Surest Poison, The (16 page)

“I’ll have to find a way to use that.”

“Did you get in touch with Larry Irwin’s
friend in Clarksville?”

“No, but Judge Thackston called me with
an interesting tip.” He told her about Trent Decker and Dixie Seals.

“That man definitely needs looking into.
Why don’t I do another sweep and see what turns up?”

“Okay. Have you been able to do anything
about getting Pete Rackard’s phone logs from Friday night?”

“My telephone contact doesn’t work
weekends. I’ll get onto it first thing Monday morning.”

“You keep this up I’ll have to pay
overtime.”

She laughed. “This isn’t work, Sid. I
thrive on challenges.”

Knowing her background, he wasn’t
surprised. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s see how many challenges you thrive on
tomorrow when we tackle Bobby Wallace.”

“Spoilsport.”
She made a hissing sound. “Incidentally, have you heard anything else out of
your friends from Thursday night?”

“Yeah.
About an hour ago.”

“Really?
What happened?”

He told her.

“My God, Sid.
They shot out your truck tires? Did they shoot at you?”

“No, it was just a threat.
A warning.
But if I get hold of that guy—”

“And you didn’t call Metro? You should at
least tell Bart about it.”

“He’s got enough trouble on his hands.”

“What do you plan to do?”

“I’ll be carrying my nine-millimeter Sig
wherever I go until this thing is solved.”

23

As soon as
Sid finished his morning run, he headed for the backyard and began a
methodical search. The wind was not as strong as during the past few days,
but it ruffled the leaves enough that any small item dropped by an intruder
could have been hidden. He spent a couple of
hours
criss-crossing the area and kicking leaves to no avail.

Back in the garage, he surveyed the
damage to his truck. The tires had a lot of miles on them and were no great
loss, but just the thought of what the lowlife had done made him boil. He
worked off his anger by dismounting both wheels and tossing them in the
trunk of his car.

He took a shower, sat down with the
Sunday newspaper, and ate breakfast. The TCE spill and its aftermath rated
extensive coverage, but there was only one small mention of Auto Parts
Rehabbers. A reporter quoted Attorney Arnold Bailey as saying a preliminary
investigation indicated this was the company responsible for the pollution.
The newspaper was unable to unearth any further information about the firm.

After breakfast, Sid sat at the computer
in his home office and checked out the phone number from Scarface’s call the
night before. As expected, it turned out to be untraceable. He cursed
himself for failing to get more information out of the pair while they stood
on his front porch Thursday night.

He drove around looking for two new truck
tires, an exercise that only increased his anger at Scarface and his boss.
He discovered it was almost impossible to find a place open that sold tires
on a Sunday morning. No doubt his mother would have told him it served him
right. He should have been in church rather than out shopping for tires.

He arrived at the LeMeiux gate around
one, dressed in an open-collar white shirt and a brown plaid wool jacket.
When John Wallace opened the barrier, he drove until the mansion came into
view. The house sat on a small knoll that likely would have provided
picturesque views from the upper story windows except for all the towering
oak and elm trees that surrounded it. The mansion looked like an import from
the Louisiana countryside with its four gables highlighting the second floor
roof and a wood-floored veranda that crossed the front and ran halfway back
on both sides. Jaz met him at the door with a Chessy-cat grin.

“The background I unearthed on Trent
Decker is quite a shocker,” she said. “Come on back to my office.”

Crowded bookshelves stretched around the
room. A large metal globe mounted in rich, dark wood sat in one corner. A
wheeled ladder on a track stood beside a wall of books, reminding Sid that
she had spoken of her dad as a short man. He would have needed the ladder to
reach the upper shelves.

“Take a look,” she said, pulling a chair
next to hers in front of the computer monitor, a twenty-four-inch screen.
“One of my most reliable sources just came through. I haven’t printed it out
yet.”

She clicked the mouse a couple of times
and brought up a page headed “Trent Decker — Age 43.” Sid leaned forward and
caught a whiff of Jaz’s perfume. She looked particularly elegant today.
Concentrating his attention on the screen, however, he read:

“Trent is the twin brother of Tony
Decker, who served time in Tennessee for armed robbery. Their father, Virgil
Decker, ran off to South America with Trent when the boys were babies.
Tony’s mother raised him in Memphis. After the father died in Argentina in
1996, Trent came back to the States. He settled in Nashville and bought a
five-year-old business named Dixie Seals. The firm has done quite well.
Trent now lives in a fashionable section of Brentwood. Tony’s location could
not be established.”

Sid sat back and looked at Jaz. “So what
do you make of Trent Decker’s relationship to Bronson Fradkin?”

“Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?”

“If you believe in
such things.
I’d say it
indicates Trent has been in touch with his brother.”

“Ergo, he should be able to put us in
touch with said brother.”

“Correct. It’s a pretty day out. Maybe we
should take a little Sunday afternoon drive and pay a visit to Mr. Decker.”

Jaz turned away from the computer.
“Agreed.
And I know something you should do
tonight,” she said.

“What’s that?”

She took a newspaper clipping from her
desk and handed it to him. “There’s a TV program on Channel 8 that includes
a biography of the poet you were named after.”

“Sidney Lanier?”

“Right.
Have you read much about him?”

“Not in a long time. Maybe I’ll learn
something.”

First there was Marie’s bountiful Sunday
dinner to indulge in. They ate at the large family table in the dining room,
set with the LeMieux’s fine china and silverware. The menu was traditional
Southern, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, corn, peas,
a
green salad. Chocolate pie with a thick
meringue topped it off.

