Skunk Hunt (74 page)

"Are you cured?" I asked Barbara, hopping up
when Flint aimed the gun at my foot.

"I don't know. He said...there would be one
or two explosions, then the crap would be gone forever."

"How do you...feel now?"

"Not too...good."

Music to my ears. We had a potent weapon, if
only we could find a way to use it without wiping out half of
mankind. But I had forgotten that Flint was already aware of the
secret doomsday device, having suffered through Barbara's
Alamogordo in his own bathroom. He keenly perceived the threat, and
dug more frantically into his pocket. Finally, he found what he was
looking for and pulled it out. The gun stopped its idiotic
peregrinations and settled once again on Jeremy, who must have been
kicking himself for not taking the opportunity to jump out the
window. Maybe he was curious as to what lay hidden in Grandpa's
pocket.

For the moment, though, Gramps kept his hand
closed.

"The day he died, Skunk and Winny Marteen
came to my place to let me know what was about to come down. He
thought the whole thing might be a set-up, and that he might not be
coming back."

"Did Winny know?" I asked.

"Winny didn't know his asshole from Jupiter.
He just kept grinning the whole time. But I don't think either one
of them thought they was going to get kilt."

"He gave you something," Todd guessed.

"He did that. Said he wanted to leave
something behind for his old pappy and grandma. Not just because we
were blood, but for all the good turns I'd done him over the years.
Your pappy had a soft heart, Mute."

And tough as hell toenails.

Flint opened his hand.

It was a watch.

"That's it?" Jeremy complained. "That's the
Bildass haul?"

"Part of it. I don't know where the rest
is."

"Oh shit," I said.

"Yeah!" Flint laughed. "Another treasure
hunt! I figured that's why you went to Bartow in the first place,
thinking there'd be jewels. In case Vern didn't make it clear, I
needed to be here to tell you why that wasn't so—besides offing
tinsel-brain here."

Jeremy tried to laugh, too.

"It was Carl and his weenie nephew that gave
it away. Kept asking me about Penrose this and Penrose that."

"Shit," Michael hissed.

"I suppose you're the one who told them about
the real treasure and pushed them into this mess." Flint seemed to
consider popping Michael, too. He had a pair of bullets, after all.
"I figured they were looking for a bigger score than jewels or
money."

"And all Skunk gave you was that?" Jeremy
intoned, as though pointing out our father was an even bigger
bastard than we suspected. "How much can it be worth?"

"About twenty years in the pen," said Flint.
"Not that I ever needed a watch. Time doesn't mean much in my
world."

"Actually…" Michael's 'ahem' as a phony as
his face. But what he said next held our interest. "It's a Tom
Cruise watch."

"It's Tom Cruise's watch?" Barbara squealed,
groupie to the end.

"That's not what I said. It's the same kind
that he has. An IWC Grande Complication Perpetual."

Barbara leaned forward for a closer look at
its multiple dials. "Well yeah, it's complicated."

"And worth a cool quarter of a million."

"No shit," said Jeremy appreciatively.

"No shit," said his twin.

"What do you plan to do..." I said, then
stopped.

"That's right," Barbara said. "Daddy gave it
to him. It's his to decide."

"Uh," Michael winced.

"You aren't going to report him to your
company, are you?" I demanded. "You have Whacko. That's what you
really wanted. Right? Tell me the Kissmecanoe Ice Cream Company
doesn't sub its dirty work out to Radcliffe Detective Agency."

The McPherson/Dementis blood rose to his
cheeks. "No."

"Really?"

"We were hired by Margaret Penrose to find
out what happened to Archibald Penrose. She was the one who stood
to lose most if her other brother—that's Morris Penrose—won his
claim to half the company. You see, their father—the president of
Kissmecanoe—had bought a Piper Cub and was making his first solo
flight…he probably shouldn't have taken his wife along…"

"He crashed?" I asked.

"Without finalizing the inheritance. That's
the problem with family-owned companies. It's up to Mom and Pop to
cross all the T's, and in this case all they knew was ice cream.
Archibald-in-the-Grave would have taken a third of the ice cream
pie and broke any ties between Morris and Margaret, except he
mysteriously disappeared the same week his parents died. Which
opened more cans of worms than you can imagine."

