Murder by Gravity

by Barbara Graham

  “Yeah.” Gentry’s eyes widened as if he had just remembered something. “Actually, no. He seemed a bit off, you know, confused maybe. It did occur to me that he might have had a little stroke, because he sort of leaned to one side as he walked to the plane. Nothing major though.”

  “Did you ask him if he was ill?” Tony studied the older man.

  “Not exactly, but I did ask if he’d rather go later and his answer was no, let’s go.”

  Wade said, “And then what happened?”

  “Smith came back with the airplane an hour or so later. Surprised me. I expected him to stay over and wait for Cash-dollar to do his fishing. That’s the usual way it goes.” Frazier breathed hard, almost panting. “Smith said Cashdollar suddenly freaked out, starting yelling something Smith couldn’t hear, and then climbed out onto the wing. And jumped.”

  “And you didn’t call to report it?” Dupont’s lips turned down in a frown.

  “No. I was shocked and worried, so I took a different plane and flew over the area where Smith said he’d jumped. Smith’s description made it easy to spot.” Frazier massaged his hands as if they were still cold, then looked from face to face. “I swear, I didn’t see Cashdollar anywhere, and I hoped he’d been picked up by someone and taken to the hospital if he was injured. Stranger things have happened, you know. He could have bounced off a tree or landed in a bush. There were acres of trees surrounding a small bald.”

  “And then, much later than the time you said he jumped, you finally reported it.” Tony leaned close. “Why, if you waited this long, when you did call—why lie about the time?”

  “Smith was frantic. He kept saying it happened at nine. But I was afraid I’d been seen over here and didn’t want to admit I wasn’t flying the plane so I fudged the time.” Frazier started gasping for air. “I can’t lose my business.”

  Tony’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. The local sheriff. He brushed his finger over the screen to answer. He didn’t get the chance to say a word.

  “Tony, you’ll never guess what we just found.” Tony’s North Carolina counterpart was laughing. “Good news! We’ve got the Cashdollar Land Rover.”

  “Where was it?” Tony couldn’t imagine how the thing had managed to stay hidden so long. With traffic cameras and patrols looking everywhere for it. It wasn’t exactly a bicycle. “We never saw a sign of it.”

  “Well, his son told us where he’d picked his dad up, right?”

  “Right. But the car wasn’t there.” Tony had wondered if Carl Lee was mistaken about the parking spot. “And the traffic cameras didn’t show the Land Rover going anywhere.”

  “True. We just located it a bit further from town in a different parking area. That dark green car was way up under some fir tree branches and the weight of the snow had lowered those.” The sheriff laughed. “It had its own little hidey-hole.”

  “Any idea how it got out there?” Tony rubbed his neck. “Carl Lee was very adamant about the location.”

  “Oh, I have something even better. Something that explains a lot of our questions. Now we think it probably was left just where Cashdollar’s son claimed, and when. Our tech is busy with her fingerprint stuff, but there’s a new sticker on the windshield, you know, like they put in to show when you need your next oil change.”

  Tony liked the sound of this. “And?”

  “And right there on the front passenger seat is a receipt from the quickie oil change station, dated the day of the flight,” the sheriff said. “Most of our search on the camera recordings has been concentrated on the known time of his flight. None of us expected the car to move after he died.”

  “An oil change?” Tony felt like he’d just been dropped from an airplane himself. “Doesn’t sound like something you’d do if you were not planning to return.”

  “Dupont is on his way to pick you up again. He begged to be assigned to go along with you.”

  Dupont was smiling when he collected Tony and Wade. “This is the damnedest thing I ever heard of. We’re going on a little tour.” First he drove to the site where the Land Rover was supposed to have been parked. “We’ll start here.” He read the number on the odometer and then drove past the front gate of the small airfield, then turned left onto a quiet two-lane road. No traffic at all. Crossing an intersection, he pointed at a traffic camera. “Just after nine in the morning, the Land Rover came through here. It took an unbelievable number of man-hours to find it. Okay now, we’re almost there.” Before they reached the next intersection, he turned into a drive-up oil and lube business.

