Murder Buys a T-Shirt

by Christy Fifield

  “I’ll have to do this in stages as I can afford it,” I said for the third or fourth time. “And that will depend on business at the shop.”

  Karen stepped away from the counter—and my Abbott-and-Costello routine with Joe—to answer her phone. I heard a sudden note of concern in her voice, and she returned a minute later, worry putting fine lines at the corners of her eyes.

  “I need to go. There was a fight over at the Surf and Sand,” she named a low-rent motel just outside of town, “and the station manager wants me to go interview the witnesses.”

  “Go ahead,” I told her. “If I can’t get my car out of here this morning, I can always call Ernie and get a ride home. Or I can walk—it’s not that far.”

  Which might have been a bit of an overstatement. Fowler’s was probably three miles from Southern Treasures. But I intended to ransom my car and bring it back for the actual repairs later.

  Or not. Given the size of the estimate, I just might have to think about replacing it.

  Karen hesitated, as though she didn’t want to strand me. I turned my back to the counter and whispered, “Besides, Fowler isn’t even here.”

  “Are you sure?” she said. “You could ride out there with me and we could come back here after, or I could make a quick detour to drop you at Southern Treasures.”

  “I’m sure. I want to try and get the car out of here today, and they close in about an hour, so I better stay. I’m already hating that I have to depend on other people to get around. You go on. I’ll be fine.”

  Her phone rang again, and she glanced at the display. “The station manager. Again.” She gave me one last questioning look, and when I shooed her toward the door, she went, putting the phone to her ear and snapping “What now?” as she headed out of the building.

  I turned back to Joe, wondering what it would take to convince him I wasn’t going to agree to any more work right now.

  It wasn’t Joe I saw at the counter, though. It was Roy, the mechanic who had been checking out my car the night before.

  “You’re the lady with the Civic, right?”

  I nodded. “And you’re Roy, not Chet.”

  He laughed. “Yeah. They got us the right uniforms today.” He pointed to the name “Roy” embroidered on his coveralls.

  Roy glanced around the reception area. “Is someone helping you?” he asked.

  “Depends on how you define ‘help,’” I replied with a little laugh. “I need to ransom the car, but this Joe guy that works here keeps trying to talk me into having more work.”

  “It does need attention,” Roy said. “But,” he glanced around again, “my personal opinion is that you’d be throwing good money after bad.”

  The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach told me he had just confirmed my worst fears.

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Oh, it’ll get you by for a little longer, but I wouldn’t take it out of town.” Since Keyhole Bay didn’t stretch more than five miles in any direction, that was a pretty limited driving area.

  “You mean I shouldn’t drive it up to Montgomery?” Not that I had any intention of visiting Peter, or his parents, any time soon.

  “I’d say not,” he answered with a shrug. “But that’s just my opinion.”

  “And you’re the guy who’s been under the hood,” I said. “If I want to trust anyone’s opinion, it’s the guy who’s actually inspected the car.” I saw an opening and took it. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to end up like the Stanley boy.” I shivered delicately, betting that Roy would want to reassure a delicate lady like myself. If he only knew!

  “Oh no!” His alarm was genuine. “Nothing like that. You might end up stranded, or you might even run off the road, but,” he smiled to take the sting out of his next words, “that Civic probably couldn’t get going fast enough to do that kind of damage. It might slide into the ditch, but that’s about it.”

  “So he was going pretty fast?”

  “I’m no accident investigator or anything,” he said, relishing the opportunity to show off his knowledge, “but it sure looks like he was traveling at a pretty good clip.”

  “But how did he end up all the way out in the field?” I dropped my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I was out there right after it happened, even before the ambulance. The car was way off the road.”

  “Like I said, I think he was going too fast. There was nothing wrong with that car. In fact, he’d just had it in here a couple days before, and we’d checked it out.”

  “That’s right,” I said, as if I had just remembered. “He was the new lot boy, wasn’t he? You guys take good care of them, don’t you?”

