Ed Lynskey - Isabel and Alma Trumbo 02 - The Cashmere Shroud (14 page)

L
ate every Sunday morning, a rally of muscle cars with their drivers’ sweethearts’ names painted on the rear fins squealed down Main Street. The drivers heading for Reynolds’ drag race track fancied themselves as TV’s Luke and Bo Duke gunning their General Lee back in the 1980s.

Reynolds
dropped away the security chain from his front brick gate posts, each with a brass eagle mounted atop it. Ray Burl once wisecracked to Sammi Jo how the pair of eagles resembled vultures.

A
vid spectators arrived early as possible to wait in line and buy their tickets. They streamed through the gate to reach the bleachers where they staked out their vantage points.

Reynolds didn’t have to
sweat if the racket his race cars raised was a nuisance because many local residents came to cheer on their favorite drivers and muscle cars. This Sunday found the sisters out in the midst of the hoopla. Since Reynolds was busy putting on his extravaganza, Sammi Jo holed up with the sisters inside the cool relief at Eddy’s Deli. The mercury had climbed to the low nineties, and ordering hot cups of coffee or espresso was out of the question.

Instead, they each
ordered their old summer standby beverage: a tall glass of iced tea. Isabel and Sammi Jo took theirs with lemon slice, but Alma liked a lime slice with a fresh mint sprig. Tabitha said Eddy was fresh out of mint sprigs, so Alma lowered her expectations and settled for the run-of-the-mill lime slice.

Isabel had glimpsed
Sheriff Fox’s cruiser through the window, its red-blue roof bar glittering like the town square Christmas tree as it zipped by on the street. When she pointed him out to Alma and Sammi Jo, he’d already vanished from their window vantage point.

“
Where is Roscoe off to in a big hurry?” asked Isabel.

“
There must be a sale on doughnuts at the Wawa, or he’s setting up a Sunday speed trap for the muscle car drivers,” said Sammi Jo.

“Good
zinger,” said Alma. “You make a first-rate cynical shamus.”

“
My zinger moments are what I live for,” said Sammi Jo.

“I don’t much care where’s he going as long as he stays out of our hair,” said
Alma.

“Sometimes Roscoe is a
roadblock more than an asset to uncover the truth,” said Isabel.

Tabitha
sauntered up behind Alma, and Isabel smiled at the waitress.

“Will you not
mention to Sheriff Fox we came here in case he should visit the deli?” asked Isabel. “We’re trying to keep a low profile around him.”

“
Up to his dirty tricks again, is he?” said Tabitha. “How he managed to be re-elected sheriff I’ll never understand.”

“
Simple. He was the only candidate after Clarence Fishback dropped out of the race,” said Sammi Jo. “Even if Roscoe Fox had run opposed, his shirttail kin would’ve voted him into office.”

“That’d
do it, all right. Can I get you gals anything else? I’m chafing to go on my break for a smoke. Eddy is supposed to cover for me, but he’s too engrossed by fiddling with his new boy toy of a cell phone.”

“We’ll be fine,” replied Isabel. “Just a minute before you go. Has
Ray Burl been a steady customer at the deli?”

Tabitha smiled. “You bet, and he’s a big tipper.” Her smiled went south as she remembered
Ray Burl was no more, and his surviving daughter sat at the booth as her customer. “Was, I mean, of course. I’m sorry as I can be for your loss, Sammi Jo.”

S
he nodded as she rotated the glass of iced tea on the tabletop. “Thanks, Tabitha. It’s still a shock to me, but I’m bearing up from it.”

“
I wish I could help you, but I only had contact with him while I waited on the tables.”

“
But you say he was a big tipper,” said Isabel. “Was this always his custom?”

“He left an extra sawbuck
—ten dollars—after each meal about the time he got promoted to foreman. I figured he’d gotten a hefty raise and was sharing some of the love with us poor folks.”

“Is that what he told you?” asked Isabel. “That he’d landed a sizeable pay increase?”

“You know Ray Burl. He was a man who favored silence over talk. When he did speak, it was on the basic stuff. I liked him fine before he added the big tips to his tabs. You know, come to think of it, he did once tell me out of the blue he’d bought a shotgun. Then he chuckled, saying how it was something he’d never done before. I asked him if he’d taken up a new hobby, you know, like skeet shooting or duck hunting. ‘No ma’am,’ he replied. ‘I feel the necessity to keep one nearby in case I’m experiencing a bad day.’”

“What did he mean by saying
‘experiencing a bad day?’” asked Sammi Jo.

“I don’t have the
foggiest idea. It just stuck with me since it was so unlike him. Personally, I don’t care much for guns so I let the matter drop. He didn’t further elaborate, paid his bill, and strolled out with that loose-jointed saunter in those slant-heeled boots. Well, I’ve got to be off before my break time is up. Later on, ladies.”

“Thanks for your help,” said Sammi Jo.

