I gave her one of my what-the-hell-are-you-doing looks and said, “What about the wet swim suit?”
She giggled. “If the sofa gets wet, I’ll buy a new one. Now, where were we?”
I set my glass on the small end table and folded my arms as her hip pressed against mine. I felt my face turning warm and sweat beginning to dampen my shirt. “I think I was about to ask what kind of detecting it was you wanted me to do.”
She turned up her glass to take a swallow and spilled some of the drink down her chest. “Oooo! That’s cold.” She reached a thumb down to pull out the halter and almost dislodged a tanned breast that had obviously been bared out in the sun.
I hadn’t seen a show like this since I took in a New Orleans strip joint with some OSI buddies fifteen years ago. Talk about provocation. I knew better. I should never have agreed to come out here.
“Camilla,” I said, “I’m not sure what you have in mind, but I’m pretty damned sure my wife wouldn’t approve of it.”
“Oh, Greg. I’m sorry.” She feigned an innocent look. “Am I embarrassing you? All I had in mind was to enjoy the company of a fascinating man ...while on duty. I was quite impressed by you last night. I thought it would be helpful to get a little better acquainted before we talk about the detecting task I have for you.”
I had stared down some tough felons during my law enforcement career, and I thought I had encountered just about every variety of calculating female known to man. But I realized now I was playing in a totally new ballgame. The old rules no longer applied. With Camilla Rottman, I was playing out of my league.
I glanced at her shapely torso and at the sensuous lips turned up in a puckish grin. I noted that Lady Camilla, up close with the makeup washed away, showed lines in her face that said she was not the spring chicken she sought to portray. She’d had plenty of years to polish her act to a fine point. Bottom line, considering that copper-colored skin and the sensuous way she moved, I suspected she could be as dangerous as the copperhead snakes that writhed about our backwoods.
“You want to get a little better acquainted? Here’s my pedigree,” I said. “I’m the son of a master brewer with Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis. My mother was a high school English teacher. When I joined the Air Force, I was pursuing a military career like my Scottish ancestors had followed since the seventeen hundreds.”
Camilla’s eyes glowed. “How intriguing.”
“Maybe. But no generals. My grandfather, Staff Sergeant Alexander McKenzie, fought in the Boer War and in World War I with the First Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Regiment. He was forced to retire after complications from wounds he received in France. He immigrated to America when my dad was a teenager.”
“I’ll bet he was highly decorated.”
I shrugged. “He had some medals. I found them in a drawer after my dad died. My dad, incidentally, was an Army cook in World War II. Now, what about you?”
She had almost finished her drink. She pulled one leg up, tucked it under her and turned to face me. “I told you last night about my great-grandfather, Samuel Hedrick, who started the company during World War I to provide medical supplies to the Army. And my grandfather, Randall, the Flying Tiger. My father, Stone Hedrick, built HI into what it is today. They say I take after him more than my mother, a quiet woman who preferred to avoid the limelight.”
“I’d have to say I don’t exactly picture you that way.” I had begun to feel self-conscious sitting with my arms folded. I shifted around, laying an arm on the back of the sofa.
She took the last swallow of her drink and grinned. “You’re right. Nobody has ever accused me of being shy or retiring. After high school, I went to Vassar. It was strictly a girl’s school back then. I studied in France and came back home to Nashville in the early seventies. Roger was a young engineer with HI when we met. I suppose I’m the antithesis of my husband. He’s a whiz with facts and numbers, but he has a problem with the hard decisions. As a member of the board, I have to keep him in line. Anyway, after marriage I got involved with the symphony, the Junior League, that sort of thing. And here I am.” She got up and looked toward my glass. “Wouldn’t you like something more stimulating than Sprite?”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe I could take any more stimulation than you.”
She let out a burst of laughter, leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “You darling man. What a compliment.”
I checked my watch as she busied herself at the bar. Nearly four-thirty. I needed to get out of here and head for Warren’s motel.
“Where’s Roger today?” I asked as she came back with her drink.
Her lip curled for a moment. When her face softened into its usual smile, her voice had cooled. “Roger takes off occasionally with one of his old Vanderbilt cronies. They’re supposedly fishing at a lodge up on Center Hill Lake.”
I realized I had asked the wrong question when she slid up against me, closer than ever. Despite all the bravado, she appeared to be suffering from the neglected spouse syndrome. I shifted to my businesslike voice.
“I appreciate the hospitality, Camilla, but I have an appointment with another client shortly. How about clueing me in on this detecting job you have in mind?”
Her expression turned serious. “This is highly confidential, Greg. It must go no further than you.”
“We never reveal a client’s identity and only discuss aspects of a case necessary to the investigation.”
“Very well. What I want you to do is find out who Roger is sleeping with. It must be done—”
I held up my hands to stop her. “We don’t handle domestic relations cases. Sorry, but that’s something Jill and I decided from the start.”
She stiffened, eyes blazing. “You refuse to help me?”
“Camilla, I work as an investigator because it’s what I’m good at and something I love to do. I take cases where I can feel good about the results I achieve, where it’s obvious an injustice has been done and I might be able to right the wrong. I don’t feel good about taking sides between a husband and a wife.”
