T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 02 - Southern Poison

by T. Lynn Ocean

  He pointed to the Derma-Zing banner. “My company is a sponsor, Jersey. We support all types of charitable causes in communities nationwide.”

  “You mean your company ECH Chemical Engineering&Consulting, in Roanoke?”

  The comment caught him off guard and I sensed his memory backtracking to recall if he’d ever mentioned Derma-Zing’s parent company in front of me. “Why, yes, that’s right,” he said.

  I turned my attention to the woman standing next to Holloman, nervously fidgeting with her wineglass. Since Holloman hadn’t bothered, I introduced myself and Lindsey, explaining that Lindsey had done the Derma-Zing television commercials.

  “Magazine spreads, too,” Lindsey said.

  The woman looked up and did a half-smile. “Hello, I’m Peggy Lee.”

  She looked much different tonight, I realized, but Peggy Lee was the woman I’d met in the doctor’s office waiting room. The pregnant chemist. Before I could acknowledge that we’d already met, the woman excused herself and hurried off, walking as though her shoes hurt her feet.

  Holloman ushered me and Lindsey away from the too-loud music. We found a table and, when I mentioned that I was starved, he graciously left to get a plate of finger foods. As soon as he’d gone, I asked Lindsey if she’d been discussing her doctor visits with Holloman. Sure, she replied. He called almost every day to see how she felt, ever since he heard she’d been sick. That factoid sent a chill along my spine. Why was he so interested in Lindsey’s health? From where he stood, she was simply one of several Derma-Zing models, and none were indispensable. I told Lindsey never to discuss anything personal with the man, starting right now. She didn’t understand why, but agreed with a shrug and a “whatever.”

  Holloman returned with a plate of peeled shrimp and freshly cut fruit, each stabbed with a toothpick. He told us to help ourselves.

  “Is your father here tonight?” he asked Lindsey.

  Lindsey ate a bite of cantaloupe. “Nope. Jersey brought me and a friend. Cindy’s outside talking on her cell phone, but she’ll be here in a minute.”

  “That’s too bad.” He finished his orange juice. Since a lime wedge floated among the ice, I assumed the glass contained vodka, too. Odd, since he’d never had an alcoholic drink during all the times he’d been at my pub. He’d never had Peggy Lee on his arm, either. “I want to tell Mr. Oxendine what a fabulous job you’ve done for us,” Holloman said.

  “Thanks,” she said, and spotting her friend, excused herself. Talking with Holloman was one thing, but letting her friends see her hanging at a table with the adults was another. That would be totally not cool in Lindsey’s world.

  When the girl moved out of earshot, Holloman quizzed me about my knowledge of his company. The fact that I knew of ECH bothered him, which made me wonder why it mattered. I find the direct approach works well, especially to shock someone into showing a reaction. I’d done a background check, I told him, and learned that ECH produced quite a few different adhesives for commercial use. Most impressive, I said, was the government contract he’d just secured to manufacture a new sealant material for hazmat suits.

  His mouth pursed briefly and something flashed in his eyes. Anger? Surprise? “You’re quite thorough for a bar owner, Miss Barnes. That’s confidential information, as we’re a privately held corporation.”

  I gave him my bimbette smile, complete with a hair toss. “Really?”

  “It’s been nice talking, but I should go find my date and circulate.” He stood up, leaving the food and his empty glass. “Tell Lindsey I said good-bye, will you?”

  I’d been keeping my radar on Peggy Lee and knew she’d gone into the hotel’s corridor. I dumped the ice from Holloman’s glass, wrapped the glass in a napkin, and dropped it in my handbag. Following Peggy Lee, I caught a flash of white dress as she disappeared into the women’s restroom.

  I found her standing at the sink, doing a bad job of applying lipstick. Her wineglass sat on the counter. “Peggy Lee, hi, it’s Jersey. Remember me from the doctor’s office?”

  She stared at my reflection in the mirror with nervous eyes.

  I handed her a paper towel to blot the lipstick. “What’s wrong? You left so quickly, we didn’t get a chance to talk.”

