Dead in D Minor

by David Crossman

  AND THEN THERE WAS ALBERT...

  "(Albert mysteries) shine with comic brilliance. Crossman has a gift for creating characters...who should show up in further adventures of Albert. And there should be more."

  Edward S. Gilbreth Chicago Sun-Times

  "These novels are an exercise in the comic style, defying disbelief. To his credit, Crossman brings it off nicely. Albert is clearly a survivor, likely to be heard from again."

  Charles Champlin Los Angeles Times Book Review

  "Crossman...creates an offbeat, sympathetic sleuth who meanders innocently through these tales like a lamb through a pack of wolves. Bravo. Encore!”

  Publishers Weekly

  "If you have ever aspired to be a private detective, here is some hilarious inspiration. Crossman's delightfully offbeat tales of wacky academic politics and Civil War intrigue contain a host of bizarre characters and inexplicable homicides. Albert is indeed a unique, likable operative. I certainly look forward to more!

  Jeremy C. Shea St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  Dead in D Minor

  by

  David Crossman

  Alibi-Folio Publishers

  Nashville, TN, U.S.A.

  Copyright 2012 David Crossman

  Published by Alibi Folio Publishers

  2479 Murfreesboro Road, #170

  Nashville, TN 37217

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012905649

  All rights reserved. With the exception of brief quotations for the purpose of review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form without prior written permission of the author.

  ISBN 978-1-4750-9256-1

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to individuals, living or dead, however, is hardly surprising as we’re all alike to some degree.

  Cover design: CiA

  Dedication

  To Arianna, Valerie, and Colby.

  Isn’t it nice to be amazed?

  Acknowledgement

  To Darlynne Vrechek and Barbara, who loved Albert enough

  to dress him up and make him presentable

  Dead in D Minor

  Chapter One

  1983

  Albert was not fit for a life of crime.

  He’d stolen a cigarette from the large black lady beside him while she was asleep. By two o’clock in the morning, he and the bus driver were the only ones awake. He snuck into the rest room and smoked it. Menthol.

  The large lady was awake, going through her purse. She must be suspicious. The insidious worm of guilt was eating away at Albert’s insides in large bites, chewing with its mouth open. What if she counted her cigarettes and found one missing? She’d tell everyone.

  Sweat stood out on Albert's forehead, and he entertained the notion of jumping out the window. Hitting the pavement at a fairly high rate of speed would probably be preferable to the mental anguish he was going through.

  Fortunately the bus came to a stop. Albert took a crumpled brown paper bag from the seat back pocket in front of him, stuffed it in his coat and got out.

  “I need to get some cigarettes,” he told the driver as he stepped into a shallow puddle. Wet feet were nothing new to Albert. Everything else was.

  It was early in the morning. A strong smell of damp nature mingled with the diesel exhaust. The hills surrounding the small town were dressed in the promise of green, and a row of trees in big wooden pots lined the sidewalk, bursting with flowers, alternately pink and white. It must be spring.

  It had been spring when he left New England, too. There had been a lot of mud and pussy willows. Otherwise, it was hard to tell.

  He opened the screen door of the restaurant that doubled as the bus stop. The place was full of people, and they were all smoking.

  Heaven.

  “What can I do for you, darlin’?” said a blonde lady behind the counter. She was wearing a little white and blue hat with points on it and had the biggest, bluest eyes Albert had ever seen. He turned around to see who she was talking to. There was nobody there.

  “I’m talkin’ to you, sweetcakes,” she said.

  She didn't know his name. The disguise was working.

  It had gotten a lot quieter and people were staring at him over their coffee cups. They were smiling. People often smiled at Albert. Some even laughed outright.

  He smiled back.

  “Coffee?” said the waitress, as she poured him a cup. “Do you good after a long trip. From Boston, huh?”

  She was psychic.

  She leaned on the counter and smiled the biggest, warmest, most welcoming smile he'd ever seen. Albert took the cup and drank heartily, scanning the inhabitants hastily as he did so. He felt himself being absorbed. What if they found out about the cigarette? It looked as if they expected as much of him.

