A Good Man Gone (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book One)

  When I walked into Kronos ten minutes later, Uncle Morty waved me over to his favorite table under a display of firemen boots suspended from the ceiling. He says they remind him of a mistake he made that got him kicked in the head. I feel that way about the back seats of Honda Civics, but I didn’t want to sit under one.

  “It took you long enough.” Morty glowered at me, motioned to the opposite seat, and handed me a paper menu.

  “What’s this?”

  “Rod decided to work up a breakfast menu.” I gave him a doubtful look and scanned the menu for hash brown stuffed hot dogs. Happily, they weren’t there. Rodney came out of the kitchen, pulled up a chair, and mounted it like a horse.

  “What do you think of the menu?” he asked.

  “Looks good. What started this?” I asked.

  “Cops been coming in asking for breakfast before we open. I been fixing them up. If I’m gonna be doing it anyway, I may as well add it. Did Aaron tell you about his dog idea?”

  “Please don’t do that. It’s too gross to be considered,” I said with a well-placed gag noise.

  “Dog idea?” Morty looked at Rod with a curled lip. He reminded me of a cartoon bulldog.

  “Aaron wants to stuff a hot dog with hash browns for breakfast. Nasty, but if I change it to a house-made split breakfast sausage on a sourdough roll heaped with browns and eggs, we might have something.” Rod smiled, his eyes crinkled and his eyebrows went to points. He looked like the Grinch getting ready to steal Christmas. Rodney had a great feel for what people, particularly men, would eat.

  “I could go for that,” Morty said.

  Rodney leapt up and looked at me.

  “Why not. Go crazy,” I said.

  Rod clapped his hands and sprinted into the kitchen, happy as all get-out.

  I glanced out the front window and damned if Emil Roberts wasn’t loitering across the street, fiddling with a parking meter, and looking suspicious as hell. I turned to Uncle Morty and he snorted.

  “Took you long enough,” he said.

  “How long has he been there?”

  “The whole time. Probably followed you from your apartment. You got instincts, you do.” He looked at me like I was too dumb to breathe. There was no point in reminding him that I was trained in IVs and illnesses, not detecting tails. Being that I was Tommy Watts’s daughter; much was expected. Plus, I wasn’t expecting to be followed. Nardo promised to back off and he had.

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “I got to give credit where credit’s due.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that. So why am I here?”

  Uncle Morty stretched and took a sip of coffee. His expression changed from a look of amusement to restrained anger. “You need to change your number again.”

  “I already did it twice,” I said.

  “Yeah and you emailed the numbers to everyone you freaking know.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  Uncle Morty slapped a cheap throwaway cell on the table. “You use this. I email the number out. We don’t trust your provider anymore.”

  I picked up the phone. Definitely wasn’t a lux model, but it came without crazy freaks. “You rock, Uncle Morty.”

  “How’s the wrist?” he asked with another frown.

  “Fine. So, what’s going on? I assume you didn’t bring me here just for the phone.”

  “Who you want to start with?” He drummed his fingers on the table, each strike a hard thump.

  “What are my choices?”

  “The Girls or Gavin,” he said.

  “Gavin,” I said.

  “Did you check out Wilson Novelties while you were in Lincoln?”

  “No. Why? Was I supposed to?”

  “Would’ve saved some time, but no. Another charge posted on Gavin’s account.” Uncle Morty’s fingers drummed harder. The sound echoed off the walls of the near-empty restaurant.

  “Wilson Novelties? Isn’t that kind of late?” I asked.

  “Paper charges take longer and I guess the owner wasn’t in a big hurry.”

  “Sample’s fiancé ordered her something from there, right?”

  “Yeah, but Gavin didn’t know that. He wasn’t working for Sample anymore,” he said.

  “So he was really shopping,” I said. “He had a sweatshirt and a cookbook in his trunk.”

  “That’s the stuff. I cross-checked his motel bill against the new charge.” Morty took another sip of coffee and paused for effect. He wanted me to jump to the bait. I was determined not to, but before I knew what I was doing, I said, “Well?”

