Tinkerbell on Walkabout (4 page)

The Sheriff’s guys spend hours in the lot, combing through
the wreck and the surrounding area. Bob’s body is photographed and dusted, then
taken away in an ambulance. July and I answer questions and watch the flow of
detectives.

Their questions are easy to answer unless I think about what
they mean. I try not to. I pretend I’m in a crime scene training exercise, and
that the accuracy of my account means no more than a good grade. Underneath my
false calm, I twitch like I’m
tied to an anthill. I’ve known Bob Wray a handful of days, but still feel an
urgent need to know who could have killed that big, sweet man—and why.

But for now, I answer questions, not ask them.

When the detectives are done with the office, leaving
fingerprinting dust everywhere, July and I tidy up. Perry is still out on the
lot, guiding an exhaustive search. Meanwhile, officers have gone to his
apartment. That they don’t find anything is evidenced by the fact that they
don’t arrest him. I hear him tell the cops he doesn’t own a gun. They test him
for residue anyway and apparently find nothing. His fingerprints everywhere are
no surprise; it would be weird if they weren’t everywhere, in fact.

In the course of straightening Bob’s desk I discover how
truly obsessed he was with order. On the flip side of his desk mat-cum-calendar
is a hand-drawn grid laminated in thick, clear plastic. In each square of the
grid, is a notation in dry erase marker. The first three cells of the grid
read: BLHOAC86, RDTOCO92, and TN/RDBUSP44.

“What are these?”

July peers over my shoulder. “Not vehicle ID numbers. Wrong
format.”

“Oh, wait, I get it. I’ll bet this is how Bob keeps track of
cars. If the grid represents the lot, then BLHOAC86 might be Blue Honda
Accord—1986. And this one, I think is a Red 1982 Toyota Corolla.”

July nods and goes back to dusting.

I follow up on my suspicion. I go to the chain link fence
and peer through into the wrecking yard. The car nearest me in the row along
the fence is a silver blue Accord. I can’t make out the model of the car on the
far side of it, because it looks like a concertina. But it’s definitely a
Toyota, and what’s left of its paint is bright red. I’ll have to take Bob’s
word that it was once a Corolla.

“What happened, Bob?” I murmur, pressing my forehead to the
cold wet metal. “What happened back there that was worth your life? Did you
catch Perry stealing? Did you have an argument that got out of hand? Can you
give me some help here?”

I realize one hand is wrapped around my pocketed
obereg
and willfully detach it. I consider the possibilities. Maybe someone had been
using Bob’s beloved wrecks
for target practice and he’d
simply gotten in the way. I make a mental note to ask the detectives if they’d noticed bullet holes in any of
the other cars.

Back in the office I take another look at the chart. Bob had
faithfully reproduced the way the highway and county road squeezed his property
into an uneven rectangle, wider at the southern end. Kind of like a pie wedge
with a couple of bites gone.

My eyes go against my will to the farthest corner. GROLCU77,
it says, and my brain does a slow tilt.

“Jules, the car Bob’s body was in—it was a Chrysler LeBaron,
right?”

“Yeah. Why?”

I turn the mat around and show her. “Bob’s chart says it’s
an Olds Cutlass.”

She snatches the mat and charges outside. Trailing behind, I
watch her ambush one of the plainclothes guys emerging from the yard. She hands
the chart to him, gesturing at the now open gate.

By the time I stroll over, she’s saying: “Look at this one. According to
this chart, we should have found Bob Wray’s body in an Olds Cutlass, not a
Chrysler LeBaron.”

The detective shrugs. “So, the chart’s wrong.”

“I don’t think so,” I say. “Bob Wray was fanatically
organized. I doubt he’d make that kind of mistake.”

His eyes move from the chart to my face. “And you are . . . ?”

July says: “This is Gina Miyoko. We found the body.”

“You a detective?” he asks me.

“Not professionally, no.”

He gives me an eloquent look and returns the chart to July.
“This chart is only meaningful if it’s one-hundred percent accurate. You have
any idea how long it would take to establish that? I’m not sure it would mean
anything even then. Maybe Dixon put the car there and neglected to tell Mr.
Wray he’d done it. Or maybe Wray put it there, but hadn’t gotten around to
changing the notation.”

“But you’ll check it out, right?” I ask.

“Excuse me, I have work to do.” Mr. Plainclothes turns away
and heads for his car.

“I’ll just
bet his name’s Dick,” I say.

“You think that’s how it happened?” July asks.

“What—the LeBaron?”

“Yeah. Bob never got the chance to write it down, or didn’t
know it was there?”

“In the end he knew it was there.”

We return to the office where Perry is standing in the doorway,
looking gray and weary.

“They’re letting me go home,” he tells us. “I gotta think
about things—like what I’m going to do for a living.”

“Any chance you can keep the lot open?” July asks.

“Maybe. Not sure for how long, though. He might have
relatives somewhere . . .” He shrugs, then turns and starts to
reach for the empty peg by the office door. “Oh, dammit, they took my effing
jacket.” He stares at the empty peg as if his train of thought has derailed.

“Perry,” I say, “how often did Bob update this chart?”

“What?” He pulls his eyes from the coat peg.

“The chart that shows all the cars in the lot. How often did
he update it?”

“Every time something changed.”

“Literally every time? Car comes in, you find a spot, and
Bob writes it in?”

“Yeah, Bob was kind of maniacal about that. I think he had
OCD or something.”

“So it’s accurate.”

“Yeah, it’s accurate. Why?”

“Because the car we found Bob’s body in isn’t on the chart.”