  She realized she was supposed to use the paper towel on her lips, and did so. “Please don’t say anything to anyone about the baby, okay?”

  I dug in my handbag to find some lipstick of my own and swiped the tube across my lips. “Sure, okay. Your business is your business. But I have to say that I don’t think you should be drinking.”

  “Oh, I’m not.” She turned to me, unsure of whether or not to confide in a stranger. I gave her my friendly woman-to-woman smile. “I’ve been pouring the wine out,” she finally said.

  “Whatever works,” I said, sounding like Lindsey.

  “See, Chuck doesn’t know I’m pregnant,” she explained. “I mean I was all excited when I found out and couldn’t wait to tell him. But then his reaction … well, he didn’t want a baby. He thinks the earth is already overpopulated. As far as he knows, I got an abortion.”

  “How do you know Charles Holloman? I mean, Chuck.”

  “I actually work for him.”

  “You’re a chemist, right?”

  She nodded. “I’ve got a lab here in Wilmington. I make a raw material for Chuck.”

  “What else does your lab do?”

  “It’s really his lab. But I’m the only chemist there.” She bent over to adjust the strap on a shoe. “I only make the one ingredient, and it gets shipped to the production company for—”

  “Production company for what?”

  Clamming up, Peggy Lee said that Chuck was probably looking for her. I agreed that he was.

  “Lindsey is a beautiful girl,” Peggy Lee said. “Is she your daughter?”

  “She’s my best friend’s daughter, but to me, she’s family.”

  A vertical crease appeared between her eyes as Peggy Lee headed out of the restroom.

  “Don’t forget your glass.” I handed the wineglass to her, along with a Barnes Agency business card. “Call me anytime you need to talk. And I won’t say anything to Chuck about your baby, promise.”

  She dropped the card into her purse, poured half her wine into the sink, and left with a tentative wave.

  My mobile phone buzzed and the display was JJ’s number—her signal that the job was done. I headed outside and found her in the valet parking area.

  “All set,” she said. “You’ve got full coverage on Holloman’s rental car. I’ll let you know where he goes and what he does for the rest of the week. He’s reserved the car through Sunday. By the way, how’d you know he’d be here?”

  “The PR lady told Lindsey she really needed to attend, since Derma-Zing is a main sponsor. Figured Holloman would want to see that his money is being well spent,” I said. “What about our equipment?”

  “Manager at the rental company will hold the car until I recover the electronics. I made up some private-detective-cheating-spouse story. Told him I needed to check the car for ticket stubs, that sort of thing. Cost you a hundred bucks.”

  “Good job. Let me round up Lindsey and Cindy, and let’s get out of here.”

  JJ stuck out a hip. “Can’t I at least come in and get something to eat? You promised me free chow.”

  “You look like a cat burglar. Besides, I meant you’d get free food at the Block.”

  Bored, Lindsey and her friend sat in the hotel lobby, applying a Derma-Zing design to a grinning valet parking attendant. I asked if they were ready.

  “Sure,” she said. “This party blows.”

  I’d parked the corpse caddy across the street and once on the road, Lindsey and Cindy cranked up their music in the back. JJ pushed the button to close the sliding divider. “Cripes. Did we used to like that kind of noise?”

  “Probably,” I said, lifting my dress to remove the Sig and thigh holster. I checked my rear- and side-view mirrors out of habit. The roads were
quiet, normal, except for Ashton’s coverage, which I’d already spotted earlier in the evening. One of them had stayed with the hearse and the other tried to meld with the partygoers. I ignored them, just like I was supposed to.

  My mobile phone chimed, alerting me to a text message. I handed the phone to JJ and asked her to read it.

  “Who’s Jill?” she said and read the message out loud.

  Jill Burns is a nice name. Jersey Barnes is a better one.

  So John Mason hadn’t left town. And he had done some digging. “My roach coach alias,” I said, realizing that not only had the identity of my boat been compromised, but now, he knew the name and whereabouts of both the Barnes Agency and the Block.

  Using JJ’s phone, I placed a call to Ashton.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Think you’re untouchable? Think again.

