by Amy Vansant
It was Harry Wagner. Harry had worked with Penny and George to expand Pineapple Port, but at nearly eighty, he’d long since retired and now lived in one of the homes.
“Abby no!” Charlotte called. “It’s okay.”
Abby did a tight loop around the man and then thumped her head into his knees, begging for pets.
Harry stared at Charlotte, his freckled head gleaming in the last of the afternoon sun.
“Were you just peeking over my fence?” asked Charlotte.
Harry grimaced.
“I hear you had some excitement.”
“News travels fast. I’m afraid you missed all the excitement if that’s what you were looking for. You scared me to death.”
“I’m sorry. I was curious and I didn’t want to bother you. How are you? I imagine it was a little upsetting.”
“I’m fine. Although I won’t be gardening any time soon.”
“Hmm.” Harry relented and offered Abby a quick pat on the butt. “Well, if you want someone to talk to, you know I’m no stranger to death.”
Charlotte knew. Everyone knew. Harry was an ex-Chicago cop and loved sharing cold case stories. Investigating old, seemingly unsolvable crimes in the latter part of his police career had been the highlight of his life. He’d only solved four or five cases, but when played on repeat, they provided him with decades of stories for sharing. Charlotte braced herself, hoping she wasn’t in for another encore performance of The Body in the Lake or her personal favorite, The Case of the They Thought He’d Killed Himself, But I Knew Better Because Everyone Else is an Idiot.
“I think I’m good, but thanks.”
Harry nodded and looked at his shoes, but he didn’t leave.
“Was there something else?” she asked, sure she knew the answer.
“I was wondering…maybe I could come see the spot you found her?”
“You want to see the grave?”
“If I could…”
“Um…” she looked behind her as if the house might have an opinion. “I guess…”
“Great!”
Harry walked toward the door, pausing a moment to reach around the side of the house and produce a metal detector. He’d left it at the fence line. Charlotte recognized the contraption; she owned one herself. It sat, forgotten, in a closet somewhere. She hadn’t been to the beach treasure hunting in a very long time. At fifteen, she’d waged a month long Christmas season campaign for a metal detector, certain she could find riches on nearby beaches. Several quarters and hundreds of bottle caps later, the detector had found its way to a permanent home in her closet.
Charlotte scowled.
He’d been looking for a way to hop into the back yard and use it without telling her.
“I was thinking I might pass this over the crime scene a few times,” he said.
“I can see that.”
“Like I said, I didn’t want to bother you, but the gate was locked…”
“Don’t you think the crime guys did that already?”
“These guys,” he said, shaking his head the way someone might after a child handed him a report card full of failing grades. “They aren’t always as thorough as they should be. I just want to make sure they didn’t miss anything. I have a lot of cold case experience, you know.”
“I’ve heard that somewhere,” she said, using her leg to push Abby back as the dog strained to get a good whiff of Harry’s fascinating metal stick.
“It’s really lucky I’m here. I’m sure we’ll have this puzzle solved in no time.”
Harry entered the house and made a beeline for the backyard. He was at the gravesite by the time Charlotte joined him.
“What made you pull up the concrete?” he asked.
“I wanted a garden. I don’t know why so much of my backyard was paved. My neighbors have more grass.”
“You grandmother requested a larger patio during the building,” Harry mumbled, tucking his sifting scoop under his arm and switching on the metal detector. “Not sure why. Paid extra for it. Just made more work for my men.”
“Probably just didn’t want to mow the grass.”
Harry shrugged.
“I can already see they made a mess of this,” he said, pointing at the dirt around the gravesite. “I knew it.”
As he bobbed his hand at the gravesite mess, his leather belt flopped in unison. Charlotte judged it a foot too long for his waist. The leather looked like hamsters had been chewing on it. She couldn’t hold Harry’s fashion sense against him; no one in the neighborhood would make the pages of Vogue anytime soon, but it looked like he’d punched the last three holes himself with a pair of scissors. It made her sad. She knew what it meant when the older residents started losing weight: a slow, but steady march to the end.
“I heard they identified the body as the mother of a shop owner around here?”
“Not officially, but there’s a good chance it’s Declan Bingham’s mother. He owns the pawnshop in town.”
“I should interview him. I know what questions to ask. I have a way of helping people remember important details.”
“I’m sure,” she said, yawning.
Harry placed his arm in the metal detector’s cuff and passed the round white disc at the end over the shallow grave. Nothing pinged.
Harry walked away from the hole, sweeping back and forth. Finding nothing to the left of the grave, he moved towards a pile of dirt near the fence. Charlotte recognized it as the lump Katie made while digging for the skull. Harry passed the detector over it.
She heard a beep. It was a strong signal. Memories of treasure hunting burst vivid in her mind, and she suffered a shiver of excitement. Apparently, she’d conditioned herself to react to metal detector pings like a Pavlovian dog drooling at the prospect of food.
“Part of the fence?” she asked. “A nail?”
Harry thrust out a raised palm to shush her.
She scowled, but remained giddy as the detector sang its mechanized aria.
