Designed to Kill (Greg McKenzie Mysteries)

by Chester D. Campbell

  “It’s about as discomfortable as you can get.” Her lips flattened into a straight red line.

  We had a running joke about her therapy. Vickie, the PT, had instructed her to keep working despite the discomfort but to stop if she suffered pain. Though we chuckled about the terms occasionally, I knew Jill experienced no fun at all when she rubbed up against that gray area where the misery became too difficult to categorize.

  I had turned to head back downstairs when a sudden crash froze me.

  “Oww!” Jill cried out.

  I looked around to see the web belt had slipped loose, letting the metal pulley fall. I hurried toward her. “What the hell happened...hurt your shoulder?”

  “No. It hit my leg. It only hurt my feelings. That does it. I’m done for the day. If I’d known I was going to have to go through all this, I don’t know if I’d have agreed to that surgery.”

  The rotator cuff tear had resulted from an incident in Israel a year ago. The situation developed after we found ourselves caught in the middle of a struggle between Palestinian and Jewish groups out to recover an ancient parchment scroll. During my effort to rescue Jill, one of the assailants had shoved her to the ground. She was sore after the ordeal but did not realize until later that her left shoulder had been injured. The pain plagued her off and on during the months that followed, finally reaching the point that something had to be done.

  Dr. Vail, the orthopedic surgeon, had assured her she should be nearly as good as new if she followed her exercise routine faithfully. I was a little envious. I had no idea what it would take to get me back on track after the derailment I had suffered from my encounter with Metro’s finest.

  7

  The funeral home had started out as a large plantation-style house with stately white columns in front. The sort of place Rhett Butler might have galloped up to on his wild black stallion. Inside, the high-ceilinged parlors had been turned into “viewing rooms” and chapels, conservatively decorated with cool colors and jungles of fake greenery. Jill and I were among the first to sign the guest register in the hallway beside a sign that read TIMOTHY GANNON. Tim’s closed casket sat on display inside the room, covered by an American flag and surrounded by photos of him as a stalwart high school tailback, helmet tucked beneath his arm, a Navy lieutenant in dress whites, gold wings on his chest, and as a blue-suited businessman a year ago when he had received an award from the architects’ association.

  His popularity was obvious in the mass of fragrant flower arrangements, sprays and potted plants that crowded one side of the room. The younger Gannons’ Sunday School class was a large one, and the area filled quickly with couples in their thirties and forties.

  Sam introduced us to Tara’s parents, Barney and Gladys Johnson from Columbia, forty miles south of Nashville. They had been on a trip to North Carolina when their daughter received the call from Sergeant Payne and were unable to reach her house before Jill and I had left. When the Johnsons drifted off to where Tara stood near the casket, Sam turned with a wan smile.

  “Barney recently retired from a bank in Columbia,” he said. “They’re good people.”

  “How did Tim and Tara meet?” Jill asked.

  “It was at UT. They dated for a couple of years as students. She was in broadcast journalism and after graduation landed a job with Channel Five in Nashville. Tim wanted to get married, but he was dead set on flexing his wings as a naval aviator. Tara couldn’t pass up the TV job, so they parted company on a rather unhappy note.”

  I smiled. “I bet she’d still look good on TV. Was she a reporter?”

  “A pretty good one, from what I hear.”

  “So how did they manage to get things back together?”

  “Tim called her a few times when he would come to Nashville to visit Wilma’s mother. After he got out of the Navy, he went to work for an engineering firm here and started courting Tara again. Hot and heavy. A couple of months later, they were married. When Tom was born the following year, she quit her TV job.”

  After Sam and Jill drifted away, I staked out a spot at one side of the room to study the dynamics of funeral home visitation. It was an intriguing exercise. Those I would call true friends lingered at length with the Gannons, offering condolences and recalling incidents from Tim’s past that would bring fond memories and smiles from everyone around. The opportunists, those who came to see or be seen, would shake hands briefly with the family, then turn away to spend their time chattering with acquaintances they thought important to know they were there. A third category I labeled duty-bound friends. These were people who appeared to feel the visit compulsory, despite the discomfort they experienced. They would walk in with barely a look to right or left, say a few words to the Gannons, do an about face and depart.

