Grave Undertaking

by Mark de Castrique

“He’s not a sexual predator,” said Tommy Lee.

  “A lot of Catholics said the same thing about their priest.”

  “And the vast majority were right.” He picked at his tuna fish for a few seconds. “All right,” he conceded. “I’ll keep Bridges in the dark, but we’ll need another way to find Calhoun’s source.”

  “Any ideas?” I asked.

  “Sounds like you got all the information Annette Nolan had. If some of the victims were underaged girls, we’re talking juvenile detention. Those records are hard to get. We’ll have to start with who was in charge at the time.”

  “What if Calhoun did spend that money as a bribe,” I suggested. “Paying off his source. He might have gotten the hard evidence he needed and then approached the culprits without revealing his contact. The guy could still be around.”

  “Can you backtrack who Calhoun hung out with?”

  “I can ask Cassie. And there’s his landlady, she might remember somebody coming to the apartment.”

  “Don’t be blind to another possibility.”

  I stared at him and read the concern in his eye.

  “I can handle it,” but I felt my stomach tighten at the prospect. “I’ll talk to her tonight.”

  Chapter 13

  When we left the Cardinal Café, I knew Tommy Lee wasn’t happy. He suspected Ewbanks would seek out anyone who could shed light on Susan’s relationship with Sammy Calhoun, and he wanted to tip off his friend Bridges to Annette Nolan’s lead. Until I had the chance to follow up with Susan and Cassie, I insisted that investigative angle be withheld.

  On the way to the cabin, I called Mom for an update on the McBee funeral. Wayne had returned with news all had gone smoothly, including Claude’s descent into the ground. My uncle said Darlene had decided to leave the pocket watch on her father since it held too painful a memory to be a comfort. My nose felt comforted when I heard Stony had stood sullenly at the edge of the graveyard, his arm in a sling.

  I reached Susan at home, where she’d just come in from her father’s.

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Not so well. He had a long talk with Cassie. She told him everything they’re reporting is circumstantial and the worst is over. But it’s all still hanging over him.”

  “How about you?”

  “I’m scared for him. He doesn’t need this stress. Not at his age. I tell you, being a murder suspect is not a good way to lead your life. I’m lucky I’ve got my job. Once I’m behind my surgical mask, this other stuff no longer matters.”

  “Any contact from Ewbanks.”

  “He dropped by my father’s this afternoon. Good thing I was there so we could keep our stories together. Ewbanks was civil. Apologized again for my name getting in the press.”

  “Social call?”

  “Hardly. He wanted to know more about the gun. Why I had it. When I last fired it. I told him Dad made me take it because my residency schedule was so crazy. I was living at home at the time and driving in and out of the hospital at all hours.”

  “That’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Of course it’s true.” She sounded put out. “At least the crazy hours part. I never drove with the gun. Just kept it in a clothes drawer with the clip out for safety. I told Ewbanks that was why my prints would have been all over it.”

  “He’d have to admit it’s a plausible explanation.”

  “And Dad backed up everything I said.” She sighed. “What a nightmare. What are we going to do?”

  I caught the “we” and felt encouraged to include myself. “We’ll get through it, Susan. I’ve been doing a little investigating of my own.”

  “Are you calling from the emergency room?”

  “Not yet.” Susan knew that my efforts at amateur police work and my time spent in the hospital had a direct correlation. “I’m on the road and about to lose the cell signal. How about dinner tonight?”

  “Sure. You want to come here?”

  “I thought we’d go out. A real date. Sullivan’s?”

  “You always say that place is too dark.”

  I glanced at myself in the rearview mirror. “Believe me. Dark is good.”

  The numbers for Cassie Miller were at the cabin so I had to wait before calling her. First, I fed and watered George, then grabbed a clean legal pad. Cassie answered the first ring of her cell phone.

  “What’s up, Barry?”

  I was ready for caller ID. “Nothing new,” I said casually. “Thought I’d check in. I know you’re not officially on the story so I figured you’re free to talk about it.”

