The Tail of the Tip-Off

by Rita Mae Brown

The nonagenarian pointed at Cooper, the silver hound’s head of her cane gleaming in her right hand. “You think the deed was committed here, don’t you?”

  “Still a hunch, Aunt Tally, still a hunch.”

  “But I don’t understand why H.H. wouldn’t yell or slap his neck if he was stabbed.” Jim puzzled over the obvious stumbling block.

  “He didn’t feel it,” Big Mim replied.

  “Because the game distracted him?” Jim asked.

  Bill Langston, the new doctor, surprised the others when he spoke. He sat directly behind Aunt Tally. “It’s possible for a victim to not feel what pierced his skin—not at first anyway. A painkiller on the tip of a dart would deaden sensation. He would feel it later, whether ten minutes later or a half hour, that would depend on the type of painkiller and the amount injected, naturally. And curiously enough, some wounds aren’t as painful as others despite the damage. Cold can also blunt initial pain for seconds or even minutes. If he was attacked outside, the cold might have helped numb the puncture.”

  “Thank you—”

  “Bill Langston.” He smiled. “Hayden will get around to formally introducing me.”

  “We’re glad you’re here,” Cooper smoothly said.

  Now the assembled knew what she and Rick had known, there was a painkiller. She hoped this would prove useful and she knew that as she moved from row to row, person to person, Rick was observing everything. He had a tremendous feel for people.

  The tall blonde deputy stepped up to the next row. She smiled at Matthew and Sandy’s two sons.

  “It’d be so cool if we could solve this crime,” Matt, Jr., the elder, said.

  “Yeah,” Ted, a fifth-grader, affirmed.

  “That’s why we’re all here.” Cooper turned to Sandy and Matt. “Two rows back but close. Can you remember what you were doing those last, oh say, five minutes of the game?”

  Sandy laughed. “Matthew was handing out beers when he wasn’t cheering.”

  “That’s why I had the beers. Our throats were raw.” He genially put his arm around his wife’s shoulder.

  “Susan?”

  “Oh, I remember being on my feet most of the time. I’d no sooner sit down than I’d jump up again. And noisemakers. We all had noisemakers.”

  “Kazoos?”

  Ned answered Cooper. “Kazoos. Little tin horns. A big cowbell and, uh, you know, those things you blow at New Year’s parties.”

  “They furl and unfurl,” Brooks added.

  “We make a lot of noise in this row.” Matthew pulled a kazoo out of his pocket.

  “Who had the cowbell?”

  Matt, Jr., called out, “I did.”

  “Where is it tonight?”

  “I forgot it,” he sheepishly answered Cooper.

  “Yeah,” Ted said, “because we were late and Mom was on our tails.”

  “How big is the cowbell?”

  Matt, Jr., held his two hands about ten inches apart. “Big Bessie.”

  “I guess.” Cooper laughed, then she stepped up to the third row behind H.H.’s seat. “BoomBoom, what do you remember?”

  “What a great game it was. The noise was deafening.”

  “Nothing unusual?”

  “No.”

  “Blair?”

  The handsome model, his eyes a warm chocolate, thought, then shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “Did you have a noisemaker?”

  “No.”

  “What about a pennant or one of those foam rubber fingers that says Number One?”

  “No. The less I have to carry, the better.”

  “Little Mim?”

  “Well, I confess, I do have a noisemaker.” She reached into her purse, pulling out one of the New Year’s type. She handed it to Cooper.

  “This seems a bit sturdier than the party variety.”

  “I bought it down at Mincer’s.” She mentioned a university institution on the corner across from the University of Virginia. “As you can see, blue and orange. Lasts about a season before it finally dies.”

  Cooper handed it back, glancing at Tazio.

  “Like Dr. Langston, I’m just sitting in.”

  “Unlike Dr. Langston, you knew H.H. Can you think of any reason why anyone would want to kill him?”

  “Anyone in the world or anyone in this group?” This response from Tazio made everyone sit up straight.

  “Keep it small. This group.”

  “No.”

  Cooper called up to Fred. “Any ideas?”

  “No,” he called back.

  “You can come closer, Fred.”

  “No, I want to sit where I sat. Where I was the night of the murder.”

  “All right then.” Cooper stepped down the tiers back to Rick. “You all knew H.H. Would it be possible for him to be involved in a theft ring here at U-Hall, at the Clam?”

  This also got their attention.

  “What do you mean?” Matthew kept putting his index finger over the mouth of the kazoo.

  “We are investigating a theft ring.” She held up her hand as though quieting them even though they were quiet. “It hasn’t been made public. Is it possible that H.H. was part of this?”

