For Whom the Limo Rolls

by Lorena McCourtney

  I thought I might have to go months back in the log, but Fitz, looking over my shoulder, pointed to the name only a week back. I realized now why the name had sounded semi-familiar. I’d had a McClay as a limo client, although I had him down as Andy McClay, not the more formal and also more memorable Anderson. I also recalled now that he’d joked about our Andy and Andi names being similar. An older, pleasant couple, solid-citizen types, his figure robust, hers matronly.

  My records showed I’d taken them to Sea-Tac.

  Andy McClay certainly hadn’t looked like a killer. He looked exactly like what he was, a prosperous retired banker now wanting to serve his locality as a county commissioner. He hadn’t seemed nervous or jumpy. And yet. . .

  “Mary Beth is murdered on Friday, and the very next day Andy McClay pulls the get-out-of-Dodge trick,” I said. “Doesn’t that seem like a strange coincidence?”

  “There isn’t necessarily a connection. Lots of people who didn’t kill Mary Beth must have left town that same day.”

  “But not people who were also involved with Trafalgar.”

  “True.” Fitz stroked his mustache thoughtfully. “But, as Detective Molino would say, motive, Mrs. M.?”

  “Something to do with the investment scam.”

  “But Mary Beth, or Trafalgar, was only now enticing your neighbor Tom into the scam. It seems unlikely McClay would have had time to lose enough money in it to be murderously angry with Mary Beth.”

  That put a dent in my blossoming theory of McClay as a murder suspect, but certainly didn’t demolish it. Maybe he’d been involved with Mary Beth from much further back. He’d also mentioned to Danielle that his daughter had been to channeling sessions. “We need to know more.”

  “We probably aren’t going to find out much if we just call him up cold and start asking questions about Mary Beth and Trafalgar.”

  True. Then, inspiration!

  The box of items I’d found in the limo at various times was sitting on the floor by the desk. I knelt and hastily scrounged through it. Purple lipstick. No. Packet of— No! Definitely not. I tossed that packet in the waste paper basket, wondering why I hadn’t done so before. Nail clippers. No. Carton of bunion pads. Possible, but hardly worthy of a phone call. Sunglasses. Yes!

  I looked up the McClay number in the phone book and dialed. A youngish-sounding woman answered.

  “This is Andi McConnell, Andi’s Limouzeen Service. May I speak to Mr. McClay, please?”

  “May I ask the nature of the call?”

  “Is this Mrs. McClay?”

  “No, this is their daughter. Neither Mr. or Mrs. McClay is available at the moment.”

  The uninformative statement didn’t surprise me. It was a wise move, of course. You don’t give out revealing information to a stranger on the phone. Yet I also had the feeling this careful sidestep meant the McClays were still out of town. Hmm. Interesting. I spoke quickly to keep the conversation from floundering right there.

  “As I said, this is Andi McConnell from Andi’s Limouzeen Service. I took Mr. and Mrs. McClay to Sea-Tac a week or so ago, and I have here a pair of sunglasses that were left in the limo. I’m wondering if they belong to Mrs. McClay. They’re Gucci’s, quite expensive, I think.”

  “It’s possible, but I don’t think so.” The woman laughed, her tone more friendly now. “Mom doesn’t mind spending big bucks to add to her collection of lighthouse figurines, but she’s more of a Wal-Mart person with things like sunglasses. I don’t remember her having a pair of Gucci’s. But it’s very thoughtful of you to call. Thank you.”

  Again I rushed to keep the conversation from collapsing. “I’d really like to get these sunglasses back to their rightful owner.”

  “I can have her call you later, if you’d like.”

  “When will they be back?”

  The casual question slipped right under the daughter’s radar. “Not for some time yet. Dad made an impulsive decision to visit my sister down in San Diego, and they were also planning to try to get on a cruise from there. And perhaps visit an aunt in Arizona before coming home. The damp winter weather here bothers Mom’s arthritis.”

  What, I wondered, about his run for county commissioner? But I didn’t want to ask, because that would suggest I had something more in mind than sunglasses.

