Death of a Toy Soldier (4 page)

I set Othello’s carrier down. “Okay to let him loose?” I asked Cathy. “And thanks for letting us stay. Hopefully it will only be a day or two.”

Ken had declared our home and shop a crime scene. We’d been asked if we could vacate until they finished collecting evidence and the crime scene cleaners had come through.

Cathy, now decked out in faux leopard print, walked across her living room and gave me a hug. “You guys can stay as long as you need. And Othello can come out. Parker decided Clyde was ready to release.”

“Clyde?” Dad said.

“A possum,” Cathy explained. “He was limping pretty badly, so we had him in for a few days. Just a sprain, we think. He was doing better when he didn’t have to forage for food.”

“An animal from the center?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” Cathy said. “Just from the neighborhood.”

Parker came in the door juggling more luggage. It looked like Dad and I were moving in for a month. Strange, the
things you want to take with you when you don’t know when you’re going to see home again.

When the door was closed, I knelt down and opened the carrier. Othello didn’t budge. Even the brightly blinking Christmas tree in the corner wasn’t enough to lure him out. I had a feeling in an hour or two, I’d be peeling him off the branches.

“No, we’re not at the vet,” I said.

He sniffed, as if he were checking out the place, then took a few cautious steps forward.

“Don’t rush him,” Cathy said.

I sat with my back against the coffee table and waited him out. “Thanks again for letting us crash here.”

“Oh, you know me,” Parker said. “Always glad to help the strays and the refugees.”

“Hear that, Othello?” I asked. “He’s calling you a stray.”

Othello peeked out of the carrier when I mentioned his name. He put one paw on the carpet and stopped before scanning the faces in the room. Then his nose went to sniffing madly.

“I’ll bet he smells Clyde,” Parker said. “He’s gone.”

Othello stared up at Parker as if he understood him, then took another cautious step out of the carrier. Convinced that no deadly danger was near, he started sniffing around the room, rubbing his cheek against the corners of the coffee table. He didn’t venture far before looking back to make sure I was there.

“He’ll be fine.” Dad sank down into an overstuffed recliner. He let his head fall back against the pillowed chair and closed his eyes. “I could sleep a week.”

“You didn’t get much last night, Dad,” I said.

I hoped that would start him talking. He blew out a long breath, then opened his eyes. “Sorry, Lizzie.”

“For what?” I tried to sound nonchalant.

“For worrying you.”

“For worrying me?” I could feel my volume and pitch rise but checked myself. When he was stressed, he’d clam up. Maybe it was a cop thing. Interrogations only worked with him when he was the interrogator. If he was going to volunteer any info, it would be when he was calm and relaxed and in familiar surroundings, which was one more reason I hoped we could regain our home and open the shop soon. That, and I’d grown fond of being able to pay my bills, having a roof to keep the snow off, and eating.

“I’m fine, Dad,” I said in my most reassuring tone, despite the knot in my belly. “But I would like to know a little more about what happened. Did that man come back for his toys?”

“The toys?” he asked.

“Yeah, I noticed they weren’t in the apartment.”

A vague expression crossed his face, as if he struggled to focus. “I suppose the police could have taken them into evidence.”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t . . .” The vague look disappeared and he set his jaw. “Do we have to do this right now?”

I put a calming hand on his and squeezed. “Only when you’re ready. In the meantime, everything’s okay. We’re safe and together.” I patted his hand, then looked up at Parker, who hid his own worried look behind a reassuring smile.

“I should bring in the rest of the luggage,” he said, then vanished out to the car.

###

I woke up early the next morning, aware of another presence in the living room. Yes, Othello was sleeping on my chest, but then I heard someone clearing his throat.

“Parker?” I pushed myself up, trying to ignore the achy feeling in my back from sleeping awkwardly on the couch.

“Shhh.” Parker already wore his work uniform and sat in the overstuffed chair drinking his coffee. He was quite blurry since I didn’t have my glasses on. “Everyone else is still asleep,” he whispered.

I picked my glasses off the coffee table and managed to get them on my face. I pointed to his coffee cup. “Any more where that came from?”

“Whole pot. Do you still like it insanely sweet?” he asked.

“I cut back to two sugars,” I said, “and some milk.”

While he headed back to the kitchen, I sat up and ran my fingers through my hair, which in the morning tended to stick out at odd angles, similar to Bozo the Clown’s. When Parker came back with a full snowman mug, I was sitting cross-legged on the sofa rubbing the sleep from my eyes. For several minutes, we sipped our coffees in silence.

