Do Wah Diddy Die

by Pauline Baird Jones

  “Hugo?”

  “My channel. He’s my conduit to the space/time continuum. He’s a little upset by all the police cars and sirens because he was a criminal in a past life, but I’m sure he’d cough up something to help me. Though I won’t mention it’s for Reggie. He doesn’t like Reggie. Claims Reggie is a con artist. It’s absurd, of course. Reggie is a businessman with interests in—”

  “Cleveland.” This time Delaney finished it. “That seems to be about the only thing we do know about Reggie. We’d really like to know more.”

  “Why? So you can bully and brutalize him? He’s sensitive. Kind, caring. But why should you care about that? You just want someone to pin this murder on.”

  Mickey and Delaney shifted uneasily. It was hard to summon a credible protest when they had been hoping to bring it home to Reggie. Pinning it on him would be unethical. And difficult. Though not impossible.

  Mickey opened his mouth to say something soothing, but lost his train of thought when the lamp next to Velma began to spin in a slow circle. Next to him, Delaney stiffened as he, too, caught sight of the lamp.

  With some difficulty, Mickey collected his thoughts, which wanted to spin faster than the lamp, and managed a question. “It’s helpful to get your...views of Seymour, Ms. Verlain. The others—”

  “Oh, I know. They think he’s next to useless! They have no conception of the damage they do with their lowered expectations! Reggie has been marred, marred I tell you, by this ridiculous dysfunctional family thing! So, he finally manages to rise above it, and then the police come sniffing around. It’s an unjust world. An unjust world, indeed.” She tipped her head back, looking at them through lowered lids while the lamp began to spin faster.

  “Yes, well.” Delaney cleared his throat, his eyes fixed with horrid fascination on the lamp. “We really need to ask him a few questions. When he calls—”

  “He doesn’t call. Reggie and I are connected by something better. Something deeper than mere wires and signals. Our souls joined the moment our eyes met—”

  With a vicious jerk, the lamp spun across the room and crashed into the opposite wall.

  Velma shook her head, leaning forward to say, confidentially, “I’m afraid Hugo has descended to unbecoming jealousy.”

  As soon as she came in, Luci could tell her aunts had searched her room. They had tried too hard to leave things as they were, so of course, they had failed. Luci had anticipated this move and hidden the photograph between the two mattresses. Even if the aunts had suspected this move, they wouldn’t have been able to lift it up. Luci had barely managed it.

  With some difficulty, mostly caused by the sling and the elastic bandage on her left arm, Luci removed the photograph and held it up to the superior light by her bedside. The face still eluded her efforts, but she could see the medals in strict rows across his chest and the way his hand gripped Lila’s.

  Not too surprising he’d gotten what he wanted, even from an elusive Seymour, Luci decided with a slight smile. Though he hadn’t gotten all he wanted. Lila had eluded him in the end, taking her secrets with her.

  The frame was a heavy one, not really suitable for the photograph it housed.

  “I wonder...” Luci turned it over, removed the back and freed the photograph from confinement. With rising excitement she realized there was faded writing on the bottom right hand corner. She held it up to the light—

  “To love cheeks from your pooh bear?” She lowered the picture and stared at herself in the fading mirror. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  There was no middle ground in this investigation, Mickey decided morosely. The participants either had too much personality—or too little. His uncle’s fiancée came in on the too little side, possessing less animation than Velma’s lamp. This seemed symbolic somehow, but Mickey was too weary to figure out why.

  Medium height, medium build, straight brown hair, blank brown eyes, late fifties to early sixties, with no distinguishing marks whatsoever. Sitting opposite them, she stared at the wall. The one with nothing on it.

  Mickey had long ago decided his uncle was marrying Unabelle because he knew only the personality-less could put up with Eddie’s powerful personality. It still didn’t make much sense. Zero times zero was still zero. But if Eddie wanted to marry the equivalent of a slightly warm, inflatable person, that was his business. And if she kept Eddie from messing about in Mickey’s life, so much the better.

