For the Birds: Rose Gardner Investigations #2 (Rose Gardner Investigatons)

by Denise Grover Swank

  “What’s he been doin’ here?”

  “We haven’t found out much. No one knows him, but he’s been workin’ at Maynard’s junkyard, laying low. It recently changed owners.”

  “How recently?” I asked.

  “A few months ago.”

  “And who’s the owner?”

  “A corporation in Louisiana. Sandusky Enterprises.”

  “And who owns that?”

  “We can’t tell. It’s an obvious dummy corporation, and they don’t own anything else.”

  I’d look into that later. “What about the other guy?”

  “He didn’t have any identification.”

  I gave him a look of contempt. “You expect me to believe that? I find that coincidental given you searched his pockets after I left.” When he didn’t answer, I said, “If you want me to find Scooter and clear your name, I need every bit of information you have. Otherwise, this is pointless.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Where was I taken last night, and who owns it?”

  “Fenway Manufacturing. It went bankrupt a couple of years ago and filed for bankruptcy. It’s owned by the bank.”

  “Fenway Manufacturing. Any connection to Henryetta or Fenton County?”

  “None that we know about. They probably picked it because it’s been vacant for so long and it’s out in the middle of nowhere.”

  We’d look into that too. “Have you heard anything about a parrot?”

  “What?”

  “Heard of anyone looking for one or wanting to buy one on the black market?”

  Disgust washed over his face. “You using me for your own private purposes? We worked out your payment . . . unless this is it.” He lifted his eyebrows.

  I gave him a long hard stare. “The deal’s off. Let’s go.”

  I turned around and started to walk out, Witt falling in line in front of me and Neely Kate behind. Both of them were still holding their guns at their sides. Buck didn’t holler after me, so I kept going.

  We’d all opened our car doors by the time Buck appeared in the doorway. “You sure are a touchy bitch.”

  “And that disrespectful remark, Mr. Reynolds,” I said, slowly turning to face him, “is strike three.” I took a step toward him. “You really are a shortsighted man, aren’t you? There’s a reason Skeeter Malcolm is running this county, and it has everything to do with his ability to use the brains God gave him.”

  His face turned red. “I knew you were workin’ for him.”

  “No, Mr. Reynolds, I still stand by my original statement that I’m workin’ for the good of the county. It’s my belief that Skeeter Malcolm is the better leader.”

  “I could kill you.”

  “You could,” I conceded dryly. “But it would only be further proof that I’m right.”

  His chest rose and fell in heavy pants, and he looked like he couldn’t decide what to do.

  I took a step closer, my gun still at my side. “When I ask a question, it’s for a reason, Mr. Reynolds. If you knew where I was going with my questions about the parrot, then you wouldn’t need me, would you? Turns out I have information you don’t.”

  I took another step closer. “You asked for me,” I said slowly. “Think about that when Skeeter Malcolm finally comes callin’ to string you up for killin’ his brother.”

  I turned around again to walk back to the car.

  “I didn’t do it!” Buck shouted after me. “You know that!”

  “No longer my concern.”

  “You’d let the kidnappers go free?”

  “You made sure that didn’t happen,” I said, although I wasn’t as convinced as everyone else seemed to be that they’d killed the two guys to keep them quiet. “As far as I know, there’s no more threat and we can presume Scooter’s dead.” It killed me to say it so cavalierly, but I was beginning to suspect it was true. Especially if Squawker had heard someone talk about cleaning up Scooter’s blood.

  “There’s evidence of a third guy.”

  I stopped again. I’d suspected as much, but it still pissed me off that he was holding out on me. “And you’re just now tellin’ me that?” I asked in disbelief. “Seriously?”

  “We were gonna see if you could figure it out.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that time was of the essence?” I asked. “That Skeeter Malcolm is close to gathering his troops and coming for you?”

  The look on his face suggested he hadn’t. He really was a stupid man, and his stupidity would probably help him meet his maker sooner rather than later, but I wasn’t going to let him destroy the county on his way down.

