Surest Poison, The (10 page)

14

The man spoke
in low, conspiratorial a voice. “A friend in Ashland City gave me some
unwelcome news today. Our former police chief is meddling again. Private
Investigator Sidney Chance is asking questions around Cheatham County. He’s
interested in Auto Parts Rehabbers and the TCE dump at the old plant site.”

“I thought you knew,” the man on the
other end of the line replied. “Our friends gave me the word. They’ve been
checking on his travels around Ashland City.”

“Why wasn’t I contacted? You need to keep
me in the loop. I want to know what he’s up to.”

“He’s working for Harrington’s lawyer in
Nashville. The man has a bad habit of sticking his nose where it doesn’t
belong. Some day it’s gonna get chopped off.
Some day
soon.
He roughed up a couple of guys who were sent to see him last
night.”

“My advice is to be careful. Chance has
an associate working with him named Jasmine LeMieux. I believe she’s also an
ex-cop. Plus she’s got tons of money.
Owns majority
interest in the Welcome Traveler Stores chain.”

“Yeah.
I’ve heard about her. I understand she drives a bright red Lexus. I wasn’t
aware she was involved in this business, though.”

“You’d better tell your people to keep
their heads up.”

“Don’t worry. We have a few aces up our
sleeves.”

“Overconfidence is a recipe for
disaster.”

“You take care of your end. I’ll handle
the rough stuff. Mr. Chance didn’t learn his lesson the last time, but you
can bet your ass he won’t forget this one.”

Sid returned
to his office after lunch and took up the search for Hershel Owens. One of
his databases provided a man by that name in a small town not far from
Murfreesboro. It identified him as a teacher in the Rutherford County
Schools. He checked with the school system and learned that Owens taught
math in a middle school not far from his home. He had been on the faculty
there for four years.

Sid punched in the number listed, got an
answering machine, and left a message to return his call.

Afterward, he contacted Arnie Bailey to
report on progress in the investigation. He thought it best to stay a step
ahead of the client. Call him before he calls you.

“Think you can find this Decker fellow?”
Bailey asked after hearing the details.

“We’ll find him. If he’s changed his name
and gone into hiding, it’ll be more difficult. You know the old saying, the
difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer.”

“By next week?”

Sid rolled a pencil between his fingers.
That was a question he couldn’t easily answer. He felt confident in his
ability to locate the man, but at this point he had no idea how long it
would take. Rather than give a reply that might be misleading, he said, “I’m
waiting to hear from Jaz on Pete Rackard. I’m hopeful he can lead us to
Decker.”

“Okay. Keep me advised.”

Not long after finishing his call to
Bailey, the phone rang.

“I see you have a substantial new
client,” Mike Rich said in the same jovial voice he always used. Four years
younger than Sid, he had a carefree attitude that masked the intensity he
displayed in pursuing the financial markets.

“Who told you?” Sid asked.

“I saw you made a nice deposit from the
law firm of Bailey, Riddle and Smith.”

“You’ve been checking my bank account.”

“That’s what you pay me for, my friend.”

It was true. Mike handled all of his
funds. A financial consultant, he was, in Sid’s opinion, the best in the
business. In high school, Mike had been a star student of Sid’s mother, Mary
Virginia Chance. After he became a successful stockbroker, Mike went to Mary
Virginia and offered to help with her finances. He got her into the house
Sid now occupied and did such a great job managing her money that she
recommended Sid use him, also.

Sid drummed his fingers on the desk. “I
suppose you know how Arnie Bailey happened to look me up.”

“I know he does some work for Welcome
Traveler Stores.”

“Right.
Jaz pointed him in my direction.”

“You’re not complaining, are you?”

“I’m not sure. Was this idea of getting
me into the PI business yours or hers?” It was a subject that, for whatever
reason, they had never discussed.

Mike paused. “You’re aware that I was a
friend of her dad’s, and that I also handle her portfolio. We were
discussing things one day when she mentioned her problem with old Frank
Hartley. He had come to her after getting fired for stealing expensive items
off the store’s shelves. She was inclined to believe his innocence but
wanted it investigated outside company channels. I thought of you up on that
hillside and told her I knew someone who had all kinds of investigative
experience he ought to be putting to use.”

Sid rocked back in his chair,
remembering. “That’s when she showed up at the cabin.” She was accompanied
by a deputy sheriff Sid had met when he first moved there. Otherwise it’s
doubtful she could have found the place.

“She told me you had assured her I was
the man to take care of her problem,” Sid added, “that I was dedicated to
finding justice for the little guy.”

Mike laughed. “I don’t think I put it
exactly like that.”

Sid scratched his beard. “Well, I told
her after what happened in
Lewisville,
I no longer had any faith in the human race. I was quite comfortable out
there with my creature friends.”

Mike was the one who had found the
hillside property and negotiated the purchase for Sid. When he replied,
there was a smile in his voice. “She flattered you, didn’t she? Charmed
you,
cajoled you.”

“She did all the above, even offered to
pay for my private investigator license.”

“Jaz can be more persuasive than a TV
evangelist.”

“She claimed you told her I needed to get
back into the real world and do what I’m good at.”

Mike answered slowly. “I may have said
that.”

“Okay, I guess it was equal parts you and
Jaz. What I can’t figure is why you put her onto me, knowing what a charmer
I am. I recall hearing that you two were an item.”

