4 The Marathon Murders (8 page)

“Hi, Phil,” I said when he answered. “Thanks for giving me
good marks with TBI Agent Fought.”

"You meet with him?”

“Just got back.
He was willing to give us a little slack thanks to you. But he wants a solid
tie-in with my case before he’ll really cooperate.”

“Can’t blame him
there.
One of the other boys in Homicide told me he’d worked with Fought
on a case. Said he was a no-nonsense investigator.
A lot of
talent.
I think he has a criminal justice degree and worked for a few
years with the Knoxville PD.”

“He seemed pretty competent to us.
But Agent Fought wasn’t the reason for your call, was it?”

“No. I thought I’d warn you not to
get too excited when you hear your friend’s been called into the DA’s office.”

“Warren Jarvis?” That didn’t sound
good. “What’s up?”

“I did some checking on the
colonel, and the military seems to think very highly of him. However, the
assistant DA handling the case wants to talk to him. He’s one of these cocky
young lawyers, thinks he can dig stuff out of people they won’t give to cops. I
told him we hadn’t come up with any idea of what Sharkey was doing there.”

I decided it was time to level with
Phil. I owed him that. “I had a message on the answering machine from yesterday
afternoon about one-thirty. Harold Sharkey called to ask in effect what I was
doing at Arthur Liggett’s house. Apparently he came by while my Jeep was parked
out front. The idiot talked like he expected me to tell him.”

“Interesting.”
Phil’s voice had an edge to it. “So he thought you’d tell him more than you
told me, huh?”

That hit more like a jab with a
hypodermic needle than a subtle pinprick. “Okay, I get the point. Confession is
good for the soul, right? I don’t think the client would mind my telling you
our case involves Arthur Liggett.”

I told him briefly about the
Marathon Motors papers and Pierce Bradley’s apparent murder. I added that Agent
Fought remained to be convinced of any connection between the two.

“So you’re thinking Sharkey was
looking for the papers?”

“That’s my guess, but I don’t have
any proof.”

“And you’d really like the identity
of his employer.”

“I’d lick your boots for it,
buddy.”

“Well, your tongue’s in no danger. We
checked Sharkey’s office and came up with a blank. Not even any doodles on the
desk calendar. If this guy wrote anything down, he burned it before he left the
place.”

I thought of the possibility
someone connected with our case had tossed the office before the cops, but the
people who searched Bradley’s and Kelli’s places had hardly been that subtle.

“What a character,” I said. “I
wonder how he managed to hang onto his PI
license?
”

“I can’t help you there. We don’t
issue PI licenses.”

“I know. Well, thanks anyway for
the heads-up on Colonel Jarvis. I’ll get back to you if we learn anything of
interest.”

When I told Jill about the plan to
call Jarvis into the assistant DA’s office, she slapped her hand on the desk as
if trying to kill a fly. “Why don’t they quit playing their little boys’
games?”

“Warren is a big boy. I’m sure he
can take care of himself.” I really wasn’t so sure, but I hoped he could.

“We promised to call them when we
got back from the TBI,” she said. “Let’s see if they want to get together now.”

She picked up her phone and dialed.
I heard her say, “Kelli, this is Jill. Would you like us to meet you somewhere,
or do you want to come over here? . . . Okay, we’ll be looking for you.”

As soon as she hung up, Jill went
into hospitality mode. Ever the consummate hostess, she had to serve food
whenever mealtime lurked anywhere in the vicinity. “I’ll go over to the little
café up the street. They have a darling tray with all kinds of sandwich
fixings. I’ll be right back.”

She hurried out the door, leaving
me to wonder if my talents as an investigator would impress clients more than
her mastery of the culinary arts. I didn’t have long to ponder the image before
the phone rang.

“Mr. McKenzie, this is Martha
Urey,” said a voice I recalled from Trousdale County. “You asked me to call if
I remembered anything else about last Monday night.”

“Right.
What did you come up with?”

“Well, I was driving through town
this morning after I finished my bus route, and I saw a car that struck me as
just like the one in Pierce Bradley’s driveway.”

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as
anything.
It was parked at the store, a little red car.”

My attention sharpened like the
point on the pencil I held. “What store was that, Mrs. Urey?”

“Cumberland Farm
Supplies.”

I thanked her, remembering Sheriff
Driscoll’s account of Bradley’s fight over a bill he didn’t think his father
owed the farm supply store.

