Pink and blue wildflowers blossomed at the edge of the mowed lawn of the park. A family of at least three generations had eaten breakfast on one of the picnic tables, and now the adults sat, talking and sipping coffee while their children swarmed the sandbox, swings, and jungle gym. There were eight or ten children.
Immy pushed Drew on the swings, pondering when would be a good time to ask Mike Mallett for business cards. She wondered if she could get him to change her title from Assistant to Associate. Her name would look good underneath his on the door. The length of her name would make the sign look impressive.
“Hey, sugar.” Baxter startled her out of her reverie. Damn, he was out of jail?
“Don’t call me that. I’m not your sugar.”
“Aw, sweetie, what’d I do?”
She whirled on him. “What did you do? Do you not know what you did?”
He backed off and dropped his smile. Was he afraid of her, little old Immy?
“You got my father killed! You stole money and gave it to me and made me a suspect! You—”
“Wait a sec, sugar. I did not steal that money I gave to you. I told you I found it.”
“If you’re telling the truth, you picked it up off the ground. It wasn’t yours. You didn’t try to find the owner, which was Huey’s Hash and which I now own. It was stolen from me.”
Baxter shrugged and started to walk away.
“Wait, there’s more.”
When Baxter turned back to her, she realized the picnicking family was staring at them. She lowered her voice but left the fire in her words.
“You lied to the police about my mother.”
“Not exactly, sugar.”
“Don’t call me that.” One of the men in the family started toward them. She lowered her voice again. “You told Ralph Mother threatened to kill Huey.”
“She almost did. She said she wouldn’t be sorry if he were dead. She said she wished he’d died in the robbery instead of her husband.”
Drew’s swing had come to a stop, but remarkably, she didn’t ask for a push. Instead, she twisted her head around and watched the exchange, wide-eyed.
“How did you hear them? You weren’t there.”
“I wasn’t? Who says?”
Immy squared her shoulders and lifted her chin for her lie. “I was there in back, in the alley, and your car wasn’t there.”
Baxter pondered this for a moment. “You were there? Did you go inside?”
She decided not to answer this. The man from the picnic table reached them, and Immy told him she was all right, just having a heated discussion. After he returned to his family, Baxter continued, still keeping his distance from her.
“Do the cops know you were there? They don’t, do they?” How could she have thought that smile was sexy? It was mean. “But I could tell them, couldn’t I?”
Damn. Immy had to think about that. Could he move her to the top of the suspect list again? Then she remembered what Ralph said about people lying to them. He wouldn’t believe Baxter. She would bet the chief wouldn’t either.
“Ha. With your word against mine, guess whose would win?” said Immy.
“I must have been in the storage room or outside helping unload supplies. I lied to the cops. I didn’t hear anything that happened that day, but I did hear your mother say that exact thing another time. I overheard her and Hugh about a month ago, out back when he was leaving one night. She didn’t think he was running the place right. She was afraid he was going to drive it out of business, and you and Drew wouldn’t get anything from it.”
That could have been true, Immy thought. Those were her mother’s sentiments. She often lamented that Louie wasn’t around to oversee his brother.
“But,” Baxter continued, “I came back after he was dead, after your mother left. I told the cops I found him the next morning, but I saw him before then. Just didn’t report it until morning. I figured maybe someone else would find him, but no one did until it was time for me to go to work.”
“How long after he was dead were you there?”
He frowned. “How should I know? I don’t know when he died. It wasn’t long, though, from the looks of things. That sausage was frozen solid, and it was mush the next morning.”
“Was anyone else there?”
“I didn’t look around, sugar. I grabbed the money from the charity box on the counter, got in my truck and left. I ran outta there so fast I dinged Clem’s pickup with my door, got that blue paint on my white pickup. Had a hell of a time scraping it off, too.”
After Baxter sauntered away, acting like he’d won an argument, Immy absently gave Drew’s swing a push.
“Sandbox, Mommy,” Drew said, jumped off the swing, and ran to the sandbox, where three of the picnicking family’s children were playing. Was Drew outgrowing the swings?
