by J. R. Ripley
I peered past him into the apartment. It was small, sparsely furnished with pieces that could have come from a thrift shop. There was no art on the walls and no TV set that I could see. Nothing personal to mark his presence. “May I come in a minute?”
His eyes raked over me before he answered. “I guess.” The black leather motorcycle jacket hanging open off his shoulders appeared a couple sizes too big for his slender frame. There were more zippers on his jacket than I had in my entire wardrobe. Underneath the jacket was a purple football jersey.
Bobby stepped away from the door and, despite the alarms going off in my head, I entered, closing the door behind me. Not that it helped much. It was almost as cold inside the dingy apartment as it was outdoors.
The young man smelled like bargain-bin cologne and tobacco. Bobby threw himself into a threadbare chair and picked up a pack of cigarettes on the cluttered side table.
I stood a couple of steps inside the entrance. The main room was no more than two hundred square feet. There was a small galley kitchen toward the back to my left. Off a short hall, I could see a bathroom with white subway tile walls and floor. The bedroom, which shared a wall with the outside, was to the right. The bedroom door stood open, but all I could see was the unmade end of a bed.
“So what’s the job?” Bobby stuck a cigarette between his thick red lips, pulled a cheap plastic lighter from the pocket of his jeans, and lit up.
“General help around the store.” I took a step back as he blew a cloud of smoke toward me. “I heard you used to do that sort of thing at Christmas House Village.”
My mention of Christmas House Village was accompanied by the twitch of his brow.
“In fact,” I pressed, “didn’t you formerly rent a room from a family friend of mine?”
He pushed his brows together and sucked loudly on his smoke. “And who would that be?”
“Virginia Johnson.” I clutched my purse close against my belly. The room was dark and close and filling with cigarette smoke. I was dying to open a window. The pale green carpet looked like it had died decades ago.
“Yeah. I lived there. Until the old lady killed herself.” He plucked the cigarette from his lips, inspected it, then took another puff. “I don’t remember even once seeing you there.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What did you say your name was?”
“Amy.” I coughed and resisted the urge to wave a hand in front of my nose. “Amy Simms.”
“Mrs. Johnson never once mentioned you to me.”
“That’s funny. Well”—I smiled—“you know how old people can be.”
“I guess.” Bobby mashed the cigarette into a dented beer can on the table.
“A pity, her dying the way she did.”
Bobby reached for his next cigarette. “Yeah. Rough.”
“I heard you were the one who found her.”
Bobby’s countenance darkened considerably as he sucked hard on his cigarette, the end glowing like molten ore. “You ask a lot of questions, lady.” He stood, towering over me by several inches. “I thought you were here to talk to me about a job?” He thrust his empty hand in the pocket of his leather jacket.
“I-I am.”
“That’s funny.” He jabbed his cigarette at me. “Because it sounds like you’re being snoopy.”
I took a step back in the direction of the door, without taking my eyes off him. He could very well prove to be a killer.
Times two.
“I didn’t mean anything, Bobby—”
Anger flashed in his eyes. He flicked his cigarette toward the kitchen, where it landed on the linoleum and smoldered.
“I wasn’t even there when Mrs. Johnson died. I was in Asheville. Ask anybody,” Bobby said defiantly. “I came home and found her. I was the one who reported her dead! Bet you didn’t know that, did you, Miss Nosy?”
I suppressed a frown. The snotty kid was right. I hadn’t known that.
But I did now.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” I swept a lock of hair from my eyes. “About the job. You would need transportation.” As I blathered on, I wondered if Bobby could hear how shaky my voice sounded. “Is that your motorcycle outside? It’s very nice. Blue is my favorite color.”
Bobby pulled his hands free and pointed one of them at me. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”
I nodded quickly. “Okay.”
Bobby went through the bedroom door. “I’ve got something I want to show you.” He closed the door behind him and shouted, “You’re going to like it.”
I debated turning and bolting, and every bone of wisdom screamed at me to run for my life. But curiosity won out and I waited.
And wondered.
After several moments of waiting in fear and interest, hearing nothing but the sound of my heart thumping and blood rushing in my ears, I tiptoed to the bedroom door.
As I did, I heard the roar of a motorcycle coming to life. “Bobby?” I opened the door.
The window screen had been tossed on the bed. The bedroom was empty. Bobby had gone out the open window. I ran to the window, which stood ajar, letting in the force of winter. Bobby was astride his motorcycle and already heading down Crawford Avenue. Soon he disappeared from my sight completely.
“Rats.” What an idiot I’d been. First, to come alone to his apartment, second to enter it alone with a criminal, and third, to let him get away.
I frowned and pushed the window shut, not that it mattered.
The tiny closet with accordion doors hung open. A few cheap long-sleeved cotton shirts hung from black plastic hangers. Two pairs of blue jeans lay in a heap on the carpeted floor beneath them.
In the battered bureau, I discovered a mixed bag of socks and underwear. If there was anything lurking underneath, I’d never know because there was no way I was touching any of it.
The bottom drawer was empty. Once again, there was little in the room to reveal the personality of its occupant. Then again, maybe that said scores.
