. Don’t people understand that recycled thrift clothes are a fashion and social statement rolled into one?
Jeeze, I was going to have to start wearing a sign.

I got even.
I flashed my fake I.D.
badge and scared the shit out of her.
Adriana Mitchell was at the door within seconds.
“Yes?” she asked, stretching the single syllable into three.

“My condolences on your husband’s death,” I said formally.
Never hurts to suck up.

“Ex-husband,” she corrected me in a syrupy drawl.
“And I won’t pretend to be upset.
We parted ways long ago. How can I help you?”

“I’m a private investigator looking into his death on behalf of the woman whose car he was…” Well, how was I going to explain it?

Apparently no explanation was necessary.

“You’re working for Mary Lee Masters?” my hostess said brightly.
“A lovely woman.
I met her at the benefit antiques show last year.
I can’t imagine what Thorny was doing in her car.
It must have been quite a shock to poor Mary Lee, finding a dead person in her back seat like that.”

“Who is it, Addy?” a musical voice called out from a back room.
This was echoed by what sounded like a dozen more voices, all as high and fluty as dove calls.

“It’s a private investigator, girls,” Addy called over her shoulder.
“And it’s a woman.”

I heard squeals and wondered what the hell I was getting into.
A bevy of well-dressed middle-aged ladies emerged from a back room and pulled me into the house, escorting me to a huge screened-in back porch where you could hardly see the rattan furniture for the hanging plants.
Coffee pots and mountains of those useless little sandwiches covered several card tables.

“This is my bridge club,” Addy explained. “But we think cards are boring, don’t we girls?”

I assumed the genteel yelping meant yes.

“A private detective is so much more exciting,” one woman in a flowered skirt declared.

Another was more prosaic.
“Tell us some good dirt,” she demanded, flipping open a gold cigarette case with practiced efficiency.
The cigarette dangled from between her bright red lips, bobbing up and down as she dragged on it to light it.

“I’m here to gather some good dirt myself,” I cheerfully admitted.
And why shouldn’t I be optimistic?
Hell, I’d fallen into a veritable gold mine of juicy indiscretion: a harem of women with nothing else to do but sit around and talk about other people’s lives.

“Who do you want dirt on?” a plump woman with white hair asked.
She looked distressed, as if scruples might enter the room at any moment.
A clever distraction was in order.

“I’m famished,” I announced, eyeing a plate of tea sandwiches.

The chorus of “Oh, pleases” and the rush to offer me boatloads of food did the trick.
“I’m looking into Mr. Mitchell’s background,” I mumbled through a butter and ham sandwich square.
“Trying to get a handle on who might have killed him.”

“Wasn’t it just awful?” one woman asked, leaning forward, her eyes glittering.
“Do you know that Thornton forgot to change one of his life insurance policies?
Why that thing was twenty years old and now Addy is going to get over $100,000 out of him.
Is that a scream or what?”

The sighs of admiration that filled the room confirmed my suspicion that a goodly portion of the women present had been jettisoned by their husbands to make room for younger models.
Addy was apparently the winner of their unofficial “milk ‘em dry” award.
She had managed to get a chunk out of her ex even after he was dead.

“That must have been a nice surprise for you,” I murmured tactfully.
It was a motive, after all.