The Baby Blue Rip-Off (A Mallory Mystery) Page 3

  Her kitchen was spacious—considering the size of the house—as big as her living room and remodeled fairly recently. Though the walls and ceiling were cream-colored, as were the counters and cabinets and appliances, the dominant color was blue. Two walls were completely covered with mounted blue plates, decorative plates that upon closer observation revealed Christmas scenes: sleighs, decorated trees, reindeer, candlelit churches, lots of snow—all the standard concepts dressed up somewhat differently on each plate in shades from dark to baby blue. There were eighty-some plates, and each was dated, starting back at 1895. The designs were simple but striking, and it was an impressive display. Christmas seemed to radiate out of the wall, even if it was late June.

  “Oh, the Christmas plates,” she said, when I returned milk-in-hand and mentioned them. “Our one extravagance.” She laughed. “From what you’ve heard me say about my husband Elwood, you may have guessed that he was... somewhat tight with a dollar?”

  I nodded. I had indeed guessed that Elwood was tight with a dollar. He made Silas Marner look like Hugh Hefner. The only thing that might tie him to those Christmas plates was a kinship to Scrooge.

  “Once a year... at Christmastime, as you might guess... Elwood would have one of his relatives in Denmark send over one of the plates, and that would be his special gift to me—special because it was not the practical sort of gift he’d usually give. Those plates aren’t cheap, you know. About twenty-two dollars apiece they’re up to now, if you send to Denmark—twice that in a store—and every year they break the mold, never make that particular plate again. Wouldn’t be surprised if that collection of mine’s valuable, as those things go. At least I know it means a lot to me, enough so’s I kept it up since Elwood’s passed on.”

  “They go back a long way.”

  “Elwood’s mother, for a wedding present, gave me her plates. She’d collected them from the start, in 1895. We were married in 1919, and we haven’t missed a plate since.”

  The rest of the living room was antique-heavy, too, and when I mentioned that, she said, “More of Elwood’s mother’s things; that cabinet of china over there, all very nice, very old pieces; that set of crystal goblets on the mantel is, too.... She left all her things to Elwood and me.”

  “She really collected some beautiful things.”

  Mrs. Jonsen laughed and said, “Elwood certainly didn’t get his thrifty ways from his mother. Old Beth Jonsen spent her husband’s money and enjoyed it, which is what Elwood and I should have done, I’m afraid. When he passed on, twenty years back, I sold the farm lock, stock, and barrel, just holding onto this little house and the piece of ground it’s on. Used some of the money to fix the place up—spartan is the word for the way Elwood had it fixed up when the help lived here—and I gave a substantial portion of the rest of the funds to our boy Edward.”

  There was a pregnant silence, and I said, “What did Edward do with the money?”

  “Bought himself a filling station. Let me tell you a story about that. Edward always has been a determined boy, a lot like his father—all the stubbornness, if not the tightness of money... and though it’s unkind to say so about one’s own offspring, which you love very much, he just never had the horse sense his father had. How are the cookies holding out, young Mallory?”

  “Fine.”

  “Plenty more.”

  “No, really.”

  “Where was I?”

  “Edward always has been a determined boy.”

  “Oh yes, well, when Edward was just a youngster, he used to work at this certain filling station, pumping gas. My husband Elwood believed that a child had to earn his own way to appreciate the hardness of a dollar—and that was when a dollar was truly hard, remember—and so in addition to his farm chores, Edward went to work while he was still in junior high school, buying his own clothes and that sort of thing. Though in defense of my husband, we never made the boy pay room and board.... If you want more milk, just help yourself.”

  “Thanks, ma’am.”

  “Just go on out to the kitchen; this story’ll hold.”

  “I don’t care for any more.”

  “If you do, you know where it is. What was I saying?”

  “Edward used to work at this filling station.”

