The Pink Flamingo Murders (11 page)

There was one other major change. The dangling
FOR SALE
sign was now hanging from two hooks, not one, and it had a fresh, new
UNDER CONTRACT
sign plastered across it in big red letters. Who would buy that burned-out building?

I took one more detour and drove slowly up North Dakota Place. The street was deserted. Caroline’s grass glowed golden in the long-shadowed sun, and the angel fountain was a mass of gilded rainbows. At sunset, the street was paved with gold. It was an enchanted summer place.

I had no more reasons to avoid going home. I parked Ralph in front of my flat and waved to Mrs. Indelicato behind the counter at the confectionary on the first floor of my building. That used to be my grandparents’ confectionary, and some of the same families still ran in for milk, bread, disposable diapers, and six-packs. When unexpected company dropped in, they still sent the kids out the back door for a pound of
boiled ham to dress up the everyday pickle loaf and baloney on the cold-cut platter. I spent a good part of my childhood in that store, helping my grandparents. I sold penny candy to my classmates and dusted the canned goods with a turkey-feather duster. I still liked those pink and purple candy buttons on the long strips of paper, even if I did wind up eating half a pound of paper.

I unlocked my front door and spotted a cobweb above the radiator. I’d get that before I went to bed. My housekeeping wasn’t up to my grandmother’s standards, but I was still Scrubby Dutch to my soul, and a cobweb could not be tolerated. Dutch was a corruption of Deutsch. The old beer-making and beer-drinking Germans who built this section didn’t think cleanliness was next to godliness—they thought it was better.

The flat was unchanged since my grandparents’ deaths. They took me in when I was nine years old, after my parents died. Well, Mom and Dad didn’t just die—they went out in a pretty spectacular scandal. They were supposed to be the perfect young couple, except they were both boozers and Dad played around a lot, but most people didn’t know that, because they were such big deals in the Catholic church. Then Mom caught Dad with her best friend at a church party and went kind of crazy. A week or so after she caught them together, I came home from school and noticed my dad’s car was in the drive, but it was too early for him to be home. I heard this dripping sound, like a water pipe had broken. And Mom wasn’t in the kitchen, fixing dinner. I followed the dripping sound upstairs to their bedroom. At first, I wondered why Mom had a new red bedspread and what she and Dad were doing taking a nap in the afternoon, but then I realized the sound was blood dripping, and they were dead, and then I started screaming. The police said Mom had
shot Dad and then shot herself. After that, I got to live with my grandparents. I didn’t tell anyone, but I liked that better.

I never changed my grandparents’ place, because I admired them, and besides, their home was comfortable. There was the big old recliner, with my grandmother’s hand-knit afghan. The TV was a huge, dark-wood Magnavox cabinet on skinny brass-bound legs. Over it was a picture of Christ where the eyes followed you. The kitchen had a gray Chromcraft table, a huge gas refrigerator, and a Sunbeam toaster with a skirted Aunt Jemima doll. The bathroom had a plaster fish blowing three gold bubbles and a top hat that Grandma knitted to cover the extra toilet paper roll. A decorator friend told me the place was the epitome of kitsch, so out it was in. He loved it, but I think it’s safe to say most people didn’t appreciate it.

I ordered up a fourteen-inch Imo’s pepperoni-and-mushroom pizza, and when it arrived, I settled in to watch the tube. But I couldn’t find anything worth watching. I switched from old movies to sitcom reruns and then, wait a minute . . . was that Charlie on TV?

It was. Our managing editor, the slimy little snake, had crawled on a show called
Press Pass
, the local version of
Meet the Press
. The show featured a host and a couple of local media types who sounded off on national politics without knowing much about the subjects. I preferred the political debates in the local saloon. They were just as informed, and I could get a drink while I was at it. Charlie was wearing his blue suit and a yellow tie to match the streak down his back. His red nose and bald spot had been carefully powdered, and he talked earnestly into the camera, as if he were talking each and every one of us into bed. Charlie could talk the balls off a pool table when he got wound up. And he was definitely wound up. But what about?

The host helpfully answered my question. “Tonight we re discussing the latest revelations about Missouri Senator Deaver Dulwich. The senator is alleged to have had an affair with a twenty-five-year-old intern, then promoted her to a forty-thousand-a-year job in his office,” he said solemnly. He was wearing a good suit and a bad rug.

