Greg McKenzie Mysteries Boxed Set—Books 1-4

by Chester Campbell

  “We’ve had problems getting our invoices paid,” she said. “They claimed sales had been slower than anticipated, causing some delays. But Mr. Gannon believed they had the money to pay us. I think there were some other things that bothered him. He never told me just what. On a few occasions, he closed his office door while talking to those folks down there. Afterward, he would be really agitated.”

  “Who was he talking to?”

  “The developer, Mr. Baucus, or the contractor, a Mr. Detrich. He wasn’t real happy with either of them.”

  “Was he concerned about the quality of the construction?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know. You’d best ask Mr. Sturdivant about stuff like that.”

  Sam looked around. “I wonder where Walt is? I would have thought he’d be here by now.”

  Mrs. Renegar had just headed off to speak to Tara when Walt Sturdivant made his appearance. He looked more like a college professor than an engineer now, the pipe bowl protruding from the breast pocket of his gray-checked wool jacket. I watched as he paused in the doorway, his head snapping back and forth. When he spotted Sam and me, he strode toward us.

  “Something weird is going on,” he said in a low, angry voice.

  “What’s wrong?” Sam asked.

  “I just came from the office. I went by to pick up some things to take with me tomorrow. We may have been broken into.”

  I frowned. “May have?”

  “Well, the place was still locked up like I left it Friday. But when I looked for The Sand Castle plans, they were missing. I checked the computer and guess what—the whole damned file has been deleted.”

  Chapter 8

  Monday morning turned sullen. Somber clouds huddled over the cemetery as Tara and the boys dropped red roses into the open grave. We stood beneath a green canvas tent, the chill of a gusty breeze striking our faces. The air had the musty smell of dead grass, adding to the dismal mood. Dr. Trent offered a few final words of comfort to the family, after which Jill and I joined others in expressing our heavy-hearted farewells.

  “Let us know what you find, Greg,” Sam said.

  I shook his outstretched hand. “Don’t worry. You’ll hear from us soon. We’ll send everything of Tim’s back with Walt.”

  Jill hugged Wilma.

  “I wish you were going with us,” Jill said. “You need a break.”

  She got a wistful smile in return.

  “Sometime soon, maybe,” Wilma said. “You take care of that arm.”

  Walt Sturdivant had driven to the funeral with Robbie Renegar and hurriedly transferred his bag to my Jeep Cherokee. After I pulled off my jacket and tie to get more comfortable for the journey, we headed for I-65 with a brief stop at the Hermitage Rehab Clinic. Housed in the end of a small strip center, the facility was a long, narrow room packed with padded treatment tables and a variety of exercise machines, all designed, Jill would tell you, to inflict torture on recovering orthopedic surgery patients. She had called her doctor on the cell phone earlier that morning as we drove to the cemetery. Though he was not exactly thrilled with the idea, Dr. Vail probably realized the futility of arguing and agreed to let us pick up Jill’s physical therapy records and take them to a clinic in Florida. But the doctor cautioned her the trip would be taxing, that she should take extra care to protect her arm.

  Once we were under way, I stuck my sunglasses in the console. There would be no problem with glare this trip, at least not until we reached South Alabama. Jill had called in for an airman’s forecast and found the clouds would likely accompany us to some point south of Montgomery. The Florida panhandle promised a complete turnaround—warm temperatures and sunny skies.

  “Would anybody object to smoking my pipe?” Walt asked from the back seat.

  Looking in the rearview mirror, I saw him tapping the bowl in his hand.

  “I’d object to smoking your pipe,” Jill said. “Matter of fact, neither of us smokes anything. This is a non-smoking Jeep.”

  I saw Walt jam the pipe back into his pocket and twitch his mouth in displeasure. And though I sympathized with his feelings over being unable to smoke—Jill had hounded me the past several months into becoming tobacco-free again—I had begun to experience a few misgivings about Mr. Sturdivant.

