Reed Ferguson Mystery series Box Set 2

by Renee Pawlish

  When I awoke, it was dark outside and the game was over. And my phone was ringing.

  “Reed, honey, is that you?”

  “Hi, Mom, how are you?”

  “Why didn’t you call and tell us about Deuce?” She had a way of launching right into something, sans any chit-chat. “Joyce Smith called us this morning, just as worried as can be. She said no one’s heard from Deuce since Friday night!”

  I suppose Bob Smith had had to let his mom about Deuce's disappearance. What a difficult call that must have been. Joyce Smith and my mom have known each other for years, since their country club days in Denver. Now they all live the retiree life in Florida, and she and my mom still talk almost every day. Or, more accurately, mostly my mom talks and Joyce listens. I sometimes felt sorry for her, dealing with the Brothers and my mother.

  “Yes, that’s true. I –” I said.

  “That’s just not like Deuce, is it?” she interrupted. “Joyce said that he and Ace are like two peas in a pod, and that’s what I remember of them, so isn’t it strange that no one knows where he is?” When my mother got going, it was hard to stop her. “You’re a detective – can’t you help? You know I don’t approve of that business you’re in, but since you refuse to get another job, put your skills to work. Have you looked around for him?”

  I rolled my eyes, hoping she could hear it through the phone. “I’ve looked high and low.”

  “Don’t get fresh,” she sniffed, noting my tone. She had a way of sniffing to show her disdain, usually at my jokes. “You know your father and I worry about you – who knows what might happen to you – but surely you can do something.”

  Oh mother, if you only knew what has already happened to me in this ‘business’, I thought. “I really am trying to find him,” I said. “I’ve got a lead or two; unfortunately I have to wait until tomorrow to follow up on some of it.”

  “Oh, that’s not good, is it?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Well, let me know okay? Oh, how’s Willie? Are you still dating her? I’m so glad you found someone nice.” When it comes to her son, my mother has three worries: that I’m doing drugs; that I’m in perpetual danger because of my job; and that I’ll die alone, never having given her grandchildren.

  On the first, she needn’t worry, as my last illicit drug use was in college. On the second, I was tempted to tell her all about the perils my profession had put me in, but then I’d never hear the end of it. And on the third, I might have been guilty of perpetuating that fear. I hadn’t had that many girlfriends since college; I was too busy flitting from job to job, trying to find something that didn’t bore me. And although I think I’m okay-looking – if you ignore my dull hazel eyes – my lack of stability wasn’t an attractive quality. At least now I seemed to have a girlfriend, which was progress. .

  “Yes, I’m still dating Willie,” I said.

  “Wonderful, dear. Your father and I are excited to meet her.”

  “And she can’t wait to meet you.”

  We launched into small talk for a few minutes and I deftly managed to hang up before she was able to tell me about her latest visit to the mall. Some things a son just doesn’t want to know.

  Willie was at work. Ace was over at Bob’s. Deuce was…who knew where. I was alone. There didn’t seem to be much else to do, so I undressed and crawled into bed. I was just settling in when the phone rang again.

  “You still up?” Willie asked, her voice tired.

  “Hey,” I said. “Aren’t you at work?”

  “I got off early. Want some company?”

  “You have no idea how much.”

  “Bad day? It’s not Deuce, is it?”

  “Still no Deuce. Come on over and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  At least my day would end on a good note.

  Chapter Eleven

  The headquarters of Criss Cross Construction was a two-story brick building located in Arvada, northwest of downtown Denver. I parked in a lot across the street and went in the building. Inside was a cavernous foyer with a model of a power plant placed in the middle and huge fake trees on either side. Off to the left was a winding staircase with a wrought-iron railing. I took the steps two-at-a-time up to the second floor. A gray-haired woman sat at a computer behind a long mahogany desk. On the wall behind her was a large wooden sign: three C’s intertwined, with the company name to the right. She paused when she saw me.