After Jaz all but ordered her to, Marie
joined them at the table. Sid tried to draw Bobby into the conversation with
little success, sparking nothing but one-word replies. With all the
questions from Little Bob and his great-grandparents, Sid became the center
of attention. He told tales about his tenure as chief of police in
Lewisville, including some of the dumb things criminals did.

“One of the funniest cases I remember
involved a young man and his girlfriend. They wanted to get married, but he
didn’t have enough money for a honeymoon. He had seen bank robberies on TV
and thought it looked easy. He borrowed a pellet gun he thought looked
pretty fierce and drove to the bank. Before he went in, he remembered they
always handed the teller a note. He looked around and saw an envelope on the
seat. He grabbed it and printed ‘HAND ME YOUR MONEY!’ Then he went inside
and walked up to the teller. He gave her the note and showed her his gun. He
scooped up the stacks of bills and shoved them into his jacket, then ran
out. As soon as he turned around, the teller looked at the front of the
envelope. There was his name and address. It was a bank envelope with a
letter saying his account was overdrawn.”

After they all laughed, Connie asked,
“Did you retire from that job?”

Sid frowned.
“Afraid
not.
I resigned.”

“Why?” Little Bob asked.

Connie scolded him. “Don’t be so nosy. He
doesn’t have to tell you why he did anything.”

“No, it’s a fair question.” Sid looked
down at the boy. “It might be a good lesson for you, Little Bob. Be very
careful who you get involved with. One of my officers had arrested a young
man for possession of drugs. I was more concerned about where the drugs were
coming from, so I offered to go easy on him if he would help us catch the
dealer.”

“What’s a dealer?” the youngster asked.

“A man who sells
drugs.
They’re bad folks
who get teenagers and other people in trouble. Don’t ever have anything to
do with them. Anyway, the man we had arrested agreed to cooperate. I didn’t
want to put him in any danger, so I asked him to tell the dealer he had a
friend who wanted to buy some crack—that’s crack cocaine.
Bad drugs.
We set up a time and place for him to
deliver the stuff to me.”

“Weren’t you afraid he would recognize
you?” Connie asked.

“I had worked with some theater people in
town, and they created a great disguise. My own mother wouldn’t have
recognized me. I met the guy in the parking lot behind a restaurant. I had a
couple of my officers out of sight for backup. As soon as I walked up to the
man, he handed me a fat envelope. I hadn’t expected to get drugs delivered
that way. I looked at him and said, ‘What’s this?’ He smiled and said, ‘The
five thousand bucks you asked for, Chief. Now keep your cops off my back.’”

“A setup,” John Wallace said in his deep
bass.

“Exactly.
The sheriff and several deputies swarmed around us. Turned out they had
wired the dealer and recorded what he said on tape. There I stood like an
idiot with an envelope full of hundred-dollar bills in my hand.”

“What did they do?” Connie asked.

“They put me under arrest and charged me
with taking a bribe from the dealer. I had been causing trouble for some of
the county bigwigs, and they’d been looking for a way to get rid of me. It
seems the man we arrested had confessed to the dealer about our plan. The
dealer went to the sheriff with a tale that I had asked for a bribe. Instead
of checking into the guy, the sheriff jumped at the chance to get back at
me.”

“Sid was exonerated,” Jaz said. “He had
said nothing incriminating on the tape, and his officers stood behind him.
The dealer and the man they had arrested for possession both had records,
including lying under oath. The district attorney threw out the case.”

Sid wiped a hand across his face as
though attempting to rid himself of a painful memory. “The publicity was
devastating. I didn’t feel I could accomplish anything further down there,
so I resigned and came back to Nashville.”

Marie spoke with a solemn face. “I
appreciate what you did and the way you handled it.” She turned and looked
straight at Bobby. “I just hope my grandson will find some of the same
courage to stand up against whatever he’s facing.”

The young man averted his eyes and said
nothing.

Sid looked across the table at him.
“She’s right, Bobby. If you don’t stand up against these people, it will
haunt you the rest of your life.”

“But I’ll still have my family,” he said.
He got up and left the room.

It was around
three o’clock when Sid and Jaz left in her Lexus for Brentwood, which
straddled the county line a few miles up Franklin Road. Trent Decker’s home
sat in a neat subdivision with designer street lamps and patterned brick
crosswalks. A large single story structure with a high-peaked roof that
likely meant a cathedral ceiling, the house was brick except for stonework
around the entrance. Jaz parked in the broad driveway, and they walked
across to the front door.

After Sid rang the bell several times,
Jaz threw up her hands. “I guess we should have called first.”

He gave a final rap with his knuckles.
“We’ll hit him tomorrow morning at the business.”

As he was turning away, he heard the door
open. Looking back, he saw a tall, handsome man with sandy hair, a smile
tugging at the corners of his mouth. The man wore jeans and a white dress
shirt with thin blue stripes. When he tilted his head, Sid noticed his hair
was pulled back into a lush ponytail.

“Hi,” he said. “Were you looking for me?”

“Trent Decker?” Sid asked.

“Right.
Are you the new folks up at 2231?”

“No, we’re trying to locate your brother,
Tony. We have some information for him.”

Decker gave him a curious look. “You
know, I haven’t heard anything of my brother in years.”

“Not a letter, a phone call?”

“Nothing.
Not a lot of people know about my brother. How did you happen to know?”

“We don’t know him personally. But a
friend familiar with your background suggested you could help us find him.”