My Bad Grandad

by A W Hartoin

  “What are you thanking me for?” I kept my eyes trained on her face, but those snakes really drew the eye.

  “Wade hired me,” she said, grinning so wide her heavy lipstick cracked.

  I looked at the singer, notorious for his womanizing, and gave him the stink eye. “Hired you for what?”

  Wade tossed his long blond hair back and said with a lascivious smile, “Anything she’ll agree to.”

  Lacy giggled and fluffed her hair.

  “Makeup,” said Mickey.

  “What happened to Tamberlin?” I asked.

  Mickey groaned. “She’s pregnant and the morning sickness is wicked. Poor girl.”

  I didn’t know her well, but she never mentioned a boyfriend. “Who’s the father?”

  Every single person in the room looked at Wade. It was a reflex. Wade held up his hands. “Why are you looking at me?”

  “It’s a mystery,” said Grandad with a laugh.

  “I’m happy to say it isn’t Wade,” said Mickey. “It’s Dallas.”

  “My bodyguard? No way.”

  Mickey stroked his short beard and said, “I know. I asked her if he got her drunk and took advantage of her, but she says she likes him.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Wade, spreading his long arms wide. “She could’ve had this and she went for that skinny hipster.”

  “Another mystery,” said Grandad and everyone chuckled, including Wade, who went to sit next to Raptor. She got up and then sat. Then got up and then sat. Wade had that effect on women. Not me. I’d spent too many years listening to him singing about hot babes in Dad’s car to have any fascination with the aging star.

  “So, Lacy,” asked Mickey. “What can you do with this knot on Mercy’s head?”

  She got up close, gently pressing on the area. “Doesn’t look like it will get bigger. I’m thinking an exotic snake design like off your Jungle Deep album.”

  “I like it,” said Mickey and the other guys nodded.

  “I’ll get my stuff and do some sketches,” said Lacy, rushing out the back door.

  I sat on a stool and sagged as a bell rang in the other room and Virginia took off.

  “That’s probably Mrs. Dudgeon,” said Kathleen. “Do you have any more hot chocolate, Aaron?”

  Aaron didn’t answer. He just grabbed a mug as Jeanette walked in with Trevino and Bennett. The three of them stopped short when they saw Mickey. The conversations around the kitchen died and Mickey stepped up. He walked to Jeanette and took her hand. “I’m so sorry for your loss. Please come in and have something to drink.”

  Jeanette burst into tears and he brought her to an empty armchair by Wade, who surprised me by losing all his usual bravado and expressed his sympathy. Aaron brought her a mug of hot chocolate, but she said she wasn’t hungry.

  “It’s not about hungry,” I said. “It’ll help. I swear.”

  She took the mug and a tentative sip. “This is hot chocolate? It tastes like…”

  “Happiness?”

  Her eyes spilled over and she nodded, her blonde hair sticking to her damp cheeks.

  Trevino took me aside and said, “We have witnesses at the Millford shooting.”

  “Really? That’s great,” I said.

  “Well…”

  “So not that great.”

  Three independent witnesses saw a man walking away from the scene when other people were running toward it. He was wearing jeans and a dark jacket with the hood up. That’s where the similarities ended. In one account, he was over six feet tall and the jacket was red. Another said he was slim and short, maybe five eight with a blue jacket and a third said five ten, obese in green. Trevino asked me if I’d seen anyone walking away. I hadn’t. The street was completely deserted.

  He sighed and accepted a hot chocolate from Aaron. “Eyewitnesses. The bane of my existence.”

  “It’s better than nothing.”

  “Is it? We’ve got a man wearing clothes. We could safely assume that.”

  For some reason, I was incensed. Maybe it was the exhaustion. “Could’ve been a woman. Women kill people.”

  “Sorry to insult all the female murderers out there. Women kill, but not this time.”

  “I’m losing it,” I said.

  “You’re not the only one.”

  I looked over at Jeanette, who was curled up in front of the fireplace being soothed by Janet. “What did she tell you about Steve?”

