I’ve always been a sucker for a sob story. Guys found that out early on, and I handed out a lot of pity comfort before I caught on that I was being used. But I was a total sucker for Viv and her sad eyes. I was ready to jump out that window and take her wherever she wanted to go, just to make her go back to the in-your-face, always-upbeat Viv. I didn’t like this sad, pitiful Viv.
“Viv, don’t,” I said. “You’re not old, you don’t have one foot in anything except a ridiculously expensive shoe. Quit talking like this.”
“But Salem, this past week has been one of the best in my life. I have a mission. I have something important to do, something besides playing cards or writing my memoirs or learning a new stinking computer program. Something that actually matters. This week I’ve had something to think about. And I’m not ready to let that go.”
I sighed and made a face at her. “Well, I’m certainly not up to jerking the rug out from under someone’s entire reason for living, not in the middle of the night. Give me a minute to get dressed.”
“Make it quick.”
I turned back to her with my finger raised. “I’m bringing Stump with me.”
“Fine with me. She can be our sidekick. All great detective teams need a sidekick.”
I reached for my sweats and pulled them on. “I’m warning you right now. If somehow this night goes south and the police become involved, I’m giving you and your gun up first thing. I’m not getting into more trouble just because you’re not taking to the mahjong thing. If you want excitement, try the county jail. It’s a thrill a minute.”
“You’re crabby in the middle of the night. Are you still sleepy? When you get to be my age you don’t sleep so well. If you want I can get you one of those flavored-up coffee things at PakASak to wake you up.”
Actually, I wasn’t all that sleepy. I’d slept most of the day, and besides, Viv’s little speech had stirred something in me, too. The past few days had been frustrating, but it had also been exhilarating. I knew what Viv meant when she said she was finally doing something that mattered. I mean, I loved my job at Bow Wow Barbers, but lives don’t exactly hinge on a dog’s haircut or color of nail polish, no matter how passionate some customers feel about it. What Viv and I were doing was important. Well, it would be important if we actually helped Tony. It would be life and death. I finally had a glimpse of a notion of why someone would want to be a cop. Before, I always thought it was for the uptight and power-hungry. Now I realized that someone could go into law enforcement because they actually wanted to help people.
I wasn’t tired anymore. However, Viv had offered me one of those flavored-up coffee things at PakASak. Cappuccino, in other words. PakASak had the richest, chocolatey-est cappuccino in town. It was kind of like a chocolate candy bar and a cup of coffee melted together in a cup. So I yawned. “You know, a cup of something caffeinated would help me think a little more clearly.”
“Are you going to tell your husband you’re leaving?”
I shook my head and tugged my shoe on. “Let’s let him sleep.” I didn’t think he’d be too keen on any of this.
I handed Stump through the window and giggled as I threw my own leg over the sill. “I haven’t done this since high school.”
“See, I told you. This is exciting stuff.”
We tiptoed around the house and jumped in Viv’s Caddy. I heard a soft noise as we drove, and looked over to see Viv singing, “Bad Boys, Bad Boys, watcha gonna do, watcha gonna do when they come for you?” under her breath.
I was happily pouring my cappuccino when Bobby touched me on the shoulder. “Hi!” I said with a grin, right before I realized we weren’t just coincidentally bumping into each other.
“What’s going on?” He didn’t look happy.
“With what?” Viv asked.
“What are you two up to?”
I looked at Viv. She looked at me. Clearly this was not the time for the truth.
I set my cup down and frowned at him. “Fine. But I want you to know this is completely your fault.”
His jaw twitched and he glared at me.
“It is. All your talk about Tony made me paranoid. I couldn’t sleep, thinking about all the stuff you said.”
“So you’re finally showing some sense.”
“Get the smug look off your face. You freaked me out. I had to call Viv to come get me. She’s taking me back home.”
“I thought you were going to stay away from there till we find the guy who attacked you.”
