Dead Broke in Jarrett Creek: A Samuel Craddock Mystery (Samuel Craddock Mysteries) (11 page)

I wake up even earlier than usual Friday morning. A cold, spooky fog is hovering close to the ground when I go down to the pasture to see to my cows. The fog makes everything seem a little unreal. Even the sound of my cattle lowing is flat and tamped down.

When I get back to the house, I’m happy to hear Loretta calling out at my screen door. She’s brought coffee cake and we sit down at the kitchen table to drink a cup of coffee.

“You’ll never guess what’s happened.”

“Spill it,” I say, after I’ve eaten my first mouthful.

“Gabe LoPresto has taken off with that girl from the bank.”

I almost choke on my coffee. “What do you mean, taken off?”

“Apparently the girl didn’t show up for work yesterday morning. Everybody figured she didn’t know the bank would be open as usual. Then this morning she called and said she was off for a few days with Gabe. Can you imagine calling your work and just saying you won’t be in?”

“Did LoPresto tell anybody where he was going?”

“That wasn’t in the information I got. I can tell you that everybody is wondering what’s going on, though. Are they eloping?”

“That’s hardly likely since as far as I know LoPresto is still married.”

Loretta looks like she has more to say but thinks better of it. She sips her coffee and looks around with a critical eye. “Samuel, I haven’t wanted to say anything, but you could use somebody to come in and clean once a week.”

I look around the kitchen. I’m surprised. “I don’t think I need anybody. I’m doing fine. You’ve got higher standards than me, that’s all.”

“How often do you dust?”

“You’ve got somebody in mind who needs a job, don’t you?”

Of course she does. And she says she wants me to let the woman come in one morning a week “because she needs the money.”

“I don’t like the idea of somebody I don’t know coming in here.”

“You’ll get used to it. She’s nice and quiet. She won’t bother you.”

I tell her I’ll think it over.

It seems prudent to change the subject, and I’ve got the perfect subject. “I met the new woman who’s opening the art store downtown.”

“Oh, I heard there was going to be a new store. The owner’s name is Ellen Forester.” Loretta likes to know things, so she trots the name out as if it gives her points. “What does she look like?”

“She’s…” I pause. What does she look like? “I don’t know. She looks good. She’s got brown hair and eyes. Seemed friendly.”

“Samuel, you could be describing a dog. Is she fat? Thin? Does she have a nice smile? What did she say?”

“You’ll see her soon enough. She’s having some work done on the space she’s rented.”

“What kind of work? They just got done renovating that building.”

“I don’t know. Go down there and ask her. She’ll probably be glad somebody is interested.”

Her sigh is long-suffering.

“Okay. No, she’s not fat,” I say. “She’s regular size. And she was very nice, all ten words that she said to me.”

“Like what?”

“She said she’d like to see my art collection.”

She nods. “That makes sense. What kind of art is she going to have in the store?”

“She didn’t say, but she mentioned she was also going to have painting workshops.”

“Workshops? I don’t know who she thinks is going to do that.” Then she catches herself being snippy. “But I suppose we’ll see. I surely hope she succeeds. Ida Ruth told me she’s starting over because she got divorced recently.”

“We didn’t discuss that,” I say. “Listen, I’ve got to get going.” I stand up.

“You didn’t tell me what you found out about what happened to poor Gary Dellmore.”

“That’s going to have to wait for another time.”

“All right, then. I guess you’ve got to keep things under your hat.” She gets up and starts toward the door.

“One thing.” I stop her, and it seems like what I have to say is momentous. “I got myself a cell phone. You want the number?”

“A cell phone. What do you want with that?”

“Since I’m going to be the law around here, people will expect me to be available.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. I guess you’re right. But now everybody is going to think you’re at their beck and call night and day.”

I write down the number and she looks at it like it’s written in Sanskrit, but she tucks it into the pocket of her skirt.

Bill Odum is already at the police station when I get there and looks relieved to see me. “This came in,” he says, thrusting a fax at me before I can even sit down.

It’s a preliminary autopsy report from a doctor whose name I don’t recognize, affiliated with the hospital in Bobtail. It says the bullet that killed Gary Dellmore was most likely a .45. I point it out to Odum and say, “You got the caliber right. Only problem is half the people in town have a .45 stashed away somewhere.”

I tell him to pull up a chair next to my desk, and I fill him in on who I talked to yesterday and what I learned. “So,” I wind up, “we know that Dellmore was killed with a .45-caliber weapon, his car is missing, he was playing fast and loose with Jessica Reinhardt down at the office, his daddy was fed up with his behavior, and his wife had every right to be. Plus, Alton Coldwater claims Dellmore had a hand in pushing the city to invest in the water park deal.”

Odum grimaces. “Dellmore didn’t exactly make himself popular. Makes you wonder why a man who has everything acts that way.” He searches my face as if I might have some bright idea I’m not divulging. Suddenly he laughs. “I always got in trouble when I was in police training for making observations like that. They told me if I was so interested in motivation, I ought to study psychology.”

“It always seemed to me that a big part of being a cop is knowing what made people tick,” I say.

“I like that. It suits me.” He rubs his hands together. “How are we going to proceed today?”

“I’d like you to find out more about the outfit that went broke out at the lake. See if they had any hard feelings about the way Dellmore handled the financial end of things. You know how to locate them?”

“I’ll ask Marietta Bryant. She must know something, since she’s the city administrator.”