  In an attempt to ease her non-existent unease, Mickey gave Unabelle a false smile. “I don’t know if you remember me, Miss Fraser? I’m Eddie’s nephew, Mickey Ross.”

  Her blank gaze got, if anything, blanker. After what seemed like a long time, she asked, “Eddie?”

  He looked at Delaney and saw the same desperation in his eyes that he felt in his own.

  11

  The humid air was slow to bring the soft sound of a blues-laden love song from the frat house across the street as Luci came out and perched on the porch railing, pondering her few options. If her aunts wouldn’t help her, it wasn’t going to be easy unraveling the mystery of her paternity. That Lila had called him her pooh bear was not something she wanted to admit to anyone.

  She pushed her paternal thoughts to the back burner and let her mind home in on the distant hum of traffic as the city geared up for the night. The air was heavy with the scent of too many green growing things to sort out the alien foods that enticed and teased one to venture forth from comfort zones. This place, with its lazy decadence, was the polar opposite of her sturdy, duty-minded Wyoming, and had her feeling very unlike her Seymour self.

  She’d come here in search of her father and found murder, mayhem and a strange stirring she hadn’t known she was capable of. Was it the city that was making her wish for things a Seymour didn’t? Or was it someone?

  With some reluctance, she let herself think about “someone.” Men had passed as tiny blips across her horizon. Better looking, far less uptight men. Why did this one disturb her thoughts? Stir yearnings to which she was supposed to be immune? All the nerve endings in her body seemed to have awakened to the fact that they were nerve endings and could feel. Could feel so much so that she now felt the soft stroke of air across her skin. Was aware of each thud of her heart and the in-and-out of her own breath. Inhaled a thousand heady scents and heard the most insignificant bug’s mating cry.

  That she even knew it was a mating cry was pretty amazing.

  Was this how her mother had felt before breaking who knows how many years of family tradition? Had her flaky, infuriating mother felt this languid and this filled with want?

  It was a terrifying thought. She’d come to find her father, to discover the roots of her strange duality, but he wouldn’t just be her father. He was her mother’s lover. She was the by-product of something that had been meant just for them. Did she really want to open that Pandora’s box? Her fright and flight instinct clamored for equal time with the “jump his fine bones” instinct. It might even be ahead of the game, but how could she leave with her aunts mired in the mess of murder?

  She was caught between the rock of murder and the Seymour hard place.

  Murder was a messy, untidy business, even without her aunts factored into the equation. The family would expect her to factor them out, but the object of her lust wasn’t going to let that happen until he was sure they weren’t in it.

  As if her thoughts had conjured him, the door behind her opened and Mickey and Delaney emerged.

  “Don’t feel bad,” Delaney said. “You do the best bad cop on the force. There just wasn’t anything to get a hold of there.”

  With night-accustomed eyes, she noted the discouraged slump to their shoulders and their glum faces.

  “I just don’t get it,” Mickey said. “What does Eddie see in her?”

  “He’s got enough personality to animate ten people,” Delaney pointed out.

  “I have to meet Eddie,” Luci said.

  They both started with surprise. Mickey peered int
o the shadows until he found her, framed against the round moon riding just above the tree line in the night sky.

  For a moment he contemplated a meeting between Luci and Eddie. What would Eddie think of Luci? She was in a picture perfect pose on the porch railing. The moon had maliciously chosen to bathe its light across her mouth, to stroke light and shadow in just the right amount to highlight the curve of breasts and thighs, and left her heart-stopping legs lost in shadow. About halfway through his examination of her, he quit thinking about what Eddie would think of her and started thinking about what he’d like to do with her.

  Delaney gave him a forceful nudge that cleared his head, but not the heat that had built in his mid-section.

  “Huh?”

  Luci’s smile was slow and sultry. “Gracie tells me you had a little chat with Velma.”

  “Gracie?” Delaney said.

  Mickey bit back a sigh as Delaney went into “moon” mode again, turning his bulky body to send a hopeful look at the house.

  “Is she—”

  “Turned in for the night? I’m afraid so,” Luci said. “How was Hugo?”

