Stuffed (12 page)

Would that I had any confidence in my public defender Phil, but I pegged him as a cocktail fork against the Mongol horde: useless. Unless the Mongol horde in question was serving cocktail weenies. Which they weren’t.

What I needed to do was locate those guys, find out why Bret was pals with them. Bret’s mom and maybe the barmaid needed visiting, and I was just the guy who didn’t want to do it.

I tromped down the steps to the parking lot, more exasperated than angry by the time I got back to the car. Angie was gone. In her place was a note:

Sweetums: Rented a car, gone to the coast—I’ll call from there—Stay out of trouble—XXXOOO. P.S.: Don’t be mad. Remember: I owed you one.

“Son of a . . .” I snarled. “Gimcrack!”

Chapter 13

I
pulled up to the Fletchers’ modest Cape Cod, which was more a bungalow than a house, two bedrooms tops. The place was so cozy that I surmised Bret was an only child. The phone book listed only Mrs. Fletcher, so I further surmised that Mr. Fletcher was dead. Which figured. Bret had the frantic behavior of a mama’s boy gone haywire. I had a mind’s eyeful of his room already, pennants on the wall, plaid comforter on the bed, gun in the sock drawer.

Yes, there I was, subjected to doing my own legwork to make sure there wasn’t some sort of gross miscarriage of justice on my behalf.

Toggling the rearview mirror in my direction, I tried to corral my hair. What was I going to say? “Hello, Mrs. Fletcher, I’m the guy who chased your kid into traffic?”
Watch out for the old lady’s fry pan, Garth! Bong!
Maybe I could claim I was an insurance adjuster, or—

“Can I help you?”

She’d snuck up on me from behind, grocery bag on her arm. I knew her immediately. She had Bret’s rosy cheeks, downy complexion, and thin brown hair.

And she suddenly knew who I was too. An excruciating silence followed before I stammered, “Mrs. Fletcher, I want . . . you to know that I, uh, well . . . Bret—I’m very sorry about it.” Her eye glistened, and she reddened a bit more. I clambered out of the car. “I never wanted, intended for this to happen. You see . . .”

Mrs. Fletcher brushed past me like I’d just won a bake-off with
her
cobbler recipe. I winced, wiped sweat from my brow, and pursued.

“I’m trying to find out who it was in the truck, Mrs. Fletcher, that’s why I came. I thought maybe you knew—”

“I knew,” she tremoloed without stopping.

“What?”

“I knew Bret was with some bad crowd, I knew it,” she sniffled. “Carnies.”

“Carnies? Do you know who?”

“Don’t you think the police have asked me? I don’t know. I should have known, but I didn’t. A mother gets scared of the truth sometimes. For all I know you was one of them. I talked with the police, I talked with the reporter. Go away.” She climbed the three steps to the screen door and yanked the mail from her mail basket.

I was about to lose her and figured I could endure another lashing to get in a good question. But I got ambitious.

“Where did he get the white crow?”

The mail crunched in her fist. Turning slowly from the door, she held up a trembling, bony hand. I took a step back. The look on her face was . . . The eyes looked right through me, like those of some kind of evil centaur.

“The devil himself,” she hissed, “is in that crow.” One of her bony fingers swept past the hedges and flower beds and toward the backyard. Looked like a heck of a storm had done a number on some large trees there, which had been uprooted, their gnarled roots like bony black hands clawing the earth. Sawdust and piles of logs were evidence that a cleanup was in progress. Funny, but none of the neighbors’ trees looked any worse for wear.

“Look at what it did. Burning. I should have burned it,” she spat.

I was too stunned to say anything more as I watched her recede into the dark house and shut the door.

Burning? The devil? Felled trees? Jeez, welcome to New England, home of H. P. Lovecraft. The bloated corpulence of Cthulhu and the boundless demon-sultan Azathoth probably lived in the split-level next door like Ozzie and Harriet. Must be a fearsome sight when they turn out to trim the azaleas.

I smoothed the goose bumps down on my arms and made tracks for the Lincoln. I felt like a heel for bothering the old gal, but she seemed a little far gone anyway. But the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree—Bret was a wacko in his own right.

It wasn’t until I got back to the car that I smacked myself in the forehead. She’d spoken to a reporter. Of course. There would be an obituary.

The Lincoln and I wheeled over to the library, which I’d noticed on my way back and forth from the courthouse. I went to the research desk and asked the tie-dyed kid at the counter for yesterday’s local paper. I took the papers to a nearby table but didn’t find Bret’s obituary.

