Steeled for Murder (17 page)

Reggie nodded. His bleary gaze followed mine to the kids. “Prob’ly before Christmas,” he said.

I wouldn’t have bet on that.

He belched, shook his head, almost falling off the chair, and then tried to sit up straighter.

Sam glanced at us in alarm.

“You guys got clean pajamas?” I asked. Doubtful.

“Pajamas?” Sam looked puzzled.

“You know. To sleep in.”

“We usually just sleep in our clothes.”

Not good. Mrs. Coleman maintained that one of the benchmarks of neglected children is that they sleep in their clothes. They were almost always neglected in other ways, too. “Okay. We’ll take baths in the morning.”

Sam just shrugged. “Okay. Can Chief come in with us?” he asked.

“Chief?” I looked at Reggie.

“The dog,” he said. “Sure. He can go lie down with you guys. He likes you.”

“Come on,” Sam said, grabbing the twins by the hand. “Chief’s gonna come to bed with us.”

I turned back to Reggie. I didn’t need years of prison living to tell me I was dealing with someone who was less than an upstanding citizen here. Reggie could probably figure me out, too. Unless he was too drunk.

“Do you know anything about the Uncle Carl who’s supposed to be coming?” I asked Reggie. “A soldier or something. Sam says he’s gonna get leave for the holidays.”

Reggie bent down and loosened his boots. He leaned forward so far, I poised myself to grab him if he fell off the chair. He didn’t.

“I know Tiffany’s got a brother who’s a Marine.” He straightened up and rubbed his nose. “Just got back from Iraq. I heard he was in town a few days ago. Then he left again.”

“So he didn’t stay here?”

“Nah. He and his sister don’t always get along real well.” Reggie took a slug of his beer.

“Why’s that?” Although I had to admit I hadn’t exactly gotten along with my brothers, either.

“Carl didn’t much like how Mitch treated Tiff. Or the kids.” Reggie slid his feet out of the boots and flexed his toes. The smell of unwashed feet in unwashed wool socks wafted toward me. “And Mitch didn’t much like Carl. Mitch and Tiff fought about it some. Guess Carl figured Tiffany was an adult. She could make up her own mind.”

“So Carl did come to see her?”

“I’d guess he did. Probably at night, when Mitch was at work, so there wouldn’t be any fights.” Reggie grinned. “I’d expect you’d have a much better idea of whether he came by while Mitch was at work than I ever would.”

No point revisiting that issue. Reggie was gonna think what he was gonna think. “You know some way to get hold of Carl?” I asked. “The kids expect him. They thought I might be him. And somebody’s got to see these kids are taken care of.”

“You seem to be doing a bang up job of that. I’m sure Tiffany will show you how grateful she is, if you know what I mean.” A smirk crossed Reggie’s face. “The kids got a good supper. The place is cleaner than I’ve ever seen it. And Mitch ain’t gonna show up to ruin things. You might have yourself a permanent gig.”

I gathered the other supper dishes and put them in the sink. “I can’t stay forever,” I said.

“Those kids’d be better off with you, looks like, anyhow.” Reggie stared at the cigarette he’d rolled, tucked it behind his ear, and went to the refrigerator to get another beer.

“Why would you think that?”

“At his best, Mitch wasn’t a real patient dad. Especially with Sam, who isn’t his kid. And lately, I wouldn’t say he was at his best.”

“Why is that?” I repeated. Although I had a pretty good idea.

Reggie sat down at the table, looking away from me. He rested his chin on his grimy hand and thought for a few minutes. “Lately, he hasn’t been exactly exercising good self-control,” he finally said.

“As in smoking the evil weed and worse?” I ventured, turning on the water and adding a squirt of detergent to the water in the sink.

“Maybe,” Reggie said. He laughed loudly.

“Not my concern. As long as there’s nothing here that could get me in trouble for possession or something.” A worrisome thought came into my head. “You think he’s got anything stashed in the van?” I’d been driving that van.

