I told Joyce that Bromley’s death had been ruled natural causes, but we had our suspicions.
Joyce excused herself to go to the toilet and put her face back on.
While she was gone, Veenie said she thought we ought to take Joyce’s case. “We got no case now that Bromley wasn’t murdered. Harry’s not about to find us a case. He’s too busy playing ride the bologna pony with Dottie. Joyce is our flesh and blood, and she needs our help something fierce.”
“Thought you said I ought not to be casting myself in Joyce’s soap operas.”
“This here is a professional thing.”
I eyed Veenie. “You still trying to save up enough to see Blake Shelton in concert over in Terre Haute?”
“Dang right. That boy is a hottie, dimples and all.”
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll take Joyce’s case, but if this goes south, I’m holding you responsible.”
Joyce squealed when she came out of the bathroom and Veenie gave her the good news that we’d be snooping on Rusty starting first thing the next morning.
“I love you, Mama!” Joyce squeezed me, reminding me she’d always be my little girl. My crazy little girl.
Chapter Fifteen
Veenie woke me up bright and early the next morning. She was dressed for the day and bounced on my bed like a beach ball. She wore a new outfit: a fluorescent green and blue paisley poncho and a pair of screaming yellow stretch pants with red cowboy boots. I practically needed sunglasses to cut the glare. “Get up, Ruby Jane!”
“Why?” I asked as I rubbed my eyes, which were crusted shut. I’d been deep in a dream about this pet chicken I kept as a girl, Clucky. I’d loved Clucky. By mistake, my daddy had chopped Clucky up for dinner one night. In the dream, Clucky was sitting at the table in a bow tie talking dirty to me. Oh boy. Too much greasy fried chicken and gravy and yacking about sex before bedtime. “What’s up?” I asked Veenie. I wasn’t quite ready to get out of bed. It was almost an hour before my normal rise and shine.
“It’s Sassy,” said Veenie. Her blue eyes were huge and bright behind her Coke bottle glasses. “She’s done been arrested for murder.”
That got me to sit up straight. “What in the name of Sam Hill? You sure?”
“Sure. Sassy done called, wants us to come on down to the jail. Grape Nuts has her locked up tight.”
“Who’d she murder?”
“Fussy Jones.”
“You’re putting me on.”
“Nah. This is for real. They found ol’ Fussy napping face down in the White River next to his pontoon boat. Sassy was the last to see him. Guess they had a hot date last night. I reckon things got too hot. Maybe they were playing one of them dress-up games. Everybody says Fussy loves them kind of games. Maybe Sassy got so worked up she lost all control.”
I pulled a foggy memory out of my brain of Sassy telling me she and Fussy were going to drop his pontoon over at the White River Boat and Gun Club, then drive over to that new German sausage restaurant in Salem. And yes, everybody knew that Fussy loved to mess around and wear outfits in the boudoir. His ex-wife had made no secret about that down at the VFW after she divorced him. She told the best stories about Fussy and his peculiar love of women’s lingerie to anybody who’d buy her a shot of Jim Beam.
I rolled out of bed and tugged on my jeans. I grabbed a shirt off the rocker and pulled it on, buttoning it up before sticking my feet into canvas sneakers. I ran my fingers through my unruly white hair and fluffed it up a bit as I followed Veenie through the kitchen and out the back door. “Boots got any hard evidence?” I asked.
“Lord, I hope so,” said Veenie.
Sassy was pacing back and forth in her cell by the time we arrived at the jail. She’d taken her heels off and had a runner up the back of both of her stockings. Boots had taken us in to see her. He unlocked the cell door so we could go inside and sit with her. She looked a fright. Her face was all smeared from crying. Her hay pile of hair was mushed down on one side, like she’d been hit in the head by a frying pan. “I didn’t kill him!” Sassy screamed. “Honest, gals. You know how hard I work to get a man.”
True. Sassy loved getting all dolled up for men. I honestly couldn’t see her doing anything that might reduce the dating pool.
I asked Sassy why they thought she’d killed Fussy.
