Colors of Blood, page 13
“Don’t you think this stuff is?” Mary Celeste asked.
Evangeline said, “No horses on this place, so why the horsey stuff?”
“Someone from Loblolly Farm probably dumped it,” Web said.
Shaking her head, Mary Celeste said, “But the things are not old, and we have a dump on our property.”
“Don’t touch anything else,” Web said.
“I wanted to know what was in the box, but that’s all I touched,” Evangeline said. “Can we report this to the sheriff?”
He found himself shaking his head. He hated dashing these girls’ diligence and enterprise in finding their friend, but no, the sheriff would not take them seriously since he probably owed his election to the Lombards. They and their associates would not appreciate a sheriff who looked into their business, especially on the whim of two girls who missed their friend and had been told that she’d gone to New York and possibly abandoned her Loblolly post there for another job. Web had the benefit of knowing about Soire’ missing boy friend and figured there was a better way than approaching a beholden sheriff. Web looked at the boots again. Could they have belonged to the missing Francois Dupain? Then he recalled the report where Francoise had kept his driver’s license in his shoe. “Anybody look inside those boots?”
“No,” M C said. “Should we?”
“Grab some leaves and stick your hands inside,” Web said. “Don’t leave fingerprints on boots or what’s inside, if anything.”
M C looked reluctant. “Spiders and snakes.”
“I’ll do it,” Evangeline said and stripped a live oak branch nearby of its leaves. With the second boot, she brought out a piece of red card stock. She nudged it onto the ground and turned it over with the stick. “Huh? It part of something. It’s torn.”
The approximately three-inch-by-three-inch cardboard piece was tattered like it had been torn to use for something. A part of a bar code number was at the bottom of the piece. Web said, “Looks like the corner of a book or leaflet.” He gave Evangeline a good-work nod and said, “Scoot it back inside. If Soire can’t be found in New York and doesn’t return after the meet, then you might persuade your daddy to speak to the sheriff.”
“Daddy won’t,” Mary Celeste said. “The sheriff’s running for office and he’s supporting him.”
“Pooh,” Evangeline said. Web thought if he weren’t there, she probably would have said something stronger. “I’ll do it.”
“You said you have photos of this place,” Web said.
“We do,” Evangeline said. “I have mine and M C has her set.”
“Good.” He would ask Evangeline for a copy of hers to give to Dru. “Might be valuable in the future.”
“People turn up dead in cemeteries like this,” Evangeline said.
“There are no fresh graves here. No graves have been dug here in more than fifty years at least, probably since the county or state disallowed burials on private land.”
“But they could be unofficial burials,” Mary Celeste said, biting her upper lip.
“There are, all the time. Abandonment, too,” Web said. “Now I think we’d better get back.”
“Don’t you think this is important?” Mary Celeste asked.
“Maybe, maybe not. You two are certainly trying to convince me to help you, but I don’t know what I can do.”
“You’re an adult, a man,” Mary Celeste said. “We are teenagers. See what I mean?”
“I do.”
“Evangeline said you’d help us.”
“I’ll do what I can, but only if it turns out Soire is not in New York.”
Both girls sighed and Web followed them to the cut in the fence and watched as limber Mary Celeste ducked beneath and stood on the other side. Not so limber, Evangeline practically rolled under. Web followed.
They found the horses at the same spot where they’d left them. Was it his imagination or was Fast Eddie giving him a jaundiced eye? Web took Eddie’s reins and walked to the stump to mount. Climbing aboard he was aware of Eddie’s snort. Once settled in the saddle, he said, “I don’t think he cares much for me.”
“Watch him going back to the barn.”
“Oh Jeez.”
21
Freddy Lombard was waiting at the statue of Hallelujah. He was leaning against the concrete stable boy wearing the exact same shade of Star scarlet as the statue. “Thought you’d be back here eventually,” he said, his tone implacable.