  “May I help you?” She had a low, sultry voice, like some of the femme fatales in the movies I loved.

  I put on my best smile. “I hope so. You have an employee that works for you named Gary Granderson.”

  “Gary Granderson?”

  “Yes, and Deuce Smith.”

  “Deuce…Smith?” The words came out like they were sour on her tongue.

  “Yes. I’m wondering if you could tell me what construction sites they work at.”

  Her lips formed into a thin line. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. I can’t give out information about employees.”

  “It’s very important.”

  “As I said, I can’t give out that information.”

  I figured it would go this way, so it was time to try another tact. “Then I’d like to speak to Lon Carlson,” I said.

  She surveyed me more closely. “Mr. Carlson is a very busy man, and he doesn’t have time for interruptions. What is this regarding?”

  “It’s a private matter.”

  “Then I’m afraid you’ll have to come back.” She glanced at her monitor and tapped her keyboard. “I’ll see when Mr. Carlson is available later this week.”

  “I need to speak to him now,” I said.

  She paused, then sat just a bit straighter. “What is this regarding?” she repeated. She had a very busy boss, and it was her job to keep things running smoothly for him. Interruptions like me were not tolerated. Or so she thought.

  “That’s between me and Mr. Carlson.” I pulled out a business card and handed it to her.

  She hesitated, as if I were handing her a snot-filled Kleenex, then took the card by the edge. She read the card and her eyes darted up to me and back to the card.

  “Is there some sort of trouble?”

  “It’s private,” I repeated, staring her down.

  “I’ll see if he can make time for you,” she said, picking up the phone. By her tone, I could tell that she expected the answer to be a negative. She waited a moment, then spoke expertly into the receiver, so discreetly I only made out a word or two. She listened and her eyebrows arched in surprise.

  “All right, sir.” She hung up the phone and stood up, straightening her skirt. “He can give you five minutes before he has a meeting.”

  “Thank you.” I tried to hide the smirk on my face.

  I followed her down a short hallway, past multiple cubicles where Criss Cross employees were hard at work. She stopped at the end of the hall and stood by an open door to a corner office.

  “Mr. Ferguson,” she announced.

  “How can I help you?” said Carlson. He was a big man, build like a linebacker, with a few extra pounds around the waist. His blue tie was knotted neatly, but the top button of his pressed white shirt was undone and his sleeves were rolled up. A man who’d already put in a hard day’s work by nine a.m. He stepped around a desk twice the size of his secretary’s and offered me a meaty hand. “Lon Carlson.”

  His handshake was forceful.

  “Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Water?”

  “I’m fine, thanks,” I said.

  He nodded at the gray-haired woman. “Thank you, Edna,” he said. She gave me one final, cursory glance and shut the door.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” I said.

  “Getting a visit from a private investigator certainly piques my interest. Please, sit.” He waved at a leather chair across from his desk.

  I sat down and waited as he settled himself behind his desk.

  He contemplated me for a moment. “What’s this about?�
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  “You have an employee named Deuce Smith who works for you,” I began.

  “That name’s not familiar.” His brow wrinkled. “Is he a laborer at one of the job sites?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t, uh…Deuce, did you say?” He took a sip from a black mug that said ‘Boss’ on it.

  I nodded.

  “I don’t know him. We’ve got a lot of jobs going and it’s impossible for me to know everyone who works for me personally.”

  “I understand.”

  “Is Deuce is some kind of trouble?”

  “I think so. He hasn’t been seen since Friday night.”

  Carlson leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk. His arms stretched the material of his shirt.

  “That is concerning,” he said. “What do you think happened to him?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “How can I help?”

  “Can you tell me what job site he worked at? I’d like to talk to his coworkers and maybe his supervisor, see if they noticed anything unusual.”

  “Sure, I’ll have Edna look that up.” He picked up the phone and hit a button.

  I held up a hand. “And can you confirm that Gary Granderson works at the same site?”

