Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 06 - Extracurricular Murder (20 page)

I asked the young waitress who greeted me for the manager.
Moments later, a smiling young Hispanic woman emerged
from the rear. Dark complexioned with long black hair, she was
a striking paragon of Hispanic beauty.

“Yes, sir. Can I help you?”

“I hope so,” I said in my best little-boy-lost tone. “This just
hasn’t been my day.”

“Maybe it’ll change,” she replied brightly, her dark eyes
laughing.

I identified myself and showed her Holderman’s picture. “A
few years back he was a regular here. About once a month.
Recognize him?”

The laughter in her eyes vanished, and the smile on her face
faded, but while she quickly replaced the smile, she couldn’t replace the laughter in her eyes. “I think so. But, I haven’t seen
him for a long time now.”

“His name was Holderman. He died about a year ago.” I
glanced around the large room. There were only a handful of
customers.

She shrugged. “I wish I knew more. I wish I could help you.”
There was no conviction in her voice.

I waited for her to continue, but after several awkward seconds of silence, I came to the profound conclusion she had said
all she was going to say. “Do you know a man named Harper
Weems? He’s in a wheelchair.”

A glimmer of recognition flickered in her dark eyes. “Oh,
yes. He has blond hair. He has come out here before. He hangs
around with the kids.”

“Kids?”

She indicated the clock on the wall. It was three-thirty. “High
school kids. They come here after school and hang around at
night. He is a good friend of theirs.”

“Did he ever come out here with Holderman?” I showed her
the dead man’s picture again.

“No.” She shook her head. “I see them talk some, two,
maybe three times, but the one in the wheelchair, he always
came in his van. He is a nice man. I think he is one of the kids’
teachers.”

A voice called from the kitchen.

“One more question. What about a man named Perry Jacobs?
You know him?”

She shook her head. “No. Sorry.” She stepped back and cast
a hasty glance at the diners along one wall. “I wish I could help,
but if that’s all, I need to get back to our customers and get
ready for the afternoon rush. School is out.”

I nodded, sensing the anxiety in her tone. She knew more
than she was saying.

As I pulled out of the parking lot, two carloads of laughing
teenagers pulled up and scampered inside. On impulse, I
whipped my truck around and headed back to Safford High
School. Maybe I could catch Harper Weems before he left.

Evidence doesn’t lie. The problem comes when it is being
interpreted. Too often, a zealous investigator forces the evidence into a pattern in which it doesn’t belong. He manipulates it, not deliberately, but because of his perspective of the
case.

I hoped I wasn’t doing the same thing with Harper Weems,
but something continued to nag at me about the man. Was it
because the evidence overwhelmingly proclaimed his innocence? Yet, what did he and Holderman have going? Simply
school? Impossible. He had deliberately lied to me, claiming
the only time he had dealt with Holderman was at school, yet
the waitress at Lupe’s says she saw the two in conversation
more than once and Holderman had written Weems’ initials on
his desk calendar on several occasions.

Engrossed in my own thoughts, I paid no attention to the
black Camaro convertible behind me. If I had, maybe I could have stopped another murder. If I could have made the connection.

The high school was empty except for the school administrators and the sweepers, one of whom was cleaning around
Harper Weems’ desk when I arrived.

An older woman with thinning gray hair pulled back in a
short ponytail, she told me he had left fifteen minutes earlier.

With a laugh, I replied, “Story of my life. Seems like I’m
always fifteen minutes late.” I introduced myself, explaining
that the principal knew I was in the building. I glanced at
Weems’ desk, spotting a picture under the glass desktop.

She nodded knowingly. “Oh, yes. You’re the one trying to
find out who killed Mr. Holderman.”

For a moment, her declaration caught me by surprise, and then
I remembered. Not even e-mail travels as fast as gossip through
the cleaning crew of a school building.

“Trying to,” I replied. “I’d planned on asking Mr. Weems a
couple of other questions.”

Her face lit up. “Mr. Weems is a real gentleman. He loves
these kids. He never gives up on them, even them what mess
theirselves up with all them drugs.”

“Yeah. That’s what I’ve heard.” On impulse, I tossed up a
trial balloon. “I hear he spends a lot of time out at Lupe’s Tacos
on Ben White Road with the kids.”

“I don’t know about that place. But, he does go out and try to
stop some of the kids from buying drugs. I never heard of that
place though, but that ain’t no surprise. Personally, I don’t
know why them kids go anywhere to buy drugs when they can
get all they want right here at this school.”

And she was right. I remember the locker searches, the drug
dogs, the futile attempt to stem the flow of drugs through high
school. Turn off one source, another was pumping away before
you could spit. And to compound the problem, schools didn’t want drugs to be discovered for fear of damaging the school’s
reputation.

“I hear Mr. Weems is a twin. He has a twin brother up in
Denver.”

She smiled broadly and pointed a wrinkled finger at a snapshot under the glass top of his desk. “Yes. Here’s the two of
them. Mr. Weems told me they took it last summer.”

I suppressed the urge to shout. Maybe I hadn’t been reaching
too much. They were identical. Same color hair, same face,
same shoulders. Put either one in a wheelchair and you couldn’t
tell them apart.

I thanked the sweeper and headed back to my truck, rearranging my neat little theories. I remembered Weems’ hand
when we shook that first day. It was soft, uncallused. No way a
man can push a wheelchair for fourteen or fifteen years and
have the heel of his hand soft and clean. No way.

