Dead Broke in Jarrett Creek Read online

  Caton’s story is so preposterous that I laugh in spite of myself. Gary Dellmore wouldn’t come close to lending his car to anyone, I don’t care what the circumstances. And the likelihood that he would meet someone like Louis Caton stretches the imagination even more. “When did this happen?”

  He screws his face up like he’s trying to remember. “Couple of days ago. I can’t remember exactly.”

  “It’s kind of important to know the exact time.”

  He scratches his scruffy chin. “It must have been Wednesday.”

  “That’s good,” I say.

  He must hear something in my voice because he puts his coffee cup down on the floor and looks at me warily. “Why is that good?”

  “Mr. Dellmore was murdered Tuesday night, so if you saw him Wednesday, that means he woke from the dead.”

  “No, no, no.” Caton jumps to his feet. “That was a mistake. It must have been Monday I saw him. And listen, you’ve got to believe me. If he’s dead, I had nothing to do with that.”

  I sigh. “Why don’t we start over and you tell me how you came by that car. It may be important for a murder investigation. And if you don’t get yourself untangled from your story, it might be you that’s being investigated.”

  “Okay, okay.” He comes up as close to me as the bars will allow. “I didn’t steal the car, okay? I want to say that right out. I did not steal that car. I found it.”

  I laugh again. “This gets better and better.”

  “It’s true, I really did. It was on the turnout below the dam road.”

  “On the lake side or the other side?”

  “The other side. There’s a little park just beyond it.”

  I know the place. “When was this?”

  “Like I said, it was Wednesday, but it was around one o’clock in the morning.”

  “All right. Now we’re talking. Did you hotwire it?”

  “I wouldn’t know how to do that. The keys were in it.”

  At that, I get up fast. This sounds more like the truth, and it’s a twist I didn’t expect. “I’m going to take you there and I want you to show me exactly where you found it. No bullshit. You understand me?”

  “As God is my witness.”

  I call Alvin Raines down at the Texaco station and ask him to meet me at Dellmore’s car with a tow truck. “And don’t touch the car until I get there.”

  “My boy is out with the truck and it may be forty-five minutes before he gets back. You’ll probably beat me out there. Give me your cell phone number in case I’m held up.” I’m starting to see why people like their cell phones.

  Before I take Louis Caton out of his cell, I check on the two Jarrett Creek police cars, both small Dodge Chargers, to see what kind of shape they’re in. One is low on gas, but the other one has plenty. The fingerprint kit is in the trunk, along with a shotgun, an emergency first-aid kit, a blanket, and half a dozen empty food containers, mostly from the Dairy Queen. I gather those up and dump them in the trash bin at the side of the building.

  Although I don’t think Caton is much of a flight risk, I keep the handcuffs on him when I lead him out to the car. He complains when he half falls into the backseat. “Man, it’s cramped back here. And it smells bad.” He wrinkles his nose.

  “Sorry it’s not up to your standards.” And then something occurs to me. “You’ve never been in the back of a police car before?”

  “No, sir, I haven’t.”

  “How did Bill Odum get you over here?”

  “He was in a pickup and made me sit in the back, handcuffed to the rail.”

  “We’re not going far. You’ll be okay.”

  On the way over Caton babbles some more, repeating the details of how he found the car. I stop by to tell Zeke the situation. His small SUV is parked behind Dellmore’s black Crown Victoria. Seat tilted back, he’s lying with his hat over his eyes. His window is rolled down, and as I pull up alongside him, he sits up and resettles his hat back on his head. “Looks like nobody stole the car while I was napping.”

  “Zeke, I’ll be back here in fifteen minutes, and if you don’t mind I’d like you to hang out a little longer. I’ve called to have the car towed.”

  He looks at his watch. “You know, officially, I’m off duty. Why is this such a big deal?”

  “You do know that this is Gary Dellmore’s car?”

