Peril by Ponytail (A Bad Hair Day Mystery) (27 page)

Old-fashioned lanterns on posts gave the street with its adobe buildings a historic appeal despite the modern diagonal parking. At least that part was free. The town encouraged visitors, unlike downtown Fort Lauderdale where you had to pay for the privilege of shopping and dining.

“The Poisoned Pen Bookstore is still open,” she said while searching the Web on her cell phone for a place to eat. “They’re having a book signing tonight. I
have
to get Brianna and Nicole some mystery novels. There’s a trendy restaurant called Virtu nearby where we can go afterward.”

“Okay, give me directions.”

Marla stared in awe upon entering the bookshop. Shelves lined the walls and stretched toward the ceiling while other attractive displays lay on tables throughout the store. The author event hadn’t started yet, judging by the half-filled circle of chairs further along. Customers milled around or browsed the shelves. Marla snagged a bookseller to recommend mysteries set in Arizona.

“Sure, I can help you,” said a tall, handsome guy who wore a button-down blue shirt tucked into belted navy trousers.

By the time Marla left, she carried a canvas tote full of books and a couple of wrapped logo mugs as surprise gifts. Dalton had bought a souvenir mug for himself along with a tee shirt and baseball cap. The store also had a great collection of nonfiction works on the southwest. He’d purchased some history books and field guides to the state’s trees and plants, while Marla had gravitated to the travel and cooking section. Besides a regional cookbook, she picked up a few helpful titles on copper mining, life of a miner, and Arizona haunted hotels.

The next day emptied their wallets further. Marla shopped to her heart’s content, buying turquoise jewelry and Native American earrings, a western-style blouse, a red sunhat that she could wear in Florida, and various other tchotchkes. She bought an amethyst pendant for Brianna with matching earrings and copper necklaces for them both. It was easier to resist the Mexican woven baskets and pottery.

Dalton shopped the cowboy hats and boots and other leather goods, picking up some new belts in the process. After lunch, he called it a day.

“We should head back to the ranch.”

“You’re right,” Marla said, reluctant to go. She could have spent their whole vacation in this town. Nonetheless, she gamely climbed into the SUV for the drive through the mountains back to Last Trail Dude Ranch. The magnificent scenery drew her attention until their return.

They hadn’t missed much in their absence, Dalton determined upon checking in with his cousin from their resort room. Catching up on his phone calls, he called the sheriff next with their report. “I would eliminate the work contacts for Garrett Long. Most of these folks are occupied with their own lives now. They didn’t express any regret at Long’s death but I didn’t detect any real indications of involvement either.”

Dalton listened a moment while Marla unpacked their purchases and hung up their new clothing. Heading into the bathroom to sort out their supplies, she couldn’t hear the rest of his conversation.

“Beresby discounts the last guy’s claim about the Chinese man,” Dalton told her when she reappeared. “He probably saw whatever he wanted to see that fit in with his conspiracy theories. But the sheriff says the threat from the E.F.A. is real. They’ve been known to bomb facilities like Lovelace’s place.”

“Tate Reardon worked for him. Could the plant’s manager have been targeted by this group?”

“The sheriff is looking into it. He says the E.F.A. connection could link Garrett Long’s death with Reardon’s. He’s keeping an eye on Kevin Franks in that regard.”

“Oh, joy. That makes me feel safe.”

He strode over and massaged her shoulders. “Don’t worry. We’ll be okay if I have anything to say about it.”

She hoped his promise held true as they drove the next morning up the mountain toward Otto Lovelace’s palatial residence. She’d called ahead to take him up on his offer for a tour of his facility, and he said to park their car at his house. He would drive them through the gates to his industrial plant. As a precaution, Dalton had notified the sheriff and Wayne where they’d be heading.

The winding road led them to a Mediterranean-style villa nestled among the rocks. Driving up the steep incline of a driveway was an adventure in itself. Marla wouldn’t care to drive there at night. A separate cutoff ran to a second garage, but they parked at an upper level near the massive carved front doors.