He passed the detector over the pile again and narrowed in on the hot spot. Grabbing his scoop, he dug and sifted until Charlotte heard the sound of metal on metal rattling in the can-like digging device. The object sounded small, but solid.
Harry plucked out a small blob of metal. It looked like a tiny mushroom, with a cylindrical base and mushed top.
“That’s a bullet,” he said, his face glowing with pride. “I told you these yahoos down here don’t know what they’re doing. It’s the damn heat. It makes them lazy.”
“I guess you’re right. Shouldn’t you be wearing gloves?”
He looked at his fingers on the bullet.
“I’m holding it on the edges. There won’t be any perp evidence on a spent bullet anyway.”
“What about fingerprints from when they put the bullet in the gun?”
“Well, yeah, that. But it’s old and, again, I’m holding it properly.”
“You think that’s what killed her?”
“Very probable, unless you’ve been out here shooting guns.”
Charlotte chuckled, but she could tell by the way he was staring at her that he wasn’t kidding.
“I don’t have a gun,” she said. “What are you going to do with it?”
He grimaced. “I’d like to send it to my guys back in Chicago…”
“I don’t think you should do that. It should go with everything else they collected for the sake of continuity, don’t you think?”
“They’ll only mess it up.” He slapped his thigh and smiled until it looked as though his face would break from the strain. “Boy, are they lucky I’m here!”
“Why don’t you take it to Frank? I’ll go with you.”
“Fine,” he said switching off his detector. “I’d like that cocky little bastard to see how his people messed up, anyway.”
Charlotte started back to her house and Harry followed, staring at the bullet, grin still plastered to his face.
“Get me an evidence bag,” he said as they walked in
the back door.
Charlotte lip twitched; annoyed by the way he’d barked his order.
“I’m fresh out of evidence bags.”
“A plastic bag will do. I know you don’t have any official evidence bags. I do, of course, but they’re back at the house. I forgot to bring them. Dammit!”
She opened a kitchen drawer and retrieved a sandwich bag.
“Easy there, Colombo,” she mumbled, knowing he was a little deaf and probably wouldn’t hear. “Here.”
“You have a permanent marker?” he asked, dropping the bullet in the bag.
“I do,” said Charlotte, opening another drawer.
She handed him a black Sharpie. He laid the bag on the counter and wrote on it as Charlotte read over his shoulder.
Bullet from—
“What’s your address here?”
“118 Flamingo Court.”
Bullet from 118 Flamingo Court – found by Harry Wagner.
Harry added his own address and phone number on the opposite side. By the time he finished, his scrawl had nearly turned the entire bag black. Charlotte could barely see the bullet.
“Is that where they should mail the medal?” she asked.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing. Don’t you want to give them your email?”
“Oh, good idea,” said Harry, scrawling it beneath his telephone number and plunging the bullet into total darkness.
Charlotte and Harry walked the few houses down to Sheriff Marshall’s house.
“Did I ever tell you how I solved the Playground Killer case? The murder of Anthony Vera?”
“Once or twice,” she said, quickening her pace.
Harry began an abbreviated version of the story, talking in a steady rhythm until Charlotte knocked on Frank’s door and he answered.
“Hey Char. How can I help you?”
“Harry found something.” She pointed to him and he held up the sandwich bag. “It was near the grave. He found it with his metal detector.”
“Seems your people missed it,” said Harry.
Charlotte watched as a dark cloud passed over Frank’s countenance.
“They weren’t my people. They were from the big city.”
Harry barked a scratchy, humorless laugh.
“Sorry. When you’re from Chicago it’s funny to hear people call Tampa the big city.”
Sheriff Marshall ran his tongue over his teeth and reached to take the bag from Harry.
“What you paint the bag black for?” he asked, straining to see the bullet.
“I labeled it. Her pens were too fat.”
“I beg your pardon!” said Charlotte, pretending to be offended.
Frank looked at her and chuckled.
“Come on in,” he said, grabbing a pair of reading glasses from the counter beside the door to study the object.
“It’s a .380,” said Harry.
“Might be a 9mm,” said the Sheriff, squinting at it through his glasses. “Though, I can barely make it out through the short story written on the bag. It could be a tiny cannon or a ham sandwich.”
“It’s a .380.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“Do you think it killed her?” asked Charlotte.
“Could be. Could be some weird coincidence.”
Harry snorted. “I doubt it.”
“You say this was in the grave?”
“It was in the pile of dirt Katie dug. A few feet away, up against the fence.”
Frank nodded and put the bag on the end of his counter.
“I’ll make sure this gets to the right people.”
Harry’s smile dropped and his gaze fell upon the bag. For a moment, Charlotte thought he might grab it and sprint out the door.
“I could take it somewhere if you tell me where,” he said. “I don’t mind.”
“I got it,” said Frank, sliding the bag farther from Harry’s reach and ushering them both towards the door.
Outside, Charlotte waited for Harry to pick a direction and then with a quick goodbye, opted to walk the opposite way. All roads led to every other in the community; she could get home either way. She preferred to travel without another cold case story. She was living a cold case story, she didn’t need more.
