“What do you mean by barter?” Bertha asked.
“My family owns a resell-it shop. You know, a pawnshop,” Pat Reed said quickly. “Do you need a stereo, a television, something like that?”
“Not really,” Bertha said with a sinking feeling.
“Jewelry? How about a nice camera? Golf clubs?”
“What’s the name of this pawnshop?” Bertha asked.
“Gunsmoke Sporting Goods.”
“Gunsmoke? You sell guns?”
Pat Reed hesitated, then said, “Sure we do. You need a gun?”
Bertha pulled a pencil out of her middle drawer and searched for something to write on. “Give me the address,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-seven
White gravel glistened in the hot afternoon sun and made popping sounds as Bertha swung the Jeep into the last parking space. A woman on the radio claimed the temperature was ninety-six degrees, with a heat index of one hundred and twenty-nine. Patricia Reed had told her the store closed at six. Bertha had twenty minutes. A liquor store shared a portable sign with the pawnshop. Two men came out, carrying five cases of beer, and loaded them in the rear of a black extended-cab Dodge truck. As Bertha approached the solid wood door of Gunsmoke Sporting Goods, the sun baked down on her neck and shoulders, and she glanced over her shoulder at the liquor store.
The small pawnshop consisted of a single cluttered room with a glass horseshoe counter. One wall was covered with instruments, mostly guitars and amps. Locked display cases contained several shelves of jewelry—one showcase was filled exclusively with wedding rings. A male clerk behind the back counter demonstrated a rifle. He cocked it, looked down its barrel, and passed it to a younger man on the customer side of the counter. Bertha made her way around the room until she reached a display of handguns. She saw several small-caliber revolvers and studied them.
“Find one you like?” Pat Reed’s voice startled her.
“Not really.” Bertha sighed. “I was hoping for something higher caliber.”
Patricia Reed thought for a moment, then called across the room. “Hey, Bill, you done with that Smith and Wesson?” She looked at Bertha and added, “My brother cleans them up—makes sure they’re in good shape before we put them out.”
Bill called out, “Yep.”
“I got something I think you might like.” Pat disappeared into a back room. When she returned she was carrying a brown leather holster. “This comes with an extra clip. Holds ten rounds and one in the chamber. Semi-automatic. Double action. Standard four-and-a-half inch barrel.” Pat removed the Smith and Wesson from the holster and passed it across the counter. “It’s a Sigma. New kind, lightweight.”
Bertha turned the gun over in her hands. “What’s this go for?”
“Extra clip, holster and all, we could get over three hundred, maybe three seventy-five or four hundred.”
“I’ll give you five hundred in legal fees.”
Pat let out her breath slowly. “When can you file?”
Bertha looked down the barrel, lining up the sights with an electric socket on the wall, and said, “Tomorrow. He’ll probably hire his own attorney on this one. And he could win.”
Patricia Reed cleared her throat. “I’ve got to try.”
Bertha nodded. “Stop by my office sometime tomorrow. I’ll have my secretary draw up an agreement and get the paperwork started.”
“Have you ever fired this type of weapon?”
“Sure,” Bertha lied.
“Well, just in case you forgot, I need to tell you about the slide action. You have to hold it just so,” Pat said, “or it’ll take some skin off your hand. You probably should get lessons. Mother’s Gun club has them all the time.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Thank you, Miss Brannon.”
Bertha smiled. “I think you’re doing the right thing. When I was in treatment, they told us the disease takes adolescents much faster than adults, because they’re growing fast—hormones and all.”
“You went to treatment?”
“Eighteen months ago.”
“I’m impressed.”
After an awkward silence, Bertha said, “Most of the time it doesn’t feel too impressive, but I guess it is.”
Pat Reed leaned forward and whispered, “Do you have a Firearms Owners ID? They’re so damn fussy about drug addicts.”
Bertha reached for her hip pocket, nodding. “Got it before I got my diagnosis. Now that I quit, doesn’t make sense to tell them.”
