Baby Daddy Mystery

by Daisy Pettles

  I decided it was time to stop beating around the bush. I told her we had cracked Bromley’s cell phone with Kimmy’s help. I told her that it appeared Bromley had dressed like a scarecrow as part of some roll-in-the-hay sex play he had going on with Dottie.

  “Dottie? Dottie Reynolds?”

  “Yep,” I confirmed.

  “Dear Lord, I had no idea, I mean, that things had gotten that bad with his, well his … sexual problems.” She threw a glance at Bert, who simply nodded.

  “You knew he played around?” I asked.

  “Whole county knew that,” said Avonelle. “But really? Dottie? Dottie Reynolds?” She made a sour face. I reckoned Dottie wasn’t her idea of a daughter-in-law.

  I shrugged. From the messages on Bromley’s cell phone, I’d have to say he wasn’t ever all that discriminating. “Did you know he was treated for VD?”

  Avonelle tightened her lips. “I’d gathered as much. Bert, unfortunately, had informed me of this. This will all stay confidential. Yes?”

  We glanced at Veenie, who sat perched on the edge of her chair next to me. “What?” cried Veenie. “Why is everybody staring at me? I didn’t do nothing.”

  Avonelle spoke up. “And let’s keep it that way, shall we.”

  Avonelle asked if we were satisfied that Bromley’s death was of natural causes. She said she and Bert now believed it to be a natural death.

  I said we had no reason to believe otherwise, given what Dottie told us and the nature of Bromley’s cell messages. “Barbara told us Bromley had been to visit her, tried to pay her off to take the kids and move out to California. We reckon maybe he was down in Hound Holler hoping to have another try at her, made it as far as the front porch, and his heart gave out on him after all that rolling in the hay with Dottie. You know anything different about why he might have been in Hound Holler?”

  Avonelle drew in a sigh and fussed with her Buster Brown bow. “He did know that Barbara had sent me that letter asking for child support. He begged me to let him handle that, told me it was all a scam, but let’s say I’d lost faith in his judgment by then. I decided to handle it straight on myself. That’s why I hired your firm. I figured it’d be best to handle this whole affair professionally.”

  “He thought Barbara was pulling a scam?”

  “Convinced of it.”

  “Did he give you any evidence in that regard?”

  “No, and frankly, I wasn’t sure. I’d always felt maybe William had been keeping someone on the side, but well, he was a decent husband. That’s just how men were. As long as he was discrete and it didn’t threaten our marriage, I’d made my peace with the whole affair, until Ms. Skaggs sent me that child support letter. And the DNA test was conclusive? Yes?”

  “Pretty much,” I said. “I mean, we saw Billy Junior spit in that tube, and we mailed in that sample.”

  Veenie jumped in. “Plus them kids have the Apple ears. You can’t fake something God awful like that.”

  Avonelle winced a bit and adjusted her jacket. “Fine, but if Bromley’s death was natural, who’s sending me these blackmail notices? And who shot at you in that barn?”

  That last question was certainly one I wanted answered.

  Avonelle plucked a small key from a chain from her purse and flicked open the top drawer on her desk. She pulled out a sheet of lined yellow paper and slid it across the desk to me. I took the paper and read, “Stupid move at barn. Will now cost you fifty thousand dollars to keep me quiet. Will send delivery notice soon.”

  I eyed Avonelle. “Why are you being blackmailed?”

  She squirmed. “I told you, I don’t know.”

  I glanced at Bert, whose face looked pained, like he might throw up. “You know who the blackmailer is?” I asked him.

  “Certainly not,” he said as he fiddled with his tie. “Of course not. Why would I?”

  Veenie, who’d been uncharacteristically quiet, jumped in. “Who’s Money Boy?” she asked.

  Silence.

  Avonelle and her son exchanged nervous glances.

  “I saw them glances,” Veenie said.

  Avonelle asked how we knew about Money Boy.

  I said, “He’s all over your son’s cell phone. Near as we can tell, he was milking him for blackmail payments, but we don’t know why. You two know?”

  Avonelle bit her lip.

  Bert leaned forward in his chair and opened his mouth.

