Risky Undertaking (26 page)
Authors: Mark de Castrique
“Read them and weep, gentlemen. Read them and weep.”
Archie Donovan Jr. watched the hole cards flip over and fill out Uncle Wayne's full house of aces over jacks. Archie sat motionless as my uncle raked the pot away from him.
“I'm out,” Mayor Whitlock exclaimed. “At least I lost to somebody different for a change.”
Everyone looked at Archie and the purple Crown Royal bag that had been plump with coins and now lay before him like a deflated balloon.
“Maybe you can pay Wayne to give you some pointers,” Pete Peterson said.
“Or pray for the state legislature to adjourn so that Mack can return,” Taylor Hobbs advised.
Taylor had been the person I replaced at the game two months earlier when I'd been ambushed with the cemetery expansion. Now I was sitting in for Luther while my uncle replaced Mack. Neither of us was interested in becoming regulars, even though it was uncertain if Luther would return.
***
All of Gainesboro had rallied around Luther, no one more than Mack Collins. But the magnitude of his daughter's crimes weighed on Luther like an unbearable stone of grief and sorrow. The evidence against her was undeniable. Her thirty-eight revolver and pillow feather traces found in the Cadillac tied her to Eddie Wolfe's murder.
Furthermore, soil matches confirmed Jimmy Panther had been at the casino construction site, and the recheck of Sandra's cell phone call to her father the night of Panther's murder placed her in Cherokee, not Atlanta. Tommy Lee admonished himself for not scrutinizing her location as closely as he should have. But, at the time, he'd been focused on Luther's alibi and only looked where he thought he should look. All that aside, Danny Swift's testimony would have been the nail in Sandra's coffin.
The investigation had spread to the state level, and the FBI snared Senator Gerald Eckles in a bribery scandal after tracing cash withdrawals from G. A. Bridges that matched deposits in accounts tied to Eckles. The payments began during the Great Recession when public works projects became the primary source of revenue for construction companies. Several state DOT staffers in charge of bid reviews were also feeling the heat.
Mack Collins had so far proven to be squeaky clean. Melissa Bigham had withheld his name from her story, a story that went national, because she had no proof that Tyrell and Sandra hadn't come together on their own. Collins appeared to have left his old life behind and rebuffed every effort to entice or threaten him back into the mob, including what I suspected was Tyrell's final attempt to intimidate him in Cherokee. We'd enough victims as it was.
Frankie Tyrell had improvised Panther's execution at the cemetery. When Sandra told him about the confrontation and Panther's threatening notes and feathers, Tyrell saw a way to introduce a new motive for the crime. He didn't care if it threw suspicion on Luther.
I think of all Sandra's wicked deeds, the one Luther couldn't bear was his daughter's desecration of his wife's grave. He would carry that abominable atrocity for the rest of his life.
Romero received proper credit for the rescue of Danny Swift. When I asked him if he'd been worried Tyrell might have spotted him earlier in the day mounting his camouflage blinds in the bamboo, he said he hadn't carried them in. The screens of bamboo had been created in Oconaluftee Village and he'd had some children bring them to the river to use as rafts. If Tyrell spotted them, he'd see them only as rafts and not realize they could have another function. In his mind, they would always be rafts. The kids left them hidden in the bamboo and all Romero had to do was reposition them.
The issue of a second Cherokee casino still divided the tribe. The shock that Jimmy Panther was murdered to further its construction halted the pro-casino momentum. But, the revelation that Panther was planning to fraudulently plant artifacts undercut some of the moral high ground claimed by the opponents. The potential money, both in per capita payouts to enrolled tribe members and in the contracts and ancillary business growth, was a dangling carrot that refused to go way.
To Darren Cransford's credit, he severed his ties to the Catawba efforts and worked to reconcile his relationship with his father. I hoped that would bring Luther comfort amid the great despair Sandra had caused him. Both men faced a hard road ahead.
However, the challenge from the Catawba casino intensified as Sandra Cransford was held up as an example of unscrupulous efforts to deny the Catawba their rights. The logic was spurious, but emotions ran high.
I hoped whatever the outcome, it would be decided by the tribe and not the outsiders manipulating and jockeying to get their way. But hadn't that been the case for centuries? Termination, not preservation.
The luck of the Indians couldn't be confused with the luck of the Irish. Kevin Malone returned to Boston unscathed. The illegal entry into Tyrell's hotel room was never revealed because no one doubted Kevin's version of how he intercepted the satchel in a public drop between Tyrell and Sandra. Tommy Lee and I said nothing, and Romero had the good sense not to ask us. Kevin did say at our parting that I'd pulled his potatoes out of the boiling pot and he would make it up to me. Given his track record, I'd prefer to call it even.
***
Mayor Whitlock got up from the table. In his customary orange Clemson warm-up suit, he looked like the Great Pumpkin rising out of the pumpkin patch. “Well, boys, it's been fun.”
