Ricky hopped from her stool and headed for the door, pulling cigarettes and a lighter from the breast pocket of her coveralls. Standing in the open doorway, she fired one up. She exhaled a plume of blue smoke before she continued. “Mr. Spears struggled to maintain the real estate development company, but when the economy took a downturn, and the recession punched a hole in the housing bubble, he was forced into bankruptcy. Eventually, he lost his upscale family home. You remember that house—it was the one Dr. Al-Serafi bought, and that your bank financed.”
Rhetta’s heart knocked against her rib cage at the memory of Doctor Hakim Al-Serafi. He was a customer of Missouri Community Bank Mortgage and Insurance who’d been killed in a car wreck earlier this year. His death led to the chain of events that caused Rhetta to lose Cami. She shuddered at the memory of Al-Serafi’s death. She eyed Ricky’s cigarette longingly. Although she’d vowed to quit smoking, she hadn’t managed to succeed yet. She wouldn’t, however, let Ricky or Woody know how often she gave in to her cravings.
Now, she understood Ricky’s hesitation in calling the police.
“All right, I understand your concerns, but we need to call the police right now,” Rhetta said, groping around inside her bulky shoulder purse for her cell phone. She glanced at her watch. “I’ll stay here with you when they come, since it’s my car, and all.”
Woody looked up from his scrutiny of the found objects on the workbench. “Uh, Rhetta? Look at this wrench,” he said, pointing to the one that Ricky had found in the fender well. “Is that dried blood?”
Chapter 2
Rhetta turned to Ricky. “Please tell me you still had your vinyl gloves on when you picked this up?” She edged toward the discolored wrench that Woody was studying. He might be right. There was something on it that she couldn’t identify.
“Of course. I already told you I did,” Ricky answered, joining Rhetta at the workbench. All three locked eyes on the wrench.
Rhetta broke the stare and groped in her purse until she located her phone. “Where’s your phone book?” Ricky tugged it out from under the shop phone at the end of the workbench and handed it over.
“Shouldn’t you call 9-1-1?” asked Woody, his eyes still riveted on the wrench.
“I don’t see where this is an actual emergency, considering Griffith has been gone over fifteen years. It’s not like finding this will bring him back.” She thumbed through the pages. “Here’s the number.” She punched the keypad of her cell phone.
“Cape Girardeau Police Department,” said a crisp female voice.
“Uh, yes, this is Rhetta McCarter. May I please speak to Sergeant Abel Risko?” Rhetta had met Sergeant Risko a few months back, so his name popped into her head.
“Hold please.” The dispatcher placed the call on hold.
In a minute, a gravelly male voice came on. “This is Risko.”
“Sergeant, this is Rhetta McCarter. I’m not sure if you remember me. Anyway, I’m here with my friend Ricky Lane at Fast Lane Muscle Cars in Gordonville. She’s working on an old Camaro for me, and when she began taking it apart, she found Malcom Griffith’s wallet inside a fenderwell.”
Risko paused a moment. “I remember you, Mrs. McCarter.” He cleared his throat. “Did you say Malcom Griffith? The guy that disappeared several years back?”
“That’s right. I know it’s Griffith’s because all his ID is still in the wallet.”
Risko let out a soft whistle. “As intriguing as that discovery sounds, Gordonville is in the county, so you need to notify the Sheriff’s office in Jackson. Hold on, and I’ll transfer you.”
Rhetta should have known to look up the county sheriff. She must’ve allowed herself to get rattled at the discovery. Gordonville was a small community in Cape Girardeau County, definitely not in the city limits of Cape Girardeau. She sighed. She wouldn’t tell Randolph she called the wrong agency. She wondered if Risko really did remember her from interviewing her after she’d found Randolph’s friend, Professor Peter LaRose, dead in his apartment earlier this summer.
“Isn’t Gordonville in the county jurisdiction?” asked Woody.
Rhetta glared at him. “Now, you remind me.”
When the Cape Girardeau County sheriff’s deputy answered, she repeated what she’d told Risko.