  Seeing Bert move, Avonelle motioned for him to sit back and keep quiet.

  He complied.

  She straightened in her chair. “You think this Money Boy is the one sending me blackmail notes?”

  “Seems logical,” I said. “He was blackmailing Bromley. Bromley died. Can’t get milk out of a dead cow, so it makes sense he’d turn to you. Everybody knows you got money.”

  Bert spoke up this time. “Mom, I think it’s time we filled in some of the blanks for the ladies. This is all confidential and frankly, dog-gone-it, we could use some help.” His words tumbled out like he was afraid he’d be shut down before he could complete his thoughts aloud.

  Avonelle considered her son’s comment. “Fine.” She motioned with one hand for Bert to continue talking.

  “Money Boy,” began Bert, “has been stealing from the bank.”

  “I didn’t know the bank had been robbed.”

  “No one knows,” said Bert. “And it wasn’t really robbed. Someone installed software on our central system, and that software has been skimming small amounts out of people’s accounts and depositing them into an overseas account in the Cayman Islands.”

  I pondered that. “Small amounts, like three cents at a time?” I thought of Dode Schneider and his complaints about the missing three cents on his monthly bank statement.

  Avonelle said, “Precisely. Tiny amounts like that. And the virus, which started here, has spread through all the banks in southern Indiana. It’s called salami slicing.”

  “Salami?” I asked.

  “That’s what con artists call it. It’s ingeniously simple. They get someone inside the bank to install a virus that visits all the bank’s accounts and skims a few cents off each as a fee credit or miscellaneous charge. The software does that thousands of times and rakes the pennies into a central off-shore bank account. It’s like taking tiny slices off a big salami. It takes a while, but millions can be siphoned off and stolen this way without a single soul noticing. Most people don’t look at, let alone reconcile, their bank statements. And if they do, they see a charge for a few cents coming from the bank, and they figure it must be legitimate. Not many people would take the time to dispute a three-cent error.”

  “Except for Dode Schneider,” I said.

  Avonelle nodded. “Yes, he was one of our customers who complained, but not the only one. Turns out people in Pawpaw County still read their bank statements and are willing to fight for their pennies.”

  I pondered this information. “You know who Money Boy is?”

  Bert opened his mouth, but Avonelle shook her fingers at him, motioning him to be quiet.

  He shut his mouth but didn’t look happy about it.

  Avonelle spoke. “We suspect he’s the one sending those blackmail demands.”

  “What does he know that’s worth money?”

  “That the bank had been embezzled. Frankly that all the banks in southern Indiana have been embezzled.”

  “Why would you hide that?”

  Avonelle shrugged. “We’re not hiding it going forward. I reported it to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. They operate out of the United States Department of the Treasury, Chicago regional offices. Mr. Peesley,” she nodded Veenie’s way, “you met him, Lavinia, is here investigating. We reported it last week, soon as we discovered the problem. I suppose Money Boy wants me to pay him to keep the embezzlement out of the papers, but at this point we’ve cleaned the system and repaired the breach. We’ll be announcing it soon ourselves.” She tugged at her lapels, looking smug and satisfied.

&
nbsp; Veenie spoke up. “You want us to do anything more about that blackmail note?”

  “I want you to find out who is sending these notes and why. I need a solid answer. If we can flush Money Boy out into the open, the Treasury agents can arrest him. Right now, they have no suspects.”

  I wasn’t sure I favored that idea. “You want to use me and Veenie as bait?” I asked.

  “Well, I wouldn’t put it quite that way.”

  Veenie squeaked. “Well, I gosh darn would. You already got us shot at. We only make minimum wage, just so you know.”

  Veenie loved a good crime-cracking case, but I could understand why she wasn’t all that keen on taking a bullet for Avonelle. I was with her on that one.

  I stood up. “Let us think about this some more,” I said. “Not sure we can help you out all that much. Might be best to let the Feds handle this from here on in.”