  They all traipsed inside. Dupont said, “Can we talk to the manager?”

  “That’s me, sort of. The owner isn’t here. I’m Jeremy.” The young man squinted at the threesome, all in uniforms. “Y’all need an oil change?”

  “No. We need to ask about one recently done here.” Tony thought Jeremy didn’t look scared. But Tony thought having the three uniforms lined up facing him made him a bit jumpy. Tony pulled out a photo of the Land Rover. “Does this vehicle look familiar?”

  “Oh, yeah, a big white dude in a suit brought it in and had the oil changed. I remember ’cause he was wearin’ white gloves. We don’t see much of that.” Jeremy frowned. “An’ he was too busy talking on his cell to look up at me.”

  Tony couldn’t imagine that description would fit anyone besides the butler. “Anything you noticed besides his bad manners?”

  “Naw. He paid me and then dumped his trash in the barrel and took off.”

  “I don’t suppose the trash is still here?” Tony thought he’d ask.

  “Nossir. It gets emptied every night. There’s always lots of fast-food trash. Starts to smell, you know.” Jeremy paused, looking curious. “Lookin’ for somethin’ special?”

  Tony felt like he was about to win the lottery. He tried to guess what the killer used. “Maybe a thermos or a travel cup?”

  Jeremy looked thoughtful, like he wasn’t sure what to say, then softly, “I mighta found somethin’ like that.”

  “I could tell your parole officer you’ve been very helpful.” Sergeant Dupont stepped forward. “Never hurts to have someone put in a good word.”

  “I ain’t done nothin’ with it. You know, like washed it. Thought I might give it to my girlfriend.” Jeremy reached under the counter and pulled out a white ceramic travel cup with a sip-through lid. “Ain’t real pricey, but why toss it?”

  Tony gently placed it into an evidence bag and made a few notes. Then he sincerely thanked young Jeremy for his help. An expression of pleased surprise had the young man’s mouth agape.

  The three men went back to Dupont’s vehicle.

  “So, from roughly nine in the morning to at least ten, maybe, the butler had the vehicle and a set of keys.” Tony checked the list of things found on the body. “He was not using Mr. Cashdollar’s keys, though, because they were found among his personal possessions.”

  “Was that pre-planned, do you think?” Dupont stared at the cup. “Let’s see if someone downtown is willing to run a quick analysis to see if there has been something other than coffee and water in this container.”

  “My thought exactly.” Dupont headed his car downtown.

  “I’ve got some very interesting findings from the lab about the travel cup,” Dupont said. “They did some quick checks on a couple of things. The full report’s not in.”

  Tony thought Dupont sounded downright giddy. “What’s up?” Tony, sitting at a borrowed desk, had been busy trying to run his office in Tennessee over the telephone.

  “There are four different people’s fingerprints on it. The techs started with people connected with this case. Of course the first ones they identified are our new best friend, Jeremy-the-lube wizard, and Franklin Cashdollar.”

  “The butler wore gloves. So, maybe the cook.” Tony smiled. “And who?”

  “Mrs. Laura Dill Cashdollar herself.”

  “No way.” Tony was shocked. Not surprised that she might have wanted her husband dead,
but that she actually had touched the cup. Any halfway decent attorney would claim she would naturally have touched her husband’s cup as a matter of course and get it dismissed as evidence. “And the contents? Anything?”

  “Those tests aren’t complete but they have found a lot more ingredients than water and coffee. Some kind of a drug cocktail. Weird stuff mixed together.”

  Tony said, “I have to call our prosecutor. I doubt our little county can handle a high-profile case like this one. It sounds like a conspiracy.”

  Tony, Wade, and Dupont sat in a small chamber with mechanic and under-licensed pilot, John Smith. Smith had been offered an attorney, which he rather smugly refused, so cameras and recording devices were busy recording every word and itch and twitch. “First, why don’t you tell us all how you did it? We’re always interested in a good yarn.” Tony smiled benignly, “Just begin at the beginning. How’d he get to the airfield?”

  Smith looked surprised. “Had to drive himself out there in that expensive car of his, don’t you think?”

