Harley Rushes In (Book 2 of the Blue Suede Mysteries)

by Brown, Virginia

  “That errand would be . . . ?”

  “I visited a sick friend in the hospital.”

  “Right. Every cheating husband’s favorite excuse. What friend in what hospital?”

  Madelyn’s lips tightened and the end of her nose actually twitched. “Margaret Meade at Baptist East.”

  “You do know I’ll check that out, don’t you? So will the police if you tried this crap on them.”

  For a moment something flickered in Madelyn’s eyes and Harley could have sworn it was fear. Then she shook her head and looked toward the house. Heat shimmered up from the tennis courts, and Madelyn gripped her tennis racket with white knuckles.

  “All right. Fine. I didn’t visit anyone in the hospital. I . . . I went to see someone. A man.”

  “A married man, by chance?”

  Madelyn looked back at her, then nodded. “Yes. He’s married. And I have no intention of telling you his name.”

  “Fine. Save that for the cops. They always find out the truth.”

  To her surprise, Madelyn collapsed on the grass beneath the crepe myrtle and put her face into her palms. “What am I going to do?”

  Not entirely unsympathetic, Harley said, “Tell the truth. It can’t be worse than the lies you invent.”

  “Oh yes it can,” Madelyn said, her voice muffled by her fingers and the leather half-gloves she wore to protect her palms. “You just don’t know.”

  Exasperated, Harley said, “Dammit, tell me!”

  Madelyn looked up at her. “I was with Harry Gordon right after the shop closed Thursday night.”

  Oh boy.

  Harley plopped down on the grass in front of Madelyn. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s worse.”

  “What am I going to do?” she asked in a kind of a wail that frightened away some birds.

  “That depends. Did you kill him?”

  “No!”

  “Then you can tell the truth when the cops ask you. If you lie—and they have a way of finding out that kind of thing—they’ll wonder what else you’re lying about. Did you meet Harry at the shop?”

  “Yes. We’d had an argument and I went there to end it with him. We quarreled, because he threatened to tell Mama—I don’t want Mama to know, Harley. Promise you won’t tell her.”

  “Okay, I won’t, but you should. It’s going to come out, you have to know that. Let her hear it from you first. And why don’t you want her to know? I thought Harry was single. Did you just lie about seeing a married man?”

  “Yes. I lied about that. Mama decided she didn’t trust Harry. You know how she can get, Harley. She gets these ideas and you just can’t convince her she’s wrong. She thought Harry was stealing from her, or some such nonsense. Besides, she always said Harry was bourgeois, and she’d never have liked me seeing him.”

  “So you and Harry had, uh, a thing going on, right?”

  Madelyn looked irritated. “Do I have to draw you a picture?”

  “No, that’s all right. I’m not that into porno. Was it serious between you?”

  “I don’t know if you’d say serious, but we did enjoy one another’s company exclusively.”

  Harley thought about Cheríe Saucier and her hysterical fit when she’d learned about Harry. “Did Harry and Cheríe have anything going?”

  “Who?”

  “Cheríe Saucier. You know. She worked with him.”

  “Oh. Her. No, of course not. Harry would never be interested in her, though she didn’t know that.”

  “Did Harry know that?”

  “Know what?”

  “That he wasn’t interested in Cheríe. She sure seems to believe differently.”

  “I’m sure she does. She’s an opportunist, a nasty little thing.”

  “Did she know about you and Harry?”

  Madelyn’s eyes widened. She put a hand up to her throat, fingers pressing against her windpipe as she drew in a sharp breath. “Do you think—could she have killed Harry because of . . . of me?”

  “She seems to think Aunt Darcy killed him. Or so she told the police.”

  “That vicious little bitch! Mama could no more have killed Harry than I could.”

  And that, Harley thought, was precisely the problem. Both Darcy and Madelyn seemed quite capable of removing any obstacle in their way. But murder? Fortunately, it seemed unlikely either of them could have hung Harry off an elk horn even if they’d wanted to. That’d take a certain amount of upper body strength, and Maddie was limited to tennis rackets, and Darcy to gin bottles. No, neither of them could have killed him. Surely, the police would recognize that.

