Sharpe Wit

by Lisa B. Thomas

  “Not until Monday. Vera bought us ad space in the newspaper and has just about gotten the mailout ready.”

  “Are you having a grand opening? Maybe you should get one of those colorful banners and big blow-up elephants to put out front.” Deena hid a grin behind her mug.

  Gary cut his eyes at her. “Have you been talking to Vera? She suggested the exact same thing.”

  Deena laughed. “Yeah, she told me. I said it was a little over the top for a financial planning business.”

  “Good.”

  “I suggested a clown and magician instead.”

  * * *

  IT MUST HAVE BEEN A slow day because only one visitors’ parking space was taken at the jail. Deena got out of the car and headed toward the entrance, wondering if Kitty was even still going to be there or if she was already home. The wheels of justice didn’t generally turn that fast in Maycroft.

  She went to the front desk and asked to see Kitty Cooper. The older woman behind the glass pane looked as tired as Deena felt. Deena didn’t know her and wasn’t in the mood for a get-acquainted conversation.

  “Are you family?” the woman asked.

  “Um, no. I’m a friend.” That was a stretch, of course, but saying she was a reporter would probably mean a long waiting game. She was ready to get this over with.

  “Sign here,” the woman said and shoved a clipboard toward her. “Have a seat and I’ll let you know if she wants to see you.”

  Deena knew the routine from when she worked for Ian and would visit clients at the jail. She sat down in the waiting area, which looked to have been styled after Outdated & Uncomfortable Magazine. Deena looked at the selection of reading material on the table and opted to pull out her notepad and make a list instead.

  She had been planning a small vacation with Gary but hadn’t decided on a destination. Since Russell and Estelle had gone to Paris, she was getting the itch for a romantic getaway. It would be a hard sell now that Gary was opening his new business, so she would have to plan it, schedule it, and pay for it without him finding out. She’d let Scott know before booking anything so as not to interfere with any major work they might have.

  At the top of her list was Napa Valley. Gary loved wine and they’d often talked about going there. Next was Lake Tahoe.

  “Mrs. Sharpe.”

  Deena looked up to see the receptionist calling her name.

  “You can go back now.”

  The door on the right side of the front desk clicked open. A guard was reading the Tribune outside the visitors’ room door. He put down the paper and stood up as though the effort might break a bone. “Purse, please.” He pointed to the table.

  Deena set down her handbag and took off her blazer.

  “You must be a repeat offender,” he said, taking the jacket from her.

  “Pardon me?”

  He shook it a little, then handed it back. “I just mean you must have been here before since you know the routine.”

  “Oh. Got it.” She started to pick up her things.

  “Hold on a minute. I’ve got to swipe you.” He pulled out the Garrett handheld metal detector from under his chair.

  “That’s new,” Deena said and assumed the position they used at the airport.

  “Yep. Got it about a month ago. Nothing gets past us now.”

  As he waved the wand around her body, Deena recalled hearing about an incident a few months back where a man got in the jail with a bowie knife. He tried to slip it under the door to the area where prisoners were kept, but it got stuck and he was arrested. That’s probably when they beefed up security.

  “You can go on in. Sit at that first window.”

  Deena did as she was instructed and waited for another guard to bring Kitty out. She looked tired and fairly clownish with her pink hair clashing with the orange garb. At least the nose ring was gone.

  They both picked up the phone receivers. Deena spoke first. “How are you doing?”

  It was a fairly innocuous opener. Apparently, Kitty didn’t think so. “How do you think I’m doing? I’m in jail and it’s your fault!”

  Whoa. Deena hadn’t seen that coming. “What do you mean? I didn’t do anything.”

  “You are the only one I told about the money and the ring. You called the cops.” Her eyes glistened with tears and rage. “I’m surprised you didn’t put it in the newspaper. Or maybe you did.”

  “Hold on,” Deena said. “I didn’t tell the police and I didn’t put it in the newspaper.” Yet. Once she told Dan and Guttman, that might change.

