“Wow!” she said. “You made some progress.”
“If they can get one or the other of them to talk,” he said. “They may solve the drug case and the murder case.”
“I bet Chief Jenkins was beside himself.”
“He was,” Bishop said.
For dessert, Bishop had bought a pecan pie. They had that with decaf coffee, watched a television show, and hit the sack.
*****
The next day the chief called with an update. He and the City Attorney had been hammering at both Bryant and Margo constantly since they’d been brought in.
He said, “Well, both of them kind of want to confess to something. Lord only knows what, but from what they have said, using ‘if’ before practically every incriminating sentence, they both want to say that the other is the seller of the pot. Both swear they didn’t kill the Thomas guy. Nobody can say where the drugs came from. Bryant thinks Thomas was dealing it to Dawkins, but neither one can say they actually saw him with any of it. It just showed up on her door.”
“So, they’re saying they don’t know for sure if Stan was supplying the weed Dawkins or Bryant were apparently selling.”
“That’s right. As I said, Bryant thinks it came from him, but he doesn’t have anything to base that on except the one conversation he had with the dead man when they were working out an agreement that he wouldn’t bother the Dawkins woman.”
“They must have reconciled their differences. Sounds like they did anyway, working together like they are,” Bishop said. “They must have decided the restraining order she had against him had to give way to the money they could make selling pot. I’m assuming they were working together selling the stuff.”
“I’m inclined to believe, based on the info they did admit to. It ties into what Stan’s secretary told you, that Bryant was selling the stuff that Dawkins somehow got from somebody. She said that Bryant was also buying weed in New Orleans and selling it on the side. She didn’t get anything out of that.”
“So nobody knows for sure where it came from? Is that about it?” Bishop asked.
“All of it’s speculation, but I think that’s about where I’m at with it. Bryant will confess to something if he can get a suspended sentence. Dawkins will too, but she apparently doesn’t know where the weed comes from. She says Thomas claimed to have a client who was supplying it. As I said, the stuff was left in front of her door when she was out. And that’s where she left the money from the previous delivery’s sale.”
“And Stan Thomas is dead,” Bishop said.
“Yep. He’s dead, and nobody admits to killing him.”
“Damn. So all we have is speculation then.”
“That’s right. But we have part of the drug ring in custody. Not the actual suppliers but the street sellers. That’s progress! I’ll sleep better.”
But I won’t. I still have to find out who killed him.
“Dawkins says it just shows up on her door stoop. We’ll have to wait and see if anymore shows up,” the chief said.
“Will you let ‘em out on bail?” Bishop asked.
“I think we will, so we can watch ‘em. See what they do.”
“And I guess you’ll keep a watch on the Dawkins house,” Bishop said.
“Her mobile home. Yes. We’re already watching it.”
“Well, you got more than you had out of them, but nothing all that definitive. I think you can shut the drug ring down locally but you can’t get the guy supplying it, unless it was Stan. If so, it should stop with him dead.”
“If it doesn’t, I guess we’ll still be looking.”
“And I’ll still be looking for the man’s killer,” Bishop said.
“Unless it’s one of them and for damn sure they’re not admitting to killing anybody.”
“Frustrating.”
“You said it,” the chief said. “Both are claiming poverty so they don’t own anything we can go after. They’re claiming they spent all they got from sales developing the business, paying the guys they used to sell the stuff.”
“Yeah. Well, since the ring is at least shut down for now, you should be able to rid yourself of the task force. And take this murder case back. Don’t you think?”
“I hear you, Bishop, but I don’t know yet. We have to wait and see if the drugs keep coming in. If the drugs stop, I think you’re off the hook. I’ll assume one of them, Bryant most likely, killed him. Too early to tell right now.”
Bishop cursed. Back to the drawing board damnit, he thought. I’d better have a look around the dead man’s home to see if there’s anything that’ll tell me something more about who might have killed him. I’ll talk to the man and woman living in the barn apartment, Garcia and Silvia. See if they know anything about who killed him, Bryant or Dawkins or somebody else? Hell, maybe they did it for some reason.
“I’ll eye ball them and make a decision,” he said to himself.
*****
Bishop parked in front of the dead lawyer’s house and got out. Old farmhouse, he thought.
The chief had given him the key he was given by Shelly. No one appeared to be around, Bishop observed. He had wondered if perhaps Stan’s parents might be there. He was pretty sure they had a key.
He checked the mail box at the road. There was nothing inside but junk mail.
Bishop did a general walk around inside the house, but saw nothing of interest. He ended up in what he assumed was Stan’s home office. The desk was locked, but as many people did, he’d left a key under his desk pad. So Bishop unlocked the desk and looked through his files. There was only one file that interested him, and it interested him big time. It was a file that listed all of his bank accounts including one in Alabama. The bank book for the Alabama account was in the desk drawer. The balance it showed was a quarter of a million dollars.
“Damn, I bet that didn’t come from local divorces. That had to come from drug sales. Be damned. I’ll give this to the chief. That should nail down his drug case. And it gets me off the hook. He can find Stan’s murderer.”
