Gilt Trip

by Laura Childs

  “Competition,” said Madame Blavatsky.

  Margo frowned. “Competition? With who?”

  Madame Blavatsky shrugged. “It could be in the areas of work or career, or even a romantic rival.”

  Margo went a little cross-eyed. “A rival?” she sputtered.

  “Now the next card,” Madame Blavatsky said. “That represents the cause.”

  “Cause of what?” asked Margo.

  Madame Blavatsky’s eyes drifted closed. “The cause or reason for the situation in which you find yourself.”

  Margo’s lips pressed together as she flipped over the card and revealed a reversed four of pentacles.

  Madame Blavatsky studied the card. “This one implies that you are holding on to things, people, money, or . . .”

  “Greed!” Beetsie suddenly squawked. “That’s what it means. Greed!”

  Ava raised an eyebrow. “Wow, honey, you really know your stuff.”

  Margo looked supremely insulted. “Greed?” she said. “I sincerely doubt that!” She hastily flipped over the last two cards. “Please tell me what these are supposed to represent?” Now she sounded petulant and abrupt.

  “A recent death as well as anxiety,” said Madame Blavatsky.

  Margo stood up suddenly, practically knocking over the table. “You’re telling me my life is filled with death and anxiety?” she quavered.

  “Don’t be upset,” said Madame Blavatsky. “Death is natural, and anxiety is something to guard against.”

  Margo reached down and clasped Carmela’s hands. “Oh, Carmela,” she cried. “Please help me figure out what happened to Jerry Earl and Eric. As you can see, I won’t be able to rest . . . to find peace . . . until I have an answer!”

  • • •

  “HOW DID YOUR TAROT READING GO?” ASKED Gabby. She was restocking paper bins when Carmela came cruising into the shop.

  “Don’t ask.” Carmela tucked her handbag behind the front counter and let loose a heavy sigh.

  “Ooh, that bad?”

  “You know Margo,” said Carmela. “Frankly, squeezing into my skinny jeans this morning was far more productive than her tarot card reading.”

  “The thing is,” said Gabby, “I really don’t know Margo. But from the little I’ve seen of her, I have a feeling she’s awfully demanding.”

  “You have no idea.” Carmela picked up the morning mail and idly sorted through it.

  “So you’re still working on this . . . thing?” said Gabby.

  Carmela looked up. “Go ahead and say it. It’s an investigation. I know I shouldn’t have gotten involved, but I did. And now everything’s in a muddle and I don’t seem to be getting anywhere at all.”

  “Then you should just quit,” said Gabby, ever the practical one. “Hang it up and let Detective Gallant grapple with it.”

  “I would,” said Carmela. “Except . . .”

  “Except now it’s become a personal challenge,” said Gabby. A smile stole across her face. “I know you, Carmela. “You love a challenge. You’re like a cantankerous mule when it comes to a challenge. You won’t give in, you won’t give up.”

  Carmela fingered a packet of floral stickers. “Why do you make tenacity sound like such a bad thing?”

  “Because when you obsess over something, like these two murders, it becomes, well, obsessive,” said Gabby. She studied Carmela carefully. “I don’t know. You usually come up with something.”

  “But not in this case. I feel absolutely stumped. I feel like . . .” Carmela rubbed a hand through her hair.

  “Like you’ve hit a dead end?” said Gabby.

  “Ha-ha, very funny,” said Carmela.

  “Maybe you should lock yourself in your office and doodle for a while. Try to clear your head.”

  Carmela was nodding in agreement. “Blow out the cobwebs. Yeah, well, I suppose I could give it the old college try.”

  “Oh,” said Gabby as Carmela headed for her office. “I put a couple of those little feathered birds on your desk. The ones you wanted for cake toppers.” And under her breath she added, “Maybe they’ll put you in a better frame of mind.”

  • • •

  CARMELA GRASPED A SQUISHY RED MARKER AND sketched a quick layout for a scrapbook page she was working on for Chart House Antiques. If she put a large photo at the bottom of the page and a smaller photo intersecting the top half of the large one . . . then her copy could go . . .

