Baby Daddy Mystery

by Daisy Pettles

  Gretal Apple wasn’t home. Her daughter, Kimmy, answered the door. She told us that her mother was shopping over in Bedford. Kimmy looked to be about twenty years old. She wore thick eyeliner, purple lipstick, and an all-black wardrobe with a purple velvet cape that put me in mind of Vampira, the late-night hostess on the local cable channel’s movie night Fright Fest. It wasn’t anywhere near Halloween, so I figured Kimmy might be a little odd. Or maybe she was normal, and that was the way hip girls dressed these days. I’d given up on tracking fashion trends back when boys started wearing their underwear on the outside of their pants. When it came to fashion, I relied on Veenie to keep me in the know.

  Veenie asked Kimmy, “You one of them steampunks?”

  “Might be. What are you?” Kimmy’s eyes swept across Veenie. Today she was wearing a Day-Glo orange poncho with wool argyle knee socks and purple dotted capri pants. It was seventy degrees, but Veenie’s internal thermostat had cracked at menopause. Her little wave of white hair was moussed up Kewpie doll style. Her tiny feet were clad in rubbery white cross-training shoes that looked like melted marshmallows.

  Veenie stared Kimmy down. “This here is my Monday casual wear. I like to start the week off relaxed.”

  Kimmy looked at me. “She on meds?”

  “Loads of them.”

  “But she’s safe, right?”

  “Long as you don’t poke at her.”

  “Believe me, I’m not touching that.”

  “Hey,” cried Veenie. “I’m right here. And my ears ain’t busted.”

  “Sorry,” said Kimmy. “Old people kinda creep me out.”

  “That makes two of us, sweet pea.” Veenie ducked under Kimmy’s arm and darted into the living room. The room had a cathedral ceiling with a floor-to-ceiling limestone fireplace on one end and stairs that led up to a second-floor landing with a railing that probably branched off into three bedrooms. “Nice crib,” said Veenie. “Got anything solid to drink?”

  “Diet Coke. My mom drinks it.”

  “That stuff will kill you. Mabel Beavers been drinking that since the seventies and now she sees Nazi U-boats coming up White River.” Veenie busied herself snooping around the house. She found a desk over in the corner and began rifling through the papers.

  Kimmy swooped forward, cape and all. “Hey, you can’t do that!”

  “Course I can.” Veenie rifled some more.

  “I’m calling the police.”

  Veenie opened a checkbook and scanned the register. “Ask for Sheriff Boots Gibson. He has the hots for Ruby Jane.”

  Kimmy looked at me, perplexed. “Who are you people?”

  I gave her the 411 on why we were there, representing the agency and her grandmother. “We’re investigating your father’s death. Anyone you know might want to harm him?”

  “My mom.”

  “They fought?”

  “Duh. Like all the time.” Kimmy sprawled out on a white sofa, careful to pool her cape to one side. “She tried to run him down once. In broad daylight. In our driveway. Claimed her high heel got stuck on the gas pedal.”

  “What did they fight about?”

  “Daddy was a big old man ho.”

  “Was that a problem?”

  “Not for him.”

  “Did you know any of his girlfriends.”

  “Ewww! He never brought them home or anything kinky like that.”

  I heard a garage door roll up. Kimmy looked through the kitchen and what appeared to be a laundry room toward the back garage door. “Bet that’s her.”

  “Your mom?”

  “Hey, you catch on quick.”

  A tall redheaded woman came into the kitchen cradling a canvas bag from the organic grocery. The place was called Healthy Living, but Veenie called it Wealthy Living. They charged an arm and a leg for good, old-fashioned poor people food like dandelion salad and bone marrow broth.

  “We got company, Kimmy?” Gretal shouted the question into the living room as she put the groceries away in the kitchen.

  Veenie popped up in the kitchen door. “Law enforcement. Investigating your husband’s murder.”

  Gretal was wearing half-glasses hung around her neck on a jeweled lanyard. She was dressed in black yoga pants and a black sleeveless turtleneck. Her red hair was short, swept up against her head like a duck’s tail. She eyed Veenie. “You don’t look like the police. You look like an escapee from Game of Thrones.”

