“That would be the part.”
“It has crossed my mind more than once these past few days.”
Chapter Seven
Starnes Carver pulled her dirty Ford Escort into a parking space in front of a greasy spoon restaurant in downtown Madison, North Carolina.
“It’s not much from the outside, but the food is good and the place is clean. Is the dog okay in the car?” Starnes said.
“I’ll bribe him with grub when we come back. He’ll manage.”
“You eat here regularly?”
“Not on your life. I eat most meals at home or bring a sandwich to work. The lady that looks after my dad can’t cook a lick, so I have to fix things ahead of time just to keep some sanity and food that’s decent,” Starnes said as we walked towards the entrance.
“So how do you know about the food here?”
“Everybody else in the county eats here. And … this is where Mina Beth Cody works.”
“Oh,” I said as if I knew precisely the clue she was following up.
Sure enough the restaurant was crowded but we found a couple of bar stools together on the left side near the hallway that led to the restrooms. We edged our way in. I sat down next to a man wearing a ball cap advertising the fact that more people needed to be chewing tobacco. The sides of his mouth indicated that he was certainly helping the cause.
“You sure are tall for a woman,” he said to me without an introduction.
“Parents stretched me on a rack when I was younger. Made me what I am,” I quipped.
“Do tell. Well, I’ll be. Would that work for anybody?” he said as if he believed me.
“No. Can’t try it on just anybody. Need the manual to be sure you don’t injure the person. Lots of different brands out there. Better check with the family doctor before you buy one,” I said with a straight face.
“You sure are tall,” he repeated.
“Good genes, too.”
“How tall are you?”
“Five ten,” I said.
“Damn,” he answered. “I’m only five eight, I think.”
“You want me to move?” I asked.
This time he laughed. It takes my humor a while to get through.
“No, ma’am. It makes me feel good to have a tall, red-headed woman sitting next to me on a bar stool. We don’t get many women in here that look like you.”
“I’ll take that as compliment,” I said.
“Meant as a compliment. You got a name?”
“Are you hitting on me?”
“No ma’am. I’m a happily married fellow. Go to church, too. Just curious about your name, that’s all. Didn’t mean anything by it.”
“No offense taken. Clancy Evans’ my name,” I said and extended my hand. We shook. His four day stubble had more than just crusty tobacco juice in it. Made me wonder about that adjective he attached to married. He probably cleaned up well. For the sake of his wife, I hoped that he did.
“You finish flirting with the customers, we’ll eat something and try to talk with Mina Beth,” Starnes said to me.
“Just being friendly.”
“Sure.”
A short, cute, buxom but slightly paunchy young female waitress approached us and asked what we wanted. Her blond hair was tied back in a ponytail, her jeans were at least one size too small, and her blue oxford shirttail was out. A large name tag gave her name as Mina Beth. Starnes ordered two cheeseburgers, fries and two sweet teas.
“What time is the rush hour over with?” Starnes said to our waitress.
“Usually slows some around 1:30, sometimes earlier,” she said.
“We need to talk with you.”
“About what?” Mina Beth said.
“Abel Gosnell.”
“What about Abel Gosnell?”
“I’m trying to find him,” Starnes said.
“And who are you?”
“Acting Sheriff of the county. We need to talk.”
“Okay. I can take a break about then. We can find an empty booth or something. The place generally clears out and there’s enough quiet for us to talk.”
Mina Beth walked away to take care of Starnes’ order.
“How did you know I wanted a cheeseburger?” I said.
“I didn’t.”
“What if I told you that I don’t eat cheeseburgers?”
“Then you’d better get her back over here and order something else,” Starnes said.
“I’ll stick with the cheeseburgers. Any reason why you ordered cheeseburgers?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Well?”
“I like cheeseburgers.”
“What about regular hamburgers?”
“Nope. Has to be cheeseburgers.”
“Why’s that?” I said.
“It takes the cheese to mask the taste of the hamburger.”
“I thought you said the food was good.”
“It is, if you eat the cheeseburgers.”
We took our time eating our cheeseburgers and fries. The sweet tea was really good. It was a few minutes after one and the crowd was beginning to thin out. My new best friend with the tobacco juice in his stubble finally left after telling me what an honor it was to eat next to me. I think I made his day. It’s about time a man noticed me. Just the luck of the draw that I get the one with dirty beard, yellowing teeth, tobacco juice stains, and married. It was easy for me to conclude that the single life is a good way to live.
Starnes and I moved from our bar stools to a corner booth next to an antiquated juke box. We took our tea with us. We waited on Mina Beth.
“This thing still work?” I asked as I was studying the juke box.
Starnes got up, put a quarter in a slot, punched two buttons and the music started almost immediately as if the juke box knew exactly what she was going to select. Merle Haggard began singing Today I Started Loving You Again. I knew then it was an old juke box.
“You think they ever changed the records?”
“Why would they want to?” she asked.
I smiled and sipped some tea through the straw. Starnes Carver was the genuine article.
Mina Beth joined us finally. She was drinking coffee when she sat down in our booth.
“I waited on him two hours that Friday night. When he didn’t show, I called him on his cell, but there was no answer. I called his house and his daddy told me that he had left several hours earlier. It just wasn’t like him to not let me know where he was.”
