Pumped for Murder (23 page)

“Don’t play God,” Margery said. “If Shelby’s husband is playing around with anyone, male or female, she needs to know. She wants to know. She’ll survive.You certainly did.”

Phil returned with a frosty club soda topped with a lime wedge for Helen and a second beer for himself.

“Well, I’m making progress,” Phil said. “I thought there was something missing to Mark’s accident report.”

“Why?” Helen asked.

“Because those cops weren’t the best investigators, but they were thorough about their paperwork. I spent the day searching the old records at Sunset Palms and found two more pages to Mark’s accident report. It’s some kind of addendum to the original report. It was filed in the wrong folder and forgotten. Took me four hours to find it. Going through those paper files was dusty work. I needed this.” He raised the beer in a toast.

“What did the new pages say?” Helen asked.

“Didn’t get a chance to study them,” he said. “The office was closing at three. The records clerk will fax them to me first thing tomorrow. Did you see what happened to Danny Boy after he left the bar last night? I saved the paper for you.”

Phil handed Helen the local news section. “Check out the first story. Danny Boy Cerventi was arrested for a DUI last night. Must have been while he was driving home from his bar. He’s been released on bail.”

“You offered to drive him, too,” Helen said. “His friend Bobby said he couldn’t get in trouble on the short trip home.”

“Looks like he managed after all,” Phil said. “I was curious about Danny. He talks too much and drinks too much. Strikes me as a man with a guilty conscience. I did a background check on him. No arrests, wants or warrants. Then I checked the county records.

“Danny Boy’s grandfather had left nothing but a small policy to cover his burial. He didn’t leave his grandson enough to buy a beer, much less a bar. I’ll say this: The old man was respected. He had a nice write-up in the paper when he died.

“I learned something else, too,” Phil said. “Remember the mustachioed gent hanging over the bar?”

“I assume you’re talking about a photograph?” Margery said.

“He is,” Helen said. “Danny Boy told us that was a picture of his granddaddy. He said he inherited a lot of money from the old man and named the bar in his honor.”

“I saw Mr. Cerventi’s obituary picture,” Phil said. “Danny Boy’s grandfather is not the man in that photo.”

“H
ey, Danny Boy, you shouldn’t be drinking soda water,” Bobby said, taking a seat at the bar at Granddaddy’s. “Let me buy you a beer.”

Last night, Bobby and his yellow-haired girlfriend had tried to help Danny. His old high school buddy had tended bar for the rest of the night when Danny left. He’d also insisted that the drunken Danny could drive himself home without Phil’s help. That had led to Danny’s DUI.

Now Bobby was tempting the bar owner with a beer. Some friend, Helen thought.

Danny was sober tonight, but Helen wondered how long he’d stay that way. Temptation beckoned from every corner. Liquor bottles glowed. Beer was poured into frosty mugs. Friends offered him drinks and pushed cold beer bottles his way.

Danny fended them off and clung to his club soda, seething with red-eyed anger.

Helen watched the spectacle from her seat next to Phil at the bar. She was sipping her own club soda and listlessly picking through a salad with no dressing—and no flavor. She speared a rubbery slice of boiled egg and chewed it mournfully.

“I can’t drink, Bobby,” Danny Boy said. “I told you. My sister Linda will ream my ass.” The skinny bartender rubbed the seat of his jeans and said, “It’s still sore from the chewing out she gave me when she bailed me out last night.”

“She didn’t have much to chew on with your bony ass,” Bobby said.

“I promised Sis I’d lay off the sauce,” Danny Boy said. “This isn’t the first time I got stopped for a DUI. Linda says this is absolutely the last time she can pull strings and make the charges disappear.”

Danny took a sip of club soda, winced in distaste and turned to Phil. “Did I tell you my sister Linda is a big deal in Sunset Palms?”

Alcohol didn’t change Danny, Helen thought. He was just as repetitious sober as he was drunk.

“Is that right?” Phil said.

Danny leaned in closer to his new friend. The bartender needed a shave and a clean shirt. And a bath, Helen thought. Danny didn’t seem to remember Helen from last night. She kept silent, hoping he wouldn’t notice her. She decided now would be a good time to check out that back room. She slid quietly off her barstool and headed toward the restrooms. Danny was droning on. Bobby was watching his friend.

