Your Goose Is Cooked (A LaTisha Barnhart Mystery)

by S. Dionne Moore

  Mac joined our huddle. “Followed Eddie and Roger to the edge of town where the ladies got into a car and left.”

  “Eddie and Roger?” Chief asked.

  Mac shrugged. “They talked for a few minutes. At one point I could hear them arguing but I was too far away to make out their words.”

  Chief tucked his thumbs in his belt, classic cop pose. “Where did they go next?”

  “I left them still talking.”

  “Why?” Chief’s tone went low. Authoritative.

  Mac averted his eyes. “Had to use the john. Drank too much coffee.”

  “That’s what you get for loading up on the stuff,” I put in my quarter’s-worth. “Don’t you know it’s not good for you? All that caffeine.”

  Mac glanced around, the same look my boys got when they had waited too long.

  I dug around my pocket for my keys and dangled them. “Come on, I’ll let you in to the Goose.”

  Chief did a stretch, his eyes slipping over to me, curious-like. “I’m going home,” he announced. “See you in the morning, Mac. I’ll expect you in early. Tomorrow’s the big speech day. I want to make sure everything goes smoothly, so it’ll be all hands on deck.”

  I shoved the door to the Goose opened, wondering what Chief’s look meant. And he didn’t even tell me good night, just laid it on Mac to be on time in the morning. I flicked on a light, moving out of the way before Mac rolled over top me. Nothing seemed out of place in the Goose, not that I expected anything less, but I did wonder where Hardy had gotten to. I hoped he was still keeping an eye on Roger and Eddie.

  Mac reappeared, rubbing his hands on his pants as he walked. “Thanks, LaTisha, I’m calling it a night.” At least he washed his hands.

  “Leave off that coffee!” I hollered as he opened the door.

  I used the time to gather a few things for the morning rush Hardy and I had forgotten. We’d be closing at ten, in preparation for the speeches at the library, but reopening to feed the hungry crowd for lunch. I closed my eyes and let my mind wander. Up close, every point of this mystery led to a dead end. Almost everything we had was conjecture. I stuffed away any more thought on the whole mess and refocused on the fund-raiser as a way to clear my mind.

  In a month, I’d line up volunteers and get them started slicing, dicing, boiling, and canning the relish. Another group would work on salad dressings. I’d call up my children and see if they could come in and lend a hand. It would take a lot of work. A lot of volunteers, but maybe it would help pull our community together after the trauma of Marion’s murder, Sara’s death, and now Aidan’s.

  A deep grief washed over me, and I, like millions of others, wondered what the world was coming to. People murdering other people. Politics rampant with corruption left unchecked. Morals on a decline. The rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer. Taking God out of school, but those children could cuss a blue streak and sass their teacher and no one blinked an eye. It was enough to make my heart weep, if not for me, for my grandchildren.

  The deep longing made me want to pull out my cell phone and call my babies, one by one, to make sure all was well, to hear their voices. I checked the clock and realized I hadn’t heard back from Shayna yet. My cell phone beeped and showed two voice messages.

  Shayna here, Momma. I’ve already set things in motion and it looks like Shakespeare is the only one who has a commitment that weekend. I’ll work on him. Love you.

  The second message was a hang up.

  I scooted over to the table and wrote a list of Hardy’s favorites. With our anniversary in less than a month, if I planned this right and everything fell into place, I could get our babies rounded up to celebrate our anniversary and have the fund-raiser the next day. What a wonderful celebration it would be. Forty years and he still made me smile. How many can say that?

  I raised my eyes to the clock on the wall. Ten-thirty. What was keeping Hardy? I fell back to my planning, making list after list of both food and people I knew to be reliable to help out with the fund-raiser. To round out my plans, I also made a rough sketch of the posters and wrote out the ad I’d put in the Denver papers and the Distant Echo.

  When words started blurring, I checked the clock again. Eleven-fifteen. And that’s when I finally heard keys in the lock. I hit the lights for the dining room as I headed to the front door. Hardy blinked like the blind man healed by the hand of the Lord.

