“It might have been her firebug neighbor, Fran Schnabble,” I said. “She and her husband split up because of Rhonda. And I think Fran is a couple of Bradys short of a full bunch, if you catch my meaning. Snuffing Rhonda might have been Fran’s way of doling out justice.”
“I vote for the ex-husband,” said Giselle, who’d had two unhappy marriages.” It’s always the ex-husband.”
“Maybe it was the Schnabble woman’s hubby,” Juju suggested. “He killed her because she dumped him.”
“It’s gonna turn out to be a complete stranger,” Samantha said confidently. “Some guy she picked up at a bar. Lots of creeps and crazies out there, trust me.”
Of course I’d neglected to mention one of the suspects. Because it was ridiculous to imagine that Bonaparte Labeck was capable of murder. And if he did kill someone, he wouldn’t be dumb enough to leave the body lying out on the lawn furniture.
The lunch people started coming in and I got busy waiting tables. I needed tips more than ever. Pig had been hauled off to a repair shop that morning, and I was going to need every penny I could scrounge up to pay for its new alternator. As the lunch crowd was clearing out, two men walked into the café. Cops. I could spot them a mile away. They stopped, looked around, and then the big one, a guy who rolled his shoulders when he walked, approached me.
“Mazie Maguire?” He flashed a badge. He wore sharply creased pants, dress shoes polished to a gleam, and a tan trench coat that looked as though it had been retrieved from the prop department of a cancelled TV detective show. He had skin the color of liverwurst sausage and a shelf of teased orangish hair combed forward on top of his head to hide a bald spot.
The guy with him had a babyish face with a few scattered patches of acne, and blond hair cut so short his pale scalp shone through. Apparently he was too junior to rate a trench coat, because he just wore a snow-speckled jacket.
“I’m Lieutenant Vince Trumbull, Brookwood PD,” said Mr. Comical Combover. He jerked at thumb at the younger guy. “This is Detective Olafson.”
My hands went all clammy. Immediately, I began to feel guilty. Cops can reduce you to gibbering idiocy. It’s the way they look at you out of their hard, flat eyes, like they know everything you’re hiding, and even though you know it’s a technique, it still makes you want to confess to the JFK assassination. I was getting heart-pounding flashbacks to the time I’d been arrested for my husband’s murder.
“Mind if we ask you a few questions?” Lieutenant Trumbull asked, but of course he wasn’t asking. He was politely telling me I was going to answer questions.
I shrugged, trying to look nonchalant, even though my mouth had gone dry and my heart was beating to the rhythm of the Dragnet theme. Dum da dum dum.
“I’m investigating the murder of Rhonda Cromwell,” Trumbull said. “You heard about it?”
“It was on the news.” I started scrubbing an already-clean tabletop with a wet rag, to steady my shaking hands.
“So, Ms. Cromwell was your boss at this CRS place, right? And you were some kind of traveling saleslady?”
“A mystery shopper.”
“A mystery shopper.” Trumbull’s small, deep-set eyes, the color of navy bean soup, fixed on me. “You mind explaining that to me?”
“I evaluated businesses for customer service and product quality,” I said, reciting straight from the CRS script.
“Is that right?” Trumbull said. “So how did you and Rhonda Cromwell get along?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“Reason I ask,” Trumbull said, digging his pinkie finger into his ear, “is a couple of your coworkers mentioned you had some kind of altercation with Ms. Cromwell earlier this week.” His eyes lingered on my gouged cheek.
It took an effort of will not to touch the scratches on my face. “We had a disagreement. We both may have raised our voices.”
“Olafson, you getting this down?” demanded Trumbull, who’d relegated the note taking to the junior detective.
“Yes, sir.”
Olafson had his pen on his small spiral notebook, but his eyes were on the Hotties, who were putting on an extra show today, bending waaay over tables and throwing a little extra bounce into their walks. Trumbull’s gaze, however, remained riveted on me. “What was this ‘disagreement’ in regards to?”
“We argued over an evaluation I’d done.” No way was I going to go into Rhonda’s questionable business practices. Let the police find that out for themselves.
Trumbull abruptly switched tacks. “A witness claimed you were in the deceased woman’s house Monday night.”
