Demise in Denim

by Duffy Brown

  “Can I go?”

  “Keep me in the loop, and if you can talk Boone into surrendering, it might be in his best interest. A lot of people behind rifle sights are looking for the guy.”

  The sun was just peeking over the spire of St. John’s as I came out of the police station and saw Mamma pulling to the curb in her black Caddy. She rolled down the window. “Some people put on PJs and go to sleep at night, dear.”

  “You should have seen BW, he was magnificent.” I took shotgun and we headed down Bull.

  “What in the world happened?” Mamma asked. “And you smell like the bottom of a garbage can.”

  “I went out for a run, and then I went to jail. See, this is why exercise is really a bad idea, least for me. There was a dead body and getting picked up by the police in the middle there somewhere.”

  “Did Boone get away?”

  “He flattened Deckard.”

  “Well there you go, all’s well that ends well.” Mamma parked the Caddy in front of Cherry House and we hoofed it up the sidewalk to Auntie KiKi sitting on the steps in yellow curlers, yellow housecoat, and matching bunny slippers. BW was sprawled out across the porch doing his buzz-saw routine. I sat downwind on one side of KiKi, and Mamma took the other. “You’re wearing jeans,” I said to Mamma.

  “If they didn’t let you out of that jail, I figured there might be some serious butt-kicking in order.” She patted her thigh. “Plus I just got these new shaper jeans and wanted to take them out for a run.”

  KiKi handed me a steaming mug of coffee and gave Mamma hers. “Harper Norton’s dead?” she asked.

  “As a mink hat.” I took a sip of coffee. “How’d BW get here?”

  “Chantilly, our friendly doggie delivery service.”

  I took a deep breath. “They think Boone was having an affair with Harper Norton and she tried to turn him in for the reward money and he killed her. I got to his office before he could ditch the body, and BW is more Bruce Willis than we give him credit for.”

  Mamma stared wide-eyed, and KiKi sat perfectly still for a second. “An affair?” KiKi asked.

  “So they say.”

  “Don’t move.” KiKi got up and scurried off to Rose Gate, her robe flowing out behind her like Batman. “What do you think she’s doing?” I asked Mamma.

  “It’s either Putter’s golf club to beat up Walker the next time she sees him or it’s booze.”

  KiKi was back in one minute flat with three glasses and a bottle of vodka. “Screw the vermouth.” She filled the shot glasses; we toasted, then chugged, then did a repeat performance.

  “Better?” Mamma asked.

  I touched my nose. “I don’t feel anything.”

  “Good, now we can figure this out. It’s a known legal fact that a relaxed brain is better functioning.”

  “Right now I think I could pass for a rocket scientist.” I reached over and patted BW. “Best I can come up with is that someone lured Harper to Boone’s office, then stabbed her, and Boone just happened to show up, but why did he do that?”

  I sat a little straighter. “Because of the lights. They were out in the office. I knew something was up and came in to check, and so did Boone. He showed up at the wrong time, and then Deckard followed me in.”

  Mamma and KiKi exchanged looks and Mamma asked, “So you’re not buying the Walker/Harper lover idea?”

  “I suck at men, I truly do. Look at Hollis, could I have made a worse choice than getting involved with that man? Probably not . . . but . . . but I know Boone, and the scary part is he knows me. He calls me blondie. Bet he never called Harper Norton that.”

  “I believe she was a brunette, dear.”

  “Now you’re just getting picky.”

  Auntie KiKi kissed me on the forehead; well, she tried and it landed on my ear. Such was the power of early-morning vodka, but the thought was there. “If you ask me”—she hiccupped—“it still stands that Tucker and Russell have the most to gain by getting rid of Walker. They’re both dirty as bathwater on a Saturday night. Harper could have had something on them and they suspected as much.”

  “Harper planned to cut into Anna and Bella’s boutique business,” I added. “The sisters wouldn’t let her get away with that.”