  Harley got to her feet and brushed pine mulch from her bare legs. Her cutoff jeans were worn and comfortable, her tee shirt cool if not fashionable. She held out a hand to help her cousin, but Madelyn ignored it.

  “I trust this will remain confidential, Harley,” she said in that haughty way she had, and Harley just shook her head.

  “Not a chance. Even if you don’t have a decent sense of self-preservation, I feel a family obligation to keep you out of jail. Besides, it’s embarrassing and inconvenient to visit the Big House on holidays. So come clean with the cops or I’ll do it for you.”

  “You sneaky little toad! You promised!”

  “No, I promised not to tell Aunt Darcy you’ve been banging the help. I said nothing about keeping quiet to the cops.”

  She left Madelyn still sitting under the crepe myrtle and went back up to the house, where Cami and Amanda were sharing a bag of fried pork rinds. When she lifted a brow, Cami grinned.

  “No carbs.”

  “Gross. Say good-bye, Mandy. Cami, you got your cell phone with you?”

  Cami produced it from her purse and followed Harley out of the house to the Saturn. “I thought you got a new cell phone.”

  “I’ve bought several new cell phones recently. I’m going to have to start figuring them into my monthly budget if they don’t stop breaking.”

  With a nervous glance at her cell phone, Cami started the car while Harley punched in a few numbers. Tootsie answered on the third ring.

  “Hi, gorgeous,” Harley said cheerfully, and heard him laugh.

  “Okay baby, you must want something. What is it?”

  “A little more of your magic. You know, the way you have of coming up with all kinds of info when no one else can.”

  “Spoken like a true brownnoser. Do I want to hear what you’re going to say next?”

  “This won’t hurt at all. I just need to know all you can find out about Cheríe Saucier. Yeah, I know. I’ll spell it for you.”

  Tootsie said he’d get back to her with the info in a little while, and Harley hung up and stuck the cell phone back in Cami’s purse.

  “Where to now?” Cami asked, squinting against the bright sunlight coming through the windshield. “Somewhere respectable, I hope.”

  “Sure. We have a little time to kill, I guess. Let’s check out the shop. The cops ought to be done by now, and maybe we can find something they overlooked.”

  Cami gave her a quick glance. “You sure about that? How do we get in?”

  Harley smiled. “I still have my key. Aunt Darcy never asked for it back.”

  Yellow tape swagged around the back where Harry had been found. Cami parked under a line of hedges where they weren’t easily seen from the road.

  “Why is it we always seem to be breaking and entering these days?” she muttered as they made their way around to the front of the shop, and Harley grinned.

  “I have a key. It’s only breaking and entering when we break before entering. I don’t think there’s any law against unlocking and entering.”

  “Good thing. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  “You never have bad feelings around the right thing.” Harley unlocked the door and pushed it open. “You need to think about what you and Bobby are doing.”

  “I thought you liked Bobby.”

  “I do. He’s the brother I never had.”

  “You have a br
other,” Cami pointed out.

  “Yeah, but Eric . . . well, Eric is just Eric. Bobby, I can talk to about stuff. If it isn’t about art or music, talking to Eric is like talking to one of your cats. Kinda twitchy.”

  “You bonded with Sam. He’s a cat.”

  “But Sam is a cool cat. Even better, he’s your cat. Ah. Here we are.”

  Harley found the light switch and the alarm. It wasn’t set, but that wasn’t unexpected. The cops had no doubt left it that way, and it was unlikely Darcy had come back to set it.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” Cami asked as Harley led the way to the back, and she nodded.

  “The office is back here. Harry had a desk in a little alcove, and it’s probably still there. I hope the police weren’t looking at manifests and things. Maybe they were more concerned with actual evidence, fingerprints, stuff like that.”

  “Did your aunt tell them about Harry smuggling?”

