Harley Rushes In (Book 2 of the Blue Suede Mysteries) (14 page)

But Cami was different. She was vulnerable. Her ex-husband Jace had done a number on her and destroyed any self-esteem Cami had left. For a while, Harley had thought she wouldn’t recover from the divorce. The menagerie that Cami kept, as a volunteer animal rescue worker in the spare time she had from her job at the telephone company, had temporarily convinced Harley that her best friend had lost her mind. Then she’d decided it was just Cami’s way of coping with being alone. Surrounded by needy dogs and cats was more than enough companionship for anyone. She hoped Cami didn’t get too emotionally involved with Bobby. He was much better as a friend than a boyfriend.

“Lord, Harley, you look like you’ve been trawling racks at the Salvation Army. But then, you usually do. Don’t you own decent clothing?”

Madelyn, of course. Harley turned around. “How nice of you to notice. That won’t work, though. I still want to know where you were Thursday night and why you were in your mother’s car instead of your own.”

“You’ve always been too damn nosy. Too bad you and your hippie parents didn’t stay in California with Charles Manson.”

“Well, I did learn a lot from dear old Chuck, so don’t push it.” Sometimes Madelyn could be a real bitch, but not even she could really believe Diva or Yogi would ever have even known Manson. If she was working this hard to distract Harley, she really did have something to hide.

“I liked it better when we saw each other once a year,” Madelyn said, and Harley nodded.

“So did I. Now. Answer my questions and I’ll go away. It’s very simple.”

“If you must know, I borrowed Mama’s car because one of my tires needed air and I had an errand to run.”

“That errand would be . . . ?”

“I visited a sick friend in the hospital.”

“Right. Every cheating husband’s favorite excuse. What friend in what hospital?”

Madelyn’s lips tightened and the end of her nose actually twitched. “Margaret Meade at Baptist East.”

“You do know I’ll check that out, don’t you? So will the police if you tried this crap on them.”

For a moment something flickered in Madelyn’s eyes and Harley could have sworn it was fear. Then she shook her head and looked toward the house. Heat shimmered up from the tennis courts, and Madelyn gripped her tennis racket with white knuckles.

“All right. Fine. I didn’t visit anyone in the hospital. I . . . I went to see someone. A man.”

“A married man, by chance?”

Madelyn looked back at her, then nodded. “Yes. He’s married. And I have no intention of telling you his name.”

“Fine. Save that for the cops. They always find out the truth.”

To her surprise, Madelyn collapsed on the grass beneath the crepe myrtle and put her face into her palms. “What am I going to do?”

Not entirely unsympathetic, Harley said, “Tell the truth. It can’t be worse than the lies you invent.”

“Oh yes it can,” Madelyn said, her voice muffled by her fingers and the leather half-gloves she wore to protect her palms. “You just don’t know.”

Exasperated, Harley said, “Dammit, tell me!”

Madelyn looked up at her. “I was with Harry Gordon right after the shop closed Thursday night.”

Oh boy.

Harley plopped down on the grass in front of Madelyn. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s worse.”

“What am I going to do?” she asked in a kind of a wail that frightened away some birds.

“That depends. Did you kill him?”

“No!”

“Then you can tell the truth when the cops ask you. If you lie—and they have a way of finding out that kind of thing—they’ll wonder what else you’re lying about. Did you meet Harry at the shop?”

“Yes. We’d had an argument and I went there to end it with him. We quarreled, because he threatened to tell Mama—I don’t want Mama to know, Harley. Promise you won’t tell her.”

“Okay, I won’t, but you should. It’s going to come out, you have to know that. Let her hear it from you first. And why don’t you want her to know? I thought Harry was single. Did you just lie about seeing a married man?”

“Yes. I lied about that. Mama decided she didn’t trust Harry. You know how she can get, Harley. She gets these ideas and you just can’t convince her she’s wrong. She thought Harry was stealing from her, or some such nonsense. Besides, she always said Harry was bourgeois, and she’d never have liked me seeing him.”

