The Case of the Invisible Dog (15 page)

We got out of the car and I started heading toward the front door of Matt's office, assuming (foolishly, as it turns out; when will I ever learn) that Shirley was right behind me.

“Excuse me,” I heard her call out. “Are the two of you regular customers of this loan establishment, by any chance?”

“What's it to ya?” the male half of the young couple snarled as I turned around and saw Shirley marching purposefully toward them.

“I heard there was a dreadful murder here a couple days ago,” Shirley told them, stopping a few inches in front of the couple, leaning on her cane with both hands. They both stared at her as if she had just landed and emerged from a Martian spaceship.

“Yeah,” the man said. “Some guy got popped here.”

“Shut up, Tom,” the woman snapped.

“You shut up.”

“No, you shut up. What if she's a cop?”

“So? We ain't doing nothing.”

“Like that matters,” the woman said with a snort.

I started to walk over to them, and grabbed my cell phone out of my purse, ready to dial 9-1-1 if things took an ugly turn. With Shirley doing most of the talking that was always a possibility.

“Oh, dear,” Shirley said merrily. “I did not mean to cause an altercation. I can assure you that I am not a member of the Springville Police Department. As a matter of fact, if the truth be known, they do not care for me at all. Or for my partner, here,” she added, as I stepped over and stopped next to her, with my hand folded over my phone.

“Yeah?” Tom asked, sounding a little less hostile. “Why not?”

“Let's just say that there are two detectives employed by the local constabulary who would be very happy to see me leave town permanently.”

“The who?” Tom asked.

“The cops,” I clarified. “They don't like us.”

“Really?” the woman asked with a satisfied smirk, as Tom blew a great wad of spit out of his mouth and onto the sidewalk.

“Really,” Shirley replied calmly with no apparent reaction to Tom's spit globule as it lay there glistening in the sun just a few inches from her feet.

“So why do you want to know about the dead guy?” Tom asked.

“I was acquainted with the poor man, and I do not believe that the police are on the right track to find the person who murdered him.”

“Wouldn't be surprised,” Tom said, shaking his head sadly. “They don't know their ass from a hole in the ground, if you ask me.”

“You got that right,” the woman agreed. “We got friends who are locked up and they are, like, totally innocent.”

“Totally innocent,” Tom agreed.

“Oh, dear,” Shirley said
sympathetically.
“What a dreadful state of affairs. Have any of them filed a complaint?”

“Like a million of them,” the young woman said bitterly.

“I knew him,” Tom said. “That dead dude.”

“Matt Peterman?” Shirley asked, startled. “You knew him?”

“Shut up,” the woman said, shaking her head. “Ever since you found out it was the dude who worked in that insurance office that you probably saw get out of his car a couple times, you keep acting like you
knew
him.”

“You shut up, Brenda. Maybe there's more to the story than you know. And maybe I woulda told you before if you ever shut your big trap for more than two seconds. I didn't know him like we partied together. But last month when you were, uh, away, that asshole John wouldn't give me anything for my watch. Said it was a piece of crap. Couldn't believe it. My paw-paw gave me that damn watch. It had to be worth something. Anyway, I was standing out front here, freezing my ass off, just, like, at the end of my rope. I was hungry, man. So I went into the Chinese place and said I'd wash dishes or mop the floors, or whatever, if they'd just let me have an eggroll or something. I could tell that old bitch was going to say no before I even got halfway through. She's looking at me like I'm something she found on the bottom of her shoe.”

“Does this story ever end?” Brenda asked with a roll of her eyes.

“Yeah, if you'd ever shut up so's I could finish. He gave me his lunch, okay? The dead dude. He came in when I was talking, and was standing behind me, and heard what I said, and before the bitch could say no he told her to give me his lunch, the one he'd called in, and he'd pay for it. Is that enough of an end for you, Brenda?”

“Whatever,” she muttered, but the hardness in her eyes had softened.

“Should have gone back and thanked him,” Tom muttered, staring down at the ground and kicking the bottom of his left foot across the sidewalk.

“Can you think of anything else?” Shirley asked quietly. “Anything you knew about him? Or any possible reason someone might want to kill him?”

