The Baby Blue Rip-Off (18 page)

“I will,” Lou said softly. “And I’m not worried. Because nobody’s left.”

He was right. The Petersens clearly had made it away before Brennan got there. Chet was dead. Pat was dead. P. J. knew nothing. The women knew nothing. Me? I had a patchwork quilt of guesses; try
that
out in court.

“I’m left,” Debbie said.

We hadn’t heard her come up behind us. I’m sure she hadn’t wanted to leave Pat behind, but she’d felt the need to come over and join us. To let Lou know.

That she knew.

Husbands don’t keep much from wives. Lou should have thought of that. And maybe Felicia Richards would turn out to know as much as Debbie. After all, Chet was her brother. Among other things.

Lou’s hand tightened around the butt of the holstered .357 Magnum once again. Began to draw it out.

“Are you kidding?” I said. “Listen to those sirens. They’re thirty seconds away. Look at all these people standing in their yards, on porches, watching. You going to shoot them, too? Get serious.”

He let the gun drop back down in the holster.

He said, “I really didn’t mean... want... to kill them. But it was all I could think of to do.”

The tears came now. Debbie’s, I mean. She buried her face in my chest, and I patted her head.

Lou touched his forehead with one hand and mumbled, “Damn sirens.” He went over to the curb and sat and covered his ears with his hands, while the cars started rolling in on the scene: first cops, then ambulance, then Brennan, in close succession. Across from Lou, Pat and Chet were staring, empty-eyed. Lou was staring, too. With eyes just as empty.

I spent the next several weeks trying to forget the whole damn affair. I didn’t have much luck. Every time I turned around, Brennan (who had become friendly due to the favorable publicity I’d helped him get) was stopping by to tell me the latest. I came to dread those visits, but also looked forward to them, since my desire to put the mess out of my mind was equaled by my natural curiosity to see how the details worked out. You might be curious, too, so I’ll give you the nutshell version of what Brennan had to say.

While the Petersens had made it away that afternoon before Brennan could get out to their antique shop, they’d left a truck behind in their barn, a furniture truck with ramps set in back for the loaded green van to be driven up inside. The truck’s place of purchase was traced to Cleveland, Ohio, where, not coincidentally, Lou Brown had been working in a factory until he decided to move back to Port City.

Brennan also said that a pattern involving the Petersens was forming, which should facilitate their eventual capture. Apparently, under various names, the couple had on at least four other occasions (in Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois) made down-payments on down-at-the-mouth antique shops located out in the boonies, keeping up the payments for several months and then leaving town suddenly. The young couple
skipping out after failing to make a go of their investment had never been remotely connected to the local outbreaks of breaking-and-entering. Now that it had, and the pattern was clear, it was just a matter of time, Brennan said, before the Petersens would join Lou Brown, whose trial was set to come up in three months.

My hunch about Felicia Richards was right; she, too, knew of Lou Brown’s link to the break-in ring and was bitter enough about her brother’s death to testify. The fact that doing so brought her immunity from prosecution may have had something to do with her cooperation. Because of such cooperation, neither Felicia nor Debbie was to be charged with anything.

Which was fine with me.

And now two weeks had gone by since the shooting out in front of Mrs. Fox’s. I was getting back to my mystery novel and hoped to get the final draft typed up and in the mail by the middle of next month. And I had a good idea what my next one would be. Right now, however, I was drinking a Pabst, enjoying the solitude of my trailer. Didn’t even have the stereo or TV on.

The phone rang, of course.

Solitude has a way of not lasting long—when I’m enjoying it, anyway.

“Mal? This is Debbie.”

“I know. How are you doing?”

“Better. I haven’t seen you since....”

“Right. You making the adjustment okay?”

“I suppose as well as can be expected. We’re moved in with Mom now. A lot of our stuff was... stolen property, you know, so all of that was confiscated. Cindy’s taking it kind of hard. She was crazy about her daddy.”

“Most little girls are. I’m sorry.”

“Mal, I can’t tell you what it means to me that you’re not... bitter about what... what I did to you. I think about that—what I did—and it makes me feel so, God... well, let’s just say this wasn’t an easy call to make.”

“It wasn’t a necessary one, either,” I said. “I can understand what you did, without approving of it. Pat was your husband. You loved him. What you did came out of that.”

