Shay O'Hanlon Caper 03 - Pickle in the Middle Murder (13 page)

“Got a couple things for you. First, the bad news—word on the vine is Roberts is sure he has his woman and isn’t looking for any other suspects. Which, as you and I both know, is bullshit. Second, the potentially worse news—just heard from the friend of a friend of a not-so-good friend that preliminary ballistics came back. The bullet found at the crime scene matches a handgun that was found down the stink hole—”

“The ‘stink hole’?”

“Yup. Exactly what you think it is. I feel for the poor grunt who sifted through all that shit, no pun intended. Anyway, you gotta keep this under wraps, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I won’t say anything to anyone who counts.” So much for positive thinking. “What about fingerprints?”

“One tiny ray of sunshine. They couldn’t pull a single print off it. You know if JT was carrying when you went to the festival yester-
day?”

Was she? I thought about it. It was a rare occasion she didn’t stash a weapon somewhere on her person while off duty. I hadn’t mauled her before we left home, or I would’ve known for sure. “Probably. Why?”

“The gun they fished from the crapper was the same kind I know JT uses as one of her off-duty weapons. A Smith & Wesson Bodyguard. Do you know the one I’m talking about?”

My heart beat heavy in my chest. I didn’t pay any attention to what guns JT used. I knew she had a locked crate for her weapons, but that was it. “Oh shit.”

“Yeah, oh shit. We have to hope the gun they found isn’t registered to her.”

“Wouldn’t they have taken swabs of her hands to see if they had gunpowder on them or something?” That’s what the CSI guys always did on Eddy’s shows.

“Yeah. I’m sure they did. Haven’t heard anything on that yet, though. Trying to get information through the Clint Roberts filter is worse than having a tooth yanked with string and a slamming door.”

“I could take a look in her gun locker and see what’s there.”

Tyrell sighed. “If you get a chance, let me know. And, hey. I talked to someone who’s checking into the two names she gave you. Nothing yet. I’ll call when I can if I hear anything else. Chin up, okay?”

I disconnected. That tiny, wee sliver of doubt regarding JT’s guilt flared as bright as a flash-bang grenade. Then my overextended but still sort of functioning brain tamped the flare out almost imm-
ediately. I itched to get home and take a gander in JT’s strongbox. If this Bodyguard gun were there, it would prove her innocence, right?

When I was little, the ragtag bunch of neighborhood kids I ran with often played the pickle in the middle game. The object was to keep the ball, or whatever it was we decided to toss back and forth, away from the person in the middle of the pack. The pickle in the middle.

In this case, the truth was my elusive ball, and it went sailing over my head, first one way, then the other. Every time I reached out to grab that truth, it just barely slipped through my fingers. The game frustrated me to no end as a kid, and that’s how I felt now. Every time I came to a conclusion about what JT may or may not have done, something happened that made me question my own perceptions. But come on. This was JT we were talking about. The one who cared about justice, about people. Who, for some reason, loved me. It didn’t matter if JT had a gun on her person at the fair. She didn’t kill Krasski.

Still, that insistent knocking in my heart and conscience meant that I knew I’d be making a beeline for that gun locker as soon as I got home.

Coop’s and Eddy’s piercing stares knocked me out of my ruminations. I told them what Tyrell had shared. When I finished, Eddy rolled her eyes. “That girl did
not
shoot anyone. We simply need to find who did. What were the two names JT said Tyrell should look into again?”

“Geller. Shawn Geller. And Handy Randy. Shawn Geller was the human trafficker recently released from prison, if I remember right. Handy Randy? I don’t have a clue.”

“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go find Geller, wring his neck, and see if he shoved a pickle in his old boss’s mouth. Coop, fire up that contraption of yours. Do your thing and find out where Geller’s staying. Shay, you go do whatever you need to do to print those names off your phone. I can’t see a damn thing on that little bitty screen.” Eddy was a great drill sergeant on a moment’s notice.

For once I was ahead of the eight ball. “I can do better than that. Coop, I stuck the stuff you printed out at JT’s in your bag.” I’d forgotten I’d done that when we’d hauled ass out of the house and headed to the lockup to see JT. “Can you dig them out while I pop over and see if things are holding together in the Hole?”

Sundays we closed at nine. I glanced at my watch. It read 9:20 p.m. I walked though Eddy’s living room and through a short hall into the café. The front door was locked, and the neon OPEN sign was off. Anna was busy scrubbing the remnants of multitudes of coffee creations off the espresso machine.

“Hey, kid,” I said.

