4 The Marathon Murders Page 4

  Chapter 6

  Arthur Liggett lived in a large two-story brick off Blair Boulevard, a main artery into an area of once genteel homes not far from the sprawling Vanderbilt University campus. Liggett was one of the few long-time residents who had not fled to the suburbs in various waves of migration that followed World War II. Renters or upwardly mobile singles and families who had bought in during recent decades occupied most of the picturesque old houses.

  A squarish, three-story yellow brick with a porch that ran the full width in front, its roof anchored by six white Ionic columns, Grandpa Liggett’s house featured a small, flat-roofed projection with two windows that likely opened onto a partial top floor. In contrast to most of the homes along the street, this one boasted a driveway of two concrete strips at one side. I parked my Grand Cherokee behind Kelli’s rental car shortly after noon. We headed for the front steps.

  Pressing a button beside the oversize mahogany door produced the sound of chimes. A Kelli Kane different from the one we had encountered earlier opened the door. This was probably closer to the real Kelli, shorn of the suave public demeanor. She wore a sweat-dampened, faded Yellowstone National Park tee shirt over well-worn brown jeans. Floppy sandals adorned a strong pair of feet with bright red toenails. I suspected the earthy young woman with a certain natural charm was seldom seen in the clandestine world she occupied before coming to Nashville. At the moment, however, the charm appeared a bit bent out of shape, as evidenced by the anger that darkened her eyes.

  “Come on in,” she said, waving a hand. “I’ve been searching for identity clues they might have left behind.”

  I looked past her into the room. “What did you find?”

  “Zilch.”

  A strong smell of tobacco smoke greeted us just inside the door. Now that I had become a confirmed non-smoker, the smell was enough to bring a twitch to my nose. It also told me the origin of Arthur Liggett’s emphysema. In the living room, elaborate ornamentation on the chairs and a large sofa struck me as French provincial, though I admit I’m no authority on period furniture styles. I knew Jill would straighten me out if I had it wrong. Tapestries bearing ancient Roman scenes hung on the walls. I suspected the décor had not been altered in many years. The only modern touch was a large screen TV at one side of the room. A massive brass umbrella stand with some kind of figure on top stood near the door.

  “The worst mess is in here,” Kelli said, leading us down a hallway papered in subdued brown stripes to a room her grandfather used as an office. She moved with an athletic grace that hinted at a strict fitness regimen. I had worked out with fitness machines at an earlier stage in life. Now the closest I got to weights was in weight watching.

  Drawers had been pulled out of a file cabinet, their contents dumped on the floor. Books and papers were strewn about, swept from shelves along one wall. It looked like the aftermath of a hurricane down in the neighborhood of our Florida condo, but it didn’t appear to be the work of professionals. For one thing, the chair and sofa cushions in the living room hadn’t been cut open.

  “I’ll have to get this cleaned up before Grandpa comes home,” she said, shaking her head. “I’d hate for him to see what they’ve done. He’s an exceptionally neat and organized person. This would kill him.”

  “By the way,” I said, “yesterday you made the comment that as long as you’d known him, your grandfather had never been a complainer. That sounds like you haven’t known him all that long. What’s the story?”

  She arched a well-sculptured eyebrow. “You’re quite perceptive, Greg. Warren told me you had the reputation of being an excellent investigator. I can see why.”

  “Be careful you don’t give him the big head,” Jill said, grinning as she folded her arms.

  Kelli leaned against her grandfather’s large oak roll-top desk, its pigeonholes now bare thanks to the burglar’s handiwork. “My dad, Vincent Kane, ran a liquor store. That made him persona non grata to the Liggetts, particularly my grandmother, who was a straight-laced Southern Baptist. She would have nothing to do with him and absolutely forbade my mother to marry him.”

  Jill gave me a knowing look. “I can sympathize with your mother. My father tried to talk me out of marrying Greg. He didn’t have a very high regard for career military men. He finally gave in when I refused to budge. Obviously, your mom ignored her mother’s protests, too.”

