Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 02 - Crash Course (10 page)

“Absolutely,” Ronnie said easily. “Jeff Cantrell. Hell of a salesman. He used to work for me. Hated to lose the guy.”

“He quit?” Hilley said. “When was this?”

“This afternoon,” Bondurant said. “He said he had a business opportunity over on the east coast, Lauderdale or someplace. Nothing personal. You know how they get when they’re young. The guy was single, no attachments. He moved on.”

“What about his car?” Jackie asked. “That’s his car out in the parking lot. Why didn’t he take his car if he quit?”

Bondurant raised one eyebrow. He did it well. “His car? You mean the Mustang? That belongs to me. Inventory. We always let our salesmen drive the inventory. It’s good for business.”

“He’s lying,” Jackie said quickly. “They must have moved the car and the body. While those two goof-off cops were out joyriding. It was right here under their noses and they didn’t even look inside. It was right here.”

Hilley had been writing in his pad again. He looked up at Ronnie.

“Mr. Bondurant? Okay if I ask the other officers to step inside here and take a look around?”

“Fine with me,” Bondurant said, sticking his hands in his pockets. “Lot of fuss all on the say-so of a hophead girl like this. Somebody in the habit of breaking into a business. A burglar, you might say.”

Hilley looked up sharply. “You want to file charges? She admits she came in here.”

“I’ll look around, see if anything’s missing,” Ronnie said. “If I find anything missing, you can lock her up.”

“You’re the thief,” Jackie said fiercely.

“That’s enough,” Hilley said, still polite. “I think you can go wait outside with your friend now.”

They left the tall, skinny cop, the joyrider, to wait with Ollie and Jackie. He got his bucket of chicken out of the Gran Torino and sat in his cruiser with the engine idling, the windows rolled up, and the air conditioner going full blast.

“I’m taking his badge number,” Ollie told Jackie. They were leaning against the hood of one of the other cruisers.

Jackie couldn’t help it. She had to bring it up.

“You were watching while I was inside on the phone,” she said accusingly. “Didn’t you see it? A black tow truck pulling my car? How could you miss seeing it?”

“I was watching as close as I could,” Ollie snapped. “You were gone a hell of a long time. There was a lot of traffic, you know. Besides, they could have taken it out the other side. How could I have seen it if they did that?”

“You were supposed to be watching,” Jackie repeated.

It was another half hour before the cops came out. Ronnie Bondurant locked the office door behind them. He left the strings of fights festooned around the lot burning, and overhead, the slowly twirling pink Caddie’s headlights blinked on and off, on and off.

“Sorry for your trouble,” Hilley told him. “You change your mind about filing a breaking and entering report?”

“Didn’t see anything missing,” Bondurant said grudgingly, his eyes boring into Jackie. “Just make it clear to her. She makes any more trouble for me, comes snooping around here or causing any more disturbances, I will file charges. That’s my right, am I correct?”

“That’s correct,” Hilley said.

“You understand that, miss?”

Jackie stood stiffly. Her hands were crusted with blood, her best jeans were in tatters, she was near tears, but she was damned if she’d let the sons of bitches see her cry.

“You’re gonna let him get away with murder?” she asked Hilley. “And I’m the one who gets in trouble?”

“I oughta sue,” Bondurant snarled. “Get out. But remember. Come Friday, you owe me seventy-seven dollars and ten cents. Miss a payment and I’m gonna be all over you like stink on a dog.”

“We’ll see about that,” Jackie said coldly. “I’ve still got that can of transmission fluid. That’ll prove who stole my car. Let’s go, Ollie.”

The atmosphere inside the Nova was thick with accusation, denial, and bitterness. Jackie turned the car south on U.S. 19, back toward the Fountain of Youth. She was exhausted and sore.

Ollie craned his neck to see the watch on Jackie’s wrist.

“Nearly eleven o’clock,” he said, “Truman’s gonna be mad.”

