Legwork (5 page)

“How very civic-minded of them,” I said dryly.
“She said they were out parking in Country Club Hills?” Bullshit.
The kids screwed on the fourth hole of the golf course there.
They didn’t drive around looking for Lover’s Lane.

“That’s what she said,” Bobby answered, palms spread wide.
“I got me some impeccable sources.”

“What was her name?” I demanded.

“She didn’t say.” Bobby shrugged.
“She called the dispatcher directly.”

“Not 911?”

Bobby shook his head.
“Nope.
Called the dispatcher and was all excited, blurted out her story, and gave the address.
Then she hung up.”

“What makes the night clerk think she was young?”

“She was out driving around with her boyfriend, what else?”

“Bobby, if you were any dumber I’d make you into a doorstop.
No one is a teensy bit skeptical of a miraculous midnight caller who conveniently knew all the facts about the body?”

“I didn’t say that,” Bobby admitted.
“It sounds fishy to me, too.
And to everyone else.
Maybe that’s why they haven’t arrested Mary Lee for murder.”

“Not that Hooter would let them.”

Bobby shrugged.
“Whatever.
She’s been down at the station for a couple of hours now, answering questions. She’ll probably be there all afternoon.
It’s driving the reporters crazy.
Happened too late to make this morning’s papers and they might not even get a statement from her in tomorrow’s edition.”

“How terribly inefficient of Mary Lee,” I muttered.
“She must remember to murder at a more convenient hour next time.” Then it hit me.
“The station?” I asked.
Had Bill Butler won the battle of jurisdiction after all?

“Who’s in charge of the investigation?” I asked.

“Joint effort,” Bobby replied.
“Local and state.
CCBI and the SBI.
Everybody but Andy Griffith.”

“Well, surprise, surprise, surprise,” I said, clomping out to my car.
I wanted to get home and sleep off my hangover.
My head was really aching.
I was bone tired.
I needed to get some sleep and think it over.
I ought to take a good look at Mary Lee’s husband, Bradley, but for now I just wanted a good look at my pillow.

“Where are you going?” Bobby called after me.
“We’ve got work to do.”

“So do it,” I told him.
“If you ever want to get up, just put your hands on the armrests and push.”

Twenty-five minutes later, I was snuggled beneath my very own pair of cool sheets.
My apartment was quiet in the afternoon light, the silence broken only by the occasional freight train crawling through downtown.

I had switched off the telephone ringer and muted the volume on my answering machine.
It was imperative that I head off Mary Lee and her questions.
I was too tired to hear anyone’s theories but my own.

I turned on a local radio station for the old fogies and settled down in my bed.
The sounds of Glen Miller filled the room and I shut my eyes, thinking of Bill Butler and how good he would have looked in a World War II uniform.
I needed music from another decade right then.
I felt transported and hoped it would last.

I finally fell asleep listening to Johnny Mathis.
Helpless as a kitten indeed.

I woke at five the next morning when the paperboy scored a bull’s-eye on the window near my bed.
It was still dark outside when I retrieved the newspaper.
The cold October morning put a sting into the concrete of the stoop beneath my feet. I couldn’t find my second bunny slipper.
I wondered briefly if Jack had taken it, but no—a slipper fetish was too imaginative for him.

The murder took up the entire front page. Every one of those reporters had managed to score a by-line. Shrimpboat Shorty had insinuated himself in not one, but three photographs.
Bill Butler was nowhere to be seen.
Rats.
There was no statement from the Mary Lee Master’s camp anywhere.
I knew why.
She never let a word out the door unless she checked it first and she’d probably been too busy downtown fending off questions to approve any official release.

Mary Lee’s opponent, Stoney Maloney, had been more on the ball.
The N&O ran his statement on page two, across from a handsome campaign photograph of him at a recent rally.
Stoney had the look of a winner.
He was tall with a strong build, a square jaw, clear eyes, Roman nose, and a full head of prematurely silver hair, carefully cut so that no offending strands dangled beneath his collar to provoke the church-going folks.
He stood at a podium, hands spread wide, leaning toward a microphone. The camera had captured him as he was making an important point and people always look better when they’re not posing.
If only he could manage to be as impressive in person as he appeared in photos.
He had a wooden side to him, a stiffness in public, a sort of reserve not often found in politicians.
Maybe he just hated pretending to be someone he wasn’t.
Or maybe he had a stick up his ass.

