Deadly Ruse

by E. Michael Helms

  I introduced Kate and myself. “I believe I spoke with you yesterday. We have a one-thirty appointment with Dr. Garrett.”

  Mildred’s eyes lit up. “Why yes, from St. George, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Mildred picked up the phone and punched a button. “A Mr. McClellan and Miss Bell are here to see you.” She paused a moment. “Yes, sir, I’ll send them right on back.

  “Dr. Garrett will see you now,” Mildred said and gave us directions.

  Our footsteps echoed on the worn hardwood floor as Kate and I followed a hallway to its end and then turned left down another to the fourth door on the right. Lawrence C. Garrett, Th.D. was painted in block letters on the door’s opaque glass window.

  I glanced at Kate. “Ready?”

  She nodded. I took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

  “Come in, come in,” a deep, friendly voice called.

  Opening the door, I stood aside for Kate and followed her in. A tall, large-framed man in his midsixties with a ruddy complexion strolled around a cluttered wooden desk and offered his hand. “Larry Garrett,” he said as we shook, “so nice to meet you.”

  Kate and I introduced ourselves and sat in the two padded leather chairs Garrett offered. “Now, how may I be of service?” he said, moving back to his own chair behind the stout desk. His thick hair and matching eyebrows were cottony-white.

  I pulled one of Frank Hightower’s business cards from my shirt pocket and handed it to Garrett. “I represent Hightower Investigations,” I said, figuring that as long as I didn’t try to pass myself off as a licensed PI, I wasn’t breaking any rules or laws. “We’re trying to locate someone who worked for Sacred Word Missions as a pilot in the late nineties.”

  Kate handed me the best photo she’d been able to find of Rachel, the same waist-up shot of Kate, Wes, Eric, and Rachel standing on the beach together in swimwear. Rachel was about three inches shorter than Kate, around five-five or so, a very pretty brunette with dark eyes and a petite build. In the photo she was wearing a modest white one-piece suit. Kate’s skimpy black bikini top didn’t make it any more comfortable to show the photo to a man of the cloth, but like I said, it was the best shot she had.

  “It’s my understanding that she used to pilot an airplane for your ministry somewhere in South America.” I handed the photo to Garrett. “Her name is Rachel Todd.”

  I swore his jaw twitched when I mentioned the name. His wrinkled brow furrowed deeper as he picked up a pair of glasses from the desk. “Rachel Todd, did you say? Hmm.” He put the glasses on and studied the photo.

  “Yes, sir. That’s Rachel on the right, next to her brother, Eric Kohler,” I said when he seemed hesitant. Maybe he didn’t recognize Kate from the photo, although that seemed unlikely.

  Garrett’s lips tightened. He stared at me over the rims of his glasses. “Brother?”

  “Actually, her half-brother,” Kate offered. “Eric was friends with my boyfriend. They both died in a boating accident several years ago.”

  Garrett studied the photo for another moment. He removed the glasses and set them and the photo on the desktop. “My condolences, Miss Bell. When was this photograph taken?”

  “In the late nineties,” Kate said, “a few weeks before the accident.”

  “I see. And may I ask why you’re trying to locate Miss Todd now, after all these years?”

  I took another deep breath and let it out. “Three men supposedly lost their lives in that accident. Their boat capsized during a storm, and all three were declared lost at sea. But now we have reason to believe that at least one of them might have survived.”

  “I see,” Garrett repeated. He glanced down at the photo and tapped a finger beside it a few times before looking up. “Yes, I do remember the young lady. But I don’t recall her ever mentioning anything about a brother or half-brother. She was raised in an orphanage in Texas from infancy until she was thirteen or fourteen, at which time she was adopted by the Todds, an upstanding older Christian couple who provided her with the loving home she deserved.”

  Kate made a kind of choking noise. When I looked she’d turned nearly as pale as she had the night she saw Wes Harrison at O’Malley’s. The Destin gang’s story seemed to be coming apart at the seams. I reached over and placed a hand over hers.

