Starke Naked Dead (Starke Dead Mysteries Book 1)

by Conda V. Douglas

  “Sorry, but Lester is—” I stopped. If he knew Lester had staked out the store, he’d bolt.

  “Lester?” Rupert took a couple of steps toward the tunnel.

  I shut the trap door. “I mean I wouldn’t want anybody to spot you from the street.” Especially Lester, I added to myself. I wanted to convince my father to turn himself in to Lester on his own, not the other way around.

  Rupert stepped back into the shadows. I guided him over to my stool at my workbench at the back of the store and helped him sit down. He winced.

  “How badly hurt are you?” I asked.

  My father tugged at his beard and grimaced again. He dropped his hand. “I’m okay.”

  “Did Derek beat you?”

  Rupert shuddered. “He knocked the door down.”

  I remembered the broken lock. Another wave of relief hit my knees and they almost buckled. Rupert must have been terrified. He must have grabbed his gun during the fight and fired without thinking. “You killed him in self-defense.”

  My father jumped up. He gasped and grabbed his side. Rupert stared at me, his damaged mouth gaping. A raw hole showed where one rotten tooth had been knocked out.

  Good thing I stood between him and the tunnel exit. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep you safe, no matter what,” I promised.

  I hoped I could keep that promise.

  Rupert’s wounded lower lip trembled. “Derek’s the killer, not me. I’ve never killed anyone.”

  “Except in self-defense, which doesn’t count, since Derek was the one threatening your life, you’re safe now. Right?” I opened my mouth to say, and you can turn the necklace over to the cops. Catastrophe solved.

  “No, no, I didn’t shoot him,” Rupert answered.

  I gulped in shock. “But—I mean—how—is that why you stripped him naked, because somebody else killed him?”

  My father’s eyes popped wide. “He was naked when they found him?”

  I nodded.

  “I didn’t take off Derek’s clothes.” My father chewed on his lower lip, his beard flapping. “Someone must have been searching for the necklace. I knew you had it, Dora.”

  The necklace. The killer had been hunting for the necklace on Derek’s body. Although where on Derek’s body didn’t bear thinking about.

  Rupert tilted his head. “Wait, how did you know he was naked? The Widows Brigade?”

  “I know because I found him.” I gulped again and tasted stale potato chips.

  “Oh, Dora, I’m so sorry,” my father said, echoing Aunt Maddie. He reached toward me.

  I stepped into the curve of his arm. He smelled of fear, sweat, tunnel dirt, and underneath, polishing rouge and solder dust. I remembered how, when I was tiny and we were a family, he always smelled of rouge and casting wax and metal dust.

  He gave me one squeeze and then dropped his arm. I stepped back and tried to think of a way to get my father to tell me what was going on without scaring him away. Already he’d spoken more words in these few moments than he had in decades.

  I gestured for him to sit back on the stool. He sat on the edge, ready to spring up at any moment.

  “Who killed Derek?” I asked.

  “How long do canned peaches last?” Rupert asked.

  From a murdered man to canned peaches. Had I fallen asleep again and this was some new nightmare? “Peaches?”

  “Maybe a few decades?”

  “Canned fruit?”

  Rupert tugged on his beard. “Do you have anything to eat?”

  “Ah.” I retrieved the last of the breakfast bars from my apron.

  Rupert ripped into the package and snarfed down the bar. He couldn’t be injured too badly, I consoled myself.

  I wondered how my father managed with his bad teeth. I wondered how he’d manage out in the woods and whether that was where he had been hiding. And what, if anything, canned peaches had to do with it.

  He saw me staring and covered his mouth again as he swallowed the last bite. A habitual gesture to cover his bad teeth? Tears came to my eyes as I realized I didn’t know my father well enough to know his habits.

  Rupert saw my tears. He dropped his hand. “Oh, Dora, I’m so sorry,” he repeated. He reached into his coat pocket and then held out that hand to me.

  I took his hand. It trembled beneath mine.

  Underneath my fingers, the old familiar scars and calluses created by jewelry fabrication on my father’s hand rubbed against mine, a reassurance. And something else that poked into my palm, sharp and hard.

