Oh. I do know her.
“She’s the one who helped us with the plumbing supplies. Cute, too,” Travis says. “Remember?”
“I remember. She was very helpful.”
“She’s our go-to girl anytime we need something home repair-ish,” Travis says. He adjusts his wig.
“We need to put Travis in the booth and see if he works as your butter doppelganger,” Arthur says.
“I feel in touch with my feminine self,” Travis says, swinging his hips from side to side as he walks toward the booth.
“I don’t walk like that,” I call out after him.
“No, but you should,” he retorts.
“He does make a very nice woman,” Arthur says.
Travis stands holding a carving knife behind the glass of the refrigerated booth. We three cock our heads in unison. With the hat and a close shave, Travis makes a pretty good me. The judges only saw me that once, so Travis could pass. Our only problem might be Caroline Swank, but I’m counting on her to be so intent on winning she doesn’t scrutinize Travis.
“I think it’ll work,” Betty says excitedly.
Arthur nods. He looks over at me. “If he’s you, who are you going to be?”
There’s that question again. “I was kind of hoping you could help me out on that one.”
“You need to be a spy without being noticed,” Arthur says.
“Precisely,” I say.
Betty appears to be thinking. “I know! You can disguise yourself as the souvenir seller. We have a girl who normally does it, but she got mono from playing spin the bottle, so we need another one. Otherwise, I was going to have to hire my sister’s son and he’s not reliable, never has been.”
“Sell souvenirs?” I ask. “Like in a booth or at a table?”
“No, dear, you have a box that you carry around, you know like the peanut people do at ball games,” Betty says. She points to a box-like thing resting up against the concession stand that they open up for the butter competition.
“You want me to be like those cigarette girls in the old movies?”
“Yes. Only instead of a dress you wear a costume.”
“What’s the costume look like?” I ask. I sincerely hope it doesn’t have a cape.
“Why a stick of butter, of course,” Betty replies brightly.
Chapter Nine
I’m back in my own kitchen cleaning up Travis’s butter carving tools. Not only am I going to have to wear a butter costume and sell butter trinkets, but I have to wash dishes, too. Travis finished carving a miniature Custer’s Last Stand before he went to work. He was going to be late for work at Burt’s Burlesque, so I offered to do clean up.
I just can’t seem to figure out how I’m going to find Lehane, save the butter competition, and complete my Del Hargrave assignment, all by the end of the week.
All Del seems to do is go around town with a redhead and a black duffle filled with goodies. She doesn’t have a wife or girlfriend according to Veronica, so it’s not adultery. What could Del the mystery client be doing that has Veronica so intent on keeping her tailed? I scrape butter off the spatula and think about the butter case. We’ve got a note warning Lehane to step away from the butter, a cruise that he may or may not be aboard, no ransom note, and no sign of violence. Oh, and a phone-answering parrot. Maybe he really is on that cruise. Or maybe…
That gets me thinking. I pick up my cell phone and call the cruise line again. This time there’s a different voice.
“Yes?” the caller asks.
I inquire as to whether I’ve got the correct number. The woman assures me I do. “I’m checking to see if you have a passenger on board named Lehane Noster.”
“Let me check for you,” the woman says. “I’ll need to put you on hold.”
There’s no muzak while I wait. It sounds more like she’s got the phone up against her shoulder. I hear a bird squawking in the background. It says, “Make my day.”
“Is that a parrot?” I ask.
The woman doesn’t respond. She acts like she either didn’t hear me or doesn’t want to talk about it. “Yes, I have a Mr. Noster right here. He checked in late.”
“How late?” I ask. I’m buying time to see if I can hear the parrot in the background again.
“He barely made boarding.”
“Can I speak with him?”
“Uh…” she says, seeming to decide what her next move is, “It’s really difficult to make ship to shore calls. How about when they hit port I have him call? Would that work?”
“Sure, that’d be great. Just tell him to call London Wells at the Lakeland Police station,” I say.
