Dangerous Undertaking

by Mark de Castrique

  “Yeah,” said Tommy Lee. “A bug I hope gets squashed.”

  Since there was nothing I could do to help Tommy Lee on Saturday, I decided to enjoy some normalcy and get as far removed from a multiple murder investigation as I could. At nine-thirty I turned into Fletcher’s pasture, which serves as the park-free zone for all the archery tournaments at our club. Although my wounded shoulder would not allow me to compete in my favorite hobby, I thought walking the course as a spectator would do my spirits some good.

  Susan rode beside me in the Jeep, dressed in lightweight, wheat-colored jeans and a red cotton blouse. She’d rolled the cuffed sleeves back from her wrists. A novice at her first tournament, she had taken my warning about ticks to heart and left little skin exposed.

  Breakfast had been a treat, not only because Susan had given into Herbie’s House of Pancakes and their buttermilk flapjacks smothered in real Vermont maple syrup, but also because she was a wonderful diversion from the cyclone of events usurping my life. Now she and the tournament promised to take me away from those problems for awhile.

  I parked between a 1963 Impala and a new Range Rover. The vehicles epitomized the socioeconomic span of the participants. Trunks and car doors stood open as archers selected their equipment for the day. To the uninitiated, it appeared to be a tailgate party or impromptu flea market. Susan saw everything through fresh eyes, and as we walked along, she didn’t hesitate to barrage me with questions.

  “Why are there wheels on the bows?” She pointed to two men sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck. Each held a compound bow. The cam wheels at the tips and the multiple strings linking them together certainly gave the impression of a contraption that would have caused Robin Hood to shake his head in disbelief.

  I overheard enough of their conversation to recognize the endless arguments that keep archers jawing for hours: magnesium vs. wood vs. aluminum for bow construction, the ideal arrow weight, the perfect flight speed, ad nauseam.

  “The wheels act like pulleys on a block and tackle rig,” I explained. “Draw back the bow and sixty pounds of effort can be reduced to thirty pounds. The more power in a bow, the harder it is to pull. This design lets even a woman shoot a hunting bow.”

  “Even a woman?” Susan drenched me with sarcasm.

  “Did I say woman? I meant even a wimp like myself.”

  “Barry!”

  I heard my name on the open air.

  “Barry,” shouted Josh Birnam. He stood at the end of the row of cars, waving his bow over his head.

  Josh and I could pass for brothers. The color of our sandy, curly hair matched perfectly, and we both cut it the same. Josh wore glasses and stood a couple of inches taller at an even six feet, but we drew the same length arrow which, in an archer’s eye, made us the same height. He was thirty-five, five years older than me, and he looked it, thank God. As we walked toward him, I enjoyed watching the curiosity grow on his face.

  “Josh, you know Dr. Susan Miller.”

  He shook her hand and then looked at me. “So, you brought a doctor along just to back up this phony sling as your excuse to get out of the tournament?”

  “That’s right. I did his surgery myself,” said Susan.

  Josh didn’t miss a beat. “Well, that explains it.”

  “Explains what?” asked Susan.

  “Why you’re with this turkey. Professional duty, right? No good-looking woman would hang around him voluntarily. And I apologize, Barry. Obviously, you’re severely injured.”

  “Tell me, Josh,” she said. “Do you shoot arrows as well as you shoot bull?”

  “Unfortunately, no.” He laughed. “But maybe my arrow shooting will improve. I got the new bow, Barry.” Josh held out his prize for me to admire. The high-gloss silver and camo finish enhanced the image of its technical wizardry.

  “So, you went with the Lightning,” I said.

  “Yeah, Darton makes another bow I liked, but this one just has such a great feel. I jumped to a sixty-pound pull, and at full draw, it’s no heavier than my old one. Want to try it?”

  “With what?” I asked. “My feet?”

  “Hey, that might improve your scores,” he said. “Surely something can. I brought you my old bow and arrows.”

  He reached into the rear of his SUV and pulled out another camo-colored bow and quiver of arrows.

  “Josh is a certified archery addict,” I said to Susan. “He has to get the latest and greatest.”