  “She did, but Grandma refused to relent. Mom and Dad wound up eloping and moving to Seattle. I had no contact with my grandparents until after I graduated from college.”

  “And went to work for the congressman,” I said without thinking.

  Her glance bore an icy sheen. “I thought we had a deal.”

  “We only checked a couple of open sources,” I said with a shrug. “Newspapers, to be exact. You were chronicled in the press for several years. Practically a minor celebrity.”

  Her frown deepened. “Then I’m sure you found out about John Hunter.”

  “And his death at the hands of terrorists. We noticed that Kelli Kane Hunter faded from the headlines after that. I saw no reason to look any further.”

  She gave a mirthless laugh. “You would have found nothing. Unfortunately, there was no way to erase my past. My parents were killed in the San Francisco earthquake in 1989. Not long after that, my grandmother died. Grandpa Liggett retired a couple of years later. He tried to stay in touch with me after that. I was living in Europe at the time, but I kept in contact as best I could. It’s been more difficult in recent years.”

  Kelli brushed supple fingers across her damp forehead and turned toward the doorway. “Damn this heat. Would you like something cold to drink? I think I’ll run up Grandpa’s electric bill and keep the air conditioner running full blast.”

  Compared to outside, it felt fine in here. She stopped to adjust the thermostat as we followed her into a large traditional kitchen that hadn’t been trashed like the office. A few dish towels lay where they had been tossed from a cabinet drawer.

  “Grandpa obviously doesn’t do a lot of cooking,” Kelli said. She opened a refrigerator that looked almost bare and took out three soft drink cans. Jill chose a Coke. Being a non-cola person, I took the Sprite. Kelli set them on the table and brought us glasses. “Let’s just sit here and talk, if you don’t mind.”

  Jill and I joined her at a vintage kitchen table with a plastic top that reminded me of one I ate at as a wartime tyke in St. Louis. Kelli scored several points with me when she moved a crowded ash tray from the table to a counter. Opening a cardboard box filled with letter-sized envelopes, she pulled one out.

  “These are the letters I found in the attic, the ones from my great-great-grandmother. Her younger sister had bundled them up and stored them. Grandpa said a cousin found the box when her mother died. She recently mailed it to him, but he hadn’t had time to read any of them.”

  “Do they date back to the time Sydney disappeared?” Jill asked.

  “Right.” She glanced at the envelope in her hand. “This one sets the stage. It was written early in 1914.”

  She opened the flap and pulled out a brittle sheet of paper filled with dainty penmanship in blue-black ink. She read:

  “Dearest Sister,

  “Things have not been going at all well in Nashville. As you know, Sydney does not like to talk business at home. He spends much of his time tinkering with his woodworking hobby, building cabinets and that sort of thing. But he has been so gloomy of late that I finally prodded him into telling me something about what was wrong. Still, he would only say some things were being done at the company that were not right, and he was afraid Marathon may not survive. I asked what sort of things and he would only say it involved money, what else? I got the impression his boss was doing something that he didn’t approve of.

  “It is affecting young Henry, too. His father has been too preoccupied to take him hunting, which he always loved to do. I am quite worried. I hope things get resolved for the better soon. I look forward to your reply.
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  “Your loving sister, Grace.”

  “Henry was Albert’s father, right?” Jill asked.

  “Yes. Grandpa was about fifteen years old then. Henry must have married at nineteen or twenty. Grandpa was born in 1920.” She thumbed through the envelopes. “Look at these four-cent stamps with Jefferson and Washington on them. Quite a difference from what we have to pay today.”

  “The letters were written with an old nib pen, too,” Jill said. “I’ll bet you never used one of those.”

  Kelli looked up. “My mother had a fountain pen when I was little, but I cut my writing teeth on a ballpoint.” She pulled out another envelope. “This is from one written a week after the disappearance.”

  She opened the letter and read:

  “We still have no word from Sydney. They’re saying awful things about him. His boss at Marathon claims he took a lot of money and some papers from company files. They say he embezzled funds and ran off, but that’s preposterous. The day before he disappeared, he told me he had found something terribly disturbing. He wasn’t sure who to tell about it, things were in such a mess.”

