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

by J. J. Murray

  “Right.”

  “Are you sure about the last name?”

  “Yes.”

  Mayor Billy Parsons. Billy isn’t married, and Hen is in his mid-twenties. Billy has two older sisters who moved away to Calhoun years ago. Is Philip Billy’s nephew?

  “You still there, Gio?”

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “So should I tell Tina about her poser soul mate?”

  Who might be up to no good. “You know, you could get tickets to Hair and take Tina to see it.”

  Ayana laughs. “Oh, the woman would go off! That’s a much better idea. Oh, but I can’t get arrested.”

  “Then give Tina a ticket to the show.”

  “But I want to be there to see the ruckus!”

  “Sit in a different section.”

  “That’s a plan. I think I’ll do that.”

  “Let me know when the oil cooler arrives, and I’ll hook you up.”

  “Okay. Bye. And don’t you ever call me this early again.”

  “I won’t.”

  Philip Parsons and Billy Parsons.

  Is this the connection I need to understand so I can figure out this mess?

  Chapter 26

  After eating one more donut and feeling absolutely no guilt, I decide to blindside Billy. He was rude to me yesterday, and if he wants the minority vote this fall, he had better be nice to me today.

  I step out to the porch, get a signal, and call Billy. “Billy, it’s Gio.”

  “I told you, Gio. You missed the deadline, so—”

  “It’s not about the tractor or the parade, Billy,” I interrupt. “It’s about Philip’s mini-Cooper.”

  “He brought it to you?”

  Gotcha.

  “Why would he bring it up here when he can get it fixed in Calhoun?” Billy asks.

  “Well, it had been sitting a while because Philip was out at Solitude posing as a hippie named Hen.”

  Silence.

  “You still there, Billy?”

  “I’m here.” Billy sighs. “What do you want, Gio?”

  “Answers,” I say. “And I have a lot of questions. Why did you send Philip to Solitude?”

  “It wasn’t my idea, Gio. You have to believe that.”

  Then it could only be … “I already know it was Sheriff Morris’s idea.”

  “And it was a stupid idea.”

  Wow. I have three men involved now, but I still need to connect them to Melville.

  “But, Gio, please understand,” Billy says. “Philip was in trouble. Again. He was speeding on three-oh-three with an open container and some other … stuff this time.”

  “So in exchange for him infiltrating Solitude, the charges were dropped.”

  “You’re not going to the Current or to the Calhoun Times with this, are you?”

  Billy sounds scared. Good. He should be. “Why would I go to the Current or the Times?”

  “I don’t know, to get Mr. Simmons’ tractor into the parade.”

  What? The tractor? This is a lot more serious than that! “Mr. Simmons’ tractor should already be in the parade because it’s the right thing to do, Billy.”

  “Okay, okay. You can show it off in the parade. I’ll put you in at the end.”

  Something’s not clicking here. “I could go to Captain Downs and the state police with this information, Billy.”

  “Oh man,” Billy says. “I knew this would blow up in our faces. Are you taping this?”

  “No.” And what exactly blew up in their faces? “Billy, this is serious.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Let’s start at the beginning, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Why did Sheriff Morris need Philip to be his narc at Solitude?”

  “It wasn’t like that, Gio. Sheriff Morris wanted Philip to join Solitude to gauge how interested they might be in a marina if a lake should show up one day. That’s all Philip was supposed to do.”

  Supposed to do? “Did Philip do more than he was supposed to do?” Like kill Mr. Simmons?

  “No. He did exactly what he was supposed to do.”

  This isn’t making any sense! “You all wanted a lake so your property would go up in value, right?”

  “Not mine,” Billy says. “The sheriff’s. I don’t ever intend to sell my five acres. I’m building a hunting lodge on that land. I’ve already laid the foundation.”

  Billy was always good with a gun and a bow. I sometimes think that’s why we keep reelecting him. “But the sheriff isn’t hurting for money if he has a timeshare down at Pine Lake.”

