Dangerous Undertaking (16 page)
We stopped at the registrar’s table where Josh picked up a scorecard. Doug and Sally Turner waited along the pathway to the first target. Like church door greeters, they welcomed everyone and wished them luck on the round. Silver-haired and crinkled from years of outdoor activities, both would never see seventy again. Yet they lived as if their whole lives stretched before them, looking forward with excitement to whatever the next day held in store.
Sally captivated Susan immediately. Who wouldn’t be fascinated upon meeting a storybook grandmother armed to the teeth. Battle gear included a quiver of twelve arrows hanging from her waist and a leather arm guard strapped to the inside of her left forearm with a matching, right-handed finger glove to keep the bowstring from slicing into the skin during the thirty times Sally would draw, aim, and release. The bow at her side gleamed black in the sunlight, uniquely wicked-looking with its high-gloss finish where most archers chose the greens and browns of traditional camouflage design.
“Stay with me, honey,” Sally told Susan after I made the introductions. “We’ll show these men what we can do with their precious phallic symbols.”
“Don’t mind her,” joked Doug. “It’s my fault she’s over-sexed.”
“A legend in his own mind,” said Sally. She stepped up to the first stake and stared down the cleared forest avenue to the model grizzly reared up on hind legs. The menacing target looked a good seventy yards away. “Ladies first, I assume.” Then she said to Susan, “They always say that to make me take the first shot. I’m the guinea pig to get the distance, but then I fib about where my sights are set.”
She slid her needle-pointed sight lower on its track, nocked an aluminum arrow and drew back until its small conical tip was flush with the front of the bow. Broadhead hunting blades were not permitted as the targets would be shredded before half the archers went around the course. Sally’s left arm elevated a few inches, and then held steady. A full five seconds elapsed. At last, the string twanged its solitary note of relief as the arrow leapt forward, hurled by the pent-up energy into arced flight. We watched the white feathers curve downward and slam into the frozen creature’s chest. A second later the smack of the impact returned to our collective ear.
“Bravo, Sally,” cheered her husband, the spotting binoculars held to his eyes. “A perfect shot. Did you go at sixty-five yards?”
“See what I mean,” she told Susan. “Gee, I can’t remember, dear. It was either sixty-five or seventy-five, I guess.”
Josh shot next. The power of the new bow propelled his arrow in a much flatter trajectory, but Doug sighed behind the binoculars. “No, just outside the kill area, up on the neck. Better not allow for much drop.”
Doug’s own arrow arced more than Josh’s but struck lower. Sally had spotting honors and announced, “You just raised his growl three octaves. He’s alive, but you killed his future children.”
The banter continued throughout the entire round. I had expected Josh to carry the day; but Sally, inspired by Susan’s presence, made kill after kill. As we walked away from the last target, Doug double-checked his math and proudly declared his wife had set a new personal record. She finished only three points behind Josh and stood a good chance of winning the Woman’s First Place Trophy.
“Drinks are on me,” said Sally, and led us over to the volunteer fire department’s concession stand.
We commandeered an empty table. Josh tossed several bags of shelled peanuts in the middle to keep us going while the tournament rankings were tabulated.
Doug Turner tore open a corner of one packet and poured salted nuts in his hand. “You know what I like about goobers? That.”
He pointed to an adjacent picnic table where a young mother served slices of watermelon to three carrot-topped boys whose ages probably ranged from three to eight. The youngest shrieked, tears gushing down a face as red as his hair, and waved a pudgy hand at the yellow-jacket wasp that belligerently strutted across the juicy pulp.
“Goobers don’t interest any bees or bugs I know of.” He tossed a peanut high in the air and caught it in his mouth.
“I once performed an emergency tracheotomy at a baseball game,” said Susan. “The guy caught three peanuts in his windpipe. I don’t worry about someone catching a watermelon in his mouth.”
“See, Doug. I’ve told you that a thousand times,” said his wife. “You don’t want me to go cutting on your throat, do you?”
“Aren’t you kidding?” Doug asked Susan, taking an extra chew or two for safety.
“Yeah, I am.”
Sally laughed. “Child, you’ve got a devilish sense of humor.”
Josh asked, “How long are you going to keep Barry looking like a goony bird with a busted wing?”
“Probably five or six weeks. Then he’ll be out here losing his arrows like old times.”
“Barry, she’s seen you shoot before,” said Doug.
Sally wiped the flecks of peanut dust from her hands and looked across the table at me, her face suddenly aged with worry. “Why, Barry? Why would Dallas Willard want to kill you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Guess I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. He was upset his grandmother had died. And he may have thought his brother and sister were selling the family land out from under him.”