Oh, yeah, Not-So-Dull Dulwich, they were calling him, the photogenic I’m-for-Families senator who always posed with his blond wife and their two blond children. His dog was blond, too. The scandal came out when his wife decided to divorce him, instead of standing by her wandering man.

“In my day politicians had standards,” Charlie was saying. “Such behavior in our leadership was not tolerated.” What? I turned the sound up, in case I was hearing things.

“Absolutely,” said the TV host, whose wife had kicked him out of the house for boffing an intern. “I couldn’t agree more.”

“If we excuse his infidelities, then we show our own lack of character,” Charlie said. “The senator must resign.”

“Our leaders should set standards for the little people,” said a jowly syndicated columnist who was rumored to be having an affair with the wife of a prominent businessman.

Charlie grabbed the floor back. “I don’t care if the young woman was promoted. That doesn’t make the senator’s actions better. That makes them worse. The minute an executive has a sexual relationship with an underling and then promotes her, he has broken the law,” Charlie said, quoting his inamorata on the issue of infidelity.

The other two adulterers nodded smugly. I stared at this shameful display. Had my profession really sunk this low? Newspaper people were never angels—adultery
and alcoholism were our two favorite vices, and we had lots more. But we didn’t used to be such hypocrites. I shut off the TV in disgust, fetched a broom, and tied a clean rag around it. I got that cobweb, and any other one I could find. Then I started cleaning the house, as if I could scrub away the whole disgusting display on TV. I even dusted the gold bubbles on the plaster fish. Finally, at two
A.M
., I was so tired I fell into a dreamless sleep.

It was after eight-thirty when I was awakened by sirens screaming down my street. I peeked out the window. It was a repeat of Otto’s death: first a fire truck, then a wailing string of police cars, and finally, an ambulance. Once again, they were heading toward North Dakota Place. I threw on some clothes and followed them. This was getting old.

This time, the police and emergency vehicles were at the entrance to the alley behind Dina’s house. I saw Homicide Detective Sergeant Mark Mayhew’s unmarked car, which looked so much like an unmarked car it might as well have
UNMARKED POLICE CAR
painted on the side. Mayhew was talking to Dina. The fluffy little blonde was alternately flirting with him and wringing her hands. Uh-oh. It finally penetrated my sleep-fogged brain. If Mayhew was here, that meant only one thing. There was a suspicious death. But all the principal residents of North Dakota Place seemed to be there. I saw Kathy and Dale, both in double-breasted khaki suits, standing at the edge of the alley. She was clutching a briefcase, and Dale had his arm protectively around her. For a moment I felt a pang and wished Lyle was here with me. But I turned my attention to the others. The usually cool Margie looked agitated, talking a mile a minute and shifting from foot to foot. Tall, thin Patricia was standing alone and very still. Her face was drained of all color. She looked like a pillar of salt in a T-shirt. Caroline wasn’t saying
anything, either. Short, strong, and wide-hipped, she looked like a primitive fertility carving, with a single stroke of the ax blade for the grim line of her mouth. She clutched her wheelbarrow with both hands. It was filled with dying weeds.

“What happened?” I asked.

“It’s Hawkeye.” Margie’s voice rasped like a runaway chain saw. “Dina found him in the alley this morning. Dead.”

“Was he mugged? Shot? Stabbed?”

“Here’s Dina now,” she said. “She can tell you.”

As Dina joined us, I saw Mayhew walking toward the alley, freshly barbered and dressed like something out of a GQ summer fashion issue. He was a brave man, wearing a cream silk jacket in an alley on a St. Louis summer day.

Dina’s eyes were red and puffy, as if she’d been crying, and up close her fluffy blond hair looked flyaway. Her woeful face contrasted oddly with her funny T-shirt. It said: “LOST—husband and cat. Reward for cat.”

Dina couldn’t wait to talk about what she saw, as if maybe that would push the awful picture out of her mind. “He wasn’t shot or anything,” she said. “I didn’t see any bullet holes or knife wounds, but I didn’t look real close after I saw the blood. I think he fell and hit his head on the bricks.”

“I don’t see how that can kill a big strong guy like Hawkeye,” I said.

“I don’t, either, but he was dead just the same,” Dina wailed.

“What’s a jogger doing running in an alley?” Dale asked. Now he was clutching Kathy for comfort.