Immy followed behind while Drew ran across the park. OK, so Baxter wasn’t there and didn’t hear Mother threaten Hugh the day he died. But for some reason, Immy thought he’d told her the truth about returning a day before he told the police he did. Stealing the money from the charity box sounded just like something he’d do, the rattlesnake. Then he dinged Clem’s truck and took off.
Wait a minute. He’d dinged Clem’s truck? Clem had said he was out. She needed to talk to Clem. Soon.
When they reached home from the park, Hortense was in the kitchen, happily mixing shortcake batter. Every time she added an ingredient, it seemed to be necessary to taste a spoonful to make sure the balance was satisfactory.
They lunched on sandwiches while the shortcake baked, and then Drew felt like taking a nap. She didn’t usually take one anymore, but the walk to the park and the climbing she had done on the jungle gym, after swings and sandbox, had tired her out.
Immy sat at the kitchen table, watching her mother test the cakes with toothpicks. She decided to make another list. She would list each person she deemed of interest along with the points for and against them.
First, Baxter. He was trying to blame Mother. Did that mean he was the killer? If he was a serious suspect, would he be out of jail now? He was a thief and probably had been planning to make meth, but killing? She wrote “maybe” next to his name.
Next, Xenia. She was still in the hospital, and Hugh’s driver’s license and credit card had been found in her possession. Did that mean she was the killer? If she had killed Hugh, wouldn’t she have hidden those things better than that? Maybe she had been framed by the killer, or maybe she wasn’t too bright. She wrote “maybe” next to her name.
Then, Frankie. He came from a violent family, full of hit men. Well, one for sure, but maybe more. He wasn’t the type to do it himself. He would have his uncle do the dirty deed. So she wrote “no” by his name.
Guido, Frankie’s uncle. There was no evidence for or against him except what Immy had overheard in the hospital parking garage, and the police didn’t seem to be considering him very seriously. She wrote “maybe” next to his name.
She would have to put Clem’s name down. His alibi didn’t seem to hold up. If he’d gone out for cabbage, his truck wouldn’t have been there. Was Baxter cleverly implicating him by slipping in the comment about Clem’s blue truck being at the diner, or could Clem have returned from buying groceries by the time of the murder? Didn’t they see each other? Could they be giving alibis to each other? She put “maybe” by his name, too.
She would not put her mother’s name down, but she mentally put a “maybe” beside it. At the end of the list she added her own name but wrote “NO” after it.
This exercise wasn’t getting her very far.
“Taste this, dear,” said Hortense. She held out a spoon with a dollop of whipped cream on it. “Is it sweet enough?”
Immy licked the spoon. “Umm. Just right, Mother, as always. You know how to use your sugar.”
Sugar. Drew had gone with Clem to leave messages spelled out in sugar packets. The messages were meant to draw suspicion away from Mother. How on earth had he thought that would work?
“Mother, when you were at Huey’s Hash, and you had that argument with him before he was killed—”
“I did not threaten him bodily harm. At the interrogation, Chief Emersen tried to intimate I had done so. He tried to put the words in my mouth, actually.”
“Did you notice anyone else there?”
“I have repeatedly told the police that the premises were vacant. Do you doubt my veracity?”
“No, no, I believe you, except for me being there, of course. Baxter even told me he lied about hearing you tell Huey you’d kill him. At least that day.”
“If he was present, I did not detect the whereabouts of Baxter Killroy.” Hortense shuddered when she said his name.
“I don’t think he was there, Mother.”
“If he was truly on the premises, he would have reported the conversation with more verisimilitude. For instance, it does not seem he mentioned that Hugh told me he had decided to effect the vending of his restaurant to the Giovannis and retain the proceeds for himself, which would leave you and Drew destitute. He laughed when he told me. If Baxter had heard and reported that, the police would know I had an excellent motive for wanting my brother-in-law dead.”
Immy felt a quick shiver go through her. That gave her an excellent motive, too.
Immy didn’t need even a sweater tonight. Every day seemed warmer than the last lately. Soon enough, summer’s sweltering heat would be here, but tonight, Saltlickians were out in droves, enjoying the warm evening as she strolled past on the way to Clem’s. The diner had closed an hour ago, so he should be home by now.
