He’d come from the opposite direction, so he parked his station wagon facing the other car, headlight to headlight.
He hauled himself out of his ride. “Mr. Tucker.”
“Detective Huyne.”
Huyne blinked at Joepye. “Mr. Adder.”
“Hey.”
“You’re actually the one who spotted the body first?”
He looked down. “I don’t know.”
“You went to get Tucker.”
“I did. I wasn’t sure what I saw.” He finally looked up at Huyne and grinned. “I might have been drinking just a little.”
Huyne smiled back, but it wasn’t a friendly smile at all. “So you went to Tucker to see if he could tell you what this was?”
Joepye nodded slowly. “I think that was it.”
Huyne looked up at the body. “What else could this have been besides a body, Joepye?”
Joepye didn’t look. “Sometimes the kids’ll tie some shoes together and sling them over street wires or lampposts.”
“Shoes?”
“Or it could have been a squirrel’s nest. They get real big.”
“On a lamppost?”
Joepye was getting agitated again. “How’d I know it was a lamppost? Didn’t I just say I was drinking. Hell, it could have been a dogwood or a phone pole or a basketball hoop.” He cocked his head defiantly. “I need glasses too, you know. I’m drunk and I need glasses. So.”
The detective took a long look and then shrugged in my direction. “Mr. Tucker? Does that look like a dead body to you?”
I nodded. “Does to me.”
He looked at the other two cops. “We have a confirmation. Would you two mind getting the ladder out of my wagon?”
The two uniforms fetched an extension ladder.
Huyne directed. “All I want to do is take a look at the note. I’d like to try to leave everything like it is, but if I could just see what the note on this one says —”
I piped up. “You noticed that.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I figured we could get started right away thinking about the information on the note. Thinking’s not going to disturb the crime scene. Would that be all right with you?”
I nodded right back. “I was a little curious about that myself.”
One held the ladder while the other clambered up it.
The man at the top of the ladder stared at the note for a minute and then called down. “It just says, ‘Number Two: The Tango.’ Can I come down?”
Huyne looked up at him. “Yeah. Come on down.”
He did. It was Huyne’s turn to stare at me. “So?”
I was looking up at the body. “I was just thinking how nice and organized it is when a serial killer actually numbers the victims.”
Huyne nodded. “Numbers and titles.”
“Right.”
“So what does it mean?”
I looked at him. “Just like that? Right away I’m supposed to know what it means?”
He squinted. “What do you know about the tango?”
“It was born in Argentina — in brothels. It was basically copulation set to music. Or foreplay anyway. Very popular in America in the twenties. Had a post-World War Two nostalgic resurgence. And then it finally got what it deserved from Bertolucci.”
“The filmmaker?”
“Last Tango in Paris. If you’ve ever seen it, you can’t think of the dance without also thinking of odd uses for butter.”
He had no idea. “I see. So what does all this mean?”
“That the murderer is from Argentina, born in the twenties, fought in World War Two, and hates Marlon Brando.”
He was willing to play. “Or loves Maria Schneider. Wasn’t that the actress’s name?” So maybe he did have an idea.
I nodded.
He shrugged. “You can shut up now, but give it some thought, okay?”
I looked at him sideways. “Why are you being so …”
“Cooperative? Helpful with your … investigation? Even nice?” He took a step closer to me and lowered his voice. “Well, I’m not doing it entirely for you, see? Ms. Oglethorpe is something of a favorite around our station house, as you may already have discovered.”
The way he said Dally’s name — even her last name — told me more about him than the note told me about the stiff.
“I see.” I nodded. “Well, I’ll tell her you said hey. I can go?”
Big nod from him. “Please.”
I almost took a step. “Joepye can go?”
He stared at the little guy for a minute. “I don’t think so. He found the body — again. I need to talk to him awhile.”
“As a matter of fact” — I didn’t move — “I’d like to talk with him too, now that you mention it.”
He shook his head. “Not tonight, Flap. Go on, now.” He flipped his hand away.
Can’t say I liked being shooed like a dog.
Still, I started the walk back to Dally’s place, where my car was parked.
Lot himself was wiser, but I followed the example of Lot’s wife. I turned around to take one last look at the poor kid hanging from the lamppost. Good thing I did. I suddenly remembered where I knew that image from, long before all this mess started.
9. Lobster Walk
“Who is it?” She was trying to make her voice sound as tough and irritated as possible.
I was in no mood. “Who else would be knocking on your door at this time of night?”
The door swung open. She was already in the black kimono she usually wore for a bathrobe. She was smiling, but it was one you might file under the “wan” category. “I just didn’t want it to be Joepye again, sneaking up on my porch.”
“Oh, he’ll be out of your hair for a while. He’s being entertained by the police.”
She closed the door behind me. “I see. I take it the police didn’t find you as entertaining as he is.”
“Right. So guess why am I here.”
“Long night, and you need a little mint tea?” She waved the mug in her hand. “I’m just getting some for myself.”
I nodded. “Peppermint tea. Very calming.”
We shuffled into the kitchen. She pulled down another mug. “So why are you here?”
