Woody didn’t budge from his chair. “Aren’t you just being nosy? Anyhow, the car is in impound. That means we can’t see it.”
Rhetta rolled her eyes. “Woody, honestly, this isn’t New York. I’ve known Eddie Wellston forever. Did you forget how small a town Cape is? Besides, we’re the insurance agents. We can look at the car.”
“I’m his agent,” Woody corrected Rhetta.
“Right. Whatever. Let’s go.”
Woody still didn’t move.
She gathered up her purse and keys. “I’m no expert in looking at wrecked cars, but Eddie is. I don’t believe how the paper says this happened. I have a gut feeling that Al-Serafi’s accident was no accident. I’m sure somebody will investigate, if they haven’t already.” Rhetta headed for the door. “I want to see the car for myself.” She veered to Woody, still seated at his desk. “Besides, we need to prepare in case we have to clear ourselves.”
“What does that mean? What did we do?”
“You and I know we didn’t do anything, but the paper may see it differently.” Rhetta fanned out her palms, mimicking a banner. “Would you like to read a headline that says, ‘Doctor Dies in Crash after Missouri Community Bank Lends Him a Huge Sum of Money’?”
“Are you saying it’s our fault?”
“It’s not the bank’s fault, but the article might start with, ‘James Woodhouse Zelinski, the loan officer who handled the loan….’” She glared at him. “You want that kind of free advertising?”
Woody rose. “We’ll have to lock up the office and leave a note, since LuEllen won’t be in.” Ever practical, he grabbed a note pad and stood. He picked up the desk phone. “I’ll forward the incoming calls to my cell phone.” After he entered in the proper code, he began writing. LuEllen, their part time receptionist, had taken three weeks off to visit family in Idaho, so they would have to lock the office.
Rhetta watched him write in his painstakingly neat hand. “What are you going to say? ‘Gone to look at terrorist’s wrecked car. Be back soon?’”
He ignored her until he finished. “How about, ‘Sorry we missed you. Be back by 1:00 PM?’” After taping the note to the door, he locked it behind them.
Rhetta knew how Woody fretted about the bank president calling the branch and having the call drop into voice mail or having LuEllen take a message. Rhetta, however, never worried about that. There were times they needed to be away from the office, meeting with real estate agents or going to a customer’s home to take an application.
Rhetta was already behind the wheel when Woody folded himself into Cami’s spotless white passenger seat. After he buckled in, she pressed the Camaro into the southbound Kingshighway traffic. She made a mental note to check the Missouri State Highway Patrol website, appropriately called The Crash Website that posted information on all wrecks. Accidents were usually updated within hours.
He shouted above the oldies pouring through her speakers. “Should we really be checking out Al-Serafi’s car?”
After she reassured him one more time they should, they sped across town to the Tri-County Impound Yard, located on a bluff off State Route 177 near the Mississippi River. The city of Cape Girardeau, settled by French-Canadian settlers, sits in a large bend in the Mississippi River, framed by massive limestone bluffs overlooking the river.
Eddie Wellston owned the impound lot which served not just Cape Girardeau County but two surrounding counties, Bollinger and Perry. The three counties contracted services with Eddie, thus saving them from the expense of having to maintain lots of their own. When they topped the hill, Rhetta, not for the first time, marveled at the awesome sight of the broad river. Its surface sparkled like golden fireflies in the afternoon sun. The riverside trails were full of joggers and cyclists taking advantage of the perfect day.
The impound lot was completely enclosed by an eight-foot tall chain link fence topped by razor wire. A large rectangular metal shop building-cum-garage had a small wood-sided addition on the front, which served as an office. Behind the lot, Eddie owned a large junk yard that was enclosed like the impound lot.
Woody extended his long legs and scrambled awkwardly out of the car, putting him three steps behind Rhetta, who aimed for the screened front door. Over the doorway, a faded metal sign read, Tri-County Impound.
“And if it’s an or what, what do you suggest we do? And what, exactly, is an or what?” Woody picked up the conversation while he tugged the squeaky screen door open, allowing Rhetta to step through ahead of him.
