Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 05 - Tight as a Tick

by Toni L. P. Kelner

“Do you have any idea of who would have wanted to kill him? Or why?”

  He hesitated, then said, “I don’t want to get anybody into trouble, but when I first heard about Carney being dead, I wondered about Tattoo Bob. Carney could have put Bob out of business by setting the public health people on him.”

  “But Bob passed the inspection.”

  “I know he did, but I also know that Carney hadn’t given up. The week before he died, I heard him telling a man that Bob had given one of his customers AIDS. I know Bob keeps his needles clean, and Stan got that tattoo years ago. He got AIDS by being queer as a three-dollar bill.”

  That name sounded familiar. “Stan Upton? China Upton’s husband?”

  “No, her son. China kept the AIDS quiet, but I went to school with Stan and I knew he was that way. When I saw how he looked right before he died, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. Anyway, spreading that rumor could have put Bob out of business. Since he uses needles all the time, blood doesn’t scare him, and everybody knows that artists can be nervy.”

  I think Bob would have appreciated his reputation as a temperamental artist, even if he didn’t care for why J.B. was saying it. “Did Bob find out what Carney was telling people?”

  “Not that I know of. I was going to tell him, but Carney was killed before I got a chance.”

  “If Bob didn’t know, then he didn’t have a reason to kill Carney.”

  “I guess not,” J.B. said. “Then I hope you find whoever it was soon. We can’t have a murderer running around. I’ve got a family to take care of.”

  “Tammy and Dulcy are lucky to have you,” I said. “One other thing. Would you let the other dealers know that we’re not working for Mrs. Lamar? We really got the silent treatment today.”

  “Sorry about that. I’ll spread the word.” He looked at his watch. “I heard you tell your aunt that somebody was going to pick you up. Do you want me to keep you company until he shows up? This is a lonely place to be by yourself.”

  He was the most dangerous thing I’d seen, but I thought it would be rude to say so. Instead I said, “No, thanks. My cousin should be here any time now.”

  “Then I better be getting home. If there’s anything else I can help you with, you just ask.” He got back on his Harley. “You know, I thought you’d be more scared than you were.”

  “Are you kidding? I was petrified.”

  “It sure didn’t show. You acted like you were ready to take on every one of us.”

  “I think you’re trying to pull my leg, but I appreciate it anyway.”

  He kept the visor up as he drove away, and for some reason, the motorcycle’s engine didn’t sound nearly as loud as it had before.

  Chapter 29

  I’m sure the encounter with J.B. and his friends didn’t last nearly as long as it seemed to, but I was surprised that Augustus hadn’t shown up by the time it was all over. Thirty minutes later, I was beyond surprised and all the way into mad. Aunt Nora had said he was due any minute. Was this another case of his forgetting what he was supposed to do? I couldn’t help but picture him off toking somewhere while I fumed.

  A full forty-five minutes after I’d told J.B. my ride would be there any time, Richard pulled up in Aunt Maggie’s car.

  “Sorry to leave you waiting so long,” he said as I climbed in. “Aunt Nora called right after we got the car unloaded and said that Augustus hadn’t shown up yet so we might want to make other arrangements.”

  “I should have known not to count on Augustus,” I said as he drove out of the parking lot.

  “Aunt Nora said the same thing.”

  “Really?” It takes a lot to get Aunt Nora mad.

  “I hope you weren’t too bored.”

  “Actually, the first few minutes were quite exciting,” I said, and told him what happened.

  “Jesus, Laura. You must have been scared to death!”

  “I kept thinking of Mad Max, and wishing Mel Gibson would show up.”

  “I should never have left you alone! What kind of idiot am I? There’s a murderer on the loose, for God’s sake!”

  “It’s okay,” I said, reaching over to pat his leg. “I’m none the worse for the wear.”

  “You could have been. What if J.B. hadn’t believed you?”

  “He wouldn’t have hurt me. He just wanted to scare me.”

  “Still, from now on, we’re going to be more careful.”