“So you and Harry had, uh, a thing going on, right?”

Madelyn looked irritated. “Do I have to draw you a picture?”

“No, that’s all right. I’m not that into porno. Was it serious between you?”

“I don’t know if you’d say
serious
, but we did enjoy one another’s company exclusively.”

Harley thought about Cheríe Saucier and her hysterical fit when she’d learned about Harry. “Did Harry and Cheríe have anything going?”

“Who?”

“Cheríe Saucier. You know. She worked with him.”

“Oh.
Her
. No, of course not. Harry would never be interested in her, though she didn’t know that.”

“Did Harry know that?”

“Know what?”

“That he wasn’t interested in Cheríe. She sure seems to believe differently.”

“I’m sure she does. She’s an opportunist, a nasty little thing.”

“Did she know about you and Harry?”

Madelyn’s eyes widened. She put a hand up to her throat, fingers pressing against her windpipe as she drew in a sharp breath. “Do you think—could she have killed Harry because of . . . of me?”

“She seems to think Aunt Darcy killed him. Or so she told the police.”

“That vicious little bitch! Mama could no more have killed Harry than I could.”

And that, Harley thought, was precisely the problem. Both Darcy and Madelyn seemed quite capable of removing any obstacle in their way. But murder? Fortunately, it seemed unlikely either of them could have hung Harry off an elk horn even if they’d wanted to. That’d take a certain amount of upper body strength, and Maddie was limited to tennis rackets, and Darcy to gin bottles. No, neither of them could have killed him. Surely, the police would recognize that.

Harley got to her feet and brushed pine mulch from her bare legs. Her cutoff jeans were worn and comfortable, her tee shirt cool if not fashionable. She held out a hand to help her cousin, but Madelyn ignored it.

“I trust this will remain confidential, Harley,” she said in that haughty way she had, and Harley just shook her head.

“Not a chance. Even if you don’t have a decent sense of self-preservation, I feel a family obligation to keep you out of jail. Besides, it’s embarrassing and inconvenient to visit the Big House on holidays. So come clean with the cops or I’ll do it for you.”

“You sneaky little toad! You promised!”

“No, I promised not to tell Aunt Darcy you’ve been banging the help. I said nothing about keeping quiet to the cops.”

She left Madelyn still sitting under the crepe myrtle and went back up to the house, where Cami and Amanda were sharing a bag of fried pork rinds. When she lifted a brow, Cami grinned.

“No carbs.”

“Gross. Say good-bye, Mandy. Cami, you got your cell phone with you?”

Cami produced it from her purse and followed Harley out of the house to the Saturn. “I thought you got a new cell phone.”

“I’ve bought several new cell phones recently. I’m going to have to start figuring them into my monthly budget if they don’t stop breaking.”

With a nervous glance at her cell phone, Cami started the car while Harley punched in a few numbers. Tootsie answered on the third ring.

“Hi, gorgeous,” Harley said cheerfully, and heard him laugh.

“Okay baby, you must want something. What is it?”

“A little more of your magic. You know, the way you have of coming up with all kinds of info when no one else can.”

“Spoken like a true brownnoser. Do I want to hear what you’re going to say next?”

“This won’t hurt at all. I just need to know all you can find out about Cheríe Saucier. Yeah, I know. I’ll spell it for you.”

Tootsie said he’d get back to her with the info in a little while, and Harley hung up and stuck the cell phone back in Cami’s purse.

“Where to now?” Cami asked, squinting against the bright sunlight coming through the windshield. “Somewhere respectable, I hope.”

“Sure. We have a little time to kill, I guess. Let’s check out the shop. The cops ought to be done by now, and maybe we can find something they overlooked.”

Cami gave her a quick glance. “You sure about that? How do we get in?”

Harley smiled. “I still have my key. Aunt Darcy never asked for it back.”

Yellow tape swagged around the back where Harry had been found. Cami parked under a line of hedges where they weren’t easily seen from the road.

“Why is it we always seem to be breaking and entering these days?” she muttered as they made their way around to the front of the shop, and Harley grinned.

