Dead Head db-3

by Rosemary Harris

  “Early on I saw a Civic and an SUV following us—couldn’t tell what make because he was behind the Honda.” Lucy was good with anything that had a label. “Both cars were light colored.”

  “Out-of-state plates?”

  “Yeah, but I couldn’t recognize which state. Remember when each state had one type of license plate and you could play name-that-state on long driving trips? Now there are three or four to choose from. I’m pretty sure the plate was dark blue and white.”

  “Maybe we should leave,” I said.

  “C’mon, we lost them. No one’s here. Can’t we at least wait until the pizza comes? It’s Frank Pepe. It’s supposed to be wonderful.” Lucy said. “I had to give my credit card, so I’ve already paid for it. And I haven’t eaten all day.”

  We took a vote. If there was no activity outside the hotel in the time that it took the pizza to come, we’d stay. By morning Caroline would have to surface somewhere, and when she did it wouldn’t take long for whoever wanted to find her to find her, but we’d deal with that tomorrow.

  Lucy, sans wig, and I went to the front desk when the pizza arrived and we went to her room to let Grant and Caroline have their first private visit in weeks.

  And that’s what would have happened if ten minutes later the cops hadn’t burst into both of our rooms.

  Props to the desk clerk who I had dismissed as a nerdy loser, so unobservant that he checked in two women as mother and son. When Lucy and Grant arrived, ordered a pizza under a different name than they registered under, and then switched partners with us, the clerk—who probably watched a lot of true crime stories on television—decided I was a madam who’d brought a teenage boy to a motel for an assignation with a man while I ate pizza with the guy’s wife. Lord knows what he thought we were doing. It was the stuff of supermarket tabloids.

  Once the cops discovered Caroline was not a young boy but a middle-aged woman dressed as a boy, they reckoned it was simply kinky sex, none of their business, and they left the four of us alone. Hey, if consenting adults wanted to play the housewife and the UPS man or the contessa and the chauffeur, what was it to them? Needless to say, for Grant and Caroline, the moment had been ruined.

  Thirty-six

  Unlike their first blissful stay at the other Hacienda, Caroline and Grant couldn’t leave this one fast enough. The Sturgises declined to spend the night and fled north to a house they sometimes rented in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. It would be shuttered for the season, but they knew where the key was hidden, and they would call the owners in Baltimore as soon as they arrived so the Wellfleet police wouldn’t think they were squatters. Having already had run-ins with police in two states and despite the hockey outfit, Caroline and Grant weren’t looking to score a hat trick. And there was a TJ Maxx nearby, so the next morning Caroline could buy warm clothing and get out of her son’s smelly sports gear. No phone in the house, no cell service, no Internet. It was just what they were looking for.

  “There’s a general store fifteen minutes away from the house where I can get a cell signal. I’ll call you from there tomorrow,” Caroline said, rushing to her husband’s car in the dark.

  Bone-tired, I suggested to Lucy that we spend the rest of night at the Hacienda—after all, we had no fewer than two rooms at our disposal and instead of preservative-laden muffins at the free breakfast bar we could have leftover pizza—but she said something about preferring to take the pizza, chug an energy drink, and get on the road, so we left shortly after Caroline and Grant. Lucy insisted on wearing the wig again and readjusted it several times before we were allowed to leave the room. (Ah yes, room 104, so many fond memories.) She said the wig was in case anyone was following us, but I think she enjoyed being in disguise. How often do grown-ups get to play dress up?

  “It’s one thing to stay in a place like that for a story. Quite another if I have a choice,” she said, giving the room a once-over before we left.

  “Later when my brain is functioning properly, I’m going to ask you about that ‘story’ part,” I said. “No, let’s do it now and get it over with. What the hell are you talking about?”

  She stalled for a bit, not wanting to risk my disapproval, then blurted it out. After spending all day with Grant, she’d gotten his consent to write about the experience, “I Was a Fugitive,” by Lucy Cavanaugh.

  “What about Caroline? Doesn’t she have a say?”

