A Knife in the Back (6 page)

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Authors: Bill Crider

BOOK: A Knife in the Back
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S
he certainly gave us plenty to think about,” Jack said as they walked back to Sally's office.
“Yes,” Sally said. “Too much. We're out of our depth here, Jack. We need to call Weems.”
Jack followed Sally through the office door and plopped back down in the chair by her desk.
“I really wish you hadn't said that,” he told her.
“You know I'm right about it. I can deal with hot love affairs. But hot-car rings? No thanks.”
“I didn't think a pistol-packing woman like you would let a little thing like a hot-car ring bother you.”
“You know about the pistol?”
“Everybody knows about the pistol,” Jack said.
Sally was a little surprised, though she knew she shouldn't have been. It was beginning to appear that there was no such thing as a secret in Hughes, Texas.
Not that she minded people knowing about the pistol. She wasn't ashamed of it. It was a Smith & Wesson Model 36, the Ladysmith with a three-inch barrel and wood-grain grips. She kept it in a burgundy carrying case, which she felt was appropriate for a lady.
Sally had taken a concealed handgun course offered by the college, not because she'd read a book but because she was curious.
And to her mild astonishment she had found out that she liked guns. She knew that wasn't a politically correct thing to do, and it wasn't as if she had become a militant supporter of the NRA. She wasn't in the least afraid that the government was going to send a squad of jackbooted thugs to break into her house, shoot her full of holes with their automatic rifles, and pry her Ladysmith from her cold dead fingers. She simply liked guns, particularly pistols. She liked the way they were made, the way they fit her hand, the way she could take out her frustrations after a hard day by blasting away at the silhouettes on the targets at the school's range.
Besides, she had discovered that she had a natural talent for shooting. She started out well, and she got even better. Even at that, however, she never felt an urge to go hunting or to use the pistol for anything other than target practice. If she had to, she supposed she might use it for self-defense, but the occasion to do that had never arisen. She thought that was just as well. She'd heard that some people were unable to pull the trigger when it came to shooting another human being, and she might well be one of them.
Anyway, it wasn't as if she carried the pistol with her. She kept it in the lingerie drawer of her dresser, and when she took it to the shooting range, she put it in the trunk of her car. If that was “packing,” then she was guilty.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked Jack. “Shoot somebody? Somebody specific?”
Jack smiled. He had a nice smile, Sally thought. Sort of like one of those self-effacing movie stars from the old days, the kind of guy who probably couldn't get a part in a movie now that brashness was all.
“I don't want you to shoot anybody,” he said. “I just thought you could protect me from the hot-car ring if I had to confront any of the members.”
“I don't think I'd be very good at that. That's a job for the police.”
“I know. I guess I was just hoping that we could find some way to get me out of this mess.”
“What about an alibi?” Sally asked. “Did Weems ask you for one?”
“Of course,” Jack said. “But it wasn't much help. When Bostic was killed, I was at home, reading. Alone.”
Sally didn't read a lot of mystery novels, but she'd read enough to know that being at home alone wasn't much of an alibi. In fact, it wasn't any kind of an alibi at all.
“What about phone calls?” she asked. “Did you phone anyone? Did anyone phone you?”
“I don't get a lot of calls,” Jack said. “I don't make many, either.” He paused. “Wait a minute! I did get a call last night, from my mother. She always wants to know if I'm getting enough to eat.”
“My mother's the same way,” Sally said, thinking that mothers were like that, even if their children were long grown and even a few pounds overweight. “What time did she call?”
“Too early,” Jack said, shaking his head. “Bostic was killed between nine and ten, or at least that's the impression I got. I got the call around eight-thirty.”
“So much for that alibi,” Sally said.
“I could be wrong about the time of the call. I didn't look at the clock. I could give my mother a ring and ask her about it.”
“Won't she ask why?”
“Naturally. That's okay, though. I just need to let her know about my problems before she sees them on TV or reads about them in the papers.”
“There shouldn't be much in the papers yet. Weems probably won't give out your name.”
“But he might. You never know what a guy like that will do. Besides, there's probably some record of my little visit to the police station, official or not. Some reporter will sniff it out if it's there, and my mother reads the papers from front to back every day. If my name's in there, she'll find it.”
“Will she be worried about you?”
