Murder Buys a T-Shirt

by Christy Fifield

  “Darn near,” she grumbled. “Turned out one of the guys in the fight was one of Riley’s deckhands. I got caught up in the drama and ended up spending most of the night sitting in the police station with Riley while he tried to get his guy bailed out.”

  “Sounds exciting,” I said drily.

  “Tell me about it. The police strongly suggested I should put my phone on silent while I was in the station. I was so tired when I left, I forgot to turn it back on.”

  Now that was tired. Karen never got more than a few feet from her cell phone, and if she didn’t get a call at least once an hour, she checked to make sure it was working.

  “I finally got to sleep about daylight,” she continued. “Just woke up a little bit ago.”

  “You hungry?”

  There was silence on the other end for long seconds, and I could almost see Karen cocking her head to one side, thinking. “You know, I think I am. Heaven knows, I should be. Haven’t eaten since Riley brought me a burger last night. Why?”

  “I’ve got leftover pizza. Homemade. And information. You interested?”

  “Sure.” Karen yawned so hard I think I heard her jaw crack over the phone. “Let me shower first, and I’ll be over.” She yawned again. “What kind of information?” Her voice was suddenly sharp, as though what I’d said had just registered in her sleep-addled brain.

  “I’ve had a busy day or so,” I answered. “See you in a few minutes.”

  I think Karen set a speed record getting from her house to mine. She was at my back door in fifteen minutes flat, her hair still damp from the shower and an air of impatience surrounding her.

  “What did you find out?” she demanded when I opened the door.

  “Hello to you, too,” I said.

  Karen charged up the stairs, and I followed along.

  I’d switched on the oven to reheat the pizza. As long as I had a good stone and a little patience, it was way better than the microwave. Not that Karen cared.

  She charged into the kitchen, poured herself a glass of sweet tea, and plopped down at the kitchen table. “Spill,” she commanded.

  “Where did we leave off?” I asked.

  She sighed. “When I left to cover the brouhaha at the Surf and Sand. Which, by the way, wasn’t worth the time it took to get over there. Especially since Riley roped me into helping him get his hand out of jail.”

  I slid leftovers into the oven on a sheet of parchment paper. I couldn’t put them directly on the stone, because the melting cheese would run all over, so the parchment was as close as I could come.

  “Let me see.” I set the timer and joined her at the table. “After you left, I talked to Roy—the service guy I told you about—and then I practically had to arm wrestle Joe for my keys.”

  “I don’t doubt it. Fowler must have him on commission, considering the hard sell you were getting.”

  “Oh, and Jimmy Parmenter came in just before I left. I don’t think he had much use for Kevin Stanley. Made it really clear he thought the crash was Kevin’s own fault.”

  “Drinking and driving? Yeah, that pretty much makes Kevin responsible.”

  “But that’s the strange part.” I told her about the visit from the football team, skipping over Bluebeard’s floor show. “Those boys said Kevin didn’t even drink that beer. And Julie said he was out there trying to break it up.”

  “Wait! What?” Karen looked confused. “I just woke up and all, but that still didn’t quite track. Where did Julie come from in this whole thing?”

  “I talked to her when I was in Frank’s,” I explained. “I took her T-shirts over when I went to get stuff to make pizza.”

  Karen stared at me for long seconds, her brows drawn together in concentration. “Start over, Martine. Let’s take this from the top, and this time no jumping around, because I need to know what happened.”

  It was a long story, especially since I had to keep backing up and filling in details as Karen questioned me. I told her about the conversation with Roy and the one with Jimmy. About sneaking into the secure lot—I had to stop her from yelling at me for that one—and meeting Sly.

  “You mean Fowler doesn’t even own that lot?” she asked.

  “Nope. Sly must be nearly seventy—he said he was in the army in the 1960s—and he inherited the place from his dad. Said he remembered Uncle Louis, too.”

  “So you got out of there without getting attacked by the junkyard dog. Then what?”

  We finished our pizza while I told her about the football team and my trip to the grocery store, glossing over the real reason for my shopping trip.

