Deadly Homecoming at Rosemont

by Chappell,Connie

  Where would he go after being fired from his job? Then I remembered what he said Saturday morning. If he wasn’t sitting on his porch, he’d hang out at Dooley’s. I raced for the car and pointed Midnight east.

  When my phone rang, I snagged it out of my pocket.

  “Where are you? And who was that man you were talking with out front? He was cute.” The caller was Lucy. I imagined the drool on her lip as she spoke.

  I decided to ignore all of that and got down to business. “Tell K.C. I’ll be there in about an hour. Has a fax come in with the Chamber’s guest list?”

  “Just a minute ago. This afternoon’s agenda came with it. I laid them on your desk. I’ll head over to Dan D.’s around ten to pick up the scissors. What happened on Winding Trail? I thought about that all weekend.”

  “Not much. I talked with most everyone on your list. Hey, can you do me a favor? There’s a new plan to fix the street. Can you call out to the street department and get it? Burl Wilde mentioned it Saturday. K.C.’ll want to know.”

  “Sure. No problem.” There was a moment of silent air. “Then you’ll tell me about that guy later?”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  More silence.

  I pictured her pouting face. “Okay, okay, when I get a chance. Now I’ve got to go.” I ended the call.

  Lucy apparently came in while Glenn and I were seated on the bench. I could see how that looked, our heads together, talking quietly, my fellow employees dragging in behind us. Tongues would wag, emails would fly, and everyone would look to Lucy for the scoop. The highlight of her Monday, I’m sure.

  I needed only fifteen minutes to get out to Pleasant Stop. The backwater burg was just as depressing at midmorning as it had been at the dinner hour. I made the loop, rubbernecking, while still being careful to dodge potholes. I crossed into Dooley’s lot, kicking up dust. Two trucks were parked out front. I pulled in on the far side of a pint-sized pickup and got out.

  My gaze floated over the hoods of the trucks to the shaded front entrance. I moved that direction. The bar’s door was propped open by a rock the size of a loaf of bread. An old bloodhound wandered out, looking like he’d been on a three-day binge: eyes bloodshot, face sagging, ribs showing, tail limp and lifeless. He moseyed around the corner out of sight—to sleep it off, I presumed.

  I was ready to angle through the propped door when I stopped short, a measure necessary to prevent a head-on collision with Wilkey Summer, exiting at full tilt.

  “Damn dog gets treated better than I do,” he grumbled to himself.

  My outstretched hands were ready to deflect him. At the last second, he sidestepped, taking me in.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked with a curled lip.

  “Looking for you. What’s wrong?”

  He waved an arm back at the door. “Lets that flea-bitten dog in the kitchen, but doesn’t want to get caught serving me a beer before eleven-thirty. Didn’t mind asking me to mop the floor. Says I’ve got time on my hands.” At a pitch loud enough to be heard inside, he said, “If I’ve got time on my hands, I’m going to pay the health department a visit. Did you hear that, Dooley?”

  An empty beer can came flying out the door, bounced off the knob, then toppled end-over-end into the lot. That was definitely an affirmative.

  The retaliation that surged through Wilkey’s veins was palpable. He moved toward the dented can, but I grabbed his arm, holding fast.

  “Stop it,” I ordered. He pulled himself free of my grasp. I saw his careworn expression, so I tempered my tone accordingly. “I just came from Norb’s place. Why did he fire you?”

  “Because I did the right thing and fessed up to duplicating those keys for Gina. I wanted him to know before the cops showed up. If they showed up. I couldn’t be sure. Anyway, it just felt like I should tell him. Norb’s always been good to me, and I wanted to be straight with him.”

  On the face of it, it didn’t seem like a firing offense. “Why would Norb fire you for copying keys? He’s a locksmith. That’s what he does.”

  “They were master keys, and I knew it. They were marked D-N-D. Do not duplicate.” That trade secret was added for my benefit.

  “And they were Eastwood master keys. And Eastwood was robbed.”

  A fractional silence followed. “How’d you know they were Eastwood’s?” he asked meekly.

