Die Like an Eagle

by Donna Andrews

  “I thought you’d be pleased,” Randall said, jumping down from the cab of the truck. “Now let’s find the chief and ask him—”

  “I’ve got the contract to supply porta-potties to the ball field,” Biff said. “What kind of a scam is this, Shiffley?”

  “Scam!” Randall exclaimed. Normally he was pretty easy-going, but apparently Biff knew how to push his buttons. “Scam! If you think you—”

  “Of course we know that you have the contract,” I said to Biff in my most soothing tones, before Randall could say something that would be satisfyingly insulting but probably unproductive. “But Randall didn’t think it was right to bother you in your time of sorrow just to take care of a problem with porta-potties.”

  “That’s right.” Randall appeared to have recovered his temper thanks to my interruption. “You need to be spending this time with your family. And let us take care of this. After all, it’s not your fault the police have to rope off your porta-potty as a crime scene, and you shouldn’t have to suffer for it. So I arranged temporary replacements at the town’s expense.”

  Not so temporary if I had anything to do with it.

  “We only need one,” Biff said. “League can’t afford to pay for three. Especially not three of those luxury numbers. This is a ball field, not the Taj Mahal.”

  I was opening my mouth to give Biff a piece of my mind on the subject of porta-potties but this time Randall saved me from being undiplomatic.

  “I know you only had the one,” Randall said. “But as long as my truck was making the trip, I thought I’d try a little experiment. We get a lot of complaints about the ball field porta-potties down at the Town Hall.”

  “Some people—” Biff began.

  “Are just not satisfied unless you give them a marble bathroom with rose-scented toilet paper,” Randall said. “We both know that. Some of the citizens are always going to complain as long as there’s porta-potties. But I bet if we give them the fancy kind, and more than one of them so there won’t ever be much of a line, we can keep the complaining down to a minimum. And when you consider the amount of time my staff spends listening to people complain, it might be a savings in the long run. So let’s keep the three porta-potties for now, at no cost to the league, and see how it goes. If it works out, when we renegotiate the contract between the town and the league, maybe the town can foot the bill for two or three of your deluxe models.”

  “Well … we’ll see how it goes,” Biff said.

  He strode off, still grumbling, but in a pro forma kind of way. I suspected he was already calculating the profits to be made from renting three high-end porta-potties to the town.

  “I’d rather have one of your standard porta-potties than three of his so-called deluxe models,” I told Randall when I was sure Biff was out of earshot. “Assuming he even has any deluxe models, which I seriously doubt. And I bet those three of yours would cost the league less than he’s charging for that one nasty standard one.”

  “You did hear me say ‘maybe,’ right?” Randall shook his head as if Biff still amazed him. “When we negotiated terms for the ball field, my uncle Lem was still in charge of the league. We thought we were dealing with a sane individual, and we didn’t do nearly as good a job on the contract as we should have. I’m going to contact the county attorney and have her start working on something a lot more useful for next year.”

  “Does that mean you’re not expecting your uncle Lem to recover?” I asked. Quite apart from being one of my friend Randall’s favorite uncles and reputedly a pretty competent league head, Lem had always impressed me as a very kind and thoughtful man, and I wished him well on all accounts.

  “No, he’s doing great and looking forward to getting back,” Randall said. “Though probably not till the fall season. But he could completely recover from cancer and be hit by a bus next week, and then we’d be in the same boat, so let’s draw up a contract so solid that we’d be in good shape even if Attila the Hun showed up and kicked out Biff and Lem both. A contract that gives the town, not the league, control of the facilities. Would I be correct in assuming you and the rest of the team parents might have a few ideas about how that contract should read?”

  “Tell the county attorney I’ll be in touch,” I said.

  “Will do.” Randall was studying his deluxe, handicapped-accessible porta-potties with much the same look of disgust and annoyance I usually bestowed on the Brown johns. “And will someone tell me why in tarnation we’re still using porta-potties out here? Water and sewer lines came by this way twenty years ago. We could just as easily have flush toilets.”

  “I gather there’s an arrangement between the league and the town that once the league raises the money to pay for them, the town will arrange to have them built.”

  “Yeah, and it seems pretty strange that neither the Little League nor the Summerball League under Biff can save enough profit from the Snack Shack after all these years. Lem and I were talking about tossing that agreement aside and just having the town build them—our park after all—but Biff has been resisting that idea.”

  “Maybe it’s a matter of pride to him to raise the money instead of asking for a government handout,” I said.

  “Then why not let us build them and pay us back gradually?” Randall said. “You get some real flush toilets in here and business at the Snack Shack will boom. Right now, half the people who come to a game sit nursing a small water for two hours cause they’d rather faint from dehydration than use the porta-john. Not to mention the people who drive back to town for a bathroom and buy their snacks there while they’re at it.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir,” I said. “Why don’t we get these unloaded before Biff thinks of some other reason to turn them away.”

  “Let’s talk to the chief,” he said. “We can’t put them over by the old one. Let’s see how much distance he wants between them and his murder site.”

