Dead Broke in Jarrett Creek: A Samuel Craddock Mystery (Samuel Craddock Mysteries) (13 page)

“Listen, Slate, they’re playing my music.”

“I believe Carlton King has a crush on you,” Slate says. He’s back to being the indulgent uncle, and Angel is trying to retrieve her cheerful smile. Several people turn to look at her. She nods in time to the music, doing finger waves at people. When the song is over she says quietly, “I’m sick to death of that song.”

Slate reaches over swiftly and grabs Angel’s wrist. “Just remember the sound of money every time you hear it.” He lets go and turns back to me. “Now what is it you came all the way out here to ask me?”

“I wanted to know if you saw or heard anything unusual as you were leaving the meeting the other night.”

He gnaws a rib and when he puts it down says, “Like I said at the meeting, I don’t remember anything but wanting to get home. I’m sorry you came all the way out here for that.”

“It’s all right. It’s a nice drive.” I eat a bite of brisket and then say, “Did you ever have any business dealings with Gary Dellmore?”

The plastic fork Angel has been poking into her potato salad stops moving. I can feel the tension radiating off her.

“I have had some dealings with him,” Slate says, “but it didn’t amount to much. Couple of small loans. I thought since I lived part-time in Jarrett Creek, I ought to throw some business to the bank there.” He shakes his head, his smile rueful. “Can’t say I was fond of him. He was something of a know-it-all.”

“You own any guns?”

“Of course I do. Hunting rifles, a shotgun, that sort of thing.”

“You own a .45-caliber handgun?”

McClusky considers. “No, I don’t own any handguns. I’m a rifleman.” He grins. “But Angel does, don’t you, sugar? She kept one for her protection when she was a celebrity, and with me gone so much, I insist that she keep one in the bedside drawer. Can’t have anybody coming in and hurting my girl, here. Why are you asking? You think I had some reason to be mad at Dellmore? He was pretty feisty at that meeting the other night.” He laughs.

Angel gets up abruptly. “If you all will excuse me, I’ll be right back. I need to powder my nose.”

McClusky watches her leave, as do half a dozen other people sitting at tables around us. “Quite a woman,” he says and winks at me.

“She had a good career,” I say. “She didn’t mind giving it up when she married you?”

McClusky shrugs. “I offered her a good bit more stability than the music business. But the real reason she gave it up is because her sweet little voice was slipping. Don’t tell her I said so.”

Despite McClusky’s dewy-eyed smile, his words are biting and I feel like I’ve had a glimpse behind a curtain that should have stayed closed. I think about that poster I saw announcing a comeback—a comeback I don’t remember actually happening. Maybe they had to cancel it because her voice wasn’t up to it.

Slate wads up his napkin and throws it onto his plate. “Getting back to the subject, sounds like Dellmore was killed with a .45.”

“That’s right.”

Angel slips back onto the bench across from us. “What are y’all talking about?”

“Maybe you better confiscate my wife’s gun and have it tested.” He laughs and nods in her direction. “Angel packs a Colt .45. She might have had a grudge against the banker that she’s keeping secret from everybody.”

Angel gets up from the table again, picks up her barely touched plate and dumps it into a nearby trashcan.

“A .45 is a big gun for a small woman,” I say.

“She can handle it if she uses both hands.” Angel has come back, and Slate says, “The idea is to have a gun that will stop somebody in his tracks. Didn’t I tell you that, honey?”

Angel stares at him but doesn’t reply. I get the feeling she’s one step short of lashing out at him, though he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Yes, I always say you can’t ever be too careful,” McClusky says.

“Slate, I’d like to go now,” Angel says.

“Honey, I don’t know if Samuel is done questioning us.”

I get up off the bench and pick up my empty plate. “I’ve got a lot to do. Do you have a number where I can reach you out at the resort since the cell service isn’t good out there?”

“Oh, we’re not staying there. We always stay at a private condo at the Marriott out in Horseshoe Bay,” Slate says. “You can reach us out there on our cell phones.”

