Dead Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 5)

by Phillip DePoy

  “Oh.” She was breathing funny. “I think we know who it is.”

  “We do?”

  She wasn’t looking at me, so I didn’t know what else to do but kneel back down and slip my little penknife past the heavy rope and thick butcher paper. Soon enough the body was laid out, sprawling nearly six feet tall. He was dressed in a swell blue suit, no hat, no glasses; his face was in rigor mortis, but I still recognized him — maybe it was the two-toned shoes. The dead body was none other than our food critic and all-around bad guy with double letters in all his names. Speaking of which, there was a letter sticking out of his breast pocket.

  She made an ungodly, barely human noise. I thought it was just because of the way the hard face looked, a mask somehow distilled from a life of constant sorrow.

  “Care to see what this letter in his pocket says?” I sat on the floor.

  She nodded again.

  I pulled the letter out of the pocket, ripped open the envelope, and read it out loud. “Consider this payment in full.”

  I stared up at her.

  She closed her eyes.

  “Dally?”

  “What?” Her eyes opened again. She really hadn’t quite heard what I’d said. I could tell from her face she’d been that far away.

  “Are you going to tell me who this gent really is now?”

  “Yeah.” She stood, took in an even deeper breath than before, and nodded one last time. “I know I never formally introduced him to you.” She looked away. “That would be my husband.”

  19. Husband?

  Now, under ordinary circumstances, one of the greatest things in the world is discovering something new about a person you love. Some new bit of information just when you thought you knew it all — that’s what keeps surprise alive and fire in the heart of every good relationship.

  Unless this fresh discovery includes a cold corpse. I think that’s a safe rule: New information that involves a corpse is seldom “one of the greatest things in the world.”

  “Husband?” That’s the first thing I could get myself to say. And only then because all I had to do was repeat a word she’d said — not have to come up with some new thought all my own.

  “Yeah.” She was apparently having the same verbal dysfunction that was plaguing me. “Husband.” I still hadn’t digested all the business about their dating.

  Just then, because timing is everything in the entertainment business, and because Dalliance and I were in her top-notch club where entertainment reigns, Mug Lewis busted in the front door with his automatic in his left hand.

  Some parts of that image were not unusual. Mug was left-handed for example, so it was natural that his gun would be in that particular appendage. On the other hand, he was the last person I might have expected to see at that time of the morning in Easy, mostly because the last time I had seen him was at his funeral.

  So I said, to the room in general, “Well, this is certainly a surprise.” Which I thought was a fair statement.

  “Yes,” he agreed, idly nodding, “I suppose it must be. I myself am a little surprised as well. I thought it was past closing time, and didn’t expect anyone to be here.” His eyes traveled two feet south. “Who’s the stiff, by the way?”

  “Dally’s husband,” I told him, but it didn’t sound like my voice.

  “Really?” He lowered his gun a little. “I never knew you were married, Ms. Oglethorpe.”

  “It was a well-kept secret,” I conceded.

  Dally remained strangely mute.

  “Well then, I suppose you are wondering what I might be doing here,” Mug went on casually, “at this time of night — and being dead and all.”

  “Now that you mention it” — I stood slowly — “I was kind of wondering about that.”

  “It goes like this.” He took a small step in, toward the bar. “I was shot in the head by men who thought they were doing me a favor. But as luck would have it, the bullet didn’t hit anything important. I’ve been recuperating in a distant land.”

  I looked at Dally. She just stared.

  I turned back to Mug. His face caught the light just right, and anyone who looked at him then would have understood his given name. He had the prettiest face of any straight man I’d ever seen, even with his new stubble. Not handsome: pretty, like angels are, or Raphael heroes. In his black suit, with his gun pointed at a jaunty angle, even I would have to admit he cast something of a romantic image.

  Mug Lewis had, in fact, been the apple of many an eye in both high and low society for quite a number of years in Atlanta. About a year before, he had thrown some sort of cotillion at the Piedmont Driving Club for his eighteen-year-old “niece” when she’d wanted one. How he got in there was anybody’s guess. The rumors were, of course, that she was his paramour. But he tired of her after a few months, and that particular debutante ended up with a film career and a home in California, married to a prominent audio technician, with a small baby boy, first name: Lewis. All also, according to the wagging tongues, courtesy of our boy Mug.

  That’s the sort of mishmash Mug was known for. I never understood how he even had time for his nefarious activities, given his amorous adventures. But he was quite the mover in the more mannered fringes of Atlanta’s gentleman crime, where it was often difficult to tell the difference between that and just plain good business. Big money was always involved. For example, years back he had promoted a huge land deal — or scam — around the block of Peachtree between Tenth and Eleventh Streets. First it was supposed to be an urban mall. Nearly the whole block was razed. Then the alleged Nordic developers went belly-up, and the only thing left standing was some poor little live theater. Mug felt so guilty that he sponsored a production of Beowulf there — a musical version of Beowulf, if you can believe it. I saw it. Mug invited me to opening night. Quite a hit, I thought.

