4 The Marathon Murders (12 page)

Jill agreed to drive home. She looked around after I got
into the passenger seat. “I’m surprised you were so willing to leave, Colonel
McKenzie. You seemed to be having a great time in there.”

I wasn’t sure if she was being
serious or facetious. “Just following instructions, ma’am. You told me to be my
usual charming self and I’d be the hit of the party.”

“I don’t know about the party, but
you sure made a hit with Camilla.”

I chuckled. “Do I detect a hint of
jealousy, babe?”

She knitted her brows. “You were
too busy to see me making goo-goo eyes at the doctor.”

“Seriously, the lady had spent way
too much time at the bar. She was toying with me. I think I did a neat job of
cutting her off at the pass. You mentioned learning something about her son.”

I must have defused her momentary
displeasure, as Jill calmly related the story of young Kirk
Rottman
,
of whom Mrs. Wallace could find little to extol.

“Kirk is in his late twenties,”
Jill said. “He was a rebellious kid, got expelled from two colleges. His
parents pulled some strings to get him out of a DUI charge and another related
to marijuana. They gave him a job with HI, as the company is called, and he
soon got a girl in the office pregnant. They finally exiled him to a company
plant, threatened to disinherit him and throw him to the wolves if he didn’t
shape up.”

“He sounds like only a step up from
some street punks I’ve run into. They get caught up in an endless cycle of what
they call partying.
Gambling, drinking, prostitutes, and
drugs.
They spend money like mad. When it runs out, they get into
trouble trying to raise more cash.”

“I don’t imagine young
Rottman
had that problem.”

“No. He probably bummed cash or
borrowed from his parents. But they finally got tired of doling out the cash
and gave him an ultimatum—work or hit the road.”

“I’m sure the boy’s antics gave his
mother a lot of grief,” Jill said. “I feel sorry for her.”

“You didn’t sound like that a few
minutes ago.”

She gave me a look. “It was just
that she made such a spectacle of herself fawning over you, but she obviously
has problems.”

“Well, I hope she keeps them to
herself. I’d prefer not to have to listen to them.”

Back home in Hermitage, we found the answering machine
winking like a creature with one bleary red eye. Warren Jarvis had left a
message to call him. I had turned off my cell phone at the
Rottmans
’
and forgot to switch it on again.

“Sorry we missed your call,
Warren,” I said when I got him on the line.
“Anything new?”

“Kelli’s missing.”

I sat there for a moment, unsure
what to make of it. “You mean you don’t know where she is.”

“I don’t. And for me, that means
she’s missing.”

“When did you last see her?”

“The middle of
the afternoon.
She spent the morning with her grandfather,
then
came back here and we ate lunch. She seemed a little
distant, preoccupied. When I asked about Mr. Liggett, she said her talk with
him gave her an idea.” He sounded both worried and annoyed.

“What kind of idea?”

“She didn’t say, just that she
needed to find a Wal-Mart and she’d be back around three.”

I was beginning to get the picture of
a covert operator preparing to step back into the shadows. “Did you see her at
three?”

“I think so.”

“What does that mean?”

“I was in the lobby getting a cup
of coffee when I looked up and saw this woman walking toward the door. I
thought it was Kelli. I was about to say something when I realized the hair
color was wrong.”

“What color?”

“Red. She wore faded jeans, a dark
blue shirt, a ball cap and sunglasses. I was about to turn away when I saw her
step into a cab and realized the black bag she carried was Kelli’s.”

Just as I
suspected.
“What kind of bag?”

“Like a carry-on. I have a key to
her room, so I went up and checked. Her bag was gone.”

“I don’t imagine she left a note.”

“No. But something else was
missing, too.”

“Like what?”

“We had talked a long time last
night. She told me a little about the undercover work she had been involved in.
And she showed me a small case with make-up and such she used for disguises. It
was gone.”

I felt sorry for him, but all I
could offer was a bit of solace. “Warren, it’s going to be difficult to tie
down someone who’s accustomed to living that kind of life. At least until she’s
ready to give it up.”

“She told me how much she had
enjoyed being with me the past few days. She sounded very sincere. She said she
had resisted getting close to anyone since her husband’s death, but I had
changed her outlook. I’m not one to talk about such things, but we made love
last night, and it was something special. I want to help her, Greg, but how can
I? What’s she doing?”

“I’d say she’s looking for the
Marathon papers just as we are.”

“Where?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know what
we could do beside talk to Mr. Liggett and try to find out what sparked this
sudden decision to head off
on her own
.”

“We can’t do that until tomorrow.”

“True.
And not
until after Pierce Bradley’s funeral up in Hartsville.
We need to head
that way early in the morning.”

