4 The Marathon Murders

by Chester D. Campbell

  “Interesting.” Phil’s voice had an edge to it. “So he thought you’d tell him more than you told me, huh?”

  That hit more like a jab with a hypodermic needle than a subtle pinprick. “Okay, I get the point. Confession is good for the soul, right? I don’t think the client would mind my telling you our case involves Arthur Liggett.”

  I told him briefly about the Marathon Motors papers and Pierce Bradley’s apparent murder. I added that Agent Fought remained to be convinced of any connection between the two.

  “So you’re thinking Sharkey was looking for the papers?”

  “That’s my guess, but I don’t have any proof.”

  “And you’d really like the identity of his employer.”

  “I’d lick your boots for it, buddy.”

  “Well, your tongue’s in no danger. We checked Sharkey’s office and came up with a blank. Not even any doodles on the desk calendar. If this guy wrote anything down, he burned it before he left the place.”

  I thought of the possibility someone connected with our case had tossed the office before the cops, but the people who searched Bradley’s and Kelli’s places had hardly been that subtle.

  “What a character,” I said. “I wonder how he managed to hang onto his PI license?”

  “I can’t help you there. We don’t issue PI licenses.”

  “I know. Well, thanks anyway for the heads-up on Colonel Jarvis. I’ll get back to you if we learn anything of interest.”

  When I told Jill about the plan to call Jarvis into the assistant DA’s office, she slapped her hand on the desk as if trying to kill a fly. “Why don’t they quit playing their little boys’ games?”

  “Warren is a big boy. I’m sure he can take care of himself.” I really wasn’t so sure, but I hoped he could.

  “We promised to call them when we got back from the TBI,” she said. “Let’s see if they want to get together now.”

  She picked up her phone and dialed. I heard her say, “Kelli, this is Jill. Would you like us to meet you somewhere, or do you want to come over here? . . . Okay, we’ll be looking for you.”

  As soon as she hung up, Jill went into hospitality mode. Ever the consummate hostess, she had to serve food whenever mealtime lurked anywhere in the vicinity. “I’ll go over to the little café up the street. They have a darling tray with all kinds of sandwich fixings. I’ll be right back.”

  She hurried out the door, leaving me to wonder if my talents as an investigator would impress clients more than her mastery of the culinary arts. I didn’t have long to ponder the image before the phone rang.

  “Mr. McKenzie, this is Martha Urey,” said a voice I recalled from Trousdale County. “You asked me to call if I remembered anything else about last Monday night.”

  “Right. What did you come up with?”

  “Well, I was driving through town this morning after I finished my bus route, and I saw a car that struck me as just like the one in Pierce Bradley’s driveway.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as anything. It was parked at the store, a little red car.”

  My attention sharpened like the point on the pencil I held. “What store was that, Mrs. Urey?”

  “Cumberland Farm Supplies.”

  I thanked her, remembering Sheriff Driscoll’s account of Bradley’s fight over a bill he didn’t think his father owed the farm supply store.

  Chapter 17

  Warren Jarvis drained his glass and set it on the corner of my desk, where we had indulged in small talk while devouring a tasty array of sandwich fare. “That tea was delicious, Jill,” he said. “I don’t believe I’ve ever had anything quite like it.”

  I finished off mine, too. “It’s her own secret formula. We call it fruit tea. She pours in a mixture of pineapple and orange juice, plus a dollop of Marachino cherry flavored syrup.”

  Kelli smiled. “If it isn’t too secret, I’d like the formula.”

  “I can give you an idea, but I don’t measure the stuff,” Jill said. “I just put in what looks like the right amount. Say, I guess you two are dying to hear about our visit to the TBI. Why don’t you bring them up to date, Greg?”

  I gave them a brief account of what we had learned, and didn’t learn, during our meeting with Agent Wayne Fought. “The bottom line is, until we can come up with some reliable link to the Bradley murder, the TBI couldn’t care less about the missing Marathon Motors papers.”

