It Takes Two to Strangle (5 page)

Damon took a steaming hot shower, allowing the scorching water to pound his back, then turned and challenged it to pummel his face. Stepping out, he shook with the transition from hot to cold. The sky had continued to darken and the rain picked up in intensity.

He laid in bed and called Rebecca. He could hear the industrial strength dishwasher in the background. Damon knew Rebecca’s schedule by heart, and she was in between classes.

“Did you hear?” Damon asked without proffering a greeting.

“The one about the two silkworms?”

Damon cut her off. “Be serious for a minute. Did you hear about what happened this morning at the fairgrounds?”

“No,” she said in earnest. “What happened?”

“Lirim Jovanovic went and got himself murdered.”

“Murdered,” she repeated. “That guy we saw in the Fish Barrel two nights ago?”

“One and the same.” He recounted his morning adventures.

Rebecca took in the story with relative ease. “I bet it was that guy Victor,” she said plainly when Damon finished his account.

“Really?” Damon said. “He seemed like the only person who could stand to be around Lirim.”

“Maybe, but he still gave me the creeps. He didn’t say anything at the Fish Barrel. He just sat there grimacing.”

“True, but he was talking yesterday when he announced the pig races.”

“Yeah, like the grim reaper doing stand up.”

Damon laughed. “I suppose the murderer could be Victor. But, then again, it could have been anyone.”

“Clara must be on top of the list,” Rebecca said. “She’ll surely get the money from her mother’s estate now that her father is dead. She might get Lirim’s assets, too.”

“They didn’t appear to have been on the best terms,” Damon said. “But if she doesn’t have siblings, anything Lirim had will probably go to her.”

They debated whether Lirim was likely to have had sired any other offspring.

“And he may have had a will,” Damon suggested. “From what we heard at the Fish Barrel, it sounds like his wife had one.”

“Good point. So did you hear the one about the two silkworms who had a race?” Rebecca asked, bringing their conversation full circle.

“No,” Damon said flatly.

“It ended in a tie.”

Damon called his mother and let her know how he had spent the morning. She engaged in uncharacteristic motherly cooing and demanded that he come over for a late lunch.

Damon feasted at Lynne’s kitchen table on pastrami and Swiss and a mountain of homemade fennel slaw. During Lynne’s six years living in Hollydale, no one had been murdered there. She decided it wasn’t a local who had done the killing. Damon agreed. He sensed this murder was committed by someone who had a much longer history with Lirim Jovanovic.

Needing a rest, Damon stretched his long legs over the end of the love seat in Lynne’s front sitting room. As soon as he laid down, his phone vibrated. He glanced at the caller identification. Bethany Krims.

Damon sat up and hesitated before answering. She greeted him warmly, which calmed him. “I saw you were down at the fairgrounds this morning,” she said.

“You were there? I looked for you with the reporters and didn’t see you.”

“No. I saw you on film footage. I heard about the murder from one of my colleagues and came into the station early to see what was happening.”

“And you saw me on tape?”

“You were talking to a woman who was putting on ChapStick while a couple of guys in long coats loaded the body into the truck.”

“That was Liz de la Cruz,” Damon said. “She’s my counterpart over in Oakwood. Did I make it into the segment?”

“Sorry, you two were the first things cut. Did you know this Lirim person?”

“We met a few times while he was setting up the carnival. So if you know it’s Lirim, the police must have released his name.”

“I guess so, it was in the segment. The police must have already notified his next of kin.”

“They did. I saw his daughter when I was leaving the fairgrounds this morning.”

“Is that the gorgeous woman with the throaty voice? My colleague interviewed her for the segment.”

“I’m sure that’s her, though I didn’t think her voice was that throaty.”

“Maybe it sounded that way because she was competing with the rain crashing down during the interview.”

“What did she say?” asked Damon.

“Nothing earth-shattering. Just the usual devastated daughter routine with a huge golf umbrella as a backdrop.”

The conversation continued for a few more minutes, moving from the murder to the closing of the fair. Just before they hung up, Damon asked if he could call her “if he heard anything else about the murder.” She agreed and he stored her number in his phone.

He breathed in deeply and exhaled. Bethany had never called him before.

Before returning home, Damon detoured to the nearby Safeway to pick up some staples. Traversing down the cereal aisle, he noticed Jim Riley wedging a box of granola bars into a handheld basket. Damon offered his condolences.

“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Jim replied looking up. His earlobe was pulsating and Damon couldn’t help but notice several deep scratches on one of his forearms.

Damon regretted approaching the man, but he couldn’t walk away now. “Still, it’s horrible when anyone dies before their time,” he said.

“I suppose, but he wasn’t doing me any favors living. The IRS audited us last year. Lirim and Victor McElroy were skimming cash off the top of our receipts.”

Damon was taken aback by Jim’s frankness. “They didn’t go to jail?”

“No. That’s the kicker. The IRS penalized the company rather than call in their criminal investigation team. Because I own half of Big Surf I had to eat fifty percent of the penalty.” He set his basket on the floor and crossed his arms. “The IRS said they were skimming about five percent, but I think it was closer to fifteen. And those two wouldn’t let me anywhere near them when they were counting receipts. I was his partner, and he wouldn’t even let me see the books.”

“Why didn’t you sue him?” Damon asked. His regret about approaching Jim had vanished.

Jim blanched. He picked up the basket and switched it from his right hand to his left and then back again. “I couldn’t do that. I just couldn’t.”

Damon looked at him with interest. There was clearly something Jim wasn’t telling him, but he didn’t press the point. “At least the IRS made them stop skimming,” he said in an effort to mollify Jim’s agitation.

“It made them stop for a while, then about two months ago they started right back up,” Jim said with venom in his voice. “He and Victor might not have been taking fifteen percent off the top this time, but it was probably almost ten. After the audit penalty, I had a better sense of how much we were really bringing in.”