  Gretal brushed past Veenie into the living room. She carried an open bottle of red wine and two wine glasses upside down by their long stems. “Why on earth are you questioning me? I haven’t touched Bromley in years. But say, let’s drink to whoever did.”

  I declined the wine. “You don’t look grief stricken.”

  She kicked off her high heels. “I’m not. Besides, what makes you think he was killed? He ate like a pig. Donuts and Diet Coke for breakfast.” She poured two glasses of wine. When everyone refused one, she drank from both of them.

  Kimmy spoke up. “These are the detectives Grammy hired.”

  Gretal eyed us as she rubbed the arch of her right foot. “Aren’t you two a little old to be playing Nancy Drew?”

  Veenie plopped down on the couch next to Gretal. “Social security is for shits. We need extra money to buy Twinkies and stuff.”

  “That’s awful,” said Kimmy. “Don’t you have husbands to look after you?”

  “That what you think husbands do?”

  “I’m not having a husband,” said Kimmy, glaring at her mother. “I’m making a baby in a test tube.”

  Gretal knocked down another glass of wine. “Can’t argue with that.”

  I jumped in. “Any idea who killed your husband?”

  “God no. Could have been anyone, but who says he was murdered?” She set aside the glasses. She was drinking out of the bottle now.

  “Good point.” April, the coroner, wouldn’t issue an autopsy report for another day or two. Bromley could have died of natural causes, but then why was he wearing a scarecrow’s outfit and sitting on a porch glider? Nothing about his death looked natural to me.

  I asked Gretal, “Did you know Barbara Skaggs?”

  “No.”

  “Know your husband was involved with her? Maybe having an affair with her?”

  “Was he? That would surprise me. He never could keep his zipper up, but I saw that woman’s photo. Not his type.”

  “Then why was he found dead on her porch? Did he know anyone from Hound Holler? You have family down there?”

  “Oh, please. I’ve never been to Hound Holler. My people are from Columbus. I only live in this hillbilly haven because Bromley insisted, and his mother staked him to that dental practice. I’d have left him eons ago, but Avonelle, that old hamster, made me sign a prenup that was in force until we had children. That’s pretty much how Kimmy came to be.”

  Veenie jumped on that one. “So you inherited everything when Bromley kicked?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Sounds like motive to me.”

  “Oh, please,” she rolled her eyes. “Everything Bromley owned was wrapped up in that dental practice. The only thing he owned much of was debt. What am I going to do with half a dental office? And this house is underwater, double mortgaged. Should have started a denture lab like his cousin over in Salem. That’s where the big bucks are in this neck of the woods.”

  Kimmy spoke up. “I know Barbara Skaggs.”

  Gretal looked surprised. “How’s that?”

  “She and daddy weren’t involved. She was Grampy Will’s lust bunny. He was gaga over her. He used to take me down there with him on Sundays when you left me with Grammy and Grampy Apple to go to the Ashram meetings.”

  “I thought he was taking you to the Pancake Palace while Grammy went to church.”

  “Barbara worked at the Pancake Palace. We’d pick her up. She’d make us pancakes down at her place. Then she and Grampy would sit on her porch glider and play a game they called find the bald gopher.”
/>   “Hey, I know that game,” said Veenie.

  “That’s disgusting,” said Gretal.

  Kimmy disagreed. “Actually it was kind of sweet, in an old pervert kind of way. Gramps was gaga over Barbara. I think he was in love.”

  Gretal finished the wine and uncorked another bottle. “Was your father involved in any of this hillbilly hanky-panky?”

  “Nah. He was busy with his own women. He always met them out on Lover’s Lane, over at the Moon Glo Motor Lodge, down by the covered bridge. I could tell when he’d been out cruising because he came home with corn stalks stuck up like giant matches in the back bumper of the Lincoln.”

  “Figures,” grunted Gretal. “He stuck his little pale stalk everywhere.”

  It was getting late. Time to knock off for the day. Harry didn’t pay overtime. We left our calling card with Kimmy and Gretal and asked them to call if they remembered anything important. Kimmy said she would. Gretal mumbled.

  Back in the Impala, Veenie popped open the glove compartment to get a little light going. She ruffled something between her fingers. She had her neck down, nose to the thing.

  I put the Impala in gear. “What in the Sam Hill are you doing?” I asked.

  She peered up at me. “Reading Bromley’s checkbook register.”

