Dove in the Window (34 page)

I sat forward and picked up Emory’s slips of paper. Look behind the story. Dig deeper. How would I do that? I didn’t have the resources of the police, and apparently they hadn’t found anything yet ... at least not anything that would cause them to charge someone.

Dig deeper.
I had only one resource that the police and my dear cousin didn’t, and that was my long and varied connections in this town. I picked up the slips of paper and stuck them in my purse.

“I’m going to lunch,” I told the docent behind the counter. “I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

Then I headed to see the only person who knew everything about everyone within a fifty-mile radius of San Celina—Bud the Hot Dog Man. Even the cops were aware of Bud Stumpey’s prodigious knowledge of activity, both legal and illegal, and they courted him like a prom queen, hoping to gain a tidbit now and then. He doled out his information sparingly, his criteria in confiding in a person as capricious as the famous Central Coast winds.

His silver hot dog stand ruled the corner of the Save-rite Drugstore parking lot downtown, a spot he’d held for twenty years. His hot dogs were juicy, all beef, kosher paragons of pleasure served in a gently steamed bun that had those little black seeds that dalmatianed your teeth with every bite. With fresh Vidalia onions, French’s yellow mustard, and chopped kosher dills, they were worth every cent of their two-dollar price. Soft drinks were a buck, toothpicks a nickel. And he only allowed you one napkin unless you were under six years old.

I parked five blocks up the street, avoiding the parking structures that were bound to be full at this time of day. I needed the exercise anyway. Especially if I was going to get one of Bud’s hot dogs, which were certainly not known for their low-calorie healthfulness. Not that he had any intention of changing his menu. When a new San Celina resident, one of the many transplants from Southern California, playfully suggested he stock turkey and tofu franks for those who didn’t eat beef or meat, he refused to serve that person for three months. Bud knew his niche and didn’t deviate. He was open 365 days a year and gave away free hot dogs on both Thanksgiving and Christmas to San Celina’s burgeoning homeless population.

“Benni Harper!” he exclaimed when I walked up. He wasn’t any taller than me, and it was guessed that his age was anywhere from fifty to seventy years old. His hair had been white as a cotton ball since the day he opened up twenty years ago, and the pink caterpillar scar along the edge of his tanned jaw had been a source of speculation and urban myth for years. He lived alone in a small house downtown, his only company his parrot, Six-Gun, who quoted the Bible and cursed like a cop with equal abandon. Bud jumped up from his webbed lawn chair with the attached red-and-white umbrella and opened the hatch to his silver stand. “One extra mustard and onions, no pickles coming up.” Bud took pride in knowing the preference of each of his regular customers. I’d been a faithful once-a-week imbiber since my college days. He handed me my hot dog wrapped in a napkin and pulled out a dripping can of Barq’s root beer. “What’s new in the worlds of folk art, law enforcement, and bovines?” he asked.

I popped the top of my root beer and took a deep drink. “Nothing that I’m sure you don’t already know about, Bud. Actually, I’m here to sit at your feet and beg some information.” Two college kids came up beside me and started counting the change in their pockets.

He nodded at the patio chair next to his. “Let me get these youngsters taken care of.” I sat down gratefully, knowing that his invitation meant he’d talk to me. No one who was smart ever sat down until invited personally by Bud, who reserved it for people he really liked or those who came to him for advice. He had become a sort of surrogate priest, confidant, and grass roots legal expert to San Celina’s poor, homeless, and young. He was a walking self-appointed social services expert and probably knew more secrets about the people in this town than all the priests in the county combined.

I watched him fix up two hot dogs for the college students, telling them they were seventy-five cents short and they could pay him later, but that they’d better not forget because he had a memory as big as Alaska. Three more customers came up, and he had a small rush that kept him busy enough for me to finish my hot dog and most of my Barq’s.

A lull came, and he sat down next to me. “Enjoy it?” he asked.

I smiled and toasted him with my can. “You have to ask?”

“Good. Now, what is it you need to know?”

“First, has the sheriff’s department been to talk to you yet?”

He smirked. “Of course.”

“And?”

“I answered their questions.”

