Dead Broke in Jarrett Creek: A Samuel Craddock Mystery (Samuel Craddock Mysteries) (7 page)

In the kitchen it’s taking the efforts of both his mother and his grandmother to keep little Mikey from pulling everything he can reach out of the cabinets. “I don’t mind a bit,” Clara is saying to her daughter. “After you leave, I’ll have plenty of time to put things away.”

“Mamma, I don’t want to give him the idea that it’s okay to make such a big mess.”

“I understand. You have to discipline him. But I’m his grandmother and I can indulge him if I want. He’s so darling.”

The little darling starts running around the kitchen, roaring, holding a pan over his head like a club. I make the appropriate noises, saying how smart he is while dodging his efforts to hit me with the pan. I can’t help being skittish that he might clobber my knee.

I tell Clara I need to be on my way and ask her if she’ll walk out with me.

At the front door I ask if she knows of any problems Gary was having with anyone.

She holds herself straight, and despite the misery in her eyes, her voice is clear and strong. “It’s no secret that Gary wasn’t as discreet as he could be with bank business. Alan was always on him to do better, but I chose not to bring it up with Gary.” She falters. “I wish I had tried to talk to him. I wish I had told him to shape up.” She shakes her head. “I indulged him.”

“Clara, you know as well as I do that he probably wouldn’t have listened to you.”

She puts her hand on my arm. “Alan told me Gary’s car was missing. Has anybody found it?”

“Not yet, but we will.”

She frowns. “I wonder if somebody from out of town killed him to get his car? If so, they’d be long gone.”

“The highway patrol is on the lookout for it. It’ll turn up. Meanwhile, I want you to think over the conversations you had with Gary in the past couple of weeks. Call me if you think of anything that seems off, even if you don’t think it’s important.”

“Where do I reach you, at your house or your cell phone?”

“Try the house,” I say weakly.

I’m going to have to break down and get a cell phone. Everybody will expect me to have one if I’m going to be police chief. Recently a new tower has gone up between Jarrett Creek and Bobtail, and they say it’s easier to get service now, so I don’t have that excuse for not getting one anymore.

I head for Citizens Bank to see what Cookie Travers can add to Alan Dellmore’s version of the argument between him and his son. Cookie is standing next to her desk in the carpeted area of the bank where loans and new business get handled, talking to a woman I don’t recognize. She spots me and waves me over. “Here’s Samuel Craddock right now,” she says to the woman. “He’s the one I was telling you has a big art collection.”

The woman who turns toward me is in her fifties, with a fine figure, dark eyes, and an uncomplicated chin-length hairdo. She has an anxious look, but when she smiles her expression lightens.

“Samuel, this is Ellen Forester. She’s just signed a lease to bring a new business to town.”

I shake her hand. She has a firm handshake and looks me straight in the eye.

“That’s good to hear,” I say. “We can use some new business.” I’m wondering if anybody told her the town is insolvent.

“Guess what kind of business?” Cookie says.

I’m surprised at the hint of conspiracy in her voice, as if the business has something to do with me. “I couldn’t begin to guess.”

“She’s opening an art gallery and workshop.”

Ellen gasps and slaps her hand to her mouth. Her eyes are dancing. “Oh, dear,” she says. “Hearing you say it out loud makes it seem real.”

“Anyway, I told her you collect art. I hope you don’t mind me gossiping.”

“I don’t mind at all.” Sometimes it surprises me that anyone in town knows I collect art. It’s not what most people expect in a small town. My wife Jeanne and her mother were passionate art collectors, and after a while Jeanne got me interested in it, too. Luckily, Jeanne’s family had the money to buy art, and Jeanne and I bought a few things, ending up with a nice little collection.

“What kind of art are you going to carry?” I ask. I expect it will be the kind of paintings you find in most Texas galleries, the three “Cs”—countryside, cows, and cactus. It’s a far cry from the art I appreciate.

“I’m still working on that,” she says. “Nothing too unusual. I’ll show some of my own work, and I hope to find some local talent. But I’m also going to have a workshop where I can offer painting classes.”

“You think there’s some untapped talent here?”

“You never know. I think it’s good for people to have a creative outlet.” She glances at her watch. “I better get going. I’m supposed to meet the contractor at the new site.” There’s excitement in her voice. “It was nice to meet you. I hope I get to see your collection sometime soon.”

When she’s gone, Cookie says, “She ought to perk things up around here. A new business and a little more tax revenue is exactly what this town needs. Now I expect you’ve come to talk about Gary.”

We sit down at her large, tidy mahogany desk. As a bank vice president, her desk is positioned so she can see everyone who comes and goes. Cookie is pushing sixty and is working hard to pretend the years aren’t piling up. Her hair is blonde, though I know for a fact it used to be dark. She’s wearing a shapely pink suit that would look good on a younger woman, and she uses makeup with too heavy a hand, her eyes surrounded with dark eyeliner. I don’t remember whether Cookie was ever married, but I know there isn’t a Mr. Travers currently.

“Cookie, Alan Dellmore told me he and Gary had an argument over an incident between Gary and Jessica Reinhardt. Can you tell me more about that and introduce me to Jessica?”

Cookie shifts in her chair. “She didn’t come in today. She was pretty upset yesterday when she heard what happened. Tell you truth, I wouldn’t be surprised if she quit.”

“Really? Why is that?”

“I might have been a little hard on her.” She sniffs. “But it’s my job to keep things running smoothly here. I’ve got standards that I demand the employees hold to, and I expect the women to behave well. It might have been Gary’s fault, but it takes two to have a flirtation.”

