A Dead Issue (10 page)

“Did you check his sock drawer?”

Devereaux deadpanned me for a moment. “He had a gun?”

“Just one. Jonah sold most of them. Gave a few away, but he had second thoughts about his pistol. He said he might need it for protection. He told me to put it back in his sock drawer.”

“Protection?” Devereaux asked. “You mean like he was threatened?”

“No, Jonah said it with a smile—like he knew he'd never be able to hit anything. It was a gun he used in the war. A souvenir.”

“You know what kind?”

“No, just a big black thing—some kind of automatic. You could stick your pinky in the barrel.”

“A 1911 Colt,” Devereaux said almost to himself. “That fits—we found steel casings from WW II. So the gun was Jonah's.”

He flipped his notebook shut. “We still have to clear up where that money came from.” Then he gave me a smile that said we're done here and asked, “Ready to go?”

Yes, I was.

Detective Devereaux dropped me off at my apartment. All the way over to Fifth Street I replayed the interrogation. He asked a few questions, I told the truth—mostly

and we shared some ideas. Except for the extra money in my wallet, I felt good.

CHAPTER 19

Once home, I cracked open a beer, feeling sleepy and relaxed, thinking a nice nap would do me good before going in to work. I was still congratulating myself on my performance during the interrogation and it struck me that I wasn't really performing. Except for that one lie where I told Devereaux that the last time I saw Jonah was around five o'clock, I had told the truth.
The lie about what time we showed up at work was still to come.

I was at the refrigerator again, looking for something to eat, when I saw Dusty coming up the steps to my apartment. Although I had enough of him I knew that he was here on a mission. He had either already been interrogated by Devereaux or was going to be. In either case, it was time we talked.

When I answered the door, I tossed him an unopened beer and got another one for myself. Dusty cracked his open and followed me into my living room.

“They talk to you?” he asked.

“Just before you got here.”

Dusty sat back and melted into the cushions of my sofa. “Who'd you talk to—Devereaux?”

“Yeah, and guess what,” I paused to allow Dusty to prepare. “He found my wallet.”

His brow scrunched up. “Your wallet? Where?”

“In Jonah's back pocket, that's where.”

Dusty whistled a long fading note.

“And that's not all. There were eleven hundred-dollar bills in it along with my thirty-three.” I watched as that thought bounced around inside his head.

“Eleven hundred? That's weird.” He looked at me and frowned. “Really weird.”

Dusty ran the length of his index finger, from knuckle to tip, across his lips wiping away some beer. Then he started to nod. “That explains it.”

“Explains what?” I demanded.

“It explains why he was so interested in you.

I felt suddenly weak.

“Me?”

“The whole thing was about you,” he finally said.

I groped for a chair.

Dusty studied me as I sat down. “He wanted to know why the son of the richest man in the state works at McDonald's—why you do yard work, whether you and Jonah got along.” He paused. “He seemed awfully interested in what makes you tick.”

I took a long swallow of beer, draining the can, letting my thoughts settle a bit.

“What did you tell him?”

Dusty gave me a wink and an uncertain smile. “I told him you're an asshole.” He laughed, revealing a silver bead on his tongue. “I told him you like to piss off your old man by wasting your life at McDonald's.

“I also told him you and Jonah got along fine. We worked for him yesterday and everything was OK when we left.”

“What time did you give him?” I asked, wanting to make sure our stories matched.

“Around five.”

Perfect. Everything was going to be OK as long as we told the same thing, but I was troubled with an ever-growing feeling that I was a suspect. Who else could he focus on? I was the one with a wallet full of money. Devereaux would always return to me, pecking away at my story, probing ever deeper into my activities, drawing nearer and nearer to the big lie.

“What are we going to tell him when he finds out that Cash punched us in?” I asked after a long silence.

Dusty raised his eyebrows and bit down on his thumb. “Don't know,” he said at length. “But we sure as hell ain't saying nothing about looking for Stemcell.”

