Die Like an Eagle (15 page)

At least now I understood how Aida and Vern could have spent several hours searching the premises for Biff's intruder. They could easily have spent several days.

I pulled out my phone and checked my mail and messages—not that I was expecting anything urgent, but I was stalling my departure. There was always the chance that Biff would return. Or that I'd get up my nerve to stroll along the perimeter and spy on the inside of the junkyard.

Not that I could think of any good reason why peering into the junkyard would be useful. I already knew more than I wanted to about Biff's business. I'd be spying out of sheer, useless nosiness. That, more than the continued barking of the dog—or dogs, perhaps?—was what kept me inside the Behemoth. As long as the dogs were inside the fence, they couldn't hurt me, no matter how hard they barked, but in case Biff's fences were in the same dismal state of disrepair as the rest of his domain, I decided caution was wiser.

I was just about to start the engine and depart when I heard another vehicle. My spirits rose—maybe this trip hadn't been useless after all. And then a sudden thought struck me—had it been really wise, coming out here into Biff's territory. Yes, it was broad daylight, but that didn't mean much out here in the vine-infested woods. I quickly fired off a text to Michael, telling him where I was. And then one to Randall, in case Michael was too busy with the Eagles.

A Caerphilly County police cruiser crept into the clearing. I didn't know whether to be relieved or annoyed. I recognized Aida Butler at the wheel. She pulled the cruiser to a halt near the gate. I got out of the Behemoth and went to meet her and she rolled down her window.

“What are you doing here?” she said.

“Hoping to catch Biff in,” I said. “Not that I'm ever sorry to see you, but I got all excited, hearing a car coming down the lane. Thought it might be him.”

“Fat chance,” she said. “Have you tried the ball field?”

“Wouldn't they chase him away if he showed up there?” I asked.

“True,” she said. “But if you're looking for him…” She pressed a button or two on her radio. “Sammy? Is Brown there at the field?”

“Haven't seen him since he left for the ceremony,” the radio crackled back.

“He's probably figured out I'm looking for him,” I said, “and is avoiding all his usual haunts so I can't catch him.”

“Heaven only knows where he's got to, then,” she said. “Maybe over in Clayville seeing to the funeral.”

“Definitely in Clayville?” I asked. “The funeral, I mean.”

“Well, Shep lived in Clayville,” Aida said. “And all their people are there. You'd think the Clay County people would take it hard, him changing his address to a Caerphilly County one, but no one seemed to care. Maybe they thought it was a good joke, him pulling the wool over all us Caerphillians. Not that he ever did that much. Everybody already had his number.”

“Not that I'm snooping or anything,” I said. “But what are you doing out here? Anything I should worry about?”

“Just checking on things.” She was getting out of her car. “Apparently after the Opening Day ceremonies Biff got the wind up and made a big fuss. Complained that the chief wasn't taking last night's burglary seriously enough. So I get to come out here every few hours and make sure everything's secure. Not that anyone but him could tell if anything was stolen, and for heaven's sakes, who'd want any of it?”

“He can't come check himself?” I fell into step beside her as she approached the gate.

“Scared to, I guess.” She rattled the padlock to make sure it was still secure, causing the distant dog to bark all the more furiously. “He's panicking. Convinced that whoever killed Shep was actually gunning for him.”

“Not unreasonable,” I said. “From what I've heard talking to my fellow baseball parents, Shep wasn't really liked, on account of his biased umpiring, but everyone knew he was only doing it because he didn't dare cross Biff.”

“Exactly,” Aida said. “Killing Shep won't do anyone any good, because Biff will just find another stooge to ump for him. But killing Biff—a lot of people might consider that a good deed for the community. Me included—I have nephews who played in Little League under him. You know they'll have to learn hard lessons, playing sports, like sometimes even their best efforts won't be enough to win. What you don't expect to have them learning is that the fat cats who run the world can do what they like and there's nothing they or anyone else can do about it. I'd just as soon they didn't have to learn that lesson quite so young.”