  “Liar. If it wasn’t you, who was it?”

  Deena shook her head but then stopped. The only person she had told—besides Gary—was Ian, Edwin’s lawyer.

  Kitty must have sensed something. “Who was it?”

  “I did tell Ian Davis about it.”

  Kitty threw out her free hand. “Who in tarnation is Ian Davis?”

  Deena bit her bottom lip. Should she tell Kitty their conversation was on the record for the newspaper? Who would that help? For one, Kitty would probably clam up on her and storm out. It was never her intention to get Kitty in trouble. Why would Ian have taken such extreme measures to help his client? “He’s your grandfather’s attorney. I thought telling him was helping.”

  “Sure you did. That’s why I can never trust people like you.”

  That one stung. She thought about all the times she had helped Ian set innocent people free. Of course, Kitty wouldn’t know that, and she was probably in no mood to hear Deena defend herself as a seeker of justice. “Look, I can help you. Has your lawyer arranged for bond?”

  “My lawyer is younger than I am and has a unicorn backpack. The judge set bond, but I don’t have the money to pay it. Not even with a bondsman. And—” Tears started to flow but she wiped them quickly from her cheeks.

  “And what?”

  “I can’t get ahold of Clay. He didn’t answer my call and hasn’t come to see me. I talked to one of the guys at work and they said he hadn’t come in. I never thought he’d just take off and leave me. Especially since this whole thing was his idea in the first place.”

  Deena leaned in. “You mean the bank job?”

  Kitty nodded, almost imperceptibly.

  “And what about the man from the park? Was that Clay’s idea too?”

  Kitty nearly swallowed the phone. She looked over at the uninterested guard and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Who told you about that?”

  Deena tilted her head like a scolding parent. “The truth never stays hidden forever. Also, you know this call is recorded, right?” Deena pointed to one of the many signs on the wall.

  Kitty blew out a sigh. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not going anywhere anyway. My grandfather is the only one with five hundred bucks to spring me out of here, and the judge said I was forbidden to contact him.”

  As Deena reached for her checkbook, she stopped herself and remembered the admonition Ian used to give her. If a person couldn’t figure out how to come up with their own bail money, they might just be better off staying in jail awhile until their attorney could work things out.

  But she had another thought too.

  “Maybe I could ask your grandfather for you. I’m sure he wouldn’t want to see you like this. Do you know if he is aware of your arrest?”

  “I don’t know, but I’d hate to worry him. I’ve put him through enough with that whole John Doe situation.”

  “Speaking of that, I want you to tell me the truth about what happened. That’s the only way anyone is going to be able to help you.”

  Kitty didn’t think long before she laid the whole thing out. “I guess you know that we made a plan to go to the bank when our friend Leslie would be able to open the safe deposit box for me. Anyway, I knew Granddad would never agree to stay in the car while we went in. He loved going to the bank to talk to that friend of his. So that’s when Clay found a guy under the bridge who said he’d be willing to go with us if we’d give him a little money. Twenty dolla
rs, actually. Clay arranged for us to pick him up the next day at the park.”

  Everything Kitty said fit the story as Deena knew it from her talk with Tiny. “Did you find out his name?”

  “I didn’t really talk to him,” Kitty said as she twirled the phone cord with her fingers. “Clay said his name was Rocky.”

  “Did Rocky say anything about himself when you were in the car together? Any little nugget of information might help identify the man.”

  Kitty shook her head. “He said he wasn’t feeling that great. He was wheezing a bit.” She stared at the linoleum counter in front of her as though reliving the incident. “Oh yeah. He said something about the doctor telling him he might have an ulcer.”

  “Doctor? Maybe there’s a record of him receiving treatment somewhere recently. We’ll have to check it out.”

  The look on Kitty’s face turned bitter. “I can’t believe the cops still haven’t figured out who he is.”

