by Celia Kinsey
“Would Antonio be capable of injuring himself just so he could claim someone else did it?” I asked.
“I considered that, too,” Hannah told me, “but I quickly ruled it out. There’s no question Antonio has a terribly twisted mind, but he’s also a physical coward. You know how he likes to mountain bike? Well, he tries to project the image of being this tough, adventurous, outdoorsy type, but he’s actually super-cautious. He goes on and on if he gets even a little scrape and makes it out to be a serious injury.”
“Is it possible that’s what he’s doing now? Making a big fuss over nothing?”
“I saw him for myself,” Hannah said. “He’s not faking it. He may not have broken any bones, but he has some really nasty bumps and bruises, and they are most definitely not painted on.”
“You know Tanisha is in town,” I said.
“Antonio’s ex-wife Tanisha?” Hannah said. “What about her?”
“Do you know anything about her dad? I understand he lives in Bray Bay.”
“Sidney Smith? I do know him, actually. He’s Sammy and Porter’s pediatrician. Well, Dr. Smith used to be Sammy and Porter’s pediatrician. He retired last year. I guess some of his patients probably thought it was high time he did, considering he’s probably pushing eighty.”
“What do you think of him?”
“As a pediatrician? He was a fine doctor. I was disappointed when he retired.”
“I meant what was your impression of him as a person?”
“I have no idea. Our conversations were limited to discussing ear infections and strep throat.”
“Do you think they’ll let me see Arnie?” I asked Hannah.
“I doubt it,” she said. “They took him over to the county jail in Eagle’s Rest. Visiting hours aren’t until three, and by that time, I expect he’ll have made bail.”
As Hannah got ready to leave, I thought of one more question. “Where does Antonio live?”
“He’s renting a little house a couple of blocks from Whispering Palms. On Hibiscus Lane.”
“What’s the house number?”
“What do you hope to accomplish by confronting him?” Hannah asked. “I already tried that, and it was a waste of time. Besides, it’s very possible that Arnie did beat Antonio up and is too embarrassed to admit it. It would be totally out of character, but heaven knows my brother has plenty of reason to hate Antonio.”
“I have no intention of confronting Antonio,” I told Hannah. “I do, however, plan to stake out the place.”
“Well, don’t you go and get arrested, too. If Antonio catches you at it, I wouldn’t put it past him to try and get you charged with stalking and harassment, not to mention trespassing, if you dare to set foot on his lawn.”
During the lunch hour, several of our Whispering Palm regulars, including Prue and Fitz, came by for burgers. The news that Arnie had been arrested clearly had the Bray Bay rumor mill abuzz.
“You should see Antonio’s face. Looks like someone took a baseball bat to him,” Fitz said before Prue shushed him. I guess she thought it insensitive to bring up the subject in front of me.
“You’ve seen Antonio?” I asked.
“He looks terrible,” Fitz said. “I stopped by the pizza truck just to get a look at the damage. Your Arnie sure did a number on him. Wonder why. I didn’t think they even knew each other.”
“He’s not ‘my’ Arnie,” I protested.
“At least Arnie gave him fair warning.” Fitz chuckled. He appeared to be finding the whole distressing incident highly amusing. Fitz finds a lot of things amusing that don’t speak particularly well of his character.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I guess you didn’t hear,” Prue said. “When Patsy was out for her sunrise walk this morning, she saw something written in red on the side of Antonio’s pizza truck.
“What did the warning say?” I asked as my heart sunk into my shoes.
Chapter Seven
“I’m not sure what the warning said, exactly,” Prue told me. “It was washed off by the time I got around this morning, but I think Patsy took a picture of it. You should ask her.”
As soon as the lunch rush was over, I fired down the fry vat, pulled down the shutters on the window, and wrote “back at 4:00” on the chalkboard where Arnie usually writes what the special of the day is. Today there was no special because there was no Arnie.
I walked the three blocks to Whispering Palms and went straight to the front desk and asked for the apartment numbers for Patsy Johnson and Sidney Smith.
I started with Patsy. My questions for Patsy were straightforward, and I wouldn’t have to do a lot explaining who I was and why I had a “right to know.”
Patsy didn’t open the door until I’d knocked for at least a solid minute. I think she’d been napping because she looked a little rumpled and slightly disoriented.
“I heard you have a picture of the warning somebody wrote on the side of Antonio’s food truck.”
Patsy did have a picture, although it would have been more useful if it hadn’t been so blurry.
GET OUT OF BRAY BAY OR ELSE ……….LAW
The first part of the phrase was clear, but after the word “else,” the letters had run so badly that everything in between “else” and “law” was illegible. I could see how the warning could easily be interpreted as being signed by Arnie. It wasn’t a stretch to assume that “brother-in” preceded “law.”
It could also be father-in-law, or less likely, mother-in-law, or simply some phrase like “fear the law.” I wondered if any of Antonio’s scam victims lived at Whispering Palms. If so, parking his food truck next door certainly would make him an easy target for their ire.
“Do you know what the words were written with?” I asked Patsy.
“I was curious about that, too, so I walked up and had a closer look. You’ll never believe what it was.”
