Varnished without a Trace

by Misty Simon

  “Bertie, how’s it going? Sherman just asked me to come over to look at the house to see what it might need.”

  “Oh, bless you. Does that mean we might have help? I swear, with this person running around I’m about tuckered out. I’ve never been this busy before. I have dishpan hands from cleaning stuff even wearing my rubber gloves.”

  Did he really mean that or was he just playing me? I rarely had anyone so happy to see me, and I would technically be taking away some of his business. I was going to assume he really was happy for the help and not second guess him or myself.

  “Bertie, if you really want help, I can get a few of my people on site for you.”

  “Oh dear, would you do that? I would be so thankful. I don’t know what else to do and I want to get these people back into their houses and back to normal life. The money’s good of course, but I feel horrible putting people off because we have too many sites to clean.” Bertie wiped his brow with a rag, even though it was barely above freezing out here. Did men go through hot flashes?

  The rest of his crew had shown up on the sidewalk and were milling around. I caught one of them giving me an angry look; then he looked away when I stared him down.

  “I’m happy to help, but it looks like some of your people might not like that idea.”

  Bertie looked around and zeroed in on the tall guy with the light hair standing off to the side, the one who’d glared at me.

  “We’re all fine with this and know it’s important to have the people back in their homes, more important than collecting big money. We’d be happy to split the charge with you if you don’t mind bringing your own chemicals.” He looked in the front windows of the house behind me. “This is going to be a big job, but I have to finish the Franklins’ house before I can get here.”

  Zeke, Bertie’s son, put a hand on his father’s shoulder. “We’ve got this, old man. I swear we’ll be able to get it all done, and then we can take a break for a little while hopefully. The season of irresponsible people with flammable trees is almost over, and then it might be a grease fire or two for a little if we’re lucky.” Where Bertie’s hair was white and poofed out around his ears, leaving the top of his head bald, Zeke had a full head of light brown hair. I looked a little more closely at him. Letty wasn’t old by any means—in fact, she and Zeke were probably about the same age—but Zeke had a very youthful face. And if he’d been hit by soot from the fire or smoke, his hair might have been darker, or maybe it had seemed darker when seen through the smoke Letty had been trying to escape.

  Could he be the one who was setting the fires? Not only did it bring in money, but he’d know the mechanics of a fire and all the things that could be done to set them off. Had I called out to him to call 911 when I’d arrived at the fire and he’d ignored me because he’d set it? I’d thought he was a kid at the time, but I could have been wrong. Then again, I thought anyone under thirty was a kid, so there was that.

  I filed the information back in my brain as I smiled and worked out the details with Bertie. Once things were settled, I turned to Max.

  “Are you working today?”

  “In an hour or so your dad wants me to come into the basement to work with Clarissa, who does hair for the funerals.”

  I shuddered. That was one of my least favorite things to be a part of. Especially if the person had broken their neck or had head trauma. Clarissa was a magician, though, not just a beautician, and did an amazing job even with the hardest cases.

  “Okay, well then, why don’t you go do that and I’ll get the crew together to sort out who can do what?”

  “Whatever works for you. I could probably help with the cleaning too, if you want. I’ll just be a Max-of-all-trades.”

  I snickered. “I might just take you up on that while Letty’s recovering. I don’t know when she’ll be back on her feet.”

  Bertie was talking to his three employees and pointing things out when I looked back at him. “I want to help, but I don’t want to spread everyone too thin.”

  “We can get it all done. No fear,” Max said

  “Yeah,” I said as I watched him walk away and turn the corner to go back to the funeral home.

  “You know, if you don’t have time, we really can handle this ourselves.” Zeke was back at my side while everyone else was grabbing tools from Bertie’s van.

  “If your dad wants my help, I’d like to offer it.” I eyed him up and down. He was tall, and if Letty had thought he was younger than he really was, it was very possible I was staring at the firebug. “It’s weird how many fires have happened over the last few weeks. It’s almost like they’re deliberate.”

