Greg McKenzie Mysteries Boxed Set—Books 1-4

by Chester Campbell

  The string of vehicles clustered along the shoulder of the road looked like worshipers parked for Sunday morning at a country church. The sheriff’s cars had been moved out to allow a more detailed search of the lakefront. A few other cars and pickup trucks added to the gaggle of vehicles. A small group of men stood around the deputy who had been posted at the opening of the trail. Word of the tragic drowning had probably spread to the nearby boat dock. I parked behind a pickup, and we walked down to the uniformed officer.

  “Has the TBI truck arrived yet?” I asked.

  “Just got here.”

  “Agent Fought told us to come on back.”

  He pulled out his radio and said something about “the PI and his wife.” I heard Sheriff Driscoll’s voice reply, “Send ‘em on in.”

  We hiked into the woods, happy the clouds had migrated westward, blocking out the sun. The humidity made me feel like I’d forgotten to dry off after a shower. We found a large white truck parked behind the sheriff’s car. Lettering on the side spelled out Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, below that “Crime Scene Investigation.”

  One of the techs logged us in. Wayne Fought stood a few yards away with Sheriff Driscoll, talking to a couple of the investigators. I debated whether to tell them about our visit to Martha Urey. The idea lost out in the debate. I decided it would be best to stick with our side of the bargain and stay out of the way. The small bit of info we had gleaned might make a good bargaining chip later on.

  I watched as one of the techs bagged a few small items the deputies had picked up in their search around the lakefront. It looked like cigarette packs or candy wrappers. Another took photos of the entire area. Photography usually proved one of the major sources of information gained from a crime scene. My interest centered on their truck, which was a new one I hadn’t encountered. Three large panels on each side lifted up to give access to all the tools of the trade. One section featured every size, shape, and type of evidence bag or container imaginable. Large metal boxes in another bore such labels as “Fingerprint,” “Serology,” and “Firearms.” No doubt specialized kits for gathering evidence in those fields.

  The driver finally cranked up his wrecker and began to pull the Jeep out of the lake. The photographer kept snapping pictures as the vehicle emerged like a submarine breaking the surface of the water. It resembled some mud-encrusted sea monster trailing tentacles of weeds. I saw a bloated body slumped against the steering wheel when the front end came up out of the water.

  Fought and Driscoll walked over to the vehicle with one of the rubber-gloved techs, who moved the victim’s head around for a better view.

  “That’s Bradley,” the sheriff said. “He loved this old Jeep. Even installed seat belts in it.”

  “He’s strapped in,” said Agent Fought.

  The investigator studied the head for a few moments. “The question is was he really driving? Looks like he’s been struck a pretty good blow just in front of the right ear. Not the sort of injury that would likely come from a plunge into the lake.”

  My cell phone rang at that point and I turned away from the group to answer it.

  “Greg, we need your help,” said Warren Jarvis, a dire note in his voice.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I think I just killed a guy.”

  Chapter 10

  I stood there for a moment in shock, not sure I heard what I had just heard. After what we had encountered at the lake, Warren’s words hit me like a thunderbolt.

  “You what? Who?”

  “It was an accident. I’ve called the police. I guess they’ll send a homicide officer. Do you have any contacts there?”

  “I have a good contact in Homicide, Detective Phil Adamson. He knows about that scroll business in Israel and that you helped me out over there. But what happened?”

  “I’ll tell you the whole story when you get here. Basically, I got back to Mr. Liggett’s house a little while ago and found Kelli being accosted by the guy who tailed her across town earlier in the day. When he tried to run, I tackled him. He hit his head on a large metal umbrella stand. Before we could do anything, he was gone.”

  After hearing that horrifying experience, I couldn’t add to his misery by telling him about Pierce Bradley. I took a deep breath. “You have Kelli as a witness. I think they’ll treat it as an accident, at least initially. Jill and I are up in Trousdale County. We’ll head on back right now. Hopefully we’ll be there within an hour. Just be careful what you say. You might want to get a lawyer.”