  “Yeah, well, the sheriff said the state retirement plan was a joke, and it is. He said he needed a little nest egg, and selling his property would have given him a nice nest egg but only if it were on the lake. He’s only ten years from retiring, you know. Are we done here? I’m really busy.”

  “How busy can you be? You’re the mayor of Kingstown.”

  “Look, Gio. I only knew about it, okay? I didn’t participate.”

  “In what exactly?”

  “In gathering information.”

  “But Mr. Simmons was murdered, Billy.”

  “Do you think … Gio, we had nothing to do with Mr. Simmons’ death. Is that what you think? That we killed Mr. Simmons?”

  I’m not so sure now. “But didn’t you visit Philip at Solitude?”

  “Yes, I did. I brought him some buffalo burgers from The Swinging Bridge one night because he said he was starving. All that organic food was giving him the runs. I even met him at The Home Place one night so he could pig out.”

  “Was that on D-Day?”

  “The night before. He ate enough for four people that night.”

  Something still isn’t right. “Did the sheriff know Mr. Simmons had changed his will?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  I am missing a huge chunk of information here. “Could the sheriff have known what was in Mr. Simmons’ will at any time? Even before Mr. Simmons changed it?”

  “Quit beating around the bush, Gio,” Billy says. “Man, you are seriously well-informed.”

  I am? I’m only taking stabs in the dark here. What do I already know? “Come on, Billy. Spill it.” Please. Whatever it is I’m not informed about.

  “Okay, okay. You obviously already know that I wrote Tiny’s original will.”

  Billy wrote Mr. Simmons will? When? But if I ask that, I won’t sound informed. “Why did he have you write it?”

  “He said I was the only person he could trust,” Billy says. “I had only just graduated from UVA, but he figured I’d know what to do since I was pre-law.”

  That was back in 1995. Around the time of Mr. Simmons’ competency hearing. I take another stab. “Mr. Simmons left all his land and property to his kids in the original will, didn’t he?”

  “All of it. He said he hoped they would feel guilty for treating him so badly.”

  “Those people cannot even spell the word ‘guilt.’”

  “You got that right.”

  But how did the sheriff find out? “And you might have mentioned all this to the sheriff in passing.”

  “We’re hunting buddies, all right? There’s not much else to do when you’re waiting for something to shoot at. And I wasn’t a lawyer at the time, so I didn’t violate any lawyer-client privilege when I told the sheriff about it.”

  Billy has really thought this out. He’s already covering his backside.

  “You shouldn’t have told the sheriff anything, Billy,” I say.

  “I know,” Billy says, “and I felt guilty about it, Gio. When Sheriff Morris first sent Philip to Solitude, I visited Mr. Simmons and recommended that he update his will because his land had gone up in value in the last twenty years.”

  “Update? You mean ‘change.’”

  “No. I didn’t tell him to change anything. I told him, ‘You might want to update your will, Mr. Simmons.’ That’s all I said. Then I gave him Curtis Daniels’ number and left. I didn’t expect
Tiny to change his will so drastically.”

  “When did you suggest to Mr. Simmons that he update his will?”

  “About four weeks ago.”

  Back in mid-May. “And that’s when Philip started spying.”

  “He wasn’t spying, Gio,” Billy says. “He was just … hanging out.”

  “And hooking up with Tina Morse,” I say. “He broke Tina’s heart, Billy.”

  “Really? Philip and Tina? She’s old enough to be his mother, even his grandmother.”

  “She’s still pretty torn up, Billy.”

  “Well, that’s on him, not me.”

  Where is my conspiracy to commit murder now? “When you talked to Mr. Simmons about updating his will, was he receptive?”

  “You know Tiny.”

  “So he was against the idea.”

  “Completely.” Billy laughs. “Tiny said he hoped they would fight each other over the land. His exact words were, ‘I hope they slug it out and waste thousands of dollars on lawyers until there’s nothing left for them to get.’”

  That sounds like something Mr. Simmons would have said. “Do you have any idea what made him change his mind?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Why would I know?”

  “Gio, everyone thinks that you changed Mr. Simmons’ mind.”

  “I barely spoke to the man,” I say.

  “What did y’all talk about?”

