A Fistful of Collars (26 page)

The door opened.

The woman peered out. She had rusty red hair and wore very big glasses. The eyes behind the lenses looked small and watery. They took in Bernie, and then me.

“This is Chet, Mrs. Mizell,” Bernie said.

“April had a dog,” said Mrs. Mizell. Holding her housecoat tight at the neck, she stepped to the side and let us in.

We were in a small living room, separated from an even smaller kitchen by a counter. On the counter stood an open jug of red wine and a half-filled glass. Mrs. Mizell made a gesture toward a couch facing the TV. Bernie didn’t sit there. Instead he pulled a footstool closer to the couch and sat on that. Was an interview about to happen? Maybe: Bernie always got fussy with seating arrangements when it came to interviews.

Mrs. Mizell screwed the top on the wine jug and pushed the glass out of sight, behind the toaster, then turned quickly, the way humans do when they’re checking to see if you saw. So complicated. And of course we saw. We’re pros, me and Bernie.

Mrs. Mizell came over, smoothing her housecoat, and sat on the couch, shifted herself away from Bernie, but because of where he’d placed the stool, she couldn’t go far. She sat up straight, a kind of bloated woman, but her feet were bare and they were nice, well-shaped in a way that’s hard to describe, the nails red, a very bright red I had trouble taking my eyes off.

Mrs. Mizell gave Bernie a sideways look. She was real nervous; the smell, not unpleasant to me, filled the room.

“What was the name of April’s dog?” Bernie said.

“Kurt,” said Mrs. Mizell. “She was a big Kurt Cobain fan.” She put her hands together, wrung them a bit. “He got unmanageable after she . . . after. I had to give him away.”

“After what?” Bernie said.

Now she looked him right in the eye and her voice got harsh. “After April got murdered,” Mrs. Mizell said. “Isn’t that the old case you’re talking about?”

“It is,” Bernie said.

“Old and cold,” said Mrs. Mizell. She gazed down at her feet.
I gazed at them, too, and was hit by a strong desire to give them a lick. Was this a good time? I wondered about that.

“What happened to her, Mrs. Mizell?” Bernie said.

She shook her head. “April was a good kid, no matter what any—no matter what,” she said. “And she was as pretty as a movie star.”

“Have you got a picture of her?”

“I do.”

Mrs. Mizell rose, her knees cracking, and went through a door into a dark room. Bernie turned to a desk by the wall, opened the top drawer, glanced inside, closed the drawer. Mrs. Mizell returned and handed Bernie a picture. He studied it.

“Yes,” he said. “She was very pretty.”

“Beautiful,” said Mrs. Mizell.

“Is that the old Flower Mart in the background?”

Mrs. Mizell, looking over Bernie’s shoulder, nodded. “She worked there part-time.”

“Who’s the boy with her?”

Mrs. Mizell’s face hardened. “The boyfriend,” he said. “Ex-boyfriend, but this was before she dumped him.”

“Why did she dump him?”

Mrs. Mizell took a deep breath. “By that time I maybe wasn’t keeping the close eye on her that I should. And I had problems of my own. A single mom, in case you haven’t guessed. This was before Mr. Mizell. Now is after him.”

“So she didn’t tell you?” Bernie said.

“I wasn’t really around much, is what I’m saying. April was here alone. I’d gone up to Vegas that summer, looking for work.” There was a silence. “Aren’t you going to ask what kind of work?”

“No,” Bernie said. “I’d like to know more about this boyfriend.”

“Manny? I never liked him.”

“The boyfriend’s name was Manny?” Bernie said. My ears went up right away. There was a change in the sound of Bernie’s voice, not big, but that change, a slight sharpening, almost always meant something.

“Short for Manuel.” Mrs. Mizell said Manuel in a way that was kind of—what was the word? catty? whoa! I’d never thought about that, clearly a huge subject, and no time now. And where was I? Manuel. Yes. She stretched it out like she was making fun of the name.

Bernie leaned forward. “Do you remember his last name?”

“Chavez.”

Bernie went very still. When he spoke again, his voice was back to normal. “Do you know what became of him?”

“Became of him?”

“Since then.”

“I never saw him again.”

“Was he a suspect?”

“In my mind he was,” Mrs. Mizell said. “April was stabbed to death, and if you’re a private eye, then you must know all about Mexicans and knives.”

