Baby Daddy Mystery

by Daisy Pettles

  It was after midnight before Veenie, me, and Pooter convened in the quiet of the Impala in the IGA parking lot. I was all ears as Veenie and Pooter filled me full of hot gossip, most of which surprised the holy heck out of me.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “You’re sure about this?” I asked Pooter.

  We sat facing each other in the front seat of the Impala with Pooter sitting between me and Veenie, chewing his fingernails. The pole light in the IGA parking lot sprayed a cone of light into Veenie’s side of the car. The light bounced off Pooter’s sunglasses and chrome frames, making him look like a large-eyed insect. He had a pack of cigarettes stuck in the breast pocket of his wide-lapel jacket. I’d seen him working the backdoor at the VFW, selling the cigarettes at a quarter a pop to folks who snuck out the back door into the parking lot to steal a smoke during the bingo showdown. Folks rarely carried pocket change, and most of the crowd at the VFW drank too much. All this meant that Pooter often raked in a paper dollar for each cigarette. Not a bad gig for a kid his age.

  I asked him where he got his new suit jacket and seersucker shorts, and he hitched a thumb toward Veenie. “Granny Goens.”

  Veenie shrugged. “Plucked it up at the Goodwill. Thought it would look mighty good on the little fart.” Veenie had a soft spot for Pooter, whose dad had a perpetual time-share over at the state prison, but she wasn’t about to admit it. Most days the two of them pretended to tolerate each other, but they didn’t fool me. Pooter made the best snitch because he roamed around town on his sister’s banana-seat bicycle, sticking his sun-crisped nose into everybody’s business. He could be found every Monday morning in the back parking lot of the Hoosier Feedbag, selling past-its-prime produce the Feedbag had tossed in the dumpster or that he’d bogarted from the gleaned fields. He called himself an “entrepreneur,” though when he said it, it sounded more like “enter-manure.”

  I asked him again if he was sure about the news he’d reported to me and Veenie.

  “Course I’m sure. I seen it with my own two little eyes.” He jabbed two fingers toward his insect eyes. “Down by the river at the Moon Glo Motor Lodge.”

  What Pooter claimed to have seen was Bromley meeting up in a motel room with a man who was, as he described it, “a right fancy dresser.”

  “And you didn’t recognize that man?”

  “Nah, ain’t from around here. I’d never seen him before he showed up out at the Moon Glo.”

  The Moon Glo was an old motor lodge out by the covered bridge that passed out of its prime about the same time Veenie and I did: the early seventies. Its neon sign had lost its fizzle. About the only guests who stayed there long term these days was a family of turkey buzzards who nested in the fizzled-out neon sign. Back in the day its air-conditioned rooms and Magic Finger beds had attracted tourists, who came for the catfishing. These days, the clientele were mostly cheating-heart Romeos who needed someplace to do the dirty that was a bit more romantic than the rusted-out bed of a pickup truck. These days, the rooms were rented out by the hour. Even the air conditioning was busted.

  Veenie piped up. “I bet you a dollar to a donut Bromley was gay. Bet that’s what Avonelle and everybody has been hiding from the town. He probably took up with some party boy with sparkle panties from Louisville, got himself into some deep doo-doo.”

  I shook my head. “That doesn’t sound right to me. Everybody knows Bromley couldn’t keep his hammy hands off the ladies.”

  “Bet that was a cover,” suggested Veenie. “Used to, nobody wanted you to know if they was a poofter. And you know how sourpuss Avonelle is about appearances.”

  “Nah,” I said. “Even if Bromley were gay, nobody cares about that. It’s downright fashionable to be gay these days.”

  Pooter squeaked up. “I ain’t saying he was gay. I said he was meeting up with some strange man who dressed in some pretty fancy duds. But, heh, it is a motel. There’s nothing to the place but a rented room with a bed. What’s a decent fella to think?”

  “Describe the man for me,” I said.

  Pooter wiggled around in the Impala seat and pulled a tiny notebook out of his back pocket. “I keep my snitch notes in this here notebook Granny Goens gave me.”

  Veenie beamed with pride. “I want the little fart to be accurate when he fingers perps. Got him in training as a PI.”

