He walked over and examined the tic-tac-toe pattern of the window. It looked like we had been playing Hollywood Squares in our front window, and somebody had thrown a rock through Paul Lynde and Charley Weaver.
“You have somebody look at this yet?” Burke asked.
“Yeah,” I said, bewildered.
“How much they charging you for it?” It was my turn to stare at him for a while.
“They quoted us two thousand.” I didn’t want to tell him, but I couldn’t think of a reason not to.
Burke looked like his head would explode. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open like a wide “O.” “Two thousand dollars to fix this window?” he gasped.
“No, two thousand dollars to replace the window. The guy said it couldn’t be repaired.” I was talking to a six-year-old.
“The guy lied. This window is easily repairable. I could do it for four hundred.” No, Burke was talking to a six-year-old. “You could?” (Really, Daddy? It just needs new batteries?) “Sure. Didn’t your wife tell you? I’m a contractor. That’s how
I make my living. This, here, is maybe a one-day job. Four hundred, including materials.”
“Three hundred,” I said. “You’re in love with the owner of the window.”
“Five hundred,” he countered. “She’s married, to you.”
“Split the difference,” I said magnanimously. “Four hundred.”
“Deal.” We shook hands.
Preston examined the window and made some measurements with my tape measure. He kept talking to himself and nodding, since apparently he agreed with what he was saying. I walked over when he appeared to be finished.
“When do you think you could do it?” I asked.
“I’m not working now,” he said. “Too many people still think I’m a serial killer. I can start this afternoon and finish tomorrow.”
“You’re a fine human being, Preston,” I said. This was not how I expected this conversation to end up.
“Just one thing.” Uh-oh. Here came the catch.
“Yeah?”
“You’re not from the Bar Association. Who are you, really?”
I let out my breath and told him the whole story. Burke seemed shocked that we suspected him.
“You thought it was me?” I was personally offending him. I think he was considering raising the price of the repair again.
“Well, there was that letter and. . . look, Preston, that’s over now. And I just have one question to ask you.”
“Name it.”
“You’re not really Waldrick Malone, are you?”
Preston Burke smiled. And shook his head.
Chapter
Fourteen
The encounter with Burke left me no time to interview potential hooligan parents before my kids got home, so I decided to do that first thing tomorrow. The kids came barreling in just about the time Burke showed up with some wood, panes of glass he’d cut to size, putty, and other equipment. He borrowed a ladder from my garage and set to work.
Leah burst in the door and dropped her book bag on the floor. “Who’s the man on the ladder?” she demanded.
“He’s fixing the window. Go feed your lizard.” She rolled her eyes and flung herself on the couch, her latest in a series of defiant gestures.
Ethan was a few steps behind her. He stomped noisily into the house and dropped his book bag on the floor. “Can I go on the Internet and look for dogs?” he asked.
“Do your homework.”
He shrugged, got his books out of the bag, hung the bag up on the banister, and got to work on his homework, sitting on the floor next to the couch and working on the coffee table (in this case, the homework table). He had to avoid sitting on his sister, who was writhing on the couch now, since just flinging herself onto it had not produced the desired response.
“Leah, feed the lizard and do your homework.”
“Ahhhhhhhh!” The sound that emanated from her throat can’t be accurately translated into letters and punctuation. It was the kind of thing that took the sound effects artists who worked on The Exorcist three months to produce, with layer upon layer of wild animal noises, squeaky doors, and the transmission of a 1942 Nash. But she got up and stomped into the kitchen to fetch the tasty treat for Little Zilla.
While she was upstairs, the phone rang. “Hi, Aaaaaaron,” said a minuscule voice. “Is Leeeeeeah there?”
“Hi, Meliiiiiiisa,” I said. “She’s feeding the liiiiiiizard.”
But Leah was already harrumphing down the stairs, still glaring at me, and I pointed to the phone in my hand, then to the one on the kitchen wall. She didn’t smile, but nodded.
She and Melissa were deep into conversation when I heard a loud scuffle outside the window. I looked out, and two Midland Heights police officers were holding Preston Burke’s arms. They’d clearly pulled Burke down off the ladder, and were talking to him. He appeared perplexed.
I opened the door and called to the one I knew. “Hey Craw-ford,” I said. “It’s okay.”
“Isn’t this the guy the chief told us to watch for outside your house?” Crawford said. “He was doing something to your front window.”
“Yeah,” I said, walking down the stairs to them. “He’s fixing it. I hired him.”
The two cops looked at each other, then Crawford shrugged. They let Burke’s arms go. “That’s what he said,” Crawford reported. “But you can understand. . .”
“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “You did your job exactly right. I’ll tell the chief.”
“Can I come in for a minute?” Crawford asked. I knew he was just checking to see if Burke had, in some way, taken my children hostage and was coercing me into letting him repair my window, so I waved Crawford into the house while his partner continued to question Burke.
Crawford looked around and saw one 12-year-old boy, approaching his father’s height, with his knees on the floor, his hands on the coffee table and his feet on the sofa, and one eight-year-old girl, approaching the height of the average lawn gnome, sprawled out flat on the floor in the kitchen, phone cord tracing to the wall five feet above her head.