“I was the last to see him.”
“You went out to dinner last night?”
Sassy made a strange face. “Well, no. Not quite. We meant to go out to dinner, but we, er, got distracted. And then Fussy got a phone call that got him all excited. He said we had to wait around at the river awhile longer, so he could talk to a man about some business deal.”
“Distracted?” said Veenie. “What in tarnation would make you forget to go out for a free sausage diner? Sausage talks to me, especially that German bratwurst. Might be talked into killing a man myself for a hot plate of that stuff.”
“Well, if you must know, Fussy was hinting that he wanted some full-on nookie. He’d just shined up his boat real nice, and he looked so cute in his little captain outfit.” Sassy broke down weeping.
I was thinking spring better end soon, or there wouldn’t be enough tissue in Pawpaw County to comfort all the brokenhearted hens.
Veenie piped up. “Boots said Fussy was found floating face down with a fish gig through his chest. You do that?”
“Lord, Jesus, no!” she cried. “I told you I didn’t touch him.” Sassy pressed a hand to her chest. “I mean I really didn’t touch him. We were on his yacht having some wine, a right nice Indiana peach wine with a screw top. We were watching the sun set through the sycamore trees. It was getting dark. He got a little frisky and started smooching on me. Then he told me to hold my wild horses while he ran back to that little cargo shed at the back of the boat. It’s like a little shed where he keeps the grill and fishing tackle and whatnot.” Sassy stopped and gritted her teeth. She got up and glanced out the cell bar doors, then scanned the hall to make sure Boots or Devon weren’t around. “This part is kind of embarrassing.”
That got Veenie’s attention. “And?”
“Well, gosh darn, Fussy busted back out of that shed wearing nothing but underwear.”
I was taken aback. “That got you upset?”
“You don’t understand,” wailed Sassy. “It was women’s underwear. He was all trussed up in a red lace bustier, and he was wearing a Farrah Fawcett wig. And … and … he was wearing my lipstick and one of my best leopard bras.” Sassy broke down completely. She buried her face in both hands. “He’s one of them transvestites.”
Veenie shrugged. “Whole town knows that.”
“They do?” Sassy looked twice as mortified now.
“Afraid so,” I said.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I handed Sassy another tissue. “You asked us if he was healthy and could drive nights.”
“And it never occurred to you to tell me he was kinky?”
Veenie shrugged. “There’s always something. I dated a fellow once from over around Leesville who couldn’t do anything with his willy unless I spanked him first. Once I whacked his behind. everything worked just fine.”
“Who was that?” I had to ask.
“Spanky Ritter.”
“Figures.”
Sassy hugged herself. “I don’t have many rules in this life. Lord knows I try to please my men. But if someone’s going to wear lingerie, it darn well better be me. Lord, I felt like he was asking me to be a lesbian. That’s all good and fine, lesbians, I mean. California is full of them. They’re right nice, near as I can tell. A whole herd of them used to clean my pool. But, well, dang it, men don’t look good in lacey things.”
Sassy sat down and put her face in her hands. “You gals got to help me. I’m innocent. I got a couple of thousand laid away from when they arrested Doogie out in California. I could pay big time.”
Veenie said, “Thought you didn’t have anything to do with that real estate scheme your hubby cook
ed up.”
“Might have had a wee bit to do with it. I mean, I might have hidden back some money for him, just in case he got in trouble.”
“He did get in trouble.”
“I know. That’s why I left him. You going to help me or not? I got cash money.”
Veenie and I looked at each other. “Sure,” I said. “We need a five-hundred-dollar retainer. You got that?”
Sassy nodded yes and grabbed her gold lamé clutch purse, which she’d been using as a pillow. “I’ll write you a check right now. Give you an even thousand just to show I’m serious.” She looked relieved as she ripped the check out of her register and handed it to me. “Plenty more where that came from. Can you gals get me out of this drafty old cell now?”
“Probably not right away,” I said. “You’ll have to see the judge. He’ll set bail. We’ll talk to Boots. See what they have on you. You ever been arrested?”