With so many millions in the pot, sibling
murder wasn't out of the question. Hmmm….

"The police investigated Margaret and
Morris, Morris hired an agency to investigate Margaret, and
Margaret hired Radcliffe to investigate Morris." Michael laughed. I
guess it was funny. "But in this case things are tied up because it
involves death
in absentia
.
After seven years, Margaret and Morris petitioned the court to have
Archibald declared dead, and it was done. But the two of them were
already squabbling over who would run the company—so the
stakeholders stepped in and put on the brakes."

"Stakeholders?"

"Kissmecanoe has around 260 employees,"
Michael said. "That's 260
pensioners
. The old man had set up a pretty sweet
deal for his ex-employees. Their lawyer pointed out that 53% of
family-owned businesses fail within ten years of the second
generation stepping in. That stat increases significantly when one
of the inheritors is a dumb ass, which Morris is, aces up. He
spends most of his time in Aruba or somewhere, and I don't think
he's cutting sugar cane. His behavior is so bad that the court put
Kissmecanoe in receivership. Yeah, for that to happen to a family
business! It was making money hand over fist, not even close to
Chapter 11. I've never heard of preventive bankruptcy, but the
evidence against Morris is pretty conclusive. If he took over, the
company would crash and burn just like his parents' plane. Who
knows, maybe he tinkered with their engine. Margaret was awarded
interim management and has been running the business pretty much
ever since. She has brains—she hired us, after all. But she's
making a bad call on this."

"What do you mean?" I prodded.

"Right now, she can't do anything without
asking permission from Morris and the court appointed receiver.
She's so convinced Morris popped Archibald that's she's willing to
shell out her own money to anyone who can find the body. It started
at one million, and over the years it's grown to twelve…"

"Twelve million?" Jeremy squeaked, though it
might have had nothing to do with the amount. Flint's gun had just
rounded to his midsection.

"When the coroner finds out it wasn't Morris'
gun that killed Archibald, it won't help Margaret. She wants her
brother in jail. Then Kissmecanoe could have come out of
receivership, because the stakeholders trust her." Michael
shrugged. "I can't help that, though. She's just paying for the
body. It's her gamble."

"But that means turning in Granddaddy Flint!"
Barbara burst out.

"How so?" asked Michael.

"Didn't he use the same gun on Carl and
Dog?"

"Damn…" Michael snapped his fingers.
"Ballistics will come up with a match."

"What a bunch of simps," I scowled. "There's
nothing to connect Whacko with Flint. He picked up his Smith &
Wesson in Vietnam. There's probably no record of it. All he has to
do is lose the gun."

"Not quite yet," Flint grinned.

I didn't protest because I had just relegated
three murders to the realm of the unsolved. Carl, Dog and Whacko
Penrose. It was a bit like condemning the dead to a second death.
It made me feel queasy.

"You're not planning to cut me out of my cut,
are you?" Yvonne snarled suddenly.

"You'll get your share of the Whacko reward,"
Michael sighed. For a moment I thought he was signing away his
portion. Then he turned a sly eye all around and said, "If
everyone's in agreement, that is."

So he was asking us to part with a percentage
to keep his girl quiet. It made sense. We would all be
millionaires, still. But it was too smooth. If Michael's greed was
as strong as Jeremy's—and I had no reason to believe otherwise—we
might be in serious trouble. I was suddenly very pleased by
Marvin's foresight. I tried to spot the microdot on Michael. Where
the hell could it be hidden? It wouldn't do much good hidden in his
clothes. There were long weeks ahead, and while the reward was
being processed he was bound to change his shirt. Up the whazoo?
The microdot would be lost at the next dump. I could only hope that
Marvin was using 'microdot' as shorthand for a host of monitoring
devices.

"What about me?" Jeremy asked.

"What about you?" Flint said.

"Okay, what about that?" Jeremy pointed at
the gun still pointed at him.

"I only shot three rats. Six, if you include
the two-legged ones. That means I got two bullets left. The plan is
as follows: first, I shoot you. Then I shoot myself."

It took a moment for Jeremy to regain his
breath. "You wouldn't consider reversing that order?"

"Jeremy Doubletalk McPherson Dementis, I
condemn you for all those years you put me through hell. All that
smut you drew on my shed—remember the head with the antennas? And
the swear words you wrote on the side of my house. What was
'hookah-head' supposed to mean?"

