Suspicious Mimes

by Virginia Brown

  “Can’t say it’s done me any good either.”

  Harley hung up and made sure the van’s air conditioner was full blast to cool off the group, then went to assure Lydia’s group, huddled close to the yellow crime scene tape, that they’d soon be returned to their hotel.

  “Your day is comped for your inconvenience,” she added, “courtesy of Memphis Tour Tyme. Please wait for your ride to the hotel in the coffee shop, and we’ll get you safely back.”

  By the time she got back to Graceland for them, Charlsie had picked up those she could. The ones left behind had indulged in a few beers and were feeling fine. One of them, a rather chunky guy who was obviously feeling no pain, sat up front with her since there was no more room in the back. She didn’t normally allow that, but this guy seemed genial enough, good-natured and not belligerent, and since there wasn’t room for him in the back, she was out of options anyway.

  “I should’a known something was wrong with that guy,” he said once the van was on the Interstate headed for their hotel. “He acted kinda weird.”

  “What guy? Oh, you mean the dead man? Most Elvis impersonators act a little weird.” My father not excluded, she thought wryly.

  “Naw, it wasn’t that. Didn’t want to share his seat. Acted like he’d get robbed or hit in the head. Put up a little fuss until the other guy said something to him, and then he settled down all right.”

  “Did you tell this to the police?”

  “No, didn’t think about it. Maybe I should have, huh? Was the dead guy sick?”

  Harley thought for a moment. Apparently he didn’t know that the dead Elvis had been stuck in the neck with a penknife.

  How had he been killed so quietly and without anyone noticing?

  It took a lot of nerve to do something like that in a bus full of tourists—nerve, or insanity. Or maybe a little bit of both.

  “So he knew the other guy?” she asked, and the tourist shrugged. “Couldn’t tell. No one else knew him, but we didn’t know either of them anyway.”

  “Wait—weren’t they part of your group?”

  “Never saw ’em before. Figured they were just along for the ride.”

  Just like the extra guy had been along for the ride in her van. That was very interesting.

  “Can you give me a description?” she asked.

  “Black hair, long sideburns, white jumpsuit—”

  “No, not the dead man, a description of the other guy.”

  “I just told you. Black hair, long sideburns, white jumpsuit, and gold chains.”

  “Both of them were Elvis impersonators?”

  “Yeah. Maybe that’s how they knew each other.”

  Sounded logical.

  “But what’s weirder,” he said in a bit of a slur, “is that only one of them was s’posed to be on the bus. If that twitchy gal’s right, that is.”

  “Twitchy?”

  “Yeah, the skinny little driver. She’s kinda excitable.” Good description for Lydia.

  “Did she say one of the Elvises wasn’t supposed to be on there?”

  “Not exactly, but she kept reading over that list on her clipboard and doing a head count when we got to Graceland. Like it wasn’t coming out right.”

  “Where was the other Elvis?”

  “Don’t know. He got off the bus with the rest of us—except for the guy that died—but there were a lot of other Elvises around there, so I guess he just joined up with them. Some kind of concert under a tent.”

  After a moment, Harley said, “You really need to tell all this to the police.”

  “Sure. If you think it’s important. Can’t see why though.”

  “It’s important.” Let someone else tell him the guy had been murdered. It sure wasn’t her job.

  Tootsie met her at the garage when she returned the van. He looked frazzled. His hair was all loose around his face and straggling out of the ponytail he kept it in for work, and his silk shirt was half out of his pleated-front pants. Not at all normal. He was always immaculate.

  “What’s up?” she asked in concern, and he gave her an open-mouthed stare.

  “Two . . . dead . . . bodies. On our vans! When this gets out we’ll have cancellations all over the place.” He cupped a hand over his mouth, words coming out all muffled. “This is worse than being embezzled.”

  “I’d think so. Although Sandler does look the type. It’s always the quiet, snarky ones.”

