Barbara Graham - Quilted 05 - Murder by Sunlight

by Barbara Graham

  “Where did Candy get her drugs?” Tony stood in front of the day shift. Roll call was over, and they were going over a list of situations needing attention in the county.

  “We’ve got several possible dealers on our radar.” Wade stood. “I suggest we talk to Quentin Mize. He’s clean now, but he and Candy hung out together when he was deeply into drugs.”

  Sheila agreed. “I imagine he still knows how to find them if he wants them.”

  “Oh, good, Quentin as a confidential informant.” Tony thought it would be like asking a feral dog to guide them to a meat market. The last thing he wanted was for Quentin to fall back into drugs.

  “If not to tend Alvin’s garden, why would Candy have been in the garden or greenhouse area? The way everyone has described her to me, I doubt she developed a sudden determination to raise prize-winning roses.” Tony studied their chart. “What’s there for her in the daylight?”

  “Sir.” Sheila leaned forward. “Do we know it was daylight when she went out there? Maybe she went out in the dark.”

  Tony lifted the extensive report from the pathologist. “According to the experts, she became overheated while she was unconscious. They seem to consider it unlikely she would have regained enough consciousness to at least squirm around in the cooler night air. All indications suggest she lay motionless where she landed. No heel marks in the dirt.”

  “So she and her companion did not pull back the tarps to watch the moon rise?”

  “Well, maybe.” Tony considered it. “I guess they could have pulled the tarps away and spent time in the greenhouse. Maybe she came back later, when it was hot, and they got into an argument. She died where she landed.” He discarded the jumbled idea. “I’m just connecting people and places. Her being hit in the dark doesn’t work.”

  “What about J.B.? He knows everything that happens in Park County after dark,” Sheila suggested. “Did he see anything unusual the night before? You know, like a car where it shouldn’t be or a person sneaking through a yard?”

  “Nothing in his report. I’ll talk to him. There’s always a possibility that there’s a regular visitor to the house after midnight who wouldn’t be classified as unusual.” Tony said, “Sheila, I want you to check with your contacts in the schools. Who’s dealing what?”

  “I know a couple of kids who might be able to supply a few names, if I can promise to keep them anonymous.” Sheila jotted herself a note, then met his eyes. Waiting.

  “Forgive a past deed, but not a future one.” Tony hated drugs. “I don’t want you handing out any get-out-of-jail-free cards.”

  It didn’t take Tony long to locate Quentin. A quick call to his brother Gus produced the address where he had sent Quentin and Roscoe to build a mower shed. It was a simple enough job that even the two friends could complete it without much supervision from Gus.

  Tall, thin, and a bit twitchy, Quentin ambled toward Tony’s vehicle with a wide grin on his face. “Howdy, Sheriff.”

  “You’re just who I was looking for,” Tony said. “Have you got a few minutes to talk?”

  Quentin glanced at Roscoe.

  The smaller of the two men was the brains of the operation. “Sure.” Roscoe flipped his hammer into the air and nimbly caught it. “Take your time. I’ll call Veronica.”

  “He’s crazy about the professor.” Quentin lowered his voice as though he were telling a secret he was supposed to keep. “Once they find a place to live, I’m thinkin’ they’ll get hitched.”

  “More surprising things have happened.” Tony herded Quentin away from his friend. “I need your help.”

  Quentin’s jaw dropped. “No kidding? That’s great.”

  “I know you’ve been doing well, working hard, staying away from drugs.” Tony watched Quentin’s head bob with every word.

  “I’m proud of you.”

  The gangly man blushed. “Thank you.”

  “What I need to ask is if you know who might have been dealing drugs to Candy Tibbles?”

  Eyes wide, Quentin’s head moved from side to side. “No. I’ve got no idea. It’s been a while since I bought any, you know. Sorry.”

  Tony was surprised at how relieved he was to hear Quentin’s words. “I’m not. I’m glad you’ve gotten this far away from all those poisons.”

  Quentin glanced in Roscoe’s direction. “Couldn’t do it without friends.”

