Your Goose Is Cooked (A LaTisha Barnhart Mystery) (23 page)

“Sure did. I could see them from our bedroom window.”

“You went home?”

Hardy crossed his legs and laced his fingers over his knee. “No, but I could have seen them from there if I had.”

“Where was Mac?”

“He stood in the shadows of the school’s parking lot. I got closer by standing behind the school’s storage shed.”

 
The ding of the microwave interrupted. I yanked open the door, gave the soup a stir and sent the bowl sliding across the surface of the desk toward Hardy. He stopped it with his hand, squeezed his eyes shut for the three-second prayer, and dug in.

One gulped mouthful and he shot out a question. “Did Mac tell you about the car?”

“You just told me they parked a car out there and that the ladies left in it.”

His spoon clattered on the rim of his bowl. “It was the blue car,
LaTisha
. The same one I saw behind Betsy’s.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Mac wouldn’t have known about the blue car that narrowly missed me out in front of Big Sky Grocery. Excitement fired my blood.

Hardy’s grin went huge. “Not a bad bit of detective work.”

I ran my hand over his head. “Not a bad bit at all. Maybe I will keep you around for another forty years.”

He shoveled in another bite, eyes glowing.

“Where did they go after the ladies took off?”

His head wagged back and forth. “Hold on a minute. I saved the best news. I got the license plate.”

“You wrote it down?”

He tapped his head.
“Memorized it.”

I dove for the pen I’d used for my lists.

“KXT-L685.”

I eyed him hard.
“You sure?
Colorado plates have six numbers.”

Another spoonful disappeared. “That’s why I’m thinking it wasn’t a Colorado plate.”

“Vanity plates usually allow you more numbers.” I thought out loud. “Was there a design?”

“Couldn’t tell.
Was too busy looking at the
numbers.
”

I’d give him that one. “So where did they go after the ladies took off?”

“I followed them back to Aidan’s. Saw the lights come on in the apartment. They were arguing over something.”

“Mac thought he heard them arguing when they were dropping off the ladies.”

“Then too.”
Hardy swiped his spoon over the bottom of his bowl, stuck the spoon in his mouth, leaned back and burped.

“Full of yourself, aren’t you?”

“William’s getting to be as good a cook as you.”

 
I glared. “Then you can just haul your hide over to his house.”

“Nah.”
He got to his feet and buried his face in my shoulder. “He’s not as pretty.”

I pulled him close.
“Um-hm.”
The warmth of his body made me want to snuggle up and go to sleep. I inhaled the scent of him and pushed him away. “Get on with you. We’ve got work to do.”

After we locked up, Hardy took my hand and I finally pried the conversation he’d heard between Eddie and Roger out of him.

“I only got a few words. Eddie was getting hot, saying something about money. Roger told him to hurry and ‘get the roughs from a posse.’ They lowered their voices after that and I wasn’t sure but I thought I heard them say something about the mayor, or a mayor.”

“Not Eugene?
Or
Taser
?”

Hardy went quiet and I knew he was thinking hard. “I don’t think so.”

We moved through the night holding hands.
Doing our out-for-a-stroll innocent routine.
Only anyone who knows Hardy and I
knows
we don’t do late-night strolls. Last time we did a late-night stroll, it was to walk
Shayna
around the neighborhood. She’d sat in the principal’s office all day for sassing a teacher, so she walked the neighborhood with me all night because her bottom stung so much I was afraid she’d set fire to something if she sat too long. So we walked until she was exhausted and I knew she’d go right to sleep. Nearly two hours of continuous circles around the neighborhood.

Then there was the time when we spied on Payton
O’Mahney
, but we were up to something then, so it wasn’t an innocent late-night stroll at all.

Hardy had stopped to peer in Sasha’s window. “That the hat you bought?”

“You’ll think you married yourself a princess.”

“I already do.” He kept on staring and I kept right on walking.

A honeycomb couldn’t drip more honey than Hardy. “You hurry yourself up,” I hurtled back. “Sweet talk won’t get us where we need to go.”

“I’m thinking up a tune. I think I’ll call it Dumpster
Divin
’ Prowlers.”

I growled low in my throat.

“I’m coming.”

He came even with me. My mind was jumping around so much my head was hurting.
 
“You think those ladies tried to run me over on purpose?” It had occurred to me in slow degrees that the whole thing could have been planned. Cars didn’t run down innocent bystanders unless the driver was blind
or
had an axe to grind. But why would Eddie and Roger’s wives want to make me into a speed bump? And neither one of them had red hair.

“Tell me again how you saw this car.”

Hardy dragged in a deep breath. “When I was walking around the neighborhood, I heard a car rev its engine. Thought it was strange that Betsy would have someone parking out back, so I went over there to check things out. I got as close as those trees and saw the car, but couldn’t see much other than a flash of red and a body moving.
Looked like they were dumping something in the dumpster.
Then the car’s engine revved real loud.”

“Where’d you go next?”

