Designed to Kill (Greg McKenzie Mysteries)

by Chester D. Campbell

  Sherry arrived less than five minutes later, dressed in a stylish yellow suit with a brown scarf at the neck. “I’m on my way to show a condo,” she said. Then she stared at my face with its array of Band-Aids. “What happened to you?”

  I grinned. “Jill didn’t beat me up, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  She sat down next to us and smiled nervously.

  “It’s good to see you again, Sherry,” Jill said, hoping, I’m sure, to put her at ease.

  “Thanks for coming, Jill. You too, Mr. McKenzie.” She looked across at me with troubled brown eyes. “I apologize for the way I acted over at my house on Tuesday.”

  I smiled. “No apology is necessary. You were quite upset and we were intruding.”

  “I guess Jill told you about our discussion?” Sherry asked.

  “Yes. I hope that was all right.”

  “I assumed she would. This business about Tim has been a real burden on me. I didn’t want to talk about his death, but after what you said the other day, that you didn’t think it was suicide, I felt I had to talk to somebody. You were a godsend, Jill.”

  Jill reached across the table and patted her hand. “I’m glad I could help.”

  Sherry took a deep breath, then looked at me. “But I didn’t tell her the whole story.”

  “What didn’t you tell?” I asked.

  “After you were over on Tuesday, Boz came by the house. He got really agitated when I told him what you were doing. He wanted to know everything you had asked and what I told you. He seemed quite relieved that I hadn’t provided much information, but then he made me an offer. He said if I would keep quiet about what I knew, he would get his dad to help finance my campaign for state senator.”

  I frowned. “About what you knew?”

  She nodded. “Some months ago, Tim told me he didn’t trust Claude Detrich. He suspected they were cutting corners to the detriment of the project. Later, when I told Boz what Tim had said, he just laughed. He said, ‘Why do you think they picked a small time guy for that project? They looked on him as someone they could manipulate.’”

  “He was serious?”

  “Oh, definitely. I asked what do you mean, manipulate?”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said you know, put things over on, sneak things past.”

  “Did he elaborate on that?”

  “Not exactly. But he said something else I didn’t really understand. Boz is a big tennis player, as you may know. He said he had to be careful. He’d been playing too much tennis, sometimes when he should have been elsewhere.”

  I looked at her curiously. “This was at the same time he talked about Tim and the project?”

  “Right. The comment didn’t make any sense to me, but I thought it might to you.”

  At the moment, it didn’t.

  “I understand he’s not on the best of terms with his dad now,” I said. “If he was willing to push old dad to finance your campaign, this business must really have him shook up.”

  “I thought so, too,” Sherry said. “I know he was on edge after the building inspector called him in last Monday to ask about his certifications. Last night Boz called again and said they want him at a hearing on the accident this coming Monday. That’s really got him pulling his hair.”

  I thought of Boz’s thick crop of wavy blond hair and tried to imagine him pulling out a handful. But I was more intrigued by what we had just learned about the Threshold Inspector.

  “We really appreciate your leveling with us,” I told Sherry. “I know you want that Senate seat, but I’m sure you can find the financing in a more palatable way.”

  She nodded. “I hope so.”

  36

  On the drive back to Gulf Sands, Jill looked around uncertainly. “Do you think this makes Boz a more likely suspect?”

  “He’s certainly a much bigger question mark now. Obviously, he knows a lot more than he let on. But will this give me a big enough wedge to pry any more out of him? I’m not sure.”

  “What about that comment on playing too much tennis? Make any sense to you?”

  I had thought about the possibilities. Where should he have been, on the job? Perhaps, but there must have been more to it than that.

  “I’m still working on that one,” I said.

  I had kept a close watch on the traffic both going and coming from The Shell Game, and now I swept my gaze around the Gulf Sands parking lot. No black Caddy or any other strange vehicle with watchful occupants. We got back to the condo just before eleven, and Jill stirred us up two large cups of cappuccino with a French Vanilla mix.