She yelped and almost toppled head over keister. “Whoa—” Anna slapped a hand to her throat. “You could be a little noisier, you know. I doubt the health inspector would appreciate a dead barista messing up this not-yet pristine floor.”

“Sorry, Anna. Don’t worry, we’d make sure you were safely tucked away in the dumpster.”

“Oh you—” She attempted to snap me with her wet towel. I barely avoided a stinging
thwap
to the hip as I escaped into the kitchen.

The kitchen wasn’t huge, but it worked. One wall was taken up by wire racks loaded with supplies for the café. A long stainless-steel counter with a three-well sink occupied most of the opposite side. Dripping dishes rested on the drying rack. At the far end of the room was a 6x8 closet we’d recently turned into a dinky office.

Since I wasn’t living in the apartment above the café any longer, I hadn’t wanted to take all of the store paperwork I’d accumulated to JT’s. So now a lot of it was stowed in the four-drawer filing cabinet we’d crammed into the space, along with a midget-sized desk that one of Eddy’s Mad Knitters had donated to our cause.

I leaned against the doorjamb, crossed my arms, and watched Kate, whose head was bent over her work. She was busy counting cash, the bills making a rhythmic
whooshing
sound as they slid through her nimble fingers. She sensed my presence and glanced up mid-count.

“Hang on.” She finished and then tapped the money against the surface of the desk, set the pile aside, and wrote a number on the deposit slip. “What’s up?”

“Can you take the dogs overnight?”

“Sure I can.” Kate’s eyes drilled me. “What the hell is going on now? Is JT out of the klink?”

I heaved a sigh and caught her up. When I was finished, she leaned back in her chair. “Jeez. How do you guys always manage to get into such crazy-ass shit? I swear trouble follows you around like a … like … when I think of an appropriate comparison, I’ll let you know.”

“Sounds good,” I said wryly. “Anyway, if you can take the mutts, that’ll be one less worry.”

“Yeah, no problem. You want me to open for you tomorrow, too?”

Five in the morning was going to come mighty early, especially depending on what we got ourselves into next. “That would be totally awesome.”

“Not a worry. I have my slave girl to help if needed.”

Poor Anna. Good thing she thought the ground Kate walked on was sacred—except when Kate pissed her off, which luckily didn’t happen very often.

“Thanks, as usual.” I waved and spun around, then paused in mid-step. I backed up and stuck my head through the door. “Hey, you hear about Rocky?”

“What about Rocky?”

“Tulip’s coming to town.”

“Really? When?”

“Tuesday.”

“As in this Tuesday?”

“Yup. Guess what else?”

Kate looked up sharply at my tone. “What?”

“You and Anna are going to be Tulip’s bridesmaids.”

“What?”

“You sound like a parrot. Rocky and Tulip are going to get hitched. Wait. They are going to”—what the hell had Rocky said?—“be joined in ultimate holy matrimony and bliss. Rocky wants Eddy to officiate, Coop to be best man, and you and Anna to do bridesmaid duties.”

Kate’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times. I could see the wheels in her brain start and stop and start again as she tried to process my bomb. “Bridesmaids? How can Eddy—”

I smirked. “The Internet is a miraculous thing. For a couple hundred bucks, I guess one can be endowed with all the necessary licenses or whatever to legally marry people.” Bad Shay. I was getting a kick out of watching poor Kate flounder. “Wait,” I said. “It gets better.”

“Oh no. What?”

“Rocky wants to get married here.”

“That’s not a problem.”

“Wednesday.”

“Wednesday what date?”

“He wants to get hitched here, at the Hole, on Wednesday.”

Kate’s eyes just about popped from her head. “It’s Sunday, nearly Monday. Two days from now? That Wednesday?”

“Yup.”

“Oh man. We can’t do it on this short notice.”

“I know. I’m hoping we can con him into changing his mind. See if we can get him to delay it a couple days. At least long enough to give notice to the customers. By then this JT mess better be straightened out.”

“I’ll talk to him as soon as I have the deposit done. Is he upstairs?”

“I think so. Thanks.”

“Hey, it’s both our asses I’ll be saving. Don’t thank me yet.”

I left Kate mumbling to herself and hustled back through the French doors that connected Eddy’s place with the Hole.

Coop was still putting his laptop through its paces. Eddy was next to him poring over the printouts. Shawn Geller’s information was on the top of the stack. She squinted as she looked over the face staring back at her. “I need my reading glasses. Shay, they’re in the living room on the TV tray next to the recliner.”

