Nineteen

The intruder wasn’t the only one who could have been sprayed silver to make a day’s wage on a boardwalk somewhere. The five of us were transfixed too. Whoever this was, he’d comprehensively blown his cool. It was hard to imagine a more definite sign that the kilt was dodgy.

“Is there a problem?” Kathi said. “I was just preparing the garment for processing.”

“So … you haven’t done anything yet?” the man said. He was really only a boy, I thought, now I’d had a proper look at him. “Is there a charge if I take it back?”

“No,” Kathi said, “but you won’t get a better deal in Cuento today, you know.”

“It’s just that, to be honest with you, my … boss … wanted me to have an alteration done as well so that’s why I was supposed to go to Wash-n-Dry cleaners.”

“Oh, we can do alterations here,” Kathi said. “What was it you wanted to have done?”

“Hang on there a minute though, Kathi,” I said. “I can hem a pair of jeans but I’m not sure I could tackle a kilt.”

The man turned his wild eyes on me and I could have sworn each of his pupils was moving independently of the other as he darted glances all over. “Y—you?” he said. “Aren’t you the Blame Game therapist? Or is there two of you?”

“Two of me?” I echoed.

“Sew Speedy has a team of experienced tailors ready for any project,” Kathi said.

The man dragged his gaze away from me and back to her. “Yeah, but the thing is, you see, to tell the truth,” he said, “my … boss … has an account at the Wash-n-Dry and they’ve done this kind of alteration before.”

“Right,” Kathi said. “Well, if you’re sure then.”

“I do honestly think it’s best,” the man said. He waited.

“Go for it,” said Kathi, gesturing to the kilt.

“Uhhhhh, can I have a bag?” the man said. “Just to get it out to the car without … ”

“Without … ?” said Todd.

“Um. I ran out without my duffel. To be frank, when my boss told me I’d … ”

“You’d … ?” said Roger.

“Never mind,” the man blurted. Then he rolled the kilt up like a tarp, opened his rain jacket, zipped it closed again over the wad of wool, and waddled off.

“What the fuck?” said Noleen once the echo of his footsteps on the metal stairs had died away.

“How many lies did he just tell?” said Todd.

“Well, to be honest, and tell you the truth, and be frank,” I said, counting off on my fingers, “his boss hasn’t got an account at a rival dry cleaners and he isn’t getting a kilt altered and he’s never had a kilt altered before.”

“And his ‘boss’ isn’t his boss either,” said Roger. “It’s Sunday. So like Noleen said, what the fuck?”

“If I had to guess,” Noleen said, “the kilt is a family heirloom and the owner—the fake boss—couldn’t stand it being covered in corpse juice, so he sent Boy Wonder to get it cleaned but for some reason the kid came here—twenty feet from where the body was found—instead of where he was supposed to go.”

“You’re a genius,” Kathi said. “I bet that’s it. You’ve cracked it, Nolls.”

Roger and Todd both smiled. It’s so easy for the happily married to enjoy others’ happiness. Noleen just about managed to smile too, even though public protestations of affection weren’t her favourite thing. I smiled like I had a coat hanger in my mouth. I’ve done far too much psychological training to get caught being sour about someone fizzing over with admiration for the love of her life.

“If only we knew his name,” Todd said when all the hearts were warmed. “Then we could take this straight to Mike. This is a bona fide lead.”

“We know his first name,” said Kathi. “Because that’s why he ended up here. I put the sign out this morning: fifty percent discount for all Andys.”

“And I suppose someone took a photo of the kilt, right?” I said. Todd nodded but still looked puzzled. “So we’re in with a good chance of getting a last name.” No lightbulbs were on yet. “If we reverse engineer the tartan,” I said, “we’ll find a clan name. My money’s on Worth.”

“Is Worth a clan?” said Kathi. “Is Worth even Scotch?”

“No idea,” I said. “But it’s a better bet than Ortiz and Tafoya.”

Todd was scrolling already. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “These’d give you a migraine quick enough. No such thing as a Worth plaid, Lexy. Or Lampeter. Or Shatner. Or … O’Shanter, even.”

