Murder by Serpents (Five Star First Edition Mystery) (21 page)

“I arrived at the four way stop just in time to see Roscoe pass through it, towing a vending machine, headed out of town.” J.B. lifted a thermal coffee mug to his lips.

“A vending machine,” said Tony. “Why?”

“I'll get to that in a minute, but I swear, Sheriff, I thought I was hallucinating. ’Cause there he was, in that old paintless pickup of his, trucking on down the road. Sparks were flying from the bottom of that candy machine.” J.B. laughed so hard he had to stop and take in great gasps of air. “I sure didn't need the tracking skills of Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett to follow his trail. Between the flying sparks and that godawful scraping noise, my great-aunt Tillie couldn't have lost him, and she's been blind and deaf for a century. Roscoe had to stop twice along the way and reattach the chain.” Clutching his sides, he finally managed to blurt out, “Roscoe's in love with that machine.”

“Not really,” said Ruth Ann.

“That's what he said.” J.B. went on with his story. The flood had encouraged Roscoe to do a certain amount of impromptu thinking, ill advised as it was. Roscoe had been down at the crossroads, helping stack sandbags, when he saw a vision of loveliness across the road. The vending machine usually sat in the covered walkway of the Riverview Motel and Cabins. It had been moved to the higher ground of the parking lot. When a stream of sunlight leaked through the bleary sky and reflected from the chrome buttons, he fell in love.

Roscoe told J.B. that for a long time the machine had been one of his favorite restaurants. Now it seemed to be available for the taking, just waiting for him. Romeo had met his Juliet. One of the last to leave the area, he was relieved see that no one had moved his love. His old pickup truck was not pretty, but it was strong. Backing up slowly, Roscoe positioned the truck only inches away from the object of his affections.

At first, he attempted to lift the vending machine, but it was too much for him to handle alone. Then he tried to push it into the bed of the truck, hoping it would topple into place. That didn't work. He couldn't leave it. Almost frantic, he tried everything he could think of to get it into his truck. In desperation, because he couldn't leave it behind, he wrapped a length of chain around it and attached it to the trailer hitch on the back of his truck and drove back to his residence at the Oak Lawn Trailer Court.

“If there had been less water on the ground, the sparks dancing from the steel rubbing on the pavement would have ignited countless grass and forest fires.” J.B. rubbed his eyes.

“Please, stop.” Sheila raised a hand to stop him. She moved like an arthritic turtle, tender in every muscle, bone, nook and cranny. “You are killing me.” Every breath taken was an obvious insult to her bruised ribs, and J.B.'s story reduced her to tears.

“Sorry, Sheila, I didn't stop to think. I know you're sore.” J.B. reached over and gave her a fatherly pat on the hand. “We'll finish this report someplace else.”

“Over my dead body.” Sheila spoke so forcefully that she winced again. Reducing her voice, she gave him her best glare, “Don't you dare not tell me.”

J.B. just stared at her. His expression showed that he didn't know what he was supposed to do.

Ruth Ann solved his dilemma. “Tell the story, J.B., but slow enough so she can breathe from time to time.” She glanced at her fingernails. The cerise polish that she had been applying when J.B. started the story stuck to the tissue that she used to wipe her overflowing eyes. She shrugged and reached for the polish remover. “Was Roscoe surprised to see you?”

“I guess you could say that. He made it to his place maybe thirty seconds ahead of me. Even with all the water, I wanted to make sure that he didn't start a fire with that thing.”

“Why didn't you just pull him over?” Tony stretched, feeling the knotted muscles in his back loosen a bit. With his thumbs hooked into his belt, he leaned against the doorframe of his office. “That would have taken care of it.”

“I couldn't. I had to see where he took the thing. Have you ever watched anyone sleepwalk?”

Tony nodded.

“It's kind of the same feeling. You don't want to wake them up, and at the same time, you sure are curious to see what they'll do.” J.B. swallowed a big mouthful of coffee. “Anyway, when I pulled up behind him at his trailer, he was standing next to the thing, kissing it and caressing the buttons.”

“So he didn't steal it to take the coins?” said Sheila.

J.B. shook his head. “He swore that the money had nothing to do with it and I believe him. He wants to keep her. I'm telling you that he is in love with her. He'd probably marry the damned thing if she would say yes.”

