The Complete Honey Huckleberry Box Set

by Margaret Moseley

  Joaquin tried to talk, to tell me everything that had happened at the police station, but it was hard to do with his mouth full. He offered me the last half of the last sandwich on the plate, but I waved it away, and he stuffed it in his mouth, devouring it in two bites. I did, however, join him for a cup of red wine that we’d found in Steven Hyatt’s cooler, still cold in neck-deep melted ice.

  “Steven Hyatt never did clean up his messes,” I said as I looked around the cluttered room. There were still blankets on the couch, and some on the floor, where I guessed Harry had slept. I wouldn’t have invited Harry to spend the night with me even if the two of us had been alone. Not in the house. Not in Aunt Eddie’s house.

  “I don’t mind the mess, Honey. I’m one myself.” He yawned as he leaned back into the pillows on the couch. “You were right. I do feel better now.”

  “Good, ’cause I want to know.”

  What I wanted to know would have to wait. Arthur Stephen Roselli—a.k.a. Joaquin Verde—was sound asleep in Stephen Hyatt’s swaddle of sheets and blankets. His complexion was ruddier now. Actually, it was a little flushed, and motherly like, I touched his cheek for fever as I covered him with a quilt I found on the floor. He was all right, I decided. Just overtired.

  I wandered around the room, strangely reluctant to leave. It was like I was forgetting to do something. Roaming into the side room, I saw the blueprint of the house I had left on the table. It was still tightly curled like it was holding fast to its mysteries. I picked it up and took it downstairs with me, leaving Joaquin to his much-needed rest.

  I had work to do.

  Joaquin almost slept the clock around.

  The telephone didn’t wake him; I raced to catch it every time it rang—before the answering machine did—so I usually caught it on the first ring unless I was deep in the pantry.

  Harry called, of course, and we finally had the good long talk we’d needed to have. It was a shame that the only privacy we could find was to be five hundred miles away from each other.

  And Janie’s call was predictable. “What’s happening? Who did it? Is anybody else dead?”

  But Steven Hyatt’s was a delight. “Honey, my God. Honey, my God, where did you get it? Is it real? What do you want me to do with it? Honey, my God.”

  Assuring him the money was indeed legal tender and legal for me to have—Lennox had assured me of that—he relaxed, but he still wanted to know why I had given it to him.

  “It’s from me and father,” I told him. “For your debts so you won’t have to play tag with the Mafia anymore. They’re trouble, Steven. Just ask Bondesky.”

  “For God’s sake, Honey, I can’t take your money.”

  “Of course, you can. No, wait, I know. Use it for an investment for me. That’s it. I don’t have any investments and, Steven, you know I trust your talent. This next project—the Australian one—is going to be a big success. I just feel it. And I want a piece of the action. That’s how you say it, don’t you? Let me be your angel.” That sounded right.

  “You are my angel, Honey.” He sounded frustrated. “Oh, all right, but I hope you know what you are asking of me. I know I can’t ignore your feelings. Now I’ll have to make it … and make it big, so I won’t let you down. That’s a dirty thing to do to me, Honey.”

  Before we hung up, I added, “And if that’s not enough, if you need any more …”

  “More! There’s more? Honey, how much is there, and where did you say you found it?”

  It was typical of Steven Hyatt not to ask any more questions, and while most of the time it annoyed me, today I was glad that he was behaving normally for him. He obviously was too overwhelmed with the money and prospect of freedom from the mob to be more concerned with the source of the pink-tissue wrapped packages he’d unloaded in his hotel room.

  And I was relieved, because overwhelmed myself, I might have told him that the Laura Ashley shopping bag he’d carried innocently into New York City was only a drop in the bucket to the mounds of cash that between telephone calls I’d eventually pulled from the fake insulation behind the stairs.

  My cup runneth over.

