The Trouble With Murder

by Catherine Nelson

  “Your lies.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. Evidence of your con. These are all the parts you swapped out of my truck and charged me for.” I turned to the old woman. “He’s not working on your car, is he?”

  “Well, uh, actually, yes.”

  “My advice? Take it to someone else. I recommend this guy.” I pointed to Manny.

  “How dare you march in here and accuse me like this!” Krupp cried.

  Manny walked over to the woman and extended his hand. She placed hers in his, and he gently helped her up, then guided her to the door. He was talking softly to her.

  “We have a problem here,” I said to Krupp. “You charged me more than four thousand dollars over the last year, and you’ve been swapping out parts the whole time.”

  “You can’t prove where these parts came from,” he said as Manny returned to stand beside me. “You can’t prove I put them there. You probably put them there yourself.”

  “I keep very detailed records, and since Stan died, you have been working on my truck exclusively. That doesn’t look so good. You know, Stan’s probably rolling over in his grave right about now, you bastard. He trusted you.”

  Krupp had the decency to look ashamed, if only briefly. His eyes darted to the floor, and he shuffled from foot to foot.

  “I would never—”

  I cut him off, because we both knew he would, and he had. “The good news is, we can make this whole little problem go away right now.”

  He looked up again, studying me skeptically. “Oh, yeah? How’s that?”

  “I’ll need my four thousand dollars back. Plus another thousand for my hassle.”

  “What? Are you crazy? There’s no way in hell I’m giving you five thousand dollars!”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “I was recently fired, and now I’m on vacation, so I have a lot of time on my hands. I think I’ll put my energy into you. I’ll start compiling a list of your customers. Then I’ll talk to each of them and have Manny here look at their cars. I bet he finds something similar in those cars. Then we’ll get a lawyer. The public loves a good tort case like that. thieving mechanic caught swindling customers. That will be the headline. How much do you think that will cost? You won’t work as a mechanic another day. You’ll have to close. Still, that probably won’t cover the debt. You’ll probably lose your house, too. And your car, your retirement, any stocks or savings—all of it.”

  Anger seized him then, and he reached under the counter. When he came back up, he was holding a gun and staring down the barrel of the 9mm in my hand. He looked up from the gun and into my face.

  “Why don’t you pass me that gun?” I asked.

  It took a full minute of private deliberation before he finally made a decision. He slowly handed the gun to me, and I took it. He looked defeated.

  “Are you going to shoot me?” he asked.

  “Don’t think I haven’t considered it.”

  He was watching me, trying to gage my intent.

  He sighed. “All right.” He looked at the gun. “All right, I said. I’ll write you a check.”

  “I don’t take checks.”

  He looked at me.

  “Wouldn’t you just cancel it by the time I got to the bank?”

  He conceded. “Fair enough. I’ll get cash.”

  “Let’s take your car. I’ll drive.”

  The trip to the bank and back took less than an hour. Manny and I dropped Krupp back at his garage looking pissed and defeated. I had five thousand dollars burning a hole in my bag, and I was sure I’d be leaving most of it with Manny.

  We returned to his garage to find the Scout sitting out front, back in one piece and sparkly clean. In the office, Manny printed the invoice, and we went over it item by item. It ran the length of five pages and took half an hour. We got to the bottom of the page, and I saw the price.

  “That can’t be right,” I said.

  He pinched his eyebrows together and pulled the invoice to him, studying the number. “It’s right,” he said, turning it back toward me.

  Five hundred and thirty-nine dollars.

  “You replaced close to fifty parts.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I know. It took a couple hours, too. But, that’s all on there.”

  I pulled the stack of cash out of my bag and counted off a thousand dollars, putting in on the counter. “Even that is less than fair.”

  He handed three hundreds back to me. “Take these back and you’ve got a deal.”

  “I’ll take one back.”

  “Take two.”

  “Fine.”