  Anyway, Mr. Lewis was a complex man, a beautiful man, and — until just a few moments previous to his busting in on Dally and me — a dead man.

  “Mug,” I finally said, “there’s so much about your little story that I call to question. First: Somebody thought they were doing you a favor by shooting you in the head?”

  “I owed some money to some very bad drug men, and I couldn’t pay it back,” he explained. “They thought if they shot me in the head, it’d be one way out of my dilemma.”

  “All right” — I shrugged — “but then: The bullet did you no harm?”

  “They shot me in the back of the neck” — he put his own gun up behind his head to demonstrate — “but when they pulled the trigger, the bullet ran, if you can believe this, between my skull and my scalp — excuse me for the description, Ms. Oglethorpe.”

  She waved her hand.

  “And it popped out right about here.” He put the gun at his left temple, where there was something of a charming scar. “I have a very hard head.”

  “This is some kind of an amazing story.” I had to shake my head. “But now tell me about how we all thought you were dead, and where you’ve been these …” I turned to Dally, “… six months?”

  She shrugged.

  “Well, you thought I was dead because you went to my funeral because someone shot me in the head.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “What you meant is this: I thought it best to leave it that way — people thinking I was dead, which was my own idea of doing myself a favor …”

  “… I think I can see that,” I agreed.

  “So I went South, as they say.”

  “Right.”

  “A little place called Cumberland Island. I was a custodian there. It was … refreshing work.”

  “Refreshing?”

  “I wras in the out-of-doors a lot,” he explained, “and it calmed me down a good deal. They have wild horses on the beach there.”

  “Yes, well,” I began slowly, “you do seem calm, but I guess I have to wonder, then, why you have your automatic out.”

  “Oh, this.” He looked down at it. “As I was s
aying, I was casing the place to make sure it was closed and no one was around. I’d seen the bartender leave. Then, all of a sudden, there was a guy.”

  “A guy?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Lumbering across the parking lot, with a rug or something over his shoulder. He barged into the very door I was about to enter. I only stood there a second or two, trying to figure what to do, before I saw him run out again. He zipped across the street and took off, in a van or something.”

  “You saw the guy who delivered this body?”

  He inclined his head.

  “Well?”

  “Are you asking if I could pick him out again in a crowd? I think, actually” — he blinked — “he looked a little like you. But as you are here and not in an escaping van …”

  “… so you have the gun out now …” I prompted.

  “… oh, yes,” he picked up quickly, “the gun. It was a kind of talisman, if I may use that word — protection against whatever else weird might be in here. At this time of the night. After such a spooky event.”

  “Talisman?”

  “Okay, just a precaution, then.” He shrugged. “To call a thing by its proper name.”

  “By all means, let’s be proper.” I looked at Dally again. “Sugar …”

  “… thanks,” she interrupted, then turned my way, “for not asking me any stupid questions right now, okay?”

  “Okay.” I turned back to Mug. “So how about if I ask you what you’ve been doing since you saw the guy split.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Why didn’t you come in here then? That had to be, like a half an hour ago. Dally found the body, called me, I drove … you see my problem.”

  “Linear time,” he nodded.

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m a cautious man these days, Flap. I’ve got patience, too. I peeked in here through the front door and saw Dally all agitated, I thought she was calling the cops. Naturally, I wouldn’t want …”

  “… naturally,” I agreed, “but why didn’t you just split, I’m saying.”

  “Patience is a funny thing,” he began, philosophically. “It can give a man curiosity — which is what I got.” He tossed his head. “It’s like a disease.”

  “Not that I’m buying this …”

  “… but when I saw it was only you, and not the cops, I got comfortable, and came on in.”

  “Just not comfortable enough to come in without your pistol.” I took a short breath. “I’m going to call the police myself, now. And I hate to ask, but it would certainly help out, here, if you could …”

  “… sorry, Flap.” He held up his hand. “I’m back in town on secret business of my own. And even if I wasn’t, I couldn’t be known to your police friends.”

  “They’re really more Dally’s friends than mine, actually, but I see your point.” I stared. “Still, I’m really hoping that maybe you could help us out, then, on the sly.”

  “I could do that — while remaining dead to everyone else, you understand.”

  “Of course.” I shrugged. “So, by the way, who was in your casket at your funeral — which was quite a nice affair.”

  “Yes, I thought it was pleasant.” He smiled. “I paid for most of it myself, you know. And in the casket? It was all the records of my transactions with the certain parties I owed money to. Do you see the poetry in that?”

  “Dead and buried, I get. And I see now why it was a closed-casket affair …”

  “… is there any other?”

  “In the South? Sure. Everyone wants to look at a dead body.” But I wished right away I hadn’t said that, because there was a dead body nearly touching my right foot that, really, no one wanted to see.

