by Diane Kelly
As I walked through the gate, the dog came down the two steps from the porch and trotted over to greet me. Zane followed. I reached down and scratched the dog behind his ears, but apparently that wasn’t good enough. He flopped over onto his back exposing a circle of white fur on his chest. He kicked his legs in the air and woofed, begging to have his belly scratched. I bent down and obliged the big beast, digging in with all ten fingers to make a good impression on him.
“That’s Eight-ball.” Zane gestured to the white spot on the black dog’s chest. “I suppose it’s obvious how he got his name.”
“Because he’s magic?” I teased, playing dumb.
“Well, he can make hot dogs disappear right before your very eyes.”
The dog wriggled gleefully on his back as I scratched him. “Who’s a good boy?” I asked. He responded by wagging his tail harder. Me! I’m a good boy!
I looked up at Zane. “Any word from Mrs. Tucker’s son?”
“Yeah. He couldn’t remember the tenant’s full legal name, only that he goes by J.J. The guy pays his rent every month by money order. Brings it by and drops it off in person.”
In other words, the tenant paid via a means that would be much harder to trace than a personal check or online transaction. Money orders were purchased with cash, and in most cases no identification was required to buy them. They weren’t printed with the payer’s information, either.
Zane added, “Tucker’s son won’t be able to tell us the guy’s full name until he gets back from his trip and can access the lease. He said the guy was clean shaven when he first rented the place, but that he’s since grown a beard.”
So he could be the guy I’d seen in the security video from the medical center. Still, it would be easier if we knew for certain who lived at the property. We could check for a criminal record, or determine if he was some type of mechanic or involved with cars in some way. Without that information, we could be spitting in the wind here. All we really had to go on was that the guy had rented a property with an aluminum outbuilding big enough to house a car. That was pretty flimsy evidence, at best.
“Monday’s recycle day,” Zane said. “If the tenant puts a bin out, I’ll take a look in it, see if there’s any junk mail with his name on it.”
“Good idea.”
I stood and the dog flipped expertly over onto all fours and levered himself to a stand.
Zane reached down and ruffled his ears. “You’ve got to stay here boy. Officer Sharpe is taking your place in the boat today.”
He issued a soft whine as we closed the gate on him, but quieted when Zane pulled a large dog biscuit from his pocket and tossed it his way. Zane and I climbed into the truck.
I fastened my seatbelt and sniffed the air. “Is that gasoline I smell?”
He tilted his head to indicate the gas-powered leaf blower lying across the floorboard of the backseat. “I promised my mother I’d come by sometime this week to clear the leaves from her flowerbeds and garden. The smell reminds me I need to get over there.”
“Can’t you just put a reminder in your phone?”
“I can ignore a phone. I can’t ignore that odor.”
I waved a hand in front of my face. “Tell me about it.”
Zane started his truck. “Let’s grab a quick bite at the diner before we head out. I can’t function without biscuits and gravy.”
He’d get no argument from me. Once again, all I’d had before setting out this morning was a cup of coffee.
I kept an eye on our surroundings as we drove to the diner, making use of the drive to scout for the Barracuda. The roads were fairly busy with church traffic, as those who’d attended the early services were now leaving Sunday school and those who’d slept in were arriving for the late services. Zane raised his fingers from the wheel to wave to one of his fellow deputies who was standing in the roadway, directing traffic at the exit from a church parking lot.
“Poor guy,” I said. “He must’ve drawn the short stick.” Directing traffic was the worst. It was extremely dangerous, especially these days when everyone was distracted. I’d been grazed by a bumper a couple of times, and had nearly had my toes run over a dozen more.
There was no sign of the Barracuda. All I saw were family cars filled with folks dressed in their Sunday best, a few pickup trucks, a John Deere tractor, and a snazzy silver Chevy Camaro circa 2015 parked at the pumps of a gas station a quarter mile from the diner. Nice ride.
