Chapter 25. Coming Clean
COMING CLEAN
WHITNEY
On Friday morning, I was standing in the coffee shop, waiting for three Cocoa-Nutty lattes, two regular for Buck and Owen, and one decaf for me, when the door opened and in walked Thad Gentry.
He held the door as three people followed him inside.
Two were men in business suits. The third was a woman wearing heels and a fitted dress with a stylish bolero jacket over it.
I ducked behind a display of bagged coffee so he wouldn’t see me.
The barista greeted him by name. “Hello, Mr. Gentry. You’ve brought more friends today, I see.”
“Set us all up with large drinks,” he said. “I’ll have my usual Cocoa-Nutty.” He paused as the three people with him gave their selections, then paid the barista, tucking a five-dollar tip into the glass jar.
Between two bags of whole-bean dark roast, I saw him motion to the others. “There’s a table over here,” he said, heading my way.
As he circled around one side of the display, I circled around the other.
After they sat down, he began to expound on the virtues of investing in River Valley Ranch.
“Investing in real estate is one of the smartest things you can do right now. The stock market is hardly better than a casino these days. Prices go up and down with no rhyme or reason. You’re much better off investing in something tangible.
You can’t go wrong with residential real estate. Everyone needs a roof over their head.”
I’d hoped to hear more, but my order was called—by the wrong names, of course. I suspected the loud bean grinders rendered coffee shop staff partially deaf. “Whitey. Aaron. Bud.”
Close enough.
I avoided looking in Gentry’s direction while I grabbed a handful of napkins, tucked them into the pocket of my coveralls, and picked up the cardboard carrier holding the three drinks.
The fact that he kept talking told me he hadn’t noticed my presence in the shop.
I supposed it didn’t matter if he had seen me.
I just didn’t want to see his smug face.
I exited the shop and made my way down the stairs.
As I approached my SUV, I realized Gentry’s Infiniti was parked right next to my SUV.
I opened my door and leaned across the seats to set the carrier down on the passenger-side floorboard.
As I did, the baby gave me a kick in the ribs.
For something the size of a grapefruit, my offspring had a surprisingly powerful kick.
It felt as if he or she were wearing a pair of baby-sized steel-toed boots.
As I climbed into my seat, something white in Gentry’s car caught my eye.
It was a rectangular piece of paper sitting in the open compartment on the console.
Using my door for cover, I leaned over to take a closer look, peering through his window.
The paper was a receipt from a dry cleaner, preprinted with the cleaner’s name and phone number in black ink, along with a claim number in red.
The address for the cleaners was in Nolensville, a town that sat about a half hour directly south of the Nashville airport.
The name scrawled on the form was Chad Jeffries, not Thad Gentry, but I supposed dry cleaner staff were no better than baristas at spelling people’s names.
I might not have thought anything of it, had the date not caught my eye.
Gentry dropped off the dry cleaning the same day Tyler Yee was killed.
Though my instincts began buzzing, I told myself to calm down.
After all, I’d gotten all worked up after finding the Redeemed pin in my boot, and it hadn’t gotten Detective Alonzo anywhere yet.
Still, in case this could be something, I pulled my phone from my pocket, turned my back to the coffee shop in case Gentry happened to look outside, and surreptitiously snapped a photo of the claim ticket before turning back around to climb into my seat.
I drove slowly and carefully to the barn so I wouldn’t risk spilling the drinks. Buck and Owen were already hard at work, framing the apartments on the other side of the center hallway. They set their tools down and came over to get their coffee.
“Look what I saw in Gentry’s car.” I pulled up the photo on my phone and showed it to them. “You think it means anything?”
“Yeah.” Buck scoffed. “It means he doesn’t wear stuff that can be tossed into a washing machine like us working stiffs.”
“I mean, do you think it could be some sort of clue?” I asked.
“The day he dropped off his cleaning was the same day Tyler Yee was killed. The cleaner is in Nolensville. Gentry doesn’t live out that way.
He wouldn’t have passed the cleaners on his drive from his house to Leipers Fork.