A flash of red and white under the bed caught my eye. I bent and took a peek. Uncertain what I was looking at, I gave the material a tug.
My brow went to the ceiling.
It was a Santa Claus suit.
All red and white and fluffy and fake furry.
“What the devil?” No matter how hard I tried, I could not envision the Bobby Cherry whom I had learned about, and now met, playing Santa Claus to a bunch of smiling, hopeful children.
If anything, I pictured him as the Anti-Santa, sliding down chimneys and removing all the toys from under each and every Christmas tree in Ruby Lake.
27
I rose early the next day determined to put in a full day at the store.
“You’re really going to work for the whole day,” Mom said with a twinkle in her eye as she picked up our breakfast dishes.
“Very funny, Mom.” I pushed my hands through my hair. I had thrown on a comfortable pair of brown corduroys and a cable-knit sweater featuring a cockatiel in an elf costume perched on a snowman’s head.
“Speaking of funny . . .” Mom tugged at the fabric of my sweater.
“I know. It is tacky, yes, but it’s the spirit that counts. Besides, I bought it on clearance a year ago and haven’t had the opportunity to wear it yet.”
“Or the guts.”
“Ha-ha.”
I left Mom to her jokes. She had the day off from store duty. At the apartment door, I thrust my feet into a nice pair of knitted boots with faux fur cuffs and green and blue laces. Perfect for the holidays. While I expected to stay inside where it was clean, dry, and warm, there had been a dusting of snow overnight and these boots provided good grip.
I arrived downstairs a few minutes before opening.
Esther stood near the door and turned at the sound of my steps on the stairway. “It’s about time.”
“Good morning, Esther. Is everything ready? Have you started the coffeepot?” I always liked to have the coffee brewing before we opened our doors. The smell of coffee added to the shopping experience, in my opinion.
“Never mind the coffee,” Esther said, sounding surlier than her usual self.
“What’s wrong?” I opened the cash register and checked that we had plenty of cash on hand. I wasn’t in the mood for a trip to the bank. “Did you miss your coffee and cookie this morning?”
Esther is fond of strong coffee and sugar-packed cookies, especially when they’re on the house. That house being mine.
“Just come here, would you?”
I banged the register shut and grabbed my apron off its hook behind the counter. “Fine, but if this is about the snow, I’ve already seen it.”
“Yeah,” snapped Esther, stepping away from the front door, “but have you seen this?” She wore a pale blue frock decorated with horizontal rows of two-inch tall white snowflakes.
I jolted to a stop. “Oh, dear.”
A neatly tied rope noose hung from the eave, dancing on the breeze.
A chill shot through me. I bit my lip and inched closer to the French door. “Is this somebody’s sick idea of a joke?” I spun around. “Where’s Paul?”
In addition to owning the biergarten next door, Paul was renting the apartment next to Esther’s on the second floor.
Esther pulled a face. “Do you actually think he’d pull a stunt like this?”
Paul could be annoying and he could, indeed, be a bit of a clown. But hanging a noose on my front porch went beyond even his juvenile idea of a joke. “No,” I was forced to admit. I pressed my nose to the glass. “Have you telephoned the police?”
“No.” Esther stuck her hands in her frock. “I figured that was your job.”
I shot her a look. Sure, suddenly something around here was my job. “I suppose I’d better call then.”
“You’d better do something,” quipped Esther. “A thing like a noose hanging from your door is bound to scare the customers away.”
There wasn’t a doubt about that. “Too bad our midnight visitor didn’t leave a nice Christmas wreath instead.”
* * * *
The big man himself arrived in response to my call. I unlocked the front door the minute I saw his squad car pull up to the curb.
It was well past the time to open our doors but, as Esther had suggested, not a customer had appeared. Jerry spoke into his radio then extracted himself from his car and headed up the brick path to the porch, shaking his head side to side as he came.
I stepped out on the porch to greet him. “Good morning, Jerry.”
“Simms.” He stopped several feet from the porch steps and stared at the noose. “Damn. That’s something you don’t see every day.”
I had thrown a coat over my sweater. “It’s not the same kind of rope that was used to hang Franklin Finch.”
“I can see that.” Jerry climbed the steps, his breath coming out in tiny white clouds that quickly disappeared. He craned his neck and examined the noose. It had been expertly knotted but the rope was much thinner than the rope I’d seen around Finch’s neck. This white rope looked like what my mother used to hang between the trees in our yard to dry our clothes on. The rope was attached to a nail that I sometimes hung feeders from.
“Any idea who might have left you this little Christmas present, Simms?”
“Not a clue.”
“Well,” Jerry sighed, “I’ll send Pratt over to take pictures and check it out. I don’t expect we’ll come up with anything though.”
“I’d like to get it down as soon as possible. Esther says it might scare the customers away.”
Jerry stamped his feet. “It’s cold out here. Let’s go inside.” He pulled open the door and led the way.