  “Twenty minutes after the charge at Wilson Novelties, he extended his stay by a day. That extra day he went to the university.”

  “So he found something. Any idea what?”

  “Nope. Owner doesn’t remember Gavin,” he said.

  “Please don’t tell me you want me to go back to Lincoln.” I put my head in my good hand.

  “Somebody’s got to check out that store.”

  “Well, it’s not going to be me. Why couldn’t you’ve given me this information yesterday?” I asked, my head still in my hand.

  “I got it when Visa got it,” he said.

  “Crap, shit, fuck.”

  Morty smiled, a rare thing, but he likes to hear me cuss.

  “So, was that the good news or the bad news?” I asked, dreading the answer.

  “It’s all bad,” he said.

  “Great. Let me have it.”

  “I found out about The Girls.”

  I straightened up. The idea of helping someone alive had appeal.

  “There’s a freeze on their bank accounts, all the accounts,” said Uncle Morty.

  “Credit cards?”

  “Frozen.”

  “Lines of bank credit?” I asked.

  “Frozen. They don’t have access to a freaking dime and they have a shitload of dimes,” Uncle Morty said.

  “Who did it? Did you talk to them?”

  “Hell no, I didn’t talk to them. I talked to Big Steve.”

  Big Steve was the biggest badass lawyer in St. Louis and a good friend to my parents. Mom used to be his legal secretary when I was little. My parents trusted Big Steve and that trust was returned. Big Steve called them when his son, Stevie, got in trouble. Stevie was a disaster and I was grateful for every one of his scrapes. He made me look good.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “Rumors mostly. Somebody’s trying to take over the family trust,” he said.

  “Can that be done?”

  “It ain’t easy, but yeah.”

  “What do you do? Get them declared nuts or something?”

  “Basically,” he said.

  “I can’t imagine anyone who would want to do that,” I said.

  Rodney brought me a cup of coffee and I took a slow sip. Somebody wanted to hurt The Girls. I couldn’t wrap my heart around it.

  “It’s family whoever it is,” he said.

  “Family,” I repeated.

  “Yep. Only family has that kind of pull. Got any candidates?”

  “I don’t know most of the family. There’s Lawton, but he’s a sweetheart.”

  While both of the girls had married, only Myrtle had a child. Lawton was in his mid fifties and childless. He lived in Cambria, California, a small tourist town on the coast filled with artists and retirees. He came home several times a year, spending weeks gardening and shopping. Lawton loved to shop and my mother was his Barbie doll. He took full responsibility for Mom’s collection of outlandish hats and he got miffed if she neglected her nails. Lawton considered Mom a work of art. I was a work in progress, slowly making my way towards greatness. A couple of years ago, he told Mom that I would be fab, if I’d just stop wearing cutoffs. I’m still not fab.

  “It ain’t Law. I checked him out this morning.” Morty looked disappointed. Lawton tried on a yearly basis to reform Morty’s wardrobe. He had less luck with him than he did with me. Morty avoided Lawton like he carried ebola.

/>   “There are some cousins, but they’re all rich. Why would they want to screw over The Girls?”

  “Shit, who knows. Maybe somebody’s gambling or bought too many houses in Tuscany,” he said.

  The red alert signal from the Enterprise echoed through the bar. Rodney had changed the door buzzer from my favorite tricorder beeps to the much more obnoxious red alert. I looked up to see my mother coming through the door. Beyond her across the street, Nardo chewed on a toothpick and eyed Emil Roberts. Mom wore jeans and a tank, which meant it was a bad day. On the other hand, her hair was done. She walked to the bar without seeing us and asked Aaron for a cup of coffee when he came out of the kitchen.

  “Check it out,” Uncle Morty said with a nod to the front window next to the door. Emil Roberts had disappeared, but two guys in their forties stood peering in though the glass with their hands cupped around their eyes. They were dressed in business suits and looked too old to be stalking my mom, but she gets all kinds.

