Inspector Specter (18 page)

“What's Vinnie's last name?” I said. “And don't start with ‘I don't know,' just tell me and we'll leave you alone.”

“Monroe. Vinnie Monroe. They call him Goldfish.”
Aha!

I nodded, then gave him five dollars. “For the frozen custard,” I said.

“You didn't order any.”

“I know.” We turned to walk back to Josh's van, then I stopped and looked at Lay-Z. “What's your real name?” I asked.

“Lamont,” he said.

I'd been so close!

Paul Harrison stood in my kitchen sink and shook his head. “We have a great many things to deal with,” he said.

Melissa, under Mom's supervision, had created macaroni and cheese burgers (which are exactly what they sound like—burgers with mac and cheese on them), something I'd never had before but which were now going to be my main source of cholesterol, I'd decided, and we'd gathered in the kitchen to try to make sense of everything that had happened in the past day.

Maxie, Paul and Dad had reported, had not left the house after the afternoon spook show and was in an unusually sullen mood (even for her), but everyone was too wary to ask her why. She was in the attic, allegedly looking into the lineage of Vinnie “the Goldfish” Monroe, whom everyone in the room had assumed was related to our somewhat damp pal Harry the Fish.

Mom and Liss—especially Liss—were basking in the glow of appreciation for the food, some of which had been broken up into very small pieces and given to Oliver, who also appeared to enjoy it heartily. With each bite I gave him, he would pound his fist on the high chair and make a happy noise. I was torn between wanting to tell Jeannie about this, because I wanted to show off how well Melissa could cook, and wanting to keep it a secret forever, so Jeannie wouldn't blame me when Ollie stopped wanting to eat mashed kale.

Malcolm Kidder had called while we were driving back from Madison Paint, where I'd gotten to see Sy and hear him tell us how only one customer, a woman looking for a pink that “wasn't too pink,” had crossed the threshold while Josh was absent. Dad, chuckling over his old friend's story, hitched a ride back to the guesthouse with us.

There had been no progress by the Harbor Haven police, Malcolm reported, and “Anita” still hadn't called. Malcolm said he'd driven around, but the lieutenant wasn't in her usual stomping grounds, which didn't surprise him but had given Malcolm something to do.

I'd held off on telling him about Vinnie the Goldfish because I wasn't sure yet whether Lay-Z had been lying to get us to go away, or even if this Vinnie person actually existed. No sense getting Malcolm's hopes up if we'd simply been misled by a teenager with a wildly long neck.

“Perhaps we should talk to Lamont's mother,” Paul suggested.

I gave him a look.

“Perhaps not. Let's see what Maxie finds out.”

On cue, Maxie dropped down through the ceiling in her hide-a-larger-object trench coat, which no doubt meant she had the laptop with her. As she opened the coat, which vanished as soon as she was clear of the ceiling, I could see she was wearing her usual painted-on jeans and black T-shirt, this time bearing the words “Kiss My Grits.” I had no idea what that meant, and was glad.

“I've been looking up Vinnie the Minnow,” she said.

“Goldfish,” the rest of us gave her back in unison.

Maxie nodded. “That explains things.” She started tapping away at the keyboard, which she rested on the counter near the stove. Luckily, the stove was not in operation. Ghosts tend to overlook things like that.

Dad, picking up on a theme that I thought had been put to rest, was still looking grim. He pointed at me. “If you think you're going to start mixing it up with gangsters, young lady, you're not setting a foot outside that door without me, you understand?”

A sigh escaped my lips that was at least forty percent unintentional. “I already promised you, Dad, and I promised Mom, and I promised Liss, that there is no way I'm talking to any gangsters besides Harry the Fish, who really can't do me all that much harm from the second buoy to the left off the pier in Point Pleasant. So don't worry, all right?”

“So what are you going to do when you find this Vinnie the Guppy?” Maxie asked.

“Goldfish!”

She grinned. “I just wanted to see if you were listening that time.”

