Slugfest db-4 Page 14

  “Because he’s wanted for questioning in connection with the death of Garland Bleimeister. We also want to talk to him about the death of one Otis Rudolph—”

  “Randolph,” Stancik said.

  “Which we are now officially treating as suspicious.”

  Forty

  “His parents came in from some place in Pennsylvania to identify the body,” Stancik said.

  “Some town like Smallville. The mother said Garland started hanging out with some rich kids. He always needed money to keep up with them, so he worked a lot. Especially for one professor who paid pretty well. But that was only during the summertime. The parents weren’t sure where Bleimeister had been staying in New York. It could have been anywhere—a friend’s place or a bench in the park.”

  “Wait a minute. I saw him once before Wednesday.” I told them about jogging on Tuesday morning and seeing Bleimeister at the small private museum near Lucy’s apartment. “He looked as if he might have spent the night huddled in the doorway. I thought he might have been a runaway until I saw him here the next day.”

  “See, people never think they know anything and then, wham, they do. The Sterling Forsyte Museum—that the one? Transitional neighborhood,” Stancik said. “Was that near where you’re staying?” I nodded.

  “We think Bleimeister might have hooked up with Jamal sometime in the last six months, and the two of them went into business. Kid like Bleimeister could open up a whole new line of distribution for a street operator like Jamal.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Lauryn said. “Jamal is a B plus student with lots of extracurricular activities.”

  “We didn’t say he was stupid. For all I care, he’s the editor of the school paper and his mama’s got a bumper sticker that says he’s on the honor roll, but his name came up, unsolicited, in two separate interviews. People say he’s got the makings of a first-rate botanist—or marijuana grower.”

  Could Allegra and Rolanda both have put the finger on Jamal? If so, it would be the first time they’d seen eye to eye on anything.

  “He’s got a part-time job,” I said.

  “So you do know him.” Labidou acted as if he’d caught me in a lie. “You seem to know both of these boys pretty well. You got a thing for younger men?”

  For the first time I wished I had a husband or boyfriend to trot out to prove to this Neanderthal that I wasn’t some lonely woman lusting after young boys.

  “He sold me a tablecloth, detective. That was the extent of our relationship. If Bleimeister and Jamal knew each other, why would Bleimeister need to sneak into the convention center to see him? What about the names on these two pages?” I flipped through the book and showed them the pages in question. Lauryn read in between the two taller men. Her face turned ashen.

  “What is it?”

  “We’re High School 240, but our official name is the Byron Davis School. That’s how we were registered here. We’re on these pages.”

  Like everyone else, I’d been thinking of them as Sticks and Stones or the Gangsta Gardeners. Their school name hadn’t even registered when I leafed through the book at Lucy’s last night before dozing off. Could we have been that wrong about Jamal?

  “Do you plan on interrogating the other people on these pages?” I asked.

  “Let’s all stay calm. Right now we’re focusing on Mr. Harrington.”

  “Does he need a lawyer?” I asked.

  “If he hasn’t done anything, why does he need a lawyer? We just want to talk to him. If either of you ladies sees or hears from him, I strongly suggest you advise him to voluntarily turn himself in for questioning. We will find him, but it will be easier if he comes in on his own. Save the taxpayers a little money. And us, a little aggravation.”

  Fat chance. Rolanda and I had tried that the night before. Maybe Lauryn had, too. For all we knew he was already on a bus to his cousin in North Carolina.

  “Damn. Here comes another one. Are we doing something this morning to attract fine-looking, ornery women?” Coming toward us wearing the least sincere smile I’d seen on anyone since the last election was Kristi Reynolds. She chattered into a headset, but her eyes were fixed on Stancik and Labidou.

  “We’re done,” Stancik said, “but don’t forget—either of you sees Harrington, tell him we want to talk. We don’t want his body to be the next one we find floating in the river.”

  Kristi swept the cops off the floor, no doubt doing damage control for the benefit of the morning’s showgoers, who were starting to pour into the exhibit hall. Lauryn stammered an apology.

