This Dark Road to Mercy: A Novel (14 page)

“Are you a cop?”

“No,” I said. “I used to be, years ago, but not anymore. I install security systems, and I’m a volunteer in family court.” Another long pause.

“Is this about the money?”

“What money?” I asked, but she didn’t say anything. The air over the phone line changed, and I could tell she’d put her end on mute. She was doing something she didn’t want me to hear. Her voice came back on the line.

“My husband will meet with you,” she said. “Tonight.”

“Great. Where?”

“You know Tony’s Ice Cream?” she asked. I wanted to tell her that everyone in town knew Tony’s Ice Cream. It wasn’t even a five-minute drive down Franklin Avenue from my office.

“Yes,” I said. “What time?”

“Six,” she said.

“I’ll be there.”

C H A P T E R   14

A
round 5:30
P.M.
, I left the office and drove down Franklin to Tony’s Ice Cream and found a spot in the near-full parking lot. I’d arrived about a half hour early, but something about my conversation with his wife told me that Lane Kelly would be there early too. I rolled my windows down and listened to the music coming from the car garage that shared a parking lot with Tony’s. For a second I watched people leave the old blond-brick building, carrying white paper bags full of hamburgers and hot dogs, tall wax-coated cups with milk shakes inside.

And then my eyes scanned the parking lot until I found what I was looking for: an oversize Ford F-150 with a huge toolbox sitting in the bed. I leaned forward to get a better look, and I saw a woman sitting in the front seat. She was scanning the parking lot too. On the driver’s-side door, you could tell that someone had removed the lettering, but the paint around where the letters had been was a little faded, and you could still make out
Kelly Renovation
and the phone number beneath it, the same one I’d called earlier. The woman in the driver’s seat caught me staring at her truck, and she shifted her eyes and hunkered down in the seat as low as she could without lying down. I watched her window slide up until it closed. Mrs. Kelly, I thought. The truck’s windows were untinted, and I saw her eyes dart back over in my direction; I gave her a little wave, but she just hunkered down even lower. After seeing her in the parking lot, I was certain that Mr. Kelly was inside waiting for me.

The smell of frying burgers and boiled hot dogs hit me as soon as I opened the door. Tony’s had a full dinner crowd as usual, and I walked through the line in front of the order window and stopped with my back to the ice cream counter. Booths lined three walls, and my eyes hopped from table to table until I found the only man who seemed to be alone: a pretty big guy in blue jeans and a button-down shirt, which surprised me because it was so hot outside. He had short brown hair and a beard. His thick fingers were interlocked on the table in front of him and his head was turned to the right, where the cars on Franklin Avenue passed by the window.

I walked over and stood by the bench seat across the table from him. He didn’t look up.

“Mr. Kelly?” I asked. His eyes darted upward, but his head didn’t move.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m Brady Weller,” I said. “I spoke with your wife a few hours ago. We’re supposed to meet at six
P.M.
” I looked at my watch. It was 5:46. “Looks like we’re both early.”

His face seemed to relax, but his eyes still looked a little nervous.

“Let’s get something to eat,” I said. “You hungry? I’m hungry.”

“No,” he said. “I’m okay.”

“We’ve got to eat,” I said. “It’ll look weird if we just sit here without eating anything.” I took a step toward the line of people at the order window. “Let me get you a cheeseburger.” He didn’t say anything; he barely looked up at me. “I’ll get you a cheeseburger,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

I ordered two cheeseburgers all the way, two fries, a Sun Drop and a Cheerwine, both in the can. I carried the tray over to the booth where Kelly was sitting and divvied up the food before gesturing toward the two sodas. “You can have whichever one you want,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said, but he didn’t make a move for either of them, and he didn’t unwrap his cheeseburger. He finally picked up a french fry and put it in his mouth. I was starving, and I didn’t hesitate. I unwrapped my cheeseburger and took a bite, and then I emptied my little bag of fries on a napkin I’d opened beside my cheeseburger.

“So, Mr. Kelly,” I said, “I figure you know Wade Chesterfield.”

“Why are you looking for him?”

“I already told your wife,” I said. “His two daughters have gone missing, and somebody identified him as the last person seen with them. I’m looking for those two little girls.”

