14 The Chocolate Clown Corpse (6 page)

I was sure Joe would remember. I certainly did.

In fact, at that moment I was having a vivid flashback to the first day I saw this man, the person I now realized must have been Royal Hollis. It had been a day in late fall, two years earlier.

I’d been alone in our house, a house built more than a hundred years ago by my great-grandfather. The house sits in a secluded area, inside the city limits as far as water and sewer service goes, but in a neighborhood where the houses aren’t close together. And the space between houses is filled with trees and shrubs and undergrowth.

I love our house, which is just an old white farmhouse. But I come from the Texas branch of the family. I was raised in open country, with few trees around. I value trees, sometimes more than Michigan folks do, but I like to see the horizon.

So I sometimes find our neighborhood rather spooky. Joe indulges me by working year-round to keep the undergrowth from eating the house alive. Our property is fairly clear, except for a sort of privacy strip of trees and undergrowth between the house and Lake Shore Drive. But the sandy lane that serves as our driveway is kept in plain view. I like to see who’s coming.

So on that autumn morning a knock on the front door caught me by surprise. I hadn’t seen anybody walking up the road, and I hadn’t heard a car drive up. Also, people who know us usually come to the back door. Who could it be?

The storm door was in place and locked, but I still opened the inside door only six or eight inches to look out.

Immediately, a loud, cheerful noise broke forth. Someone started playing a harmonica.

I opened the door a bit wider and began to laugh.

The man on the porch was not only playing, he was also performing a shuffling sort of dance. I call his motions a “sort of dance” because what his feet were doing didn’t seem to have any pattern to it. Neither did the sounds from the harmonica. He was just moving around and making noises with a mouth organ.

He was an old guy; I’d have guessed his age at seventy-something. He wore raggedy clothes and had a raggedy beard and a torn ball cap. His gray hair was nearly to his shoulders, but it was neatly combed.

Despite his age, he was kicking up his heels like a lively young man. Lively, if not musically talented.

After about two minutes of this, he stopped playing. Then he took two steps back and said something so peculiar that it made his dancing and singing act seem close to normal.

“Hi, there,” he said. “I’m not homicidal.”

I’m afraid I laughed again. Not because I found his greeting funny. I didn’t. I think I laughed because I was nervous.

So he went on talking. “I’m looking for some work,” he said. “I could rake leaves—you can pay me what you want to. See, I need twenty dollars real bad.”

I didn’t speak, mainly because I didn’t know what to say, and
he went on talking. “Now, I’m not homicidal,” he said again. “And ten dollars—or even five—that would help me a bunch.”

“I’m sorry.” I started to answer no, but he was still talking.

“I need a bus ticket, see? I came here looking for a job, but there don’t seem to be any. So if I could buy me a bus ticket, I’d be on my way.”

My impulse, of course, was to refuse. In this day and age we don’t hire people we know nothing about to work around our homes. One of my Texas great-grandmothers, according to the family lore, had a steady stream of “tramps” calling at her back door and offering to chop wood in exchange for a meal. But today we call these wandering people “homeless,” and we have agencies to house them in shelters. We tell ourselves they aren’t truly needy. We shrink from personal contact with them—even with homeless people who promise not to kill us.

As if reading my mind, the man spoke again, repeating what seemed to be his motto: “I’m not homicidal.” And he put his harmonica to his lips and played again. This time I could recognize the tune. It was “Home! Sweet Home!”

How could I resist? I had a home. Whatever his problem was, he didn’t. And at least he was trying to be friendly and entertaining.

As soon as the tune ended, I spoke. “The garage is open and there’s a leaf rake out there. If you’ll rake for an hour, I’ll contribute toward your bus ticket, but it won’t be much because we don’t keep money in the house. And I’ll throw in a sandwich.”

He gave me a grin. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll do a lot for a sandwich. And I’m not homicidal.”