Jim winced and his earlobe pulsated in unison. “I should’ve been able to see early on what he and Victor were doing,” Jim continued. “It’s so obvious now. But before the investigation, it never occurred to me because the receipts had been consistent since we became partners.”

Damon nodded sympathetically.

“We expect the college kids to slip the odd twenty dollar bill in their pockets, which is why we pay them so little,” Jim said. “But I never expected my business partner to do it.” He took a deep breath.

“Why did Lirim sell a share to you in the first place?” Damon asked.

Jim eyed Damon but didn’t shy away from the question. “I think he needed the capital. He was in deep with a couple of guys who called themselves venture capitalists. Maybe venture capitalists for rednecks. I suspect that they suckered Lirim into a bad investment down in Florida. The first winter after I bought in, Lirim spent a lot of time down there. About a year later I stopped seeing the ‘venture capitalists’ around.”

“So does that mean Clara isn’t inheriting anything other than Lirim’s half of Big Surf?”

“Probably not. And even though she’s an only child, Lirim’s half is mortgaged to the hilt. Still, I imagine she’ll ask me to buy her out and I probably will.”

“I suppose it also depends on whether Lirim had a will,” Damon pondered out loud.

“I don’t think he did. He told me his wife had one but he didn’t care what happened after he was gone. He probably didn’t want one drawn up because he didn’t want an attorney looking too closely into his financial affairs.”

The men stopped speaking as a harried father pushing a toddler in a grocery cart stopped to select a box of generic raisin bran cereal. The boy was clutching a strawberry in one hand and a flyer for the county fair in the other. He smashed the two together, leaving a bright red stain over the words “Big Surf Shows.”

“I heard Lirim’s wife died in an accident,” Damon said after the father and son moved on.

“She did. Tabby was a really nice woman. Too nice for Lirim.”

“Did she travel with you?”

“On occasion. They have a place in West Virginia outside of Morgantown. Tabby would come out once or twice every summer. She always cleaned Lirim’s trailer up real nicely if you can imagine that.”

“Too bad for Clara about losing her mother.”

“I guess. I don’t know how close they were. But the accident was tragic. Tabby got hit by a drunk driver late at night near their house. Or at least Lirim thought it was a drunk driver.” He smacked his hands together. “The police found her crushed body inside a smashed up car on the side of a gravel road. None of the trees along the road was damaged, so they decided it was a hit-and-run. They never tracked down the person who hit her.”

Jim turned in the aisle and selected a box of protein bars. “Sorry for unloading on you. I guess I just had to tell someone other than the police. I told Detective Sloman and the female lieutenant everything about the IRS this morning. Victor would’ve told them anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if he tries to pin Lirim’s murder on me. But I suppose Lirim’s money skimming does make me look like a suspect, especially with these scratches I got from Bertie’s cat last night.”

Jim answered Damon’s quizzical stare. “I share a trailer with Bertie Mangrove and two others. Bertie manages one of the food stands and her cat Christof lives with us.”

“Bad timing for a scratch,” Damon replied.

“You’re telling me. I thought the lieutenant was going to arrest me on the spot. I have to go. Now that Lirim’s gone, I’m moving into his trailer once the police clear out, and I told Victor to give me all of the files from the past year. I need to get up to speed now that I can.”

Damon was left standing in place, contemplating how Jim could bear to sleep in the bed of a murdered man just after he was killed.

Chapter 5

Back at home, Damon unpacked groceries, and then dialed Gerry. Jim Riley said he told Gerry his story, but he may not have provided as much information to Gerry as he revealed to Damon. Damon caught the detective just as he was about to take a dinner break after nine hours of interviewing carnival workers. Gerry accepted Damon’s invitation to come over for a quick bite.

Ten minutes later, Gerry trudged through the front door, looking significantly more worn down than he had in the morning. He passed through the kitchen, flopped down on the leather sectional in the family room and accepted the bottle of lager Damon held out.

“I hadn’t thought about dinner yet, so I just put on spaghetti and popped some frozen garlic bread into the oven,” Damon said.

“Sounds perfect. Thanks.” Gerry took a long pull from the beer and set it on a nearby coaster. “Let me tell you, there weren’t many tears shed today. I don’t think a single person at Big Surf could stand Lirim.”

“Including Jim Riley, I just ran into him at the Safeway,” Damon said and gave Gerry a synopsis of their conversation.

“I have to admit he has a pretty good motive. Jim Riley has all of his money tied up in this carnival business, but his partner and partner’s henchman are skimming. Sounds pretty damning to me, especially with those scratches on his arm.” He turned to face Damon who had seated himself on the opposite end of the sectional. “I asked him why he couldn’t have gone to the police, or back to the IRS after they started skimming again. He shut up really quickly. Did you get any sense of why he couldn’t rat them out?”

“No. If I was him I would have hired a lawyer to go after Lirim, but when I asked, Jim became really quiet really quickly.”

“I think Jim was scared of something Lirim knew,” Gerry said. “It could be that Lirim was blackmailing Jim into keeping his mouth shut.”

“If Lirim scratched him, could you get DNA from that scratch on Jim’s arm?” Damon asked.

“I asked Margaret the same thing. She’s not sure whether we have the legal right to take a swab yet and doesn’t want to risk a conviction getting thrown out on a technicality. She put in a call to one of our attorneys but hasn’t heard back yet. If Jim did anything, he’ll have cleaned that arm until it’s raw by now.” Gerry scratched his own arm reflexively. “I don’t suppose you saw hydrogen peroxide in his shopping cart.”

“No,” Damon said. “Just junk food. After being around carnival fare all day, you’d think that when he had the chance to go to the grocery store he’d buy something decent.”