A Dash of Murder (8 page)

Zach continued to sulk as we walked. I glanced at my watch. It was nearly eight o’clock, and it was getting close to Zach’s bedtime. Thinking of my schedule for the next few days, I figured we would need to make one more stop before going home. We walked on the sidewalk to the back of the courth
ouse where the parking lot was.

“So Zach,” I said, changing the subject. “How about you and I go down to SuperWally and look for a co
stume for you for the campout?”

He uncrossed his arms and smiled slowly. “That would be cool,” he said, his voice rising a note with each word. He loved going to the local superstore, and he loved Halloween shopping, so the argument over t
he abandoned hospital vanished.

“I know just what I
want to be – an axe murderer.”

“No.”

“Mo-om,” Zach intoned as if
a dying tea kettle, “why not?”

“First of all, it’s too violent. You will be out there with little kids, an
d you could scare one of them.”

Aunt Maggie, who had been following us with Danny, added, “Zachary, do you really want to go through the whole night w
ith sticky red stuff all over?”

“Yuck,” grimaced Danny.

He droned on. “Mo-om, it’s Halloween. You think they’re going to see littl
e fluffy blue bears all night?”

We walked to the large glass doors and pushed
them open into the muggy night.

“I don’t know, but you don’t have to add to the scar
y stuff they will see,” I said.

“How about you go as one of them s
uper heroes?” Aunt Maggie said.

“I don’t look good in tights.” Zach folded his arms back across his chest in frustration. I hated seeing him do that, because it was a mannerism Barry had been particularly fond of. How could he learn that ges
ture if he hadn’t ever met him?

“Okay, how about going as somethi
ng from a video game?” I asked.

Zach nodded his head slowly in interest with this new idea. “Hmmm, m
aybe I could go as … a zombie.”

“Oh dear, I guess we’re parked on the other side, dearie,” my aunt said. “Get your rest and don’t be too late pic
king out just the right getup.”

“Bye Betsy. Bye Zach,” Danny said. We waved and walked on alone. In an effort to save the town money, the new mayor had deemed the parking lot lights be turned off at 8 p.m. The moonlight shed a weak illumi
nation on the trees and bushes.

“So what do you think of the zombie idea?” Zach continued as we walked in the blackness. A bush to the side stirred. I tried to focus into it through the darkness. The light was too dim for me to see if there was a person next to the bush. This whole paranormal business had me looking at anything that moved in the shadows. Zach had stopped waiting for me to answer. He continued making what he thought was an exceptional bargain
.

“They only have a little blood, you know, if they’ve just eaten someone’s brains or somethin
g,” he said as if to assure me.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said and shrugged. I had seen “Night of the Living Dead” as a kid and couldn’t g
et it out of my head for weeks.

“So can I be a zombie? Please?” Zach put his hands together as if to beg for the last
morsel of bread on the planet.

“I’ll think about it.” I honestly didn’t have a strong enough reaso
n to tell him no, but a zombie?

I had pulled into a space that skirted a bank of trees next to the parking lot. As we approached it, I could see our headlights dim
ly lighting the shadowy trunks.

“Oh no,” I said. Had I actually done this? Had I left my lights on?

“What’s wrong, Mom?”

I ran to the car and unlocked the door and hopped in. I put the key in the ignition and turned it, only to be greeted with the sound of the syncop
ated rhythm of a dying starter.

Zach listened. “Mom, our car sounds sic
k. Try turning the key harder.”

“And when was it that you got that certific
ate in automobile mechanics?”

“Sorry,” he replied. He waited while I turned the key harder, to no avail. His mind still on the costume, Zach went o
n with our former conversation.

“Okay, here
’s another idea for Halloween.”

“And what would that be?” I ask
ed, sucking in my breath.

“Get this,” he said.
“I want to be a mad scientist.”

I tried the key one more time, only to be greeted with the same noise, just a little weaker this time. “A mad scientist?
That’s it? Well that’s doable.”