At all the big junctures in life, it seemed Parker and I shared a quiet cup of coffee. When Mom went to rehab. Before Dad’s major surgery. On the day after I came back after breaking up with my former fiancé. The morning he married Cathy. We’d start by each draining a cup of coffee in silence, then we’d talk things through during the second cup. Today, I dreaded finishing the first one.

When I had, I rummaged through my suitcase, dug out my slippers, and padded out to the kitchen to pour more for both of us. When I spun around holding two steaming cups of coffee, I spotted eyes peering in at me from the patio door. I jumped, sending scalding coffee spilling over my fingers and onto the tile floor. Only then did I realize the eyes were not of the human variety.

I breathed in through my teeth, set the cups down on the counter, and dried my hands on my sweatpants before steeling myself for a closer inspection of the critter. A possum, its pink nose twitching at the end of its long snout, was balanced on the gas grill outside, craning to look into the house.

Othello had followed me into the kitchen, probably wondering if it was time for him to eat yet. The possum caught his attention, too. The cat was in full stalker mode, advancing an inch or two at a time toward the door, then freezing, but never keeping his eyes off the possum.

“What’s wrong?” Parker said, coming up behind me.

“I think I met Clyde,” I said.

“Sis, you and I need to have that talk again. That there is Bonnie.”

Since rolling your eyes at your brother doesn’t count when it’s before dawn and he can’t see you, I punched him in the arm, and then we carried our coffees to the kitchen table.

“How much trouble is Dad in?” Parker asked.

“I wish I knew.” Although that wasn’t entirely true. I actually wished I could crawl back into my own bed, fall asleep, and wake up discovering everything that had happened was a dream. But that wasn’t an option. “Chief Young seems
like he’s pretty good, but something’s off with Dad. That’s going to hamper the investigation. You know as well as I do that these early hours are so important.”

Parker stared down into his cup. It went without saying that whenever something big happened in East Aurora when Dad had been the chief of police, days often passed before we saw him. That’s usually when Mom took to the bottle. Somehow, Parker managed the laundry, I learned how to cook, and he and I became best friends.

I rubbed the sleep out of my eye. “Dad says he didn’t know the dead guy, but I’m sure I’ve heard the name before.”

“The police haven’t released the name. Who was he?”

“Carson Suffern.” I sipped my cooling coffee. “Why does that name sound so familiar?”

“Carson . . .” Parker started to shake in silent laughter.

“I fail to see what’s so funny.”

“You. Carson Suffern? As in, ‘Don’t suffer with stopped-up drains. Call Carson Suffern!’ and ‘Sticky septic issues? Don’t suffer; call Suffern!’”

“Oooohhh. The self-anointed kingpin of plumbing.” All those corny radio commercials came back, with the same announcer screaming at the top of his lungs. I caught myself smiling, but then the corners of my mouth drooped. “What was the kingpin of plumbing doing dead in our shop?”

###

The next great tragedy in our lives came when Cathy insisted on making egg salad for lunch. She overcooked the eggs, leading Dad on a merry chase through every Seussian and
green-egg pun he could think of. When Cathy got tired of hearing that Sam-I-Am wouldn’t eat them extra large or on a barge or from a moat or in a coat or in a lump or while taking a . . . she turned on the radio.

Cathy pranced around the kitchen to the end of “Jingle Bell Rock.” When the news came on, she reached to switch the station, but Dad stopped her.

The report was vague. “An unidentified man was found dead in an East Aurora shop after hours. Police are investigating and will release a statement later.”

After a weather report (cold with a chance of snow—big surprise there), the station aired, ironically, an ad for Suffern Plumbing.

I winced but immediately glanced at Dad. If he knew Carson Suffern, his face sure didn’t betray that fact.

“Dad, have you ever met Carson Suffern?”

“Who?”

“The commercial that was just on. The kingpin of plumbing?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Hmm . . .” I repeated my personal mantra.
Dad would never lie to me
.

We barely had time to dispose of our lunch when Cathy answered a tap at the door and ushered Ken back into the kitchen.

“Would you like some egg salad?” Cathy asked.

I wasn’t sure if he caught a glimpse of the bowl or if he just wasn’t hungry. “No thanks.” He took a seat at the table opposite Dad.

