Hearse of a Different Color (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries) (3 page)

“Looks like a beautiful day,” Bonnie sniffed, looking out the window at the unquestionably lousy weather. “What do you think? Sunny and warm? Highs in the low eighties? Oh! Is that a fucking
rainbow
I see over there?”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” I said, giving her a pat on the bumper and a nip to the back of her neck … to show that
I
wasn’t going to be hard on her. I’m sometimes accused of being patronizing, and I guess I am. But only with people I already like.

Bonnie turned from the window. “I’m a fucking joke in this town. I might as well stand before the camera and tap dance for two minutes.”

I stepped into the kitchen to feed Alcatraz. “I didn’t know you could tap dance,” I called out. I filled my dog’s bowl with hard, chunky nuggets, poured in a touch of milk, a half cup of water and mixed the stuff up into an ersatz gravy. I topped it with a garnish of crushed doggie vitamin. Bonnie appeared at the kitchen door. She didn’t appear there amused.

“I don’t. But I’d probably
predict
that I was going to tap dance and then break into a goddamn Charleston.”

Uh-oh. This wasn’t going away. I skidded the food bowl across the floor to Alcatraz and took Bonnie by the shoulders. She tried to look away, but I bobbed and weaved and finally got her to lock on.

“Look at me. Read my lips,” I said. “Astrolo
gist
. Psycholo
gist
. Meteorolo
gist
. The root word ‘gist.’ Do you know what that means?”

She shook her head.

“The gist. The general idea. It means ‘guess.’ Sometimes right, sometimes wrong. The word is imbedded in the profession. You are a prognosticator, not a soothsayer.”

Bonnie’s big, beautiful blue eyes narrowed. “How much of this are you making up?”

“Nearly all of it.”

“God, it almost sounds legit.”

“I know. Scary, isn’t it.”

She smiled. Cold front passed. Crisis over. I asked, “You want to walk the pooch?”

She looked at me with mock suspicion. “Is that something kinky?”

“It could be. But actually it means I’ve got to take Alcatraz out to pee as soon as he finishes his breakfast. Maybe after we walk the pooch we can come back and walk the pooch. Whatever that turns out to be.”

She stepped into the bedroom to change. Alcatraz padded over to sit next to his master and watch. There can be little that is sexier than a woman letting a bathrobe drop from her naked body. You see it in the Bond movies all the time. I turned to my dog and growled. “You and your bladder.” He paid me no nevermind.

I made a special effort to not say anything about how god-awful cold it was outside. A bastard wind kicked out of the harbor a block away and slapped us in the face the moment we stepped outside. Even Alcatraz tensed. I unleashed my best friend and let him skid around on the ice and snow as he sniffed out locales on which to leave his love letters. Bonnie and I linked arms, as much for the combined body heat as for affection, and picked our way down to the harbor. All was calm, all was gray. The seagulls hovering above the docks were barely distinguishable against the dull sky. A bright red tugboat bobbed in the oily water. Opposite the tug, the Screaming Oyster Saloon—capped with a frosting of ice—clung to the side of the pier like a worn old man about to lose his grip.

Bonnie and I walked along in silence, our only sound the crunch of snow under our feet. The frost from our breathing was like dialogue balloons in a comic strip … but without words. I had no idea where her thoughts were. Mine were on the dead waitress. Helen. I could guess where she was by now. Not all that far away, in fact. She would be out of her black body bag, stretched out on a cold aluminum table in the basement of the medical examiner’s office over on Penn Street. By now the M.E. would have cracked open her breastbone and opened her up to have a look around. The contents of her stomach would be excavated and various tests run to determine what her last meal had been and when it had been eaten. There were organs to be removed and weighed and, of course, a bullet to be extracted. In my mind’s ear I heard the little
ping
as the bullet was dropped onto a metal tray.
Ping.
A far cry from the sound it must have made when it came out of a gun sometime last night and slammed into the woman’s chest. A chill spiked my spine.

Alcatraz was enjoying his romp, which featured several four-legged splits—like Bambi on ice—as he trotted about in search of love. I’ve done a few splits myself in search of love. Who hasn’t?

“Everybody loves my father.”

I was jerked from my reverie. Bonnie and I hadn’t spoken for several minutes. I looked down at her lovely profile.

