Catch as Cat Can

by Rita Mae Brown

  “We'll see. Also, I'd amend thief to killer,” Mrs. Murphy said.

  The animals watched as BoomBoom patiently restored the huge lock to its place. Fair held it up but even his strong arms wearied. Harry took a turn to spell him.

  As Boom worked, Cooper told the group about Dwayne Fuqua. “. . . on the fringes.”

  “What about a high-school counselor? He must have made an impression on someone,” Susan said.

  Cooper shook her head. “Not much. Didn't get his diploma. The father abandoned him. The mother turned to drink and drugs. No one knows where she is or even if she's alive. He lived in a room in a small house past the old Ford dealership, I mean before they moved. Checked with his landlady. She said he was quiet. She didn't know much about him except he'd be gone for days at a time. Paid his rent on time.”

  “Did he have a criminal record?” Harry called out as she was holding the lock.

  “No. That surprised me.”

  “Odd.” Fair stepped in as BoomBoom turned down the flame. “My turn.”

  “Thanks.” Harry was relieved. “And he knew Don. That's really—I don't know. It confuses me. Waynesboro's just over the mountain. There's plenty of ways people can meet one another. I guess criminal intent doesn't have to be party to it.” She shrugged. “But with both of them dead—well, what could they have known?”

  “Or done?” Coop rested her elbow on the carton of phony money.

  “I still say it's drugs. People don't have cash like that unless they deal drugs,” Fair said.

  Boom, mask up for a quick breather, added, “Diamonds. Gems. There's a lot of cash in that business.”

  Susan lovingly looked at the fake money, wishing it was real and wishing it was hers. “Well, what about rubies or sapphires?”

  “Susan, what are you talking about?” Fair raised his voice over the sound of the torch.

  “Okay, you intend to get engaged. You aren't sure what stone your fiancée would like. The jeweler shows you loose stones. You pick one and the others go back. Retail jewelers don't keep a lot of loose gems. Not here, anyway. We're too small a market. So Don could have illegal rubies. I mean it wouldn't have to be diamonds, given what Harry said about the dirty diamonds. I'd forgotten about that, the press calls them dirty diamonds.”

  “Gold, silver, platinum. Maybe it was metal.” Harry was curious.

  “Yeah, but the next question is, Where would Don Clatterbuck or Dwayne get the gold, who would buy it from them, and why?” Cooper sighed, her head spinning.

  Harry smiled at Cooper. “What you're telling us is you don't think this money is about stones or precious metals.”

  “Right.”

  “Drugs,” Fair persisted.

  “The kingpin used Wesley, I mean Dwayne, and Don as mules.” Coop rose to take her turn holding the lock in place. “That's more likely.”

  “Don could hide drugs in the animals he stuffed,” Susan said brightly.

  “What an awful idea.” Pewter made a face.

  “What? You don't want to be stuffed when you die?” Murphy laughed uproariously.

  “I'll outlive you!” Pewter flared, flashing her fangs.

  “Who knows? Anyway, it doesn't do you one bit of good to think about death. There's nothing you can do about when you die but there's sure a lot you can do about living.”

  “Murphy, Pewter, let's not talk about dying.” Tucker hated the thought of dying.

  The torch cut off, BoomBoom flipped back her face guard. “Done!” She inspected the seam as she tried not to inhale, because the metallic fumes made her eyes water. “Not bad if I do say so myself.”

  The others crowded round as the fumes dissipated.

  “Let me clean up the floor.” Harry had brought a dustpan and hand mop with her, anticipating this. “It wouldn't do for someone to open the safe only to hear tiny metal bits crunch underfoot.”

  Once the floor was cleaned Coop stacked the fake money in the safe. “Okay, let's shut it, lock it, and then unlock it to make sure his combination works.”

  “No.” Boom put her hand on the door to keep it open. “Test the combination before you shut the door.”

  “Right.” Coop let BoomBoom twirl the handles, then stop them. Then she carefully rotated the center dial according to the directions found in Don's safety-deposit box at the bank.

  The clicking of the tumblers filled the room as everyone remained quiet.

