Bentley Dadmun - Harry Neal and Cat 09 - Dead Dead Dead, the Little Girl Said

by Bentley Dadmun

  Bentley Dadmun - Harry Neal and Cat 09 - Dead Dead Dead, the Little Girl Said

  Harry Neal and Cat Mysteries [1]

  Bentley Dadmun

  Bentley Dadmun (2010)

  * * *

  Tags: Mystery: Thriller - Old Man and Cat - New Hampshire

  Mystery: Thriller - Old Man and Cat - New Hampshirettt

  Harry and Cat are steady customers at Gretchen’s Kitchen, a shabby, pleasant restaurant where Cat can warm her scarred body by the woodstove and Harry can slump in a booth, drink Gretchen’s $4 a gallon wine, and contemplate the folly of his declining years. They’re existential drifters, content to let life take the line of least resistance.

  So when Gretchen asks Harry to do her a favor and help her dying friend, Eva, he at first declines. But he’s cursed with an overactive curiosity, and he visits Eva to see what there is to see. He learns that Eva’s husband, Frank, was found dead of a heart attack ten years ago, but she’s sure that’s not what happened as Frank was a very healthy fellow.

  Enticed by Eva’s $5,000 reward offer, Harry and Cat team up with her granddaughter, Priscilla Matson, a diminutive bodybuilder with a nine pound mouth and an aversion to cats.

  They travel central New Hampshire seeking answers. They learn that another man went missing around the same time as Frank’s death and suspect a connection. Harry bribes a policewoman, robs a funeral home, and makes an error in judgment that has horrific consequences.

  They carry on, getting ever closer to the truth until finally, in a subterranean hell, they find it in a soul-ripping encounter with horror and death.

  COPYRIGHT

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part (beyond that copying permitted by U.S. Copyright Law, Section 107, “fair use” in teaching or research, Section 108, certain library copying, or in published media by reviewers in limited excerpts), without written permission from the publisher.

  DEAD DEAD DEAD,

  THE LITTLE GIRL SAID

  A Harry Neal and Cat Mystery

  by

  BENTLEY DADMUN

  … . .

  WITH THE GIZMO I ROBBED FROM Mrs. Graylor crammed in the bike’s trailer with Cat, I coasted into the common, pedaled halfway around Main Street, and stopped in front of Kreb’s Hardware. I locked the bike to a parking meter, then zipped open the door to the trailer and looked in on Cat. She was dozing on top of a piece of my ex-wife’s beloved quilt so I let her be and went into Kreb’s.

  Before I opted out of my previous life I was a professor at the college, and Alice, Don Kreb’ s daughter, was a student of mine. She was a poor student, preferring boys and parties to books and studying, and had to take my Early American History course twice. I flunked her twice and she dropped out in the second semester of her Sophomore year. Don, who obviously thought his daughter’s failing was due to my pernicious nature hasn’t talked to me since. It used to bother me until Gretchen pointed out that Don doesn’t talk to half the town due to innumerable slights both real and imagined, and if it weren’t for the rest of the Kreb clan the store would have folded long ago.

  I prowled the aisles for a few minutes and headed back outside. As I left, Alice smiled and waved from behind the checkout counter.

  Between the Village Deli and Bristol Books is an alley, and at the dirty end of the alley is a door recessed in grimy brick. The door is an odd green with an undercoat of something that appears to be growing. The current handle, which dangles below two deadbolts, is a leather strip screwed to the door with at least eight sheetrock screws. Above the door is a two by six with Gretchen’s Kitchen hand printed on it in shaky black letters.

  Gretchen and her kitchen are a pretty even match. They’re warm, crusty, and always ready to serve up a hot meal, a cup of damn good coffee, or a mug of cheap wine. She grinds her own hamburger from high grade sirloin and her soups could be served on a plate. Near the back squats a woodstove, a big old bastard that creaks and pops, exhales wisps of birch scented smoke, and has a lavish appetite for five pound chunks of hardwood.