  “Why are you giving Barry your arrows?” she asked.

  “My new bow takes a stiffer spine. And who said anything about giving. Shoot them, Barry, and if you like them, we can work out something on next year’s tax fee. The fletchings are in good shape. I’m not just giving you the shaft.”

  “This will be a first.”

  “Why do arrows have to match a bow?” asked Susan.

  “It’s all very scientific,” said Josh. “The arrow has to bend a little as the bow releases its stored energy, but the arrow can’t flex too much or it wobbles. Either way accuracy suffers. Barry has a wimpy bow, so he’ll have to use these arrows with this bow.”

  “I guess even a woman could shoot Barry’s,” said Susan.

  “Yeah, even a woman,” agreed Josh, not realizing he was trampling through a flower bed.

  Susan smiled at me. “So, show us what a real man can do.”

  We transferred Josh’s old bow and arrows to my Jeep, and then followed him to the practice range that hugged the boundary of the pasture and woods. Six targets lined the edge of the forest. Multiple stakes marked the distances from them. Archers waited in line for a chance to set their bow sights because once on the actual course, the distances would be unknown, just like in hunting. The archers would have to estimate and adjust their sights against the tested reference points.

  These targets were not the multi-colored concentric rings around the gold bull’s-eye that most people remember from a few hours of practice at summer camp. Instead the only clear spot to aim at was a small black circle on a white field. I realized as Josh sent four arrows inside that sweet circumference that he would be hell to beat whenever I started shooting again.

  “Okay. Ready as I’ll ever be,” he said, after nailing another four from sixty yards. “Let’s go join up with Doug and Sally Turner. We go off at ten. I knew they wouldn’t mind you tagging along, and the total number of entrants worked out so that we can stay a threesome without adding someone who may object to my little entourage.”

  Normally, tournament rules allowed four archers to shoot the course together, much like a foursome in golf. A path wound through the woods, passing by thirty different three-dimensional targets. Thirty molded replicas of deer, bear, and a variety of small game animals constituted the challenge. Clean “kills” scored ten points. Other hits counted for eight or five. A perfect round was three hundred.

  We stopped at the registrar’s table where Josh picked up a scorecard. Doug and Sally Turner waited along the pathway to the first target. Like church door greeters, they welcomed everyone and wished them luck on the round. Silver-haired and crinkled from years of outdoor activities, both would never see seventy again. Yet they lived as if their whole lives stretched before them, looking forward with excitement to whatever the next day held in store.

  Sally captivated Susan immediately. Who wouldn’t be fascinated upon meeting a storybook grandmother armed to the teeth. Battle gear included a quiver of twelve arrows hanging from her waist and a leather arm guard strapped to the inside of her left forearm with a matching, right-handed finger glove to keep the bowstring from slicing into the skin during the thirty times Sally would draw, aim, and release. The bow at her side gleamed black in the sunlight, uniquely wicked-looking with its high-gloss finish where most archers chose the greens and browns of traditional camouflage design.

  “Stay with me, honey,” Sally told Susan after I made the introductions. “We’ll show these men what we can do with their precious phallic symbols.”

  “Do
n’t mind her,” joked Doug. “It’s my fault she’s over-sexed.”

  “A legend in his own mind,” said Sally. She stepped up to the first stake and stared down the cleared forest avenue to the model grizzly reared up on hind legs. The menacing target looked a good seventy yards away. “Ladies first, I assume.” Then she said to Susan, “They always say that to make me take the first shot. I’m the guinea pig to get the distance, but then I fib about where my sights are set.”

  She slid her needle-pointed sight lower on its track, nocked an aluminum arrow and drew back until its small conical tip was flush with the front of the bow. Broadhead hunting blades were not permitted as the targets would be shredded before half the archers went around the course. Sally’s left arm elevated a few inches, and then held steady. A full five seconds elapsed. At last, the string twanged its solitary note of relief as the arrow leapt forward, hurled by the pent-up energy into arced flight. We watched the white feathers curve downward and slam into the frozen creature’s chest. A second later the smack of the impact returned to our collective ear.

