Read Pearls and Poison (A Consignment Shop Mystery) Online
Authors: Duffy Brown
Pearls and Poison (A Consignment Shop Mystery) (9 page)
“For old times’ sake I can help you out in your time of need.”
“I’m not in need, and old times was you bedding anything in a skirt and me too dumb to know what was going on.”
“I can get a pretty penny for Cherry House now. If you wait till the holidays roll around, the market dries up. No one wants to move during the holidays.”
“Bye, Hollis.” I walked on, the BMW keeping pace, Hollis’s head poking out the window turtle style.
“If your mamma can’t shake this murder charge, you won’t have any business; you realize that, don’t you? A scandal like this gives everyone in the family a right bad name. Who will want to associate with the daughter of a murderer and that includes buying merchandise? You should sell now before things get worse. When Gloria goes on trial, things will get much worse, I promise.”
“You have a buyer, don’t you?”
“Loan’s preapproved and everything. They have big plans for that house. Think about it, Reagan.”
I gripped the window opening, and Hollis stopped the car. Expensive cologne oozed from the interior, and his minty-fresh breath fell across my face, devil horns neatly concealed under his hundred-dollar haircut. He probably had his pitchfork stashed in the trunk. “Judge Gloria Summerside would never kill anyone, but that doesn’t mean her one and only daughter wouldn’t if you get my drift.”
An icy contempt flashed in his eyes. “I should never have listened to Boone.”
Hollis floored the BMW, laying rubber like a teenager with too much car and too little brain. I cut across the parking lot. As much as I disliked Hollis Beaumont the Third, I had to admit our divorce was not all his fault. I was the stupid idiot who married him in the first place, and what did he mean about not listening to Boone? The only connection between me, Hollis, and Boone was the divorce that still gave me nightmares.
Saturday evening at the grocery store was pretty Zen with most people having better things to do than squeeze the tomatoes and read the ingredients on a cereal box. I loaded up on the essentials of life like SpaghettiOs and toilet paper, and wrote down a recipe on the back of my receipt for meatloaf that the checkout gal guaranteed even I could make and would impress Mamma to no end.
I stuffed the recipe in my pocket, hoisted Old Yeller onto my shoulder, and snagged my now full eco-friendly market bags. On the way out of Kroger’s I picked up a free copy of the
Savannah Pennysaver
and met Mercedes coming through the door. Tonight she had on black slacks, a cream blouse, and a blue jewel-toned pashmina scarf with matching pumps I’d seen in the Nordstrom’s fall catalog. Obviously spiffing up the dearly departed paid well.
“What’s a fine girl like you doing here on a Saturday night?” Mercedes asked. “You should be out making whoopee with some young stud.”
“I did the stud thing once, and it was a disaster.”
“Honey, that’s because you went and got yourself the wrong stud. I still got my eye on Mr. Boone for you. Now there’s a fine-looking man and then some. You should give him a try.”
Both grocery bags slid from my hands, the contents spilling out onto the sidewalk. Mercedes shifted her weight to one foot and looked me over head to toe. “You got something going on with Boone?”
“Nothing good.”
“Uh-huh.” Mercedes laughed and helped me with the items. She handed me the copy of the
Pennysaver
that I’d dropped along with the bags.
“Why there’s Dozer on the front page of this here paper doing some advertising. My guess he’s trying to recoup some of that business he’s lost to Seymour.”
“I met up with Dozer last night.”
Mercedes arched her left brow high enough to touch her red bangs. “So that’s what got you tossed out of the Cemetery? You got to be careful with Dozer. A few drinks and he gets real unpleasant, and if you’re to keep winding up on the Internet, we need to do something about those roots you got going on.”
I stepped off to the side and out of the way of shoppers coming and going, Mercedes following. I dropped my voice. “You mentioned that Dozer was upset with Seymour outbidding him on projects. Last night when I was talking to him, he said he’d found out something about Seymour, something he was hiding. Something big. Do you think Dozer is capable of killing Seymour? But then why would he when he could just go to the police with this information he has and get rid of him that way? Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
“Dozer couldn’t turn in Seymour to the cops because Seymour probably had something on Dozer. You do me, and I do you kind of thing. Dozer runs a pretty big operation, and best I can tell Seymour was driving him into the ground financially. Building new houses is dead in Savannah and has been that way for a few years now. My guess is municipal projects are where the money is, but with cities being cash poor that’s got to be mighty tight too and the competition stiff. I haven’t had anything to do with Dozer in months, but if he came across some information that gave Seymour the edge in these municipal bidding wars, he’d be crazy mad about it.”
