by K. J. Emrick
He waved his fingers at me over his shoulder as he walked into his office and slammed the door shut hard enough to make the ceiling tiles shake.
Bruce growled and started herding me to the door. I smiled sweetly. “I’m leaving. Just remember. I know what happened. I have the proof.”
He didn’t say anything. He just held the door open to make sure I was really gone.
The warm air was kind of a shock after the air conditioning in the police station. I took a deep breath of it to steady myself. This was only the first step in the plan me and Kevin had worked out last night. Now for the hard part.
I checked both ways along the street, even though this end of town got very little traffic. I could see the end of the pavement over that way where Main Street became Kookaburra Road again and wandered off into Hartz Mountains National Park.
My destination was a lot closer than that.
Across from the police station, Oliver Harris’s towing and recovery station huddled together under an old metal sign on a pole that was leaning slantways more and more each year. The siding on the building hadn’t seen a fresh coat of white paint in a lot of years. It was peeling and chipped and added a sort of rustic charm to the place. The smell of gasoline and grease met me as I crossed the street. Signs in the big windows of the office advertised oil changes and brake service and “fifth tow... free!”
One side of the two-stall garage had the overhead door rolled up and a brand new red Jeep Cherokee was sitting in there. I’m pretty sure Kevin told me it was this year’s model. He’d bought the car after he left Lakeshore. No way for anyone here to recognize it.
He was sitting in the driver’s seat, nearly invisible until I was walking right up to the Jeep and getting in the passenger side. He had a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes for good measure.
“How’d it go?” he asked me.
“I got the message across. Gave it to Bruce myself.” I took the little button in its bag out and turned it over in my hands. Everything hinged on this little piece of clothing. If this didn’t work...
No. It had to.
“He let me off,” I told Kevin.
“Excuse me?”
“That’s right. He unarrested me. Said there was no murder, so he shouldn’t have arrested me in the first place.”
“Oh, so that’s the game, is it?” Kevin nodded slowly, coming to the same conclusions I already had. “He’s trying to cover the whole thing up and sweep it under the rug. Make it like Bostwick never actually got murdered. Probably would’ve just done that from the start, except Alfonse Calico happened to stumble by when the body was being brought out.”
“How ‘bout that? Covering up a murder. Sounds right up a dirty cop’s bailiwick.”
“Only, we threw in a monkey wrench, didn’t we?” Picking up a bag of roasted peanuts from the cup holder he held it out for me. “We told him we know where the body’s buried.”
“Which we don’t.”
“Not yet, but we will.”
“If this works.”
“It’ll work,” he promised. “You told him we found Bostwick’s body. It can’t be too far away from Lakeshore. It’s somewhere within a few miles from here, I’m sure of it. We said we found it. That’ll be enough to scare him. He’s gonna need to see for himself and make sure.”
“And then he’ll try to kill us?”
Kevin took the peanuts back and shrugged. “Well, just you.”
“Gee, thanks. I feel so much better.”
“Don’t worry,” he told me. “If he tries to kill you then he’ll really look guilty, won’t he?”
How comforting. “Well, I won’t be the only one he comes after.”
“I know.” He sighed, checking his watch. “Alfonse Calico. He’s in just as much danger as you are. He tried to silence you by arresting you, and then acting like it was all a big mistake. He won’t be able to do that with Alfonse. He’s in as much trouble as us, all right. Maybe more.”
“Right,” I agreed. “When Alfonse accidentally saw them removing the body, Cutter knew he had to do something to buy time until he could cover the whole thing up. I made a convenient scapegoat.”
“With Alfonse out of the way, Cutter’ll be able to spin this any way he wants and just sit there and laugh if you say different.”
In a way, I almost had to admire what Cutter had accomplished. I hadn’t seen what he was up to until it was too late. “So what do we do?”
“We sit,” he said, “and we wait. We can’t do anything for Alfonse right now. In fact, best thing we could do for him is catch Bostwick’s killer. Prove he really was murdered. That way, there’s no reason to go after Alfonse.”
