Surest Poison, The (29 page)

At 7:30, he called his client, Arnie
Bailey.

“I have some not so good news,” he said
when Arnie answered.

“I’m not sure I want to know.”

Sid told him about losing the First
Patriots’ file.

“The whole damn file is gone?” Arnie
groaned in disbelief.

“Every trace of it.”

After a moment of heavy breathing, Arnie
asked, “How’s your head?”

“Sore, but intact.”

“Did you and Jaz both read the file, the
part about Fradkin and Keglar?”

“Not only us but Hickman County Deputy
Ross as well.”

“We’ll need all three of you to testify
at the hearing. That piece of paper would have been the whipped cream on the
sundae. When do you plan to talk to Tony Decker’s brother?”

“As soon as I find
out about Bobby Wallace.”

“Who’s Bobby Wallace?”

“He’s the grandson of John and Marie
Wallace, who work for Jaz.” Sid explained the situation, including their
suspicions that Bobby may have worked for Auto Parts Rehabbers.

“This case is becoming more confusing
than a Supreme Court decision,” Arnie said. “Let me know something as soon
as you work it out.”

Sid was ready to leave for the office
when Mike Rich called.

“Remember that new case you told me about
the other day?” he asked.

“The pollution deal
in Ashland City?”

“Yeah.
I heard something odd last night I thought might be of interest to you.”

“What’s that?”

“I was with my wife doing her weekly
grocery shopping when we ran into one of my clients. She’s an elderly woman
who lives not far from us. She moved here from Ashland City a few years
ago.”

“I hope she wasn’t affected by the
trichloroethylene.”

“No,” Mike said, “but she mentioned
reading about it in the Ashland City newspaper, which she still gets. It had
a story saying you were looking for former employees of Auto Parts
Rehabbers.”

“Did she know someone?”

“That’s the odd part. She told us she had
read something in the newspaper here last week about a man found shot to
death in Shelby Park.”

“His name was Gillie Younger.”

“I know.”

“So what’s the connection?”

“She says Mr. Younger worked on the
garbage truck that picked up her trash. He helped her with some boxes back
during the summer, and she repaid the favor with cold drinks when the
weather was so hot. At some point she mentioned having lived in Ashland
City. Younger told her he had worked there for a company that reconditioned
auto parts. He didn’t give the name, but she thought it might be Auto Parts
Rehabbers.”

That brought the morning’s first grin.

“Mike, you get today’s Avenging Angel
award.”

He laughed. “Did my little old lady hit
the jackpot?”

“She sure did. Give me her name and
address. I need to get it to my homicide detective friend right away. She
has probably helped pin the tail on a very nasty donkey.”

He wasn’t positive of the donkey’s
identity yet, but he had a pretty good idea. When he called Bart Masterson,
the detective’s voice mail answered. He left word that he had an important
new development on the Gillie Younger murder.

It was after eight by the time he reached
his office. The phone was ringing when he opened the door.

“I was about to hang up and try your
cell,” Jaz said. “Do you still have the headache?”

“Not like last night, but I have a sore
lump that feels as big as a barn door. I just walked in here. I’ve been on
the phone at home.”

“I know. I tried to get you a couple of
times.”

He told her about Mike Rich’s tip and the
chat with an unhappy Arnie Bailey.

“Tell Arnie not to wet his pants,” Jaz
said. “We can all testify that Fradkin and Keglar were listed as owners of
First Patriots, and I have the link to First Improvement Corp. But if
Younger and Larry Irwin were killed by the same
gun,
and both worked for Auto Parts Rehabbers, that puts a whole new slant on
things.”

“Right.
I have a call in for Bart.”

“It should also give us more ammunition
to go after Bobby. I just heard from his friend, Ned. They plan to be here
in about forty-five minutes. Can you head over this way now?”

“I’ll have to delay my trip to Dixie
Seals, but that’s okay. There’s one point we need to nail down before I
confront Mr. Decker.”

“What?”

“We’re told Tony Decker is dead, then we
find out the obituary is a fake. Everybody denies having seen him or talked
to him in years, but they all appear to be lying. Your source confirms Trent
Decker’s story, but what if he or she picked up on something as fake as that
Commercial Appeal
obit? Somebody is an accomplished scammer here. We
need to confirm if Trent is really a twin, or is he Tony?”

“I have an idea,” Jaz said. “Maybe I can
find the answer by the time you get here.”

The sky was
an edgy gray that resembled the underside of a pewter lid. Sid wondered if
this could be what it looked like to unlucky turkeys on Thanksgiving
morning, which was only a couple of weeks away. He didn’t feel in a lot
better shape. When he reached the gate on Franklin Pike, Jaz buzzed him in.
All the bare trees along the driveway added to the somber look of the day.

John Wallace met him at the front door
and directed him to Jaz’s office. An eerie quiet filled the house as he
walked across to
ma cachette
.

“Anybody home?” he asked, knocking on the
open door.

Jaz looked around. “Come on in. I just
got off the phone with one of my good contacts.”

“Checking what?” He strolled over to the
chair beside her desk.

“You said you wanted confirmation about
Trent and Tony.”

“So what have you come up with?”

“A way to determine whether Tony has a
twin brother named Trent.”

A smile began to tug at his lips. “You
have a contact in the state Office of Vital Records.”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“I don’t recall what’s included on birth
certificates. I presume it has information on multiple births?”

