Chapter 18

 

Next morning I started a small fire in the camp grill and stood in front of it, warming my chilled limbs and thinking about what Amber and Professor Quinn had said. Despite Amber's warning, I had already decided to visit BST's office in Dill City. I also had reason to believe I knew why Bill had searched the veins before his disappearance and why he had sent me the diamond.

As a thorn in the side of corporate BST, Bill had placed himself at risk when he publicly criticized the company. From my own experience with the loggers on the mountain, the company or someone in the company possessed the necessary means to extract worrisome thorns. Circumstances had persuaded me BST had trumped up the breaking and entering charges against Bill to undermine his accusations.

Why had he become involved in the first place?

Trying to forget the nagging inconsistency and keep my anger from erupting into something I could not control, I drank instant coffee from a tin mug and forced myself to concentrate on the noisy mockingbird on a limb above me. Within the hour, I left the campground to two busy chipmunks and started toward Dill City.

Indian summer had run its course and a chill wind had finally forced me to raise the Jeep's canvas roof. Last night's rain had left tranquil puddles, some still capped with thin sheets of ice, on the blacktop. Overhead, a solitary mallard circled a farm pond. Seeing none of its brethren, it headed south alone. As I traversed the lonely road, I felt a strange kinship with the wandering duck.

Loggers and farmers in pickup trucks, having begun their daily commerce well before dawn, crowded the highway into Dill City. For the last ten miles of my trip, I followed a cattle truck, watching hapless frightened eyes peer back at me through the wooden slats. Jammed together, the cattle slipped on manure-slick wood, and tossed and bumped into each other as the truck swayed. Unlike convicts approaching the gallows they were unaware of their imminent fate, though obviously no less fearful.

Near the city limits, I took a side road that led through the little town's industrial section where bars, liquor stores, and warehouses crowded both sides of the street. A large neon beer sign bearing the name Pancho's topped one of the bars and a chopped Harley with a dented gas tank lay on its side in the gravel parking lot. I wondered if it was a hang out of the big biker.

Dirt replaced blacktop near the murky river that coursed through town. I soon reached train tracks that lay three abreast. Beside the tracks, I found the Sunrise Cafe and stopped for breakfast and the answers to a few questions.

A nearby crew loaded cargo with a forklift. Behind the little white roadside diner, the metallic clank of freight cars joining echoed like the dull ring of a broken bell. Nearly eight, most of the customers had already come and gone. The place was empty except for two old men in a corner booth. I found a spot on a red revolving stool facing the front counter and smiled at the woman leaning against the wall.

“Coffee?” she asked already tipping the lip of the pot toward the white mug in front of me.

“Please. Still serving breakfast?”

“You bet,” she said, her voice a husky imitation of Mae West.

Vera was the name on her tag, pea green the color of her rumpled uniform. She was plump and probably mid-fifties. Her hair color matched the mustard stains on her blouse. She handed me a dog-eared menu individually typed on a machine badly in need of a new ribbon.

“Bacon and two eggs. Over easy,” I said after a brief glance of the menu.

“Not from around here, are you?” she said, not bothering to record my order on her pad.

“New Orleans.”

“Visiting relatives?”

“Sightseeing,” I said. “Guess I got off the beaten path a little.”

Her throaty laugh came from deep within her big bosom. One of her front teeth was missing, the others black around the edges.

“Just a little,” she said.

Vera called my order to the unseen cook in the kitchen before bending over the counter and staring at me as I sipped hot coffee.

“So what's happening in Dill City?” I said.

“Rent and taxes. Just like every place else.”

“Too bad. Thought I might stay awhile and soak up a little local color.”

“Honey, you're close as you're going to get to any of that right here,” she said, pointing at the counter.

We both grinned at her little joke. When she returned with breakfast I said, “Gas station attendant down the road told me you have a local celebrity.”

“You bet we do. G. Gray Townsend. We had a senator straight from Washington D.C. visit him just yesterday. Served him apple pie myself, right there in that booth,” she said, pointing.

“Townsend has quite a reputation,” I said, not knowing exactly what my wild guess might produce.

“Honey, you ain't heard the half of it. That man has had every woman in Dill City. Present company excepted, of course,” she said, cupping her hand to her mouth and bending closer as she confided the last sentence in a near whisper.

“Playboy, huh?”

“Ain't the half of it. He owns Dill City and thinks every woman in it is his personal property—at least every attractive woman.”

From beneath the counter, Vera removed a timeworn photo album and flipped it open to the first page. Gray Townsend's life unfolded before me, documented by old Polaroids and yellowed newspaper clippings lovingly kept by one of the women in Dill City he supposedly never had. Pale skin of Vera's plump neck tinted noticeably pink when her fingers paused near the photo of Townsend and a young woman. They were standing arm-in-arm, the skyline of a large city behind them. It was obviously a much younger Vera. She quickly flipped the page when she caught me studying her melancholy expression. Closing the album, she shoved it back under the counter.

“A real bastard,” she said as she hurried into the kitchen.

Five minutes later the short order cook, wearing a grease-stained apron over his jeans and tee shirt and sporting a day-old growth of beard, sauntered out of the kitchen to refill my cup from the half-empty pot of coffee. Ash from the cigarette Bogarted between his lips dropped to the counter beside my plate. He didn't seem to notice.

