Mile High Murder

by Marcia Talley

  ‘Who are Matthews and Cantwell?’ I asked Cindy, raising my voice so I could be heard over Mark’s raving.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she wailed.

  Mark ranted on. ‘When they bought the Cantwell Place, I should have put a stop to it then. I had Matthews look it up. Sotweed Factor Group, LLC.’ He paused, then, ‘Ha! Who the hell knew where the money was coming from?’

  ‘What’s an LLC?’ Lisa asked, keeping her voice low.

  ‘A limited liability corporation,’ I explained. ‘A shell corporation. Useful if you’re the kind of person who wants to hide money from the IRS.’

  Josh knew all about LLCs. ‘You can create an anonymous shell corporation in one country that controls an anonymous trust in a completely different country and it, in turn, controls a bank account in a third country. Once you’ve got it up and running, you can use your shell company to stash any spare millions you happen to have lying around and nobody will know you’re doing it.’

  Cindy finally persuaded Mark to sit down, but sitting did little to check the torrent of words. From his lounge chair, Mark kept hammering away. ‘Matthews hired an attorney who did a good bit of digging. Hard to prove, but he thinks he traced the Sotweed Factor Group back to a subsidiary of Churchill-Mills.’

  He paused to draw breath, so I jumped in.

  ‘Hold on, Mark. Are you telling us that Churchill-Mills is secretly buying up land? In Dorchester County?’

  Mark took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘Not Dorchester yet, as far as I know. Southern Maryland. Calvert County. They’ve been growing type thirty-one burley down there, but since the state started paying farmers not to grow tobacco about fifteen years ago, the market for burley’s dried up. Matthews had switched to soybeans, but wasn’t turning much of a profit.’ He raked a hand over what little remained of his light brown hair. ‘Here’s the deal. The Sotweed Factor Group is one of the twenty-three companies licensed to grow and process marijuana in Maryland. When Matthews sold out to them, too, they’d amassed over three hundred acres. And in March, Maryland gave the Sotweed Group the go-ahead. They’ll have weed ready for market by this fall. They’re killing the competition.’

  We all sat quietly for a moment, letting the significance of this sink in.

  Josh was the first to speak. ‘When Lisa recognized Daniel, we knew right away he was up to no good.’ Josh leaned forward. ‘If he works for Churchill-Mills, it’s the clearest case of industrial espionage I’ve ever seen.’

  I didn’t get it. ‘But we all went on the tour, Josh. What kind of trade secrets could Daniel get away with? Austin and Desiree were totally open about their business.’

  Mark answered first. ‘It’s the principle of the thing, Hannah. If Big Tobacco is sneaking into the marijuana biz via a back door, that’s a grave cause for concern among independent growers.’

  ‘But can you prove it?’ I asked.

  Mark’s face sagged. ‘Not yet. Daniel What’s-his-name showing up here is a big red flag, though.’ He sprang from his chair. ‘I’ve got to make a few phone calls.’

  Cindy flounced after him, but paused at the patio doors. ‘Mark was hoping to get one of the grow licenses for our land in Dorchester County, so this really hits home.’ And then she was gone.

  ‘Did Austin and Desiree know about Daniel?’ I asked Josh.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  Lisa flushed a bright red that had nothing to do with the sun. ‘I didn’t tell them. Not exactly.’

  Josh exploded. ‘Lisa!’

  Lisa folded her hands in her lap, stiff and prim. ‘I took Desiree aside after the tour and told her to watch out for Daniel, that’s all.’

  Her husband hissed air out through his teeth. ‘Jeesh.’

  ‘I knew he had to be up to no good, coming to Denver using a fake name and all. I couldn’t let him get away with screwing over the Nortons the way he did Josh,’ Lisa said, keeping her voice low. ‘Not again.’

  Thinking about Daniel’s attempt to derail Josh’s career, I said, ‘It seems like you both landed on your feet at Stafford. Have you been there long?’

  ‘Six years,’ he said. ‘And we’re both in tenure-track positions.’

  ‘Josh is up for tenure next year,’ Lisa said. ‘That’s why he’s working so hard on getting his fruit fly research published.’

