BM03 - Crazy Little Thing Called Dead (4 page)

I turned to Hambecker, who was still leaning against the window-sill. A moth was beating its wings against the window.

“Do
you
know who he is?” I asked.

“I heard you were instrumental in apprehending the Senator. Nice work.” Hambecker caught the moth in his hand, opened the window and let it fly away.

“You aren’t going to answer me, are you?”

“I think you just missed the part where I complimented you.”

“Thank you. But it was really Stripes. If he hadn’t shown up I’d probably be dead.”

“The skunk? I doubt it.”

“Who’s Stripes? Did you add a zebra to your menagerie since I was there? he asked.

“Stripes is a skunk.” I said. “Duh.” I wasn’t feeling especially mature.

“Saved by a skunk. I would have never guessed.” He pushed himself upright. “See you around, Trouble.” He tapped his knuckles on the desk as he walked past.

“Considering that you were the cause…” But he was gone. I caught a glimpse of a six inch rip in his jeans just below his left butt cheek and the door slammed behind him. Just one Richard Hambecker sighting had caused my hands to start sweating, and my stupid heart was beating faster just seeing him again. He was excellent to look at and totally bad news.

Chapter Three

Thursday morning, when my egg, sausage and cheese sandwich was reduced to crumbs on my desk, my coffee cup was three quarters empty and Beagle Annie was once again asleep under my desk, I booted my computer and scanned the list of articles I was planning. Good stuff, but not what I was going to write about this week. I picked up the phone.

“Bree.” Tom’s voice was warm. Not too much stress today. Good.

“What can you tell me about the guy in Planet Hair, Maverick?” I was doodling on my legal pad and wishing I had more coffee. I needed my brain to be sharp.

“This again? Lucky you have me in your pocket, MacGowan. Anyone else would have fed this to the
Valley News
just to get you off their back
.
” His chair creaked.

“One of life’s perks. So what’s the deal?” I dropped my pen on the desk and leaned back, resting my heels on the desk.

“I don’t have any more details. We don’t have an ID. We don’t have a motive. We’ve got bupkis.” He was more matter of fact rather than upset. “But we should have a fingerprint match today, dental records tomorrow or the next day. Give us a couple of days with the car, and before you know it we’ll have a case.

“Come on! You’ve got to have something to give me.”
I
was upset.

“Nope. Investigation’s stalled until forensics come back.” Tom said. Still no hint of frustration.

“That’s bull.” They had to have something by now. They had Hambecker here for cripes sake. “Did Hambecker take over the investigation?” I could see that happening.

“Nope. He has bigger fish to fry. Unless there’s an issue we don’t know about, he wouldn’t have jurisdiction.”

Oh, yeah. Jurisdiction. That was always important.

“Do we know if the car from the lake is related to the murder?” I was trying to cover all the angles like the big boys do.

“Nothing definitive.”

“What about the rifle?”
Come on. There has to be a connection
. I felt like I should be blowing on dice.

“It takes time, Bree.” He let out a sigh. I was ruining his mood.

“Come
on
, Tom!” You’d never know I was his wife’s best friend. “What about time of death, do you have that?”

“Right around 11P.M. That’s the official word from the coroner.”

“Well that’s
something
.” I jotted down the time. “But no suspects at all? Hambecker doesn’t have any ideas?” I was pushing now.

“Not that I know of.” He rang off with the excuse of work. More like he’d had more than enough of me.

Bupkis was right.
Dang
. What could I do with time of death? Bupkis.

“Hey you,” Meg said as she came in the door, “I thought you were coming over to the house last night. You forget?” Meg threw her bag onto the shelf behind her desk. “We need to talk about next week’s front page.”

“I’m working on it now. Headline:
Identity of body found at Planet Hair
, and then either
still a mystery
, or
is revealed
. With a photo of Claire in front of her salon. What do you think?”

“You could put a picture of Claire naked on the cover for all I care. Just as long as it sells papers.”

“Is circulation down?” I said.

“No, but someone is telling our advertisers it is. Tireless Tractors and Steadfast Feeds are threatening to pull their ads. If they go, others will follow.”

