by Nancy Martin
She recognized me and said. “Well, if it isn’t Heidi Klum. How’s life at the top of the best-dressed list, Rox?”
Okay, so I’m not a fashion model. But I didn’t spend my weekends knocking other women on their cans in front of bellowing fans.
I pointed. “You’ve got a spider on your shoulder, Pam.”
She shrieked and jumped out of the limo, then tore off her tailored jacket and threw it on the pavement. She danced around, screaming for a while, then saw my face and finally stopped the hysterics.
“You bitch,” she said.
“I’m getting a lot of that lately. Got a minute?”
“I should shoot you right now.”
She reached behind the waistband of her pencil skirt, but stopped before yanking out whatever firearm she had concealed there. Already, she’d drawn the attention of everybody within shouting distance. The Bumper shooting me in the driveway of the hotel was going to make headlines her company didn’t need. Plus mess up her outfit.
Pam’s dad, Roger Anderson, had made his fortune running numbers before he finally opened a used-car dealership that specialized in not asking questions. He went to jail a few times and finally tried a legit business, driving limos and special-event buses for senior citizens who wanted to visit Gatlinburg and Niagara Falls. He made a pretty good living at it, and now all of his kids were vying to run the operation. Pam, the youngest, was obviously trying to learn the business from behind a steering wheel for the time when her roller derby career finally dwindled.
“Take it easy, Pam. Let’s remember who testified in your brother’s favor last year.”
Pam narrowed her already slitty eyes at me. “He went to jail anyway.”
“But only for three months. He was out in time for your mom’s birthday, right?”
She stopped reaching for her gun. “What do you want?”
“There was an Anderson limo out last night, up on Cherry Street, about seven. Were you the driver?”
“No,” she said sullenly. “I had a date last night.”
“Congratulations. Anybody I know?”
“I hope not!” She bristled as if insulted. “Are we done?”
“I need to know who was driving last night. Who the passenger was.”
“Why should I tell you?”
“If you tell me, I won’t tell the police one of your cars was up there.”
“Why should it matter where the car was?”
“When you read the paper tomorrow morning, you’ll know why it matters. Your dad will be happy you cooperated. Just tell me, okay?”
Pam was savvy enough to understand that something had happened that didn’t need the addition of an Anderson vehicle to the mix. She picked up her jacket and dusted it off. “It was Dooce.”
“What?”
“The rock singer.” She hooked her thumb at the hotel. “He’s staying here. We’re on call for him, night and day. Last night, he went out for dinner. Him and his assistant—Jeremy somebody. My brother Donnie says they took a drive up into the city first. Some neighborhood. Could have been Cherry Street, for all I know.”
“What were they doing up there?”
“How should I know? They wanted to drive around, so Donnie did what he was told.”
I stood in the driveway and tried to figure out what it meant. Dooce was in town for his concert. Dragging around a food writer, too. What the hell connection did he have with the Crabtrees? Or was it some coincidence he’d been near their house?
Pam said, “Be careful, Roxy. The steam coming out of your ears might ruin that hairdo of yours.”
“Relax, Pammy. Bad hair’s not contagious. You know anything else about this evening drive Dooce took?”
“Only that his assistant lost a briefcase somewhere. Donnie had to retrace their route today, but he didn’t find it.”
“Briefcase?” I said. “Or a messenger bag?”
Pam shrugged. “What’s the difference?”
What the heck had Dooce’s assistant been doing up at the Crabtree house? I wondered. Had they been mixed up in Clarice’s kidnapping? Seemed impossible.
I left Pam and walked back to the Monster Truck.
I told Nooch to move over, and as I climbed into the driver’s seat, my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I checked the screen. There was nobody I wanted to talk to, except Marvin Weiss.
“Who is it?” Nooch asked, wrestling with Rooney for possession of the passenger seat.
“Bug.”
I let the call go to voice mail, then dialed Marvin’s number.
“Marvin,” I said when his recorded voice invited me to leave a message. “Call me when you get this, or I’m coming to cut your tiny balls off.”
I snapped the phone shut.