  Kelli looked up. “She must have been referring to those papers that Pierce Bradley had.”

  I leaned an elbow on the table. “That would be my guess.”

  “Have you read all the letters?” Jill asked.

  “No. There are quite a number of them. I’ll check out the rest as soon as I can.”

  I glanced at my watch, saw it was around one. “We’d better get moving. We need to take another look around Bradley’s place up in Trousdale County. Could you make copies of any letters that discuss Sydney’s disappearance or the problems at Marathon Motors? They should help us with some background.”

  “Sure. Warren will be back this afternoon. I’d imagine we can find a Kinko’s somewhere nearby.”

  I took a final swig of my Sprite and pushed back from the table. “Have you met any of the neighbors around here? Maybe one of them saw somebody snooping about while you were gone. A car in the driveway maybe.”

  “I haven’t met any of the neighbors, but I think they’re young couples who work.”

  “We’ll knock on a couple of doors, then head for Walnut Grove and see what we can unearth about Mr. Bradley. We should be able to get a better reading on his house in the daylight.”

  Kelli joined Jill and me as we started toward the front of the house. I noticed the air conditioner had kicked in full blast, dampening the pervasive smell of tobacco smoke, and lending a touch of cold storage locker to the living room. Her mood turned gloomy as we approached the front door.

  “Grandpa is having a difficult time with this nursing home stay. I sure hope you can give him some good news soon on this Marathon Motors business.”

  I hoped so, too, though at the moment that task seemed on a par with attempting to start a ninety-year-old touring car.

  Chapter 7

  After getting no response to our knocks at the houses flanking Arthur Liggett’s, we headed across town to Gallatin Road. With Jill complaining of the tummy rumbles, I stopped at one of a dozen assorted restaurants in the area around RiverGate Mall in Madison. I had no objections, of course, since the pressure of a difficult case always ratcheted up my appetite. Jill could be counted on to call my hand if I tried to overdo it.

  We chose one of those places where the patrons tossed peanut hulls on the floor. I hated crunching through all that litter but knew the food would make up for it.

  Wrong.

  After we were seated, Jill glanced at the menu, then tilted her head. “Why don’t we eat light and I’ll fix us something good for supper.”

  I’d been thinking about a nice chunk of prime rib, but with my private gourmet chef making such an offer, I couldn’t refuse. While we waited for salads and half a sandwich, Jill targeted in on the problem at hand.

  “After talking to his sister,” she said, “do you still think somebody with an interest in those papers got to Bradley?”

  I leaned back in the booth and crossed my arms. “Let’s consider the alternative. I suppose if he left his sister’s in a rage, he might have been mad enough to toss his cell phone out the window. But he has a responsible job and sounds like an intelligent man. Doesn’t strike me as something a normal person would do.”

  “I suppose not. Other than that cell phone and his not being home last night, though, we really don’t have anything to suggest that something out of the ordinary has happened, do we?”

  “We have a strong hunch, but hunches have to be backed up with facts. Let’s reserve judgment until we get a good look at his house. If we don’t find anything there, we can check the hospital or the sheriff.”

  I got high marks for not ordering dessert, and we headed toward Trousdale County around two. The sun beamed down like the red-hot eye on an electric stove, but my trusty Jeep’s air conditioner proved adequate to the challenge. By contrast, the passing parade of luckless cows had to get by with only their tails for fans. Most clustered under shade trees like Fourth of July picnickers or tested the waters of nearby ponds.

  We made it to Walnut Grove with no delays. Pulling into Bradley’s driveway, I noticed the not-too-distant sky seeded with cumulus clouds that had blossomed into towering thunderheads.

  “Typical August build-ups,” Jill said. “Not a good time for flying.”

  Holder of a commercial pilot’s license she had used in her charter air service, Jill still owned a Cessna 172 that she flew regularly, sometimes on McKenzie Investigations business.

