by Robert Greer
He’d once run down a bookmaker and loan shark for CJ, a man who’d threatened to blow up Rosie Weeks’s back-room gambling establishment, the den, because it was cutting heavily into his business. Things had ultimately come to a head one snowy January afternoon when CJ had confronted the bookmaker in the parking lot of the man’s bank with Petey standing scared as hell only a few feet away. With heavy wet flakes of snow falling on them all, CJ had reminded the bookmaker that he’d be wise to stop making threats. When the bookmaker had reached into his coat pocket for his .38, CJ had dropped him with a right cross so quick and violent it broke the bookmaker’s upper jaw and lower denture. The fractured denture’s sharp plastic edge severed an artery in the man’s mouth, sending blood from the agape bookie’s mouth down onto the new-fallen snow.
The thing Petey remembered most about that confrontation was the lost look on CJ’s face immediately afterward. A guilty, forlorn look that as much as said, Forgive me.
There wouldn’t be that kind of excitement tonight, Petey lamented as the lights in Reasoner’s living room went out and the house turned dark. Nothing even close to it. But every job couldn’t be as adrenaline-popping. Snooping, after all, was a lot like scrounging for antiques, he told himself as he slipped onto his moped. In both worlds, things tended to run hot and cold.
Chapter 15
CJ’s two-hour early-morning drive from Denver to the northeastern Colorado farming and ranching community of Sterling started out calmly enough, but by the time he’d reached the South Platte River bottom town’s outskirts, he found himself nervously drumming his fingers on the steering wheel of Ike’s Jeep.
His upset had nothing to do with any potential confrontation he might have with Goldsby or her lover, Ramona Lepsos, or with not yet having wrapped up Willis Sundee’s problem, or with the fact that he’d been pulled over for speeding and fined seventy-five dollars just ten minutes earlier. It had everything to do with his impending trip to the symphony with Mavis that evening.
The genesis of CJ’s nervousness was concern that Mavis might somehow realize she was mainly a prop to add a degree of authenticity to his still incompletely thought-out plan to ambush Molly Burgess.
During his five years as a bail bondsman and frequent bounty hunter, he’d caught unsuspecting clients, cops, and even attorneys off guard—more often than not with either Rosie or Ike at his side. Most of those confrontations, however, had taken place in back alleys, bars, and seedy apartments, never at a Denver Symphony Orchestra performance, and never with a woman like Mavis in the mix.
Still drumming his fingers, he took a deep breath and turned onto the county road that led to Cheryl Goldsby’s ranch. He was two miles down the gravel washboard stretch of road that dead-ended at Goldsby’s when the reason for his upset finally registered completely: deep down he suspected that he was afraid of making a fool of himself at the symphony. Suddenly he had the feeling that he’d made a huge mistake. He’d picked the wrong time and place to ask Mavis to ride shotgun with him. Disgusted with himself, he slammed an open palm down onto the steering wheel and mumbled, “Damn!” just as the arched entryway to the forty-six acres that Cheryl Goldsby called Box Elder Ranch came into view.
Goldsby had been reluctant to agree to his visit when he’d talked to her on the phone the previous day, and he had the feeling she never would have consented if Ramona Lepsos hadn’t bellowed in the background, clearly enough for him to hear, “Let him come, Cherie. You need to get this shit with your uncle settled once and for all.”
He could only imagine that Cheryl’s response, “Shut up,” had sent Ramona packing since he heard no rebuttal.
As he eased the Jeep beneath the tempered-oak, sixteen-foot-high archway with the weathered “Box Elder Ranch” sign that hung from the crossbeam swinging back and forth in the wind, CJ found himself thinking more about how he would have to put his best foot forward with Mavis that evening than about what he would ask Cheryl Goldsby.
After parking the Jeep and nearly losing his Stetson to the wind, he headed for Goldsby’s modest frame ranch house, where she greeted him on the front porch with a faint “Hello.”
A sandy-haired woman in her late thirties, Goldsby walked with an upright propriety that as much as said, I’m better than you. Her plump, cherubic face and almost triangular deep-set eyes gave her an odd jack-o’-lantern look and her thin, bony frame helped to create an eerie appearance of a pumpkin on a stick.