  “I also know you’re not likely to get any useful evidence out of it after somebody has been using it for joyriding.” He nods to Caton in the backseat. “That the joker who was driving it?”

  “It is. I’m taking him down to the scene where he found the car. We won’t be long. If you really need to leave, go ahead.”

  “No, I’ll stay here. You’re the boss.” He settles back in and claps his hat back over his face.

  Caton is laughing in the backseat. “This town’s got itself quite a police force. Two old geezers and a kid.”

  He’s right, so I keep my mouth shut. I pull over in front of the Crown Vic and get out to take a look at it. It has a crumpled left front fender. I’m grateful Caton was in the fender bender. If it hadn’t been called in, we might never have found Dellmore’s car. I look inside and it’s a mess, with food cartons, wrappers, and beer cans all over the floor and backseat.

  Back in the car, I continue driving along the dam road, the lake off to our right. Approaching the park there’s no shoulder on either side of the road because of a steep drop-off on the lake side and a swampy creek on the other. When the road opens out I pull off on the shoulder and take Caton out of the backseat and uncuff him. He zips up his light jacket against the stiff breeze that’s coming off the lake.

  “You say you found the car on this side of the park?” I gesture up ahead where there’s a gravel pullout area with a picnic table surrounded by several post oak trees. You can tell from the weeds and leaves that the park isn’t used much.

  “The car was nosed in right up there.” Caton points. “It was parked kind of cockeyed.”

  I wonder if somebody forced the car off the road. But who was driving the car? Was it Dellmore? If so, why did he leave it here and how did he get back to the American Legion Hall? It’s possible that somebody followed him, forced him off the road then drove him to the Hall to kill him. But why go to all that trouble? Why not shoot him here? It’s far more deserted here than it is at the Hall.

  I can’t tell anything from the tire tracks around the car. People use the park as a turnaround when they drive back and forth along the dam road. There are crisscrosses of tire tracks that could be from Dellmore’s car or any of a dozen others that pulled off here.

  Caton is taking this seriously. He walks a little ahead of me and is looking from side to side to figure out where the car was parked. “Okay, right here,” he says. “You see that?” He points to a Coors can in the weeds. “I was walking along here drinking a beer and I threw that can down when I walked over and looked into the car.”

  “Where were you going?”

  “Back to the trailer where I’m staying.” He motions in the direction of the trailer camp a half-mile away. “I was at a guy’s house back down there.” He points to the road that leads back into town. “The guy said he was going to have a couple of girls come over, but they never showed up, so I got tired of waiting and decided to walk back home.”

  “You said this was one in the morning?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And you’ve had the car ever since?”

  “Yes.” His eyes flick to one side. There’s something he’s not telling me.

  I search for a question that will get to what he’s hiding. “Was it around here the whole time?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What does that mean?” I say. “Where was it?”

  “I figured as long as I had a car, I might as well make use of it. You know, if somebody’s going to leave their car sitting around with the keys in it, they’re going to have to expect somebody to use it.”

  “Where did
you take it?”

  “Wednesday it sat in front of my place all day because I was sleeping.”

  Sleeping it off. “You’d had a fair amount to drink the night before?”

  “I suppose we did drink a few brews while we were waiting for those girls.” He grins. “Wednesday night I went back over to his house, only this time I had the car, so we drove over to A&M to find some girls.”

  “And did you?”

  “Yeah, we did. We had some fun.” He grins and raises his eyebrows as if I’m going to congratulate him.

  That’s where all the trash inside the car came from. Zeke was right, any hope I had of gathering evidence from it is somewhere between slim and none, but I’ll still have to go over it in the morning when it’s at the service station.

  I don’t see signs of a struggle—not weeds trampled down or gravel disturbed. I pick up a stick and poke around in nearby clumps of weeds, but I don’t see anything that might be of any use. Anything could have happened here. As far as that goes, Louis Caton could have made up the whole thing and he could have come upon Gary Dellmore sitting in the car, killed him, taken the body to where it was found, and then claimed the car for his own. But if it had happened that way, it’s unlikely Caton would have hung around here. He seems aimless but not stupid. Besides, the autopsy indicated that Dellmore was killed where he was found.

