Something to Crow About: Another P.J. Benson Mystery

by Maris Soule

  “No, I didn’t take anything off. It must have come off when you pulled it down from the shelf.”

  “I didn’t take it down from the shelf.”

  “If you didn’t . . .?” He frowned.

  “Miguel?” I thought back to Thursday. “No, it couldn’t have been him. I looked after he left. The rocking chair was still on the shelf.”

  I gave it a gentle push and a tinny rendition of “Rock-a-bye Baby” played. For a moment Wade watched the chair rock, then he put a hand on the back of the seat and stopped it. “Well, I didn’t take it off. When I took the chair out of the loaner car, I decided, since our little girl wouldn’t be using it for a while, I would leave it on to keep the mechanism from getting dirty. That’s also why I put it up on that shelf. To keep it from getting dirty or scratched when next winter’s load of wood was delivered.”

  “So, who pulled it down? Who took the wrapper off?”

  Wade shrugged. “Someone must have come here between Thursday and today. Maybe while you were taking a nap.”

  I glared at Wade. “I don’t take that many naps, and he would have let me know if someone was in the shed.”

  We both looked down at Baraka, who was sniffing the seat of the rocking chair.

  “Then I don’t know, but someone got whatever was under that wrapper.” Wade lifted the chair and held it upside down so he could get a better view of the music box. “My guess is under the brown paper they had a plastic bag filled with heroin or cocaine wrapped around the music box. It wouldn’t be the most efficient way of transporting drugs, but—”

  I had another thought. “Maybe it wasn’t drugs. What about diamonds? If they were being packed inside of a ceramic crow, why not around a rocking chair’s music box?”

  “I suppose.” Wade tapped on the back of the rocking chair. “Seems to be solid. You’d be amazed by the ingenious ways these guys hide drugs. False walls in furniture. Cocaine mixed with molten plastic.” He ran a fingertip over the plastic cover of the music box. “Which means we should test this.”

  “Really?” I didn’t like the sound of that. “If that plastic has cocaine mixed with it, wouldn’t the person who pulled it down from the shelf have taken the whole rocking chair?”

  “Maybe he didn’t realize he was supposed to get the music box, too. Maybe that’s why Miguel returned two additional times.” Wade set the rocking chair back on the linoleum. “I have to take it in, P.J., you know that.”

  I knew. “It’s just such a pretty rocking chair. The bright colors. The flowers.”

  Wade leaned over and kissed me. “It is pretty, and I promise we’ll find something for our little girl that will be just as pretty. Okay?”

  I shrugged, and he picked up the rocking chair. “I’m going to take this out to the Jeep. I copied some of the pictures taken inside Ken Paget’s trailer to have with me tomorrow. If he found diamonds in a crow statue that we didn’t take, I’m wondering what else we might have missed. Maybe you can see something.”

  “I’ve never been in Ken’s trailer,” I said as Wade headed for the door. “How would I know what you missed?”

  “You pick up on things,” he said. “Little things I sometimes overlook.”

  His words pleased me, and I realized I was no longer angry with him. Not as angry as I’d been earlier. He might not think he was kindhearted, but he was. I couldn’t blame him for going off to rescue Marge. I couldn’t even blame her for wanting him for herself. As I watched him through the kitchen window, I smiled. She wanted; I had.

  My cell phone chimed that I had a text. I turned away from the window and went into the living room to get my phone. The text was from an unknown number. All the message said was: TELL WADE TO CHECK THE FREEZER.

  WHAT? I quickly typed back. WHO IS THIS?

  Wade came into the house carrying his briefcase and started for the dining room. “I’ll put these printouts on the table and you—”

  “Wait. I just got a strange message.” I showed him my phone just as another message came through: KEN

  “Ken?” Wade frowned.

  “I guess.” I typed: ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?

  A few seconds later, I read: WITH A FRIEND. YOU NEED TO BE CAREFUL. STAY AWAY FROM PATTERSON’S

  Ken didn’t need to tell me that. I regretted my one visit.

