The Homicide Report: A Nell Matthews Mystery (InterMix)

by JoAnna Carl

  As I went into my room, I punched the Messages button.

  “Nell? Miss Matthews?” The lisping voice was hesitant. I didn’t recognize it. “I’m calling on behalf of Rocky Rutledge. He went to a picnic out at Panorama Park, and he’s run into a problem.” A little throat clearing interrupted the message. “His car won’t start—and it seems he’s not alone. He’s eager not to embarrass the, ahem, person he’s with. They’re at the Westside picnic area. He said he was sure you’d take care of the situation.”

  I stared at the gadget. “What the heck?” I said. The answering machine clicked off. I punched Save, then clicked it on again. It said the same thing the second time through. The lisping voice still didn’t identify the speaker. But there was something familiar about it.

  I called down the stairs. “Mike! Come listen to this.”

  Mike trotted upstairs and listened, frowning. “You’re not going to a place as lonely as Panorama Park just two days after some guy in a stolen Cadillac tries to hijack you.”

  “It doesn’t seem as if it would be a smart idea,” I said. “But what if Rocky really is stuck somewhere? I can’t refuse to help him out.”

  Mike knew how much Rocky had done for me in the past. He was a friend.

  “We’ll call a patrol car,” Mike said.

  “No!” I gulped. “Rocky hasn’t been seeing anybody but Jamie for months now. I assumed he was planning to move Jamie in as soon as he gets Brenda, Martha, and me out. But—”

  Mike grinned. “You’re afraid he really is with someone he can’t afford to get caught with.”

  “Rocky’s been well out of the closet for years. But his pal may not be.”

  Mike leaned over conspiratorially. “Who do you think it is? The mayor? Or Chief Jameson?”

  I whispered back. “It’s probably Harley Duke.” Harley Duke is a city councilman neither Mike nor I like. “Or the worst-case scenario—Sarah Larkin!” Sarah Larkin, Ph.D., is the president of Grantham State and is widely supposed to be a lesbian.

  “My God!” Mike said. “If Sarah got caught out with a man—”

  “The heavens might fall,” I said. “Maybe we’d better rescue Rocky and his pal.”

  “Or send a rescue party.”

  I called Rocky’s friend Jamie, but he didn’t know where Rocky was. Mike and I argued back and forth before we agreed on a plan. I picked up my clothes for the office the next day. Then we went by the store and bought a couple of pounds of hamburger and some spaghetti sauce. Mike dropped me, the clothes, and the groceries off at his house. He and Jim Hammond conferred briefly in the front yard. Jim left.

  Then Mike headed for Panorama Park, on a mission to rescue Rocky. In case he did need rescuing.

  I was sure Mike could use tact and diplomacy to handle Rocky and any companion he might have, so I didn’t feel I was letting Rocky down. And I may be liberated, but Mike was absolutely right. It would have been totally stupid to go to a lonely spot like Panorama Park only two days after the guy in the Cadillac almost managed to run me off the road. We didn’t know who had been driving the Cadillac, but the person who tossed Arnie’s apartment seemed to have been driving the same car.

  I guess I’m as brave as the next person, but as I began to brown hamburger, I allowed myself a smug thought or two. “I hope I’m not dumb enough to be lured to the wilds of suburban Grantham by an anonymous phone call,” I told myself.

  Arnie interrupted my self-congratulations by popping his head into the kitchen. “Can I help?”

  “Sit down and entertain me,” I said. “This is going to be a simple supper.”

  “I could set the table.”

  “Fine.”

  He went to the proper drawer and got out the silverware. I was almost jealous. He’d been there long enough to find things in the kitchen, and I hadn’t known Mike was hiding him out. But I pushed the feeling aside. Now, at last, we were alone. This was my opportunity to tell Arnie the real reason I’d always believed he was the one I’d heard my mother talking to the night before she died. If I had the courage.

  I got out a piece of waxed paper and started chopping onions. I cut the onion into thick slices, then held each slice in my left hand, using the knife in my right and cutting against my thumb to turn each slice into a bunch of little pie-shaped pieces. Because of the natural rings of an onion, the wedges fall apart, and you come out with chopped onions.