  “And parked it at the airfield?” Wade looked skeptical.

  Smith nodded, but with less confidence. “I mean, wouldn’t he? The man was totally obsessed with his car and so whiny about not wanting anyone to scratch it.”

  Tony half-believed this part of the story because he knew Franklin had a reputation for worrying about scratches. But if he drove to the airstrip, how did the car end up where Carl Lee reported leaving his father and, still more oddly, where the vehicle was found. Loose ends or more lies?

  “So, how did you plan to kill him?” Tony slipped an antacid from his pocket and popped it into his mouth.

  “I knew he’d come back for another fishing day.” A smile turned up the corners of Smith’s mouth. “People with too much money and no real work to keep them busy are so predictable.”

  Tony decided John Smith had no filter on his mouth. He thought it, he said it. Tony wrote himself a note. It was not a trait he’d personally want in a co-conspirator. Who would trust this man? The recording equipment would keep track of all details of the interview, but it didn’t know what his thoughts were. This note said, “Whines too much.”

  John Smith looked relaxed, a rarity in this situation. Usually, unless they were too stupid to live anyway, the suspects he’d dealt with had twitched, itched, and wiggled all over the uncomfortable chairs. Occasionally a suspect would spend hours slouched in a position that made Tony’s own spine scream just looking at it.

  “What was the plan?” Wade tightened his grip on his pen.

  “My wife’s mother has more aches, pains, and medicines than anyone I’ve ever seen before.” Simple disgust twisted Smith’s handsome face. “It was so simple. I just took a couple of pills from each of her jars, you know, and she’d still have enough to keep her happy and I could slip them into Cashdollar’s coffee.”

  “Poison?” Tony asked for clarification.

  “No, no, I wanted him alive and conscious. I just didn’t want him at his best. Franklin Cashdollar was a fighting machine. He wasn’t a young bull anymore, but he stayed fit.”

  Tony wrote, “coward.” He was developing zero empathy for the man. “So you drugged him so it would be easier for you to dump the man, alive but semi-conscious, from an airplane? With no parachute?”

  “Yes.” Smith hesitated for the first time and looked Tony directly in the eyes. He managed to look aggrieved. “Well, put it like that and it sounds a bit harsh, don’t you think?”

  What Tony thought was getting increasingly harsh. Having an official laboratory report that there were no drugs in the thermos of coffee, Tony knew this confession was either nothing but a smokescreen, or they still hadn’t found everything they needed. Somehow, Smith seemed very sure he could lie about how he killed Franklin and then not be convicted of the crime. Tony was curious about how that would happen. He could play the game for a while longer. “Let’s go on. So you drugged Cashdollar and then flew him over to Tennessee and then what?”

  “Well, I didn’t have to do much. He was really zoned out. I told him to unbuckle his harness, and he did. Then I told him to hang onto his fly rod and he did. So, well, I did a barrel roll with the plane and he fell out.”

  “How did you know you’d be flying that plane?” Tony understood the switch in pilots had been a last-minute decision.

  Smith scratched his ear and focused on the ceiling for a while. “I, uh, well, that is, I said to the boss that I would do it.”

  Even though it was pretty much what Tony had expected, he sat, frozen in his chair. He believed this part of the confession. Tony thought Smith was extraordinarily calm and seemed rather pleased with himself for making a plan and having it work. The man was a stone-cold killer, at least in his own mind.

  Wade said, “This doesn’t seem to bother you.”

  Smith looked up then. “It’s not like I worked alone on this. It wasn’t my fault. I was just the delivery boy. I did it. I killed Franklin Cashdollar.” John Smith said the words but his face showed nothing, not guilt, fear, repentance. “Lock me up. I served under that S.O.B. twenty years ago.” Smith glared, the embers of an old grudge still burning bright in his eyes.

  “Was he a bad officer?” Tony hadn’t loved every officer he’d dealt with, but none had gotten him killed and none had left him with a residue of hatred.

  “Militarily, he was all right, I guess. Solid, unimaginative, probably better with his paperwork than with people.”