  At least my kitchen did. There was money everywhere. Maybe, I thought halfway into my treasure hunt, maybe I should have left it right where it was, but it was like eating peanuts. One just won’t do, and you keep on until the bowl is empty. Only the bowl—kitchen in this case—just kept getting fuller. It was hell having all that money and no place to put it. I must have dragged it to about every possible hiding place in the house before I finally decided to stuff it into the top of the upright piano. Even then it almost didn’t fit.

  I had just closed the top of the piano when I heard Joaquin on the stairs. Looking around for any stray hundreds—they were slippery things—I ran to the front door to let him in before he rang the doorbell.

  He was still wearing his old grungies that he’d had on the day before—actually two days now—but he looked clean himself and refreshed.

  I was surprised at his first words. “I’ve seen you like this before. Tell me, Honey, is this a fetish of some kind?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No? Then I suggest you go take a look in the mirror.” He followed me into the house. I ran into the living room to look at myself in the mirror over the mantel. “I know, don’t tell me, when you’re alone in the house, you dress up like this. Why? To keep the goblins away or to keep them company? Which?”

  “The pantry,” I said weakly, gazing at my reflection and recognizing the physical destruction I’d forgotten the little room could wreak upon me. “I’ve been busy all morning.”

  “Ah, yes. That’s where I remember you collect these lovely cobwebs,” and he pulled one out of my hair, its dusty strings stretching between us. “Honey, I told you I’d clean it out for you.”

  And we both stopped at that.

  Joaquin might have cleaned out my pantry, but Arthur Stephen Roselli?

  There was an instant awkwardness that our previous banter couldn’t erase. “We’ve got to talk,” we both said at the same time.

  “But not now,” he added. “I promised the police I’d come back to the station today, and I’ve just got time to change clothes at the clinic and make it there. Honey, I’m embarrassed, but I have one more favor to ask of you. May I borrow your car? I won’t be long, I promise.” He gently brushed some more cobwebs away from my face. “And then we’ll talk. I’ll tell you everything I know about what’s been going on. I know, I’ll take you to dinner.”

  “I’d like that,” I said still shy at this new Joaquin. Maybe I’d find out who this man really was. The phantom phone caller or the congenial gardener? Or maybe someone else entirely. “I’ll be ready.”

  He broke the strain between us with his next words. “Oh, and while we won’t go to someplace all that fancy, I do think something black would go with your atmospheric attire, and I do have to mention, I don’t think spiders are in this season.”

  I swatted at a dead spider I had just noticed on my forearm.

  He was laughing as he went out the front door and still laughing as he made a clean military turn back. “The keys? And this; I found it in your mailbox.” We exchanged items. I gave him the keys to the Malibu, and he gave me a manila envelope in which—after he left again—I found another set of keys and a bill of sale stating, “Jay Owen Plymouth has received payment in full from Miss Honey Huckleberry for one Plymouth Voyager.”

  Excited, I ran out of the house and finally located the new van in the back parking lot. Exactly where the green one had been parked on Tuesday night. The one with Jimmy’s body in it.

  I was afraid to open it.

  “Honey, how are you? Jesus, you look a fright.” Ralph’s silent approach startled me.

  “Ralph. I’m so glad to see you. Will you do me a big favor? Will you open up this van for me?”

  “Why are you so dirty?” he asked fascinated by my appearance.

  “Oh, never mind that. I’ve just be
en doing some deep housekeeping, that’s all. It’ll wash off, it always does. I don’t think I’ve ever cleaned like I have today, but it feels good. Before I’m through, I’m going to sweep the cobwebs out of every corner of the house. Every corner I can find. I swear, Ralph, if you could see what’s hidden around in that house … but would you … would you open the van for me?”

  “Of course, Honey,” he said, still looking at me strangely. “But there’re no dead bodies in this one.”

  “I hope you’re right, Ralph,” I said as he took the keys and deftly unlocked the doors to reveal the shiny new navy interior. Warm waves of new car smell wafted over us as we peered inside.

  “See,” he said, “there’s nothing to be afraid of now, Honey.”

  THIRTY–FIVE

  “I’m going to be leaving tomorrow, Honey,” Joaquin said as we finished our after-dinner coffee at Joe T. Garcia’s.

