Catch as Cat Can (15 page)

27

Rick Shaw stopped off at Pantops Shopping Center to grab a snack. He'd slipped back into the car with the sandwiches as Cynthia Cooper returned with drinks and two cartons of cigarettes since the price was so good.

He turned on the engine. Just as he did he heard the dispatcher's voice. “Sheriff, Sheriff Zakarios of Culpeper needs to talk to you. I've been trying to get you.”

“Say what he want, Sheila?”

“No. But he said it's important.”

“See if you can get him for me. I'll be in the car.”

“Righto.”

“Wonder what Zak wants.” Coop bit into a ham-and-cheese sandwich. She hadn't realized how hungry she was until she took her first bite.

“Rick,” Zakarios's voice boomed over citizen's band radio.

“Yes, Zak. What's cooking in Culpeper?”

“Albemarle resident found on White Shop Road just about a half hour ago. Shot through the temple, slumped over the steering wheel. Don Clatterbuck.”

“I'll be right there, Zak.”

“We sealed off the site. You know this guy?”

“Yes.”

“Damnedest thing, he has a stuffed pileated woodpecker on the seat next to him. Thing's almost two feet tall.”

“He's a taxidermist on the side. Sirens on, maybe I can get to you in a half hour. I don't know, rain's looking evil.”

“How far down are you on White Shop Road? This is Deputy Cynthia Cooper.”

“Hi, Coop. Not two miles. We're a little off the road to the right. You'll see the yellow tape and the squad cars. Ambulance will be here, too. Thought you'd want to see him before—” He was interrupted, then returned. “John says he thinks he's been dead less than an hour.”

“Be there as fast as I can. Over and out.”

         

A gushing rivulet of rainwater poured down in front of Rick Shaw's eyes each time he bent his head. The sheriff's hat, a modified cowboy hat that he and other officers wore, shunted water fore and aft, but the rains were so heavy the hat was soaked through in fifteen minutes.

Sheriff Zakarios mourned the loss of clean vehicle tracks next to the truck. Tracks could still be seen but the rain wiped out a tread imprint. “We've gone over his truck thoroughly.” He wiped his cheeks, wet; his hands were wet, too. “Not a feather off this woodpecker.”

Coop leaned against the 1987 GMC truck, now wearing real license plates, her back to it. “The woodpecker belongs to Mary Minor Haristeen. He must have just finished it.”

“She into drugs or anything?” Chris Zakarios asked.

“No,” Coop replied. “Straight as an arrow. Why, were you going to tear apart the woodpecker?”

“Not right off the bat but I'll impound it for a while.”

“Neat. Small caliber.” Rick opened the door a crack again, inspecting the wound. “Twenty-two, I'd reckon.”

“Whoever it was walked right up to him,” Chris theorized. “The driver's window wasn't down. The door was closed. So the door had to be opened, perhaps by Clatterbuck himself,
bam,
then the killer closes the door and drives off. Swift. No sign of struggle.”

“Well, Don wasn't looking for it.” Rick sighed. “Your people might as well take the body away. I appreciate you calling me. You'll keep the Cowboys windbreaker for evidence, too? You see, we've been looking for this particular truck and windbreaker.”

“I don't suppose there was anything in the pockets that—” Coop hoped against hope.

“A matchbook. We dusted it. Here.” He handed it to Coop, who bent over to shelter it from the downpour.

Beautifully colored with turquoise, airbrushed orange, and yellow with squibbles of purple, the matchbook was expensive to produce. Three inches by two inches, shiny coated paper, the proprietor intended to make an upscale statement. “Roy and Nadine's,” with the Y of Roy as a martini glass, announced the restaurant in Lexington, Kentucky. The address, Palomar Center, Harrodsburg Pike and Man-O-War Drive, was printed on the back. The phone number was printed under the address.

Rick huddled next to Coop. “Don't jump to conclusions.”

“I'm not but if this matchbook belongs to Partlow maybe he's from Kentucky.”

“We sent the fingerprints out nationally,” Rick replied.

“Doesn't mean he's got a record.” She noted that at the bottom of the matchbook, the black lip had printed in white ink, “Contemporary American Cuisine.” The R in the restaurant's name was printed in yellow, the A in deep orange, and the N was hot pink. “Great design. I'll call the restaurant.” She walked back to the squad car, scribbled down the information, then emerged into the deluge, handing the matchbook back to Sheriff Zakarios.

“Know much about the victim?” the Culpeper sheriff asked.

“Friendly. No record. A relaxed kind of guy.”

Coop answered the good-looking, trim Culpeper sheriff. “It's hard to imagine anyone wanting to kill him.”

