by Janet Dawson
The Mullin house looked as though it had been built in the 1950s, a buff brick one-story ranch style with a paved circular drive, and a garage on the right. There was a dusty red pickup truck parked in front of the garage. I pulled into the drive and parked.
I rang the bell and kicked at a stray pecan. I thought I heard voices in the house, but I wasn’t sure. They could have been coming from one of the neighboring homes. Then the door opened, and I found myself looking into the face of a leathery-skinned woman somewhere between fifty and seventy. She wore cowboy boots, faded blue jeans, and a loose-fitting western-cut shirt in a red and yellow check.
“I’m looking for C. J. Mullin,” I said.
She gazed at me with a pair of pale blue eyes, then the edges of her thin mouth quirked upward in a smile. When she spoke, her voice was flavored with a Southwestern twang. “You found her.”
Thirty-two
“YOU’RE C. J. MULLIN?”
So much for preconceived notions, I thought.
“That’s right” she said with a nod. She stood with one hand on the door and the other on her hip. Her smile was friendly and her eyes curious at finding a stranger on her doorstep. From inside the house I heard children’s voices striving to be heard over the noise of a television set.
“Do you own ten acres of land on Executive Center Boulevard in El Paso?”
Her smile dimmed as her eyes narrowed. “I think you’d better tell me what this is about.”
I reached for one of my business cards and handed it to her. “My name’s Jeri Howard. I’m a private investigator from Oakland, California. I’d like to ask you some questions.”
C. J. Mullin’s eyes flicked over the printed words on the card, then back at me. Her face was wary now. “I’d like to ask a few questions myself. Why is a private investigator from Oakland here in Carlsbad, asking questions about some land in El Paso?”
“I’d have called,” I told her. “But your phone number isn’t listed. And I couldn’t get it out of your real estate agent. Besides, I’d rather talk with you in person.”
That was the truth. Frequently, face-to-face contact was better than getting information over the phone. It gave me the chance to read faces and body language. At the moment, however, neither C. J. Mullin’s face nor body was providing me with much information.
“Not sure I would have told you anything over the phone anyway,” she said slowly. “Not sure I’ll tell you anything now. Why should I answer your questions?”
“Can’t think of any reason why you should,” I said frankly. “Except curiosity. You satisfy mine, and I’ll satisfy yours.”
C. J. Mullin’s face changed again. She relaxed, and her eyes twinkled with amusement. I heard the thud of footsteps, then a boy of about six or seven appeared behind her. He was towheaded, his fair skin tanned, with freckles dusting his nose. Barefoot, he wore a pair of green shorts and a yellow T-shirt decorated with a damp stain and some crumbs. He paid no attention to me, focusing instead on the older woman at the door.
“Grammaw,” he said, “Jimmy let Beau out the back door, and he won’t come back.”
“Beau’ll be fine, Tommy,” she told him. “He’ll come in when he feels like it. Go on back to the kitchen and finish your breakfast.” She gave him an affectionate pat on the shoulder. The boy turned and disappeared C. J. Mullin glanced at me with a hint of a smile, and explained “Got my grandkids this weekend.”
“Three boys?” I asked.
“Two. Beau’s a dog. He’s not used to the boys being around, so I figure he got out the back door on his own.” She looked over my shoulder. “In fact, there he is now.”
I glanced in the direction of her gaze. A big golden retriever with dust on his paws and wisps of dried grass in his coat ambled into view around the corner of the house, moseying toward us across the green lawn. When he brushed up against C. J. Mullin, she reached down and scratched him behind the ears.
“What’s the matter, fella? All this company getting to you?”
The dog wagged his tail and snuffled at her fingers. Then he turned his attention to me, with a thorough inspection of my hand, my shoes, and the legs of my blue slacks. Then he sat down on my foot and leaned into my right leg, adding a liberal overlay of red-gold fur to the cat hair that was already visible on the navy cotton. I massaged the spot between his ears, and he groaned with pleasure.
