Under the Moonlight collection

by MaryAnn Kempher

  “Goodbye, Mr. Bryan,” said Nene.

  He grunted. Nene looked over at Gaga. Gaga shrugged.

  “You know,” said Nene. “I bet Boris can fit through that door just fine.”

  “So?”

  “So maybe it’s Boris who’s been getting into the candy,” Nene suggested. “Maybe Boris ate your display.”

  “What about the milk? I know that dog couldn’t have opened a carton.”

  Nene looked thoughtful. “That’s true. I’m almost sorry nobody has come into the store after closing time lately.”

  “You mean nobody has broken into the store,” said Gaga.

  “Okay…I’m almost sorry nobody has broken into the store lately, now that we’ve got a camera set up. What are we going to do once we find out who it is?”

  Gaga went back to cleaning the display case. “What do you mean, what are we going to do? We’re going to have the little monster tossed in jail and throw away the key.”

  Nene looked at Gaga sideways, her doubt showing clearly on her face. “I know you don’t mean that. What if it’s someone we know? Would you really prosecute one of the neighborhood kids?”

  “Heck yeah, I would,” Gaga answered, tossing the wet paper towel into the trash. “I spent hours on that display, and someone ruined it. And how many chocolate donuts and cinnamon buns have gone missing?”

  Just then, a man walked into the store. He looked to be about forty-five years old, and was wearing a suit and holding a clip board. “Ladies,” he said. “My name is Harry Delaware,” he pulled out his ID, flipped it open and shut quickly, and put it back into his shirt pocket.

  “Is there something we can do for you?” asked Nene.

  “I’m from the health department. We’ve gotten some disturbing calls regarding the cleanliness of your store.” He peeked behind the counter as he spoke. “I’ve been sent over to take a look and make sure all is as it should be.”

  “Oh,” said Nene. “I can assure you our store is very clean. In fact, all we do when we don’t have customers is clean.”

  Gaga placed her hands on her hips, she looked at Mr. Delaware. “What is this? A shake down?”

  “I’m just responding to a tip,” he answered.

  “A tip,” Gaga said knowingly. “Was it Mr. Burch who put you up to this?”

  “I don’t know who that is.” He began walking around the store, every now and then scribbling on his clipboard. “Ladies, I already see some violations that will need to be taken care of very quickly if you hope to keep your store open.”

  “Like what?” Gaga asked.

  “For one thing, there’s dog hair all over the floor over there,” he pointed. Gaga and Nene’s eyes met.

  Boris.

  He walked around the space, quietly taking notes before he spoke to them again. “I’ve noted all the other violations here.” He pulled the paper from his clip board, with a carbon copy underneath. Then he pulled a sheet with the letter “D” and taped it to the door.

  “What?” Gaga said. “A ‘D’? This store does not deserve a ‘D’ rating.”

  “That’s not your call,” answered Mr. Delaware. “I’ll return in week. If the violations haven’t been addressed, I’m afraid the rating will remain.”

  He walked out the door, leaving Gaga and Nene staring at the letter on the door and list of violations on the paperwork he’d left. Aside from the dog hair, they were all minor and easily corrected, but the “D” rating would hurt business for sure. Their regulars would probably ignore the grade, but a lot of their business was generated by word of mouth. Business was really going to suffer when people heard about it.

  Nene and Gaga watched as the inspector got into his car. “Damn that Burch,” Gaga said.

  “We don’t know he’s behind this,” said Nene.

  “Don’t we? A ‘D’ after all these years, now that Burch wants to sell the building?”

  Nene shrugged. “Not much we can do about that.” She looked at the paper he’d left. “These aren’t big infractions, though. We can easily fix them all.”

  Both women looked at the door as Rose, the owner of a small dry cleaners across the street walked in. She was an older woman, round like Nene, with short hair.

  “Hi, Rose,” Nene said.

  “Hi, Nene…Gaga.” The woman watched with Nene and Gaga as the inspector drove away. “Was he bothering you too?”

