Switcheroo (14 page)

Chapter
23

After a day of chasing accounts
for mortgage companies I was ready for a cold one and some Monday night football.
I wondered what Wendy was doing, maybe she would go to Union Jack’s with me and
we could throw some darts.  I knew now that it had been a mistake to buy a car
with a hard top.  True, the LeBaron had been ugly, slow and mechanically
unsound but it had been a good convertible cruiser, good for an evening like
this. I was driving down the streets of residential Knoxville, the twilight
glowing through the autumn trees and the foothills of Appalachia in the
distance.  Unfortunately, I was on my way to Drew Chandler’s house, not out on
a romantic drive. I had to know why he had hired someone to follow me.

I pulled up to his house, which
was too small to have a circular front drive, but it did anyway.  Part of west Knoxville’s Lyon’s Bend community, it is a semi-snobbish neighborhood where your
occupation, automobile and even your furniture still mattered.  I had to drive
past my old house, now my first ex-wife’s house, which gave me a sinking
feeling.

I would say most residents here do
not have butlers.  Probably the reason Chandler employed one was in case he
suddenly grabbed his chest and dropped dead, someone would be there to call the
paramedics or the meat wagon, if it was too late.  I rang the bell.  I admired
the mahogany front door with its leaded glass and beautiful brass hardware
while I waited.  That door knob must have cost more than I make in a week.

Drew Chandler answered the door
himself, telling me that it was his butler’s night off.  He invited me in and I
followed him to his library.  Seeing his boney frame this close to Halloween I
was reminded of Vincent Price. He offered me a drink. I asked for decaf. He
returned with the coffee and a small glass of something for himself. Probably
port, but it looked like blood in the amber glow of the library.

We made small talk. Had he seen
mother lately?  How was their ‘friendship’?  I was not really paying attention
to his answers until he changed the subject to the real reason for my call.

“You remember our last
conversation about teleportation and ORNL and so forth? I decided to hire an
agency to look into the matter. I received an update today saying that the
agent was attacked and he had to be treated for a broken arm and sprained knee.
I was shocked.  I think your little investigation is getting dangerous. These
people may be serious criminals.” He looked at me, raising one eyebrow and
swirling his drink slowly.

“I feel very badly about that.
This past week, I have been followed by more that one party, shot at and
attacked by a large dog.  I am a bit jumpy and I over-reacted today when I
realized Agent Smithey was tailing me.  I thought he meant to hurt me.”

“
You
assaulted that man?”
Drew gasped, pretending surprise.  I think he knew or at least suspected I was
the culprit. He was a gentleman and did not want to make accusations.

“I’m afraid so.  I think a known
drug dealer is in possession of the other truck and he has his people looking
for my client’s truck.  I thought the agent was one of these rednecks… I mean
ruffians,”  I said, draining the rest of my top-notch coffee.  “Why have me
followed?”

“He must have picked up your trail
since you are investigating this matter yourself.  I never dreamed anyone would
get hurt,” he fretted. “I have always had an interest in the science of
teleportation and I was curious to see if your case had any legitimacy.

“You see, I always wanted to do
something positive with engineering, for mankind.  Instead I spent my working
years perfecting the nuclear bomb.  I was not really a part of the original
invention and, in spite of its awesome destructive power; ‘the bomb’ did not
inspire me.  I was fascinated by ‘The Fly’ and later ‘Star Trek’.  Could
teleportation really work on people?  I always thought that it was possible.  
Some technologies we have right now could be considered teleportation.  The
telephone turns your voice into waves of electricity and reproduces it at the
other end of the line.  Does this count as teleportation?  Can something
disappear and reappear instantly in another place?  You know Einstein said
nothing could travel faster than light.  If this discovery is now loose in the
marketplace then whoever owns those trucks has a huge scientific discovery in
their possession.   The benefits to man kind as well as the commercial uses are
unlimited,” he said, gazing past me, dreaming of the possibilities.

“I have seen this thing work on
these trucks and I can assure you it is legit.  But, some unsavory types are
after this invention. There are many ways teleportation could make crime
easier, especially smuggling.”

