Suspicious Mimes

by Virginia Brown

  Maybe she’d been wrong to take Williams off her list, Harley thought when she left. The possibility of a team effort wasn’t too much of a stretch. And Williams had been on her short list once. But what motive? What advantage could there possibly be to winning the competition that’d be enough to kill four people? Was the trophy filled with gold? The cash winnings weren’t that much, not for two successful businessmen like Hughes and Williams. They might not be CEOs, but they made a lot more money than the cash prize offered. It just didn’t make sense.

  She mentioned that to Tootsie when she got to work. Plopping her backpack down on his desk, she crossed her arms over her chest and looked at him. “Well? What do you think?”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Honey, I think it’s time you stopped worrying about it. The police have Hughes in custody, and life can get back to normal. I’ve already booked four tourist groups this morning. My friend at the paper did a great write-up for us.” He shoved the morning paper toward her. “You’re a hero again.”

  “Heroine. Don’t you care that Williams may be getting away with complicity in murder?”

  “In a word, no. If he was complicit in the murders, and I’m not saying he is, then Hughes is definitely the kill and tell type. He’ll be quick to incriminate Williams and claim it was all his idea. The police are good at finding out that kind of thing. Besides, I don’t care right now, as long as they got the right guy.”

  “Tootsie, I’m shocked. Where’s your sense of justice? Fair play?”

  “Renewed now that business is picking up.” He pulled the end of his headset forward and punched a button on the console as three lines lit up at once. Harley sighed and opened the front page of the paper.

  “Suspect Held in Elvis Murders” read the headline. It went on to say that police had an unnamed man in custody on suspicion of killing three Elvis impersonators and a Memphis Tour Tyme employee. “Harley Jean Davidson, instrumental in the capture of jewelry thieves this past May and smugglers in June, identified the man on her tour bus as the killer of Derek Wade, 42, of Midtown,” the piece read.

  Then it went on to give a little background information, including the fact that Diva and Yogi had been frequent guests at 201 Poplar for things like picketing the meat-packing plant and protesting the wearing of furs. Good Lord. Was it a slow news day?

  Not bothering to read the entire article, she debated calling Bobby and sharing her concern with him. That might turnaround and bite her in the butt. He had a lamentable lack of faith in her powers of deduction and a surplus of experience in her past failures. Maybe that could wait. She’d have to be certain before she went to him again, even though the success of being bait to catch Hughes had paid off quite nicely. Bobby too often saw the world in black and white. And he had a conveniently short memory.

  “I’m keeping the security guards on the buses,” Tootsie said when he had a moment in between calls. “Just for safety’s sake. And to reassure tourists.”

  “Good plan. So do you need me today?”

  “I’m calling drivers back in as we get booked. Charlsie quit. You can take her run from the Airport Inn to Graceland at three.”

  Harley wasn’t surprised Charlsie had quit. She’d been really rattled. The possibility of being stalked by a murderer could be unsettling. She should know.

  “Got it,” she said, and took the printout of confirmed name she gave her. “Where does the security guard sit?”

  “Wherever he wants.”

  “Sounds reasonable. Which van?”

  “The ten.” He hesitated. “It’s parked next to Lydia’s bus in the garage.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll have to get over it sometime.”

  It was harder than she thought. She kept seeing Lydia standing in the bus doorway, her face reflecting fear and horror as she babbled and then wound herself around Harley like she could protect her. She certainly hadn’t done a very good job of it. It took a cold-blooded person to kill a harmless creature like Lydia. That only made her more determined to make sure Hughes got what he deserved.

  The rain had stopped, and the streets were slick and littered with cars whose drivers obviously had never seen rain before, much less driven in it. The air was so muggy that she turned the van’s AC on full blast.

  The tourists were waiting at the hotel by the airport, a pretty happy group. Harley checked off names and matched ID photos to passengers, a tedious task she didn’t mind doing at all. In spite of the wait, the group remained cheerful, a good sign. Surly tourists who complained about everything from the summer heat to long lines—like it was her fault—were a pain in the ass.

