Killerfind (3 page)

“This fender well is still on, so I can show you how
that might have happened,” Ricky said and pointed to the bulbous-shaped inside
fender. “See how it’s rounded on top?” She slid her hand over the crest. “These
cars are notorious for suckering a mechanic into setting a tool there, just for
a second. It slides down, and nine times out of ten, if the tool is narrow
enough, it falls through this slot.” She pointed to an opening that measured
about one inch by three inches, midway down the fender well. “Whatever slid
down wound up staying inside on an inner ledge, with nowhere to go. There are
weep holes in that ledge bottom, but they’re only large enough to let water
out. Tools stayed trapped. Almost every second generation Camaro mechanic has
experienced finding a tool or something in there when they remove the inner
fender wells.” Ricky pulled out a tissue from a box nearby and wiped
perspiration off her forehead. “I bet no one has ever made a find like this
before, though.” She tossed the tissue into the waste can.

Rhetta leaned over and studied the area. “Why did
Chevrolet design these like this in the first place?”

Ricky smiled. “Mechanics have been asking that same
question for forty years.”

Rhetta returned to the workbench and stared at the
old leather wallet. Time had dried out the leather, sending spiderlike cracks
across the surface.

Woody examined the fender well a little longer
before joining her at the workbench.

“You know we have to call the police. Why didn’t you
when you found this?” Rhetta said, waving a hand over the misbegotten booty.

Ricky sighed, then plopped onto a chrome and black
mechanic stool sporting a Summit Racing logo across the back. “I guess I wanted
you to tell me it would be okay to just ignore this.”

“Why?”

“I hate the thought of putting Jeremy through
anything to do with Griffith again. His dad was Griffith’s former partner,
Willard Spears. When Mr. Spears died last year, he’d never completely shaken
off a blanket of doubt surrounding Griffith’s disappearance, even though he was
the primary victim.”

“I really don’t know much about all of that. I’ve
only gotten to know Jeremy since you started dating him.” Rhetta didn’t want to
add that she wasn’t real fond of Ricky’s new man. He struck her as conceited,
and his know-it-all attitude rubbed her as painfully as though she’d used a
cheese grater for a skin treatment. She decided now wasn’t the time to bring
that up. She had preferred Ricky’s interest in Billy Dan Kercheval, an old
friend of Randolph’s, who was the former General Manager of the maintenance
division of Inland Electric Co-Operative.

“Their joint business account for G & S
Development had been drained of over a million dollars,” Ricky went on, pulling
Rhetta away from her negative contemplations of Jeremy Spears and thoughts of
Billy Dan and Ricky together. “Half of that belonged to Willard. He was left
broke when Griffith disappeared. Jeremy and his mother, along with Mrs.
Griffith, firmly believe that Malcom stole the money and left with his
girlfriend.”

Ricky hopped from her stool and headed for the door,
pulling cigarettes and a lighter from the breast pocket of her coveralls.
Standing in the open doorway, she fired one up. She exhaled a plume of blue
smoke before she continued. “Mr. Spears struggled to maintain the real estate
development company, but when the economy took a downturn, and the recession
punched a hole in the housing bubble, he was forced into bankruptcy.
Eventually, he lost his upscale family home. You remember that house—it was the
one Dr. Al-Serafi bought, and that your bank financed.”

Rhetta’s heart knocked against her rib cage at the
memory of Doctor Hakim Al-Serafi. He was a customer of Missouri Community Bank
Mortgage and Insurance who’d been killed in a car wreck earlier this year. His
death led to the chain of events that caused Rhetta to lose Cami. She shuddered
at the memory of Al-Serafi’s death. She eyed Ricky’s cigarette longingly.
Although she’d vowed to quit smoking, she hadn’t managed to succeed yet. She
wouldn’t, however, let Ricky or Woody know how often she gave in to her
cravings.

Now, she understood Ricky’s hesitation in calling
the police.

“All right, I understand your concerns, but we need
to call the police right now,” Rhetta said, groping around inside her bulky
shoulder purse for her cell phone. She glanced at her watch. “I’ll stay here
with you when they come, since it’s my car, and all.”

Woody looked up from his scrutiny of the found
objects on the workbench. “Uh, Rhetta? Look at this wrench,” he said, pointing
to the one that Ricky had found in the fender well. “Is that dried blood?”

hetta
turned to Ricky
.
“Please tell me you still had your vinyl gloves on when you picked this up?”
She edged toward the discolored wrench that Woody was studying. He might be
right. There was something on it that she couldn’t identify.

“Of course. I already told you I did,” Ricky
answered, joining Rhetta at the workbench. All three locked eyes on the wrench.

Rhetta broke the stare and groped in her purse until
she located her phone. “Where’s your phone book?” Ricky tugged it out from
under the shop phone at the end of the workbench and handed it over.

“Shouldn’t you call 9-1-1?” asked Woody, his eyes
still riveted on the wrench.

“I don’t see where this is an actual emergency,
considering Griffith has been gone over fifteen years. It’s not like finding
this will bring him back.” She thumbed through the pages. “Here’s the number.”
She punched the keypad of her cell phone.

“Cape Girardeau Police Department,” said a crisp
female voice.

“Uh, yes, this is Rhetta McCarter. May I please
speak to Sergeant Abel Risko?”  Rhetta had met Sergeant Risko a few months
back, so his name popped into her head.

“Hold please.” The dispatcher placed the call on
hold.

In a minute, a gravelly male voice came on. “This is
Risko.”