  “Forget it. Look, I wasn’t ready to indict Jamal because of a jacket.” Only then did I realize I hadn’t even mentioned the jacket to the police. And if Rolanda had told them, why wouldn’t they have said something?

  “They’re not even going to talk to anyone else, are they?” Lauryn said. “They think they have their man.” She shook her head in disgust.

  “We don’t know that. Not to rub your nose in it, but you were wrong about me. I hadn’t said a word about Jamal and you assumed the worst. We could be wrong about them.” I wasn’t sure I believed it either, but I wanted to raise her spirits.

  “I should get back to work,” I said. “You know, I’ve already talked to most of the people on those pages. It wouldn’t be so hard for me to ask a few questions. Do a little shopping and snooping at the same time?”

  “Would you? I’m going to have my hands full trying to find Jamal and getting him a lawyer.” I said I’d ask around and would let her know if I learned anything useful.

  “Sell another piece?” Nikki asked, when I returned.

  “Dream on—the one in the brown leather jacket? Probably has a painting on velvet in his bachelor pad. Or one of those prints of the dogs playing poker.”

  “Don’t knock those—I’ve sold quite a few of them.”

  I shared as much as I thought they needed to know about my conversation with Lauryn and the cops.

  “At least the Javits Curse doesn’t seem to have struck this morning,” Nikki said, looking around at the relative calm.

  Only if you didn’t count two possible murders and a drug deal gone awry. I wondered silently if Jamal’s absence had anything to do with the disappearance of the curse.

  The morning passed quickly with my neighbors depleting their stock of smaller items and keeping their fingers crossed on the bigger pieces. Mrs. Moffitt’s Jensen returned and surreptitiously stole another glance at Nikki’s sarcophagus. I sold an eight-foot-tall wind device and three tabletop sculptures. There wouldn’t be much to pack when the show ended, and that would be good news for the folks in Springfield.

  * * *

  Foot traffic had slowed to a crawl around lunchtime. My stomach was sending signals, when I remembered J. C.’s scone still in my bag. It would taste delicious drizzled with fresh honey—and I knew where to get some. I wanted to update Cindy about my talk with the cops, so I found her booth number in the directory and headed for the Buzz Word exhibit.

  “Is the owner here?”

  A smartly dressed woman in her forties or fifties turned around. She had smooth blond hair cut in an ear-length bob and wore a crystal necklace that might have been Baccarat—a yellow bee on a black silk cord. “That’s me. Can I help you?”

  “I meant Cindy. Young girl.” Oops. “Dark hair, brown corduroy jacket?”

  “Let’s see—I used to be young and had dark hair once, but I can assure you I haven’t owned or worn a brown corduroy jacket since I was about three years old and had no say in the matter. That said, I am Cindy Gustafson.”

  Forty-one

  “Well, you might have guessed when she said she harvested her honey every month. Perhaps she was thinking of tapping sugar for maple syrup. All the beekeepers I know harvest in the fall.”

  It wasn’t the first time I’d been lied to, and I’d get over it. I should have been tipped off when she mentioned Garland’s lost show credentials, but I’d assumed that he was lying to her, not that she
was lying to me. So, who was the girl I’d treated to a bagel earlier that morning and why had she concocted that story about Garland Bleimeister?

  The real Cindy Gustafson gave me a good price on six pounds of honey—two pounds each for Lucy, J. C., and myself. She even threw in a set of honey dippers and painstakingly wrapped each jar in colorful tissue paper without using tape, just a few strands of raffia attaching the dipper with the last knot. Ordinarily it would have annoyed the heck out of me that she was taking so long, but even though she wasn’t the woman I’d met that morning, her name was on one of those two pages. When given an audience, people love to talk about themselves, and Cindy was no exception.

  Buzz Word sold artisanal honeys, lip balms, and soaps. The company was based in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, and at present this Cindy Gustafson was the only employee.