I’m happy to hit the road and get away from those two. There’s something between them that feels off. Maybe they’re just having a fight, but it feels like it goes deeper than that. Like for some reason they have begun to dislike each other and it poisons the air around them.

As I pass the turnoff to McClusky’s resort on my way home, I have an urge to stop back by and insist that Harold let me go inside. Whatever is bothering the McCluskys extends to their resort as well: something is not right. Where are all the animals? Why did the resort go to seed the way it did? And what’s inside the main building that Harold didn’t want me to see?

I’m half an hour from home when I hear a strange sound, as if the radio is tuned to a station that’s playing some kind of electronic guitar music. Since the radio hasn’t worked in some time, I’m especially puzzled. But the sound repeats itself, and I realize it’s not coming from the radio but from my pocket. The cell phone. I didn’t even notice what kind of sound the phone would make when I was setting it up.

I don’t trust myself to drive and talk on the phone at the same time, so I pull over and take the thing out of my pocket and look at it. It’s police headquarters calling.

I punch the button to take the call and hold the phone up to my ear, not quite trusting even yet that this contraption will give me the same ability to hear and speak that my home phone does. “This is Samuel Craddock.”

“Chief Craddock, thank God, I’ve been trying to reach you. Where are you?” Bill Odum sounds frantic.

“I’ll be back in town soon. What’s going on?”

“I got back here an hour ago, and a call came in about a fender bender out at the dam road. Nobody was hurt, but somebody was driving by and said the two guys involved were getting heated up, and he thought we ought to go out there and get it sorted out. So I drove over, and you’re never going to believe what happened.”

“Don’t keep me hanging here, Odum. Tell me.”

“Well, sir, one of them was driving Gary Dellmore’s car.” There’s a crackling on the line and I’m not sure I’ve heard him right.

“Did you say ‘driving Dellmore’s car’?”

“Yes, sir. A drifter who’s been staying out at the lake. He’s got some wild tale explaining how he came to be driving it.”

“You didn’t let him leave with the car, did you?”

“Heck no! I’ve got him in a holding cell here at the station, and Zeke is out at the dam keeping an eye on the car.”

“All right. I’ll be there soon.”

He sighs. “There is one more thing. You might want to talk to Chief Skinner’s wife when you get a chance.”

“I went by to see her yesterday. What did she want?”

“She said she needed to talk to you.”

“I’ll take care of it when I can. It’ll take me a half hour to get back to Jarrett Creek. Hold the fort until I get there.”

I push my truck pretty hard getting back, and Odum is grinning when I walk in.

“You’re sure the car is Dellmore’s?” I say first thing.

“Yes, sir, no question. I asked both drivers involved in the accident for their license and registration. The guy driving the Crown Vic tried to make some excuse, but I insisted. Turned out he doesn’t have a valid driver’s license, and the car was registered to Dellmore. He claimed Dellmore lent it to him. But the story is obviously b.s., so I brought him in. He’s in one of the cells.”

“And you called Zeke to watch the car?”

“Yes, sir, as soon as I realized what we had, he came out to keep an eye on it.”

“Did you mention Gary Dellmore to the driver?”

“No, sir. I just told him he was driving a stolen car. I figured you’d want to start from the beginning.”

“You did a good job.” I shake his hand.

“I’m really glad I came back in. But I told my dad I’d go back to help him finish up as soon as I could.”

“Get on with it, then.”

He tells me where the car is located, and I ask if he’ll take the dam road on the way out of town and tell Zeke I’ll be there as soon as I can.

“Uh, Chief, I could call him on his cell phone.”

I start laughing. “You sure he’s got one?”

“Yeah, that’s how I reached him to begin with.” He grins at me. We’re both a little giddy. Finding Dellmore’s car is a break we needed.

As soon as Odum is out the door, I brew myself a pot of coffee and head into the back where we have the two jail cells, with an extra cup for the prisoner.

