Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels (16 page)

“I’m sorry you were worried about me,” I added, wishing we could talk face-to-face. “Everything is fine here. I’ve just been doing some volunteer work, since I don’t have any assignments.”

I didn’t add that my “volunteer work” had me in hot pursuit of a murderer. Tom obviously had enough on his mind already.

“So call me when you can,” I concluded. “I’ll be thinking about you.”

I hung up the phone and wondered for the thousandth time if he felt as close to me as I did to him. Even though we’d never met in person, even though I knew next to nothing about his private life, sometimes it was as if I could just
feel
him with me. Now was one of those times.

But there was work to do, not just with Shayna’s case, but also with Verlene’s. I cleaned my dishes and then retrieved the file that Verlene had given me and opened it onto the table. I didn’t have much time to spare, but I thought I should at least take a look at things and get myself oriented with this company that had approached Advancing Attire about forming an alliance.

From what I could tell, the introductory letter and company information looked like fairly standard stuff. The group was called Comprehensive Nonprofit Alliance, or CNA for short, and just as Verlene had said, it was a national nonprofit company that handled other nonprofit organizations’ peripheral duties, such as accounting and fund-raising, freeing the employees and volunteers of the local organizations to focus on their primary services. According to the letter, there were 42 charities across the country already being served by CNA, and they were actively
seeking to expand the operation to eventually cover nonprofit companies in all 50 states.

For a nonprofit, the letter did come across as a bit aggressive, but then again, that wasn’t necessarily a strike against them. Verlene herself could be aggressive when she wanted something—as witnessed by the fact that I was sitting here at my kitchen table doing this research, despite never actually agreeing to it! I grinned, thinking of Verlene and indeed all the good charity heads I had had the pleasure to know. If they had one thing in common, it was their ability to pull other people into their own enthusiasm.

My procedure for investigating nonprofit groups was always to follow a list of fairly standard criteria. Over the years, I had developed a roster of “Ten Qualities of a Good Nonprofit” that I used as my guide. This investigation would be no exception, since CNA was essentially a nonprofit that just happened to serve other nonprofits.

The first criteria, that the agency “serves a worthwhile cause,” was a matter of opinion. I supposed that organizations like this had their place. According to their literature, they provided a number of services in a variety of categories: accounting, fund-raising, public relations, and even purchasing. Certainly, some of these services could be worthwhile, as I often advised charities to hire out the more tedious tasks, such as payroll. In the end, the extra expense was almost always worth it.

For now, then, I would go ahead and give a yes to the first criteria, albeit a qualified yes. In theory, this place served a worthwhile cause. The bigger question was how that theory translated to reality.

My second criteria, that the agency “adequately fulfills its mission statement, showing fruits for its labors,” was going to be a bit harder to discern. Without actually going to all 42 agencies and looking for myself, how could I know whether CNA was doing a good job for them or not? I scanned the list of charities that they served, grabbed the phone, and started calling for references.

By the fourth call, I was able to reach a manager, a man in Dallas, Texas, who apparently ran a cars-for-the-needy-type of group. He was a retired repairman, he explained to me, whose group took donations of old clunkers, fixed them up, and then gave them to ladies at a local battered-women’s shelter.

According to him, he had been affiliated with CNA for about a year, and he had mostly positive things to say. CNA had taken over all of the duties the man used to pass off to his wife, like the bookkeeping, freeing her to handle fund-raising and car donations while he was left with doing the actual repairs.

“I thought CNA handled the fund-raising for you,” I said.

“No, when you first hook up with them, you can check off the services you want them to perform. We didn’t check fund-raising assistance. We just turned over the payroll, bookkeeping, things like that. Oh, and for an extra fee, they do our taxes at the end of the year, too.”

“But you secure your own funding?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he drawled. “We have a big barbecue dinner the first Saturday of every month. Most of the food is donated by local businesses, so we keep the money we make and that pays for our operations. It works out real well all the way around.”

We talked a bit further, and by the time I had hung up the phone I was most impressed with the man and his agency. The dedication and ingenuity of some people never ceased to amaze me. Glancing at the clock, I decided to spend a half hour making similar calls before switching back to my other investigation and continuing the search for Eddie Ray’s killer.

The list was easy to follow, and though I left a lot of messages for people to call me back, every second or third call netted me someone of authority who was free to talk and able to give a reference for CNA. Most were positive, though one woman in Los Angeles told me she had a bit of a personality issue with the first rep they were assigned.

“At first, they put us with their Small Agencies Division,” the woman told me. “Since, technically, we fell right under the line.”

“The line being where?” I asked, wondering how Advancing Attire would stack up.

“If your charity has an annual budget of three hundred thousand or less, they qualify you as a small agency,” the woman said. “Once we crossed that, we were switched to a different rep and things seemed to go much more smoothly.”

I asked for the name of the person that they didn’t like, but the woman became hesitant and said that she’d rather not say. I thanked her for her help, hung up, and made a note to myself to find out more about the Small Agencies Division, since that’s the one Verlene would be dealing with.

When my half hour was almost up, I decided to stop making calls and send out a few e-mails instead. Since CNA was based in Cleveland, Ohio, I wrote to a colleague of mine in Akron, a private investigator who owed me a favor, and asked if he could do a quick evaluation of CNA, its facilities, its executives, and its board of directors. Then I wrote a simple e-mail asking for references for CNA and sent it to various contacts I had across the country, people who might have crossed paths with CNA and its service before. In the e-mail, I said that I was assisting a local nonprofit in their decision as to whether to link up with CNA, and I would appreciate any insight and experience they could provide. All conversations would be confidential, of course.