“Gérard de Nerval.”
“What?” The kettle started whistling. She look it off the heat and poured into both mugs.
“French literary figure. Nerval lived in Paris in the early 1800s, but he was the Salvador Dalí of his day. He had all these surreal absinthe hallucinations, and he wrote about them. I think the book’s called Le Chimera or Les Chimères or something. Very strange guy. He used to walk a lobster on a leash down the Champs-Élysées.”
“No kidding.” She handed me the tea and sat at her kitchen table. Her kitchen was more spacious than mine and filled with plants, mostly fresh herbs growing in clay pots. She didn’t do much cooking, but when she did, you could alert the media, and five stars wouldn’t be enough to put beside the menu. Five shooting stars, maybe.
“Gérard de Nerval,” I said again.
“Sounds familiar. I guess you’ve mentioned him before.” She closed her eyes for a second. “Anyway, you bring him up because this is a strange, surreal night, what with the scary visitor on my porch and the dead body hanging in the park. I assume there actually was one.”
“Assume away. But that’s not why I bring him up. It’s more specific than that. He was, as you might imagine, a very troubled soul —”
“Wait.” She raised her eyebrows. “He’s the one that wrote the translation of Faust that Berlioz used for his opera.”
See why I love her? I had to smile. “Correct. You should be on Jeopardy.”
“Okay, now I know the guy you mean. Just took me a minute.”
“Yeah.” I sat at the table with her. “But do you want me to tell you the story or not?”
“Story?”
“Of why I bring him up in the first place — on a night like this.”
“Oh.” She nodded. “
Yes, I guess I do want that. The story.”
I set down my mug a little noisily. “How do you suppose good old Gérard de Nerval died?”
“Tell me.”
“Suicide.”
She cocked her head. “Yes?”
“He hanged himself from a lamppost” — I leaned forward — “using his mother’s apron — by the neck from a lamppost with an apron string. That’s how he died.”
“Oh, yeah, you have told me this before.” She stared silently.
I blinked. “Didn’t you hear what I said?”
“I did hear what you said.” She took another sip. “Now listen to what I have to say. The person that’s doing this — this hanging these kids like this — is possessed of some pretty eclectic esoterica: a knowledge of the tarantella and some French nutcase, not to mention an ability to whisk somebody up a lamppost and not have anybody see him. I mean, that’s quite a populated neighborhood where he’s strung these two girls up. Lots of people could see, even this time of night.”
I yawned. “I know.” That’s all I could manage.
She smiled back. “Okay, that proves my point. What we both really need is sleep.”
I nodded. “I’d say you’re right. But you’re also right about the murderer: He’s got odd knowledge, he’s nuts, and he doesn’t care.”
She took the cups and put them in the sink. She had her back to me. “Flap?”
“Um-hm?”
“You wouldn’t want to grab your shut-eye on my sofa here tonight, would you?”
I looked at the top of her kitchen table. Didn’t know where else to look. “Don’t see why not. It’s closer than my apartment, isn’t it?”
She nodded, still not turning to face me. “By a couple of steps, yeah, probably is.”
My voice was soft. “Still a little shaken by strange men lurking on your porch?”
“A little.” She turned her profile. “I like to know the men lurking on my porch.”
I nodded. “Right. Okay. I’ll stay.”
She started out of the room. “You know where everything is. I’ll make a nice egg white omelet in the morning.”
I got up. “I hope you’ve got espresso beans.”
She didn’t move. “I do.”
I stood beside her in the doorframe. Her face was very close to mine. “You do?”
She turned, but her eyes were down. “You know, that wasn’t much of a story … about Nerval.”
I brushed a strand of her hair back behind her ear. “Well, maybe story wasn’t the right word.”
“So I guess this is goodnight.”
I dropped my hand to my side. Her arm was touching mine. “I guess. Although I could stand right here just like this for another hour and a half or so.”
She finally looked up. “Flap …”
But I wouldn’t let her finish the thought. “See, if my name were almost anything else, it wouldn’t have ruined the effect of a perfectly good romantic mood like this. But it’s a challenge to maintain the romance when you’ve got to softly whisper a moniker like mine.”
“Okay.” She smiled, looked away, and moved out of the doorframe. “See you in the morning.”
She knew I was nodding, even though she wasn’t looking back.
10. Show Dog Status
Much as I wanted to sleep in the next morning, that’s how much the person pounding on the door wanted me to get up. Pounding. Like with the back part of the fist, not a little knuckle rap.
So despite my ire, I put on a happy face, flung myself unsteadily up, straightened my clothes as much as possible, and went to the door.
Huyne seemed surprised to see me. “Jesus. Tucker.”
I nodded. “Detective.”
“Well” — he stared — “looks like you slept in your clothes.”
I tried not to yawn. “I did.”
“Here?”
“Uh-huh.” I don’t know why I didn’t just say I’d slept on the sofa.
He looked past me into the place. “Ms. Oglethorpe here?”
“She’s still asleep. She works nights. What time is it anyway?”
