Felonious Jazz Page 7

  But early Monday, the owners of the dog they called “Beebee” returned from an evening out to dinner to find their Mill Run Estates home ransacked by burglars – and Beatrice dead on the kitchen floor, apparently poisoned. It was the first of two apparently connected burglary/pet executions…

  Jeff pulled up the main story:

  The heads of the two families whose Mill Run homes were burglarized early this week are both major players in a controversial plan to turn a Rocky Falls mobile home park into an upscale subdivision on Drying Barn Road.

  Mickey Reuss, the subdivision developer, lives at 105 Mill Run Way. Dean Hegwood, owner of the framing subcontractor Reuss has hired to work on his homes, lives at 111 Mill Run Way.

  The Hegwood family’s cat, Porcupine, was discovered dead Tuesday after a burglary. The Reuss’ golden retriever Beatrice, was found dead after a burglary at the Reuss home the day before (see sidebar).

  Sources close to the investigation refused to comment on the possible connection.

  Jeff cursed and threw his wireless computer mouse against the window, and it bounced into the foot well of his desk. He snatched up his phone and called her desk number, which he’d written on the yellow legal pad by his phone. She picked up on the first ring.

  “You fucking piece of shit.”

  “What the hell is your problem?”

  “You broke our deal.”

  “What?”

  His hand strangled the phone receiver. He spat the words through gritted teeth: “I gave you the doggie cancer angle. In exchange, you agreed to wait on the trailer park thing!”

  “Our deal was before the framing contractor, two doors down from Mickey Reuss’ place, turned up with a dead cat of his own, graffiti of his own, and another solid connection to the same subdivision project. I didn’t end up needing confirmation from you.”

  “That doesn’t mean it has anything to do with the burglaries!”

  “It doesn’t matter, and that’s not what I wrote. I wrote that they’re both connected to the project and that you and the freaking cops won’t say boo about whether it has any bearing or not.”

  A sour coffee taste backed up into Jeff’s mouth. When he realized she had a point, it only made him more furious. She had been clever not to mention last night that she was going to print the trailer park angle, and he hadn’t confirmed with her then that the arrangement was still intact.

  “I want that correction.”

  “You already got it. Page 2 of today’s Rocky Falls Progress. ‘A story Tuesday gave an incorrect title for J. Davis Swaine of the Cross Baker Allison law firm. He is a legal investigator.’ I sucked it up. You don’t have to call my damn editor. And I can’t imagine how you can sit there this morning and act like I’ve been anything but extremely sweet to you.”

  Jeff sat in silence, angry at himself, he realized.

  Caroline spoke first. “Look, I really want you to know that I wasn’t trying to screw you.” She said it without a trace of irony. “Remember, I gave you the e-mail.”

  He looked over at the envelope with the charity e-mail. “Look, never mind. I got to go.”

  He slammed the handset into the cradle.

  Sixteen

  Morning sunlight sneaked through gaps between the leaves overhead, and Leonard used his trowel to scoop up another trout lily and the dirt that held its roots. He carefully pushed it into a quart-size plastic pot, then added it to the plastic tray behind him – beautiful plants, dark greenish leaves with purplish specks, and a salmon- or yellow-colored bloom during this part of spring. He potted two more lilies, which filled the last slots in the tray. A hundred trays lay scattered in the woods around him, filled with different woodland plants: phlox, trillium, Sweet Betty, purple coneflowers.

  Leonard had to laugh at himself. He had never thought that the media would cover his burglaries. Burglaries happened every day, he reasoned, and as far as he knew, they weren’t in the paper unless someone got hurt. But his had that certain little touch. It was mostly the pets, he realized. And the messages on the walls.

  He was disappointed in his Progress-Leader neighborhood newsroom. Those squares had completely misrepresented his work – some type of retaliation for a land development deal? They were trying to turn him into some rival condo-building Republican? He had no idea where they’d gotten that. And the TV reporters were even worse: “Is there a serial killer of pets lose in Rocky Falls?” They’d made him out to be some kind of torturer. The whole point was that the pets hadn’t suffered, wouldn’t suffer any more.

