Wildcat Wine (12 page)

Then Philip took me home, and coasted in the door with me. I poured us a glass of Earl's organic wine and wondered idly how many cases of wine had disappeared from Dave's rental truck before the sheriff's department returned it to Earl's vineyard. We had finished the first round when Philip took off his glasses, pulled me into his arms, and kissed me.

Umm, those lips did more than just look good.

“I was hoping we might make love now,” he said, lifting himself away from me.

While I didn't verbally respond, I did pull him back to me.

About the time I was
really
getting into the kissing, the phone rang. Bearess came leaping into the room and started barking at the phone.

“Ignore it,” I said.

We did, kissing some more until the answering machine came on.

“Er, ah, Lilly? This is Tired. You better call me.” He left a number. He didn't sound happy.

“Dave's still out of jail, right?”

“Yes,” Philip answered.

We went back to kissing.

The phone rang again, and Bearess howled at it, and jumped on the couch with Philip and me.

I shooed Bearess off, but then my answering machine squawked out: “Lilly, Jackson here. Call me. Right now.” Blam.

Philip and I looked at each other, I shrugged and reached for him, and the phone rang again. Tired left another message to call him immediately.

All right. I got it. Something was up.

I called Jackson first.

Before I even said hello, Jackson thundered out, “Somebody shot the man. Shot him dead.”

“Oh, my god, not Dave,” I screamed.

“Dave? Who's Dave?”

“Who got shot?”

“Kenneth Mallory. Somebody shot him at his house, a couple of hours ago. I just heard. It made the ten
P.M
. news.”

“Mierda,”
I said, and hung up. So much for making out with Philip. I punched in the number Tired had left.

“Tired,” I said, no need for any extended hello under the circumstances. “What happened?”

“That's what I'm trying to find out. You need to come down to the sheriff's office. I need to, to, ask you a few things.”

“Like what?”

“Just come on down to the sheriff's office. I'll have somebody meet you out front. No, better yet, I'll send somebody to pick you up.”

“Why me?” I shouted, but he hung up.

Naturally, Philip went with me, riding politely in the backseat of an official car while I worried in the front. I mean, okay, what was I, the karmic center for murder? We were up to three bodies in the last week, and still had Saturday to go. Plus, I thought, Tired sounded as if he thought I was a suspect.

Which, as it turned out, he did.

Chapter 20

After all the time
I had spent wishing ill winds to blow upon Kenneth Mallory's head, I actually felt guilty.

But what I also felt was uncharitable relief.

That is, until I got the gist of Tired's questions and realized he had penciled me in as the most immediate suspect in Kenneth's death.

“Hey, bud,” I said, jumping up out of my plastic chair in a tacky, dank, and cramped little interview room at the sheriff's department, “I've got an alibi.”

“Lilly,” Philip repeated in his official, i.e., not Dean Martin, voice, “for the last time, be quiet.”

Oh, yeah, Philip had been counseling me from the get-go to keep my mouth shut, and just see what we could find out from Tired.

What we had learned after a circuitous and irritating route, in which everyone in the room, including some darkly dressed man introduced as Stan Varna-dore, apparently Tired's supervisor, had raised their voices two or three times, was that Kenneth Mallory had been shot six times.

Between sniping, Philip had also managed to trick Tired into admitting that one neighbor had heard shots and called 911, while still another had seen a car speeding away from Kenneth's house.

Therein lay the rub.

The car the neighbor had seen was a bright blue Honda, and not a new model. One with unusually dark, tinted windows.

After hearing the car description, I knew what was coming. After all, Tired had had a pretty good look at my not-new-model Honda, repainted in what was technically deemed cobalt blue, which incidentally did not look all that blue on the paint-sample card when I had it repainted after Jennifer the crazed StairMaster wizard had shot it all up, but to the layman it was probably just bright blue. And for security reasons, I'd had the shot-out windows replaced with darkly tinted windows, and would have gone for bullet-proof glass until I got the quote. I mean, really, do they make that stuff out of diamonds, or what?

It laid out pretty easy: Tired thought I had driven to Kenneth's in my unfortunately distinctive Honda and plugged the man with six bullets.

“Well, it wasn't me and it wasn't my car because—”

“Lilly, shut up.” Philip put a hand on my shoulder, and shoved me down in my plastic chair.

“I have an alibi,” I said, and shot right back up, hovering in Tired's face. “I've been out with Philip since eight
P.M
. We ate dinner in a room full of people, and I—”

Uh-oh, what if Kenneth had been killed at seven-thirty?