  “I don’t know. If she didn’t, then we’ve got a very short opportunity to find out what we can about him before they figure it out. Once the cops know about the smuggling, there’s the motive for her to murder Harry. But I figure he had to have accomplices that got greedy, or maybe he didn’t pay his connections.”

  “There are really pretty things in here,” Cami remarked as they passed through one of the showrooms. “I had no idea it’d be this nice. Look at that—that’s an antique armoire.”

  Harley recognized it. “It’s Portuguese. It’s just in, and already in the showroom.” The piece had ornate curves that flowed in intricate patterns, the top two doors open, two drawers below closed. Perfect for smuggling in animal skins, European antiquities, valuable paintings, or whatever else smugglers could steal. The most likely possibility was one of the smugglers had killed Harry. There was no honor among thieves, and he’d seemed like the type to cheat when he could. Maybe one of the deals had gone bad. But she had to find some evidence to prove that.

  It was quiet, not even the air conditioning making noise as they skirted couches, tables, floor lamps, elegant vases and curio cabinets on their way to the back. Harry’s desk was in an alcove in the big room where he’d met his grisly end, not something she really wanted to think too closely about at the moment. Their footsteps were muffled by the thick carpet underfoot, and only Cami breathing through her mouth like a panting dog made any sound.

  The only light came through a tall window at the end of the room; it was filtered by a big potted tree that looked remarkably real. Harley paused, fumbled for the light switch, and the bank of overhead fluorescent lights hummed into use. She deliberately ignored all reminders of a dead body and police investigation, and steered straight toward the alcove where an antique desk fit against the wall.

  Cami stopped short, staring at the smears of graphite dust left by the Crime Scene Unit, to the chalk outlining the empty space where the elk horns and Harry had hung. Her voice sounded shaky.

  “Is this . . . is this . . .?”

  “Yep. Don’t look. It was pretty nasty.”

  The drawers of the antique desk were locked, but she had expected no less. Fortunately, she’d been foresighted enough to arm herself with another metal pick for recalcitrant locks. Yogi made them by the dozens, apparently expecting lots of locked doors in his life. Probably due to long experience.

  It took her a few minutes, but she got the top drawer open, and that in turn freed the other drawers. Apparently, the police had been clever enough to get there first. The top drawer was completely empty. The second and third drawers held only color brochures of exotic places like Majorca and Prague. No wonder they’d been left behind. Hardly affordable on a policeman’s salary.

  Disappointed, she stood there a moment, just staring at the desk and trying to think where else Harry might have hidden his illegal manifests. Maybe he didn’t really have manifests. It’d be foolish, given his occupation as a smuggler. Aunt Darcy could be wrong about that. A second set of books would be too risky. But how else would he know what was coming in, how and when? He had to keep some kind of list or schedule. And what did he do with the smuggled goods?

  Drumming her fingers atop the gleaming surface of the desk, only slightly marred with remnants of fingerprint dusting powder, she considered her next move. A search of Harry’s house would probably be impossible. Despite her recent dip in the detective pool, she was notoriously cowardly. It was the closest she came to a religion since her days as a student in Catholic school. Going from the complete freedom of her early life in communes to the restricted discipline of well-meaning nuns could have been more traumatic if she hadn’t actually yearned for some kind of structure in those days. She’d even briefly flirted with the idea of becoming a nun, until a fling with Bobby Baroni in the back seat of a Ford had proven her lack of real commitment to the vocation.

  “What now?” Cami asked as she plopped her purse on the desk, and Harley shrugged.

  “I don’t know. I guess I thought something would jump out at me, or the police would have left behind something important.” She’d dropped the little metal pick, and bent to retrieve it from the carpet. A faint gleam under the desk’s kneehole caught her attention, and still bending down, she reached up under the desk to find the source. Her fingers grazed something metal and sharp. She pressed it, and a soft click sounded. What the—? Going to her hands and knees, she wiggled her way under the desk to investigate. A small door had popped open. Her heart raced with excitement. The missing manifests, perhaps?

  No. It was a tiny compartment hardly big enough for a button. But it did hold a key. She pried it loose from the tape holding it to the opening, and scooted out from under the desk. With a grin, she held it up so Cami could see. “Voila!”