  “Stealing what?” Aunt Tally sensibly asked.

  “Sports equipment,” Cooper answered.

  “H.H. died for sports equipment?” Matthew was incredulous.

  “You think he could have been part of it?” Cooper homed in.

  “I didn’t say that,” Matthew, red-faced, instantly replied. “No. H.H. wasn’t that kind of man.”

  “Wasn’t that kind of man or believed, ‘Never steal anything small’?” Tracy called out from the middle of the basketball floor.

  “Not that kind of man.” Matthew spoke with conviction.

  “Of course, you were watching the players, Tracy, but what about after the game as people filed out? Where were you?”

  “In front of the timekeeper’s desk. Both Josef and I. Then we went back to our lockers.”

  “Did you happen to notice H.H. at all?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Does anyone here think H.H. could have been part of something dishonest?”

  No one said anything.

  “Is there anything anyone wants to say?”

  An embarrassed silence followed, at last punctured by Aunt Tally who figured at her age she could say anything she wanted to, but then she always had, even when she was twenty. “The affair.”

  “Yes.”

  “H.H. strayed off the reservation.” Aunt Tally used the old expression for a wandering husband or wife.

  “If he was that careful about hiding an affair, don’t you think he could hide criminal activity?” Cooper persisted.

  “It’s not the same thing.” Matthew chose his words with deliberation. After all, he was sitting next to his wife and two sons. “Many men put sex in a category. You know what I mean.”

  “Compartmentalize,” Tazio called down to him.

  “Thanks. That’s the word I’m looking for. They compartmentalize, so sexual behavior isn’t a reflection of how they might behave in a business context.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Believe it? I see it every day,” Matthew said.

  “He’s right.” Fair agreed since he himself had thought like that and it cost him his marriage.

  “And women don’t?” Cooper prodded.

  “We can but usually we don’t.” BoomBoom’s voice, a mellow alto, seemed to fill the vast space.

  “So the woman or women with whom he was having the affair did not compartmentalize.”

  “Well, Cooper, how would we know?” Harry innocently asked.

  “Would you boys like to leave?”

  “No!” both Matt and Ted shouted.

  Cooper looked apologetically at Matthew and Sandy. “I forgot about their ages.”

  “Oh hell, Coop, this stuff is on television every night.” Matthew shrugged.

  “Yes, but they don’t know the people on tele
vision,” Sandy perceptively added.

  “Sandy, do you want to go outside with the boys?”

  “We’ve gone this far. I mean, as long as we don’t get into physical detail.”

  Cooper shook her head. “No. Would the affair be reason enough in your minds? You’ve all said you can’t think of another reason why H.H. would be killed. You can’t think of anyone with a motive.”

  “I’m surprised there are as many men alive as there are.” Aunt Tally, as usual, scored a bull’s-eye.

  Another uncomfortable silence followed since no one wanted to state the connection between Anne and the possible motive.

  “You all are awfully quiet.”

  Little Mim said what everyone was thinking. “We all adore Anne.”

  “I can understand,” Cooper responded.

  “So that girl killed here. She was the one, wasn’t she?” Aunt Tally put it on the table.

  “She was.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Fred finally came down to BoomBoom’s row.

  “Fred, we have proof. I’m afraid it’s true,” Cooper declared.

  He sat down. Visibly upset, he put his head in his hands.

  “Well, you’ve all been a great help to us. Thank you for your time. Rick, anything else?”

  “No. Go on home, folks. We appreciate your help.”

  Fred stepped down another row and spoke over the boys and Sandy. “Matthew, come up here with me a minute.”

  The larger man slipped the kazoo into his coat pocket and reluctantly followed Fred back up over the seats. Fred led him to the hairline crack in the wall where it joined the roof near the stairs.

  “See this?”

  Matthew put his face close to the crack, then felt the dampness. “Uh-huh.”

  “You fix it.”

  “Fred, this building is thirty years old. Shifting is natural. Besides, I worked on it but I wasn’t the general contractor back then.”

  “I don’t give a good goddamn. You fix it.”

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing’s the matter with me. You fix it before I find more shit to throw on your plate.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that.”

  “Fix it!” Fred was losing control.

  “Aren’t you laying it on a little thick?”

  Fred, without warning, pushed Matthew hard and he fell backwards, entangled in his own feet. Like most large men, he wasn’t agile. He rolled down the stairs toward the basketball floor to the horror of the others.

  Little Mim, acting quickly, and closer than the others since she was the last person in the row, stepped into the stairs to break his downward progress. He was so big, though, that he knocked her down as he rolled. Blair grabbed Little Mim as Bill Langston stopped Matthew, his face banged up, cut from the hard surface.