Thanks a lot, Fran. “I went there to pick up my coat. I’d left it at Rhonda’s Saturday night. I cut across Fran Schnabble’s yard, and we started talking. I helped her clean her lawn furniture.”
“Yeah? What’d you touch?”
“Everything. Furniture, tarps, the bottle of cleaner.”
“After which you illegally entered Mrs. Cromwell’s house,” Trumbull said. “Breaking and entering. We could charge you with that, you know.”
I was finding it hard to breathe. Clam the hell up, Maguire. “If you’re going to charge me, I want a lawyer,” I said, my voice wobbling.
Trumbull shook his head mockingly. “Why would you need a lawyer if you didn’t do anything wrong, Mazie? Only guilty people talk about getting lawyers.”
Yeah, I’d heard that one before. Before I wound up being charged with murder.
“Anyone else in the house while you were there?” Trumbull asked.
Looking him straight in the eye like the seasoned liar I was, I shook my head. The lie might have been more convincing if I hadn’t been wearing a sea-foam-green baby doll nightie and matching tap pants.
“Where were you Monday night—say between nine and midnight?” Trumbull asked.
Suddenly I was channeling Lori Loonsfoot, the jailhouse lawyer back at the prison who’d had a bona fide law degree from Marquette University. If this guy thinks you’re holding out, he’ll make you go to the station to give a statement, so don’t stonewall, Lori yelled at me. Answer his questions, but keep your answers short and simple.
“I was with a friend,” I said. “We watched TV until eleven, then I went to bed.”
“Who’s the friend?”
“Magenta Pfluge.”
“Magenta? That guy who performs at the drag queen bars? You think a jury is going to be impressed with an alibi from a guy who gets off wearing women’s panties?” His eyes roved over me, and it felt like centipedes were using my body for a highway. “Speaking of panties, I see you’re into the hooker look.”
“I’m a lingerie model and barista.”
He gave a bark of laughter. “Good one. Maybe I ought to ask my friend in the DA’s office to check if it’s legal for women to prance around serving coffee in their undies.”
Trumbull turned to Olafson. “Know who this gal is? Mazie Maguire Vonnerjohn. Shot her hubby to death, did a couple years in stir, then got some gullible judge to let her off.” He turned back to me and fixed me with a cold stare. “Only I’m not as dumb as those judges, Mazie. You better watch your step or you’re going to find yourself back in prison, playing stuff the turkey with the guards.”
He stalked out, Olafson following behind.
“I’m not as dumb as those judges,” Juju mocked. “No, that guy is so dumb they had to burn down the school to get him out of third grade.”
Chapter Thirteen
If you want to know what’s really going on, don’t ask the boss; ask the secretary.
—Maguire’s Maxims
Walking into Koz’s on Milwaukee’s south side is like time-traveling back to the fifties. You feel as though you’ve been invited into someone’s unfinished rec room. Koz’s is one of the last outposts of duckpin bowling in this country. The lanes are only twenty feet long, the pins are the size of Coke bottles, and the balls are the size of grapefruits. No splashy LED graphics displaying your score; you compute the old-fashioned way, with pape
r and a stubby pencil. A nimble old guy named Mike hops back and forth between the alleys resetting the pins after each frame, and any bowler who thinks it’s funny to send a bomb down the alley while Mike is setting will get a pin flying back in his face. Same deal if you forget to tip Mike.
Koz’s is one of those word-of-mouth bars that never has to advertise. When a joint is so popular it has a two-hour waiting list for its alleys, the last thing it wants is a bunch of slumming newbies.
I found a place to park half a block away, along the fringes of Kosciuszko Park. Pig was back from the shop, complete with new alternator, and raring to go. I locked the car and hurried past the park’s dark, ominous-looking shrubbery, wondering about the text message I’d received from Labeck as I was leaving work today.
Koz’s @ 7. Want u to meet someone.