“I’ll drop by and see Mr. Liggett.”

When I repeated the story for Jill,
she didn’t appear too concerned. “More power to her if she can find what we
haven’t been able to.”

“I just hope she doesn’t get
blindsided by whoever is behind all the mayhem up in Trousdale County.”

We spotted Wayne Fought, dressed in his Sunday best, as soon
as we entered the funeral home, a long, single-story yellow brick building on
the main highway. I had donned a suit and tie, also—two days in a row, and in
the middle of August. Ugh! I felt sure he had come for the same reason we did.
In a murder case, who showed up for the funeral could sometimes tell a lot.

Fought frowned
when he saw Jill and me.
I decided to ignore him for the moment and
walked over to a doorway marked “Chapel,” where a guest book sat on a small
table with Pierce Bradley’s name on a placard above it.

“Shall we sign in?” Jill asked.

“Why not?
We need to be sociable.”

She wrote our names and the office
address. We entered the chapel and looked around. It was already half filled
with a mixture of people dressed in everything from suits and dresses to tee
shirts and overalls. One crusty looking fellow wore tomato-red
galluses
. Sheriff Driscoll stood in the back, his uniform
freshly pressed, talking with a lanky teenage girl with stringy blonde hair and
braces on her teeth. Her full face seemed a mismatch for her slim body. We waited
a couple of minutes until he looked around and saw us. When he waved, we walked
over.

“I didn’t expect to see you two,
but glad you’re here,” Driscoll said. “Mr. and Mrs. McKenzie, this is Marcie
Cook. She’s Pierce’s niece. ”

I shook her outstretched hand.
“Patricia Cook’s daughter?”

“That’s my mom,” she said, smiling.
“You folks aren’t from around here.”

“We’re from Nashville,” Jill said.

The sheriff nodded. “They’re
private detectives. Pierce had some papers for a client of theirs, but we
haven’t found them yet.”

A lanky girl with stringy blonde
hair and braces on her teeth, Marcie narrowed her eyes.
“Must
have been about a building or airplanes.
That’s about all Uncle Pierce
ever talked about.”

“The papers were about a man named
Liggett who worked for Marathon Motors in Nashville, many, many years ago,” I
said.

“Did they sell Jeeps? That’s what
Uncle Pierce was in when they found him.”

“No. They sold a car called a
Marathon. It was way back, even before I was born.”

“Who would want that stuff now?”

“Mr. Liggett’s
family for one, and probably some other people.”
I turned to Driscoll.
“Has anything new been turned up on Casey Olson?”

“Nothing I know of. I haven’t had a
chance to talk with Wayne this morning. I think they’re having Casey’s funeral
on Tuesday, if the docs in Nashville get finished over the weekend. Marcie,
you’d better go get with your mom and dad. It’s about time for the service to
get underway.”

When the girl walked toward the
doorway, the sheriff lowered his voice.
“Didn’t want to say anything
around her.
She’s nosier than a
billy
goat.
Wayne told me last night they matched the mud on Olson’s Corvette with that
around the lake. And they solved the mystery of the stainless steel pipe. It
came from an IV stand they hook to gurneys at the
Samran
plant. Looks pretty certain Casey was one of the killers.”

“When I talked to Fought yesterday
morning, he said they had taken a nine-millimeter bullet from Olson.”

“Yeah.
It
got too dark on the TBI team Thursday to locate any cartridge cases. The lights
didn’t help. I sent a couple of my boys out there yesterday morning. They went
at it on hands and knees until they came up with a nine-millimeter casing. I
had one of them
take
it to the TBI lab in Nashville.”

Jill kept her eyes moving, checking
out the crowd, while I spoke to the sheriff. “Did they come up with any
footprints, anything that might give a clue to the guy who fired the shots?”

“The sun had baked the area pretty
good. There were some beaten down weeds where he probably walked in or out, but
nothing good enough to get a shoe impression.”

With the room beginning to fill, we
left the sheriff and moved into the next to last row of seats. I gazed around
the room before sitting down. The only person I recognized was the old farmer
we had talked with at the convenience store Tuesday evening. He wore the same
garb we’d seen that night.

“Spot anybody you know?” I asked
Jill.

“Nobody but our
farmer friend.
Who did you expect?”

“Maybe the Lone
Ranger.
We could use a good silver bullet at this point in the game.”

She rumpled her brow and turned
toward the center aisle as a group headed toward the front of the chapel. I saw
Marcie Cook holding hands with a woman who had the same thin build and stringy
hair. She reminded me of the Wicked Witch of the West without her pointed hat.

“I’d say that’s Patricia Cook,” I
whispered. “She sounded more like Aunt Bea on the telephone.”