Chapter Eight
Charlotte didn’t go directly to Declan’s pawnshop. First, she went food shopping. Then, she pretended to head for home, looped around driving aimlessly, and finally turned down the road that led to the pawnshop.
She wasn’t sure who she was kidding. She didn’t need to manufacture an excuse to see Declan. He needed to know about the bullet. The problem was she’d freshened her makeup before leaving her home; not something she normally did. It made her feel as if part of her mind had an ulterior motive for visiting the sexy salesman. A reason not related to the case. She pictured his chiseled jaw and the manly curve of his neck and felt a tingle.
Maybe it wasn’t her mind with the ulterior motives.
Charlotte flew by the Hock o’ Bell, taking it for an actual Taco Bell restaurant. The stucco walls and arches betrayed its former purpose. She’d thought Declan’s restaurant repurposing idea was clever when she met him, but now she wondered if it wasn’t a little confusing. How many people pulled into the parking lot searching for burritos, only to find creepy antique dolls and jewelry? Maybe he should sell food, too. He could have stuffed deer heads with hot dogs balanced on their antlers…serve everything on an endless supply of antique candy dishes…
She made an illegal U-turn and pulled into the shop’s parking lot. An avalanche of nerves rumbled through her body. Declan was easy to talk to, she had nothing to fear, but she felt weird around him, as though he kept catching her looking at him. When she talked to other people and they looked at her, it felt normal; after all, she was having a conversation with them. When she talked to Declan and he looked at her with those impossibly green eyes, she felt…caught.
“I’m being silly,” she said aloud.
She’d so wanted to dismiss him as a money-hungry ambulance chaser, but he didn’t seem like a ghoulish type. He seemed nice. Maybe even a little sad and vulnerable. In addition, didn’t Darla and Mariska go to estate sales all the time to buy items from the dead? Wasn’t that the same thing?
But wait! Half the residents of Pineapple Port thought Declan was gay, so the idea of coupling with him might be more impossible than it already seemed. Granted, she didn’t think he was gay, but then, she was less likely to jump to conclusions than the denizens of the Port. They thought any man who used hair gel was gay. They probably took one look at Declan’s well-manicured nails and never looked back. Most of them had grown up in a time when a man who wore matching clothes was suspect.
Charlotte took a deep breath and opened her car door. She needed to talk to Declan. She had every right to be there. Nay, she was honor-bound to be there! First, she didn’t feel right attending the Corpse Committee without his blessing. Of course, she also didn’t feel great about telling him her neighborhood had a Corpse Committee.
Second, she needed to tell him about the bullet. He deserved to know about any evidence that could help solve his mother’s murder.
Charlotte opened the shop door to the sound of a bell ringing. Not a gonging bell, like the shape of the building might imply; but an old-fashioned tinkling retail bell tied to the door hinge. The store appeared empty of people, but stuffed with rows of furniture and trinkets. As she stepped inside, she stopped to admire a huge armoire that appeared large enough to lead to other lands. Her mind wandered. Did French children called C.S. Lewis’ book The Lion, the Witch and the Armoire? What was the French word for lion? Was it Lyonnaise? No, that was a kind of French fry. She definitely didn’t know the French word for witch… Le witch?
“Hello?”
Charlotte jumped and found Declan standing beside her.
“Why are you always sneaking up on me?” she asked, her hand pressed against her rapidly beating heart.
“I’m pretty sure you ju
st came into my store. I didn’t sneak my store around you.”
Charlotte let her gaze drop from his eyes to his toes and back again. He wore a red polo and khaki shorts; the polo once again hanging neatly from the slope of his perky pecs.
So the blue polo wasn’t responsible for making you look well built.
It had to be what was underneath the polo.
Dammit.
Charlotte cleared her throat and looked away.
“That would be quite a trick,” she said.
“What?”
“Sneaking your store around me.”
“Oh. Right. That’s my point.”
Declan looked away and then came back to her.
Why do you look flustered? We can’t both be flustered.
“Sorry, you’re right. My fault. My mind was a million miles away,” she said, largely to keep herself from saying something even more awkward.
“That happens with you I’ve noticed.”
Charlotte nodded.
“Old habit,” she muttered, looking around the store to avoid his eyes.
“Why’s that?”
Charlotte ignored his question.
“Hey, you don’t happen to know…” she trailed off, realizing how weird she was about to sound.
“What?”
“You don’t know the French word for lion, do you?”
“Did you come here to ask me that?”
“No…” She took a few steps away, dragging her finger along a low walnut bureau as she moved, as if testing it for dust. She didn’t know why she did it. But now, the urge to check her finger for dust was overwhelming.
“Nice shop,” she said, rubbing her fingers together.
I don’t feel dust…don’t look. He’ll know. Don’t look…
“Thank you.”
“It isn’t nearly as smarmy as I thought it would be,” she added, taking a quick look at her fingers.
No dust.
“Uh…thanks, I guess. I should use that in my ads: Hock O’Bell: Not nearly as smarmy as you think.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“No. No problem. I had a big blowout last month and sold most of my smarm. Can I help you with something? How are you?”