I went back to the counter. “Do you have today’s paper?”

“Dude over there.” He pointed. “When he’s through.”

I sank into a chair opposite the man behind the paper and waited politely. He merrily bounced one crossed leg and hummed softly, the white of his sock blinking at me from under his slacks.

“Shame,” he said from behind the paper. “Boy that young, hit by a truck. Shame.”

I smelled cloves, and a familiar shiver wriggled up my spine. The man lowered his paper. It was Jim Kim and his happy grin. “Here to read about your handiwork?”

I had so many things I wanted to say, or ask, or do that my circuits locked. I was only able to stab my finger impotently in the direction of my mystery pal, my unknown best friend, my anonymous confidant, my Korean shadow.

“Yes, Garth, his obituary is in today’s paper.” He moved into the chair next to mine, handing over the paper, which was folded to display Bret’s obituary. “I’m finished. And if you don’t mind me saying so”—he patted my forearm like a dear old chum, his voice subdued but no less jocular—“I think you should finish up here. Got your stuff back, didn’t you? Believe me, things are well in hand. Go back to New York, get some decent Chinese food, for Pete’s sake.”

“Who are you? What do you want?” I finally blurted, which got me cross looks from the book-stack shushers.

“It’s me, Jimmy. And I want the same thing you want. Only more.”

“So you’re not going to tell me who you are, is that it?”

“I’ll tell you who I am, Garth. I’m your friend.”

“Look, if you don’t mind me saying so, Jimmy, you’re a very creepy guy. To tell the truth, you—of all the people mixed up in this business—have convinced me I’d have a healthier future if I back away from this thing. But the State of Vermont has different ideas.”

“Creepy?” Kim looked genuinely hurt, stroking his thin mustache. “I never thought of myself as creepy. If it was anybody else, Garth, I’d be offended. And here I am trying to help you extricate yourself from the jam you’re in.”

“Help me? You know what’s going on, right? You can help get me out of this mess?”

“What are the magic words?”

“Okay,” I sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for calling you creepy.”

“That’s okay, Garth. You’re under some stress here.” He slapped my knee. “Look, how about I see what I can do—as a friend—to sort of pave your way south, get the district attorney to see what a good egg you are? You’ll go home then, won’t you? Leave this dirty business to me?”

“You betcha I will. I’ll try.”

“Try?” He tittered.

“This crow is like gum on my shoe. I wipe it off and step right back into it.”

“That’s not entirely true. You didn’t have to go back to Bermuda, now, did you? For a fifty-dollar crow?” He stood and gave his knuckles a self-satisfied crack.

“Scout’s honor, I’ll forget about the crow. You and your friends can have him.”

He smiled, turned to go, but came back and leaned over me. “By the way, Garth, this is just between you and me, okay? You wouldn’t want to spoil everything.”

I shook my head. “Believe me, if it means getting out of this and back home, scot-free, I’m your best friend.”

Now, what should I have done?

A. Call the police. (Yeah, right . . .)

B. Call my public defender. (Remember the weenie fork?)

C. Follow him. (Hell, I didn’t even want him following me.)

D. Threaten him. (With what? My disapproval?)

E. Punch him. (I liked this idea a whole lot at the time.)

I still don’t know. As a New Yorker, though, my instincts are not to go to the cops about somebody who may well have influence. In the Big Apple, you don’t rat out someone who can put the fix in to make the traffic cops go easy on your block’s parking tickets or get the postman not to crumple your mail. Cops have their own wiles, their own secret ways and motivations. The way I always figure it, the police are in a really difficult spot, floating in a Bermuda Triangle between the criminals, the public, and the courts, and the whims of either on a given day may set their moral compasses spinning. DAs are all about convictions, so definitely not on my side. Go to pencil-muncher Phil, who’s already doubting me, with a story about a threatening, friendly Korean? Don’t think so. Anyway, I finger Jimmy, or follow, or do anything to irk him . . . Who knows? He could make it worse for me—I could get twenty-five years.

