Tails, You Lose (A Witch City Mystery Book 2)

by Carol J. Perry

  “Whatever you say. Where to for lunch?” Pete asked. “Not a drive-through this time.”

  “Have you tried the diner at the Tabby yet? I had lunch there yesterday. Good food.”

  “Sounds okay to me,” he said, and we headed toward Essex Street.

  The diner was busier than I’d expected it to be on a Saturday. It was obvious that more than the student body of the Tabby had discovered the place. All the booths and most of the seats at the counter were occupied. I glanced around, looking for familiar faces, and spotted Mr. Pennington sitting alone in one of the wide booths.

  “Let’s see if my boss wants to share his table with us,” I said.

  The school director didn’t look up as we approached. His attention seemed to be focused on multiple sheets of lined yellow paper strewn all over the table, barely leaving room for the full cup of coffee, which appeared to be untouched.

  “Sir?” I said, gesturing toward the crowded counter. “Busy place. May we join you?”

  “Huh? What? Oh, Ms. Barrett. Detective Mondello.” He swept the papers together into a ragged pile and attempted to stand, knocking a few pages to the floor. “Please do. Glad for the company.”

  Pete gathered up the fallen sheets while I slid into the booth, facing Mr. Pennington. Pete sat beside me, adding the yellow papers he’d picked up to the pile. “You look busy, sir,” he said. “Preparing a math test?” I realized then that the pages were completely covered with numbers. Row upon neat row of numerals marked each sheet.

  “No. But it is a test of sorts,” Mr. Pennington said, running a hand through thinning hair. “Perhaps I need a detective like yourself to help me figure it out.”

  “I’m not much on math,” Pete admitted. “What’s the problem?”

  “Know anything about safecracking?”

  I blinked, surprised.

  “A little,” Pete said. “Why?”

  I knew what the answer was going to be. Mr. Pennington was trying to figure out how to open the safe in his office.

  “It’s that huge safe in my office,” the director said. “I’ve tried listening for clicks. I’ve tried random combinations. Now I’m trying to figure out possible configurations of numbers to try. But there must be a million of them.”

  “Probably more than a million,” Pete said. “Have you called a locksmith?”

  “Of course. He offered to drill it. Can’t do that. It’s city property.”

  “Do you know what’s in it, Mr. Pennington?” I asked. “Something valuable?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” He shrugged. “That’s not the point. It bothers me when I don’t know things like that. What’s in the locked safe? What do my spare keys open? How did that man get out of the tunnel? I don’t like mysteries. Never did. Except in the movies, of course.”

  “Still haven’t found out what those old keys go to?” Pete asked. “You were trying to figure that out when we first met.”

  “Still trying,” he said. “They’ve got to fit something in the old store.”

  Or somewhere under the old store. Maybe in a tunnel. Or even something belonging to a pregnant, dead teenager.

  “Are you talking about the two old skeleton keys I saw on your key ring, sir?” I asked.

  “Ah, you are perceptive, my dear. Indeed. The very ones.”

  “They came with all the others? The ones that open the doors and cabinets all over the building?”

  “Absolutely. With patience and diligence I’ve learned what each and every one of them unlocks—with the notable and unfortunate exception of the two you noted.” He looked proud of himself. “No easy task. There are almost twenty keys on that ring.”

  “I remember it,” Pete said, “and I was impressed with how you knew exactly what each key opened when we searched the building on Christmas night.”

  “Keys, like people, have distinct personalities of their own,” he declared.

  “Is that from a movie?” I wondered aloud.

  Mr. Pennington beamed. “It sounds like it, doesn’t it? No, I made that one up myself.”

  “I don’t know if I can be helpful with your safecracking problem or with your mystery keys,” Pete said, “but we may be close to finding out exactly how Bill Sullivan got out of the tunnel.”

  “Oh, I do hope so. All that activity beneath the school is quite disconcerting. The daily parade of workers up and down the basement stairs, the presence of the armed guard, the general atmosphere of unrest cannot be beneficial to the student body.” He looked at me. “Do you not agree, Miss Barrett? Do your students seem uneasy because of it?”

