Secondhand Stiff

by Sue Ann Jaffarian

  “Kim. She found out about it shortly after she became his partner. She convinced him to pull out of it, but when he tried, they killed him.”

  “Did you tell the police that?”

  “Kim did, or at least she’s there now being questioned. They found drugs in one of the units up for auction today. She said it was time to stop trying to protect Red and clear the air. She’s trying to save the business.”

  The words sounded good—too good and convenient. Buck had said he’d known Red for years and that the guy was a straight shooter. “Acme belongs totally to Kim now, right?”

  “Yeah,” Tiffany confirmed. “I think she owns it all now.”

  Greg swiveled his chair slightly. It was something he did when he was lost in thought, like running a hand though his hair. “Tiffany, your father does not believe Redmond Stokes was mixed up in any of this. He believes Kim is the one involved. That’s why he was so upset when you moved in with her.”

  “He never said that to me. He just said he wouldn’t let me move in with her. Wouldn’t let me! I’m not a child anymore. I’m nineteen, almost twenty. He even threatened to lock me up to keep us apart.”

  Buck, Buck, Buck. It sounded exactly like something an upset and bull-headed parent might say.

  “I think,” I said to Tiffany, “that your dad might have put it badly in his desire to keep you away from Kim. He believes she’s involved in the drug scheme, not Red, but he didn’t want to tell you because knowing about it might put you in danger. He’s really supportive of your coming out.”

  “He told us he just wants you to be happy and safe,” Greg added. “Did you know already about the drugs?”

  Tiffany was looking out the front window into the small parking lot but shook her head. “Not until today. I knew something really bad was going on because of Tom’s and Red’s murders and the blast at my dad’s store, but I didn’t know what it was. Kim said it had nothing to do with us—that they were all involved in something illegal.”

  “Even your dad?” I asked.

  “She tried to tell me that, but it didn’t sound like Dad at all. Then when his store was blown up, I started thinking she might be right.”

  Tiffany leaned against the wall and slid to the floor, covering her face with her hands. “I’m so confused, I don’t know what to think.”

  “Didn’t Ina try to tell you when she came by the night before Tom was found?”

  She shook her head. “No. She just said she had something to tell my dad before she left town. Do you think she knew?”

  I shook my head. “About Kim’s possible involvement? I doubt it, or else she would have tried to get you away from her. Ina’s your friend, isn’t she?”

  Tiffany nodded. “She’s the one who encouraged me to come out, especially to Dad. She’s always been there for me, like a big sister.”

  “Come on,” Greg said, holding a hand out to the girl. “We need to get out of here, all of us.”

  “If what you say is true, where will I go?” She lifted her face to show tear tracks in her black eye makeup.

  “You’re coming with us,” Greg told her. “Leave your car here.”

  “And your cell phone,” I added. “We need to get you out of sight just in case the drug guys decide to pay a visit to this office.”

  “What about Kim?” Tiffany wiped her nose like a five-year-old. “I can’t just leave her! She told me to stay here and wait for her. She said she would straighten everything out.”

  Greg shook his hand at her and this time she took it. “If Kim is innocent,” he told her, helping her to her feet, “you’ll be reunited, and I’ll bet Buck will even give you his blessing this time. But if she’s involved in this in any way, you need to stay away from her. She could be dangerous.”

  Tiffany looked torn by indecision, but in the end slipped back into the office and grabbed a black leather jacket. She shrugged into it and followed us out the door.

  “What about the receptionist?” I asked as Tiffany locked the door of the office. “Do you think she knows about the drugs?”

  “You mean Madeline? She just quit and left, like right before you guys showed up. I know the police questioned her about Red. She’s worked for him for years, but if she knew anything about the drugs, she didn’t let on to anyone.”

  On the way to the van, I said, “I got the feeling when I spoke to her on the phone that she wasn’t too pleased with Kim owning part of the company.”

  “She and Kim never got along. Kim said it’s because Madeline is prejudiced against gays.” Tiffany climbed into the van and buckled up. “But I’ve been working here a few weeks and Madeline has always been nice to me. In fact…” her voice drifted off.