“Right. There’ll only be reason to come after us,” I summarized.
“Right. So what else is new?” He tipped the brim of his baseball cap in an overly dramatic way. “I can take care of myself, sure enough, and I know for a fact my Mom can do the same.”
I appreciated the compliment, I just wish I didn’t keep getting myself into these situations. I didn’t need to keep proving him right.
From the corner of my eye I saw Oliver Harris coming out of the side office, stepping down the three little steps to the garage floor and then up to Kevin’s side of the car. “How’s it, Dell?” he asked me with a smile. “We gonna beat that fake murder charge Cutter put on ya?”
I had to like Oliver. Not the sharpest tool in the box, to be sure. A bad tackle during a high school football game had left him several IQ points lower than what he’d started out with. Still, he was an ace mechanic, and an all-around good bloke. He was one of the few people in town who I knew I could always trust.
“Already beat the charges,” I said, talking across Kevin through the open driver’s window. “I’m a free woman again, Oliver.”
“Heh. Good to know.” He nodded to me, scratching a grease-stained finger behind one ear. He was a bear of a man, with hands as big as dinner plates and a face that had never passed for attractive even before the undercarriage from a Toyota Camry had dropped on it. “You two need anything?”
“Not right now,” Kevin said. “We just appreciate you loaning us your shop.”
“Anything to help Dell. You too, Kevin,” he added after a heartbeat. He managed to look sheepish under the black streaks of oil on his face. “Uh, just let me know if ya need anything.”
After he went back up into the office, Kevin turned to me with a smile. “I think he’s got a crush on you, Mom.”
“He’s fifteen years younger than me!” I huffed. “Not to mention James and me...”
“Are on the outs,” Kevin finished for me.
Which was probably more accurate than what I had been about to say.
Kevin understood my silence. “Have you heard from James today?”
“No. I don’t know what to do, Kevin. I wasn’t trying to blow him off, I swear, I just... got to thinking about your father and it made me really sad, you know?”
He turned to me in the seat, putting his hands over mine. “Mom, Dad’s gone. He chose to leave us. He chose to leave you.”
Which was true. I knew it was true, but now that I knew he was dead it changed things. Didn’t it?
A part of me missed Richard so very, very much. I didn’t want it to create a wall between me and James, now that things were so good between the two of us, but there it was. My dead husband was ruining my love life.
And I hadn’t even told Kevin about it yet.
Well. No time like the present.
“Kevin, I need to tell you—”
“Hold on.” He sat up straighter, looking across the road. “Here he comes.”
I clamped my mouth shut, knowing that what we were doing here was more important than what I had to say. At least for the moment. The target of our surveillance, sure enough, was coming out of the police station, all cocky and sure of himself, although I could see the worry in the creases of his forehead. We’d struck a nerve with what I’d said to Bruce.
&nb
sp; “Okay,” Kevin said, putting the peanuts back up on the dash and gripping the steering wheel. “Ready for this?”
“I am. I got arrested for a murder I didn’t commit, remember? Oh, I am so ready for this.”
I gripped my unicorn necklace.
In the center console, Kevin’s mobile phone rang.
“Let it go to voicemail,” Kevin counseled me.
I knew he was right but I checked the caller ID anyway. That’s the thing about a ringing phone. It demands to be answered. It’s almost impossible to ignore... a ringing...
Kevin must have seen the look on my face. “Who is it?” he asked.
“Alfonse,” I read the name off the display. “It’s Alfonse Calico.”
He pulled the phone out of my hand and answered the call.
Across the street, one of the two patrol cars in the police department parking lot started up.
With a tap of his thumb Kevin put the call on speaker.
“Kevin! It’s Alfonse Calico.” Even as stressed as the man sounded—and he sounded plenty stressed—he managed to add a flair to his name. “Told me to call ya if ever I needed help, right? Well, I need it now, Mate!”