I was really hoping she wasn’t going to say blood. She didn’t.
“It was ketchup,” Patsy said. “Somebody wrote that message in ketchup. They even left a couple of those big squeeze bottles like the ones you use at your food truck behind.”
My next interview was a bit stickier. Dr. Smith seemed none too happy to see me. I think he expected me to confront him about stealing my ketchup, which I was 98% certain he had, although, technically, he’d more than paid for it with the $40 he’d left behind.
I had no intention of accusing Dr. Smith of ketchup theft. There was too much at stake to get caught up with petty crime.
When I explained that my best friend Arnie’s sister used to be married to Antonio and that I was trying to extricate my friend from a vicious smear campaign orchestrated by Dr. Smith’s hated ex-son-in-law, he warmed up considerably.
When I told Sidney that Antonio was blaming Arnie for dumping out his toppings and putting horse poo in his pizza oven, Dr. Smith started laughing so hard I thought he might pass out.
“I did all of it,” he said when he’d finally regained his composure.
In the middle of Dr. Smith’s confession, I got a plaintive text from Arnie saying he’d made bail and was heading home to rest.
“I’m sorry that I can’t share your amusement,” I told Dr. Smith. “Arnie’s just bailed out of jail after Antonio had him arrested for assault and battery.”
Sidney Smith sobered up quickly.
“If it comes down to confessing to my crimes in order to clear the innocent, I’ll do it…and I am sorry about the ketchup.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you think he did it?”
“Do I think Arnie beat up Antonio? My gut says definitely not, but the evidence points to yes. According to everyone who has seen Antonio since the incident, he’s genuinely injured.”
“Well, I can’t say I haven’t ever thought of—”
Dr. Smith never finished telling me what he hadn’t ever thought of doing because we were interrupted by a boom so explosive that the windows of the apartment rattled.
Chapter Eight
Dr. Smith and I rushed to the window.
There was nothing to see, so I hurried outside, Sidney Smith close on my heels.
There was a black column of smoke billowing up over the roof of the apartment block we’d just come out of. When we rounded the corner of the building, we had a clear view of the vacant lot next to Whispering Palms.
Antonio’s Mobile Pizza Kitchen looked like it had been hit by a bomb.
Against my better judgment, I rushed over to the smoldering wreckage.
The side of the truck was blown out, and bits of metal and glass littered the ground.
“Antonio!” I called out but got no answer.
I cautiously approached the blackened truck and looked inside. Thankfully, I didn’t see a body, but without poking around, I couldn’t be sure.
I looked back toward Whispering Palms and saw Sidney Smith standing at a safe distance from the blown-out truck. He was holding his phone to his ear, and I assumed he must be calling 911.
Curious residents were peering out of windows, and I watched as Fitz Robison rounded the corner to investigate. Prue was right behind him, holding her ears as if she expected a secondary explosion any second.
Normally, Prue can’t be counted on to be logical, but I decided she might be onto something, so I took a step back from the smoking truck.
Within minutes the police had arrived (although Officer Finch was not among them), followed by an ambulance. The officers approached the wreckage and determined the ambulance was not needed. Antonio’s Mobile Pizza Kitchen had been unoccupied when it blew sky high.
“Did anybody here see what happened?” one of the officers asked the crowd of Whispering Palms residents and staff who’d gathered in little agitated knots around the outskirts of the scene.
Lots of people had heard the explosion, but it seemed that no one had seen it. After a while, the crowd started to break up. A lot of the residents were off to senior bingo in the basement of the Baptist church few blocks away, and Marcella informed me that she had an appointment to get a wash and set. She had a date, apparently, but declined to divulge the identity of the unfortunate gentleman. I wondered where the couple intended to dine. I hoped Marcella didn’t take exception to the quality of the service and start flipping tables.
I couldn’t help wondering where Antonio had been when his food truck exploded. When I’d asked around, there was unanimous agreement that no one had seen Antonio anywhere in the vicinity of Whispering Palms or his food truck since he’d closed up around one. He’d told several people he was in too much pain from his injuries to continue working, so he was going home to recuperate.
Before I headed off, I sidled up to one of the officers at the scene and asked if they’d pinpointed the source of the explosion.
“Can’t be sure until a team of specialists looks at it,” the officer told me, “but it looks like it was fireworks?”
“Bottle rockets? Antonio has been giving away a fistful of free bottle rockets with every pizza through the Fourth.”
“There do seem to be a bunch of spent bottle rockets, among other things, but I can’t imagine a box of bottle rockets doing that kind of damage.”
Before I headed back to the food truck, I texted Tanisha. Prue had informed me that it was her day off, so I assumed Tanisha might not even know that Antonio’s truck had blown to bits.
“I’ll go over to his house and check on him,” Tanisha told me.
A few minutes later, as I was telling Arnie what had happened, Tanisha called me.
“You’re sure Antonio was telling people he was going home to rest?”
“I asked around,” I told her. “Five people all agreed that Antonio closed up shop around one, said he was going home, and nobody’s seen him since.”