So the non-homicidal drifter raked for an hour, and I made him two ham sandwiches, putting them in a sack and adding an apple and a dozen store-bought cookies. I dawdled about giving
them to him, frankly, hoping Joe would show up before I had to come out from behind my locked doors and approach the old man. I even called Joe at his boat shop to ask him to come home, but he wasn’t at the shop, and he had his cell phone turned off. I’d gotten myself into this situation, and I had to deal with it on my own.

The old man worked spryly, raking the leaves into piles and then stuffing them into bags he found in the garage. After an hour I got up enough nerve to carry his lunch outside, though I didn’t go too near him. I set up a lawn chair with a folding tray beside it under a tree. I placed the sack lunch and a ten-dollar bill on the tray. I was still being cautious, but I told the old man his lunch was ready.

He washed his hands at the outdoor faucet, then sat in the lawn chair.

“This is a nice lunch,” he said. “I thank you. It makes this a nice day.” Then he tapped the ten-dollar bill. “And this helps me toward my ticket.”

I felt rather guilty at that remark; ten dollars wasn’t going to get him very far on down the road. I could have given him a bit more; my tale that we didn’t have “money in the house” had been a code meaning we had nothing to steal. I could have anted up another ten.

“My husband is due any minute,” I said. “He might have a suggestion on where you could find work.”

Again I was covering my fanny. Telling the guy that I wasn’t alone all the time.

“What kind of work were you looking for?” I asked.

“Oh, anything honest,” the old man said.

Was I being played, just as I was playing him?

He spoke again. “See, I’m not homicidal.”

Why did he keep saying that? I didn’t understand exactly, but he ate, and I stood on the porch and talked uneasily about the weather—because Texas girls are taught to be friendly even to strangers. I was relieved when I heard a truck.

I looked down the drive. “Oh, here comes my husband,” I said. “Good!”

And when I turned back to speak again to the old man, he was gone.

He was fading into the trees behind our house, lunch sack and all. But he had left in such a hurry that his ten-dollar bill was still on the tray.

“Wait a minute!” He didn’t turn around. “You forgot your money!”

He disappeared into the undergrowth.

I was both shaking my head and laughing when Joe got out of his truck. “What’s going on?” he asked.

I described my adventure with the homeless man. “I guess you scared him away,” I said. “All I had to say was, ‘Here comes my husband’ and he disappeared into thin air.”

Joe smiled, but he wasn’t really amused, and I got that lecture I’d already been expecting—the one about being careful of strangers.

I gestured toward the heap of stuffed garbage bags. “Well, he did work on the leaves,” I said. “I wouldn’t normally hire somebody like that, but there was something about that harmonica I couldn’t resist.” I leaned toward Joe. “And he assured me—at least a dozen times—that he wasn’t homicidal.”

We put the ten-dollar bill on the little tray, weighed it down with a rock, then went in for our own lunch. That afternoon we went out to do some shopping, and when we came back the money was gone.

The non-homicidal harmonica player never came to the door again, but once or twice I thought I saw him walking up a lane in the neighborhood, still wearing a ball cap with the bill half torn off. Whoever he was, he didn’t bother us, even if we left the garage unlocked. Eventually I almost forgot the whole episode.

Now I reminded Joe about it. He shook his head. “I’d forgotten that. In fact, since I never saw the old guy with the harmonica, I had almost decided you imagined it. It’s so unlike you to offer food and bus fare to some homeless guy.”

“I guess it’s my Texas great-grandmother’s genes coming out. She was known for letting strangers sleep in the barn in exchange for chopping firewood.”

“They probably marked the gate some way to tell other tramps this was a good place to ask for help.”

“My grandmother thought they did. But nowadays—well, there are too many crazies around. No, if somebody really seemed to need help, I’d be more likely to call the Salvation Army shelter and tell ’em we needed a pickup.”

“I don’t think they offer that service. People have to get there on their own.” Joe sighed deeply. “But that leads us back to that phone call.”