“Half of what we do comes back to drugs.” The sheriff squinted as the rain blew sideways. “Maybe he had a secret life.”

“It's a damn national epidemic.” Rick stepped away from the GMC as the ambulance crew pulled out the body. “Coop, get the license plate number.”

“Yeah.” She had written down the letters and numbers the minute she got out of the squad car. The license plate, white with blue raised numbers, appeared much older than the truck itself but it had the correct registration stickers on the upper left-hand and upper right-hand corners. She slipped inside the squad car, ran the information, and within minutes was back out. “Nothing. This license plate is from before computer records. Carol Grossman will check back in the files. But the stickers are certainly current. And there's no way you can peel them off another vehicle's plate without tearing the stickers.”

“We've got a homicide. The victim was reported driving this truck.”

“Kid hanging from a tree.” Sheriff Zakarios stroked his long, square chin. “That's a hell of a note. So is this.”

“Thanks for the call.” Rick Shaw clapped Zak's back.

“I'll help in any way I can.”

One of Zak's deputies called to him while wrapping the pileated woodpecker in plastic. “Good work.”

“He did very good work.” Cooper sighed. Don was a likeable man, clearly a man who had either been in the wrong place at the wrong time or had been involved in something she couldn't fathom right then. But she and Rick would figure it out. They usually did, and she always came to the same conclusion: it's easier to keep your nose to the grindstone and be honest. But she couldn't imagine what Don could have done that was dishonest. As far as she knew, criminals had no need of taxidermy skills.

As they climbed back into the squad car, Rick tossed his hat in the back, droplets flinging outward. Coop threw hers back there, too.

“I'll have to get my hat blocked. I forgot my plastic hat cover.”

“Those things look awful.” She shivered in her seat.

“Chill?”

“Yeah. Soaked to the bone.”

“Me, too, but I've more protection.” He pinched his spare tire, which was decreasing slowly. Rick struggled with dieting. The temptation was to roll into a fast-food joint.

“When we get back I'd better tell Harry her woodpecker has been impounded.”

“This woodpecker is news to me. She shooting woodpeckers out there? Isn't that against the law?” He winked.

“Found it dead by the back porch. Actually, the cats found it.”

“Those cats of hers.” Rick laughed. “She'd better enlist them for Social Security numbers given all the work they do.” He turned left down Route 29. After about five minutes he asked, “Any ideas?”

“The truck ties them together. Weird.” She lapsed into silence and then spoke again. “I'll track down Lottie Pearson, too.”

“Why?”

“She dragged Don to Mim's charity dance.”

“And wasn't it Lottie who brought O'Bannon the coffee? It was. Glad you were there. Lottie Pearson.” He whistled low. “Want me to turn up the heat?”

“No. We'll suffocate. I've got a change of clothes in my locker. I'll talk to Lottie after calling Roy and Nadine's. She'll be a real treat.” Coop folded her arms across her chest.

28

No.” Lottie frowned as the rain slashed at the windowpane in her office.

“Lottie, no one thinks you killed Donny Clatterbuck. Don't get your nose out of joint.” Cynthia Cooper, tired and frustrated, spoke bluntly. “But you were in his company recently. Anything you noticed might create a major breakthrough.” Cooper thought to herself how onerous it was to butter up people like Lottie.

“Well.” She tapped the desk with a pencil, rose from her ergonomically correct seat, crossed the tidy, attractive office, and closed the door behind Coop. “Of course I want to help. It's just that you put me off coming to my place of work in uniform. I have a position to uphold.” She returned to her seat. “The university would take a dim view of anything incorrect.” She lowered her voice on “incorrect.”

Assistant Director of Major Gifts, Lottie was hypersensitive to social nuance. The job suited her and the day would come when old Vernon Miller retired and she would take over. Patiently she nurtured his social contacts as well as her own.

“I understand but
you
have to understand two men are dead, Wesley Partlow and Don Clatterbuck. There's a strong possibility that their murders are connected—”

“What?” Alarm registered on Lottie's face. “And who is Wesley Partlow? I read about him being found but the paper didn't say much.”

“Because no one knows much. Partlow was a kid parking cars at Big Mim's fund-raiser.”

“What's someone like that got to do with Donny?”

Coop leaned forward as the rain beat down. “Don Clatterbuck was shot in a truck Partlow had driven before he was killed. Sean O'Bannon described the truck when we— Well, it's a long story involving Mrs. Hogendobber's hubcaps but Sean correctly described the old pickup. We couldn't trace the truck. We had no license plate. We now have a license plate but it's ancient. The stickers are current. Carol Grossman down in Richmond, working on this since this morning, has tracked the old license plates to a Jaguar dealer down in Newport News. They used them as part of the decor.”