  “Edward worked at this filling station, where he got a lot of abuse from his boss, a fellow name of Meeker who liked to treat his help like so much dirt. You can tell a lot about a person by the way he treats his help, you know. That Meeker fellow divorced his wife, too, to give you some indication of the man’s character. As I was saying, Edward got it in his head that one day he would buy this Meeker out and own that station himself. And, well sir, determined boy that he was, he did. A lot of years went by first, of course, with Edward staying on at the farm and helping his father, but when Elwood came to his untimely early end, I gave Edward a substantial portion of the money we got for selling the farm, and he bought himself that filling station.”

  She smiled.

  “And?” I said. “What happened after that?”

  She frowned. “The station went broke that first year,” she said. “Sure I can’t get you another plate of oatmeal cookies? Plenty more, though I must save some for Edward. They’re his favorite.”

  5

  It was a month before I got back around to Mrs. Jonsen again. Oh, I saw her every Thursday evening, dropped off her Hot Supper all right. And promised her that as soon as possible, I’d make her last on my route again so we could have another chat.

  Which was something I very much wanted to do; my prejudice against the aged had turned to fascination. These wonderful old ladies were memory books come to life, living, breathing bundles of the past, containing all the wisdom, folly, pain, pleasure, joy, sorrow of a lifetime. Talking to them, I felt a sense of nostalgia for days I’d never known.

  But that next week was when I spent the evening hearing Mrs. Fox reminisce, and the week following was my night with the Cooper sisters, and the Thursday evening after that I had a poker game to go to, and so it was a month before I got back around to Mrs. Jonsen.

  And too bad, too. Because that was that July evening I told you about; that July evening that seemed like October, where the van and the red-white-and-blue GTO were crowded around the porch of Mrs. Jonsen’s overlit little house, and I made my feeble attempt to play hero and got kicked in the ribs (among other places) for my trouble.

  So the second time I came to spend an evening with Mrs. Jonsen was the last time.

  And she had nothing to say.

  She was, after all, dead; tied to a chair in the kitchen where all those blue Christmas plates had hung. No more. Only faded circles where they had been—every plate, like much else in the house, was gone.

  6

  Sheriff Brennan took off his white Stetson and played with a lock of greased brown hair. He was wearing a red-and-blue hunting jacket, and under that the cream-colored shirt and cream-colored slacks that, along with the badge on his chest, made up his uniform. Brennan was well over six feet tall, a wide, solid-built man, with less paunch than most men his size, age, and disposition.

  When he first came in, accompanied by his deputy Lou Brown, he was all business, and brusque but not offensive in his questioning. I had told him some of the details over the phone—I’d caught him, not a deputy, when I called—but he was taking it all down again, and some new stuff I hadn’t got around to saying before, writing it all in a little notepad.

  I told him I couldn’t be sure how many of them there had been, but at least three and probably four. When I mentioned the red-white-and-blue GTO, license number three, Deputy Lou Brown chimed in, “That’s Pat Nelson’s car. He called it in stolen.”

  So much for remembering license-plate numbers.

  Nonetheless, Brennan had called the local and state police to let them know about the GTO and the green van. He made several other phone calls, the first of which was to the coroner, and it was after that call that he sent Lou Brown out to the patrol car to
get a camera for the coroner’s dead-body pictures. Brown, who was about my age and an old high school acquaintance of mine, was a tall thin guy with black hair and a white complexion, extra white tonight. His pencil mustache and neatly trimmed sideburns looked especially black next to his pale, pale face.

  After the initial questioning, Brennan said not a word to me, while he got everything in motion. But now that the situation was under control and the detail work beginning, Brennan was starting to get restless. He paced. He wandered around like a caged animal. He was simply too big a man for Mrs. Jonsen’s little house; he was the freak show’s giant stuck in the midget’s dressing room. Restless, pacing, wandering around, Sheriff Brennan was getting pissed off, and that meant he’d be talking to me again.

  You see, Brennan didn’t like me much. And our mutual dislike was about all we had in common.

