Death Dangles a Participle (Miss Prentice Cozy Mystery Series) (23 page)

“Stt!” He signaled me and gestured with a large, hairy hand, indicating I should sit opposite him. Alec furtively wedged the attaché between himself and the wall. “Amelia,” he began in a hoarse whisper, only to be interrupted by Shirley, Danny’s taciturn wife, who also happened to be his waitress.

“Get ya anything?”

Alec froze, his eyes darting back and forth.

I couldn’t help myself. “BLT special and a large glass of milk, please.”

Shirley noted my order on her pad and began to turn, but Alec stopped her in his melodious Scottish burr. “M’dear, would ye add to that order another one of those wonderful sandwiches,” he nodded at an empty plate before him, “and a warm up on m’coffee? Give me the check?”

To my amazement, Shirley’s habitually sour expression melted into a wide smile. “Sure thing, Professor. Right away.”

I leaned out of the booth, watching her walk away. “How did you do that?” I whispered.

Alec dug in the attaché case. “Do what?”

“Get a pleasant reaction out of that woman. I’ve never seen her smile in all the years I’ve been eating here.”

Alec shrugged and placed a handful of papers on the table. “Oh, sure, she was a bit curdlin’ back when I first came in, but I dinna take the bait, so to speak. Just kept play actin’ as though we were fast friends, and soon enough, we were!”

I leaned back into the aisle and spotted Shirley at another booth, her frown once again firmly fixed. “Oh, I don’t know. I think maybe it’s more than that.”

Alec brushed aside my suggestion. “That’s neither here nor there, Amelia. Getting back to the real reason for my calling you—look!” He slid the papers across to me. “You told me that the bullet wasn’t found in the boys’ Volkswagen, rright?” His r’s rolled pleasantly as he tapped the top paper with a thick forefinger. “Look here.”

I squinted at the page. It was a simple black and white sketch of a VW bug’s front seat interior. “Where did you get this, Alec?”

Alec reached over and patted my hand. “I keep forgetting that you’ve only just joined the new century, m’dear. ’Tis simplicity itself with a search engine on the Internet. I found it on a website for Volkswagen enthusiasts and printed it out.”

I rolled my eyes and sighed. Anyone who knew me at all well was aware that I did not own a computer. The first time I heard the term
search engine,
my overactive imagination conjured up the image of an eccentric, ornate Jules Verne-style contraption, a kind of snowplow derivative, equipped with a powerful headlight and perhaps a loudspeaker on the cab roof for good measure.

To my word-obsessed mind, even the term
website
had a sinister sound. Where there was a web, could a spider be far away?

Until I acquired my new cell phone, I’d managed to duck the pressure to conform to technological advances, even though Mr. Berghauser had gone so far as to give me an email address:
[email protected].
I’d ignored it. Frequent visits to Olive’s desk allowed me to obtain all the school information I needed to function, thank you very much. But there it remained, at the principal’s insistence.

Alec leaned forward and pointed at the illustration. “This is the rather elderly model the Rousseau boys have, and ye can see the glove compartment there.”

“Yes, of course, but what does this—”

“Steady, lass, let me finish.” He pulled another sheet from underneath the first. “You’ll notice by this sketch that the back window of a Volkswagen is tiny by today’s standards. So the shooter had a very narrow range in which—”

“The shooter?“

Alec looked confused. “Yes, shooter. Isn’t that the correct term?”

“You mean you believe the boys’ story?”

“Of course, don’t you?”

“I do believe that they didn’t kill anyone, but I thought perhaps the bullet-hole story was, well, a desperate attempt to validate themselves. It’s just so melodramatic.”

“Think, Amelia. What’s more melodramatic than murder?”

“Point taken. Go on.”

“Well, if that part of the story was true, I think we can give more credence to the other part, as well.”

“I don’t know, Alec. It just seems so fantastic. But,” I mused, “that lunchbox thing does contain what I guess to be stolen IDs.”

“Right! It’s my contention that there was something illegal going on, and the boys stumbled onto it,” Alec said, then sat back, fixed a wide smile on his face and directed his gaze into the aisle. “Ah, here she comes now!”

As Shirley Dinardi laid two heavy diner plates before us and removed the empty one, she positively simpered at Alec. Some kind of Scottish magic, I thought, and shrugged inwardly.

