“I’m here about my brother,” Wanda Nell said. “Rusty. You were just talking about him to me the other day.”
“What about him?” Bert said. “I think I said all I needed to say then.” He opened a box on his desk and extracted a large, dark cigar. He snipped off the end, stuck the cigar in his mouth, then lit it with a gold lighter. Expelling a cloud of fragrant smoke, he said, “I hope you don’t mind me smoking.”
“No,” Wanda Nell said. “Smoke doesn’t bother me. And it’s your office.”
Bert regarded her through the haze he was creating. “So what about your brother?”
“He’s disappeared, so things are a little different now,” Wanda Nell said. She watched Bert carefully for his reaction. His eyes tightened briefly, but he gave no other sign that the news affected him.
Bert exhaled more smoke. “What do you mean, disappeared? You mean he went back to Nashville or wherever it was?”
“No, I don’t think he went back to Nashville,” Wanda Nell said. “He was on his way back from the sheriff’s department last night, and he just disappeared. They found his truck on the side of the road and no sign of him.”
“And why do you think this has anything to do with me?”
“Oh, come on, Bert,” Wanda Nell said. “You were talking to him just the other day. I saw you leaving the trailer park.”
Bert took the cigar out of his mouth and regarded the ash on the tip. He continued to study the cigar as he spoke. “Now that you mention it, I do recall talking to Rusty. What about it?”
“Y’all were arguing about something, not just talking," Wanda Nell said, “and I can’t help but wonder if what y’all were arguing about has something to do with him disappearing.”
Bert sat and puffed on the cigar for at least a minute before he answered. “Rusty and me were just talking over old times, Wanda Nell. Nothing special about that. We disagreed on something, that’s all. Nothing important.” He shifted in his chair. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have some work to do.”
“I do mind, Bert,” Wanda Nell said, her voice taking on an edge. “I don’t know whether you know it, but somebody murdered Reggie Campbell.” She could see that he already knew. “And now with Rusty disappearing, I think something strange is going on.”
“Maybe Rusty did it, and he’s run off,” Bert said. “Did you ever think about that?” He tapped the ash from his cigar into an ornate crystal ashtray on the corner of his desk.
“He could’ve,” Wanda Nell said. “But I don’t think my brother’s a killer. I think maybe somebody kidnapped my brother, but I don’t know why. I want to know what you know about it.”
“Why should I know anything?”
“If you don’t, why were you hollering at Rusty?” Wanda Nell said. “Near as I can recall, you said something like, ‘I’ll see you in hell first, you bastard.’ ” She paused. “What was it Rusty wanted from you?”
Bert’s face paled, but he remained impassive, exhaling smoke. “I don’t really have anything to say to you, Wanda Nell. I think you’d better get on and let me get to work.”
“Well, Bert, you can either talk to me, or you can talk to the sheriff’s department,” Wanda Nell said. “What’s it going to be?”
Bert stared hard at her for a moment, his eyes glittering with hatred. He put his cigar in the ashtray and leaned back in his chair. “I’ve been thinking about that policy you’re carrying on your trailer, Wanda Nell. I’m not sure it’s really enough, you know? I mean, if something was to happen to it, I don’t think your insurance would be near enough. Maybe we should be thinking about more insurance.”
Wanda Nell didn’t back down from the thinly veiled threat. “I don’t think anything’s going to be happening to my trailer anytime soon, Bert. But if it does, insurance is going to be the least of my worries, and yours. You understand me?”
Sticking the cigar back in his mouth, Bert remained silent.
“Have it your way,” Wanda Nell said, standing up. “You know something, and sooner or later it’s going to come out. You’d better think about that, and what’s going to happen to you when it does.”
She left the office, resisting the temptation to slam the door behind her. She couldn’t believe the bastard was threatening her.
“Everything okay?” Karen Marter asked.
Wanda Nell hadn’t been paying any attention to the secretary, she was so intent on just getting out of Bert Vines’s office. She paused for a moment and took a deep breath. “I’m okay,” she said. “I’ll be seeing you. I’ve got a lot to do today.”