  She assured me, as she had probably assured Grant, that it would be tasteful and respectful. I had my doubts whether any story entitled “I Was a Fugitive” could be tasteful and respectful. I wondered which tabloid would be the highest bidder for the classy piece.

  In the hour or so it took us to drive home, I brought her up to speed on the note and package that Caroline had received what seemed like days ago but was really only that morning.

  “You think it was sent by this guy Eddie?” she said.

  That was the obvious assumption. Dead or alive—and I was beginning to suspect that Caroline hadn’t told me everything—if Kate Gustafson was not a suspect, who else even knew about Caroline except Donnelley? Warren? O’Malley had told me that he was in the hospital. Her brother? He was an unlikely candidate for villain. Caroline had only spoken of him in glowing terms: my brother. I realized I didn’t even know his first name and wondered if that was an unconscious habit Caroline had picked up from years on the run. Why would he reveal her identity now after all this time? If he had needed money, Caroline would have simply given it to him as he had given it to her.

  “And you think Donnelley is passing himself off as this Kevin Brookfield?” she said.

  I wasn’t sure what I thought anymore. Brookfield was one of the few newcomers in town. Newcomers were always suspect. I’d been there myself. “That’s what I think today. Last week I thought it was a guy who turned out to be a priest.” I told Lucy about my trip to Mossdale’s stables and my chat with Father Ellis Damon.

  “Ellis Damon? E.D.? Same initials?” she said, turning in the passenger seat to face me. “Isn’t that what people do when they make up fake names? Use the same initials as their real ones?”

  “E.D. also stands for erectile dysfunction. Do you think Bob Dole was involved? For pete’s sake, Lucy, the guy was a priest.”

  “Oh, and I’m a natural blond? You can buy gladiator outfits online. How hard can it be to get one of those little white collars? I think I have one from a silk jacket I bought in Chinatown.”

  “If he’d been Eddie Donnelley,” I said, “Caroline would have recognized him when she saw him at Mossdale’s that first day. He couldn’t have changed that much in twenty years. She recognized Jeff Warren right away, but she didn’t even mention the man at the stables. I think she just saw judgment day coming toward her. She was already spooked by the traffic ticket and the fear that her personal information was being fed into a law enforcement computer system. All Father Damon had to do was say ‘good morning, my child’ and she’d have freaked. Poor guy. I think her reaction caused him to question his calling.”

  Lucy fell silent. Neither of us had seen any pictures of Donnelley online, and now that Caroline was hurtling toward Cape Cod, the one person who could give us a description was temporarily unavailable. Correction, the one woman. There was always Jeff Warren. And once he got out of the hospital I might ask him. Maybe I could try him anyway. Plenty of people who’d had car accidents could still talk on the phone. I asked Lucy to get my cell from my backpack. Dead.

  “This is aggressively antisocial behavior,” Lucy said, shaking the phone at me. “You do realize that.”

  “Chill out.” I plugged the cell into the car’s cigarette lighter to recharge it and heard the snippet of classical music that told me I had a message. It was the one from Roxy I hadn’t deleted. I’d forgotten about it.

  “Listen to this.” I replayed the message for Lucy.

  “What the hell does that mean? Have you spoken to her?” Lucy asked.

  I shook my head. “No idea. Just picked it up a few
hours ago. I don’t think even Roxy stays in the office that late. We’ll see her tomorrow.”

  Warren’s number was in saved contacts, and I scrolled through to find it. I autodialed but was kicked into voice mail. Now I started to wonder where McGinley was. Was he back in Michigan, having made his report? Or was he still in Connecticut waiting to finish the job he’d been sent here to do? Or was he—long shot here—really crashing at his friend’s place so that they could get an early start hauling those countertops?

  I checked the rearview mirror obsessively.

  Lucy noticed. “I’m not the nervous type,” she said, “but you’re making me jumpy. No one is following us. Why would they? Let’s just get back to your place.”

  We pulled into my driveway at around 3:15. We should have been tired, but we’d both gotten our second winds, or maybe it was nervous energy, and instead of collapsing in bed, we decided to pull an all-nighter just like in the old days.