I traipsed off and in a moment returned and handed over Eddy’s cheaters.

“Thank you, child. This Geller kinda looks like he’s about to pee himself. Let’s see.” She scanned the page. “He’s supposed to be staying at the Shamrock Motel in St. Paul.”

“Already on it,” Coop said without looking up, his fingers going a mile a minute. I was always surprised he didn’t get knuckle whiplash at the rate he typed. Way better than my hunt, peck, backspace method.

“Okay,” Coop said. “The motel is close to Dale and University. I can’t find anything in the system about it though.” He frowned at the screen. “The phone number is listed here, but there’s no website.”

“Well, child, have you considered the fact that there’s still plenty of people out there who don’t do computers?” Eddy disliked technology, but she would put her game face on and give it a whirl when the need arose. Luckily for her, the need arose very infrequently. And the cell phone battle raged on; one of these days I’d convince her they weren’t spawn of the devil.

“That’s true,” Coop said, “but you have to admit, Eddy, once in awhile, even you’ve shied away from a business that doesn’t have a website you can check out.”

She was quiet a long moment. “You’re right. It’s a sad thing, but you are right.”

Coop scrawled something on a piece of paper he had next to the laptop. “I’ve got the directions. I don’t think it’s the greatest of areas—Frogtown.”

Frogtown was a St. Paul neighborhood that had long since seen better days. Had seen better decades, actually. It was a poor area, and at times, a rough one. It was definitely nowhere I was particularly keen on adventuring into on the hunt for a potential murderer.

Eddy said, “You let me get changed out of my fine jammies, find my Whacker, and we’ll head on over there and see if Mr. Geller is receiving visitors.”

“Now?” I said. “Don’t you think it’s a little late? It’s almost ten o’clock.” In my estimation, the advantage of daylight would be much better to confront a potential murderer with an affinity for pickles. Then again, JT was behind bars, right now, this very minute. Come daylight, she was still going to be there.

Eddy echoed my subconscious. “Now’s the time to strike. Besides, it’s Sunday night. Bad guys tend to lay low on Sunday night.”

Coop said, “How do you know that?”

“Because that’s always how it is. I am a woman of great knowledge.” With that, she shuffled away to her bedroom.

I looked at Coop. His eyes were red-rimmed, and I’d have wondered if he were doing drugs if I didn’t know him better. He was one tired Green Bean. I felt completely strung out myself and I hadn’t done a single drug either. Well, if you didn’t count the whiskey.

Twelve

“I’m ready,” Eddy announced
as she scooted down the stairs a few minutes later, dressed in black from head to ankle. Bright green high-tops were tied firmly on her feet. She wielded her Whacker—a mini Twins baseball bat—tight in her right hand. After the scrapes we’d run into the last year, her Whacker mantra had shifted from “can’t break up coffee house brawls without it,” to “can’t be part of no break-in without it.”

Snap on the safety belts, kids. Here we go again.

Five minutes later, we sailed down I-94 toward St. Paul. The glow of the in-dash clock read 10:22 p.m. Traffic was light, almost nonexistent. Most people were tucked in their houses, maybe snug in bed, getting ready for the workweek to begin anew. I wished that was where JT and I were right now.

I kept a watchful eye on the speedometer. It wouldn’t bode well to get pulled over while we were on the way to confront a potential killer. The steering wheel felt slippery under my palms. I wiped one damp hand, then the other, on my pants. What on earth were we thinking? We were a motley crew of nobodies who thought they were going to figure out something the cops were probably onto long ago. This was lunacy.

No.

I shoved that thought from my head. The cops—or at least the ones who counted here—figured they had the right person locked up. The bottom line was that we had to prove they were wrong. To do that we needed to find the pickle-stuffing murderer.

Coop called out directions, and before long we’d exited on Dale and crossed University. We made a couple rights, a left, and after a number of blocks, I pulled into the rutted parking lot of a run-down, worn-out motel. The sign atop the building designated this dump as the Shamrock Motel. The name, at least, would’ve gone well with my dad’s bar, the Leprechaun. The sign was less than half lit, the red neon illuminating only the letters S, H, O, and T.

Coop caught sight of the sign. “I hope that’s not an omen.”

I said, “Me too.”

Eddy stuck her face between the seats. “What are you two jawing about?”

I pointed to the flickering sign.

She spelled out, “S-H-O-T.” Then it sunk in. “Oh. Oh my goodness. Good thing I brought the Whacker.”

I wasn’t so sure how well that mini baseball bat would stop a bullet.

