Shay O'Hanlon Caper 04 - Chip Off the Ice Block Murder (5 page)

The front door opened. Agnes tottered in with Eddy, Rocky, and Tulip in tow.

Hallelujah! More help had arrived. I’d gotten so busy I hadn’t said goodbye to Agnes, and here she was with people who could help me keep things, including my sanity, together.

Rocky, a savant of some kind, lived above the Rabbit Hole in my old one-bedroom apartment with sweet, quiet Tulip, his balloon-animal-
creating bride of three months. Rocky and Tulip’s whole situation still stunned me nearly speechless every time I thought about it. But as wacky as the two of them were, it was cool to see them happy.

As motherly stand-ins went, Eddy took the prize. She was a second mom to all of us, actually, and I loved her dearly. I couldn’t help but admire her eccentricity—like the hot-pink low-rider sneakers
she was currently wearing that Coop had given to her for Christmas. She gave me hope that I could be as cool as she was when I became a Woman of a Certain Age and retired. Not that I was guaranteed a retirement at all, considering the way the economy was going.

“Shay O’Hanlon,” Rocky said, his green plaid aviator hat pulled low on his head and a delighted smile on his face. “Happy New Year! Did you know that the first recorded celebration of the Eve of the New Year goes back four thousand years? Four thousand years, Shay O’Hanlon! That is a very long time.”

Rocky was a round little man somewhere in middle age—maybe forty-five?—with the personality of a sweet teenager. His savantish specialty was facts. He had a photographic memory and knew a bit
about almost everything, and that was no exaggeration. If he came across something he wasn’t familiar with, he’d dash right to the computer and Google the hell out of whatever it was until he gleaned all there was to glean. Then he enjoyed sharing his newfound knowledge with the rest of us—whether we wanted to know it or not.

I laughed. “No, Rocky, I have to admit I didn’t know that.”

Tulip was looking cute as could be in a red down jacket with an attached hood and a black-and-pink striped muffler wrapped about fourteen times around her neck. She was actually a little taller than Rocky, a fact he adored about his wife. Tulip was an exotic cross between Queen Latifah and Carol Burnett, with a good dose of Creole thrown in. I think it was the brash red hair, dark skin, and curvy build.

There was certainly no sense of shortcoming between the two of them. They simply delighted in one another. In turn, they were usually a delight to be around, although on occasion the rapid-fire fact sharing sometimes made my head ache.

When Tulip smiled, her entire face lit up, her eyes crinkling with good humor. She said, “To add to Rocky’s most entertaining factoids, there are thirty-two thousand two hundred and fifty-six LED lights on the ball that drops in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. It weighs a whole bunch. Eleven thousand eight hundred seventy-five pounds, to be exact.”

Rocky’s head bobbed enthusiastically. “And there are two thousand six hundred and sixty-eight crystal panels—”

“Come along, kids,” Eddy said, smoothly interrupting the flow of Rocky’s patter. “Let’s help Shay out in the kitchen.” Eddy hustled Rocky and Tulip into the kitchen.

When Eddy returned, she valiantly squirmed her way aboard the stool next to Agnes. She said, “Set those two on some cleaning in back. Your father does okay, but the joint sure could use some Rocky and Tulip elbow grease. Who ever knew they could have so much fun working together?”

The two could happily spend hours at working on this or that. They did a remarkable job, too.

“See,” Agnes said to Eddy. “Told you Shay was here.”

Eddy cut dark eyes toward Agnes. “I didn’t doubt you, Aggie.” Eddy half-turned and scanned the floor. “But you said she was pulling her hair out, and it looks to me like things are under control. You do have an inclination to exaggerate, ya know.”

Agnes and Eddy were great friends, but they had a tendency to squabble like a couple of thirteen-year-olds. I could tell they were about to launch into a full-tilt bicker fest. I repressed a grin and got ready for the fireworks. It was humorous to watch, at least when their arguments weren’t getting in the way of extricating ourselves from some death-defying situation.

“Pshaw, you old woman,” Agnes said. “I only exaggerate when it doesn’t matter. You should’ve seen it in here earlier. Plum crazy, it was.” She squinted at my barkeep counterpart. “Who, may I ask, are you?” Subtlety truly wasn’t one of Agnes’s strengths.

Just like that, the bicker fest was derailed.

“Lisa Vecoli,” Lisa answered.

I said, “She’s the one who hauled my keister out of purgatory last night, and she came back today for more fun. She’s either a serious sucker or a deranged do-gooder.”

