Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 04 - Any Port in a Storm (17 page)

When I looked in the drawer again, the first file folder caught my eye.
It said it was for food orders for more than five years ago. I remembered the pile of recycled folders we use, and then remembered I had picked this folder off the floor the day of the break-in and just stuffed a bunch of loose papers in it. When I opened it, the locksmith invoice was there and a small ticket fell out, the kind used for carnival rides and drawings.

I picked it up, remembering that I had picked it off the floor when I was gathering up papers.
There was no name on it, and I started to toss it.

“You have a ticket from Louie’s?” Megan asked, surprise in her tone.

“It was on the floor the day of the break-in. What’s Louie’s?”

“He calls it a loan business, but it’s really a pawn shop.
On the south edge of town,” Megan said.

“Oh, right.
Near that deli that makes those crab cakes that are mostly bread.”

She walked over and took the ticket.
“His tickets are so old they hardly look orange. If you look closely,” she pointed to a small spot on the side with the numbers, “he puts his initials, JL, in tiny print on each ticket. He thinks he’s being really smart.”

My first reaction was almost sorrow that Megan knew the pawn shop so well, but I covered it quickly.
“Wonder how it got here?”

She gave me a sad smile.
“You’d be surprised at the number of people who pawn things.”

NO ONE COULD CALL Louie a proud business owner. The awning over the sidewalk in front of his store had two large slits in it, and the dust balls on the floor on one side of the shop looked as if they could be great grandparents of the ones on the other side.

He was also a very suspicious person, not the least inclined to think “a friend” had asked me to pick up whatever had been pawned.
And forgotten to tell me what it was. Figuring I had nothing left to lose, I told him it had been on the floor in Harvest for All and I thought it might have belonged to Hayden, and knowing what he had pawned might help me.

“It seems to me,” Louie said, “that if you was helping the police clear your name it’d be Sgt. Morehouse or that really cute lady cop showing me this ticket.”

“If you’ll help me out, I won’t tell Corporal Johnson you called her a ‘really cute lady cop,’” I said.

All he said was “Heh, heh.”
He didn’t have to say more, I knew he wanted me to give him money to talk to me.

I nodded toward his sign.
“It says if I have a ticket, I can get the pawned item.” Actually, it said I could get the “paw” because the sign was torn.

“It works that way as long as you didn’t
snuff the guy had the ticket,” he said, and his expression suddenly had a conspiratorial air.

“I didn’t
snuff
him!”

“That’s what you say,” he said, with what novelists would call a sneer.

I gave my best indifferent shrug. “Okay, I’ll just mail it to his parents. They can let their lawyers sort it out. If the fee comes due, I wouldn’t sell it.”

My hand was on the door before Louie spoke again.
“Jesus Christ! I’m just tryin’ to make a dollar here.”

I turned.
“And I’m trying not to get arrested for something I didn’t do. I’d like to at least see what he pawned.”

“Listen, I show it to you, you’re redeeming it.”

“Can you give me an idea how much it is?” I asked.

He opened a dirty notebook and flipped a page.
“Sixty bucks.”

“Done.”

He made a big show of going into a back room and coming out with a large cardboard box that rattled as if it had pieces of heavy plastic or light wood in it. “Show me the money.”

I don’t always have sixty dollars in my wallet but today, thankfully, I did.
I figured if I had to leave to get cash, when I came back he’d try to charge me for additional storage time. I put the three twenties on the counter next to where he sat the box. “Do I need to sign anything?”

He hesitated.
“Yeah, I guess you better.”

I thought about using Ramona’s name, but he had already figured out who I was.

THE JUMBLE OF plastic tubing and cups with the tubing sticking out of them meant nothing to me.
There were bits of gravel and a small pump, the kind I associate with aerating water in backyard fish ponds.

I called George.

“Listen, Jolie, Tiffany’s on vacation so I’m the only one covering most stuff,” George said. I could hear his fingers on the keyboard as he talked.

