by Nancy Martin
“I heard about that. He get along with his family?”
Roxy pulled a face. “Does anybody get along with their family?”
“Sorry. I forgot about your folks. You ever hear Trey and his brother argue? Anything to make you think Trey held anything against Julius?”
“We didn’t get into that kind of conversation.” Truth be told, her conversations with Trey were mostly about where to put which body part and how fast. But telling Bug might make him blush.
Bug said, “In your acquaintance with Julius, did you ever get a hint that anyone thought ill of him? Might want him dead?”
Truthfully, Roxy said, “He was a pretty easygoing guy, as far as I could see. Paid on time. Enjoyed a dirty joke. Didn’t blow a gasket if Rooney peed on his lawn. I don’t know why anybody would want to kill him.”
“Yeah, that’s what we hear from everybody. So far.” Bug put the papers on his knee. “Okay, here’s the deal. I’m going to report back what you had to say, and somebody else will probably come calling. The two guys running this case are under a lot of pressure to wrap things up fast. Could be you might remember something they think is important. Between now and then, if you think of anything, here’s my card. Call me. I mean it, Roxy. If you’ve got some real information, everybody including you is going to be much happier if you call us, not the other way around.”
He flipped his card onto her desk.
She didn’t reach for it. “Is that a generic threat you use with everybody, Bug?”
“It’s a friendly suggestion, that’s all. I mean, we could put you in one room and Nooch in another and see if the two of you remember the same stuff.”
“You aren’t going to do that.”
“I probably wouldn’t, no, but I can’t speak for the whole department. Nooch is a scary-looking guy, and he hasn’t been an angel all his life. They’re looking at everyone for this murder, Rox. If anything comes to your mind, give me a call. You might spare Nooch an interrogation.”
“Thanks for the preferential treatment.” Roxy used her toe to kick Bug’s crutches toward him.
“You’re welcome.”
After Bug left, Roxy turned up the space heater. She sat in the barbershop and thought about things. The Hydes, damn them. She should have known better than to get mixed up with that family in the first place. It didn’t pay to stray too far out of her own neighborhood.
She unlocked her desk drawer and took a peek inside. Trey’s gun lay there, just where she’d left it. Maybe she should have given it to Bug. On the other hand, the gun might be valuable later. And it would only cause more questions and maybe lead to the statue. She closed the drawer and locked it again.
Her safest bet was to unload the statue fast, before the cops really started nosing around. She reached for her Rolodex and flipped through it, hoping a name might jump out at her.
The desk phone rang. Roxy considered letting it go to voice mail, but what the heck—it might be necessary to eat this week.
“Roxy?” a voice shouted when she’d identified herself. “You there?”
If she were paid a nickel every time she was asked if she was in the office, she’d never have to work. “I’m here, Freddie. What’s up?”
Freddie Manfredo, a guy who demolished buildings for the city, bellowed as if he were standing on the moon. “I’m here at a teardown in East Liberty. We got some kind of pictures in white plaster.”
Roxy rubbed her forehead to stave off a headache. She liked Freddie, and he often called when he found stuff he didn’t understand. She was usually glad to hear from him. Unlike most demo guys, he didn’t destroy everything in his path. “A bas-relief.”
“You’re the best, kid.” The noise of a bulldozer roared over the phone line.
“Thanks. Good condition?”
“Coupla cracks, nothing major. It’s a jazz band or something.”
The neighborhood of East Liberty had been a thriving kind of second “main street” for the city until the Johnson administration edict came down to create cheap housing for the poor. Half the beautiful art deco buildings had been razed to build sterile high-rise apartment complexes that quickly became nests of family dysfunction and crime. Fifty years later, the city was trying to undo the mess by tearing down more buildings to make way for big-box stores and peripheral office space for the nearby hospitals. The theory was that all the indigenous people would move to pretty houses in the suburbs, but it didn’t work that way. Roxy’s observation was that more poor families were getting broken up just like back when LBJ gave the orders.