In other words, the usual at my house.
“Situation normal,” I told Crawford. “He’s telling you the truth. But I appreciate your concern.”
He collected his partner and drove off. I made a mental note to call Barry Dutton and commend their work. Burke walked over to me as soon as they drove off.
“This is one secure community,” he said. “I should think about moving here.”
We went on like that for the rest of the afternoon. Melissa invaded for a while, and the two girls played on the swing I hung off the roof of our patio (we don’t actually have what you’d call a backyard), doing tricks designed to give me a massive coronary, until it was time for me to start cooking dinner for the kids.
I got out some pieces of frozen fried chicken for Ethan, since he refuses to eat virtually anything that is cooked under our roof, and put them in the oven on a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil. Then I cut some potatoes very thin, sprayed them with cooking oil, and put them on another cookie sheet, similarly prepared, to “fry” in the oven. For Leah, I dredged a piece of boneless chicken breast in matzo meal, then seasoned it with the Colonel’s recipe of eleven herbs and spices, eight of which are salt, and put that on the same sheet as Ethan’s dinner. The sound I heard off in the distance was James Beard spinning in his grave.
Just about the time I started calculating my children’s cholesterol levels, the door opened and Abby, looking as flustered as I’ve ever seen her, came in and pointed at the door.
“Isn’t that. . . do you know who. . . why is. . . Aaron!”
It was so cute, I could barely stand explaining the situation to her, but by the time I got to how Burke was saving us $1,600, Abby was grinning. We sat in the kitchen until Burke knocked on the door to say he was leaving, and would be back in the morning. Abby and I waved, and he sighed (I like to think) and walked out.
>
“It’s a shame,” I said. “That there aren’t two of you to go around.”
“Maybe the guy who looks like him has a sister who looks like me,” Abigail said.
I snuggled close to her and kissed her on the cheek. “Looks are not all there is to you,” I said. “She’d have to be the most wonderful woman in the world, too.”
“Aaron, you make such lovely use of hyperbole.”
Silly woman. She thought I was exaggerating.
Chapter
Fifteen
The next morning, I was all set to start interviewing parents of miscreants, but by the time I got back from the Y, helped Burke get set up, took a shower, and got dressed, it was too late even to consider such a thing (okay, so it was 9:30, but I just couldn’t think of a way to do this gracefully). Freelancers are without question the finest, most diligent procrastinators on the planet.
Still, there were at least two other mysteries to be solved, and one of them was actually a paying job, so I called Lydia Soriano at Snapdragon to keep the boss happy. That was easier said than done.
“I called over the weekend, Aaron, and today is Wednesday,” she said grumpily. “Couldn’t you have called sooner?”
“I was away in Washington, actually doing interviews for the story,” I told her. “My wife doesn’t let me check in for messages while we’re away.”
She laughed. “Well, she’s a wise woman. What have you found out so far?”
I filled her in on my minute progress, and told her about the hair and the gathering I had organized for the evening. “At the very least, I figure I can get the guys to talk about what Legs was like in the old days,” I said.
“It’s decent background,” she said. “But if I want to get it into an issue that’s going to be at all relevant to the event, you’re going to have to write something soon, Aaron.”
“How soon?”
“Like, Monday.” I believe something akin to a sharp intake of breath took place on my end of the phone. “Okay,” I breathed.
“It’s been over a month since the assignment,” Lydia reminded me. “I know I haven’t been breathing down your neck, but if I hold this much later than the January issue, it’s going to be such old news that my readers will wonder why we ran it at all.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “But does there have to be a solution to the mystery in the article?”
I have no idea what Lydia Soriano looks like, so the image of a woman pursing her lips in thought is probably just conjecture. Besides, the woman looked a little like Abigail.
“I don’t want to press you for it, Aaron, since any arrests will hit the papers long before we run a story, but if we run a story that doesn’t at least speculate on who killed Gibson, and arrests are made in the interim, we’re going to look awfully foolish.”
“Okay, Lydia. I’m close. Really. I’ll have something for you Monday.”
“Thanks, Aaron. And, if this works out, there may be more we can do in the future.” We hung up.
Four days to unravel Legs Gibson’s murder, and all I had was a hair from a dead man and a whole lot of missing money.
Piece of cake.
Not that I had any idea what to do, but a piece of cake sounded like a good idea. I walked into the kitchen in search of one before I remembered that Preston Burke was watching through my front window, and used him as an imaginary diet cop to stop myself from becoming obese. It was even too early in the morning for a Diet Coke. Luckily for me, the phone rang.
Lucille Purell Watkins had a Texas twang that could snap a rubber band. And if it was 9:45 a.m. where I was sitting, it was 8:45 where she was, so the slurred words and thick pronunciations that come with drinking were even more jarring than they normally would be.
“Is this Mr. Aaron Tucker?”
“Last time I checked.”
“This is Lucille Watkins. I’m Branford Purell’s sister.” At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what she said. I activated my tape recorder as quickly as I could, but even after multiple subsequent listenings, Lucille was not easy to decipher.
“Mrs. Watkins, thank you for calling back.”
