Dead Broke in Jarrett Creek Read online

  Back at headquarters Odum and I sit down to talk over where to begin the investigation. “We’ll need to talk to Gary Dellmore’s wife again, this time with real questions. And Dellmore’s folks and the people he worked with at the bank.” I’m jotting down the names as I speak.

  Odum sighs. “I don’t see how even with both of us we’re going to be able to do all this. Not and take care of regular business, too. The problem is…” He looks shamefaced, as if he’s going to disappoint me.

  “What is it?”

  “I have another job. In fact, I ought to be getting out of here.”

  “How many hours a week do you put in here at the station?”

  “I only get paid for twenty hours, and Sissy and I can’t make it on that, so I’ve got to make an extra income. I was hoping to get on as a full-time officer, but now that’s not looking good.”

  “What’s your other job?”

  “I work for my daddy. He’s got a big cotton farm out between here and Bobtail. He’s okay with me not keeping regular hours, but he wants me to put in the time he pays me for.” He looks itchy, like he’s anxious to be on his way but doesn’t know exactly how to make his exit.

  “I guess you better get going then. When are you due back?”

  “I come in five days a week either morning or afternoon. I’ll come in tomorrow morning first thing.”

  “Tell you what: Why don’t I get started questioning people? Tomorrow we’ll work out a plan.”

  “Sounds good. I hate to leave you to do the whole thing, though.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’re short-handed, and we may not be able to figure this out, but there’s a lot we can do. We’ll probably do all the legwork and then the hotshot Rangers will take over and get all the glory.”

  He laughs. “That’ll be okay with me. As long as I don’t get shot at, Sissy will be happy.”

  I stop home to grab some lunch and find Loretta waiting for me on my front porch in the sun. She’s working on one of the shirts she’s making for her grandsons. The shirts are the loudest red-and-blue flannel plaid I’ve ever seen. Her grandsons are eleven and eight, and I hope their folks have taught them the art of thanking someone who gives you a present—and acting like you really mean it.

  “I thought you’d never get back here.” She tucks the shirt into her workbag. “Why didn’t you tell me Gary Dellmore was killed?”

  “I didn’t find out until after you left. How’d you hear the news?”

  “How would I not hear news like that? It’s all over town. That’s a terrible thing, young man like that. Do you know who did it?”

  “They didn’t leave a calling card. Let’s go inside and I’ll tell you what’s been going on.”

  She follows me inside, complaining that she was cold out on the porch. She has a key to my door, so she could have come inside and waited, but she’s particular about appearances and doesn’t like to if I’m not home, afraid someone will gossip. While I make a sandwich and coffee, I fill her in on the visit to Barbara Dellmore.

  “How did she take it?”

  “Pretty shocked, but she’ll be okay.” I tell Loretta I was surprised that Barbara went on with her gardening after hearing that her husband had been murdered. “She said she had to finish up transplanting and then she’d call her mother.”

  Loretta says, “I’ve always found Barbara a little standoffish, but her going back to her gardening doesn’t mean anything. You not being a gardener, you don’t know what a comfort it is to work in the garden when you’re upset. I’ll take her some coffee cake tomorrow morning.” She frowns and sets down her coffee mug. “What was she transplanting this time of year?”

  “Roses.”

  “It’s not the right time to move roses, but I guess you can’t argue with success. I never was much good with roses.” I hear a tinge of jealousy in her voice. Every year Barbara enters her roses in the county fair contest and almost always wins.

  “What do you know about Gary Dellmore’s folks?” I ask.

  She puts a finger to her lips and ponders. “I don’t know Clara. They’re Episcopal. She’s quiet. Not in a standoffish way like Barbara, just doesn’t say much. But I do my banking with Alan Dellmore, so I know he’s a fine man. He and Clara will be devastated. Their only son.”

  “They have a daughter, too, I recall.”

  “Yes, she’s older than Gary. She married a man in the insurance business in San Antonio. I think they do pretty well. Not that I know anything but what I’ve heard. Now, you haven’t said a word about last night’s meeting. You said it was a free-for-all. You think somebody got riled up enough to shoot Gary Dellmore?”

