Halfway to Half Way

by Suzann Ledbetter

  Then Leo refused to walk sock-footed into the dingdanged shoe store. Delbert argued that it was the same as buying a raincoat when it was raining. Fortunately, he'd only shuttled three pairs out to the curb before one of them fit. A top-of-the-line Hush Puppy model, with a sticker price to prove it.

  After that, Delbert dropped thirty-one simoleons plus tax at Wal-Mart for booze and Bengay, sprang for lunch at a fast-food place, gassed up the Edsel, then took Leo home and hied back to the testing lab.

  By the time Code Name: Epsilon was stamped Mission Accomplished, Delbert figured he'd have enough change left from his pension check to buy a tin cup to panhandle with.

  "Are you Mr. Bisbee?"

  Delbert scowled up at a young jake with glasses as thick as Leo's, but a full head of curly hair. He glanced around at the room's other five empty chairs. "Good guess, picking me outta the crowd like that."

  The jake introduced himself as Kerry Scott, the lab's head honcho, apologized for the delay, then gestured at an open doorway. "Step into my office, Mr. Bisbee. I'd like to discuss my findings with you."

  Delbert made a show of checking his watch. "Wish I could, son, but there's someplace I gotta be in about five minutes. Just give me the report and I'll come back—"

  "Sorry. I won't release it until you've answered a few questions."

  "Whaddya mean, release it?" Delbert blustered. "I paid for it. Out the ying-yang, I don't mind telling you. Now, hand it over and I'll be on my way."

  That's the problem with young folks these days, he thought a few moments later, taking a seat in Scott's office. No respect for their elders.

  "I'm not familiar with the address you gave on the form. Where do you live, Mr. Bisbee?"

  "In Valhalla Springs."

  "Really." Scott consulted the huge topographical map taped to the wall. "I'm not aware that there was ever an orchard in that area."

  "An orchard? You mean, like fruit trees?" Delbert shook his head. "Jack Clancy planted cherry trees here and there and around the golf course, but it's a far cry from what I'd call an orchard."

  "And too recent." Still focused on the map, Scott went on, "Prior to 1947, growers all over the country sprayed pesticides with high arsenic concentrations on their trees. It was cheap and it worked, but it also saturated the soil. In some instances, the groundwater and nearby wells were tainted."

  Hot ziggety. Delbert barely resisted the urge to toss his cap in the air. The lab jockey'd confirmed their samples contained arsenic and not just a pinch of it, either. If they'd been clean, Scott wouldn't be yapping about bug spray and fruit farming.

  He turned away from the map. "Which means your samples didn't come from Valhalla Springs, Mr. Bisbee."

  Delbert started, even though he'd confabulated a pip of a story, in the event he needed one. Contingency plans—no smart P.I. left home without 'em.

  "Well now, Dr. Scott, I can see where the confusion derived from." Sitting back, Delbert crossed his legs and hung an arm over the back of the chair. "First off, that form didn't allow for a location that doesn't have a street address. I plugged in mine, instead of leaving it at 'out a ways on VV highway.'"

  The lab superintendent appeared less than impressed by that reasoning.

  "Here's the thing. Me being founder and president of the Valhalla Springs Treasure Hunters Club, I lead metal-detecting expeditions where nobody's tromped around for no-telling how long." Delbert waved at the map. "Unless you're familiar with what folks call the old Sandusky place, I can't narrow it—"

  "I know exactly where it is," Scott said.

  "You do?" Delbert cleared his throat and willed himself to stay calm. He'd gotten what he'd come for. All he had to do was stick to his story. "Then you know about the family plot north of the old home place."

  Finally, he had Scott's attention. "No, actually, I don't. We soil-tested the property adjoining it."

  A cough disguised Delbert's sigh of relief. Back in the spring, Walt Wagonner spied what he thought were gravestones poking up on the far side of a deep, brushy draw. Dusk was falling, leaves were rustling, and Walt scared the bejesus out of them with a load of hooey about the Sandusky Curse.