“You can call me Lucille. But I don’t understan’ why you’re calling me about my brother, Mr. Tucker. He’s been gone for seven year’.”
“I know, Lucille. I’m writing a story about someone else for Snapdragon Magazine, and your brother’s name came up, so I need some background on him. And you can call me Aaron.”
I got up and started to pace, which is a habit I have whenever the call I’m on is not routine, or I have to be on my best behavior. Like when my mother calls.
“I don’t know what I can tell ya, Aaron. My brother was a bad guy who killed some women and paid the price for it.” Lucille was nothing if not to the point.
“Well, tell me. Did he ever mention a man by the name of Louis Gibson?”
“No. He did know a Marvin Gibson, I think. Worked in the Mobil station on Route. . .”
“I don’t think that was him, Lucille. Did Branford ever go to Washington, D.C.? Ever give any money to political causes, get involved in groups against abortion, anything like that?” Okay, so I was grasping at straws. I was hanging by a hair, literally.
“No, sir. I don’t think Branford even noticed there was politics. Only time he ever joined anything was when he joined the gun club, and I think that was just to meet girls.” I did my very best not to speculate on the kind of girls one meets at the gun club, and pressed on.
“How did Branford make a living after the oil rig shut down?” I asked. “That must have been tough.”
Lucille took a long pause, which I initially thought was reflection. After repeated playings of the tape, I finally discerned a long pull on a bottle of some beverage. From the burp that followed, I’d guess beer.
“Well, it was rough,” she agreed. “He never really held a steady job after that. Just bummed around, picked up money doing odd construction work, but there wasn’t much of that, either. He actually sold his blood a couple of times for medical research at a lab near here. Then, he just took to driving around, and as it turned out, to shooting people.”
“Can you imagine why DNA evidence would surface that suggests your brother was in a Washington, D.C. apartment a little over a month ago?”
This time, the pause was out of sheer confusion. “Did I hear you right? There’s DNA of Branford in Washington last month?”
“I can’t be sure, but that is the indication.” I was still pacing, and I’m willing to bet Lucille was on her feet, too.
“I can’t tell you, Aaron,” she said. “I saw the man fry more than seven years ago, with my own eyes. If he was in Washington last month, it’s only because he rose from the dead, and I don’t think that’s all that likely.”
“No, ma’am,” I said.
Chapter
Sixteen
Branford Purell’s perplexing insistence on staying dead was not improving my day in any way, shape, or form. Luckily, Preston Burke was doing his very best to cheer me up, and had finished his task by 11:30. I stood back on the sidewalk in front of my house to admire his hardwork.
“You do nice work, Pres,” I said. “If it was painted, I’d never know there’d been any damage.”
“I could paint it, Aaron,” he countered. “Another two hundred, and I’ll scrape and paint the whole thing.”
I weighed the two hundred bucks against the mental image of me on a ladder in front of my house on the weekend as the weather turned colder, scraping the thin wood between window panes. It wasn’t even close.
“Go for it, Preston,” I said. He happily went off to Haberman’s Hardware for some sandpaper and paint.
The only thing to do now was have lunch. I was still trying desperately to lose that last nagging twenty pounds, so I went to Hallie’s Coffee House for a grilled chicken salad, which I brought home in the environmentally disastrous Styrofoam package that all New Jersey diners consider de rigeur.
You may have noticed t
hat nowhere in that paragraph did I mention going out to investigate the stink bomb incidents. You are a remarkably astute reader.
The fact was, I couldn’t bring myself to de facto accuse little kids without a shred of evidence to back up my claims. I needed something, anything to hang a theory on, and I had absolutely nothing.
So I pondered, which is what I’m best at before two in the afternoon. I read Fax McCloskey’s latest missive, detailing with exhaustive thoroughness the Washington, D.C. Police Department’s examination of FBI files that had virtually nothing to do with Legs Gibson’s murder. But it was nice Fax continued to write. It made me feel part of the D.C. police family.
If I were nine or ten years old, and bought a stink bomb at the Kwik N’ EZ, why would I choose the girls’ locker room, the gym, and the boys’ room at school to try out my purchase? Well, two of those locales, at least, had a common overseer. A grudge against the gym teacher, of course (I suppose you have a better idea?). I headed for Buzbee to seek out Hester Van Biezbrook.
Hester, the prototype for all gym teachers, was roughly 400 years old, and could still put me through a cinderblock wall if the spirit moved her. She stood about six-foot-three, had triceps Arnold Schwarzenegger would find intimidating, and spoke in a voice high enough to qualify as a dog whistle. She was supervising a game of volleyball when I arrived, breathless from my two-and-a-half block walk.
“The stink bombs,” I managed.
“What about them?” she asked. Hester wasn’t much given to small talk, and since Leah had never so much as stepped out of line once in her class, she didn’t know me very well. The parents of the squeaky kids get the grease.
“Did somebody have a gripe against you? Some reason one of the kids would have wanted to get back at you that day?”
She regarded me with a look approaching pity. “You think that a fifth grader needs a reason to throw a stink bomb into a bathroom? Any ten-year-old boy worth a damn would throw it into the locker room just to watch the girls run.”
A Farewell to Legs Page 17