Mary Celeste looked the picture of guilt. She said, “Dennis asked—”
“Don’t even start with the lie, young lady. What are you looking for?”
“We’re—” she shrugged. “I can’t say.”
“The girl is in New York, Mary Celeste. You will be in New York tomorrow. I’ve moved up our household flights so you will have time to find your friend. She is not in this cemetery.”
He stared hard at Evangeline which simply emboldened her. “Why would she leave your stable in New York? She loved exercising Star horses.”
His eyes shifted away from Evangeline as if she were not to be reckoned with and looked at his daughter. “Talk with the head groom when we get there.” He glanced at Evangeline and then stared at Webdog. “I can’t imagine why you let these two talk you into intruding upon my hospitality.” Web started to answer, but Lombard held up a hand. “Be that as it may, we’ll be seeing the last of you, Mr. Dennis Caldwell, candidate for Master of Computer Science and Engineering. There was no need to pretend to be something you are not.”
“I study in many disciplines,” Web answered, meeting the older man’s stare and feeling very hot at the implications of what the man had just told him.
Hold your tongue, though.
Then Lombard said, “It’s my place, my business to know what’s going on. Hear me?”
“Loud and clear.”
Lombard got inside the cart, executed a U-turn and sped away.
After that confrontation, Fast Eddie didn’t appear to be in a hurry to run for the barn. But because he hadn’t lost his will to be a front-runner, he kept his head thrust forward of his equine companions and they all breezed home.
Fast Eddie stopped next to a groom who took the reins from Web. Mary Celeste called, “Let me give you a lesson in dismounting. Lift your right leg over Eddie’s neck.” Web did that. “Now drop to the ground, your feet landing at the same time. There—” she said when he had executed that handily. “—you’ve done beautifully. Now give Eddie a thank you pat on his neck and shake hands with his groom.” All of which Web did, feeling a little more proficient than when he started out.
As they watched the hot walkers remove the saddles, bridles, and check the shoes, Mary Celeste asked Web, “What was that all about, between you and Daddy?”
Evangeline started to answer for him, but Web shut her up. “He was the one who followed us last night, I’d bet on it.”
“Daddy hates the horse cemetery. Too many of his friends are buried there.”
“Is that what he says?” Web asked.
Mary Celeste shrugged.
Rubbing the backs of his thighs, Web walked away—through the shedrows and paddocks—to the Mews. “Never been saddle sore before,” he muttered and felt athletic and smug for it.
In his room, Web fired up the laptop that had many talents, one that he’d forgotten to employ when he’d moved in and after Lombard braced him in here.
He hadn’t anticipated.
Within a second of tapping into the program, it beeped. A photo of the room came up showing where the bug was located. It was on the knob of the built-in dresser hugging the wall, second drawer down. He inspected the tiny dots in the center of what looked like and functioned as a dresser knob. “Damn,” he said. It took two minutes to gather his belongings. He shut the door, left his cases on the card table and walked to a closet he’d noticed in the community bathroom. It looked like a linen closet, but when Web had tried the door during his morning wash and shave—him wanting fresh towels—he’d found it locked. Other inmates had used the towels, so he’d dried himself on the semi-clean shirt he’d worn yesterday.
He picked the lock and found half a dozen cassette recorders. They were numbered and obviously wired to the rooms in the carriage house. Fortunately, he found the recorder with room number one on it. His room. The knob bug had broadcast his conversation—via radio waves through the air and wall—to tiny microphones that picked up the sound waves and produced an electrical current. The current ran to the radio transmitter that transmitted the signal to a receiver which in turn sent it to the recorder he was looking at, the very one that encoded his voice on the tape. He could see how much had been wound on the receiving reel and itched to play what Lombard had heard, but no time. Lombard could be walking up the steps at any minute so he removed the tape. He spotted a box of blank cassettes—jeez hadn’t Lombard heard of digital recorders. The suspicious Lombard had stocked up, probably bought out the Southeast’s supply of old-fashioned cassettes. Much easier to sticky-tape a fake electrical power outlet behind a piece of furniture. It recorded to a microSD card. Take out the card, check it and be on your merry way.
