Lead-Pipe Cinch

by Christy Evans

  As I neared the top I heard idling engines and male voices carrying through the still morning. I wasn’t always the first one on the site, but I was usually early, and I cherished those quiet moments before the crew arrived.

  It was a habit I’d developed at Samurai Security. Arriving before my employees had allowed me uninterrupted time, a rarity in the hard-driving high-tech world. Yet Blake had somehow managed to turn even that against me in the final days.

  I shook off the memory. Blake was history. Period.

  When I topped the rise, emerging on the plateau where the site looked down on the surrounding pine forest, the sky was lit with red-and-blue strobe lights.

  In the middle of the gravel pad an ambulance idled, puffs of exhaust creating vapor clouds in the cold morning air. The sheriff’s cruiser was parked a few feet away, its bubble gum machine strobing in counterpoint to the lights on the ambulance.

  For one surreal moment I realized this must have been how my parents’ house looked the night my father had his heart attack.

  Then reality hit me. There were rescue crews on our job site. Someone on the crew was hurt, badly enough to call an ambulance.

  I slammed on the brakes and jumped from the car. I had to find out who was hurt, had to help if I could.

  My heart raced as I ran toward the edge of the trench. If someone was hurt, I knew it would be in the moat.

  Maybe it wasn’t that bad.

  Maybe it was just a false alarm.

  Maybe they didn’t need the ambulance after all.

  A deputy stood in my path, and I tried to run around him. His arm reached out as I passed, snagging the sleeve of my Windbreaker.

  “Not so fast, ma’am. No one’s allowed up there.” He nodded toward the site, where I could see uniformed men milling about.

  “I work here,” I snapped.

  “Don’t think anybody’s working today,” the deputy said, releasing my sleeve. “You might as well go back home.”

  “That’s kind of up to my boss.” I checked his name plate. “Don’t you think so, Deputy Wheeler?”

  “Who’s your boss?” he asked slowly.

  “Uh, Barry. Barry Hickey. Hickey & Hickey Plumbing?”

  The deputy eyed me up and down. My coveralls were relatively clean, and I’d brushed off my boots, but I was sure I looked the part.

  “I’m on the plumbing crew,” I added.

  The deputy didn’t respond, and my imagination started working overtime. Maybe Barry was hurt, and he wasn’t going to tell me.

  “Tell me what’s going on.”

  The deputy hesitated before he answered. “There’s been an accident. This site is closed while we investigate. No one will be working here today, so, as I said, you might as well go home.”

  “Is someone hurt, Deputy Wheeler? I know all the guys on the crew. Who is it?”

  Wheeler pressed his lips into a thin line. Obviously, he didn’t intend to tell me anything more.

  I debated my options. There weren’t many. Wheeler was broad-chested, and his arms strained the sleeves of his uniform jacket.

  I couldn’t push past him, and I couldn’t see around him, but I wasn’t going away.

  “Miss Neverall?”

  I heard Sheriff Mitchell’s voice from behind the deputy. As he loomed out of the fog, his face became recognizable.

  “What are you doing here?” It was more of an accusation than a question.

  “Just showing up for work, Sheriff.”

  The sheriff and I had become acquainted during the investigation of Martha Tepper’s disappearance. I had solved the murder, but it didn’t make us fast friends.

  I don’t think he had quite forgiven me for getting myself shot at. I wasn’t too happy about it, either, having been the target, but that didn’t seem to matter.

  “Well you heard the deputy. Nobody’s working here today.”

  “What happened, Sheriff? I work on the site here, and I know all the guys on the crew. If one of them is hurt, I’d like to know who it is.”

  Pine Ridge is a small town. The sheriff would know all the regulars on Barry’s crew. He should be able to tell me something.

  “We don’t think it’s any of the crew, Miss Neverall. None of us recognize him.

  “I called Barry, and he’ll be here soon. But he’s already been notified that you can’t proceed until we’ve finished our investigation into the accident.”