  “Where have you been?”

  His lips pressed together, but his nostrils flared, and that gave him away almost as much as the way he fidgeted in place. Didn’t I just say how he made me smile after forty years? Well, he made me frown too. “Mac came back over an hour ago and said those ladies left.”

  “They sure did.” He slid right past me. “Got something to eat?”

  You can be sure I knew I wasn’t going to get a thing out of him until I filled his gut. Not hard to find leftovers in a restaurant, though. Chicken noodle soup was the easiest. His excitement must have gotten the better of him, because he started spilling news before I got the food heated.

  “They walked clear over to the other end of town. You know, out in that field that’s for sale.”

  I shut the door on the microwave and tapped in two minutes on the keypad. “You telling me they parked a car out there?”

  “Sure did. I could see them from our bedroom window.”

  “You went home?”

  Hardy crossed his legs and laced his fingers over his knee. “No, but I could have seen them from there if I had.”

  “Where was Mac?”

  “He stood in the shadows of the school’s parking lot. I got closer by standing behind the school’s storage shed.”

  The ding of the microwave interrupted. I yanked open the door, gave the soup a stir and sent the bowl sliding across the surface of the desk toward Hardy. He stopped it with his hand, squeezed his eyes shut for the three-second prayer, and dug in.

  One gulped mouthful and he shot out a question. “Did Mac tell you about the car?”

  “You just told me they parked a car out there and that the ladies left in it.”

  His spoon clattered on the rim of his bowl. “It was the blue car, LaTisha. The same one I saw behind Betsy’s.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Mac wouldn’t have known about the blue car that narrowly missed me out in front of Big Sky Grocery. Excitement fired my blood.

  Hardy’s grin went huge. “Not a bad bit of detective work.”

  I ran my hand over his head. “Not a bad bit at all. Maybe I will keep you around for another forty years.”

  He shoveled in another bite, eyes glowing.

  “Where did they go after the ladies took off?”

  His head wagged back and forth. “Hold on a minute. I saved the best news. I got the license plate.”

  “You wrote it down?”

  He tapped his head. “Memorized it.”

  I dove for the pen I’d used for my lists.

  “KXT-L685.”

  I eyed him hard. “You sure? Colorado plates have six numbers.”

  Another spoonful disappeared. “That’s why I’m thinking it wasn’t a Colorado plate.”

  “Vanity plates usually allow you more numbers.” I thought out loud. “Was there a design?”

  “Couldn’t tell. Was too busy looking at the numbers.”

  I’d give him that one. “So where did they go after the ladies took off?”

  “I followed them back to Aidan’s. Saw the lights come on in the apartment. They were arguing over something.”

  “Mac thought he heard them arguing when they were dropping off the ladies.”

  “Then too.” Hardy swiped his spoon over the bottom of his bowl, stuck the spoon in his mouth, leaned back and burped.

  “Full of yourself, aren’t you?”

  “William’s getting to be as good a cook as you.”

  I glared. “Then you can just haul your hide over to his house.”

  “Nah.” He got to his feet and
buried his face in my shoulder. “He’s not as pretty.”

  I pulled him close. “Um-hm.” The warmth of his body made me want to snuggle up and go to sleep. I inhaled the scent of him and pushed him away. “Get on with you. We’ve got work to do.”

  After we locked up, Hardy took my hand and I finally pried the conversation he’d heard between Eddie and Roger out of him.

  “I only got a few words. Eddie was getting hot, saying something about money. Roger told him to hurry and ‘get the roughs from a posse.’ They lowered their voices after that and I wasn’t sure but I thought I heard them say something about the mayor, or a mayor.”

  “Not Eugene? Or Taser?”

  Hardy went quiet and I knew he was thinking hard. “I don’t think so.”

  We moved through the night holding hands. Doing our out-for-a-stroll innocent routine. Only anyone who knows Hardy and I knows we don’t do late-night strolls. Last time we did a late-night stroll, it was to walk Shayna around the neighborhood. She’d sat in the principal’s office all day for sassing a teacher, so she walked the neighborhood with me all night because her bottom stung so much I was afraid she’d set fire to something if she sat too long. So we walked until she was exhausted and I knew she’d go right to sleep. Nearly two hours of continuous circles around the neighborhood.