Pat examined the card, turned it over in her hand, pulled a pencil from a coffee mug by the register, and wrote the FOID card numbers down. “There’s a three-day wait, you know.”
Of course, Bertha knew. She’d simply forgotten. “I really need it today.”
“You’re probably nervous about the murders at your office building.”
“Plus, some creep has been hanging around my grandma’s house. And someone broke into my apartment Sunday night. Whoever was after her didn’t care about the laws.”
Pat looked across the room where her brother was putting the rifle back in the showcase. His customer was gone. She called to him, “Billy, will you run next door and get me a bottle of Coca-Cola?”
Billy patted his pockets, nodded, and walked past Pat and Bertha out into the heat. Pat said, “Do what you can to avoid firing this weapon in the next three days. I’ll send in the paperwork this afternoon.”
Bertha watched, puzzled at first, while Pat Reed bagged up the gun, ammunition, extra clip, and holster, then laid them on the counter next to the register. She headed for the back room, stopped in the doorway, turned, and said, “Be careful, Bertha.” Then she was gone.
Bertha picked up the bag and walked out to her Jeep. She looked over her shoulder before pulling away and saw Billy Reed watching her from the liquor-store window.
*
A fan sat on the floor by Grandma’s sewing machine. Bertha could smell chicken cooking. Probably boiling. Grandma wouldn’t use the oven in this heat. “Where’s Aunt Lucy?” she asked.
“Taking a nap,” Grandma said. “We was up half the night.”
“I need to talk to her.”
“Come back later. I ain’t waking her.”
Bertha sat down in the worn swivel-rocker. “I’ll wait.” She stretched her long legs out across the linoleum rug.
Bertha heard Aunt Lucy’s voice behind her. “Girl, you are stubborn.”
“I need to talk to you,” Bertha said without turning.
“Me?”
“I almost ran into you today. At lunch.”
Aunt Lucy said, “Let’s take a walk out in the garden.”
Grandma started to move her walker toward the kitchen Aunt Lucy said, “We need to talk alone.”
Grandma drew herself up. “What can’t I hear?”
Bertha stood and crossed the room, then stopped for a second and said, “You deal with this. I’ll be waiting.”
She left the two women and walked through the long kitchen and the arched doorway, across the closed-in back porch that shared a tacked-on inside bathroom.
The sun was low, and half the long, narrow lot was covered in shadows. The rain had settled the stench of the Latchs’ burned-down store. It was still there, but faint. The grass was getting high, and Bertha wondered if she’d have time to mow it over the next weekend. In this shabby neighborhood, Grandma’s back lot had always seemed like a grand lady dressed in bright colors and perfumed, ready to go to a ball. All Bertha’s life Grandma had pointed out each flower and told her its name. Bertha couldn’t remember most of them. Overgrown lilac and rose bushes lined the fences on either side. Only the perennials were left, year after untended year, growing smaller. At the end of the yard, the alley was lined with trashcans and covered with broken glass. Dry weeds grew in uneven patterns. The vegetable garden was behind the garage. Bertha had eaten fresh tomatoes like apples all her life. As a child she and Grandma had worked on hot summer afternoons in garden gloves, picking g
reen tomato bugs off the plants. The birdbath was dry. A rusted hoe leaned against the back of the garage. There were no vegetables this year. Hadn’t been since the broken hip.
Bertha pulled two webbed lawn chairs into the shade. They’d faded over the years but still seemed sturdy. She sat down to wait, listening to the sounds of the insects. A mosquito lit on her arm, and she slapped at it. She could feel the cool leather and metal of the holster and gun beneath her shirt, against the small of her back.
Bertha smelled cigarette smoke and turned to see Aunt Lucy emerge from the shadows. She sat in the empty lawn chair and leaned back. They were quiet for a moment.
“I have some questions,” Bertha said. “I went to interview Sally Morescki today and was very surprised to see you with her.”
Aunt Lucy tossed her cigarette toward the alley. The spark arced in the air and exploded when it hit the cinders. “How much did she tell you?”
“Everything.”
Aunt Lucy she threw back her head and laughed. “I doubt that.”
