“I see this coming,” Leonard said.
“She didn’t,” Marvin said. “A train knocked her ass about two miles down the track and into some woods and into a sink of water. Next morning they found the car. Someone finally saw the roof of the car sticking out of the water, shining in the sunlight. She turned out to have a car engine stuck up her ass. But the good news, my contact said, was the air bag opened.”
“That technology,” I said, “it’s somethin’.”
“I presume the husband inherits?” Leonard said.
Marvin shook his head. “Nope. Mini’s mother, Twilla, bought herself a new car and a hairdo and about three thousand dollars’ worth of duds on credit, then went to a lawyer and made a will. She left it to her daughter should anything happen to her. This was two weeks before Mini was found dead. Little later, Twilla got hit by the train. Not long after, the daughter and the boyfriend bit it.”
“Was anyone next in line for the money after Mini?” I asked.
“The animal shelter,” Marvin said. “She liked cats. Not dogs, just cats.”
“Prejudice is an ugly thing,” Leonard said.
“Bert, her husband, wasn’t completely left out. He got ten thousand. But that had to bite his butt. Him with ten thousand and the cats with almost eight million dollars. That buys a lot of catnip.”
“So Bert could have a grudge,” I said.
“I guess the cats are looking over their shoulders,” Leonard said.
“Cops looked into him,” Marvin said, “up one side and down another. They couldn’t find anything that led them to think he was involved or did anything himself. But it’s a motive. I don’t know how it would connect to the other girls, but maybe he was trying to make it look like the murders were connected with what Godzilla and the girls had done. According to what I got here in my notes, Bert wasn’t big enough or tough enough to do much but give Sharon’s cats to the animal shelter. That was about the extent of his mean as far as the cops can see. Still, we won’t take him off the suspect list.”
“June might have a place on that list too,” Leonard said. “I don’t know how much I buy the ‘she really loved her brother’ bit. She didn’t like the idea that he might get that inheritance instead of her. She had the money to make a hit, and if Mini was there when it was set up, so be it. Not that June needs the inheritance, but the ones who don’t need it are often the ones who want more of it.”
“All right,” Marvin said. “June’s on the list too.”
“Do you think it’s odd that Mini’s mom made out a will right after getting the money?” I said.
“Not really,” Marvin said. “She was old enough to think about it. Maybe she finally felt motherly and thought if anything happened to her, Mini would get it and she would check out making up for not being the best mom in the world. And if Mini died, well, there was the animal shelter. The husband did hire a lawyer on contingency to try and pry the money from the fuzzy little paws of all those desperate kitties. I don’t know how that worked out. But there’s nothing about Bert that has to mean murder. And the mother, well, I figure too much alcohol and a big case of the stupids did her in.”
I glanced over at Leonard and his deerstalker. I turned to Marvin. “Do you come across many murders where a fella didn’t like his best friend’s hat?”
“No,” Marvin said, looking at Leonard, “but I can understand the impulse.”
19
Marvin gave us some contact information for people we might want to talk to, and I folded that up and put it in my coat pocket. We left when his sandwich arrived. We knew when we weren’t wanted.
At my place we fried up some egg sandwiches and sat on the couch and turned so we could look at each other. Leonard had finally taken off the deerstalker, so it was easier to do.
We decided we had to see Mini’s stepdad, Bert. I called the cell number we had for him. The phone rang awhile, but finally he answered.
I told him we were investigating his stepdaughter’s murder, that the mother of Mini’s boyfriend had hired us, and could we meet up with him.
“Can’t we just talk over the phone?” he said.
“I suppose, but we’d rather do it in person.”
“Not anything I can tell you, and since I don’t know you, I ain’t wantin’ you to come out to the house.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve had threats.”
“Threats?” I asked.
“That’s all I’ll say about it.”
“Look, I don’t know about the threats, but we’re on the up-and-up. What say we meet someplace public? We’ll buy you lunch.”
“Made a sandwich already.”
“Well,” I said, “how about just meeting you in town?”
He was silent for so long I thought the connection was broken. But just when I was about to give up, he said, “I’m going out to the auction barn, catch me there.”
“Not sure what you look like.”
“Call my goddamn cell, man. Use your head. When you get there, call me.”
On the way out to the auction barn, I said, “He sounds paranoid.”
“Doesn’t mean someone’s not after him,” Leonard said.
“Take off the hat, Leonard. Where we’re going is cowboy country. You going in there looking like that, you’re asking for trouble. Only thing missing is a purse.”
“This is anything but effeminate,” he said. “In Merry Ole England they wore these to hunt deer. Real men. Real guns. Real deer. And this hat.”
“Deer probably laughed themselves to death.”
When we got out to the auction barn, the parking lot was full of pickups and trailers and everything smelled like animal shit; it was so thick you almost had to climb over the reek to get to the auction barn.
Inside, the place looked like an ad for chewing tobacco and blue jeans. Cowboy hats floated on the crowd, and there was a lot of crowd. Last time I’d seen that many people was in a rerun of The Ten Commandments. Who knew cows were that exciting. The animal crap smell was now so intense I felt I needed mountaineer equipment to scale it.
We started moving in among them, and as we went, Leonard pulled the deerstalker out of his back pocket, unfolded it, and popped it out like a wet towel and put it on.
“You sonofabitch,” I said.
20
As we rambled through the crowd, a tall cowboy with a hatband full of toothpicks watched Leonard pass with open curiosity. I was right behind Leonard. I said to the cowboy, “He’s working a child’s party after this.”
The cowboy looked at me and nodded, like that explained everything.
We found a spot with a break in people, and went there. I took out my cell and called.
“Yeah,” Bert said.
“This is Hap Collins. I spoke to you earlier.”
“What about?”
I was more than a little certain now that Bert was not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
“Your stepdaughter. You told me to call.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m over by the door. Too many people in there, and hot.”
“Okay,” I said. “Meet you there. What’s your description?”