  When things were squared away, Manny and his helpers heaved the Cushman into the back of the truck. I strapped it down then climbed behind the wheel. I waved to Manny and the others then drove away. Suddenly, things seemed a bit better than they had that morning. My truck was fixed, I was four thousand dollars richer, and I had a new gun.

  16

  Dressed in the requisite outfit of business casual, I reported for my first day of work at King Soopers, donning the black vest Karen had provided. After visiting Krupp, I’d managed to make my interview at Hobby Lobby. The manager, Helen Auwaerter, was paged then emerged a minute later to lead me to her office.

  “Oh, my, dear,” she’d said when she saw me. “What happened to your face?”

  My face was the only part of me I couldn’t cover up. I’d worn a long-sleeved shirt, which caused me to sweat like a pig, but I couldn’t do anything about my face. I had put a Band-Aid on the largest laceration, covering the sutures, but there were dozens of smaller ones.

  “I was beside a pane of glass when it shattered.” No need to explain why it shattered.

  The interview was over in fifteen minutes, and I wasn’t really sure what had happened. I’d presented a copy of my resume and expected questions about my work ethic and experience. Instead, the questions had been strictly about my personality. If I was an animal, which animal would I be? If I had a dream about having a baby, what would that mean to me? If I could change one thing in the world, what would it be?

  How did any of this relate to my ability to wear the blue vest and supervise those who punched numbers into the cash register? I had no idea how, or even if, the woman had been able to determine my qualification to do said task by the said idiotic questions. She promised to make her decision by the end of the week and let me know either way, but I wasn’t holding my breath. I could only hope the King Soopers thing panned out. Because so far, this job-hunting crap wasn’t working out too well.

  Karen introduced me to a man named Tony, who was to teach me my new job. Tony wasn’t quite six feet tall, wasn’t quite of average size, had dark hair that was prematurely thinning, and wore glasses. Based on these factors, as well as the limp handshake he’d given me, I assessed him to have a very sensitive ego. As the shift progressed, it became apparent I was correct. I hoped I wouldn’t be working with Tony very often (or ever again), because tiptoeing around and trying to filter everything that came out of my mouth was exhausting. Not to mention, I’m not very good at either to begin with.

  My official title was “Customer Service Manager,” but that, I soon learned, was just a fancy way of saying “babysitter and referee.” A great deal of my shift was spent shadowing employees in various other positions around the store. I also learned being hired to a managerial position from outside the company didn’t earn me any favor with anyone, certainly not with anyone who had applied for the same position and lost out. I spent three hours at the customer service counter with a woman named Yolanda who had been passed over twice for the job I’d just accepted. “Awkward” didn’t begin to cover it. Actually, “hostile” was probably more fitting.

  After lunch, I was partnered with a kid named Landon whose job was bagging groceries and helping people out to their cars. Landon lectured me extensively on proper bagging protocols then stood over me with hawk-like focus as I attempted to put into practice what I’d been taught. He was quick
to jump on me when I made mistakes. I could have fainted with relief when he went to a neighboring register temporarily without a bagger.

  Taking my first deep breath in hours, I addressed the next customer in line.

  “Paper or plastic?” I asked the man. He was dressed in an ill-fitting suit and gold jewelry and was talking on the phone.

  “Plastic,” he snapped.

  I made quick work of the items collecting at the end of the conveyer belt, arranging them in sacks of like items to a particular weight designation, as per training protocol. I was actually quite impressed with my handiwork as I loaded the plastic sacks into the cart. It seemed I worked exceptionally well when out from under the eye of critical teenage scrutiny.

  “$98.76,” the checker said. Zander wasn’t much older than Landon, but he was more laid back, with long brown hair that fell forward over his eyes. He was quick to make jokes and smiled easily. He was also pretty good at his job.

  The man ended the phone call and handed Zander his credit card.

  I put the last of the items into sacks. The man glanced over at me.

  “I said paper,” he snapped.

