A Knife in the Back (16 page)

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Authors: Bill Crider

BOOK: A Knife in the Back
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A
huge dark cloud had moved in from the Gulf while they were in the building, and by the time Jack and Sally were seated in her car, it had started to rain, big drops the size of dimes. They splatted on the windshield and thudded on the roof.
Sally had almost everything worked out in her head, or so she thought, though there were still a couple of loose ends. But something seemed to be worrying Jack, so she asked what it was.
“Those initials,” Jack said, staring out at the rain. “Now I know what's been bothering me about the knife.”
Sally started the car and turned on the air conditioner, though she was still cool from the potent arctic blast of the air conditioner in Talon's showroom building.
“So?” she said.
“When Weems took me to the police station, he said that my initials were on the knife handle. My initials are on there, but not my name. So how did he know it was my knife?”
“Was your middle initial on the handle?”
“Yes. It's K, by the way. For King. My mother's maiden name. Why?”
“Because Weems probably recognized the knife as being something that was made by hand. He must know about the knife-making class. How long do you think it would take him to find out how many faculty and students had the initials J. K. N.?”
“Oh,” Jack said. “I thought it was probably a clue.”
“It wasn't, I'm sorry to say.”
“You sound as if you know something I don't know. What was all that about Jorge?”
Sally wasn't sure she was ready to talk about it. She said, “I'll tell you later. I have to think about it.”
“Sometimes it helps to talk it out. Or write it down. That's what I tell my students. Writing is a form of thinking.”
Sally wasn't in the mood for a composition lesson. She wanted to be alone, and she didn't want to talk.
“I'll have to think it all through before I write anything down,” she said. “I'll take you home and give you a call this afternoon.”
Jack didn't say anything more until they were at his house and Sally had stopped the car.
“I guess that means the date for tonight is off,” he said.
“I think we should wait until a better time,” Sally said. “Sometime when we don't have quite so many distractions.”
Jack said he understood and got out of the car, wincing slightly.
“Take some aspirin,” Sally told him.
“Thanks. I will.”
He walked toward the door as fast as he could through the rain. He didn't look back, but at least he wasn't shuffling the way he'd been in the hallway at Talon's. Sally backed out of the driveway and went home.
 