  “You know I can’t share that with you. It’s part of an active investigation.”

  “So nothing.”

  “This week sucks,” he said, downing the rest of his drink. “Ah, screw it. Boris said the grieving widow was late for her appointment and she says she was alone in their room for an hour before with no alibi.”

  “You think she snuck out to Bear Butte Lake and bludgeoned her husband to death before getting a massage?”

  “I’ve got over twenty witnesses saying they heard her threaten to kill him.”

  “And then she told me where to find the body?” I asked with an eye roll.

  Trevino watched Jeanette dabbing her eyes. “She seems sincere, but I can’t rule her out. She was in the bar and The Stone House. You suspected Steve. Why not her?”

  I bit my lip and glanced over at Jeanette, her lined face was red and blotchy. She weighed probably 150 at five four. But that wasn’t it. I was being sexist. I couldn’t imagine an old lady stabbing Robert or cracking Hal or Steve. “She was there,” I agreed.

  “And she claims that she was with her husband at the time of the Millford shooting. He’s dead, so no alibi for that.”

  “Maybe somebody else will get killed while she’s out here hanging with us,” I said. “You could get lucky.”

  “When are you leaving again?” he asked.

  “Sunday.”

  “I’m counting the hours.”

  “Thanks. I love you, too.”

  Trevino and Bennett left with wistful glances at Aaron prepping on the island. They could’ve stayed, but they claimed they had wives they hadn’t seen in days and didn’t wish to be divorced.

  Virginia and Kathleen gathered everyone at the island for our lesson, except Wade and Mickey. They weren’t interested in a cooking class, just eating. I wasn’t interested either, but Aaron stood in front of me, bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet until I got up and came to the island.

  He taught a class in simple techniques. So simple, I think he said a grand total of six words the whole time. We learned how to make scrambled eggs, slow cooking the French way with heavy cream and butter, gorgonzola and pine nut-stuffed pork chops, and grilled asparagus with hollandaise. I don’t know how Aaron did it. By the end, I knew I could cook that stuff. No problem.

  When we ate, half the table was teary-eyed. Okay. Raptor and Jeanette would’ve been in tears if we’d eaten frozen dinners, but the rest were genuine food tears. I spent most of the time after dinner trying to get Jeanette alone so I could question her, but she easily avoided me with all the comforting going on. Eventually, I gave up and dozed in a wing-back chair with dreams of black cats and angry old men.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  THE NEXT MORNING, Raptor poked me on the shoulder. “Answer your phone.”

  I rolled over in bed. “Leave me alone.”

  “Answer that phone or I’m going to tell Wallace to pee on your head.”

  Bark.

  The pug would do it. That much I knew. I sat up and Raptor shoved Aaron’s phone in my face. “It’s been ringing every ten minutes for the last hour.”

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “Ten fifteen.”

  “Ah, crap.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Raptor.

  The phone started up again and I took it from Raptor, who sat on her bed glaring at me. I vaguely recognized the number, which could mean anything from friend to stalker. It turned out to be neither.

  “Finally, Miss Watts,” said a bellowing male voice. “Why don’t you answer your p
hone? You’ve got a job to do.”

  “Dr. Capshaw?” I asked, wincing.

  “Who else? I’ve got some info for you. Full autopsy’s done, but not the full tox. Understand?”

  “Got it.”

  Raptor whispered, “Who is it?”

  “Autopsy,” I whispered back.

  “What was that?” boomed Dr. Capshaw. My ear would never be the same. I turned down the volume, but it didn’t help much.

  “Nothing. Is this Hal’s autopsy that you’re talking about?”

  “I’m not authorized to talk to you about any other deaths.”

  “But…”

  “But there might be some hypothetical crimes that I’d like to hash out with you,” he said.

  “Hash away,” I said.

  Dr. Capshaw cleared his throat and shuffled through some papers. “Mr. Hal Reiner’s stomach was full of Isradipine, partially digested. What he did digest was enough to kill him three times over. He did have cirrhosis of the liver and severe stenosis of the coronary arteries. He was scheduled to have an angioplasty after the trip to Sturgis.”

