Murder in the Smokies

chapter Seven



It took a second for Sutton to school his features into his customary inscrutable mask, but it was enough. Ivy saw a ripple of guilt pass over his face before he shuttered his expression. At the same time, he seemed genuinely surprised to see her here.

“I came to look up an old friend,” he answered, his voice carefully void of inflection.

“Yeah? What old friend?”

She noted the slight tightening of his mouth before he answered. “Seth Hammond. His sister said he’s working here now.”

Since when was Seth Hammond a friend? Sure, Sutton and Seth had been tight as ticks when they were boys, but by the time Sutton shook the dust of Bitterwood off his boots, he and Seth had been enemies.

“Why are you here?” Sutton asked.

“Following up a lead.”

“This is the company you were talking about.” Sutton’s brow furrowed.

“Coincidence, huh?”

He looked a little defensive. “Yeah, definitely a coincidence.”

“You’re looking for Seth Hammond?” the receptionist behind the desk interrupted. “He’s probably out in the fleet garage. Third building on the right.”

“Thanks.” Sutton turned back to Ivy. “I’ll head on out there now.”

“Wait.” Ivy caught his arm as he started to pass her.

He gazed down at her with hazel-eyed intensity that made her insides tremble. “Yeah?”

“Seth Hammond works here?”

“Looks like.”

“When did you find that out? I thought you didn’t know where he was anymore.”

“I talked to his sister last night and she mentioned he was living here in Maryville now, working for Davenport Trucking. I thought I should drop by and say hello, see if he’s really on the straight and narrow this time. For Delilah’s sake.” He cocked his head slightly. “What’s your lead?”

She was tempted to tell him, if for no other reason than to make sure she wasn’t simply grasping at straws about the Davenport connection. But she couldn’t just go around spilling all her operational secrets to virtual strangers, no matter how good her memories were—or how damned hot he looked in a pair of jeans. “I’m not at liberty to discuss it.”

He nodded slowly. “Okay.”

She softened her tone. “Did you find anything to eat this morning?”

He smiled. “I might have raided your egg bin for an omelet.”

She smiled back. “Feel free to raid the rest of the fridge for lunch if you like.”

“Actually, I was thinking about grabbing something at J.T.’s Barbecue on my way back to Bitterwood,” he said. “Think you’ll be finished here by lunchtime?”

“Probably.”

“Why don’t I hang around then?” he suggested. “We can grab lunch together.”

“Okay,” she agreed, trying not to grin like an idiot. She watched him leave, her gaze dropping helplessly to his denim-clad backside.

Behind her, the receptionist let out a deep sigh. “That man sure can wear the hell out of a pair of jeans.”

Ivy turned to look at the receptionist, biting back a grin. She crossed to the desk and flashed her shield. “I’m Ivy Hawkins with the Bitterwood Police Department. I have some questions about a couple of former employees. Who do I talk to?”

* * *

THE MAINTENANCE GARAGE two doors down from the main office turned out to be an enormous one-story building with tall retractable doors built in to accommodate a variety of trucks, from local delivery box vans to large eighteen-wheel big rigs.

When Sutton entered the garage, only four trucks were parked inside, two big rigs with full trailers, a large box truck with a local moving company’s logo painted on the sides and a black panel van. A lone man occupied the space, holding a heavy-duty hose with a nozzle attachment at the end. Spray shot from the hose and hit the panel van’s wheels with a loud splatter, the whoosh drowning out all but the faintest sound of the tune he was whistling. Water ran in a stream past Sutton’s feet, rusty with red clay from the van’s tires. He avoided the flow and crossed the garage to the man holding the hose.

He was wiry, hard-muscled but whipcord lean, with short, dark hair that tended to spike on top and sharply defined features that gave him a faintly vulpine appearance. His green eyes swept up to meet Sutton’s gaze, and a slow, cynical smile curved his wide mouth.

He turned off the hose. The garage fell silent for a moment. Then the man spoke in a deceptively soft drawl. “Sutton Calhoun. Never thought I’d see you ’round these parts again.”

“Really, Seth? That’s how you want to play this?”

Seth Hammond’s left eyebrow twitched. “What are you talking about?”

So innocent. If Sutton didn’t know better, he might believe that Seth really was clueless.

