The Claudia Hershey Mysteries - Box Set: Three Claudia Hershey Mysteries

by Laura Belgrave

  They were taking turns with the camera. Claudia handed it off to Moody, then crouched beside the garbage again. They’d already plucked a few items from Bonolo’s trash for potential evidence, each piece carefully bagged and tagged. Bonolo drank a lot of beer. Prints on the cans might show him to be someone other than who he claimed. But after another twenty minutes of pawing through his garbage, they only learned with certainty that he didn’t recycle. Newspapers still in plastic sleeves took up almost half of one bag. No shredded or whole files from Hemmer’s house, though. No pornographic tapes or magazines. And no hint of a female presence. If Bonolo was fooling around with Addison or anyone else, it didn’t show from his trash.

  “He sure doesn’t spend a lot of time at home,” said Moody.

  “Not at work lately, either,” Carella added. He stomped on a small candy wrapper that threatened to flutter off. “I talked to his boss again this morning. Bonolo hasn’t shown his face all week, not even to brag about his role in the hostage situation. His boss is out of patience and Bonolo’s out of a job. Won’t he be surprised.”

  Claudia doubted he’d be surprised at all. “Was he home when you grabbed his trash?”

  “No way to know for sure,” said Moody. “He hadn’t picked up his paper yet and there weren’t any lights on, but of course it was early. His vehicle wasn’t parked outside, but it might’ve been in the garage.”

  She cranked her neck to work out a few kinks. “Okay. We got a couple things. We’ll see where they take us.”

  Besides the beer cans, they’d bagged a handful of gummed-up store receipts and other odd bits of paper that she would examine more carefully later. But credit card invoices or ATM receipts—anything to suggest that Bonolo was more than a phantom—nothing.

  “Mitch, can you run the evidence bags to the lab?”

  “I’m on it as soon as I wipe the scum off my face and change my shirt,” he said.

  “Good. Hang out while someone runs prints, okay?”

  “Done.”

  She gave him a few more leads to run down, then turned to Carella. “Emory, I got a couple of things for you, too.”

  “Imagine my surprise,” he quipped.

  She grinned. “All right. Let’s clean this up and get back into the A/C.”

  Five minutes later, they’d finished. Claudia stayed behind long enough to smoke half a cigarette and watch a trail of ants scour the ground where they’d just lost their picnic. Life was tough all over.

  Chapter 20

  Claudia went home to shower and change. The only evidence that Sydney had been there at all was the key she’d thrown on the kitchen counter and the festival tickets that lay beside it. Claudia fingered the tickets for a moment, then shook her head and tossed them in the trash. It was what it was. She showered briskly, picked at some leftover tuna salad, and was back in her car twenty minutes later, already thinking ahead to her next stop.

  From the computer files Booey recovered, Carella had been able to isolate Hemmer’s businesses accounts. There were only six, all of them small independents in Indian Run or just outside the town’s limits. Carella said it looked like Hemmer had been testing his software with them. Carella would visit three of the businesses. Claudia would take the other three. As much as it didn’t seem likely that Hemmer’s skirmish with the homeowners association had anything to do with his business activities, they couldn’t eliminate the possibility without checking.

  Claudia’s first stop was Diller’s Shoe Shack, not far from her house. She took Robin there now and then, and occasionally dashed in when she needed new knee-high hose. The owner was one of the few town residents who apparently didn’t know her as a cop, and she always called her “Mrs. Hershey.” Claudia cringed every time she heard the “missus”; she’d kept her married name only for Robin’s sake. Still, asking the woman to call her “miz” would’ve been more complicated than it was worth, so she never bothered.

  But the owner must have spotted her on the TV news, because this time she greeted her as “detective,” a concerned look on her face.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Diller,” Claudia said. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, just fine.” She lowered her voice and said somberly, “But how are you? You’ve been through such a terrible ordeal.”

  Claudia and Carella had rehearsed their approach, banking on the ever-popular mantra of “paperwork to finish, loose ends to wrap up” as an opening to elicit information. If they needed to go further, they would intimate that estate issues for Hemmer’s daughter might be delayed if they didn’t “touch all bases.” Whether Hemmer was regarded as a crazed villain or not, no one would want a child to suffer.

