I looked back at the bill and realized something was missing. Zach had only charged me for the new tire. I shook my head and said, “I know, but this doesn’t cover your time or labor. How can you make money running your business like that?”
Zach’s smile disappeared, and he jammed his grease-stained hands in his pockets and took a step toward me. I leaned back against the counter, but even then I had to crane my neck to look up at him.
“Tell you what,” Zach offered. “If you don’t solve Mack’s murder, I’ll redo the bill. Then you can pay me for the tire and my time. If you find the guy who killed him, I’ll forget the whole thing.”
My mouth dropped open. I didn’t know what to say, and Zach wasn’t waiting for me to regain use of my tongue. He turned on his heel and headed out the door. Grabbing my keys, I threw some money on the counter and raced out the door after him.
“Hey,” I yelled. Zach stopped walking, and I caught up to him, panting. Getting in better shape was going to have to become a priority. “Why would you give me a free tire?” I asked. Zach hadn’t said much about Mack at the poker game, and I had assumed it was because he didn’t know the guy very well. Something told me I was way off.
Zach ran a hand through his hair. When he was done he bore a startling resemblance to a character out of the movie Grease. “Mack was my friend,” he said, looking away. For a second I thought the macho mechanic was going to cry, but when he looked back his eyes were tear-free and filled with anger. “I don’t have all that many friends. Knowing the person who killed him is walking around free pisses me off. I’m no good at poking my nose in people’s business, and no one else in this town seems to care. You were always pretty smart in high school. So the way I see it, you’re Mack’s best shot at justice.”
Gee. I blinked twice. I hadn’t thought about it quite like that. I sucked in air in an attempt not to hyperventilate as the enormity of my investigation hit me hard in the chest.
Nodding at Zach, I choked out, “I’ll do my best.”
He gave a whisper of a smile and nodded back. “Let me know if you need any help.”
I watched him get in his tow truck and drive off as the weight of my mission pressed down on me. Zach was right. Mack deserved better than Barney Fife and company botching his murder investigation, which left little old clueless me in charge. Poor Mack.
I hopped in my yellow Civic and zipped the five blocks down to the rink. Office work is boring, but I’m good at it. I fired up the computer, checked the answering machine for messages, and returned six customer calls. Every one had called about the same thing. They informed me that the Indian Falls High School graduation ceremony was in sixteen days and the Toe Stop was a great graduation party locale in spite of the murder. I penciled the parties one by one into the rink’s schedule, feeling a bit bemused. Most normal kids wanted iPods or trips to Europe for their commencement present. Indian Falls kids wanted to skate in circles. Go figure.
I called back the customers to confirm the date and assure them the place was murderer-free, then logged on to the Internet to check my e-mail. There were nine messages from Neil. I opened each of them, terrified one would contain the official death notice of my job. None of them did. Not a single e-mail mentioned his family problems, either. They were just friendly reminders that he missed me. The last mentioned he was looking forward to seeing and talking to me soon. I typed a quick hello back and let him know I was thinking of him and his family.
That message sent, I switched to a search engine and typed in the name Anthony Catalano. A list of the first twenty entries appeared, and I checked out my options. There were a guitarist, a couple of doctors, one district attorney, a couple of high school football stars, two felons, and a president of a landfill outside Moline, Illinois.
I clicked on the landfill guy. A couple of mouse clicks got me to the home page of Catalano Enterprises. A quick click on Anthony’s biography told me the guy went to University of Illinois and had a master’s in business. Impressive. The Web site also said he had a wife and kids, but there was no picture. I couldn’t tell if this was my guy, since the address of the landfill business didn’t match the one on the card he handed me and no other address was listed. I’d have to take a road trip to find out if this was my primary, and currently only, suspect.
A quick search for the guy’s home info revealed that he lived in a town only thirty miles away from Indian Falls. I scribbled down the address and grabbed my purse.
I waved to George on my way out to the parking lot, then, steering the car southwest, dialed my grandfather’s phone number. It took five rings before Pop’s voice came on the line.