But he had proof otherwise. Dipping his hand in the right front pocket of his jeans, he pulled out the green marble and held it up so that it caught a shaft of light pouring into the garage from a window high above the floor.

Seth’s gaze followed the movement of Sutton’s hand. His eyes narrowed before his gaze dropped to meet Sutton’s.

“What’s your game, Seth? Why leave this for me?”

Seth remained silent, pinning Sutton with his unnerving stare.

“Thanks for the marble. I’ve kind of missed it.” Sutton pocketed the marble and started to walk away.

“Wait,” Seth said, his voice tense.

Sutton turned slowly to face the other man, waiting silently.

“April Billings worked here until July. Part-time internship.”

“Doing what?”

“A little of everything, although her main job was helping out the bookkeeping staff.”

“She quit in July?”

“Wanted a month off just to enjoy herself before going back to college in the fall.” Seth’s tone held a hint of sadness. But he was a good actor. Hard to know if his show of emotion was authentic.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I hear you’re looking into her murder. And since two other former Davenport employees have also turned up dead—”

“And look who works here.”

Seth’s expression darkened. “You’re not seriously going there.”

“Even serial killers sometimes start small.”

“Yeah, torturing animals, not pulling cons.”

“A con artist is just a sociopath who kills the soul instead of the body.”

Seth shook his head. “Well, maybe that’s so. And if you’re looking for a serial soul killer, feel free to take me in for questioning.”

“You’re mistaking me for the police.”

“That’s right.” The smile Seth shot Sutton looked more like a smirk. “You’re working for the big chief Cooper down there in Alabama.”

“Did you call your sister so I’d know where to find you?”

Seth smiled. “You’re just full of conspiracy theories today.”

“How did you know to find me at Ivy Hawkins’s place?” Sutton pulled the marble from his pocket again. “I can’t believe you still had this after all those years, Seth. Never took you for the sentimental type.”

“Ivy Hawkins’s place?” Seth looked surprised. Sutton didn’t buy it for a second. “You’re in town a day and you’re already shacking up? And with the police, of all people.”

“Who told you I was back in Bitterwood?”

Seth laughed, giving up the pretense. “A Calhoun can’t come back to Bitterwood without the whole damn county hearing about it, Sutton. You should know that.”

“Why’d you leave this marble for me at Ivy Hawkins’s place?”

Seth didn’t answer.

“It was you outside her house last night. What did you do, follow us from the motel? Or were you out there at Clingmans Dome?”

Seth’s neutral expression slipped a moment, betraying a hint of confusion in his green eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Which part? The motel? Or the mountain?”

“I went looking for you at the motel,” he said finally. “You know, for old times’ sake. Saw you with the little lady cop so I decided to bide my time before making contact.” His drawl broadened. “Don’t know if you know this, Sutton, but I’m not real popular with the police around these parts.”

“You couldn’t wait until morning to get in touch with me?”

Seth’s mouth curved slightly. “I figured you wouldn’t care to see me if it wasn’t your own idea.”

“So you set me up to come looking for you?”

“And it worked.”

Seth Hammond always had been too damned wily for his own good. If he’d just use some of his native intelligence for good reasons instead of bad, no telling what he could accomplish.

“What do you really want, Seth?”

“I told you what I wanted. I told you about April Billings.”

“So three of the four women killed worked here in the past few years. Thanks for sharing.”

“Don’t you think that’s strange?” Seth asked. “Three dead women who worked at the same place? Wouldn’t you call that a significant connection between the victims?”

“You seem awfully interested in this case.”

Seth looked injured. Sutton wasn’t sure if the expression was real or carefully calculated. With Seth, you never knew. “People around here are wondering if someone’s targeting the Davenports. Folks are worried about working here, especially the women.”

“Are they right?” Sutton asked carefully. “Should people be worried about working here?”

“I don’t know,” Seth answered. “But I’d sure like to find out.”

* * *

“I’D HAVE TO GO THROUGH all of our files to be sure, but I don’t remember anyone here ever renting a truck to Marjorie Kenner.” George Davenport looked at Ivy with apology in his blue eyes. He started walking toward the front door, leaving her little choice but to follow.

“Will you check for me?” she asked, trying to keep her tone polite and friendly rather than commanding, not so much because she thought honey would get her further than vinegar but because he looked too tired and wan to make forcefulness seem wise.

