“So how did he seem Friday afternoon?”
“Like something was bothering him, but he didn’t want to talk about it. He would grin and try to act silly, but his heart wasn’t in it.” He shook his head. “I hate this. I loved him like a brother.”
A long driveway through the woods led to our house. After a dogleg to the right, the hard-packed gravel ended at a large log structure that sat in the midst of a cleared area. The mailbox on the street showed only our house number, but anyone with basic computer smarts could find out who lived at that address. I no longer worried about it, though when we first moved in I wanted to remain anonymous in case some of the felons I helped put in prison should come looking for me. Now that we were established in the PI business, anybody interested in tracking me down could find the office number in the phone book, but the home number was unlisted. That was no guarantee of anonymity.
I think the original owner of the property had visions of living on a ranch. Wooden gateposts and short pseudo fences stood at the entrance to the driveway. I started turning in at our mailbox when I spotted a car parked at the side of the street, facing us, forty to fifty yards ahead. It wasn’t something we normally saw along here. People usually parked in driveways. I had a bad feeling about it. I swung back into the street and drove on toward the car.
“What are you—?”
“Try to get a license number when we pass that car,” I said.
I slowed as we approached a large, dark-colored SUV. As we came closer, the vehicle lunged forward and sped into the night without any lights.
“It’s too dark to see the tag number,” Jill shouted, looking back, her voice laced with frustration.
My Jeep Cherokee did not enjoy the same tight turning radius of Jill’s Toyota Camry. I swung into our neighbors’ driveway, reversed directions, and headed back down the street. By that time, the SUV was already out of sight around a curve.
I raced to the curve, then slowed. Nothing but a string of darkened houses on either side of a vacant street. No cars. With the lead he had on us, there were too many opportunities to turn in or take a side street. I had lost him. I drove to the next intersection, grumbled silently, did a U-turn, and headed home.
Chapter 7
Shortly after we swung into the clearing beyond the woods, motion-activated floodlights bathed the house in a glow bright enough to reveal every knothole in the logs. I looked around but saw nothing amiss. Activating the opener, I pulled into the garage and closed the door behind us. We had keyless entry pads on all the outside entrances, including the one from the garage into the house. I punched in the current code and opened the door for Jill.
“Who do you suppose it was?” she asked. She had remained quiet as a rag doll on the way back home.
“He didn’t intend for us to find out.” I hung my jacket in the hall closet beside her fur-collared coat.
“Do you know anybody who drives a black Cadillac Escalade?”
Though the night was dark and the visibility poor, the vehicle was obviously a luxury SUV and we’d agreed that was most likely the model.
“I can’t think of anybody who drives an Escalade of any color,” I said. “But I’d sure as hell like to know who this one was.”
She gave me a beady eye. My wife has never learned to appreciate my four-letter vocabulary, which is why I use it sparingly. I followed her into the large country kitchen, her favorite part of the house, and sat at the round maple table that matched the cabinets.
Jill leaned against the counter. “Do you think he was watching for us?”
“He was certainly up to no good. Why else would he leave in such a hurry? And without lights.”
“What should we do about it?”
“We’re going to keep a careful eye out for anything else that doesn’t match the ordinary. And we’ll be armed like pirates whenever we go out until this case is solved.”
She poured water into the coffee maker. “Then you think this has something to do with Terry Tremont’s case.”
“What else could it be? Either that or Arnold Wechsel’s murder, which are probably one and the same.”
She spooned in Columbian coffee, pressed the switch, turned, and grinned. “Armed like pirates, huh? That means armed to the teeth. Do I have to go around with a knife in my mouth?”
Jill was not the type to cave in at the prospect of danger. She had faced down more than a few crises at the controls of an airplane. She accepted that a potential menace should be respected but not dreaded. She had also bought into my practice of countering intimidation by finding a way to laugh at it.
“The knife is optional,” I said. “But carry that little .38 in your bra.”
