“
Goddamnit, you didn’t tell me the place hadn’t been mown all summer,” Richard groused as our arrival seemed to have rousted a swarm of hungry mosquitoes.
“
What’s a little malaria between friends,” I said, swatting at my bare arms and wishing I’d worn a jacket. “And what are you bitching for anyway? All you have to do is hold the flashlight. I’m the idiot who’s got to do the digging.”
“
So start digging.”
Sound advice, but I had no idea where to start. “Give me a minute, willya?”
“
A minute,” he said testily.
I shut my eyes and cleared my mind, hoping I’d get some kind of vibe from the dead guy. I heard Richard slapping at mosquitoes and swearing under his breath.
Maybe I needed to roam around the yard. Maybe if I trooped across the area in a kind of grid pattern I would get weird vibes, literally stumble across the gravesite, dig down a foot or so, find the victim and—voila—justice would be served.
Of course the flaw in that plan was proving Madam Zahara or her son had killed the guy and buried him there. And what was their motive supposed to be, anyway?
“
Have you got a plan or are we just going to stand here and be bitten until we come down with West Nile virus?” Richard asked.
“
I’d better walk the property. Maybe then I’ll know where to start digging.” I could see Richard’s form in silhouette. He shook his head as though perturbed. “Why don’t you go stand on the sidewalk until I call for you. That way won’t get bitten as much.”
“
I’ll do that,” he said. “The last thing I need right now is another blood-born virus.” He stalked off.
I looked around the shadowy yard wondering which way I ought to go. It didn’t matter. I chose to start at the farthest, darkest corner and wished I’d asked Richard to hold the shovel while I used the flashlight.
No sooner had I gone five feet when the toe of my sneakered foot got caught in a hole. The shovel went flying and I fell flat on my face, wrenching my knee. “Goddammit,” I swore as I grabbed at my leg, rolling onto my side. My movements had jostled a whole new swarm of mosquitoes, who seemed to zero in on my face and neck. I could feel them crawling all over me and slapped and cursed at them in anger.
“
Will you shut up!” Richard whispered loudly.
“
I just fell in a friggin’ hole,” I hissed back.
“
Well, be more careful.”
That was easy for him to say, he had the flashlight.
I groped for the shovel and used it to haul myself upright before gingerly putting weight on my throbbing knee. It let me know it was not happy, but it didn’t give out on me, either. I took a fortifying breath to steady myself and opened my mind as I hobbled up and down the yard.
The night air was cool and damp—clammy—and I shivered. In fact, I stopped and felt downright frozen. The saying “cold as the grave” came back to me.
“
I think I found it,” I called to Richard.
No answer.
“
Hey, you still there?”
“
Oh, shit,” I heard him say out loud.
“
What’s the matter?”
Before he could answer, a police car—with lights flashing—skidded to a halt in front of the yard.
“
Oh, shit,” I said as the officer jumped out of the cruiser, trained a light on the yard until he found me, and then drew his gun.
“
Hands up!” he shouted.
I did as I was told, still with shovel in hand. “Something wrong, officer?” I asked, trying to sound cheerful.
“
Yeah, you’re trespassing. Put down the shovel and drop to the ground.”
I tossed the shovel aside and fell to the grass, unleashing another horde of mosquitoes and wondered if the town lock-up provided Calamine lotion for its prisoners.
#
Brenda whacked a jumbo egg on the side of the hot skillet, then dropped its contents into the spattering butter. “Of all the stupid, lame-brained ideas . . . .”
“
Hey, as a person with a brain injury, I resent that remark,” I said, and took a sip of my coffee. It was nine-thirty and I’d had to sit in jail until first thing that morning, waiting for a judge to set bail and for Richard to come and collect me. He’d been smart and ducked behind an arborvitae when the cop arrested me the night before. I didn’t hold a grudge. Why should he get in trouble for one of my funny feelings? And I promised to pay him back . . . one day . . . for making my bail.
The toast popped up and Brenda grabbed it, first slathering butter and then raspberry jam on it before depositing it on my plate.
“
Hey, what about me?” Richard complained.
I picked up one of the slices and dropped it on his plate. He nodded his thanks, scooped it up and took a bite—quite satisfied.
“
And what’s next on your agenda?” Brenda asked, sounding thoroughly annoyed.
I took another sip of my coffee before answering. “What I should have done first. Research the house. See who owns it. My guess is the dead guy. I’ve got a feeling Madam Zahara and her son have been squatting for some time.”
“
How can you prove that?” Richard asked, and took another bite of his toast.
“
First I’d need to find out if the real owner has been seen in the past few years, which is what I should have done before we went blundering over there last night. I’ll start with the county tax records to see who owns that house and who’s been paying the taxes for the last few years. Next I’ll see what else I can find out about the owner.”
“
Who says it was the owner that died? Couldn’t it have been one of Madam Zahara’s customers?”
I nodded. “If that’s the case, I might be looking at a dead end from the start. My gut’s telling me there’s a paper trail to follow—but first I have to go looking for it.”
“
Be my guest,” Richard said, polishing off the last of his toast.
“
When I’ve pulled it all together, perhaps you’d like to be a witness when I present my evidence.”
“
And just who are you going to present it to?” he asked.
I picked up my cup. That was a good question. Clearly confronting Madam Zahara hadn’t done the trick. But was a cop going to believe me?
Probably not.
But then I did have a friend at
The Buffalo News
. He might want to play with a missing-person story. And if he set the ball rolling, the Clarence PD might just pick it up.
I’d just have to wait and see.