“Course not!”
Veenie took the check and stuffed it into her bra. Said she was walking down to the bank to deposit the check as we left the cell. “Could be rubber,” she said. “I’d not start working the case until we know we got the real thing here.”
“You think Sassy killed Fussy?”
“I dunno. Maybe she’s one of them black widows. You know, the kind what kills their mates just for fun.”
I could completely see how a woman might want to off her husband, but Sassy didn’t seem like a black widow killer to me. That woman lived and breathed men.
“How we know what Sassy is?” asked Veenie. “She showed up in town one day looking to rent a room. She was out in California all them years. You know how freaky they get out on the West Coast. She was probably hanging with a fast crowd of hippies. They smoke LSD. That kind of stuff.”
“I don’t think you can smoke LSD.”
“Her husband was a crook.”
“Don’t mean she was a part of that.”
“How’d she get the cash money for this check then?” Veenie patted her bosom.
She had a good point. All this time I’d bought Sassy’s story about how her last husband, Doogie Duval, had swindled her right along with all those dim-witted investors with his fancy real estate scheme. For all I knew, Sassy herself had masterminded the scheme and left Doogie to take the fall. Boots had undoubtedly run an interstate background check on Sassy when he’d booked her. I’d have to sweeten him up a bit. That’d be the fastest way for us to uncover what Sassy had really been up to all them years out in California.
Chapter Sixteen
“You trying to sweet talk me, Ruby Jane?” Boots sat at his desk, his feet up. He’d just finished reading the Pawpaw County Banner. He rolled the paper into a tube and slapped it against the edge of his desk.
“We been friends a long time, Boots. I was thinking maybe Veenie and I could help you out on this case.”
He grunted as he poured himself a cup of coffee from a glass pot. “Want some?” he asked.
I nodded yes. Veenie had yanked me out of bed mighty early. I was still trying to jump-start my brain.
Boots slid me a cup of black coffee.
It was thick, bitter, and as chewy as tar. “I think you need a new coffee maker,” I said as I spat the coffee back into the cup.
“I’m not one to waste the taxpayer’s money. Stuff tastes fine to me.” He knocked back a slug of his own coffee. “Sassy tell you everything about her past?”
“She married bad. What’s to tell?”
“That what she told you?” He leaned forward in his roller chair and eyed me.
“Pretty much. You telling me different?”
“She was married four times.”
“So?”
“That’s a lot of poor judgment for one woman.”
“She’s rattlebrained. You know that.”
“Her mama, Mildred Smith, was a little off. Kinda odd about men.”
“Mildred was a social climber. Some people are just like that.” Sassy’s mama, Mildred Smith, had sent her to all the best schools: Twinkle Toes Tap & Twirl and Miss Mamie’s Conservatory of Music and Manners. She sent her to the Methodist church, although she herself had been raised a Baptist, because that was where all the town socialites congregated. The Methodists of Pawpaw County may not have been closer to God, but they were certainly higher up in the income brackets.
Sassy’s father, a ne’er-do-well bottle sucker named Jakie Smith, either died or disappeared. No one knew for sure. He up and vanished one night. And not a single soul cared to ask after him.
Whatever happened, Mildred and her daughter were left to fend for themselves. “Mildred was a social climber,” I repeated. “Wanted a better life for her daughter. No crime in that.”
“Just saying, maybe it’s genetic. The bad husbands. Disappearing husbands. All that.”
“Oh for Pete’s sake, Boots, we went to school with Sassy. She seem like a serial killer to you?”
He shrugged. “I got a report here from California says Miss Sassy is a person of interest in her last husband’s crime spree.”
“Everybody knows her last husband was a con artist. She told us that. No big secret. What’s your point? You got anything there that proves Sassy committed a crime?” I tried to peek a look at the state police report sheet, but Boots yanked it back.
He teased me with the paper. “You know her husband is out of the pokey?”
“Parole?”
“A kind of do-it-yourself parole.” Boots twirled his sheriff’s hat around on his fingertips.
