“Somebody found out about your past,” I said.
His eyes got wider. His breathing harsh. Ragged. It reminded me of Rick dying. After he’d been shot. No. This asshole, he was nothing like Rick. Rick had been good. This man was a piece of human waste. I stood up.
“Wait!” Trabucco pulled the mask down. “You’ll find who did this, right? They’ll go to jail? They killed, they killed my sweet babies.”
I hopped out of the ambulance and came face-to-face with Wright. “What’re you wearing?” I asked.
He looked down at his yellow, striped pants. “Snow pants. It’s colder than a witch’s tit.” He looked at the smoking house. Firemen had entered. “So someone lit his house on fire.”
“Dix said something in front of a neighbor, Mr. Ellington, about Trabucco being a pedophile. Seems Mr. Ellington’s been telling the neighbors about it all day.”
“So one or more of them decided to clean up the neighborhood?” he asked.
“Looks that way.”
“Fanfuckingtastic. We don’t have enough men for the kidnapping, plus we have the break-in. Now we gotta investigate this.” He tugged on his hat. “I’ll take pictures.”
“You brought a camera?” I asked.
He nodded.
“I’ll take statements,” I said. A gust of icy air made me hunch into my coat, turtle-like. It was going to be a long day.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nate had let me into Suds hours before opening so I could retrieve my clean uniform and a week’s worth of laundry. Inside the station, I took my uniform to the locker room. The locker room had one semifunctional shower, two toilets, and sixteen tiny lockers. The men stored deodorant and fresh t-shirts inside. The shower was running. Surprising. Last time anyone used it was when a skunk sprayed Billy. I stuck the hanger’s hook into one of the locker slats and peeled off clothes. In winter, it was like peeling an onion. I was down to my skivvies when the water shut off. I tore the plastic from the uniform. Damn stuff clung to itself. Before I could get the shirt off its hanger, Hopkins came around the corner, naked and dripping.
“Whoa!” he yelled.
“Hey!” I shouted.
He looked about, panicked. I looked away. God, now I’d have that image in my head. I unbuttoned the shirt. His bare feet slip-slapped as he ran away. “Where’s my towel?” he said. I got my shirt on. “What did you do with my towel?”
“I haven’t seen your towel. I got here two seconds ago. I need to change. Give me a moment and I’ll have a look.”
“No! No. I . . . I’m fine.”
“You’re wet and naked. How’s that fine?” I pulled on my pants.
“I’ll be okay. Are you done yet?”
“No.” I shoved my feet into my boots. Smoothed my shirt. If anyone else were here, Hopkins would be laughing, making comments about the size of his sausage. Because it was me, he was acting like a goddamn girl. “I’m done.” I grabbed my stuff and exited the room. Dix stood by the door, a towel in hand. He saw me and lost his smirk. “Give it to him,” I said. “He’s about to have a heart attack.”
In my office, I said some bad words. I shadowboxed for two minutes. Threw jabs, hooks, and uppercuts until my heart raced from exertion, not rage.
Three raps at the door. “Come in, Mrs. Dunsmore.” Her face was paler than usual.
“There’s something wrong with the plant.” She’d given it to me when I came on board. Before we got to know each other.
She lifted one droopy strand. Then she moved the pot a few inches to the left. “Have you been watering it? Looks overwatered to me.” She poked the soil with her long index finger. “I saw your holiday work detail. Bad news. Clyde and Quint called in sick.” She inhaled. Her breath rattled. “Normally I’d tell them to drag their sorry selves in here, but Clyde has walking pneumonia. Quint has got that flu.”
“Does everyone get sick here?” I asked.
She managed a crooked smile. “Thankfully you’ve got a city-bred immune system.” I waited. She never complimented me unless . . .
I groaned. “I have to work the interfaith event tomorrow night?” We had three criminal investigations underway. Three actual cases, and I had to babysit churchgoers?
“There’ll be hot cocoa.” She rubbed one of the plant’s limp leaves.
Swell. Cocoa. That changed everything. I left the office to see if any actual work was being done.
“Hey!” Finnegan waved his hand. He was happy to see me or he’d had too much coffee. “Heard about the fire. Late night?”
“Yeah, and damn cold too.”