  They'd never gone back. Delbert intended to—by himself, if Walt and the other nancies begged off. He just hadn't found the time, yet.

  "Besides leadershipping the club," he said, "I ascertain and assess the hazard potential of a location vis-a-vis the possibility of somebody getting hurt."

  Scott made a noise and covered his mouth with his hand. Odd ducks, these scientific types. Delbert continued, "When I found out arsenic's common to old cemeteries, I bagged up those dirt samples lickety-split."

  "A wise precaution, Mr. Bisbee." Scott passed him a computer printout. "The accepted concentration standards for children frequently exposed to contaminated soil is thirty-seven milligrams per kilogram, or less."

  "Humph. That works out to what, a speck in a little over two pounds of dirt?"

  "Yes, if by speck, you mean virtually invisible to the human eye. Now, for occasional adult exposure, the ratio increases to one-hundred-and-seventy-five milligrams per kilogram." Scott's head tick-tocked. "Approximately a tenth of a teaspoon in the same amount of soil."

  Still pretty skimpy, Delbert thought. A full teaspoon of arsenic in Royal's chili, or however Chlorine got it down his craw, would have hit him like a runaway Freightliner.

  "Your club members," Scott said. "Have any of them complained of a red, itchy rash or skin lesions?" His fingertips grazed his neck. "A scratchy throat, perhaps? Watery eyes?"

  "No, sirree. We had on coveralls, gloves, goggles, masks, the works." Realizing that was too much gear for a metal-detecting expedition at the tail end of July, Delbert hastened to add, "Leastwise, we will, next time we go metal-detecting out there."

  Scott sucked air through his teeth. "I'd strongly advise finding another site, Mr. Bisbee. Judging from my analysis, the samples you collected show a concentration slightly above four hundred milligrams per kilogram."

  "No sh—er, no kiddin'?" An involuntary shiver tracked down Delbert's spine. "Which ones?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "Which numbers," Delbert enunciated, "on which bags tested high for arsenic? They can't all be the same, coming from different parts of the yar—the graveyard."

  Scott looked at him as though Delbert's ears needed a good scrub with a Q-tip. "This is a composite analysis, Mr. Bisbee. Contamination patterns vary too much for an accurate result on small, individual samples."

  Delbert stifled a groan. He'd told that dingbat female clerk what he wanted when he brought them in. Composite, hell. All that gridding and numbering, scooping and bagging, and still no X marked the spot where Royal was planted.

  He was there, though, by cracky. And they were a step closer to proving it.

  As for the test results, they'd stay his little secret. He'd watch Leo like a hawk for any of the symptoms Scott mentioned, but knowing how much poison was in that dirt would make anybody break out in a rash.

  12

  Hannah swigged her iced tea. She swallowed and touched the glass to each cheek then her forehead. "The sign of the demented," she said, returning the sweaty glass to the table beside her chair.

  The porch was too hot, even with the fan from the bedroom balanced on the railing. Inside, it was too cold. Malcolm, of course, was in dog nirvana, snoozing on the great room rug, but he had fur, and she was philosophically opposed to wearing a sweater with shorts.

  Feeling herself slowly melt and mummify simultaneously did have its advantages. The computer's power cords wouldn't reach to the porch, and her side table wasn't big enough or sturdy enough to hold the components. Hence, the numerous e-mails with attached employment applications from Jack's secretary were logistically unavailable for review.

  Besides, Hannah rationalized, during the summer months, nobody in corporate America did any actual work after noon on a Friday.

  At the top of her legal pad was a list of titles for her nascent empire
. One stood out, The Garvey Group. Granted, the agency would be a sole proprietorship whereas The Garvey Group alluded to—well, a group, as in two or more principals. But this was advertising and advertising was all about illusion.

  It could be done. The numbers Hannah crunched assured that. Start small. Stay small. Don't reinvent the wheel. This time, she'd have a career and a life.

