Courting Murder

by Bill Hopkins

enforcement. Your arrest powers come from the court, which is me.” He pointed to his chest.

  “My arrest powers,” Frizz said in a low, growling tone, “come from the voters who put me in office.”

  “Bull crap.” Slamming his palm on the desk again didn’t seem advisable since the first time he’d done it had sent a shriek of pain through his wounded arm. He’d managed not to scream. “Do you want to see the Supreme Court cases that back up my position?”

  “Let’s have the bitch session later.” Frizz swept off his big cowboy hat, peered inside as if divining a secret message from the cosmos. After slapping the hat a couple of times to loosen dust, he screwed it back on his head. “We can argue on down the road.”

  Inhaling at the wrong time, Rosswell sucked in some of the dust, leaving a scratchy taste that made him sneeze twice.

  Rosswell said, “Now would be a good time to air our laundry to see if it’s dirty.”

  “Damn it, let’s do that.” Frizz picked up a pencil, licked its end, and wrote something on a paper. Rosswell wanted to remind the sheriff he didn’t know where the pencil had been but decided instead to listen to Frizz. “Don’t you find it odd that no one has reported two people missing?” He made a check mark. For a long minute, he scribbled, the pencil moving on the paper making a scritching sound. “That’s odd thing number one.”

  “Yes, I find that odd. That’s why I asked you about it when I first came in. Hermie may’ve made a connection.”

  “A connection for what?”

  “Hermie saw a white Cadillac leave the park. A big driver. I know several people with white Cadillacs, but none of them are big people. But someone besides the owner could’ve been driving the car.”

  “You know them?” Frizz licked the end of the pencil. “Who are these people who own white Cadillacs?”

  “Ambrosia Forcade, Turtles Rasmussen, Susan Bitti, and Trisha Reynaud. You know all of them.”

  “I never see Ambrosia. She must practice some kind of law that doesn’t involve going to court.”

  “Estate planning. On occasion she’ll show up in probate court, but she doesn’t represent criminals.” Rosswell coughed. “Sorry. Alleged criminals.”

  Frizz snapped his fingers. “Turtles is a guy I’ve wondered about.” He pulled a file from a cabinet. “The guy likes to spend money, but I don’t know where he gets it.” The sheriff ran his finger down a paper. “He’s got to be a con artist, but I’ve not been able to pin anything on him.”

  “Maybe he owns a whorehouse in Nevada.”

  Frizz sputtered. “Where did you get such a ludicrous idea?”

  Rosswell evaded the question. “And Susan?” The time didn’t seem right to tell Frizz that he’d recently seen a special on the History Channel about sex workers in Nevada who helped the mob launder money.

  “Susan is dull as day-old dishwater,” Frizz said. “If she’s our killer, then I’m returning the couch I bought from her.”

  “Trisha?”

  “Bankers are always taking trips. They never want anyone to know where they’re going.” Frizz replaced the file folder in the cabinet. “None of them have been reported missing.”

  “That doesn’t mean they’re not gone.”

  “If someone were missing around here, why haven’t they been reported?” He wrote again. “Question number two.”

  “Sheriff, are we playing twenty questions?”

  “Indulge me.”

  Rosswell said, “You told me I’d been fired.”

  “Shut up and listen.” Frizz scribbled something. “You won’t leave, so I’m going to pick your brain.”

  “That’s a sordid cliché.” The phone rang and Frizz chatted for a few minutes. When he hung up, he said to Rosswell, “Are you going to talk to me or not?”

  “First thing I can think of is that the victims were not from around here. We have a fair amount of folks from other places come through here. Maybe they were driving along with the murderer, got in a big fight, and whoever it is killed them.”

  “And they took a detour to the park first?” Frizz laughed. “That doesn’t make sense. You don’t drive through the park going somewhere. You have to find the park. It’s way out in the boonies and someone who’s never been there could easily get confused trying to find it.”

  Rosswell stood and paced. “Let’s reverse that scenario and assume that the victims and the murderer—”

  “Or murderers.”

  “—were locals. All three or however many of them there were.” Pacing helped Rosswell think. It made him feel like he was back in his early days as a lawyer, giving a closing argument to a jury.

  “Then why isn’t someone around here reporting someone else as missing?”

  “There could be several reasons.” Rosswell lifted an index finger. “Maybe the dead people were supposed to be on vacation and no one’s thought to check on their whereabouts.” He raised a second finger. “Maybe no one likes the victims and there are a bunch of people around here who are glad they’re gone.” He raised a third finger. “Maybe someone knows these folks are missing and they’re not telling.”