  “Not always. Believe me, it can be someone you least expect. Anyway, I’d settle for that right now instead of this. At least it wouldn’t run off a lot of our clients.”

  “Speaking of running off clients, you look pretty frightening at the moment.”

  Tootsie went back to pacing, his Birkenstock sandals slapping against the concrete floor of the parking lot. “This is unbelievable. Unbelievable!”

  Harley looked at him. He seemed awfully upset for a mere employee. Could it be that he had a personal stake in the company? Like financial? She’d often wondered just how the ultraconservative Lester Penney had been induced to hire a man who painted his fingernails in the office and wore women’s clothes after hours. For that matter, how had they even met? That could be a very interesting story. Now wasn’t the time to ask, but one day . . .

  “What can I do to help out?” she asked when he stopped pacing and leaned his forehead against the concrete wall with a big blue number two painted in the middle.

  With his head still resting against the wall, Tootsie cut his eyes at her. Silence stretched, and then he said, “I can’t believe I’m even asking you, but could you help find out who’s behind this? Quietly, and without publicity?”

  Harley blinked. “Wait—you’re asking me to help?”

  “I know. I can’t believe it either. But you do seem to have a knack for it.”

  “I have a knack for getting hit in the head, crapped on by a goose, and whacked with a wooden penis. Although technically, I did most of the whacking with the last one.”

  “As if I need a reminder of your newest hobby. Not wooden Johnsons. Dead bodies.” He turned to lean back against the wall and briefly closed his eyes. “Jewel thieves, smugglers, now dead Elvises. Your career has taken quite a different turn.”

  “Who’d have thought it.”

  “But somehow, and I have no idea how you manage it, it all ends up good.”

  “For the police and aspirin corporations.”

  He opened his eyes. “You didn’t do too badly last time, if I remember correctly. Ten thousand dollars is a nice reward.”

  “You’re offering me money?”

  “No. But I’ll keep you on the payroll even when you aren’t doing tours.”

  “Can you do that? What’ll Mr. Penney say?”

  “Just let me worry about that. Think you can do it?”

  “Why not? It’ll be a great distraction for me right now. I can’t promise there won’t be publicity, though,” she warned. “There usually is.”

  “Just please, please, try to keep it to a minimum.”

  “No promises,” she repeated, and Tootsie sighed.

  “As long as it’s a Tour Tyme employee who solves the murders, that can only be good. Just be sure you help solve the murders and save the publicity until after it’s over, okay?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Four

  It was much too quiet in Harley’s apartment. The Spragues next door didn’t have their music up loud for a change. Maybe the honeymoon had worn off. Not that she was complaining. Right now, listening to rather vocal lovebirds would be like throwing a bucket of water to a drowning man, completely unwanted.

  Thoughts of Morgan had changed from regret to resignation. In some weird way, she understood his reasoning behind putting distance between them. For a guy in
his position, this new habit she’d somehow acquired had to create career conflict. It’d be like her Aunt Darcy going to work for the Republican party, when everyone knew she’d rather give up all her Manolo Blahniks than vote anything but a Democratic ticket.

  Understanding and liking it were two entirely different things, though. Usually, she could see the end of a relationship well before it finally hit the skids. This one had blind-sided her.

  “Maybe you’re so upset because he did it first,” Cami said when Harley called her later to complain about Morgan. “You know how you’ve always been the one to walk out first.” Camilla Watson had been her best friend since junior high and knew far too much about her past loves and crimes, just like Bobby. That could be inconvenient, but also helpful at times.

  This wasn’t one of those times. She didn’t want truth. She wanted sympathy and righteous indignation.

  “That’s not true,” Harley said. “Remember Alex?”

  “How could I forget? And you still walked out on him first. Yes, you did, because you called me from Oxford to say you were moving out and needed a place to stay for a night.”

  “Oh. Yeah. That was my third year of college. Stupid of me to quit college. Alex should have been the one to leave. One more day of living with him, and I’d have kicked his ass down the stairs. I guess I should have waited him out.”

