Rust in Peace (A Giovanna Ferrari Repair-it-all Mystery Book 1)

by J. J. Murray

  I pick up the filter, and it’s dry as a bone. I’m not. I could use some of that inorganic water. Once I replace the filter and turn on the AC, it hums along nicely and begins to cool off the store.

  Hmm. But no one’s running the store. Not that they ever have many customers. I go outside to see Hen hugging Tina. I do not want to interrupt them, but I would like someone to pay me for my sweat.

  Tina turns toward me, her face a beaming smile, her dreadlocks a knotted mess. “What do I owe you?”

  “Twenty-five and … three apples.” One each for Nonno, Jack, and Lovie. They all need breath-fresheners.

  Tina pulls a twenty and a five from a little medicine pouch around her neck. “The Redfree apples are great.”

  “I’ll take three on my way out,” I say. “Thanks.”

  “Gio, um, I don’t mean to pry, but …” Tina winces. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, Tina.”

  “I mean, it must have been such a shock to find Mr. Simmons,” she says.

  “It was. Gotta go.”

  I pick three decent smelling and looking Redfree apples from a bin and walk back to the shop. I hand Nonno an apple.

  “What is this?” he asks.

  “A Redfree apple,” I say.

  “But it is red,” he says.

  “Hey, I don’t name them.” I stare at a wall of tools for five minutes. “I’m bored, Nonno.”

  “Why don’t you go out to The Simmons Farm?”

  “Why?”

  “Take the trailer and get that tractor,” he says. “Bring the tractor here and finish the restoration.”

  “But Mr. Simmons is dead, Nonno.”

  “The contract is still good, Giovanna.”

  Yes it is. “I did promise I’d have that tractor in the Fourth of July parade.” I juggle the two remaining apples. “I should take Jack back, too. Do you think Lovie will cause any trouble at the farm?”

  “Yes. Lovie has never met a cow or a donkey before.”

  And those donkeys wanted to stomp Jack into the ground. “I’ll only take Jack then.”

  Chapter 13

  Collecting Jack from the cabin is easy. He follows me across the bridge as if he’s done it all his life. Lovie takes two steps onto the bridge—a record!—and stops, sits, and pants. I wonder if she’ll miss Jack.

  I don’t have to wonder long. She has disappeared by the time Jack hops into the Jeep.

  Before I return to the shop, I stop by Deed’s. “Have the tires arrived yet?”

  “Not yet,” Mr. Deed says. “Maybe by the end of the week. How are you doing?”

  “I’m fine, Mr. Deed,” I say. “Really. Did Mr. Simmons’ son Fred have a favorite tractor?”

  “Sure did,” he says. “He rode that Farmall Cub into town quite often to see my wife. She wasn’t my wife then, of course.”

  “So Fred Junior dated your future wife.”

  “Briefly,” he says. “I won her hand in the tenth grade, and I haven’t let go of it since.”

  “What about Billie and Bobbie?”

  “Those two were as useless as mudguards on a hog, bright as coalbins at midnight, and sharp as marshmallows,” he says with a scowl. “They would have been fired by M&M for throwing out all the W’s. Neither of them finished high school, and they took the first hippie van that rolled through here going west in 1970.”

  “Did you see them when they …”

  “Tried to get their old man declared incompetent?”

  I nod.

  “Both of them were stoned at the courthouse,” he says. “They weren’t stoned out of their minds, though, because they didn’t have minds to begin with.”

  “What about, um, Mel …”

  “Melville Taylor. As ornery as a treed raccoon. A beer has more brains in its head. He is the only person I have ever kicked out of this store.”

  “What for?”

  “He asked my two daughters for a date. At the same time. While I was standing here listening to him ask.”

  “He sounds like a piece of work,” I say.

  “That ain’t the piece that boy was and probably still is,” he says. He leans close to me. “You be careful now, Gio.”

  Huh? “Why do I need to be careful?”

  “Just … watch your step, okay?”

  “Why?”

  “You were the last person to see old Tiny alive, and I hear maybe he didn’t die of old age.”

  “Who’d you hear that from?”