  Arnie laughed. “You chop onions just like your mother did,” he said. “I never understood why she wouldn’t use a chopping board.”

  “That’s the way Grandmother taught me to do it,” I said. “If you’re chopping just one onion or one carrot, Grandmother never thought it was worth getting the chopping board dirty. Aunt Billie does the same thing. It works fine as long as nobody sharpens your knife while you have your back turned. I guess Grandmother taught all of us to cut up vegetables.”

  “Is your grandmother gone now, Nell?”

  “She died five years ago.” He started to ask another question, but I went on. “But before we get into reminiscence, I’ve got to tell you something—now, while Mike’s gone.”

  “What?”

  I had to gulp and clear my throat, but I think it was the onion that made my eyes smart. “About that phone call—the one that made the eight-year-old me think you were talking to my mother. There was a reason I thought so—another reason. Besides the ones you and Mike figured out.”

  Arnie sat down at the kitchen table and lit a cigarette. I washed onions off my hands and cleared my throat a few more times. We both seemed to dread going on.

  Finally, Arnie took a deep drag and looked at me. “Well, it’s not going to get any easier,” he said. “Spit it out.”

  “Small,” I said.

  He looked blank.

  “When I was little, I remember you always used the word ‘small’ to mean the superlative of any word. Everybody has their little pet expressions, and that was one of yours. I can remember hearing you tell my mother that a special section the Amity paper had run was ‘small hard’ to put together. When you assembled my new bicycle on my seventh birthday, with me hanging over your shoulder every minute. I remember that you said the directions were no help at all. ‘They made the job small confusing.’ You used it that way.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Arnie said. “When I was growing up in Wichita, there was a time when all the kids used the word that way. I don’t know if it was a strictly Wichita thing or if it was nationwide—like kids a few years ago using ‘bad’ to mean ‘good.’ I guess I hung on to it. But some time back I quit using it so much.”

  I nodded. “It’s a distinctive expression—or I think of it that way. I don’t think anybody in Jessamine said it.”

  “Probably not.”

  “But when I picked up the upstairs extension and heard my mother talking to someone, that someone had used the word ‘small.’ ”

  Arnie frowned.

  “The guy said something that ended with ‘—small disastrous.’ Then Mother cut him off and said, ‘Nell! Did you pick up the phone?’ And I began to whine about talking to my daddy. Then she came upstairs and took the phone away from me, and she talked into it. She said she’d see the guy the next day. And then she hung up.”

  “And scolded you.”

  “No. I expected her to, but she didn’t. She put me back to bed and sang me a song.”

  I gave up and ripped down one of Mike’s paper towels to mop my eyes. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s still not one of my happier memories.”

  Arnie took a drag from his cigarette. “Have you told Mike about this? Jim Hammond?”

  I shook my head. “I wanted to hear your—” I quit talking with the word “explanation” unsaid. “I wanted to tell you first.”

  I stared at Arnie as he sat smoking. When he finally spoke, he said, “Your hamburger’s trying to burn.” Then he got up and walked into the living room.

  His reaction infuriated me. How could he simply turn his back on me after I’d fina
lly spilled the big secret? I gnashed my teeth, took the skillet full of crumbled hamburger off the fire, and followed him into the living room.

  “What is the deal?” I said. “Don’t you believe me?”

  “Yes, Nell. I believed you twenty years ago. You were a truthful child. I believe you heard exactly what you say you heard.” Then he raised his right hand to shoulder height. “But I swear, I was not the person your mother was talking to I don’t have any explanation for the use of the word small.’ ”

  “Was there any other person who might have used it in Jessamine? Anybody from Wichita?”

  “None that I recall. I’m wracking my brain.”

  I left him to wrack it by himself and went back to the dinner. I had drained the fat from the hamburger and thrown in a can of mushrooms and the onions when Arnie came to the kitchen door and leaned against the door frame. He spoke casually.