“Or what means sabotaged. If it wasn’t sabotaged, that means that Al-Serafi went into the channel for some other reason. Maybe he had a heart attack, or somebody forced him off the road, or something.”
“I don’t like the sound of an ‘or something’ either,” Woody complained, as the door slammed shut.
Eddie Wellston obviously didn’t feel the need for fancy surroundings. There was neither a desk nor a customer chair anywhere in sight. Four mismatched metal filing cabinets stood lined up against one wall, like worn-out soldiers who’d lost the war. A folding table covered with papers and scattered file folders sat under the room’s only window on the opposite wall.
Tall and lean in well-worn jeans and a white T-shirt, Eddie sauntered in through a doorway that connected the office to the secure back area of the building. He wiped his brow with a red paisley handkerchief, which he folded before returning it to a back pocket.
“Don’t you have AC in here?” Rhetta braced against the tornado blowing from an oversized floor fan. She was grateful she hadn’t worn the peasant skirt she’d originally planned for this morning. It would’ve been wrapped around her head by now.
“It’s broken.” Eddie reached for a rag to wipe his hands. “Went to turn it on last Thursday, and it wouldn’t cool. The technician from Allied Service said it needs its regular spring shot of coolant.”
“Eddie, this is my associate, Woody Zelinski,” Rhetta said, motioning toward Woody.
“Good to meet you,” Eddie said as he grasped Woody’s outstretched hand. “The car you want to see is back there.” He pointed toward the rear of the lot. They trooped outside.
“That’s Al-Serafi’s car, over there.” Eddie motioned to a four-door tan Lexus resting on the flatbed trailer he’d used to haul it. Rhetta recognized the car. The last time she saw it was when she watched Al-Serafi and his wife leave the office after their loan closing.
“There’s no yellow crime scene tape surrounding the car,” Rhetta said. “Means the police deemed the event an accident.”
“I looked the car over but I sure can’t tell what happened,” Eddie said, accompanying Rhetta on her tour of the trailer. “Maybe the driver fell asleep at the wheel.”
“I don’t know.” Rhetta shook her head. “That seems doubtful. Woody and I both knew Al-Serafi, and we can’t believe he’d do that. He had a regular schedule at the hospital. There was no reason for him to have been out at that early hour. He hadn’t worked the night before.” Rhetta had called her friend Dr. Phillip Islip, another emergency room physician, and found out what Al-Serafi’s hours had been. Phillip later called her back and told her that hospital administration had sent a memo to its employees not to discuss Al-Serafi’s death with anyone. She promised she wouldn’t. This didn’t count, did it?
Other than a badly smashed front grille, probably from landing nose-down, a thick layer of sludge coating the front two-thirds of it, and a deep green scrape mark along the front driver’s side fender, Rhetta found little evidence of what may have caused the accident.
The Diversion Channel emptied water and mud into the Mississippi River; she wasn’t surprised to find the vehicle caked with foul-smelling muck.
“I want to look inside.” Rhetta searched the trailer for a ramp or a step.
“The car’s pretty dirty,” Eddie cautioned, producing the wobbly wooden chair she’d spotted outside the front door. He steadied the chair while she clambered on to the trailer. High-heeled sandals aren�
�t meant for field investigating.
Woody didn’t follow her.
Probably doesn’t want to get his spiffy slacks dirty or get mud on his shoes. She shouted down to him, “Aren’t you coming?”
He shook his head. “I’ll just wait here.”
Eddie, however, vaulted on to the trailer.
“That’s funny,” Eddie said.
“What?” asked Rhetta, glancing around.
“I could’ve sworn that window wasn’t broken out yesterday.” Eddie pointed a skinny index finger at the driver’s window that bore a baseball-sized hole, while shards of glass littered the trailer. “A guy from the insurance company was just here looking it over, too.” Eddie looked around as though the man might still be close by. “Guess he left. No, that’s his Explorer over there.” He pointed toward the back of the lot. Rhetta followed his gaze. A man opened the driver’s door and slipped inside.
