Deadly Ruse

by E. Michael Helms

  I headed west on Highway 98 to the outskirts of Parkersville where White’s was located. A short drive north on Sandy Bayou Road brought me to the tall, slatted chain-link fence surrounding the several acres of White’s salvage yard. I drove through the open gate and parked the Silverado between a NAPA delivery truck and a midsixties primer-gray and Bondo Mustang.

  A couple of customers were seated on stools at the counter flipping through inventory books. Behind the counter a young man with receding blond hair was chatting on the phone. Near him, a husky older man with slicked-back silver hair looked up from a parts catalog. “Can I help you?”

  Ted was embroidered on the nametag sewn above the left breast pocket of his dark-blue work shirt. “I hope so. I’d like to speak with the driver on duty who worked the single-car accident just west of St. George last night. Honda CR-V, metallic green.”

  Ted’s bushy eyebrows arched. “You a cop?”

  “No.” I reached in my shirt pocket and pulled out one of Frank’s cards and handed it to Ted. “I’m with Hightower Investigations,” I said, using the best PI voice I could muster. Watching those old Sam Spade flicks does have its rewards. “The driver’s family asked us to look into the accident before the insurance hounds come sniffing around.”

  Ted glanced at the card and handed it back. “The county boys impounded it.”

  “Yeah, I know. I just want to ask your guy a couple of questions, strictly off the record.”

  Ted stared me down a few seconds, and then his face relaxed. “Okay, as long as it’s off the record. I don’t want Bo Pickron on my case.”

  “Off the record. You got my word.”

  “Charlie Baumgartner.” Ted turned and pointed to the east side of the yard. “He’s out yonder near the fence pulling a radiator and fan off a Pontiac. Third row.”

  I thanked Ted and hurried out the door. It hadn’t rained in a week, and my shoes kicked up dust from the crushed-shell parking lot with every step I took. By the time I reached the rows of junked cars the footing had changed to trampled crabgrass, sandspurs, and other weeds. I found Charlie Baumgartner hunched over the engine compartment of a Bonneville Coupe wielding a socket wrench and a long-handled screwdriver. The car was so rusted and faded it was impossible to make out the original body color or what was left of the tattered vinyl roof.

  “Muscle car,” I called from about ten yards away so I wouldn’t startle the guy.

  Charlie lifted his upper body out of the engine well, wiped his forehead with the back of the hand holding the socket, and squinted my way. He was around thirty, short and wiry with a shock of unruly red hair sticking out from under a faded Atlanta Braves cap. “Was once. Shame she ended up junked. I had the money, I’d restore her.”

  “A ’72?”

  “Yep.”

  “Thought so. My old man had one when I was a kid. Four-fifty-five?”

  “Yep. Only got a two-barrel, though.”

  “I bet it still ran like a bat out of hell in its day.”

  Charlie set his tools on a fender and pulled a shop rag out of his back pocket. “I’d drop a four-barrel Holley in her. Nothing ’round here could touch her then.”

  We sweet-talked another couple of minutes, and then it was time to get down to business. “Ted told me you worked the wreck on 98 near St. George last night.”

  Charlie found a clean spot on the rag and mopped his forehead. “Yep. Rollover. Hope the lady’s doing okay.”

  “She’s doing good. What do you think made the wheel come off?”

  Charlie frowned. “You the police?”

  That seemed to be a popular question around this place. I pulled the card out and gave Charlie the same spiel I’d used on Ted. “I heard you think somebody might’ve tinkered with the right front end.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Sheriff Pickron.”

  Charlie turned his head and spit. “The wheel didn’t come off, it collapsed. I did some checking after I got it on the hauler. There were some deep scrape marks on the lower control arm near the weld that ought not’ve been there. My guess is somebody fooled with it, maybe took a cold chisel and cracked the weld. That’s what I told the deputy. Reckon that’s why they had me haul it to impoundment’stead of here.”

  But how the hell would a person be able to take a hammer and chisel to Kate’s car without somebody hearing the racket? Then it dawned on me. In nice weather Kate often rode her bicycle to work. “You drink beer, Charlie?”

