A Knife in the Back (13 page)

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Authors: Bill Crider

BOOK: A Knife in the Back
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T
hey were almost at the front door when Sally stopped and said, “Did you hear a noise outside?”
“Probably just Hector,” Jack said.
“Hector?”
“The cat I was telling you about. When he came here, I thought he looked a little like Hector must have looked after Achilles finished dragging him around the walls of Troy behind his chariot. So I named him Hector.”
“And now he makes noises outside your house?”
“Sometimes. He sneaks around in the bushes hoping he can find a bird to pounce on. Or maybe a lizard. I have some kind of lizards around here. They're all over the place. They even get inside the house.”
Sally didn't think the noise had been a cat chasing a lizard, but she couldn't be sure. Lola was strictly a house cat.
“Your car's in the garage,” she said. “Maybe we should use it instead of mine.”
“You think there's someone out there?”
“Maybe that's what the calls were about. Maybe he was checking up on us. Now that he knows we're together, he can get us both at once.”
“You really have an odd way of looking at things,” Jack said. “It's just the cat.”
“All right, then, we'll go in my car. Hold my purse.”
Sally handed her purse to Jack, who took it awkwardly. Men never seemed to have any idea of how to hold a purse. She took her pistol out of its case, then closed the case and handed that to Jack, too.
“I hope you're not going to shoot my cat,” Jack said, eyeing the pistol.
“I'm not going to shoot anyone, I hope. But you know the Girl Scout motto: Be prepared.”
“That's the Boy Scout motto.”
“Whatever. It's a good motto, no matter who thought of it.”
Sally held the pistol close to her chest, her finger alongside the trigger guard.
“Open the door,” she said.
“I thought you were supposed to jump through the door, stick the gun straight out in front of you, and hold it with both hands,” Jack said. “That's the way they do it on
Nash Bridges
.”
“This isn't TV,” Sally said. “The firearms instructor for the handgun class told us that if you tried something like that in real life, the bad guy, assuming there's one out there, would just grab your arm and take your gun away from you. And probably break your finger if you have it stuck through the trigger guard. If you hold the pistol close like this, with your finger along the side, it's a lot harder for anyone to get hold of it, and the gun is a lot less likely to go off by accident.”
“Oh,” Jack said. “Well, I admire your professionalism, but I don't think there's anything to worry about.”
“We'll find out, won't we,” Sally said. “Open the door.”
Jack opened the door and gave it a push. Sally stepped through, and the warm, humid night air fit itself around her like a damp glove. It was very dark.
“What happened to your streetlight?” she asked.
“I don't know,” Jack said. “It goes off all the time. I'll turn on the porch light.”
“No!” Sally said. “If you do, we'll be silhouetted. Perfect targets.”
“I'm beginning to think you're taking this seriously.”
“Of course I am. Bostic and Thomas are dead, aren't they? You can't get much more serious than that.”
“Maybe we should go in my car,” Jack said.
“Too late. We're already out here. Close the door.”
Jack closed the door and stepped out onto the front walk with Sally.
“Now what?” he said.
“We get in my car and drive away,” Sally said. “Come on.”
Jack followed her toward the little Integra.
“Remember those stories that came out around Christmas last year?” he said. “The ones about the guy who was supposedly going around to shopping malls and hiding under cars? When you got to your car, he'd slide out from under it and slice your Achilles tendon with a razor blade.”
“Jack! Stop that!”
“It wasn't true,” Jack said. “It was just some stupid urban legend. There's not room under a car for anyone to hide these days. They're too close to the ground.”
“It makes me uncomfortable to hear that kind of story. Just for that you'll have to look under the car.”
“I have broken ribs.”
“Don't argue.”
Jack, moving very slowly and carefully, got down on one knee and looked beneath Sally's car.
“I can't see anything under there. It's too dark.”
“Then you'll just have to get in first. But be careful when you open the door. The interior light will come on, and you'll be—”
“Silhouetted,” Jack said, slowly getting to his feet. “A perfect target.”
“You catch on fast. But there's an upside.”
“What would that be?”
“Maybe you'll be falling down because someone's cut your Achilles tendon. That way whoever shoots at you will miss.”
“Some see the glass as half full,” Jack said. “Others see it as half empty.”
“Right. Now get in.”
Jack reached out for the door handle, and something reached out from under the car and grabbed his ankle.
