A Line To Murder (A Puget Sound Mystery) (10 page)

“Orientation for the Puyallup Spring Fair.”

“That again? I can’t see why you bother.”

“Well, not for the money. That’s for sure. It’s minimum wage.” I peered at the pictures on the direction sheet. “I work there because it’s a fun way to use some of my vacation time. I don’t have money to do a lot of traveling, and I meet people. It’s refreshing to make burgers and fries instead of staring at spreadsheets and answering phones all day. Why?”

Dave crossed one knee over the other. He made no attempt to help put the cart together. “I’m taking Francisco to something special at the Church of Divine Humanity and we wanted you to come with us.”

“Are you two fighting?” I occasionally mediated their arguments.

“No, we’re not fighting.” He mimicked my tone. “It’s just something we thought you’d enjoy.”

By then I had the body of the cart assembled and was fitting the brightly painted wheels onto axles. “What is it?”

“I’m not telling. I can see you’re not interested, anyway.” Even pouting, he was a very handsome man, and his white T-shirt showed off his well-toned pecs.

“Oh, Dave, of course I am.” I put a wooden tongue down to give him my full attention. “I’m being rude. I’m sorry. Spill it.”

“Well, I won’t tell you now, but maybe afterwards. When do you do your ‘grease monkey’ thing?”

“Grease monkeys are mechanics, not fry cooks. I’ll work whatever shifts they give me. I don’t know yet”

“Good.” He got up, flexed slightly and fell into a
GQ
pose that seemed to come naturally. “You can have Francisco and me to brunch on Sunday. I’ve got a new Snoqualmie Valley wine for you to try.”

I’m basically lazy and don’t like to be inconvenienced. However, everyone else liked wine so I was trying to acquire a taste. Dave loved brunch on my little balcony because it overlooked the park and his didn’t. When the sun was warm, he’d work on a tan and talk about what was going on in his world. I loved them because he led such an interesting life.

“I’ll make quiche.” I walked with him to the door.

“Great.” He paused. “You had the dead bolt on. Have we had trouble in the building?”

“No, I’m just nervous.”

“I hear you’re checking out Calculating Love.”

I think my mouth dropped open. “How did you know?”

“Never mind that. Hope it works out. You need a man.”

I stuck my tongue out at him and didn’t wait for his footsteps to fade, just snapped the locks in place. As I turned from the door, the phone rang again. Nine was a little late for a phone call. My stomach tightened.

“Mercedes? This is Bill Haines.”

“Mr. Haines, hello. How are you?”

“Tolerable. Mother and I both are. How are you?”

“I miss Isca terribly, but I’m doing okay.”

“Yes, well.” He paused. “Actually, Mother’s not so good and I’m taking her on a little trip.”

“That’s great about the trip, but she doesn’t have anything serious, does she.”
God. I hope it isn’t cancer or something, coming so soon after Isca’s death.

“Nerves and depression. At our age you just don’t have the bounce-back you do when you’re young. We’re going on a cruise.”

“Where to?”

“The inside passage to Alaska, and on to Glacier Bay.”

“Awesome.” I gave it as much enthusiasm as I could muster. Cruises didn’t appeal to me.

“That’s what we thought. Mother has always wanted see Alaska. We decided now would be a good time. Which brings me to why I called.”

“Yes?”

“We were able to book right away, you see, because of a last-minute cancellation.” He hesitated.

I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what he was getting at, so I waited. It was his phone bill.

“I stopped Isca’s paper, you see, and had her mail forwarded to us, but I wondered if you could run over and check the house. I won’t have time.”

I must have made some audible sound.

He hurried on. “I don’t mean go inside or anything. Just drive by and make sure nothing is lying around. You know, flyers hanging on the door advertise an empty house. Maybe get a neighbor kid to cut the grass. That sort of thing. I’ll send you a check. Parker’s the executor, if something comes up, if you think he should see to anything, but I’d really appreciate it….”