Taking a deep breath and wheezing asthmatically, she forced a smile and said as if she were in a rush to send CJ on his way as quickly as she could, “Let’s go down to the pond and talk, Mr. Floyd.”
“Lead the way,” said CJ. They had never shaken hands.
“You remember Ramona, of course,” she said, waving for the stocky woman with a crew cut who stood just inside the house to join them on the porch.
“Yes,” said CJ as Ramona Lepsos, who looked as if she didn’t really want to be there, appeared and politely shook his hand.
They walked down a hill toward a cattail-encircled pond fifty yards west of the house, with CJ clutching the Monte Vista plate in an envelope in his hand.
“As I suspect you know, Mr. Floyd, I only agreed to talk to you again because Ramona insisted.” Cheryl flashed Ramona a look that was a clear reprimand. “You intruded on my grief five years ago, and now, for whatever reason, you’re back. Can you tell me what gives, Mr. Floyd?”
“I’m still trying to find out who murdered your uncle.”
“Sometimes it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.” She stopped, flashed Lepsos a look that as much as said, Isn’t that right, Ramona? zipped her jacket up a notch, and eyed the slate-gray sky. “We’re in for a long, hard winter. Gray clouds this early in the fall always spell the way,” she said, frowning. “So what’s up with that new lead you mentioned on the phone, Mr. Floyd?”
CJ glanced skyward before slipping the Monte Vista plate out of its envelope. “I stumbled onto a license plate that I’m sure belonged to your uncle at a flea market yesterday. The man who sold it to me is an antique dealer. He wouldn’t tell me how he got the plate.”
“And what makes you so sure the license plate belonged to my Uncle Wiley?” Cheryl asked, stopping abruptly, barely looking at the plate.
“Because Wiley showed the plate to me the week he was murdered. At least, I’m pretty sure it’s the same plate.”
“‘Pretty’ is an imperfect word, Mr. Floyd. One that I suspect was dreamed up by lecherous old men. Anything more specific you can tell me about the man you bought the license plate from?”
Ramona punctuated Cheryl’s response with a supportive nod.
“Not really.” Deciding that it might be wise to withhold information about Gaylord Marquee for the moment, CJ slipped the Monte Vista plate back into its envelope, and tucked it under his left arm.
“How well did you know my uncle, Mr. Floyd?” Cheryl asked, walking toward the pond once again.
“Not real well. I’d only known him a couple of days or so when he was murdered.”
“Good for you. Unfortunately, I knew the man all my life. Sadly, I had to live with him for the four years I was in college at the University of Denver. Economics left me no choice. My Uncle Wiley was a bitter, devious, selfish man, Mr. Floyd. You’d have learned that about him if you’d known him longer.”
“He didn’t seem that way to me.”
“That’s because you met him post-AA. I knew him before that.”
Reflecting on his own uncle’s alcoholism, CJ said, “A drinking problem doesn’t necessarily make you a bad human being. Harry Steed says Wiley had pushed that drinking problem behind him years ago.”
“Of course Steed would say that. Wiley was Steed’s poster child. His gold-star reclamation. The two of them fed off one another,” said Cheryl, stopping at a weather-worn wooden bench at the edge of a three-acre pond and taking a seat.
Looking up at Ramona and CJ, who remained standing, she said, “You look disappointed, Mr. Flo
yd. Sorry to disenchant you, but here’s another tidbit for you. Those four years I lived with my uncle while I was in college were sheer hell. A swinging pendulum of erratic days, sometimes weeks, that were filled with nothing but yelling and shouting and nights that all too often ended up with me cleaning up my uncle’s urine and vomit. And to top it off, he was nowhere as upstanding as you and most people believe.”
“Wanna spell out how?”
Erupting into a broad smile, as if she’d been waiting for years to give her answer, Cheryl said, “He and that Chinese man who was killed with him were dealing in stolen goods. They were big-time fences, Mr. Floyd.”
Puzzled as to why she hadn’t mentioned that issue five years earlier and wondering whether she’d told the same story to the cops, CJ said, “It’s a little late for a confessional, don’t you think? Besides, I’m well aware of the hearsay. Just never seen the proof.”