  I’d told him he had to say he’d eaten at the north side Mexican restaurant or no one would believe him when he’d said he’d been in Fort Worth. Actually, the purple skirt and embroidered white Mexican blouse were all I could find in the war room that I felt like wearing that night, so the leaning, ramshackle restaurant seemed appropriate. The night was cool enough for me to pull the bright, flowered shawl around my shoulders, but warm enough for us to eat out on the patio. The waiters rushed about delivering trays of monster-sized margheritas to other diners, managing to dodge the strolling guitarist, and not spilling the drinks into the fountain that our waiter assured us had been just turned on for the first time this spring.

  I turned back from the festive sight to make sure I’d heard him correctly. “You’re leaving tomorrow? What about the police? Won’t they need you to testify or something?” I was suddenly disconcerted to know that Joaquin was going to disappear from my life.

  He reached across our table to cover my hand with his. His hand was large and rough, from the gardening work I supposed, but probably rough before that, too. As an agriculturist, he’d told me, he’d spent a lot of time in the fields. When his hand warmed mine, I realized just how cool the evening had become. “I’m going to trust you, Honey. Because I think I can. Yes, to answer your question, the police, the FBI and, I think, the CIA, have warned me to stay for awhile, but I’ve got to get back to Italy. Quickly.”

  “But how?”

  “The same way I came in … through Canada. There are too many questions the officials want to know that I’m not prepared to answer. Not right now, not to them.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like they should be asking me about the explosion at my lab, but instead, I’m getting more questions about my formula. Especially, from a couple of guys no one has properly identified yet.” He took his hand away, and I felt cold. He folded his hands together and locked them under his chin, his elbows on the table, as he spoke. “I have been told more mystery interrogators will show up tomorrow. I’ve got to get away first.”

  I was not familiar with the intensity of his words, but then with what was I really familiar with—this new Joaquin … Stephen?

  We’d talked about our first telephone calls. How and why we’d come to trust each other. Me, out of instinct, and him, out of desperation. “I had no other way. I didn’t mean to terrorize you.”

  He’d come home from downtown exhausted again, but insisting that we carry out our plans for dinner. I had been ready to demur, because although I was bathed and dressed for the outing, I, too, was tired. The job I had finished after Joaquin left for the police station—one I had put off until its accompanying noise wouldn’t wake him—had depleted my energy. But both of us had revived with the cheerful atmosphere of the Mexican restaurant. Now the golden lights strung across the patio seemed too garish and the musical gaiety surrounding us too forced.

  Death and intrigue had crept their way back into our evening.

  Joaquin saw me pulling the shawl tightly around my arms, and he turned to signal the waiter. “We’d better go,” he said.

  “Wait, Joaquin. Who’s coming tomorrow? Who’d they say?”

  “A couple of men from Italy. Along with one of my fellow scientists. And I don’t want to be here to greet them.”

  “Why?” I questioned. “Why not, Joaquin?”

  He stood over me, reaching for my hand, and when I looked up, he looked dark and foreboding against the backdrop of the festooned patio. “You still don’t really understand how big this is, do you, Honey?”

  I didn’t answer him, and we were quiet on the way back to the south side. Joaquin drove the Malibu; I wasn’t ready to tackle the Voyager yet. What’s not to understand? I asked myself.

  Our good-byes were short, stiff, and self-conscious. In Joaquin’s eyes, I could see him making a decision, which resulted in an awkward hug at my front door and a vague promise to call me.

  Trying a joke, I said, “Of course, that’s how this all began.”

  I heard his footsteps taking the outside steps two at a time to the third-floor room. I had told him he might as well stay there now. What difference would one more night make? I closed the front door and wandered through the downstairs, switching on lights to dispel the unexpected anxiety I felt, but they did nothing to erase my increasing apprehension.

  “What’s not to understand?” I said aloud to the living room walls. Maybe I was naive in the ways of international conspiracies, but I wasn’t dumb. “I think I’ve been insulted,” I said to the red lamp with the gold fringe. And I felt my temperature rise.