  “Same as any other employee,” he said.

  “So it wasn’t anything wrong with the car?”

  “Nah, just too much car for a young kid.”

  “A young kid with too much beer in him.”

  We both turned to look in the direction of the voice. It was Jimmy Parmenter, and the scowl on his face didn’t hide what he thought of Kevin.

  Jimmy quickly arranged his features into a mournful expression, but I had seen the anger and resentment behind his sorrowful mask. “It was sad, sure. Nobody wants to wish that on a young kid. But everybody’s acting like it’s a big surprise that he had an accident. There was nothing wrong with that car; it was running like a top. It was just too much car for him, like Roy said, especially when he’d been out bangin’ the brewskis.” He paused, lowering his voice. “Hell, all the guys were out there. But Kevin was the only one with a car like that.”

  Jimmy shook himself, throwing off the moment of melancholy. He dropped a pile of paperwork in the wire basket below the schedule board. “I’m outta here,” he said to Roy. “I’ll have the cell with me if there’s a call.”

  Jimmy turned to me. “Sorry for what I said, Miss Glory. I didn’t mean to upset you none, and I know I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. But he got himself in trouble, and now nobody wants to admit it was his own fault.”

  He turned and stomped out. In a few seconds I saw him hop up into the cab of his overgrown pickup and roar out of the lot onto the highway.

  Roy and I exchanged a glance, and Roy chuckled. “That boy does seem to know about driving a vehicle with too much power, doesn’t he?”

  Joe finally returned from wherever he’d been and reclaimed his place at the counter. He gave Roy a sharp look. “Aren’t you supposed to be in the shop?”

  Roy tossed my key ring on the counter. “Just bringing back Miss Glory’s keys. I got the plugs done and the new battery terminals on. It should get her by for a little longer, but she’ll need more work pretty quick-like.” He turned so Joe couldn’t see him and gave me a wink, reminding me that he’d told me something different.

  With great reluctance, Joe accepted my check for the minimal service and gave me a receipt. I was beginning to think I was going to have to arm wrestle him for the keys when he looked at his watch—a too-big piece of shiny gold strapped to his bony wrist.

  At least I understood why he was so determined to get me to agree to more repairs. He probably worked on commission, and he needed to support that watch.

  “Closing time already?” he asked in mock surprise. “I had no idea it was getting so late!”

  He put the keys on the counter, but he didn’t turn loose of them. “You have to promise me you’ll get that car back here soon,” he said, his voice full of fake sincerity. “It needs some work before it’s really safe to drive.”

  I managed not to roll my eyes. “I will bring it back just as soon as I can afford to.” It was as much as he was going to get.

  My impatience must have shown on my face. Joe took my hand, turned it over, and deposited the keys in my open palm. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt, driving a vehicle that isn’t 100 percent safe.”

  I tried to believe him.

  I walked out of the building into the parking lot. My car was waiting at the far end of the lot—as far away as possible from the shiny models
Fowler was trying to peddle.

  Beyond my car I caught sight of a tall chain-link fence, with two rows of barbed wire running along the top. It had to be the secure lot—the place where Kevin Stanley’s baby-blue Charger had been towed and was now waiting for the police and Kevin’s family to determine its fate.

  I really wanted to see that car.

  I STUFFED MY CAR KEYS INTO THE POCKET OF MY jeans and sauntered as casually as I could across the lot outside the service area. My heart raced, and I had to force myself not to run. But the service bays behind the big roll-up doors were deserted; everyone had bailed out as soon as the clock reached noon. This might be my only chance to look at the secure lot.

  I followed a wide arc, avoiding going near my car, and craned my neck as though looking for something.

  As I neared the gate to the secure lot, I spotted a chain and padlock holding the gate closed. The padlock was open, with the hasp holding two links of the chain.

  Ernie had asked me if I was crazy, and I guess I had his answer. In spite of every nerve in my body screaming at me to run away, I reached for the chain.