“Who you think did it?”
“Neighbor. One of ’em found out about Mr. Trabucco’s past and told everybody who lived nearby.”
“Sounds like a neighborhood cleanup project.”
“Yeah, except the fucker who lit it could have taken out a neighbor’s house. High winds, lots of trees.”
“In happier news, I’ve narrowed the time window on your patrol car getting tagged. It happened between 9:45 a.m. and about half past ten, when you and Wright discovered it.”
“Does that tell us anything?” I asked.
“It wasn’t Captain Hirsch. He was at a fire-training seminar.”
“Did you really consider him?” If so, he wasn’t trying.
“Naw, not really. I whittled some names off my long list though.” His intonation made it clear that he wouldn’t tell me whom he’d cleared. “I’ll find him. My momma didn’t raise any fools. Well, except my brother, Dave. He’s almost simple, Dave is.”
He wanted me to laugh. I wished I could. But the idea of a list, longer than mine, bothered me. I returned to my office and my Selectric typewriter. I had two evidence vouchers to fill in for the fire. My aggression went into pounding the keys.
“Chief!” My fingers stilled.
Wright stood in the doorway. “You didn’t hear me knock. You, um, type.”
“Yes.”
“No, but you really type, like Mrs. Dunsmore types.”
I took a swig of coffee and said, “Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Compare me to Mrs. Dunsmore.”
He fought a smile. “I can only hunt and peck.” I’d seen. It was painful to watch. Took Wright half an hour to type what took me five minutes. “Update on the fire. It started around 1:30 a.m. I sifted through our reports, and we can eliminate a few people. Mr. Carson, the spectator in the wheelchair, has advanced Parkinson’s.”
“Okay. Who else?”
“Miss Folks is out. She got home from her hospital shift just before 2:00 a.m. Officer Wilson had to help guide her car down the street.”
“So who do you like for it?” I asked.
“Neighborhood parent,” he said, without hesitation. “I can’t see a regular Joe getting worked up enough. But someone with young kids? They’d want him gone.”
“How many people on our list have kids?”
“Five, and four of them make up two couples, so . . .”
“Focus on them first. Let me know if you need more manpower.” I’d spoken on autopilot. “. . . Except we don’t have any. Everyone’s sick. I’ve got to patrol the interfaith celebration tomorrow night.”
“They recruit a Buddhist? Or are they counting the UU guy?”
“UU guy?”
“Unitarian Universalist, the religion for people who hate their childhood religions. They have this long-haired dude who holds up peace signs along Main Street.”
“Ah, him.” I’d seen him, holding a rainbow-colored peace sign. Waving at cars. I’d assumed he was an old hippie who lacked the funds or energy to go west.
Finnegan appeared. “Could you both come take a look at something?” He led us to the VCR/TV combo set up by his desk. We looked at it expectantly. “Footage from the gas station where Cody was spotted. There’s one camera, inside, behind the cashier.” Damn. That meant we wouldn’t see Cody in the car. Couldn’t hope to get the car’s license plate or make and model. “It gets worse.
You can pay at the pump using a credit card,” he said.
“Really?” There were one or two gas stations where I’d seen this. “Oh, hell. So it’s possible our kidnapper isn’t on camera.”
“Bingo. I ran the tape twice. Expanded the time our caller gave us. Problem is our kidnapper could’ve paid at the pump, and getting credit card information will take—”
“Forever?” Wright said.
“Near enough. Only five people appear between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. Not surprising, given the storm. Two are women. Three men. One of them, this guy.” He pointed the remote and hit a button. A small man stood at the counter, credit card in hand. He looked up, saw the camera, and turned so that his face wasn’t visible.
“He turned from the camera,” Wright said. “Did he buy gas?”
“Yes, and a pack of gum.”
“None of the others seemed good?” I had to ask.
Finnegan said, “Nope.”
“Good luck,” I said, glad it wasn’t on me to hunt gas-station guy down. “I’m going to stop by Sweet Dreams later.”
“Why?” Finnegan asked. “Have there been more problems?”
“No. I just want to see the damage for myself.”
Finnegan shook his head. “Gay community service.”
Wright’s head snapped up. “Is that a thing?”
