by Andy Straka
“Now that you’ve broken this chef’s heart,” Nicole said, “you think Clayton may have had second thoughts and gone back to whipping up some gourmet with her again?”
“Exactly what I’ve been thinking.”
“The doctor likes the danger.”
“Probably.”
“And you’re afraid he might tip off his on-again lover if we tell him what we’ve already found.”
Toronto nodded. “That’s pretty much the story.”
“Guess there’s only one way to find out,” Nicole said. “Go see the girl.”
10
Finding Maria Andros took us on a rolling thirty-minute drive along the Jackson River into Bath County and the village of Hot Springs. Hot Springs is a resort town tucked into the mountains, famous for its mineral baths, around which stands the Homestead Resort, a brick and glass cathedral to fine old Virginia living built around the turn of the century. There is a majestic ballroom and private bowling lanes for guests, a golf course and riding stables, and, in the winter, an outdoor ice skating rink and ski slope. There is even a falconry barn, where, for a fee, a licensed falconer will take guests on educational “hawk walks.” Toronto and I have known the man who runs the operation for years.
Down the road from the resort we found the chef’s address, a tidy frame house with flower boxes in the windows on the edge of the town near the stables. A blue Honda Accord was parked in the driveway. We stepped across the porch and rang the bell.
After maybe thirty seconds the door opened and there stood a striking young woman with short, dark hair. Her lips were full and glossy, her skin almost brown. Her violet eye shadow matched a sleeveless shell over cutoff shorts that made the most of her long legs.
“I don’t want to see you,” she said to Toronto.
“This is important,” he said. “I wouldn’t bother you otherwise.”
She glared at him then scrutinized the three of us for a few moments, finally stepping aside to let us in.
“Who are these people?” she asked, gesturing toward Nicole and me.
“This is Frank Pavlicek and his daughter Nicole. They’re private investigators. Old friends of mine.”
“Old friends and real private eyes, huh? Perfect.” She rolled her eyes. “You never cease to amaze me, Jake. What, did you folks come to try to Gestapo me out of my new job too?”
“Not at all,” I said. “Mind if we sit down?”
“Why not?” She gestured toward a small living room. I took a rocking chair in the corner. Toronto sat on the large overstuffed sofa across from her. She crossed her legs; her toes were painted several different colors. “Forgive me for not offering high tea.”
“I expect you get enough of that on the job,” Nicole said.
Andros said nothing.
“You have a beautiful place here.”
“I like it,” the woman said.
“We’d like to ask you a few questions, if that’s okay.” Nicole was using her best sisterly voice. Not a put-on. It was genuine. We’d all agreed ahead of time that she should be the one to take the lead in talking to Andros.
“Go right ahead,” Andros said. She kept glancing over at Toronto. “I’m listening.”
“Did you know that Jake keeps falcons?”
“What? Those birds he hunts with? Sure, I know about them.”
“Where were you yesterday morning about nine o’clock?”
“Yesterday? Here, asleep in bed. I worked late the night before.”
“Were you alone?”
She peeked at Toronto again, then turned and stared at us, expressionless. “Yes, I was alone.”
“I lost Jazzy,” Toronto said. “Think someone may have taken him or even shot him.”
Andros’ eyes grew wide. She glanced out the window for a second.
“Do you know anything about it?” Nicole asked.
“Who, me?” The young woman laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”
“You have to admit you were pretty upset with me last time I saw you,” Toronto said. His monotone reminded me of how he used to question suspects in the Bronx. Had he felt something for this woman? It was impossible to tell.
She folded her arms. “Not enough to kill your stupid bird.”
“We didn’t say he was dead, Maria,” Toronto said
“What?”
“I just said I thought someone shot Jazzy, but I didn’t say he was dead. Can’t find any trace of him, in fact.”
“Well, I... Hey listen, I’m not into any of your dumb games.”
“The Pavliceks and I will be going over that mountain again with a fine toothed comb at first light tomorrow,” Jake said. “Sooner or later, we’ll find Jazzy. Or what’s left of him. We’re not perfect, but we don’t miss much. You’d be amazed what kind of evidence shooters leave behind.”
Andros crossed her arms. “Go ahead. Knock yourselves out... Doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
“What about Dr. Clayton?” Nicole asked.
Her eyes grew a little narrower. “What about him?”
“Jake was flying Jazzy on his land when it happened. We went by to visit him earlier, which is how we found out where you were.”
“So.”
“Have you talked to the doctor lately?”
“No.”
“Really?” Toronto, said. “You sure you and he aren’t dancing a tango again?”
Andros spat out a grunt. “You’ve got some brass, Jake. After what you did . . .” She paused. She seemed about to cry and turned her head away for a moment to compose herself. “Why should I tell you anything about my life?”
Toronto looked embarrassed. When she turned back to us, her eyes brimmed with tears. They were beautiful eyes. There was no getting around that.
“You wouldn’t object to being fingerprinted though, would you, if the sheriff up in Leonardston asked?” Nicole said.