“Got hungry so I went into
Shiny’s
to see what he had. When I came out is when I saw you.”

Strange.
Things weren’t adding up. Not surprising. Murders seldom were clear-cut and simple. As I watched Hardy sink down into the muck of Betsy
Taser’s
trash, I was sure glad to have a partner willing to do the dirty work.
Literally.

Objects crunched under Hardy’s boots, the only pair he owned. Snow boots at that. But boots were boots, and if I had to do the diving, I knew I’d want boots. And long sleeves.
Thick clothes.
A paper bag covering my head, or, better yet, a thick plastic body suit.
Astronaut style.

Sending Hardy in is much easier than all that.

“Found anything?”

I couldn’t see much, though the security light over the back door did leak light to where I stood, it didn’t reach the interior of the Dumpster. Good for Hardy.
Bad for me.

Grunts punctuated the night air and a beam of light flashed on. Hardy had brought a small flashlight, and by the looks of the beam, a small one.
More crunching.
The friction of broken glass rubbing.

“Not much food in here.”

Why on God’s green earth did this man think of nothing else but food? If he found a half-eaten bag of potato chips, he’d probably sit his scrawny rump down on a trash bag and fill the air with his crunching.

“It’s an office Dumpster, not a restaurant Dumpster.
Would smell a lot worse if you were in the Goose’s bin.”

Another grunt.

With my eyes adjusting to the dimness within, I could make out Hardy’s form as he shone his light on some bags. “Whatever it was you saw that red head throw out, it’d be right near the top.”

I hoped.

A scratching noise made me blink my eyes wide. I listened close. If a rat popped out,
LaTisha
Barnhart was going to run the race of her life.

Something scraped. With Hardy right in front of my eyes, my ears zoned in on the sound coming from off to my right. I scanned hard for any signs and decided to move around into the shadow created by the dumpster.

“Hardy.”
I did my best to keep my voice low, but between the noises and his silence, my skin got all crawly.
“Hardy.”
I tried a little louder.

This time, I knew what I heard was gravel crunching. I still couldn’t see anyone.

“
Whoo
-wee,” came from the Dumpster, then the sound of paper crackling. “
LaTisha
!”

I crept out around to the front of the dumpster and stuck my head inside. “You hush your mouth. Someone’s coming.”

It was no use. Hardy’s teeth were flashing and his eyes were bright. He wasn’t hearing a word I was saying. Paper and bags of trash crushed downward or slipped aside as he traipsed closer to me and held out his hand. “Look at this!”

The scrape of a foot on the pavement made me stiffen. From behind me, a hand shot toward Hardy, palm up. “I’ll take that.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Hardy and I stared at the walls of the police station. Every five minutes or so, he would wander over to the vending machine, then stare back at me with his big browns drooping.
Pleading.

“I’m not giving you one dime to by another bag of popcorn. You already have a tissue full of kernels.” The tissue sat between us on a table of magazines. Not much made my stomach heave, but the sight of those kernels about sent me to hang over a toilet. “Why don’t you throw that thing away?”

“’Cause I’m hoping to get another bag.
Chief could be in there for hours.”

“He won’t be. It’s way too late at night. He’ll want to get home. Now, read a magazine or something.”

Hardy stalked back to his seat and slumped down. “I read all I want to read and looked at all the pictures. Even did that
sud-ko
thing.”

“
Su-do-
ku
,
and you didn’t finish it.”

He flexed his blackened fingers and swiped them down his navy polyesters. Chief had gotten his prints to eliminate Hardy should there be other prints on the gun. “You wouldn’t give me any help.”

I rolled my eyes. “If I wanted to do those puzzles, I’d do them. Helping you is doing them.”

He picked up a magazine and pointed. “Want to do a crossword with me?”

This boy was getting on my last nerve. “Why don’t we play the silent game?”

Shayna
and Lela and
Bryton
would all get to talking so much on family trips that we invented this game to get some silence. Problem was, they never won,
then
they kept right on talking a streak.

“I was being quiet. You started this whole thing.”

“Only because you kept looking at me with those big, brown eyes.
As if I never fed you.”

“Long time since that chicken and noodles.”

“You had peach cobbler at the Goose.
Two big bowls.
I saw you pouring milk on it and making it mushy so you could eat it. Where do you put it all?”

He rubbed his stomach. “I can’t help it that I’m hungry.”

“And I can’t help that I’m feeling a need to hurt somebody.”

Hardy’s smile went huge. “At least you’re in the right place if you do.”

The police station.
I stared at the wide cracks in the wood floor and wondered, for the thousandth time,
who
the red-haired visitor was and why she put that gun in Betsy’s Dumpster then nearly ran me over. Maybe one of those ladies wore a wig. Still, it didn’t add up.

“You think he’s going to lock me up?”

This from Hardy.
He was worried. “You didn’t do anything. I’m your witness and Dr.
Cryer
is your alibi, remember? You were unconscious in a dentist’s chair when someone else aimed that gun at Aidan. Chief checked you out first thing.”