As I started to turn back toward the car, his urgent voice stopped me. “It might be a good idea to stay away from here tomorrow.”
I looked around, puzzled. “Why?”
“That’s all I can say. But you wouldn’t want to get caught in a multi-agency trap. And forget I said that.”
Jill looked up as I slipped into the driver’s seat. “What now?”
I tapped my hand on the steering wheel. I decided not to mention the sheriff’s warning. I hadn’t worked out in my mind what was going on.
“It’s almost three o’clock and I haven’t heard from Craig Audain,” I said. “Let’s head for home and I’ll see if I can run him down.”
Warren leaned forward, almost lunged. “What about Kelli?”
“Why don’t you call the motel and ask for her room? If she’s there, we can head back in that direction.”
He threw up his hands. “I don’t know the number.”
I pulled a card from my pocket and handed it to him. “I got this off the counter while talking to the clerk.”
“Thanks.”
I started the car and turned toward the main highway while he called the motel. After a couple of minutes, he handed the card to me.
“No answer. Just take me over there and I’ll wait.”
“And what if she doesn’t show up?” Jill asked. “You’ll be stuck up here with no clothes, no transportation, no hope of accomplishing anything.”
He heaved a deep sigh. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. But if I don’t figure out something to do soon, I’m going to start coming unglued.”
“I’ll dig out my glue pot as soon as we get back.” I hoped a little frivolity might brighten his mood. From the look I got, it was levity wasted.
We dropped Warren off at his motel around four-thirty.
“Let’s keep in touch,” I said. “If you hear anything from Kelli, call us right away. We’ll let you know any new developments we uncover.”
“I know you’re both going above and beyond the call,” Warren said. “I can’t overemphasize how much I appreciate it.”
“Don’t give it a thought,” Jill said. “After what you did for us in Israel, you’re still way ahead on the ledger.”
As we drove to the office, I told Jill about Sheriff Driscoll’s warning. We were almost there when Agent Fought called.
“Have you heard from the lab techs?” I asked.
“Yeah. It’s definitely a match.”
“That makes it pretty certain the guy who whacked Casey Olson was involved in Pierce Bradley’s murder. Did they find any DNA?”
“No. But I agree with you on the subject’s involvement. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to put things on hold for a day. There’s a big operation going on in my territory tomorrow that I need to monitor.”
“Must be why Sheriff Driscoll wanted me to stay out of the way tomorrow.”
That set him off. “What the hell did he say?”
“Nothing really. He merely suggested I stay out of Trousdale County tomorrow, that something big was going down.” I made it more vague than the sheriff’s version.
“Damn him. All we need is a leak at this stage.”
“Well it won’t come from me,” I said. “And I’ll stay clear of the place. Will you be able to get a diver in the river up there?”
“I’ve already talked to my supervisor. He’s taking care of it.”
I told Jill the gist of our conversation as we walked into the office. She gave me the old raised eyebrow. “So it looks like we’ll be tracking down where the Dallas Lights were bought.”
“If it’s going to be done anytime soon, babe, it’ll be up to us.”
First, I dialed the home phone for Craig Audain, the Chamber of Commerce man.
“Hasn’t he called you yet?” his wife asked in disbelief.
“Not yet. Is he there?”
I heard her yell his name. A few moments later, he came on the line.
“I humbly apologize, Mr. McKenzie. I slept late this morning, and I was still half asleep when my wife told me about your call. I didn’t get home until nearly three A.M., but that’s no excuse. I simply forgot. Just what was it you wanted to know?”
I reminded him of Pierce Bradley’s call regarding the papers found at Marathon Village. “Who did you call to find out that Sydney Liggett’s grandson was Arthur Liggett?”
“Gee. Let me think a minute. I believe I started out with Irving Glastonbury. He’s a retired lawyer. You may know him. I remembered he was an antique car nut, so I called and asked if he knew anything about the folks who ran Marathon Motors. He referred me to Allen Vickers, whose great-grandfather had been president of the company at one time.”