  Despite the anxiety evident in his voice, Jarvis seemed to be in complete control. I knew he had faced many crises during his Air Force career, but I suspected few rivaled this one. Jill agonized over the possibilities all the way to Nashville. Looking at it from an investigator’s standpoint, I knew there could be real problems, especially if somebody like Murder Squad Detective Mark Tremaine, my personal nemesis from the past, happened to show up. But since the person responsible for the death was known, it wouldn’t be a job for the Murder Squad.

  The big question we faced was could they keep the story from the newspapers, and if not, could they keep Kelli’s name out of it? Maybe I could prevail on Phil Adamson to soft pedal her role in the affair.

  When we got back to discussing events in Trousdale County, Jill looked downcast. “It’s really sad when a young man survives all the carnage in a war zone, then comes home and has one of his fellow citizens do this to him.”

  This kind of case always stirred feelings of sadness and anger, but over the years I had learned to compartmentalize the anguish, step aside, and view the situation with as little emotion as possible. Jill, new at this detective business, had a long way to go.

  “It’s bad,” I said, “but the best thing we can do for him is to find those papers he planned to give Arthur Liggett. Plus, see if we can tie them into his murder.”

  “Without Bradley’s help, where do we start looking?”

  “I need to give that some thought. I wish we could have stayed until they searched his house. Maybe they’ll turn up the Marathon papers when they pick the place apart.”

  “But if the murder had anything to do with them, the papers probably won’t be there.”

  I turned off Twenty-first Avenue onto Blair Boulevard and gave her a sidewise glance. “Then let’s hope Bradley stashed them somewhere else. At any rate, we need to put on a full court press to find those papers before anything else breaks loose.”

  A Metro Fire Department ambulance pulled away from the Liggett house just as we drove up. A white Malibu, the type used by Metro homicide detectives, sat at the curb. Three cars were parked in the driveway, including Kelli’s and Warren’s rentals. I parked behind the Malibu, and Jill and I walked to the front door.

  When I punched the chime button, Kelli promptly opened the door. She had changed into brown slacks and a light green blouse. Her hair had been put up in a swirl and nested gold rings dangled from her ears. Her eyes were dark with stress. She looked more vulnerable than we had ever seen her.

  “Come on in,” she said. “Detective Adamson is here.”

  Thank God for small favors. As we walked in, Phil rose from a chair opposite where Warren sat on the sofa, hands clasped beneath his chin. Tall and gaunt, Adamson looked like a guy with his nose out of joint. Not figuratively, but literally. It angled slightly to one side, the result of a bad encounter early in his police career. He was a sharp investigator who taught the subject for other law enforcement officers at a local community college. Phil stuck a pen in his shirt pocket and swiped a hand through thinning brown hair, turning to me with a modest grin instead of his usual dour look.

  “After Colonel Jarvis told me about the connection, I figured you’d show up sooner or later.” He looked over at my partner. “Hi, Jill.”

  She waved.

  Phil and I had been friends for some time, but our relationship was more firmly cemented a few months earlier when we shared a traumatic moment with an armed and deadly felon. I re
turned the grin.

  “I wasn’t in any hurry,” I lied. “I knew Metro’s finest would have everything under control. How’s it going?”

  “If by ‘it’ you mean the case at hand, I’ve about wound up the initial phase of the investigation. The Medical Examiner’s man has already been here and gone.”

  I looked around at Warren and Kelli, who were now seated side-by-side on the sofa. I was sure they weren’t happy with that “initial phase” remark.

  “Would you excuse us a moment, folks,” I said. “Come on back to the kitchen, Phil.”

  He followed me down the hall. “You seem pretty familiar with the place.”

  “Jill and I were here early this afternoon.” I pulled out a chair and beckoned him to join me at the table. “Matter of fact, we sat right here and talked with Kelli about her grandfather. Getting to the case at hand, how about filling me in? All I know is Warren called and said a guy was dead.”