“I don’t know them,” he said.

“That’s fine,” I said. “I just want to know about Chesterfield. How long has he worked for you?”

“Maybe two years,” he said.

“And what does he do?”

“Whatever needs to be done,” he said. “Carpentry, painting, drywall.” He took a few french fries and popped them into his mouth. Then he opened the Cheerwine and took a sip.

“When’s the last time you saw him?” He looked at me for a second, and then he took another sip of his soda. He picked up a napkin and wiped his hands.

“Friday afternoon,” he said. “We were on a job.”

“Where was the job?”

“Calder Mountain,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows and took another bite of my cheeseburger. “That’s a pretty swank place. What kind of job was it?”

“Some guy’d just finished hanging drywall in his basement. He wanted us to mud it, tape it, come back and paint it when it dried.”

“Y’all didn’t hang it?” I asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because the guy had already done it.”

“He sounds like a pretty handy guy.”

“Not really,” he said. “The job was shit. The pieces were cut all wrong. That’s why Wade—” but he caught himself and stopped.

“That’s why Wade
what
?”

“Wade couldn’t stop talking about how bad the drywall job was,” he said. “And it was. I mean, the guy’d cut some of the sheets too long, and he’d used nails instead of screws. He’d beat that drywall all to hell trying to sink some of those nails.” He stopped talking and took his hands off the table and leaned back against his seat. “But that wasn’t the weird part.”

“What was?”

“The walls,” he said. “They were everywhere. It was like a maze down there: no outlets, no overhead lights. We had to run work lights so we could see. It was weird. Gave me the creeps as soon as we went in.”

“Did you ask the guy about it?”

“No way,” he said. “The last thing you want to do is tell a customer he’s done a bad job. That’s why I got pissed when Wade started messing with the walls.”

“Fixing them?”

“The guy had a few leftover pieces of drywall stacked on a pallet in one of the rooms. Wade wanted to fix the worst walls before we mudded and taped them.”

“And you didn’t want to?”

“No way,” he said. “That wasn’t
our
leftover drywall. I wasn’t going to use it without asking, and then do extra work I might not get paid for.”

“But Wade?”

“I went to get something out of the truck, and when I came back Wade had a pry bar and was jerking nails out of one of the walls.”

“And what did you do?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I didn’t have time to do anything before the drywall came down. It just exploded off the wall. Wade barely got out of the way.” He leaned forward and put his elbows on the table, and then he put his hands over his eyes and rubbed them. He looked at me. “That’s when we saw it.”

“Saw what?”

“The money,” he whispered.

“The money?”

“Shhhh,” he said, looking around to see if anyone had heard me. “Yeah,” he whispered, “money—stacks of it. It just came pouring out of the wall. There must’ve been thousands of dollars back there.” I couldn’t believe what he was telling me.

“And that’s why the guy had hung the drywall himself,” I said.

“That’s why,” he said.

“And that’s why he wanted you to finish it. To hide it.”

“Yep,” he said.

“What’s the guy’s name?”

“Broughton,” he said. “Tommy Broughton.”

Tommy Broughton: I almost coughed my Sun Drop up into my nose when I heard that name. Sandy and I had spent years dealing with him in one way or another; he was nothing but a small-time crook, but if Gaston County had had a hillbilly Mafia then Tommy Broughton would’ve wanted to be its Don Corleone. But he’d also spent plenty of time turning over evidence in investigations and trying to buddy up to the police. I’d always thought of him as one of those fat catfish swimming in the Catawba River, trudging along the bottom with his belly in the mud, his mouth open, feeding on whatever he came across. There was no way he’d earned that kind of money honestly, and even though he’d gotten this far he wasn’t smart enough to get away with an armored car heist, but he was stupid enough to hide money in his walls and then invite somebody like Wade Chesterfield to come over and admire his work. But I knew how dangerous stupid could be when stupid got scared, and Broughton scared easily.

“Had you met Broughton before this?”

“Yeah. A couple months ago at a bar he owns on Wilkinson. I did some work for him.”

“Was Wade on that job?”

“No,” he said.

“What’s the name of the bar?”

“Tomcat’s.”

I smiled and shook my head. “Tomcat’s? That’s cute. Find any money hidden in the walls there?”