  I was sitting on the arm of the couch in Mrs. Jonsen’s living room. From where I was, I could see into the dining room, off to the right, beyond which was the kitchen, off to the left. The couch was one of a handful of things left in the room. The television was gone, along with the cabinet of antique china and some of the older, nicer pieces of furniture; most everything was gone. In addition, much that remained had been torn apart, as if looting the place wasn’t enough and a finishing touch of vandalism had been necessary. Pillows and couch and chair cushions had been gutted by some sharp knife; even the flowered wallpaper had been chopped into here and there. The braid rug had been rolled carelessly to one side, and floorboards had been pried loose. Any furniture that didn’t fit the category of antique had been knocked over, mostly broken by the force of the act.

  Suddenly Brennan stopped pacing. He looked at me like he hadn’t noticed I was there before. He said, “What’re you doing here, Mallory?” He rocked back and forth on his feet.

  I didn’t say anything. He seemed to want me to be a smart-ass, so he could yell at me or maybe slap me around a little. But I didn’t oblige him. I’m never witty after getting kicked in the nuts.

  “What’re you doing here?” he continued. “What’s this delivery-boy horseshit?”

  “It’s just something I was doing.”

  “What were you delivering food at seven o’clock at night for?”

  “I was about an hour behind schedule. I got to talking to one of the other old ladies.”

  Light flashed from the kitchen, where Lou Brown was taking pictures of the body. Brennan turned to go out to the kitchen and said, over his shoulder, “I’ll be talking to you some more, Mallory.”

  “Terrific.”

  “You sit right there.”

  “And here I was planning to dance,” I said, finally obliging him with the smart-ass remark he was after.

  He stopped and looked at me hard. “Maybe you find this funny.”

  I stood. “Not at all, Brennan. It’s just I’m bored with your stupid macho act, which is what you fall back on for lack of being able to launch an actual investigation.” I was pointing a finger at him like a gun.

  “Don’t point your finger at me—”

  I showed him another finger.

  “Brennan!” It was Lou Brown, in the kitchen.

  “Yeah, coming,” Brennan said, glaring at me, then joining Brown.

  I sat down.

  More light flashed in the kitchen doorway. Two ambulance attendants came in, rolling a stretcher behind them. Brennan told them just a minute, and they stood outside the kitchen in the dining area, which was just as emptied and torn up as the living room. The attendants wore traditional white and seemed anxious to get in there, like guys on the bench waiting to get in the game. I wondered if they’d run the siren coming out here. I doubted they would run the siren going back.

  A fat man in a brown suit burst through the front door. He was just short of being round; his flesh was doughy and paler than Deputy Brown’s. His hair was the same color as his suit, and he was balding, combing his hair over the front of his head from in back where it was still growing, Zero Mostel–style. In fact, he resembled Zero Mostel, only not funny.

  “Look at this place,” he said, looking at it. “Oh my God, look at it.” He peered into the living room and covered his face with a pudgy hand. “Jesus Christ, will you look at it! So much gone, so much ruined!”

  He padded into the kitchen and the house seemed to tremble.

  I heard him say, “She’s dead?”

  There was a mumbling that must’ve been Brennan or somebody saying, “That’s right,” or something. It wasn’t a question that took much of an answer. It didn’t take a doctor to pronounce that body dead.

  “What can be done?” he said. He spoke loud. His voice was baritone, but not very masculine.

  There was another mumbling: somebody saying, “Nothing can be done,” or the equivalent. Maybe somebody said, “Bury her,” which is about all you can do for a dead person, after all.

  It was silent for a while.

  Brennan waved the ambulance boys in, and some of the people in there (which ones I don’t know, because I was still in the living room and couldn’t see into the kitchen) got Mrs. Jonsen’s remains untied from the chair and moved onto the stretcher. It was a slow process. Five minutes went by before the attendants passed through the dining room with the covered stretcher. The fat man in the brown suit followed along behind them like a pallbearer. Brennan closed the door after the fat man and the ambulance attendants.