  I didn’t want to say any more than necessary until I learned what they had told Phil. He was smart enough to know what I had in mind.

  “According to the colonel and Miz Kane, who I presume is his girlfriend, this guy comes in posing as a real estate agent wanting to list the house for sale. Said he was told Kane’s grandfather, who owns the place, was in a nursing home. She accuses him of following her to the nursing home earlier, and he gets his dander up. She says he made a threatening move toward her just as the colonel walks in. She screams, the guy sees Jarvis and starts to run. Jarvis says he tried to grab the guy but knocked him off balance. The guy falls and hits his head on a big brass stand with a cupid figure holding an arrow.”

  I flinched at the image. It was the stand I had noticed when we first came in. “Did he hit the cupid?”

  “The arrow caught him right in the temple. The paramedics say that’s likely what killed him. We’ll let the medical examiner say for sure.”

  Two deaths in three days from blows to the head was scary. I leaned my elbows on the table. “Do you know who the guy was?”

  “Yeah. He was one of yours.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “A private investigator named Harold Sharkey. Know him?”

  I had never met the man, being new to the ranks, but I’d heard he was not too highly thought of by most others in the profession.

  “By reputation,” I said, “which isn’t very good. I hear he’ll take on anything, legal or otherwise.”

  “That’s my impression. Why do you suppose he was tailing Miz Kane? I have to tell you, Greg, your friends are holding back something. Kane has been awfully evasive. I haven’t been able to get much out of her at all.”

  I debated for a moment what to say. He could check into her background and hit a dead end, which I was sure he would. But that would only make him bore in harder on both Kelli and Colonel Jarvis.

  “Can I tell you something in the utmost confidence, Phil? It mustn’t go any farther than right here.”

  He clenched his teeth and twisted his mouth to one side. “You don’t mind putting a guy on the spot, do you? You old military types and your secrets. Oh, well. If it’ll help me understand what’s going on here, let’s have it.”

  “I have your word?”

  “You have it.”

  “First, let me put in a plug for Warren Jarvis. He’s a topnotch guy, Air Force Academy graduate, son of a Baptist preacher from Indianapolis. You already know he was the air attaché in Tel Aviv who provided lifesaving assistance when I sorely needed help locating Jill in Israel.”

  “He reminded me of that.”

  “Jarvis met Kelli several years ago when he was working on the project developing the F/A-22 Raptor, the Air Force’s new state-of-the-art fighter plane. She suddenly left the project, vanished like an airplane disappearing into a cloud. When he tried to find where she’d gone, no one would tell him anything. The Pentagon even denied her existence. Seems she was working undercover for some agency he couldn’t discover. Well, she’s still working for them and recently got back from an overseas assignment. When she flew to Nashville to check on her grandfather, Jarvis was on the same plane, headed for Arnold Air Force Base.”

  “First time he’d seen her in years?”

  “Right. He recognized her immediately. He approached her when they landed in Nashville. She denied who she was at first. But after Jarvis told her he’d been looking for her all that time, even got into the intelligence business to better his chances of finding her, she broke down and admitted he had it right.”

  “Sounds like a fairy tale romance.”

  I caught the hint of a grin. “Call it whatever you wish.”

  Adamson sat back in his chair, hands on his hips. “Okay, she’s some kind of federal spook. As far as I can determine, she’s not in any way responsible for Sharkey’s death. So what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is if the media gets Kelli’s name and plasters her picture all over the newspapers and on TV, it’ll probably blow her cover and could put her at risk. She may be involved in some anti-terrorism operation, Phil. I don’t think we should do anything that might put her in danger.”

  I wasn’t sure if the patriotic pitch would help, but it was worth a try.

  “You know I’ll have to put her name in the report,” he said.

  “Just say as little as you have to about her.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. But I still want to know the reason Sharkey tailed her and came nosing around here. Your friends claim they have no idea. I’m not so sure of that. You got any take on it?”