“Isn't that what mothers do? Worry?”
“Most of them, probably. And with good reason in this case. So
do you want to call Weems and tell him what we've found out, or should I?”
“Why don't you do it,” Jack said. “He won't listen to me. He'll think I'm just trying to create confusion and cover up for myself. Which I guess is the truth, more or less.”
Sally picked up the phone and dialed. She got Weems fairly quickly after talking to only a couple of people at the police station, but she could tell he wasn't happy to hear from her. He was even less happy when she told him what she wanted.
“Dr. Good,” he said, “you're an intelligent person, what with your degrees and everything. You should know better than to interfere with a police investigation.”
“I'm not interfering,” Sally said. “I'm just offering you some information that might help you.”
“Let's say I came in your classroom one day and started telling you how to teach
Beowulf
because I've read this new translation and might have some information that would help you. Would you call that interfering?”
Sally didn't like the idea of anyone coming into her classroom to tell her how to teach, but she didn't want to say so. She thought about Naylor taking over Jack's classes and wondered if the dean would consider that interfering. Probably not, but Jack would, and with plenty of justification, to Sally's way of thinking.
“Dr. Good?” Weems said. “You still there?”
“All right, you have a point,” Sally said.
“You're damned right I do. And that's how I feel when some public-spirited citizen such as yourself tries to tell me how to run an investigation. You and your boyfriend need to back off and let me do my job.”
Boyfriend?
Sally thought, looking at Jack, who was staring at her bookshelves.
Boyfriend?
“Dr. Good? Are you drifting off again?”
“No,” Sally said. “I'm right here. I won't be bothering you anymore.”
“That's the best news I've had all day,” Weems said.
Sally hung up the telephone and looked at Jack, who was smiling wryly.
“I told you so,” Jack said.
“You don't have to remind me. What do you think about Bostic trying to have Fieldstone fired?”
“According to Wynona, Bostic was just trying to talk the board into not renewing the contract. That's not the same thing as having someone fired. I'm sure Fieldstone's contract has several years yet to run. He could find another job long before it expired, if he wanted to.”
“What if he didn't want to? What if he wanted to hang on here at Hughes until he was ready to retire?”
“I don't know,” Jack said.
“Did Fieldstone ever stop by your office to admire your homemade knife?”
“As a matter of fact, he did come by one day. He was on his way to a meeting.”
Fieldstone didn't make it a habit to spend much time with the faculty. He always said that he believed in leaving them alone to do their jobs, though he would occasionally visit their offices when he was passing through the building.
“Did he mention the knife?”
“Yes,” Jack said. “Or maybe I mentioned it. Somebody did. I told him about making it.”
“What about Mae Wilkins?”
“You're kidding. You think she'd admire a knife?”
“I just wondered if she'd seen it.”
“As a matter of fact, she told me once how tacky she thought it was. You don't think she killed Bostic with it, do you? I think that if she ever killed anyone, she'd use poison, not some tacky handmade knife. Besides, guns and knives are way too messy for her.”
“You're right, I guess. I was just thinking, though, that everyone who's mixed up with Bostic has seen that knife in your office.”
“You didn't mention Hal Kaul. He saw it, too.”
“He was in this building?” Sally asked. Kaul left his office even less often than Fieldstone did.
“Meeting,” Jack said.
“Oh. Well, that just makes it tougher.”
“Makes what tougher?”
“Finding out who killed Bostic.”
“You mean we're not turning it over to the cops?”
“We tried,” Sally said. “Weems wouldn't listen. Remember?”
“I told you so.”
“Don't start that again. No one likes a smart-aleck.”
“I'm not so smart. If I were smart, I wouldn't be taking a paid vacation from my classes, starting next week.”
“Nobody who leaves a knife lying around on his desk is a genius, but you haven't started that paid vacation yet.”
“I've learned an important lesson about knives,” Jack said.
“I certainly hope so,” Sally told him.
“Trust me. Now what about the paid vacation?”
“If you're not going to take it, we'd better get busy.”
“So what do we do first?”
“That's a good question,” Sally said, “and I don't have an answer for it.”
“Neither do I.”
“Just in case, you'd probably better go make out those tons of lesson plans for Naylor.”
“I was afraid you'd say that,” Jack told her.