  Avonelle didn’t object or say anything in reply. She simply stood up and showed us briskly to the door. Bert followed, looking peevish, but he didn’t say a word until we were well outside the bank, standing next to the Chevy. With his mother gone, words rushed out of him like penny candy out of a fat piñata.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I hurried Bert off the sidewalk and ushered him into the back of the Impala, which was parked in front of the detective agency. I knew Avonelle wouldn’t want him spilling the family secrets to us, so I figured it was best if we talked to him in private. Bert apparently knew more than his mother let him reveal to us in her presence. Veenie and I had been shot at once. I wasn’t in any hurry to duck and dive through another shower of shotgun shells. My knees still ached from the big shootout at the barn. If I had to scramble like that again, there’d not be enough Bengay in all of Indiana to get me upright and ambling.

  And I wasn’t about to get one of them bum knee replacements at the Pawpaw County Hospital. Last person I knew who did that, Johnny Bill Guthrie, walked like a duck after they were done with him. They left him with one leg shorter than the other, God’s truth.

  Having nowhere in particular to go, and wanting to chat with Bert outside the range of prying eyes and ears, I gunned the Chevy and we headed out of town toward the knobs. My stomach was unsettled. I felt I needed a piece of pie—or two. Heck, maybe even a whole pie. Ma Horton, who ran a free range chicken farm on top of the knobs, Chickenlandia, also ran Pawpaw County’s emergency pie shed. It was an old tool shed that she kept stocked with homemade pies. Anybody could roll up the knobs and pick one up anytime. I was fairly near in love with her coconut cream pies.

  Veenie squeaked with excitement when she noticed I was headed up the knobs. “Pie?” she asked, her little blue eyes twinkling with hope.

  Bert stuck his head up between me and Veenie and rested his chin on the top of the front seat like a dog. “Where are we going?”

  “Emergency pie shed,” I said.

  “They have chocolate cream?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Count me in,” he said.

  It was late afternoon, and there wasn’t any traffic going up the knobs, which was good because the road was narrow and twisty, and the Impala wasn’t always up to the climb. It was really a one-way road. You couldn’t see around the hair-pin curves until you were halfway around the bends. The gears ground on the Impala as we climbed the steep hills, but the poor old gal held steady all the way to the top.

  Veenie turned her head and studied Bert, who sat quietly in the backseat like a kindergartener, his dental coat a wee bit too short for him in the sleeves. “You got any money?”

  He sprung open his wallet and pulled out several twenties, which he fanned over the edge of the seat. “That do?” he asked as I shot down a gravel road toward Ma Horton’s farm.

  Veenie snatched the money out of Bert’s hand and tucked it into her bra. “That’ll get us started.”

  I pulled in tight, under the shade maples, next to the pie shed. Veenie sprung open the car door and sprinted up to the shed like she was a twenty-year-old with no heart problems. Pie had that kind of magical effect on her. Ma Horton wasn’t around, neither was Peepaw, but the door to the pie shed was open. Veenie darted in.

  While Veenie was inside the shed gathering up a selection of ten-dollar pies, I asked Bert to start telling me everything he knew.

  His face filled up with relief. Leaning forward, taking a deep breath, he started yacking at me like a schoolgirl.

  By the time Veenie came back to the car with the pies—she had four of them balanced in a tower against her body, one hand on top of the tower and one on the bottom—I was beginning to get a good idea of who Money Boy might be, and some of what Avonelle might have been hiding from us all along.

  Bert stopped yakking when he saw the pies. Veenie handed him a chocolate cream pie across the seat, along with wad of napkins from the glove compartment and a white plastic fork.

  “My own pie?” Bert asked. He looked like he might cry.

  “Course you get your own pie,” Veenie said. “You paid. Plus we don’t share pie, do we RJ?”

  I really couldn’t answer that because my cheeks were busting with coconut cream pie.

  It was late in the afternoon, so we decided to just eat the pie right then and there in the shade of the maples. We opened all four doors on the Impala to let in some breeze. It was a nice day. Chickens clucked in the background. Ma and Peepaw Horton had fifty hens and one cocky old rooster named Dewey. I enjoyed my pie while I watched Dewey’s antics with the ladies. He was pestering one fat, old speckled hen, trying to mount her, but she was having none of that. She pecked and squawked until he flew off and perched atop a fence post to nurse his pride.