“And the big guy beside her must be
the banker.”

After they took their seats down
front, the service began. It was mercifully brief. The preacher quoted some
scripture, spoke a bit about Bradley and his family, and introduced one of the
pilot’s Air Force buddies from the Gulf War. The former colleague described a
few of Bradley’s exploits, and told how he had helped save lives of other soldiers
and airmen. As the service ended, his sniffling sister followed the casket out
to the parking area, and we looked around for Wayne Fought.

We found him outside watching
people head for their cars. When he seemed to lose interest and started walking
away, I hailed him.

He turned, glanced at us and
stopped. “I saw you two come in. Did you find anything of interest?”

“Not much. The only new person we
met was Marcie Cook, Patricia’s daughter. Sheriff Driscoll says she’s as nosy
as a
billy
goat.”

He gave me a half-hearted smile.
“I’ll make sure she’s not around when I talk to her mother.”

“The sheriff also told us he sent
you a nine-millimeter cartridge case from the Olson crime scene. Have your lab
folks determined the
make
of the gun, anything on
manufacture of the cartridges?”

The agent gave me a wary eye and
folded his arms. “You know, McKenzie, you ask too many questions for an
outsider.”

Jill smiled. “I thought we were all
in this together, Agent Fought, trying to find out why this man was killed and,
hopefully, who did it?”

He took a deep breath and shoved
his hands in his pockets. I suspected he felt uncomfortable trying to stiff a
woman who may have reminded him of his mother. “Markings on the bullet
indicated it was fired from a Beretta.”

“Interesting,” I said. I carried a
government-issue Beretta on active duty and still owned a smaller version.
“What about the ammo manufacturer?”

“They’ve been contacted, but it’ll
take a while to research the lot and what stores received them.”

If we had a suspect, a lot of shoe
leather could be expended calling on retailers that sold the cartridges, hoping
to find somebody who could ID our man. But at present, we had no suspect.

“Are you going to the cemetery?” I
asked.

He looked around at the cars lining
up behind the hearse. “Yeah, and I’d better get moving. See you around.”

With that he hustled off toward his
unmarked car, leaving us to wonder who owned the Beretta that fired those three
shots into Casey Olson.

Instead of going to the graveside, Jill and I pursued
another line of investigation we had decided on earlier. The first thing I did
was get rid of my coat and tie. We drove to the edge of Hartsville, which was
just far enough to warm up my Jeep, and found the small white frame where Jeff
Olson, Casey’s father, lived. The place was a prime candidate for a paint job.
The small front porch accommodated a wooden swing, suspended from the ceiling
by chains, and a rocking chair with a faded yellow cushion. A cocker spaniel
came sniffing around as we approached the porch.

The door stood halfway open. From
what we could see of the inside, the house looked dark as a cave. The whir of a
floor fan sounded through the screen. Although a layer of clouds had kept the
heat at bay more than in recent days, the temperature had slipped well into the
eighties. I knocked and waited. A man with a full gray beard appeared after a
couple of minutes. Considering when Casey’s father had served in Vietnam, this
man looked much older than he should have.

“Mr. Olson?” I asked.
“Casey Olson’s father?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re Greg and Jill McKenzie from
Nashville. We’re private investigators looking into the circumstances
surrounding your son’s death.”

His eyes narrowed. “I’ve already
talked to the cops.”

“I know you have, but we’re doing
an independent investigation. We’d like to ask a few questions, if you don’t
mind.”

“What you want to know?”

I smiled. “It would be more
comfortable for all of us if we came inside or sat out here on the porch. Which
would you prefer?”

He frowned, making it clear he
preferred neither, but opened the door and came out. Jill and I moved to the
swing, while Olson took the rocker.

“Did Casey live with you?” I asked.

“He stayed here some.”

“Does that mean he also had another
home?”

“He had a girlfriend. Sometimes he
stayed at her place.”

That gave us another subject to
interview, though I realized she might be even more reluctant to talk. I could
always use my secret weapon—Jill. She had a real knack for pulling information
out of women. Looking out in the front yard where a large maple tree stood
still as death, I began to push my foot against the floor, attempting to create
a little breeze.

Jeff Olson stared across at the dog
as it chewed at fleas on its brown coat.

“Did your son bring his girlfriend
around here very often, Mr. Olson?”

“Not when his Ma was here.
Mazie
couldn’t stand the girl
..”

I was sure that little fact would
give Jill some ideas. “Did you have a chance to talk to Casey on Monday?”

His eyes blinked, and he looked
down at his rough, weathered hands. “Not much.”

“Did he say anything that might
have indicated he was having trouble with somebody?”

