Then Nona said, “Mr. Sutter received two visitors that evening. Zelda doesn’t know their names, but one was that lady who runs the Historical Preservation Society, and the other was a tall man with short dark-blond hair, about forty, who Zelda thinks might be a relative of that Sutter guy.”
Evelyn and Gavin. Interesting!
“This is important, Zelda,” I said to the chair. “Did they come together, or separately? And at what time? Also, what was their demeanor? Normal? Angry? What was your impression?”
A full minute passed. I resisted shaking the chair to get her to talk.
Finally Nona said, “Zelda says they came separately. The woman first, at about eight o’clock. The man later, maybe nine or nine-thirty. They each stayed about fifteen or twenty minutes. The lady seemed upset when she came out, and the man looked mad when he left.”
I was digesting that information when the door opened and Tony strode in. As usual in work mode, he wore a tan trench coat flung over his usual light blue shirt, navy striped tie, gray slacks, and brown shoes.
By the chief’s befuddled expression as he took in his surroundings, I was able to deduce he’d never been inside Cinders before.
He spotted me and walked over.
“Chief Cassato,” I said. “I’d like you to meet Nona.”
He nodded at the woman. “Nona,” he said.
“And this,” I went on, gesturing to the empty chair, “is Zelda. Say hello.”
Tony looked at the chair. Tony’s mouth dropped open. Finally a word came out of it: “Hello.”
A few moments later, Nona said, “She says ‘hi’ to you, too, Chief. She says she’s a fan.”
“. . . Thank you?” Tony, barely hiding his impatience, said to me, “Ah, Vivian—you wanted to talk to me?”
I downed the rest of my Shirley Temple.
“In the back,” I said, and slid out of the bucket chair.
As he walked with me, he said, “What was that about?”
“Are you familiar with the movie Harvey? That wonderful, whimsical Jimmy Stewart vehicle?”
He frowned. “That invisible white rabbit thing?”
“That’s right. While Zelda is invisible, she isn’t a pooka. The pooka, like Harvey the big white rabbit, appears here and there, now and then, to this one and that one. We’re talking tulpa here.”
“So Zelda’s not a pooka. She’s a tulpa.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s Nona who’s the tulpa. Do try to keep up. Zelda is my new informant.”
Tony said, “Your new informant is an invisible woman.”
But then so many women in our society are invisible, aren’t they? I decided not to share this pithy observation with the police chief. I mean, he wasn’t even ready for a tulpa yet, was he?
“That’s right, Chief.” So difficult to stop calling him “Chiefie,” but then as sheriff I did need to maintain a certain decorum. “Do you find the notion of an invisible informant surprising?”
“Vivian,” the chief said, massaging his forehead with the fingertips of his left hand, “nothing you say or do anymore surprises me.”
“Headache, dear? Tough day?”
“About average if long,” he said slowly. “This headache just came on all of a sudden.”
We had paused before a beaded-curtained doorway.
“I always travel with pain medication,” I said. “What do you want? Aspirin, ibuprofen, acetaminophen, naproxen . . .”
“Do you have any Tylenol in a tampered-with bottle?”
“Oh, Chiefie, you’re a card! Sorry. That was a slip.”
He sighed. “Where are we headed? How far back does this thing go?”
“This way. Making progress!”
We went through the beads into the next room, which contained an assortment of vintage arcade games—Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Super Mario Bros. The walls were plastered with 1980s movies posters—The Empire Strikes Back, Ghostbusters, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (Jake’s favorite movie to watch when he’s home sick).
A bamboo-strung archway took us into a third room, this one with a Mexican theme—tuck-and-roll upholstered car bench seats, Day of the Dead figurines, and colorful sombreros and serapes.
I parted red velvet curtains and we entered the last room, which was rather small and intimate, with only two options for sitting: a small couch in the shape of red lips, and a chair fashioned as a large black high-heeled shoe. The remainder of the space was taken up by fake palm trees whose branches were filled with an assortment of stuffed monkeys.