“He escaped?”
“Last week. There’s an all-points out on him.”
“That why you locked up Sassy?”
“Jealousy is a mighty strong motive for murder.”
“You think Doogie has been hanging around town? That he saw Sassy dating Fussy and decided to gig him straight on?”
“I’m saying it sort of makes sense, don’t it? A lover’s quarrel. One of them love triangles. Maybe a three-way. And it got out of hand.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t you think we’re all a little old for that kind of hanky-panky?”
“Age has got nothing to do with it. Some people just lack common sense. For instance, I have it on good faith that your friend Lavinia got kicked out of the drive-in last weekend for conduct unbecoming a senior citizen; and during a showing of The Ten Commandments, no less. She’d been putting on a show with Dickie Freeman, who used to be a right good Baptist boy. She tell you that?”
“Lavinia is a little odd. Don’t surprise me a bit.”
“Odd?” Boots white eyebrows shot up. “A two-headed cow is a little odd. Lavinia is …” The desk phone rang, and Boots took it. “Excuse me,” he said as he turned around and muttered into the phone a few times. “Gotta go,” he said, sliding the phone back in its cradle. “Business.”
I knew a brush-off when it hit me. I was being swept out the door. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. I thanked Boots for his time and ambled on over to the Shades Agency office. Time to fire up the old desktop and start to snoop electronically for some answers about Sassy and her past.
Back at the office, Harry was pleased as punch that Veenie and I had brought in two new cash cases. Not pleased enough to work either of them though.
Veenie was a little peeved. “Why we got to do all the work?”
“I’m the boss.” Harry hitched a thumb at his chest. “I’m licensed. You two are in training. Ought to thank me for giving you a crack at this. Could have hired a pair of cute gals with college degrees and great legs.”
Veenie snorted. “Everybody knows that ain’t true. For the chicken scratch you’re paying us, the only applicants you got was me and Ruby Jane.”
Dottie, who was still hanging around the office and working on her nails, echoed Harry’s sentiments. “Harry is famous, you know. He solved that ghost busting mystery. They had him on TV. CNN. Just makes my skin crawl thinking about it.”
“Yeah,” said Veenie. “Harry makes my skin crawl too.”
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Dottie crossed her legs and wagged a skinny foot wrapped in a red, canvas wedge shoe at us. “He found that missing treasure. He’s like a national hero.” Dottie crossed the room and laid several sloppy kisses on Harry’s cheeks. She tweaked his little pewter-colored mustache. “My hero.”
Veenie stood up on her chair and craned her neck to see out the window. “Heads up, Dottie! I think I see your hubby coming down the sidewalk. And he’s armed.”
“Oh, hell,” Dottie murmured. “Hell’s bells. Oh, hell!”
She and Harry jumped up. She started to pull him up the stairs to his apartment.
“Not that way!” Harry cried as he grabbed his hat and mushed it onto his head. “We’ll be trapped up. Fire escape is broken. Out the window. The alley.”
Last thing I saw was Dottie’s skinny legs scrambling out the alley window after Harry.
“Shap really out there?”
“Nope.”
“Tired of hearing Harry and Dottie yack?”
“Yep.”
I filled Veenie in on what Boots had told me about Sassy being a person of interest in Doogie Duval’s real estate schemes, and how Doogie had flown the coop last week at Club Fed over in Terre Haute. I asked her about getting thrown out of the drive-in too.
She made a face. “That thing at the drive-in was not my fault. Charleton Heston in a skirt always gets me going. Dickie was a backsliding Baptist when we took up, and I aim to keep him that way. More fun for me.”
She changed the subject. “You reckon Doogie is hanging around these parts?”
“Might be,” I said. I’d found a bank of articles on Doogie and his background online in one of my crime-busting databases. “Doogie was born in Indiana, you know.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Says here, Terre Haute.”
“Sassy went clear across the country to hook her a crazy Hoosier boy?”
“Says here Doogie’s upbringing was right common.”
Baby Daddy Mystery Page 9
