Fractures: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery

by Mike Markel

  “Are you saying he told Florence about his girlfriends?”

  “I really have no idea whether he did or not. He didn’t talk to me about his relationship with Florence—”

  “You mean, when she was his mistress?”

  “Either before they were married, or after,” Cheryl Garrity said. “I mean that once she was in his life, I became what my job title suggests: director of operations. In addition, when you’ve been with a colleague twenty years, you get to know them so well—what they’re looking for in life, their values, how they spend their time—some of the details kind of fall away.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “That he was having an extra-marital affair?” She waved her hand in the air dismissively. “I saw that enough times that it didn’t register with me. I didn’t really care who it was. This woman you mentioned—the dancer or whatever she was to him—I’m sure he was very kind to her, very attentive and sweet when they were together. He probably gave her little gifts. But it would have lasted until it ended. Then he would have moved on.”

  “Well, he’s done moving on. This Susan Warnock, the last girlfriend—you’re saying you don’t know whether she has a boyfriend or some guy? You know, some guy who might be unhappy that she’s screwing this sixty-five year old rich guy?”

  “I wouldn’t know her from Eve.”

  “All right, what do we need to know about Ron Eberly? Not just what’s in his personnel file.”

  “Lee and Ron go back many years—years before I came on board. They worked rigs together. Texas, Oklahoma, all over. Lee founded his own company, and Ron was his first hire. Ron doesn’t have the drive that Lee had. Didn’t want to make something. Ron just wants to keep working. When his body couldn’t take it anymore—being a roughneck, I mean—Lee fronted him the money to learn to be a landman. Ron didn’t finish the course and get credentialed, of course; Ron doesn’t finish things. But Lee didn’t care. He rode along with Ron on his first few calls, to see if he was doing it well enough.”

  “Apparently he was.”

  “That’s right,” Cheryl Garrity said. “At the start, Lee had to rein him in a little. Ron would promise the landowners a little more than the company could deliver. Lee told him how he wanted him to represent the company, and I think Ron has complied. One other thing: Lee made sure Ron was on salary, no commission. I think Lee understood Ron well enough that he wanted to remove any incentive for Ron to try to work the landowners—more than necessary, that is.”

  “So you don’t have any more problems with the contracts Ron has written than you do with your other landmen?”

  “That’s correct. Ron does the job.”

  “Does he have a family?”

  “An ex-wife. Lives in Houston with their two children.”

  “Did Lee know Florence was having an affair?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Lee know it was with Ron?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “Actually, I told him about the affair.”

  “Explain.”

  “I learned about it some months ago—”

  “How’d you learn about it?”

  “I was following up on some missed communications. I thought Ron was here in Rawlings. He told me he was out in Marshall. But I saw him here. I swung by his place that night. His lights were on. Florence’s car was in his driveway. I confronted him about it. He admitted it and asked me not to tell Lee.”

  “He didn’t want to get fired?”

  “I think it was he didn’t want to face the fact that he had betrayed his best friend.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I thought it would be best for Lee if Ron were fired. There are enough irregularities—minor violations of policy and such—in Ron’s record to warrant termination.”

  “So why is he still working?”

  “Lee found out about it and called me in. He asked me what was going on. I laid out the case for termination. He didn’t buy it. He asked me what’s was really going on. I told him Ron was engaged in an inappropriate sexual relationship with someone in the company.”

  “What did Lee say?”

  “He smiled. He didn’t believe I was firing Ron for that. The culture in this company: We’re not sticklers on that issue. He asked me who it was Ron was involved with. I told him I couldn’t tell him. He said, then you can’t fire Ron. He wouldn’t let it drop. Finally, I told Lee it was Florence.”

  “Why didn’t you just refuse to tell him?”

  “Because I realized I had a responsibility to the company. I’m the director of operations at Rossman Mining. My job is to protect the company. And the first order of business is always to protect Lee.”

  “What did he do when you told him it was Eberly?”

  “He told me he’d take care of it. And that he appreciated that I told him.”

  “When was this?”