  Now he had me in a quandary. “I’m not at all sure, but it could have something to do with a case I’m currently working.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Sorry, Phil. The client insists on absolute confidentiality.”

  “And the client is probably sitting in there. Hey, partner. What happened to that quid pro quo arrangement we used to have?”

  I put my hands on the table and pushed back. “Damn. This is embarrassing, Phil. It could be something entirely different, you know. Maybe somebody has an agenda involving Arthur Liggett. Hopefully, I’ll be able to nail something down tomorrow on my case. If I find any connection, I’ll let you know.”

  He gave me a chilly look. “If there isn’t, then we may never know. From what I hear, Sharkey was a loner. He had a hang-up with writing things down, in case his office got tossed. We’ll do it, of course, but probably won’t find anything.”

  A scrupulous record keeper, I had no idea how you could run a PI shop any other way. The guy either had a great memory or a penchant for writing fiction.

  Phil aimed his finger like the barrel of a pistol. “You realize when the newshounds see the PI angle, they’re gonna jump on this like pups in a frenzy. You’d better see that Miss Kelli gets lost for a few days. We’ll want them both available for further questioning, though.”

  I got up from the table. “Shouldn’t be any problem. Jarvis is assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon. He’ll have to report the details to them, and I’m sure they won’t be too happy. But accidents happen.”

  “Yeah. You’d better hope the DA sees it that way.”

  Chapter 11

  Phil had called for a wrecker to haul Sharkey’s car off to the tow-in lot. As soon as he left, I suggested Warren and Kelli get their cars away from Blair Boulevard and meet us at our office. On the way, I told Jill about my conversation with Adamson.

  “Sounds like you did a pretty good job of defusing the situation,” she said.

  “That remains to be seen. You can be certain Phil’s going to do a lot of digging. And I feel the same way he does. I’d sure as hell like to know what Harold Sharkey was up to, who he was working for.”

  “How about this, Greg? What if whoever was after the Marathon papers hired him to make sure Kelli was away so they could search her grandfather’s house? Then he came back to see what else he could learn from her.”

  I nodded. “Good scenario. Of course,
it assumes someone is after the papers, which we have no proof of as yet. And if they’re the same people who killed Bradley, it would mean they didn’t find the papers on him or at his house.”

  “Which means we’d still have a chance to recover them.”

  I reached over and patted her knee. “I like your positive attitude, babe. Let’s try to keep it up when we talk to our clients.”

  It was well after six when we swung onto I-40, headed for Hermitage. Rush hour traffic had slowed and the only bottleneck was perennial construction between downtown and the airport. We tuned in a weather report, getting the usual August forecast for tomorrow—hot and humid, possible afternoon thunderstorms. At least for the moment the sky was being swept blue by a steady southerly breeze.

  “I need to get a little flying time in during the next day or so,” Jill said. “Anywhere we need to go?”

  I shrugged. “I hope not.” Flying wasn’t my favorite mode of transportation. I used it when necessary and knew I’d have one of the best pilots in the business. Still, every time I made it back to terra firma, I vowed I’d never leave again. Maybe it all stemmed from my parents’ death in an airliner crash on the way to my graduation at the University of Michigan. Maybe it’s just some kind of weird hang-up. Anyway, I preferred to keep my four wheels and my two feet on the ground.

  By the time we pulled into the parking area, the evening crowds were beginning to pack the restaurants near our office. I unlocked the door and we headed for our desks. The answering machine light winked as though burdened with a nervous tick.

  “I’ll check the calls,” I said.

  There were two messages. I played the first one. It was a real shocker.

  “Mr. McKenzie, I’d appreciate your giving me a call. This is a fellow PI., Harold Sharkey. We’ve never met, but I’ve heard good reports about you. I’m sure you’d be happy to give a little professional courtesy to another investigator. I have a question about your interest in a certain woman visiting here.”

  Jill looked at me with a raised eyebrow as he rattled off his phone number. “Did I just hear what I thought I did?”