The Treacherous Teddy

by John J. Lamb

  It was easy to imagine him using precisely that same brusque tone of voice with a dull employee who hadn’t mastered the intricacies of assembling a triple-decker burger and was on the verge of losing his job. It stung, but at the same time, I had no right to be offended. After all, I’d just spent the better part of ten minutes telling the poor guy all the things I didn’t know about his father’s death.

  I said, “Fair enough. You can help me by answering a few more questions.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Just how big is this farm?”

  “Why is that important?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know that it is important, but I like to have all the information I can about a victim.”

  “It’s fifty-eight acres.” Kurt’s tone was a little less bellicose. “Some of it is used to grow field corn and hay, while the rest is pasture for the longhorns.”

  “And, correct me if I’m wrong, the property up on the hills is unimproved timberland?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you know if your dad was thinking about installing a fence up there along the property line?”

  Kurt looked a little puzzled. “On the hill? No, he never said anything about that. Why?”

  I turned toward the hill. “We were up there a little while ago and noticed that there are new survey pegs along what we think is the property line.”

  “Huh. That’s news to me. Maybe Wade was going to put up a fence.”

  “I wondered about that, too. But if Mr. Tice was begging your dad for money to help drill a well, he probably didn’t have the cash for a new fence.”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean. I don’t know. Maybe Dad was considering a fence. I know that he’d had it up to here with the poachers. “

  “A fence would have been expensive.” I looked back at Kurt. “My father-in-law is a farmer, so I have an idea of just how tough it is to turn a profit from a small farm. Was your dad doing okay financially?”

  Kurt’s features again grew stern. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Again, I don’t know. But, I’ve got to assume that your dad’s death—like most killings—was caused by one of the three eternal -ances.”

  “The what?”

  “The -ances are romance, finance, and vengeance. Maybe I’m jumping the gun, but I don’t think romance had anything to do with why your dad was killed. It’s obvious he loved and missed your mom.”

  Kurt swallowed hard. “That’s true.”

  “Which leaves money and revenge as possible motives for murder. That’s why I want to know about your dad’s finances.”

  “He wasn’t getting rich, but as far as I know, he was doing all right. It wasn’t something we talked about.”

  Tina asked, “How often did you talk?”

  “Not as much as we should have. Maybe once a week on the phone,” Kurt replied. “Some son I am. I live two and a half hours away, but I could only spare him a phone call a week and a monthly visit.”

  I said, “Mr. Rawlins, there’s no nice way to ask this, but did your dad have a will?”

  “Yeah. He finally had one drawn up after Mom died.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “I think he had a copy in his office. I can go in and check if you’d like.”

  Tina said, “That wouldn’t be a good idea, sir.”

  “What? Do you have some sort of problem with me going into the house?” Kurt demanded as I thought, Houston, we have ignition.

  “Actually, there is,” said Tina. “We’re still processing this as an active crime scene, so I’m going to have to ask you to leave for now.”

  “You’re throwing me off my dad’s property?”

  Keeping my voice serene, I said, “Mr. Rawlins, as far as we can tell, nobody witnessed your dad’s death except the person who caused it. That means we have to rely on this scene and the autopsy to tell us what happened. But if you stay here, you might contaminate or destroy vital evidence. I don’t think that’s what you want.”

  “Point taken,” Kurt grumbled. “But when will you be done? There are arrangements to make and I have to be back at work on Monday.”

  Tina said, “I understand, and we’ll do what we can to expedite the process. Are you going to be staying locally?” She handed him her business card. “I’ll let you know when we’ve released the scene.”

  “Yes, and I’ll expect frequent updates on your investigation.”

  “I’ll call you when I have something to report.”

  If Kurt realized that Tina’s response was fundamentally evasive, he gave no evidence of it. Slipping his sunglasses on, he got back into the Lexus, made a U-turn, and drove toward the road.

  As we watched the car leave, Tina kicked at the gravel and said, “I am sorry for his loss, but even though I never knew him when he still lived here, I bet that guy was a flaming jerk a long time before his dad died.”