Leann had told him they were using a number of small banks around the county for their deposits. She’d asked Stan, but he’d never answered why. The file showed their names. She had said he was being paid by his walk-in clients in cash. They wanted to keep their problems confidential. A check would establish a link to an attorney and if that leaked out, it might lead somebody to start asking questions.
Seeing the Alabama bank book tells me it wasn’t his clients paying him in cash. It was probably Margo Dawkins.
Stan was trying to avoid scrutiny by the Feds by not having too many cash deposits in one bank. My guess is that he periodically moved money from the small banks to the Alabama bank.
He tore through the rest of the desk drawers but found nothing that even suggested who might have killed him.
Might have been somebody who wanted his drug business. That’s the most obvious answer to who killed him. Problem is, who wanted it? Bryant? He has to be at the top of the list. He’d already accused the dead man.
Bishop found a twenty-two automatic under his pillow and a shotgun in his closet, but neither suggested anything of interest.
He took the Alabama bank book and the file to his car, then walked to the barn to talk with Garcia and his wife if they were in the apartment. Along the way, he looked over the barren fields behind the house. They looked and he saw no evidence of any tilling, as would be expected if anybody had been planting and growing marijuana.
“Hell, the man would have been nutty to plant marijuana in full view of the road anyway. He must have been planting it someplace else. Maybe his tenants know. Might have been helping. Most likely. I’ll ask ‘em.”
He found the apartment. No sound came from within, but he knocked anyway. To his surprise, a woman came to the door. He introduced himself and showed her his credentials.
“I’d like to talk to you and your husband. Is he at home?” Bishop asked.
She told him her name and said that G
arcia, her husband, was in the bathroom, but invited Bishop into what amounted to their living room to wait. Bishop could see the apartment was a one bedroom addition to the barn. Sparsely furnished, as he had expected of an apartment for “working tenants.” The furnishing would not impress anybody.
Bishop took a chair, turned down her offer of coffee, and waited for Garcia to make an appearance. A couple of minutes later a burly man with dark hair and dark eyes came into the room. He wore worn working clothes and looked to be a few inches shorter than Bishop.
Bishop stood as Silvia told Garcia in Spanish who the visitor was. He shoved out a hand to shake Bishop’s and said something to her. From the few words of Spanish that Bishop knew, he concluded the man was telling her to do most of the talking.
Bishop began by asking if they had heard that Mr. Thomas, their landlord, had been killed. The woman said they knew of it but also, his father and mother came by and told them.
“They also say we stay here until things get settled. We keep doing like before. Taking care of place. We both work for others too,” she said and explained her work as a cleaning lady for motels around the country and her husband’s work with landscapers.
She also told him that “Mr. Stan” had Garcia doing extra work at the house. Painting and plumbing and things like that. “He pay extra for it.”
Bishop recalled Leann saying something about that when he interviewed her.
He asked if they knew of any arguments or fights that “Mr. Stan” had had with anybody. He figured if they knew him that way, he’d refer to him that way.
She shook her head and put the question to Garcia in Spanish. He shook his head concurring with his wife.
“Did either one of you have any arguments with him?”
The answer they gave was an emphatic no.
“Had he said he was going to make you move?” Bishop asked, trying a back door approach to a conflict situation with them. Considering their financial situation, that might be reason enough for them to want to kill him.
They again emphatically shook their heads no.
I’m getting nowhere with that. Might as well get to the main question.
“Mr. Stan was selling drugs. As I understand things, he was growing marijuana and selling it. He told his secretary – you met her I think – that you were helping.” He had decided to fudge a bit on the facts, as he often did when he was doing legal work. More often than not, it motivated whoever he was questioning to tell the truth.
Silvia turned sharply and looked at Garcia who was already staring at her.
Both of ‘em know the sale of pot is illegal and they obviously know what I’m talking about. But they’re afraid to say anything. I guess I’d better help them.
“I’m investigating the murder of Mr. Stan. I’m not investigating the illegal sale of drugs. So, what you tell me about drugs won’t go in my report. I just want to find out who killed the man. Did you, by the way, kill him?”
Their heads jerked toward Bishop, their mouths dropped open.
“No!” both said.
“We not kill anybody,” Garcia said.
“Why you think we kill man? He give us place to live. Work. We not kill,” Silvia said with some intensity.
“Okay, then,” Bishop said. “Tell me about about growing the weed for the man. You did that.” Bishop again fudged with the truth.
Garcia looked at his wife and shrugged. He said something to her. Bishop picked out enough words to understand that he was telling her to tell him what they were doing for him. So, she did.
“Mr. Stan asked my husband and some others to help grow … drug, pot. We grow, cut and dry and put in box for him to take someplace to sell. We not sell,” Silvia said.
She and her husband exchanged looks and said something Bishop couldn’t make out. She looked at Bishop and said, “My husband say Mr. Stan sells drug to woman in … mobile home … trailer.”
Margo Dawkins, Bishop assumed.
He asked, “Did you or your husband go with him to deliver the pot to the woman?”