If there ever was a time for a good defense being a ballistic offense, this was it. “What the heck do you expect me to do, Bobby, sleep under a bridge? I have to stay somewhere. And my best choice has now been ruined by what is probably your own narrow-mindedness. Tell me what you think I should do? Just sit in my car till you finally find the guy who wants to beat me up? And what are you doing following me around, anyway? Am I a suspect or something?”
“Actually, you are.” He raised an eyebrow.
Uh-oh. I’d only said that to make him defensive. I hated it when things backfired on me. “I am? Why?”
“Because suspicious things keep happening around you, Salem. You find dead bodies. You harass witnesses. You’re the main suspect’s ex-or-maybe-not-wife and you refuse to stay away from him even though he’s clearly someone you should be nervous around.” He lifted his lip with a slight sneer. “You’re not making a lot of sense, Salem. And that makes you look guilty.”
Viv, bless her heart, intervened before I could hyperventilate. “Enough of that, Detective. Is she a suspect or are you simply browbeating her? Because if you suspect her, you need to make it official and take her in for questioning.”
Uh-oh. I was back to near-hyperventilating again.
“And if not, we’ll need for you to step back and leave us alone. This week has been very traumatic for my friend, and she needs her rest.”
Bobby stared from me to Viv and back again. Funny, most of the time I didn’t have a clue what Bobby was thinking, but now he seemed to be thinking all kinds of things: like he really did suspect me of something but he wasn’t sure what, and he really was worried about me and frustrated because he couldn’t tell me what to do, and mostly he really did think Viv was a crotchety old pain in the butt.
I shrugged and put the lid on my cappuccino. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going home.”
He didn’t say a word. Just stood by the cappuccino machine and watched Viv pay for our drinks, then followed us out to the parking lot.
Two blocks down the street Viv said, “Is he behind us?”
I didn’t have to turn around to see; I’d been watching in the sideview mirror. “Yep.”
“Crud. What do we do?”
“No idea. I guess you’ll have to take me home.”
“Crud crud crud. Okay.”
Chapter Fourteen
So we went to my house. Stump was glad to be there, even if it was the middle of the night. She whimpered and twisted around in her box. Finally I made a pallet from the old blankets on the sofa and let her lay down on those. She was snoring within five minutes.
I checked out the whole trailer – a three minute task – and came back to make sure Viv was comfortable. She had her keys and was moving toward the door.
“Oh, no, you’re not. You’re not leaving me here by myself.”
“This is your house.”
“So what? I was safe and snug in bed at Tony’s and you came and woke me up. If I have to stay here, you and your gun do, too.”
She sighed and looked out the rectangular window in the door. “Your boyfriend is still out there. I guess he was watching Tony’s house when I came up.”
“I was his stakeout. That’s interesting.” I collapsed on the couch. “I wish I was sleepy. I’m so wired I could tap dance.”
Viv crossed her arms over her chest and plunked down on the chair. “Join the club. I never get more than four hours of sleep a night anymore. The rest of the time I stare at the ceiling and count ex
-husbands.”
“Do you think Bobby really believes I have anything to do with this murder? Or was he just trying to spook me?”
Viv shrugged. “Who knows? He was probably just blowing smoke.”
I leaned sideways and scratched Stump lightly on the back of the neck. She groaned and shifted away. Stump doesn’t like to be disturbed when she’s sleeping. I drew my hand back before she decided I might be a monster she needed to take care of.
“’Probably’ isn’t very reassuring to me. He can’t really think I’m guilty. It makes no sense.”
“Salem, honey, the only thing that makes sense in this crime is that Tony did it.”
I looked around for something to throw at her. But the only thing within easy reach was Stump, so I settled for a glare. “If you really believe that, why are you so pepped up about solving this crime? It’s not just because you’re bored.”
“I didn’t say I believed he was guilty. I said he’s the sensible one to suspect. There are so many illogical things about this whole situation that it makes me want to get to the bottom of it. Somebody’s lying here, and it’s not just Tony. Lots of somebodies are lying.”