“Crazy enough to kill him?”
“You can only push a man so far. You think someone was letting Seymour know the lowest bid on a project and then he’d turn in an even lower one.”
“But then how could Seymour make money if the bid was so low? Something was going on between Seymour and Dozer, and Dozer was on the short end of the stick.”
Mercedes pointed to the little map in Dozer’s ad. “Delany Construction is a few blocks over from here. We could take a look around.”
“It’s Saturday night. He’s closed.”
“There’s all kinds of closed, honey. The thing is, I like your mamma. She’s not one of those uppity snobs who think she’s too good to talk to the likes of me. We both know she didn’t kill Seymour, but somebody sure enough did. Dozer is as good a candidate as any. He wasn’t nice to my girls back when I had the Mane Event, and I don’t forget something like that ever.”
“You should know that I have a way of attracting the wrong kind of attention lately. Well, actually, more than lately. I don’t want to cause you trouble.”
“I look at dead people all day long. I need something to liven things up a little. That’s some more of that funeral home humor,” Mercedes said on a laugh. “I was stopping here for ice cream for my cousin Scooter’s birthday party, but he don’t need that anyway with his cholesterol being off the charts the way it is. I got my car in the lot, but two women out walking, talking, and toting grocery bags is pretty ordinary stuff, unlike a pink Caddy circling the block and casing the place out. I say we get a move on and head on over toward Delany Construction.”
Before I could protest, Mercedes snagged one of my bags and crossed onto Lincoln, heading in the direction of East Broad. A stiff breeze kicked up, sailing clouds across the sky and tumbling leaves and the occasional Starbucks cup down the sidewalk. I snuggled into my jacket, and Mercedes wrapped her pashmina tighter around her shoulders. Big Victorians gave way to basic clapboard domiciles with narrow pockmarked alleys in back. Streetlights were of the glaring blue-white variety, and fences were chain link instead of ornamental wrought iron. Mercedes told me stories from the Mane Event that would make a terrific HBO series.
Traffic was sparse, no one out strolling on a blustery autumn evening. Residential morphed into light industrial. Buildings sat farther apart now with security lights scattered here and there. Oglethorpe Marble and Granite sat on one corner, Delany’s on the other.
The office was brick with white shutters and matching window boxes overflowing with orange and yellow chrysanthemums. A green awning with “Delany Construction” in white letters sheltered the front door, and there was a line of decorative boxwoods by the street. The gravel road ran back to a warehouse, bulldozers, backhoes, cranes, and other earth-moving equipment men salivate over from childhood and beyond. And everything was safe and secure behind industrial strength chain link and a growling, drooling guard dog.
“Guess this is as far as we get tonight.” I shifted my bag to my other hand.
“There’s a gap where the gates are padlocked together in front.” Mercedes pointed in that direction. “Bet you could squeeze your skinny behind through that there opening.”
“And wind up being Killer’s midnight snack.”
Mercedes put her hand to her ample hip. “Girl, where’s all this negativity coming from?”
“I’ve had a few setbacks lately.”
“Then it’s time for a change of luck. What we need here is some sort of dog distraction. Get that bad boy’s mind off guarding and onto something else, and we can get inside. Since we don’t have a sexy little poodle to strut her stuff around, we’ll have to come up with plan B.”
Mercedes held her black patent leather purse under the streetlight and rummaged around. “I got a pack of Juicy Fruit in here and some of those sour Icebreakers. Love sour Icebreakers. Maybe Killer does, too. Had a dog once who couldn’t get enough brussels sprouts. Smelled something fierce and would bring tears to your eyes.”
I pulled the package of hot dogs from my eco-friendly bag. “Better than brussels sprouts.”
I plucked out a cold chunk of processed meat, and Mercedes and I crept toward the fence. “Here doggie, doggie, doggie,” Mercedes sing-songed as I stuck the hot dog through to the other side, keeping my fingers out of snapping range. Growling and snarling, Killer trotted over, eyes mean, lips curled back, teeth bared. He sniffed; he ate; he wagged.
