Hearse of a Different Color (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries) (17 page)

I
left a message for Bonnie that I would catch up with her after the six o’clock news. I added that my lunch with the redhead had been about as much fun as poking sticks in my eyes. Still, I was glad that I had the scarf as a peace offering.

Despite the frigid temperatures, I was sitting on an overturned wooden barrel alongside the tugboat pier, sifting through the information I had gathered from Tracy Atkins. Alcatraz was busy hiding his love notes everywhere. I had the photograph of Helen and Bo with me and was once more in a staring contest with the dead woman. The eyes. Those chocolate brown eyes. They nearly spoke. But the message kept being swept off by the wind before it could reach me. Was Helen laughing and smiling at the person who would be murdering her in three months time? Was that it? Was the killer right there, just behind the camera? That close? Maybe with a nuclear magnifying glass of some sort I would have been able to see the person’s face reflected in Helen’s happy lamps.

A large seagull landed on a mailbox a few feet away, tucking its wings up under its breast with a shudder, as if it were hugging itself to keep warm. Alcatraz bounded over. He planted his oversized feet in a wide stance and gave the gull a piece of his mind. The large bird snickered back at him. I hoped I wouldn’t have to intervene. Alcatraz could well get his ass kicked. Seagulls fight dirty. And they have a perpetual height advantage. I pulled off one of my gloves and threw it at the bird. It hit him squarely on the side and fell to the ground. I took off my other glove and tried it again. This time the bird turned its snooty head and screeched at me to buzz off, or noises to that effect. I considered pulling off a shoe and seeing if I could dislodge the ruffian with a well-placed Rockport. But I didn’t.

“Come on, Alcatraz. We don’t need him.”

I slipped off the barrel and retrieved my gloves. The bird’s wings deployed and off it glided to the end of the pier, where it struck a picture-postcard pose atop a wooden piling. Alcatraz found my bare hand and washed it for me. I dried it among his wrinkles and we headed off to the Oyster.

I knew what I had to do next. But it would require my getting ahold of Vickie Waggoner. The woman had just buried her sister a few hours ago. For all the strong front Vickie had shown at the funeral, I also recalled her torrent of tears when she had allowed herself to break down in my office the other day. This really was not the time. It would have to wait.

The impromptu ice sculpture from the water main break looked like a keeper. Besides the wreath and the tinsel, someone had chipped several small notches into the ice and hooked a few tree ornaments onto it along with about a dozen candy canes, strategically placed. There were also some canned goods at the base of the thing. Green beans. Sauerkraut. A few cans of soup. I pulled out a ten-dollar bill and tucked it under the can of green beans.

Sally was off Christmas shopping with Julia. Frank was there—Sally’s hubby—holding down the fort. To watch the two of us you might think that my former father-in-law and I don’t get along. The fact is, my former father-in-law and the
world
don’t get along. Frank is a sourpuss. How in the world such a creature had anything to do with the conception of someone like Julia is beyond reason and genetics.

Frank knows what I drink, but he makes me ask him for it. He uncapped the bottle of Wild Turkey with an irritation and fatigue that seemed to know no bounds. The only way to escape Frank’s vortex is to attack it head on.

“Beautiful weather we’re having, isn’t it?” I sang out, sliding my glass away from his bony fingers. Frank wiped his hands relentlessly on a dish towel as if he were trying to strip off his fingerprints.

“Have you seen the stuff your daughter did for the zoo?” I asked, in peppy overdrive. “It’s very clever stuff, Frank. You’d really flip.” I threw back the contents of my glass.

I’d grow a tree out of my ear before this man ever came even close to flipping. Frank sucked his lower lip partway in. His moist eyes showed only half-life. Just then, Alcatraz made his move, going back on his rear legs and bringing his front paws up onto the bar. His bony head and floppy ears came up to my shoulders.

“How about a drink for my friend here?” I said to Frank. I wasn’t sure who had the better poker face, the bartender or the hound. I got Frank to put a bowl of water on the bar, and I ordered a second shot of Turkey. Can’t let the pooch drink alone. It was a little after three. The afternoon could slide away very easily if I didn’t watch out. Frank poured me the shot and wandered off. I toasted the man in the mirror behind the bar. And the dog. They looked familiar. Vaguely.