Tony looked at me, eyebrows raised. “Really? Whatever happened to good old-fashioned deserted underground parking lots?”
“I thought we’d be more comfortable here,” I said, and gestured to the seating. “Take your pick.”
Tony took on the lower lip, apropos as he himself had a pouting lower lip at present, while I perched on the toe of the stiletto.
Waving his arms a bit, he said, “Vivian, what the hell is this about?”
An orange orangutan he’d knocked loose fell onto him, and he tossed it back up into the tree, where it didn’t stay, so he sighed and just sat there with it on his lap.
I said, “Chief, I’m beginning to suspect a conspiracy between a number of people who may benefit from the mansion fire.”
Tony frowned. “Any proof?”
“None at the moment—as Nero Wolfe says, ‘It’s merely conjecture.’ But you know how right he always was!”
The chief was studying me much as I had studied Zelda’s chair. “You came to this conclusion from your interviews today?”
“Yes. With Gavin Sutter, Evelyn Snydacker, Benjamin Wentworth, and Cliff Reed.”
“Fill me in,” he said.
“Okay, but we should start at the beginning. And this begins with the vase.”
“What vase?”
“The Tiffany lava vase that was always in the entryway of the Wentworth mansion . . . only when I entered that hell-fire inferno, it no longer was!”
“. . . I think I will have some aspirin.”
“Plain? Or ibuprofen, acetaminophen, or—”
“Anything!”
I located my zipper pocket pharmacy in my jumpsuit and handed him two naproxens. He popped them into his mouth and swallowed.
“I couldn’t do that without water,” I marveled.
“Vivian? I’ve had a long day. So, please, please . . . keep it simple.”
“I will give it my very best shot.” I took a deep breath. “When I went to see James the day of the fire, the vase was on the table in the entryway, but when I ran into the burning mansion that night it was gone. A vase just like it showed up on the internet for sale at a store in Chicago, and I had someone check it out. It was sold to the store by an individual named Alek Wozniak, who just happened to have served his sentence for robbery in the same prison at the same time as Leon Jones, the one-time janitor of the Playhouse, who has since apparently absconded.”
Tony was looking at me intently. “That was really very good, Vivian. Why can’t you do that all the time?”
“Do what?”
He petted the monkey absently. “Never mind. Do you think Leon was involved?”
“Maybe. He could have been helping Miguel with the painting job at the mansion and gone back that evening, helped himself to the vase, and planned on fencing it through his old prison cohort.”
The chief was nodding. “And then got surprised by James, and killed him, and set the fire for a cover-up. But that doesn’t explain the other dead body.” He paused. “What’s the vase worth, anyway?”
“Eighty thousand,” I said, “give or take a thousand or ten. At auction? More. So, fencing it . . . half of that estimate? And, maybe other things were taken. Possibly by other people involved in raiding the place of more precious, valuable antiques.”
Tony was nodding. “Hard to determine in the fire, even with top investigators, what exactly was destroyed.”
“Did you question Miguel today?”
“This
morning, at the Playhouse. I accompanied forensics, who were looking for something that might have Leon’s DNA.”
“Any luck?” I asked.
Another nod. “An electric shaver in his locker—should get something from that.”
“Any information yet on Leon’s medical or dental records from the prison?”
“Requested but not yet received, although with the corpse in ashes, I don’t see how that helps.”
“True,” I said. “But that information may come in handy. I’m inclined to think, however, that our mystery man is a transient from the homeless shelter.”
He was nodding. “I did follow up on that. Someone who fits the profile was there for about a week before the fire, then left suddenly . . . which of course is not unusual. Folks move on in that realm without giving notice. We’re trying to track the man to other area shelters.”
Now I was nodding. “What about your interview with Miguel?”
Tony shrugged a shoulder. “He was cooperative. Claimed he worked at the mansion the day of the fire but knocked off around three in the afternoon.”