  “So you can give leads to your friend Melissa Bigham?”

  I should have anticipated that Cassie would deduce where the Vista reporter got the background on Sammy Calhoun.

  Cassie laughed. “It’s okay. She did me a favor by showing up Cliff Barringer. Maybe I should hire her.”

  “As Cliff’s replacement,” I suggested.

  “I can only dream. So, what do you want to know?”

  “I figure Ewbanks won’t let go of Susan until he has something more promising to track. That could be the last story Calhoun tried to pitch you.” I left it there. Cassie might be excluded from covering Calhoun’s murder, but I didn’t trust her to sit on the news that the sex scandal had been in Walker County, not Buncombe.

  “Could be,” she agreed. “I’ve been thinking about that myself.”

  “Have you got any names of people Calhoun hung out with? Did he have an office? Did he always call you or come to the station?”

  “He didn’t have an office, but I had a couple of numbers. Not a bad idea, Barry. I’ll check my phone logs.”

  “Your what?”

  “Notes of my calls. In my business, I keep an informal record. Just a small steno pad I can even use with my cell. Jot down date, time, key tidbits. Now I do it unconsciously.”

  I looked at my legal pad where I had written sex scandal, office, and phone log.

  “Really? And you keep them?”

  “Got an attic full. Amazing how often they come in handy. I should be able to find the right one pretty quickly.” She paused. “I’ll expect an exclusive on this.”

  Reporters, I thought. Must be something in their DNA. “Sorry. I’ve already got a date for the prom. I was hoping we were working for Susan, not NEWSCHANNEL-8.”

  Silence greeted my statement. Then Cassie said, “Serves the bastards right if the Vista beats them. I’ll call you back.”

  I wore a hat with a brim pulled down over my eyes so the light from Susan’s front porch lamp couldn’t penetrate the shadow on my face. As she closed the door behind her, I slouched back against the wrought-iron railing that bordered her stoop.

  “Oh, are we Sam Spade tonight?” she asked.

  “More like Ricky the Raccoon.” I doffed my hat politely, letting the light fall upon me.

  “Barry!” She jumped back against the door. If it hadn’t been latched, she would have tumbled over the threshold. “What happened?”

  “Sorry. I should have warned you.”

  “You’re lucky you look so bad or I’d hit you.”

  “Too late. Stony McBee already did.” On the drive to dinner, I told her the story.

  Sullivan’s is Gainesboro’s special event restaurant. Proms, Valentine’s Day, anniversaries, marriage proposals—all celebrate with a four-star meal that impresses tourists from Manhattan to Miami. Yet Sullivan’s is locally owned and priced to attract the winter people with more limited finances. I had had the foresight to make a last-minute reservation, requesting a quiet corner away from any Christmas or birthday parties.

  Our table was lit by a single white candle floating in a crystal bowl. I could have had two noses and three eyes and gone unnoticed. The perfect atmosphere for a romantic interrogation. Over a glass of white wine and shrimp cocktail, I summarized my conversation with Annette Nolan.

  “So, you think Sammy was pulling a fast one on Annette?” Susan asked.

  “Not necessarily. He was cov
ering his options. If the blackmail angle didn’t work, he had another thousand coming for the story. If he could squeeze more, probably a good bit more, from his target, then he’d pay Annette back and say the story hadn’t worked out.”

  “Why bother to come to Annette in the first place?”

  I held up answering while the waiter cleared away our appetizers, replacing them with two Caesar salads that could have fed his Roman army.

  “It gave him two things,” I continued. “A real threat of exposure for his quarry and working capital for his sting. Maybe he had a copy of a receipt from Annette he could brandish as proof the paper would print the story. And the money would be needed to bribe his snitch and acquire any equipment. We know he spent six hundred dollars somewhere.”

  “And you’re following this lead by yourself?”

  “There’s Tommy Lee.”

  “But he can’t do anything officially, and you don’t know who in Walker County is clean or dirty.”