“Well, I’ll be. Now we’re in the money,” Mercedes said as I pulled a handful of hot dogs from the package. “Women like their jewelry, but for men it’s all about food; they cave every time. Feed Killer some of those things now and stuff the rest in your pocket. You got to get yourself back out of that there office, you know.”
I gave Killer a wary look.
“He’s harmless,” Mercedes soothed. “Nothing but a big old pussycat now that we fed him.”
I slid the flashlight from my purse and sat Old Yeller beside the two grocery bags. “I don’t see any security cameras mounted on the office, but I bet there are plenty back by the warehouse and equipment. You know, I don’t have a clue what I’m looking for.”
“Sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith, honey. Do what comes along next, and trust in the Lord to lead the way.”
“You think the Lord’s leading the way to breaking and entering Dozer’s office?”
“He got us this far with hot dogs and an opening in that there gate, didn’t he?”
She had a point. I tossed a hot dog on the ground for Killer and stuck my head then the rest of me through the opening. Killer looked up, a what-the-heck-are-you-doing-here expression on his face. I swear it really was that kind of expression. He licked his chops, suddenly more interested in me on this side of the fence than the meat on the ground.
“Uh, maybe you should come back out of there,” Mercedes said. “That dog’s getting himself an attitude.”
Except Killer growled and circled around, cutting me off from the exit. Mercedes’s gaze fused with mine. “What should I do?”
“Give him another hot dog. Hurry. He’s looking real upset.”
I dropped another hot dog then another, Killer gobbling as fast as I dropped. I ran backward toward the office, dropping more meat, Killer gaining on me till I crashed flat against the door; it only now occurred to me that I didn’t have a key to get inside.
“I
DON’T
know how to get in,” I yelled to Mercedes, every hair on my body standing on end. “There are more hot dogs in the bags.”
Mercedes pulled out the second package and kicked our purses and the bags behind the boxwoods. She put an expensive suede shoe against one side of the opening, pulled back on the other side Superwoman style, and wedged her head and shoulders through. She looked like a piglet stuck in the rabbit hole till she gave a final wiggle and popped out like a champagne cork from a bottle.
Killer looked up at the racket, zeroed in on Mercedes, and licked his chops. She ripped the package and flung it out into the yard, hot dogs flying in all directions. Mercedes galloped my way, Killer deciding between fast food on the ground and two-hundred pounds on the hoof. Hot dogs won out, and Mercedes pulled up beside me on the step huffing and puffing.
“Now we’re both stuck out here,” I said, Killer devouring package number two.
“The Lord will provide, honey.”
“Provide Killer with dessert, and that would be us.”
Mercedes laughed. “Chocolate and vanilla.” Then she reached behind, turned the knob, and miracle of miracles the door opened! Killer charged as Mercedes and I scrambled in and slammed the door, and a hundred pounds of totally pissed-off dog hit solid wood.
“How’d you know the door would open?” I wheezed, sinking into an overstuffed chair, my heart beating a million times a second and Killer serenading us with growls and snarls.
Mercedes grinned, looking calm as a heifer in clover. “If you had a big old fence and Killer the dog on retainer, would you bother to lock your door?”
“Why didn’t you just tell me that while you were standing on the sidewalk?”
“Didn’t occur to me till I was running this way.”
I smacked my palm to my forehead. “How could I think of the hot dogs and remember the flashlight and forget about getting inside the office? Bet 007 never had days like this.”
Mercedes patted me on the head. “Honey, you’re 008 in my book. You’re trying to save your mamma. Nothing’s better than that. Now we better get a move on before that dog claws his way in here.”
Street light sliced through the blinds marking rows of dark and light on the carpet, couch, chairs, and the tables decorated with artificial flowers. A little kitchenette with an eating bar sat toward the back.
“Smells sort of musty in here,” Mercedes said, walking around. “Not that nice new smell of success. Dozer’s in a hurt all right. This here area in front is for customers picking out things for their dream home. I’m guessing offices are down the hall.”
I flipped on my flashlight, keeping it trained at the floor so as not to draw attention from anyone passing by. Mercedes followed. There were offices on each side, one furnished with basic Ikea, the other an antique desk with comfy chair and a row of file cabinets.