I keep my eyes firmly on Perry’s face, looking for what, I’m
not sure. It’s hard to believe he’d kill Bob, racial bigotry notwithstanding.
What I see is a slight widening of the eyes, a flush of color to the neck and
ears.

“You’re
kidding.”

“No. Right color; wrong make and model. Did you put it
there?”

“No,” he says, then: “I’ve gotta go home.”

We watch him lock up, then stand in the soaked parking lot
like a couple of cows too dumb to get out of the rain. The whole thing feels so
unreal. My stomach growls loudly, reminding me of the lamb vindaloo I’d never
gotten for lunch.

“I think it means something,” I say.

July whistles the iconic five-note
Close Encounters
melody. “I’m not taking you
any place that serves mashed potatoes.”

“I’m serious, Jules.”

She looks up at the clouds. They shed tears in her face.
“Yeah. What do you think it means?”

“It means Bob thought there was a different car in that
corner because he didn’t put the Chrysler there. Which could mean that Perry
was moving some of Bob’s inventory on the sly.”

“Selling cars off the lot without Bob knowing? Why? I mean,
how much is a twisted pile of metal worth? Besides, that leads to the
conclusion that Perry killed him. Weak motive.”

I glance over at the now padlocked gate. “How long do you
think the crime tape will stay up?”

“Okay, Tink, what are you thinking?”

I shrug. “I’d just like to take a look around back there.
There wasn’t much opportunity before, and my mind was on other things. One
thing I want to know is if any of the other cars have bullet holes in them.”

“Ask.”

“You think Dick Plainclothes would tell me?”

She gives me a speculative look. “Maybe you
should
become a P.I. Then at least you indulge this morbid curiosity of yours
legally.”

In Sacramento the next day, July and I and try to get into
the hunting/gathering spirit. I’m
unaware I’m even thinking
about Bob’s murder until
lunch. I open my mouth for a bite of vindaloo and blurt: “Perry can’t be selling cars off the lot.
Then the cars would be
gone
, not
different
.”

“Maybe Cutlasses bring more on the black market,” July
answers without missing a bite.

Despite the fact that we are sitting in an Indian restaurant
eating food that causes euphoria, and discussing China patterns, she makes a
seamless transition to murder and mayhem. I love that about July.

“Even so,” I say, “it’s hard to imagine anybody committing
murder over an old wreck.”

“Unless they got caught stealing it.”

“Yeah, but murder?”

“Or an accident. Maybe whoever killed Bob didn’t mean to do
it. But having done it . . .”

“You think the dog was an accident, too?”

“Maybe. Or maybe the perp was shooting at the dog and Bob
tried to stop him.”

Her logic is appealing. Bob’s lot is being vandalized, the vandals go from taking pot shots at
the cars to taking pot shots at the dogs. Bob walks into the middle of it and
things go from mischief to murder.

The Sheriff’s Department likes that theory too. The problem
is, they only find three bullets: one in Bob, one in the car, and one in the
ground near the car. The last of these has doggie blood on it. Three bullets is
hardly target practice.

There is also the fact that the bullets are from different
guns. The ones that took nibbles out of the rear quarter panel of the car and
the Lab’s hip are from a Saturday night special, the one that killed Bob is
from a Glock. That ballistics bulletin doesn’t explode the favored theory, but
it makes it less tidy.

By the time I leave Grass Valley, the Sheriff’s Department
is settling in for a long haul, crosschecking the million or so fingerprints
they’ve collected from the car and garage, and thoroughly tossing the wrecking
yard. So I’m surprised when, a little over two weeks later, July calls in a
deep funk to report that the case has been all but shelved.

“So far, Perry is the closest thing to a suspect they’ve got
and he was with his girlfriend until around three a.m. The time of death was no
later than one. Right now, they’ve got two detectives on the case part time and
they’re not doing jack. The D.A.’s
put some pressure on them, but the Sheriff says they don’t have the resources
to maintain a full investigation. And I can’t help but think . . .” There is an uncomfortable
silence.

“What?”

“I think maybe they’d try harder if it was someone else. If . . . if it
wasn’t Bob.”

“You mean, if he wasn’t
black
?
For God’s sake, July—tell me
that’s not what you mean.”

“A couple of years ago, a black man got beat up by a bunch
of white kids hanging out in a local park. No one in the Sheriff’s office would
admit it was racially motivated, despite eyewitness accounts to the contrary.
If the D.A. hadn’t been such a bulldog, that poor man would have been blamed
for instigating his own beating.”

“You’re
saying nothing can be done.”

“They’ve got no perp, no murder weapon, and no leads. None
of the prints on the car are complete and none match anything in the AFIS
database. Dammit, Gina, two agents who think they’ve hit a dead end are not
going to solve this.”

“Have you asked Perry if there’ve been any more strange
goings on in the yard?”

“He says not. The theory is that Bob caught some vandals in
the act. They killed him, maybe accidentally, and aren’t likely to return to
the scene of their crime. They’ll find some other place to hang.”

“Yeah, or they might figure that with Bob gone, they’ve got
no reason to suspend their activities.”

“What activities?”

“Activities that caused them to swap a green Chrysler LeBaron
for a green Olds Cutlass.”

July is silent in a way that is not at all silent, then
asks: “How soon can you be back up here?”

I’m in
Grass Valley by suppertime, packing my Taurus and a new talisman. The
matryoshka
dolls just weren’t cutting it, so I swapped them for a
Saint Boris medal. Saint Boris’ feast
day happens to coincide with my birthday, which allegedly makes him
particularly interested in my welfare.