Shay O'Hanlon Caper 03 - Pickle in the Middle Murder

by Jessie Chandler

  It was just past eight thirty when we rumbled up the alley and I parked in front of Eddy’s garage behind the Rabbit Hole. Dawg and Bogey were busy chasing each other around the yard. After slobbery hellos I left the two to their game of tag. I thought again how the life of a dog was a hell of a lot easier than the lives of humans these days. Pee. Play. Nap. Eat. Play. Poop. Get some human love. Nap. Pee. Pee again. Eat. Repeat.

  I trooped into the kitchen, leaving Coop outside to feed his nicotine addiction and suffer a little more canine slobber.

  The kitchen simmered with the mouthwatering fragrance of Eddy’s homemade enchiladas. My stomach reminded me it had been awhile since it had been properly filled and wasn’t particularly happy about it. What an unending, crazy-ass day. I was ready to chow down on just about anything that was edible, and maybe some things that weren’t. The good news was that Eddy’s cooking was always more than edible.

  The woman herself, clad in black footie pajamas emblazoned with the rock band Kiss’s logo, stood at the stove stirring something. Without turning around, she said, “About time you showed up. I’ve got a late supper going. Chicken cheese enchiladas. They’ll be done in fifteen minutes. I’m cooking up parsnips for Coop, and a salad.” She turned away from the softly bubbling root vegetables to face me. “Where is that boy? Kate said he left with you. What kind of shenanigans did you kids get yourselves into while I was stuck with the Knitters? Although,” she said almost as an afterthought, “I made twenty-six bucks on the deal.”

  Ah yes, the Mad Knitters doing what they did best.

  “As to your first question, Coop’s outside.”

  “Puffing on those damn cancer sticks.” She didn’t wait for my affirmation. “We need to light a fire under that boy. Thought he had ’em beat last time. Maybe he should take up cigars.”

  Yuck. I had hopes that Coop’s last effort to kick the coffin nail habit would’ve stuck, but at least he had a good attitude about trying again. And again. And again.

  I mentally reviewed the day’s events. It made me tired to think about it all. From my morning visit to the Hole, snagging Coop and Rocky from the phone book biz to help with my police station snooping exercise, the near-disastrous water dance with Dimples and Eddy, locating Taffy at the sperm bank and meeting her menagerie, to the heart wrenching trip to see JT and finally tracking down Peaches, or rather, Heidi. It was quite a list to run down when I reviewed it.

  I said, “You aren’t going to believe the visit we had to Taffy’s place. Eddy, you should’ve been there.”

  “’Course I’m gonna believe. You might not be a child of these old loins, but you’re as close to a daughter to me as anyone could be. I dang well know when you’re laying it on thicker than clumpy molasses.”

  That was true. The woman had this freaky sixth sense when it came to me copping a lie or spilling the honest dope. I couldn’t count the times the wooden spoon went whack! across my backside when she finally pried the truth from my mouth. It had taken some good thwacks, but I learned to either keep my mouth shut or tell the woman the truth. Which, in the long run, was probably a good thing.

  Eddy grabbed a fork and stabbed a parsnip. “These are done. You fetch Coop and I’ll get Rocky.”

  She drained the parsnips and dumped them in a frying pan with a slab of butter. Then she zoomed off in her footie jammies, the sight of which still cracked me up every time I saw her wearing them. She’d become a Simmons Family Jewels fan, and the sleepwear had been a natural hit.

  I swung the screen door open. “Coop,” I called into the night. “Eddy cooked. She made you parsnips.” The vegetable was one of his favorites. I thought they were rather unappetizing, myself.

  I held the door open as Dawg and Bogey strolled in, snuffled me in greeting, and then wandered out of the kitchen and into the living room. Coop followed them inside and closed the door, sighing appreciatively as he sniffed the air.

  I said, “Bet you wish you ate meat right now, don’t you?”

  “I can use my schnoz to appreciate that which I’m not going to stuff in my pie hole.” Coop sniffed again. He moved toward the stove. “Sweet. Looks like I’m just in time to keep these beauties from burning.” He grabbed a spatula and started flipping.

  “Nick Coop!” Rocky burst into the kitchen, with Eddy trailing along in his wake. “Shay O’Hanlon,” he added when he caught sight of me. “You will never guess what!” He bounced on the balls of his feet.

