Legwork (20 page)

“Hello, Ramsey,” I said quietly when he sank down on the bench opposite the table from me.
He leaned forward so that his head nearly touched mine, anxious that no one overhear. The guard behind the glass tore his eyes off the smoochers to glare at us.
I guess jamming tongues down each other’s throats didn’t count as physical contact for some people.
I doubted they’d extend the same courtesy to Ramsey Lee.

Ramsey was so close I could feel his warm breath on my cheek.
I expected a state secret, at least, but I guess he was just being cautious.
“You’re my first visitor,” was all he said.

“Really,” I whispered back.
“I’m surprised, what with all those cousins of yours.
How is good old Mary Lee anyway?”

“Awwhh,” he said, trying on that phony ah shucks facial expression that country boys pull when they’re about to get the best of you.
“You’re just pissed I didn’t tell you we were related.”

“I’m pissed she didn’t tell me,” I explained.

“You can’t hardly blame her.
It’s bad enough it looks like she killed someone.
Now her cousin gets arrested for it instead.
Have you seen anything about it in the papers?’

I shook my head.
“Not yet.
I’m kind of surprised I haven’t.”

“It makes me nervous that it’s being kept quiet,” he confessed.
“No one knows I’m here except for you and a few other people and the cops.
If I vanish, it’s going to be up to you to let folks know what happened to me.”

I stared at him skeptically.
After all, this was North Carolina, not Argentina.
Still, he seemed genuinely concerned and I hastened to assure him that I’d raise bloody hell if he disappeared.

“Thanks for seeing me,” I said once I had calmed him down.
“What made you change your mind about talking to me?”

“Mary Lee sent me a message.
If I’d known you were working for her, I would have talked right away.
Why didn’t you say she was your client?”

“It’s hard to concentrate when someone is trying to turn you into a shish kebab,” I told him.

He laughed and the guard leaned forward, pressing his face against the glass.
Maybe laughing was forbidden, too.
“I am a good shot, aren’t I?” he asked.

“You are,” I agreed.
I was becoming uncomfortably aware that, up close, Ramsey Lee was a very handsome man.
If you defurred him, that is, stripped away his ruddy goatee and mustache then trimmed back his hair, you’d have a man with high angular cheekbones, deep- set eyes, and a wide, thin mouth that curled up a bit at the corners, as if laughter might erupt at any moment.
I realized I was wasting valuable visiting time and coughed.
“Sorry,” I said.
“I was just admiring your beard.”

He laughed even more softly and if he was laughing at me, I didn’t feel insulted.
I smiled at him—then unleashed my ammo.
“What aren’t you telling me, Ramsey?” I asked.

“I didn’t do this thing,” he answered.
“I only kill what I intend to eat.”

“Is that why you tried to kill me?” I teased him and was rewarded with an unexpected blush.
Hmm .
.
.
perhaps the thought had crossed his mind.

“I know you didn’t kill Thornton Mitchell,” I assured him.
“Besides, you wouldn’t have botched it.”

“That’s true,” he said, pleased at the thought.
“But I don’t think these SBI fellows are going to accept that defense.”

Beneath his good old country boy drawl, he was a well- educated and articulate man.
A dangerous combination, I thought to myself.
Smart on the inside, and seemingly innocent on the outside.

“How well do you know Mary Lee these days?” I asked.

“Not like I used to,” he admitted.
“When we were kids, we spent whole summers together, down at my parents’ farm near Gastonia.
But then we grew up to be real different.
She’s not as bad as she seems, though,” he added earnestly.
“Really.
I know what she looks like to you, but she has a big heart beneath all those designer clothes and the makeup.”

“I’ll admit she has a heart,” I said.
“I draw the line at saying it’s big.”

His laugh rumbled softly against my ear. “She wasn’t always like that.
College changed her.
That creep she married changed her, too.”

“So why does she stay married to him?” I asked.
“Dump the bastard.”

“You know why,” he said.
“It’d be the end of her career.”

“Why’d she marry him in the first place?” I asked.

