The Pink Flamingo Murders (13 page)

“I think you’re reaching, Francesca,” he said. “All you have is two murders—a crooked city employee and a drug dealer. Hawkeye’s death is suspicious, but you don’t know anything about him. He could have
been doing something risky, too. All he did was jog on Caroline’s grass. Do you think she’d kill him for that? She’s a rich woman. Rich people don’t commit murder. They sue you to death.”

I laughed, though I knew very well that the rich could be just as murderous as the poor, and they could hire better lawyers to escape the consequences.

“You can’t understand the tension on that street, Lyle,” I said, losing another battle with my dip cone. “Rehabbers are free spirits, and Caroline is trying to control them like a cross between a prison matron and a high school principal. She doesn’t want them parking their trucks out front. She yells at them if they walk on the grass. She calls the city inspectors if they disobey her. You can get by with that tight-assed behavior in the richer parts of West County. I heard about this Ladue subdivision where the neighbors go nuts if you didn’t close your garage door. But city people won’t put up with that kind of control.”

“They’re not putting up with it,” Lyle said. “They’re telling off Caroline.”

“And winding up dead,” I said.

“But you said Caroline has fought with just about everyone on the street. The others are still alive, aren’t they?”

I mentally ran down the list. Mrs. Grumbacher, the widow who had the city inspector all over her house when she didn’t paint fast enough to please Caroline, was alive. So was Mack, reprimanded for not cutting the grass. And Sally, whose boyfriend got a twenty-dollar ticket when he parked his pickup on North Dakota Place. Make that ex-boyfriend, thanks to Caroline.

“Yeah, they’re alive,” I said. “But they all did what Caroline wanted. Is that a coincidence, too?”

Another squiggly line of melting frozen custard escaped and ran down my fingers. I finished the last bite
and licked my fingers. Then I licked Lyle’s ear. He grabbed me and kissed me firmly. His lips were soft and sticky sweet, his tongue was hard and talented. “How’s that for South Side soul?” he asked when we came up for air.

“Very nice,” I said. “I think we’re giving those West Countians quite a show. Now they’re pointing at us.”

“Let them find their own entertainment,” he said. “My place, or yours?”

The next day I was sitting nervously in Katie’s office at the city medical examiners, wondering what horror was lurking here. Katie didn’t have anything obviously awful in her morgue office, like jars of pickled people’s feet. She was more subtle, but I knew it could be stomach-turning just the same. I was already unnerved by the faint smell of spoiled meat that seemed to seep under the door.

Katie sure didn’t look like a morgue creature. Her short brown hair was shiny and springy and she had a healthy tan. She’d even remembered to change into a fresh lab coat, so I wouldn’t be grossed out by any suspicious stains. I inventoried her office. The shelves still held fat, dignified medical books, the walls were covered with framed diplomas and honor society certificates, and her golf putter was in the corner. Then I saw it, in plain view on top of her desk. It was long and shiny, with a lethal-looking metal club on one end.

“Is that a murder weapon?” I asked.

“It’s been used to beat a man pretty badly, but he’ll survive,” Katie said, and grinned. “It’s my new putter.” She stashed it in the corner, next to her old one.

“What happened to the guy who collapsed on the golf course?”

“He’ll live,” Katie said. “It wasn’t a heart attack. He had heat exhaustion, which gave him severe muscle
cramps and chest pains, which scared the heck out of him. Happens a lot on golf courses in the good old Midwest.”

“So what did you and Mitch do for him?”

“There was only one bottle of water around, and a lot of beer, so we had his three pals dump their cold beer on him, which they thought was the ultimate sacrifice for a friend. That helped cool the guy down. Then we made him drink the water, something that hadn’t passed his lips for a while. By that time EMS showed up and took him off to the emergency room. Mitch and I resumed our game, and it went a little faster with that foursome out of the way. I won, Mitch bought the beer, and then I called the ER. The guy had been treated and released. I haven’t seen him in here, so I assume he’s okay.” Katie leaned back in her chair and stretched.

“That’s the good news,” I said. “Now for the bad. How did the jogger fall and kill himself?”