Tom shook his head. “No. Hope you find out, though. Dumb-ass cops never will.”

“Ah, Tammy,” Shirley said with a small shake of her head as we left Tom and Brenda behind and headed over to Matt Peterman's office. “One looks at those two sad people, who were once shiny, new infants, filled with boundless potential, and has to wonder why it is that humanity so often ends up going so terribly wrong.”

“Uh…”

“It was a rhetorical question, my dear. I was not really expecting an answer to a mystery that has plagued philosophers, saints, and thinkers of all kinds since the dawn of time. But here we are at Matt Peterman's door, and we shall have to put aside thoughts of those sad, eternal mysteries and turn our time and attention, instead, to one that we may actually be able to solve.”

With that she whisked open the door to Matt's office and ushered me inside.

“So then she has the nerve to say,” the woman with the purple-spiked hair shouted into the phone, “like it's my fault Jack can't keep his hands off me, that we're no longer friends. So I say…” The woman's voice trailed off as the door shut behind us and she spotted Shirley and me walking toward her desk. “…fine by me. Uh, gotta go. There's someone here.” Whipping the phone off her shoulder and placing it back in its cradle, the woman gave us a bright smile. “Hello. Sorry. I don't normally make personal calls, but I decided to take my lunch break here instead of going out so I could keep an eye on things. You're here to go over the files?”

“I am here to purchase life insurance,” Shirley announced, stopping abruptly in front of the woman's desk. “And you are?”

“Casey Blunt,” she replied, no longer smiling. “You're not from corporate?”

“As I believe I stated quite clearly a few short seconds ago I am here to purchase life insurance.”

“Sorry. No can do.”

“I beg your pardon?” Shirley asked, peering down at the woman with undisguised disdain. “Is this not an officially designated office of the Providential Insurance Company as the sign out front indicates? Do you not sell life insurance?”

“Yeah, normally we do. But not today.”

“And why ever not?”

“ 'Cause the guy who had the office, he, like, got killed yesterday.”

“Heavens!” Shirley gasped, putting her right hand over her chest.

“Creeps me out, to tell you the truth,” Casey said with a small shudder. “I was in here for, like, probably an hour or two, without even knowing he was out in the back alley laying dead in his car. He always came in that way 'cause one time someone had thrown all our trash around. Like
that
was our big problem, some trash in an alley that no one uses but the crackheads and the garbage collectors. I kept wondering where he was…Ugh,” she said, shuddering. “And then all of a sudden all these cops show up…I didn't ever want to come back. But corporate said they'd pay me my regular salary if I'd keep the place open until they get someone else out here to run it, and then let me transfer to their main office.”

“And do you have some
particular reason
to want to transfer to another office?” Shirley asked, her voice dripping with suspicion.

“Uh, my boss got killed out in the parking lot?” Casey said with sarcasm so thick it could have cut a slice of bread. “Is that a good enough reason for you?”

“Is it?” Shirley asked, leaning over the desk so that her face was a mere inch away from Casey's. “Or were you secretly in love with him? Or maybe not so secretly. While the rest of the world pitied Matt Peterman for his supposedly sad and lonely life, little did they know that the two of you were in the middle of a torrid affair! And perhaps embezzling money from his clients so that you could run away together and live in Tahiti or some other tropical paradise?”

“What? Are you out of your fucking mind?” Casey yelled, scooting back in her chair and then jumping to her feet with a furious expression on her face.

“Uh, Shirley,” I interjected, “maybe we should—”

“Wait a minute!” Casey exclaimed, breathing heavily as Shirley stared back at her with a placid expression. “His ex-wife, Patty, sent you, didn't she? That damn bitch.”

His ex-wife?

“His ex-wife?” Shirley asked, shocked. “I was not aware that Matt Peterman had an ex-wife.”

“Oh, don't play innocent with me,” Casey snapped as I groaned to myself. The ex-wife. How much more of an obvious suspect could there possibly be?

“My dear young woman, I am not playing innocent.”