  “So where does that leave us?” Jarvis asked. “What’s the next move?”

  Jill got up and started gathering the remains from lunch. I leaned back in my chair and tried to look more useful than ornamental. “I’m going to contact Sheriff Driscoll and see if he’s picked up any loose ends that might be helpful. I got a call from a lady we interviewed up there yesterday that gives me something to offer him.”

  “I thought it was a TBI case now,” Kelli said.

  “True. But the sheriff will still be a major player. Also, he seems to think quite highly of me, even if Agent Fought doesn’t.”

  Jill walked over and stood behind my chair, kneading the muscles at the back of my neck. She knows when I’ve reached an impasse and need a little boost to get back in the groove. She also knows how to needle me into doing something I’m reluctant to do.

  She gave my shoulders a vigorous squeeze. “Did you ask Warren if he had heard from Phil Adamson today?”

  I reached up and grasped one of her hands. I looked the colonel in the eye. “You may have a problem, Warren, though I hope not. I talked to Phil a little while before you got here. He said the assistant DA handling the Sharkey case wants you to come in and talk to him.”

  Jarvis had been sitting with his hands together. He began nervously twisting his Academy ring. “What on earth for? Does he think I did this deliberately? That would be murder.”

  “If it comes down to that, I’ll tell them the truth,” Kelli said.

  I raised a calming hand. “Let’s wait and see what he wants. Phil said it’s a young hotshot lawyer. He’s probably just flexing his wings. I had problems with a few guys like that when I worked for the DA.”

  That was before my widely publicized problem with Murder Squad Detective Tremaine, which wound up getting me fired by the District Attorney.

  “Just look confident and answer his questions calmly,” Jill said, always ready with motherly advice. She’d have made a good mama, I’m sure. We had tried, but the doctor finally said no way.

  “Should I turn myself in?” Warren asked.

  “No,” I said. “If they want you, they’ll call. They know where you’re staying. Did you work out taking some leave time?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got a week. I hope you can come up with some answers by then.”

  He didn’t hope it half as much as I did. This case was rapidly turning into a big time frustration. I wanted to recover those papers for Kelli and Warren’s sake, but the affair had also become a personal challenge. As soon as they left, I turned to Jill.

  “I’m going to call Sheriff Driscoll. Then let’s sit down and go over all our notes. There’s got to be something in there we haven’t honed in on.”

  When I got Driscoll on the line, I described our visit with Pierce Bradley’s neighbor, Martha Urey, and her call about seeing the “little red car.”

  “In front of Cumberland Farm Supplies?”

  “That’s right. Is the guy Bradley had the fight with still manager there?”

  “Hell, yes,” the sheriff said. “His name’s Malcolm Parker. But I never saw him driving any little red car. I’ll check him out. I don’t know if Wayne Fought’s contacted him yet.”

  “Who was the other man you mentioned? The one who tinkered around with Bradley’s airplane?”

  “Kid named Casey Olson. He’s in his early twenties. Local boy. His dad served in Vietnam near the end of the war, then worked on a tobacco farm until he moved into Hartsville. Casey is a troublemaker. We never caught him in anything more serious than drunk and disorderly, b
ut he’s always hanging around in the wrong places. I gave his name to Wayne, too.”

  “By the way, Fought told me he went with you to inform Patricia Cook about her brother’s death.”

  “Yeah. She took it pretty hard. I mentioned something about your missing Marathon Motors papers, but she was probably too distraught to pick up on it.”

  “Thanks anyway. Say, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know what you find out about Parker.”

  “Sure. I’ll give you a call.”

  I gave him both office and cell numbers, then relayed what I’d learned to Jill as I jotted down a few notes for the record. She printed out the case file from the computer and laid it on my desk.

  “Pull up your chair,” I said, “and let’s wade in.”