Chapter
24

Anderson County was my destination
this morning.  I could do my inspections and work on trying to find that
barbeque restaurant that contained Tammy McHenry’s miraculous pickup truck. 
Tuesday is usually the busiest day in the field investigation business.  This
is because on Monday, mortgage company collectors come to work and discover
that customers who had sincerely promised to wire the money on Friday, did not
do so.  These broken promises are what generates emails to LISA and then to
me.  Reach out and touch someone, the mortgage company is saying.  Make these
people pay.  Get in their business.  Find out why they cannot pay.  Is it loss
of a job, divorce, death in the family, illness? Or just irresponsibility? 
Maybe substance abuse? These are popular reasons for skipping mortgage
payments.   These were the things I needed to know for my reports, my bread and
butter.  If Tammy’s case turned into anything, it would be gravy, or icing on
the cake.  With my luck, it would probably be gravy on the cake.

With this in mind, I did most of
my calls first.  I took digital pictures, filled out condition reports, and
talked to several delinquent residents.  When I got to a stopping point, I
pulled a cheap cigar from the zip-lock bag in the Crown Vic’s consol.  The bag
had a scrap of damp paper-towel in it: a poor man’s humidor.  I raised the
electric window for a moment while I lit the smoke and the turned up the radio.

If you want to know about food,
ask an expert. I headed back to Oakridge and eventually made it to the 70’s
looking building where
The Oakridger
, Anderson County’s primary
newspaper, had its offices.

I went into the cavernous
reception area and asked politely if I could talk to the food editor.  One
moment, I was told.  I waited until I was instructed to go up a spiral
staircase to the second floor.  There I was met by the food editor, James
Inskip.

Mr. Inskip had a gray Abe Lincoln
style beard.  That was all he had in common with Honest Abe.  Inskip weighed at
least three fifty and his center of gravity was around his pear- shaped
middle.  I was vague about why I wanted to know where to find the best barbeque
in Anderson County.  I implied that I might need some catering for a large
gathering.

He sat back in his chair, eyes
looking upward, scratching his beard in thought. The slack jowly skin around
his mouth turned up a little, my line of conversation had struck one of his
favorite chords. Finally he spoke. He had a deep Santa Claus voice.

“There are so many good ones it’s
hard to say,” he said, still deep in thought. “Do you lean toward spicy sauce
or sweet?”

“It is all in the sauce, isn’t
it?” I agreed. “I was thinking of a big place that could serve a lot of
people.  Not a little mom and pop hole-in-the-wall place, although I like
those, too.”

“Oh, I like the small places as
well, but they are always failing their health department inspections. 
Barbeque is fun to eat, but its preparation is pretty darn greasy,” he thought
some more. His face lit up.

“You know if you want a large
party catered, you should try the Fruit of the Loom factory.”

“Huh?”

“I know it sounds odd, but the
Fruit of the Loom factory has its own cafeteria and they have some of the best
food around, including delicious real pit barbeque,” he made this statement as
though he was answering final Jeopardy.  He crossed his arms, satisfied and
waited for a reply.

“I hadn’t thought of that,”  I was
thinking that could be the place, a large building that smelled strongly of
barbeque.

“Anyone can eat there. They take
cash as well as employee debit cards,” he said, looking at his watch.  “They
are making lunch for the second shift now, we could go over there are try it.
What do you say?”

“Okay,” I said with a shrug.

I have my own addictions and I was
not going to stand between this man and his.

There are so many towns in a great
country as big as ours that eventually people run short of good names.  Names
like Charleston, Savannah and New York were already taken by the time East Tennessee was settled.  That is how we ended with names like Wartburg and Harriman.
Newcomers to our area are sometimes hesitant to visit a place called Wartburg.
And Harriman is a little scary, too. They wonder why it is named ‘Hairy Man’
and exactly who is this Hairy Man and what does he want?  Actually the locals
pronounce it “hair-mun.”  Nothing to fear. No actual scary hairy man in
Harriman.

