Searching for Harpies

by Charlie Vogel

  “What?”

  Her face softened. She turned her head to the side and smiled, really smiled like I was something more, maybe something more than a john ever could be.

  “I’m an aging, mid-western guy who can’t stand a mystery. That’s all. I can’t stomach the thought of having an innocent man sitting in jail. So sue me!”

  She scoffed. “Aging, my ass! You, Bob Norris, are burning up with life. From your painting to that light inside you.”

  “What light?”

  She walked to a tall narrow dresser, opened a drawer and pulled out lacy under wear. “It’s called a conscience, Fr. Dumb Ass. It’s keeping you from fucking me and it’s making you beat your head against a wall for a priest who couldn’t keep his pants zipped.”

  “So Fr. Manning is human. What of it?”

  “And so are you,” she said lightly as she dropped her towel and donned the navy blue lace I couldn’t take my eyes off.

  I pointed a finger at her. “We agreed last night that I have issues and you have issues, right?”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Not right now, but we’ll get around to that eventually. Agreed?”

  “Whatever!” She slid back the closet’s mirrored door and started sorting through clothes.

  “Wrap your sharp brain around this, Ms Saint. I have a hunch the priest has a part to play in the murders. Although he’s ignorant of what’s going on, someone wants to place the blame on him. There has to be a reason.”

  “Agreed,” she said before slipping a light-weight slinky dress over her head. The slit on the side opened all the way to her hip as she bent over to hunt for shoes.

  I coughed and closed my eyes to maintain focus. “We have incomplete information from Fox, who thinks a woman is doing the killing for some sort of revenge for a lost marriage. Both of us thought of Ann, but can’t place her near any of the crime scenes.”

  Lori frowned up at me as she stood with strappy shoes dangling from her fingers. “By the way, where is Ann today?”

  “Kansas City.”

  “Hm. Doesn’t it seem strange she’s there on the day when Tommy’s arrested again?”

  I thought a moment then shook my head. “So, she gets away from town to shop. She’s always been a little strange, awkward like and a little out of place. Not exactly Harry’s perfect match. Not the sharpest tack in the box, I mean. Their two daughters know more about the real world than Ann will in a life time. I think putting the blame on her was just . . . a quick connection of the dots. I don’t see her planning and carrying out all that makes this whole mess so complicated.”

  “What was that?”

  I stiffened then whispered. “Sounded like the living room’s patio door.”

  “You didn’t lock it when you walked in?” she whispered.

  “No ‘cause you didn’t have it locked in the first place.”

  We moved together to stand against the wall next to the interior doorway. Lori quietly set the shoes on the floor as we strained to listen.

  The hum of the air-conditioner next to the bedroom’s glass room stopped. The slow grating of the living room door in its dirty track could be heard more clearly. Damn, her patio door needs cleaning worse than mine.

  I crouched and eased into the great room. In a blur of navy blue, Lori passed me. Before I could stand up, a thump sounded followed immediately by the crack of bones and a grunt. I shivered, remembering what caused that sound.

  At the slanted glass doors Lori stood over yet another lifeless man, light glinting off the silver of a gun in his outstretched hand.

  “He looks dead,” I commented then met Lori’s wide eyes. I could tell from her rapid breaths that she was still pumped on adrenalin.

  “I took him out before he could fire.”

  I nodded then looked down at the sizable form. Since the time of my wife’s murder, it seemed like I had been looking at an endless string of dead people. I wondered if it was me or the company I was keeping.

  “Damn you’re fast, lady. Some day you have to teach me a little of that karate shit.”

  “When you ain’t painting me naked.” She leaned forward to look more carefully at the weapon but didn’t offer to touch it. “Bastard was looking where he was stepping and not up. I think he would have got a shot off, but he was too surprised. It cost him.”

  I knelt down to get a better look at the man’s face. “Holy shit!”

  “Yeah, Sgt. Moore. Guess we won’t have to pay him, huh?”

  “What the hell was this about?”

  “Ah, he was going to shoot us?”