  Their good mood raised her spirits, so that by the time they got to Graceland and she had them in line to get on the EPE bus to cross the street to the mansion, she was able to laugh at some of their jokes and banter. This was the kind of group she liked, there for fun and to appreciate Elvis, not to ridicule the man and his talents or his taste. After all, time had stopped for Elvis in 1977, and he’d have no doubt redecorated the Jungle Room sooner or later. Maybe he’d always have been a little over the top, but who knew?

  Bubba’s security guard, a man shaped like a square, with no neck but an impressive pistol on his belt, had gone to talk to someone he apparently knew. Another security guard, probably. He’d not said a single word the entire ride, but sat in the last row and pretended not to watch all the passengers. But Harley saw in her rearview mirror that he kept a close eye on everyone. Obviously, a jovial personality was not an employment requirement in the security business.

  Harley went inside the coffee shop and ordered a Coke. She had some time on her hands before her group got through across the street, and she wasn’t supposed to take them back to their hotel for three hours. Maybe Tootsie had another run for her, so she called him from a pay phone.

  “God,” he said when he heard her voice, “don’t tell me—”

  “No, everything’s just fine. Hughes is in police custody, remember? I just wanted to see if you needed me for a short run. I’ve got three hours to kill. My cell phone lost its charge, so I can’t even talk on the phone. If I sit here too long, I’ll start thinking.”

  “That’s never good. Let me see what I’ve got. Have a cold drink and I’ll call you right back at this number.”

  Caller ID could be a wonderful thing. She drank a Coke, ate some fries, and was thinking about a piece of pie versus the slight tightening of her jeans during the days spent with Nana when the phone rang.

  “Yo,” she said into the receiver.

  “I’ve got a quickie for you, and don’t make any jokes about my choice of words,” Tootsie said. “A group got stuck at the airport and all the other companies are booked, of course. Harley? Are you there?”

  “Yep. You said no jokes so I’m just biting my tongue.”

  “Thank you. They need a ride and will be waiting at passenger pickup. Your contact name is Sam Elliott.”

  “The actor?”

  “I should know? I ran his credit card and he checks out. Just pick them up and take them to the Ridgeway Inn on Poplar.”

  “It was a good idea to get in the taxi and limo service.”

  “Wasn’t it? Don’t speed, but hurry, okay? They’re willing to pay fat corporate dollars for a ride now instead of having to wait for the next limo or hotel van.”

  “I’m on it.”

  She headed for the parking lot behind the tourist shops. It couldn’t be the Sam Elliott, she was sure. This one was corporate and would be some potbellied bald guy making jokes that were stupid, but his employees would laugh anyway.

  She got close to the van and unlocked it with the remote. It made a beeping sound. Then a loud blare from behind made her jump. The backpack fell from her hands, landed on the paved parking lot, and her cell phone popped out of its safe little pocket and skidded a few feet away. Befo
re she could pick it up, the guy who’d startled her with his horn drove over it, coming so close to her that she had to flatten herself against the van to keep from being hit. What a jerk. He never even slowed down.

  Harley stared at what was left of her cell phone. Apparently they weren’t hardy enough to survive being run over. Sadly, she gathered up the remains. Another phone fatality.

  While she was looking at the pieces of phone in her hand, a harrowing thought made her shudder. Had it been him? The Elvis killer? She flung herself into the van and locked the doors, sweating from more than the heat. An urgent need to get out of the parking lot made her hit the curb before she got to Elvis Presley Boulevard.

  On her way to the airport, Harley realized that she hadn’t even thought about finding the security guard. He probably hadn’t missed her, either. It shouldn’t matter. Hughes was behind bars and no Elvises had been murdered in over a week. Life could go back to normal. Whatever that was.

  Obviously, the group had spent corporate dollars at the bar while waiting. A rowdy bunch, but in a harmless kind of way.

  No mishaps slowed the trip to their hotel, conveniently located at the entrance to the interstate that’d take her swiftly back to Graceland. Ridgeway Inn was due to be torn down and replaced by something else soon, progress on the march. It was also across the street from Memorial Park Cemetery where Lydia had been buried.

