Murder in the Smokies - By Paula Graves Page 0,30

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