“Surely with Gary being the boss and being older, most of the blame fell to him?”

“Maybe so. Alan thought so. Gary is a good-looking man, and the girl was probably flattered, but I still say that’s no excuse. I spoke pretty sharply to her and told her to see to it that it didn’t happen again.”

“Who told you they were flirting with each other?”

Cookie’s penciled eyebrows shoot up. “Saw it with my own eyes! It had been going on for a while, but last week it got out of hand. One night—I guess it was Wednesday—Jessica stayed behind because she found an error when she was tallying up and had to go back over everything. I went out on an errand and came back to lock up after her, and when I walked in, I saw the two of them in one of those cubicles.” She gestures across the bank lobby to where a teller is counting out money to someone.

“Looks crowded for two people.”

“Yes, it is. That’s the way these types of situations get out of hand. Close quarters. But I was surprised anyway. When I walked in, Gary had his arm around her and then…” Cookie draws a sharp breath. “Well… his hand dropped down… toward her rear end, and she giggled. What kind of behavior is that! Even if he did like her, and even if he wasn’t married, that’s no way to behave in a professional setting.”

“Did you say anything to them?”

“I asked what was going on. Gary laughed, and Jessica said it was nothing. She can be a snippy little thing, and I didn’t like her tone, which I pointed out to her when I talked to her Monday.”

“You felt you needed to tell Alan about it?”

“Yes, I did. It upset me. Gary is his son!”

“Is this the first time something like this had happened?”

Cookie grimaces. “I know of one other girl Gary flirted with. I was thinking of asking if any of the other women had problems with Gary—if he got fresh with them. I’m not a prude, but laws being the way they are these days, if Gary made a move with the wrong person, somebody might bring a lawsuit.”

“I’d like you to do that. Find out if anybody else had a problem.”

She puts a hand to her chest. “You don’t really think somebody killed Gary because he was fooling around, do you?”

“I’m trying to get the situation here at the bank clear in my head. Did the employees like Gary? Did they respect him?”

Cookie pauses, her hands tightly clasped. “It’s hard to measure how much people respected Gary for himself, and how much because he was Alan’s son. I don’t know of anyone who had any particular problem with him. I do know that no one looked up to him the way they do to Alan.”

I glance over at the two women within my line of vision. “You said Gary flirted with one other woman. Who was it?”

She grimaces. “It wasn’t exactly the same thing. It was that little Darla Rodriguez. She flirts with everything in pants who comes through the door, and I guess she finally nabbed Gabe LoPresto, though he’s no prize. That poor fool! She’s going to run rings around him and then drop him. You watch.”

I stop by Town Café for some enchiladas, hitting the place at lunchtime, so it’s crowded. I hesitate in the doorway, the same feeling coming over me that I had yesterday. I don’t have the same relationship with people that I did before. I hope it’s my imagination that the room gets quieter with my standing there.

Town Café wouldn’t win any award for decor, being a big tin Quonset hut reinforced with knotty pine paneling and linoleum tile floor. The walls are hung with neon beer signs, old photos from Jarrett Creek’s past as a thriving railroad town, and photos of winning football teams. Christmas was several weeks ago, but they haven’t taken down the decorations, which consist of worn-out gold and silver garlands and a tiny artificial tree hung with miniature candy canes. Despite the haphazard decorating, the café is a popular place because the food is good.

A couple of the old boys I frequently have lunch with wave me over and I sit down with them. One is Gabe LoPresto, who is either behaving in a scandalous way or making the most of life, depending on who you talk to. LoPresto’s construction company has pretty much tied up business in the county. He’s a little hard to take sometimes because he brags and struts himself around, but his company has a reputation for quality work. Today he’s wearing a suit with a string tie, snakeskin cowboy boots, a black suede hat, and a big self-satisfied grin. He has been more or less insufferable since he took up with Darla Rodriguez. It makes it hard to talk to him like he’s a reasonable person.

“I hear you’re the Big Chief again,” LoPresto says.

“At least for a while,” I say. “Until we can get the city finances under control.”

“That’s not likely to happen anytime soon,” LoPresto says. “You’re in for the long haul.” He gestures toward my knee. “At least it looks like the knee is doing pretty well.”

“It’s getting there.” I don’t know why it makes me skittish to discuss the knee, even though it’s healing fine. Remembering what it’s like having it so banged up reminds me of how vulnerable I can be.

“I hope it’s not going to take so long for the city to get back into financial shape,” one of the men says to LoPresto. “My wife was already complaining that the library is only going to be open a couple of afternoons a week. And that’s only because Mrs. Cutter is willing to volunteer her time.”

“I’m afraid your wife is going to have to get used to it,” LoPresto says.

“You’ve got your hands full being chief again at your age,” Harley Lundsford says, looking me up and down. He’s a rough-and-ready kind of guy, face as weathered as a lizard from farming. “I wouldn’t want to take on the job right after somebody got shot.”

“That does make it something of a challenge,” I say.

“If Dellmore had carried a gun on him, he’d be walking around right now.” Lundsford is a fierce advocate of everybody carrying a loaded gun in plain sight. So far he hasn’t gotten enough people to agree with him that it’s been made into law, but he takes every chance he gets to poke people with his opinion.

“Could be,” I say, not wanting to open that particular can of worms today.

I give Lurleen my order and then field questions about Dellmore’s murder until the conversation veers to the surprising success of this year’s football team. The season is long over, but the season for discussing football is year-round. I’m finishing up my lunch when Alton Coldwater walks into the cafe.