  “It’s hard to keep a secret in this town,” I said, shortcutting around the layers of bureaucracy I would need to peel away in order to fully answer the question.

  “No shit.” With that, he spun on his heel and walked away.

  I watched him go. He set a languid pace for himself, head bent toward off-brand basketball shoes, hands shoved into his back pockets while a baggy white T-shirt billowed around him with the wind. He was a man whose recently broken heart had been coupled with a full dose of terror on the side. He was a jobless ex-con, suspected of Rosemont’s murder, and the woman who could give him an alibi on the lam.

  By the time I pushed my feet into motion, he passed between the two trucks and loaded himself easily into the bed of the small Toyota pickup. The tailgate was missing. His legs cut across the bed’s width, his back propped against the wheel well.

  When I reached the truck’s bumper, he raised green eyes so full of misery that it was like looking at myself in the mirror in those weeks and months after Grams died. I think most of all, he missed Gina. No matter that she used and abused him, his love for her—and now his pain—was real.

  “Sorry, Wrenn. I’ve been a butt,” he said apologetically, sliding his feet out of the way. “Sit down here. What’s up?”

  I settled on the edge, letting my feet dangle. “I made some progress since Saturday. I hope you don’t mind talking about Gina. There’s just no way to avoid it.”

  He gave a hapless shrug, exhibiting all the zip of a rag doll.

  “As I said, the keys aren’t a secret anymore. Gina lifted them from an associate history professor at Eastwood, a man named Adam Porter.” I saw no name recognition so I continued with a brief explanation of the valuable Egyptian collection and its partial theft the night of the murder. “The cops may pay you another call to identify Porter’s keys.” This brought a flash of anxiety to his face. “Remember to act surprised if they do. No reason to let them know we had this little talk.”

  “This is progress. How does this help me?”

  “It doesn’t really.”

  He immediately started tapping his middle finger to his chest. “They still think I murdered Jimmy. Have they found Gina? She’s my alibi, you know.”

  “I know, I know.” I nodded agreeably while my hands patted down his rising angst. “I think we should go at this from another direction. I learned something this morning that’ll put us in line to reveal the real murderer.”

  “No shit,” he said, his response a blend of wariness and surprise.

  “I think Gina gave the keys you duplicated to Barton Reed.”

  “The theater guy?”

  I nodded. “Then Barton and Jimmy—Trey to me—used the keys to break into the university to steal the artifacts. Trey knew there’d be a place to hide them out at his family’s estate. But something happened, and Barton killed Trey.”

  Wilkey sat back, visibly startled, his eyes focused on mine.

  “I think there’s evidence in Barton’s office at the theater that’ll place him at the murder scene. I want to look around over there this afternoon while he’s out at a ribboncutting ceremony with the mayor. We’ll have a good twenty-to-thirty minutes. The office is small. It shouldn’t take long to search.”

  “Hey! You just switched from I to we real fast. Why do you need me to poke around?”

  “Barton always keeps his office locked. But I don’t have the key.” I remembered how he tested the lock when I delivered the new scripts from Cummings and how he needed to unlock the door to provide Gina Frawley’s address from his files.

  I watched while comprehension dawned, slowly at fi
rst, just behind the eyes, then a colorful sunburst lit Wilkey’s face.

  “Are you crazy?” he shouted loud enough for Dooley Torrance to hear inside.

  As I shushed him, he pulled his knees toward his chest, spun on his backside, and came to rest beside me on the truck bed. His tone ran the gambit from amused to argumentative. “You want me to pick the lock and let you in. I did time for that. No. Nah-uh. Not on your life.”

  “Well, it isn’t really my life that’s at risk here. It’s yours,” I argued.

  “It’s illegal to even possess lock picks. I could get arrested just walking around with them. Besides, I don’t have my picks anymore.”

  “Come on, Wilkey, don’t tell me that,” I said, calling his bluff.

  “Why don’t you go to the police?”

  “The police poking around may spook him. He could take off like Gina did, and I want to get the artifacts back.”

  “Hey, I thought it was my butt we were trying to get out of a sling. Now you’re worried about some old pieces of art. What’s the deal here?”