  The waitress reached up and flipped the little tag that was attached to his coat button. “Boston to Atlanta,” she said. “Most people put these things on their luggage.” Then the impossible happened, her smile grew bigger still, and caught fire in her eyes.

  Her voice made him think of honey with champagne in it, and her accent was rich, thick, and southern. Northern Georgia, probably.

  She straightened up and presented Albert with other points of interest that dwarfed both her eyes and her smile. He tried not to stare, but he blushed from head to toe. He forgot to swallow for a moment and some coffee dribbled out of the corner of his mouth. “Why don't you sit down, before you hurt yourself,” she suggested. He did so, and she reached out and dabbed his chin with a wet cloth. Some truck drivers giggled in a corner booth.

  Albert had found a happy place.

  “Just passin' through,” said the waitress whose name, if the little red and white tag on her blouse could be trusted, was Cindy, “or do you have time for some breakfast?”

  “I was just,” Albert began, looking out the door, “I came in to get some cig . . . “ Just then the large lady stepped off the bus and herded herself across the sidewalk. “Eggs, please,” said Albert.

  “Oh . . . “ Cindy replied. “I thought you were going to ask for cigarettes.”

  “No,” said Albert immediately. “I quit.”

  Fortunately she didn't ask when. “Good for you!” She took a pad from her apron pocket. “How do you like 'em?”

  “Regular,” said Albert. “Not menthol.”

  The large lady was standing in the aisle near the door, studying postcards in a white metal rack. Her brows were knit, whether in anger or concentration he couldn't tell. Better safe: assume the worst.

  “No, I mean your eggs,” said Cindy. “How do you like 'em cooked?”

  Eggs were just something you ate. Albert couldn't remember liking them anyway in particular. It had just popped out. “What kind do you have?”

  Half of Cindy's smile and the corresponding eyebrow collapsed. Men had put her on before.

  “The kind we have are still in the shell, hon',” she said, a little sarcastically.

  “Whatever's easiest,” said Albert. He was perplexed by her change in attitude. “Just . . . whatever's easiest . . . for you.”

  Cindy studied him for a minute. He was wearing the brown felt hat Mrs. Bridges at the bank had given him just before he left Ashburn. The earflaps stood more or less straight out on both sides. He had a full beard, the result of not having shaved in over a week, and his thick, horn-rimmed glasses were fogging over with steam from the coffee. The ensemble was dramatically concluded by a new olive green snow jacket with matching hood, mustard colored corduroy pants, and wool-lined L.L. Bean boots, also procured by Mrs. Bridges. She hadn't known he was going south.

  Neither had he, for that matter. That's just wher
e the next bus out of Ashburn was going.

  Everyone else in the restaurant was wearing short sleeves or T-shirts except one man who wore a seersucker suit, the same material Albert’s mother used to wear back in Maine, when she went berrying on the hill behind the barn.

  The smile returned to Cindy's face. “How about scrambled?”

  “Eggs?” said Albert. He wanted to be sure.

  Cindy turned away and dabbed at her eyes with the same cloth she'd employed on Albert's chin. There was a bond between them. “Joey!” she said to the tall, thin black man in the kitchen. “Scrambled, grits, hash browns, and a slab of country ham.”

  She turned back to him. Her eyes were still watery, but apparently she'd taken care of whatever was in them. “Take a seat right here, hon,” she said, indicating the stool between them. “It'll be ready in a shake.”

  Albert looked out the window. The bus was still there.

  “You've got plenty of time,” said Cindy. “They're refueling. Be fifteen minutes, anyway.”

  Albert nodded; the universal language.

  “What's your name?”

  His name was Albert, but if anyone was looking for him, that's who they'd ask for, wouldn't they? “Most people call me 'Professor',” said Albert. True enough.

  “Professor, huh?” said Cindy. “You're a teacher?”

  Well, yes . . . he was.

  “What do you teach?”