  “Works.” Boom smiled. “Want me to shut the door now?”

  “Sure.” Coop nodded.

  The door shut with a satisfying, heavy sound.

  “What do you think about my idea of Don hiding drugs in deer heads?” Susan reminded them of her idea.

  “God, I hope there's nothing in my woodpecker.” Harry wanted to get that woodpecker back from the Culpeper sheriff's department.

  “My woodpecker,” Pewter corrected her.

  “Nothing has turned up in your woodpecker.” Coop allayed her fears. “But hiding drugs in stuffed animals would be a good way to transport them. Maybe you're on to something, Susan.”

  “Wonder how Don got into it?” Harry asked.

  “Greed. That's how everyone gets into it,” Fair said.

  “Where would they get that quantity of illegal substances to begin with?” BoomBoom checked her tools.

  “If they were selling marijuana that's not hard. It's grown here in the state and no amount of surveillance by helicopters at harvest time locates all of it. And people can grow it in greenhouses, too. If they sold cocaine, heroin, those drugs, they'd need a source in a big city. If that's what they were doing.” Coop picked up the empty carton.

  “What about legal drugs? Why couldn't they sell Darvon and Valium and Quaaludes?” Harry thought they were as bad as the illegal drugs.

  “Sure, but they'd have to have a contact. Either a corrupt physician or a company salesman. You can't just go out and get your hands on a jar of muscle relaxers.” Fair, being a vet, had a keen appreciation of legal drugs, since he was pestered by salespeople at regular intervals.

  “What about steroids?” Susan wondered.

  “Same difference.” Fair picked up the heavy oxygen tank. “Even someone good at chemistry can't cook that up in the kitchen. Like I said, you'd have to have a corrupt source or steal them from a patient.”

  “Are there drugs you can make at home?” Harry innocently asked.

  “Amyl nitrite,” Coop answered. “But it's a liquid, wouldn't be that easy to transport. It's the kind of drug that someone with skill could cook up in the kitchen but your customer would come to the kitchen to buy. Liquids are too much of a pain to transport great distances and the profit isn't that huge. The profit margin on illegal drugs or designer drugs from the big drug companies is huge. Don isn't going to have five hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in his safe from amyl nitrite.”

  “What if they stole frozen semen from high-priced stallions in Kentucky? What if the business was that? Some of those stallions stand for over a hundred thousand dollars. I know how the semen is cooled and shipped. If Roger kept going to Lexington he could be bringing back stolen semen. With DNA testing he'd have to have the real stuff. But he could do it. Maybe the car racing was a cover.”

  “He could. I never thought of that but I don't associate Roger with horses.” Fair put the oxygen tank down. “I guess he could have done it. Are we ready?”

  The others nodded; they checked and rechecked the place, then turned out the light and left. Fair gallantly carried the oxygen tank up to the truck just as he had carried it down.

  “Strong bugger,” Pewter said admiringly.

  “You didn't live with us when Mom was married to him. He really was worth his weight.” Mrs. Murphy remained neutral about whether or not Harry should get back together with Fair but she certainly appreciated his hard work on the farm.

  Fair pulled Harry aside after he loaded the tank on BoomBoom's fancy truck. “Have you heard from Diego?”

  “He called late this
afternoon from Montevideo. He'll be in town next weekend. He's escorting Lottie to an alumni fund-raiser.”

  “Oh.” Fair smiled.

  “She asked him.”

  “Oh.” His face fell.

  “And?”

  “She's making it hard for him.” Tucker loved Fair.

  “He's gotten better at expressing himself.” Mrs. Murphy was proud of Fair's progress and although she wasn't a big believer in therapy she thought it had helped him. He liked structure even for his emotions, and therapy gave him the illusion of that. She knew one could never structure one's emotions but Fair's sessions helped him gain insight into himself.

  “I thought we were going to the Wrecker's Ball.”

  “We are. I haven't changed my mind. You asked me at New Year's. As I recall you said, ‘Plan ahead.'”

  “I did, didn't I?” He was tremendously relieved, then he tensed again. “Is Diego coming to the ball?”

