Murder on the Mullet Express

by Gwen Mayo

  “Yes,” Cornelia said. “We also noticed him giving Peter Rowley a hard time about it here yesterday.”

  “Rowley doesn’t get along very well with Andy.” The mustache curved over his upper lip, revealing a wry smile. “Looking over his report, I’d say that he asked you all the questions about the fight and later death that I would have asked.”

  Cornelia nodded, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “Andy tells me that Mr. Janzen sat next to your uncle on the train during the trip down.”

  “Yes, he did. He didn’t start there, but it was closer to the lavatory than the seat he originally had.”

  “So, you’re saying he was already sick.”

  “Yes, of course. You would be better off asking my uncle these questions.”

  “I agree, Miss Pettijohn, but he seems to have made himself scarce. Do you know where he is?”

  “No. I’m afraid he didn’t tell us his plans before we went to sleep.” Cornelia didn’t like the idea that her uncle was missing. If the hotel had evicted him, wouldn’t he have woken them up? “I thought, on the train, that Mr. Janzen was suffering from the blows Mr. Hofstetter dealt him. Have you interviewed Mr. Hofstetter?”

  “Oh yes, Andy and I have both spoken to him. They had a real estate partnership in Miami that ended badly. I learned a few other things, too. Are you aware your uncle was suing Mr. Janzen?”

  Teddy stopped fanning. “Really? What for?”

  Bowden continued to stare at Cornelia, who felt sandbagged. “He didn’t mention it to me. My uncle does sue people from time to time, though, generally for patent infringement.” Why hadn’t he told her about it, especially if the man he was suing had died?

  The sheriff wiped his mouth and pulled out his notebook. “In this case, he was suing England Homes. That’s based out of England, Arkansas, not the country. Mr. Janzen was the registered agent.”

  Cornelia immediately remembered Uncle Percival’s ill-considered trip at Thanksgiving to visit an old student in Little Rock. The damp, cold trip by train was responsible for the pneumonia and resultant delicate health that had forced her to come to Florida with him in the first place.

  Teddy filled in the lull of conversation. “Is that a construction company, or an architectural firm?”

  “Neither, exactly. It was a business that sold mail-order houses—sort of like the ones they’re putting up in Aladdin City right now. They just did a ‘dawn-to-dusk’ demonstration—built a house in one day from the kit.”

  Her eyebrows, smudged from the night before, lifted. “You can order a house in the mail?”

  “Not everyone is born in an ancestral mansion like yours,” Cornelia said. “Or on an old farmstead as I was, for that matter.”

  “The kit is a bunch of materials pre-cut from the company, the lumber and such,” the sheriff said. “They ship it to the place you plan to build, and you put it up without having to hire a bunch of people. Great time and money saver. Sears and Roebuck do a brisk business with them.”

  “Aladdin City sounds more romantic,” Teddy opined.

  His mustache curved with his smile again. “Yes. Well. Anyway, Miss Pettijohn, your uncle was suing England Homes for fraud.”

  Cornelia’s mind raced backward over the past three months. She’d just returned to her home in Fisher’s Mill, where she planned to stay once she officially retired from the Army Nurse Corps. The farmhouse needed repairs and renovations, ones her uncle had been very helpful in arranging. Once the house was ready, Teddy came from Arizona. A lot of adjustments had to be made, especially as the climate disagreed with Teddy’s health. In the middle of the fuss, Uncle Percival had taken it into his head to travel south. Now, he thought a winter home would be the ideal solution for him and possibly Teddy, too.

  “He’s done some barn design in the past for agricultural purposes, so I suppose home building could be a new interest. Did they steal one of his designs?”

  “No, ma’am. He was a financial backer of the company. An investor. He charged them with taking money for manufacturing that was never done.”

  That sounded like the old goat. Why was she just learning this now? “They weren’t constructing the kits?”

  “According to the complaint, there wasn’t even a factory. Says here that your uncle went to the legal address of the business and found an empty lot in the middle of the swamp. Lotta swamp up in Arkansas.”

