Hour Game (19 page)

K
ING’S CHOICE OF VENUE TOOK THEM TO THE REAR GROUNDS.
They wandered over to the spot where they could see Remmy’s bedroom window. King gazed at the house where the servants lived and then back at their employer’s window.

“If someone were really looking,” he said vaguely.

Michelle said, “Mason definitely has a thing for Remmy. Maybe he hopes to become the new man of the estate.”

King glanced over and saw the woman walking toward the stable.

“Let’s go talk horses.” As he was turning away, an image at one of the second-story windows caught his attention.

It was Savannah, staring at them. Yet she was gone so quickly that for an instant King wasn’t even sure she’d really been there. Yet she had been. And the look on her face was clear: she was terrified.

They both greeted Sally Wainwright over by the stable. Her cheerful disposition wasn’t evident today.

“God, I’m thinking about quitting,” she said.

“Because Battle was murdered?” asked King.

“And four other people,” said Sally as she looked over her shoulder as though for an attacker. “This was a nice, quiet town when I got here. Right now I’d probably be safer in the Middle East.”

“I wouldn’t do anything rash,” said Michelle. “You’ll probably live to regret it.”

“I just want to live,” Sally shot back.

King nodded. “Well, then maybe you can help us find the killer before he strikes again.”

Sally looked shocked. “Me! I don’t know anything.”

“You may know something important, only you don’t know that it is,” said King. “For instance, can you think of anyone who might have intended Bobby Battle harm?”

Sally shook her head—too quickly, in King’s mind.

“Come on, Sally, whatever you say goes no further.”

“Sean, I really don’t know anything.”

He decided to try a different tack. “Why don’t I throw out some possibilities, and then you can jump in if they trigger anything?”

She looked doubtful. “Well?”

“Battle was a wealthy man. People benefit from his death, right?”

“But I suppose Mrs. Battle would get most of it. And Savannah has her trust fund. I don’t think she needs any more money.”

“Eddie?”

Sally glanced in the direction of the carriage house. “They don’t appear to be scraping dimes together. And I know for a fact that Dorothea Battle makes big bucks.”

“How do you know that?” asked Michelle.

“My best friend does her nails. Dorothea likes to brag.”

“Well, some people never have enough money,” suggested King.

“I just don’t see that being the reason,” said Sally stubbornly.

“If not money, then what else?” He stared pointedly at the young woman. “I guess you probably haven’t been here long enough to know about Bobby’s adulterous past.”

“Oh, I know more than you think,” blurted out Sally. “I mean—” She stopped and looked at her dirty boots.

“It’s okay, Sally,” assured King, hiding his pleasure that she’d bit on his bait so quickly. “Do you know a lot about that because maybe Bobby made advances toward you?”

Sally shook her head. “No, it was nothing like that.”

“So what, then?” pressed King. “It really could be important, Sally.”

She remained silent a bit longer and then said, “Come on with me.”

They walked past the stables and servants’ house and down a paved roadway, eventually arriving at a large brick two-story building with eight old-fashioned wooden garage doors. There was an antique gas pump with a glass bubble top out front.

“This is Mr. Battle’s private garage. He has, or
had,
a collection of antique cars. I guess Mrs. Battle owns them now.” She pulled out a key and they entered.

The floor was covered in a black and white checkerboard pattern. The shelves held dusty trophies from antique car shows. In front of seven of the doors, sitting perfectly aligned with one another, were vintage cars ranging from a Stutz Bearcat to an imposing vehicle with cloth top and a round grille that the placard on the stand in front proclaimed to be a 1906 six-cylinder Franklin.

“I’d heard that Bobby collected old cars, but I didn’t know his collection was this extensive,” said King as he looked around.

“He has a bunch more on the second floor. There’s a special elevator that takes them up and down,” said Sally. “He used to have a full-time mechanic to take care of them.” She walked down to the last space and stood. King and Michelle joined her. There was no car here. They looked at her questioningly.

She hesitated for an instant. “Look, you didn’t hear this from me,” she said. They both nodded in agreement. “Well, there used to be a car that sat right here. It was huge, you know, one of those big Rolls-Royces you see in the old movies?”

“What happened to it?” asked Michelle.

