Murder by Serpents (Five Star First Edition Mystery) (8 page)

Too late, warning bells clanged in his head. Ruth Ann was being way too pleasant. “What's wrong?” Tony settled onto his chair and gripped the edge of his desk with both hands. He knew that he was about to be shelled. He didn't know whether to duck or to run.

“I happen to know who owns that old motel. I don't even have to look it up.” Ruth Ann paused while she checked her nails.

As a dramatic pause, it was powerful and effective. Tony sucked in a deep breath and held it.

She did look at him then, but the hint of tears glistening in her eyes alarmed him even more. Her expression could only be called sympathetic. “It belongs to Martha Simms.”

“Martha Simms, as in my Aunt Martha?” Tony groaned and reached for an antacid tablet.

Ruth Ann coughed, giving him a discreet warning before she continued the bombardment. “Actually, it is owned jointly by Martha Simms and Jane Abernathy.”

Tony's hand stopped without touching the jar. “My aunt and my mother?” Tony searched Ruth Ann's face to see if by chance she was making it up. She wasn't. “When did they buy it?”

“They filed the deed maybe a month ago. I'm sure that it couldn't have been much longer than that because the sale hasn't shown up in the newspaper yet. I've been watching for it.” Ruth Ann sat up straighter. “I do know that they are forming some kind of partnership. They asked me to read through the contract, but since I haven't finished law school yet, much less passed the bar exam, I told them to check with a real lawyer. I suggested that they call Carl Lee Cashdollar.”

“If I give you my gun, will you promise to shoot me with it? Please?” His head spun. “How did that pair of women decide to buy that old motel, not to mention why? Are they nuts? Neither one of them has any business experience. They could lose everything they own and end up without a pot to . . . to . . .” He couldn't finish that thought.

Flinging himself out of his chair, he began pacing but the size of the room didn't allow a man his size to go very far. He came to an abrupt stop in front of his secretary. Ruth Ann didn't flinch but sat calmly, watching him. “Do you have any idea why they decided to buy that dilapidated piece of weed and skunk infested property or how they ended up having a makeshift congregation of snake handlers meeting in the office?”

Shaking her head, Ruth Ann's eyes widened. “All they told me was that they had big plans for it and asked me to keep it quiet. They said that they wanted it to be a surprise when it was ready but I don't know any more than that.” Her shoulders moved in an eloquent shrug. “It is a matter of public record, so I guess the cat's out of the bag now.”

“I'd say so.” He heaved a great sigh. “I'd better go have a chat with them.”

With those brave words, he plopped down behind his desk and picked up a folder. He couldn't focus on its contents, though; his brain spun. No way would he go over to the high school and pull his aunt out of her English class to ask her about this. The prospect of tackling the subject with his mother sounded like a good reason to consider moving.

Maybe he could find a job herding sheep in Montana or Wyoming. He could call it research for the novel he worked on in his spare time.

“Any word yet on what killed the snake guy?” Ruth Ann rose to her feet and headed toward the door then paused, turning to face him. Genuine sympathy radiated from her. “I heard about the inside of the car. It sounded like a mess.”

“That's an understatement. I'm still waiting to hear from Doc Nash and Wade.” He shot her a pained glance. “That is, unless they find my mother's fingerprints on the handcuffs. If that happens, I think I'll join the French Foreign Legion.”

“Do they still exist?”

“I don't know. Maybe when you finish painting your nails you could find that out for me. You know, just in case I need to leave town in a hurry.” Tony could have sworn that he heard her laughing as she left the room. He spoke to the open doorway. “It's hard to get good help.”

Moments after Ruth Ann departed, Wade arrived.

Strolling into Tony’s office, he said, “Doc had to leave and deliver a baby. He told me to go away and that he would call when he is ready to get back to dealing with the dead.” He carried with him a notebook and a two-liter bottle of ginger ale.

As he watched his deputy lower himself into the chair Ruth Ann had recently vacated, Tony thought that Wade's complexion had not quite returned to normal.

“Why don't you just sit there for a moment and get rehydrated. I'll get Sheila and Mike to come here for a confab.”

