Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 03 - When the Carny Comes to Town (22 page)

“Look, you can get yourself killed whenever you want, but for Pete’s sake, go out doing something exciting, or noble, or at least interesting.  Then I’d have a story.”  He got up to order from the counter. 

As Joe passed George his coffee he winked at me.  “Lester was looking for you, Jolie.”

“Great.”  I needed Lester like a barefoot beachcomber needs sharp shells on the beach.  On the other hand, I did appreciate his insistence that his security firm let us see the security tapes. 

George sat back down.  “Listen,” he began.

“Are you going to show Sgt. Morehouse those tapes?” I asked.

“When I finally write a story he’ll hit the ceiling and my editor will turn them over.”

“I’m surprised he hasn’t made you already.  It shows Turk following Scoobie and Penny following him.  You guys aren’t in the business of covering up crimes.”

“I’m not dumb enough to show them to my editor yet.  Besides, the tapes might qualify as a lead, but they don’t show a crime.”  He added more sugar to his coffee.  “And I checked businesses near those steps Scoobie got pushed down.  None of them point cameras there.  And back when it happened, for two days running I talked to people who have businesses there.  No one saw anything.  It was too early in the morning.”

“Except maybe Penny,” I said.

“And she’s not talking,” George said.

“You do your thing George, I’m done.”

“Whaddya mean you’re done?”  His voice rose.  “We don’t know who did anything!” 

“All right, George,” Joe Regan said. 

George scowled at him.

“I know what I think I need to know,” I lowered my voice even more, “to keep Scoobie safe.  Everything about how Turk acted at the hospital that night and at the carnival in Pleasant Point yesterday tells me he went after Scoobie.  And now he thinks Scoobie won’t tell anybody about that.”

“But you don’t know why,” George said.

“I don’t need to know why, that’s your department.  Besides, I have a lot of fences to mend, starting with Harry.” 
And I want to know if he’ll tell me the Parkers won’t take my money for their deductible.

“Damn, Jolie.  Just when I get used to you, you turn everything upsid
e down.  You’re being a spoil
sport.”

“Nope.  I’m just willing to read all about it in your paper.”

“See, you are still interested.”  George’s expression reminded me of a kid asking for just one more piece of candy.  “Come on, Jolie, you like working with me,” he said.

I considered that as I stood to leave.  “I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I like it when you’re focused
on somebody other than me.”  I g
ave him my four-fin
gered wave.  I’d have to thank
Marcus-Ha
rdy-mystery-
writer for giving me that little gem.

MOST OF MONDAY I did homebody things like laundry, walking the dogs, and beating Aunt Madge to the sink to do the dishes from the afternoon tea she served her guests.  She could tell I was sucking up to her, and a couple times I could swear I saw something like a smirk on her face. 

I decided I wouldn’t go to the hospital until early evening.  Better Scoobie should have a chance to miss me.  When I got there Ramona was sitting across from Scoobie in a patient lounge area.  They were playing chess and I could tell Scoobie was beating her.  I wouldn’t bother to play with him.  He’d beat me in six moves.

“Hey guys,” I plopped into a chair.

“How’s the mayhem maker?” Scoobie asked, without looking up.

I took his tone to mean things between us were back to normal.  It felt good. 

The chess game was over in short order.  We spent more than an hour playing a game of Trivial Pursuit that was in a bookcase in the lounge, which has a more homey environment than the rest of the hospital because the rehab patients can be there for weeks rather than days.  We finally realized that it was the original version of the game and a lot of the answers had been superseded by time.  Pluto is no longer the smallest planet and most of the sports records had been overtaken in the last couple decades.

I HAD STAYED LATER than I’d planned at the hospital and it was nine-thirty when Ramona and I walked to my car.  I popped the locks and was pulling open my driver’s side door when Ramona shrieked and tumbled out of sight.  I ran around the car and saw Ramona sitting on the ground with her ankle in the grip of a gloved hand. 

I kicked at the hand and missed and got Ramona in the thigh.  “Ow!” she shrieked.

I reached for the hand and it disappeared under the car.  I looked toward Ramona and got half a face full of pepper spray.

“My eyes!”  I stood up fully and jumped in place.  One eye was almost completely shut and the other streaming with tears.

