Caruso 01 - Boom Town (15 page)

The man checked him out more carefully now. “What da fuck ya want with him?”

“I’m a friend of his sister, Dawn.”

He really considered him this time. “You aren’t that Italian guy, are ya?” He paid particular attention to the ‘I’ in Tony’s national-ity.

“Afraid so.”

“Well I’m Don Sanders.” He held out his grimy right paw, which was missing the pinky. They shook and pain shot up Tony’s arm tempting to pop his stitches. “What ya need? By the way, you really should be more careful in a blasting zone. Coulda got your ass blown up. My sister wouldn’ta liked that.”

Without saying another word, Don Sanders went over to the control device, waved his arms at two other men standing off a ways from the explosives, glanced back at Tony momentarily, and then set the charge.

If Tony hadn’t been familiar with explosives and watching things blow up, he might have been alarmed by the shaking ground and the lava rock and dirt flying high into the air, not to mention the tremendous noise. In fact, he even had enough time to cover his good ear. He looked back at his truck, hoping the topper had cut some of the sound from reaching Panzer.

When the dust settled, Tony followed Don Sanders toward the blast site.

They stood over a covered hole of broken lava and gnarled wood from juniper roots.

“Cool,” Don Sanders said.

Sanders gave his two men instructions on what needed to be done next, and then Don and Tony wandered under a large ponderosa pine.

Sanders pulled out a can of chew, shoved a wad into his right cheek the size of a golf ball, offered Tony some, but Tony declined with a shake of his head. Tony had tried chewing tobacco once in high school right before a baseball game in his sophomore year. Threw up twice, once just after sliding into second
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base off a double. Vowed never to try the stuff again.

“So, what ya got on your mind?” Sanders said, his tongue working the tobacco into his cheek.

Tony wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but that never stopped him in the past. With Don Sanders, anything but the direct approach would be sniffed out as bullshit.

“Tell me about your land squabble with Cliff Humphrey,” Tony said. Couldn’t get any more direct than that.

Sanders’ eyes shifted and he spit a straight stream of brown cud into the dusty ground. “Not much to tell. That dipshit wants my land. I don’t want him to have it.”

That was straight enough on his part. “Isn’t he offering you a fair price?” Tony asked.

“You work for that bastard?”

Tony hesitated. Maybe too long. “I’m just asking a simple question. I could care less if the man builds a destination resort in Bend.” That was the truth, and Don Sanders seemed to sense it, Tony could tell.

Sanders ran his grimy fingers through his beard. “The only reason I’m even talking with you is because my sister told me about you. If she likes you, I guess ya gotta be all right.” He thought for a breath or two before spitting. “The price isn’t the problem. I probably would have sold out to the guy until my place was ripped off. Don’t like those kind of tactics.” He shifted his eyes about as if they were being observed or listened to by some unseen enemy.

“What’s the problem?” Tony asked.

“He’s a powerful man.”

“Cliff Humphrey?”

He nodded his head yes.

“You think he ripped you off?”

“Damn straight! That ain’t all. I’m lucky to have any work in this town. The bastard blacklisted my company. Only reason I got this gig is because I went to high school with the developer. He was the running back and I was the pulling guard. Saved his ass
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many times.” He smiled and his teeth were brown with tobacco.

“There’s got to be a lot of lava rock to blast out for a development the size Humphrey is proposing. Couldn’t you work out a contract for that, plus a fair price for your property?”

Sanders thought it over, as if he hadn’t considered that before.

“I don’t know. I don’t like the idea of working for him. Are you sure you don’t work for the guy?”

“That’s not my agenda,” Tony said, which was really the truth.

“That’s what Dawn told me,” he said, and then hocked up a nice wad and sprayed it airborne through his teeth. “Said you were looking into Dan and Barb’s deaths. Thought that was figured out.”

Perfect opening. “There’s still a few insurance issues open. I’m just trying to confirm what the authorities have called it. You knew Dan and Barb?”