  “You’re looking after things while they’re away?”

  “I come out every day to water plants and feed the cat and try to convince him he isn’t being neglected.”

  “Oh, I have a cat who needs that kind of convincing too. How very nice of you! Your parents seemed like such lovely people. I hope they’re enjoying their cruise.”

  “Actually, I can ask Mom about the sunglasses the next time they call.”

  There was a lot more I wanted to know. Did this daughter know if her father was on speaking terms with an other-dimensional entity? Had he recently invested money in some get-rich-quick scheme? Had she? But I couldn’t think of any way to make such questions relevant to this conversation. Then Fitz scribbled something on a scratchpad and held it up in front of me. Mary Beth – sunglasses?

  I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I put my own spin on it. “If the sunglasses don’t belong to your mother, I’m afraid the only other possibility is another recent client, and that possibility is kind of . . . creepy.”

  “Creepy?”

  “They might belong to that woman who was recently murdered here in town. The one who was involved in that channeling business? It’s been in the news. She was a client in the limo not long before her death.” I soothed my conscience with the thought that this wasn’t a wild fabrication. Mary Beth had been in the limo, and she could have been the owner of the sunglasses lost in it.

  The woman hesitated and then said, “Would you believe I actually went to a few of those sessions? The woman was quite personable, but then that strange voice coming out of her. It was just so peculiar.” She laughed self-consciously. “But I’ve been having some problems lately, and sometimes you find yourself looking for help in all the wrong places.”

  Problems. Marriage? Money? I lowered my voice to a confidential tone. “I heard she had some kind of questionable investment scheme going. Something her ‘entity’ was advising people to invest in.”

  “Really? I can’t imagine anyone getting involved in something like that.”

  But a cooling in her tone, almost as if she’d taken a step back from me, told me she could imagine it. And maybe knew more than she had any intention of letting on.

  “Has the detective on the case talked to you?” I asked.

  “No!” She sounded alarmed. “Why would he?”

  “I think they may be interviewing a number of people who had contact with the murdered woman.”

  “I certainly don’t have anything to tell them.”

  “Did your father ever go to any of the sessions?” I knew the answer to that, but I asked anyway, wondering what she’d say.

  “Dad? Dad wouldn’t— Look, I really don’t care to discuss this any further. And don’t bother about the sunglasses. I’m sure they don’t belong to my mother.”

  Slam of phone, end of conversation. At which time I realized I didn’t even know her name.

  Then my thoughts took a pretzel twist and shot down a new path. Suppose daughter here was the one caught up in the scam, or about to be, and Dad took it upon himself to protect her? He does a preliminary investigation by attending a channeling session, maybe even signs up for some private sessions. When he’s sure his daughter is targeted for a scam, he – somehow knowing where Mary Beth is working that day – goes there to warn her to keep her entity’s fingers out of his daughter’s finances. Mary Beth tells him she has nothing to do with what Trafalgar discusses with people. He’s disbelieving and furious. He grabs the necklace and twists. . .

  Maybe he’s just thinking he’ll force her to tell him the truth. But then the unthinkable happens. He twists too hard and too long. When she’s dead he frantically decides taking all the jewe
lry might make her death look like a robbery that escalated into murder. Afterward he makes the sudden decision to get out of town and stay out. Wouldn’t a ship at sea be the ideal place to get rid of all that incriminating evidence?

  Fitz tilted his head as he watched me. “I see the wheels churning.”

  I passed along my thoughts. Phreddie had jumped up on the desk, and Fitz absentmindedly rubbed his upturned tummy. “I suppose you think that’s all wild imagination,” I said.

  “Imagination . . . but not necessarily wild. A good detective needs to think outside the box.” He looked at his watch. “But right now what we need is lunch.”

  ***

  We ate at the newly opened downtown branch of the Sweet Breeze, a marvelous sub sandwich called “Neil’s Specialty” piled high with ham, cheese, and onions, plus Neil’s secret sauce, and then drove around to the far side of the bay to take a walk on the Hornsby Inlet beach.

