Hide and Snake Murder (9 page)

Eight

We arrived at the
Jardin Royal well after three in the morning. On the way to the hotel, we all agreed it would be suicide to stay in the room from which Hunk and company had hauled us.

Eau de sheep followed us through the entrance. The front desk guy struggled not to wrinkle his nose at the stench and was all too happy to get us out of his lobby. The hotel had one suite left that slept six, and Agnes paid cash for it, slipped the clerk a fifty, and gave a fake name. The man hastily handed Agnes a key and directed us to the third floor.

On the way up, we made a pit stop in the original room and cleared it out. Thankfully, we were able to retrieve Eddy, Agnes, and Rocky's luggage and the bags Coop and I brought along as well as Baz's, so we could all change into something a little less aromatic.

The bucket with the cell phones had disappeared, though. I couldn't even take my waterlogged iPhone in for repairs.

After some heated discussion, we decided not to bring our incident to the attention of the local police. Who knew who was on the take and who resided in whose pockets? As soon as we were functioning in the morning, I was going to call and make airline reservations to get us out of the Big Easy.

I showered, and Eddy cleaned out the cut on my eyebrow and proclaimed it “just a scratch, quit your yelpin'. ”

Once we'd all settled down to sleep, the silence was punctuated by Baz's steady snore. I tossed one way, and then another, thankful I was alone on a rollaway. My brain kept replaying scenes from that fatal accident so many years ago that claimed the lives of Eddy's only boy and my mother. Every time I was about to drop off, a flashback flickered in front of my closed eyelids. Thankfully, the darkness and exhaustion finally won out, and I dropped into unconsciousness.

The eight a.m. wakeup call from the front desk came entirely too soon. I rolled out of bed and hit the bathroom before anyone else had a chance to move. I showered again, hoping to rid myself of the last vestiges of ewe. By 8:18 I was out of the bathroom and on the in-room phone with April McNichi, who, after being appropriately dismayed at our latest brush with trouble, tried like a madwoman to arrange return tickets for everyone and get us all on the same flight out. I assured her we'd pay her back as soon as we were able. Our luck seemed to be rolling with the punches, and April managed to get us six seats on an evening flight back to Minneapolis. We gratefully spent a few more hours sleeping before we had to head to the airport again.

It dawned on me all the contact information I had for JT was lost with my cell. Thank goodness I'd jotted her numbers down at home. The woman was probably fit to be cuffed because she hadn't heard from me for two days. Not much I could do at this point, I unhappily decided. Besides, how would I explain New Orleans, the kidnapping, the coffin factory, the car-wreck, and the rescue via sheep-truck?

At 7:45 that evening, we landed safely on the tarmac at MSP.

A half-hour later, after a bathroom break and some over-priced snacks, we headed out into the parking ramp and crammed into my truck. Agnes called shotgun, leaving Rocky and Eddy squashed like sardines in the back. Baz and Coop crawled into the truck bed along with all of our luggage. Eddy slid the small rear window open for them.

“You know they're going to keep coming after us,” I said. “We escaped becoming alligator chow once, but who knows what'll happen if they get their hooks into us again.”

“You're right,” Eddy said. “Maybe we should talk to the boys in blue here in Minneapolis.”

Silence filled the truck.

Then Agnes said, “We sure are in a pickle. If whoever is behind this had at least some of the New Orleans police department on their payroll, don't you think there are going to be some police officers on it here, too? After all, Hunk and Donny said they were up here in Minneapolis before they were in New Orleans.”

“True.” Coop's face was framed by the open window. “Cops are corrupt pigs.”

“Hey.” I twisted around in my seat to shoot a look at Coop. “JT's not a pig, and she's not corrupt.”

He held up a hand. “She's the exception.”

“What about Doyle?” I asked. Doyle Malloy worked MPD homicide, and we'd grown up in the same neighborhood together. I'd call him, but I knew he was up north right now working some big case.

Coop mumbled, “Doyle's a dumbass dork.”

“Nicholas Cooper,” Eddy said. “I'm going to rinse your mouth out with soap, young man.”

“That I'd pay to see,” Baz said as he nudged Coop out of the way, his face filling the rear window.

“Sorry, Eddy,” Coop said, shoving Baz to the side and reclaiming the opening. “But it's true.”

Doyle was Doyle, and he took some getting used to. Maybe it would be best to feel things out a bit more before we approached him.

This was an appropriate time for a change of subject. “Agnes, we could drop you off up at our cabin until this mess gets straightened out if you'd like.”

“Are you kidding me? This is the most excitement I've had since Eddy hauled the Knitters to Canterbury and one of them jockeys lost his race and got shot at by the owner. No way are you guys leaving me behind. Besides, someone needs to keep an eye on that nephew of mine.”