A white cargo van with an aluminum extension ladder secured to the top turned out of the diner’s parking lot as we turned in. Two burly, bearded men in coveralls sat in the front seats, probably on their way to jobsite. Unfortunately, whatever spot they’d vacated had already been filled by one of the cars circling the lot. We drove around twice before being forced to park on the grass along the edge of the asphalt.
I climbed out of the truck. “Looks like everyone in the county is here right now.”
Zane closed his door, too. “Sunday morning’s their busiest time. Lucky for us, my mother keeps a table just for family in the back of the kitchen.”
We stepped through the diner’s door to find a crowd of people waiting to be seated and to see Pauline at the telephone by the register, frantically jabbing buttons. She put the phone to her ear and, an instant later, Zane’s phone began whistling in his pocket as it launched into the theme song from The Andy Griffith Show. An appropriate ringtone as the late actor had played a sheriff in the show, which was set in a fictionalized version of his North Carolina hometown.
Zane pulled the phone from his pocket and tapped the screen to accept the call. “Hey, Mom.” He paused a moment and raised a hand in the air. “Look up.”
Pauline looked up, spotted Zane waving, and hung up the phone. She rushed over, squeezed through the crowd, and grabbed our shoulders, pulling us in close. “I think the man you’ve been looking for was just here!” She told us that the cashier had rung up the man’s bill and noticed his beard was sparkling. “He’d called in a takeout order. He picked it up a few minutes ago and left.”
My nerves began to sizzle like the hash browns on the grill. We just might get the guy!
Zane asked, “Did she see what kind of car he was driving? Maybe get a license plate?”
Pauline shook her head. “No. She said she tried, but he walked past the windows and then she couldn’t see him anymore. His car must have been parked on the side or behind the building. She ran straight back to the kitchen to tell me. By the time I got through the crowd and out to the parking lot, he was nowhere in sight. I saw a couple of cars pull out of the lot, but they both headed west so all I could see was their back ends. I couldn’t see who was in them. I asked the people waiting if they’d seen the man get into a car, but nobody had been looking out the windows. Nobody recognized him, either. They didn’t seem to have paid him much mind.”
They’d probably been too distracted by the display of pies in front of them. I know I would’ve been. Heck, I had a hard time not being distracted by them right now!
Zane glanced out the window behind us. “The cars that drove off. What types were they?”
“One was a green mini-van with a bunch of those family decals on the back window,” Pauline said. “The other was a maroon, four-door Cadillac. The way it was poking along made me think one of our older customers must be driving it.”
Neither vehicle sounded like one a classic car thief would be driving, assuming he had a choice in the matter.
Zane must have had the same thought. “We passed a work van with two men inside when we pulled into the diner. Wonder if he could’ve been one of them.”
“Could be,” I said. “They both had beards.”
“Let’s talk to the cashier right quick.”
He strode up to the register and motioned the cashier aside. Pauline and I followed him.
The girl excused herself to the customer waiting at the counter and stepped over to speak privately with us. Zane said, “Mom says you saw a man with a sparkly beard?”
Uh-oh. “The same color as his beard, you mean?”
She nodded. “He was wearing a ball cap, and I didn’t even notice until he lifted his chin and the light caught ‘em.”
My hopes faded a bit. Beards were big business, and stores sold all kinds of beard-care products. Beard oil. Beard conditioner. Beard balm. I’d even seen something called beard butter once. Any of those products might have added a shimmer to his natural color, and if he had some gray or silver hair in his beard, the effect might look like glitter or paint flecks. I asked about the hair on his head, whether it was salt and pepper, but she said his hat had covered it so she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t remember the color of his ball cap, and neither Zane nor I could remember whether either man in the cargo van had been wearing a cap. We’d only gotten a quick glimpse as we’d passed them.
Zane leaned toward her intently, as if by staring into her eyes he could visualize for himself the man that she had seen. “What else was he wearing besides the cap?”
“A black T-shirt with a pocket.”
