Killerwatt (3 page)

It
was time for action. “Come on,” she said, heading to thedoor. Woody remained at
his desk.

“Aren’t you coming with me?”

“Where are you going? What do you want to look at?”
Woody hesitated. “What’re you thinking?”

She faced him. “There’s something too peculiar about
Al-Serafi’s accident. I can’t imagine where the heck he was going on I-55
south, obviously alone, so early in the morning. He didn’t live anywhere near
the Diversion Channel.” She snorted. “Al-Serafi lived on the west side of Cape.
I’m sure he wasn’t making a house call.” Another safari through her bag
produced the door key. “He doesn’t have any other family around here, and I
remember him saying how he doesn’t like to drive too much because we drive on the
wrong side of the road. Or at least compared to how he drove in England.”

Woody didn’t budge from his chair. “Aren’t you just
being nosy? Anyhow, the car is in impound. That means we can’t see it.”

Rhetta rolled her eyes. “Woody, honestly, this isn’t
New York. I’ve known Eddie Wellston forever. Did you forget how small a town
Cape is? Besides, we’re the insurance agents. We can look at the car.”

“I’m his agent,” Woody corrected Rhetta.

“Right. Whatever. Let’s go.”

Woody still didn’t move.

She gathered up her purse and keys. “I’m no expert
in looking at wrecked cars, but Eddie is. I don’t believe how the paper says
this happened. I have a gut feeling that Al-Serafi’s accident was no accident.
I’m sure somebody will investigate, if they haven’t already.” Rhetta headed for
the door. “I want to see the car for myself.” She veered to Woody, still seated
at his desk. “Besides, we need to prepare in case we have to clear ourselves.”

“What does that mean? What did we do?”

“You and I know we didn’t do anything, but the paper
may see it differently.” Rhetta fanned out her palms, mimicking a banner.
“Would you like to read a headline that says, ‘Doctor Dies in Crash after
Missouri Community Bank Lends Him a Huge Sum of Money’?”

“Are you saying it’s our fault?”

“It’s not the bank’s fault, but the article might
start with, ‘James Woodhouse Zelinski, the loan officer who handled the
loan….’”
She glared at him. “You want that kind of free advertising?”

Woody rose. “We’ll have to lock up the office and
leave a note, since LuEllen won’t be in.” Ever practical, he grabbed a note pad
and stood. He picked up the desk phone. “I’ll forward the incoming calls to my
cell phone.” After he entered in the proper code, he began writing. LuEllen,
their part time receptionist, had taken three weeks off to visit family in
Idaho, so they would have to lock the office.

Rhetta watched him write in his painstakingly neat
hand. “What are you going to say? ‘Gone to look at terrorist’s wrecked car. Be
back soon?’”

He ignored her until he finished. “How about, ‘Sorry
we missed you. Be back by 1:00 PM?’” After taping the note to the door, he
locked it behind them.

Rhetta knew how Woody fretted about the bank
president calling the branch and having the call drop into voice mail or having
LuEllen take a message. Rhetta, however, never worried about that. There were
times they needed to be away from the office, meeting with real estate agents
or going to a customer’s home to take an application.

Rhetta was already behind the wheel when Woody
folded himself into Cami’s spotless white passenger seat. After he buckled in,
she pressed the Camaro into the southbound Kingshighway traffic. She made a
mental note to check the Missouri State Highway Patrol website, appropriately
called
The Crash Website
that posted information on all wrecks.
Accidents were usually updated within hours.

He shouted above the oldies pouring through her
speakers. “Should we really be checking out Al-Serafi’s car?”

After she reassured him one more time they should,
they sped across town to the Tri-County Impound Yard, located on a bluff off
State Route 177 near the Mississippi River. The city of Cape Girardeau, settled
by French-Canadian settlers, sits in a large bend in the Mississippi River,
framed by massive limestone bluffs overlooking the river.