  I grabbed the leather strip and pulled. The door fought back, but I prevailed and charged through before it could slam shut and do damage to the bike or trailer. I leaned the bike against the back wall, removed Cat and the gizmo from the trailer, and headed for the rear booth. Cat waved her bad paw in the air, meowed piteously, and smacked my nose. This is her way of informing me she would really prefer the counter where she can scrounge for a few licks of sugar laced black coffee, which ranks right up there with tuna when snack time rolls around.

  But I prefer a booth where I can stretch out, sip wine, and avoid lengthy conversations with retired clerks and plumbers turned philosophers. Cat, taking in the intoxicating odors of frying meat and fresh ground coffee, meowed again and pushed her good paw against my chin, but it was a futile gesture, for I too was on the hunt.

  Several of the stools were occupied with people taking advantage of Gretchen’s buckabowl soup of the day. In the front booth an old couple dressed in black shared a bowl of that soup while fondling each other with warm smiles. I slid into the rump polished seat of the last booth, and after getting Cat settled next to the napkin holder, positioned Mrs. Graylor’s machine, pristine in its red white and blue box, in the center of the table.

  Gretchen and her granddaughter were behind the counter, which meant the kid worked while Gretchen yakked with the stool sitters. She saw me and waved, and a few moments later slid into the opposite seat. Like me she turned sixty a few years ago, and also like me she usually dresses in second hand clothes purchased at local thrift stores. Her seamed face is framed by a mat of limp gray hair that always looks damp, and her eyes rarely meets yours but flit about the room like an anxious sparrow’s.

  She slid a frosted mug and a carafe of red wine across the table, put a cube of cooked beef on top of the box and said, “What are you doing with this thing? I thought you didn’t like television or videos or any such things.”

  I drank some wine, topped it off and drank again while trying to catch her eyes. “You’re right, most of it is insipid drivel produced by lampreys for consumption by the Obedient Herd, but I heard your biography is now out with Daisy Duck playing the lead, so I rushed out and bought the thing.”

  Gretchen grunted and shook her head. “Daisy Duck my aching butt, it’d have to be Meryl Streep, only she has my depth and beauty.”

  Cat limped across the table, lifted her good paw and snagged the piece of beef and pulled it off the box. While purring loudly, she bite into the meat and shook it a few times. Then, with the meat hanging out of her mouth she limped over to Gretchen and mumbled, “Urr?” Gretchen tweaked her ear, picked her up, and gently put her on the floor. She limped over to the stove, flopped down and toyed with her kill while soaking up heat from the stove.

  Gretchen leaned forward and tapped the box with a skeletal finger. “Seems to me that two or three weeks ago I told you I’d kinda like one of these things. And now here one sits, trying to talk at me.”

  I drank a bit more wine and nodded. “I found Hazel Graylor’s poodle for her. It took me three days and it slept with us last night. It snored and made Cat nervous. Graylor’s ad mentioned a three hundred and fifty dollar reward but when I asked for it she claimed poverty. So after a few gentle threats I departed with her almost new machine. I stopped at Kreb’s Hardware and they have one just like it for a hundred and ninety-eight ninety-eight. It plays Blu-Ray, whatever the hell that is, standard DVDs, and records programs on discs or a flash d
rive, whatever the hell that is. It’s a top of the line model, which according to the blather on the box means that it has all kinds of digital geegaa’s and gee-whiz accessories. Since you are who you are I’ll let you have it for a hundred and fifty even.”

  She fished a cigarette out of her pocket and torched the tip with a three inch flame from a hissing butane lighter. She inhaled deeply, coughed several times and muttered, “You robbed an old lady?”

  “That old lady is no lady. She had about four thousand dollars worth of electronics in her living room and her TV covered half a wall. If I’d had the gall to rifle her purse I probably would have found a king’s ransom.”

  She stared at me a moment and shook her head. “Jesus, Harry, what are you gonna do next? Hang out in the alley and rob my customers as they shuffle down for a bowl of soup?”

  “At least I’d save them from acute intestinal distress.”

  “Says you, it just so happens I haven’t poisoned anybody in over a week. So listen, you got anything else lined up? Any more lost pets out there?”