  Jill and I had accompanied him to the New Horizons Building after we left the funeral home Sunday night. We learned there had been two sets of plans kept at the firm, huge stacks of blueprints and specification sheets that described every detail of the structure, from electrical, plumbing, heating and air conditioning systems to the composition of the reinforced concrete shell. One set should have been at the office, while the other traveled to Perdido Key with Tim. But The Sand Castle drawer in the plans case was empty, and the project’s file in the computer no longer existed. Walt checked the box of CD-ROM back-ups and found nothing bearing a Sand Castle label. Every trace of the condo’s origin had vanished like the pinched-out flame of a candle.

  Checking with the burglar alarm monitoring station, we confirmed there was no record of any unauthorized entry. And I could find no evidence of tampering that might have by-passed the alarm and provided access to the building. By all appearances, we were dealing with an inside job.

  As we sped south toward Alabama, I should have been enjoying the hardwood forests that flashed past near their peak of fall splendor, hills painted with swathes of yellow maples, elms and ash, occasional fiery red splashes of scarlet oak. Instead, I spent the time puzzling over possible answers to the enigma of those missing documents and files. Finally I asked Walt about the significance of the apparent theft.

  “Damned if I know,” he said, “it makes no sense.”

  “Who could have wanted them?”

  “Nobody but us, the contractor or the developer.”

  “But they already have them, right? Could it have anything to do with that incident Friday night?”

  “Such as?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. Something in the plans or files that somebody didn’t want to come out.”

  “Hell, everything about those plans has been out in the open for two years,” he said, his tone antagonistic. “The developer has a copy. The contractor has a copy. The Threshold Inspector has a copy. They were reviewed by the Escambia County Building Inspections Department. How much more open can you get?”

  His attitude reminded me of something Sam had told me before the funeral. Tim had confided to his dad that although Walt was a whiz at analyzing engineering problems and devising solutions, his handling of interpersonal relationships left a lot to be desired. He was a former Pennsylvania farm boy who obviously never took a Dale Carnegie course. Sam said Tim knew how to handle him, however. One method was to keep Walt at arm’s length from the clients.

  After dashing around a convoy of eighteen-wheelers that labored up a long stretch of incline, I glanced back at Walt in the rear seat.

  “Who has the magnetic key cards used for entry to the building?”

  “We all have them,” he said. “People frequently have to work nights or weekends to keep up.”

  “Do they turn in their cards when they leave the company?”

  “They’re supposed to. I’m sure it doesn’t always happen.”

  Maybe I should go into the business of counseling on industrial security, I thought. Everybody locks their doors and windows, but few consider all the people who might have access with a key.

  “That’s sort of asking for trouble, wouldn’t you say?”

  He shrugged. “Never thought of it that way.”

  “Have you had any employees leave recently?”

  “Our electrical engineer resigned a week ago.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we insisted on it. He had an alcohol problem. Tim found a half-empty Jack Daniel’s bottle hidden on his bookshelf.”

  “Did he go quietly?”

  “Ha! About as quiet as a raccoon in a henhouse. It was good riddance, if you ask me. I never liked him. On
the other hand, Tim thought he was a sharp cookie. But the guy had gotten terribly sloppy. It was only a matter of time before he would have screwed up something big time.”

  “Did he turn in his key card?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  Had he gone on a binge Saturday, decided to come in and exact a bit of revenge, I wondered? That was one possibility. “Anybody else fired recently?”

  “Not fired. We’ve had a couple leave as The Sand Castle project wound down. Tim urged them to stay. He had just landed a new job that would have provided plenty of work.”

  “How long since they left?”

  “Friday was the last day for a draftsman recruited during the buildup. Said he wanted to go back home to New Orleans.”

  Two employees had just departed, one under unfavorable circumstances. That gave me two possible suspects. Of course, I couldn’t rule out anybody still on the payroll, but what motive could they have? I was forced to agree, Walt had a point—at the moment, none of it made much sense.

  “When you get back to the office,” I said, “collect what information you have on the engineer and the draftsman. Get it to me. I need to look into those two.”

