Dead Head: A Dirty Business Mystery (25 page)

“Could this be Brookfield?” Lucy asked.

It could have been Kevin Brookfield or it could have been Kevin
Bacon. I wasn’t prepared to hang the man based on such a sketchy photo.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. There’s a lot of hair obscuring his face. But the nose looks different.”

“He could have broken his nose in jail,” Lucy said. “Rival gang? Power struggle?” She had an even more active imagination than I did. Maybe she
should
turn her fugitive story into a screenplay.

“You’ve been watching too much cable,” I said. “I don’t know. I can’t say it’s him, I only saw him briefly.”

While I was at it, I googled
Kate Gustafson
. And sent the images to my downstairs computer—the one hooked upto the the printer.

We’d bring the pictures to Roxy’s tomorrow and see what she thought. Babe’s, too. Brookfield had camped out at the diner for a while—she might remember him better than any of us.

Tomorrow started four hours later when, sleep-deprived, Lucy and I shuffled into the Paradise Diner.

“Hey, look who’s here. You two girls look like crap. You here to give our girl a makeover or to get one? I heard she did some shopping in your closet after that wedding, but I haven’t seen any new outfits.” Rats. That reminded me of the bag full of Lucy’s hand-me-downs, still in my entrance awaiting my next trip to Goodwill. I hoped she hadn’t seen them.

“No,” Lucy said after they air-kissed. “I’m here on a story—‘I Was a Fugitive.’” She slipped onto a counter stool and spread her hands wide, envisioning the headline and the layout.

“Should I assume you’re no longer a fugitive if you’re announcing it in a public place?”

“That’s correct. Paula, tell Babe what happened last night.”

“Later. Keep it down. We still have a few private issues to discuss.” I robotically ordered two Paradise specials and two coffees and asked Babe
to join us at the farthest empty booth when she had a chance. She brought our food and slid into the seat next to Lucy.

“Much as I love to see you, you really should consider keeping a box of cereal in your house for emergencies. Don’t you ever eat at home anymore?”

I shook my head, then pulled out the photo of Eddie Donnelley and showed it to Babe. I watched for a glimmer of recognition in her eyes, but none came.

“Who’s this? He looks like some guy I picked up in a bar in Greenwood, Indiana, in 1984.”

“That’s Eddie Donnelley,” I whispered. “One of the people who was arrested with Caroline. Does he look familiar?”

“You gotta be kidding,” Babe said, “at my age any long-haired hippie in a grainy photo looks familiar.”

I told her who I thought it might be.

“That guy looking for real estate? No way. This guy’s eyes are closer together and he has finer cheekbones. And the nose is totally different.” She’d make a good witness if ever called upon to identify someone in a lineup.

I was starting to feel better about Kevin Brookfield.

“Did he ever come back?” I asked.

Babe had to think. “Yeah, one other time.” I could see her piecing together the scene. “A day or two after you saw him. I thought he was planning to camp out here again, the way he did that day, when the Moms were falling all over themselves to give him real estate advice. He sat down at a table outside with a coffee and those damn brochures again, like he was waiting for someone. I thought it was a real estate agent. Then something happened and he left abruptly. His coffee cup was still warm when I cleared.” She replayed the event in her brain, rewinding like an old videocassette.

Just then two cops entered the diner. Babe got up and handed them a
gray cardboard box that was stashed under the counter. It was filled with three dozen donuts. One of them opened the box and inhaled deeply.

“Can’t survive the weekly community meeting without a little help from Pete.”

“Standing order every Tuesday. Come to think of it, Brookfield was here on a Tuesday. Same time. As soon as the boys came in, he left.”

“You think he doesn’t like donuts?” Lucy said.

Or he didn’t like cops. I wanted to hear what Roxy Rhodes had to say. I still had a few reservations about Kevin Brookfield before I was ready to jump on the welcome wagon.

Forty minutes later, we were at Rhodes Realty with Roxy Rhodes demanding to know what I’d said to Kevin Brookfield to put him off buying the nursery. Without even asking us to sit down she launched into her assertion that I’d poisoned the waters by leaking information about the former owner’s murder.

“It’s not exactly a secret,” I said. She didn’t threaten legal action but came close. I thought I heard the word
ruin
mixed into her rambling, apoplectic message.