  The second text message that came from an unknown sender was more sinister than the first. When I alerted Ashton, he wanted to put me in a safe house until the “situation” was over. I refused, logic telling me that a former SWEET agent would be able to track down a safe house. He’d never become a true field agent, but John Mason had made it through the first level of training. If he wanted to find me, he would. My strategy was to be prepared and, as Ox had taught me, hope the spirits were on my side when it happened. Meanwhile, I needed to find out what Edward Charles Holloman was up to.

  Rather than force me into a safe house, Ashton put full coverage on me, the Barnes Agency, the Block, and my vacant boat. He read me the riot act about keeping my cell phone powered on and went so far as to suggest a microchip bracelet. I knew the price tag for my protection continued to grow and wondered if Ashton was sorry he’d called me back into service. I didn’t fret over the flowing government dollars for too long, though. The background research on Peggy Lee Cooke and Holloman proved a much more interesting use of my time.

  The fingerprint obtained from Holloman’s glass revealed that he’d applied for a conceal-carry permit, which meant he had a predisposition to be armed but also held an appreciation for rules. They also told me that Holloman didn’t have a criminal record. His parents were killed in an overseas industrial accident, after which Holloman founded his chemical engineering company. What struck me as suspicious, however, were the radical environmental causes that he supported. His company prospered by making all sorts of commercial adhesive products and sat nowhere near the green end of the environmentally friendly scale. Yet he gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to a hardcore cult whose mission was to reduce usage of the earth’s natural resources.

  While Holloman was an enigma, Peggy Lee was what she appeared to be on the surface: a capable research chemist with few social skills. She didn’t pop up in any Internet searches, except for a few trade publication articles in which she was mentioned as conducting fertility research. No marriages, no children. No rap sheet. No social organizations or clubs. She didn’t belong to her college alumni association. Even her neighbors at the apartment complex where she lived could recognize her photograph, but didn’t know her by name.

  My next visit needed to be the lab where Peggy worked, and thanks to the GPS locator JJ put on Holloman’s rental car, I knew exactly how to get there.

  A nondescript building with no signage, the laboratory was in Wilmington’s industrial section and when I found a small Honda with a license tag registered to Peggy Lee Cooke, I knew I was at the correct spot. During the time I waited, sitting in the hearse, a constant stream of trucks traveled the roads. Nondescript delivery trucks, brown UPS trucks, refrigerated trucks, tractor-trailer rigs, and workers in pickups. Two hours, one Pepsi, and one bottled water later, a FedEx van stopped at the lab. Its driver went inside with an empty hand truck. He came out wheeling four large boxes. He went back in to collect another four. He returned a third time to make it a total of ten. Soon after the FedEx van continued on its route, Peggy Lee emerged. Hair in a ponytail and still donning a lab coat, she put on sunglasses and went straight to her car. Based on the time, she was either going for a late lunch or heading out early for the day.

  The entrance door was equipped with a dead bolt lock and a standard lever door handle lock. I picked the lever lock in seconds and was pleased to find the dead bolt unengaged. A wall-mounted numerical keypad beeped when I walked in, but the alarm system was not set. Either the chemist was careless, or she planned to return soon.

  I found the packaging area, where she put her raw ingredient into cardboard boxes for pickup and backtracked until I found a partially full box. Inside were opaque glass bottles filled with a thick substance. I stashed two of them in my backpack and searched the lab until I came across a desk and computer. I stuck in my earpiece and called Soup. As usual, he was home, clacking away at a keyboard. That’s the good thing about computer hackers. They’re always there.

  “Okay, I’m standing in the lab in front of a computer and I’ve got the memory stick thingie you gave me. What do I do with it?”

  “It so turns me on when you talk techie to me,” he said.

  “C’mon. I’ve got to hurry.”

  “Laptop?”

  “Desktop.” We did some rapid-fire question and answer until Soup told me where to insert the stick and which buttons to push. “Now what?” I asked.

  “Now you wait and watch.”

  The computer screen came to life and the light on his memory stick started flashing. According to Soup, it was copying the hard drive.