  “Hold on.” Karen didn’t miss anything. It was part of what made her a good reporter, but it also made her a pain in the neck when I wanted to keep something to myself. “Why did you go all the way over to Frank’s to deliver T-shirts in the middle of the night?”

  “All the way over? Are you kidding me? It’s all of about four blocks. And it was hardly the middle of the night; I’d just closed up the shop and I needed some stuff for dinner.”

  “You never go grocery shopping on the weekend,” she said accusingly. “You would have found something here to eat.” She jumped up from the table and flung open the refrigerator, surveying the contents. Sure enough, there were at least three different things I could have had for dinner.

  “So?”

  She had me. I confessed that I’d had company for dinner and, under pressure, that it had been my hunky, book-selling neighbor.

  The same neighbor she’d seen me having coffee with just a few days earlier.

  “Is there something I should know?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No. And anyway, isn’t a person entitled to a little privacy?”

  She grinned. “Nope. Not in a small town, and not from your best friend. So tell me about Mr. Tall, Dark, and Yummy.”

  “For heaven’s sake! He’s a neighbor who’s helping me work on a website for the store, and he’s willing to be paid in home-cooked meals. That’s all there is to it.”

  Karen’s look said she didn’t believe me, and I knew the subject wasn’t closed.

  “THE BIG QUESTION I HAVE,” I SAID WHEN I FINISHED recounting the events of the previous day, “is what’s going on with Julie and Jimmy Parmenter? There’s something there, and I have the feeling it has something to do with Kevin.”

  Karen looked unconvinced.

  “What if Ernie’s right, and it is Fowler?” I pressed on. “Jimmy works for him. They might be in this together.”

  “Big Shot Fowler and the washed-up football star that drives a tow truck? That seems like a pretty odd couple to me. Besides, what’s in it for either one of them?”

  I shrugged, picking up paper plates and tossing them in the trash, along with the parchment I’d used to heat the pizza. “Fowler gets his problem cleared up, and Jimmy gets a job.”

  Even to me, it sounded lame.

  “And Fowler gives the loser something to hold over him? Not likely. Fowler’s too smart for that. Besides, what kind of problem did Fowler really have with Kevin? Has anyone come up with an answer for that?”

  “No.” I had to admit all I had was conjecture. “But those boys—when the team was in here—said he was getting to be a real goody-goody. Which might mean he wasn’t willing to go along with Fowler’s schemes. That would threaten Fowler’s plan to ride the kid’s coattails.”

  Karen shook her head. “I don’t know. What about the theory that it might be someone else on the team?”

  “Well,” I ticked people off on my fingers as I ran down the names we’d tossed out over the last couple weeks, “it could be Travis or Coach Bradley. Ernie and Felipe swear it couldn’t have been Tricia but she’s still a possibility. Or even Shiloh, though I doubt it. And, of course, there’s Fowler. But we’re pretty sure he wasn’t out there in the woods himself, so that means he had an accomplice.”

  “What if…” Karen hesitated, biting her lip. “What if it really was an accident? What if Kevin just lost control of
the car and went off the road, even if he wasn’t drinking?”

  “And Uncle Louis is lying?”

  “Not necessarily.” She raised her hands, palms out. “Hear me out. I am not saying it isn’t Uncle Louis talking to you. I’ve heard him through Bluebeard, and I can’t argue with you. It doesn’t sound like a parrot repeating something he heard. It sounds like a person. But what if Uncle Louis misunderstood something, and he’s getting you all riled up over something that didn’t happen? Isn’t that possible?”

  I couldn’t lie; the thought had occurred to me. But there were too many things that didn’t add up for me.

  I shook my head. “After everything I’ve heard,” I said, “I really can’t believe this was just an accident. You didn’t see that car, Karen. That scratch along the side didn’t come from a roll-over accident.” In fact, I’d spent some time that afternoon looking at gruesome roll-over pictures on the Internet. Lots of damage, but I hadn’t seen anything that looked like the crease in Kevin’s door.