Jackie shot him a look. “Gonna be even madder when he sees you got duck sauce all over his seats.”

Ollie scrubbed at the orange stain on the upholstery, and Jackie drove, plotting her next move.

Jackie slid the basket of biscuits onto the table and put the car keys right beside it. She made a big show of filling Truman’s cup with coffee. So he’d know she’d keep up her end of the bargain.

Truman put down the paperback copy of
To Kill a Mockingbird
that he’d been reading. He and Margaret McCutchen were supposed to meet for lunch today, and he wanted to be able to impress her with his grasp of the story. This was one Great Book he really was enjoying.

“How did the stakeout go?” he asked. “See any trailer loads of stolen cars being unloaded?”

“He’s dead,” Jackie said. “They killed Jeff. Now I’ll never be able to prove they took my car.”

She looked around for Mr. Wiggins again. If he saw her sitting down while there were still customers in the room, he’d have a fit. No sign of him, though. So she told Truman the whole story. How they’d seen the Indian guy leave, and then Ronnie Bondurant. How she’d seen Jeff’s body in the red Corvette. And how Bondurant—or somebody—had managed to get rid of the car and the body by the time the cops got there.

Truman ate steadily while she talked, pausing only occasionally to ask questions.

“This Jeff,” he said, helping himself to another biscuit. “What’s his last name?”

“I couldn’t remember. So I looked on my sales contract. He stapled his business card to it. It’s Cantrell. Jeff Cantrell.”

Truman heaped jelly on the biscuit. He was really going to have to do some extra sit-ups today. Take a walk this evening if it wasn’t too blasted hot. Maybe Margaret would join him.

“And Bondurant told the police that Cantrell quit his job and left town?”

“Left the planet is more like it,” Jackie said. “Yeah, Bondurant made up some big story about Jeff going over to the east coast.”

Truman pushed his plate away. If Jackie hadn’t been sitting there, he could have discreetly loosened his belt.

“You think they moved the body?”

She shrugged. “I know they moved the car. Right under Ollie’s nose. I could have wrung his neck, TK. The police looked all over the place, for like, half an hour. And there were three of them. You’d think they’d find it if it was there.”

Maybe not, Truman thought. Not if they didn’t believe she’d seen it in the first place.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jackie saw three youth hostel kids sidling toward the door. Deadbeats. She hustled across the room and met them at the cash register. “Everything okay?” she asked in a loud voice.

The hostel kids, two boys and a girl, wouldn’t look her in the eye. “Yeah, great,” they mumbled, reaching for their money.

“Four bucks,” Jackie said when she got back, out of breath but holding the coffeepot. “They eat like truck drivers for four bucks, and they want to skip out on their checks?”

“Larceny in the soul,” Truman observed.

“We’ve got to do something,” Jackie said. “Bondurant says I have to keep paying on the Corvette, even though he stole it. I’ve got to have $77 by Friday. This Friday and every Friday for the next two years. You’ve seen what my tips are like, TK. How am I gonna save up for another car when I’m paying off that bloodsucker for the car he stole?”

“We?” Truman asked.

“I thought maybe you’d help,” Jackie said. “Like you did when Mr. Wisnewski was in trouble. You said before that you’d make some phone calls, talk to a friend in the state attorney’s office.”

“That was when it was just a nasty little scam,” Truman said. “Now you’re talking about murder.”

“You said you’d help,” she said plaintively.

“Bondurant Motors.” The voice was a man’s, high-pitched, with a pronounced Southern drawl.

“Hello,” Truman said brightly. “Jeff Cantrell, please.”

Long pause. “He don’t work here no more.”

“He’s no longer with you?”

“Who is this?” Wormy Weems demanded.

“This is Mr. Jackson at MCI,” Truman said. “I’m calling about Mr. Cantrell’s long distance service. Frankly, I’m distressed to hear he’s changed employment. He doesn’t answer at home, and on his credit application he gave this number as his place of employment. Do you have a more current number?”

“No.”

Dial tone.