“Are you avoiding me?” I asked, suddenly remembering he’d said we “should talk” after I called yesterday to tell him about the lawsuit.

“Not exactly,” he said.

“So exactly what?” I asked.

He lowered his voice. “I’m kind of in the doghouse because I told my editor I couldn’t write the story about you getting that wrongful death lawsuit letter.”

“Why’d you do that?
Wait, how do you know that?”

“Everybody knows it,” he said, simply.
“The suit was filed in Monmouth County Courthouse.”

“I hate this town,” I snapped.

“No, you don’t,” he countered. “You might need a meeting.”

I didn’t say anything for a couple seconds, and tried really hard not to tell him where he could put
All-Anon meetings. “Okay, I hate what’s happening to me. So, why’d you tell him you couldn’t write the story?”

“Because you’d probably never talk to me again,” George said.

Hmm. Would I miss George?

“Thanks.
But you have to stop to eat, right? Why don’t we go to the IHop? Unless it’s not safe to be seen with me there.”

No more typing.
“Are you asking me to have dinner with you?” George asked.

“Um, well, why not?”
My face was burning. What difference does it make where we talk about the box of stuff?

“All right, but…make it seven.
I should have all my stories done by then.” George hung up.

I stuck my phone back in my pocket.
What do I think about George? A few weeks ago my response would have been more than unflattering, but then he did help me out when Aunt Madge had what the Brits would call a spot of bother. With a start I realized I was looking forward to seeing him, and not just because he could help me figure out who really killed Hayden.

My phone chirped.
“Yo, Jolie,” came Scoobie’s voice.

“Hey.
Where’ve you been hiding?” I asked.

“College library.
Too noisy to study for anatomy in the regular library. You free for dinner?”

“You know, I just this second made plans with George.
You want to join us at IHop? I could pick you up.”

“Nope.
George would kill me.”

“Why would…?” I began.

“Gotta run.” Scoobie hung up.

IT WAS SEVEN FIFTEEN and I was tapping my feet in time to the seventies music playing throughout the restaurant when George finally showed up. I was in a small booth, and en route to me George grabbed a glass of ice water from the counter and downed it.

“Parched are we?” I asked, as he slid into the booth across from me.

He grinned. “Didn’t even have time for coffee all afternoon.” He grabbed a menu. “What’s the special?”

“Fried shrimp, cole slaw, and chocolate ice cream,” I said, taking in his neatly combed hair, which was damp around the collar.
I started to ask if he’d gone home to shower and then the waitress came up.

We both ordered the shrimp and I added a tossed salad, in the hope of not eating the large roll that comes with the meal.

“So, what’s so important?” George asked. I gave him a stony stare. “Besides that,” he said. “That lawsuit’ll never go anywhere.”

“I wish I could be so certain.
” I took my digital camera from my purse and turned it on. I hadn’t wanted to bring the box into IHop, so I’d taken a couple of photos of the contents. I passed the camera to George. “Do you know what this is?”

He moved the camera a bit to get the light right.
“If I’m right, I’d say it’s part of a hydroponic growing system. Where’d you take this picture?”

“In a box I got from Louie’s Pawn Shop,” I said.

“Jeez, Jolie. I wouldn’t trust him with the care of a feral cat. What the hell did you go in there for?”

I explained about the ticket I’d found the day of the food pantry break-in, and that I’d forgotten about it until today.
“So if Megan hadn’t been in Harvest for All, I would have chucked it, probably.”

“Louie’s probably drowning in his beer right now.
Even used he probably could have sold that for two or three hundred dollars.”

“So this is all you need to grow stuff in water?” I asked.

“Gee, except for the water and a container to sit the pots in, and a bunch of gravel or some other non-soil substance to put the plants in, and…”

“Okay, okay.
But this is a start. Why would he have…? Oh, wait.”

“The obit,” George and I said together.

“It said he was studying hydroponics,” George said.

“And Morehouse said he thought Hayden really learned about it to grow pot,” I added.

“Is he talking to you again?”

“Not likely.
And for a couple days Aunt Madge wasn’t because I went to talk to the Brunos,” I said.