Oscar Grant doesn’t open the Two Dog Bar until ten a.m., but I go around back and find him next to his truck wrestling a keg onto a dolly. I hold the backdoor while he wheels the dolly inside and follow him in, noticing that the floor seems to be tilting more than I remembered.

“Oscar, if this building leans any more, one of these nights it’s going to tip right over.”

Oscar looks around like he hasn’t noticed the state of the building. He moved here and bought the bar from the previous owner a dozen years ago. I know he’s divorced and has a daughter, but he’s close with his private life. He runs a tight ship, though. He lets people act up just so far before he runs them out of the Two Dog. “I suppose I ought to get some work done on the building. But I have to win the lottery before it comes to that.”

“You play the lottery?” He sells lottery tickets and alcohol, and since I rarely see him drink, I suspect he doesn’t indulge in gambling much, either.

“No, come to think of it, I guess I don’t. So that eliminates the possibility of me winning.” He snorts, the closest I’ve ever seen to him laughing. “You didn’t come here to inspect my building. Let me make some coffee and you can tell me what you want.”

Coffee in hand, I sit down at the bar. “I want your take on this business with Gary Dellmore. You hear things at the bar. Did you ever hear anybody say they carried a grudge against him, anything like that?”

Oscar takes his time, pouring enough sugar into his cup so that the spoon could stand up on its own, and then stirring while he contemplates my question. “I don’t really attract a banking clientele here. But I’ve been keeping company with a woman who told me something a while back—I don’t know if it’s of any use, but it did have to do with Dellmore.” He frowns and keeps on stirring.

“What did she say?”

“She said Dellmore bragged to her that he was making a lot of money in this water park deal. She didn’t get any details because she wasn’t particularly interested in Jarrett Creek’s water park. But she said he acted like it was a big secret, and she wondered why a banker would need to keep his part of a banking deal secret.”

“Who’s this woman you’re dating and how did she know Dellmore?”

He grins. “I don’t know that you’d call it dating. We don’t go out on dates and I don’t see her that often. She lives over in Bobtail. She’s a nurse. She doesn’t know Dellmore. She said he was in the hospital having a little procedure done and they got to talking when he was still a little loopy from the anesthesia. She said a lot of people blab all kinds of things when they’re coming out of anesthesia. I’m pretty sure she shouldn’t have told me. She probably never figured I would have occasion to pass the information on to anybody. So if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather nobody knew where you heard it.”

“I can’t think of a reason anybody would need to know.” Or even if the information is relevant.

Now that I know Dellmore was killed with a .45, I have to ask everybody I talk to if they own one, even though I may not get the truth. When I ask Oscar, he reaches under the bar and pulls out a shotgun I’ve seen him brandish a couple of times. “This 12-gauge is all I need. Makes people nervous when they see a shotgun staring at them.”

I’m not due to meet Bill Odum back at headquarters for another hour, so I have time to corner Slate McClusky. I hope I don’t run into Angel again, but when I ring the doorbell, there’s no answer at all.

I’m turning to leave when a horn toots. Truly Bennett pulls to the curb and climbs out of his pickup, which is even older than mine. Truly and I go way back to when I was chief of police and got him out of some trouble. He is widely respected in the county for his ability to deal with livestock. If there’s such a thing as a cow whisperer, it’s Truly. Cattlemen often hire him to move their cows to auction or to help buy stock. He’s a good judge of cows and seems to know instinctively if there’s something wrong with one. When I had to be away for several days for knee surgery, I left Truly in charge of my cows and didn’t worry about them for one minute.

“Good to see you, Chief Craddock. What are you up to?”

“I guess you heard they’ve got me back at work.”

“I did hear that. Seems it’s all to the good for the rest of us.”

After we shake hands he goes around to the back of his pickup and lowers the tailgate. He takes out a ladder and lays it on the sidewalk.

“You heard that Gary Dellmore was murdered?” I say.

“Yes, sir. I didn’t know Mr. Dellmore, but then I don’t have a lot of use for banks.” He continues to work as we talk, pulling out paint cans, brushes, and tarps and setting them on the sidewalk.

“What are you up to?”

“You know I do a little painting on the side when the cattle business is slow, and Mr. McClusky hired me to repaint the east side of his house while they’re gone.” He points to the house. “The east side always gets a lot stronger sunlight and needs painting a little more often.”

“Gone? When are they leaving?”

“Nobody was here when I got here this morning, so I guess they already left.”

“Do you know where they were going?”

He scratches his head. “I’m not sure. He hired me last week and said they’d be out of here by today and I should get started.”

“Did he say how long he’d be gone?”

“No, sir.”

Now why didn’t Angel tell me yesterday that she and Slate were leaving today? I don’t know whether it’s suspicious or if she was simply careless.

Truly grins as I help him with the last of the cans. “Looks like that operation you had turned out okay. You’re moving around pretty good.”

“Should have done it a lot earlier. Stubborn.”

I go next door to find out if anybody knows where the McCluskys have gone. Nobody is home at the big house next door, and the house on the other side has been vacant since Scooter Jefferson died. But across the street Camille Overton is home and invites me in for a cup of coffee. She’s a tall, brisk woman with a ready smile. According to Loretta, Camille is a force in the Baptist Church ladies’ group.

“Usually I’d take you up on the coffee, Camille, but I’m a little pressed for time. Do you have any idea where Angel and Slate have gone?”