“Sure,” Dodge said. “I do admit it’s a possibility, but my money’s on a woman being the killer. I mean, it could have even happened by accident. Doesn’t mean the killer meant to kill Charlie. Perhaps a kinky game that went too far or something.”
“Interesting the way your mind works,” Tilley replied with a sly grin.
“Can I tell you both something without you guys getting mad?” Lemkie asked.
“I don’t like the sound of this,” Dodge quipped.
“Shoot,” Tilley said, giving Dodge a puzzled look.
“A few of us… well, not us but people at the station… have, uh, started talking about a pool of sorts.”
“A what?” Dodge asked.
“You’re betting on who the killer is?” Tilley asked. “Seriously?”
“Well, not really,” Lemkie replied. “But the idea has been tossed around some and it’s gaining popularity.”
“Well, I sure as hell hope this doesn’t get to the chief or out to anyone outside the station,” Dodge said. “If the mayor, or better yet the press got a hold of this, shit would hit that fan everybody keeps talking about. We’ve managed to keep most of this out of the press so far and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“The press!” Tilley said. “Just imagine if the Naughty Knitters Club got a hold of this juicy piece of gossip.”
“The what?” Lemkie asked.
“Long story,” Dodge replied.
“Well, don’t leave me hanging,” Lemkie said.
“I’ll fill you in when we get back to the station,” Tilley said. “We’ll be there soon.” She ended the call.
“You want to place a bet, don’t you?” Dodge asked as he shot a quick glance at Tilley before turning his attention to his driving again.
“Not just yet,” Tilley said. “I have a feeling our list of suspects is not really complete.”
“Me, too,” Dodge replied. “So, what do you think happened? I mean, why would the killer bother locking the door on her way out?”
“My money is to buy time. I mean, he or she just killed Charlie and probably wanted to get as far away as possible. Maybe even solidify an alibi of some sort in the process.”
“Buy time?” Dodge asked, wanting his younger, less experienced partner to fill in the blanks before he did it for her like he often did in the beginning of their collaboration.
“Well, it’s obvious Charlie Baker was pretty popular in some circles,” Tilley said. “For sure he or she expected someone to show up. I mean, someone did, right?”
“Ms. Weatherbee,” Dodge said, glancing at Tilley.
“Weatherbee rang the doorbell but I’m sure not all of Charlie’s “friends” would have,” Tilley said.
“True,” Dodge said as he pulled into the parking lot of the station and parked his Ford Escape in his usual spot.
Shortly after making coffee, Tilley was telling Lemkie about the ladies who referred to themselves as the Naughty Knitters. She explained to both Dodge and Lemkie how the O’Briens had started the Wellness Centre with only one licensed therapist. Around the same time, Emma would embark on a path to becoming a licensed therapist herself, specializing in sexual therapy. The clinic prospered. Dodge couldn’t help but wonder how nosy Emma could be a licensed therapist with her own gossip group and still manage to keep this all quiet enough to keep this a secret. Secret enough that the detective and Head Crime Scene Investigator investigating a Panty Bandit wouldn’t know about her role at the centre as a sexual therapist. There had been somebody breaking into homes and stealing women’s panties in this town not so long ago, and nobody had thought to tell him the rehab centre treated more than just drugs and alcohol addictions.
Tilley would later confess that she had questioned one of Emma’s on-staff therapists about the Panty Bandit behind her partner’s back. More or less had consulted the therapist more as profiler, also in hopes that if she had anything she might break her patient-therapist trust and divulge what she knew, woman to woman. But this had been pointless, as the therapist and Emma had known nothing. Although, according to the therapist she spoke with, Emma was very happy to take some wild guesses as to who the Bandit could be. Emma’s guesses were so wild that most were preposterous and unfounded. This was why Tilley went to the therapist and not Emma directly. She knew Emma would try to find out who their suspects were. But if anyone at the clinic knew anything, they were lying and wouldn’t actually divulge facts if they had them.