  “Did you consider him foolhardy?” Some officers had the reputation, whether deserved or not, of incurring unnecessary losses.

  “No. Can’t say I have any details. Never got the idea he was prone to tossing his men into a hole. It was his personal life I had an issue with.” John Smith’s hands balled into fists. “He stole my girlfriend at the time.”

  Tony’s eyes focused on the mechanic’s wedding ring. “Did you win her back?”

  Smith looked confused for a moment. “Oh, no, I married someone else.”

  “Children?”

  “Sure, we have a couple of kids.” Smith caught up with the conversation. “Doesn’t mean I can’t be mad. She was my girl.”

  Tony was fascinated in spite of his revulsion. “Who do you consider to be more guilty than yourself?”

  “Well, Frazier, for one. He shouldn’t have let me fly. Mrs. Cashdollar, for the other.” Smith shifted on his uncomfortable chair. “I mean, after all, it wasn’t my idea.”

  There was something so honest about his criminal behavior, Tony believed him. Smith really didn’t think he’d done anything particularly illegal or immoral because it wasn’t his idea. And lying to protect the guilty? He’d eventually figure out it wasn’t a smart decision. Tony assumed Smith was paid well for confessing. But by whom? “Let’s take a break, shall we?”

  Tony wanted more information. “Now that we have a time frame, let’s see what else your camera wizard can find.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The camera technician truly seemed like a wizard. His long fingers ran over the keyboard like a hyperactive spider, bringing up various cameras on the route, in a range of dates and times.

  “Thank goodness the man drove something easy to pick out of a blurry group of vehicles speeding through a snowstorm.” The wizard grinned. “Look at this.”

  Tony, Wade, and Dupont all leaned closer to the computer screen. The date and time on the recording showed the car was parked, as Carl Lee had said, at the time he’d returned his father to the spot.

  “Pause.” Tony blinked, focusing on a smudged figure opening the passenger door and putting something inside moments after Carl Lee departed. “Who is that?”

  “Too fuzzy.” Wade stared. “The coat has some kind of hood, and we’ve got nothing but the back.”

  “See here?” The technician touched the screen with his forefinger. “A little later, this guy gets into the car and drives away.”

  “Where does it go?” Tony stared at the image. “The airstrip or head
ed for an oil change?”

  Wade asked, “And when does it come back?”

  “Hopefully I’ll be able to let you know the answers to both of your questions. First, I need to find the vehicle again.” The wizard tipped his head toward some folding chairs. “Help yourself. There’s coffee in the pot.”

  Like three men at the movie matinee, Tony, Wade, and Dupont sat on their chairs, watching the ever-changing pictures on the screen.

  “Okay, we’ve got a shot of the driver’s face.” The wizard froze the image on the screen. “Anyone recognize this guy?”

  Tony studied it. The picture was not flawless, but it was good enough. “We’ve met. He’s the Cashdollar butler.”

  “Damn you say?” The tech expert leaned closer. “You mean you’ve actually got a case where the butler did it?”

  “Well, he’s driving the car. It looks like it might have only been his job to get the oil changed.” Tony wasn’t prepared to claim victory. “What’s near this intersection?”

  “What time is it on the recording?”

  “How long before it’s returned to the parking space?”

  “Take it easy gentlemen.” The tech raised his hands in mock surrender. “Sooner or later we’ll have a fair idea where, who, and when.”

  Tony thought the tech had a good point. “Let’s leave this to the expert and go see what the butler has to say.”

  The butler answered the door. He didn’t look happy to see them.

  “May we come in?” Dupont smiled and indicated the others with him. “You remember our good friends from Tennessee.”

  “Shall I announce you?” Anderson calmly stepped back to let them enter. “Madam might be busy.”

  “Let’s start our conversation with you.” Tony carefully closed the door behind himself. “We’ve got a few questions about the day Mr. Cashdollar died.”

  “Yessir?” Anderson stood at attention, his gloved hands clasped at the small of his back.

  “You delivered Mr. Cashdollar to the airport?”

  “No. I only went to have his car serviced.”