“Where is it now?” Tony tried to maintain a modicum of dignity and professionalism but failed miserably. The mental image of skinny little Roscoe with his stringy hair and overcrowded teeth kissing a vending machine was too much for him and he burst out laughing. “Does it have a name?”

“She, not it.” J.B. waited until Sheila and Tony could suck a little air in before answering. He nodded and that caught their attention. “Dora.” He continued after a brief pause. “I had the Thomas brothers come out and load her on a flatbed and lock her up for the night.”

Ruth Ann reacted first. “Dora?” Tears streamed unchecked down her face. All pretense of working on her fingernails was over. “Why Dora?”

“I asked him that myself.” J.B. paused.

“And?” said Sheila.

J.B.'s lips twitched. “He said that he called
her
Dora because that's
her
name and so what else would he call
her?
I must say that he seemed rather indignant.”

“Had he been drinking?” Sheila's eyes were wide. “The last time I talked to Roscoe, he didn't seem likely to fall in love with a vending machine. A truck maybe, you know, or something else with tires.”

“Naw. There was no alcohol on his breath and he passed all of the field sobriety tests. I don't think he had any drugs or alcohol in him at all. He'd been working down at the creek all evening. Just Roscoe being Roscoe, you know.” A rumble of laughter worked its way through his whole system. “That man never has more than three wheels on the road on a good day.”

Tony nodded. He had seen Roscoe earlier in the day. The skinny little man had worked like a demon, stacking sandbags. Tony hated to punish Roscoe after all his hard work. He started reading through J.B.'s reports. They were incomplete and he gave up. “Did you arrest him?”

“Oh, yeah, you haven't heard it all.” J.B. yawned and drank more coffee.

“There's more?” As one, his audience leaned closer.

“I had to arrest him for the license plate scam that he was running.” He glanced at their faces to make sure that they were all paying close attention. “You see, I've been hard at work while you were all snoring in the dark.”

Tony thought that J.B. should be on a stage. He was the Will Rogers of the area.

J.B. teased them by making a big production of finishing his coffee and then cracking his knuckles. Satisfied that he had their full attention, he went on with his report. “Roscoe supplied the snake handler with Queen Doreen's license plate.”

“No way.” Tony straightened.

“Yep. It turns out that Roscoe has quite a collection of license plates for sale. Most of his stock, he stole from tourists passing through. He normally takes just the front plate of cars and trucks from states that require two plates. Roscoe's favorite seems to be Ohio. Half of that state must have had the front plate ripped off by Roscoe, and the other half has never visited the area.”

“If he has a collection, why take the plate from her majesty, the mayor's wife?” said Ruth Ann.

From her words and expression, Tony assumed that Ruth Ann's relationship with the mayor's family had not improved.

“That was a special order. Our preacher requested a Park County plate. Right after that, Roscoe happened to be passing through a parking lot and he took the first license plate that he came to.”

“How did the preacher know to contact Roscoe?” Sheila's question mirrored Tony's thought.

“That one's easy. Quentin recommended him.” J.B. shook his head. “Before you ask, I don't have any idea how Quentin knew about Roscoe's business venture or why they didn't steal the plate themselves instead of paying Roscoe a hundred dollars for a ‘finders fee.’ ”

“You didn't have a warrant.” Tony didn't ask.

“Didn't need one.” J.B. raised his right hand like he was being sworn in. “I read him his rights about six times, but Roscoe begged me to take the license plates. He said that maybe the judge would let him keep the candy machine in exchange for them. I told him that it doesn't work that way but he insisted.”

Tony stepped into his office and retrieved several antacids from the jar on his desk. Realizing that there were only two left in it, he wrote himself a message on a sticky note and stuck it on his door before he returned to the impromptu meeting. “I guess we'd better let Archie know. He'll know how many laws Roscoe broke. The license plate thing is not going to just go away.”

Ruth Ann's phone rang. Picking up the receiver, she held it to her ear for only a couple of seconds. Her eyes twinkled as she met Tony's eyes. “Rex called with a message.”

“What?” From her expression, he assumed that no one had found another body.

“Tell the sheriff that Elvis has left the building and Quentin is ready to talk.”