  “None that I’m aware of. I guess I’ll have to go back to Hannaford and bag groceries for a while. I’ve applied for Social Security but the damn thing hasn’t come through yet. The college is advertising for janitors but I can’t quite bring myself to apply.”

  She snorted and favored me with a malicious grin. “Why the hell not? You walked away from them people when you were a genuine tenured professor. Now you could go back and clean their toilets for them, it’d keep you humble.” She reached over, grabbed my mug and downed the wine. She burped quietly and suddenly locked eyes with me. “You ever hear of Eva Jankey? Lives out on River Road and used to come in here all the time until maybe four, five months ago.”

  “No, I don’t believe I know her, she a friend?”

  “Yes she is, a good one, and she’s in trouble. She’s got the cancer, a lot of it. Her sister Ona is up from Manchester taking care of her and I think a granddaughter is with her also. Anyways, she’s the one that’s got that ad in The Gazette.” Again she locked eyes with me. When I didn’t respond, she said, “You ever see it? It’s always on the back page, been there every week for almost ten years now. You were a history teacher and ten years makes it history… sort of.”

  “I only read the lost and found and the comics. The adventures of the garden club are less than interesting and those back page pleas for help depress me. Now what about the gizmo? You interested or shall I barter with your customers?”

  “Harry, Eva is a dear friend of mine and she’s most likely on the way out. And she needs help right now. You ain’t doing anything of note that I can see and I’d appreciate it if you’d go out and talk with her about the problem. Hell, you might even get her what she wants, but even if you don’t it’d give her some bit of comfort to know someone is doing something and she might die a little easier.

  “And with regard to this contraption you’re trying to pawn off on me for an unreasonable amount of money. I figure the damn thing is used, that poodle probably pissed on it a seventeen times, and it’s gonna stop working the day after tomorrow.” She slid out of the booth and went behind the counter. When she came back she put a copy of the Gazette and another half liter of wine in front of me and said, “I’ll take the thing off your hands for a hundred flat and you can have five orders of those stir fries you like so well.”

  “Like so well? Gretchen, a withered, nasty looking pile of weeds deep fried in animal fat doesn’t qualify as an order of stir fries.” She grinned, blew a stream of smoke in my face, and leaned forward. Her eyes locked onto mine and we went at it.

  … . .

  I POURED MORE WINE IN MY glass and settled back with the Gazette. Cat had consumed her kill and was stretched out in front of the stove, dozing, which she is very adept at. Gretchen was behind the counter reading the manual that came with her new toy and I had a hundred dollars in my pocket, along with a piece of paper that stated I was good for a thirty-five dollars worth of her food.

  No ads offered rewards for lost pets and nobody seemed to want an odd job man, so out of curiosity I turned to the last page to see if the ad Gretchen mentioned was there. It was, a small square of print bordered in black that read: Five thousand dollar reward for information on what really happened to Frank Jankey. Contact Eva Jankey on River Road. I do odd jobs, but this sounded a bit too odd. Gretchen’s friend or not, I had no desire to cope with a sick old woman with a compulsion, so I mentally shook my head and put the paper aside.

  I settled in the booth, drank cheap wine, and mulled about in preoccupied nonsense while sort of planning the evening. When the wine was gone I said goodbye to Gretchen, who was staring at the gizmo’s remote like it was a magic wand, put a limp, dozing Cat into the trailer and left.

  The weather was toughening up. The cold drizzle drifting down from the sky would be rain in a mile or two and I was going to get caught in it. I unzipped the trailer’s door and covered Cat with the quilt made by my ex-wife’s mother, The Bitch Who Blamed. After a little belly scratching I zipped up the plastic door and pushed the bike up to Main Street. I eased onto Main Street and played dodgeem with the traffic as I pedaled my way around the common.

  I coasted past my turnoff, turned onto Bridge Street, and pedaled across the bridge and took an immediate right onto the narrow unpaved road that followed the river. I bounced along for about a mile until I came upon a weathered board nailed to a tree. Barely legible in the rotting wood was a hand painted arrow and the word Jankey. The arrow pointed to an overgrown gravel drive that led up a brush clogged hill. Near the top, partially hidden by trees, was a house.