Finnegan laughed. I walked away.
Sweet Dreams’s front windows were covered with butcher paper. A note on the door promised the store would reopen in two days. Someone had scrawled, “Looking forward to it!” I tried the front door. Locked. But there was music playing, loudly, inside. The back door, pried open by the vandals, was still damaged. I pushed past it into the back office/storage space and then walked out onto the store’s floor. Heavy bass thumped through the soles of my boots. AC/DC. “You Shook Me All Night Long.” By the wall, Nate, the owner of Suds, hammered wooden shelves. Another man taped baseboards with blue tape. No sign of Mr. Gallagher or his partner, Mr. Evans.
The broken glass was gone and the floors cleared of candy debris. The graffiti remained. “YOU COCKSUCKER!” took up half of the biggest wall. There was no dick art. Unusual. People who enjoy destroying private property are often the same people who enjoy drawing pictures of dicks. The death threat was near the front door, squished into a small area, like an afterthought. The paint colors were different. Death threat in green. Insult in red. Death threat not capitalized. Looked like two different graffiti artists.
The music stopped, abruptly. “Hi, Chief!” Nate said. “Come to help?”
“You’re fixing up the place?” I asked.
“I offered to help. Didn’t want them to be closed during their busiest season.”
I peered at the scratched-up floorboards.
“Careful,” Nate warned. “We’ve been over the surfaces with a Shop-Vac, but there may still be stray glass.”
“I keep finding pieces with my fingers,” the other guy said.
“Lincoln, this is Chief Lynch.”
Lincoln looked like Nate. Same Native cheekbones, but he was heavier and his hair curled, unlike Nate’s long, straight curtain of hair. “Nice to meet you, Chief Lynch,” Lincoln said.
“Call me Tom.” I looked at the tools and drop cloths. “What can I do?” I didn’t have other plans, and it would be rude to leave. They needed help. Finny’s voice whispered, “Gay community service” in my head.
Lincoln said, “Once I finish taping, you can start painting.”
Nate unlocked the front door, promising more volunteers would arrive.
The wall paint color was “Sparkle.” Even for a gay couple, it seemed a bit much. I pried open the lid with the flat end of a screwdriver. A gust of cold air swept the corner of the drop cloth upward. Two men entered, barely visible behind stacked pizza boxes.
“Just set those there,” Nate said, gesturing to where the candy scale and register usually stood. Were the machines damaged? “Tom and Lincoln, here are Fred and Randy, if they ever emerge from those amazing-smelling pies.”
“Harry’s Pizza?” Lincoln said. He sniffed the steam rising from the boxes. “I’ve died and gone to heaven.”
“Where’s Harry’s?” I asked.
“Hartford,” Randy said. He wore a leather jacket and had mutton-chops. “Best pizza ever.”
“Don’t start,” Fred said. They were a couple. It was obvious from his tone and their body language.
“Hey there, anybody home?” a woman called from outside.
“It’s Sharleen,” Nate said to Lincoln. “Open the front door for her, will you?”
Sharleen entered, dressed in heels and a suit. Nate explained that she was a lawyer.
“I’m also the owner’s daughter. Charles’s daughter,” she said. Interpreting my expression, she said, “From when he was married to my mom, before he came out.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Tom.”
“What do you do, Tom?” She set her briefcase down by the pizza table and grabbed a paper plate.
“I’m the police chief.”
She put two veggie slices on her plate. “You gonna catch the bastards who trashed my dad’s shop?”
“Better hope you do,” Fred said. “You don’t want Sharleen on your case.”
We ate the pizza before it got cold. More people came. Ms. Hart, the Christmas décor goddess who lived near the Forrands came over and said, “Nice to see you again.” People swapped stories about Sweet Dreams and its owners. The time Charles and David helped raise money for the Girl Scouts so they could travel to Washington DC. The summer they’d hosted a wedding in the store between two customers who’d first met there. The time they’d sold alcoholic chocolates unwittingly to children. “Dad made a point to try all the candy before selling it after that incident,” Sharleen said.
The front door opened to reveal Damien Saunders. A breeze set paper plates spinning to the floor. I hadn’t known he’d be here. Should’ve expected it. He greeted everyone in the room. Laid his hand on my shoulder when he said hello.
