Sticky Fingers (18 page)

“Forget it, then. I don’t feel up to chasing you.”

“Find Clarice’s killer yet?”

“Nope.”

“I— Look, I’m sorry about yesterday. Losing my temper, I mean.” I didn’t want to get into a big deal about my mother and all, but I said, “You were right. I was kinda torn up about things. I didn’t mean to take it out on you. This whole friend thing—well, it’s new territory for me.”

“Forget about it,” Bug said easily, to my great relief. “I talked to both husbands again last night. I guess we’d have figured this out sooner if I’d checked those two IDs in Clarice’s handbag, but that’s the way police work goes sometimes. ME said she was probably killed right after she was snatched, so I don’t think we could have stopped that. Both of the husbands claim they had no idea Clarice was married to somebody else.”

“Do you believe them?”

“Not exactly. We also started looking at Clarice’s financial records.”

“And?”

“She drew a small salary from the museum. So did Husband Number One—Eckelstine. But they had big expenses—nice cars, big mortgage, legal fees to keep their kid out of jail. They used credit cards erratically—ran up big debt, then paid them off in big chunks.”

“Where’d they get the chunks of money?”

“Eckelstine says she was paid to give speeches, but he wasn’t sure about the details. Either that, or he’s lying. Clarice took care of all their finances, he said.”

“What’s the story with the Mitchells?”

“Same deal. She handled the financial stuff. He mostly takes care of their kid. She’s a figure skater. Here’s where it gets interesting. You won’t believe what it costs to train a teenage ice-skater. Tens of thousands of dollars on coaching, travel, tournaments. Plus she goes to a private school—some online education with assignments the kids do on their own time. Huge tuition, plus extra fees for tutoring when she travels. I’ve got a guy working on figuring out where Clarice got the money to pay for everything. Mitchell, incidentally, has no job at all except driving the daughter back and forth between skating rinks. He devotes all his time to the kid.”

“Maybe Clarice’s father gave her dough?”

Bug shrugged. “Maybe. She had recently taken over his financials, too, but at first glance his assets were modest.”

“By the looks of his house, Professor Crabtree didn’t have much extra cash. What are you doing next?”

“Talking to banks to follow the money. Then back to the husbands. One of them probably offed her.”

“Did you figure out who Rhonda is? Crabtree kept asking about her. I wonder if she was maybe a secretary or something. Or a sister?”

“I forgot about Rhonda.”

“You’ve had a lot on your mind. Look, there’s something I haven’t told you.”

Bug squinted up at me through his sunglasses. “Just one thing?”

I tried to smile, but couldn’t. “When I was in the house talking to Clarice that night, Nooch saw a black limousine pull up on the street.”

Bug waited for more, saying nothing.

“It took Nooch a while to remember to tell me. He’s forgetful. It’s not his fault. Anyway, yesterday I asked around, and it sounds to me like Dooce was in the neighborhood that night.”

“Dooce? You mean the singer, Dooce?”

“Yeah, him. And his assistant, some guy named Jeremy.”

“Dooce was at the Crabtree house? When were you going to mention that?”

“I’m mentioning it now. Look, they didn’t get out of the car or anything.”

Bug’s expression didn’t waver, and I wanted to pull off his sunglasses to see what he was thinking. Finally, he said, “A rock singer driving by the Crabtree house doesn’t sound like a promising lead right now, Roxy.”

It sounded pretty stupid to me, too, suddenly. So I said, “I’m just putting my cards on the table, that’s all. You know—sharing information with a friend.”

His phone jingled, and he answered it. He checked his watch while listening to the voice on the other end. “Yeah, I’ll be there in ten.”

“Hot lead?” I asked when he snapped the phone shut.

He shook his head. “I’m taking my boys to their dentist appointment.”

Bug’s wife, I knew, had MS. He’d shouldered a lot of parental responsibilities in the last year. I felt a twinge of guilt for giving him a hard time. He had his hands full already.

Bug tossed his phone on the passenger seat. “Look, I still need to talk to you about what happened yesterday with Clarice’s husbands. What they said to each other before I got there—that kind of thing. You available later?”

“For you to arrest me?”

“Not unless you provoke somebody into another street brawl. Lunch? At Roland’s? One o’clock?”

I wondered if he’d still be awake at one o’clock, but I liked the fish sandwiches at Roland’s, so I said, “Yeah, okay.”