“That wasn’t nice,” Nooch said.
“Shut up.” Then, “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. You’re mad about the truck. Let’s visualize it clean and fixed, okay?”
“Okay, okay.”
Instead of worrying about the truck, I thought about what I knew so far. Clarice Crabtree, a bigamist, had one egghead husband and one idiot spouse quick with a rabbit punch. Somebody wanted her kidnapped—for ransom, or maybe just to get her out of the way for a while. But now she was dead—probably shot by a pro.
If I hadn’t seen the mystified expressions on their faces, I’d have guessed that one of her husbands had already figured out the marriage was crowded and had killed Clarice for it. But they both looked genuinely astonished to learn about the other guy. Besides, neither one of them looked like he had the stones for killing. The police surely assumed one of the husbands was guilty of killing his two-timing spouse. I could leave the job of interviewing the husbands to the cops.
Clarice’s father was in the loony bin, but he obviously had an escape route. Still, I didn’t see him as a murderer.
And now I had a wild card. What the hell was Dooce doing, cruising around the Crabtree house in a limousine? Had his assistant dropped his messenger bag in the Crabtree’s front yard?
I should probably call Bug and tell him about that development.
But the fact that earlier in the week somebody had tried to hire a kidnapper worried me considerably. If Bug found out I’d been high on the hiring list, I could be in some seriously hot water.
The picture of Sugar Mitchell weeping in her dad’s car, though—that really stuck in my head.
The way I figured it, one of Carmine’s minions had screwed up and killed Clarice. Had to be. I needed to find out who so I could save my own skin. And maybe make things easier for Clarice’s kid.
There was one person who could give me right answers.
“I’m going to take a cruise past Marvin’s office,” I said to Nooch. “I definitely need to see him.”
I drove out of downtown along with rush-hour traffic. The other drivers were mostly well-dressed professionals leaving their offices in BMWs and Mercedes sedans, heading for the upscale neighborhoods of the East End. Everybody steered clear of the Monster Truck. City buses tried to crowd me, but I was hard to bully. Still, it was slow going. Then I heard an ambulance behind me and pulled over. When it went past me, though, I cut in behind it and followed. All the other traffic got out of our way. Drafting behind an ambulance was still the speediest way to get through rush hour.
When we got to Shadyside Hospital, the ambulance went into the emergency-room entrance, and I continued down Aiken. At a more sedate pace, I continued a few more blocks and turned left through a bunch of grad students walking away from the universities. Within four blocks, I hit a neighborhood where lots of schoolkids crowded the sidewalks, strolling home from after-school activities as the streetlights started flickering on. The houses we passed were lit up from inside. Through the windows, I could see kids doing homework. Moms making dinner. Then I crossed into a small commercial district. There was a Mr. Squishy storefront on one corner, but I passed it by.
Slowly, I drove past Marvin’s office. Closed. Lights off, blinds down.
His parents’ dry-cleaning shop was open, though. Customers were dashing in and out, picking up their laundry.
I craned to see who was running the shop and saw it was the Weiss family’s efficient employee, Mrs. Wong. I parked the truck at a fire hydrant, left it running, and went inside to talk to her. The bell over the door jingled when I entered.
All business, Mrs. Wong rang up the customer ahead of me and handed over a plastic bag stuffed with dress shirts. Whatever chemicals were used to dry-clean clothing, they had the added benefit of preserving certain human beings. Mrs. Wong looked to be about thirty, but she was probably nearer eighty. Not a wrinkle in sight.
When I stepped up to the counter, her expression of polite attention faded. Her oversized eyeglasses were decorated with rhinestones, but the sparkle did not extend to her eyes.
I pasted on a cheery grin. “Hi, Mrs. Wong. How you doing this evening?”
She didn’t crack a smile. “Marvin not here. Mr. and Mrs. Weiss not here either.”
Mrs. Wong and I weren’t exactly best buddies. In my own defense, she got all her information about me from Marvin’s mother, who didn’t trust me for reasons that probably had to do with me not treating her son like God’s gift to the human race.