  “Bravo, Sally,” cheered her husband, the spotting binoculars held to his eyes. “A perfect shot. Did you go at sixty-five yards?”

  “See what I mean,” she told Susan. “Gee, I can’t remember, dear. It was either sixty-five or seventy-five, I guess.”

  Josh shot next. The power of the new bow propelled his arrow in a much flatter trajectory, but Doug sighed behind the binoculars. “No, just outside the kill area, up on the neck. Better not allow for much drop.”

  Doug’s own arrow arced more than Josh’s but struck lower. Sally had spotting honors and announced, “You just raised his growl three octaves. He’s alive, but you killed his future children.”

  The banter continued throughout the entire round. I had expected Josh to carry the day; but Sally, inspired by Susan’s presence, made kill after kill. As we walked away from the last target, Doug double-checked his math and proudly declared his wife had set a new personal record. She finished only three points behind Josh and stood a good chance of winning the Woman’s First Place Trophy.

  “Drinks are on me,” said Sally, and led us over to the volunteer fire department’s concession stand.

  We commandeered an empty table. Josh tossed several bags of shelled peanuts in the middle to keep us going while the tournament rankings were tabulated.

  Doug Turner tore open a corner of one packet and poured salted nuts in his hand. “You know what I like about goobers? That.”

  He pointed to an adjacent picnic table where a young mother served slices of watermelon to three carrot-topped boys whose ages probably ranged from three to eight. The youngest shrieked, tears gushing down a face as red as his hair, and waved a pudgy hand at the yellow-jacket wasp that belligerently strutted across the juicy pulp.

  “Goobers don’t interest any bees or bugs I know of.” He tossed a peanut high in the air and caught it in his mouth.

  “I once performed an emergency tracheotomy at a baseball game,” said Susan. “The guy caught three peanuts in his windpipe. I don’t worry about someone catching a watermelon in his mouth.”

  “See, Doug. I’ve told you that a thousand times,” said his wife. “You don’t want me to go cutting on your throat, do you?”

  “Aren’t you kidding?” Doug asked Susan, taking an extra chew or two for safety.

  “Yeah, I am.”

  Sally laughed. “Child, you’ve got a devilish sense of humor.”

  Josh asked, “How long are you going to keep Barry looking like a goony bird with a busted wing?”

  “Probably five or six weeks. Then he’ll be out here losing his arrows like old times.”

  “Barry, she’s seen you shoot before,” said Doug.

  Sally wiped the flecks of peanut dust from her hands and looked across the table at me, her face suddenly aged with worry. “Why, Barry? Why would Dallas Willard want to kill you?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Guess I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. He was upset his grandmother had died. And he may have thought his brother and sister were selling the family land out from under him.”

  “Waylon Hestor’s project,” commented Doug, as if we all knew what that meant.

  “What?” The intensity of my single syllable caught everyone’s attention.

  Doug reacted as if he had said a cuss word at the church barbecue. “There was nothing wrong with it. Josh, your name was mentioned. Look, Waylon was a general partner bringing in limited partners to develop property. I’ve invested with him before. So have you, Josh.”

  “No, not exactly,” Josh corrected. “I’ve audited some of his deals in the past. He’s clean enough, Barry. He’s a real estate developer who lives in Asheville, but he has holdings in our county.”

  “This limited partnership, it wouldn’t by chance be to develop land adjacent to migrant work camps?”

  “Yes, it would,” Josh said. “If and when the county consolidated the worker camps, the limited partnership would begin development of land tracts owned by Waylon. The low profile was kept because of the politics involved, but nobody did anything illegal. Waylon already owns the property.”

  “Yeah, but I bet he’ll be first in line to buy up the old camps as they are closed.”

  “Probably,” said Josh. “It’s public record, Barry. Carl Romeo handled all the legal filings.”

  “Carl Romeo? But he—” I stopped myself from blurting out that he hadn’t told me anything about it. Instead, I continued—“but he would make sure everything was in order.”

  “Exactly my point, Barry.”