  20. Two Good Reasons

  There were really only two good reasons to call Detective Burnish Huyne. First, he was the presiding homicide detective for the area and there was a corpse on the floor. Second, we’d sort of worked together before, he and Dally and I. So he might not think it was as strange as it might seem for people like us to have such a thing special-delivered to the club at that hour of the AM — and he was known as something of a night person so I figured he’d be in his office. There were, on the other hand, dozens of reasons not to call him. To mention just two: He didn’t think much of me, and he thought a little too much of Dally — at least for my money.

  But, ultimately, my money was no good: A stiff on the floor beats a jealous friend any day in the week. So I found myself dialing up his number before I thought too much more about it.

  “Hello.” It wasn’t a question with this guy, it was an accusation. That's the way a real police detective answers the phone, I thought.

  “Well, Detective Huyne, I thought you might be in. It’s Flap Tucker calling.”

  “Oh.” He seemed more puzzled than anything else. “It is?”

  “It is, and it’s something about a dead body, the reason I’m calling.”

  “What sort of a dead body?” He was calm.

  “Well, for instance, let’s start with the fact that it’s right here on the floor, in Dally’s club.”

  “You’re at Ms. Oglethorpe’s?” He was more interested than he had been.

  “Yes, and I hope you’re sitting down for this: The body is none other than Ms. Oglethorpe’s Mister. Ex-mister, I guess, at this point, since it’s been dead for a while. It’s stiff.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about Ms. Oglethorpe’s husband.”

  “Husband?”

  “That was my first response,” I told him, smiling. “Try as we might, we do think kind of alike, you and I, don’t we?”

  “Her husband is the dead body?” he shot back.

  “Yes.”

  Mug had put away his automatic and was sitting at the bar. Dally had gotten him a Glenfiddich, his choice of scotch. He seemed content.

  Dally was standing still behind the bar. She seemed the opposite of content, whatever that would be in a situation like … like what? I really could come up with no simile whatsoever for the situation. I was, in every sense, stumped.

  “So?” Huyne’s voice was buzzing in my ear.

  “Ah. Yes. So, perhaps you’d like to come over and visit in your official capacity?”

  “Flap?” Which startled me. I couldn’t remember that he’d ever called me by my given name.

  “Yes?”

  “What’s really going on? You sound … you don’t sound like yourself. Are there other people there?”

  I looked at Mug. “No. But you know how surprised you probably are to find that this body was the former spouse of our Ms. Oglethorpe?” It wasn’t getting any easier, no matter how many times I tried to say that phrase, how many ways I tried to say it.

  “Yes.”

  “Double that, and multiply by a factor of, let’s say, pi — and maybe you’d get just how perplexed I am at the moment.”

  “Isn’t pi an infinite number?”

  “I think so.”

  Silence at the other end. Then:

  “You didn’t know she’d been married.” He couldn’t hide the incredulity. He wasn’t trying to. He was only trying to hide something else, something like delight, I thought — Dally had a secret that big and she’d kept it from me. That, it seemed, actually made him happy.

  And that statement, especially framed in the sound of that voice, stuck an ice pick or a meat cleaver or some equally sharp and tough cliché right into the middle of my solar plexus. For a second, I couldn’t feel anything else but that. My mind was trying to form the response: “That’s right, I didn’t know,” but my voice was stuck in a rock of dry ice.

  Dally was watching my face. She read it like a newspaper column, and reached out her hand, took the phone away from me.

  “It’s Dalliance,” she said, but it didn’t sound like her voice. “Could you just come on over, now, or send someone. I don’t like to leave the place in a mess like this. You understand. It could be bad for business if people had
to come in tomorrow and step around …”

  She trailed off, I guessed because Huyne had started talking.

  After a few seconds, she lifted her head. “Okay. See you then.”

  I found my voice again, looked over at Mug. “I assume you’ll be wanting something like one more for the road, and then you’ll be on your way — as you’d like to remain dead, at least to the cops — but I’d really like to keep in touch. I’ll be moving pretty quickly to find out who brought this thing in here, and I’m going to need some timely confirmation from you about the culprit’s identity before I show the guy his own liver in an effort to learn more about what’s going on.”

  “You don’t like to do a thing like that, that liver thing,” Mug agreed, “without being sure you’ve got the right guy. I understand.” He knocked back his scotch, Dally poured another to the top. He smiled. “I’m staying just across the street, as it happens, at the Clairmont. Ask for Curtis.”

  “All right” — I squinted, trying to ignore the fact that I might have to go to the Clairmont again — “but then here’s my question for you: Don’t you realize how recognizable you are? Nobody’s got a face like you. You can’t be hanging out around these parts without somebody knowing …”

  “… I have a disguise.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a pair of glasses. “Clark Kent.” He put them on. “Plus.” He got something else out of his suit coat pocket.

  He grinned, and snapped something into his mouth. When he moved his hand away, I could see that he had popped in a gold tooth on top of one of his front incisors.

  “And,” he went on, “I’m growing a beard, as you can see. Soon even my mother, if she were still alive, wouldn’t recognize me.”