  Eight

  As we drove back to the sheriff’s office, Tina radioed to ascertain the status of the deputy sent to the Massanutten Crest Lodge. The dispatcher replied that Mike-Three had just arrived at the station and was completing the auto theft report. We found Deputy Lonnie Bressler hunched over a computer keyboard in the tiny report-writing room.

  Tina asked, “What are the details, Lonnie?”

  Bressler looked up from the computer monitor. “Not much to report, Sheriff. The victim is a Sherri Driggs and she parked her Saab in the north lot, near the golf course, yesterday afternoon.”

  “Time?”

  “Around eighteen hundred hours. She didn’t check her watch, but does remember it was dark. When she came out this morning, the Saab was gone.”

  “Was the car locked?”

  “Yeah, and the alarm was set, but nobody remembers hearing anything.”

  “What about the hotel security?” Tina asked Bressler. “Did they notice anyone suspicious hanging around the lot?”

  “The security director had already called the two guards working last night, and they told him that nothing out of the ordinary happened on their shift.”

  “How about surveillance video? There are cameras all over the complex.”

  “But not all of them work,” Bressler said with a disdainful chuckle. “The security director asked me to keep this hush-hush, but they had a bad-ass lightning strike back in July during a thunderstorm, and it knocked out a bunch of cameras that they still haven’t replaced.”

  I asked, “Was the car equipped with a GPS theft recovery system?”

  “No, just the alarm.”

  “Did Ms. Driggs show you the exact spot where she parked her car?” Tina asked.

  “Yeah, and I got photos.” The deputy inclined his head toward a digital camera on the countertop beside the computer. “But there wasn’t any physical evidence.”

  “No broken auto glass?”

  “There was nothing on the pavement. I made sure of that, Sheriff.”

  “So the thief probably used a slim-jim to pop the lock.”

  I said, “What do we know about our victim?”

  “Age forty-six, valid Georgia driver’s license, and lives in Alpharetta, which she made sure I understood is a ritzy suburb of Atlanta. She checked into the hotel on Tuesday and she’s staying in Room Three-Thirty-One. She’s scheduled to leave this coming Monday.” Bressler looked up from his notebook. “Oh, and Ms. Driggs ain’t happy that Deputy Lyon stopped chasing the Saab.”

  “How did she hear about that?” Tina asked.

  “It’s my fault, Sheriff. I accidentally mentioned it. Sorry,” said Bressler.

  “Lonnie, what were you thinking? I hope you didn’t say anything about the car possibly being connected with the murder.”

  “No, ma’am. Right after I’d opened my big mouth, I remembered you wanted that kept quiet.”

  “Good, but I just wish you’d thought of that a little sooner.”

  I asked, “Is Ms. Driggs traveling alone?”

  “Nope.
She’s on a working vacation and her gofer came along,” said Bressler, who sounded relieved with the change in topic. “His name is Jesse Hauck. Age twenty-three, lives in Atlanta, and drove up here in a Volkswagen Passat.”

  “Good work, Lonnie. Put your report on my desk and download the photos into the death investigation computer file.” Tina looked at the wall clock. “And I’ve got to get started for the ME’s office in Roanoke.”

  “One other thing, Sheriff,” said Bressler. “Ms. Driggs said that she expects to be kept up-to-date on the investigation to recover her car.”

  Tina rolled her eyes and sighed. “That seems to be a real popular attitude this morning.”

  As we walked out into the hallway, I asked, “With this bad leg, I’m not very good at genuflecting, but would you like me to roll by the hotel and talk to her?”

  “She can wait. I want you to go interview Wade Tice.”

  “All I need are the keys to the Cannabis Comet and I’ll be en route.”

  “Do you want Lonnie to go along as backup?”

  “It’s your call, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I followed Tina into her office. “If I show up there with a uniform, that’s a tacit message we view him as a suspect. I’d like to keep things nice and friendly for now. But if for some reason things go south, I still have Ash’s portable radio.”