The single-level motel, which appeared many decades old if the crumbling walls and flaking paint were any indication, was built in an L shape, with the office/lobby at the top of the L. The front door of each unit faced the dark parking lot.

I pulled into a spot next to the office. Dim light filtered out through dirty windows.

We scrambled from the car. Eddy took two steps toward the entrance when Coop put his long arm to good use and dragged her back.

“Let go, child. What are you doing?”

Coop hissed, “Stop. Wait. What are we going to tell whoever’s in there?”

Good point. Why did we always seem to be just a step behind ourselves when it came to this kind of thing? We should’ve been discussing how we were going to con the desk clerk into telling us what room Geller was staying in the whole way over here. We could be a bunch of idiots sometimes.

Eddy said, “We’ll just go in and ask if Shawn Geller is registered here. Then we go knock on his door.”

“But,” Coop said, “what if whoever’s on duty won’t tell us?”

Eddy twitched her Whacker.

“No,” I said, “we’re not going to give him a crack.”

“You two kids. Couple of wusses. Come
on
.” Eddy hightailed it toward the front door. Coop and I exchanged a look of terror and hustled to catch up just as she opened the door and cleared the threshold.

I caught the door just before it slammed shut and we snuck through the portal in Eddy’s wake. The aroma of cigar smoke almost knocked me on my ass. The rug underfoot was filthy and had been either pea green or industrial gray at some point in its life. Now it was just skanky.

The desk was maybe six feet long, constructed of battered, dark-stained, graffiti-laden wood. Cubbyholes mounted on the wall behind the scarred workspace held old-fashioned keys for the motel doors. There were twenty numbered slots, and at least two-thirds, if not more, of the spaces had a key within.

Eddy elbowed me. “I don’t see a guest register we can sneak a peek at.”

Coop asked, “Where is the night clerk?”

I stepped closer to the desk. A tarnished brass call bell sat next to a cheap plastic nameplate mounted on a jaggedly cut 2x4. It read
S. Neilson, Proprietor
.

What the hell. I banged on the bell, the
ding
echoing throughout the space. At least a hundred seconds passed. I hit the bell again.

Coop raised his eyebrows at me, and Eddy’s frown turned into an icy glare.

Another half-minute passed, and I was about to smack the thing one last time when a loud crash sounded from behind a closed door situated to the right of the key cubbies.

The angry tones of a deep voice seeped through the wood. Then said door slammed open, bashing into the side of a counter next to it. A tall, silver-haired, barrel-chested man limped into the lobby. He wore a garish orange and black Hawaiian shirt covered with white flowers and faded jeans. The stub of a smoldering cigar nestled in one corner of his mouth. The nonstop stream of foul language that erupted from the other half would’ve put a blush on the most sea-weary sailor.

He reminded me of a cartoon character, but for the life of me I couldn’t say which one.

The man said, “What the hell do you want? I think I broke my goddamned kneecap.” He planted two beefy fists on the top of the counter and glared at us, smoke curling from the end of his cigar.

Eddy, ever the brave soul, stepped up to the desk. She fanned the now-smoky air. “We’re wondering if you might have a Shawn Geller registered here.”

For a moment, the entire room was silent, like it was holding its breath for the beast to speak. Then the beast spoke. “What the fuck. You mean to tell me you pulled me away from my
Debbie Does Des Moines
DVD to ask if someone was staying here? You’re goddamn lucky my pause button works. Get the fuck outta here.”

I was ready to make tracks. Coop had already edged toward the door. Eddy, however, stood her ground. One did have to admire that about her. I would do just that, as long as we all lived to contemplate such things.

Eddy said, “I’m sorry to have interrupted your—um—television viewing, but we need to track down Mr. Geller. His mother is dying. The family sent us to see if we could find her only child.”

Holy shit, good one Eddy. Where she came up with that load of malarkey I had no idea. But it was impressive nonetheless.

Proprietor Neilson’s strangely familiar face had started out beet red, his forehead beaded with perspiration when he burst into the lobby. As Eddy spoke, the redness faded into a less death-impending pink. The sweat remained, soaking his hair.

“His mother’s sick, huh?”

Ah ha! I wanted to raise my hand and wave. Neilson had just confirmed that he at least knew who Geller was.

“Yes,” Eddy told him. “We need to speak to Mr. Geller right away. It’s truly a matter of life and death.”

Neilson’s Einstein brows inched together like two night crawlers trying to mate as he sized us up. “Okay. But it’s gonna cost ya.”

