Finding Sheila

by Anne Hagan

  “And who are they?”

  “You keep asking me that. I don’t know. I really don’t. They call or they text and they tell us what to do. If we want paid, we do it.”

  “Can I see your phone?” Yvonne asked him.

  He dug it out of his pocket and handed it to her, saying, “It won’t do you any good. They change our phones out all the time.”

  Yvonne shot Dana an ‘I told you so’ look. She asked Theo, “So you were just doing what you were told that day?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember what you were supposed to do that day?”

  He thought about it for several seconds. “Go on a long run, I think. Take somebody to Ohio. Me and Caleb.”

  “And do you know what happened that day?” Dana asked.

  “Only what Caleb told me. I wasn’t there. For some reason, they didn’t want me there. I don’t know why.”

  He sounded sincere. Dana looked at Yvonne but Yvonne was watching Theo.

  “Theo,” Dana asked him, “what does the name Sheila Ford mean to you?”

  His eyes darted toward her but he said nothing, shaking his head instead slowly at first and then violently.

  Dana shoved the water pitcher at him as he began to retch.

  Both women got up and stepped away while he puked into the pitcher. When he was finished, Yvonne held her nose and went to empty it down the toilet. She returned with a cold, wet wash cloth and wiped down Theo’s face. “Better?” she asked him.

  “Yes. My mom used to do that, when I was little.”

  “I’m not your mom, Theo. I can be a real nightmare for you though if you don’t start giving us some real answers.”

  “I’ve told you everything I know. My job was to help find real victims sometimes from accidents we responded to. People that were maybe not hurt to bad who we could refer to…to certain lawyers. Sometimes the victims got a lot of insurance money. Sometimes, when an accident claim went into the court system, they got a real good cut and sometimes, with the people that weren’t as…weren’t as smart, they only got a fraction of what was awarded. They were scammed too. Everybody was scammed. That’s all I know, I swear.”

  “I think he knows more,” Yvonne told Dana, after they tucked Lundquist into a police cruiser and watched it drive away.

  “About Sheila Ford?”

  “Maybe, maybe not about that. But, he certainly knows more than he’s actually saying as evidenced by him knowing about the awards. I’m going to follow him in to the station. Might be a while before he sobers up enough to realize the depth of crap he’s in. Then I’ll hit him again. If he cooperates, I’ll see that he gets a light sentence. You coming too?”

  “I don’t think so. None of what he said really helps me. I think Caleb was the only tangible tie to my investigation, and now he’s gone. It’s been a long week down here. I think I’m going to take myself out of your investigation, catch a few hours of sleep and head home.

  2:50 AM, Friday, November 27th

  When she got in, Dana called Mel and told her about Yvonne and what they’d spent Thanksgiving night doing. “I was right about the scam babe, we shook Theo down and he cracked, but I’m pretty sure he can’t lead us to Sheila. I think he’s a small cog in a great big scam, given how long Yvonne has been working leads in this case. She’s been all over the state of Tennessee, chasing this ring around and even some into Kentucky.”

  “What did you just say?” Mel asked.

  “I said, she’s been all over Tennessee and Kentucky over this stuff.”

  “Dana, ‘All roads lead to Tennessee’. That’s what Tyrell Bragg said.”

  “Who?”

  “Sheila Ford’s cousin that’s here in Ohio. He said, ‘All roads lead to Tennessee.’ He said Terry was a layabout and a schemer. Maybe he was tied into all of that, at one time or even up until he died. He sure went to Tennessee a lot. Maybe not always because he was a cheating ass of a husband.” She squinted at the bedside clock. “Pardon my 3:00 AM crankiness.”

  “I’m sorry about calling so late. I needed to talk to someone about this stuff.”

  “It’s okay. I’d do the same to you.”

  “You have. Anyway, Terry was in Ohio for twenty some years, Mel, not down here.”