  He flinched and pulled at the collar of his shirt, then yanked his hand back down to his side. “I highly doubt that. Who would do something like that? We’re a good town.”

  “Even good towns have people who do bad things. I heard that there might have been some accelerant used. Something that’s hard to come by. The fire chief was looking into where it might be available and how you’d go about buying it last I heard.” A total lie, because my uncle had no idea, but why not put that out there and see what happened?

  Zeke just scoffed. “He’s looking for something that doesn’t exist.”

  Bertie called over for Zeke and he waved to his dad.

  “You’d better get going.” I waited to see if he’d say anything more. He opened his mouth and closed it, then opened it again.

  “Don’t go looking for trouble where there is none. Don’t you have your hands full enough with trying to do Burton’s job and now trying to horn in on my dad’s cleanup business? I’d think you would want to just stick with your little cleaning crew. Don’t get mixed up with the big boys.”

  Well, that sounded a little like a threat and too tempting to pass up. “Zeke, you have no idea who you’re talking to if you think I can’t take on and demolish the big boys. I’ve had a lot of practice.”

  “Zeke, now! I need you over here to make sure we’re all on the same page with this cleanup, boy.” Bertie stood with a clipboard in one hand and the other on his waist.

  “Better scoot along, boy.” If pressed, I would admit that calling him “boy” was above and beyond what I should have said, but I was irritated with how much was going on around my small town and didn’t need to be told where my place was.

  My place was wherever I wanted it to be. And if someone asked for my help, I was going to do my best to help in an effort to continue to atone for abandoning everyone in this town when I was too stuck up to realize how I’d shunned the very people who’d meant so much to me. Bertie was another one. He’d let me work with him when I was eighteen before I went off to college. I vaguely knew what I was doing regarding fire cleanup, and Zeke could just go stuff it.

  To prove my point, I took out my phone and started taking pictures of the house while they stood out on the sidewalk talking. I got shots through the window as best I could.

  I was about to walk away when I realized there was something strange inside the house on the foyer floor that hadn’t been touched by the fire. A wig; a dark wig.

  Digging the key out of the flowerbed, I opened the back door and snuck in, trying to keep low in case anyone on the sidewalk looked in the window while I was being stealthy.

  With my phone, I took a picture of it where it lay on the floor, then ran to the kitchen to get a paper towel to pick it up and a plastic bag from the pantry to put it in. Sherman was going to have to ask the Clemenses if either of them wore a wig or one of their kids cosplayed, but I had a feeling this didn’t belong to them. It smelled like fire, but with a strong undertone of man sweat.

  I had just tucked the bag into my jacket against my belly when the front door opened. Bertie made a sound of surprise, but I got a beady-eyed glare from Zeke.

  “It looks like it’s going to need a lot of work in here,” I said with sunshine in my voice. “I’ll call you later, Bertie, to set up a schedule. I’m sure the girls will be more than happy to help.
”

  I waved on my way out and ignored the under-the-breath snarl from Zeke. He might talk a big game, but I could go one better. I did every time. Ask Burton.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  After dropping off the wig to a jubilant Sherman and telling him my theory, I headed over to the old folks’ home on Keller. I was going to be a couple of minutes late, but hopefully Hal Burton wouldn’t notice.

  I should not have thought that, or even hoped for it, knowing what his kid was like. Burton had to come by his attitude somehow, and I knew his mother had been a sweetheart.

  “You ask for a meeting and then you aren’t on time. That’s no way to treat anyone, much less an old man who has things to do.” The old man in question thumped his cane on the floor hard enough to make the guy next to him jump and topple over from his low chair.

  I beat the male orderly, who smelled of man sweat and smoke, as I rushed to grab his arm to make sure he didn’t hit the floor and realized it was another uncle of mine. Actually great-uncle, or maybe great-great-uncle, perhaps a cousin four times removed. I’d have to ask my dad when I talked to him next.

