Greg McKenzie Mysteries Boxed Set—Books 1-4

by Chester Campbell

  In the center of the long room, small groups of players were gathered around the tables, where dealers in black pants, white shirts with wingtip collars and black bow ties doled out cards, raked in the dice, or spun roulette wheels. Jill and I looked around in every direction but saw nothing of anyone resembling Claude Detrich. We had just sat down at adjacent half-dollar Blazing Sevens machines when my cell phone rang.

  “Win a bundle,” I said. “I’ll take this over near the restroom where I can hear.”

  I hurried across to the alcove marked Men, punched the button and said hello. When the caller asked for Mr. McKenzie, my pulse kicked up a notch. Was this Ollie O’Keefe? In my rush I hadn’t checked the ID.

  “This is Mr. McKenzie,” I said.

  “Sergeant Upton here, Mobile County, Alabama Sheriff’s Office. I understand you’ve been looking for Oliver O’Keefe. Can I ask you why?”

  I frowned, confused. “I don’t mind telling you, Sergeant, but what the devil brought this on?”

  “Then tell me, okay?”

  “Oliver O’Keefe quit his job as draftsman with a Nashville firm last week. About the time he left, they discovered some plans were missing. I wanted to ask him about it.”

  “Was he suspected of taking the plans?”

  “That’s a good possibility.”

  “Well, I’m afraid he won’t be answering any questions,” said Sergeant Upton. “His body was found this afternoon on the shore near Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island. He appeared to have drowned, but his neck was broken also.”

  Chapter 27

  Jill swiveled in her chair as the machine noisily counted off a win of eighty coins. The look on her face, though, had shifted from pleasure to pure dismay.

  “His neck was broken?”

  “Right,” I said. “They found his car in another part of the island. They’re waiting for the autopsy to decide exactly what happened.”

  “Do they suspect foul play?”

  “They consider it a definite possibility. I asked the sergeant if they found any plans in his car. They didn’t.”

  We had no time to discuss young O’Keefe’s death any further. As I looked off toward the section of the casino that housed the high-ticket slots, I saw a big man lumbering along dressed in a bright red shirt and blue jeans. I recognized Detrich immediately, though he appeared to be cultivating a new feature I hadn’t heard mentioned before—a mustache that ended at a thin line of beard, making a hairy full circle from his upper lip around his chin.

  “There’s our man,” I said. “Do you want to keep on playing while I go approach him?”

  She pressed the button to cash out, and coins began clattering into the tray. “Let me collect my payoff and I’ll go with you. You may need a witness if things get out of hand.”

  I grinned. “I’m the cowardly lion. If things get out of hand, I’ll run.”

  “Yeah. I know how you run. In Israel it almost cost you your life. I’m going with you.”

  Jill toted her plastic can full of half dollars as we walked toward the row of machines where Detrich sat in front of a slot labeled $10. I noticed he had eighty tokens showing in the credit window. Unlike us peons, who rarely patronized even the dollar machines, he obviously was a high roller.

  I sat down at the machine next to him and looked around. “I hope this is your lucky night, Mr. Detrich.”

  He glanced over at me, frowning. “Do I know you?”

  “Not until now,” I said, smiling. “My name is Greg McKenzie. I’m an investigator. I’ve been asked to look into that accident at The Sand Castle. Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  “Here at the casino?”

  I shrugged. “That’s where we are.”

  He grunted, then asked, “Got some identification?”

  I pulled out my billfold and showed him my military ID. Behind the window across from it was a bronze coin with the OSI insignia and Special Agent at the top. “I’m a retired special agent in charge with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. This isn’t an official inquiry, Mr. Detrich. I’m making it on behalf of a close friend.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s his interest? He own one of the condo units?”

  “I’d rather not say just yet.”

  “You wouldn’t, huh? What sort of questions you got?”

  “I understand the accident was caused by the use of rebars too small to carry the load and concrete of insufficient strength.”

  “You been talking to the county building inspector?” he asked.

  “I’ve talked to a number of people. They seem to agree on the basic cause.”

  “They’re probably right.”

  “I wondered why you used the particular rebars and concrete you did?”

  “Jesus...that’s what the damn plans called for.” The way his nose flared reminded me of a snorting bull.

  “Were the plans you worked with an original or a copy?”

  “A copy.”

  “A copy of what?”

  “They were a copy of the plans Tim Gannon gave to Evan Baucus. What do you think? Damn, you ask stupid questions.”

  A short-skirted waitress holding a small round tray stuck her smiling face between Detrich and me. “Would you gentlemen like something to drink?”

  “A Bud,” Detrich said. Another snort.

  “Scotch and soda,” I said. Then I looked around at Jill standing beside a slot behind us. “You want something, babe?”

  “How about a strawberry daiquiri,” she said.

  The waitress flounced away as Detrich turned to check out Jill and the plastic can she held. “Who’s the dame?”

  “My wife,” I said. “She came along for a little fun.”

  “Hmph. Why don’t you quit messing up mine? Go play with her.”

