Harley Rushes In (Book 2 of the Blue Suede Mysteries) (24 page)

She took her helmet off the buddy bar and fired up the bike, fastening the straps under her chin while it idled. Yogi met her in the driveway.

“Give me a quick ride? It won’t take long.”

Eying him, she nodded. “Jogging to McDonald’s?”

“Don’t tell your mother.”

“Are you kidding? And lose any leverage I might have for the future?”

Yogi grinned and straddled the bike behind her. McDonald’s wasn’t far, and by the time they’d cruised through the drive-out window and back down Highland to Douglass, he’d finished his sausage biscuits. How he ate with a forty-mile an hour wind in his face, she had no idea, but he managed just fine.

“You’ve got sausage grease on your mouth,” she said when she dropped him off at the end of the driveway, and he did a quick, guilty pass of his hand over his lips. “Diva probably knows anyway,” she added, and he shrugged.

“As long as I don’t give her proof, she’s happy.”

“I never thought my father would have to hide a love affair with a hamburger.”

“Cheeseburger and sausage biscuits.” Yogi grinned when she shook her head and gave the bike gas. Really, dealing with family peculiarities could be interesting and amusing.

Next stop was the design shop. It’d reopened for the employees to tidy up this morning. The only obvious evidence of the murder was a shred of yellow crime tape that had come loose and been blown into the top of a tree where it fluttered like a banner. Several cars were parked in front. She recognized none of them. A
Closed
sign still hung on the door, but she went in anyway.

A thin woman wearing a brown pantsuit with a coral scarf draped around the neck met her three steps into the showroom. Her brown hair had been pulled back into a tight bun on the nape of her neck, and she had a look on her face like she’d just stepped in dog poop.

“I’m sorry dear. We’re closed . . . for inventory. May I help you?”

“It’s possible.” Harley smiled, aware that her jeans and tee shirt marked her as a customer unable to afford so much as a pillow from Designer’s Den. “My aunt is Darcy Fontaine.”

“Oh?” She sounded slightly incredulous.

“Yes. I’d like to ask a few questions of the employees.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. They’re all rather busy.”

“Too busy to keep dear Aunt Darcy out of prison?”

Miss Dog Poop hesitated. With a little coaxing—and a show of ID in case she’d come to rob them—she was given limited access to the employees who’d shown up for work. Three had quit. Fortunately, by process of elimination that took a half hour, she finally found the designer that Cheríe claimed had heard Darcy threaten Harry. In her early twenties, Linda Moore looked defiant but honest.

“Where did you hear her threaten to kill Harry?” Harley asked. “And when?”

“I didn’t want to make any trouble for Mrs. Fontaine, but the police asked me if I’d heard anything odd between them and I had to say what I heard. I won’t lie.”

“I understand. Really I do. As long as it’s the truth, it can only help.” She hoped. Since it was out anyway, she might as well know exactly what had been said.

Linda hesitated, then said, “It was Thursday afternoon. I’d gone to get a pair of crystal candlesticks from the buffet in the Victorian Room. They were in the hallway just outside, before you get to the Edwardian Room. They got a bit loud, and I overheard them.”

“What was said?”

“Mr. Gordon had come in with some kind of carved box in his hand. I didn’t see it clearly myself, but Mrs. Fontaine stopped him. She said if he was endangering her business with that kind of thing, she’d see him dead. He laughed at her, and she said, ‘I mean it, Harry. I’ll kill you myself if I have to!’ and he just laughed again and said, ‘You don’t have the guts to do it. Besides, you need me.’ That’s when I bumped into the case clock and they heard me.” Flipping a lock of light hair from her eyes, she said, “That’s it. That’s all I heard.”

Damning, in light of what had happened a few hours later. Was that why Darcy had been so rattled when she’d come out to the storage area Thursday afternoon? Had she seen Harry come in with more smuggled goods?

“Thank you, Miss Moore. I’m sure Aunt Darcy appreciates your help.”

That lie should have made her nose grow a foot. It’d hardly be a help if Darcy ended up being charged with murder on the testimony of this witness. And that, unfortunately, seemed like a sure thing.