Mike laughed. “How many did you charm up
on your mountaintop? Anyway, that’s ancient history. Jaz and I are just
friends now. You two, though, you’d make a great pair. I’m sure I told you
about her experience in the ring. I remember your mom telling me what you
did to a kid once with boxing gloves.”

“You’re stretching things, Michael. You
only mentioned she’d been a boxer.”

“Not just a boxer. She was tops in her
weight class. The only problem was women professional boxers didn’t make
enough to live on. Since she’d been with the Security Police in the Air
Force, she joined the Metro Police Department so she could pay her bills.”

Sid smiled to himself. “She’s something
else, all right.”

“Just wait till you get to know her a
little better.” Mike chuckled. “Now tell me about this new case.”

Sid gave him a quick rundown on the TCE
spill and its aftermath.

“And you don’t have a clue where this
Decker guy is?”

“Not really.”

“Well, good luck, buddy,” Mike said. “The
good news is you’re in great shape financially. Just don’t go out and buy
any airplanes.”

A little later, Sid got a call from
Hershel Owens, who had just arrived home from school.

“What does a private investigator want
with me?” he asked.

Sid explained that he was investigating a
case in Ashland City and asked if Owens had once lived there.

“We left about five years ago,” he said.

“I’m trying to locate former employees of
Auto Parts Rehabbers. I was told a boy stayed at your house when you lived
there, perhaps a nephew, who worked for the company. Is my info correct?”

“Referring to Larry
Irwin.
He wasn’t a nephew,
though. He was the son of a cousin I was close to while growing up. The
boy’d had some problems, gotten into serious trouble. But he had made a real
effort at getting straightened up. We agreed he could live with us if he
found a job. Turned out he knew somebody at the Parts Rehabber place who
helped him get on out there.”

“Was he working for them when the plant
closed?”

“Sure was. It happened without warning.
One day he went to work and they told him they were closing. No advance
notice.”

“What did he do after that?”

“He’d studied automotive maintenance in
high school and got a job as a mechanic in Ashland City. His mother died,
and I haven’t been in contact with him in a while. I’m sure he still lives
in Ashland City, though.”

“Do you have an address and phone number?
I’d like to talk to him.”

“Hold a second.” Owens was back moments
later and read out the information.

When Sid tried the phone number, he got
an answering machine. Still at work, he thought. He left a message asking
for a callback.

After tearing off the sheet with Irwin’s
contact info, Sid stared at the blank page on his note pad. It stared back
like a silent challenge. He decided to try an exercise he sometimes used to
generate fresh ideas. The scheme involved jotting down random thoughts about
the case as they flashed through his mind. First
came
Hank Keglar, a known shady character, who sold the property to Auto Parts
Rehabbers and took it back. Sid had tangled with Kegler on many occasions
during his time in Lewisville.
A grotesque hunk of
humanity—make
that inhumanity—Keglar was the godfather of the town’s
unruly element. Below that he made an entry about Tony Decker, the ex-con
who had managed the company. Decker was an intriguing question mark,
either polite and
cordial or brusque and
uncooperative, depending on who you asked. Pete Rackard? Sid looked up from
his notes and wondered if Jaz had returned home yet.

He picked up the phone and called her
cell number. When it went to voice mail, he knew she was still at her Board
meeting.

Jaz got the
message
on her Bluetooth headset
an hour later after leaving downtown. She decided to wait and return Sid’s
call when she got home. She wanted to check on Rackard first. Driving out
I-65, she took the Brentwood exit and turned to the north on Franklin Road.
This was a fashionable area that housed business leaders as well as
up-and-comers. It had once been home to country music legends like Hank
Williams and Eddy Arnold. She slowed as she approached the stone entrance
that bore what she called, with tongue lodged firmly in cheek, the LeMieux
coat-of-arms. It was a stonecutter’s impressionistic version of an
eighteen-wheeler with “LM” on the trailer. She flashed an infra-red beam at
the sensor, and the heavy wrought iron gate rumbled open.

Jazz navigated the winding driveway lined
with stately oaks and maples and saw John Wallace riding up on a small
tractor with a trailer in tow. Large and stocky, with muscular arms and an
almost expressionless face reminiscent of a figure chiseled on a
mountainside, he had always impressed Jaz as a man at peace with his
surroundings. She parked in front of the house, got out, and waited for him
to turn off the engine, which raised a din rivaling that of a jackhammer.

“What have you been gathering?” Jaz
asked.

“Getting some dead
limbs out of the way, Miss Jasmine.
That was a pretty strong wind the other night. Oh, there was a man stopped
by asking about you around lunchtime.”

“At the gate?”

“Yes, ma’am.
I answered when he buzzed the house.”

“What did he want?”

“I suppose he just wanted to know if you
were here. That’s all he asked. I said who
should I
say is calling, but I guess he’d already pulled away.”

“Did you notice what kind of car he
drove?”

“No, ma’am.
You could check the tape and find out.”

A motion-detecting surveillance camera
kept track of visitors. She wouldn’t have thought much about it except for
what had happened to Sid. Still, she could think of no reason for anyone to
connect her to his investigation. He hadn’t mentioned her name while
Harrington’s office was bugged.

She thanked John and went inside. After
calling to Marie in the kitchen to say she was home, she went to her office.
Pete Rackard was her first priority.

It didn’t take long to track him down.
She called Sid’s office to give him the information.

“Chance Investigation Agency,” he
answered.