The Investigator (Letty Davenport, #1) (17)

“How much are the thieves getting for the oil?” Letty asked.

“I don’t know. Because I don’t know how much is being stolen. I’m guessing. No matter what they’re doing, they’ll have some costs, too,” Wright said. “Unless . . . and this troubles me . . . it’s being stolen on paper. That somebody else is being credited with our oil. Lots of people handle the oil before it winds up in a gas tank. Or the money winds up in our bank account. Stealing actual buckets of oil . . . that’d be complicated. If it’s some nerd sitting at a computer and moving numbers around . . . that might be complicated, too, but it’s not like you’d have to hire trucking companies to move the oil around.”

He turned back to them as Kaiser said, “Whatever it is, even if it’s just your oil, it’d be worth doing, for most folks. Now your Boxie guy is missing. Four days, he could be in Panama by now, already moved into the new house. Making bids on a power cat.”

Wright jabbed a finger at him: “That’s what worries me. He stole it and ran. Or, worse, he poked his nose in somewhere he shouldn’t have, and somebody cut it off.”

“We’ll want to talk to the people in your Midland office,” Letty said.

“It’s already fixed. They’ll answer any questions you have.” He turned to Kaiser. “You might want to take a gun. Rough stuff happens out on the patch. There could be a lot of money sticking to the wrong fingers.”



* * *





They talked for another half an hour, and Letty noted the names of Wright-Hughes employees in Midland. “You going down today?” Wright asked.

“Might as well,” Letty said. “Get an early start tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.” Wright moaned. “I’m going to Phoenix tomorrow, down to the Mayo to get my knees replaced. Both of them. I’ll be out of it for a while, but I will leave strict instructions with Midland: what you want from us, you get.”

Letty nodded: “Thank you.”

Wright spent another fifteen minutes outlining problems and personnel, speculating on which other companies might have gotten hit—“I talked to the boss over at Lost Land; he thinks they’re down between eight and ten thousand”—along with background on Boxie Blackburn.

When they finished talking, Wright picked up his cane and walked with them to the elevators and wished them luck. “Get these guys. I know you have different concerns, but if you can get me names, I have some security people who’d like to talk to them privately.”



* * *





“What do you want to do?” Kaiser asked, as they took the elevator down. The smell of oil was still with them, and outside, the sun poured down like melted butter.

“Get something decent to eat—I couldn’t eat that crap on the plane,” Letty said. She put on her sunglasses. “Then get outta town.”

“Maybe find a rib joint,” Kaiser suggested. “Towns like this got good rib joints.”

“Fine with me, if I can get a salad.”

They wound up at Front Door Barbecue, where Kaiser ingested a year’s worth of cholesterol and Letty had an oversized salad with turkey. Satisfied, they walked back to the car, took it out to I-44, and turned south. As they crossed the Canadian River, leaving the city behind, Kaiser said with patent insincerity, “I’ll drive if you want.”

“I’m good.”

“Think I’m gonna kick back then, take a nap,” Kaiser said. “Save my energy for the big show.”

“You mind some quiet music?”

“That’d be great.”

Kaiser had the soldier’s knack of going to sleep almost instantly; he did that, and was a silent sleeper, arms crossed, chin on his chest, the bill of his baseball cap resting on his nose.

Letty dialed up a jazz channel, loud enough to mute the road noise, and set the cruise control ten miles an hour over the speed limit. For the trip, she’d dressed in blue jeans and a pale blue, long-sleeved blouse with pearl snap buttons. She wore a Twins ballcap and had the straw cowboy hat, now sitting on the backseat, as recommended by Colles, if she had to go out in the sun.



* * *





Interstate 44 was four lanes of pale concrete laid though an agricultural landscape that wasn’t exactly rolling—Iowa was rolling—but more like notched by creeks and twisting rivers, marked by scrubby trees, Love’s truck stops, and weather-beaten small towns.

Letty checked off the towns as they rolled by, but spent much of the trip thinking about the people she’d be talking to. When they got to Midland, she had to get on top of the Hughes-Wright people immediately.

Wright had told them that Dick Grimes, a company vice president who ran the Midland office, was touchy about his territory. Grimes, he’d said, was an oil field veteran who didn’t care for anyone’s opinions, if that person hadn’t spent time as a chainhand. That automatically eliminated women, and especially young women, and especially young women with college degrees who might be considered snotty.

She decided that she couldn’t adopt any particular attitude until she actually met with Grimes: she’d get in his face if she had to, but she’d prefer not to do that. Grimes was a trifle old-fashioned, Wright had said, but he knew everything about oil and where it might be going.