“You
what?!”
George asked.

Everyone within hearing distance stopped talking.

“Sorry, folks,” George called.

“All rabble rousing outside, George,” the manager said as he walked by.
But he didn’t sound serious.

“When did you do that?” George said, in a loud whisper.

“Two days ago. I was going to tell you.” And I had planned on it. I just hadn’t seen him.

He stared at me.
“Maybe they thought you looked guilty so they’d try to get half a million dollars from you. Or that you were gullible. That’s it? You went up there…”

“I went up there to tell them I was sorry about Hayden, and that I didn’t kill him.”
George continued to stare, so I added, “I even took a plant.”

“No wonder Morehouse sounded more ticked off at you than usual,” he said.

“He talked to you about it?”

“No, he specifically said not to call him with any more questions about Hayden or you unless I wanted to be out of the loop on everything.”

“Jeez,” I said.

“How’d he know you went?” George asked.

“The Brunos called him. Or I think they did.”

George shook his head.
“Serves you right.”

“I learned something really important,” I said.

George motioned that I should keep talking.

“Veronica Bruno’s maid of honor was Joe Pedone’s sister.”

“Here we go again,” he said.

“She was Hayden’s godmother.
I think she encouraged him to come to Ocean Alley to get back at me, and he knew dating Alicia would do that.”

“You’re really reaching,” George said.

“No reach, no grasp,” I said.

I WAS STILL ARGUING with myself about whether my visit to the Brunos had prompted the lawsuit, but I had about decided it would not have happened so soon after my visit. Had to have been planned for a week or so. Whatever.

Ever since the murder I’d been thinking about how to find the person who really killed Hayden.
This morning, as soon as my eyes were open, I realized I didn’t need to find the killer, I had to figure out who was trying to frame me. This could be the same person, but it didn’t have to be.

“Where does that leave me?” I asked this of no one in particular, since I was coming out of a house I was appraising.
The only one that was in “my” box as opposed to Harry’s. It was so unfair. I hadn’t done anything to Hayden, and a lot of people assumed I did.

I had been mindlessly driving toward the boardwalk.
I parked and walked up the steps and chose a bench that faced the ocean. I was about two blocks away from Java Jolt. I wasn’t in the mood for company.

It was about seventy-five degrees, and there was little wind.
You didn’t have to look too far beyond the breakers before the ocean looked placid.

Why did Hayden go back to the park?
It made no sense. The wind was howling until well after two a.m. I read in the paper the next day that the police had moved everyone off the boardwalk about ten p.m., so if he had been walking on the boardwalk he would likely have been seen. On the other hand, he was wearing a rain slicker when they —I— found him, so he could have been seen, but not identified.

Somebody had to know more about Hayden’s intentions that night.
I thought about going back to talk to the grocery clerk, but I had probably gotten everything out of Claude that he was going to tell me. I went back over the day when my trunk lid was popped to steal the ashtrays. I’d gone to the house with the wood-rot porch, found Scoobie writing a dumb pirate limerick, gone to the boardwalk, seen Alicia and the sand castle…

“Ah.”
I smiled. She’d been on the beach, but she was the only one of the sand castle guardians I recognized. Claude said he had been in the house, maybe Hayden was. I didn’t think Claude would have a clue about how to force open a trunk lid, but he might feel guilty if he knew who did steal the ashtrays and trash.

I had distracted myself.
The only way I’d even get a clue about why Hayden was on the boardwalk, or at least in the park, that night would be to talk to Alicia. Maybe he told her he was going to walk during the storm, if only because the police and every newscaster advised against it.

At the spaghetti dinner, someone had said Megan was working at the dollar store not too far from Mr. Markle’s grocery.
It was only two blocks north of where I was sitting, though it faced the street, not the boardwalk.

I walked into the store and started browsing.

