Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 02 - Crash Course (22 page)

There was a stir across the room. “Very funny,” Jackie said angrily. Ollie and Truman turned around to see what the commotion was about.

Jackie was standing over two of the youth hostel kids, both boys of maybe eighteen, with long, unkempt hair. They sniggered wildly as Jackie dumped the contents of a hunter-green knapsack out on the table. Foil-wrapped packages came tumbling out in a heap. She tore one open.

“See!” she exclaimed. “Bacon. Sausage. Fried ham. I knew it. What else have you two been squirreling away?” The foil from another package fell to the floor. Half a dozen biscuits and as many jelly packets were added to the heap of breakfast meats. Now she had her hand in the bag, digging around to see what else she’d find. A set of silverware clattered onto the table, followed by two of the restaurant’s small service plates, salt and pepper shakers, and a jumbo-sized McDonald’s drink cup. Orange juice slopped over the side as Jackie held it triumphantly in the air.

“There’s enough food in this bag to feed six people,” she said accusingly. “I told Mr. Wiggins somebody was stealing food. Y’all ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

The young men looked anything but ashamed. “Lighten up, babe,” one of them said, snatching the backpack out of her hands. “It’s not like we broke into Fort Knox or something. Just a little snack for the guys back in the room.”

Both of them got up from the table, threw a handful of pennies on top of the mess, than swaggered out of the restaurant.

Jackie stood for a moment, speechless. Then she scooped up the change and followed the boys out into the hotel lobby, where they were unlocking their bikes from the wrought-iron planter they had chained them to the night before. “Here!” she shouted, flinging the pennies in their faces. “Buy some bubblegum for the dudes back in the room. And get those bikes out of this lobby before one of our regular guests trips over them.”

The boys glared at her and mumbled something under their breaths, but they wheeled the bikes quickly out of the lobby, while Jackie stood there, hands on her hips, daring them to give her any more lip.

“Good for her,” Truman said. He scraped up the last bit of scrambled eggs with the crust of his toast, then pushed away from the table.

“Time to get busy. I’ve got a lot of research to get done before I go in to work,” Truman said.

“Yeah,” Ollie said reluctantly. “Me, too. You got anything you need me to research? I got all those magazines at the newsstand, you know.”

“Not today,” Truman said. “Let me get my feet wet at Bondurant Motors. Then maybe I’ll have a better idea of how you can help. Things are starting to heat up though, I can tell you that.”

“Gonna be a big story,” Ollie said. “Blow this town apart.”

Jackie stomped back into the dining room and began cleaning up the mess the hostel kids had made at their table. Truman watched in sympathy. “I’d be satisfied just to help her get her car or her money back,” he said.

“And solve a murder,” Ollie added.

Truman didn’t correct him.

Ed Weingarten, the FDLE agent, was visiting a sick friend, his secretary said. Truman left a message telling him it was urgent that they talk.

Then he called Clarice Umbach, his insurance agent. Actually, Clarice was his old agent’s daughter-in-law. When Jack retired, Clarice took over all his clients. She’d been helpful and sympathetic during Nellie’s hospitalization, and later … And over the years, he’d referred a lot of business to Jack and Clarice.

She greeted him enthusiastically. “My favorite client! Want to hear about our new annuity program for that grandson of yours?”

He felt a pang of guilt. Someday, he’d put some more money in that college fund he’d started for Chipper. Someday.

“Actually, Clarice, I need information for a big story I’m working on for the
St. Pete Times
. A car insurance scam.”

Clarice groaned. “That’s all we need around here. A new way to cheat insurance companies. Pretty soon there won’t be an insurer in the country willing to write a policy down here. So tell me how this one works.”

“They stage car accidents,” Truman started.

“Nothing new in that,” Clarice said.

“This guy owns a used-car lot. From what I’ve gathered, they buy a collision policy on a junky car, put it in the name of one of their flunkies, then stage an accident with a much more expensive car. Corvettes, usually, for some reason I can’t figure out. And they said something about wanting to be able to make the claim at a drive-through.”