“Waylon Hestor’s project,” commented Doug, as if we all knew what that meant.
“What?” The intensity of my single syllable caught everyone’s attention.
Doug reacted as if he had said a cuss word at the church barbecue. “There was nothing wrong with it. Josh, your name was mentioned. Look, Waylon was a general partner bringing in limited partners to develop property. I’ve invested with him before. So have you, Josh.”
“No, not exactly,” Josh corrected. “I’ve audited some of his deals in the past. He’s clean enough, Barry. He’s a real estate developer who lives in Asheville, but he has holdings in our county.”
“This limited partnership, it wouldn’t by chance be to develop land adjacent to migrant work camps?”
“Yes, it would,” Josh said. “If and when the county consolidated the worker camps, the limited partnership would begin development of land tracts owned by Waylon. The low profile was kept because of the politics involved, but nobody did anything illegal. Waylon already owns the property.”
“Yeah, but I bet he’ll be first in line to buy up the old camps as they are closed.”
“Probably,” said Josh. “It’s public record, Barry. Carl Romeo handled all the legal filings.”
“Carl Romeo? But he—” I stopped myself from blurting out that he hadn’t told me anything about it. Instead, I continued—“but he would make sure everything was in order.”
“Exactly my point, Barry.”
I dropped Susan off at her condo, declining her offer for lunch and claiming I needed to review some files at Tommy Lee’s office.
Fifteen minutes later, I turned down Vance Avenue. Down aptly described the sloping street whose sidewalks each hid behind a row of white pines that guarded the Saturday strollers from the Saturday cruisers. Vance Avenue dissected the heart of Gainesboro’s vintage neighborhood of choice. The houses were set back in generous lawns. Most were two-story brick or stone built in the 1930s. An occasional ranch sprawled across an acre, breaking the pattern.
Carl Romeo owned a neo-Victorian he had constructed on the ashes of a client’s fire-gutted disaster. Suing the electrical contractor and insurance company for faulty wiring had not rejuvenated his client’s incinerated invalid mother, but it had provided enough cash for the client to move to Florida and Carl to buy the scorched, empty lot.
A bronze plaque embedded in the stone column that marked the entrance to his driveway summed up the story: “
PHOENIX HOUSE
.” Fifty feet from the curb, the driveway split with one lane looping behind the house and the other ending in a brick-lined terrace used for guest parking. A powder-blue Cadillac occupied a third of the space. I pulled to the far right, allowing as much clearance as possible.
Prior to that day, I would have turned my car around and driven off, not wanting to encroach upon someone’s Saturday afternoon company by arriving unannounced. But now social conventions and courtesies carried no significance because although I wasn’t sure where my action was taking me, action was required, no matter what proper etiquette decreed.
I walked between purple and yellow pansies lining the Romeos’ sidewalk. This horizontal sea of blossoms rippled in the late afternoon breeze. The air moving over my skin felt neither hot nor cold, a curious lack of sensation blending me into the world around me. The phrase thermal harmony popped in my mind. It was the only harmonious thought I had.
A wide, covered porch extended across the entire front of the house. Two Adirondack chairs and a cane-bottom rocker held sentry duty, their empty frames huddled in silent homage to some past conversation.
As I reached the front door, I heard muffled voices at a distance farther than just the other side. Most likely, they were in the dining room if I remembered the layout of Carl’s house correctly. Too early for a dinner party. Perhaps a neighbor had dropped by, and Carl could easily excuse himself.
A brass knocker in the shape of a gavel tempted me to enthusiastically call the court to order. Instead, I used the doorbell which sent out a mellow chime proclaiming a wanderer at the gate.
There was a faint sound of a door closing, then footsteps. No window or peephole offered advance warning that I stood on the threshold. The latch clicked, and I gave Carl a tight-lipped smile as he stood in the half-opened doorway, his eyebrows arched in unrestrained surprise.
“Barry?” He stopped, clearly not sure what to say.
“Carl, I need to talk to you.”
“I’ve got company, Barry.”
“I’ll just be a minute or two.”
He hesitated a second and then opened the door wider. Perhaps he intended to step out, but I took the move as approval and slipped into the foyer beside him. On the left, closed French doors screened me from Carl’s company, which was just as well as it relieved the need for introductions and my awkward request that Carl and I speak in private.