Cheryl sounded disgusted. “Could be the reason you’re still drawing a blank all these years later is because you don’t want to open your eyes to reality.”
Her pensive stare had CJ suddenly second-guessing himself and the thoroughness of his initial hit-and-miss, less-than-methodical investigation of the GI Joe’s murders. “Could be I missed a few things,” he said ruefully.
“Real likely. So, for one reason and one reason only, I’m going to help you with what you might have overlooked. That reason being that I don’t want you coming back out here to my ranch ever again.” Pointing toward a dilapidated shed fifteen yards away and up a slight incline, she rose, eyed Ramona as if for some reason she needed her approval to proceed, and said, “There’s something I want you to see.” She flashed Ramona a look that said, You’re the one who wanted closure here, and headed for the shed as CJ and Ramona trailed after her.
A few steps from the shed, she pulled a key ring out of her pocket and fumbled with a half-dozen keys before finding the one she needed and slipping it into the door’s lock.
A wave of dust and mildew wafted up to greet them as she pushed the door open and flipped on a nearby light switch. The uneven earthen floor was moist, with just enough pond seepage to make it slippery. “Watch your step; it’s easy to slip and fall in here,” she warned CJ as she waved for him and Ramona to follow her in.
The shed’s only window sat cockeyed in a west-facing wall, covered with plastic that let in a fuzzy square of light. The light seemed to settle on a drab green chest that CJ recognized immediately as Wiley Ames’s army footlocker.
With her key ring dangling from a pinkie, Cheryl walked over to the footlocker, brushed away a curtain of cobwebs, unlocked it, and flipped the top back. Slipping aside the army blanket covering the contents, she said, “Have a look, Mr. Floyd. Go ahead, pick one up and examine it.”
CJ stooped down and with a puzzled expression picked up the largest seashell in three rows that ran parallel along the length of the footlocker.
“You picked a good one. A Cooper’s nutmeg.” Taking in the look of puzzlement on CJ’s face, she continued, “Exceptionally clean and exquisitely ornamental. You’re looking at the exoskeleton of a mollusk, Mr. Floyd. There was once a living, breathing animal inside that shell—a snail. They’re quite adaptive creatures. The one that lived in that particular shell was capable of burrowing beneath resting angel sharks and sucking their blood. Kind of ghoulish, isn’t it?” she said, laughing. She gingerly moved aside the first layer of shells, which rested on a blanket, to reveal a second layer resting on another blanket. “There are lots more shells here to have a look at. Shells with nobs and ribs and teeth. Shells that scientists once thought could only be found in the belly of a bottom-feeding fish. Shells that are worth a considerable amount of money, in fact.”
“Quite an impressive amount of seashell knowledge,” said CJ, placing the Cooper’s nutmeg shell back among the others. “Where’d it all bubble up from?”
“From a lifetime of study. I grew up on the California coast. Lots of shells to play among. And along the way, I picked up a PhD in marine biology.”
“So I’m guessing you think these seashells are somehow connected to your uncle’s death?”
“In one way or another, yes. Ramona finished up her PhD at UC Santa Barbara the same year I did. My parents died in a car wreck my final semester of high school, and my Uncle Wiley paid for my schooling afterward. I think that in one way or another, he expected to be repaid. And he was. Ramona and I repaid him with our knowledge of seashells. Shells that he bought and sold on what you’d describe as the black market. Shells that his associate Quan Lee Chin, in his travels with various symphonies here and abroad, pilfered from dealers, shops, museums in Thailand, and collectors.” Noting the look of amazement on CJ’s face, she boastfully said, “As with most collectibles, Mr. Floyd, you have to know what you’re looking at. Ramona and I did.
“The most valuable shells were the ones they stole from museums. A single seashell can easily be worth a thousand dollars.” She picked up the nutmeg. “Gather yourself fifty of these little puppies and you’ve got yourself fifty thousand dollars’ worth of inventory. There’re close to fifty shells in this foot-locker, Mr. Floyd. You do the math.”
“Real money, as they say. And of course you’ve never told the cops about your uncle’s criminal dealings?”