  “So he was vulnerable.”

  “I’d say exceptionally so. As a side note, Mr. Reiner was prescribed Diltiazem previously. Something tells me that you may have heard of that recently.”

  “I might’ve heard that was in a drink meant for Hal.”

  Dr. Capshaw chuckled. “You’re very like your father.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. So why did Mr. Reiner’s prescription change?”

  More paper shuffling. “Looks like an insurance issue.”

  “When did it happen?” I asked.

  “Three weeks ago.”

  I blew out a breath. So whoever was taking a peek at Hal’s records would’ve seen he was taking Diltiazem two months ago and that’s what they slipped Big Mike in The Rack and Ruin. “That’s interesting,” I said.

  Raptor waved at me. “What?”

  I put my finger to my lips as Dr. Capshaw said, “I’ve had a lot of interesting thoughts on cases lately. Hypothetical, you understand.”

  “Of course.”

  “Sometimes, people get bludgeoned to death. Sometimes the head wound matches another case, which is always interesting to a man in my profession.”

  “I imagine so. Hal had a special head wound.”

  “He did and someone else might have the same pattern, although it’s hard to tell when the entire back of the head is caved in.”

  I grimaced and Raptor gave me a pleading look. “Can you tell the height of the attacker in such cases?”

  “Usually, but sometimes, the wounds are diverse and take time to unravel which blow might have been first.”

  “And how long would that take?”

  “Could be a day or two. Piecing a skull back together isn’t as easy as it sounds and you have to extrapolate depth of the blows to bleeding, etc.”

  I said that I understood. I didn’t. Not really, but I didn’t want to ask, because pathologists like to explain and it was more than I wanted to know. The memory of Steve’s exposed brain was bad enough.

  “And, of course, I have an interest in gunshot wounds and the weapons that make them.”

  I sat up straight. “Oh, yeah?”

  “You mentioned that the Vietnam-era is of particular interest to you, I believe. My uncle served and he brought back his personal side arm.”

  My arms went weak. A Vietnam sidearm. Another connection that nobody could deny. “They issued a lot of different types during that war, didn’t they?”

  “Not that many. I borrowed my uncle’s piece and it wasn’t interesting, but…”

  “But…”

  “But my uncle was issued several sidearms over the course of his career. One was a Remington M1911 .45 cal. It has this little protruding metal piece on the butt. It makes a distinctive impression. Say, on a skull. And an issued weapon might have seen a lot of use. Nice lands and grooves.”

  That took me back. We weren’t just talking about Hal and Steve. “If the weapon were fired in another crime…”

  “A ballistics match would be easy. Were someone to find such a firearm.”

  My mind was spinning. I’d begun to think the Millfords weren’t necessarily connected to Hal and Steve. Totally different MO. “So, in theory, one weapon could be linked to three different crimes?”

  “Hypothetically, yes.”

  “That would be unusual, wouldn’t it?” I asked. “Don’t murderers like to stick with what works? Bludgeoning as opposed to shooting, for instance.”

  “Sometimes, an object is what’s important, not the method.”

  I thanked Dr. Capshaw and we hung up. I had to call Uncle Morty, but I couldn’t quite do it yet.

  “Who was that?” asked Raptor. “The M.E.?”

  “Yeah. Hal, Steve, and the Millfords are connected by a certain type of firearm.”

  “What about the knife?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe that was a separate deal.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “No, but there’s no real connection other than that the victims all knew each other.”

  “That’s a big connection.”

  “I think so, but I need something else.” I texted Uncle Morty, asking him to find out if anyone had a M1911 registered to their name. He came back immediately and said no. Fantastic.

  Grandad knocked on the door and said, “They’re ready for you.”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “You and DBD. They want to do a rehearsal.”

  I screeched in frustration.

  “Mercy?” Grandad opened the door and peeked in. “Something wrong?”