He hesitated before he spoke.
I wondered why.
“Maybe there’s things we don’t know,” he said.
“Or maybe she’s like most of the people in this world and got scared there was no one for her.
She just married the first good- looking guy that came along.”

“You’re not one of those people, are you?” I asked.
“The kind who are always looking for someone?”

“Wouldn’t do me any good,” he admitted, his arm inching closer to mine.
I could feel the hair on his forearms brushing against my hand.
“I like being alone too much.
No woman would put up with it.”

“Maybe a woman who likes being left alone a lot?” I suggested.

His smile made it clear that he was pretty sure no such creature existed on the face of this planet.
“Why are you helping Mary Lee?” he asked.

“She’s paying me,” I said.
“Why are you? Even if she is your cousin, you aren’t particularly close anymore.”

Ramsey shrugged.
“I think it would be good for the land if she got elected.
She wouldn’t sell out to the developers like that other guy.
I want to see her win.
You’ve got to clear me before all this gets out and hurts her chances even more.”

Maybe the guy was even more innocent than I thought.
Because I doubted Mary Lee would hold out for ten minutes in the face of big-buck contributions if she thought she could get away with it and still keep the left-wing vote.
“Give me something to help clear you,” I told him.
“Were you along the river that night?”

He leaned even closer, so that his lips nearly brushed the edge of my right ear and his beard tickled the base of my neck.
I hadn’t enjoyed so much foreplay since high school.
“I heard people along the riverbank that night,” he whispered.

“Thornton Mitchell and his killer?”

“Someone else, too,” he explained softly.
“I heard voices arguing.
More than two people.
Maybe three or even more.”

“What kind of voices?” I asked.
“Male or female?”

“I don’t know.
I was pretty far back from the riverbank.
I was up at my house, sitting on the porch, admiring the full moon.
Sound carries pretty good.
I know there were at least two male voices but I can’t be sure of the others.
It could have been a girl.”

“A woman,” I corrected him.

“A woman,” he repeated obediently, his eyes dropping to my chest.
How do you like that?
The man was into more than wildlife after all.

“I remember the moon that night,” I said. “It was pretty bright.
Did you see anything?”

He shook his head and a lock of his hair brushed against my cheek.

The guard stuck his head in the door and called across the room, “You’ve got five more minutes, folks,” he said.

Ramsey waited until the guard was behind the glass again before he spoke.
“No, not what you want anyway.
I heard the shot and that was when I started out through the woods to see if maybe someone was poaching on my land.
But three of my dogs were out and tried to follow me.
I didn’t want them getting in the way, especially if someone had a gun out there.
Damn fool city men get full of liquor and decide they want to go out hunting.
They’ll shoot anything that moves, including my dogs.
So I stopped to put them in the pen.”

“How long did that take?” I asked.

“Held me up about fifteen minutes because one of the dogs kept running away from me.
If he hadn’t been a champion, I wouldn’t have bothered.
But I couldn’t afford to lose Big Red.
By the time I got there, the riverbank was empty.
I could hear people arguing in the woods over near the road and a couple of car engines after a while.
I figured it was just someone screwing around and I went back home.”

“Oh.” I was disappointed.
It wouldn’t help me much.

“There’s something else,” he whispered, his warm breath seeming to snake down my ear canal and right to my heart, setting it thumping more quickly.
“I saw a campfire on the bank, about a hundred yards or so downstream from where you were the other day.”

“So?” I asked cautiously.

“So someone else was out there,” he explained.
“A fisherman, maybe.
I don’t bother them if they’re peaceful about it.
He might have seen or heard something.
Maybe more than me.”

“Who was the fisherman?” I asked him.

He shrugged.
“Hell, Casey, I don’t know. You’re the one who’s a private detective.
I’m just a country boy.”

“That’s the biggest crock of shit I’ve heard all week,” I told him.
“Don’t try to put one over on this country girl.
Speaking of which, who called me this afternoon to let me know you would see me?”

He hesitated.
“One of my associates,” he said.