I decided to forget that last part had happened. “I'm going to let the police know if I can make a connection between Vinnie and Detective Ferry,” I said. “What I'm thinking right now is that I'll confront Harry the Fish with any evidence you can dig up and see how he reacts.” I glanced at Paul, who beamed approvingly. It was like I had three parents in the room, and only one of them was still alive.

“I don't see how this gets us closer to finding Lieutenant McElone,” Melissa said, wiping Oliver's mouth with a paper napkin, which he did not appreciate. “Aren't we supposed to be more worried about her than about what happened to Detective Ferry? I mean, it's bad that he's dead and all, but we can't make that unhappen.”

As usual, Liss had managed to articulate what most of us in the room (I can never completely make any assumptions about Maxie) were already thinking: We needed to find McElone soon, or her situation might become just as unfixable as Martin Ferry's.

“Finding out more about what happened to the detective will only help us find Lieutenant McElone,” Paul explained to Liss. “If we know who's behind it, we'll know their motivation for killing the detective, and that will help us figure out where the lieutenant might have gone for her investigation.”

It was double-talk, but it was good double-talk. What Paul really could have said was,
We have no way to find McElone, so we're concentrating on the things we can do and hoping something will happen
. But that would have upset Liss. In fact, it would have upset me. Not thinking about what happened to the lieutenant was my new hobby. And now—
dammit!
—I was thinking of her as a friend.

“So what do you think we need to do?” I started to say. But I was about halfway through
think
when Maxie started bellowing from the stove area.

“Here we go!” she said. “Vincent Louis Francis Manfred Monroe is the grandson of Harry ‘the Fish' Monroe.”

“His grandson!” Mom exclaimed.

“Oh no,” Josh said, grinning. “Bringing his grandson into the family business? The man is a monster.”

Mom flattened out her lips. “It's not the same kind of business as you and Sy, Joshua,” she reminded him, as if that were necessary. Josh nodded at her in apology for the imagined insult.

“Don't sass your mother-in-law,” Dad chimed in, but luckily Josh couldn't hear him. I chose not to react, so I wouldn't have to repeat it to my boyfriend.

“
Anyway
,” Maxie went on, “Vinnie's only twenty-four, but he's been very busy the past few years. I found his juvie records—they're supposed to be sealed, but, you know, I'm me. Got himself arrested the first time when he was sixteen for stealing someone's Hyundai in Asbury Park. Charges were dismissed after the aggrieved party appears to have dropped the complaint, saying she had just forgotten that she'd actually parked the car where it was found.”

“Where was that?” Melissa asked.

“Spring Lake, only five miles away. Then when he was eighteen, Vincent found himself in some trouble with the law again, charges of possession of a controlled substance with the intent to distribute.” She stole a glance at Melissa to see if she'd gone too far.

“What was he dealing?” my eleven-year-old asked as she helped Jeannie's eleven-month-old down from his high chair. “Weed? Coke?” I gave some thought to restricting her television hours, but that was a discussion for another day.

Maxie looked a little stunned. “Weed, mostly.”

Liss nodded. “Figures.” Oliver crawled over to me, and I advised him not to tell his mother that my eleven-year-old daughter thought she was a narc. But he was clearly not pleased about having nothing to stand and cruise on. The longer he stayed with us, it seemed, the more he wanted to be on his feet.

“In the past year,” Maxie went on, “Vinnie has been doing much better. He hasn't been arrested once in close to sixteen months.”

“What a guy,” I said. “See? Rehabilitation works.”

She shook her head. “Not so much. The unencrypted sections of Detective Ferry's files that Paul and I looked at have tons of references to ‘Goldfish.' Personally, I thought the detective was partial to cheddar cheese crackers.”

“For the record, I never thought that,” Paul threw in.

“When you say they have references, what do you mean?” Mom asked.

