In Plain Sight (10 page)

M
aybe setting the Shih Tzus on fire hadn't been such a good idea after all.

“Move away from the phone and out from the counter,” Merlin ordered as he approached me.

Oh, good. The Pillsbury Dough Boy with a gun. Not that I wasn't going to comply. Hell, I would have complied if it had been Mr. Softee. A twenty-two may not be a .357, but it's big enough. If one of its slugs hits you in the chest or the stomach and does a Bouncing Betty routine, it can rip up everything inside.

“Why'd you have to do it?” demanded Merlin. We were now about five feet apart from each other.

“It?” I asked, playing dumb, which at the moment wasn't too far from the truth. “What's it?”

Merlin sauntered close enough for me to see the nick on his chin where he'd cut himself shaving. “I'm going to teach you a lesson,” he hissed. “I'm going to teach you not to mess with other people's stuff.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I insisted, which made Merlin even madder.

“Don't lie to me,” he snarled.

I studied him, wondering if a simple apology would do, but then I decided we were past that stage. Way past.

Merlin took a few more steps toward me. “You embarrassed me in front of my friends.”

“I didn't know you had any,” I couldn't keep myself from saying as I reflected that my mouth always has been and probably always will be my downfall.

Merlin's scowl deepened. His eyes grew darker, two raisins in a sea of barely baked dough. “You don't think I'm serious, do you? Let me show you.” He took another step in my direction and Zsa Zsa started barking, a high-pitched yapping that filled the store and started the parrots off.

“Shut her up before I shoot her,” Merlin snarled.

Instead I reached over and pushed his gun hand down with my left hand while I punched him with my right. I felt his flesh yield and then a satisfying thud as my knuckles connected with his jaw. His head jerked back. He stumbled. But he still managed to hold on to the twenty-two.

He was bringing it back up when I punched him again. A jolt of pain traveled up my arm. I heard a groan and realized it was me. Then I looked at Merlin. His teeth and lower lip had turned carmine. A thin red line of blood dribbled down his chin. His hand opened. The gun clattered to the floor next to Zsa Zsa. She danced around it. Merlin grunted and bent to get the twenty-two, but he was too slow and too fat. I dove to the ground and came up pointing it at his chest before he had taken two steps. Now it was my turn.

“Put your hands up,” I ordered over Zsa Zsa's yipping. The noise was so piercing I wanted to kill her myself.

Merlin smirked. His hands stayed where they were. “The gun isn't loaded,” he informed me.

“Yeah, right.” How stupid did he think I was? Obviously stupid enough because I involuntarily glanced down at the gun before I caught myself and looked back up. Merlin had taken advantage of my momentary lack of attention to move two steps closer to the door.

“Stay right where you are,” I said.

“Why should I?”

“Because I'm telling you to.”

“What are you going to do if I don't?” he jeered. “Shoot me?”

“Now that's an interesting thought.” I raised the gun slightly and fired over his head. For an instant the air around me smelled of cordite. Then a trickle of cedar shavings began falling out of the bag I'd hit. The noise was too much for Zsa Zsa, and she scampered into the back room.

“No bullets, hunh?” I said to Merlin.

He went slack-jawed. “Jesus,” he stammered. “I didn't know. Marsha told me it wasn't loaded. I swear.”

For a moment I almost felt sorry for the man. Almost but not quite. I lifted an eyebrow. “And how, pray tell, would she know something like that?”

“Because it was hers.”

“You're lying.” When I'd seen her, Marsha had had the air of a rabbit, someone who was ready to run whenever anyone said boo. People like that don't go out and buy themselves a gun.

“Look at the handle for Christ's sake,” Merlin cried. “Do I look like someone who would buy pink mother-of-pearl?”

“No,” I reluctantly conceded after thinking about it. “Probably not.”

“I wouldn't have come in here like this if I'd known it was loaded,” he continued earnestly. Like a lot of bullies he was all contrition now that I had the upper hand. “Honest. I just wanted to scare you, to teach you a lesson.”

