Death on Planet Pizza

by Madeline Lepore Martin

  "Where was Ival Overoye this morning?" asked Spenser, breaking through the cop's mental labors.

  "Overoye?" What a weird thing to ask, thought Youngquist. "The maintenance supervisor?"

  "Yes."

  "Uh, Spense, maybe we should go home. It's been a long day." Bea tried to smile at the cop but was afraid that the effort made her look constipated.

  Spenser stood her ground. "Does he have an alibi?" persisted Spenser.

  Youngquist sighed. "Look, if I arrested someone just because they looked like a weasel our lockup would be overflowing."

  Weasel? That's exactly what he looks like. Youngquist turned to leave but Spenser caught her sleeve. "Wait." Spenser leaned into the detective and asked sotto voce, "Did you find a blue notebook in Gina Mae's room?"

  "Blue notebook?" repeated the cop, wondering suddenly about Spenser's sanity.

  "Tucker writes these stories..."

  Bea looked at her wrist that did not have a watch on it. "Wow, look at the time. We should probably get on home, Spense."

  "Kind of like a journal," continued Spenser, ignoring her friend. "They're sort of autobiographical. His last story was about the murder of his friend."

  "Murder?" The cop was vaguely interested.

  "Her name is Chloe. He said she'd been murdered by a pirate named One-Eye..."

  "A pirate?" Youngquist was rapidly becoming convinced of Spenser's dementia.

  Spenser sped on. "I know it sounds bizarre..."

  "Ya think."

  “...but Overoye has this scar that kind of looks like an eye-patch...”

  Youngquist held up her hand. “Stop before you dig that hole even deeper.”

  Spenser took a breath. "All I'm saying is maybe Tucker's story implicates Ival Overoye and it wouldn't hurt anything if you checked out the blue notebook."

  The policewoman scraped her hand across her forehead. "You see a correlation between a handicapped man's story and the brutal murder of his girlfriend?"

  Spenser could feel logic slipping away. "No matter how obscure, if Tucker’s story suggests other suspects, wouldn’t you want to see it?"

  Youngquist was becoming annoyed. Fast. “Other suspects? Like maybe a pirate?"

  Spenser's frustration was cutting a wide swath through her stomach. "Can you just tell me if you found a blue notebook? Please."

  The detective stared at the earnest face before her, and for some bizarre reason not even she could fathom, actually answered. "No. No notebook."

  "Not in Gina Mae's or even Tucker’s room?"

  "No. Look, I'm sorry for your friend, but even good people do bad things." She turned and left the lobby.

  Bea spoke quietly. "Mr Moran's gonna wait for CC." She linked her arm through Spenser's. "Let's go home."

  Spenser sighed audibly and allowed her best friend to guide her out of the station and into the Shadow. She started the car and pulled onto the two-lane highway. Neither friend spoke. Bea was starting to worry. Spenser had always been a bit quixotic but never this obsessive. And coming on the heels of a personal tragedy that Spenser had yet to deal with properly caused even more concern in her chum.

  "Spenser..." Bea finally broke the silence. "I know you want to help Tucker but..."

  Spenser set her jaw. "I'm going to find that book."

  "Find the book?"

  "The notebook is missing. What does that tell you?"

  "That Gina Mae was probably irresponsible and lost it."

  "Or..." Spenser jerked the Shadow onto the shoulder of the road then made an illegal U turn right in front of a very pissed off Paseo.

  "Whoa, Spenser." Bea held onto the dashboard. "What are you doing?"

  "Going back to the Sunflower."

  "What? Why?"

  "Maybe Patty or Amy knows what happened to the notebook."

  "And, if you find it? Case solved? Spense, even if Tucker does mention Overoye, it's all circumstantial, you know."

  "Probably, but it might point the cops in another direction. Maybe there's something in the notebook, something Tucker never read to us..."

  "Something like 'hey, guess what, the pirate is really Ival Overoye and I know for a fact that he killed Chloe?'"

  "Something that may lead Youngquist toward Overoye and away from Tucker."

  Bea opened her mouth to protest but thought better of it. When Spenser was in one of her crusader moods, it would take the combined armies of the world to dissuade her.

  Spenser broke the land speed record getting to the Sunflower. She parked the Shadow and raced into the home with Bea reluctantly riding her crest. Adrienne had gone home. A night attendant, the one who'd been in Spenser's interview group, blocked their path.

  "Help you?" His name tag read 'Chip', but his demeanor was anything but chipper.

  "Here to see Amy," answered Spenser, a sweet smile plowing across her face.

  "Family?" His scowl was cartoonish, but effective.

  "Niece." Spenser's facile lie was wonderfully convincing.

  She watched Chip's face gyrate with faint recognition. Where had he seen her before? Ah, what the hell. He could handle any trouble these two could dish out. "Doors close in exactly fifteen minutes." His bastion stance dared them to stay even a second longer.

  "Fifteen minutes," repeated Spenser as she headed for the eastern corridor.

  "Hey!" Chip's yell crashed into the walls then ricocheted into Spenser's ears, stopping her in her tracks. Bea's forward momentum drove her into her friend's shoulder with a thud. Chip raised his arm and crooked his thumb toward the hallway behind him.