“
You
love your father,” I reminded her.

“But I don’t want to
be
him,” she said. “I don’t want to follow in his footsteps, damn it. It’s just so frustrating.” She made as if to count off on her fingers, but she was wearing mittens, so it didn’t work so well. “One. Everybody loved him, and he’s an impossible act to follow. Two. I’m not doing what I want to be doing anyway. Three. I’m not doing it well. In fact, I’m doing it horribly.
Look
.” She spread her arms to take blame for the entire world. “
He
would have called it right.”

And there was the rub. Lewis Nash. Bonnie’s father had been Baltimore’s preeminent television weatherman since before the Stone Ages. The man started back when bow ties were a fashion, not a fad.
That
long ago. You can scour a Boy Scout manual to come up with the adjectives you need for what a loyal, trustworthy, congenial, caring, honest guy Lew Nash was. Baltimore loved Lewis Nash. He had been everybody’s favorite uncle.

Bonnie never intended for the weather slot to be anything but a rung on the ladder. She wanted to cover hard news not light flurries. But we live in a patronizing and capitalizing culture and Bonnie Nash is a drop-dead darling of a palomino blonde. Genetically perky face. Bright blue schoolgirl eyes. And a body like Everyman’s dream of the perfect stewardess. From the moment the station tried her out at the tender age of twenty—the perky blonde in the pumps and tailored suits—the glass ceiling was immediately lowered into place. The fact that Bonnie couldn’t forecast a sneeze in a pepper factory didn’t mean a damn thing.

“Everyone wants me to be Daddy’s little goddamn girl, Hitch. I’m fucking sick of it.”

“Why don’t you just quit?” It wasn’t the first time I had suggested this.

She snapped right back. “And do what? I’m pigeonholed. I’m Lew Nash’s kid. I’m a pair of breasts that tells you what the weather is going to be tomorrow.
Maybe.
And the more I screw that up the less likely I’ll ever be taken seriously as a reporter anyway. I’m so fucking
frustrated
.”

She drew up short from her fit and gave me a plaintive look. Bonnie was wearing one of those dead-animal Russian caps. Her cheeks were as red as the tugboat in the harbor behind her, and her lips were quivering.

“We should get back,” I said. “You’re freezing.”

She snapped. “Don’t try to change the subject!”

I tried to point out to her—gently—that there was no subject. “Are you trying to make an actual decision here or are you simply lamenting?”

Her expression grew vulnerable. “You’re tired of hearing me complain, aren’t you? You think I’m just a whiny girl.”

“I don’t think you’re a whiny girl. I think you’re a frustrated young woman.”

Bonnie came back to me and pretzeled our arms together. Alcatraz was melting some snow over near the Oyster. I tried to whistle to him, but my whistle was frozen. And a clapping of gloves—especially impeded by Bonnie’s arms—didn’t amount to much either. Bonnie curled her tongue under her teeth and brought forth a piercingly loud whistle. Alcatraz nearly snapped his neck at the sound.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” I said.

“There’s a lot about me you don’t know.”

I lowered my nose into the dead Russian animal. Bonnie squeezed my arm. Unfortunately, this was all the foreplay we could afford. A noon whistle from across the harbor pierced the air. My Bonnie lass had to get back to work.

Just before we got back to my place I told Bonnie about the events of the previous evening. I suppose it might seem peculiar that the fact of a dead waitress being dropped at my front door hadn’t been the first thing I blurted out when I got home the night before, but you can blame Bonnie’s loving embrace for that.

Bonnie’s mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding. She’d been
shot
?”

“I don’t think she was shot there. I think someone brought her there and dropped her off.”

Bonnie’s eyes were as wide as saucers. “Absolutely. The murderer! That’s who dropped her off! Oh my God. Do the police have any leads?”

“I can’t say. As of last night all they knew was that she was a waitress named Helen.”

“Do they know what restaurant?”

“Her name tag didn’t say. They’ve probably figured it out by now though.”

Alcatraz was across the street at a mailbox, nosing around. Bonnie was practically beside herself.

“Hitch! We’ve got to find out what restaurant she worked at. And what shift she was working yesterday. Or last night. We’ve got to find out her name!”

“Her name is Helen. I told you that.”