It briefly made sense that he might be in cahoots with Bret’s cohorts, sent here—as before—to steer me away from the crow. But he’d talked about smoothing things over with the DA for me. I just couldn’t fathom how someone with connections like that, someone with political pull, would be involved with those lunkheads who’d stolen my stuffed crow. From the way my preppy Korean friend talked and dressed, he didn’t seem like a confederate of Slim’s. Jimmy wasn’t at the Maple Motor Court bar, and he was definitely too tall and far too composed to be one of the guys who pillaged my apartment. He was slick and would have had pros do his dirty work. Clearly, he had interests of his own. No doubt he wanted the crow for himself, or at least for Bret’s crew to have it.

But why? Whose interests did he represent?

Motives? Love or money, and my money was on money. Whatever was going on, there was a lot of moola involved, that was for sure.

Throw it in a pot and boil it down, I had no one I could trust to act in my best interest other than me. Clearly, the best path for me wasn’t to find some stuffed crow of no intrinsic value or to track down the people who accosted Angie and me. There was no reason to put my neck on the line. None at all.

On the other hand, forsake not the fig leaf of prudence for naked practicality. I mean, it wouldn’t hurt to try and get a little more background on the players, just in case Kim didn’t command as much influence in this affair as he claimed. For now I was still in dutch, so it couldn’t hurt to make a few phone calls, could it? I dropped a dime and photocopied the obituary.

Chapter 14

W
here was Angie? There were no messages back at the hotel, and I was worried. She’d been gone about four hours and should be at Mallard Island already. But I managed to calm myself somewhat. At least she was far away from Slim, Angus, and my “friend” Jimmy. Among all the other wacko stuff coming down the pike, I found that reassuring, I can tell you.

So I turned my attention back to Bret’s obituary, which read:

Bret Fletcher, 25, of Brendille Lane, was the victim of a hit-and-run accident outside the Maple Motor Court. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Circumstances of his death are still unclear at press time. It appears he was chased into the road by one of the motel guests, who mistook him for a prowler.

Fletcher graduated from Daniel Webster High School, and subsequently took several credits in veterinary sciences at Portland College, Oregon. He worked two summers with Faldo Amusements, a traveling carnival. Last summer, Fletcher took an internship with the Primate Department at the Portland Wildlife Conservancy.

Bret Fletcher is survived by his mother, Bernadette Fletcher, of Guilford. Services will be held at the North Guilford Funeral Home this coming Saturday.

Well,
Phil,
looks like you didn’t quite have the whole story. Or chose not to tell me. Or didn’t care enough to tell me.

Primate Department. That didn’t set off any bells, but it was a whole heck of a lot more to go on than carnival workers.

I got on the horn to the conservancy in Oregon. “Yes, could I please speak with someone in the Primate Department?” They switched me around.

“Yello?” somebody sighed in Portland. She sounded like a refugee from a truck-stop lunch counter.

“Hi, my name is Carson, and I’ve been retained to investigate the circumstances of Bret Fletcher’s death. If I may, I’d like to ask—”

“The police already called. If it’ll make you happy, I’ll tell you what I tol’ them.” Truck Stop didn’t give me a chance to answer. “Bret was a bright kid, good with the animals. He was almost always on time and a good summer intern. Most of the folks in the department are older than him, an’ since we didn’t socialize, I don’t know who his friends are. He had a basement apartment a few miles from here.” Truck Stop sighed again. “Look, I gotta go, awright?”

“Did you ever see him with a white crow?”

Another sigh. “A what?”

“A white crow?”

“Like a bird? No. Just primates. Simian anthropoids. Apes.”

“What duties did he have?”

“Whadda you mean? You mean like cleaning cages, feeding? What’s this, the third degree?”

I felt she was about to hang up, and I figured my sex appeal wasn’t going to keep her on the line. After sex and money, guilt usually proves a pretty good motivator. “Sorry to cut into your coffee break, but Fletcher’s mother, a little rosy-cheeked old lady in a little white house surrounded by posies, is crying her eyes out right now, brokenhearted. Her only son is dead and she needs to know why.” I surprised myself; a sob caught in my throat. “Are you going to help Mrs. Fletcher or hang up on her?”

“Dang . . .” Truck Stop said slowly. “I didn’t know it was ’xactly like that, y’know.”

“So, what animal did he spend the most time with?”

“But I don’t see what use . . .”

Neither did I. Just trying to open this clam. “I assure you, these questions have a direct bearing on his murder.”

Truck Stop harrumphed. “Glenda and Gobo. He spent lots of time with them. Not common with interns.”

“Excuse me?”