“Tell them my car broke down and you helped me. That's why we were late,” I said. “Our stories have to match—always. Don't go getting creative when you talk to Devereaux. OK? Don't come up with a story unless we agree on it.”

“Count on it,” he smiled and gave me a wink.

CHAPTER 20

With my license held at police headquarters and a car that didn't work, I asked Dusty to drive us to McDonald's. I would rather have driven myself because I knew I'd be leaving early. I couldn't wait to tell Cash that Waldo was lost in the unemployment line.

As we neared McDonald's, I felt a growing need to let Dusty know my plans. “I had lunch with my father,” I said, breaking a long silence.

Dusty continued driving for a full block before asking, “Did he cut you off?”

“He gave me a job.”

I watched him drop into a thousand yard stare, driving on autopilot. I was pretty sure what was troubling him.

“Dusty, we're still in this together.”

He was shaking his head, tuning me out with his own troubling thoughts.

“I just have to get away from Cash,” I continued and knew how lame that must have sounded.

“No,” he said, “you want to get away from me—because of last night.” He drove in silence for a while. “It will make it easier for you to turn on me when the time comes.”

“Dusty, I'm not going to turn on you,” I said, but the fact of the matter was that the idea had crossed my mind. It was my plan B if Dusty decided to take off.

He shook his head again. “Your father will step in,” he said, “get a lawyer for you. Plea bargain.” Dusty's eyes shifted from the road to me and back again.

“Dusty, the only reason I'd turn on you is if you left town. You'd look guilty, and I'd have to explain why to save my ass.”

“Your father would throw me under the bus. You know I applied for a job at Cameron?”

I did not answer and he continued.

“I thought he might come out of the office to see what I looked like, but I was wrong. He wants nothing to do with me—he hates me.”

It was more likely that my father hated what he symbolized. He was the embodiment of his ruined marriage. When I was two, my mother met Carson Bates, a promising actor with more time for fun than a struggling businessman. After a tumultuous year of fighting, she moved to Hollywood with her new lover. She was already pregnant. I was left behind with my father, who went on to develop Cameron Industries. Dusty was born in California where my mother developed the drug habit that killed her.

“He doesn't hate you,” I said. “He just doesn't know you.”

I told him the details of my luncheon and how I was going to move back home. I made it sound more like a job description than reconciliation with my father. I was giving Dusty the same sales pitch my father had given me. Reconciliation would come later.

At McDonald's, we punched in and went quietly to work without direction from Cash. He was out of sight and I was happy not to have to face him right away. By now he had read the paper and knew Jonah was dead. I was certain he had questions about my timecard. The only thing I wanted was to use it one last time.

Dexter came out of the men's room, drying his hands on a piece of brown paper towel.

“Dex,” I said as he passed the drive-thru station. He stopped and gawked at me, open-mouthed. “Cash wants me to check the bathrooms. Take over for a minute.”

I left before he could say anything and I went into the back where Cash had his little office set up. He was sitting at his desk, which was little more than a flat surface piled with all sorts of papers that he had to keep pushing back to make a small work area for his crossword puzzle. He was startled by my unexpected appearance.

“I'm on a break,” he explained.

“Want me to come back in a few hours?” I asked but made no move to go.

“No, stick around. I was just thinking about you. Let's see . . . seven-letter word for insignificant person. That would be piss ant.” He looked up at me pointedly.

“Actually, that's two words—like flaming asshole.” I
gave him a similar look, half expecting him to stand. I was bigger than Cash, but he had a ruthlessness about him that scared me. I had never backed down from him and did not intend to now.

His lips tightened thoughtfully. “Flaming asshole—good! Actually that fits seventeen across. Spoiled rich guy.”

I shook my head. “No,” I corrected him, “Flaming asshole goes in thirty-five down, night manager. Spoiled rich guy is former employee known as Waldo.”

Cash's eyes looked up from under his brow. “You telling me you're quitting?”