“Listen to this,” I said as I tugged my shoes off and dropped them on the floor beside Stump. “I asked Tony what the police had on him, and putting it together with what Bobby let slip, this is the evidence. One, Tony was seen going into the church around the time of the murder. That in itself wasn’t a big deal, because although he wasn’t scheduled to go there that night, it wasn’t uncommon for him to visit the job sites to check up on things.”
“Did he say why he went?”
“He said Lucinda called and asked him to come. She was having trouble with one of the floor buffers or something, but when he got there, she was gone. He checked out the buffer, saw it was working okay, so he went looking for her but didn’t find her.”
“Was she already dead by this point?”
I shrugged, remembering the tightness in Tony’s voice. “He said he thought he could hear her phone ringing, but it was too faint to be sure, and eventually he left.”
Viv shuddered. “That’s creepy.” She was quiet for a minute. “So the cell phone records would back up his story that he was there because she asked him to come.”
“They would show that she called him, and that he called her back. But of course none of that means he didn’t kill her.”
Viv frowned. “So what else do we have?”
“A strange mark on the back of Tony’s neck. Remember the other day at his office when he showed me the back of his neck? The police took a picture of it when he was arrested. There was a thin red mark there, like a little scratch. Tony said it felt like an allergic reaction, and he’s had a similar reaction to some kind of cleaning solution before.”
“Ugh!” Viv leaned back in her chair. “None of this makes sense. You would think, if they were looking for some kind of defense wound, they’d look at his hands or his face or something on the front of his body. Like scratches from her fingernails, you know?”
“That’s what they always do on CSI.”
“I know! And on Columbo. What kind of defense wound would be on the back of your neck?”
I sat with my chin tucked into my chest, mulling that thought and also thinking that one of those Star Crunches would go great with my cappuccino. An uncomfortable thought intruded: Tony would rub an allergen like that on his neck if he wanted to cover up another, more defined mark.
I wished I hadn’t thought of that. I got up to comfort myself with a Star Crunch.
“What’s that look for?” Viv asked.
I told her my idea.
“What kind of more defined mark?”
“A mark that would indicate he’d been in a struggle. Just think, the St. Christopher has something to do with this, right? I was thinking, maybe it was ripped off the killer’s neck during the murder. And if it was, it would probably leave a mark on the neck of whoever it was ripped off of.”
“Right.”
“So what better way to cover it up, than to make a bigger wound over it?”
Viv stared at me. “Now who’s talking like they believe he’s guilty?”
I sighed and took a Star Crunch out of the box. There were only two left. I held one out to Viv in silent offering.
“What kind of kiddie junk food is that?”
“The good kind.”
“Give it.”
We silently tore off the plastic wrappers and chewed while we thought. I was right; the Crunch and the cappuccino went great together, too bad it was sitting like a hot sour ball in my stomach.
“He can’t be guilty,” I said finally. “Stump loves him, and she’s the best judge of character I’ve ever seen.”
“She just seems that way in contrast to you. You’re the worst judge of character I’ve ever seen.”
“I hang around with you, don’t I?”
She nodded solemnly. “Exactly.” She leaned back and lifted the curtain. “He’s still out there.”
“I feel like I’m sitting here eating chocolate while Tony’s twisting in the wind.”
“I know. But it’s good chocolate.”
“What are we going to do?”
She sighed and chewed. “I’m out of ideas.”
Just then I had an idea. I liked it only minimally more than my last idea. “Your car is blocking the pickle-mobile.”
“What?”
“Your car is blocking the pickle-mobile from Bobby’s view.”
She got a look in her eye. “And?”
“And we could sneak out, slip into the pickle-mobile and go over to Ricky’s place. See what we can see.”
“We’ll never get away with it.”