If he had been one of the men in the van, he could have donned the coveralls over his T-shirt after returning to the vehicle. But why not wait until they got to the jobsite? “Did he order enough for two people?” I asked.
“No,” the cashier said. “Just a single two-egg omelet with a side of grits and a plain biscuit.”
The fact that the man had ordered only enough for one person made it seem less likely that he’d been one of the guys in the van.
“How did he pay?” If the guy had used a credit or debit card, we could trace the number to his bank and get his name.
“Cash.”
Damn. Zane and I exchanged a glance. His tight face told me he was as disappointed as I was. We couldn’t be sure if the guy she’d rung up even had paint in his beard, and the fact that he’d ordered only one breakfast and wasn’t wearing coveralls made it unlikely the man had been one of the two we’d seen in the van. Neither of us had seen which way they’d turned when they left the parking lot, either. If only we’d gotten here a few minutes sooner . . .
Zane thanked the cashier, and I did the same.
Pauline scoffed. “The guy didn’t order gravy with his biscuits? What kind of self-respecting man doesn’t want gravy with his biscuits?”
Zane raised his hands and pointed both thumbs back at himself. “Not this guy. Give me all the gravy you’ve got.”
Pauline handed me a menu, but didn’t bother to give one to her son. She angled her head to indicate the kitchen. “Head on back, you two. I’ll be around in a minute.”
Zane led me through the bustling kitchen to a small bistro set at the back, just inside the rear door. After deciding on biscuits and gravy with a side of fresh fruit, I watched the kitchen staff go about their duties. Though they worked at warp speed, they functioned like a well-oiled machine. As much grease as they used, it was no wonder they ran so smoothly. I’d never seen so much vegetable oil and shortening be put to use.
Pauline circled by to take our order, and filled it in under a minute, fixing our plates herself. “Enjoy, you two.”
“Thanks!” As she hustled off, I turned back to Zane. “Wow. I’ve never gotten an order so fast.”
Zane raised his fork in tribute. “It pays to have friends in high places.”
Eager to get to to work, we made quick work of the delicious food, slid out the back door, and aimed for the county park. On the drive there, we passed Mrs. Tucker’s property. Again, we saw little other than the glint off the aluminum roof of the outbuilding.
A quarter mile farther, we approached a double-wide mobile home set close to the road. Zane’s gaze ventured off the road in front of us and past me, to the right, as we passed it. He pulled into the next driveway, came to a stop, and backed up to go back the way we’d come.
“See something?” I asked.
He pointed as we pulled up to the dirt drive of the mobile home. I followed his finger to see a rectangular device strapped to a tree. It had a round glass lens on the front.
“Is that some type of home security camera?” I asked.
“No. It’s a trail cam. People put them out to capture photos of wildlife. Hunters use them to figure out where the game trails are.”
No wonder I wasn’t familiar with them. You couldn’t shoot game within the Durham City limits, and neither my stepdad nor anyone else I knew was into hunting.
Zane pulled up the dirt drive and parked in front of the mobile home. A tire swing hung from a tree and a square sandbox sat in the yard, with colorful plastic buckets and shovels strewn about the sand. A playhouse made to look like a log cabin stood under a tall pine amidst a scattering of dried needles the tree had shed. Parked on the other side of the drive were a white Subaru hatchback and a blue Dodge sedan. Two children’s booster seats were strapped in the backseat of the Subaru. The back bumpers of both vehicles were decorated with bumper stickers. Coexist. Don’t Hate, Meditate. Be the Change You Want to See in the World. Bernie 2016. Bernie 2020.
I followed Zane up onto the porch. He rapped on the door. A moment later, a woman’s voice called out inside. “It’s the sheriff!”
A thirtyish woman yanked the door open. She sported a worried expression, along with red hair and an explosion of freckles across her face and arms. The twin boys hanging onto her legs sported the same hair, like duplicate, miniature Ed Sheerans. What a couple of cuties. They looked to be around four years old, their toddler chubbiness gone but all their baby teeth still in place.
