Suspicious Mimes

by Virginia Brown

  “What was that?” Harley asked Cami when she gave up and came to sit on the front stoop beside her.

  “Cat in heat noises. Sam doesn’t know he’s been neutered.”

  “Sounded more like cat being strangled noises.” She shuddered and made a sign from her forehead to her chest, then crossed herself.

  “Catholic school training sticks, doesn’t it,” Cami said with a sigh. “But don’t worry about that happening to Sam. He takes care of himself really well.”

  “I know. So does Frank Burns. I should take lessons from the animal kingdom.”

  “It’d help both of us. I’ll set the trap I brought and bait it with some tuna flakes, and you check it first thing in the morning.”

  “It’s not one of those things that traps his paw, is it?”

  “Lord no, Harley, you know better than that. It’s humane, a cage with a trap door. Once he gets in to eat the food, the door snaps shut and he’s trapped.”

  “Try Chinese rather than tuna,” Harley suggested. “He particularly likes shrimp fried rice.”

  Cami stood up. “No wonder Sam loves you. He’ll just have to take what I brought with me this time. You can use egg rolls or sushi or whatever if he’s not in it in the morning.”

  “The only sushi he likes is salmon. My favorite is the California roll.”

  “Somehow, I’m not surprised.”

  After Cami set the trap, sliding a can of reddish tuna flakes just for cats to the back of the wire mesh cage, they situated it next to the house behind the bushes, and at the foot of the white trellis that held some kind of climbing greenery. They crawled out of the beds and brushed dirt and mulch from their hands and legs. The gray Pontiac still sat under a streetlight at the curb.

  “I wonder if that’s how the killer got down so quickly,” Harley mused, staring at the trellis she’d never really paid attention to before. “It looks pretty sturdy, not like the cheap, flimsy ones.”

  Cami turned to peer at the white trellis against the shadowed brick. “More than likely. The police were down here earlier pouring plaster into footprints.”

  “Ever efficient.” Harley couldn’t resist one last call of kitty, kitty, kitty before they went in, but there was no answering miaoow or indignant yowl. “Strangely,” she said, “I don’t want to go to bed without Sam there to irritate me. He likes to bite my feet when I wiggle my toes.”

  “Kinky. But I told you that you’re a cat person.”

  “As much as it pains me to admit it, you must be right.”

  After Cami left, Harley worked on straightening up the apartment. Police had dusted for fingerprints that left a fine black powder over everything, a complete bust since the guy had worn gloves. They’d taken a few things with them, but she had no idea why. Maybe they thought they’d find fingerprints or DNA. If they wanted DNA, they should have taken Frank with them. He probably still had bits of the killer between his teeth.

  “Don’t you, Frank?” she leaned over the tank and asked. “Do you still have bits of the bad guy between your sharp little fangs? Or is that red lace I see?” She peered closer into the tank, but Frank obviously had other things on his mind. Cami must have given him more treats, because he barely paid any attention to the face hanging over the top of the tank. She wondered how she must look to him, magnified by the glass, and her face a collage of fleshy spots between wire mesh. Not that he seemed to care either way, as long as he had a piece of apple and a few raisins. Those were raisins, weren’t they? Eww. Maybe looking close was a bad idea.

  Straightening up, she decided the rest of the mess could wait. Tomorrow loomed long and fraught with apprehension, anyway. A good night’s rest, if not sleep, would go a long way toward keeping her coherent. Besides, with Morgan outside her apartment watching over her, it was about as safe as it could get.

  That led to thoughts about how safe she’d be if Morgan was inside her apartment instead of outside, and that line of thought was dangerous. Maybe not so much to her body as to her peace of mind. Well, maybe just a little to her body, since it still got these heated tingles in parts she’d rather not think about right now. Hmm. It could be time to dust off Old Faithful, but it still wouldn’t compensate for the real thing.

  She fanned her face with her hands. Time to think about something else. Anything else.