  When Tony and Wade went looking for the night patrol, they discovered that as was his custom, Deputy J.B. Lewis had left the building as soon as he turned in his reports. The deputy loved the night shift, wrote decent notes, and didn’t gossip about anything or anyone he witnessed.

  Tony and Wade caught up with him in the grocery store parking lot. Tony said, “I read your reports. Is there anything you saw you thought was maybe wrong but nothing you’d put on paper?”

  “Clandestine or suspicious activity?” The creases around J.B.’s eyes deepened as he grinned. “Sure, Sheriff. I’m pretty up to date on who is cheating and with whom. Who are you interested in?”

  “Candy Tibbles,” Tony said. “Maybe in the past few weeks.”

  “Pitiful woman.” J.B. shook his head in obvious sorrow. “Such a lost soul. I’ve seen her with so many men.” He paused, studied the sky. “Well, there is a guy, Sinclair, who drives a mid-aged dark blue Toyota. I’ve seen it parked pretty often in Candy’s driveway late at night.” J.B. shook his head again. “They might have been friends or he might have been selling her something. I don’t know. I’ve seen the same car over at Kwik Kirk’s. It’s right across the highway, so why not walk over from Candy’s house?”

  “Anything else? Not necessarily related to Candy.”

  J.B. rubbed his forehead. “I’ve seen several guys coming out of The Spa with women who were not their wives, and women with men who were not their husbands. Bad behavior on both sides. You want the names?”

  “Yes. Make me a list. Sounds like it will be a long one.” Tony didn’t really want to know as much about the county residents as he sometimes learned. There were times his knowledge made it difficult to deal with them on unofficial business. Chatting over coffee at church with a cheating husband or wife stretched his meager diplomatic abilities.

  “Sheriff, I have a report of a fight.” Flavio paused for a moment, then continued. “Mayor Cashdollar requests—his words not mine—you come to the funeral home. As soon as possible. Or faster.”

  “The fight’s at the funeral home?” Tony hoped he’d misunderstood.

  Flavio’s voice was muffled, sounding like he was stifling a laugh. “Yes, sir. I gather it has something to do with the viewing for Hydrangea Jackson.”

  “I’m on my way.” Tony walked toward the Blazer. “Notify Wade to meet me there. He’ll never forgive me if he doesn’t get to come along.”

  “I wouldn’t mind seeing it myself. From what I could hear in the background, it must be quite a show,” Flavio murmured as he disconnected.

  As soon as Tony and Wade walked through the front doors of the Cashdollar Mortuary, they were hit with the sounds of piano music and hymns being sung with enthusiasm, if not talent. Over all of the musical sounds, Tony could hear agitated, high-pitched voices and one distinctive male voice. It belonged to Mayor Calvin Cashdollar.

  “Ladies, please.” Tony thought Calvin was begging. “Please, don’t do that.”

  When he and Wade entered the visitation room, Tony was grateful he was considerably taller than most of the mourners. The room was packed, and no one was moving to let him pass. Over the heads of a cluster of weeping women, Tony was able to see the two most elderly Flowers sisters leaning over their sister’s coffin. One was scrubbing on the corpse’s eyelids with a tissue, spitting on it, and returning to the task. “Sister never wore lavender eye shadow a day in her life. What was Calvin thinking?” Her strident voice cut through the chatter.

  The second sister must have pulled a tube of lipstick from her purse, and she began applying it generously to her late sister’s lips. “
Poor sister. She looks so pale.” The amateur makeup artist’s aim was poor, and the walker supporting her teetered. In seconds she had painted a scarlet slash across most of the dead woman’s face, turning it into a grotesque sight.

  Tony exchanged glances with Wade. “Is any of this illegal?”

  “Weird? Hell, yes.” Wide-eyed, Wade raised one shoulder and let it drop. “Illegal? I don’t know.”

  Calvin waved the men closer. “Can’t you stop them?”

  “You called about a fight.” Tony forced his eyes away from the elderly women and their makeup project.

  “Yes, yes. Look at this,” Calvin pointed to a trail of broken gladiolas and some overturned memorial potted plants. A porcelain vase had shattered, apparently when it hit the wall behind it. “They are destroying my place of business.”