  The marker hit her desk with a clatter. No. Doodling and working weren’t putting her in a better frame of mind at all. They were only delaying the inevitable.

  Which is . . . what? More investigating?

  Carmela spun in her chair and tried to think in a more practical manner. What would be the next step? Talk to Margo again? Try to pry more information out of Bobby Gallant? Or . . .

  She straightened up, and her hands suddenly flew across her keyboard. Maybe she should try to follow up on the lead that Squirrel had given her. The guy named Beck who lived up in West Feliciana Parish near Laurel Hill.

  Wait a minute. West Feliciana Parish? Where else had she heard that mentioned in the last few days? She racked her brain. Somewhere . . .

  First had been the party and the murder. Then she’d gone to Margo’s home to commiserate. And she’d been introduced to Eric Zane.

  Poor Eric Zane.

  But . . . wait! It was Zane who had mentioned West Feliciana Parish! They’d been talking about dinosaurs and fossils, and Zane had said the jawbone of a mastodon had been dug up in West Feliciana Parish!

  Could Jerry Earl’s crazy fossil hunting be behind his messages to Beck? Would someone murder Jerry Earl over a fossil? She supposed it depended on how much a fossil could be worth!

  Carmela tip-tapped away, searching white pages, people finders, and LinkedIn. But the only Beck she was coming up with, the only one near Laurel Hill, was Beck’s Tire Store.

  A shot in the dark maybe, but a shot worth taking.

  Carmela dialed the phone number. Two seconds later, a chirpy voice came on the line.

  “Beck’s Tire Store, this is Cindy.”

  “Hi, Cindy,” Carmela began, then faltered. What exactly should she say?

  “Hello?” said Cindy.

  Carmela cleared her throat and gave it another shot. “I’m looking for Beck. Is he there?”

  “You mean Bill? Sorry, he’s with a customer right now. May I have him return your call?”

  Bill Beck. Looks like she’d happenstanced upon a possible lead!

  “It’s pretty important,” Carmela said. “I really need to talk to him.”

  Cindy made a noise and Carmela wondered if she was chewing gum. “Uh-huh. Do we have your car here in the shop?”

  “No,” said Carmela. “I’m calling about a personal matter.”

  Now there was a distinct popping sound. “Maybe you should call back,” came the slightly disinterested voice.

  “How long will Bill be there?” Carmela asked, looking at her watch. It was a bit of a drive up to Laurel Hill, but she didn’t want to just sit there and twiddle her thumbs. She needed answers!

  “He’ll be here until closing,” Cindy said.

  “And that’s what time?”

  “Six o’clock,” Cindy said as she hung up.

  Chapter 20

  LAUREL Hill was above Baton Rouge, practically on the Louisiana-Mississippi border. It was an easy drive through beautiful pine-studded countryside, and Laurel Hill itself was a small, picturesque town that was simple enough to navigate.

  Five minutes after Carmela hit town, she was cruising the street in front of Beck’s Tire Store. The store was a small stucco building that had seen better days. Definitely a mom-and-pop-type setup. She pulled into a small parking lot at the side of the store and hopped out. An old-fashioned Coke machine buzzed noisily nearby
while clanking sounds came from the back of the shop. Probably, she decided, that’s where the service entrance was. That’s where she’d find Bill Beck.

  A burly man in khaki coveralls wiped his greasy hand on a towel when he saw Carmela approach. “Our showroom and main office is around front,” he called out.

  Carmela nodded. “I’m looking for Bill Beck.”

  The man squinted at her, then stuffed the rag into his back pocket. He had a friendly hangdog face and a ring of gray hair with a little bald spot on top of his head. Like a monk. “You’re in luck, you just found him.”

  “I’m here on a kind of fact-finding mission,” Carmela told him. “And I’m hoping you can help out.”

  Beck squinted at her. “That so.” His tone was flat, barely interested.

  “I’m looking into a few business dealings that concerned Jerry Earl Leland. I understand you were fairly well acquainted with the man?” Beck didn’t look like any sort of killer to her. Then again, you never know.