  “I’m feelin’ generous,” I said. “You have two minutes to tell me everything.”

  “The second guy didn’t have ID,” Tim Dermot said, pushing past Buck and standing in front of him. “But he had a burner phone in his pocket with one programmed number. We called it and got a liquor store. Henryetta Package Store. They asked if it was Bud.”

  “Bud?”

  “Yeah, the guy said he’d been waiting for Bud’s call. We hung up.”

  I cast a quick glance at Neely Kate before shifting my gaze back to Dermot. “How long ago?”

  “A half hour?”

  “Any of your men been out there?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Don’t send anyone. We’ll take care of it.”

  “So you’re still gonna look for Scooter?”

  I glanced from Dermot to Buck, then back again. This man had sense—the very opposite of his boss. “I’m answering to you, Dermot.”

  Buck started to protest, but Dermot elbowed him hard in the stomach, without so much as a glance at his boss. “Done,” he said. “You were askin’ about a parrot?”

  “We think the missing parrot we were looking for might have seen something to do with Scooter’s disappearance.”

  “What the hell?” Buck scoffed. “My dog might have seen me knock Johnny Bueller’s lights out, but he’s not tellin’ anyone.”

  Dermot looked like he wanted to punch his associate. “Parrots talk, Buck.” Then he shook his head. “We haven’t heard anything about a parrot. Are you tryin’ to find him so he’ll tell you what he heard?”

  “We’ve already found him,” Neely Kate said. “He won’t stop talking about Scooter going bye-bye, and we’re tryin’ to figure out what he witnessed and where.”

  Dermot shifted his gaze to my best friend, and his eyes widened slightly. It was like he was noticing her for the first time—and very much liking what he saw. “You don’t say.”

  “We think someone tried to steal him from his owner and he escaped in the process,” I said. “We’re hoping his owner can shed some light on the situation. Do you know anything else?”

  “No, we’re trying to find out more about Landry. The car was registered in his name, but that’s as far as we got. If we find out anything else, I’ll let you know.”

  I nodded, then ducked into the car, and Neely Kate and Witt followed.

  Witt didn’t waste any time leaving the property, and he let out a loud whoop as soon as he turned onto the main road. “What the hell just happened back there?”

  “That was Rose in action,” Neely Kate said. “I told you she was good.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at me. “You realize what you did back there, right?”

  “Stood up to Buck Reynolds? The man’s dumber than a doornail. The fool was so anxious to one-up me last night, he shot me in the leg. And here he was today trying to do it again.”

  “Shot you?” Neely Kate asked, her voice going up an octave.

  “It was barely a scratch,” I said in dismissal.

  “I wasn’t talkin’ about you standin’ up to him,” Witt said. “Sure, that too, but I’m talking about the power shift that just happened.”

  “What are you talkin’ about?”

  “Dermot just usurped Buck Reynolds.”

  “What? No . . .”

  “Yeah. I’m tellin’ you, Dermot’s in charge.
Otherwise, Reynolds’ men would have stopped him. You did that.”

  Chapter 20

  I was still reeling from Witt’s announcement when he asked, “What now?”

  “The Henryetta Package Store, don’t you think?” I asked Neely Kate. “One of us is gonna have to go undercover. Maybe we should both do it.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll pretend to be Bud’s girlfriend looking for him.”

  “You think that will work? It’s dangerous.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Please.”

  Nevertheless, I couldn’t help worrying.

  I’d never been there before, but Witt knew where it was. He parked in the laundromat parking lot next door. “I’ve been in there a time or two,” he said. “I think it’s best if I stay out of sight.”

  Neely Kate was out of the car before I could give her any last-minute instructions.

  Witt chuckled as we watched her strut across the parking lot. “That’s Neely Kate. Headstrong.”

  “Has she always been like that?” I asked, realizing I had access to a treasure trove of insights on my best friend.

