The Mezzo Wore Mink (36 page)

“
Ah. That explains it then. You know that Dave and Nancy have broken up?”

“
What?
I mean…yes, of course.”

Meg laughed. “I haven’t had a trim in over a month, Mr. Detective. Dave and Nancy broke up last week.”

“
Anything else I should know about?”

“
I’ll let you know.”

The sun rose over the squalid city like a giant, orange star of the spectral class G2V, implying a surface temperature of 5780 degrees Kelvin and actually white, although it appeared to be the aforementioned orange due to the scattering of blue photons in the atmosphere and its relative position on the horizon, and it felt like heaven.

Suddenly a shot rang out. A woman screamed. A dog barked, a car honked and a marching band came down the street playing “Moonlight Over Milwaukee.” This wasn’t heaven. I grabbed my hat, jumped out of bed, put on my hat, then changed my mind, put it back on the nightstand, and reached for my heater. I was a split-second too late. Stretched out on the floor was Barbara Seville, her mink nightie askew and a mink covered sub-machine gun in her lifeless hand. Standing in the doorway were Marilyn and Pedro LaFleur. Marilyn—my ace secretary—was sporting a couple of smoking 38s. Pedro had a gun.

“
She was going to ice you,” said Pedro. “Marilyn followed you up, but I knew you’d be here.” He grinned. “You never could resist a mezzo.”

“
It’s the mellifluous timbre of that middle register,” I said wistfully. “The dark sensuousness of musical desire aching for a suspended climax. It’s like the call of the siren.”

Pedro nodded and holstered his piece. “You and Rossini.”

“
You know the scam?” I asked, mentally tracing the Diva’s outline in chalk.

“
Yeah. Ginger had me working on it, too.”

Marilyn tried on one of the mink coats hanging in the closet. “How does this one look?”

“
Looks great,” said Pedro, admiring the view. Then he turned back to me. “We’d better cheese it. The bishops will be as steamed as six pounds of mountain oysters when they find out this has gone bad.”

“
I’m not going to tell them,” I said. “I’ve got no pig in this hunt.”

“
How about this one?” called Marilyn from the closet.

“
Take ‘em both,” said Pedro. “This case is closed.”

“
I sense that you’re wrapping it up,” said Meg. “But I never knew you were attracted to mezzos.”

“
Not me. The detective.”

“
One and the same,” said Meg.

“
Well,” I said. “Maybe I am. Actually,
you’re
probably a mezzo. Not a soprano.”

“
I know. Would you like to hear the mellifluous timbre of my middle register? Maybe feel the dark sensuousness of my musical desire aching for a suspended climax?”

“
You bet!”

“
Well, forget it, Buster. Not till after the wedding.”

•••

The leaves had peaked, faded, and were now coming down in bunches, covering the mountains in a soft, multicolored blanket. Billy Hixon had his crews out almost every morning with rakes and leaf blowers, filling giant plastic bags and hauling them somewhere up in the hills. There were still those folks who burned their leaves, and although it was now illegal in town, the smell was delicious and no one bothered the offenders as long as they were careful. The mornings had turned cold, hoarfrost covering the ground and lasting until midmorning—even later in areas that were steeped in shade. It was on one of these white mornings that I got an early call.

“
You’d better come on in,” said Nancy. “I just got off the phone with Panty Patterson. It seems that Dale’s been holding out on us.”

“
Dale?”

“
Panty wants to tell us when we get there. He doesn’t want us to bring Dale in. Says it’ll terrify him.”

I sighed and looked at my watch. 5:30 a.m. “All right. Give me about forty-five minutes. I’ve still got to shower and feed the boys.”

“
Hurry up. They’re waiting for us at the crematorium. They’ve been up all night.”

Baxter was asleep in front of the fireplace taking advantage of the warmth generated by the dying coals from last night’s fire. I reached down, patted his shaggy head and then knelt and shook him awake, making sure I scratched his belly in the process. He rolled onto his back in appreciation and let his tongue loll out of his mouth, looking at me through half-closed eyes.

“
Get up, old dog! You want to go for a walk?”

The magic words got Baxter immediately to his feet and bounding toward the kitchen door. I wasn’t going to take him far—just to the end of the drive and back, but he was always happy to be asked. I took a minute to get a couple of mice out of the refrigerator and leave them on the windowsill for Archimedes. As the weather chilled, he’d spend more time indoors, but for now, the owl was out hunting all night, returning around dawn—still a good hour away this time of year. Baxter and I jogged down to the end of the drive and back and I put his bowl of food down outside the kitchen. He dove into it and I left him to his repast. I still had to shower, grab something to eat and be in town in thirty minutes.