  “There were some hard words, but it was mostly hot air. I can’t imagine anybody shooting anybody over it.” The meeting seems like it was two weeks ago instead of last night.

  “How many people did you have there?” She pulls one of the shirts back out of her bag and starts working on it again.

  “There were eight. Besides Rusty, Gary Dellmore and me there was Marietta Bryant, of course.” She’s the city administrator who discovered the disastrous state of the town’s finances. “And Jenny Sandstone.”

  She looks up. “Why Jenny Sandstone? She grew up in Bobtail.”

  “You don’t have to have been brought up here to understand the problems. Jenny being a lawyer, I thought she’d have something to contribute.” Jenny is also my next-door neighbor and a good friend. She and I had a disagreement over her horses for a time after she moved next door to me, but that has been smoothed over and I’ve come to appreciate her wit and wisdom.

  “Who else was there?”

  “Oscar Grant. We figured the Two Dog Bar needs more than its share of law enforcement, so Oscar ought to be on the committee. And Jim Krueger, since he’s the school principal.” Jim is the father of James Harley Krueger, acting chief of police. The two men couldn’t be more different. “Jim will be an asset to the committee.”

  “That’s only seven.”

  “Slate McClusky was there, too, although I can’t say he contributed much. He mostly grinned and tried to agree with everybody.”

  “Why did you ask him? He only lives here part-time.”

  “He’s a successful businessman, so we thought he might have some ideas.” My motives weren’t pure. I thought since McClusky was the richest man in town he might be willing to chip in a little extra money for law enforcement. I could put money in, and I know a couple of other people I could count on, too. But the committee didn’t get that far.

  “Was he above it all?” She’s not looking at me; she’s busy making little stitches, but I know she’s concentrating on what I’m saying.

  “Nothing like that. Everybody got in an uproar arguing whether we even need law enforcement. Dellmore had the bright idea that we ought to try to get along with a volunteer force to back up the two part-time officers we’re able to pay, and he didn’t want to hear any argument.”

  She sets her work down on her lap. “That’s ridiculous! We can’t make do with a bunch of amateurs who don’t know a thing about how to handle a criminal. Next thing you know someone will shoot somebody by accident. It’s bad enough that everything else in town is falling apart.”

  “Nothing is falling apart. There will be volunteers to take care of things. You know the fire department has always been a bunch of volunteers.”

  “Yes, but I don’t like the idea of volunteer police.”

  “Neither do I, but there were some who wanted to try it.”

  “Who besides Gary Dellmore?”

  “Oscar Grant, for one. You know how Oscar is, though. He’s pretty independent. He said he could take care of problems at his bar, and for any other problems we only need a couple of part-time officers. And Dellmore only needed one person on his side to think he had a majority.”

  “Nobody would argue with him? You didn’t disagree?”

  “Of course we argued. Rusty Reinhardt pitched a fit, but it was hard to reason with Dellmore. It was m
y fault for not having an agenda for the meeting. Reinhardt had a plan, but I hadn’t counted on people having such different ideas.”

  Loretta picks up her work again. “With Gary being killed, that’s pretty good proof that we need a police force. Until we get one, who’s going to investigate his murder? Somebody has to.”

  “Like I said, Rusty has a plan. He’s off taking care of it right now.”

  “What plan?”

  “Let’s hold off until it’s official.”

  I don’t want to tell her that Reinhardt has me in mind. It may turn out that the sheriff in Bobtail doesn’t like Reinhardt’s plan and will come up with another idea.

  “Shame for that boy to be killed. Such a good-looking boy. But he knew it. I hear he catted around a good bit. You think maybe Barbara had enough of it and killed him?”

  “Loretta, don’t go make accusations like that!”

  “All I’m saying is it must have been awfully hard on her having him run around the way he did, especially her being older—and you know as well as I do she’s not holding on to her looks.”