I said it as a joke, but what I had begun to feel was far from amusement. I drummed my fingers on the table. “Having said that, I’ll have to admit I don’t like this one bit.”
“Could Phil help us?”
“I’m afraid Phil doesn’t have time to check out every Escalade owner in Metro and surrounding counties. But I need to tip him off about Dick Ullery.”
When I got Detective Adamson on the phone, I gave him a friendly needle prick. “Did I disturb your nap again?”
“Big joke. I haven’t been home long enough to stretch my arms, much less stretch out on a recliner. If you’re fishing for new developments, you’ve cast your line in the wrong stream, buddy. There ain’t any.”
“Maybe I can help out,” I said. “Have you come across the name Dick Ullery?”
“Damn, Greg. I should’ve known you’d outflank us.” He sounded a bit miffed. “Ullery’s name turned up this afternoon. We haven’t checked him out yet. What do you know about him?”
“Jill and I just came from his apartment. It’s not far from our house.”
I told him what we had learned from the Superspeedway employee.
“I suppose I should talk to the chief and see if I can’t deputize you to join my team on this.”
“Not a bad idea. If Arnold’s murder turns out to be unrelated to our case, I’m not sure Terry Tremont will pay our bill. Do I get overtime?”
“Ha! They tell us to close our cases in double-time. Forget the overtime.”
Jill brought my coffee over and set it on the table.
“Be glad you’re not in the military,” I said. “We were on duty twenty-four/seven at the designated pay rate.”
“Yeah, it’s tough all over. Thanks for the tip, though. For your information, the ME is releasing the body. They’re supposed to contact the family about sending him back to Germany.”
“What did the autopsy show?”
“One interesting point. This isn’t general knowledge, so keep it under your Titan’s cap. As you know, he was shot at close range through the cheek. The bullet had an upward trajectory. It was a hollow-point nine millimeter. The TBI lab is running tests on it.”
That meant the bullet would give up any secrets it held. The firearms section of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Forensics Lab did great work. I wasn’t through with Phil yet, though. I took a sip of coffee and told him about the Cadillac SUV lurking on our street.
“What the hell,” he said after hearing my story. “You think it’s related to Wechsel’s murder?”
“If it isn’t, I have no idea what it could mean. We don’t have any other cases that would warrant something weird like this.”
“I’ve heard you talk about the possibility of some old case from your Air Force days coming back to haunt you.”
“That’s always a possibility. I’ve worked some grisly cases, but nobody’s threatened me in years.”
“Want me to ask Patrol to keep an eye on your place?”
“It couldn’t hurt, but I don’t know that it would help, either.”
“I’ll pass the word along. Let me know if anything else happens.”
Chapter 8
I awoke the next morning to an icy north wind rattling the windows. The deck of surly clouds looked low enough to reach out and grab a hand
ful. The forecast called for temperatures to hover below the freezing mark, which meant we’d be traipsing about like Eskimos. Jill wasn’t the best morning person, particularly on a frigid day like this, but I managed to coax her out of bed with the smell of hot coffee. Jeff Price called from Ramstein Air Base while we were eating breakfast.
“I hope it isn’t too early for you,” he said. “It’s afternoon over here.”
I glanced at Jill, whose eyes still looked like they’d been raised to only half-staff. “We’ve been up for a while. Did your wife get word they’ve released Arnold’s body?”
“They contacted her sister. I think they’re flying him back here tomorrow. Have you come up with any information?”
I told him what I could about our investigation so far. “What about you?” I asked. “Learn anything additional about Arnold that might be helpful?”
“His mother said she’s really been worried the past couple of months. He talked about all this ‘easy money’ he’d been making. She knew he liked to bet on things before he left here, but he denied gambling in the States. I didn’t tell her otherwise. Still, she had a feeling this new job was somehow related to it.”
I thought about what Dick Ullery had said regarding people Arnold had met. Could they be involved with gambling?