  Josh managed a grin. ‘You know what they say about academia? “Publish or perish.”’ Josh’s ice-blue eyes met mine. ‘And in Daniel’s case? Two out of two. Not bad.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Then follow errors of sense, false convictions and the predominance of extravagant ideas where all sense of value seems to disappear. The deleterious, even vicious, qualities of the drug render it highly dangerous to the mind and body upon which it operates to destroy the will, cause one to lose the power of connected thought, producing imaginary delectable situations and gradually weakening the physical powers. Its use frequently leads to insanity.

  H. J. Anslinger, Commissioner of Narcotics. The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, Transcripts of Congressional Hearings, Additional Statement.

  The door on Claire’s side of the bathroom was closed, but as I stood at the sink washing my hands, I could hear the furious click-click-click of her laptop keyboard. When the clicking let up for a moment, I tapped lightly on the door.

  ‘Hannah?’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘Might as well come in,’ she said, sounding tired. Perhaps she hadn’t gotten a nap in after all.

  I found my friend, fingers still poised over the keyboard, sitting at a desk made out of an antique suitcase supported on trestle legs. ‘Catching up on emails,’ she explained.

  ‘Story of my life,’ I said. I pulled a straight-back chair out from the wall and sat down. While she regarded me steadily, I told her about Mark King’s meltdown on the patio.

  ‘I’m totally pissed off at Mark,’ Claire said after I’d finished. ‘Until this trip, I hadn’t seen him since the session ended. He volunteered to come, so I agreed. I knew I should have asked Craig Waller.’

  ‘Who’s Craig Waller?’

  ‘An oncologist. Retired now. He’s a delegate for Baltimore County.’ She paused for a moment as if weighing up how much to tell me. ‘I should have paid more attention to the signs. I thought it was a one-off at first, last January, when Mark blew up at a witness who was testifying on behalf of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation about phosphorous management. Manure, chicken shit mostly,’ she clarified, before I could ask. ‘Another time, I watched him argue over something stupid – Mac versus PC – with a delegate over lunch at Harry Brown’s. He squirted catsup on the guy’s cheesecake and stalked out.’ She sighed. ‘Now this! I’m afraid Mark’s got a problem with impulse control.’

  ‘Is that why Cindy came along? As wrangler?’

  Claire hooted. ‘That’s hilarious, Hannah.’

  I smiled back. ‘Just saying.’

  The silence between us grew, filled only with the pulsing drone of a riding mower somewhere in the neighborhood. ‘I was surprised to hear that Mark was applying for one of Maryland’s marijuana grow licenses,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that a conflict of interest, Mark being a state delegate and all?’

  Claire’s face clouded. She picked up a glass paperweight and turned it over and over in her hands, like a worry bead on steroids. ‘In this political climate, traditional ethics seem almost quaint.’ She set the paperweight down on the desk and gestured at her laptop. ‘It’s all moot, in any case. I’m just responding to Michael Busch.’

  ‘The Maryland Speaker of the House? That Michael Busch?’

  ‘One and the same.’

  ‘What’s up? A little too late to call off this trip, I should think.’

  ‘I’m simply furious!’ she said, punctuating the remark by slapping the lid of her laptop shut. She faced me, leaning forward, with her forearms resting on her knees. ‘Mark’s resigned his seat in the House of Delegates. He sent a formal letter to Busch late yesterday but didn’t even bother to cc me
on it.’

  ‘That’s rude,’ I said. ‘Why is he resigning – did he say?’

  ‘The letter cited personal reasons, but I just got the scoop from Michael. Remember that football scandal at Maryland State?’

  I nodded. It had been front-page news for months, then splashed all over national television in a segment of 60 Minutes. Four female students claimed they’d been drugged and abducted by members of the football team. As too frequently happens, heavy drinking and gang rape ensued. Maryland State authorities either ignored or mishandled the investigation. When the truth came to light, several members of the school’s senior administration were fired, along with the coach of the football team, who’d tried to cover it all up.

  ‘So the head coach was given the boot. Zero tolerance and all that.’ Claire paused. ‘Eventually.’ She leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath. ‘Long story short, they’ve offered the head coach position to Mark and he’s accepted.’

  ‘Get out!’

