5 A Sporting Murder (2 page)

Dexter and I faced each other like a couple of duelers ready
to fire as Phil’s white Chevrolet Malibu screeched to a halt nearby. Tall and
gaunt with a beak of a nose and a dour look that made him resemble a bird of
prey, Phil Adamson was a veteran detective I had befriended, after a rocky
start, before I got into the PI business. Since then we had collaborated on
several cases, including one where we stared into the barrel of a 9mm
semiautomatic held by a remorseless assassin.

Phil hurried over to where Dexter
and I stood. “What’s the situation, Tom?” he asked.

“We got a dead one on the floor in
there,” the officer said. He nodded his head toward the building. “Paramedics
just checked him.”

“I’ve already alerted the Medical
Examiner’s office. They have somebody on the way. Is Bolling inside?”

“Right. I left her in charge and
came out to talk to this so-called investigator.”

“For your information, Officer
Dexter,” Phil said, his voice calm but unyielding, “Greg McKenzie was
responsible for solving the Marathon Motor Works case a few months back. Nailed
the guy who killed three people.” He turned to me. “I’ll talk to you in a few
minutes. Let me get in here and get a report from the officers.”

Dexter twisted his mouth in obvious
anger but followed Phil toward the shop without further comment. I’m sure he
knew he was dealing with a real pro in Adamson. Besides twenty years experience
as a detective, Phil had a criminal justice degree and taught the subject at a
local community college.

I returned to my car and prepared
to hibernate as the parking lot began to take on the look of a police
convention. Crime scene techs, a patrol sergeant, more blue and whites, the
Medical Examiner’s man. I spent my time trying to reconcile the grief I felt at
Arnold’s death with a growing determination to track down his killer. Phil
had the responsibility to find who did it, but I had a personal stake in solving
the crime.

When Phil came out, he opened the
passenger door and slid into my Jeep. “Sorry to keep you waiting. How long have
you known Wechsel?”

“Close to a year, I guess. When
Jeff Price talked to my old commander and found out I was in Nashville, he
called and told me about his new wife’s nephew. They’d only been married for a
year. Arnold studied high performance cars at Nashville Auto Diesel College.”

“You said he was bringing you some
information. Was it related to a case you’re working?”

“Right. I can’t discuss it, though.
We’re working this one for a lawyer, Terry Tremont of the Three Tees.”

Normally, a PI’s investigation is
subject to police scrutiny, but when it’s done on behalf of an attorney, it’s
privileged.

Phil scratched his nose. “Tremont,
Tisley and Tarwater. Might have known. They seem to like you. Give me a hint,
at least.”

“It involves that NBA deal.”

His normal frown turned darker. “You
mean your friend got croaked over a basketball franchise?”

“I don’t know what it means, Phil.”
I threw up my hands. “I wondered if it might be a simple robbery.”

“Doesn’t appear to be.”

“We just got called in yesterday.
Haven’t even talked to the principals involved.”

“How come you met at this
Godforsaken place?”

“I certainly wouldn’t have picked it.
It was Arnold’s idea. Seems the owner is a friend who gave him the key.”

“I’d better get hold of the owner
of this place and see if he can tell me anything else about what’s going on.”

He turned toward the door.

“Did he have any papers on him?” I
asked. “Anything he might have been bringing to me?”

Phil looked over his shoulder.
“Nothing but a billfold stuffed with cash. Was this a payoff?”

“Hardly. Look, Phil. I’ve got a
personal stake in this one. Keep me in the loop. Okay?”

“I’ll do what I can. You know
you’re lucky you didn’t get here early for that appointment. There might have
been two dead guys in there.”

I knew, and I thought about that on
the way home.

Jill had just finished brewing steaming cups of spiced tea
when I got home. I could have used a Scotch and soda but didn’t complain as we
sat in front of our massive stone fireplace to discuss what had happened. With
the flashing Christmas tree lights and all the baubles and garlands that
decorated the room, a festive mood would have seemed appropriate. It was
anything but.

“I still can’t believe this,” Jill
said. “He was so quiet and well-mannered.”

“I agree. He’s the last person
you’d think would end up like this.”

She sipped at her spiced tea, a
troubled look on her face. “Do you think it was related to what he planned to
tell you about the NBA deal?”

“I can’t say for sure, but it looks
that way. He didn’t want to talk about it on the phone, and he didn’t want
anyone to know he was meeting with me. Obviously, someone did.”

“Are you going to call Jeff?” she
asked.

“I’ll have to.” I checked my watch.
“It’s not five in the morning yet over there. I don’t want to wake a guy up
with news like this.”

“Did Phil find anything to indicate
who might have been the killer?”

“Not that I’m aware of. I’ll have
to check back with him after he gets all the crime scene reports, and the
autopsy. One thing’s for sure. What Terry Tremont’s clients heard was not just
a rumor. If it’s enough to blow my mind and get Arnold killed, something is
definitely not right.”