“Thank you, ma’am. I’ll send an officer to pick it up in the morning. This is a pretty old case, so I’ll check and see who will have jurisdiction. Meanwhile, don’t let anyone handle the wallet, or the other items. And don’t do any more to that car until we check it out.” He asked her for the address and the phone number where the car was located, along with her information.
After agreeing to comply with the officer’s request. Rhetta disconnected. “He sounds almost annoyed that this stuff showed up,” she said, and bent over to study the wrench. “And of course, just as I feared, he said not to do anything more on the car until they check it out. That doesn’t sound good.”
She resisted an urge to snatch up the wrench and examine it more closely, and to pick up Griffith’s wallet and tear into it. Pointing to the items, she said to Ricky, “Can you leave this stuff right here until tomorrow? He said he’d send someone to get it in the morning.”
“Sure, no problem.” Then, grinning, Ricky said, “Come over here and let me show you what progress I’m making.” She tugged Rhetta back to the car.
“Are you sure this is progress?” Rhetta ran her hand over the sanded-down, stripped out metal shell.
“I’m nearly ready to paint, so you bet, that’s progress.”
Rhetta eyed the car. Would it ever look as good as Cami? She missed her two-toned blue Rally Sport with the white leather interior. She and Randolph had done most of the interior restoration themselves. She didn’t want Ricky, or Woody, to think she was entertaining maudlin thoughts about losing Cami. She fished around in her purse for a tissue, and blew her nose. “Allergies are really bad this year,” she said, tossing the tissue into the nearby trashcan.
“You’re going to love this color.” Ricky picked up a six-inch square piece of sheet metal painted an electric blue.
Rhetta nodded. She hoped she’d come to love this replacement. She knew it would be beautiful. But would it capture her heart the way Cami had? This Z28 had T-tops, and more features. Ricky promised to jazz up the interior with a custom console with cup holders, charging stations for her cell phone and an iPod dock.
“It’s great,” Rhetta said, and hope she sounded eager. She’d not only lost her car, but with it her purse, phone and most precious of all, a locket that had belonged to her deceased mother.
“I’ve been searching on eBay for a rear bumper cover, but can’t find one reasonably priced, so I’m going to order a new one. Actually, the new ones are made of fiberglass instead of urethane, so a new one will look much better anyway. At first, I thought I could repair the two big breaks in the original, but I don’t think it will look good patched. If it cracks again after painting, it will look really bad.”
“Did the car have a rear-ender?” Rhetta wasn’t keen on the idea that the car may have been wrecked from behind.
“No, I don’t think so. The funny thing is, it’s only the outer bumper cover that’s broken. Nothing under the car, like the supports, or especially the gas tank, or the inner bumper, show any signs of being in a wreck. Frankly, it looks like some dummy pushed the car with another bigger vehicle, like a pickup.” She walked to the bumper that lay on the floor, and pointed to the damaged area. “See that?”
Rhetta squatted to inspect the damage. Sure enough, even to her lesser trained eye, it appeared that something had pushed the car from behind. There were two large perpendicular cracks that went completely through the urethane. They could have been made from bumper protrusions like bumper guards. She pushed on the cracks and they yielded inward. “Maybe whoever owned this Z got it stuck somewhere and got a push from a neighbor in a tractor or pickup. No matter, I bow to your expertise. We’ll toss this one.”
&nb
sp; Glimpsing the time on Ricky’s wall clock, she called out to Woody. “We’d better get back to the office. LuEllen will want to go to lunch soon.”
* * *
“I need to run some errands,” Rhetta said as she dropped Woody off. She recognized the look Woody shot her as he got out. It was his right-eyebrow-raised suspicious look.
“I’m just going to the post office, and the bank. I’ll be right back,” she promised.
He turned back to glare at her. “No, you’re not. I know that look. You’re going to go do something about what Ricky found, and I want to go.”
“No, I’m not, Woody. I’m going to the post office.”
“Uh-huh,” he said and got out. As soon as he stomped through the office door, she grabbed her cell phone.