  “Why are you asking?” said Beck. “Who are you anyway?”

  Carmela put a friendly smile on her face. “My name is Carmela Bertrand and I’m looking into a couple of things for Leland’s widow.”

  Beck cocked an eye at her. “Widow?” He looked confused.

  “That’s right,” said Carmela. “Jerry Earl was murdered last Sunday.” She let her words wash over him. “And buried yesterday.”

  A shocked expression crossed Beck’s face. “Murdered? You don’t say. By who?”

  “We don’t have any answers on that yet. The police are working on a number of leads, but the whole case is rather complicated.” Carmela hesitated, then decided to be very, very direct. “I know you had some kind of business deal with Jerry Earl.” She lifted a hand casually to indicate she was just trying to tie up some loose ends.

  Beck pulled the rag out of his back pocket again and wiped his hands unnecessarily. “I did have something going with the man. But that was a while ago.”

  “Can you tell me what kind of arrangement the two of you had?”

  Beck stuffed the rag back into his pocket. “Well, I suppose I could. Nothing really came of it, so . . .” His voice trailed off. “And you’re helping out his widow . . .”

  “If you could just outline the basics,” said Carmela, hoping he’d continue.

  “Mr. Leland wanted to lease some land from me,” said Beck. “Thirty acres off of County Road 714.”

  “Land?” Carmela thought back to Jerry Earl’s little notebook with all the intricate maps and jottings. Could all this be about a fossil hunt? “Does he still hold a lease on it?”

  “Oh no, heck no,” said Beck. “After we’d hammered out the terms, Mr. Leland had that turn of bad luck and was sent to prison before the lease was ever signed.” He shook his head. “It sounds like he had a lot more bad luck after that.”

  “So you still own that parcel of land?”

  “Nope,” said Beck. “I sold it six months ago.”

  “Was it farmland?” Carmela pressed.

  “Hardly. It’s more like swampland next to a big gravel pit. The company I sold it to said they were gonna build a shopping center there. Some kind of discount mall.”

  Carmela immediately thought of Conrad Falcon, Jerry Earl’s neighbor and nemesis. Had he beat Jerry Earl out of another contract? When she’d overheard Falcon late yesterday afternoon, he’d mentioned something about moving his equipment in . . .

  “Who was the buyer for your land?” Carmela asked.

  “Let me jog my memory,” said Beck. He crossed over to a wide wooden shelf that ran along the entire back wall of his shop. An aging computer sat there amid a tangle of tools. Beck wiggled the mouse and brought the computer to life. He tapped a few keys and muttered, “Just a sec.” Then, after a minute, he said, “Spangler Enterprises was the buyer.”

  “Spangler?” said Carmela. She’d never heard of the company. “Are you sure the buyer wasn’t a man by the name of Conrad Falcon?”

  Beck shook his head. “I don’t think so, ma’am.”

  “But you’ve heard that name before?” Carmela asked hopefully. “Falcon?”

  Beck should his head. “Nope. Sorry. Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  • • •

  CARMELA FOLLOWED HIGHWAY 714 OUT OF TOWN, determined to take a bit of a detour and look at the land that Jerry Earl had been so anxious to lease. She followed the directions Beck had given her and came upon the parcel of land with a minimum of fuss.

  Beck had been right. The land was part swamp, part gravel pit. Not much to look at. Her curiosity at a fever pitch, Carmela wondered just what Jerry Earl’s interest had been. Were there fossils buried here? Dinosaur bones? Somehow that didn’t seem very likely. So . . . had something else drawn him?

  Determined to get a closer look, Carmela parked the car on the side of the road and jumped out. Because she was still wearing pumps, she exchanged them for a pair of sneakers that were in her backseat. As she laced up the sneakers, she noticed a spot of dried dog drool staining them.

  Oh well. What else is new?

  Then she stepped off the blacktop and crossed into what appeared to be a miniature Badlands. The land was challenging terrain at best, lots of mounded earth and deep trenches where it had been roughly gouged up. And tall, prickly grasses that made her wish she’d strapped a couple of Poobah’s flea and tick collars around her ankles. She pressed on, came to a stream that burbled down through a rocky streambed, and skipped across it.