  “I’ve got him, thanks,” I said to the kid, the same one I’d seen on Bertie’s crew. “You work here too?”

  “I do a lot of things, but I’m off shift now, so make sure he doesn’t fall again.” He frowned at me as if I had been the one to push the old guy off the chair.

  Ignoring him, I turned back to the frail senior. “You okay, Mr. Brannigan?”

  “Barbara? Barbara, is that you? Did you bring me cookies, girl? They never let me have any sweets here, and you know how much I love my sweets. Tell me you brought me cookies,” he pleaded while clawing at my arm.

  Glancing over his head, I caught the eye of a nurse and nodded her over. She hustled over and helped me with the grasping man.

  “I’ll make sure to bring some next time, Mr. Brannigan. Promise.”

  “You’d better. They’re going to be your entrance fee. No cookies, no time with your favorite uncle, girl. And it’s Uncle Bruce, not Mr. Brannigan. I’ve told you that before.”

  Seriously, I didn’t know what to say to that, and this was one time when I really didn’t want to lie because I wasn’t sure which Barbara he was referring to.

  I looked over at the nurse and she winked at me as she took him by his elbow. “I’ll handle it. I can offer him something he hates, then make it sweet by giving him what he’d prefer,” she murmured to me. Then she raised her voice. “It’s time for your tapioca pudding, Mr. Brannigan; that will be nice and sweet. You love your tapioca pudding.”

  “Ha! I want a cookie, not pudding. Tapioca looks like it has maggots in it. Can I at least have chocolate this time?”

  “Of course.” The nurse looked back at me again and winked.

  “He falls for it every single damn time.” Hal Burton snorted in disgust. “I’ll never be that stupid.”

  “Are you a fan of tapioca pudding?”

  “Hate the stuff.” He glared at me.

  “And so, if they offered you chocolate, you’d turn that down.” I waited to be seated until he offered. We’d already gotten off to a bad start, but I had a feeling this was going to be like Zeke; you had to show no fear and let them know you weren’t going to take their flack or you’d get stepped all over.

  “Of course not. I already told you I would never be that stupid.”

  “Good to know.” I opened my purse and handed him a plastic baggie of cookies. “I’m told they’re oatmeal, which I know isn’t quite as sweet as pudding.” Burton had also told me that they were his absolute favorite. I hadn’t had time to whip them up myself, so I’d bought them at the grocery store, but he probably wouldn’t know the difference. Although, on second thought, I could be playing with fire here if he was offended.

  He took a bite of the first cookie, then harrumphed. “Store-bought. Next time bring me the real thing.”

  “Sure.” I reached out to take back the bag and he snatched it out of my grasp, then clutched it to his bony chest.

  “Don’t even try. I might be old, but I’m still quick on the draw.”

  “I’m told no one is really old until they’re a hundred and seven.” I figured he wasn’t actually going to offer me a seat, so I took one. My legs were tired from running around over the last few days, and he was just going to have to live with me not waiting for his invitation, just like he would have to be fine with the store-bought cookies.

  He took another bite and sighed. That was a sigh of satisfaction, and it made me wish I had taken the time to bake the cookies. He would have done more than sigh for those.

  “If you ask my son, I was old before I even retired.” He took another bite and yanked the hunk off with his dentures. They were way too straight and white to be his real teeth.

  “Ah, Burton, my nemesis.” If he despised his son as much as Burton thought he did, would playing Hal’s ally work in my favor?

  “Nemesis, ha! I heard you’re trying to replace him, not take him down.”

  Oh, that could be dangerous territory. “I’m not trying to replace him. I’m just helping him.”

  “Yeah, help him lose his job. Back in my day, we never would have let a common citizen solve our cases for us. We didn’t involve them at all. We took care of things and no one was the wiser exactly what was going on in their little town. All the secrets, the lies, and the people who weren’t as good as they said they were.”