I read his statement carefully.
Depending on how you looked at it, it was either a very fair response or a carefully crafted ploy.
I wanted to believe it was genuine but I knew that Stoney was taking no chances: he had surrounded himself with “paid political operatives” as the old-timers like to say, media specialists imported from New York and backed by a war chest big enough to buy television time every damn night of the autumn. One of his consultants, Adam Stoltz, was only twenty-eight years old and already rumored to be the next generation’s Roger Ailes. Whether this was a compliment or not depended entirely on the speaker.

Still, the official statement had a down-home quality to it and I was willing to give Stoney the benefit of the doubt.
The gist was that Stoney was aware that his opponent had been detained for questioning by the authorities and that a body had been found on the premises of her home.
He wanted to let people know that the victim had been a minor contributor to his campaign—as he had contributed to virtually every pro- business campaign in the state—but that Stoney had not known him personally. Just the same, his heartfelt condolences went out to the victim’s family.
He did not mention that Thornton’s family consisted of an embittered ex-wife and two alienated college-age children who had long been embarrassed by their father’s immature excesses.
Stoney then went on to say that he had always found Mary Lee Masters to be a woman of integrity, one who played fair and exhibited a deep moral foundation.
He was positive she was innocent and felt sure that the authorities would clear up the mystery.
He hoped it would be soon.

Lordy.
They’d drum him right out of the party.

I didn’t get the man.
I truly didn’t.
I’d watched him at a lot of debates by now, taking on Mary Lee.
He was always serious, always listening.
But a little too good to be true. And, of course, related to Senator Boyd Jackson.
I’d sooner vote for him if he was related to an iguana.
Stoney was often flanked in photographs by his mother— older sister to Boyd Jackson—and his female sidekick of the moment, usually a quiet woman with the color and personality of putty.
Any other guy would have been labeled as gay for being forty-four years old and never married, but since all of North Carolina had met Stoney Maloney’s mother by now, everyone knew why the dude was still single.
No one was willing to take her on as a mother-in-law.

Rumor had it that Sandra Douglas Jackson was the one who really ran the family show and had long been the force behind her brother Boyd’s success as well.
She was small and wiry, with a short-cropped cap of gray hair and a brittle gleam in her eyes.
I’m not saying she was the type to run a concentration camp or anything, but I am saying she was the type never to hesitate. She knew what she wanted to do, and she knew what she wanted everyone else to do, and she wasn’t shy about letting the world know it.
I’ve met thousands of women like her scattered throughout the South.
She could have done a damn sight better job of running things than the men but had never had the chance.
Sandy Jackson was Mary Lee without the money, the attractive exterior, or the opportunity.
I didn’t know her and I didn’t want to.
I had a feeling she was the reason why old Stoney was such a stiff.

The call I had been expecting came just after I had showered, inspected my black roots in the mirror, and donned my favorite sheath dress for the day.

“Casey?” Bill Butler said, his tone businesslike, “I need you downtown this afternoon for questioning. It’s official.” Translation: five assholes from the SBI were at his elbows, listening in.

“No problem,” I said sweetly.
“What time?”

“Two o’clock?”

“I’ll be there.”

I called Mary Lee’s house the second I hung up and got her all-around-secretary, Peggy Francis, on the line. “It’s Casey,” I told her.
“Should I come in or not?”

“I don’t think so,” she told me.
“The place is crawling with people.
Party hacks, the whole campaign team, Hooter and his crew.”

“What about Bradley?”

“Not yet,” Peggy said, disapproval tight in her voice.
“I tried reaching him through his office and they say he’s unreachable.
Mary Lee has no idea where he is.”

“What a creep,” I said for about the fiftieth time when it came to Mary Lee’s husband.
And I’d only known him for a month.
Peggy did not reply.
“Let me speak to Mary Lee,” I demanded, hoping my forcefulness might get me through.

“She’s busy.” It was an automatic reflex.

“Tell her it’s me,” I promised confidently. “She’ll come to the phone.”

It about knocked me over when she did.
“What did you find out?” Mary Lee asked.
She didn’t bother with hello. “Where’s Bradley?”

“Hell if I know,” I told her, a little guilty I hadn’t done what she’d asked.
But shoot, you’d think even the dirtiest dog would come crawling home, tail tucked under, once he found out his wife had been accused of murder.

“He has to be somewhere.
What’s his office say?”

“That he’s unreachable.” Thank you Peggy Francis.
“I’m working on it.
In the meantime, I’ve been poking into Thornton’s background.”

“I’m telling you, this is about me, not him.”

“I think it’s about both of you,” I explained patiently.
She had a bit of Louis the XIV in her.

“If Bradley had anything to do with this, I’m killing him,” Mary Lee said.