“He used it as a shortcut to Tower Grove Park,” Margie said. “Besides, Caroline told him not to run there, so of course he did.”

“I told him it was dangerous,” Caroline corrected. “Looks like I was right.”

Patricia still said nothing. She just stared straight ahead. But Dina kept talking. “I opened the front door to get the paper this morning, and my cat Stan ran outside. He never does that. Well, hardly ever. He slipped through the gate to the backyard, and I ran after him, and grabbed him as he ran out to the alley, and then I saw poor Hawkeye lying on the bricks, blood all over, and the back of his head . . .” She stopped, took a gulp of air, and said slowly, “It was horrible. I didn’t go to City Hall today. If I had, I would have been back by my garage when he was running in the alley. He always turned in there at eight-oh-five. That’s when I used to see him, when I was getting my car out. Maybe if I’d been back there . . .”

“He wouldn’t have fallen and hit his head?” Margie rasped. “Sorry, sweetie, there wasn’t anything you could do. It was an accident.”

“What a waste,” I said, remembering Hawkeye’s beautiful body, bronze as a statue, skimming across the grass.

Patricia was speechless until I said that. Then she made a little catlike mewing noise, which suddenly turned into wrenching, awful cries. But she never said a coherent word. Caroline patted her shoulder, said something soothing, and half guided, half carried Patricia back to her home. She must have stayed with her distressed friend for hours. Margie told me Caroline’s wheelbarrow with the dying weeds sat in the parkway for most of the day.

I noticed Mayhew spending a lot of time examining the fence at Dina’s house. While everyone was watching Caroline take Patricia away, I tried to get a closer look. There was no way I could get into the alley at this end. It was blocked with crime scene tape, police, and emergency vehicles. They still hadn’t taken Hawkeye
away, but there were too many people around him to get a clear look at the body. I walked around the block and approached the alley from the other end, but it was guarded by a cop I didn’t know, and he waved me on. I walked some more, slipped into Dale and Kathy’s backyard, and eased past their battered pickup. I still couldn’t get out into the alley, but I was within shouting distance of Mayhew. I couldn’t see much, because Dina’s garage stuck out and blocked the view. Most garages in this alley were made for Model-Ts, and unless you drove something the size of a Geo, you had a hard time squeezing a car inside. But Dina had built a big, new garage. The rusty Dumpster next to it blocked more of the view, but I saw Mayhew squat down (first pulling up his perfectly creased trousers) and examine the brick pavement. I also saw two grass-stained running shoes and muscular tanned legs on the bricks, and felt really queasy. Fortunately, the Dumpster blocked the rest of Hawkeye’s body. Then Mayhew checked out Dina’s six-foot privacy fence, going over it carefully, inch by inch. Something was photographed and put in an evidence bag, but I couldn’t see what it was. Then he went straight across the alley to an old white-painted garage and examined a nail about two-thirds of the way up in the door frame, and repeated the photographing and bagging routine.

“Find something interesting?” I yelled.

“Yep,” he said.

“Want to tell me what it is?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said.

Mayhew had that alert, concentrated look, and he was talking in one-syllable sentences. When he got that way, I might as well try to hold a conversation with a clam. I figured I’d find out anyway when I talked to Katie tomorrow about the autopsy results. Katie had no clamlike qualities. I closed the gate and
walked back to where the group was. Kathy and Dale were gone.

“They got a little rattled when the police started questioning them,” Margie explained, when I asked after them. “The cops were talking to all of us, just doing their jobs, but Dale and Kathy looked really spooked. They took the Toyota that Caroline lets them park in front of their house and went to work.”

“I don’t want to be mean,” Dina said, being mean, “but Patricia is carrying on like the grieving widow. I don’t even think they had a date.”

“No, but they would have,” Margie said. “There was a strong attraction there. Patricia blushed like a young girl around him, didn’t you notice? And if he saw her outside, he always stopped to talk to her after his run. He didn’t have to, either. He could have kept running. I didn’t see her out this morning, though.”

“Probably playing hard to get for a change,” Dina said, waspishly. “I could see what she saw in him, but what did he see in her?” She sounded puzzled rather than envious. Round, blond Dina was so much prettier than Patricia. “He was a knockout, and she’s so plain, except for those amazing blue eyes.”