Die Like an Eagle (10 page)

“The far end of the impound lot,” Horace added, grimacing as if he wasn't looking forward to the possibility of going near the porta-potty for those additional tests.

“Can do,” Randall said. “I'll tell my driver to stand by till you're ready.”

He nodded in farewell and left the trailer.

“And I should leave you three to your police work,” I said to Dad, Horace, and the chief. “I can get a ride back to town with Randall.” I picked up my tote and started to slide toward Horace's end of the seat, and he hopped up to let me out. But before I could get up, the chief spoke up.

“Just one more thing.” He looked down at his notebook and frowned.

I sat down on the banquette again.

 

Chapter 8

“Just to clear something up,” the chief said. “Mr. Brown claims he's been receiving threatening phone calls from someone. A woman.”

“I bet he means me.” Just like Biff to try causing me trouble. I took a deep breath before going on. “I've been calling him for weeks—at least once a day for the past few weeks. His company is supposed to be renovating the town square, and so far I haven't seen a single workman on site. But I'm not sure it counts as threatening phone calls since I've never gotten past his secretary.”

“You never used … intemperate language?” the chief asked.

“Of course she didn't,” Dad chimed in.

“I might have to him if I'd ever reached him,” I said. “But not to his secretary. I always tried to be polite to her. Not her fault he's dodging me. Couple of times I told her to tell him it was no use sending any more invoices because we weren't paying a red cent until we saw some progress on the town square. Made her write it down. I suppose that might have sounded like a threat to him. But I never said that to him—never got a chance to. Is there such a thing as threatening While You Were Out notes?”

“I rather doubt it.” The chief was fighting a smile. “You never called his cell phone?”

“I don't think I have his cell phone number.” I pulled out mine, looked at the contact list, and shook my head. “No. Hard as he was to reach, if I'd had a cell phone number I'd have used it, but I don't. I only have what I believe is his office number.”

I repeated the number. The chief scribbled it down, then flipped to another page and nodded.

“Yes, that's his office number,” he said.

“If making one or two calls a day to his office in a vain attempt to find out if he's ever going to do a lick of work on the town square is harassment, then guilty as charged,” I said. “I've also sent him a couple of e-mails a week, and the occasional snail mail. But that's all I've done, and I'd be happy to share my phone and e-mail records if you want them. I have no idea how one goes about doing that, but I'm sure you can tell me.”

“No need,” the chief said. “Since Mr. Brown raised the issue of threatening phone calls, we should have no difficulty getting a warrant to examine all his phone records.” He sounded rather pleased at the prospect—almost smug. I wondered if Biff realized how useful his complaint about harassment might be to the chief—or how inconvenient for himself, if he had anything to hide. “Given the business relationship between your employer and Brown Construction,” the chief went on, “I would be surprised not to see your number there.”

“You'll see my office number as well as my cell,” I said. “I don't recall ever trying to reach him from our home phone, but I can't swear I never did. So does this mean you're operating on the theory that Biff, rather than his brother, was the intended victim?” None of my civilian business, technically, but since the chief seemed to be in a mellow mood, I risked asking.

“I'm not operating on any theory yet,” the chief said. “What was it Sherlock Holmes said about theories?”

“‘It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data,'” I rattled off. And as I continued, Dad chimed in so we were reciting in unison. “‘Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.'”

Sherlockian trivia had been as much a part of my childhood dinner table conversations as fascinating medical facts.

“Precisely.” The chief looked only mildly startled by our Holmesian duet. “It's much too early to speculate on whether Mr. Henson was himself the target or whether he was merely the victim of an unfortunate physical resemblance to the killer's real target.”

“Did Randall mention that one of his cousins saw Biff having a fight with one of the Pruitts?” I asked. “And he didn't mean just an argument; they had to be pulled apart. I only got it third hand, but it stuck in my mind.”

“I'll look into it.” The chief made a few more notes. “Did Randall happen to say which cousin? Or which Pruitt?”

“His cousin Cephus, and I don't know which Pruitt, but probably one whose kid is on the Yankees.”

The chief nodded and scribbled.

“My money's on Biff as the target,” Dad said. “After all, people don't very often yell ‘Kill the umpire' in real life.”

“And when they do, they're usually just venting,” Horace added. “Has anyone ever really killed an umpire?”

“Not since 1927, to the best of my knowledge.” Yes, the chief would know something like that. “And baseball was a much rowdier game in the late eighteen-hundreds and early nineteen-hundreds. I doubt if this murder has much to do with baseball—historically, most of the violence against umpires, or for that matter players and coaches, has been committed in the heat of the moment—during the game or shortly thereafter.”

“Yeah,” Horace said. “And there's not much baseball going on around here between ten p.m. and two a.m., so heat of the moment won't fly as a mitigating circumstance.”

“And remember,” the chief added, “Lem Shiffley didn't use Mr. Henson as an umpire in the fall season, so to my knowledge, Mr. Henson hasn't officiated at a game since the end of last year's spring Little League season, a good nine months ago. I'm sure a few parents are still complaining about some of his more egregiously bad calls in the playoffs, but I have a hard time believing that any of them would still be in the throes of homicidal rage. I'm not discounting Shep's—or Biff's—involvement in baseball as a possible motive, but I suspect we'll need to look off the diamond for the killer's motive.”

And I suspected he'd be relieved to find the motive outside baseball. After all, the chief was such a passionate Baltimore Orioles fan that he'd named his sons after his favorite ballplayers. And at least one of his sons had followed suit—the one whose untimely death, with his wife, in a car crash had made Henry and Minerva the custodial grandparents of Frank Robinson Burke, Jr., Calvin Ripken Burke, and Adam Jones Burke.

“Well, idle speculation won't solve this,” the chief said. “Horace, if you're finished here for the time being, why don't you head over to Mr. Henson's place to search there?”