“Could you come up with another expression?” I reminded her.

“Oh, yeah.
Right.
Listen, I have to go. We’re issuing a statement this afternoon and I still haven’t written it.
The press is unbelievable.” She did not seem entirely displeased with the situation.
I wasn’t surprised.
What Mary Lee really craved was attention.
She had it in spades now.

I promised to check in later and rang off, resolving to track down good old Bradley Masters before I went any further.

I dialed his office and wasted no time when some fresh- voiced Betty Boop soundalike answered and said, “Paradigm Investment Banking Inc.” She made “Paradigm” sound like “pair of dimes” which was about all Bradley had to rub together these days in the way of capital.
He was not a financial success and only family connections kept him in business.

“This is Susan Montooth from First Federal. I must speak to Mr.
Masters immediately.
It’s urgent,” I lied in my most officious voice.

“Mr.
Masters is out of the office this morning.
He will be back by early afternoon.”

“Where is he?” I demanded, hoping to sound as if I would repossess his home at any second.
“This is extremely important.”

The lady kept her cool.
“He is returning from a business trip abroad, Miss Montooth.
May I take a message?”

I wasn’t going to get anything out of her. She sounded like she’d been fielding similar calls from media representatives all morning long.

But I had an idea.
If he was due in the office by early afternoon, he was coming back to town sometime late this morning.
And if he’d truly been “abroad,” or, at least, far enough away to miss the news about his wife, he was damn sure coming in by plane.
The murder had made headlines up and down the eastern seaboard and he’d have called in if he had seen it.
Chances were good that he had been out of the states.
There was only one airport in the Raleigh/Durham area and only one terminal for international arrivals.
I’d find the jerk first.
Unless some eager beaver newscaster beat me to it, of course.

No one beat me to it.
When Bradley Masters walked out through the double doors that marked the customs area at Raleigh/Durham Airport, I was the only one waiting for him.
I watched him stride down the corridor and thought about what a shame it was that he was such a washout as a person, because he was truly a handsome man.
If you go in for the Aryan type, that is.
He was tall, his broad shoulders and flat stomach carefully sculpted through regular workouts at the most expensive gym in Raleigh.
He still had plenty of blond hair, kept thick by a steady supply of Rogaine which he stored behind a stack of towels in the master bathroom.
I knew.
I searched the place regularly.
His eyes were large and almond-shaped, tinted even bluer by the contacts he wore. And his straight nose and narrow mouth gave him a noble look he did not deserve, considering he had the personality of a weasel.

He’d apparently had nothing to declare at customs, if you didn’t count the large duffel bag in one hand and the college coed in the other.
She peeled off like a precision swimmer when she saw me headed toward them.
I suspected she’d ducked for cover from a jealous wife many times before.

“Meet a friend on the plane?” I asked Bradley, grabbing his bag like I was being polite.
I really wanted to check the weight.
Maybe I could catch him with a couple kilos of cocaine and send him away for decades, saving us all a whole lot of trouble.
“Been gone long?”

“What are you doing here?” he asked sourly. “God, I hope no one sees us together.
What’s with those roots anyway?
Can’t afford a bottle of Clairol?
And what’s with those dresses you wear?
You look like a sausage.
Plus that heavy eyeliner went out with my grandmother.”

“You don’t like the way I look?” I asked innocently.

“No one I know thinks you look normal,” he answered.

“Maybe that’s the point.”

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Where were you?” I stared at his tan.
It was deeper than his normal studio tint.
“Pretty cushy business trip.
She a new secretary or your new jogging partner?” I nodded toward the brunette, who had proved faster than a pro linebacker and was already halfway to the outer doors.

“Is it any of your business?” he countered.

I looked his expensive slacks over and shook my head.
“Don’t you know it’s tacky to wear Armani in the Caribbean?”

I knew by the startled look on his face that I had him.
It was more than an educated guess.
He was too cheap to take a babe anywhere else.

“What do you want?” He checked his watch. “My wife send you to follow me around?”

“Your wife is a prisoner in her own home, under suspicion of murdering Thornton Mitchell.”

That one stopped him.
Stone cold dead. “What?” he asked, face perplexed.
“What did you just say?”

His bag felt like it held a pair of swim trunks and little more.
I guess he didn’t need a lot of clothes for a three-day tumble in the hay.
I took advantage of his shock to check the cover of a used airline ticket peeking out of a pocket on the side of the bag.
He’d been in Nassau by way of Miami.
“I’ll tell you about it on the way in,” I said.
“You’d better head straight home.”