  Claudia told Diller she was fine, stepped her through the mantra, then quickly asked about Hemmer’s work before the woman could probe further. Diller called out to a part-timer to keep an eye on the shop, then led Claudia to her computer in a back office. She poked a key combination and a splash screen opened with the name “HemmerWare” displayed on a gradient background.

  “Steve—Mr. Hemmer, that is—didn’t have an official name for his software yet,” Diller explained. “He said it was too rough to bother with yet. But he was being modest. The software is already wonderful, and Mr. Hemmer was brilliant. I still can’t get over what happened. It seemed so unlike him. In here, he was always so—”

  “I’ve heard many nice things about him,” Claudia interrupted. “But the software . . . what does it actually do?”

  “It’s an all-in-one package with an accounting component, a customer database, online distribution and sales capabilities . . . well, just everything. And it’s all customized. There are similar programs out there, but most are pricey and geared toward big businesses. They offer less customization and require frequent updates.”

  She gushed for a while more, poking keys and demonstrating the program components. Claudia interrupted again, this time to ask about Diller’s business arrangement with Hemmer.

  The woman lifted her hands from the keyboard. “I don’t know that I’d call it an ‘arrangement’ at all. He loaded the software for free and refused to take any kind of payment until he was satisfied that every possible kink had been worked out.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “He said his HemmerWare was in beta and he was testing it with me and a few other small businesses. He carried on about how major software companies thrust flawed programs on consumers, then abandon them when problems come up. He’d worked for some of those companies in the past, you know.”

  Claudia nodded. Files Booey recovered included documents pertaining to a software package Hemmer previously sold to another company. The software involved emulation, which she refused to let Booey explain, and initially there’d been friction over the deal. Hemmer apparently didn’t realize he was handing over all of the rights when he signed the contract. But the issue was resolved without litigation. Hemmer got more money and a ten-year royalty provision. Shortly afterward he moved to Indian Run with enough of a bankroll to finance his house and fund his HemmerWare.

  “His dealings with big software companies was one reason he went solo. He didn’t like their tactics, their culture, their shortsightedness. But the other reason was his daughter. He wanted a lifestyle that would keep him at home with her.” Diller grew pensive. “He was a good man,” she said softly. “I’ll never understand what happened.”

  Claudia thanked the woman, bought half a dozen pairs of hose for herself and some socks for Robin, then moved on to an optometry shop in Flagg. The owner showed marginally more restraint in his assessment of Hemmer’s software, but provided no new insights. He did, however, persuade Claudia that she should get her eyes examined and when she left an hour later, it was with an appointment card and a brochure describing laser vision correction. She immediately chucked the brochure. The day someone speared her eyes with a hot beam of light was the day that person would die.

  * * *

  The Indian Run Liquor Store bisected the short si
de of a small, L-shaped strip shopping center on the edge of town. The plaza begged for a facelift, but it thrummed with shoppers who apparently didn’t mind its shabby appearance. Claudia maneuvered the Imperial between two vans so poorly parked that she could barely squeeze out the door. She stood on the hot asphalt for a moment to get her bearings.

  The plaza was a conglomerate of old and older. Claudia shaded her eyes and spotted a thrift shop, a dry cleaner, a florist, a used books store, a diner, a dollar movie theater, a bakery, a real estate office, a children’s clothing store, a barber, and a grocer. The stores showed their age in faded yellow paint, which Claudia imagined had once been gaudy enough to hurt your eyes. She had never been to the plaza. Robin, she knew, would never set foot in it.

  The liquor store was surprisingly free of customers, though Claudia supposed it did most of its business after working hours. She found a sales clerk thumbing through a People magazine at the register, and asked if the owner was available. The clerk—“Dale,” according to a name tag crookedly affixed to his shirt—barely looked up long enough to mumble “not in.” Claudia slid her badge under his nose and Dale came to. His eyes gradually widened in recognition. He grinned.

  “You!” he said. “You’re that cop from TV! Man, that whole hostage thing—”

  “The owner?”