  He looks down the first aisle at several customers. “The state police,” he whispers. “Captain Downs called me an hour ago, and he asked a couple questions about you. I only told him about the paint and the muffler you bought for Tiny’s tractor.”

  “Because Captain Downs probably read the statement I gave to Thomas.”

  “Still, I’d watch your step,” he says. “You know what happens around here. People become infamous awful quick.”

  “How is finding a dead body going to make me infamous?”

  “Your name will be on everyone’s lips,” he whispers. “It’s already in the paper. You know how people around here like to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “About what things look like. You were the only person out there, and Tiny died. Some people might think you had something to do with it.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Oh, I know that,” he says. “But I can only speak for myself. Just be careful.”

  “Okay. I will.”

  Only three of our residents have been famous—or infamous—enough to get into Wikipedia. Johnny “The Jet” Morse, arguably the worst pitcher in professional baseball history, went 0-22 for the Philadelphia A’s in the 1920s. He was Kingstown’s very own Charlie Brown, yet county commissioners in the 1950s named Gray County High School’s baseball field after him even though “The Jet” drank himself to death during the Depression. They had to name it after someone, right? And they couldn’t name it after Talulah Puckett, a silent film star who changed her name to Petunia Rose Washington. I think she doomed her movie career because her new name couldn’t fit on a theater marquee. Talulah/Petunia was a saloon barmaid with a hairy mole on her cheek in Chuck’s Wagon. She was a uni-brow librarian in The Pages of Sin. In her greatest and last role, she played a cockeyed preacher’s wife turned circus animal trainer in Gladly, the Cross-eyed Bear. She later jumped off the Fifth Street Bridge into the Calhoun River when her career ended with the “talkies.” Evidently, her accent was too “country” for sound pictures. And an actress named Heaven Lee owns a six-bedroom “cabin” on top of Motts Mountain where she irregularly rehabs when she isn’t serving one day of “mandatory” ninety-day jail sentences out in Los Angeles. No one has ever seen her in Gray County, in Kingstown, or in any movie that has earned more than half a star.

  Be careful, Mr. Deed says. Don’t become infamous.

  I return to the shop and hitch up our twenty-four-foot heavy-duty trailer that Hank lets us park near his mulch next door. I don’t know what I’d do without this trailer. It has its own built-in ramp and winch and can handle up to ten thousand pounds with ease on a black metal frame, a treated wood floor, and four twenty-inch tires. Though it’s a pain to maneuver sometimes, it can go just about anywhere.

  I could really use some soothing music right now. Though I have a nice Kenwood sound system, I rarely get a chance to use it. The tuner only pulls in one crackly AM station that plays country and western from way back in the day. We’re talking Roy Acuff, Kitty Wells, Montana Slim (the yodeling cowboy), and Jean Shepard. I have nothing against country and western music, but after a while, it all starts to sound the same: a dog, a pickup truck, alcohol, and unrequited love. Why would I want to hear a song about a typical Saturday night in Kingstown?

  Gray Creek is even lower as I barrel through it and see a series of wide tracks and ruts going up the other side. Once I clear the rise on the other side of the creek, I can only pull up twenty more feet because a black state police Dodge Charger bl
ocks the path. I look up the hill and see police tape flapping in the wind around Mr. Simmons’ homestead, the coroner’s van from Calhoun, an ambulance, a Chevy Tahoe, and two more state police cars.

  All this for one dead body? And why is Mr. Simmons’ body still here?

  A tall, bull-necked state trooper gets out of the Charger, his mirrored sunglasses blinding me.

  I roll down my window. “What’s going on?”

  “This is a crime scene, ma’am.”

  According to his nametag, he’s Officer Smith. How anonymous. Oh, now he’s taking off his sunglasses, probably in a lame attempt to flirt.

  “How is this a crime scene?” I ask. “I thought Mr. Simmons died in his sleep.”

  “He didn’t, um …”

  No more “ma’am” for me. He’s not terrible looking, but his Adam’s apple and ears are far too big. “Gio.”

  “Gio? Are those your initials?”

