Uprooting Ernie (Jane Delaney Mysteries Book 2)

by Pamela Burford

  “The Sexy Beasts are in second place,” Maxine continued. “They got eight questions right.”

  I look at the table in question. The Sexy Beasts consisted of Maia Armstrong, Rocky, and the pottery couple. I saluted them with my beer glass.

  “Skeleton Crew is tied for third place with—” Maxine read the team name written on the answer sheet “—Ramrod News: Like Real News, Only Not. Both those teams got seven right.” Sten Jakobsen was on the Ramrod News team, along with a few folks I recognized from his law practice.

  “Not good enough, guys,” Sophie told us. “Come on, we can beat these amateurs.”

  “The Devilish Divas are in fourth place with six correct answers,” Maxine said. I looked toward the bar, where The Devilish Divas sat. Officers Howie Werker and Geri Marvin had teamed up with Kyle Kenneally and his unfortunate date for the evening, a prim-looking young woman who sipped a white-wine spritzer and appeared flummoxed by the rowdy goings-on. None of the team appeared diva-like to me, but then who was I to judge? I’m the one with “Diva” in her nickname, and to me, applying liquid eyeliner is a mystery on the order of Stonehenge.

  “In fifth place with five correct answers,” Maxine announced, “is, appropriately enough, Pentagram Schmentagram.” This team was populated by Patrick O'Rourke and his wife, Barbara, plus another couple I recognized from around town.

  “Tied for last place with a whopping one, count ’em one, correct answer—” she held up a single digit “—are Jane’s Double Ds and Thongs for the Granny Panties.”

  Jane’s Double Ds also sat at the bar, sucking down the suds at an alarming rate. It was the loathsome pincher Logan and his snickering cohort, now snickering over their oh-so-clever team name. They shared last place with the padre’s team, Thongs for the Granny Panties. Neither Martin nor any of his adorable teammates appeared at all perturbed that they’d come in last.

  During the second round Maxine showed brief clips of old movies on the bar TV. Contestants had to name the film. Skeleton Crew moved up in the rankings to second place, thanks to Stevie’s addiction to classic films. Thongs for the Granny Panties jumped from last place to third. Someone on Martin’s team—perhaps the padre himself?—knew a lot about Bette Davis and Gary Cooper. It irked me to think of Martin and his giggling, jiggling, daiquiri-lapping cuties coming out ahead of us in this contest.

  So I was pleased when Maxine introduced the third round, world geography, and I saw Sophie rub her palms together and growl, “Bring it.” Startlingly, she knew all the answers, including the two capitals of Benin.

  I can tell you’re dying to know, so here they are: Porto-Novo and Cotonou. See? Hanging with me makes you smarter.

  My team held its ranking. Meanwhile Martin’s team moved up to tie us for second place. Nina’s team went into the final round in first place. I didn’t want Martin to win, but I really didn’t want Nina to win.

  Fortunately, the final category was local current events. Skeleton Crew had a ringer in the form of one Jane Delaney, Death Diva and discoverer of skeletons. Correction: We had two ringers. Not only was Sophie the town’s mayor and therefore privy to inside info, she was intimately involved in the events of the past week.

  Sophie read my mind. “If we don’t win this one, I’m tossing in the trivia towel for good.”

  “It’s no secret to anyone,” Maxine began, “that Crystal Harbor has been prominent in the news this week. Our very own Jane Delaney started the ball rolling, so I think it only appropriate that the current-event questions in our final round test your knowledge of the life and times of our intrepid skeleton wrangler.”

  Huh?

  “No fair!” Logan, well on his way to falling-down drunk, stabbed a finger in my direction, the movement causing him to practically tumble off his barstool. “She knows, like, a lot of stuff about herself. She’ll cheat.”

  “For the record, I did not know Jane would be joining us tonight,” Maxine said. “More of a challenge. So what? Man up, Logan. By the way, I’m cutting you off. Question one: Who first called Jane Delaney the Death Diva?”