The next few minutes were occupied with consuming Danny’s deservedly famous sandwiches, then Alec dabbed his lips and dusted off his gray-speckled beard with a paper napkin, signaling a resumption of our discussion. “What we need to do,” he whispered gruffly, because Shirley was taking an order in the next booth, “is somehow get into that car.”

My mind was wandering. “What car?”

Alec sighed. “Amelia, pay attention! The VW, of course! You know Dennis O’Brien quite well. Surely there’s a way.”

I shook my head. “No, there isn’t. Last time I got Dennis involved in a problem of mine, I almost got him fired. I can’t impose on his friendship like that. But I suppose we could ask Mr. Cobb for help.”

Alec smiled. “Of course! The defense attorney. Good thinking!” He dug in a side pocket of his attaché and produced a computer the size and thinness of a children’s picture book. “A gift to m’self. It’s already come in mighty handy,” he said in answer to my surprised expression. “Danny doesn’t have Wi-Fi, so I’ll have to use me modem.” He pulled a small rectangular item from his pocked and plugged it into the side of the computer.

I had no idea what any of it meant, but within three minutes Alec had obtained the telephone number of Brand’s law firm and was poking it in to his cell phone, which he then unceremoniously handed over to me. “He knows you,” he mouthed at me.

After some clumsy back-and-forth on my part and the admonition from the secretary that he could only spare a minute of his time, Cobb came on the line.

“Yes, Mrs. Dickensen? What can I do for you?” His voice sounded impatient.

“It’s about the boys’ car.”

“The boys?”

“Your clients? The Rousseaus? Their Volkswagen.”

“Oh, yes, of course. I can help you a little there. The father only wants a couple thousand for it. A steal, if you ask me. That thing’s a classic.”

“Then the police have released it?”

“Sure. They dropped it off in my parking lot. The father’s going to pick it up tonight sometime.”

“Haven’t you looked it over? For evidence, I mean? That is, the boys said—”

“Yes. Well.” Cobb allowed himself a small, derisive snort. “I’m framing the defense to go in a slightly different direction. These young men have been put through such trauma—”

“You know, Mr. Cobb, I
am
interested in possibly buying that car, or at least I know someone who might be.”

Gil liked classic cars. It was possible he’d like to buy one, I rationalized. Perhaps. Maybe.

“Could I come see it this afternoon?”

“Sure. Look, I’ve got to get to court. I’ll leave the key with my receptionist.”

Alec drove, and we made it across town to the new office center in record time, as he hummed “Be Thou My Vision” under his breath.

“There it is,” I said, pointing to the rather bedraggled little car, hunched in a far corner of the parking lot.

Alec pulled in a slot next to it. “I’ll take a look at it while you fetch the key. Mr. Cobb might obtain a restraining order against me if I were to go up there.”

“Why on earth?”

“Don’t ye remember? I’m a prosecution witness, and—haven’t ye heard?—I’m to be portrayed as a maniac who sees mythical creatures. Perhaps I’m even dangerous. Have a care, Amelia.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me.

I sighed. “What a mess!”

“Ye’re right therre. Now run along! We’ve noo time to waste shilly-shallying!”

“Who’s supposed to be the sidekick?” I muttered as I headed into the building.

When I returned, Alec was sitting in the front passenger seat, running his hand around in the open glove compartment.

“How did you get inside?”

“I used the coat hanger that I carry in m’back seat for this very purpose. Simplicity itself.”

“You? But—” I began, but stopped when Alec’s face lit up.

“Amelia! I feel something! Let’s see. Ungh!”

The professor seemed to be trying to cram his square, bulky body inside the compartment. All at once, he sprang back.

“I was right! See for yourself. There’s a hole toward the back that you could put your fist through, and certainly a bullet! Try it yourself!” He backed out and hurried around to the front of the car, where he worried the trunk latch until it opened.

Carefully I slid into the passenger seat, reached out and ran my fingers along the interior of the small box-like compartment. “Oh yes, here it is,” I said.

My hand was smaller than Alec’s, and I was able to get it all the way through the hole to the trunk. I wiggled my hand and was startled to feel Alec’s calloused fingers in mine.

“Oh!” I laughed and retracted my hand. “But Alec,” I asked, coming around the car to join him at the front, “what does this mean?”

“It means, m’dear, that we might be able to prroove the boys are innocent.”

“Oh, Alec, that’s wonderful! We need to call Dennis O’Brien right away!”

