The Readaholics and the Gothic Gala (11 page)

“That's what I just said, isn't it?” She looked wistful. “I wanted to go to that party—I love a good costume party. Trent and me once won a prize at a Halloween party, for best couple's costume. It was a party at the restaurant where my cousin Delania works. They got the best fried shrimp in Trenton, although Delania tells me they recycle the rolls off customers' plates—just pop 'em back into the warmer to serve again. Can youse imagine? Anyways, I got a big box, tall as I am, and cut out holes for my arms and head, and then I painted it red. I was a brick, and Trent went as a
bricklayer. Get it?” She gave a throaty laugh, delighted by the memory.

“Saturday night?”

“I was just gettin' to that.” She gave me a hurt look. “So, Trent tells me I can't come, even though I am the sexiest vampire that ever lived if you just give me some fishnet hose and a set of fangs.” She bared her teeth. “He says that I have to stay at that fleabag motel or go to a movie while he meets the mark. That's what he called him—or her—‘the mark.' He took the package with him, and said he should be back in two hours, three tops, with the money. Five hundred K.” Her eyes widened at the thought. “He said if he wasn't back by midnight that I should skedaddle, ditch the hotel, and get out of town.”

“But you didn't.”

“Is it likely I'm gonna let someone get away with killing my Trent?” she said, the steely look back in her eyes. It was odd how such warm-colored eyes could look so cold.

“Of course not,” I said.

“If we were back in Jersey, I know plenty a guys I could call on to help me out with this, but out here, all I got is the cops”—she dismissed them with a wave—“and you. So, you gonna help me, or what?”

“What kind of car?”

Taking the question as my willingness to help her, she nodded with satisfaction and said, “Tan Volkswagen station wagon, older than dirt, with two hundred and twelve thousand miles on it. Total POS, but it got us from Chicago to here, so I guess I shouldn't dis it.”

I wrote the details in my notebook. “License plate?”

She looked sheepish. “I don't remember the whole thing.
H
twenty-three something. We only got the car a month ago, bought it from some dude whose son had gotten a DWI, so he was teaching him a lesson by off-loading his junker. Paid three hundred bucks, cash. We keep a crate of oil in the back because the gas guzzler burns about a quart a day.”

“How are you getting around?”

“Well, I've got my scooter, don't I? We shoved it in the back of the wagon and brought it with us.” She gestured to the east side of the stadium, where I imagined it was parked out of sight.

I thought for a moment, and then said, “It seems to me that if we could find the car, and the package was still in it, that it might tell us who Trent was meeting, or at least give us a clue.”

“You think I haven't thoughta that? Whaddaya think I been doon the last three days? Nothin' but riding my scooter on all the roads around that ritzy country club, looking for the car. Nada. All I got to show for it is a sore butt, a coupla dozen golf balls I can sell, and a great photo of a moose.” She thumbed through the screens on her phone to show me a close-up of a startled bull moose with impressive antlers standing in the middle of a gravel road.

“You're lucky he didn't charge,” I said, handing the phone back. “Moose are unpredictable.”

“Oh, he did,” she said, with a tight smile of satisfaction, “but turns out my scooter is faster than Bullwinkle here.”

“I've got friends who can help look for the car,” I said. I was also planning to give Hart the info, but thought it wise not to mention that to Sharla. “In the meantime, is there anyone else Trent might have talked to about whatever—”

She was shaking her head before I finished. “Nah. He knew better.” She stood and arched her back to stretch it, and then looked over the stadium wall into the parking lot. “What the—?” She whirled to give me an angry look. “The cops! You brought the cops.” She was already descending the bleacher steps as I jumped to my feet and peered over the wall. A police car was pulled to the curb, half a block down from the high school. I was pretty sure the cop was there to hand out speeding tickets to the high schoolers returning from lunch, but Sharla wasn't waiting for my explanation. She was halfway to the field by the time I started after her.

“Sharla—wait! I didn't—I want to help. How do I get in touch with you?”

She didn't slow down, just held up her right hand with the middle finger pointing up.

