Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 05 - Tight as a Tick

by Toni L. P. Kelner

  So it was more than half an hour later that Arthur, Vasti, Aunt Maggie, Richard, and I finally got out the door. Then, despite her claiming to be in a hurry, Vasti had to tell me a half a dozen tidbits of gossip about people I barely knew and tell me how pale I looked. I was going to remind her that the weather in Boston doesn’t make it easy to get a tan, but Richard spoke up first to tell her that it was the contrast between my soft brown hair and deep brown eyes that made my skin look so fair. That hushed her up long enough for us to jump into the car with Aunt Maggie.

  Chapter 4

  “If Vasti does get pregnant,” I said as we drove away, “I bet the baby comes late.”

  “And is born talking,” Aunt Maggie added.

  “Poor Arthur,” Richard said. “Having to perform on schedule must be tough.”

  “Especially with the whole family knowing what they’re doing,” Aunt Maggie said. “In my day, things like that were kept private.”

  “Speaking of private matters,” Richard said, “what’s this about a murder? Can I assume that the death at the flea market is the one you’re concerned with?”

  “Of course it is. How many murders do you think we have in Byerly?”

  He didn’t answer, and I knew what he was thinking without any shrugs or nods. For the past few years, there’d been a murder pretty much every time we’d come to Byerly. I was surprised they’d still let us into town.

  Aunt Maggie said, “I’d just as soon wait till we get to the house to get into it so I don’t get interrupted in the middle.”

  That was fine with me. I wanted a minute to catch my breath. As much as I love my family, being around them wears me out, especially after a half day at work, two frenzied hours of packing, and the flight from Boston.

  Besides, I always enjoy the drive to Aunt Maggie’s house. It’s not all that scenic, but there’s something special about coming home and seeing all the places I’d grown up around. Of course, there are changes every time I come back, but at night they don’t show so much.

  I’d lived half my life in the Burnette home place because Paw took me in when my parents died. When he died, Aunt Maggie inherited it, but I still feel very close to Paw when I’m there.

  It’s not a fancy house or even particularly pretty, but it is friendly looking, like a threadbare old bathrobe that feels better than anything else you own. In the dark, I could just barely tell the difference between the parts that had been the original wood frame farmhouse and the pieces that later generations added on.

  Richard and I always stay in my old bedroom, and we took our stuff upstairs as soon as we got inside. Then we went down to the den in the basement, where Aunt Maggie had bottles of Coke waiting for us.

  Richard and I sat down on the couch, still covered in a bright floral pattern that refuses to fade. Aunt Maggie sat in the battered brown recliner facing us.

  “Here,” she said, handing us a pad and a ballpoint pen. “I figured you’d want to take notes.”

  Richard took the pad, but I was starting to get peeved. Aunt Maggie was assuming that we were going to do what she wanted before we even knew what it was all about. I said, “I don’t remember saying that we’d be doing anything we’d need notes for.”

  “I figured that since you were going to be in town anyway, you’d want something to do,” she said.

  “I think we could find enough to do to fill a week.” Shoot, if we only allotted two hours per relative, we’d barely have enough time to sleep. “Why would we want to spend our vacation chasing a murderer? We didn’t even know the man who was killed, did we?”

  “No, you didn’t, but you’ve got a good reason to find his killer.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m asking you to.”

  I started to argue with her, but instead I took a swallow of my Coke. Aunt Maggie is one of the most independent people I’ve ever met. I couldn’t think of the last time she’d asked anybody for help. Even at her age, she’d tried to paint the house by herself last year. Fortunately, Aunt Nora drove by and saw her at it, and got her boys to come take over. If catching this murderer meant that much to her, I wasn’t going to turn her down without a darned good reason.

  I said, “All right, Aunt Maggie, we’ll do what we can.”

  “Absolutely,” Richard chimed in.

  “I appreciate it.”

  Then I asked, “Did you know the man who was killed?”