I looked around the parking lot to see if other people were heading out to their cars. It seemed everyone had parked in the front this evening. I wondered if the shadow in the bushes had any jumper cables. I started calculating how late SuperWally would be open if I had to call a tow truck. Too bad I didn’t have a hint in my book for startin
g a car with a drained battery.

“Of course we’ll need to find a chainsaw and so
me fake blood,” Zach continued.

“Excuse me? Did you say a chainsaw? This is starting to sound surprisingly sim
ilar to the axe murderer idea.”

“Uh, he
is a MAD scientist after all.”

“Couldn’t you just carry a test tube around or something? A chainsaw c
an get pretty heavy, you know.”

“Mom! Not a real chainsaw!” He looked at me in shock. “I could hurt myself. I am a kid, you know. I mean a toy one. You can get one at the s
tore with blood painted on it.”

What has our society come to when a child could go to a store and pick up a bloody chainsaw toy? “I see. What about a white lab coat? Can I get one of those there
as well?”

“Nah. The only kinds of costumes they have are princesses and comic book guys.” Zach sighed and tapped his chin with his finger. “Maybe … we could ask Grandpa’s friend, Mr. Rivera. He is a coroner, after all. I’m sure he must have some mad scie
ntist stuff somewhere.

Knowing Art, he would probably say yes to the request. I just hoped he didn’t give Zach any rea
l blood to put on the chainsaw.

“You think you could ask
him if he has one?” Zach asked.

“Sure,” I answered.

It was then I finally acc
epted my car was dead.

“I think we’re stuck.”

“Call Grandpa,” Zach said.

“Zach, I can survive on
e day without calling Grandpa.”

“Call Grandpa.”

I grumbled and then pulled out my cell phone and dialed my dad’s number. After just a few admonishments, my dad told me that he was on his way out the door. Barry’s old car had died, even
though I turned the key harder.

Zach and I waited there, sitting in the darkened car. Zach pushed a little button on the side of his Scout watch to illuminate it. It was around 8:15. If my dad got here in the next few minutes, we would still have time to look around for a costume at SuperWally. I looked out at the shadows playing amid the bushes. A slight breeze ruffled the branches. Finally, the lights of my dad’s cruiser dro
ve into the parking lot.

I popped the hood as he exited his car with the jumper cables.

“So you left your lights on?” he said, not feeling the need to start with the
customary greeting of “hello.”

“Uh, yeah, I really appr
eciate you coming out to help.”

“Where else would I be when my daughter and grandson need my help?” Zach crawled out of his side of the
car and tapped on my shoulder.

“Is this a good time to tell you that I promised the Scouts that you would bring some of your homemade cookies to the c
ampout?”

I could not express in words how much this wasn’t a good time to tell me this. “You prom
ised and then forgot? Oh Zach.”

“Please, Mom. All the kids are depending on me. I told them that you bake great cookies. You can do it. You have time. Please
?”

“Ugh. I don’t know, Zach. I’ll
have to work on them tonight.”

“Thanks, Mom! You’re the best.”

“Yep, that’s me.”

My dad chuckled. “Sweetheart, did I ever tell you how nice it is to see all of the junk you did to me as a parent coming back to zing you
with Zach?”

I rolled my eyes. “Glad to ma
ke life so sweet for you, Dad.”

Zach got inside the cruiser in the back seat and started bouncing up and down. Someone driving by must have thought my dad had just arrested the
town’s most notorious kangaroo.

“Grandpa, are you taking us to get a costume? Are you?”
Zach yelled from the backseat.

My dad raised his eyebrows, wondering what I had just gotten him into. “
I hadn’t planned on it, sport.”

“Mom and I were going to SuperWally to get me a costume. I need it
for the campout this weekend.”

“A costume at a campout? I don
’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“It gets worse. He wants to go as something sc
ary like an a guy with an axe.”

My dad scowled. “Why would you want to go as one of the bad guys, Zach? How about you get on the right side of the law. Would you like to be a junior deputy for the one and only
Pecan Bayou Police Department?”

Zach’s e
yes widened. “I could do that?”

“Well, we don’t bestow that honor on just anyone, mind you, but I know your upstanding character, and I can speak
for you, so the answer is yes.”