  I was willing to go along with him there, but I was starting to wonder where it was we were going. “Richard, you do know the way back to Aunt Maggie’s, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do. Aunt Maggie said that as long as we were out, we should pick up something to eat. What would you say to some barbeque from Pigwick’s?”

  “I’d say, ‘Hello, handsome. Where have you been all my life?’ ”

  “I think I’m jealous.”

  “Don’t be. My relationships with barbeque platters never last long.” Then I had a thought. “Do you think Aunt Maggie would mind if we took a detour?”

  “The way she was diving into those boxes, I don’t think she’d even notice. There are boxes all over the basement, and she’s as happy as …”

  I could tell he was trying to come up with something to say without the Bard’s help. “As happy as a pig in slop?”

  “Exactly. What did you have in mind?”

  “I thought we could go visit Trey Norton and see how the investigation is going.”

  “Good idea, but we should call first and make sure Mark Pope isn’t there.”

  We found a pay phone, and I called and found out that Trey was on duty at the station and that he’d be glad for us to come visit.

  When I got back into the car, Richard said, “I think I detect a theme in our activities. Aunt Maggie is acting like a pig in slop while we’re on our way to get pork barbeque. And we’re stopping off to see a policeman. I trust you remember what some people call police officers.”

  “That’s awful!” I said, but I added, “You forgot about my encounter with a Harley hog.”

  We kept on for a while longer, but fortunately had pigs out of our systems before we got to the police station.

  Byerly’s police station is neither large nor fancy. There’s a front room with a couple of metal desks, some filing cabinets, a radio transmitter, and a photocopier. I knew from past visits that there were cells and storage space in the back. That’s all, but it’s usually enough to do the job.

  Trey was waiting for us inside with three cold Cokes. “I’m glad y’all stopped by. Have you found out anything about Carney Alexander’s murder?”

  “That’s what we were going to ask you,” I said as I sat down and gratefully took a swallow of my Coke. “Has Mark had any luck?”

  “Nope. Belva says she hasn’t either, but I don’t know that she’d tell Mark if she did find anything.”

  “What’s that about, anyway?” Richard asked.

  “Two of her brothers started acting up at the Mustang Club once and Mark arrested them. If it’d been me or Junior, we’d have just called their folks and got them to come get them, but you know Mark. Belva heard they were in jail, so she came down here to try to get Mark to drop the charges. She tried to sweet-talk him first, but he didn’t catch on. Then she got mad, and by the time Junior showed up, they were in the middle of a shouting match. Junior got it all cleared up and sent the boys home with Belva, but Belva still has a grudge against Mark. As for Mark, he thinks she shouldn’t be in law enforcement if she can’t keep her own family out of trouble. Their feuding has made this case real uncomfortable.”

  “I imagine it has. Trey, I know this is against the rules, but do you suppose Richard and I could take a look at your file?”

  I expected him to fuss a little, but he said, “I’ve got it right here.” That either meant that he and Ilene were getting along real well, or that Junior had told him how much money she had riding on the case.

  Richard read the file while I filled Trey in on what we’d fou
nd out. I left out the parts I’d promised not to tell, and downplayed the bits with J.B. and his biker friends, but I was careful to tell him all the information and guesses we’d come up with. I finished just as Richard closed the file.

  “What do you think?” I asked Trey.

  “It sounds like you’re on the right track, but Mark wouldn’t see it that way. As a matter of fact, he said he doesn’t want me talking to y’all any more than absolutely necessary.”

  I’d been afraid of that. “Do you think you could convince him to check out the people at the flea market without mentioning me and Richard?”

  “I’ll try, but this is the first time Mark’s handled a big case without Junior around, and he’s bound and determined to do it his own way. He doesn’t always like the way she handles things.”

  “Junior is a terrific police chief,” I said.

  “You won’t get any argument from me, but Mark thinks he should be police chief instead of her because he’s worked here longer. So he’s not likely to listen to anybody, especially not y’all.”

  “Rats,” I said. I liked the idea of solving the case and rubbing Mark’s nose in it, but I liked the idea of catching the killer quickly even more. “Do what you can, and we’ll let you know if we get anything else.”

