Murder Hooks a Mermaid (22 page)

“I’ll move the car over there,” Jake said, climbing in behind the wheel. “Bobo will cheer you up. Especially if you brought anything he can have.”

“I did. How could I come with a bag of goodies and not bring something for Bobo?”

Jake parked next to the chain-link fence at the back of Fowler’s service area.

The junkyard, which I had initially thought belonged to Fowler, butted against the parking lot. Just inside the fence was an area the local police used for a secure impound lot. A row of mostly intact cars and small trucks faced the parking lot, grease-pencil markings telling the time and date they had been impounded. Behind them was a row of larger pickups and big trucks parked parallel to the fence, effectively creating a barrier between the vehicles and the actual junkyard.

We got out and walked around to the gate, which was chained but not locked. The padlock that would secure the chain hung open, allowing us to swing the big gate open.

At the sound of the squeaky hinges, Bobo came bounding toward us at a run. When he spotted who we were, he slowed slightly, wiggling in doggy greeting, his tail wagging.

I handed the pastry bag to Jake and crouched down to greet Bobo. I petted his broad head and scratched behind his ears. He was a mutt of the junkyard variety, but I could see clearly the influence of Rottweiler ancestors in his dark coat and large head full of sharp teeth. If you didn’t know him, he would look menacing.

We followed Bobo around the row of trucks and past the metal racks of car parts that held Sly’s extensive inventory. The shelves, reaching higher than my head, held large pieces of metal, engine blocks, cylinder heads, manifolds, and dozens of smaller parts I couldn’t identify. They crowded together in a mystifying jumble that only Sly seemed able to understand.

A small forklift, used to reach the top shelves, blocked our path, and we detoured around it.

That’s when I saw the Civic.

I gasped. My knees buckled momentarily, and I grabbed Jake’s hand to steady myself.

I knew it was being towed, but I hadn’t thought about to where. It made sense it would be here until the insurance company and fire department were through with it.

I just hadn’t been prepared to confront it.

“Miss Glory!”

Sly had come out of the cinder-block building where he lived. He caught sight of me and hurried over, trying to put himself between me and the Civic.

I gave him a hug.

Jake wandered over, peering closely at the Civic. It was the first look we’d had in the daylight. The damage was worse than I had imagined, and the stench of burned plastic clung to the wreckage like a heavy blanket.

The tires had melted, leaving the car sitting on the rims.
There was no paint left, just a layer of crumbling black residue. All the windows stood empty, even though I had closed them tightly when I parked it. Headlights and taillights had broken or melted, leaving behind gaping holes.

The interior was worse. Exposed springs showed where the seats had been, stinky black puddles all that remained of the worn vinyl upholstery.

I watched as Jake walked around the car, occasionally poking at a piece of debris with the point of a pencil. He craned his neck through one of the windows, examining the back seat without touching anything.

The hood was buckled where the firefighters had pried it open to reach the fire in the engine compartment. Broken wires jutted from unrecognizable chunks of metal, their insulation melted in the heat of the flames.

It made some kind of sense to Jake, who nodded and made little humming noises every couple minutes. I guessed he’d had a class in fire investigation as part of his training, and he was getting a chance to try out what he’d learned.

At his side, Bobo’s attention was riveted on the bakery bag, his sensitive nose quivering in response to the tempting smells coming from the bag.

I took the bag from Jake, digging out one of the doggy-safe treats. “May I?” I asked Sly. He nodded, and I let Bobo see what I had.

“Sit!” I commanded. Sly insisted that Bobo mind his manners, and he’d taught me how to make the big dog behave.

Bobo immediately plopped his hindquarters down in the dust, waiting with high-voltage anticipation for the hard baked, bone-shaped treat. Pansy couldn’t let dogs in The
Lighthouse, but she provided water dishes on the sidewalk and canine-friendly items alongside her chocolate muffins and lemon scones.

Like Jake’s chairs and my parrot, it was one of the things that made our little downtown shopping strip a friendly place to visit.

“Good boy.” I tossed the treat, and he leaped into the air, catching it on the fly. His massive jaws crushed the faux bone, and the pieces quickly disappeared. It was an impressive display and one that made me glad I was a friend. I wouldn’t want to be on Bobo’s bad side.

