Murder on the Toy Town Express

by Barbara Early

  As Frank walked to the door, straightening his uniform, Ken and I headed toward the comic booth, but Cathy intercepted us. At least I think that’s what she was trying to do. She was leaning over the table and waving like a windmill. “Liz!”

  “Thanks for coming in,” I said. “Are you up for this today?”

  “No worries. I got this, at least once I figured out that last sale. Parker must have been swamped last night just to leave cash on the table like that.”

  I winced. “I didn’t even get to check the booth last night. How did it go with Parker? Did you tell him?”

  “I chickened out.”

  “Cathy!”

  “I tried! We had such a lovely dinner. And he even brought home a pie. And then over coffee—don’t worry, I had decaf—he got to talking about how he loved spending alone time together, just the two of us. And I started thinking about how a baby is going to change all that. I couldn’t tell him.”

  “Cathy, he’s going to be thrilled.”

  “But what if he’s not? What if he’s disappointed? This is going to change both of our lives forever.”

  “Cathy”—I took her face in my hands to get her to focus—“he’s going to be thrilled. Trust me. Now breathe.”

  Cathy breathed in deeply, and I let go of her. “What if we’re lousy parents?”

  I shook my head. “You two are going to be amazing parents.”

  “Liz?” Ken touched my arm.

  “Just a minute,” I said.

  “No, I think you’d better see this.”

  I spun around to face him and caught a glimpse of Maxine whipping the last of the covers from her tables. She stood back, put her hands on her cheeks, and just stared. The comic book tables that we’d painstakingly searched through the night before—and then left in apple-pie order—were now in complete disarray. Some comics lay in heaps on the table. Others were ripped apart.

  Maxine continued to stare, then her hands started shaking.

  “Get me a bottle of water,” I told Ken. “And get Dad!” I rushed over and helped Maxine to a chair, pushing their cart, loaded with a laptop and a fresh supply of graded comics, to the back of the booth.

  “Who would do this? Who would destroy these things? I don’t understand.”

  I knelt next to her chair and patted her hand. I had no answers. Instead, all I seemed to have were more questions.

  # # #

  Dad and the water seemed to arrive at the same time. I handed the bottle to Maxine, who took it with still-trembling hands.

  Meanwhile, Cathy had come over and put the tablecloths over the vandalized comic books. “We don’t want customers right now,” she said as she stashed the loaded cart behind the drapes at the rear of the booth.

  I thanked her and was glad for her timing. The doors opened, and those who didn’t have to stop to buy tickets were already streaming in. I was wondering if we should try to take the distraught Maxine away from the booth, which was probably going to be considered a crime scene, when Dad voiced the same idea.

  Maxine vaguely nodded, and we followed him to the door that led to the corridors that held that empty kitchen, only this time we jogged a little to the left and ended up in some kind of small lounge area, with lockers, vending machines, a couple of small lunch tables, and a bank of semicomfortable seats along one wall.

  “Employee lounge,” Dad said.

  “You’re getting to know your way around this place,” I said.

  Dad patted his security ID. “All part of the job, ma’am.”

  We got Maxine settled on the couch, and I bought her a pack of chocolate chip cookies from the vending machine. Dad also found a blanket somewhere, and Maxine pulled it tightly around herself. Considering all that had happened in the last twenty-four hour period, she was certainly entitled to a little bit of shock.

  “If those security cameras were on last night, they should’ve gotten a good shot of whoever did this,” I said. “They will catch them.”

  “You probably think I’m acting foolishly over a bunch of comic books,” she finally said. “It’s just when I saw those books torn up like that, it made everything else more real. Torn up and discarded. That’s what happened to Craig.”

  “You really liked him, didn’t you?” I asked.

  Dad’s radio erupted with a chain of static, and he excused himself to go answer it.

  Ken sat down in a nearby chair.

  Maxine put a hand over her mouth, deep in thought. “It’s not about liking Craig. It’s a lot more complicated than that.”