“Yup. Made from the homeless shelter and assuring us that ‘the wife’ had something to do with Moe’s death.”

“Now that I’ve read up on the case, I guess I’d better make an effort to find out who made that call we got this morning.”

“Do you think he was referring to Moe’s wife? Emma?”

“Who knows? It could have been some other woman; the caller probably didn’t actually know Emma. It might have been Lorraine with the loud mouth. Or anybody. And even if he did mean Emma herself, there’s probably nothing to the tip.”

“After meeting Emma one time, I’m inclined to agree that any involvement by her is unlikely. She’s just so very quiet. She almost hid in the corner while Chuck was showing me around the store. She let Chuck and Lorraine do all the talking.”

“Besides, the investigation report indicates she wasn’t even there.”

“Wasn’t there?”

Joe nodded. “Apparently Chuck met his dad someplace, and they came to the house up here together. Emma had dropped Moe off, then gone home. So it would be hard for Mrs. Davidson to have been involved in her husband’s death.”

“Oh. Well, what’s the next step?”

“Maybe I can run by the shelter and see if they have any idea who made that phone call.”

“Does it matter? If Emma Davidson wasn’t there, why bother?”

“I’m not sure.” Joe considered for a long minute before he said anything else. “I guess you could call it a hunch. Moe Davidson’s death was investigated in such a superficial way—somehow I don’t like to ignore that particular tip.”

“Go for it,” I said.

“I’ve got to see a judge at three o’clock. But maybe I’ll have time to go to the shelter after that. I can’t ignore a potential witness.”

I was at my office the next time I heard from Joe. At four fifteen he called and asked if I wanted to have dinner out in Holland that evening.

“Sure. What’s the occasion?”

“I’m at the homeless shelter. The director says anybody who’s familiar with the layout here could have wandered into the office and used the phone, especially in the morning, when most of the occupants are moving out and things are busy. So he recommends that I just ask people about Royal Hollis. And the best time would be as they check into the shelter tonight.”

“Are you saying we’re having dinner at the homeless shelter?”

“No, we could go out and eat after I talk to the clients. They finish serving by six thirty or so. I would just stay around on my own, but I need a little help from you. So my dinner invitation includes requesting a favor.”

“What do you need?”

“A change of clothes. I’m wearing the wrong thing.”

“The shelter has a dress code?”

“No.” Joe laughed. “But I’ve got on my impress-the-judge
suit. And that’s not going to impress the shelter’s clientele. They’re pretty informal.”

It was my turn to laugh. “I’ll bring you some jeans.”

“Not the ones with the hole in the knee or the brand-new ones, please. And a flannel shirt. But the shelter opens at five fifteen. The guys are lining up already.”

“I’ll hurry.”

I made it by five o’clock, carrying Joe’s clothes in an old gym bag. Joe snatched it from me and dashed into the men’s room. By the time he came out I had introduced myself to the director—I noticed he also wore jeans and scuffed boots. I’d found time to change into jeans and a flannel shirt, too.

The director was a young, earnest guy. His nametag read
DARREL
. He explained that the shelter took only men—women and children were referred to a different shelter—and they could register for only one night at a time. Everyone left after breakfast the next morning.

“I don’t know if anybody will be able to give your husband any information,” he said. “But he can ask. And if you are going to wait for him, you can sit here in my office.”

“Since I’m here, could you use some extra kitchen help? I might as well do a little work.”

The earnest Darrel gave an earnest smile. “We can always use help. We have a paid person in charge of the kitchen, but we can use six or eight volunteers a night, and we rarely have that many.”

Darrel led me to the kitchen and introduced me to the kitchen manager. He was small and scrawny, with hair shot with gray. His face was heavily lined, as if he’d had a hard life. I speculated that he was a former client of the shelter. Darrel told me his name was Elkouri.

“So naturally we all call him Elk,” he said. This was obviously a joke; Elk was built more like a mouse than a large horned beast of any type.