  “Yes,” said Nene, holding up the inspection report. “He gave us a ‘D’. Now, you look around. Does this store look like it deserves a ‘D’ rating?” Nene shook her head in disgust.

  “You’re not alone,” said Rose. “He stopped by the diner up the street earlier today. That man is on a mission.”

  “We thought maybe Mr. Burch had put him up to it,” said Gaga. “But, if he inspected the diner too, maybe it’s just bad luck.”

  “Why would Mr. Burch want your store to fail an inspection?” asked Rose.

  Nene began straightening a shelf. “The city wants to buy this building. He can’t sell unless we break out lease.”

  “Hmm…” Rose said. “The city wants to buy my building too, for their visitor’s center.”

  “For their visitor’s center? That’s weird. We were under the impression the city wanted this building for their visitor’s center.”

  Rose shrugged. “Maybe they need two? I don’t know.”

  “Are you going to sell?” asked Nene.

  “Might have to. Once they start updating the neighborhood, we won’t have parking anymore. They’re putting a fountain in the area we’ve been using now.”

  “You mean, you don’t own that lot?” Gaga asked.

  “No,” Rose said worriedly. “I don’t.”

  ***

  Late Tuesday morning, on his way into his office, Jack stopped in to see Nene and Gaga.

  “Good morning, ladies,” he said as he entered. “Curious about that sign on the window…”

  “You mean the ‘D’ rating we received from the health department?” asked Gaga.

  “Yes,” Jack answered. “What’s that about?”

  “We were inspected this morning,” Nene answered, “and we failed.”

  “I know people down there,” Jack told them. “I’ll make some phone calls, see if we can’t get that bad grade removed.”

  “That would be great, and very much appreciated, Jack,” Nene said. She looked over at Gaga. “Wouldn’t it Gaga?”

  “Hmm?” Gaga said distracted. “Oh sure…appreciated.”

  Jack smiled and headed to his office. Curt was at his desk, with a large donut box in front of him. Jack smiled, walked over and reached for a donut. Curt shoved his hand away.

  “Hey,” said Jack, with mock indignation, “don’t tell me you’re not going to share?”

  Curt’s mouth was full. “Frover fair,” he said, pointing toward the table by the window. An identical donut box sat next to their coffee pot.

  Jack grabbed two donuts out of it and poured some coffee, then sat at his desk. He watched with amusement as Curt shoveled donut after donut into his mouth. “How do you eat so much and not get fat?” he asked.

  “Good genes,” Curt answered.

  “When did you get here?”

  “About eight. Hey Jack? I don’t mean to bust your balls, but it’s nearly noon. Don’t you think we should have set hours that we know at least one of us is in here? It’d be just our luck to actually have a customer come in when neither of us is here.”

  “You’re right,” said Jack. “I’m sorry. I was up until midnight going through the crime scene photos again. From now on, if I’m coming in late, I’ll call you.”

  “Sounds good,” Curt said, “and just to let you know, I’ll be heading out of here early today, but I’ll probably be back.”

  “Meeting Daisy again?”

  Curt shuffled some papers around on his desk, “I just have something to do.”

  “I have some things to do, too,” said Jack. “Maybe just put a note on the door when yo
u leave, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Their communication was improving greatly.

  ***

  Curt was relieved to watch Jack leave a few hours later to take care of his errands. He was glad Jack hadn’t pressed him on why he was leaving early. He wasn’t seeing Daisy until that evening, but before their planned get-together he had something else to take care of. He wondered if he should just go ahead and tell Jack, but he was too embarrassed to bring it up. He asked himself again how he’d gotten himself roped into it. Of course, he knew the answer—it was love. Wasn’t that always the reason men behaved foolishly?