Warren Jarvis drained his glass and set it on the corner of
my desk, where we had indulged in small talk while devouring a tasty array of
sandwich fare. “That tea was delicious, Jill,” he said. “I don’t believe I’ve
ever had anything quite like it.”

I finished off mine, too. “It’s
her own
secret formula. We call it fruit tea. She pours in a
mixture of pineapple and orange juice, plus a dollop of
Marachino
cherry flavored syrup.”

Kelli smiled. “If it isn’t too
secret, I’d like the formula.”

“I can give you an idea, but I
don’t measure the stuff,” Jill said. “I just put in what looks like the right
amount. Say, I guess you two are dying to hear about our visit to the TBI. Why
don’t you bring them up to date, Greg?”

I gave them a brief account of what
we had learned, and didn’t learn, during our meeting with Agent Wayne Fought. “The
bottom line is
,
until we can come up with some
reliable link to the Bradley murder, the TBI couldn’t care less about the
missing Marathon Motors papers.”

“So where does that leave us?”
Jarvis asked. “What’s the next move?”

Jill got up and started gathering
the remains from lunch. I leaned back in my chair and tried to look more useful
than ornamental. “I’m going to contact Sheriff Driscoll and see if he’s picked
up any loose ends that might be helpful. I got a call from a lady we
interviewed up there yesterday that gives me something to offer him.”

“I thought it was a TBI case now,”
Kelli said.

“True. But the sheriff will still
be a major player. Also, he seems to think quite highly of me, even if Agent
Fought doesn’t.”

Jill walked over and stood behind
my chair, kneading the muscles at the back of my neck. She knows when I’ve
reached an impasse and need a little boost to get back in the groove. She also
knows how to needle me into doing something I’m reluctant to do.

She gave my shoulders a vigorous
squeeze. “Did you ask Warren if he had heard from Phil Adamson today?”

I reached up and grasped one of her
hands. I looked the colonel in the eye. “You may have a problem, Warren, though
I hope not. I talked to Phil a little while before you got here. He said the
assistant DA handling the Sharkey case wants you to come in and talk to him.”

Jarvis had been sitting with his
hands together. He began nervously twisting his Academy ring. “What on earth
for? Does he think I did this deliberately? That would be murder.”

“If it comes down to that, I’ll
tell them the truth,” Kelli said.

I raised a calming hand. “Let’s
wait and see what he wants. Phil said it’s a young hotshot lawyer. He’s
probably just flexing his wings. I had problems with a few guys like that when
I worked for the DA.”

That was before my widely
publicized problem with Murder Squad Detective
Tremaine
,
which wound up getting me fired by the District Attorney.

“Just look confident and answer his
questions calmly,” Jill said, always ready with motherly advice. She’d have
made a good mama, I’m sure. We had tried, but the doctor finally said no way.

“Should I turn myself in?” Warren
asked.

“No,” I said. “If they want you,
they’ll call. They know where you’re staying. Did you work out taking some
leave time?”

“Yeah.
I’ve got a week. I hope you can come up with some answers by then.”

He didn’t hope it half as much as I
did. This case was rapidly turning into a big time frustration. I wanted to
recover those papers for Kelli and Warren’s sake, but the affair had also
become a personal challenge. As soon as they left, I turned to Jill.

“I’m going to call Sheriff
Driscoll. Then let’s sit down and go over all our notes. There’s got to be
something in there we haven’t honed in on.”

When I got Driscoll on the line, I
described our visit with Pierce Bradley’s neighbor, Martha Urey, and her call
about seeing the “little red car.”

“In front of Cumberland Farm
Supplies?”

“That’s right. Is the guy Bradley
had the fight with still manager there?”

“Hell, yes,” the sheriff said. “His
name’s Malcolm Parker. But I never saw him driving any little red car. I’ll
check him out. I don’t know if Wayne
Fought’s
contacted him yet.”

“Who was the other man you
mentioned?
The one who tinkered around with Bradley’s
airplane?”

“Kid named Casey Olson. He’s in his
early twenties.
Local boy.
His dad served in Vietnam
near the end of the war, then worked on a tobacco farm until he moved into
Hartsville. Casey is a troublemaker. We never caught him in anything more
serious than drunk and disorderly, but he’s always hanging around in the wrong
places. I gave his name to Wayne, too.”

“By the way, Fought told me he went
with you to inform Patricia Cook about her brother’s death.”

“Yeah.
She
took it pretty hard. I mentioned something about your missing Marathon Motors
papers, but she was probably too distraught to pick up on it.”

“Thanks anyway. Say, I’d appreciate
it if you’d let me know what you find out about Parker.”