Something in the background of the phone call crashed, and Alfonse lowered his voice, and suddenly I was very sure he wasn’t alone.
The patrol car backed out of its parking space.
“Alfonse, I can hear you,” Kevin told him. “What’s wrong?”
“I need your help!”
The words were barely a whisper.
And then the phone call ended.
Kevin looked at me.
The patrol car pulled up to the edge of Main Street.
“He’s about to drive away,” I pointed out.
“I know.” Kevin bounced the mobile on the palm of his hand. “We can’t lose him, but... I don’t know. Alfonse sounded like something was really wrong.”
We had to make a decision in the next few seconds.
I had an idea.
“You follow him,” I told Kevin. “Follow him, and let’s hope he’s actually going to lead us to where he buried Bostwick.”
“Mom. I know what you’re thinking, but—”
“We have to split up, Kevin. There’s no other way.” I was already opening the door on my side. “We can’t lose that patrol car, and we can’t just leave Alfonse swinging. If there really is something wrong at the Thirsty Roo we need to know what it is.”
The white car with the blue and white checkered pattern along the sides and the large 'Police' logo on the doors started toward town. It was now or never.
Kevin sighed out a breath through his nose. “Fine. Mom, go find out what Alfonse’s problem is. It can’t be anything serious, I’m sure. He probably heard a rat in his cupboards. Whatever. I’ll chase down our friend here, you go see to Alfonse. Just... don’t be a hero. Be careful, all right?”
One foot out of his car, that stopped me short. “Be careful? I thought you said it’d be nothing? Just a rat in a cupboard.”
He pointed to the patrol car driving away down the street. “That’s the man with the gun. Alfonse is just a guy with a song in his heart. You’ll be fine. Got a way to get to the bar?”
“I’ll find one. Just don’t lose that car. Good luck.”
“You too,” he said as I closed his door. “Remember, you’ve got someone you can call to go over there with you.”
He drove away and left me there. I knew who he meant when he said I had someone I could call for help. I just wish there was someone else.
In Lakeshore, we don’t call the police for help. We call our friends.
Friends like James.
I hated that me and James couldn’t just be two adults dating each other. This wouldn’t be the first time I called him because someone’s life might be in danger, mine included. Just what a man wants his girlfriend ringing him up for. Add in that whole thing with my husband’s ghost popping up out of the blue, and what was he supposed to think of me?
After Kevin was gone I rushed up into Oliver’s office. He was sitting in a reclining, swivel-based office chair, leafing through a copy of Popular Mechanics. He smiled up at me.
The smile slipped and he sat up straighter when I said, “Remember when you asked us if there was anything else we needed? Well, I need something.”
“Sure, Dell. Anything I can do for ya.”
“Good,” I said. “I need a car.”
Chapter Nine
Turns out that Oliver’s salvage yard had two or three rebuilt vehicles for sale. He loaned me the best one he had, a 1999 Honda Civic. It reeked of cigarettes and the air conditioning didn’t work, but it had plenty of speed, and that’s what I needed most right now.
It was just a few minutes from this end of town to the Thirsty Roo. It felt like an eternity before I got there. Especially since I’d made a very uncomfortable call on the way over.
Now here I was, at the Thirsty Roo, wondering why it felt so quiet and empty.
Maybe, I thought, because it was.
The front doors were open. The room inside was deserted. The tables were empty. No one stood at the bar. The lights suspended from the ceiling in their chandelier wheels showed me a huge, empty space. It was like everyone in town knew that, right now, this was a place to avoid.
Or it could just be that the pub wasn’t open yet.
Should I call out to Alfonse? I wondered about that, and then I wondered if maybe I should just turn around and walk out and let it be someone else’s problem.
Only, there was no one else. Alfonse had called me and Kevin for help. So here I was.
I shuffled my way through the room, looking under the tables, looking behind the top of the bar, pushing open the doors of the bathroom slowly and finding more of the same. Nothing. Nobody.
