by Linda Ross
“Speaking of cutting, do you think Kara’s habit of slicing up her lovers might have sent one of them over the edge?”
“It’s highly possible. Maybe she went too far with one of them.”
Frankly, as soon as the knife came out I would consider it too far. And I didn’t really understand what she got out of it. A sense of power? Personally, the only knife I was comfortable with was the one that spread peanut butter. I thought about spreading peanut butter on Jimmy’s face and licking it off.
“What are you smiling about?” Jimmy asked. “You’re not taking this seriously, are you?”
I blushed. “Believe me, I’m taking it seriously.” I cleared my throat. “Did you notice that there were hardly any personal items in Kara’s house?”
Jimmy nodded. “I’m thinking she might have moved in with one of her boyfriends.”
“That should help narrow down the suspects if you can find him.” I took a sip of soda. “The damage to the tree in her yard looked fresh too.”
“There was damage to the front passenger side of her car.”
“So she ran into the tree recently.”
“Looks that way.”
“Anyone home?” Eileen called cheerily from outside the door before she came in. Anyone home? As if she hadn’t seen Jimmy’s car and mine parked outside. I’d been annoyed by her sudden interest in Jimmy, but so far he hadn’t reciprocated. I don’t know why that cheered me up since he seemed only mildly interested in me, our talks over dessert notwithstanding.
“I’ve got a pot of coffee on at the house if you want to come over,” Eileen said, beaming at Jimmy.
“I’d rather have tea,” I said, but apparently the invitation didn’t include me.
“I need to get going,” Jimmy said. He stood and gave me a serious look. “Call me if you decide to do any more investigating. I mean it. This could get nasty.”
He left, and Eileen looked at the pile of cookie boxes on the table. “Maybe I could help with the investigation,” she ventured.
“The only thing you’re interested in investigating is Jimmy,” I said.
Eileen sighed and tossed her hair. “I’ve already got a man,” she said.
“A new one? Who?”
“Ralph McCready.”
I stared at her slack-jawed. “The same Ralph McCready who represented Boyd in my divorce? Are you kidding me?”
“You need to let it go, Aretha. Ralph doesn’t harbor any bad feelings.”
“Well, I guess not. I’m sure he got a tidy sum out of that piece of work. And I ended up with my car. And Ralph even tried to get that for Boyd.”
“It was his job. Nothing personal.”
“It was personal to me. I was just lucky that Gram left me this place after the divorce or I might be living in my car.”
“Some days you’re just impossible to talk to,” Eileen complained. She frowned at the box sitting on the counter. “And if you’d start working on that jigsaw puzzle maybe you wouldn’t eat so much, and then you wouldn’t gain weight.” She flounced out the door and headed back to her own house, leaving me to glare at the puzzle box. Eileen had brought it over a couple of weeks ago, insisting that if I would only work on the puzzle my hands would be too busy to stuff my face. I was tempted to give it back to her and tell her that if she worked on it maybe it would help keep her hands off men.
I swear to God that sometimes I could punch her. I mean, she’s my sister, and most of the time I love her, but she has a warped view of romance. She collects men the way other women collect recipes. She has radar where testosterone is concerned. She’s an addict. I swear to you she keeps a photo of each of her past boyfriends. I’ve seen them in her bedroom. You know how people used to get a sticker for their car in each state they visited? Eileen does the same with men. At least if she was interested in Ralph now, she might not try to add Jimmy to her collection.
With our ten year age difference, I was through with dolls by the time she was ready to play with them. Still, I resented it when she sneaked my Ken doll out of my closet and ensconced him by the jewelry box in her room. It wasn’t that I was particularly fond of Ken. I mean he had better hair than I did and he was plastic, for God’s sake. Most of the time my hair looked like I’d been jumping rope with a chainsaw in one hand. But Ken represented something I was just beginning to appreciate, the male of the species. I guess I thought that if I hung around Ken I might learn what it was that attracted men. I know it’s dumb. Here I thought it was some lofty ideal that men were in search of, and all they really cared about was a pretty face and a perky bosom, not necessarily in that order.