“Cool!” He bounced even more.

My dad looked around from under the hood of my c
ar. “Okay, sweetheart. Try it.”

I pressed on the gas in my car a
nd heard it come to life again.

“You’re going to need to replace that battery, Betsy,” my father said as he disconnected the cables from the positive and negative ports of the batteries. “What do you say Zach comes home with me and we’ll lo
ok at some of my old uniforms?”

“Thanks, Grandpa! That would be
excellent!”

“Thanks, Dad,” I echoed.

“And then maybe we could spill a little fake blood on the front,” Zach
said softly, almost to himself.

“NO!” My dad
and I both answered in unison.

“Tell you what. I’ll take Zach over to my house, find an old uniform for him, and he can just spend the night. That way you can dedicate all of your time to m
aking those delicious cookies.”

“Thanks, Dad.” I reached across to hug his shou
lder, and he turned and smiled.

“That
is, if you save a few for me.”

“Deal.”
 

I knew I needed eggs if I was going to be baking all night, so I stopped off at the Best Buys Grocery Store. As I pulled in to park, I noticed that Zach had left part of his math homework in the passenger side, and it looked as if it was about to slide under the seat. I turned off the car and reached down to attempt to pull out the paper, which had become wedged in the metal bars that moved the seat back and forth. As it continued to stick, I reached my hand under the seat, a little worried what else might come out with it. I tried to grab for the paper but came up with something lumpy and metal instead. I nudged my hand further back and found the co
rner of paper and slid it out.

Curious as to what else was down there, I slid my hand under the seat again and tried pulling out the small object. I could feel the familiar metal ridges of keys. I couldn’t remember the last time I had lost my keys. I had always been pretty responsible about hanging my keys on a peg in the kitchen. Barry, on the other hand, had misplaced his keys at least once a week, and I know we had to replace them at least once during our short marriage. The one time I teased him about it, he blew up at me and told me to quit nagging him. I remember how much it had surprised me at how sensitive he became at the slightest criticism. Reaching around the back end of the seat, I pulled out the long-forgotten keys. I held them up to the light shining from the post of
the grocery store parking lot.

There were several keys on the ring and a keychain ornament with a Canfield Investments logo on it. Could this be an old set of Barry’s keys? How long had they been down there? There were only a couple of keys on the ring, so they were probably his office keys. They had been wedged under the seat, which explains why my
car vacuuming had missed them.

I remembered his old office in the bank building downtown. I had brought in some plants to help with the decorating, but then I only visited a few times after that. Barry would always put off my suggestions to come downtown for lunch. He told me that he preferred to be all business at work, and then he added, almost as an afterthought, that I would be too much of a distraction for him. Now I knew he just didn’t want me finding out about whatever it was he and Canfield were doing. If Canfield had returned to that office when he came back to Pecan Bayou, I wondered if the keys would still work. I also wondered how he was paying the rent without a partner to split the cost. I hadn’t seen any real estate signs with Canfi
eld’s name on them around town.

After Barry had disappeared, Oliver Canfield did come by the house one time to bring a box of Barry’s things. He sat on the edge of our old couch and told me if I needed anything just to call him. It probably would have sounded like a legitimate offer if he hadn’t been out my front do
or within the next two minutes.

I thought of Barry as I held his keys in my hands once again. Keys that he had forgotten, that had stayed buried in this old car for the past seven years. I fingered the metal ridges. I wondered if they would still work. No, I couldn’t. I had to buy eggs and bake cookies. I stuffed the keys into my purse and headed for the grocery store. As I stood at the checkout a few minutes later, I noticed all of the pregnant celebrities on the cover of the gossip magazines. Now, if a woman was pregnant and in Hollywood, she was delicately phrased as having a “baby bump.” That way she could still be seen on the beach in her bikini sporting her “bump” but still looking incredibly beautiful. I thought about Celia, who had much more than a “bump” to carry around. Even though she was much bigger than the starlets I saw pictured on the magazines, she was also just as beautiful, even if she couldn’t get her wedding ring on anymore. I wondered if she thought to take it off before her hands got bigger or if she had to use butter to get her ring off. When I had been pregnant with Zach, I didn’t know my hands would swell. I barely got my ring off in time. Canfield’s hand came to my mind. Had he been trying to take a ring off just before he was shot? There were so many
things I still needed to know.