My heel caught on the edge of a step and my ankle twisted.
Yeow!
The pain pulled me up short. By the time I limped the rest of the way down the stairs, holding one pump in my hand, Sharla had disappeared. Ticked off and hurting, I pulled out my cell phone, but then decided it would be better to tell this story to Hart in person. Gingerly wedging my shoe back onto my foot, I hobbled up the ramp to the parking lot and my van.

O
n the short drive to the police department, I worked out what I was going to say to Hart. My goal was to flood him with all the details Sharla had supplied, hoping to distract him from the fact that I'd agreed to meet a total stranger alone, and that I was once again sticking my nose into police business.

It didn't work. By chance, he and Chief Uggams were chatting in the reception area when I arrived at the police department. Hart, tall and lean, made the chief look even squatter and heavier by comparison. Chief Uggams, a black man with grizzled hair, a barrel chest, and a slight gut made more impressive by his uniform belt loaded with gun, cuffs, baton, and other paraphernalia, played poker with my dad and had known me from birth. He greeted me with a pink-gummed smile. “Amy-Faye, what brings you here?” He hugged me, and I caught a whiff of cherry Jolly Ranchers. “Did Norm send you down to gloat about that four of a kind he tripped me up with Thursday night?”

I smiled. “No, he didn't say anything about it.”

Chief Uggams shook his head. “He played me like a fly fisherman after a trout, and I went for it hook, line,
and sinker. No one bluffs like your dad—you remember that.”

“I will,” I promised.

Hart, who had been studying me since I walked in, broke in to say, “Why don't you come back to my office, Amy-Faye?”

“No hanky-panky on the city's dime,” Chief Uggams said, laughing and giving us a knowing look. He went down the hall toward his office, chuckling.

My face warmed. Did the whole town know that Hart and I were seeing each other? I thought—and not for the first time—that one of the drawbacks of small-town life was the way everyone knew everyone else's business and didn't hesitate to bring it up at embarrassing moments. When Doug Elvaston and I had broken up after dating since high school, I suffered for months from the comments well-meaning neighbors and mere acquaintances had heaped on me, everything from condolences to dating advice. Thank goodness Mabel Appleman, the department's secretary/receptionist/dispatcher, wasn't sitting at the counter. If she had been, the chief's remark would have been all over Heaven before Hart and I got down the hall to his office.

Hart's office was a small room with windows on two sides, one looking out on the lot behind the police station, where three of the department's vehicles currently sat, and the other on the alley running between the department and A World Apart, the travel agency. Paint, flooring, and furniture were all taxpayer-funded blah and utilitarian, but a full set of Sherlock Holmes
novels and short stories was bookended by a plaster deerstalker cap and pipe, a set of golf clubs slouched in one corner, and a stuffed bulldog wearing a red jersey perched atop the printer. His name was Uga and he was the University of Georgia's mascot. A framed photo of Hart's sister and his nephews sat on the credenza, next to a photo of a high-school-aged Hart with his folks and his brother and sister. Their matching smiles made me want to smile.

“What's up?” Hart asked, hitching one buttock onto the front of his desk while I sat in the ladder-back chair facing him. “You look like the cat who just ate the canary.”

I gave it some consideration. “I don't think I actually got the canary,” I said, “but I saw it.” I launched into an account of my meeting and conversation with Sharla, glossing over how and where I met her. “So all we—you—have to do is find the station wagon,” I finished, “and we'll know who Trent went to meet, with any luck.”

Hart tapped a pencil on his desk. “What did this Sharla look like?”

I described her as he took notes. “She said she had a scooter,” I added.

He nodded. “That's helpful.” I thought he might congratulate me on coming up with information that might help solve the case, but he merely asked, “Who was this ‘Frankie Cockroach' that she mentioned would be upset by Van Allen's plan, whatever it was? Extortion, it sounds like.”

“I didn't get a chance to ask her that before she took
off.” Dang. I wasn't cut out to be a police interrogator. I reminded myself that I truly hadn't had time to call Hart before meeting Sharla.

“Did you get the impression he might have followed Van Allen and Sharla here, that he could have caught up with Van Allen?”

It hadn't crossed my mind. I twisted my lower lip and bit it. “She certainly didn't say anything about that. She just mentioned the guy in passing.”

