Hiding Gladys (A Cleo Cooper Mystery) (9 page)

FIFTEEN

Traffic was bad. The
trip from New Bern to the garage in Stella was going to take at least an hour. If I tried real hard, I might be able to calm down before I got there. I was just about to put in another call to Wink when my cell vibrated. Bud.

“Yes?” I said impatiently.

“I completely forgot that Will is coming up at the end of the week and wants to stay at Seahaven for a while. Do you think your friend would mind some company?”

“I knew about this, and she’s looking forward to meeting him.”

“Good, uh … ”

I didn’t have time for him to pause and collect his thoughts. “I’m listening, Bud.”

“Well, it’s just that I want you to know I’m always here for … ”

“Oops!” I interrupted him as I heard a beep for another call coming in. “Gotta go!” I clicked over to the other call, from Will.

“Hey, Mom. Just calling to let you know I got a lucky break. You remember my friend from Wake Forest, Joe? The one whose dad has a private plane?”

“Of course I do.”

“Well, he’s coming down here Thursday to pick up Joe for a trip home and he said he’ll give me a ride and drop me off anywhere along the way.”

“Great,” I said. “Tell him to drop you at a little strip called Albert J. Ellis Airport. That’s close to my worksite and Seahaven too. I’ll pick you up. Just give me a call or text me to let me know when.”

“Will do,” he said.

Spotting a Jiffy Mart gas station jammed between a Mexican food store and a Laundromat, I pulled over and availed myself of the ladies’ room. As soon as I stepped out, Shirley’s boyfriend appeared in front of me.

“Oops,” I said, avoiding a collision with him.

“Hey there … ” he said.

“Uh. Hello.”

I stood there for a moment but when he didn’t offer any explanation as to why he was lurking outside the ladies’ room, I said, “We’ve really got to stop meeting like this, Ivan.”

He gave a fake little snort. “I saw you pull in here and thought I’d take the opportunity to ask you to reconsider your position on letting Shirley see her mother.”

I sighed. “Tell your girlfriend I don’t have anything to do with what Gladys does or who she sees. She’s a grown woman.”

He snorted again only this time sarcastically. “Listen, Shirley’s going to be my wife. I’ll be taking care of her from now on and let me tell you, I take that responsibility very seriously. You hurt her or anyone in her family and you’ll have me to deal with. You got that?” He punctuated his last sentence with an index finger held a few inches from my nose.

Several remarks regarding this rude body language occurred to me. Mostly ones referring to Ivan’s mental soundness or lack thereof, but I decided against voicing any of them.

“Gee, it’s getting late,” I said instead. “I’ve got to run.”

Unfortunately I had to take the time to fill the Jeep’s tank. I watched Ivan get into a mud-spattered, silver Dodge Ram 4x4.

As he exited the parking lot, he scraped the tire in a poorly executed right-hand turn. Clearly this guy belonged right up there with Robert Earle and Shirley when it came to creepy.

Change in plans. Wink and I were still missing each other with our calls, but he had left another message, this time telling me to skip Purdue’s and meet him at the site. My stomach twisted in again. Did that mean he’d already been to Purdue’s and found the rig’s repairs were going to take weeks instead of days? Were no other rigs available? Was the crew at the site now packing up the equipment to leave? I needed that data in order to be ready for the Big Bankers by Tuesday or this whole operation was sunk. I raced there as fast as I could, driving the Jeep through the woods to the site this time, ignoring the limbs scratching the sides.

My anxiety evaporated as I stepped from the Jeep and saw a repaired earthen bridge and a drill rig on the other side busily chewing out a fresh core sample from my granite deposit. Mule and Stick waved as I strode past them to where Wink stood by his pickup filling in data on his field map.

“Dang, Wink,” I said. “There’s no gum on your shoes!”