“Then you called me later that night,” Starnes said.
“Yes, ma’am. I reckon I did. I called the Sheriff’s Office and talked with some woman. So that was you. Well. I was worried about him.”
“And you have heard nothing since?”
“Nothing,” Mina Beth said.
“Where was he supposed to be going before meeting with you?”
“He told me earlier in the day that he had to get by the feed store before they closed at 5. Said he had to pick up some feed for the sheep. I don’t understand all that farming stuff that he does, so I can’t help you very much with that.”
“No problem,” Starnes said. “I don’t understand that farming stuff myself. We’ll check out some things and call you if we find something.”
“Thank you for looking. You know of course that he could be anywhere.”
“Anywhere?”
“I mean in these mountains. Lots of places to hide a person,” she said.
As she walked away, I wondered about her last statement.
“You think she misspoke?” I said.
“Misspoke?”
“I thought she should have said there are lots of places for a person to hide. Instead she said there are lots of places to hide a person.”
“You always nitpick like that in your investigations?” Starnes said.
“I’m a careful listener. It matters to me what people say … how they answer the questions I ask. And how they say what they say.”
“Well,” Starnes said, “I
think she believes something bad has happened to her boyfriend and that whoever did it to him has a lot of mountainous terrain to dispose of the body.”
“That’s possible, too,” I said and finished my sweet tea.
Chapter Eight
I followed Starnes into the Madison Feed Company on Main Street after I had given Sam two cheese hamburgers and a bowl of water. It could be that I spoil the dog too much. Still, I felt as if he deserved some reward for keeping Bolt at bay earlier that morning as well as waiting so patiently on us without murmuring. It’s not fun to listen to a dog murmur.
“You’re the new sheriff,” a friendly voice said to Starnes as we approached the counter in the feed store. The man behind the counter was balding, middle-aged, and trim with a graying mustache. There was no tobacco juice stain in his mustache or on the sides of his mouth. Hope.
“That’s what people call me,” Starnes said.
“Is this your deputy?” a man sitting in a lawn chair in front of a pot-bellied stove spoke this time. He was also a slightly built man and was wearing a ball cap, bib overalls and old, dirty boots. The boots looked as if the last time they saw any polish was back when Hoover was president. This one had no facial hair and no gray showing. He just looked old and beat up.
“No, just a friend helping me out.”
“You’re tall enough,” the lawn chair man said to me.
“Actually I’m from a county where most people are seven to eight feet tall. I’m one of the shorter ones in the group,” I said.
He was overwhelmed. Speechless. He scratched his head, looked at me sideways, tugged a little on his cap, and decided he had had enough of the conversation.
“I need to know if you saw Abel Gosnell in your store a week ago last Friday. It was a just before you closed, I’m thinking,” Starnes said.
“Yeah, I do seem to recall him coming in here. Bought a whole mess of supplies for his sheep. Yeah, big order and all. Right at closing time. Hadn’t a’been for the size of his order, I would have been upset him waiting till closing to come. Comes in a lot, you know. He still missing?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe he took off and went up north somewhere,” the lawn chair man spoke again.
“And why would he do that?” I said.
“Looking for that group of tall women you wuz talkin’ about a moment ago,” he slapped his knee and laughed. Good to know some folks have a sense of humor.
“You remember anything else about his coming in here that day?” Starnes asked the clerk.
“Nothing comes to mind. Sorry I can’t be of more help.”
“Thanks,” she said, “if you remember anything else, give me a call.”
As we were walking out of the store, I turned and waved at the lawn chair man with the dirty boots. He didn’t wave back. Probably lost his humor as I was leaving him.
We got into her Escort and headed out of town going east towards Weaverville.
“Where are we going?”
“If he bought all those supplies for the sheep, that means he had to be driving a truck or pulling a trailer with all those supplies he bought. Somebody had to see him,” Starnes said.
“And why are we traveling in this direction?” I said.
“Gotta travel in some direction.”
“No particular reason, huh?”
“Hunch.”
“But you’re a scientist and given to evidence, tangible evidence.”
“Sheriffs have to play some hunches.”
“Do you know what he was driving?”
“Adam told me that Abel had one of those small Chevy trucks. White. Been around for a while, you know, beat up and dirty. Sheep farming isn’t the cleanest profession in the world.”
“So, we’re looking for a small, white truck with lots of supplies in it,” I repeated.
“For starters.”
Starnes’ cell phone starting playing Darth Vader’s theme and my mind retreated thirty years.
“Starnes here… yeah…. okay… when? …. You call the wrecker yet? …. No, don’t. Who’s there? … Call him and tell him to stay out of the water and not to move an inch from the bank. I want no one touching anything. You got that? … Good. We’re on our way.”
“A lead, I presume,” I said.
“Bet your sweet life. It’s about time something happened in this case. Someone spotted a white truck in one of the branches off the French Broad River. Might be the vehicle that belongs to Abel Gosnell.”
“We can hope.”