  “I made it last night,” Rupert said. “For you.”

  He’d given me a pin made from bits of tin, wire, and a piece of ruby red bottle glass—a woman’s silhouette scratched upon the glass above a free form in the starburst pattern my father so loved. How did he take scraps of trash and create such beauty? Could I ever hope to do the same?

  I frowned as I realized the woman’s form resembled the necklace’s onyx fairy and the starburst in the piece Godiva wore earlier today. Into my pocket went the pin. I didn’t want to consider what it might mean, not yet.

  “Don’t you like it?” Rupert asked. He brushed the crumbs from his beard.

  I smiled at him. “I love it. It’s beautiful.”

  My father smiled his shy, happy smile. “You sold the Noira, right?”

  “Who? Nor—” I remembered what Nance had said before she hung up. “Do you mean the necklace?”

  “Where’d you put the money?” Rupert pulled open my top workbench drawer. “You did get cash?”

  I chewed my lower lip.

  He looked up from where he rummaged in my bottom drawer and licked his split lip. “How much did you get?”

  Who was this avaricious stranger?

  “How can I sell the necklace when—”

  “You haven’t sold it?” Rupert’s eyes and mouth both gaped wide.

  “You haven’t answered me.”

  “Sell it to Nance. She’ll pay what you ask,” Rupert said.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Oh, Dora, you’ve seen the Noira. You’ve held it. Wouldn’t you pay anything to possess it?”

  I exhaled hard, remembering how I had wanted to keep the necklace forever. To keep me grounded, I squeezed the pin in my pocket tight.

  He shook his head. “If you don’t give me the money, I’m dead.”

  “Who’s going to kill you? Answer me.”

  My dad combed his beard with his fingers. “You will have killed me.”

  I tipped my head to one side, not believing what I’d heard. “What?”

  “I have to have the money to be free.” Rupert bent his head and covered his face with his hand. “Won’t you help me, Dora?”

  “You’re my father,” I said. Perhaps both of us needed reminding. I held out my hand.

  Wet glistened on my father’s cheek. My heart burned. Whoever he had been, whatever he had done, now he was Wild Rupert, lonely and afraid. And for the first time he had come to me.

  “If I do sell it—”

  “You have to.”

  “Can I have some of the money?” I clapped my hand to my mouth. Oh Buddha, what had I asked? I still didn’t know where he had found the necklace. I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t stolen, and I couldn’t sell a stolen object.

  My father looked down at the contents of my bottom drawer. Empty except for one of his old dapple blocks. “I never did give you much of anything, did I, Dora?”

  My heart swelled and filled up my chest so much it hurt. “You taught me how to make jewelry. You gave me a love of design. That’s plenty.”

  “No, it’s not. It never was.” He stroked his battered cheek. “With the missing pearl—that doesn’t matter, it was added later, if you get all the—sure, I can give you some of the money,” he said as if to reassure himself. “How much do you need?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how much Aunt Maddie’s back rent is.”

  My father’s mouth snicked shut. “Maddie’s back rent?” he a
sked through tight lips.

  I raised my eyebrows and nodded.

  “No. Not for Maddie, not now, not ever.”

  “Why?”

  “It was that Charles of hers who took Patty away.”

  I made a startled gargle at the back of my throat. “But Charles left after Mom,” I said when I could speak.

  Rupert’s mouth twisted, deep and ugly. “Patty left first and that bastard followed, like a dog after a bitch.”

  I moved farther away from Rupert.

  He didn’t seem to notice.

  “Aunt Maddie says—”

  “She never believed me after Seattle.” His gaze shifted to far away. “Where is she?”

  “Who? Maddie?”

  “No, her.”

  “Mom?” I peered at the shadows as if my mother, gone for years, might leap out. Did he mean where had I hidden the necklace? “The necklace?”

  Rupert shook his head hard and grimaced in pain. “Not the necklace.” He seemed to look past me or through me. “Godiva. Where is she?”

  “She’s at the Castle.”

  I stared at my father’s face. The shadows made deep hollows under his eyes, the bruised one a black hole. He looked starved for something more than food.