Sally hesitated again, as though debating whether to tell them.

Sensing this, King said, “Sally, you’ve gone this far.”

“Okay, it was over three years ago. It was late at night, and I’d slipped down here just to look around. I wasn’t supposed to have
a key, but the mechanic who used to work here took a liking to me and gave me one. I was inside looking around when I heard a car coming. It was then that I noticed that one of the cars wasn’t there. The door started opening and I saw the headlights. I was scared to death and sure I was going to be fired if they found me here. I ran and hid over there.” She pointed to a tower of fifty-gallon oil drums that sat in one corner. “The Rolls pulled into the garage and the motor was cut off. Mr. Battle got out and he looked bad. I mean really bad.”

“How could you tell? Wasn’t it dark?” asked King.

“There’s an automatic trigger on the doors. At night when the doors go up, the lights come on in here.”

“When you say he looked bad, how do you mean?” asked Michelle. “Sick? Drunk?”

“No, like he was really upset, worried.”

“Did you ever find out what about?” asked King.

“No. Anyway, like I said, he looked bad, but then all of a sudden he started smiling and then he started laughing. Laughing! Well, he did, until she showed up.”

“She who, Remmy?” said King.

Sally nodded and said in a hushed tone, “If she’d had a gun, I think Mr. Battle would’ve been dead a long time ago.”

“What happened then?” asked Michelle.

“They started arguing. Well, at first, she just was screaming at him. Not much of it made sense. But from what I could hear, there was another woman involved.”

“Did it seem like Remmy knew who?” asked King sharply.

“If she did, she never mentioned her name, at least not that I heard,” said Sally.

“What did Bobby do?”

“He started yelling, told her it was none of her damn business who he slept with.”

“And to think I was halfway admiring the man,” said Michelle in disgust.

“Well, he said something else I’ll never forget,” said Sally. She paused, drew a quick breath and looked at them anxiously.

“Go ahead,” said King. “I don’t think anything will surprise us now.”

“Mr. Battle said he wasn’t the only one in the family who practiced that philosophy.”

“Of sleeping around?” said King, and Sally nodded.

Michelle and King looked at each other. “And you think he was referring to Remmy?” she asked.

“I just assumed he was. But Mrs. Battle always seemed so proper and…”

“Supportive of her husband,” suggested King.

“Yes, exactly.”

“Public faces can often be deceiving,” he commented.

“And the Rolls?” asked Michelle.

“It just disappeared after that night. I don’t know what happened to it. In fact, Billy Edwards—he was the mechanic who used to take care of the cars—he was gone too. That’s when Mr. Battle lost interest in his collection. He never came down after that, as far as I know.”

“You never saw this Billy Edwards before he left?”

“No, his place was cleaned out the next day. I don’t know who came and took the car. It must have been at night, or else someone would have seen it driving off.”

“Thank you, Sally, you’ve been a big help.”

They left Sally and headed back to the front of the house.

“So what do you make of that?” asked Michelle.

“It creates lots of questions. Who was Bobby seeing back then? Was the reference to sleeping around actually directed at Remmy? And why get rid of the car?” King looked pensive. “I wonder if there’s any chance of tracking down this Billy Edwards and asking him about it.”

“What about going directly to Remmy?”

“She’d want to know how we found out about it. And Sally’s obviously not good at hiding her feelings. One look from
Remmy and she’d crack. We may have to at some point, but for now we’ll look for another way.”

“We keep uncovering more questions and no answers,” said Michelle.

“At some point the tide has to turn. We just may not like the answers we find, though.”

D
OROTHEA AND
E
DDIE
B
ATTLE WEREN’T HOME, SO
K
ING
and Michelle drove to the Aphrodisiac that afternoon to speak with Lulu Oxley about the murdered exotic dancer, Rhonda Tyler.

The parking lot was already filling up with the lunch crowd when they arrived. As they walked past one of the bar areas, they caught glimpses of the nearly naked ladies dancing and the men staring and catcalling.

“I just don’t get the attraction,” said Michelle.

“The product isn’t exactly directed at someone like you.”

“Come on, are you saying you find watching something like that enjoyable?”

“No, but I’m afraid I’m in a minority among my gender.” He smiled and added, “That comes with being intelligent, sophisticated and sensitive.”