I offered to shake Elk’s hand, but he avoided me by picking up a tray of hamburger buns. He gave a little cough, what I’ve heard described as a cigarette cough. Hmmm. That was interesting. Our anonymous caller that morning had coughed that way.

Elk looked at me suspiciously. “We work pretty hard here, even the volunteers.”

“I’ve got experience with food service, including some at a shelter,” I said. I didn’t tell him I’d worked at a shelter when I was doing a couple of years with the Junior League of Dallas, one of the activities my first husband had approved of for the former Miss Texas competitor he saw as a trophy wife.

I tried to look eager. “What do you need me to do, Elk? Wash dishes? Scrub floors? I’m pretty handy around a kitchen.”

Elk tipped his head back and squinted. “Can you lift one of those big flat pans? Like the one with Tater Tots in it?”

“Show me where the hot pads are, and I bet I can.”

Three other volunteers had reported for work, and, with Elk calling the shots, we got the food onto folding tables and began to fill the plates as the men filed past. The shelter had quite a crowd, at least seventy-five men. Winter, naturally, draws the biggest crowds of people needing a place to stay.

As I worked I saw Joe working, too. Now in his jeans and flannel shirt, he went up and down the line of waiting men, questioning the diners. Some were obviously giving him the brush, but he gave out some business cards. After the line cleared he began to circulate among the tables.

The shelter’s food looked more filling than either delicious or nutritious. That night’s menu featured sloppy joes, Tater
Tots, and frozen mixed vegetables. Dessert was sheet cake—unadorned and not very tasty-looking. Elk said the cakes had been donated by one of the supermarket bakeries. The food was served on paper plates and eaten with plastic utensils.

It was definitely not fancy, but it would keep a homeless man from starving.

After the food was served, Elk instructed the volunteers on how to put the leftovers away. Then we began the cleanup, scrubbing down the tables, washing up the pots and pans, mopping the floor. The clients drifted into another room, where there was a television set, or wandered up the stairs, apparently toward the dorms.

Elk offered all the volunteers dinner, but the other three declined. He told us we could leave, but Joe was still talking to one or two of the men, so I waited around, changing to dish drying duty. By the time Elk carefully rinsed and scoured his final serving pans, then put them into the hot soapy water, Joe was through with his interviews. He came over and picked up a dish towel, ready to help dry.

Elk glared at him. By then I’d realized that Elk glared at everybody.

“This woman of yours,” he said. “She ain’t afraid of hard work.”

“I picked a good’un,” Joe said. “And luckily, she picked me, too.”

“Darrel says you’re a lawyer. Whatcha askin’ everbody about?”

“I’ve got a client who’s in a lot of trouble. His name is Royal Hollis.”

“Ha! I
guess
he’s in trouble!”

“I’m hoping I can help him out.”

I jumped in then. “Did you know him, Elk? He may have stayed here. He’s the old guy with a harmonica.”

Elk lowered his head until it was almost inside the giant pot he was scrubbing out. “Some people knew him,” he said. “But Royal Hollis never come to the shelter.”

Joe nodded. “It sounds as if he liked to camp on his own.”

“That’s how he got in trouble.” Elk rinsed out the big cooking pot and handed it on to me.

Then he stood back and glared at us again. “I could give you some dinner.”

Joe took a deep breath, and I knew he was going to say we had to leave. So I spoke quickly. “I’d love some of that sloppy joe, Elk. It smells just like my mom’s.”

“That sauce ain’t canned,” he said. “I make it myself.”

Joe gave me a quizzical look, and I winked at him. By the time Elk had warmed some sloppy joe and fixed three plates—we got heavy crockery plates, not paper ones—we were through drying the pans, and the three of us sat down at the kitchen worktable.

Elk’s sloppy joe turned out to be pretty good. The frozen vegetables left a lot to be desired, but I’ve definitely had worse meals. Heck, I’ve cooked and served worse meals.