  He turned and walked away. “Go home,” he said without turning around.

  I went back to the Bug and climbed into the driver’s seat, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to stay. I reached for my thermos, grateful that I had been organized enough to make coffee this morning.

  That’s where Barry found me.

  His truck pulled up next to me, and I looked over at the mud-caked tires even with my window. A minute later Barry’s face appeared in the window, and I wound down the glass.

  “Sheriff Mitchell said he closed down the site and was sending everybody home.”

  “Not everyone,” I said, looking pointedly at Sean’s pickup, parked a few yards away. “But he wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “Nothing personal, girl, uh, Georgie,” he amended quickly. Barry was trying to come into the twenty-first century.

  “Sean was the first one here, and he’s the one that called the sheriff. That’s all.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe so. But who’s hurt? He says he doesn’t think it’s one of our guys, but who else would be out here at this hour?”

  “That’s what I’m here to find out.” Barry patted the windowsill and straightened.

  I didn’t wait for an invitation. I jumped out of the car and followed him toward the flashing lights. He didn’t try to stop me.

  Deputy Wheeler stepped forward to block our path, as he had done earlier, but Sheriff Mitchell spotted Barry and called out to him.

  Barry glanced at Wheeler. “Sheriff wants to talk to me,” he said as he passed the deputy.

  I stuck close to Barry, as though I belonged. This time Wheeler gave me a sour look, but he let me pass.

  I wasn’t exactly hiding behind Barry, but I figured if Mitchell didn’t notice me he couldn’t send me back to my car.

  We passed through the ring of official vehicles, the red-and-blue lights casting garish shadows across our faces.

  Firefighters in heavy turnouts and hard hats stood at the lip of the moat, looking down into it. From below, I could hear muffled voices and the splash of booted feet in the water at the bottom.

  As we moved closer there was no sense of urgency in the men, no rush to get the injured man to the ambulance. No one was in any hurry.

  Not good.

  Sheriff Mitchell led Barry to the edge of the moat and I trailed along behind. The firefighters moved aside, clearing our view of the muddy bottom.

  The beams of heavy-duty flashlights cut through the mist in the moat. The reflected light cast crazy shadows, throwing the scene at the bottom into chaos.

  My brain struggled to make a recognizable image from the jumble. The moat itself was a place I knew well, and I could sort out the steep sides and the temporary bridge.

  But the bottom didn’t look right. As I looked harder I saw three paramedics, the reflective tape on their brown jackets spelling out “Clackamas Fire.”

  The fog shifted and I got a brief clear look at the scene below.

  I don’t know what I expected to see. But I didn’t expect to see a pair of hand-stitched Italian loafers motionless at the bottom of the moat—their owner lying partway under the temporary bridge, his upper body hidden by the piers and planks. But I knew those shoes.

  I gasped. Several heads swiveled my direction, and Sheriff Mitchell quirked an eyebrow. “Someone you know, Miss Neverall?”

  “No. Yes. I—maybe,” I stuttered. “All I can see are the shoes, really, so how can I say?”

  The sheriff gave me a hard look. “Don’t go anywhere. As soon as Doc Cox gets here, you can take a look at the
rest of him. In the meantime, stay out of the way.”

  I didn’t ask why they were waiting for Dr. Cox. The answer was clear in the lack of urgency. This wasn’t a rescue.

  The body attached to those shoes was dead.

  chapter 7

  I told myself it wasn’t my fault Blake had managed to drown in the few inches of water, but I still felt guilty. After all, hadn’t I just been wishing that he would go away and stay away?

  It looked like I got my wish, but it didn’t make me happy. I’d wanted him gone, not dead.

  Barry called the office and reassigned the crew to other jobs—except for Sean and me. We were at the McComb site until the sheriff let us go.

  Barry said Sean had found Blake in the moat. What had Blake been doing out here before the crew arrived? The man I knew wouldn’t have been caught dead . . .