“Hey, Pop, I need to ask a favor.”
“Do you need me to help you break into another house?” I rolled my eyes at the excitement in Pop’s voice. “I could borrow John Markham’s gun. Should have thought of that last time, right? I would have taken down that Italian mob guy.”
More likely my grandfather would have shot his own foot. “No breaking, no entering, and no guns,” I insisted. “I need you to help out at the rink during open skate. There’s an errand I’ve got to run. I’m not sure what time I’ll be back.”
“Damn. I thought it was going to be something exciting. I already made boring plans with Louise tonight.”
Trying to cheer Pop up, I added, “Maybe Mack’s killer will return to the scene of the crime. You might get a chance to nab him single-handed.”
“You think?”
I could hear Pop’s eyes light up and sighed. “Anything’s possible.”
The minute he agreed I said good-bye, closed the phone, and turned it off. I didn’t want to give Pop a chance to change his mind.
Forty-five minutes later, I pulled into the Catalano driveway. I rang the doorbell and took a step back. Running room was always a good idea when waiting for the Mafia’s answer to the Incredible Hulk to come to the door. My heart raced as I waited, only nothing happened. I rapped my knuckles on the door, but still no answer. On tiptoes, I looked through the diamond-shaped window. Not a creature was stirring.
Now what?
My eyes cased the house as I tried to decide if the place looked like my Anthony Catalano lived here. It was a big white colonial with blue shutters and an impeccably groomed yard. Stunning rosebushes were flourishing all around the perimeter of the property. The place was perfection—or it would have been if not for two ugly stone garden gnomes guarding the stairs to the front stoop. “Can I help you?” A gravelly female voice snapped me out of my thoughts, and I spun around to face the street. A white-haired lady walking a dalmatian smiled.
I grinned back and waved. “Hello. I dropped by to see the Catalanos, but I must have come at a bad time.”
The dog eyed me and tugged at the leash. I was thankful the woman kept a firm grip as she checked her watch. “You’ll probably find Regina at her store.”
Store? That sounded promising. The woman gave me directions to Regina’s place and set off with her dalmatian to fertilize a tree. Following her instructions, I pulled up in front of a building with a large sign that read CATALANO’S CURIOS, CURIOSITIES, AND MORE.
The minute I walked through the front door, I understood the garden gnomes guarding the Catalano house. Regina’s store was full of them. Medium-sized gnomes gaped at me from shelves. Little ones smiled from tabletops. Four-foot-tall ones glared at me from their seats on the floor.
Displayed between the gnomes were beautiful antique tables and a stunning silver mirror and brush set. There were also ancient metal Brady Bunch lunch boxes, Hot Wheels toy cars, Precious Moments figurines, Beanie Babies, and a collection of Barbie dolls that as an eight-year-old I would have drooled over.
“Hello, can I help you?” a tiny, birdlike woman with olive skin, dark eyes, and harsh features asked as she came out of a back room. My first thought was that she needed Annette’s expert help. The woman’s ink-black hair was so teased it looked pissed off. She was wearing a bright purple satin blouse that matched
her vibrant eye shadow. I noticed the large diamond on her left hand winking at me. Surrounded by this junk, I figured it had to be cubic zirconia. This was a woman screaming to be arrested by the makeover police.
“Are you the owner?”
Her four-inch silver heels clicked across the room, and she held out a manicured hand. “I’m Regina Catalano. Can I help you with something?”
This woman couldn’t possibly be married to my Anthony Catalano. The guy might bump people off and dump them in the Mississippi, but he had style. No way could he be married to this freaky-looking woman.
“This is a great store,” I lied through a smile.
“Thank you.” Regina’s lips widened with delight. “I used to collect things in my home. Then my husband suggested getting a shop and selling them. So I did. Now I get to share my treasures with everyone.”
My eye caught sight of a rusty robot missing one arm. This woman was off her rocker, but she’d given me the opening I was looking for.
“Your husband sounds like a great guy. Does he help you run the place? It seems like a lot of work for one person.”
