Designed to Kill (32 page)
“I told J.W. I considered our discussion confidential. I thought about calling
Denton
—we’re still good friends—but I didn’t know if I should. What got him so upset?”
“Boz Farnsworth has some serious problems. He approved the installation of that balcony when he should have known it wasn’t constructed properly. I questioned him about that and about where he was Friday night after the accident. When I put a little pressure on him by talking about what the sheriff might do if they hauled him in, he got uptight and called his dad.”
“Would you like me to talk to
Denton
and explain things?” Charlie asked.
I knew I was not likely to win any popularity contests around here with all the dirt I was digging up, but it didn’t bother me. I had managed to keep a steady succession of people unhappy during my years in the Air Force. Anyway, I never had much sympathy for guys who did nasty things and got caught, thanks to my efforts.
“I guess not, Charlie,” I said. “After that hearing on Monday, I expect Boz will be the one doing the explaining.”
“What hearing?”
“The county building inspector is looking into the cause of the accident Friday night. Everybody involved will be there.”
“I suppose we’ll see all about it in the newspaper. Have you had any luck in finding out if somebody else was responsible for Gannon’s death?”
“I have a pretty good idea who killed him, but I don’t have the proof yet. I’m trying to put the pieces together now. Hopefully I’ll know more by Sunday.”
“Good luck,” Charlie said and hung up.
Jill came in with cups of cappuccino and sat beside me. “Had any ideas about how to make some headway with Claude Detrich?” she asked.
I took my cup and sipped thoughtfully. “He’s probably here, but we don’t know where he lives. I wonder...”
I walked over to the counter, got the phone book, and thumbed through the D listings. There was a Claude Detrich listed with the address of an apartment down the beach.
“This has to be him,” I said. “Since he’s been working on the project for over a year, it’s logical he would have a phone here.”
“Are you going to call him or drop by?” Jill asked.
“I seriously doubt he’d issue an invitation if I called. We’d better just drop in and see if we can catch him at home. Maybe in the morning.”
“Let’s hope he doesn’t have a hangover.”
“Good thought,” I said. But I was considering something else. If he was our man, it would likely bring another visit from the
New Orleans
contingent in the near future.
41
Claude Detrich had a second floor apartment in a rustic gray building on the opposite side of the road from the beach. The structure appeared to stand on stilts, with room for parking underneath. It was angled back toward the stretch of water called
Old
River
, which separated Perdido Key from
Ono
Island
, a finger of land that housed an exclusive residential area. Jill and I arrived at the apartment around
on Saturday morning. With the temperature hardly out of the fifties, our jackets felt good. I had on my Titans cap to deal with the beaming sun.
The Detrich who answered the doorbell appeared a bit less sinister than the one we remembered from the Gulf Royale Casino. This one looked more like a short-haired fat boy in brown shorts and an extra-extra-large T-shirt. But the deep-set gray eyes and the circular mustache-beard carried the same anger I had seen Wednesday night in
Biloxi
.
“What the hell do you want, McKenzie?”
“I’ve turned up information I think would interest you,” I said. “May we come in?”
Detrich snorted. “I know who you are and what you’re up to. I don’t give a damn what you turned up.”
“You’re going to be asked a lot of tough questions at that hearing on Monday. I can tell you some things that are likely to come up.”
He eyed me suspiciously, then glanced at Jill, weighing his options. Finally he jerked his head toward the interior of the apartment. “Come on in.”
We walked into a small living room furnished in a style that might have been called Modern Chaos. There was a cheap brown sofa, a modernistic floor lamp, a pair of striped beach chairs, and a too-large wooden desk with matching chair beside the window. The most striking feature of the place was the clutter. Shirts, pants, socks and other assorted items of clothing were scattered about, covering one chair and part of the other. Jumbled sections of newspaper lay on the floor and across one end of the sofa. Empty beer cans were lined up on the desk, a stack of blueprints on the floor at one end.
“You caught me before I had time to clean up,” Detrich said.
Like he cleaned house every morning after breakfast.
He scooped up the papers and dropped them behind the sofa. “You can sit over here.”
Jill and I sat on the sofa, and he eased his large frame onto a beach chair that appeared in danger of collapsing. I sat gently, too, though the soreness in my side had eased as the large bruise shifted into a patch of many colors.
“You know Tim Gannon’s father is the one who asked me to look into what happened down here,” I said.
“Yeah. And I know you’re the people who own the condo where he was staying.”
