Dead Head: A Dirty Business Mystery Page 5

  “Are you taking the maple, senorita?” the man asked when he was sure I was okay.

  “No, I’ve changed my mind. I was looking for the false lamiums. Are they in yet?” Right…I mistook a tree for a perennial.

  “Maybe our next shipment,” he said. “Try again in a few days.”

  “Just these plants, then.” The man pushed my cart to the checkout desk for me, walking at a funereal pace in deference to my wretched physical condition until we reached the outside counter, where yet another employee would tally my purchases and hand me a slip to take inside to the cashier. Everyone’s a specialist.

  I glanced to the right and saw the white pickup turn around and come barreling toward us. I leaned back slightly so that my face was hidden behind a scarecrow and a towering stack of baled hay.

  The Guatemalan nursery employee who had helped me saw me lean backward and must have thought I was fainting. He screamed for someone inside to call 911, and in a clumsy attempt to catch me wound up knocking over the hay bales, the scarecrow, and me on top of them. From my horizontal position in the driveway, I saw the truck pass, with two Hispanic garden workers and what looked like a mixed-breed Lab inside, none of whom I’d ever seen before. All of them, even the dog, appeared to be laughing.

  Six

  I laughed myself the next morning as I drove to Babe’s, thinking about the disturbance I’d created at the nursery, but as I approached the diner, I saw a cluster of Springfield police cars with their lights flashing. All the cops I knew walked across the road to the Paradise. Either someone was having a retirement breakfast or something bad had happened, and I was afraid it was the latter.

  I pulled closer and saw a man being handcuffed and led over to one of the cars by Sergeant Mike O’Malley, a Springfield cop I’d gotten to know in the last few years. Not in the biblical sense, but Lucy and Babe still gave it a fifty-fifty chance.

  I instantly recognized the vest and sweatshirt on the person now being helped into the patrol car; it was Countertop Man. With all the official vehicles in the lot, the only parking space still available was at the far end near a hair salon that I’d never seen anyone enter or exit. I took it, then jogged to Babe’s private office in the back of the diner, where I met Babe and Mike O’Malley.

  “What’s going on? You okay? Was that Countertop Man?” I asked, pointing to the man in the patrol car. “I knew there was something fishy about that guy.”

  “I thought you didn’t know him,” O’Malley said to Babe.

  “He said his name but I don’t remember it. I know he likes black coffee and fried eggs and he asked me if my name was Brittany. He’s been in the last few days, that’s all. Said he worked for a countertop company downtown. I just feed them, Mike. I don’t ask for references.”

  Then O’Malley asked what I knew about the man, but I didn’t have anything substantial to contribute other than my gut feeling, which didn’t seem fair to share with the police given that it was based on the guy’s inability to tell Formica from limestone, which was not a crime, although perhaps it should be. I spared Mike the nursery anecdote, since it no longer seemed all that funny.

  “So you think he lied about being in the countertop business and he flirted with Babe and you thought that made him weird? Doesn’t everybody flirt with Babe?”

  For my benefit Babe repeated what happened. “I closed up around 7 P.M. last night—business was dead, so I came in early today, to make up for it. When I got here, I found that guy, whatever his name is, in my office, curled up on my inflatable bed. He scared the crap out of me, so I backed out of the room as quietly as I could, locked him in, and called the cops after I looked myself inside the diner.”

  “It’s lucky he didn’t just wake up and run away,” I said.

  “He did wake up, and busted my lock in the process, but I’d blocked the door with my SUV. He couldn’t get out. Even the windows are painted shut. I’ve been after Neil all summer to scrape them. Now I’m glad he didn’t get around to it.”

  Countertop Man claimed to have left his ID in his other suit which was kind of funny since he didn’t strike any of us as a suit-and-tie kind of guy. All he’d said was that his name was Chase McGinley. He was babbling in the back of the police cruiser, his head rocking back and forth in an animated argument with himself. Against the odds, he appeared to be losing.