“Of course I will. No problem.”
I’m such a liar
. “I’ll go over tomorrow after work.”

“I really appreciate this. You can’t be too careful these days. Getting Mother away for a while should be just the thing.” He sounded almost teary with relief.

“Have a wonderful trip. Take lots of pictures. I’ll see you when you get back.”

We said good-bye and hung up. I plopped in a chair and tried to come up with reasons to break my promise. Somehow, “because I don’t want to” didn’t seem good enough.
Crap!
I hated it when people guilted me into doing things I didn’t want to do, and I definitely didn’t want to do a drive-by at Isca’s. I scowled at Porch Cat. “Why aren’t you a big dog I could take along?” He ignored me. A dog would have at least looked up. Maybe I could hire one of the Janes boys to cut the lawn and give the house a quick look-see. I got out the phone book and looked for a listing. Nothing. Rats. An unlisted number. I’d have to go over after work in order to make arrangements. I really didn’t relish the idea of being at Isca’s house at dusk, or worse, after dark. “Hell’s bells!”

I pulled the shades, filled the bathtub and took a long soak. Then I opened the bedroom window a few inches and hit the sack.

* * *

During the following week, the weather held and looked promising for the fair. Every fall, Puyallup, Washington, had a full-blown fair, but recently, fair officials had begun to experiment with a week long, spring mini-fair. I loved the fair and was glad to have something to take my mind off Isca’s death. As kids, my brother and I got free admission tickets at school and half a day off to attend. Mom packed a lunch and we spent the afternoon in the barns and on the rides. As an adult, I usually stood through several demonstrations by the Ginsu knife man.

“It slices! It dices! It chops, blends and purées! It also cuts through steel! But wait! There’s more!”

I’d once read that my favorite bad guy, Charles Bronson, sold Miracle Knives at the Atlantic City Boardwalk. Everyone’s gotta start somewhere, even if I had been conned into buying the steamer that didn’t work very well. As an employee with free admission, I wandered through the art and photographic displays at length. Several times I saved calories and planned an eating orgy only to eat nothing at all. Somehow just smelling the sweet Belgium waffles and hot buttery scones was enough.

* * *

The night of orientation, I parked outside the grounds, near the Ferris wheel, and went in through the green gate. The first aid station and duck cages were empty and the grounds swept and rubbish free. I walked toward the bingo tent where we were to meet, accompanied by the ghosts of midway music, barkers’ voices and cotton candy.

The grounds were full of people who drifted in and out of buildings, doing last-minute chores.

“Testing. Testing.” A man standing near the guillotine demonstration tapped a loudspeaker. “Prepare to be shocked and amazed.”

I giggled as I entered the tent and took a seat with a hundred or so others. For six or seven days, these would be my coworkers and friends. I’d walk from the employee parking lot in a large unused pasture, cross a little footbridge over a creek and cut through a field where carnival people had their trailers. If I worked a breakfast shift at six, the sideshow people would be outside, standing on the grass in bathrobes, having a first cup of coffee while they exercised their pets and checked the weather. The Heinz Ketchup song went through my head. “Anticipation, it’s making me wait.”
I’ll bet Carly Simon got plenty for selling that jingle.

Boxes of bingo prizes lined the walls of the tent and, for a moment anyway, I was a regular person again. Not one acquainted with murder.

Orientation followed a familiar routine. The four generations of family who owned our stands introduced each other. We collected work assignments, striped aprons and I.D. badges. When orientation was over, I walked back to my car with a substitute teacher and we exchanged names and casual information.

An earnest dusk settled in as I hurried down River Road toward Tacoma and Isca’s north-end home.
I really, really don’t want to do this.
I crossed my fingers and exceeded the speed limit.

When I turned the corner onto Isca’s street, I was relieved to see a group of boys playing basketball in the Janeses’ driveway. They stopped to watch as I parked and got out.