  “That’s what I really need to know.”

  “What?”

  “I need to find out which one of your three maybes is correct. Or perhaps a fourth or fifth maybe I haven’t thought of.” Frizz, still sitting, slid further down in his chair. “I don’t know where else to start.”

  Rosswell knew exactly where to start.

  Frizz said, “Go home. Your brain is empty. And, remember, you’re not a cop.”

  Rosswell walked home, showered, shaved, and put on fresh clothes. Since he was now sober, he drove Vicky to Merc’s. That was the where to start. But how to start? He didn’t have the foggiest notion how he was supposed to find out who the corpses were when they didn’t have any corpses. All he knew was that one was male and one was female. That narrowed it down to several thousand people within a hundred miles. Time to go fishing.

  When Rosswell sat next to Ollie, the snitch sniffed and pinched his nose. “You still look like shit.”

  “I’m really tired of your telling me that.”

  “Then, if I were you, I’d start trying to improve myself.”

  “I don’t stink. I took a shower.”

  “How’s Tina?”

  “Stoned and sleeping. She’s barely got a scratch on her, but the anesthesia put her under.”

  “Somebody’s a lousy shot.”

  “Yep.” Trying to ignore a sheen of grease on the table, Rosswell

  filled Ollie in on the detective discussion between Frizz and him. “And, more good news, you’re now my official sidekick.” With a napkin he’d plucked from the dispenser, Rosswell wiped the table.

  “Unadulterated bullshit. I’m not going to irritate Frizz so you can play Sherlock Holmes. And, if we did play that game, I sure as hell wouldn’t be Watson. I’d be Sherlock’s brother Mortimer.”

  “Mycroft,” Rosswell said, proud as a peacock in heat that he knew some trivia Ollie didn’t.

  Mabel appeared. “Usual?” She held up the order pad, pencil at the ready.

  “Mabel,” Rosswell said, “I need to know something.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  Ollie said, “Now, honey, you know lots of stuff. Judge here just wants to pick your brain.”

  Mabel blessed Ollie with a dirty glare. “You know how revolting that cliché is? Would you want someone picking your brain? What do you pick brains with anyway? Toothpicks? I mean, brainpicks? And you can’t pick someone’s brain unless their skull is gone. What do you do with brain pickings? Eat them? What do they taste like?”

  Mabel was a woman Rosswell admired as much as a dog loves a steak.

  Ollie laughed. Rosswell half-expected his daughter—Rosswell still assumed she was Ollie’s daughter—to grace them with a squeak, but instead she kept the glare on her daddy. She’d inherited from Ollie the ability to cast dirty looks accompanied by biting sarcasm.

  “Mabe
l,” Rosswell said, “you’ve got a regular crowd here, don’t you?”

  “I could name you a whole list.”

  “Is there anyone missing?”

  “Missing?”

  “Yeah,” Ollie said, snagging the drift of Rosswell’s questions. “Is there anyone who should’ve come in during the last couple of days but didn’t?”

  Mabel angled toward Ollie and Rosswell and whispered, “This is about those murders, ain’t it?”

  “Yes,” Rosswell whispered back. “You’re quick.”

  Ollie said, “Two people are dead. A man and a woman, yet no one’s been reported missing.”

  She tapped her pencil against her teeth. A disgusting habit. “You know, Mr. Dumey never came in today. He always comes in every day.”

  “Elmer Dumey?” Rosswell asked.

  “No,” Mabel said. “Johnny Dan Dumey, Elmer’s boy. Elmer’s up in the nursing home. Seven Pines, up on the hill.”

  Ollie said, “We know where it is.”

  She snapped, “Never hurts to be clear when you’re talking to someone.”

  Rosswell tried to place Johnny Dan. Since he’d never been arrested or had never sued anyone, Rosswell didn’t recognize the name right off. He took an educated guess. “Isn’t he the guy with a mechanic shop down from the courthouse?” Rosswell had seen the man lots of times, yet had never spoken to him. Then Rosswell made the connection. Johnny Dan was the guy who collected muscle cars. How often Rosswell had lusted after those cars at his shop. “The muscle-car guy?”

  “The same,” Mabel said.

  Ollie said, “Healthy dude. Big shoulders. Blue eyes. Short brown hair. Doesn’t say much. Knows everything about cars.”

  Rosswell said, “How do you know him so