  Pooter cleared his throat and read aloud from his notebook. “The fella is right short, with hair sticking up on top like a rooster. His hair is all black. His face is grandpappy old. All wrinkled up like a raisin.”

  Pooter slipped his sunglasses down on his nose and stared at me with a look in his beady, little brown eyes that asked if I wanted to hear more.

  I nodded. “Yeah, sure. Go on.”

  “Suspect is wearing a big gangster suit and thick black glasses. Looks like a Hollywood movie guy.” Pooter flipped shut his notebook.

  I asked how the man got to the motor lodge out by the river. “Did he have a car?”

  “Nah,” said Pooter. “Bromley always drove him out in his big-ass Lincoln. They came out together. Went into a room together. Then came back out together about an hour later.”

  Veenie asked Pooter if he ever saw them squeeze each other’s butts or anything untoward like that.

  “Nah,” said Pooter. “They weren’t doing any of that stuff, but they did argue some.”

  “What about?”

  “I couldn’t hear much of what they said all that clearly, but the Hollywood guy yacked a good bit about condiments … stuff like that, and when he talked about that stuff, the other guy, the dentist, well, he would swell up big and red, like his head was a pimple that might pop off.”

  “Condiments? You mean condos?” I asked Pooter.

  His face screwed up a little. “Yeah, could have been that.”

  Lightbulbs popped on in my head. I pulled my cell phone out of my messenger bag and flipped on the dome light in the Impala. I flicked through my cell until I found the photo I was looking for. I held the photo up to the light so Pooter could see it too. “This the Hollywood guy Bromley was with, out at the Moon Glo?”

  Pooter sniffled and wiped at his nose with the heel of his hand. “Yeah, might be. Maybe.”

  Veenie rubbernecked around Pooter until she could see the picture on my cell phone. “Ain’t that Doogie Duvall, Sassy’s felon husband?”

  “One and the same,” I said. I hadn’t a clue what this meant, but I reckoned either Sassy or Avonelle, or the both of them, knew a good bit more about these cases we were working than they’d been letting on. And come Monday morning I intended to twist both their tails until one of them hollered and came clean.

  I kept the promise to myself. On Monday morning, over a pot of coffee and a bowl of Cheerios, I drilled into Sassy about her husband and Bromley.

  “I got no notion what you’re talking about,” she claimed as she clutched at the buttons on her housecoat. “Doogie and Bromley? That’s plain silly. How could they possibly know each other?”

  Veenie eyed Sassy. “You want a free trip to the big house?”

  “Course I don’t,” Sassy croaked.

  “Then you better come clean.”

  “Gosh darn, Lavinia, why you got to stick your big nose into all this?”

  “Cause, gash darn, Sassy, you hired me.”

  Sassy looked distraught. “Guess I did, didn’t I?” She took another big gulp from her coffee. “God’s truth, I don’t know why Doogie would be hanging out at that fleabag river motel with Bromley. I suppose he might have been looking for me, trying to get some information on where I was, what I was up to.”

  I refilled my coffee mug. “Why would he ask Bromley about you?”

  “How should I know? I hired you all to get to the bottom of this. If I knew any of this, would I have hired you all?”

  “Doogie and Bromley never met, far as you know?”

  Sassy clutched at her housecoat again. “Not that I know. I mean, obviously Doogie kept secrets from me. I guess t
his was just another one of his big ol’ secrets. Boy, you think you know someone …” Sassy reached up and fussed at the lines in her forehead with her fingertips.

  I was about to ask more questions when my cell phone, which sat on the kitchen table, started to jump and hum. I flicked it open to a batch of texts. Some were from Avonelle. Some were from Joyce (those were punctuated with dagger hearts). I decided to deal with Avonelle first and hit the reply button to let her know that Veenie and I were headed over to the bank to see her as soon as we finished our morning coffee.

  “Sooner,” Avonelle texted back.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Things were hopping at the First National Bank by the time Veenie and I arrived. Dode Schneider, a farmer we knew from a previous case, stood at the barred deposit window in the limestone lobby. He was fussing up a storm at the teller, a young guy with thick glasses and a scraggly red goatee, wearing a dark blue suit and skinny tie. The teller didn’t look happy. His face was scrunched up in frustration.

