Hearse of a Different Color (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries) (28 page)

“Why not.”

Tracy lived in a dump. I felt immediately as if I were in a wing of the Gary and Gloria house. The wall-to-wall carpet was snot green and severely tufted. The walls were beige—or simply dirty—and unadorned. The furniture looked vaguely bacterial. Tracy had straightened up in anticipation of my arrival, if shoving loose junk into the corner can be called straightening up. She was wearing lime green shorts, a blue tank top and a fresh patina of makeup. I hadn’t noticed in the crab house how full and loose her breasts were. I noticed now. Tracy had teased her fiery red hair into a feathery cascade. Her nails were freshly painted. As I perched lightly on the edge of the couch, I caught a glimpse of a flickering candle out of the corner of my eye. Through an open door. Next to a bed. I seriously doubted I’d have gotten out alive had I arrived solo. Bonnie alighted next to me. I hoped Miss Atkins didn’t keep a shotgun handy. We were sitting ducks.

“We want to ask you a few questions about Helen,” I said.

“You did that already.” Tracy crossed her arms over her bouncy breasts and dropped into an armchair. A puff of silvery dust leaped from the cushions.

“I know. I’m just trying to get the clearest picture.”

“How clear do you want? Someone killed Helen. You don’t know who. I don’t know who.”

“Well, now, you see, that’s not a very clear picture.” I pulled the torn photograph of Terry Haden and his lawyers from my pocket and leaned across the coffee table to hand her the half showing Haden. “That’s Terry Haden.”

She glanced at the photograph. “Okay. So?”

“You do recognize him, right? That’s Helen’s ex-husband.”

She looked at the photograph again. Or pretended to.

“If you say it is.”

“Just how close to Helen were you?” Bonnie asked. I would have preferred that she let me do the talking. The redhead stiffened.

“Better than you, I guess.”

“This guy in the picture, Tracy, did you ever see him at Sinbad’s?” I asked. “Did you ever see him and Helen together?”

“No.”

I pointed at the front door. “So, if he were to come walking through that door right now, would he recognize you?”

If she were lying I’d know it. As far as she knew I had Terry Haden cooling his heels right outside. She answered immediately.

“Nope.”

I believed her. I stole a glance at Bonnie. She did too. Good … we had a liar telling the truth. Progress. I asked my next question. My real one. “Did you steal Helen’s car?”

Tracy answered slowly, “What do you mean?”

Bonnie attempted to clear it up for her. “He means did you steal Helen Waggoner’s car after she was killed?”

“You can just shut up, lady!” Tracy snapped. “I don’t have to listen to any of your crap.”

I leaned forward, partly blocking her view of Bonnie. I lowered my voice. “Then you listen to mine, lover girl. Withholding information from the police is a crime. And you’ve done it. Withholding it from me is just general state-of-the-art lying.”

“Who says I’m lying?”

“Where’d you get that nifty, vintage MG of yours?”

“What about it?”

“I asked, where did you get it?”

“I bought it. What’d you think?”

“How much did you pay for it?” asked Bonnie.

Tracy turned a sneer on her. “How much did you pay for those earrings?” Bonnie instinctively raised a hand to one of her ears. “It’s none of my business, is it?” Tracy continued. “Same thing with my car. How much I paid for it is none of your damn business.”

“How about if you paid nothing for it, Tracy?” I suggested.

“What does that mean?”

“How about if someone bought that car for Helen, paid to have some of that recent bodywork done? How about if, after Helen was killed, a certain redheaded waitress … a ‘good friend’ of Helen’s just happened to know where she kept her keys?”

“I didn’t steal that car. That’s my goddamn car!”

“Paid for with all that good tip money you make at Sinbad’s?” Bonnie piped up. “Or should I say, next door to Sinbad’s?”

I caught Tracy Atkins before she got her claws into Bonnie. She came right across the coffee table. I had her by the arms and I kept a firm grip on her as I guided her back to the armchair. Her nostrils were flaring.

“You’re a goddamn son of a bitch aren’t you?” she murmured. I released her arms and she fell back into the chair. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared up at me.

“I’m not looking to get you in trouble,” I said simply. “I could care less if you took Helen’s car. It won’t do her any good now.”

“Then what’s this all about?”