Josh didn't say anything, and most men would. I always like to watch Josh during exchanges like this. He can't hear at least half the conversation, but a casual observer would have no idea anything special was going on around him. Now, he was sitting on one of the bar stools I use as kitchen chairs around my center island, smiling, watching me whenever no one he could hear was talking. He is a calm man, one who is content to be told what's going on when it's appropriate and not demanding to be the center of attention all the time.

Paul did not wait for Maxie to respond to Mom. “The lieutenant didn't have all of Martin Ferry's case files, but she did have some reports he'd filed in his investigation of Harry the Fish and Barnett ‘Buster' Hockney, who appear to have been competitors,” he said. “Vinnie's nickname comes up in connection with Hockney, but there are no direct links. I can't tell if Vinnie and Buster were working together against Harry, or if Harry was using Vinnie to spy on the competition. The detective did not name sources in his notes, perhaps to avoid them being found by the wrong person. That's why the data kept in the encrypted file is so vital to the investigation. I'm almost certain that's where his best information would be.”

“But Lieutenant McElone encrypted the file,” Melissa pointed out, holding Oliver by his right hand so he could cruise around the room searching for . . . something. They were making the rounds of the kitchen. “That would mean she's seen the stuff in there.”

Paul stroked his goatee—always a sign that there was something new to think about—and considered. “You're right, Melissa. The lieutenant has information we don't, and it led her in a direction that doesn't seem to have gone well.”

“Malcolm Kidder said he's been in touch with the Harbor Haven police and the Seaside Heights police,” I said, mostly for Josh's benefit, who'd been so patient I felt he deserved to be rewarded. “So there's no point in duplicating that effort.”

Josh, his eyes showing gratitude for being included, asked, “Has Phyllis Coates gotten back to you? She was supposed to check on Harry the Fish's autopsy.”

I put my arm around him. “That's actually a very good question.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket with my free hand and speed-dialed Phyllis, who answered on the second ring.

“I hear from a couple of places that Harry the Fish drowned in his car,” she said. Phyllis doesn't bother much with pleasantries, although she's always pleasant. Well, most of the time. There's also no point in asking who her sources are. She'd go to jail before revealing them—and actually did so once, for three days. “Now, how could you have known that?”

“I didn't call to talk about what I know,” I said. “I called to talk about what
you
know. How does a guy drown and then show up in completely dry clothes in the front seat of his car?”

“It's unlikely he did it on his own,” she answered. “I'm guessing a buddy or two helped him out. Maybe the Fish was the designated drowner that night.” Phyllis sometimes thinks she's funnier than she really is. One indulges her.

“Why bother? Why not leave him in the ocean?”

Phyllis chuckled. No doubt she'd been steering the conversation into this area so she could drop a bomb. “Ah, but that's the thing, sweetie. Harry wasn't in the ocean when he died. His lungs were full of both fresh
and
salt water. Traces of seaweed, too.”

Paul must have read my face. “What?” he demanded.

“He had both fresh water and salt water in his lungs?” I repeat things and make myself sound like an idiot just for the sake of some see-through people who populate my house. And yet have I ever been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize? I have not.

Paul looked intrigued. Mom and Dad turned to face me. Melissa helped Oliver move around some more, but he wouldn't let go of her hand. Josh tightened his arm around my waist.

“That must mean there was salt water and then fresh, or the other way around,” Paul suggested. “Otherwise, it would just be fresh water with some salt in it. I wish we could see the report.”

Maxie lay back, the laptop on her outstretched legs. “If we're done here, I've got somewhere to go,” she said, and then, without waiting for a reply, shot through the wall toward the beach.

“I'm on it,” Dad said, and followed Maxie out at a discreet distance.

“This habit of hers is becoming inconvenient,” Paul observed.

“Yep,” Phyllis answered, unaware of the other conversation happening in the room with me. “My source in the ME's office in Ocean County isn't as good as the one in Monmouth, but that's what I'm hearing. There's also some evidence that Harry didn't drive the car to where it was found. Like there were no fingerprints on the steering wheel, and it was ninety-six degrees that day; he sure as hell wasn't wearing gloves.”