“Okay. I’ll have him call.” She disconnects quickly.
I’m no genius, but I’m pretty sure Lehane is not on that cruise ship, and I have a pretty good idea that he has left us for the big butter dish in the sky.
I dry and buff Travis’s carving tools. I hear Ivan sneeze. I’ve crammed all the remaining butter into the fridge, turned off the air conditioning, and put on enough heat to get the temp up to seventy degrees. I find Ivan on the couch, bundled up in blankets, shivering. I bet he wishes he had fur right about now.
“I’ll make you some tea.” I make him the decongestant tea Michael bought him from the Silk Road Chinese tea shop.
“Here you go,” I say, holding up the saucer I’ve put the tea on. Ivan doesn’t do cups but licking the tea off the saucer works just as well. He finishes his tea, looks at me pleadingly, and I know exactly what he wants. “Biscuit?”
He yips. I get him more tea and a biscuit. I feel guilty because if the apartment hadn’t been so chilly, he might not have caught a cold. I know, I know, the medical community says a cold is a virus and not caused by low temperatures. All I know is that Ivan was living in a refrigerator and now he has a cold. It’s a case of cause and effect.
I snuggle in next to him and get back to my thinking. I feel like Winnie the Pooh—think, think, think. I’m pretty sure the cruise line is bogus, Lehane is most likely dead, and Del is a nymphomaniac who spends a lot of time in motel rooms, which is not illegal. The Del thing grates on me. Is she a major Christian and somehow having sexual relations all over town would be frowned upon if it got out? Veronica would want to know this. Maybe the mystery here is that Del gets around and Veronica wants to know so she can strategize about how to play this. What I need to know is, what did Del get booked for?
I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. I check the time. It’s only nine-thirty. I call London.
“Are you busy?” I ask when she picks up.
“I’m never too busy for you. I’m still at work but I’m just about done. What’s up?”
“Can I meet you at Burt’s for a drink and an update on Lehane and some fact checking on your end?”
London chuckles. “You need anything else? Besides me?”
I laugh a little. I can’t say a late night cuddle without our clothes on is necessarily a bad idea. “Can you look up what Veronica’s client, Del Hargrave, was booked for?”
“Veronica didn’t tell you that?”
“No, she thinks I need a fresh perspective. She doesn’t want to taint my findings with preconceived assumptions of guilt.”
“Sounds fishy.”
“I know, right?”
“I’ll get a print-out and meet you at Burt’s in half an hour.”
“Perfect,” I say.
It’s always good to have an insider in the police department who has access to certain things. All the best private eyes have one; London is mine.
***
Burt’s is busy tonight. On stage, the dancing girls and drag queens are doing a rendition of a Pink song. Travis smiles when I walk in and waves me over to the bar. Michael is waiting tables tonight. He finger-waves at me, then drops off his drink order at a table, and begins to flirt with the group of older, silvered-haired, moneyed gentleman. I notice that Travis keeps one eye on Michael.
I plant my butt on a stool. “He’s
just making tips. He only has eyes for you,” I say as Travis slides a Yoo-hoo my way.
Travis harrumphs. “What are you doing here?”
“What? I can’t come see my bestie?”
He raises his eyebrows.
“All right, I’m meeting London, so we can go over some case stuff with each other.”
“Oooh, I wanna hear,” Travis says.
“You’re working, and it looks really busy,” I remind him.
Michael comes over with another drink order and Travis is distracted momentarily by his job. “Hi, Jamie. Long time, no see,” Michael says.
I roll my eyes.
Michael leans over and touches his toes. Guys at the bar shift on their stools to get a better view of his ass. He has a dancer’s tush so it’s quite a view.
“Stop that!” Travis hisses. “We’ve discussed your stretching at work.”
“I can’t help it. My hamstrings are seizing,” Michael says. He blows Travis air kisses and prances away with the drink order held high on a tray above his head.