  “Body dump site, actually,” I said. “But yeah.”

  After consultation with the chief, we arranged to put the porta-potties all the way at the other side of the field from where the old porta-potty was, and the truck lumbered off to the far end of the parking lot.

  Randall had brought three of his workmen to help unload the porta-potties. He and one of the men climbed up on the truck and shoved a porta-potty onto a little elevator platform at the back of the truck bed. Then the driver lowered the platform until it was at ground level, where the other two men could shove the porta-potty off the platform and wrestle it into place. If I’d been doing it, I’d have tried to back the truck as close to the desired spot as possible, to avoid quite so much manual labor, but I didn’t want to suggest it, lest the volunteers take that as an insult to their physical prowess. So I merely watched and praised their efforts when all three new porta-potties were neatly lined up and ready for customers.

  Just then another truck lumbered down the road, towing a bright blue object that I recognized as one of Randall’s job site trailers.

  “I thought the chief could use it as a mobile investigation headquarters for however long he has to spend out here,” Randall said, when he saw my puzzled stare. “Let’s go surprise him with it.”

  The chief seemed charmed by the loan of the trailer, and supervised unloading it at the far end of the parking lot, near the new porta-potties.

  “That was very thoughtful, Randall,” he said. “I’m much obliged to you.”

  “Let me show you around,” Randall said, leading the way into the trailer.

  Inside, to the right of the door, a built-in U-shaped banquette provided seating around a table at one end, while a desk and chair stood on the left side. I took a seat around the table and watched as Randall gave the chief a tour. A brief tour, since the trailer was only about eight feet wide and twenty long, meaning someone sitting behind the desk wouldn’t have to raise his voice much to be heard by anyone on the banquette.

  “And you can lock up when you leave,” Randall said, handing the chief
a key ring. “And—”

  “Chief?”

  We looked up to see Horace and Dad peering in the door of the trailer.

  “Come in,” the chief said. “Do you have some information for me? Time of death, for example?”

  “From my initial examination, between ten p.m. and two a.m.,” Dad said, as he seated himself at the table and I scooted along to the center of the U-shaped seat to make room for Horace. “That’s based mainly on body temperature and lividity. I may be able to refine that further when I get him on the autopsy table.”

  Dad sounded almost cheerful at the thought of doing the autopsy. Luckily, everyone now in the trailer completely understood that his enthusiasm arose from his passionate desire to solve Shep’s murder, and that he’d have been infinitely happier if it were a case of performing hours of heroic life-saving measures on a wounded victim. Still, even Dad seemed to realize his tone might upset the uninitiated.

  “Chief, you’ll notify Mr. Brown that we’re doing the autopsy, right?” Dad added. “People seem to take that so much better coming from you.”

  “Of course.” The chief nodded, scribbled something in his notebook and turned his gaze to Horace—who, from his expression, had something to report.

  “He definitely wasn’t killed in the porta-potty,” Horace said. Not a surprise to me, since I’d already heard what Horace and Dad had told Aida. And from the chief’s expression, not a surprise to him.

  “Not enough blood spatter?” the chief asked.

  “No blood spatter at all, technically,” Horace said. “Blood drops on the floor and a little smearing on the walls, all consistent with his being killed somewhere nearby and stuffed almost immediately into the porta-potty.”

  “Why nearby?” the chief said. “Couldn’t the killer, for example, have killed him somewhere else—just about anywhere else—and driven the body over here to use the porta-potty as a body dump?”

  Both Dad and Horace were already shaking their heads.

  “Livor mortis,” Dad said. “That’s the way the blood settles in a body after death,” he added, presumably for Randall’s benefit, since the chief and Horace were familiar with the term from their jobs, and I’d grown up listening to Dad’s peculiar ideas of proper dinner table conversation. “The livor mortis is entirely consistent with the position in which Meg found him, which means he either was killed in the porta-potty—”

  “Which is not possible,” Horace interrupted.

  “—or he was put into the porta-potty very soon after death,” Dad went on. “Livor mortis can start to show between twenty minutes and two or three hours after death.”

  “More important, the body’s not going to be dripping blood for more than a few minutes,” Horace said. “He was killed somewhere around here, and then hidden in the porta-potty while he was still bleeding.”

  “So we need to search the area to find the actual murder location,” the chief said. “Which means we need to keep everyone away for a while.”

  “Mr. Witherington—you met him, right?” Randall said. “The man from the Summerball national office?”

  The chief nodded.

  “We’ve been strategizing on how to rearrange the schedule.” Strategizing in the absence of Biff, apparently. “Be nice if we could announce the new plan at the end of the opening ceremony.”

  “Which starts at noon,” the chief said.

  “But we don’t have to announce the schedule first thing,” Randall said. “We can keep people busy for a while with the speechifying.”

  “How much time will you need?” the chief asked, looking at Horace.

  “At least a few hours,” Horace said. “If you think you can get people to sit still for a couple of hours of speeches … well, count me as glad I’ll be busy out here.”