Jimmy had been different, but Jimmy and I knew each other on a pals basis. Bosoms didn’t matter when you were shooting baskets in the driveway.
Thinking about Jimmy was kind of depressing, like when you want a cream-filled donut and the quick shop only has bagels. And no cream cheese. I let Nancy out, then cleaned up the pee when she came back in and squatted at the door. “The rest room is outside,” I informed her, but I figured if she didn’t get that by now she never would.
I still had a good part of the day left, and I sat down with the Sunday comics and a Diet Coke. I ate a few more of the cookies I’d used to pacify Jimmy, but I was feeling restless. I brushed Nancy, and she fell asleep on the couch. I picked up the paper and started reading again.
Hannibal is generally a quiet town. It’s like someone’s grandmother, all quilts, doilies, lavender and elderberry wine, not looking for trouble. Like any other town, we have drugs, but there are no rave parties and nobody gets arrested with a kilo of cocaine. That’s big city stuff.
So I was surprised to see an overdose death on the second page. It was a young woman who was found dead in her apartment the night before. Her name was being withheld until her family could be notified. Police said they found drug paraphernalia in the apartment, along with a wad of cash. The drug hadn’t officially been identified yet, but it was suspected it was fentanyl. Police were warning the public about the dangers of the drug.
I thought it might be something Lorenzo would be interested in, the drug death of a young woman, so I googled the apartment address and came up with a list of names of people who lived there. I picked a woman’s name, Georgia Martinez, and looked up the number in the phone book. A lot of people don’t have a landline anymore, but Georgia did.
I hadn’t practiced a cover story, so I winged it when she picked up. She sounded older, so I told her I was calling on behalf of a local church, and we were worried because one of our parishioners was going to move into the apartment complex. We’d just read about the drug death and worried it wasn’t a safe place for an older woman.
“Oh, it’s not that kind of place,” Georgia assured me. “We never have any trouble. I just can’t imagine that that girl was doing drugs like they say. She seemed such a nice little thing. I mean, we’ve had a few packages go missing, but I guess that happens everywhere now.”
“Did she live alone?” I asked. “We worry about young people entertaining, if you know what I mean.”
“Hominy lived by herself, “Georgia assured me. “I hardly ever saw anyone there. She worked at one of the convenience stores, I think.”
I felt a chill run down my spine. “I really appreciate your time,” I said automatically. “I hope I can call again if I have any more questions.”
“Oh, of course, dear. You tell your friend that this is a lovely place to live.”
As soon as I hung up I searched for my notes. I was hoping I was wrong, but there it was. Hominy. The woman Derek said had come to see Kara. It had to be the same person. It’s not exactly a common name.
It was too much of a coincidence. First Kara was murdered, then this Hominy died of a drug overdose. There had to be a connection. I called Thelma, and as soon as she answered I said, “I think we’ve got a twist in Kara’s murder.” I filled her in on the newspaper story and my call to Georgia in the apartment complex.
“So what do you thi
nk?” I asked.
“I think there’s something really bad going on.”
“I agree. But what do we do about it?”
“You could talk to Jimmy.”
“Are you kidding? He’d just lecture me again.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“Let’s get together at work tomorrow morning and figure something out.” Then I smacked my head. “Oh, crap! I forgot. Lorenzo wants me to do the winter horoscope tomorrow. He left me a note. It’s the one that covers three months instead of just a week.”
“Will that take long?”
“Probably not. Let’s go to lunch together. And don’t say anything to anyone about this.”
“Like my huge social circle?” Thelma asked dryly.
“Look, I don’t know how many nuns and priests you see on a regular basis. For all I know, there could be a wild Bingo party at your apartment right now.”