  “He was jealous,” Mickey admitted reluctantly.

  “Oh? He just tried to cop a feel off me.”

  Mickey realized his hands had fisted and deliberately straightened his fingers. “Velma didn’t mention you’d been there.”

  She stretched languidly. “Miss Weena assigned her to me when you declined to be her Watson. If you feed me, I’ll tell you what I know.” Her hopeful look had a generous helping of humor and sympathy.

  Mickey started to sigh again, then realized he’d been doing it almost continually since he’d met her and stopped himself. Hadn’t he vowed to take the tough line with her? “You’ll tell us what you know or we’ll charge you with obstruction.”

  Luci looked at Delaney, her sunny good humor belying her words. “You’re right. His bad cop is good.”

  “Don’t—” Mickey fought his way to control. “Just tell me about Reggie’s police record.”

  Luci folded her hands demurely in her lap. “He tries to cheat people.”

  Mickey looked at Delaney. “A bunco artist?”

  “You give him far too much credit,” Luci said.

  Mickey grinned. “Velma says it’s the family’s fault, that you all marred him.”

  Luci smiled. “He marred himself without any help from anybody. Unless you count the body piercing.

  Mickey looked at Delaney. “Body piercing?”

  “Intimate body piercing. Lila calls it his small vanity, but I think that puncturing your—private areas—with cheap jewelry, no matter how specially designed, is not a small vanity.”

  Mickey looked uneasy. “Specially designed jewelry?”

  “Yeah, according to the family grapevine, it’s a variation on the family crest. Poison oak and a weasel head. It was designed by a great aunt of mine. She had a rather wicked sense of humor. I don’t think Reggie got the joke, else why would he be flaunting it? If you can call it flaunting to wear it—there.”

  Both men flinched and Luci bit back a smile.

  Mickey shuddered. “Does Velma know?”

  “If she’s a psychic, she should.” Luci looked toward Velma’s house just in time to catch her closing the drapes. Luci frowned as the feeling that she knew her from somewhere else swept over her again. But how could that be? Velma had moved in after Luci and her mother left the area.

  “Something wrong?” Delaney asked her.

  Luci stood up and shook off all the feelings and impressions like a dog shedding water. “Do you hear it?”

  Mickey and Delaney looked at each other, then at her. Their mutual blankness made her smile.

  “A pizza,” she explained, “calling my name. I swear I can smell the sauce.”

  On Mickey’s face, blank gave way for annoyed, with just a hint of resignation. Delaney tilted his head and listened. “Yeah, I think I do.”

  “Not a chain pizza. Something more upscale, I think?”

  “There’s a place on Magazine that does gourmet pizzas,” Delaney said, giving Mickey a hopeful look and rubbing his stomach. It obliged him by growling.

  Mickey shoved his hair back. “Fine. Whatever.” Luci’s delighted smile made his head spin so fast, he didn’t notice the sling on her arm until they got to the car.

  “Did I do that when I tackled you last night?”

  Luci patted his arm reassuringly. “I took a header off an escalator.”

  Delaney looked worried. “You okay?”

  Luci nodded. “Just a slight sprain and a touch of snow burn.”

  Mickey shook his head. “Snow burn?”

  “From showing the kiddies how to make a snow angel.” She slid into the car and smiled up at him. “Bad idea in a dress.”

  In a daze, Mickey closed the door and looked at Delaney. “When did I stop knowing what was going on?”

  But he already knew the answer to that. The moment Luci Seymour walked into his life. He started the car and pulled away, his stomach rumbling happily at the thought of upcoming pizza.

  Artie waited until they were out of sight before he emerged from the ivy. Pizza sauce liberally splattered his pants and the stolen pizza shirt, but his shoes had suffered more vilely. Even his Instant-Polish kit couldn’t fix them. It had been a bad week for shoes. Something else to add to Luci Seymour’s account.

  It was dark in Fern’s hospital room when Donald pushed the door open and peered in. Fern was huddled in the regulation bed in the regulation gown, a cast adorning her arm. He started to back out, but she stopped him with, “I’m awake.”