  “She looks okay to me.” I speak more sharply than I intended to and she looks surprised.

  She sniffs. “I don’t know what’s gotten into all these married men around here anyway, carrying on the way they do.”

  “You mean Gabe LoPresto,” I say.

  “Of course that’s who I mean.”

  LoPresto has scandalized the town by taking up with a young girl who works at Citizens Bank and moving out of his house. He’s in his fifties and the girl is in her twenties. I figure LoPresto is making a last-ditch effort to capture his youth, but what I don’t understand is what the girl gets out of it.

  “I’ll tell you what’s gotten into Gabe LoPresto,” she says, “That little Darla Rodriguez is a troublemaker. You know she and Gary had a little thing going before she took up with Gabe.”

  “Loretta, how would I know that?”

  “Because everybody else does. You haven’t been paying attention. Maybe Gary wouldn’t leave Darla alone, and Gabe shot him.”

  I stand up. “It may be that you’re right, but I’ll reserve judgment until I know more about it. And you shouldn’t go around spreading that kind of gossip.”

  Loretta is leaving when the phone rings. It’s Rusty Reinhardt with news that sends me out the door ten minutes later.

  “You all know why I’ve called you here.” Reinhardt’s mustache is drooping as if he’s been pulling the ends of it down to match his mood.

  He’s called an emergency meeting of the committee that met last night, and we’re back at the American Legion Hall. Everybody but Jenny has managed to make the meeting. She’s in court today and couldn’t be reached. The six of us have gravitated to the same seats we sat in last night, which means we are all acutely aware of Gary Dellmore’s empty seat.

  It would be nice if the meeting was in a more agreeable spot. The American Legion Hall is convenient, but that’s the only thing to say for it. We’re sitting on hard metal folding chairs around a long rectangular table scarred with use. The lighting makes all of us look like we’ve got green-tinted skin. Worse, the place smells of mold and the accumulation of years of people holding their family events here. I can pretty much guarantee that last weekend somebody served barbecue and potato salad and beer. And if I’m not mistaken, the toilets have backed up recently.

  “Seeing what happened to Gary, we’ve got to get some law established in town,” Reinhardt says.

  Heads nod. Everybody looks distressed and a little guilty at all the fuss they made last night, even if it was mostly Dellmore who stirred everybody up.

  Reinhardt tells them that as of this morning James Harley Krueger and two of the deputies have resigned.

  “You can hardly blame James Harley,” Jim Krueger says. The school principal, he’s also James Harley’s dad. There’s a trace of anger in his voice. “He knew he was going to be out of a job. He had to find work. He doesn’t have the luxury of giving away his time.”

  “No one blames him.” Marietta Bryant reaches over to pat his hand.

  Marietta is the city administrator who took office six months ago and discovered the disaster. A part-time realtor who wears crisp suits and neat little earrings, she has perfect posture. Usually warm and friendly, she had a few sharp exchanges with Dellmore last night when he questioned whether the town’s finances were as bad as everyone said. “You better believe it’s that bad,” she said. “Alton Coldwater should have known better than to invest in that water park.”

  Reinhardt says, “Jim, no one is sorrier than I am that we can’t pay James Harley, but we simply don’t have the money.”

  Slate McClusky was so quiet last night that everybody’s a little startled when he pipes up. “I wonder if the city council ought to be in charge of this?” As usual, he asks this with a bright-eyed smile. In his late forties, he’s a well-kept man, tall and rangy, with a thick head of hair that has a good bit of gray in it. Today he looks a little rumpled. Even his usually carefully groomed hair looks untended. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen McClusky frown. He always seems eager to shake hands and tends to step in a little too close when he talks to people.

  “We discussed this matter last night,” Reinhardt says, “and if we turn it over to the city council, they’ll have to start from the beginning. Now I’ve got a proposal to make.” Reinhardt looks over at me, so everybody else looks my way, too. “I propose that we ask Samuel Craddock to become temporary chief of police on a one-dollar-a-year salary until such time as we have the money to pay a police chief.” He glances over at McClusky. “If the city council goes along with it, of course.”