Before heading out to Atoka for a conversation with the Plotz sister, she cruised by her apartment building. Across the street, the park had its share of visitors, carloads of mommies and kiddies arriving at the zoo, bicyclists, and patrons visiting the Brooks Art Gallery. It wasn’t too hard to blend in and still get a good look at the street running in front of her building, just to see if there were any cars staking out her car and apartment.

There was a dark blue Pontiac with a bashed-in front fender parked on Tucker as she’d thought there might be. Her stalker was so predictable, and obviously not too smart or he’d be in a different vehicle. She pulled over to one side under a tree, retrieved her cell phone—heavily padded by a leather case and wrapped in a thick scarf inside her backpack—and dialed Bobby. He answered on the second ring.

“Hi,” she said cheerily, “I have a favor to ask.”

“No.”

“You haven’t heard the favor yet.”

“Whatever it is—no.”

“Bobby, Bobby, you’re being shortsighted. I may have Harry Gordon’s murderer parked outside my apartment.”

After a brief silence, Bobby said, “Then let him in. It’d solve so many of my problems.”

“I know you don’t mean that.” When Bobby stopped laughing, she added, “He attacked me last night at Numbers. It occurred to me that he’s probably the same guy who killed Harry, though I haven’t yet figured out why. Anyway, I thought you might want to arrest him on some pretext, assault or illegal parking or whatever, while you connect him to the murder. I’m sure he’s involved in it, and probably the guy who did it.”

“Harley—”

“Ask Morgan about it. He was with me last night when I was attacked. He ran the guy’s plates, and they’re from Ohio and Harry Gordon was in Ohio before he came to work with Aunt Darcy.”

“Harley—”

“The least you can do is talk to Morgan before you make an arrest.”

“We already have a suspect in custody.”

“You do?” She knew that she wasn’t going to like what he said next, and she didn’t.

“We brought in Darcy Fontaine this morning. Harry Gordon was killed with her gun, and so was Julio Melendez. Her prints are all over it, she had motive, and her alibi didn’t hold up. I tried to call you, but you had your phone turned off.”

“Oh. I thought Harry was killed by an elk horn.”

“No, he was just hung on an elk horn. He was killed by a nine millimeter bullet. Just like the one that killed Julio Melendez.”

Some investigator she was, Harley thought in disgust, she’d never even asked what killed Julio. Somehow, it hadn’t seemed that important. Dead was dead.

“I didn’t know Darcy even had a gun, Bobby. Are you sure it belonged to her?”

“Registered in her name, with her prints on it. It’s a safe bet it’s hers.”

Aunt Darcy was just full of little surprises. Damn her. She could have at least mentioned the small fact she owned a gun that had turned out to be the murder weapon.

“So where’d you find the gun?”

“In Mrs. Fontaine’s car.”

A string of expletives danced in her head, but she restrained herself long enough to ask, “I suppose the case against her is pretty strong?”

“Strong enough that the DA is seeking an indictment. Sorry, Harley. I know she’s your aunt, but it really looks like she’s guilty.”

“Bobby, Aunt Darcy may be a lot of things, but you know she’s not a killer.”

“That’s not what the evidence says. And that’s what we have to go by.”

“Did you check out the other designers? The delivery guys? The office workers?”

“You know we did. They’ve all been ruled out. Except for Julio, and he was killed before Harry Gordon, according to the coroner.”

She sighed. “Okay, will you at least check out this guy waiting outside my apartment? There’s got to be a good reason he attacked me last night.”

“Harley, I know any number of people who’d want to attack you. But I’ll send out some uniforms anyway.”

“Thanks.”

“Stay inside until they’ve had a chance to check him out, okay? Don’t do anything on your own.
Stay away from him
, Harley.”

It seemed best not to tell him she was already outside. “I promise I won’t try to talk to him.”

“Or follow him or pelt him with eggs, or anything else.”

“Bobby, you have such a vivid imagination. Or good memory. I seem to recall an incident in your childhood that involved a dozen eggs, a neighbor’s house, and the police.”

