by Tyler Colins
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “Where would you like to go?”
“Evan's Bar-Stop is the closest, just a couple of blocks away.”
“Sounds good,” Gail responded, gesturing. “Let's go hoist a couple of pints.”
“I prefer red wine.”
“Really?” Rey looked bemused.
“Yeah, really. I was a wine merchant in another life.”
* * *
Evan's Bar-Stop was a long and narrow bar on a side street near the agency. We'd only been in the dim venue once, when we first settled in but, as Linda had wryly stated, it wasn't our cup of tea. The décor was dark and drab, the libation selection limited, and the evening crowd a bit rough-and-tumble. Beer was a safe bet; wine not so much.
It was just after midnight on a Friday night and the bar—watering hole, as Rey had muttered on the walk over—held three dozen heavy-duty drinkers. After placing an order, we settled into cheap ladder-back chairs at a window table; a round of beers and glass of red wine quickly found their way over.
“You hungry?” Rey asked Timmy-Tom's milk-pod fuzzy eyebrows, which she couldn't cease staring at.
I kicked her under the table.
He waved to a middle-aged, similarly attired couple who could have been Jack Sprat and his wife. “I could go for a basket of wings and fries. They're pretty decent here.”
Rey got the attention of the sole waitperson, a toothy, kindly-faced fellow named Ched. He resembled a leprechaun: short and springy (that he was dressed in five shades of green and sported shamrock-shaped glasses was neither here nor there).
Once a food order had been placed, Timmy-Tom asked, “What can I do for you?”
“Where you around when the fire broke out?” I eyed the watered-down beer warily, pretty sure the four of us were on the same page (doubting the place could win any cleanliness contests).
He sampled the strawberry-colored wine and, leaning back, relaxed with a contented sigh. “I was at the rear of the first gallery when the trucks arrived. There's a little alcove, or used to be. I was eating dinner.”
“Was that long after the fire broke out?”
“Not long,” he drawled, scanning the bar. “I hung around for a while, thinking they'd get it under control, but it soon became obvious they were going to lose the fight.”
Linda sniffed her beer like Button might a potential pal in the park.
“Do you know Carlos or James-Henri, the gallery owners?” Rey asked.
“By sight.”
“I'm guessing you didn't see much, if you were in the alcove,” Gail put forth.
“I walked around some before dinner.” He eyed her curiously, as if he might have known her once upon a time, shrugged, and finally continued. “I saw people exit and enter the galleries. A couple were really pie-eyed. It must have been a helluva good time.”
I pulled out my cell and showed him a photo of Lolita/Mary-Louise. “Ever seen her?”
He studied it for a full minute. “Twice. The first time was maybe a week before the fire. The lady all but bolted from the back of the gallery, looking fit to be tied. The second was the night of the fire. She looked different … all fancy, with her hair in an updo.”
“Tell us what you saw,” I requested with a coaxing smile.
He smiled sheepishly. “To get to the side street, I needed to walk past her and the person she was with. I didn't want to intrude or scare them, so I waited in the shadows, figuring they weren't sticking around long.”
“Person?” Rey asked excitedly.
“She and the guy she was with were talking under their breaths, like they didn't want to be heard, but there was an urgency about the way they talked and moved their hands and arms.”
“As if they were angry?” I prodded.
“Angry or anxious, or maybe both.” He nodded to Ched when he placed cheap cutlery and paper napkins on the scarred table. “How's the family, my friend?”
“Very well. Always good to see you, Timmy-Tom.” Smiling impishly, Ched offered a salute and ambled off.
“Can you tell us who the guy was—”
Rey never finished the question. Like a melon hitting pavement at full velocity, Timmy-Tom's shattered head contacted the table with a loud thud. It was an awful sound and an even awfuller, uh, sight.
Dumbfounded, Rey and I peered from the gory mess to each other and back again.
“Damn.”
“Frig.”
Gail, on the other hand, had enough sense to soar out the door in hot pursuit of Tommy-Tom's killer.