  Ooh, bad choice of words.

  Besides, he’d been here just yesterday.

  He had a job. But was that a reason to come out here in the middle of the night?

  Dr. Cox slid his way down the side of the moat to where Blake’s body lay, and I watched from above. The sheriff followed him down, and the two men stood at the bottom conferring as the doctor examined the body.

  The doctor was only down there a couple minutes before the paramedics signaled to their crew above. A litter was lowered down the slope, and they rolled the body into it.

  The irony was not lost on me. Blake Weston—the man who wouldn’t go to the dog park with me because he might get something on his shoe—had drowned in the dirty rain water at the bottom of an unfinished moat.

  I wondered how he would have explained that to his friends. Would I even know his friends now?

  Or at least his family. I seemed to remember a brother in Salinas—or something like that—and a mother in the Bay Area.

  The stretcher inched up the side of the trench, but instead of having me look as they brought Blake up, the sheriff pulled me aside behind a truck.

  “The doc said he’s going to need a little time with this guy, so he asked me to bring you by in a couple hours. Give him a chance to find out what killed him, and clean him up a little before you look at him.”

  I nodded.

  Truthfully, I hadn’t been overjoyed at the idea of looking at him at all. At least this would give me some time to . . .

  To what? Think about it? To dread the encounter?

  Maybe waiting wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe I should just get it over with.

  But the sheriff already had me by the arm, and was walking quickly toward my car. “I could take you with me,” he said, “but that would leave your car stuck up here. Unless you want to have someone come get it?”

  Something in his tone made me think that having my own car would be a very good idea.

  The offer of a ride? Probably not a chivalrous gesture.

  I turned down the hill away from the McComb site. A last look in the rearview mirror showed a covered litter sliding into the back of the ambulance. It was instantly replaced by the front end of the sheriff’s cruiser as he pulled in behind me.

  I observed every speed limit all the way to the station, acutely aware of the sheriff a few car lengths behind me.

  As I drove, I considered calling someone. But who would I call? None of my friends nor my mother knew anything about my life in San Francisco. A call to any of them would invite questions I wasn’t ready to answer.

  I tried to remember the names of the people who’d been part of Samurai Security; people who might remember me or Blake, or both of us.

  There were several names I would never forget. Their numbers had been in the company cell phone left on the executive desk with my letter of resignation.

  And what would I say if I could call them?

  Hi. Haven’t talked to you in years. By the way, have you seen Blake Weston lately? He just showed up in my hometown, and now he’s dead.

  Yeah, that would make for interesting conversation.

  No. I was on my own.

  Sheriff Mitchell kept me waiting for nearly an hour in the lobby of the station. I passed the time sitting in an institutional molded-plastic chair that made my right leg go to sleep and reading months-old copies of police news magazines.

  By the time he called me in to his office the initial shock had worn off, I had passed the point of semi-cheerful cooperation, and moved on to annoyed inconvenience. If I couldn’t work today, there were a lot of other things I would rather do than hang around the sheriff’s office waiting to tell him as little as possible about Blake Weston.

  He waved me to a chair and sat down behind his desk.

  The vinyl-padded, metal office chair was an improvement over the molded plastic in the waiting room, though not by much. I sat stiffly on the edge of the seat, waiting impatiently.

  He kept looking at me, then back down to the file that was open on his desk—neither view improved his mood—and his face was as grim and clouded as the weather.

  “Miss Neverall”—he shook his head—“what is it with you and my crime scenes?”

  “It’s where I work! I was supposed to be there, just like I have been every morning.” I was getting tired of defending myself for turning up for work.

  Then I realized what else he had said. “And, crime scene? What do you mean? Just because some idiot wanders into a construction site in the dark and manages to fall in a moat and drown?”

  “If by ‘some idiot’ you mean a former associate of yours, and by ‘drown’ you mean suffer fatal injuries, then that is exactly what I mean.”