“That’s not completely true. We... we really
were
unhappy. Pat wasn’t a drunk, he didn’t beat me; that was all a lie. But our lives weren’t going anywhere. He couldn’t keep a job. His job at the silo plant was the best he ever had, and he lost that for filching cases of Pepsi meant for the pop machine. That stuff I told you about him quitting was a cover-up. Pat was a kid—never grew up, still thought he could cheat and con and steal his way through life. But he didn’t have it figured out, did he, Mal?”

“Have what figured out?”

“That when you take things from people, you take something from yourself, too.” Silence for a moment. “Like me ripping you off, Mal. Emotionally. Like I have since we were kids.” Silence again. “There are two really big rip-offs, Mal, the two biggest rip-offs of all. Know what they are?”

“No.”

“One’s death. Guess the other.”

“I can’t.”

“It’s life, silly.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“I know that, Mal. It usually is, though, isn’t it? Can I ask you something?”

“Debbie... I really don’t think seeing each other is a good idea.”

“How do you know I was going to ask you to see me?”

“I just know.”

“I’m glad you do, because... well, it started out with me lying to you, using you, to help Pat... but it became more than that, and I really did...
do
like you, Mal. Remember that morning you saw Sarah Petersen and me together at breakfast? Know what we were arguing about? I didn’t want to do it anymore; didn’t want to lie to you, use you, just couldn’t stand doing that to you any longer.”

“But you did.”

“I did. I’m not strong, Mal. Neither was Pat. If I’d had somebody strong, it could’ve been different. You made me realize that, Mal. How things could’ve been different.”

“They always could.”

“Good-bye, Mal.”

“Bye, Deb.”

That conversation called for a fresh Pabst. I finished off the dregs of my present can and went for another. I got settled down to relax and couldn’t get my mind empty, so I got up and put on a record album, a golden oldies record, hits from back in my junior high days. I listened to half a song, took it off, put on something newer.

And the phone rang again.

“Yes?”

“This is Edward Jonsen.”

“What do you want, Jonsen?”

I had a good idea what he wanted. Several days ago I’d been contacted by the lawyer representing Mrs. Jonsen’s estate. Seemed she’d made an addition to her will, codicil they call it, leaving all those Christmas plates to me. And the damn set of plates turned out to be even more valuable than Mrs. Jonsen had realized. The lawyer wouldn’t give me their exact worth, but he
did admit, “We’re talking in the neighborhood of ten thousand dollars, Mr. Mallory.” Which was a nice neighborhood.

Of course, Mrs. Jonsen had had plenty of other valuable antiques, and that fabled hidden loot of hers that Pat, Chet, and P. J. had searched so diligently for turned up in a bank safe-deposit box, and so Edward Jonsen was going to do all right even without the plates. But I’d made my mind up to give him the damn things anyway. What did I want with them? They’d just stir up memories I didn’t want stirred, that’s all. Let the fat bastard have the plates. Let him eat caviar off ’em; what did I care?

“Look, Jonsen, I’ve made a decision about those plates—”

“Don’t bother asking for money, Mallory! I don’t intend to pay you one cent for the plates. They are legally mine. I’m going to have that will broken; I’ve spoken to my attorney and he agrees with me. I’m going to fight this all the way; I can
prove
my mother was incompetent when she made that addition, I—”

I hung up.

Well, I supposed I could clear the movie posters off one wall and make room for the plates. Or maybe just sell them to some collector; my funds
were
getting kind of low. A mystery writer can always use a little extra cash, you know.

Edward Jonsen really did have more right to those plates than I, but some people just seem to deserve getting ripped off.

In the meantime, I had some hot suppers to deliver.

Photo Credit: Bamford Studio

Max Allan Collins is the
New York Times
best-selling author of
Road to Perdition
and multiple award-winning novels, screenplays, comic books, comic strips, trading cards, short stories, movie novelizations, and historical fiction. He has scripted the
Dick Tracy
comic strip,
Batman
comic books, and written tie-in novels based on the
CSI, Bones,
and
Dark Angel
TV series; collaborated with legendary mystery author Mickey Spillane; and authored numerous mystery novels including the Quarry, Nolan, Mallory, and the best-selling Nathan Heller historical novels. His additional Mallory novels include
No Cure for Death, Kill Your Darlings, A Shroud for Aquarius,
and
Nice Weekend for a Murder.