But first, breakfast.
#
Since I wasn’t scheduled to work, I spent the rest of that day on my computer in air-conditioned comfort while Brenda and Richard took off for the country club to sweat their way through a few rounds of golf.
First, thanks to the fact that the Erie County tax records were posted online, I found out the property on Route 5, which was also known as Main Street, was owned by one Fred Butterfield. Next up, I looked for every Fred Butterfield I could find, in case the owner was an absentee landlord. There were four of them in the greater Buffalo area. I had no idea how long the guy in the plaid shirt had been dead, so I wasn’t sure which one I was looking for—at least at first. I discounted the one who was ninety-six and another who was six years old. That left two.
I Googled the name and came up with over five million, one hundred and eighty thousand results (in less than 2 seconds—not bad). I narrowed that down by adding Buffalo, NY to the search parameters, and winnowed it down to a mere seventy-two. It took another twenty minutes to go through that list. I found hits on only one of the guys on the tax records, who’d been a football sensation back in high school. Next stop: Facebook.
I had to go through a whole page of men by that name before I narrowed it down to two, but both of them were listed on that social network as living in the Buffalo area. Now to figure out which one was the dead guy. Not such an easy task, since one of the profile pictures was of Popeye the Sailor and the other was a 1989 orange Corvette.
Since I wasn’t their “friend,” their personal info pages weren’t available to me. I couldn’t friend them as myself—Madam Zahara knew my name and wasn’t likely to approve my friendship request—so I went to Google and set up a phony email address, then went back to Facebook and set up a new account. And why hadn’t it occurred to me to do this before now? I had a feeling I’d be able to use this bogus name and history for snooping in the future.
While I waited to see if my friend requests would be granted, I studied their info pages, but neither had allowed much information to be made available to non-friends.
Gut feeling told me the picture of the Corvette represented Mr. Plaid Shirt, although from the looks of his clothing and his hair, and the condition of the home on Main Street, he’d fallen on hard times long before his demise. That made the idea of someone killing him for that crappy house even more appalling.
To kill time, I friended a bunch of Buffalo institutions, including the library, the Bills, the Sabres, and any other sports-affiliated thing I could think of, a few restaurants, and microbreweries, figuring what the hell—it would give my fake persona a little credibility.
I Googled Madam Zahara and found her listed in the Buffalo online phone directory—she’d even paid for an ad—but that didn’t tell me who she really was or what her connection to Fred Butterfield was.
It was after three and I already had twenty friends when I looked back to my profile page to see that Mr. Corvette Butterfield was now my friend, too. I clicked onto his pictures. Bingo! There he was in a number of shots, first looking some twenty years younger with said orange Corvette, and then a few of him looking pretty much as he had when I’d seen him at Madam Zahara’s. He’d apparently never had the opportunity to become older.
I clicked back to his wall and found that his last post was made just two days before. “Watching the Mets on TV.” I did a quick Google search and found the team had played two days before. (They’d lost—five to three.)
So, who was updating the dead guy’s page—Madam Zahara or her long-distant trucking son? And when it came down to it—I had no proof that either of them had done anything wrong, and no real proof that Fred Butterfield was actually dead. Just that funny feeling in my gut that I had learned to trust during the past five months.
I figured I’d gone about as far as I could go on my own without doing some face-to-face interviews and possibly stirring up a hornet’s nest, so I called my friend Sam Nielson at
The Buffalo News
.
Sam and I go back to high school days. He was the editor of the school newspaper and I took the photos. We didn’t talk much back then, but we’re now . . . maybe not friends, but we had a mutual understanding when it came to crime. He reported it, and I seemed to keep finding it. Since he’d helped me out a couple of times, there was no reason not to ask for his assistance once again.
“
This sounds pretty lame,” he said when I finally got a hold of him late that afternoon.
“
Have I been wrong so far?”
I heard him sigh. “No. Okay, what do you want me to do?”
“
See if this guy has paid taxes.”
“
You got a social security number? Date of birth? Anything like that?”
“
According to Facebook, he was born on April twelfth—no year given.”
“
And if that’s a bogus date?”
“
Then I’m shit outta luck.”
“
You’ll be on
my
shit list, that’s for sure.” He was quiet for a moment, and I could hear the rustle of paper. “Okay, give me a day or two and I’ll get back to you.”
He hung up.
A day or two. It was going to seem like years. I just hoped he had things cleared up before my court date or I might find myself in jail—or doing community service. Maybe digging holes in parks for new trees instead of digging in yards looking for bodies.
But I didn’t have to wait those two days because Madam Zahara called me. After all, I didn’t have an unlisted number and she did know my name.
“
Mr. Resnick?” she asked. “The one who visited a psychic on two occasions this past week?”
“
That’s me,” I said as a chill ran up my spine.
“
It seems as though we have more business to conduct.”
“
How so?” I asked.
“
You want to know about Fred Butterfield, right?”
“
Yes,” I said.
“
I’m prepared to tell all. And if you want to call the police after you’ve heard my story, I won’t try to stop you.”
Boy did that sound like a trap, or what? But she had me pegged and I did want to hear her story.
“
I’m not prepared to go back to the house on Main Street. Can we meet on neutral ground?”
The connection was silent for long seconds. “I’m open to that. Where?”
Someplace crowded. “How about Eastern Hills Mall?”
“
Where will we meet?”
“
By the food court. Tomorrow afternoon. Is five thirty all right with you?”
“
Perfect,” she said. She sounded smug, which made the hairs on the back of my neck bristle.
“
I’ll see you then,” I said.