  Tracy Raz, still quick as a cat, bounded up the other side of the group, reaching the top. He put his strong hand on Fred’s shoulder. Miranda, fearing a fight, stood up from her seat on the opposite side of the court.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Tracy.” Fred, calm now, walked down the steps, Tracy right behind him.

  “Oh, honey, are you all right?” Sandy ran over to her husband, now on his feet with Bill’s and Fair’s help.

  “The padding helped.” He patted his stomach.

  Cooper reached Matthew as Rick came up alongside Fred.

  “Fred.” Rick simply said the man’s name.

  “Do you want to press charges?” Cooper asked Matthew, while Sandy dabbed his face with a linen handkerchief.

  “No.”

  “You’re being noble,” Fred sneered.

  Matthew, face crimson, controlled himself. “Fred, you need help.”

  Before anyone else could explode, Cooper and Fair escorted Fred out of the basketball arena.

  The others all talked at once. Bill Langston proved very helpful. Ned, smart about these things, introduced him formally to Tazio Chappars.

  Fair reminded Harry and BoomBoom he owed them drinks and that they could collect at the Mountain View Grille in Crozet proper. They both agreed to meet him there but Harry warned them she’d be about ten minutes late.

  Finally Rick, Cooper, Tracy, and Harry were left in the basketball arena.

  “Well, Fred blew,” Harry simply said.

  “He did but he sits in the wrong place to have killed H.H.” Rick stepped toward Harry. “You, on the other hand, had a clear shot.”

  “I did,” Harry agreed. “But I have no motive.”

  “Before we go, let’s go up to where Fred pushed Matthew. He kept saying, ‘Fix it.’ ”

  The four of them climbed up the stairs. At first nothing much seemed unusual, then Tracy stepped over to the wall and noticed the hairline fracture.

  “Here.”

  The other three came over.

  “That? He’s screaming about that?” Harry was incredulous. “He’s got it in for Matthew.”

  “I think it’s beyond professional distaste,” Tracy noted.

  “Mental.” Harry delivered her judgment.

  Cooper put her hand to the wall, feeling the coolness, the dampness. “Harry, don’t even think about coming back in here. This place is dangerous.”

  “It’s going to fall apart because of one little crack in the wall?” Harry joked.

  “I don’t want anyone in this building alone at night.” Rick glared at Harry then.

  Rick reached for a cigarette even though the signs read, “No Smoking.” He didn’t flick out his plastic lighter until they were back down on the floor. “This place is dangerous. Tracy, whoever you ref with, leave together from now on.”

  “I will.”

  Rick inhaled gratefully, then said, “Folks, this one ain’t over.”

  * * *

  46

  As Tazio drove west on Route 250 heading toward Crozet, she reflected on how attractive Bill Langston was. Brinkley, who snuggled in the sheepskin left for him in the truck, loved riding around with Tazio. He usually sat up, looked out the windshield as though he were driving. He noticed other dogs, of course, but also farm signs swaying in the wind, cattle, horses, Canada geese flying in a V. Being next to his human made him feel important. When they went places, people now spoke to him as well. He liked that.

  She turned right onto Route 240 and within five minutes was in the middle of Crozet, a little town devoid of pretension and perhaps even charm except that its residents loved it. She counted Harry’s truck, Fair’s truck, BoomBoom’s BMW, Herb’s black Tahoe, and other cars, then said, “Party.”

  The Mountain View Grille, usually full, strained at the seams tonight. People had been sitting at home long enough thanks to the snow. The roads were good enough so everyone was out and about.

  “Brinkley, let’s join everyone. ’Cept I need to pop into the office for one skinny minute.” She turned left at the intersection, swooped under the railroad overpass, and pulled into her office parking lot.

  She pulled right up front, stepped out, and Brinkley hopped out with her. As he relieved himself at the corner of the building, he noticed a new Toyota Sequoia lurking at the back.

  “Mommy, don’t go in the office,” the Lab warned.

  She turned to her canine friend. “Brinkley, you could water every bush, pole, and garbage can in this town. Hurry up.”

  “Stay here.” He hurried over to her.

  She had her office keys on the same chain as her truck key. As she slipped the cold metal key into the lock, the tumbler rolled back with a click.

  Brinkley gently sank his fangs into her skirt, holding her back.

  “Don’t.” She smacked his head, not hard. She swung open the door. Before she could flip on the lights she heard a bump, then someone pushed her hard. She lost her balance, tumbling down in a heap.

  Brinkley leapt onto the intruder. He bit hard, a nice fleshy calf.

  “Ow!” a woman’s voice cried out but she socked the dog and he let go.

  She ran out the front doo
r and around the back of the building.