If she had to guess, she’d say Mr. Davenport was chronically ill these days. He had the thin, sallow look of someone who had lost a significant amount of weight in a short span of time. Heart trouble? Cancer? Either was possible, she supposed. He wasn’t well, but to his credit, he walked at a brisk enough pace that she had to move at a clip to keep up.

“I’ll check,” he agreed, shielding his eyes with one hand as a truck turned into the parking lot and swung around to one side of the lot, where there was a large open bay with a large tank, a hose and what looked like a large manhole. As they both watched, the driver pulled up in front of the manhole and got out of the truck. He circled to the back and bent to pull up the manhole cover. The cover must not have been heavy, since he lifted it with little trouble and set it aside.

Turning to the truck, he opened the back doors wide and stepped back quickly. Muddy water spilled out of the back of the truck, and Ivy realized the bay was built at a slight incline to tilt downward toward the drain.

Mr. Davenport must have noticed her interest. “That’s our cleaning bay. We get farmers who rent trucks to take chickens and pigs to the butcher, and folks like Stan Thomas there who rent trucks to carry live fish in aerated tanks to restaurants that want their fish to be as fresh as possible. Those kinds of transport jobs can get messy, and I’ve found that everyone benefits if we offer a discount to the renters to muck out the trucks themselves before we do the final sanitation.”

If the muddy water were red instead of brown, Ivy thought, it would be easy to imagine the back of the truck as the scene of a bloody murder. “Do you supervise the initial cleanings?” she asked.

“No. We don’t have the time or personnel for that. And if our cleaners go in and we can document that the renter did a slapdash job, we’ll cut the amount of the discount. Renters know that, so they usually do a good job.”

“Is the lot open at night?”

Davenport slanted a curious look at her. “The warehouse is locked up tight, but no, we don’t lock up the parking area or the cleaning bay.”

“So, theoretically, anyone could clean out their truck after hours?”

“Well, not anyone. You could drain stuff out, I suppose, but the only way you can get the washing equipment to work is to have the keycard for the water unit.” Davenport nodded toward Stan Thomas, who had just pulled something from his pocket and ran it down a slot set into the side of the large tank. He pressed a trigger on the hose nozzle and water shot out and hit the inside of the truck with a thump. “You turn in the keycard with the truck. The water can be heated to a high enough temperature to meet sanitation requirements.”

“Do you have video surveillance on the parking lot?”

“Right around the buildings, yes.”

“Not the entrance or the cleaning bay?”

“No. We park the vehicles in the big garages at night, and that’s locked up and protected by alarms. There’s nothing in the parking lot worth bothering, and we’ve never had a problem with random after-hours washing.” Davenport shot her a wan smile. “Are you asking for a particular reason?”

“I’m not sure,” she admitted, watching the murky water running out of the back of the rented truck. “Would it be possible to get a copy of all your rental agreements for the past five months?”

Davenport frowned. “That seems unnecessarily intrusive, Detective.”

“I could arrange for a warrant,” she said, although she wasn’t entirely sure that was true, especially since she wasn’t even in her own jurisdiction.

“Then that’s what I would suggest you do,” Davenport said firmly. He smiled again to soften his words. “I don’t mean to be difficult.”

“No, I understand,” she assured him, and she did. People had a right to privacy, even in a murder investigation. She’d try to get what she wanted going the legal route and hope she could make a Blount County lawman see things her way. She’d need local law enforcement to get a warrant.

“If you come across anything strange or remember anything you care to share, I can be reached at this number.” She handed him one of her cards. “Thank you for your help.” She watched George Davenport head back to the office, wincing as she saw his legs seem to buckle a little more with every step. Definitely ill, she thought. Should he even be at work?

As she started toward the department-issued Ford sedan she’d driven to Maryville, she looked for Sutton’s truck. It wasn’t parked anywhere in the lot. Of course, she hadn’t noticed it when she came in, too focused on the questions she’d wanted to ask.

She pulled out her cell phone and dialed his number. He answered on the first ring. “Hey, Ivy.”

Damn, but even his voice could send shivers down her back. “I thought we were going to J.T.’s Barbecue for lunch.”

“Yeah, about that—I’ve had something come up. Rain check?”

“Will I see you back at the house tonight, or are you going to find somewhere else to stay?” She hoped the question didn’t sound needy.