“That’s crap. Who told them our numbers were down?” My sixth sense was pointing straight at Lucy Howe.

“Don’t know, and no one is talking.”

“Maybe we should launch an Internet edition. Tell them that we’ll throw in online ads for free for the first month or so.”

“I can’t see that doing anything for us. How’s it going to increase revenue? More to the point, how can we prove that people are seeing their ads?”

“Run a coupon. Tag it so they can tell when people print it off the Internet and bring it in.”

“I don’t know Bree, we already have a cash flow problem, how can I pay someone to oversee the online edition?”

“I’ll do it for free until it gets off the ground.” Just what I needed, more work for the same pay.

“I’ll think about it. But don’t push me, okay. You know how I feel about the Internet.” She went to her desk and dumped her purse.

I did know. Meg resented the rate at which electronic data was supplanting print media. Paper was everything; it was tradition with a capital T.

“Do you think I should take some night classes in investigative reporting?” As much as I didn’t want to be insecure about my reporting skills, I was.

“I don’t think you need to, at least not for me, but if you want to then go for it. I’m all for self-improvement. In others. You won’t catch me going back to school.”

“That’s kind of a non-answer: sure, but I wouldn’t?”

“You’re doing a fine job for a small time paper. I don’t want to lose you, but if you see a future at a big city paper someday, then you probably should. It’s been eight years since you graduated, and I don’t know, did you take classes in journalism?” I guess I hadn’t talked much about school with Meg.

“Yeah. A couple. Nothing hardcore.” And I hadn’t paid attention. What does a small town farm girl need with a degree in business and journalism? I don’t know what I thought I was going to do when I graduated.

“Do what you need to do. But do it for yourself, not for me.” She focused her attention on her computer. “And make sure it doesn’t interfere with your day job.”

I was getting hungry, and a glance out the window told me the fire department had fired up the big grill on the green. “Going to eat chicken at Old Home Days?”

Old Home Days is a Vermont—or maybe a New England—thing. It’s basically an excuse to eat too much food, drink too much beer and watch little kids ride rinky-dink carnival rides. Like a county fair on the opposite of steroids.

“I wish. I’m going to West Leb for office supplies this afternoon. You want to come?”

“Sure, as long as we’re going to do lunch.”

I wrote, and Meg talked to advertisers on the phone. Deirdre didn’t work on Thursdays. There wasn’t enough work for her to worry about being here. Besides she worked enough overtime on paste-up day that she could probably work a three-day work week and get more than enough hours.

Meg shut me down at noon. “Lunch,” she said. “Let’s go.”

I deserted my article for the promise of food and put a bowl of water out for Beagle Annie, who lifted her head and looked at me with her dark brown, black-lined eyes, to see if she was invited. She put her head back down when I didn’t call her. We locked the office and walked down the stairs to Meg’s car. My ex-boyfriend once removed, James Fisk, was coming out of the coffee shop as we were getting into the Subaru. He was another guy who’d dumped me when my life got too complicated for him. I ducked my head and tried to hide. I wasn’t fast enough. James raised his hand in greeting and came to stand next to my window. I rolled my eyes at Meg and lowered the window.

“Hi Jim.”

“MacGowan. Meg.” He nodded his head in Meg’s direction. “Bree, I’ve got tickets to the NASCAR at Loudon next weekend. Want to go?”

“Are you offering me the tickets?” I was being perverse. He wasn’t offering me the tickets; he was asking me on a date. But I couldn’t help busting his chops.

“Uh. No. I’m asking you if you’d like to go to the races with me.” He spoke slowly and I could tell it was an effort for him not to roll his eyes.

“No. Thank you. I’m not available to go to the races with. Gotta go.”

“When are you going to stop punishing me for that mistake?”

I rolled up the window and Meg backed out of the parking spot, leaving Jim standing there with a scowl on his face.

“You know,” I said, “he still has my house key.”

“You never lock your door anyway.”

“Yeah. But that’s not the point. Him having my key is the point.” The thought of keys rang bells in my head. Excitement buzzed through my body. “Wait. Do you mind if I bail on lunch?”

“Does this have to do with the murder?”

“Yeah. Drop me at your house. There’s something I want to ask Claire.”