“Bret liked taking care of Glenda and Gobo. Mountain gorillas. Wasn’t like we let him get in the cage with ’em. You know, a rapport. He fed ’em. Same you get with a cat. It rubs against your leg when it knows you got tuna. Except they’d probably rip his brains out by his nose. Yello?”

“I’m here. Very interesting. Did anybody else take care of the gorillas?”

“Of course. You don’t think we’re gonna let a bio intern be in charge of a half million bucks worth of ape?”

“Half million?”

“Look, he had nothing to do with the Glenda and Gobo thing, if that’s what you’re gettin’ at.”

“Pardon?”

“Look, I’d like to talk, but—”

“What Glenda and Gobo thing?”

“Dang, don’t you read the papers?”

“I’m out east.” Boy, Truck Stop was as annoying as Mrs. Fletcher was damning. “What Glenda and Gobo thing?”

“Gobo died on accident, got hold of some cleaning fluid.”

“On
accident?”

“On accident.”

A little flicker, a little tingle, a little notion popped into my head. As morbid as it sounds, I have a contact, a disinterested techie at the World Wildlife Conservancy Fund, who lets me know when something interesting dies at a zoo. They track captive-animal mortality. Tiger cubs, chimps, and other endearing critters I don’t make a bid for, knowing full well that the zoo would have political if not staff problems if they sold the carcass. Besides, many of those are dissected for pathology studies. Deceased birds of prey and parrots I almost always inquire after and often get them in exchange for a donation. It works out for me, because having exotic birds stuffed isn’t usually as expensive as exotic mammals.

“What did they do with the body?”

“Who is they?”

“What happened to the body?”

“Buried. Buncha folks in town here put together a collection for the funeral.” There was a soft chuckle. “People get pretty soft when it comes to gorillas. Bought a plot for her an’ everything.”

“In a pet cemetery?”

“Uhn-uhn. In a human cemetery. I thought it was kinda sick, embalming, a coffin, an’ all that.” The tone darkened suddenly. “If they wanted to do something nice, they shoulda planted Gobo in a rain forest, in a nice nest of leaves. Public relations, don’tcha know. Yello?”

“Who was at the funeral?”

“Everybody.”

“Could you narrow it down a bit?”

“Everybody from the department, a lot of donors, the mayor—stuff like that.”

“And Bret, right? Was he with any friends then? A happy Korean guy maybe?”

“I tol’ you, I never met or saw any friendsa his, happy or otherwise. Bret was there with the department and the funeral director.”

“Who?”

“With us. But he was the one who found a funeral parlor that would do the embalming. So he was with the funeral director a lot, y’know, for the arrangements.”

“What funeral parlor?”

“MacTeague’s . . . Yello? Yello?”

“Guy with black hair?”

“Hair as red as a clown’s, actually. Scotch, I think.”

“Thank you very much for your time. Sorry to trouble you.”

“Yeah, okay.”

I depressed the receiver and let it up to make the next call.

“Yello?” Truck Stop was still on the line.

“Good-bye, thanks a million!”

This time I held it down for a full minute.

I called information, then MacTeague’s Funeral Home.

“Yes, is Mr. MacTeague there?”

“Regrettably, no.” A soothing voice replied, the antithesis to Truck Stop. “He’s away for the week. My name is Norman. May I serve you?”

“Well, yes, um, I had spoken with Mr. MacTeague about some arrangements.”

“Ah yes, arrangements. Our continuing condolences.” Norman’s timbre could smooth over a bed of nails. “Name?”

“You see, well, we never got as far as that, we only spoke briefly. I’m out east, in Vermont, and we were thinking of a burial out west. He said he was planning a trip here and that we might consult in person.”

“Hmm, yes. Too bad. He’s currently in Maine, on other business. He’s due back tomorrow. Let me take your name, and I’ll have him call.”

“Thanks just the same.” I hung up.

I was beginning to feel a bit more like a detective. But I decided to fight the odds and see if I couldn’t make a few honest bucks.

I called all the chums I’d tried to reach that morning and predictably found that nobody knew of any white crows except the one at the Terry Brisbane Taxidermy Museum. At the same time, I managed to conduct a little more business, which was good, because I was living on Visa and running my business into the ground by staying away from the shop.

I had a call on my machine from Gillie, a fifties’ retro dealer in Charleston, who said he had a customer who wanted a moose, which are slim pickins down thataway. I left a message on his machine that I could ship one out to him next week for eight fifty plus crating and shipping, which probably would let him cut a couple hundred out for himself. I asked, by the by, whether he had any dolphin (the fish, not the mammal), which are a hot item in the northeast but overflow the back rooms of some taxidermists in Florida. A lot of tourists catch fish but balk when it comes time to foot the bill.