  Dode, who was dressed in worn overalls and a plaid, long-sleeved flannel shirt, kept pointing at a bank statement that he had pushed into the copper sliding area under the bars in the deposit window. “It ain’t right. It’s all wrong,” he kept repeating as he shoved the statement at the teller. “Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.”

  “Mr. Schneider,” said the teller with a huff of exasperation, “I’m pretty sure that statement is correct.” He gently pushed the paper back toward Dode’s side of the window.

  “No it ain’t, boy. I been paying on this tractor loan every month. That there amount due ain’t what it should be.”

  The teller bit his lip. “What should it be?”

  “Three cents less.”

  “Three cents?” the teller’s eyebrows shot up and then he snorted.

  “Yep. And that’s my three cents, so I want it back. Right there. I want to see it right there. Darn it.” Dode poked a bony finger at the paper statement. “And lookie here,” Dode hitched to the left on account of his busted right hip and pulled some rolled up papers out of the back pocket of his overalls. “You all been cheating me for months now. Stealing three cents every month, right regular. Thought I was too addled to notice, didn’t ya?”

  “Sir,” the teller began, “if we were going to cheat you, wouldn’t we steal more than three cents?”

  Dode’s face reddened. “I said you was thieves. Nobody said you was smart thieves.”

  Avonelle came down the hallway while Dode and the teller were still going at it. She walked straight up to Dode and promised him she’d personally look into his problem if he’d give her a day or so.

  Dode cocked his head. “A day?”

  “Or two.” Avonelle had her hands on her bowling-pin hips.

  “Well, okay, missy. I guess I can wait another day. But I want interest on my stolen money. Will you give me interest?”

  The teller objected, “On three cents?”

  Dode glared at him.

  “Yes,” said Avonelle. “If there is an error on your account, the bank will make good, with interest.”

  “Well, all righty then,” said Dode. He rolled the statements and slipped them back into his hip pocket. “I’ll be back then,” he said triumphantly to the teller, who was already busy with the next customer, a boy too short to reach the window who’d brought in his passbook to make a deposit into his Christmas Club account.

  “Fine,” said Avonelle. “We appreciate your business and your patience, Mr. Schneider.”

  Avonelle turned to us. “This way,” she said. She hurried us down the hallway to her back private office.

  Avonelle wasted no time drilling into us. “You have a plan for tomorrow?”

  I bit my lip. “You asked us to go out to Barbara’s barn at nine p.m. and meet whoever shows up and report back to you.”

  “Yes, I did. I was hoping you’d uncovered the identity of my blackmailer in the meantime.”

  Veenie spoke up. “Last night was jackpot bingo over at the VFW. Our minds was busy working on that. We got us some hunches. It’s setting up solid in our minds now, like Jell-O. Thinking takes time.”

  “Hunches?” Avonelle leaned forward and eyed us both. “All right, then. Tell me your hunches, ladies. Who’s on your suspect list?”

  “Hold your horses,” said Veenie. “Suppose you tell us who has reason to be blackmailing you. You done something real bad, didn’t you?”

  Avonelle flinched. She sat up in her chair and yanked down on the lapels of her jacket. “I have done nothing. I told you, Bromley wasn’t good with money. He had debts. I imagine this blackmailer is one of his debtors wanting to be paid off, or some kin of that Skaggs woman thinking I’ll pay to keep the fact that William had kids with Barbara out of the public domain.”

  I asked Avonelle if she was willing to pay for either of these things.

  She sighed so deeply I thought she’d blow us right out of her office. “I don’t know. I won’t know until I know who we’re dealing with, and what they imagine might be worth twenty thousand dollars.” I could see her face reddening, the patience draining out of her.

  I decided to go at Avonelle a bit more while she was off kilter. I was willing to meet up with her blackmailer, but I wasn’t buying the fact that this whole blackmail thing was a big mystery to her. “You know a fellow named Doogie Duval?”

  “No.”

  “Bromley never talked about anyone of that name?”

  “Not that I recall. You think he’s the blackmailer? Who is he?”

  Avonelle’s face was smooth and calm. She didn’t blink an eye. If she was lying now, she was gosh darn good at it.

