Death, Guns, and Sticky Buns

by Valerie S. Malmont

  Remembering the way a lot of young Lickin Creek men walked, I tried to swagger slightly as I crossed over to the shelves. There, I pretended to browse for a minute, pulled a magazine out, and sat on one of the plastic chairs. While I feigned an interest in the well-worn magazine, I looked around for any sign of the person I'd come to see, Lillie White, Mack Macmillan's former girlfriend.

  While I was so occupied, I didn't notice a man approaching, and I nearly fell off my seat when he said, “Do you want a booth?”

  With my head down, I shook my head.

  “Hot tub? Massage?”

  “Nope.”

  “Lap dance?”

  I made my voice as low as it would go and said, “Lillie White here?” I knew she was because I'd called and asked only half an hour ago.

  “Let's see your ID, son.”

  Oh Lord, I hadn't thought of that. To him I must look like an underage teenager. “Don't have it with me,” I growled.

  The man grabbed my chin and jerked my head up. He stared at me for a minute, then began to laugh.

  “What's so funny?” I muttered as I pulled away from him.

  “So you're one of them…”

  “One of what?” Too late, I realized he knew I was a female and misunderstood my reason for being there.

  “You people always try to dress like men,” he said.

  I let my voice return to its normal register. Might as well go with it, I thought. “I'm here to talk to Lillie White.”

  “Sure you are, honey. Well, you ain't gonna like it. Lillie don't swing your way.”

  “I said I want to talk to her.”

  His scornful smile showed what he thought of that statement. “Twenty-five bucks and she's all ears—for fifteen minutes.”

  I dug in my pocket for my money. After counting the crumpled bills, I said, “All I've got is twelve dollars.”

  He took it from my hand. “Close ’nuff. She's through that door in the back.” He walked over to the counter and pressed a button, which triggered a buzzing noise. “Go ahead. Can't keep my finger on this damn thing all day.”

  The walls of the back room were covered with dark vinyl panels that some optimistic person must have thought looked like wood. Like the front room, its only light came from a dim red bulb. There were four Formica-covered tables with about half a dozen chairs squeezed around each one. All the way in the back was a small wooden platform, which couldn't have been more than four feet square, and behind that hung a red curtain.

  I sat down at the table closest to the platform and waited. Nothing happened, so I called out, “Yoo-hoo. Anybody here?”

  The curtain was pushed to one side and through the open doorway behind it came a young woman. She wore a shiny purplish-blue polyester kimono, too much makeup, and shoes with ankle straps and the highest heels I'd ever seen. Her hair was long, permed to the breaking point, and the color of the hay bundles in the fields of local farms.

  She walked over to a portable CD player on the edge of her small stage and pushed a button. A Bee Gees tune that had probably been popular around the time she was born blared out at top volume. I covered my ears and yelled, “No music. Turn it off, please.”

  Lillie White looked surprised, but cut off the music. Before I had quite realized what she was doing, she untied her robe and let it drop to the floor. She stood before me wearing nothing but a G-string and pasties, and began to gyrate to an unheard beat.

  “Please,” I said with averted eyes. “Put your robe back on. I only want to talk.”

  “Whatever.” She picked up the robe and put it on.

  “Sit down, please.” I pointed to an empty chair at my table.

  “You only got twelve minutes left,” she announced.

  “Then I'll talk fast. You are Lillie White, aren't you?”

  She nodded.

  “I want to ask you a few questions about your relationship with Mr. Macmillan.”

  “You a cop?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

  “No. Just a concerned citizen.”

  She giggled. “Never heard that one before.”

  “I've been asked by the college to make some inquiries about his death.” I didn't think it necessary to mention that last night President Godlove had called and told me to stop my investigation since he was satisfied that Woody was to blame. I wasn't about to stop, because in my mind and in my heart I was sure Woody was not involved.

  “You sure talk fancy, sort of like a teacher I had once. She wasn't from around here.”