He chuckled. “No sense wasting time. Soon’s you told me about the accident, I got on the horn with our dispatcher and for a while there, I thought we might be up the creek without a paddle, but he scrounged around and came up with that raggedy-ass backup rig. I know the boys that run that concrete plant right outside Jacksonville. Great guys. They practically beat me out here with three new culverts. Didn’t take long to push a little dirt over them and get a road back across the creek. Got something to show you, though,” he said as he walked around to the passenger door of his pickup, opened it and removed one of several pieces of concrete from the floorboard. He pointed to a small smooth curved spot along its jagged edge. “See this?” he said.

“Yeah?” I said.

“It’s a piece of pipe from that bridge out there.”

I took the concrete from his hand and inspected it. “That’s weird. It looks like … ”

“Like a drill hole,” he said, finishing my thought. But I didn’t even know I’d been thinking it. I just knew there was something wrong with what I was seeing.

“Listen,” Wink said. “It looks to me like somebody came out here with a cordless heavy-duty drill and honeycombed that concrete pipe. S’why it collapsed.”

“Are you sure?”

“You and I both checked that bridge. Don’t know about you, but I climbed inside and there were no holes there then.”

He was right. We’d both inspected it Friday morning.

“Considering someone’s already tampered with the core boxes and now this happens. Well, kinda looks like someone wants you to give up and leave,” Wink said grimly.

“Or run me out of money,” I said.

“That too, but, whoever it was, they didn’t cost you as much as they might have hoped. Damage to the rig is minimal, mostly cosmetic. Then there’s the cost of a couple of concrete pipes—that’s not much.”

“Could have been catastrophic, though,” I said.

“Yeah, if the drill had flopped over or if anyone’d been hurt … ”

We quietly contemplated that possibility. “Oh yeah, before I forget.” Wink reached in the back pocket of his jeans and gave me a crumpled scrap of paper with a telephone number scratched on it. “Sheriff dropped by earlier today looking for you. Said to give him a call at that number.”

I looked at the paper. “Thanks,” I said, noticing by the prefix that it wasn’t the sheriff’s office number; probably his cell.

“You going to tell him about this?” Wink asked, holding up the piece of pipe.

“I’m not sure if that would be a good idea. I’m under a lot of pressure from my banker to wrap up all our results in a shiny New York–style presentation by next Tuesday, seven days from now. My son—he’s designing the computer presentation for me—needs the data by Friday. Even skipping some of the drill holes and taking a few less cores, it’s going to be a stretch.”

And that wasn’t the only reason. I was hating this conversation.

“Listen Wink, you don’t need to be concerned about anything, but just in case the sheriff shows up out here again, there is the possibility that he is starting to think Irene Mizzell’s murder and all the hard luck I’ve been having out here might somehow be connected. If he’s spooked, he could order us to shut down until he finds out who killed Irene. If he does that, I’m done. No way I can make my presentation without that data. And without the presentation, there’s no money. No money … well, guess you can figure the rest.”

Wink pulled at his bottom lip. “Well, we could stretch the distance between drill holes and leave out a couple. What’s the word … we could extrapa … ”

“Extrapolate? Fudge it?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Fudge it.”

“As it happens,” I said confidently, “I’m pretty good at fudging it, so go ahead, drop the depth-check on every other hole unless absolutely necessary and cut the number of cores from every other hole to every third hole. Meantime, I’ll check in with the sheriff, see what he wants. I’m going to leave out the bridge collapse. No sense worrying the law with stuff we can handle ourselves, right?”

“Right,” said Wink, looking a little overwhelmed.

A few quick directions from the sheriff led me straight to what he referred to as his secret fishing hole. Though I’d never fished it myself, I knew exactly where it was from years of prospecting in the area. Ever since people started building roads down east, they have used the limestone marl dug from shallow depths as base material. After a mining operation ceases, the irregular depression that results fills with water, making a wonderful fishing and swimming hole. These ponds also served as reservoirs for wildlife and people during times of drought.

As I joined Sheriff Evans at his favorite spot, I wondered why he felt seeing me was important enough to interrupt a good worm-drowning.

“There’s an extra rod in the bed of the pickup, if you want to wet a hook.”

“No, thanks,” I said. “I’m content to just watch you.”

“Suit yourself. I’ll get right to the crux of the matter. I’m a little concerned about you and your crew.”

