Harley Rushes In (Book 2 of the Blue Suede Mysteries) (12 page)

“Yes, that’s right. It’s a nice day.” He unlocked the top desk drawer and held out her paycheck with fingers cruelly twisted by arthritis. “I’m sure you’ve come by for this.”

“Thank you. You’re always prepared.”

“Yes, my hair’s thinning a bit on top.” He took off his cap and smoothed a hand over the white wisps that clung tenaciously to his pink scalp. “Still got a way with the ladies, though.”

“You’re a rascal, Mr. Grinder,” she said, and apparently he heard that and seemed pleased by it.

“I sure am.” He clacked his false teeth together in what may have been an invitation, so Harley took the elevator up to the second floor to find out what Tootsie was doing.

Tootsie looked up at her with a lifted brow. “What’s up, baby?”

“Name it. You still have on makeup. You look like a raccoon. Good show last night?”

“Great show. I vamped it up, did my Cher routine and sang
Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves
. I rocked. You should have come.”

Harley sat down in Tootsie’s office chair to watch him connect wires to the older model computer on the desk. “I was a little busy. Life’s been crazy since Thursday night.”

“Honey, life’s always crazy for you.”

“Now, I don’t know why you’d say something like that.”

“A murder in a design shop, guy hanging off moose antlers, what d’ya think?”

“Elk horns. He was hanging off elk horns.” Harley stared glumly at Tootsie. “What are you doing here? I thought you were usually off on Sundays.”

“Hooking up the DSL. The ogre thought it was time we stepped into the twenty-first century. Not that this dinosaur of a computer will help that much. Not enough RAM or gigs.”

“Uh huh.” Her interest in computers rated pretty low. RAM and gigs meant goats and pitchforks as far as she was concerned. She barely listened as Tootsie rambled on about memory and software for a few minutes. Then he looked up at her.

“So what are you doing here? I already gave your runs to Charlsie. She’s doing Graceland and Tupelo today. A fan club from England.”

“I came by to get my paycheck. I was a little distracted Friday and forgot to pick it up.” She leaned forward in the chair. “Darcy’s mixed up in the murder. She was there.”

Tootsie plugged in a wire then ran a hand through his hair to shove the long strands out of his face. “Think she did it?”

“I don’t know. She says she has an alibi, but I saw her car leaving the parking lot right before I found Harry. She told the police that she was at her Junior League meeting.” Darcy’s affair would remain a secret for now. She had to have some standards.

“Maybe she was.”

“Maybe, but how many cars like hers in Memphis still have a Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker? Most people don’t continue to advertise that they voted for the losers.”

“So, maybe someone else was driving her car.”

Harley looked at him. “Damn. Of course. That makes sense—you’re a genius, Tootsie.”

“Only pointing out the obvious, baby.” He smiled a little when she made a rude comment. “You’re too close to it. Darcy’s your family. My advice, let the police handle it.”

“Now you sound like Bobby and Mike.”

“Both reasonable men.”

“Both cops.”

“Not necessarily a bad thing.”

“You only say that because the imaginary Steve is a cop.”

Tootsie grinned. “That doesn’t make it less true, baby.”

“You know, you’re at your most annoying when you’re smug.”

“Not at all. I can be far more annoying. Now move out of my way so I can see if I’ve got this hooked up right.”

Harley rolled close to the file cabinets while Tootsie played with the computer. It made sense. If Aunt Darcy hadn’t been in her car, someone else had to have been. But who? It’d have to be someone she trusted, because she’d never loan anyone else her car. That left only a very few possibilities. Starting with Mandy and Maddie, the gruesome twosome. Her bet was on Madelyn. But then . . . she hadn’t even considered that her uncle might figure into this. Maybe because he seemed like a timid mouse most of the time, one of those mild-mannered men who seemed to fade into the background except when he was expected to ante up some money. Darcy almost couldn’t be blamed for having an affair, but Harley had always thought Paul a really nice guy. Not that she had any qualms about investigating him. And that made her wonder—could Harry have been Darcy’s lover? Was that what she was hiding?

“Got it,” Tootsie said, and she looked over as the monitor popped up a home page.

“So do I,” Harley said, and stood up. “Keep my schedule flexible this week, okay? Just in case.”

“Sure. Crimestoppers must pay more than advertised. Unless you’ve come into money and don’t need our paltry paychecks.”

Harley made a face. “Unkind of you to remind me, but if I clear Aunt Darcy, I’ll take her entire check so fast she won’t have time to reconsider.”

“So what happened to the five thousand for investigating Harry?”

“Harry being dead and all, I can’t take the entire thing for just a few days’ work. I charged her a hundred instead. But if I can keep her out of jail, it’s worth at least five thousand, don’t you think?”

“That’s one of the reasons I love you, Harley, you have scruples.”

She shuddered. “Don’t say that. You’ll ruin my reputation as a bitch. Life is much easier when people hesitate to cross you.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“If I didn’t know better, Tootsie, I’d swear we were separated at birth.”

He made a wry face. “Except that I have much better taste than you.”

“I happen to like shabby chic, thank you very much. You’re into elegance. I’m into the right price. In fact, I think I’ll hit my favorite secondhand clothing store after I talk to a few lucky people I like to refer to as suspects.”

“You frighten me, baby.”