With a grateful smile and a nod, Wade broke the seal on the large bottle and lifted it to his lips.

Within minutes, Sheila and Mike joined them. Mike dragged a chair in from the hall and Tony sat on the edge of his desk. Sheila sat in the chair next to Wade. Except for Darren, this little group was Park County's day shift. The night shift was smaller.

Tony looked at Wade. “Tell us about the car. Did you find any usable fingerprints?”

“Not on the outside, I didn't, at least not good ones. I only found some partials on the driver's side door handle and a fairly good smudge on the roof. All that rain sure didn't help any.” He finished the first third of the two-liter bottle. “I'm guessing the owner of the smudges had oil or grease on his fingers or there wouldn't be that much left.”

Tony moved behind his desk and made a note in the file. “What about on the inside?”

Wade shuddered and took another swig. “The handcuffs were totally clean. I mean I couldn't even find a hint of a fingerprint.” He looked at his notes. “There were lots of clear prints on the dash and the inside surfaces of the doors. We found magazines, pop cans, a Bible, and one of those soft leather briefcases.” He looked at Tony. “It was empty, by the way. I haven't had a chance to check those things for fingerprints.” Clearing his throat, he looked disillusioned and a tinge of red rose on his face. “I can tell you that for a preacher, he had pretty raunchy taste in reading material. Real rough stuff.”

“How about our dead guy?” said Tony. “We're you able to get his prints?” The picture that formed in his mind of a preacher with a stolen license plate and violent pornographic literature made him uneasy. It had to be bad to make the former Marine blush.

“I did my best. The left hand was too swollen and messed up to get any good ones but I got a couple of partials from his right.” He paused to take another long drink. “With those, I'll be able to make a match if he's in the system somewhere. I'll send them out as soon as I can. You just never know.”

Mike took the floor. “You wanted to know who came by that parking lot this morning. That's easy. Every single resident. I swear that the entire population of Park County was there. No strangers. We did find something odd, though.” Apparently thinking about it amused him and he chuckled. “Like nothing else is odd about this case. The key was in the ignition, right?” He waited until everyone nodded. “The key was still turned and the car was in ‘park.’ The only reason that it was not running when we arrived was that the car ran out of gas. I mean it was bone dry.”

When everyone had absorbed that, he continued. “The heater was set on warmest heat setting and the fan on maximum. That's why Doc is having so much trouble with the time of death and why it felt like an oven in there. No telling how much gas it started with or how long it had been stopped. I'm guessing that it ran for several hours.”

“For heaven's sake.” Tony couldn't believe his ears. “Were the headlights on or off?”

“Off.” Mike answered.

“Fingerprints on the key?”

“No, sir.” Wade swallowed more ginger ale and stifled a burp. “I found a few smudges but no real prints.”

Tony thought that his color was improving.

Wade continued his report. “It was the only key on the ring with one of those little remotes. There are a couple of smudged and partial prints on the remote. Again, it is going to take a while to see if we have a match.”

Ruth Ann knocked on the doorframe before strolling into the office with a couple of papers that she handed to Tony. “I ran the vehicle identification number. You'll love what came back on that VIN.”

Tony reached for the paper and scanned it, surprised. It didn't take long to read. He could feel his frown deepening. “Thanks, Ruth Ann.” He glanced at the curious faces that watched him. “Ruth Ann ran the VIN on the Focus. It seems that the vehicle is part of an inventory of cars that belonged to a dealer in Atlanta. The cars were impounded or something because of a pending bankruptcy hearing. According to the report, that car should still be locked up in Georgia. They were surprised to learn that it had been stolen.”

He looked back up at his secretary. “Will you contact Atlanta and see if they know any thing about John Mize? A man who drives a stolen car probably knows it. Quentin did say that his cousin came here from Atlanta and he must have moved there from Maryville.”

She nodded. “Can you believe how many people have moved here from Atlanta? I'd say that most of our new residents come from there. It's almost turned into our population base.”

Tony started to nod when he was distracted by Ruth Ann's fingernails. They now sported tiny white polka dots on the raspberry background. “Did you check with the mayor's wife?”