We were headed toward Wartburg and
the Fruit of the Loom factory with its reportedly delicious barbeque.  When we
had left
The Oakridger’s
office, I had been pleased that my new Crown
Vic held up nicely under the immense weight of my passenger, James Inskip. 
Don’t get me wrong, the Ford’s springs did give a bit, but once I hopped in, it
did not seem that the car was riding any lower on one side than the other. The
way, let’s say, a Miata would with a normal person on one side and an obese
food critic on the other.

The neighborhood was called
Milltown.  Just outside Oliver Springs, it was a nicely laid-out group of
houses that had been, when they were constructed, identical.  These squared-off
row houses framed a central quad with a softball field and soccer field.  Each
of the homes had been renovated several times since the area’s development
around the mill in the 1920’s.  Two good schools had been built nearby and it
was close to Oakridge, property values had skyrocketed.  Ironically, no actual
mill workers lived in Milltown anymore, because a mill job did not pay enough
to handle a mortgage on these now-desirable homes.  The neighborhood now was
made up of engineers from Oakridge, soccer moms and all manner of trendy
professionals. Dinks, yuppies and weekend warriors.

I saw ladies jogging, people
walking dogs, parents pushing kids in strollers and people throwing Frisbees to
leaping Labradors.  Don’t these people have day jobs? I realized then that
James Inskip, the loquacious, oversized food critic, had been talking like
crazy and I hadn’t heard a word.

“….Until the 1990's when I thought
their barbeque sauce had a bit much vinegar in it for my taste.  So I didn’t go
back for years.  They have had a number of different managers since then, but I
like this new guy.  Stanley something, they call him Slink, for some reason. 
Slink has whipped the place back into shape and got the vinegar situation under
control.  Now their sauce recipe is delicious.” My mind raced at the mention of
Slink. This was a break, I could feel it.

Skirting the quad, I followed
Inskip’s fat finger pointing toward a drive at the back of the neighborhood. I
turned and we headed toward a dark brick building that was about the length of
two football fields. The sign said ‘Fruit of the Loom, O/S Plant’, so I pulled
into the nearly full parking lot and waited for James to hoist himself out of
the Crown Vic.  I considered giving him a hand but a vision of myself at the
chiropractor stopped me. I figured he’d be okay, he does this everyday, right? 
He managed to power himself to a standing position, with knees slightly bent,
and we headed toward the factory building, looking like Jake and The Fat Man. 
I followed James toward the back of the building, walking along a landscaped
sidewalk. We could hear the hum of the machines inside the yarn mill as we
walked.

The dark brick walls of the
factory loomed over us on the right. I could see a smaller metal structure
attached to the back of the factory’s hulking main building.

“That’s the cafeteria?” I asked. I
sensed I might be reaching a mile stone in my journey to find this truck. 
Tammy had described a metal building with no windows and a high ceiling; here
it was.

“Yep, can’t you smell it?” James
said. I could smell it. This was a beautiful-smelling autumn day. The air was
cool with a hint of burning leaves and fireplace smoke, but beyond that,
getting stronger as we approached was the smoky, rich scent of excellent
barbeque. Inskip had a look on his face like a bachelor party drunk approaching
the door of the Mouse’s Ear Club.  I thought I heard him smacking his lips.
That gave me the willies.

Well, really, this whole factory
scene gave me the willies.  It’s a place where I’ll bet many folks work for
twenty or thirty years and don’t ever earn much more than minimum wage.  But
still, at the least bit of labor trouble, this whole factory would be move to Mexico in a heartbeat.

This sad thought was replaced by
thoughts of yummy-ness as the smell of good cooking grew closer.  A good meal
was coming and if that was the worst thing that happened, oh well.  My mind did
not stop with thoughts of food.  That delicious smoky smell was the smell of
teleportation! It was the smell I had noticed in Grandma Tuttle’s barn.  I
started thinking about a huge commission for finding this truck and helping
Tammy sell its secrets.  My active imagination started spending this imaginary
money and before long I was debt free, driving that new Jag convertible and...

“Well, come on in, we’re here.”

James opened the door.