  In the daylight, Bradley’s double-wide looked much more inviting. The neatly kept lawn bordered on a walkway lined with multi-colored rows of impatiens and begonias. Beige drapes covered the windows. I wondered momentarily about that but noted the house faced westward. We also kept our drapes closed against the afternoon sun. I saw no vehicles around the place.

  As we headed across the concrete walk toward the front door, I noticed the drapes at one window had been left with a small gap at the bottom.

  “Let’s check this out,” I said, moving toward the window.

  Jill walked up behind me as I peered inside. “Look at this, babe.” I motioned to her.

  Staring into the living room, we saw a straight chair turned onto its side. Papers lay scattered about the carpet. Except for the overturned chair, it resembled the shambles we had seen at Arthur Liggett’s.

  “Oh, my God,” Jill whispered. “This doesn’t look good at all.”

  I pushed up the bill of my Titan’s cap. “That’s for damned sure.”

  I hurried to the door and banged on it. After waiting a few moments, I took out my handkerchief, covered the knob and gently turned it. The door opened. I took a step inside and looked around. Other pieces of furniture appeared to have been shoved about and papers, magazines, books, anything that might have provided a hiding place, littered the floor. A range hood light had been left on in the kitchen. Its glow illuminated a dark, rusty splotch on the carpet in the doorway leading from the living room.

  I turned to Jill. “Stay right here. This has the look of a crime scene. Let me check closer on one thing.”

  I walked carefully across to the doorway and squatted beside what appeared to be a bloody spot just outside the kitchen. If there had been blood on the vinyl floor, someone had cleaned it up. I didn’t venture any farther. The implications left me with a deepening unease. Our case was about to get out of hand. As I turned toward the front door, I spotted another item that stopped me. A heavy wooden walking stick topped by what looked like a doorknob lay on the floor. There appeared to be blood on it, too.

  I stepped outside and closed the door.

  “What did you find?” Jill asked.

  I told her about the blood and the walking stick. Then I pulled out my cell phone. “I’m calling the sheriff.”

  I punched in 911 and soon had the dispatcher. I identified myself and asked to speak to the sheriff.

  “Sheriff Driscoll isn’t here.”

 
; “Is there somewhere I could find him? I have some important information I need to get to him.”

  “You’ll have to head out to the lake then, around Pine Cove. That’s where he and most of the deputies are.”

  “Has there been a drowning?”

  “Right. And a car in the water.”

  It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “Do you know what kind of car?”

  “They said it was an old military-style Jeep.”

  Chapter 8

  Following the dispatcher’s directions, we headed back to Highway 25 and turned toward Hartsville. After half a mile, Old Highway 25, a narrow two-lane road, angled off to the right and wound through green swaths of pasture and woodland. Jill quizzed me as I drove.

  “If it’s Bradley’s Jeep, how did it get from his house to the lake?”

  “Somebody could have driven it there with him tied up in back.” I was already stewing over the possibilities, certain in my mind that the Jeep in the lake was Bradley’s and his body was inside.

  “How did the driver get back?”

  “It would have taken two people, one in another car.”

  “So we’d have a murderer and an accomplice.”

  “Looks that way. You’re thinking like a detective, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.”

  We soon crossed a bridge where a rain-swollen creek fed into the end of the lake. After passing several scattered houses, we turned onto Boat Dock Road, then Boat Dock Lane. We finally found the gravel road that was unmarked except for a crude sign nailed to a tree. From there it was downhill the rest of the way to the lake. Not far past a small frame house that seemed to have been squeezed into the heavily wooded area, two white patrol cars sat at the side of the road. Just beyond, a narrow trail led through the trees. Looking around at all the tall evergreens, it wasn’t difficult to see why this area had been named Pine Cove.

  I pulled off as far as I could and parked behind one of the patrol cars, which had Metro Sheriff painted on the side, along with Hartsville/Trousdale County. Although the smallest county in the state area-wise, and one of the least populated, Trousdale had established a metropolitan form of government a couple of years ago with its county seat, Hartsville. We heard voices coming from the lake as we got out.