  “Carney? I knew him for years. He started selling at the flea market a month or two after I did. His booth was right across from mine.”

  “Were y’all close?” I thought maybe I knew why this was so important to her. I hadn’t heard about her dating anybody since the night she went dancing with Big Bill Walters, but if anybody in my family could keep a romance secret, it was Aunt Maggie. Then she knocked that idea right out of my head.

  “No closer than I had to be. I never did care for Carney.”

  “Is the person the police think killed him a friend of yours?”

  “The police don’t have any idea of who killed him, and at the rate they’re going, I don’t think they ever will.”

  “Really? Junior usually knows what she’s doing.” Junior Norton is Byerly’s police chief, and I’d never dream of getting in her way unless family was involved.

  “It’s not Junior who’s in charge,” Aunt Maggie said. “Laurie Anne, why don’t you let me tell it from the beginning? Then you can ask questions.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “All right. This is what happened.” She lowered her voice like she used to when she told us kids ghost stories, which was appropriate, because what she said was spooky enough for a ghost story. The idea of all of those people walking by when there was a dead man so close they could have touched him really gave me the creeps.

  “What did y’all do?” I asked after Aunt Maggie described finding Carney’s body.

  “Bob ran to the pay phone at the snack bar, and Obed took off for Bender’s trailer to tell him.”

  “They left you and the other woman alone with the body?” Richard asked.

  “Why wouldn’t they? Do you think I got the vapors?” She gave Richard a look, and he looked embarrassed, as well he might. Arnold Schwarzenegger is more likely to get vapors than Aunt Maggie.

  She went on. “We knew that Carney couldn’t do us any harm, and it was plain that he’d been dead for a while, so whoever it was that killed him was long gone.” Then she added, “Unless it was one of us there, but that’s for y’all to figure out. Anyway, Bob called the police, Obed found Bender, and Bender called his brother Evan.”

  “Evan owns the lot, right?” I said.

  “Right. So we had two sets of police running around like chickens with their heads cut off, plus Bender and Evan Cawthorne getting in everybody’s way.”

  “Why two sets of police?” Richard asked.

  “You remember what I said at supper about the town line being in dispute? Well, the body was found smack dab in the middle of the part that both cities are claiming. I swear, if I’d known that, I’d have rolled the body to one side or the other so they wouldn’t have anything to fight over.”

  I started to point out how much damage that would have done to the physical evidence, but I was reasonably sure that she was kidding. Instead I said, “I’m surprised there was a problem. Junior and Chief Monroe usually get along all right.” Junior and Lloyd Monroe, Rocky Shoals’s police chief, have very different styles, but they also have a lot of respect for one another.

  “I told you that Junior isn’t involved, and neither is Lloyd Monroe. They’re both in Fort Lauderdale for a police convention. Mark Pope is in charge of the Byerly police, and some gal named Belva Tucker is running the show in Rocky Shoals.”

  “Do they not get along?” I asked.

  “About as good as Lee got along with Grant,” Aunt Maggie said. “Mark got there first, with Trey Norton.” Trey is Junior’s little brother and part-time deputy, and my cousin Ilene’s full-time boyfriend
. “Mark told Trey to secure the scene, whatever that means. As far as I can tell, all he did was string yellow tape all around the building so nobody would come in or out, which was locking the barn door after the horse got away, considering how many people had trooped through there. Trey hadn’t got all his tape up when in comes Belva Tucker with her roll of tape. Belva and Mark spent a good half an hour arguing over whose body it was. Finally I said that no matter whose body it was, Dr. Connelly was going to be the one looking at it.”

  “Dr. Connelly is the county medical examiner,” I explained to Richard. He also runs a medical lab, because fortunately, the county doesn’t have enough deaths to keep him busy.

  “It took another five minutes for them to decide who was going to call him. Evan Cawthorne showed up right after that, fuming about everything. I think he was afraid that his insurance rates would go up, because the only thing he gets that steamed up about is money.”