  “And I can’t believe you had nothing to do with him ending up dead at the Highway Café.”

  Kitty set her jaw. “We didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Then what did happen?”

  She leaned back and gave Deena a long stare. “Are you asking these questions because you want to help me or because you want to put it in the newspaper?”

  That was the one-hundred-thousand-dollar question. Deena wished she had an easy answer. “Look, if I were your attorney, I’d advise you not to talk to me. But since I haven’t told you that this conversation is on the record, I can’t report any of it in the newspaper. It would be unethical.”

  “Ethics.” Kitty spat the word out as though it had a bad taste.

  “I can assure you I won’t write anything in the newspaper without asking you first. But you should know this, I am concerned about what happened to Rocky B., so if you tell me anything, I will probably tell the police.”

  “I knew it! You’re working for the cops.” She slammed the receiver into the cradle.

  “No,” Deena said and exaggerated the word with her mouth. She pointed to the phone.

  Kitty picked it back up hesitantly.

  “I’m not working for the cops. But a man is dead, and his family probably knows nothing about it. He’ll end up in a pauper’s grave, unmourned and unknown unless we do something about it. How would you feel if that was your grandfather and not a stranger?”

  Kitty seemed to consider it. “I guess it doesn’t matter now. But I swear we didn’t kill him.” She took a few deep breaths. “When I came out of the bank, I thought he was asleep. He made a kind of raspy sound. I saw Leslie coming outside and tried to drive off before she got to the car. I didn’t want her to get a good look at the guy in case she’d seen my grandfather at the bank before. We’d put a baseball cap on him, but you could still see his face a little.”

  Deena had assumed Leslie knew about Rocky. “Are you saying Leslie didn’t know that the man in the car wasn’t the real Edwin?”

  “That’s right. She stuffed the ID and bank slip in his shirt pocket, and we left. Clay and I were both relieved she didn’t stick around to talk or anything. I was driving and we headed back toward the park. I made a sharp turn on Boulder Drive—you know where that curb juts out by the Laundromat? That’s when the old guy fell over on top of me. I pushed him back, but he was dead weight—you know what I mean.”

  Deena could relate, remembering the time she’d ended up sitting on a dead man’s lap at a haunted house. “What did you do?”

  “We pulled into the alley and Clay checked him out. When he said the man was dead, I just about threw up. We didn’t know what to do.”

  “I could think of a few things,” Deena said. “Take him to the hospital or call emergency—for starters.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m no Girl Scout, and Clay has a record. At least we didn’t dump him under the bridge.”

  Deena bit her tongue. That hardly earned the woman and her boyfriend a merit badge.

  “We drove back to our place and parked in the carport and put a blanket over him. We waited until the middle of the night and took him to the café and set him in one of those big rocking chairs out front. He was already in a sitting position—if you know what I mean.”

  Deena tried to ignore the picture. “But you forgot something.”

  “Right. We forgot to empty his shirt pocket.”

  “And that’s how this whole mess got started.” Deena tsked at the girl across from her.

  Kitty’s head dropped. “Besides stealing from my grandfather, do you think we did anything illegal?”

  Deena considered the question awhile before she answered. If only Ian were there. “If everything you say is true, I know you have a couple of problems. You might be charged with failure to render aid—”

  “To a dead guy?”

  “Yes. For all you know, he might have been able to be revived. Also, mishandling of a corpse. You can’t just dump a body even if it is in plain sight. And before you say anything else, I strongly advise you to tell all of this to your attorney. She’s the only one who can help you and Clay with this mess.”

  Obviously, the sound of her boyfriend’s name upset her again. Her face was red and worn. She looked ten years older than her thirty years. “Okay.”

  “Time’s up,” the guard said. His eyes were red as though he’d just woken up from a catnap.

  Kitty stood up. “One last thing. Will you try to find Clay for me? Please?”

  Deena found herself nodding as the guard took the receiver from Kitty and hung it up.

