Another Man's Ground--A Mystery, page 2
Old Mountain inspected every grow site before signing a contract with the owner. Its employees showed landowners exactly how to harvest the herbs. Once collected, they were picked up by company drivers and brought to the company facility in Indianapolis. There, they were tested for purity and to make sure they were indeed organic. Some people tried to cut corners and started using chemical fertilizers. Or even, heaven forbid, sprays. They certainly couldn’t have that, now could they? After testing in the lab, the herbs were transformed into whatever was necessary—powders, syrups—all in their high-tech facility. In fact, that marvel of herbal formulation was taking place right down the hall from him as they spoke. Hank stopped him there.
“Has Vern Miles’s slippery elm ever tested badly?” he asked.
He heard papers rustling.
“I pulled his whole file,” Miller said. “No, all of his quality control tests have been fine. He’s only sold us four batches. Started last spring. Spring and early summer are the best collection times for Ulmus rubra. The sap is flowing heavily and the inner bark is at its best, and is easiest to remove. He seemed keen on sustainability, so he wasn’t harvesting in the off-season. We were expecting good things from him this year.”
“Did you find him, or did he find you?”
More paper flipping. “Let’s see … he found us. Contacted us last April. We sent Lee down to certify the place. The report says he’s planning to add different crops, see what else he can grow. But the elms were already there, obviously, and ready to go, so he started with those right away.”
“Do you know why he chose your company instead of one of the others?”
“Huh. No idea. Our sterling reputation, maybe?”
The guy certainly wasn’t nervous anymore, Hank thought as Miller chuckled at his own humor. Get people talking about their passions, and they loosened up. Happened every time. And relaxed people didn’t think as much about what they were saying.
“So you must have herb growers all over,” Hank said. “How many states do you cover? What herbs do they grow?”
Miller gave him a list. All over the Midwest. Kentucky was especially good for slippery elm, but Missouri was rapidly gaining ground. The state also had a good inventory of sassafras trees. The bark and root were used for fever reduction and as an anti-inflammatory. There also was a good supply in the state of boneset plant, a slender plant with spiky white flower clusters that helped with colds and flu.
And then there were the root plants, ginseng and goldenseal, which southern Missouri forest was so good at growing. Powdered-goldenseal-root tea was used for digestive problems or colds. And ginseng root, of course, was so good for so many things—fighting disease, increasing stamina, reducing the effects of stress—and the wild stuff was extraordinarily valuable. Missouri had some great patches, and looser laws than some other states. Harvesting on private land was allowed. It just took forever for it to grow.
“All of those darn root plants take years to mature,” Miller said. “It’s really too bad Miles didn’t have some in his forest. He’s got the perfect terrain for growing them. We searched the whole darn property—they’re just little leafy things—but didn’t find ginseng at all. We’re going to get him started growing some, but then we can’t market it as ‘wild’ and the—”
Hank interrupted. The line between relaxed interviewee and time waster had been crossed. He steered the conversation back on track.
Old Mountain had ten inspectors, Miller explained. Each had a geographic region. The aforementioned Lee Sells was assigned to Missouri for all initial evaluations and subsequent spot checks.
“When was the last check on Miles?”
Flip, flip. “Last summer. Since there was no harvesting in the fall or winter, Lee didn’t check in. He’d already inspected the trees, when we contracted with Miles. He was scheduled to go back in two weeks for a spot check during the harvest season.”
“So who else besides Lee, or the other inspectors, knows where the owners’ plants are?”
“Oh, we know where all of our growers are.”
“No,” Hank said, “I mean, does it say in your files exactly where every stand of trees is?”
“Oh, goodness no. Some of these groves are miles from anywhere. That would be impossible to write down.”
“You could use GPS coordinates.”
Silence. Hank doodled a tree on his notepad. He’d drawn half the branches by the time Miller spoke.