  "Right. Of course." Spenser laughed, slapped her forehead, grabbed Bea's hand, and, hugging the wall, slithered past the suspicious sentinel.

  "Which room?" whispered Bea even though they were well out of earshot.

  "Um..."

  "Great." Bea had never gotten this close to losing all patience with her friend.

  Spenser finally gave up trying to figure it out and knocked on the door directly in front of her. After a moment out rolled Leigh Ann Beatty. Prokofiev's Peter. "Oh, hi Spenser, Bea."

  "Hi, Leigh Ann." Spenser kept her voice low. "I didn't mean to bother you. We're looking for Amy's room."

  "You're close. Second door on your left."

  "Thanks."

  "I'm glad I got this chance to talk to you. I wanted you to know that I don't think Tucker killed Gina Mae." Leigh Ann grabbed the wheels of her chair and began slowly rotating them backward. "'Course that leaves the scary thought that the real killer is still on the loose." She shivered, goosebumps popping up on her arms.

  "Can you think of anyone who'd want to hurt Gina Mae?" asked Spenser.

  Leigh Ann shook her head slowly, sadly. "Gina Mae was a snoop and a braggart, but harmless."

  "D'you know if she ever had any trouble with Mr Overoye?"

  Leigh Ann smiled ruefully. "We all have." She moved her chair slightly forward, spying into the corridor. "He's mean, Spenser. Real mean. The kind of mean when there's no good reason for it. You know?" The significance of Spenser's question suddenly hit her. "Oh, my God, you think Mr Overoye...?"

  "No. No, of course not." Spenser shifted uncomfortably.

  Leigh Ann inched back into her room. "I always felt safe here." She grabbed the knob and slowly closed the door.

  Spenser stared at the closed door. She hadn't meant to scare the poor girl, but at least she'd confirmed her suspicions about Overoye.

  "I'm surprised you didn't remind her that they've never captured the Zodiac killer."

  Spenser cringed. But she knew that what she was doing was for a greater good. She walked two doors down and knocked.

  Amy tentatively opened the door. "What?" The question fell out of Amy's mouth and hit the floor like a flat basketball.

  "Hi, Amy," began Spenser, her voice treacly. "May I ask you something?"

  Amy was confused. Should she be talking to the aunt of the murderer of her best friend?

  "About Gina Mae." Spenser plowed on.r />
  "She's dead." Amy's reply was matter of fact. "She was my best friend." Her lower lip began to quiver. "Her and Patty," she amended.

  Spenser leaned closer. "What'd you think of Tucker’s story, you know, Planet Pizza?"

  Amy rolled her eyes. "I thought it was dumb. Patty thought it was scary. She's a big 'fraidy cat."

  "Am not." Patty's petulant reply escaped the room. She poked her head out the door, confronting Amy. "I wasn't scared," she emphasized.

  "Was so." Amy's superiority in the face of danger was obvious.

  "Was not," reaffirmed a defiant Patty.

  "Who was it," asked a snide Amy, "couldn't sleep last night 'cause she thought she saw Mr Overoye with a hammer?" She tsk tsked in Patty's face. Patty was forever seeing things.

  "Did too see him." You could doubt Patty's courage but not her veracity.

  "You saw Mr Overoye last night, Patty?" Spenser's curiosity was piqued.

  "Uh huh."

  "Nuh uh," countered Amy. "If he'd a seen us he'd a told Mrs Quinn-Jackson and we'd be in trouble. And we ain't." Amy's logic was irrefutable.

  Spenser was getting a headache. She decided to try to steer the conversation back to what she came here for in the first place. "Gina Mae read you the pirate story over by the pond, right?"

  "Yep," answered Patty. "And it was scary."

  "Do you remember what Gina Mae did with Tucker's notebook?"

  "Notebook?" the girls asked in unison.

  "The blue notebook with the pirate story in it."

  "I told her she was gonna get in trouble ‘cause Tucker’d be mad if she lost it." Patty shook her head. “She never listens.”

  “What happened to the notebook?” asked Spenser.

  Patty couldn't quite figure out what could possibly happen to a notebook. What kind of things happen to notebooks, she wondered. Could it grow legs and walk away? She pictured the notebook with feet and started giggling.

  "I mean," Spenser tried to be a bit more specific, "after your secret meeting, what did Gina Mae do with the notebook?" She could almost see the gears grinding away.

  "She didn’t do nothing with it." Patty was still having a problem with this concept.

  “So, she took it with her?” persisted Spenser.

  “S’pose so.” Amy replied.

  "Oh. All right, then.” Spenser tried to conceal her disappointment. “Well, thank you."

  Spenser and Bea turned into the corridor.

  "Tucker's bad. What he done was bad." Amy's words were intensely sorrowful. She and Patty began weeping, holding each other as they closed the door.

  Spenser and Bea made their silent way toward the exit. The interview had been less than illuminating, to say the least, but Spenser wondered if she could rely on Patty's possible Overoye sighting.