“Doesn’t take a genius to figure out which office is Dozer’s and which belongs to the hired help,” Mercedes said, heading inside. I handed her the flashlight. “How about you take the file cabinets, and I’ll take the computer.” I sat behind the desk and powered up the old Dell.
“Over here it looks like customer files on houses and projects,” Mercedes said, drawers sliding open and shut. “I got nothing but pictures of appliances, cabinets, and carpeting and lists of products, manufacturers, and catalog numbers. Here’s the Alcamps’ beach house out on Tybee, the Andersons’ house on Skidaway, the George Boifeuillet Warehouse on Washington Square when they converted it over to the Mulberry Inn. These are all from years ago.”
“Nothing’s password protected on the computer,” I said. “Guess Dozer’s not a techy kind of guy.” There were folders labeled
Alcamp
,
Anderson
,
Boifeuillet
that corresponded to the cabinet files and right at the end was
Seymour.
“Find anything?” Mercedes wanted to know as she came up beside me. “I got nothing over there.”
I pointed at the screen. “There’s a Seymour file on Dozer’s desktop, but it’s just a list of the projects that I’m guessing Dozer lost out on because the library project is listed at the end.”
I opened the top desk drawer to chewed pencils, Tums, Pepto-Bismol and a manila folder marked
Seymour
. I flipped it open. “Newspaper articles? This one’s on that porch collapsing at Shady Haven Senior Center, this one’s on the roof at the SPCA leaking like a sieve, and here’s one on that new floor needed over there at the library. What’s with that, the library’s not even two years old?”
Mercedes picked up the articles, a picture sliding to the floor. She retrieved it and held it under the flashlight. “It’s a picture of a bunch of numbers and abbreviations on a piece of wood.”
“It’s a lumber stamp. They use them at the mills so you know what you’re buying. The numbers and letters are code for grades, sizes, species, and moisture content. Construction grade lumber and standard grade lumber are for residential building. Utility grade has about a third the strength, so using that to hold up your roof may not be a great idea. This stamp says this piece of lumber is grade two. It’s for roofs, floors, load-bearing walls, 15 percent moisture content, fir, and the BHLC with Mill 10 means it’s from Butler Haber Lumber Company number 10.”
“Yo, girlfriend, you’ve been watching way too much of
This Old House
?”
“Honey, I own this old house. You should see me change out a faucet.”
Mercedes snatched up the folder and headed for the Ikea office. “I’ll make copies, and you are in desperate need of a life.”
“Hey, I have a life.”
“Uh-huh.”
I emailed KiKi an attachment of the Seymour folder, my name in the subject line, then deleted the action from Dozer’s sent folder so there’d be no record. If Uncle Putter saw an email from Delany Construction, he’d think I was fixing up my place. When KiKi saw it, she’d be ticked as all get out she missed the action, knowing I was up to something. I had no idea what either of these folders meant, but Scummy’s business in Dozer’s files meant something was going on between these two, and one of them was dead.
Mercedes rushed back in, her eyes huge. “Sweet Jesus, a cop car just drove by. You know faucets; I know cops. They drive up the street, and they’ll be driving back down. We got to get out of here before they realize Killer’s at the door for a reason.”
I powered down the computer, Mercedes slid the copies under her pashmina, and we slid the folder back in the desk drawer. She doused the flashlight, and we scurried toward the main room, Killer still barking his head off.
“He’s sounding kind of hoarse,” Mercedes said. “Giving himself a bad case of canine laryngitis. Bet he feels right poorly tomorrow. How many hot dogs you got left?”
I pulled out an empty wrapper.
“We’ll have to fake it. Women are real good at faking lots of things.” She grabbed the doorknob. “I open, you toss the wrapper, and we run like the devil. On three. One, two.” Mercedes whipped open the door, completely throwing off my timing.
“You said on three. That was two.”
“That was on three. Throw the wrapper!”
Killer charged inside leaping for the airborne plastic. Mercedes and I tore out the door, slamming it closed behind us, Killer now growling and barking on the other side. We hustled to the gate, and I squeezed through, then Mercedes as a police cruiser pulled to the curb, red and blue lights flashing in the night.
“You weren’t kidding about attracting the wrong kind of attention,” Mercedes said as Mr. Uniformed Officer got out, rattled off his name, and blinded me with his flashlight. Another guy in a suit got out on the passenger side. Uniformed guy was bald and beefy, suit guy young and scrumptious.