Our discussion was interrupted by
the telephone on the end table beside the sofa. It was Wes Knight, a newspaper reporter
I had met shortly after Jill and I started the agency a year ago. He was an old
hand in Nashville, while I was a relative newcomer. Meaning he had sources I
needed. When Wes started probing, it could be a bit uncomfortable, but he was
not someone I wanted to alienate.

“What’s going on, Greg?” he asked. “The
cops identified you as the guy who found a murder victim out Dickerson Pike.”

“Unfortunately, it’s true.”

“How did it happen?”

“Sorry, but I can’t tell you
anything else, Wes. The young man called and asked me to meet him out there.
Said he had some information for me.”

“That’s it?”

“When I arrived, all I found was a body
lying on the floor.”

“What kind of information did he
have?”

“As I told the cops, I have no
idea. He didn’t tell me on the phone. That’s all I know.”

“Damn, buddy. You can really get
into some scrapes. Hasn’t been all that long since you got mixed up in that
Marathon Motor Works business.”

“True. And we really appreciated
your help on that one.”

“No problem. How about letting me
know if you get any more information about this deal. Remember, you said I was
‘J for juicy’ on your speed dial.”

“I’ll let you know if I hear
anything juicy,” I said, forcing a laugh.

When I put down the phone, Jill looked
around at me. “I trust you had your fingers crossed.”

“Fingers, toes, anything else, babe.
I think I’d better check another news source, though. Maybe one of the TV
sports guys. We need to know what goes on inside the professional sports
franchise business. It’s getting deadly.”

I waited until midnight to call Jeff Price. He had been up
only a short time.

“You’re staying up late, Colonel,”
he said in his Alabama drawl. “It’s still Saturday night over there, isn’t it?”

“Sure is,” I said. “I waited to
call so I wouldn’t wake you up. I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

“What’s happened?”

In all my years of passing along emotionally
distressing information to family members, I never learned a way to sugarcoat
it. “It’s about Arnold, Jeff. He called and asked me to meet him last night.
When I got there, I found him shot through the head.”

“Aw, no…”

I told him what had happened and the
circumstances leading up it. He understood. Jeff and I went back quite a few
years, to my first assignment as a Special Agent in Charge. His first wife had died
before he was assigned to Ramstein, which was located near Kaiserslautern, Arnold’s hometown. New wife Lisle worked for a local police agency, where Jeff met her.

“This is gonna kill his mother,”
Jeff said. “How did he learn this information about your pro basketball deal?”

“He wouldn’t tell me on the phone,
and I never had a chance to talk to him again.” In hindsight, I knew I should
have insisted."

“He was a sharp kid, really gung ho
on auto racing, but I never heard him mention anything about basketball.”

I recalled the night Arnold came over for dinner. “He didn’t talk a lot, but it was obvious he enjoyed working
at the shop where they build and repair race cars.”

“Right. He was pretty high on that
job. When he was home the last time, he told me, confidentially, didn’t want
his mom to know, that he’d done a little gambling on the auto races.”

“That’s interesting. The homicide
detective investigating the case said Arnold had a lot of money in his
billfold.”

“So the motive obviously wasn’t
robbery.”

“Right.”

“Greg, would you do me a favor?”

“I know what you mean,” I said.
“And it’s a given. Us old Air Force guys stick together. I intend to find out
who murdered your nephew.”

When I climbed into bed a short
time later, that promise weighed heavily on my mind.

We lived in Hermitage, a bedroom suburb named for President Andrew
Jackson’s historic mansion. The impressive home attracted thousands of visitors
yearly to the nearby estate. Our office occupied a small space in a strip
center a few miles away on the circumferential boulevard that bore the
general’s nickname, Old Hickory. One of the things I loved about Nashville was the seemingly endless historical snippets that turned up when you peeked
below the surface.

On a normal Sunday morning, we
would have headed to Gethsemane United Methodist Church, but after last night’s
shocking debut, I was anxious to start digging into this case. I hoped it would
lead to some answers about who had killed Arnold Wechsel. When we arrived at
the office around eight, the answering machine chirped with a message to call
Terry Tremont. I draped my jacket on the back of my chair and slid in behind my
Plain Jane wooden desk, a clone of the one Jill occupied nearby, part of our
equal opportunity policy.

“What’s the deal on this Arnold
Wechsel I read about in the morning paper?” Terry asked when I got him on the
line. “The story said he was bringing you some information. Did it by chance
relate to our case?”

“Definitely,” I said. “When he
called, he said he had information about the NBA deal that would blow my mind.”

“Damn. What was it?”

“Unfortunately, he wouldn’t tell me
on the phone. I didn’t have a chance to talk to him in person.”