He led me through the archway on the right into the living room. I knew next to nothing about antiques, but I speculated the furnishings in the room were of significant value. Carl sat in an armless, velvet-cushioned chair and motioned me to the adjacent small settee. Now that we sat face to face, I wished I had rehearsed this conversation. Carl allowed no time to craft an opening sentence.
He folded his arms on his chest and asked, “So what’s this about?”
“It’s still about Dallas Willard and the Willard property. It’s about your not telling me about your involvement in a venture to get the land.”
He paled and his tongue flickered across his upper lip. Reading his face proved difficult. A tangled mixture of anger and fear. He leaned forward, placing a hand on each of his knees. The fingers whitened slightly as he gripped his khaki pants.
In a voice barely above a whisper, he said, “That’s not fair. You asked me to speculate on the value.”
“I didn’t think we were splitting legal hairs, Carl. The context was what could have caused Dallas Willard to behave as he did. Any individuals or situations that could have pressured him were certainly relevant to my questions.”
“I was not splitting legal hairs. I was respecting legal ethics. I don’t go around giving out my clients’ names or discussing their business any more than you go around saying how much somebody spent on a funeral. You should understand that.”
His words stung and the blood rushed hot in my cheeks. To hell with thermal harmony. Frustration pushed my decibel level to a near shout. “We’ve had enough god-damned funerals. And what about your responsibility to Martha Willard, and Norma Jean, and Lee, and Dallas. They were your clients too, and the bodies don’t stop there, Carl. Something is going on I don’t understand, but if there is a connection, any connection, between what happened in that cemetery and Dallas Willard’s and Fats McCauley’s death, I’ll be god-damned if I’m stopping until I’m satisfied that I know all there is to know even if it creates a problem for you, or Doug Turner, or some hot-shit wheeler-dealer named Waylon Hestor.”
The flicker of fear on Carl’s face burst into outright panic. He looked to the dining room doors as they split apart.
“Just who the hell do you think you are?” shouted a steel-haired man who strode across the foyer and into the living room. He stopped only a few inches away, towering over me, the wealthy tan on his face broken with blotches of fury. We recognized each other. He had been the distinguished mourner at Grandma Willard’s funeral.
I sat in stunned silence and then guessed the obvious. “Carl,” I said in the quietest, most civil tone I could muster. “Why don’t you introduce me to Mr. Waylon Hestor?”
Carl Romeo got to his feet, and for a split-second, he looked like he would bolt from his own house. I stayed seated, leaving both men to realize my level suited me perfectly. I was content to look up to them and found nothing intimidating in our relative positions. Psychological power stayed on the settee with me.
“Mr. Hestor, this is Barry Clayton.”
Carl waited, but neither Hestor nor I said anything. I wasn’t expecting a handshake or a “glad to meet you.” He had just heard me call him a “hot-shit wheeler-dealer.”
Carl filled the silence. “Barry, that is Mr. Clayton, was shot by Dallas Willard.”
“I know,” said Hestor. “I was standing beside him.”
Carl looked surprised for a second, and then continued, “Barry came to me thinking I might know why and could it involve Martha Willard’s land. I told him how attached Dallas was to the ridge sections of the property based upon an earlier effort to buy it. Now he apparently believes I was less than truthful because I didn’t mention your development plans.”
Waylon Hestor studied me for a few seconds. His eyes focused on my left arm and shoulder while he relived the horror of the cemetery. I assessed him as well. He looked to be in his early fifties. The green pullover short-sleeve shirt and yellow cotton slacks tagged him as the country club set. His body was trim and lean, the result of a disciplined diet and regular exercise. I suspected he took an active role in whatever interested him. I also suspected he wielded formidable economic and political power, and that he did not like to lose.
Waylon Hestor cleared his throat in an effort to reset his vocal cords to a more conversational mode. “You’re an undertaker, aren’t you?”
He asked the question without sarcasm or any implied condescension. More for confirmation.
“Yes. And I’ve had more business than I want.”
“That was a terrible tragedy up there. I hope you have a speedy recovery, Mr. Clayton. I can understand why you want answers.” He looked at Carl and frowned. “I appreciate your concern with confidentiality, Carl, but, under the circumstances, I want Mr. Clayton to know I do have an interest in the Willard property. Frankly, that’s why I attended the service—to pay my respects, sign the register book, and begin a relationship with the heirs.”
I slid over. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
“I think the dining room is more appropriate, don’t you, Carl?”
Our mutual attorney gave an audible sigh of relief.