  “Miss Todd did work for us around that time,” Garrett continued. “She flew shipments of translated Bibles and study guides and other supplies to our missionaries in the field. She was a lovely young woman and a commendable worker, but...”

  I didn’t like where this conversation seemed to be headed, and I highly doubted it was anything Kate or I wanted to hear. “But what?”

  Garrett raised a hand to his brow and massaged his forehead. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Miss Todd’s plane apparently crashed somewhere in the jungle around that time.”

  Kate and I sat dumfounded while Garrett explained the bombshell he’d just dropped in our laps.

  “Miss Todd was delivering a load of New Testaments and food staples to our missionaries working with the Warao Indians in Venezuela when her plane disappeared,” he said. “She’d been following the Orinoco River west when for some inexplicable reason the plane veered off course heading south. It was last spotted over Canaima National Park in southeastern Venezuela, which borders Guyana and Brazil. Despite an intensive aerial search the wreckage was never located.”

  Garrett hesitated for a moment, looking pained. “After a few weeks, and only after we’d exhausted every means of locating her, we had to presume Miss Todd was deceased. She most likely perished somewhere in the jungles of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, either from the crash or... well, I don’t like to dwell on such things.

  “No one knows why the accident happened,” he continued. “Her airplane was inspected and serviced on a rigid schedule. The missionaries had radio contact with her that morning early in the flight, and then nothing. There was no distress call or any further contact from Miss Todd. She simply vanished.”

  “When did this happen?” I said when my mind finally stopped spinning.

  “Hmm, Miss Todd’s file should still be in our inactive records. Excuse me a moment, please.” Garrett picked up the phone and called Mildred. A couple of minutes later she brought a folder containing Rachel’s employee info. She handed it to her boss and stood patiently beside his desk.

  “That will be all, Mildred.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said and left the room.

  Garrett opened the folder and leafed through a few pages until he found what he was looking for. He ran a finger along the page and stopped about halfway down. He turned the folder to where we could read the date.

  Kate and I locked eyes. June 4—about two weeks after Wes and company supposedly met their fate in the Gulf of Mexico.

  “Do you have an address or phone number for Rachel’s parents?” I said.

  “I’m sorry, but Miss Todd’s parents both passed away shortly after she came to work for us,” Garrett said.

  “How about the name of the orphanage where she grew up?” What the hell, it was worth a shot.

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry. It’s against Sacred Word’s policy to release such information without a proper warrant from the authorities.”

  I was really fishing without bait now. “Could I have a quick look at the file?”

  Garrett frowned and stared at me like I’d completely flipped my lid. “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

  “No wonder you never heard from Rachel after the boating accident,” I said to Kate as I unlocked the Silverado. “Why didn’t you try to get in touch with her here?”

  Kate was still a little pale and looked stunned from what we’d learned, not only about Rachel’s likely demise, I figured, but also the fact that she and Eric might not have been siblings at all. “Dang, Mac, I was a zombie for weeks after Wes’s and Eric’s deaths,” she said. “And when I did think about Rachel I couldn’t remember the name of the place
where she worked. After a while, when I hadn’t heard from her in so long, I guess I assumed she’d moved back to Texas. We were never very close anyway.”

  Kate barely said another word until we were crossing Pensacola Bay on our way back to St. George. She’d been staring aimlessly out the window at the dark, choppy water as if she’d find the answer to whatever questions were running through her mind there. Finally she turned to me. “Eric or Rachel never mentioned a thing about any orphanage. Eric said his father abandoned him and his mother when he was a baby, and his mother married a man named Todd when Eric was around three. A few months later they had Rachel.” She paused for a moment. “What on earth do you think it all means, Mac?”

  “I should be asking you that question.”

  Kate bit her lower lip, turned her head, and stared out at the bay again. “First Wes and Eric and Robert Ramey are lost at sea, and then Rachel’s plane disappears in the jungle just two weeks later. It all seems a little strange, don’t you think?”

  I kept myself from laughing out loud. A little strange? More like a bad script from a B-grade flick. “You don’t remember seeing anything about Rachel’s disappearance in the newspaper or maybe on TV?”