  Chapter 9

  I could have given Jill some kind of award for stamina. She required only one pit stop before we swung off the interstate below Birmingham for lunch. I pulled into a Cracker Barrel parking lot crowded with cars and trucks from across the map, including a church van from the Atlanta suburbs. We waded through aisles stacked with a wild assortment of souvenirs, ranging from decorated sweat shirts to ceramic figurines to creatures that sang weird songs when disturbed, arriving at the hostess station just before a dozen jeans-clad seniors filed out amidst a burst of laughter.

  “I’ll bet that’s the church group,” Jill said. “Wonder what’s so funny?”

  “Sounded like a bunch of hyenas,” Walt said.

  The place was almost full, but we were promptly ushered to a table in the non-smoking area, something Jill had insisted on since my agreement to give up cigarettes again. I looked around at Walt. “Don’t be so damned hard on the old folks. Play your cards right and you might be one some day.”

  He shook his head. “God forbid.”

  A tall, skinny waitress with short black hair appeared at our table. She looked like a sitcom caricature. After an artful swipe across the table with a damp towel, she gave us a disarming smile. “Whatcha gonna have to drink?”

  “Decaf and water,” Jill said, returning the smile.

  I nodded. “The same.”

  “A Coke,” Walt said, frowning.

  She twisted the towel in her hands. “Where you folks from?”

  “Nashville.” Walt snapped the word like a gunshot and sat back in his chair.

  The waitress grinned. “Don’t see no git-tar.”

  “Actually,” Jill said, chuckling, “I left my oboe in the car.”

  She was joking. She hadn’t played the oboe since high school days.

  The girl frowned. “Your hobo?”

  Walt slapped his forehead. “Christ, I’m not believing this.”

  “An oboe is a long woodwind instrument,” I said, gesturing to show its length. “Similar to a clarinet.”

  “Well, I swear,” she said, shaking her head. “Never heard of it.” Then she smiled again. “I’ll get your drinks.”

  When the waitress headed toward the kitchen, Jill turned to Walt. She spoke calmly, like a mother to a wayward child. “You know, Walt, you really need to cool it a bit. Life can be so much less complicated if you just ease up and go with the flow.”

  He took a deep breath and let his shoulders sag. “Sorry. I’ve been told I’m not the most congenial guy around. I guess it started back when I was a kid. Some boys at school nicknamed me Weasel. I wasn’t very happy about it. But I was too small to make them stop. I didn’t wind up with a lot of friends.”

  From where I sat, that was a given. But if I was going to get anywhere with this investigation, I had to have Walt’s cooperation. So I ignored his orneriness and got to the heart of the matter.

  “How about filling me in on the main people Tim dealt with on The Sand Castle project,” I said. “Who’s the top dog?”

  “Guy named Evan Baucus. He’s head of Perseid Partners.” Walt spelled out the name. “It’s a development firm located in Biloxi, Mississippi. He’s the one who chose New Horizons to design the structure and do the engineering.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “Not a lot. I met him a couple of times when I was down there with Tim. He’s around sixty, Tim said. But not a gray hair in his head. I’ll bet he dyes it. He’s a real dandy and a control freak. Tim said he went to law school but never took the bar exam. Was involved in real estate for a long time. Came from LA, as I recall.”

  While Jill and I ate beef stew and Walt devoured a plate of chicken strips, he gave us the sketchy details he had accumulated regarding The Sand Castle development crew. During a tour of the project early in the construction phase, Walt said, Baucus ordered his people around like some kind of third-world tyrant. But as soon as a local official showed up, he made a chameleon shift into an affable, smooth-talking businessman.

  “Robbie Renegar told me you’d had trouble collecting on your invoices,” I said.

  “Right. Tim had to raise a bit of hell about it. We finally got our money.”

  “Did you have any questions about the construction?”

  “Tim had problems with the contractor. His name is Claude Detrich, a big bear of a guy, the polar opposite of Baucus. He’s about as suave as a water buffalo.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  “He wanted to change a lot of specs to save money.”