  I quickly reviewed the tape in the VCR and found only a couple of cars besides my Jeep going in and out of the lot. There were also two pairs of walkers headed out to the road. I rewound the tape and had just sat down on the sofa to savor my cappuccino when the phone rang.

  “You’re going to love this, Boss,” said Ted Kennerly.

  “You must have dug up something juicy.”

  “Did I. Your contractor has quite a background, including several brushes with the law. Turns out he was originally from Greenville, Texas, just east of Dallas.”

  “I didn’t expect you to come up with anything this fast,” I said.

  He laughed. “I really hit it lucky on this one. My Dallas source had just come off a really tough assignment and was ready to tackle something simple. He found that back in the seventies, Claude Detrich signed on with an American contractor building big projects in Saudi Arabia. Hospitals and that sort of thing. Evidently Detrich was good with his mouth as well as his hands, and he wound up talking himself into the job of doling out construction materials. He was canned in the late seventies and sent home when they caught him selling steel and concrete to the Arabs.”

  “A real self-made entrepreneur.”

  “Can’t you just see them hauling off loads of rebars and bags of cement strapped to the backs of camels?”

  “I suspect they were a little more sophisticated than that,” I said.

  “Probably so. Anyway, there’s more. Back in Dallas, he moved about in the heavy construction field, getting in a few brawls and making the police reports. Then in the late eighties, he moved into home building. He got in with an older guy who soon decided to retire. When Detrich took over, he started producing cheap tract homes in the suburbs. The quality was poor and the complaints poured in. He has a nice fat file at the Better Business Bureau. When the heat got too much for him, he bailed out and resurfaced in New Orleans. I think you know the rest.”

  “Right,” I said. “He’s still up to the same old tricks, cutting corners to save money. Doing shoddy construction. Thanks a million, Ted. You did a terrific job in a short time.”

  “As you well know, Boss, in this business sources are everything.”

  “True. You obviously have some good ones.”

  “Well, my Los Angeles source just got off leave and hasn’t had time to do much on Evan Baucus. Shouldn’t take him long, though. Hopefully I’ll have something for you by Monday. And speaking of sources, I just thought of one that might interest you. Do you remember Red Tarkington, the NCIS agent we worked with at Pearl Harbor?”

  “Sure. Sharp guy.” We had worked with the Navy investigator on a smuggling case in Hawaii not long before I retired.

  “I ran into him in Washington a couple of months ago. He’s stationed at Pensacola NAS. I told him about your condo down there. He said you should call him sometime. Maybe he can give you a little help.”

  I thought of something else Ted might be able to do. “Are you still in touch with your FBI contact, the one who helped us out with the Israelis last year?”

  “Yeah. He’s still in New York.”

  “See if he might be able to find some info on an outfit called Perseid, Limited. They’re based on Grand Cayman.”

  “Shouldn’t be any problem. How do you spell it?”

  I told him. “Thanks, Ted,” I said. “Be sure and give Karen our love.”
r />   “Will do. Say, how is Jill making out with her PI assignments?”

  “Fantastic. Turns out she has a real knack for this sort of thing. She’s especially good with women.”

  “I may be calling on you two for some help,” Ted said.

  “Any time, buddy. We’re in your debt.”

  When I related the conversation to Jill, her eyes widened. “Sounds like Detrich is just the sort of guy who would do what we think he did.”

  I stretched my arms and ran a finger gently down the side of my face. The Band-Aids were still intact. If those hoods worked for Detrich, I really owed him a takedown.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Now all I have to do is find the proof.”

  37

  I called Boz Farnsworth’s office and got a youthful-sounding female voice. She informed me he was due back from the tennis court at any time now. I identified myself and said it was urgent that I speak with him. Surprisingly, he took me at my word and called back about fifteen minutes later.

  “What’s so urgent?” he asked.