“No,” he said, trying to smile. “Not there.”

“So, what did y’all do when you saw that money?”

“Me? I didn’t do anything. But Wade just freaked out.”

“How?”

“He started talking about how this could change our lives,” he said. “About how we could take the money and use the extra drywall to hide it. Said it would take Broughton forever to find out, especially if the rest of the walls had money in them. He said we could be long gone before he noticed anything.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘No way.’ I wasn’t getting involved in something like that.”

“But Wade?”

“But Wade wanted to,” he said. “So he did, but I tried to stop him. I swear.”

What he’d just said made me stop and think, and I suddenly realized how quiet we’d been talking. I sat back and sized up Mr. Kelly: he was at least six feet tall, easily over two hundred pounds. I remembered the description on the back of Chesterfield’s baseball card: six-foot-one, 162.

“You couldn’t stop him?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I tried.” I narrowed my eyes and smiled at him to let him know I didn’t believe him.

“Come on, Mr. Kelly,” I said. “You’re a pretty big guy; you look like you can handle yourself. You’ve got what, thirty, forty pounds on Chesterfield?”

“He had a gun,” he said.

“He had a gun?” I asked, almost laughing. “Where’d he get a gun?”

“I keep one in the truck,” he said.

“Why do you have a gun in your truck?”

“I’ve had a lot of stuff stolen over the years,” he said. “You drive around all day in a truck with thousands of dollars of equipment in it, year after year. People tend to steal it sometimes.”

“Okay,” I said. “He had a gun. He had a gun that he went outside and got from your truck
after
he found the money. And then he held you up and took it.”

“Yes,” he said, not showing any signs of being aware of just how lame his story sounded. “He’s got a duffel bag that he carries some of his gear in, and he dumped it out on the floor and filled it with money. He could barely zip it, and then it was almost too heavy to carry.”

“Did he tie you up, then take your truck?”

“Yes,” he said.

I laughed, but he acted like he didn’t notice.

“He used zip ties and got my hands behind my back, and then he used them to tie me to a support post under the deck just outside the basement. He put duct tape over my mouth.” Now I knew he was lying.

“So,” I said, “you want me to believe that you watched thousands of dollars tumble out of a wall, and then you watched your buddy go outside to your truck and get a gun. And
then
you stood there while he fastened all those zip ties together to get them long enough to go around both your wrists, and then you waited for him to make another set to go around the post? And then he put duct tape over your mouth?”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s what happened.”

“Did Tommy Broughton believe your story?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“You better hope so,” I said.

“He found me down there after Wade left,” he said. “He cut me loose and I told him what happened.”

“Did he call the police?”

“No,” he said. “He never even mentioned the police. It was like somebody’d found his stash of kiddy porn and he didn’t know what to say. He just freaked out, started acting all nervous, asking me all about Wade: what kind of guy he is, where he lives, that kind of thing.”

“Did you tell him?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I told him everything he wanted to know. I mean, I felt bad and I didn’t want to, but Wade dragged me into this. I didn’t know what else to do. I was scared because the guy was so freaked out.”

“Did you ask Broughton where the money came from?”

“Hell no,” he said. “He said something about his wife’s inheritance, about a will being contested. Said that’s why he was storing the cash.”

“Did you ask if the other walls had money in them?”

“Hell no,” he said again. “I know better than that. I acted like I believed him, and I called somebody to pick me up, and then I got the hell out of there. I mean, there was money everywhere; probably hundreds of thousands of dollars inside that one wall.” He raised his eyes to mine, and we just looked at each other.

“Did you call the police?” I asked.

“No way,” he said. “That’s the last thing I’m going to do. A cop called my phone this morning, but there’s no way in hell I’m calling him back.”

“You should call him back,” I said. “I know him; he’s a good guy.”

“No way,” Kelly said again. “The police show up over at Broughton’s and ask about that money, who do you think he’s going to suspect of ratting him out? Who’s he going to come looking for?” He closed his eyes and sighed, and then he opened them slowly and looked at me. “Somebody broke into our house a couple days ago—kicked in the back door. We’ve been staying at my mother-in-law’s because I knew we couldn’t stay at home.”