An hour or so—and a few toasts—later, they looked only vague. That is, the man did. The dog had returned all fours to the floor and was sleeping at my feet. I had the photograph of Helen out on the bar. This time the eyes seemed to be scolding me. A warm bar. A warm bloodstream full of bourbon. Not really a serious care in the world. Ready to jump into action as soon as the next person dies. Thinking impure thoughts about the dead woman’s sister. It really does take just the slightest of tweaking to become a bastard sometimes. It can happen before you know it.

I asked Frank for the phone. He brought it over to me, along with my fourth shot. Or maybe it was my fifth. I had sort of counted on Alcatraz to keep track for me. I called information and got Vickie Waggoner’s number. I dialed it. At the Oyster you really
dial
it. I almost hung up, but Vickie answered on the seventh ring.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said. “This is Hitchcock.”

“Oh. Hello. That’s all right.” She sounded a little stiff. I shouldn’t have called.

“It’s not very professional of me.”

“I told you, it’s all right.” Now she sounded annoyed. I looked past the bar at my reflection in the mirror. I wasn’t looking all that professional either. Frank was making no effort to conceal the fact that he was listening to my end of the conversation. Were it not that his eyes always maintain a mild condemnation, I’d say he was disapproving of my call.

“I wanted to ask you about Helen,” I said. “Do you have any idea who her obstetrician might have been?”

“Her obstetrician? Not at all. Why?”

“That friend of hers at the funeral. The redhead. I had lunch with her. She told me that she’s pretty sure that Helen was seeing some guy who didn’t mind spending his money on her. It occurred to me that if he happened to also be the guy who got Helen pregnant, maybe he’s been footing the baby doctor bills.”

There was silence for several seconds on the other end of the line.

“That’s very smart,” Vickie said.

“Thank you.”

“But I have no idea who her obstetrician might have been.”

“Maybe there’s a bill or something like that, a phone number, lying around her apartment.”

“I don’t know. The police have been all over Helen’s apartment.”

“Did they mention anything?”

“Not to me. Not about anything like that anyway.”

“I’m just trying to kick start some ideas here. I really shouldn’t have called you today. I’m sorry. I—”

Just then I heard a voice in the background. I heard what I guessed was Vickie muffling the phone. I heard her—dimly—say, “It’s the police.” Then she spoke back into the phone, overarticulating her words. “Is there anything else, officer?”

“Haden’s there, isn’t he?”

“Yes, officer,” she said artificially.

“Are you okay? Is there some sort of problem?”

There was a pause. “That’s quite possible. Yes.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

I let my sleeping dog lie. Somewhere between the Oyster and my car—at a full-tilt run—I sobered up. Or maybe not. The fuzzy bits left me. But there was still a slightly angular skew to things as I skidded to a stop twenty minutes later in front of Vickie’s house. The skew grew even sharper when I saw a yellow cloth clown with an ink-stained arm lying facedown on the sidewalk leading from the front door. At the curb, where the sidewalk ended, was an available parking spot.

I had a sinking feeling that it hadn’t been there for long.

Vickie’s front door had been left unlocked and I let myself in. I discovered nothing in the house that might help me figure anything out. I guess I hadn’t expected anything so helpful as a note sitting on the kitchen table.
The pillhead and I are out for a drive. We’ll be back by dinnertime.
I felt a little guilty wandering through the place. I had no business there. And I couldn’t imagine what I thought I was looking for. Vickie had converted what appeared to be a study—a desk with a computer, gray filing cabinet, bookshelf—into a bedroom for Bo. The half-sized sofa was folded out into a single bed. Kids’ toys and books were tossed all around. Back downstairs I sat down in the same chair where Haden had been sitting the first time I came over. I could see the wall phone in the kitchen from where I was sitting. I imagined Vickie on the phone:
Yes, officer. That’s quite possible. Yes.
I imagined her hanging up the phone and turning to Haden with a little shrug. And in less than a minute the creep is hustling her out the front door, the kid scooped under his arm.

Before I left I phoned police headquarters and left a message for Kruk. There was nothing else I could think of to do.

Mimi Wigg was bantering with the sports guy, Brett Brown. She was cooing with congenial envy about Brown’s upcoming trip to Florida to cover Super Bowl week.