  When people heard she was a beekeeper, they expected her to be Olivia Walton, churning her own butter and wearing a long dress like the Amish or the Mormons.

  “That’s tiresome. I prefer Coach. Or St. John, when I can afford it.”

  Beekeeping wasn’t like that—you could have one box or a hundred. You didn’t even need much room, maybe four cubic feet per box. Cindy knew one man who had his hives on a roof in Philadelphia, ten boxes with ten frames in each. And it only took a few hours a week, except when he harvested.

  Cindy had gotten into it in college. A sign outside the cafeteria asked for volunteers to help with a study on an early outbreak of what they’re now calling colony collapse disorder, the thing that is or isn’t happening depending on which scientific paper you read. She was fascinated by the rules of the hive—queen, drones, female workers. Things happening at a set time. The orderly transfer of power when a new queen is chosen and nurtured. It was civilized. There were no surprises. She appreciated that.

  As a thank-you, the organizers of the study gave Cindy a few pounds of honey and some of the beeswax, which she packaged in colorful tins and gave to friends as presents.

  Then the campus store wanted to carry them.

  “It supplemented my wardrobe allowance at school, and my parents were pleased that I showed an interest in something other than getting married, but it was just for fun. I took it up again after I divorced. My husband was deathly afraid of bees. He was allergic to bee stings.”

  The first year all her bees died. The next year she did better, but nowhere near the seventy pounds a year per hive she had planned on, based on her research and the business plan she’d devised. All her items were under twenty dollars, which she had determined was the right price point. She started selling the products at farmers markets, then moved up to county fairs, finally graduating to shows like the Big E—the Eastern States Exposition—and this one.

  “People want to spend money at shows. What other explanation is there for the ridiculous number of mops and chamois cloths sold at events like these?” It was David’s pinecone-nightlight theory. These people had done their homework.

  As casually as I could, I broached the subject of the dead boy, but she claimed to know nothing about him. All I knew was that he was from New Jersey and may or may not have gone to Penn State.

  “As it happens,” she said, “my younger sister graduated from Penn State, but from your description of the boy, I doubt she knew him. She was an extremely serious student. Too serious. For a time my parents worried that she was putting too much pressure on herself, but it resolved itself. An adviser helped straighten out her priorities.

  “In any event, I haven’t read the paper for days. Since I got here, it’s been all work. This is hardly a huge moneymaking proposition for me, but I certainly don’t want to lose any.”

  “So, your sister is a former denizen of Happy Valley. Do you know of any other use of that expression other than its being a nickname for the Penn State campus?”

  She thought about it. “Wasn’t that what they called the English expatriate community in Kenya in the twenties?”

  That jogged my memory. I’d screened a documentary years back on the unsolved murder of a wealthy Englishman just outside Nairobi during that time period. The press may have even called it the Happy Valley Murder. And now there was another. Very different, of course, but long after the case was solved some well-read magazine journalist would eventually pick up the story and use the headline for Garland’s story as a private joke he was sure no one else would get.

  “My ex-husband traveled to East Africa frequently for business.” She fingered a large chunk of tanzanite on her earlobe. “He bought me these. He was always bringing me something. Unfortunately, the last time it was a rather nasty infection. Just when you think you know someone.

  “We moved past it,” she said. “I went back to my maiden name and picked up the hobby I’d given up when we married. It keeps me busy.”

  Cindy Gustafson stowed my purchases in two sturdy black paper shopping bags, and I thanked her for her time even though she hadn’t shed any light on Garland Bleimeister. I was still ravenous but didn’t need the upper body workout of carrying six extra pounds while I searched for a place to eat, so I headed back to my booth to drop off the honey.

  When I arrived, Rolanda Knox was waiting for me. I was not happy she’d blown me off and talked to the cops without me. I thought we were in this together, and I didn’t know if what she said dovetailed with my story. The look on my face revealed my irritation.

  “Is that your suburban, white-bread version of the stink eye?” she said. “’Cause when I deliver the stink eye, I usually like to squint a little. Sometimes I adopt a quizzical look if I really want to scare the person.”