  No, this time she'd have a life with a career. And if career intruded on Mrs. Sheriff David Hendrickson, she'd dump The Garvey Group and buy a cow, or something.

  Her gaze flicked to the doodle of a floor-length strapless gown. It was simple, elegant, and hid all traces of the hot-fudge sundae with mocha whipped cream she'd snarfed before daring herself to go into the dress shop.

  Jonesing for chocolate was Marlin Andrik's fault. Her visit to the Outhouse had gone so splendidly, a hot fudge infusion wasn't just deserved, it was mandatory. If Mr. Personality wasn't a workaholic, his wife would probably tip the scales at nine hundred pounds. Or be his ex-wife. Or his widow.

  At a rumbling sound, Hannah looked up and was instantly blinded by sunlight reflecting off a car's windshield. A turquoise Edsel's windshield, to be exact, with an old fart behind the wheel.

  She froze, watching the aircraft carrier with whitewall tires drive up Valhalla Springs Boulevard. The porch shade is deep, Hannah intoned silently, and I am invisible.

  The Edsel's front bumper passed the first leg of the cottage's circle driveway. Yes, my liege. Return to Castle Bisbee, posthaste. Delbert's profile in the side window was as fixed as a cameo's. Going going gone.

  A tiny ah of relief escaped Hannah's lips. Delbert was home, safe from wherever the heck he'd been all day, and she was free to empire-build and doodle wedding dresses and toy with ideas for getting back at Marlin for being such an asshole at times.

  By some auditory freak of nature, she didn't hear the Edsel's mellifluous motor before its front wheels rolled into the driveway. Yanking her feet off the rail, she crammed her notes and printouts at the back of the legal pad and flipped its pages forward to a blank sheet.

  "The AC's broke again, huh," Delbert called, moving from the driver's door toward the trunk. His green, blue and red striped shirt tucked into yellow striped shorts resembled a TV test pattern after a bad hit of acid. "Lemme get my toolbox and I'll have 'er—"

  "Oh, God, not the toolbox," Hannah said, as some might say, Oh, God, not the bone saw. "The air's working fine." She raised her hand. "Scout's honor."

  "Then what the hell are you doing out here? Waiting on a bus?"

  Yeah, she thought, to take me somewhere less infested with irritable and irritating geezers. "I'm communing with nature."

  "Humph." Delbert pulled open the screen door. "I've had all the nature I can stand for one day."

  So had she, but intuition and his gimpy gait said he hadn't been out bird-watching or netting butterflies. Hannah switched off the fan and followed him inside.

  "How many holes did you and Leo get in today?" she inquired, knowing full well that he and his compadre hadn't been on the golf course, either.

  "Holes?" Delbert plunked down in the chair beside her desk. "How'd you—" He blinked. "Oh. Uh, none. Lost our tee time." Mangling his golf cap as if it were a dishrag, he said, "What'd you get out of the Sanity PD?"

  She stowed the legal pad in a bottom drawer, then took the copied police report from the Epsilon file. She could tease him with it until he told her where he'd been and what he'd been doing. On the other hand, what she didn't know, she needn't lie about to David later on.

  "The cold-case investigator gave me this," she said, holding out the report, "but it's pretty much a waste of toner. Supposedly whatever else was in Moody's file was transferred to the sheriff's department. I went down swinging there, too."

  Delbert glanced up from the paper. "Why the sheriff's department?"

  "Excellent question." She sat down in the swivel chair and repeated the answers she'd received, including Marlin's insistence that the transfer never happened.

  "Thanks for trying, ladybug. I didn't figure on a jackpot, it being so long ago and just a missing—" Delbert leapt to his feet. "Yeehaw and hallelujah." He clapped her cheeks and smacked a kiss on her lips. "I've racked my brain for days trying to figure out how to get this, and holy comoglies, you did it!"

  "I did?" Hannah cocked her head, delighted to have been so helpful, but how escaped her.