  As Richard and I got up to leave, Trey said, “Have you heard anything from Ilene?”

  “Not directly, but I hear that the tour is going well.”

  “She’s still supposed to be home this week, isn’t she?”

  “I’m sure you’d find out about any changes in plans before I would.”

  He grinned. “I guess I would. Y’all be careful now.”

  I drove the next leg of the trip so Richard could tell me what he’d found out from the police files. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to tell.

  “The medical examiner’s report verified what Aunt Maggie told us,” Richard said. “They know Carney was killed Sunday because of the contents of his stomach. He had multiple wounds, but was killed by a stab in the back.” He grimaced. “The photos were quite explicit.”

  “Poor Richard.”

  “Dr. Connelly thinks there was only one attacker, despite Belva’s gang theory.”

  “That’s not necessarily a flaw in the theory,” I had to admit. “One member of the gang could have actually done the stabbing. If there’d been a gang, that is.”

  “There were no useful fingerprints on the knife, in Carney’s booth, or in his van. Nobody saw the attack, and nobody saw the murderer abandon the van. Though Carney was not well-liked, Mark hasn’t discovered any likely motives for murder.”

  “He’s got none, and we’ve got more than we can handle.”

  “That’s about it.”

  “Really? I expected more.”

  “There were notes from his interviews of people at the flea market, including Aunt Maggie, but nothing we didn’t already know. And I got Carney’s address and his sister’s name.”

  “Maybe we should go see her. I can’t think of anything better to do. Aunt Maggie’s got to be wondering why she asked us to help.”

  “Cut that out! We’ve only been on the job since the night before last, and we’ve learned quite a bit, especially considering how little sleep we’ve had.”

  “I guess,” I said, not convinced.

  “This is our vacation, after all. I think that tonight we should remember that—and forget about Carney Alexander.”

  So that’s what we did. We got our barbeque and, despite how wonderful it smelled, got it back to Aunt Maggie’s before digging in. Then Richard and I watched TV and read while Aunt Maggie looked at her new acquisitions. We did offer to help, but she said she could work faster alone.

  At ten or so, I went to tell her we were going to bed.

  “See you in the morning,” she said, paying more attention to the bowl in her hand than to me.

  “Late in the morning,” I amended.

  “Not too late,” she said. “The thrift store opens at ten.”

  “What thrift store?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? I like to get to the thrift store first thing Monday morning. They stock the shelves Sunday night.”

  “Do you need us to go?” I asked plaintively.

  “I see other dealers there sometimes.”

  I sighed. “Okay, count us in.”

  “Good.” She turned back to the bowl. “It’ll be nice to have company.”

  I stared at her. Had I heard that right? Or was I more tired than I thought? I trudged upstairs and broke the news to Richard.

  “Ten o’clock isn’t so bad,” he said philosophically. “If we go to bed right now, we should get nine hours of sleep.”

  “Of course, that assumes that we’ll be going right to sleep,” I pointed out.

  “Eight hours of sleep will be more than enough,” he said with a big smile.

  Chapter 30

  Aunt Maggie is usually a slow, careful driver, but not that Monday morning. After staying up into the wee hours going through boxes, she’d slept late, and then Richard and I hadn’t moved fast enough to suit her, so she was trying to make up for lost time. She went way over the speed limit, pushed through two yellow lights, and went through a four-way stop two cars ahead of her turn. I was still half-asleep when I got into the car, but I was wide awake when we made it to the thrift store.

  Aunt Maggie swerved into a parking place by the front door, and even though hers was the only car in the parking lot, she hopped out and said, “Come on! They’re already open.”

  Richard and I had to run to keep from being left behind, then bumped into her when she stopped just inside the door. “Good morning, Davy,” she said to the man at the register. “What have you got for me today?”

  “Morning, Miz Burnette.” Davy scratched his chin, which looked like it had three or four days’ worth of beard on it, and turned to look at the shelves. I wondered how he could pick out the new merchandise from the old. It all looked old to me.