Besides, Dodge was still considered new in town back then and had been on the suspect list as well. A fact that insulted his pride at first, but soon had him laughing so hard he almost passed out. He got it. He was new in town around the time the break-ins started. He was often seen out at night and Tilley knew nothing about his nightly runs at that time. It made perfect sense that they thought of him for it, he thought. And by the end of the day, Dodge had already forgiven his partner for going behind his back in the Panty Bandit case. Besides, it had led nowhere, as the Bandit was never caught.
19
Dodge watched as Tilley crossed the street and came to join him in his screened porch. This practice had become somewhat of a routine of theirs at this point. Sometimes they discussed the day’s events, if they had interesting cases in progress. But usually they just chatted and got to know each other.
It was on this very porch, during the Panty Bandit case, that Dodge had first told Tilley about how he hadn’t lost his virginity until college. The conversation got pretty intense as he told her about his college affair with a much older woman.
He also told her about when he was a teenager; his mature neighbour had caught him looking at her granddaughter. He’d been sixteen at the time and had a crush on the granddaughter who was in some of his classes. But it was her grandmother who had flirted with him every chance she got and the flirting went on for years. But even at an awkward young age Dodge was learning to read people, and he knew she enjoyed teasing him, flirting with him. Part of him also thought it was to keep him away from her granddaughter. She probably didn’t want to become a great-grandmother just yet and flirting with him was her way of trying to avoid that. He would never really know, as he had been too embarrassed to ask her then, and she had passed away while he was in the police academy. But to this day he still dreamed of those teenage days when he would visit his neighbour, only to be teased and tormented by the grandmother.
At the time, Tilley had suggested he talk to someone at the clinic. She had mentioned that perhaps Emma could help. The Naughty Knitters had revived these memories for Dodge. Tilley thought this was very funny, but vowed to never repeat any of it. And while Dodge had confessed much in those times spent in the porch, neither of them really knew why he felt he could or should. He had done so anyway, as a strange friendship had developed between them. Perhaps it had been the strange cases they worked together; someone stealing women’s underwear from homes all over town. And now this new case where a man is killed in such a strange way.
Tilley, on the other hand, felt reluctant to share like Dodge had done. She did, in the past, reveal to Dodge about her first kiss at the tender age of twelve. The boy had been thirteen and had put his hand on her budding young breast and she had blackened his eye for it. Thinking about how Emma had said she suspected Dodge might be the Panty Bandit Tilley had felt awkward about sharing, even if she thought Emma was off her rocker even back then. Sharing such intimate details with someone like Dodge, who she would always see as her mentor, wasn’t something she could be comfortable with.
Tonight Dodge sat in running shorts and t-shirt with his laptop, as usual while nursing a cold beer.
“Anything interesting on Facebook tonight?” Tilley asked as she opened a beer of her own and sat down.
“Nope. But I managed to get a copy of the coroner’s report on Charlie Baker.”
“Let me guess,” Tilley said. “Death by asphyxia
tion?”
“Yes,” Dodge replied. “But he has a theory about the flag pole.”
Tilley laughed sharply before speaking. “Men and their fascination with dicks—it’s simply amazing.”
“What?” said Dodge with a stupid grin as he took a sip of beer before continuing to explain what would turn out to be a guess more than anything. “Blood clots. He thinks it was blood clots. Apparently our Charlie used to take a lot of blood thinners because of complications from an operation to remove a kidney, years ago. But he wasn’t taking them anymore. Probably because of the Viagra.”
“That’s a lot of maybes, if you ask me.”
“Oh, I know,” replied Dodge. “But other than Viagra, there was nothing else in his system. No drugs or toxins.”
“Asphyxiation,” said Tilley.
“Asphyxiation by application of a pillow to face,” replied Dodge.
“Was there ever any doubt?” asked Tilley.
“Not really,” replied Dodge. “But I was curious as hell about the tent pole.”
“I see that,” replied Tilley, amusing them both.