“Ricky? I just got an idea. Grab your metal detector. I want to go to the barn where we got the Z and look around.” She aimed Streak right back toward Gordonville.
Chapter 3
Rhetta blasted the air conditioner as high as it could go. She’d set it on moderately comfortable for Woody, since he always said riding with her was like riding in a refrigerator. For herself, she loved when the fan whipped the frigid air straight at her face. She sang along to the oldies blasting on her satellite radio as she inched her way across town again to Gordonville.
Kingshighway traffic was heavier than usual, with folks who were probably running errands in anticipation of the Labor Day weekend coming up. Being Friday, and the last day before the three-day weekend, all the procrastinators in Cape had apparently decided to get their barbeque supplies at the same time. The entrance to the shopping center was as crowded as it was during the Christmas shopping stampedes. She wove through traffic lined up to turn into the shopping mall.
Once past the mall, she pushed the accelerator up to sixty and flew into Gordonville. She slammed on the brakes as she remembered the twenty-five mile per hour speed limit along Main Street. This time, the town constable eyeballed her from his favorite stakeout spot. Breathing a sigh of relief when she passed him and his blue lights didn’t fire up, she coasted at twenty-five until the she passed the Thanks for Visiting, Please Come Again sign. Then, she floored it. Or at least as much “flooring” as the SUV was capable of. It didn’t exactly burn any rubber like Cami did.
She thought about the wallet and the wrench. She couldn’t conceive of a reason why they would have been in the Z28. She thought back to the day she and Ricky had taken Ricky’s truck and trailer and gone after the Z. She tried to picture the inside of the barn, but couldn’t recall anything unusual in or around the area when she and Ricky had finally loaded the car onto Ricky’s flatbed trailer. After Ricky had backed as close as she could to the barn door, they had had to push the car to the doorway, so that Ricky could hook up the winch. When the car proved too much for the two of them, with the tires being flat and embedded into the dirt, Ricky enlisted the help of three construction workers at the highway project down the road to come and help. Offering a couple of six packs of beer was all it took to persuade the men to push the car into position, and the winch did the rest. Three brawny men and two petite women eventually got the job done.
She was so engrossed in her musings that she nearly passed up Ricky’s road, and braked hard to avoid missing it. She swerved hard to the left, irritating the driver of the red Mustang convertible right behind her. He saluted her with his middle finger as he roared past.
* * *
Ricky had closed the shop and was outside waiting when Rhetta rolled up. Ricky stowed the metal detector in the back of the Trailblazer, closed the hatch and slid into the passenger seat.
“It’s cold enough to hang beef in here,” Ricky said, fastening her seat belt, then turning the vent away from her face. “Go back. I think I know where my parka is.”
“Very funny,” Rhetta said. She reached for the climate control and turned the temperature up to 73 degrees. It had been set on 60. Lately, those annoying kindnesses called “hot flashes” struck randomly, and when they did, she required plenty of cold air. Randolph had learned not to protest. He usually just carried a sweatshirt, and let her turn the air as cold as she needed, both in the car and at home.
“What are we looking for?” Ricky said.
“I’m not really sure, but there might be something else out there that could be a clue to Malcom Griffith’s disappearance.” Rhetta glanced over her shoulder and pulled out of Ricky’s driveway. At the end of the gravel road, she turned right on to the main road going through town. After easing though, she punched it up to fifty-five.
Within minutes she turned onto another gravel road. In the distance, she spotted several huge earth-moving machines.
“Look over there,” Ricky said, pointing to the equipment. “Jeremy’s company is building Oak Forest Subdivision. They’ve got Plat One nearly ready to start installing the improvements.” All of the area around where the barn was located had been cleared and platted. There were survey sticks marking lot corners, and others marking the proposed streets.
“Have they torn down the old barn yet?” Rhetta asked, turning into the tree-lined driveway. The subdivision entry used the same scenic driveway lined with tall white oaks that once led to the farmhouse.