  He grinned. “Been known to down a few every now and again.”

  I reached for my wallet, pulled out an Old Hickory, and handed it to Charlie. “Buy yourself a case on me.”

  CHAPTER 19

  I was walking past the second-floor waiting room headed for 218 when somebody called my name. I turned and saw Frank High-tower standing in the doorway. He motioned for me to follow and took a seat in a corner of the room farthest away from the wall-mounted TV. There were only two other people in the room; a young man flipping through the pages of a dog-eared Sports Illustrated magazine, and a portly middle-aged woman watching a black-and-white rerun of an early Andy Griffith episode.

  “A nurse ran me out of Katie’s room a few minutes ago,” Frank said. “She said the doctor wants to check on her and then she needs to rest.”

  “Where’s her parents and Mark?”

  Frank ran a hand through his thick gray hair and fiddled with the collar of his light-blue dress shirt. “They went to lunch. Jim’s a Captain D’s addict, can you believe that? The man grew up eating fresh seafood his whole life, and now he prefers that fast food crap. Go figure.”

  “How was Kate when you saw her?”

  “She’s putting up a brave front, Mac. I’ll tell you, that girl must be hurting something awful, as banged-up as she is.”

  “Roger that.” I glanced at the others in the room and lowered my voice. “It wasn’t an accident, Frank. Somebody tried to take Kate out.”

  His jaw dropped. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I had a little visit with Bo Pickron this morning. The county’s got her car impounded.”

  “Whoa, slow down, Mac. That doesn’t necessarily indicate foul play. There’s several reasons why they might’ve impound—”

  “I talked to the guy who worked the wrecker. He said it looks like somebody used a chisel on the control arm. That convinced Pickron to at least have his guys check it out.”

  Frank clasped his hands together and rested his forearms on his thighs. “Damn.”

  “Yeah, my sentiments exactly. This crap is getting personal.”

  “Damn,” Frank repeated. “Who would want to hurt Katie? And why?”

  “Wes Harrison, for one. Think about it. Kate and Harrison cross paths at O’Malley’s. They make eye contact, and despite all the fancy scalpel work, Harrison is pretty damn sure he’s been ID’d. Then we start probing around, asking a lot of questions. Harrison knows Kate’s the only one who can connect the dots after all these years since him and Kohler supposedly bought the farm. So, he decides to shut her up before his little scam is ruined.”

  Frank sighed. “I don’t know. That’s reaching some, don’t you think?”

  “You got any better scenarios?”

  Frank shook his head. His face was pinched, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Just then I remembered another link to Harrison and the old gang I’d somehow overlooked. “I spoke too quick, Frank. Kate’s not the only one still around with ties to Harrison’s past.”

  He thought for a moment. “Alice Spence?”

  “Roger. I’d bet my retirement check she’s up to her pretty little neck in this mess somehow.”

  “Focus on her then, Mac. She just might lead us to Harrison.”

  “You’re reading my mind.” I decided to change the subject. “Did you make it to Pensacola?”

  Frank sat upright and rubbed at the old scar above his right eyebrow. “Yeah, very interesting.”

  I waited while Frank kept mas
saging the scar. “Well?”

  “Rachel Todd did leave a will. All legally witnessed and notarized.”

  “And?”

  I waited several seconds, but Frank’s thoughts seemed to have drifted off to Never-Never Land. “Christ on a crutch, Frank, come on!”

  “She left her entire estate to Sacred Word Missions. The will was filed with the Escambia County Clerk of Court by one Dr. Lawrence Garrett the week after Rachel’s plane disappeared. Garrett also happened to be named the will’s trustee by Rachel when she drew it up.”

  “Trustee... which means?”

  “Which means Garrett had legal control to administer Rachel’s estate as he saw fit, under the terms of the will.”

  “So, by Rachel leaving everything to Sacred Word Missions, Garrett had free rein with her money?”

  “There’s some legal mumbo-jumbo involved, Mac, but Sacred Word being a not-for-profit organization, that about sums it up. I believe a five-year waiting period is the max, but if good reason was shown that the decedent was exposed to a specific peril of death, that could be waived.”