“Roxy, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I only saw the man once. Maybe the Moms told him. Maybe he read about it online. Maybe he was full of baloney and was never really interested. Lots of people look at places and have no intention of buying. They’re real estate junkies. Window shopping.”

She calmed down briefly. She knew I was right.

“And who is this?” she said, pointing a bony, reaperlike finger at Lucy.

“She’s a friend. Can we sit down and talk like civilized people? Like neighbors?” (Thank you, Mr. Rogers.) Roxy collapsed onto her designer throne, and Lucy and I pulled over two stylish but decidedly uncomfortable wire chairs. “Thank you.”

All Roxy knew about Kevin Brookfield was that he specifically came to her office to see about buying the Chiaramonte nursery. No other property interested him.

“I should have known he wasn’t for real. He didn’t even try to get the price down. But he was so simpatico. He said he was making a fresh start and he had that wonderful smile.”

Good grief, did he flirt with her, too? I showed her the picture, but she was noncommittal.

“It’s this economy,” she said, tossing it aside. “Or perhaps I’ve just lost my mojo.” Suddenly Roxy looked old, as old as she really was. This was more than the loss of a 6 percent commission.

“That’s not it,” I said, trying to make her feel better. “Your mojo is fine. But there’s a possibility Kevin Brookfield may not be who he says he is.”

She wilted, seeing her commission, and perhaps a budding romance, flying out the door. “Brookfield suggested you and Caroline and he might go into business together.”

“Highly unlikely, especially given Caroline’s situation.”

A door in the outer office slammed and Roxy’s assistant tapped gently on Roxy’s for permission to enter.

“I’m so sorry, Ms. Rhodes. The documents you requested? You wanted to know as soon as they arrived.” The assistant maneuvered her way around the enormous desk and placed a light blue bubble pack envelope in front of the slumping Roxy. Then she turned on her kitten heels and left.

“What are you women staring at now?” Roxy said. “Is there some other deal you’d like to put the kibosh on? Some other area of my
business that you’d like to involve yourself in?” The outside door slammed again.

“Just one,” I said, rising out of my seat. “Can you tell me what delivery service you use?”

“This isn’t from a delivery service. It’s a personal matter.”

As if on cue, Lucy jumped up and ran to the window.

“A blue Civic,” she said. “Connecticut license plate 485 SMK. It could even be the one I saw last night.” She grabbed a felt pen from Roxy’s desk and in the absence of any paper, scribbled the license plate number on the palm of her hand.

“Will you two fruitcakes please get out of here?” Roxy sank her head into both of her hands. “Natalie,” she yelled for her assistant, “get my calendar. I need four days at the ranch and a stop at Dr. P’s on the way up.”

“Save us some time, Roxy. Unless that envelope has something to do with Brookfield or Caroline Sturgis, we don’t really care what’s in it. We just want to know who delivered it.”

She closed her eyes and made circles with her head in a stress-reducing ritual I imagined she performed many times during the course of a morning like this one.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with either of them. I do represent a great many properties apart from that decrepit, blood-soaked nursery. It’s from an agency we sometimes work with. Nina Mazzo’s.”

I called Nina and made an appointment to see her that afternoon. This time I didn’t pretend to be Thelma Turner.

Lucy stared at the image we’d printed out from my computer. “Kevin Brookfield must be a helluva lot better looking than this picture if every woman in this burg would be so all-fired happy to see him relocate here.”

“We don’t know that Donnelley
is
Brookfield. You may be looking at a picture of someone else. But Brookfield has something. No denying. It’s something else,” I said, trying to figure out what it was. Lucy and I had time before our meeting with Nina Mazzo, so we doubled back to the Paradise to pick the brains of the town’s resident expert on men. Maybe Babe could put her finger on it.

“It’s true. I am generally acknowledged to be an expert on a great many subjects—movies, music, and men included,” Babe said. We’d parked ourselves in a rear booth and made our guru join us.

“What makes a woman gravitate toward a man?” Lucy asked.

“She kidding or is this some Sphinxlike riddle?” Babe said.

“We’re serious.”

“You mean if he isn’t wealthy, famous, or powerful and doesn’t look like Johnny Depp, act like Mr. Darcy, and make love like Don Juan?” She gave it some thought. “Okay, he’s got a sad story. How’s this? He’s a single parent whose wife died young—and tragically—and he nursed her until the bitter end. Could be his mother dying but not as effective as the wife. The kid’s not necessary; in the absence of a kid, a dog would work. Dogs are chick magnets, but best for generating one-night stands, not lasting relationships.”