I waited, knowing he’d tell me everything in his good time.

He tugged at one of his white jaw-length sideburns. “The guy they sent wanted extra onions on his first time.”

I
tsked
sympathetically under my breath. Huge faux pas on the detective’s part. They must have been really busy and sent a rookie who ignored their instructions on how to treat Bud. All the locals knew you never asked for special treatment the first ten times you bought a hot dog from Bud. That was tantamount to trying to kiss the pope’s ring before being asked.

He continued, “He asked me if I’d heard anything about the murders through the grapevine. I told him no.”

I sipped my root beer and tilted my head, listening.

His smirk got bigger. “What I heard was directly from the horse’s mouth. He really should learn to ask the correct questions.”

I laughed and wondered again if the speculations many of us had tossed around were true. That Bud, with his sharp mind and often incredible legal knowledge, was an attorney who left “the life” to run his hot dog stand. He had a good-natured but sometimes wickedly revengeful relationship with law enforcement that certainly acquired its roots somewhere. He just barely forgave me when I married the chief of police.

I sat forward in my lawn chair. “So, you talked to Shelby?”

He nodded. “She was a real sweet little girl. She had money but didn’t flaunt it. I like that in a person. She donated two hundred dollars to help buy hot dogs for my Thanksgiving Day feast. Not many kids her age would do that.”

“I liked her, too. That’s why I’m trying to find out who did this.”

He ran a tongue across his teeth, then pursed his lips. It was a gesture he always affected right before he gave advice. “Willing to bet your new husband won’t be too happy about that.”

I took another sip of my root beer and gave him a little smile. “I only bet on sure things. Seriously, I’m merely working the angles the police have already tried ... and failed. Besides, it’s not Gabe’s case.”

He chuckled. “You two have been fun to watch, I’ll grant you that. Well, I’ll tell you what I didn’t tell the sheriff’s detective because he annoyed me to no end. What were they thinking, sending that greenhorn to talk to me?”

“Had to be crazy,” I agreed. “What did Shelby tell you?”

“Saw her early the day after Thanksgiving. I was eating breakfast at Liddie’s as usual, and she asked if she could join me. Said she needed to talk to someone impartial, get something off her chest.”

“Can you tell me what?”

He sucked on a back tooth and frowned. “Said she saw something the day before that troubled her. Something she thought might be illegal that involved a friend. Asked me what she should do about it.”

I drew in a deep breath. “What did you tell her to do?”

“Said if it were me and this person was really my friend, I’d talk to them about it. But that was just me.”

I exhaled, feeling a small modicum of relief, or at least shared guilt. “She asked me the same thing right before she was killed. She squeezed me into a corner when I tried to get out of giving her advice and asked me if I’d ever been in a similar situation. I had, and I had to admit I didn’t go to the police. She asked me if I’d have done it differently if I had the chance to do it again, and I couldn’t lie and say I would, but that it wasn’t necessarily the right thing for her to do.” I rested my chin on my fist. “I wish now I’d just said nothing. I feel like I contributed to her death.”

He leaned back in his lawn chair, his tanned jowls folded over with regret. “I know. This is one time I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. Or told her to go straight to the police. But she didn’t give me any details, and, frankly, I didn’t want to know any. I stupidly assumed it was something like smoking pot or shoplifting.”

We stared at each other soberly, knowing that we’d both carry the guilt for this, deserved or not, for the rest of our lives.

I asked, “Did she give you any hints about who this person might be or what they did?”

“All she said was she had proof. And that it was in a safe place.”

“No hint where? Her apartment was searched very thoroughly.”

“Only that no one would ever think to look where she hid it. That’s all she told me.”

I stood up and threw my aluminum can in his recycling bag. “That’s not a lot to go by, but thanks anyway.”

I was halfway across the parking lot when I heard him yell my name. I turned and waited as he hurried up to me. “One more thing I just remembered. Don’t know if you can make heads or tails of it, but she said it was a career buster. That this person would never work again if it were found out. That help any?”

“A career buster,” I repeated. “It might. It narrows it down, anyway. Anything else?”