  “Music,” said Albert, talking too quickly and thinking too slowly to come up with anything but the truth.

  “You mean, like a piano teacher?” Cindy asked with interest.

  Piano teacher? Amazing how people could add one and two and come up with 'c'. Piano teacher. He liked that. Out here in the world he could be anything he wanted to be. He nodded.

  “Too bad you ain't stayin' around. You could teach my Maylene to play the piano. You think you could? She's retarded, but she loves to sit there and plunk at the piano in the parlor. Like to drive folks crazy with it. But it keeps her happy, you know? If you could teach her to play just a song . . .Comin' Round the Mountain' orOld Rugged Cross . . . that'd be a miracle.”

  It would be two miracles; Albert didn’t know those songs.

  “Well, maybe they ain't popular up north,” Cindy suggested. “But you know. Somethin' simple that everybody knows.”

  Albert didn't know what everyone knows; he'd stayed home from school that day. Nevertheless, there was something oddly appealing about the idea of teaching someone to play the piano. And she was retarded. They'd probably hit it off. However …

  “I don't think . . . “ he said.

  Cindy tossed a glance at some men farther down the counter. “What all are you lookin' at?” she said. “Eat your breakfast or I'll call your wives.”

  The sound of cutlery filled the land.

  “I was just talkin' out loud,” said Cindy. “You know how it is. That's my trouble. As soon as I think somethin', I say it. Blab! There it is, just like a drunk's lunch.”

  The black man in a cook’s hat rang a little bell, and she turned to fetch Albert's breakfast from the counter. She put it in front of him and he stared at it. “There you go,” said Cindy. “Put some meat on your bones.”

  In recent months Albert had become aware of a curious female tendency to want to see meat on his bones. The same trait exhibited by the witch inHansel and Gretel; as he recalled.

  A troubled person.

  “Where you headed? I mean, just Atlanta, or you goin' on from there?”

  Albert took the ticket from his inside coat pocket to make sure. “Atlanta,” he read. “Atlanta,” he replied.

  “Hot-lanta, we call it,” said Cindy with a smile in which there was something Albert had never seen before. Whatever it was made him shift in his seat. He took a bite of the eggs and poked at the little pile of shredded potatoes.

  “Hot-lanta,” Albert corrected. It was going to take him a while to learn the language.

  “That’s country ham. You eat it ‘fore it gets cold,” said Cindy, turning his plate until the object in question was pointed at him. “What're you going to do there?”

  Albert shrugged. The ham was very salty and chewy. He liked it.

  “Teach piano?”

  Albert shrugged and swallowed.

  “You have friends there?”

  As far as he knew, she was the closest thing he had to a friend in the world, she and Jeremy Ash. He shrugged and took a sip of coffee. “No,” he said.

  “Well, if you don't know nobody and you've got nothing to go for, you should just stay here and teach piano!” Cindy suggested. Some people looked up from their papers.

  “That's how I come here, you know. Me and Maylene was drivin' through town one day . . . guess you could say we was runnin' away. I'm from Georgia, originally.” Albert thought she was from northern Georgia. He was usually good with accents. “Northern Georgia,” she added. He was right. “Anyhow, we come in here and I saw they needed help. Here I am!

  “That very day Rudy Tatum hired me . . . I waitressed at The Clock back home when I was in high school.

  “Then I got us a room at Miz Grandy's. She owns the boarding house where we live. She took to Maylene just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Been there over four years now, ‘cept for a few months when I went off to Asheville half crazy.” Her eyes washed over him with a distant sadness. “Loneliness can make you do strange things.” She smiled and looked around the room. “Good town,” she said. “Good people. I think you'd like it here. Wouldn't you like to take off your hat?”

  Albert took off his hat. His hair was greasy after the long bus ride, and what wasn't matted to his head was pointing straight up. Cindy laughed. “Too bad them buses ain't got showers, ain't it?”

  A shower would be nice. He was very hot, come to think of it.

  “It's hotter in Atlanta,” said Cindy, reading his mind. “And you ain't exactly dressed for it.”