  “About ten days ago.”

  “Between that time and Lee’s murder, did you get any information about a confrontation between Ron Eberly and Lee?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Do you think Ron Eberly killed Lee Rossman?”

  “No, I do not.”

  “Seems to me entirely plausible.”

  “Not if you know Ron Eberly.”

  “Everything you’ve told me says he had a number of reasons to do it, starting with the fact that he didn’t want to get fired—or shot by Lee. Plus, maybe he thought he might have an opportunity to marry some of Florence’s money.”

  “Ron Eberly loved Lee. It was the only real relationship Ron ever had with another person. Ron would kill himself before he hurt Lee.”

  “But he’s okay with screwing Lee’s wife.”

  “Self-control is not Ron’s strength. In many ways, he is a very weak and needy man. But I stand by my statement that he loved Lee. I know that he did not kill Lee Rossman.”

  Chapter 20

  “What have we got on Mr. Eberly?” I said. We were back at headquarters, having re-interviewed Cheryl Garrity, who confirmed what Ryan had suspected: Florence Rossman’s lover was Ron Eberly. I’d given Ryan a half-hour to find out everything we needed to know about Eberly. With a phone and the Internet, Ryan needs only twenty minutes, but since he had figured out it was Eberly that Florence was banging, I thought he deserved a ten-minute break.

  “Mr. Eberly is not good with money,” Ryan said.

  “For example?”

  “For example, he has two personal bankruptcies and two business ones. And this is his house in Houston.” He pointed to his screen. It looked like my place—a crappy three-bedroom ranch with scraggly shrubs, dead grass, and a few missing shutters—except his had a sign in the front yard that said BANK OWNED.

  “This guy’s pulling down—what, a hundred thousand?—and he can’t make payments on this litterbox?”

  “Child support?” Ryan said.

  “Only if he had the world’s worst divorce lawyer. No, there’s something else going on.”

  “Drugs?”

  “That, or gambling.”

  “There’s three or four casinos out near the wells,” Ryan said.

  “Shit, long as he’s got a computer he could lose all his money from the comfort of his home.”

  “Let me give him a call.”

  I nodded and Ryan leafed through his notebook to get Eberly’s cell number. I don’t pray, but I heard myself asking Someone to let Eberly be in Rawlings, not in Marshall.

  Ryan got through, told Eberly we need to talk to him. “Order yourself another cup of coffee. We’ll be there in five.” Ryan ended the call and turned to me. “What are you so happy about?”

  “It’s just a beautiful day,” I said. “Where’re we going?”

  “To Elmer’s.”

  It took us four minutes to get to the diner. It was a little after ten. There were only five old timers in the place. Ryan and I slid into the booth across the table from Ron Eberly. He was halfway through
a big plate of eggs, sausage links, toast, and a couple small pancakes on the side.

  Not having eaten anything in close to twenty-four hours, I started salivating. “Mr. Eberly,” I said, “did you know Lee Rossman was having an affair?”

  He gave it a little thought. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  I looked at him. “That would be lovely.”

  He waved the waitress down. She was a weary sixty-year old wearing her dyed-black hair in a spike. She walked gingerly, like her shift started when the diner opened at six. Eberly looked at Ryan, who said, “Decaf.”

  Rod Eberly ordered the two drinks, thanking the waitress by name.

  “So, Mr. Eberly,” I said again, “did you know Lee Rossman was having an affair?”

  He placed his coffee cup down on the table carefully. “Where did you get that information?”

  “We’re detectives. We’ve been detecting.”

  Rod raised an eyebrow, just a little. “Lee has been known to have affairs.”

  “Do you know the current woman he was having an affair with now?”

  “This particular woman?”

  “Yes, this particular woman. This particular now.”

  The waitress came over and put the coffee and the decaf down at our places. She got three thank-you’s, as well as a warm smile from Eberly.

  “No, I don’t know her.”

  “She’s a dancer downtown. A stripper. Name’s Susan Warnock.”

  Rod nodded and smiled, like Lee still had it. Then he shook his head. “Sorry.” He reached for the cream in a little pitcher. “Never met her.”