“Weren’t you?” asked Dodge, remembering how his partner had been mesmerized. How she had stared at it. Now he found himself wondering how long it had been since Tilley had gotten some. He never did see any cars at her house. No gentleman callers since he’d been in town. Rumors at the station were that she’d had a fling with a fellow officer, but nobody offered him any details and he didn’t feel he had been around long enough to ask.
His smiled widened as Tilley muttered something he couldn’t quite understand as she got up and left, taking her beer with her. She had said something about men being something or other, he wasn’t sure. Dodge finished his beer and added it to an almost full bag and tied it loosely, as it wasn’t yet ready for Walter’s next pick-up.
20
Pegged to a corkboard in the management’s office of the Poplar Malls Shopping Centre is a set of keys which have yet to be claimed by anyone. Nor will they ever be since their owner lies on a slab in the morgue. The keys were found in a puddle in the parking lot and had nothing special to help identify them. They contained four keys on a simple ring. Three of the keys had to be house keys, the last perhaps to a padlock or something. At least that’s what the mall janitor thought when he found them. Nobody would ever know this was a key Charlie Baker stole from Stella Rubbin. A key to a cabinet where she sometimes kept confiscated materials, including pills. Stella had never noticed when the key went missing because she had a spare in her purse. But nobody would ever know because the keys would remain on the corkboard for nearly two months before being thrown away during one of the janitor’s decluttering sprees.
21
The battered laptop lay open, face-down on the dew-covered lawn of the bright yellow house on Robin Street. Very early that morning, while nobody was watching, it had been tossed from a passing car. It bounced on impact once, twirling in the air, causing it to open and land screen-down. A curious crow pecked at it not long after and flew away after quickly losing interest. Ms. Langley, the elderly owner of the home, never noticed the new would-be lawn ornament.
Tuesdays Walter did his usual pick-ups, including the ones on Robin Street. He stopped his tricycle in front of a blue house and collected a full transparent blue bag of cans, plastic bottles, and jugs. The trailer hooked to the back of his tricycle was nearly full and he would have to go to the recycling depot to drop off his first load soon. Today was a good day, thought Walter as he spied the small bag of recyclables Ms. Langley had left out for him. She normally didn’t have much but she was more than willing to give them to poor Walter, the brain-damaged boy. He smiled slightly, pleased by the thought as he scooped up the bag and tucked it into the front basket of his tricycle. He wiped his nose with the sleeve of his jacket and said the word Tuesday to nobody in particular. But before Walter could get on his tricycle, something caught his eye as the rising sun reflected off the dew-covered laptop.
“Tuesday,” Walter exclaimed for a second time as he walked over to the laptop. He paused and looked around to see if anyone was watching. He was no longer the sharp kid he once had been, and even he realized that. But his mind was deteriorating since the surgery; and the connection from his mind to his mouth seemed broken.
“Tuesday,” he said again as he crouched down and turned the laptop over. He poked at the keys like he remembered doing so in the past, but nothing happened. Walter picked up the laptop and examined it closer, seeing its casing was cracked in a few places and it was missing the caps lock and the ‘w’ key. Otherwise it looked somewhat intact, but even Walter could tell it had been discarded. Unsure why he felt the need to he took it to his tricycle, moving the bags of cans from the front basket to the back basket. He placed the battered laptop in the front basket. He glanced around to see if anyone was watching before heading off on his way to continue his route.
O’Neil, the manager of the recycling centre, tried to take the laptop from Walter when he made his drop of recyclables, but the brain-damaged young man would have none of it. O’Neil went as far as to offer him ten dollars for the laptop but Walter wouldn’t part with it. O’Neil stopped pestering when he saw that Walter was getting angry with him. This wasn’t like Walter. He was usually very willing to part with his recyclables, or anything else he might have found, for money. Walter took the payout for the cans and stuffed it into his pocket, climbed on his tricycle, and rode off. Again, this was odd behaviour for Walter, as he always paid close attention to the counting of his haul and made sure he wasn’t being ripped off when it came to his money.
