Suspicious Mimes

by Virginia Brown

  “Kids today.” Harley thought about Larry Penney and wondered just how badly he hated his father. Enough to try to ruin him? She looked up at Tootsie and knew he was thinking the same thing.

  Nana said bluntly, “I’d be looking at that kid, if I were you two. Kids brought up with that sense of entitlement rarely turn out well. Sounds like a sociopath to me.”

  Harley blinked. “What do you know about sociopaths?”

  “What, you think I lived this long without learning anything? Take John Dillinger, for instance. Sociopath. Al Capone. Sociopath. I wouldn’t rule out most of Congress, either.”

  Tootsie laughed. “You are such a darling.”

  “So are you, princess.” Nana winked and clicked her teeth.

  “Too bad you don’t swing our way.”

  “If I did, you’d be first on my list.”

  “And I’d give you a run for your money, baby doll.”

  Harley looked at them with her hands on her hips. “Please, your mutual love-fest is leaving me nauseous.”

  After they left Corky’s, Harley went back to Whispering Pines and packed her few clothes before tackling Sam. She’d need a rest before attempting to wedge him into his carrier.

  “Sure you want to leave? You can stay another night or two,” Nana said.

  “I’ve paid my rent this month and hate to waste it, but thanks. Now that Hughes is in jail, it’s safe for me to go home. And it’s a lot closer to work. Maybe business will pick up again since the murderer’s been caught. Tootsie’s pretty worried about it. Job security isn’t something to take lightly.”

  “Well, I hope it works out. That Tootsie is a nice girl.”

  “I’ll pass along the compliment.”

  “Time for my shuffleboard tournament. Think this looks all right?” Nana turned for Harley to admire her outfit. She wore a soft blue sweatshirt under her pearl necklace, a long jersey skirt, and rolled down athletic socks with her running shoes. Atop her head perched an Atlanta Braves baseball cap.

  “Perfect,” Harley said.

  “Good. I hate good-byes. Don’t stay away so long next time.”

  “I won’t.”

  Nana smiled and reached up to pat her cheek. “You’re a good girl. I don’t care what everyone else says about you.”

  “Thanks. Wait—who? What do they say?”

  Laughing as she went out the door, Nana stuck her head back inside to say, “Psych!” then was gone.

  “You’re a terrible old woman,” Harley said to the closed door, and smiled.

  Harley went home, released an annoyed Sam into familiar territory, washed her scratches with hydrogen peroxide, and lay down across her bed. She fell asleep almost immediately.

  It was dark when she woke. Only the nightlight in the hall provided any illumination. She felt drugged. It’d been a while since she’d been able to sleep soundly.

  Yawning, she got up and went into the kitchen, where the nightlight over Sam’s litter box put him in silhouette as he took advantage of the facilities.

  “Nothing like the smell of fresh cat doody to wake a person up,” she muttered, but Sam was still sulking over the indignity of being dumped rear end first into the cat carrier and didn’t answer. He was like that sometimes. He’d get over it.

  After getting a glass of iced tea, Harley went out onto her balcony to sit in the fresh air and wake up a little. It smelled like rain. Wind rustled the thick, leathery leaves of the huge magnolia and felt damp on her face. Wind chimes clanged nearby. Tammy Sprague next door must have hung them. It reminded Harley of Diva, and that made her think of what Diva had told Tootsie. It didn’t make much sense, but that wasn’t so unusual. There were times Diva was right on the money, but most of the time, she said obscure things that no one could figure out until later. Hindsight was twenty-twenty, as the saying went. Lord. Now she even thought in clichés. Nana was a bad influence.

  Leaning her head against the back of the chair, she tried to connect the dots between what Diva had said and the killer. It wasn’t easy. Some of it was obvious, like being caught between the past and present. Hughes was still mad at being disqualified, so transferred that anger to all things Elvis. Tour Tyme was caught between. And of course, the hidden Elvis only meant that he’d been in hiding since committing the murders. But the candlelight reference . . . What could that mean? The vigil or just that Hughes was in shadow?

