Behind the Bonehouse (24 page)

“I don't know what they've got. We won't until we talk to Garner after he's seen the prosecutions' files. Why?”

“Just curious. You'd think that might help. Anyway. I've got to load Tracker and get home. I've got so much work to do to pull off this buyout, I can't take off more time today.”

“I need to get to the office too. I've been so distracted, I'm way behind at work.”

Jo said, “I'm going to take Ross and go down to Shaker Village and see if they've started the renovations. I think I need to get away and do something fun.”

“Good.” Alan was standing beside her, and he leaned down and kissed her. “I've been thinking about what you said the other night. About the lab supply distributor, and what he was up to with Carl. Let's talk when we get home.”

“What did Garner say when he called this morning? When does he think he'll be done with the file?”

“He thought Monday. But it'll probably take him all day to finish his notes and do the copying.”

Monday, May 11th, 1964

Alan asked Kevin Hardgrave, who worked on the lab bench, and did some pharmaceutical manufacturing in the fermentation room under Bob's direction, to come in and talk to him after his lunch hour.

When he did, he looked more or less like normal, calm and steady and hard to rattle, with humor hovering at the corners of his mouth. He was average size, and somewhere in his forties, and he sat down and looked at Alan, holding a notepad and a pen.

They talked for half an hour, about short- and long-term projects, and what they needed to accomplish that week, and what milestones ought to be met by Wednesday.

Then Alan asked him about the lab supply distributor they'd bought a lot from the year before.

“Cecil Thompson?”

“Yeah.”

“He's a strange bird. One of the old-style salesmen who think nothing matters but relationships. You know what I mean. Handing out tickets to a Wildcat game. Not price, or value, or the quality of a product.”

“But Carl did a lot of business with him?”

“Yep. He bought more and more from him last year as time went on, and less and less from other suppliers. Cecil would come in and Carl would take him into the supply room, and they'd stay in there for a considerable time, and then go out to lunch.”

“Did Carl spend as much time with other distributors?”

“Not that I saw.”

“So from Cecil Thompson Supply we were buying basic reagents, some proprietary raw materials, glassware, gloves, syringes, and maybe a balance, or a microscope?”

“Yep. A lot of our glassware. Pipettes, stirrers, paper filters too, lab crayons, that kind of thing. His chemical line was limited. He wanted to expand in that direction, but I don't think he had the scientific background. I know Carl would let him look in our cabinets, so he could've known the products we used and who else we bought from.”

“What I recall, is that after Carl left in August of last year, you and I, when meeting with Fisher Scientific and others, found out we could save a significant amount of money by switching suppliers. We'd always used more than one supplier. We'd be fools not to. But it was after Carl left that we diverted most of our orders to two of Cecil's competitors. Do I have the timeline right? I was busy with a lot of other things.”

Kevin said, “That's what I remember. And Cecil went kind of crazy when I told him. I didn't just phone him, because he was a small outfit, and I knew we were a fairly sizeable customer for him, so I didn't want to drop the bomb over the phone. I took him out to lunch and explained the situation, and told him we'd still buy from him occasionally, but that we had to find the best prices for ourselves.”

“What did he say?”

“He tried to talk me out of it, and then said he'd bought an unusually large inventory because of conversations he'd had with Carl, and it wasn't fair for him to bear the brunt of Carl having overpromised.

“I told him I didn't know anything about that. That the orders I'd seen placed by Carl were for similar amounts to what we'd been ordering. That he had increased them in the summer some—last year, in '63—but that we'd have to work through our inventory before we purchased more, and then it would be with suppliers who offered the best deals.”

“How'd he take it?”

“He drank two martinis and ate hardly any lunch, and got more and more upset. By the end, he was almost begging me to give him another order. I was actually afraid he'd burst into tears.”

“When was this?”

“I can check my calendar from last year, but I'd say last September. He still called on us after that, at least once a month like usual, till … well, I guess it was probably late March. I haven't seen him since. I heard from the Fisher Scientific salesman in April that Cecil's gone out of business.”