When we were ready to leave for work, Jill eyed the kitchen clock. “We’d better skip the office if we’re going to make it out West End for our eight-thirty appointment with Bradley Smotherman. Rush hour isn’t over yet.”
I agreed. You never knew what you’d run into on I-40. It was like playing Russian roulette, hoping to click on an empty lane. Our office was near the longest entrance ramp to the interstate I’d ever encountered. It must have been more than a mile long. I-40 would take us downtown to the Broadway exit and a short drive out to Smotherman’s office. But with the morning rush, all bets were off.
I didn’t have any real concern that we might encounter a problem this morning, but I wasn’t taking any chances, either. I holstered my 9mm Sig-Sauer P-229 before we hit the road. As it turned out, despite five lanes of traffic, a rear-end collision near the airport slowed us to the point that we made our appointment with only minutes to spare. I didn’t envy the cops who stood in the icy wind, arms waving in an attempt to keep traffic from stalling, which it did anyway. Maybe they were just moving to keep from freezing. I’d worked in a hell of a lot worse conditions. I served a tour at a base in Minot, North Dakota where the average temperature in December was minus thirteen degrees. Nashville hadn’t seen a snowflake this month, though the dark folds of cloud jammed together overhead looked capable of producing a flurry or two.
We had just passed where West End split off from Broadway when a red light caught us. I turned to ask Jill if I needed to adjust the heater and my gaze hit on the driver of a pickup truck in the next lane. He had a sharp, angular face, with a chin that seemed almost pointed. I did a double take.
The man looked around at me and grinned. Then the light changed, and he took off.
Jill saw my frown and asked, “What’s wrong? The light’s changed. Let’s go.”
I gunned the Jeep, keeping the truck in view. It was a light blue Ford F-150. I couldn’t see the license plate. Solid traffic in the right lane prevented my getting behind him. I pounded the steering wheel angrily as he turned off West End at the next intersection. There was no way I could follow him.
Jill leaned toward me. “What’s going on, Greg?”
“Izzy Isabell was driving that truck,” I said. “I’d swear to it.” I recalled the last time I saw him, being led out of the courtroom in handcuffs.
“Is that the navigator you arrested on drug charges?”
“Right. It was back in the late eighties. While he was in jail, he talked about arranging the murder of some witnesses, including me. He was real unhappy that I caught him in the first place.”
“Was he from Nashville?” Jill asked.
“No. Louisville.”
“Are you sure that was him in the truck?”
“He has a face I could never forget, even with a little age on it. And he grinned when he looked at me. He obviously knew who I was. It’s possible he was following us.”
“If he’s out of prison, shouldn’t Colonel Grigsby have called you?”
“I need to check with him and find out what’s happened.”
My former OSI commander, the colonel kept tabs on the whereabouts of incorrigible criminals we had put away. He advised us when somebody who didn’t have our best interests at heart got put back on the streets. That included Izzy Isabell, a name his parents had given him for Lord knows why. The lieutenant, a navigator on a KC-135 Stratotanker, always carried a heavy briefcase for his maps and charts and whatever else he required to get the tanker to its rendezvous with jets that needed air-to-air refueling. I finally got proof that it had also contained bricks of cocaine.
If anyone doubted Bradley Smotherman’s addiction to ice hockey, the sign on his office suite provided the unequivocal answer—Hatrick Brake Company. A “hat trick,” of course, was when one player scored three goals in a game. Terry Tremont had told us that Smotherman grew up in Rochester, New York, one of the original hotbeds of pro hockey. His company manufactured disc brake assemblies. He relocated here when Nissan’s arrival made Middle Tennessee a favorite spot to build new auto plants and make parts that went into the assembly of cars.
Besides all the jungle-like greenery of contemporary office décor, the reception area featured a mock-up of the driver side of a sports car with the wheels missing to show the brake assembly. Two bright-eyed young blondes occupied desks shaped like they’d been designed by someone with a scroll saw and a free-form mindset. I handed the nearest one my business card.