  They were so wrong, and so far behind. The album had totally moved on. It was to be expected, Leonard figured. Critics never understood great compositions right away. It might take decades for the many of the subtleties to be appreciated.

  The TV reporters were hopeless, he figured. But maybe he could give the girl from the newspaper a little assistance. She seemed pretty sharp.

  The main point though, was that he had The Soulless Bitch’s attention now. The way to a lawyer’s heart was through her most lucrative clients, and Leonard felt like he’d heard every detail about the bigshot developer across the McHouse’s dinner table, along with how happy his wife was that the divorce was so messy and complicated and producing so many billable hours.

  Then, his wife had referred him to the new Mrs. Reuss when she needed a piano tuner, and the woman had told him about the sick dog and what they were spending on her care – and how everybody in the neighborhood “took care of their pets,” including the neighbors and their cat. When he decided to do the album, it was the first suburban outrage he decided to write a song about: “Rich Pets, Poor Kids,” even though it ended up as Track Two.

  J. Davis Swaine III. That was another dude Leonard had heard too much about over dinner. The more Leonard thought about it, that was probably who Jacob’s father was. One of those nights when Sarah was “working late at the office” something had happened… Leonard had scrutinized J. Davis’ photo and bio on the Cross Baker Allison, PA website. Good looking. Fancy prep school. TV news background. Elite college. Pretty much everything Sarah was and Leonard wasn’t.

  Well. Now, Leonard would get to see whether this smart, young zero’s chops were any match for almost 50 years of life experience. J. Davis Swaine Three might at least understand the themes Leonard was working with here.

  Leonard gulped some water from a plastic bottle. He decided to work on Christmas ferns for a while. He used his spade to transplant several dozen into gallon pots.

  It was uncomfortable to be the one digging up native plants. By right they should just keep growing in these woods, which had been theirs for millennia. But better he preserve them than let a bulldozer plow them under.

  Leonard had moved into the century-old, wood-frame house on this 40-acre parcel, which had been a family tobacco and vegetable farm until 10 years before. These 15 acres were densely wooded with birches, maples, tulip poplars and shagbark hickories along a little creek.

  The rent was just $400 because the lease was month to month. The county had re-zoned the land for a new subdivision, and as soon as the construction financing was approved, he’d get two weeks’ notice to leave. Then the bulldozers would push over the house and carve the land into cul-de-sacs. Not one tree in 50 would survive. None of these understory plants would after their habitat was altered – not without his help.

  Leonard had no idea why dudes wanted to turn this kind of beautiful country into Dallas. He stuck the shovel blade into the ground and leaned on the handle to rest. Suburbs.

  Cities, he understood. He’d never been happier than right after he’d left the military, 19 years old, and moved into a tiny apartment in pre-yuppie Greenwich Village. There was something efficient and vibrant about all those people and buildings packed so closely together, where you could jump onto the subway and get wherever you wanted to go, where there were enough people in one area to really support the arts. He especially loved New York, where he and America’s classical music – his
music – jazz, had gone to grow up.

  Leonard was tired. And he had to work again tonight. He left the shovel sticking in the ground and went inside to shower and get some sleep.

  His score was sitting here on the kitchen table, open to the page for tonight’s track. He had it all memorized, but he had a weakness for enjoying his own art on the printed page. The top of the sheet of music said, “The Natives are Priceless,” and under that, in small capitals, “L. Noblac ASCAP Bassburbanbourbonturban Music Group. All rights reserved.”

  Leonard sang the opening bass riff, his fretting hand’s fingers moving subconsciously as his vocal chords hummed the notes and he read the italicized words underneath. But these weren’t lyrics. They were the plan – the meticulously composed dance movements, so to speak, that went along with this track.