  I could almost feel the guilt flood onto my face. “Well, there are a couple of butts involved here and one of them belongs to my boyfriend.”

  “What the…? Great!”

  “He’s a professor at Eastwood. The university’s reputation is at stake. This exhibit was a big deal for them.”

  He pinned his elbows to his legs and clapped his hands to his head. “You don’t really care about me. I’m so far down your list—”

  I cut off the woebegone man with a contradictory tone. “You can believe that if you want, Wilkey, but that’s not true. I believe you’re innocent.”

  He unclamped his head to face me. “First, it was that Addison guy. Now, it’s all about your boyfriend, the professor.” His tone was snooty. “Where are these guys going to be while I’m risking jail time breaking and entering?”

  “It’s not breaking and entering.”

  “Oh, no. How do you figure?”

  “The theater is city property. There’s no reason why I can’t be over there. I work for the mayor. It’s not illegal to enter a room on your own property.”

  “Then the mayor must have a key. Get the key.”

  “The mayor doesn’t keep the keys. He’s got someone who keeps the keys. And there isn’t time. We’ve got to get in there this afternoon while we have the chance.” I didn’t mention the exhibit’s impending return drove my urgent timeframe. I thought it wise not to set him off again. “Please, Wilkey, you’ve got to help me. No one will see you. I’ve got it all planned. I can sneak you in the back door off the alley. The office is right there.”

  “I haven’t picked a lock in years. I’m rusty.”

  Aha, I mused, holding back a grin, he does have picks. “If you can’t get it open, that’s one thing,” I nudged him along, “but not even to try when everything hinges on what’s in that office...”

  Shaking his head, he looked over with a smirk that said I just flew in from outer space.

  Tiring of the debate, I was ready to cut and run. Maybe I could finagle a key, but I didn’t want to. “Okay, if you don’t have the guts for it, then take your chances without my help. Where will that put you?”

  That wiped the smirk off his face. He launched himself out of the truck bed, took a few steps, and stopped, staring straight ahead, arms folded across his chest.

  Thinking I went too far, I slipped my feet to the ground and went around to face him with one last determined effort. “We’ve got to catch this guy. You and I. If we find what I think we’ll find, they can hold him. He’ll talk. He knows where Gina went. He won’t go down alone. That’ll get her back here, and you’ll be cleared completely.”

  During my closing monologue, he stared stubbornly at something far off and over my right shoulder. Now he dropped his eyes to mine and put me on the offensive. “I don’t understand you, Wrenn. It’s too risky. Why won’t you let the cops do it?”

  “Because I’ve got something to prove to a couple of cops.” The words flung themselves spitefully off my tongue before I even realized the thought formed.

  His scowl vanished. “Oh. It’s personal,” he said, every pore oozing with bad-boy pride. “What the hell then. I’m in.”

  We agreed on a plan. Wilkey would dust off his lock picks and meet me in the lobby of the Whitney Building at 1:45.

  I pulled onto Pleasant Stop’s main thoroughfare with a fleeting thought about my cohort. If Wilkey can pick locks, can he also crack safes? When I glanced back and saw him race over and heave the beer can back through the bar’s open door, I dismissed the idea entirely, replacing it with a prayer that he wouldn’t show up half drunk.

  For ten minutes, I paced the Whitney Building’s long, narrow lobby, checking the clock on the wall every time I passed beneath it. I would’ve preferred time to stand still, but it forged ahead at a fairly good clip. In two minutes, Wilkey would officially be late.

  I cursed him under my breath and left my post at the entrance doors off Gatling Street. From there, I possessed an unobstructed view of the theater across the way. Turning, I stamped over tile flooring to the elevators and looked up at the clock. Another minute gone. From a second set of doors opening out to the parking lot, I saw Barton’s BMW still occupying the third slot from the end. The theater, like the other stores and businesses downtown, didn’t have private parking, so he was forced to use the municipal lot.