  “Yeah, I know. Craig could be a jerk sometimes.”

  “That wasn’t where I was going . . .”

  “No, those things are hard to say. Sometimes the people in our lives are difficult, but we learn to get along. To make do. We remember the good times. We hope they’ll change. And when they’re gone . . . yeah, we feel loss, but then there’s almost a sense of relief. But then you feel guilty for feeling that, especially when everyone else is sad.”

  Maxine took my hand. “Who did you lose, child?”

  Man, Ken was right. I was transparent.

  “My mother. She had an alcohol problem. Those last few years were . . .”

  Maxine stared off into space. “You’re right, you know. Craig wasn’t the nicest man. I tried to take into account what he’d been through. You’re familiar with all those years in the foster system, right?”

  “That must’ve been hard on him.”

  “Some make it out okay. Others never find their way. Craig was just learning to find his way, I thought. Learning those things that maybe he should have figured out years ago. Getting along with people. Having a little empathy for others.” She shook her head. “I’ve known people who came out of the system far worse. I thought he had a chance. I actually thought . . .”

  She trailed off into her own thoughts while I entertained a few of my own. Yes, I still had emotional baggage. I loved my mother, but those feelings were challenged by the frustrations of living with an alcoholic parent. Even then, I still had Dad, my ever-present rock.

  What must it have been like for Craig, shuffled from foster home to foster home, like a holiday fruitcake? No mooring. No safe harbor. Although that mixed metaphor created the odd mental picture of a fruitcake tossed by the waves in a stormy Lake Erie.

  Yeah, there were times when my childhood was no picnic, but Craig had it a lot worse. I only wish I’d found “a little empathy for others,” as Maxine had put it, when I knew him in school.

  “Liz.”

  I jumped at my dad’s voice. I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t hear him come into the room. He slid into a chair facing Maxine and me.

  “I just got a call from the police.”

  Ken’s posture stiffened a bit.

  Dad went on. “I’m afraid there’s more bad news. They’re sending an officer to escort Maxine to the comic book shop. There’s been a break-in, and they want her to look around to see if she can figure out what’s missing.”

  Maxine closed her eyes. “When it rains . . .” She squeezed my hand. “Will you come with me?”

  “As long as the police don’t mind,” I said.

  “They shouldn’t,” both my dad and Ken said at the same time.

  “Then of course.” I reached in and gave her a hug.

  # # #

  I wish I could say I’d never ridden in the back of a police car before, but the truth was I had. If you want to avoid the feeling of claustrophobia, you try not to focus on the fact that there are no handles on the inside. And taking my dad’s advice, you try really hard not to touch anything.

  This was a short trip, though, just back to Main Street. The police car double-parked another out front, but the young officer didn’t stay. He just escorted us to the doorway where Howard Reynolds was standing, then took off.

  “Maxine asked me to come with her,” I volunteered, then realized I probably shouldn’t say too much more. I didn’t have Ken to keep me from putting my foot i
n my mouth. He’d gone to the station to see what he could find out. Meanwhile, Dad was going over last night’s security camera footage, looking for any good shots of the vandals.

  Maxine hung onto me for support, and that might’ve been all the convincing Reynolds needed, because he nodded and held open the door.

  I followed Maxine in. Whoever broke into this place had done a thorough job. Display cases were smashed, and the floor glittered with broken glass. Bins were upended, and comics were strewn knee-deep in spots.

  “You want me to try to figure out what’s missing?” Maxine asked. “I mean, even with an inventory list, that’s going to take a while.”

  Reynolds put his hands up. “For now, concentrate on the things of greatest value. Anything that jumps out at you.”

  She exhaled a forced breath and began a survey of the room. “Craig’s computer,” she said, pointing at the desk.

  “Do you know what kind?” Reynolds asked.