  “At which point he filed suit. That makes sense.”

  “You said your uncle sued other people. What did he do in those cases?”

  “He usually confirmed that someone was using a patented item or process of his without paying for it, then filed suit.”

  “Confirmed it. Did he confront the violator personally?”

  “In court, yes. Sheriff Bowden, usually the violator was some company or other that either thought they could escape detection, or had a designer who’d hit upon the same idea by accident. He’s a very clever man. The Stanley people even purchased the rights to some of his patents to prevent competition from other automobile companies.”

  “Companies. Not people.”

  “Companies are run by people, Sheriff. He occasionally named individuals in his suits, especially if he felt they’d tried to slip one past him. Uncle Percival worked hard for his money and has a sharp eye on where it is invested.”

  “He is thorough.”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “He was through in this case, too. According to Mr. Hofstetter, your uncle got the names of the other investors from the business filing in Little Rock and organized the suit. Since the mail-order business was supposed to dovetail with the real estate operation in Miami he ran with Hofstetter, they started looking at that, too.”

  “You said it ended badly. I presume the suit is why?”

  “Exactly. They were fending off requests from the authorities to examine their books, and their clients wanted their money back. Seems that Mr. Janzen emptied the bank account and took a powder. Hofstetter was left holding the bag, and an empty one at that.”

  “No wonder he punched him,” Teddy said. She leaned towards Bowden, twirling her beads. “How did they both wind up here? Did Mr. Hofstetter track him down?”

  “That’s neither here nor there, ma’am. My question to you two is: did Percival Pettijohn track him down?”

  Cornelia opened her mouth to say no, and then closed it again. She wasn’t so sure any more. Her uncle was bull-headed enough to chase down a scoundrel who tried to put one over on him. Setting things right would be more important to him than the money.

  “I don’t know. When he was younger, he would have,” she said, and sighed. “I was stationed in California until three months ago.”

  Once the sheriff had left, Cornelia sat and thought for a while. Teddy finished her toast and became brave enough to ask for a slice with butter.

  “We need to find my uncle,” Cornelia said.

  “Maybe he’s off taking pictures again.”

  “I hope it’s that simple. He could be in the hands of Mr. Belluchi and his cohorts.”

  “He also could be trying to book us new rooms. It’s getting hot around here, and I don’t mean the weather.”

  “The climate has turned decidedly hostile,” Cornelia agreed. “I do want to find him, though. He has designs going on that I didn’t know about.”

  “Just because he’s old doesn’t mean he’s not sneaky.”

  “Well, he’s going to stop being sneaky with me. And after I beat the truth out of him, I need to speak to Mrs. Minyard,” Cornelia said.

  “About her visit to Mr. Janzen’s room? It does sound rather apropos. Why didn’t you tell the sheriff about her?”

  “Because she didn’t walk out with anything that looked like luggage. I wanted to ask her why she was there before I spoke to anyone. Why didn’t you bring it up?”

  “Because I was afraid if I spoke too much, I would spew. Especially when I could smell that sausage.”

  “Da
mn that Florida heat. In February.”

  “I am a delicate flower.”

  Cornelia rolled her eyes at that line. Aside from her damaged lungs, there was nothing frail about Theodora Lawless.

  “You might be a less delicate flower if you weren’t potted every night.”

  Teddy tried to look offended, but broke into a grin.

  “How you go on,” she said.

  Tiny Belluchi and his cohort rode in the first passenger car. They tried getting close to the gear stowed in the front, but the conductor was having none of that. If it had just been the three of them, Tiny would have played a little chin music with him, but there were a lot more customers on the train than this backwater burg deserved. It wasn’t a real town yet. He glanced out the window, spotting a chain gang of saps working on what they called a road here. It wasn’t even paved, for Chrissake.

  After about twenty minutes, the train pulled into another small station. The schedule listed it as a mail drop, but a couple of railmen came for the old geezer’s equipment. Tiny elbowed Cesare, who was snoring next to him.

