Schooled in Murder

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Schooled in Murder Page 7

by Kim Smith


  “Dude,” he said, rushing over to Sal, battery dangling from one hand. “Man, I am so sorry about Justice. Are you okay?”

  Sal shouldered the responsibility for this exchange and they shook hands, and did the semi-hug thing that guys do, albeit awkwardly with the battery coming between them. Sal assured Dee that he was managing, and offered to help get my car fixed. They turned and went out to the parking lot, leaving me wondering what would have transpired between Sal and I if things had happened differently.

  Treading these thoughts like swirling water, I wandered out onto the balcony of the building to watch. The evening air was humid, promising a hot day tomorrow. I looked out over the tree tops and noted stars coming out like a sprinkling of salt across the sky.

  When my gaze came to rest on the guys out in the lot, Sal and Dwayne walked around looking at shadows. The parking lot had a few places illuminated from spotlights, but there were more places without lights. Places where someone could hide. My two friends had thought of this before it came to me, obviously. Chilled, I opted to wait inside close to a telephone and my gun.

  When Betsy’s engine coughed, and caught, and the coffee was ready and poured, the guys trudged back to the office and we all sat down for a cup and a chat. I tried hard to keep the tone light, and steer away from the murder, but Dwayne kept picking at it like a scab.

  “So, do you think it was a man who did this?” he asked Sal.

  “Too early to say, really.”

  “Some freak called Dingleberry, here,” Dee said, pointing at me. “Did you tell him?”

  I nodded and tried to shake my head at the same time hoping he would drop it. If I could have reached his bony knee, I would have kicked it.

  “Who’s botherin’ to make a call to her?” he persisted.

  Sal sipped coffee and measured his words like he’d been thinking about it. “The news story has broken. Maybe the caller found out who you two are, what you do. Maybe he thought you had a camera in the house and filmed something that might implicate him. You two have scared someone. Again.” He let that last word hit home.

  Dwayne, cup halfway to his lips, stopped and stared as if Sal had told him his face was green.

  “Probably not,” I interjected. “That phone call was probably just one of ole Thelma’s students. One who likes the teacher. Maybe she has a pet? Although I cannot imagine why,” I tittered. It sounded horrible, but I was nervous trying to convince Sal that there was just no reason to assume anyone had it in for us yet.

  “He decided to threaten me to leave her alone, hoping to keep her from going to jail. It’s a small town. Surely she has some fans. They could find Video Angels number in the book. Let’s talk about something else.”

  Two sets of eyes bore into mine.

  “The department’s being very careful about releasing any information to the news just yet,” Sal said. “I don’t recall anyone stating that two videographers were the ones to find the body. But as you say, your number is accessible to the general population. It’s not a stretch to find out who Shannon Wallace or Dwayne Brown is after the news splash you made with Fine’s case. Or Thames.”

  Bubba Thames had been a friend of Dwayne’s who’d ended up stuffed in his own floral cooler a few months ago. The reminder of how we’d been targets thanks to two previous other cases made me wish the caller had not called.

  “Yeah, um, nobody knows about us, about videographers being there, yet.” Dwayne let his gaze drop to his feet. “I’m pretty sure.”

  That was not a good sign—if I knew anything about Dwayne at all—but I remained mute hoping he would spill his guts to me later.

  An uncomfortable silence ensued until I cleared my throat and said, “How about them Redbirds, huh?”

  Chapter Seven

  Later, Sal bid us goodbye, encouraged us to keep an eye out, and left. I walked him to the stairs, and suggested he get some tall boys, and find a good reality show. He smiled and gave my lips a long look that told me there was something else he wanted even more. The warmth of that suggestion in his eyes stayed with me as I returned to the office.

  “I’m ready to head to the house,” I told Dwayne.

  He followed me home, and went inside with me to make sure I was safe. Then he dropped his bombshell. “First, it wasn’t your battery that was dead. Someone tinkered with the cables. The dude up at AutoZone helped me figure it out. I bought new cables along with a battery. When Sal heard someone done been nasty with the car, we had to traipse around the lot checkin’ things out.”