  “And it wasn’t already there. You know how Kevin kept that car. If there had been a scratch on it, he would have buffed it out and touched up the paint immediately. In fact, it was in the shop just a day or two before the accident, according to Roy. And I don’t believe that Jimmy could have made such a huge mistake when he towed the car. I don’t think Sly was lying, I just think he was repeating what he’d heard from someone.”

  Silent minutes dragged on. We were at an impasse, and I didn’t have an answer. Neither did Karen.

  Finally I had to give up. “I have no idea,” I admitted. “Maybe it wasn’t anyone we know. Maybe it was a way-lost tourist who sideswiped the kid and didn’t stop.” I shrugged. “That would explain the anonymous call, too.”

  That call bugged me. “Can’t they trace the number it came from or something?” I asked. “Find out who made the call, and make them tell what happened?”

  Karen rolled her eyes. “You have been watching too many cop shows, Glory. Half that stuff isn’t even possible, and Keyhole Bay isn’t New York City. Or Los Angeles. We barely have a police department!”

  “So they can’t find the caller?” I was disappointed. Apparently the magic computers that could tell you everything about a phone call were right up there with flying cars.

  “From what I hear,” Karen said, “and it’s all strictly off the record, they tried. The call bounced off a tower on County Road 198, near the crash, and it was made with one of those prepaid phones like they sell everywhere in town.”

  “Not in Southern Treasures.”

  “Only because Peter hasn’t figured out you should. You could get a shipment of them any day now.”

  I groaned at the idea. Peter could help me right into the poorhouse if I let him. “Okay. The phone call is a dead end. We eliminated everybody who might have a reason to hurt Kevin, and if I’m not careful, Peter will bankrupt me with his brainstorms. Is that about it?”

  “Yep.” Karen waved away my defense. “Maybe you should just stop obsessing about this, and let Boomer take care of it.”

  “And sweep it under the rug as a tragic accident.”

  “Again, whatever. We haven’t found anything that says different.” She shook her head. “I know. I know. Except for Bluebeard. Or Uncle Louis.”

  She leaned on the table and levered herself out of the chair. “Much as I love you, Martine, I have got to go home. I did nothing but sleep all day, and I need to at least get a load of laundry done so I have something to wear to work tomorrow.”

  After Karen left, I pulled out my website notes and my laptop and started poking into the corners of my undeveloped website, trying to figure out how to make Southern Treasures as alluring as possible.

  It occurred to me that this was the kind of thing Peter should be doing. It would keep him out of my hair, let him feel like he was contributing, and get the job off my to-do list.

  And there was no way in the world I would trust Peter to do the job. No matter how many engineering degrees he had.

  Stubborn only took me so far, and eventually I found myself wandering around the Internet, watching silly pet videos and generally killing time.

  Frustrated, I got up from the table. It was too late for the gym, but I could do something useful. I needed more newspapers for the racks downstairs, and I could sort out some of the bundles from my storage area.

  The 1960s were always popular with the baby-boomers that seemed to make up a large proportion of my snowbird customers, and I found three bundles from throughout the decade.

  I carried the bundles downstairs and set them on the counter, intending to put some of them on the display. But when I cut the first bundle open, Bluebeard came hopping across the store. He glared at the pictures on the front page of the top issue and ruffled his feathers.

  After a moment, he grabbed the paper in his beak and dropped it to the floor.

  “Liars!”

  He ruffled his feathers and reached for the next issue. I quickly snatched it away and bundled the papers back up. Whatever was in the News and Times, I wasn’t going to find it while Bluebeard was supervising.

  I coaxed him onto my arm and took him back across the room to his cage, scratching his head and talking soothingly. I settled him back in the cage with a biscuit, closed the door, and went back to work. Lately he was too agitated to be left free to roam when I wasn’t in the shop.

  Hauling the bundles into the storage room, I cut the string on the rest of the stacks and started laying them out on the empty shelves in preparation for cataloging and packaging. Despite my resolve, I caught myself leafing through the issues, reading about people and events in Keyhole Bay before I was born.