  I ran my hand through my hair, still feeling nothing as Mamma said, “The problem with all these great ideas is, how did the guilty person, whoever it is, lure Harper into Boone’s office? We know they had the key because they broke in to get Boone’s gun to frame him. Now we need to figure out who had it in for Harper.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to put things together. “So Anna and Bella had a connection to Harper, but who else did?”

  “Probably a lot of people came into contact with Harper,” Auntie KiKi said. “She was working all over the place. I first saw her over at the Slumber playing at Conway’s farewell bash.”

  “When I helped Chantilly with the barbecue fiasco over at the Old Harbor Inn, she was playing there, and that brings her into contact with Russell and his dealing to get the inn.”

  “And she helped Steffy Lou with the theater project,” Mamma chimed in. “That brings her into contact with Tucker, and he’s always been tops on my who-framed-Walker list.”

  “We went and talked to the guard out at that marina that Tucker owns and found out the old boy’s bust,” KiKi told Mamma. “If Harper found that out, Tucker would not have been a happy camper. He sure didn’t want Steffy Lou or anyone else to know what a really bad businessman he is.”

  “We’re back to the big three suspects,” I sighed. “Nothing new.”

  “But whoever’s behind this is getting desperate,” Mamma said in her I am the judge and know all voice. “We’re going to find him or her, it’s just a matter of time.” Mamma put her arm around me. “I’m glad you’re safe. What can I do to help?”

  “You filled my fridge.”

  Mamma gave me a long steady look, a little smile tripping across her face. “Always nice to have someone watching out for you, dear.”

  Mamma headed off to court, KiKi had morning twinkle-toes time with Bernard Thayer, and I woke BW the wonder puppy and we went inside Cherry House. I fed BW his morning kibble along with a peanut butter apple for saving my butt last night. I grabbed a shower to try to sober up, maybe wake up, and for sure wash away interrogation-room grime. With my hair still wet I dabbed on some eyeliner and slid into a black cotton skirt. Not exactly a fashion statement of the season but the best I could do with no sleep and two shots of vodka under my belt on an empty stomach.

  The boutique wouldn’t be open for shopping at this hour, but I knew firsthand what went into getting things ready for a busy day . . . when I used to have a busy day. I told BW to hold down the fort, snagged a protein bar, then flagged down Earlene for a lift on Old Gray. Mamma was right in that Harper dead in Boone’s office held the key . . . literally. So, who needed to get rid of Harper and why, and the last time I talked to Harper, and Anna and Bella’s Boutique were our topics of conversation.

  “Did you hear what happened over at Walker Boone’s place?” Earlene said to me as I sat down behind her. “That poor man keeps getting in deeper and deeper; someone’s sure out to set him up, even put a price on the man’s head, and I don’t believe for one minute he had a little something going on the side with that Harper Norton woman.” Earlene gave me a sideways glance. “Do you? So, honey, where can I drop you this fine morning?”

  “Everyone knows about Harper and Boone?” I asked.

  “Got five tweets this morning discussing the situation, as much as you can discuss on Twitter, that is. But we all know that there is no Harper and Boone, and you shouldn’t concern yourself with such talk.” She added another sideways glance. “Right?”

  I got off the bus two stops early so I didn’t have to listen to the rest of the Harper and Boone scenario. I crossed the street, where a
line was already forming in front of Anna and Bella’s Boutique. I spotted Mercedes sitting on a bench behind Colonial Park Cemetery, sipping coffee and checking her e-mail. See, that was what I wanted to be doing, coffee and e-mail, not hunting a killer.

  “You’re looking none too happy,” I said to Mercedes as I sat down beside her. “Bad news?”

  “That’s all it is these days, with dead bodies piling up like pancakes on Sunday morning. First it’s Conway in the tub and now it’s that girl in Mr. Boone’s office and him standing right over her, least that’s what the gossips are saying and they usually get it right.”

  She gave me a hard look. “Well I’ll be, I heard you were there, too. You should know that nothing was going on between that Harper woman and Mr. Boone. I keep the man’s house and I know wrinkled sheets when I see ’em and if there be more than one doing the wrinkling, if you know what I mean. There hasn’t been any wrinkling for quite some time now. He likes you.”