  Tina tossed me the keys to the Aztek. “Okay, but be careful.”

  “I will, and can I ask a big favor? I got all preachy with Kurt over how he was treating Longstreet; meanwhile, my own dog has to stay in his crate all day. Would you mind if I took Kitch with me?”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “It’s just for this morning when I go to Wade Tice’s place. I promise I’ll vacuum all the dog hair from the backseat.”

  “And clean up his dog slobber from the windows.”

  “Think of it as biodegradable window tinting.” When Tina didn’t reply and raised an eyebrow, I quickly continued, “The windows will be spotless.”

  “Okay, I guess. But only this once.”

  “Thanks, Tina. Oh, and one other thing . . . could you assign Kitch a really cool radio call sign like Hellhound-One or Lethal-Woofin’? It’d make his day.”

  “Good-bye, Brad. I’ll see you when I get back from Roanoke,” said Tina as she headed for the door.

  We went back out to the parking lot. Tina got into her cruiser and headed for the medical examiner’s office, while I fired up the Aztek. The vehicle’s digital thermometer said the temperature was up to forty-eight degrees, so I rolled all the windows down. That helped clear the air inside the car a little, but it still reeked of Shenandoah Valley sinsemilla.

  As I pulled out from the parking lot, I briefly paused to admire the maple tree-lined main street of Remmelkemp Mill. The glorious fall foliage was past its prime, but the street still looked lovely. Instead of making the right turn to go home, I turned left and drove the half-block to Pinckney’s Brick Pit. I hadn’t seen Sergei in the better part of a week and was hoping to briefly stop at the restaurant to say hi. However, Sergei’s big pickup truck wasn’t in the lot, so I headed home to get Kitchener.

  Fifteen minutes later, Kitch was in the backseat of the Aztek, hanging his head out the open window, savoring the universe of new scents. Before I went to the Tice farm, I made a short detour to the Food Lion supermarket in Elkton, where I went inside to try to confirm one of the bits of information that Kurt Rawlins had given us.

  The store manager was puzzled that I was asking questions about a two-week-old event that had never been reported to the sheriff’s department. He told me he hadn’t seen the encounter, but that one of his cash register operators had. It was obvious that folks still didn’t know about Rawlins’s death, and I wasn’t going to break the news. Witnesses usually feel less compelled to embellish their statements if they think they’re describing a minor crime.

  The register operator was a middle-aged woman who continued to scan groceries as she talked to me. She told me she knew both Everett Rawlins and Wade Tice and said there was no doubt in her mind that Tice had provoked the fight. Furthermore, she remembered that Tice had shouted words to the effect of that he would get even. I thanked her and the store manager for their help and returned to the Aztek, where Kitch had been busy tinting the passenger windows.

  I drove south toward Kobler Hollow Road and, playing a sudden nasty hunch, made a quick stop at the Rawlins farm. I’d half expected to find that the bullheaded Kurt had returned, but he wasn’t there. Perhaps I’d misjudged him . . . or simply come by too soon. I continued on to Wade Tice’s farm.

  Unlike the Rawlins farm, the Tice homestead looked down-at-the-heels and forlorn. The driveway was deeply rutted and could have used about two tons of fresh gravel, the cedar planking on the cabin-style house was in dire need of a fresh coat of stain, and one of the tall grain silos adjoining the ramshackle barn was leaning like the Tower of Pisa. An old International Harvester tractor was parked in the yard. Half of the tractor’s engine was missing, and from the metallic clanking coming from the barn, I guessed that Wade was undertaking the motor repairs. I don’t know much about agriculture, but it was obvious to me that this farm was in serious financial trouble.

  I parked the Aztek and raised the rear windows to prevent Kitch from jumping out and finding some barnyard muck to roll in. Getting out of the car, I caught sight of a bemired four-wheel ATV parked on the other side of the house. However, that didn’t necessarily mean it was the vehicle that had left the muddy tracks on the road. A lot of the farmers around here had quad-runners.