Eddie Wellston owned the impound lot which served
not just Cape Girardeau County but two surrounding counties, Bollinger and
Perry. The three counties contracted services with Eddie, thus saving them from
the expense of having to maintain lots of their own. When they topped the hill,
Rhetta, not for the first time, marveled at the awesome sight of the broad
river. Its surface sparkled like golden fireflies in the afternoon sun. The
riverside trails were full of joggers and cyclists taking advantage of the
perfect day.

The impound lot was completely enclosed by an eight-foot
tall chain link fence topped by razor wire. A large rectangular metal shop
building-cum-garage had a small wood-sided addition on the front, which served
as an office. Behind the lot, Eddie owned a large junk yard that was enclosed
like the impound lot.

Woody extended his long legs and scrambled awkwardly
out of the car, putting him three steps behind Rhetta, who aimed for the
screened front door. Over the doorway, a faded metal sign read,
Tri-County
Impound
.

“And if it’s an
or what
, what do you suggest
we do? And what, exactly, is an
or what
?” Woody picked up the
conversation while he tugged the squeaky screen door open, allowing Rhetta to
step through ahead of him.

“
Or what
means sabotaged. If it wasn’t
sabotaged, that means that Al-Serafi went into the channel for some other
reason. Maybe he had a heart attack, or somebody forced him off the road, or
something.”

“I don’t like the sound of an ‘or something’
either,” Woody complained, as the door slammed shut.

Eddie Wellston obviously didn’t feel the need for
fancy surroundings. There was neither a desk nor a customer chair anywhere in
sight. Four mismatched metal filing cabinets stood lined up against one wall,
like worn-out soldiers who’d lost the war. A folding table covered with papers
and scattered file folders sat under the room’s only window on the opposite
wall.

Tall and lean in well-worn jeans and a white T-shirt,
Eddie sauntered in through a doorway that connected the office to the secure
back area of the building. He wiped his brow with a red paisley handkerchief,
which he folded before returning it to a back pocket.

“Don’t you have AC in here?” Rhetta braced against
the tornado blowing from an oversized floor fan. She was grateful she hadn’t
worn the peasant skirt she’d originally planned for this morning. It would’ve
been wrapped around her head by now.

“It’s broken.” Eddie reached for a rag to wipe his
hands. “Went to turn it on last Thursday, and it wouldn’t cool. The technician
from Allied Service said it needs its regular spring shot of coolant.”

“Eddie, this is my associate, Woody Zelinski,”
Rhetta said, motioning toward Woody.

“Good to meet you,” Eddie said as he grasped Woody’s
outstretched hand. “The car you want to see is back there.” He pointed toward
the rear of the lot. They trooped outside.

“That’s Al-Serafi’s car, over there.” Eddie motioned
to a four-door tan Lexus resting on the flatbed trailer he’d used to haul it.
Rhetta recognized the car. The last time she saw it was when she watched Al-Serafi
and his wife leave the office after their loan closing.

 “There’s no yellow crime scene tape surrounding the
car,” Rhetta said. “Means the police deemed the event an accident.”

“I looked the car over but I sure can’t tell what
happened,” Eddie said, accompanying Rhetta on her tour of the trailer. “Maybe
the driver fell asleep at the wheel.”

“I don’t know.” Rhetta shook her head. “That seems
doubtful. Woody and I both knew Al-Serafi, and we can’t believe he’d do that.
He had a regular schedule at the hospital. There was no reason for him to have
been out at that early hour. He hadn’t worked the night before.” Rhetta had
called her friend Dr. Phillip Islip, another emergency room physician, and
found out what Al-Serafi’s hours had been. Phillip later called her back and told
her that hospital administration had sent a memo to its employees not to
discuss Al-Serafi’s death with anyone. She promised she wouldn’t. This didn’t
count, did it?

Other than a badly smashed front grille, probably
from landing nose-down, a thick layer of sludge coating the front two-thirds of
it, and a deep green scrape mark along the front driver’s side fender, Rhetta
found little evidence of what may have caused the accident.

The Diversion Channel emptied water and mud into the
Mississippi River; she wasn’t surprised to find the vehicle caked with foul-smelling
muck.