Lola was waiting, bouncing around as if she were wired on caffeine.
“Calm down,” Sally told her. “I'll get your treat.”
When Sally tossed it, Lola made a grab for it as usual, but she missed. The treat bounced off her nose and skittered under the table, where it came to rest near a dust bunny. Lola eyed the dust bunny with suspicion.
“I'm not going to get the treat for you,” Sally said, “and I'm not going to mop the floor. If you want to eat, you'll have to take the chance.”
Lola overcame her hesitation and went after the treat, which
disappeared into her mouth. The dust bunny, on the other hand, didn't disappear. Sally wished that it would.
She looked in the refrigerator for something to eat. There wasn't anything that looked particularly appetizing, but there was some pasta salad that she'd made with Tuna Helper a couple of nights earlier. That would have to do.
While Sally was eating, Lola hung around the chair winding herself in and out of the legs. Sally was sure that the odor of tuna was the reason rather than affection or desire for social interaction.
“Lola,” she said, “you're a beautiful cat.”
“Meow,” Lola said, as if such self-evident facts didn't need stating.
“But you're not much help when it comes to solving mysteries.”
“Meow,” Lola said, looking up hopefully at the pasta salad.
“You're not getting any of it, so forget it,” Sally told her.
Lola looked hurt. When that didn't work, she wandered off and flopped down in front of the refrigerator, where warm air came gently out of the vent. She began to groom herself, a process that Sally knew could take a long time, unless Lola was very sleepy, in which case it wouldn't take long at all.
Sally finished her salad and rinsed off the plate before sticking it in the dishwasher. She thought for a second about calling her mother, but she couldn't talk to her mother about any of the things she was thinking without going into a lengthy explanation.
So she went into her living area and lay down on the couch. She hadn't slept well, and she thought that a short nap would help her concentration. And sometimes in the past her unconscious mind had worked out problems while she was asleep, and when she woke up, she had the answers.
She drifted off to the sound of the rain on the roof, and soon she was dreaming. In the dream, she was climbing a high mountain, but instead of snow there was desert sand all around, and instead of cold there was heat. The higher she went, the hotter she became, and in the thin air she could hardly breathe. She gasped for breath, but she couldn't breathe in. It was as if some mighty weight were crushing her lungs.
She awoke with a start to find Lola lying on her chest and staring into her eyes.
“Lola!” she said. “Are you trying to suck my breath?”
“Meow,” Lola said, implying that Sally should know better than to believe that old wives' tale.
Sally lifted Lola off her chest and set her on the floor.
“Maybe you weren't, then, but you're so heavy that you nearly crushed me.”
“Meow,” Lola said, highly insulted.
“I'm sorry,” Sally told her. “I didn't mean that the way it sounded.”
Lola sniffed and stalked away, heading back to the kitchen and her place by the refrigerator.
Sally ran a hand through her tangled hair and turned on the TV set. She found a cooking show and watched that for a few minutes. She was always intrigued by how easy it all seemed until she realized that the chef had everything prepared beforehand and even had a complete meal ready to show the viewers only seconds after sticking the dish in the oven. What took thirty minutes on TV must have taken hours in reality. It would have taken longer than that if Sally had been involved. She was definitely cooking-impaired.
She left the cooking show and surfed through the channels until she came to a movie made in the 1970s. All the men had bushy sideburns and wore bright paisley shirts with huge collars, along with bell-bottomed pants. The color was garish, and the overall look was cheesy. The look suited her mood, so she turned off the sound and tried to put everything she knew and surmised about the murders together in her head.
One of the things Wynona had mentioned was the rumor that Ralph Bostic had been involved in some scheme to steal cars and sell them in Mexico. Who better to work with in such a scheme than a car dealer? He would know what cars were available and where they were. Since he operated a dealership, he would have access to keys for every model he sold, and Roy Don Talon sold just about every model there was.
So, she thought, let's say that Talon and Bostic were working together. It seemed likely enough. But where did Ray Thomas come into the picture?
She thought about what she'd seen in the school's auto shop the previous afternoon, and about what she'd smelled. Fresh paint. And there had been a car there, all right. Suppose that Thomas was helping Talon and Bostic repaint the cars, maybe even doing some other kinds of things, like changing the engines? It made sense. Bostic was under suspicion, so he wouldn't do the work at his own shop. What better place to have it done than the college? No one would suspect that stolen cars were being repainted in a college auto shop.
Hal Kaul had strongly implied that Bostic and Thomas were working together to cheat the school out of money. Thomas was the one who'd recommended that Bostic repair the school vehicles. The stolen cars could be just another part of the deal.
Where did Jorge fit into all that? Sally was sure that Jack hadn't mentioned Jorge to Talon by accident. Whether he'd been aware of it or not, Jack had connected Jorge with the idea of problems at the dealership because Jorge knew about cars. He'd been a mechanic, after all. Besides that, he spoke fluent Spanish, and Wynona had said the stolen cars were being sold in Mexico. Jorge would have been the perfect middleman. His prison contacts might have been a consideration, too. Who could say what kind of people he'd met there and what they might be doing now? Maybe some of them were also involved.
Thomas had worked in the prison, too, of course, and he'd been forced to leave because he'd brought contraband onto a prison unit. It was possible, then, that he and Jorge had both made contact there with someone who'd helped set up the whole thing, from stealing the cars to selling them in Mexico. Bostic might not even have been the one behind the scheme. It could have been Jorge or Thomas.
And besides all that, Jorge would have been eliminating his rivals for Mae's affections.
Now that Sally had it all figured out, the question was, who had killed whom? If Fieldstone had found out that Thomas was running
stolen cars through one of the school's programs, maybe even using students to help, then Fieldstone couldn't be ruled out, not considering his temper. He might even have killed Bostic because of the way Bostic had been ripping off the college. The old alibi-by-phone trick had been used often enough in movies for Sally to know it could be discounted. It was hardly a reliable alibi in the cell phone era, after all. Fieldstone could have called from anywhere.
But what really worried Sally was the possibility that Fieldstone wasn't involved and that Jorge might have killed either Bostic or Thomas or both. If things had begun to unravel, and if Jorge had looked like a convenient scapegoat (
or scapecat
, she thought), which he certainly would have, given his history, then he might have decided to take care of his partners before they took care of him. He had been very impressive when he had talked to Sally about the fact that he was never going back to prison again, and she had gotten the idea that he would do whatever it took to remain in the free world. She wasn't sure if he would actually kill anyone, but, as people had pointed out, he'd done it before.
Still, even after all that, Sally somehow didn't think Jorge was guilty of anything at all.
To take her mind off things, Sally turned her attention to the TV set just in time to see a car crash through a roadside barrier and tumble down the side of a mountain, bursting into flames at the bottom. She was pretty sure the burning car wasn't the same model as the one that had shattered the barrier, not that she cared. A poorly executed car crash on TV couldn't distract her for long.
The trouble was that she didn't want Jorge to be guilty of anything, even if he was dating Mae Wilkins, and that was clouding her judgment. But if he wasn't guilty, how could she explain his late-night visit to Talon? She was convinced that there was nothing Talon wouldn't do. After all, he sold used cars.
On the other hand, maybe she was misjudging him. Maybe he was a completely honest man. It was just barely possible, she told herself, that she was stereotyping Talon based on nothing more than
hearsay. She'd come down hard on her students if they did something like that.
She told herself that she should call Jorge and talk to him, just come right out and ask what he'd been doing with Talon, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. She was afraid of what she might find out. Besides, if Jorge turned out to be guilty, he'd have to kill her.
Sally laughed aloud. The idea that Jorge would kill her was ludicrous. Jorge could never kill her, and he could never have killed Thomas or Bostic, either. Therefore someone else must have done it. Talon. Fieldstone. Or someone she hadn't considered yet.
She tried to think who that could be. An idea tried to nudge itself into her consciousness, but she couldn't quite dredge it up from the depths where it was hiding.
Then it came to her. Hal Kaul. Maybe that was what was bothering her—something about Hal.
What had Jack said when they drove up to Hal's house last night? It was something about Hal being paid a lot more than the instructors at the college. Sally knew that wasn't true, in spite of having joked with Jack about it. Kaul didn't make much more than she did.
So how did Hal get that big house on the golf course? Could he have been lying to her and Jack about things? What if Thomas hadn't recommended Bostic to him at all? What if Hal had been the one in league with Bostic instead? Jack's attack on Bostic at the board meeting would have made it clear that things couldn't continue as they had been, and Bostic could easily have threatened to make Hal the scapegoat (or cat, as the case may be).

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