by Debbi Mack
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I drove back to our motel. Was taking a peek at Bower’s processing plant a smart move or simply ridiculous? Getting an up-close look at his operation could be quite revealing. Or not. Worrisome, since time was running out and I couldn’t afford to spin my wheels.
En route, my phone rang. I pulled over to the side of the road.
“The cops are done with the condo,” Jamila said. “I checked us out of the motel and moved our stuff back.”
Her voice sounded strange. “What’s the matter?”
“You’ll see soon enough.”
When I arrived at the condo, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
I didn’t know for sure what I was looking at until I climbed upstairs and saw the mess. The front of the condo had been egged. Rotten eggs.
“Jesus.” I was numb with disbelief. The air was putrid with sulfurous fumes. Gasping air through my mouth to avoid gagging, I unlocked the door and hustled inside.
Jamila sat in the living room, her arms crossed, staring at the TV.
“Jesus!” I said again. “When did that happen?”
“Sometime after the cops left, I assume.” Jamila spoke without looking at me. “They left this, too.”
She got up and handed me an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet of white paper. On it, someone had printed, “Die screaming nigger bitch!!!!” It looked like the product of a standard laser printer.
Nice. I was all out words.
“At least they didn’t stick it on a rock and throw it through the window,” Jamila said, with false cheerfulness.
“Have you called the police?” Talk about sounding idiotic.
“I’ve been sitting here for the last half-hour trying to figure out why I should. Who’s going to care? What are they going to do? Nothing. We can’t link this note to anyone. And, even if we could, all it would do is give the prosecution more reasons why I have an ax to grind or a motive to kill that guy.”
She crossed her arms tighter and scowled.
“If it makes you feel any better, I think I’ve hooked up with someone who might help us.” I told her about my meeting with Amber and her promise to let me tour the processing plant.
She looked appeased, but only slightly. “That’s interesting, but how does it help me?”
Fair question, I thought. “It’s just a hunch. Bear with me on this. Bower Farms is a small fish in a big pond. However, according to what I’ve read, the business has been growing by leaps and bounds. How do you suppose they’ve done that?”
She shrugged. “Knowing people. Greasing the wheels.” She rubbed her fingers together in a way that suggested money could be changing hands.
“Could be that. Or there could be more.”
“Such as?”
“What if Bower Farms was cutting costs on worker safety or hiring illegal aliens?”
Jamila snorted. “So, what else is new?”
“Well, I think OSHA and the INS might take a pretty dim view.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What are you suggesting?”
I paused to gather my thoughts. “Let’s suppose—hypothetically—that Bower Farms is hiring illegal aliens and making them work for slave wages in unsafe workplaces. If Billy Ray is supposed to take over the business, he’d be fully aware of these practices. For all we know, he might have been involved in smuggling migrant workers.”
Jamila nodded. “Hypothetically, sure. So you think there might be murder buried among these hypotheticals?”
“Exactly.”
She blew out a breath. “I sure hope you stumble across something soon. Bad enough I could be asked to plea to a crime I didn’t commit. The humiliation of being scratched from the program is more than I can bear.”
I gaped. “Have they canceled your presentation?”
“Not yet, but it’s just a matter of time. After all, I’m supposed to be speaking on ethics. In three days.”
I know. I read the program, too.
“I realize it seems like a longshot, Jamila, but Amber is the closest I’ve come to finding an ally.” I kept mum about my meeting with Jinx. “It’s at least worth a visit to a Bower Farms facility.”
Jamila grunted and shrugged assent.
“Besides,” I added. “Your arrest hit the papers early. Most of the attendees haven’t even arrived.”
“Right. Well, now they’re arriving and calling me.”
“Oh, no.”
Her lips twisted in a grimace. “Oh, yes. Why do you think I’ve turned this off?” She pointed to her cell phone on the side table. “I don’t even want to think about how many messages I have or who they’re from.”