Figuring I should at least have a weapon, I picked up the toilet plunger from the ladies’ room and held the end out like a mighty war hammer made of black rubber. Let everyone tremble before me, or else die from laughter.
Where was Alfonse?
Then I remembered my mobile. I had Alfonse’s number from the call he made to Kevin and that meant finding him would be a simple matter of dialing him up. I pressed the green button to connect the call, and then listened.
I heard his ring tone coming from behind the swinging door that led to the storage room at the back of the building. It took me a moment to recognize it as that Spice Girls song.
It stopped when Alfonse answered.
“Hello?” he whispered.
“Alfonse.” I stood there, staring at the door to the storage room. He was hiding in there. Hiding like a little girl under her bed. If he’d called me for no reason, and made me come down here while Kevin had to tail our suspect all by himself, then so help me God—!
“Dell! Oh, Dell thank the Lord above!” I could hear him panting, near tears. “I’m in a spot! There’s someone here. Someone in the bar! Ya gotta come help me!”
I held my tongue, and walked up to the swinging door on its creaky hinges, pushing it in ahead of me. “Alfonse,” I said, the phone still to my ear.
“Yes?” he whispered back.
I could see him now, huddled behind a metal shelving unit stacked with huge jars of olives and those restaurant-sized cans of ketchup. “Alfonse,” I repeated.
“Yes, Dell?”
Finally I took the phone away from my ear and shouted, “Alfonse!”
He jumped up from his makeshift hiding spot, the poufy sleeves of his shiny gold colored shirt flapping as his arms waved erratically. He nearly pitched forward onto his face. Just barely catching himself, he turned in a crouch, looking up at me, his phone still to his ear. “Uh, hi?”
“You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered. Putting my phone away, I walked over to the man and lent him a hand to haul him up on his feet. “What exactly are you doing?”
“Hiding,” he explained again, not exactly whispering anymore but still keeping his voice down. “They’re here! We need to
get out of here, is what we need. Where’s that son of yours? Is he covering us? Got his gun out so’s he’s ready to shoot the blighters down?”
I was going to smack him. I never really liked Alfonse, but I’d never had cause to hate the man.
Well, that was all changing.
“No,” I told him. “No, my son isn’t here. No, we aren’t ready to shoot anyone down. Alfonse, there’s no one here!”
The look on his face would’ve had me laughing under any other circumstance but this one.
He looked past me, to the door between us and the main room of the bar, which was still swinging in a slow slap, squeak... slap, squeak, against the hinges. “But,” he complained, “I heard someone.”
Yup. I was going to smack him. With something heavy. Maybe with that jar of olives. “What, exactly, did you hear?”
“I don’t know,” he said miserably.
“What d’ya mean, you don’t know?”
“I mean, it’s just kinda... hard to explain. It was a noise! A sound. It was like—”
Scatch scratch scratch.
Alfonse yelped and jumped two feet off the floor. “That! That was the sound! Right there!”
I followed the sound with my ears. Up in the heating ducts. The rectangular metal pipes were exposed back here in the storage room, along the ceiling. The sound was moving, echoing up there, scuttling along from one side of the room, closer and closer to where I stood.
A broom was leaning nearby against the shelves. I couldn’t reach the ductwork with my short-handled plunger weapon, but that broom handle would work just fine. I traded one for the other, and then banged the end of the broom handle up against the ductwork. Several times.
Inside, the rat squeaked and chittered and ran back to whatever hole it had come from.
Alfonse’s jaw dropped open. “A rat? You mean that was a rat I heard?”
“Yes, you nit, it was a rat!” Maybe I could smack him around with the broom. Alfonse, I mean. Not the rat. Just a little. “I can not believe you called us over here because you heard a rat! Do you know what my Kevin is doing right now? Do you? No. Of course you don’t. What are you even doing here? It’s not time for you to open the pub.”