10
On Saturday morning, I drove to Turner Creek Sporting Clays, annoyed with myself for checking the rearview mirror every few minutes for the dark van. I kept expecting the van to reappear and start following me again, but the country roads that wound through wide fields of soy and corn were deserted.
Inland from the bay, the Eastern Shore was flat, agricultural, and quiet. Today the modest farmhouses and green pastures seemed unsettling. Turner Creek Sporting Clays was three miles off the main highway at the edge of a thin forest. My tires made a crunching noise on the gravel parking lot of the shooting range. After rolling to a stop near the front door, I waited for Hailey to arrive and contemplated what Richard Kostas might have done here on the last day of his life.
There was no logical reason for a vice president of Benton Dynamics to have been at this place last Tuesday after dark. I stepped out of my Barracuda and scanned the area. No cars were on the road, no people loitered outside the shooting range, and no sounds broke the eerie stillness, except for an occasional murmur from a breeze off the bay that somehow had traveled this far inland.
Turner Creek Sporting Clays was a single wooden building that resembled a hunting lodge trimmed with rough-cut logs and cedar shutters. A row of mounted deer antlers lined the exterior wall. The entrance door was shut.
Next to the door, a large sign on a bulletin board displayed the hours of operation. Wednesday through Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Closed Monday and Tuesday.
Hailey had agreed to meet me here at ten o’clock, which was still a few minutes away. Papers covered the bulletin board, so I climbed the wooden plank steps and searched for private shooting lessons either before or after regular hours. The business cards thumbtacked to the board were mostly for gun sales and repairs. Four taxidermists competed for the local trophy business. An outdoorsman had posted an advertisement for anyone interested in bagging ducks or geese from rented blinds along the Eastern Shore.
One flyer in the upper corner of the bulletin board seemed out of place. Someone named Alejandra offered cello lessons at a price of $120.00 per hour or $65.00 per half hour. I couldn’t imagine anyone at a rural shooting range having an interest in the cello, especially at those pricey rates, but six tags with Alejandra’s phone number at the bottom of the flyer were torn off. Only two tags remained. The rest of the flyers were for archery gear and fishing tackle. Nothing on the bulletin board indicated that Turner Creek Sporting Clays was open anytime other than the posted hours.
Hailey’s red minivan pulled into the gravel parking lot and kicked up dust in a powdery-gray cloud behind the rear tires. She got out of the passenger side and then turned to speak to her partner, Daniel, behind the steering wheel. Hailey sat back down on the passenger seat, removed her sneakers, and opened a large shoebox. I walked over to her as she put on hiking boots. A label on the shoebox indicated that she wore size seven.
“Hi, Bryce,” she said. “I'm not going to ruin my new sneakers in these muddy fields."
“Good idea. I guess you’ll mess up your new hiking boots instead. Who do you have with you today?”
“Just Daniel and the girls, but they can’t stay. Ballet class in half an hour. He’s taking them.”
“Hey, Daniel,” I said, greeting him. “Too bad you can’t join us.”
Daniel seemed tall and muscular as he sat cramped in the driver’s seat of the minivan.
“Yeah,” he replied. “It would’ve been fun, but maybe next time. And Hailey, we’ll be back before noon. You’ll be done by then, right?”
“Sounds about right,” she said. “See you, hon.”
Daniel gave Hailey a look of mild disbelief at her plan to spend Saturday morning at a shooting range with her boss, the lawyer. He turned the key in the ignition. The red minivan drove off the parking lot onto the country road that led back to Ocean Highway.
The front door of Turner Creek Sporting Clays swung open. A bearded young man wearing a camouflage shirt, jeans, and an orange baseball cap stepped out and looked us over like we were two French pastry chefs wandering lost in a swamp. The young man turned and went back inside.
“You ready?” Hailey asked.
“You bet. Apparently, this was the last place Richard Kostas went on the night he died, so let’s see what we can find. Tell me if you notice anything unusual. It might help Marisa Dupree’s defense … and let’s go kill some clays.”
She smiled. “What exactly are we looking for?”
“Not sure,” I replied. “But Kostas wrote down his visits here in a small calendar that Sheriff Tompkins found. He came here at six-thirty in the morning a few times, and then one final visit at eight o’clock the night he died. Maybe there’s nothing to this, but let’s check it out.”
The interior of Turner Creek Sporting Clays smelled of gun oils and fresh brewed coffee. Stuffed ducks and Canadian geese covered the log wall to the left. The mounted heads of elk, whitetail deer, and a snarling black bear hung on the wall to the right. Racks stocked with boxes of shotgun shells and clay pigeons stood behind the counter.
The wooden floor creaked beneath our weight as we approached the burly owner. He had a microscopic crewcut. Yellow shooting glasses dangled from the pocket of his dark green shirt. His name tag read “Ervin - Owner.”
Ervin chomped on an unlit cigar and grumbled, “Morning to ya. Doing the course today?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. “Gonna give it a try.”
“You brought guns or need ’em?” he asked.
Hailey looked over at me, so I took the lead and said, “We need them, as well as clays and shells.”
“Everything, huh?