“Did you find everything you ne
eded?” the checkout girl asked.

“Just
about,” I answered. Just about.

*****

I held Barry’s keys in my hands as I turned the steering wheel into the parking lot of the bank building. It wasn’t as if I were going to the crime scene. I had been offered an opportunity to look inside Canfield’s office and see just what he and probably Barry had been up to all those years ago. If my dad had been given this opportunity, he might have done
the same thing, I rationalized.

I looked up at the town’s oldest two-story building. It housed our bank, which was situated at the end of a two-story atrium lined with smaller offices. I slipped into the main lobby door. There was the unmistakable odor of cleaning products in the air, and I saw a cleaning cart outfitted with squirt bottles and a large trash bag holder. A woman looked down as she cleaned inside an accounting office. A strain of tinny portable radio musi
c drifted across the open area.

Not wanting to take a chance she would look up, I waited until she turned her back to vacuum in an inner office. I darted across the lobby to the stairway leading to the second floor. My eyes shot to the accountant’s door again, and I could hear a chorus of singers coming over the radio. Whoever was cleaning probably wouldn’t hear me ascend the stairway. I took off up the stairs, got to the top and looked down again on the open lobby. The woman pushed the vacuum out of the back office and started emptying trash cans. I blended into the sha
dows on the unlit second floor.

I pulled out my keys and tried the lock. Whether I had the right keys for the lock became a moot point as I realized that the door was already unlocked. Maybe it had been opened for the cleaning lady. If so, I would need to make this a speedy search. I was in. Canfield’s office looked as if it had been updated since Barry’s days. My plants were gone and replaced by tasteful potted palms. There was a large oak desk next to a brown stone wall and a leather couch next to a large window. The wood floors shone and were tastefully covered with
a brown and gold oriental rug.

Using what little light I had streaming in from the downstairs lobby, I started going through the items on Canfield’s desk. There were no pictures of a wife, and if Canfield had any children, there was no trace of them. Reaching into the middle drawer, I found an appointment book. I leafed through the pages of the small book to see that he had spent the year in various deals around the state with appointments in Dallas and Fort Worth, as well as Pecan Bayou. On the Wednesday before his death, he had an appointment with Benny and one with someone named Bitsy. He also had a scheduled time next to a scrawled JTB, which I had to assume was the Johnson Tuberculosis Hospital. This appointm
ent was with someone named Roy.

I knew who Benny was, but who the heck was Bitsy? I couldn’t remember a soul in town named Roy. I searched further and found a sketch of what looked like a layout for a mall. That must have been his idea for the property. Pecan Bayou did not have a mall as of yet. Most people drove over to Andersonville to do their department-store s
hopping.

I searched through his right desk drawer. I found memo pads, business cards and a few scattered breath mints. My hand skimmed over something sticking up in the back. I tried to grasp it as all of Canfield’s business cards came sliding toward me. I seemed to be lifting out the bottom of the drawer. I pulled it completely out, letting the cards and mints hit the floor. I had stumbled onto a hidden section in the drawer. There were several credit cards and a couple of identification cards with Oliver Canfield’s picture on them, but not his name. One said Javier Torres and another had the name Oscar Bianchi. It seemed Mr. Canfield, or whoever he was, had more than one identity. I looked at the credit cards and was surprised to see they were all issued to women. Ruby Morris, Martha Johnson, Molly Baumgartner and – I couldn’t believe it – Maureen Boyle. What was he doing with her credit card? Did he steal it from her, or did she give it to him? If I hadn’t just broken into this office, I would be calling my dad right now. Trying to explain how I learned this information was a conversation I didn
’t want to be having right now.

I looked for Canfield’s computer. There was an empty area on his desk where it should have been. The police were probably searching through his hard
drive for their investigation.