  “He is and I'll dance with him. I dance with all the fellows. I even dance fast ones with Susan if you all are pooped out.”

  44

  At eight o'clock Monday morning Roger O'Bannon was exhumed from his grave. As he hadn't been in the ground that long, he retained all his features and his digits but the body was filled with gas.

  Rick detested exhumations. They were unpleasant affairs but he felt he had to be at this one in case Sean showed up. Although Sean had promised his mother he would comply with her wishes, people could snap, change their minds. Emotions were like quicksilver even in the best of times. This, hardly the best of times, called for extra vigilance.

  Rick accompanied the body to Marshall Wells. As he worked, the new coroner said he couldn't promise when Richmond would return the results but he didn't think it would be longer than a week at most. Fortunately, this was a slow time.

  As he drove away from the coroner's office, Rick called Coop, alone in her squad car that day.

  “Coop, meet me at O'Bannon's Salvage.”

  “Trouble with Sean?”

  “No. But I want to go over those grounds again.”

  “Might it be a good idea to wait for another day? I would expect Sean's a little raw today.”

  “In a perfect world, you're correct and sensitive. But if he is in on this or if he did kill his brother, he might drop a card, you know?”

  “Okay. I'll be there in ten minutes. I'm at Route 250 and 240, want a sandwich?” A good deli was at that intersection.

  “Not hungry.”

  “Sorry. I forgot.” She was glad she wasn't at the exhumation.

  Sean was curt but not openly rude. He told them to go wherever they liked.

  First they walked the perimeter of the four acres. Rick liked to make sure he knew the terrain. Nothing unusual presented itself except for the fact that the business had room to grow physically, always a plus.

  The few small outbuildings contained gardening tools or small pieces needing cleaning. Some salvage yards left the cleaning to the customer. Sean discovered if he cleaned, put in a little time, he could command bigger prices. It was worth the effort.

  Then they pushed open the door to the garage. The large sliding door, big enough for vehicles, was locked but the small door, to the left of that, was open.

  “Neat as a pin,” Coop said.

  “Yeah.” Rick walked over to the hydraulic lift. “This is something.”

  “Nothing much here. I guess he wasn't working on anything. The books showed the last old car he sold was a week before his death. A 1932 Ford coupe. He got twenty-seven thousand for it. Deuce coupes. I'd love one.”

  “Yeah.” Rick wasn't a motorhead but he appreciated old cars. They were more individual or so it seemed to him. “Nothing out of line. He picked up most of his old cars in South Carolina and Georgia. The sources checked out. Guess he was waiting to find the next one or two. He seems to have contributed to this business. He wasn't the front guy but he worked. For one thing, Sean wouldn't have put up with it.”

  “Here's a bag of popcorn.” Coop bent over to pick up the empty foil bag. “That's the only debris.” She tossed it in the trash.

  They left, walking through each of the large outdoor piles of offerings. They tried the door to the caboose. Locked. Coop dashed back. Sean gave her the key. She dodged the puddles back to Rick.

  She opened the back door, then ran up the shades on the windows. The light streamed in. “Cool.”

  A potbellied stove sat in the middle. The floor, hard oak, was clean and no dust was on the two chairs and the heavy desk in the corner.

  “Sean's a neat freak, too,” Rick noticed.

  “This would make a neat restaurant. I hope he goes through with it,” Coop said.

  They opened the drawers of the desk. Nothing but an old cracked celluloid fountain pen.

  “Well, that's it,” Rick said. “I wish I knew what we were looking for.”

  “I'd have been happy with one marijuana plant in the window.” Cooper sighed. As she walked toward the door, she said, “I feel bad, we're tracking some mud in here. I'll tell Isabella we did. I'll even clean it up.”

  “Coop, it's not as though we've brought in slops. If Sean is that anal retentive, he can sweep it out.” As Rick headed for the door he looked down at the wet footprints. A beam of light shone on dried footprints, light mud. “Hey.” He knelt down. “This can't be more than a few days old.”

  Coop knelt down with him. “Yeah.” She followed the tracks: one person, big feet. Two strides and then back out, footsteps overlapping the entrance footsteps. “In and out.”

  “H-m-m.”