I slid back my chair.
Whitlock raised his hand. “Hold up a minute, Barry. A little town business.”
The queasy churning returned to my stomach. “Wayne and I rode together.”
Uncle Wayne made a show of checking his watch. I was thankful he would get me out of there.
“It's only ten thirty. We've got time.”
My jaw dropped. An alien had taken possession of his old body. Uncle Wayne considered post-nine o'clock to be populated only by insomniacs.
“Grand, that's just grand,” Whitlock proclaimed. “I'll show the others out and be right back. Make yourselves at home.” He led Archie, Pete, and Taylor up the stairs.
“Uncle Wayne, what's going on? You can't stand being around the mayor any longer than I can.”
My uncle frowned. “Now that's not true. Sammy's gotten mellower in his old age. He's got some good ideas.”
“Well, retiring from office would be the best one.”
Multiple footsteps came down the stairs. Mayor Whitlock and Archie wore grins as wide as a piano's keyboard.
“This is going to be grand,” Whitlock said again.
“Grand,” chorused Archie and Uncle Wayne.
I looked at my uncle with disbelief. He was in on whatever was about to happen. Betrayal. An Eddie Wolfe in my uncle's clothing.
“And what is so grand?” I asked.
“Why, the new opportunity you've given us,” Mayor Whitlock said. “Archie, you tell him. He's your best friend.”
Not even on Facebook, I thought.
Archie slid into the seat beside me. “Barry, you know how much I appreciate your bringing me into the Jimmy Panther case.”
Bringing him in because Kevin Malone had hoodwinked me into keeping Francis Tyrell occupied.
“And you said I did a good job,” he continued.
“Yes. You did a good job.” I looked at the eager faces of my uncle and Mayor Whitlock. “You all did.”
“Well, I've got some spare time,” Archie said. “We all do. And we've decided to open up a detective agency.”
“A what?”
“A private detective agency. I can run it out of my office. We were so successful on your case, we figure we can do it professionally.”
“There's not another one in town,” Whitlock said.
“You're the damn mayor. How can you go undercover?” I turned to my uncle. “And you put people under a cover of dirt. Everybody knows you.” I threw up my hands. “They know all of you.”
“They only think they know us,” Archie said. “That's the beauty of it.”
Suddenly, Romero's voice rang in my head. “If Tyrell saw it as a raft, then in his mind it would always be a raft.”
“Fine. Fine.” The whole thing was too ridiculous to argue. “And where will you get these cases?”
“From you,” Archie said triumphantly. “Not the big murders, of course. We'll handle the kind of things the department doesn't have the time or manpower to investigate. Shoplifters. Cheating spouses. Maybe a cold case.”
“They show them on TV,” my uncle said.
“I know what a cold case is. But that's not my call. Tommy Lee has to authorize any referrals to private detectives.”
Their smiles withered. Archie and Whitlock looked at my uncle.
“Well,” Uncle Wayne said, “we were hoping you would ask him for us.”
“You know him as well as I do.”
“Yeah, but we just asked him for a favor,” Mayor Whitlock said. “Some extra security for a town event.”
“What town event?”
The mayor pressed his hands on my shoulders. “You remember Barry Clayton Day?”
Archie grinned. “It's next Saturday.”
Although the plot and characters of this novel are fictitious, the background events are based on actual issues confronting the Eastern Band of the Cherokee.
After much debate, a second casino is under construction on the edge of the Qualla Boundary Reservation, which some tribe members believe will diminish the number of visitors to the cultural and artistic centers that tell the Cherokee story.
The attempt by the Catawba tribe of South Carolina to buy land in North Carolina for the sole purpose of building a casino is currently under debate and faces strong opposition from both the Cherokee and elected representatives in the North Carolina Legislature.
I am grateful to the members of the Cherokee tribe who shared their perspectives on the impact of both the second casino and the Catawba proposal. I'm also grateful to Mary Walker for her insights into Cherokee heritage and her support of the Richard “Yogi” Crowe Memorial Scholarship Fund to further postgraduate education for Cherokee students.
I'm indebted to attorney Tom DeMille for sharing his knowledge of the legal issues involved with Native American gaming and to retired Boston police detective William DeMille for providing his law enforcement expertise. Unlike Kevin Malone, Billy went by the book.
The writing and publishing of a novel is a team effort. Thanks to Robert Rosenwald and the entire staff of Poisoned Pen Press, and to my editor Barbara Peters for her ongoing guidance. Also thanks to my wife, Linda; daughters, Lindsay and Melissa; and son-in-law, Pete for reviewing the manuscript.
Last but not least, I am grateful to those booksellers and librarians who share my stories with their patrons, and to you, the reader, for spending some time in the mountains with Buryin' Barry.
Mark de Castrique
April 2014
Charlotte, North Carolina
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