I turned around and headed toward a row of filing cabinets on the back wall. Upon opening the first drawer, I found files listed by property. It seemed Mr. Canfield closed more real estate deals than I had been aware of. In the next drawer, the files were listed by last name. Once again I saw some of the same names I had seen printed on the credit cards. I reached for the file marked “Maureen Boyle” when suddenly the reflection from the lobby lights went black. Upon turning around, l looked through to the glassed-in front office. The entire building was dark. Had there been a power outage? I walked forward a few steps and felt pain shoot up my leg as my knee collided with the corner of Canfield’s desk. I placed my hands on the desk for leverage and tried to see the path to Canfield’s office doorway. I heard a soft sound in the next room. Could that be the outer door opening? Had the cleaning lady come up here? I crouched down by the desk. If it was her, I couldn’t let her see me. I could hear breathing as whoever it was moved around the r
oom. I tried to hold my breath.

My phone jangled “The Eyes of Texas are Upon You.” I jammed my hand into my
pocket, trying to grab at it.

“Dad!” I whispered a scream. Then pain spread across my skull as something hard
hit me in the back of the head.

*****

I came to with a sudden jolt as I coughed to clear something in my chest. I coughed again, feeling pain as my lungs labored to breathe. Smoke was everywhere. My eyes fixed on a bright light now illuminating the doorway. Was the office on fire? Staying away from the clouds of smoke I saw billowing above me, I started crawling towards the door. My head throbbed, and I recognized the coppery taste of blood in my mouth. As I came close to the fire, I forced myself to stand up, although my head felt like a giant bell was ringing inside of it. I took a deep breath and immediately went into another cough for my efforts. I shut my eyes and leapt over a darting flame, ready to feel the impact of my body hitti
ng the floor on the other side.

“Betsy!” The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t make out the figure, other than it was a man. As he drew closer to me, I started backing towards the painful heat of the flames. Was this Canfield’s killer? He edged in closer
and grabbed me under the arms.

“It’s okay, Betsy. It’s me, Leo,” he said gently. “We have to get out of here now.” We hobbled together to the stairs. We were now overlooking more dancing flames edging toward us on the bottom fl
oor.

“Can you get down the stairs?” he yelle
d over the thunder of the fire.

“I’ll try,” I said as I tried to see my own feet on the floor. How was it that the plac
e was on fire and spinning too?

I put both hands on the stair railing to find it was hot, so I held on to Fitzpatrick behind me. Together we started down the stairs, one by one. When we reached t
he bottom, we ran for the door.

The cleaning cart was now abandoned by the accountant’s office. I wondered if the cleaning woman got out. I tried to tell Fitzpatrick about her but couldn’t seem to speak very well. What if she was trapped in there? I could see the red-and-blue flash of the fir
e trucks and police department.

Running in from the street with Zacha
ry in pajamas, I saw my father.

Zachary ran into my arms. “Mom!” was all he screamed before burying his head into my shoulder. Fitzpatrick stepped back. My dad, heaving the sigh of a father whose daughter couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble, watched the building grow into a larger blaze. “Betsy, what the hell were you doing in there? I thought y
ou were going to bake cookies!”

“I was,” I confessed that I found an old set of Barry’s keys. “I was in Can
field’s office. I had to know.”

“It was a damn fool idea. That’s what it was. You could have been killed, do you know that? Now I’m thinkin’ having that GPS gadget on your phone w
as the best idea you ever had.”

“Mom,” Zach joined his grandfather in scolding me, “you coul
d have been killed. It was a …”

“Okay, okay,” I answered, holding my hand up to stop the two-generation lecture.

“Thank God Mr. Fitzpatrick pu
lled you out of the building.”

I looked around behind us. I saw the cleaning lady now sitting on the curb with a paramedi
c putting a blanket around her.

“Where did he go?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” my father said, turning around in the parkin
g lot in an effort to find him.

“That’s strange,” I said. “Why woul
d he go running off like that?”

“And what the hell was he doing here in the first place?” said my dad.