  Tony spotted Blossom huddled in the far corner of the room with at least six of her sisters. Her fiancé Kenny was jammed up against the wall, behind some of the Flowers men. Tony strode over and cut her out of the herd. “What happened here?”

  Blossom’s eyes watered, and she dabbed at them with a tissue. “Our aunts have been out of control ever since Aunt Hydrangea died. Her sisters went wild with grief and now, just minutes ago, we learned Aunt Hydrangea had been hiding a second marriage. I can promise you they were not happy about learning the old lady has—had—two husbands.” Blossom nodded toward a pair of elderly men, identical in appearance and attire, and each clutching a bouquet of flowers in one hand and the casket’s handle with the other. “That’s them, the husbands.”

  “If it’s true, I can’t exactly arrest her for bigamy. Since she’s dead,” Tony muttered to himself. The sounds around him continued to grow. He sent Wade to silence the piano.

  In a louder voice, he urged the mourners to all say their farewells and quickly leave the building. As one of the ancient sisters moved past the new widowers, she paused to study them and sniffed, lifting her nose higher. “Quantity not quality.”

  It took a while to pry the old guys loose, literally, their gnarled hands seemed locked in place. Eventually they managed to clear the room.

  Wade and Tony paused at the doorway and looked back. The carpet was soaked with water from overturned vases. Broken flowers littered the room. Calvin sat near the casket, which was askew, one corner almost touching the floor. Calvin was holding his head with both hands.

  “What do you think, Wade?” Tony pulled out his notebook. “How do we write a description of this?”

  “I’m thinking this has got to be some strange dream. I sure hope I can remember the details when I wake up.” Wade gathered a handful of crumpled flowers from the floor and dropped them in a trash can, one almost completely filled with used tissues. “Grace will love it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  * * *

  As Tony and Wade walked outside, Tony received a call, telling him where to find Sinclair, Candy’s frequent visitor.

  “Candy always had cash and was a lot of fun.” Sinclair snuffled and turned his face so he could wipe his nose on the back of his hand and cleaned it on the seat of his pants. “She’d slip me a little, you know, gas money, so I could come out and visit.”

  “Rumor has it you’re selling drugs.” Tony took a step closer. It put him much closer than he wanted to be to the man. It hadn’t taken great detective work to locate the owner of the blue Toyota. He was sitting in it, parked at Kwik Kirk’s. “I think Candy was one of your best customers.”

  “Oh.” Sinclair’s narrow face developed a bit of a sneer. “You know, rumor ain’t the same as proof. I say me and Candy was friends, and you c’aint prove otherwise.”

  “If I borrow a drug dog, I don’t suppose you’d mind if it paid you a little visit?” Tony raised his palm to stop the inevitable tirade about interfering with personal freedom. “You don’t need to answer, just give it some thought.” Tony almost laughed at the idea of Sinclair doing much thinking. “Did you and Candy have a spat recently?”

  “A spat?” Sinclair seemed not to understand the term.

  “An argument.”

  “Oh, I know what that is.”

  “And did you?”

  “Just a little difference of opinion. I wanted pepperoni on the pizza and she wanted ham and pineapple. Silly girl pizza.”

  “And did you eat this pizza in her house?”

  “Nope. We had us a little moonlight picnic in the yard.”

  Tony pretended to study the yard across the road. “In Alvin’s greenhouse?”

  “No way. I ain’t traipsing off into the dark.” Sinclair looked insulted. “I got better sense than to wander back there even with a flashlight. It’s cuz of that boy of hers, Alvin, always digging holes like some damn gopher.”

  “Did Candy like going back there?”

  “Nossir. She was worse than a girl. Always going on like ooh, there might be bugs or snakes, or one night she swore there was an axe murderer back there with a flashlight and a gun.”

  “Not an axe?” Tony couldn’t help himself. To him, Sinclair didn’t sound any braver than Candy. It also didn’t sound like the couple was likely to be in the greenhouse at night.

  Sinclair looked a bit cross-eyed at Tony’s jibe. “You got a problem?”

  Tony ignored the question. “Did you ever go into the greenhouse in the daylight?”