  “And a pilot suddenly veering off course and disappearing somewhere in the Amazon jungle would probably stand a good chance of qualifying as a peril of death.”

  “My money says it would.”

  “This whole mess is starting to stink.”

  “How’s that?”

  “The day Kate and I visited Sacred Word; at first Garrett acted like he barely remembered Rachel. But after we pressed him a little he did a one-eighty and started spouting all kinds of info about her. Now that I think about it, that just didn’t fit. Seems to me if an attractive young employee, and a pilot at that, left a few million bucks to your organization and made you the trustee, you wouldn’t have a very hard time remembering who she was.”

  Frank chuckled. “I doubt I would.”

  “There’s something else. I remember Garrett saying they didn’t give up hope of finding Rachel alive until several weeks after her plane went missing. Yet he filed the will with the clerk of court the week after she disappeared. What’s with that?”

  Frank shrugged. “I’m not sure, but I believe Florida law states that a will should be filed within ten days of the death.”

  When Frank said that, I remembered reading something about “ten days” during my research on Florida wills. “Fine and dandy. But the guy claimed they beat the bushes looking for Rachel for weeks. I do know this much—Garrett’s starting to smell like last week’s garbage.”

  Kate proved to be a fast healer. On Monday the bandages came off, and by Wednesday most of the bruising had all but disappeared. The hospital discharged her Thursday morning, and she returned to Destin with Mark and their parents to finish recuperating at the family home. I’d spent as much time at Kate’s beside during her hospital stay as the nurses would allow and made sure I didn’t come across as a nuisance to her folks. By the time the Bells returned home, I’d developed enough rapport with the family to feel comfortable around them and to accept an open invitation to visit as often as I could.

  Meanwhile, I’d used the time to mull over and rethink the case and all its details from top to bottom. Sheriff Pickron’s investigators determined there was inconclusive evidence that Kate’s car had been tampered with. There were the scrape marks that Charlie Baumgartner claimed were made by somebody wielding a cold chisel, but Kate might have previously run over some debris that caused them. The control arm could have been a factory defect. Insufficient evidence of a crime was the department’s final determination. The “accident” was most likely the result of a mechanical failure, just as Bo Pickron had predicted. Bullshit. I put my money on Charlie.

  My instincts told me that Robert Ramey’s sweet cousin Alice was involved one way or another. Her past involvement with Wes Harrison; the surprised look on her face when she’d greeted me at her doorstep in Atlanta; the way she’d quickly dismissed as “far-fetched” Kate’s claim that she’d seen Harrison at O’Malley’s. Alice Spence was just too damn squeaky-clean for me to swallow.

  The evening after Kate left for Destin I dug through the daily newspaper and retrieved a pink flyer insert for a mobile-unit prostate screening that was blank on the back side. Why the hell they picked pink for a prostate ad was beyond me, but I needed a blank sheet of paper and there was no use wasting perfectly good printing paper to scribble on.

  Years ago I’d read a mystery novel, probably from the Hardy Boys. The sleuths had drawn a diagram listing all the pertinent people involved in the case, and by using a sort of connect-the-dots system had nailed down or eliminated the most likely suspects. What the hell, if it was good enough for Frank and Joe Hardy, it was good enough for me.

  I opened my catch-all drawer, found a pencil with a good eraser, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and sat at the table. I drew a crude boat inside a big circle in the center of the page and jotted the names Robert Ramey, Wes Harrison, and Eric Kohler/Travis Hurt around the boat. At top center I wrote and circled Rachel Todd; bottom center was Lawrence Garrett. Left of the page was Kate’s circle. Mrs. Darla Ramey’s and Alice Spence’s circles shared the right of the page. Then I started wracking my brain, trying to connect the dots or, in this case, arrows pointing to who was involved with who, and how.

  Three beers and an hour later I sat admiring my detective work. Hell, even old Sherlock himself would’ve been proud of my deductive reasoning. On second thought, probably not.

