Pursuit (39 page)

Julie took her gum and started out the store, having no intention of excusing Mr. Mag's.

“I noticed something on that re-seat, ma'am.”

Julie turned, ready for one more disappointing comeback.

“We don't get much of a call for one of the items on your tab there.”

“And what would that be?”

“Those nasty fellows all packed up tight in the tin can.”

Julie looked at her list. Mostly fruit, vegetables, and something described as “preserved meat.” “Would these be sardines?”

“They could be. We got your spam and your weenies in a can, and for simple sake put them all under ‘meats' that are preserved. If  'n we had the right kinda customers, we'd buy us some of that cava fish-eggs stuff. Know what I mean?”

Julie felt she understood the old coot as much as she wanted to. “Who buys most of your ‘preserved fish'?”

“Oh, a whole wheelbarrow of folk, mostly older types, retirees. Can't afford steak or chicken from Splendid Farms, theys just a might better than our cat-food folk; we got a couple of them. Feel sorry about that.”

“Can you give me the names of your tinned-fish people?”

The man went through a handful of names, nothing standing out. Julie wrote them all down along with any known addresses. She once again started to leave.

“There was one name I forgot. Smart fella; only gets our tinned fish on occasion. He buys it like it were going outta style, then nothing for months on end.”

“Who is this fellow?” Julie stepped back on the porch.

“I won't get in any trouble tattlin', will I? What's he done?”

“I don't know if he's done a gosh darn thing. Just checking.” Julie didn't think her speaking his tongue would bring the name out any sooner, but she had to try.

“That would be Mr. C, ma'am—first name, well, I don't for the life of me know. Hmm. Lives down the lakes way, I hear.”

The
C
name resonated through Julie's brain.

“You okay, missy? You seem flustered.”

Julie got as much information from the fellow as possible, making it a point to question him more thoroughly on some of his other tinned-fish customers to try to divert his attention from Mr. C, but it was not to be.

“If Mr. C comes in, I'll pretend you were never here. Would that be hunky-dory?”

She nodded her thanks. She knew the man wouldn't be able, in light-years, to keep the secret of Mr. C's sudden notoriety. She wondered what in the hell she was going to do now.

On the way back to the station house, she realized that she would have to bring Todd up to date on her findings. With luck, maybe he'd offer a helping hand when she nailed the bastard.

S
ince Todd was
still down from the flu, she went first to Walker and laid it out for her captain—all the seeming similarities that added up. She had not yet patrolled the area near the multitude of lakes, perhaps seventy miles wide, north to south.

“That's a lot of lakefront to cover, Sergeant. What will you be looking for? A mailbox that says ‘I'm here'?”

She went along with the joke for a while. “I thought I'd cover the Miller County real estate tax records first, since their lake frontage seems closest to the area where Cheryl was picked up. If there's nothing, maybe a house-to-house canvass with Todd when he recoups.”

“Good, keep a low profile. If you find him, don't make any moves until you've checked with me, okay?”

The folks at the Miller County seat were helpful. The warrant she'd gotten from the district judge seemed to pave the way. Since the county records didn't show whether a property was on the lakefront or not, Julie was forced to go through the whole lot.

The
C
s didn't produce any Caldwells, but she figured that while there she would plow through the complete
batch. It was late afternoon when she finished. She looked at the tax records, wondering what she'd missed. Julie went back to the
C
s, still not finding that elusive Caldwell. She flipped over a few more of the oversized pages and came across the
D
s. Realizing her mistake, she started to close the bulky record book when she saw the name Drew under the heading “Business.” The woman at the front desk explained, when asked, that firms doing trade in Miller County typically received their bills at their workplace rather than at taxed homes. Julie requested a printout from the woman with the address and amount of yearly taxes for the aforementioned home owned by Drew Box Factory.

Once again she checked with Walker, talking of Drew Box Factory's ownership of this house.

“Let me think on this for a while,” he said. “If Drew in fact owns that house and put it under the company name, there's nothing there that one could jump on. All perfectly legal; probably a tax dodge. All companies do it.” He paused. “I'm thinking maybe give the head honcho a call, ask him straight out, ‘What's up with the house? Is it a client perk? Company investment?' You name it; could be a hundred reasons to have a weekend place.”

“Right, sir. But what if, by chance, I was in the neighborhood and dropped by to chat. I could maybe get a better read on the situation as we discuss the place.”

“Good idea, Sergeant. Nice to hear you're up to speed on your field skills. Should I call, or do you want to?”

“If you don't mind, I'll wait til I get close by and then pop in. Don't want to give him time to alibi out. I'll keep you posted.”

Under normal conditions, Julie's trip to the box factory would take her twenty minutes. She waited until she was close to the factory before phoning.

“Ah, Miss Worth. Mr. Drew just this moment left for home. Can I take a message?”

“No. Maybe I can catch him. It's kind of important. What is his number?”

“Very sorry. I can't do that.”

“What does he drive?”

“Well, I don't, oh . . . it's probably all right. A silver late-model Mercedes. He'll be heading toward Arnold on 141.”

Julie switched on her bar lights and sped up. She was just a couple of minutes out. Nearing the factory, she doused the lights and continued past for about a mile. A silver automobile chugged along several notches below the speed limit in front of her. Approaching a gas station—a proper location to pull into—she switched her blinker back on. The driver's head bobbled up and down, from the rearview mirror to the dashboard and back again. He pulled into the Conoco lot. Julie got out of the cruiser, nudged her elbow against her Sig, and approached the car carefully. Not from any sense of danger but because, to use the old saw, she was “way out on a limb.”