  “How do you know her name?” My eyes burned as I stared at him and realized that he knew her before. “If you knew her, why did you run?” I took a step toward him. “Is that crazy nudist why you need to sell that Nora necklace?” I took another step. “Is she blackmailing you?” I took a third step. “And if she is, why? What have you done?”

  He shrunk back on my stool, a much-diminished man. “I did something for love once and now it’s caught up with me.”

  I shook my head. “No more riddles, Rupert. Who killed Derek?”

  “Good question, Dora. Let’s hear the answer, Rupert.” Lester’s voice came from behind me.

  I jumped. Why hadn’t the bell clanged? Oh wait. It sat on the countertop.

  Lester stood so close to me that his breath touched the back of my neck. He’d snuck up on us both. Good cop.

  Rupert screamed. He leaped off my workbench stool. It tumbled with a crash. Bent to one side to protect his ribs, he scuttled around a display case and down the side aisle toward the front door.

  Lester ran along the central aisle. I followed.

  Rupert looked behind him, yelped, and pushed over the front display case. It toppled. The last remaining potato peppershaker shattered. Rupert tore out the front door.

  Lester shoved aside the case and pursued. I chased after. We all thundered down the wooden sidewalk.

  Even injured, my father had longer legs than me and ten years of youth on Lester, plus a head start.

  The forest fire still cast a warning glow behind Dog Face Mountain. Thick morning smoke mixed with the mist to create a low-lying, choking miasma. In the gloom, Rupert reminded me of a dream figure as he sped ahead of us. I shivered in the deep cold of the early morning. My breath plumed as I breathed, miniature ghosts.

  We ran down Main Street. Rupert turned at the corner that headed up to the new mall. He squeezed through a cut in the chain link fence around the construction. Security lights flashed on. Rupert half whirled around, his face stark white in the brilliant light. He stumbled, recovered, and ran on, into the clapped together shaft-like buildings half-finished.

  We followed. Only a block ahead of the sheriff, I ran first into the main entrance of the main building and blackness.

  Blind, I tripped over my father and fell.

  He thrust me off of him. “I’m so sorry, Dora. I’m not strong like you.”

  “Rupert,” I said.

  “Sell it and save me.” He scrambled away and vanished.

  I struggled to stand. I’d gotten to my knees when Lester fell on top of me.

  “Oomph,” Lester said. He panted and wheezed. Beneath his noisy breathing, my father’s footsteps clattered away.

  “Rupert, wait!” I called out as best I could from under Lester’s weight. For such a thin man, Lester weighed quite a bit.

  “Rupert, you’re making this worse,” Lester wheezed out.

  No answer came, except for the fading sound of Rupert’s footsteps. Was this where he had hidden? If so, then where might he hide now?

  I sneezed from the sawdust.

  Lester crawled off me with a groan and a “Sorry, Dora.” He pulled me to my feet, his strength as much a surprise as his weight. “Take my hand until we get out of the dark,” he said. His strong hand closed around mine and he led me into the light.

  NINETEEN

  I couldn’t believe what I saw.

  From the computer screen my father grinned back at me with white even teeth. Clean-shaven and with a full head of hair, he looked even more handsome than I remembered from my childhood. I looked away.

  Lester tapped the computer monitor screen. “Dora, you need to see this.”

  He sat in his chair next to his old roll-top desk, the desk scarred by decades of sheriffs who smoked and lined smoldering cigarettes along its edge. The monitor crowded the old desk. One of Mama Chin’s cinnamon rolls, half-eaten, sat atop the monitor.

  I looked back at my father’s face. I never remembered him appearing so happy.

  “It’s a picture of my father from a long time ago. So what? Is that why you hauled me in here before breakfast?” I studied the cinnamon roll. It looked to have been on the monitor for quite some time.

  My coffee cup still sat perched over on Mallard’s desk. I wondered if Lester would mind if I made coffee.

  “Dora, pay attention.” Lester leaned on his elbows next to his computer. “Watch.” He clicked the mouse and another screen popped up.

  A newspaper article from seventeen years ago led with a huge photo of the necklace above a headline that proclaimed “MAN KILLED IN THEFT OF CURSED ‘NOIRA,’ WORTH MILLIONS.”