But there was a good chance the bas-relief Freddie found was a leftover from one of the old East Liberty theaters. With luck, she might be able to sell it to the fancy new August Wilson cultural center downtown.
“Save it for me, Freddie?”
“I’ll be here till noon tomorrow,” he yelled, and hung up.
Roxy wrote Freddie’s name on a Post-it and stuck it to the side of her computer screen. Maybe the bas-relief was one of the kind made during FDR’s time, when real artists were paid to create public art. In which case it might be worth a pretty penny. If not—well, it would probably be worth the gasoline to drive up to East Liberty.
Outside, Rooney threw himself against the office door to pop it open. The door burst inward and banged against the wall. The dog trotted into the office, panting hard and tracking mud on the linoleum. He skidded to a stop, made eye contact, and gave a woof. Then whirled around and dashed outside again.
Roxy sat looking after him. “What’s the matter, Lassie? Timmy fell down the well again?”
She could hear him barking outside. Thinking he’d maybe cornered a couple of skateboarding kids on her property again, Roxy followed.
But Rooney stood in the shadow of the car crusher, his head cocked at an angle, listening. Roxy shoved her hands into her pockets and listened, too.
Which is when she heard two gunshots. Then two more.
Followed by the distant squeal of tires.
A silver Monte Carlo—vintage with fancy hubcaps and a tattered landau roof—roared laboriously up the street, took the corner with another scream of rubber, and disappeared around the block.
“What the hell—?”
Rooney followed Roxy to the gate, and they stood together looking in the direction the car had gone.
A minute later, a red Mustang came lurching up the street, too. The driver was swerving like a drunk on his way home from a bachelor party.
Surprising the hell out of Roxy, the Mustang turned into the salvage yard and slid to a stop in the loose gravel. Screwed to the front bumper of the car was a pink vanity plate that read SEXY BABY.
But it was Nooch who popped the passenger door and heaved himself out of the car. “Rox, you won’t believe what just happened!”
By that time, Roxy had already noticed the bullet holes in the driver’s-side door. She squinted to see who was behind the wheel and wasn’t happy to recognize the face.
Nooch handed over a bag of bagels. “They were all out of the Parmesan cheese kind,” he reported. “That’s what you wanted, right? I asked them if they were going to make another batch, but they said if I couldn’t get there before nine, I should—”
“Nooch,” Roxy said. “What happened? And what are you bringing her around here for?”
“This is my cousin Kaylee. Kaylee Falcone. Well, she’s kind of a second cousin, really.”
Kaylee climbed out of the car, all long legs on another pair of expensive-looking high-heeled sandals. Today she wore a wraparound dress with matching leggings, no coat. The wind had kicked up, and she hugged herself against the cold, trying to hide her nipples. She’d been crying again, and she didn’t look as if she’d gotten much sleep. Her smeary mascara gave her the look of a high-fashion raccoon.
She looked at Roxy and hiccupped. “Somebody just took a shot at me!”
“Kaylee,” Nooch said formally, “this is Roxy. Roxy, this is—”
Roxy pushed the bag of
bagels into Nooch’s chest. “I know who she is. What the hell is she doing here?”
Kaylee leaned on the hood of the car and gave a gasping sob. “I don’t know what’s going on. Last week my life was just perfect and now—now everything’s gone crazy. I saw Nooch down at the bagel shop and we were just talking and I said I’d give him a ride, but then—then a car zoomed past and—and—y’know, this city isn’t safe anymore. And holy shit, I think I’m gonna faint.”
Roxy grabbed her just as Kaylee’s knees gave out. The girl sagged against her, all skin and bones and goose bumps.
“Help me get her inside,” Roxy said to Nooch.
He picked up Kaylee and carted her clumsily across the yard to the office. Rooney ran around them in circles, panting with excitement. Roxy pushed open the door and stood back. When Nooch dumped Kaylee on the couch, Rooney jumped up and licked her face.
“Oh, gross!” Kaylee sat up, woozy, but mad. “That dog is totally dirty!”