He shook his head. “That’s it. Let me know if there’s a memorial fund or anything, okay?”

“Sure will, Bud. Thanks.”

A career buster,
I thought as I walked the five blocks back to my truck. That eliminated one person—Bobby Sanchez. If those pictures of him were released, it would have embarrassed him and his family and he might have been razzed to death, but he’d still be able to cowboy. That left Roland, Greer, Olivia, and Parker. All of them had careers that were certainly worth ruining if they’d been caught doing the wrong thing. But what was that thing? Since all of them were involved in the art world, the only crime I could think of would be forgery. But which of them? And how? And why? The why would almost certainly be money. It appeared that all of them needed that to some degree or another.

I opened my truck door and climbed into the cab, sitting there for a moment tapping my fingers on the cold steering wheel. My speculations seemed ridiculous even to me. Art forgery and the fencing of it was a complicated business. And besides, it didn’t make sense with the very slight clue that Isaac and I found—or rather hadn’t found—the missing strip of negatives. I was sure that was the proof Shelby was talking about, and the strips numbered before or after it were taken outside, so it seemed a logical progression that the missing strip was, too. What had she taken pictures of? A person transporting forged paintings? Even if she had, the person doing it wouldn’t have had the paintings out in the open—they would have been covered up. How would that be proof?

There was no doubt, though, that whatever proof she had and had told this “friend” about was something that scared him or her enough to kill her. Maybe not intentionally, but even if it was an accidental push in a fight, that person had left her out in the elements to die. Maybe she could have been saved had help been called right away. For some reason, until now it hadn’t occurred to me how similar the situation was to how Jack had died. He, too, might have been saved if someone had just not walked away.

I suddenly felt a hot-white anger at this person who had cared so little about sacrificing both Shelby’s and Kip’s young lives.

I leaned my head on the steering wheel. Let it go, a voice warned me.
You’ve been down this path before. Why can’t you just let the police do their job?

Isaac’s anguished face burst into my mind. Because of that, I answered. Because the police didn’t care whether Wade ever made it home to his family. Because, though I knew most of them to be hard working, caring people, it was just a job to them, a file to be cleared off their desks. To Isaac—and to Wade—it might mean their very ability to emotionally survive.

I drove back to the museum determined to investigate deeper into the backgrounds of the four people I still suspected. In my office, I reread Emory’s notes and thought about how I could find out more. While I was sitting there, my mind a complete and utter blank as to where to go next, the phone rang.

“I finally caught you. Good.” Amanda’s honeyed voice flowed through the receiver. “How’s our boy doing?”

“Fine, I guess. Lying low like you instructed him. I, on the other hand, am going crazy trying to get a handle on who killed Shelby. Let me tell you what I’ve found out so far, and you tell me what you think.” I ran Emory’s and Bud’s information by her and told her how I thought that eliminated Bobby and that art forgery might be the reason why Shelby was killed. “What else could she have seen that would hurt someone’s career?”

“Sounds logical enough,” Amanda agreed. “Leilani’s done a little deeper checking than your cousin and came up with almost similar results.”

“Almost? What else did she find?” Leilani Jones, Lei to her friends, was a former San Celina detective who had been an investigator for the DA’s office before going to work for Amanda. She was a smooth-skinned, strong-boned Samoan woman with a face as perfect as a beauty queen’s. She was always getting pissed off because people talked to her in Spanish, thinking she was Latino. She once showed me how to hide a pistol in your cleavage and button up your blouse so it didn’t show. I tried it, and she almost bust a gut laughing. Either her gun was too big, my bra too flimsy, or my cleavage too small. At any rate, she was the best investigator the DA’s office had ever had, and they still hadn’t forgiven Amanda for stealing her.

“Roland Bennett has a couple of ex-wives.”

“So?”

“Three to be exact. It’s number two who’s so interesting.”

“Who was she?”

“A Louella Ebersole.”

“Why is she so interesting?”

“She’s from Bakersfield.”

I waited. “And?” I finally said, trying to keep the impatience out of my voice. Like most Southerners, Amanda dearly loved to draw her stories dramatically out to the enth degree.