  “Why?”

  Mercedes laughed, her whole face happy. “Now that you have to be asking him. So, are you here to check out the competition?” She nodded to the boutique.

  “Hope they’re giving you a discount because you’re working for them.”

  Mercedes fluffed her hair and looked ticked. “I used to work for them; then they up and fired me after only one time cleaning.”

  “But what about the bonus of doing up their dear old husbands for the big meet-their-maker party? That was the whole purpose of getting you to clean their houses, right?”

  “See, that’s the thing, it’s like the boys just dropped off the face of the earth and my excellent Slumber services aren’t needed. I stopped by here to see if they showed up. You’d think they’d be at their wives’ new business venture, now don’t you, but I didn’t see them today or yesterday.”

  “We could just ask Anna and Bella where Clive and Crenshaw are.”

  “I did, and they told me to mind my own blankety-blank business and went back to unpacking all their fancy New York clothes.”

  “Atlanta, aren’t these rich ladies from Atlanta?”

  “New York, I saw the boxes being delivered myself when doing the cleaning that one time.” Mercedes checked her watch. “I need to be getting myself over to the Slumber. Junior Lambert enjoyed Walls’ barbecue one too many times and thumbed his nose at Lipitor once too often. Let me know if you run into C and C. They’re always nice to me. I hope nothing’s happened to them, I truly do.”

  Mercedes headed for her pink Caddy parked across the street and I studied the line of customers, a lot of whom used to be my customers. But the strangest part was the Clive and Crenshaw disappearing act. If I’d picked up on the two of them gone and so had Mercedes, there was something to it. Going in the front door of the boutique was for shopping; going in the back door was for snooping. I crossed the street, then cut down an alley off Lincoln used for local deliveries. A panel van sat parked at the end, the back door to the boutique propped wide. A man tore boxes open and ripped plastic bags off clothes, really nice-looking clothes.

  “What are you doing back here?” Bella said to me from the doorway. “This here is private property.”

  “Actually it’s an alley.”

  “Too bad about your pathetic little business going belly up like I’m sure it is, not that I’ve had time to check it out. Come here to see what success really looks like!”

  “Where’re Clive and Crenshaw? Thought they’d be here to support your success.”

  Bella’s eyes went to bits of ice. “Clive and Crenshaw are none of your business.”

  “Thought your rich consigners were from Atlanta, that’s what everyone’s saying.” I picked up the side of a box with an address on the side. “New York? Why New York? Did Harper Norton wonder the same thing? She told me you have a sweet scheme going on here and she wanted in on it.”

  Bella’s hands fisted at her side.

  “Is that why you killed her?” I asked.

  “I didn’t kill anyone, you annoying person. Now get out of here before I call the cops and they put you behind bars where you belong.”

  “Let me see if I got this right, you obviously don’t care about your husband, but just mentioning Harper Norton sends you into a tizzy? What did she have on you? Enough to want to shut her up permanently?”

  Bella took her phone from her pocket. “You’ll be sorry you got involved in this, Reagan Summerside. My sister and I know how to get what we want and keep it, and get rid of people we don’t want around. You are not messing things up for us.”

  I didn’t need another run-in with the police in less than twelve hours, so I turned and left. I still didn’t know about C and C, but I’d hit a nerve with Harper. Least I wasn’t the only one starting off the day with a bang; now Anna had a little something to think about, too.

  I started for home. If I could just catch a few hours’ sleep before I opened the Fox, that would be terrific, not that there’d be any customers, but I had to figure out what to do to improve my plight and . . .

  I lost my train of thought as a red SUV pulled up beside me; Dinky stuck her head out the window, crying and sniveling.

  “Please don’t tell me there’s another body.” I leaned against her car, feeling weak in the knees.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I’VE been looking for you,” Dinky said between sniffs and nose blowing. “I’m desperate for a place to stay and I didn’t want to just show up at your place, and you really need to get a phone.”

  “Oh, honey, your husband kicked you out?”