  McGinley said he’d just been sleeping one off someplace warm, but apparently he’d gone through Babe’s garbage, her files, and a bottle of Bombay gin before passing out on her sofa. When the cops cuffed him, he had bits of receipts, mail, and a picture of Babe and Neil crammed into his pockets.

  “Identity theft?” I asked. “That’s a pretty low-tech way to do it, isn’t it?”

  “Could be. Back in the day, people used to steal the carbon copies of credit card transactions. Not all the bad guys are computer savvy,” O’Malley said. “Some of them are just thieves.”

  Identity theft was another thing I rarely thought about that had surfaced lately, along with convict labor, backsplashes, and my old dentist. The list was getting longer. I wasn’t even as fastidious as my eighty-seven-year-old aunt, who scrupulously shredded all her documents including sales flyers and newsletters from her congressman. I knew identity theft happened, but there were so many things I worried about before that—like my house payments or world peace or an infestation of bronze borers that would decimate my flowering dogwoods—that identity theft was way down on my list. “Who’d want to be me?” I had said. I had no dough and not much stuff.

  “That’s not the way it works,” Mike had answered. “They’re not stealing stuff. They’re stealing your good credit rating. Your good name.” Maybe that was what Countertop Man was doing. Babe Chinnery’s name was gold in these parts and probably all over.

  “You know, I drove by a few nights ago, when the diner was closed. I thought I saw something moving around behind the diner but I didn’t get out to investigate.”

  “That was an uncharacteristically prudent thing to do,” Mike said. This was a not-so-veiled reference to the way we first met, on a cold case I’d accidentally unearthed a few years earlier. “Do you think it was him?” he asked after a minute, now more curious. “Is that why you said he was weird?”

  “I thought it was turkeys. If it was him, what on earth could he have been looking for for so many days? He was just creepy. Taking Babe’s picture and then insisting on guessing her name. And I’m pretty sure he would have followed me if I had left the diner. Call it intuition—just don’t say women’s intuition or I’ll have to smack you.”

  At Mike’s suggestion, Babe had checked her office thoroughly to see if anything else was missing. The man had obviously gone through her things, but she couldn’t say what, if anything, he’d taken, other than the booze. She didn’t keep any jewelry or cash in the office, and since he was still there when the cops arrived, he couldn’t have left with anything unless it had been squirreled away on his person and neither of us wanted to stick around for the cavity search.

  “It’s a good thing I don’t keep the Fabergé eggs here anymore, right?” At least she was getting her sense of humor back. Countertop Man saw us laughing and it infuriated him. He stuck his head out the window and yelled at us. “Why are you jerks arresting me? This is just a little criminal trespass. Kid stuff. I’ll be out before Oprah goes on.”

  “Berry, tell that guy to quiet down or we’ll tack on disturbing the peace to the charges.”

  Apparently, the man knew his law. And his daytime television. According to O’Malley, he’d be issued a summons and made to sign a PTA, a promise to appear in court. If he got “belligerent,” he might graduate to a $250 bond. But he’d still be let go, probably in just a few hours.

  “Define belligerent,” I said.

  “Broad definition.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What would you like me to do with him? We’ve done away with stocks and pillories in New England. No weapons; no damage, thank goodness; no
physical harm to Babe. It’s like the man said, trespassing—a misdemeanor in the state of Connecticut. Forget Oprah, he may even be out before Martha goes on.”

  O’Malley’s young partner was exasperated. He had no luck getting McGinley to shut up, and had gotten tired of trying. Finally he rolled up the window of the patrol car and came over to where Babe, Mike, and I had drifted near the side entrance to the diner.

  “What’s he yapping about now?” O’Malley asked.

  The younger cop looked uncomfortable.

  “Go ahead,” Babe said, smiling. “We’ve heard four-letter words before.”

  “That’s not it, ma’am. He said, ‘She’s the damn criminal. She’s the one you want.’ He thinks we should arrest Mrs. Chinnery.”

  O’Malley simply closed his eyes for a second or two with a look that suggested this was as novel an excuse for trespassing as he’d ever heard.