  TELL WADE TO CHECK FREEZER.

  HE’S HERE, I typed back and handed my phone to Wade. He read the messages, then tapped a button. Next thing I knew, he was talking to Ken.

  “What’s up, Paget?”

  I couldn’t hear Ken’s response, but I saw Wade frown. “You could have called me from the bar.” He shook his head at whatever Ken said in response. “No, there was no one there when I stopped by.” Wade nodded and listened before speaking again. “Good idea. By the way, I stopped by your apartment Saturday. Your neighbor told me what happened Friday night. You should have come to the station, reported all of this . . . No. No excuses.”

  Wade grumbled, held the phone away from his ear, and frowned at it. Then he clicked off and handed the phone back to me. “He hung up.”

  “So, what did he say?”

  “That he did try calling me Friday, but my line was busy, so he decided to go to the bar and get a beer. When he got back to the trailer, two guys were hanging around outside, so he headed back to Kalamazoo. He didn’t think they knew where he lived, but then they—or at least one of them—showed up Friday night and he decided to take off.”

  “What did he say about the diamonds?”

  “He hid them in the freezer before he went to the bar.” Wade looked outside, then shook his head. “You know what? I’m not going up to his trailer today. We’ll have an official warrant tomorrow, and I’ll have another deputy with me. If those diamonds haven’t been found by now, they should still be there tomorrow.”

  In the dining room, Wade set his briefcase on the table. “Now that I know we’re talking about stolen diamonds, I understand why an agent from CBP is involved. Smuggling diamonds is a violation of the Clean Diamond Trade Act. But why would Patterson’s get involved with smuggling diamonds? Drugs, I understand. The Mexican cartels are always looking for ways to get their product across the border. And from Kalamazoo, transporting cocaine and heroin to Chicago or Detroit is easy. The items we took from the trailer that day were ones we thought might have held drugs. We didn’t think of diamonds. Now that we know there were some in a crow statue, take a look and see if you think there’s anything else we missed.”

  Wade pulled several black-and-white scanned pictures out of his briefcase and placed them on the table. Each showed a portion of a trailer’s interior. Ken’s trailer. “These were taken after the body was removed.”

  The first picture included the kitchen and living room area. “What, no outline of where the body lay?”

  Wade chuckled. “That’s only on TV and in the movies.”

  There was no chalk outline, but there were several small, plastic tents with numbers on them. Those, I knew, had been placed beside anything the crime scene investigators felt might be related to Jerry’s death. In the pictures, I saw tents next to pieces of clothing scattered across the floor, evidently where Jerry pulled them off and dropped them. One tent had been placed next to an ash tray with a marijuana joint, and in the kitchen area, there was a yellow tent next to a plastic bag of pills, which I assumed, were the oxycodone plus fentanyl pills. There were tents next to a spoon, cigarette lighter, and syringe on the counter near the sink, and two on a wooden end table—one beside a worn leather wallet and the other next to a small brown paper bag that appeared to be full of something.

  I looked up. “What was in the paper bag?”

  “The Epsom salt Howard says he left for Ken’s plants.”

  I went back to the pictures. Besides the section of the trailer where Jerry’s body was found, a couple pictures included the narrow hallway that allowed passage to a half-bath and a small bedroom. Two others focused on a larger bedroom and bathroom that took up the
trailer’s back section. The ceramic crow was on a table next to the bed. “That’s it,” I said showing Wade. “Ken said the diamonds were in bubble-wrap inside the crow’s body.”

  “See anything else we might have missed?”

  A colorful vase sat on a dresser. “I saw these in the store, too. Did you take it as evidence?”

  Wade shook his head. “I don’t remember seeing it on the list. I’ll look for it tomorrow.”

  “It might just be a vase,” I said and stepped back from the pictures, “and I don’t see anything else that wouldn’t normally be in a trailer. It’s almost one o’clock. You hungry?”

