Risky Undertaking (14 page)

I grabbed Romero by the arm, halting the big man's stride. “Would the discovery of artifacts have the same effect as discovering an Indian burial site?”

“You mean was Jimmy going back to salt a wider area of your cemetery?”

“Yes. Both Skye and Eddie Wolfe said he was growing more confrontational. Could he effectively have shut the cemetery down?”

Romero's lips tucked into a fine line as he thought about my question. “Your cemetery's not public property, is it?”

“No. It's privately held.”

“Then it would clearly need to be categorized as a burial site and not simply an archaeological find. The Archaeological Resources and Protection Act is federal law enacted to protect irreplaceable archaeological resources on federal, public, and Indian lands. That's what we most commonly enforce when we come across artifact hunters on the Qualla Boundary. But off reservation, human remains would trigger the more extensive actions regardless of who owned the property.”

“Would Jimmy go so far as to exhume bones from a known site to perpetrate a hoax?”

“I find that hard to believe,” Romero said. “He'd be desecrating one site for the sake of another. A site we're not even sure is more than a single grave.”

“Doing something bad so that something else good would happen,” I said, quoting what Panther supposedly told Swifty. “It describes that scenario perfectly.”

“Yes. But it runs counter to everything I knew about Jimmy. You're talking about disturbing the dead. He wouldn't have taken that action lightly. And his grandmother said he was happy. That doesn't square with grave robbing. He should have been troubled.”

“When we pressed her, his grandmother said contented, not happy,” I corrected. “I've helped enough terminally ill people make their funeral plans to witness an unexplainable peace come over them once everything is set.”

Romero stared at me. “You're saying Jimmy knew he was going to be killed?”

“No. I'm saying he was content to let his plan play out. Whatever that plan was, he was ready to activate it.” Skye's word came to me. Not contented. Smugness. “Jimmy must have been confident of its success.”

“And instead he wound up dead on a fresh grave.”

“With evidence he was killed elsewhere, and a missing collection of artifacts and possible human remains that could have salted the scene of his most recent protest.”

“Can you have it both ways?” Romero asked. “That his target was the cemetery and yet he was killed someplace else?”

The detective sergeant had put his finger on the dilemma. The cemetery made Luther my main suspect. The possible abduction introduced other motives from within the reservation. Motives that might have caused a thirteen-year-old boy to go into hiding, or worse, try to find answers on his own.

And there was Kevin Malone and his Boston hit man. I had no idea how they figured into things, only that Kevin's tactics depended upon Archie Donovan, and that made me very nervous.

Chapter Fourteen

Romero dropped me off at the casino around four thirty. I went straight to the hotel room and swiped my keycard through the electronic lock. The steady sound of streaming water came from the shower and I knew Susan had started getting ready for our big night at the gaming tables. I cracked the bathroom door enough to let steam pour out.

“Got room in there for a good-looking guy to soap up with you?”

“Yes,” she shouted. “But my husband will be back soon.”

“Very funny.” I closed the door and sat on the leather love seat by the window. I needed to call Darren Cransford, but I figured I should check in with Tommy Lee first. He was still at the department.

“What's up?” he asked.

“I spoke with Eddie Wolfe. He claims not to know anything, but he did say Panther was supportive of the Catawba casino efforts. Eddie wouldn't put it past him to stage some kind of public demonstration, maybe at the legislature in Raleigh.”

“Was something planned?”

“Not that Eddie knew of.”

“I thought Panther and Eddie were tight,” Tommy Lee said.

“Yeah, but according to Skye and Eddie, Panther was taking their cause in a more confrontational direction. He might not have confided in them. And there's a new development. Hector Romero asked me to accompany him on an interview regarding a runaway thirteen-year-old boy.” I recapped the conversation with Dot Swift and the Oconaluftee Village interview with Robbie Ledford.

When I finished, there was silence on the other end of the phone. I didn't press Tommy Lee for a response. I knew he was thinking.

The water cut off in the shower. Susan opened the bathroom door. She was barely covered by a plush towel with a second one wrapped around her wet hair. “You need to get in here?”

I pointed to the phone at my ear and mouthed, “Tommy Lee.”

“Too bad.” She spun around, whipping off the body towel a split-second before disappearing behind the bathroom door.

“Bad,” Tommy Lee echoed. “And then good.”

“What?” I thought Tommy Lee had heard Susan's tease.

“That phrase the kid said. Something bad had to happen for something good to happen. That doesn't sound like a picket line in Raleigh.”

“No. But it could be salting the cemetery with his Cherokee artifacts.”

“Barry, it's nice to feel our town's important, but that cemetery isn't a cause worth sacrificing what everyone says was so valuable to Jimmy Panther. And if Kevin's right, although I'm hard pressed to see how he could be, Francis Tyrell didn't come down to Cherokee to take out a guy who embarrassed Archie, Luther, and Mayor Whitlock. Believe me, it didn't happen.”

