Dust Devil (51 page)

“
Yeah,
I do. Unquestionably, he was using whatever information’s
contained in those files to blackmail somebody here in town—which
means the stuff must be pretty damned explosive. Because I sincerely
doubt that anyone would have murdered Lamar just because he had
found
out
some bored housewife is slipping over to the Rest-Rite Motel every
time her old man’s out of town.”

“
No,
I don’t think so, either,” Morse agreed wholeheartedly.
“All right, then. I’ll take these home with me tonight to
work on them and let you know what, if anything, I discover. I hope
you’re not counting on a quick answer, however. It’ll
take me some time.”

“
Thanks,
Morse. I appreciate it.”

That
same Monday morning, at Field-Yield, Inc., the first thing Jolene
McElroy did when she sat down at her switchboard in reception was to
get out the purchasing order she had filled out the previous Friday,
before leaving work. In addition to answering the telephone lines at
the fertilizer plant, it was Jolene’s job to see that the
office-supply storerooms remained properly stocked. Since, when she
wasn’t answering the phones, Jolene was generally yakking on
one herself, she never paid sufficiently close attention to the
storerooms, so as a result, Field-Yield, Inc. was always running out
of stationery or staples or Scotch tape—much to everybody’s
annoyance. Late Friday afternoon, however, Jolene had finally unglued
her headset from her ear long enough to traipse down the hall to the
storerooms, where she had, much to her surprise, discovered that the
plant was—in addition to various other items—totally out
of the double-sided, high-density diskettes used in its computer
system. Jolene hadn’t believed how quickly the company had gone
through the cases she had ordered the last time, and she had
speculated to herself that more than one employee must be pilfering a
box
here
and a box there, taking them home to use on their own personal
computers or to sell them.

Now,
smacking her gum as she gazed at her purchase order, Jolene slipped
on the headset to her switchboard and punched in the number of De
Fazio’s Computers & Electronics.

“
Mr.
De Fazio? This here’s Jolene McElroy, over to FYI. I need you
to send me over a couple of cases of double-sided, high-density
diskettes.”

When
she had finished placing her call, Jolene trotted down the hall to
Bubba Holbrooke’s office. After she had knocked on the door,
she stepped inside.

“
Oh,
excuse me, Bubba. I didn’t know you were occupied,” she
said as she spied J.D. and Evie sitting in the office, as well.

Obviously,
the three were having some kind of a family quarrel, Jolene
thought—and she’d be willing to wager a week’s pay
that it had something to do with the fracas over at the sheriff’s
office this past Saturday afternoon. Even this morning Bubba still
looked like hell, sporting a black eye and a cut lip—and
suffering a pounding hangover, too, unless Jolene missed her guess.
She smiled inwardly at all the gossip she’d have to report
later to everybody she talked to on her switchboard—unless, of
course, Bubba made it worth her while to keep silent.

That
was the great thing about always blabbing everything you knew. People
usually went out of their way to do you favors or buy you things, so
you wouldn’t tell all you were privy to about
them!
In
the past, whenever Sarah Kincaid had got him all hot and bothered,
only to leave him hard and hurting, Bubba had come to Jolene to
ease
the
pain. And he had always given her something real nice afterward. Last
time, she had got a bracelet she had admired at Goldberg’s Fine
Jewelry. Nothing
too
fancy
or expensive; still, she’d bet he had spent at least a hundred
dollars on it.

“
I’ll
come back later, Bubba, when you’re not so busy,” Jolene
announced.

“
It’s
all right, Jolene honey,” Bubba replied as he massaged his
forehead, groaning a little at the pain stabbing behind his eyes.
“What can I do for you this morning?”

“
I
just wanted to let you know about the office supplies. I know people
are stealing ’em, Bubba. I ordered two cases of double-sided,
high-density diskettes only a short while back, and last Friday
afternoon, when I checked, they were already gone. Why, if I didn’t
know better, I’d think old Thaddeus Rollins and that poor, dumb
nephew of his who got murdered out on the old town road last Friday
night were taking ’em—except that I can’t imagine
why, unless it’d be to sell ’em on the side. I don’t
believe Thaddeus can hardly even write his own name, much less use a
computer, and Lamar was a high-school dropout.”

“
All
right, I’ll check into it later,” Bubba told her. “And,
Jolene honey, would you mind getting me another cup of black
coffee—and a couple of aspirin, too, if you can find some? My
poor head’s just about to split wide-open!”

“
Sure
thing, Bubba.” Taking the coffee cup he handed her and blowing
a bubble with her gum, Jolene sashayed from his office, thinking
about the darling little dress she had seen last week in the window
of the Fashion Boutique.

“
Your
head wouldn’t be pounding like a sledgehammer, Bubba, if you
hadn’t got drunk all weekend, pissing and moaning in your beer
over that sluttish piece of coalmining trash Daddy and I both warned
you not to take up with
in
the
first
place!” Evie gibed disgustedly. “My God! I never thought
I’d live to see the day when my brother would make a complete,
idiotic ass of himself over stupid little Coal Lump Kincaid!”