  He slurped something. “Depending on the file sizes, it could take fifteen or twenty minutes. You may as well go play with something else while you wait. When the blue light on the device stops flashing for more than five seconds, it’s done. Just yank it out. Unplug the power cord to the computer, count to six, plug it back in. They’ll think it was a power surge.” He hung up before I could say that I owed him.

  While I waited for Soup’s device to do its thing, I rummaged. I sifted through desk drawers, looked through the contents of four refrigerators, and searched the bathroom. Finding nothing of interest other than a bunch of lab-type stuff, I went back to the smallest of the refrigerators and found a ginger ale. The blue light continued to flash as I drank my soda. I waited. My phone buzzed.

  “Holloman’s on the move and it looks like he’s headed to the lab. Aren’t you there now?”

  “Yep.” I disconnected and, standing on a chair, peeked through a small window near the ceiling of the building. Holloman’s rental car pulled in, right next to the front door. I sprinted to the door, locked the dead bolt from the inside, ran back to the computer, removed the stick without bothering to see if it was done, unplugged the computer power cord, and shoved it back into the outlet without counting to six. I went inside the bathroom and shut the door. Using the toilet for a step stool, I jimmied open a push-out window above it, and ungracefully hauled myself and my backpack through the opening. Landing in a patch of weeds, I crouched, listening, until I heard the front door open. As soon as it clicked shut, I headed across the street.

  Taking a break to smoke cigarettes, two workmen from a screen printing shop watched as I sprinted toward them and made my way to the corpse caddy, which I’d backed in next to a Dumpster. I shook out my hair, adjusted my bra, and climbed into the hearse. Pulling out, I gave them a big smile and wave. Dumbfounded, one just stared after me, but his buddy waved back.

  I drove by Soup’s place to give him the memory stick.

  “Hey, interesting set of wheels you’ve got there. Is that what retired people drive these days? Casket baskets?”

  “How fast can we see what’s on there?” I said, ignoring his smirk.

  Soup told me he’d get on it right away and call me later.

  When I arrived at the Block, the parking lot was jammed and loud music emanated from one corner of my bar. Cutting through the crowd of people, I found Ox and pulled him into the kitchen.

  “I don’t know what’s going on yet, but we need to get Lindsey out of her Derma-Zing contract. I don’t think we w
ant her to have any further contact with Holloman or his company.”

  Ox smiled. “I was going to tell you the exact same thing. I just had a talk with the modeling agency and Lindsey has fulfilled her new contract. But even if she hadn’t, I agree that we don’t want her involved anymore.”

  The physical nearness to Ox fired up my nerve endings and my hands migrated toward his body. I picked up a discarded beer carton to give them something else to do, and updated him on Peggy Lee’s laboratory. “What do you think about it all?”

  Ox removed the cardboard box from my grip, tossed it against a nearby wall, and took both of my hands in his. “I think I’d be destroyed if something happened to either one of the women in my life, Jersey. That would be Lindsey and you, just in case you’re wondering.”

  We would have stood like that long enough to enjoy the moment if Ruby hadn’t hustled by. “You’d better get out there and tell your daddy to quit giving away shrimp and crab leg platters. The hush puppies and chicken fingers were one thing. But all the seafood’s gonna add up to a pretty penny.”

  I let go of Ox’s hands. “What is he up to now? And who brought a band in here?”

  “Beats me,” Ox said. “I just got here.”

  Ruby let out a jolly belly laugh. “You two didn’t set this up?”

  We shook our heads. A cook shouted something to another cook and a server hurried by looking stressed.

  “Oh, this is priceless!” Ruby said. “Spud and his friends have put on a fund-raiser. Got Wilmington’s art council involved and everything. Flier advertises fifty-cent beer, dollar drinks, and free food all night long. Plus no cover charge for the music. They’re going to auction off his two sculptures at ten o’clock.”

  She pulled a folded sheet of paper from her apron pocket and passed it over.

  Incredulous, I scanned the page. “They made a flier? And who authorized free food?”

  “Spud said you did. That you were helping him raise enough money to pay for the damage at the shooting range.” With a final hearty laugh, Ruby scooted off. “Your daddy is a piece of work.”