  ‘He’ll be moving to Hagerstown for the job, so he’ll be out of Baltimore and couldn’t represent the city anyway, but what really fries my grits is this deal has to have been in the works for ages and I’m just now finding out about it.’

  ‘To be fair,’ I offered, ‘maybe Mark simply wanted to make sure it was a done deal before telling anyone.’

  Claire snorted. ‘Bull. I know why. If he’d told me before, I’d have scrubbed him from this trip. He can live in Hagerstown or New York City or effing Timbuktu, but he’ll still own that farm in Dorchester County, and he’ll still have aspirations to be The Maryland Baron of Pot.’

  It struck me that ‘Head Football Coach’ and ‘Baron of Pot’ were mutually exclusive job titles, especially in a state where recreational pot was not yet legal.

  ‘It’s curious,’ I said. ‘If Mark was angling for that job at Maryland State, why was he so hot to come along on the trip? He approached you about it, right, not the other way around?’

  ‘Right.’ She reached for her Juju vape pen and fired it up. ‘Sorry,’ she said after taking a toke. ‘I’m super stressed just now.’ She offered the pen to me, but I smiled and waved it away. I was feeling mellow enough from the celery soup at lunch.

  ‘With the coaching job not yet nailed down, you’d think it would actually be risky for him to come,’ I said. ‘But suppose Mark already knew Daniel Morecraft-Hill?’

  ‘If he did,’ Claire mused, ‘he’d have to know about the man’s connection to Big Tobacco.’

  ‘Exactly. So, maybe Mark wanted to come along precisely because he knew Daniel would be here?’

  ‘To what end?’ Claire took another toke and considered me through half-closed eyes.

  I described in some detail Mark’s recent outburst on the patio.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘With property changing hands at such a rapid rate, perhaps Mark wanted in on the ground floor. With a new job on the horizon, maybe he hoped to unload his farm. What if he tried to cut a deal with Daniel and Daniel refused?’

  I nodded. ‘And you said Mark had anger control issues.’

  ‘Damn,’ Claire said.

  ‘What did he do before?’ I asked. ‘After retiring from football, I mean. The forty-eight thou he gets from the state of Maryland couldn’t have gone very far.’

  ‘Former NFL players aren’t exactly paupers,’ she said. ‘I’m assuming he’s well-invested. And Cindy doesn’t strike me as the kind of gal who’d let him fritter a fortune away on Dom Perignon, private jets, luxury condos in Cannes and fleets of antique cars.’

  Realizing that I’d be joining Mark and Cindy for dinner in a couple of hours, I asked, ‘Am I supposed to know about this head coaching thing?’

  Claire shrugged. ‘Hell if I care. Honestly, Hannah, I could just kill him!’ She flapped a hand, waving the thought away. ‘Sorry. Don’t quote me on that.’

  She looked so panicked that I had to laugh. ‘You’re the ringmaster of this circus. Why don’t you simply tear up his return ticket and let him pedal back to Annapolis on a bicycle?’

  That elicited a grin. ‘You’re a mean girl, Hannah Ives.’ She reached out and patted my knee. ‘But I like the way you think.’

  EIGHTEEN

  It is now much too late to debate the issue: Marijuana versus no marijuana. Marijuana is here to stay. No conceivable law enforcement effort can curb its availability.

  Marijuana Decriminalization: Hearing Before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency. US Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary, May 14, 1975, p.73.

  I peered into the vintage oak armoire that dominated my room, considering my options. Although I’d hung my clothes up on arrival, none of the tops I’d brought seemed ready for prime time. ‘In my next life, I’ll learn to pack like a pro,’ I called out to Claire through the connecting door. ‘This shirt looks like I slept in it.’

  I’d seen the YouTube videos. Smiling millennials folding their garments into neat little origami packages, demonstrating how you can fit the entire contents of your closet into a single carry-on. ‘What are you wearing to dinner, Claire?’

  ‘Navy blue slacks and a colorful top,’ she called back. ‘It’s not exactly the White House, you know.’

  I extracted a long-sleeved tie-dyed tunic from the wardrobe, the least wrinkled of my three choices, and carried it next door for consultation. ‘What do you think?’

  Claire grinned. ‘If pleats were in, you’d be good to go.’