The noise level was even louder in the back room tonight. Helen stuck her head in and saw four bodybuilders and a red-haired woman. Heather from the gym. She said something, and the big lugs around her laughed. She was holding the only drink in the room, a glass of something clear and fizzy. Helen heard a heavy footstep in the hall behind her and darted into the restroom.

What was Heather doing here? she wondered. Flirting with the bodybuilders? Did she buy something for Debbi’s fatal fruit smoothie?

Helen slid back into her seat. Danny didn’t notice. Phil patted her leg.

“Linda had her picture taken with Governor Jeb Bush,” Danny confided. “Keeps it on the wall. Sis knows everything going on in town.”

“Like what?” Phil asked. Helen watched her husband artfully draw Danny into more conversation. How could he stand the boredom?

Danny lowered his voice. “Like she says there’s some kinda detective going through the city files, looking for information about how Mark Behr died.”

“Mark Behr.” Phil pretended to search his memory for the name. “Is he the good-looking guy in that picture?”

“That’s him,” Danny said. “My sister says Mark’s brother, Gus, is the one who is stirring up trouble. I know he’s got the money to do it. Gus charges an arm and leg at that car-repair shop of his. Now Linda says Gus has hired a detective to look into Mark’s death.”

“Who’s the detective?” Phil asked.

“Don’t know,” Danny Boy said.

“I thought your sister knew everything in Sunset Palms,” Phil said.

“She does. She’ll find out,” Danny said. “We gotta make Gus stop.”

“Why?” Phil said.

“ ’ Cause he’ll ruin everything, dude. Can’t have an outsider poking around in our business. It’s private-like.”

“Privacy is important,” Phil said.

“Damn right. What that detective wants to know is none of his business. What time is it?”

Phil checked his watch. “Two minutes after eleven.”

“I’ve had enough of this pee-water.” Danny slammed down the club soda on the bar, and the liquid slopped on the wooden top. “I made it to eleven tonight without a drink. I can’t stand being here anymore. I’m going home.”

He yelled,
“Any cops in here?”

The other customers looked up at his shouted question. The music stopped. Even the televisions were suddenly quiet. Danny heaved himself up onto the bar and screamed,
“I said, any cops in my frigging bar? I’m warning you now. Go ahead and follow me home. I’m sober. You won’t get me tonight, assholes.”

Bobby reached up and helped his friend climb down from the bar. “Dude, have a drink and chill,” he said. “You’ll feel better after a beer. You need to relax.”

“Can’t,” Danny Boy said. “I’m too angry. People are meddling in my life, detectives are sticking their noses where they don’t belong and now my sister is telling me how to live. It’s gonna stop now.” He tore off his stained apron and threw it on the bar. “Watch the bar for me, okay, Bobby?”

“It’s late, dude. I got work in the morning.”

“You don’t have to come in until ten o’clock. I’ll pay.” Danny opened the cash register and took some bills out of the till. “Here’s fifty bucks. Take the keys. You know how to lock up. I need to get out of here now.”

“Thanks,” Bobby said.

Danny didn’t wait to hear Bobby’s thanks before he walked out. The customers watched Danny Boy’s exit in silence. Then the music blared again and the TV volume went back up. Once again men were watching the ball game, drinking, cheering and slapping one another on the back.

Helen gave up on her limp salad. “Can we leave now, Phil? I have to go into the gym at ten tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll drive,” Phil told her, and Helen happily handed over the keys to the Igloo. She was tired. “How do you think Danny’s sister found out about you?”

“Records clerk probably told her,” Phil said. “She was protecting her job.”

“Think you’ll still get the rest of Mark’s report faxed to you tomorrow?” Helen asked.

“I hope so. I made the request in writing. Danny’s sister knows there’s a paper trail, so she’ll be careful that I get some response. I just hope the clerk doesn’t fax me two pages of gibberish instead of the actual report.”

“I learned something, too,” Helen said. “I saw more bodybuilders in that back room, and Heather from my gym. She was the only one with a drink.”

“Did she see you?” Phil asked.

“No, and neither did Bobby.”

“Good,” Phil said.