“What are you doing in there?” Beefy asked, nodding to the office.
I glanced back to Killer barking and snarling like the banshee from hell. “Well, you see—”
“That’s what’s going on,” Mercedes said, pointing at the office and taking over like someone who’d encountered the police before. “That poor little doggie is in some severe distress, I tell you. We were out for a night walk and heard the thing carrying on something pitiful and thought he might be in trouble, so we took ourselves right over there to have a look-see. But he’s okay,” Mercedes added with a bright-eyed grin. “Gotta take care of our furry little friends now, don’t we?”
Uniform put his hands on his hips. “Dozer has that dog outside to watch the place. What’s he doing inside the office?”
“See?” Mercedes added. “That’s exactly what got us all worried.”
“What’s your names?”
“Ann . . . Ann Taylor,” I said, thinking of the pile of fall catalogs on my counter and the fact that the police did not need to know Gloria Summerside’s daughter was in on this. “And this is Donna Karan.”
Suit folded his arms. “Donna Karan’s a designer.”
I nodded at Mercedes. “Her mamma has good taste.”
“You always carry a flashlight on your walks? You two sure you’re not out here for no good,” Suit said, rounding the cruiser.
“Not unless we’re going to drive off with a backhoe or crane.” My smartass remark got me a
don’t poke the bear
look from Mercedes. She was right; the bear might look handsome, but his eyes said he was trouble. He was Hollis with a badge.
“Kind of dark back here,” I said. “But we like the solitude when out walking. Om shanti, shanti, shanti,” I chanted in a calm voice. “Means
peace prevail everywhere
. We go to Amy’s House of Yoga over there on Whittaker twice a week. We’re getting really good at inverted tortoise.”
Uniform pushed his hat back on his head as if trying to picture Mercedes doing inverted anything. “Guess the dog’s okay till tomorrow. Dozer must have forgotten to let him out. I’ll give him a call.”
The officer and the suit got back in the cruiser, and Mercedes and I started for the grocery bags, the cruiser following us at a snail’s pace.
“Donna Karan?” Mercedes hissed in a low voice. “Do I look like a Donna Karan?”
“Better than L.L.Bean.”
“I’ll get the grocery bags and put these copies of the news articles in your purse. I’ll drop them off later tonight. Right now we best keep walking.”
• • •
“I’M GONE FOR ONE DAY, AND YOU REPLACE ME,”
KiKi said, pacing my bedroom in an aqua housecoat, matching curlers, and velour slippers.
I pried one eye open. “It’s seven
A.M.
on a Sunday. What are you doing up at seven
A.M.
on any day?” I put my pillow over my head, BW burrowing his head under the covers. I so needed to find a better hiding place for my spare key.
“I was sleeping all peaceful like, and Putter was on the computer,” KiKi went on. “He said there was an email from Delany Construction with your name on it. I knew you were up to something and then remembered seeing Mercedes’s Caddy dropping bags at your house last night. One measly day I’m not around, and you go off without me.” She sniffed.
Oh dear Lord in heaven, KiKi was playing the martyr role. I pushed myself up on one elbow and flipped my hair out of my face. “We were just trying to get some information on Seymour and Dozer, and since it was a Saturday night, we just sort of headed toward his office.”
“I bet there was breaking and entering involved. You never include me in breaking and entering. I do all the boring stuff like go to funerals and get locked in closets.”
“You went to jail, and you’ve jumped from a fire escape—that was pretty cool—and if Uncle Putter finds out you’re into B&E, he’ll have you tethered to the front porch.”
Auntie KiKi stopped pacing, a twinkle dancing in her eyes. “I got nothing going on tonight. I’m free, bored to tears, and Putter’s driving up to Augusta for a seminar on obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.”
“Sounds impressive.”
“It’s really an excuse to play at the Augusta National Golf Club where they hold that there Masters tournament every year, and I’m sure there will be new golf clubs involved. This is your big chance to make it up to me; let’s do something risky tonight.”
My one hard and fast rule with my dear auntie KiKi was not to get her involved with things blatantly against the law and obviously risky. That didn’t mean breaking the law and risky didn’t happen en route, but at least I started out with good intentions.