“That would be technically possible, yes. But that is proprietary information. It needs to be known by the fewest number of people possible. Our growers sign nondisclosure contracts. Our inspectors sign those and noncompete contracts. We take that very seriously.”
So who knew exactly where Miles’s stand of slippery elm was located?
“On our end, Lee. That’s it. Even I don’t know. And on the other end, Miles. And whoever he’s told. Which is hopefully nobody.”
“What about your company drivers? They have to know where to pick it up, right?”
Miller let out a sigh that made clear Hank was not getting the gravity of the matter.
“They only know in general terms. The grower has to be able to deliver the harvest to a centralized spot. We contract with drivers who truck several delivery points at a time up to us here in Indianapolis.”
“Wait. Contract with? Not employ directly?”
“Well, no. That would be impractical. It’s usually truck drivers who are at a seasonal low point. So they drive for us at certain times of the year but not others. We couldn’t keep them all on permanent payroll.”
“Who’s picked up deliveries from Miles?”
There was more paper shuffling. “Lloyd Taylor. The four deliveries last spring and also the one so far this year.” His voice had tightened again. The worry was back. “You don’t think…”
“I don’t think anything at this point, Mr. Miller,” Hank said. “But I’m going to need Lloyd Taylor’s contact information and the names of any other of your growers that he picks up deliveries for.”
Hank wrote down the information, gave Miller his fax and email so he could send both paper and electronic copies of Miles’s paperwork, and wished the Old Mountain man a nice day. Then he punched up Lloyd’s driver’s license information on his computer.
Fantastic.
He was one of those Taylors.
* * *
The kid came out of the Easy Come & Go convenience store carrying two bags full of merchandise Hank assumed he must have paid for, because no one came running out after him. He was skinnier than his DL photo, which showed an already thin nineteen-year-old wearing a carefully buttoned Oxford shirt and studious-looking glasses. The shirt had, as Hank suspected, covered Lloyd’s tats, which he could now see snaking across the portion of his chest visible under the wife beater he was wearing. One half-done tat was even in color, which was surprising. Most Taylor ink was strictly the standard black. Wonder where he got the money for that, Hank thought as he started his borrowed Ford and slipped out into traffic behind Lloyd’s battered pickup. He stayed well back. The ratty camper shell on the back looked like it could come loose at any moment.
They drove out Highway 160 toward the Stone County line and then turned north. Traffic thinned out until they were the only two cars on the road. Good thing he’d borrowed Sam’s Bronco—his Crown Vic would have tipped Lloyd off immediately. The whole family could smell a cop a mile away. At least that’s what they bragged at the local bars.
They continued for another ten minutes, until they came to the Stout Oak Road turnoff. Then a mile west and Lloyd turned onto the Taylor property. Hank hadn’t been out here since Sam gave him a driving tour of the county’s hot spots when he became sheriff, nine months ago. His deputy had stopped right outside the gate.
“Now this here is the Taylors’,” Sam had said. They had stared at the half-cleared acreage, and Hank felt his skin crawl. “Yeah,” Sam said. “That’s the normal reaction. You know, for a normal person. For a Taylor … well…”
Trees were haphazardly chopped down. Stumps of varying heights dotted patches of otherwise barren dirt. One pine looked like it had fallen victim to an ATV, which was still stuck on the snapped trunk and looked like it had been for a while. Piles of trash were everywhere. Hank counted at least three rusted-out car frames, plus a large van whose engine block lay five feet away.
There was a dilapidated mobile home farther back where the trees hadn’t been cut. “And that,” said Sam, who had been following Hank’s gaze as it came to a thick stand of trees and brush that looked like it might be camouflaging a small structure, “is what I figure has to be the meth lab. Back in there. But we’ve never had probable cause to search. And it’s never exploded, which is a bummer. That would make things nice and easy.”
Even without an explosion, you’d need a hazmat suit to enter that property, Hank had thought as he and Sam pulled away. Now he drove past at normal speed as Lloyd turned in. He had some asking around to do before he let Lloyd know he was interested.