“Oh, yeah.” Ruth Ann's tone remained light, but the tension lines carved into her face said a lot about the other woman's attitude. “Queen Doreen told me that she was not aware of the license plate being off her car, and then she went on to say that she leaves all the car stuff to her husband and who was I to be interrupting her bridge game anyway?” Her dark eyes blazed and her lifted chin promised retribution. She stalked back to her desk just as her phone began to ring.

Tony turned and faced his deputies. He didn't try to hide his grin when he noticed that each of their expressions suggested that the mayor's wife had better come to a complete stop at every single stop sign and that her annoying little apricot-colored frou-frou dog had better be on a leash in the park. Ruth Ann might be a pain in the backside, but she was theirs. He cleared his throat and waved the papers.

Ruth Ann reappeared in the doorway almost immediately. She looked directly at Wade. “Doc Nash says that the newest resident of Park County has been born and if you don't want to miss the fun of an autopsy, you should get to the morgue right away.” Her eyes twinkled. “He sounded even crankier than usual.”

Wade swallowed the last of the ginger ale in a single giant swallow. A deep rumbling belch followed. The sound echoed in the quiet room. A self-deprecating grin blossomed on his face. “I really hate upchucking without something in my stomach to begin with. I'm ready to go.”

Tony felt a surge of almost fatherly pride. It was a measure of the respect and friendship that existed within this group that no one made a comment. Everyone knew that Wade was tough enough to eat his cereal with battery acid, but the sight of a dead body was guaranteed to produce his last meal. The morning's combination of a hideously messy body and widespread blood spatters had tempted each of them to join him.

Tony considered asking Wade to stay behind to do his computer work on the fingerprints pulled from the car and snake boxes, but he knew that it would not be what the younger man wanted or needed. Wade wanted to be a detective. A good one. One way or another, he would get through the autopsy, even if he had to hold a bucket the entire time.

Tony rose to his feet. “Okay, let's go. I want to be there too.”

He reached for his jacket. “Mike, stay on that car. I'll bet that we can learn something else from it. I'm really curious about how it came to be in our little town when it is supposed to be in Atlanta and why it has that license plate.

“Sheila, find out what Quentin's been up to lately. I doubt that he would know the truth if he sat on it, but make sure you have backup if you go out there. I wouldn't be surprised if he won't be so welcoming on your next visit.” He remembered Quentin's attitude and grinned. “I would like to talk to that female in the house with him. She might have all kinds of information.”

As autopsies go, Tony thought, it was uneventful. No bullets or knife wounds turned up in the body. The worst part was watching Wade try to obtain a set of fingerprints from the corpse. The fingers simply weren't cooperating.

After a single bout with the bucket, Wade observed the rest with apparent interest. Tony wondered if Wade's system could be getting stronger.

According to Doc Nash, nothing obvious indicated that any cause other than the snakebites was responsible for the death. He seemed to think that because of the severity of the reaction that the man would have died even if he had gone directly to the hospital.

Doc Nash wouldn't be through for a while.

Tony decided to go home. He left Wade there.

Theo couldn't believe her ears. The sounds coming up the stairs and through her door sounded like the mob storming the Bastille. “For heaven's sake, Zoe. Maybe I better go help Jane. I'm afraid they'll be calling for the guillotine.”

She hadn't seen this many women in the shop at one time since Super Bowl Sunday. On that day, it had been the promise of great sale prices, door prizes and food that had created the excitement.

“Theo!” Several women shouted her name at the same time. “Do you know who died?”

Theo could only shake her head. Even if she had known, she wouldn't tell anyone until the news was announced. The relatives deserved to know before it hit the gossip lines.

“I know.”

All eyes turned to the speaker. Nellie Pearl Prigmore stood near the front door. The old woman was an avid gossip but not a quilter. “I saw that little car speeding past my house all the time. A lot of the time there was another car following it.”

“Whose car?” Theo wasn't surprised that she saw speeding vehicles pass her house. After all, she did live next to one of the busiest roads in the county.