He glanced at his watch. “About ten.”
I still didn’t invite him in, which he clearly wanted me to do, what with the anxious body language and the peering over my shoulder into the darkened room. “Seems a little early for you too, considering how late you were out last night.”
He got my eye. “A little. But I’ve got this work to do, see.”
“And you need to see Ms. Oglethorpe.”
“I do.”
“Do you mind my asking what for?”
“I don’t mind your asking as long as you don’t mind my not telling you.”
I smiled. “So I guess we’re even.” I stood aside, finally. “Like to come in?”
He made a little snorting noise, like a riled animal. Then he brushed past me into the living room.
I watched him invade. “I thought we were supposed to be friends, at least in this particular endeavor.”
He looked back at me over his shoulder. “Well, I was kind of operating along those lines myself. Then I start thinking.”
“That’s a mistake.”
“Yeah. Still, here’s what I’m thinking: You and that little ratweed Joepye are the first ones there both times we find dead girls hanging in the park. And then you seem to know the answers to all my questions. So I get to thinking, What is it that looks like a mutt, smells like a mutt, but acts like a show dog?”
I cocked my head. “I just woke up. I’m not in the mood for riddles.”
He squinted back at me, hard. “Then I’ll tell you the answer. The answer is: It’s a mutt that wants you to think it’s something else.”
I shifted my weight. “Now, last night you shooed me away from what they call the crime scene like a stray, and this morning you come lumbering into somebody else’s house and impugn my show dog status.” I took a step in his direction. “I sense a change in our relationship. I think I’m entitled to know why this has happened. I thought we had such a nice date at Easy last night.”
He took a little step my way. “I’ll tell you what happened.” He held up his hand and counted off the troubles on his fingers. “One, I find out you had a conversation with Mick Nichols in my very own establishment, and this man is not only no good but also a murderer; I still think that no matter what other confusing information you send my way. And then, two, I find out that he gets you to help him prove he didn’t kill a girl that I’m pretty sure he did. Okay? Then, three, I find you are a font of information about unusual old dances, and you don’t look much like a dancer to me. But the kicker is four: Joepye Adder tells me that he thinks you're the one who’s killing these girls.”
“Comedy’s supposed to come in threes, pal. And what you’re telling, whether you realize it or not, is a joke.”
Not that Huyne would believe it, but that Joepye would say it — that was the surprise. Joe must have been put under some severe stress.
He leaned toward me. “Yeah?”
“Well … you don’t even remotely agree with him about that last wild allegation, do you?”
He stared at me a second longer, then let go. “No. I don’t. But I’ve got to ask myself why he said it.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Could it be, Detective Huyne, that your police techniques might have led the poor guy to say things he thought you were wanting to hear?”
He made that sound again. “That little sucker is tougher than you think.”
I shook my head. “I know he’s tough. I also know he’s easily confused. Did you ask him how many of the girls he’d killed himself?”
He looked at the floor. “Yeah, well, he did admit that he’d killed them both.”
“Ask him where Hoffa is, by any chance?”
That got him. He finally cracked open a tiny smile. “I’m sure he’d tell me.”
I finally moved into the living room. “So why the hard sell?”
He looked out the window. “Would yo
u believe me if I said it was my job?”
“No.” I watched him move slowly around the room. “There’s more to it than that.”
He turned to look at me. “Okay, here’s the deal.” Deep breath. “I was surprised to see you here, and it irritated me, and I came on a little harsh because that was my first reaction. I’m not proud of it. It just happened.”
“You’re an emotional boy.”
He sniffed. “Not usually.” He looked around the room. “I thought you two were just friends.”
“There’s nothing just about our thing.” I held a steady look. “It’s more in the what-the-hell-is-this category.”
“I see.” He looked away.
“Well, you probably really don’t see.”
His voice was small. “Yeah. Maybe I don’t.”
He actually jumped when he heard Dally’s voice coming from the stairs.
“What’s all this noise? Where’s my beauty sleep?” I looked up. She was dressed, which said to me that she’d heard most of the conversation and had decided to get made up for her guest. What that meant, I had no idea.
He was the first to answer. “Ms. Oglethorpe.”
She came down the stairs and into the room. “Hey, boys. Coffee?”
I smiled. “You all can have that weak American brown water —”
She wouldn’t let me finish. “I know what you want.”
She made it sound more suggestive than she needed to. Once again I was at a loss as to what that meant.
We followed her to the kitchen. She went about making two separate versions of the coffee beverage and assumed the hostess role with the kind of ease that made her the perfect bar owner.
“Detective Huyne? You think Flap killed those little girls?”
He tapped on the top of the table with this fingers. I interpreted it as a nervous habit. “The point is, I have to explore every alleyway, see?”
She started the little espresso machine. “Well, that one’s a dead end, don’t you think?”
He lifted his eyes to me. “Tucker here was just saying I think too much.”
She nodded. “That’s his party line.”
I was still trying to figure why he’d shifted in his attitude toward me in under twenty-four hours. Usually takes me a good week to offend people like him.
Dancing Made Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 4) Page 6