  As I was completing my clinical analysis of the shifting crowd, Sam strolled up with a small woman who appeared to be in her mid-fifties. Dressed in a simple brown suit, she had short, chestnut hair and gazed out through large round glasses with troubled gray eyes.

  “Greg McKenzie,” Sam said, “meet Robbie Renegar, Tim’s secretary. She did her best to keep him in line.”

  She held out her hand, which I shook gently. “Nice to meet you, Robbie,” I said.

  “It was your condo he stayed in down in Florida, wasn’t it?” A catch in her voice told me she still hadn’t come to terms with Tim’s death.

  “Right. We’re going down tomorrow to look into things.”

  “Greg’s a former Air Force investigator,” Sam said. “I’ve asked him to see what he can find out. I just can’t accept that Tim committed suicide.”

  “Neither can I,” she said. “He wasn’t the sort of fellow who would do something like that. This is the most awful thing that’s happened since my husband died.”

  “How’s your daughter?” Sam asked.

  Her face brightened. “She finally got pregnant. I’m going to be a grandma next April.”

  Sam hugged her. “Congratulations. I’m so happy for you, Robbie. Have you told Wilma?”

  “No, not yet.” Her face darkened. “How’s she holding up?”

  “It’s been rough, but she’ll be okay. She’s a tough lady.”

  Recalling what Tim had said when he came after the condo key, I asked a question that had been bugging me. “Mrs. Renegar, was Tim having problems with The Sand Castle project?”

  “We’ve had problems getting our invoices paid,” she said. “They claimed sales had been slower than anticipated, causing some delays. But Mr. Gannon believed they had the money to pay us. I think there were some other things that bothered him. He never told me just what. On a few occasions, he closed his office door while talking to those folks down there. Afterward, he would be really agitated.”

  “Who was he talking to?”

  “The developer, Mr. Baucus, or the contractor, a Mr. Detrich. He wasn’t real happy with either of them.”

  “Was he concerned about the quality of the construction?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know. You’d best ask Mr. Sturdivant about stuff like that.”

  Sam looked around. “I wonder where Walt is? I would have thought he’d be here by now.”

  Mrs. Renegar had just headed off to speak to Tara when Walt Sturdivant made his appearance. He looked more like a college professor than an engineer now, the pipe bowl protruding from the breast pocket of his gray-checked wool jacket. I watched as he paused in the doorway, his head snapping back and forth. When he spotted Sam and me, he strode toward us.

  “Something weird is going on,” he said in a low, angry voice.

  “What’s wrong?” Sam asked.

  “I just came from the office. I went by to pick up some things to take with me tomorrow. We may have been broken into.”

  I frowned. “May have?”

  “Well, the place was still locked up like I left it Friday. But when I looked for The Sand Castle plans, they were missing. I checked the computer and guess what—the whole damned file has been deleted.�
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  8

  Monday morning turned sullen. Somber clouds huddled over the cemetery as Tara and the boys dropped red roses into the open grave. We stood beneath a green canvas tent, the chill of a gusty breeze striking our faces. The air had the musty smell of dead grass, adding to the dismal mood. Dr. Trent offered a few final words of comfort to the family, after which Jill and I joined others in expressing our heavy-hearted farewells.

  “Let us know what you find, Greg,” Sam said.

  I shook his outstretched hand. “Don’t worry. You’ll hear from us soon. We’ll send everything of Tim’s back with Walt.”

  Jill hugged Wilma.

  “I wish you were going with us,” Jill said. “You need a break.”

  She got a wistful smile in return.

  “Sometime soon, maybe,” Wilma said. “You take care of that arm.”