  Kohler/Hurt, Wes Harrison, and Robert Ramey had the obvious connection of working together and, supposedly, dying together. Kohler had a long-standing relationship with his phony half-sister Rachel Todd dating back to their days in the Texas orphanage. He also had a fling with Ramey, and he knew Alice Spence on a friendly but casual basis.

  Wes Harrison was romantically involved with Alice Spence and was Kate’s main squeeze.

  Robert Ramey knew Kohler intimately, knew Harrison from work, and was close to his mother and younger cousin, Alice.

  Rachel Todd was lovers with phony half-brother Kohler, knew Harrison and Ramey through Kohler, and was friendly enough with Kate to have had her picture taken at a beach outing with Kate and Harrison and Kohler. She’d also met and befriended Alice Spence at one of Ramey’s parties. And, she worked for Lawrence Garrett, making her the only person on the page with a known connection to Garrett.

  Kate was in love with Wes Harrison, good friends with Eric Kohler, and had rubbed elbows with Rachel Todd in social settings, although their friendship was casual at best.

  Lawrence Garrett was Rachel Todd’s boss and had obviously done enough background checking to know about Rachel’s time in the orphanage, her adoption by the Todds, as well as her education in Christian mission studies and pilot training. He was also named the trustee of Rachel’s will, which left her entire estate to Garrett’s Sacred Word Missions—a somewhat baffling event considering Rachel had worked less than two years with Sacred Word when her plane disappeared.

  Darla Spence Ramey, widow of Edmond Randolph Ramey, mother of Robert, and “Dear Aunt Darla” to niece Alice Spence, was well aware of her son’s relationship with Eric Kohler but had no idea Harrison and Kate were an item. That was about the extent of the elderly woman’s knowledge as far as I could figure.

  Alice Spence seemed to have been very close to “Cousin Bobby,” given the amount of time she spent at his home in Sandestin. She was infatuated with Wes Harrison, who was friends with Eric Kohler and Rachel Todd, but didn’t recall ever meeting Kate Bell. Add in her current roles as caretaker to Aunt Darla and president of Spence-Ramey Investments, and the pot was beginning to simmer.

  I got up for another beer but decided to change to something stronger. I poured a hefty shot of Dewar’s into a tumbler and sat back down at the table. The more I studied the pattern of circles and arrows, the more confused I got. I grabbed my Scotch and the scrambled drawing and headed for the picnic table, hoping the fresh air would clear my head.

  The sun had sunk below the shadow
y pines, leaving a faint orange glow filtering through the trunks. Far out over the gulf, thunder rumbled. I glanced at the scribbled mess that I’d hoped would help clear things up, but by then it was almost too dark to see. What the hell, it didn’t much matter anyway. I wadded up the pink sheet and tossed it at the garbage can with the upended lid on top standing next to the steps of the camper. It banked off the siding and fell into the lid. Ringer—three points for me. Whoopee.

  CHAPTER 20

  I’d spent a near sleepless night tossing and turning with visions of my crude drawing dancing through my head. Conclusion? Alice Spence. Someway, somehow, she was involved in the Wes Harrison case. The fact that Alice’s surname was listed first in Spence-Ramey Investments suggested she’d somehow gained control of the Ramey fortune—probably all legal and aboveboard as Aunt Darla’s power of attorney. Alice was too damn savvy to let a legal loophole get in her way.

  Kate swore she’d seen Wes Harrison at O’Malley’s, and I’d bumped head-on into an attractive redhead that could’ve been Alice Spence—based on Alice’s height and figure and her reaction when she’d opened the door at her aunt’s house during my Atlanta visit. If I’d only had the wits to notice her face that night, that little mystery might already be solved. Too late now. Some PI.

  Knowing that Dakota worked at the casino gave me a hunch she just might’ve seen Harrison around the place, maybe Alice too, if she was the redhead I’d bumped into that night. Alice and Harrison had been romantically involved, and if he was still alive, who knew? What the hell, the odds weren’t good, but it was worth a shot. So I drove by Dakota’s place on the chance she might be home. Her old Corolla was parked in the driveway. I climbed the stairs to her garage apartment and rang the doorbell.