I was afraid to ask what he wanted in exchange. Eddy, however, had no such compunction. “Just how much you want, big boy?”

I blinked. She was a third the size of this man, a good number of years older, and she was flirting with him.

Neilson crinkled his nose, and his upper lip twitched. “Lady, you couldn’t handle me. I’ll give you his room number, but like I said, it’s gonna cost.” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together in the international signal for cash.

Oh God.

Eddy rummaged through the pockets of her black jeans. One by one she came up empty. Finally she turned to Coop and me. “What do you have? I forgot to bring bribery dough. Or my wallet.”

Great. Just freaking great. We were about to be murdered, and Eddy’s corpse would get buried wherever they stuck unidentified bodies. At least Coop and I had our driver’s licenses on us and our next of kin would be notified. That got me to thinking about JT and me. If we managed to get out of this alive and JT got sprung from the slammer, we’d better talk to a lawyer about powers of attorney, living wills, and all that.

“Shay!” Coop
thwacked
my arm, knocking me out of my lawyer zone.

“What?” I rubbed my upper arm.

Eddy glared at me and said, “How much money do you have, girl?”

“I don’t know.” As I spoke I noticed a pile of bills lying on the counter top. And S. Neilson wanted more. Bastard. I rummaged in my pockets and pulled out two singles, a ten, and two twenties.

I looked into Neilson’s greedy, beady eyes. “How much do you want?”

He smirked. “All of it.”

“Oh, come on. That’s all the money I have until I work again.”

“Not my problem, sweet cheeks.” He held his grubby paw out, and I slapped the money into it. “You need to make some extra dough,” he said, “you just come see Uncle Steve. I’ll hook you up with some nice paying customers.”

Understanding dawned and I was instantly nauseous. “That’s dis-
gusting.”

“Just sayin’.” Neilson leered at me as he grabbed the greenbacks. “Geller’s in thirteen. Guess it’s not a lucky number for him, is it?” He guffawed at his own joke, and it finally occurred to me who he reminded me of. Barney. Barney Rubble, Fred’s best friend in
The Flintstones
. But I didn’t think I’d call Neilson anything close to a member of the modern stone-age family. He was stuck at cave man.

“It’s been a pleasure. Don’t let the door smack you in the ass,” Neilson cheerily called to our rapidly retreating backsides.

We gathered in front of my truck. My heart was thumping madly in my chest. I glanced down the length of the building, but it was too dark to make out the room numbers.

“Okay,” I said. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
Yes, Shay? What exactly are we going to do?
I racked my brain. It had frozen up, like the inside of a too-small air conditioner on a hotter than the devil’s own home day.

After a couple of seconds, Eddy said, “Well?”

The clock ticked on. I tried. I really did.

Coop said, “Shay?”

Ack. What the hell. “We find room thirteen and knock on the door.”

“Sounds good to me.” Eddy was off again. Coop and I hurried to catch up.

The farther away we got from what little light the dirty office windows cast outside, the darker it got. Two unlit lampposts stood at cockeyed angles in the middle of the mostly gravel lot, like maybe someone’s bumper had gotten a little too close. Repeatedly.

I counted the shadowy hulks of parked cars as we trooped along the sidewalk. Five vehicles, make that six with ours, occupied the lot. Most of the rides looked old.

A large window was situated to one side of the door to each room. All the windows we passed were covered by heavy drapes. In a few of the rooms, light bled around the gaps where the cloth didn’t fully cover the glass. The muffled sounds of television sets at varying volumes trickled out of gaps in warped doors. Some of the sounds that filtered through the cracks were of the X-rated kind. Was this a short-stay motel—a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am kind of place—on top of being just plain trashy? Did Minnesota motels even charge by the hour?

Eddy stopped in front of the door marked 13. The window was blacked out, but a thin line of light snuck through at the top. She raised her fist. I caught it just as it was descending toward the pitted wood surface.

She yanked her hand from mine and whispered, “What now, for goodness sake?”

“Plan,” I whispered hoarsely. “We need a damn plan. We can’t just go pound on his door. What was I thinking?” Someone, please tell me why we never thought anything through. Carefully. “We can’t just trounce in there and ask him if he offed Krasski. He’ll kill us.”

Coop murmured, “Maybe we should tackle him when he opens the door. Ask questions later.” It was hard getting used to such a change from my peaceful protester pal.

Eddy waved her Whacker. “Let me at him—”

In a blink, two things happened almost simultaneously. The first was that the end of the Whacker met the surface of the door with a loud bang. The second was that the door was abruptly yanked open.