  My teammates looked at me expectantly. “How am I supposed to know that?” I said. “Everyone just started calling me that and it stuck.”

  Ben said, “Yeah, but who was the first one?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you remember when you first heard it?” Stevie asked.

  I shook my head. “It was so long ago.”

  “Irene.” Sophie tapped the pencil on the answer sheet. “It was probably Irene.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “She thought the name was kind of dopey, so...”

  “Who were your earliest clients?” Ben asked. “It was probably one of them.”

  I groaned, dropping my head into my hands. How humiliating to make wild guesses about my own life. I looked around the room and saw the other teams huddled, wracking their brains for the correct answer. Not Martin, though. He lounged back in his seat, chatting and laughing with his bodacious babes. Almost as if he didn’t care whether he won or lost.

  Or as if he’d already written the correct answer.

  “Question two,” Maxine called out.

  “Irene,” I hurriedly said. “Put down Irene.” Maxine was diligent about researching answers before her trivia contests. I hoped I’d guessed right.

  “What is the original location of Janey’s Place,” Maxine said, “the Crystal Harbor health-food restaurant named for Jane Delaney?”

  Sophie frowned. “Is this a trick question? It’s the one right here on Main Street, no?”

  “Yeah, of course.” I took the pencil from her and wrote the answer. “Why did she ask such an easy one?”

  And so it went for eight more baffling questions, ending with, “Jane Delaney’s ‘familiar’ is a dog named Sexy Beast. What is the name of Sexy Beast’s mother?”

  I started writing my own name before it occurred to me Maxine was probably referring to a mom with fewer thumbs and more nipples. I slapped the pencil on the table and uttered a naughty word. “Before you ask,” I informed my teammates, “no, I do not know the name of SB’s biological mother.”

  “Think back,” Sophie said. “Irene never mentioned it?”

  “She probably never knew her name,” I said. “I mean, how obscure is that?”

  “Time’s up.” Maxine started collecting the answer sheets, starting with our table.

  I scrawled Dick Cheney on the paper, shoved it at Maxine, and tossed the pencil onto the table. “How did you manage to find out such a thing?” I asked her.

  She shrugged. “Irene got all her poodles from the same breeder. I gave him a call.”

  Maxine took her time scoring the answers, giving her customers ample opportunity to order more drinks. All except for Loathsome Logan, who was forced to make do with ginger ale. The first time he tried to sneak a gulp of a buddy’s beer, Maxine informed his pals that if they let him imbibe, she’d kick them all out and ban them from Murray’s for the rest of the summer. From that point forward, they did the policing for her.

  Stevie and Ben excused themselves to cross the room and chat with Martin. Sophie asked about the car Dean had sold me. She smirked. “Is it still running?”

  “It’s a dream compared to my last ride,” I said. “That’s all that matters. You know, I thought about Dean when Max asked that geography question about Boston.”

  She frowned. “What connection does Dean have with Boston?”

  “He told me he was there when Ernie was killed,” I said. “He flew up there for a business seminar.”

  “Oh yeah, some franchise gimmick. Always had something cooking, always convinced this was the scheme that’d get him rich. Only, he never stuck with anything long enough, or worked hard enough, to make it pay. And of course, it was never his fault.”

  “So I was wondering—and I’m sure you’ve considered this already,” I said, “but how can you be sure Dean really was in Boston when he says he was? Couldn’t he have just told you he
was leaving and, well, you know...”

  “Secretly stuck around and offed the husband of the woman whose pants he was trying to get into?” she asked. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told Bonnie when she brought it up. I called Dean at his hotel in Boston. He was there. We spoke.”

  “And this was the day Ernie died?”

  “Yep.” Sophie took a deep pull on her beer. “If Lacey’s to be believed, she saw Porter get in Ernie’s car and drive away with the body on the afternoon of June fifteenth, not long after lunchtime—she estimates it was around two o’clock. Which is right about when I phoned Dean. I was at work, eating a late lunch at my desk.”

  “Had he left a number where you could reach him?” I asked.

