Marlin's mouth formed a lowercase O. "That went pretty well, don'tcha think?"
An engine roared outside. Tires squealed on the pavement. Chafing the back of his neck, David said, "I honestly don't know what to think about either one of them."
"Slick work on that doorknob." Marlin hitched a shoulder. "Could be, I'll be buying you a beer before the night's over."
Twenty minutes later, Josh Phelps greeted them back at the Outhouse with a grinning "Guess what?"
Marlin said, "You got a hit on AFIS."
"Yeah, but get this"
"The print on the rearview matches Rodney Windle aka Rocco Jarek, current known address, Los Angeles, California."
Josh and David looked at each other, then at Marlin. He held up the tape strip lifted off the doorknob. "What the hell are you two staring at? Phelps said guess what, so I guessed."
Handing over the strip to the rookie, he said, "Well, what are you waiting for, Sheriff? Let's go pick up the drone."
David drove this time, his cruiser having an accessible back seat. "What about Kimmie Sue?" he asked. "How do you think she figures in?"
"Takes two to tango." Marlin lowered the window and hung over the ledge to smoke. "Jarek's been in that house. I don't know who shut all the doors upstairs after we processed it this morning. Phelps, probably. But when I said 'Master bedroom,' damned if Jarek didn't lead you straight to it."
"Bev's jewelry, though. It doesn't make sense that Kimmie Sue would say what's missing if she was in on the murder."
"Maybe she's stupid. Maybe the guilt got to her." Marlin drummed a rat-a-tat on the door panel. "Maybe Jumbo Dick paid himself a bonus for doing her dirty work."
David didn't want to believe any of it; the burning sensation licking up his breastbone said one or all of the theories could be true.
The Wishing Well began life as a motor court, in an era when
motel
was synonymous with
sleazy.
Its age showed in the red shingled roof, clapboard siding and fieldrock trim, but for under fifty bucks a night, guests got a clean room, a pool, basic cable TV and free local calls.
"No Jeeps," Marlin noted.
"There's less traffic noise around the back," David said, and circled the L-shaped building.
The Wishing Well was his temporary home, after he took the chief deputy's job. The owner was delighted to have him and knocked a chunk off the weekly rate. The room he'd occupied was in the rear corner, so prospective customers wouldn't spot David's patrol unit and assume a raidor a rendezvouswas in progress.
Good ol' room 23 appeared to be vacant. Farther down were nine lighted windows with the drapes closed. Nine corresponding vehicles nosed the broad cement walkway. None of them was a Jeep.
Marlin hammered the window ledge. "Shit."
Pulling around toward the office again, David said, "Maybe Kimmie Sue's buying Jarek that cup of coffee."
"There're coffeemakers in the rooms" sufficed as the detective's exit line, before the cruiser rolled to a complete stop.
David didn't recognize the night-desk clerk. Marlin's yank on the office's glass door was anything but sociable. While he made a new friend, David did a one-eighty to survey the Wishing Well's street entrance.
Marlin stormed out of the office, his face redder than his necktie's diagonal stripes. Hurling himself into the passenger seat, he bellowed, "Fuckers checked out two hours ago."
Marlin snatched the mike from its hook. "Baker 2-03."
Dispatch responded, "Go ahead, 2-03."
"Get me a statewide APB, Tony." Marlin's finger inched down a page in his notebook, as he supplied the vehicle's make, model, description and tag number. "California registration, Rodney Windle, also known as Rocco Jarek. Probable secondary occupant, Kimmie Sue Beauford. Got that?"
Static, then, "
Larry's daughter?"
A lengthy pause. "What's the charge against them, 2-03?"
Marlin looked at David. His voice caught when he answered, "Suspicion of homicide, Tony. Both of them."
7
M
alcolm whimpered as Cruella De Vil's henchmen loaded the dalmatian puppies into the truck. Hannah hugged his neck and set the popcorn bowl between his paws. Poor guy. He'd been depressed for days after she rented
Old Yeller.