  Chip watched, ever vigilant, as the two walked out of the Sunflower and into the Shadow.

  "So, what did you learn?" Bea couldn't keep quiet any longer. "Besides the fact that you scared the shit out of Leigh Ann?"

  Spenser put the key in the ignition. "I didn't mean to."

  "That should help her sleep tonight." Bea was irritated for being so irritated.

  "I just wanted to know whether or not Planet Pizza is missing." She started the car. “Which it is.”

  "Better question... why are you so convinced that Ival Overoye is a thief and may have killed Gina Mae?"

  "Well," began Spenser, counting on her fingers. "One, he's mean and looks like he would steal from a blind beggar."

  "Not proof," countered Bea.

  Spenser put the car in gear, rolled slowly down the driveway and out the entrance toward home.

  She continued. "Two, he probably has a master key and access to every room in the facility."

  "So, does Kanesha and Brianne and probably the ever-personable Chip."

  “Three, if he thought Gina Mae could expose his thievery, he would not hesitate to kill her and eliminate the threat.”

  “That’s absurd, Spense. You don’t know any such thing.”

  Spenser shot her friend an exasperated look. "You don't see any relationship between One-Eye the Pirate and Ival Overoye?"

  Beatrice ran her thin fingers through her massive expanse of black hair. "You have flipped, you know that?"

  Spenser turned the Shadow toward San Oaks. "Damn it,” she sighed. “I just feel so helpless."

  "Right now, so do I. But grasping at straws is counterproductive. We have to let the police figure this out. Tucker is innocent. They won't convict him of a crime he did not commit."

  Spenser wasn’t so sure.

  Spenser pulled into her driveway, allowed her best friend to plant a kiss on her cheek, watched Bea drive away, and sat staring at her tin house.

  She rubbed her eyes and shook her head and tried to make some sense of what had happened. "Damn it.” Her words clung to the humid night air. It was ridiculous to think that a murderer would be revealed in a series of fantastic stories penned by a mentally challenged man.

  "Bea's right. I am obsessing." Spenser stared at her neighbor's darkened door. "Hey, Rasmussen. Who killed Gina Mae?" No answer was forthcoming.

  She got out of the car, climbed the three steps to her porch, unlocked the door, walked into her warm trailer, turned on the kitchen light, the bedroom light, the bathroom light, the TV and the stereo, then sat on her worn love seat and let the noise and bright lights wash over her. Ah, sensory overload. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on everything at once. The Shostakovich on the stereo, Gordon Ramsey on the TV. But one thought kept poking its persistent head into her meditation.

  She reached for the phone book, looked up the Sheriff's Substation and rotary dialed. A very pleasant female voice came on the line asking if she could be of any help. Spenser asked for Youngquist and was told to hold for a moment.

  "Sergeant Rysanek."

  Shit. "Lt Youngquist, please."

  "Who's this?" Civility was not his forté.

  "Spenser Isaacs."

  "Who?"

  "Spenser Isaacs." Spenser heard the receiver hit the desk hard. She could almost see the reluctant detective heaving his sweaty carcass out of the chair and walking gangster style to Youngquist. I just love making new friends.

  "Youngquist." The policewoman's voice was a sexy mixture of Demi Moore sand and Julia Roberts silk. It also sounded tired and irritated.

  This is going to be fun. "Lieutenant, this is Spenser Isaacs."

  Youngquist's sigh traveled along the phone lines at warp speed, crashing into Spenser's ear.

  "I'm on my way home, Isaacs. What is it?"

  Yep. A lot of fun. "I just spoke to Amy and Patty - they were the last ones to see Gina Mae - and neither one has the notebook or knows where it is."

  "Notebook?"

  Spenser didn't think it possible to ask a question without even a smidge of interest, but Youngquist had done just that.

  "Tucker's blue notebook. Remember?"

  Spenser heard what sounded like an involuntary groan. "And this information is even remotely interesting to whom?"

  Spenser's temples started to throb. She screwed her courage and sped on. "I think Ival Overoye knew about Tucker’s story and that it incriminated him in some thefts that have occurred at the Sunflower."

  Youngquist’s sigh was portentous. “I know about the thefts, Ms Isaacs and they have nothing to do with this case.”

  “And I think they do.” No response. In for a pound. "And I think Overoye killed Gina Mae to get the book and shut her up." There, that wasn't so bad. Except of course for the dead line.

  "Look...," began Youngquist. She hadn't hung up. Though she was definitely entertaining the idea. "I know this is tough for you, but you're going to have to accept the fact that your friend lost control. I've seen it happen. Passion can be a very destructive emotion."

  "Tucker did not kill Gina Mae." Spenser enunciated every word.

  "The evidence says otherwise." The lieutenant enunciated her words as well
.

  Spenser decided to go for broke. "What if there's a chance, no matter how remote, no matter how ridiculous, that Overoye is connected. That Tucker's story does implicate him. That Overoye killed Gina Mae and stole the notebook to make sure she never repeated the story." She was ranting and she knew it. It was an odd sensation, feeling her sanity slowly slipping away. She took a deep breath. "Did you search the tool shed?"