Dad half rose and shook Ken’s hand. “I see you’re still not releasing the name of the deceased,” he said. “I take it you haven’t been able to notify the family.”

“Well, we started to,” Ken said, also waving off a cup of coffee. “Only when we got there, the man we thought was in the morgue was actually sitting at his kitchen table. Whomever we found in the shop is clearly not Carson Suffern.”

Dad cast me a quick glance, and I could feel my face begin to blush. He’d caught me fishing for information.

“I suppose those dreadful commercials will continue then.” Cathy sighed as she pulled up the remaining chair at the table. “It’s a pity.”

“I wonder why he gave me Carson Suffern’s card,” I said.

“Maybe he mistakenly handed you the wrong one,” Cathy said.

I shook my head. “Nope. He looked right at it before he handed it to me. Do you think he was deliberately hiding his identity?”

“Sounds like it.” Ken leaned his elbows onto the table. Already he had dark circles under his eyes and a scruffy bit of beard started on his chin. The perils of being a small-town police chief in the middle of a murder investigation.

“So I’m assuming you ran his prints in the FBI database,” Dad said.

Ken rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Well, funny thing about that . . .”

“No record?” Dad asked.

“Actually, no prints.”

Dad’s eyebrows shot up. “The victim had no fingerprints?”

“That’s odd,” I said. “Do you think he tampered with his own prints like some of those old-time gangsters?” Who was this victim, and what was he up to that he’d go to such extremes to conceal his identity?

Ken shrugged. “That’s one theory. Although the good folks at the FBI suggested other possibilities. Apparently certain occupations can damage the fingerprints over time. Bricklaying, for one, or handling paper or cash money regularly. Even industrial accidents with fire or acid have been known to strip prints. So I came over here to see if either of you recalled anything more about the man.”

Dad closed his eyes. His face was unreadable.

“Scrubs,” I said. “He was wearing scrubs the first time I saw him. And he was very tan. Bricklayers would be tan.”

“But they wouldn’t wear scrubs,” Ken said.

“So he could be a medical worker who frequents tanning salons or a bricklayer who finds scrubs comfortable. Or maybe the scrubs were a ruse to make us think he was a health care worker.”

Ken squinted at me.

“If he’d gone to such lengths as to conceal his name and obliterate his fingerprints, why not wear a disguise?” When I said it out loud, it sounded more outlandish.

Ken jostled his head from side to side as if contemplating my logic. “I guess it can’t hurt to check with the local unions. See if anyone recognizes him. Anything else?”

I thought for a moment. “I honestly have nothing. But I did want to ask if you’d removed any toys from the shop. As evidence, I mean.”

“Miss McCall, we wouldn’t take any of your toys.”

“No, these were very old toys that the victim had brought to us to be evaluated. The last I saw them they were on the kitchen table upstairs, but they weren’t there when you and I . . . talked.”

“So you’re saying you think someone broke in and took them?” His voice bore a hint of skepticism.

I chose my next few words carefully. “I’m saying I don’t know where they are.”

“I guess I can keep my eyes open for them,” Ken said. “Is there a list or something so I know what I’m looking for?”

“On the kitchen table in the apartment. Just make me a copy,” Dad said, then his eyes widened. “Carson Suffern.”

Ken sat up in his chair. “What about him?”

“The vic had Carson Suffern’s card in his pocket?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Then he had to get the card somehow. Maybe Carson Suffern can identify him. Take a picture over there and see if he can cough up the name of our John Doe.” Dad was back in chief mode.

If Ken resented this, he didn’t show it. He practically saluted on his way out. I kept an eye on Dad all that afternoon. His suggestion to Ken had sounded like an order, and the last thing we needed was Dad inserting himself into an investigation in which he was also a suspect.

Fortunately, a nice board game marathon brought him back to his kindly toy store persona, even if he did almost kick my butt in Catan. Just before Dad scored enough points to win, however, Othello darted across the table, sending hexagons and playing pieces skittering in all directions. I took to my hands and knees to salvage the ones that had fallen
to the floor—all except the one my cat happily batted under the refrigerator. He’d been lying on his side, poking with his paws, trying to retrieve his prize. Before long, I was doing a reasonable impersonation, trying to sweep the missing piece out with a butter knife. I finally connected and sent it spinning toward me, amid a collection of cheerios, apparent possum fur, and a dust bunny the size of Texas. Othello started sniffing the possum fur, making that disgusted face cats make when they focus on a new smell.