She nodded her ratted head. “He’s president of his own company, but he comes in once in a while to help me with the books and do some inventory. It’s hard to keep track of everything since each piece has its own value.”
“I can imagine.” I didn’t really want to, but it sounded like the right thing to say.
The woman cocked her head to the side. “Did you come here to look for something specific or are you just looking around?”
“Definitely browsing.”
So that’s what I did, although I didn’t wander far into the store for fear I’d get lost amid the clutter. Regina’s eyes followed me around the room as if I were going to shoplift one of her precious treasures. Far as I could tell, the trip had been a bust. Time to buy something and get out of here. I picked up an inexpensively priced garden gnome and headed for the counter.
A few moments later, I was twenty dollars poorer and the proud owner of a grumpy-looking garden gnome. It was then I noticed the locked case behind the counter. Inside were three beautiful antique china dolls wearing intricate lace dresses.
I pointed to the cases. “Those are lovely dolls.”
Regina squealed, “They’re my pride and joy. Each doll is from the turn of the century. Are you a collector?” Regina’s pleasure was as evident as the cash register sounds going off in her head.
They stopped when I said, “Not really. I don’t think I can afford it.”
She gave me a knowing look. “I understand. My husband bought me my first doll for our tenth anniversary, and I almost fainted when I learned what he paid for it.”
I peered into the case. A tiny price tag next to one doll’s foot read—eight thousand dollars? Yikes. Maybe I should have hung on to my Barbie collection. “And you have three of these?”
“Four.” She corrected. “The other is being cleaned by a professional restorer.” She drifted back behind the counter, which I took as my cue to leave. I grabbed my garden gnome and said good-bye. My hand reached for the front door’s handle, and I stopped. There was a picture hanging next to the entrance. In it, Regina’s smiling family stood in front of the building. The sign above the store read GRAND OPENING, and the man with his arm around Regina’s shoulders was none other than my Anthony Catalano. I’d found him. Only now that I had, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with him.
The sky was turning black as my shotgun-riding garden gnome and I turned into the rink parking lot. The minute I parked, my passenger door swung open, and Pop appeared.
He put the garden gnome on the floor and hopped in, yelling, “We gotta get over to Doc Truman’s office, fast.”
On reflex I asked, “Why?” The icky feeling in my stomach told me that I already knew the answer.
Pop strapped on his seat belt. “Eleanor called. She’s waiting for me in the back room, and this time Doc Truman won’t be surprising us. He’s having a romantic dinner with his wife in Galena. That leaves us free to find out what drug killed Mack. Put the pedal to the metal, Rebecca.”
My tires squealed leaving the parking lot, and we arrived in front of Doc Truman’s office in four minutes flat. I turned off the car and cringed as my grandfather popped a breath mint into his mouth.
“We gotta get this right. I don’t plan on doing this again.” Pop opened the car door and turned back to me. “Now, give me a few minutes to get her distracted. Then you can snoop around. I’ll make sure there’s enough noise so she won’t hear you.”
Yuck. I squeezed my eyes shut. This plan was even worse the second time around. “Why don’t we just ask her for the name of the drug?” Honesty was a much better idea than listening to my grandfather make barnyard noises in the back room.
Pop frowned. “Why? That ain’t the way real detectives do things. Real detectives are always sneaky. That’s how they get the information they need.”
“I’m a mortgage broker, Pop, not a detective.” Actually I wasn’t sure what I was, considering I might have lost my job. Still, Sherlock Holmes I wasn’t.
Keeping that in mind, I got out of my car and hit the sidewalk, with my grandfather grumbling behind me. We walked through the front door, and my heart stopped. Eleanor was lounging against the counter with a rose between her teeth. Tonight her ample body was wedged into black leather pants and a matching satin corset. With a whip and a couple of handcuffs Eleanor would be a front-runner in the Miss Dominatrix of Illinois pageant.
The minute she spotted me, Eleanor gave a tiny squeak and dashed behind the counter as if that were going to make me forget her striking ensemble. Or the fact she still had a rose dangling from her lips.