  “Do you think I killed her?”

  I looked at him. The easy answer would be no. But old blunt Nell—I never come up with the easy answer.

  “I don’t want to think you did,” I said.

  He laughed humorlessly. “But you’re afraid I’m guilty,” he said.

  “No!” I angrily stirred my cooking, then turned around. “I don’t know you all that well,” I said apologetically.

  “I know. I’m sorry.” Arnie’s eyes were wet by then. “Are you going to tell Jim Hammond about the word ‘small’?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to make things harder for you. But if I don’t tell it, and they fail to turn up the one guy from Wichita who passed through western Michigan that year—and it turns out somebody you knew in high school came up there and killed her—”

  Arnie nodded. “I know. It’s not easy.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I’m not real happy about the prospect of prison—or death by injection. But I don’t want you to lie, either.” He took a deep breath. “I guess I want you to believe me, but I can’t tell you one reason that you should. You’d better tell Hammond.”

  He patted my hand, turned silently, and went back into the living room.

  I finished up the casserole and put it in the oven before I joined him. I sat on the floor, facing him across the coffee table. “We could play some Dirty Eight,” I said.

  Arnie chuckled, but the sound didn’t quite sound sincere. He pulled his cards out of his pocket and shuffled them on the coffee table.

  “Listen, Arnie. If you think it would be smarter to run—”

  “No! I ran away twenty years ago and let you down. I told myself it was the best thing for you. But this time—if someone’s out to kill you—and it’s linked to your mother’s death in some way—”

  The telephone cut off his speech. I got it.

  “Ms. Nell Matthews?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Speedy Florist. We have a delivery for you. Will you be at that address for a few minutes?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll bring it right out.”

  I went back to the Dirty Eight game. “Who’s sending me flowers?”

  “Mike?”

  “Mike’s good at sentimental gestures, but they usually involve food. He sends candy or takes me out to dinner.”

  We played two hands of Dirty Eight before I heard the sound of a van in the street outside. I got to my feet. “You hide,” I said. “Remember, nobody is supposed to know you’re here.”

  Arnie nodded. “Sure. They’ll think you’re sitting here smoking and playing a two-handed card game all by yourself.” But he stood up and pulled a dollar out of his pocket. “Here. In case you want to tip.” Then he went into the kitchen.

  I got to the door before the bell rang, so I was facing the delivery driver when the door swung open. Again, I had to push the storm door open, forcing a tall, skinny kid to step backward. I stepped onto the porch.

  That’s when all hell broke loose.

  A motor gunned, then brakes squealed. I looked up, and the tall, skinny florist’s kid turned around at the sound. We both stared at the heavy dark blue van that was skidding to a stop at the curb, the two of us standing there motionless. Then we began to jump and dodge around.

  If we hadn’t jumped, we would have made perfect targets for the guy in the ski mask as he leaned out the driver’s-side window and fired a large silver-colored pistol at us.

  Chapter 21

  I roared and shoved the kid, and he dropped a dozen red roses in a green glass vase. The vase hit the concrete porch and shattered like a bomb at the same moment the safety glass in the storm door developed a hole the size of my head and became checkered all over, like a street map of a medieval city.

  I grabbed the kid and yanked him into the living room. Then we got all tangled up trying to slam the inside, wooden door. Arnie ran in from the kitchen with cries of “I heard a shot!” and “Get out of the way!”

  Two more shots rang out, but we were all jumping back and forth so much that the gunman would have had to be Wyatt Earp to hit any of us. Arnie was yanking my arm, and I was yanking the kid’s, and the kid was yanking both of us this way and that.

  Escaping from a gunman is an awkward business, but we got the door slammed shut without anybody getting a wound worse than a sprained elbow, and I turned the key in the dead bolt. A dead bolt is so much help in deflecting bullets.

  Then I heard the squealing of tires, and I deduced that the van was taking off.

  “Call 911!” My voice was shrill.

  “Get down on the floor!” That was Arnie.

  “It’s a drive-by!” That was the kid.