I handed the bag to Sly. “There’s a couple more Bobo treats, and some of Miss Pansy’s muffins for you.”

“That’s mighty nice of you, Miss Glory. No man in his right mind would turn down anything that came out of Miss Pansy’s oven.” He peeked in the bag, inhaled deeply, and sighed. “I do believe I could use a muffin this afternoon.”

He looked back at me. “But don’t think this gets you out of telling me about that parrot. You promised me a story.”

“You’ll get it,” I answered. “But first you need to answer a question for me: just how well
did
you know my Uncle Louis?”

Sly stood motionless for a full minute. He drew a deep breath and looked over at Jake, then back at me. “Y’all better come inside where we can get comfortable.”

Chapter 26

THE INSIDE OF SLY’S SMALL HOME WAS NOTHING
like I’d expected. That he was close to seventy and a life-long bachelor created an expectation of dark, mismatched furniture, selected for comfort and functionality rather than decorative potential.

Instead, I found myself in a spacious room that felt like something out of a Caribbean vacation brochure. The rattan settee was covered with cream-colored cushions and littered with pillows in bright hues. Sparkling glass topped the bent-wood tables, and several large plants softened the whitewashed cement block walls.

The layout was a lot like my apartment: The kitchen opened into the living area, with a small dining table in the space between. There were two doors on the far wall, and I was willing to bet they led to a bedroom and bathroom.

A huge grin split Sly’s dark face, exposing the gaps where he’d lost teeth. “Not what you were expecting, was it, girl?”

At a loss for answers, I shook my head.

“My daddy was from around here, but my mama came from the Dominican Republic. She worked for a very wealthy American family and came here with them when she was still a young girl. She married my daddy and stayed here the rest of her life, but she always talked about her home.” He gestured at the vibrant colors and the lush greenery. “I know this isn’t how it really was, not for a poor family. But it still reminds me of my mama.”

It was the longest speech I’d ever heard him make. A wave of understanding and regret washed over me.

I had gone in the opposite direction, divesting myself and my home of everything that reminded me of my parents, shunning reminders of my loss. But Sly had embraced his mementos and honored his mama and daddy.

Maybe it was time for me to do the same. I filed that question away for later examination. Frankly, it scared the hell out of me.

“It’s a lovely home,” I said. “You must be very comfortable here.”

Sly went into the kitchen. He took cobalt blue mugs from a lemon yellow cupboard and put them on the counter. “I put the coffee on when Bobo said there was company,” he explained as he filled the mugs. “Didn’t know I’d have muffins to go with it, though,” he added as he emptied the bakery bag.

I took a mug of coffee but waved away his offer of a muffin. “I just had a scone. I brought those for you.”

Sly nodded and put the plate on one of the glass-top tables. “In case you change your mind.”

Sly gestured to the settee. Jake and I took the invitation and sat down. Sly took a chair across from me.

“I’ll tell you about your uncle,” he said. “But first I
want to hear about what happened to your car. And then you owe me an explanation ’bout that parrot.”

I gave Sly a rundown on the fire, leaving out the most incriminating parts. When I finished, he gave me a stern look. “So you two girls are out digging around in this bad business, and suddenly your car catches fire? Sounds pretty suspicious to me. Maybe you ought to take it easy for a few days.”

“Does to me, too,” Jake agreed. “But in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s pretty hard to tell this lady what to do.”

“But we have to do something! They arrested Bobby, and they think he killed that agent.”

“And you’re chasing around looking for the guys who did,” Jake said. “It appears someone is objecting to your poking around.” He turned to Sly. “You try to talk some sense into her.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Since whoever it is is already mad at me, it won’t matter if I keep looking. So there isn’t anything to talk about.”

I turned back to Sly. “You promised to tell me about Uncle Louis, and how you knew him.”

“He was a good man,” Sly said. “Treated me like a real person, even when most of the white folks ’round here didn’t agree with him.”