  A moment later, a middle-aged man with a large flat-head screwdriver in his oil-stained hand emerged from the barn. The man looked to be about five feet, ten inches tall, with a stocky physique, grayish-black hair, and a shaggy iron-colored beard. There was an old brown briar pipe stuck in the right side of his mouth, and a tendril of white smoke rose from the bowl, reminding me of a volcano that was mistakenly thought to be extinct. He wore faded jeans, a sun-bleached blue ball cap, and a ragged old military flight jacket that had about as many holes in it as the plots of the Star Wars movies.

  “Help you, mister?” asked the man, in a voice that didn’t sound particularly helpful.

  “Are you Mr. Wade Tice?”

  “Look, if you’re from the heating oil company, my wife told the woman at your office that I’ll have the money to you on Monday.” Wade’s teeth tightened around the pipe stem.

  “No, sir, I’m not from the oil company. I’m Brad Lyon, and I’m an investigative consultant with the sheriff’s office.” I pulled the badge case from my jacket pocket and showed him my ID card.

  Wade glanced from the card to my cane. “You’re Lolly’s son-in-law that moved here a few years ago from California, right?”

  “That’s right,” I said, hoping the family connection would breed some goodwill.

  The pipe sagged slightly as his jaw relaxed and he said, “What can I do for you?”

  “If you’ve got a minute, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “Is it about that ruckus last night?”

  “What ruckus?” I asked, just in case he wasn’t referring to the police response to the Rawlins farm.

  “All those sirens from out on the road.”

  “So I take it you haven’t heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “That Everett Rawlins was killed last night.”

  Wade Tice folded his arms across his chest. “Huh. That’s a damn shame. But what does it have to do with me?”

  Tice was cool, I thought, but the body language suggested he was hiding something. However, rather than directly confront him with the potentially damning facts about his conflict with Rawlins and his longtime experience as a bow hunter, I decided on an oblique approach. I said, “You’re his neighbor, and I know you want to help. Did you notice any suspicious-looking people or vehicles around here last night?”

  “Nope.”

  “How about a veh
icle up on the ridge?” I pointed toward the hill with my cane.

  Wade shot a quick disinterested glance at the hill. “Nope. I was in the house with my wife all last night.”

  “In the past, have you ever noticed any vehicles up there?”

  “Sure. Hunters go up there looking for deer, but it don’t bother me none. There’s plenty of deer and I figure I can’t begrudge a man if he’s hungry.”

  “Getting back to last night, did you hear any strange sounds?”

  “Just the sirens. Lots of sirens.”

  “Is your wife here? Maybe she noticed something.”

  “Nope, Marilyn is at work.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Why do you want to know that?”

  I shrugged, feigning indifference. “I need to ask her these same questions, and I’m just trying to save myself a trip out here later tonight.”

  Wade removed the pipe from his mouth and used the screwdriver to dig out some ash. Finally, he said, “She works at the lodge as a maid.”

  “The Massanutten Crest Lodge?” I asked. I found this new link to the lodge mildly intriguing, but after a few seconds of consideration, I was inclined to dismiss it as a coincidence. A farmer’s wife usually doesn’t have much experience boosting cars.

  Wade said, “Yeah. It’s a hell of a thing that my wife has to clean up after other folks, but it’s been a bad couple of years and we need the money.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, and I’ll finish up here as quickly as possible so you can get back to work. What was your relationship like with Everett Rawlins?”

  “There ain’t much to say. We wasn’t exactly what you’d call close friends, but we got along okay, I guess.” Wade tried to sound casual.

  I gave him a long thoughtful look and then gently said, “That isn’t what I’ve heard, Mr. Tice.”

  “You calling me a liar?”

  “No, sir, but I’m confused. You say that you got along okay with Mr. Rawlins, but other folks have told me that you were extremely angry at him for making your well go dry.”

  With a sudden flick of his wrist, Wade Tice hurled the screwdriver blade-first into the ground. “Oh, I get it! Some rich farmer dies and the law can’t move fast enough to falsely accuse a poor man of his murder! Get off my land, you damn rich man’s whore!”