  “Smart ass. I was just thinking out loud.”

  When I reached for the phone on a nearby end table, Lori stepped over the body. “Who’re you calling?”

  “The police.”

  She yanked the phone from me. “No way! I just killed a goddamn cop.”

  “Who was sneaking in here to kill us.”

  “Oh, yeah, and the fucking men in blue will believe an ex-whore and a trouble-maker’s word?”

  “Self-defense, Lori. There he is in the doorway with a gun in his hand.” Keeping the phone against her chest, as if I would claim it again, she walked into the kitchen. She chewed her lip in thought as she opened the refrigerator to pull out a beer she shoved at me then took one for herself. Still thinking, she settled in a chair at the table.

  I didn’t miss the shapely leg revealed by the slit in the skirt before sitting down to study her. Still protecting it, she set the phone in her lap to twist the cap off her bottle.

  “Bob, here’s how the real world works. Cops make up logical stories to prove their theories and protect their goddamn asses. Moore was a cop working the whore beat. We knew one another, got it? Who knows what he put in his shit-assed reports on me. Now, he’s dead in my house and I killed him. Shit, the goddamn cops won’t believe Tommy. Why would they believe me or you, a smart alec who makes more paperwork for them?”

  We sipped our beers in silence for several minutes.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I finally said. “What should we do with the body?”

  “Dump it downtown.”

  “And what if the police sent him here on an assignment?”

  “Like the cops sent him here to kill me or you?”

  Nodding, I held my hand out for the phone. “I’ll call Harry.”

  “Not a good idea. Something tells me we should keep this to ourselves.”

  Chapter 8

  A few minutes past midnight, wearing rubber gloves, we gift-wrapped the two hundred pounds of dead weight in three split and duct-taped garbage bags, grunting as we secured the plastic covering with clothesline I found in my garage. I lifted the heavier shoulders while Lori got the feet. Sweat popped out on my forehead as I backed Sergeant Moore slowly through the patio door of her darkened house. We stopped for breath at the deck’s steps. When Lori dropped the feet, my gloved hands couldn’t maintain the weight inside the slippery plastic. The next moment the body tumbled down the dark steps. It continued to roll several feet down the slope leading to the lake. We dropped onto the top step and stared where it settled.

  Lori sighed. “This remind you of anything?”

  We were both thinking about her dead pimp, Alabama. Harry and I had tried to package and lower his hulking body from her apartment to a waiting pickup below. The pulley rope had broken and the body dropped. We covered it in garbage sacks before driving to another pimp’s turf and propping him on a discarded couch.

  “He’s a cop, not a pimp. We could roll him all the way down the hill and bury him in the brush along the lake.”

  Dark water slapped and frogs and crickets sang in the background. No one had bought the property on either side of mine. And no one was out boating that late on a week night. We had no witnesses.

  “How far away could we drag him? Remember what a goddamn rotting body smells like? You want that on the wind while we’re playing in your hot tub?”

  I huffed out a breath

  “
And, “she went on, “if someone found him near here, we’d be wadding in shit up to our necks. We have to get him a long ways away.”

  “Where?”

  “We dump him in an alley on his turf.”

  “You have any furniture crates and a pickup?”

  She smiled. “We need a truck, something with a lift on the back.”

  “A rental will work. But we’ll have to put him in something. Those plastic bags make him look like a dead body.”

  She leaned forward squinting toward my patio. “I sure could use a hot tub.”

  “You can use that one anytime.”

  “I mean one of my own. Don’t they come in big crates? What did they bring that one in?”

  “The installing company cleaned up after themselves. Shit, I’m more particular than Harriet’s friend. I don’t keep my trash.”

  “Like I don’t know that. But we need something . . . Wait a minute! My new refrigerator. I had the delivery people leave that box in my garage. I was going to hang clothes in it, you know, for storage.”

  “We’d have to rip off any labels so it couldn’t be traced. But it would be big enough.”

  We stared back at the lump in the grass.

  “Yeah, you keep this place so fucking clean, I think the boaters on the lake would notice that pile of garbage tomorrow.” When I bent forward, she asked, “You gonna puke?”