A plastic bag of neighborhood store ads hung on Isca’s doorknob. Three newspapers, dated the previous week and yellow with exposure, lay on the mat. I picked them up and carried them to my car. Somewhere on the way home would be one of the Boy Scout’s recycle bins. The grass and weeds were high so I walked across the street and asked one of the Janes boys to have his dad give me a call.

Isca’s flower box plants looked pretty droopy. I went through a squeaky gate at the side of the house to look for a bucket in the backyard. It was worse to try and not look at the bedroom window, so I gave it a cursory glance. As I did, the glow from the lights in the neighbor’s greenhouse hit a piece of metal directly underneath the window in the garden and caught my attention. A gum wrapper? An old spoon? I squatted and reached under the rhododendrons for the object.
Even if the grass is full of crane fly grubs, at least it isn’t slug season
. Then I stood and brushed my clothes off. The faucet water was cold as I held the object under the flow. After a minute, I dried my hands on my jeans and used the greenhouse light to examine my find. It was round, about the size of a silver dollar, and expensive-looking. One side was made from mother-of-pearl intertwined with silver. The other had a clip to hold folding money. The edges were engraved, but it was too dark to read the words. I put it in my pocket, filled the bucket and returned to the front to douse the flower boxes. An ice cream wagon played “Little Brown Jug” as it turned the corner.

Great choice of songs.
I set the bucket near the garage door.
Why hasn’t some parents’ organization gotten up in arms?

By then it was completely dark. I got into my car, locked the doors and turned on the dome light. I tipped the object this way and that and remembered Andy had a money clip the night we went to the Passion play. The clip I held couldn’t have been in the garden long; it was too shiny. Engraving on the back was both visible and legible.

“Andy, Luv Isca.”

Chapter 9

Jeez Louise! Isca’s house was a crime scene and I’d messed up that clue big time
. But then, any fingerprints on the clip would be Andy’s, wouldn’t they? Yes, but what I’d done was walk over any footprints that might have been in the dirt. Why footprints would’ve been there was anyone’s guess.
Unless Andy is the murderer and returned to the scene of the crime.
My mind raced like the bulls at Pamplona. How did Andy’s broken money clip end up behind a bush in Isca’s garden? Why didn’t the police find it? Either it wasn’t there when they searched the premises or they hadn’t looked under the plants. For a minute, I wished desperately I’d called the police. If I had, though, what would I have said? There’s something shiny in the dirt in the garden in Isca’s backyard? That sounded pretty lame, not to mention a grammatical mess:  three prepositions in one sentence. I’d also have to explain why I was there. Good. I’d appeased my conscience.

There was a flashlight in my trunk, but the batteries were weak
. Nancy Drew’s batteries were never weak.

It occurred to me, later, my own actions might have been considered suspect.
At the time, however, I was only thinking about checking for further clues.

In the backyard I gave a strangled choke when something brushed my leg, but it was only a cat. There was no use looking around where I’d found the clip. That ground was trampled. Instead, I knelt on the grass at the other end of the line of shrubs and flicked on the flashlight. Holding it close to the ground, I crawled along, moving the beam slowly around the area. Were spiders nocturnal? Their webs were always completed in the morning. Ugh. The webs were low to the ground, too, right about where my head was. If they just didn’t have so many legs and didn’t scoot along so fast. Once I had to go to the bathroom at summer camp. As I walked toward the outhouse, something rustled in the bushes along the path and kept me company. Step. Rustle. Step. Rustle. I ran back to the bunkhouse, peed by the porch and never told anyone. The next morning no one gave themselves away by looking at me and giggling.

I shuddered involuntarily and tried to focus on the task at hand. I hadn’t the least idea what I was looking for, except, maybe footprints, so I just tried to see anything out of place. A torn piece of fabric ripped unsuspected from a shirt would have been great. A gum wrapper would have been okay. Nothing. Not a string. Just a couple of places where the leaves had been crushed.