  Buckled up in my own seat, I turned to her. “In fact, what?”

  “It’s just something silly Madeline said to me one afternoon when we were alone. It was right before Red was killed.”

  Greg looked at Tiffany in the rear-view mirror. “What was it?”

  “We were eating lunch together in the office, and Madeline, out of the blue, said I could do better than Kim. She said Kim wasn’t a nice person and I shouldn’t trust her.” Tiffany thought about the words for a second, then added, “She didn’t say I should find myself a nice boy, just that I could do better than Kim and shouldn’t trust her. I thought she said it because she didn’t like Kim. Now I’m wondering if it was a warning.”

  Greg and I exchanged looks as we pulled out of the lot.

  We were heading back to our house. The plan was to stash Tiff-

  any with my mother and decide what was next. After finding the drugs in the Santa Ana unit and probably in the Busy Boxes unit, the police of several jurisdictions would be busy rounding up witnesses and suspects. Greg and I didn’t want to get in their way, but we also didn’t want to stand around idle.

  “That’s funny,” I said to Greg while we were on our way home. “I’ve called Mom on both our home phone and her cell, and there’s no answer.”

  “Maybe she took Wainwright for a walk and forgot to take her phone.”

  “Maybe.” But it still didn’t feel right. Since coming to visit, I seldom saw Mom without her phone. She even told me she kept it close for emergencies in case she fell or felt ill. I put a hand on Greg’s arm. “Honey, can you drive faster? I’m a little worried. She might have fallen or something.” After what happened to Seamus and how sad it made Mom, I didn’t want to take any chances.

  In response, Greg increased the van’s speed and did some fancy maneuvering in and out of traffic. For a man who couldn’t move his lower limbs, Greg definitely had a lead foot when it came to driving.

  Before Greg brought the van to a complete stop in our driveway, I jumped out and went through the back gate. Wainwright wiggled out his doggie door and made a beeline for me, his tail wagging in joy. He didn’t seem distressed at all, which was a very good sign.

  “Mom?” I called as I entered through the back door. “You here?” When I got no response, I headed for her room. It was empty. I checked the bathroom, then went to the other side of the house and checked the master suite just in case—nothing.

  Greg and Tiffany were coming into the kitchen when I returned to the main part of the house. “She’s not here, and her purse is gone,” I told Greg.

  “I’ll bet she went someplace with my mom.”

  “Of course,” I said with relief. I punched the speed dial for Renee’s cell phone. She answered on the third ring. “Is my mother with you?” I asked.

  “Why, no,” my mother-in-law answered. “I called Grace to see if she wanted to go looking at more retirement places, but she said she had plans.”

  “Plans? My mother had plans?”

  “Yes, with some gentleman she met.”

  I squeezed my eyes tight and tried not to groan. “Was his name Bill Baxter?”

  “Yes, I b
elieve his name was Bill. Grace sounded excited.”

  Before I could say anything more, Greg held up a note. “This was left on the kitchen table. I think it says she went out with Bill.”

  “Renee, Greg just found a note from Mom. Sorry to have bothered you.”

  “No bother at all, Odelia. I think it’s lovely that your mother is already making friends. She’ll enjoy living here and being close to you.”

  After hanging up, I scanned the piece of paper, taking in the short message in my mother’s shaky scrawl. It did say she was out with Bill. But it also said something else—something about a lead. At least I think that’s what it said.

  “I wish Mom would learn to text,” I said to Greg. “Her handwriting is atrocious.” I showed the note to Greg and pointed to the sentence I was becoming more alarmed about by the second. “Does that say lead?”

  Greg put on his reading glasses and took the note from me. “Yeah, I think it does. Something about them checking out a hot lead.”

  I looked at the note again. “That word is hot? I thought it said bat or love.”

  Greg read the note out loud in a halting voice as he sounded out Mom’s hieroglyphics. “Gone with Bill. Got hot lead. Or it could be, Good with Bill. Got hot bed.”