Otto opened the door after they rang the bell. He wore a buttoned dress shirt and tailored trousers, but it was the worried look in his eyes that drew her attention along with the white stubble peppering his jaw. Those hinted at unrest. Since the new beard growth didn’t match his tar black hair, she surmised he dyed the latter. But his vanity wasn’t in question here. What had him upset this morning? Could his manager’s death have left him shaken?

“Come in while I get my keys. I’m glad you took me up on my offer.” His careful enunciation didn’t erase the trace of an accent in his voice.

Standing inside a marble-tiled foyer, Marla surveyed the living and dining areas and the terrace beyond. Her gaze fixed on an ornate clock by the fireplace mantle. She’d learned about clock-making back home when investigating a woman’s murder. The husband had studied horology, the art and science of timekeeping. He owned a shop to repair and restore chronological works.

As she moved into the living room where a patterned rug covered a polished wood floor, she noted other antique pieces scattered around. A synchronized ticking sounded in her ears.

“I like your clock collection,” she said to Otto when he returned, a set of keys jangling in his hand. She wondered if he lived alone. Being unmarried, he might still have companionship. But no other sounds reached her ears except for the incessant tick-tocks.

A furry white cat with slanted eyes slinked from behind a couch and leaped onto the cushion. It settled down with a purr of contentment. Marla glanced at it warily, being more of a dog lover. A pang of affection hit her for Spooks and Lucky, her poodle and golden retriever.

“My father was a watch maker in Germany.” Otto’s eyes gleamed. “I remember the smell and sounds of his shop as though it were yesterday. He instilled in me a love for fine timepieces. Their precision is unmatched. Young people today don’t appreciate the artistry involved. They rely on digital devices to tell time.” He glanced at his pocket watch and frowned. “We must move on, or we’ll get off-schedule. It’s important to structure your time, you know. Otherwise, you waste away your life in meaningless activities. Even if you are late for one minute, this is one moment closer to your death.”

My, aren’t you cheerful.

“I imagine your work schedule got shot to pieces when Tate Reardon died,” Dalton mused as they trailed their host through a hallway toward the garage entrance.

“Poor man. Carbon monoxide can be such a hazard. I don’t understand why he didn’t replace the batteries in his smoke alarms.”

“It’s fortunate his wife and daughter weren’t home.”

“Indeed. I spoke to the police extensively about the fellow. He’d been a good employee, always on time. It’ll be hard to find a replacement.”

You don’t sound too sorry, pal. You’re more upset by the disruption to your schedule.

She kept silent as they climbed into his Mercedes. The drive up the mountain took less than fifteen minutes. They approached a barbed fence with a gate and two guards carrying rifles. As soon as they recognized Otto, they opened the gate and waved him through.

A complex of buildings rose ahead, stark white against the azure sky. From the far building rose the plume visible from the town in the valley below.

“Are you sure that’s steam? It looks thicker from here,” Marla said from the back seat.

“We run a clean operation, Mrs. Vail. We’re dedicated to preserving the environment to the best extent possible. Our facility exceeds government requirements.”

“Are all inspections conducted by Matthew Brigham?” Dalton asked in an idle tone.

“Yes, he does a thorough assessment several times a year.”

“Who’s running the show since Tate Reardon’s death?”

“One of our section heads. We have an executive search going on for a new manager.” Otto pulled into a reserved space in the employee lot behind the first building. “It’s not easy finding a replacement. Our general manager has to understand and agree to follow our exceptional standards.”

Noise hit Marla’s ears as soon as they entered the structure. Whirling machinery, rattling conveyor belts, and stamping mechanisms made her head spin. So did a thumping vibration that shook her bones.

“Where do you get the water?” she asked, impressed by the speeding rows of plastic bottles and the enormity of the place. “Don’t you lease a certain amount from the city?” Disappointed that they hadn’t seen the brook gushing down the mountain, Marla couldn’t imagine how it ended up here.

“The stream is about three miles from our location. We tap the source through stainless steel underground piping. Our share is less than ten percent of the total flow.”

“So you don’t use groundwater like the cities?”

Otto glared at her like a teacher to a recalcitrant student. “We have no need to obtain water from an Artesian aquifer when we have a fresh mountain stream.”