  “But not the ones who weren’t who they said they were?” I slipped in the question, interrupting his tirade and making him shove the rest of the cookie into his mouth. I sat while he chewed and then swallowed. He picked another cookie and bit into that one too, staring at me the whole time. I smiled to let him know I was happy he was enjoying the cookie. “I’m not going anywhere until I get some answers, so you just enjoy that cookie and talk whenever you’re ready. Unless you want me to call the nurse back over? She might take your cookies, but there’s tapioca pudding on the menu.”

  “You’re underhanded.”

  “I get the job done.” I shrugged.

  “You’re undermining my son,” he fired back.

  “I’m helping him close cases before they get out of hand or before they go cold. I don’t try to get involved unless it means something to me, and these have meant something to me. Plus, people tell me things that maybe they shouldn’t. Like my grandmother . . .” I left that hanging there for a moment while he took the last cookie out of the baggie.

  “I wondered why you were coming by when I’ve never had you visit before. I thought maybe it was just to gloat, or because Shirley had guilted you in to doing community service for all that time you thought we were beneath you.”

  Oh, a jab, and one that would have hurt far more a few months ago. Now, I just smiled at him. “That was the old me. I’m all about helping now and have made peace with everyone. Cookies seem to go a long way to get people talking.”

  “We’re having a parallel conversation. Well done.”

  “Thanks.”

  “That’s it, just thanks?” He shoved the last piece of oatmeal cookie in his mouth, then looked sadly at the empty baggie.

  I took the second baggie out of my purse and put it on my lap.

  “Well, damn, girl.”

  At that, I laughed. “I gave you something you wanted and then I held back the rest in case you wouldn’t cooperate.”

  “Is that what you do with my kid?”

  I scoffed. “No, I try my hardest to help your son, and he’s about as stubborn as you are. The apple didn’t even roll slightly from the tree as far as I can see.”

  “Nothing wrong with that.”

  “Not at all. Except when it comes to getting either of you to tell me what I need to know to get things moving in the right direction.”

  He eyed the bag of cookies and then used the back of his hand to wipe at the corner of his mouth. I fought with myself not to just hand them to him. But they were my bargaining tool, and I cou
ldn’t give in without getting some answers.

  “So, tell me about Hoagie and I’ll give you the cookies plus the third bag I was going to give the staff when I left.”

  “They don’t need the cookies. They can go home and gorge on them anytime they want.”

  “And I can go home with this last bag and eat them myself . . . or I can open them right now and enjoy them.”

  “Fine, fine, fine. You got me. Give me the cookies and I’ll tell you a story.”

  “Tell me a story and I’ll judiciously hand out the cookies at specific intervals.”

  He laughed, and I knew I was in. Now to find out what had really happened, what kind of person I was actually looking for and whether I really wanted to find Hoagie.

  I settled into the surprisingly comfy visitor’s chair and tried to block out the smell of antiseptic sitting just under the scent of deodorizer. It wasn’t a lot different from the smell in the basement of the funeral home. I certainly wasn’t going to say that out loud, but it stayed in the back of my head as I waited for Hal Burton to start.

  “I wasn’t told very much when the marshal came to me and asked me to take Hoagie on. We didn’t have computers and that type of thing back then, so I just had to trust that the witness to a crime they were sending me was going to keep himself out of further trouble and not really discuss what he’d seen in the first place. I knew it had to do with his brother, though. He was going to be in hiding from him and his friends for years while his brother served a jail sentence.”

  “Did they tell you how long the sentence was?”

  “Forty years. I’ve watched over him all these years, though. I’d considered taking him into our family instead of asking your grandfather, but with Shirley and her insatiable curiosity, it never would have flown. She would have grilled that poor man like she used to grill hot dogs for our family picnics.”

  I snickered, because Mama Shirley liked her dogs well done, like crispy black on the outside well done.