  “Because he’s tight as a tick,” Richard said, proud of himself for using a new phrase.

  “Mark and Belva ignored him as best they could, and asked us dealers what had happened,” Aunt Maggie continued. “Only we couldn’t hardly answer for them talking over each other. Finally they lined us up, and Mark started on one end and Belva started on the other. That meant that we got asked the same questions twice, but by that time we were so glad that they were doing something other than fuss at each other that we didn’t care.

  “We didn’t know exactly when Carney had gotten there, but it must have been before seven, because that’s what time I got there. Bender said he didn’t notice anything earlier, which means that he was probably tight as a tick. As usual.”

  Richard looked puzzled. “What difference did Bender being cheap make?”

  “She didn’t say he was cheap; she said he was drunk,” I pointed out.

  “As drunk as a skunk,” Aunt Maggie agreed.

  “I thought tight as a tick meant tight-fisted,” he said.

  “It does,” I explained, “but it also means drunk. You tell which it is by context.”

  “What does being a tick have to do with being cheap or drunk?” Richard asked.

  I’d never thought about it before, but I said, “Well, a tick is a bloodsucker, like a cheapskate is, and a tick lives by drinking, like a drunk does.”

  Aunt Maggie cleared her throat noisily. Obviously she wasn’t in the mood for a language lesson. “Anyway, for all Mark’s and Belva’s arguing and securing the scene, that’s all either police department knows.”

  “What about Dr. Connelly?” I asked.

  “He was the one who found the knife in Carney’s back. He said he couldn’t say so officially before the autopsy, but it sure looked like he’d been stabbed to death. There were marks on Carney’s hands and arms that Dr. Connelly said were defensive wounds, meaning that he tried to fight off his killer. As for when he was killed, Connelly said it was probably early that morning, which made sense. I saw Carney drive off when the market closed the night before.”

  “Was anything taken from his booth?” Richard asked.

  “Only the knife.”

  “The knife he was killed with?” I asked.

  Aunt Maggie nodded. “A big one, with a confederate flag on it. Obed thought it looked familiar when Dr. Connelly found it, and Mark went through Carney’s display cases until he found the place it came from. I forget whether it’s Mark or Belva who’s going to get it checked for prints. Naturally they argued over that, too.”

  “If they’re having so much trouble,” I said, “why don’t they call in the state police? They’ve got experience with murders.”

  Aunt Maggie said, “Not in this lifetime—that’s the only thing they agreed on. I guess they hate the state troopers even more than they hate each other. Anyway, even though they were acting so silly, I wasn’t too worried because I figured that as soon as Junior and Lloyd Monroe heard, they’d come running back to take over. But they aren’t coming back until the conference is over.”

  “At which point the trail will be stone cold,” I said.

  “That’s why I want you and Richard to take care of it.”

  “No offense, Aunt Maggie,” I said, “but why do you care? You said you didn’t like Carney.”

  She looked away. “I don’t want my customers scared off.”

  “It seems to me like this would attract business,” I objected. “You know how morbid folks are.”

  “I don’t want that kind of business.” Before I could point out that she was contradicting herself, she added, “Besides, I’m nervous to go out there with a murderer on the loose. Who knows who he’ll come after next?”

  I looked at Richard, and he raised one eyebrow. Whatever Aunt Maggie’s real reason was, it sure as heck wasn’t being scared. I don’t think my great-aunt would be scared of anything short of a volcano erupting, and I don’t think she’d admit to being scared of that. “Okay, what can you tell us about Carney?”

  “Like I said, he’d been selling out there nearly as long as I have. His specialty was knives: pocket knives and Bowie knives and all kinds of collector knives.”

  “Did he live here in Byerly?”

  “I don’t think so. Seems like I heard him talking about Rocky Shoals. Or maybe it was Granite Falls.”