  “He called me for a year after that, you know, asking about you.”

  Harley was surprised. “He did? I never knew that.”

  “Yep. Couldn’t get over the fact that you’d dumped him. It surprised me, too. I’d always thought Alex was the great love of your life.”

  “So did I. Wonder why I left him? I can’t even remember now.”

  “Neither can I. Anyway, it proves my point that you’re mostly upset because Morgan left first.”

  She thought about that a moment. Then she said, “No, I think I really miss him. The jerk.”

  “At the risk of sounding like Diva, if it’s meant to be, he’ll be back.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t quote that ‘Let it go free and if it’s meant to come back, it will’ crap that annoys the hell out of me. I prefer the other version.”

  “Which one is that?”

  “Let him go free and if he doesn’t come back, hunt him down and shoot him.”

  Cami laughed. “I’ve heard people say that when you live long enough, you know you’re better off with a cat anyway.”

  Harley glanced over at Sam. He sat on the arm of a chair washing his family jewels. Or what he had left of them. “That’s entirely possible. He’s the only male in my life or bed right now.”

  “So, other than your tawdry love life, how are things?”

  “I take it you haven’t been watching the local news.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Why is that the reaction I usually get from you?”

  “Who died?” Cami asked with a sigh.

  “Elvis.”

  “This may shock you, but rumor has it that he died in 1977.”

  “I’ve heard that. This Elvis, however, was stabbed in the back of my van yesterday. It was not a pretty sight.”

  “Oh, I did hear that. It was your van? I should have known. Have you ever considered that you may be some kind of magnet for murder?”

  “Now see, that’s just what I said to Morgan. I can’t figure it out either. So today, when I was minding my own business, going right along with my usual tour guide stuff, another dead Elvis pops up.”

  “Another one? Harley, they’re going to put you under the jail.”

  “It didn’t happen in my van. It was in Lydia’s tour bus. But here’s the really strange thing—two Elvises were on that bus. Sitting together. One of them ends up dead, and one of them ends up gone. Ring any bells for you?”

  “Yes, warning bells. Stay away from this, Harley. Remember the other times you got mixed up in this kind of thing.”

  “Here’s the kicker—Tootsie asked me to investigate.” When Cami didn’t say anything, Harley waited a moment to allow the shock to sink in. Sam had curled up in her lap for a nap, and she stroked his soft fur with one hand. His body vibrated in a loud purr. Just as the silence on the other end of the line stretched a little bit too long, Cami asked, “Are you sure?”

  “Yep. Shocked me, too. I didn’t know he had so much faith in me.”

  Cami wasn’t as pleased as she’d expected. Instead, she sounded horrified. “You do realize he was probably just being sarcastic?”

  “No, not at all. He was dead serious. Ha! I made a pun. Anyway, he said he’d cover any time I missed and still pay me, as long as I keep things as quiet as possible and find out who’s killing people on our tour buses.”

  “Harley, Bobby is going to freak out when he finds out you’re getting involved. You know that.”

  “You’re not going to tell him, are you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then he’s not likely to find out. I’m going to be very low- key. And since Morgan isn’t around to rat me out, it ought to be a lot easier.”

  “It won’t work. You know it won’t work. Something’s going to happen, you’ll end up in big trouble and Bobby will have to arrest you. So don’t do it.”

  “Take a deep breath and have some faith, Cami. Everything’ll be just fine. Tootsie says I have a knack for this.”

  “A knack for murder? There are nicer things to have, Harley. Like typhoid.”

  “Unbeliever.”

  After they hung up, Harley reflected on the two murders.

  They had to be related, but it had occurred to her that they had two slight differences. One Elvis had been killed by an unknown Elvis in a bus full of Elvises, while the other Elvis had been killed by an Elvis he knew. If it was the same killer, he—or maybe even she—adapted to the situation. But why pick on Elvis impersonators? There had to be a common thread. Had the two dead Elvises known each other? Were they all in the same competition? Business together? Neighbors? There could be any number of motives, but none of them jumped out at her.