  We’d barely gotten the words out when we heard sirens.

  “Guess that’s our guard,” Arnie said. “Where was he when we needed him?”

  I ran to the living room window, dropped to my knees, stuck my head between the draperies, and peeked out over the sill. A GPD patrol car sped by, and I belatedly realized that Mike and Jim Hammond wouldn’t have left Arnie and me alone.

  Somebody had been keeping an eye on us. They didn’t want to arrest Arnie, maybe out of kindness to me, but they didn’t want him taking off, either. Since they wouldn’t have expected me to lie down in the driveway to keep him from driving his car out of the garage, they’d stationed a patrol car down the block.

  The tall, skinny kid called in to tell Speedy Florist that he’d have to stick around for a while. Arnie lit a cigarette with a trembling hand and began to write something in a notebook he brought from his bedroom. I went to Mike’s computer, opened his word-processing program, and wrote out a brief statement of what had happened. I made a lot of typos. After I was through, Arnie took my place and typed out the statement he’d been making notes for.

  Arnie and I had reacted in the same way. Both of us had wanted to write out what had happened before we talked about it. Was it genetic? Or therapeutic? Or just because we’d both been crime reporters long enough that we knew the cops would want a statement and it would save time to have one ready? Did it prove that we were related? Wondering about this gave me something beside gunshots to mull over while we sat there, waiting.

  Ten minutes later, Mike and Jim Hammond arrived, almost simultaneously. Through the window I saw Jim come up the walk and stand with his hands on his hips, glaring at the mess on the porch. Mike came in through the garage, and I met him in the kitchen. He put his arms around me and held me so tightly I nearly fainted from lack of oxygen. Then he backed off and looked at me, shaking his head and grinning weakly.

  “Can’t I leave you alone for a minute?”

  I think I would have fallen into a dramatic fit if he hadn’t joked. As it was, I managed to stay calm—well, reasonably calm—until we’d all told Jim Hammond what happened, Arnie and I handed over our typed statements, and the tall, skinny kid was released to go back to work. He looked at us strangely as he left. He probably thought he’d fallen in with the mob.

  Somehow I wasn’t too surprised to learn that Mike had not found Rocky, wi
th or without a companion, in Panorama Park. The lisping message on my answering machine had obviously been a ploy to separate me from my boyfriend-bodyguard. If I had gone to Panorama Park, I was sure the gunman would have followed me there. Since the message lured Mike away, leaving me at his house, the killer had fallen back on the flower-delivery scheme, sure that I would be the one to answer the door.

  The scariest part may have been realizing that the killer had been watching us. He must have followed us from my house to Mike’s and must have known that I stayed there and Mike went out.

  I also wasn’t surprised to learn that the van and its masked driver had disappeared, even with a patrol car in hot pursuit. The patrol car had been facing the wrong way, of course, so it had to flip a U-turn before it could begin the chase. It would have been easy for the van driver to arrange that.

  The patrol car wasn’t there to stop killers from breaking in. It had been there to stop Arnie from taking off. The patrolman hadn’t been led to expect an attack.

  The patrolman had followed the van, siren blaring, but he hadn’t been able to catch up before it pulled up to a gas pump at a busy convenience store and service station three blocks away. A man had gotten out, carrying a small duffel bag and wearing a baggy raincoat and a knit cap—maybe the ski mask, rolled up—that covered his hair completely. He strode into the store, headed toward the rest rooms in a back hall, then disappeared. The assumption was that he’d yanked the hat and coat off, stuffed them into the duffel bag, and walked out the back door. He had probably had another vehicle stashed on the next street. Anyway, he was gone.

  And the van was empty of clues. And, naturally, it had been stolen from a used-car lot the night before.

  “Well,” I said, “the guy is developing a recognizable M.O. He steals a car from a used-car lot, then abandons it.”

  “There are a couple of other things I’ve noticed,” Mike said. “He acts quickly. We’re not talking about an introspective person who sulks before he does something. He comes up with a plan and carries it out. Maybe too quickly, since he hasn’t managed to kill you yet.