She waved good-bye to Karen and didn’t wait for a response.
Climbing into her car, she sat in it for a moment, staring blankly into space. “Guess I’d better think about getting a new insurance agent,” she confided to herself in the rearview mirror.
She backed out of the parking space and nosed her car onto the highway. Had she made a real mess of things by confronting Bert? Probably, she thought. But she wasn’t going to stop now. Bert knew something for sure, and by rattling his cage, maybe she could get some results.
Now, though, she had another cage to rattle. Tullahoma High School was only a five-minute drive from Bert Vines’s insurance office. Wanda Nell parked in a space marked for visitors, locked her car, then walked up the steps to the main entrance.
Inside, she went immediately to the office and stood waiting for nearly five minutes until the school receptionist finished what was obviously a personal phone call.
“Can I help you?” The woman stared at Wanda Nell in an unfriendly fashion. Wanda Nell remembered her from a confrontation they’d had back in the spring, and it appeared the woman remembered her, too.
“I need to see Coach Simpson, if he’s available,” Wanda Nell said, keeping her tone polite. “It’s urgent.”
Lips pressed together in a firm line, the receptionist didn’t respond for a moment. “Let me see if he’s in class right now,” she said grudgingly.
“Thank you,” Wanda Nell said. “I’d appreciate that.”
The woman turned back to her computer, punched a few keys, then studied the screen. “You’re in luck,” she said, though it was obvious she was disappointed. “Coach Simpson has a free period right now.”
“Where do you think I can find him?”
The woman shrugged. “Probably in his office in the fieldhouse,” she said. “You know where that is?”
Wanda Nell nodded.
“Hold on,” the receptionist said as Wanda Nell turned away. “You need a pass, or else the security guard might throw you off campus.”
She handed Wanda Nell a laminated card with a small clamp attached, and Wanda Nell affixed it to her blouse. The word visitor was clearly visible.
“Just bring it back here when you’re ready to leave,” the receptionist instructed. Wanda Nell nodded.
The shortest way to the fieldhouse took Wanda Nell through the high school’s main building. The halls were empty of people, and Wanda Nell hurried down the hall, the rubber soles of her shoes squeaking occasionally on the highly polished linoleum.
She came out the back end of the building and blinked at the bright sunshine. Shielding her eyes with her hand, she looked across an open space toward the fieldhouse about fifty yards away.
She ignored the sidewalk connecting the two buildings and instead walked through the grass in a more direct route to the front door of the fieldhouse. Stepping inside, she noticed the faint odor of stale sweat at once.
The door to the coach’s office, a few feet down the hall, was closed. As Wanda Nell stepped closer to it, she could hear odd scuffling sounds coming from within. Peering through the inset opaque pane, she could see only blurs on the other side. She rapped on the door and called out, “Coach Simpson.” She tried turning the knob, but the door was locked.
The scuffling sounds stopped abruptly. After a moment, a voice called out, “Just a minute.”
Wanda Nell had a very good idea what had been going on in the co
ach’s office, and it was confirmed a couple of minutes later when the lock snicked open and the door swept inwards abruptly.
A beautiful blonde girl—seventeen or eighteen, Wanda Nell judged—pushed her way out. Wanda Nell moved aside, noting the girl’s red cheeks and slightly disheveled hair.
“Good morning, Coach Simpson,” Wanda Nell said, moving into the office.
Scott Simpson, once the star quarterback at Tullahoma High School, and afterwards an All-American at Mississippi State, stood behind his desk. His face was slightly red, and one hand raked over the short black hair on his head. He had put on quite a bit of weight since his glory days, Wanda Nell observed, but he was still pretty good looking. Certainly good looking enough to turn the head of a girl who was dumb enough to take up with a forty-year-old teacher.
“I’m not sure if you remember me,” Wanda Nell continued when Simpson failed to respond to her greeting, “but we went to school here together. I think you were a year behind me, though.”