I
t took Jack nearly an hour, but he built up quite an impressive stack of material for Naylor's use in the classroom. Jack was going to insist that Naylor had to cover every single syllable of it. While he worked he looked at the place on his desk where the knife had sat, thinking about what a dunce he'd been to leave it there. It had been a really nice knife, though. He'd been proud of the workmanship and not a little surprised that he'd been able to turn out something so well made.
The more he thought about the knife, however, the more something bothered him. Unfortunately, he couldn't figure out just what was causing the bother, other than that it was something about the knife. Maybe he was just confused. It had, after all, been a confusing day. He'd never been accused of murder and grilled by the cops before.
He gathered up all his materials, stuffing papers into separate folders for each class, but Naylor still wasn't back in his office when Jack arrived with his mound of paperwork. Wynona said that she expected the dean back at any minute, but Jack didn't want to wait around. He wrote Naylor a short note and left everything with Wynona.
“I'll see that he gets it,” she said.
“Thanks,” Jack said, and headed back to Sally's office.
She was still there, grading tests. When Jack came to the door,
she looked up and said, “Everything taken care of?”
“I think so. Naylor should have a very busy weekend, if he even bothers to look at the stuff I gave him.”
“I'm sure he will. He's very conscientious.”
“Great,” Jack said. “Maybe my students won't even care if I'm indicted for murder. They can keep Naylor for the rest of the semester.”
“Don't talk like that. I called Mae Wilkins but she's not in her office.”
“It's Friday afternoon,” Jack pointed out. He looked at his watch. “In fact, it's after four o'clock on Friday afternoon. There's no one here except us, the secretaries, and the deans. And I'm not so sure about one of the deans.”
“Then we should leave,” Sally said.
“Good idea. Then what?”
“We'll have to think about that. What would be a good place to do some thinking?”
“The Seahorse Club?” Jack said.
There were no bars in Hughes, but there were “private clubs” that anyone with a couple of bucks could join. Under the law, members of the private clubs could be served alcohol. The Seahorse had the advantage of being near the college campus. That was also its disadvantage. It was the preferred place for college faculty to have a drink, and Jack wasn't sure Sally would want to be seen with him. For that matter, he wasn't sure he wanted to be seen by anyone. He'd have to answer too many questions, and there wouldn't be any time to consider what he and Sally should do, if anything, about his problems. He was surprised that Troy Beauchamp hadn't already sought him out to pump him for information.
“The Seahorse is a little too public,” Sally said, echoing Jack's thoughts. “Why don't we go to my house?”
That sounded fine to Jack. He was pretty sure that any chance of romantic involvement was dead now that he was a murder suspect, but he'd take whatever he could get.
“I'll get my car and follow you,” he said. “I'm not parked far from you.”
As they were walking out to the parking lot, they passed under the big oak tree near the shop building where both auto mechanics and welding classes were taught. The auto mechanics and welding shop was on the opposite side of the campus from the administration building, and the parking lot beside it was a bit more convenient for Jack and Sally. When the welders were working, taking a peek into one of the building's small windows was a little like glancing into the infernal regions, where masked demons moved around among the sparks and blue flames.
“That's where I did a lot of work on the knife,” Jack said, flipping a hand in the direction of the building. “I heated the blade to temper it with an acetylene torch.”
“Who taught that knife-making class?” Sally asked.
“Stanley Owens. You probably don't know him. He teaches just that one class in continuing ed. I don't think he has a degree. Nice looking, with really gray hair. His real job is office management. He manages the repair department for your friend Roy Don Talon.”
“He's not exactly my friend.”
“Irony,” Jack said. “That's what we English teachers call it.”
“Oh,” Sally said.
“Talon is on campus occasionally. Sometimes he stops by to say hello. I think he came to a faculty workshop one fall. Sat in the back row of the meeting room and never said a word, which is pretty odd when you consider his occupation.”
“I get it,” Sally said. “Irony. Because he's a car salesman, and they tend to be talkative.”
“Right the first time. Maybe you should consider becoming an English teacher. Anyway, I'm sure Fieldstone wishes that all the members of the faculty kept their mouths shut.”
“Unlike those of you who are accused killers and speak up at board meetings.”
“That's one way to put it,” Jack said.