Then I called Oscar in Rangely (who almost always has a couple midsize, fair-priced Bullwinkles) and rounded out the deal, copping a hundred for yours truly. But that wasn’t going to excite my checking account any, so I asked Oscar if he could move any dolphin. I heard him scratch his stubble, then say, “Just might,” which in his lexicon meant yes.

May seem easy, but it’s not every day that I can clear three hundred for the price of a few phone calls. Might even break even for the week if I could work a little more magic. Which reminded me that I had to call the Network Theater again and check on my bear. Turns out they’d used her the night before, in a taped segment. The bit went well, and the celeb host Buddy wanted to rent Aunt Jilly for a month. Hot damn. They could have bought her for two weeks’ rent, though I had little doubt the thing would be returned in bad condition after all that time in a studio. The dry heat of stage lights combined with sloppy stagehands really takes it out of a mount. So I leveled with them, said they might as well buy the bear. No way. Had something to do with how their budget works. Fine.

I pulled a piece of paper from my wallet, the one Pete Durban had given me in the Ernest Borgnine booth, and unfolded it. I ran my finger above the bit about the white crow to where it read
MOOSE HEAD 4 SALE
and then dialed the number.

A sleepy female voice answered tentatively: “’lo?”

“Hi, I’m calling about the moose head, the one that must go, you haul?”

“Yes. What?”

“You have a moose head for sale?”

“Why, yes . . .”

“I’m interested in buying it. Do you still have it?”

“Hello?”

“Moose head. You have one for sale.”

“Why, yes . . .”

“How much is it?”

“The moose head?”

Is it just me, or are there some days everybody else seems to be running on AAA batteries?

“Yes.” I winced. “The moose head. How much is it?”

“When can you come by?”

“I don’t know where you live,” I sighed.

“It’s fifty dollars.”

My fist tightened around the receiver.

“Where do you live?”

“On Dewberry Road. When can you come by?”

I jotted the road down.

“I’ll come right over as soon as you tell me what state you’re in.”

Nothing.

“Hello?”

Still nothing. I heard a click. The line was dead.

I redialed and found the line busy. Waited five minutes. Still busy. Was someone doing this to me on purpose? I could picture an old woman in a TV lounger in front of
Golden Girls,
still cradling the receiver, mouth open, eyes closed and snoring. For crying out loud.

Next call: home. Now, in person, it’s difficult communicating with Otto. Over the phone, well, it’s like talking to your dog. But like any bad dog, he knows a few key words.

“No smoking in house!”

“Ah, Garv, very nice!”

“Everything okay?”

“Vhat? Eetz looking, yes, of course. Garv, how Yangie? Eh?”

“Good.”

“Vere you, Garv? Vac-ate-ton? Eh? Wodka, maybe svimming pool, naked veemin? Naked veemin beach?”

“Vermont, Otto. No nude beaches.”

“Ah, good, eetz looking: Vere Mont. Many trees, bird, air good. Maybe I go Vere Mont, yes? Otto verk all time. Maybe Otto vac-ate-ton, eh?”

“Look, Otto, get a pencil. . . .”

“Pencil, yes . . .”

“I want to let you know where we are. Ready?”

“Yes, I ready.”

“Angie and Garth are at the I-N-T-E-R-S-T-A-T-E M-O-T-O-R L-O-D-G-E.” My enunciation was as elongated as possible. “That’s in B-R-A-T-T-L-E- B-O-R-O, V-E-R-M-O-N-T.” I capped it all off with the phone number. “Got that?”

“But of course, Interstate Motor Lodge, Brattleboro, Vere Mont.”

“Okay. We’ll see you soon.”

“Soon?
Ahoyatilne!”
That last exclamation is yet another Russian tidbit, one based upon a certain aspect of the male anatomy. It could mean almost anything but was always an exclamation. “Eetz looking, Garv! I see you soon, yes, of course. I very heppy.” There was a click and he was gone.

I called him back.

“Garv! Very nice speaking again, my friend.”

“Don’t hang up until I tell you, okay?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I need you to pick up the penguins. They’re in Astoria. The address is on the rental-slip pile on my desk. Do you understand?”

“Yes, of course. Dopey, Sleepy, Heppy, Doc . . .”