Bernie said nothing.

“And he had a motive,” Mrs. Mizell went on.

“What was that?”

“Jealousy, of course. I think April had started seeing someone else.”

“Is that why she dumped Manny?” Bernie said.

Mrs. Mizell got angry. “I told you I didn’t know. I just think.” She glanced over at the toaster.

“What makes you think she dumped Manny for this other person?”

“It was a long time ago,” said Mrs. Mizell, eyes still on the toaster.

Bernie rose, took Mrs. Mizell’s chin in his hand and turned her face toward his, not hard, even kind of gently. Her eyes got big.

“But you remember,” he said, and let her go.

Mrs. Mizell nodded. “I overheard her telling a friend on the phone.” Her hand went to her chin, felt it, almost like she was making sure it was still there.

“Did she mention the name of the new boyfriend?” Bernie said.

“Not that I remember. I really don’t, so keep your hands off me.”

Bernie made a little motion, like he was brushing a fly from in front of his face, but I didn’t hear or see one. “Who was the friend on the phone?” he said.

“Probably her oldest one, going all the way back to grade school,” Mrs. Mizell said. “Dina was her name. Dina . . . Taggert, I think it was. “Or maybe Haggerty. But what difference does it make?” She started getting angry again. “Manny alibied out.”

“How do you know?”

“The cop told me—the cop who found poor April in the first place. I put him on to Manny first thing.”

“What was the alibi?”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure I even knew.”

“And the cop?”

Mrs. Mizell stared at the wall. “A serious young man,” she said. “It’ll come to me.”

We waited, Bernie watching her face, me watching her feet. We’re a team, me and Bernie, which must have come up already.

At last Bernie said, “Did he have long sideburns?”

“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Mizell. “That was the detective in charge. Detective Luxton.”

“Detective Luxton?”

“He had long sideburns, like from the seventies,” Mrs. Mizell
said. “The cop wore his uniform, of course. He cared, I could tell. He promised me they’d find April’s killer but they never did.” We sat in silence. “You’ve brought it all back to me,” Mrs. Mizell said. “What gives you the goddamn right?”

“There’d only be one good reason.”

She raised her head. “You’ve found something?”

“I can’t go into details,” Bernie said.

Mrs. Mizell gave Bernie an angry look, then turned away from him. Her gaze happened to light on me. The anger seemed to leak out of her. “The cop was named Stine,” she said.

W
e parked across the street from Red Devil’s around closing time. You could always tell closing time from the fact that no one was going in, plus no one coming out ever walked in a straight line. The Little Detective Agency does a lot of its best work at closing time.

When we’re sitting on a place at night, we like to avoid streetlights, not a problem on this block, since none of them were working. “Infrastructure of the whole damn country’s falling apart, big guy,” Bernie said. “Gonna end up living in caves.”

Wow! And I was hearing that for the very first time? But we could live in caves, no problem, me and Bernie. We’d been in caves, and also mines, plenty of times. Bernie loved exploring abandoned mines out in the desert, so when the infrastructure, whatever that was, finished falling apart maybe we’d be even happier. Hard to imagine, so I didn’t even try.

The door of Red Devil’s opened and out came a few women, none walking in straight lines. The ones in high heels took them off, which made them surprisingly short but didn’t help with the straight line problem. A taxi pulled over and they sort of fell in.
After that a dude appeared, started heading one way, then changed his mind, and finally changed it again and went off in the original direction.

Lights started going out inside Red Devil’s and soon it was dark, except for the neon sign in the window. The door opened and Dina came out, wearing jeans and a halter top, and pushing a bike. She pulled down one of those metal screens, covering the whole front of Red Devil’s, and locked it in place. Then she got on the bike and pedaled away. The bike had a small flashing red light at the back, couldn’t have been easier to follow. We followed.

Had we ever tailed anyone on a bike before? Sure, and also people on skateboards, forklifts, golf carts, and once a roller coaster, maybe the worst day of my life. Bernie kept our own lights off, and we loafed along well back of Dina on her bike, real slow. The street was dark, the night was dark, and Bernie was in a dark mood: I could feel it. The only illumination was red and green, red from Dina’s flashing light and green from the dials on our dash. Bernie’s face was hard in that green light. Something was bothering him, but what? We weren’t in danger. In fact, weren’t we bringing it? Which was what we did at the Little Detective Agency, lots of fun even if we weren’t always paid.

