Something Borrowed, Something Bleu (13 page)

Instead of being on
auto row south of Spring Creek, Dunner & Son Auto Sales was tucked off a side street in Old Town. It looked like a small operation, with only twenty-five or so cars in the lot, but they were all expensive foreign models: jaguars, BMWs, a beautifully restored MG in British racing green, and in one corner a stately looking vehicle Barr informed me was a Bentley.
Still, the place had a rundown, seedy look to it. Paint peeled from the exterior of the old building with the
Office
sign over the door, dust dulled the surfaces of the fancy vehicles, and thistles and bindweed flourished in the planting strips surrounding the lot.
My fingers curled around the old wrought-iron stair railing, and it rattled against the bolts that held it to the wooden stairs. The bars set into the windows matched the railing. Overall, the place radiated Old West grimness.
We went up the short stairway and through the door. The sudden dimness slowed my steps. The clammy air smelled of scorched coffee and Pine-Sol. Behind an unmanned reception counter, two desks faced each other from opposite sides of the room, and three windows, also heavily fortified, punctuated the back wall.
I turned to Barr. He shrugged.
The sound of a toilet flushing drifted through a closed door on the right. It opened to reveal a man about my age still hitching up his pants. He saw us and hurried to the counter.
Please God, don’t let him try to shake my hand. No way had this guy taken the time to wash his hands.
“Hiya, hiya. Sorry, ’bout that,” he said. “I’m here alone today, and you know, sometimes a man’s just gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
“No problem,” Barr said.
I smiled, my radar on high alert. Something about this guy, just being in the same room with him, set my internal alarm bell to jangling.
“Are you Dunner or Son?” Barr asked in a light tone.
We both could see he wasn’t old enough to be Ogden Dunner. But he looked to be about the right age to be his son.
“Ray Dunner, at your service.”
I’d wanted to meet the father, but Ray would have to do, at least for now. And, after all, he’d been the one at the river when Gwen Miller fell in—though I didn’t know how on earth I could bring up that painful incident with any finesse.
Barr started asking him questions about an XJ something-or-other. My eyes had adjusted to the difference in light, and now I perused Dunner’s face while trying not to be obvious about it. He was short and stout, his considerable gut hanging over his belt buckle. His thinning blonde hair didn’t stop the dandruff from sifting down to the shoulders of his dark blue shirt, and the broken capillaries on his nose and cheeks formed a complicated road map of dissolution. As Barr spoke, Dunner fidgeted, moving his head side to side as if trying to work out a crick, squinting and pursing his lips. All together the movements gave him the air of a teenager with ADD who didn’t really care about anything the teacher was saying.
His eyes belayed any notion that he was stupid, though. Dark and watchful, they sent a cringe down my spine when they met mine.
“Let’s go take a look at that beauty, then,” Dunner said, leaning across the counter.
I tried not to wince as a wave of rank halitosis drifted over me.
“Oh, I’m not sure whether we’re ready to buy yet,” Barr said.
“Please, honey?” I said. “Pretty please? It’s so cute.” I had no idea which car they were talking about.
“Well, there ya go, buddy. The little lady has spoken.” Dunner bustled out from behind the counter and opened the door to the lot.
“That’s right,” I said. My voice had gone up at least an octave.
Barr looked down at me. Raised one eyebrow, which Dunner couldn’t see.
I grinned. He rolled his eyes.
We tagged after Ray Dunner, who glowed pale in the August sun and instantly began to sweat. Any sports this guy was interested in were on the screen in the corner of his living room. He led us to a low, sleek Jaguar, easily the sexiest car on the lot. Cute didn’t even begin to describe it.
“This little lady of yours here has real good taste.” He opened the driver’s door. “Lookit this interior—all leather. Soft as butter.”
And hot as hell. Even with the old asphalt beneath our feet beginning to soften in the heat, the air coming out of the closed car felt like a blast furnace.
Dunner jingled the keys.
I sighed, long and loud.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“It’s just not quite right. I wanted one with a white interior.”
Behind me, Barr snorted.
“White?” Dunner asked.
I nodded. “My friend, Tabby Bines, said you’d be the man to talk to.” Too late I wondered whether Ray and Tabby were still in contact. I couldn’t really tell from his reaction.
“Tabby. Bines.”
I nodded again, adding extra vigor.
“Sent you out to see me.”
“Well …” I scrambled for just the right words. What would Anna Belle do?
“She said you carried the kind of car little Sophie Mae here wants me to buy her.”