As Tabitha, her pack of cigarettes and lighter already out, whisked away from their booth, Isabel mulled over how Ray Burl’s shotgun kept popping up like a whack-a-mole in their conversations. He’d pretty much admitted to Tabitha he’d acquired it for self-protection. Isabel wanted to search at his Cape Cod for the shotgun, but she dismissed the idea because Sheriff Fox and his underlings had already combed through the rooms. Or had they yet? She backed up in her thinking and didn’t see why they couldn’t at least try their luck. She presented her idea to Alma and Sammi Jo.

Alma
turned to Sammi Jo. “Why I bet checking inside of the Cape Cod hasn’t crossed Sheriff Fox’s mind.”

Sammi Jo grinned. “
That’s a sucker’s bet to take.”

“Then what are we sitting around
here for?” said Alma. “We’ll be off as fast as Isabel pays for our iced teas.”

Ray Burl
Garner had lived in a Cape Cod fabricated from cinderblocks. It was set a softball toss off the state road under a grove of honey locust trees. Unlike many of his neighbors, his Cape Cod lacked for a single stall garage while it cost about eight grand when built during the early 1950s. Stucco (pastel lettuce green) covered the Cape Cod’s exterior while paint over plaster (bright canary yellow) adorned the interior walls.

Sammi Jo had accepted the
Cape Cod as a primitive but colorful shelter, and true to form, Mo carped how she loathed to take up residence inside a bat cave. She was correct in that the Cape Cod suffered from a few drawbacks. Foremost, the moisture wicked up on the interior walls after the weather turned cold.

Ray Burl
, striving to make a happy wife for a happy life, experimented with applying the different epoxies and paints on the wall to dispel the dampness. No remedy he tested worked out very well. All the while, Mo stewed at a long simmer when she didn’t explode with her temper until she finally had enough and vamoosed on the Greyhound that morning in May.

Sammi Jo
had stored up lots of happy girlhood memories, and the best of those were her playing under the ornamental honey locusts. Their cream-hued flowers bursting out in late April suffused a pleasant scent. She predicted it would be a phenomenal commercial hit like Shalimar or Chanel No. 5 if the perfumeries could develop a process to distill the exotic bouquet.

She’d dab it on
following Coco Chanel’s enduring advice. She had tipped off the ladies to put on their perfume wherever they liked to be kissed. So far, only Reynolds knew where those sweet spots on Sammi Jo were located. His frequenting those sweet spots was in serious jeopardy if he didn’t quit smoking cigarettes and remaining so insensitive about her father’s murder.

Sammi Jo
could do without the honey locusts’ brittle, black thorns when she kicked off her sneakers and went barefoot like a pigtailed heathen during her summer vacations until the first day of school civilized her again. Skillful with his hands as a jack of all trades, Ray Burl crafted the durable wood from the dead honey locusts into small pieces of furniture, like end tables and magazine racks. He sold these on the side as a way to supplement the family coffers.

The
three ladies arrived at the Cape Cod. Sammi Jo inserted her door key, and they entered. She felt right at home and sensed her father’s presence in the bedroom down the short hallway. She had the urge to holler out to him as if he still lived there.

“Yo, Daddy! You’ve got
three guests out front. How about if you shake a leg? We’ve got oodles to catch up on, so don’t you go and sleep away this gorgeous Sunday. Time is wasting. I say again, yo, Ray Burl! Where are you, sir? It’s past time for working folks to rise and shine.”

She heard the
sane twangy drawl he’d last used on their recorded phone conversation she’d replayed earlier.

“What’s that?
Oh, it’s you, Sammi Jo. Lord, I just now woke up. What time is it? I never set my alarm clock for Sunday mornings. Look, just come back in an hour. You and your friends don’t want to be around me when I’ve just rolled out of bed and before my first pot of coffee.”

“
I’d do that for you, sure, but Isabel and Alma are the friends with me. They’ve been up for hours, and they’re putting you to shame.”

“Why didn’t you say so
in the first place? They’re my most favorite people in the world. All right, I’ll be out straightaway, so just hold your horses.”

“Hey
, Daddy, have you heard anything from Mom lately?”

Their imagined
repartee playing through Sammi Jo’s mind had a one-sided finality because Ray Burl wasn’t at home. His absence wasn’t a temporary but permanent status. She had no choice but to either accept it as true or go out of her ever-loving mind. A heavy, dark weight lay on her heart and slowed its pulse to a sluggish one. New tears seeped from their ducts into her eye corners, and she feared making a complete ninny out of herself again in front of Isabel and Alma.

Always attuned to others’
somber moods, Isabel stepped up to guide Sammi Jo through the desperate interval. The older lady took the younger one’s forearm into her grasp.

“It’s okay, dear, to
be with your sorrows, but only for a little while, since we’re here to accomplish something important.”

Sammi Jo,
slit-lipped and set-jawed, nodded her head while she gathered herself. Isabel was right. They’d ridden to the Cape Cod with the purpose in mind to dig out the clues illuminating Ray Burl’s murderer. That was the extent of what they could handle doing on this visit. There’d be later trips when Sammi Jo could let her rawer emotions have their freer rein. She buckled down and resolved to carry out what they’d come to do.

“What
is this note?” Isabel cast down her glance at a sheet of paper left on the foyer table. “I went off and left my reading glasses on my nightstand. Alma, how about you?”