Bug rolled up his window, put the cruiser in gear, and left the alley.

I climbed into the truck and started the engine. While hunting for a radio station that would tell me more about Clarice Crabtree’s life and death, I saw a black Escalade pull into the alley.

An Escalade. In Loretta’s alley. My urban-dweller radar switched on.

The vehicle of city drug dealers and bad guys in general was a sleek truck with tinted windows and the full package of chrome wheels and door trim. From the angle of the sunlight, I couldn’t see who was behind the wheel of this one.

The driver beeped his horn, and a second later Sage pushed out the door and came skipping down the sidewalk, munching on toast and smiling at the driver. She climbed in the passenger seat, and I could see her silhouette as she leaned across and kissed the driver, long and sweetly.

I laid a hand on my horn and blasted it.

Sage sat up quickly and buckled her seatbelt. The driver pulled away fast, throwing up a spray of gravel.

That’s when I saw the license plate:
SQUISHY.

It was no drug dealer. It was my daughter’s new boyfriend. I considered ramming the Squishy Escalade with the Monster Truck, but I couldn’t get the beast turned around fast enough. I grabbed my cell phone and dialed Sage’s number.

No surprise, she didn’t answer.

At the traffic light, I saw a flash of chrome as the Escalade turned left. Away from the direction of Sage’s school. When I reached the light, I got caught behind a bus and missed which way they went after that. Cursing, I trolled a couple of side streets, hoping to catch sight of them, but no luck. Sage had disappeared, and I knew she wasn’t going to study for a chemistry test.

I tried her cell phone a couple more times. She didn’t answer.

Fuming, I picked up Nooch. He got into the truck and sniffed. “You smell good. Like bacon.”

“We should invent a perfume that smells like bacon. Men would love it. Of course, men love everything as long as there’s food or sex involved, preferably both.”

Nooch blinked fearfully at me. “What are you so mad about this morning?”

“Sage has a new boyfriend, and I think they’re skipping school together.”

Nooch looked grave. “That’s not positive.”

“It’s about as negative as it gets.”

“But Sage is a nice girl. She wouldn’t get into any trouble.”

“Don’t bet the farm on that.”

But Nooch was right. Sage was a good kid, and I had to trust that—especially on a day when I had other stuff to worry about.

I tried to think through what I could accomplish in the hours before I had to meet Bug for lunch. First, I drove down to the salvage yard. Rooney was waiting for us at the gate, holding his bone in his teeth.

Nooch yelped. “Oh, no. Look!”

We jumped out of the truck. Rooney bounded over and shoved his face into mine, and I realized somebody had spray-painted him, too. His face was splotched with green paint, and his body had a fine green tint all over.

“What happened to you?” I asked the dog.

“Somebody painted him!” Nooch cried.

“Probably through the fence.” I examined Rooney more carefully. He was green, all right, but it didn’t look as if it hurt him any. He waggled his whole body—happy to see us. I pried open his mouth to check if maybe he’d inhaled anything poisonous, but his teeth and tongue were clean.

“It was that idiot Gino.” I hugged Rooney. “Damn it, it’s time to saddle up and go after him.”

“Oh, jeez,” Nooch groaned. “It makes me nervous when you go all cowboy.”

I gave Rooney more pats and pulled out my keys again. “Nooch, I need you to pull out all the pocket doors in the inventory. The beveled glass ones. Tomorrow there’s a guy coming from Fox Chapel who’s interested. You do that. I’ll go after Gino.”

“What about lunch? Will you be back for lunch?”

“If I’m not, you can order a pizza. There’s money in the petty-cash box.”

I went into the office and looked up some addresses in the phone book. Then I loaded Rooney and his bone into the truck. I phoned Flynn from behind the steering wheel.

“What?” he said, sounding hostile.

Better to skip any pleasantries. “Do you still play hockey at night with your friends?”

If the topic of conversation surprised him, he didn’t sound that way. He said, “Yeah, couple nights a week when I can. Why?”

“Do you know any ice-skaters?”

He paused. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“Not hockey skaters, but the girls in the sparkly outfits.”

“You mean figure skaters?”

“Yeah, any of those?”

“A couple. What’s this all about?”

“Do any of them teach little kids?”