We turned off Hwy. 25/70 and headed towards the French Broad River. Twenty minutes later we arrived at the Break Rock Fork where the French Broad is fed by several smaller creeks. One of Starnes’ deputies was already on the scene, along with two or three other men staring out into the creek where a white truck had nosed dived into the water. The creek was too small for the truck to float down it, so the truck was simply sitting there looking very much out of place.
I let Sam loose so he could nose around and sniff out anything that might elude the two footed animals canvassing the scene.
“He won’t mess with my crime scene will he?” Starnes said to me.
Norfolk or McAdams County, it made no difference to Starnes Carver. A crime scene was a crime scene and evidence was to be found in, on, and around it. One of the more thorough of the CSI’s in the Norfolk department as well as the head of the unit, Starnes’ reputation was spotless because she took no prisoners and made everyone conform to her standards. She didn’t have many friends either, but that was another matter. Miss Personality was all business with evidence gathering.
“He knows better.”
“I will hold you to that,” she said as she walked briskly toward the deputy and the others standing on the bank.
“You find where the truck went into the water?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the young deputy said. His name was Walt Stanton and he stood about six feet four inches, weighing in at something over two hundred and sixty pounds. I was guessing, but since he was a large man, I knew I was close in my estimation. Starnes had told me that he was not to be messed with, or at least that’s what the elected sheriff had told her. Starnes had gone by the hospital several times to get the lay of the land in regards to the staff that Sheriff Buster Murdock had put together the past three years. But Walt was a daisy. Whatever Starnes said, Walt obliged and quickly. After Walt had been given the order from Starnes by way of the dispatcher, he had made sure that no one moved an inch closer to the whole area where the truck was resting peacefully in the middle of the stream.
“See those tire tracks over there,” Walt pointed to an area about one hundred feet from our present position. The tracks angled off the paved road onto the soft shoulder and disappeared below the embankment. Judging from the distance from the shoulder to where the truck landed in the stream, my guess was that the vehicle was traveling at something over sixty miles per hour. It obviously cleared the embankment and sailed out into stream landing close to the middle. It was a narrow stream, about twenty-five feet wide. Looking back at the approach of the road down to this point, I made a quick assessment. The truck was traveling much too fast for the curve as well as for the proximity of the river. But then, I’m a tad more cautious as a driver than some.
Starnes walked close to the tracks and knelt down. She studied the ground carefully, then turned and told Walt to call the office and have Benjamin bring the mud kit. She called it the mud kit, but in reality it was the casting kit for creating molds of the impressions embedded in the soil from footprints, tire tracks, or anything else that created a noticeable indention.
After several minutes of close scrutiny, Starnes walked back to the Escort where I had not moved from my sacred spot near Starnes’ crime scene. She opened the door of the car, sat down sideways with her feet on the ground, and proceeded to remove her boots. Leaving her socks on, she rolled up her pants’ legs and told Walt to join her in the water. I was thankful she had not invited me to come along on
her watery expedition. I was dreading the cold more than the wet.
“Watch out for the slippery rocks,” I called to her as she descended the side of the bank next to the creek directly in line with the white truck. Walt ran down the side bank to catch up with Starnes. He was barefooted. I shivered.
The small crowd watched as the two of them waded into the creek and edged their way slowly to the cab of the truck. Starnes was careful where she touched the vehicle and I could hear her telling Walt to watch where he put his hands. I couldn’t hear everything that Starnes was saying to him, but I figured that he would be the one to eventually dust the vehicle for prints as well as carefully check everything he could before the vehicle was removed from the creek bed.
They stayed in that cold water for what seemed to me to be entirely too long. I got cold just watching. They finally turned and headed back towards our little party on the bank. As they neared the edge, Walt slipped and fell into the stream. Starnes turned, did not laugh, and reached back to give him a hand. Starnes extended her left hand to the man sitting on his bottom in the cold water. At first Walt graciously refused, thinking no doubt the same thing I was thinking. There is no way in this lifetime that Starnes Carver could help a 260 pound man out of a stream bed with him sitting on his butt.
I was wrong, so was everyone else watching the scene thinking that way. The men standing around talking and smiling and gesturing at the scene in the water suddenly stopped when Starnes helped Walt come up out of the water. After Walt had smiled and waved off her offer to help, he had fallen down two more times because of the slippery rocks beneath him. He finally took her hand and she pulled him up from his wet seat. Not a one of us believed our eyes. Pint-size Starnes Carver had just helped a gentle giant of a man. I had a similar feeling several years ago when my Uncle Walters demonstrated for me the artificial intelligence he had built into a test computer. The first time the computer spoke to me was that feeling we were all feeling on that riverbank at the moment Starnes Carver pulled Walt Stanton out of the water. You’ve got to be kidding me.
Back at the Escort, Starnes opened her trunk, took out a towel and a fresh pair of socks and dried her feet quickly. I noted that she put the socks on in a hurry. Human after all. As I was waiting on Starnes’ next move, Sam came up with a empty bottle of Old South Whiskey in his mouth. I knew that Sam did not collect bottles nor imbibe. Being the astute detective I try to be, I suspected he had found something significant. Perchance a clue.
When Blood Cries: A Clancy Evans Mystery (Clancy Evans PI Book 6) Page 4