“Arrgghhh!” Jack said, jumping up and then falling backward as the sharp pain stabbed him in the vicinity of his Achilles tendon.
When he hit the ground, his head bumped the grass, aggravating the knot that was already there, and the pain from his ribs shot through him. He screamed even louder.
“Where is he?” Sally yelled. “I can't see him!”
“Don't shoot!” Jack said as Hector ran across his chest and streaked across the lawn. “It's only the cat!”
Sally walked over to where Jack lay in the damp grass beside the driveway with her purse and pistol case nearby.
“You scared me half to death,” she said.
“You think you were scared?” Jack said. “I thought for a second someone had severed my Achilles tendon.”
“Serves you right. Can you get up?”
“I'm not sure. I think I'll just lie here for a while. Look up at the stars.”
“You can't see any stars. It's too cloudy and there's too much light from Houston anyway.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I'm sure. If you're seeing anything at all, it's those little white lights you told me about.”
“Maybe you're right. I think the back of my head hit the ground. It doesn't feel so good.”
“No wonder.” Sally reached down with her left hand. “Let me help you up.”
“Are you supposed to move an injured person?”
“I don't think you're injured, not any more than you were before. I know your ribs must hurt, but you can't lie there all night.”
“It's my lawn. I can lie here if I want to.”
“True, but the neighbors would probably complain.” She thrust her hand at him. “Grab hold.”
Jack gripped her hand, and she pulled him into a sitting position.
“That wasn't so bad, was it?” she said.
Jack moaned. “I think a dentist said that to me once.”
Sally still had hold of his hand, and she gave an easy pull.
“Come on up,” she said.
Jack got his feet under him and rose up off the ground with only a little bit of whimpering.
“If you hadn't told me that story about the shopping mall slicer, this would never have happened,” Sally said.
“Sure, blame me. It was that stupid cat's fault.”
“There's always a scapegoat handy,” Sally said.
“Scapecat, in this case.”
“Whatever. Do you think you can get in my car?”
“I'll try.”
Sally opened the door, and Jack twisted himself into the seat without crying out. When he had his legs inside, Sally helped him with the seat belt, which was admittedly a bit hard to grab from the front seat without a great deal of bending. Jack clicked the belt closed, and Sally shut the door.
Jack sat there while she put her pistol back into its case and picked up her purse. When she got into the car, he said, “I told you there was nobody out here.”
“You can never be too careful,” Sally said, and started the engine.
H
al Kaul lived in one of the newest sections of Hughes, a monster housing addition called Horizon Ranch. It had sprung up practically overnight, complete with large, two-story houses, landscaping, an eighteen-hole golf course, and a number of small lakes.
“How can he afford a place like this?” Jack asked when they drove up. “The college must pay the business manager a lot more than the instructors get.”
“Fair is fair,” Sally said. “You know that colleges can get plenty of teachers. Where would we be without all those people willing to teach part-time for next to nothing? But a good business manager is a pearl of great price. One of those can save the school lots of money and manage what's there so that everybody comes out ahead.”
“Right. That's the way it should work. So why is it that the business manager didn't blow the whistle on the school's deal with Bostic?”
Sally didn't respond. She parked in the driveway, and they got out. A couple of blocks away, more new houses were going up. The smell of new wood and sawdust filled the air.
Sally noticed that Kaul's lawn was much more impressive than either Jack's or Sally's, almost on a par with Mae's, though Sally was certain that Mae did all her own yard work, while Hal no doubt had a much more expensive lawn service than the one Sally used.
They walked up to the imposing front door, solid carved wood, and Jack rang the bell. Sally noted that the sound of the bell was much more satisfactory than Mae's. It had three different tones and a resonant
bong bing bong
sound. Actually, she thought,
bongs
one and three were the same, but it was still very nice, sort of like the NBC chimes.
A woman opened the door. She was small, shorter than Sally, and round and soft, not at all like her husband, who was all angles and planes, though equally short. Sally introduced herself and Jack, and asked if they could see Hal.
“Of course,” she said. “Come on in.”
They stepped on the tiled floor of the entryway, and Mrs. Kaul led them to a small room that was outfitted as a home office. They could see Kaul seated at his computer desk, looking at a seventeen-inch monitor. Sally could smell the scent of a vanilla candle burning somewhere in the house.
“Hal's doing online auctions,” Mrs. Kaul said. “I'll let him know you're here.”