Her chest rose and fell with rapid breaths. “That’s a flimsy pretext, a plain old cop-out.”
“Call it whatever you will. It’s a firm policy from which McKenzie Investigations does not deviate.” I got up from the sofa. “I’m sorry if you’re having problems, Camilla, but no, I can’t help you.”
She didn’t move, but her face turned crimson. “You’re going to regret this, Colonel McKenzie.”
I was already regretting it, but not for the possibility of something she might do. “I’ll show myself out, Camilla. Good-bye.”
I turned and strode quickly to the front door. I left without looking back.
Chapter 30
Until he opened the door for me, Jarvis had been sitting in front of the TV where a baseball game was in progress. The muted sound left only the rumble of the air conditioner to make the room resemble something other than a hollow shell. Warren gave me a vacant, out-to-lunch look at first, then he shook his head.
“I still haven’t heard a word, Greg. Come on in.”
I knew my own expression wasn’t much of an improvement over his. “Everybody’s got troubles,” I said.
“What’s happened to you?”
I sat in the room’s other chair and told him about my visit with Camilla.
He shook his head. “Jesus. She must be some piece of work.”
“Well put. But now I’ve got to go confess to Jill.”
“You think that’s necessary?”
“I do. I’ve always been up front with her, and I don’t intend to change at this late date.”
“Sometimes, some things are better left unsaid. I don’t feel any compulsion to relate all of my past female encounters to Kelli.”
“That’s a bit different. You aren’t married and haven’t been living with her for the better part of forty years.”
He clicked off the TV. “You’ve got a point there. Still, I’m not sure confession is always good
for the soul. It could undermine the underpinning of a relationship.”
“That’s a chance I’ll have to take, Warren.”
He gave me an I-surrender look. “You’re a determined man. Have you come up with any new ideas from your trip to Hartsville?”
I told him about our adventures at the funeral, about Jill’s visit with Mickey Evans, and my trip to the Battle of Hartsville area.
“I once studied a couple of Civil War campaigns,” Warren said. “Interesting stuff from a military standpoint, but not a lot of help to a fighter pilot. I did learn, however, that aerial balloons were first used for surveillance and gathering intelligence during the Civil War.”
“Really? I’ll bet my Rebel classmates didn’t know about that.”
“Both the North and South used them. The Union came up with the idea first. They sent up a tethered hydrogen-filled balloon in 1861 near Arlington, Virginia. It spied on Confederate troops at Falls Church, three miles away. The observations were telegraphed back to the ground, resulting in the first case of guns being accurately aimed and fired without being able to see the target.”
“Thanks. I’ll try that one on my buddies in the morning.”
Warren looked thoughtful. “You said something about finding a cigarette pack. What can that tell you?”
“Maybe nothing. Probably not much. It’s in the car. I haven’t really examined it.”
Warren got up, walked over to the window and looked out. After a moment, he turned. “Why don’t you go get it and let’s take a look. Would sure as hell beat standing around here waiting for a phone that won’t ring.”
I went out to the Jeep and retrieved the crumpled cigarette pack, still wrapped in the tissue and locked in the glove box. I’m always concerned about chain of custody when I come across potential evidence. Back in Warren’s room, I laid it on the table, straightening it out with another tissue, careful to do as little tampering as possible. The pack was white with a partial red background, a blue design on the left side of the front. Letters spelling “Dallas Lights” were reversed out of the color in white.
“Never heard of that one,” Warren said.
“Neither have I.” I turned it over, and we looked at the back.
Warren scratched his stubble of beard. “I’ll be damned. They’re made in Russia.”
He was right. The small print indicated packaging in St. Petersburg, Russia. No question it was a rare thing to be found on a riverbank in rural Trousdale County, Tennessee. The chances of its being tossed there by some redneck fisherman were about as good as the chances I’d be invited to join the Murder Squad at the Metro Nashville Police Department. So who had dropped it there? The killer?
As I felt of the package, I realized a cigarette had been left inside it. The end could contain DNA if the smoker had put it in his mouth, then returned it to the pack. But that was an extremely long shot.
I pulled out my cell phone. “I need to call Agent Fought. This might possibly be a real break.”
Instead of a voice, I got Fought’s voice mail. I left a message asking him to call me about a potentially important piece of evidence I had turned up. Next I called Jill and told her about the cigarette pack.
“Where could they buy something like that?” she asked.
“That’s a question Fought needs to answer. Or we could. We’d have to go through the phone book and start calling tobacco stores.”
“Should I give it a try?”
“Let’s hold off until we hear from Fought. He can devote a lot more manpower to the job. I won’t be here much longer, babe. Then I’ll head on home.”
Warren leaned back against the windowsill. He toyed with the TV remote. “I can’t get interested in a baseball game or anything else for worrying about Kelli.”
“Have you tried her cell phone?”
“Numerous times. It just switches to voice mail.”
“Why don’t you come on over to the house? Give you somebody to talk to. If you stay around here, you’ll drown yourself at the bar and feel lousy in the morning.”
“I hate to impose on you.”