  He smiled and put the pictures back in his briefcase. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  * * *

  I fixed sandwiches and after we ate, I stretched out on the couch with my head on Wade’s lap while he watched a basketball game on the television. I was exhausted, physically from my housework and mentally from worrying about what Marge was up to. Wade casually ran his fingers through my hair, massaging my scalp. I was nearly asleep when he said, “You knew, didn’t you?”

  “Knew what?” I mumbled.

  “That Marge wanted to be more than a friend. That her call this morning was just a ploy to get me over there.”

  I sighed and looked up at his face “I guessed as much. The way she looked at you that first time I met her I could tell she wanted to be more than friends. And then, all those late-night calls.”

  “I just didn’t see it,” he said. “I should have realized what was going on, shouldn’t have left you this morning. We should have had the day to ourselves.” He leaned down and kissed me, then whispered, “I love you.”

  “And I love you,” I said, feeling more content than I had all day.

  I dozed for an hour or so while Wade watched the game. The ring of his cell phone woke me. I sat up, and he went over to where he’d left his phone on the table. His “Hello” was followed by a noncommittal “Yes, that’s me” and another “Yes.”

  His responses sounded formal, and I tensed. A quick glance at the wall clock showed it was now nearly four o’clock. If Ginny hoped to have Jason back by his usual bedtime, they should be on the road headed home. Was this a call to inform Wade of an accident?

  Wade nodded at something the caller said, his expression neutral, then added, “Yes, I initiated it.”

  That didn’t sound like anything he would say if Ginny and Jason had been in an accident. I released the breath I’d been holding, let my shoulders relax, and realized I needed to use the bathroom. As I walked by Wade, I mouthed, “What’s up?”

  He raised a finger, indicating he’d tell me later.

  He was off the phone, reheating a mug of coffee, when I returned. Once again I asked, “What’s up?”

  “Van Buren Sheriff’s Department found a black truck submerged in one of the lakes north of Paw Paw.” Wade paused, took a sip of his coffee, then went on. “Just the truck. They’re starting a search for a body.”

  “They’re sure it’s the truck that’s been here?”

  “License plate matches.”

  “Accident?” The way people connected to Patterson’s Furniture had been dying lately, I had a feeling this wasn’t.

  Wade smiled. “Not likely. That truck was completely submerged. To get that far into the water, the truck had to be going over a hundred miles an hour when it left the road. The accident was that the truck was found. The fisherman who spotted it and called 9-1-1 said it’s been months since he’s gone out on that lake, that it’s rarely fished by anyone. Under normal circumstances, it might have been weeks before the truck was spotted.”

  “So, do you think Miguel drove it into the lake to hide it, then swam back to shore?” I didn’t want him dead.

  “Maybe.” Wade didn’t look convinced. “Or maybe the divers will find his body in that lake.” He set his coffee mug on the counter. “I think it’s time I contact that CBP agent you talked to.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Ginny had Jason call us when they were driving by Grand Rapids. She estimated their time of arrival at one hour and pulled into the yard almost on the minute . . . just in time for dinner. Both she and Jason were exhausted and hungry. Thank goodness I’d anticipated them joining us and had enough food. They filled the dinner conversation with stories of runs they’d made, falls they’d taken, and people they’d met. Ginny had started taking Jason skiing when he was four, and he was a pro compared to me. Usually, she took him to Timber Ridge or Bittersweet, near Kalamazoo. They’d been twice this year. As far as I knew, this was the first time she’d taken Jason up north. According to him, the slopes at Caberfae Peaks in Cadillac were a piece of cake.

  Ginny lifted her eyebrows when he said that, making me think he wasn’t quite the pro he thought he was.

  I expected Ginny to take off right after dinner, but she came into the kitchen when Wade took Jason upstairs to get ready for bed. “I want to talk to you two when he’s not around,” she said.

  She sounded concerned and I wanted to ask her what was wrong, but I forced myself to wait until Wade could join us. Plates, glassware, and mugs were loaded into the dishwasher, pots and pans hand-washed, and the counter scrubbed. Between my burst of housekeeping in the morning and what Ginny and I accomplished while we waited for Wade, I swear the kitchen and dining room were the cleanest they have ever been. Even Wade said so when he joined us.