I walked to the seed bins arranged on the front wall. Customers could buy various types of birdseed by the pound and mix their own varieties if they chose. I also prepared some blends that I mixed myself and sold in prepackaged bags. I grabbed a bag, picked up one of the two metal scoops I provided, lifted the plastic lid of the peanut bin, and shoveled a generous portion into the bag.
I handed the bag of peanuts to Jerry. Jerry had a habit of helping himself to my peanuts. I’d long given up trying to stop him.
To prevent his eating dangerously into my profits, I had come up with the idea of scooping him up a small bagful preemptively. So far, my plan seemed to be working.
“Thanks.” Jerry opened the bag, gave it a shake, and pulled out a handful of shelled peanuts that he chewed quickly.
I could see and hear Esther preparing the coffee in the kitchenette.
“What did Bobby Cherry have to say for himself?” I had called Dan at the police station after returning to Birds & Bees.
“Nothing.” Jerry ran the back of his hand over his lips.
“Nothing? Didn’t you haul him in for questioning?”
“I might have if he’d been there. When we got to Olympia Apartments, he was gone.” He was looking at me like it was my fault.
I squirmed. An argument could have been made that he was right.
“We staked out his apartment and he didn’t come back all night.”
“I saw a Santa suit under his bed.”
“Yeah, we saw it too. Ho, ho, ho.” He looked toward the back of the store. “Coffee ready?”
“In a minute!” Esther hollered. “Hold your horses, copper!”
Jerry glowered but didn’t dare respond. I couldn’t blame him.
“Bobby told me he was in Asheville at the time Virginia Johnson died.”
Jerry shook the bag of peanuts and stuck his hand in. “That’s right. He was in Asheville at the time. Witnesses confirmed it, not that we were looking at murder at the time. But he was there all right. If Virginia Johnson was strung up, it wasn’t by him. He was in Asheville all that day until he came home and found her.”
“That reminds me, I saw some strands of rope outside that window that had been left ajar in Franklin Finch’s loft.”
Jerry narrowed his eyes at me and buried his right hand in his back pocket, which I figured was better than placing said hand on the grip of his pistol. “What were you doing there, Simms?” Bits of chewed peanut spilled out his mouth and landed on his boots.
“I, that is we, Kim and I, went to see Eve Dunnellon . . .”
“The offices are on the second floor. What were you and Kim doing on the third floor?”
“Look, Jerry, I think you should check it out.”
“You want me to check out every rope in town?”
“It couldn’t hurt,” I shot back.
“No, but it could take a lifetime.”
“There’s a coil of rope in Santa’s Reindeer Barn.”
Jerry snorted. “Yeah, and there’s bells on bobtails.”
“Very funny. There’s a killer loose and hanging threatening nooses on people’s doorsteps, and you’re making jokes.”
Jerry shook his head. “We saw the rope in the shed. The hardware store also sells that rope, as does the lumber yard, so do any number of other stores in this county alone.”
He balled the bag of peanuts up in his hands. “I know how to do my job, Simms. What you need to focus on is doing yours.” He swiveled his head toward the kitchenette. “That coffee ready?”
Esther scooted over with a lidded to-go cup in her hand.
“Thanks.” Jerry took the cup. He went to the door and opened it. “If you have any more trouble, give me a call.”
“If I have any more trouble,” I muttered, crossing my arms over my chest, “you are the last person I’m going to call.”
Jerry stopped at the threshold. “What’s that?”
I smiled. “Thanks, Chief!” If he got himself caught up in that noo
se on the porch as he passed by, I wasn’t sure if I would help him or not.
Fortunately for him, I didn’t have to make that life-or-death choice. He bent his head and stepped lightly under the noose on his way to his squad car.
I planted my hands on my hips. “Somebody better get here soon and take that thing down.” I turned the Closed sign to Open, not that I expected any customers under the circumstances. Maybe if I wrapped some sprigs of mistletoe around the noose . . .
“Thanks, Esther. That was a smart move bringing Jerry his coffee in a to-go cup.”
“I figured if I did, the man would get the message and go.”
I had to admit, though I never would to her, the woman had some slick moves.
Esther grunted. “I guess I’ll fill those stockings now.”
“Good idea.” We had ordered several dozen Christmas stockings with various species of birds on them. We would fill the stockings with an assortment of bird-themed items, from seed to socks. I hoped customers would agree that they made great Christmas gifts for their bird-loving friends.
“Amy?” Mom stood at the bottom of the stairs. She’d changed her robe and slippers for a wool skirt and slate-colored sweater.
“Hey, Mom. What’s up?” I moved to check the levels of the seed bins.
“Mr. Calderon called a few minutes ago,” Mom explained. “I thought you’d like to know. Well”—she brushed her hand against her sweater—“maybe like to know isn’t quite the way to phrase it.”
“Oh?” I picked up a bag of millet and topped off its bin.
“I’m afraid it isn’t good news.”
I set the bag down and reached for the safflower seed. “What do you mean?” I had more important things on my mind, like nooses on my doorstep.
“He had the estimate on the house repairs.”
“And?”
“He says he has given you the absolute lowest price possible,” Mom prevaricated. “And a very generous discount.”
“I’m sure, Mom. Go ahead, hit me with it.”