“Why should I? Look, Jake, I didn’t do anything to your friggin’ bird, okay?”
Toronto rubbed his hands together. “Okay.”
Andros stood, signaling an end to our interview. “Look. I’ve answered your questions. I’d like you all to please leave now.”
“All right,” Nicole said.
We all stood and moved toward the door. Andros followed. We were almost through it when she said, “Jake?”
He turned. “Yeah?”
“I hate what you did to me. In my book it makes you lower than low.”
Toronto stood on the threshold of the apartment. He took in a deep a breath and let it out. “You’re right,” he said. “It wasn’t the way I should have handled the situation. I was trying to do a job, but that’s no excuse. I apologize. I used you and I was wrong.”
Her demeanor shifted. “Like I said, I had nothing to do with it, but I’m sorry about what happened to your falcon.”
Toronto nodded. “Me, too.”
As we turned to leave I noticed a coat rack and a caddie for shoes beside the door.
No falcon feathers. No Frye boots. No smoking guns.
11
Gabriel Wylie came strolling in though the front door of Lord Alfred’s Smokehouse and Deli in Leonardston a little after noon. The place was exactly the kind of hangout Toronto had described to us on the way over—retro seventies/eighties kitsch complete with a PacMan video game. The lunch counter was busy enough, with about a half dozen customers in the process of ordering or consuming already purchased sandwiches and drinks, but we weren’t there for lunch. Wylie caught Toronto’s eye and made a beeline for our booth.
“Thanks for coming,” he said as he slid into a chair next to Toronto across the table from Nicole and me.
“You come here often, do you?” I asked, looking around some more. I was concerned about eavesdropping. This being a small town, someone might recognize Wylie and wonder what he was doing meeting with Toronto and a pair of investigators.
“Never,” Wylie said. “It’s why I picked here.”
“Smart. What else d
o you have to tell us?” Toronto was in no mood for chit-chat.
Wylie glanced around the deli as if he wanted to make sure no one else was listening to him. “If I tell you guys something, you have to promise me you’ll keep my name out of it.”
“Done,” I said. If we were talking about criminal activity, Wylie might be compelled to testify, but no need to burden him with that just yet, or slow him down when he seemed ready to talk.
He hesitated before lowering his voice. “What do you people know about illegal dumping?”
I looked him over. He was still in his work clothes but had cleaned himself up a little bit and combed his hair. I suspected the improved grooming had something to do with Nicole being there. Then again, his appearance upgrade might have had something to do with a genuine desire for doing good. “What kind of illegal dumping?” I asked.
He lowered his voice even further. “Wastewater.”
“Water?”
“Yeah. When they drill in some of the mines a few miles from here, there’s lots of wastewater produced, and they can’t just dump it anywhere legally because it seeps into the groundwater and the watershed.”
“So what does any of that have to do with my falcon?” Toronto asked.
“One of the guys I work with at the construction site drives a tanker truck part time for one of the big haulers around here. Normally, he dumps his wastewater loads at the treatment plant, but he told me a couple of weeks ago they sent him somewhere else to dump his load when the line got too long at the plant. Guess where?”
“Up where Jake lost his bird,” Nicole said.
“Exactly.”
“Are you saying he just dumped his wastewater load on the ground?”
“No, no. He said there was a pipe and a place to dump, except he wasn’t sure what it was all about. He just thought it seemed a little fishy, that’s all.”
“So why’d he tell you?”
“Because he knows I care about stuff like that. I’ve been meaning to look into it some more, but I’ve been so busy lately on the job, I haven’t had time.”
“And this was still on Dr. Clayton’s land?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure the doctor owns all of the land up that way. That’s what all the signs up there say anyway—Clayton Farms.”
“I still don’t see the link to Jake’s falcon,” I said.
Wylie brushed a strand of hair back from his forehead. “Don’t you get it? Maybe Toronto here was getting a little too close to somebody’s illegal operation. Maybe the bird landed on their dumping station or something and they freaked when they saw that stuff you put on its legs.”
“You mean the leather jesses and tail transmitter.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
Toronto leaned forward in his chair. “Okay. We’ll look into it,” he said. “Do you think we could get this guy to give us directions to where he dumped his load?”
“I’ve done you better than that.” Wylie fished into the front pocket of his blue jeans. “Before I came over here just now, I got him to draw this out for me.” He pulled out a crumpled packing list for construction supplies and spread it on the table. A crude map was drawn in blue ink on the back.
“You know if we find anything, your friend may have to talk to the state or federal authorities,” Nicole said.
“Yeah, well, when you guys showed up this morning, I got to thinking about that. If there really is anything bad going on here, I figured maybe you folks were better able to look into this kind of stuff than me.”
“And take whatever heat comes down,” she said, staring at him.
Wylie looked back at her for a moment. I wondered if he got the fact that in Nicole’s estimation he’d just dropped a peg or two. If he did, he wasn’t about to show it. “Pretty much,” he said. “I don’t want this guy to lose his job over giving me this information . . . me neither.” He turned and looked at Toronto and me.