“Are we going to satisfy each other’s curiosity?” I asked, wondering if I’d piqued C. J. Mullin’s interest sufficiently for her to let me in.
Maybe the fact that her dog seemed to like me made her open the door wider. “Well... shove Beau off your foot and come on in.”
Beau and I followed her into the house. She wore her gray-blond hair long, pulled back into a single braid that fell all the way to her waist. The heels of her cowboy boots clicked on the umber tile that covered the floor of the long central hallway, the sound echoed by the fainter click of Beau’s toenails. On my left was a wall punctuated here and there with paintings and photographs, mostly landscapes reminiscent of the mountains and high desert of this part of the country. On the right, an open doorway led to a big kitchen with white appliances, knotty pine cabinets, and more red-brown tile.
A portable television set sat on one end of a counter, its sound turned too loud. The program was one of those Saturday morning cartoon shows, and the two boys at the round table weren’t paying much attention to it. Tommy, the one I’d seen, and an older boy I guessed was Jimmy were spooning cereal from bowls. Their grandmother crossed the room and turned down the sound. Then she surveyed the spilled milk and cereal on the table’s surface.
“You boys have made a mess for sure. Make sure you clean it up when you’re finished. And if you want to go with me to the sale, you better get yourselves cleaned up and put on some shoes.” Tommy and Jimmy murmured their assurances that they would do both of these. Then C. J. Mullin turned to me. “You want some coffee?”
“I would like that very much. I take it black.”
There was an automatic drip coffeemaker nearby on one of the counters. She poured the strong black brew into two mugs as Beau detoured into the kitchen and drank noisily from a big stainless-steel bowl, splashing water onto the tile. My hostess handed me one of the mugs, then led the way past the counter that separated the kitchen from a formal dining room with a long rectangular table.
The living room was at the rear of the house, with windows and a wide sliding glass door looking out at the Pecos River. The glass was open, and there was a slight breeze coming through the fine mesh screen door that hadn’t been closed all the way since the dog had escaped earlier. On this autumn morning several paddleboats loaded with people were making slow progress against the river’s current. I could hear their faint laughter as the boats went by.
I glanced around me, at the room’s comfortable furnishings. The big red and gray Navajo rug in the center of the room was probably the real thing, since it looked old and timeworn. A collection of Indian pottery my father would have envied was arrayed on the glass-fronted shelves of the barristers bookcases on either side of the stone fireplace. I leaned closer to examine a large black-on-black pot on the mantel.
“Is that a Maria Martinez?” I asked, mentioning the famed potter from San Ildefonso Pueblo.
“Sure is,” Mullin told me. “My grandpa bought it from Maria herself. Have a seat.” She waved at the worn brown leather sofa. I sat down on one end and watched as, with a pleasurable sigh, Beau sprawled on his side on the tile in front of the fireplace.
C. J. Mullin sat down in an overstuffed armchair and rested her booted feet on top of the matching ottoman. The blue eyes in her tanned face pierced me as before.
“Do you represent Bates?” She took a swallow of coffee, then set her mug down on a nearby table piled with magazines.
“No. I can’t tell you who my client is, but it’s not Bates.” I didn’t add that my client was dead.
“Anybody from Bates know you’re here?”
<
br /> “I hope not.”
“Then what’s your interest? Does your client want to buy the property?”
I shook my head. “I want to know what Bates intends to do with that ten acres of land you own, and the office building sitting on it.”
“I guess that must be why you hope nobody from Bates knows you’re nosing around this deal.” She smiled. “Sounds like industrial espionage, or some such thing.”
“Believe me, it’s not.”
“Well, I don’t know exactly what Bates plans to do with that parcel,” C. J. Mullin said. “Nobody’s come right out and said what they plan to do with it, least of all that tight-mouthed young lawyer that come out here earlier in the week. Mostly it’s been lawyers talking to lawyers, you understand, and none of them saying anything more than necessary.”
She sipped her coffee before she spoke again. “I would guess Bates wants to put people in that office building. No point in buying it if you’re gonna leave it empty. As for the rest of the ten acres, I figure they’ll build a plant on it. That would be the logical thing to do.”