“That’s what Morgan says.”

“He should know.”

“Yeah, but he keeps hanging around anyway. He’s just a sucker for punishment, I guess.”

It always gave her a warm feeling to think about Mike Morgan. She could blame it on the summer heat, but denying it didn’t change it. The man tickled her libido in the best possible way. It probably wouldn’t last. She knew she wasn’t that good at relationships. There was no reasonable explanation for that. Except maybe it had something to do with her early life, when they’d moved around a lot and she’d learned that most people were only temporary. Either they had moved on, or Harley had moved on with her parents, traveling around California from commune to commune, or someplace on a whim, the freedom of the seventies giving way at last to their more stable life in Memphis. While she’d spent nearly half her life here, the mark of the first fourteen years had left more of an impression, it seemed. Maybe there really was something to that theory that the first five years of a child’s life molded the rest of it. She hoped not. Living out of a van and eating dried seaweed really wasn’t that appealing.

Heat struck like a closed fist when she stepped out onto the parking lot where her trusty Toyota waited in the shade of a tree. June was one of those months that could be hot as a furnace or quite pleasant. Sometimes it turned out to be both. In the same hour.

Crossing Poplar Avenue on a Sunday was a lot easier than during the week, and she made it into the Taco Bell parking lot across from the office building with only a few annoyed honks from other drivers. Memphis drivers were notoriously impatient, ignoring Southern hospitality in favor of a two-second head start at stop lights. Southern hospitality obviously did not extend to the perils of Poplar Avenue.

It didn’t take long to get her food, and she pulled back onto Poplar and headed toward her apartment. She needed a little quiet time to think. And plot her next move.

Tootsie’s suggestion made sense. Aunt Darcy had to have loaned her car to someone. It made a lot more sense than another identical Lexus with an identical row of bumper stickers just happening to be in the parking lot. So now there were more possibilities, the list of suspects a bit longer than before. That was good for Darcy, bad for the police.

When she pulled into the driveway shared with the other tenants, someone darted in front of her and she had to brake hard. Sarah Simon. It was a rare sighting. Normally, Sarah stayed in her apartment and peeked out her windows through closed drapes. Now, she scuttled like a crab to get out of the way before getting hit.

“Hey, you okay?” she called, but Sarah ran all the way back into the building without looking over her shoulder. She had short auburn hair, and loose clothes that looked like pajamas flapped around her legs. Sarah lived in the apartment below hers, and as far as Harley knew, only came out on Groundhog Day. Strange girl.

The red brick house held four apartments and five tenants: the Spragues on the second floor next to Harley, Sarah Simon right below her, and Mr. Diaz below the Spragues. She didn’t know his first name, but he had a really nice CRX that he parked in the garage. It was a mystery why there were only three parking slots in the garage for four apartments, but as the last tenant to lease, Harley parked under the oak tree. At least it was shade on hot summer days.

Even with the ceiling fans and floor fans on, it was warm in her apartment. Harley opened the French doors and windows to get a cross breeze, took off her tee shirt and put on some shorts with her sports bra. Then she went out to sit on her balcony to eat. Bean burritos and nachos with cheese spanned three of the major food groups: vegetables, grains, dairy. Not bad. One day all this junk food was going to catch up to her, but right now, she ate pretty much what she liked. Diva’s dire warnings of obesity and rickets, among various other sinister diseases, couldn’t fight the lure of Taco Bell.

Just across the green expanse of lawn in front of her apartment building, the Overton Park Zoo had a Sunday crowd. Cars rolled slowly through the park, bikers and walkers and picnickers enjoyed the day, and the occasional shriek of a child drowned out the peacocks. But not the diesel engines of an occasional city bus or the irritated blast of a car horn. Ah, summertime was nigh.

She propped one foot on the wide white-painted concrete rail of the balcony and leaned back in her chair to finish off her second burrito. Her neighbors were home; she heard their New Age music seeping through the walls. The Spragues. They hated her now. All because of that unfortunate incident in the laundry room when one of the jewelry thieves Harley had been pursuing had mistaken Tammy Sprague for Harley and bopped her on the head. Tammy was all right, but apparently carried a grudge. Ah well. No big loss. They hadn’t been that close anyway.

It occurred to her as she started on the nachos that while it was quite possible she’d mistaken Darcy as the driver of the Lexus, she’d been sure she’d caught a glimpse of blonde hair before it’d sped away. That meant it could be Madelyn or Amanda. It all happened so quickly, and there’d been no reason to be suspicious of anything at the time. If Darcy, who by her own admission wasn’t the most compassionate person in the world, was covering for someone, it had to be family.

Harley thought about that some more. She really needed to talk to her cousins, and she needed to do so separately. That wasn’t always easy since Madelyn had come back home to live. She and Amanda could close ranks quickly, even though they didn’t always get along well when left on their own. Madelyn could be cruel, poking fun at her sister for being what she called “fat” when she was really only healthy. Harley had learned a long time ago not to defend Amanda, after a memorable afternoon at a family reunion when they were all teenagers. It had ended in a hair-pulling, nail-scratching brawl that Harley had won, even if barely. All the adults took sides, except Diva. And Nana McMullen. Diva had been disappointed in the unnecessary violence, and Nana McMullen had enjoyed the entertainment. Scary old lady.