"It's okay, Malc. I promise this one has a happy ending."
A skeptical
moomph
averred that happy for a human could fall short of a tail-wagger for him. Even giant Airedale-wildebeests had trust issues, it seemed.
Malcolm was so riveted on the TV screen, he didn't twitch a whisker when the doorbell rang. Hannah zapped down the volume with the remote, as though the uninvited visitor might assume any overheard snatch of soundtrack was an auditory hallucination.
David wouldn't, but he was occupied with the Beauford homicide. The first forty-eight hours were critical. From what he'd told her earlier on the phone, the ten that already elapsed hadn't generated any revelations. Which was why Hannah was dressed for watching a kid flick with her dog, not for David, or for company. And honestly not in the mood for it, either.
Then again, the usual suspects never failed to bring refreshments along with them: ooey-gooey luscious refreshments that put the pie she'd eaten that afternoon to shame, let alone the bologna, mustard and crushed potato chip sandwich that sufficed as dinner.
Sure enough, the gumshoe gang stood in the glow of the porch's bug light. All five beamed at Hannah as though it were Halloween and word on the street was, she was handing out full-size candy bars.
To the first in line, she inquired, "What, did you leave the lock-pick gun in your other pants?"
The ones Delbert was wearing were solid navy-blue. His dress shirt, plain white. A braided leather belt matched his lace-up oxfords and attaché case. He pulled open the screen door, saying, "You told me not to use the lock picker anymore when you're home."
She'd told him not to use it, period. But concessions were rare, so must be appreciated while they lasted. As for Delbert's world's-oldest-Catholic-schoolboy attire, something was up and it wasn't his fashion-consciousness.
Marge Rosenbaum was the Mod Squad's recording secretary. A visor banded her cropped gray hair, as if a round of moonlight golf was planned after the meeting adjourned. She regarded her own white blouse and dark slacks, muttered, "I feel like a Bobbsey twin," and headed for the office nook to retrieve the extra chair they'd need in the breakfast room.
IdaClare Clancy's cotton-candy hairdo, jersey knit palazzos, tunic and the poodles hugged to her bosom were variations on her cottage's paint job and the lacquered baby grand in her living room. For Jack's mother, "in the pink" was an attitude, a lifestyle and her entire wardrobe.
She bobbled the Furwads, who appeared to be stoned out of their tiny, vicious minds. "Say hello to your aunt Hannah," she cooed, wiggling one of Itsy's, or Bitsy's, little paws.
Switching to a nonpoodle voice, she said, "I know I should have called, dear, but I couldn't leave them home by themselves. Good heavens, what if the house caught fire while I was gone?"
Jack would revert to an only child, but even he wouldn't wish a horrible, painful death on the teacup terrors. Just a sudden, natural, premature one.
Hannah waved toward the couch where Malcolm was lapping up unpopped kernels from the bottom of the bowl. "The snack bar's pretty much closed, but
101 Dalmatians
is now playing at Garvey's Bijou. He can fill in Itsy and Bitsy on what's happened so far."
The last two through the door were newlyweds Leo and Rosemary Schnur, whom Hannah had affectionately nicknamed Mr. Potato Head and the Vamp. Leo, a postwar German immigrant, bore an uncanny resemblance to the former, while Rosemary, his bride of three months, was a vision in plus-size lamé stirrup pants, huge gold hoop earrings and a cleavage-intensive, V-necked top.
Considering the massive baking dish lidded in aluminum foil Rosemary was carrying, it must have been her turn to bring the refreshments. Tonight's edible extortion smelled as fattening as ever, but wasn't the typical cake, cheesecake, cobbler, cinnamon rolls or cookies.
C-food, Hannah thought, as Leo held up a bag of tortilla
c
hips. Talk about a revelation. Everything she loved most, apart from Malcolm, David and the gumshoes, began with a
C.
"The eight-layer dip it is we're having." Leo's jowls quivered in anticipation. "Only the seven layers, my darling Rosemary used to make, but on the beans she put the spicy meat and now it is eight."