A man with shaggy blond hair stepped up behind the woman and addressed us over her shoulder. “Is something wrong, Deputy?”
Zane raised his palms in a no-need-to-worry gesture. “It’s all good.” He introduced both himself and me. “We’re working an investigation in the area and happened to notice you’ve got a trail camera on your tree out front.”
The woman put her hands atop her boys’ heads and ruffled their hair. “These two love to watch the wildlife. We put up the camera so the boys can see what comes through the yard at night or when we’re not looking.”
One of the boys chimed in, his eyes wide with excitement. “We saw a bear!”
“A bear!” Zane repeated, matching the boy’s enthusiasm. “That’s so cool!”
The father filled us in on the camera’s workings. “We paid a little extra to get the wireless model. It records up to sixty seconds of video at a time. We go through the videos every week or so and only keep the good stuff.”
I glanced back at the device. “Does it pick up activity on the road?”
“Only cars heading south,” the man said. “The range doesn’t extend to the far lane.”
Luckily for me and Zane, the Tucker place sat south of this property. If the Barracuda had been driven past this family’s home on its way to the Tucker’s, it should show up on the recordings. Assuming, of course, that the camera had been running at the time. “Is the camera on all day?” I asked.
The man nodded. “Twenty-four seven.”
Zane pointed a finger into their home. “Any chance we can come in and take a look at the feed?”
“No problem.” The man waved us inside and led us over to a desktop computer. He took a seat in the desk chair and gave us a quick lesson in how to operate the feed.
One of the boys tugged on his father’s T-shirt. “Show them the bear, Daddy!”
“Yeah!” the other said. “Show them the bear!”
The man cut a look to Zane and me. We didn’t have a lot of time to spare, but how could we disappoint the excited little boys?
“I’d love to see the bear,” I said.
“Me, too,” Zane agreed.
The man pulled up the video. The screen showed their yard dappled with early morning sunlight, slivers of sun just beginning to peek through the woods as it rose over a far-off horizon. The time stamp in the lower corner indicated the video clip was recorded a week prior
at 6:48 AM. As we watched, a medium-sized black bear ambled out of the woods and looked around the driveway.
“That bear’s up early,” I said. “He must’ve been looking for breakfast.”
Zane looked down at the boys. “Think he likes pancakes or waffles better?”
“Pancakes!” hollered one.
“Waffles!” shouted the other.
Their mother cringed. “Inside voices, boys!”
The bear wandered about, occasionally raising his tan-colored snout like a dog to sniff the air. When he neither found nor scented anything he might eat for breakfast, he returned to the edge of the woods. There, he raised his short tail, popped a slight squat, and released a barrage of bear droppings onto the ground.
Zane’s head bobbed as he watched. “This video answers the proverbial question. We now know for certain where bears defecate and it is, indeed, in the woods.” He looked down at the boys. “That was cool. Thanks for having your dad show it to us.”
Our review of the bear video complete, the man stood and offered Zane the chair, then went to the kitchen and rounded up a seat for me. Zane played with the feed to show what it had recorded on late Monday morning. Sure enough, right around the time I’d been swerving to avoid the buck, a lime-green car crossed the frame. Given that the driveway was narrow and flanked by trees, the car was on the screen for a mere instant before it disappeared again.
Zane dragged the circle at the bottom to take the feed back a few seconds, and froze it when the car appeared. Between the velocity of the vehicle and the limited resolution of the video, we couldn’t say with absolute certainty that the bright blur was the Barracuda, but the odds of another car the same color as the ‘Cuda passing this way at that time seemed small.
“Looks like we’re on the right track,” I said.
Zane squinted at the screen as if that would somehow make the blurry image more clear. “Seems that way. But just because the car drove past here doesn’t mean it’s still in the area.”
Party pooper. I scowled at him. “I know that. But if it’s not, that means the Chatham County Sheriff’s Department let a car thief slip through its fingers.”