  Walt Sturdivant had driven to the funeral with Robbie Renegar and hurriedly transferred his bag to my Jeep Cherokee. After I pulled off my jacket and tie to get more comfortable for the journey, we headed for I-65 with a brief stop at the Hermitage Rehab Clinic. Housed in the end of a small strip center, the facility was a long, narrow room packed with padded treatment tables and a variety of exercise machines, all designed, Jill would tell you, to inflict torture on recovering orthopedic surgery patients. She had called her doctor on the cell phone earlier that morning as we drove to the cemetery. Though he was not exactly thrilled with the idea, Dr. Vail probably realized the futility of arguing and agreed to let us pick up Jill’s physical therapy records and take them to a clinic in Florida. But the doctor cautioned her the trip would be taxing, that she should take extra care to protect her arm.

  Once we were under way, I stuck my sunglasses in the console. There would be no problem with glare this trip, at least not until we reached South Alabama. Jill had called in for an airman’s forecast and found the clouds would likely accompany us to some point south of Montgomery. The Florida panhandle promised a complete turnaround—warm temperatures and sunny skies.

  “Would anybody object to smoking my pipe?” Walt asked from the back seat.

  Looking in the rearview mirror, I saw him tapping the bowl in his hand.

  “I’d object to smoking your pipe,” Jill said. “Matter of fact, neither of us smokes anything. This is a non-smoking Jeep.”

  I saw Walt jam the pipe back into his pocket and twitch his mouth in displeasure. And though I sympathized with his feelings over being unable to smoke—Jill had hounded me the past several months into becoming tobacco-free again—I had begun to experience a few misgivings about Mr. Sturdivant.

  Jill and I had accompanied him to the New Horizons Building after we left the funeral home Sunday night. We learned there had been two sets of plans kept at the firm, huge stacks of blueprints and specification sheets that described every detail of the structure, from electrical, plumbing, heating and air conditioning systems to the composition of the reinforced concrete shell. One set should have been at the office, while the other traveled to Perdido Key with Tim. But The Sand Castle drawer in the plans case was empty, and the project’s file in the computer no longer existed. Walt checked the box of CD-ROM back-ups and found nothing bearing a Sand Castle label. Every trace of the condo’s origin had vanished like the pinched-out flame of a candle.

  Checking with the burglar alarm monitoring station, we confirmed there was no record of any unauthorized entry. And I could find no evidence of tampering that might have by-passed the alarm and provided access to the building. By all appearances, we were dealing with an inside job.

  As we sped south toward Alabama, I should have been enjoying the hardwood forests that flashed past near their peak of fall splendor, hills painted with swathes of yellow maples, elms and ash, occasional fiery red splashes of scarlet oak. Instead, I spent the time puzzling over possible answers to the enigma of those missing documents and files. Finally I asked Walt about the significance of the apparent theft.

  “Damned if I know,” he said, “it makes no sense.”

  “Who could have wanted them?”

  “Nobody but us, the contractor or the developer.”

  “But they already have them, right? Could it have anything to do with that incident Friday night?”

  “Such as?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. Something in the plans or files that somebody didn’t want to come out.”

  “Hell, everything about those plans has been out in the open for two years,” he said, his tone antagonistic. “The developer has a copy. The contractor has a copy. The Threshold Inspector has a copy. They were reviewed by the Escambia County Building Inspections Department. How much more open can you get?”

  His attitude reminded me of something Sam had told me before the funeral. Tim had confided to his dad that although Walt was a whiz at analyzing engineering problems and devising solutions, his handling of interpersonal relationships left a lot to be desired. He was a former Pennsylvania farm boy who obviously never took a Dale Carnegie course. Sam said Tim knew how to handle him, however. One method was to keep Walt at arm’s length from the clients.

  After dashing around a convoy of eighteen-wheelers that labored up a long stretch of incline, I glanced back at Walt in the rear seat.

  “Who has the magnetic key cards used for entry to the building?”

  “We all have them,” he said. “People frequently have to work nights or weekends to keep up.”

  “Do they turn in their cards when they leave the company?”

  “They’re supposed to. I’m sure it doesn’t always happen.”