  The lobby was drab, utilitarian, and completely devoid of any interior design ambitions whatsoever. Its pass-through style funneled everyone efficiently to a pair of side-by-side elevators. The only adornments were rudimentary in nature: the building registry between the elevators and the clock above it. I’d be hard-pressed to say it wasn’t clean, but it could’ve been spruced up with a modest outlay of cash.

  Since my one-thirty arrival, I placed three phone calls from the lobby, getting my ducks in a row. I thumbed through my list of stored numbers for Clay’s. I stomped my foot when my call rang straight through to voicemail.

  “Clay, why don’t you have your phone with you?” I nagged. “You promised me when you left the park. You said you’d carry it. And turn it on.” I could picture the thing lolling in the Chevy’s front seat between the seatbelt gizmos. “Clay, this is important. Meet me in the alley behind the theater. Be there at two-thirty. I need you to serve on an impromptu reception committee.” Then getting back into the spirit, I added, “Don’t worry how you’re dressed. It’s not fancy.”

  The reception committee would greet Barton upon his return from the ribboncutting ceremony. It was absolutely essential that it include one more member. I put in another call. After four rings, the sexy, baritone, and recorded voice of my dear sweet Gideon spoke, inviting me to leave a message.

  “Hi, slugger. It’s me, your faithful fan,” I cooed alluringly, then switched to a highly consoling tone. “I know you’ve just come from your meeting with Dillon, where he probably tossed Adam off campus for good. I’ve got something that will brighten your day, and I’ll give you a hint: It’s about the stolen artifacts. I think we’ll be looking at a Theban king’s golden face before we see dinner. After which, there will be cake, if you know what I mean. Don’t let them truck the collection out of there today. Meet me behind the Baxter at two-thirty. See you then.”

  I knew I’d reach Gideon’s voicemail, just as I knew he would pick up the message shortly after two. He and Adam Porter were scheduled to meet with President Stuart Dillon from one to two. Meetings with Dillon began and ended precisely on time. I remembered this from meetings K.C. and I held with him about instituting campus police and others since. He was a paragon of punctuality. Many of us could learn from his glowing example: Wilkey Summer being one.

  My first call went to Lucy Matthews. Everything hinged on her part in this. I needed her to fill in for me at the ribboncutting, and she needed to hear a plausible excuse explaining my absence from this duty. By late morning, I had my sit-down with the mayor so he was prep
ped and ready. I then primed Lucy’s receptiveness by keeping my promise to tell her about Glenn. I merely reset the scene back to Saturday when I met the cute telephone lineman out on Infantry Road and let Lucy run with it. She turned the whole thing into a quick Harlequin: boy meets girl, boy chases girl, girl breaks boy’s heart on a bus-stop bench.

  With less than thirty minutes’ notice, Lucy snapped into service. She accepted my fib about being called into an important meeting with Irv Hammer to discuss my Piedmont Alley article. With my ribboncutting file in hand, she agreed to put K.C. in the car and go. Fibs are easier told over the phone.

  While I put the prologue to work flawlessly, I saw a hitch in the main story if Clay didn’t get his message. After I found Hellfire’s costume, I planned to let him take it from there. First, a little Q & A with Barton before calling it in to headquarters. I mentally penciled in a Plan B, substituting Georgie for Clay. Heaven forbid I had to put in a call to Elmore or Sherrie. I think I’d rather let Barton go before I spoke to Better Bully Baines.

  Gideon, of course, would arrive on time, all shirttails and work boots. After hearing my message, he would halt the crating of the larger artifacts to backpedal the National Archeological Museum’s decision to yank the collection away from black-balled Eastwood University. The promised return of the stolen pieces might soften their stance on the matter. The actual return might turn it around altogether.

  My eyes were trained on the theater doors again, expecting them to open, and Barton to come strolling out. My two City Hall ducklings passed in front of the Whitney Building a full ten minutes ago.

  I should’ve been in that car. Why was I doing this?

  Why, indeed, when the danger felt close enough to raise the hairs on my neck? They mingled with Wilkey’s unhesitant conclusion this morning: “It’s personal.”

  Who was I fooling? Part of this was about settling the score with Elmore and Baines.

  Waiting for Wilkey gave me too much time for self-analysis.