“You married Bobby Ray Culpepper, didn’t you?” Simpson’s voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat. “Wanda Nell, right?”
“That’s right,” Wanda Nell said, advancing further into the office.
“I can’t talk long,” Simpson said. “I’ve got another student due in any minute for another counseling session. What can I do for you?”
Wanda Nell just looked at him a moment. Surely he didn’t think she was going to buy that baloney about a counseling session. As she stared at him, he flushed beet red. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a can of tobacco. Opening it, he pinched some between his fingers and thrust the stuff into his mouth.
Wanda Nell didn’t comment as he put the tobacco into his pocket again. She thought it was a disgusting habit, but she wasn’t here to talk to him about that, either. But she was glad she had a little leverage with him, because of the little scenario she had interrupted.
She sat down in one of the chairs in front of his desk, and after a brief hesitation, Simpson also sat down. He stared uneasily at her, working the tobacco in his mouth.
“If you remember who I am,” Wanda Nell said, “then you probably remember my brother, too. Rusty Rosamond.” She watched his face.
He paled a little, but didn’t respond for a moment. “Yeah, I think I remember him. Skinny little red-headed kid, right?”
Wanda Nell nodded. “That’s him.”
“What’s he doing these days?” Simpson tried to look as if he really cared about the answer.
Smiling, Wanda Nell said, “You mean he didn’t bring you up to date the other day when he was here?”
Now Simpson really went pale. He reached for a Styrofoam cup sitting on his desk and spit into it. He set the cup down again. “What do you mean?”
“I know he came to see you,” Wanda Nell said. “I just don’t know what it was he wanted from you.”
“If he did come here, and I ain’t saying he did,” Simpson said, trying to remain impassive, “I don’t see where it’s any business of yours.”
“It is my business,” Wanda Nell said, “because he’s my brother and he’s disappeared. I think somebody kidnapped him, and I want to know why.”
Simpson couldn’t hide the shock that her words gave him. He swallowed convulsively, and for a moment, Wanda Nell thought he had downed his tobacco. He was looking a little green around the gills.
“Kidnapped? Are you serious?”
Wanda Nell nodded. Simpson’s eyes strayed to the telephone.
“And I’m sure you heard about Reggie Campbell’s murder.”
“Yeah,” Simpson said. “But it ain’t got nothing to do with me.”
“It strikes me as kinda odd,” Wanda Nell said, her voice neutral, “Reggie Campbell being murdered, and then my brother disappearing like that. Now, I know my brother didn’t kill anybody, so maybe whoever killed Reggie is worried about what my brother knows about it. After all, he was talking to Reggie, and he was talking to you.” She leaned forward. “Now I just want to know what about.”
Simpson stared at her like she was a snake about to strike. He licked his lips, obviously searching for some kind of response. He might have been a quarterback and a star athlete, Wanda Nell thought, but he didn’t have brains for much besides football. That much she remembered about him.
While she was waiting for an answer, Wanda Nell let her eyes wander around the room for a moment. They fell on the shallow wastebasket at the side of Simpson’s desk near where she sat. As she noted the contents, she smiled grimly.
Suddenly she bent forward and grabbed the wastebasket. She made a show of peering down into it. “My goodness,” she said in mock horror, her nose wrinkling in disgust, “how on earth did this get into your trash can?”
There was no way she was going to touch it and dangle it in front of Simpson, but he surely knew what she was talking about. For a moment, Wanda Nell thought he was going to faint.
He made a sudden move, reaching for the wastebasket, but Wanda Nell pulled it back out of his reach.
“I bet the principal would just love to know what his students are getting up to,” Wanda Nell said.
Simpson made another move for the wastebasket, but once again Wanda Nell held it out of reach. “I wouldn’t keep doing that if I was you,” she advised him sweetly. “I’d hate to have to go to the principal and tell him one of his teachers was attacking me. Then the whole story would have to come out, wouldn’t it?”