  “I’m sorry?” I said. “I asked and you said plastic.”

  “No, I didn’t,” he said, raising his voice and stepping toward me. “My wife’s on some tree-hugging kick and only wants paper; it’s recyclable, or some such crap. I said paper.”

  I looked at Zander and he shrugged.

  King Soopers has a very strict the-customer-is-always-right policy. I looked at the cart full of groceries neatly arranged in plastic sacks and sighed.

  The yelling had drawn Landon back. He apologized to the belligerent man while giving me a see-what-happens-when-I-leave-you-alone look. I thought he was sending the wrong message, and I made a mental note to discuss it with him later. It’s one thing for the customer to always be right, and another thing entirely to throw a coworker, new, incompetent, or otherwise, under the bus.

  We transferred the items from the plastic sacks to the paper ones, Landon assisting and once again supervising. He didn’t once mention how well organized the plastic bags had been.

  While we re-bagged all the groceries, the woman behind the man made clear her impatience at being made to wait.

  The last bag was finally packed, and as I settled it in among the others, I asked, “Would you like help out?”

  I’d hardly gotten the words out of my mouth or let go of the bag when the man suddenly jerked the cart forward and spoke over me.

  “No,” he spat. “You’ve helped enough already.”

  He almost ran over an old lady leaving another register in his haste.

  “Have a great evening!” I called in as cheery a voice as I could muster, waving at him as he stomped away.

  Zander had already begun ringing up the items of the next order, and they were collecting at the end of the belt. Landon separated them as I looked to the impatient woman.

  “Paper or plastic, ma’am?” Landon asked before I had a chance.

  “Plastic.” Her tone was cold and superior, as if she was disgusted to have to interact with lesser beings like us.

  “Plastic?” I repeated. “You want plastic?”

  “Isn’t that what I said?”

  I shrugged as I began filling the first bag. “It’s what the last guy said, too. I just wanted to be sure.”

  This scored me a reproachful look from the vigilant Landon.

  By this time, I was counting down the minutes until I was able to leave. When I had thirty-eight minutes on the clock, I heard an announcement overhead.

  “Wet cleanup, aisle fifteen. Wet cleanup, aisle fifteen.”

  Aisle fifteen is the soda aisle, and there are, by far, more wet cleanups in that part of the store than all the others combined. I knew this after just seven and a half hours of employment. I’d also quickly learned soda is a pain in the ass to clean up. By the time the cleanup call went out, a dozen carts had been wheeled through it, and twice as many people had tracked through it, so the whole damn aisle had to be mopped. Still, I had my finger crossed.

  “I’ll go,” I volunteered. “Landon’s got this covered anyway.”

  Tony turned and looked down at me from the small podium on which he stood, raised between the center registers to afford managers a view of the entire front end. He considered something privately for a moment then grunted in assent.

  “Fine,” he said. “Hurry up.”

  I wheeled the mop and bucket over to ground zero and counted this cleanup as my fourth wet cleanup in the same aisle today. The horrifying part was that I hadn’t been the only one doing cleanups today.

  I dragged the cleanup out as long as possible, trying in vain to run down the clock. When I could stall no longer, I put the mop away and returned to the front end, bagging groceries under the impossible criticism of an eighteen-year-old kid with horrible acne until it was finally time for me to go home. I clocked out, grabbed my bag, and used every last ounce of self-control I possessed not to run out of the store.

  _______________

  Ellmann had said the police followed up on my tip about Tyler Jay and turned up zilch. This was disappointing, and I couldn’t help but wonder how long my information, my perfectly good information, had sat in some voicemail box somewhere in digital outer space waiting to be listened to. Considering how “wanted” Tyler Jay was, he didn’t seem like a real priority.