“How’s that?” I asked trying to sound casual.

He wiped his brow with his sleeve and cast his line before he said, “My detectives, along with crime scene investigators, have pretty well determined that the black plastic grill cover Miz Mizzell was wrapped in more than likely came off the one on the back porch of Gladys Walton’s house. Both the grill and the cover are the same make, Coleman. This brings the Walton kids back under some strong scrutiny.”

“Isn’t that a commonly used brand?” I asked, playing devil’s advocate.

He pulled a little more line from his reel, watching the action of the silk fly as he teased it along the surface of the pond. “There’s more.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. After looking at recent photos of Miz Mizzell, it’s plain that her resemblance to her cousin is significant. Because forensics placed the location of the murder in the kitchen of Miz Walton’s home”—he interrupted himself to take a swipe at the sweat on his brow again—“and, in light of the information you gave me regarding the Walton kids inheriting their mom’s estate, it’s our feeling right now that Miz Mizzell was murdered by mistake. The real target was Gladys Walton.”

I adjusted my Ray Bans and hoped the shiver that traveled through my body upon hearing an officer of the law voice my suspicions had gone unnoticed.

The sheriff reeled in and made another cast. “Shirley has a very solid alibi for the time surrounding our best estimate of when Miz Mizzell died. She was in Raleigh at a week-long high school reunion. She was on some of the committees, helped plan some of the activities. It all checks out. That leaves Robert Earle as our main suspect. I know he’s made repeated trips to your worksite, which brings us back to you and your crew out there on the Walton land.”

Uh-oh.

“You got any more information you want to offer?” he asked.

I felt like I had to give him something. “Well, Robert Earle did try to take over testing the property with a phony contract from a company I never heard of. He claimed to have a Power of Attorney, but, when I pushed him, he couldn’t produce it.”

I could see a fresh coating of sweat appear on the sheriff’s forehead. After a long moment, he said, “You should tell me things like this. This could be important to our investigation. We’ll definitely want to talk to Gladys again.” He punctuated his sentence with a cast that sent his fly clear to the other side of the pond where it settled into the murky water under the overhang of a limestone boulder.

Crap. I had a sinking feeling I wouldn’t be able to keep her location from him, although I was going to give it my best shot. I decided to start with a tactic that’s rarely failed me, the guilt trip.

“About that,” I said. “I had to move her. Robert Earle and Shirley found Gladys by following you to my house. It upset her pretty bad.”

This time the sheriff’s head snapped around so hard I’m pretty sure I saw sweat fly from under his chin. “You should have told me that too.” His right hand had gone to his hip, his rod all but forgotten in his left. “All of the information you’re giving me right now goes to motive, and, frankly, it suggests that Gladys Walton could be in real danger. Where the hell is she? She may need police protection.”

So much for guilt-tripping him.

“Now, Sheriff Evans,” I said in my most soothing voice, taking a dignified stance with hands clasped behind my back. “There’s absolutely no reason to do that. Besides, you know a little about Gladys and understand how very headstrong and proud she is. She’s also in denial about her children having anything to do with Irene’s death and, quite naturally, she doesn’t want to believe they might do anything to hurt her.

“That little incident with them trying to get her to sign a Power of Attorney did get her attention, however, and she now knows better than to answer the phone until I get all the testing completed and our legal affairs finalized.”

“Where the hell is she?” he said through clenched teeth. Apparently, my quiet professional bearing was unappreciated by Sheriff Evans.

“She told me not to say.” My voice sounded like an embarrassing faint echo of its normal volume.

“You own a gun, Miz Cooper?” The giant, sweaty sheriff was now looming over me. His fishing rod abandoned. “Answer me,” he said.

“Yes sir,” I said.

“Where is it?”

“In my Jeep. Why?”

“Let me see it. Now.”

I quickly retrieved my Beretta 380 and handed it to him.

“You got a permit to carry concealed?”

“No,” I said, trying to sound confident. “I don’t need one as long as I inform any law officer upon being pulled over—”

“I’m familiar with the rules, Miz Cooper.” He handed my gun back to me.