“If what you’re saying is true, Mr. Wylie,” I said. “Losing your job may turn out to be the least of your worries.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dr Clayton seems like a civilized guy. But illegal haulers generally don’t look too kindly on whistle-blowers.”
“Hey. That’s why I came to you people. This is the kind of thing you do for a living, isn’t it?”
Toronto, Nicole, and I all exchanged glances around the table.
“It is indeed,” Toronto said.
12
A small sign marked the turnoff from the main highway onto the dirt road shown on the truck driver’s crudely-drawn map. Posted signs hung at intervals along a wire fence told us we were still on Clayton Farms land. The early afternoon sun baked the earth like a brick oven. Nothing moved in the woods but insects.
The road ended at a small storage building beside which stood the capped drainpipe the truck driver must have been talking about. No one was dumping water now. The place looked deserted. It didn’t exactly look like the type of enterprise someone would shoot a bird over, no matter how motivated they might have been to prevent discovery.
The three of us climbed out of Toronto’s Jeep as we pulled up next to the building.
“Not much here,” Toronto said.
I watched as he examined the door to the building. “I’ve always admired your facility for understatement.”
He continued looking over the door. “It’s locked and it’s alarmed.”
Nicole stepped up beside me. “Any way to disarm it?”
Toronto frowned. “Not easily.”
They started talking about circuit boards and digital mumbo-jumbo.
I stepped back and took a look around. Was a dead bird, the sketchy testimony of an unseen truck driver, and a lock and alarm in the middle of the woods probable cause enough to call for help? Not really.
“Hey guys. How about this for an idea?”
Toronto and Nicole turned to look at me.
“Let’s just break-in and trip the alarm,” I said.
“What?” Nicole looked horrified. “You give us enough time, we can probably disarm this thing.”
“ ‘Probably’ isn’t good enough. I, for one, don’t care to sit around here all day. And what’s the worst that can happen? Jake here is on good terms with the owner and has permission to be on this land. We can always explain we were just following up on a lead over the bird shooting, and we’re all armed in case something worse should happen.”
Jake began to nod his head. “Makes good sense to me. I’ve got a sledgehammer and a couple of crowbars in the back of the Jeep.”
“We’ll have to pay for any damage to the door, of course, but maybe the good doctor will show mercy on us.”
Nicole continued to look at me like I had a screw loose. “Men,” she said, rolling her eyes. “No use thinking through an elegant solution to a problem when you can just use brute force.”
“Exactly.” I smiled.
Toronto smiled back, and less than three minutes later we had the door open with a broken console hanging by a tangle of wires to one side with its panel blinking. Pulling the door back, we stepped inside.
“Well, that was pretty much a waste of good muscle,” Toronto said.
The small structure was completely empty except for a clipboard hanging on the wall with a sign-in sheet and a list of drop-offs made by tank truck drivers. Affixed to a bulletin board beside the clipboard a large official-looking placard printed with both state and federal seals indicated we were standing in a one hundred percent government approved dumping station—most likely surplus storage for the waste processing plant down the road for use when the plant got too backed up. In addition to breaking and entering, we’d probably just broken at least a half dozen federal laws.
“Great,” Nicole said.
“Ouch,” I said.
“So much for Gabriel Wylie’s dumping conspiracy theory.”
“Looks that way,” Toronto said. “But it was worth checking out.”
“You think Wylie
set us up?” I asked.
“Would make things interesting, wouldn’t it? Except I don’t think he’s that smart.”
13
Two Clayton Farms security men showed up in a Range Rover as we were trying to put the shed door back together. They weren’t exactly amused. Nor were they sympathetic with our cause, until we offered to follow them back to the house to talk to Dr. Clayton. Toronto’s presence also seemed to pacify them. Apparently, like the guard at the gate, they’d had enough dealings with him in the past to rest assured that we weren’t up to no good.
This time, we were ushered through a side door into the great house itself. Mrs. Clayton must have been out because I overheard one of the security types talking about her being in town for the afternoon. Dr. Clayton was at work in his study, seated at his desk staring at a pair of oversized computer screens, a black windbreaker draped over the top of the tall seatback behind him. The office also featured a theater size movie and video conferencing screen as well as a wall full of smaller video screens. Not to mention a small television studio with Clayton’s impressive library serving as backdrop. There was a mobile television camera, overhead boom mike, and equipment for satellite uplink. Clearly, we had stumbled into the never center of the Clayton empire.
Our escorts made themselves scarce as soon as we were ushered into the room, closing the office doors behind.
“Jake, I understand there’s been some kind of problem up at our dump site.” Clayton barely looked up from his work.
“That’s right, Doc. And I’m sorry to have to tell you we’re the problem.”
“Oh?” Now Toronto had the man’s attention. He looked over top of his reading glasses before squinting back at the screens and clicking something with his mouse. Then he pushed his chair away from the desk and stood up. “How is it you’re the problem?”
“We broke into the shed.”
“You broke into my shed?”
I stepped forward. “We did and we’re sorry. It was my idea. We’ll pay, of course, for any damage to the property.”