  “What’s the flashing light—radon levels reaching red alert?”

  “Pay no attention. Something to do with the alarm system. I haven’t been able to clear it since it went off, and I’m afraid to touch any more buttons for fear it’ll go off again. I found out I’m going to be fined a hundred bucks for having a false alarm that the Springfield police had to respond to and I don’t want it to happen again.”

  “Ouch. Can’t you get your cop friend to fix it? Like a ticket?”

  Did everyone know how to do that except me?

  “I’ll get around to reading the manual one of these days when I have some time, like in December.” I dumped my things on the sofa and headed into the kitchen.

  “Let me try.” She pushed the reset button and I held my hands over my ears, gearing up for the sirens, but they didn’t go off and surprisingly the flashing red lights disappeared.

  “Excellent.”

  We sat on the living room floor with our reheated pizza and I powered on the laptop to google images of Eddie Donnelley. Like Warren, it was a relatively common name and until we added the state and the crime we got nowhere. Even then all we got was a grainy black-and-white mug shot from twenty-five years ago that had been reproduced many times, and had only been resurrected because of Caroline’s recent arrest. It could have been any dark-haired male with a long face and brown eyes. The aviator glasses, long hair, and beard didn’t help, I guess. When you’re a drug dealer or undercover cop, it’s an asset to be able to change your looks quickly. Enlarging it only further distorted the image.

  “Could this be Brookfield?” Lucy asked.

  It could have been Kevin Brookfield or it could have been Kevin Bacon. I wasn’t prepared to hang the man based on such a sketchy photo.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. There’s a lot of hair obscuring his face. But the nose looks different.”

  “He could have broken his nose in jail,” Lucy said. “Rival gang? Power struggle?” She had an even more active imagination than I did. Maybe she should turn her fugitive story into a screenplay.

  “You’ve been watching too much cable,” I said. “I don’t know. I can’t say it’s him, I only saw him briefly.”

  While I was at it, I googled Kate Gustafson. And sent the images to my downstairs computer—the one hooked upto the the printer.

  We’d bring the pictures to Roxy’s tomorrow and see what she thought. Babe’s, too. Brookfield had camped out at the diner for a while—she might remember him better than any of us.

  Tomorrow started four hours later when, sleep-deprived, Lucy and I shuffled into the Paradise Diner.

  “Hey, look who’s here. You two girls look like crap. You here to give our girl a makeover or to get one? I heard she did some shopping in your closet after that wedding, but I haven’t seen any new outfits.” Rats. That reminded me of the bag full of Lucy’s hand-me-downs, still in my entrance awaiting my next trip to Goodwill. I hoped she hadn’t seen them.

  “No,” Lucy said after they air-kissed. “I’m here on a story—‘I Was a Fugitive.’” She slipped onto a counter stool and spread her hands wide, envisioning the headline and the layout.

  “Should I assume you’re no longer a fugitive if you’re announcing it in a public place?”

  “That’s correct. Paula, tell Babe what happened last night.”

  “Later. Keep it down. We still have a few private issues to discuss.” I robotically ordered two Paradise specials and two coffees and asked Babe to join us at the farthest empty booth when she had a chance. She brought our food and slid into the seat next to Lucy.

  “Much as I love to see you, you really should consider keeping a box of cereal in your house for emergencies. Don’t you ever eat at home anymore?”

  I shook my head, then pulled out the photo of Eddie Donnelley and showed it to Babe. I watched for a glimmer of recognition in her eyes, but none came.

  “Who’s this? He looks like some guy I picked up in a bar in Greenwood, Indiana, in 1984.”

  “That’s Eddie Donnelley,” I whispered. “One of the people who was arrested with Caroline. Does he look familiar?”

  “You gotta be kidding,” Babe said, “at my age any long-haired hippie in a grainy photo looks familiar.”

  I told her who I thought it might be.

  “That guy looking for real estate? No way. This guy’s eyes are closer together and he has finer cheekbones. And the nose is totally different.” She’d make a good witness if ever called upon to identify someone in a lineup.

  I was starting to feel better about Kevin Brookfield.