  “That’s why I’ve got to deliver evidence they can’t ignore. Tommy Lee agrees. Otherwise Ewbanks will just keep building a circumstantial case against you until he can get a warrant and that hotshot Claiborne can use you as fodder for his law-and-order campaign for attorney general. Someone’s already prompted Calhoun’s landlady into remembering events in the most damning sequence. Claiborne may time a high-profile trial so a verdict isn’t reached till after the election. By then, what does he care if the case wasn’t strong enough.”

  “And I’ll always be that woman charged with murder,” Susan admitted. “Where are you going to start?”

  “Right here. Right now.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “There’re questions I have to ask.” I leaned across the table, ostensibly so only Susan could hear, but really because I wanted to study her face. “Did you ever meet Calhoun at a place called The Last Resort?”

  She looked away and her jaw muscles tightened. “No, but I think Sammy used to hang out there. Who told you about it?”

  “Your Aunt Cassie keeps phone logs. The last month before Calhoun disappeared she returned calls that weren’t to his apartment. This afternoon I telephoned the number she gave me and got The Last Resort. What’s it like?”

  “From the outside, it looks like a real dive of a bar.” Her eyes widened. “And it’s right across the line in Walker County.”

  “Listen, Susan, you’ve got to tell me everything about Sammy Calhoun so I don’t go stumbling around making things look worse for you.”

  “I know,” she conceded, and all trace of defensiveness evaporated. “Sammy came to Asheville and thought he could re-start our relationship. He kept playing up the story about accidentally shooting the girl to make me feel sorry for him. And I knew his work with Cassie gave her station a tremendous ratings boost.”

  “Why’d you give him the gun?”

  “He told me he was working on another investigation and needed it for protection. He said even if I didn’t care about him, at least think about Cassie. She was counting on the story.”

  “But you were still hesitant.”

  “Hesitant? I was angry. He had come to the hospital trying to see me. Told security he was my brother and insisted they page me for a family emergency. I had gotten the message in surgery and was so mad I told the guards to escort him off the hospital grounds. When I left O.R., I found him waiting by the parking lot gate.”

  The memory kindled a fire in her voice. She took a deep breath and regained control. From out of the shadows stepped our waiter with an expression of concern that rivaled the best in the funeral business. He looked at our untouched salads.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No,” I assured him. “We haven’t seen each other in a long time and I’m asking too many questions to let her eat.”

  “I can request the chef delay the entrées.”

  Susan shook her head. “I’m about out of answers. He’ll be talking to himself in another minute.”

  “Very good,” he said, and then looked aghast that he’d somehow insulted me.

  As he withdrew, Susan said, “He’s kissing his tip goodbye.”

  “You said Sammy was at the gate. Did you talk to him?”

  “I yelled at him. I was furious. He’d told hospital security he was Stevie.”

  For all his slick manipulations, Sammy Calhoun had pushed one button too many using the name of the dead brother she idolized. Susan was the sweetest girl I knew. She also cut people up for a living.

  “What was so urgent he’d resort to a trick like that?”

  “The damn gun. Had to have it before that night. Promised me he’d never ask for another thing.”

  “How long after that did he disappear?”

  “Like I told you before, a few days later I heard he left for Texas and I never saw him again.”

  “Then our only link is that bar, The Last Resort. Aptly named.”

  “I asked Sammy why he hung out in such a dump. He laughed and said it was a gold mine and you never knew when you’d discover a nugget.”

  “Then that’s where I’ll start,” I said. “We need a nugget of our own. Do you still have a picture of Sammy?” A part of me wanted to hear no.

  “Maybe. A loose one in a drawer of photos I’ve been meaning to organize. Why?”

  “It’s been seven years, but I want to see if anyone there remembers him.”

  Susan reached around the salad and candle to clutch my hand. “Barry, if he found something in that bar, it got him killed with his own gun.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t have a gun.” I meant it as a joke, but Susan didn’t laugh.

  A soft cough sounded from my left. The waiter was back with our main course. “The petite sirloin for the lady, and the gentleman’s wild trout almondine.”