The noise hit me the instant I walked into the place. Blare of jukebox, beep-bleep-blip of pinball machines, and exploding wooden bowling pins. I spotted Labeck, who’d managed to snag the third lane, beneath the deer head strung with Christmas lights. He was with a woman who was never going to need breast implants. She had sparkling black eyes and brown skin, hair pulled up into a sort of frizzley cupcake atop her head, and red lipstick that matched her rhinestone eyeglasses. She wore tight designer jeans and a Chicago Bears sweatshirt, which was either brave or foolhardy, because Bears fans ain’t welcome in this here neck of the woods.
“Josie Wheeler, meet Mazie Maguire,” Labeck said.
Josie grinned as she shook my hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mazie. I’m a fan. I was rooting for you every inch of the way when you broke out of prison.”
“Thanks.” I smiled back. Half the people in the city thought I was a hero, and the other half thought I was drainpipe slime.
“Josie is my source.” Labeck said. “My mole inside the Brookwood PD.”
“You’re a police officer?” I asked Josie.
She chuckled. “Hell, no—I’m a secretary. I know where all the bodies are buried, honey, and Bonaparte here has been pumping me for years.” She dug an elbow into his side. “Well, I wish he was pumping me, but I guess I’m too much woman for him—he likes ’em small and skinny like you.”
“I like you fine just the way you are.” Labeck slung an arm affectionately around Josie’s shoulder. They seemed genuinely fond of each other, friends who obviously went back a few years.
“How do you know each other?” I asked. Josie looked to be in her forties, a little beyond Labeck’s usual romantic range, but she was cute enough to snag a guy of any age, and I didn’t want to be blindsided later, discovering that their relationship went beyond drinking pals to bedroom buddies.
“Bonaparte coached my son Robbie’s hockey team,” Josie said. “And he was Robbie’s mentor in the Big Brother program. I repay the favor by passing along whatever juicy tidbits I pick up so his crew can be first on the scene.”
Every time I turned around, I discovered something new about Ben Labeck. Buddies with Ms. Big Badoinkies here, mentors, moles … what next?
“You guys ready to bowl?” Josie said. “Because there’s a waiting line for this lane.”
She hefted her ball and stepped up to the line. With an ease that spoke of long practice, she hurled the ball down the alley. The pins burst apart with a thumping boom that sounded like an orchestra’s entire woodblock section. The pins were maple, nicked and scratched and hard to knock down because they had round, heavy bottoms.
Labeck got a strike and I managed to hit four pins. I understood now why Labeck had chosen to meet here. Bowling provided the perfect cover for a clandestine meeting. In case any of Josie’s police coworkers happened to stop in here—very unlikely, since Brookwood was miles across town—it would look as though she were here to bowl, rather than to pass confidential information to the media.
“Okay, so here’s what happening,” Josie said. “The medical examiner did the autopsy on Rhonda Cromwell this afternoon. Top secret, hush-hush, this document will self-destruct in sixty seconds, and all that jazz, so naturally I got my grimy little paws on that report before the chief did.”
Labeck and I strained to hear above the thump and bump of the alleys.
“Cause of death was compression of the aortic arteries by ligature strangulation,” Josie recited. “The implement used was a fifty-four-inch brown shoestring. Considerable force was used, which caused the shoestring to dig deep into the victim’s neck.”
Josie seemed to be quoting verbatim from the report. “The victim would most likely have lost consciousness within thirty seconds. Brain death would have occurred within three minutes.”
“Do they know the time she was killed?” Labeck asked.
“Sometime between ten p.m. Monday and one a.m. Tuesday. Later they’ll nail it down to a more specific time.”
Not good. Labeck said he’d dropped Rhonda off at ten thirty.
“You guys gonna bowl or what?” a guy behind us yelled.
Labeck turned around and eyeballed him. Labeck can be scary when he wants to be. He’s big and tall and has large hands that form large fists. The guy shut up and slunk away.
“Where was Rhonda killed?” I asked.
“In her house,” Josie said. “A chair was knocked over in the living room, there were drag marks on the carpet, and a piece of her skirt fringe got snagged on the back door. You’re up, Mazie.”
Darn. I’d been hoping they’d forget about me. I picked up my ball. Strung out on nerves, I barely bothered to aim. My ball flirted with the gutter cliff before finally plinking off a single pin. In duckpins, you get three tries, so I tried two more times and managed to knock down five more pins.