Truman hadn’t expected much from Bondurant Motors, but it was on his checklist of calls to make, and he was nothing if not methodical. Forty years with the AP would do that for you.

His Nellie had hundreds and hundreds of friends. She’d been dead over a year now, and they still sent Christmas cards and called. Nellie’s friend, Nancy Ann, had a daughter, Louise, who worked at the state patrol driver’s license office. He hadn’t expected Louise to remember him.

“Mr. Kicklighter?” she said. “Of course. Mama misses your Nellie awful bad, you know. We all do. And I saw that big story in the
St. Pete Times
last year. That was really something.”

Louise had inherited her mother’s tendency to prattle. Truman decided to get right to the point. He did have other calls to make.

“I’m working on another big story now,” he confided. “Major stuff. Extremely confidential. Possible organized crime connection.”

He’d found over the years that the mere mention of organized crime tended to terrify and motivate.

“How can I help?” Louise said, lowering her voice. “Is it mob?”

“Possibly.”

He told her what he needed, an address and a driver’s license number for a Jeffrey Cantrell.

“With a ‘G’ or a ‘J’?” Louise asked. He could hear her clacking away on her computer keyboard.

“J—I think,” Truman said.

She clacked merrily away. “The mob,” she said worriedly. “Right here in Pinellas County?”

“Afraid so,” Truman said.

“Here it is,” she said.

The address was actually not far from the Fountain of Youth. Allamanda Road, 316-B. Before she’d let him hang up, he had to promise to come to Louise’s to dinner, too—any Sunday he liked.

Allamanda Road was a narrow street of close-set wooden houses tucked in back of Sunken Gardens, one of St. Pete’s oldest tourist attractions. When Cheryl was little, they’d taken her there on Sundays, let her pose for pictures with a parrot on her head. The gardens were still full of tropical birds—parrots, cockatiels, macaws. There was a flock of wild peacocks, too, whose desperate shrieks still brought calls into police headquarters that somebody was killing a baby somewhere.

Number 316 Allamanda was painted a dull white. Cracked concrete pillars held up a sagging roof, and the grime-encrusted jalousie windows were cranked open. At the end of an abbreviated sand driveway, Truman could see that the tiny, wood-frame garage had been converted to an apartment. The mailbox by the front door had 316-B painted on it. He went to the apartment door and knocked. He was trying the handle when he heard a door open behind him.

The lady of the house was at home. He whirled around to say howdy-do.

“Hey, you.”

She stood on the back stoop, a cigarette dangling from her lips. She was only a little taller than Ollie, not quite five feet. Her hair was short and curly and lavender, her eyes large and suspicious behind sparkly cat-lady eyeglasses. She could have been forty or sixty.

“Hello, there,” Truman said. “I’m looking for Jeff.”

“Gone,” the landlady said, flicking some ash into a straggly hibiscus bush by the back door. “You interested in a nice apartment? One-bedroom efficiency. I can let you have it for two hundred dollars a month till the season starts.”

“Can I see the inside?” Truman asked.

She took a drag off the cigarette and considered.

“Nope,” she said finally. “Hasn’t been cleaned. Come back next week, you can have a look.”

Truman nodded. “What happened to Jeff? I thought he was pretty well set here.”

“He left,” the landlady said. “I found an envelope on my front porch with next month’s rent, in cash. Note said he had a new job on the East Coast.”

“Cash, huh?” Truman asked.

“That’s right. Cash spends real good.”

The landlady turned to go back inside.

“Wait,” Truman said. “Jeff and I had a business deal going. He forgot to tell me he was leaving. I was wondering, uh, you ever see any of his other friends come around?”

She shut the back door and padded over to him. Her feet were bare, the nails painted a metallic purple two shades darker than her hair.

“What’s all this to you?” she demanded. “Who the hell are you, knocking on my door asking a lot of nosy questions?”

“He owed me some money,” Truman said. “Lousy punk. I’m surprised he paid you off.”