Smothered in Onions

by Tracey Quinn

  “Sure, where are you going?” Brendan asked.

  “Uh, Dorcas gave me some dresses and I need to bring them to Miss Pat to have her take them in for me.”

  “Dani, Dani, Dani, you're in a relationship now,” Brendan said, shaking his head. “You've really got to learn how to lie better than that. Don't you think that the sheriff can do a better job investigating the glove factory that you can?”

  “I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm sure that if Sheriff Wilkerson weren't too busy dragging Gene McGee off to face the firing squad, he could do a great job.”

  “I must have missed the article in the Gazette about East Spoon Creek City hiring a firing squad.”

  “You know what I mean. Anyway, if you can still see to finish the mashed potatoes with your nose stuck in my business, I'll get going.”

  As I walked out the front door I saw Dorcas watching as Mutt Sr. wrestled his monster son into the truck. Dorcas was laughing again. “Look at that,” she said to me. “Mutt Jr. has an imaginary friend now and he writes his name everywhere. See how many times he's wrote 'Bucko'?”

  Imaginary friend or familiar spirit? I wondered. Bucko had indeed been written all over the sidewalk, but the B looked a lot like an F and the O looked a lot like a U. Everything seemed so nice in Dorcas's world. I just hoped she didn't wake up one day with the house burning down around her.

  Brendan stuck his head the door as they drove away and looked over the sidewalk.

  “It's supposed to say Bucko,” I said.

  “Whatever you say,” he replied. “I'll get the hose.”

  In a few minutes I was on the highway heading for Kettletown. Pumpkin City, East Spoon Creek City and Kettletown are only about 20 miles apart in distance but about a million miles apart in other ways. Pumpkin City is made up of mostly middle class families who are community conscious. It has a mall, nice parks, sports fields and a large beach on the lake that separates the town from East Spoon Creek City. The schools are good, the hospital is up to date and business is booming. Kettletown on the other hand, is nothing but a few aging factories surrounded by boarding houses and run-down strip malls. People who started out in East Spoon Creek City drifted to Pumpkin City if they were looking for more opportunities than we offered. People who wanted a more Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome atmosphere headed for Kettletown. The people who wanted to live in a town that hadn't changed much since it was founded and probably never would stuck around in East Spoon Creek City.

  The glove factory was really just a big warehouse with a rusty corrugated metal roof, which sat behind a gas station by the highway. As I pulled into the parking lot I noticed black smoke billowing out a large chimney at the back of the building. I wondered what a factory that just makes gloves would have to burn. I went in the front door and saw a desk marked “reception” where a young woman in shorts and a tank top was standing with one foot on a stool and shaving her leg with an electric razor.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “my name is Dani O'Shea. Could I see the owner?”

  “Sure, but you don't need to see Maurice to get a job here. I can give you an application as soon as I finish.” She nodded towards the razor. “ Just fill it out and you can start working today.”

  “Thanks, but I wanted to talk to the owner about one of his trucks that may have been stolen,” I said. “It was seen in East Spoon Creek City last week and I thought he might like to know about it.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said. “His office is at the top of the stairs, but remember if you're ever looking for work, we're always hiring.”

  I went up the stairs and found the door to an office with the words “Maurice Sharp, Owner and General Manager'. I knocked and heard someone say, “Yeah, come in.”

  Sitting behind a large desk was a short middle aged man with oily salt-and-pepper hair and an unshaven face. He had a stack of what appeared to be time cards in front of him and was working on an ancient adding machine. He peered at me over his reading glasses and said, “You're hired. Go on down to the factory floor and tell the manager I sent you. Minimum wage and we deduct the cost of your uniform from your paycheck. You can fill out the application after you get off work.”

  “Actually I'm not looking for a job,” I said. “One of your trucks was seen by someone over in East Spoon Creek City last week. Apparently two men accosted a man named Lloyd Duval and drove off in a glove factory truck when a witness intervened. I thought you'd want to know.”

  Maurice took off his glasses, leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.

  “Who are you, a friend of Duval?” he snapped.