“Will you just be quiet and sit down,” Philip said.

I sat down.

Then we went forty rounds, with Stan interrupting and apparently playing his version of bad cop, though Tired was wavering in his imitation of good cop, and finally, I just flat out had had enough and stood up. “If I'm not under arrest, I am going home. I trust that the deputy who brought me will take me home.”

“That's probably a good idea,” Philip said.

“I want to talk to Lilly alone,” Tired said.

“No, that is not advisable.” Philip physically edged himself between me and Tired.

“No, that's fine. I'll talk to Tired. It's all right.”

“Lilly, am I your attorney or not? I am advising you, no, telling you, ordering you, not to speak with Tired without counsel present.”

“Nobody tells me what to do.” Oh, except for Jackson.

Proving my independence, I pranced out the door, and Tired followed me out into the hallway.

“What time did Kenneth get killed?” I asked first.

“I'll go square with you if you do with me.”

“All right. I think that's a good idea.” Rather, I thought it was a good idea if Tired thought I was cooperating.

“We got the 911 call, shots fired at 8:35
P.M
.”

I grinned in spite of myself. That would have been just about the time I was harassing the manager of the swank Palm Avenue eatery and he, the waiter, and the folks at the nearest tables would be sure to remember me.

“Alibi, absolutely,” I said. “Just somebody else's Honda. Must be a thousand of them in this town.”

“Where were you?”

I gave him the name of the place, a brief highlight of my exchange with the manager, and, of course, the fact that Philip would vouch for me. Tired's face visibly relaxed, and I was touched to see his obvious relief.

“I didn't think you'd shoot a person,” he said, and reached out and patted my shoulder for about half a second.

“Let's go back in,” I said, that is, before Philip imploded.

Okay, I was off the hot seat, but I didn't have a clue where Bonita had been. And I really doubted that there were thousands of cobalt blue Hondas in Sarasota County, not ones as old as mine, and not ones that old with dark, tinted windows.

Chapter 21

Philip's hand
on my arm didn't feel sensual, but rather custodial, as he pushed me out the door and toward a cab.

He groused at me all the way back to my house, but he also paid the cabdriver.

Then, apparently for the first time that night, he noticed Bonita's white station wagon in my driveway. “Where
is
your automobile?” he asked, eyeing me now with suspicion instead of anger.

“Listen, do we have a client-attorney privilege here?”

“Absolutely. Now tell me, where is your automobile?”

“Bonita has it. We traded cars. Just for the night. It's a long story.”

“Then perhaps you should tell it to me as we drive over to Bonita's.”

Chewing my lip, I fretted over what this might mean for Bonita. Then I realized it was only a mess for Bonita if Tired found out she had my car. “So, how good an investigator is Tired?”

“Do not let that shucks and ma'am country-boy routine deceive you. Tired is a very proficient investigator.”

Oh, frigging great.

Philip opened the passenger-side door in his car for me, and I slipped in.

As we drove off, at Philip's insistence I told him how Bonita came to have my car. Then I had to answer about six different versions of questions all getting at whether the car swap was my idea, or could Bonita have arranged it?

“Look, I know Bonita. You don't. Trust me on this, she is not the kind of woman who would trick me out of my car and then use it as a getaway vehicle after she shot a man.”

“What kind of woman is she?”

I mulled this over a minute, wanting to get it just right. “If Bonita's house caught fire in the middle of the night, by the time the fire truck arrived, Bonita would have all of her children safely outside and all five of them would be wearing warm clothes.”

“Would she shoot a man?”

“No. Absolutely not,” I said.

“Would you?”

Now why would Philip ask me that? Wasn't he my alibi?

“Would you?” he repeated.

“It depends.” The most honest answer anyone can give to almost any question.

“Yes, and it often depends upon the circumstances. However, you might be surprised by how many people find themselves perfectly capable of killing someone when the right set of facts present themselves.”

“Not Bonita.”

But as we pulled up in her driveway with my cobalt blue car sitting there, I had to wonder for just that fraction of a second.

The door opened before I knocked and Armando stood there with Johnny Winter, an albino ferret, wrapped around his neck.

“They've been home all night. Since work,” he said and clumped off.

Well, I hadn't asked, but that was nice to know, I thought, and then walked in, gesturing for Philip to follow me despite the technical absence of a formal invitation.

Though it was getting pretty late for a house with five children, all the lights were on and loud noises came from every corner. I followed the noise to the kitchen, where Benny, Henry, and Bonita were seated around a Monopoly board.