  I slipped the lock from the chain, watching to see if I attracted any attention. No one on the sales lot was concerned with the closed service area.

  I pulled the gate open just wide enough to pass through and slid into the enclosure.

  It shouldn’t have been that easy, but no one seemed to care. So much for the superspecial secure lot.

  I looked around, wondering where the Charger was. The secure lot was like a mash-up of a wrecking yard and an impound lot like you see on TV cop shows.

  Near the fence, where they were visible, sat two rows of passenger cars and small trucks, maybe twenty in all. They appeared to be reasonably intact, with grease-pencil markings of dates and times on the windows. Behind the cars, a row of a half dozen large trucks created a barrier that shielded the rest of the lot from public view.

  Behind the wall of pickups, steel racks held a massive collection of car parts. To my inexperienced eye, it looked like an engine supermarket: blocks of iron with mysterious metal appendages filled three levels of shelves, reaching higher than my head, and a small forklift stood ready to retrieve the chosen piece from the rack.

  I continued exploring, gingerly making my way around the racks to see what was hidden from view.

  That’s where I found Kevin’s Charger—and about a million other cars. Well, that might be an exaggeration, but there were a lot of cars, and a lot of them were wrecked.

  The thought crossed my mind that Fowler must pay some hefty “fees” to maintain what amounted to a wrecking yard in the middle of Keyhole Bay. It looked like the kind of place you’d find out in the piney woods, far from any kind of city.

  But here it was, in the middle of town.

  A small cinder-block building sat in a patch of hard-packed dirt in the middle of the lot. On the bare earth next to the flat-roofed structure were the remains of the once-pristine Charger. A couple forlorn loops of bright-yellow “Crime Scene” tape flapped from the mangled door handles.

  I approached the Charger, feeling the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. As I got closer, an air of menace seemed to surround the car, and a deep foreboding settled over me.

  I didn’t want to get any closer.

  But I had to. If there were any clues here, anything that would help me—help us—figure out what really happened to Kevin, I had to find them. I couldn’t let this opportunity slip through my fingers just because it gave me the heebie-jeebies.

  When I reached the car, I realized the utter futility of my plan. The car had been pummeled by the repeated rolling, and there wasn’t a single place on the entire body that hadn’t been bent or dented or scraped.

  “Hey!”

  The shout startled me. I spun around to face a wizened old man with skin the color of walnut shells and dark eyes, clouded with suspicion. He glared at me for several long seconds before he spoke. When he opened his mouth, I saw several gaps where missing teeth left bare gums exposed.

  Beside him an immense black dog stood at alert, held in check on a heavy chain. His head looked as big as a basketball, if basketballs had mouths full of sharp teeth—which were currently on display. For good measure, he gave me a low growl, as though daring me to move. I had never heard a basketball growl.

  “You ain’t supposed to be in here.” He gestured to the dog. “Bobo come and got me.” Bobo looked up at the sound of his name, then focused his attention back on me before I could move. “He said there was somebody sneakin’ around the yard, and I better come quick.”

  The dog had told him all that? For a moment I considered the insane notion that the dog could talk, just like Bluebeard, and had ratted me out to the old guy.

  Which was ridiculous. The dog had found the old man and dragged him out into the lot. That was all.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, smiling innocently. “They gave me back my keys inside and told me the car was out in the lot. But I didn’t see it, and the fence was unlocked, so I thought maybe it was in here.”

  I resisted the impulse to bat my eyelashes, or pour on the sugar any more than I already had. I could Southern belle with the best of them, but it usually worked best when applied with restraint.

  “Don’t have no repaired cars back here.” He looked around like he was checking the lot. “Just impounds and parts.” He turned his attention back to me. “What kinda car you got?”

  “An old Honda Civic,” I answered. “It’s old enough that somebody might think it was a parts car, but it’s really what I drive every day.”

  I laughed nervously and tried another faint smile.