  “Very funny. I could make room for him in that garden shed under this deck. Out of sight and locked away from our opossums, the one’s that get in our garbage all the time?”

  “Eww, I forgot about them.” She stood and clapped her gloves together. “Let’s move him before they come sniffing. But, ah, Bob, he’s now downhill, a steep hill. How the hell we gonna drag his heavy ass back up?”

  I thought a moment. “I hire the yard work done or I’d own a wheelbarrow. No dolly for moving anything heavy—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she interrupted me, “You rich guys don’t like to haul ass unless it’s in some fancy gym. Well, in my shed I got a garden scooter.”

  “A what?”

  “It’s got round roller wheels and you rest your knees on it to pull weeds. Your lawn guys only mow for me now. I do the rest.”

  I grinned at the thought of Lori digging in the dirt. “I like that. I like it a lot. Just don’t expect me to join you.”

  “Oh, yeah, you and your creaking, old knees? Wouldn’t think of it.” She started down the steps.

  “I’m not that old,” I said as I followed her.

  She turned slowly to look back up at me. “We get done with Sgt. Dead Ass and I’ll let you prove it.”

  I pushed by her. “How about I let you find your scooter in case there’s any hungry opossums hiding in that shed.”

  Later, as I positioned the body and waited for Lori to dig around in the dark for her scooter, I thought about Moore. With years as a cop, why would he come after us? He had mentioned working with Morten, the cop who tried to kill me a couple of years back. But, Harpies and the murders of the hookers just didn’t connect to my father-in-law’s long ago money scam and that corrupt cop.

  Moore had crept into Lori’s home holding a gun out with a bullet in the chamber wearing black athletic shoes, a black tee shirt and dark jeans. Besides the gun and a cheap wristwatch, he had nothing of value, not even a wallet. In fact, he had no identification of any kind. Lori had found a folded telephone memo in his front pocket with the message, Call Marge about Peg. But, why come to Lori’s house ready to shoot?

  A car motor humming interrupted my thoughts. I glanced at the corner of the house. In the reflection of the partial moon, Lori’s white, two-seat, 1957 Ford Thunderbird convertible with its lights off, slowly backed down the slope between our houses. She eased the car towards me then stopped and got out.

  “That’s not the scooter.”

  She patted my cheek with her gloved hand before turning to pop the trunk. “I decided not to screw up my little scooter and your aging back with this heavy sonofabitch. I don’t want to think of him rotting for even one day under my deck.”

  “You think we can get him in the trunk?”

  “Easier than getting back up the goddamn hill. Trunk’s big enough. We’ll never know until we try. Don’t rip your gloves; we don’t want prints on him.”

  “You know, I was thinking of ordering you your own hot tub.”

  “So I’ll quit showing skin around yours? Let’s put some muscle into it, Fr. Dumb Ass.”

  On each side of the plastic bag, with a count of three, we lifted the torso. Letting the chest rest over the lip of the opened trunk, we picked up the feet and Moore sort of rolled backward into the spacious compartment.

  Lori slammed the lid and asked, “You ready to go?”

  “You aren’t tired?”

  “I’ve been working out, remember?”

  I wiped my arm across my sweaty face. “Where to?”

  “By the time we get downtown, I’ll have it figured out.”

  I folded my arms and looked across the shadowy slope and foliage. “I hate to point this out, but I don’t think you’ll get the Thunderbird out the way you came in.”

  “It’s not a light weight and the tires are like new. I know what I’m doing. ”

  “You’ve got a steep, grassy hill. Easy coming down, like, ah, Sgt. Dead Ass did, but now you have to go back up. You think your car will make it without tearing up the lawn?”

  Instead of responding, she jumped behind the wheel and started the engine. I slid into the passenger’s side. Keeping the gears in first, she slowly followed her previous tire tracks in the grass.

  All at once, water hit the windshield like a rainstorm.

  “Your fucking sprinklers are going off!” she screamed at me.