“I do understand,” I said, not believing that she was as uninformed as she claimed. “But perhaps you’ve heard something.”
“This transaction hasn’t exactly been on the top of my list of priorities. I got a ranch to run. In fact,” she added, looking at the watch on her left wrist, “I got to be at a livestock sale at eleven o’clock. I’m leaving as soon as I corral those two yahoos.”
She glanced to her right as her grandsons, who had evidently finished breakfast, ran through the dining room into the living room. Beau, in front of the fireplace, growled low in his throat as though he’d been pestered quite enough since they’d arrived and he didn’t want any more of it. Mullin intercepted the boys and sent them off down the hallway in the direction of the bathroom, with instructions to wash their faces and put on their shoes.
“That El Paso property is just one of my investments,” she told me. “Haven’t been able to put a tenant in that building since the last tenant moved out. So I put it on the market. I want to sell, Bates offered a good price, and looks like we’re about to sign on the old dotted line.”
It looked like the three-hour drive to Carlsbad, and the overnight stay, had been wasted time. I swallowed my disappointment with some coffee and tried a different tack. “Bates is a food processing company. I noticed, just down the road from your property, that the old Sheffield Foods plant is up for sale. It would make sense for Bates to buy that, too, if they’re going to expand their operations into the southwest.”
Surprise passed over C. J. Mullin’s face. “Expand isn’t what I heard.”
“So you do know more about the deal than you’ve said.”
“I didn’t say I knew.” There was a touch of irritation in her voice. “Hearing rumors isn’t the same as knowing.”
“I’m just as interested in rumors as I am in facts. What have you heard?”
“Those Sheffield plants have been on the market since the company folded, about two years ago. There’s six of ‘em, one near my building and the rest spread out all over El Paso. I guess they’d need some modernizing to go back into production. But I figure that’s what’s going to happen. I heard it from a very good source. One of my old college roommates lives in El Paso, and her husband works for the city. According to her, he’s mighty happy that an outfit like Bates is buying up all the old Sheffield plants and moving its operations to El Paso.”
I’d suspected as much. “The whole damn company?”
“The whole damn company,” C. J. Mullin repeated, reaching for her coffee. “Corporate headquarters, production, distribution, the whole works. Means tax revenue for the city, and lots of jobs for the locals.”
And what did it mean for the people who already had those jobs in California? No wonder Hank was being so secretive about Project Rio. He and the other powers behind this proposed move didn’t want word getting out until the signatures were on the dotted lines, the money had changed hands, and the deal was done. No doubt corporate taxes in El Paso would be a lot less than in Oakland. Maybe environmental laws in Texas were less restrictive than those in California. I’d bet salaries were lower, too.
Moving Bates to the banks of the Rio Grande might make sense from a strictly business standpoint. But it meant empty plants in Oakland instead of El Paso, and betrayal for people like Gladys and Nancy. They’d be out of work.
Something of what I was thinking must have showed on my face. C. J. Mullin frowned. “Is there something underhanded about this deal with Bates?”
“Depends on how you look at it,” I said, raising my coffee mug to my lips.
Thirty-three
AFTER TALKING WITH C. J. MULLIN, I RETURNED TO the Carlsbad motel and called the airline. If I pushed it, I could get back to El Paso in time to catch a late afternoon flight that would get me to Oakland late Saturday evening. I made the reservation, checked out, and gassed up the rental car before heading out of town. I kept the speedometer hovering just over the limit and my eyes on the seemingly endless strip of two-lane blacktop until I hit the outskirts of El Paso. I turned in the rental car and had just enough time for a snack before I boarded the plane.
It was good to get home. In my absence, Cassie had stopped by my apartment to feed Abigail and Black Bart. Nevertheless, both cats met me at the door with loud protestations of neglect and imminent starvation. I dropped my travel bag near the sofa and walked back to the kitchen to check their bowls, which, as I suspected, had food in them.
