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guy had a point. None of the other houses in Jiggerville had min-eral rights.
His house did. He finally agreed to move but only if company agreed to give
him the mineral rights to whatever other property they moved his house to. And
that s exactly what they did. It was a quiet kind of deal. I don t think ten
people in all knew about it. In fact, the Buckwalters themselves may not have
realized ...
You re saying the Buckwalters own the mineral rights to property under the
clinic?
That s right, Skip said. As I said, most of the houses Saginaw are located
on land the company already owns. We ve moved those houses once, and if we
have to, we can move them again. The big difficulty is that the main body of
ore seems to run directly through the tract we don t own.
In other words, Joanna said, when you gave it away forty-odd years ago,
you shouldn t have. Now, in order to make the Saginaw site workable, you have
to buy it back.
You ve got it, Skip Lowell said. That s it in a nutshell.
And you ll be buying it back from Terry Buckwalter?
Whoever the owner of record is, that s who we ll buy it n, Skip answered.
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The lawyers will be coming down next week to make the offer.
But what does all this have to do with Larry Matkin? Ernie asked.
There was a slight hesitation before Skip answered. It could have been
evasion, or simply reluctance.
Obviously, Larry has known exactly what s going on. One day the project is
on a fast track. The next, after some company researcher discovers the
mineral-rights problem, everything grinds to a halt. Larry had to be told, but
he was sworn to secrecy.
You re worried that he s told someone? Wilma asked.
Skip shook his head. No, it s worse than that. In the past few weeks, I ve
become aware that there have been several unexplained absences on Larry s
part. There ve been times when I ve tried to reach him when he clearly wasn t
where he said he would be, where he was supposed to be. Late yesterday
afternoon, through a fluke, I discovered that he s been golfing at a place out
near Palominas. He s been doing it on company time and in the company of Terry
Buckwalter. It could be it s all on the up-and-up. But I m concerned that if
they re involved somehow romantically, I mean that the company will end up
with a conflict-of-interest problem.
Armand Skip Lowell was a company man to the bone. His sole worry lay in
what kind of corporate repercussions might result from an inappropriate
relationship between Terry Buckwalter and Larry Matkin.
krnie Carpenter and Joanna Brady were cops. Both their minds turned to
murder.
How much is that property worth? Joanna asked.
Surely, you don t think ... Skip objected.
How much?
Don t quote me on this, Skip cautioned. The property is probably worth
something in the upper six figures. Maybe even more.
Suddenly Joanna was thinking about Terry Buckwalter- about how pleased she
had seemed to be at receiving what she considered fair value for her dead
husband s defunct vet-erinary practice. She was hoping to come out of the deal
with enough money to pay off her debts and maybe get away clean. She was
counting on the insurance proceeds to fund her venture into the L.G.P.A. That
didn t add up to an upper-six-figures kind of deal. It sounded to Joanna as
though Terry Buckwalter was being shafted. Maybe she knew nothing at all about
the mineral rights, and maybe, just maybe, Reggie Wade did.
Does Terry Buckwalter know any of this? Joanna asked.
Skip Lowell frowned. She might, he said. But she isn t supposed to.
Joanna stood up. Come on, Ernie. We ve got to go.
But I m not finished
We re finished for the time being, Joanna told him. We can come back if we
need to. For now, there s something else we have to do.
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What the hell is going on? Ernie growled as he climbed into Joanna s
Blazer. I don t leave off interviews
I think we ve found our killer, she said. Reggie Wade pushing through a
deal to buy out the clinic at something far less than an upper-six-figure
figure, Joanna said. In fact, I think Terry may have already signed papers
on this.
What are you saying?
I ll bet Reggie Wade knows all about this mineral-rights deal. Knew it was
coming and knew when it was coming.
You re saying maybe he and Larry Matkin are in this thing together?
It s possible.
So what are we going to do? Ernie asked.
Drive down to Douglas and find out, Joanna told him.
Ernie leaned back in the seat, crossed his arms, and closed his eyes. Sounds
good to me, he said. Wake me when we get there.
TWENTY
As they headed east on Highway 80, Joanna could barely contain her
excitement. With Ernie Carpenter snoring softly in the passenger seat beside
her, Joanna could see that they were about to crack the case wide open.
They didn t have all the answers yet. So far, there were no proved links
between Matkin and Wade. Other than Joan-na s having seen them together
briefly at the Amos Buck-walter funeral, there were no direct connections. But
Joanna was confident those would come. They had to.
Once the deal on the clinic closed, Reggie Wade would have bought himself a
fortune for the price of a small-town animal clinic. Joanna s fiction-fueled
visions of the kindly, hu-mane vet were fast going the way of the goateed
composite-sketch artist. All artists didn t wear beards and mustaches, and all
vets weren t James Herriot.
The desultory chatter on the radio told Joanna that noth-ing much was
happening in the county. There was a disabled semi blocking the intersection
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