She needed to find out why his truck was at the diner when Baxter was there, the day Hugh died, after the murder. She was hoping he would say he’d returned from buying groceries and had been in the food storage room or the locker, and that’s why Baxter saw his truck out back.
The other reason she wanted to visit Clem was because he had never adequately heeded the warnings about Frankie’s Uncle Guido. Any day now he might be a mob target. She thought maybe she should first stake out his house to make sure no hit men were lingering about. A quick perusal of her
Compleat Guidebook
made it clear she should provision herself adequately for a stakeout.
She was in luck as she approached the house with its cheerful, lit windows shining into his front yard. She spied an excellent place to carry out her surveillance, a clump of sage under his kitchen window. She had come prepared to watch all night, if need be. Her backpack held three peanut butter sandwiches and a package of animal crackers from Drew’s lunch stash. She had also packed a thermos of iced tea but wouldn’t drink that unless she was parched so she wouldn’t have to pee. She couldn’t figure out how people on stakeouts did that. At least, there was no mention in the
Guidebook
about how females did it. There was a section that could only pertain to men. It said to use the empty drink container. How could a woman do that?
In utter silence she crept to the window, parted the bush to squeeze into the middle of it, and poked her head over the sill, inch by excruciating inch. She first had to make sure Guido hadn’t already offed Clem or wasn’t holding him hostage.
Clem sat at his kitchen table, his broad back to her. The huge cat lay in front of him, getting stroked, its eyes narrowed in pleasure. Three boxes of sugar substitute packets sat on the floor next to them.
He was stealing from the restaurant! He had to be, otherwise why did he have so much sugar and sugar substitute at his house?
Fuming at his treachery made her hungry. She started to unwrap one of her sandwiches, slowly, so it wouldn’t make any plastic crinkling noises from the wrapper. She needed to do more observation. Moving her head to the edge of the window, she could see his kitchen counter where a half-head of cabbage sat next to a cutting board. That man sure did like cole slaw. Cole slaw. Cabbage.
It was at that point that Immy put it all together. Clem hadn’t gone out for cabbage. There had been cabbage on the counter in the kitchen when Immy peeked in the day Hugh was killed. He might have been in the storage room, but he wasn’t. He had stolen those sugar packets, not for profit or to use, but to make the murder look like a robbery. He had been there in the diner, had heard Hugh tell Hortense he was selling Huey’s Hash. He may even have been upstairs. Immy envisioned Clem’s overburdened, probably enlarged heart breaking at that. Clem had devoted his life to the restaurant, had never worked anywhere else for twenty years. His passion for Hortense would have extended, did extend, to Hortense’s daughter and grand-daughter, and now they would live in poverty.
Immy froze, going back over all the odd happenings. Had Clem planted Huey’s ID on Xenia while she was unconscious in the hospital? Had he planted the money and checks on Baxter, knowing he would pick up a bag of abandoned money?
Had he killed Hugh?
The murder must have been his attempt to protect Hortense’s family, an attempt gone horribly wrong.
Immy turned to leave, wanting to think this over at home. She was stopped by a very large man with a very large knife.
“So, do you have it all figured out now?”
“What? What, Clem? What would I have figured out?” Was her voice shaking? Probably. The rest of her body was.
“What exactly are you doing here?” He kept his voice low. No neighbors would be overhearing them. Before she could say she was trying to save his life, he rambled on. “You saw the box, didn’t you? I hid them when you were here before. You figured out I took the merchandise to throw off the investigation. You know I only killed him to protect Hortense.”
“Well, yes, Clem. I totally do not blame you for that.”
She needed to figure out how to call 9-1-1 with the phone in her pocket. There was no way she could get out of this bush and around this huge man without getting sliced.
“But you know.”
“Clem, I’ll never tell anyone.”
Until after I’m out of here.
She jammed the peanut butter sandwich she still held into her left front jeans pocket and fingered her cell phone in the other one. She had to flip it open to use it. Probably couldn’t do that with it in her pocket. “I only came here tonight to make sure Frankie’s Uncle Guido didn’t bump you off.”