  The day had cleared to glorious fall sunshine, bright leaves of maple on the hillsides flashing like golden torches among the madrone that stayed green and glossy all year. The tide was going out, swift as a river, leaving fresh-washed beach behind. I picked up colorful rocks as we walked, even though I knew they’d turn faded and dull when they dried. We circled an area identified by metal-mesh bags as an oyster bed. A yacht-sized white boat moved slowly up the inlet, a fast-moving jet ski raced the opposite direction, a rooster tail of spray arcing behind it. Overhead a jet spread a white trail across the blue sky, “airplane tracks,” as Sarah used to call them. Tiny crabs scuttled at the edge of the water. A dozen seagulls lazed on a floating dock now grounded by the departing water.

  A comfortable blending of the natural and the man made.

  A comfortable blending between Fitz and me too, neither of us feeling the need to fill the companionable silence with chatter. A good place to reach in a relationship, a place where neither of you feels the need to entertain the other, or to try to draw the other out in conversation. You can just walk hand in hand and enjoy.

  Murder and other-dimensional entities and investment schemes seemed far away in all this sunshine and serenity.

  Yet when we got back to the duplex, there was Tom sitting on his deck across the street, his drooping shoulders matching his droopy jowls. I wondered if the possibility of a conviction for murder had finally gotten through to him, or if he was just mourning the loss of his big investment opportunity.

  I also had to wonder if he really had done it. His fingerprints showing up on Mary Beth’s throat was definitely disturbing.

  But if he had done it, why try to push the guilt off onto such an unlikely candidate as Trafalgar? Why not try to throw suspicion on someone more reachable in this dimension, someone such as the towel-snapper? Or any one of the people who participated in Mary Beth’s sessions? Anderson “Andy” McClay was certainly shaping up as a good prospect.

  “I still don’t think he did it,” I said, as if we’d been in the midst of a discussion about the murder.

  This was another of the benefits of our relationship. You didn’t have to start a conversation at the beginning. You could start anywhere, and the other person could jump right in.

  “Tom? I don’t think he did it, either. But if it comes to trial, he’s apt to be convicted on the basis of those plaid pants alone.”

  “Should we go over and talk to him?”

  “You want to ask how his fingerprints got on Mary Beth’s skin?” Fitz suggested.

  “I figure that with your inimitable charm, you could accomplish that.”

  “Is that a dare?”

  “Of course not. Dares are childish.” I should know. A dare was how I’d gotten a childhood broken ankle trying a Tarzan swing through a maple tree.

  “Even if it isn’t a dare, I detect blatant sarcasm in that remark about my charm. But you’re on, Mrs. M. I’ll see what I can do.”

  We crossed the street and Fitz opened Tom’s metal gate. Tom didn’t get out of his chair when we walked up the steps to his deck. He didn’t, I thought, sitting there in his slippers with a hole on one side, the plaid pants, and gray-stubbled cheeks, look like a man with money. Considering that I certainly hadn’t known Tom had money to invest, how had Mary Beth known?

  Fitz held out a hand. “Sorry to hear about your problems.”

  Tom shook the hand, but he gave me a sour glance, as if I were the biggest problem. This was indeed not an easy man to want to help. But we were here. Tom didn’t invite us, but we settled into wooden lawn chairs on either side of him. Mine had a slat missing. You know what flabby thighs do when you sit in a chair with a missing slat? Think bread dough, oozing through a narrow grate.

  I got up and stood at the rail.

  “I see you have a ’98 Buick,” Fitz said. “Great car.”

  Fitz could probably spell Buick, but I doubted his knowledge went any further than that. Still, he wouldn’t let that inhibit him about carrying on a conversation on the subject.

  “Where’s that Camry you’ve been driving?” Tom asked.

  “It’s at the marina. I’m with my son and the sailboat up in Bremerton for a few days, getting some boat repairs done, so I rented the Corolla to drive down here today. Say, what do you think of the hybrids they’re coming out with now?”

  “Rattraps. Junk. Big ripoffs. Two systems to break down, not just one. What’ll they try to pawn off on us next, something wind powered?”