  I hadn’t really thought about it. My students, like Mr. Pennington’s keys, each had a distinct personality. How much they’d been affected by the commotion at the Tabby, I didn’t know.

  “I can’t honestly say that, sir. I don’t know what any of them was like before they enrolled here.”

  Pete gave the waitress our orders and offered to buy Mr. Pennington lunch, as well.

  “Oh, no thank you, Detective,” he said, gathering up his papers. “I’ve already eaten and have occupied this space far too long already. You young people enjoy your day, and thank you for listening to an old man’s ramblings.”

  He stood, about to leave, then turned. “Ms. Barrett,” he said, “do you happen to know whether your delightful aunt has decided to accompany me to the Woody Allen Film Festival?”

  “Um . . . she did mention it. I’ll have her call you.”

  “Excellent,” he said. “Thank you. Miss Russell is a charming woman. Charming.” He left the diner, using the Tabby’s first-floor entrance.

  “Your aunt and old Pennington?” Pete raised an eyebrow.

  I shrugged. “Who knows? Pete, is that true about Bill?”

  The waitress appeared with our food. I was hungry and it all looked delicious. “Is what true?” he asked, pouring ketchup onto hot onion rings.

  “Is it true that you’re close to figuring out how they got Bill out of the tunnel and into the park?” I put ranch dressing onto my salad.

  “We’ve broken through that pile of rubble I told you about.”

  “The rocks and dirt you said were deliberately put there?”

  “That’s right. We had to be careful taking it all apart. Didn’t want to cause another cave-in. Somebody really doesn’t want us to see where they dragged Bill’s body to.”

  “But you’ll find it,” I said.

  “Of course we will. But the mess of rubble gave whoever it was time to clean up any tracks they might have left, and the damned thing branches out in about forty different directions. Up and down. Old tunnel blocked. New tunnel dug underneath. They all probably exit in different places along the waterfront.” He held up the menu. “You want dessert? Boston cream pie looks good.”

  Pete had pie, and I had Grape-Nut pudding. We both had coffee, and then, with his assurance that he didn’t have a worry in the world about riding in a Corvette with me, we left for the Sullivans’ place.

  “God, I hate doing this,” Pete said, lifting the door knocker on the second-floor apartment.

  Junior Sullivan answered and, with only the slightest expression of surprise, invited us inside. “Come in, Lee, Detective,” he said. “What can we do for you? Do you need to see Mother?”

  “I don’t want to disturb her,” Pete said. “Maybe you can help me. I’m really sorry to bother you about this, but the chief would like to take another look at that coat your dad was wearing when we found him.”

  “That ratty old thing? It wasn’t his, you know.”

  “We know that, but do you still have it?”

  “I doubt it. It was dirty and smelled of booze. But we can ask Mother what she did with it,” he said. “Everybody’s in the kitchen. Come on.”

  I didn’t know what to expect when we followed him through the dining room, where the table, with a fresh white linen tablecloth and a centerpiece of red carnations, displayed an assortment of covered dishes and baked goodies.

&nb
sp; Mrs. Sullivan hurried across the kitchen to greet us. I’d been afraid we’d intrude on a group of heartbroken people, sad and tearful, having just buried a dear one. But what we found was a true celebration of Bill’s life. There was laughter and storytelling, and maybe a nip or two of Irish whiskey.

  Junior explained to his mother why we’d come. “You want that nasty old jacket? Bill wouldn’t have been caught dead in that thing.” With a rueful smile, she sighed. “Though I guess he was.” She motioned us toward an adjoining laundry room. “I planned to give it to the Goodwill, so I washed it first. Here it is.”

  Neatly folded on top of the dryer, the brown quilted jacket looked quite presentable. “It cleaned up right nicely, didn’t it?” she said and handed it to Pete.

  We thanked her, declined the invitation to stay for a “bite of food,” expressed our condolences once again, and left.