“Conditions at the Donovan ranch and other properties downstream have gone dry. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” Dalton shot him a sideways glance.

Otto tugged on his ear. “Of course not. Drought is always a danger in the west. It can have many causes. At any rate, the town holds senior water rights to the source, and they’ve granted us a lease. We take our allotted amount and not an ounce more.”

He signaled for them to accompany him down a long hallway lined with wide glass windows. Employees gave him deferential greetings along the way. He nodded to them like a beneficent ruler.

“How many people work here?” Marla couldn’t begin to guess.

“Two hundred and fifty.” Otto made an expansive gesture. “We offer generous benefits. I believe in treating our workers as we would our customers—with courtesy, respect, and outstanding service.”

His speech sounded like a commercial. They needed to rock his foundations.

“What’s causing that deep vibration and those pounding noises?” Marla asked. It was hard to hear the background thumps over the roar of the machinery.

“That’s from our subsidiary operation next door. We make carbonated drinks and flavored waters. We’re a diverse company, Mrs. Vail, like many of the better known beverage companies that are household names.”

He stopped before one window. “When the water first enters our facility, it goes through several purification processes. Particulate and micron filtration remove any sediment or suspended particles. Our product ends up a lot purer than municipal sources that remove mineral content through reverse osmosis. Then we hit it with ultraviolet light as an extra measure.”

“What goes on in there?” Marla pointed to a microbiological laboratory where workers wore white lab coats and paper caps on their heads as they peered into microscopes.

“That’s where we test the water. We have ten different production lines, and each one is tested two hundred times per day. That’s sixty times more than your municipal water.”

He guided them to another window. “See that piece of plastic the size of your thumb? It blows up to become a bottle.”

Marla watched in fascination as the newly minted plastic bottles slid overhead to an elevated track where they entered a spinning machine. There looked to be a whole row of gleaming stainless steel carousels whirling throughout the cavernous space.

“Twelve hundred bottles are filled and capped every minute.” Otto’s chest puffed with pride. “Note those giant spools twirling around. They hold the labels, which are snipped off and slapped on the bottles as they pass by. Then we have lasers check for defects, like crooked caps or bottles that aren’t filled all the way.”

Marla’s gaze followed the rows of bottles moving along a conveyor belt toward wrapper machines, where groups of twenty-four bottles each were packaged by a mechanical arm. It surrounded the cluster with a wrapper that shrank tight. She noticed the labels on the wrapped parcels obscured their bottoms.

Further along, the packages were stacked high onto wooden shipping pallets. The pallets slid down a roller into a gazebo-type structure. There a rotating head wrapped the tower in a plastic wrapper to prepare it for shipping.

“Fifteen hundred bottles fit inside one of those pallets,” Otto said, pointing to where men driving forklifts drove back and forth moving the weighty bundles.

“I’m impressed,” Dalton acknowledged. “But if things are so environmentally sound, why are you afraid of terrorists? Isn’t that why you post armed guards around your perimeter?”

Otto gave him a dark glance. “Follow me into my office. It’s quieter inside.”

The neat space must have been sound-proofed, because Marla could hear much better in there. However, it didn’t lessen the teeth-rattling thumps that shook the building. What could be happening in the adjacent structures to be causing that vibration?

Then again, was it coming from next door or from underneath them? Could that be the piping containing the gushing water?

Once they’d been seated, Otto straightened a clock on his desk. “So tell me, what is the real purpose of your visit here today?”

“You invited us,” Marla reminded him. “I like to visit places where we can see how things work. It’s more interesting than the standard tourist attractions and gives you a flavor for the area. Plus it’ll give me a new topic for my blog.”

“I sense your husband is after more than a guided tour.”

“What do you know about the E.F.A. member Kevin Franks?” Dalton asked, his manner deceptively casual but his eyes eagle sharp.

“I’m not familiar with the man.” Otto tugged on his ear lobe. “Is he active in the area? The Environmental Freedom Alliance is a genuine concern. They’ve attacked places like ours despite assurances that we’re doing our best to preserve the environment. They see us in concordance with the government, which puts us on their blacklist. I’d want to know if one of their operatives lived close by.”