  After a hot shower and thorough shampoo, she brushed her teeth, put Neosporin on all the cuts she’d sustained during the struggle, and put on a pair of men’s boxers she’d bought at Target. Great to sleep in, she’d discovered. A moment’s deliberation about the risks of being awakened unexpectedly led her to put on a wife-beater just in case. The sleeveless tee shirt covered her and wasn’t uncomfortable to sleep in. Then she went to her balcony and called for Sam again, just on the off-chance he might pop up and say Here I am! in cat-speak.

  He didn’t.

  She locked the French doors and shoved a chair in front of them, then triple-checked the locks on the hall door. A precaution. She wasn’t really scared, just prepared. Yep. It was always smart to be prepared. “A good thing,” as Martha Stewart would say. Only she usually meant Crepes Suzette or baskets of painted pine cones, not arming herself against a killer.

  While the lock on her bedroom door wasn’t as sturdy, it’d at least slow an intruder long enough to give her time to shake her canister of Mace. After a moment’s thought, she took the wooden penis off her dresser and put it on the nightstand, too.

  All she needed was Nana’s gun and she’d qualify as a mobster.

  But a girl could never have too many weapons these days. So now she had her cell phone within easy reach and Morgan’s number at the top of the list, and the house phone positioned just right. She was ready for anything.

  Then, clad in her Looney Tunes men’s boxers and the kind of tee shirt men who beat their wives usually wore, she went to bed and tried to relax enough to sleep. Of course she lay awake a long time, tensing at any strange sound, half-expecting an Elvis to leap out from the shadows. Out in the living room, Frank chuckled to himself. She considered bringing him into the bedroom, not so much as an attack-ferret, but as company. It felt precariously solitary, an unfamiliar and uncomfortable feeling she didn’t like at all.

  Tomorrow, this would hopefully all be over, with the bad Elvis in custody. All she had to do was stay alert. Still, her stomach clenched and her heart thumped.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and pretended she was back in California that long-ago day Yogi had held her on his shoulders so she could release a balloon above the Golden Gate Bridge. She’d been four or five, but she still remembered it as vividly as if it had been yesterday. It had been a red balloon, bright against the blue sky as it soared toward a light drift of clouds. They’d watched it until it was only a tiny speck in the distance, pushed by wind currents to the unknown. For her, it’d been a magical moment that she’d held close, though she wasn’t sure why. Maybe it had something to do with being free, though she’d never really felt constraints in her childhood. Yogi and Diva believed in letting children discover the world at their own pace. While Eric thrived on that kind of thing, she’d yearned for more structure.

  And for indoor toilets. Living in a commune with outdoor showers and toilets had been free, but also free of life’s amenities. That’s when she discovered that she must be a hedonist, because she liked her comfort too much. It’d been quite a relief to move to Memphis and a real house with indoor plumbing. Maybe she didn’t lie under the open sky and stars anymore, but she didn’t worry about snakes crawling into bed with her, either.

  Life had its perks.

  Sleep didn’t come quickly. For a long time after the apartment was dark and quiet, she lay awake. Fragments of conversations flew at her like bats in the night. A groundhog. Hughes on bail bond. Williams has an alibi. Penney’s son might want to hurt his father. Then: “The past is following you
, but it’s not your past. You’re caught in between. Elvis isn’t dead, he’s hiding. He finds you in the candlelight . . . but it’s not really you . . . ”

  What on earth did Diva mean by that? It seemed like she should know, and something hovered just beyond reach, teasing her. How maddening. This had to stop or she’d never sleep. She closed her eyes and focused on the balloon again, the polished blue of the sky and clouds scudding by, the feel of the wind in her face and her father holding onto her legs so she wouldn’t fall from his shoulders to the ground. The balloon rose so high, higher and higher as she watched it drift away . . .

  Suddenly, a hawk appeared in the sky right next to the balloon. It soared on wind currents, wings outspread as it glided toward the balloon. Talons pierced the thin rubber and the balloon popped with a loud noise she heard clearly. Shocked, she yelled at the hawk to go away, but it was too late. Shreds of bright red fell from the sky and the hawk made a keening sound like laughter.