Pushing through the front doors of the high school, I jerked
to a halt. “What the … ,” I muttered, breaking into a trot down
the sidewalk toward my pickup, which sat forlornly on four flat
tires.

The same grinning driver climbed out of the Riverside
Salvage wrecker and shook his head at me. He pulled off his
gimme cap and ran his fingers through his bushy red hair while
he studied my truck. “For someone who ain’t no teacher, you
sure got on some kid’s bad side, mister.”

I looked back at the empty windows of the high school.
“Friend, I got a feeling you’re right.”

Thirty minutes later, sporting four new tires and a $383.73
debit to my VISA, I pulled on to Highway 71 and headed home,
mulling my conversation with the sweeper.

Could there have been some kind of drug connection
between Harper Weems and George Holderman? Danny
O’Banion identified Holderman as a staker, one who bankrolled the pusher. Could Weems be the pusher, the dealer? That would
explain his visits to Lupe’s Tacos despite the sweeper’s observation that Weems was always trying to help students.

But, how did Weems pull off the hit? I was convinced he was
indeed paraplegic, that it was a physical impossibility for him
to reach the second floor.

The only answer was that Weems’ brother could have taken
his place that night. He rolled into the restroom, raced upstairs,
whacked Holderman, then just managed to get back downstairs
before Jacobs showed up. Jacobs had claimed he thought he
saw someone disappear around the corner of the stairs. And
Weems’ room was at the very bottom of those same stairs.

On impulse I continued down Ben White to Lupe’s Tacos
instead of taking 1-35 north to my apartment. I didn’t expect to
see anything at the restaurant, and I wasn’t disappointed.
“Probably too early for action,” I muttered.

I headed back to my place, planning on an evening of typing
notes and organizing my thoughts. In some of the popular fiction, I read about those guys with steel-trap minds, who can
focus on half a dozen different ideas and follow through on all
of them at the same time. I didn’t believe it. I had all I could
handle trying to keep focus on one thing at a time.

That’s when Marty stepped in.

The voice mail on my telephone was flashing when I walked
in. I glanced at the readout. Marty Blevins, 4:32 P.M. An hour
earlier. “Now what,” I muttered, wondering if he was going to
praise or fire me.

I dialed the office, but he was gone for the day. I left a message on his phone, then called him at home. Still no answer. I
left another message.

The attachments from DL Burnet, the Denver PI, were waiting in my mailbox, three professionally executed pictures of
three different men, but one, Arthur Weems, leaped out at me. Harper Weems’ twin brother. Like the snapshot on Weems’
desk, identical, except now the brother wore a burr haircut.

He was tall, a few inches over six feet, I guessed. He was
climbing into a BMW that was parked in front of a sprawling
building of Spanish architecture with a sign indicating it was
the Rocky Mountain Country Club.

I cut my eyes to his wrists. A surge of excitement swept over
me. He wore his watch on his right wrist.

Hurriedly, I skimmed the hard copy below the photo. Arthur
Weems. Left-handed.

I pumped my fist in excitement. I was right. I was right.

Leaning back, I replayed my theory, rehearsing it for Marty.
Weems dealt drugs to high school kids. Holderman was his
staker. A dispute arose. Weems’ brother came in from Denver,
whacked Holderman, then headed back that very night.

I suppressed my excitement. “Easy, Tony, easy. Don’t get
ahead of yourself.” I e-mailed Burnet a request for Weems’ activities on November 11, 2004 and the source of his income. I
reread the message before I sent it. “Come back right,” I muttered, punching the send button.

Now all I had to do was find proof that Weems was a dealer.
“That shouldn’t be hard,” I muttered, pulling my Fuji 35 from
my desk drawer. I fit it with a 200-400mm zoom lens with a 2x
tele-converter. With that rig, I could pick up a flea on the belly
of a fly perched on a ten-story building. More than once on
stakeout, I’d snapped incriminating shots that assisted our
investigations. “Shouldn’t be any problem now,” I muttered.

I figured if I could catch any money or drugs exchanging
hands between Weems and a student, I could pressure the student to come clean.

A sharp knocking on the door interrupted me.

It was Marty, cradling a paper bag in his arm like a baby. “I
was heading home, so I thought I’d drop by for a talk.”

“Sure. Come on in,” I said, stepping back and opening the door.

He stepped inside and handed me the bag. “Bourbon.
Figured we might as well relax.”

Taking the bag, I led the way to the kitchen. “What’s the occasion?” I gestured to a barstool and pulled out the bourbon. To my
surprise, it was Jack Daniels. I poured him a stiff drink and ran
a tumbler of water for me.

Puffing, he hefted his bulk up on the stool. “Concerned. Got
a call from our client. She was upset about you questioning
her.”

I watched as he sipped his drink, trying to get a read on his
thoughts, wondering if he was second-guessing himself about
assigning me the case, wondering if he was second-guessing
himself about even keeping me on his staff. “What’d she think?
That I was going to forget all about her? Hey, she’s the number
one suspect with everyone.”

He grunted. “Who knows what she thinks? She’s our client.”

I looked him square in the eyes. “I didn’t do anything special
with her. I questioned her just like I have all the others. And I
did my best to assure her that it was just part of the routine. I’ve
done my best, Marty. If you don’t like it, then …. I left the rest
unsaid.

With a frown on his forehead, he studied me. Finally, a faint
grin broke the frown. “Hey, I know that. I just wanted to know
what pushed her buttons. It’s no secret the Safford police has
her as its number one suspect.”