My head whipped around so fast my neck hurt. Little Sophie Mae, indeed. It was one thing for me to let Ray Dunner refer to me like a second-class citizen, but Barr better not get any ideas. Amusement played across his features at my reaction.
I looked back at Dunner. Tried a wink. “You remember Tabby, don’t you? From when she and my brother used to go out to your place, way back when?” That’s what Anna Belle would do: charm, manipulate, and lie like a rug if she had to. So perhaps I had the gene for lying after all. I just needed to practice more.
“Who’s your brother?” The words were flat, as was the gaze. His fidgeting quieted, too. I bet Dunner knew darn well who I was; Bobby Lee and I had looked too much alike for him to have missed the resemblance.
Beside me, Barr tensed. He didn’t say anything, though, and I plunged on.
“Bobby Lee Watson. He’s no longer with us, you know.” Wide eyes. Big blink. I waited for the inevitable sympathy.
“I didn’t know Bobby Lee had a sister. So you’re friends with Tabitha Atwood.”
“Bines,” I said. “Tabby Bines.”
“Right. Married.” He lifted his left palm to the sky. “Or at least she was.”
So he knew about Joe’s murder. Of course, all that proved was that he read the paper or watched television. The story was all over the news.
“Terrible tragedy, what happened to Joe,” I said. “Terrible.”
Dunner blinked slowly. “Mm-hmm.” The dark eyes in that pale face looked reptilian.
“I was there when it happened, you know.” It wasn’t hard to sound frightened.
“You don’t say. Musta been awful,” he said, rotating on his heel and moving back toward the air-conditioned office. Apparently he’d given up on us as potential customers. But we were right behind him. “You see who did it?” He tossed the question so casually over his shoulder that it took me a moment to realize what he was asking.
“What? Of course not. If I had, then the sheriff would’ve already arrested the killer.”
He stumbled on my last word, paused, then went up the steps and opened the office door. Looking over his shoulder at me he said, “Depends on what you saw.”
I trotted in after him, Barr silent beside me.
“Well, I didn’t see anything.”
Dunner regarded me with narrowed eyes from behind the counter. “Is that so. Well, now, you tell Tabitha hello from Ray Dunner. And tell her I’ll be giving her a call soon, okay?”
Condolence call or threat?
“Listen,” I said. “I want you to know that I think it’s a real shame you all had to shut down your Rancho Sueńo place. It sounds like it was a good thing while it lasted, and helped a lot of teens who were in serious trouble.”
Dunner grew still again. “That was something my father did. I was just a kid.”
I could feel the tension roll off Barr, and I glanced up at him. His poker face was impeccable, though, a mask of polite interest. He smiled at me. “Where was that place again?”
“You know, I’m not sure. Ray, it was out east of town, wasn’t it?” I asked, all chattylike. “Oh, my God. Are you okay?” His face had suffused with red so quickly I thought he was going to have some kind of attack. “Mr. Dunner? Ray?”
“Maybe you should ask your good friend
Tabitha
where our place was.” He grated the words out.
“Ray.” The single word came from the doorway, and Barr and I turned to find an older gentleman had joined us. He was rail-thin, with a gaunt, Lincolnesque face under bushy eyebrows. His brown eyes smiled at us both.
“Dad.” Ray Dunner’s tone held warning.
I glanced at Barr. So this was Ogden Dunner. Very unlike his son, it appeared.
Now he came into the office and introduced himself. “Are you two looking for a new car?” he asked, then laughed. “Or a new old car? We’ve got both kinds here.”
Barr spoke. “We were looking at one of your Jags, and then Sophie Mae and your son here got to talking about some people they knew back in the day.”
Ogden’s look contained interest and kindness. “You’re Sophie Mae Watson, aren’t you?”
Nonplussed, I said, “Used to be, yes.”
“Well, dear, you have wonderful taste in cars. And you, sir,” he said to Barr, “have wonderful taste in women.”
If Ray Dunner had said that I would have been disgusted, but coming from his father, who gazed at us both as if he genuinely meant it, I found myself almost charmed. This guy was either a bona fide good guy or a terrific con artist. Either way, I found myself smiling.
“I’m afraid we’re not quite ready to buy yet,” Barr started.
“In fact, they were just leaving,” Ray said.
“Really? That’s too bad. I would’ve liked to try and convince you of all the positive attributes of the Jaguar. They’re very nice machines.”