  “So you can’t help us with whether she had another boyfriend might’ve got angry she was seeing Lee.”

  He shook his head again and took a bite of toast. He wasn’t going to interrupt his breakfast just because he had to talk with a couple detectives.

  “You and Lee go way back. He never said anything to you about anyone threatening him? Blackmail, anything like that?”

  He just shook his head and took a sip of his coffee.

  “Something else Cheryl Garrity told us.”

  Ron was chewing a mouthful of pancakes. He looked up. “What’s that?”

  “Florence Rossman was having an affair, too.”

  His eyes darted off to the side for just a moment before he looked back at me.

  “Any thoughts on that?” I said.

  “What kind of thoughts?” He chewed some more.

  “Do you think Cheryl was telling the truth?”

  Rod put his knife and fork down, took a sip of his coffee. “Really can’t say.”

  I was starting to get a little pissed at how content Eberly seemed as he ate his breakfast. I decided to put off telling him we knew it was him nailing Florence; maybe I could give him a little heartburn as he wondered whether we knew. “You go back pretty far with Cheryl, right?”

  “Twenty years, I guess. Long as she’s been with Lee.”

  “Would she have any reason to lie about that? About Florence having an affair?”

  “Lee met Cheryl Garrity back in Houston in the nineties. Both of them were married then. She was working for another oil company. They began an affair. Cheryl moved over to Lee’s company. But it didn’t work out, her being his mistress and working for him, too.”

  “Who ended the relationship?”

  “Lee did. He told me it was a lot harder to find a good manager than a good lay.”

  “He tell her that?”

  Eberly smiled. “Just me. But I think Cheryl would have agreed. She seemed okay with ending the affair.”

  “She was over him.”

  He had a pained expression on his face. “I’m not sure about that. Cheryl is a realist. Her own marriage broke up. She saw how Lee was giving her more and more responsibility within the company. She liked the salary—and the ego strokes.”

  “And liked being around Lee?”

  “I think that was a big factor.”

  “So Lee hooks up with other women. His first wife gets sick, dies. Tell me about Lee marrying Florence.”

  “It was fast. He’d met her at some business conference three, four years ago.”

  “Did it surprise you? I mean, Lee deciding to get married. Why not just keep screwing all the women he wants? Let Cheryl Garrity keep running the office? That would keep things simple, right?” I heard my phone ringing in my big leather bag. I let it go to voicemail.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he fell in love with Florence.” Rod smiled. “It happens.”

  “Florence is a very attractive woman.” I couldn’t resist. “How did Cheryl take it when Lee married Florence?”

  “In public? Fine.”

  “In private, she go batshit?” I said.

  “The way I’d put it,” Eberly said, “Cheryl understood how Lee needed her to run the company. And even how Lee wasn’t into fidelity. But then he marries a younger woman. Cheryl really didn’t like that.” He was most of the way through his eggs. I was eyeing a piece of toast.

  “Getting back to Cheryl saying Florence was having an affair. You think maybe Cheryl was making that up? Like she wanted to show how Lee couldn’t really have a successful marriage. How he had to fool around like he always did? You know, to make Cheryl feel better about herself?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not Dr. Phil. I’m just an oilman.”

  “Interesting,” I said. I looked over at Ryan, who was sitting there with a mildly amused expression on his face. One of the really good things about Ryan, he’s willing to just sit back if I’m doing an interview. He doesn’t feel he has to participate if things are going smooth with me and the guy.

  I said, “You know who Cheryl said Florence is having an affair with?”

  He cut a sausage link in half with his fork. He shook his head. “No, I don’t.” He started chewing.

  I counted to five. “You.”

  He finished chewing the sausage and lowered the fork to the plate.

  “Would you like to comment?”

  “It’s not true.”

  “I thought we had an understanding, Mr. Eberly. We keep you up-to-date on the investigation. All you have to do is tell us the truth.” I looked at him. He looked at me. “That’s it? Nothing you want to say?”