Jaz turned to the computer screen, which
showed a sample birth certificate. “There’s a line here that says ‘This
Birth—Single, Twin, Triple, etc.’ I just asked her to take a peek for me
when she has a chance. It shouldn’t take long. I’ll—”

“Front gate warning,”
blared
a computer-generated voice, interrupting her.

They glanced at the gate monitor. The
large white pickup that sat beside the farmhouse in Cheatham County last
night idled outside the barrier. Jaz pressed buttons on the security
console.

“Come on up to the house,” she said into
the microphone as the gate opened.

She and Sid met the two young men at the
porch steps. Bobby walked with his head half-bowed, eyes turned up as though
staring over a pair of glasses. Ned, about the same height but bulkier, wore
an animated smile beneath a Tennessee Titans cap.

“Good morning,” he greeted them. “You
have a real cool place here, Miss LeMieux.”

“Thank you,” she said. “And thanks for
bringing Bobby in. Let’s go back to the rec room. I think we’ll be more
comfortable in there.”

As they walked into the foyer, the elder
Wallaces stood waiting, faces as solemn as an honor guard, though they
didn’t appear in a mood to bestow any honors. Bobby looked from one to the
other.

“Good morning, Granny,” he said.

“Where’s Connie and Little Bob?” she
asked, irritation showing in her dismal look.

“They’re still at Ned’s.”

“He’s all yours after we have a little
talk,” Jaz said and led the way to the rec room.

Inside, Sid glanced around. “Why don’t we
gather around the card table? That will put us all eyeball-to-eyeball.”

Jaz had suggested he take over the
inquisitor role, since it had worked well at the first confrontation with
Bobby. As soon as they were seated, he stared across at the young man.

“We know what’s going on, Bobby,” he
said. That was a bit of an exaggeration, but they would soon know for sure.
“Let me lay it out for you:

“Early on Halloween morning, a man named
Gillie Younger was shot to death in Shelby Park. You were abducted that
night and threatened. That same night, a young man named Larry Irwin died
from a gunshot fired from the same weapon that killed Younger. Thursday, Jaz
and I spent most of the day asking questions and being very visible around
Ashland City. Somebody must have reported what we were doing. Friday
afternoon, they held Little Bob for an hour,
then
turned him loose. When we went to your house that night, you told us you had
been threatened again by phone, that they knew Jaz had been there. Somebody
followed us to Ashland City Highway after we left. On Saturday, Jaz and your
grandparents had you brought to this house.”

Sid watched Bobby’s reaction as the story
unfolded. His eyes got bigger and bigger, his mouth dropping open.

“Sunday, a man approached one of the
Welcome Traveler Stores employees who drove you over here. The guy asked if
you were staying in the mansion. He was told you got out at the little house
in back, where they left your car. Monday night, someone broke into the
basement and rigged a device to cause a gas explosion. We traced one of the
men involved to Pete Rackard’s garage in Franklin. The car that followed us
from your house Friday caused a wreck last night that killed a man. All of
these incidents are tied into a company named Auto Parts Rehabbers, the
company you used to work for in Ashland City. Was Tony Decker the man who
threatened you?”

Bobby sat there stunned, blinking his
eyes, as they all stared at him.

For a long moment, the silence was as
thick as Marie’s cake batter. Sid would have sworn he could hear Bobby’s
heart beating. When the young man spoke, his voice was little more than a
whisper.

“I couldn’t see him for the blindfold,
but that voice wasn’t something you’d forget. He said somebody was dead, and
I would be next if I didn’t keep quiet. Then he said they would get my
family, too. I didn’t know about all this other stuff you say was going on.”

His hands shook as he spread them out in
a gesture of futility.

“What did he not want you to talk about?”
Sid asked.

Bobby breathed a deep sigh. “About
pouring out a lot of TCE, a chemical they used in the plant. It was a few
months before they closed it down. I did janitorial work, Gillie Younger and
me. After they used the TCE to clean parts, they stored it in big drums at
the back. That’s what it came in.
Once before they
shipped off a bunch of drums.
To be recycled, I guess. But Mr. Decker
said that cost too much money, just dump the stuff out behind the plant.
There
was
more than twenty drums. It was quite a
job. I got Gillie to help with the last bunch of ‘em. It smelled awful.
Made me sick as a dog that night.”

47

Ned had an odd
look on his face. “Is that what all this fuss has been about on TV?”

“That’s it,” Jaz said.

He slapped Bobby on the back, grinning.
“Man, you gonna be a celebrity.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,”
Bobby said, looking confused.

Jaz cut her eyes toward him. “When Marie
and I were at your house Thursday night, Connie said all you read in the
paper or watch on TV is football, basketball, and hockey. You’d better start
paying a little more attention to the world around you.”

“Did you know people near the old Auto
Rehabbers plant have been getting sick because of the TCE pollution?” Sid
asked.

Bobby gave him a wide-eyed, blank look,
and slowly shook his head.

“What did Larry Irwin have to do with all
the TCE dumping?” Jaz asked.

“He showed me how to load the drums on
the towmotor.”

“They must have thought they couldn’t
trust him to keep quiet,” Sid said. “Unlike you, he didn’t have a family to
threaten.”

Bobby was still frowning. “What happens
now?”

Sid sat back and rubbed his chin. “We
have one more thing to establish. Did you ever hear Decker say anything
about having a twin brother?”

“No.”

“We haven’t been able to find Tony
Decker, but there’s a man named Trent Decker who claims to be his twin
brother. He runs a company called Dixie Seals out off I-24 near the county
line. We have a hunch that Trent and Tony
are
the
same person. I’m going out there to talk to him this morning.”