  “No, he didn’t kick me out,” she sobbed. “He wouldn’t know what to do with baby Boomer; the man can’t change a diaper to save his life and the only bottle he knows is the kind with Budweiser on the front. Boone’s office is a crime scene, of all things. There’s blood on the carpet, the new Oriental.”

  She cried louder. “This keeps getting worse and worse. Will you take me in? Can I set up the office at your place? I’ve got paperwork that Mr. Boone started before all this murder stuff started up, and I need to be filing legal documents with the courts and the like and keep the office going. With that new boutique in town going gangbusters you probably don’t have any business so I figured you wouldn’t mind.”

  I heaved a sigh. “Sure, why not.” I opened the passenger-side door to get in; files spilled out onto the street, and the morning commuters were less than thrilled with the show making them late for work. I scooped up the files and set them on my lap as we motored across Congress. “Don’t you use computers for this file stuff?” I asked Dinky.

  “We use both, and paper files can’t be hacked. This will be fun,” Dinky said, swiping at her tears. “It’s been so lonely sitting at the office all by myself and I’m getting depressed. I heard that the police think Mr. Boone was carrying on with that Harper Norton woman, and that’s just not true at all. She went and sent him her dead wedding bouquet, and that really kills the mood, if you get what I mean.”

  Dinky pulled up in front of the Fox. I hooked my arm around a stack of files and hauled them up the walk.

  “Nice display window,” Dinky said, trailing behind me with a box. “The mannequin with BW sitting next to it looks like a magazine cover. Maybe you should go with a vintage shop; that Anna and Bella boutique isn’t competing against that.”

  “Not enough money in vintage clothes.” I balanced the files on my hip and unlocked the door. I nudged it open and BW barreled out onto the porch, jumping and whining as if I’d been gone a year; the files slid out of my hands and scattered across the floor.

  Dinky looked at the mess. “I think you were missed.”

  I picked up a file labeled Clive and Crenshaw. “Boone gave them some advice on their wills, right?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “They were clients, right?”

  “I can’t say.”

&
nbsp; I sat cross-legged on the porch while BW inspected the landscape. I flipped open the file and Dinky snapped it out of my hand. “Lawyer-client privilege is sacred. You can’t just read this stuff ’cause you’re nosy.”

  “Both these guys are missing; no one’s seen them for days. They’re old and rich and their wives just opened a store in the historic district. Smell a little fishy?”

  Dinky sat down beside me. “I’ll look. I’m like an attorney . . . sort of. It’s just notes saying Clive and Crenshaw told Mr. Boone to butt out of their affairs, and he tried to point out the error of their ways in setting up their wills making their wives sole beneficiaries.” She closed the file. “That’s it, just that one meeting. Fact is, it’s the last meeting Mr. Boone had that night before he took off.”

  “The night he found out Conway was his dad?”

  Dinky nodded. “Yeah. I remember setting it up. It was late and I left at six, and they didn’t come in till around seven.”

  “That means Boone didn’t give Clive and Crenshaw this will advice till after Conway was dead. Anna and Bella, the dear wives, had no reason to swipe Boone’s gun, kill Conway, and frame Boone for the deed. They had no reason to be pissed at Boone at the time of Conway’s demise.”

  “You mean Anna and Bella were suspects in all this? Why, I had no idea, and that surely is mighty fine news. I’d hate to see that boutique of theirs close. I love that place.” Dinky pressed her lips together tight. “You sure you don’t want to go vintage?”

  I helped Dinky unload more files, file cabinets, and a leather chair that a passerby tried to buy right out of the back of the SUV. Another lady tried to buy the Tiffany-style lamp that I hauled in, and AnnieFritz offered fifty bucks for the little petit point footstool Dinky used to keep her feet elevated to avoid the much dreaded varicose veins.

  I went to the car to retrieve the espresso maker, amazed how much stuff Dinky had crammed into the car. When I came back in, Dinky’s red leather chair was parked behind my green door checkout counter. She’d plugged in the Tiffany lamp, giving a soft glow to the hallway; the antique floral desk blotter with matching pen holder sat on top along with her flower stapler, laptop, printer, and two framed pictures of baby Boomer.