  I started to stand up to tell them to get a life, when they caught sight of me. Both their hands and their jaws dropped. They looked from Mom at the bar to me and back again. They did it so fast they banged their heads together, and they rubbed their foreheads while looking at us.

  Rodney walked out of the kitchen carrying two steaming platters. He set them in front of us and marched to the window.

  “Get out of here, you freaking losers. We don’t open til ten-thirty.” Rodney wiped his hands on his apron as the businessmen ran away.

  “I guess they were really hungry, huh, Rodney,” I said, trying not to be too sarcastic.

  “They’re hungry alright.” Morty rolled his eyes and dug into his pile of hash browns.

  Across the street, Emil Roberts yelled at Nardo and a second later they were bitch-slapping each other. I snorted and Morty’s eyes left his plate to see my stalkers going at it. He shook his head and shoveled in more hash browns.

  “Must’ve heard I was starting a breakfast menu,” Rod said.

  “That must be it,” I said.

  Mom came up behind Rod and pursed her lips. She wasn’t the fan of sarcasm that I was.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Mom said.

  Uh oh.

  “You need to drive Aunt Miriam to the funeral home tomorrow.”

  Score.

  “I can’t. I’m taking narcotics. Sorry.” I concealed my smile by stuffing my mouth full of sausage.

  “I’ll drive you.”

  I looked up and saw Aaron standing next to Mom, smiling.

  Double score.

  I swallowed my sausage. “Um, well, if Aaron is driving then you don’t need me, right?”

  “Wrong. We finally got Gavin a spot at Straatman’s and Aunt Miriam needs help with the casket. You know her cataracts are giving her trouble,” Mom said.

  “Why aren’t you going or Dixie, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Stop arguing. Dixie doesn’t want to go there until she absolutely has to. So we need you to go and you’re going. Or would you rather stay home with Dad and Dixie? She may stop crying by then.”

  “Fine, I’ll go,” I said.

  “Thank you, honeybabe. Make sure Aunt Miriam takes plenty of pictures. Dixie wants to see the choices.” Mom slid into the booth next to Uncle Morty and looked back and forth between us. “So what is this all about?”

  “I can’t even remember.” My eyes roamed around the restaurant watching Rodney turn on the ceiling fans one by one. A chilly breeze washed over us and I shivered.

  “We were talking about The Girls,” Uncle Morty said as he handed me his jacket.

  “Oh yeah. I guess I’m supposed to do something,”

  “Don’t you want to help?” asked Mom. “The Girls are family. They practically raised you.”

  God help me.

  “I’m so disappointed in you.” Uncle Morty smirked at me.

  “You could deal with it.” I smirked back.

  “I’m going to Lincoln,” he said.

  “Enough. Mercy, you’ll deal with The Girls’ situation.” Mom leaned back and crossed her arms. Discussion over.

  “I thought I was going with Aunt Miriam.”

  “That’s tomorrow. You can speak to The Girls today. Rodney, do you have my order?”

  Rodney jogged back into the kitchen to get it. Mom kissed me on the cheek and took her bag. “I have to go. Your father keeps trying to get out of bed. I caught him crawling towards the office this morning.” Mom left, bringing traffic to a dead stop. She should never wear tank tops.

  Aaron looked at my plate. “So…what do you think? How was it? Taste good?” He held his hands clasped in front of him. He would’ve looked angelic and sweet if it weren’t for the hair, clothes, glasses, and everything else about him.

  “It’s okay.” My plate was spotless. Okay didn’t cover it.

  “Maybe more hash browns or add cheese sauce?” Aaron asked.

  “Fine. I admit it. Your dog disaster is delicious. Thanks. I’m going to gain a thousand pounds.” I told Uncle Morty good luck in Lincoln and walked to the door with Aaron close on my heels.

  “I’ll drive you,” he said.

  “I’ll walk.” I left Kronos and went past Nardo and Emil slapping each other and yelling insults about mothers. I angled away from them to cross the street in front of a Mustang. It started honking like crazy. The driver stuck his head out the window, made a V with his fingers and started doing a lovely tongue thrust through them.

  Some days just can’t get bad enough.