“
Shut
up, Evie!” Bubba growled angrily. “At least I ain’t
been married and divorced three times already—and you ain’t
even thirty yet! Why in the hell don’t you just screw ’em
instead of marrying ’em all the damned time? ’Cause at
the rate you’re going, by the time you’re dead, you’re
going to have had more husbands than Elizabeth Taylor!”

“
Yeah,
that’s right.” Evie’s voice was frosty, disdainful.
“Enough for pallbearers, anyway—which is more than you’ll
have whenever you finally keel over. Lord, at the rate
you’re
going,
we’ll have to cremate you and hope you at least have a decent
girlfriend to carry away the urn full of ashes! Because let me tell
you something, Brother— unlike your little lump of coal-mining
trash, my husbands have all been perfectly respectable. And I’ll
tell you another thing, too, Bubba Holbrooke. They weren’t
sneaking around behind my back, fucking any goddamned dagos on the
side, either!”

“
Evie!”
J.D. roared, his face turning scarlet with fury at her language—since
although he considered it perfectly acceptable for gentlemen, he
didn’t hold with ladies swearing.

“
Evie,
you bitch!” Bubba cried fiercely, jumping up from his burgundy
leather chair and clenching his fists as though he were preparing for
a boxing match. “You’d better get her out of here, Daddy!
I’m warning you. You’d better get her out of here right
this minute—before I strangle her!”

“
Daddy,
you’d better settle down....just settle down now.” Coolly
ignoring her enraged brother, Evie patted her father’s arm
soothingly. Her brow knit anxiously as she saw how a big blue vein
had popped out on his forehead, so she feared he might have a stroke.
“I’m sorry for talking so unladylike. Really, I am. But
Bubba had no cause to insult me like that—and you know it,
Daddy. After all, I’m not the one who’s brought scandal
and disgrace on this family and our good name! And I tried hard to
make my marriages work, Daddy. Truly, I did. But Parker and Tommy Lee
and Skeets, well, not one of them was half the man you are, Daddy.
Why, they couldn’t get themselves elected to a garbage detail
if their lives depended on it! Come on, Daddy. Let’s leave big,
bad Bubba here to cry in his beer. Taggart Evanston ought to be here
by now, and we can get on with planning your senatorial campaign.
I’ve got some great ideas for advertising and promotion, Daddy.
I never did know why you listened to that stupid little Coal Lump
instead of me. She never had your best interests at heart, Daddy, the
way I always have! Why, at the rate we’re going, one of these
days we’ll be living in the White House, and people will be
addressing you as ‘Mr. President.’ Won’t that be
something, Daddy? Won’t that be fine?”

“
It
would have been a whole helluva lot finer if I’d lived to see
Sonny in the White House, missy!” J.D. declared gruffly. “But
I’ll get there for him—the Good Lord willing. Although I
doubt even that’ll help, that I’ll ever get over burying
that boy... my golden boy, moldering in his grave. While you and
Bubba continue to thrive like a pair of damned-nuisance weeds!”
J.D. snorted with derision and disappointment. “Why, I’d
trade you both away tomorrow to have Sonny back again. He was a
thoroughbred, worth ten of either of you two pack mules! So quit your
fussing and hanging on me, Evie! I don’t need you to
mollycoddle me like some old mother hen. Now, I’m going down to
my office, and I don’t want to be bothered for a while. So
you’d best get on out of here and leave Bubba alone. Because I
don’t care if the two of you do kill each other. I’m not
going to come running back down here again to put a stop to your
arguing!”

With
that Parthian shot, J.D. stalked from Bubba’s office, leaving
both his children standing there hurting—and silently cursing
their dead brother.

In
the big, plush, semidark office, the computer screen glowed brightly.
From the burgundy leather chair, a pair of capable hands stretched
out to fall upon the keyboard, while the wheels of the brain that
directed the hands churned furiously. Lamar Rollins had not proved so
stupid as originally thought. The diskettes in his car
had
not
contained
the deadly files; instead, they had all been blank—although
clearly, at one time, they had held some sort of information. For,
gazing at them, Lamar’s killer
could
see traces of adhesive backing where old labels had been peeled away
from the black plastic.

So
if Lamar had used the diskettes himself before erasing them, whatever
files they had held and that he had deleted could still be
reconstructed—provided, of course, that he hadn’t written
over and erased them a couple of times or used a program like Norton
Utilities on the diskettes themselves, which, short of a bulk eraser,
were the only sure methods of preventing recovery.

Fortunately
for the killer, Lamar had done none of those things, merely deleted
his files.

In
the silence of the summer night, the killer worked painstakingly,
clever mind—so much more clever than anyone had ever
suspected—continuing to direct competent hands on the keyboard,
until, finally, the monitor flashed, darkened momentarily, then
brightened again, and all the information Lamar had ever recorded
about his dope deals began to scroll by on the screen. At the sight,
the killer’s face lit up just as the monitor itself had,
glowing with a purely wicked smile.

What
a stroke of luck!
the
killer thought, a perfect complement to the stroke of genius that
would wreak havoc on Lamar’s files and the town itself before
the killer was through.