  I sighed. This was getting me nowhere. I decided to be blunt. “Lillie, did you have an affair with Mack Macmillan? Answer yes or no.”

  “Sorta.”

  “What does sorta mean?”

  “I mean we went out for a while, and he sorta fell in love with me. It don't count as an affair if you're going to get married, does it?”

  “The man was already married, Lillie.”

  “Yeah, but he was going to divorce her.”

  It occurred to me that if Lillie truly believed that, she was even dumber than she looked. “How did you meet him?”

  Her eyes opened wide as if she thought I was dumber than I looked. “Here, of course.”

  “You mean Mack Macmillan was a customer of…” I struggled for a descriptive word and came up with “this establishment?”

  “Not a customer, silly. He owns it.” Tears began to streak her pancake makeup. “I mean, he done owned it.” She covered her face with her hands, and I noticed her nails were bitten to the quick. “Nobody was supposed to know, but I guess it don't make no difference now.”

  While I waited for her sobs to stop, I thought about Mack Macmillan. He was hardly the kind of person he'd appeared to be. Not exactly “a man like you,” as his political campaign ads proclaimed, unless you happened to own a porno shop and cheat on your wife with a stripper.

  I felt really sorry for her. Only about twenty years old, stripping in the seediest place this side of Atlantic City, and deluded by an older, wealthy man into thinking he was going to marry her.

  “Lillie, you seem like a nice girl. Why are you working in a place like this?”

  “The only other choice is fast food. I got a four-year-old daughter to support.”

  “You don't look old enough to have a four-year-old.” Now I really felt sorry for her.

  “Got pregnant in high school. My first time.” She shrugged. “Shit happens.”

  “What is she going to think of you when she gets older?”

  Lillie unsuccessfully tried to toss her stiff blond hair. Under the makeup, she was actually pretty. “Kayla ain't gonna know. I'll quit when she starts school. I'm working on my general equivalency diploma so's I can get a good job.”

  “Does her father help support her?”

  “Said she ain't his kid.”

  “There's DNA testing, you know.”

  “Can't test a guy's DNA when you don't even know where he is.” Lillie crossed her arms over her chest. “Time's up,” she announced.

  CHAPTER 13

  Monday Morning

  I ARRIVED AT THE OFFICE SHORTLY AFTER NINE. TO get there that early was a triumph, since I'd spent most of the previous night awake, missing Garnet and feeling sorry for myself. Only when the sky began to lighten had I fallen asleep.

  “You look awful,” Cassie said.

  “You're not exactly brightening my day with remarks like that.”

  “Sorry, Tori, but your eyes are puffy, your cheeks are pillow-grooved, and your hair is standing straight up in back. Why don't you go home and go back to sleep. I can handle everything that's scheduled for today.”

  “I'm fine.” I smoothed my hair down as best I could, knowing it would snap back as soon as I removed my hand, and took a look at the calendar lying open on my desk. “What's this, Cassie?” I asked. “There's something down for six-thirty tonight, and all it says is Foster's Elevator.”

  “I told you about that. It's the shower for Janet Mar-golies's new baby.”

&n
bsp; “It's being held in an elevator? Small, select group, I guess.”

  Cassie laughed. “Don't be silly, Tori. Foster's Elevator is a grain elevator and feed store in Mountain View. Everybody knows that.”

  “Even though I've had plenty of opportunities to discover that Lickin Creek is very different from Manhattan, I think holding a baby shower in a feed store is just a little peculiar. Don't you?”

  She shook her head. “Not if the feed store happens to be owned by your father, and it's got a large meeting room upstairs.”

  “I give up.” I picked up a story sent in by one of our freelancers and pretended to read it, but I was seriously thinking about going home for a nap.

  Cassie answered the phone a couple of times and handled whatever crises loomed on the horizon. The fourth time, though, she covered the receiver and spoke to me. “I think you ought to take this one, Tori. It's Maggie at the library, and she sounds awfully upset.”