Megan was helping someone who was insisting that the clothes they were trying to buy were from the clearance rack.
“I’m not saying they were not on the clearance rack, just that they should not have been there. See.” She pointed to a tag on the long-sleeved jersey shirt. “The name of the brand is Fall Fashions. Summer clothes are on sale, and these aren’t summer clothes.”

The woman cursed and threw the shirt at Megan before she stormed out.
I had moved to within a couple feet of Megan and stared after the rude customer.

“Oh!”
Megan was startled to see me.

“I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.
I walked over here in case that woman tried to hit you or something.”

Megan sighed.
“That kind of thing happens two or three times a day. Sometimes it’s someone trying to see if they can get away with it. Mostly it’s desperate people. Parents looking for clothes for their kids.” She moved toward the cash register.

“Um.
Megan?” I asked.

She turned to face me.
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to talk to her.”

My face reddened.
“How did you know that’s what I wanted?”

She shrugged.
“I’ve never seen you in here.”

I could tell she didn’t really want to talk to me, but I plowed on.
“Did she ever tell you why she thought Hayden was in the park that night? It seems odd that he went out in the storm.”

“If she knows, she won’t say,” Megan said.
“I think she wonders if he was meeting another girl.”

I smiled slightly.
“I guess that’s the kind of thing a teenager would think about.” I paused. “The thing is, I don’t know anything about him, so it’s kind of hard to think about where he’d been recently, or who he was hanging with besides Alicia.”

Megan stared at me for a couple of seconds.
“She says she didn’t even know where he lived.”

“That’s right.
The papers still showed him living at his sister’s.” How stupid can you be? He had to live somewhere, had to have money to rent a room.

“Jolie!
Jolie!” Max and Josh had just come into the store, and Max made the proverbial beeline to me.

“It’s great to see you, Max.”
And I didn’t mind. As long as it was a short visit.

“We saw you in the paper again,” Max said.
“It wasn’t very nice.”

I smiled.
The editor himself had written the short piece about the Grosso family’s lawyer filing the wrongful death suit. The article spent more time stressing that I had not been charged with anything than it did elaborating on the details of the suit, but I still felt as if anyone who saw me wondered if I really did kill Hayden. A couple pages later there was a short editorial about “frivolous lawsuits.” The focus was on the fact that the Grossos had included the city in the lawsuit and the fact that no could expect a park by the ocean “to be a safe place in the middle of a tropical storm.”

“I know, Max.
Did you see that the paper said I haven’t been charged with anything?” I asked.

“Innocent until proven guilty.
That’s what Josh said.”

I looked at Josh, who wore a pained expression.

He turned to Max.
“Were you going to see if there was any more of that soda you like on sale?”

“I was, I was.”
And Max was off to the back of the store.

There was an uncomfortable two or three second silence and Josh looked at Megan and me.
“You both had a heck of a couple of weeks.”

Megan and I looked at each other, and I could tell she didn’t want to talk about it.
“You could say that. I need to get back to the register. Can you find what you need?”

“Sure thing, Megan.”
He nodded to me. “I better follow Max. He tries to carry three or four six-packs at a time.”

He’d gone about ten feet when something occurred to me.
“Hey, Josh. Didn’t you say you take walks at night?” I lowered my voice. “After Max goes to sleep?”

He nodded, looking puzzled.
“Most nights.”

“But probably not the night the hurricane brought all that wind and rain.”

“Max is afraid of storms. We were at the Budget Inn that night. It’s better if I stick around when we’re in a motel,” Josh said.

“Oh, right.
I don’t suppose you saw Hayden other times, did you? Besides when he was with Alicia.”

Josh hesitated.
“It’s funny the police haven’t asked us. They know we’re around a lot.”

My heart rate went up.
“What did you see?”

“Well, I can’t say for sure, but I think he was selling small amounts of drugs,” Josh said.

I thought for a second. “That could have made Hayden some enemies, couldn’t it?”

He shrugged.
“If you cheat somebody, or promise something and then don’t have it.”

“You know anyone he sold to?”

“He was smart,” Josh said. “Hayden always sold to people who looked like tourists.”

“Why is that smart?”