  “We talked about tractors. We talked about his wife’s daisies. We talked about …”

  Whoa.

  “What, Gio?”

  “We talked about the lake,” I say. “I told him I was glad he didn’t sell his land for the lake.”

  “And that might have been enough to change his mind, Gio. For most of his life, Tiny thought the entire county was against him, and then you showed up and proved that not everyone was.”

  That’s too … simple. “I can’t believe he would change his will completely because of me.”

  “It’s too much of a coincidence not to be true.”

  What did Mr. Simmons tell me in that will? That I reminded him of his wife. That I was tough like her. Mr. Simmons couldn’t leave anything to his wife, so he left me … what I wanted. I wanted the tractors and the truck. I didn’t want the lake, and he changed his will so that no one would get a lake. I guess I did sweet-talk him without even trying. Oh, goose bumps are crawling up and down my arms. “Well, we’ll never know for sure, will we?”

  “No, I guess we won’t. Do you have any more questions or suspicions?”

  “No. But I do have a request.”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t want Mr. Simmons’ tractor at the end of that parade. I want it to be somewhere in the middle.”

  “Okay. Anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Then I have a request for you. Please don’t let the sheriff know what I’ve told you. He might up and retire early out of spite, and we need him.”

  “Thomas Bradley could be sheriff.”

  “Like I said, we need Sheriff Morris. Bye.”

  I stare at my phone.

  Did I in one afternoon and in only maybe fifteen minutes of conversation with Mr. Simmons change the future of Gray County? I didn’t mean to. And even if I did, Curtis Daniels, Roberto, and the surveyors were out there a few days before I even met Mr. Simmons. Mr. Simmons was already in the process of changing his will before I might have convinced him to change it.

  Why was he changing his will in the first place?

  I’ll have to pester Nonno later.

  So much drama.

  I hear Lovie barking.

  And much more drama to come.

  Chapter 27

  I get ready for battle.

  I put on torn jeans and a stained gray Virginia Tech sweatshirt. I hide the canine nail clippers, a black collar, and a red leash behind my back as I sit on the cabin porch.

  “Lovie!”

  She bounds up to me, and I pet her with my left hand while sneaking the collar around her neck with my right.

  She jerks away immediately, but I hold on and clip the leash to her collar.

  “Don’t be that way,” I say. I take the clippers from under me. “Please be still.”

  Lovie doesn’t know how to be still. I think she has ADHD—Angry Dog Hyper Dog—whenever she wears a collar.

  Her nails are somewhat shorter half an hour of fighting her later.

  “Want to go for a ride?”

  Lovie spins on the ground, using a paw to try to remove the collar.

  That would be a no.

  I scoop Lovie up, and my sweatshirt collects a small dog’s worth of fur. I carry her across the swing bridge, put her into the front seat of the Jeep, and close the door. When I get in, she calms down and points her snout at the window. For a dog who hates going to the vet, Lovie loves riding in the Jeep because she can snort up forty-five miles of odors and aromas on the way there.

  I drive at or under the speed limit when I enter Calhoun County because I do not like Calhoun County police. A few years ago, they pulled over drivers who drove safely and didn’t break any traffic laws to present them with coffee mugs while embarrassing them and making them late for work. That program lasted less than a week. Two years ago, Calhoun County police threw a foul-mouthed paraplegic man to the ground during a traffic stop of the man’s motorized wheelchair because he wouldn’t get off the vehicle. He couldn’t get off without assistance, yet a cop slung him to the ground and impounded his wheelchair. It took two cops, an ambulance, and a tow truck to “subdue” a cussing paralyzed man.

  Lovie becomes an official “spazz” once we arrive at the vet. When I get out, she chokes herself all the way into the reception area.

  To Lovie, “walkies” are “chokies.”

  While I’m trying to wrestle her away from two dogs and a cat sitting calmly with their owners in the waiting area, I announce our presence: “Lovie is here for her yearly checkup.”

  “I have a few questions, Mrs. Ferrari,” the receptionist says from her safe perch behind a sliding glass window.