  Many of the names were familiar, parents or grandparents of kids I went to school with, or neighbors from when my parents were alive. There were ads for businesses that had closed, and birth announcements for people whose own children were now grown and starting their families. It all reminded me Keyhole Bay was a small community, and it was all about family.

  Was that the answer? Did all this go back to the basics, back to family? Or was it really just a random reckless moment that cost an innocent young life?

  And if it was, why did my own uncle insist it wasn’t an accident?

  BY TUESDAY I HAD SOLD OUT OF ALL BUT A COUPLE OF T-shirts, and I was ready to have them out of the shop. I called Shiloh and told her I needed to turn in the proceeds and return the last couple of shirts.

  “I can come and pick them up,” she offered. “If that’s okay with you?”

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “I don’t know.” Reluctance tinged her words, but she continued. “When I called the other night with your work order, I kind of got the idea you were upset with me.”

  I laughed, hoping it didn’t sound as false to her as it did to me. “I’m so sorry; I was just in a hurry. I had people here waiting for me. Tell you what,” I continued. “Come by when you can stay a few minutes, and I’ll buy you a coffee if the shop is quiet.”

  “You don’t need to do that,” she said. “I’ll buy and charge it back to the dealership. It’s the least Mr. Fowler can do for you, considering how much you did for him on the whole shirt deal.”

  We agreed she would come by in an hour. I hung up feeling a little less guilty. Shiloh’s loyalty to Fowler was showing some cracks, which was a good thing for her.

  I had the accounts totaled and an envelope of cash and checks ready for Shiloh when she came into the store. We spent a few minutes going over the counts, checking that all the shirts were accounted for.

  From his perch, Bluebeard watched as I counted out the money and Shiloh verified the total of the checks. “Looks like it’s all in balance,” she said. “Which I totally appreciate. Most of the time, if Mr. Fowler ropes somebody into helping with these things, they do half the job and expect me to clean it up.”

  “Good job!” Bluebeard yelled at us.

  “Thank you, Bluebeard,” Shiloh said, “for the compl
iment.”

  Bluebeard loosed a piercing wolf whistle. “Pretty girl!”

  Shiloh blushed. She was a pretty girl but so tentative she faded into the background. She probably didn’t get many compliments, and she didn’t quite know how to handle them.

  I locked up, and we went next door for a cup of coffee.

  Chloe made three lattes and brought them to our table with the morning’s fresh cranberry-orange scones. She pulled out a chair and joined us, as she had before.

  I took a sip of the sweet coffee, nearly burning my tongue. “Extra hot today?”

  Chloe nodded. “Like you always ask for.”

  “And you never do,” I shot back.

  She rolled her kohl-rimmed eyes and turned to Shiloh. “Some people are never satisfied.”

  I took a bite of scone, enjoying the crunch of the crisp outer layer and the decorative sugar crystals, followed by the mellow, buttery taste and the tang of cranberry.

  “Someday I am going to con this recipe out of Pansy,” I said for about the millionth time. Pansy, the eighty-year-old owner of The Lighthouse, did all her own baking and guarded her secret recipes with the vigilance of the Secret Service.

  “She’ll never give it up,” Chloe said. “I’ve come in at four to bake with her, and she won’t even let me know how she does it. She keeps everything in her head and goes so fast that I know I miss stuff.”

  “Is she ever going to retire?”

  Chloe shook her head, her mouth full of scone. She took her time, savoring the bite, before she answered. “She wouldn’t know what to do with herself. She comes in here before dawn, and it’s all any of us can do to get her out of here at noon. Her son’s over in Fort Walton, and he calls every day at twelve thirty to make sure she’s gone home. About half the time he has to tell her to go.”

  We chatted for several minutes about Chloe’s classes at the community college. She was studying to be a paralegal, and I wondered how her tattoos and piercings would fit in a law office.

  It reminded me I had an appointment with Mr. Wilson in the afternoon. I couldn’t imagine Chloe in Clifford Wilson’s office. Old Mr. Wilson would have a heart attack the first time she walked through the door.