Denton - 03 - Way Past Dead (20 page)

Enough said. “Okay, now why Dwight Parmenter? From what Ray said, he had a bad case of the hots for her.”

“Which is why he’d have done it,” Slim snapped. He jerked a finger at the window. “You just don’t understand, Harry. When it came to Becca Gibson, the only thing worse than wanting her was having her. She left a trail of bodies behind—used, abused, and excused.”

“I’m trying to understand that. I know she was a heartbreaker and a ballbreaker. But why Dwight Parmenter? If he had the hots for her and she turned
him down, did he kill her just for that? Or did he wind up sleeping with her and then get thrown over? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

Slim sank back on the stool, calmer now. “I know they were doin’ it,” he said. “Both of them told me that. In fact, there were days lately where I’d get off the phone with one of them bitching to me about the affair, and then five minutes later the other one would call.”

“You were caught in the middle.”

“Yeah,” he said, his head drooping with the weight, “just like I am now.”

“What about her manager?” I asked, shifting gears. “What’s-his-name …”

“Mac Ford. Yeah, he’ll be able to help you. He knew more about the business dealings than anybody else. I’m pretty sure he’ll talk to you.”

“Great, but what I meant was could he have killed her?”

Slim got this quizzical look on his face. “Why? He’d worked with her all these years, trying to build her a career. Rebecca was going to take off. She was going to be really big, and Mac’s cut was going to take care of the next three generations.

“No.” He shook his head. “Anybody in this mess comes out a loser, it’s Mac Ford. Besides Rebecca, that is. Mac’s lost a fortune. He’ll still make money off her, though, off everything she’s got in the can. He won’t starve.”

“What about a will?” I asked. “Becca have one?”

Slim looked thoughtful for a second, as if he were recalling some long-ago memory that made him feel warm inside. “You know, back when we were married and it looked like we were going to go somewhere, I brought the subject up one time. Becca wouldn’t even discuss it. I tried to tell her, ‘Honey, we could get in a car wreck or something.’ She busted my ass over it. Funny thing, Harry, she was scared as hell of death.”

His voice had become softer, lower, as if somewhere
beneath the decade’s worth of abuse and baggage and emotional garbage, he still loved her. Some people, I knew from hard experience, were just like that. They get under your skin, wrap themselves around your very nerve endings, and never turn you loose.

“Well, if it’s any comfort,” I said, “she doesn’t have anything to be afraid of now.”

Slim’s eyes glazed over, and I was sorry I’d said that. “Nobody could ever understand it who hadn’t been through it, Harry. That woman was the best thing that ever happened to me—and the worst. All at the same time.”

As I left the jail a half hour or so later, I thought of what Slim had said:
The only thing worse than wanting her was having her
. I couldn’t help but think of Saint Teresa, and the price she quoted for inordinately strong desires.

Something about answered prayers and shed tears …

The five hundred in cash Lonnie’d loaned me was going to be a pretty good cushion, but I still needed to stay on top of Phil Anderson at the insurance company to get my invoice paid. I got my car out of hock at the parking lot across the street from the jail, then navigated through the traffic back to my office so I could catch him before his usual round of afternoon meetings.

It was nearly ten-thirty by the time I hit the landing on the third floor and turned for my office. As I scrambled for my keys I heard the relays in my answering machine clattering away again, and a muffled voice leaving what sounded like the last of a message. I couldn’t understand what the caller was saying, but the voice was Southern, almost hick.

“All right,” I said out loud, thinking it sounded like Phil Anderson,
“do that paperwork thing you do so well.”
For some unknown reason, I was in a good mood. Maybe it was just the apex of the bipolar roller-coaster ride. I hoped, maybe even assumed, that Phil was calling me with good news. I already had the money spent.

I pushed the door open just as the caller hung up. My ancient answering machine takes about thirty seconds to reset itself. I took off my coat and cracked a window to air the place out.

I opened my briefcase and took out the notebook where I’d made a page of notes after talking to Slim. The conversation with him had helped a little, but not
much. I absentmindedly reached over and hit the play button. After the obligatory greeting from the computer chip, a voice dripping Dixie syrup began playing off the tape. It wasn’t the voice I expected.

“Hey, you son of a bitch, this’s me again. I just wanted you to know I ain’t forgot the promise I made. You go ahead and have you a real good time, boy, because yo’ good times is about to come to a end.…”

Click and dial tone, fade the hell out.

“Jeezus H.,” I said, “what is going on with this guy?”

I reached into my briefcase and recovered the tape with the first threatening message and slapped it in the machine. I hit the button again and listened to the first message.

Yeah, same voice. Same slurring of the words
son of a bitch
. Somehow, I’d managed to piss off somebody who sounded like they had a mouthful of cotton, or more likely, chewing tobacco.

I pulled the tape out of the machine and stuffed both tapes into my briefcase. If this kept up, I’d soon be heading to Wal-Mart for a case of answering machine tapes.

Who the hell could this be? The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t know the person. Not only did I not recognize the voice, but the threatening messages had only been left on my
office
machine. After some nut I ran into made a couple of nasty phone calls to my apartment a few months ago, I’d had my home number changed and unlisted. So whoever was taking a turn at me now was beholden to the Yellow Pages. My only recourse was to save the tapes until I had enough of them to call South Central Bell and file a harassment claim.

I raked across my Rolodex cards until Phil Anderson’s came up. Seven short number punches later, I was talking to his secretary.

“This is Harry Denton,” I explained. “Is he in?”

“May I ask what this is concerning?” she asked.

It always irritates the pee out of me when somebody
asks that. I’ve always wanted to say to some secretary:

“No, you may not ask what this is concerning, and if you do again, I’m going to come up to your office and rip your liver out through your nostrils.”