“Her boyfriend got killed,” Nooch said to Roxy. “And now somebody’s shooting at her, too.”
“Get this dog out of my face!”
Roxy snapped her fingers, and Rooney flopped onto the floor at her feet. She handed Bug’s Red Bull to Kaylee.
“I told her you’d help,” Nooch said.
“What am I supposed to do?”
Kaylee wiped the dog slobber from her face with the back of one hand, further smearing her makeup. She took a sip of Red Bull and grimaced. “Believe me, you’re not my first choice, either.”
Nooch said, “The police arrested her.”
“They didn’t arrest me! The cops came to my apartment to talk. They think I killed Julius.”
“Did you?”
“Hey,” Nooch protested. “Kaylee’s a nice girl. She’s got a temper sometimes, but she’s nice.”
“The police don’t think so,” Kaylee said, looking tired.
Roxy folded her arms across her chest. “You don’t need me, honey. You need a lawyer.”
“I’ve got a lawyer. I called him when the cops questioned me. But I can’t pay him, because Julius didn’t give me my allowance yet this month. Look, I don’t like you any more than you like me, but Noochie said—”
“Hold it. Rewind.” Roxy put up her hand to stop the flood of idiocy. “The cops really think you killed him?”
“They asked a bunch of questions.”
“When?”
“All day yesterday! And again this morning! It’s a wonder I got any sleep at all. They kept pushing and pushing until I finally gave those guys a piece of my mind.”
Nooch said, “Kaylee knows how to do that. She was in this fight once in a drugstore—”
“A salon,” Kaylee corrected. “If you’re talking about that time I shoved a lady into a display of hair products. She was the one mouthing off, but they made me pay for the damages!”
“No, the drugstore. When you hit a guy with magazines or something.”
“Oh, that! It was the post office.” Kaylee seemed pleased to recall the story. “I threw my grandmother’s mail at a cop behind me in line. I was picking up her mail because she was in the nursing home, you know? And he gave me a hard time about my skirt being short or—I forget exactly. So I let him have it. How was I supposed to know he was a cop?”
“Okay, okay.” Roxy steered them both back to the crisis of the moment. “What about the night before last at Trey’s apartment?”
“What about it?”
“Did the police come visit you then?”
“Not while I was there. Trey threw me out, the bastard. I was upset, but he made me go home! There’s something wrong with him. Then Sunday the cops came to my house and talked for, like, hours.”
“But they let you go? Didn’t charge you?”
“The lawyer charged me.”
“I mean—never mind.”
Nooch flopped onto the sofa and opened the bagel bag. “Roxy can help. There’s all kinds of people she helps.”
“I don’t think so.” Kaylee stood up unsteadily. “This was a bad idea. I’m going back to my apartment.”
“Sure, go ahead,” Roxy said. “Those guys in the Monte Carlo are probably waiting for you there.”
Nooch pulled out a bagel and frowned at it. “Was I supposed to get Parmesan? Or pecan? I forget.”
“What do you mean?” Kaylee asked Roxy.
Roxy stood looking down at the bedraggled girl and almost felt sorry for her. It must be hard going through life with shit for brains. “You think it was random that a couple of guys shot at your car? After your boyfriend is murdered?”
“Who said anything about shooting at me? Those guys probably robbed a store or—or—” Kaylee began to doubt her own theory and frowned. “Why would anybody shoot at me?”
“Face it, Kaylee. Somebody doesn’t like you.”
“Who?”
“Besides me?” Roxy shrugged. “I don’t know. One of Julius’s friends? Or his family? His wife? Somebody who’s pissed about all the stuff he gave you?”
Kaylee’s face scrunched into a surly pout. “There was lots of stuff. Not just jewelry. Big stuff.”
“Such as?”
“A building, for one thing. A warehouse or something down on the river. He took me to see it once. He said I could sell it, if I wanted to, as soon as I got the title. Why a building needs a title, I don’t know. He wanted the best for me. Said I deserved a break in life. He actually said that.”
