Mother Knows Best (A Margie Peterson Mystery) (29 page)

“Yes? What about it?”

“What I didn’t tell you was . . . well, Peaches asked me to help move the body.”

My mother jangled as she sat up straight. “What?”

“He was in a hooker’s apartment, wearing Aquaman tights and goggles.” I didn’t mention the urine. “Peaches was trying to help out a friend, and she asked me for help. Anyway, I accidentally dropped Becky’s card on top of him, and the police found it.”

My mother choked out a startled laugh. “Aquaman?”

“It’s not funny,” I said. “If I don’t get it figured out in the next couple of days, I have to tell the police that I moved the body, and I’ll probably go to jail.”

“Why were you moving the body, anyway?” she asked.

“He got shot in a hooker’s apartment,” I told her. “The hooker is a friend of Peaches, and she didn’t want her parents to find out what she was doing to pay her way through college.”

My mother sat back in her chair. “That’s why you’ve been gone so much. I knew it wasn’t just the pig.”

“Well, there’s been that, too.”

“Any idea who did it?”

“I must be getting close, since someone shot up the minivan at the office yesterday.”

Her eyes widened. “What?”

“That’s why I have the rental. I also found some strange words on a paper hidden in Cavendish’s office,” I said. “The problem is, I have no idea what they mean.”

“That’s the headmaster—Cavendish,” she said. I nodded. “How did you get into his office?”

“Never mind,” I said.

“Is that where you were last night?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Well,” she said, “what’s done is done. And you did want a job with a bit of excitement. Maybe I can help. I was really good at codes when I was a kid.”

It was worth a shot. “I’ll go get them,” I said. “Maybe you can make sense out of it. Oh—and I got Elsie’s fry phone back, but it’s covered in pig manure.”

“Good for you! I know how to get that fixed up. Three-thieves oil sanitizes everything,” my mother said, nodding sagely.

“Are you sure? I was thinking a bleach bath.”

“Leave it to me,” she said. “Now, go get that paper.”

As I went inside to retrieve the legal paper—and a plastic baggie for the fry phone—Elsie looked up at me with a big smile. “Look at my forest!” she said. “I even built a little house.” She pointed to a small structure built of seaweed flakes. Her dog collar, I noticed, lay discarded on the table.

“Who lives there?” I asked.

“The kale fairies,” she said, as if it were obvious.

I kissed her on top of the head and gave her a squeeze. “You’ve got quite a forest growing there! Do you need another cookie sheet to expand?”

“That would be great, Mom!”

I gave her a second cookie sheet and another bag of seaweed snacks and glanced at the laundry room. There was a soft grunting noise, but nothing violent. At least not yet.

“Thanks, Mom,” my daughter said as I stacked a second bag of seaweed snacks on the table. As Elsie adjusted the roof of her kale-fairy house, I grabbed the legal paper from my purse and headed out to the back porch.

“She looks so happy in there,” I said, nodding toward my absorbed daughter. “I never would have thought of making a kale forest.”

“It doesn’t take much when you’ve got such a creative kiddo,” she said. “Now, let’s take a look at this list of yours.”

I spread the page out on the table and we both examined it.

“Is it some kind of code, do you think?” I asked.

“
Arthur207
,” she said, pointing to the first line. “Hmmm,” she said. “What did you say he was dressed as when he died?”

“Aquaman,” I said. “Why?”

“What was Aquaman’s ‘street’ name?”

“I’ll look it up,” I said, retrieving my manure-coated phone from my back pocket and typing it in.

“Arthur Curry,” I said, looking at the page. The second word on the line was
C1U2R3R4Y5
.

“I thought so,” my mother said, eyes glittering. “I’ll bet this is a username and password.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I
looked at my mother; what she said made sense. “They do look like usernames and passwords. The problem is, to what?”

“Let’s find out,” she said, reaching for my phone. “May I?”

I took the phone out of its case and handed it over. It was slightly dented—probably a tooth mark—but it seemed to have passed through Bubba Sue’s digestive system intact. It was a modern-day miracle.

“Let’s try the obvious suspects first,” she said.

“Like what?”

“Gmail,” she said. A moment later, she said, “Nope.”

“Yahoo?” I suggested.

Nothing. She went down the list of mail providers, with no luck. I was about to lose hope when my mother said, “Bingo.”

“You found it?” I pulled my chair over beside her.

“On Inbox.com,” she said.

“What’s in the e-mails?”

“Setting up meetings,” she said, clicking through his e-mails.

“With whom?”

“Largely a woman named Desiree,” she said, “but there’s one other here.”

“Who?”

“Someone named Cherry,” she said.

Hmm. “When did this happen?”

She scrolled through the list. “Looks like last January is when the e-mails started,” she said.

“Did they meet?”

“Looks like it,” she said. I peered over her shoulder as she read,
“Thank you so much for putting in a good word for me. I’ll be extra thankful this Friday night.”
My mother looked up at me. “What do you think that means?”

“I think one of the moms was trading . . . favors for getting her kid into school.”

“Do you think she killed him?”

“No,” I said. “I can’t think why she would. She got what she wanted, and it wasn’t something he was likely to tell anyone. Let’s try the other account and see what comes up.”

My mother logged out of Aquaman’s account and typed in the next username and password. She was right; Cavendish had two e-mail accounts on Inbox.com.

“Investments?” she said, wrinkling her nose as she clicked on the first few messages. “Why would he need a secret account for investments?”

“Not a lot of e-mails, are there?”