I thought of the partners at her firm. This news couldn’t be buying her any good will with them.
The creak of the front screen door and a brisk knock turned our heads.
“Who could that be?” I muttered.
I crept up to the door and checked the peephole. A well-groomed woman loomed into view, lips puckered, nose wrinkled. Behind her, a man stood, holding something on his shoulder. Apparently the rotten egg stench wasn’t putting them off.
“Good grief,” I whispered.
“What?”
I put my finger to my lips and padded away from the door. “I’m not sure, but I think there’s a reporter out there,” I said. “With a cameraman.”
Jamila threw her hands up and fell back against the sofa. “Wonderful. What next?”
“Have you told anyone where we’re staying?” I asked.
“I told Rudy, of course.” Her husband was a man sensible enough not to talk to the press.
“I haven’t told anyone.” Then I thought of the rotten eggs.
Jamila must have read my mind. “I think we know who told them.”
The knocking resumed. Would I have to act as Jamila’s press agent now?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I peered through the peephole until the reporter and her sidekick left. Moving to the front window, I watched the two heading for an unmarked van that gave no clue who they worked for. Awesome. The man stowed his camera in the back, as the woman—well-coifed reddish-brown hair, late twenties, medium build—slid into the passenger seat, clutching her notepad and pen.
I snorted. “I don’t believe this. They have to know you won’t be willing to discuss the case.” Shaking my head, I added, “Journalists. They’re goddamned vultures. Idiots and vultures.”
Jamila remained silent, gaze fixed on the television. She’d muted the sound, but kept staring at the images. She was either inwardly steaming or taking this remarkably well.
“I guess those guys go after anything that even smells like a scoop around here,” I said. “It must get old covering the farm beat and whatever rinky-dink occurrence passes for news in these parts.” I knew how feeble and stupid I sounded, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Jamila was holding back.
“I’m not sure what else to do, except get a look at Bower Farms from the inside and hope it reveals something compromising. Maybe follow up with those guys who hung around Billy Ray.” I prattled on like a moron, dancing around the point in a manner wholly unlike me.
“Jamila,” I finally said. “Why did Mulrooney ask if you could think of a motive to kill Billy Ray?”
She heaved a sigh. “It’s … nothing, really.”
I steeled myself. Jamila knows I have to ask. “Are you positive?”
“Yes.”
She cast a sad glance my way. One that seemed to belie her words.
*****
Since Jamila seemed too numb to act, I took the initiative and scared up a watering hose from beneath the landscaped shrubbery around the building. A bit of digging through the junk drawer produced an adapter that let me attach the hose to the kitchen faucet. About a half hour later, I’d finished blasting rotten egg off the front porch and replaced the hose where I’d found it.
I washed up and was drying my hands when my cell phone rang. I
t was Amber.
“Up for a tour of the processing plant tonight?” she asked.
“Absolutely.”
We arranged to meet at a mutually convenient spot on Route 50, where Amber would provide a ride to the plant. “My advice,” she said, “don’t eat beforehand.”
*****
I had a few hours to kill, so I decided to confront the two men who’d been with Billy Ray on the day of our auspicious meeting. For Jamila to be set up, one of the people who’d been there that day had to be involved. Even if they only slammed the door in my face, I had to at least try to question them.
I took the laptop to the closest place with Wi-Fi to do a bit of Internet research on the men so I’d have an idea who I was dealing with. The names of the players were Curtis Little and Dwayne Sutterman. For kicks, I checked the Maryland Judiciary Case Search, which had docket information about civil, criminal, and traffic cases throughout the state.
Dwayne Sutterman’s record wasn’t spotless. I checked the entries. Nabbed a couple of times for possession and use. Each time he managed to get off with probation before judgment—a slap on the wrist. Luck? Or more? I searched for Curtis Little, but found nothing in the official docket. Which didn’t mean he hadn’t done anything. He just hadn’t been caught.