  Seventeen

  Jeff called Cooperton. “I guess you saw the press is onto the connection between our pet burglaries. What’d you find out about that minivan license plate?”

  “Hell, I figured you’z callin’ about the traffic sabotage thing.”

  “‘Traffic sabotage?’” Jeff heard a swish and pictured Cooperton contributing dark spit to a foam coffee cup. “The snarl on Rocky Falls Boulevard?”

  Instead of answering, Cooperton put the receiver down on his desk hard enough to hurt Jeff’s ear. Computer keys clicked. Soon, a new e-mail dinged into Jeff’s inbox. Cooperton picked up the phone again. “Take a look.”

  “So y’all think the traffic tie-ups are deliberate?”

  “Yep. Somebody stole a semi and a dump truck, dumped them at major intersections and shot holes in the gas tanks and into every one of the tires. Hard to do that by accident. Big damn mess.”

  “Graffiti?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “But it could be our guys again, too?”

  “Hell, buddy, I don’t know.” It took Cooperton about three minutes to explain the basics, say that the Sheriff’s Office had no suspects and report that the roads wouldn’t be cleared until mid-afternoon. They were driving a crane to the site to clear the flatbed.

  Jeff shook his head in amazement. “Thanks, buddy.”

  “Anyway, the van tag is kind of interesting,” Cooperton said. “Lady said she wasn’t in our neighborhood the night the dog died. Sent an officer to see her, and he saw the tag number on her van was totally different from the one you gave me. Somebody had switched her license plate for another one.”

  “So where’s her plate?”

  “Ran that plate and called the owner and found out her van’s being repaired at a body shop right down the street from the dead pet cases. Sure enough, it has the other license plate on it.”

  “Maybe somebody who works at the body shop?”

  “What I was thinkin’, too. Except they said the van wasn’t there the day the lady said she dropped it off overnight. It showed up a day after that. I assigned my two best detectives, but that ain’t sayin’ much. They ain’t gotten much goin’ so far, and we’re covered up with all this other shit.”

  Jeff felt like the investigation was gaining momentum. Unfortunately, the photo of the van was useless now, since the burglar wasn’t using that vehicle any more. “Any results from the pet necropsies?”

  Cooperton told him that the lab work on Beatrice showed she had been killed with an overdose of sodium phenobarbital, a drug used as a veterinary anesthetic and anti-seizure drug – and in larger doses, to euthanize animals.

  The phenobarb screen had been run on Beebee only after other tests for the cause of death came up negative. Now that the phenobarb hit had come back, the same test was being done on tissue from Porcupine.

  Jeff hung up intrigued. He did some quick Internet research and found that phenobarbital overdose was considered one of the most humane ways to put an animal down. So killing the pets wasn’t an act of sadism. Maybe it was simply a way for the burglar to keep them from attacking him or making noise. That made sense for the dog, but how much resistance would a house cat offer? Killing Porcupine seemed gratuitous, unless killing the animal was the whole point. But if so, why steal anything?

  When he dug through his inbox, there was the e-mail from the Triangle Children’s Medical Fund again. He put in a call to the Peter Wallace who had sent it, pulling the e-mail Caroline had given him from its manila envelope before Wallace picked up.

  “Appreciated the quick e-mail,” Jeff told him.

  “Least we could do. And let me tell you thank you again. How may I help you?”

  “It looks like I don’t have a record of which account the donation came from,” Jeff said, choosing his words carefully. “Could you double-check that for me? Clearly, I didn’t handle it personally.”

  Wallace put him on hold for a moment and came back. “The money came in a series of convenience store money orders in various denominations. The amount I listed in the e-mail was the total. I assumed you had a good reason to do it that way.”

  “Strange. I didn’t give instructions for money orders to be sent. I’ll have to check with folks in the office about that. How did they arrive?”

  “Well, they were in an envelope with a typed page with your name, telephone number and e-mail address, with your instruction that the donation help inner city children with diabetes. The envelope had been slid through our mail slot when we arrived at work yesterday morning.”