  Curiosity, for most of our species is a minimal distraction, for me it’s an opiate.

  I got off the bike and pushed it up the hill. Trees and brush grew right up to the house, giving the impression that it was sinking into the ground. The sagging wrap-around porch was cluttered with old bicycles, lawn furniture, and stuff I could only guess at. The house looked like it had never felt a coat of paint, and the clapboards were weathered a warm shade of gray and patched in several places with odd shaped pieces of plywood and sheets of tin. The roof was partially covered with blue tarps secured with plastic clothesline. Under a sagging leanto tacked onto the left side of the house was a ten or twelve year red Ford pickup, and backed into an island of brush was a beat up blue Dodge Maxi Van.

  I almost got back on the bike, but the rain was coming down hard, so I pushed it and the trailer up three stone steps and got close to the door, which had a brown paint job that looked like it had been slapped on with cheese cloth. I gave the door three knocks and waited a moment. As I lifted my hand to do it again, the door opened fast and a leathery old woman in jeans and a red teeshirt with, Not Here, Not Now, printed on it in bold black letters stared up at me. Her hair was cut ragged short and she wore a black baseball cap with a skull and crossbones sewn on the front. She looked me up and down, raised one white eyebrow and growled, “Whatever it is you need to go somewhere else with it.”

  I smiled and gave a little bob of my head. “I’m here in response to the ad in the Gazette.”

  She tilted her head back and stared at me for a time, then stepped out onto the porch and muttered, “Really.”

  “I understand the ad has been in the paper for almost a decade, so I assume not much is happening, but if you’ll answer a few questions I might be able to do something with it.”

  “You’d know about doing something like that?”

  “I’m not sure, but for five K I could probably be enticed to take a crack at it.” I tried another smile, held out my hand and said, “My name is Harry Neal.”

  That got me cold silence and another ten seconds worth of scrutiny. Finally she nodded, gave my hand a quick squeeze and stepped back into the house. “Come on in, Harry Neal, before the rain gives you a case of the galloping crud. I’m Ona Fuller.”

  “Would you mind if I leave my bike on the porch?”

  “You can, but the sea
t would get wet and your ass might rust. Bring it in the house and stick it next to the one that’s already there.”

  I pushed the bike and trailer through the door and followed her through a large living room crammed with last century’s furniture, down a dark hall, and into a kitchen that hit me with splashes of bright colors and polished wood. She pointed to a gray mountain bike leaning against the wall near the back door, then gestured at a round dining room table that filled the center of the kitchen. I put my bike next to the other one and sat down.

  Across from me, slumped in a cushioned chair on casters, was an emaciated hollow eyed replica of Ona. On the table in front of her sat a large glass ashtray and a can of Budweiser. Ona stood by the woman and said to her, “Eva, this here is Harry Neal. Harry, this is my sister, Eva Jankey.” She gently stroked Eva’s cheek. “He says he’s here about your ad in the Gazette.”

  Cat meowed and slapped feebly against the fabric of the trailer and meowed again. I got up, unzipped the door and nestled her in the crook of my arm. Eva stared at Cat a moment, raised her eyebrows and said softly, “Your cat looks like something the dog pulled out from under a rock. You want anything to drink?”

  “What are the odds on a glass of wine and seltzer?”

  She snorted, shook her head and looked at Ona. “Christ on a stick, we got another one.” Out of a bright yellow refrigerator Ona took a gallon jug of red wine, a liter of seltzer, and a can of Coor’s. From the floor above came a vaguely familiar thumping sound. I cocked my head and listened. After a moment I realized it was the same sound I used to hear in the neighborhood gym when I was a kid. It was the sound of determined fists hitting a heavy punching bag.

  Ona handed me a mug overflowing with wine and seltzer, sat next to Eva and popped the top of the Coor’s. The surface of the table in front of her was gouged and scared, as if someone had methodically hacked at it with a very dull knife.