  “Maggie, what's the matter?” I asked. She was crying so hard I couldn't understand what she was trying to say. “Has something happened to Bill?”

  “No,” she wailed. “It's the”—sob… sniffle… sob—“the gutta-percha. It's gone. Stolen.”

  Cassie, still listening on her extension, looked at me quizzically. “Gutted perch?” she mouthed.

  “Tell you later. No, not you, Maggie. I was talking to Cassie. Do you want me to come over?”

  “Please.” Sniff… sob… sniff.

  As I hunted for the camera and some film, Cassie said, “Sounded like she was talking about a fish. What's the big deal about a gutted perch?”

  “Gutta-percha, Cassie. It's a rubberlike material. Maggie has a display at the library of objects made of it. I think it was on loan from the town historian.”

  “And it was stolen? Poor Maggie! I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of Gerald Manley's temper.”

  “Ah, here it is.” The camera was on top of the file cabinet behind a potted snake plant, the only plant that hadn't died since I'd taken over the office.

  I ran down Main Street toward the library. From a block away, I could see the Lickin Creek police cruiser parked in the tow-away zone out front.

  Maggie fell into my arms the instant I entered the building. She was sobbing harder than before. “What am I going to do?” she moaned.

  “Tell me what happened?”

  She pointed at the empty display case. Shattered glass lay on the floor and on the table where the neat display of Civil War books still stood.

  “Hi, Tori,” Luscious said, coming to stand beside me. I smelled brandy, not necessarily on his breath, but surrounding him as if it were oozing through his pores. Evidently, last night, while I'd cried myself to sleep in bed, Luscious had quieted his loneliness in a different way.

  The door burst open and Gerald Manley rushed in. His silver hair looked worse than mine, and he obviously had pajamas on under his coat. “You'd better have a good explanation for this, young lady,” he barked at Maggie.

  I could see her shaking, but she regained her composure for long enough to say, “I'm so sorry, Mr. Manley. In all the years I've had displays in the library, nothing like this has ever happened.”

  “How did the thief get in?” I asked Luscious.

  “Through a window in the rear of the building,” Maggie moaned. “Nobody would see him. There's nothing back there but the parking lot and the playground of the Third Street Elementary School. Both are empty at night.”

  Manley turned a furious face to Maggie. “Don't you check the windows and doors before you lock up at night?”

  “I usually… I think I did… I don't remember…”

  “Does the library have insurance to cover losses like this?” I asked her.

  She nodded, but Manley jumped in before she could answer. “Those daguerreotype cases are priceless. One of a kind. Collected over a period of forty years. There's no way I can replace them.”

  Maggie collapsed into a maple chair, put her head down on the table, and cried so hard I feared she'd shake something loose. I patted her shoulder in an awkward attempt to comfort her.

  “Do you have any photos of the display?” Luscious asked.

  “Yes,” Maggie gurgled. “Top desk drawer.”

  In Maggie's office, where three distressed-looking staff members were huddled, I found the pictures and brought them back. While Gerald Manley explained to Luscious exactly why his gutta-percha daguerreotypes were so valuable, I took a few pictures of the empty, shattered display case.

  “May I take one of the pictures of the collection with me for the paper?” I asked Luscious. He handed me the stack, and I selected one that showed a close-up view of a southern soldier in his gray uniform.

  “Daguerreotypes of uniformed soldiers are the rarest,” Manley said. “Especially one that shows a Reb.”

  “I'll run these pictures around to some pawnshops,” Luscious said.

  “They'll never turn up in a pawnshop,” Manley told him. “Whoever took them already had a buyer lined up.”

  Luscious accompanied me out the front door. “I didn't want to say anything in there,” he said, “but I had a call this morning about another robbery.”

  “My God,” I exclaimed. “What's happening to this town? We might as well be in New York. What else was stolen?”

  “Some things from the Lickin Creek Archeological Society's collection.”

  “I didn't even know Lickin Creek had an archeological society. Does it have a museum?”