Rhetta said, “I don’t know who that might be. I thought I knew all of our adjusters.” She turned her attention back to Al-Serafi’s car.
Eddie worked on the driver’s side door, which was closest to them. It took a few minutes before he successfully tugged it open. “I’ll leave you to it.” He leapt off the trailer and rejoined Woody, leaving Rhetta to snoop alone. She kicked aside the glass pieces since she didn’t want to wind up wearing one inside her sandal. She turned her attention to the inside of the car.
A grey, putrid-smelling slime covered the interior dash, steering wheel, and all of the front floor carpeting. Rhetta wrinkled her nose. She noticed a similar coating along the outer edge of the front seat. Tilting her head sideways, she estimated that if the car was nose down, how high the water must have been. There was nothing, not even mud, in the back seat. Even after surviving a dunking in the channel, the back seat was cleaner than in most cars. Not a scrap of anything lay on the seat or on the floor.
Rhetta’s eyes swept the interior once more. Beside the broken window, there was nothing significant in or about the car. She didn’t know what she thought she’d find, but she was disappointed that her search produced nothing.
Glancing back at Woody and Eddie, who were engrossed in deep conversation, Rhetta closed the door, stepped carefully through the broken glass to cross the front of the car to the passenger side front door. Her destination was the glove box.
The door refused to budge due to mud as hard as concrete clogging the hinges. Rather than call for Eddie to help, she returned to the driver’s side. This time she was able to tug the door open herself. Then she stretched across the interior to pop open the glove box. The soft click went unnoticed by the two men engrossed in conversation. She glanced down at the swipe of dirt that had leapt on to her blouse from the steering wheel.
The smell from the dried slime in the glove box made Rhetta turn her head aside. She wiped the back of her hand across her nostrils in an attempt to dislodge the foul odor. When she looked back inside, she found a small stack of mud-soaked papers. Under the stack was a sealed plastic bag, containing the owner’s manual. Why would the owner’s manual be sealed in a bag? She removed the bag and pried open the plastic zipper.
Using her thumb, she fanned the pages of the owner’s manual. Deciding there was nothing interesting or unusual about the booklet, she began to reinsert it into the plastic bag. A sheet of loose paper the same size as the book’s pages escaped from the owner’s manual and floated to the seat. Covered with undecipherable scrawls, the sheet was decidedly different from the handbook pages. She snatched the sheet and then folded it while glancing surreptitiously at the men. Seeing that they weren’t paying any attention to her, she quickly pocketed her prize.
After coaxing the glove box closed, she slammed the driver door shut. The only way down was the way she’d come up. She stepped gingerly onto the chair, and then hopped to the ground, hoping to keep her shoes out of the dust. She turned her ankle and nearly fell. Did anyone see her? There went her pedicure. Along with having messed-up toenail polish, mud had splattered the back of her pants leg.
Eddie and Woody were discussing the merits of refinancing Eddie’s house when Rhetta, acting as if nothing had happened, strolled up to them. She was still brushing smudges off her pants.
“Sounds good, Woody.” Eddie shook Woody’s hand. “I’ll stop by after work tomorrow to get started.”
“Are you ready to go now?” Woody asked. He looked pointedly at her shirt then at her splotched pants leg, raising an eyebrow. Following his gaze to her shirttail, she rubbed the dots of mud spatter that decorated it.
“Yep, let’s hit it.” She veered toward Cami. Eddie had already disappeared inside the office. “Let’s go, nothing left to see,” said Rhetta, swiping at the mud on her shirt one last time before scrambling in and closing the door. Woody climbed in and reached for his seat belt.
“You look like the dog that swallowed the canary,” Woody commented while Rhetta shifted into second, pulled out onto Highway 177, then shifted twice more. The speedometer tattled on her, the needle pointing to 65. She eased back to the speed limit of 55.
“Cat,” she said, peering in the rear-view mirror, grateful that there were no blue lights flashing on top of the police car that had pulled up right behind her.
“What?”
“It was a cat, not a dog that swallowed the canary.” Rhetta favored him with a fleeting sideways glance.