I said, “I can see they’re not here. Where can I find them?”
“Gone away. Gone on vacation.”
“No kidding?” I leaned comfortably on the counter. “Where’d they go?”
“Mrs. Weiss not say anything about where they go.”
“Oh, come on, Mrs. Wong. You can trust me.”
She gave me a look that said she wasn’t crazy.
“I want to send them a postcard,” I said. “Did they go to Atlantic City?”
She shook her head.
“New York to take Mr. Weiss’s sister to see Jersey Boys again?”
Mrs. Wong continued to sternly wag her head.
“D.C.?” I asked. “What about Cleveland? Doesn’t Marvin have a cousin in Cleveland?”
“Not Cleveland. No cousin. No phone call. You go now. I have work to do.”
“But—”
“Weiss family not want to talk to you,” Mrs. Wong said.
“Just tell me where they went.”
Nothing.
“Well, okay, Mrs. Wong. Nice to see you.” I turned in the doorway. “By the way, I saw your grandson yesterday. James is in my daughter’s study group. He says he’s applying to Harvard.”
Mrs. Wong started to smile, then squelched it.
I said, “Too bad Harvard only takes one kid from every high school. Did you hear that? I read it in the paper. Only one kid who applies from the same high school. I think James and Sage have grades that are the same, but how about her SAT score? She beat James by twenty points. Maybe I should encourage her to apply to Harvard, too.”
“She not want Harvard.”
Yes, threatening nice old ladies was a sign of poor character. What else is new? I said, “Sage hasn’t had time to look at it carefully yet. I think she should apply—you know, as a safety school or something.”
Mrs. Wong’s mouth flattened as she thought over the situation. Finally, she said, “Weiss family gone to Bermuda.”
The destination surprised me. “Really? When did they leave? When are they coming back?”
Mrs. Wong frowned. “Don’t know. Don’t want to know. They leave in a hurry. Marvin say it a surprise vacation.”
As long as I had her gushing like an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, I wanted to ask more questions, but the bell on the door tinkled again, and another customer came into the shop. No use making a scene.
“Thanks, Mrs. Wong.”
She said, “No apply to Harvard.”
I shrugged. “Sage doesn’t listen to me much. Who knows where she’ll end up?”
While Mrs. Wong fumed, I went out to the truck.
“Well?” Nooch said when I got back into the truck. “You find Marvin?”
“He’s gone on a vacation. Took his parents, too.”
“You don’t look happy for him. Rox? You okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” I said.
“You look worried.”
Maybe it was the wrong thing to do, but I couldn’t help myself. I said, “That woman I talked to last night? Clarice Crabtree? She was murdered. The cops found her in the river today.”
A storm of shock, sympathy, and compassion blew across Nooch’s big features. “Wow. That’s bad.”
“Those kids at the house this morning? Those were her kids.”
Nooch’s face puckered again. “They don’t have a mom anymore.”
“Right.”
“That’s really sad.”
I looked at my sidekick. When brains were handed out, he’d been standing in the line for muscles. But he had a big heart, which was the main reason I kept him around. Again, I started feeling guilty that he’d gotten his face messed up by Gino. Gino was my problem. Not Nooch’s.
I gave him a gentle sock on the arm. “Yeah, I know. Tomorrow? I’ll pick you up at the regular time.”
“Okay, Rox. Whatever you say.”
I threaded the Monster Truck through traffic back to the Lawrenceville neighborhood. Parked out in front of Nooch’s house was a big Chrysler, the vehicle owned by the only stable male figure in Nooch’s life—his uncle Stosh, who ran the steamfitters’ union. Stosh checked up on Nooch now and then, and he was standing beside the Chrysler when we drove up.
Stosh raised one enormous hand and gave me a wave. We had an unspoken understanding. Whoever was with Nooch at the time was responsible for his safety. Today, I hadn’t done my job. Nooch’s battered face wasn’t going to make his uncle happy.
“Hey, look! It’s Uncle Stosh!” Nooch’s good humor was back. “Maybe he brought some of his homemade pierogies. He makes the best.” When he climbed out of the truck, he looked back long enough to give me a loopy smile. “You want to come for dinner?”