  “Looks like this is our stop.”

  “But we’re paid all the way to Ocala,” his sleepy partner muttered.

  “Maybe another day. C’mon.” Tiny could see the white-haired man already standing on the platform, talking to the fireman through the open locomotive window.

  The conductor made a token objection to their disembarking, but let them go. Tiny thought he was happy to see the back of them; suits and fedoras were viewed with suspicion in these parts. Suits with a bulge under the left arm, anyway.

  Another car was waiting outside the station. The old man walked right up to it and got in, leaving his tripod for the driver to handle. Tiny ran towards it, waving his arms.

  “Hey, buddy! Can we share your ride? I got money!”

  No use; the car was already pulling out, leaving a spray of pebbles in its wake.

  “What now?” Cesare asked.

  “We get a hack and find him. How much town could there be here? It wasn’t even a real stop.”

  It took a while for Tiny and his buddy to get a ride. Wasn’t a proper cab, just a local fellow who would take them around in his bucket for a couple of dollars.

  The lanky local looked the pair up and down. He wore a short-sleeved shirt and pants with suspenders. Tiny realized that their suits would make them conspicuous.

  “You boys looking to buy some prop’ty here in town?” the yokel asked.

  “Yeah, maybe. Lots of buyers comin’ by?”

  “Nah, most of ‘em are goin’ further south. We have a lot to offer, though—gas station, good fishin’, close to the county seat. Even got our own police station.” He pointed to a squarish building near the bank. “Safe place.”

  Both men instinctively sank lower in their seats, somewhat ineffectively in Tiny’s case. “Yeah, I see that,” Belluchi said. “Say, you want to take us somewhere else? Maybe somewhere more scenic.” He hadn’t noticed Gramps filming many city buildings.

  “What sort of scenic? Trees? Fishing?”

  “Fishing, yeah. Maybe with alligators. People like to take pictures of those.”

  “Okay, here we go,” their driver said, and made a U-turn. “But I wouldn’t do any close shots if I were you.”

  After the almost unbearable breakfast, Teddy went back to the room and collapsed. Her cough woke her. The sunlight was brilliant enough to make her wince, and she wished she had pulled the shades before going to sleep. She lifted the pillow from her head and fumbled in her bag for her medicine flask. “Hair of the dog,” she said to no one in particular. Judging from her headache, she was going to have to break open a new bottle before the day was over. For a long time she lay in bed, her head buried under the pillow again, as she pieced together the fragments of memory. Chago's party, the alarm, poor Mr. Hoyt. His head must ache almost as bad as hers this morning. That bucket gave him quite a whack.

  Her hand drifted to the edge of the bed. Cornelia was a grouch, and she snored like an old bear, but not finding the familiar lump curled in the bed beside her gave her a moment of panic. Teddy willed herself to calm down. Cornelia hadn't adjusted to civilian life. She was up at the crack of dawn every morning. Probably off birdwatching again with that Carson woman.

  Teddy lifted the pillow and opened one bloodshot eye. The sun was awfully bright. How late was it, anyway?

  With everyone else out taking advantage of the West Coast Company's hospitality, this was a good time to have a long soak in the bath. She was more than happy to skip the sales pitches in favor of some old-fashioned pampering.

  Cornelia was sitting on the edge of the bed looking at a magazine when Teddy emerged from the bath. A hobo with a bindle stood on the cover, blocking part of The Saturday Evening Post’s title.

  "Glad to see you're alive," Cornelia said.

  "No thanks to you. How could you abandon me in my hour of need?"

  "It is nearly noon, and you haven't dressed yet. I imagine you were happily snoring for several hours after I left."

  "Yes, I was,” Teddy replied. “So what have you been up to this morning?"

  Cornelia smiled. "Rosemary and I took a johnboat through the salt marsh this morning. It was really beautiful with the sun coming up over the water and turning the black spikes of marshgrass to shades of brown and green."

  "It's Rosemary now. Not Mrs. Carson? What does her husband think of that?"