“No one shot at anyone, Agnes,” Eddy said. “That was the starter's gun.”

“There is no starter's gun. It's a bell.”

“Bell, my wrinkled behind!”

“It was!”

Oh my. “Enough, both of you.” I gave them each a look in the dim light.

“What do you mean, someone needs to keep an eye on me?” Baz grumbled.

“If someone had kept an eye on you,” Eddy said, “We wouldn't be in this mess. And stop pushing at each other back there. One of you are gonna fall right out onto your head.”

“Okay,” I said. “We need to figure out just who's after us.”

Eddy said, “We have to find out who Basil took the snake from. Start at the start. That's how they do it on
Criminal Minds
.” She clapped her hands once and rubbed them together. It was something she did when she was about to immerse herself in trouble of some kind.

Coop said, “Baz, we need the location of the house you stole the snake from, and hopefully the owner's name.”

“That information will be at the office.”

“Then we have to pull a Bingo Barge on Basil's office,” Eddy said.

“No way.” I tried to look back at Eddy, but she was hidden in shadow behind my seat. Last fall, among other illegal acts, we'd broken into a floating bingo barge on the Mississippi trying to prove Coop innocent of murdering his boss. I wasn't itching to repeat the experience.

“We go on in and check things out.” She was only warming up. “We need to do some investigating, here,” Eddy said. “Got to get the address and then check out the joint. If we do a little poking around that house, we might find some clues as to why this is all happening. Where do you work again, Basil?”

“At Ducky Ducts in Crystal.”

I have no idea how Baz kept a straight face telling people the name of his employer.

“Where in Crystal?” Eddy asked.

“Small office in the back of a strip mall between West Broadway and Becker Park.”

Coop said. “I can't believe we're thinking about breaking into another business. I have enough problems with the law without sh—, uh, stuff like this.” He sighed heavily. “How late are people in the office?”

Baz said, “Usually the receptionist, the accountant slash secretary, and Rich, the boss, hang around until five. Sometimes one of the other ducklings are there picking up jobs or dropping off paperwork 'til after seven. But it's past eight-thirty. Everyone should have cleared out by now.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Ducklings?”

“That's what Rich calls us duct service people.” Baz's voice held a note of contempt.

Coop said, “Man, how low do you have to go to actually consider employment with these people? Ducklings?”

I caught Baz's shoulder lift in the rearview mirror. He said defensively, “It's a paycheck.”

Agnes said. “It's high time we run the show instead of the show running us.” She waved her hand. “Let's go.”

I backed out of the parking space and began the long spiral to the bottom of the ramp. We were off to Ducky Ducts, on a date with destiny. Hopefully it wouldn't be the kind of destiny that involved a jail cell. Or winding up horizontal in one of those Louisiana coffins.

Nine

I pulled into the
Ducky parking lot shortly after nine.

Eight bright yellow vans sat patiently waiting for morning and their “ducklings” to come and take them to the next appointment. Emblazoned across the back doors of the vans was the Ducky Ducts clever tag line:
We Clean Your Pipes Slick as a Whistle, Guaranteed.

How embarrassing to drive around with that on your figurative ass.

“All of the vans are in,” Baz said. “Rich's car and the secretary's minivan are gone.”

“Whoever's coming, come on.” I opened the door.

Agnes thrust a wizened, veiny hand at me. “Give me the keys. I'll be the get-away driver. Rocky's my second-in-command.” As I dropped the keys in the palm of Agnes's hand, I wondered if her driving skills were any better than Eddy's.

Rocky hopped into the passenger seat, beaming as if the gift of a lifetime had dropped from the sky. “I will be a very good second-in-command, Agnes. There are lots of famous second-in-commands like Spock and Clone Captain Rex.”

“Right,” Agnes said, clearly having no idea who they were.

The cool night air slid down the back of my neck. I shivered, glad to have my sweatshirt on, even it if the front was still decorated with powdered sugar.

“I'll hang out at the door,” Eddy announced as I gave her a hand out of the back of the truck. “Let you know if anyone we don't want to see shows up.”

“How are you going to do that?” Agnes asked.

“I'll scream.”

I smiled wryly to myself.

“Baz,” Coop said as he looked at the entrance door, “Is there any problem with you going into the office after hours?”

“No, I don't think so. We come in late when we're stuck at a job longer than we were supposed to be to drop paperwork off. It's never been a problem.”

Last fall's leaves and rocks from crumbling asphalt crunched under our feet as Coop, Eddy, and I trailed after Baz toward the office door. Baz stuck his hand in his front pocket and rooted around in there long enough I wondered if he was playing with himself. Then he pulled out a ring of keys and opened the door.