  Why, she wondered, would Jerry Earl want to lease this land? Could he really find fossils here? Or was he looking for something else? Or had he been the one who planned to build a big shopping center? Although this place seemed like it was in the middle of nowhere.

  Up ahead, an enormous mound of gravel rose up. Carmela headed that way, thinking that the ground might be a little drier that way, and that if she climbed to the top of the mound, she could get a bird’s-eye view of the entire property.

  Halfway up the mound, her tennis shoes displacing little avalanches of gravel, a loud noise suddenly started up. A kerpuckety-puckety kind of noise.

  What on earth?

  Startled, she glanced up and was stunned to see a giant yellow bulldozer shudder to life on top of the mound. Suddenly, the noise turned into a loud roar, and the front bucket of the bulldozer rose up like the trunk and tusks of an enraged bull elephant!

  Rivulets of gravel began to stream past her like crazy! The dozer was pushing gravel down the hill! Directly at her!

  “Stop!” Carmela yelled. “Stop it, please!”

  As more gravel continued to pour down, the loose gravel beneath her feet gave way. Stumbling, scrambling to gain a better foothold, Carmela fought to keep from falling as gravel rained down from above.

  “Stop!” she cried again, waving her arms, trying to catch the attention of the machine’s operator.

  But it was useless. More gravel tumbled her way, streams and streams of it, this time burying her up to her ankles. Thrown off balance, she fell forward and sank to her knees as more gravel piled up around her.

  Frantic now, Carmela began pawing at the stones around her.

  Dear Lord, if I don’t get myself out of here, I’m going to be buried alive!

  She struggled to get upright again as dust blew into her eyes and filled her nose. The roar of the engine above was deafening.

  Small stones pelted painfully against her as she pulled one foot free and spun to turn her back on the bulldozer. A massive push of gravel came hurtling downhill and shoved her forward. Helpless now and at its mercy, she rode the avalanche down as if surfing a wave, somehow managing to keep her balance. At the bottom of the hill she was rudely upended and bounced painfully onto her backside.

  Pulling herself up, dazed and shaking with fear, Carmela backed away from what was now a major rockslide. Then
she spun on her heels and sprinted for the safety of her car.

  Still shaking and trembling, spitting out grit, she gunned the engine and raced away from there as fast as she could!

  • • •

  INSTEAD OF HEADING HOME TO RELATIVE SAFETY, Carmela drove back over to Laurel Hill. She was dazed and dusty and hopping mad—determined to find out who owned the land and figure out what exactly was going on there! After a few wrong turns and more than a couple of inquiries, she found her way to the county clerk’s office.

  The office was housed in a sleepy-looking red brick building with white trim, and Carmela prayed that someone was still working there. It was late Friday afternoon, so there was no knowing if the office would be open or closed.

  Hoping for the best, she pushed her way through the front door, saw two service windows with closed signs on them and one window still open. Luck was with her.

  She glanced around the deserted office and called out, “Hello?” Her voice echoed in the empty building. Walking up to the open window, she grimaced when she noticed that her shoes were leaving scuff marks on the tile floor. She kicked at the spots, hoping to erase them, but only made it worse.

  After a moment, a woman with short wavy hair and thick glasses that gave her a bug-eyed look appeared behind the counter. She let out a startled gasp when she saw Carmela and put a hand to her heart.

  “I’m sorry,” said Carmela. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  “I didn’t hear you come in,” said the clerk. Her eyes remained large and startled. “I was just about to lock up.” She glanced at a wall clock in a black metal cage. “We close at four thirty,” she said primly. It was four twenty-eight now, clearly an imposition.

  “This will only take a minute,” Carmela said. “I was hoping you could look something up for me.” She held her breath, hoping the woman would comply.

  The clerk seemed to hesitate, glancing at the clock again, probably willing it to spin ahead faster.

  Then Carmela said, “I just need you to check the ownership of a parcel of land out on Highway 714. It’s approximately thirty acres and was sold by Bill Beck maybe five or six months ago.”