  “Oh, I forgot to introduce myself,” I said. “My name is Dani O'Shea and I own the Breezy Spoon Diner in East Spoon Creek City. I'm not a friend of Lloyd Duval but as a business owner like yourself, I thought I should inform you that your truck was used in a way that might affect your reputation with-”

  “Gimme a break,” Maurice cut in. “Maybe the part about your name is right but the rest is a load of crap.”

  Rats! Brendan was right. I had to learn how to be a better liar. Maybe there was a YouTube video that would help.

  “I don't know what your game is, lady,” Maurice continued, “but if you're here looking for a payout, you're out of luck! Get outta my office!”

  “I didn't come here for money-”

  “Didn't I just tell you to leave?!”

  “Okay, I'll leave. I thought you'd prefer to handle this privately, but if not then I'll call my brother who's the deputy sheriff and tell him about the incident. You can talk to him about it instead.”

  Maurice's eyes narrowed and he scowled at me, biting his lip. Finally he said, “Okay, so I went out with my son Todd to see one of them lectures that Lloyd Duval was giving, and we had a little dust up afterwards; no big deal. What's it to you?”

  “What was the fight about?” I asked.

  “It was about Lloyd Duval being a lousy lying, thieving, no-good sack of garbage who stole $15,000 from me!” Maurice snarled. “You wanna know what kinda guy your friend was?”

  “He wasn't my friend-”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't talk, just listen,” he said. “About six years ago Lloyd Duval worked for me here at the factory. After he had been here about three months he broke into my office after hours and stole the cash for the payroll. He knew I had the money in my safe, so he and his partner busted in and cut the whole damn safe out of the wall and drove away with it!”

  That sounded like a very Lloyd Duval thing to do. “Couldn't the police catch him and get the money back?” I asked.

  “Aw, they were useless!” Maurice whined, waving his hand dismissively. “They said I couldn't prove it was him! I had footage of them on the security cameras in the parking lot but they were wearing masks and the car they used wasn't Lloyd's; sure, one was a big burly dude just like Lloyd and sure, Lloyd didn't come in to work the next day, but the cops searched his place and didn't find the money or any evidence to link him to the robbery, so tough luck for me! Then a week later he gets arrested for killing some drunk in a bar up in Pumpkin City, and once the cops here see that he's going to prison for a long time they don't bother to investigate him anymore! What am I paying taxes for anyway?!”

  “What about his accomplice? Couldn't they find him?”

  “Nah, he didn't work here; he was just someone Lloyd knew and without Lloyd the cops couldn't get any leads on the other dude.”

  “So when you heard that Lloyd Duval was out of jail and back in town, you went to confront him about the robbery? Did you really think you could get him to admit having anything to do with it?”

  Maurice laughed bitterly. “I don't care what he admits; I know he did it and he knows he did it. I heard he was making a lot of money with those stupid lectures he was giving, so I figured he wouldn't mind sending a little cash my way on a regular basis to make sure his adoring fans don't find out what a crook and a fraud he is.”

  “You were trying to blackmail him?
”

  “Hey, fair is fair! I was just getting my own back!”

  “From what the witnesses saw, it sounds like he didn't like your little plan too much,” I said. “I guess you had to find another way of getting revenge on Lloyd.”

  “What are getting at?” Maurice growled. “Are you trying to say that I killed Lloyd? You can't pin that on me!”

  “You had 15,000 reasons to want him dead.”

  “So what?! A lot of people hated that crumb! What about the guy he killed? I'll bet he had a family! Go bother them for a while! Hey, Todd!”

  A moment later the door opened and a near-clone of Maurice Sharp walked in; same oily hair, same unshaven face and smudged glasses, only a younger version. Maurice stood up from his desk. “This is my son Todd,” he said. “Todd, this is someone who's leaving now, and if you see her around here again throw her out!”

  Todd was an inch shorter than I am and didn't look like he was capable of throwing anyone out of anywhere. He rubbed his hands on his overalls and mumbled, “Um, I guess you should go....”

  “Would you like to tell me where you were on the night Lloyd Duval was killed?” I asked Maurice as I stood up. “Or would you rather tell your story to the police?”