  It’s five o’clock by the time I get back to the station, having seen to it that Dellmore’s car was towed. I drop Caton off at his trailer, warning him not to leave town.

  It’s been a long day, but I need to let Barbara Dellmore know that we found Gary’s car. When I phone her house and tell her, she asks me if I’ll come over. She sounds shaky. I tell her I’ll be right there.

  The living room is as dark and gloomy as the last time I was here, with Odum. Barbara jerks open the drapes to the waning daylight. The room has an uncared-for look, as if things landed where they were put a long time ago and nobody has bothered with them since. Barbara looks around the room as if she doesn’t recognize it. “Everything looks different without Gary here. I don’t know how to describe it.”

  “Barbara, let’s talk for a minute.” We sit, but she doesn’t really settle into the chair, as if she’s hovering a few inches off it. She asks me exactly where her husband’s car was found, and when I tell her, she says, “That makes no sense. What was he doing there?” Her voice is shrill.

  “I was hoping you might be able to give me some idea.”

  “You mean why he was driving the dam road at night? No idea at all.”

  “Do you know if Gary had any friends with a place out at the lake? Anybody who might know what he was up to on the dam road?”

  “He never mentioned knowing anybody out there. It’s not his kind of people.” She gets up. “Do you mind if I make some coffee? Come on in the kitchen.” It seems to me like she’s already had plenty of coffee.

  We sit at counter stools and drink some kind of coffee with a flavor in it that I don’t recognize. She says it’s hazelnut, like she’s proud of it. As far as I’m concerned, infusing coffee with nuts is as unnatural as those genetically modified tomatoes with fish genes in them.

  “Did Gary ever mention knowing somebody by the name of Louis Caton?”

  She frowns. “No. Who’s that?”

  “It’s the man who was driving his car.” I tell her that Caton said he found the car abandoned with the keys in it.

  “None of this is making a bit of sense.”

  “Did Gary have any close friends?”

  “We have a few church friends, but no men in particular that he’s friendly with. He said he and Slate McClusky went out to eat a few times.”

  I’m startled by that, after the way McClusky talked as if he hardly knew Gary. And I don’t recall the two men being particularly friendly with each other at the meeting. In fact, if I had to swear, I’d say they didn’t know each other at all.

  “And Gary goes deer hunting with Annalise’s husband and some friends of his. They go every year. This year they went after turkey instead of deer. They got two and we had them at Thanksgiving. All of us together at Alan and Clara’s house. One big happy family.”

  “So Gary and his brother-in-law were friendly. Do you get along well with Annalise? Did the four of you socialize?”

  Her smile is bitter. “You’re wondering about that argument you walked in on Wednesday? We usually do okay, but we never socialized with them except when we were all over at Alan and Clara’s house. I don’t really care for Annalise, or her husband, for that matter. Pompous and small-minded, both of them. I guess that’s one of the consolations I get with Gary gone. I don’t have to go over there and listen to Annalise detail every move her kids make.”

  “You and Gary never wanted kids?”

  “No. We agreed on that before we got married. I don’t like children. That’s not something I tell everyone because people don’t like to hear it.”

  “And Gary was okay with that?”

  “More than okay. It’s one thing that drew us together. And it’s why I don’t have many women friends. All they ever talk about is their kids. How can every woman find her children so endlessly fascinating? And Annalise is the worst. She never shuts up about that brat Mikey.”

  “Tell me about the fight you had with Annalise the day I saw you at the Dellmore’s.”

  She gets up and pours herself another cup of coffee, but I tell her I don’t need any. “It had to do with Gary fooling around with other women.” Her cheeks flame up and she looks at me with defiance as if I might challenge her version of things. “And of course Annalise and Clara couldn’t hear that their precious Gary might be to blame. It had to be my fault.”