“I can help you with that,” Clarice said. “A Corvette’s body is made almost entirely of fiberglass. No metal on it. You hit a Corvette and it crumples like a paper doll. That’s why their rates are so high, higher even than your average sports-car. On the upside though, a good body man—one who knows fiberglass—can put one back together pretty quickly. Unless the frame is bent. If that happens, not all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can make it right.”

Truman was taking notes almost as fast as Clarice was talking.

“Could you take the same car, take it apart, and put it back together again and again? Without most people being able to tell?”

She paused. “I don’t know. You need to talk to a body shop about that. Want me to see who’s on our approved list?”

“Yeah,” Truman said. “But what about the insurance claims? Wouldn’t somebody notice the same guy getting hit over and over again?”

Clarice laughed. “Theoretically, yes. There are two or three huge companies, Globalfax is the-biggie, that keep computer databases on every policy bought, every claim filed, everything. They sell that data to insurance companies so they can check up on people before they write a policy. See if they’re a good risk.”

Truman was appalled. “They can do that?”

“And more,” Clarice said. “But if you’re worried about somebody checking up on you, Truman, you can relax. I happen to know that your insurer, Gulfshores, isn’t a subscriber.”

“I should have known,” Truman said. “They don’t even send out a calendar at Christmas.”

“Don’t knock it. Their rates are the cheapest in town,” Clarice reminded him.

“I’d sure like to think of a way to find out whether these crooks have a history of this thing,” Truman said.

“I’ve got a friend at Allstate,” Clarice said thoughtfully. “They do subscribe to Globalfax. We trade favors sometimes. Do you have the names of these scam artists?”

“Just three,” Truman said. “Ronnie Bondurant. Wormy, uh, William D. Weems. Hernando Boone. Oh, yeah, and there’s a fourth. Billy Tripp. Two ‘P’s, I think.”

He could hear her pencil scribbling away. “Got it,” she said finally. “What kind of currency can I use for the trade?”

He had to think. In the old days, at the wire, he had access to all kinds of riches: passes to the latest concerts, movies, the circus, Broadway plays, free records, books, booze, hotel rooms, fancy restaurant meals. Everybody wanted to show off their wares to the Associated Press. Later, the bosses had started to frown on freebies. Backlash from Watergate. So you took the freebies under the table.

Now he was retired. He had a Nova station wagon with a busted window, a half share in an aluminum boat with no motor, and an AARP discount card.

What about Ollie though? He griped all the time about all the magazines and paperback books he had to destroy so Chet could get credit for unsold merchandise. Truman had access to every cheesy paper-back novel and magazine he could ever want.

“Does your friend like to read?” he asked Clarice.

“She likes to eat,” Clarice said. “I bet she weighs three hundred pounds. It’s a cinch she’s not spending her spare time working out at the gym. Let me give it a try. Anything else while I’m at it?”

“No, but thanks,” Truman said. “Wait. Yes. One more name. Just in case. Jeff Cantrell.”

When Ed Weingarten called back, he was not in a chatty mood.

“You’re not still sniffing around Ronnie Bondurant and his bunch, are you?”

“Hell, yeah,” Truman said, getting defensive. “In fact, that’s why I’m calling. Last night we saw them in action. Bondurant, Weems, Boone, and a kid named Tripp. Out on Weedon Island, where all the construction is going on. We saw them total Boone’s Mercedes. On purpose. This kid named Tripp was nearly killed. And I know about the Corvettes, too—why they use them, probably even why they killed Jeff Cantrell.”

“We already know most of that stuff,” Weingarten snapped. “Mr. Kicklighter, I asked you not to get involved in this matter. You’re endangering yourself as well as our agents.”

“I can take care of myself,” Truman said. “In the meantime, you people can’t tell me a single thing about this young man they killed, can you? While I’ve tracked down his girlfriend, staked out his apartment, what have you people been doing? Tell me that, Mr. FDLE.”

It had been years since he’d told off a cop like that. Felt good, too.