“Well, your associates are a little paranoid, aren’t they?” I asked.
“He wouldn’t even tell me his name.
What does he think?
He’ll be thrown in jail for opposing real estate development?”

“Well, I’m here, aren’t I?” he asked.

He had a point.
“I’ll get you out,” I promised.
“I heard the forensics tests didn’t match, anyway.
They can’t keep you forever.”

“My dogs,” he said.

“What?”

“My dogs.
They’re still in the pen. Someone’s got to check on them.
I tried calling a friend but couldn’t get through.
They’ve got enough food to last a week, but I need someone to go check on their water.
Sometimes the pipe to the trough clogs up.”

“I can do that for you,” I promised.
“Don’t worry about them.
You’ll be home soon anyway, I promise.”

“Thanks.
I’m sorry I didn’t trust you before.”

Then damn if the guy didn’t kiss me.
He brushed his lips right across my ear and over my cheek and planted one right on my mouth.
I kissed him back, of course.
And let me tell you—shooting arrows wasn’t the only thing that boy was good at.

“Time’s up,” the guard interrupted.
“Let’s go.”

Oops, we had violated the no touching rule. Gosh, I bet we lost a whole thirty seconds for it.

It had been well worth it.

I decided to call Bobby from Sadlack’s, a sandwich bar on Hillsborough Street, to see if he had tracked down the owners of the companies investing in the failed Neuse River Park project.
I also silently kicked myself for failing to ask Ramsey Lee about his involvement in stopping the project.
Had distracting me been his intent all along?

Sadlack’s is famous for its tolerance of rabble-rousing liberals, destitute students, and scruffy losers just this side of the law who have scraped together enough bucks for a night of beer.
It was the perfect place to unwind after my trip to Central Prison since an appreciation of personal freedom was the one trait that every patron there shared.
The bartender had sideburns like Elvis and an attitude like Genghis Khan, but he let me use the house phone when the pay phone turned out to be broken.

“Get in here now,” Bobby said the second he heard my voice.

“You’ve got the names?” I asked eagerly.

“Soon,” he promised.
“Just get your ass in here now.
I can’t deal with your latest visitor.”

That meant it was either a child or a crying woman.
Turns out it was someone in between.
When I arrived at the office, I was greeted by the sight of Bobby stuffing cold pizza into his mouth while Thornton Mitchell’s daughter Andrea looked on in horror.
A rope of cheese trailed out of his mouth like an albino mouse tail.
It dangled and twitched when he chomped, a sight so appalling that the girl had momentarily forgotten her tears.
She was sitting as far away from Bobby as possible, staring at him the way you’d view a sexually aroused gorilla at the zoo.

“It’s the guy’s kid,” Bobby mumbled, nodding toward our guest.

“I know,” I said.
“Thanks for your sensitivity.”

“I want you to help me,” Andrea pleaded, rising to her feet before collapsing in a fresh round of sobs and sinking back into her chair.

“Get her out of here, will ya?” Bobby demanded.

He was all heart.
I led her into my office and shut the door, waiting patiently until her sobs turned to hiccoughs.
Her eyes were red and mascara rivulets ran down cheeks now smeared unevenly with blush.

“Want some water?” I asked, when her hiccoughs continued.

“No, I’m fine,” she gasped, then proceeded to hold her breath until her face turned nearly Carolina blue. After a minute of silence, she expelled a whoosh of breath, dabbed beneath her eyes, settled back and stared forlornly at me.
“I remembered what you said about looking into my father’s death,” she whispered.

“What makes you want my help now?” I asked.

“No one else is doing anything,” she said. “Now I understand what you meant about the newspapers and television.
I’m the only one in the world who seems to care at all that he’s dead.” Her voice broke.

I offered a short and silent prayer that she not start crying again.

“Everyone made fun of Dad,” she explained. “Mom made jokes about his girlfriends, my brother hated him, the papers only printed photos that make him look like some dirty old man.
But he wasn’t that bad, honest.”

“What do you want me to do about it?” I asked.