  “I suspected as much. Sent me right back inside the office, too,” I said, grimacing.

  “Second, Charlotte Dillon was hangin’ out at the crime scene. She’s probably done a story that will hit the airwaves on the morning news, and that’s where your caller got his dope. Could have been eavesdroppin’ her filmin’.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Sal all this?”

  “I don’t believe in showin’ my hand early in the poker game. Charlotte Dillon is a damn ambulance chaser. She’ll get about half the story right and make up the rest. If someone was standing around listening to her tellin’ her shit on camera, then Bob’s your uncle.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah, and since there’s no love lost between you two, maybe she put someone up to—”

  “To scaring me?”

  “Yeah, maybe. If she thought it would get you movin’, joggin’ stuff around, allowin’ her to focus her attention on the guts of the case, why not? Especially since the cops ain’t talkin’.”

  “Well, for one thing, it’s not ethical.”

  “Who said she ever cared?”

  “More importantly, she’s a reporter. She wouldn’t want people to be looking at me like I have the Holy Grail, when the real news is somewhere else.”

  “Oh yeah she would, girl. While everyone is lookin’ at you, and me too, probably, she’ll be hot on the trail of the real story. If she gets everyone includin’ all the other local channels lookin’ in the opposite direction, it’s all gravy for her. A real shell game.”

  “Wow. I guess I’m too worried about other things to even ponder such a possibility.”

  He placed his hand on his hip and waggled a finger at me. “To be forewarned is to be forearmed, my granny always says. Now be careful, you hear me? If the caller is lurkin’ out there waitin’ on you to do something stupid, you don’t need to go givin’ him no thrills. You got that?

  I sat down hard on my sofa. “Oh. Right.”

  “You gotta think first on all sides, Shan. Otherwise, you’re just a perfect victim.”

  I tried to play it off. “Well, obviously, you and Sal are way more worried about this telephone call than I am. I mean it isn’t like anyone has tried anything, have they?”

  But while I said it, I remembered a funky blue Spark whirling by me in the apartment parking lot. That might not be an accidental-almost-accident after all.

  “He ain’t had time to do anything yet!” Dwayne’s voice rose two octaves. “Listen, Wall-ass, you gotta be careful. And I do mean careful. What if that caller wasn’t tipped off by Dillon? Maybe it’s the killer? You gotta be scared to be safe. I ain’t goin’ to no more funerals for friends, you hear me?”

  We looked at each other, brown eyes piercing blue. He knew of all things he could say, that one would get me. We’d both been battered by death. Now Sal was on the verge of joining this sick club of ours and neither of us wanted to repeat the experience or admit new members.

  “It’s okay, Dee. I’m not going to die, nor am I going to do anything to make you worry that I might die.”

  He sat down on the other end of the sofa, took a deep breath, and turned on his signature charm. “Good. Now let’s discuss why you ain’t givin’ Sal no love.”

  “No. Let’s don’t and say we did.”

  “Fine. Then let’s talk about what we know about Dan the Man, a teacher who’s absent, and a kooky coffee drive-by.”

  “Nothing to discuss that hasn’t
been discussed. Dan is dead, Thelma is missing and left her purse behind, and someone is driving her around and being mean to her while doing it.”

  “You think the driver is involved in all this?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think he killed Dan the Man?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You think she’s been kidnapped?”

  “Yes. Again. For the ninth time.”

  “How’re you gonna find out for sure?”

  “I don’t know yet. It’ll come to me tonight in my dreams. Speaking of which, are you staying or going? I need my beauty sleep.”

  He yawned. “Goin’.”

  He left after making me check all my windows and lock the door behind him. Depressed, I made a beeline for the refrigerator. Food: the best method for working out my troubles. I put together my idea of a healthy sandwich, including peanut butter and sliced Granny Smith apples, and poured a tall glass of milk.

  I took it all to the living room, turned on the television and watched a half hour of a crime drama. The characters were good-looking men and tough women, and I thought I’d like to be just like them when I grew up. It just seemed so strange for them to be able to solve their cases in an hour when in the real world it took a whole lot longer. The reality of police life made me sigh.