“We’re trying to find out who killed Helen. I need to find out just who it was that was showering her with stuff like clothes and a car. You can keep the damn car for all I care. But I want to know who actually paid for it. Who gave that car to Helen?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”

I turned to Bonnie. “Truth?”

She was nodding her head. “I think so.”

Tracy sneered across the coffee table. “Well, thank you.”

I turned back to her. “Where were you the night Helen was murdered?”

“With someone.”

“Does that someone have a name?”

She glared at me. “You’re a total prick, aren’t you?”

“It’s just a question.”

“I was with Gary.”

“That’s your alibi?”

“I don’t need an alibi! I didn’t do anything.”

“Except steal the car of a dead woman.” She said nothing. She just glared. “Where are the keys to the car, Tracy?”

“You’re not taking my car!”

“I didn’t say I was. And it’s not your car. Now where are the keys?”

She whined a bit more but eventually came up with the keys. I tossed them to Bonnie who scurried out the front door.

“Is that your girlfriend?” Tracy asked, making certain that I caught her disapproving tone.

“Look, I’m sorry I had to play the heavy with you. I want to find out who killed Helen. So level with me, do you know
anything
about this guy she was seeing? Anything at all.”

“I don’t have to tell you a goddamn thing.”

“Tracy, I’m holding a stolen MG over your head. If you want, I can get heavy all over again. I can give a friend of mine down at the police station a call. Now, do you know something about this guy or not? I promise I’ll just keep harassing you if I think you’re holding out. I’m good at being a pain in the ass, believe me.”

“I got that part.”

“Good. So, is there anything you’re forgetting to tell me that might help?”

“Well. Maybe just one thing.”

“And that would be?”

Just then Bonnie came back in. In one hand she had the keys to the MG, which she tossed to me. In the other she was holding the FOR SALE sign that I had noticed the other day on the floor behind the driver’s seat.

“It’s got a phone number on it,” Bonnie announced triumphantly. I turned back to Tracy, who was smiling her bad-teeth smile.

“Same thing,” she said. “That phone number. That’s what I know. That’s where Helen got the car.”

Then she stuck her tongue out at me.

“Sure man, I remember her. She was a real piece of ass.” The guy was looking over at Bonnie, whose upper half was invisible, as it was poked into the driver’s side window of a bottle-green Valiant. “That’s the girl from TV, isn’t it?”

“That’s her.”

The wolf was giving a lamb-chop look. “Cool.”

The phone number from the FOR SALE sign on Tracy’s—Helen’s—MG had led us to this garage near the intersection of Joppa and Belair Roads. The guy’s name was Johnny. He had told me on the phone that I couldn’t miss the place, and he was right. Johnny and his wife, Shirley, ran a lawn ornament business out of their home. All your plaster deer, lawn elf, balsa windmill, pink flamingo, stone Madonna, fake water well, ceramic rabbit needs could be met at Johnny and Shirley’s. The quarter acre out in front of their little ranch house was choked with the stuff. Maybe it was just the time of year, but the leisurely pace of this sort of business seemed to suit the couple’s other interests, which for Johnny was the restoring of vintage automobiles in his garage, and for his wife it was the watching of the daytime talk shows. A rousing dustup between serial infideliacs could be heard through the open garage door, coming from the television set in the room just off the kitchen.

“That MG was a sweet car,” Johnny said, his gaze not yet wandering too far from the rear end of the TV celebrity in his garage. “Piece of shit when I got it too.”

“So you did what to it? Bodywork?”

“The whole thing. The engine needed a ton of work. Pretty much had to rebuild it. Then, you know, new brake pads, universal joint, new clutch. The real trick is finding the parts. You’ve got to go to a lot of junkyards and shit like that to dig up some of this stuff. Most of the parts on the new models don’t fit the old ones.”

Bonnie popped back out of the Valiant.

“Are you selling this one?” she asked.

“I’ve still got some more work to do to it,” Johnny said. “That’s a hell of a car. It’s a ’64. V-6. Push-button automatic. She can really cook.”

I asked, “How much are you asking?”

“You interested?”

“I could find a way to be.”

“What are you driving now?” Johnny asked.

“An old Chevy.”

“How old?”

“Not old enough.”

“You got a number? I can call you when its ready. I’m waiting for one more part, and then she’s pretty much done. You can come back out and take a test drive.”