“Try McShanter,” I said.

“Nope.”

“McLeod?”

“Why? Holy Jesus, that’s one ugly-ass plaid.”

“No reason. I just wanted you to see it. It’s quite something, eh? Well, Téo, it looks like you just need to look up green tartans and work your way through.”

“And what are you going to do?” Todd said. He looked a little bit bug-eyed already as he raised his eyes from his screen and blinked them hard.

“I’m going to Mike,” I said. “She owes me. She didn’t believe me about that bloody ring but it got us Tam’s ID in the end. Who’s coming with me?”

There was silence. Roger broke it. “Who’s coming with you to tell Mike she owes you and remind her of when you were right and she was wrong?”

“Anyway, what makes you think she’s working Sundays now?” said Noleen.

“It’s a murder inquiry,” I said. “She’s probably working day and night.”

“You watch too much TV,” Noleen said. “City of Cuento doesn’t have the money to pay Sunday overtime just because some scumbag’s dumb enough to drink lye.”

It was a good point well-put.

“So here’s what we’ll do,” Noleen went on. “We’ll take today to work out what to say to Mike tomorrow to fulfill our civic duty and keep the motel and laundromat out of it. Okay?”

“Sounds fair enough to me,” I said. “The motel and the laundromat are out of it, apart from anything else. Tam got tangled in the beer-chilling rope of a houseboat moored in the slough downstream from where his body was dumped after he was killed God knows where, God knows why. This is nothing to do with the Last Ditch at all.”

Roger was staring at me, chewing his lip.

“What?” I said.

“That’s strange, isn’t it?” he said. “The cutty sark on the ‘burial ground’ speaks to local knowledge, doesn’t it? And lying in wait for Kimberly’s horse to cross the footbridge speaks to real detailed local knowledge. But dumping a corpse upstream in a slough with a big old houseboat parked in it? That’s sloppy. Raises questions.”

“Raises one or two of the eleventy billion questions,” I said. I looked over at Todd. He was hunched over his phone still sniffing out tartans. “I’ll do a coffee run and then let’s really put our heads down, eh? I want to speak to Mrs. Ortiz as well, if we can find her. Coffee first though.” I waited for Todd to offer to go with me—or even for me, since I know he doesn’t rate my coffee-ordering abilities—and right enough, my words did slowly permeate the fog of checkered wool forming behind his eyes.

“I’ll drive you,” he said. “Roger can you take this over? Blue squares with a green windowpane check and a white line through the green. I got up to Kerr. It’s a pretty one. I could totally pull off a Kerr plaid.”

“Oh you got up to Kerr, did you?” said Roger. “Just the Ms to go then.”

Todd blew him a kiss and hustled me out the door.

It was chucking-out time at the various churches of Cuento and the drive-thru at Swiss Sisters was backed up all the way to the railway underpass. We joined the end of the queue.

“So … did Patti Ortiz run away to Florida with Tam Shatner?” I said.

“They both disappeared after graduation,” Todd said. “It’s a possibility. Now we know that Tam was a ladies’ man, it’s a definite possibility.”

I reached over onto the backseat for the yearbook and flipped to the first photograph of Tam, there in the back row with the Future Homemakers. “And there is Patti,” I said. “At the end of the row. Isn’t she lovely?”

“Cute,” Todd agreed. “Doesn’t seem too much of a stretch for her.”

Way up ahead of us someone got their coffee and left. Down here we edged into the dimness of the railway underpass.

I laughed and put the overhead light on so I could keep looking. “Right?” I said. “Future Homemakers of America! It’s like they’re saying ‘I firmly believe some guy is going to marry me’ and some of them deserve a medal for self-confidence. Jeez, look at this one! What’s her … Oh God, the poor thing. Gudrun Andersen. Gudrun!”

“It sounds even worse in your accent,” Todd said. “Like you’ve swallowed a hair and you’re trying to get it back up.”

I lifted one side of my mouth to acknowledge the joke, but truth be told, I felt like I’d had enough attention on account of my accent for a while. “Sometimes things get better,” I said, flipping another page.