  It seemed to be working. He pulled on the dog’s chain, and the pooch immediately dropped his haunches to the dirt, though he didn’t relax. It was clear that as far as Bobo was concerned, the jury was still out on me.

  “Is that… ?” I let the question hang in the air and nodded toward the wreckage of the Charger.

  “Yep. That’s the car that damned-fool kid got hisself killed in.” He spat in the dirt. “Nobody’s supposed to be around it on account of the po-lice ain’t released it yet. But it just been sitting there for a week gone, and they haven’t paid a lick of attention to it.”

  Of course they hadn’t. Like the rest of the town, Boomer had decided Kevin’s death was a tragic accident. Nobody had any reason to look at the car.

  Nobody but me.

  “I really am sorry to be somewhere I don’t belong,” I repeated. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble.”

  I turned back to look at the car and a knot formed in the middle of my stomach. I had to find a way for him to let me take a closer look. I didn’t want to miss something important.

  “It’s just, I got back in here, and I saw that car. I had to come and look.”

  I turned back to the man and dog. “My parents were killed in an accident a few years back, and I never looked at their car. Never tried, never wanted to.”

  To my horror, very real tears burned my eyes and threatened to roll down my face. I blinked rapidly. I’d been taught that crying in public was unseemly, that a true lady controlled her emotions in front of others. And here I was blinking back tears in front of a complete stranger.

  I shook my head, glancing back over my shoulder at the wrecked Charger. “It’s just such a shame.”

  “I guess just lookin’ won’t do no harm,” he said. “But me and Bobo will have to stay with you. I can’t let nobody touch this until the po-lice say so. That okay with you?”

  I nodded.

  “Name’s Sylvester,” he said, tugging gently on the dog’s chain and urging him toward the Charger. “Most folks call me Sly, like that actor feller.”

  “Gloryanna,” I answered. “Call me Glory.”

  “Well, Miss Glory, let’s get a look so you can feel better about things, and then I can get back to my movie.”

  With my escort close behind, I walked over to the Charger. Up close, the damage was even more
pronounced. Every window was broken out—whether from the crash or from the rescue efforts I didn’t know—and the doors hung open. Dirt and mud had caked on the wheels and covered the headlights.

  Sly, now that we were on a first-name basis, was happy to give me a running commentary on the indignities that had been visited on the vehicle. The tires were flattened, the trunk was sprung, and the famous baby-blue paint job had deep pits from the rocks in the ditch.

  We walked around the car, Bobo occasionally sniffing at my shoes and pant legs.

  The sun had reached the early afternoon peak, and the heat baked the yard, releasing the smell of old motor oil that had soaked into the dirt over the years.

  I made a slow circuit, not knowing what I was looking for, but hoping I would see something. All I could see was crumpled metal layered with dirt.

  Then, as I slowly scanned the driver’s side, I spotted an odd dent. Unlike the others, which appeared to be direct impacts, this one was a long crease along the side of the car, just above the door sill.

  It looked like something had been dragged along the side of the car, digging a furrow into the sheet metal of the door.

  Like maybe the side of another car. Or the running board of a truck.

  I LEANED IN CLOSER, EXAMINING THE CREASE. IT WAS low, maybe too low for the running board of the huge tow truck.

  Several inches above it, closer to the door handle, was another long scratch, this one with a flake or two of black paint.

  Sly moved closer, pulling Bobo with him. “Ain’t that just stupid? That idiot Jimmy—the pretty boy driving the tow truck?—managed to put another damn dent in this when we was taking it off the truck. Said he pulled in too close after they winched her off and scraped the side. The po-lice chief was none too happy ’bout that. He raised three kinds of hell—’scuse my language—with the kid and with Fowler. Told them they wouldn’t be doing any more city tows if they couldn’t keep from making things worse.”

  So Ernie was right. The paint on the truck had come from a mistake when they took the car off the flatbed.

  There went my first real clue. Unless Jimmy had lied about how the dent got there.