  I stomped the brake.

  Veenie bounced off the console like a Day-Glo orange Super Ball. “Why’d you do that for? I’m old. Got bones like Jell-O. You could have broken my hip.” Her glasses were wobbly on her face. Her nose bridge was a bit red, like I might have bruised it a tad.

  “You stole evidence? From Bromley’s desk?”

  “Don’t be a wiener. His checkbook was sitting out there in the open, calling my name. Besides, he’s dead. Dead people got no rights. Everybody knows you can go through dead people’s stuff.”

  “What’s in that check register?”

  Veenie flashed the black leather register my way. I flipped on the overhead dome light. Her fat, little pointy finger was poking at an entry penned last week. One thousand dollars, paid to the order of Ms. Barbara Skaggs. That check was proof positive that Bromley Apple knew Barbara Skaggs. It proved something else too: people had been lying to us. That idea burned my bacon. I squealed out of Camelot so hard the fake geese rippled across the pond trying to make a break for it.

  “Maybe it was Bromley who was having that affair with Barbara, not his dad?” I said, reasoning out loud.

  Veenie fiddled with the eight-track tape player that her boy toy, Dickie, had installed in the Impala for us. “I saw this show on YouTube where the old men handed their mistresses over to their sons when they were done with them. Men are pigs like that sometimes.”

  “Were they Mormons?”

  “Nah, just normal men.”

  I chewed on that idea for a while. Barbara Skaggs didn’t look like much of a catch to me, but then I’d known men to do some pretty weird stuff in the name of lust. Ever since Great Aunt Shish told me what Great Uncle Moose really did with that dancing standard poodle of his out in the barn—Ms. Eva, he called her—I understood that a man’s desires can run pretty muddy. I also understood why no one in the family would open Uncle Moose’s barn door without first yelling “I’m coming! Here I come!” before storming into the stalls. As Grammy Titsy always said, you don’t really need to know every little thing about your kin or neighbors.

  While I was chewing my cheek over why Bromley would have given Barbara a thousand dollars the week he died, Veenie, who loved to cruise with the tunes cranked, popped in an eight-track tape of Dolly Parton promising to always love everybody. The bass was thumping so loudly that everybody who lived on the east side of Knobby Waters got to enjoy the sixties with us again. The eight-track player worked most of the time, if you poked at it. Veenie kept a Philips head screwdriver in the glove compartment so we could rewind tapes by hand as needed, because the rewind doohickey was busted on the tape deck. Our selection was limited, but we’d found even the most heart-wrenching things in life could be set to a soundtrack from Hank Williams or The Eagles or Dolly Parton.

  We rumbled on home, stopping at the Go Go Gas to get a family-sized bag of pork cracklings. I was so frustrated I picked up a double pack of pink Hostess snowballs on my way out the door just to calm my nerves before bedtime. When I exited the Go Go, snacks in hand, the Impala wasn’t parked out by the pumps where I’d left it. Veenie had taken the wheel—she isn’t supposed to drive, long story—and was laying rubber up and down the edge of the driveway. I had to dangle the pink snowballs Veenie’s way before she’d zoom over and hand the wheel back to me. Once she sank her teeth into a snowball, she was sedated. After gobbling down the cupcake, she fell asleep in the front seat. She was deep in her dreams, snoring like a hound dog, by the time we reached home.

  Chapter Eight

  Boots visited the office bright and early the next morning. He fiddled with his gun belt as he fired questions at me. “Were you and Veenie cruising in the Impala last night? Listening to Dolly Parton cranked up high? Cutting donuts over at the Go Go Gas?”

  “No,” I lied.

  “Well I got several complaints says you were.” He pulled a pile of yellow sticky notes out of his shirt pocket. They fluttered onto my desk like butterflies.

  I eyed the notes. “People are petty. They like to complain. You ought to know that by now.”

  Boots hitched up his belt. He placed a booted foot on my chair rung. “What got you all riled up last night, Ruby Jane?”

  “Listening to Veenie rattle on about what random body part fell off her this week.”

  “Really, because I heard tell you were out at Camelot visiting Bromley’s widow, Gretal. She tell you anything you ought to be sharing with the law?”