She went into the office and said something to her husband, who looked up from his monitor and saw them. He nodded to his wife, who told them to come on in. His wife drifted off to another room, where Sally could hear muffled voices coming from a TV set.
Sally looked around the office. Kaul had all sorts of junk stacked around: costume jewelry, old toys, old magazines, old catalogs, even old phone books.
“I do this for fun,” Kaul said, waving a hand at the room in general. “It's a kind of hobby. I buy this stuff at garage sales and flea markets, and then I resell it at the online auctions. I don't make much money doing it, but I have a lot of fun.”
“Seems as if it would take quite a bit of time,” Jack said.
“Not really,” Kaul said. “I take a picture of something with my digital camera, or I scan it if it's flat. Then I just upload the picture and a description, price it, and it's done. It just takes a few minutes. But I'll bet you didn't come here to talk about online auctions.”
“No,” Sally said. “We came to talk about Ralph Bostic.”
Kaul ran his hand through his sparse gray hair, which was cut very short as if somehow to disguise the fact that there wasn't much of it.
“That's what I figured,” he said. “Your friend Jack there is in a little trouble about that, from what I hear. Is that right, Jack?”
Jack acknowledged that it was.
“Glad to hear that the old school grapevine is still functioning as well as ever. You can always count on it. Now, what was it that you wanted to know about Bostic?”
Sally looked at Jack, who picked up his cue.
“You probably know I had a fracas with Bostic at a board meeting.”
Kaul nodded.
“Well, it seemed to me that if Bostic was repairing cars for the school, someone knew how much it was costing. Someone should have caught on to the way the college was getting ripped off a long time ago.”
“And I'll bet I know who you think that someone is,” Kaul said.
“I'm not making any accusations,” Jack said. “I was just wondering how things were handled. I know there are forms that have to be filled out, and I know that someone has to write the checks. All that stuff eventually has to cross your desk, I suppose.”
“But you're not making any accusations,” Kaul said, his voice dry.
“No, just wondering.”
“Well, then, I'll set your mind at ease. Or maybe I'll just give you something else to worry about. You see, I did think those figures Bostic turned in were exorbitant. It took me a few months to catch on, but I did. And, like you, I wondered how he ever got the job of repairing school vehicles in the first place. You did wonder that, didn't you?”
“Yes,” Jack said. “I did.”
“And I'm just the guy who can tell you. The usual process is for us to develop a working relationship with a single garage for all our
automotive repairs. They give us the best deal, and we give them all our business. Makes sense, right?”
Jack and Sally both nodded agreement.
“Sure it does,” Kaul said. “So that's exactly what we did. For years, we sent all our work to Buddy Berry and everyone was happy. But let's say that even though you were perfectly satisfied with the arrangement you had, someone came to you, someone you trusted and thought would know all the angles, and told you that you could get a better deal somewhere else. What would you do?”
“The school's always trying to save money,” Jack said. “I'd probably change garages, or at least have a look at what the better deal was.”
“You wouldn't do it all that fast, though. You'd investigate things for yourself. You'd talk to the owner of the business, you'd get assurances that things would be even better than they'd been at Buddy's, you'd even check things out by sending a couple of vehicles over to the new place. Wouldn't you?”
“I guess so,” Jack said.
“If you were going to do things right, you would. And that's what we did. Bostic was great, too. The repairs were done right, they were done fairly fast, and the price was fair.”
“Then what about the figures I got?” Jack asked. “The ones that got Bostic so upset with me.”
Kaul looked at his computer monitor and tapped a couple of keys on the keyboard.
“That all came along later,” he said. “When it started, I took the bills to the person I trusted, the one who was supposed to be the expert, and had him check them out. He said they looked fine to him. He said we were getting a bargain.”
“What about a conflict of interest?” Jack asked. “After all, Bostic was on the board.”
“The vehicle repairs don't go out for bids, and Bostic just avoided voting on anything that seemed remotely connected to that kind of thing. So there wasn't any conflict. He was just a businessman,
giving us a good deal. Or so he told us.”
“That's interesting,” Sally said. “But let's back up a little. Twice you've mentioned a ‘trustworthy person' that you consulted. Are you planning to tell us who that person is?”
“
Was
,” Kaul said. “I can tell you who he
was
.”
“All right,” Sally said, surprised that a business manager would be so finicky about verb tense. “Who was he?”
“Ray Thomas,” Kaul said. “That's who.”

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