  “Didn’t he like the food?”

  Seven

  False or not, Babe’s lamiums had finally arrived. They wouldn’t look like much until the following spring, so I filled the bare spots with temporary fixes like annual grasses and mums that could stay in their black plastic pots until the winter came and we composted them. By that time, not too many people would be eating in Babe’s outdoor seating area anyway, and no one would notice if the garden was a little bare.

  Right then, the diner’s business was booming. Indian summer had brought people out in droves and even inspired a few hardy souls to resurrect their long shorts and flip-flops, but not the Main Street Moms, who rarely strayed from their seasonal uniforms. I didn’t see Caroline Sturgis in either of the two packs of women at the picnic tables but expected to see her soon for our long-awaited business meeting. I was also mildly curious to learn if little Brandon’s DNA tests revealed he could keep up with his swimming lessons.

  Outside the diner, not far from the planters, where I was adding topsoil, sat a sandy-haired man, fair skin, around fifty to fifty-five years old—I could never tell anymore. He was extremely fit and attractive despite a nose that had obviously been broken and never fixed properly. If he were a woman, he’d be what the French might call jolie laide. I was amused to see a ripple of interest pass through the Main Street Moms’ tables, and I made a point of not staring at the man—he was getting enough female attention without my adding to the adoration.

  A stack of real estate brochures was fanned out on the table in front of him, and he pored over the booklets with more than the casual interest of diner patrons, who generally leafed through them only after they’d ordered and were waiting for their meals to be served. He even took notes. I could imagine Gretchen Kennedy and her colleagues who filled the Free-Take-One! racks coming to blows over a buyer as motivated as this one.

  For some reason I assumed he was single and so did the rest of the women, who consciously or unconsciously sat up a little straighter and spoke with their heads tilted at flattering angles. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, although that didn’t prove anything. But straight or gay, how many guys went house shopping without wife or partner? I had to pass him three or four times carrying large bags of the mulch that I used to camouflage the nursery pots in the planters.

  “May I help you?” he asked, getting up from his seat.

  “No thanks,” I said, breathing heavily. “I’ve got it covered.” And I did mostly. I was out of breath but tried not to show it.

  “You’re pretty strong.”

  Was he checking out my muscles the way I’d been checking out his? I kept working and didn’t respond.

  He dog-eared pages in the brochures and finally got up and approached one of the Moms’ tables. Despite the banged-up nose he had an elegant, catlike grace, almost like a dancer.

  “Excuse me, ladies. I know this is presumptuous, but I was wondering if I might ask you a few questions about Springfield?” He fanned out the real estate brochures as if to show them he was for real.

  The sea of females parted for him, and before long the women from the second table had dragged their chairs over to assist the handsome, well-spoken man. I could almost hear the gears moving as the quickly confirmed single man was being mentally seated next to divorced friends at future dinner parties.

  There went my chance—I should have let him help me with the bags of mulch. I could have had first dibs on one of the only eligible men in Springfield. A sudden peal of giggles erupted from the women, who had regressed in age and maturity due to the unexpected novelty of a man in their midst—and during the day. Flirting. It was like riding a bicycle.

  I finished up, stored my tools in my Jeep, and went inside. Through the window, Babe had been keeping an eye on the action outside.

  “Something tells me if that guy really does buy a place around here, those girls are going to reinstate the welcome wagon, but instead of cookies and kitchen tools there’ll be rubber and latex in the goody basket.” I cleaned up and joined Babe at the counter, where a cup of coffee was waiting for me.

  “He got here an hour before you did,” she said. “Had breakfast inside and about five refills on the coffee. If he doesn’t come in to pee soon, he’s going to make medical history.”

  When the man first arrived, he’d asked Babe if this was the only diner in the area so many times that she was close to throwing him out, but he apologized and explained that he’d gotten the directions from a friend and just wanted to make sure he was in the right place. That’s when he began studying the real estate booklets. When the Moms arrived, he took his research outside. One of them, Becka Reynolds, was being particularly helpful.