“Good-bye, Harley.”

She smiled as she hung up. Sometimes it was so easy to fluster him.

Atoka was on the northeast side of Memphis, a small community that hadn’t yet been swallowed up by the larger city, so it still had that country feel to it. The inevitable house trailers on one to ten acre lots were scattered about, with older homes on decreasing farmlands still in the majority. New subdivisions were springing up on bare lots of what had once been corn or cotton fields, big houses built so close together the residents could lean out their upstairs windows to exchange handshakes if they wanted. Suburban living at its finest.

Harley found Anna Plotz Merritt at the address Tootsie had given her, living in a mobile home on some wooded acres off the main highway. A dirt drive led off the narrow blacktop road, two deep ruts forming the approach to the trailer.
No Trespassing
signs were nailed to trees on each side of the drive. A steel cover stretched the length of the metal home, shading the door and windows. Broken lattice panels enclosed a small porch set on concrete, and a couple of lazy dogs slept in the shade. Neither dog bothered to acknowledge her arrival, other than the barest flicker of a tail. She switched off her bike, and silence descended as she propped it up on the kickstand.

Three steps led up to the deck and front door, and Harley navigated around half of a pair of old rubber boots, a naked doll baby with frizzy hair and blue ink tattoos, a few plastic blocks, a rugged Tonka truck covered in mud, and a huge stuffed duck squatting in a lawn chair. The latter had realistic looking feathers and seemed to be leaking. A strange hissing sound came from that direction.

Harley rapped twice on the aluminum storm door and heard someone yell out, “Wait a minute!”

She took a step back to be out of the way when the door opened. The leaking duck got louder. This time she looked more closely at it. It blinked a beady eye.

Startled, she took another step back just as the storm door opened and the duck launched at her in a furious flurry of feathers and hisses. Arms flailing, Harley missed the second step and slid down the rest of the way on her butt and elbows. The duck followed, landing atop her chest and nipping at her face. The beak was hard as wooden pliers, pinching her ear, stabbing her arms when she flung them up to protect herself. It
hurt
.

She’d never hit a duck before, but there was a first time for everything. Grabbing hold of whatever she could reach, Harley swung it at the feathered fury. The baby doll’s head flew off, but so did the duck. A little shakily, Harley got to her feet.

Someone was laughing hysterically. It wasn’t Harley. She looked up at the porch.

A brown haired, slender woman was bent over at the waist, her face knotted up with laughter. Actual tears slid down her cheeks.

“This is not funny,” Harley said, but the woman she assumed to be Anna Plotz Merritt obviously didn’t agree. She kept laughing. “I mean it,” Harley said. “You should have some signs posted. Beware of Duck or something like that.”

Shaking her head and wiping her wet face with the heel of her hand, the woman said, “It’s not a duck. Gladys is a goose.”

A goose
. Of course. Diva had warned her. She really had to learn to interpret her mother’s predictions better.

“No offense to Gladys,” Harley muttered, “but who keeps geese on their front porch?”

“Geese are good watchdogs.”

“Better than yours, anyway,” Harley said with a glance at the still sleeping hounds. “Are you Anna?”

“Yes. And you are—?”

“Bruised, but my name is Harley.”

Anna glanced past her to the chrome bike sitting between ruts. “Harley on a Harley, huh. Cute.”

“Right. That’s me. Cute. Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“If you’re selling something, forget it.”

“It won’t cost you anything but a little time.” Harley tried her most innocent smile, but Anna apparently wasn’t fooled.

“Oh no, anytime someone shows up at my door wanting nothing, it’s always expensive. Usually it’s a man, but if Gladys doesn’t trust you, neither do I.”

“Gladys is mistaken. I don’t even eat meat. Much. Just a few questions, please. Then I’ll leave.” When Anna shook her head and reached for the storm door handle, Harley said, “It’s about your sister Cheríe. She may be in trouble.”

Anna paused and turned to look at her with narrowed eyes. “Cheríe is dead.”

“I know, but her name isn’t. Frieda’s using it.” While Anna looked like she might be thinking about that, Harley added, “And she might be in danger.”