5 A Sporting Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

Arnold out to meet my granddad next week,” Ullery said. “He lives on a farm up in Robertson County.”
    “What was the occasion?”
    “Granddad spent time in Germany as a prisoner of war during World War II. He wanted to talk to Arnold about the way
things are over there now. He’ll really be disappointed to hear about this.”
    “Sad,” I said.
    Jill looked across at him. “We
heard that Arnold was involved in something besides the auto shop. Was he
working with a pit crew?”
    Ullery took a swig of beer and set
the can on the carpet beside the recliner. “He didn’t work with a crew, but
he’d been hanging out with guys from the Victor Block Racing Team. They’re
based in Nashville and race in the NASCAR Nationwide Series. Not a bad idea,
actually. Given a little time, he might have gotten on the team. He knew his
way around the cars for sure.”
    “Was he a gambler?” I asked. “The
homicide detective said he had a lot of money in his billfold.”
    “He did a little gambling now and
then. I went with him to the boat a few times. You know, Harrah’s casino on the
Ohio River up in Metropolis.”
    Jill and I made that trek up I-24 to
the Illinois side of the river occasionally. We looked on it as a recreational
thing and set a fairly modest limit for what we’d spend. Sometimes we came back
winners. Most of the time we didn’t.
    “Did Arnold ever win big?” Jill
asked.
    “A few hundred bucks, at best. He
talked about making bets a few times, but I never heard anything that sounded
like he’d scored any real hits at it.”
    I thought about the problem a lot
of players faced with borrowing to cover their bets. “Did he ever mention owing
money to somebody, maybe a gambling debt?”
    “Not a chance. He was a real nut
about staying out of debt. I doubt he’d ever have bought a house, since he’d’ve
had to borrow money to do it. Anyway, he was saving his money to go back to
school.”
    “Did he have any lady friends?”
Jill asked.
    “He might have, but he didn’t talk
about it. Arnold was the most private guy I’ve ever met. He wasn’t real outgoing,
didn’t make friends easily, but he was sharp as a filet knife.”
    “That’s sharp,” Jill said with a
gourmet grin.
     “Do you know if he was working
anywhere besides the race car shop?” I asked. “Another job might account for
the extra money.”
    Ullery took a gulp of his beer. “He
was doing something for some guy, but I’m not sure who or what. He didn’t like
people nosing into his business, so I didn’t ask a lot of questions.”
    “Did he talk about this extra job
at all?”
    “Y’know, it’s funny, as shy as he
was. He actually seemed to enjoy meeting people he never expected to meet and
going places he never expected to go. He talked about that a bit, although he
never said exactly what he was doing.”
    “What sort of people and places?”
    “As I say, he was a little short on
details, but he mentioned once meeting an exec at a big hospital chain. The guy
lived in a fancy house in Belle Meade. He talked about some others, but the
only one I remember him mentioning by name was this Freddie Ford, the car
dealer you see all over TV. Arnold said he was a real oddball.”
    “When was the last time you saw Arnold?” I asked.
    He looked thoughtful. “Would’ve
been Friday afternoon. I was off and we met for a beer.”
    “Was he in a good mood?”
    Ullery stretched his fingers out and
wiggled his hands in a gesture of uncertainty. “Mood was a hard thing to pin
down with Arnold. He could be up when you thought he was down, and vice versa.”
    “So how did he seem Friday
afternoon?”
    “Like something was bothering him,
but he didn’t want to talk about it. He would grin and try to act silly, but
his heart wasn’t in it.” He shook his head. “I hate this. I loved him like a
brother.”
     
    A long driveway through the woods
led to our house. After a dogleg to the right, the hard-packed gravel ended at
a large log