  “I’ve received some other information that concerns you,” I said. “We need to get together and talk about it.”

  “I’ve got enough problems. I don’t need to talk to you about anything.”

  “I think you do. I’ll have to turn over my investigative files to the sheriff soon. As it stands, they will haul you in for a very rigorous interrogation.” A bit of an exaggeration, perhaps, but not entirely out of line. “You’d be a lot better off talking with me now and getting things straightened out before they get any messier.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Not on the phone. It has to be one-on-one.”

  “Does it concern that hearing on Monday?”

  “That and other things.”

  “Damn you, McKenzie. Have you been talking to Sherry again?”

  “I’ve been talking to a lot of people and learned a lot of things. What time can we meet?”

  His heavy breathing gave me a picture of a man in turmoil. Clearly I had struck a nerve, or at the very least, piqued his curiosity beyond a point where he could disregard the possibilities.

  “Be here at one o’clock,” he said in an angry voice.

  “You can count on it,” I said.

  ———

  At ten till one, I let Jill out at Sacred Heart Hospital for her therapy session. She hated to miss the confrontation with Boz, but after getting her arm bumped around last night, she was acutely aware of the need to get back to the rehab routine. A few minutes later, I parked beside Boz’s Corvette in front of the white brick building that housed BF Inspections and went inside. The owner of the young female voice was nowhere to be seen, but the blustery would-be tennis pro was in his office.

  He took one look at me and said, “Wreck your car?”

  I grinned and gave the excuse I’d decided on for future questioners. “I had an unfortunate encounter with a gravel driveway.”

  “Where’s your wife?”

  “She had a physical therapy appointment. She had rotator cuff surgery a couple of months ago and is in rehab for it.”

  He actually showed a bit of concern. “One of my tennis partners had that recently. He says it’s bad news.”

  “I’m sure Jill would agree.”

  He eyed me suspiciously. “So what’s this new information?”

  “A few questions first. I understand you and Claude Detrich were at a bar down the beach after the accident. Which one was it?”

  “The Key Hole.”

  We didn’t frequent the bars, but I had seen the Key Hole in passing near the Alabama state line.

  “What did you talk about?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “The accident, of course. What probably caused it.”

  “What did you conclude?”

  “That it was Tim Gannon’s faulty design specs. Like I told you before.”

  “What time did you and Detrich leave the bar?”

  He hesitated before answering. Finally, he said, “What do you want to know that for? You think somebody killed Tim, don’t you? Are you implying that it might have been me?”

  “I only want to establish what time you and Detrich left the bar. That does not imply anything.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to read me my rights before you ask a question like that?”

  I smiled. “That’s called Mirandizing. It’s only done after you arrest someone for a crime. My investigation is not an official police matter...yet.”

  “My dad has some high-powered legal advisors. I think I’d better call in somebody before we talk any further.”

  I shrugged. “If I were a law enforcement officer and you asked for an attorney, the questions would have to stop. I’m not, so it doesn’t matter. But let me give you a little advice. If you are merely being interviewed, like we’re doing now, when nobody has suggested you might be guilty of anything, and you start asking for lawyers, the cops are going to think he’s got something to hide, he’s done something wrong. Then they’re really going to bear down on you. Understand?”

  His hands folded and unfolded nervously. I suspected he was beginning to sweat despite the air conditioner going full blast. Finally he nodded.

  “Okay. Once more, it’s a real simple question. What time did you and Detrich leave the bar Friday night?”

  “Around midnight or a little after. When he drinks a lot, he can get pretty rowdy. They asked him to leave and he started arguing. I didn’t want to get involved, so I left. I’m guessing they threw him out shortly afterward.”

  “Sherry Hoffman came to the party with you,” I said, “but she left before you did. Do you know where she went?”