“The dealer stole the plates.” Lottie jumped to a conclusion.

“According to the dealer, he didn't. They turn the plates in. By law they must.”

“Well, someone took them.” She liked being right.

“Someone did. Someone also filched new date and month stickers. Dealers don't have those. You can't even peel them off someone's plates intact using a razor blade. As you can see, Lottie, this is becoming more and more interesting.”

“I still don't believe Donny would know anyone like that hanged man.” She stopped herself, regrouped, and continued, “There has to be a reasonable explanation. A coincidence. Maybe Partlow stole the truck and returned it. No one knew.”

“That has occurred to us but what I need from you are details: Don's mood, did he say anything about plans for the future? That sort of thing.”

“Would you like a beverage?” Lottie asked. “I apologize. I should have offered you one when you came through the door.”

“A hot coffee would work wonders.”

“Cream and sugar?”

“Heavy on the cream, light on the sugar.”

Lottie pushed a button on her phone system. “Franny, two cups of coffee. The usual for me and heavy on the cream, light on the sugar for the other. Thanks.” She returned her attention to Coop. Lottie thought Cooper, nice-looking, could look even better. With a bit of luck a tall, lean woman like Cooper could make a decent match in a county like Albemarle, but working as a deputy destroyed her chances of moving too far up in the world. Lottie wondered why women didn't think of those things. Life would always be easier if one was attached to a wealthy man.

They chitchatted until the coffee was placed before them. As Franny withdrew, Lottie took a deep sip, as did Cynthia.

“Thank you. This is just what I needed.”

“For the record, Donald Clatterbuck and I weren't dating. He escorted me to Mim's party. I liked him, of course. Who didn't? You know why I, well, I won't go into that but it still bothers me that BoomBoom didn't allow me to show Diego Aybar the sights. I love doing that sort of thing and Harry already has a beau. It just upset me. That's how I wound up with Donald.” She cast her eyes at Coop but Coop betrayed no feelings of her own so Lottie continued on. “He couldn't have been nicer. You see, I'd not been especially solicitous of him. Well, truthfully I ignored him. You know, he was just a working-class guy. But he actually had some ambition, which surprised me.”

“In what way?”

“He said he was taking his leather-design business on the Internet. He'd been working on a website where he would display techniques. I don't know anything about leather design and repair but I remember he said something about showing the different quality of skins. He thought if he did that he'd get orders for special items like sofas, couch slipcovers, even boots.”

“He was good.” Cooper sighed.

“He also wanted to go on the Internet for his taxidermy business. He said he ought to preserve rich people and call the business Stuffed Shirts. He had a good sense of humor.”

“So he seemed positive?”

“Yes. He mentioned saving to buy his grandfather's farm. Said it had been a good year so he was going to make Mr. Mawyer an offer. He mentioned that no one else in the family was interested. He's lucky there.”

“No clouds on the horizon?”

“No. If there were he didn't mention it. You mean was he afraid of something or someone?”

“Considering he was shot, yes, I'd—”

Lottie interrupted. “What if the murder was a mistake? What if whoever killed him saw the truck and thought he was someone else?”

“Anything is possible.” Coop drained her cup.

“Would you care for some more?”

“Thank you, no. I'm finally warming up. If I hadn't had a change of uniform in my locker I'd be sitting here dripping on your floor. It's not that cold but I took a chill.”

“Don't you just hate that?” Lottie asked sympathetically.

“Did you think Don wanted to go out with you again?”

“We just didn't click on that level. What can I say? No chemistry.” She dabbed her lips with the small napkin Franny had brought with the coffees. “Speaking of chemistry, Harry and Diego!”

Coop smiled. “Who knows?”

“Do you think she's done with Fair forever? I mean I thought that's why BoomBoom set her up. Boom wanted Fair away from Harry. She's like that.”

“I don't know. That was a long time ago, BoomBoom and Fair. Five years . . . or close to it. I don't think she wants him back.”

“She wants them all. She's not happy unless every man is circling around her like a honey pot.”

“Then you would have thought she'd have kept Diego for herself.” Coop shrewdly observed Lottie's reaction.

“Steinmetz is a bigger fish and probably a richer one, too. She doesn't miss a trick. I hate the way men fawn over her.”

“She's beautiful.”

“Artifice.” Lottie sniffed.

“Don evidenced little interest.”

“They grew up together. He saw right through her.”

“But, Lottie, Fair grew up with her, too.”

Not one to appreciate an errant detail in her argument being pointed out to her, Lottie's shoulders froze a bit, then relaxed. “Donald had more sense.” She glanced out at the gloomy day, returning to meet Cooper's eyes. “I'm sorry he's dead. He was a nice person. I can't imagine why anyone would want to kill him.”