“Don't pay no attention to Vera,” he said. “She ain't never going to get over what Townsend did to her.”

“Sorry,” I said, hearing the concern in his voice.

“Earl,” he said, shaking my hand. Without waiting for me to introduce myself he said, “You'd think a woman would forget about something happened twenty years ago.”

I was dying to ask what Townsend had done to Vera but seeing Earl's own morose expression I decided to refrain. Without prodding, he poured forth the story and it was more than I really wanted to hear.

“Townsend owns this town, the bank, the old folk's home, feedlots, paper mill, everything. Want a job in Dill City you get it from Townsend. And he likes his girls. Still keeps a few on the line. Sets them up with a car, job, and a nice place to live.” He chuckled, as if remembering something humorous. “Visits maybe once a month and don't care what they do when he ain't around.”

“Cozy arrangement,” I said.

Earl nodded and said, “He knows how to manage his women. Vera's my old lady. Guess she found out first hand.”

“Does Townsend live around here?”

“Straight up the road, about ten miles from here. Has a fancy estate up the mountain,” Earl said.

“Seems likely a powerful man like Townsend could have done lots of good for Dill City.”

Earl's reply was sarcastic and bitter. “A lot of good all right, specially if you like the stench coming from the smokestacks across the river or eating fish from the river after the crap the mill dumps into it stews them like so many prunes.”

“Maybe it's the only way to create jobs.”

“Jobs my ass. He could clean it up if he wanted. He'd feed his old widowed mother raw chicken shit if he thought it would save him a nickel.”

“Sounds like a man that would murder for a buck.”

Earl flicked an ash on the floor and glanced up from the counter. For a moment, he stared at me, assessing my use of the word murder.

“Wouldn't put it past him,” he finally said, dusting off his apron with both hands before folding them tightly against his chest.

I paid the breakfast tab and started for the door. With my hand on the knob I said, “Thanks, Earl. Tell Vera I enjoyed talking with her.”

With a sullen nod he lit another cigarette from the glowing butt in his hand and returned to the kitchen.

Before leaving Turkey Gap, I had already decided to confront Gray Townsend. I knew the only thing to gain by such a visit was the guilt I might see in his eyes—if it was there. After talking with Earl and Vera, I had a feeling it would be.

Across the river Townsend's paper mill's twin stacks belched yellow smoke into the sky and its fetid odor hit me like a kick in the chest. With burning eyes, I continued through town, hoping the wind was blowing in the opposite direction. Near the city limits, it started up a winding mountain road and found Townsend's estate near the top.

Acres of manicured yard and native stonework surrounded the large English Tudor mansion. A black Rolls convertible occupied the circular driveway. Shouts and laughter coming from the back of the house attracted my attention. I parked and got out, not bothering to knock on the front door.

An eight-foot stone fence bordered the huge backyard. Climbing over the fence, I found myself staring at a huge pool sparkling with rippling water the color of Aqua Velva. It occupied, along with cabana and redwood deck, much of the backyard. Two attractive young women clad in matching bikini bottoms and nothing else, were shouting, and splashing in the pool. Wisps of steam rose up from the heated water. Someone grasped my shoulders and wheeled me violently around.

“What the hell you think you're doing here?”

I stared up into the man's coal black eyes. Dressed in white linen pants and black pullover shirt, he looked at least six inches taller than I was. His build complemented his height, and a matching temper from the scowl on his face. Black hair pulled into a little pigtail imparted a somewhat prissy look to the large angry man. He shoved me back against the stone fence.

“I asked a question. You a peeping tom or something? Getting your rocks off?”

“I'm looking for Mr. Townsend.”

“Then why didn't you try the front door?”

“Mistake I guess. Thought I heard him back here.”

Pigtail blinked, considering if I really did have had a legitimate appointment with Townsend. Grabbing my shoulders, he shoved me toward the house. The near-naked girls in the pool continued their noisy antics, unmindful of my confrontation with Townsend's tough.

We entered the house through a sliding glass door overlooking the back patio. Oriental rugs draped polished wood floors. Vaulted ceilings with rough-hewn beams and knotty pine paneling dominated the architecture of the large house. Pigtail directed me up a massive stairway to an upstairs corridor. After following him down the hall to a double-doorway, I watched as he knocked. He entered without waiting for an answer.

It was an office with bookshelves on three walls and a giant desk in front of a wall-sized picture window overlooking the backyard pool. Someone sat behind the desk with his chair turned toward the window. He was staring at the girls swimming in the pool below.

“Mr. Townsend. I caught this creep in the backyard.” Pigtail said, “Looks like he was trying to get a better look at the girls. What do you want me to do with him?”

The man, still with his back to us, didn't answer. Unlike the young man in Vera's picture, his hair was iron gray. When he turned around, I saw the chair in which he sat was not an office chair at all. It was a wheelchair. Snowy sideburns extended below fleshy earlobes and a twisted grin locked his portly face. Little eyes, the color of lime green Jell-O, glared at me.

He said, “Get lost, Breck. I'll take care of Mr. Logan.”