I could hear Ramona getting to her feet.  Someone grabbed my shoulder and I wrenched myself away, not sure if it was Ramona or whoever belonged to the hand.  The hand felt much bigger than Ramona’s.  It seemed to run halfway down my back. 

“Hey, are you okay?”  It was a man’s voice and I could hear feet running toward us, but all I could think about was my burning eyes. 

“Jolie, I’m so sorry.  I have some water in my bag.” 

I could hear Ramona fumbling in her shoulder bag and I groped in my pocket for a tissue.  The only thing streaming down my face more than tears was mucus.  What little I could see told me an orange man was running toward us.  All orange.  I shrieked.

A man’s voice said, “We need the police in the visitor parking lot at the hospital.”

LUCKILY I DIDN’T have access to a mirror.  I could only imagine what I looked like.  At least my eyes burned less.  I didn’t get to the ER for a few minutes.  Whoever the orange man was he led me to the ladies room just inside the hospital front door and told Ramona to keep my head under the water running in the sink.  Ramona told me later he stood outside the door until the police came.

“Oh my God,” Ramona said for the fifth, or twenty-fifth time.  “I’m so sorry.”

“Was that guy really orange?” I asked.

“Orange?” she asked.

“It can be a side effect of pepper spray,” Sgt. Morehouse said as he walked into the ER cubicle.  “Makes you confused and afraid for a few minutes.”  He nodded at Ramona.  “Better make sure you don’t let Winters near her with a camera.  Even I wouldn’t wish that on her.”

“That’s not funny,” I said, hearing how stuffed up my nose was. 

“You’re right.  I’m sorry.”

From what I could see of Morehouse’s face through my puffy eyes, he was trying to hide a smile as he pulled out a notebook.  “How come you’re wearing shorts?” I asked.

“Barbeque,” he said.  “Called me at home.  Big fight outside the Sandpiper so all the guys are down there.”

“It’s my fault,” Ramona said, blowing her nose.

“It’s the hand’s fault,” I said.  “The hand under the car.”

“Was it attached to a person,” Morehouse said, patiently.

“Yes,” Ramona said.  “It was wearing a glove.  A black glove.”

“Okay…What else?” Morehouse asked.

“We got to the car, and I popped the locks on both sides.  I guess
…
Ramona did you open your door first?”

“I’m not sure, but when I started to pull it open, somebody grabbed me from underneath.”

“I thought she fell,” I said, “so I ran around the car, the front of the car.  And I tried to kick the hand…”

“But you got me,” Ramona said.  “In the thigh.”  She raised the hem of her skirt and I could see a bruise had formed on the side of her thigh.

“Yuck.  Now I’m sorry.  And then, then what?  Oh, I reached down, I was going to grab the hand.”

“But I’d gotten my pepper spray,” Ramona said.  “I was trying to spray under the car, but Jolie bent down just then and I guess I got her.”

“I think so,” Morehouse said, dryly.  “You always carry pepper spray, or somebody been bothering you?”

“Nobody.  I just, you know, I walk everywhere, even at night.”  Her voice trailed off and she looked at me.  “I’m so sorry.”

“If you say that again, I’m going to get my own pepper spray.”

“Damn, I should think so.”  George Winters was in the doorway.

“No camera,” Morehouse said.  “And you gotta wait in the lobby.”

George walked over and pulled me into a hug.  “Damn, Jolie.”  He held on for several seconds and then pulled back.  “Will you talk to me after?” he asked Morehouse.

“Yep,” was all Morehouse said.

I think I was more in shock from the hug than the pepper spray for the next couple of minutes.  Sgt. Morehouse found it hard to believe we hadn’t seen anything of the attacker.  Well, almost nothing.  We saw the hand, and Ramona had a glimpse of his back, but all she knew was he was tall and seemed to have short hair.

“He had on a knit cap,” Morehouse said.  “The guy who brought you back inside saw that much, but not much more.”

“Who brought us in?” I asked.

“Larry Budd,” Aunt Madge said, from the doorway.

Morehouse gestured her into the room.  “I’d say we gotta stop meeting like this, Madge, but she’ll probably do it again.”

“I didn’t DO anything,” I said, and blew my nose hard.

“Who’s Larry Budd?” Ramona asked.

“He works maintenance at the high school,” Morehouse said.

“His wife just had twins,” Aunt Madge said.