  “I know, I know, your brother's a cop!” Maurice grumbled. “I wasn't anywhere near East Spoon Creek City that night; Me and the boy were at Chucky's Bar here in Kettletown until late that night. You can ask Jasmine the bartender; I was at the bar playing video poker and Todd likes to shoot pool with the guys. Isn't that right, Todd?”

  Todd blinked and looked confused, then said, “Yeah, I was playing pool. Everybody saw me....”

  “Satisfied? Now beat it, lady!” Maurice snapped. “I got a business to run here!”

  He already had the phone in his hand as I walked out the door, ready to call Jasmine at Chucky's Bar to get her story right in case I went there to check on him. I was satisfied, all right; satisfied that I had my first good suspect!

  Chapter 6

  The next afternoon found me in the town square with Brendan, setting up our booth for the city fair. The fair was beginning tomorrow, so the square was bustling with plenty of other people doing the same thing as we were. There would be about 20 booths with food and various things for sale, about seven or eight booths with games for the kids, and a stage for various local bands to entertain.

  Mayor Pumphrey always made an opening statement which was more like a political speech listing all of his contributions to the betterment of East Spoon Creek City during the past year. That didn't take long. Of course, it would have been interesting if he and Lloyd Duval had actually had the debate that was scheduled. Now the debate was canceled and it seemed that Mayor Pumphrey would be running unopposed again.

  “I see that Mayor Pumphrey hasn't started putting up his booth yet,” I said. “His wife is due back this evening so I suppose she'll put it together.”

  “That's usually the way it happens,” Brendan agreed. “Mayor Pumphrey doesn't have much to do with the booth, and this year especially he didn't seem to be doing much but fretting about debating Lloyd Duval. He was pretty upset about it; I was at the firing range a couple days before Duval was murdered and the Mayor had a stack of Duval's life coach brochures with Lloyd's picture on them. He would tape them to cans he found in the trash container, line them up on the fence and shoot them. Didn't miss a one. I didn't realize that he was such a good shot.”

  “Motivation works wonders. Why are their so many beer cans at the firing range anyhow? Should a bunch of drunks be standing around shooting at things?”

  “Soda cans,” he replied. “No alcohol for obvious reasons. Do you think Duval could have won the election?”

  “I don't know; he had a lot of enemies,” I said. “On the other hand, he was a handsome guy and he was obviously a good speaker; look how many people he had coming to those ridiculous lectures! I wonder what the Mayor would do for a living if Lloyd did win. I was overseas when he first got elected; what was he doing before he ran for mayor?”

  “He had a job at a Chevrolet dealership over in Pumpkin City. From what I hear he never sold a car all the time he was there so his head was always on the chopping block. Our previous mayor, Marty McFadden, had been working part-time at the bowling alley in Kettletown and decided to make it full time so he didn't run for reelection. Pumphrey saw his opportunity so he went all around East Spoon Creek City passing out tickets for a free ride to anywhere you wanted to go in the state in a brand new Corvette. His opposition was Al Sholes' wife Noreen. She promised that if she won she would put a toll both at the city limits so that anyone trying to leave the city would have to pay a $10 toll. That way the residents would be encouraged to spend their money here instead of going elsewhere.”

  “Did she get any votes at all?”

  “Well, there was one from Al, and she voted for herself, of course.”

  “If Mayor Pumphrey knew that was her platform, he probably didn't need to have bothered renting that Corvette.”

  “Oh, he didn't rent it,” Brendan replied. “Shortly after the election the dealership he worked for found out that their new demonstrator model Corvette had 172,000 miles on it. They threatened to sue Pumphrey but decided not to waste their time when they learned what the East Spoon Creek City Mayor's salary was.”

  “Do you think that Mayor Pumphrey could have shot Lloyd?” I asked. “A guy like him without many prospects outside of politics might fight pretty hard to hang onto his position.”

  “He's a silly little round guy who always eats with his mouth open. Can you really picture him shooting Duval and hauling his body off to McGee's onion bin?”

