Class Conspiracy: A Hank Lancaster Mystery

by Ace Beckett

  “Thank you for coming in and telling me, Mr. Wiley. I think that story is very important and the key to this case.”

  It’s the long-lost clue that I was looking for, I thought to myself.

  The headquarters of the Franklin Cattle and Company was an impressive looking structure behind a chain-linked fence about 12 miles from the city limits. The gates were open so I smiled as I passed a security guard who nodded as I stepped inside. I squeezed the car between two white lines behind a sign telling me the space was for visitor parking. The cattle, I guessed, were some miles away. I stepped onto a thick carpet as I approached a desk with an officious young brunette behind it and gave her my best smile

  “My name is Hank Lancaster. I have an appointment with Chet Franklin.”

  She looked at the computer in front of her, punched one or two buttons. Her two lips were firm but then loosened into a smile.

  “Yes, Mr. Lancaster. You are expected.” She swerved in her chair and pointed down a corridor. “Take the elevator to the second floor. Mr. Franklin’s office is two-oh-seven. He should be able to see you in a minute or so.”

  I thanked her and followed her directions. Franklin also had a secretary that looked as efficient as her down stair counterpart. The nameplate on the door behind her read Chet Franklin in Old English lettering. The black haired secretary had a sweet voice and she perked up when I walked in, her smile indicated seeing me was the high point of her day.

  “Please be seated. Mr. Franklin is in a meeting that has lasted a wee bit longer than anticipated but he should be through in just a minute or so. Mr. Franklin does like to be prompt and doesn’t like to keep anyone waiting.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said.

  I was about to sit down in amply cushioned chair and read a copy of Sports Illustrated that was on a waiting table when the door opened. A thin man in a coat shook Mr. Franklin’s hand and then walked out. Franklin, a medium-height man with a round but very friendly face looked toward me.

  “Please come in Mr. Lancaster.”

  The voice was friendly too. He had a natural grace about him. One of those people you like at first glance. I walked in and eased down into a chair in front of his massive, shiny desk.

  “I’m a bit intrigued by your phone call but you really were not too specific in our conversation. So what exactly can I do for you?”

  “It’s what I can do for you. Or at least it’s about what I have to tell you.”

  He gave me a curious look but showed an amusing smile as if he thought I was going to tell him a funny joke.

  “I have a theory and some degree of evidence that someone will try to kill you very soon, Mr. Franklin.”

  The amusing smile disappeared immediately. Since his class graduated twenty years ago he had to be in his late thirties but he had a young, almost boyish, face. Two dimples on each jaw paired with blue eyes that sparkled with vitality but for a moment the eyes dimmed and a blackness clouded over them. He leaned back in his chair as he reached over and opened a cigar box on his desk and took out a cigar. He stuck it in his mouth, flicked a lighter and brought the flame to the tobacco.

  “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you Mr. Lancaster?”

  “Not at all.”

  His voice was soft, almost gentle. “Yes, but I don’t light up if visitors have sinus trouble or respiratory problems.”

  “Fortunately I’m free of both those medical afflictions,” I said.

  “Lancaster. I should have recognized the name. You put an ad in the class e-mail bulletin.”

  “Actually a colleague did that but he had permission to use my name and local number.”

  “I saw that notice and I tried to put it out of my mind. I didn’t want to face it but you can’t run away from the past forever, can you?”

  “Not usually. A classmate of yours told me a story about a hunting trip he said you and four other students took. Three of those students are now dead. One may be out west but if someone killed three people from that hunting trip they may go for a fourth.”

  Franklin took a long puff on his cigar. “I like cigars,” he said. “I can think when I’m smoking them. You know about the homeless man on the road then?”

  “Yes.”

  “I woke up just in time to see him in the headlights of the van before he pitched over the side of the embankment down into the stream. Your ad mentioned and gave a few details about the deaths of Mary and Harper. It didn’t mention much about Keegan.”

  “The police believe he committed suicide. He was found hanging from a tree in back of his hands. Investigators found a suicide note in which he alluded to an incident where he contributed to the death of a man.”

  Franklin shook his head. “Keegan wasn’t to blame. He was asleep in the back of the van. He had no responsibility whatsoever for the man’s death.”

  “But that incident is the connection between you five?”

  “Yes, it has to be.” He shook his head. “But no one else knew about it. Although I guess someone did, someone told you.”

  “The story I was told came from John Kuster and he told at least one other person.”

  “And maybe more if he told others then they could have told others.”

  “Did the three people sleeping in the van realize what happened?”

  “I don’t know. I know John was a good friend of Keegan and they were good friends before we began the hunting trips. John could have revealed what happened to Keegan, I guess there’s a good chance of it. I doubt Mary and Harper ever knew what happened on that road.”

  “Mr. Franklin---”

  “Call me Chet. Everyone does.”

  “Call me Hank, Chet. We can discuss the details of the incident later. What is more important is that you hire a bodyguard, preferably two of them. The facts are stark. You were on a hunting trip with four other people and now three of them are dead. The official verdict is two died accidental deaths and one committed suicide. I think the official verdict is wrong. I think all three were murdered in cold blood and since no one knows where John Kuster is you are the next logical target, and you need protection.”