He shuffled his boots in the dirt. “Not good. They were the microbrew and espresso type, and I’m more the cold Bud and burnt black coffee kinda guy.”

“You know them enough to have an opinion on their death?”

He shrugged. “Opinions are like assholes. Everyone’s got one.”

Tony waited.

Finally Sanders said, “I don’t know. They seemed about as happy as most couples these days.”

That wasn’t exactly an encouraging indictment. “You think Dan could have killed her?”

Sanders spit and then said, “I think anyone’s capable of murder depending on the circumstances.”

Tony didn’t want to piss someone off who had access to explosives, but he couldn’t help himself. “Where were you the night Dan and Barb were fried like Smores at a boy scout campout?”

Sanders narrowed his intense eyes on Tony and said, “Fuckin’

my mare up the ass.”

“Great,” Tony mumbled.

Without saying another word to him, Don Sanders ran off yelling and waving his arms at one of his men. Tony wandered
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back to his truck. Just before getting in, he noticed something on the ground. He stooped down and picked up the one-inch piece of wire. It was the same color, could have been from the same roll and lot, as the piece he had found at the base of Dan and Barb’s burned out fireplace.

He gazed down the hill at Don Sanders, and his long beard seemed to wave in the breeze back at him again, telling Tony to go screw himself.

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It was late afternoon by the time Tony got back to his condo.

He got himself a beer and took a seat at the small table in front of the sliding glass door. Cracking the door open slightly, he glanced out at the golf course. There was no one to be seen anywhere, since the temperature had dropped some and low clouds had moved in off the Cascades.

Something was bugging him about the development Cliff Humphrey and his partners wanted to build. According to Melanie, the housing market in the area had started to slump a little, with the high-end houses taking the biggest hit. So why build now? What did Cliff Humphrey know?

He got up and went for his second beer, retrieving his laptop computer on his way back and hitching it up to the phone. When Tony took on a case, one of the first things he did was check into the person who hired him. In this case, since the guy was a friend of his Navy friend, Joe Pellagreno, he hadn’t done a thorough job of checking out Cliff Humphrey. That could have been a mistake.

Maybe Tony figured the guy’s reputation should stand for something. Maybe he didn’t think the case would bring him anywhere the local cops had not already been. Whatever the reason, he hadn’t done his normal complete background check.

Pulling up Humphrey’s development company, Tony sifted through the normal crap, and, seeing he was getting nowhere, decided on another direction. At the court house he had found out
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HGE Enterprises was the company trying to get land use for the new destination resort. So he checked into that company. Bingo!

Under the principal owners were Cliff Humphrey and James Ellison.

He finished his beer and headed out.

By the time he got to Cascade Peaks Estates, all that remained of the sun was a pink hue behind dark swirling clouds in front of Mount Bachelor and the Three Sisters. He pulled the truck over in front of the burned out house and sat. His eyes weren’t focused on the fried shell that used to be Dan and Barb Humphrey’s place.

Instead, he gazed directly at the home that resembled a Scottish hunting estate. The home of Mr. and Mrs. James Ellison.

His mind drifted off, thinking about how the two rent-a-cops had jacked him up out front, the conversation he had had with the captain, Beaver Jackson, and then the talk with Mrs. Ellison.

Starting the truck, he drove up into the driveway. When he got out, blinding lights flicked on, startling him for a moment. He continued on and knocked at the front door.

Mrs. Ellison peered out from a side window at him, gave a strained smile, and then opened the door for him. She was wearing a tight aerobics outfit with sweat visible at various spots.

“Mr. Caruso,” she said. “What brings you by?”

“May I come in? I have a few more questions.”

She hesitated long enough for him to sense the answer would be no, but then relented, opening the door for him.

Tony stepped inside and glanced around, looking for a sign that her husband might be there. He could hear a Puccini opera sift-ing in delicately from the other room.

“Would you like a drink?” she asked. She had a bottle of French water and took a quick gulp from it now.