“I knocked on his door,” Tanisha said, “and I swear someone was inside, but nobody answered. He’s also not responding to texts or answering his phone. While I was there, a police officer came by looking for Antonio, but he hadn’t been able to reach him either.”
I stuck around the food truck after that to help Arnie deal with the after-bingo crowd, but then headed off to the grove down by the beach where the off-road bike park was.
I met Marge and Bobby two blocks from the beach.
“You heard about Antonio’s pizza truck exploding?” I asked.
They had. They’d been in the vicinity of Whispering Palms several times that day, but they couldn’t recall seeing anything unusual.
“There is something I wanted to tell you,” said Marge. “It’s about Arnie.”
“Oh?”
“We heard that he got arrested for beating up Antonio,” Bobby said, “but I don’t think that’s what actually happened.”
That made two of us.
“Oh?”
“Our friend Trent saw Antonio in the woods that day before Arnie got arrested.”
“Riding his bike?”
“Wrecking his bike,” said Bobby.
“Trent said Antonio was all busted up. Trent saw him take this jump, but it ended so badly Antonio couldn’t even ride his bike back out of the grove.”
“Do you know where I might find Trent?” I asked.
Marge thought he hung out down by the beach this time of day, so we all went down together to find him.
Trent was asleep under a palm tree, but Bobby woke him up.
“That guy didn’t get beat up,” Trent said when he’d finished telling the story of seeing Antonio wreck his mountain bike and limp away, “not unless you count the beating he took from the stump he came down on. That and the tumble down the slope into the gravel.”
“But I though Antonio wore a bunch of protective gear,” I said. “Body armor and a full-face helmet. How did he manage to get so injured?”
“He wasn’t wearing any of that stuff,” Trent said. “It was at least 90 and I guess he decided to do without it. He was wearing a regular bike helmet, but that was it.”
“Would you be willing to repeat everything you said to a police officer?” I asked him.
Trent said he was prepared to go down to the station with me whenever I wanted.
“Did Antonio leave with his bike?” I asked Trent.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “He was pushing it right after he left the jump, but he was having a really hard time, so he might have decided to stash it in the bushes and come back for it later.”
I decided to look around and see if I could locate the wrecked bicycle before I drove Trent down to the station. Marge, Bobby, Trent, and I split up and searched sections of the shrubby undergrowth at the outskirts of the grove.
I was the one who found Antonio’s battered bicycle.
“Can you guys watch this thing until we come back with the police?” I asked Bobby and Marge.
I wasn’t too worried about Antonio coming back to retrieve his bike, and it turned out he had bigger problems on his hands, literally.
I drove Trent down to the police station and left him there while I made another stop. Bray Bay Drugstore is on Main Street, so it should have a lot of walk-in traffic, but Mr. Forbes, the man who runs the place, is very old school. He has never tried to diversify. The Bray Bay Drugstore doesn’t sell souvenirs, snacks, or magazines. Nobody ever goes there unless they are sick or injured.
Mr. Forbes himself was working the counter when I walked in. Besides a young woman in the back who was stocking shelves, we were the only ones in the place.
“I have an odd question for you, Mr. Forbes,” I said.
Chapter Nine
Mr. Forbes merely grunted in answer to my question. He’s never been a man of many words.
“Did you happen to notice a man about my age come in here a couple of hours ago: tall, muscular, dark-haired?” I asked. “Possibly with burns or black marks on his clothing?”
“Wasn’t here until a few minutes ago,” said Mr. Forbes. He gave no explanation for his absence.
“Who was here earlier?”<
br />
“Jessica,” Mr. Forbes jerked his thumb toward the back.
I repeated my question for Jessica.
“I don’t know about burns,” she said, “but there was a man who came in here a few hours ago. He was very strange. He insisted that I carry his shopping basket for him.”
“Why?”
“Don’t know. He kept his hands in his pockets the whole time.”
“Surely he had to carry his purchases out of the store.”
“No,” Jessica told me. “He asked me to put them in his car for him.”
“Was he alone?”
“Seemed to be.”
“What did he buy?”
Jessica hesitated. I suspected she’d been coached by Mr. Forbes that is was imperative she preserve the confidentiality of the clientele if she wanted to keep her job.
“Was it supplies to treat burns?” I persisted.
She looked wordlessly over at Mr. Forbes, who was absorbed with rearranging the display of balms and ointments by the register, then nodded.
Before I’d come into the drug store, I’d texted Hannah and Tanisha and asked if either of them still had a picture of Antonio. Only Hannah had replied, and the picture she had was several years out of date. I showed it to Jessica anyway.
“This look like him?”
Jessica was convinced that it was Antonio who’d been in earlier.
I walked out on the sidewalk and dialed Officer Finch.
“It’s imperative that you get Antonio in for questioning before the burns have time to heal,” I told him without preamble.
“What burns?” Scott said. “Did you send some homeless guy down here? He’s been talking to Randal for the last half hour.”
“Antonio, or his doppelganger, was in the Bray Bay drugstore shortly after the pizza truck blew up. He was buying supplies to treat burns. He kept his hands in his pockets the whole time and made the drug store clerk carry his purchases out to the car.”