  “He’s going off and leaving me to answer to the police, and I’ll either have to lie to them again … or tell them where he is. How dare he!” I shouted to the four walls, banged my hand on the piano, and shivered again in the loneliness of the house. I was really alone now. The protective aura the house had always provided for me was gone.

  Unaccustomed anger seeped into me as I paced and argued with myself. I called out my other half. “Lydia! Lydia, are you going to let him get away with this?”

  Lydia!

  That name brought back the memory of Steven Miller lying in this room, dying with my alter ego’s name on his lips. Mixed with my anger, Steven Miller’s unresolved death brought me to a sharp turn in my thinking process.

  Who was this Italian-American-quasi-Mexican anyway that he could breeze in and out of countries, in and out of intrigues, in and out of my life, and get away with it? He said he was Arthur Stephen Roselli, but just as someone was coming to prove it, he was skipping the country.

  Suddenly I thought I knew. Joaquin wasn’t Roselli. Maybe he was one of conspirators who had planned Roselli’s death and had been sent to America to tie up any loose ends. Like Bondesky. Sure, and he’d found the perfect chump … me … to go along with his plans, and then what had happened?

  Yes, he’d murdered Steven Miller when Steven had found him searching the house. That’s why he’d called out the “Lydia” that Miller had told me about before he died. How stupid I’d been.

  I ran to the telephone to call Silas, but stopped before I’d finished dialing the number. I put my finger on the cutoff. Silas wouldn’t believe me. Peggy had told me that. But Lennox would! I dialed again, but hung up when the other end answered.

  What would I tell him? That Joaquin was skipping out? Certainly. But my other suspicions … Would they be enough? I remembered my mistake of accusing Steven Bondesky of Steven Miller’s murder.

  This time I would make sure before I called in the police.

  I didn’t call it the war room just because I’d stolen the name from Churchill’s underground planning room. I really named it that because that’s where the gun lived. It had been there for as long as I could remember. A big one: silver, heavy, and loaded. I’d found it one day when I was very young and all angles and full of curiosity.

  My mother had one of her headaches and the usual white cloth was draped over her eyes and forehead. Father had gone for some medication, and I was to watch over Mother, but I could tell she’d drifted off into a li
ght sleep. Bored, I had tiptoed out of the room, into my father’s bedroom and—unusual for me—began exploring the knotty-pine drawers and doors built into the wall. In the top of the right-hand one, I’d found the gun.

  It looked for all the world like the one Matt Dillon might have carried slung at his side every Saturday night on television … one of the few programs Father would let me watch with him.

  Fascinated, I’d taken it from the cardboard shoebox and held it in my hand. I’d never felt such strength and power in any object I’d ever touched before. Scared but reluctant to return it to its hiding place, I’d looked around for a safe place to examine it. If Mother woke, she’d come looking for me. I didn’t dare take it to my room. How would I get it back to the closet?

  I settled on unlocking the screened window in Father’s room and sliding under its partial opening to perch on hunkered knees on the small roof overhang outside his room. The gun didn’t feel cold or hot to my touch, just big and, oh, so heavy. I turned the barrel toward me and saw the bronze bullets with what I thought were silver tips.

  Silver bullets! Then I knew. My father was really the Lone Ranger.

  Those thoughts and fantasies occupied my mind for probably a quarter of an hour while sparrows landed beside me, curious as to what the new motionless statue was doing on their roof. It was my mother’s plaintive cry of, “Honey, where are you?” that finally brought me from my reverie. I hastened to climb back through the window, stuff the gun into its box, and close the cabinet before she entered the room, the white cloth still clutched to her forehead.

  “What have you been doing, Honey?” she asked not in an accusatory tone, but with a genuine desire to know.

  “Nothing,” I’d said.

  I’d never touched the gun again … well, only once, after Father died, to verify that it was there.

  It still was. As heavy and powerful as I’d remembered it.