He removed the tape of his conversations and replaced it with a blank, and then fast-forwarded to the nearly exact length that had been used. He left wondering if Bryce and Jose had discovered their bugs.
He could only hope Lombard had not heard this morning’s call to Dru. He’d been in the game room, but his door was wide open. Could be a problem.
Pocketing the small cassette, he slipped back into room one—no longer his. He looked at the spy knob. Since the jig was up, he said, “Thanks for the hospitality, Mr. Lombard. Hope Soire is in Saratoga, but if she’s not, we’ll find her wherever she is.”
Passing the card table, he looked out the window to see Lombard heading across the Mews from the Victorian house. Lombard was almost at the carriage house door when Web descended the steps. Outside, and deciding to speak to Lombard, he paused and waited until the man was standing before him. “So long, Mr. Lombard. It’s been a pleasure. I’d offer my hands, but as you see, they’re full.”
Lombard’s eyes were covered by sunglasses, which reflected a glinting sun. He said, “No worry. Your cousin is waiting at your car.” He looked at Web’s cases hanging from his shoulders. “You sure you got everything and didn’t leave anything in your room? We can’t account for guests’ belongings and usually give them to charities.”
“You find anything of mine, anything at all, go right ahead.” He started away, but gave a backward glance and turned around. “By the way, the linen closet in the washroom is locked. I tried to get a fresh towel this morning.”
Lombard shrugged. “I’ll see to it.”
Web hurried away. He wanted out of Loblolly before Lombard heard his parting shot on the recorder.
***
Evangeline had put up a royal fuss about flying home. She lost with ill-grace and dark prognostications that boded ill for Webdog. He was glad to be heading west, out of the sun, for home, and leaving the little oracle behind.
At the Madison, Georgia exit, he anticipated lunch at the Antebellum House, a Southern cooking (what else?) restaurant in existence for nearly seventy-five years, a place where his parents broke their journey when they took the occasional trip to Savannah to see his uncles, his mother’s brothers. His mother and her brothers had lived in a dilapidated house just off Townsend Square. That was before all the mansions had been renovated, though his family’s birth home had not. It had been torn down so that expensive condominiums could occupy the land and fill bank coffers.
The Antebellum House became an inn when the owners added faux antebellum style guest quarters at the rear of the authentic old house and charged phenomenal prices for a night’s stay. That the Antebellum House, and other Madison homes, were spared during Sherman’s march on Georgia during the Civil War, came about because Madison was the home of pro-Union Senator, Joshua Hill. Because of politics, Madison was the second largest designated historic district in Georgia—second to Macon.
Crossing the gravel lot, he stepped up and onto the marble floor of the foyer. A small sign invited him to wipe his feet. And he did. The chandelier above him never failed to impress and neither did the staff, now dressed informally in morning clothes from the era. Rhett Butler would have been proud.
Just then his cell phone rang. It rang as his eyes picked up the sign that said, “For the dining pleasure of our other guests, please turn off cell phones during your meal.”
He stepped outside and answered.
“Evangeline, how did you get my cell phone number?”
“You gave me the number of the office. I called there. Miss Ellis answered and gave me your right number. Are you trying to avoid me?”
Evidently, I haven’t tried hard enough. “No, but this is for non-work calls. Yours is a work-related call, right?”
“I might just have wanted to thank you.”
“So you got home all right?”
“I have not left the airport. The plane is late.”
“Sorry about that.”
“I’m calling because Mary Celeste texted. The dump where we were this morning caught on fire.”
The son-of-a-bitch.
“Some ass burned everything on it, down to the metal junk,” Evangeline said. He could hear her sniveling. “The fire department just let it burn since it was a dump.”
“I’ll call Miss Dru.”
“I wanted to but Miss Ellis didn’t know her private number.”
