Reed Ferguson Mystery Box Set 5

by Renee Pawlish

  I finished my meal, paid, and went out to the front desk. The young clerk was in his usual spot, but his video game wasn’t on. He was slouched in his chair, looking off into space. He had dark circles under sleepy eyes, and he looked a little pale. Too much partying the night before?

  “Could you tell me where Mayor Holder’s office is?” I asked.

  He jumped, then said, “Uh, he’s out at the dairy plant.”

  “And that’s where exactly?”

  “Follow Main Street west. It’ll keep going, and the plant is about five miles out of town. You can’t miss it.”

  “Thanks.”

  I went back to my room and grabbed my backpack with my laptop, then walked outside. I took a deep breath of the fresh air and went to the 4-Runner. I gave it a once-over in the daylight, and didn’t notice any further damage. With a relieved sigh, I got in and drove out to Holder Dairy.

  The Holder Dairy plant was a series of large white buildings that sat a hundred yards off the road. I took the only road onto the property, and found a parking space in front of a small building with a sign that read, “Office.” A steady rumble of machinery greeted me as I got out and went inside.

  The office was plain and simple, with white walls, a sofa against the far wall, and windows that looked out into the parking lot. A hallway led to other offices, and the murmur of voices drifted out to me. A woman about my age sat at a metal desk, working at a computer. She looked up and smiled at me.

  “May I help you?”

  “I’d like to speak to Mayor Holder,” I said.

  “He’s not in.”

  I jerked my head at the sofa. “I can wait.”

  Just then her phone rang. She picked it up, listened, and frowned. When she finished, she replaced the receiver and eyed me carefully. “The mayor won’t be in until this afternoon.”

  I glanced toward the hall. Was someone watching us, and had that someone warned her about me?

  “It’s rather important that I speak with him,” I said as I gazed surreptitiously at the ceiling, searching for a hidden camera. “Do you know where he is?”

  “No.” Now she was cool. “And he’ll be busy later today.”

  She didn’t offer to let me make an appointment, and I didn’t bother asking. I was sure she’d tell me his schedule was full.

  “I’ll come back another time,” I said.

  “You do that.” There was no warmth in her tone.

  I gave her my most amiable smile – which did nothing – and left. I wondered if I should’ve tried the Bogie approach, played it dark and surly. But that probably wouldn’t have helped. I sat in the parking lot and waited for Holder to show his face, but after a while, the secretary came out and gave me a hard look. I waved, started the 4-Runner, and drove off. I reached the main road and parked down from the dairy entrance, watching for Holder’s black Cadillac. After an hour, this seemed pointless, and I worried that the longer I stayed, the more I risked drawing a visit from the sheriff. And I wasn’t ready to see him yet. I decided to move on before someone figured out what I was doing.

  Since I’d drawn a blank here, I decided to try Toby Holder. I sat for a moment in the 4-Runner and pulled up a map of Sagebrush. I studied it and quickly found Tenth Street. Holder Farm Equipment was at the opposite end of town from where I was. I fired up the 4-Runner, got back on the road, and was soon driving down Tenth Street.

  Toby Holder’s store was a big green warehouse on a large corner lot. Behind the building, a lot surrounded by a high chain-link fence was full of all sorts of large tractors and tractor attachments, some new, some used. A few trucks were parked in front of the warehouse.

  I pulled in next to a beat-up blue pickup, went inside, and glanced around. Smaller farm equipment was displayed all around the store, along with other accessories and tools. Two men stood near a riding lawn mower, talking to a salesman. Standing at a long counter at the back of the store was a man with blond hair and a handlebar mustache. Annette’s husband. He wore a blue T-shirt with “Bill” on it, and was helping a young farmer in worn jeans and a plaid shirt. As they talked, the young man kept adjusting his John Deere cap. They completed an order, and the young man paid and left.

  Bill looked at me with a smile. “What can I do for you?”