  Cami didn’t look impressed. “Walla what?”

  “That’s French for Looky what I found. Never mind. It’s a key. Now we just have to find what it fits, and I bet we find the missing evidence we need to prove Harry’s a smuggler.”

  “How is that going to help? He’s dead. The police are looking for his killer, not illegal imports. Besides, didn’t you just say that’d give your aunt a motive?”

  “Cami, Cami, you can be so shortsighted. If we find the evidence, we find the motive. If we find the motive, we find the killer. See how simple that is?”

  “So what if it really is your aunt? I’ve always thought she had the personality of a serial killer.”

  “The only thing Aunt Darcy is capable of killing is a bottle of gin,” Harley said, though she wasn’t completely sure that was true. She slid the key into the pocket of her cutoffs, then retrieved her metal pick and looked around the storage area. Evidence that the police had done a thorough investigation showed. Furniture was pulled from the wall, rugs unrolled and clumsily rolled back, graphite residue was everywhere, and file cabinets had been left partially open. Aunt Darcy would have a fit when she saw the disarray. They had that much in common. Both liked things tidy.

  “So now what?” Cami said, looking around with her hands on her hips. “I think we’ve done all we can do here.”

  “First, I’m going to see if this key fits anything here, which I doubt since that’d be far too easy, then we’ll go. No point in pushing our luck.”

  Cami looked agreeable, and wandered over toward a stack of rolled carpets against the far wall. Harley tried the key in the desk locks. It didn’t fit, not that she’d thought it would since it looked more like an old fashioned door key, then tried it on all the shop’s closet and Exit doors. It didn’t fit any of them. Of course not. There would have been no reason to hide it. Maybe to Harry’s house? A lock box in a bank?

  “You missed this door,” Cami said when they went back to the storage area and Harley pocketed the key again.

  “What door?”

  Pulling back a roll of carpet, Cami pointed to a small door built into the wall. It was barely visible, looking like part of the wall unless you looked really close. Then the outline could be discerned in the wainscoting. The wallpaper d
esign hid it very well, but there was a definite keyhole right beside the white painted molding.

  Harley inserted the key. It turned with a metallic click of tumblers and the door swung open. A musty smell wafted out from a narrow flight of stairs that led down into pitch darkness. She left the key in the lock and stood there indecisively.

  “What is it?” Cami wanted to know. “Another storage room?”

  “I don’t know. Storm shelter, maybe. But isn’t it odd that it’s hidden like this? Why is it disguised?”

  “Let’s look inside, Harley. I’ll wait here.”

  Harley shot her a wry glance. “Right. You’re really brave as long as it’s not you.”

  “There might be bats in there. I don’t like bats.”

  “What if there are spiders? I don’t like spiders.”

  They stood there for a moment, staring into the void that beckoned. The hair on the back of Harley’s neck stood up without the benefit of gel. She had no idea why. All of a sudden it just seemed risky to be doing this. Despite the stuffy air and possibility of finding smuggled goods, she shivered.

  “Harley? Maybe you shouldn’t.”

  “Yeah. Still . . . it seems a shame to have found this door and not at least see where it goes. Doesn’t it?”

  “Uhhh . . . ”

  “This is silly. It’s a door. It’s probably the basement, though I didn’t know there was one. And I can’t imagine why the entrance would be hidden. Or why the key was hidden under Harry Gordon’s desk. Or why I’m talking out loud instead of just going on and getting this over with.”

  Dredging up her flagging courage, Harley stepped into the stairwell. To her relief, there were no cobwebs, just cool concrete walls as she gingerly made her way down the steps, feeling for a light switch along the way. You’d think they’d have had the good sense to put a light switch in here close to the top, she was thinking when something bumped into her. She screamed. Cami screamed. Then Harley realized Cami was right behind her on the steps.

  “Damn, Cami! You scared the crap out of me!”

  Cami’s teeth were chattering. “I didn’t want to stay up there by myself. Sorry.”