  A sudden shadow on the table next to her made Harley spill her iced tea and leap up from her chair. Heart pounding, a shriek caught in her throat, and then she recognized the reason.

  “Sam, what are you doing out here? You know you’re an inside cat. I signed an agreement promising not to let you outside. Cami would repossess you if I reneged. She said so. And I could tell she wasn’t kidding. Now come on, go back inside and stop scaring the bejesus out of me.”

  Sam deigned to offer a reply, with a rather indignant miaaow loud enough to wake up the lions in the zoo across the road. Maybe it was his way of making up after a quarrel. She took him in with her and shut the balcony doors.

  When the phone rang, Harley looked at the clock. A little after nine. She picked up the phone a bit warily.

  Cami said, “I didn’t wake you up or anything, did I?”

  “If you mean by anything am I involved in something hot and sweaty, no. Unfortunately. I think I’m awake. My eyes are open, so it must be true.”

  “Not necessarily. I remember a sleep-over with your cousin Madelyn. She sleeps with her eyes open.”

  “Makes you wonder if she doesn’t do that during the day too, doesn’t it. So what’s up?”

  Cami hesitated, and then said, “I have a big favor to ask you.”

  “As long as it doesn’t involve Elvis, I’m good with it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Wait a minute. I recognize that tone of voice. It’s your This isn’t going to hurt at all voice.”

  “Well, it won’t hurt. It’ll just take up a little time. And space. It won’t be for very long, I promise.”

  “Cami—”

  “You’ll be saving a life, Harley.”

  “Yours?”

  “Possibly. Definitely Frank’s.”

  “Frank?”

  “Frank Burns.”

  A deep suspicion ignited. “Frank Burns, like in MASH on TV?”

  “That’s who he’s named for, yes.”

  “Cami, tell me it’s not another cat.”

  “It’s not another cat.”

  “Thank God—wait. Or a dog?”

  “Or a dog.”

  Harley closed her eyes and sighed. Cami really did take her animal rescue bit too far at times. Now she’d branched out into relatives. “Okay,” she said. “But just for a few days.”

  “I knew you’d come through for me, Harley. We’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”

  “If you collected dollar bills like you collect strays, you’d have more money than Donald Trump. Frank can stay a night or two, but he has to sleep on my couch. I don’t give up my bed for anyone.”

  “That’s okay. He’s got his own bed.”

  Cami hung up before Harley could ask why a relative carried around his own bed. Uh oh. This did not bode well. She decided to be optimistic. Maybe it was a fish.

  When she saw Cami lugging a big glass aquarium, Harley breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t a crazy relative that Cami was trying to push off on her. It must be a fish. She didn’t mind a fish sleeping over. Fish didn’t make a lot of noise. Fish didn’t require toys and cans of cat food. Fish didn’t make stinky poop.

  “Hey,” Harley said, opening her door wider for Cami to get through with the ten gallon tank, “you should have asked for help. I’d have met you at the car.”

  “That’s okay. I thought it’d be bes
t if he was already inside when you met Frank.”

  Lifted brow time. “Does Frank have problems with strangers?”

  “Not often. Strangers sometimes have problems with Frank.”

  Cami set the glass aquarium down on the coffee table. It was covered with a light blanket. Odd squeaky sounds came from it. The water filter? Rocks? Loud fish? Piranha?

  Panting a little, Cami looked at Harley over her shoulder.

  “Do you mind putting Sam up for a few minutes? It’ll make Frank feel a lot better if he’s not being stared at by a cat.”

  “I can understand that. Unless he’s a piranha, he’s probably not that fond of cats.”

  Harley shut an indignant Sam in her bedroom and went back into the living room. Cami had taken the blanket off the aquarium. Squeaking noises had turned to hisses.

  “I never knew fish made sounds.”

  “They don’t. Did you think this was a fish?”

  Harley narrowed her eyes and tried to look around Cami into the aquarium. “It isn’t? What did you bring over here? I’m not keeping another cat. Even kittens. Sam wouldn’t like it. He’s picky about who and what he likes.”