“Greg and Jill McKenzie,” I said with my best PR smile. “We have an appointment with Mr. Smotherman.”
She glanced at a sheet on her desk and returned my smile with one straight off a tooth-whitening commercial. “Please have a seat. He’ll be right with you.”
She spoke on the phone as we took our seats in softly upholstered earth-toned chairs. Looking around, I saw the Predators’ influence in hockey posters and paintings on the walls. We had just settled in when the receptionist’s phone rang. She turned to the other girl, who’d have made a great model for Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue.
“Dolores, take Mr. and Mrs. McKenzie back to Mr. Smotherman’s office.”
As we followed Dolores through a door to a long hallway, the hockey motif jumped out at us. Wallpaper up to chair rail height featured a succession of hockey sticks, pucks, skates, helmets, and other items peculiar to the sport. I was forced to admit, Bradley Smotherman had to be the quintessential fan.
He met us at the door and ushered us to an area at one side of the ample office where several chairs were arranged around a low walnut coffee table. The walls sported framed hockey scenes.
“Welcome to Hatrick,” he said in his clipped New York accent.
I had dressed in my best new-client outfit, white shirt and tie, dark blue blazer. Jill looked stylish as usual in a burgundy suit. But our host, with ruddy cheeks and short brown hair, could have just stepped out of a hockey arena suite. Decked out in black slacks and an open-collared white knit shirt emblazoned with the Pred’s sabretooth tiger logo, he looked early fifties.
“Please have a seat,” he said, moving to one of the chairs. “Would you like coffee or a Coke?”
Jill shook her head.
“Thanks, we’re fine,” I said. I let my gaze sweep around the office. “You must be quite a hockey fan, Mr. Smotherman.”
He feigned a frown, then laughed. “Now where did you get that idea?”
“I’m sure Terry Tremont gave you some background on us,” I said, bypassing the small talk. “We’d like to know the circumstances that led to our being brought in.”
“Fair enough. I understand you’re retired Air Force. I was a Navy pilot after college. Trained at Pensacola.”
> Jill’s eyes brightened. “We have…make that had a condo on Perdido Key, before the hurricane turned it inside out a few months ago. We always watched the Blue Angels practice when we were down there.”
“Sorry to hear about your condo. I wasn’t quite good enough for the Blue Angels. I did my share of low-level buzzing, though. That was back in my younger days.” Smotherman chuckled, then abruptly switched the topic. “How familiar are you with the effort to bring a National Basketball Association team to Nashville?”
“I’ve read some of the newspaper accounts and heard a bit on TV,” I said.
“Then you probably know of the attempt back in 2001 to bring the Grizzlies here from Vancouver. We opposed it, but the idea never got past the talk stage before they decided to move the team to Memphis. This effort is more dedicated. The front man for the deal is a smooth-talker named Louie Aregis. He’s a venture capitalist who recently moved his investment company here from, would you believe, Pensacola?”
“We saw the name,” Jill said, “but it didn’t mean anything to us.”
“I’m told he has plenty of cash,” Smotherman said. “And he has some well-heeled partners in Howard Hays and Fred Ricketts.”
I noted his easy manner of speaking, the mark of a man who was sure of himself.
“I know Hays heads the Dollar Deal retail store chain,” I said. “He’s in the news frequently. Who is Ricketts?”
The Hatrick president folded his arms. “He runs a company in Brentwood that designs software for medical practices. Their group proposes to use the Preds’ arena for basketball. It would take a lot of coordination between hockey and basketball schedules, but that’s not the main problem. The fan base here will support two professional teams. Three…I don’t think so.”
“You’re afraid it would cause the Predators to fail,” I said.
“Likely both teams would fail.”
“Okay. I see your problem. So you’re creating a campaign to discourage support for the basketball franchise?”
5 A Sporting Murder Page 4