  “Not really, but plenty of silly little round guys have murdered people,” I said. “Who knows what people are capable of doing when they've got no other way out of the trouble they're in?”

  As we were talking, Cooter and his cousin Jake walked up to the booth, carrying a large sign that said “Kissing Booth- $1 per Kiss”. A strange feeling came over me. I think it was horror.

  “So you guys are going to have a kissing booth this year?” I asked.

  “Oh, no,” said Cooter. “No way would Jolene put up with that. We're just helping Miss Dora and Miss Pollyanna get set up. Miss Pollyanna wants us to set up a card table next to the booth selling little bottles of mouthwash. I done told her that ain't nobody at the fair interested in buyin' stuff like that, but she said she's pretty sure they will. We split the profits with her if anybody does buy the stuff.”

  “We told her that not many people line up to kiss Miss Dora,” said Jake, “but she says they will this year.”

  “So has Pollyanna given up on the idea of a wrestling show?” I asked.

  “Nah, she's still doing that,” Cooter said. “She's gonna wrestle Suze from Mollie's Yarn Store.”

  “Suze Peters?” I asked. “She's going to wrestle Pollyanna?” Suze is a purple-haired hippie girl in her early twenties with more tattoos than the rest of the people in town combined. She's been managing Mollie's Yarn Shop while her Aunt Mollie is visiting her sister in Alaska, and spent her first month in charge selling marijuana out of the shop. She managed to avoid going to jail because of technicality (caused by Cooter, of course) but she seems to always be up to something crazy and possibly a little illegal. There's nothing illegal about wrestling, of course, but this was pretty crazy even for Suze, considering that she's about half Pollyanna's size and looks about as athletic as your average pot-dealing hippie.

  “Yep, they're gonna have a wrestling show every afternoon,” Cooter replied, “and Pollyanna's gonna help out at the kissing booth the rest of the time.”

  “Pollyanna doesn't strike me as the kissing booth type,” Brendan said.

  “Well, she ain't gonna do no kissin',” said Jake. “She said she's just gonna help men find their way to the booth.”

  “Ah, I think I get the idea,” I said. “This should be interesting.”

  “Yeah, it'll be somethin' to do for
fun seein' as there ain't gonna be no debate now,” Cooter said. “Me and Jake was lookin' forward to seein' Lloyd Duval debate Mayor Pumphrey. I think he would have won, him bein' such a good speaker and all. I reckon you folks are as bummed as we are about what happened to him. He was always so kind to everyone.”

  Kind? Lloyd Duval? Maybe Cooter had been sampling the mouthwash.

  “At least the sheriff arrested the feller that killed him,” Jake said.

  “The sheriff has arrested someone?” I asked. “You don't mean....”

  “Yep, Gene 'the Onion Ringer' McGee,” Cooter replied. “That's what everybody's calling him. Jolene says Pearl told her that she read on the internet how exposure to onion fumes can make people go crazy if they're around 'em too long, so I figure that's what must have happened. Say, I was gonna go down to McGee's Market and see if they're hiring now that Gene's in jail; maybe I ought to buy one of them doctor masks from Al's Emporium first just to be safe.”

  I would have warned Cooter that putting anything from Al's Emporium on his face was more dangerous than onion fumes, but I had bigger problems on my mind. “Excuse me a minute,” I said as I made a beeline for my car, dialing Bob's number as I went.

  “Hi, sis,” Bob answered. “Since I know exactly why you're calling and exactly what you're going to say, how about I just recite it to myself in my head and save us both a lot of time?”

  “How could you arrest Gene McGee?!” I shouted. “You know he couldn't kill anyone!”

  “Look, I like Gene as much as you do, but we have to follow the evidence.”

  “Oh, I suppose you fingerprinted the onions?!”

  Bob sighed. “We got a call from Mike McGarity at McGarity's Garage saying he found something funny in Gene McGee's car when he brought it in to get his tail light fixed. We went over there and found the murder weapon in the trunk of Gene's car, along with a money wrapper from the Farnsworth Bank. Gene said he was working late at the market that night, but no one can vouch for his alibi. We had no choice but to arrest him.”