Sally looked at the automotive building. She'd been on the Hughes campus for six years now, but she'd never even looked inside the shop. She wondered what went on in there.
“I've never been inside that building,” she said. “Let's have a look.”
“It's Friday afternoon,” Jack reminded her. “There won't be anyone around.”
“I'm not interested in interviewing the faculty. I just thought it might be interesting to see what it looks like.”
Jack shrugged and said, “I don't see any reason why we can't have a look.”
They went over to the heavy steel door, and Jack pulled it open, holding it for Sally to walk through. He was never sure whether a man should do things like that for a woman these days, and he hoped she wouldn't think less of him.
The inside of the building smelled of oil and gas and something that might have been antifreeze or possibly power-steering fluid. Sally wasn't an expert in automotive smells.
No lights were on, and because the building's designers had hoped to cut down on cooling costs by reducing the number and size of the windows, it was hard to see anything. Sally didn't know where the light switch was, though she thought it should be somewhere near the door. Jack was fumbling around for it when she heard something scrape softly on the concrete floor.
Jack stopped groping for the light switch.
“Did you hear that?” he whispered.
“Why are you whispering?” Sally asked.
Jack spoke up a bit. “I don't know. It just seemed like the thing to do.”
“Is anyone there?” Sally called.
There was no answer. She looked around the large, gloomy area. She could see a little better now that her eyes were getting adjusted. There was some illumination from the small windows, and the
edges of the large doors on the opposite side of the shop were lined with daylight.
There was only one car in the shop, a fairly new model that Sally couldn't identify. It sat off to one side where it appeared to have been freshly painted. There was a sharp smell of paint in the stuffy room.
Nearby there was some kind of portable hoist, with an engine hanging dangling from it by chains. There was a hydraulic lift that was raised for no reason that Sally could see. It was as if someone were changing the oil on an invisible car. There was also a square hole in the floor with steel tracks across it. Sally thought it might be a grease pit, though why it was necessary when there was a lift, she didn't know. On the wall beside the car there were some large metal toolboxes on wheels and a couple of immobile steel lockers.
On the opposite side of the shop stood the acetylene bottles and some of the welding equipment, with which Sally was completely unfamiliar, not that she could have identified it anyway in the dim light. There were a couple of workbenches with tools on them and vises affixed to each end. A few wrenches and a couple of hubcaps lay on the floor beneath them.
“Maybe we were just imagining things,” she said.
“Both of us at the same time?” Jack said.
“Well, I don't see anyone. Do you?”
Jack said that he didn't, and Sally called out again. There was still no response.
“What about the lights?” she said.
Jack again felt around on the wall for the switch.
“Here it is,” he said, and Sally heard a muted click.
The lights didn't come on. There were another couple of clicks, but the result was the same: no lights.
“I think it's time to go,” Jack said. “There's nothing to see in here, anyway.”
There was another low sound, as if something had brushed softly against a wall.
“Someone's in here,” Sally said. “Hey! Who's there?”
No one replied.
“Probably a cat,” Jack said. “Maybe even a rat. You never know. Let's get out of here.”
“Just a minute,” Sally said. “I'm sure there's someone in here.”
There weren't too many places to hide other than the car and the area around the workbenches and the acetylene bottles. Sally started toward the benches. Jack trailed along behind her.
When they passed the square pit in the floor, Sally looked down. The bottom of the hole was five or six feet below floor level. There were a few rags lying down there, along with what looked like a small metal toolbox.
And there was one other thing.
“Is there someone down there?” she said.
Jack stopped beside her and looked.
“Damn,” he said.
Both of them moved a little closer to the edge of the hole.
“Hey,” Jack said, but the figure lying below them didn't move.
“We'd better go for help,” Jack said.
“But there's someone in here,” Sally said.
“Yeah. He's lying down there in the grease pit, and he's not moving.”
“
Some
body's moving,” Sally said.
“All the more reason that we should go for help, if you ask me.”
Sally knew he was right, and she knew all those sayings about curiosity and cats. None of that seemed to matter right at the moment, however. She really wanted to know who was in there with them.
“Come on,” she said.
They had gotten to within about ten feet of the acetylene bottles when one of the bottles fell over with a terrible ringing sound, and they were suddenly confronted by the creature from the black lagoon.

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