  I moseyed up to the counter. “Is Toby around?”

  Just then, a tall, solidly built man in new Wranglers and a T-shirt similar to Bill’s walked up. The name on his shirt read “Toby.”

  “I’m –” I started to introduce myself.

  “I know who you are,” Toby said. His voice was deep, with a gruff edge. “Jennifer called me.”

  “Are you going to give me the cold shoulder, too?” I asked.

  Bill’s eyes darted between us. I wondered if he recognized me from last night.

  Toby shook his head. “I don’t have anything to tell you.”

  One of the men inspecting the riding lawn mower headed up to the counter, so Toby stepped away. I moved with him.

  “I’m trying to find your sister Marcia,” I said. “Have you heard from her in the last few days?”

  “Nope, and if I had, I wouldn’t tell you. Now –” he began in a low voice.

  “Let me guess,” I interrupted, “you’re going to tell me to mind my own business, and that your father’s a mean man, and to leave him alone.”

  His lips were a thin line that hardly moved when he talked. “He had a hard upbringing, and he’s made good here in spite of it, so I’m not going to fault him for that.” He stood staring at me, his stance wide. “What’re you doing here?”

  “I told you, I’m trying to find Marcia, and everything points to Sagebrush. But nobody wants to give me a straight answer about anything. I find that a little bit suspicious, wouldn’t you?”

  He glared at me, but didn’t say anything.

  I nodded. “Okay, I’ll try your father next.”

  “Don’t bother him.”

  “Try and stop me.”

  “You’re not going to get anything from him.”

  “Why? Is he hiding something?”

  “There’s nothing to hide,” he barked. “Just because my father handled things a certain way a long time ago doesn’t mean he did anything wrong.”

  “He forced his daughter to leave her boyfriend and return here. And he threatened to force her to give the baby up for adoption.”

  The other men in the store were trying hard to appear as if they weren’t listening.

  Toby lowered his voice again. “So?”

  “Who’d he send to get her?”

  “I don’t know. Some of his pals, I guess. I don’t know what happened that night.”

  “Did you ever meet Marcia’s boyfriend?”

  His eyes darted away. “No.”

  I crossed my arms casually. “Now why don’t I believe you?”

  “You can believe what you want. I didn’t know the guy, but he shouldn’t have gotten her pregnant.”

  “I hear he didn’t.”

  He scrutinized me. “What do you know?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.” I could play his game. We had a staring contest. Then I said, “Tell me about your friend Jay.”

  His eyebrows arched in surprise. “Where did you hear that name?”

  “Nowhere.”

  He glanced over at Bill, who was helping his customer and very deliberately not paying attention to us. Toby looked back at me.

  “Jay’s death was an accident.”

  “I hear it might’ve been a drug deal gone bad,” I said. “You know anything about that?”

  “You can believe what you want.” Toby gestured out the door. “You need to get in your car and head on out of town.”

  “I like it here.” I grinned at him. “I think I’ll stay for a while, maybe move here. It’s such a pleasant, friendly town.”

  Toby’s eyes narrowed. “Get out of here.”

  “I’m going to find Marcia,” I said. “If you know where she is, you better tell
me.”

  “Your little private investigator’s license doesn’t hold much weight here,” he sneered. Then he stormed away.

  I felt the eyes of Bill and the customers on me as I sauntered out the door. I stood in the sunlight and mulled over the conversation. Toby Holder hadn’t told me a lot with words, but he’d revealed more than he’d intended. I was sure he knew something about John Smith. When Marcia and John had their secret liaisons, had Toby known about them? Had he seen them together, and told Mayor Holder about it? Not only that, I was sure Toby had been talking to the sheriff. How else would he have known I had a private investigator’s license? I hadn’t actually shown the license to anyone but the sheriff.

  Toby was hiding something, but what did that have to do with Marcia? If I could answer that, I’d bet my private investigator’s license I’d find Marcia.