Looking down for an instant, she shook her head.
Bishop noticed her hesitancy but couldn’t do anything about it. He said, “You said you grew the pot for him.”
She nodded.
“I looked around the fields behind the house. I didn’t see any plowed areas,” Bishop said. “Where did you grow it?”
“Not here,” she said. “Another place.”
Garcia said something else which Bishop interpreted as a reference to the “green house” on the south side of the barn.
Silvia said, “Mr. Stan plant seed in … green house to make plants,” She gestured in that direction. “When plants grow, we take and … put in field. He tell us.”
She went on to tell how Stan had told them to set the plants out so about a third would mature at a time, for them to cure. They’d harvest that third and replant more. A second third would mature and they’d repeat the process.
Mr. Stan showed them how to dry the harvested plants in the barn. They helped him put the cured crop into a box in separated layers and he took it someplace. She said they didn’t know where he took the box, and didn’t know who sold it. She also told him they sometime had rolled some joints for the box. Not lately though. Also, she said, Mr. Stan had not been taking so much of the cured pot in the box lately.
Because the chief had been cracking down, Bishop thought.
He not know we know where Mr. Stan take drug and I not say, she thought. She and Garcia had discussed what they should tell the law about where “Mr. Stan” took the boxes of the pot and picked up the money. They decided to keep that information to themselves until they figured out what they were going to do about growing more pot.
“We just do what Mr. Stan tell us to do,” she told Bishop. “He give us money for helping.”
“Where did you set out the plants?” Bishop asked. “Not here.” He gestured toward the fields behind Thomas’ home, repeating what he’d said earlier.
“No, not here. Not know … address of place,” Garcia said with a shake of his head. But Silvia said by way of interpretation of what he told her was that they could show him where they had been growing it.
So he loaded them into his car and drove where they told him to drive. They came to the dirt drive into the hundred-acre field where they planted the “weed” on a small parcel.
Bishop stopped and got out with them. Garcia walked ahead and showed him the area where the last plants had been harvested. The earth still had a disturbed look to it.
“Here,” he said waving over the patch of ground.
Bishop asked, knowing that they didn’t likely know, “Who’s land is this?”
Silvia interpreted to Garcia who told her they didn’t know.
“Who helped you do the planting and harvesting?” Bishop asked.
Garcia glanced at his wife before saying, “We not know. Mr. Stan have people who help. We work. We not talk. He say not to talk.”
His wife nodded. Bishop decided they knew more than they were saying but didn’t figure they were going to tell him so he let it go. He was learning what he needed to know just then anyway.
Bishop made a note of where the land was located so he could have somebody run a check to see who owned it. Maybe the owner was helping with the marijuana, or maybe got something out of letting him use their land. The land owner, as soon as I find out who they are, will go on my list to ask what they know.
He drove them back to their barn apartment. He got out with them. To Silvia he said, “You know where the woman who buys the pot lives, don’t you?”
A shocked look flashed across her face. She said something to Garcia who shook his head.
She said, “We not know.”
Yeah, you do, Bishop thought.
He looked at both and said, “You do know. I know it, but I’ll let it go for now. The woman’s name is Margo. Isn’t that right?”
Both looked shocked that he knew the woman’s nam
e. They looked at each other before she said, “Yes. Margo.”
“Okay. Don’t talk to anybody about what you told me. You understand?”
They nodded their heads, yes.
He didn’t want anybody else to know what he knew about how Stan Thomas was growing and selling pot. He figured they’d do what they wanted to do anyway regardless of his warning. But all he could do was try.
Before he left, he asked to be shown the greenhouse. He wanted to see if there were more pot plants growing in it. And if there were any more seed.
Garcia opened the greenhouse flap and held it open for Bishop to go inside for a look. It was completely clean. No plants, and no seed. Not even any dirt to plant any seed. He turned around and took a good look.
Somebody had cleaned the place out. I bet old Garcia and his unnamed helpers did it. Covering their tracks. Well, not a problem for me right now. I want to find out who killed the man, not who was involved in the drug trade. But I’ll tell the chief what I found out. He can do what he wants. I imagine he’ll have them deported.
Chapter 12
He went home and booted up his computer. First thing he did was type up a report of all he’d found out. Stan Thomas was growing and selling pot on land that most likely didn’t belong to him. The plants from his small greenhouse were set out so they’d be ready for harvesting at different intervals.
“Apparently, he always wanted to have freshly harvested weed for sale. Like his dad and the vegetables he grew,” he said to himself, recalling Hank Thomas’ habits when he was a truck farmer.
He alluded to the help given to Stan by the tenants, he said they were following orders from their landlord but they knew they were growing marijuana. It’s up to the chief what he wants to do with them. He was sure they were not ignorant of all that had been going on.
“They told me Stan had said he was delivering the stuff to a woman who lived in a mobile home, Margo Dawkins. Bryant wasn’t mentioned. But no doubt he was getting the stuff from her and selling it. They know where she lives in a mobile home, and I assume that you do.”
Death of the Weed Merchant Page 14