If he had sent the
New Orleans
pair after me, that was a given. I was also sure he had talked with Boz and Baucus.
“We found a laptop computer Tim had left in our bedroom,” I said. “Someone had tampered with it early Saturday morning, erased The Sand Castle file that contained Tim’s original plans and specifications.”
“So what? I got a set over there,” he said, pointing toward the floor beside the desk.
“Boz Farnsworth has a set, too. Where did yours come from?”
“Same place as his. It’s a copy of what Gannon furnished Evan Baucus.”
“You might be interested to know that Walt Sturdivant, Tim’s assistant, says the rebars and concrete Tim specified originally are different from what he saw on Boz’s plans.”
“Then I’d say he was a damned liar.” Detrich twisted his face into a scowl.
“Walt took Tim’s laptop back to
Nashville
and had a firm that specializes in software recovery work on it. They recovered The Sand Castle file. Walt confirmed what he remembered. He’s bringing the information down here Monday.”
From the look in Detrich’s eyes, I was sure this had not been happy news.
“The only thing that counts are sheets with Gannon’s seal on them,” he said. “That’s what I’ve got.”
“What you have is a copy. Evan Baucus says the original was stolen by a man named Oliver O’Keefe. The same Oliver O’Keefe who quit last week as a draftsman for New Horizons Architects and Engineers in
Nashville
. That was just before Tim’s plans disappeared. He’s the same Oliver O’Keefe, I might add, who lived on Carondolet in
New Orleans
and worked at Paige and Wilson Contractors when you did.”
Detrich’s face reddened. “Is that supposed to mean something?”
“You tell me, Mr. Detrich. That’s an awful lot of coincidences.”
“I think you’re full of shit, McKenzie. You’re digging in dry holes.”
“Boz Farnsworth told me you left the Key Hole Bar Friday around
. Where did you go from there?” I asked.
He doubled his fists and planted them firmly against his broad waist. “Where I went anytime is my private affair and none of your damned business.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Your face looks like somebody’s already worked you over once. You’d better get the hell out of here while you still have a few teeth left.”
I stood, facing him. “Why are you afraid to tell me what time you left and where you went?”
He stomped over to the door and jerked it open. “Out, McKenzie! You stay the hell away from me if you know what’s good for you.”
With the comforting bulk of the Beretta under my jacket, I wasn’t worried about my safety. But I didn’t like the prospects of what might happen to Jill. I ushered her through the door and toward the nearby stairs.
“You sure have the formula for making folks unhappy,” she said. “Sherry and I parted the best of friends. Maybe you’d better let me do the questioning in the future.”
I wasn’t sure whether to throttle her or laugh. But she had a point. When you have a big organization behind you, like the district attorney’s office or the United States Air Force, you can be as confrontational as you want with very little danger. Taking that tack when you’re on your own is not without peril. But I hoped by giving Detrich a lot to think about, maybe shaking his confidence, I could induce a slip-up that would allow me to nail him. I’d just have to wait and see.
When we left Detrich’s apartment, Jill suggested we continue a couple of miles west to
Orange
Beach
and hit the big supermarket there. We had been so busy the last few days that we hadn’t found time to replenish our food supply. Then, as we left the grocery, I made the mistake of not directing her straight to the Jeep. A colorful blouse in a nearby store window caught her eye. By the time she got her fill of shopping, we had wasted most of another hour, putting us back at Gulf Sands after
.
I considered what I had and hadn’t learned from Detrich while Jill fixed a green salad, which we ate with melon that was surprisingly sweet and juicy for this time of year. Our discussion over the contractor’s possible role in Tim’s death kept me from checking my parking area surveillance tape until after lunch. When I finally got around to it, I felt my suspicions about Detrich confirmed. Well along the tape, with the time showing
—which meant the segment had been recorded about the time we had started eating—a black Cadillac with a dented front fender slowly cruised through the lot. I had focused the camera so it would catch license plates. As the car departed, I saw a
Louisiana
tag with the number clearly readable.
I grabbed the phone book and looked up the number for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service at Pensacola NAS. As expected, I got a lifeless answering machine voice with an emergency number to call or the option of leaving a message. I left word for Red Tarkington to get in touch with me at our condo.
He called a short time later while Jill was working on her second set of exercises for the day.
“I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon,” I said, surprised.
“I’m not usually here on a Saturday afternoon, but I came in to do a little paper work. Well, actually, a lot of paper work. They’re forever coming up with some new kind of report that needs to be done yesterday.”