Mike the pinsetter made a razzing noise from his post above the lanes. “My two hunnert-year-old grammaw can bowl better than that.”
Mike’s insults are part of the Koz’s tradition. Oddly, they never seem to hurt his tips.
“Did the killer leave fingerprints?” Labeck asked Josie.
“They think the killer was wearing gloves. Rhonda wasn’t sexually assaulted. No trace of saliva, semen, or sweat in or on her body or clothing. She had a Betty Boop tattoo on her left ankle and a lot of surgical scars. That woman must have had every inch of her body nipped, tucked, or enlarged.”
The bartender yelled that he had a table for us, so we scratched on the game and trooped over to a narrow wooden booth at the back of the bar. A vintage advertising poster for Pin Up Ale was tacked on the wall above the booth, showing a woman in a skimpy costume straddling a dolphin-sized bowling pin. The ad copy read: “Grab your balls and strike!”
A man with white hair like dandelion fluff came to take our orders. He was wearing a towel as an apron and his face said he’d seen it all, but against all the evidence believed that a few decent human beings still inhabited the planet. Ordering at Koz’s is easy. You have whatever the cook feels like making that night. Tonight we were all having sloppy joes. Labeck said he’d spring for beer, an offer that wasn’t as generous as it sounds, since Koz’s only charges five bucks a pitcher.
I described my encounter with Lieutenant Trumbull that afternoon. “He practically accused me of killing Rhonda.”
Josie shook her head. “Blowing hot air,” she said. “Vince Trumbull likes to throw his weight around. I ought to know, because I work with the guy.”
“I’ve had run-ins with Trumbull,” Labeck said. “He plays for a police hockey league. Last time we played, my team beat his team, and he didn’t take it well.”
“You need to watch out for that guy,” Josie said. “Trumbull is dangerous. He’s stubborn, once he gets an idea in his head you can’t move it with dynamite, and he’s got connections—his brother-in-law is the mayor.” She looked directly at Labeck, her rhinestone frames glinting in the dim light. “I think he’s going to finger you for the murder, Bonaparte.”
Labeck nodded glumly. “He gave me the third degree today. I was covering that Iraq veterans’ demonstration at the courthouse and he hauled me off the job, to
ssed me in the back of his car, and grilled me for about an hour. I told him the truth—that I’d dropped Rhonda off at her place Monday night, then left.”
“Did he believe you?” I asked.
“Are you kidding?”
The waiter brought our pitcher of beer and three glasses, and we waited until he left before resuming our conversation.
“You two aren’t the only suspects,” Josie said. “That pyromaniac neighbor lady was questioned, and there’s a couple others on the short list. You can bet Rhonda’s ex-hubby will be getting a proctology exam, too.”
Josie drank, wiped foam off her upper lip, then looked up and stared meaningfully at Labeck. “The techies found an unknown male’s fingerprints on the tarpaulin used to cover Rhonda’s body. Same prints on her purse, the front door, and a coffee table indoors.”
“Mine?” Labeck asked.
“You tell me, Bonaparte,” Josie said. “You don’t have a police record, so your prints aren’t on file in some database. But you’ll be asked to ‘voluntarily’ go in for printing. And there’s something else.” Josie drew figures on the wet tabletop. “The forensics guys found traces of skin under Rhonda’s nails.”
“Christ,” Labeck said. “Rhonda had her hands up under my shirt, she was gouging into my back. What was I supposed to do—karate chop her?”
Sometimes you had to feel sorry for guys. Defending yourself from a predatory female is a lose-lose. Let her have her way with you and you feel unmanly. Tell her no thanks and you feel even more unmanly. Guys are supposed to want sex however they can get it.
“They can have my prints, my DNA, whatever the hell they want,” Labeck said, raising his voice. “It doesn’t matter, because I didn’t kill Rhonda. Why would I kill a woman I barely knew?”
Josie looked at him in a way that was almost pitying. “You took her home that night, you started fooling around, the rough sex got a little rougher—you got carried away. Or maybe Rhonda got you all stirred up, then said no at the last minute and you killed her in a fit of thwarted lust.”
Crazy for You: Life and Love on the Lam (A Loveswept Contemporary Romance) Page 8