  The front of the store was filled with furniture: sagging couches, wooden end tables, partial bedroom sets, and a couple of fifties-style dinette sets. Behind that were mismatched racks of mismatched clothing and bins filled with shoes and battered pocketbooks. Then came stuffed animals and board games, and a motley assortment of dolls ranging from clowns with porcelain heads to naked Barbies with their hair teased in all directions. Next were appliances: toaster ovens and can openers colored harvest gold and turquoise and other colors nobody uses in kitchens anymore.

  Near the center were racks and shelves of dishes, glasses, vases, and other breakables. Along the right wall were books in boxes, on shelves, and in stacks on the floor.

  The last third of the store held everything else: two lawn mowers, framed pictures of sad clowns and dogs playing poker, an exercise bike, a stack of needlepoint kits still sealed in plastic, a case of eight-inch floppy disks, a pink manual typewriter, and boxes of chartreuse mini-blinds.

  Davy said, “There’s some big bowls like those you got before, and we got a good load of paperbacks. Some of them look like they’ve never even been read.”

  “Thanks, Davy.” She paused, and I guessed that she was trying to decide where to start. “Richard, you sold a lot of books this weekend, so you know what kind I need. See if you can find any good ones. Laurie Anne, you get a cart and come with me.” She went on, not waiting to see if we obeyed.

  The shopping cart was rusted and marked with the name of a grocery store that had closed at least four years before. By the time I wrestled it free of the line by the door and caught up with Aunt Maggie, she already had two mixing bowls in one hand and was inspecting a third. She put all three into the cart.

  “Those two with the brown stripes are McCoy,” she said. “I bet I can get fifteen dollars apiece for them.”

  I looked at the price tags. They were marked two dollars each. “That’s twenty-six dollars profit,” I said in awe.

  “Any idea how much that one with the apple on it is worth?�
�

  I didn’t have a clue, but I turned it over to look at the bottom like I knew what I was doing. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything on the bottom. “Twenty-five dollars?” I finally guessed.

  “Multiply that by four. I think it’s a piece from Watt Pottery.”

  “A hundred dollars?” I looked at it more closely, but it still just looked like an old bowl. “How come it’s worth so much?”

  “Because there’s people who’ll pay that much. That’s the only reason I know.” She turned back to the shelves and slowly worked her way down them. Occasionally she’d pick up a glass or a dish and look at it, and about a third of the time she’d add it to the growing pile in the cart.

  I pushed the cart behind her, trying to guess which pieces she’d take. I didn’t do too well. In fact, it seemed like anything I thought was worthwhile was junk, and vice versa. I told myself I wasn’t asking questions because I didn’t want to disturb her, but in fact, I didn’t want to demonstrate how ignorant I was. When she picked up a cheap-looking ceramic bird with its head pointed up and its beak wide open, I had to say something. “Why on earth would somebody want that?”

  “Don’t you know what it is?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s a pie bird.”

  “Looks more like a canary.”

  “It may be a canary, but it’s also a pie bird.” She stuck her finger down the bird’s mouth, and it came out the bottom. “You see the hole? You put this in the middle of a pie to release pressure on the crust so the filling won’t overflow while it’s baking. It’d come in handy, if I ever baked.”

  “I’m hopeless, Aunt Maggie,” I said. “If I ever tried to make a living at this, I’d starve to death.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said with a grin. “You’ve got to remember that I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’m old enough to remember when you could buy Watt bowls in the store and when people used pie birds.” She kept looking as she talked. “I’ve made plenty of mistakes. Most of the time I don’t know what it was I should have bought, or what I sold for less than it was worth, but there was that one time.” She stopped, and I wasn’t sure if it was so she could look more carefully at a dish or because she was stalling. “Once I bought a box at an auction, and inside was this vase, I guess you’d call it. It was a pitiful-looking thing. Red-brown clay with splotches of paint, and I don’t think it would have held water, but I stuck a quarter price tag on it and put it on the table. There it sat for six months.”