  I wondered if he had intended that to be a double-entendre, but decided it was probably not his style. “Sorry,” I said. “Just a few more questions. What reservations did Bosley Farnsworth express about the rebars or the concrete?”

  “None.”

  “Shouldn’t he have?”

  “Hell, Gannon was supposed to be a competent structural engineer. We assumed he knew what he was doing.”

  “At what point did Baucus ask you to cut corners on the project?” I asked.

  He glowered. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Just what it sounds like, Mr. Detrich. When did Baucus instruct you to deviate from the plans?”

  “We didn’t deviate. We didn’t cut corners. My people constructed that building exactly the way Gannon designed it. Period. Now get the hell off my back.”

  He squirmed around in his chair like he was about to get up. I held out my hands in a calming gesture. It didn’t bother me so much that I wasn’t a match for him physically. I still remembered a few karate moves I had learned in my younger days and was ready to use them, though somewhat more slowly. But I wasn’t interested in getting thrown out of a casino tonight.

  “Okay,” I said. “I accept that. I just heard that you had wanted to change some things to save money. I thought maybe Baucus had pressured you to keep costs down.”

  “You’re damn right he wanted to hold costs down. Wouldn’t you?”

  I ignored the question. “Getting back to Tim Gannon, where did he stay when he came down to Perdido Key?”

  “A condo down the beach from The Sand Castle. I think it’s called Gulf Sands.”

  “Were most people involved in the project aware of that?”

  “Where he stayed? Of course. You think he was hiding or something? He said it belonged to some guy from Nashville.”

  “I guess you have a place on the beach, too.”

  “Yeah. I got an apartment farther down...if it’s any of your damn business.”

  I tried to soften my tone, to make the next question sound totally harmless. “I know all the commotion and all the carnage Friday night must have been terribly stressful.”

  “Yeah, it was bad, all right.” He twisted his face to one sid
e. “People hurt, some killed.”

  “What did you do to wind down after that?”

  “I didn’t do nothing different. After that damned deputy got through with me somewhere around eleven, I headed for the bar down the beach where I usually hang out.”

  I gave a sympathetic nod. “Some of the others go with you?”

  “Nah. But Boz was there. We talked a little about what had happened, agreed it had to’ve been Gannon’s fault.”

  “What time did you get away from the bar?”

  He started to answer, then stiffened, his face turned ugly. “What the hell do you want to know that for? What’s it got to do with any accident? You’re getting awfully damned nosy, Mr....what was it—McKenzie?”

  I saw his fists clench as he started to rise.

  Chapter 28

  I might have enjoyed a little tussle with Mr. Detrich in earlier days. I had been a scrappy cuss during my youth and particularly while I was with the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office. My dad used to say I was as combative and tough and uncompromising as my Scottish grandfather, Alexander McKenzie, a sergeant with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Regiment. But now was not the time to mix it up with the contractor.

  The waitress returned just as I stood up. I reached for my drink, dropped a tip on the tray and turned to Detrich. “Sorry I took so much of your time. Hope you have a winner there.”

  I grabbed Jill’s good arm and steered her away before he could say anything else. We moved all the way to the other side of the casino, where we found a row of quarter Wheel of Fortune machines.

  “I don’t think Detrich is likely to frequent anything this cheap,” I said. “Let’s try this for a bit, then head for the room.”

  “Fine by me. I’d say you’ve agitated enough folks for one day.”

  Jill hit a lucky streak and we were three hundred dollars to the good when we retired to the fifth floor. I called that a good night’s work...or play. But the digital clock beside the bed showed it was barely ten. Hardly the time to call it a day. I had figured lingering in the casino any longer would not have been productive, however. I checked a couple of times and found a growing collection of beer bottles beside Detrich’s machine. Any more questions and he would probably have blown like a stick of dynamite.

  I was convinced the contractor had not been playing by the rules. Either he was lying through his teeth or somebody else had done a slick job of substituting bogus instructions for those Tim had specified. And from my observation, Detrich resembled the rough, antagonistic character Walt had described much more than the easy-to-please, agreeable person Boz Farnsworth had tried to paint him.

  Jill and I watched the TV news, which dealt mostly with an upcoming local election and a five-car pileup on I-10. But one story near the end of the newscast snagged our attention. A Mobile sheriff’s sergeant talked about a body found on Dauphin Island. He reported the Medical Examiner’s preliminary finding had created some unanswered questions. Young Oliver O’Keefe had probably been dead since Sunday night. More disturbing, his neck had been broken before his body found its way into Mobile Bay.

  When I turned off the TV, Jill looked around. “If you were right that he took the plans, what do you think happened?”

  “My gut feeling is he turned them over to somebody, and that somebody whacked him or had him whacked. Leave no witnesses.”

  “Was it Claude Detrich?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe I should go down and ask him.”

  Chapter 29

  Some people sing in the shower. Others follow the quickie routine—slap on the soap, rinse, hop out. I like to take my time and let the hot water relax my muscles and reinvigorate my gray matter. As the fine spray played over my shoulders Thursday morning, I pondered what I had turned up to date. Or, more properly, what we had turned up.