“How do you know her?”
“She was a friend of your father. Do you remember her?”
“Should I?”
Aunt Lucy shrugged. “I suppose not. It was a long time ago.”
“After my mother left?”
“Before.”
Bertha tried to remember. She had some memories of her father. Good memories. And there was something familiar about Sally. Not her appearance, but her tone, her voice, her trembling hands. Finally Bertha shook her head. “I don’t remember. She told me you went to high school with her.”
“She’s a few years younger than me. I remembered her from school but didn’t really know her until your father brought her around. She moved to Chicago a long time before me. When I moved up there, she looked me up. Believe me, I was glad to know somebody in that big city. Since she got married and moved back here, we try to keep in touch.”
“And, my father knew her?” Bertha waited but Aunt Lucy didn’t answer, so she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me when I talked to you about her yesterday? Why didn’t she mention you to me? What’s everybody hiding?”
Aunt Lucy shrugged. She fished in her pocket for her cigarette case, extracted one, and lit it. “There’s nothing to hide. I admit her husband showing up dead in your office seems suspicious. But I’ve known her a long time, and she’s a good person. I didn’t want to get you all riled up. So I just went and talked to her myself.”
“What did you find out?” Bertha asked.
Aunt Lucy spread her hands. “Nothing. I got the impression she’s not going to miss the man. But I don’t think she knows who killed him.”
Bertha watched smoke curl from the long white cigarette between Aunt Lucy’s fingers. Her crimson fingernails were perfectly manicured. The sun hung low in the sky, and trees on either side of the lot cast long shadows. A cool breeze caressed Bertha’s warm skin. Insects in the grass and trees buzzed on unaffected as she tried to compute this new information. She studied Aunt Lucy carefully and wondered if there was more. She was forming another question when she heard the scrape of the walker, and Grandma emerged from the semi-darkness.
Grandma motioned to tall bushes along the west fence and said, “This garden has gone to weed. Them rosebushes should have been pruned. They was a stand of day lilies right here.” She pointed to a spot along the narrow sidewalk where she stood. “Looks like they got mowed down. First the peonies, now the lilies.”
Bertha pushed herself up out of the lawn chair and went to the old woman. She scolded her affectionately. “How in the world did you negotiate those steps alone?”
“I ain’t as bad off as you make out, Bee.”
“Come over here and sit down,” Bertha said. “Rest a spell before you go back in.”
The rubber tips of the walker sank in the soft earth. Bertha stayed beside Grandma until she was settled in the lawn chair. Then she sat in the cool grass at Grandma’s feet.
“You gonna get chiggers in that grass,” Grandma said.
“I’ll take a hot bath as soon as I get home.” The thought of the little black bugs made her itch.
Grandma said, “Be sure and soak.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Aunt Lucy interrupted. “Now, Mom, you’re treating Bertha like she’s a child.”
Grandma touched Bertha’s shoulder. “Big as she is, she always be my baby.”
Bertha scooted close to the lawn chair and leaned her back against it next to Grandma’s legs. The old woman smelled faintly of the lavender sachet that she kept in her underwear drawer. Aunt Lucy started talking about her youngest boy, and Bertha sensed the questions would have to wait. She rested her head in Grandma’s lap and felt the old woman’s cool fingers on her forehead.
“You had your dinner, Bertha?” Aunt Lucy asked.
“No.”
“I got a chicken cooking. Stay and eat with us.”
Bertha realized she was hungry and agreed.
Aunt Lucy stood and stretched. “You help your grandma in, and I’ll go finish things up.”
A dog barked somewhere down the alley, and another joined in. “Damn dogs,” Grandma said.
“Are they a nuisance?”
“Times like this is bad enough, but when they go on in the middle of the night it worries me.”
“They wake you up?”
“They was hysterical the night Latch’s Store burned. Just somebody up to no good.”
Bertha walked slowly toward the back steps next to Grandma.