“Very funny. See you tomorrow.” And she hung up.
CHAPTER FIVE
I guess I could have worked on the horoscope at home, but instead I spent the evening watching a cooking show and eating popcorn and M&Ms. I figure if my life is so boring that my only excitement is watching someone make an omelet on TV, I might as well make the best of it and go for a sugar and salt fix.
When I got to the office the next morning, a box of donuts in hand, Thelma was already there at her desk. I offered her a donut, but she shook her head. “I already had cereal.”
I took a chocolate-frosted long john with custard filling and got a Diet Coke from the machine. I left the box of donuts on the counter near the door, which was akin to fishing. The men nearly came running. The women pretended they were looking for something and just happened to see the donuts. They offered to split one with someone else, and of course they ended up coming back for another one. For a small office, the box emptied in a hurry. I saw Lorenzo grab two jelly donuts and disappear back into his office with a cup of coffee, like a giant groundhog wriggling back into his burrow.
Fortified, I started on the horoscope. On a whim, I looked up Ralph “Greedy” McCready and discovered that his birthday was in August. So Leo was in for a treat this winter. I started with a festering rash in December, just in time for Christmas, and then I threw in a couple of broken bones in January and a bad case of food poisoning on Valentine’s Day. I was starting to feel a lot better.
I moved on to Aquarius, my ex-husband’s sign, and gave him an STD for Christmas, always an appropriate gift, overdue bills in January and pink eye in February. I thought maybe I’d given him pink eye before, so I changed it to massive hearing loss. I was in a really good mood by the time I finished the horoscope and forwarded it to Lorenzo. I grabbed my purse and coat and headed for the door. Thelma followed suit.
“Where do you want to eat?” I asked as we headed down the sidewalk.
We took my car and ended up at a buffet on the main highway. I loaded my plate with fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, biscuits and corn. Thelma had so much salad on her plate that it looked like a conservatory.
“So what do we know about this Hominy?” Thelma asked, carefully blotting her mouth. I noticed that her lipstick was still in place. I had just about cleaned my plate and I’d wager there was corn in my teeth.
“Not much. I looked over my notes again, and Derek said that she had said something about Walmart to Kara.”
“Not much to go on. It could mean just about anything.”
“I don’t think they were planning a shopping trip,” I said dryly.
“You never know. A shopping trip for us might mean something different to them.”
“What? You think they were stealing?”
“Could be. They were certainly into something for both of them to die suddenly.”
We were silent a moment, and I slipped back to the food bar to get some dessert. I couldn’t decide between the carrot cake and cheesecake, so I got one of each. Thelma raised her brows, but didn’t say anything.
“I’m going to go on a diet,” I assured her. “This is my last fling.”
“How many last flings have you had?”
“I’ve lost count.”
“You should start with something easy,” Thelma advised. “Start eating a salad with lunch.”
I looked at her plate and sighed. “I’m not that fond of salads.”
“So try something else. Have some soup with lunch.”
That sounded doable. Especially broccoli cheese soup, one of my favorites. And big slices of French bread slathered with butter always went well with broccoli cheese soup. I could get into this dieting. Dieting. “Yikes,” I said. “Fat Blasters is day after tomorrow.”
“What’s Fat Blasters?”
“It’s this diet group I belong to. We weight every week and then we go out to eat.”
“And this works for you?”
“Well, maybe not as far as losing weight, but the gossip and eating out are fun. Actually, I could probably pick up some information on Kara there.”
“I’m sure you could,” a deep male voice said, and I jumped and looked behind me. There stood Jimmy Burrell, looking annoyed. Thelma wisely kept silent.
“Jimmy,” I said, “what are you doing here?”
Jimmy sat on the edge of my bench seat and nudged me with his leg until I moved over. “I stopped by the Spyglass and Lorenzo said he saw you driving away from downtown. I figured you were heading to lunch. This is the second place I’ve checked.”