“He didn’t fall,” Katie said. “He was murdered. Your neighborhood is getting downright dangerous, Francesca. That’s the third murder I’ve seen. The uniforms who answered the call saw something was wrong right away. I just confirmed it. Somebody did a bad job of trying to make a murder look like an accident. Your friend Mayhew figured out that a thin wire or fishing line had been stretched across the alley—he didn’t find the wire, but he did find the nails the killer used to hang it on.”

“That explained why I found Mayhew examining Dina’s fence and the nail on the garage across the alley,” I said. “How do you know it was wire?”

“That’s the best guess, judging by the injuries. Fishing line has a better chance of breaking. Mayhew spotted the thin line the wire made across the guy’s neck.”

“And that killed him?”

“No, he was only stunned when he fell. Probably
knocked him out for a minute or so. But he died of repeated blows to the head, and they were not caused by the fall. They were inflicted later. Somebody beat the victim so hard with a brick or rock, it killed him.”

I shuddered. What an ugly end for the hunky Hawk-eye. “You’re sure it wasn’t a bad fall? That alley is paved with bricks, and some of them get loose. He could have hit one.”

“No way,” Katie said. “I examined his head and saw his X rays. Skull fractures look different when someone is hit repeatedly as opposed to when the person falls. The murderer probably used a brick, but the police didn’t find the actual weapon. It would be easy to remove and toss away later. What a waste. Such a fine physical specimen, and now he’s a hundred and ninety pounds of meat.”

“The man was beautiful,” I said. “You should have seen him running through the grass. I don’t like Caroline much, but she was right to warn him to stay out of that alley. She said some kids were playing dangerous pranks back there, boobytrapping the alley.”

“Kids?” Katie said. “This wasn’t done by kids, and it wasn’t any prank. Kids might have gotten lucky and knocked the guy out with the wire, but they wouldn’t smash his head with a brick. He was killed by someone who was very angry. The killer literally beat his head in.”

I shuddered. “We called him Hawkeye, but I know that wasn’t his name. I don’t know what he did for a living, either.”

“I have that information,” she said. She paged through the autopsy report. “His name was Johnny Morano. He had an apartment on Maryland Avenue in the Central West End. He was unmarried, twenty-nine years old, and a bartender at the Meet Rack, a singles’ bar on Laclede’s Landing.”

Katie’s beeper sounded. She read the number and jumped up. “Gotta go,” she said.

So did I. As I walked outside to my car, the heat hit me in the face. It was like walking into a burning building. The temperature had to be near a hundred degrees. My suit jacket was soaked with sweat on the short walk. My panty hose felt like wet bandages. I wondered if it was possible to strangle from the waist down. Ralph’s leather car seat burned my legs. His steering wheel was almost too hot to hold. Only after the air conditioning cooled off my car could I think about Hawkeye’s death—excuse me, Johnny’s. Now that he was dead, he at least deserved the respect of his real name.

Did Caroline kill Johnny Hawkeye? No, that was crazy. Caroline was a respected businesswoman. She wouldn’t kill a jogger for running on her grass. Anyway, it wasn’t her grass. It was the city’s. But Caroline acted like the grass was hers. Heck, she carried oh like she’d personally adopted each blade. And Johnny Hawkeye didn’t just run on the grass. He humiliated Caroline—and she seemed fairly unhinged to begin with. She didn’t sleep much. She worked almost around the clock. She made harsh, ridiculous rules and expected people to follow them without question, as if she were a queen giving commands. I’d seen her get into screaming fights with three people. Who were now dead.

Still, as Lyle said, rich people didn’t kill, they sued you to death. But how could she sue Johnny Hawkeye? He wasn’t doing anything illegal. He was running on a public parkway and in a public alley. Johnny had a mean mouth and a serious stubborn streak, both ideal for a feud with Caroline. South Siders loved feuds better than the Hatfields and McCoys. They could start over something as small as a grass blade and go on for decades. I knew a woman who didn’t speak to her own
sister for fifty years over a twenty-five-dollar savings bond. One of my aunts didn’t talk to her husband for twenty years over a button he wanted her to sew on his shirt. She had three kids during that time, too, but that was her wifely duty.