  Yogi swung her down from his shoulders to the ground. He bent, scooped up a rock and threw it at the hawk. The hawk dove toward them from the sky, screaming furiously and looking like a small feathered bomber. Instead of aiming for Yogi, the predator went straight for Harley.

  Shouting angrily, Yogi threw himself in front of her and took the brunt of the attack. Talons sunk into his shoulder as he fought the creature. Harley rushed at the combatants, not sure what to do, but knowing she had to do something. Sharp talons raked her, and she screamed but didn’t let go until the hawk lay on the ground with a broken wing. Yogi started shaking her.

  “Harley! Harley! You’re all right, wake up!”

  She jerked upright in her bed, heart still pounding hard as a jackhammer. Light stung her eyes and she blinked, but instead of Yogi, Morgan shook her. She sucked in a deep breath.

  “What are you doing here? And how did you get in?”

  He shrugged. “Easily enough, if you know how. Did you see anyone?”

  “No. It was just a nightmare, I guess.” She shuddered.

  “Well, it scared the hell out of me. I thought maybe Kirkland had let the perp get by him.”

  “Who’s Kirkland?”

  Morgan sat down on the end of her bed. “The back door guard.”

  “Oh. So I rate two guards?”

  He grinned. “Not so much you as the killer.”

  “Well, that’s deflating. And here I thought I might be important.”

  “Only to some of us, babe.”

  Her eyebrow rose. “I note that you included yourself in that group.”

  Instead of replying, he bent forward and kissed her hard on the mouth, his hands moving to her shoulders, then up to cradle her face. Oh boy. There went that tingle again, all the way to her toes.

  “Want me to send Kirkland home?” Mike asked right about the time her bones melted to jelly. His mouth was still close to hers, too close, and his hands had moved from her shoulders to the front of her wife-beater.

  “I suppose I’d be safer with you inside than outside,” she managed to murmur.

  “Not really, sugar, not really.”

  “I take it our break is over?”

  “As over as it can get.”

  “Send Kirkland packing.”

  He did.

  “You look pretty mellow for someone who’s going to be bait in a little while,” Tootsie said when she showed up at the office the next morning. He squinted at her. “Ah. You got some.”

  “Got some what? Oh. Why do you think that?”

  “You have that—”

  “I know, that ‘just laid’ look. Honestly, you’d think I was wearing a sign or something.”

  “I’m assuming you were with Mighty Mike Morgan. Are you two back together?”

  She flopped into an office chair and it wheeled several feet before she stopped it. Using her heels, she dragged it back toward the desk. “Who knows? It wasn’t mentioned. We, um, had other things to talk about.”

  Pursing his lips, Tootsie said, “I’m quite sure.”

  She ignored that. “I suppose you’ve heard all about last night’s excitement.”

  Tootsie punched a buzzing button, sounding a bit harried as he tried to fit in more tourists to the already busy schedule. Another nice article in the Commercial Appeal had helped business and lessened fears about MTT being unsafe.

  “Of course, I did,” Tootsie said when he’d finished the call. “I think the entire police department heard about it. Steve said this is the weirdest case they’ve had in a while.”

  “Weirder than the city coroner having a bomb fastened to his chest with barbed wire? And then being charged with doing it himself? He got acquitted eventually. Can you imagine anyone would wrap themselves in barbed wire?”

  “No, but that was a few years ago. We’re talking recent.” He ran his hands through his hair and retied it in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. Faint lines furrowed his brow. “I know you’re set on this thing tonight, but I’d rather you reconsider. It’s going to be so crowded, and I just don’t see how the police can protect you that well.”

  “Of all people, I’d think you’d have more faith in the MPD.”

  “I have faith in the police, just not the sanity of a killer. This one’s got to be crazy to do what he’s done. He doesn’t care if it’s in plain sight, and the really scary part is that he’s gotten away with it so far. Rather clever of him to disguise himself as Elvis in a crowd of Elvises, but I’m not much in the mood to admire his planning.”