“Sure. I’ll give you a call.”

I gave him both office and cell
numbers, then relayed what I’d learned to Jill as I jotted down a few notes for
the record. She printed out the case file from the computer and laid it on my
desk.

“Pull up your chair,” I said, “and
let’s wade in.”

I took a sheet of paper and sketched
out a chart with headings for each day this week. We made shorthand listings of
everything we had ferreted out, from Pierce Bradley’s rage on leaving his
sister’s house Monday up to Martha Urey’s report this morning of the “little
red car.”

“Okay,” I said, “what pops out at
you? Where are the gaps?”

“The first thing is we haven’t
established who else knew about the papers before they disappeared.”

“Right.
Craig
Audain
at the Chamber hasn’t checked in yet.
Make a note on your list.”

“We still don’t have any details on
what happened back in 1914 that apparently brought this on.” Jill held a long
yellow pencil and tapped it against her cheek.

“It might be a good idea for you to
dig a little deeper into the library’s files. Maybe look through the newspapers
from that year.”

Jill looked up with a thoughtful
frown. “Don’t forget, Kelli hasn’t brought us copies of those letters from her
great-great-grandmother, either.”

I made check marks on the chart
beside items we had discussed. “That still leaves the possible murder suspects
in Trousdale County. Let’s see what we can get out of the sheriff or Agent
Fought before we go tooling up there again.”

Jill glanced at her watch. “It’s
almost two o’clock. Where do you want to start?”

“I’ll check on
Audain
.
You can ask Kelli about the letters.”

When I called the Chamber, I
recognized the voice of the young blonde with the peek-a-boo hairstyle. “This
is Greg McKenzie,” I said, “the worry-wart PI Do you have any news yet on the
whereabouts of Craig
Audain
?”

“Oh, hi, Mr.
McKenzie.
Not really, though I’ve heard a rumor that he’ll be back this
weekend. Let me give you his home number. The office won’t be open.”

I jotted down the number and
thanked her. If we hadn’t made any progress by Saturday or Sunday, I’d keep his
line hot until I got him. I looked around at Jill, who was just hanging up her
phone.

“Kelli apologized profusely,” she
said. “She promised to make copies this afternoon and get them to us. Warren
had a message at the motel to call the District Attorney’s office.”

If it were me, I’d tell the young
jerk to get real and spend his time on something productive. Fortunately,
Warren wasn’t me. “I hope he gives a convincing performance,” I said.

Jill leaned back in her chair and
folded her arms. “I guess that leaves us with the library option. They have
plenty of microfilm readers. We can both go at it.”

I was about to reply when the phone
rang.

“Hello, Greg, this is Terry
Tremont,” said the staccato voice of a hard-charging attorney with Tremont,
Tisley
and
Tarwater
, our best
lawyer clients. We called them the Three Tees.

“How’s it going, Terry?”

“Great. For us, that is. We have a
client who’s got a bit of a problem, though. I’d like your help with it.”

“Sure. What do you need?”

“We’re trying to settle an estate
with a sizeable piece of property involved. It was bequeathed to two brothers.
One is our client, Nate Yancey, who runs a local trucking company. He has no
idea where his brother might be located. We need you to find him.”

“We should be able to do that.
Interestingly, we’re involved in another case where we ran into a similar
situation.”

“Two brothers?”

“This is a brother and sister
combination. Only they were very much in evidence and mad as hell at each
other.
Couldn’t agree on selling the place.”

“That sometimes happens. Hopefully
these two will agree if we can get them together.”

“Is this something you need
yesterday?”

He laughed. “There’s no great rush,
but I’d like to get it resolved without too much delay. Drop by the office when
you’re down this way and I’ll give you the details.”

“Jill and I are heading into town
in a few minutes. I’ll catch you shortly.”

I hung up the phone and looked
around to find Jill with a big question mark on her face. “I presume that was
the Three Tees?”

“Yeah.
Terry Tremont wants us to track down a missing heir.”

“So you’re going to shunt me off to
the stacks while you
schmooz
it up in the lawyers’
office, drink coffee or have a glass of wine.” The tone said she was only half
serious.

“Terry’s a Scotch drinker.”

“Aha!
All the
more incriminating.”

I rubbed my chin thoughtfully.
“Tell you what, babe, you go ahead and get started with the microfilm and I’ll
bring you a box of Turtles.”
Her favorite chocolates.
She couldn’t resist them.

“Now we add bribery to the
charges.”

I gave up. She could always get the
last word.