“Maybe this time will be different,” I said. “Because a lot of us are determined not to let things go on like this.”

“Good luck to you,” she said. “Lord, I wish that miserable mutt would stop barking! I know he won't though. Three and a half hours we were out here the other night, and I don't think the blasted cur shut up for more than five minutes at a stretch. If I were a better person, I'd walk all the way round the junkyard, but I don't see any signs of anything amiss. You see anything hinky when you got here?”

I shook my head.

“I'm going to pass on the long walk in the woods.” Although she had returned to her cruiser, she was spraying herself from head to foot with Rose Noire's all-natural essential-oil mosquito repellant, which actually worked a lot better than most noxious chemical products as long as you remembered that it had a really short half life and you'd pretty much need to respray yourself every hour.

“If you're not circumnavigating Brown Construction, what's with the bug repellant?” I asked.

“If there was some way to breed ticks and mosquitoes for profit, Biff would have that market cornered,” she said. “And I figure I should at least walk the fence as far as the back gate and make sure that's secure. Then I'll do something actually useful, like check for tire tracks in all the places people might have hidden their cars if they decided to sneak in the back way last night.”

“What does he need a back gate for?” I asked, looking at the dense woods surrounding the yard. “Does he have much call to dump bodies out there in the swamp?”

“Used to be the front gate,” she said. “He's still got something that loosely resembles a road back there. Leads straight to Clayville. Nearly all of his employees live over there, and I expect they use the back way to get here. Long as you've got four-wheel drive and don't worry too much about your axles and your shock absorbers, it's doable.”

“Let me have some of that stuff.” I held out my hand for the bug spray. “And I'll keep you company.”

I'd be the first to admit that it was sheer curiosity that made me stay—curiosity about Biff's lair, and also about any other tidbits Aida might drop about the investigation. But the perimeter hike wasn't conducive to casual conversation. Between climbing over fallen tree trunks and hacking through bushes, avoiding the swampy bits, and warning each other about snakes, we didn't have time or wind for much else.

“Here we are,” Aida finally said as we stepped out into another clearing. “The original grand entrance to the thriving commercial enterprise that is Brown Construction.”

It looked a lot like the current front entrance, except that a couple of centuries ago someone had painted a word in foot-high brown letters along the rusty corrugated metal side of the building. Enough paint had flaked off that if I hadn't known Biff's name I could never have guessed that the letters spelled out “Brown.” The clearing was littered with rusting cars and trucks. The area inside the fence had the same air of neglect and dilapidation I'd already seen, and was filled with the same apparently random piles or clusters of items. A mountain of old car batteries. A front-end loader that appeared to have had a collision with something even larger. Another gaggle of repulsively dilapidated porta-potties.

“Seeing all these luxury vehicles reminds me—have they figured out how Shep got to the field?” I asked. “He didn't have a vehicle in the parking lot at the ball field.”

“His truck's here,” Aida said. “That one,” she added, looking up from her phone and pointing to a battered Ford pickup, distinguishable from the rest of the hulks mainly by the fact that it still rested on tires rather than blocks. “Apparently he got to the ball field on his Harley. They found it abandoned in the woods not far from the field.”

“Dumped by the killer?”

“Most likely.”

Aida rattled the gate, sending the distant dog into frenzies again, and then without a word we turned to go back to the new front gate.

“Hope you weren't expecting anything exciting out here,” Aida said when we got back to our vehicles and were cleaning the burrs and bits of stickweed off our pants legs.

“Just studying up on how to tackle Biff,” I said. “Wish I had some idea where he's gone.”

“Lying low somewhere, I expect. Hoping we catch the killer before the killer finds him.”

“Unless he is the killer,” I suggested.

“Yeah, he could just be pretending to be terrified so we don't suspect him. If you really want to talk to him, I'd go see if he's home.”

“That will be my next stop,” I said. “Even if he doesn't know anything, maybe his wife will.”