“But something was worth it,” I said.

“I agree. And you've opened up an interesting possibility. Especially since Luther's alibi seems more probable.”

I stood from the sofa. Tommy Lee had new information. “What did you learn?”

“Luther told us he had a couple of Miller Lites up at the Blue Ridge Parkway overlook Sunday night. Wakefield found the bottles.”

“Could Luther have planted them later?”

“Maybe. He would have had to do it before I talked to him because I sent Wakefield up there as soon as Luther told me. Luther wouldn't have had time to stage the scene afterwards. Given the way you said he reacted to the news of Panther's death and the site supposedly being the spot for his first picnic with Eurleen, I find his actions credible. When you lose someone close, you take comfort in shared familiar places.”

I thought of Emma Byrd taking Romero and me to Panther's lodgings because she wanted to feel close to her grandson. Then I thought of a grieving thirteen-year-old. “My God, Tommy Lee. I think you've hit on something. Danny Swift might be doing the same thing.”

“Can you check it out?”

“Not now. I've got to meet Kevin at six. But I'll phone Romero.”

Tommy Lee grunted. “I wish we hadn't agreed to this stupid poker thing. If you're right, I'd rather you talk to the boy with Romero.”

“Do you want me to hold off?”

“No. If the boy's there, he needs to be found. We don't want the parents worrying a second night.”

“I mean do you want me to hold off on the poker game? I can't believe anything's going down at the table.”

“Nothing's going down. But I don't think that's the intent.”

Tommy Lee wasn't making sense. “You think Kevin's just hassling the guy?” I asked.

“Archie's got his eyes on Tyrell, you'll have your eyes on Archie and Tyrell, and no one will be watching Kevin.”

“Watching him do what?”

“Anything he has to, Barry. Don't forget it.” Tommy Lee hung up.

I tried to reach Detective Sergeant Romero at the Cherokee police station but was told he'd left for the day. I followed up with his cell, but that went straight to voicemail. I left him the suggestion that Swifty could be at Panther's and asked him to call me. Then I retrieved Darren Cransford's number from the phone log, took out my notepad, and moved to the small desk opposite the bed. I remembered Tommy Lee's goal to drive a wedge between the stories of father and son. But with Luther a less likely suspect, Darren Cransford now merited a different approach.

“Hello?” He sounded tentative, like he'd never answered a phone before.

“Darren, it's Barry Clayton.”

“Yes, Mr. Clayton. Is anything wrong?”

Darren and I were about the same age and he'd called me Barry up till now. The new formality put distance between us, and I didn't know whether it was a defensive move or continued anger at the debacle in the cemetery. I decided to forge ahead aggressively.

“Yes, Darren. Something's very wrong, especially for Jimmy Panther. He was found dead yesterday morning in the cemetery.”

“I know. My sister told me. Do you suspect my father?”

“What has he told you?”

“I haven't spoken with him.”

That response surprised me. “You're kidding? A man is murdered on your mother's grave and you don't talk to your father?”

“I knew any discussion would only upset him.”

“Did your sister agree with your decision?” I asked.

“She did. She spoke with him and he assured her he had nothing to do with it. I thought it was better to leave it at that.”

I jotted down that Darren claimed no contact with Luther after the murder. “And I guess things were crazy at your office.”

“You know it. I had to catch up on a lot of work after mother's funeral.”

“Now which office would that be? You're no longer employed by Wilder and Hamilton.”

Silence.

“Where did you go Sunday night when you told your father you had to get back to DC?”

“Did you tell him?” Darren whispered the question.

“No. If he knows, it's because he called them or your sister told him.”

“Sandra wouldn't say anything.”

“And why's that?”

“She wouldn't want to create a rift between my father and Mack Collins.”

“What's Mack Collins got to do with any of this?”

“He's the one who got me fired. Called my boss and complained I was lobbying for the Catawbas.”

Darren's disjointed answers suddenly made sense. Sandra told me her brother had taken on the Catawba tribe as a client using his family connection to State Senator Collins. But Mack Collins wasn't in favor of the Catawba casino proposal. His loyalty was to western North Carolina and to preventing the negative economic impact a rival casino would create. Darren had to be the dullest knife in the drawer if he hadn't seen that conflict.

“Had Mack asked you directly not to represent the Catawbas?” I asked.

“Yes, but I thought that was just for show. I knew he had aspirations for statewide office, maybe even governor, and bringing jobs and growth to another part of the state would play in his favor.”

“So, he called your firm and told them you were moonlighting. When was this?”

“Two weeks ago. Since then I've been working full time for the Catawba tribe and a group of businessmen in Kings Mountain.”