We all ate for several minutes before I spoke. “Royal Hollis came by our house once,” I said. “He raked some leaves for us. Seemed like a nice old guy. I was sure surprised when I heard they thought he killed someone.”

“He’s a kind of a loner,” Elk said. “Or that’s the scuttlebutt around this place.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Joe said. “I was hoping to find somebody who hung out with him, maybe who’d camped with him.”

“Why would you want to talk to somebody like that?”

“The deputies didn’t do much of an investigation, but when they picked Hollis up he was in a cabin at least a mile from where the killing took place. They did notice that more than one person had been staying there. I thought the other guys might know something that could help him.”

“I guess they all split.”

Joe nodded. “Probably Hollis came back after his run-in with Davidson and said he’d had some trouble, so the others took off. What I don’t understand is why Hollis didn’t take off with them.”

“I guess he didn’t know the guy was dead.”

“Yeah, but if he told the others he had punched somebody, or shoved him down—or whatever happened—you’d think he would have known it was likely the sheriff would be there PDQ.”

“Maybe Royal told them a different story.”

“Like what?”

Elk sighed. “Well, the talk is that ol’ Royal claimed the guy had shoved
him
down.”

“That Moe Davidson struck Royal Hollis?”

Elk nodded seriously. “Now that’s just Royal talkin’. And he didn’t always make good sense. Or so I’ve heard.”

I was careful not to look at Joe. Elk’s story was a new version of what had happened when Moe Davidson was killed. If Moe had struck first, that might be the basis of a plea of self-defense for Royal. I considered that and decided—in my nonlawyer way—that it was unlikely. Moe had been the householder. All the prosecution had to say was that Moe was protecting his life and property.

But Elk was still talking. “What I always wondered was what that woman had to say.”

I paused, my fork loaded with overcooked carrots and halfway to my mouth. When I spoke, I tried to sound innocent.

“Woman? What woman?”

Elk dropped his head nearly to his plate and didn’t reply. “It’s just scuttlebutt,” he said. “Probably nothin’ to it.”

Joe chewed and swallowed. I could almost hear him thinking, I must not spook this guy.

“The sheriff didn’t know that there had been a woman there,” he said. “It might help Royal a lot if we knew there had been someone.”

Elk kept looking at his plate. “Anything I heard was gossip,” he said.

“I understand,” Joe said. “Of course, it would have made sense for Mrs. Davidson to come up to the cottage with her husband.”

Elk shrugged. “You want dessert?” he asked.

The conversation was over. Joe didn’t ask another question, and I kept my mouth shut as well. We declined the sheet cake, told Elk his sloppy joe was delicious, thanked Darrel for his cooperation, and went out to the parking lot.

“You didn’t get a fancy dinner out,” Joe said.

“It might not have been fancy, but it was interesting.”

“We could go to Russ’ for pie and coffee.”

“You’re on.”

Russ’ is like a large-scale diner, with down-home food and good pie. I always like to go there, and I was eager to talk over Elk’s comments and to find out if Joe had learned anything else interesting about Royal Hollis.

As soon as our order was on the table, I wanted to ask Joe a question. But he asked me one first. “How’d you figure out Elk was the guy who called us this morning?”

“I don’t know that he is. But the caller this morning made a little noise—well, it could have been a cough like Elk’s. I just
thought you should talk to him. For someone who claimed that he never met Royal Hollis, he seemed to know a lot about him.”

“Elk’s the only person I talked to who admitted he’d ever heard of Hollis.”

“Do you think he might testify?” I asked.

“I doubt it would do much good. But he’s convinced that some woman was there at the house when Davidson died.” Joe took a bite of apple pie and followed it with a sip of his coffee.

“Do you think it might have been Mrs. Davidson?”

“I don’t know. But I guess I’d better try to track her down tomorrow.”

“Do you think she’ll be willing to talk to you?”

“I guess I’ll find out.”