  Deena watched as Kitty was led away. What had she gotten herself into now? Not only had she promised not to report on the information Kitty had given her, she wasn’t sure she could trust Ian. That only left Guttman to rely on. And Miss Unicorn, attorney-at-law. Deena would check the court record to see who had been assigned the case.

  But in the meantime, it was her turn to be grilled. She’d have to face Dan and tell him what happened without revealing any information. Maybe she could do it by text. Wasn’t that how all the millennials broke up with each other these days?

  Unfortunately, this wasn’t her boyfriend. It was her boss, and she’d rather talk to him in person than have him accuse her of anything unethical.

  Maybe ethics meant nothing to Kitty, but they meant everything to Deena.

  Chapter 17

  Major crimes only, Deena repeated to herself like a mantra meant to focus and relax a person during meditation. But as she walked into the Tribune building, she felt anything but relaxed.

  Dan waved her in when she knocked on the door to his office, barely looking up at her. Was he avoiding eye contact? What did he have to be nervous about? He was the one who held all the cards in this situation. Unless . . . unless he was afraid she’d quit.

  “Hey, Deena. Whatcha got?” He kept his focus on his computer monitor.

  “I spoke to Kitty Cooper.”

  Dan turned abruptly to her as though she’d passed a test and was now worthy of his attention. “Yeah? Let’s see your notes.”

  “I didn’t take any.” It was all she could do to keep from squirming in her chair.

  “Why not?”

  “Because, like I said before, I want off the story.” She felt her chin lift in defiance and hoped Dan noticed it too. “When I came back to work at the newspaper, you said I would be reporting on major crimes only. This isn’t that kind of case. You should assign it to Crosby or Hollings.”

  Dan stared at her a long moment and then slowly nodded his head. “Yeah, I should probably do that. They’re both hungry and would love to sink their teeth into a story like this. Front-page bylines are like fresh meat to them.”

  Deena knew what he was doing. She wasn’t going to take the bait. “Good. Tell whoever you decide on to call me and I’ll fill them in on the background.” She held Dan’s gaze.

  He swiveled back to his computer. “Yeah, I understand. It’s probably getting a little harder to keep up
the pace these days. You probably want to sit back and enjoy working in your garden and hanging out at the fruit market.”

  “Seriously? Now you’re throwing my age at me?” She jerked up out of her chair.

  Dan shook his head. “Settle down, cutie. I’m not doing any such thing. I’m just trying to understand why a good reporter wants to walk away from a juicy story. It’s got everything—a mysterious stranger, a fishy business dealing, an arrest. Only thing missing is a murder. Is that what you’re holding out for?”

  “I’m not even going to justify that with an answer.”

  “Okay, you win. But don’t be surprised when some of these newer reporters try to steal your beat.” He picked up the phone and punched in some numbers. “Crosby. I need you in my office, now.”

  Deena smiled. She’d won and it felt good, although Dan hadn’t put up much of a fight. She spent the next thirty minutes in a small conference room catching Eric Crosby up on the story, being careful to only include the information that she’d gotten on the record or was public knowledge.

  “Thanks for this,” Eric said, holding up his notepad. “This story might be the break I need to get noticed by some bigger papers. Don’t tell Dan that, though.”

  She left the building knowing why Dan needed her. Few good reporters were willing to stick around a small town like Maycroft when there were bigger markets like Dallas and Houston right around the corner. Dan had always said she was a good writer, but he really liked the fact that she was tenacious when it came to following up on leads. Her gut instincts were good.

  But it was that same gut bothering her now. She missed her job with Ian and got a sinking feeling in her stomach every time she thought about it. Not only that, but she needed to find out why he had filed a complaint against Kitty. If it was him, that is. Had the girl done more to take advantage of her grandfather than she’d admitted to Deena?

  The only way to find out was to talk to him, but that wasn’t her next stop.

  Chapter 18