“I’m sure they are. We’ll be back if we decide to buy one,” Barr said.
“That’d be fine. Well, you have yourselves a nice rest of the day, then.” And darn it if he didn’t seem to mean that with every fiber of his being.
We thanked him and left.
In the rental car again, I asked Barr, “Did Ogden get rid of us? Or did Ray?”
“Hard to tell.” He shook his head. “So much for the pretty Jag.”
“I have the best car ever, thanks to you,” I said, and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. A few months earlier, Barr had given me a used Land Rover when my little Toyota pickup had met with an unfortunate end. It was dark green, and I loved to drive it. It was also a very practical vehicle for running errands for my soap-making business.
“God, you do wade right in, don’t you, Sophie Mae.”
“What do you mean? I didn’t ask either of them a single thing about Bobby Lee, didn’t ask anything about Gwen Miller’s death, didn’t ask much of anything at all. But we did get a pretty good feeling for how Ray felt about Tabby, and Joe, too.”
“Mr. Dunner the younger doesn’t strike me as the nicest of men.”
“That,” I said, “is the understatement of the day. You know, I keep wondering …”
“What?”
“According to the newspaper there were three other people there when Gwen Miller fell into the river besides Ray Dunner. Inspector Schumaker said the same thing. One was the mystery girl I mentioned last night, the one who talked with the sheriff’s department. He told me the other two were runaways staying at Rancho Sueńo, that they got spooked and left before the authorities got involved. They couldn’t track them down afterwards, and he thought they probably had given false names to Dunner. I went back and looked. The article said the authorities were looking for Tom and Jane Smith.”
“Yeah, those names sound fake, all right. But it makes sense; runaways never give their real names to cops or social workers.”
“Right. But the article in the paper didn’t say who the girl who stuck around was. I wonder why.”
“The law tends to protect kids. That’s a good thing.”
“Oh, I agree. But just because you’re a teenager doesn’t mean you’re a child. They didn’t say how old the runaway siblings were, but they wouldn’t call them runaways if they were eighteen or older, right?”
Barr nodded.
“And I think Ray Dunner was nineteen. I’m surprised everyone was so protective of this one witness. After all, the paper was willing to publish the names of the brother and sister who hightailed it out of there, even if they were fake.”
Speculation settled on Barr’s face as he drove. “Maybe she was quite young. Plus, they were trying to track down the siblings who ran away, so publishing their names makes more sense. I don’t know.” He shook his head and glanced over at me. “Okay, so it does sound off. But all this happened almost two decades ago. There’s just so much we don’t know.”
My shoulders slumped. “And can never know.”
“Do you want me to ask your Inspector Schumaker about the mystery girl?” he asked.
“He’s not my inspector. And no, I don’t think so. I’m still leery about making it sound like Bobby Lee had something to do with the Miller girl.”
“Do you think he did?”
“Bobby Lee? Not really. But if he did have anything to do with that girl’s death, it would kill my parents.”
“Doesn’t sound like the brother you’ve described to me.”
“Of course not. And there’s no evidence at all that he was even there. Still, I can’t believe he was involved with the Dunners or Rancho Sueńo at all.”
“A boy will do a lot for a girl,” he said. “Love is blind.”
“It better not be. You’re not some crazed serial killer, are you?”
He grinned. “Maybe. The wife’s always the last to know.”
I rolled my eyes and looked out the window, watching a bicyclist riding toward us. He was about twenty, and took a long puff off his cigarette as he rode by. The irony distracted me for another couple of blocks. Barr turned on the radio and Neil Young’s voice filled the car.
Down by the river …
I flicked it off, and silence returned. “The reporter would know,” I said.
“Who the other girl was? Yeah. Probably. But why would he tell you?”
“She.”
“Okay, why would she tell you?”
“She might not. But it was a long time ago, as everyone keeps saying. It can’t hurt to try.”
He made a left turn, heading back toward my parents’ house. “The same argument you make for not pushing the sheriff’s department for an answer applies here. You could just stir up trouble, make this reporter look for dirt on Bobby Lee.”
“Maybe. But Schumaker’s seen the letter and knows I’m trying to find out more about Bobby Lee. This woman would only know that I’m …” I wracked my brain for a good story.
“That you were a teenaged runaway and stayed at Rancho Sueńo for a while, and now you’re trying to track down someone you knew there.”
“Wow. You’re good at this stuff.” Still, it felt like such a, well, a lie. Which, of course, it was. A lie I’d use if I had to.