  I do not correct her because my arm is getting tired.

  “What does Lovie eat?”

  Oh, buffalo chips, snakes, birds, possums, rabbits, groundhogs, squirrels, dirt, rocks, and fish. “Beneful Healthy Fiesta,” I say.

  “She should be on Beneful Healthy Weight,” the receptionist says.

  No one has even weighed Lovie yet!

  “Has her activity level changed?”

  Lovie rarely stops moving until she falls asleep on my bed. “No.”

  “Any problems or concerns?”

  Just one. Can Lovie catch hoof and mouth disease from playing with a buffalo chip? “None.”

  While I sit and Lovie tries to chase the clinic’s “house” cat, I look at a sign on the wall: “Dog got bad breath?” Has Lovie ever had nice breath? Apples seem to help. Another sign asks, “Remember when fetch was fun?” No. I see a picture of man throwing a Frisbee toward a golden retriever.

  Lovie would eat that Frisbee.

  “Mrs. Ferrari,” the receptionist says, “would you like Lovie to be clipped and dipped today for only nineteen dollars?”

  Lovie will only roll around in something vile when we get home. “No thank you.”

  When it’s “our” turn, vet assistant Jordan and I corral Lovie long enough to weigh her.

  “She only gained a pound since last year,” Jordan says.

  How? I wish I could live a full year and only gain one pound. Is Jordan looking at me funny? Yes, I feed my dog, Jordan, and so does Mother Nature. Hey, get your tag-team act together. The receptionist thinks Lovie’s fat, and you think I’m starving her.

  Once we’re in the claustrophobic exam room, Lovie runs from door to door and tries to leap up onto the silver examining table while I read a fascinating article in Dog Fancy titled, “Why do dogs eat poop?” Evidently fifteen percent of all dogs eat their own poop. I should write Dog Fancy to ask them,
“Why do dogs eat other animals’ poop?”

  I put the magazine down and look up at the doggy wallpaper border. My dog will never be on wallpaper. Only purebreds get to be the stars on wallpaper. Someone needs to make some wallpaper featuring mutts.

  “Sit,” I say to Lovie.

  Lovie splays her feet on the ground like a soldier hitting the dirt.

  Close enough.

  Dr. Huffton walks in, and Lovie shoots off the floor to cower beside me. “And how is Lovie doing?”

  “Fine,” I say.

  “One sec.” Dr. Huffton leaves and returns with Jordan and Tammy, another vet assistant.

  Dr. Huffton remembers Lovie.

  While Jordan and Tammy pin Lovie down, Dr. Huffton checks Lovie’s ears, frowns, and writes something on Lovie’s chart.

  We go through this every visit. “Lovie was a bait dog,” I say. “I adopted her from Angels of Assisi.”

  “She has many scars around her ears and a long scar down to the base of her tail,” Dr. Huffton says. “Does Lovie have any phobias?”

  A vet has used the word “phobia” in reference to my dog. I hope I don’t have to take Lovie to a dog whisperer. “She fears loud noises mainly,” I say. “Thunderstorms affect her the most.”

  “We’ve had a few big thunder boomers here lately,” Jordan says.

  “They missed us in Gray County entirely,” I say. Gray County must only manufacture and export the clouds.

  After Lovie ignores the “Scooby snacks” they offer her, Dr. Huffton takes a blood sample, gives her two shots, and inserts that fecal spoon.

  “I noticed she gained a pound,” Dr. Huffton says. “I wouldn’t feed her any more than you currently feed her.”

  For one freaking pound? “Sure.”

  “I’ll be back with the results.”

  Dr. Huffton leaves, Jordan and Tammy release Lovie, and Lovie crawls into my lap. This is as still as Lovie ever gets. When Jordan and Tammy leave the exam room, Lovie jumps down and gobbles up the Scooby snacks.

  Lovie doesn’t like strangers watching her eat.

  After I read “Fight Fido’s Firework Fears,” Dr. Huffton returns and announces, “All tests are negative. You have a healthy dog.”

  I already knew this. “Great.”

  And now the real struggle begins: paying the bill.