  Veenie spoke up. “He’s a felon. Sassy’s ex-husband. He was doing time in the big house over in Terre Haute, but he busted loose last week. He was seen with Bromley out at the Moon Glo.”

  “And who told you this?” asked Avonelle, her arms crossed against her chest.

  “Pooter Johnson. He’s one of our snitches.”

  “Pooter Johnson is a boy. A juvenile delinquent. And not a very smart one either, if what I’ve heard of him is correct,” said Avonelle.

  Veenie sat on the edge of her seat ready to defend her source. “That boy saw what he saw.”

  Avonelle shook her head. “So why would Bromley meet with a felon at a second-rate motel?”

  “Didn’t we just ask you that?” Veenie said.

  I jumped in. “Doogie was in jail for running a real estate scam out in California. Did Bromley own any California real estate?”

  Avonelle shrugged. “Not that I know of. He didn’t even own the house he lived in. I hold the mortgage on that. Fussy was kind enough to let me assume the payments when Bromley started defaulting last year. Fussy did very well for himself when he built Camelot Court and Leisure Hills. Came to see me about Bromley’s loan default, let me assume Bromley’s payments as a professional courtesy.”

  I remembered Gretal, Bromley’s wife, confirming that same fact about Bromley’s house as she blew out of town.

  The buzzer on the intercom on Avonelle’s desk rang. She leaned over and flipped on the speaker. “Yes?”

  “Your ten o’clock appointment, Mr. Peesley, from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency up in Chicago, is here,” said the voice on the other end.

  “Send him back, please,” said Avonelle as she rose from her chair and smoothed out her skirt. “You two,” she eyed us. “Go out to that barn tonight. Meet whoever shows up. Find out what they know. Report back to me when you have some facts. Facts not rumors. Not speculation. Facts.”

  Veenie and I brushed past a middle-aged man in a blue banker’s suit as we exited the hallway back into the lobby of the bank. He carried an expensive thick, black leather briefcase in one hand and an equally expensive blue hat in the other. He wore heavy black-framed glasses, like the type Clark Kent wore. He bumped full into Veenie but said nothing and kept right on moving.

  Veenie called out over her shoulder, “Hey, you always beat up on old l
adies in hallways like that?”

  The man glanced at Veenie but hurried on toward Avonelle’s office, not bothering to give her a reply.

  “Big city folks. Got no manners,” Veenie muttered under her breath.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Well,” Veenie said, “now what?” as we climbed into the Impala.

  I felt as frustrated as a hen brooding on a nest of eggs that refused to hatch. I let the keys dangle in the ignition of the Impala before turning over the engine. “Wish we could talk to Bromley. Looks like he took a heap of secrets to the grave with him.”

  Veenie popped open the glove compartment and rummaged around. “We got something better than talking to him.” She pulled Bromley’s cell phone out of the glove compartment and held it up to the sunlight. It glinted silver.

  I’d forgotten about the phone. Gretal Apple had tossed it to us when we’d asked about Bromley’s girlfriends and his little black book. We’d tried to snoop through his phone log and text messages when we’d first gotten it, but Bromley’s fingerprints were required to unlock the device. “We can’t crack that doohickey,” I reminded Veenie. “It’s locked up tight.”

  Veenie eyed me, her little blue eyes twinkling with mischief. “I got us a plan,” she said. She turned the glinting phone around in her hand and mashed at it with her thumbs. The phone lit up, then a giant blue fingerprint splashed across the screen. Veenie mashed at the fingerprint pattern with her thumbs but the phone just blinked “unauthorized” and flashed off.

  “You know how to hack a fingerprint lock?” I asked.

  “Nope, but I know where Bromley’s fingers are.”

  I stared at Veenie. Bromley’s funeral showing was this afternoon, right after lunch. He was being buried the old-fashioned way: stuffed and dolled up with an open casket.

  “Dead people still got fingerprints,” said Veenie. “We just got to mash his fingers to this here screen and his whole life will spill wide open.”

  I thought about that idea for a moment and then keyed the Impala and roared toward the funeral home. I aimed to make us first in line to pay our respects to the dearly departed.