“I could sure use that,” he says as he snatches it out of my hand. He’s a weasel of a guy, in his twenties with ropy arms and longish dishwater-blond hair that doesn’t look like it’s been washed recently. Neither have his jeans or his jacket, which give off the smell of fish. Most likely he’s one of those people who stays out at the lake living on whatever money they can scrounge and supplementing their food with whatever they can catch.

His name is Louis Caton, and he says he’s from the Gulf Coast and is just drifting around. “I want to get some living in before I settle down.” When I hand him the coffee, he sits down on his cot and leans back against the concrete wall. “Man, I needed this coffee.”

I drag a chair in from the office and sit down to question him. “How long have you been staying out at the lake, Louis?”

“Couple months.”

“How did you meet Gary Dellmore?”

“Who?”

“The guy whose car you said you borrowed.”

“Oh, him. I didn’t know his name. I met him and we got to talking and I told him it was hard getting around without a car, and he said he’d be glad to lend me his.”

Caton’s story is so preposterous that I laugh in spite of myself. Gary Dellmore wouldn’t come close to lending his car to anyone, I don’t care what the circumstances. And the likelihood that he would meet someone like Louis Caton stretches the imagination even more. “When did this happen?”

He screws his face up like he’s trying to remember. “Couple of days ago. I can’t remember exactly.”

“It’s kind of important to know the exact time.”

He scratches his scruffy chin. “It must have been Wednesday.”

“That’s good,” I say.

He must hear something in my voice because he puts his coffee cup down on the floor and looks at me warily. “Why is that good?”

“Mr. Dellmore was murdered Tuesday night, so if you saw him Wednesday, that means he woke from the dead.”

“No, no, no.” Caton jumps to his feet. “That was a mistake. It must have been Monday I saw him. And listen, you’ve got to believe me. If he’s dead, I had nothing to do with that.”

I sigh. “Why don’t we start over and you tell me how you came by that car. It may be important for a murder investigation. And if you don’t get yourself untangled from your story, it might be you that’s being investigated.”

“Okay, okay.” He comes up as close to me as the bars will allow. “I didn’t steal the car, okay? I want to say that right out. I did not steal that car. I found it.”

I laugh again. “This gets better and better.”

“It’s true, I really did. It was on the turnout below the dam road.”

“On the lake side or the other side?”

“The other side. There’s a little park just beyond it.”

I know the place. “When was this?”

“Like I said, it was Wednesday, but it was around one o’clock in the morning.”

“All right. Now we’re talking. Did you hotwire it?”

“I wouldn’t know how to do that. The keys were in it.”

At that, I get up fast. This sounds more like the truth, and it’s a twist I didn’t expect. “I’m going to take you there and I want you to show me exactly where you found it. No bullshit. You understand me?”

“As God is my witness.”

I call Alvin Raines down at the Texaco station and ask him to meet me at Dellmore’s car with a tow truck. “And don’t touch the car until I get there.”

“My boy is out with the truck and it may be forty-five minutes before he gets back. You’ll probably beat me out there. Give me your cell phone number in case I’m held up.” I’m starting to see why people like their cell phones.

Before I take Louis Caton out of his cell, I check on the two Jarrett Creek police cars, both small Dodge Chargers, to see what kind of shape they’re in. One is low on gas, but the other one has plenty. The fingerprint kit is in the trunk, along with a shotgun, an emergency first-aid kit, a blanket, and half a dozen empty food containers, mostly from the Dairy Queen. I gather those up and dump them in the trash bin at the side of the building.

Although I don’t think Caton is much of a flight risk, I keep the handcuffs on him when I lead him out to the car. He complains when he half falls into the backseat. “Man, it’s cramped back here. And it smells bad.” He wrinkles his nose.

“Sorry it’s not up to your standards.” And then something occurs to me. “You’ve never been in the back of a police car before?”

“No, sir, I haven’t.”

“How did Bill Odum get you over here?”

“He was in a pickup and made me sit in the back, handcuffed to the rail.”