  He looked more than a little annoyed. “You’re damned right I do. She went to Tim’s...uh, your condo. After I left the bar, I drove by there. She was parked beside his Blazer. I saw her come out in a big hurry. She got in the car and slammed the door like she was pissed. I tried to follow her, but, well, I guess I’d had a little too much to drink myself—I lost her.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I was madder than hell. Tim was this Mr. Goody Two Shoes, a married guy with kids, and Sherry was my date. I sat in a parking lot on Sorrento for a bit, working up a good rage, then decided to have a showdown with him. I drove back over to Gulf Sands, but his Blazer was gone.”

  “Do you remember what time that was?”

  He thought about it for a long moment. Then his face brightened. “Yeah. I remember. I looked at my clock—stared at it, in fact. Said 12:50. I thought: I’ll bet the bastard’s gone over to her house. So I drove over there. Her car was parked out front, but no sign of Tim’s. I decided to hell with it and went home.”

  “Okay. This involves the hearing,” I said. “When Walt Sturdivant came by here to look at your plans the other day, did he tell you their original of the plans was missing?”

  “Yeah. He said something about the computer file was gone, too.” Boz grinned. “Sounded like a convenient excuse.”

  “Tim had a copy with him down here. It’s missing, too. He also had a laptop computer, which we found in our condo. The Sand Castle file had been erased from it. But Walt took the laptop back to Nashville and had a software recovery firm work with the machine. They recovered the file, so there’s a copy of Tim’s original specs available now. They show the larger rebars and the higher p.s.i. concrete, like Walt remembered.”

  “No shit?” He looked astonished.

  Walt hadn’t seen the file in the laptop to confirm it, but I had no doubts after listening to Sherry tell how Tim had pointed to where his plans showed the correct specifications.

  “Who could have tampered with the original and made bogus copies?” I asked.

  “I have no idea. Baucus has an original, but he knows nothing about structural design.”

  “Could it have been Detrich?” I asked.

  His eyes betrayed a fleeting doubt. “I wouldn’t want to speculate on that.”

  “Walt will have that
computer file with him on Monday. Would you like to speculate on what they’ll be looking for at the hearing?”

  Now he really looked uncomfortable, and I thought of Sherry’s hair-pulling comment.

  “If they’re after a scapegoat, it better not be me.”

  ———

  Jill was just coming out of the rehab center as I headed in. She looked about like I had felt this morning.

  “Rough session?” I asked.

  She sighed and let her left arm swing freely at her side. “Taking a week off probably wasn’t the smartest move I’ve made lately. I’m sure Vickie would say I told you so. I go back again Tuesday. How are you feeling?”

  The aches and pains definitely had not gone away, but concentrating on the investigation had helped push them into the background. “I’m still motivating. As long as nobody punches me in the stomach or bangs my side, I’ll probably be okay.”

  “How did Boz take your visit?”

  As we drove back to Perdido Key, I gave her a play-by-play account of the hostile session in the office of BF Inspections. But I didn’t get so carried away that I neglected to watch out for the Cadillac assault team, or any suspicious vehicle for that matter. The trip was uneventful on that score.

  “Looks like you’re steadily narrowing in on Mr. Detrich,” Jill said when I reached the end of Boz’s account.

  “Yeah, it looks that way. The only thing that bothers me is we still haven’t had the opportunity to quiz the other major player, Evan Baucus.”

  Having said that, it came as quite a shock when we arrived back at Gulf Sands and found this message on the answering machine:

  “Mr. McKenzie, I think we need to talk. This is Evan Baucus. I would appreciate it if you would call me at The Sand Castle.” He left a phone number.

  38

  At four o’clock, I parked the Jeep in a VISITOR slot and Jill and I walked toward The Sand Castle’s ornate entrance. The iron grillwork had arabesque elements, with flowers and unusual shapes, and the stonework helped give the feeling of entering a real castle on the Mediterranean coast. Inside, the contrast of medieval and modern was striking. The small lobby was bright and airy, its walls covered with swords and shields and other armament associated with the Middle Ages.