He straightened and I got up. “This is good info,” he said. “We'll put a statewide alert out on Sharla and the Volkswagen. It's possible the killer found it and disposed of it somewhere, but maybe we'll get lucky.”

Relieved that he wasn't chewing me out, I smiled and said, “You don't mind if the Readaholics keep an eye out for it, do you?”

He eyed me. “Not as long as you promise that you'll call me if you find it.”

I crossed my heart, the motion making me think of Sharla. “Promise.”

He took a step closer until no more than two inches separated us. I felt the heat of him and his scent made me flush in a good way. “Still on for tonight?” he murmured.

“Absolutely. Where are we going?”

“How about my place? I can grill, we can drink wine on the deck”—he lowered his voice—“and then maybe there can be some of that hanky-panky the chief doesn't want going on on police property.”

My blood fizzed through my veins like I'd been
infused with champagne. “Sounds great,” I managed to say. “Can I bring anything?”

“A toothbrush?”

His voice was half-serious, half-questioning, and it jolted me. Was he suggesting what I thought he was suggesting? Yes, of course he was. I drew in a breath, not sure if I was ready to move our relationship into bed. My body, warm and tingly with his nearness, informed me that it was definitely ready, but my head wanted to take things slowly.

“A bottle of wine it is,” I said, licking my lips.

He smiled ruefully. “See you at six thirty?”

“Perfect.” I stepped toward the door.

“And don't think I didn't pick up on the fact that you went to meet a possible murder suspect alone,” he said, his voice reverting to “cop” as I twisted the doorknob.

Thinking it wisest not to reply, I scooted through the door with a hasty, “See you later.” His description of Sharla as a possible murder suspect got me thinking, though. Could she have killed Trent? She could have donned her sexy vampire getup and slipped into the party, found Lola's metal stake, and used it to impale her boyfriend, but why kill him there if she wanted him dead? And why come to me for help with finding his murderer? She was already in the clear, with no one having the least notion that she even existed. No, I decided, Sharla wasn't the murderer.

It was after one o'clock and I was starving, so I swung through the Munchery to grab a salad (the Catwoman costume had made me decide to lose five
pounds) and an iced tea, and then headed toward Brooke's house. I got halfway there before remembering that she volunteered at the Heaven Animal Haven on Wednesday afternoons, so I reversed and drove to the animal rescue. HAH was located on five acres of land on the east side of Heaven. Bordered by a scraggly line of lodgepole pines and set three-quarters of a mile off the road, it wasn't the kind of place you'd run across by accident. A mobile home served as the office, while two buildings housing animal kennels and runs took up the rest of the clearing. HAH mostly cared for deserted cats and dogs, but people sometimes brought in wild animals, which volunteers rehabbed, if possible, and released to their habitat. The wild animals stayed on the far side of the compound, completely separate from the domestic pets and the people who came to adopt them.

Brooke's Mercedes was parked outside the office trailer and I parked alongside it. My ankle twinged when I got out, and I almost dropped my salad. Drat that Sharla. A gadget of some kind let out a loud “meow” when I opened the door, and Brooke looked up from the computer. She had her long dark hair back in a loose fishtail braid, and wore her usual subtle makeup. I didn't see any signs of tears, and she greeted me with a smile.

“I've come for lunch,” I announced, looking around. Last time I was in here, there'd been a loose iguana and four people trying to corral it. Today, there was nothing more animated than a stack of kitty litter bags waiting to be hauled out to the cat kennels. Pulling a stool up
to the counter where she sat, I plopped my salad container and iced tea onto the laminate surface. It looked clean enough. Animal intake was in the back building, although sometimes people—witness the iguana incident—brought strays in here by mistake.

“I see you didn't bring me any,” she said.

“I figured you'd have eaten already,” I said, “but if you haven't, I'm happy to share if you've got your own fork.” I nudged the container toward her.

She shook her head. “Thanks, but I ate before I came out here.”

“Sooo?” I said leadingly once I'd swallowed a bite.

Her eyes gleamed and an almost shy smile broke out on her face. “I think she's going to give us the baby, A-Faye.”