I finished my research, packed up my things, and headed out to Curtis Little’s place. The address I found for him was in a trailer park outside Berlin—a forlorn cluster of mobile homes on a large dirt lot behind a line of trees. The frontage was a carpet of weeds with a long, straight gravel driveway striped across it.
As my car crunched up the driveway, my expectations—already low—sank even further upon surveying my surroundings. I suspected the trailer park was well populated with people who didn’t care for lawyers. No doubt, Curtis Little would have little incentive to answer my questions.
I located the trailer—a double-wide with a small porch—and knocked on the door. I vaguely recalled that Danni had mentioned in passing that Little was probably Billy Ray’s best friend.
The door was pulled open by a chubby dark-complected young woman who looked up at me with liquid brown eyes. The top of her head barely reached my shoulders.
“Is Curtis Little here?”
She stared at me for a moment. Then, she began to prattle in Spanish.
My Spanish was more than a bit rusty, but I tried it out. “Por favor. Curtis Little aqui?”
She shook her head. “No,” she answered in perfect Spanish, followed by an overwhelming flood of more of the same. I waved my hands to silence her.
“Lo siento. No hablo español. Un poco solamente. Muy, muy poco.”
“Ah.” She smiled and nodded. The woman spread her hands, looking helpless. “No hablo inglés. Um … sorry?” Her smile widened.
I returned the smile and nodded. “Uh … ¿Dónde está Curtis?”
She took a moment, no doubt trying to process Spanish thoughts into words I could understand. Finally, she dredged up, “He go. Doo-ah-ee-nay.”
“He go” I got, but I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that last part.
“So, Curtis has gone?” I waved my hands as I spoke, hoping to pantomime my message. “He left here—¿Vaya de aqui? And—¿Dónde está?”
I knew I wasn’t getting all the words right, but she nodded throughout my performance like a pleased critic. When I asked my last question, she simply repeated, “Doo-ah-ee-nay,” stretching out each syllable like warm taffy.
Is there a place called Dooaheenay? Never heard of it.
Then I realized I was an idiot.
“Do you mean his friend—um, amigo, Dwayne?”
Her smile would’ve lit up a subterranean cavern. “Sí, sí. Doo-ah-ee-nay.”
“Well, thank you, um, gracias. I’ll go see him. By the way, who are you? I mean, ¿Cómo se llama?” I held up a finger before she answered, retrieved a card from my shoulder bag, and handed it to her. “Me llamo Sam McRae,” I said, running my finger under my name on the card as I did.
She spouted a few more words my stellar American public school education hadn’t fully prepared me to understand, then added, “Me llamo Carmen Morales.”
“Uh … su nombre es muy bonita, Carmen.” God, I was shameless.
She blushed. “Muchas gracias.”
“Well, nice to meet you. And, buenas tardes.”
Even if she didn’t understand all the words, her beaming expression indicated my intent was clear.
We smiled and nodded at each other a few more times before she finally closed the door.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I headed farther west on Route 50 to Dwayne Sutterman’s place. On the way, I passed a flatbed truck laden with crated chickens. The odor suggested an overflowing septic tank on wheels. Upon closer inspection, I could see the chickens crammed so tightly their feathers fluttered between the slats like tiny flags of surrender.
“Poor birdies,” I muttered, as I slowed to turn off the highway. The truck zoomed on, its driver heedless of me or his passengers.
The Glades apartment complex was a step up from Curtis’s trailer park home. Part of it might survive if a tornado ripped through the area. The apartments were organized into four-story units of light brown brick with beige trim. I strolled the grounds of manicured grass, lined with boxwood shrubs and the occasional bed of daylilies and impatiens, until I located Dwayne Sutterman’s building. It was only early June, but the summer heat was already creeping in. A trickle of sweat inched down my spine as I climbed to the top floor. I knocked at his door and waited.