  Dale’s smile dropped off. “Oh, sure. The owner, that’d be Gil—Gil Larch. But he’s got another store, and that’s where he’d be except for he had to go up north for a funeral and so I’m in charge. Mostly I run the register.”

  Dale had a narrow pink face, wispy blond hair and scruffy stubble on his cheeks that had probably taken him three or four days to grow. He fidgeted with the pages of his magazine when Claudia didn’t immediately respond.

  “I know I don’t look my age, but I’m twenty-two, so I’m legal here.” He cleared his throat. “You want to see some ID?”

  “No, I—”

  “Oh, man, is it Gil who’s in trouble? That’d be like practically impossible because he’s this total straight arrow, goes to church and everything.”

  Claudia told the clerk to calm down, that no one was in trouble. She handed him a business card and told him to have his uncle call when he returned.

  Dale brightened, relieved. “Sure. I can do that. No problem.” He caressed the business card as if it were some kind of souvenir. “This is so wild, man. We’ve had just about the whole cast of characters in here, and now you. If Hollywood makes a movie, think maybe they’d give me a walk-on gig?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They use a lot of extras. I could play my own part, me behind the register.” He smoothed back his hair. “I’ve been told I have presence. You think?”

  “I think I want to know what you mean about the cast of characters in here.”

  He told her. There’d been Hemmer, of course, with his computer program. But Gloria Addison stopped by with regularity, as did Bill Bonolo. And now the detective.

  Claudia waited impatiently while Dale rang up a customer. When the customer had moved on she nodded for Dale to pick up where he’d left off.

  His face took on a dreamy expression. “Gloria Addison . . . I could see she kind of liked me, if you know what I mean. She’s got an eye for quality. Top-end gin. Top-end vodka. Top-end wine . . .” His voice trailed off, then he sighed and added, “She’s one fine lady. If Hollywood did make a movie, maybe they’d cast me as the lover.”

  Claudia caught herself before she laughed out loud. “You do have charisma,” she said, “but don’t you think Bill Bonolo might have a problem with you playing his role?”

  He gaped at her. “You’re joking, right? Gloria and a cretin like Bonolo?” He furiously shook his head. “It’d never happen.”

  “Huh. I thought they were an item.”

  Dale snorted. “Yeah, like a fish and a kangaroo.”

  Claudia puzzled over that, but chose not to pursue it. “Guess I had bad information.”

  “I saw them in here together a total of once. She was an ice queen with him. Believe me, they’re no kind of . . . pair.” Dale waved a hand, dismissing the whole silly notion. “Bonolo only comes in to buy low-life beer and drop off this funky fruit-flavored water.”

  “Ah. So you’re on his distribution route.”

  “Was,” Dale corrected. “We sell a so-so amount of water, so Gil likes to keep it on hand. I don’t know what he was thinking with that flavored water, though.” He made a face. “Probably doesn’t matter. Bonolo hasn’t been in at all in since he killed Mr. Hemmer, so I doubt we’ll be buying more.”

  “Everybody thinks it was self-defense.”

  He shrugged. “All’s I know is they weren’t fans of each other.”

  “Dale, are you writing a script now or stating what you think is fact?”

  The clerk looked offended. “It’s a fact that they almost got into it once just outside the store.” He gestured at the liquor store window. “See the bookstore?”

  Claudia looked. It sat just on the other side of the plaza’s “L,” giving Dale an unobstructed view.

  “Bonolo’s a regular there, too,” the clerk continued. “He was coming out of it once when Mr. Hemmer was leaving here. Bonolo dropped something. Hemmer picked it up for him, but before he was even straight on his feet again Bonolo snatched it out of his hand and started waving his arms like a loon. They had words and I thought I might have to call 911; you could see Bonolo was itching for Mr. Hemmer to make a move so he could flatten him.”

  Bonolo a reader? Claudia shook her head. She asked Dale if Hemmer frequented the bookstore, too.

  “I don’t think so. Only time I ever saw him go in there was that same day—after Bonolo peeled rubber out of the parking lot. It was a few days before the hostage thing. I remember that because when I caught the news on TV later I thought, ‘Oh, man, I just saw him.’ Very unreal, you know?”