“Helen
who
? Helen from
where
? Hitch, for God’s sake, a murder victim was dumped off at your fucking
door
last night. We have to investigate!”

We had reached my place. I’ve got a narrow formstone house in the middle of a row of narrow formstone rowhouses. Sewell & Sons is at the far end of the block. It’s a great commute.

“The police are investigating,” I reminded her.

Bonnie looked at me like I had four ears. “Screw the police! Aren’t you
curious
? I mean, she was dropped off at your goddamn door! What did she look like?”

I gave a cursory description.

“Was she pretty?”

“She was dead.”

“Don’t hide behind that. You’re an expert in dead people. You know if she was pretty.”

“She appeared to have been a nice looking woman.”

“Hitch. I want to solve this murder. I want this more than anything. This is a golden opportunity. I want to find out who killed that woman.”

“But—”

“I want you to help me. Please. Do this. I want you to go inside right now and write down everything you can remember from the moment the body was discovered. Everything. Every detail.”

“Aren’t you getting just a little too excited at the expense of a murder victim?”

Her eyes flashed. “Yes!”

I guess you couldn’t fault her for honesty.

Now who knows. Maybe it would have all ended in another minute or two. Flared up and sizzled out. But just then the Fates, the Muddling Chessmen, the old S.I.B. (Supreme Ironical Being) himself, stepped in. In the guise of a dog. My dog. Alcatraz trotted over to us and Bonnie bent down to see what he was carrying in his slobbery chops. She took what appeared to be a small pad of paper from Alcatraz’s mouth. She straightened and waved it triumphantly in my face.

“Oh Hitch. How can you say no?”

It was an order pad. The kind a restaurant uses.

I pictured the woman curled up dead on my doorstep.

I said yes.

H
elen Waggoner was a month shy of her twenty-sixth birthday when she was killed. She had worked at a place called Sinbad’s Cave, which was a restaurant lounge out by the airport. She had lived in the Woodlawn section and “had attended” Northern High School. No mention of having graduated. She was survived by a sister and a three-year-old son. No husband.

I hadn’t gleaned any of this information from sleuthing; I got it from the
Baltimore Sun
. City Section. Front page, below the fold.

MURDERED WAITRESS FOUND
ON FUNERAL HOME STEPS
by Jay Adams

The story continued on page B9, alongside an article about a man biting a dog. No lie. The dog was pictured. A German shepherd named Rosie. Rosie was up for adoption and had already received over two dozen offers. The SPCA was sifting through the calls. The man was not pictured.

Neither was Helen Waggoner.

I handed the paper to Billie. “Do you want to see your name in print?”

We were in Billie’s kitchen. It was two days after the unexplained drop-off. Jay Adams, the
Sun
reporter, had been out the day before and had spoken with Billie. I had met him as he was leaving. A delicate looking fellow with olive skin and jet black hair slicked back in large comb grooves, he didn’t look so much like an Adams as maybe an Adamapadopolis, but anything’s possible in this great melting pot of ours. Jay Adams had wanted to know if I would talk to him about the dead waitress, and I told him no thanks. I trusted that Billie had given him the pertinent details.

“Do you have any idea why she was dumped off here?” His notebook was open. His pen was poised.

“Nope.”

“And you’ve never seen her before? You don’t know her?”

“Nope.”

“Have you ever been to Sinbad’s Cave?”

“Nope.”

“So you have nothing to add to the story.”

“Nope.”

He had flipped his notebook closed with a prissy snap.

“Did you see this about the dog?” Billie folded the paper in half. She looked over at Alcatraz in the corner. He was curled up in his tail-chasing posture, dreaming doggie dreams. “Do you think Alcatraz would like a friend?”

“He has a friend. Me. Dog’s best friend.”

“I mean Rosie.”

“I know you do. And no. Alcatraz likes the spotlight. He wouldn’t want to share it. Especially with a dog that has had her picture in the paper.”

Billie was wearing a thin flannel robe and a pair of those old fuzzy slippers that used to be so popular. Maybe they still are. Hers were pink. Alcatraz had a pair as well, handed down from his godmother Billie. His
used
to be pink. If I ever want to hear my dog’s primal growl I simply insert one of those slippers between his teeth. Never fails.