Invisible

by Lorena McCourtney

  “Not truly invisible—”

  “But not visible either,” she said. “I guess it’s an age thing.”

  “Don’t let it bother you.” I patted her shoulder. “I’ve discovered it’s really quite useful.”

  “Useful?” She sounded doubtful. Then she tilted her head, eyes narrowing. A nod and unexpectedly foxy smile followed. “Yes. I’ll remember that. Quite useful, indeed.”

  “Well, I’d better get started home. I’ll have to stop in a motel somewhere along the way.”

  “It would probably be okay if you stayed here overnight.”

  We both looked around. The apartment was clean and unoccupied, and Debbie surely couldn’t care. But the idea gave me too much of a walking-across-someone’s-grave feeling.

  “I think I’ll just head on home,” I said, and she nodded as if she understood. I realized I was still holding the bundle of letters. “I found these. They’re letters Debbie’s brother wrote to her. Would it be all right with you if I take them along to give to the authorities investigating the murder?”

  She looked undecided for a moment, again considering legalities, I assumed. Then she cast aside whatever her worries were and nodded firmly. “If they can help catch Debbie’s killer, by all means, take them. And the birthday card too.”

  Letitia picked up her sandals, and together, she in her pantyhose feet, we walked around to the front porch.

  “I’m going to have to do something about the apartment,” she said. She sounded worried. “I need the income from the rental.”

  “I’ll talk to the police about getting Debbie’s body identified right away. I’ll give you my address.”

  Once more I scribbled everything on a scrap of notebook paper. Maybe I should have business cards made: “Ivy Malone. Invisible Lady. Specializing in Neighborhood Murder Investigations. Cemetery Stakeouts, and Oddly Shaped Vegetables.” I handed her the scrap and hugged her. “I wish we’d met under happier circumstances.”

  *

  I stayed in a motel just across the Missouri line, but I didn’t sleep well and felt frazzled with heat and weariness by the time I got home. Maybe I should trade the Thunderbird in on something compact, with working air conditioning? Although that would mean dipping into a CD, and I need all the interest I can get in these times of miserable interest rates.

  I was also rather stiff from that fall I’d taken from the chair, with a blue bruise developing on the inside of my left knee. I tried not to notice that it was shaped like Australia.

  I was relieved to see the shades were pulled in Magnolia’s house, which meant she and Geoff were away. Dearly as I love Magnolia, I’m not always up for her flamboyant energy.

  Even though I was tired, I tried to call Dix right away. I wanted to discuss the letters with him. But there was no answer at Dix’s apartment all afternoon and evening, not even when I tried one last time a little before 11:00 p.m., after I’d soaked my sore bones in the tub. Not like him to be out so late these days. I was worried enough that I called the hospital to see if he’d been readmitted. No, no Matt Dixon there. I couldn’t call Haley because she had only a cell phone, no home phone, and I didn’t know the number.

  Next morning I tried Dix’s number several times. No answer. I called the community college library and learned that Haley wouldn’t be in for several days. Unlikely as it seemed, it almost looked as if they’d gone somewhere together.

  Reluctantly, thinking the letters and information about Aunt Chris were too important to delay, I called Detective Harmon. He didn’t sound particularly interested but said that when he had time he’d come out to see what I had. When I pinned him down, he reluctantly agreed to maybe later today.

  While waiting for him, I called Tiffany. She recognized my voice, of course. Before I could say why I was calling, she said, “Oh, I’ll bet you’re wondering about Detective Dixon and Haley, aren’t you?”

  “I did try to call him …”

  “Ronnie said Detective Dixon’s brother called—he’s been in the Mideast, you know? And he was going to be passing through Chicago, just a layover there at the airport for a few hours. Detective Dixon hasn’t seen his brother for over two years, so Haley is driving him up to Chicago.”

  Chicago! Well, Dix had better appreciate that. Above and beyond the call of duty, I’d say.

  “They left just yesterday, so it’ll probably be at least a couple of days before they get back. They were going to stay with some relatives of Haley’s along the way.”