“Greg Zachman, right?”

“Yeah. He works out of his house on Morgan Street in Versailles. His territory's big, though. Cincinnati, Louisville. Indianapolis. Probably down to Knoxville. If he's not working his territory here, he's gone for at least a week.”

“Thanks. You've been a big help.”

Kevin started toward the door, then looked back at Alan. “It's none of my business, but are you doing okay? I don't believe for a second that you killed Carl.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that. I do.”

Jo wouldn't be home until seven, when she would've picked Ross up from Becky and Buddy's, and when Alan got home at six, having talked to Greg Zachman at his house on his way home, he decided to squeeze in a ride on Maggie.

They worked in the sand riding area for fifteen minutes, warming up and working on transitions, Emmy watching from the sidelines, hoping they'd go cross country.

When they started off, heading north till they could angle west to the path in the woods, they were walking along the paddock fence where Toss had put all the mares without foals who had been, or were about to be, bred again.

Alan had Maggie on a long rein, letting her stretch her neck after working with more collection, and he was humming something quietly to himself, more relaxed than he'd been in days—when a horse thundered close up behind him, running right at him on the other side of the fence. He was just starting to look over his right shoulder, when Maggie spooked, shying straight left in a fraction of second, unloading him on a fence post, as she bolted toward the woods.

The same mare squealed and snorted a foot away from him as he landed on his right side on rock hard ground. He was stunned for a second, lying crumpled on his side—when Maude, the mare who'd charged the fence, galloped away down the fenceline with the rest of the herd behind her.

Alan lay there, thinking about Maggie, loose somewhere in the woods, stirrups slapping her sides, where she could stumble, or fall on the reins, or tangle herself in branches and underbrush, or break a leg on a tree root.

All his body parts moved, when he tested them, inside the generalized pain. And he grabbed a fence rail and pulled himself up, rubbing his right hip and the length of his thigh, trying to get his knee to bend more than it would on its own, while Emmy licked his arm.

A boot could've gotten caught in a stirrup, dragging him off to his death. His head could've hit the post a lot harder than it had, and bones could've been broken—and he told himself to stretch and get moving, because Maggie was running on a narrow trail through a maze of bare roots.

Alan hobbled a few yards, and then trotted, more or less, limping now on both legs, something wet running down his arm, his helmet lying where he'd landed, Emmy running in front of him.

When he got to the break in the trees where the trail started, he could see Maggie standing sideways a hundred yards ahead. Her head was hanging, but she was watching him, quivering enough he could see it. And then she started walking, limping on her left fore, the loop of reins around her right, as she picked her way up the trail toward him, instead of running the other way, thank God, the way a lot of horses would've.

“Hey, sweet girl. What'd you do to your leg?”

She stopped and waited for him, slick sweat staining her bay coat black, foamy sweat white between her legs and circling the edge of her saddle.

Alan picked up her right fore, and untangled the reins, then ran a hand down her left leg without seeing a cut or a lump.

He stroked her neck and patted her shoulder, and started leading her out toward the field, limping beside her left shoulder, saying, “Why were you so silly? You know Maude, and what a jerk she is, doing that on purpose. She took me by surprise too, so it's my fault as much as yours.” Alan knew Maggie didn't understand, but it calmed her down to hear a reasonable voice, and it gave him something to do besides wonder how badly she was hurt, while his own pain rolled in in waves.

Jo and Toss both worked with Maggie, looking for heat in the tendons, looking for swellings to suddenly appear, putting her leg in a bucket of ice water, hoping to head it off.

They gave her a dose of bute, and walked her around for quite awhile, then put her in her stall and figured out a schedule for checking her during the night.

Alan got a shower, then doctored the cut on his forearm while watching Ross, and getting dinner on the table—cheese omelets, and boiled potatoes, with a spinach-and-bacon salad—before Jo came in from the barn.