  Waves of falling droplets hit us. And the top’s down. The spray blinded me, soaking my shirt, pants, hair and the seat. I wiped it away as fast as possible and turned to see Lori bent forward, closer to the steering wheel, her teeth bared. Not good. The tires slipped on the wet grass once, grabbed, slipped again.

  “Don’t brake—” I started to give driving advice.

  “Shut up!” she sputtered.

  The rear of the Thunderbird drifted slightly and she gently turned the wheel to compensate. It worked for a moment then all traction was lost. The car slid backwards until the rear settled into a dip in the yard. Lori shifted into reverse and attempted to rock the Ford from the hole. As the tires spun I realized the grass was history and she was churning mud.

  Water still cascading down her face, she turned to me. “Why in hell did you buy a house on a goddamn hill?”

  Breathing hard, her breasts rose and fell under the now transparent cropped tee shirt without a bra covering anything. Damn, you look good soaking wet. I was smart enough not to say that aloud. Instead I offered, “The view over the lake?”

  After flipping me off, she eased her door open into the decorative bushes that partially blocked the water spray. When her athletic shoes slipped, she gripped the side of the car and stayed upright until she could step beyond the bushes where my yard began. My house sprinklers hadn’t come on. Knowing I couldn’t get any wetter and not caring that my expensive shoes were about to get ruined, I slipped and slid down my side.

  As I steadied myself on the fender, I saw the right rear tire had settled into the deep rut up to its hub cap. Lori sat in the dry grass of my yard, her knees drawn up, her eyes glaring at me. I slipped and crawled my way under her deck then found the exterior control box to shut off the automatic sprinkler system.

  As I cautiously worked my way back to Lori, the cool night air sent shivers up and down my wet body. I knew better than to comment on it when I finally dropped down beside one very pissed woman.

  “I’ll call a tow truck. I think we can have it winched.”

  “Oh, brilliant, Fr. Dumb Ass. With the cop stuffed in the trunk.”

  “Like a tow driver will open the trunk? Get the car to street. That’s all he’ll care about.”


  “And lots of money.” She took off her shoes and rubbed the soles and sides against the grass to wipe off the mud, her lips still curled back like a snarling she bear. “The risk is more than what I want to take. Having a big-assed truck out here pulling my car would get a lot of people involved.” She flipped her wet hair, droplets, hitting me in the face. “You don’t think they’d want to know how my car ended up in my backyard? And who says the nosy, dick-headed cops working the area wouldn’t stop by. It’s after mid-night. They’ve had their donuts and they’re bored.” She was really working up a head of steam, so once again I was glad we had no neighbors. “And shit like this always gets in the papers, especially on slow days.”

  “Lori,” I spoke softly in as soothing a tone as I could, “You need to go back in and put on dry clothes.”

  She glared at me, but at least her lips were covering the teeth now. “We’ll go in the basement and strip. You aren’t tracking that goddamn mud and clay into my house.”

  “Okay.”

  I followed her in silence and didn’t offer to help her when she slipped on the grass. I didn’t want my hand bitten. She fumbled with the keys dangling from her hand and finally got the door open. When she flipped on the light, I knew not to make a comment about looking like sorry-assed drowned rats.

  I flinched when she snapped her gloves off.

  “I hope you’ve got more gloves.”

  “I do,” I mumbled meekly as I removed my own gloves. They were good quality and hadn’t torn. Now was not the time to mention that. I turned my back to her and steadied myself on the cinder-block wall as I fought out of my soaked jeans. Just above my hand an eight by ten picture in a cheap metal frame hung on the wall between the door and the curtained window.

  “What a petty little girl. Who is she?”

  “Me, when I was ten.” Wet clothes slapped into a nearby washing machine.

  “Who’s the man next to you?”

  “My father.”

  I stepped closer. “You never say much about him, just that he was in jail.”

  A dry towel flipped over my shoulder. I pulled it down and around my bare ass as Lori stepped to my side to look at the picture with me. Out of the corner of my eye I thought she looked a little wistful. At least she didn’t look pissed any longer.