  Harley would have answered, but Rhett Sandler chose that moment to appear at Tootsie’s desk.

  “You were right. Someone’s hacked into the computers,” he said in his nasal monotone. “I don’t know how much information they managed to access.”

  Despite his impeccable gray suit, black-rimmed glasses, and natty little white handkerchief sticking up out of his breast pocket, he looked distraught. It wasn’t that easy to tell, since he rarely had any expression at all. Emotions were mostly expressed with his eyebrows, black fur that blended in with his glasses. Now they met in the middle over his nose.

  “This one, too,” Tootsie said. “I put up some firewalls, but a smart enough hacker can still get in if he’s determined enough.” He blew out a heavy breath. “Just what we need right now.”

  “Did you ever find out if the guy who embezzled MTT is still in prison?” Harley asked.

  Tootsie nodded. “Locked up tight at the white-collar spa in Millington. He’s probably in their library or working out with weights. Hardly payback for nearly sucking the well dry.”

  “Yes,” Monotone Man said, “a good thing you came along to invest.”

  Harley looked from Sandler to Tootsie. “I knew it! No wonder you’ve been so panicky. You stand to lose money, too.”

  Tootsie’s mouth pursed, and the look he gave Sandler should have scorched his professional strength gray socks. “How indiscreet of you.”

  Sandler’s expression didn’t change. “My apologies.”

  Harley smiled. “One mystery solved. Next thing I know, there’ll be an actual Steve-sighting to prove he exists.”

  “How droll of you,” Tootsie said, but she could tell he wasn’t angry, only annoyed at being outted as more than a mere employee.

  “I’m sure you’ll share your reasoning for being so secretive.” She waggled her brows.

  “Don’t hold your breath.”

  Harley smiled.

  Sandler said, with what passed for impatience, “I’ve traced the identity of the hacker, but the police must become involved now.”

  “Yes, the police will definitely be involved.” Tootsie paused, and then added, “I have a feeling that they already know more than we do anyway.”

  “Quite likely,” Sandler said, then pivoted on his heel and walked back
to his office down the hall.

  “Have you ever noticed that he walks like a penguin?” Harley mused.

  “I’d describe it as more like he’s got a stick up his ass. But he’s good at what he does, so I have no complaints.”

  “So the last guy who had his job stole a lot of money?”

  “Quite a bit. If not for my investment, Penney would most likely have folded. Fortunately, we came to an agreement—that you are not to tell any of the other employees. I prefer being one of the rank and file, not one of the bosses.”

  “That’s so modest of you.” Harley crossed her legs and swung a foot back and forth. “Tell me about the last accountant. Did you know him?”

  “I met him several times. I started out here as a driver, and when my grandmother died she left me a tidy sum that I decided to invest here and there. Unfortunately, Horton objected. It got tense around here for a while, but then he got caught embezzling so it didn’t matter.”

  “How’d Horton get caught?”

  Tootsie looked a little uncomfortable. “Well, I’m the one who discovered the discrepancy when the books were examined before I invested. It was supposed to be routine, but it turned out to be a nightmare. Horton didn’t take it kindly.”

  “I imagine not.” Harley swung her foot a little harder, thinking. “So Horton—every time I hear that name I think of the Dr. Seuss book, Horton Helps A Who—went to prison?”

  “I thought it was Horton Hears A Who.”

  “Whichever. Anyway, I take it he went to prison.”

  “Ten to twenty. He’s been there four years now.”

  “You checked and he’s still there, but he has motive to want to ruin MTT. Maybe he’s on work release?”

  “Not from prison, no. I checked. What would he have to gain anyway?”

  While Tootsie answered another incoming call, Harley mulled this new possibility. Really, he seemed like the most likely candidate, other than Hughes or Larry Penney.

  “There’s no shortage of suspects,” she said when Tootsie finished the call and typed in the information on the computer.