  Since she had to start somewhere, it made sense to find the connection between murderer and victims and go from there. To do that, she had to start with the victims’ connection to each other and work backward.

  Fortunately, she had experience in working backward. Tootsie was quite willing to do his computer magic and use his police connections to find out what he could about the victims. The first Elvis’s real name was Derek Wade and he worked at the local Kellogg’s plant in his other life. The second dead Elvis was a thirty-six year old man named Leroy Jenkins.

  One lived in Midtown, the other lived in North Memphis, and neither of them had any known connection to the other except that they were both contestants in the Elvis competitions.

  “Maybe if I talk to their families, I could find out if they knew one another,” Harley said the next morning, and Tootsie nodded. He looked a little haggard, with bluish bruises under his eyes and a frown line between his brows. “Sounds good to me.”

  “I’ll need some kind of official sounding reason, though. You know, without being too obvious.”

  “You’re a Memphis Tour Tyme employee. You’re there to offer condolences and ask if there’s anything we can do. Of course, our insurance adjusters will handle any claims that may arise, so don’t get sucked into discussing that. Especially admitting fault in any way. We have to be very careful about that, and let the lawyers and adjusters handle that kind of thing.” Tootsie paused, and then said, “I’ll print you out a few business cards with our logo and phone numbers so they’ll feel more comfortable about allowing you to ask questions.”

  “Good. I ran out of mine. Put my cell number on them, too, okay?”

  “Don’t you think that’s a waste of ink? It’ll be broken by the end of the wee
k anyway.”

  “I haven’t broken a one since I started clipping them to my belt loop. My record is now at nearly six weeks.”

  Rolling his eyes, Tootsie said something about too little too late, but printed out the cards on the laser jet printer, and handed her the perforated sheet of thick paper. “Be careful, girlfriend,” he said, and she nodded.

  “I always am.” She flashed him a bright smile meant to reassure him that the problem was in good hands, and then blew him a kiss on her way out the office door. She thought she heard him shout after her Don’t do anything stupid! but could have been mistaken. She always tried to be careful.

  Armed with business cards, her cell phone, and a full tank of gas in her ’91 silver Toyota, Harley set out for Midtown and the family of Derek Wade. He’d been forty-two, lived at home with his parents—which explained a lot—and worked as a raisin counter at the local Kellogg’s. Apparently it paid well to count raisins. She wondered how they did it, one by one, or with a scoop like in the commercials, “two scoops” in every box. That was Kellogg’s, wasn’t it? It was hard to keep up with the battling cereal corporations’ ads.

  And it was much harder than she’d imagined interviewing the grieving parents. She had to remind herself it was for a good cause, finding his killer, but she still found it difficult to deal with their pain. It put real faces to the victim’s family, something she’d never had to deal with before. Statistics were cold. Grief was not. How did the police do it day after day? How did they deliver such terrible news after seeing broken and bloody bodies? No wonder so many officers retreated to emotional apathy while performing their jobs. It’d be suicide to empathize with all the victims and families they must encounter on a routine basis, and lessen their competency and effectiveness.

  The interview with the Wades yielded little information she didn’t already know, and she considered avoiding her visit with the Jenkins family. But that wouldn’t get the job done. So she steeled herself for another emotional hour and drove to the North Memphis address. It was in a shabby area of the city, the houses smaller and rundown, litter in many yards, not to mention the broken trees from a storm several years before. The media had dubbed it Hurricane Elvis, the straight-line winds fierce enough to knock down old oaks and keep electricity off for weeks in many neighborhoods. Just a few streets over in the same part of Memphis, houses were compact but neat, with fenced yards and obvious pride in ownership. Houses here still had tree rubbish, but at least it was piled up.