“Casey was always having trouble
with somebody.”

“Anybody in
particular?”

“I don’t know.”

 “Did he mention where he was
going that night?”

“I didn’t pry into his affairs, and
he never said much.” Olson rubbed a hand across his chin. It sounded like
sandpaper.

“Can you tell us anything about his
close friends?”

“Some was stock car drivers. And I
guess he had some from that
Samran
plant where he
worked.”

“How about some
names?”

He took out a large handkerchief
and swiped it across his forehead. “You ask a lot of the same fool questions as
that state cop. Why don’t y’all get together and save both of us some breath?”

“I’m sure it gets a little old,” I
said, trying to show a bit of sympathy, “but sometimes a fellow will remember
things he didn’t think of the first time he was questioned. Do you have any
idea who would want to do this to your son?”

He shook his head, heavy brows
pinched. “It don’t make
no
sense to me. The boy was a
little wild at times, but he never done any real harm to nobody I know of. It
just don’t make
no
sense.”

When we left him sitting on the
porch, his eyes were closed. His head rested on one hand. About all we had
managed to get out of him
was
a name and an employer
for the girlfriend.

Mickey Evans worked as a waitress at a small café in
Hartsville. It was run by a large woman with frizzy brown hair and the
gentleness of a grizzly bear, according to Jeff Olson’s description. The place
was wedged between a grocery and a real estate office. The cash register, a
genuine antique machine, had keys you pressed to make a ca-
ching
sound. The clock above it showed eleven when Jill and I walked in.

“You must be the proprietress,” I
said to the woman who approached us wearing a flowery dress that covered her
like a tent.

“Most folks just call me Big Mama.
Two for lunch?”

“Not yet. Right now we’re looking
for Mickey Evans. Is she working today?”

Big Mama gave a grunt that sounded
more like a growl, which fit the grizzly description. “Girl
ain’t
been in since they found Casey Olson’s body. Said she’d be in today at three.
We’ll see.”

“We’d like to talk to her. Do you
have her address?”

“You a preacher
or something?
You don’t look like police.”

I guess I looked too old to fit her
image of a cop. I handed her a business card. “We’re private investigators.”
Recalling Jeff Olson’s last comment, I added, “Trying to make some sense out of
this.”

Big Mama snorted. “Well, if you can
make any, I sure wish you’d tell me about it. Trousdale County
don’t
have one murder a year, much less two in one week.
That’s the sort of thing you folks probably have in Nashville all the time, but
it just don’t happen around here.”

She gave us directions to where
Mickey Evans lived on the lower floor of an old house that had been split into
apartments. It sat on a hill that looked down toward the town, a small,
sparsely populated chunk of rural Middle Tennessee that made a valiant struggle
to create its niche in the fast-moving world of the twenty-first century. We
had earlier noted such enhancements as the Tennessee Technology Center at
Hartsville, a small school that trained young people for jobs in offices and
factories like
Samran
, where Casey had worked.

Discussing what might lie ahead, we
decided if the young waitress showed any reluctance, I would make some excuse
to move on and leave the questioning to Jill.

A small yellow Ford sat in the
rutted driveway, which needed a new layer of gravel. On the right side of the
house, an outside stairway led to the second floor apartment. We got out of the
Jeep and walked to the front door across a wooden porch painted dark gray. The
air smelled of freshly-mowed grass. I used the brass knocker to rap with a
metallic clanking sound.

A girl about Jill’s height opened
the door just wide enough to poke her face out. She had short brown hair and a
plain though pleasant face, highlighted by sad brown eyes behind thin
metal-framed glasses. She gave us a blank stare. “Yes?”

“Mickey Evans?” I asked.

She nodded.

“We’re Greg and Jill McKenzie,
private investigators from Nashville. We have been asked to look into some
aspects of Casey Olson’s death. It would be a great help if you could answer a
few questions.”

Her look hardened. “You think he
killed that Bradley man, don’t you? That’s what they’re saying. Casey wouldn’t
of
done that.”

“That’s part of the case that we’re
not concerned about,” Jill said. “We’re only interested in finding who killed
Casey.”

Mickey hesitated a moment. “I don’t
know.”

I took a step back. “I need to get
into town to pick up some things. Why don’t I just leave Jill here and you two
can chat.”

“That’ll be fine,” Jill said before
Mickey could reply.

I turned and headed toward the car.
As I slid into the driver’s seat, I heard Jill say, “I know this has been a
rough time for you, dear. I’ve been through something like this of my own. I
can sympathize with you.”

I glanced up, key poised at the
ignition, as Mickey Evans swung the door open wider and Jill stepped inside.