  I tore the note out of my grinning husband’s hands. “Funny.” I looked at the note again. “Are you sure that word isn’t lunch instead of lead?”

  “Looks more like lead to me.”

  This time I did groan out loud. “Who knows what those two are getting themselves into?” I looked at Greg. “We have to find them somehow.”

  Tiffany seemed surprised by the conversation. “Are you talking about Bill Baxter, the locksmith?”

  “That’s the one. They met the day of the blast,” I explained. “We’d stopped by the store to talk to your dad, but he was gone.”

  Tiffany shivered. “Bill’s a creepy garden gnome. Even Ina thinks so.” She laughed. “One time Ina was at Dad’s store and Bill was standing by her car when she tried to leave. She threatened to turn him into roadkill if he didn’t leave her alone.”

  Greg grinned. “Sounds like our Ina.”

  I looked at Tiffany with raised brows. “I thought Bill and your father were friends. He told us he kept an eye out for Buck’s store when Buck wasn’t around.”

  “More like he spies on Dad and the store—on all the people at that mall. He’s always sneaking around and asking questions.” She shifted from one foot to the other. “Most people there just tolerate him. Dad more than anyone else.”

  Something still didn’t sit right. “When I spoke to Bill Baxter,” I said, looking straight at Tiffany, “he seemed to know a lot of personal things about you, including about your mom and dad and how they met.”

  Tiffany shuffled from foot to foot. “When I first came to live with my dad, Bill was very nice to me, like a grandfather. I was lonely and mad about my mother. Dad and I were going through a lot of problems. I guess I told Bill a lot of personal stuff I shouldn’t have.” She stopped fidgeting. “It didn’t take me long to catch on that he was just a nosy creep.”

  I stepped forward with concern. “Did he do or say anything to hurt you?”

  “Oh no, nothing like that. Dad told me Bill was a lonely old man and to stay away from him if he made me uncomfortable.” She looked around. “Hey, can I use your bathroom?”

  I directed her down the hall to the guest bath. When she was gone, I said to Greg, “I don’t like this at all. Bill Baxter might not be the harmless old coot I thought he was.”

  “Maybe he’s just too nosy for his own good.”

  “And maybe it was Bill who planted the bomb at Buck’s store,” I suggested. “He would know when the store was empty. No one would think twice about him poking around in the back alley. That’s where the trash containers are kept. He probably put his trash back there.”

  “And he’s a locksmith,” Greg pointed out, getting on board with my idea. “He could probably get into Buck’s store to plant a bomb with no trouble.”

  I sat down in a kitchen chair with a heavy thud. “But why would he want to get involved with Mom if he was the one with the bomb?”

  “To see how much she knows,” Greg suggested. “To see how much the police might have told the two of you?”

  “But what about the lead bit?” I put my head in my hands. “Oh my gawd, where could they have gone?”

  I didn’t wallow long. As Tiffany was coming out of the hallway, I was going down it, heading for Mom’s room and her iPad, hoping she didn’t have it secured with a password. I also hoped she’d been doing some research before she’d left with Bill. If so, it might give me a clue as to where they were headed. While I did that, Greg tried her cell phone again.

  Mom’s iPad was sitting on the nightstand. I opened the cover and turned it on. It prompted me to provide a four-numeral password, just like my iPhone did. Good gawd! It could be anything. After a little calculation, I tried my mother’s year of birth. It wasn’t that. I tried Clark’s year of birth. Nada. Not knowing how many tries I got before the thing locked or melted into toxic goo, I stopped and thought about what those four numbers could be. It was then I spied a postcard from Marie, Clark’s eldest daughter. It was tucked inside a front pocket of the cover. On the front was a photo of a lovely beach in the Bahamas. It appeared to have been mailed in early spring and was addressed to Mom at the retirement home in New Hampshire. My eye caught on the address: 1716 Chestnut Lane.