I picked up Nancy at her house and we headed out to the crematorium. It was still dark, but starting to lighten with the first rays of the sun as we pulled up to the main building, the tires of my old truck crunching on the gravel drive. We walked up to the door. It was unlocked and ajar. I pushed it open and we walked into the dimly lit space. As our eyes adjusted, we could see Panty and Dale playing cards at the small table in front of the furnaces. We walked over.

“
Hey,” said Dale, not looking up. It was another game of War and Dale was concentrating hard. The cards were thrown down and snapped up at a blistering pace. The thing about this particular game, a game we had played as kids when there was nothing else to do, is that it can take
hours.
In fact, as long as both players hold an ace, the game will go on forever. As a kid, I don’t think I’d ever played the game out to the end. I just didn’t have the patience. Dale and Panty were going at it though, hammer and tongs.

“
Okay,” said Nancy, finally. “That’s enough.” She slapped her hand down on the pile of cards in the middle of the table with a smack.

Both men looked up at her, startled.

“
I want Dale to talk to us,” she said.
“Right now.”
There was no mistaking her tone. Dale and Panty didn’t move. They sat, dumbfounded, in their matching overalls and white collared shirts, buttoned to the neck.

“
Now!” she said.

“
Yes,” said Panty, relaxing, his white skin glowing eerily in the fluorescent light. “Dale needs to talk to you.”

We both looked at Dale. He started chewing on his bottom lip and ran a hand through his fine, blonde hair.

“
Dale,” I said. “You have something to tell us?”

He nodded.

“
Go on, Dale. Tell them what you told me last night,” said Panty.

“
Well..I…” started Dale. “I didn’t tell you before ‘cause I fergot.”

“
It’s all right,” I said. “Tell us now.”

Dale looked over at Panty with a confused look on his face. “What am I tellin’ them?”

“
About Miss Thelma,” Panty said.

“
Oh, yeah. The day before Miss Thelma died, she asked me to drive her when she went to that house beside the church.”

“
The Upper Womb?”

Dale shrugged. “Don’t know what it is now. It used to be Miss McCarty’s house. Anyway, I picked her up and drove her over.”

“
Did you drop her off and leave?” asked Nancy.

“
She didn’t want me to. She says for me to wait in the car right here in the alley beside these bushes. But she cain’t talk, you know? She’s all whispery-like. And she says ‘When I blow this horn, you come runnin’ and I says ‘Okay, I will.’ She says ‘If’n you don’t hear me blow it after about ten minutes, you go on home.’ Then she goes ’round back and I heard her unlock the gate.”

“
How long did you wait?”

Dale shrugged. “A little while, I guess. So then I hear this other voice—I’m pretty sure it’s a woman—and she says ‘I’ll give you twenty thousand for the head.’ And then I don’t hear nothin’ and then I hear ‘Okay, twenty-five.’ And then, nothin’ again and then I hear ‘You’re makin’ a big mistake,’ and then nothin’.”

“
So what did you do?” asked Nancy.

“
Well, I waited and waited and I never did hear no horn, so I came on home.”

“
How come you didn’t tell us this when we discovered Davis’ head missing?” Nancy said.

Dale was incredulous and his voice went up about an octave. “I thought they was talking about hogs or cattle or some such thing. Panty only just told me it might be Davis they was talking about.”

“
Calm down, Dale,” I said. “You’re not in trouble. Tell me, when you picked Miss Thelma up, did she have her purse with her?”

Dale snorted and his voice returned to normal. “Shore. A big black one.”

“
Did you recognize the other voice?”

“
No, sir. I’m pretty sure it was a woman though. It was sort of high, but she warn’t talkin’ very loud.”

“
Did the other person know you were there?”

“
Prob’ly heard the car drive off, but she didn’t see me if that’s what you mean.”

•••

“
A new twist,” I said to Nancy as we climbed back into the truck.

“
Indeed. A woman. Maybe Lacie?”

“
Maybe. She certainly looks good for it. They were poisoning Thelma, that’s for sure, but she has an alibi for Sunday night through Tuesday. On Monday, she and Chad were at their naked meeting in Galax, Virginia.”

“
Well,” Nancy admitted, flipping through her notebook, “we didn’t actually check that alibi, because, at that point, we thought that Thelma had died of natural causes.”

“
Time to check,” I said.

“
It should be easy. All the DANGLs are getting ready for their convention out at Camp Possumtickle. I’ll just go have a talk with them.”

“
Camp Daystar,” I corrected.

“
Not yet,” said Nancy. “They haven’t actually signed the papers. I’ve heard rumblings from some folks in town. The populace is not keen on a Christian nudist colony only three miles from St. Germaine. Why do you think that is?”

“
We shall leave that question to the philosophers,” I said. “It seems that now we have a murder to solve.”

“
So what if Lacie’s alibi checks out?”

“
Then we’ll have to look elsewhere.”

“
Any ideas? Another woman perhaps?”