“Only five,” she said, pulling up the earliest one. “Second thoughts about investment direction. Cannot afford connection. Please advise soonest.”

“What was the response?”

She clicked on an e-mail from Rainbow2348. “Concern noted. When current shipment distributed, will divert funds to lower-risk enterprise.”

“Per our meeting, events have become too dangerous. Need to divest soonest.”

She clicked on the response from Rainbow2348. “Cannot withdraw immediately. Need four-week lead time.”

Two days later, Cavendish sent one last e-mail. “Divest HO within 48 hours, or will be forced to take action.”

“And that’s the last e-mail,” my mother said.

“He was killed the next night,” I said, feeling my skin prickle.

“I think you’ve found the smoking gun,” she said.

“Yes. But who’s Rainbow2348?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” she said. Though I was pretty sure I already knew the answer. “Is it time to tell the police?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Let me talk to Peaches. She may have a better idea.”

“I’ve got Elsie,” she said. “You go see what you can find out.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said, giving her a big hug. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Me neither,” she said, eyes twinkling.

“I’ve got Bubba Sue,” I announced to Peaches as I walked into the Pretty Kitten twenty minutes later, smelling rather strongly of scotch and pig manure despite my change of clothes.

Peaches pushed back from the desk, exposing a few miles of hairless legs. “Terrific! Did the client come and pick her up?”

“I left her a message.”

“Where’s the pig?”

“In my laundry room at the moment,” I said, “but she tore up the rental car. Can we charge that to the client?”

“By tore up, you mean . . .”

“She tried to rip out the passenger seat.”

Peaches winced. “Did she succeed?”

“Not completely. But that’s not the only thing,” I said. “I’ve got a lead on Cavendish.”

“What?”

“My mother cracked the code on the legal paper we found,” I said. “It’s usernames and passwords to e-mail accounts.”

“Anything good?”

I told her what we’d learned.

“Things are coming together. I’ve got some info, too,” Peaches said. “I looked up those license-plate numbers from the Holy Oaks parking lot. Guess who one of them belongs to?”

“Cressida Cavendish?”

“And Marty Krumbacher.”

I blinked. “Do you think Krumbacher might have offed the headmaster?”

“It depends on the investments Cavendish was talking about,” Peaches said. “What was that company called? Golden Investments?” She typed it into the computer.

“Yeah. Their biggest holding was Spectrum Properties,” I said. “Right?”

“Let’s look that up,” she said. Her fingers flew over the keyboard. “Owned by an LLC, but it doesn’t say who’s behind it.”

“Does it list their holdings?”

“Aha.” She grinned at me. “You’re going to love this.”

“What?”

“They own a lot of bars around town. Including . . .” She paused for dramatic effect. “The Sweet Shop.”

“Rainbow2348 talked about a shipment at a shop,” I said.

“And Desiree talked about a bunch of boxes in the back of the club.”

“Do you think?” I asked. “It sounds shady. If we could get a picture of whatever they’re shipping, with a label, maybe we could hand everything we know over to Bunsen, and he’d start looking into Golden Investments and Spectrum Properties.”

“Anonymously,” Peaches said.

“Probably a good idea,” I said. “You think those boxes are at the Sweet Shop somewhere?”

“Only one way to find out,” she said. “I haven’t had lunch yet. You up for a strip steak?”

“Only if you’re driving,” I said. I couldn’t face another trip in the Leaf.

The parking lot was stuffed once again at the Sweet Shop, whose marquee blared “FRESH, HOT BUNS: AMATEUR DAY!” Peaches levered the Buick between two SUVs several rows away from the door.

“What’s the plan?” I asked, glad I’d changed into a decent pair of jeans and a clean T-shirt after my run-in with Bubba Sue.

“We’re going to see if we can get into the back rooms,” she said.

“What will you do if Banana Twirl is there?” I asked.

“Hide in a dark corner,” she said as we walked up the front steps. Chewy was there again.

“Hey, Peaches!” he said. “Looking good.”

“You too, honey,” she said. “Hey, is Banana here today?”

“She’s off till Tuesday,” he said. “You here for Amateur Day?”

“Nah,” Peaches said. “Just lunch.”

“Too bad. You’d be a hit,” he said, giving her an appreciative look. “You should try it sometime.” He nodded to me. “Your friend, too.”

“Thanks,” I said, not quite sure how else to respond, and a moment later I followed Peaches back into the Sweet Shop.

There was no plastic pool this time, although I thought I picked up the faint scent of spoiled milk. Carpet, I reflected, was not the wisest choice for an establishment that specialized in whipped-cream wrestling. Desiree probably could have told them that.

As a woman in three square inches of lime-green spandex writhed on the center stage, Peaches and I headed toward a corner table that was close to the back hallway.

“Should we head back now?” I asked after we’d slid into our sticky seats.

“Let’s get a drink first,” she said.

“Really, Peaches?”

“I’m still recovering from my date the other night.”

“The guy from HonkytonkHoneys didn’t work out?”

Peaches looked at me. “He drinks Chelada.”

“What’s that?”

“Bud Light and Clamato.”

“That sounds repulsive. Is it really a drink?”

“It shouldn’t be, but it is. He had six of them, and then he tried to kiss me.” She shuddered. “When I turned him down, he got on the mechanical bull, and threw up all over the bar. It smelled like Manhattan clam chowder.”

I sat for a moment, watching as the dancer stripped off another square inch of spandex, and trying to put the image of regurgitated Clamato out of my mind. “Talked with Jess recently?” I asked.