  He'd left in a hurry. People were looking for him. Not that it mattered. Even if he'd had all the time in the world, he wouldn't have thought about assembling a cooler wardrobe. Things like that didn't occur to Albert. Miss Bjork and Tewksbury were the kind of people who thought that way. They were planners. But they were dead, so it hadn't helped them.

  That was another story. His manager, Huffy, was like that, too. He was still alive; at least he had been two days ago. Huffy was with William Morris – whoever he was – and Albert hoped he would stay there. He wanted to be alone. At least, alone from anyone who knew him.

  The large lady left and boarded the bus. Albert couldn't imagine resuming his seat beside her, reeking, as he did, of guilt and cigarette smoke. “Maybe I will stay a while,” he said. “A day or two.”

  “You're kidding!” said Cindy. “Just like that?”

  Albert smiled. “Just like that,” he said softly.

  “You better go get your luggage off the bus,” Cindy suggested. “Hiram! Go tell 'em to hold the bus a minute, will you?”

  Hiram, a wiry man of advanced years, had been inspecting a rack of car air fresheners near the door. He couldn't decide between Miss July and Miss October, so a break would do him good. He opened the screen door and yelled at the bus driver just as he was about to get aboard.

  “I don't have any luggage,” said Albert. “Just this.” He removed the brown paper bag that held his socks, underwear and maps from his coat pocket. Albert was fastidious in the matter of underwear, and maps were his security blankets, his teddy bear, done up in a dog-eared little bundle held together with rubber bands. He may not know his own place in the world, but he knew where everything else belonged.

  Cindy stared at him. “None?” she said flatly. “None at all? An overnight bag . . . or a shaving . . . no, I guess not.” A thought squatted on her eyebrows. “You have money, don't you?”

  “Yes,” Albert said. Mrs. Bridges had given him five hundred dollars in cash; ten in quarters. He removed his new wallet from his coat and opened it.

  “I
wasn't asking for proof!” said Cindy, “I didn't mean to . . . put that away.” He did. “It's just that . . . I'm the kind of person people take advantage of, you know? All the stray dogs and cats end up at my house. And I've drug home more losers that you could shake a stick at . . . which is just what I should've done to most of 'em.

  “Hiram,” she yelled at Hiram, who had resumed his place at the air freshener stand. “Tell him to go on; this fella's staying.”

  Apparently Hiram had been on the verge of making a decision, and did not brook this intrusion with his customary élan. Nevertheless, he obeyed. A moment later the bus was on its way to Atlanta, lighter by an Albert and one cigarette, not to mention a load of guilt that would have flattened the tires of a lesser vehicle.

  “Why don't you go get yourself some clothes over at Gifford's when they open?” said Cindy. She'd simply been talking to pass the time of day with a new face. Now he'd gone and stayed, all because of her. She should know better. Now he was her fault. Another abandoned puppy.

  “Miz Grandy has a room I bet she’d let you have . . . at least for a night or two. You can start right in on them lessons with Maylene. How much do you charge?”

  “Charge?” This, as far as Albert knew, was something goats did. His mother had had a goat once on their farm. It charged at every opportunity. What this had to do with Maylene and piano lessons, he couldn't fathom.

  “I don't know what you usually get,” Maylene considered, negotiating with herself, “but I know what I can afford, and that's about six dollars an hour. How's that? Fair?”

  “You want to pay me six dollars to teach your daughter . . . “

  “Maylene.”

  “Maylene . . . to play piano?”

  “Six dollars an hour. I might could go seven, but not more than twice a week. 'Course, providin' you decide to stay a while. Leastwise, you could get a couple lessons in, teach her something simple.Twinkle Little StarorMy Body Lies Over The Ocean.” Albert's heart leapt. He knew that one, only by a slightly different name. His sister used to sing it. Kismet. “I mean, I don't expect she'll ever be no what's-his-name . . . Andrew Carnegie or whatever. Somethin' simple she can play and be proud of is all.”