One Hoof In The Grave [Carriage Driving 02] (33 page)

“Whose home?”

“I live in the guest cottage behind Raleigh’s stable,” Brock sounded annoyed, but he’d relaxed. This wasn’t the scary question.

“Alone?”

“Yes, alone.”

“Mrs. Raleigh didn’t join you?”

“What the hell kind of question is that? The woman just lost her husband.”

“The woman’s also carrying your baby,” Stan said quietly. “I don’t imagine your girlfriend Gwen was happy about that, Mrs. Raleigh being a rich woman and suddenly available and all.”

“I didn’t even know Mrs. Raleigh was pregnant.” Brock’s pupils had gone back to nearly normal size. The pulse at his neck still thrummed, but not as fast as it had.

“Then why’d you tell Whitehead she was?”

Stan’s Berserker forebears showed in his smile. Brock must have caught a whiff of Norse Warrior too, because he seemed to diminish in his chair right before their eyes. Whitehead?”

“You mentioned it at breakfast this morning, right?”

He gaped. “Who? Wha . . .”

“You ought to know by now you can’t stir your coffee in public without somebody noticing,” Stan said. “Why’d you need money so bad? Deal for the coke fell through?”

“What coke? Who says I need money? You keep talking about coke like I’m supposed to know about it.”

Stan gave him a sad ‘more in sorrow than anger’ look. “Thirteen kilos on their way to Atlanta to a secure evidence locker. Amazing the number of prints Saran Wrap preserves. Since we took yours on Sunday after Raleigh’s death, we had them on file all ready to check.”

Brock looked as though he might throw up. Stan was as fastidious about his interview rooms as about his squad car, so Geoff hoped Brock would not toss his cookies.

“Guess whose prints we found all over all the packages? Yours, my friend.”

Brock went very still. “Do I need a lawyer?”

“You can have one if you want one.” Stan sat across from him totally relaxed. “Course, we’ll stop the interview and put you in a cell ‘til he gets here. ‘Course, I won’t be able to help you then.”

Geoff could see the wheels turning in Brock’s brain.

“Help me how?”

“You’ve got thirty seconds to get in front of this,” Stan said. “First rat gets the cheese. Maybe we can cut a deal if you give us some names. People higher up the food chain.”

Geoff could almost read the sign on Brock’s forehead:
abandon ship, every man for himself
. “I can’t go to jail. If I talk, can I get probation?”

Stan cut his eyes at Geoff and said, “Lord knows. The judge might give you probation, depending on how good your information is.”

On a cold day in hell Brock would get probation.

“All I ever did was help pack and drive the hay up from Florida,” Brock sounded close to hysteria. “If you want to know who it belongs to, ask Gwen. I don’t even know who picks it up. It was her gig from the get go.”

“Where from? How often?”

“Look, you sure I can get probation?”

“You got to give me more than that,” Stan said. “How’d you get into this?”

According to Brock, Gwen worked in a big south Florida practice after she qualified as a vet. “They handled a bunch of high-dollar racehorses for some of the drug kingpins. Gwen got to know them. They were her ticket to her own practice.”

“How’d you two hook up?”

“Raleigh goes down to Wellington and Ocala to drive every winter for a couple of months. We used Gwen for our vet down there, and she and I hit it off.”

“Who worked out the way to hollow out the alfalfa and fit the coke inside?”

“I guess it was a joint effort.”

“How long have you two been doing this?”

“Gwen had something going before with prescription drugs. She said it was easier to conceal in a large practice, but it’s chancy and doesn’t pay all that well. She’d made enough to set up her clinic, but not to pay for the equipment she wanted.”

“Why pick north Georgia?”

“Lot of horse people up here go down to Florida. They agreed to use her if she settled here. She really is a great vet.”

“How long you been working together?”

“I told you, I’m just the driver! I just started!”

They waited. Geoff watched Brock calculating how much he could lie, then give it up. “Three years.”

“How many loads a year?”

“Three or four, if the price of alfalfa was cheap enough in Florida to make it worth Raleigh’s time to bring up extra loads.”