  “Too bad she washed it,” Pete said as we headed back to the police station. “Probably destroyed any evidence we might have found.”

  “At least you have it, though,” I said. “It’s not in a landfill somewhere.”

  “You’re right. And it may be of some use, even clean. I’m going to show it to that woman who told us about the three drunks she saw near the park that night.”

  “The carol-singing drunks?”

  “Yeah. It’s a pretty slim chance, but if she recognizes it, maybe she saw Bill.”

  “Bill? But Bill couldn’t have been walking down the street, singing or otherwise,” I reasoned. “You said his leg was broken when he fell. Besides, the medical examiner said he wasn’t even drunk.”

  “True,” Pete said. “But suppose you’ve got somebody who needs to be moved from one place to another. And suppose that somebody has passed out. Unresponsive. Even dead.” His voice dropped. “And suppose you’ve got a friend handy who’s willing to help you move him.”

  I saw the picture in my mind. One person on each side of Bill, with an arm around him, pulling him along across the snow. An irreverent flash of a scene from Weekend at Bernie’s popped into my head.

  “And you think those were the three drunks the woman saw on Christmas night?” I asked.

  “Could be. Worth checking, anyway.”

  We reached the police station, and this time Pete agreed that I didn’t have to come inside while he delivered the coat. I turned on the radio, and smiled when I realized that Pete had it tuned to a country and western station. There wasn’t much to look at from the car window besides a flagpole and some bare-branched trees, so I pulled a few index cards and a pen from my purse.

  I made notes about the jacket that wasn’t Bill’s, Thom Lalonde’s tears, the three drunks singing Christmas carols, Mr. Pennington’s search for the old safe combination, and the pile of rubble obstructing the tunnel.

  I was scribbling on a sixth card when Pete returned.

  “How did it go?” I asked, switching off the radio. “Was the chief glad to get the coat or mad because it was clean?”

  “A little of both, I think,” he said. “Let’s go test-drive your dream car.”

  “Yes!” I said. “I can hardly wait. You ready for a quick trip to Gloucester?”

  “You picked that ride because you know there’s a nice little stretch there where you can open her up.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “And I promise I won’t go over eighty.”

  “Seventy,” he said. “I don’t want to have to write you a ticket.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Pete aimed the car in the direction of the dealership, while I searched the bottom of my purse for a rubber band to keep my newly written index cards together. I caught myself happily humming an off-tune version of “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys” when Pete suddenly executed a fast U-turn, reversing our direction, activated the hidden red, white, and blue flashing lights in the windshield and grill, hit the siren, and floored the Crown Vic.

  OMG! I’m in a high-speed chase with a cop!

  “Hang on, babe,” he said. “That’s your green Ford.”

  No high-speed chase, after all. The green car ahead of us was already slowing down.

  “That’s it,” I said. “But what are you going to tell him you stopped him for?”

  “Mud splashed all over his front license plate,” Pete said. “Unreadable. That’s against the law.”

  The Ford pulled over to the curb. Pete parked behind it and climbed out of the Vic. There was mud smeared on the back plate, as well. Pete kicked it, making the numbers visible. He stood there for a moment, tapping on his phone, then approached the driver.

  From where I sat, I couldn’t get a clear view of the man in the driver’s seat, except to see that he had long hair and a beard. He handed something to Pete, his license and insurance, I supposed. Pete leaned closer to the window. He appeared to be listening, not talking.

  It seemed as though a long time had passed when Pete came back and opened the car door, but a glance at the clock told me it had been only about five minutes. I saw the Ford start up and drive away.

  “That is the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said, sitting behind the wheel but not moving the car. “You’re not going to believe it.”

  “Who is it?” I said. “I know I’ve never seen him before. Why is he following me?”

  Pete shook his head. “First,” he said, “you have seen him before. And second, he isn’t following you.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “I didn’t, either, until I got a look at his driver’s license.”

  “Come on, tell me,” I said. “Whose car is it?”

  Pete turned off the flashers and moved us smoothly into traffic. “Nope. I think I’ll make you play detective for a while. I’ll tell you this much. The car is registered to a person who you probably don’t know and who has no record of any kind of legal trouble.”