  Chapter Twenty

  At this point, I needed to talk to the one man everyone said I shouldn’t: Mayor Holder. But how could I find him? I didn’t relish the idea of staking out the dairy plant to wait for him to arrive, especially since I might draw the attention of the sheriff. And what if the mayor never showed today? My next bet was to find out where he lived and try there. Then my phone rang. I checked the number, but didn’t recognize it.

  “Hello?” I answered tentatively.

  “Reed Ferguson?”

  “Yes.” The voice seemed familiar, as if I’d heard it before.

  “Mayor Holder.”

  I glanced around, wondering if I really was in a Twilight Zone episode. “How did you get my number?” I asked.

  “I have my ways.” He sounded very much like me when I didn’t want to reveal how I got information. “I want to talk to you, son. Meet me at the park on Main Street, now.”

  I was tempted to tell him no, just to screw with him, but he hung up before I could say another word. I pocketed my phone, then wondered what I was about to get into. Was this a trap of some kind? Would the mayor resort to something nefarious in order to get me to stop asking questions? I shrugged. I’d be careful, but there was no way I was not going to meet him. I went to the 4-Runner, and as I headed out of the parking lot, I saw Toby Holder standing in the warehouse door, watching me.

  I drove down Main Street a few minutes later, and in the center of town I noticed a black Cadillac parked prominently in front of a park that took up an entire square block. The park had a pavilion in the center, lots of tall maple trees, and benches all around. A few people were in the pavilion, eating sack lunches at picnic tables. I started down a path toward them when I spotted a man sitting at one end of a bench near Main Street. A tree towered over him, providing some shade. I walked casually over and stared at him.

  He gestured with a wrinkled hand toward the other end of the bench. “Please, have a seat.”

  I hesitated, just long enough so he’d know I wasn’t taking an order, then sat down and took a second to study him. Alvin Holder was tall, like his son, but where Toby was solid muscle, Mayor Holder had withered with age. But he still had strength in his face, and his eyes flashed dangerously. He looked dapper, if somewhat out of style, in white slacks and suit vest, with a light blue shirt and black tie. It was hot, even in the shade, but he wasn’t sweating. A woman walked by with her dog, and he smiled at her and said it was a nice day. They exchanged a few pleasantries and then she waved and walked off. Then he turned to me.

  “I’ve lived in Sagebrush since 1963,” he said as he fanned himself with a Panama hat. He sounded like his son, the same deep, gruff voice. “I started a small dairy and built it into something. I had to expand, up to hundreds of acres now. We make sweet cream, condensed milk, and nonfat dry milk, which are all used to make cheese, yogurt, and ice cream.” It sounded like a commercial: well-rehearsed and delivered with just the right amount of sales pitch to impress me. Only I wasn’t. “Holder Dairy may not be as big as some other plants,” he went on, “but I’ve turned it into something. I may sell it soon, to a bigger dairy. That’ll be a windfall for the city. The dairy already helps our economy here immensely, but expanding the dairy would mean more jobs, and it’ll help the community in other ways.”

  “And you’ll benefit plenty yourself.”

  The hat stopped for a second, and then he resumed fanning himself. “That’s true,” he finally said.

  A man in blue slacks and a striped shirt walked by. He nodded his head at the mayor and smiled.

  “Afternoon, Don.” Not to be outdone, the mayor gave him a big smile of his own.

  Don said hello, and the mayor interrupted our talk to chat with him. I was well aware of what Holder was doing. He wanted me to see him as the man of the people, the guy who provided jobs for the town, a well-respected leader of the community. A good guy.

  I found myself momentarily falling for it. Was everyone lying about him? Then I thought about what Willie had said last night about domestic violence. Was Holder like the doctor she’d talked about, a Jekyll and Hyde character?

  Don moved on and Holder cleared his throat. “You sure like stirring up trouble.”

  He thought he’d buttered me up, and now we were getting to it.

  “I want to know where your daughter Marcia is,” I said.