I paused after jotting down the names. “Did you tell these men how the papers were found and that they indicated Sydney Liggett intended to turn them over to the district attorney?”
“Not with Irving, but I believe I did go into some detail with Allen Vickers.”
“What business is he in?”
“Vickers runs a software company that creates computer programs for clinics and hospitals. He said he’d do some checking around. He called back later the same day with Arthur Liggett’s name. Said I could find him at the Safe Harbor Nursing Home.”
“Do you know who Vickers talked to?”
“He didn’t say.”
Chapter 34
We had invested so much hope in Craig Audain that his call left us virtually speechless. After I repeated “he didn’t say” for Jill, we sat at our desks like a pair of zombies. Several minutes later, I pulled my phone book out of the drawer and thumbed through the V’s. I found AllenVickers’ listing in Brentwood, an upscale suburb that straddled the county line along I-65 to the south.
I punched in the number and waited. After four rings, an answering machine picked up. “You’ve reached the Vickers. Sorry we can’t take your call, but if—”
I slammed the phone down. “Nobody home.”
“This case is plagued with a conspiracy of silence,” Jill said, propping her elbows on the desk.
I switched to the yellow pages and flipped the phone book open. “Dammit, I for one refuse to sit here and take it.”
I looked up tobacco products and picked out a store that sounded like something other than a discount cigarette retailer. I got a grumpy-voiced man who listened to my problem and grunted.
“I doubt you’ll find anybody around here who handles them,” he said. “A lot of those importers don’t import anymore, so you’re looking for a needle in a haystack.”
When I repeated that glum forecast for Jill, she closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. After a moment, she looked up with an enlightened smile. “I wonder if John Jernigan could steer us in the right direction. Didn’t he work for a tobacco company?”
“Yes, but they made snuff, not cigarettes. Still, he’s a confirmed smoker. He might have some contacts in the business.”
I turned back to the phone book and looked up John Jernigan’s number. A few moments later, I heard his familiar “Jernigan here.”
“John, I’m delighted to hear your voice, you old rascal. This is Greg.”
“What’s up? Have you been prowling around some old battlefields again?”
“No, but I’ve been battling with a very troublesome case we’re investigating. I hoped you might be able to help me out.”
“I’ll certainly be happy to try.”
“Ever hear of a cigarette brand called Dallas Lights?”
“Is that something the Cowboys’ cheerleaders smoke?”
I laughed. “If they have a name like Chekov or Tchaikovsky, maybe.”
“It can’t be Russian.”
“Sure is. Any idea who around Nashville might carry a Russian cigarette brand like that?”
“I’d start with The Compleat Tobacconist,” he said, spelling it out. “They’re on West End just beyond Vanderbilt. They have a wide selection of products, both domestic and imported. Talk to a fellow named Ri
dley. Tell him I sent you.”
I riffled through the phone book again and called the tobacco shop. A man answered with an accent that might have been Russian, for all I knew.
“Is Ridley there?” I asked.
“He has not returned from supper. Maybe thirty minutes.”
I hung up and swung my chair around to face Jill. “We’re off to West End, babe. Hopefully, Ridley is our man.”
We found the traffic flow on I-40 heading into town moderate, likely laced with people headed home from a day at the lake or some venue farther to the east. We took the Inner Loop around to Broadway, drove up the hill past automobile row and swung onto West End when it split off to the right. The restaurants seemed to be doing a good business, the sidewalks populated with strollers of all sizes, shapes and ethnicities, thanks to a couple of hours of daylight left.
We found The Compleat Tobacconist in a row of shops that catered to the Vanderbilt University crowd. I parked in a space not too distant, and we walked over to the store. The smell of tobacco slammed me as soon as we entered, overpowering my olfactory apparatus. I decided this probably wasn’t the best place to linger. At Jill’s persistent prodding, I had kicked the smoking habit for the second time—the first didn’t take too well after I became immersed in the quest to find her, which wound up requiring Warren Jarvis’s intervention.