“I think she'll be okay. If we're lucky it's just a bruised hoof. Sole, or frog, either one, from a tree root, or maybe a stone. How 'bout you? Your head's okay? No blurry vision or anything?”

“No. I'm okay. I'll be sorer tomorrow, but nothing to worry about.”

“So did you talk to anyone about the supplier?”

Alan told her what Kevin had said about Cecil Thompson, as he dished himself up more salad. “I called the Fisher Scientific rep, Greg Zachman, too. I actually got him at his house while he was doing paperwork, so I stopped and saw him on the way home. He lives across from Mack Miller, the trainer Toss thinks so much of.”

“What did Zachman say?”

“A lot, actually. He worked at another supplier with Cecil twelve or fifteen years ago. Cecil left and started his business, just about the time Zachman went to Fisher. He got along okay with Cecil, but he didn't respect him. He knows for a fact that he gave a kickback to a purchasing agent at one of his customers when they worked together. And from what he's heard, and it's only hearsay, Cecil did the same in his own company, and Carl was said to be one of his recipients.”

“How does he know that?”

“He doesn't know it for a fact. But someone he knows, who worked for Cecil part time, says that's what happened. He says that last fall Carl gave Cecil to understand he was going to need a broad range of products, and hinted that he would be going out on his own and would make it worth Cecil's while. So Cecil bought a lot of inventory when prices were high. 'Member when raw materials went up in August, because of the teamsters threatening to strike? Petroleum products were really up too. And then Cecil got stuck with a whole stockpile of stuff when Carl got fired.”

“Carl could've asked for a cut. That wouldn't surprise me.”

“Right. And
if
Cecil was giving a kickback to Carl, that would explain why we could find his products cheaper from other sources. He was selling top dollar to cover the kickback, and bringing in larger inventories to get a quantity price break for himself.”

“So then when Carl leaves, and his Canadian business falls through, Cecil's in a hole.”

“Exactly. And then, when the raw materials costs went down in January, things got even worse for him. He'd bought high, and was going to have to sell low to compete.”

“So he could have a grudge against Carl.”

“Especially once his business folded with a lot of debt. He drinks a lot too, which may not help him be rational about who's to blame for what.”

“When did the business fold?”

“Probably in March. And he obviously had all the same syringes and gloves and vials we have at Equine. He sold a lot of them to us.”

“What about the Dylox?”

“He never represented Bayer, but he was in our lab, and in our storeroom. I expect he could've figured out how to get himself a sample. Take the pint of Dylox to the restroom and fill a small bottle. I don't know exactly how he'd do it, but it wouldn't be beyond the possible if he'd wanted to kill Carl.

“No. It wouldn't.”

“Even if that's a long shot.”

Ross started crying in the red canvas seat of his windup swing, and Jo got up and wound it again so they could talk in peace. “So what can we do to investigate him? I could talk to Jane Seeger, and see if she knows anything about Cecil. Did he go to their house? Did Carl say they were fighting? Did she know if there was a kickback?”

“Sure. You'd do it better than I would. I think I oughtta go take some aspirin.” He was carrying their plates down the two steps to the study, limping slowly, looking as though his pelvis was twisted off to the left.

Jo watched him pass through the kitchen doorway before she said, “Maybe you oughtta get your back adjusted. The DO Toss went to, after he broke his legs.”

“I'll see how I feel in the morning.”

“I'll go look at Maggie again, if you'll change Ross's pants.”

Tuesday, May 12th, 1964

Jo tried to get Jane Seeger at home early that morning, and then called the University of Kentucky library and was told Jane was away at a conference and would be in the library on Friday. Jo made an appointment to see her at work Friday morning. Then threw the dishcloth into the sink from halfway across the room. “I can't keep doing nothing! There's gotta be something I can do to help!”

When Alan was getting himself a cup of coffee at Equine that afternoon, Doug Smith from packaging walked up to him at the coffeemaker and asked if he could speak to him. Maybe they could step out back while Doug had a smoke?