  “Boss, you worried?”

  “Yes.”

  “Me, too.”

  Pope Rat, observing them from his cozy quarters, growled, “Nipshits.”

  45

  Coop sent photographs of Dwayne Fuqua and Donald Clatterbuck to Bill Boojum in Lexington, Kentucky. Bill couldn't or wouldn't identify either man. He'd never seen them with Roger.

  Refusing to give up, Coop sent photos back to the dealer in Newport News. She asked him to show all his employees photographs of Dwayne, Roger, and Donald. Although none of those men ever worked at the dealership, it would have been possible that one or more of them could have dropped off a vehicle or picked one up to be delivered to Boojum's in Lexington, since a leasing agent would purchase cars from big dealers all over the U.S.

  Within two hours of faxing the photographs she received a phone call from Fisher McGuire, the general manager. One of his office workers remembered giving Dwayne the registration papers for him to drive a Jaguar to Boojum's. He even remembered that the car was a three-year rental.

  Large rental dealers like Boojum's would get a request for a specific vehicle, in this case a new Jaguar sedan, British racing green, tan interior. The salespeople at Boojum's would call their contacts at various Jaguar dealers until they found one matching their client. They would then pay for the car, have it driven to the dealership, and rent it to the customer. If the residual value of the car is accurately figured, a dealer can't lose on car rentals because the customer eats the depreciation, not the dealer. The customer is responsible for maintenance and is allowed a certain number of miles per year, usually twelve to fifteen thousand. Any mileage over that is charged at ten to fifteen cents a mile. If the wear and tear on the vehicle is excessive, the customer is responsible for costs when the lease term expires. Once the car is turned back in at the term of the lease, usually three years, the dealer sells it at retail value. The customer has the right to purchase the car at retail value.

  The program works nicely for those people not wishing to tie up a lot of money in a car. However, since they don't own the vehicle it is never counted as an asset but only as a liability. The tax write-offs and depreciated value present another labyrinth of issues that only an accountant can decipher. A renter needs a lawyer before signing a contract. The renter might be able to write off the monthly rental fee if the vehicle is used for business. However, as is often the case, what y
ou save with one hand the IRS steals from the other.

  Cooper nabbed Rick as soon as he walked through the door. He listened intently to her findings.

  “Boojum can't identify Dwayne?”

  “No, but it's possible he never saw who dropped off the car. Dwayne may not have been a regular.”

  “True.” Rick dropped heavily into his chair. “Who paid for the delivery?”

  “It was prepaid by Boojum's. They didn't specify a driver. Fisher McGuire, the general manager down there in Newport News, faxed all the paperwork, including the release form, to Dwayne Fuqua. McGuire was under the impression that Dwayne was a driver for Boojum's. Bill Boojum says no one at his dealership has ever seen Dwayne Fuqua or Wesley Partlow, pick your name.”

  “I can guarantee you someone had seen him!” Rick slammed his hand on his desk out of frustration. His coffee mug rattled.

  “Yeah, someone is lying through their dentures.” She held her hand on his coffee cup in case he lost his temper again. “So what's the deal? Are they running drugs in these rented cars? Each time over the mountain a different car is used. Maybe even a different driver. Lexington and Louisville are good drug markets.”

  “Hell, they're so rich in Lexington they can fly the shit in,” he growled.

  “Well, not everybody is that rich, Boss.”

  “It makes sense and yet it doesn't make sense. If Boojum is in on this he—” Rick stopped in mid-sentence, grabbed his address book. “Just one minute.” He found the number he was looking for and dialed. “Sheriff Paul Carter, please.” He waited a moment. “Paul, Rick Shaw from Albemarle County, Virginia. Buddy, I need a favor.”

  “What?” the sheriff, an old friend from Washington County, asked.

  “I'm going to fax you three photos. Will you take them to Boojum's in Lexington, avoid Bill Boojum, and see if anyone can identify any of these men?”

  “The big dealership there? Very high-end.”

  “High seems to be the operative word,” Rick said. “That's it. I'm conducting a criminal investigation here and I have strong reason to believe that Bill Boojum may be involved.”