  It was easy to get caught up in Rocky’s enthusiasm. He did a little dance, his entire body getting into the motion. Then he took a big breath and said, “As Shay O’Hanlon likes to say, my flower, my flower, oh boy, oh BOY! My flower is coming!”

  “What?” Coop turned toward Rocky, spatula frozen in mid-flip. A lone parsnip slid off the utensil and dropped into the sizzling frying pan.

  “What?” I echoed, my voice sounding decidedly feeble. Did he really just say Tulip was coming? Holy shit. Rocky and Tulip were both adults as far as the law was concerned, but they were a bit shy of a fully operational deck. Not that either one of them were dumb, not by any stretch. They just lacked a few—okay—more than a few facets of common sense, while they were beyond brilliant in other aspects.

  “Oh yes!” Rocky clapped his hands in sheer delight. “Tulip is coming here! To the Twin Cities! To Minneapolis! To the Rabbit Hole! To see me! Oh boy. I am so excited!” He hopped from one neon-orange Converse clad foot to the other. The shoes had been a gift from Eddy, and the sight of him walking around glowing usually made me grin. This time, however, the sight failed to do its job. Panic of a new kind was too firmly imbedded inside me.

  Eddy had stopped behind Rocky. Her eyes were round and her mouth gaped in a shocked O.

  I swallowed hard and cleared my throat. “Is she coming alone?” I was afraid to ask and was afraid of the answer. I couldn’t recall ever hearing anything about a caretaker who might give Tulip a hand. I momentarily wondered if they might produce kids as strangely brilliant and as weirdly unique they were. Then I banished that thought. It was a little like thinking about sex and a close relative.

  Rocky clapped his hands again, excitement radiating off him in palpable waves. “She is coming with Miss Marple, the wonderful woman who is exactly fifty-seven years, three months, and twenty-two days old. Miss Marple loves Tulip. She likes me too. And this is the very, very, very best part of all.” He gulped in a huge breath, and then said through a face-splitting grin, “We are going to be joined in ultimate holy matrimony and bliss.”

  For a heartbeat, utter silence descended on the kitchen. Then the sound of the spatula hitting the edge of the frying pan and clattering to a rest on the countertop broke the spell.

  Both Coop and I looked from Rocky to Eddy. She looked as flabbergasted as we were. In fact, I was afraid for a moment she might pitch headlong to the kitchen floor. She covered her eyes with her hands, inhaled, and calmly said, “Let’s eat.”

  Ten minutes later we were seated around the kitchen table, stuffing our faces with enchiladas, parsnips, and salad. One part of my brain recognized the food was as awesome as it always was whenever Eddy slapped her cooking hat on, but a much larger part of me paid no attention to the taste. Instead, Rocky’s bomb ripped repeatedly, loud and clear, through my brain.

  Usually when Rocky ate, he shoveled one thing at a time into his mouth. He’d hardly look up and rarely uttered a word before the task of feeding himself was complete. I’d learned early on that something in his makeup compelled him to chew his food a certain number of times before he swallowed it, and if he lost count, he’d have to start over. Tonight, however, his jaws flew as he masticated his grub. For the first time since I’d known him, Rocky finished eating before anyone else. And none of us were exactly leisurely diners.

  Rocky swallowed his last bite and downed the rest of his grape-flavored Kool-Aid. He set the empty glass down with a thump. “Shay O’Hanlon, w
e want to be joined in ultimate holy matrimony and bliss in the Rabbit Hole.”

  I nearly spewed out the milk I had just sucked into my mouth. “I—uh—don’t …”

  Eddy shot me a withering look.

  “Ah, yes, of course you can, Rocky.” I quickly shoved in another mouthful of salad.

  Rocky bobbed in his chair like a jack-in-the-box and turned his attention to Coop. “Nick Coop, you are going to be my best man.”

  Coop raised his fist and did a knuckle bump with Rocky. “You got it, my man. Do you want a bachelor party?”

  I yelped, “Coop!” I couldn’t believe he just said that. Our Rocky—at a strip show?

  Coop gave me an innocent look. “What?”

  Oblivious to our interchange, Rocky shifted gears again. “Eddy, I want you to be our sermonizer in ultimate holy matrimony and bliss.”