I dug out one of my cards and handed it to him. I almost got away with it, but at the last minute he glanced at it.

“You bury people?”

“Only dead ones.”

Bonnie rolled her eyes. She had only been with me several months but that was long enough to have heard
that
one more times than she could count. Johnny shook the card several times, as if he was drying it off.

“I’ll call you.”

We were way off the track. “Look, about this MG, Johnny. The woman who bought it. How did she see it in the first place, did she say?”

“I had that car running for about a week or so before I put the For Sale sign on it.”

“Then what? You parked it out front with the sign?”

“No. Shirley doesn’t like when I do that. A used car out in front of the business. She says it looks cheap.”

Bonnie and I tied for the Poker Face Award. The lawn ornament impresario continued.

“I just drove it around about a week with the sign on it. I must’ve gotten like a dozen calls in no time. Those were great-looking cars, those old MGs. The best thing they done for the vintage car business is put out the pieces of crap they’re selling now.”

“So you said you drove it around about a week before you sold it. Was that mainly just around here?” We were nowhere near the airport or the neighborhood where Helen had lived. I was wondering how she would have seen the car in the first place.

“Pretty much, yeah. Here. Towson. Timonium. I took it out on the Harrisburg one time, to open her up. See how she did.”

“How’d she do?”

“She did me a hundred-dollar speeding ticket, that’s how.”

“How fast were you going?” Bonnie asked.

Johnny smiled. “A hundred miles an hour. A dollar a mile. The trooper who pulled me over was asking about buying it too.”

“Can I ask how much you sold it for?” I asked.

“What is this?” Johnny suddenly said. “Is someone in some sort of trouble?”

“No. But I—”

“Like did that chick hit someone with the car? Man, I’ll kill her if she messed it up that quickly.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Bonnie said softly.

Johnny was looking at us suspiciously now. “What is this? Is this about insurance or something? I’m telling you right now, that car was in excellent shape when it left here, man. Nobody’d better be trying to say I sold her a bum car, man. She had a mechanic check it out and everything before she bought it. He said it was fine.”

“Look,” I said. “It’s not about the car, the car’s fine. We’re not trying to set you up for anything. We’re interested in the woman who bought it, that’s all. Was anyone with her when she came in to look at the car?”

“I wasn’t here the first time she came by. She talked to my wife.” He turned toward the open door. “HEY SHIRLEY!”

A chorus of boos were sounding from the television studio audience. A few seconds later, a large woman in a housecoat and a head full of curlers appeared at the open door. I would have guessed her to be Johnny’s mother, not his wife.

“That woman came by to look at the MG. She have anyone with her?” Johnny asked.

The question seemed to annoy Johnny’s wife.

“You gonna fix the flagpole?”

“Did she have anyone
with
her?” When Shirley continued to glare, Johnny pointed at Bonnie. “Do you know who this is?”

Shirley sucked on the question a few seconds. “I don’t remember if she did or she didn’t,” she said, then turned around and retreated to her television. Johnny’s gaze lingered on the open door.

“She remembers,” he said. “That means no. She came by herself.”

“But she was here more than once,” I said. “You said that she brought a mechanic.”

“Yeah. He went over the car from head to foot. Told me I did a great job on her.”

“But no one else, huh? Like a boyfriend?”

“Nope.”

“How did she pay for the car?” I asked.

“Cash. And lots of it. I told you I got a lot of calls about the car? Well, I had one guy all set to give me a couple hundred dollars more than I was asking for it. I was going to sell it to him. Then this woman you’re talking about calls me up. I tell her it’s sold. I tell her about the guy offering me more money. She says hold on. I can hear her talking to someone. Then she offers me five hundred more. Hey. Money’s money. I said sure. She said she had to have a mechanic go over it first, but otherwise she was ready to go. Cash and carry, you know.”

I glanced over at Bonnie. She was thinking the same thing. When Helen had asked Johnny to “hold on” she had consulted her First National Boyfriend, who must have given her the okay to outbid the other guy.

I thanked Johnny for his time. I had only one more question. So did Bonnie. Mine yielded me a piece of paper on which was scribbled the name of the mechanic Helen had brought along to go over the car, as well as the address of the place where he worked. Hunt Valley Motors, on York Road. Johnny was pretty sure that the guy owned the place.