  “Are you a bodyguard, Hank?”

  “No, I never specialized in that. I’m a detective but I can give you several names of good bodyguards.”

  He took another long puff of his cigar. “I need to think about that. I find it almost unbelievable that, even if someone knew about that long ago incident, that he would murder the occupants of the van.”

  “It may be almost unbelievable but it’s definitely happening. We can deal with details and speculations later, you need two beefy sized men on the payroll who are trained to protect clients and kill people who try to hurt to their clients.”

  “We have a security force here. There are two or three guards roaming around the premises now.”

  “They’re hired to protect against vandalism not murder, most of them are older and out of shape. I saw one when I was driving in. Don’t get me wrong, I know several men in their early sixties who are well-trained, have stayed in shape and are men I wouldn’t want to tangle with. Your security people are not that good. You need professionals. You also need someone to find the murderer but I’m already doing that. I’m working with another private detective named Bill Wyland and he’s a good man. However, I urge you to get protection.”

  He tapped the ashes of his cigar in a large blue ashtray. “This is not a good time for me, Hank. My father is dying and he’s at his house only because the hospital sent him home to die, cared for by nurses and attendants. He tells everybody that he has had a good life which he’s proud of.”

  “Hopefully we all can say the same when we’re knocking on death’s door.”

  “I am focused on him right now. I’ve always been very close to my Dad and my brother Tom has always had conflicts with our father. They have fought often and at times bitterly but Tom has had conflicts with a great many people.” He shook himself. “Sorry I got off the subject. I’m sure you don’t want
to hear about family issues. I appreciate your concern, Hank and I do own a gun, a handgun and several rifles. I don’t have time to do much hunting anymore but I still have them at my house. I still find it difficult to believe that a man would hunt down five people due to an incident twenty years ago but I understand your concern.”

  “Is there anybody you think of who might be the hunter?”

  “No, I can’t think of a single suspect. I wonder if anyone saw what happened twenty years ago. I didn’t see any other cars or other stragglers on the road but it happened so quickly I supposed someone could have been in the nearby woods and witnessed it. But why would he start killing people now?”

  “That’s a very good question,” I said. “And there is another very good question that needs to be answered. If anyone saw the incident they might have, even at night, identified the driver and catch a glimpse of you in the passenger seat. Maybe he recognized you. But how could they have known about the other three people in the van? They were sleeping in the back.”

  Franklin took the cigar out of his mouth and nodded. “Yes, you could not have seen them from the road but John knew who they were. If he told one person he could have told other and those he told could have also repeated the tale. Who could have been on that road twenty years ago?”

  I nodded. Actually I gritted my teeth. Any detective likes solid evident and in this case the evidence was more like wisps of fog that would blow away with the wind.

  “I don’t know, Chet. I don’t know a lot about this case, I can’t even say I know three people were murdered. If I was hooked up to a lie detector and asked if I believed they were murdered I would say yes and if the next question was can I prove it the answer would be no. This connection, though valid, is flimsy but despite the entire flimsy, shifting evidence and theories you still need a bodyguard. The murders were planned very carefully and I think we are dealing with a very shrewd killer. So you need protection.”

  “I will think very carefully about what you said, Hank, and I thank you for coming in. At first I wondered if there was a financial angle in this for you but I see there isn’t. As I noted there is security in the office, as for full-time guards I’m not sure about that yet.”

  As I stood up I said, “There are times to be cautious Chet, this is one of them. Can you tell me where exactly the incident occurred?”

  He nodded. “It not like I can ever forget it. About thirty miles north of here on County Road 57 there’s about two-dozen houses and a grocery store and a few shops, it has a little sign reading “Burrows Point” although it’s never been incorporated. Ten miles south of Burrows Point is a sharp curve to the right where John turned the van on the curve and that’s where we saw the man.”

  As I walked out of the building back to my car I was getting frustrated. Sitting behind the wheel of my car I phoned Astrid, when her voice came on the line I asked if she’d like to spend a few days in north Florida with a private detective.

  “Which one?”

  “Your one and only.”

  “Oh, Dale? No, wait a minute that would be Ronnie. Wait! This sounds like Hank.”

  I chuckled. “I love your sarcastic sense of humor.”

  “I can take a few days off. I was just thinking of calling and asking if you’d like to drop by.”

  “I would, very much.”

  “You seem tired, honey. Tough case.”

  “Yes, tough case,” I said. “I feel like a guy who sees a UFO but nobody will believe him.”

  “I believe you.”

  “That’s why I love you, my number one fan.”

  “It will be about three hours before I can leave. I’m guessing it will take about three hours to get over there, with time for a late lunch. Should be there about five? Maybe a little after.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Bill Wyland had ordered a Russian Tundra of a salad and he eagerly dug into the green lettuce, red cherry tomatoes, orange carrots and bacon bits with a fork, whereas I settled for a roast beef sandwich. We were settled in at Cy’s Diner, a small restaurant two blocks from the hotel and it had surprisingly good food.