“And that's supposed to make things better?”

Merlin gently touched his split lip and looked at the blood on his fingertips. “You hurt me,” he said reproachfully.

I nodded toward my bruised knuckles. “And you hurt me. I guess that makes us even.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked, wiping the blood off on the back of his pants.

I shifted my weight from one leg to another. “Calling the cops is one possibility that comes to mind.”

A simper of a smile flitted across Merlin's face. “I don't think that's a good idea.”

“And I don't think you're in a position to think anything,” I reminded him.

“If you do,” Merlin informed me, “I'll tell them the gun is yours and that I came in here and you attacked me.”

I smiled pleasantly. The man's gall was truly amazing. “Then maybe I'll just shoot you instead.”

I didn't think it was possible for Merlin to get paler, but he did. “You're crazy,” he whispered.

“So I've been told. Repeatedly.” I leaned against the counter and watched Merlin's eyes dart back and forth as he assessed the distance to the door and tried to decide whether or not he should make a break for it.

“Don't try it,” I warned. “You're not going to make it. You're too slow.”

Merlin's eyes narrowed into two slits. His mouth twisted in a grimace. “This is all Marsha's fault,” he spat out. “Even when she's dead she's still making trouble for me.” The hate in his voice made the hairs on my arms rise. “I bet she pranced that fat body of hers in here and told you some bullshit about me and you believed her.” He leveled a finger at me. “You think she's the good guy. Everyone does. But she wasn't. Not by a long shot. Let me tell you that woman had problems of her own—big ones. Go ask Shirley. Just ask her. She'll tell you.”

“I intend to,” I said. “After I talk to you.”

Merlin had just opened his mouth to say something else when I heard the front door open behind me. Fuck. Just what I didn't need. A customer.

“Hello,” Tim said.

As I breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn't someone else Merlin spun around and ran for the door.

“Hey!” Tim yelled as Merlin bumped into him on the way out.

I cursed. Fluently.

Tim's eyes widened as he saw the gun in my hand. “What's going on?” he demanded.

I laid the twenty-two on the counter. “Nothing now.”

“That doesn't look like nothing to me,” he observed as he plunked the carton he'd been carrying down next to the register. “Somehow pink doesn't seem to be your color.”

“It's not,” I retorted and told him the story.

“You're really not going to call the police?” Tim said when I was finished.

I reached for the pack of cigarettes underneath the counter and took a Camel out. “Let me ask you a question.” I paused to pull my lighter out from my black leather backpack. “If it comes down to my word against Merlin's, who do you think they're going to believe?”

“Merlin,” Tim replied immediately.

“Exactly.” I lit my cigarette and indicated the twenty-two. “And with my luck I'd get Connelly, and I don't even want to think about what he'd do with this. Possession of an unlicensed firearm? He'd book me no questions asked. It would make his day.”

Tim meditatively twirled his bottom earring around. “Why do you think it's unlicensed?”

“Because otherwise Merlin wouldn't have threatened to tell the cops it was mine.”

“Good point.” Tim took the bill of lading from the shipment he'd just picked up at the air freight office out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me. “So what are you going to do now?” he asked as I scanned the receipt. For once, Reptiles & Things had actually shipped everything I'd ordered.

“I don't know. I'll tell you one thing, though.”

“What?” Tim asked as he took the box cutter from the utility drawer, slit the tape along the carton's flaps open, and bent the flaps back.

“This gun proves that Marsha didn't commit suicide.”

Tim tossed the box cutter back in the drawer. “How do you figure that?”

“Why would she drag herself out to LeMoyne and drown herself when she could put a bullet through her head in the comfort of her home?”

Tim shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe she was a neat freak. Maybe she didn't want her husband to clean up after her.”

I glared at him.

“Okay, okay. I'm sorry.” Tim lifted a cloth bag out of the box and untied it. A corn snake slithered onto his wrist. “Let's suppose you're right.”