Boy, I thought, am I getting hostile these days or what? “Certainly,” I said as politely as I could muster. “I’m just following up on the case I completed for him.”

What I was trying
not
to say is that I’m calling about the damn money he owes me. That usually doesn’t get you very far, I’d found.

“Please hold, Mr. Denton. I’ll see if he’s available.”

I reread my page of notes twice before she came back. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Denton. Mr. Anderson’s unavailable right now. May I have a number where he can reach you?”

“Sure,” I said. What was I going to say? So I gave her my number and stared at the phone for a few seconds after hanging up.

In all the times I’d phoned Phil Anderson, he’d never not taken my calls. I began to recognize the foul stench of a telephone dodge.

Still fuming over the insurance company’s shabby treatment of me after I’d pulled their unaudited asses out of the fire, I dialed Roger Vaden’s office and took a chance on him being in. Lawyers, I’ve found over the years, will rarely admit to being in their offices when you need them, and on the few occasions when they are, they are adamant in their unavailability for unsolicited phone calls. Vaden was no exception.

“When do you expect him back?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” the sweet feminine voice on the other end of the line answered. “Perhaps you could tell me what this is in regard to.”

I suppressed the urge to bitch somebody out. “I’m a friend of Slim Gibson’s. I’m a private investigator, and he’s asked me to help him out with his case. I thought
I should at least let Mr. Vaden know what I was doing before I started doing it.”

“Oh,” she said abruptly. “Please hold.”

I drummed a succession of fingers on the desk, waiting for perhaps an hour or more during the next thirty seconds. Roger Vaden’s stiff, cool professional voice finally came on the line, sounding much more in control than it did before Judge Alvin Rosenthal.

“Yes, Mr. Denton, what can I do for you?”

“I spoke with Slim,” I began.

“You saw him at the jail?”

“Yes, just this morning.”

“I wish you’d asked my permission.”

Something about his tone of voice made want to rear back on my haunches and flash a fang at him. “I didn’t know I needed your permission to visit the jail during public visiting hours.”

“You don’t, but you do need it to question my client.”

“I didn’t
question
your client. Your client wanted to talk to me.”

He backed off at that. “Bickering like this will do us no good. What do you want?”

“Slim asked me to do a little looking around. As a courtesy, I’m making you aware of that. I don’t know how deeply I’m going to get involved in his case. As I’m sure you already know, the Slim Gibson defense fund is a little on the meager side. Also, I’m not exactly sure what I can do for him. He’s in a lot of trouble.”

“I know,” Vaden said.

“You can do something for me—and for Slim. If I need the leverage of working in an official capacity, I’d appreciate it if you’d back me up.”

“Meaning?”

“If I get in a spot where I have to tell somebody I’m working for you on Slim’s behalf, that you just verify that.”

“I won’t be responsible for you. I take no responsibility or liability for anything you do.”

“I’m not asking you to,” I said. “But if somebody calls and says, ‘There’s a guy here who says he’s working for you,’ could you just say, ‘Yeah, he is’?”

“You
are
a licensed private investigator?” he asked.

“That’s correct. I’m even bonded.”

“The problem is that I don’t know how long I’m going to be on the case.”

“I understand. You’re trying to get a criminal lawyer involved, right?”

“Yes, but I’m not having much luck. Mr. Gibson is not being held in very high esteem within the local community. The press has pilloried him, practically convicted him. And with his limited resources, he can’t afford the defense he needs. The only alternative, really, is the …” His voice faded away, as if he couldn’t bring himself to say the two dreaded words.

“Public defender?” I asked.

“Yes. And that basically means he won’t have a defense. More likely, he’ll just have someone negotiate the length of his prison term.”

“Slim deserves better than that.”

“I agree. But what can we do? I’m not even sure what our options are. The judge will hear preliminary motions in about a month. It’s going to take almost that long for defense to prepare. Which doesn’t leave much time to find him an advocate.”

“And you’re definitely not going to represent him?”

Vaden cleared his throat nervously. “This is not my specialty. Even if I could afford to take the case on for what Mr. Gibson can pay, I seriously doubt I’m equipped to give him the best representation possible.”

“How long have we got? Or rather, how long have you got before you’re off the case?”

“A week. Perhaps a bit longer.”

I felt overwhelmed and frustrated by so much coming from so many different directions at once. “Okay, listen,” I said. “Let’s try this. I’ve got a form that’s just a simple boilerplate that says I’ve been retained by you.
It’s got some blanks to be filled in that describe what I’m supposed to be doing, and for how long. I’ll fill in the blanks, sign the form, and mail it to you. If it meets with your approval, sign it and mail it back to me, along with a check for one dollar. I’ll bill Slim for the rest when this is all over—that is, if he’s in a position to make any more than the sixty cents an hour or so that inmates earn. Is that all right with you?”

“Yes,” he said, after a moment’s silence. “That will do. I can go that far, as long as there aren’t any problems on the form.”

“Add whatever you need to in order to protect yourself,” I said. As if he wouldn’t anyway …

“I’ll turn it around as soon as I get it,” he said.

“Okay, Mr. Vaden. It’s a pleasure doing business with you.”

“I only hope this does Slim some good.” His voice relaxed now that the negotiations had ended. “I’m extremely worried about him.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.”

I filled in the blanks and typed up an envelope in about five minutes, then plopped a stamp on it and dropped it in the mailbox on the way out of the building. The sun was high above the Seventh Avenue buildings now; another beautiful spring day was in the making. We get about six or eight weeks every year in Nashville when this city is draped in the most glorious weather you’ll see anywhere on the planet: temperatures in the low seventies, bright blue skies, little or no humidity. Sometimes I think this little balmy window between the frozen gray of winter and the sweltering red of summer is all that keeps most of us here.