  “She showed up at my house.”

  I tried not to show my surprise. “When?”

  “Last night. I was watching TV in the den and she just appeared. I haven’t seen her in years.” He showed no emotion.

  “What did she want?”

  “She thought I’d sent people after her, but why would I do that now?”

  “You weren’t in Denver recently?”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t been there since last fall, when I had some meetings downtown.”

  “You didn’t check on her while you were there?”

  “I did not.”

  “It looks like there was trouble at her house.”

  He gave me an approving look. “So you’ve been there.”

  “Yes.” I told him about the broken lamp and blood. “I thought maybe she’d been taken against her will.”

  “Well, we know that’s not true.”

  “If I can believe you.”

  Irritation crossed his face, then was gone. “She’s okay.”

  “Did she tell you what happened at her house? Maybe she was assaulted, then escaped, and came up here.”

  “She didn’t tell me a thing.”

  “Did she tell you where she’s staying?”

  “I don’t know. We spoke for a minute, and then she vanished as quietly as she’d appeared. I continued watching TV.”

  An indifferent chill emanated from him, but then one of the lunch-time crowd walked by and the mayor chatted briefly with her, all warmth and charisma.

  “What else did she talk to you about?” I asked when the woman left.

  “She asked about that night in Kansas. She seems to think that whatever happened back then is rearing its ugly head now. I told her that’s ridiculous.”

  “The night you came for her.”

  He hesitated, then nodded.

  “What’d you tell her?” I asked.

  “I had to do what I thought was best. Her actions had caused me a lot of problems.”

  I had a hard time not letting my anger boil over. He was so calm about the whole thing, so righteous. He gave no thought to anyone but himself.

  “Why’d you bring her back?” I asked. “Why not just let her go?”

  “I had a reputation in town. I couldn’t let people think I wasn’t capable of handling my own family. This was – is – a good community, churchgoing folk.”

  “You worried about what Pastor Sheehan would say.”

  “That’s part of it. Marcia had no idea what she’d done to my wife, either. The embarrassment. The disappointment. And I wasn’t going to have Marcia running off with some hoodlum.”

  “You knew who she was dating?”

  “No. Hoodlum’s just a figure of speech.”

  “Was it Toby’s fr
iend Jay?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “Jay got what was coming to him.”

  “Huh,” I said. He didn’t think much of Jay. “Did you have something to do with his death?”

  “No.”

  “What’s Jay’s last name?”

  “I don’t remember.” He said it too quickly to be believed. His eyes narrowed. “Who my daughter was seeing is a mystery to me. Satisfied?”

  I wasn’t, but he wasn’t going to say more about it, so I moved on. “What happened in that hotel room?”

  He shrugged. “I wasn’t there.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “She remembers your voice.”

  “She had a concussion, and she’s mixed up about a lot of things that happened that night.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed that. “Who’d you send then?”

  “Some people of mine. I was at a mayor’s conference in Cleveland.”

  “I’ll check.”

  “Please do. I’m not lying.”

  “People who kidnapped –” I had to search for the correct name. “Victoria?”

  He shrugged. “I wish I knew. It was all a long time ago.” And suddenly, our meeting was over. He stood up, put his hat on, and adjusted it carefully. “You’ve talked to me now. I think it’s time you leave town quietly. I’d hate to get tough with you.”

  “I hear you’re good at being tough.”

  He threw me a wicked smile. “Don’t make things difficult for yourself.”

  “I’m not leaving until I know Marcia’s safe.”

  Mayor Holder contemplated me for a moment, then strolled off without another word. He never once looked back at me. I sat for a while, not quite sure what to make of my conversation with him. My gut said he was telling the truth about Marcia’s visit, but not about whatever had happened years ago. And if Marcia was asking him about the past, it meant she didn’t think he was being truthful, either. Another thought occurred to me. Was Marcia wrapped up in whatever had happened? Had she been lying to me?