“Who else would come up with such a ridiculous story?” Casey asked, sneering at Shirley with contempt. “
Me
screwing Matt Peterman? Only a crazy, jealous, psychotic bitch of an ex-wife could think that was even possible.”

“The game's up, Shirley!” I exclaimed, jumping in before Shirley pissed off the woman so badly that we would never get anything out of her. And I, for one, wanted to know more about this ex-wife.

“Game?” Shirley asked, turning her head to give me a withering look. “What game is it that you are referring to, Tammy?”

“I'm sorry,” I said, smiling at Casey as if horribly embarrassed. Which, actually, I was, and pretty much had been ever since the moment I became gainfully employed by Shirley Homes. “We should have told you the truth from the start. We're on your side here. We want to get all the dirt on Matt's ex-wife that we can.”

“You do?” Casey stood there a moment, thinking, as her breathing slowed back down to normal, and then she narrowed her eyes. “Why? Who are you?”

“My name is Tammy Norman,” I told her matter-of-factly. “And this is Shirley Homes. Matt hired us, right before he died.”

“Hired you? For what?”

“To, um, look into something that was bothering him. Something that he couldn't go to the police with,” I said, while doing my best to ignore the eyes of Shirley Homes, which were currently staring at the side of my head with the intensity of an exploding nova. “But it had to do with his ex-wife.”

“I was just about to explain all that,” Shirley said after sending another withering glance in my direction. “Before my assistant so kindly decided to interrupt. Matt Peterman came to see
me
at
my
office the day before he was killed.”

“About Patty?” Casey asked breathlessly.

“I am not at liberty to say anything more,” Shirley told her, leaning forward and lowering her voice as she spoke. “But anything that you could tell us would be most appreciated.

“Well,” Casey said looking around slowly as if making sure that no one was hiding behind the file cabinet, eavesdropping. “I thought it was weird, the way she came slithering back into his life. I knew she had to have an ulterior motive. Did you find out something?” Shirley shrugged her shoulders
noncommittally,
and then raised one eyebrow as if to indicate that Casey was on the right track. “Oh!” Casey gasped. “Is that why you're here now? Do you think Patty…do you actually think she had something to do with his murder?” she gasped again, her eyes wide as saucers.

“What do you think?” Shirley asked, cocking her head at a slight angle.

“I wouldn't be surprised.” Casey looked around the room and beckoned for Shirley and me to lean in closer. “This office wasn't doing well,” she whispered, just loudly enough for us to hear. “If he didn't get his numbers up pretty soon, corporate was ready to bring someone else in to take over the office, and if he was lucky they'd let him work at the main office crunching numbers. He was good with numbers and stuff. But people? He just didn't make that great an impression. He was pretty down about it. Especially the last few weeks. I think he was really depressed, you know?”

Yeah, Casey. I know.

“Anyway, he wasn't exactly hot, he didn't have any money, so why was Patty making a play for him again? She came in once to take him to lunch, and he tripped on the rug. The look she gave him behind his back…I think she actually hated him.”

“Were they still seeing each other when he was killed?” Shirley asked.

“I don't know for sure, but I don't think so. She stopped calling, and Matt was acting kind of strange for the last few weeks. He started complaining about not being able to sleep, and he had these huge dark circles under his eyes. But he was really on edge, too. And just…weird. Like something was really bothering him. She didn't come in anymore, either, except for yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” Shirley and I both asked in unison.

“Yeah. She came in all nice at first. Says that as Matt's
next of kin
she needs to go through his desk and see if there's any papers she needs to take. So I tell her that corporate already told me no one is to touch his stuff. And then she starts to get snotty, so I get snotty right back. I tell her that since they've been divorced for years I didn't think she qualified to be his
next of kin.
And then she goes ballistic and says I'll be hearing from her attorney. So I tell her,
Bring it on.
So then she gets this snotty smile and says
I hope you weren't wasting your time sleeping with him. Because whatever he has is coming to me.
Uh, like big deal. All Matt had was that house, and he'd taken out a second mortgage on it 'cause he had all this credit card debt. I knew about that because he was a nervous wreck waiting for the bank to get back to him about whether he'd qualified.”