“I’m not sure. I’ll call to let you know. I’ll have to get my things from your place if I stay somewhere else anyway.”

Nice and noncommittal. Hell, she should be glad if he had decided to put a little distance between them. The sooner Sutton Calhoun moseyed off to wherever he’d come from, the sooner she could go back to being a sensible cop instead of a flutter-headed idiot.

Unfortunately, the Maryville police captain to whom she outlined her case disagreed there was enough probable cause to approach a judge for a warrant. “You have a hunch, not evidence. Get me evidence and we’ll talk again.”

So she ended up driving back to Bitterwood in time to run into Captain Rayburn heading out to lunch, accompanied by a silver-haired man dressed in a dark blue suit. She recognized the man as the Sevier County Sheriff’s Department’s deputy chief of operations. They were both smiling as they came out of the building, but Rayburn took one look at her and his expression went from cheerful to thunderous. “Hawkins, I want to see you in my office when I get back.”

“Yes, sir.” She gave a crisp nod and moved out of his way before he and his companion bowled her over heading down the concrete steps to the personnel parking lot. She watched the two men walking away, noting that the silver-haired man was still grinning but her captain’s back was as rigid as a steel girder. She released a sigh. Her day was turning out to be one giant barrel of horse manure.

Antoine Parsons caught her up on what she’d missed while she was in Maryville. “Apparently Rayburn and the chief deputy are old fishing buddies from way back. Tommy Logan dropped by to take Rayburn to lunch but mostly, I think, to give him a few friendly whacks about one of his investigators getting herself caught in a shoot-out up on Clingmans Dome in the middle of the night.” Parsons sent a pointed look her way. “Which, by the way, you didn’t think that was something worth telling your old buddy Antoine?”

He was smiling, but she heard a tone of offense beneath Parsons’s light tone. She dropped heavily into her desk seat.

Yup, a big ol’ barrel of manure.

* * *

THE ONE-STORY clapboard house on Kettle Creek Road hadn’t changed much in fourteen years, Sutton saw. Still shabby, the sun-faded white paint job nearly flaked away by time, leaving weathered gray pine showing in scabrous patches. Just looking at the place made his gut tighten with dread.

But he wasn’t eighteen anymore. He hadn’t come back to get in touch with his past or anything sentimental like that.

He’d come here for answers.

At the top of the cinder-block steps to the rickety front porch, he paused, wondering if the sagging wood slats of the porch floor would hold his weight. They creaked but didn’t snap as he crossed to the ripped screen door that hung by one precarious screw from its hinges. It made a loud groan as he opened it, killing any hope he might have had for a stealthy entrance.

It didn’t matter. He knew who was inside, and he didn’t need sneaky ninja skills to get to the bottom of what was going on.

The front door was unlocked. Not that it would have mattered either way—Sutton knew where to find the spare key.

Some things never changed.

The living room just inside the front door was tidier than Sutton had expected. The old man had never cared much about what the place looked like; he’d saved his concern for first impressions for himself, making sure to wear nice clothes, shave and keep his hair neatly cut. He was selling an image, after all. People had to think they could trust him.

Footsteps sounded on the hardwood floor of the hallway beyond the door on the other side of the living room. Sutton steeled himself for his first glimpse of the old man in over a decade.

But it wasn’t his father who walked through the door. It was the man who’d led him here today. Seth Hammond paused in the doorway, folding his arms over his chest as if to block the way. “Thought you weren’t interested in a family reunion.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not family, so what do you know?” Sutton pushed forward, daring Seth to hold his ground.

For a moment, it seemed as if they might come to blows. Then Seth backed away, making an exaggerated gesture toward the bedroom down the hall. Sutton pushed past him, his shoulder bumping hard against Seth’s, knocking the smaller man backward into the wall.

He didn’t know what he’d expected to find when he finally saw his father again after so many years. An older man, his handsome face a little more lined, his dark hair liberally lined with silver.

Anything but the wheelchair-bound shell of a man who sat hunched and bitter beside the bedroom window, one hand curled into a gnarled claw and both legs thin and atrophied beneath his saggy blue jeans.

“What’s wrong with him?” he asked quietly as Seth entered the room.

Seth’s voice was gentle, tinged with unexpected sympathy. “Five years ago, he suffered a massive stroke. He hasn’t walked or talked since.”