“Whatever. What did you find?”
“What do you mean?”
“I know that look all too well. Tell me what you found.”
She stretched out her left leg to withdraw the folded paper from her pants pocket and handed it to him.
He whistled. “Should you have taken that?” He reached for the paper, shaking his head in mock disapproval.
“Hey, you heard Eddie. The adjuster will probably have the car hauled away at any time. Why shouldn’t we take this one lone piece of paper?”
“We? I didn’t take anything.” Woody arched an eyebrow. “Where did you find this?”
“It fell out of the owner’s manual.”
“Fell out?”
“Sure.”
“Where was the owner’s manual?”
“In the glove box. I found it.”
He raised both eyebrows. “Just happened to find it?”
“The whole front seat area was full of mud, but the back seat was spotless. There wasn’t a scrap of anything personal lying around either in the front or the back. All I found was the owner’s manual in the glove box, and this strange paper fell out. I didn’t even find the insurance or registration papers. Isn’t that odd?”
Before he could answer, Rhetta, who had slowed down to approach the one lane bridge on 177, slammed on the brakes. A green SUV sped around them. “Holy crap,” Rhetta shouted as she hit the accelerator and swerved hard to the right. “That guy nearly hit us!” A glance in her rearview mirror told her that, of course, the police car was no longer behind her. “Where are cops when you need them?”
The Camaro rested precariously on the remnants of the shoulder of the bridge approach.
“A few seconds later and we would’ve been on the bridge! We could have been forced to hit the side of the bridge.”
She jumped out to inspect her car and shake her fist at the departing SUV as it disappeared down 177.
CHAPTER 5
Ten minutes later, after her tirade at the offending driver had subsided and they were downtown, Rhetta remembered the piece of paper. She slid Cami into a quick left on to Spanish Street. “Let’s stop at Dockside and get lunch. I can’t wait to look at this.”
After making two tours around the block, Rhetta settled for a parking place in the courthouse parking lot two blocks away from The Dockside Diner. She jogged down the hill to the restaurant, while Woody ambled alongside her. By the time Woody pushed open the heavy wooden door, he was pulling out a clean handkerchief from a back pocket to mop his brow.
Hungry patrons, eager for a speedy lunch, packed the popular eatery.
The din of clattering dishes along with numerous conversations made the prospect of quiet conversation bleak. Most of the customers were courthouse employees on their lunch break. Rhetta and Woody lucked into a table for two in a quieter area near the back door.
Woody ordered a half-pound Dockside Burger and double fries. The service was fast. Within minutes, the server arrived balancing their steaming plates, along with several others, down the length of her left arm.
The thick burger looked delicious and smelled even better. Rhetta’s stomach growled. The breakfast shake that she’d gulped after her morning run had dissolved by ten o’clock. Her passion for running increased after she turned forty, as did her determination to stay in shape. Although her weight hadn’t varied much from when she’d graduated from Southeast Missouri State University, she was convinced that certain parts of her anatomy were beginning to shift and relocate, mostly south, to her butt.
She dipped her fork into the ranch dressing that, at her request, the server had poured into a small bowl alongside her plate of grilled chicken salad, then stabbed at a chunk of lettuce. After each bite, she repeated the dunking procedure.
“Why don’t you pour the dressing over your salad?” Woody wiped at his beard, which had trapped a generous dollop of burger juice.
Rhetta glanced up, interrupting a forkful of salad on its way to her mouth. “By dipping your fork into the dressing, you don’t actually consume much dressing. You still get the taste with half the calories.” Her mouth closed over a chunk of iceberg lettuce.
Woody cut a glance her way. “Want some fries?” He slid the plate across the table, tormenting her with the delicious smelling, thick-sliced fries. She glared at him.
Rhetta dabbed her lips with a napkin after her last bite of salad, then pushed the empty bowl aside. She unfolded the mysterious paper and flattened it on the table where the bowl had been. She twisted her neck first one way, then the other, and turned the paper around several times. Each turn of the paper generated another neck twist.
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