I snapped out of my financial wet
dream and followed him into the factory cafeteria.

We passed row after row of
institutional style folding tables as we made our way to the back of the long
lunch line.

In here the hum of the mill gave
way the echoing roar of lunch room chatter. It was amplified by the tile floor
and the thirty-foot-high metal ceiling.  The scene made me flash back to high
school where the tables were packed with kids, cheerleaders and football
players. My biggest challenge back then to throw a fork just right so that it
would stick in the dropped ceiling of the lunchroom.  Memories, some good and
some not-so-good, surfaced and then had to be stuffed quickly back down, like
dirty laundry in an overflowing hamper.

Now we were sliding our trays down
the stainless steel rails toward the front of the line.  After ringing up
James’ food the cashier looked past me to the next customer.  She had assumed
that James’ three plates of food and three desserts were for both of us.   I
got her attention and forked over the cash for my barbeque pork plate, sweet
tea and slice of lemon meringue pie.

Like a Tennessee River barge
moving into a small lock, James Inskip slid slowly into a metal-frame, plastic
lunchroom chair. The chair flexed but did not break, impressive. I sat down
across from him.

Pausing only to swallow, James
managed to continue talking as he chewed.

“...Back to your catering situation...
You should consider serving this potato salad; it will taste even better after
it sits twenty-four hours. The ingredients have time to comingle and the flavor
of the onions and what-not permeate the potatoes. Delicious!” He used a piece
of Texas toast to push a bit of beans and potato salad out of his beard and
into his mouth.  It is a credit to how great the food was that this did not
kill my appetite.

“Well, I will seriously consider
the potato salad,” My eyes scanned the room for anyone who could be Stanley ‘Slink’ Bailey.  “What about the manager here?  They call him Slick or something?”

“Slink, actually, from his
football career with the Bobcats. I’m sure he’s around somewhere, probably in
back.”  James gestured toward the kitchen with his fork.      “When we’re done
I’ll introduce you.”

This didn’t take as long as you
might think since I was hungry and my new friend was a human vacuum cleaner. 
Having put away enough food to sustain a third world village for a day, he
dabbed has chin with a brown paper napkin as if it was fine linen.

“Let’s go say hi to Slink.”

Waddling by, he waved to the
smiling ladies in the serving line and they admitted him to the kitchen as if
he were culinary royalty. No one even noticed me since I was walking behind
James. I was obscured, like the moon in a fatty lunar eclipse.

We entered the kitchen through two
swinging stainless steel doors. On huge prep tables, workers got pans of
barbeque and various sides ready for the steam tables out front.  The smell of
greens with onion and bacon, corn, fried okra and other dishes blended with the
barbeque aroma into something that must have smelled like heaven to James.

“There’s Slink, uh. Right there,”
James stammered and waved. “Hi, Slink.  This fellow wants to meet you and talk
about having some catering done.”

“Okay, come on back,” Slink
hollered over banging pots and the hum of overhead vents.

When Inskip and I started to walk
between the tables to the rear area where Slink was, we found James would not
fit between the prep tables. There was not enough space.  A narrow opening and
way too much of James.  The height of the tables caught him where he was the
widest.

“You go on ahead and I’ll wait for
you out front.  I’m gonna go say hi to the ladies and check some of the side
dishes I didn’t have room for on my tray the first time around.”

He turned and floated out through
the swinging doors, like a balloon made of Dockers and a giant oxford shirt.

I walked to the back of the
kitchen and introduced myself to Slink.   As I shook hands with him, his
expression told me he knew I was not there to see about feeding my wedding
party.

“Gettin’ married, Mr. Stover? 
You’re gonna have to give up your life of crime then.  Seems like I saw your
name on a police blotter for attempted breaking and entering?”

“Yeah, that was me.  Thanks for
dropping the charges, by the way.  I’ll drop off some lasagna for you
sometime.”

“Don’t bother. I can make lasagna
that would smoke any recipe you got,” he released my hand. “I dropped the
charges because there was nothing to gain and I do not want to draw attention
of any kind from the police. Even if I am the victim.”