  “Why would I?” Sinclair leaned closer, his breath vile. “There’s nothing so great about it. Candy said her boy wouldn’t let her grow any weed back there, so I say, what’s the point?” His tirade stopped in mid breath. His brain must have finally caught up with his mouth.

  Unfortunately, Tony believed him. He seriously doubted Sinclair would walk all the way to the back of the yard without powerful incentive—money or fear. Neither fit the facts as he knew them.

  Trapped in her own office, Theo sat next to Martha on the window seat. Tony’s aunt kept crying, and all Theo could do was to keep handing her more tissues. “I didn’t think you liked Candy Tibbles.”

  “I didn’t.” Martha wailed like a toddler. “She was an awful girl, an awful mother, and a general waste of skin.”

  “So, of course, you’re sitting here bawling all over my expensive fabric.” Theo didn’t understand. “What am I missing?”

  “I feel so sorry for Alvin.” Martha’s sobs became hiccups. “He was just getting used to being emancipated, and now he has to deal with funerals and the property and grief.” She wiped the tears from her face with a wad of tissues. “Do you think he’ll move back to his house?”

  Theo hadn’t given the matter any thought. “I guess he could. I’m sure his grandparents paid the house off years ago, and I can’t imagine he won’t inherit it.”

  Martha sighed. “So much responsibility for a young man.”

  “He’s a boy.” Theo refuted Martha’s statement. “I’ve got shoes older than he is.”

  “It would be nice if he’d stay in my downstairs.” Martha blew into the tissues with a loud honk.

  “Aha.” Theo felt like the lights had just come on in the tunnel of her confusion. “This isn’t about Alvin, it’s all about you. You enjoy being a landlady.”

  “I do.” Martha managed a smile. “If, or actually when, Alvin leaves, I think I’ll rent again. The space is perfect and private and yet”—she exhaled heavily—“if I should fall and break my leg, maybe I wouldn’t have to lie there for weeks before someone would know to come rescue me.”

  This statement surprised Theo, because Martha was not old. It would have been less shocking if Jane, who was considerably older than her sister, was the one concerned about living alone. Of course, Jane had a very active, if overworked, guardian angel. She could still picture Tony’s face when he’d given her a description of Jane and the bear, the wild bear. His reenactment had gone into great detail, including his own part in the melodrama. “I promise we’ll check on you if Alvin moves out and you can’t find another tenant.”

  “I’m really curious about how the tools got under t
he porch.” Tony lined up a couple of sheets of paper on the table. “If Alvin shoved them under there, I will jump off the courthouse roof and fly.”

  “I agree.” Wade rocked back on the chair legs. “Alvin would have put them neatly in the shed, and latched it shut. Maybe even locked it. But . . .”

  “What?” Tony wondered if his deputy was thinking the same thing he was. “Who would be using them, and why? We didn’t find any holes. Of course, someone has been digging out there. It’s a garden. Alvin’s the only one who can tell us if something has been changed, damaged, or rearranged.”

  “Maybe someone thought Alvin buried money in the garden. You see it in movies where someone stashes the loot in a coffee can and buries it next to the tomatoes. And, as you say, who but Alvin would be able to tell if someone other than him had been digging in there?”

  “Sinclair said he saw a light and heard digging one time when he and Candy were having their picnic. Or did he say they had seen it at another time?” Tony rose to his feet. “Time to get Alvin to give us a tour of his garden. Maybe he’ll spot something out of place.”

  As Tony drove Alvin out to the Tibbles home, he saw no reason he couldn’t release the house and its contents to the boy. Nothing they’d found inside it showed any connection with Candy’s death. Tony cleared his throat, wondering about the best way to broach the subject to Alvin.

  “If you’d like some help with cleaning up the house,” Tony mumbled. “There’s a group of women from the church who are willing to come out and sort and clean and organize a yard sale for you.”

  “Why?” Obviously surprised, Alvin jerked forward, making the seat belt tighten across his chest.

  “You don’t have to.” Tony realized he’d been hasty in his suggestion. After all, the boy’s mother hadn’t even been buried. “It’s your call.”

  “I pay them?” Alvin’s voice was only a little louder than a whisper.