  “I know that. But he’s only one cat, and I’ve got so many cats at my house that they really do make Frank nervous.”

  “He’s a cat. Get him a mirror. He can get used to it.”

  “Uh, he’s not a cat, Harley.”

  “A dog? Cami, I don’t have time to walk a dog! I’m not home that much, and Elvis week is coming up. I’ll be gone so long, and—”

  “He’s not a dog. Do you think I’d keep a dog in an aquarium? Jeez, Harley, get a grip.”

  Harley did a fake feint to the left, and then moved to the right before Cami could block her view. A long, skinny raccoon looked at her, blinking black beady eyes and twitching whiskers.

  “I’m not keeping a raccoon!”

  “Frank is not a raccoon, Harley. He’s a ferret. M*A*S*H. Frank Burns. Ferret-face, get it?”

  “I got it. He’s not staying. Get it?”

  Cami looked frazzled. Her blonde hair stuck up at odd angles, the tee shirt she wore had a rip and stains with mysterious origins, and her cutoffs looked more David Duke than Daisy Duke.

  “Please, Harley. It’s only for a little while. He’s already been adopted, but she had to go out of town and can’t take him until she gets back. No one else can take him. Everyone I know has too many cats or dogs, and Frank keeps getting loose.”

  “Oh, that’s a point in his favor. Don’t you have a cat cage?”

  “Of course I do. Frank knows how to unlatch it.”

  Harley looked back at the aquarium. Frank twitched his whiskers and put tiny black paws up against the glass. Cedar shavings held some toys and two empty bowls, along with a few tiny dark pellets that she suspected weren’t just decorations.

  “What next, Cami? A llama?”

  “No livestock allowed inside the city limits. They make good guard animals, though. I’ve always thought I’d like to have one.”

  Jeez. She actually looked serious when she said that. Harley shook her head.

  “I know I’ll regret this, but okay. Only for a few days!”

  “Great. I brought some, but in case you run out, here’s a list of foods he eats. You’re the best, Harley. I owe you big-time.”

  Harley took the list Cami held out. “Damn straight about that. Wait a minute—what’s this at the bottom of the page?”

  She looked up. Cami had the door open.

  “Gotta go. Feeding time at the zoo. Call me if you have any questions, okay?” Cami swept out the door and closed it behind her.

  “Damn,” Harley said when she reread the bottom of the page, “Cami!”

  By the time she got downstairs and outside to the parking area, Cami’s red taillights were at the end of the driveway. Who’d have ever thought Saturn coupes could move so quickly?

  Apparently she banged the entrance hall door a little too hard when she went back inside. Sarah Simon opened her door a crack to peer out, one eye visible above the chain lock.

  “Sorry,” Harley said, and the door gently shut again. Strange girl. She hid like a groundhog all the time, tucked away in her apartment and only coming out to signal six more weeks of winter.

  When she got back upstairs, the aquarium was empty. No sign of Frank. Sam kept up a yowl in the bedroom that sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard, and Harley went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She took out a bottle of wine and didn’t bother pouring any into a glass. After chugging a few swigs, she put the cork back in the top and the bottle back on the shelf and went ferret hunting.

  She hoped the last line of Cami’s list wasn’t prophetic: May poop in panty drawer.

  Fourteen

  Morning came too early, as usual. Worse, rain pattered against her window panes, one of those summer rains that cooled Memphis only as long as it hung around. When it stopped, streets would be steaming like a nuclear reactor plant. Rain also brought out the worst in Memphis drivers, increased the workload on police, and made the streets as safe as the Indianapolis 500 home stretch. It was a day to sleep in, not a day to be out hauling tourists, but she got up anyway. When had she become so damned responsible?