  “That’s it. It’s not true.” He held my gaze. He was an awfully good liar. Better than me.

  “Couple reasons I know it’s true. First, she has a lot of money. You, on the other hand, don’t. Bankruptcies, foreclosures.”

  He just looked at me, his face a mask. At least he had stopped eating.

  I leaned toward him. “Where does all the money go, Ron?”

  He leaned in toward me. We were maybe a foot apart. “Unless you can explain how this relates to Lee’s murder, it’s not really any of your concern.”

  “Well, like I say, it might go to motive.”

  He was wearing a dismissive smile, like I was going to have to do a lot better than motive. “You said there was another reason?”

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “Florence says she’s having an affair with you.”

  “I don’t believe you.” His voice was low, but the tone was confident.

  I raised my eyebrows. On the table, next to his Ford key ring with a dozen keys on it, sat his cell phone. I pushed it over toward him. “Call her.”

  The waitress came over and re-filled Ryan’s cup from the carafe with the orange spout. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said with a pleasant smile. Then she re-filled Eberly’s coffee from the other carafe.

  Ron Eberly sighed, pushed the plate away, rested his elbows on the table, and tented his fingers. This was him telling me he wasn’t going to phone Florence to check up on my story. But I couldn’t quite tell if it meant he was done talking with me, or done denying he was doing Florence.

  “Were you with Florence Sunday night?” I said.

  He nodded.

  “What time?”

  “Around eight.”

  “Till?”

  “Six, six-thirt
y Monday morning.”

  “At her house?”

  He shook his head. “My apartment, here in town.”

  “Can anyone else confirm that? I mean, besides Florence?” I took a sip from my coffee. “We’ll have to check with Florence, of course.”

  He thought it over a few seconds. “It was the two of us.”

  I leaned back in the booth. “See how easy that was, Mr. Eberly? Telling the truth, I mean. If Ms. Rossman says she was with you—eight pm till six, six-thirty Monday morning—and we can corroborate that, then you’re off the hook. You are, and she is. You can both go about your lives without a care in the world. You’ll have plenty of money. Hundreds of millions, if the newspaper articles are right. You’ll be able to buy your house back from the bank. The house in Houston, I mean. The one where your ex-wife and two daughters live. That one.” I looked at him and smiled. “Lee Rossman dying like this, you and his wife having nothing to do with it—it’s gonna work out real good for the two of you.”

  He was looking down at his plate. When he looked at me, for the first time I saw fear in his eyes. “I told you Florence and I were alone. How are you going to corroborate our story?”

  I put on a pained expression. “You know, Mr. Eberly, that’s always a tough one. Usually, you know, we get two people admit they were humping away, we believe them. But here? Here, it’s a little tricky. Seeing as each of you had a motive to take Lee out, and each of you could’ve persuaded Lee to come meet you outside the tittie bar, and each of you had the physical strength to slide a knife into him—I’m just saying, the police chief’s gonna ask us how we know it wasn’t one of you two, with the other one covering with a lie about how you were together. Or how it wasn’t both of you working together, so you can grab the old man’s money and get back to fucking each other. I’m just saying.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “You say you didn’t do it, right?” I shrugged my shoulders. “If you’re telling the truth, you got nothing to worry about. Because here’s the thing: We’re a little different from you. If our investigation shows you didn’t kill your best friend, we’re not gonna frame you. You’re home free.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Then you’re fine. Actually, I shouldn’t use the word fine. Just so you understand the difference between you and Lee, know this. When Cheryl Garrity found out about the affair, she wanted to fire you—get you out of the company, to protect Lee? But apparently Lee wouldn’t have it. He didn’t want to handle it like that. He wanted to resolve it, one-on-one. Like a man. You’re still working because of Lee. In fact, all your life, you’ve been working because of Lee. And you’re fucking his wife?” He didn’t look up. “Out in Marshall the other day, at the deeds office, you told me and my partner the one thing you’re proudest of is that you never let Lee down. Now Lee’s dead, and you and his wife—you’re both gonna be okay. Plus, rich.”