  “Did he ever come back?” I asked.

  Babe had to think. “Yeah, one other time.” I could see her piecing together the scene. “A day or two after you saw him. I thought he was planning to camp out here again, the way he did that day, when the Moms were falling all over themselves to give him real estate advice. He sat down at a table outside with a coffee and those damn brochures again, like he was waiting for someone. I thought it was a real estate agent. Then something happened and he left abruptly. His coffee cup was still warm when I cleared.” She replayed the event in her brain, rewinding like an old videocassette.

  Just then two cops entered the diner. Babe got up and handed them a gray cardboard box that was stashed under the counter. It was filled with three dozen donuts. One of them opened the box and inhaled deeply.

  “Can’t survive the weekly community meeting without a little help from Pete.”

  “Standing order every Tuesday. Come to think of it, Brookfield was here on a Tuesday. Same time. As soon as the boys came in, he left.”

  “You think he doesn’t like donuts?” Lucy said.

  Or he didn’t like cops. I wanted to hear what Roxy Rhodes had to say. I still had a few reservations about Kevin Brookfield before I was ready to jump on the welcome wagon.

  Thirty-seven

  Forty minutes later, we were at Rhodes Realty with Roxy Rhodes demanding to know what I’d said to Kevin Brookfield to put him off buying the nursery. Without even asking us to sit down she launched into her assertion that I’d poisoned the waters by leaking information about the former owner’s murder.

  “It’s not exactly a secret,” I said. She didn’t threaten legal action but came close. I thought I heard the word ruin mixed into her rambling, apoplectic message.

  “Roxy, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I only saw the man once. Maybe the Moms told him. Maybe he read about it online. Maybe he was full of baloney and was never really interested. Lots of people look at places and have no intention of buying. They’re real estate junkies. Window shopping.”

  She calmed down briefly. She knew I was right.

  “And who is this?” she said, pointing a bony, reaperlike finger at Lucy.

  “She’s a friend. Can we sit down and talk like civilized people? Like neighbors?” (Thank you, Mr. Rogers.) Roxy collapsed onto her designer throne, and Lucy and I pulled over two stylish but decidedly uncomfortable wire chairs. “Thank you.”

  All Roxy knew about
Kevin Brookfield was that he specifically came to her office to see about buying the Chiaramonte nursery. No other property interested him.

  “I should have known he wasn’t for real. He didn’t even try to get the price down. But he was so simpatico. He said he was making a fresh start and he had that wonderful smile.”

  Good grief, did he flirt with her, too? I showed her the picture, but she was noncommittal.

  “It’s this economy,” she said, tossing it aside. “Or perhaps I’ve just lost my mojo.” Suddenly Roxy looked old, as old as she really was. This was more than the loss of a 6 percent commission.

  “That’s not it,” I said, trying to make her feel better. “Your mojo is fine. But there’s a possibility Kevin Brookfield may not be who he says he is.”

  She wilted, seeing her commission, and perhaps a budding romance, flying out the door. “Brookfield suggested you and Caroline and he might go into business together.”

  “Highly unlikely, especially given Caroline’s situation.”

  A door in the outer office slammed and Roxy’s assistant tapped gently on Roxy’s for permission to enter.

  “I’m so sorry, Ms. Rhodes. The documents you requested? You wanted to know as soon as they arrived.” The assistant maneuvered her way around the enormous desk and placed a light blue bubble pack envelope in front of the slumping Roxy. Then she turned on her kitten heels and left.

  “What are you women staring at now?” Roxy said. “Is there some other deal you’d like to put the kibosh on? Some other area of my business that you’d like to involve yourself in?” The outside door slammed again.

  “Just one,” I said, rising out of my seat. “Can you tell me what delivery service you use?”

  “This isn’t from a delivery service. It’s a personal matter.”

  As if on cue, Lucy jumped up and ran to the window.

  “A blue Civic,” she said. “Connecticut license plate 485 SMK. It could even be the one I saw last night.” She grabbed a felt pen from Roxy’s desk and in the absence of any paper, scribbled the license plate number on the palm of her hand.