Simpson swore at her, and Wanda Nell was tempted to get up and march straight for the principal’s office, wastebasket in hand. But she sat still and waited for him to shut up.
“Now, you listen here,” she said when he fell silent, “that girl’s probably over sixteen, so it wouldn’t be statutory rape, but you’d still be in a hell of a mess if somebody finds out what you’re doing here. Am I right?”
Simpson nodded, his eyes wary.
“I think it’s disgusting,” Wanda Nell continued, “but right now I’m more worried about my brother. You tell me what you know, and I won’t say anything about this.” She held up the wastebasket again. “But you damn well better stop it, or you’re going to be a in a whole heap of trouble.”
“What do you want to know?” Simpson asked. If he could have come over that desk and strangled her with his bare hands, he would have. Wanda Nell could see it in his face. Though he frightened her, she made an effort to appear unfazed.
“I want to know what you and Rusty were arguing about.”
Simpson shifted in his chair. He picked up his cup again and spit into it. Holding the cup, he stared down into it. “Just some old business, something that happened a long time ago.”
“What was it?” Wanda Nell demanded, losing patience.
“I can’t tell you,” Simpson said stubbornly. “I don’t care what you say, I’m not going to tell you.”
“I know it’s something involving you and Bert Vines and probably Reggie Campbell.” Wanda Nell thought it was worth a try.
Simpson stiffened perceptibly. “Maybe you’re right,” he said after a brief, strained pause. “But I can’t tell you anything, no matter what you do.”
She’d thought she had enough leverage to make him talk, but it wasn’t working. He was obviously more afraid of whoever he was protecting than he was of her.
Who could it be? Surely not Bert Vines?
Why would he be afraid of Bert?
Because Bert had killed Reggie Campbell?
“I don’t know who it is you’re trying to protect,” Wanda Nell said at last. “But I can promise you this, if something happens to my brother because of all this, I’ll talk to whoever I have to talk to. You’re not going to get away with it, one way or another.”
Simpson sat stone-faced.
Suddenly it went all over Wanda Nell, and her temper hit white hot. Before she even realized what she was doing, she threw the wastebasket at Simpson’s head. He ducked, and the wastebasket clattered against the wall behind his desk. The impact disl
odged several of the pictures hanging there, and they crashed to the floor.
Simpson stood up. “I think you better get the hell out of my office.”
Wanda Nell stood up and leaned forward over his desk. She wasn’t going to let him think he intimidated her, not one bit. “Don’t you forget what I said. I don’t care who I have to talk to, even if it’s the governor himself. I’m going to find my brother, and he damn well better be okay.”
She whirled around and marched out of the office. She slammed the door behind her so hard she thought for a moment the glass would shatter. It didn’t, and Wanda Nell was half disappointed.
Her fury carried her at a rapid pace all the way back to the school office, where she tossed her visitor’s badge down on the counter. The receptionist took one look at her face and didn’t say a word.
Out on the front steps of the school, Wanda Nell stopped to catch her breath. Her chest was heaving, she was so wrought up. Slowly she descended the steps and walked to her car as she got her breathing under control.
In the car she sat for a moment, not seeing anything in front of her. Instead, she focused on an image of Scott Simpson.
He was afraid of something, or somebody. That much was clear. And it certainly wasn’t her.
Whoever, or whatever, it was, Simpson obviously feared it enough that he was even willing to let Wanda Nell expose his sexual escapade with a student rather than tell her the truth.
Her hands gripping the steering wheel to help her stop her sudden shaking, Wanda Nell closed her eyes. She was more afraid than ever that her brother was either dead or soon would be.
She had rattled a cage all right. Now that she had done it, she was beginning to realize she should have thought this all through more carefully.
Instead she had bulldozed her way into a situation where she really didn’t know very much. She had probably stirred up a real hornet’s nest now, and no telling what could happen next.
Too late now, she thought. She put her key in the ignition and cranked the car. One more stop to make, and she’d better do it now, before she lost her nerve.
Best Served Cold (A Trailer Park Mystery Book 3) Page 8