Lisa gave my hip a friendly nudge. “I’m a sucker for a pretty woman in distress.”

I laughed. “I don’t know about the pretty part, but I was certainly in a hell of a lot of distress.”

Was Lisa flirting with me? She
was
a hot little package. Long hair hung in a braid down her back. A white T-shirt stretched tight across her chest, and worn blue jeans hugged her assets. I might have had a spark of interest if my life and my heart weren’t so happily enmeshed with JT’s.

Then I recalled why she’d appeared—not as an angel sent from the distillery gods—and thoughts of any potential flirting flew right out the front door. I glanced sideways at Lisa with a curious frown. “Time to fess up. Why are you looking for my dad?”

That was a question I so wanted to hear the answer to. Too many people were asking for my dad, and I was at a loss for a reasonable answer to give any of them. Three pairs of curious eyes locked on Lisa.

She blinked a couple of times. I could almost see the cogs turning in her head. She said, “It’s a long story. I’d rather save it for a quieter moment.” She indicated the bar with a jerk of her head. “Bad timing.” It was the same excuse she used last night, but I had to admit it was valid. We’d almost certainly be interrupted as soon as she got started.

Eddy waved a hand before Lisa had a chance say anything more. “We can listen to her saga once things are squared away here in this old pit. Shay, you need to see if you can rustle up your father. Aggie, you go on in the back and see what those two kids are up to. I’ll help Lisa here dole out the booze.”

“Eddy,” I said with alarm, “you don’t know how to tend bar.”

“You hush, child. I didn’t know how to run a coffee shop either, but I do now.”

Good point. She’d gone from drinking Folgers to pulling espresso shots with a finesse that rivaled my own.

I looked at Lisa to see her reaction to Eddy’s idea. She shrugged. “I’m okay to stay. Go on and see if you can track your dad down.”

With that, I was summarily dismissed. It was almost five o’clock, and I wasn’t sure who’d be around to talk to, but I’d give it the old college try.

I searched for my car keys while Lisa gave Eddy a rundown of booze-slinging basics. I don’t know why Lisa seemed so trustworthy, but she did. Besides, Eddy was there to cover for me. Nothing bad would happen with her holding court at the Lep.

My mother had picked her friends well before she died, leaving both my dad and me in capable, loving hands. If I couldn’t have my mom, Eddy was the next best thing.

Before deciding which of my father’s favorite hideaways to investigate first, I wanted to make a quick run-through of his apartment and see if I could find that damn gun. Once I knew where it was, I was going to feel a hell of a lot better.

Ten minutes later I came down the steps empty-handed. I’d checked the obvious places and struck out. The search I’d conducted was decidedly haphazard, but before I let myself get too wound up, I figured he could’ve sold the thing or given it away.

During the failed search, I settled on tackling Rudolph’s Bar-B-Que in Uptown first. Rudolph’s opened in ’75 and was still going whole hog serving comfort food and, of course, barbecue.

The huge, multipeaked, alpinesque restaurant occupied the corner of Lyndale and Franklin. The neon pink, yellow, and purple barbershop-style “Rudolph’s” sign was awesome. It reminded me of a figurehead on the bow of a landlocked ship.

One of Rudolph’s longtime bartenders was a guy named Beezer. He and my dad went way back, with liquor being the common denominator between them. Beezer had corralled my father more than once during one of Pop’s marathon blackout sessions.

A gigantic hulk of a man with a barrel-sized beer belly and the kind of ear that separates the good barmen from the best, Beezer could listen to the current woes of an inebriated patron, pour a drink for another customer, and tend to waitstaff at the same time. He had that special touch that scored him premium tips. Beezer was why Rudolph’s was one of the first places my dad headed when the funk hit.

I was happy to see Beezer was indeed behind the bar. He was all smiles as I walked up, but his grin faded when I asked if he’d seen my dad. He knew if I was asking, there was trouble. I told him my litany of woe, and he listened intently. With a sympathetic whack on my shoulder, Beezer told me he hadn’t seen my dad, but to tell him howdy and that he hoped the trouble he’d been having at the Lep had stopped.

I wondered if Beezer was talking about the sewer problem, but when I pressed him, he clammed up. Maybe it had something to do with the guy who’d asked my dad to sell out. Or could it have something to do with that paper I’d found on the desk? The two could possibly be related. I wracked my brain trying to remember more about what my father had said about being pressured; I came up with nothing.