  Sophie’s smile was knowing. “You’ve been thinking about this.”

  I shrugged, embarrassed. Clearly she didn’t consider her ex a suspect. “I just figured if he left you a number to call—”

  “I know, it could be the number to some pay phone somewhere and not necessarily the hotel,” she said. “But no, he didn’t leave a number, so I had to call information for it. Knew he was staying at the Sheraton where the seminar was being held. Operator put me through to his room. I called to tell him Porter couldn’t pick him up from the airport when he came in the next evening, due to a last-minute business dinner, and that I’d do it. Chatted for a minute and then he had to get back to the seminar. Satisfied?”

  I shrugged again. “I had to ask.” I stayed Sophie’s hand as she started to refill my beer glass. I might not have a long drive ahead of me that night, but Crystal Harbor squad cars had a spooky way of materializing out of nowhere.

  She said, “Did you forget that whoever murdered Ernie had to know the story of how Ernie supposedly killed Tim? That fake suicide note shortens the list of suspects. And if I didn’t know about it back then, Dean sure as hell didn’t.”

  “True.” If not for that note, I might have suggested that Dean could have hired out the murder while he was hundreds of miles away establishing his alibi. “I just feel compelled to, I don’t know, tie up loose ends.”

  “Can’t blame you for that,” she said. “But face it, Porter and Lacey have something to do with the murder, even if their stories have holes. The truth is in there somewhere.”

  My brain kicked the facts around. “So you didn’t go home for lunch the day Ernie died.”

  “Almost never did,” she said. “Too much work.”

  “I assume you mentioned that to Bonnie. I mean, you can’t be in two places at once—slaving away at your place of business at the same time that you’re clobbering her husband at home.” I thought about Sten’s law firm, where she’d been employed at the time. “Do paralegals have to account for every minute of their time like lawyers, for billing purposes?”

  Sophie sat up straight. I could tell she hadn’t thought of that. “Yeah. And Sten holds on to every piece of paper in perpetuity. He must have a warehouse full of old records at this point.”

  “So your time sheet for that day probably still exists.”

  “Not that our dear friend the detective will care. She’ll just say I faked it to account for my whereabouts.” She sighed. “Just wish I trusted Bonnie to get it right. Keep waiting for her to show up with handcuffs.”

  She went still, listening intently in the noisy bar. “Is that my phone?” She pulled it out of her purse and answered it, covering her other ear. I watched her expression tense. “No way, it’s late and I’ve had a couple. Whatever it is can wait till morning. I’ll be there at nine.” She hung up, muttering curses under her breath.

  “Please tell me that wasn’t her nibs,” I said.

  Sophie grimaced. “New information has come to light, Bonnie says.” She tapped the phone’s screen and put it to her ear again.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “That lawyer Sten hooked me up with,” she said. “No way I’m talking to the cops alone.”

  14

  Johnny Appleseed

  As it turned out, Sexy Beast’s mother had two names. Either would have counted as a correct answer. Her registered name was Champion Monkeysee Monkeydo. Yeah, that’s right, my neurotic little poodle shares the genes of a certifiable champion. Do they give blue ribbons for dribbling pee while prostrating oneself in fawning submission? Her “call name”—what her humans called her, in other words—was Bananas.

  The padre knew this. He wrote it all out on his answer sheet. He also knew that I have sober, dignified Sten Jakobsen, of all people, to thank for my decidedly undignified, impossible-to-shake nickname, Death Diva. I must remember to thank him.

  Oh, and the original location of Janey's Place? Not Main Street, thank you very much, but a big, apple green food truck, a kind of health-food roach coach that used to make the rounds of businesses too small to have their own cafeterias.

  And yeah, it’s understandable that this “original location” slipped my mind, considering I spent about a million hours behind the wheel of that thing way back when, serving up smoked-portobello club sandwiches and creamy carrot-coconut soup to hardworking vegetarians all over western Nassau County.

  It’s not my fault, it was a trick question!

  Guess who got it right.