Helen was half asleep by the time they were home. The Coronado Tropic Apartments shimmered in the moonlight. A soft breeze stirred the pool and made the palm trees whisper in the dark. Helen sighed and leaned against Phil. “We’re lucky to live here. It’s so beautiful.”

“Are you happy?” Phil asked her.

“Oh, yes.”

“Sorry we started our agency?”

“Never,” Helen said. “I like having our own business. I just wish I didn’t have to work out at Fantastic Fitness.”

“You can stop that as soon as you solve the case,” he said, patting her bottom. “I like you the way you are.”

She gave him a lingering kiss on the doorstep to his apartment. “I like this living arrangement, too,” she said. “Sleeping at your place makes us seem like lovers.”

“We are,” he said, and kissed her.

As Phil unlocked the door, they heard his phone ringing.

Helen’s heart was pounding. “Midnight phone calls are always bad news. I hope it’s not my sister.”

Phil put the phone on speaker so Helen could hear the conversation.

“Phil, it’s Gus.” Helen hardly recognized the burly mechanic’s voice. He sounded frightened. “You and Helen got to get over here. There’s blood everywhere.”

“Are you hurt?” Phil asked. “What about your wife? Should I call an ambulance?”

“I’m fine. Jeannie is spending the week with her sister in Vero Beach. I was working late at the shop and just walked in. Somebody broke in. My living room is a mess.”

“Is the burglar in the house?”

“I checked,” he said. “It’s empty.”

“Get out of there now, Gus,” Phil said. “Call 911.”

“I’m not calling the police until you see what he did first,” Gus said.

“Helen and I can be there in fifteen minutes. Give me your address and go sit in your car until we get there.”

“I’ll wait outside for you,” Gus said. “I can’t look at it anymore. It’s awful.”

Helen thought she heard tears in his voice.

“I don’t understand what happened,” Gus said. “I don’t know why they brought Mark back and splashed blood all over. Get here fast, okay?”

“M
ay you live forever, and may I never die.”

The cheerful voice gave Helen chills. She watched the beautiful Mark Behr lift his beer in his last toast. He was smiling, golden—and dead for a quarter of a century. Helen viewed the dead man through a veil of blood spattered across the television in Gus’s living room.

She watched Mark blow out the candles on his cake. The screen went dark, and the blood looked even grislier. Then the scene started again. Mark raised his beer in that deadly toast and smiled through the blood-splashed TV screen. He blew out the candles, and the blood-drenched screen went dark again.

Helen watched spellbound as Mark gave his fateful toast three times.

“That’s enough,” Gus said. “I can’t stand to watch it anymore.” He started to turn off the television.

“Don’t touch it,” Phil said. “The police need to dust your television for prints. Tell me again what happened.”

It was after midnight. Gus was bleary-eyed and grease stained. Helen, Phil and Gus made a weary cluster in Gus’s living room. The blood-splashed television sat on a dark wood stand across from a beige brocade couch flanked by cut-crystal lamps. The dark coffee table was crowned with a silk flower centerpiece. The blood-drenched television looked like a Halloween prop in this traditional living room.

“Can we go in the kitchen?” Gus said. “I haven’t showered, and I’m walking on this beige carpet in my work shoes. Jeannie tries to keep this room nice.”

He seemed more comfortable in the cheerful kitchen, splashed with bright tropical oranges, blues and yellows instead of blood.They sat down at the oak kitchen table.

“Coffee?” he asked.

“No,” Phil said. “We need you to tell us what happened. Then we’ll leave and you’ll call the police.”

“I got home about midnight,” Gus said, “and came in the front door. I was in the hall there, and I heard a voice. I knew Jeannie wasn’t home. I stood in the doorway and listened. It took me a minute to realize it was Mark talking. I hadn’t heard him for so long. I was tired and confused, but I knew something was wrong. I tiptoed out to my car again, got a tire iron out of the trunk, then went back inside.

“The lights were off, but the TV was on in the living room. That old tape of Mark’s birthday party was playing. Except it’s not a tape. That’s a DVD. I don’t have a tape player anymore. I watched it twice before I noticed I was looking at it through a red haze. There was blood everywhere—on the TV set and the stand. My wife’s going to kill me when she gets home.”

Phil went back into the living room, scratched a speck of blood off the TV with his fingernail and tasted it.