“No, thanks. I was wondering if I could talk with your husband, James?”

She considered that carefully, her eyes inspecting him. “I’m afraid James is away again. San Francisco.”

There was silence for a moment while he tried to think of
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something to say. He wasn’t sure how much she knew about her husband’s business.

“What can you tell me about HGE Enterprises?” Tony asked her.

She seemed to expect the question. She shrugged. “Not much.

My husband is one of the principal investors. He finds ways to infuse capital into projects.”

Deliberately, she drifted toward the room the music came from, and Tony followed her, trying his best to keep his eyes off her swaying hips. They went into a library with mahogany book shelves that lined two walls on either side of a stone fireplace.

She took a seat in a large leather chair, hoisted her right leg un-ladylike over an arm much like Frank Peroni’s wife had done, and took another sip of water.

He was feeling a little uncomfortable. Unsure where his questions would lead. Unsure what questions to ask.

She nodded her head toward an identical chair across from her, and Tony took that as a sign to sit, so he did.

“Gianni Schicchi,” Tony said in his best Italian. “O mio babbi-no caro.”

She looked surprised. “Mr. Caruso. I had no idea you were an opera fan.”

“It’s not something you bring up very often,” Tony admitted.

“But when you grow up in an Italian family...with a name like mine.”

She shifted her left leg out. “Any relation to Enrico Caruso?”

“He was a distant cousin.” Tony did his best to keep his eyes from centering on the area between her legs, which was hard considering her presentation.

As she adjusted the thin strip of aerobics suit between her legs, her eyes narrowed directly toward his. “What do you want?”

“Excuse me?”

“What do you want? Really?”

He was confused by the question. Especially since her hand was still sliding over the mound between her legs.

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“HGE Enterprises,” he managed to get out. “I was just wondering...how your husband was involved with that.” This was partially true. He knew what venture capitalists did, but he actually wanted to know how her husband and Cliff Humphrey had gotten together, without coming out and saying it.

She slid her hand up and flipped the left strap to her suit off her shoulder, giving her left breast nearly enough freedom to roam about. “HGE Enterprises,” she said formally. “James founded the company with Cliff Humphrey when they started Cascade Peaks.” She suddenly got up and headed toward the foyer, stopped at the door and turned her head toward him. “Let’s talk out here.” Then she disappeared around the corner.

He was sitting there feeling like an idiot. So he got up and followed her. It wasn’t too hard to find out where she’d gone. He simply followed the trail of discarded clothing out to the deck, catching a glimpse of her naked body as she lowered herself into the Jacuzzi. Tony reasoned that if he had a wife who looked like that, he probably wouldn’t leave town as often as her husband did.

He stood a few feet from the Jacuzzi trying not to be too obvious with his eyes. But she was sitting just high enough for her nipples to protrude like periscopes from the churning water.

“You wanna join me?” she asked him, her southern accent escaping more than ever.

“I just took a soak this morning.”

“I’m sure you could do it more than once a day,” she said, her eyes drifting down his body midway. “I don’t guess you’d have a shriveling problem.”

He’d probably hate himself later for this. “I should probably get going. I’ll show myself out.”

She stood up, exposing herself fully. “Are you sure,” she said, disappointed, her hands on her hips.

He let out a deep breath. “No. Yeah. Have a great evening.”

She sunk back into the water. “It coulda been so much better,”

she said in her best whiny debutante.

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Tony headed toward the door, his gait somewhat affected by shifting blood flow.

When he got back out to his truck, he sat for a moment gazing at the Ellison residence. Standing in the second floor window, elegantly naked and appealing, was a dark silhouette leaning against the frame.

Reluctantly moving his eyes to his right, he glared at the burned out Humphrey house, thinking about what had happened there and how life was rushing forward all around. He recalled the two spots where bodies had fallen to the carpet. What was the point? If Dan shot his wife and then himself, why blow the house all to hell? That bothered him more than anything. And he hated unanswered questions.