I squealed. “Really? Congratulations! I am so, so, so, so happy for you.”

Brooke held up a cautioning hand. “It's not for sure yet. She said she liked us best, that she thought we would be wonderful parents, but that she wanted to think about it overnight. She's supposed to call this afternoon.” She checked her cell phone, which lay beside the computer. “That's why I didn't call you back—because we don't know for sure yet.”

“I'm crossing all my fingers,” I said, doing so and holding them up so she could see.

Her cell rang, playing “Call Me Maybe,” and she snatched it up quickly, then sighed and took the call, mouthing “Troy.” “No, she hasn't called yet,” Brooke said. “Yeah. As soon as I hear.” She set the phone down. “He's antsy, too,” she explained.

I found that reassuring. I hadn't been sure Troy was committed to the idea of a baby at all, much less adopting one. And it didn't help that his parents were vociferously against adoption, not wanting a baby with “who knows what genetic predispositions and antecedents” (as Miss Clarice, his mother, put it) having the Widefield name. “Why would you adopt a mutt when you could have a purebred?” she had, in all seriousness, asked Troy and Brooke.

“The waiting is driving me bonkers. I've had to redo the inputs to this donor spreadsheet four times.” She gestured to the computer screen. “Distract me,” she pleaded.

“I met a woman this morning who said she knew who killed Trent Van Allen,” I said around a mouthful of field greens.

Brooke's perfectly groomed brows soared. “What?”

“She didn't know the killer's name or gender, but other than that, she had him pinpointed.” I grinned at Brooke's confusion, and went on to explain about Sharla's phone call, meeting her at the stadium, and my new quest for the tan station wagon. “Hart wasn't too happy about me meeting Sharla alone, but he says he's okay with us looking for the car, as long as we call him if we find it,” I finished.

Puckering her forehead, Brooke asked, “What do you think was in the package?”

I shrugged. “Beats me. Sharla didn't really offer a theory. It could have been money—money's heavier than you'd expect, and you could get a bunch in a
nine-by-twelve-by-three-inch package if you were using hundreds.”

“That would suggest that Van Allen was buying something, rather than selling something,” Brooke said.

“Who's to say he wasn't?” I licked the last glisten of Italian dressing off my fork. “If not, the possibilities are nearly endless. Collectible baseball cards? Incriminating photos—it'd be a bunch of them if the box weighed so much.”

“Drugs,” Brooke suggested.

“Definitely could be. Rare but valuable snakes,” I guessed, having recently read an article about reptile smuggling.

“Were there airholes in the box?”

“Probably not. Sharla didn't mention any.”

“Not livestock, then. Blood diamonds? Bearer bonds? Keys to a fleet of Maseratis!”

“A suitcase nuke—how big would that have to be? Sex tapes. A priceless artifact. A previously unpublished Agatha Christie novel!”

We were having so much fun with our increasingly outrageous guesses that it took a moment for the sound of Brooke's cell phone ringing to penetrate. When it did, we both shut up and looked at it where it vibrated on the counter. She almost dropped the phone as she grabbed it. Her lower lip trembled when she ID'd the caller, and I knew it was the expectant mother. My stomach felt hollow and I couldn't imagine Brooke's tension.

“Answer it,” I hissed as she hesitated.

“What if she doesn't—”

“Answer it!”

With the air of a French aristocrat approaching the guillotine, she accepted the call and whispered, “This is Brooke.”

Despite a desperate urge to eavesdrop, I figured she needed privacy, so I hopped off the stool and left the trailer, sitting on the steps to watch a couple of Steller's jays screeching at each other. When ten minutes had gone by, I became aware that I was jiggling my foot nervously. I got up and began to pace, scaring away the jays and a chipmunk that had emerged from under the trailer. I kicked at fallen leaves, satisfied by the crunchy-slithery sound they made sliding out of my way. Did the long conversation mean the woman had said yes, and she and Brooke were talking about the details? Or did it mean that she'd said no, and Brooke was trying to compose herself before facing me? Just as I was on the verge of barging back into the trailer, the door swung open.

I stopped on the lowest step and stared up at Brooke. Tears glistened in her eyes.