  The second part stopped me, but only for a second. “Well, falling into the moat in the dark would cause injuries, wouldn’t it? I mean, there wasn’t any light out there.”

  I sat back a little. This conversation was not going the way I planned. I waited for the sheriff’s reply.

  “Let’s try this again, Miss Neverall. It appears you knew the deceased.” He looked at the file again. “Blake Weston, with an address on Bush Street in San Francisco.” He looked back up at me. “You knew Mr. Weston?”

  I nodded. “Several years ago. We were business associates.” The rest of it had nothing to do with Blake’s accident. No need to go into ancient history.

  “And Mr. Weston had made multiple visits to the job site?”

  I nodded again.

  The sheriff waited, but I didn’t add anything.

  “And there was an encounter yesterday morning? Mr. Weston was”—he glanced at his notes—“ ‘ hassling’ you?”

  I hoped the surprise I felt wasn’t evident on my face. Blake had been a jerk, but I’d lost my temper and yelled at him in front of the crew. Someone was evidently looking out for me.

  “There was an encounter, as you call it. Mr. Weston came to the site. He was rude. I know you aren’t supposed to speak ill of the dead, but rude was pretty standard for him. His behavior yesterday didn’t seem much different from the last time I saw him.”

  Understatement, much?

  I glanced at the folder on the desk, but the sheriff kept it tilted enough that I couldn’t see what was in it. “You are sure it was Blake Weston?” I asked. “I mean, all I saw were his shoes, really.”

  “It was Weston. There was a California license in his wallet.”

  “So what makes this a crime scene? He wandered out there in the dark and fell in the moat.” I leaned forward. “I know that sounds pretty stupid, but you have to remember that Blake is—was—a city guy. It wouldn’t really occur to him how dark it would be out there.”

  The sheriff gave me a sharp look. “How do you know so much about a business associate, Miss Neverall?”

  Whoa. Maybe I was being a little too helpful.

  “We worked together in San Francisco, and it was obvious to everybody that Blake was a city guy. The closest he came to outdoor activities was an occasional sidewalk café.”

  The sheriff nodded and scribbled something in his file and closed it. He folded his hands on top of it.


  “That’s all for now, Miss Neverall. I don’t think we will need you to identify the body, after all.” He glanced at the closed file. “It’s not something you want to see anyway.”

  I took the hint and let myself out.

  It wasn’t until I was driving home that I realized he had never actually answered my questions.

  Why was the moat considered a crime scene?

  Was the death of Blake Weston really an accident?

  chapter 8

  When I pulled into the driveway, I was greeted by frantic barking from inside the house. Daisy and Buddha knew the sound of the Volkswagen’s old four-banger, and they knew it meant a trip to the backyard.

  On my way through the kitchen to the back door, I glanced at the answering machine. The light was blinking. No surprise there. News traveled fast in a small town. Everyone I know probably called to find out what happened.

  I wished I had an answer.

  But before I could listen to the calls, there was a knock at the front door.

  “Georgie?”

  It was Wade.

  His expression was a mixture of concern and exasperation when I opened the door.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, coming in without an invitation and putting his arm around me.

  “I heard you were at the sheriff’s office for questioning about the body they found this morning. But by the time I got there you had already left.

  “I got here as quick as I could.”

  I gave Wade a quick hug. His concern was sweet, but the gossip machine had obviously been working overtime.

  “The guys are out back,” I said, leading him back through the kitchen to check on the dogs.

  They were exploring the backyard as though it was someplace new and exotic, even though they had been out there only a few hours earlier. It made me smile.

  I turned back to Wade. “I’m glad you came to check on me, but it really isn’t a big deal. The sheriff heard I knew the guy, and he wanted to ask me about him.”

  “You knew the guy?” Wade reached out and took my hand. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Sure,” I said brightly, as though I was accustomed to ghosts rising up out of my past and then dropping dead. “It’s not like we were best friends or anything,” I lied.