“I want you to make people stop treating his murder like a big joke.
I want you to find out who killed him and why.
My Dad had changed a lot over the last year.
He was becoming a better person.
He should have had his chance to do that, but someone killed him first.”

“How was he becoming a better person?” I asked skeptically.
This was certainly a new tune she was playing.

“He said that the last year had made him realize life wasn’t just about money,” she said, sounding as if she agreed with the sentiment.
Maybe the kid wasn’t so bad after all—if you could ignore the fact that she was wearing a pink buttoned-down shirtdress in October.

“How had your father changed over the past year?” I asked.

“He was around a lot more,” she answered slowly.
“I’d hardly seen him for years.
But he started visiting me at school after his heart attack a year ago.
He was going to a clinic at Carolina for follow-up treatment.
That’s why he was in town so often.
I didn’t tell my mother, but he would pick me up and we’d go driving around and have lunch together.
He felt bad that he couldn’t give me more money for school, but I told him not to worry.
Mom had plenty.
I just wanted to spend some time with him. We never had before, he was always too busy working.”

“Why was he losing so much money over the past year?” I asked.
“What happened to his business?”

She shrugged.
“He said that everything just seemed to go wrong at once.
First his health and then his business sense.
He said that his edge was gone but that if he could just hold on for a few more months, his luck would change.
He had a secret weapon, he said.
An ace in the hole.”

“A secret weapon?” I asked.
“What was it?”

“I don’t know.
It’s just the way Dad talked.”

“When did you last see him?” I asked.

“The day before he died.
He picked me up from my dorm and we went out to eat at a barbecue place in Cary. He’s not supposed to eat it but he loves barbecue so much…” Her voice trailed off.
“He used to love it,” she corrected herself.

“Did he say anything to you that might help me find out who killed him?” I asked.

A few fresh tears trickled from each eye. “He only said that things were going to be different from now on. That he had learned his lesson, that family was the most important thing in the world.
That he’d be able to help me out more and I shouldn’t worry.
He said, ‘I helped one of theirs and now they can help one of mine.’” She paused.
“I was the only one in the whole family who would talk to him, you know.
The only one.”

This confession triggered a new round of tears and I was still waiting it out when Bobby bellowed in from the other room.

“Another weirdo for you on line one.”

“You’re a wonderful secretary,” I yelled back.

It was no weirdo.
Well, maybe it was.
It was Frank Waters, ace television reporter and world-class chicken.
And he was quaking in his Jockeys, if his panicked voice was any indication.

“Casey,” he squeaked.
“Don’t ask where I am.”

“I wasn’t about to,” I said, eyeing Mitchell’s daughter carefully.
She seemed too absorbed in her misery to eavesdrop, but paranoia is one of my more healthy personality traits.

“I’m somewhere you wouldn’t expect,” he confided, his voice trembling.
“I lied to you.
I’m not on vacation. I’m still on the story.
And I think I’ve found out something big.”

“What’s going on?” I demanded.
“What do you want?”

“I need you to check something out for me,” he said.
“I’d do it myself, but I’m all the way up here in Bethesda and I can’t.”

So much for his not telling me where he was.

“What do you need?” I asked.

“I think Boyd Jackson was treated at Memorial Hospital or maybe Duke before he transferred up to Bethesda when the Senate convened.
I need you to locate any medical records on him that you can.”

“Why?” I asked.
“They should have the information up there.”

“They don’t,” he whispered.
“Something’s weird about his file at Johns Hopkins.
It begins when he checked in nine months ago with a diagnosis of stomach cancer.
But I think he’s been under treatment for a lot longer than that.
The history should be here.
This is supposed to be the best medical care in the world.
It’s weird that it’s missing.”

“What makes you think he was treated down here?” I asked.

“A handwritten note stuck in the file says to notify a Dr.
Robert Dahler if there are any changes in the senator’s treatment.
The number listed for him has a 919 area code and a Chapel Hill exchange.
And don’t ask me how I got my hands on the file.”