  It isn’t the dumbest thing anyone has ever said about my name. “G-I-O. Gio.” I won’t overwhelm him with my last name even if it is on the side of the Jeep. “How did Mr. Simmons die then?”

  “He drowned.”

  I didn’t hear that correctly. “He what?”

  “Someone drowned him,” Officer Smith says. “That’s what the coroner from Calhoun says.”

  This has to be a joke. “Mr. Simmons was dry as a bone when I found him.”

  Officer Smith leans into the Jeep and looks into the back. “You found the body.”

  What is he looking for? Another body? “Yes. Deputy Bradley should have told you that.”

  Officer Smith puts his hand on my roof. “Is that Deputy Thomas Bradley from Kingstown?”

  “Yes.”

  He pulls out a little spiral notepad. “So you’re the one who broke into Mr. Simmons’ house.”

  “I thought Mr. Simmons was in danger, and it turned out I was right.”

  “He was in danger, Gio,” Officer Smith says. “Someone murdered him. So, you were the one who hid that glass in the wastebasket under the sink.”

  “I didn’t hide it if you found it, right? I cleaned up the mess I made so the police wouldn’t step on the glass.”

  “Uh-huh.” He writes something down. “CSI techs are going to piece the window back together.”

  “Why?”

  “To check for fingerprints.”

  “I used my elbow.”

  He blinks. “Then they’ll find your elbow print.”

  Whatever, dude. Who looks for elbow prints?

  “So the door was locked,” Officer Smith says.

  I count to three. “If it was unlocked, I wouldn’t have had to break the window.”

  “Oh, yeah, right.” He writes that down.

  The heifer and the calf trot across the field, and Jack barks. I lean over, open his door, and he bounds off after them.

  “Hey, hey!” Officer Smith yells.

  “That’s Mr. Simmons’ dog, Jack,” I say. “He lives here and tends the cows when he isn’t playing with them.”

  “Why do you have Mr. Simmons’ dog?” Officer Smith asks.

  Thomas probably didn’t put this information in his report. “Jack was sick, so I took him home. He’s fine today.”

  “Uh-huh. So you kidnapped Mr. Simmons’ dog and now you’re returning him.”

  “No. I took Jack home so he would be safe from the wolves.” Why is this beginning to sound like Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on first?” sketch?

  “Oh, so now there were wolves,” he says.

  “Yes. Three of them. It should be in Deputy Bradley’s report.”

  “Should it?”

  I bet I could sell this guy some organic water. “Where’s Sheriff Morris?”

  “Have you seen him?”

  Weird question. “No.” Sheriff Morris lives for the spotlight. He should be here. I look up the hill and don’t see his Jeep Cherokee. “He hasn’t been around at all?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you really think Mr. Simmons drowned?”

  “It’s what the coroner says.”

  “He drowned … in his living room.”

  “No, we think Mr. Simmons was drowned in the creek.”

  Really? “Mr. Simmons was a big man. There’s not enough water in that creek to drown him.”

  “Oh, there are ways to drown a person in any depth of water,” Officer Smith says. “Simply hold him facedown until …”

  “Mr. Simmons weighed four hundred pounds, and he was a strong man for his age,” I say. “There’s nothing simple about it unless more than one person was involved.”

  “More than one person, eh?”

  I sigh. “Yes. How else could they carry all four hundred pounds of him uphill to his house, give him a bath, trim his beard, put fresh clothes on him, and clean his nails?”

  He looks behind the Jeep. “Nice trailer. Good for moving a heavy dead body. I may have to tag it as evidence.”

  “Are you serious?” I could sell this guy a swimming pool full of organic water.

  “It’s even wet,” he says.

  “Because I just drove through the creek.” You idiot! “And I wasn’t using it last night.”

  “So you say,” he says. “Perhaps you drove it last night and today you drove it through the creek to get rid of some evidence.”

  I count to ten. “If I were the killer, would I come back to the scene of the crime?”

  “I don’t know,” Officer Smith says. “Would you?”

  Wow. “I don’t know what I’d do, Officer Smith. I have never killed anyone.”