  I cruised back over to Tyler Jay’s mother’s neighborhood. I’d been right the first time about the house belonging to her, and about Tyler being there. I had a feeling he hadn’t gone far. He seemed like a mama’s boy, and whatever this said about Tyler Jay and his emotional health, it was lucky for me. I was willing to bet if Tyler wasn’t at Mom’s house, she knew where he was. I harbored no illusions about her telling me, but I thought she might give it away all the same. I just wondered how long it would take.

  I drove past the house once and had a good look around. The Honda was no longer in the driveway, and the place looked shut up. I turned the corner then parked so I could see the front of the house from a distance. I slid over to the passenger seat and pulled a book out of my bag. I hoped if anyone noticed me, they would assume I was waiting for someone who’d run inside for something forgotten.

  It occurred to me sitting outside the house of Tyler Jay’s mother was stupid because there was a chance it was Tyler Jay who was trying to kill me. It also occurred to me a certain power would return to me if the hunted became the hunter. I didn’t really like being hunted, and I especially didn’t like feeling powerless. Hunting seemed scary, too, but a different sort of scary, a sort that seemed more manageable.

  Just after six, a Cadillac came down the street. Mom’s garage door raised and the Cadillac slipped inside. I made a note of the license plate. The door lowered and everything was still again. The tinted windows on the newer model luxury car had prevented me from identifying the driver. I watched the house and waited. Most the shades were drawn, but an upstairs window on the side of the house was open. I saw a woman appear and pull them closed. It was the same woman I’d seen the last time I’d visited.

  Around eight o’clock, I was tired, thirsty, and had to pee so badly I was seriously considering using the empty coffee cup in the cup holder. I’d nearly finished my book and wondered what I was waiting for. There was no guarantee the woman would do anything but make dinner, watch TV, and go to bed. But I wasn’t willing to throw in the towel just yet. Mostly because I wanted to prove I was right. Right about what, exactly, and to whom I had to prove it, was still in question.

  I practiced some deep breathing to keep my mind off my bladder and finished the book. The sun had set, and I’d required a flashlight to read. My thighs ached from holding it for so long, and my legs were bouncing. I decided to call it quits. At least for thirty minutes. I’d hit the restroom, get something to drink, maybe hit the restroom again, then come back and settle in for a few more hours.

  I reached for the key and t
urned the engine over as Mom’s garage door rattled up. It was up in time for me to see her getting into the car with a large paper carry-out bag, and I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe I knew what was in it. I had suspected Mom wouldn’t tell me where Tyler was, but thought she might end up showing me. My heart beat a little faster with excitement, and against my will, my brain quickly added fifteen thousand dollars to my bank balance.

  I kept my lights off until the Cadillac was to the end of the block, then I started to follow. I’m no expert in the art of tailing. Turned out, Mom wasn’t an expert in spotting a tail. So we made a good pair.

  We drove north. When she hit College, she continued north through Old Town, and I began to experience doubt. It was possible this wouldn’t be a short trip. Maybe Tyler wasn’t staying in town. Maybe she wasn’t going to see him at all. Maybe my bladder was on the verge of rupture for no good reason.

  She cruised past Willox and made a right at America’s Best Inn, driving to the back of the lot and parking. America’s Best Inn had been El Palomino Motel until a few months ago. The Palomino had been the sort of place that rented rooms by the hour and did a lot of cash business. It had been run down and as infested with crime as it had been with bugs. America’s Best had given the place a facelift.

  I pulled in and parked in the first slot I found that afforded me some view of the opposite end of the place. I turned in my seat and watched as Mom got out of the car, carrying the large paper bag with her. She climbed the external stairs to the second floor then walked to the third door. She knocked, there was a slight movement in the curtains, then the door opened. She disappeared inside, and Tyler Jay stuck his head out, making sure the coast was clear.

  Ha!

  Thank you, Mom.

  I immediately drove through the parking lot to the gas station next door, where I raced to the restroom. The door to the women’s room was locked, so I tried the men’s. Unlocked. I hustled inside. When I emerged, a thirty-something man was waiting. He gave me a look.

  “Emergency,” I said as I passed.