“Thanks, Nooch, but not tonight.”
“Stay out of trouble, okay, Rox?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Don’t worry too much about those kids. Not tonight. Tomorrow we can visualize some good stuff for them.”
I managed a smile. “Good plan. Thanks, Nooch.”
He jumped out and lumbered over to his uncle. I watched Stosh throw his arm around Nooch’s shoulder—no easy task—and they disappeared into the house together.
Rooney jostled my arm with his nose, which made me realize I’d been staring into space long after Nooch went inside.
I put the truck in gear and drove down the hill, heading for the salvage yard.
12
I’d left the gate open earlier in the day. Gino Martinelli’s graffiti was still there, bringing down my property values.
I parked. Rooney grabbed his greasy bone, jumped out of the truck, and made a quick tour of the property. He was the ideal junkyard dog. He liked to patrol his territory, and he was big enough to terrify trespassers, even with his mouth full. I let him go.
I unlocked the overhead door and rolled it up. Flipping the light switch, I went inside the old garage, where my uncles had once run a scrap business. Now I had the place full of architectural stuff that I’d salvaged around the city. Trouble was, lately the bottom had fallen out of the salvage business. Nobody wanted to buy old things for their houses anymore. In fact, construction was at a new low, as far as I was concerned. So I was hurting a little.
Next to the garage, connected by a steel door, was the old barbershop that I’d converted into an office for myself. I went inside, turned on the lights. I could see my breath in the office, so I clicked on the space heater.
Next door, I could hear the sounds of the new tenant who’d taken over the former chop shop. I’d heard he was some kind of artist or metalworker or whatever. He ran a blowtorch or pounded like a blacksmith day and night, that’s all I knew.
I closed the door, sat on my squeaking office chair, and scooted it closer to the heater. I noticed the light bl
inking on my answering machine, so I hit the button. A crazy part of me hoped to hear Flynn’s voice.
First came a couple of messages from Bug, both the same.
“Call me.”
Another call was the voice of a guy I knew who often tossed work my way. “Hey, Roxy, how about coming over to the old high school in McKeesport tomorrow? I got a bunch of desks and chairs that need a good home. I thought maybe you’d want to bid on ’em.”
I had no use for desks and chairs, so I deleted the message. My business was starting to look seriously awful.
Next came Stony Zuzak’s voice. “Rox, did you get a chance to listen to the CD I dropped off? What do you think? Can you make it Friday night? Sound check’s at five.”
He sounded excited, and I could understand. If somebody as famous as Dooce was his old pal and asking for Stony to play in his concert—well, that was pretty cool.
The last message was from Marvin Weiss. He’d been too chicken to call me on my cell. I sat up straight when I heard his voice.
“Roxy, hi. Sorry about this, but I’m getting out of town for a couple of weeks. Maybe you should, too.”
I slammed my hand on the desk.
“Thanks for the warning, Marvie,” I snapped at the machine. “One little problem comes up, and you take a powder. You candy ass.”
I had been left to twist in the wind, all by myself.
A few months ago, I’d have taken out my frustration with Marvin on the first guy I could pick up in a bar or a club. The fastest way I knew to calm myself down was a quickie with someone I’d never see again. Most men were ready and willing to oblige me.
The guy next door with the blowtorch. Maybe I should go check him out.
But I was trying to get a handle on that behavior. I knew it wasn’t safe. Sure, I was careful to keep plenty of condoms in my hip pocket, and I knew how to wield a blunt weapon if I needed it. So far, I’d been okay. But taking risks like that was probably going to get me in trouble eventually. And I really hated the thought of Sage finding out. It was high time I grew up.
Quietly, I opened the drawer in my desk—the drawer where I kept a lot of things I stole from the guys I hooked up with. A key chain, an earring, a rabbit’s foot. Just junk, but I remembered each encounter. I’d heard about wacko killers who kept trinkets from their victims, but, hey, that wasn’t what my collection was about. I just liked the sex.