  “Some killers like to hang around the crime scene,” he says. “To show how smart they are and to get information. Is that why you’re here?”

  This is ridiculous! “Look, I came here today to pick up a tractor I was restoring for Mr. Simmons. I was going to use the trailer behind me to—”

  “Tell me about the wolves,” he interrupts.

  I blink. “You don’t want to know why I’m here today.”

  “Tell me about the wolves.”

  This guy thinks he’s Detective Columbo or something. “The wolves were hairy.”

  “How many were there?”

  I already told you. “Three, but I scared them away.”

  He tips up his hat. Oh, now he’s Marshal Matt Dillon from Gunsmoke. “And how did you scare them away, little lady?”

  Maybe that was his John Wayne impersonation. “With my rifle.” I point to the back of the Jeep. “It’s back there, and I have a license for it.”

  “How many times—”

  “I fired it once,” I interrupt.

  He opens the back door, reaches in, finds the rifle, and pulls it out. “It’s not loaded.”

  You are. “No, and I have a right to keep a rifle in my Jeep as long as it’s unloaded.”

  “It’s suspicious to bring a rifle to a crime scene, isn’t it?” he asks.

  “I didn’t know I’d be coming to a crime scene today.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “You didn’t expect anyone to be here, did you?”

  He’s right about that. “I didn’t know if anyone would be here, no.”

  “And you were just going to come up here and steal that tractor,” Officer Smith says.

  “No.”

  He looks into the barrel of the Marlin. “This has some serious firepower.”

  “No woman in this county leaves home without some kind of weapon. Some women—even churchgoing women—keep twenty-two pistols in their vehicles.”

  “They do, do they?”

  “Yes, but those are pop guns that weigh a little more than a pound fully loaded. My rifle weighs seven pounds, and its extra weight gives me courage.”

  “To do what?”

  Why I am talking to this fool? “Look, Officer Smith, I live alone, and occasionally hungry black bears approach my front porch. Do I use a Taser? No. Do I use pepper spray? No. Do I blow a whistle? No. Do I fire up a hot pink five million-volt mini stun gun? No. I get my rifle,
load, aim, and fire. Just like I did last night with the wolves.”

  “I’m gonna have to tag your rifle as evidence,” he says.

  “Evidence of what? I didn’t use it in the commission of a crime. I used it to save a dog’s life.”

  “So you say.” He starts to walk to his Charger with the rifle.

  “Hey, now your fingerprints are on it.”

  He stops mid-step. “And I will note that in my report.” He continues to his car, puts the rifle into the back seat, and returns to me. “What is your full name, Miss Gio?”

  “Gio Ferrari.”

  “Like the car?”

  Like the third most popular name in all of Italy. “Yes.”

  “Could you spell that for me?”

  I slap the side of the car. Read the sign, fool.

  “Ferrari Repair.” He laughs. “There are no Ferraris up there.” Officer Smith laughs until he coughs. “I doubt there are any Ferraris within two hundred miles of here.”

  When I was twelve, a man driving a 1987 Ferrari Testarossa pulled up in front of our shop. “I’m so glad I found y’all,” he said. “You have to be the only Ferrari repair shop in Virginia.” I had asked my papa if we fixed Ferraris. “Sure we do,” Papa had said. “It has our name on it.” My papa had that Ferrari singing Aida in no time.

  “Ferrari is the name of our family business,” I say.

  “Kind of funny, though, huh? You’re a Ferrari and you don’t repair Ferraris.”

  You’re a Smith and you don’t work with iron. I wish I could repair your mind, Officer Smith, but you’re missing too many parts.

  “And why were you up here last night?”

  I sigh. “I am in the process of restoring a tractor for Mr. Simmons.”

  “And you came back today to …”

  Look back in your notes. You should have already written it down. “I came to trailer the tractor on the hill up there back to our shop to finish the restoration.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do. Mr. Simmons wanted to show it off in the Fourth of July parade.”

  “He won’t be around to drive it, now, will he?”

  “I know that. I would have driven it. I probably will drive it once I can get it back to the shop and finish the restoration.”

  “We’re dusting that tractor for prints,” he says.