“What was that about?” the elderly man asked as he took recyclables from the trunk of his car and carried them to the bay door where O’Neil stood.
“I have no idea,” O’Neil replied as he took his hat off, scratched his balding head, and put the hat back on. “I’ve never seen Walter so flustered before.”
“That’s that kid who had the brain tumour, isn’t it?” the old man asked.
“Yup,” O’Neil replied. “He was pretty smart before he had that operation.” Truth be told, Walter wasn’t that smart before but to O’Neil he had been a whiz kid.
“That’s what I hear,” the elderly man replied, whom O’Neil remembered as Royal Crown. O’Neil was terrible with names. Royal Crown got his nickname because of the large amount of empty Royal Crown whiskey bottles the old man returned on a regular basis. But O’Neil knew Walter’s name. Everybody knew Walter’s name.
22
Emma sat in her usual spot on her porch, right next to Bill, a pair of fresh, steaming cups of tea resting on the small table between them. Bill sat with his binoculars, watching what was happening across the street, while Emma gossiped on her freshly charged cordless phone.
“Sadie Cross just came by,” Emma said to Myrtle on the other end of the line. “She put flowers next to the steps of Charlie Baker’s apartment. Bill says she was crying.”
“Do tell,” Myrtle replied, her tone full of intrigue. “You’ll have some juicy gossip for our afternoon meeting.”
“Her husband’s gay, you know,” Emma said, as if she had not even heard Myrtle. Emma got excited when she had juicy gossip which she could share. Gossip her clients weren’t paying to have kept secret was open for discussion and discuss she would. But the townsfolk were fair game.
Bill lowered his binoculars, fingering wax out of his ear as he gave Emma a funny look as if to make sure he had heard her correctly. Bill was a bit oblivious to this sort of thing. Personality quirks were his wife’s thing, not his.
“Poor Sadie wasn’t getting any so she was fucking Charlie Baker,” Emma said as she gave her husband a sly grin. The same grin she always gets when she has really juicy gossip. “Her car was at Charlie’s place often.” Truth was, it wasn’t there as often as she insinuated, but that didn’t matter to Emma.
“Her husband must
have known,” Myrtle replied.
“I think he was jealous,” Emma said. “Probably because he wanted to have sex with Charlie, too.”
“Oh, my. You think maybe he killed Charlie?” Myrtle asked. “I heard he was the jealous type, gay or not.”
“Naw,” Emma replied. “Oh, and there are more flowers, but we don’t know who left those.”
“Do they look store-bought?” Myrtle asked.
“Bill said he didn’t think so, but he doesn’t know anything about flowers anyway.”
“Agatha’s gonna be mad when she sees women are leaving flowers at her apartment building,” Myrtle stated with a slightly suppressed chuckle. “Pissed!”
“Oh, I know,” Emma replied with a gleeful giggle. She didn’t suppress her amusement at all.
“Anyway, the real reason I called was to tell you that I’m gonna have to cancel this afternoon’s meeting,” Emma added, clearly referring to the group of Naughty Knitters.
“I assumed you were calling about that,” Myrtle replied. “I heard Stella’s gone and got drunk again. Fell right off the wagon… again.”
“Fell off? She hadn’t gotten back on it yet,” Emma replied. “But that’s not the best part.”
“Oh, doooo tell,” Myrtle replied enthusiastically.
“I heard they found her passed out drunk,” Emma said. “And you’ll never guess where.”
“Oh, spit it out, you old cow!” Myrtle replied.
“They found her in the morgue,” Emma said. “She was wrapped in a blanket, lying on the slab with Charlie Baker’s body. She had a big empty bottle of vodka and a baggie full of gummy bears.”
“Oh, my stars!” Myrtle replied.
“She was so cold, they thought she was dead,” Emma replied. “Scared the shit out of the guy who found her when she moved.”
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