“Hold your horses, Amelia, this is just part of the puzzle.” He was running his hand around the trunk. “It’s the bullet that’ll make the difference.” He grunted as he leaned over the edge and reach far into the interior, then backed out, clapping dust off his hands. “Nope, no luck.” He slammed the trunk shut. “No bullet. None.” He sighed, squinted and stared at the pavement. “A dead end.” Then his face brightened. “But we’re not defeated, are we? The good news is that the boys’ story is still possibly true. That’s something, at least.”

The expression grasping at straws popped into my head, but I suppressed it. “So what do we do now?”

He rested a gentle paw on my shoulder. “I suggest we go home now and cogitate. Something will come to either one or the other of us, I’m sure.”

“I can’t be sure when I’ll be back,” Vern said briskly.

He was cramming a change of clothes into a bag. He’d be spending several nights at Chez Prentice so he could put the finishing touches on the snow sculpture. “Between classes, driving the cab and this contest, I don’t have time to be driving back and forth out here.”

“Of course.” I changed the subject. “Please, Vern, can’t we talk about this . . . thing . . . between us? We used to be such good friends.”

“Yah, used to be. Drop it, Amelia. It’s water over the bridge now.”

Under different circumstances, I might have made light of his mangled idiom, but not today. My heart hurt from the coldness.

He zipped his duffle closed and straightened up. “Look, I suppose you did what you thought was right. And Gil took it from there. But from where I stand, it looks like a lack of respect. Respect for me and for my judgment. And that’s not easy to forgive.” He heaved the bag on his shoulder and headed out the door.

I sat down on his unmade bed and once again those dratted tears filled my eyes. “Forgive?” I said aloud. “Do I need forgiving? Lord, did I do the right thing? Did Gil?”

~~~

That afternoon, after school, as I navigated the salted sidewalk, formulating ways to convince Vern that Gil and I had done the right thing, a taxicab pulled up alongside the curb, the passenger window rolled down, and I heard, “Miss? Miss?”

When I bent down to the window, the usually taciturn Marcel LaBombard smiled back at me. “Get in, please, get in,” he said, beckoning.

“I’m all right walking, thanks.”

“No, it’s important, please, we gotta talk to you.” He patted the front passenger seat. “Real important.”

I climbed into the taxi, and closed the door. Immediately, Marcel was off.

“I’m headed to Chez Prentice,” I instructed him, but he took a right turn and headed across the small bridge that spanned the river and into a totally different neighborhood. “Where are you going? What—” I began.

Marcel stopped at a light and looked over at me with an anxious expression. “Sorry, am I makin’ you late for something?”

“No, not really. But where are we going? What did you want to talk about?”

“Okay, it’s like this. You done us a good turn, Miss Prentice. I mean with Yvonne and all.” The light turned green and he accelerated.

“Oh, but all I did was tell Fleur where I thought she was.”

The cab slowed and turned into the small parking lot of LaBombard Taxi office. “Fleur and me’s been wanting to thank you.” He was out of the car in a twinkling and held the door open for me. “Please, come in. Let the wife tell you herself.”

“Amelia!” Fleur was behind her desk when I entered, but she rose and came running to throw her arms around me. The scent of cigarettes was strong about her, and I had to work hard to control my gag reflex, but I managed, and returned the hug with a smile.

“Look who’s here!” Fleur announced as her daughter, Yvonne, a pale, slender blonde with a tendency to bad posture, came through the door carrying a case of candy bars. “Hi, Miss Prentice,” she said and went quietly about the task of refilling the candy machine.

“It’s Mrs. Dickensen now, y’know,” her mother corrected her daughter. “She got married. Come over here, honey, and sit down. Bring that box of candy. You want some candy, Amelia?”

I accepted a Twix bar and began happily munching.

Fleur said, “I want you to tell Amelia what happened.”

With a shy smile, Yvonne complied, sitting tailor-fashion next to her mother on the worn leatherette sofa, while her father beamed at her from a straight chair across the room.

“Go on,” her mother prodded. “Tell her about it.”

Yvonne looked down at her tightly clasped hands and said hoarsely in a voice I had to lean forward to hear, “Well, things had got pretty bad with Matt lately. He’d get mad over the littlest bitty thing, and, well, it wasn’t very nice when he was mad.” Her voice became almost inaudible.