Coop and I followed him inside while Eddy planted herself in the doorway. Baz flipped on the lights. The office was windowless and small. It appeared tidy. An oak-veneer-covered reception desk with a flat screen monitor and keyboard was the focal point at the front of the twenty-by-forty-foot space. Three smaller IKEA-style desks sat behind reception. Stainless steel shelving units five levels high filled an entire wall from floor to ceiling. They were loaded with cardboard storage boxes.

Another room was connected to the office by an arched doorway. From the light spilling out, it appeared to hold whatever supplies were needed to accomplish the cleaning of one's pipes slick as a whistle, guaranteed.

The sound of an automated air freshener doing its thing made me jump. Then a pleasant scent settled over us—a cross between cut grass and sunshine. “What is that, Baz?” I asked.

“Midsummer Morning. The boss wanted a smell that associated the company with being clean and fresh. He thinks it keeps customers coming back.”

If the name of the place wasn't Ducky Ducts, the scent alone might indeed sway me to use their services. Interesting psychology.

Baz walked over to the middle desk. The top was covered by three large file trays, each with a label:
Jobs To Do, Jobs Completed, And Jobs To Redo.
The to-do bin was a couple inches high. The completed files spilled out of their slot and towered precariously eight inches over the top edges. Someone needed to get to work on their filing. I was impressed to see the re-do file tray was
empty. Maybe Ducky Ducts actually did a decent job the first time out.

Baz grabbed a mound of paperwork and started sifting through it. If either Coop or I knew what we were looking for, we'd have helped. As it stood, we were forced to twiddle our fingers while Baz discarded one file after another beside the wire container.

I gazed idly around the office. A huge yellow rubber duck with a bright orange bill was painted on the wall behind the desks. “Come on Baz, hurry up.”

“I am hurrying,” Baz said, his head bent as he shuffled through the papers. He set the last one down and picked up another handful.

“Here it is!” Baz opened the top of a manila folder. Coop and I crowded around him as he ran a stubby finger along the page. The finger paused below an address in Minnetonka. The name above the address sent my mind reeling. Coop actually backed up a step and said, “Oh, crap.”

Baz looked from one to the other of us, confusion evident on his chubby face. “What?”

I looked at him, now positive he was from a galaxy far, far, away. “Don't even tell me you haven't heard of Fletcher Sharpe.”

He shrugged. “I've heard of him. He has a lot of dough, right?”

“Jeez, Baz,” Coop ran a long-fingered hand across his stubbly jaw. “You've heard of the Hands On Toy Company, right?”

“No shit,” Baz said. “So what?”

“He owns it,” I said. “He was voted Most Philanthropic Minnesotan for the second consecutive year by that magazine … ” I snapped my fingers as I tried to pull the name from my brain. “What's it called?”

“The
Twin Citian
, I think.” Coop said. “The guy's donated millions to local charities. He's the Twin Cities answer to T. Boone Pickens.”

Hopefully Fletcher Sharpe wasn't Minnesota's answer to Bernie Madoff. I sank into a chair next to the desk. “Any kid worth his salt would be absolutely crushed if Sharpe is doing something he shouldn't. So would half the business community.”

Coop said, “I'd really hate to see another well-known and mostly well-liked local businessman topple like Denny Hecker and Tom Petters. Sharpe's always been an awesome guy.”

Both Denny Hecker and Tom Petters were at one time pillars of sorts in the Twin Cities area. Hecker owned at least twenty-six car dealerships, a restaurant, and a car-rental agency. He went on to defraud GM and others, winding up with a decade-long prison sentence. Petters bought out Fingerhut, purchased Polaroid, and added Sun Country Airlines to his collection before going belly-up on fraud charges and pulling a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme. He was cooling his jets in federal prison for at least fifty years.

I had no doubt the creation of Fletcher Sharpe's Dungeon Gameroom had something to do with Coop's glowing assessment. Regardless, we needed to figure out why a cornerstone of the community had in his possession a toy snake stuffed with hundred dollar bills. It was a shame Baz hadn't managed to hang onto any of the moolah. If we could unravel whatever was going on, we could probably make Tommy Tormenta and company stop trying to lessen our longevity.

“Baz,” I said, “can I see?”

He handed me the duct cleaning work order for Fletcher Sharpe. I jotted the address down on a slip of paper and returned it.

“I miss my phone,” I said. “I could pop that address in there, and wham—the directions would appear.” I handed the work order back to Baz. “What are we going to do about our trashed cell phones?”

Baz placed the paperwork back on the pile and returned the stack to the bin. “What can we do? They're goners.”

Eddy called from the doorway, “Hurry up, kids. Time's a-ticking.”

“Come on, let's go.” I said. “I have an idea.”