“Like?” said Todd.

“Like these games mistresses could be married now,” I said.

“Games mistresses!” Todd said. “Gimme a look.” I handed the book over. “They do look happier than Mrs. Handmaid and Mrs. Surrender, don’t they?” he said. He handed the book back and it fell open at the double page where the Moes, Patti, Joan, John Worth, and the tiny letters spelling out Tam Shatner’s name were to be found.

“Does your gaydar work on women then?” I said.

“My gaydar doesn’t work at all,” said Todd. “It used to, before David Beckham and the grooming revolution. These days, unless it’s as obvious as Tam at the motorshow, I’m sunk.”

We inched forward another car length. “Jay-sis,” I said. “There should be two windows. One for coffee and one for metroccinos.” Todd had heard this complaint too many times to bother answering it. “Parp your horn.”

“Don’t say parp,” Todd said, but he parped his horn, which helped. That is, it didn’t do any good but it was pretty goddam loud here under the tunnel and it made me feel better.

“Anyway, you’re too modest,” I said. “What about Tahoe Guy
yesterday?”

“Who?”

“Mo Heedles’s nephew,” I said. “Yesterday.”

“He’s not gay,” Todd said. “He was checking out your ass until he saw me seeing him do it.”

“Nah,” I said. “He was throwing you off the scent. He clocked you, decided to mess with you, and leered at my bum. He practically puked when I turned round.”

“Huh?” said Todd. “What are you talking about?”

“He looked at me like I was a cockroach in his cream puff.”

“Don’t say cream puff.”

“P-syllid in his profiterole.”

“The P is silent,” Todd said. “And can you stop talking about critters while we’re sitting in this dungeon of a railroad underpass?”

“Sorry!” I said. “Turd in his taco.”

“Thank you. I saw that look. I thought he was overcorrecting the ass-ogle.”

“Todd,” I said. “That guy yesterday would have jumped your bones right there in his auntie’s front garden if I hadn’t been there spoiling it all. The ogle was yours.”

“Wrong,” said Todd.

“Shame we’ll never get a chance to find out.”

“I found out yesterday,” Todd said. “That was a straight man. Outdoorsy, probably a gym bore.”

“Lake bore,” I said. “Blue Tahoe, remember?”

“Right, right,” said Todd. “A surfer. Did you see his shoes?”

“What?”

“He had the straightest shoes I’ve ever seen in my life. If those games mistresses’ yearbook photos were full body shots and we could see their shoes, they’d look like the dancing slippers of Liberace and Beyoncé’s secret love child in comparison.”

“Poor Beyoncé.”

“Conceived in vitro and carried by a surrogate,” Todd continued. “Funded by the Secret Federation of Gays.”

“Them!” I said. “I thought they were concentrating on bringing floods and tornadoes.”

“The elected ones are,” said Todd. “I’m talking deep state.”

“I do love you,” I said. “You talk more crap straight and sober than most people do on mushrooms.”

“I’m married in case you forgot,” said Todd. “You should listen to your mother sometimes, Lexy. Before you wither on the vine.”

A low blow, that. I absorbed it quietly.

When we got back to the Skweek with a tray of outlandish coffee drinks and a bag of pastries that could close down a gym and open a heart hospital, we discovered that no one else had been wasting their time wittering on about Liberace. Roger, Noleen, and Kathi had all struck pay dirt.

“Lah-MAHNT,” Roger said as soon as we were through the door. “Lah-MAHNT plaid.”

“What?” said Todd. “Jeez, I got to Kerr then you swept in for the glory?”

“LAH-mnt,” I corrected. “But yes, you’re right.” The picture of the kilt on Todd’s phone and the picture on Kathi’s laptop of the Lamont clan tartan were an exact match.

“And Mama Ortiz lives on K Street,” said Noleen. “1200 block.”

“And,” Kathi said, “I found out a whole hell of a lot about Tam Shatner. Including why he came back to Cuento after all these years.”

“Really?” I said, splitting a cinnamon roll with napkins over my fingers and handing her the big half. “Was it more than just the fiftieth reunion then?”