“Impose, hell. Jill and I would be delighted to have you. Come on. You can follow me out there, and I won’t have to give a bunch of confusing directions.”
“Confusing directions are part of the Air Force way, pal.”
I laughed and headed for the door.
I kept an eye on the mirror to make sure I didn’t lose Warren along the way, but my thoughts rarely wandered from worrying about how Jill would take my little indiscretion. It kept looming larger the closer I got to home. When I called to alert her that Warren was coming over, I decided the confrontation might be blunted a bit with our friend on hand.
Jill met us at the door and welcomed Warren with a hug. “I’ve been scouring around the kitchen to find something to fix for supper,” she said, as if she didn’t stock the makings of most any delectable dish you could name.
“Don’t go to any trouble for me,” Warren said. “I can do with peanut butter and jelly.”
“Not around here,” I said.
Jill scurried toward the kitchen to finish what soon took shape as grilled chicken breasts with a blueberry sauce, sliced carrots, tomatoes and zucchini and a salad of chopped endive with ripe olives and almond slivers. Just a little something she whipped up on the spur of the moment.
When we sat down to eat, Jill smiled at Warren’s compliments. “It was nothing. Now tell me what you two geniuses came up with regarding our troublesome case.”
I took a deep breath. “First, I think we’d better talk about a new troublesome development.”
“What ....” She stopped, apparently after gauging my dire expression.
“I did something I shouldn’t have done, and I apologize sincerely for it.”
She sat still, gripping her fork. “Go on.”
“After you left the office to go to the craft store, I got a call from Camilla Rottman. She talked about how much she appreciated our coming to the party, then she gave me a story about needing help with a ‘detecting task,’ as she called it. Could somebody come over this afternoon. When I told her I’d check with you, she claimed the matter was extremely confidential and could only be investigated by a man working alone. I should come by myself and say nothing about it to you.”
By now Jill’s lips were tightly compressed, her eyes shifted from bright to stormy.
I struggled on. “I know I shouldn’t have done it the way I did. I rationalized that I wasn’t lying by telling you I was going to see Warren. I just didn’t tell you the whole story. I thought if I followed her instructions, it might lead to some good business among her friends with fat billfolds.”
“What did Dr. Trent say about money-grubbing in his sermon last Sunday?”
Boy, my wife really knows how to zing a guy. I winced. “I’ll try to listen more closely tomorrow. Anyway, I found Camilla at home alone, just out of the pool, dressed in a skimpy swim suit.”
I described the scene and everything that happened, down to my reaction when Camilla tugged on her bra and my abrupt departure after she made her little threat.
“And that’s it?” Jill said in a cool voice.
I held up my hand like a witness at the bar. “That is the whole and complete story, so help me God. Warren can tell you it’s the same account I gave him.”
He nodded.
Jill stared at me for a few moments, twitching her lips. Her face remained as solemn as a judge pronouncing sentence, but her voice softened as she spoke. “I’d like to have seen you sitting there sweating. Serves you right.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Am I forgiven?”
“I’ll have to take that under advisement. You had better eat before your food gets any colder.”
Colder than that look you’re giving me, I wondered?
Chapter 31
Jill remained cool but outwardly calm through dinner. Afterward, she carried things into the kitchen to load the dishwasher, while Warren and I
adjourned to the living room. When we were seated, he leaned toward me and spoke in a low voice.
“You’re a brave man, Gunga Din.”
I worked up a semblance of a grin. “Thanks.”
“You sounded pretty convincing. Maybe she’ll accept it and move on.”
“I hope so. We’ve had our ups and downs, but we’ve always managed to work things out.”
When the phone rang, I answered one on a table by the sofa. I recognized the voice of Casey Olson’s girlfriend. She asked for Jill.
“It’s for you, babe,” I called out. “Mickey Evans.”
I hung up after she answered in the kitchen.
“Is that the girl from Hartsville?” Warren asked.
“Right. Jill told her to call if she ran across anything that might be helpful in our investigation.”
“I wish she could tell us something helpful about Kelli.”
He got his wish when Jill came in a few minutes later, grinning. “Mickey talked to a lady newspaper reporter at the restaurant.”
“Kelli?” Warren almost jumped out of his chair.
“No doubt. She said she was writing a story about the two murders. Said her editor in Boston was interested because an AP story said the county hadn’t had a murder in several years.”
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “What did Kelli ask about?”
“A lot of the same stuff I did. Mickey told her about Casey’s friends. She seemed particularly interested in the guy called Kayjay from Samran. Mickey didn’t tell her anything about the marijuana business.”
“Did Kelli mention anything about where she was staying?” Warren asked.
“No. And I don’t remember seeing any motels around Hartsville. Do you, Greg?”
“The closest one is probably in Lafayette. That’s where the Samran plant is located.”
“I’m going up there.” Warren rapped a fist against his palm.
I held out my hands in a gesture of caution. “I wouldn’t advise it tonight. You go nosing around in that area, and if she’s there, you’d probably blow her cover. I suspect she’d be as unhappy with you as Jill is with me.”
Greg McKenzie Mysteries Boxed Set—Books 1-4 Page 81