  Then there was the time when we spied on Payton O’Mahney, but we were up to something then, so it wasn’t an innocent late-night stroll at all.

  Hardy had stopped to peer in Sasha’s window. “That the hat you bought?”

  “You’ll think you married yourself a princess.”

  “I already do.” He kept on staring and I kept right on walking.

  A honeycomb couldn’t drip more honey than Hardy. “You hurry yourself up,” I hurtled back. “Sweet talk won’t get us where we need to go.”

  “I’m thinking up a tune. I think I’ll call it Dumpster Divin’ Prowlers.”

  I growled low in my throat.

  “I’m coming.”

  He came even with me. My mind was jumping around so much my head was hurting. “You think those ladies tried to run me over on purpose?” It had occurred to me in slow degrees that the whole thing could have been planned. Cars didn’t run down innocent bystanders unless the driver was blind or had an axe to grind. But why would Eddie and Roger’s wives want to make me into a speed bump? And neither one of them had red hair.

  “Tell me again how you saw this car.”

  Hardy dragged in a deep breath. “When I was walking around the neighborhood, I heard a car rev its engine. Thought it was strange that Betsy would have someone parking out back, so I went over there to check things out. I got as close as those trees and saw the car, but couldn’t see much other than a flash of red and a body moving. Looked like they were dumping something in the dumpster. Then the car’s engine revved real loud.”

  “Where’d you go next?”

  “Got hungry so I went into Shiny’s to see what he had. When I came out is when I saw you.”

  Strange. Things weren’t adding up. Not surprising. Murders seldom were clear-cut and simple. As I watched Hardy sink down into the muck of Betsy Taser’s trash, I was sure glad to have a partner willing to do the dirty work. Literally.

  Objects crunched under Hardy’s boots, the only pair he owned. Snow boots at that. But boots were boots, and if I had to do the diving, I knew I’d want boots. And long sleeves. Thick clothes. A paper bag covering my head, or, better yet, a thick plastic body suit. Astronaut style.

  Sending Hardy in is much easier than all that.

  “Found anything?”

  I couldn’t see much, though the security light over the back door did leak light to where I stood, it didn’t reach the interior of the Dumpster. Good for Hardy. Bad for me.

  Grunts punctuated the night air and a beam of light flashed on. Hardy had brought a small flashlight, and by the looks of the beam, a small one. More crunching. The friction of broken glass rubbing.

  “Not much food in here.”

  Why on God’s green earth did this man think of nothing else but food? If he found a half-eaten bag of potato chips, he’d probably sit his scrawny rump down on a trash bag and fill the air with his crunching.

  “It’s an office Dumpster, not a restaurant Dumpster. Would smell a lot worse if you were in the Goose’s bin.”

  Another grunt.

  With my eyes adjusting to the dimness within, I could make out Hardy’s form as he shone his light on some bags. “Whatever it was you saw that red head throw out, it’d be right near the top.”

  I hoped.

  A scratching noise made me blink my eyes wide. I listened close. If a rat popped out, LaTisha Barnhart was going to run the race of her life.

  Something scraped. With Hardy right in front of my eyes, my ears zoned in on the sound coming from off to my right. I scanned hard for any signs and decided to move around into the shadow created by the dumpster.

  “Hardy.” I did my best to keep my voice low, but between the noises and his silence, my skin got all crawly. “Hardy.” I tried a little louder.

  This time, I knew what I heard was gravel crunching. I still couldn’t see anyone.

  “Whoo-wee,” came from the Dumpster, then the sound of paper crackling. “LaTisha!”

  I crept out around to the front of the dumpster and stuck my head inside. “You hush your mouth. Someone’s coming.”

  It was no use. Hardy’s teeth were flashing and his eyes were bright. He wasn’t hearing a word I was saying. Paper and bags of trash crushed downward or slipped aside as he traipsed closer to me and held out his hand. “Look at this!”