"More like a big taco," Rosemary said. "I just hope it isn't too greasy."
Two things were guaranteed to fog Leo's thick hornrimmed glasses: an unobstructed view of his beloved's bazooms and cuisine with a high sugar or grease content. In combination, the retired insurance executive's visibility descended to zero.
Hannah led him by the hand into the breakfast room, where Marge was brewing a pot of decaf. Hannah despised the stuff, but acknowledged her elders' caffeine sensitivity. Nursing a cup of weak, no-octane was preferable to letting the five of them loose after a meeting wired to the gills.
IdaClare was setting the table with a serving spoon, paper napkins and bowls. Physical therapy had restored dexterity to her right shoulder, but muscles and tendons ripped by a bullet wound mended, rather than healed.
She'd insisted that becoming a semi-southpaw had improved her golf swing and that she'd simply forgotten to sign up for this year's club championship tournament. "I was thinking about skipping it, anyway, dear," she told Hannah. "After coming in second so many times, Marge deserves that first-place trophy. What do I need with another dust catcher cluttering up my house?"
"For crissake, IdaClare. Quit fussing with the dishes," Delbert said. "We ain't having high tea at the Waldorf-Astoria."
"Ha. You wouldn't get past the doorman, Shorty."
"Ha, yourself." He removed six file folders from the attaché case and a tattered copy of
Trade Secrets from the Masters of Criminal Investigation.
"You couldn't get your rump through the goldurned door."
The serving spoon narrowly missed his nose, as Hannah seated Leo in his usual chair at the presumed foot of the square table. The presumed head, of course, was reserved for Sam Spade Bisbee. IdaClare was on Delbert's right and Marge in the desk chair on his left. Rosemary snuggled as close to her Leokins as the corner table leg allowed.
A bar stool was Hannah's regular perch, as much by default as by the five-to-one vote establishing her the sergeant at arms. In the past, their spirit of democracy encompassed nongumshoe motions, such as whether she should date the sheriff, then sleep with him, then accept his proposal. Abstaining from the voting process had been as futile as abstaining from David.
When the phone rang, Rosemary leapt up to unhook the receiver and pass it over to Hannah. On the other end Blanche Erlich said, in her adenoidal twang, "I'm sorry to bother you, but is Delbert there, by any chance?"
Hannah snapped her fingers at him and mouthed the caller's name. Delbert's reaction was electric. Only direct contact with 120 volts might induce the flailing, miming, head-shaking and hand-signaling that translated to "I don't want to talk to her."
"Go on, give him the phone," Rosemary whispered. "We want to hear him squirm."
Taking pity on the old fart, Hannah said, "Have you tried the community center, Blanche?"
A pause, then a snarky "Do you mean Carol Fogerty's house? Or the one that has the indoor pool?"
Click. Dial tone.
As the receiver made its way back to Rosemary, IdaClare sneered at Delbert. "So that's why you insisted on carpooling tonight. I've half a mind to call Blanche back."
"Oh, yeah? Well, get up off the other half and do it, then. The rest of us have a rip-snortin' new case to work on."
The file folders he distributed had gummed labels attached to their tabs. He'd titled their first "operation" Code Name: Alpha, followed by Beta, Gamma and Delta. Why the Greek alphabet had such cachet was never explained, but the fraternal order of Delbert ordained Code Name: Epsilon as the current topic of discussion.
Hannah knew she should slam on the brakes before the gang got rolling. And would, after she'd gobbled a fair share of tortilla chips loaded with Rosemary's fabulous dip before Leo shoveled in the rest.
Rosemary blushed pinker than IdaClare's hair at the barrage of compliments, and promised to bring the recipe to the next meeting.
Taking that as a cue, Hannah held up the unopened file folder. "I'm sorry, Delbert, but the Beverly Beauford homicide isn't going to be Code Name: Epsilon."
He peeled an antacid off the roll from his pocket and popped it in his mouth. Passing the rest on to IdaClare, he said, "Fine by me, ladybug."