"Mute taught me that word. Blame him."

"Mute has a head. Sweet Tooth has a heart.
Todd...Michael...I don't know you two very well, and you never knew
me, so I'll have to give you a pass. But Doubletalk, no head, no
heart. Really...was there any need to be so cruel to a fellow human
being? Forget that I'm your grandpappy. I know I don't look human,
anymore, but where's your sense of decency?"

But Jeremy was not cowed. "Suck my decency,"
he said, and actually threw out his chest.

"No!" Barbara ran forward, but Flint pulled
the trigger before she could reach Jeremy.

There was a click.

Flint grunted, then pointed the barrel at his
own head. Barbara switched directions.

Another empty click.

"Huh. Must've shot more rats than I
remembered." He gave us a wicked grin. And a grin from that face
was truly wicked.

Then he leaned ever so slowly sideways, his
head landing softly on a crusty pillow. He began to snore
instantly.

"Charmed, I'm sure," said Jeremy, reaching
for the Tom Cruise watch.

"No!" we all shouted—even Monique chimed in,
and I was not so sure about her share of the Whacko reward.

"Hey, it belongs to the family!" Jeremy
protested, pausing.

"It belongs to the head of the family," I
said. "And right now, that's him."

Barbara leaned down and gently kissed the top
of Flint's head. Then she gripped her stomach. "Oh...ow!"

"She having a miscarriage?" Todd wondered out
loud.

"Can you hold it?" I asked my sister
frantically.

She shook her head. "I have to go—I have to
go!"

"What happened to that $20,000 you
spent on your doctor?" I frowned. Medicine costs a fortune for
those without insurance—but not
that
much. Not for a sophisticated laxative.

But she ignored my complaint and pushed me
aside as she rushed for my bathroom.

"Get out!" I shouted. "Everybody get
out!"

"What is it?" Todd asked.

"You don't want to know."

Yvonne pushed herself up from her chair. "Has
everyone gone crazy?"

But when she and Todd saw Jeremy and me and
even Monique racing madly for the door, they followed.

We stood clumped outside, not knowing what to
do next. We watched the students sway and stumble across each
others' paths, oblivious to the future. There was lingering anger
and animosity among us, and we drifted a short distance from each
other. Unfortunately, Todd, for some reason, drifted with me. We
found ourselves next to Yvonne's van. We looked inside and saw Mom,
sleeping. Yvonne or Michael had considerately left the rear window
open a crack, like they would do for a favorite pet. (Jeremy, I
firmly believed, would have let her roast.) We could hear her
snoring, and we didn't have to look hard to see the graying hair
and gaping mouth.

"How much did she know?" Todd said.

"How much has she done?" I said.

"And when did she know it?"

"And when did she do it?"

"She knew about Whacko getting whacked."

"But did she know where he was buried? And
about the reward?"

"Did Winny and her...?"

"She used to make cupcakes for Flint..."

We spent a few moments interchanging and
intermingling our thoughts, latching onto the eerie frisson of
twinhood and realizing it would probably last the rest of our
lives.

We didn't stare at her for long. Todd less
than me, since he had spent over a decade seeing her like this.

"You know that poem by what's-his-name?" Todd
said.

"You mean the one about going around the
world—"

"And ending up finding yourself?"

"Of course you know it. By
what's-his-name."

"Yeah, what's-his-name."

Our ignorance was almost identical. But I was
sure I knew more about Catherine de Medici than he did. At least I
hoped I did. If you read enough, you start looking into yourself.
No, I'm not talking about self-help manuals or Popular Mechanics or
even Psychology Today. It's the classics that trigger the inner
commentator that set out examples and exemplars—whether they decide
moral decisions for you, or leave you to decide on your own, they
make you think about your place in the pancreatic cosmos. You could
say we're all searching for our identity, especially in this
identity-saturated society, where 'me for a day' becomes 'me of
yesterday' as quick as a zipper. This is the spin on the school of
thought that says we create our own identities, and judge the
result from how we reflect off of others. Looking at Todd, I
winced. He was what I could have been, and to tell the truth there
wasn't that much difference. I decided then and there that I was
Mute McPherson, and nobody else.