  She faced me again. “No, of course not. I wouldn’t have forgotten something like that. My parents or brothers, either. We just thought she’d taken Eric’s death hard and had moved back home to be with friends.”

  “What was the name of that town they were from again?”

  “Waxahachie. It’s somewhere near Dallas, I think.”

  I grabbed my notepad from the console and handed it and the pen to Kate. “Write down the name. Also, make a note to check the Pensacola and Destin papers for any articles they might’ve published about Rachel.”

  Kate arched her eyebrows, and I realized I was sounding bossy, something she didn’t take kindly to, so I quickly added, “Please.”

  About halfway to Destin I called Frank Hightower at his office but got his answering machine. I tried his cell phone. He was in DeFuniak Springs gathering evidence for a cheating spouse case. I gave him a quick rundown on what Kate and I had learned at Sacred Word Missions.

  “The snowball’s getting bigger, Mac. Sounds to me like you need to make a trip to Texas.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.” I also knew Frank was right. I had to do whatever I could to find out the truth about Dr. Garrett’s comment that Rachel Todd had no brother or half-brother. That statement had blown the lid off both Eric’s and Rachel’s credibility. Good or bad, for Kate’s sake I needed to find out.

  “It’s a hot lead, Mac. Do your research and see if there’s any orphanages in that area. If so, get out there pronto and find out if their records mesh with what Garrett has on Rachel. And while you’re there, ask around town and see if you can turn up anybody else who might’ve known or who might remember Eric or Rachel or the Todds.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Did you find out if Ramey’s mother is still living?” Frank asked.

  “Not yet. Believe it or not, I’ve been a little busy lately.”

  “Well, you’ve got your work cut out for you. How are the lessons coming along?”

  Christ, Frank must’ve been hyper as a kid. “At this rate I’ll probably be done in a year or two.”

  “Get on it, Mac. You know what they say, ‘Time’s a-wasting.’”

  CHAPTER 8

  I spent most of Thursday on the Internet preparing for my trip to the Lone Star State. First, I checked the archives of every newspaper across the Florida Panhandle I could access for articles about Rachel Todd’s disappearance, but I struck out. Maybe the lack of coverage was because Sacred Word Missions hadn’t wanted the bad publicity that would result from one of their workers meeting with a tragic end. Or, maybe the incident was so far removed from daily life along Florida’s Panhandle coast that it wasn’t deemed newsworthy. After all, Rachel was a Texas native with no local next of kin to mourn her loss. It was also possible I’d just flat-out missed something during my search. I made a note to check with the Waxahachie newspaper while I was there.

  I did learn there was an orphanage in Waxahachie: the Good Shepherd Christian Children’s Home, which housed and cared for some sixty boys and girls ranging in age from infants to seventeen-year-olds. I jotted down the address and phone number. I found no information on the Todds, but I planned to check with the newspaper obits or pay a visit to the Ellis County Courthouse to see what I could turn up.

  Kate was scheduled to work at Gillman’s Marina for the weekend, so I was on my own. I called the airport in Tallahassee and booked a flight with Delta leaving Friday morning at seven. I was up well before daylight to catch the flight. After an hour-and-a-half layover in Atlanta, I arrived at Dallas/Fort Worth shortly before eleven. Grabbing my briefcase from the overhead that contained my laptop, photos, and notes, I hustled to the baggage claim to retrieve my suitcase. Twenty minutes later, I was buckled in my Ford rental and heading south on Highway 360 for Waxahachie, a forty-something-mile drive.

  Several miles later I picked up Highway 287, followed it to its juncture with Highway 77 on the north side of Waxahachie, and pulled into the La Quinta Inn on nearby Stadium Drive. While checking in I grabbed a free map of the city and surrounding area from a display rack by the counter, compliments of the Ellis County Chamber of Commerce.

  By two-thirty I was settled into my second-floor room with a view of the swimming pool below. I kicked back to relax a few minutes on the comfortable king-size bed. This was going to be a quick trip. I’d booked a Sunday return flight; that gave me the rest of the day and tomorrow to work through the schedule I’d laid out. There was no time to waste.