“Can’t you just tell me what you and London are going to talk about? Please,” Travis says putting on his best puppy dog face.
I look around the bar. It’s packed. We’re not going to get a booth. “I think we’ll be sitting at the bar due to the crowd.”
“You’ll be needing a stool then.” Travis looks down the full bar. “Which means someone is going to have to leave. I’ll be right back.” He exits the back door before I can ask for an explanation. Next thing I hear is a car alarm going off outside.
He returns. Travis goes over to one of the bar patrons, leans over and whispers something. The man runs out the door.
“Tell me you didn’t do what I think you did?”
Travis shrugs innocently. “I may or may not have jumped up and down on the bumper of his car, which may or may not have set the alarm off.”
He looks at the guy sitting next to me. He’s morosely studying his Jack and Coke. Travis says, “You know that guy at the end of the bar keeps looking at you. Why don’t you take this on-the-house drink down to him and chat him up? He just can’t stop staring at you.”
Travis pours and sends my seating companion down the way.
London walks in just in time and takes the recently vacated stool next to me. She leans over and gives me a chaste kiss on the cheek.
“What’s your poison?” Travis asks.
“Whatever’s on tap,” London says.
Travis pours her beer. He sniffs his disapproval. She tries to pay, but he waves her money away.
“I couldn’t get us a booth, and Travis wants to be privy to our investigation,” I say.
“It’s all right. He’s part of the team, right? He’s risking his life by stepping into the viper’s nest of butter people,” London says.
Travis makes two gin and tonics and gives them to the guy he sent down to end of the bar. It seems two fellas are getting along. Who knew Travis was such a Cupid?
“My life?” he asks. “Did you say I’m risking my life?”
I guess it hadn’t occurred to him that Lehane is missing because someone wants him out of the way. I saw Caroline checking out Travis-pretending-to-be-me’s practice model of the phoenix from the flame. She wasn’t wearing her happy face either. If whoever is set on her winning thinks Travis is a threat, who knows? It could get risky.
“Hey, who do I gotta blow to get my drink?” a guy calls from the end of bar.
Travis scowls at him. “My penis wouldn’t fit in that tiny mouth of yours.”
London and I look at each other with similar expressions of yuck. “Don’t talk boy stuff around lesbians. It grosses us out,” I say.
“You all are just pussies,” he says.
“Can we stop with the genitalia-shaming already? I get enough of that at work,” London says.
“You a hooker?” the drunk guy at the end of the bar shouts. He elbows the man next to him and they laugh.
London flashes her badge at them. The men quickly clap their traps and look away. She slides a manila folder my way. “That’s all I’ve got on Del Hargrave.”
I open the folder and read the one and only thing in the file—a parking ticket. It’s for parking in a fire lane in front of the pizza parlor on Fifth Street. The parking situation over there is a mess on the weekends because they make the best pizza in town. Veronica and I used to go there every Friday night when we were dating. I wonder if she still goes there? I look up to find Travis and London staring at me.
“Well?” Travis says as he pours a pitcher of beer.
“All she has is a parking ticket. Which begs the question: why would Veronica want me to tail her client? It makes no sense,” I say.
“To you,” London says. “It must make sense to Veronica.”
“Okay, what do you two take away from it?” I ask.
“I personally think Veronica is dating this Miss Del Hargrave and wants to see if she’s cheating on her. She just doesn’t want you to know that because it makes Veronica look like a cuckhold,” Travis says.
That’s a pretty good theory. I look over at London. “What’s your take?”
“That sounds plausible to me. Why don’t you confront Del and ask her?” London says. She sips her beer. She hates Veronica, with good reason: Veronica gets criminals off the hook. London catches them, and Veronica releases them.
It’s a pretty good idea, I decide. I’ve watched her and all she does is sleep around. It’s time for her to face the music. That will be on my to-do list tomorrow. “All right. I’ll confront her and find out what her intentions are concerning Veronica.”