“Good luck.”

Aida got back in her car and appeared to be filling out some kind of paperwork. Or maybe she was waiting to make sure I left. She wouldn't have to wait long.

Although before climbing back into the Behemoth, I used the camera on my phone to take a few more pictures of my surroundings. I wasn't quite sure why—maybe if Brown ever tried to sue Caerphilly for not giving him more work, we could show the photos and make it obvious to any sane judge or jury on the planet why we weren't falling all over ourselves to hire him.

Something struck me.

“I think one of the trucks is gone.” I pointed to an area where a series of abandoned pickups lined the side of the road, ranging from one only eight or ten years old to one that looked as if it could have been used for the movie version of
The Grapes of Wrath
.

“One of those trucks?” Aida sounded dubious. I could see her point.

“I could have sworn that when I first got here there was another one beside this one,” I said, pointing to the newest of the hulks. “That one's completely off the road, and I remember having to kind of swerve around the last truck in line when I drove in.”

“Whole place is like an obstacle course,” she said.

I flipped back through the photos on my phone, but I'd been focusing on taking shots of the gate and the building, not the junk jungle around it.

“I'm probably imagining it,” I said with a shrug.

“I'll keep my eyes open,” Aida said. “If I see any zombie trucks that look as if they could have escaped from back here, I'll pull them over and check their registration.”

I nodded. Then I programmed my GPS with Biff's home address—near the center of town, thank goodness!—and set out, waving at Aida as I went.

 

Chapter 12

Biff's house, like his business, definitely illustrated the old saying about the shoemaker's children having no shoes. Maybe he thought it didn't matter how his business looked. And maybe he was right—a construction company went to its customers, not the other way around, and his ramshackle office building was so far out in the boonies that no one would ever just happen to pass by. But his house was right in the middle of the town of Caerphilly. Not in a snooty upscale neighborhood like Westlake, where people would wonder how much of their construction costs went for supplies and salaries and how much for the owner's exorbitant lifestyle. No, if I'd been a small business owner, I might very well have chosen a modest but comfortable frame house like his, on a similarly solid but unpretentious street.

But then I'd have made at least a halfhearted effort to keep it up.

Biff's house was surrounded with a white picket fence that, when new, could have starred in one of those homey paintings of wholesome small town American life. Unfortunately, it was badly in need of a coat of paint, and at least a dozen pickets were broken or missing entirely. Tree roots had buckled the flagstone front walk, making it more of an obstacle course than a path. The grass was in need of cutting, though calling it grass was an insult to respectable fescue and zoysia. The white frame house could also use paint if not new siding. A basketball backboard with no net on its hoop leaned drunkenly to one side beside an asphalt driveway so cracked and pitted that it was obvious no one had dribbled there in years.

I picked my way over the helter-skelter flagstones, held carefully onto the railing while climbing the ramshackle front steps, and rang the doorbell. I didn't hear any ringing inside, but then one doesn't always. After a minute or so I rang again. Then I gave up on the bell and knocked firmly.

After another minute or so, during which I tried to look nonchalant in spite of the uneasy feeling that someone inside was scrutinizing me at length through the door's peephole, the door opened perhaps a foot.

“Yes?” A small, slender woman peered out. She had graying blond hair pulled back into a pony tail and large eyes that would have been pretty if they hadn't held such an anxious expression. I couldn't easily tell her age—she could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty.

“Mrs. Brown?” I tried to make sure my face was calm and businesslike; friendly, but not overly so.

“Yes,” she said. “May I help you?”

“I'm Meg Langslow, special assistant to the mayor,” I said. “I was actually trying to find your husband.”

“He's not here,” she said. And then her face turned into a frightening scowl. “As you horrible people already know. He's not here! He hasn't been here for the past month, not since I kicked the sorry bastard out! I stopped caring where he was the day I filed for divorce, and I'm not calling off the divorce, no matter how many of his friends he sends out to harass me! If you think—”