  The fictional case featured a man who had formerly been missing then turned up dead and they had to follow the clues to apprehend his killer. I wished desperately I could have a few clues so I could get on the trail of my missing person. Then I remembered my mystery caller and changed my mind. I didn’t want to find her. The caller had told me that finding her might get me dead. Who was I to argue?

  ###

  Tuesday morning dawned overcast and dreary and the humidity was turned up a notch as we all waited for the coming rain. The tree leaves turned their underbellies out waiting to catch a drop of water to quench their thirst.

  I called the Mamas bright and early, whining about needing a new car and how my battery had died and been replaced, but I still didn’t trust the car to get me anywhere. It was totally true. Betsy needed to sit idly by until I could get someone to look at her innards.

  When I trudged out of the apartment, Aunt Nan’s shiny Nissan sat out front. She’d left it for me before tootling off with Tillie to the restaurant.

  We all had spare keys to everyone’s cars, so I never even had to scramble to get in. After a quick shower, and tossing on green-striped capris and a scoop-necked shirt, I headed over to the restaurant. I could drop her car, beg a bite of breakfast off them, and walk it off by taking a footpath to the office.

  “Hey darling!” Aunt Tillie wore a bright yellow tee shirt and had her hair piled on top of her head. Those sparkling blue eyes danced, and I wondered what she had up her sleeve. “Have you seen the paper?”

  Uh oh. When she asked me that, I knew she was about to dump the news on me no matter whether I had read about it or not, and I hadn’t stopped to pick one up either.

  I smiled. “No, not yet. What has Nancy’s sweetie written about today?”

  Herbert, the Times-Tribune reporter, was always dredging up good tidbits.

  “Not Herb this time,” she said, strolling over to the bench by the checkout register. She returned with the latest edition of the South Lake paper.

  “Apparently, someone took your picture again.” She tried to make it sound like I was a celebrity or something, but I grimaced remembering what Dwayne had said about Charlotte Dillon. She loved to dig up dirt about me, as I was not a fan of her or her boyfriend, Charles Fine. She worked for both the newspaper in South Lake and a small news station in Memphis, which kept her busier than most news hounds.

  On the bottom of the front page, there was a small picture of Dwayne and I walking down the Denaldo’s driveway to the car, yellow police tape being moved aside to allow our passage. The caption read, “Local videographers at scene of murder.”

  Oops. Now they’d done it. Well, that explained how the caller knew who I was. Maybe he had overheard her story being recorded.

  I chewed my lower lip. Aunt Tillie would be all over this one. She’d stayed on me for a long time after I hurt my shoulder at Scott’s Funeral Home trying to help Dwayne find Bubba’s killer.

  I waited for the explosion, but she never said a word, only sat in the chair next to me. “Shannon,” she began, quite calmly. “Dear, you must quit this line of work.”

  I frowned. “Quit? I can’t quit, Aunt Till. I’ve got to work. I’m not rich, you know.”

  “Well, you keep finding…dead people. I think there’s something wrong with your lifestyle, or your job, or your choice of friends, or something. Why does this keep happening to you?”

  I shrugged. “Lucky, I guess.

  She pursed her lips and allowed her eyes to do all the talking. “All I’m saying is that Nancy and I will always be here to help you financially. You don’t have to work doing something that will keep this,” she indicated the paper, “going on.”

  That smarted. She knew I hated asking them for money. Forcing a smile, I said, “Thanks, really, but I’m fine. I don’t plan for this to happen. It’s accidental. Usually.”

  She stood. “Accidents can be dangerous, honey. And when they happen close to home, doubly so. Remember that, and be careful.”

  I nodded.

  She gave me a look through lowered lids. “Maybe Nancy is right and you need to come by the house for a visit. We should plan your birthday celebration. You have some…um…presents you need to look at.”

  “Presents?” I perked up. “What kind of presents?”