  Eddy paled under her brown skin. She said, “Your … your—oh dear. I’m not a person of the cloth, Rocky.”

  “You can be,” Rocky told her. “You just have to go on the Internet, and you too can become a person of the cloth even if you do not like the cloth. I looked.”

  I stared at Eddy with wild eyes. She was quite wild-eyed herself.

  Rocky was oblivious to our facial antics. “Kate and Anna are going to be Tulip’s bridesmaids.”

  Before any of us could formulate any kind of appropriate response, Rocky was off on another statistical frenzy. “In 2008, two million one hundred fifty-seven thousand people who were in love got to be joined in ultimate holy matrimony and bliss.” He swooped his head dramatically toward Coop. “Eight hundred forty-four thousand people got unjoined in ultimate holy matrimony and bliss.” With that Rocky jumped up from the table. “I have to go. It is time to Facebook with Tulip.”

  I opened my mouth, but Coop beat me. “Rocky, when’s she coming?”

  Rocky paused at the threshold between the kitchen and the living room. He called over his shoulder, “Day after tomorrow. We will get joined in ultimate holy matrimony and bliss Wednesday. I do not know what time my Tulip wants to be joined in ultimate holy matrimony and bliss though.” Then he disappeared into the living room.

  “Wednesday?” I whispered.

  “Oh.” Eddy fanned her face with her hand. “I need to think about this.”

  It was a rare moment when Eddy was struck speechless. If I weren’t so stunned, I’d have taken great pleasure in that.

  For a full minute the only sounds were forks scraping against Corelle. Then I said, “Can he really get married?”

  “Why not?” Coop pushed his chair away from the table and gathered his and Rocky’s dishes. “Could be cute.” He brought them over to the sink.

  “Nicholas,” Eddy said sharply, “did you ever talk to that boy about S-E-X?”

  I couldn’t help but taunt him. “Yeah, Coop, didja?”

  Coop industriously scrubbed at his plate.

  “Well, Nicholas?”

  “I meant to. Really. I will. Soon. Oh God.”

  Eddy brought her plate and silverware to the sink and handed them to Coop. “Here you go. Maybe a little manual labor will improve your memory.”

  I cleared the table and added my load of memory improvers to his pile, still reeling. First JT, now Rocky. What could happen next? I didn’t dare contemplate the possibilities.

  Eddy rummaged around a cupboard, pulling out mugs and plunking them on the counter with a bang. Her voice was hollow behind the cabinet door. “If there ever was a time for liquid backbone, this is it.”

  She was more shaken over Rocky’s news than I realized. She skipped her special concoction ingredients and went right for the whiskey. She set the three glasses, each with about two shots of straight alcohol, on the table.

  I picked up the tumbler and watched the amber liquid swirl around the bottom quarter of the cup. I took a tentative sip. The liquor burned its way down my throat and settled hotly in my stomach. I was pretty sure I was going to end up with an ulcer before this was all over. Maybe I needed to learn to meditate to deal with my stress. But who had time to meditate when their girlfriend was accused of murder and locked up by a madman masquerading as a cop?

  We needed to keep our eyes on the prize, which was finding Krasski’s killer. Without losing track of Rocky and his upcoming—I could hardly form the word in my mind—nuptials.

  To Tulip. Oh man.

  Coop finished his manual labor and rejoined us at the table. He settled into the chair with a groan. “I’m too old for this.”

  “Young man, you don’t even know what old means.” Eddy fixed the stink-eye on him. Then she said, “Okay. Tell me all about your day. Don’t leave a single thing out.”

  I filled her in on finally seeing JT and what had happened. Then, between Coop and I, we gave her the rundown on Taffy and the zoo, and Heidi, AKA Peaches. When we were done, Eddy didn’t say anything for a long minute. Finally, she said, “A live goat—in the house?”

  After all that, she got stuck on the goat.

  “Yeah,” I said. I was starting to loosen up as the booze flowed through my system. “And a chicken. The goat and the chicken were friends. They played with each other.”

  “Okay. That Peaches—”

  “Heidi,” I said. “Her name’s Heidi. She used to go by Peaches.”

  “Anyway, she knew our JT. Do you feel better now, Shay, after hearing what she had to say?”