  Tom’s comments were scornful, but they’d gotten him started talking. Then Fitz mentioned the all-electric cars, and they were off and running on the big male-bonding topic of cars and engines. Not that Fitz knew all that much about engines, but he was doing a good job faking it.

  I leaned against the railing and wondered what India was doing, if she was making any progress on learning how to do websites. Wondered if maybe I should do more advertising in the Vigland Tides to spark up limousine business. And one of these days I still needed to do something about those two bullet holes in the trunk of the limo. The thing was, what I really needed was a whole new trunk lid, not just a patched-up repair job with Bondo. Which meant big $$$.

  Then, and I’d missed how Fitz had maneuvered the conversation in this different direction, I heard the words retired banker and McClay. I snapped to attention.

  “I don’t remember the name, but yeah, there was a retired banker guy at a group session at Mary Beth’s one time,” Tom said. “Somebody said he was running for county commissioner too. A real stuffed shirt guy. Trafalgar doesn’t like the type.”

  But what I was thinking was that Andy McClay must have made a point of letting Mary Beth know his retired banker status. Maybe setting a trap for her to see if she, through Trafalgar, would try to entice him into an investment scheme already proposed to his daughter?

  “You don’t think Trafalgar mentioned this wonderful investment to McClay, then?” Fitz asked.

  “No way.”

  “Too bad.”

  Tom straightened in the wooden chair. “How’s that?”

  “Well, if McClay knew about it, you might be able to get the information from him.”

  “Nah, Trafalgar wouldn’t of told him. This was real confidential information. He wasn’t going to let anyone but me in on it.”

  “You never mentioned this to the detectives?”

  “Those jerks?”

  “You know, I’m really interested in this spurious charge the police have made against you about the murder,” Fitz said.

  I admired the smooth segue, although what Tom said in a suspicious tone was, “I don’t know anything about spurs.”

  Perhaps I should have warned Fitz about Tom’s vocabulary problems. I wondered how he’d maneuver out of this, but I needn’t have worried. He simply ignored it.

  “Could you tell us about when you went to see Mary Beth at the house that day she was killed?” Fitz asked. “I have to think the police are misreading some vital element.”

  “Yeah, well, it was like this. I just wanted to get back a neck
lace I’d given Mary Beth. So I went to her home, but she was just pulling out of the driveway. I followed her to that house she was working on, getting it ready for an open house.”

  An open house that had obviously never taken place, given the circumstances.

  “You followed her right inside?” Fitz prompted.

  “Actually, I carried some flowers and stuff in for her. And the radio, of course. She always had to have that radio, you know. She liked those talk shows, the ones where people call in and give their dumb opinions about everything from politics to vitamins. Can’t stand ‘em myself. One politician’s the same as another. All a bunch of crooks. But she was all wrapped up in who’s running for what, and how they’re doing, and who knew what scandals about them.”

  An interest in politicians. And banker McClay had been running for county commissioner. Hmm.

  “Was she interested in any particular politician?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. She just liked, you know, celebrity stuff. She was always reading those tabloid gossip magazines.”

  “But you and Mary Beth weren’t talking about politicians and celebrities that day, were you?” Fitz asked.

  “No. She said we should talk about that night at her house, that it wasn’t what it looked like there in the shower. I said that was a lot of baloney, and I just wanted the necklace. I figured maybe I could return it to the store and get my money back.”

  “She was wearing it then?”

  “Oh yeah. She really liked that necklace.”

  “But she wouldn’t return it to you?”

  “She said I’d given it to her, and it was hers.”

  “Then you tried to take it back?”

  “No, I left.”

  “Left?” I repeated, surprised. What about those fingerprints on her throat?

  “Yeah, I left. I drove around for a while, and then I got mad. So I went back. I told her again I wanted the necklace. I grabbed her arm, and then I tried to grab the necklace—”

  “You touched her throat?”

  “I suppose. And she bit me! Can you believe that? She bit me!” He looked down at his hand, hairy and veiny, and I had to think I’d think twice before I bit that.