  I placed the honey on the edge of the table where Primo’s smaller works were displayed. There was a note on it.

  “Some guy dropped that off,” Nikki said quietly, not wanting to get between me and Rolanda.

  “Guy or a guy?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Who’s Guy? Tall fellow, tan, outdoorsy. He didn’t say his name. Just asked if you were coming back.” No one could mistake Guy Anzalone for outdoorsy. Rolanda hovered as if waiting for something.

  “And what’s the purpose of this visit? Tossing cells? A random strip search for badges?” I asked.

  “Will you quit it? I came to talk to you about that thing. Those boys we know?”

  “You’re being surprisingly discreet for someone who blabbed all about it this morning.”

  “Is that why you look like you’re sniffing baby poop? They found me. The janitor, Anthony, called the police late last night as soon as the papers hit the street. The cops were waiting for us at the church before Otis’s service even started. His poor mother had to be sedated. Really ruined the moment, having the police at her son’s funeral. I left early and came straight here to see you. While I was waiting, Miss Nikki told me something you ought to hear.”

  “Miss Nikki. I like that.”

  “Spend a few hours in the old neighborhood and you fall back into the old ways. Tell Miss Paula what you told me.”

  Forty-two

  The last time most of us had seen Nikki had been early Friday evening, before the reception started. She’d been fretting about the stain on her dress and had left for the members’ lounge to make sure the flower pin I’d lent her covered it sufficiently and would not impede her ability to sell garden ephemera.

  “As I was leaving,” she said, “I saw my husband, Russ, coming in at another gate. I knew he’d look after things if I took a little long, so I didn’t worry about hurrying back.” Maybe that was the reason she had obsessed about the stain—she wanted to look good for the husband she complained about but still wanted to seduce.

  “Go on.”

  “It took me a while to wade through the crowd waiting to come in. When I reached the members’ lounge, it was empty. You haven’t been in the lounge have you?”

  She described one large room with upholstered chairs and small tables arranged in conversational groupings. At either end were the restrooms. There were no doors, just large alc
oves with console tables and floral arrangements, leading inside to the sinks and stalls.

  “It’s not as if you can see in.” Rolanda said, clarifying for me. “It’s almost like an old-fashioned movie theater.”

  “But you can hear,” I said, prompting her.

  Nikki nodded her head. “Yes, if the person speaks loudly enough.”

  She heard a man and a woman. The woman’s voice stayed even, but the man’s grew louder and more agitated. At one point, the female voice developed an edge. She said everything was under control and the man was overreacting.

  “Don’t give me that ‘you always’ crap and don’t tell me to relax. There’s a lot of money at stake here. My future.”

  “I couldn’t hear how the woman answered,” Nikki said, “but the man sounded like he was losing it. They either got much louder or had moved closer to the entrance of the restroom, so I slipped into one of the stalls. The comments got nastier and I heard scuffling and the sound of someone being pushed. During our worst arguments, Russ would never have followed me into a public restroom to yell at me, much less push me.” What a turnaround; Nikki’s husband was starting to look better.

  “The woman said, ‘You look good in a tux. They cover a multitude of sins. They can deflect attention from a weak chin, a few extra pounds, and the absence of … well, you know.’ That’s when I got nervous. I thought, what if he hits her?”

  I don’t know what I would have done in that instance if I thought another woman was in trouble. I like to think I would have announced my presence by opening the door and acting as a peacemaker—maybe shame the feuding couple by being a witness before one of them landed the first punch.

  That’s not what Nikki Bingham did. She balanced precariously on the edges of the toilet seat and braced herself in a half crouch against the walls of the stall praying she wouldn’t be seen or heard while the row outside escalated.

  “The woman said their plan was working and the man should just shut up and execute it. Especially tonight. He’d been dumb enough to bring a kid into their arrangement—and that other poor bastard who worked here—and once again she’d had to clean up after him.”