“That was before I arrived. And his whereabouts that night?”
“Alone in his apartment. The next morning he stopped by the hospital to see you before going to work at the Playhouse.”
My cell phone sang.
“Sheriff,” Deputy Chen said excitedly. “Got a call from night security out at the gravel factory who says there’s a truck submerged in one of their flooded pits.”
“I’m on my way,” I said.
I relayed the message to Tony.
“Even though this is on my patch,” I said, “you are welcome to tag along.”
He gave me a wry half smile.
Since I was without a vehicle, Tony drove us in his unmarked car, heading south to an area the locals call the Island, which it once had been way back when the town was founded, long before the Mighty Mississippi decided to reroute its course.
The Island’s sandy soil was perfect for growing produce—especially melons, water and musk—which made something of a name for Serenity throughout the country for having the best such produce anywhere. The Island was also rich in other land resources, and the Serenity Sand and Gravel Company is where we were heading, just as the sun was setting.
In a few minutes, night would be closing in—not an ideal condition for conducting a search and rescue operation. But I had already jumped to the conclusion that this would be a process of search, not rescue—the truck had likely been there a few days, ditched by Leon, who’d made other arrangements to disappear.
Tony turned off the main four-lane highway onto a two-lane, and after a few miles took another turn toward the river, where we rumbled along a dusty gravel road, then finally passed through the open gates of the Serenity Sand and Gravel Company, awash in outside flood lights.
The chief pulled up to the office building, a low-slung industrial affair with white aluminum siding and a sloping roof, attached to a large tall structure. Long metal conveyor belts led into the structure, used for transporting large chunks of rock dug from the earth, chiefly sandstone and limestone, up and inside to be crushed. Nearby, waiting for the pulverized results, were a number of truck loaders, as well as dump trucks to transport the gravel to buyers.
As we got out of the car, a burly man exited the office. He was wearing navy slacks and a navy coat, zipped up, with the name of a local security company on the breast pocket.
After a quick introduction—his name was Norman—I asked, “Well?”
“I was walking the grounds outside,” he said, “when I noticed the headlights of two cars in the distance, driving along a lane leading to one of the abandoned gravel pits. Not particularly unusual—kids go down there every once in a while, find the chain-link fence locked, turn around, and go some other place to party.”
Before they were closed off, these gravel pits had been a favorite swimming destination for teens, the close proximity of the river filling the pits with water. But, tragically, too often kids drowned, due to ill-advised alcohol consumption and/or the tall weeds that grew on the bottom, prone to ensnaring legs.
“What time was this?” I asked.
“About half an hour ago,” Norman said. “I watched from here for a while—maybe ten minutes—before taking the trouble to go out there, and sure enough, I saw lights going back along the lane.” He paused. “Only it was just one set of lights.”
“Go on,” Tony said.
“So I head there, and could see that the chain on the fence gate had been cut, and I go through, but there’s no vehicle. I shine my Maglite into the pit, and under the water, I can see the back end of a truck. Red. Like blood.”
“Take us,” I said, my supposition that the truck had been ditched days before dissipating.
Tony turned to me. “Let’s use Norman’s vehicle to minimize the tracks.”
We did.
While waiting for Serenity Search and Rescue to arrive (the tow truck would come along later), Tony and I scoured the immediate area with our flashlights, looking for other tire tracks or footprints or any evidence to preserve.
I spotted tire tracks that indicated one trespassing vehicle had pulled off to the side of the lane, in front of the fence gate, while another had continued on through, ending at the edge of the pit. Both sets appeared detailed enough that forensics might be able to make casts.
The two-man Search and Rescue team—Adam and Mark—arrived in their specially equipped van, and I indicated with a wave where they should park to avoid disrupting the evidence.
They got out, Adam wearing a diving suit and carrying a compact oxygen tank, and Mark hauling a duffel bag of tools. Both men were under forty and fit.