“Why are you getting your shorts all in a knot? You just say it ain’t yours and you didn’t know it was there,” Reggie said. “Perfectly reasonable.”

“Just don’t need the hassle.” I wasn’t about to mention my precarious parole status if I didn’t have to.

“Don’t you think they would have found anything Mitch had stashed when they searched the house?” Reggie stretched his sock-clad feet out in front of him. “And the van? It was up here.”

“I’d think so. If they did any kind of thorough search.”

“That they did.” Reggie looked around the surface of the table. He patted his pockets. Finally, he brought out the rolling papers and the tobacco pouch again. “They brought in a drug dog and everything.”

“So did they find anything?” I wondered if I should say something about the cigarette behind his ear as he started to shake tobacco from the pouch onto a new paper.

“If they did, it wasn’t much.” Reggie evened out the tobacco with a pudgy finger, raised the cigarette to his mouth to lick the edge of the paper and rolled it.

“Because he didn’t have much?”

“Because only a total fool would keep much in their own house, with a wife and kids living there. You risk losing the house if they find anything. Mitch might have been an idiot in some ways, but he wasn’t a total fool. Besides, he had other places to keep it.”

“Like at work?”

Reggie laughed again. “Like at work.”

“I don’t see how he got all that stuff in there.” I rinsed the bowls and put them in the drainer. “Security cameras on all the doors and the truck bays. I heard they found, like, a lot of pot.”

“Some of that came in on trucks,” Reggie let loose another belch and patted his protruding stomach. “And a lot of it left that way, too. Mitch tucked it right in there with the products they were shipping. Shipments of something called root baskets, whatever they are.”

I knew exactly what root baskets were. They were stacked and tied down on a pallet for shipping. A lot of room in the center if someone wanted to pack something else in with them.

“But the other stuff—the crystal meth—Mitch brought it in himself. There’s a gate along the side of the shipping yard, over by the road out here.” He nodded toward the front door. “And it looks like it’s never been opened, at least in years. Rusted padlock and all overgrown-looking. But you know what?” Reggie leaned forward conspiratorially.

“What?”

“Mitch had it rigged so you could swing the whole section of the fence, gate and all, open. So he could get anything he wanted into the plant. Or out. No security cameras over there.”

Interesting. I wondered if that was over where Kelly saw Radman’s Mercedes parked next to the road. “A lot of people know about that?”

Reggie looked around in an exaggerated way, as if he expected to find someone else listening. “Not too many people. Don’t really know who Mitch dealt with at the plant. He bragged it was somebody important.” A sly look stole over Reggie’s face. He shook his head. “You ain’t gonna go blabbing all this, are you?”

“‘Course not.” Alcohol does strange things to a person’s thought process. If Reggie was drunk enough to be telling me all this, he was probably drunk enough to believe he could trust me.

I wondered how much of this was true. And I wondered if any of this would make Montgomery start really investigating.

Reggie licked the cigarette and put it on the table next to his can of beer.

“So the cops didn’t haul a meth lab out of here when they came searching.” I let the water out of the sink.

Reggie narrowed his eyes and looked at me. “I can guarantee you that they didn’t find a meth lab here. You have to be real careful around those things. They can blow up. Mitch had a tendency to be careless.”

“So someone else was cooking the meth and delivering it to Mitch.”

“You could say that.” Reggie wiggled his toes in the grungy socks.

“And that someone else is busy disassembling it and making sure it’s not going to be found.” I looked around for a clean towel to dry the dishes with and decided it was better to let them air dry.

“A smart person would probably do that. Even if it was the best little money-maker on the face of the Earth.” Moisture glistened in Reggie’s eyes, and he sniffed loudly. “In fact, a smart person would probably be planning to move away and make a new start somewhere. As soon as the roads got plowed in the morning.”