* * *
Seated at the narrow bar was Ald's colleague, haggard-looking Detective Devoy Hunt. Apparently, it was proving a crazy-busy night for crimes and they'd run low on personnel. He'd been abruptly awakened from the first night of sound sleep in a week; needless to say, the fleshy forty-four-year old was not amused.
“Run it by me one more time,” he requested wearily, scratching a stubbly chin and holding up an empty cup.
A barkeep of indiscriminate age hastened from the end of the bar with a half-filled coffee pot.
“Your turn,” I instructed Rey.
She rolled her eyes and began from the beginning while Gail and I got up to stretch legs. We strolled to the front door as the medical examiner arrived … followed by a familiar looking Audi A5 coupe.
“Trouble's here.”
Gail sighed. “Ald's so not going to be happy.”
“I can hear it now.”
Sporting five-o'clock shadow, he stomped past legal sorts and stopped a foot from us. Lips taut, he looked from me to Gail with a glower. “Et tu?”
She held out hands in a what-can-I-say gesture.
“I didn't know you were into The Weeknd,” I said cheerily, referring to an oversize T-shirt half tucked into Diesel jeans.
“Never mind,” he grumbled, running a hand through uncombed hair. “The three of you—uh, four—are evolving into major trouble.”
“Trouble? Us?” I feigned humbleness.
“You, Fonne, are becoming more and more like that annoying cousin of yours.” Glancing at the bar with a scowl, he gestured. “Go park your asses over at the far end. I've got catch-up to do.”
Gail and I exchanged weary looks, and did as instructed.
She nodded sideward. “Rey's not too thrilled.”
“Are any of us?” I asked jadedly.
Hunt and Ives conversed while Rey, eyes narrowed in irritation, continued looking from one to the other like a basement ping-pong observer.
“Coffee? Made a fresh pot.” The rugged-faced barkeep's plump lips pulled into a tired smile as he leaned into the bar.
“That'd be great, thanks. Milk in both,” Gail replied with a gracious smile. “Are you Evan?”
“His cousin, Ralph.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Yeah, sure.” With a wink, he moved to the coffee machine.
“Too bad no one can offer a description about the shooter or car,” Gail said once we had coffees.
“You can.”
She shrugged. “It happened fast. I saw the tail end of a black car, no lights on. It could have been a Passat, a Prius, or Optima, or any other number of midsize cars. It was hard to tell in the shadowy night.”
“One thing we do know: there were at least two people involved. A driver and a shooter.”
“Given it was an AR-15 type weapon, the shooter had to have been standing to make the kill shot.”
I stared past a dingy window onto a street rife with flashing bright lights, police, and a couple of quick-on-the-draw reporters, and envisaged the event. “Or leaning into the car for support.”
“My guess is that he or she was a solid marksman and took an athletic stance, fired, then leaped into the car.”
“Obviously the killer knew Timmy-Tom had seen him or her with Lolita. But why wait until now to silence him?”
“There might not have been an opportunity previously. He only returned to the gallery a couple
of days ago.” Slim fingers drummed the bar. “It's quite possible they were following us.”
“And lucked in when we invited Timmy-Tom here.” I glowered. “But why shoot him now?”
“Maybe they wanted us to be around.”
“To provide a warning?”
She smiled dryly. “Maybe.”
“We have too many maybes again.” I took a sip. “Ugh. This is the worst coffee, bar none.”
She sampled it and smirked. “It'll corrode a stomach layer or two, but I've had worse.”
“They lucked in, getting him before he could reveal anything.”
“Do they know that?”
I scanned Gail's pretty face. “If they suspect Timmy-Tom told us something, then I'm guessing we're next.”
“If they think we know something, then they'd also know we'd share it with the police while here with them.” She smiled drolly. “I haven't seen a black midsize return, so I'm going to assume—yeah, yeah, no lecture—that they believe he didn't have a chance to share anything.”
“Then they'll wait to see what happens.” I took another sip. Double ugh.