  The scrape of a foot on the pavement made me stiffen. From behind me, a hand shot toward Hardy, palm up. “I’ll take that.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Hardy and I stared at the walls of the police station. Every five minutes or so, he would wander over to the vending machine, then stare back at me with his big browns drooping. Pleading.

  “I’m not giving you one dime to by another bag of popcorn. You already have a tissue full of kernels.” The tissue sat between us on a table of magazines. Not much made my stomach heave, but the sight of those kernels about sent me to hang over a toilet. “Why don’t you throw that thing away?”

  “’Cause I’m hoping to get another bag. Chief could be in there for hours.”

  “He won’t be. It’s way too late at night. He’ll want to get home. Now, read a magazine or something.”

  Hardy stalked back to his seat and slumped down. “I read all I want to read and looked at all the pictures. Even did that sud-ko thing.”

  “Su-do-ku, and you didn’t finish it.”

  He flexed his blackened fingers and swiped them down his navy polyesters. Chief had gotten his prints to eliminate Hardy should there be other prints on the gun. “You wouldn’t give me any help.”

  I rolled my eyes. “If I wanted to do those puzzles, I’d do them. Helping you is doing them.”

  He picked up a magazine and pointed. “Want to do a crossword with me?”

  This boy was getting on my last nerve. “Why don’t we play the silent game?”

  Shayna and Lela and Bryton would all get to talking so much on family trips that we invented this game to get some silence. Problem was, they never won, then they kept right on talking a streak.

  “I was being quiet. You started this whole thing.”

  “Only because you kept looking at me with those big, brown eyes. As if I never fed you.”

  “Long time since that chicken and noodles.”

  “You had peach cobbler at the Goose. Two big bowls. I saw you pouring milk on it and making it mushy so you could eat it. Where do you put it all?”

  He rubbed his stomach. “I can’t help it that I’m hungry.”

  “And I can’t help that I’m feeling a need to hurt somebody.”

  Hardy’s smile went huge. “At least you’re in the right place if you do.”

  The police station. I
stared at the wide cracks in the wood floor and wondered, for the thousandth time, who the red-haired visitor was and why she put that gun in Betsy’s Dumpster then nearly ran me over. Maybe one of those ladies wore a wig. Still, it didn’t add up.

  “You think he’s going to lock me up?”

  This from Hardy. He was worried. “You didn’t do anything. I’m your witness and Dr. Cryer is your alibi, remember? You were unconscious in a dentist’s chair when someone else aimed that gun at Aidan. Chief checked you out first thing.”

  “But my fingerprints are on there.”

  “Which is why he fingerprinted you. And maybe that’ll teach you to wear gloves next time you dive.”

  Hardy slanted me a look. “Why do I always get in trouble when I do something nice for you?”

  “Did I ask you to go in that Dumpster?”

  “You wanted me to.”

  “Only after you told me you saw that blue car that almost ran me down.”

  “We found the gun, didn’t we?”

  “We didn’t find anything. It’s your fingerprints on that gun, not mine.”

  Hardy grunted. “You just said I didn’t have anything to worry about, that—”

  Chief yanked open the door that separated the front of the station from the offices. Hardy and I came to attention. “Even with the door shut I can hear you two.” Chief wagged his finger. “You’re worse than two tomcats howling on a fence.”

  I crossed my arms. “I’m about ready to scratch his eyes out and yours too. Why’d you keep us waiting so long?”

  Chief Conrad leaned against Mac Simpson’s clean desk. A desk so clean I couldn’t find one scrap of evidence to let me know what was going on in Maple Gap or what evidence had been collected from Aidan’s apartment or jewelry store.

  “State police is sending someone out for the gun. Preliminary comparison says the bullet we found in the wall came from that gun.”

  “What about fingerprints and registration?”

  Chief shrugged. “Number has been filed off. We’ll have to wait. They’re going to search the Dumpster thoroughly while they’re here. I informed Betsy.”