  I appreciated the information, even though this wasn’t why I’d called. “Tiffany, I wonder if you could do me a special favor?”

  “Sure, Mrs. M.,” she said promptly. “What is it?”

  “Could you find out if a Benny or a Danny work at that Thrif-Tee Wrecking place where you get used auto parts?”

  “Does this have something to do with Kendra’s murder?”

  “Possibly. Dix—Detective Dixon—keeps telling me to keep my nose out of this, but it seems as if nobody’s doing anything, and I think this could be important.”

  “Remember that old saying, ‘Whatever a woman does, she has to do twice as well as a man to be thought half as good’? I figure a woman’s nose belongs wherever she wants to put it,” Tiffany said.

  This was not an old saying I was familiar with, and I wasn’t sure I got the connection, but I wasn’t going to argue.

  “Anyway, I can tell you right now that there’s a Benny out at Thrif-Tee,” Tiffany said. “He handles the office work, if you can call that greasy hole-in-the-wall an office. I had to run some papers out there one time. Girlie calendars on the wall, old tin cans for ashtrays, dog ugly as a stomped-on Halloween mask, oil stains everywhere. Yuck.”

  “Maybe you can think of some casual reason to ask him if they have a Danny working there?”

  “Sure. I have to call out there every once in a while anyway.”

  “Do any women work there?”

  “I think the guys there are all those macho types who figure no woman can tell a carburetor from a spare tire. I doubt if they’d hire a woman, even if she could tear a car apart and put it back together with her eyes closed.”

  Which perhaps explained why Debbie investigated her brother’s death from a position at Barney’s instead of at Thrif-Tee.

  Tiffany giggled. “But Benny sounds an awful lot like a woman. He got really mad the first time I called out there and mistook him for one. But I recognize his voice now, of course, and try to keep him buttered up.”

  “One more thing. Do you know who owns Bottom-Buck Barney’s?”

  “No, but if it’s important I can try to find out.”

  “It might be important.” The boss at Thrif-Tee had “bimbos,” according to Ray. Debbie had seemed to be trying to pretend she was one. Connection? “The owner never comes around?”

  “If he does, he’s doing it incognito. Although I think I’ve talked to him on the phone a few times.”

  “A nice man?”

  “I don’t think he calls here unless he’s mad about something. Mr. Retzloff always jumps up and closes his door when this guy calls. I got the impression somewhere that he owns some high-class business and would rather people not know he’s associated with a grubby used-car lot like Barney’s.”

  Which sounded a lot like Ray’s comment about the “oh-so-respectable boss” at Thrif-Tee. “Let me know what you find out, okay?”

  *

  I’d been neglecting my garden, so I went out and watered everything. My tomatoes, without attention, appeared to be taking on odder shapes than ever. Remember Jimmy Durante? I could definitely see his nose on one. The cucumbers had taken the opportunity to expand to small dachshund size. One even had beginnings of a tail.

  The phone was ringing when I went back inside. I expected it to be Officer Harmon telling me he couldn’t come after all. Instead, an unfamiliar voice identified himself as Jordan Kaine.

  The name fell into a blank hole before I finally managed to drag it out. “Oh yes
, I remember Charley Mason mentioning you. You were looking into some legal aspect of the problems out at Country Peace.”

  “Yes, that’s right.” He had a deep voice, youthful sounding for a retired man. A voice that had undoubtedly impressed many a jury with its authoritative depth.

  I was not, however, feeling too kindly toward this man who had apparently taken an adversarial stand against the generous Mr. Braxton, who’d offered assistance at Country Peace. In fact, I had to admit to a certain prejudice against lawyers in general ever since the pill-lid incident.

  “Charley Mason pointed you out to me at church, but you disappeared before I had a chance to talk to you. I think you may be interested in information I’ve acquired about Country Peace.”

  “Concerning Mr. Braxton?”

  “Yes, basically.”

  “Yes, I’m very interested.”

  I thought he meant to tell me whatever he knew right then, but instead he said, “I was thinking we might have dinner together. Perhaps Friday evening at Victorio’s Seafood?”