“Sergeant, this is Rhetta McCarter. I’m not sure if
you remember me. Anyway, I’m here with my friend Ricky Lane at Fast Lane Muscle
Cars in Gordonville. She’s working on an old Camaro for me, and when she began
taking it apart, she found Malcom Griffith’s wallet inside a fenderwell.”

Risko paused a moment. “I remember you, Mrs.
McCarter.” He cleared his throat. “Did you say Malcom Griffith? The guy that
disappeared several years back?”

“That’s right. I know it’s Griffith’s because all
his ID is still in the wallet.”

Risko let out a soft whistle. “As intriguing as that
discovery sounds, Gordonville is in the county, so you need to notify the
Sheriff’s office in Jackson. Hold on, and I’ll transfer you.”

Rhetta should have known to look up the county
sheriff. She must’ve allowed herself to get rattled at the discovery.
Gordonville was a small community in Cape Girardeau County, definitely not in
the city limits of Cape Girardeau. She sighed. She wouldn’t tell Randolph she
called the wrong agency. She wondered if Risko really did remember her from
interviewing her after she’d found Randolph’s friend, Professor Peter LaRose,
dead in his apartment earlier this summer.

“Isn’t Gordonville in the county jurisdiction?”
asked Woody.

Rhetta glared at him. “Now, you remind me.”

When the Cape Girardeau County sheriff’s deputy
answered, she repeated what she’d told Risko.

“Thank you, ma’am. I’ll send an officer to pick it
up in the morning. This is a pretty old case, so I’ll check and see who will
have jurisdiction. Meanwhile, don’t let anyone handle the wallet, or the other
items. And don’t do any more to that car until we check it out.” He asked her
for the address and the phone number where the car was located, along with her
information.

After agreeing to comply with the officer’s request.
Rhetta disconnected. “He sounds almost annoyed that this stuff showed up,” she
said, and bent over to study the wrench. “And of course, just as I feared, he
said not to do anything more on the car until they check it out. That doesn’t
sound good.”

She resisted an urge to snatch up the wrench and
examine it more closely, and to pick up Griffith’s wallet and tear into it.
Pointing to the items, she said to Ricky, “Can you leave this stuff right here
until tomorrow? He said he’d send someone to get it in the morning.”

“Sure, no problem.” Then, grinning, Ricky said,
“Come over here and let me show you what progress I’m making.” She tugged
Rhetta back to the car.

“Are you sure this is progress?” Rhetta ran her hand
over the sanded-down, stripped out metal shell.

“I’m nearly ready to paint, so you bet, that’s
progress.”

Rhetta eyed the car. Would it ever look as good as
Cami? She missed her two-toned blue Rally Sport with the white leather
interior. She and Randolph had done most of the interior restoration
themselves. She didn’t want Ricky, or Woody, to think she was entertaining maudlin
thoughts about losing Cami. She fished around in her purse for a tissue, and
blew her nose. “Allergies are really bad this year,” she said, tossing the
tissue into the nearby trashcan.

“You’re going to love this color.” Ricky picked up a
six-inch square piece of sheet metal painted an electric blue.

Rhetta nodded. She hoped she’d come to love this
replacement. She knew it would be beautiful. But would it capture her heart the
way Cami had? This Z28 had T-tops, and more features. Ricky promised to jazz up
the interior with a custom console with cup holders, charging stations for her
cell phone and an iPod dock.

“It’s great,” Rhetta said, and hope she sounded
eager. She’d not only lost her car, but with it her purse, phone and most
precious of all, a locket that had belonged to her deceased mother.

“I’ve been searching on eBay for a rear bumper
cover, but can’t find one reasonably priced, so I’m going to order a new one.
Actually, the new ones are made of fiberglass instead of urethane, so a new one
will look much better anyway. At first, I thought I could repair the two big
breaks in the original, but I don’t think it will look good patched. If it
cracks again after painting, it will look really bad.”

“Did the car have a rear-ender?” Rhetta wasn’t keen
on the idea that the car may have been wrecked from behind.

“No, I don’t think so. The funny thing is, it’s only
the outer bumper cover that’s broken. Nothing under the car, like the supports,
or especially the gas tank, or the inner bumper, show any signs of being in a
wreck. Frankly, it looks like some dummy pushed the car with another bigger
vehicle, like a pickup.” She walked to the bumper that lay on the floor, and
pointed to the damaged area. “See that?”

Rhetta squatted to inspect the damage. Sure enough,
even to her lesser trained eye, it appeared that something had pushed the car
from behind. There were two large perpendicular cracks that went completely
through the urethane. They could have been made from bumper protrusions like
bumper guards. She pushed on the cracks and they yielded inward. “Maybe whoever
owned this Z got it stuck somewhere and got a push from a neighbor in a tractor
or pickup. No matter, I bow to your expertise. We’ll toss this one.”

Glimpsing the time on Ricky’s wall clock, she called
out to Woody. “We’d better get back to the office. LuEllen will want to go to
lunch soon.”

*
* *

“I
need to run some errands,” Rhetta said as she dropped Woody off. She recognized
the look Woody shot her as he got out. It was his right-eyebrow-raised
suspicious look.

“I’m just going to the post office, and the bank.
I’ll be right back,” she promised.

He turned back to glare at her. “No, you’re not. I
know that look. You’re going to go do something about what Ricky found, and I
want to go.”

“No, I’m not, Woody. I’m going to the post office.”

“Uh-huh,” he said and got out. As soon as he stomped
through the office door, she grabbed her cell phone.

“Ricky? I just got an idea. Grab your metal
detector. I want to go to the barn where we got the Z and look around.” She
aimed Streak right back toward Gordonville.