I wasn’t planning to.
He’d tell me himself soon enough.
“Why don’t you just call the doctor’s number and ask?” I said.

“They’re not going to give me confidential patient information over the phone,” he hissed.
“How amateur do you think I am?” There was a long silence.
“I tried,” he finally admitted.
“A woman answered and just said ‘Doctor’s office’ and wouldn’t tell me anything more.
She hung up on me.
But this Dr. Dahler has got to be affiliated with one of the hospitals down there.”

“Unfortunately, there are many hospitals down here,” I said patiently.
“Besides Memorial and Duke, there are god knows how many smaller facilities in Durham.
That’s why it’s called the City of Medicine, Einstein.”

“Start with Memorial,” he said.
“His office was a Chapel Hill number and that makes the most sense.”

“You seem to believe that I’m a magician,” I said.
I eyed my guest again, annoyed I could not get more specific without being overheard.

“I need your help, Casey,” he pleaded.
His voice took on a desperate, whining tone and the beginnings of an asthma attack lurked in every shortened breath.
“What if I’m being followed?
I’m risking my life.”

“Are you sure this is important?” I asked. “I have a murder investigation on my hands.”

“Of course it’s important.
Would I be risking my life if it wasn’t?” He started breathing even more heavily.
I knew if I didn’t calm him, I’d lose him to a panic attack.

“Okay,” I assured him.
“I’ll see what I can do.
Call me tomorrow.”

“I will,” he promised.
“From a secured line.” Geeze, he’d been reading too much Tom Clancy.

After I hung up, Thornton Mitchell’s daughter glared at me.
“You’re taking on another job?” she demanded.
“When my father’s killer is just roaming around free?”

“It may have something to do with his death,” I assured her, though I didn’t really believe it myself. What could it have to do with Mitchell’s death?
I intended to find out.

I was going to have to call in a marker to get a peek at Boyd Jackson’s medical files.
And I knew the perfect person to help.
Someone who was smart and charming but without any scruples.
My friend Jack.

It would have been easier to phone Jack—my human Labrador, loyal companion, and frequent paramour—but it was more effective to twist his arm in person.
I ditched the black cardigan and told myself there were times when a tight dress came in handy.
I was lucky with the traffic on 1-40 and zoomed along toward the 15-501 exit, pitying the poor commuters stuck in the eastbound snarl created by Research Triangle workers heading home to Raleigh and its suburbs.
I arrived at MacLaine’s, a popular watering hole located between Durham and Chapel Hill, just as the after-work crowd was reaching a fever pitch.
Jack was the king of the bar there and held court each weekday from four in the afternoon until some lucky lady dragged him home in the wee hours. I knew that Jack never went home alone and that he had a weakness for nurses.
What man doesn’t?
But Jack was particularly susceptible to the white uniform.
He went through more of them in a year than your local laundromat.
He’d have plenty of contacts at Memorial Hospital.

“Casey, baby.
Dangerous lady,” he yelled over the raucous laughter, dropping his thumb to his forefinger as if shooting a gun.
He began vigorously shaking a frosted silver container while the females at the bar admired his biceps and tight black jeans.
“Grape shot?”

“No thanks,” I said.
“I’m trying to quit.” Grape shots at seven o’clock at night?
Ye gods.

“Little early for you to be dropping by,” he said.
“Hard day?”

“Yeah.
Real hard.
And I’m still on the job.” I nodded toward the parking lot.
“Got a minute?”

The look of alarm on his face made me laugh.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “I didn’t hear from the health department.
It’s something else.
I need your help.”

He looked relieved.
Jack is pretty good about keeping Trojan in business, but he’s also well aware that he tempts the law of averages with each new close encounter he instigates.
“Let me check with Hank,” he said, expertly pouring a vile-looking purple concoction into a row of small shot glasses.
A trio of well-tanned secretaries whooped with anticipation as he placed the drinks before them.
While Jack disappeared into the back office, the women tossed the drinks down their throats.
I listened to their rebel yells with admiration.
Believe me, secretaries after work make truck drivers look like wimps.