  “I decided to go on a diet or at least change my eating habits,” he said as he munched the greens. “My wife keeps telling me I need to lose weight. She also tells me I don’t eat healthy enough.”

  “You’re doing it today,” I said. “All that stuff looks healthy, it doesn’t look all that appetizing but it looks healthy.”

  He smiled and took a slug of his beer. “Believe it or not both my children are vegetarians. My son just became one and my daughter has been one since she was seventeen. I don’t know how they got to be vegans in my house.”

  “But I’m sure they’re healthy.”

  “Yes, thank goodness, both are healthy and doing fine. My wife and I are hoping for grandchildren but neither are married yet and as of now neither is seeing anyone special.”

  I took a bite of my sandwich. “You did a good job again up in North Carolina,” I said.

  “I’m still being paid. I told my client this case was getting expensive but she wants to pursue until we catch the killer. She wants justice for her late husband.”

  “Don’t we all. Thankfully, I have a paying client too.” I sipped some iced tea. I prefer not to drink before five but it’s not an ironclad but I observe it most of the time. “Notice anything unusual about the van story in relation to the revenge motive?”

  He nodded. “One thing is a little bit odd.” He stuck on cherry tomato on his fork and pointed it at me. “I’m not a guy who sees racism everywhere. In my business I’ve dealt with all races, good people in all and there’s criminals in all.”

  I nodded while he swallowed the tomato. “But I have a hard time believing some vigilante is killing four people because of a homeless black man. In cases of revenge…let’s say a good friend of yours was killed by Mr. X. So you hunt down Mr. X and, one way or the other, make him pay. Say you break a few bones then turn him over to the police. Or even feed him a few bullets. The motivation for revenge is personal. Someone you know has been harmed. Or maybe someone has cheated you out of an inheritance or a large sum of money. Perhaps you have no legal recourse.”

  I nodded.

  “There’s still a personal motivation there but who is going to start wiping out people because of a homeless black man? As tragic as that accident was, I don’t see it as motive for mass murders. Unless you’re some type of racial fanatic.”

  “Great minds really do think alike. I was pondering the same question and coming to the same conclusion. The incident on that road two decades ago was the connection between our three victims but I have a hard time believing it’s the cause of their deaths.”

  “But that leaves the next question. What is the cause?”

  I frowned. “I answered one question. I can’t do two in a row, that’s asking the impossible.”

  “Some private detective you are.”

  “We can’t all be Sherlock.”

  “That’s a shame. If we were we’d have already solved the case now and maybe we should re-read all his stories.”

  “Don’t think that would help with this case.” I shrugged. “Then again, why not? Haven’t picked up many clues here, maybe one will pop up in a Holmes story. Stranger things have happened.”

  I took another bite of my sandwich. When the thought hit my brain it also wedged the roast beef in my throat. I slapped my forehead.

  “That was stupid, I walked right out of the office and didn’t do it. How could I have been so dumb?”

  Wyland was lifting a fork with green and red stuff to his mouth. His hand stopped in midair.

  “What?”

  “I talked with Chet Franklin this morning. My first priority was to tell him he needed a few bodyguards and if he was in the van too then he’s in danger.”

  Wyland nodded.

  “I did not ask him if he told anyone what happened twenty years ago. That’s a vital piece of information.”

  “
That’s understandable. You were concerned for his safety, it’s better this way than the other way around. You wouldn’t want to ask him if he told something and not advise him to get bodyguards. If he was murdered you’d feel very guilty.”

  “I could’ve done both at the same time.”

  “You can call him after lunch.”

  “I will.”

  “Even Sherlock Holmes made an occasional mistake.”

  “He did? I don’t remember that.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Pine, Oak, Hickory and Ash trees guarded County Road 57 like sentries. They stood tall and the strong branches of green waved like flags. I thought I spotted the big, sweeping curve Chet Franklin has mentioned but I was going to be sure. I turned around in the unincorporated area of Burrows Point and spied the sign as I drove past it. My arm was on the window. Astrid prefers North Carolina to her birthplace of Florida because the Tarheel State has four seasons. Last year we spent a week there in mid-October because she wanted to see the leaves change. When you on a hill peering into a small valley the reds, oranges, yellows, and purples covering the trees makes a breathtaking scenic sight. We rented a cabin for two weeks and Astrid basically stared at the hilly landscape for the entire fourteen days. I stared at landscape and Astrid for the entire two weeks. She is right though, there are no leaves changing season in Florida. There are basically only two seasons down here, a long summer and a short “winter.” It was winter now so my car window was open. With hot weather, high humidity, pythons, traffic congestion, people congestion and asphalt and concrete multiplying and squashing greenery beneath, it’s amazing so many people like Florida. But many of us still do. I have promised Astrid when we retire we can move to North Carolina. She has her eyes on a piece of land near Black Mountain which is fine with me, as long as we have central heat during winter.

  When I swerved I saw there was indeed very little space between the road and the drop off, but I did have room on the other side of the road to park. I wedged the call between two Pine trees, got out and walked to the road’s edge.