“It’s against agency policy for me to tell you this, Mr. Kicklighter. But I’m going to do it anyway, just to get you off my back. We have reason to believe that Jeff Cantrell is not dead. We think he’s very much alive. Probably still mixed up with Bondurant.”

“No,” Truman said. “Jackie saw him. With a bullet in the side of his head. You can’t fake that. And nobody’s seen or heard from him since that day.”

“Just a moment.”

Weingarten’s voice was muffled. He was talking to someone else.

“I’m looking at a printout of the activity on his Visa card and his checking account,” Weingarten said grimly. “He’s been using his ATM card, as recently as last night. There are long distance calls to his girlfriend’s apartment from Ft. Lauderdale.”

“It’s a trick,” Truman insisted. “I know it is.”

“Dead men don’t call collect, Mr. Kicklighter. Do yourself a favor. Find a nice hobby. Shuffleboard, maybe.”

LeeAnn Pilker slipped out of the king-sized bed, pulling the sheet up over Ronnie’s shoulder so he wouldn’t notice she was gone. She stood there, looking down at him, feeling something like tenderness.

There was something about men in their sleep. They looked so helpless and vulnerable. Even Ronnie Bondurant. With his hair mussed you could see a little quarter-sized bald spot on the back of his head. And with one cheek flattened against his pillow, his dark features were soft, almost sweet. She stopped herself there, though. Sweet? Ronnie? No, she wouldn’t go that far.

Her suitcase was on a chair, near the door. She rummaged around and found the black tank bathing suit. She’d just barely had time to throw a few things together on Tuesday, after Ronnie called her apartment a rathole and insisted she move in with him. Right then.

Well, why not? It was a nice place. A sprawling white-brick ranch house, smack dab on Tampa Bay, on Pinellas Point. There was a dock out back, and hanging high in the air on a set of davits, a gleaming new turquoise-and-white Hydrasport. A practiced look told her those were twin 200-horsepower Evinrude outboards. There was a time, when she was a teenager, when she knew the make and model of every boat on the bay. Especially the cool ones. Ronnie’s house had a pool, too, on the screened-in porch that led off the kitchen. Everything was very neat, if just a bit shabby. There were tiny rips in the leather sofas in the Florida room that looked out over the pool and the bay, and two or three panels of the screening on the porch were torn. The lawn was in bad shape, half the grass dead or dying, and the bushes scraggly and unkempt. Ronnie didn’t spend a lot of time at home, she’d learned.

She made a pot of coffee, found a towel, and headed for the pool. She plunged in, dove all the way to the bottom, hovered there for a minute or two, then let herself bob to the surface.

This, LeeAnn thought, was heaven. With long, even strokes she swam to the shallow end, touched the tile coping with her fingertips, and executed a respectable flip turn. She swam two more laps, then paused at the deep end, holding on to the wall, inhaling that sharp, distinct smell. Chlorine. It really was her favorite scent. Absolutely clean and clear. She’d always loved swimming. And it was great exercise because it kept your legs toned and your chest muscles strong. She couldn’t swim too much, though, or she’d end up with a set of shoulders like Arnold Schwarzenegger. The management at the club frowned on big shoulders. Except on bouncers like Margie.

What the hell? LeeAnn did another lap. Who needed the Candy Store? Ronnie was already making noises about her moving in here permanently. And he kept talking about plans, big plans.

That first night he came into the club while she was dancing, a dozen Pasco County shit-kickers, dressed up in cowboy hats and boots, the whole rig, were whooping it up at the front table.

Ronnie walked right up, with that creepy friend of his, Wormy, threw five hundred-dollar bills down on the table. “Round-up time, boys,” he announced. Wormy pulled a chair out from beneath one of the scrawnier guys, then pulled his jacket aside so the guy could see something shoved into his belt. A gun, probably. The cowboys cleared out in a hurry, taking the money with them. And Ronnie and Wormy sat through both shows. All the girls got $50 tips that night, except for LeeAnn. Ronnie was waiting by his big gray Lincoln when she got off work at three A.M.