We talked for another twenty minutes, with Morehouse making Ramona and me go over the last few hours of our day.  He wanted to know if we had seen anyone ‘hanging around,’ as he put it, or noticed anyone paying attention to us when we were visiting Scoobie.  Ramona and I were clueless.

“Whose hand was on my back?” I finally remembered to ask.

“Mine,” Ramona said.  I guess you didn’t know it was me.
”

“It felt huge,” I said, looking at her hands.

“Side effect of pepper spray.  Like I said, you feel confused.”  Morehouse closed his notebook.

“You think it could have been the guy from the carnival?” Morehouse asked.

“Turk?” I said.  “I kind of don’t think so.”

“Because you made sure he didn’t have any suspicions about Scoobie?” Aunt Madge asked, irritated.

“Because it looked like a bigger hand,” I said, trying not to sound annoyed with her. 

“I think that, too,” Ramona said.

“You two an expert on hands?” Morehouse asked.

“I draw them, you know,” Ramona said.  “It looked like the hand of someone larger.  The Turk guy wasn’t much taller than I am.”

Morehouse stood.  “I asked hospital security to check around.  Not likely they’ll find anything.” He yawned.  “I’m gonna talk to Winters.  If you’re gonna get cut loose soon, I’ll follow you home.”  He walked out.

“Thanks,” I called after him.  I looked at Aunt Madge.  “I was not ‘up to something
.
’
“ 
N
ot all day.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE GOOD THING about “the hand attack,” as Scoobie christened it, is that no one thought I had done anything to bring it about so no one was mad at me.  Because it was Memorial Day weekend, Sgt. Morehouse thought it might have been a drunk or drug-addled vacationer.  I might have agreed with him if it hadn’t been for the glove.  What drug-addled robber hides under a car with gloved hands?  In the summer?

The best thing was that Harry Steele was talking to me without apparent reserve.  I always know Aunt Madge will forgive my transgressions eventually, but I knew I’d wounded Harry by lying to him and I hadn’t figured out how to get beyond that. 

“So, anyway,” I said to Harry, “the Parkers said some of their stuff turned up in pawn shops and they may eventually get it back.”  It was Tuesday morning and I was sitting in Harry’s office at the small table I use to work with the computer-aided appraisal software.

He opened his bottom desk drawer and reached for something.  “They also said they wouldn’t accept our offer to pay their deductible.”  He slid my $500 check across his desk and I took it.

I looked at it for a few seconds, then slid it back.  “Why don’t you use at least some of it to make a donation to Harvest for All?”  He looked at me.  Usually you can tell which direction a person’s train of thought is headed if you know them well and look at them closely, but I couldn’t guess his thoughts. 

He slid the check back.  “I’ll pay you one hundred instead of $200 for your next two appraisals, and then I’ll donate $400 from the company to the food pantry — half from me, half from you.”

I grinned at him as I felt my stress melt away. 
Harry isn’t mad at me anymore!

THAT SAME TUESDAY Marcus announced that he had finished a first draft of his book and would be leaving on Wednesday.  Aunt Madge seemed almost relieved.  Even though she seemed to like his company, guests generally don’t hang out with her.  She’s friendly, but she likes her privacy.

“So, when can I read your book?” I asked him.  Since he was leaving soon I decided to be friendlier and was sitting with him in the breakfast room Wednesday morning. 

“It takes longer than you’d think,” he said.  “My publisher will edit it, work with people to design a marketing plan, lots of other steps.”

I held out my hand as I stood.  “Please let Aunt Madge know when it comes out.  She’ll tell me.”

When I walked back into the kitchen Aunt Madge made a zipping gesture across her lips.  Maybe she wasn’t interested in hearing a lot more from Marcus-the mystery-writer.

ON MY WAY TO HARRY’S after breakfast on Wednesday I stopped by the police station to see what Sgt. Morehouse would tell me.  It was the last thing I planned to do in connection with Penny’s murder or Scoobie’s attack.  Other than helping Scoobie recover I had decided to put everything that had happened out of my mind.  I was working on believing the hand under the car was a random attempt at a carjacking or robbery.  That was harder, but I wanted life back to my version of normal.

As a professional courtesy, which was Sgt. Morehouse’s term, the state police were keeping him up to date on Penny’s death investigation.  There wasn’t much to tell.  For a reason she couldn’t tell us, Penny had stopped at a small roadside picnic area just north of town.  The general police assumption was that she planned to meet someone there.  “She obviously did meet someone, right?” I asked.  “I mean, somebody killed her.”