“Yup,” said Kathi, looking pretty pleased with herself. “It wasn’t the reunion at all. That was a coincidence. He came back to buy up a piece of real estate.”

“He was moving back here?” I said.

“Nope,” said Kathi. “There’s no house on the property and the zoning is agricultural.”

“Is he a farmer?” I said. “Is that what he did in Florida? Because they do say the citrus industry is shifting west, don’t they?”

“They do?” Kathi said. “The stuff you know.”

The truth was one of my clients was an orange grower with a brutal anxiety disorder and I’d learned more than I ever dreamed I’d need to know in order to help him navigate the vagaries of pests, prices, weather, and water.

“No,” Kathi went on, “he was not a farmer. He was a waste management contractor.”

“A what?” I said.

“A dustman,” said Todd.

I flicked him the vees. “I know what it means,” I said. “I was just emoting. Because that’s like code for dodgy, isn’t it? Waste management?”

“Not necessarily,” said Kathi. “But it’s not unheard of either. He was one of Central Florida’s biggest specialized waste management contractors.”

“Specialised how?” I said. “And how did you find this out?”

“I looked him up on White Pages and called the number,” Kathi said. “Got a very talkative young woman by the name of Courtney who hates working on Sunday just because her boss is dead and the whole operation is headed—and I quote—‘straight to Shitty City.’ She confirmed everything we saw in the auto expo photo too, by the way. Thomas Shatner had an eye, two hands, and a long tongue for da ladieees.”

“’Uck sake,” said Noleen through a mouthful of muffin. “Tryina choke down some breakfast here.”

“Never married,” Kathi went on. “Not for lack of some Melania-grade gold-diggers giving it the old college try over the years. Never even lived with any of them. Just kept the rolodex turning. A real prince. So do you want an answer to your question?” I frowned. “About the specialism?” I nodded. “Roadkill disposal.”

“Ewwwwww,” said Todd. “Go back to talking about his tongue while we’re eating, huh?”

“That is truly disgusting,” I said. “But it must be lucrative if he was investing in farmland in California.”

Kathi gave me a huge grin. “He wasn’t,” she said. “He was buying a very small parcel of land. It’s surrounded by fields but it’s not a field. And it can’t be turned into a field because of ground contamination from former use as a homestead with a septic and propane tank and all that. But its residential zoning has lapsed.”

“It doesn’t sound like the start of an empire,” I said. “Why would anyone buy it?”

“I do not know,” said Kathi, “but the ever-helpful Courtney down there in Tampa provided the information that he had a watch on this property in case it ever came on the market and, when it did, she booked him a plane seat the same day.”

“That is very, very interesting,” I said.

“You’re an easy mark,” said Kathi. “Because I haven’t even got to the interesting part yet.”

“Parts,” said Noleen.

“Both fascinating,” added Roger.

“Go on then,” I said.

“The little acre and a half parcel of land that’s for sale that Tam Shatner has been waiting to buy for years on end is … the old Armour homestead.”

My jaw dropped open. “Where the cutty sark was found?”

“The same. Guess what the other interesting fact is.”

I chewed the last of my cinnamon roll and pondered. What were the options? A real estate deal had a buyer, a seller, and a plot of land. We knew two, so the last piece of the puzzle must be … “Who owns it?” I said.

“Don’t know,” said Kathi. “We can check that out tomorrow when the land registry office is open. But that’s not it. The question is who’s selling it.”

“Isn’t that what I said?” I said.

“I mean the realtor,” said Kathi. “I mean which graduate of the class of sixty-eight is a real estate agent and currently has the old Armour homestead on the books.”

I ran over them. “Mo Heedles,” I said, thinking of her pristine house and its neutral tones. Her perfect hair and face and clothes.

“Close but no fluffy unicorn,” Kathi said.

“Close to Original Mo?” I said. “You mean Also-Mo? Mo Tafoya with the prayer flags and the bong is a realtor?”

“That’s California for ya,” said Noleen. “Gotta love it, huh?”