I stood up and began to pace. I had to do it longways, because whenever I try to pace middle-ways in my trailer it leaves me feeling like I’ve just played dizzy bat. “We can sneak out the back door –”
“You have a back door?”
“Yes, in the laundry room. We can crouch down –”
“You have a laundry room?”
“It’s more of a laundry alcove, actually. Listen. If he’s paying any attention at all, he’ll see us. We have to crouch down, get in the car, and then push it down the street in the dark.”
“At the risk of repeating myself, we’ll never get away with it.”
“So what? So what if Bobby catches us? What’s he going to do, arrest us? We haven’t done anything wrong.”
“That’s what Tony said.”
I stopped pacing and chewed my lip. I was struck by a memory I’d totally blocked, of the night I’d wrecked my car and our baby – Tony’s and mine – had died. I had awoken in my hospital bed in the middle of the night. I didn’t know what time it was or even what day it was, but I knew I’d been in an accident and I knew the baby had died. I’d already been told that much.
I’d heard a noise and looked toward the foot of the bed.
Tony sat on a cot against the far wall. He didn’t know I was awake. He had his head in his hands and his shoulders shook. He hadn’t made a sound. He just sat there and cried harder than I’d ever seen anyone cry. The sobs seemed to come from somewhere deep inside him, from his soul. He shifted and one hand clutched his chest, twisting his t-shirt as if he was trying to rip his own heart out. His face twisted hard in a horrifying grimace.
I hadn’t been around very many men in my life – just the ones Mom brought home and my few “boyfriends.” I’d certainly never seen a man cry before. I’d never seen anyone cry as hard as Tony cried. The sight of it disturbed me more, somehow, than losing the baby had.
He actually loved the baby. I hadn’t realized it before then. I was shocked, confused, and yes, sad, but also maybe even a little relieved, but he was devastated.
I hadn’t thought of that night since. I stopped in the hallway in front of the bathroom and thought that no one who loved someone they’d never even seen before could be capable of murder.
“You know wha
t? I’m through going back and forth, wondering if Tony could be guilty or not. He says he’s not, I believe him, and I’m going to do everything within my power to help him prove it. If that means sneaking around behind Bobby’s back, so be it.” I pulled my shoes back on. Determination and the Star Crunch had fortified me. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. In fact, it might be a good idea if you stay here and move around every once in a while so he’ll think we’re still in here.”
“Uh-uh.” She stood and grabbed her purse. “You’ll probably solve this and leave me sitting here, left out of the glory. Nothing doing.”
Stump tuned into us moving around and began to whine, swiveling around the box on her fat bottom.
“You really should stay here,” I said. “I don’t know where we’re going or who we’re going to see, so it might not be safe.”
She lifted her nose and her mouth went into a little O shape that was an early indication of an ear-splitting howl.
Great. I wouldn’t get one foot out the door before she’d be screaming loud enough to wake all of Trailertopia and have Bobby running to our rescue.
I shook my head. “Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I switched on a lamp in my bedroom and made sure my cell phone was charged. I thought about calling Frank to ask if he’d divert Bobby’s attention, but knowing Bobby, he’d catch on, and knowing Frank, if Bobby didn’t catch on, he’d spill the beans.
The door to the laundry room opened on the opposite side of my house from the front door. I hadn’t opened it in the eight months I’d lived there; there was no telling how long before that it had been opened. It didn’t budge when I pushed on it.
I pushed harder. I leaned my shoulder against the door and shoved. I braced my feet against the dryer and groaned as I pushed. The dryer moved, the door didn’t.
I stepped back, panting and irritated. I wasn’t going to be stopped from saving the day by a stupid door.
I remembered something I’d seen Les do when his ice cream truck didn’t start one day. I looked back at Viv and commanded, “If you laugh at what I’m about to do, I’ll take you back to Belle Court and tell them I found you wandering the streets babbling and looking for your pet armadillo Pookums.”
The Middle Finger of Fate (A Trailer Park Princess Cozy Mystery Book 1) Page 26