* * *
The third tattoo parlor Hank visited was the most upscale.
“That dude? Oh, yeah, he’s been here. Didn’t look like that, though.”
Hank nodded, took back Taylor’s driver’s license photo, and asked what he had looked like. He focused on the parlor man’s eyes. Everything else was covered with tattoos.
The man continued wiping his hands on a cloth. “Sorry. We mix all of our own inks here. Everything’s custom. I was just doing a batch. Need to wash up. Come on back.”
Hank followed him past a massage table and two padded chairs with large armrests and into a small break room with a table, refrigerator, and brand-new Keurig.
“Is this going to take long? I was just going to make some coffee. Do you want any?”
“I do have quite a few questions,” Hank said, eyeing the Keurig.
The man popped in a coffee pod as he introduced himself. Dan Larkson and his wife had opened up Custom Body Art of the Ozarks three years ago. They’d chosen Branson because she was also a makeup artist, and that work was easy to find with all the shows on the Strip. They’d been ready for some blowback. Everybody knew Branson was a really conservative Christian community. But they’d been welcomed right off. The other strip mall tenants brought them a “business-warming” basket, and they’d even been invited to join the Chamber of Commerce.
“I was dead wrong,” Larkson said. “This place is great.”
He handed Hank a cup of coffee.
“Plus, I got to be honest,” he said, and pointed to the photo Hank had laid on the break room table. “I think it helps that we don’t cater to, well, to people like that.”
“Tell me about him,” Hank said.
Larkson settled his dazzling array of tattoos back in his chair and sipped at his gourmet coffee. It was an incongruous sight. Incongruous for Hank at least. It was obviously completely normal for Larkson. Maybe I need to loosen up, Hank thought.
“Lloyd was real determined. Wanted lots of color. But nothing anywhere that could be seen with proper clothes on. No face, no neck. A real Brian Setzer.”
Hank grinned. He was familiar with the Stray Cats singer’s advice about never getting a tattoo where a judge could see it.
After a consultation on artwork and prices, they’d decided on a full sleeve on his right arm. It would take multiple visits. Especially since Lloyd couldn’t pay for it all at once. The kind of intricate artwork and color he wanted ran at least twenty-five hundred bucks.
“How does that compare with the standard tats he already has?”
“It doesn’t. Not even on the same planet. Those … those were, um, poor quality, shall we say? Some were definitely prison-inspired. Slightly higher-quality ink than what they can do in prison, I think, but still. And a couple of them looked like they’d been done by some drunk guy on a dark night.”
“That’s probably not far off,” Hank said. “When is his next appointment?”
Larkson rattled off a date and time without a pause.
“You know your calendar pretty well.”
Larkson laughed. “No way, man. Only him. I don’t schedule anybody near when he comes in. He is not the kind of clientele I want people knowing about. I wouldn’t have said yes to him in the first place if he hadn’t paid half of it in cash right then. Plus, artistically, it’s a pretty cool challenge. Trying to make the Mona Lisa out of mud, you know?”
Hank did. A professional challenge could indeed be fun. He stood up and Larkson walked him to the front of the shop. They shook hands, Hank’s chapped and scratched from that morning’s trek through woods and Larkson’s green and blue with some kind of ocean wave action. Hank pushed on the door handle and then paused. He turned back around and pulled out a business card.
“Go ahead and keep this. If Lloyd shows up any time before his appointment, call me. Or … if anything else comes up, let me know. I’m always available.”
That last part was new for him. And difficult. But he’d better get used to it, he thought as he headed across the parking lot to Sam’s Bronco. He just hoped Larkson was registered to vote.
CHAPTER
3
“So we’ll just meet at the restaurant up in Springfield tomorrow? I should be done with my shift by then.”
Maggie set the lasagna in the middle of the table and sat down. Hank groaned.
“You forgot, didn’t you?” she said.
He groaned again. “Yes. And now I can’t. I’ve got a theft investigation going.”