  Not having better prospects, I plugged 1-7-1-6 into the password blocks. The iPad came to life. I went immediately to the web browser and checked for recent searches, praying it didn’t clear automatically. It looked like Mom had looked up Otra Vez, the store owned by the Vasquez family. I hit the back button a few times and saw that she’d been searching for information on Mazie Moore. Mazie had two stores. Combined with the location for Otra Vez, it meant Mom and Bill might be heading in any of three directions.

  I brought the iPad out to show Greg. “What do you think?”

  He pulled out his phone. “What’s the phone number for Otra Vez?”

  Going back to that page, I read off the phone number for the store. Greg punched in each number as I said it. “Hi,” he said as soon as the call was answered. “My name is Greg Stevens. I think my mother-in-law is on her way to your store, and I need to reach her.”

  He listened for a moment, then added, “Her name is Grace. She’s about eighty, short gray hair, and might be with”—Greg’s voice halted as I pantomimed short and stocky—“she might be with a short elderly man.” He listened again while I stood on shaky legs. Tiffany stroked Wainwright while she waited with me for news.

  “Uh-huh,” Greg finally said. “Well, if you do see them, could you ask Grace to call me or her daughter? It’s a family emergency.” He listened again before adding, “Thanks. Appreciate it.”

  “No luck there?” I asked as he closed his phone.

  “They haven’t seen them.”

  “Mazie has two stores,” I said, looking at her website. “One in Pico Rivera and one in Inglewood.”

  “Pico Rivera is closer,” Greg noted. I gave him the phone number and he called it, giving the person who answered the same spiel as he’d given before. They also had not seen Mom.

  Before he hung up, I whispered, “Ask them if Mazie’s there.”

  He did, then listened to the reply. “How long has she been gone?” he asked. When he ended the call, he said to me, “The woman on the phone said Mazie went on an extended vacation out of the country. She left Tuesday, and they don’t know when she’ll be back.”

  “If it’s the truth, then Mazie left the country the day after the auction. I’m guessing she’s involved. She and Linda were arguing right before Linda took off on Monday.” My brain went into overdrive. “Could be she was already selling the goods Linda was buying, and once she
saw Tom’s fate, she was worried the same might happen to her, so she left until things cooled down.”

  “Or,” Greg added, “the woman on the phone lied to me, and Mazie hasn’t left the country.”

  “Either way, Mazie isn’t around where people can find her.”

  Greg called Mazie’s Inglewood store and asked the same questions. They also hadn’t seen Mom and Bill and gave him the same story about Mazie’s whereabouts.

  Three strikes; we were out.

  I checked back as far as I could on the iPad but didn’t see anything else worth pursuing.

  “Maybe they did just go to lunch,” Greg suggested.

  twenty-four

  When I waltzed into the T&T office with Tiffany Goodwin in tow, Jill Bernelli was the picture of surprise. “I thought you were out all this week.”

  “I am, but I need a favor.”

  “From me or the boss?”

  “From you.” I indicated for Tiffany to take a seat in a chair by Jill’s desk while Jill and I retreated to my office. “That’s Tiffany Goodwin. Can I park her here with you for a few hours?”

  Jill gave me an odd look. “She’s a little old to need a babysitter, isn’t she?”

  I gave Jill a quick rundown of the situation. “If you don’t want to get involved, I’d certainly understand.”

  She gave it some thought, then answered. “Tell you what, how about you and Greg run along and do whatever you need to do. It’s Friday and quiet around here.”

  “We’ll be back as soon as possible, I promise.”

  Jill put an affectionate hand on my arm. “Go look for your mother, Odelia, and don’t worry about hurrying back. I’ll take Tiffany home with me tonight. Might do the girl good to see a stodgy lesbian couple in their natural habitat.”

  “I can’t impose on you and Sally like that.”

  “Sure you can,” Jill insisted. “No one would look for the girl at our place, and you can put your mind at ease about her. In fact, let’s just plan on her spending the night with us. We have no plans this weekend, and I’m sure we can rustle up some fresh clothes for her.”