  “I think it was a Dell,” she said. “He had all these stickers—Garbage Pail Kids—stuck on the case. He thought they were hysterical.” She continued to scan the room. “None of the action figures seem to have been touched, and we have a Boba Fett worth a couple grand.” She gestured to a shelf behind the register. “They didn’t touch any of these, so I don’t think whoever did this knows the business.”

  Reynolds wrote that down.

  “But they went through the comics,” I said. “Just like at the show.”

  “The show?” Reynolds asked.

  “We found out about it moments before your guy came,” I said. “The booth was ransacked as well.” I turned to Maxine. “Did they take any graded comics from the store?”

  She shook her head. “I came by last night and took the rest of what we had with me. I promised a couple of collectors that I’d have some today at the show.”

  “What time was that?” Reynolds asked.

  “Ten?” she said. “I was kind of shook up after the hospital. I had just turned on the news when I remembered that I’d made a promise to bring those graded comics.” She looked up with a start. “I left them sitting on the cart at the show. The laptop is there too. If Craig’s computer is gone, the laptop has the only other copy of the store’s inventory. Well, except for the printout, but that’s not as up to date.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Cathy pushed the cart out of sight. It’s behind the drapes at the show.”

  Maxine leaned against a stool adjusted perfectly to her height, probably the one she used every day at work. “I don’t even know what I should be doing,” she said. “Should I be cleaning up?”

  “No, not yet,” Reynolds said. “We’ll process the place for fingerprints, and we’ll do the same for the booth.”

  “What about the stuff on the cart?” I asked.

  “Some of those comics were worth a few hundred,” she said.

  “How about I take them in, for now, as evidence.” Reynolds rubbed his cheek as if he were massaging a sore molar. “Did that laptop have a copy of everything that was on the missing computer?”

  Maxine twisted her hands together. “It’s supposed to. If Craig updated all the files.”

  “You think the thieves were after some information from the computer?” I asked Reynolds. “And maybe the comic books are a diversion?”

  Reynolds shrugged. “No idea. But probably worth getting a forensics guy on the computer.” He tapped his pen on his paperwork. “Was there anything on the computer that you think someone would want?”

  “I can’t . . .” Maxine said.

  Reynolds rubbed his fingers together, as if the friction could spark an answer. “What was on there?”

  Maxine jerked to attention and started ticking items off on her fingers. “All our business records. Sales tax. Inventory. That kind of stuff. Purchase records. All the receipts for our graded comics.”

  “What about Craig’s new comic series?” I asked.

  Maxine quirked an eyebrow. “That was on there too. He got a humongous hard drive to store all the images.” A shadow crossed her face.

  “Something else?” I asked.

  “Customer contact information. Maybe some personal pictures. I think he backed up his e-mail there.” Her brow pinched a little, but Reynolds didn’t seem to notice.

  For the next few moments, Maxine wrote down all the passwords she could remember. While she did, I took a more thorough look around the shop. Without moving, of course, since touching anything might contaminate any evidence they’d not processed.

  The shop wasn’t that large. Some of the connecting shops on Main had long been subdivided; when a business ran out of space and if their neighbor had extra, cash exchanged hands, and walls were repositioned. That was probably the case here, with one of the neighboring shops enjoying the L-shaped square footage.

  On the back wall was a montage of photographs. There was Craig, closely surrounded by a youth soccer team, all bearing the “Craig’s Comics” name on their uniforms. The next picture was a baseball team. The young boys in this picture wore a different uniform, but one still sporting Craig’s name as they crowded around and hoisted a trophy. Similar pictures showed other youth teams—lacrosse, football, swimming. Mixed in with the team shots were candids of players in action. Huh. I’d never known Craig was so community-minded. It might explain his high Yelp rating.

  “So what should I be doing?” Maxine asked Reynolds. “Do I even still have a job?”

  “A lot of that will depend on the next of kin,” Reynolds said.

  “They’ve found a next of kin?” I asked. I’d pegged Craig for a loner.

  Maxine looked just as amazed at the prospect as I was.