  Thea’s and my special place for birthday celebrations. I had to give the man credit for excellent taste, but I still wasn’t eager to share dinner with a lawyer. Then I had to chide myself for that discriminatory attitude. In spite of my sour experience with the lawyer handling the loose-pill-lid case, it was a lone experience, and there were no doubt any number of decent, honorable men in the profession. And Jordan Kaine apparently was a respected member of Tri-Corners Community Church.

  “Yes, I think I can make Friday evening.”

  He said he’d make reservations for 8:00 and pick me up about 7:45.

  Magnolia and Geoff got home later that day, and she came over to tell me they’d made a rush trip down to Oklahoma and to let me in on her latest genealogical findings. She was wearing moccasins and feather earrings, which I uneasily suspected indicated something meaningful.

  “What I found out—”

  “From the guy who didn’t want to talk about family connections?”

  She waved a dismissive hand. “Not him. I located this other fascinating woman. And you know what I found out from her?” Magnolia didn’t wait to find out if I wanted to hear. “There’s American Indian blood in our background, on our great-great-grandmother’s side!”

  Magnolia’s theory of genealogy, I once decided, was that if one illustrious bloodline is good, ten are even better. And now she had this new one to add to her dazzling array of French, Hawaiian, and Russian royal ancestry. Magnolia looked no more American Indian than I looked Italian Mafia, but I didn’t dispute the claim. Who really knows what any of us is, anyway? “That’s great. Any particular tribe?”

  “Cherokee!” she gushed. “Isn’t that marvelous? I’m thinking we’ll probably visit the reservation next summer. Maybe take in a powwow or something.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Oklahoma, I think. Oh, but what I really came over for is to tell you we’re having some RV friends in for stew and Indian fry bread Friday evening, and I want you to come. I also have some fantastic CDs of American Indian drumming.”

  “I’d like to come, but I have an appointment.”

  “On a Friday night?”

  “It’s about Country Peace. A man from church has been looking into the problems there. We’re going to have dinner together so he can tell me what he’s found out.”

  Magnolia pummeled me with her usual questions, and by the time I’d told her what I knew about Jordan Kaine, she’d jumped to her own conclusions.

  “That isn’t an ‘appointment,’ Ivy, it’s a date.”

  “No, it is not a date. I don’t even know that he’s unmarried.”

  “Did he make this dinner ‘appointment’ with you for himself and a wife?”

  “He didn’t say.” Although deep down, I knew. No wife was involved in the dinner, and neither was Jordan Kaine hiding one.

  “This is a date,” Magnolia stated with assurance. “If he hadn’t wanted to see you personally, he’d have told you whatever he knows on the phone instead of asking you to dinner. He got this guy at church to point you out, he liked what he saw, and he’s using the Country Peace thing as an excuse to ask you out.”

  I could think of arguments against that theory, but I didn’t have time to present them because the doorbell was ringing. “I’ve got to go. Someone’s at the door.”

  “Wear something …” Magnolia paused, and I expected her to come up with something outrageous. My answer was ready. No, Magnolia, I am not going to wear anything sexy, seductive, or scintillating. As if I even owned anything in those categories.

  But after a thoughtful pause, the word she chose gave me pause. “Wear something enchanting,” she said.

  28

  Detective Harmon strode in, mirror sunglasses and all. I showed him the letters and birthday card and told him that the Little Rock landlady had definitely identified the earlier photo as her tenant, Debbie Etheridge. “And, as you know, that other photo has already been positively identified as her brother, Ray Etheridge. Who was engaged to the real Kendra.” I had the uneasy feeling I sounded as if I were giving a summation of a TV soap opera.

  He inspected the birthday card first, without taking off the sunglasses. “This doesn’t tell much,” he said.

  True. “But more information may be on the computer in Debbie’s apartment in Little Rock. If you could locate this Aunt Chris, she could surely identify the body.”

  He didn’t respond to that, although he did deign to take the sunglasses off to read the letters. Which he sped through as if he’d stopped in on his way to an emergency call to chase down a bank robber. When he snapped the rubber band around the letters again, I thought he was going to dismiss their importance and hand them back, but he didn’t go quite that far. “We’re quite close to tying this murder into a drug case, but I’ll take these along. They might prove useful.”