  “Mostly. When Jenny Lynn dropped her off when she was twelve, she was scared but bold, determined to take life by the horns. She fit in better than most people expected. I’m two years older than her, so I took her under my wing, but she didn’t need me for long. She found her way, and most everyone loved her in school. Then I got in trouble after graduation and ended up in lockup for a few years. When I came home, she’d graduated and taken off for Oklahoma. Granny was upset because she’d stopped hearin’ from NK.”

  “She’d stopped callin’?”

  “Yeah. Abrupt. Granny said she knew things weren’t as rosy as Neely Kate let on. She’d started talkin’ to Granny about comin’ home, and then she practically vanished.”

  My gaze followed Neely Kate into the store, and my stomach twisted with worry. “What happened to her there, Witt?”

  “I don’t know. I was fixin’ to find her and bring her home when she showed up lookin’ like the walkin’ dead.”

  “What? What does that mean? She was hurt?”

  “She had some bruises for certain, makin’ it obvious she’d been through somethin’, but it was more than that. She went straight to her room and barely left, just slept and cried and wouldn’t talk to anyone.”

  My heart broke. “What happened to her there?” I asked again.

  “Damned if I know. She never told a soul, but it was obvious someone had hurt her bad and she needed to get control back. Alan Jackson and I made sure our little cousin could kick the ass of any man who tried to hurt her again.”

  “And you never figured out what happened?” I asked, still watching the door.

  “No. I told her I was there to listen if she needed to talk. Instead, she bottled it all up, and before I knew it, she was back to her normal self . . . only something was different in her eyes. Something was off.”

  “She went to Oklahoma last week,” I said quietly.

  Witt sat up straighter. “What?”

  I sighed. “She just took off and left me a note.”

  “What for?”

  “To face her past. She came back looking better, but . . .”

  “She’s still broken.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That asshole husband of hers . . .” He shook his head. “I had no idea he was gonna hurt her, Rose. Otherwise, I would have literally kicked his ass before she walked down the aisle.”

  “I know.” I grinned. “Neely Kate’s lucky to have you.”

  “You can be our honorary cousin,” Witt said. “We’ll stand up for you too.”

  “You already did,” I said, looking him in the eye. “What were you doin’ with a gun back there?”

  “Do you know how it would have looked if I hadn’t had one? No one would have taken me seriously. But now that we’ve established you aren’t takin’ shit, I’m hopin’ we won’t have to pull ’em out again.”

  Witt had a point. “If we ever get in a situation where you have a gun and the police are comin’, you give it to me. I’ll deal with it.”

  “Rose . . .”

  “I’m serious, Witt.”

  “I know you are. Thanks.”

  Neely Kate walked out of the liquor store, and I took it as a good sign that she wasn’t being chased. She climbed into the front passenger seat and shook her head. “There’s good news and there’s bad news.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “There was only one guy working in the shop, and when I told him I wanted to talk to the guy who’d been there an hour ago, he told me he wasn’t sellin’ whatever I’d been smokin’. Said he was the only one who’d been there all morning and he didn’t remember me.”

  “Is that the bad news or good news?”

  “Neither. Then I told him I was Bud’s girlfriend, and I was lookin’ for him. He said he was too, and he’d appreciate it if I had Bud call him pronto.”

  I cringed. “Unless Bud becomes a ghost, that’s not likely to happen.”

  “I asked him for his name and number if I needed to give him an update about Bud, and he said the number for the liquor store’s in the phone book . . . as if people used those anymore.”

  “So, he was an old fart?” Witt asked.

  “I guess,” Neely Kate said. “His name tag said Gene, but I don’t know if that’s his real name. But he mentioned something about Bud workin’ at the junkyard on the side, so now we know two of them worked there. Maybe that’s where they met.”

  “Okay, short of following Gene around, there’s nothin’ more to do here,” I said. “Let’s head back to the office and see what we can find out about Elijah Landry and Sandusky Enterprises.”

  An hour later, we didn’t know much more. Witt and I had taken on the task of looking up Elijah Landry, and we hadn’t found anything interesting. Apparently he’d lived in Shreveport all his thirty-six years, and there was no record of the time he’d spent in Henryetta.