Tony was thankful that Quentin seemed grounded enough that Carl Lee Cashdollar, his attorney, would allow him to be interviewed. Freshly showered and dressed in the fashionable orange and white striped jumpsuit supplied by the county jail, Quentin still looked like hell. His body aroma was much improved but still not completely pleasant. The chemicals that he ingested had taken a toll.

“So, Quentin,” Tony waved the man into a chair next to Carl Lee. “How are you feeling today? Your lawyer thinks that you are up to answering a few questions.”

Quentin shrugged but remained silent. He stared at Sheila, who sat at the desk almost directly opposite the greenhouse door.

“Well, let’s just go over a few things while you consider it.” Tony, like Quentin, watched as Sheila made her careful way to the door and handed him several sheets of paper. The moment she left, Wade entered the room and closed the door. “We found your fingerprints on the door handle of the car driven by, but evidently not owned by, Harold Usher Brown.”

Brow furrowed, Quentin looked baffled. “Who is that?” He addressed his question to his attorney but Carl Lee shook his head, looking as confused as his client.

“We know that your dear cousin John Mize has been deceased for a while and that Mr. Brown assumed his identity. Would you care to tell us why?”Tony shuffled the papers he held but didn’t look at them.

“Brown? Is that Hub’s name? I had no idea. I thought it was Mize.” Quentin relaxed on his chair. “He’s my cousin on my mama’s side.” He jerked forward, then slapped himself hard on the side of his head. “He did say somethin’ like that. My mama weren’t a Mize until she married my pa. I guess she used to be a Brown at that. She and Pa’s uncle, Jesse I think, was relations.”

When it looked like Quentin was ready to start giving a detailed account of his entire family tree, Tony raised his hand to stop the man. “Just tell me why he wanted to use John’s identity and what he was doing here.”

“That’s pretty easy.” Quentin picked at his skin. “He showed up with them snakes one day and introduced himself. I knew he was a true cousin just by the way he looked. My mama had those same kinda spooky eyes but she never cut her eyelashes like that. He uses these itty-bitty little scissors and cuts them one at a time. Freaked me out to watch him.”

“Cut his eyelashes?”Tony remembered that Quentin’s mother had eyes that protruded and there was white visible all around the irises. It made her look wild and scary and most of the children who saw her believed she was a witch. Her personality had done nothing to dispel the idea.

Tony opened the file. A close-up photograph of the victim’s face lay on top. Sure enough, the stubby eyelashes were cut so short they almost disappeared. He hadn’t noticed that they were cut before, just that they were unusually short. He passed the photograph to Wade who took one glance and shuddered.

“Why would he do that?” said Tony.

“That’s just plain creepy looking,” said Wade.

Carl Lee studied the photograph and shook his head.

“Hub told me it was so people could see his eyes better and that the better people could see them, the more they trusted him.” Quentin’s head bobbed several times. “Trust is a big deal when you are in the preacher business. That’s why he started calling himself Mize. He said that using a local name gave him connections ’cause people don’t much take to strangers.’ ”

“What can you tell me about the things he kept in those large boxes in his car?” Tony hoped Quentin would tell him about the drugs or money.

Quentin made a series of strange snorting sounds as he sat up straight. Tony wondered if he was laughing or having an asthma attack.

“Things?” Quentin pounded on his leg with his open hand. “He didn’t keep
things
in those boxes. He kept snakes in them, lots of snakes and brought them in the house. Sometimes, he would set them boxes all together so the snakes could watch the television.” He shuddered. “I didn’t care for them but old John, er Hub that is, he loved them ugly creatures. I even seen him kiss one. The way he talked to them it was like how guys talk when they want some female to put out for them. You know, all that honey baby, you’ve got great legs, I’ll buy you a beer and you can scratch my itch, kinda thing.”

Smooth talker. Tony wondered if that eloquent line had attracted Angelina. “That’s all there was in the boxes?” Quentin’s expression of total bewilderment was enough of an answer. “Okay then, what can you tell me about where he got the license plates on his car?”

“I know that.” Quentin chortled and slapped the side of his leg. “I told him to put Roscoe on it. Figured if anyone had what he needed, it’d be him.”