She slapped the serving spoon into the cheese with more force than necessary.
“We have rescheduled this thing twice already. We are not putting it off again. She’s not going to want to work for you if you keep this up.” She scooped lasagna onto his plate, again with a little more force than necessary.
“I’d want to work for you, Daddy.”
“Thank you, Maribel,” Hank said, ladling green beans onto his daughter’s plate.
“Yes,” Maggie said, “but Darcy Blakely is not a five-year-old you can bribe with extra dessert. She’s a highly sought-after campaign manager who you need to help get you elected. ’Cause we don’t know sh—… we don’t know anything about running a campaign.”
Hank sighed as he turned to the opposite side and dished vegetables into his son’s bowl. Benny made a face and pushed it as far away from his booster seat as possible. Hank pushed it back and turned to his wife.
“I know, honey. I just … this is just such … a leap. I’m not a politician.”
“No kidding.” She laughed. She reached across the table and took his hand. “Think about it. Wouldn’t it be easier if you just had someone telling you what you need to do? That way you don’t have to figure it all out on your own. You can pay more attention to police work.”
She had a point. She usually did. He kissed her hand and held it, a little more tightly than necessary.
* * *
Darcy Blakely sat across from him and adjusted glasses that looked like they came out of a magazine ad. Pressed, plastic, and expensive. Like her.
“Now,” she said, straightening the notepad on the table between them, “we need to go over a few things. The first thing is you. I need to know all about you—your background, your beliefs, etcetera. That way, we can tailor the campaign toward your strengths. And downplay anything we need to.”
She gave him a bright and cheery smile and poised her pen over the paper. Hank tried to smile back, but he was pretty sure it came out as a grimace. He wished Maggie were there. There’d been a heart attack and a motorcycle accident right before she was scheduled to get off work, so she’d called him to say she’d be late. She was much better at this sort of thing. He had no idea what to say. He grilled a mean tri-tip and told excellent knock-knock jokes? He doubted that was what Darcy wanted.
She let out a little exhalation of disappointment. “We’ll have to work on getting you more comfortable talking about yourself. Let’s try it this way: How long have you lived in Branson?”
“About nine months.”
“And you were appointed sheriff by the County Commission?”
“Yeah. Darrell Gibbons was elected to the state senate. I’d just applied for a job as a deputy, but the commission appointed me to fill his vacancy.”
“Oh,” she said. “We’re certainly not going to mention that you didn’t intend to apply for the sheriff job. Don’t tell people that part.”
“Uh, okay.” He was beginning to feel like a suspect—artfully omitting certain details when questioned.
Darcy blazed right ahead. “And why did you move here?”
“My mother-in-law died—Marian McCleary, she was the high school principal. We moved down so we could be closer and help out my father-in-law,” he said. “And it’s a good place for the kids.”
Darcy beamed. “Excellent. Just perfect. Family. Devotion. That’ll play well with women. And your wife’s family has been here a long time?”
“Yeah. Three generations, I think.”
“Um. That’s not all that long for around here. Oh, well. We’ll make do. Where were you before you moved to Branson?”
“Kansas City. I was with the police department there.”
“Doing what?”
“I was with the gang section of the street narcotics unit. Before that, I spent nine years in patrol.”
“Any commendations? Awards?”
He’d gotten a Meritorious Service Award a few years back for working with the mothers in a neighborhood to get a grant that turned a weedy, drug-dealer infested lot into a park. Darcy nodded enthusiastically and jotted in her notebook.
“And where were you before Kansas City?”
“I was at Mizzou. I went from there to KCPD.”
She nodded. “State degree. Good. And when in that time period did you get married?”
Hank’s smile was genuine this time. “Ten years ago.”
“And where did you meet?”
“At school.”
“Oh, so you met at Mizzou?”
Hank nodded. On the Quad, at twilight, when she ran into him with her bike. But he wasn’t going to share that with Darcy.