  “I guess that’s to be expected.”

  She shrugs. When she puts her coffee cup to her mouth, her hand is shaking. “Anyway, Annalise had her opinions about why Gary had a wandering eye, and she was only too happy to share them with me.”

  She tells me pretty much the same story I heard from Alan Dellmore, and ends with saying, “Both of them thought I was robbing the cradle when I married him.”

  “Seems to me Gary got the best end of the deal.”

  She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “That’s nice of you to say, but the truth is I was pretty old when I met Gary. My daddy thought he was going to have an old maid on his hands. I still think one reason Gary married me was that Daddy offered him a good job in his company.” She can’t keep her hands still. They move restlessly, clasping and unclasping.

  “Were you happy?”

  “I thought we were. I suppose I’m not the only woman whose husband developed a roving eye. That happened after my daddy lost his business. Gary couldn’t find a job, and I had to go to work to help us make ends meet. Like a lot of men, that bruised his ego.”

  “What kind of work did you do?” I say.

  “I majored in landscape architecture in college, so I went to work as a gardener. Gary thought that was a slap in the face for me to do menial work, but I didn’t want to do anything else. I like gardening and if I had to work, I didn’t see why I shouldn’t get paid for doing what I like to do. You see women spending a lot of time in the garden and they don’t expect to be paid. A man would expect to be paid.” She flicks her hands as if to shoo her thoughts away. “Don’t get me started on that.”

  “When you went to work—that’s when Gary started cheating on you?”

  “Not right away, but things went downhill after that. We argued a lot. I guess I was foolish. It never occurred to me that he would cheat on me.” She gives me a rueful smile. “Anyway, after Gary had been out of a job for a while, Alan persuaded him to go to work at the bank, and we moved here. But it was never a great match. He and Alan didn’t get along.”

  “What do you mean, they didn’t get along?”

  She’s suddenly angry. “Alan is a wonderful man. Gary was like a teenaged girl, always trying to impress everybody with who he was and what he knew. He never took his re
sponsibilities seriously. More than once Alan warned Gary that it was important to be discreet, that people didn’t like hearing their finances aired in public. But Gary said that was old-fashioned. He thought Alan was a fool.”

  “In what way?”

  “Gary said Alan was a dinosaur. He said these days anybody can find out anything about people’s finances on the Internet. But the real problem was that Gary didn’t value the job. I don’t know why, but he felt like it was beneath him or something. He hated working at the bank and he hated this town. He kept saying that sooner or later we were going to move out of here.”

  “Did you want to move, too?”

  “Either way suited me fine. I don’t hate it here like Gary did.”

  “What kept him here?”

  “Money. We racked up some debts when he was out of work, but he said as soon as they were paid off, we were leaving.”

  “Did Alan know Gary wanted out?”

  “I don’t think he would admit it to himself. He really hoped Gary would change.”

  I’m surprised that Barbara is spilling all this to me. I don’t know her well, but sometimes people will talk to a stranger easier than to a friend.

  “I heard that Gary was involved in the deal out at the lake for the water park.”

  “Oh, yes. He was very proud of that. He thought it was going to be great.”

  “Did it bother him when the deal went south and the town lost money?”

  “It wasn’t Gary’s way to regret things. He said it wasn’t his job to coddle people, and that Alton Coldwater knew it was a risky deal. Gary got his commission on the loan, and that’s all he cared about.”

  Alton Coldwater may have known it was risky, but he was still angry at Dellmore. “Do you know if anybody ever threatened Gary?”

  “You mean threatened to kill him? He never told me if they did.”

  “I don’t like asking this, but were any of Gary’s affairs serious?”

  She stands up abruptly, glaring at me. “What’s serious? Do you mean did he ask me for a divorce? Did he tell me the details of his little side activities?” Her face is dead white.