  He slipped through and closed the door behind him.

  “You forget who’s the bopper in this family, Fernie?”

  Fern looked up, her face so downcast, Donald felt sorry about ribbing her. Ponderously he trod over to her and patted her broken arm.

  “Never mind.” His voice was gruff. “Weren’t such a bad idea, you know. If it had worked, our troubles’d be over. Weren’t your fault it didn’t, neither.”

  “She sent me flowers, Donald.” She nodded toward the tasteful arrangement brightening the darkest corner of the room.

  “Damn! Anybody else take a dive off an escalator, they’d be pushing up daisies ‘stead of sending them.”

  “What are we going to do now?”

  Donald pulled the chair close to the bed. Seated, he was on a level with her. “I been thinking on that very thing. Took a run past the house. It’s all nice and quiet. Even the bulls are gone.”

  He kept his voice low, but Fern heard his underlying excitement.

  “What?” She sat up, leaned toward him as a lust for revenge coursed through her veins. “Uzi time?”

  “I wish. Give me a lot of pleasure to blast that bitch to hell and back. But,” he said with a regretful look. “We’ll have to settle for blowing her into little bits instead.”

  “Blow—Donald, are you thinking of a bomb?”

  “I am.”

  “But—how?”

  “I told you, I’ve been by. Somebody had backed a car out of the garage. I saw her look under the hood.” He didn’t mention that Luci’s long,bare legs had made him want to look under her hood. You didn’t cross a woman like Fern. Not if you wanted to keep all your parts. “Like she was trying to get it running.” He waited a beat, then added, “A Nash.”

  Fern sat straight up in bed, oblivious to the pain the movement caused. “A Nash?”

  He grinned. “Nash has always been lucky for us.”

  Fern looked almost girlish and almost blushed. “Back seat of one, anyway.”

  “This time the whole car’s gonna bring us luck. Gonna take us all the way to the Bahamas. Who’s gonna be surprised when a little gal blows herself and a car up? Ain’t natural for her to be working on a car. Though I hate to do it to a Nash.”

  “Yeah,” Fern agreed, hesitated, then said with decision, “I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Just what I was thinking my
self.” He held up a sack of clothes he’d packed for her. “I’ll help you.”

  12

  “I do love a woman in uniform,” Delaney said appreciatively the next morning as he watched Caroline walk away. Mickey nodded morosely. Caroline had been real possessive this morning when she picked him up, even straightened his tie. Mickey shuddered, as the feeling of being hunted had him hunching in his chair. Caroline sure as shooting had the software and the hardware to take him down and wrap him up.

  “Yeah,” another detective drooled his agreement. “The only thing better’n watching her leave is watching her come.” He leered and pumped his arms suggestively.

  “Don’t you gentlemen have anything better to do than stand around being sexist?” The cold voice of Captain Pryce sent them all scrambling for their desks—except for Mickey and Delaney, who were already at theirs. “You have time to give me an update on the Seymour investigation—unless you’re not finished lusting after Officer Cory?”

  “Yes, sir, of course, sir!” Delaney tried to bring his bulky body to attention while Mickey grabbed for the folder that represented their cumulative knowledge of the Seymour investigation. It was a very thin folder.

  “Things are finally starting to move,” he stated, avoiding saying thaw, “at the Coroner’s office. They took prints this morning and forwarded them to the FBI with an ASAP request. I believe they’re hoping for dental x-rays this morning, and the autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow morning.”

  “Word is, you’ve got a possible perp on tap. A bunco artist?”

  Mickey looked at Delaney. “Not exactly an artist, sir.” The report on Reggie Seymour was in their basket this morning, confirming what Luci told them last night. Was it the idea of her being right that made him so uneasy—or something else?

  He handed the report to Pryce, who flipped it open. “Any prior record of violence?”

  “No, sir, but Miss Weena’s gun is missing. Same caliber.”

  “And,” Delaney spoke up, “most cons aren’t violent unless someone threatens them. It’s possible our John Doe is a former cellmate, trying to cut in on his action.”