  "People disappear. Cars don't." He tapped the computer monitor. "Now, get this thing cracka-lackin'."

  While it booted up, he said he'd called Eldredge Randal, the insurance agent named on the sticker on Chlorine's bumper, assuming Randal might have also written the policy on Royal's car.

  "People didn't used to change insurance companies like yesterday's socks. A gal that poisoned her husband would be less inclined."

  "Allegedly poisoned," Hannah said.

  Delbert's grin had an elfin quality—adorable and devious. "Anywho, a neighbor had told me the make, model and year of Royal's car. From that, I knew the first part of its vehicle identification number had to be 1GN69. The tenth digit was D for the model year. The rest could be any letter or number, but the insurance dude wouldn't give 'em to me."

  Hannah clicked the icon for the Internet provider. "Okay, you're champing to tell me how you knew that much."

  "You would, too, if you'd read the Secrets of the Masters of Criminal Investigation."

  Hannah had tried. She'd curled up on the couch eager to learn a few marginally legal tricks and techniques, mostly to stay a step ahead of Sherlock Bisbee. And might have gotten past the first chapter, if it hadn't read like a James Bond novel ghostwritten by William Makepeace Thackeray.

  "The 1 is for cars made in the U.S. of A.," Delbert said. "Moody's was a Chevy—a G for General Motors. Then there's the vehicle type code and body style."

  He interrupted himself to dictate the Web site address of a subscription-only vehicle locater search engine. "Now the hitch comes in, with the codes for the engine type and series. Number 9 is a check digit—could be anything. Then 11 through 17 indicate the assembly plant and the car's production sequence. A man could spend ten years trying to guess them and still get 'em wrong."

  Hannah stared at Delbert in amazement. "Wow. You're really something, you know that?"

  Ever humble, he said, "Sure," then reached over her to type in his password to access the Web site's search function. Pointing at the police report, he said, "Put in Moody's VIN from the police report in that box, click on Submit and cross your fingers."

  A dotted line zipped back and forth across the screen—a cyberspacial "Hold, please, for that information." Hannah watched it, thinking how shrewd she'd been to skip the vehicular part of the report, hoping to find a solid clue. That forest-for-the-trees thing; a Garvey ancestor might have coined it. Nearsightedness did run in the family.

  A sense she'd missed something else bubbled at the back of her mind but refused to migrate to the front. Borrowing the report from Delbert, she was visually scouring it when he cuffed her shoulder, scaring the crap out of her.

  "Eureka! There 'tis, ladybug. In black and by God white."

  The text was royal blue and the background gray, but Hannah didn't quibble. The four columns beneath the Detailed Vehicle History header revealed the Chevy's state inspection and registration dates and locations and its mileage readings. Three months after a "Title Issued or Updated" reference was sourced Missouri Department of Vehicles, Sanity, Missouri, a subsequent update noted a new owner and registration in Ottawa, Kansas. Delbert was prancing in place. "Scroll down, scroll down."

  At the bottom of the next screen, the last of three triangular FYI icons referred to a dismantled title.

  Hannah looked up. "What's that mean?"

  Hijacking the mouse, Delbert initiated the computer's print function. "Could be, it was totaled in a wreck. Engine, maybe the transmission, went kablooey. The new owner might've junked it instead of fixing it."

  Another mouse click evic
ted them from the Internet.

  "Hey." She slapped his hand. "I was reading that."

  Whisking the printouts from the machine, he put the police report on top and picked up the cap he'd dropped on the floor. "Later, gator. I gotta copy these for tonight's meeting."

  What meeting?

  He paused at the door, adding, "Say, seven bells. Seven and a half, at the outside."

  "But—"

  Delbert waved at the breakfast room. "And turn down the air a mite, will ya?"

  Hannah stared after him, then glanced down at Malcolm, roused from his nap by Delbert's hoots and victory dance. The pooch loved watching the computer screen, almost as much as TV.