“Bring back a tan for me,” Mimi chirped.

“You betcha, Mimi.”

The cameraman standing next to me made a gagging gesture.

“And watch out for those cheerleaders,” Mimi warned.

“Hey. You got it. I
will
be watching out for them.”

The two floor cameras slid noiselessly forward toward the sports desk. Mimi Wigg, out of the picture, leaned back in her chair and gave the chattering jock the finger for a full ten seconds. When it was clear she wasn’t going to throw him, she quit. Bonnie was tiptoeing over to me, careful not to step on any cables.

“I’m mad at you,” she whispered, then put her tongue halfway down my throat. What fresh madness was this? She pulled back just as I started to respond. “My makeup.”

She pressed up against me in the partial darkness. “You smell like a distillery,” she whispered, then made her way back over the cables to her weather corner. Brett Brown was still gassing about the Super Bowl. Mimi Wigg was getting a perspiration pat down from the makeup man. She was a very tiny woman—less an hourglass figure than perhaps an egg timer—with a very large head of hair and a severely pretty face. As with our football team, we nabbed her from Cleveland a number of years back. They must really hate us out there.

Brett Brown wrapped up his sports report with a high speed recitation of local high school basketball scores and threw it back to Mimi with one more dig about the cheerleaders in sunny Florida. She ignored the dig and swung in Bonnie’s direction.

“Well, for the rest of us who aren’t scampering off to follow the bouncing balls in Florida, what’s in store for us, Bonnie? Any break in the temperature? It’s like one big refrigerator out there!”

“Yes, it is, Mimi. But I’m afraid we’ll just have to get used to it.” Bonnie swiveled to look directly into the camera that had been sneaking up on her. “Folks, we’re going to have to hunker down for a while longer, I’m afraid. Mother Nature has more of the same in store for us. And that’s more record-breaking cold temperatures. The conditions right now …”

Just off camera, Brett Brown and Mimi Wigg were throwing daggers at each other. It was all silhouetted gestures and silent mouthing, as the lighting in their areas had been dimmed. It looked like a puppet show; especially with Mimi’s big hair bobbing furiously. Bonnie appeared oblivious to the shelling as she stepped smartly over to her blue scrim and began pointing out high and low pressure areas that on viewers’ TVs would appear as locations on the various maps that were electronically burned onto the scrim. At the conclusion of her segment, Bonnie told Baltimore to keep bundling up, then threw it back to Mimi Wigg. The diminutive newslady was calm and smiling again under her three thousand watts.

“I guess Mother Nature must have a new winter coat that she’s been dying to try out, huh?”

Off to the side, Brett Brown let out a snort. Mimi ignored him and went into her wrap-up. The news music came up. The moment the cameras were off, Mimi yanked the lavaliere mike from her collar and marched off the set.

“It’s beautiful,” Bonnie said. She wrapped the scarf around her neck and tucked it into her cleavage. “I love it, Hitch. Thank you.” Kiss, kiss, kiss. Wampum saves the day.

I told Bonnie on the drive over to her place what I had learned from Tracy Atkins. I decided to forgo the details of how Julia had filled in some of the pertinent blanks for me. Instead, I simply attached Julia’s brief history of Terry Haden and Helen’s skin flick days to the redheaded waitress’s account. I included the fact that Helen had followed in her mother’s footsteps, dancing barefoot and all the rest down at The Kitten Club. This brought Bonnie pretty much up to speed. I told her of my phone call with Vickie that afternoon, and how it looked to me as if Haden had dragged her and the kid out of the house the moment she hung up the phone. I didn’t mention that I had snooped through the house.

“She was pretending I was the police,” I said.

“Do you figure that was so Haden wouldn’t know she was talking to you specifically?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know why he’d care. I think it was more a matter of her calling for help. Or trying to scare Haden off.”

“It looks like it worked.”

“Only he took her with him.”

“Hitch, you can’t be sure about that. I mean, you don’t know that she didn’t agree to go with him.”

“It didn’t have that voluntary feeling to it.”

“So you’re saying that Haden thought Vickie was talking to the police and then he hightailed it out of there. Taking her and the boy along. Against their will.”

“Yes.”

“So the idea of the police spooked him?”

“Yes.”