Cigars, cigarettes, pipes, most any kind of device you’d need for smoking, and tobacco of all sorts filled every case, shelf and counter that could be wedged into the small shop. A white-haired man as thin as a pipe stem stood behind the counter, sleeves rolled up on his blue dress shirt, a red tie hanging loose from its unbuttoned collar.
“Would you be Ridley?” I asked.
“I not only would be, I am.” His furrowed brow accented a thin smile.
I introduced Jill and myself. I told him John Jernigan had sent us.
“A good man, John. Haven’t seen him for a while. What did he send you in for?”
“He said you could probably tell us if there was any place in Nashville where we could find Dallas Lights.”
He reached up to a shelf behind him, pulled out a red and blue package and set it on the counter. “Sir, you have just found the place.”
“The saints be praised,” Jill said. “We finally scored a hit.”
Seeing Ridley’s perplexed look, I explained that we were looking for customers who used the Russian cigarettes.
“I’m afraid you can count them on the fingers of one hand. We started ordering them at the insistence of a good customer who had picked them up on a business trip to Moscow. I don’t think anybody else has bought any for a while.”
“Interesting,” I said. “Who was that?”
“His name is Williams. He goes by Shelby, but as I recall it isn’t his real name. He’s an international sales rep. Travels all over the world.”
“Who does he travel for?”
“That big medical equipment company, Hedrick Industries.”
Chapter 35
When we entered the office, the phone was ringing with great excitement. At least that’s the way it seemed to me, having succumbed to a pent-up feeling of anticipation over the possibility that one of the hooks we had cast would finally pull in a catch. I found Warren on the other end of the line.
“I just got off the phone with the clerk at the motel in La-fayette.” He gave it the local pronunciation, then chuckled. “I still wonder what the Marquis would have thought of the way that sounds. Of course, he had enough other names to choke a horse, so it probably wouldn’t have mattered.”
“What did the clerk say?” I asked.
“Julia Quinn called to check on her messages.”
“Did she leave any for you?”
“I had told the clerk to ask her to call Colonel Jarvis. She left me a weird message.”
“Does that mean cryptic?”
“Sure as hell is to me.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she rode a mule to find where she needed to go. She hoped to have a full report of her journey on Colonel McKenzie’s desk in the morning. What the devil do you make of that?”
I rearranged the clutter on my desk as I considered her message. “Sounds like she’s onto something. A mule is a drug courier. Could be the marijuana contact Mickey Evans told us about. He’s led her to somebody key to the investigation. I just hope she’s being real careful.”
“I’m sure she carries a weapon, but you never know what you might run into.”
“Right. This guy has already killed twice. He’d do it again in an instant.”
When I finished the conversation and repeated Kelli’s message, Jill posed an intriguing question.
“How do you suppose she plans on getting her report to your desk?”
“If it isn’t hand-delivered, it would have to come by fax or email.”
“Does she know our email address?”
“It’s on our business card.”
She leaned back in her chair and looked me straight in the eye, as any good PI would do when searching for an unequivocal answer. “Do you plan to call Shelby Williams and check him out, maybe see if he’s been supplying Dallas Lights to any of his friends?”
I rubbed my chin in a gesture of futility. “I’d like to. But do you have any idea how many pages of Williamses there are in the phone book? It’s almost as bad as Jones or Smith. And we know Shelby isn’t his real name.”
“So how do we find him?”
“We’ll try him in the morning at Hedrick Industries. If that doesn’t work, you’d better be thinking up a good excuse to call Roger Rottman.”
We checked the fax machine and email on arriving at the office Monday morning but found nothing from Kelli. I didn’t like the implications. Had something happened to keep her from sending a report? Maybe we’d get something later.