  Sherry Hoffman had been in love with Tim, Jill believed. Sherry had definitely been with him at our condo Friday night before he died. Had he rebuffed her, made her angry, so mad that she had stormed out, forgetting her jacket? What did she know about the missing plans, about the file in the laptop? I doubted she had killed Tim, but I couldn’t discount the possibility.

  Boz Farnsworth was a bit of an enigma. Jill thought he was jealous of Tim’s relationship with Sherry. He would not have been the first jealous lover to solve his problem with a bullet. But there was also the matter of the rebars and the concrete. He was a structural engineer and he had signed off on something he should have objected to. He also possessed a set of altered plans. Could Boz have murdered Tim to silence a voice that might have accused him of malfeasance, of knowingly permitting something that would endanger people’s lives?

  On the face of it, Claude Detrich was in the conspiracy up to his bushy brows. Had he changed Tim’s plans to cut costs? Did he plant Ollie O’Keefe in New Horizons to provide an early warning in case somebody got suspicious about the specifications? After the accident, Detrich could have called O’Keefe and instructed him to take the plans and clean out the company’s computer.

  “I know the hotel’s bound to have a monstrous supply of hot water,” Jill said from the bathroom door. “But you’re really going to put it to the test if you don’t hurry up and get out of there.”

  I stuck my head from behind the shower curtain like a turtle peering from its shell. “I’ve been reviewing the case.”

  “So who did it?”

  “I was just about to get to that when you interrupted.”

  She gave me a skeptical look. “Yeah. And I was just about to give birth to a ten-pound kangaroo.”

  Like I said, she can express herself in unpredictable ways. I reached over and turned off the shower. “Coming out,” I said.

  After I finished dressing and tossed my shaving gear in the bag, I looked around to make sure we were leaving nothing behind.

  “Are we going to take our money and run?” Jill asked.

  “That’s my inclination.” I knew there were more important things on the agenda than feeding hungry slots. “Why don’t we check out of the hotel, stop somewhere for breakfast, then go by Evan Baucus’s house. I looked up the address in the phone book.”

  “I thought he wasn’t going to be back until tomorrow?”

  “True. So maybe Miss Greta’s at home. She might be more willing to talk than he would.”

  Around nine o’clock, we drove up to the large white frame house that faced the Gulf across the divided beachside highway. A huge, gnarled live oak with a twisted trunk and limbs flaring out in every direction partially obscured the structure. The two-story house featured four tall columns and a porch on each level that stretched nearly the entire width of the front. A concrete driveway led back to a portico at one side of the house.

  I parked the Jeep under the portico. A warm breeze bearing a distinct fishy odor swept past us as we walked up three concrete steps to a large door where a lighted bell button appeared beside a small meshed grill. After pressing the button, I looked up and spotted a miniature video camera mounted above.

  “Who is it?” a woman’s voice inquired from a speaker behind the grill.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Greg McKenzie,” I said. “Is this Mrs. Baucus?”

  “Yes. Are you collecting for a charity?”

  I smiled. “No. We’re from Nashville, Tennessee. We’d just like to talk to you for a minute.”

  The door opened shortly and a young woman with short blonde hair looked out. She had a pretty face and a curvaceous body overbalanced by breasts that seemed ready to burst free of a green tank top. Stenciled on the shirt was Heart Fund 10k Run. No doubt one of the charities the Baucuses supported. I now understood the bank manager’s wicked smile.

  “Tennessee. You’re a long way from home. Would you like to come in?” She smiled broadly.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I ushered Jill ahead of me as we followed Greta Baucus into a small foyer. We followed her through a doorway and found ourselves in a sitting room that was permeated with the odor of in
cense. The furniture was Early American. I wasn’t sure if the chairs were antiques or reproductions, but they seemed sturdy as new when we sat down. Paintings of scenes that appeared to be from old New England towns hung on the walls.

  “What can I do for you folks?” Greta asked.

  She still smiled, but a closer look showed a bit of hardness about those pale blue eyes. I suspected she had a lot more mileage on her than thirty years would suggest.

  “We’re considering a sizeable investment in Perseid Partners,” I said. “Before we do anything, though, we wanted to get as much information as possible about the company and its leadership.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not involved in the company,” she said with a flip of her wrist. It set off a jangling sound among the half-ton of gold bracelets she wore. “My husband is out of town until tomorrow.”

  “That’s all right,” Jill said. “I think meeting a man’s wife can sometimes tell a lot more about him than meeting the man himself. Don’t you agree?”

  Greta shrugged and made a face. “I never thought about it that way. I guess...maybe.” Then she grinned. “You guys want something to drink? We’ve got any kind of booze you could ask for. Wines, red and white. Beer.”

  “Sorry,” Jill said. “I’m afraid we’re not morning drinkers. Decaf coffee is about as strong as we can take.”

  “I can do that. I hope you don’t like it with chicory, though. That stuff’s disgusting. Evan drinks it sometimes, but he’s not from around here. He just likes to pretend he’s one of the boys. Can I get you some coffee?”