  “Look at them,” I said. “They’re fixing him up already and he could be a potential mass murderer. And he hasn’t even seen a house yet, much less made an offer. Wait until those real estate harpies get their hooks in him. He’ll be toast.”

  One of the regulars, a guy named Carl, was paying his check and overheard me. “You girls just can’t stand to see us single and happy,” he said.

  “Shut up, Carl, before I tell that sweet young wife of yours what you think about marriage.” Babe handed him his change and returned to my end of the counter.

  “You never told me about that wedding you and Lucy went to,” Babe said. “Did you find your soul mate?”

  “That doesn’t happen in real life. In real life one bridesmaid looks fabulous because she lobbied for the dress that was most flattering to her, and the rest of them look ludicrous in it, and they’ll never wear it again no much how much it’s shortened. She may be the one who gets lucky. The other guests are not hooking up. They’re wondering which of their friends will marry next and whether they’ll be the last lonely member of their group, rolling her walker over to the center of the banquet room to try to catch the bride’s bouquet in her gnarled, liver-spotted hands.”

  “Wow. That’s a depressing image,” Babe said. “Is that what you were thinking?”

  “Only once or twice.”

  Babe herself had been single for many years since her husband, Pete, had died in a motorcycle accident. They’d moved to Springfield with their twin boys and opened the diner years ago. Not long after, Pete went out for a ride with a buddy and had a smashup on Route 7. She didn’t talk much about the years right after that. It must have been hard being a single mom and the sole breadwinner with a young family and a fledgling business to get off the ground. When she did share memories, they were of her happier days with the Jimmy Collins band.

  I’d had no idea who they were and had had to look them up. They’d had a few hits back in the days when Babe was a backup singer named Wanda Sugarman—before the band had dubbed her Babe and Pete had given her his own last name.

  “Look at that guy,” I said, pointing with my cup. “All he had to do was smile and say, Aw shucks, ma’am, I’m new in town. If a woman had done that with a group of men, she’d have been handed a scarlet letter and a needle and thread.”

  “It’s a cruel world.”

  On the day I was to see Caroline, I head
ed to the Paradise for a hearty meal before our meeting. I was leaning toward Caroline’s side of the fence now and wanted a base in my stomach just in case Caroline decided to seal our partnership with a toast or three.

  Babe hadn’t seen Caroline for days. I tried her again on my cell and I got the same message I’d gotten the previous week—disconnected.

  “What’s the matter?” Babe asked.

  “Her home phone’s disconnected. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

  “Plenty of people are dropping their landlines and just going with cells,” Babe said. “It’s the economy. Don’t you have her cell number?”

  “I do but her house is in a dead zone. She never uses it at home. Besides, I don’t see Caroline and Grant belt-tightening in that way. I’m going to go see what’s up.” We had a date and Caroline was so anxious to talk to me; it wasn’t like her to disappear without leaving me a message. I finished breakfast and headed for the Sturgis house. Halfway to Caroline’s I thought perhaps I had screwed up the days. Was this the day she was accompanying one of her friends to the doctor’s on a bizarre mission to see whether or not the friend’s three-year-old was biologically suited to be the next Roger Federer? What the hell. I’d go anyway. If I had the date wrong, I’d leave a note. When she got home, she’d be thrilled that I was more interested in her proposal than I’d been when we last spoke. And I was. Between losing the real estate gigs and being sent home with hand-me-down clothing, I was a lot more inclined to consider her offer than I thought I’d be. I hadn’t seen her business plan yet, but she was a smart woman. And so was I.

  When I pulled into the Sturgises’ driveway, Caroline’s silver Land Rover sat at the entrance of the house. The driver’s side door was wide open. I parked behind it. I took my time walking up the front steps and rang the doorbell, expecting to see Caroline, perfectly coiffed, perfectly clad, and given the early hour, holding the perfect Bloody Mary in a lead crystal glass. There was no answer, so I rang again. This time I noticed a sliver of light between the door and the jamb. It wasn’t latched. I gave it a gentle push and it creaked open.