  Something—guilt, sorrow, or just curiosity—drew her gaze to the fieldstone walls that enclosed the cemetery lawns. Bright blobs of color looked incongruous, bobbing around in front of the walls, and she realized the colors were helium balloons held aloft by a white-gloved hand. Staring, her heart skipped a beat. Blood made a pounding noise in her ears so that she hardly heard the passengers disembark from the van and go into the hotel. Clutching the steering wheel with suddenly cold fingers, she looked at the painted white face and too-red mouth of the mime that had shoved her at the ballpark. It had to be the same one. He looked straight at her, red lips squared in a smug grin. Then he did a little dance, put up his hands to his face like he’d just seen something awful, and pranced down the sidewalk toward the cemetery entrance.

  She stomped on the accelerator and peeled out of the parking lot onto Poplar. When she cut in front of a car to get to the cemetery entrance, the driver laid on the horn and flipped her the Southern salute. If she wasn’t in a hurry she’d have returned the gesture, but the mime had skipped around the fieldstone wall and disappeared. Helium balloons rose slowly into the sky. She headed straight for them. He wasn’t there, of course. He’d disappeared. Where in hell could he have gone so quickly? If it was Hughes, when had he made bail? Bobby should have warned her.

  A road to the right led to the offices, chapel, and mausoleum. Straight ahead lay the grotto. The huge waterfall fountain separated the entrance and exit to the cemetery grounds. Cursing the lack of her cell phone, Hughes’s release, and that tickling little warning at the back of her neck, she eased the van forward. A few visitors looked up when she drove slowly by, probably wondering if the cemetery was on the tour route now, but no mime popped up. He couldn’t have gone far. How had Hughes known where she’d be, anyway? It couldn’t be just coincidence he’d be there when she dropped off a group at the hotel across the street. He always seemed to know where she’d be. Damn.

  There was something really strange about all this besides the fact she was trawling through a cemetery looking for a mime. As good as her imagination got at times, she’d never dream up something like this. How did he know where she’d always be? How had he known about Nana’s retirement home, the ballpark, and now here? Something really screwy was going on.

  A flash of white on the winding road ahead caught her attention and she turned the van. It started to rain again. A few drops hit the windshield, but not enough to turn on the wipers. She hit the power button for the window and let it halfway down. As crazy as it sounded even to her, if there was a liberal smell of too-sweet aftershave, she’d know it was Hughes. Apparently he didn’t know he reeked of it.

  All she smelled was rain, gas fumes, and wet asphalt. No sweet aftershave. Maybe she was imagining things. Or maybe he hadn’t bathed in it this time. After all, he hadn’t stunk of it when he went to see Claude Williams. She thought about that for a moment. Would it be something new he’d started, a sort of trademark or cover-up when committing murder? Maybe she’d ask Bobby if the smell had been in Lydia’s apartment. Maybe there were two murderers. After all, she hadn’t noticed the smell in her van with the first killing, but then, she’d been too unnerved afterward to notice much of anything.

  She thought about that for a minute. Hughes could have an accomplice, but that wasn’t very logical. Not many people considered murder an appropriate elimination of Elvis contestants. If there weren’t two murderers . . . it had to be Hughes. Who else could it be? He was the only one with a solid motive. Besides, he was back in the competitions now so maybe he had a lot more to lose. In his twisted mind, if winning was all-important, he had to make it to the final competition. And Williams might be his partner. But what could be so damn important about winning an Elvis competition? It just didn’t make a lot of sense.

  Then again, this could be an unrelated event. It was entirely possible she’d annoyed any number of people. That seemed to be one of her talents. Maybe the mime had been a tourist on one of her tours that she’d had to put off the van. It happened on occasion. Anytime a surplus of alcohol and belligerence mixed, it usually ended in an eviction. She’d been hired as a driver, not a bouncer, but sometimes the two careers overlapped.