He must have dropped off his cleaning on his way to the airport to catch his flight to Charleston. ”
Buck stared at me for a moment, his lips in a wry twist. “Just go. You won’t get anything done here until you find out if there’s anything to that receipt.”
He was right. “Okay, bye!”
“Good luck!” Owen called after me, raising his coffee cup in support.
I climbed back into my car and aimed for Nolensville, drinking my latte and listening to a repeat of Tyler’s podcast about the book club brawl on the way.
I was nearing the end of Eenie Meenie Miney Mine.
While I couldn’t imagine getting so upset over a book that I’d toss a glass of wine in a friend’s face, I had to admit the book was polarizing.
The architect loved to travel and offered the female lead a life of luxury and leisure—at the potential cost of her own goals and dreams. The veterinarian also made a good income, but his dedication to animals meant he had less time for her.
The woman would be left wanting romantically, though she could use the extra time to pursue her lifelong ambition of teaching piano to underprivileged kids.
Being a homebody, I thought the veterinarian was the better choice.
He could get her a cat to keep her company when he couldn’t be there.
As I drove, I realized this trip could be a total waste of time.
It had been over two weeks since Tyler Yee had been killed, and dry cleaning was normally returned in two to five days.
Gentry might have already picked up the item he’d dropped off.
Then again, most people turned in their claim ticket when they picked up their clean clothing.
I pulled up to the dry cleaners and went inside.
I didn’t want to explain myself and risk them not giving me information, nor did I want to lie.
It wasn’t generally in my nature to be deceptive.
I settled for simply holding out my phone and showing them the photo I’d taken in the coffee shop parking lot. “This is the claim ticket.”
The sixtyish woman working the counter looked at the last name and claim number, then stepped over to push the button that controlled the conveyer.
Items protected by clear plastic covers sailed by, as if playing a game of Ring Around the Rosie.
She pushed the button again to stop the belt and consulted the tags on the items. Finding the number that matched the one on the claim ticket, she pulled it from the rack and hung it from a metal rod beside the counter.
A note on bright yellow cardstock was attached to the hanger by an elastic band. The woman leaned in to read it. “Says here the advanced cleaning process left spots on the suit, but they were able to get the bloodstains out.”
Every white and red cell in my veins froze. “Bloodstains?” I squeaked.
She consulted the note again. “That’s what it says.”
She lifted the claim ticket to show me a second preprinted form titled Liability Waiver.
The verbiage on the form warned that the garment could be damaged by the chemicals needed to remove the stain, that the customer acknowledged the risk of potential damage, and that the cleaners bore no responsibility for damaged clothing.
An illegible signature was scrawled across the bottom.
The plastic cover over the clothing reflected the bright overhead lights, and she lifted it to give me a better look.
Underneath was a dark gray Armani suit jacket and pants.
Light-colored splotches of different sizes and shapes appeared across the front of the jacket.
Blood spatter. The nearly solid splotch near the bottom told me this was where Tyler’s blood had spurted when he’d been impaled by the pitchfork.
My head went woozy and I grabbed onto the counter to steady myself.
Still looking at the garment, the clerk hadn’t noticed my reaction.
“You can take it as is, or we could try to salvage the suit by dyeing it. There’s no guarantee we could match the current color exactly, but we’ve had decent luck with dye before and could probably get close.
Wool tends to take dye well. Would you like us to try? ”
Her question gave me the perfect out. “Let me think on it and get back to you.”
“All right,” she said. “Don’t wait too long, though. Anything left over thirty days is donated to the thrift shop down the street.”
I went outside, climbed into my car, and sent a text to Detective Alonzo to tell her what I’d discovered. I sent her the pic I’d snapped of the claim ticket earlier, too.
My phone rang just a few seconds later. After I filled her in, I added, “Gentry planned to go straight from the sales trailer to the airport the day Tyler was killed. He must have had his suitcase with him.” Presumably, that suitcase contained another suit he changed into after killing Tyler Yee but before bidding goodbye to the salesman.