“Or they'll run, to be on the safe side.”
I stared into tar-black coffee. “I hope they don't know about Doris—”
Rey jumped before us, “Hives says we can leave, but he—”
“Wants us in his office at eleven,” I finished with a lackluster smile.
“If you decide to stop being a private eye, you've got a job as a psychic.”
Gail and I chuckled, and the three of us wended our weary ways outside.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Despite sunrise being around the corner, Rey and I were energized as we ambled into my condo. Pensively, I gazed at the kitchen counter and into the living room, and exhaled loudly with relief.
“Given the way Lover Boy left, did you really think he'd return?”
“No.” I smiled dryly and looked at three fuzzies in the foyer. “But never say never.”
She grinned. “I think we've been missed, Cousin Jilly.”
“So it appears, Cousin Reynalda.”
“Breakie or walkies?”
“Gauging by the kids' forlorn looks, food's first.” I moved into the kitchen to prep three plates.
“Thanks for letting me crash here.”
“No worries.”
She patted Bonzo when he plopped onto her left foot. With a twitch of the whiskers in thanks, he sprang onto the seagrass chair and watched.
Desiring attention as well, Piggaletto flopped onto her feet. Arms crossed, she waited for him to move.
“He ain't going anywhere, hon.”
Rey stuck out her tongue and with an exaggerated woebegone sigh, gave his head a playful scratch.
Laughing, I placed heaping plates in three different locations: the chow-down had officially begun.
“It's almost not worth going to bed, given I have to walk Button and then do the usual morning routine.”
“I don't have to do anything, so I'm crawling into bed until nine.”
“You've got a pig to walk.”
“You can take 'em both.”
“If I can't sleep, cousin dear, you can't sleep.”
Slim hands flew to equally slim hips.
“Make yourself useful and put on a pot of coffee.”
“Bitch.”
I winked. “Life's been known to be that”
With a remarkably loud water-buffalo snort, she stomped across the kitchen.
* * *
“This is becoming a really bad habit.” With a glower, Ald flung an empty coffee cup into a battered army-green receptacle and perched himself on the armrest of a small sofa where Rey and I rigidly sat.
Lucky Gail. She only had to put up with a three-minute lecture; my cousin and I had received a ten-minute one. Our friend's had been firmly but patiently delivered, ours anything but. Though the two of us had nodded and uh-huhed, the three of us knew the reprimand had fallen on deaf ears. Rey and I were private investigators who followed leads wherever they went.
With a stern gaze, he folded arms like a lecturing parent. “What trouble do you plan to get into today?”
“We plan to close a real-estate deal,” Rey replied airily. “Then we're back on the trail.”
“What trail is that, Ms. Fonne-Werde?”
She offered a sassy smile. “It ain't the Trail Mix kind.”
Before he could retort, I asked, “What was Lolita Renoir wearing the night of Carlos' do?”
“You mean the former Mary-Louise Crabtree?”
I nodded.
“I hadn't seen her that night or I'd have mentioned it when we first talked about her as Victim #2.”
I watched with a wary eye. “Would you have?”
It was his turn to offer a sassy smile.
“Come on, Ald, it's important.”
He exhaled at length. “I'm not lying. If she was there that night, she was in another part of the gallery. Our paths didn't cross. I'd been cornered by Mrs. Geltschein-Smithers, socialite and money-bags extraordinaire. Fortunately, champagne flowed frequently enough to dull the painful tedium of having to listen to the incessant details of her 'personal little in-house Black Point gallery'… You ask, why?”
Rey and I looked at each other.
“Just spit it out.” Hopping to his feet, he moved to the desk and sat on the corner, a favored spot.
Rey smiled haughtily. “We found something you guys didn't.”
“And you decided to keep evidence?” he asked caustically. “Again?”
“What's with again—”
“Will you two knock it off?” I groused, rubbing my temples. “My headache is developing into a migraine.”
Rey and Ald's foreheads furrowed as they looked at each another, then me.