Having done that, I felt like I’d put in enough time on the CNA investigation for now, and I turned off my computer, put away the file, and walked back up the hall to the kitchen. After bringing Sal back into the house, I locked up and went out to the car.

I needed to do a little footwork on Shayna’s case, and now that it was nearing three o’clock, that meant a trip back to Kawshek, where I hoped to gather some more information about the late, not-so-great Eddie Ray.

Twenty

People had already put out flowers, I realized as I slowly drove past the scene of the crime. It was just a spot in the highway—the place I had discovered last night by tracking dots of blood to where Eddie Ray had been killed. There was nothing remarkable about it. But now, where a remnant of yellow police tape still hung from a bush, a small collection of flower arrangements had been placed on the ground.

Unpopular fellow that Eddie Ray was, I was surprised to see anything there at all. I pulled over and got out without turning off the car to get a closer look at the flowers. I counted five arrangements, three of which had notes attached.

“See you in heaven,” said one card with no signature.

“Farewell,” said another.

“Rest in peace,” said the third.

I was stepping toward the car when the glint of something shiny in the distance caught my eye. I stood on my tiptoes and peered through the woods, trying to make out what it was: some sort of metal structure, a tin-roofed building that seemed to hang out over the river.

Odd. I hadn’t noticed it before, but it had been dark last night. Now, however, I thought it might be significant, considering its proximity to the murder scene. On impulse, I got back into the car, pulled it far to the side of the road, and parked. It was time to do a little exploring.

I tucked my pants into my socks and then stood in the road for a moment, trying to figure the best way to the building through the thick pines and waist-high brush. I walked up and down along
the edge of the road until I found what I had been looking for: weeds that had recently been crushed down—by the police, by the murderer, or by both, I wasn’t sure. Before I went, I made a quick call to Barbara Hightower, but she wasn’t available, and I was passed to one of her colleagues. Fortunately, he and I had met last night, so he already knew who I was and how I was involved with the case.

“I just wanted to double-check something,” I told him now. “I was driving past the scene of the murder, and I realized that there’s some kind of old building out there. It was so dark last night, I didn’t notice it. Did you guys find it after I was gone?”

“You talking about the place with the tin roof, set back from the road a piece?”

“Yes.”

“It’s an old boat repair shop,” he said. “We took a look, but nothing seemed to have been disturbed. One of the guys remembered it from back in the seventies—said that the fellow who owned it had since retired and moved away. Far as we could tell, nobody’s bothered it in years, ’cept maybe some birds and a few squirrels.”

“Okay,” I replied lightly. “I just wanted to make sure you folks knew it was there.”

Once I hung up the phone and slid it into my pocket, I took a deep breath and plunged forward through the grass. I really hadn’t needed to call, but if this was a significant part of the crime scene, then I knew my presence could compromise it. Unlike the place in the road where Eddie Ray was murdered, I couldn’t tiptoe carefully around here and not disturb any evidence. In fact, I had no choice but to crash noisily through the brush, stomping all over anything that might be in my way.

It was slow going. Among the tall grasses were bushes and brambles I kept having to work around. A good machete would’ve helped, but I didn’t think it would be a wise idea to leave such a blatant trail behind—not to mention that I didn’t have a machete with me anyway. It became a little easier as I neared the building,
mainly because there were shells on the ground, obviously remnants of an old parking lot, which kept more of the undergrowth to a minimum.

Itchy and hot, I finally reached the door, which was old and rusted and half hanging from its hinges. I gingerly pulled it open and stepped through to see that the building was basically just a sheltered dock, with one whole side open to the water. Though it was empty now, the roof was obviously high enough to accommodate yachts and large boats. For smaller boats there was a boom-and-winch system rigged from a metal crossbeam of the ceiling.

I stepped fully into the room and looked around at the refuse of the old repair shop: tools scattered along a table, a few oily rags, a faded calendar tacked to the wall. The cop had been right; this place looked as though it hadn’t been touched in 20 years. A thick layer of dust seemed to coat every surface, and there were no bottles of bleach or signs of any bleach use that I could see.

Stepping carefully, I walked from one end of the big structure to the other, looking for what, I wasn’t sure. There were some footprints in the dirt on the floor, but since they looked like the tread of standard-issue uniform boots, I felt sure they belonged to the cops who had come in here last night to investigate.

Looking up, I could see evidence of a number of deserted bird nests in the rafters, as well as some wasp nests I could only hope were deserted as well. Strung from the winch system by a combination of chains and canvas straps was a huge, rusted boat motor, and it hung over the workbench like a rat hung by its tail. By the looks of it, it had probably been hanging there for years.

I walked slowly around the perimeter of the room again, studying the scattered debris along the workbenches. The dust really was thick and undisturbed. A spray of graffiti colored one wall, but, again, it looked quite faded and old—evidence of teenage vandals, perhaps, but probably from a few years back. I walked to the door and stood in the doorway looking out at the thick brush, knowing in my gut it wasn’t a coincidence that Eddie
Ray had been killed near here. I thought back to the moment I had found the murder scene on the road, in the dark, and I remembered feeling as if someone were watching me. I had shined my flashlight in this direction, and two glowing eyes had looked back at me. I had thought they belonged to an owl up in a tree, but now I had to wonder if what I had been looking at were the lenses from a pair of binoculars.