The Ghost and the Dead Deb

CHAPTER 12

Fall Guy or Felon?

Thanks to you and yore meddlin’, we finally got us a clue.

—Merle Constiner, “The Turkey Buzzard Blues,” Black Mask magazine, 1943

I’D BARELY DIGESTED the surprise of seeing the key before I was rocked by another shock. Bud Napp rushed through the Inn’s open doors, looking nearly as pale as Barney Finch.

Chief Ciders hitched his fingers in his belt and faced him. “Thanks for coming in, Bud.”

“You said it was urgent,” Bud replied. Then he noticed the rest of us standing around with funereal faces. “What the hell is going on here, Chief ?”

“Bud . . . are you still selling that bright yellow lawn rope?”

“You hustled me over here for an inventory report?”

“Just answer the question.”

“No,” Bud replied. “I told you last week when you came to buy some to tie up your tomatoes, the company stopped making it. Some issue with the dye. They’re switching to neon orange.”

“Have you sold any yellow rope in the past week?”

Bud shook his head. “I have a few bolts in my truck, that’s all. And I’m using them for my building business.”

“Let’s go on out into the parking lot, Bud. I need to get a look inside of your truck.”

“Are you looking for something in particular?” Bud asked suspiciously. “Maybe I should ask to see some kind of warrant?”

“You can give me permission to search your truck now, or wait until the State Police get a warrant issued,” Ciders replied wearily. “Getting that warrant should take all of about five minutes—and then the Staties might want to do more than search your truck. If they have to go to all that trouble for the paper, they’ll probably include your garage, your business, your home.”

Bud swallowed. “I didn’t bring the truck. I drove over in my Explorer.”

Now it was Ciders who was suddenly suspicious. “Where is your truck, then?”

“Johnny has it,” Bud replied uneasily. “He had a date last night, I told him he could borrow my truck.”

“And where is Johnny right now?”

When I saw the look in Ciders’s eye, I knew this was the question he’d been itching to ask all along. I still didn’t figure out how a yellow rope was involved, though I’d seen some of it strung around the restaurant’s construction site—no surprise since Budd was supplying the crew.

“Johnny . . . He hasn’t come home yet.”

“What about his date? Who was she? Was she staying at this inn?”

“Hell, no. Johnny was dating a local girl. Mina Griffith. Works at Pen’s bookstore.”

Now Ciders turned to me. “And is Mina at work today?”

I nodded. “But she doesn’t know where Johnny is either.”

“And why is that?”

I snapped my mouth shut and kept it that way. Ciders was grilling me, and I didn’t like it. He studied me—and obviously didn’t care for my attempt to remain uncooperative. “Okay, don’t answer,” he told me. “I’ll just have to track down Mina and ask her.”

My eyes narrowed on the Chief. Mina was in an emotional state as it was. I couldn’t let him upset her even more.

“Mina doesn’t know anything because he never kept his date with her last night,” I reluctantly admitted. “I know because she came back to the store late. They were supposed to meet for pizza, but he never showed up, so I waited with her while her roommate drove over to pick her up and take her home. I’ve already spoken to her about it.”

“Was Johnny at your bookstore at any time last night?”

“Johnny came to the store, stayed awhile. But he left before we closed and, as I said, never came back to pick up Mina.”

“He left alone?”

I felt cornered. But I couldn’t lie about something that had been witnessed by people other than just me. “No,” I said in a soft voice. “He was on the sidewalk outside the store . . .” I looked down, hating Ciders for making me admit it. “He was talking to Angel Stark the last time I saw him.”

I heard Bud release a disgusted breath. I couldn’t meet his eyes.

Ciders cleared his throat. “Bud, maybe you and I should finish this conversation somewhere in private.”

Bud exhaled again, but this time in defeat. He shook his head. “There are no secrets in this town, and Pen and Sadie already know some of what’s going on, as you just figured out.”

Then some of the old fire rekindled behind Bud’s eyes. “We’ve leveled with you, Ciders. Now it’s time for you to level with us. What is going on? Why did you want to search my truck?”

“Bud, we just found a body floating in the pond. The body of a young woman. From the condition of the corpse, the State forensics people say she hasn’t been in the water more than ten or twelve hours, maximum, which means she died late last night or, more likely, very early this morning.”

“What does this have to do with me? With Johnny?”

“We found a length of yellow rope around the dead woman’s neck. The same stuff you sold at your hardware store,” Ciders replied. “It appears the killer used that rope to strangle her.”

Bud pointed in the direction of the pond. “That construction site out there has a length of that same damn rope. Anyone could have gotten it from there.”

“I checked the rope at the site,” the Chief said evenly. “There’s only one bolt securing the area. Both ends of that bolt of rope still have the plastic tabs attached—which means that length of rope has never been cut. So the killer probably got that yellow rope from somewhere else.”

“Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that rope. But anyone could have bought yellow rope like that,” insisted Bud. “Maybe the killer bought it last season when yellow rope was everywhere, or in another town that still sold it . . .”

“Bud,” Ciders began. “I know all about your nephew—the conviction, the parole, and about the suspicion of murder charges that were leveled at Johnny in that big Newport heiress death last year. The Bethany Banks case.”

I was surprised. So was Bud Napp.

“We’re not all Keystone Kops,” said the Chief, “despite what our local letter carrying Jeopardy! genius here thinks.”

Seymour harrumphed, and Chief Ciders continued, “Bud, when your nephew moved here, his parole officer notified me of Johnny’s criminal record and his place of lodging and employment. I never bothered the kid out of respect for you . . .”

“You and I both know that those murder charges were dismissed,” Bud pointed out.

“That’s right, Bud,” Ciders replied. “But they were dismissed on a legal technicality, not for lack of evidence.”

Bud’s face reddened. “There was no real evidence or they would have tried Johnny anyway!”

Chief Ciders nodded. “I know, and I understand how you feel. But the woman in the pond . . . she was strangled. Just like Bethany Banks. And until we locate Johnny, and have a long talk with him, he’s the main suspect now, which means I have no choice but to issue an All Points Bulletin for the arrest of your nephew on suspicion of murder.”

“Wait a minute!” Bud cried. “Murder of who?”

Angel Stark, of course, I thought to myself. She had to be the lady in the lake—unless, of course, some other woman had been carrying around Angel’s room key, which was technically within the realm of possibility. So I wasn’t surprised when the Chief said . . .

“Angel Stark, of course. Technically she’s not yet identified. But since Mrs. McClure volunteered to help ID the body, we can settle the matter of the woman’s name right here and now.”

Then Chief Ciders faced me. “Penelope, you and I are going to take a little walk . . .”