None of the deaths, except Otto’s, had actually occurred on North Dakota Place, and the
Gazette
had reported Otto’s as an accident. There was no follow-up story when the autopsy concluded Otto was actually murdered, because the
Gazette
publisher did not like murder stories in his newspaper. So North Dakota Place’s reputation was saved. Thanks to the publisher’s desire for gracious living, nobody knew how deadly life was on North Dakota Place—or how profitable death was. Caroline would make a handsome profit from Otto’s death. She’d bought his house cheap from his nephew.

I remembered that “Under Contract” sign on the burned-out drug dealer’s house. Was Caroline buying that place, too? Why would she want it? Why would anyone want it? I knew who I could ask. Tracy McCreery, the real estate agent for the house. She’d given me a funny column once, and I’d helped her by talking to her real estate association when a speaker canceled at the last minute. Tracy owed me one. She could tell me who had the house under contract. I found a pay phone and was instantly sorry I’d left my cool car. The heat shimmered on the pavement, and my heels sank into the melting blacktop. One of these days, I’d have to give up my prejudice against car phones. Tracy was in her office when I called. I said I wanted to ask her some questions about rehabbing. She sounded extremely cheerful.

“Hey, Francesca,” Tracy said. “I thought I’d take an afternoon off for a change and sit by the pool.”

“Your city flat has a pool?” That was a rarity.

“Nothing but zoysia grass in my backyard,” she
said. “But I’m house-sitting a friend’s condo in West County, and it has a very nice clubhouse and pool. Might as well see how the other half lives. I’ll have my kid with me, but Michelle will be in the water most of the time. There’s always a nice cool breeze. Why don’t you come along and ask me your questions there?”

“Love it,” I said. “I can’t go swimming, but I’ll be happy to sit around and call it work.” Tracy gave me an address in the far west suburb of Manchester. Forty minutes later I pulled off Woods Mill Road and into the condo subdivision. The condos were red brick with white balconies and shrubs just high enough to hide the air conditioner units. Tracy met me at the door wearing her swimsuit and holding two glasses of cold lemonade. She led the way to the pool. Her five-year-old daughter, Michelle, capered around us in her pink Little Mermaid suit, crying “Mommeee, look!” every thirty seconds. I wondered how Mommeee managed to act interested, but Tracy didn’t seem to be faking it. I guess a real five-year-old was better than the people at my office, who just acted like five-year-olds. At the pool, Michelle ran off to splash around in the shallow end with two other girls in Little Mermaid suits. We found two white plastic lounges to watch Michelle while we talked. I took off my suit jacket, rolled up my sleeves, kicked off my shoes, and settled in. With a breeze to cool things down, the sun felt good on my face and arms, and the strong chlorine and coconut suntan oil smell conjured up lost summer days. The other folks at the pool were moms and retirees. Two of those old guys were going to step on their tongues if they kept staring at Tracy in her black suit. The woman was built, even if she did hide a lot of it with a modest one-piece suit. She’d really attracted the attention of a wrinkled old guy who sported a tiny leopard pattern Speedo suit, an enormous gut, and a neck full
of gold chains. He looked like a mummy who’d escaped his wrappings.

“You’d think those gold chains would burn his neck in the sun,” Tracy said.

“Keep America beautiful,” I said. “Keep your shirt on, sir.”

We both laughed. I don’t think Mr. Leopard heard what we were saying, but he guessed it wasn’t flattering. He retired to the other side of the pool to read his Tom Clancy and sulk.

“Congratulations for getting the contract on the Ratley Street house,” I said.

“Talk about a fire sale,” Tracy said. “The day after it burned, I had an offer.”

“Who would buy a burned-out house?”

“There’s no serious structural damage. If you were planning to rehab it, you’d have to gut it anyway. Before the fire, the owner had, shall we say, an optimistic view of its value. He refused my suggestions to fix it up and lower the price. He rented to that awful tenant without a reference check, because the guy paid him in cash. No buyers in their right minds would look at that dump. We only listed it as a favor to the manager, who went to church with this guy. I couldn’t show it, and I thought I’d never sell it.