Terry listened quietly as I
explained what had happened. A bear of a man with a vice-like handshake, a
genuinely nice guy, Terry worked out of a downtown office set up to resemble a
living room. It had a plush white sofa and chairs arranged around a dark wooden
coffee table. A faux fireplace sat against one wall. His “desk” was a small walnut
table in a corner of the room. The rationale for the setup was that he liked to
work in the comfort of home. I guessed that’s where he was calling from now.

“So you think Wechsel had
information that would confirm this rumor business,” Terry said. “According to
the paper, Wechsel came from Germany a few years ago to attend the Auto Diesel College. I’d think they had plenty of that sort of school over there.”

I told him about my OSI buddy and how Arnold had wound up in Nashville as Jill dropped the morning newspaper on my
desk, folded to the Wechsel murder story.

“Phil Adamson is working the
homicide,” I said. “I’ll try to find out as much as I can from him. Hopefully
the trail will lead us toward the information we’re looking for. What I need to
know is if you’ve told anybody else about us.”

Terry paused a moment. “I called
Brad Smotherman and asked him to inform the others. As for anybody else, just
my secretary.”

“Would you check with her?” I asked.
“Find out if she might have mentioned it to anyone else. We have appointments
with both Smotherman and Gordon Franklin tomorrow. We’ll question them about it.
We need to find out how Wechsel got wind of us being involved in this NBA
situation.”

“Somebody must have let it slip.”

“Yeah. With disastrous
consequences.”

His voice held a somber note. “This
gives the issue a whole new dimension, doesn’t it?”

“We’re not positive the murder was
related to the case, but it certainly looks that way. If it was, we’ve got a
lot more precarious situation on our hands.”

“I’m glad I got you and Jill on
board,” Terry said. “In addition to this new turn of events, I’ve got my wife
to contend with. She’s demanding to know what we were doing to put the damper
on these NBA folks. She’s almost as big a Predators fanatic as Smotherman and
his crowd.”

When I got off the phone, I took a
closer look at the newspaper story. It covered the homicide and its aftermath
fairly well. I found nothing significant that I didn’t already know.

Jill looked across at me. “You told
Terry you’d try to get all you could out of Phil Adamson. Is that our next
move?”

“Since we can’t follow up with our
Preditors contacts until tomorrow, that looks like the best we can do for the
moment.”

I got my detective friend on the
phone and asked how his new homicide investigation was going.

“Slowly,” he said.

“Did you find the auto shop owner?”

“Yeah, but he wasn’t much help.”

“My guess is he was an old Auto Diesel College classmate.”

“You guessed right. Name is Pete
Lara. Actually, Pedro Lara. He’s Mexican. Not real good on his English. Said he
had no idea what Wechsel was talking about when he called you.”

I leaned back and propped my foot
on a desk drawer. “Did he know where Wechsel got his money?”

“Just the job working on race cars.
I plan to talk with him again, maybe bring along a Hispanic officer and see if
I can get more out of him.”

“Did you find anything helpful at
Wechsel’s apartment?”

“We’re still going over it. Oddly
enough, it wasn’t the usual trashy mess of a young bachelor. The place was very
neat. His bank records were all carefully filed in a box. One interesting
thing, they included several fairly large cash deposits in recent months.
Nothing to show where they came from, though. He also made a few pretty good
size withdrawals. The computer guys are digging into his laptop. Hopefully
we’ll pick up something useful.”

“I can give you something,” I said.

“Oh?”

“I talked to my OSI buddy in Germany. He said Arnold had an interest in gambling on auto racing. I hadn’t even
thought about placing bets on auto races.”

“I’ve heard of it but not sure how
it works. That could be where those bank deposits came from. Did your friend
know anything about Wechsel’s relationship to pro basketball?”

“I asked about that. He said the
boy hadn’t mentioned anything.”

“Let me know if you hear something else
I can use,” Phil said.

And the same to you, I thought. But
I knew I was lucky to get as much as I had. Phil’s friendship went only so far
when it dealt with closely held details of an active case. It was the old quid
pro quo. You tell me and I’ll tell you.

“Do you know when they’ll release
the body to the family?” I asked.

“When the Medical Examiner gets
through with all his cutting and probing. Hopefully they’re not too busy and
can get the autopsy done today.”

When I got off the phone, Jill gave
me what I took as a hopeful look. “What did you learn of interest to us?”

“I think we need to visit Mr. Pete
Lara, owner of the garage where I found Wechsel’s body. He’s Mexican, so you’d
better brush up on your Español.”

After I retired from the Air Force,
we had wandered around the U.S. for a while, then spent some time in a
jacaranda-scented American military retirement community around Guadalajara, Mexico. Jill picked up the language a lot easier than I did.

“What did Lara tell Phil?”

“Not much. But immigrants, even
legal ones, tend to talk more freely to people who aren’t cops.”