*
That night Bertha filled the old cast-iron bathtub and soaked in the steaming water; she lay back in the tub and let the tension drain out of her, and then she went over the events of the day. It seemed like years ago that she’d talked to Rhonda Green about the prowler. Everyone Bertha’d talked to about Sally since the original conversation with Cal Mossman had made an effort to convince her that Sally was innocent. And the more people tried, the more Bertha was convinced of her involvement. Sally was hiding something.
When Bertha climbed into bed, her skin was fresh-scrubbed and her belly was full of home cooking. For the first night in several, she slept soundly.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Thursday morning Bertha overslept. She was in the kitchen, measuring scoops of coffee and watching a workman repair the back-door lock, when the phone rang.
“Bertha, I’m sorry to bother you,” Toni Matulis said.
“You’re not bothering me.”
“We got another body. Pop and I are pretty sure it’s connected to the Morescki thing.”
“Who? How?”
Toni sighed. “We’re withholding the name, pending notification.”
“That’s what you called to tell me?”
“An ex-employee of Joe’s, his bodyguard.”
Bertha’s tone was flat. “Mark Mossman.”
“You know him?”
“We talked yesterday afternoon.”
“The guy who opened the Northeast Landfill was leveling things off for the day’s business and nearly ran over him with the tractor. He was top of a heap, way in the back.”
Bertha pulled a kitchen chair away from the table and sat down. “You’ve got time of death, anything?”
“Too soon to tell. Plus, the rats’d been at him.”
“How did he die?”
“He was roughed up pretty bad. Throat slit. Could be a copycat of the Morescki thing. These guys in the drug trade bump each other off all the time.”
“He worked for Joe Morescki. The method of murder was the same.”
“I suppose. It seems too easy.”
“You got anything else? Anybody see or hear anything?”
“I don’t think so. Homicide is knocking on doors as we speak. Not many houses in that area. I doubt if they’ll get anything from the spot the body was found. I mean, how do you dust the city dump for prints?”
Bertha thought for a minute, then said, “I don’t know what to do next.”
/> “Take care of yourself next. I wanted you to know. Be careful around these folks. They play for keeps.”
“Right. Look, I’ve got to call my grandma.”
“Sure. How about you and me meeting this evening, putting our heads together over dinner, and see what we can come up with?”
“I’m going to be in and out today. I’ll call you around six.”
“You want to just come by?”
“Sure. Sounds good.”
Bertha hung up, leaned against the counter, and watched the coffee brew. She hesitated a moment, then picked up the phone again and dialed Grandma’ numbers.
Aunt Lucy told Bertha she and Grandma were having a quiet morning, following an uneventful night. Bertha didn’t see any point in talking about Mark Mossman. She cautioned Aunt Lucy to take care and hung up.
Bertha carried the cup of coffee into the living room and stretched out in her favorite chair. She blew on the hot liquid and took a small sip. A strip of sunlight fell across the arm of the couch and the coffee table. The day was going to be another hot one. She thought about the big man who’d visited her office. He might have been murdered a short time after their interview. Possibly, she was the last one to talk to him. She remembered his philosophy about murder, about the things that scared him. He ‘d tried to convince her that Sally Morescki had nothing to do with her husband’s murder. Of course the city dump wasn’t Sally’s speed. Bertha remembered his saying that somebody was out of control. Evidently he found out who that was.
An object on the coffee table lay in the strip of sunlight. Bertha looked closer. It was Cal Mossman’s metal cigarette case. The image of Cal sitting in the chair where she sat now, pulling a joint from the metal case and lighting it, flashed in her mind. She wondered if Cal knew about his brother’s death, and if he did, how much he knew.
She leaned forward, sat her cup on the coffee table, and picked up the cool metal case. She shook it. Something rattled. She watched her hands pull the case open. There were two Pall Malls, a neatly rolled joint, and, in the bottom, a small brown bottle of powder. The rush swept over her with a stunning force. She’d heard other addicts talk in meetings about the memory of the high. Her nostrils itched. Impulsively she decided to return Cal Mossman’s cigarette case.
Nine Nights on the Windy Tree Page 23