  “Darn it, Pete. Don’t play games with me. I’ve been worried about that stupid car for days.”

  He smiled. “Uh-uh. You want to study criminology. Consider this a midterm exam.”

  “You’re terrible. Okay, but at least give me a clue.”

  “Fair enough. Let me see.” Again the smile. “Try this. The driver of the green car is wearing a disguise. Fake beard and hair.”

  I thought about that. “How’s this? It’s probably someone from the Tabby who has access to the costume and makeup divisions Right?”

  “Right. Go on.”

  “And if the car is registered to someone I don’t know, it’s borrowed. Right?”

  He nodded. “Yep. Right again.”

  “You said he isn’t following me.”

  “He isn’t.”

  “If he isn’t following me, yet he’s hanging around my house, and he followed us to the Sullivans’, then he’s following someone else.”

  “Correct,” he said. “I told you you’d make a good cop. Keep going.”

  “He’s stalking my aunt. My God. Who is he?”

  “You’re almost there. Stay with it.”

  “Who at the Tabby has any interest in Aunt Ibby?” I answered my own question immediately. “Rupert Pennington. That old dog!”

  “Nice going,” he said, taking one hand off the wheel and offering a high five. “The disguise was so good, I never would have recognized him if he hadn’t shown me his license.”

  “But why? Why is he watching her?”

  “He thinks he’s in love. Isn’t watching her so much as checking for boyfriends. He wants to be sure he has a clear field before he . . . um . . . begins courting her.”

  “Amazing,” I said. “And what about the car?”

  “Belongs to his nephew. He’s on the way to return it and pick up his own,” Pete said. “He’s really embarrassed. I didn’t have the heart to ticket him for the muddy plates.”

  “Did you tell him he has to stop? That he can’t keep watching us?”

  “He promised. But what is your aunt going to think about all this?”

  “I don’t know,” I said hone
stly. “I truly don’t. She might think he’s just a silly old fool. Or she might be flattered.”

  “Women,” he said, with a mock sigh. “You never know what they’re thinking.”

  “This woman is thinking it’s about time to take a ride in my new car,” I said. “With you as copilot.”

  I could tell that they were happy to see us back at the dealership. The salesman hurried to the door to meet us, inviting us to sit down and have coffee while he explained all the new features on the Corvette. Chuck spotted us from his glass-walled office and rushed out to greet us.

  I was sold already, but I sat politely and listened to the tag-team recitation of heart-thumping statistics on horsepower, torque, and navigation.

  “Sounds wonderful,” I said. “I can hardly wait to test it out. Can we do it now?”

  “Sure,” the salesman said. “But since she’s a two-seater, we’ll have to leave you behind, Pete. Sorry.”

  “Oh, no. I promised Pete he could come with me.”

  “That’s okay,” Pete said quickly. “No problem. I understand. The salesman always goes along on the test-drive. That right, Chuck?”

  “Not in this case.” Chuck held up both hands. “No worries about a customer riding with one of Salem’s finest. I’ll get the keys and meet you out front.”

  “Great,” Pete said. “Thanks a lot.”

  “You don’t sound as excited as Lee does.” The manager smiled. “Relax. You’ll love it.” He turned to me. “Top up or down, Lee?”

  “Down, of course. We’ll just blast the heat.”

  Within a few minutes, with my jacket zipped, hat and gloves on, and with Pete in the seat beside me, I slipped on my sunglasses and turned the key, loving the sound of 6.2 liters of American V-8 muscle roaring beautifully in my ears. I headed for one of the nice clear stretches of Massachusetts freeway that tolerated a heavy foot, booted her up to a little over seventy, and knew for sure this was my car. We traveled as far as the rotary in Gloucester, where I turned and slowed down for the ride back to Salem.

  “Well, what do you think?” I asked Pete, hoping he thought as I do, that riding in a good convertible with the top down on a clear, crisp day is one of life’s great pleasures.