“I have a key. It’s only breaking and entering when we break before entering. I don’t think there’s any law against unlocking and entering.”

“Good thing. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“You never have bad feelings around the right thing.” Harley unlocked the door and pushed it open. “You need to think about what you and Bobby are doing.”

“I thought you liked Bobby.”

“I do. He’s the brother I never had.”

“You have a brother,” Cami pointed out.

“Yeah, but Eric . . . well, Eric is just Eric. Bobby, I can talk to about stuff. If it isn’t about art or music, talking to Eric is like talking to one of your cats. Kinda twitchy.”

“You bonded with Sam. He’s a cat.”

“But Sam is a cool cat. Even better, he’s
your
cat. Ah. Here we are.”

Harley found the light switch and the alarm. It wasn’t set, but that wasn’t unexpected. The cops had no doubt left it that way, and it was unlikely Darcy had come back to set it.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Cami asked as Harley led the way to the back, and she nodded.

“The office is back here. Harry had a desk in a little alcove, and it’s probably still there. I hope the police weren’t looking at manifests and things. Maybe they were more concerned with actual evidence, fingerprints, stuff like that.”

“Did your aunt tell them about Harry smuggling?”

“I don’t know. If she didn’t, then we’ve got a very short opportunity to find out what we can about him before they figure it out. Once the cops know about the smuggling, there’s the motive for her to murder Harry. But I figure he had to have accomplices that got greedy, or maybe he didn’t pay his connections.”

“There are really pretty things in here,” Cami remarked as they passed through one of the showrooms. “I had no idea it’d be this nice. Look at that—that’s an antique armoire.”

Harley recognized it. “It’s Portuguese. It’s just in, and already in the showroom.” The piece had ornate curves that flowed in intricate patterns, the top two doors open, two drawers below closed. Perfect for smuggling in animal skins, European antiquities, valuable paintings, or whatever else smugglers could steal. The most likely possibility was one of the smugglers had killed Harry. There was no honor among thieves, and he’d seemed like the type to cheat when he could. Maybe one of the deals had gone bad. But she had to find some evidence to prove that.

It was quiet, not even the air conditioning making noise as they skirted couches, tables, floor lamps, elegant vases and curio cabinets on their way to the back. Harry’s desk was in an alcove in the big room where he’d met his grisly end, not something she really wanted to think too closely about at the moment. Their footsteps were muffled by the thick carpet underfoot, and only Cami breathing through her mouth like a panting dog made any sound.

The only light came through a tall window at the end of the room; it was filtered by a big potted tree that looked remarkably real. Harley paused, fumbled for the light switch, and the bank of overhead fluorescent lights hummed into use. She deliberately ignored all reminders of a dead body and police investigation, and steered straight toward the alcove where an antique desk fit against the wall.

Cami stopped short, staring at the smears of graphite dust left by the Crime Scene Unit, to the chalk outlining the empty space where the elk horns and Harry had hung. Her voice sounded shaky.

“Is this . . . is this . . .?”

“Yep. Don’t look. It was pretty nasty.”

The drawers of the antique desk were locked, but she had expected no less. Fortunately, she’d been foresighted enough to arm herself with another metal pick for recalcitrant locks. Yogi made them by the dozens, apparently expecting lots of locked doors in his life. Probably due to long experience.

It took her a few minutes, but she got the top drawer open, and that in turn freed the other drawers. Apparently, the police had been clever enough to get there first. The top drawer was completely empty. The second and third drawers held only color brochures of exotic places like Majorca and Prague. No wonder they’d been left behind. Hardly affordable on a policeman’s salary.

Disappointed, she stood there a moment, just staring at the desk and trying to think where else Harry might have hidden his illegal manifests. Maybe he didn’t really have manifests. It’d be foolish, given his occupation as a smuggler. Aunt Darcy could be wrong about that. A second set of books would be too risky. But how else would he know what was coming in, how and when? He had to keep some kind of list or schedule. And what did he do with the smuggled goods?