“Not yet. Jeremy said an old boy from Arkansas wants the barn and is going to come up here and tear it down piece by piece, and haul the thing away.” She clicked her tongue. “Now that’s a big job. But he paid handsomely, according to Jeremy, to buy this piece of history.” She made air quotation marks with her index and middle fingers as she said “piece of history.”
“Hmm, I guess it’s hard to find these old wood barns anymore, especially if they’re in good shape,” Rhetta said as they arrived at the end of the lane, parking in front of a recently leveled bare, earthen spot. She remembered the old farmhouse that had stood there. It had been recently razed.
Ricky grabbed the metal detector and waited for Rhetta to change out of her city-slicker sandals into barn-exploring tennis shoes. Rhetta kept a pair of running shoes in her car for those days when she went to Cape LaCroix Creek Park to walk the trails for a break from office stress. She wore off-white capris, probably not the best choice for barn snooping, but much better than her usual business attire—a dress or skirt.
With Rhetta’s tennies tied and her sandals stowed in the cargo hatch, the two angled toward the old wooden barn.
“Jeremy is developing this whole subdivision?” Rhetta asked, scoping out the oak-lined fields around the barn.
“He isn’t doing it on his own. He has two partners,” Ricky said. “The partners, slash investors, are actually from California. The bulk of the responsibility is on him, though. They send the money and come out here about every six weeks to check on the progress. The company is called JS Properties.”
Rhetta remembered seeing a sign as they drove down the lane. It bore a green oval logo containing the letters JSP in the middle. She recognized the logo from several billboards around town.
They stopped at the walk-through door at the gable end of the two-story wood barn and peered at a freshly installed padlock.
“That’s strange,” Ricky said, taking the lock into her hand, and jiggling it. “There’s nothing in this old barn anymore. I wonder who padlocked it. I doubt Jeremy would have.” She led the way around to the long side of the barn to a sliding door. She tugged it, but it held fast. “This one must be locked from the inside,” she announced as Rhetta reached her.
Ricky glanced up. “I can climb through there,” she said, and pointed to an opening approximately two feet by three feet just above their heads. She stepped back several paces, ran at the barn, and leapt, gripped the ledge and easily pulled herself over and through.
In a moment, she slid the door open.
Rhetta picked up the metal detector and ventured in. She gazed around, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dim interior. The solid old barn allowed little daylight to penetrate. Long vertical slivers of sunlight oozed through the s
paces between the wallboards, casting shadows along the dirt floor. Dust motes danced in the skinny rays, and a musty, stale hay odor clung to the walls.
Inside, the temperature was significantly cooler than the late summer heat of the day. When her eyes had adjusted, Rhetta recognized the impression in the ground where the Z28 had been parked under a tarp. “Turn on that thing and check over here,” she said, handing Ricky the metal detector.
Ricky began a sweeping motion in front of her as she walked slowly around the area where the car had been stored. The metal detector stayed mostly silent, with just an occasional feeble whimper.
After circling the area, and finding nothing but a few bolts and rusty nails, they stopped, and Ricky turned the machine off.
“I thought for sure we’d find something else, another clue,” Rhetta said. She wiped perspiration off her forehead with the back of her hand. Her hair had begun to stick to her face. Although initially the barn air had felt cooler, there was no escaping the humidity.
Ricky propped the metal detector against a wall, wiped her face with a tissue and stuffed it into her pocket. “There’s nothing much here. I guess we should go.”
Rhetta eased over to the spot where the car sat for so long, and squatted to study the ground. She spotted the twin drag marks where she remembered pushing the car. The rims had dug channels into the earth. There were four deep wheel impressions on the ground where the car had rested for so many years.
She studied them, then inched her way backward, examining the ground a few feet back. “Ricky, come over here a second. Look at this.” Ricky hunkered down to join Rhetta, who pointed at four faint impressions. “What does that look like?”
“It looks like car wheel impressions,” Ricky answered. She stood, studied the surrounding area and stepped gingerly away. “It looks as though the car may have first sat right here for a time, and then was moved forward about a car length.” She pointed to the fainter set of impressions.
Rhetta stood. “Let’s not mess up these tracks.”