We followed the flashing red light down the street, around a corner, and past some warehouses that were being fixed up for lofts, which I knew because Bernie had thought about investing in one, opting for the Hawaiian pants play instead at the last moment; actually after the last moment, leading to a nasty meeting with some developer dudes, but no harm done, Bernie said, because real estate tanked and we would have lost everything anyway. At least we still had the Hawaiian pants in our self-storage in South Pedroia. Once we went down there and Bernie tried a few on, looking very sharp, in my opinion.

The red light stopped flashing. We moved in closer, saw Dina getting off her bike and carrying it up some steps to the door of one of the loft buildings. Bernie pulled right up on the sidewalk and stopped the car. I just loved when he did things like that! Dina turned and saw us, her eyes wide and dirty pink like the sky. She whipped around to the door and started fumbling for keys, losing her grip on the bike at the same time.

“Chet!” Bernie said. “Go.”

Already on it, in fact halfway up the stairs. I vaulted over the bike, which was clattering down, and hit the landing right between Dina and the front door, twisting around to face her in one smooth motion. Chet the Jet! I knew “go,” baby. Dina took one look at me and booked, back down the stairs. Bernie was there, ready and waiting. Team! He grabbed her, not hard, by one arm. Dina struggled, got nowhere, then suddenly lashed out with the keys, maybe trying to swipe him across the face. But Bernie’s too quick for that kind of thing—we’re pros, after all, worth mentioning even with the possibility it’s come up before—and a moment later the keys lay in the gutter.

Dina kept trying to get free. “I’ll scream,” she said, although why not scream it instead of just saying it?

Funny thought, and maybe Bernie’s too, because he told her, “Go ahead.”

No screaming happened. Also Dina stopped struggling. A light went on in a window across the street.

“Would you prefer talking in private?” Bernie said.

“About what?”

“Your lies and evasions,” Bernie said.

Dina started to open her mouth, like maybe a scream was coming after all, but it didn’t.

*   *   *

Dina lived on the top floor of the building. No elevator—fine with me—so we climbed the stairs, Dina first with the bike, then me, then Bernie. He offered to carry the bike. Bernie could be a real gentleman: too often that got lost in the shuffle.

Dina turned out to be one of those shufflers. “Fuck you,” she said over her shoulder. She grunted her way up the stairs, bike over her shoulder.

Sometimes when people invite you into their place, they say, “Coffee? A drink, maybe?” and often, “And how about Chet? Can he have a little something?” But not this time. Dina had a small apartment with lots of plants, so many that it smelled like outdoors, kind of confusing. We found places to sit in all the greenery.

“I’m sure you know,” Bernie said, “that there’s no statute of limitations when it comes to murder.”

“What are you talking about?” Dina said. She had dark patches under her eyes, the way humans did when they get tired. In the nation within we just go to sleep, but I’m sure there’s no right or wrong way. “I never murdered anyone.”

“Maybe,” Bernie said. “But you’ve been evasive—at best—and that makes you suspect in my book. And a suspect plain and simple to the homicide squad—they tend to paint in broader strokes.”

Wow. I didn’t follow that at all. Bernie was cooking.

“I told you everything I knew about Carla,” Dina said.

“With the omission of one key fact,” Bernie said.

He paused and watched her face. So did I. She showed nothing that I could see. Women could be tough cookies, just as tough as men, although in my experience with cookies—let’s save this one for another time. Dina was a tough cookie; leave it at that.

“Carla’s not the only murder victim in this case,” Bernie went on, “not even the only murder victim who was also a friend of yours.”

One of Dina’s eyelids twitched, always a promising sign for us.

“There are three victims,” Bernie said. “You knew two for sure, and I’ve got a hunch you knew the third one as well.” Bernie: a great interviewer, and right now—at the top of his game—he was something to see.

Dina’s eyelid twitched some more.

“How about we start with the first one—your closest childhood pal?” Bernie said.

“I already told you,” Dina said. “Carla went off to the magnet school and—”

Bernie held up his hand in the stop sign. “I’m talking about April Spears,” Bernie said. “Wasn’t she your oldest pal?” He paused. “Her mother thinks so.”