He got a faraway look in his eyes, as though watching the past play out on a distant movie screen. “I was just a baby when Mister Louis came back to Keyhole Bay. It was right after the war, the big one. I was one of those baby boomers they talk about, ’cept mostly they’re talking about white folks. But there were black baby boomers, too.

“Anyway, I grew up right here in this house. Went to what they called the ‘colored school’ back then, out in Piney Ridge. Didn’t have buses back then, but my daddy
fixed up an old bike for me, and most days I rode my bike to school, right up to the time I graduated high school.”

I tried to imagine what Sly had gone through to get an education. Piney Ridge was five miles outside Keyhole Bay. The roads hadn’t been much more than gravel and mud when I was growing up. How much worse they must have been decades before.

“My daddy taught me mechanicin’ when I was in high school. Learned to take care of cars for our friends and neighbors.”

I must have looked startled, because he nodded in my direction. “Yep. There was a neighborhood here. Long time ago. Mostly rented houses that got bought up and bulldozed to build businesses. My daddy owned this land, and he refused to sell, so here I sit.”

“Go on,” I said.

“Well, like I said, I got to be a pretty fair mechanic. Could take apart an engine, figure out what was wrong with her, and put her back together, good as new, by the time I was in tenth grade. Mister Louis heard about me, and he came out here, looking for somebody to take care of his old truck.”

“Why you?” I asked. “I don’t mean to be rude or insensitive, but you’re telling me about segregated schools and so on. Why wouldn’t he have gone to another mechanic?”

Sly’s grin matched his name. “Don’t rightly know, Miss Glory. But I heard rumors he got into a tussle with the one other mechanic in town, and refused to let the man touch his truck. Something about Louis calling him a ‘low-life cheat,’ or some such.”

The story explained a lot of things about Uncle Louis. I remembered him as a loner, a man who kept his own counsel and followed his own path.

Jake nudged Sly to continue. “So he brought you his truck?”

“Sure did.” Sly got up and refilled out cups, talking over his shoulder as he walked into the kitchen. “I did right by him, and he did right by me. Paid me what the work was worth and kept coming back.”

He turned off the coffeepot and settled back in his chair.

“We got to talking one day, right before I graduated. I was trying to figure out what to do with myself, and your uncle was good enough to listen to a scared kid. The Vietnam War was heating up, and I knew I wasn’t going to college. I knew the draft board would be coming for me.”

“What did he say?”

“Told me I’d get a better assignment if I enlisted, and with my skills I could get assigned to a motor pool. Might even get to stay stateside.”

He shook his head. “I listened to part of his advice. I enlisted, and I did get into the motor pool, but I volunteered to go to Vietnam. I came back just before my daddy passed, and I’ve been here ever since.”

“Did you see Uncle Louis after you came back?” I asked. There were a lot of years between 1966 and Uncle Louis’s death in 1987.

“From time to time.”

Sly got up again, going to the kitchen for another doggy treat. Without saying so, he made it clear the subject was closed.

I let it go. For now. I knew there was more to the story, but he’d already given me a lot to think about.

Sly had kept his part of the bargain. Now it was my turn.

Chapter 27

“YOUR TURN,” SLY SAID, GIVING VOICE TO MY
thoughts. “You promised me the story of that parrot.”

I stalled. “Bluebeard? I inherited him from Uncle Louis, along with the shop. Didn’t you already know that?” Giving up my secret, adding another person to the circle, was difficult.

Jake reached over and patted my hand where it rested on my knee. He knew what was coming, what I had to confess, and he was trying to let me know it was all right.

Not that it was. There was nothing all right about telling someone my shop was haunted by the ghost of my dead uncle.

“I knew that, Miss Glory. But what I don’t know is how that parrot knew my name.”

“I assume because he heard Uncle Louis call you by name.” It was the obvious explanation. If you didn’t count the possibility that it
was
Uncle Louis.

Sly shook his head. “Makes sense,” he said. “Except I never was in that shop while Louis was alive. There’s no way Bluebeard ever heard him talk to me.”

That stopped me cold. Jake squeezed my hand, but I couldn’t tell if he meant to be supportive or if the news had startled him as much as it had me.

There was no other explanation. No excuse I could use.