  Witt was sitting at Bruce Wayne’s desk searching the Henryetta Gazette when he shouted, “Hot damn!”

  “What?” Neely Kate and I asked simultaneously.

  “There’s an Elijah Landry in the paper about fifteen years ago. He attended his grandparents’ golden wedding anniversary at the Henryetta Baptist Church.” He looked up and grinned. “It’s him—says he’s from Shreveport.”

  I hopped up and rushed over to his computer. “Is there a photo?”

  “A few, and a long list of the relatives who attended. Half are from Louisiana, and the rest are from Arkansas.”

  “Anyone you recognize from Fenton County?” I asked.

  “A Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Beagle and Mr. and Mrs. Elwood Landry.”

  “You’ve got to be kiddin’ me,” Neely Kate said. “Those women don’t get first names?”

  “Now Neely Kate,” Witt groaned, giving me a conspiratorial wink, “what do those women need names for when their husbands’ names work perfectly well?”

  She shot him a glare.

  He laughed. “Okay. Further down it says that Mrs. Pam Beagle and Mrs. Priscilla Landry are the daughters of Seymour and Mary Ellen Constant, the happy couple who didn’t kill each other after livin’ together for fifty years. Priscilla’s son Mike was in attendance. Pam had two sons, but only her son Paul was there. Merlin was in the state pen.”

  That caught my attention. “The state penitentiary? We should look into that. Let me see the photo.” I leaned over Witt’s shoulder and studied the grainy photos—there were several. One of the happy couple. One large group photo, and one with the couple, their two daughters and sons-in-law, and their grandsons—two young men in their twenties by the look of them. And although the photo was fifteen years old, I had no trouble recognizing Elijah Landry. “That’s him.”

  We were all silent for a moment.

  “So Elijah had family here. Does it give their address?” I asked.

  “No,” Neely Kate said, “but I’ll call my fr
iend in the property tax department, see if she can find out where they lived.”

  I nodded. “Good idea. Witt, print off that photo so we can show it around.”

  “On it.”

  “You used to go to Henryetta Baptist Church, Rose,” Neely Kate said. “Do you remember Seymour and Mary Ellen Constant?”

  “No, but I know someone who will.” I gave her a look. “Miss Mildred.”

  “We have to go back there anyway,” Neely Kate said with a slight shrug. “We can ask her then.”

  “Yippee,” I said sarcastically.

  Neely Kate’s phone buzzed and she answered, saying, “Sparkle Investigations.”

  There it was again. “Neely Kate.”

  She ignored me. “Do you want to come by our office?” she asked. After a pause, she said, “Sure, we can do lunch. How about Merilee’s on the square? In about fifteen minutes? . . . Okay. See you then.” She hung up and swiveled her office chair to face us. “That was Jeanne. She just got off and wants us to feed her lunch.”

  “We just had breakfast about an hour ago,” I said.

  “I could eat,” Witt said.

  “I guess that’s a small price to pay for answers. But once again, we need to talk about the name of our nonexistent company.”

  Neely Kate twisted her mouth to the side. “It’s not set in stone.”

  “That’s good because you’d be chiselin’ it out.”

  Witt looked like he was choking back laughter as he handed me the printed photo. It had been zoomed out to fill the page and was kind of grainy, but it was clear enough to show around.

  Neely Kate frowned. “Y’all may have hit pay dirt with Elijah Landry, but the only thing I found out about Sandusky Enterprises is that they were incorporated a year ago and bought Maynard’s junkyard back in March.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” I said, folding the photo over once and stuffing it into my backpack. “In the meantime, why don’t we head over to Merilee’s and make sure we get a table? You know they can get pretty crowded around noon.”

  Witt shot out of his chair. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

  As we walked across the square—Witt already nearly to the restaurant—Neely Kate called her friend in the records department and asked for her help. When she hung up, she said, “June’s really busy, but she says she hopes to get something to us later this afternoon.”