Bonita arose and said gracious things in a strange monotone.

“¿A que te dedicas?”
Bonita asked as I introduced her to Philip, but she didn't wait for his answer.

Henry stood up and greeted me formally. But as he shook hands with Philip, his face started blotching red.

Benny would neither get up from the table nor look me in the eye.

Mierda,
I thought.

“You know Kenneth Mallory got shot tonight,” I said and watched them for reactions. Bonita reached for her gold cross pendant. Henry blotched a bit more, and Benny stared at the card he had just drawn.

“We heard. On TV,” Bonita said. “Earlier.”

As I studied her face, I heard loud squealing noises from the living room and dashed in there. The other three of Bonita's children were running around with Johnny Winter, the famous ferret.

“Hey,
Tia
Lilly,” Carmen said. “Wanna pet Johnny Winter?”

No, I did not want to pet the ferret. Notwithstanding the fact that Johnny Winter the ferret had saved my life once, we hadn't become bosom buddies. He was as apt to wiz on me as on anything else, so I shook my head no toward Carmen.

“Hey,
Tia
Lilly,” Javy said, and untangled his legs and got up from the floor and stood on tiptoe to kiss me on my cheek. He and Carmen at least acted perfectly normal.

Armando was sitting in a corner growling at a handheld computer-game toy thing that teenage boys seem to have glued inside their hands these days. I introduced Philip to the three kids.

“Why is Johnny here?” I asked, wondering how Newly's ferret had come to live with Bonita and her children.

“Armando wanted a dog,” Javy said. “And Angela was afraid she might catch something from him and made Newly get rid of Johnny.”

Okay, a ferret for a dog, close enough, I guess.

Carmen insisted she must formally introduce Johnny Winter to Philip and this apparently involved shaking paws with him, but first the ferret had to be caught, and there was a whirl of motion and run, run, giggle, giggle, and then a crash.

Hopefully that milk-glass lamp wasn't Bonita's favorite, I thought.

“Uh-oh, busted glass,” Javy said, and sprang into action, chasing down the ferret amid the shards.

Leaving Javy to the task of preventing cut ferret feet, I went back to the kitchen, where Bonita, Henry, and Benny were waiting. They weren't even pretending to be busy doing anything.

“Bonita, did you go anywhere in my car tonight?” I didn't see the point of beating around the bush.

“I did not drive your car except to drive it home.”

“Did you loan the car to anyone?”

“No.”

“Did anyone borrow the car?”

“No.”

Damn, she'd be the perfect witness. Not a word more than necessary and a perfectly pleasant, but essentially poker-faced expression.

“You didn't go to Kenneth's house? Tonight? Today? Anytime?”

“I told you I did not drive your car except to drive it home.”

“You sure?”

Oh, like she might not have noticed she was driving fifteen miles down Fruitville Road to Oak Ford, entering through ostentatious country-manor gates, and driving up to Kenneth's fake
Gone with the Wind
–type house?

A peeved expression crossed Bonita's face, which I took for her answer.

Having irritated Bonita, I looked over at Henry and Benny. They were shadowing the doorway between the kitchen and the den. Neither of them would look at me or each other. I didn't like the feeling I got in the pit of my stomach.

“Benny, why don't you and me go into your room, have a talk,” I said and tried to smile.

Henry the meek, Henry the bleater, Henry the man I'd been pushing around for years stepped in front of Benny and said, “Why do you want to talk to him?”

There was no mistaking the protective stance.

“Okay, what is going on here?” I snapped. Philip made those irritating shushing noises that always make people madder. I overrode his shushing by asking again, on the off chance no one had properly processed the previous question, “Okay, what is going on?”

“Nothing,” Bonita said.

“Nothing,” Henry said, blotching more. “We've been home all night. Since about seven. Your car has been parked in the carport all night.”

While I assessed the rehearsed quality to that and tried to catch Philip's eye, Carmen came into the kitchen. “Do you want to see my new ballerina doll?” she asked, tugging at my hand.

I held Carmen's hand, but I looked at Benny. He hung his head and wouldn't look at me.

“Philip,” I said, “perhaps you should take me home. It's late.”

I was exhausted. I was beyond exhausted.

I was terrified.

Terrified that Benny had done something terrible and Bonita and Henry would go to jail for perjury before they'd ever back off from their story that all of them had been together since seven with the cobalt blue Honda parked in the driveway.