“Moving right along,” London says, sliding her empty glass toward Travis, indicating she’d like another. “I haven’t found anyone who bought a talking parrot. I went to every pet store in Lakeland.”
“Why didn’t you just call and ask?” Travis inquires. He’s always looking for better ways to do things.
“Because sometimes you’ve got to look a person in the face. People can hide over the phone. It’s harder to lie in person,” London informs him.
“Right. I can see that,” Travis says.
“Speaking of phone calls, I got hold of the cruise line again and this time the person I spoke to claims that Lehane is on the boat. They told me he can’t talk because the ship to shore line is sketchy. He’s supposed to call when they get into their next port. How much you want to bet we don’t get a call? The other weird thing, there was a parrot in the background.”
“Did he say anything?” London asks.
“Yep. He said, ‘make my day.’”
Travis puts his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide. “Did the parrot say anything else last time?”
“Yeah, he quotes movie lines.”
“Oh, my god! It’s Lebowitz,” Travis says.
“What makes you think that?” London asks. She sips her beer.
“Because the last time I watched him,” he says, glaring at me, “I taught him movie lines because I couldn’t stand him always saying ‘Gays and Jews.’ Just because he’s a parrot doesn’t mean he gets to be a homophobic anti-Semite.”
“The parrot says, ‘Gays and Jews?’” London asks. “And who’s Lebowitz?”
“He’s the Friedman’s parrot. I look after him if they can’t find a bird-sitter,” I explain.
“And then she pawns him off on me when she’s busy,” Travis says, scowling at me.
“It was only a couple of days,” I say. “Besides, you told me that you two were getting along better.” The first time Travis watched Lebowitz, he almost killed the bird by putting him in the blender. I stepped in just in time.
“Why does the parrot always say, ‘Gays and Jews?’” London asks.
“Because the Friedmans always keep a bug-out bag in the trunk of their car in case they have to make a run for it. Mrs. Friedman suggests that gays do the same thing. Hence Lebowitz thinks it’s his parrot duty to remind us that the world is a hostile place for Gays and Jews
.”
“Is everyone you know weird?” London asks.
Travis and I reply in tandem, “Yes.”
“You should call the Friedmans,” Travis says.
“Why?” I ask.
“To see if they’re out of town and someone is bird-sitting,” Travis says, putting on his best Duh face.
“Good idea,” London says.
It is a terrific idea and why didn’t I think of it? I hate when Travis is a better detective than me. “I’ll call in the morning. They go to bed kind of early.”
“Now we’ve solved two of your problems,” London says, “that leaves Lehane Noster.”
“I’m stuck on that one,” I say. “I mean it’s just a silly first place trophy. Who’d kill a guy over that? Who cares enough to commit murder?”
Travis stares at me again like I’m seriously stupid. “Don’t you know?”
“Know what?” I snap.
“There prize money,” Travis says. “One hundred thousand dollars.”
I stare at him a full five seconds. “Why did no one ever tell me that? It’s called a really good motive.”
“If you’d read the butter brochure like I told you, you would know that,” Travis says.
I ignore him. “Okay, big motive. Who would benefit most by getting rid of Lehane? It looks like the number two carver, Caroline Swank.”
“Damn, right it does,” London says. “I think she and I should have a talk.”
“Will the chief go for that?” I ask. “The police, excluding you, haven’t been interested in the case.”
“I’ll talk him into it. We’ve got some extenuating circumstances now. Especially, since the cruise thing appears to be a ruse,” London says.
“But one thing doesn’t fit,” I say.
“What’s that?” London asks.
“Remember all the sporting equipment we saw at Lehane’s house. He’s a fit guy and he’s pretty big. Caroline might be tall, but she doesn’t weigh more than a hundred and twenty pounds. She’d blow away in a stiff wind. How would she kill a guy like Lehane?”
“Duh,” Travis says. “Rolling pin, big carving knife, garotte. Gun. Need I continue?”
For Butter or Worse Page 12