  “Edna, I need you to look up a couple of employees. Deuce?” he raised his eyebrows at me.

  “Smith,” I said.

  “Smith,” he repeated into the phone. “And Gary Granderson. Let me know what sites they’re working at.” He sat back and eyed me. “Deuce. That’s an unusual name.”

  I shrugged. A long silence ensued, in which Carlson stared at me and I stared out the window at the maple trees in a small park across the street. The sun shone brightly and the maple leaves were a brilliant red color. I found myself relieved that I didn’t have a desk job; my paychecks may not be regular, but being a private investigator suits my rather extroverted personality.

  Carlson’s phone buzzed. He picked it up and listened for a second. “Okay, thanks.” He hung up and looked at me. “They both work at the Vanguard project. It’s that new high-rise downtown. It’s off of 15th and California, near the convention center.”

  “I can find it,” I said.

  “It’s quite a project. Thirty stories, with condos and office space. It’ll have underground parking, and space for restaurants. The condos will be luxury two and three bedrooms.”

  I already knew that from my research, but I let him blow his horn. “Sounds interesting,” I said when he took a breath. “Who’s Deuce’s boss at the site?”

  “Chuck Fitzhugh is the project manager.”

  “Will he be able to talk to me?”

  “I’ll call him and let him know you’re coming out.” Carlson stood up, indicating the meeting was over. “He’s pretty busy but I’ll tell him to make a few minutes for you. There’s an office trailer right near the street; you can’t miss it. Look for him there.”

  I stood up, too. “Thank you.”

  “I just hope that Deuce turns up,” he said as he showed me out of his office.

  “I do, too,” I said.

  I walked down the hallway and as I passed Edna, she gave me a disdainful look. I’m sure she was unhappy that I had bothered her boss. Or maybe she was jealous because she didn’t know what our conversation was about.

  “You’ve been as helpful as Phyllis Dietrichson,” I said to Edna as I passed, referring to the duplicitous femme fatale in Double Indemnity.

  Let her spin with that.

  I smiled as I trotted down the stairs and outside.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Vanguard project was located near the Colorado Convention Center on the southern edge of downtown. The office trailer was right where Lon Carlson said it would be. I drove through the gate and parked in front of the trailer, next to a full-sized Chevy truck. The rumbling of heavy machinery filled the air as I walked up wooden stairs to the trailer door and let myself in.

  The trailer was decorated in a lovely dark wood paneling that had gone out of style in the ’70s. The linoleum on the floor was dirty and worn – too many work boots on it. Cheap blinds covered the windows, and framed posters, the kind with nature pictures and slogans meant to inspire – Quality Will Always Shine Through – hung on the walls. Right next to the door was a beat-up metal desk. The woman behind it looked up when I entered. She had on black slacks and a green blouse that matched her eyes.

  “Can I help you?” Already she was more pleasant than Edna. Maybe it was the smile on her face.

  I introduced myself and before I could say more she said, “Oh yes, Chuck said you’d be by. They’re pouring a section of concrete today, but he said if you didn’t mind the chaos, you could talk to him out there.”

  “Suits me fine.”

  “Great. You’ll have to wear this.” She pushed back from the desk, grabbed an old white hardhat from a box on the floor behind her, and stood up.

  I took the hardhat from her. “How do I look?” I asked, tipping the hat like it was a fedora.

  She grinned. “It’s not about the look.” She pointed to a yellow sign with black letters by the door: Safety First.

  “Ah.” I crammed the hardhat down on my head.

  “Let me show you where he is,” she said.

  I followed her outside.

  “We’ve got a lot of trucks coming in today,” she hollered over her shoulder as we waited while a cement truck rumbled by. I waved away the sudden cloud of dust around us.

  We crossed a dirt lot and walked onto the building site. The structure was in the initial stages, with the concrete and steel columns and beams rising up a few stories. A large trailer truck, loaded with rebar, was parked nearby. A light breeze stirred, carrying with it a smell of diesel and damp dirt. Metal rang against metal, saws buzzed, and construction workers milled about.