  She was real helpful. “The flea market is only open on the weekends. What did he do the rest of the time?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Was he married?”

  “I don’t think so. He never mentioned a wife, and he flirted with China Upton every chance he got.”

  “Did he have any family around? Or close friends?”

  She just shrugged.

  Obviously, working at a flea market wasn’t like working at an office. By the end of the first week at my job, I’d known the marital status, number of kids, and hobbies of all my immediate co-workers. I tried a different tack. “What kind of man was he?”

  “Not much of a man, if you ask me. Lazy as all get-out—I never saw him lift a finger to help anybody. Nosy, too, and he had a mean streak a mile wide. If you did the littlest thing to bother him, even if it was an accident, he’d go out of his way to stir up trouble for you. I don’t think he was strictly honest, either. I’ve heard stories about him selling phony knives.”

  “How can a knife be phony?” I asked. “It either has a blade or it doesn’t.”

  “It’s phony if you think you’re buying a collector knife when you’re not. There’s a lot of knives out there. Some of them are worth money and some aren’t worth using as letter openers. Bowie knives are real collectibles, but they’re also easy to fake.”

  Lazy, nosy, mean, and dishonest. I was starting to wonder how Carney had stayed alive as long as he had. Paw used to say that everybody has a good side, but Aunt Maggie wasn’t telling me anything about Carney’s. “What else?” I asked her.

  She had to think for a minute. “I can’t imagine what difference it makes, but Carney was always making jokes.”

  “Dirty jokes?” That would fit in with what we’d heard about him so far.

  “Not always. Mostly he made plays on words, and he liked puns.”

  “That figures. Puns are the lowest form of humor.”

  “Shakespeare used many puns,” Richard said huffily.

  “That’s right,” I agreed. “Why don’t you give us a sample?”

  “Nice try,” was all he said.

  Aunt Maggie looked like she was about to clear her throat again, so I said, “What kind of puns?”

  “Silly stuff,” she said. “He’d ask Bob if he was drawing in business, because he draws tattoos. He said China’s business was so-so, because she sews most of her merchandise, and he called her sachets potpourri.” She pronounced the first syllable as if it rhymed with rot. “He was always coming up with things like that.”

  Before I could ask any more questions, Aunt Maggie looked at the clock on the wall. “As late as it’s getting, why don’t we save this until tomorrow? It’l
l be easier to explain things when the people involved are handy.”

  “What people?” I said.

  “The other dealers at the flea market. I figure it was probably one of us who did it.” She sounded awfully matter-of-fact considering she’d just told us how scared she was.

  “Then I guess the flea market would be the best place to start,” I said. “What time should we meet you there?”

  “Meet me? Y’all are coming with me. I’ve got my clock set for five-thirty, so you two better get to bed if you want to get any sleep tonight.” And darned if she didn’t grin.

  Chapter 5

  Once I got over my initial horror at getting up that early on my vacation, I had to admit that it would be easier for us to talk to people if we were with Aunt Maggie. At least that’s what I said to Richard as we went upstairs. I wasn’t sure that I’d convinced him, but then again, I wasn’t sure that I’d convinced myself, either.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind doing this?” I asked. “It’s bad enough that you’re missing your trip to Cape Cod—this goes above and beyond the call of duty.”

  “I could have said ‘no’ if I’d wanted to.”

  “I know, but you only said ‘yes’ because it’s my family asking.”

  “That’s not true. First off, when I married you, I married them, too. ‘What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.’ ”

  “And your money is mine!” I crowed. “That’s Shakespeare!”

  He shook his head, grinning widely. “Actually, it’s Plautus.”

  “It is not. I know I’ve heard you quote that before; I just can’t remember the play.”

  “Oh, I’ll admit that Shakespeare borrowed the line in Measure for Measure, but Plautus said it first.”

  “Richard Fleming, I do believe that you’ve discovered a way around the bet.”