I hustled back to my vehicle with a handful of pretzels and zilch on the Find-Pete-O-Meter. I snapped the seatbelt into place, and with a twist of my wrist, the engine rumbled to life.

Frustration flirted with confusion. I absently chomped the pretzels, wondering if the Intent to Purchase letter was part of the trouble Beezer had referred to. I hated it when someone withheld information I needed, but it was hard to be angry with the Beez. I pulled the document from my pocket and reread it, but the words still didn’t help clarify much of anything. I tucked it away and reached for a half-full bottle of Coke that had been left in the cup holder. I tipped it upside down in hopes it wasn’t frozen solid.

It was.

My stomach rumbled. I hadn’t realized until I’d wolfed down the pretzels how hungry I actually was. I’d missed lunch and suppertime loomed dead ahead. I swung into a convenience store and bought an unfrozen Coke and a Snickers. The sugar rush would have to do for now.

The next place I wanted to check out was the 22nd Avenue Station in Northeast, better known as the Double Deuce. It was a blue-collar dive that happened to showcase strippers doing their thing in the back of the bar. It was on the list of Dad’s favorite retreats—not because of the girls, but because the owner had helped get the Leprechaun on its feet when Dad bought it from Roy Larson.

The owner of the Deuce was old-school, no-nonsense, and still capable of scaring the daylights out of me. Willie Glowinsky stood over six feet tall. Built like a prizefighter, she had flattened more than one nose with one of her meaty ham hocks. If you called her by her given name—Wilma—you could be sure of an immediate correction of the most painful kind. She was a broad’s broad, ran the bar with an iron fist, and at seventy-something, could still bounce troublemakers out of her establishment with ease. She valued straight talk and hard work above all else. If my father had dropped in, she’d tell me. If she knew where he was, she’d spill it. If she’d heard anything about my father’s “troubles,” she’d tell me that too.

I pulled into the back lot of the Deuce and parked. My phone rang as I was about to step out of the SUV into the cold air. JT’s ringtone made me smile. I answered, settled back in the seat, and pulled the door shut again. “Hey, babe.”

“Hey. How’s it going?”

“Lisa Vecoli showed up again looking for Pete and put herself to work. Good thing—I was about at my limit. After that, Agnes rounded up the cavalry and brought Eddy, Rocky, and Tulip in. Eddy sent me off Dad-hunting. Rudolph’s was a no-go, and I’m about to check out the Deuce.”

“Wow, you’ve been busy. I wanted to let you know I’m going to be home late. I never should have come in on my day off because now I’m stuck here working on a case we’ve been trying to close. Anyway, I got a hold of someone who got a hold of someone who owed me a favor. You’re not going to want to hear this.” JT paused. “A gun involved in a homicide in St. Paul is … ”

“Is what?”

“It’s … registered to your dad.”

“What?”

“I don’t know much. Just that it was found with the victim.”

The full weight of what she’d said slammed me. “Oh my god, JT. Not—”

“Oh, no,” JT hurriedly said, “no, it’s not your dad. Jesus. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

My relief was short-lived.

“It looks like your dad’s gun was used to kill the man that was found frozen in a big-ass ice cube in Rice Park. I don’t know if you heard about that or not … it happened last night. That’s why St. Paul wants to talk to him.” Her voice dropped. “I can’t believe I’m saying this. He’s officially a person of interest in the homicide, Shay.”

The breaking news I’d watched in the kitchen of the Rabbit Hole flashed in my mind. Acid started eating its way through my stomach lining.

“A person … of interest?” I said weakly.

“Shay, I’m sorry.”

“No. It’s okay. But, Christ. He’s a drunk, not a killer.” My dad would never intentionally hurt anyone. Unless they deserved it, of course. That’s what I’d told myself all my life, except in the instances when I wasn’t so sure.

He could do some damage if pushed far enough. He certainly had a temper, especially when well-lubed. If he was backed against the wall, or if his family or friends had problems, he would react. It’s the way he was, his genetic makeup. The inability to think before diving headlong into a situation was one of the traits I’d inherited from him that had caused me plenty of grief throughout my life.

But murder?

I honestly didn’t know what to think. The Intent to Purchase letter, Beezer’s mention of trouble, the lack of repairs to the Lep. Now his gun, found with a dead guy? Why was Lisa Vecoli looking for him? And where the hell was he? None of this was making one goddamn bit of sense, and I was getting pissed.