I could hear a rustling sound within. Several thumps and a few mumbled words later, a man opened up. I recognized him from our first encounter with Billy Ray.
“Yeah.” A toothpick hung from the corner of his mouth. Although his flint-gray eyes were unfocused, his gaze traveled up and down my body, like a scanner.
“Hi, Dwayne. You may remember me from a few days ago in the parking lot with Billy Ray.”
“Uh huh. You want something or what?”
The pungent odor of pine-scented air freshener drifted from inside the apartment. Beneath that scent, I detected the unmistakably skunky scent of weed. Unless I missed my guess, Dwayne’s eyes weren’t the only thing unfocused about him.
“I’d like to talk to you and Curtis, if I could.”
Dwayne said nothing. His gaze drifted to my face and stayed there.
“Uh, Dwayne. Is Curtis here?”
More silent staring.
I waved my hand, as if to flag him down. “Hello? Anyone home?”
Dwayne’s expression crumpled into one of annoyance. He grabbed my hand and cocked it back at the wrist. I sucked my breath in hard, as pain shot from my wrist to my elbow.
Keeping a hard grip on my hand, Dwayne leaned close, his face hovering inches from mine. “Don’t fuckin’ do that,” he growled, enunciating each word so slowly, minutes seemed to elapse between them. “Do you understand?”
“Sure, sure,” I gasped. “Sorry.”
“Good.” He pushed me and I stumbled backwards to the top of the stairs. Only good balance and quick reflexes prevented my tumbling down them.
“Are you going to tell me what you want?” His voice was as sour as his expression. If this guy is stoned, I’m sure ruining his buzz.
I sighed. “First, I’d like to know if Curtis Little is here.” I was starting to feel like a damned parrot.
“No. Is that it?”
“I’ll settle for you then. Who were you talking to just before you opened the door?”
“And how is that any of your goddamned business?”
“Is there anyone else here?”
Dwayne pressed his lips together and shook his head.
“Right,” I said. “Then let’s talk about Billy Ray.”
“What’s there to say? Your nigger friend killed him.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“All the evidence points to
her, doesn’t it?”
“Not really.”
“Oh, yes it does. What about the knife? What about the comb?”
What about the fact that you know all this?
“It’s interesting you should bring those things up. I don’t think the police have shared any of that information with the press.” I paused to watch the effect of these words. He just looked surly. “In fact, cops tend to be very close-mouthed about evidence in ongoing investigations. So unless you have an inside source, I can’t imagine how you’d know about the knife and the comb.”
Dwayne’s lips curled back in disdainful amusement.
“My brother is a detective. He’s working a homicide. Three guesses which case he’s just been assigned to.”
For a moment, I was lost for words. The nepotism and cronyism in these parts was stunning.
“That’s interesting. I wonder how your brother the cop would feel about your pot-smoking habit?”
“Yeah, right. I don’t have a habit. You can’t prove anything. Besides, he’s a homicide detective, not a narc, you stupid bitch.”
Dwayne snickered, then chuckled. This built into laughter. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a used tissue and blew his nose. A slip of paper came out and drifted to the doormat unnoticed.
I stooped to pick up the piece of paper. It read: “Maria Benitez” with a long string of numbers beneath it.
Dwayne stopped laughing. He snatched the paper from my hand, retreated inside, and slammed the door.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Maria Benitez? Who the hell was that? Googling the name could produce ten million hits easily. I wished I had a photographic memory for numbers. I pulled into the 7-Eleven parking lot. Amber waited in her burnt-orange Prius, sipping a coffee. I pulled my convertible top up and grabbed a cup of brew before I joined her.
“Get ready,” she said, as she turned the ignition.
“Dare I ask for what?”
“Some pretty harsh realities.” Amber’s lips twisted briefly. She backed out and drove off.
We rolled past flat fields of soybeans—according to Amber—stretching out in green rows toward a horizon punctuated with trees and a few houses.