  “Read out the names of all the kids,” I suggested. “And have them come up on stage to shake Mr. Witherington’s hand and pose on stage with him for group pictures. That will eat up some time, and all the families will stay.”

  “And maybe Minerva could round up some of the choir members and give them a few songs,” the chief said. “Though ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game,’ might be the extent of their baseball repertoire.”

  “They could do a few patriotic songs,” Randall said. “‘God Bless America’ and such. Good ideas, all. Be nice if we could get in at least one game today, though, even if we have to bring in the lights to do it.”

  “Why don’t we tentatively plan to release the field at six,” the chief said. “And if it looks as if we won’t be ready by then, we’ll let you know.”

  “Thanks,” Randall said.

  “And before you leave,” the chief went on, “can you arrange to leave that truck here, or maybe send it back later? The one you used to haul the new porta-potties here. We need to take the old one away.”

  “Back to Biff’s?” Randall asked, sounding puzzled.

  “No, it’s still potential evidence,” the chief said. “We’d like you to haul it down to the station and put it in the vehicle impound lot. We can lock it up there in case we need to do any more tests on it.”

  “The far end of the impound lot,” Horace added, grimacing as if he wasn’t looking forward to the possibility of going near the porta-potty for those additional tests.

  “Can do,” Randall said. “I’ll tell my driver to stand by till you’re ready.”

  He nodded in farewell and left the trailer.

  “And I should leave you three to your police work,” I said to Dad, Horace, and the chief. “I can get a ride back to town with Randall.” I picked up my tote and started to slide toward Horace’s end of the seat, and he hopped up to let me out. But before I could get up, the chief spoke up.

  “Just one more thing.” He looked down at his notebook and frowned.

  I sat down on the banquette again.

  Chapter 8

  “Just to clear something up,” the chief said. “Mr. Brown claims he’s been receiving threatening phone calls from someone. A woman.”

  “I bet he means me.” Just like Biff to try causing me trouble. I took a deep breath before going on. “I’ve been calling him for weeks—at least once a day for the past few weeks. His company is supposed to be renovating the town square, and so far I haven’t seen a single workman on site. But I’m not sure it counts as threatening phone calls since I’ve never gotten past his secretary.”

  “You never used … intemperate language?” the chief asked.

  “Of course she didn’t,” Dad chimed in.

  “I might have to him if I’d ever reached him,” I said. “But not to his secretary. I always tried to be polite to her. Not her fault he’s dodging me. Couple of times I told her to tell him it was no use sending any more invoices because we weren’t paying a red cent until we saw some progress on the town square. Made her write it down. I suppose that might have sounded like a threat to him. But I never said that to him—never got a chance to. Is there such a thing as threatening While You Were Out notes?”

  “I rather doubt it.” The chief was fighting a smile. “You never called his cell phone?”

  “I don’t think I have his cell phone number.” I pulled out mine, looked at the contact list, and shook my head. “No. Hard as he was to reach, if I’d had a cell phone number I’d have used it, but I don’t. I only have what I believe is his office number.”

  I repeated the number. The chief scribbled it down, then flipped to another page and nodded.

  “Yes, that’s his office number,” he said.

  “If making one or two calls a day to his office in a vain attempt to find out if he’s ever going to do a lick of work on the town square is harassment, then guilty as charged,” I said. “I’ve also sent him a couple of e-mails a week, and the occasional snail mail. But that’s all I’ve done, and I’d be happy to share my phone and e-mail records if you want them. I have no idea how one goes about doing that, but I’m sure you can tell me.”

  “No need,” the chief said. “Since M
r. Brown raised the issue of threatening phone calls, we should have no difficulty getting a warrant to examine all his phone records.” He sounded rather pleased at the prospect—almost smug. I wondered if Biff realized how useful his complaint about harassment might be to the chief—or how inconvenient for himself, if he had anything to hide. “Given the business relationship between your employer and Brown Construction,” the chief went on, “I would be surprised not to see your number there.”

  “You’ll see my office number as well as my cell,” I said. “I don’t recall ever trying to reach him from our home phone, but I can’t swear I never did. So does this mean you’re operating on the theory that Biff, rather than his brother, was the intended victim?” None of my civilian business, technically, but since the chief seemed to be in a mellow mood, I risked asking.

  “I’m not operating on any theory yet,” the chief said. “What was it Sherlock Holmes said about theories?”

  “‘It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data,’” I rattled off. And as I continued, Dad chimed in so we were reciting in unison. “‘Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.’”

  Sherlockian trivia had been as much a part of my childhood dinner table conversations as fascinating medical facts.

  “Precisely.” The chief looked only mildly startled by our Holmesian duet. “It’s much too early to speculate on whether Mr. Henson was himself the target or whether he was merely the victim of an unfortunate physical resemblance to the killer’s real target.”

  “Did Randall mention that one of his cousins saw Biff having a fight with one of the Pruitts?” I asked. “And he didn’t mean just an argument; they had to be pulled apart. I only got it third hand, but it stuck in my mind.”