  Chickenlandia wasn’t an ordinary kind of chicken house, but then Ma and Peepaw weren’t ordinary folks. Peepaw Horton was an energetic fellow, and Ma loved her chickens. It showed in the fancy housing they built for their fowl. They’d used scrap lumber to fashion replicas of the White House, the Supreme Court, and the Senate building. The buildings were connected with two-by-fours and chicken-wire catwalks. It wasn’t a chicken house, more like an entire Chickenlandia, which was how the place got its name.

  Veenie finished her apple pie and made a sound like it might all come back up. Thankfully, it didn’t.

  “You ate that whole pie?’ I asked. I’d only made it through two pieces of mine, which was about right. The rest I’d chill up for supper once we got home.

  Veenie belched. “Course I did. I only had that bacon sandwich for lunch. No lettuce. No tomato. I had extra room in me for pie.”

  Dewey flew our way and perched, claws out, on top of my open door frame. He balanced there, swaying back and forth like a drunken ballet dancer. He cocked his head at me and cawed.

  I dipped my finger in coconut cream and held it out for him.

  He pecked the pie neatly off my finger like it was a fat wet grub.

  Veenie stiffened. “You know I don’t like chickens,” she said. She rummaged in the glove compartment and pulled out her BB pistol.

  “That’s not a chicken,” I said. “That’s a rooster.”

  Veenie pointed the pistol at Dewey. “Don’t care. If he comes my way, he’s gonna be supper.”

  I was about to tell Veenie to put her gun away when Dewey flew off, back to the Senate to see what the chickens were squawking about.

  Bert, who’d been devouring his chocolate cream pie, spoke up from the back seat. “I just love to bake. Should have gone to pastry school, but Mother had other plans. Then I got married, and my wife never would let me bake or eat pie.”

  Veenie looked shocked. “Why not?”

  “Oh something about how only sissies bake. She never let me eat sweets. Said they hung on my hips. She always thought I was too fat.” He leaned back in the seat and patted his pooch belly.

  Veenie eyed him. “Fat looks good on you. Don’t fat look good on him, Ruby Jane?” she asked me.

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that, so I just nodded.

  “Thanks
,” said Bert, as he closed the lid on his pie box and set it aside. “I gain weight in my hips. I have Mother’s body.” He dabbed at his lips to wipe away the chocolate. He nodded at the pie on the seat next to him. “I never knew Ma Horton sold her pies like this, right out of the shed, all hours.”

  Veenie nodded. “Course she does. We come up here all hours. Pie fixes everything,” she said. “If you’re ever down in the dumps and fixing to kill yourself, try pie. It’ll fix you right up. It’s a big part of what’s kept me alive all these years.” Veenie belched again.

  Bert nodded, his eyes sad. “It’s been a really rough year,” he said. “Never been so blue and troubled in my whole life.”

  Veenie nodded back. “You miss your brother?”

  “A bit,” he said. “But he caused me and Mother a whole lot of grief. Always did cause trouble.” He sighed and looked up, toward heaven.

  “You mean like embarrassment? With the women and all?” I asked.

  “Oh sure, that. But he also ran up a lot of debt. Made it hard for me keep the business afloat. And heck, I never even wanted to be a dentist. It was him and Mother who wanted the whole dentistry thing. Money, prestige, that sort of thing. I would have been happy opening up a bakery.”

  I asked Bert if he knew who Money Boy was. I’d formed an idea, but I wanted to know straight out if Avonelle knew too.

  He twisted his lips, then rubbed them. “Some con artist Bromley got messed up with.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Oh well, look, like I told you when Veenie was getting the pies, Mother wouldn’t want me to tell you two this, but heck, I’m tired of covering up for Bromley. He darn near ruined me, our family, and the business. And he’s dead now. Mother wants to keep the family name out of scandal, but it’s not right, her letting you get shot at and all.”

  Veenie and I nodded in vigorous agreement.

  I asked Bert to tell Veenie what he’d told me about the California real estate scam Bromley had fallen into.