“You won't have Waldo to kick around anymore.”

He glared at me for a moment with cold, unblinking eyes. “We'll talk about that in a minute. Right now I'm working on two down—dead white guy.”

“Is that a threat?” I took a little step closer, closing the gap between us, advertising that I wasn't intimidated.

“No,” he answered, apparently unfazed by my anger. “Just working on a puzzle.” He slipped his pen into the folded newspaper
and tossed it on his desk. He leaned back in his chair, propped his ankle on his knee, and stared at me for a while. “I'm missing some pieces, but the ones I have fit together real good, and I'm beginning to see the picture.”

He leaned out of his chair to see behind me, and when he saw no one was there he continued. “Last night, you invited me to Miller's. Remember? Took me a while, but I finally figured out you was jerking my chain, trying to confuse the issue while you guys made your escape.”

I knew where this was heading.

“Well, this ain't the parking lot and this ain't Miller's. It's my office and we're going to talk.” He looked at me long and hard for a moment and shifted in his chair, settling in, and making me uncomfortable. “Let me lay out the pieces for you. Maybe you can help me fill in what's missing. First of all Dusty asks me to punch you guys in like you're here. He offers to pay two dipsticks under the table so it isn't on the books. Like an idiot, I agree. Then you show up a
couple of hours late and tell me that you were ‘moving things.' Lamest fuckin' thing I've ever heard. Then I catch you in the parking lot and I hear Dusty.
We didn't kill
nobody!
Him squealing like a pig and you looking like you swallowed a fuckin' canary and trying to keep it from flying out your ass.”

He stared at me—cold eyes boring into me. Without breaking eye contact, he reached for the folded newspaper on his desk and let it fall open, revealing the headline: “Local farmer found dead.” He glanced at it for a moment, letting the hollow, helpless feeling in me grow. I felt ready to implode and cave in on myself—crumble up on the floor in a heap. “My, oh, my! What a co-inky-dink! The dead farmer is none other than Jonah Heard—the guy you work for, the guy you were with the very day he died.”

I was unable to speak, so I picked up the paper and stared at the headline and pretended to read it like it was fresh news. I had the thing memorized. I had read and reread it several times earlier in the day, searching between the lines for anything that might connect me to the crime.

“What were you moving? The body?” he asked at length.

“No,” I managed to say with some conviction. “We were moving my things. I'm moving out of my apartment.”

Dusty swung into the cramped space and crowded next to me. “That's right,” he said without hesitation as if he had been part of the conversation and not afraid to advertise that he had been hanging outside the door eavesdropping. “He didn't want you to know.”

Cash eyed us suspiciously. “Why's that?” he asked.

“Because he's moving back home with his father,” he said and I felt myself flush with anger.

Cash absorbed this information for a moment and then let his satisfaction take over with a grin that spread across his face until his lips parted, showing his blinding white teeth. “And that's why you're quitting—because your old man offered you a job as a junior executive or some damned thing.”

He savored the moment before continuing.

“Well, well, well,” he said placing both feet on the floor, leaning forward. “Waldo's going to be lost in the corporate world. How ‘bout that.”

“OK. Checkmate. You win. I'm crawling back to Daddy. Anything else you want to say before I you see me for the
last time?”

Cash drew himself to his feet, slipped his thumbs into his belt and hitched his pants up.

“Yeah, one more thing. Let's hear about the murder.”

It came out so matter-of-factly, so freely and without judgment or alarm, that I blinked in surprise. He could have been asking about last night's ball game.

“I know what you're thinking,” I said. “We were late for work. Late coming from Jonah's, and now he's dead. It looks bad. That's what we were saying last night. Somebody might figure that we had something to do with it, but we didn't.”

Cash's eyes shifted from me to Dusty and then back to me. “So what are you worried about then?” he asked. It was almost a challenge.

“Look,” I explained, “we didn't do anything, but it sure looks bad. We moved some of my stuff and then I realized I left my wallet at Jonah's.”