  Maybe I should go into the business of counseling on industrial security, I thought. Everybody locks their doors and windows, but few consider all the people who might have access with a key.

  “That’s sort of asking for trouble, wouldn’t you say?”

  He shrugged. “Never thought of it that way.”

  “Have you had any employees leave recently?”

  “Our electrical engineer resigned a week ago.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we insisted on it. He had an alcohol problem. Tim found a half-empty Jack Daniel’s bottle hidden on his bookshelf.”

  “Did he go quietly?”

  “Ha! About as quiet as a raccoon in a henhouse. It was good riddance, if you ask me. I never liked him. On the other hand, Tim thought he was a sharp cookie. But the guy had gotten terribly sloppy. It was only a matter of time before he would have screwed up something big time.”

  “Did he turn in his key card?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  Had he gone on a binge Saturday, decided to come in and exact a bit of revenge, I wondered? That was one possibility. “Anybody else fired recently?”

  “Not fired. We’ve had a couple leave as The Sand Castle project wound down. Tim urged them to stay. He had just landed a new job that would have provided plenty of work.”

  “How long since they left?”

  “Friday was the last day for a draftsman recruited during the buildup. Said he wanted to go back home to New Orleans.”

  Two employees had just departed, one under unfavorable circumstances. That gave me two possible suspects. Of course, I couldn’t rule out anybody still on the payroll, but what motive could they have? I was forced to agree, Walt had a point—at the moment, none of it made much sense.

  “When you get back to the office,” I said, “collect what information you have on the engineer and the draftsman. Get it to me. I need to look into those two.”

  9

  I could have given Jill some kind of award for stamina. She required only one pit stop before we swung off the interstate below Birmingham for lunch. I pulled into a Cracker Barrel parking lot crowded with cars and trucks from across the map, including a church van from the Atlanta suburbs. We waded through aisles stacked with a wild assortment of souvenirs, ranging from decorated sweat shirts to ceramic figurines to creatures that sang weird songs when disturbed, arriving at
the hostess station just before a dozen jeans-clad seniors filed out amidst a burst of laughter.

  “I’ll bet that’s the church group,” Jill said. “Wonder what’s so funny?”

  “Sounded like a bunch of hyenas,” Walt said.

  The place was almost full, but we were promptly ushered to a table in the non-smoking area, something Jill had insisted on since my agreement to give up cigarettes again. I looked around at Walt. “Don’t be so damned hard on the old folks. Play your cards right and you might be one some day.”

  He shook his head. “God forbid.”

  A tall, skinny waitress with short black hair appeared at our table. She looked like a sitcom caricature. After an artful swipe across the table with a damp towel, she gave us a disarming smile. “Whatcha gonna have to drink?”

  “Decaf and water,” Jill said, returning the smile.

  I nodded. “The same.”

  “A Coke,” Walt said, frowning.

  She twisted the towel in her hands. “Where you folks from?”

  “Nashville.” Walt snapped the word like a gunshot and sat back in his chair.

  The waitress grinned. “Don’t see no git-tar.”

  “Actually,” Jill said, chuckling, “I left my oboe in the car.”

  She was joking. She hadn’t played the oboe since high school days.

  The girl frowned. “Your hobo?”

  Walt slapped his forehead. “Christ, I’m not believing this.”

  “An oboe is a long woodwind instrument,” I said, gesturing to show its length. “Similar to a clarinet.”

  “Well, I swear,” she said, shaking her head. “Never heard of it.” Then she smiled again. “I’ll get your drinks.”

  When the waitress headed toward the kitchen, Jill turned to Walt. She spoke calmly, like a mother to a wayward child. “You know, Walt, you really need to cool it a bit. Life can be so much less complicated if you just ease up and go with the flow.”

  He took a deep breath and let his shoulders sag. “Sorry. I’ve been told I’m not the most congenial guy around. I guess it started back when I was a kid. Some boys at school nicknamed me Weasel. I wasn’t very happy about it. But I was too small to make them stop. I didn’t wind up with a lot of friends.”