“Kudos on your detective work,” I said.
“I only had to look for places with good desserts, which narrowed the field.”
“I find that mildly insulting. True, but insulting.” I tried to subtly move my napkin over the cheesecake, but both Jimmy and Thelma were watching. Jimmy was still looking annoyed.
“What did I tell you about this case?” he demanded.
“That you don’t know who did it?”
I saw his jaw tighten. “That we’re dealing with someone very dangerous and you need to stay out of it. So what did you do?”
“I fortified myself with fried chicken.”
“No, you called the apartment complex where the drug overdose happened.”
Uh-oh.
“How do you know that was me?”
“Really, Aretha? A church with an older member looking to move in there? If that doesn’t have your fingerprints all over it I don’t know what does.”
“All right, all right. I called. I was looking into doing a fentanyl story for The Spyglass. The woman mentioned Hominy’s name and I recognized it from what Derek told us. Is that a crime?”
“It will be if whoever’s behind this comes after you next. I’m serious. Don’t do the fentanyl story. Please. We need to find out what we’re dealing with first.”
“Doesn’t it seem pretty coincidental that right after Kara was killed someone she knew dies of a drug overdose?”
“Not necessarily.” Jimmy reached over and picked a piece of my leftover biscuit off my plate, then popped it into his mouth. “If Hominy was doing drugs, especially fentanyl, it was probably just a matter of time.”
“I don’t buy it,” I said, smacking his hand as he lifted the napkin on my cheesecake.
“Come on. One bite.”
“Not until you give me some information. I don’t play fast and loose with my cheesecake.”
Jimmy sighed. “You drive a hard bargain. All right. There was a connection.”
“Hah! I knew it. So what was it?”
“They both served time in jail in St. Louis several years ago.” He looked at the cheesecake, then at my face.
I pushed my dessert fork over to him. “Okay, that’s pretty interesting. What were they in jail for?”
“Hominy for drugs and Kara for embezzling and theft.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “That’s good cheesecake.”
“What exactly did Kara do?”
“She stole money from the place where she worked, and she had a little side busine
ss going as a porch pirate.”
“As in where someone grabs a package off someone’s porch?”
Jimmy nodded and forked in another big bite of cheesecake. “Apparently she would follow the UPS truck around and pick up packages as soon as they were delivered. She was caught when some old lady was slow getting to the door to get her package and Kara thought she wasn’t home. She saw Kara. Kara ran for her car, but the woman was pretty sharp. She had a camera handy and snapped a picture of her and her car. After Kara was arrested, her employer noticed irregularities in the books and there was an investigation into that.”
“Where were they incarcerated?” Thelma asked.
“St. Louis County Jail in Clayton. Kara was there two years and Hominy one.”
“So they served time together and both ended up here in Hannibal,” Thelma said. “That does seem more than coincidence. Do you think they were doing something similar here?”
“We haven’t found anything,” Jimmy said. “Not yet anyway.”
“Maybe they stole something from the wrong person,” I suggested. “And it got both of them killed.”
“We don’t know that the overdose wasn’t an accident,” Jimmy said, his mouth full of cheesecake.
“It’s too much of a coincidence,” I said, looking at Thelma. “Too convenient for someone.”
“And the deaths were so close together,” Thelma said. “Someone wanted them both gone in a hurry.”
Jimmy put the fork down, looking a bit surprised that he had finished off the cheesecake. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “But don’t write about any connection between Hominy and Kara. We don’t want that to be public yet.”
“Okay,” I said. “But you have to keep us posted on what’s going on.”
“Maybe.” He slid out of the booth and left, leaving me to stare at my empty plate. I looked longingly at the dessert bar, and Thelma said, “Nunh-uh. You’ve had enough, Dumpling.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right.” I always had room for more dessert, but that upcoming Fat Blasters weigh-in was putting a damper on my appetite. Even the carrot cake didn’t seem that appealing at the moment.