  No siren.

  “Who was that?” I said, knowing.

  “The son.”

  “Edward Jonsen?”

  “Edward Jonsen.”

  “Isn’t there a married sister?”

  “Lives out of town. Not contacted yet.”

  “Oh. He sure seemed upset. About the house, that is.”

  “People react funny in these situations. What do you know about it anyway, Mallory?” Brennan said that, and then his face flushed, as he remembered I had lost both my parents in recent years. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  “Why was this place torn up, Brennan?”

  “I don’t know. Add insult to injury, I guess. Looking for something, maybe. Buried treasure. The Jonsens had a reputation for being hoarders, stingy, that sort of thing. Who knows? Now I want you out of here, Mallory.”

  “I thought you wanted to talk.”

  “You thinking about getting involved in this, Mallory?”

  That phrase again. Getting involved. Damn.

  “What if I am?” As if I wasn’t.

  “Just don’t. You used to be a cop once, I hear. Now you’re a big mystery writer, with a book coming out one of these days. Maybe you want some publicity. Forget about it.”

  “Can I ask you one thing?”

  “No.”

  “Can you find the people that did this?”

  “I don’t think that’s your concern.”

  “Oh, it’s my concern. For one thing, I knew the woman they killed. She was a friend of mine. For another thing, those sons of bitches kicked me more than any man should ever have to get kicked. And one last thing, Brennan—I’m a taxpayer and you work for me; I pay your goddamn salary, so don’t tell me it’s not my concern.”

  I guess I expected my little speech to get a rise out of Brennan, but he disappointed me.

  Because my outburst had cooled him down, if anything, and he touched my shoulder in a fatherly way that would’ve angered me if it hadn’t been sincere. “Let’s not bitch at each other,” he said. “Tonight you think you’re the detective in your book. Tomorrow morning you’re going to know better.”

  “Answer my question, Brennan.”

  “I don’t know, Mallory. I can tell you some about it tomorrow. Come talk to me. Can you wait till then?”

  “I guess.”

  “How you feeling?”

  “Bruised. In every way imaginable.”

  “Will you go on over to the hospital and get looked over? I’ll call them at Receiving and tell ’em you’re on your way.”

  “That’s no
t necessary....”

  “Yes, it is. Get checked over.”

  “Well. Okay.”

  “Feel up to driving there yourself? I’d like Lou to stick here with me awhile, or I’d have him drive you.”

  “I can manage.”

  “You take it easy, Mallory.”

  “Yeah. You too, Brennan. Uh, sorry I....”

  “Yeah, I know. We shouldn’t be bitching at each other right now. There’s a woman dead, and that’s more important than how we feel about each other.”

  For once I agreed with him.

  7

  No great excitement had been stirred at the hospital by Brennan’s call that I was coming. A nurse glanced at me, saw that my head and limbs were still connected to my body, and said, “Have a seat.” I had one. I had one for about half an hour before the doctor came around.

  The pin on his white tunic said “Jameson.” Jameson was sandy-haired, around thirty, and of medium height. He had brown-rimmed glasses over eyes that never looked at you, even when they did. He seemed bored.

  “How are we feeling?” he said.

  “So-so.”

  “What have we had happen?”

  “We were kicked in the nuts, and just about everywhere else.”

  So he took us into an examining room, and we took off our pants. We coughed to the left and to the right while cold fingers poked. Then we sat on a cold steel table and were probed some more, all over. Occasionally we said ouch.

  After a while the probing stopped. “We’d better have some X-rays taken.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can we have them taken tomorrow morning at nine? The X-ray technician will be on duty then.”

  “What’s the problem anyway?”

  More probing. “Some broken ribs, perhaps.”

  “How many?”

  “We won’t know for sure until we’ve had an X-ray. Awfully sensitive on the right side, and some ribs could well be broken. Or maybe just cracked.”

  “I see.”

  “You can pay at the desk.”

  He was gone.