“You still at the cleaners?” she asked.
“I’m sitting in the parking lot.”
“Stay put,” she ordered. “I’m on my way.”
An hour later, she pulled up next to me. She climbed out of her car and motioned for me to follow her into the shop. She showed the clerk her badge. “Are you in charge here?”
Her face puckered in concern. “My husband and I own the shop. Let me get him.” She pushed open a swinging door in the back wall, stuck her head through, and called, “Hon? I need you up front.”
A moment later, a bony, white-haired man appeared in the doorway.
After his wife explained what was going on, he came to the front and examined the suit and claim ticket.
“I know this piece. The man who brought it in called last week to see if the stains had come out. I told him the chemicals had bleached the wool. I said we could probably fix it with dye. He said he would come by the store to take a look, but he hasn’t come in yet. ”
Alonzo looked around the ceiling, spotting a security camera over the swinging door. “Can I see your security camera video from the day this suit was dropped off?”
“This way.” The man motioned for us to go with him.
We circled around the counter and followed him through the swinging door in the back to an office with a simple metal desk.
He offered us two wooden stools, then sat down at his computer, logged into the store’s security camera system, and typed in the date from the claim ticket.
Alonzo narrowed things down further. “The man who dropped off the suit would have come in some time after one o’clock.”
The man pulled up the feed and dragged the cursor to advance the footage through time.
While his wife worked the counter, customers came and went, an average of one every five minutes or so.
When the time stamp at the bottom hit 1:28 p.m., Thad Gentry walked in the door.
Though he had a pair of dark sunglasses on, there was no doubt it was him.
He wore a clean, nicely pressed gray suit, and held another gray suit rolled up in his hands.
The shop’s security camera system was a modern style that recorded audio along with the video. The voice, too, was clearly Gentry’s. “How skilled are you at removing bloodstains?”
I fought the urge to squeal. We have Gentry! On camera! Asking about bloodstains! He’s going down!
The footage continued to roll on the computer screen. “I got a nasty nosebleed earlier,” Gentry lied. “I’d hate to lose my favorite Armani suit.”
“Let’s take a look.” The woman donned a pair of latex gloves, then held out her hands to take the suit from him.
She spread it across the counter. Dark red stains appeared all over the jacket, in the same pattern as the bleached spots on the clean suit.
Though I hadn’t seen the pants today, the ones Gentry brought in had bloody spots across the thighs.
“That’s a lot of blood,” the woman said. “I hope you’ve seen a doctor.”
“It looks worse than it is,” Gentry replied. “It’s just allergies, happens all the time. Darn pollen.”
The woman warned Gentry that the cleaning process might not be successful.
He said he wanted them to try. She asked for his name, which he mumbled, but it definitely sounded like he’d given the name she’d written on the form—Chad Jeffries.
She slid the waiver form onto the counter for him to sign, and he scrawled on the signature line.
She pulled apart the duplicate forms, stapled his two copies together, and handed them over.
“Your suit should be ready in about a week.” He thanked her and left the store.
At Detective Alonzo’s direction, the man saved the video clip and sent the file to her e-mail.
Alonzo wrote down the names of the man and woman who owned the dry cleaners and took the suit into evidence, sliding it into yet another protective bag that she marked with the date, time, and place she’d taken possession of it.
When she finished, she looked up at the couple, who’d watched with concerned looks on their faces. “If Mr. Jeffries calls or comes by to pick up his suit, you can tell him to get in touch with me.” She handed them her business card and thanked them for their cooperation.
Once Alonzo and I were in the parking lot, I said, “Are you going to arrest Gentry now?”
“Soon,” she said, “but he knows he’s under suspicion and has probably consulted a high-powered defense attorney. I need to get my ducks in a row first.”
She didn’t elaborate on the ducks or how she’d get them in a row, and I didn’t press her for details.
I understood that she’d already made me privy to much more information than she would normally offer a civilian.
If and when the ducks quacked, she’d let me know. I just hoped the ducks wouldn’t dawdle.