Chief Sam Jenkins investigates the murder of a building contractor.
Building contractor Scotty Beets reports the theft of copper wire and pipe from his construction sites. It doesn't take Tennessee Police Chief Sam Jenkins long to find the thief, but soon after the suspect is released on bail, the complainant is found murdered and dropped into the basement of a home under consruction.
Sam's investigation leads him to more suspects than he ever wanted to meet. In a Rex Stout / Nero Wolfe-like ending, Jenkins assembles the suspects and exposes the killer.
Excerpt
Ned’s Bucket O’ Blood. The name suggested a real class joint. The Bucket, a typical Southern road house, sat on a secondary highway, about fifty feet off the blacktop in a dog-eared neighborhood.
Large clumps of Dallis grass dotted the gravel parking lot, and a bumper crop of ragweed grew along the exterior walls of the bar.
A half dozen vehicles, four of them pickup trucks, were scattered around the lot in no particular order. I parked near the door and walked in.
The smell of stale beer and old cigarette smoke could have gagged a maggot.
The occupants of those six parked vehicles perched on stools and lounged at tables throughout the dingy gin mill.
A not quite pretty blond in a short black dress sang her rendition of It Takes Balls to be a Woman. Her guitarist wore a fancy two-tone cowboy shirt and looked vaguely like Stephen King, if Steve hadn’t washed his hair in a decade.
I took a stool at the close end of the bar.
Goldie's daughter Chili Pepper leaves the Flirting With Food TV show & moves to Portland Oregon as Executive Chef at a new restaurant. But there is a rash of murders, all in the Pettygrove mansion where she lives with roommates.
An alcoholic, miserly attorney reluctantly defends a black man from a false resisting arrest charge. He then discovers damaging information against the cops and two cronies, and embarks on a battle to keep himself and his client alive.