“Nice try, guys, but no dice.”
I knelt to give each cat scratches behind the ears. I knew they missed me when I was gone. Black Bart, the more standoffish of the two, butted my hand gently and rumbled with a steady purr as he allowed me to stroke his head. Abigail’s behavior was positively shameless. She purred like a well-tuned Harley as she rolled onto her back and presented her fat belly. I tickled her, and she grabbed my hand with her forepaws, nipping my fingers in what I preferred to call love bites.
When I straightened, I filled the teakettle and set it on the burner. I was still wired from my trip and what I’d discovered about Bates’s plans to purchase the office building and the existing Sheffield Foods plants and move the entire company to El Paso. A cup of tea would settle me as I unpacked.
When I walked out of the kitchen I saw that Cassie had left some mail and Saturday morning’s Oakland Tribune on my dining room table. I sifted through the envelopes. There was a note from my mother in Monterey, a couple of bills, and some junk mail, which I tossed into the kitchen recycling bin.
The teakettle whistled, and I lifted it from the burner, then poured hot water into a mug and set an herbal tea bag afloat. I carried the mug and my overnight bag to the bedroom and unpacked. That chore done, I walked back to the dining room and sat down at the round oak table to open the mail. Then I unfolded the newspaper, skimming through the headlines and stories on the front page before turning to the inside pages.
The headline on a small story at the bottom of page three caught my eye. OAKLAND MAN KILLED IN HIT AND RUN. I read a little farther, then I spilled hot tea on the table as I set the mug down, hard.
The Oakland man the story referred to was Charlie Kellerman.
I read quickly through the story, which was shy on details, probably because the incident had occurred late enough Friday evening so that it barely made the Saturday edition of the Tribune. Kellerman had been crossing Lakeside Drive near Seventeenth, a scant three blocks from his Alice Street apartment. According to the brief article, he’d been struck by a car traveling at what witnesses described as a high rate of speed. The impact had thrown Kellerman about thirty feet. He’d landed near the curb, mortally injured, and he was dead by the time the paramedics got to the scene. The vehicle kept going. It was described as a sedan, but the witnesses couldn’t agree on color or model.
I picked up the phone and punched in Sid’s number at home. “It’s Jeri,” I said when he answered
. “I want to know about that hit and run that killed Charlie Kellerman.”
“I was wondering when you’d call.”
“I’ve been out of town since Friday morning. Just got back. What have you got that’s not in the paper?”
“Kellerman’s not my case. Besides, why should I tell you?”
“Come on, Sid. Rob Lawter goes out a window, and now his next-door neighbor is the victim of a hit and run. Surely you don’t think this is random.”
“Just between you and me and the lamppost,” he said candidly, “no, I don’t. Particularly since a couple of witnesses told the detectives that it looked like the car accelerated right before it hit Kellerman. I’ve told the guys handling the case that I think it’s connected with the Lawter case. Suppose you give me your best guess as to a motive. Why would anyone want to kill a poor old drunk like Kellerman?”
“He saw whoever Sally Morgan heard in Rob’s apartment that night. And he was collecting some cash to keep his mouth shut.”
“Good guess. Any candidates?”
“He called Patricia Mayhew Thursday afternoon. She’s one of the attorneys who works for Bates. And she didn’t look any too thrilled to be hearing from him. By the way, Charlie used to work for Bates. He got canned six months ago, after three warnings and refusing to get treatment.”
“That much I knew. Wayne and I figured Kellerman was holding back,” Sid added, mentioning his longtime partner. “So we got some background on him, courtesy of Buck Tarcher, the security guy over at Bates. Have you got any information that suggests Mayhew killed Lawter? Or Kellerman?”
“Not yet. But I’m working on it. Are you going to give me anything on the hit and run?”
“According to the lab, there were small paint chips on Kellerman’s clothes. There usually are after impact. Green, with a little rust mixed in. Seen a car like that lately?”
“Yes, I have,” I said slowly. “That Buick sedan parked in the driveway at Carol Hartzell’s place.”