Pearly Sue did, but knew better than tell Evangeline.
23
After watching Georgia Public Television’s broadcast of the Georgia Crime Summit and Lake’s presentation, I snapped off the television. He’d once again proved to be a powerful speaker. If he weren’t so honest, he could be a politician. Before his presentation, the sheriff of a northern county offered evidence of a growing meth problem there. While Atlanta fights the heroin battle, they fight the meth war. Why, I wondered, for the thousandth time, did humans seek to destroy themselves with powerful drugs. Sure, I had my cocktails and wine, and true too much could kill me, but I wasn’t going to wake up with sores all over my body or die with a needle in my arm. Up in the north counties over 50 labs were seized last year and the sheriff said they expected there will be over 200 in the coming year. It was enough to bring disheartenment to the most cheerful.
Cheerful being the watchword, it reminded me that I needed to see the least cheerful person I knew. Portia Devon. She was in court and would call me sometime in the afternoon, or so said her clerk. Meantime Webdog called from the road and filled me in on the latest, up to and including the burning of the cemetery dump. Last night’s probable trip was a sure thing now.
***
“What kind of host puts a bug in a guest’s room?” I asked Web who found an old cassette player in a file drawer of unused stuff.
“Not just mine,” Web said, “everyone’s room. Each one numbered. Six rooms, six recorders. I never suspected.” He popped the cassette into the machine.
“You couldn’t anticipate—”
“I should have. A missing girl, a haughty master, a wife-nanny triangle, the whole damned atmosphere sucked.”
“Before we listen and get your blood boiling, let’s go over what we know so far.
I had Evangeline’s photographs of the dump and its questionable contents spread on my desk. The only thing not photographed was the red piece of card stock they found in the boot. “How thick was the stock?” I asked.
“Not thick, but sturdy.”
“Passport, maybe? Europeans are red.”
“Could be,” Web said. “I’ve never had a passport.”
“The USA’s is blue. Anymore on the master-nanny thing?”
“I was only around them twice. You could have rubbed stones over their body heat and gotten a flame.”
“And the wife?”
“Saw her once. Looked pretty bleak. By the way, the girls said Soire did not have an accent. Mary Celeste said that they had a boy there a while back who was French. Name of Frank. He was hot she said, and his accent was sexy.”
“Americanized Francois,” I said. “His name was on that list you sent of those who left Loblolly Farm without notice. He had been with the farm for seven months and received twelve paychecks. Help is paid twice-monthly, so he left without claiming at least one check. That’s what the list was all about. Paychecks. Apparently the turnover there was great and the atmosphere so dire, people left without getting their last check. Dirk’s has been busy running down folks on the list. According to Dirk’s, it isn’t easy. What you heard about horse people moving around is true.”
“Even if they were fired, they should have gotten a last paycheck,” Web said.
“Frank, as he was known there, left France twenty-six months ago. Hired by Loblolly twenty-five months ago—one month after landing in the U. S. He left Loblolly eighteen months ago—seven months after employment. Hired a week later at Hollow Meadow, he worked five months before he disappeared. The Aiken County sheriff’s report is all we know of him from there on. Soire left France on a visa eighteen months ago and showed up at Loblolly about two months later. The list shows her having left without a two-week paycheck after fourteen months of employment. She’s been missing two months approximately. If she is actually at Saratoga, then maybe she’ll be paid there.”
Web said, “So we speculate: Soire learns of Francois’s disappearance and sets out for the U. S. She does some fast talking to get a charity placement organization to get her into Loblolly, where he was supposed to be working. Should we presume he never told the folks back home that he’d quit Loblolly? Which begs the questions, why did he leave Loblolly and why did he go to Hollow Meadow, where, according to the police report, he was employed at the time he disappeared?”
I said, “Yet Soire came to the U. S. and sought employment at Loblolly. Why not try to get on at Hollow Meadow when she learns that’s where he went from Loblolly? Many questions to be answered. I will ask them.”