“I want to look inside.” Rhetta searched the trailer
for a ramp or a step.

“The car’s pretty dirty,” Eddie cautioned, producing
the wobbly wooden chair she’d spotted outside the front door. He steadied the
chair while she clambered on to the trailer.
High-heeled sandals aren’t
meant for field investigating
.

Woody didn’t follow her.

Probably doesn’t want to get his
spiffy slacks dirty or get mud on his shoes
. She shouted down to him, “Aren’t you coming?”

He shook his head. “I’ll just wait here.”

Eddie, however, vaulted on to the trailer.

“That’s funny,” Eddie said.

“What?” asked Rhetta, glancing around.

“I could’ve sworn that window wasn’t broken out
yesterday.” Eddie pointed a skinny index finger at the driver’s window that
bore a baseball-sized hole, while shards of glass littered the trailer. “A guy
from the insurance company was just here looking it over, too.” Eddie looked
around as though the man might still be close by. “Guess he left. No, that’s
his Explorer over there.” He pointed toward the back of the lot. Rhetta
followed his gaze. A man opened the driver’s door and slipped inside.

Rhetta said, “I don’t know who that might be. I
thought I knew all of our adjusters.” She turned her attention back to Al-Serafi’s
car.

Eddie worked on the driver’s side door, which was
closest to them. It took a few minutes before he successfully tugged it open.
“I’ll leave you to it.” He leapt off the trailer and rejoined Woody, leaving
Rhetta to snoop alone. She kicked aside the glass pieces since she didn’t want
to wind up wearing one inside her sandal. She turned her attention to the
inside of the car.

A grey, putrid-smelling slime covered the interior
dash, steering wheel, and all of the front floor carpeting. Rhetta wrinkled her
nose. She noticed a similar coating along the outer edge of the front seat.
Tilting her head sideways, she estimated that if the car was nose down, how
high the water must have been. There was nothing, not even mud, in the back
seat. Even after surviving a dunking in the channel, the back seat was cleaner
than in most cars. Not a scrap of anything lay on the seat or on the floor.

Rhetta’s eyes swept the interior once more. Beside
the broken window, there was nothing significant in or about the car. She
didn’t know what she thought she’d find, but she was disappointed that her
search produced nothing.

Glancing back at Woody and Eddie, who were engrossed
in deep conversation, Rhetta closed the door, stepped carefully through the
broken glass to cross the front of the car to the passenger side front door.
Her destination was the glove box.

The door refused to budge due to mud as hard as
concrete clogging the hinges. Rather than call for Eddie to help, she returned
to the driver’s side. This time she was able to tug the door open herself. Then
she stretched across the interior to pop open the glove box. The soft click
went unnoticed by the two men engrossed in conversation. She glanced down at
the swipe of dirt that had leapt on to her blouse from the steering wheel.

The smell from the dried slime in the glove box made
Rhetta turn her head aside. She wiped the back of her hand across her nostrils
in an attempt to dislodge the foul odor. When she looked back inside, she found
a small stack of mud-soaked papers. Under the stack was a sealed plastic bag,
containing the owner’s manual.
Why would the owner’s manual be sealed in a
bag?
She removed the bag and pried open the plastic zipper.

Using her thumb, she fanned the pages of the owner’s
manual. Deciding there was nothing interesting or unusual about the booklet,
she began to reinsert it into the plastic bag. A sheet of loose paper the same
size as the book’s pages escaped from the owner’s manual and floated to the
seat. Covered with undecipherable scrawls, the sheet was decidedly different
from the handbook pages. She snatched the sheet and then folded it while
glancing surreptitiously at the men. Seeing that they weren’t paying any
attention to her, she quickly pocketed her prize.

After coaxing the glove box closed, she slammed the
driver door shut. The only way down was the way she’d come up. She stepped
gingerly onto the chair, and then hopped to the ground, hoping to keep her
shoes out of the dust. She turned her ankle and nearly fell. Did anyone see
her? There went her pedicure. Along with having messed-up toenail polish, mud
had splattered the back of her pants leg.