“Mr. Drew, sorry about the stop. It's Juliette Worth. We met a while back about your missing niece, Trudy.”

“Oh yes. For a moment, I thought I'd committed some sort of crime.”

Maybe, but not what you're thinking.
“Could I have a few minutes of your time?”

“Well, this is sort of unusual, wouldn't you say, Sergeant?”

The passenger-side door unlocked.

“Okay. Join me here. We'll be more comfortable in my Benz.”

Julie slid into the soft leather seat of the Mercedes.
“I'll get right to the point. Do you own a home in Miller County out toward Lake of the Ozarks?”

“No, no. Afraid not. That's reserved for the can't-afford-the-Caribbean crowd.” He guffawed at his little joke.

Julie took out a clipboard from her portfolio case. “Says here the Drew Box Factory pays $1,600 a year on lot 762 in Miller County, Missouri. Is that a mistake?”

“Let me see that.” He looked at the memo on Miller County letterhead, stationery that Julie had procured on her recent sojourn. “Huh. This can't be right. We don't have property at the lakes. Let me call David Wright, see what's up.”

Julie waited while the executive on his cell switched back and forth between his comptroller and his in-house accountant.

“Dave Wright's man, Robert, says in fact we do own a property in Miller County. I'll check on this. There's no reason we would carry something like this on our books. Odd.”

Drew seemed honestly at a loss as to why the property was listed as theirs. Julie got out of the Mercedes and slipped into her cruiser. She started to U-turn out of the lot when she saw the Mercedes's lights flashing on and off behind her. One good blinker stop deserved another. She reversed back to Drew's driver-side window.

“We need to talk. Do you have the time? Follow me, please.” He pulled out and around her Charger and drove back toward the factory.

Julie noted that this time he pushed the speed limit, along with having his cell pressed solidly against his right ear.

When they arrived back at the factory, Drew hustled from his Mercedes, giving Julie a quick hand signal. By the time Julie got out of her cruiser, William Drew stood holding the office building door for her.

“Is there a big hurry?”

He didn't answer, just headed upstairs to his office, where a short, heavyset man waited, tapping his fingers on a stack of papers. An assistant stood next to him.

“Dave, I need an explanation of this property, right now. By the way, this is Sergeant Worth with the State Patrol. Proceed.”

“When I began working here some twelve years ago”—Wright thumbed through several legal document folders—“our bookkeeping was in serious disarray. Among the equity holdings, along with this building and the factory, was the property in Miller County.”

“Let me see that.” Drew spread the sheaf of papers on his desk. He glanced through a large manila envelope at the bottom of the pile and pulled out a letter. “Did you see this?” He thrust it out. “That property was supposed to be transferred years ago—close to eighteen—for Christ's sake. We've paid nearly twenty-five thousand dollars in taxes. Oh, hell. Technically, it looks as though we do own this land. Technically, Miss Worth.”

Miss Worth. Lovely.
“So who has the rights to this property now?” She stopped herself. “Do you have a Mr. B. Caldwell working here?”

Drew turned to his comptroller. “Robert, in your perusal of the weekly payroll, does the name Caldwell mean anything to you?”

Mr. Wright's young accountant answered with a herky-jerky shake of the head.

“The name is familiar, but I'm certain he's not an employee,” Wright blurted out. “Maybe one of our suppliers, vendors, that sort of thing.”

Drew shot up from his desk and went to the window, looking out onto his factory grounds. “We'll
have to check further on this and get back to you, Miss Worth.”

Miss Worth. Again. Asshole.

“Mr. Wright, Robert, you're both excused. My apologies for keeping you late. I'll take this up with you tomorrow. Good night.”

The two men, sensing that something above their pay grade had just taken place, hurried out of the office.

“Excuse the dramatics and delay in answering your questions. I suppose I'm getting old. Well, there's no supposing to it, we are all getting old.” He took a long pause and gathered himself. “When you inquired about the name Caldwell, it started working on me. I never knew this person, as it was many years ago, before I was head of the business. But he was here with a group of other kids and was killed in an accident on the floor of the factory through no fault of the company.”

Julie flashed back to her talk with Jimbo Gerard and his story of how his father, Tuck, had taken his foster kids on a “Way Things Are Made” trip. She was surprised to learn the accident happened at the Drew Box Factory. “Did this take place at about the time of your niece Trudy's disappearance?”

“No, years before—maybe eight to ten.” Drew folded his hands as if to say, “That's it.” “I don't know what else I can tell you, Miss Worth.”

“This story just recently came to my attention, but I wasn't aware it took place here.”

“Yes, unfortunate but true.”

“And the boy was killed, is that correct?”

“Yes, Master Caldwell was killed instantly. Sorry to say.”

“Do you recall the youngster's first name?”

“No, ah, Billy, Bill, Bob, it's in the records somewhere.”

“Could it have been Bink?”

“Bink. Yes, maybe Bink? Sure, something like that. The name probably given to him by his pal.”

“His pal?”

“Yes, Mr. Clegg, our situation manager. You met him when we had that go-around with the old-time employees who were here when Trudy went missing.”

Julie had a lot to digest. She considered Mr. Drew.

He blinked as if to say “What else?” “Mr. Clegg was a young boy at the time of the incident. As part of his settlement, when he turned sixteen, the lakefront house was given to him along with lifetime employment at Drew Box. I'm sorry I didn't remember all this sooner. Guess the name Caldwell threw me.”

Julie asked for the address of the house, thanked Mr. Drew, and hurried out of the drab factory, the grey brick exteriors a series of haunted looking structures. A single light glowed in the distance. A night watchman strolled toward her vehicle; his battery operated lantern swinging casually from his hand.