Jill and I had discussed today’s major police operation in Trousdale County after we got home last night. One possibility was the investigation Sheriff Driscoll had alluded to earlier while talking about Pierce Bradley’s “aerial spying.” If Kelli had gotten involved on the fringes of the drug crowd, I hoped she didn’t wind up getting snared in the law enforcement trap being sprung today.
“Want to draw straws on Allen Vickers and Shelby Williams?” Jill asked.
I gave her my “pull-eeeze!” look. “You know I always get the short end.”
“Oh, and who winds up with the squints from sitting in front of a microfilm reader?”
“Okay.” I decided to be conciliatory. “Let’s not be arbitrary. I’ll take Vickers, you take Williams.”
She grinned. “I like a man who declines to be wishy-washy. Anyway, that means you’ll have to do the detective work. I know where to call Williams. You’ll have to find the name of Allen Vickers’ software company.”
She was right, but it didn’t take me long to come up with the firm’s name and phone number. With my usual luck, though, Vickers was in a meeting. His secretary assured me the meeting shouldn’t last long. She promised to have him call as soon as he came out.
Jill fared a little better. She quickly tracked down Shelby Williams. He said he had given packs of the cigarettes to several friends as a novelty thing. He was reluctant to talk about it after learning we needed the information for a case we were investigating. He said he had just returned Friday from a two-week trip to Europe and was late for a meeting. He would be leaving town again tomorrow. Jill finally convinced him that we merely wanted to ask the people a few innocuous questions. He agreed to jot down some names and call them in before the day was out.
“If he got back from a two-week trip Friday, that certainly eliminates him as a suspect,” Jill said.
“We may have to check him out after we see the other names.”
A few minutes later, I got a call from Mike Geary, the owner and developer of Marathon Village.
“Good morning, Mr. Geary,” I said. “You have a really interesting place over there. Did Shannon I
vey tell you what we were after?”
“Yeah. She said you came over and looked at where Pierce Bradley’s man found those papers. I’d’ve gotten back to you sooner, but I have another project under way down in Jackson. Been tied up on it. You found those papers yet?”
“No, they’ve disappeared.”
“That sounds mighty ominous. Shannon said you think Bradley may have been murdered over those old documents.”
“That’s our theory, but the police haven’t bought it yet.”
“Why would anybody kill over some ninety-year-old papers?”
“If we had the papers, we might find the answer. According to what Bradley told Mr. Liggett on the telephone, a note attached to the documents indicated his grandfather, Sydney Liggett, planned to turn them over to the District Attorney.”
“Sydney was assistant treasurer of the company.”
Jill came over and perched on the side of my desk. I motioned to her to pick up on her extension.
“I’m bringing my wife in on the conversation, Mr. Geary,” I said. “Her name is Jill and she’s my partner in the agency.”
“Hi, Mr. Geary,” she said. “Glad to hear from you.”
“A pleasure,” he said.
Picking up on his previous comment, I asked, “Do you know who Sydney Liggett’s boss was?”
“Sure. The secretary-treasurer, Sam Hedrick. He got involved in the company while it was still successful, before things started going downhill.”
That nearly took my breath.
“Was he one of the owners?”
“He was a stockholder. I don’t know how much money he had in the company. Probably not a lot, from what I’ve read. He’d been something of a playboy, had gone through most of his family’s money by that time.”
“From what we’ve heard, he was the one who accused Sydney Liggett of embezzling funds.”
“Yeah. They had a lot of problems that came out in the bankruptcy case. There were accusations of company officers selling cars out the back door, the money not on the books. The guy who designed the cars and served as general manager until they canned him charged they priced the cars at a loss. It was a big mess. After they brought Hedrick in as secretary-treasurer, it became apparent he knew nothing about manufacturing cars. They named a new president to keep an eye on Hedrick’s business habits, but this guy knew nothing about the auto industry, either.”
Greg McKenzie Mysteries Boxed Set—Books 1-4 Page 83