Lucy and I were extremely impressed. “Where do you get this?” she asked.

“
Soap Opera Digest,
1994. Classic story line. I think it was on
Another World
,” she said. Babe continued spinning her hypothetical situations. “Hoping to reconnect with a childhood sweetheart is another good one, but the dead wife story works really well. Shows he’s a romantic and will stay faithful—even after you’re in the ground.” She stood up to go back to work.

“Did Brookfield say anything like that to you?” I asked.

“He suggested it. Single guy, not too handsome, not too neat, so probably straight, looking for real estate in a new town, to start a business. To start over. Charming, no ring, or ring line, as if he’d just taken it off. A little flirty but nothing overt. Screams ‘you can trust me, I have a broken heart.’”

Even if she was wrong, it was a damn good answer on the fly and something to be filed for future reference. Oddly enough, apart from the wife and the part about being new in town, she had also just described Mike O’Malley—romantic, faithful, looking after an aged parent, and a dog owner, always a plus. And just at that moment entering the diner.

“Oh, this looks a mite scary. Three beautiful women conspiring? Or
is it gossiping?” O’Malley said. He sat at a counter stool a few feet away and waved off the young waitress’s efforts to bring him a menu.

“Why is it when men talk, they’re
discussing,
and when women talk, we’re
gossiping
? That’s very misogynistic of you,” Lucy said. “Very disappointing. I’m going to stop telling Paula and Babe that you are the cutest guy in Springfield.”

“This conversation is taking an intriguing turn, but I’m afraid I don’t have the time for verbal foreplay. I just came in because I saw your car and thought you might like to know. You can tell Caroline that she doesn’t have to worry about Countertop Man anymore. He’s dead.”

“Did I miss something?” Lucy said.

Babe, Mike, and I replied as one, “Yes.”

“Catch her up,” Mike said, getting up to leave. “I’ve got to go.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You can’t go now. Was he…murdered?”

McGinley and his car were found in a ditch in Macedonia, Ohio. The local police got in touch with O’Malley because he’d made the most recent inquiry into McGinley’s record, and as a courtesy, the cops in Ohio thought they’d inform him.

“What do you think happened?” Babe asked.

“Fell asleep at the wheel, got drunk, and drove—who knows? Pretty bad accident, though. Gas tank caught fire.”

“Does that usually happen when a car goes into a ditch?”

“Apparently this ditch led to a twenty-five-foot drop from a two-lane bridge.”

“Could he have been run off the road?”

“Yes. He also could have had an Elvis sighting or been abducted by aliens. I didn’t ask.”

“Why not?” I said.

Because he was a cop in Springfield, Connecticut, not Macedonia, Ohio. But that didn’t mean that I couldn’t ask. And I would, but first we had an appointment with Nina Mazzo.

“
You
could be a private investigator,” Lucy said. “Seriously.”

“I think not.”

“Look at how good you are at this stuff.”

“That’s what Babe said. Maybe if the gardening thing doesn’t work out.”

When I had researched Nina the first time, I learned a little about the profession. Most PIs came from a background of law enforcement. Who knew? It was the image of them standing in the shrubbery snapping pictures that made the job seem faintly cartoonish and not quite legitimate, but it was. Fewer than 40 percent of their cases were related to infidelity and divorce (I would have guessed more), but that’s all most people ever thought of when they heard the words
private investigator
. That or Humphrey Bogart in
The Maltese Falcon
. Hopefully, Nina would tell us if tracking down missing persons and delivering unmarked packages like the one Caroline Sturgis had received made up the other 60 percent of the business.

We drove downtown and saw the property values drop sharply from one block to the next until we passed under the railroad tracks.

“This isn’t much of an area,” Lucy said.

“Depends what you’re looking for. If you’re a contractor, this is as good as Decorator’s Row in New York.” We passed antiques alley, the flagstone and paving center, and the kitchen and bathroom remodeling district and I made a right onto the stretch of road where Nina’s building was located. As we pulled into Nina’s parking lot, I told Lucy
about Mazzo’s recently reduced circumstances and her fervent wish that the economy would bounce back so there would be more philandering husbands.