  Urgh, I no longer wanted anything to eat or drink.

  The necklace shone forth, glorious even in black and white newsprint. Perfect in this photo, the necklace finished with an elegant black water pearl. The missing pearl.

  From the grainy print, the necklace woman’s expression appeared serene and malicious. The resemblance to Rupert’s newest pin was unmistakable. The pin lay heavy in my apron pocket.

  “Noira,” I whispered. “That’s what he meant.”

  Lester gave me a sharp look. “Read it.” He handed me the mouse.

  I gulped.

  “Read it,” Lester ordered.

  I scrolled down so the article filled the screen, not able to stop myself, although I wanted to. The article told of an infamous necklace made by a designer named Pietro in 1892. Pietro? I’d never heard the name and I wondered why.

  The article then went on about the most recent owner, an elderly, wealthy magnate in Seattle. This tycoon purchased the Noira from the previous owner’s bankrupt estate only to die a few months later in a fire at his mansion, a fire set to cover up the theft of the necklace by a well-known jeweler.

  At the words “a well-known jeweler,” my stomach flip-flopped. When the article was written, well-known designer Rupert created with silver and gold. Now, he made tin jewelry.

  “Okay, so what?” I asked. My voice squeaked.

  “Look.” Lester pressed the “down” arrow.

  At the bottom of the article my father’s photo sat next to the picture of a well-dressed old man. The old man’s mouth was pursed so tight I figured he’d never smiled.

  I bit back a sob, no longer able to pretend my father didn’t find the necklace somehow, someway. He’d stolen it. My father stole. What else had he done? Had he lied? Had he killed the old man?

  A breeze waved the plastic tarp that blocked the construction of the new jail. Underneath the fresh pine scent lurked a smell of fresh-turned earth as if the construction workers had dug a grave. Had they broken into the tunnel that led to the original jail cell, an old converted fruit cellar beneath our feet?

  “I don’t even remember seein
g that photo,” I said. “Maybe it isn’t Rupert.”

  Lester folded his arms, a cop stance I hated.

  “It doesn’t even really look like him now.”

  “Dora,” Lester said.

  “So it could be anybody.” I knew I spoke a lie.

  “No.” Lester typed a few keys and the monitor screen began to morph. “I learned Mallard’s new program.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Pretty amazing—” Lester pressed “enter” and my father’s face changed.

  Rupert aged. He lost hair and gained wrinkles.

  “It ages at-large major criminals’ faces.” With a single keystroke Lester added a gray beard. Except for the wide, toothy smile, my father now looked as if the photo had been taken yesterday, or the day before, when he wasn’t black-eyed and beaten. “And then searches the Internet for similar facial features.”

  If Mallard possessed enough funds to promote his new computer program, enough funds so that he could walk away from the job of sheriff, from Starke… Naw, not the geeky, sweaty Mallard I knew. Or thought I knew.

  I gestured at the screen. “How did that help you find the article?”

  “Program works both ways so I ran Rupert’s face from Henry’s article through the program after we found, um, you found, the dead man.”

  “Curse Henry,” I muttered under my breath, not loud enough for Lester to hear.

  “Oh, Dora, I’m sorry that happened,” Lester said. He reached up and pulled the cinnamon roll off the monitor. “It’s a bit stale.”

  “Made with milk and butter and I’ll take it.” I grabbed it from him and took a bite. Even old, it tasted of the good times between Lester and me.

  “I don’t know what good knowing all this computer stuff will do me after I leave,” Lester said. His shoulders hunched.

  Damn the town council for not giving Lester a leave of absence. I hated the pain on his face. “You can get a job easy with any police department.” I hoped Lester heard the truth in my words.

  “I didn’t learn it for another job. I learned it for my little Jimmy.”

  Jimmy? His grandson? A photo of Jimmy sat next to the monitor. Now that I looked at it, it seemed computer generated.

  Lester caught my glance. “I didn’t have any recent photos of him.” His shoulders sagged. “My fault, I never was a father to my son or a grandfather to Jimmy. I was always too busy being the one and only Sheriff of Starke.”