  "Theodora, are you jealous? She's a married woman with two children."

  "Well?"

  Cornelia chuckled, and her blue eyes crinkled at the corners. She picked up the dress Teddy had laid out on the bed and tossed it to her. "Get dressed, you little goose. We're going to go to the grand hotel to plan a party for Uncle."

  Teddy brightened and gathered her things.

  The yokel was true to his word. Within five minutes, they were in the middle of nowhere, staring at a river of dark green water. Unfortunately, there was no sign of the geezer they were tracking.

  “You call this scenic? Reminds me of the alley behind my ma’s apartment. Muddy and wet.”

  “I didn’t know they had pines in Florida,” Cesare said, and got another elbow.

  “Muddy and wet is what gators like,” the driver said.

  “I don’t see no gators.”

  “They don’t want you to see ‘em. See those logs out there?”

  Tiny squinted. “Yeah.”

  “Only two of them are logs. The third one is a gator looking for lunch.”

  “Looking for a nap, more like. Take us somewhere else scenic.”

  They drove around until Cesare spotted the car the old man had gotten into. And there he was, perched at the edge of the water, grinding away at that camera.

  Tiny followed Cesare’s pointed finger. “Here. Here is scenic. Slow down.”

  “Okay,” The yokel hit the brake. “Don’t know what the difference is, but you fellas are the ones paying for the view.”

  “Why don’tcha park over here?” ‘Here’ was a small break in the trees, not far from Gramps but hidden from view. “My pal and I are going to get out. Enjoy the scenery. Don’t you leave, or there’ll be hell to pay.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Tiny got out of the car and unkinked his legs, which still smarted from the cactus thorns. Too many dirt and crushed-rock roads. Didn’t anyone down here believe in pavement? He wiped his neck, already damp from the humidity.

  The old man bent over his equipment, heedless of their approach. The fella he was using as a driver was still at the car, studying a map. He wasn’t close enough to interfere if they just strolled up and did a snatch-and-run. The yokel they’d come with might kick about being the getaway driver, but Tiny had a convincer under his jacket that should shut him up quick.

  He gestured for Cesare to flank their prey from the other side, then reached under his arm to ease the gun out. The sound of a motor behind him made him freeze in place.

  A car with the emblem of the
sheriff’s department passed the two Italians, coming to a stop behind the old geezer’s ride. A young guy—not the sheriff—exited the vehicle and headed for the river. Tiny and his friend made for the trees.

  “Jeez,” Cesare muttered, once they were shielded by palm fronds. “Ya think they followed us?”

  “Couldn’t be. But maybe they figger he saw somethin’.”

  “Like what?” a voice asked behind them.

  It was the yokel. He stared beyond them at the two cars by the river. “Huh. That’s the deputy that lives in Homosassa. Wonder what he wants?”

  Tiny didn’t want to create a scene, especially a noisy one, so he didn’t belt the guy for following them. “Maybe he likes to fish during his lunch break.”

  “Naw, looks like he’s talkin’ to those fellas.”

  The trio watched as the deputy spoke to the old man, who became agitated with whatever the subject matter was. After a few minutes, the deputy escorted their mark to the back seat of his car. He and the other driver gathered up the photography equipment and put it in the trunk of the sheriff’s vehicle. Both cars left.

  “Sheesh,” Cesare said. “They nabbed him.”

  “Maybe he didn’t have a permit,” the yokel said. “Anyway, you’ve got more scenery to enjoy now.”

  “Ain’t that just peachy.” Leo was going to kill them both when they got back to the hotel. Why couldn’t he have just let Tiny shoot the old geezer?

  Chapter 9

  Once the party arrangements were made, Cornelia and Teddy went in search of their errant traveling companion. Rosemary Carson and her husband came into the hotel as they entered the lobby. She smiled when she spotted Cornelia.

  “My dear, you should have been with us this morning. There was a bald eagle with talons as big as my fist. He swooped down and snatched a fish right out of the river. It was thrilling.”