  Claudia thanked Dale for his time, but when he asked for her autograph she told him not to push his luck, then left him to his magazine and daydreams. She felt a kick of optimism. Dale was no actor, but he told a good story. Her watch showed four-fifty. There might be just enough time left to do something with it.

  Chapter 21

  Like most other equipment in the Indian Run Police Department, the portable radios used in the field were relics that operated with a miserly output of 4 watts. There were six of them, but most of the time two were out for repair. The one Claudia carried had been dropped so often that its base was wrapped with tape to hold it together. She hated it. The tape had gone gummy over time and inevitably left sticky nubbies on her palms. Worse, she often couldn’t make out what anyone was saying, no matter how much she fiddled with the squelch button. She did her best to accidentally forget it when she left the station, but she had it with her today and when it suddenly crackled with a burst of static just outside the liquor store she felt her heart lurch.

  Sally’s voice came on, spewing code. Claudia could distinguish only a few words. She moved to the parking lot, hoping for a clearer signal, but the air waves weren’t giving up anything. Claudia shut it off and called the dispatcher with her cell phone, only to learn she hadn’t sent her the call at all.

  “That was a dispatch for Charlie-12,” Sally said, referring to a young officer who patrolled the north quadrant of town. “Unless you feel like picking up a trespass complaint, you’re off the hook.”

  “So why’d it come over on my radio?”

  “Who knows,” Sally snapped, irritable because her replacement had called in sick. “If someone’d upgrade us to 800 megahertz we wouldn’t have these problems. Gee. We could be just like a grown-up police department.”

  “All right, all right.” Claudia said. “Anything going on?”

  “No. The place is like a tomb.”

  “Give me thirty, forty minutes. I’ll be back in.”

  “Hey, do me a favor? Swing by Starbucks on your way and get me a nice cool latte?”

  Righ
t. Like Indian Run had one of those. They both laughed, the mood lightened. Claudia hung up, pushed damp hair off her forehead, and walked back to the shops. But the bookstore was closed. A hand-lettered sign announced its hours as 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. Her watch showed the time at 4:56, but no one responded to her knock. She was miffed, but not surprised. Mom and Pop shops danced to their own drummers. The sign said the store was closed on Sundays, but open Fridays and Saturdays until eight o’clock. Claudia headed to her car. If she wanted to know what Bonolo read when he couldn’t even be bothered to unwrap his newspapers, she’d apparently have to wait.

  * * *

  The lab was unimpressed with Bonolo’s beer cans. Moody had been treated to the same litany about low-priority cases that Claudia had heard when she’d tried to interest anyone in Hemmer’s computers. The prints would be processed tomorrow, which meant one more thing that had to wait in a case that already had too much on hold.

  Claudia leaned against the outside of her office door and sipped stale coffee. She stared vacantly into the multipurpose room. It was six-forty and she’d sent Moody and Carella home. No point in making them stick around; there was nothing more they could do right now. Carella’s visits to the remaining businesses on Hemmer’s client list had been even more unproductive than her own. He’d visited a pet store, a small accounting office, and a women’s plus-size clothing shop. Claudia related her own interviews, stopping short of telling them about the hose she’d bought. No one was quite sure what to make of the bookstore angle, if there was one. Of course, that was the problem with the entire case, Claudia thought. They had a collection of suspicious facts, but nothing to tie them together.

  Moody had verified that the BMW in the garage at the Miami Beach condo was registered to Lyle Hendricks, a wealthy investor and businessman who also maintained residences in Boulder, Los Angeles, New York, and the Cayman Islands. Under the generous umbrella of a Delaware corporation named AfLUX he owned in full or part more businesses than Medusa had snakes, and most of them catered to people who had as much money as he did and spent it freely on the exclusive cars, yachts, estates and planes that Hendricks’s companies manufactured. AfLUX, Moody told her, stood for “Affordable Luxury,” which made for a good oxymoron but didn’t bring them any closer to understanding why a man like Hendricks would entertain a man like Bonolo. Nothing did. If anything, Hendricks seemed to be retiring from his business concerns and in fact had handed over most daily operations to his three sons.