  Right. And I might locate something enchanting in my closet.

  “Couldn’t you get a search warrant for the office at Thrif-Tee Wrecking, and especially for the wall safe Ray mentioned? And the computer system at Bottom-Buck Barney’s also? Something illegal must have been going on at both places. Something that probably resulted in Ray’s death, and then in Debbie’s also.”

  I thought I knew now what Kendra/Debbie had meant when she said she was almost through here. She had the goods on both the illegal activities and her brother’s killer and was about to go to the authorities.

  Detective Harmon looked at me with an air that said I was wearing on his patience.

  “Mrs. Malone,” he said with strained politeness, “I appreciate your interest and … uh … theories, but there’s no mention of Thrif-Tee Wrecking or Bottom-Buck Barney’s anywhere in this material, and we can’t get a search warrant based on hasty assumptions. We have to have more to go on than this.” He shook the bundle of letters lightly, and I suspected he’d like to shake me as well. Meddlesome little old lady. He wanted his drug deal to work out, wanted to prove he was right.

  Detective Harmon left, backing his car out of my driveway with a bit more speed than I thought was called for.

  Tiffany phoned later in the afternoon. She’d called Benny at Thrif-Tee with a pretense of checking the name scribbled on an old invoice. Benny had told her a guy named Danny used to work there, but he’d quit last fall and moved away. To Alaska, Benny thought. Or maybe it was Argentina.

  Probably not much chance, then, of running Danny down to ask what he knew about activities at Thrif-Tee. Definitely no chance of my doing it, anyway. I hadn’t enough information about Danny’s leaving to know if it was before or after Ray’s death, but I wondered: Had the death scared him, and he’d decided to get out before a fatal “accident” happened to him too?

  “What about the company owner’s identity?”

  “I approached it with Jessica. I told her I thought it would be nice if we had his name and birth date so we could give him a birthday present from the office.”

 
“And?”

  “She looked … startled, I guess you might say. She said she didn’t think that would be appropriate, then she rushed into Mr. Retzloff’s office and shut the door.” Tiffany hesitated. “I’m not sure why, but it makes me kind of uneasy.”

  Me too, and I made a quick resolution. No more dragging Tiffany into any of this. I also wasn’t feeling good about the fact that my questions were encouraging her to use fabrications to get answers.

  *

  Jordan Kaine arrived promptly at 7:45 on Friday evening. I watched him come up the sidewalk from the driveway. Medium height, a little on the stout side, but his walk was light and brisk. Hair gray, but more iron than possum. His suit was a conservative gray, his tie conservative maroon with narrow diagonal stripes of silver. He rang the bell, and I opened the door.

  He smiled. “I have the advantage. I know you’re Ivy Malone, but you don’t know me. Jordan Kaine.”

  I could easily see him disarming a witness with that affable manner. I felt a bit disarmed myself. If Jordan Kaine were giving out approval ratings, I could see a nice gold star for me as he discreetly looked me over.

  Was this not strictly an appointment to discuss church business? Was it, at least on some level, a date?

  My life a manless moonscape for years. And now two of them?

  I quickly discarded the idea of myself as some late-blooming femme fatale. In spite of Magnolia’s claim of Mac MacPherson’s interest in me, he’d spun out of my life almost as fast as Detective Harmon spinning out of my driveway. And Jordan Kaine just wanted to talk about overturned tombstones.

  “I’ll get my purse,” I said.

  We small-talked on the drive to Victorio’s. I learned he’d lived and practiced law here for over thirty years. His wife had passed away five years ago, and he had two daughters and four grandchildren. I cautiously supplied corresponding information about myself. By the time we were seated at Victorio’s, Country Peace had not yet surfaced in the conversation.

  I looked around the candlelit room with pristine white tablecloths and gliding waiters and thought about the times Thea and I had come here. Although Jordan Kaine seemed passably okay, I had to admit I’d have happily traded this “date” for one more birthday celebration with Thea.