  He was looking forward to that evening. The circus had come down to Reno sooner than expected, and Daisy’s parents with it. So Daisy had invited Curt to see their show. In preparation, she’d told him more about what they did: her mother had a juggling act but was thinking of retiring. She wasn’t getting any younger and was now dropping more than she juggled. Both her father and uncle trained animals; her father specialized in dogs, her uncle in smaller animals.

  “I love animal acts,” Curt had said.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Daisy had told him, laughing. “My father’s act is really special, but my uncle’s isn’t great. It’s why there’s so much friction between them. I might be a little biased, though. My uncle’s act used to be much better, but over the years he’s kind of lost his touch. There’s a lot more humor, most of it unintentional.”

  As Curt remembered this conversation, he realized how much he was really looking forward to watching the show, and meeting Daisy’s quirky family.

  ***

  After running his errands, Jack decided to swing by his apartment; he’d been in such a rush that morning, having woken up so late that he’d skipped his shower. He wanted to take a quick one before going back to the office.

  He quickly undressed and stepped under the hot spray, feeling the tension release from his shoulders. A few minutes later, he stepped from the tub and wrapped a towel around his waist. He walked out to the living room, surprised to hear a light knocking on his front door. He looked through the peephole.

  Yvonne?

  Jack opened the door and held it wide as she walked in. “Nice to see you, Yvonne…quite a surprise, though,” he told her.

  Yvonne willed herself not to stare, but it wasn’t easy. The sight of Jack in nothing but a towel made her lips dry and her heart race. He was muscular, but without looking like he lived at the gym. She could see a clearly defined bulge below that the towel did little to hide. “I tried calling,” she said, “but you never answered.”

  Jack walked to the kitchen table and picked up his cell phone. “Damn,” he said, “it’s dead. Needs to be charged.”

  Yvonne stood awkwardly, not knowing where to look.

  “Give me a second,” Jack said. “I’ll be right back.

  He went to his bedroom door and grabbed a robe, letting the towel fall to the floor as he threw it on.

  Yvonne caught a glimpse in the mirror over his dresser and smiled.

  “So,” he said as he returned, “what can I do for you?”

  “I received word today from the police,” Yvonne said. “I can go back into Candy’s house now. I thought you could go with me, that maybe you’d see something the police missed.”

  Jack smiled. “That’s great news, actually. I have a lot of respect for Nolan, the detective that handled the case, but I’m ready to get into that crime scene. There are tons of photos, but I want to see it for myself. You never know what might have been missed, cops are human too. Just let me get dressed.”

  Yvonne smiled at the thought of catching another glimpse in his bedroom mirror.

  ***

  Jack and Yvonne drove in silence toward Candy’s neighborhood. Both were unsure how it would feel to be inside her home again.

  “When was the last time you saw Candy?” Jack asked finally.

  “The day before it happened,” Yvonne answered. “You know, I really missed her when she was living in Carson City. I know it’s not that far, but we didn’t see each a lot. So when she moved back down here, it was great. We’d gotten really close again.”

  “Did she seem like herself?”

  “Now that you mention it, she was a little edgy,”

  “Edgy…how?”

  “Maybe ‘edgy’ is the wrong word. It was as if she were filled with an energy that she was trying hard to keep under control. She kept smiling…I asked her if there something she wanted to share. It felt like she had a secret she was dying to tell me but couldn’t. She would just smile …I knew I was onto to something, but I never found out what.”

  Jack pulled into the driveway to Candy’s house and turned off the car. He looked over at Yvonne. “The house will have been left exactly as it was found. Nobody has gone in to clean anything. The blood will still be there.”

  Yvonne was already pale, but she seemed to go whiter.

  “I’m sorry Yvonne. I just wanted to prepare you.”

  “No, it’s okay…I’m all right. Let’s get this over with.”

  As they went inside, Jack wondered at the strangeness of an empty house. Under normal circumstances, a home would have a vibration, an energy, as if it knew that sooner or later someone is coming home. But, in Jack’s experience, a murder victim’s home always had a stillness to it, an absolute quiet that he’d always found disturbing.