  I took a sheet of paper and sketched out a chart with headings for each day this week. We made shorthand listings of everything we had ferreted out, from Pierce Bradley’s rage on leaving his sister’s house Monday up to Martha Urey’s report this morning of the “little red car.”

  “Okay,” I said, “what pops out at you? Where are the gaps?”

  “The first thing is we haven’t established who else knew about the papers before they disappeared.”

  “Right. Craig Audain at the Chamber hasn’t checked in yet. Make a note on your list.”

  “We still don’t have any details on what happened back in 1914 that apparently brought this on.” Jill held a long yellow pencil and tapped it against her cheek.

  “It might be a good idea for you to dig a little deeper into the library’s files. Maybe look through the newspapers from that year.”

  Jill looked up with a thoughtful frown. “Don’t forget, Kelli hasn’t brought us copies of those letters from her great-great-grandmother, either.”

  I made check marks on the chart beside items we had discussed. “That still leaves the possible murder suspects in Trousdale County. Let’s see what we can get out of the sheriff or Agent Fought before we go tooling up there again.”

  Jill glanced at her watch. “It’s almost two o’clock. Where do you want to start?”

  “I’ll check on Audain. You can ask Kelli about the letters.”

  When I called the Chamber, I recognized the voice of the young blonde with the peek-a-boo hairstyle. “This is Greg McKenzie,” I said, “the worry-wart PI Do you have any news yet on the whereabouts of Craig Audain?”

  “Oh, hi, Mr. McKenzie. Not really, though I’ve heard a rumor that he’ll be back this weekend. Let me give you his home number. The office won’t be open.”

  I jotted down the number and thanked her. If we hadn’t made any progress by Saturday or Sunday, I’d keep his line hot until I got him. I looked around at Jill, who was just hanging up her phone.

  “Kelli apologized profusely,” she said. “She promised to make copies this afternoon and get them to us. Warren had a message at the motel to call the District Attorney’s office.”

  If it were me, I’d tell the young jerk to get real and spend his time on something productive. Fortunately, Warren wasn’t me. “I hope he gives a convincing performance,” I said.

  Jill leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. “I guess that leaves us with the library option. They have plenty of microfilm readers. We can both go at it.”

  I was about to reply when the phone rang.

  “Hello, Greg, this is Terry Tremont,” said the staccato voice of a hard-charging attorney with Tremont, Tisley and Tarwater, our best lawyer clients. We called them the Three Tees.

  “How’s it going, Terry?”

  “Great. For us, that is. We have a client who’s got a bit of a problem, though. I’d like your help with it.”

  “Sure. What do you need?”

  “We’re trying to settle an estate with a sizeable piece of property involved. It was bequeathed to two brothers. One is our client, Nate Yancey, who runs a local trucking company. He has no idea where his brother might be located. We need you to find him.”

  “We should be able to do that. Interestingly, we’re involved in another case where we ran into a similar situation.”

  “Two brothers?”

  “This is a brother and sister combination. Only they were very much in evidence and mad as hell at each other. Couldn’t agree on selling the place.”

  “That sometimes happens. Hopefully these two will agree if we can get them together.”

  “Is this something you need yesterday?”

  He laughed. “There’s no great rush, but I’d like to get it resolved without too much delay. Drop by the office when you’re down this way and I’ll give you the details.”

  “Jill and I are heading into town in a few minutes. I’ll catch you shortly.”

  I hung up the phone and looked around to find Jill with a big question mark on her face. “I presume that was the Three Tees?”

  “Yeah. Terry Tremont wants us to track down a missing heir.”

  “So you’re going to shunt me off to the stacks while you schmooz it up in the lawyers’ office, drink coffee or have a glass of wine.” The tone said she was only half serious.

  “Terry’s a Scotch drinker.”

  “Aha! All the more incriminating.”

  I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. “Tell you what, babe, you go ahead and get started with the microfilm and I’ll bring you a box of Turtles.” Her favorite chocolates. She couldn’t resist them.

  “Now we add bribery to the charges.”