“Because he wouldn’t be seen with the same people over and over,” Josh said.

“Very smart,” I said.
“Hey, do you happen to know where he lived?”

Josh shook his head.
“I saw him come out of the Budget Inn once.”

Max’s voice came from a couple aisles away.
“Josh, can you help me carry?” There was the sound of metal hitting the floor and a fizzing noise.

“NOTHING WE DIDN’T already know, or at least suspect,” Scoobie said, after I finished talking about what Josh said.

He, George, Ramona and I were sitting on the boardwalk, facing the ocean, eating candied apples.
Once it’s apple season, they’re only seventy-five cents at the salt water taffy place.

“Yeah,” George said, “but now we can be sure he sold drugs.
Might help us learn more about him.”

“Funny I didn’t hear about it,” Scoobie said.

“You’ve been in school,” I reminded him.

We stared in silence at the ocean a couple more minutes.

“You know, that hydroponics equipment wasn’t cheap.
He didn’t buy that himself,” I said.

“Why not?” Ramona asked.

“It just seems like more money than he had,” Scoobie said.

“And it was used,” George said.
“I bet he stole it from his brother-in-law.”

“That could give Ricardo a reason to kill him,” I said, almost hopefully.

“Yeah,” Scoobie said, “because anytime somebody in your family takes something from you it’s a good idea to track them down during a tropical storm and bash their head in.”

George grunted a laugh and I scowled.

“Jolie,” Ramona said, “did you see what someone put on my white board today?”

“Don’t think so.”

“They erased all of my quote and replaced it with, ‘If a person farts in the forest and nobody hears, does it still smell?’” Ramona said this in a conversational tone, but I could tell she wanted to see if one of the guys reacted.

“I was at the library on campus all day,” Scoobie said.

“Who said it was you?” she asked.

“You’ve been hinting for two weeks that you think I do it.”

“Didn’t somebody do it when Scoobie was laid up in the spring?” George asked.

“Yes, they did.”
Ramona went back to staring at the ocean.

I didn’t look at Scoobie.
I was afraid I’d laugh. I know he usually does it, and have no idea who did it while he was out of commission earlier in the summer.

“Doesn’t Roland have security cameras?” George asked.
“Get him to point one at the board.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Ramona said.
“He wouldn’t put one on outside, but he might be able to position one of the indoor cameras to look at the door. The board is just outside it.”

“You just earned your pay,” I said to George.

“I wish. I’m officially off the entire story — Hayden’s death, you as either a suspect or patsy, the whole nine yards.”

“Why?” I asked.

“What the hell for?” Scoobie asked.

“Wait,” I continued.
“You said you didn’t want to write about the lawsuit.”

“I didn’t,” he said, and Scoobie dug an elbow into George’s ribs.
He ignored it. “But I didn’t want to be off the murder case.”

“So why are you?” Scoobie asked.

“Too involved with people of interest,” George said, and grinned at me.

I felt myself blush.
“You could say bad things about me in the office, and then he won’t think we’re friends,” I said.

Scoobie stood.
“Talk about full circle. Come on Ramona, you said you’d teach me some yoga positions.”

Either Ramona is really quick on the uptake or she really had promised.
She and Scoobie tossed their apple cores in the trash can next to the bench and left.

After almost a minute I said “So…” at the same time George said, “So how involved are we?”

We both gave a nervous laugh.

“We are sitting on a bench at dusk,” I said.

“I noticed,” George said.

What are we, fourteen?

George moved a couple inches closer and put his arm across my shoulders. I started to put my head on his shoulder when a woman’s voice called, “Jolie.”

We turned at the same time and watched as Megan and Alicia strode toward us.
“Scoobie said we’d find you here,” Megan said.

Alicia added, “We saw him and Ramona when we walked up the boardwalk steps.”

“Want to share a bench?” George asked.

“You can buy me a lemonade, George.
Alicia and Jolie need to talk.” Megan moved away and George followed, not looking at me.

Alicia walked to my side of the bench and we both sat down.