“And he’d probably take his dog along,” I said. “Be a great opportunity to make a fresh start.” I added silently,
Don’t turn into a maudlin drunk on me.

Too late. Tears were cascading down Reggie’s cheeks and into his beard. “They’re gonna think it was me killed him,” he wailed. “You got no idea what it’s like to know they’re gonna come looking for you to pin a murder on you that you never had nothing to do with.”

I did have some idea, but I wasn’t about to say that to Reggie. “Why will they think you killed Mitch?”

“I been supplying the meth,” he said, taking another gulp of his beer. “They’ll figure that out sooner or later. It should have worked out okay, at least for a lot longer than this. Let me—both of us—build up a real stash. Enough to retire.”

“What happened?”

“Mitch started using. Bad move. I tried to tell him—it’s like being a bartender. Maybe you can have one drink at the end of the shift. But you best not be hitting the bottle all night long. It’ll get away from you. And it did.”

“How so?”

“Look at the crap he pulled.” Reggie wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “Got all paranoid. Thought Tiff was having men in here at night when he was at work. And going out to meet them during the day.” He looked up at me. “Course, maybe she was. You’d know better than me.”

“I wasn’t seeing Tiffany.” But I’d never convince Reggie.

“So he did all kinds of weird shit.” He sniffled and rubbed his nose with his sleeve. “Sold his truck so he had to drive the van to work. Pulled out the phone wires. Kept the cell phone with him all the time. Even slept with it. Burned most of her clothes so she couldn’t go out.”

“He burned her clothes?” Maybe that explained the negligee.

“Yeah. All she had left was some nightgowns. Not enough to keep anybody warm in this weather.”

I pictured Tiffany getting out of the passenger seat of the van, dressed in the flimsy nightgown. Not what you’d expect someone to be wearing outside in December. “Then why did he have her drive him to work?” I asked.

“Stupid.” Shook his massive head and drained the last bit of beer from the can. “He had some stuff in the van he was worried about leaving in the parking lot. I don’t even know what it was. And he said he was gonna have her drive him down there and then make her get out and suck him off in front of everybody, so they’d be able to see she had to do anything he told her to. Made him feel like a big man.”

Big jerk was more like it. “How’d you know he was going to do that?”

“I was here when he told her.”

From what I had seen, they hadn’t gone that far. But he had been kissing and groping her where everyone could see. Kelly might be onto something there. He got his jollies humiliating her.

Kelly. I wondered what she was doing right now.

“I came to get some stuff,” Reggie said, staggering to his feet. “Mitch was gonna get it for me. I really need it. I came to see if he left it here.”

“You don’t think the police took it?”

“They would if they found it.” Reggie straightened up and ran his fingers through his hair. “Mitch had a good hidey hole. And even a dog wouldn’t sniff this out.”

“You know where to go look for it?” I asked.

“Yeah. I helped him build it.” Reggie wavered for a minute, holding onto the edge of the table. He let go and went into the adults’ bedroom. I followed.

He switched on the light and looked into the fireplace with its damp ashes. “The bastard,” he muttered. “He better not have burned my stuff.”

Moving to the side of the fireplace, Reggie began poking at the corner bricks. He gave one a shove and it pivoted out. Reaching behind the neighboring bricks, he maneuvered several of them out of place.

I didn’t like the way this was looking. “That’s not gonna collapse the bricks above?”

“Nah. We put a lintel in there, just like for a window opening.” He continued removing bricks until he had an opening about a foot square. “Course, Mitch was a lot more coherent back then.”

I imagined that Reggie hadn’t been quite so drunk, either.

He reached into the hole behind the bricks and drew out a large manila envelope. Carrying it over to the unmade bed, he dumped the contents.

A dark blue passport. Several small cards. One a California driver’s license with Reggie’s picture on it. And the name Elmer Comings. Several credit cards, a social security card, and a Teamsters’ Union ID.

Reggie opened the passport. His picture was on it, too. So was the name Elmer Comings.