“
Unfortunately, I’m just as absent-minded as you are. Sammi Jo, we need your pair of young eyes. Can you read to us what this note says?”

She accepted it from Isabel,
scanned the opening lines, and sneered. “It’s from none other than Sheriff Fox, and not only that but it’s addressed to you and Alma.”

Isabel arched her
bemused eyebrows. “My, my. Roscoe must’ve forgotten how to apply a stamp to an envelope, and what the U.S. Post Office does for us.”

Alma
glowered at the note. “What does our gallant peace officer have to say for himself? I’m sure it can’t be anything close to nice.”

Sammi Jo read
out verbatim from the handwritten page she held before her.

“
Dear Ms. Isabel and Ms. Alma, This is your sheriff writing this memorandum. If you’re reading it, then you’ve entered my crime scene, and I must warn you to turn back before it’s too late. No amateur snoops, such as you, are permitted access to this area until I have seen fit to release it, and that won’t be any time soon either. You can rest assured if any clues are to be had, my capable deputy sheriffs and I will collect and process them. If you decide to defy my direct order, I’ll have no recourse left but to arrest you for the obstruction of justice. That means jail time! Signed, Roscoe Fox, Sheriff of Quiet Anchorage
”

“‘
Amateur snoops,’ eh?” said Alma. “I take offense at his casting aspersions on us.”

“He’s also
grossly incorrect,” said Isabel. “This isn’t the crime scene, but rather where the murder victim lived. Moreover I’d say the distinction renders his written memorandum null and void.”

“You should cover yourselves and ask your legal counsel if that’s the right
assumption.” Sammi Jo handed the memorandum to Alma.

“A judicious idea.”
Isabel turned to Alma. “Shall you ring Dwight Holden, or should I?”

Alma
plucked out her cell phone like a plum from her pocketbook. “I’ll be glad to take care of it. Dwight and I enjoy a special client-attorney rapport.”

“He
’s so jazzed any time we phone him,” said Isabel. “Meantime Sammi Jo, keep an eye out the door for our intrepid sheriff.”

Dwight’s relaxing Sunday came to a ringing halt after he
answered Alma’s call, and she summarized their current legal quandary. He cleared his constricting throat before he also coughed a little.

Alma
glanced at Isabel. “Dwight suffers from allergies like yours.”

“
The poor dear,” said Isabel. “I’ll give him a few of my pills the next time we see him.”

“Should I ask
him if he’s washed the stack of dirty dishes?” asked Alma.

“Give him a little while longer,” replied Isabel.
“It was a high stack.”

B
ack on Alma’s cell phone, Dwight’s tenor sound strained and rusty. “Let me get this straight, Alma. You’ve disobeyed a written memorandum from our chief law officer, a crime besides incurring his considerable wrath. Now you’re contacting me at home and seeking my legal counsel after the fact on what you should do next. Well, I’m just thrilled to my toes.”

“
We’ve committed no infractions,” said Alma. “How could we read Sheriff Fox’s memorandum until we came indoors where he’d posted it unless we have X-ray vision like Batman does?”

“
Superman. What are you asking me then, Alma?”

“Is
this a binding document since Sammi Jo now legally owns the Cape Cod?” asked Alma. “Besides the turf farm is the actual crime scene and not in here.”

“You’re
just splitting frog hairs, Alma. If Sheriff Fox says it’s the crime scene, then it just is one. Accept that as stone cold fact and act accordingly.”

“
Your advice stinks, Dwight. You sound like you’re in Sheriff Fox’s pocket.”

“
I know the nuances of the law. Press your cell phone close to your ear and listen closely to me. Get. Out. Of. There. Pronto. Please.”

“Dwight, you’re avoiding
my question.” Alma rattled the sheet of paper in her hand. “Is this a legal document or not?”

“If
Sheriff Fox arrests you, my hands are tied. Even your friendship with Judge Redfern won’t get you off the hook. This time it won’t. She’d tell you the same thing. You’ve finally taken things too far and crossed the line.”

“Dwight, quit being an alarmist and worry wart,” said
Alma, disgusted. “Are we standing on safe legal ground here?”

“I’m not going to
respond to your question, and I’m also going to pretend we never spoke, because the next time I see you in a barred conference room, I want my conscience clear that I had nothing to do with it.”

“
That gets recorded as a no. Goodbye, Dwight. Thanks for your help.” Alma closed their link.

“What did Dwight
advise us?” asked Sammi Jo.

“He
suggested we should proceed as if we never found Sheriff Fox’s memorandum,” said Alma with a straight face. “Or words to that effect.”

Isabel knew Dwight well enough to
tell Alma was stretching the truth. “Work fast before Sheriff Fox catches us in here red-handed.”

“No sign of
our own Wyatt Earp in his Crown Vic.” Sammi Jo still looked out the door’s glass.

“
So far,” said Isabel. “Stay tuned.”

“Suppose he
was savvy enough to install surveillance cameras to keep an eye on the Cape Cod?” asked Sammi Jo.

Isabel
hunched up her shoulders. “Then we’ll have plenty of fast talking to do with or without our legal counsel present.”