  “And you just said that fraud investigator has been up into Kentucky following leads too. What if it’s even bigger than that?” Wheels start turning in Mel’s mind. “I know I said I wanted you to come home when we talked this morning, but maybe we’re being too hasty. Maybe Terry was in all of that, and maybe Sheila got mixed up in it too. Hell, that Nix woman you talked about and the other one too.”

  “Cherryman?”

  “Yeah, her. Everybody.”

  “I suppose. Yvonne thinks the fraud ring is huge.”

  “What does Yvonne know about the Fords? Did she mention them at all?”

  “No…no. She has a lot of names, but not of the people ultimately calling the shots. She’s got the people signing off on the cases, pushing the cases through the courts, that sort of thing.”

  “You don’t have to…Heaven knows I’m probably going to regret saying this, but maybe you should stay in Tennessee a while longer. Look into the Ford family a bit and see if they have any ties to the fraud ring.”

  ###

  When Mel hung up, she scrubbed her face with her hands. It’s been all dead ends on this end. If Dana doesn’t find Sheila, I might as well turn in my badge. Hell…I may turn it in anyway.

  Chapter 26 - Ford Family Tree

  When Dana hung up, she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She booted up her laptop and started to research the Ford family. At 6:00 AM, exhausted, she finally crawled between the sheets, but by nine she was up again to do some more serious poking around.

  Online, she found article after article about accidents and jury awards in rings, blanketing the state of Tennessee. Activity was heavy in Nashville, Knoxville and Memphis, the larger cities, but it was everywhere. Some involved Fords, most did not. Could Yvonne not be seeing all of this because there’s so much to focus on in Nashville? Or, could it all be legit?

  She accessed birth records and started to chase the Ford family tree. She began to cross reference last names against accident reports, court cases and on and on. She was at it for several hours. All the work led her to Avery Nix, of all people. Sheila Ford had shared a prison cell with one of Terry’s cousins. A second cousin.

  That single revelation galvanized Dana into action. She swept through her hotel room sweep her belongings up and tossing them into her suitcase. She checked out in a frenzy, tossed everything in her rental car and hightailed it east toward the Smokies and the small town of Maryville, Tennessee, as close to a ‘big city’ as could be had near the Ford family home base in tiny Townsend, Tennessee.

  At the Maryville library, she started researching local record archives for prominent family names. Fords came up a lot. So did Willard’s. The truck driver and his wife were named Willard, Dana thought. Agent Bennett said the truck had Virginia plates. Sheila was originally from Virginia. Mel had also told her Sheila’s maiden name was Perrott. She looked through the records for the name Perrott, but it wasn’t one in common use in the area with that spelling.

  Maybe Sheila was related to the driver’s wife. Recalling her license photo, Dana felt like there were some similarities between the two women. They did favor each other a little. Cousins, perhaps? Is there some other connection I’m not seeing?

  The library was still using some vintage technology. She stated looking at microfiche of old newspapers, before the library started to digitize them. She scanned through all sorts of stuff, scribbling more and more notes.

  A lead from a news article sent her to wait in line for one of the libraries three Internet connected computers. She pulled up her background checking database and plugged in names. After that, she started looking at property records from county auditor sites and making extensive notes until someone moved next to her and tapped her on th
e shoulder.

  Dana looked up, into the face of a no-nonsense librarian. “Time’s up. Others are waiting.” She gathered up everything and headed to her rental car where she dug her laptop out of the trunk, before settling in. She intended to sit there and partake of the library’s free WiFi service, but she changed her mind. She put the computer back in the bag and called Yvonne Gibbons instead.

  When Yvonne answered, Dana said without preamble, “You won’t believe what I’ve dug up in the last 24 hours. Are you ready for this?” She started the car and began to drive as she talked. “I was up most of the night researching, then I drove from Nashville to Maryville.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Just north of the Smokies, about an hour or so west of Gatlinburg.”

  “Why on earth did you go there?”

  “Because it’s near the home base of the Ford family.”

  “Shelia’s husband’s family?”

  “Exactly. They’re out of a tiny little town called Townsend that’s still, teeny-tiny but doubling in size every five to ten years because of all the tourism. It was once very sparsely populated. The kind of place where people lived in the hills and made do.”