Our brief greetings took place at the edge of the pit.
“Anyone inside?” Adam asked.
“Unknown, but unlikely,” I responded, shining my flashlight on the water’s surface.
“Then I’ll find the best place to hook the cable,” Adam said.
“ETA of the tow truck?” Tony asked.
Mark said, “Maybe fifteen minutes.”
While Adam put on his oxygen backpack, Mark unzipped the duffel bag and took out an underwater light that his partner would need.
Adam walked in his flippers to the edge of the pit, eased himself into the water, and disappeared beneath the surface.
Perhaps thirty seconds had passed when the diver’s head reemerged, and he yanked out his mouthpiece.
“Get me the puncher!” he shouted to his partner.
The chief and I looked at each other; the spring-loaded tool was used for breaking a car’s window, which meant that someone was indeed inside the cab.
And that someone must be Leon Jones, who did not perish in the fire after all but here, in a lonely gravel pit.
I said to Tony, “Looks like those prison records will come in handy after all.”
Another minute crawled by while we waited above.
Then Adam reappeared, clutching a limp body. As he began hauling it to the pit’s edge, Mark jumped in to help, and together they eased the victim up and onto the ground, placing it on its back where it rested, too late to be revived, even though Mark tried.
I gathered that Tony was as dumbstruck as I.
“This is unfortunate,” he said.
“It really is,” I agreed. “Looks like I’m going to need a new stage manager.”
Mother’s Trash ’n’ Treasures Tip
Sellers often overlook using social media as a way of attracting buyers. Post a picture of what you wish to sell on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, and let your friends help spread the word. I’ve also found that having adorable Sushi in the photo, as well, increases interest. But it’s also attracted unwanted offers from dog lovers wanting to buy the lovable furball.
Chapter Ten
In Which Vivian Takes Center Stage
And Brandy Waits for Her Cue
Nearing midnight, I started getting worried that Mother wasn�
�t home yet. I’d sent her a text an hour ago, but she’d ignored it, and I was about to call her cell, when the front door opened.
“You look beat!” I said, concerned, as she almost staggered in. “Where have you been? What have you been up to?”
She climbed out of her sheriff’s jacket, hung it up on the hook rack in the entry, then turned to me, her eyes lidded. “Tea, dear. Constant Comment.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Has caffeine.”
“Nothing will keep me awake tonight,” she sighed wearily.
I frowned. “Spill. What’s been going on?”
She gestured vaguely. “The tea, dear. And one of those biscotti biscuits.”
Too eager for information to honor the niceties, I skipped the kettle and put a cup of water in the microwave.
When I returned to the living room, Mother was stretched out on the Victorian couch, sans shoes, a pillow beneath her head. She elbowed to a sitting position, and I handed her the cup on a saucer with the cookie tucked alongside.
I sat next to her, curling my legs beneath me.
Propped now, Mother took a sip, then said, “Miguel Ricardo was murdered tonight.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “What does this mean?”
She went on to explain that her longtime Playhouse rival been found inside Leon Jones’s truck, which had been submerged by parties unknown in one of the old water-filled gravel pits on the Island.
I asked, “Do we know who did it?”
She took a bite of the cookie, chewed, swallowed, but didn’t answer.
“Oh, no,” I said. “Not Alek Wozniak!”
“A possibility. Miguel might have been his connection to the vase, through Leon Jones.” She paused. “And Wozniak would have had time to drive here after Jake saw him to then meet with Miguel.”
I unfurled my legs. “Mother, if that’s true, Jake can’t know about it. He can’t ever find out that his actions—directed by you—may have caused Miguel’s death!”
Mother said contritely, “I realize that.”
“Do you?” I demanded, feeling sick to my stomach. “Is Jake in danger?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“But you can’t be sure, can you? You can’t be sure that Wozniak won’t go after him!”
Antiques Fire Sale Page 15