“Do you have any leads who blew off half of Timmy-Tom's head?” I asked curtly. With no sleep, I was definitely leaning toward tetchy.
“Not yet,” he replied with equal terseness. “Anything you'd like to share … for once?”
Rey and I simply stared.
“What did you find?” he asked flatly.
Rey and I continued to bear deadpan expressions.
Rigid fingers ran through a James-Dean coif. “Prett-ty please.”
Rey jostled my arm. “Almost said with sincerity.”
I nodded. “Let's trade—information for a potential clue.”
He rolled his eyes. “What's the potential clue and what do you want to know?”
Gail was pursuing the two banks re Lolita's bank cards today, but it would be interesting to hear what Ald had uncovered. “The key you took from me at Carlos'—what did it unlock?”
“A safety deposit box, but you already knew that,” he said gruffly.
Rey crossed her arms. “Come on, Hives, spill it.”
He narrowed his eyes and looked at me. “I'm still waiting for two dinners. You owe me—big time.”
“I'll call later with a time for tonight. We can meet at the restaurant.”
“It had better be five stars.”
“Deal. Now, spill it.”
The eyes narrowed even more. “There were documents in the box.”
“Such as?”
“Insurance policies. One for Carlos and one for Bizz Waxx.”
Rey and I exchanged quick glances.
“Who were the beneficiaries?” she asked.
He stared for several seconds, as if debating whether to divulge. “Carlos had two: James-Henri and an art college. Bizz Waxx had appointed James-Henri's step or half, or whatever sister, Cholla Poniard.”
This time my cousin and I eyed each other, the same thought undoubtedly going through both minds: why would Lolita have Carlos' policy?
She inquired about the other documents.
“Primarily receipts of art sales made at galleries here and on the Mainland, and a couple of journals with names of pieces and patrons.”
Rey offered a saccharine smile. “Names of galleries?”
“The name that appeared most often was Galerie Couteau.” Slowly, he looked from her to me. “Now, what do you have?”
I held up a small plastic bag containing the pink-and-black gold heart.
* * *
Rey and I stuck around until Gail could leave for lunch. At a small take-out shop, we grabbed chicken-salad sandwiches, raw veggies with dip and sodas, and parked ourselves on a park bench.
“I'd better call Ald before I forget.” I'd lucked in with a dinner reservation with the fifth five-star restaurant, but only because someone had called moments before to cancel theirs.
Ald wasn't answering so I left a message. “We have a table for eight at Roy's Waikiki. Feel free to order the wine—your choice—if you arrive early.”
“That's very generous,” Gail said.
“What if he goes for a $500 bottle?” Rey asked with a frown.
“Let's hope it's a great year,” I winked. “We do owe him.”
With a shrug, she unwrapped veggies. “So, Gail-kins, tell us what you learned.”
“Your former queenpin had accounts at both banks.”
Rey chomped a celery stick. “Under what name?”
“A variation of the name at death: L. R. Frida.”
“That gal must have had a whack of fake IDs,” Rey commented dryly.
“Not difficult to get, given her past.” I turned back to Gail. “What can you tell us about the accounts?”
“One had $25,000 deposited into it last February and was never touched. I'm guessing it served as an emergency or slush fund. The other account was opened last June. It had erratic deposits in different amounts, probably art sales and commissions made, but in between those deposits—on the 18th of every month—were $3,500 deposits.”
Excited, Rey grabbed Gail's arm. “Who wrote the checks?”
“The name on the checks belong to CK Enterprises, a shell company.” She smiled. “I've got a marker in.”
Rey gave a thumb's up. “And you're checking into the $25,000, too?”
“Of course.”
Another thumb's up. “What about her laptop? Any luck?”
Gail pointed a carrot stick. “That woman was meticulous. She cleaned house regularly. Titled folders and files were methodically arranged and none were older than sixteen months. There were records and reviews of exhibits, art sales, weekly schedules, and marketing plans. Nothing of real note, though. But I'll take another gander. I may have missed something.”