  She stumbled into the kitchen, fed Sam, checked his litter box, and made coffee. In that order. Any other order drew loud complaints from the feline quarter. Frank Burns was once more shut in the aquarium. He didn’t look happy about it, but she’d finally found a use for that two-volume set of Shakespeare on her bookshelves. Wire mesh gave him plenty of air, she’d put a grape, a few ferret nuggets, and fresh water in his bowls before bedtime, and when she came home she’d check the pellet level in the cedar shavings. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Except that Sam seemed to view their guest as a threat. He growled low in his throat. He hissed at the glass. He hid under her bed. The last she didn’t mind at all.

  Since the weather promised a sauna effect guaranteed to melt make-up and gum up hair gel, she opted for the simple look. As usual. A brush of mascara over her lashes, a swipe of cherry flavored lip balm, and the “just laid” look for her hair. Tee shirt, khaki walking shorts, sports socks and white tennis shoes completed the professional yet comfortable attire of a tour guide.

  “Y’all be good now,” she said to the hiding cat and sulking ferret. “I’ll be back.”

  Fortified with two cups of coffee and the cold end of a leftover bean burrito, she grabbed her leather backpack and headed out for the day. First stop—Claude Williams.

  She found Williams at his office off Mendenhall, one of those three-story bland buildings a stone’s throw from Poplar Avenue. Expensive new cars filled most of the slots. Her Toyota with the bashed in front and rear fenders looked a little out of place. Good thing she had insurance.

  Williams’s office was on the second floor overlooking the parking lot and Belmont Café. A young woman who looked almost old enough to vote greeted her at the front desk. She had light brown hair that swung loosely around her face, fingernails painted in three different colors, a short skirt, and canvas shoes that tied around her ankles. The desk was glass, with only a telephone, a pen set, a lamp, and a laptop on it. Very modern.

  “May I help you?” the receptionist asked.

  “I hope so, but I think I’m in the wrong office. Is Claude Williams here?”

  “Your name please?”

  “Miss Davidson.” Always best not to give her first name. It saved time and the usual remarks she’d already heard a few thousand times.

  Miss Jailbait punched a few buttons on the telephone console with her long curved nails, and in a few moments, Claude Williams came from the back to greet her. “Miss Davidson, what a surprise to see you here.”

  She smiled. “I hate to bother you at work, but I have a few questions.
Just clearing up some confusion.”

  “Certainly. We can talk in my office.”

  The floors were light polished wood, the walls a creamy white, and furniture minimal. It looked efficient but not at all welcoming. Williams’s office had a few plaques on the walls, a few framed pictures on a light oak bookcase, and a potted plant in the corner. His laptop hummed atop his desk.

  “So what’s this about Preston Hughes being back in the contest?” she asked when he’d shut the door. Williams didn’t look at her but went to stand behind his desk and fiddle with a pen.

  “His request for reconsideration before the board was approved,” he said, not quite able to meet her eyes. “After all, Derek Wade isn’t in the competition this year, so there shouldn’t be any conflict.”

  Harley frowned. “Derek Wade isn’t in the competition this year because Hughes murdered him,” she said.

  “That hasn’t been proven.”

  “Not yet. The police have a different idea. Does Hughes know he’s eligible to be in this year’s competition?”

  Williams nodded. “I told him the same night we had our discussion. After all, no one can say for sure who started the argument, and a man can’t be disqualified just because he has . . . uh . . . an unpleasant personality.”

  That still didn’t mean he hadn’t murdered three Elvises. Or Lydia. Or had been stalking her. It just meant it’d paid off for him.

  “So the squeaky wheel gets the grease, right?” she said. “Never mind. It seems he won’t be in the competition this year anyway since he’s in jail.”

  Williams’s eyes narrowed a little. “He hasn’t been charged and they can only keep him for forty-eight hours without charging him. In the meantime, perhaps it’d be best if your comments and questions didn’t border on libel. You might find yourself on the wrong side of a lawsuit.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Good heavens, no.” Williams spread his hands out to his sides, and the genial smile was back. “Just expressing a friendly concern. Hughes hasn’t been proven guilty.”

  “Uh hunh. I didn’t know you two were so close.” Williams’s smile stiffened.