  Whoever the mime was, he’d attacked her in the ladies’ bathroom and tried to shove her in front of a bus outside AutoZone. That called for police intervention, no matter who he was. If she left to call the cops, he’d be gone when they got there. That was a given. No choice but to pursue and hopefully capture. Or at least identify. Then let the cops find out why he’d tried to kill her.

  A gust of cool air blew into the window, smelling faintly like too-sweet perfume. Okay, it had to be the same guy. And he was close. She put down both front windows to get a cross-breeze going.

  The van inched forward. Her backpack lay on the seat next to her and she pulled it close. If she saw him, she’d use her industrial strength pepper spray on him first, and then call Bobby. Except her cell phone had just been squashed. Damn. Okay. New plan. Juice him up with the pepper spray, and then use his suspenders to tie him up until she could call the police. Assuming he’d be properly and fully incapacitated, it should be a snap. If he wasn’t, she’d empty the can on him and worry about the consequences later. Pepper spray wasn’t lethal, was it?

  No, just hideously uncomfortable, she decided. Now that she had a plan, she fumbled in her bag for the pepper spray with her right hand and steered with her left. Nerves made her stomach thump, and her heart raced like Jeff Gordon’s souped-up Chevy.

  The roads wound gently through the cemetery, sloping at times. Interstate 240 bounded the east side, Poplar Avenue the south, Yates on the west, and condos and houses on the north side. The neighborhood was upscale residential and high-end shops, with a sprinkling of doctor and dentist offices close to a Wendy’s and Igor’s Hair Salon. Igor cut her hair when she was flush with cash, as well as the hair of famous people like Jerry Lawler’s wife. Ex-wife? It didn’t matter. Lawler retained the title of King, as long as it pertained to wrestling and not Elvis. Too bad Lawler wasn’t nearby. She’d appreciate a little help about now.

  The road she’d been following came to a T. She paused, and then took the right hand turn toward the grotto. Dark clouds scudded overhead, oak branches swayed, and mixed in with the smell of rain and wet asphalt was that smell peculiar to cemeteries. Nana had said it was ivy, but Diva said it was the smell of sorrow lingering from those left behind. Nana’s version sounded a lot more logical.

  A white face suddenly popped up right in front of the
van, startling her into slamming on the brakes. Van tires screeched, but fortunately she was going slow enough that the air bag didn’t balloon out. She slammed the van into gear and bolted out the driver’s door, pepper spray in hand, hot on the trail of the dancing mime. He managed to stay just ahead of her, and she was glad it had started raining hard enough that no one would see her running after some guy skipping along in tight black pants, ballet shoes, white shirt and suspenders, and wearing a black bowler on top of his head. They’d both be taken down to Memphis Psychiatric.

  “Stop!” she yelled even though she knew he wouldn’t. It just seemed like she should at least be yelling something at him.

  He turned around and ran backward, doing that thing again with his hands pressed to his face and his mouth open like he was scared. That made her pretty mad. If she could just get close enough to this guy, she’d give him a shot of pepper spray that’d make those painted black tears on his face real enough, by God.

  He must have read her mind. What looked like spiffy ballet pumps picked up a little speed. They had to be getting slick because of the rain, but he didn’t miss a step over the arched footbridge that led to the grotto. A high rock wall rose behind the man-made cave. To the right of the grotto, some kind of storage area with a curved door and barred window had been carved.

  Rain came down harder and thunder rumbled. It came down so hard and fast it looked like it was raining from the ground up. Puddles quickly formed and drenched her Nikes. Carefully-gelled spikes of hair clogged her vision like drowned worms. Weather never cooperated. Harley stumbled forward a few more steps, peering through the downpour, thinking that she must have been a Nazi in her former life. How else to explain all this bad luck? Or karma? Whatever it was, she should rethink letting Diva cleanse her aura.

  She stopped. There was no sign of the killer mime. He could have climbed the rocks, but she didn’t think so. Maybe he went behind the grotto. There was some kind of dirt path that went off to one side. Streams of runoff rain splashed down the rock wall in little waterfalls. Grass and plants flattened out under the force. So where had the guy gone?