  “Only everything.” I jumped out of bed, startling Wallace, who began yapping so that Raptor had to capture her and clamp her jaws shut.

  “What’s wrong, sweetheart? You’re not nervous about going on with the band today?”

  “No, I’m not.” I was. Totally. “I’m mad that you won’t help me.”

  “Help you do what?”

  “Solve the murders.”

  “I don’t know how I could do that,” he said, his face completely guileless.

  I googled the M1911 and held up the phone to him. “Recognize that? That’s the weapon used in the murders and issued to the Army during Vietnam.”

  Grandad looked like I’d screamed it at him, but he recovered quickly. “And both World Wars. It’s not an uncommon weapon.”

  “Did you have one?” I asked impulsively.

  He waited for a moment before saying yes, he did.

  “Did my grandpa?” asked Raptor. She looked scared, even though she had to know that Robert was in the clear for Steve and the Millfords.

  “No. Robert was enlisted. He had a standard issue M14. He did have a personal sidearm, a Colt .45. Big Mike and Barney’s dad had Smith & Wessons, if that’s what the next question is.”

  I was afraid of the next question, of all the questions I might have to ask.

  “Mercy, there’s nothing to worry about,” he said softly.

  “How can you say that? Four people have been murdered. You could’ve been one of them.”

  He came in and gently kissed my forehead. “It’s all over now.”

  “How is it over?” I asked.

  “We’re going home on Sunday.”

  “Big Mike better come with us.”

  Grandad cocked his head to the side. “Why would he do that?”

  “He’s a target,” I said, just to see what he’d say.

  He laughed. “Mike? Never.”

  “Dr. Capshaw just told me that he was poisoned at The Rack and Ruin.”

  “And how would he know that?”

  “Big Mike threw up that first night. It was still there and I sent it for testing.”

  Grandad nodded. “I’m sure that was an accident. Mike is the very best of men. No one would hurt him.”

  “You sound so sure. Why is that?”

  “It’s over, Mercy. We leave on
Sunday.”

  Raptor released Wallace, who spun in a circle and curled up in a little ball. “He won’t tell you anything, Mercy.”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” said Grandad. “You girls should trust me. It’s over.”

  I clenched my fists. “You’re lying to me.”

  Grandad stepped back, affronted. “I don’t lie.”

  “You’re lying right now.” I stood up and grabbed my shampoo to give me something to do. “You don’t want me to find out who killed Hal or the rest of them.”

  “It’s upsetting you. Let’s concentrate on the benefit concert and getting Robert better.” Grandad turned to Raquel. “How’s he liking the new room?”

  “Better. He’s been up and walking,” she said, then glancing at me. “I went to Spearfish at seven to see about the transfer.”

  “And Robert’s good?”

  “Very good. He wants to be released.”

  Grandad laughed. “That’s our Robert. Not a lazy bone in his body.”

  “You should talk,” I said.

  “If anybody can talk, it’s me, and it frequently is.” He turned to go and said over his shoulder. “Hurry, Mickey’s waiting.”

  I followed him to the door with my hair products pressing into my chest. “Do you still have it?”

  Grandad turned around on the top step, his greying eyebrows raised. “Have what?”

  “Your sidearm from the war.”

  He came back and hugged me fiercely. “Is that why you look so worried? No, sweetheart, I don’t have it. That wasn’t my weapon. It was issued to me and returned to the armory in country. The same with the rest of the men.”

  I hugged him back, careful not to touch his stitches. “But you could buy one if you wanted to, right?”

  “Sure. They’re not rare,” he said.

  Dammit. So close.

  “So my grandpa had his Colt,” said Raptor. “What did you have?”

  Grandad grinned at me. “A Mauser.”

  “My Mauser?” I asked.

  “One and the same. Come on down. Aaron’s made a breakfast that’ll put hair on your chest.” He left and Raptor said, “You have a Mauser?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you shoot that guy in New Orleans with it?”

  “Yeah.” I must’ve looked freaked because Raptor got off her bed with Wallace and squeezed by me, saying softly, “It must be good luck.”