“Who else was in on it?”

“Nobody up here. Gwen made the arrangements. I don’t know any names. I’d pick up the alfalfa, meet a couple of guys to help me stow it inside the bales, then I’d drop off the bales with the coke in Gwen’s shed, and take the clean stuff on to Raleigh.”

“Then what?”

Brock shook his head. “I don’t know who picked it up from her. She’d pay me, and that would be the end of it until the next time.”

“When was your last load?”

“First week in April.”

“That’s over a month ago. Why was it still at Gwen’s?”

“She said the guys who were supposed to pick it up had been busted up north somewhere. Her Florida connection figured it was safe where it was, until they could get another crew together.”

“Where were they moving it?”

Again Brock shook his head. “I told you, I don’t know anything about that end of it. All I did was help pack it and drive it to Gwen.”

“How did Raleigh find out?” Geoff asked. They were moving into murder territory now, so he took over.

“Who says he knew?” Brock’s eyes swiveled to look at Geoff, all his belligerence back in place.

“You did. You told Gwen he intended to fire you and turn you over to the cops.”

“How did you . . . ?”

“Is that why you killed him?” Geoff asked.

Brock came up out of his chair. “You can’t pin that on me!”

“So how’d he find out?” Stand asked.

Brock’s head swiveled back to Stan. “I accidentally brought one of the stuffed bales to Raleigh’s. He caught me taking out the coke, so I could get it back to Gwen. I swore it was a one-shot deal.” Brock spread his hands. “He believed me, but he was madder’n I ever saw him. I could’a talked him around. He wouldn’t’a fired me.”

“Would he have, if he discovered you’d knocked up his wife?” Stan asked.

“He didn’t know, my hand to God.” Brock subsided.

“So how come you were so desperate for money? You must have accumulated quite a stash in three years,” Geoff said.

“I wish.”

“Been sampling your own wares?”

“No way, man. That junk’s for losers. I spend my life around horses. Where there’s horses, there’s big money gambling. I’m into some very unhappy people for thirty large. I can’t ask Sarah Beth. The will’s not even probated yet. After I told Gwen I wasn’t going to bring in any more loads, she refused to give me a dime.” He narrowed his eyes at us both. “Why am I the one sitting here? You got Gwen in another room? All you got me on is transporting.”

“And murder,” Stan said.

“I told you, I didn’t kill Raleigh.”

“But you killed Gwen.”

He didn’t react for a moment. “Say what?”

“I said,” Stan said, “You killed Gwen.”

“Gwen’s dead?” He jumped up so quickly he knocked his chair over and came close to following it all the way to the floor. “Oh, lord, they killed her.” He yanked the chair and himself up, but made no attempt to sit down again. “You gotta protect me, man. They find out I told you anything, they’ll kill me too.”

“Thought you said you didn’t know who they were.” Geoff said.

“I don’t. My hand to God.”

“Where were you this morning?”

Brock stared at
him
now. He was like a bull that didn’t know which side the dogs were going to attack. “Hell, you know where I was. I guess Whitehead called y’all right after we split, didn’t he?”

They didn’t answer him. Stan called for a deputy to lock Brock up as a material witness until the various agencies could untangle the jurisdictional mess and decide who to charge with what.

After Brock was taken away, loudly protesting that he’d never killed anyone, Geoff said, “Hard to believe in two separate killers for two separate killings so close together.”

“Yeah. If Brock is out on Gwen’s death, chances are he’s out on Raleigh’s too.”

“Too many suspects,” Geoff said.

“Including your girlfriend.”

“She gave us Brock’s alibi, remember? And incidentally, her own as well. If she was listening to Brock and Whitehead, she wasn’t strangling Gwen forty miles away.”

“She could have killed Gwen early same as Brock.” He waved a hand at Geoff. “I guess she didn’t.” Stan said. “I released the news of Gwen’s death, but not that we’d found the drugs. Once they know those bales of alfalfa are still sitting in Gwen’s shed, they’ll have to take a chance on getting them. We may not solve the murders, but we should be able to take some poison off the streets.”