  I squirmed, mostly because Bromley’s stolen checkbook was on my desk in plain sight. I’d had way too much Sunday school as a kid. I sweated when I lied to authority, even Boots Gibson, which was silly because I’d seen him looking awfully unofficial back in VBS long about 1953. He was five at the time and had been messing with the grape Kool-Aid powder in the church kitchen, stealing it straight out of the packet by wetting his fingers and running them through the purple sugar packets. The little fool stained all his fingers purple. His fingers, in turn, stained his privates purple when he latched on to relieve himself in the outhouse behind the rectory. Veenie had taken to calling him “Grape Nuts” Gibson after that, whenever she wanted to get his goat.

  Not much authority in that.

  I pecked at my keyboard, trying to look busy in the hope that he’d go away. “Gretal said she knew nothing.”

  “And you believed her?”

  “Dang it! I didn’t say that, Boots.”

  He grunted. “Don’t lock those cute little lips. This is a police investigation. Might be murder. You can’t be obstructing justice, Ruby Jane.”

  “Stop fussing at me. I don’t have to share anything with you. We don’t even know if there ought to be an investigation. Maybe Bromley just up and died. It happens.” I was thinking of my husband, Charlie, who’d been about Bromley’s age when he went facedown into the potato salad.

  The door squeaked and Veenie stepped in. She glanced at Boots but kept quiet. Guilt screwed up her face when she spied Bromley’s check register on my desk, right out in the open. “Excuse me,” she said, grabbing the checkbook off the desk and running off to hide in the ladies’ room.

  Boots blew out a huff. “I’m going now, but if you hear anything about Bromley’s death, you need to be calling me, you hear?” He shuffled out the door.

  Veenie came out of the restroom drying her hands on a dish towel. “What did old Grape Nuts want? He still after you for a date?”

  I eyed her and ignored the last part of her question. “Boots heard we were out at Camelot Court interrogating Gretal Apple. He was nosing around to see if we were doing his job. It’s your day off. Why you here?”

  “Pappy.”

  Pappy Tuttle was Veenie’s dad. He had retired from
the brick plant after fifty years of feeding coal into the giant kilns. Luckily he had a fireman’s pension that kept him swimming in corn dogs and Schlitz up at Leisure Hills. “What’s up?”

  “His little red choo-choo done chugged around the bend again. They want me to stop by. See if I can jog his brain back on track.”

  Pappy Tuttle was ninety-eight years old some days. Other days he was nine. It didn’t seem to matter much to him. The nursing staff got all riled up when he slipped a decade or two. Veenie didn’t mind the slippage, but the nurses called her when Pappy’s screws started popping. They didn’t want to be liable if his mind chugged down the tracks never to be seen again.

  I had taken the Chevy to the office that morning. Leisure Hills was out by the river. Veenie needed a lift. Her macular degeneration had gotten so bad she wasn’t technically allowed to drive. She had a go-kart, custom built for her by her boy toy, Dickie, but the thing only had a lawn mower engine and no shade roof. She’d have been a red boil ready to pop by the time she reached Leisure Hills, either that or dead in a ditch. If she knocked off dead, I’d never hear the end of how I could have saved her, but no, I’d sent her to an early grave. No way I was letting her hold something like that over my head for the rest of our earthly days. I grabbed my messenger bag and the keys to the Impala, and we were off.

  I gunned the Chevy up the private gravel drive to Leisure Hills, which was lined with ragged marigolds and weeping sycamore trees. Leisure Hills sat on a hill high above a bend in the White River. Visitors were welcome but were supposed to stop and sign in at a security gate. Spying the gate, I honked at Jed, the gatekeeper, whom I’d known for a coon’s age—third cousin on my mother’s side—and he lifted the mechanical arm, letting us zoom on in with a quick wave.

  We shot under a giant Disney-like archway at the entrance to the home that promised “The Time of Your Life for the Time of Your Life.” The old folk’s home itself was big and bright yellow, with a wide, well-shaded front porch. The porch was lined with oldsters in scooters and wheelchairs. Seniors bundled in afghans sat in a pair of porch swings at each end of the porch reading books and swiping at computer tablets. Most folks took rooms at Leisure Hills because they couldn’t quite hop around like they used to and needed some type of assistance with walking. That’s how Pappy Tuttle ended up there. His spine was all squeezed down with age.