  Chapter 16

  I dropped Susan off at her condo, declining her offer for lunch and claiming I needed to review some files at Tommy Lee’s office.

  Fifteen minutes later, I turned down Vance Avenue. Down aptly described the sloping street whose sidewalks each hid behind a row of white pines that guarded the Saturday strollers from the Saturday cruisers. Vance Avenue dissected the heart of Gainesboro’s vintage neighborhood of choice. The houses were set back in generous lawns. Most were two-story brick or stone built in the 1930s. An occasional ranch sprawled across an acre, breaking the pattern.

  Carl Romeo owned a neo-Victorian he had constructed on the ashes of a client’s fire-gutted disaster. Suing the electrical contractor and insurance company for faulty wiring had not rejuvenated his client’s incinerated invalid mother, but it had provided enough cash for the client to move to Florida and Carl to buy the scorched, empty lot.

  A bronze plaque embedded in the stone column that marked the entrance to his driveway summed up the story: “PHOENIX HOUSE.” Fifty feet from the curb, the driveway split with one lane looping behind the house and the other ending in a brick-lined terrace used for guest parking. A powder-blue Cadillac occupied a third of the space. I pulled to the far right, allowing as much clearance as possible.

  Prior to that day, I would have turned my car around and driven off, not wanting to encroach upon someone’s Saturday afternoon company by arriving unannounced. But now social conventions and courtesies carried no significance because although I wasn’t sure where my action was taking me, action was required, no matter what proper etiquette decreed.

  I walked between purple and yellow pansies lining the Romeos’ sidewalk. This horizontal sea of blossoms rippled in the late afternoon breeze. The air moving over my skin felt neither hot nor cold, a curious lack of sensation blending me into the world around me. The phrase thermal harmony popped in my mind. It was the only harmonious thought I had.

  A wide, covered porch extended across the entire front of the house. Two Adirondack chairs and a cane-bottom rocker held sentry duty, their empty frames huddled in silent homage to some past conversation.

  As I reached the front door, I heard muffled voices at a distance farther than just the other side. Most likely, they were in the dining room if I remembered the layout of Carl’s house correctly. Too early for a dinner party. Perhaps a neighbor had dropped by,
and Carl could easily excuse himself.

  A brass knocker in the shape of a gavel tempted me to enthusiastically call the court to order. Instead, I used the doorbell which sent out a mellow chime proclaiming a wanderer at the gate.

  There was a faint sound of a door closing, then footsteps. No window or peephole offered advance warning that I stood on the threshold. The latch clicked, and I gave Carl a tight-lipped smile as he stood in the half-opened doorway, his eyebrows arched in unrestrained surprise.

  “Barry?” He stopped, clearly not sure what to say.

  “Carl, I need to talk to you.”

  “I’ve got company, Barry.”

  “I’ll just be a minute or two.”

  He hesitated a second and then opened the door wider. Perhaps he intended to step out, but I took the move as approval and slipped into the foyer beside him. On the left, closed French doors screened me from Carl’s company, which was just as well as it relieved the need for introductions and my awkward request that Carl and I speak in private.

  He led me through the archway on the right into the living room. I knew next to nothing about antiques, but I speculated the furnishings in the room were of significant value. Carl sat in an armless, velvet-cushioned chair and motioned me to the adjacent small settee. Now that we sat face to face, I wished I had rehearsed this conversation. Carl allowed no time to craft an opening sentence.

  He folded his arms on his chest and asked, “So what’s this about?”

  “It’s still about Dallas Willard and the Willard property. It’s about your not telling me about your involvement in a venture to get the land.”

  He paled and his tongue flickered across his upper lip. Reading his face proved difficult. A tangled mixture of anger and fear. He leaned forward, placing a hand on each of his knees. The fingers whitened slightly as he gripped his khaki pants.

  In a voice barely above a whisper, he said, “That’s not fair. You asked me to speculate on the value.”

  “I didn’t think we were splitting legal hairs, Carl. The context was what could have caused Dallas Willard to behave as he did. Any individuals or situations that could have pressured him were certainly relevant to my questions.”