I crossed my arms and waited.

“Let's suppose someone—possibly her husband—did kill her. That's too bad. Bad karma. But the lady's buried and the case is closed. Let it alone.”

“She came to me for help.”

“She asked you to help her keep her dogs, not to keep her from getting killed.”

“I know that,” I said irritably.

“Then why don't you leave this alone?”

“Because I'm pissed.”

“About what?”

“About the fact that no one seems to care about what happened to her.” I stubbed my cigarette out. “And anyway, I still have her money. I owe her.”

“I guess you do.” Tim conceded. Then he pointed to the gun. “What are you going to do with that?”

I put the twenty-two in the drawer and closed it. “The gun? Probably keep it.”

“Why bother?”

I leaned forward. “Come again?”

“You heard me. You pull that on someone they're going to laugh.”

“Not if I shoot them in the right place.”

“And what are the odds of that happening?” Tim asked.

“Not high,” I admitted. I wasn't a very good shot.

“Exactly. I rest my case.” Tim went back to unpacking the carton.

Other than a few desultory comments Tim and I didn't talk for the rest of the evening. I spent until closing time housing the snakes we'd just received, cleaning out the bird room, waiting on customers, and wondering if Merlin had been telling me the truth about the gun being Marsha's and thinking about whether or not Marsha really did have some serious problems.

I closed up the store at nine. The wind tugged at my hair when Zsa Zsa and I stepped outside. An empty trash can was rolling around in the middle of the street. Zsa Zsa jumped. Then she began barking furiously. I guess she was still nervous about the gunshot. I quieted her down, put the trash can back on the curb and headed for home. As I drove Merlin's words kept ringing in my ears. I couldn't get them out of my mind, and before I knew it I found myself driving toward the apartments in which Shirley Hinkel lived.

As I turned onto Thurber I couldn't help thinking about the high hopes Murphy and I had had when we'd moved into the Crestville. We'd come up to Syracuse to make a new start. For a while it worked. We were busy finding a place to live, getting used to new jobs, driving around the countryside, but eventually the novelty had worn off and we'd gradually gone back to our old habits. Murphy would come home late smelling of other women. I'd smoke dope and take tranqs to dull the pain. I'd have a joint with my morning coffee, then have another when I walked through the door at night, a third before we went out. I'd rationalized my habit by telling myself I could take grass or leave it, but I realized that wasn't true when I went away for a working weekend in the country with my boss. Reality was too jagged, and I spent Saturday and Sunday counting the hours until I could light up and get back to the nice, warm cocoon I'd spun for myself. So I went back to smoking. I liked the feeling it gave me too much to quit.

A couple of months later I got my wake-up call. I'd been smoking some Maui Zowie with Murphy and one of his friends when I started getting paranoid. “No problem,” I said to myself. “I'll just go to bed. I'll feel better in the morning.” Only I didn't. I woke up feeling as if the walls were closing in on me. It began to dawn on me I wasn't riding the tiger anymore, the tiger was riding me. It was time, I decided, to cut back. And I did. I gradually tapered off. But Murphy hadn't. Then somewhere down the line he'd turned to harder stuff. I sighed and pulled onto the road leading to the apartments.

Because the housing complex was up on a hill the wind was stronger, and the large white entrance sign was creaking under its onslaught. The houses looked the same now as they had when Murphy and I were living there, row after row of two-story attached town houses, all painted the same muddy brown. The parking lot was almost full—everyone was in for the night.

In the whitish glare of the street lights I could see the tree branches on the perimeter of the complex bending this way and that. Underneath one of the larger oaks a man was standing with a toy poodle waiting for him to do his business so they could both go in for the night. Years ago I'd stood there with my dog Elsie. Now she was dead and so was Murphy. Melancholy settled into my bones. It had been a mistake coming here. I'd underrated the power of memories. I should have called Shirley and met her in a coffee shop instead. But it was too late for that now. I parked the cab, told Zsa Zsa to stay put, and got out.