“Did you bring the plans?” Nate asked Sharleen.
“Yup.” She withdrew a folder from her briefcase. “I had to make copies so Dad wouldn’t notice they were missing.”
Nate said, “Should be able to do most of this. The stenciling, though, we can’t. Need to let the walls dry first.”
In the plans, the large defaced wall had the store’s name painted, in gold, along with a handful of candy-shaped decorations.
Sharleen told me, “My dad has wanted to redesign the shop for years, but it’s never the right time. They were going to take two weeks in January to do it, and then this happened. I want to surprise him. He thinks we’re slapping basic white on the walls.”
He wanted to redecorate and then this happened? How fortuitous. Then again, Charles Gallagher had been truly upset when he’d called me. And I couldn’t see him writing those words on his store walls.
“Let’s get to work!” Sharleen said.
I taped the crown molding above the wall with the cocksucker graffiti. Lincoln taped the baseboards. Nate played music. By the time I had roller in hand, coated with Sparkle paint, a shiny white, the music was late Beatles.
Lincoln’s section looked better than mine, more even. “Hey, Chief,” Nate called. “Mind giving us a hand?” He and Fred held a wooden shelf above their heads. “We need height.” I set my roller in the tray. Took the shelf from them and held it where they told me. Sharleen said, “Higher.” I extended my arms. “Is that level?” she asked. Nate gave me a level. I laid it atop the wood.
“A bit up on the right. Nope, just a fraction down.”
“Let me take the other side,” Damien said. He was nearly as tall as me.
“Up again to the right. Perfect! Hold it,” Sharleen said. We held the shelf while Nate marked the edges for brackets. Damien smelled nice. I hated that I noticed.
We gave the shelf to Fred, and I returned to my roller. I’d nearly finished the wall when I realized no one w
as speaking, it was just the radio and me singing “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” My mouth closed faster than a Venus flytrap’s. How hadn’t I noticed the quiet?
Ms. Hart called, “That’s a beautiful voice you have.” Lincoln grinned at me.
“Would someone please shoot me?” I asked. “I can provide the gun.” I peeked over my shoulder. They were watching. “Really. You just point and shoot. It’s not hard.”
“Did you ever sing choir?” Jerry asked.
“No.” Not my scene.
“Too bad,” he said, as if I’d missed my calling.
“Okay, let’s leave him alone. If it makes you feel better, Tom, you’re crap at painting,” Nate said.
“Thanks.” I scowled, but I was grateful.
“Come help me. Lincoln will finish the wall.”
Glass jars were unpacked. Shelves were hung. The graffiti had disappeared beneath two coats of paint. The scale and register were in place. “Let’s wrap it up, folks,” Sharleen said. “It’s late. Thanks, everyone. Dad and Dave will be so pleased.”
I headed out. Damien followed, whistling “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” He caught my look and said, “You do have a nice voice. I couldn’t carry a tune if it had a handle.”
He exhaled hard. “Grapevine tells me your car had ‘fag’ spray-painted on it.”
“That explains why I’m driving this.” I pointed to the station wagon.
His jaw unhinged. “Oh my god. Do they still make those?”
“No. This is an original,” I said, tapping the hood. I’m working on finding out who did it.”
He shivered. “You think it has anything to do with what happened to the store?”
“No, but I’ve got no evidence.” Except the paint colors, and a feeling.
“Hope you find who did it.”
“Thanks.”
He looked as if he’d say something more. I waited. “Have a good night, Thomas, and if I don’t see you, Happy Holidays.” He left. I stayed in the cold air, watching the exhaust from his tailpipe, wondering what I should’ve said in return. Because I hadn’t said anything. Just stayed mute, like a puppet without a handler.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sixty-four people had bundled up and come out for the interfaith celebration Tuesday evening. They carried lit tapers, drank cocoa, and discussed holiday plans. The gazebo loomed before me in its dull white glory. Town lore said it had burnt to ashes, twice, and been rebuilt. Maybe that was why the candles had Dixie Cups around them. A surprised cry made me hustle forward. I found the Forrands: Mom, Dad, Anna, and Cody, standing nearby. The family was surrounded by people three deep.
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