“You’re still a kid if you believe the pillow talk.” Roxy didn’t feel like explaining how come a rich man’s family might be unhappy that their heir apparent had been generous with his tattooed ho. Chances were, they wanted to repossess her car and everything else he’d given her. And what easier way than scaring her first?
Or maybe there was more to the story.
Kaylee suddenly looked forlorn. “I shouldn’t have quit my job at the salon. Good jobs like that are hard to find.”
“Look, Kaylee, you don’t have to take my advice, but unless you want your pretty red car to be further air-conditioned, I think it might be a good idea for you to disappear for a while.”
“Disappear?”
“Don’t go home. Do I have to spell it out? Find someplace else to stay for a few days, until the police figure out who killed Julius.”
“Where am I supposed to stay?”
“With friends?” When Kaylee looked blank, Roxy said, “What about your family?”
The girl’s expression loosened. “Except for Nooch, they’d sell me out for the price of a pizza.”
“So stay at Nooch’s place.”
Nooch chose that moment to let out a bodily noise. He looked sheepish, and Kaylee rolled her eyes.
“I see your point,” Roxy said, then began hating herself for being such a soft touch. “Oh, hell, I’m going to regret this. There’s a house I’ve been renovating across the river. Nothing fancy, but at least you won’t get shot at over there. How are you with a paintbrush?”
Kaylee blinked. “Paintbrush?”
“I don’t suppose you know how to fix a leaky toilet? I haven’t gotten around to that yet, either.”
“What kind of house is this?”
“A nice house. Or it will be eventually.” It was a waste of breath explaining the lack of furniture. Or the missing floor in the kitchen, either. Kaylee would find out all the shortcomings for herself. “If you want to crash there for a little while, it’s fine by me. But I’m not your babysitter, understand? If you need anyone to bring you bonbons and fashion magazines, Nooch can do it.”
Kaylee mulled over Roxy’s offer, the steam practically shooting out of her ears while her brain processed the situation. Finally, she must have decided she didn’t have any other choices. “Okay. Maybe just for a night or two.”
“I wasn’t asking you to be my permanent roommate.”
Kaylee stuck out her tongue, then asked, “What about my car? Everybody knows my car. Should I ditch it?”
In a city as
small as Pittsburgh, a dingbat blonde in a red Mustang with a SEXY BABY plate was pretty obvious, Roxy had to admit. “You can leave it here. Nooch can take you over to the house in my truck.”
Nooch looked astonished, as if she’d suggested he should run for president. “You’re gonna let me drive the truck?”
“I don’t have time to play taxi service.” Roxy turned to Kaylee. “If you want to make yourself useful, take Nooch to the mall first. Find him something to wear for his probation hearing on Friday.”
“Something to wear? Like a suit?”
“Make him look like normal.”
Together, they looked at Nooch.
Kaylee said, “He’s never going to look like anything but an ape.”
Roxy almost socked her. “Just get him some nice pants and a decent shirt. A belt, maybe.”
“Shoes?” Kaylee glanced at Nooch’s gigantic boots.
“Sure, whatever.”
“What am I supposed to use for money?”
Roxy searched her pockets and peeled off Trey’s C-note. “See how far this goes.” She handed the bill to Nooch.
“Okay.” Kaylee wrestled with her thoughts for a moment and finally said, “Thanks, I guess.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Roxy replied.
Because if Bug Duffy came around looking for ways to connect Roxy with any part of Julius’s death, she knew what diversion she could toss in his path. Add a bad temper and some expensive gifts from the dead man, and the cops would have lots of reasons to put Kaylee into the center of their investigation. Maybe they’d spend less time wondering what Roxy and Nooch had been doing at the Hyde house.
When the truck rumbled out of the yard, Roxy went into the garage and walked deeper into the vast building past her inventory—a couple of staircases, a slew of doors, a bunch of garden urns, and a lot of stuff she should have unloaded by now. She unlocked a door, passed through a tunnel and another door before she entered the old fur storage. In the back of a vault where water dripped down the wall, the statue stood under his splotched canvas tarp.