  “He’s coming in later today with his mother,” Reynolds said. “I’ll expect she’ll be the one deciding what happens with the business since he’s a minor.”

  The realization hit. “Craig has a son?” I asked.

  Reynolds nodded. “He’s listed as the beneficiary of Craig’s life insurance. Craig never married the boy’s mother, but the son is his closest blood relative. The only blood relative on record, actually.”

  Maxine plopped down on the stool again and stared up at the ceiling. “A son.” She looked at me. “Craig had a son.”

  Chapter 11

  By the time the officer dropped us off at the convention center, Maxine looked in no condition to operate a motor vehicle, so I offered to drive her home in her car, a beat-up Subaru that looked quite at home in the pot-holed parking lot next to the dumpster. I figured she might enjoy the company. And if I happened to glean any helpful information about Craig, all the better. I phoned Ken, and he promised to meet me at her place later.

  It was only a ten-minute drive to Maxine’s place. Or it should’ve been. I made the mistake of looking into my rearview mirror and spotted a red pickup that seemed be following a little too closely. The sun was hitting the window in just the wrong place, so I couldn’t identify the driver.

  I also noticed when I turned off Main Street, the pickup did as well.

  I had finally succeeded in prying a few words out of Maxine, but after that pump was primed, the words kept coming in a flood of nervous energy, and she was still bantering about how much she loved East Aurora. I kind of tuned her out. I made a quick unplanned right with no signal and watched as the truck followed.

  “Where are we going?” Maxine asked.

  “Do you know anybody with a red pickup?” I asked. “Don’t turn around.”

  Despite my warning, she turned around. “Someone’s following us? Doesn’t look familiar. But I don’t know a whole lot of people here.”

  I took a few more random turns, and the red pickup stayed with us. My brain conjured up any number of images of desperate rogues who might be driving—the two mobsters from the toy show ranked high on that list.

  “What are you planning to do?” Maxine clenched the door handle with one hand and braced herself against the dashboard with the other. That poor woman. She’d had a roug
h few days.

  “I could head to the police station,” I said. I wasn’t sure that was the best option, though. I’d been heading farther and farther away from Main, and I’d changed direction so many times, I’d gotten a little lost myself. I hit the throttle and picked up speed.

  The pickup seemed to fall back. “Oh, don’t get all law-abiding on me now,” I said.

  As I sped past the flea market, I spotted a patrol car parked in the lot. “Hang on!”

  “I’m hanging,” Maxine squealed as I did a superfast three-point turn and doubled back, meeting the pickup right in front of the entrance for the flea market.

  I jerked the wheel with no warning, the rear tires skidding on the stones and sending up a cloud of dust. I pulled up right next to the police car, slammed on the brakes, pulled off my seat belt, and climbed out, looking for the driver of that police car.

  No, I did not say I took the car out of gear. And no, I did not say I turned off the car.

  I realized my mistake as soon as the car started rolling forward and Maxine screamed from inside.

  I made a grab for the door and was able to hold on, but the car was moving too quickly for me to reach the brakes.

  The last I saw, Maxine was bracing herself for impact with both eyes firmly shut as her rusty Subaru rolled straight toward the homemade pie stand.

  “Move! Move!” someone shouted. It might have even been me.

  The pie vendor looked up, his eyes widened, and he jumped out of the way just in time.

  I watched as Maxine’s car crashed into a wooden display shelf fully loaded with pies. They hit the car, making colorful splashes of cherry, pumpkin, blueberry, lemon, and chocolate, all along the windshield and hood in a display that might’ve found a spot at a modern art museum—if the curator had a sense of humor.

  Fortunately, after taking out the entire pie booth, the car struck a curb and came to a stop, leaving Maxine unharmed but still screeching inside.

  And she wasn’t the only one. There was quite a bit of screaming going on. The driver of the police car came running over.

  “Officer!” I said. “I need your help. Someone is following me. The red pickup!”