I nudged Pop. He took a step forward and said, “Hi, Eleanor. Rebecca gave me a ride over.”
The flower fell out of Eleanor’s mouth. Now her face and the top of her large bosom were both the color of an eggplant. I felt a twinge of guilt for interrupting her plans. Pop might not have been looking forward to tonight, but clearly Eleanor was.
Flashing an apologetic smile, I said, “I didn’t mean to interrupt your evening, but I was hoping to ask you a couple of questions. I promise to make it quick.”
Eleanor swallowed and sat down hard in the chair behind the desk. “What do you want to ask?” Her voice sounded thin and strained with worry, as though she thought I was going to grill her on her sex life. Not in this lifetime. I figured Pop could take care of that all by himself.
I explained, “I’ve been trying to help the sheriff solve Mack Murphy’s murder. I have a few leads, but I really need to know what drug Doc found in Mack’s system, and I thought maybe you could tell me. Then I can track down the person who gave it to Mack and the case will be solved. This town shouldn’t have to live in fear.”
Eleanor’s eyes went wide, and her hands clenched together. For a second I thought she was going to deck me. Instead Eleanor threw back her head, and her robust laughter filled the room. Wiping tears from her eyes, she said, “Is that all?” Still chuckling, she reached into a stack of files and plucked one out. She started to hand it to me, then pulled it back. “You know, I’m not supposed to give this information to you. It could get me in big trouble.”
“Come on, Eleanor.” Pop sauntered over to the counter. His smile grew wide and a trifle naughty. “The sooner we get rid of Rebecca, the sooner we can get started on…you know.” He winked, and Eleanor giggled and fluttered her eyelashes.
Kill me now, I thought, before they start talking in detail. I wasn’t old enough to hear that kind of thing. No one was.
Eleanor’s eyes narrowed, and her lips curled into a big smile. “How about I tell your grandfather the name of the drug after our date tonight?” She winked, closed her eyes, and leaned over the counter, offering her lips for a kiss.
I backed away while shooting a panicked look at my grandfather. Pimping Pop was not on my agenda.
Pop waved a wrinkled hand toward the door with an ex
aggerated sigh. He was choosing to stay, which meant I was out of here before I saw anything that would scar me for life.
Once out the door, I hit the pavement running. I arrived back at the rink emotionally damaged but one step closer to solving Mack’s murder. Tomorrow I’d know the name of the drug. Then all I had to do was find the guy who gave it to Mack.
Thirteen
My eyes fluttered open to sunlight streaming through the window. Today was Mack’s funeral. I showered and put on a royal blue skirt with a tan leather blazer. Then I tiptoed out of the house before Pop had the chance to roll out of bed. Yes, I wanted the name of the drug, but I figured it was best to let Pop have some coffee before we did a face-to-face. Pop needed recovery time.
Outside, I admired Pop’s front lawn. Last night I’d placed the garden gnome next to the Santa scarecrow. Now, in the daylight, the yard had taken on a warped fairy-tale quality.
I zipped my Civic over to the rink. After sucking down three cups of coffee, I headed for the bank to make the weekly deposit. Since I was downtown I did a few other business-related things. Strange, but I was better at handling rink business than I was at juggling the mortgages I dealt with in Chicago. My mother must have rubbed off on me when I wasn’t looking. Good thing. I was determined to keep the place running and profitable until a new owner came along and my life could go back to normal.
I looked at my watch. Nine thirty. Mack’s service started in half an hour. I drove my car over to the Lutheran church, where the service was going to be held. An investigator should have a good seat, right?
I planted myself in a back pew so I would have a good view of all the attendees as they filtered in. Not that I thought anything would happen at the funeral. Still, it couldn’t hurt to be observant. Ten minutes later, mourners started to arrive. Doreen waved as she walked in with some other women. They were followed by Annette (who I was certain saw me, but didn’t smile), Tom the high school football coach, Felix and Barbara Slaughter, Dr. and Mrs. Truman, and Mayor Poste and his wife. The whole town was getting a front-row view of Mack’s send-off.
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