  “Does it look pretty much how you’d expect it to?” asked Jack.

  Yvonne looked around. “For the most part, yes.”

  Jack was surprised by her composure. Then he followed her line of sight. She was staring at the large blood stain on the couch. The bullet had gone straight through Candy.

  He placed his hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer. She hung her head and closed her eyes for a second, then walked to the fireplace. She turned and picked up the end table and set it upright then walked around, stopping to look at Candy’s shoes by the couch.

  Jack pointed down at them. “I don’t know how you women wear those things. These have to be at least four inches.”

  Yvonne smiled. “Candy loved them—the higher the better. She used to say that she never went to the gym because doing the tread mill in heels was frowned upon.”

  Jack smiled. Now that he thought about it, she’d been the same way while they’d dated. Candy had been a petite woman, like her mother, and even in high heels she’d been shorter than Jack.

  Yvonne was looking toward the kitchen now.

  Their eyes met.

  Jack took her hand in his and squeezed. “It’ll be okay.” He yanked the crime scene tape down, and walked over to the window. Pointing at the empty picture frame, he asked, “Do you happen to know what picture was in there?”

  Yvonne nodded. “Sure, it was a picture of Candy and her friend Diana, at Diana’s graduation. She moved down here right after that. She and Candy were thick as thieves.” Jack wondered if they’d had a falling out at some point…Candy must have had a good reason to take the picture out of the frame.

  He looked at the floor, dirty with dried mud and blood. His eyes wandered about the space, stopping for a moment at the soda bottle and the two glasses on the counter.

  Then he turned toward the kitchen door leading to the yard; he’d seen the pictures of the footprint they’d found outside and wanted to take a look at it for himself. The ground had dried, and though it had been over a week since Candy’s death, he could still make out the print.

  Yvonne walked up behind him. “What is it?” she asked.

  Jack nodded toward the print. “Shoe print…but we think it probably belonged to Candy.”

  Yvonne walked outside and knelt near the imprint. “I’m certainly no expert…but this doesn’t look like it came from Candy’s shoes, they seem kind of big.”

  Jack held out his hand and helped her stand. “The detectives in charge of the case will have had a mold made of that print, then had it compared agai
nst Candy’s shoes to see if it belonged to her. If it didn’t, then they should have started checking into friends and relatives. That’s what they would have done, if they didn’t already have a suspect in jail. I’ll follow up with Nolan, see if they did the mold and ask what they found, assuming anything was done at all.”

  They went back into the house, Jack following behind as Yvonne headed upstairs. They stood at Candy’s bedroom door. “It’s so bizarre,” Yvonne said, “being here like this.”

  Jack nodded. “Yvonne, do you know of anyone who might have had something on Candy—someone who might have wanted to keep her silent?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The police found a note, it sort of sounded like a threat, like maybe Candy was being blackmailed.”

  They walked into Candy’s bedroom. Yvonne paused.

  Jack tried to be gentle as he prodded. “Would you know if anything was missing in here?”

  “I don’t know, Jack,” Yvonne said, trembling. “It’s not like I took a mental picture of her room before she died.”

  “I understand, Yvonne. And you’re right. I’m sorry. Just take your time, look around…see if you notice anything. Anything might be helpful, really.”

  Jack walked over to Candy’s closet and smiled at the long row of shoes. There wasn’t one flat among the bunch.

  Yvonne sat on the bed. It made a crackling sound under her weight. She pulled aside the blanket and found a small piece of paper beneath it.

  “What’s that?” asked Jack.

  Yvonne handed it to him. “It looks like a receipt for a nearby bike store,” she said. “Candy didn’t have one as far as I know, and I don’t remember seeing a new one outside. Did you?”

  “No…but look at the writing at the bottom. This isn’t the purchase receipt. It looks like what they give you when you drop off something for repairs.” Jack looked closer. At the bottom was a handwritten pick-up date. Candy had dropped the bike off to have a bike rack installed.