  McClusky claps his hands, beaming. “That’s the best idea I ever heard.”

  Krueger glares at Reinhardt. “Looks like you two have this plot all worked out.”

  “Now, Jim, I wouldn’t call it a plot,” Reinhardt says. “It makes it sound like we were going behind everybody’s back. I did ask Samuel if he’d be willing to help us out and he said he would, but that’s all the plotting that went into it.”

  “Must be nice that he can afford to step in when my son is out,” Krueger says.

  “I’d say that’s a reason to rejoice.” Marietta’s voice has an edge to it. “Especially if Samuel agrees to do it.”

  “Do you all want me to leave the room while you discuss it?” I half rise from my chair.

  “Samuel, sit down!” Reinhardt says. “You don’t need to go anywhere.” His eyes are flashing. “Any of you have any better suggestions? Like Marietta says, we’re damn lucky to have Craddock.”

  Everyone perks up. Reinhardt is not usually one for cursing.

  “I don’t believe she put it exactly like that,” I say. Everyone chuckles and the tension is broken.

  “Seems to me Craddock is making a sacrifice for the town,” McClusky says. He opens his hands wide. “I know personally that when money gets tight, it’s up to those of us who are well-off to step in.” By far the wealthiest man in our community, McClusky probably gets hit up for money every time there’s a fundraiser for the football team or the senior center or the charity rodeo.

  “If we do okay this, how is it going to work?” Krueger asks. “Don’t you have to pass it by the powers-that-be in Bobtail?”

  “I talked to the sheriff only an hour ago,” Reinhardt says. “He said as long as a citizen’s committee gives the okay, he’ll rubber-stamp it. The county has an emergency provision that he can use.”

  Oscar Grant nods over at me. “I say we’re lucky to have Craddock. And I move that we take up Rusty’s suggestion.”

  “Any discussion?” At last night’s meeting Reinhardt was hesitant and unsure of himself. He seems to have suddenly found the gumption to be mayor.

  No one says a word.

  “All right. Let’s take a vote, asking Samuel Craddock to take over as chief of police until the town can start paying somebody again. Everybody in favor?”

  It’s unanimou
s, although it takes Jim Krueger a few extra seconds to raise his hand.

  People start to shuffle in their seats as if they’re ready to rush out of here. “Hold it,” I say. “Before you go, I want to ask a couple of questions. Did anybody see Dellmore leave last night?”

  People dart glances at each other. A couple of them say he was here when they walked out.

  “Anybody notice his car in the lot?”

  “I saw his car when I left,” Jim Krueger says. “He was parked a little too close to me.” Krueger has a nervous habit of slicking back his thinning hair. “Why is that important?”

  “Dellmore’s car is missing,” I say. “It wasn’t parked here when Carter found him this morning.”

  “Whoever killed him must’ve taken the car,” Oscar says.

  “Could be. But I’d appreciate it if you all would talk it up around town that if anyone sees Dellmore’s car, they should give me a call. One more thing. I want you all to think back if you heard or saw anything unusual last night. I know we were all in a hurry to get out of here, but give it some thought and let me know if something didn’t seem right to you.”

  “You’re thinking somebody was hiding out there, waiting for Dellmore?” Oscar says.

  “It’s as good a theory as any at the moment.” I don’t say what I expect most everybody is thinking—that it could also have been somebody in this room who killed Dellmore.

  I walk out into the crisp winter air with a new purpose, remembering what always struck me as strange about being chief of police. Suddenly I’m set apart from the people I came in here with. It’s a lonely position in some ways. People aren’t as comfortable in your presence because most people have a little something to hide, even if it’s only that they are careless about stopping at stop signs.

  Before when I was chief, I had Jeanne to go home to, always on my side whatever happened. With her gone, I’m going to be glad to have my friends Loretta and Jenny. As a lawyer, Jenny understands the sacrifice the law asks of you. And Loretta wouldn’t think of not stopping at stop signs.