***

Claire is nothing if not flexible. She’d set up shop in Meg’s kitchen and was sitting in a straight back chair eating a sandwich and talking on the phone. She rang off when she saw me.

“My cleaning service,” she said, cutting her eyes to the phone. “She wanted to know when she could get back in the salon.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I have no clue. I don’t even know when
I’m
getting back in the salon.”

“Bad for business, huh?”

“No! The phone’s been ringing nonstop. I don’t know how word got out so quickly.”

“Are you kidding? The phone tree has probably been buzzing since we found that guy. Half the people in this town have a police scanner.” I leaned on the kitchen counter across from Claire.

“Do you want me to cut your hair? I scheduled myself some time for errands but I don’t feel like going out.” She pushed the last bite of her sandwich into her mouth and got up to wash her hands in the sink.

“Sure. If you don’t mind answering some questions while you’re cutting.” I moved to the straight back chair. “What are you doing for clients that want their hair washed?” I asked.

“I have them lean over the sink. Meg’s got one of those sprayers that slide out of the faucet. Do you want me to wash your hair?”

“Nah. I was just curious. I washed it this morning.”

Claire picked up a spray bottle and started misting me down.

“What’s on your mind?” she asked. She was pulling a comb through my damp hair. It’s not that easy; I’ve got wavy, snarly hair that I don’t comb often enough.

“To be blunt, I was wondering how many people have keys to your salon. The door wasn’t forced, right?”

“I don’t think so. It’s pretty easy to wiggle the inner door open, but the outer door was locked.”

“Who all has keys? Who could get in without anyone noticing?”

“Ronnie—that’s Veronica Hart, my cleaning lady, she cleans like nobody’s business, but she’s developmentally disabled. Maybe autistic. She didn’t kill the guy. Jim has a key. He still asks about you, you know. Gets his hair cut every four weeks and asks about you every time. Lori, the stylist who used to rent space from me, she still has a key.” Claire stopped snipping for a moment. “That’s it. I can’t think of anyone else who might have a key. There might be someone from before I was here, but that was a long time ago. The place had been empty for a while when I moved in.”

“Not a very likely list of killers. I was thinking it could be someone who had a key, but now I’m not so sure.” I watched my hair hitting the ground. “You’re sure you locked the door last night?”

“I locked it. Are
you
sure Jim is above bumping someone off?”

I laughed.

“Mr. Squeaky Clean? No, I can’t see him doing that. He’d rather sue the pants off somebody than shoot a hole in them.”

“Although…” Claire said, and then started to laugh.

“Although, what? Don’t leave me in the dark here.”

“Sorry. I just got a vision of Jim wanting to put this guy in his trunk, but he doesn’t want to get blood on his car. So he runs in the pharmacy and buys a package of diapers and duct tape. And
then
, when he’s got the guy all cleaned up and he’s wrapped in duct tape and diapers he has to go to the thrift store and get some clothes to put on the body. And after all that, he can’t get him in the trunk of his car because it’s too small, and he sits him up in the passenger seat and drives around talking to him like he’s still alive.” She snorted with laughter.

“You got all that in a three-second vision?” Not that I was surprised, I could cook up a lot more than that in three seconds.

“Yeah. Good imagination huh?” She was sliding my hair straight up between her fingers and snipping the ends. I knew that’s what was happening but it was strange not to have the big mirror so I could watch her face as we talked.

I thought it was pretty interesting that she could envision Jim being anything but a straight-laced if somewhat jerky upstanding citizen. It made me wonder would he kill someone if he got mad enough. “Do you think Jim would kill someone if he thought justice wasn’t being served? Like if he knew some guy was guilty and he got off?”

“Mr. I-believe-in-the-processes-of-the-law? I don’t know. If he knew beyond a doubt that someone had killed a child or something like that? It’s possible, I guess. People get strange with they are obsessed with certain ideals.” Claire was combing through my hair now.

“There’s something else, though. I have a key to Planet Hair hidden, just in case I forget mine, or I’m driving Paul’s car. Someone could have discovered it.”

“Shit. That’s screws up my line of inquiry.” Anyone in the damn town could have found Claire’s key.