  Of course, I was ready to kick him for the comment.

  “Ginny wants to talk to us,” I said, not sure if what she had to say was good or bad.

  “About Jason,” she supplied and motioned toward the living room area. “Let’s sit in there.”

  Wade sat beside me on the couch and Ginny pulled up a chair so she was in front of us. Her voice always reminds me of Marilyn Monroe’s—low and sexy—but she kept it even lower than usual when she began. “He’s afraid. Afraid of some kid in school, and afraid for you, P.J.” Her gaze zeroed in on me. “Not ‘of you’ but ‘for you’. What has been going on?”

  I started my part of the tale with what I’d overheard when I stepped into the bathroom and heard Brenda talking. Wade told her the events he’d been involved in, and we ended with the phone call he’d received a few hours earlier about the submerged truck. “So far we haven’t heard anything about the divers finding a body,” Wade said, slipping an arm around my shoulders, “but it’s sounding to me like that furniture store is involved with both drug smuggling and diamond smuggling and maybe a lot more. As for P.J.’s involvement, my guess is they think that woman from the bathroom gave P.J. something. Something they want back.”

  Ginny looked at me. “Jason said something about you being run off the road by pigs. Twice. He said they’re trying to kill you.”

  I chuckled. “The pigs aren’t trying to kill me, at least I don’t think so. They were simply on the road, and that happened only once,” I paused, thinking about Wednesday’s incident. “I’m not sure what actually happened the second time I went into the ditch. Maybe I was intentionally run off the road, or maybe it was simply an accident.”

  “I’m looking into that.”

  Wade’s comment surprised me. He hadn’t said anything to me about investigating that accident. I gave him a quizzical look.

  “I have to follow through on something, but once I know for sure, that problem will be taken care of.”

  “Follow through on what? What do you know?”

  He shook his head. “Once I know for sure, I’ll tell you.”

  Ginny gave us a curious look, then interrupted. “Okay, what about this kid at school? Jason is really afraid of him. He seemed proud of breaking the boy’s finger, but now, he says, the kid’s going to come after him. How old is this kid?”

  “Seven?” I said and looked at Wade. I wasn’t really sure.

  “Almost eight,” Wade supplied. “I’ve had a couple run-ins with his father. I talked to Jason when we were upstairs. We’ll see how tomorrow goes.”

  �
��Well, I don’t like having my nephew bullied. Just remember, Michigan has school of choice. If necessary, you could move him over to Galesburg schools. If you took him to school, I could pick him up after school.”

  Wade nodded. “I don’t think it’s going to come to that, but thanks.”

  Ginny left soon afterward. Once she was gone, I asked Wade what he knew about the car that more or less ran me off the road Wednesday night. He hugged me, kissed my cheek, and said, “I told you. I’ll take care of that.”

  End of conversation—at least in his mind. I kept wondering what he knew that I didn’t.

  * * *

  Monday morning Jason acted squirrely, running up and down the stairs several times, supposedly for forgotten items he needed to take to school—his finished homework, a library book, and a pencil he’d borrowed from a schoolmate. He gulped down his breakfast, all the while talking a mile a minute about someone he met while skiing with Ginny. However, his burst of energy ended when it came time for us to leave for the meeting at school; then he moved like a snail. “Come on,” Wade urged. “Put on your jacket and go out to the Jeep.”

  Jason was nervous, and so was I. Wade, on the other hand, acted as if this were simply another trip to the school to drop off his son.

  “Any idea what’s going to happen during this meeting?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “What if the Harts sue us?”

  “I don’t think it will come to that.”

  Maybe not, but I did notice Wade was wearing his badge clipped to his belt and his gray sports coat that showed the outline of his holster. To intimidate the Harts? Maybe. When I asked, he said, “Nope. It’s for later. After we finish at the school, I’ll have you drop me off at Paget’s trailer. I’m meeting Detective Gespardo there. Dario has the search warrant. He’ll take me to the station after we process the trailer.”