  She cleared her throat. “I am not at liberty to say any more, but Nancy really wasn’t kidding about your needing to visit us.”

  “Okay, wait. Something is dreadful in Denver here. What’s going on?”

  She shook her head. “Not for public consumption, my darling. Just plan on visiting soon, okay?”

  I nodded again, now thoroughly aggravated. What on earth was going on?

  She patted my shoulder before walking away. My hunger abated somewhat with that conversation, and I pulled the paper closer to read the article. Hopefully, the news people knew more than I did. Damn Thelma Lunsford Denaldo anyway.

  Charlotte Dillon told the gory details of the murder as if she were talking about having her hair colored. The cops, playing it close to their hip, gave only minimal details. But she knew somehow Dwayne and I had been involved in the case, and ad-libbed the bits about a local teacher being sought for murder. I guess that news would get out sooner or later. I only prayed Sal didn’t read the paper with his morning coffee.

  But why did Dee and I have to be lumped in with the Denaldos? Now I would be on every nasty list in town. Shannon Wallace, the person who knew something about the murder case whereby a beloved member of South Lake society stood accused with the worst crime possible. Great.

  I left Aunt Nancy’s keys with Connie, one of the waitresses who’d been with the place since the first day it opened, and slinked out of the restaurant. Muttering all the way across the back streets past the co-op to the office, my vanity punctured. By the time I’d arrived, I was just plain old mad.

  Katie lounged at the receptionist desk and asked what had me so red-faced. I proceeded to fill her in.

  She could only say, “Good grief.”

  Dwayne came out of his office in the middle of my recital of the newspaper story and when I finished, he put two and two together rather quickly. “We gotta find that Denaldo woman and fast.”

  “Ya think?” I stomped to my office and slapped my tote bag on my desk.

  Katie wandered in and plopped down on a chair. “She’s been missing long enough now for somebody to call in a missing person’s report, right? Has anyone done that?”

  We gaped at each other.

  I found my voice first. “Well, damn.”

  Dwayne grinned, his white teeth gleaming. “Katie Henderson, you’re all right for a porcelain princess.”

  She did t
he Queen of England wave and I grabbed the phone on my desk to call Sal. When he got on the line, I pounced. “Has Thelma’s husband put out a missing person’s report on her yet?”

  He drawled, “No, it’s next door to City Hall. Oh, thank you for asking. Are you enjoying our weather in sunny South Lake?”

  “Sal, don’t be an ass. It’s going to pour buckets any minute. It’s been long enough for Thelma to be considered a missing person, hasn’t it? If her husband hasn’t asked for a report to be filed, I am. I have a vested interest.” I anchored a hip on the edge of the desk.

  “You’ll need to make an appearance in my office, ma’am. Yes, I understand you’re sorry to have to shelter here during this heat wave.”

  Uh oh. That was Sal-speak for, “There is someone in my office (probably a higher up) and I cannot talk to you about this now.”

  “Okay, Sal, I get it. I’ll make Dwayne bring me right over.”

  “Good bye,” he said softly.

  I replaced the desk phone in its cradle. “Yeah, hasta la vista to you, too.” I sighed, swinging my feet against the side of the desk, fixing my two friends with a snooty stare.

  Dwayne stood and dug in his pocket for his keys. “I knew this would happen. How come I always end up bein’ the lookout in the car when you have to go over to the police station?”

  “Because you always have the wheels. Besides, if we can get a report going on Thelma, maybe the cops will be more cooperative.”

  Katie laughed out loud. “Shannon, you’re living in a dream world. I think Ramirez is just baiting you, in hopes you’ll bring those cute legs by and give him a big ole eye-full.”

  “What? No way. Our relationship is totally platonic,” I told her, slipping my tote bag onto my shoulder as I followed Dwayne out. Her laughter followed me down the stairs.

  Chapter Eight

  The South Lake Police Department housed itself in an old Baptist church with white columns on a quiet side street near the high school. The close proximity to the school usually gave rowdy kids the idea they should toe the line on their violence, else the blue lights would roar onto the school lot and take them away.

 

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