“Why would I? And where’s the proof they were acquired in any way that was criminal? The inventory has always been stored out here on the ranch with me. Wiley only took shells with him—and never more than three or four at a time—if he had a sale pending in Denver.”
“Telling the cops what you’re telling me might have helped them find his killer.”
The look on Cheryl’s face hardened. “Perhaps. But somehow, you still seem to be missing the point. Let me spell it out a little more clearly for you. I didn’t much care for my uncle. He reminded me without fail, each and every time I saw him after I moved out here, that he paid for my schooling so I could become somebody respectable, and instead I turned out to be an overeducated dyke. I hated him, Mr. Floyd, with a passion you can’t possibly understand.”
“Maybe not, but it seems that the man you have so much disdain for left you one hell of a bequest.”
“Who else could he have possibly left anything to? I was his only family.”
“The shells’ real owners, perhaps?”
“No more cat-and-mouse, Mr. Floyd, okay? The footlocker’s contents are mine. Passed on to me by virtue of the fact that they’ve always been here on this property and in my possession, not my uncle’s. The contents are mine to do with as I please. I’ve only shown them to you because you’re not a cop, we’re five years down the road from my uncle’s murder, which hasn’t tainted me in any fashion, no one can possibly prove the shells aren’t mine, and Ramona asked me to wipe the slate clean.”
CJ shook his head. Based on their long-past initial meeting, he never would have expected that the then despondent looking Cheryl Goldsby had cared so little for her uncle. Thinking, Missed by a mile, he asked, “Anything else in the footlocker besides seashells?”
“Just about everything that was there in that footlocker when my uncle died, aside from the shells, which I placed inside myself, is still there. I haven’t removed very much. You might call it my retirement plan. This and the boxes of less valuable stuff Ramona and I hauled out here from GI Joe’s and my uncle’s condo.”
“Mind if I have a closer look?” CJ asked, setting his Monte Vista plate aside on a footstool.
“After I take out the shells. I wouldn’t want any damage coming to my inheritance.” Cheryl knelt and carefully removed forty-eight seashells, aligning them in rows of eight on a blanket on the floor. She then took two tobacco tins and a porcelain license plate from the footlocker and handed them to CJ. “Not quite my taste,” she said, dusting off her hands. “But I know that all three things are reasonably valuable.” She continued sorting through the contents.
CJ held the low-numbered, mint-condition 1920 Nevada plate up to the muted
light. “The plate’s worth a hundred and fifty to a hundred and seventy-five bucks. The tobacco tins maybe a hundred each.”
Seemingly unconcerned with the value, Cheryl was almost to the bottom of the footlocker when CJ asked, “Did Wiley or Chin have any special buyers or sellers they dealt with?”
“I never knew.” She handed CJ a license plate wrapped in tissue paper.
“Ever hear him mention an Englishman named Gaylord Marquee?”
Cheryl stopped what she was doing and stared thoughtfully at CJ as he unwrapped the plate. A look of recognition crossed her face. “I never knew him or what his name was, but Wiley did do business with a man who could have been English. He used to come by Wiley’s condo when I was in college. An odd-looking man with badly yellowed teeth. I’m almost sure his accent was British.”
“That would have been Marquee.” CJ glanced toward the footstool. “He’s the one who sold me that license plate.”
“Then maybe he’s the one who killed my uncle.”
“Perhaps,” said CJ, peeling back a final layer of tissue paper and realizing that he was holding a 1913, nearly mint-condition first-of-state South Dakota license plate in his hands. Trying to peg the rare plate’s value, he said, “Good value here. Is that about it?”
“Yes.” Cheryl ran a hand along the bottom of the chest to make certain. Watching CJ continue to examine the license plate, she asked, “So that one’s pretty special, you think?”
“It’s pretty rare.”
“What’s it worth?”
“I’m not sure. Seven, maybe eight hundred bucks,” said CJ, suspecting by the smug look on Cheryl’s face that she likely already knew the plate’s value.
Looking pleased, Cheryl winked at Ramona.
“What did you do with the rest of Wiley’s stuff?”
“Sold it. Gave it away to Goodwill. Most of it was junk.”