“Where did you go Sunday? And don't lie because we can backtrack your phone.”

“I went to Kings Mountain. We had a meeting that night.”

“Can anyone verify it?”

“Verify it?” His voice rose to an indignant shout. “Barry, you think I'm lying to you?”

“You've already lied about your job, so don't get high and mighty on me. Who was at the meeting and why was it so important?”

“OK, OK. Chandler Gibson is president of the chamber of commerce. He'll tell you I got to his office a little before seven. And this is ironic as hell because we were meeting about Jimmy Panther.”

I wrote “Panther and Kings Mountain” on my pad. “Because of the funeral?” I asked.

“Because the Indian freaked me out. He knew we were burying my mother and still he sent that broken feather and picketed the cemetery. He proved to me he was a loose cannon and I wanted no part of him.”

I thought back to our ride in the family car and how Darren told his father not to get upset over the warning letter and that they didn't know for sure who sent it. Now I understood he was protecting Jimmy Panther, his ally.

“You enlisted his help, didn't you?”

“Yes,” Darren admitted. “Panther contacted someone in the Catawba tribe and the information was passed to me. I thought he could be an effective spokesmen with the legislature or any rallies we might hold. But he started speaking out on his own, and giving us orders.”

“What kind of orders?”

“To be ready to press an advantage he was creating. Something that would affect the dynamics of the whole debate. A game-changer, he called it.”

“What was it?”

“I don't know. He wouldn't say. And then he got sidetracked with the Indian remains in the cemetery, and everything went to hell as far as I was concerned.”

“Did your friends in Kings Mountain feel the same way?”

“Yes. They're respected members of their community. They don't want to be embarrassed.”

“Were they angry?”

“You mean angry enough to kill him? No way. We voted to drop any association with him and pretend we'd never known him.”

Darren's story sounded plausible, but I would need to check it out.

“Where are you now?” I asked.

“In Cherokee. With Panther out of the picture, I thought I'd see if someone else might be a more restrained and reasoned voice of support.”

I decided not to tell him I was on the reservation as well. “Are you talking about others in Panther's protest movement?”

“Yes. Too soon to see his sister, but I understand her boyfriend might be a possibility. Eddie Wolfe's his name.”

“OK. Then I'll be back in touch. Be careful.”

“About what?”

“About your life. Somebody saw Panther as a threat and unless you know a lot more than you're telling, the waters are too murky to know what lies beneath them. Watch your step.”

“You too,” he replied, in a voice as cold as a frozen mountain stream.

I sat at the desk for a few minutes, thinking over what I'd learned so far. The events and interviews pointed to a very specific act that Panther planned. I could only speculate at its impact, but conservatively I estimated we were talking about millions of dollars, not counting what projected increases in per capita payments might flow into the tribe. And Panther wasn't breaking the law; he was triggering it.

“You off the phone?” Susan stood in the bathroom doorway. She must have changed in the small hallway while I'd been engrossed in my conversation with Darren.

“At least till after we see Kevin.”

She walked to the bed and sat on the edge. Her black dress was simple in its elegance. The tight waist showed off her figure. The thin shoulder straps left plenty of space for the necklace of jade and opal gracing her neck. Her auburn hair hung loose to her shoulders, its soft sheen overshadowing the subtle highlights of the silver encasing the semiprecious gems.

“You set a high bar, Doctor Clayton. If James Bond is in the casino tonight, he's going to look more than twice.”

She smiled and patted the necklace. “You like it? I bought it this afternoon.”

“I like it. But you could wear a string of popcorn and still look beautiful.”

“And how's my James Bond? Do you have a few minutes before you get ready to tell me about your day?”

I checked my watch. Five twenty. All I needed was fifteen minutes for a quick shower and change of clothes. “Definitely. And then you can tell me if I'm crazy.”

I summarized what happened after she left me at the police station. Telling the events helped reinforce the theory percolating in my mind. And Susan's sharper intellect would be the perfect sounding board.

Fifteen minutes later I finished with Darren's warning to watch my step.

“He knows more than he's telling,” Susan said.

“I think so. But I'm not sure of his motive. I don't think he had anything to do with Panther's death, so who is he protecting?”

“Maybe he's afraid of someone,” she suggested.

“Mack Collins is the only one he ran up against. That got him fired and so there's not much more Mack can do to him. Despite Darren's actions, Mack professes to be close to Luther and upset that he could be charged as a suspect.”

“But we're talking about the casino, not the cemetery, being at the heart of the case.”

“Yes. The arrowhead and the dirt lead in that direction.” I stood from the desk and paced between the bed and window. “We uncovered artifacts and Cherokee remains at the cemetery, spurring Panther to draw attention to the protection of Indian relics. He pursued his efforts, going for maximum press coverage. He further gained an opportunity with Eurleen Cransford's death.”