  Children with diabetes. “Fine, fine,” Jeff said, and he could tell the guy was nervous he’d ask for the money to be returned. “Well, thanks again for your assistance.”

  “My pleasure. I don’t believe I’ve met you, so I’d love to host a tour of our facility at your convenience. Also, we’d love to have another attorney on our board of directors.”

  “I’m not an attorney. I just work for a law firm,” Jeff said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I saw the ‘esquire’ under your signature…”

  Jeff raised an eyebrow. “Got to run.” He called the Raleigh City Clinic and asked for the development director. She was a friendly, soft-spoken woman.

  “I’m calling for Caroline Kramden to verify that you received her donation. A stack of money orders in an envelope?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. A generous donation. The largest we’ve received in some time.”

  “And you are clear on how to use the funds?”

  “To help children with cancer. Yes, sir. We have a great need in that area.”

  “Good. I wanted to make sure the note was included.”

  “Yes, of course. In fact, I sent Ms. Kramden an e-mail. Has she not received it?”

  “Ms. Kramden is a busy woman,” Jeff said. “Thanks for your help.”

  The burglars had killed the animals, stolen merchandise they could sell to raise the approximate amount spent on their medical care, then donated the proceeds to two charities to help children with the same ailments, Jeff guessed. And they’d given the donations in the names of two people they’d gotten from Caroline’s story about the dog, one of whom was erroneously listed as an attorney.

  * * *

  So one thing Caroline knew she had to figure out was what in the world was the Knox Family Trust, and who were the real people behind it? That was the legal entity that owned the trailer park that Mickey Reuss was turning into a subdivision. State records listed a Raleigh attorney as the registered agent for official mailings, but that guy had refused to put her in touch with or identify any of the trustees.

  Neither her editor nor the newspaper archives seemed to know about any well-to-do family around Raleigh with that surname. It wasn’t some old tract of farmland that had stayed in the family, either. The Knox Family Trust had bought the trailer park just five years ago. And the previous owner had died, so she couldn’t ask him.

  Odd – and frustrating. Her reporter’s intuition said that once she found a member of the Knox family, she might learn more about who would seek revenge on the builder. It was in the trust’s interest to expose that person, get them in jail and move the transaction along – the
sale of the land hadn’t yet closed, public records showed.

  Caroline noticed a new e-mail in her inbox just as she was about to stand up from her desk for the day. She tucked her hair behind her ear and clicked the subject line.

  “Pretty good story about the dog today,” the message began. “That’s the good news. But I bet there was more to it than what you wrote. And I’m not sure you’re on the right track about the real estate development angle. If you want my opinion, there’s an artist at work in Rocky Falls and he is using these crimes and these pets for making a statement. I am a artist myself and I may be able to help you get ensight on what is occuring.”

  Caroline flinched at the syntax and misspellings but kept reading.

  “I think you are a very smart and bright reporter, and I would be happy to give you an interview. I am looking forward to reading what you write in the paper tomorrow. Write me back at this address. -- Leonard.”

  The guy’s e-mail address was bassburbanbourbonturban@aol.com. Another Raleigh good ’ol boy who liked to fish and drink whiskey and probably sculpt bears out of tree trunks – but who couldn’t string a sentence – thought he could offer insight on the crime of the decade. She deleted the message, powered down the computer, and waved at her editor as she headed for the door.

  Eighteen

  Leonard Noblac drove a Ryder panel truck – his vehicle of the day – to his new job at DIY Warehouse. It was a regional chain store that competed with Lowe’s and Home Depot. He parked the truck near Lawn & Garden and went inside.

  He punched his code into the electronic time clock. He was early. The digital readout said, “21:55, ARRIVE E. GRANT.” He walked past the customers who hadn’t heeded announcements that the store was closing.

  In Receiving, his new supervisor, Robert, greeted him. “Hey Eddie.”