Morehouse gave me a withering look.  “Good one, Sherlock.  It almost had to be someone stronger than she is.  Penny was no pixie, and it takes a lot of strength to strangle someone.”

“Ugh.”

“You asked,” he said.  “There were two recent sets of fingerprints in her car, Penny’s and the man she was arrested with in Binghamton, Alex “Fun Boy” Masterson.”

George had said he couldn’t find anything recent on Masterson.  Sounded as if there was something going on, he just hadn’t been caught yet.  “Just two?” I asked.

“I thought you just told me you were going to butt out.”  I said nothing, so he continued.  “There were a number of latent prints, but I gotta agree with state police theory, which was that they belonged to prior owners.  There were no matches to the fingerprints in any databases.  And because someone scratched off the Vehicle Information Number there’s no easy way to find a prior owner to provide prints we can match or rule out.”

Sgt. Morehouse opened a file on his desk.  “They did give me a more recent photo of Masterson than when he and Penny were arrested.  You see this guy around?” he asked.

I shook my head.  The stringy brown hair was shorter and he had a mustache instead of a beard.  The seemingly perpetual smirk was the same.  “Half the guys who hang out on the boardwalk have hair like that.”   I started.  In a way the photo looked like the shorter of the two homeless guys I’d talked to.

“Yeah,” he agreed.  “I asked the state cops why they don’t look harder for him, but they seem to think if they put out a BOLO for him he’ll leave the area, even if he had nothing to do with Penny’s murder.  They’ve passed this photo to all the local departments.”

“BOLO?” I asked.

“You don’t watch much TV,” he said.  “It stands for ‘be on the lookout for.’  It’s a cop term, which you don’t need to know because you aren’t in law enforcement.”

I took that as my cue to leave and headed for the hospital.  I was familiar enough with Scoobie’s therapy schedule to know he’d be done soon, for the morning anyway. 

I kept going back to the conversation with Morehouse and the newer photo of “Fun Boy” Masterson.  I would have to be really certain about that before I mentioned the homeless guy.  The police would certainly haul him in for questioning, and if he wasn’t Masterson it would probably be hard on the guy. 
What if he is Masterson?

I shook my head to clear it.  I wasn’t going to deal with anything except Scoobie.  The police had photos of Masterson.  If it was the homeless guy they’d figure it out. 
Maybe I’d plant the idea with George.

SCOOBIE WAS IN THE hallway and his walker had been discarded in favor of a cane.  “Arrgh!”  He pointed it at me and made a gesture like a sword fighter.  I did note that he kept his other hand on the hallway hand railing.

“What are you, a three Musketeer?” I asked, as we walked into his room.

“Have you forgotten about ‘Talk Like a Pirate’ Day?” he asked.

“I did, but I doubt Monica and Sylvia have.”

He grinned.  “They’ll come around.  Anyway, we have time to plan, it’s not until September.”  His face lit up.  “You think your aunt will make me a costume?”

“Probably.”  I plopped in his chair as he sat on the edge of his bed and then swung his legs up so he could lean back against the raised head of the bed.  “How long do you have to use the cane?” I asked.

He winced as he bent his knees.  “Not too long.  I favor my right side a lot because the pain from the lumbar vertebrae runs down there.  They want me to use the cane so I walk sort of normal.”

“Can they fix it?”

He gestured at himself.  “Don’t I look fixed?”

“You look terrific,” I said.  And he did.  After more than two weeks his face was no longer bruised.  His hair was shorter than usual, his concession to “even things up” because the doctors had shaved his head in a couple places where they’d gone in to place the catheter to release the pressure on his brain.

“I might get out at the end of the week,” he said, and looked out the window.

I noticed he had ignored my question about whether they could fix his pain.  I remembered a nurse saying something about putting gel in a crushed vertebra, or something like that.  “I know Aunt Madge’ll say come to the B&B,” I said.

“It’s summer,” he said simply.  “She needs to rent all her rooms.”

I thought about this for a moment.  “You can sleep in my room and I’ll sleep on the couch downstairs.  She won’t care.”

“I can’t make you move out of your room.”

“My clothes and stuff will still be there.  You might get Jazz, too.  She’s pretty used to the other pillow on my bed.”

He nodded slowly.  “I’ll talk to Madge.”