  I looked at my dinner and it looked at me. The black, lifeless eyes of the fish reminded me what can happen when you’re lured into biting off more than you can chew.

  At eleven-fifteen, I pulled into the parking lot of what had once been a Pure service station. The pumps were gone, but the cracked cement islands still marked their spot. A windowless, plywood addition had been built out of the double garage bays and The Last Resort scrawled across it with all the care of New York subway graffiti. I doubted the designers spent much time debating the font style.

  In Laurel County, we have a bar called Clyde’s Roadside. Its cheap beer, all-encompassing menu of peanuts and beef jerky, and full-volume jukebox are the qualities that make it a watering hole for the locals. You would never confuse it with the bar at Asheville’s famed Grove Park Inn unless you had come directly to Clyde’s from The Last Resort.

  Outside flood lamps fixed to the building’s corners provided illumination. The Saturday night crowd nearly filled the plowed gravel lot with cars and pickups, but the temperature was too cold for patrons to lean on hoods or tailgates and swig beer and swap lies. All the action was inside.

  I stayed in the light as I crossed to the front door. Extra slogans had been painted under the arc of The Last Resort sign. “We don’t care how you did it up north!” was ever popular with this crowd. “What do you call a Yankee with a pension? A Floridian.” Nice spot for Sammy Calhoun to hang out. His New York accent had to have come across like asking for grits in William Tecumseh Sherman’s chow line.

  I could hear the bass beat of some country song blaring through the door. I patted my shirt pocket to make sure Calhoun’s picture was still there. The shot of Susan and Sammy grinning in front of the Biltmore House like they owned the mansion had pained me a little. But she said it was the only one she could find.

  I opened the door slowly in case someone tumbled out. Another slogan greeted me. “Your sh*t is our bread and butter!—Po’ Boy Plumbers.” Catchy. I wondered if it looked as good in the Yellow Pages as on the yellow tee shirt of the long-haired local swaying in front of me.

  Now that I was inside, the basic fact that I had no plan meant I had no next move other than look around. The décor on the
walls consisted of vintage auto product posters mixed with license plates dating back to the Fifties. Some of the bar customers might have made them.

  Most of the tables had been created from telephone line spools upended with oil cloth draped over them. A token of the season could be found in the frayed silver garlands tying the cloth around the spindle of each table.

  I estimated the size of the crowd to be between forty and fifty, counting the line sitting along the bar. The structure had a certain uniqueness, charm being too complimentary a description. The bar consisted of an oak tree split lengthwise and laid in cradles. Rough bark sheathed the underside and coats of shellac built an uneven glaze on the surface. No women occupied the barstools. I noticed only a few sprinkled among the tables, arms linked with a boyfriend.

  The talk was loud, spirited, and jumped from table to table so fast I knew everybody knew everybody else. This was the membership requirement for those whose only access to a country club would always be the delivery entrance.

  Ages ranged from early twenties to a seventy-plus guy in a corner debating with himself. The man working behind the bar looked about fifty. He carried on three conversations simultaneously while popping bottles and pulling drafts. He scanned the room frequently, watching for warning signs of a spontaneous argument about to become a brawl. When I caught his eye, he nodded, and I took that as an invitation to introduce myself.

  I maneuvered to the nearer end of the bar and yelled “Bud” at him. He pulled a mug from a hook in the ceiling, filled it with a fair ratio of beer to foam, and walked over.

  “Two bucks,” he said. “We don’t run no credit.”

  “Hard to get your product back once I’ve used it.”

  “Not in a form even these pissers would drink,” he said, and took a quick glance around the room. “Course, there’s just the plain fun of beating it out of you.”

  I reached into my pocket and took my time pulling out the bills I’d folded there. My wallet was safely locked in the jeep in case I stuck my nose into trouble two nights in a row. The bartender grew annoyed until he watched me slip an extra five on the two.

  “You buying two and a half beers in advance?” He knew I wanted something. Tips were few and far between in this dive.