Five or six tubes of rolled documents were stacked at one end of the dining room table. Two copies of
Architectural Digest
on either side of this elongated pyramid kept it from collapsing. An inch-thick pile of unrolled charts and survey reports fanned across the center of the table. Most looked like topographical mappings of land tracts, although their exact technical description was unknown to me. Several of the larger sheets had black and white aerial photographs clipped to them. Hand-drawn red lines on each photo identified an area of particular significance, probably corresponding to the attached surveyor’s plot.
I walked full circle around the table, looking for anything that would put me on familiar ground. Even the aerial shots offered nothing in the way of recognizable landmarks.
“This mess is a process,” said Waylon Hestor. “A process of prioritization.”
“Housing developments?” I asked.
“One residential community to start with.” He walked to the table, rolled back the top two sheets of drawings and pointed to an aerial composite.
Across the upper left corner ran a two-lane highway with a cleared circular area beneath it. There I saw the roofs of migrant shanties and an old school bus parked in a dirt lane connecting the camp to the paved road. A dotted line had been drawn from the highway through the school bus and shanties into the middle of the wooded terrain.
Waylon Hestor’s broad hand and stubby fingers swept an ellipse around the picture. “As things stand now, most likely my land out on Walnut Hollow Road. You see, my investors and I don’t have the kind of capital to take on more than one project at a time. Sure, I own three tracts, but it is the investment company that’s got to put in the roads, survey the lots, create a marketing plan, and sell the real estate. Carl and I are determining which tract will have the lowest start-up costs, whether it be road construction, sewer and water lines, or environmental impact studies.”
“And how about return on investment?” I asked. “Isn’t that what it’s all about? Keep your costs down and your prices up? The Willard property has more than a little to do with pricing, particularly if the migrant camp beside it is closed.”
“Indirectly.” He looked back at Carl, who still stood just inside the double doors.
“We’re willing to lay that out for you, Barry,” said Carl. “There’s nothing to hide.”
“Then let me take a stab at it,” I said. “Mr. Hestor, all your property borders migrant camps. No coincidence. In fact, you probably bought it cheap because of that proximity. A migrant camp is not a desirable neighbor to an exclusive residential community. You’re smart enough to take the long-range view that someday, when those camps are gone, the value of your land jumps immediately. So, regardless of those development costs you’ve just outlined, the lot prices increase without you spending an extra nickel. A government recommendation for centralization can make that happen. You work quietly behind the scenes so the politics come together, and you and Carl start working on the Willards to sell their land. It’s a tract you don’t own, but fits in with your plans. Only Dallas won’t budge. In fact, he thinks the migrant camps are directly tied into the deal somehow and begins taking out his hostility on the workers.”
I looked from Hestor to Carl Romeo. Neither seemed concerned. They simply waited patiently for me to finish.
“So, his brother and sister get the grandmother to leave the property in such a way that Dallas can be out-voted. And you don’t tell him anything about the new will, Carl. Then Grandma Martha dies. Dallas thinks everything is like his grandmother promised in that sketch, but someone tells Dallas the truth. That causes him to come to your office, where your secretary confirms his fears. When he finds out his brother and sister can sell the land, he makes plans to kill them.”
“That’s an interesting theory, Mr. Clayton.” Waylon Hestor actually smiled. “Part of it might be true. I can’t know what Dallas Willard thought or what his family told him. I don’t know why he should think the migrants had anything to do with it. I do know I neither spoke with him nor instructed anyone else to.”
He waved his hands over the table. “This is what I like to do. Take something from an idea to a finished project. Sure, I want to make money. And yes, bottom line, that’s why I have an interest in the government consolidating the migrant camps so that property like the Willards’ becomes more valuable. At least that’s the way it started.”
“What changed?” I asked.
“Everything changed. Now buying the Willard land also means buying lakefront property when the new reservoir is filled.” He gestured toward another aerial photograph. This larger one included several ridges with a blue-coded oval superimposed over the valley between them. It depicted the expected shoreline when the Broad Creek dam was completed. “That means double maybe even triple appreciation,” continued Hestor, “and now I’m competing with Ridgemont Power and Electric who wants the property just as badly. Hell, they don’t want to protect the watershed, they want to sell lakefront lots and homes like they’ve done with every other hydro-electric lake they’ve ever created.”
I heard the anger come back in his voice.
He heard it too and sighed. “But, the money isn’t life or death to me. As for the government, you flatter me that I exercise any control. I’ve been to a few hearings and seen the county and federal bureaucrats in action on the migrant camp consolidation. Yes, they’ll probably agree on a centralized site, but I had nothing to do with it. If anything, my lobbying would have hurt that proposal. Others would draw the same conclusion you have and figure I was only out to make a quick buck.”