  “Yeah. As a matter of fact, I do.” I peered into the depths of my nearly empty cup. “Now we just need to get our act in gear and figure out who the hell pickled Krasski.”

  I was about to down the last of my liquid backbone when my cell rang. The readout on the caller ID displayed Tyrell’s number.

  “Hey Ty, what’s up?” I hoped maybe he’d say everything had been a huge mistake and that I could go now and scoop JT up from the evil clutches of Detective Clint Roberts.

  “Got a couple things for you. First, the bad news—word on the vine is Roberts is sure he has his woman and isn’t looking for any other suspects. Which, as you and I both know, is bullshit. Second, the potentially worse news—just heard from the friend of a friend of a not-so-good friend that preliminary ballistics came back. The bullet found at the crime scene matches a handgun that was found down the stink hole—”

  “The ‘stink hole’?”

  “Yup. Exactly what you think it is. I feel for the poor grunt who sifted through all that shit, no pun intended. Anyway, you gotta keep this under wraps, okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I won’t say anything to anyone who counts.” So much for positive thinking. “What about fingerprints?”

  “One tiny ray of sunshine. They couldn’t pull a single print off it. You know if JT was carrying when you went to the festival yester-

  day?”

  Was she? I thought about it. It was a rare occasion she didn’t stash a weapon somewhere on her person while off duty. I hadn’t mauled her before we left home, or I would’ve known for sure. “Probably. Why?”

  “The gun they fished from the crapper was the same kind I know JT uses as one of her off-duty weapons. A Smith & Wesson Bodyguard. Do you know the one I’m talking about?”

  My heart beat heavy in my chest. I didn’t pay any attention to what guns JT used. I knew she had a locked crate for her weapons, but that was it. “Oh shit.”

  “Yeah, oh shit. We have to hope the gun they found isn’t registered to her.”

  “Wouldn’t they have taken swabs of her hands to see if they had gunpowder on them or something?” That’s what the CSI guys always did on Eddy’s shows.

  “Yeah. I’m sure they did. Haven’t heard anything on that yet, though. Trying to get information through the Clint Roberts filter is worse than having a tooth yanked with string and a slamming door.”

  “I could take a look in her gun locker and see what’s there.”


  Tyrell sighed. “If you get a chance, let me know. And, hey. I talked to someone who’s checking into the two names she gave you. Nothing yet. I’ll call when I can if I hear anything else. Chin up, okay?”

  I disconnected. That tiny, wee sliver of doubt regarding JT’s guilt flared as bright as a flash-bang grenade. Then my overextended but still sort of functioning brain tamped the flare out almost imm-

  ediately. I itched to get home and take a gander in JT’s strongbox. If this Bodyguard gun were there, it would prove her innocence, right?

  When I was little, the ragtag bunch of neighborhood kids I ran with often played the pickle in the middle game. The object was to keep the ball, or whatever it was we decided to toss back and forth, away from the person in the middle of the pack. The pickle in the middle.

  In this case, the truth was my elusive ball, and it went sailing over my head, first one way, then the other. Every time I reached out to grab that truth, it just barely slipped through my fingers. The game frustrated me to no end as a kid, and that’s how I felt now. Every time I came to a conclusion about what JT may or may not have done, something happened that made me question my own perceptions. But come on. This was JT we were talking about. The one who cared about justice, about people. Who, for some reason, loved me. It didn’t matter if JT had a gun on her person at the fair. She didn’t kill Krasski.

  Still, that insistent knocking in my heart and conscience meant that I knew I’d be making a beeline for that gun locker as soon as I got home.

  Coop’s and Eddy’s piercing stares knocked me out of my ruminations. I told them what Tyrell had shared. When I finished, Eddy rolled her eyes. “That girl did not shoot anyone. We simply need to find who did. What were the two names JT said Tyrell should look into again?”

  “Geller. Shawn Geller. And Handy Randy. Shawn Geller was the human trafficker recently released from prison, if I remember right. Handy Randy? I don’t have a clue.”

  “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go find Geller, wring his neck, and see if he shoved a pickle in his old boss’s mouth. Coop, fire up that contraption of yours. Do your thing and find out where Geller’s staying. Shay, you go do whatever you need to do to print those names off your phone. I can’t see a damn thing on that little bitty screen.” Eddy was a great drill sergeant on a moment’s notice.