“You've made arrangements with Sheriff Whicker, then?” Horace slid out of the banquette and picked up his forensic kit.

“No,” the chief said. “If at all possible, I'd like for you to see it exactly the way he left it, not the way it will look after some nosy Clay County deputy finishes contaminating anything that might have evidentiary value.”

“Yeah,” Horace said. “They're not so good on subtleties like chain of custody.”

“So I'll make my call once you're parked in front of the house,” the chief said. “And you can be there waiting to keep an eye on them.”

“Might help if you could send Vern along, too,” Horace said. “He's better at handling those Clay County deputies.” Probably because, in spite of the longstanding tension between inhabitants of the two counties, Vern, like his counterparts in our neighboring jurisdiction, was a good old boy who'd grown up hunting the local woods while Horace, like me, was not originally from around here.

“Good idea,” the chief said.

Horace waited while the chief called Vern to issue his instructions, then nodded to us and left the trailer.

“I should go, too,” Dad said. “I'm going to see how soon I can arrange the autopsy.”

He slid out of his end of the banquette, nodded farewell to us, and dashed out of the trailer with a look of happy concentration on his face.

“You know one thing I like about your dad as a medical examiner?” the chief said. “He's stopped asking me if I want to watch the autopsy. He'd love it if I did, and he's quick to call me in if there's something I really need to see, but he doesn't badger me about watching. Unlike his predecessor, who seemed to think I was falling down on the job if I wasn't right there looking over his shoulder every second. Definitely an improvement.”

He didn't have to mention the fact that, unlike Dr. Smoot, his predecessor, Dad was not obsessed with vampires and didn't show up at crime scenes wearing a black velvet cape with a red satin lining and sporting fake fangs. But I knew that was another big factor in his approval of Dad.

“He hasn't stopped asking me to the autopsies,” I said. “But that's because he still hasn't entirely given up hope that I'll suddenly change my mind and apply to med school so I can follow in his footsteps.”

The chief chuckled at that.

“And speaking of following in his footsteps, I'm going to see if he can give me a ride.” I slid out of the banquette, stood up, slung my tote over my shoulder, and turned for the door. “If he's going to the hospital he'll have to pass by the town square. The still completely unrenovated town square.”

“I can arrange a ride if your father leaves you behind.” The chief closed his notebook and folded his hands on top of it. “Just one more thing—are you at all exaggerating your difficulties in contacting Mr. Brown?”

“No,” I said. “Randall put me in charge of managing the contract with him about six weeks ago, and last night, when he crashed our party, was the first time I ever saw him or spoke to him.”

“A pity,” the chief said.

“Yeah, I'm starting to get a little anxious about whether the town square is going to be usable for the Memorial Day festivities,” I said.

“Actually, I meant a pity because I would have liked to have heard your opinions on Mr. Brown and his business practices. In fact, I still would, if you manage to see enough of him to form opinions.”

“What exactly do you suspect him of?” I asked.

The chief pursed his lips and frowned slightly. I could see he was torn. On the one hand, I was a civilian, and he strongly disapproved of amateur interference in his police work. On the other hand, as a member of the town and county government, I wasn't just any civilian, and I hoped he knew from past experience that I wasn't like those annoying amateur detectives in the mystery books Dad was so fond of reading. If I found evidence I'd bring it to him, not hide it and try to conduct my own investigation.

“We've received complaints about him,” the chief said finally. “Anonymous complaints, which makes it blasted difficult to know whether to pay any attention to them or not.”

“What were the complaints about?” I asked.

“At first, that Brown was cheating people,” the chief said. “The letters told us to look at his company's books and see how badly he was cheating people.”

“And was he?”

“Blessed if I know,” the chief said. “Since a few anonymous hate mails didn't exactly give me cause to demand to see Mr. Brown's financial records. I talked to a few people who'd hired his company to do projects. None of them were falling over themselves to recommend him, but no one had any specific complaints. A little grumbling about how long everything took and how expensive it all was, but you get that with almost any contractor. Not much more I can do without him finding out I'm investigating him and complaining of harassment.”

“The letters don't give any clues?” I asked.

“Apart from the fact that they were all mailed either here or in Clay County, no.”

“What about people who work for Biff?” I asked. “Or even better, used to work for him?”

“So far everyone I've found still works for him, and is from Clay County to boot—which gives them two reasons not to talk to me, even if I wanted to tip my hand. And something like half of them seem to be related to him, which makes three reasons. Apparently he uses a lot of transient labor—immigrants, many of them; legal as far as I can tell, but even if I could track them down, they might not feel inclined to speak to law enforcement, so I didn't try too hard. I'd done what I could and found nothing, so I put it aside.”

“In that part of your brain where you keep stuff that bothers you because right now you can't do anything about it,” I suggested. “But there's always hope for the future?”

“Yes,” the chief said, with a slight smile. “Nothing I can do without evidence, but I was definitely going to keep my eye on him. And I filled in Randall when all this first happened, about six or seven weeks ago, which might mean he took the accusations of cheating seriously enough to want your eagle eye on Mr. Brown.”

“Could be,” I said. “Especially since if Randall accused him of cheating, Biff could try to pretend he was doing it to discredit a rival.”

“Whereas you would be perceived as a more impartial witness.”

“Impartial.” I shook my head at that. “I'm Randall's friend and Randall's employee, and last night I made it pretty clear how I feel about Biff's management of the Summerball League. Not sure anyone will buy that I'm impartial.”

“You'd be surprised,” the chief said. “At any rate, after a few weeks our anonymous complainant switched tunes and began accusing Mr. Brown of using his business as a cover for running a drug trafficking enterprise.”

“I'm not sure I see how a construction business makes a good cover for selling drugs,” I said.