  ‘That’s what I was afraid of,’ I said. ‘Are there irons in the rooms?’

  ‘Not that I’ve noticed,’ she said. ‘Not that I’d recognize one anyway. I haven’t ironed anything since …’ she paused to think, ‘… 1992.’

  ‘What happened in ’92?’

  ‘Had the iron set to “Cotton.” Melted a favorite polyester blouse.’ She pressed a hand to her chest and rolled her eyes dramatically toward the ceiling. ‘It was traumatic, Hannah. I still have nightmares.’

  I laughed out loud. ‘Something that has always puzzled me …’ I said, catching her eye. ‘Why is there a permanent press setting on my iron?’

  ‘I rest my case,’ she said. ‘Do you have something else you can wear?’

  I shook my head. ‘Everything’s pretty fragrant, except what I wore on the flight coming over, which I hope will work its magic again on our way back.’

  ‘I’ll bet there’s an iron down in the laundry room,’ Claire suggested. ‘Ask Desiree.’

  I found Desiree easily. She was busy in the kitchen helping Marilyn prepare dinner.

  I offered up my tunic, draped despondently over its hanger, as an illustration. ‘Do you have an iron I can use?’

  Desiree was up to both elbows in dough. Flour dusted her cheeks. She didn’t stop kneading, simply jerked her head toward the back hallway and said, ‘In the laundry room. Help yourself.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, stepping up to the counter for a closer look. ‘What are you making?’

  Desiree smiled. ‘Angel biscuits so light and fluffy you’ll swear you’ve died and gone to heaven.’

  Marilyn stood at the stove, sautéing something that smelled heavily of garlic. She called over her shoulder, ‘With infused honey. Worth dying for.’

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ I said.

  ‘The iron’s probably still hot,’ Marilyn added. ‘I just finished pressing a tablecloth.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, moving toward the service door, thinking how delightful it would be to dine at a table where the hostess cared enough to press the tablecloth. ‘I’ll be sure to turn it off when I finish.’

  To reach the laundry room, I had to pass Austin’s office. His door stood ajar, so I couldn’t resist peeking in.

  If Edward Hopper had painted the picture, he’d have titled it Desolation.

  Wearing a cherry-red T-shirt that said THE BIG BONG THEORY, Austin squatted on the oriental carpet, staring morosely into his empty safe.

  ‘Any news on the robbery?’ I called out. />
  ‘Afraid not,’ he said, without bothering to look my way.

  ‘Are you changing the combination?’ I asked.

  Austin struggled to his feet. ‘About to. Why?’

  I shrugged. ‘Just curious. I’d like to see how it’s done.’

  Austin studied my face, serious as a judge. ‘You planning to make off with the payroll, too?’

  ‘I’d be a pretty lame thief if I waited to crack the safe until after the money was gone.’

  Austin laughed out loud and motioned me in. ‘What harm could it do, then?’

  I hooked the hanger holding my tunic over the cut-glass doorknob and stepped into the office.

  ‘You need two things,’ Austin began. ‘The current combination and …’ He paused dramatically, reached into the pocket of his jeans and drew out a metal rod about the size of a ballpoint pen refill. ‘Tah-dah! The change key.’

  I leaned in for a better look.

  ‘This is an old-style change key. It has a fully-rounded shaft with notches that engage with each wheel,’ he said, touching each of the notches for emphasis.

  I counted three notches. ‘So, there are three wheels?’ I asked.

  He nodded. ‘Three wheels, three numbers.’

  Austin invited me over to the safe. As I observed over his shoulder, he inserted the change key into the back of the lock and turned it a quarter turn clockwise. ‘Give me three numbers,’ he said.

  ‘Thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-six?’ I suggested, trying to keep the mood light.

  ‘Very funny,’ he said. ‘Seriously, now.’

  I picked my birthday – nine and seventeen – and the last two digits of the year I was born.

  ‘Got it,’ he said. Austin turned the dial several times around, stopped, reversed direction, stopped and repeated the process until all three of my chosen numbers had been registered. Then he twisted the change key back to its original position and removed it from the lock. ‘Voila!’ he said. ‘Now, we test the combination. Check the heck out of it while the door’s still open.’ He extended his hand, palm up. ‘Be my guest.’