  “Either lived off the land, or cheated the government with moonshine, or lived on handouts.”

  “All of those things, and it looks like they’re still cheating, but not just the government.”

  “What did you find?”

  “I’ve got evidence of Fords and extended Ford family members involved in accidents in and around the Smokies, but there are ties to the Nashville area as well, plus reaching over into North Carolina and up into the population centers of Virginia. Sheila Ford may very well have been a former player in the ring who’s now back in it, or who has joined it after being recruited in prison by her cellmate, her former husband’s second cousin.”

  “Wait, you told me she was in prison for manslaughter for killing him. This just doesn’t ring true for me. Why would they recruit her?”

  “Not for killing him! Oh, she tried. She missed. She killed his lover, a woman by he name of Patricia Dunkirk. Terry Ford did die a short time later, though. He drowned when he was out fishing and Sheila was well accounted for.”

  “And here all along, I thought she was some dangerous lunatic.”

  “You can’t make this stuff up, remember? But wait, it gets better. There was a husband and wife truck driving team at the place we stopped when Sheila disappeared. The Kentucky State Police chased them down but found nothing. Their last names are Willard but the wife’s maiden name is Perrott and they’re out of Roanoke, Virgina. Sheila Ford’s maiden name is Perrott and she’s from Norfolk, Virginia. They’re also second cousins.”

  There was dead silence on the other end of the line. “Yvonne, are you there?” Dana asked.

  “Yeah, yeah. Just trying to take it all in. So you think the Ford family is behind all of this and Sheila might be along willingly?”

  “I’m pretty sure. We really need to meet and talk about it.”

  “I’m in Nashville. Are you coming back here?”

  “I’m headed that way on I-40. Can we meet somewhere? I think the resolution to my case is back here. I don’t want to drive all the may back to Nashville to show you all of this then have to turn around and drive all the way back.”

  “Can you meet me at the Exit for Monterey? It’s a little further for you to drive but you’ve got a head start on me.”

  “Will do,” Dana said.

  She clicked off the phone with the investigator and checked her rear view mirror before changing lanes and merging onto I-75 for the short jog to I-40. She noticed a car, a burnt orange colored coupe, two cars back, that had been back there since Maryville. You’re just paranoid Dana. Nobody knows you in Maryville Tennessee. You’ve been there all of two and a half hours in your life.

  At I-40 she went west. So did the sedan, remaining a couple of cars behind her. Great. Daylight is turning to dusk. What a time to pick up a potential tail. She looked around, across all four lanes, two in either direction. Friday of a long holiday weekend for most people but it’s still pretty well traveled.

  She dived onto the exit for State Route 95 at the last possible second, then looped around in a Love’s Travel Center Parking lot before getting back on I-40. The orange coupe, a Chevy Cobalt, followed.

  Dana knew her rental had t more power than the Cobalt. She floored it on I-40 and put as much distance as she could on the Cobalt, only slowing again when she got to the exchange for SR-326. Traffic picked up a little there and she had to be more careful.

  After ten minutes of barely doing the speed limit again, she noticed the Cobalt sliding in, a couple of cars behind her. They’re not too smart. They have to know I made them. Maybe they just don’t care.

  She drove on through Kingston with the car still hanging back behind her. If she sped up, it caught up. If she slowed down, the Chevy driver did too.

  Before she reached Crossville, she redialed Yvonne and told her what she thought was happening. “Listen quick. My phone reception stinks out here. Call the state police. Tell them I’m west bound on 40 in a tan Enterprise rental sedan…a GM something or other. I don’t know. I don’t have a clue what the plate number is either.” She quickly described the other car. “And, whatever you do, don’t call the Gatlinburg County Sheriff’s Office!”

  “I’ll call you right back. Keep your line clear.”

  Dana passed an exit for Crossville. She saw signs for the Catoosa Wildlife Management Area north of that town. Yvonne was as good as her word, but the line kept failing. She had to keep calling back.