They were directed back to Lulu’s small, cluttered office, where they found her hard at work and not looking happy about being interrupted.

“I’ve told the FBI and Chief Williams everything,” said Lulu as she snapped her lighter shut and took a drag on a fresh cigarette.

“Well, we’re deputies now, so you can tell us too,” said King pleasantly as he showed her his badge.

She sighed, took another puff and sat back in her chair.

“In case you hadn’t heard, the surgeon general has proclaimed
cigarette smoking really bad for you,” said Michelle, waving the fumes away from her face.

“The surgeon general doesn’t run a gentleman’s club,” Lulu shot back.

“We’ll be happy to breathe the secondhand smoke so long as you tell us about Rhonda Tyler,” said King.

“Okay, for the third time and counting, Rhonda Tyler aka whatever the hell her stage name was…”

“Tawny Blaze,” said Michelle helpfully.

“Right, good memory,” said Lulu, eyeing the woman keenly. “Anyway, she came to work here under contract. She stayed in one of the club’s rooms, but shortly before her stint was up, she told us she had another place to crash. She did her contract time, and that was the last I saw of her. We’d used her before, and she’d always acted like a real professional, never any problem.”

“Did she mention whether she had friends or family in the area?”

“Not to me. But with her line of work, family tends to shy away from you.”

“How about a man she might have met?” prompted Michelle.

Lulu tapped ash off her cigarette into an empty paper coffee cup on her desk. “Not that I know of.”

“Anyone else she might have confided in?” asked King.

“She might have talked to some of the girls.”

“Can we speak with them?”

“If you can wake them up. The ones who work nights don’t get out of bed until late in the afternoon. The lunch-shift girls are out onstage now.”

“We’ll give it our best shot,” said King.

“You do that,” said Lulu again, watching Michelle closely.

As they headed to the door, Michelle glanced back and saw Lulu’s hand disappear inside her desk drawer. When Lulu pulled it out, there was nothing in it. Michelle looked away before the other woman could see her staring.

Lulu said, “By the way, here’s a piece of information you might
find interesting: the high-and-mighty Remmy Battle threatened Junior.”

Both of them stared at her as she summarized the meeting between the two, including Remmy’s offer to pay off Junior if he returned the stolen items.

“So she wanted something that was in the drawer, but didn’t care about her wedding ring?” asked a confused King.

“Apparently, the lady has something to hide.”

“Where will Junior be today?”

“Working a job in Lynchburg; you won’t be able to see him. But this evening he’ll be at the house he’s building for us.”

“Let me have the directions. And give me Junior’s cell phone number.” As she did so, King asked one more question. “Did Bobby Battle ever come here?”

Lulu seemed to be trying hard not to look surprised at the question. “I think I saw him around here a few times.”

“Recently?”

“What do you consider recently?”

“In the last couple of years.”

“I couldn’t say for sure.”

I’m sure you couldn’t,
thought King. “Well, thanks again for all your help.”

“I’ll show you where the rooms are,” offered Lulu.

She led them upstairs and pointed to the hallway fronted by the red curtain.

“Good luck,” she said in a tone that didn’t sound like she actually meant it.

As King and Michelle started off, Lulu touched Michelle on the arm. “Uh, can I ask you a question?” she said.

“We’ve asked
you
enough, so go ahead.”

“You ever consider pole dancing?”

“Excuse me!” said Michelle, clearly stunned.

“It’s just that you’ve got the perfect all-American, girl-next-door, come-hither thing going on. That’s pretty rare in this business. You’re leaner than the other gals and a little light in the
chest, but I don’t think the guys will mind once they see what you
do
have.”

Michelle’s face reddened. “You must be kidding!”

“The pay’s better than you think, and you keep all the tips you get. And you can pull the night shift and still work your regular job during the day. State law doesn’t allow total nudity in any strip club, so you can keep your G-string on. But the top has to come off, that’s club policy. No boobs, no bucks.”

Michelle smiled tightly. “Let me put it this way: the day you see me pole dancing with only a G-string on in front of a crowd of drunken morons is the day the sky falls and kills all of us.”

“I don’t know,” said King, who’d listened intently to this exchange. “I’d tip at least twenty bucks to see that.”