  And guess whose team won the damn trivia contest. The padre and his nubile cheering section celebrated their triumph with little glasses of sherry and a sedate toast in honor of their worthy adversaries.

  Just kidding. They screamed and pounded the table and knocked back booze and hugged and kissed and groped one another so thoroughly I began to suspect Martin didn’t go there for the trivia.

  Sophie was less vexed than I’d expected at our loss, distracted as she was by her upcoming meeting with Detective Hernandez. At least she’d lawyered up. Ben and Stevie gave her a lift back to the library, where her car was parked.

  As was mine. They offered me a ride, but it was a gorgeous night and I opted to hoof it. I hadn’t gone half a block when Martin jogged up behind me.

  “I turned around and you were gone,” he said. His breath was beer-scented, but he was by no means drunk.

  I tried not to read too much into that simple statement. Such as: I’ve been watching you all evening and when I saw you were gone, I thought my heart would break in two.

  “Where’s your motorcycle?” I asked. “Library?”

  He shook his head. “I walked.”

  “From the house?” I looked at him. “It’s about two miles from there to the library.”

  “I like running into your neighbors and telling them I’m living with you.”

  I rolled my eyes, deciding not to let him bait me. It was too lovely a night for even a halfhearted squabble. “Do you tell them Dom’s bunking there too?”

  “Nah. He won’t last.”

  “Oh, and you will?”

  Instead of answering, he nodded toward the corner restaurant we were approaching. “Want to get a table?”

  “I already had dinner,” I said.

  The restaurant, called Dewatre after its executive chef and owner, Pierre “Swing” Dewatre, featured outdoor seating in the summer. Swing had earned notoriety for serving exotic and endangered animals. Well, that was the rumor anyway, one the animal-rights groups had gotten all worked up over. For what it’s worth, I never noticed any sketchy items on the menu. All I knew was, Swing made a sweet-and-sour brisket that was the most delicious thing I’d ever put in my mouth. If it was in reality sweet-and-sour panda, I didn’t want to know.

  “I ate too,” he said, “but you can never have too much dessert. Swing makes a killer tiramisu.”

  “Some other time.”

  “I’ll hold you to that.”

  I looked at him and then quickly away, shoring up my defenses against those crystal blue eyes and that deliciously predatory smile. The fact that the padre clearly knew how sexy he was should have been a major turn-off for a mature, sensible woman like me, but what can I tell you? Something about this guy turned me into a dopey, weak-kneed tee
nager.

  “So what makes you think Dom’s going to move out soon?” I asked. “Didn’t he say he’d stay as long as you did?”

  “He has a lot on his plate,” Martin said.

  “What, like running the Janey’s Place intergalactic empire?”

  “He has two families to take care of.”

  Right. Dom’s two exes and their children. His children.

  What’s that you say? That you’ve had enough of me whining about how my biological clock is swiftly running down and it might already be too late? Okay, I won’t bring it up again if you don’t.

  Unless I, you know, forget.

  Martin continued, “And by ‘take care of’—”

  “I know.” I held up my hand to silence him. “Dom gives his exes more than the agreed-upon financial support and has joint custody of all the kids and he fixes stuff around their houses and they let him pop in all the time without calling and they all get along so splendidly it makes me want to puke.”

  Martin answered this little tirade with silence as we crossed the street and turned another corner. When I could no longer stand it, I barked, “What?”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Don’t make me hurt you, Padre.”

  “It doesn’t take a shrink to see you’re still hung up on your ex,” he said. “Is that what a guy has to do to ensure your everlasting devotion? Turn himself into Johnny Appleseed and turn all his exes into BFFs?”

  I walked faster. Martin kept pace. “You make it sound all sister-wife. It’s nothing like that. And Johnny Appleseed? The guy has three kids, not thirty.”

  “That you know of.”

  “You can shut up now.”

  He did, much to my annoyance. When we reached the library, he walked me to my car in the dark parking lot.

  “I suppose you’re expecting a ride home?” I said.

  He slipped past me and got in behind the wheel. “I’ll drive. You’ve been drinking.”