  “Like what?”

  “Cheaper plumbing fixtures, for one. Tim said no way. They were selling The Sand Castle as a luxury condo. That meant they had to have top of the line amenities. There were some more serious issues, too. Detrich insisted on always taking the low bid on materials. Tim was concerned with quality, durability.”

  “How was it resolved?”

  “I’m not sure it ever was. That’s why Tim spent so much time down there. He would argue and cajole and threaten. But he couldn’t be there all the time. They say Detrich is a good old boy who gets along well with his workers. But he likes to act the tough guy with most people. He has a quick temper, doesn’t take well to criticism. Tim was never sure he hadn’t missed something.”

  What our waitress lacked in sophistication, she made up in commitment. Walt’s Coke was constantly refilled. The level in our coffee cups rarely dropped halfway. Jill and I normally skip dessert in a restaurant, but the waitress was so insistent that we gave in and ordered the Baked Apple Dumplin.

  While waiting for it, I asked Walt about the other person he had mentioned.

  “Threshold Inspector,” Walt said. “He’s a structural engineer licensed by the State of Florida. He’s used to oversee large projects. The general contractor hires him, but he’s paid by the developer.”

  “He represents the state?”

  “He certifies to the state and county that the job meets all specifications.”

  “Tell me about The Sand Castle inspector.”

  “His name is Bosley Farnsworth. Goes by the name Boz. I understand he came from a prominent Pensacola family. He gave me the impression of being a real snob. I don’t know if that’s why he seemed to dislike us. Whatever, he enjoyed making things rough for Tim. He nitpicked the project at every turn.”

  The picture at Perdido Key was getting murkier. No wonder Tim had given Sam the impression that something was bothering him. I now knew there were at least three people in Florida with whom he had serious disagreements. But were any of them serious enough to figure into the questions I faced as an investigator—if Tim Gannon did not kill himself, who shot him...and why?

  Chapter 10

  Before leaving the Cracker Barrel, I called the sheriff’s office in Pensacola and advised
them we should be arriving between 4:30 and 5:00. A helpful young woman gave me directions to the impound yard behind the headquarters building just off Fairfield Drive. Due to some fortunate planning by the State of Alabama, the northbound lanes of I-65 had been chosen to suffer all the construction woes that day. We hit the Flomaton Exit right on schedule. We sped past white-dappled fields of cotton ready for picking, through forests of pines cultivated for wood pulp, crossed a short section of the Sunshine State and got an odious welcome to paper mill country. Plumes of smoke and an outpouring of unfriendly smells greeted us.

  The sun was settling slowly toward the Alabama line when we arrived at the old Spanish port city of Pensacola, the last outpost at the western tip of the Florida panhandle. After coming in through an area of attractive homes on large wooded lots, we found the afternoon rush hour considerably less harrowing than the motorized mayhem we were accustomed to around Nashville. I pulled up to the gate in the high chain-link fence behind the nondescript building on West Leonard Street at 4:45. An officer in green coveralls and a baseball cap stenciled with SHERIFF greeted us.

  “I’m Greg McKenzie from Nashville,” I said. “We’re here to pick up Tim Gannon’s Chevy Blazer and his personal effects.”

  He nodded. “They told me you were coming. I’m Deputy Erwin. Sergeant Payne is on the way with the personal stuff. The Blazer is over there near the fence.”

  He pointed to a nearby cluster of cars, few of recent vintage, most with an assortment of nasty blemishes. I introduced Jill and Walt as we walked toward the white vehicle with the Tennessee plate and an orange UT Vols sticker on the back window.

  “I’ll be driving it back,” Walt said. “Do you have the keys?”

  The deputy pulled them out of his pocket, unlocked the driver side door and opened it. “You’ll probably want to take it to a car wash,” he said. “It’s just like we found it.”

  “Was it checked for fingerprints?” I asked.

  Erwin frowned. “What for? We’re talking suicide.”