  I gave up. She could always get the last word.

  Chapter 18

  I found Jill at one of the Nashville Room microfilm readers scrolling through 1914 newspaper files. She had been there by herself for almost an hour. I hated to get close enough to blow my breath on her, but it wouldn’t have been neighborly to refuse a client’s offer of a Scotch and soda. I reached over her shoulder and held out a red-striped box of chocolates.

  “Thank you, Mr. McKenzie,” she said, looking up with a grin.

  That “Mr.” tag meant I was back in her good graces. If I were in the doghouse, it would have been “Colonel.”

  She laid the box beside the reader and pushed the control to focus on a large advertisement. “It’s hard to keep from stopping on these old clothing ads. You wouldn’t believe the prices. What did you accomplish?”

  “I got the info on the man we’re looking for. Terry wanted to talk, of course, so I spent some time cementing client relationships.”

  She gave me a beady eye. “Did the cement have plenty of ice in it?”

  “Okay, super-sleuth. No putting anything over on you. What have you found about Marathon Motors?”

  “Not much as yet. I finally figured out the paper had a Sunday feature on automotive news. I’ve been reading through those. So far things sound like they’re going great. New dealers, new distributors. The man who was sales manager got involved in a separate company that took over as national sales agent for Marathon. I’m afraid it’s going to take several hours to go through all of these files.”

  I looked at the microfilm boxes she had stacked beside the machine. “Without any kind of date to go by, we’re strictly shooting in the dark, babe. Let’s hold off until we see what Kelli’s great-great-grandma can tell us.”

  We got on the road in the early stages of rush hour. The downtown streets hadn’t slowed to crawl mode yet. We had just reached the I-40 on-ramp when the cell phone rang. Jill answered it. Kelli asked our location and what we wanted to do about getting the letter copies.

  “Are you at your motel?” Jill asked. And, after a pause, “We’ll just come by there.”

  They were staying near the airport, which was on our way to Hermitage. Before we got that far, one of those pesky scattered thundershowers blew into our path. A few monstrous raindrops pelted our windshield, mutating into what my dad always called a gully-washer.

  “Slow down, dear,” Jill said in an urgent voice.

  “I was about to anyway.” I gave my usual excuse. I sometimes chided her that I didn’t drive n
early as fast as she flew in her Cessna.

  “I don’t want to end up in a creek like the plunge Pierce Bradley took into that lake.”

  “Which reminds me, I should probably call Wayne Fought and see if the Medical Examiner has made a ruling.”

  “You think he’d tell you?”

  “Why not, as long as I tell him what a great job he’s doing.”

  Rain blew across the hood at a sharp angle as I pulled up to the motel, a three-story brick structure with a covered entrance. Jill hurried inside, and I moved back out into the deluge, looking for the nearest parking place. We kept a couple of small, collapsible umbrellas in the Jeep, but those wind gusts made them of doubtful use. I parked, jumped out, and ran for cover.

  I found Jill waiting in the lobby. We took the elevator up to the third floor and looked for Room 317. Kelli opened the door when we knocked.

  “Sorry about the rain,” she said as I followed Jill in. “I should have brought this out to the car and you wouldn’t have had to park.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I like playing duck.” I glanced at the water splotches on my tan knit shirt. Though I don’t play the game, I like what they call golf shirts because they have a pocket for my pen and small note pad.

  Warren stood near the window beside a round table. “Come on in and have a seat. You might as well wait till this blows over. Shouldn’t take long.”

  He wore a tie and his jacket hung on the back of a chair. “Have you had your audience with the junior prosecutor?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. I explained in fairly graphic detail our version of what happened, and he seemed to accept it.”

  “I’m sure he wanted to know what the PI was after.”

  “Yes. I told him we had no idea unless it somehow involved the missing Marathon Motors papers.”

  I took the chair across the table from Jarvis. Jill sat at a small desk and Kelli perched on the queen-size bed.

  “How did he take that?”