  “Not yet, but they're working on it. Right now, they got all their discoveries on the second floor of a barn out at Snider's farm. A team of amateur archeologists went there yesterday afternoon to put away some things they'd just dug out of a privy at the Coffman farm, and that's when they discovered some of the boxes were gone.”

  “What was missing?”

  “They don't exactly know. Seems they got an inventory, but nobody kept a list of what was in what box.”

  “Let me guess. They also don't know when the boxes were taken. Am I right?”

  Luscious nodded. “Sometime in the last two weeks is the best they can say.”

  Gerald Manley stuck his head out the door and yelled something unpleasant at Luscious. “Gotta go,” Luscious said, and reentered the building.

  I paused for a moment on the library steps and looked down at the quaint, peaceful square, where the little mermaid poured water into the fountain. The old cannon, aimed at the cars coming down Main Street, had recently been polished and looked better than new. And the Garden Society had decorated the small lawn area around the base of the fountain with pumpkins and alternating pots of rust-colored and gold chrysanthemums. Only a few vehicles passed by as I stood there. Once rush hour was over and all the Lickin Creekers had driven through the borough to get to their destinations, there was not much reason for people to come downtown anymore. Where once there had been thriving department stores, dime stores, drugstores, and dress shops, there were now only dark, empty windows. Lickin Creek was peaceful, that was true, but it was a peace gained from the flight of local businesses to the mall or their closures last year after a huge discount store had arisen overnight on the edge of town.

  Under Lickin Creek's placid public face, something sinister was happening. First, Mack Macmillan's bizarre shooting death, followed by Dr. Washabaugh's murder. And now this series of strange thefts: the fire department's antique trumpet collection, Manley's gutta-percha collection, and the robbery of the barn where the Archeological Society kept its collection. Putting these calamities together with the robbery from the Gettysburg park service's collection, it looked like someone who was very knowledgeable about the value of certain types of Civil War relics was methodically targeting local antique collectors.

  I went back to the Chronicle, where I began to write an article about the two recent burglaries. I was nearly finished when the phone rang.

  “More cancellations?” I asked Cassie as she gestured for me to pick up my extension.
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  “Nope. It's that strange lady from Gettysburg.”

  “Moonbeam,” I said into the receiver. “Is anything wrong?”

  “Not at all. In fact the news is great. Dad's doing so well, he may be out of the hospital by the end of this week.”

  “Super! I'm delighted.”

  “Tori, I told him you saved his life, and he's anxious to thank you. Can you come today? He's allowed to have visitors between two and four.”

  “I'll be there,” I promised. To keep myself awake until then, I threw myself into the task of changing the farmers’ advice column from Lickin Creek lingo to English.

  “Is you'uns singular or plural?” I asked.

  “Usually plural, but it is often incorrectly applied to a single person.” That rasping voice certainly didn't come from Cassie. I looked up, startled, to find Helga Van Brackle standing in the doorway, holding a small cardboard box.

  “Come in,” I said. Where the heck was Cassie? My unspoken question was answered when the rest room door opened.

  “Please sit down.” I moved a pile of books from the guest chair.

  Helga frowned and sat on the edge as if she feared something would rub off on her tailored black suit. She placed the box on my desk. “Home-made sticky buns,” she said. “My thanks for your part in finding Mack's killer.” She opened her purse and pulled out an envelope. “This check is from the college—a small thank-you.”

  “I already told Doctor Godlove I wouldn't accept a check. If you insist, I'll donate it to the Salvation Army in the name of the Chronicle.”

  She dropped it on top of the box of sticky buns. “I really don't care what you do with it, Tori. I'm only the messenger. I'm afraid we've had a few more difficulties, and I'm here on behalf of the college to ask for your participation in another event.”

  I sat back as if confronted by a cobra. “The last time I participated in an event at the college, it turned out to be a disaster, Helga, as you well know. I don't want to get involved with anything there, again, ever.”