  We turned a corner. Up ahead, the cement truck was backed up to an area that had been excavated and had rebar spread all across it. Obviously the floor for this part of the building.

  “Chuck’s over there, in the gray shirt.” She pointed to a man in worn jeans, gray Polo shirt, heavy work boots, and hardhat who stood near the cement truck.

  “Thanks,” I said. I walked past a stack of long pipes and as I approached Chuck Fitzhugh, he turned and saw me.

  “You must be Reed Ferguson,” he said. He was tall and thin, with disproportionately wide shoulders and long arms.

  “Thanks for taking the time to speak with me,” I said, elevating my voice above the din.

  “No problem. Sorry we have to talk out here. The office would be better, but I’ve got to oversee this.” He gestured at the commotion around us. “They had a problem when they poured the last area, so I need to make sure things go better this time around.”

  “You’ve got a lot going on here.”

  Fitzhugh nodded. “I wondered why Deuce was so late, and then I get a call from Mr. Carlson, saying that Deuce wouldn’t be coming in to work, and that a private investigator wants to talk to me.” He stepped back and eyed me. “What’s going on?”

  “No one’s seen Deuce since Friday night. He’s not the type to disappear for the entire weekend, and he definitely isn’t the type to blow off work.”

  Worry lines creased Fitzhugh’s tanned face. “That’s true. Deuce has been working on this project for almost a year and he hasn’t missed a day.”

  “Did you see him last Friday?”

  “Yeah, but not for very long. Hey, watch that part over there,” Fitzhugh shouted at a guy over by the corner section. Then he turned back to me. “There’s a lunch wagon that comes on site and Deuce was waiting in line to get something. I talked to him while we waited.”

  “Did he act unusual, or say anything that sticks out?”

  Fitzhugh thought for a second while we watched concrete pour out of the sluice. “No, not really. Wait, he did say something about guns, that he needed to learn how to shoot, or he was going to go shoot guns, something like that.”
r />   I laughed. “He went with me to the firing range Friday night.”

  “That must’ve been it then. Hold on.”

  A muscular guy with spiky black hair walked over. He gave me a onceover, then turned to Fitzhugh. “What about that other section?” he asked in a deep voice.

  Fitzhugh spoke to him for a second. “Hold on,” he said to me and then they moved off. While I waited, I watched a guy wearing black rubber boots work with a hose attached to a small machine. “Sorry about that,” he said when he returned.

  “What’s that guy doing?” I asked, gesturing at the guy with the hose.

  “That’s called a vibrator,” he said. I resisted the juvenile urge to laugh. He pointed at the sluice. “When the cement is poured, air pockets can form. You use the vibrator to get rid of them. If you don’t, it can hurt the structural integrity.”

  I nodded. The things I learn. “So, did Deuce get along with his coworkers?”

  “Yeah, no problems there. He’s a pretty popular guy. Kind of simple, but he works hard and doesn’t make mistakes, and the guys respect that. Hell, so do I.”

  “You didn’t see him after lunch?”

  “No.” Fitzhugh stayed focused on the cement being poured. “I can ask around, see if any of his coworkers noticed anything, or if he said anything unusual to them.”

  “Sure,” I said, giving him a business card, although I didn’t expect much from that.

  “I don’t know what else to tell you,” he said. “If you don’t need anything else…”

  “Just one more thing.” I had a habit of sounding like Peter Falks' Columbo. “There’s a guy named Gary Granderson who also works for you.”

  “Uh huh. He started working for me on the project before this one.” Fitzhugh frowned. “Talk about two different guys.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Deuce is pretty laid back, a nice guy. Gary, on the other hand…” He tipped his head back and forth, mulling over what to say. I waited him out. “Let’s just say Gary isn’t such a nice guy.”

  “Problems with his coworkers?” I asked.