  The car that had been between her and her tail had pulled off at Crossville. For a long stretch of road, it was just her and the burnt orange Chevy and Yvonne on the phone. Heavy woods lie to either side of the divided highway.

  The Chevy sped up. She tried to do the same. The rental car sputtered. She looked down at the driver’s display on the dash. She was running out of gas. She hadn’t fueled the car all week; hadn’t even given it a thought.

  Just after the Jim Garrett road overpass, the Chevy caught up, got into the left lane and forced her off the road. The rental rolled twice and stopped when it crashed into a stand of trees and began to burn. She grabbed her laptop case and her files and climb out, sore, bruised and shaking, but thankful to be alive.

  She looked up toward the road, thirty or forty feet above where she’d wound up. She knew she needed to get back up there, but she worried the Cobalt and it’s driver were waiting, somewhere just out of her view. The crackling of the car fire behind her prompted her into motion. She stuffed as much of the paperwork as she could into the bag, then shouldered it. Cradling the rest of it in the crook of her arm, she got moving.

  Half way up the embankment, she realized her cell phone was still in the car. She turned back to look. The car was burning, white hot by then, a couple of dozen feet below her. Shouldn’t explode. Can’t be much fuel in the lines. She continued to do the only thing she could do. She clawed her way back up to the hardstand road, through lightly forested land and brush until she got close to the highway. From the brush near the berm, she watched to make sure whoever was after her in the Cobalt was gone. She waited for a couple of minutes, the rental crackling and popping down below her.

  In the waning light of the day, she saw it; a black bear. It was coming from the woods on the down hill side of the road, four lanes away. It wasn’t very big, but it had seen her and it didn’t look happy about the whole idea of a human invading its space.

  Dana panicked and froze. The bear didn’t. He started toward her from his side. She knew she shouldn’t run, even if she did have the strength, but she didn’t know what she should do. Already shaken and battered and now this? She had never wished for a gun so much in her life. Those were in the car too.

  Chapter 27 - Aloaloa

  The bear was crossing through the median when a Tennessee highway patrol cruiser moved up the highway, a light searc
hing the berm and the edge of the woods. The cruiser slowed then stopped when the officer saw the flames from the burning car.

  The officer spotted Dana and then the bear, in one sweeping glance from side to side as Dana watched, rooted in fear to her spot. The officer picked up his mike and called out, “Stand up tall! Hands in the air!”

  She did as she was told as he pulled his cruiser up, between her and the bear. She watched as the bear turned away, crossing the eastbound side again and running back into the woods, off the other side of the road.

  The officer steps out of his cruiser when he was sure the coast was clear. “Anytime you encounter a bear ma’am, you need to do whatever you can to make it think you’re bigger than it is.”

  Dana took that in but didn’t respond, at first. When she found her voice again, she told him, “I’m in danger. I have bigger problems than a bear, but I don’t want to talk until Yvonne Gibbons is here. She’s an insurance fraud investigator. She can explain everything.”

  “Gibbons is the one that called us, ma’am. She’s enroute this way. I’m officer Howard. Why don’t you come with me? I’ll have her meet us at the post.”

  In his cruiser, he radioed the closest fire department dispatcher and told her, “North side, across from Lake Aloaloa.”

  “Their ETA is less than two minutes,” she responded back.

  To his own dispatcher, he radioed, “I’ve got a passenger. We’re coming into headquarters, ETA 30 minutes.”

  Once Dana had gathered her wits about her, she became leery that she might have said too much to him. Yvonne had said there were police officers in on the whole insurance fraud ring too. She started quizzing him. “How did you get to me so fast?”

  “I was parked at the truck parking area just west of where I found you on the eastbound side. We’ll go by it in a minute. I drove east, saw the flames in the Aloaloa Lake area off the westbound side, crossed over at the first place I could and then shot back west, searchlight going, looking for you. Fire and EMS were actually already in route, I just needed to give them an exact location. I called them when I first saw the flames.”