“Yes. Rox, I’m busy here—”

“How about a name? Somebody I can talk to?”

“Is this about Sage? She wants to learn to skate?”

“No, I just need to learn in general about skating.”

“Sometimes you’re more nuts than others,” he said. “Try Jenny Osterman. She works at the Harmar Rink, teaches lessons after school. She’s a nice girl, Rox. Don’t go trying to intimidate her, okay?”

“What kind of jerk do you think I am? Wait—don’t answer that. How was dinner last night?”

“Crazy,” he said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

He hung up.

I had other things to do before I could intimidate the skating teacher after school, but first I headed over to Petrone’s gas station to wash the truck. On the way, I tried to think up an appropriate punishment for Gino. I envisioned everything from pelting him with water balloons to eviscerating him with a sharpened pencil.

Outside the car wash, I did a double take.

“Holy shit,” I said. “Maybe this envisioning thing works!”

Pulling through the big-rig bay was one of Gino Martinelli’s tow trucks. I pulled in front and blocked it.

Gino himself leaned out of the cab. “Bitch!”

It was all I needed. I was out from behind the steering wheel in a heartbeat, and I yanked open Gino’s door. He gave a squeak as I grabbed a handful of his jacket and dragged him out of the truck.

He fought me, kicking and scratching. I kneed him once and he went limp, but only for a second. In another instant, he reared up and tried to bite me on the neck. He got a mouthful of hair instead.

I snapped. Okay, I’d had a bad couple of days. On the front seat of his tow truck I saw a clipboard, some jumper cables, and a bunch of other stuff. I leaned in and seized the jumper cables. In another second, I wrapped them around Gino’s scrawny neck.

He wound his fingers through the cables and turned purple, chanting, “Bitch, slut, dirty whore—”

“Call me all the names you like, hamster man. I saw you without your pants, remember? You go after little girls ’cause you can’t make a real woman happy?”

He choked and gagged and struggled.

I hauled him up by the neck. “Listen up, Gino, you miserable shit. You painted my gate. You messed up my truck. But when you try to hurt my dog, you son of a bitch, you get what’s coming to you.”

He made gargling noises and started to slide to the ground. Panting and cursing, I tightened the cables until the muscles in my forearms screamed. I heard Rooney barking like crazy, but he sounded very far away. If Nooch had been there to pull me off Gino, it might have turned out okay. But I could feel the wildfire in my veins. My brain stopped functioning on anything but the most primitive level.

Then suddenly a police cruiser passed the entrance to the car wash.

The cop stopped the car. As he backed up to get a better look at what was happening, Gino and I both caught sight of him.

I dropped the jumper cables and put my arm around Gino’s shoulders, hoping it looked convincing.

Likewise, Gino straightened up and smiled at the cop. He even waved.

The cop rolled down the window of his cruiser to take a longer look at the two of us. He stared hard.

We smiled back.

After an eternity, the cop put up his window and drove away.

The interlude gave me enough time to regain my wits. With a little less fury than before, I slammed Gino into the side of his truck and pinned him there with one hand against his throat. “Listen to me, you baby-screwing asshole. You come near one of my daughter’s friends again, I’ll get out my hedge clippers and do some serious damage, you know what I mean? And picking on Nooch? That’ll get you something just as bad. But if you touch my dog, I’ll core you like an apple.”

“Whore,” he snarled.

I reached inside the cab of his truck and came out with a stapler—the one he used to attach his overpriced receipts to the credit card slips of the car owners he cheated. Then I pulled a five-dollar bill out of my hip pocket and slapped it into the palm of his hand.

“Here,” I said. “This should cover the damages.”

I stapled the five into his hand.

Gino howled, but I threw the staple gun and walked way. I got into the Monster Truck and drove out of the car wash.

A little while later I drove into a pretty residential neighborhood. By then, I was no longer blind with rage. I could almost think again. I was wishing I could summon a little of Nooch’s positive energy, because I was still shaking with diffused anger.

But I’d managed to find myself in the Eckelstine neighborhood.

The Eckelstine house was a century-old brick two-story with Tudor beams on the front, like Henry the Eighth might drop by to behead somebody. Similar homes lined the street—mansions built back during the first steel boom and still well maintained. They had rolling front lawns and sculpted flower beds, and brick driveways led to garages out back—garages once big enough to hold carriages and a couple of horses, too.