  I opened the briefcase and scanned my to-do list. Good Shepherd was at the top. I wasn’t even sure I had the right orphanage, but it was located in Waxahachie, the town Eric Kohler claimed to be from. And with him and Rachel passing themselves off as brother and sister, it was the best shot I had to go on. But what if Eric had lied to Kate about his hometown, or Rachel had fed Sacred Word Missions a line of bull about being raised in an orphanage? This little trip to Texas could prove to be a total wild goose chase.

  I stripped down to my skivvies and made a quick trip to the bathroom to wash up and trim and shave around my beard. Kate had talked me into keeping it, even though more gray bristles seemed to be invading the reddish-blond every week. After brushing my teeth I put on clean Dockers, a blue button-up shirt, leather deck shoes, and a sports coat. Not bad, I decided, giving myself a quick once-over in the mirror. To hell with a tie.

  I decided a cold call to Good Shepherd Christian Children’s Home would be better than wading through a maze of telephone transfers to find the person I needed to talk to. I scanned the map as I walked to my car. The orphanage was located on the west side of town. I cranked the Ford and drove south into downtown Waxahachie. Approaching Main Street I caught sight of the Ellis County Courthouse, a huge, gothic-style structure that would look more at home in medieval Europe than modern Texas.

  I took West Main to Brooksfarm Road and hung a left. Crossing under Interstate 35, I eased into the right turnoff lane and drove through a wrought iron gateway onto Good Shepherd’s grounds. The winding road led to a cluster of wooden buildings, all painted the same white with forest-green trim and metal roofing. Acres of greening lawn were trimmed and weed-free. Sidewalks were neatly edged, and there wasn’t a trace of litter or debris from trees or bushes to be found anywhere. The property was as well-maintained as any military base I’d seen during my twenty-four years in the Marine Corps.

  A hundred yards beyond the buildings stood an athletic complex; a couple of the fields had chain link fencing and tall light poles. I parked near what appeared to be the main office building. Climbing out of the car, I heard kids’ voices shouting from the direction of the athletic fields. The research I’d done on Good Shepherd emphasized how the home was dedicated to the total well-being of the children entrusted to their care, in body, mind, a
nd spirit. My first impression was these people had their act together and practiced what they preached.

  I guessed right about which building was the office. With its multi-hipped roof and wraparound porch, it looked more like a large family home from the early twentieth century than an orphanage business center. Most of the other structures on the property were elongated, reminding me of military barracks but with a more homey flair. Above the office’s wide covered porch was a sign in large block lettering: Good Shepherd Children’s Christian Home, established 1934. Below, in smaller letters, Administrative Offices.

  I glanced at my watch. Quarter to four, no time to lose. I hustled up the stairs and across the porch to find the front door standing open behind a screen door. I figured that meant to come on in, so I did. Inside and immediately to my right was a long counter that once had probably been the bottom section of a wall. Behind the counter were a few desks, one currently occupied, and a long row of filing cabinets stacked along the back wall. An attractive young woman wearing a green skirt, white blouse, and braided blonde hair piled atop her head looked up from a desk and smiled as I approached the counter.

  “May I help you, sir?” she said in a Texas drawl, standing and walking my way.

  Early thirties, I guessed, with a trim and well-toned body. With her hair down she’d be a real looker. “Yes, ma’am,” I said, remembering my Southern upbringing. I slipped one of Frank’s business cards from my pocket, handed it to her, and gave the spiel about representing Hightower Investigations. “We’re trying to find information on a missing person who might’ve been a resident here several years back.”

  When she glanced at the card, I noticed the engagement and wedding ring combo. Some lucky guy had done well for himself. “You’re Mr. Hightower?”

  “No, ma’am, his associate, Mac McClellan. I flew in this morning from Florida.”

  She handed the card back and smiled again. “Welcome to Good Shepherd, Mr. McClellan. She extended her hand. “Pardon me. I’m Melissa Banks. Who is it you wish to see?”