Every Crooked Nanny Read online

  "Neva Jean," I said. "I thought you were gonna talk him into giving it to her for free."

  "Callahan, honey, you know how cheap Swanelle is," Neva Jean said plaintively. "The word 'free' ain't in his vocabulary. Why, I had to turn myself inside out to get him to agree to seventy-five dollars. We're talking sex on demand for two, three months."

  "Spare us the details," I told her. "She'll pay fifty dollars a month, tops. Now y'all get going before Dr. Zimmerman starts calling here to chew my butt. And call in before you go on to your afternoon jobs. I may have something else for you to do."

  When the last car had pulled out of the driveway, Edna gave me that look. "You sure you know what you're doing, putting Ardith to work for the House Mouse? What if she decides to help herself to some of Zimmerman's expensive doodads?"

  "She won't," I said lightly. "Neva Jean will be watching her like a hawk."

  "We'll see, Little Miss Social Worker. Now what have you got planned for me to do?"

  I flipped through my notebook, looking for the list I'd made for her. When the phone rang, I literally snatched it out of her hand. "House Mouse."

  "Callahan," a voice said, "this is Rita in Dr. Drescher's office. He'd like to talk to you."

  Rich came on the phone quickly. "Is Edna there?"

  "Right here," I said warily. "Why?"

  "Because if you don't agree to come in at seven A.M. tomorrow, I'm coming over there right now with a set of your X-rays. I'll show them to her, then we'll hog-tie you ourselves and take you to the hospital."

  "That won't be necessary. I thought you said any time this week," I said grumpily. "It's only Monday. Call me back Wednesday."

  "Can't," he said. "I showed your films to Lonette Jefferson, the breast specialist I told you about. She thinks we may need to do a lumpectomy, and she's agreed to consult. Tomorrow's the only day she has free for the next month."

  "No way," I said. "I've got tomorrow booked already. I'll pencil you in for later in the week."

  "This is no joking matter, Callahan. We're lucky to be able to get Dr. Jefferson. I'm going to put Rita back on the line now, and she'll give you your instructions. See you tomorrow, sweetheart. Don't forget to bring your hooters."

  Rita came back on and told me to be at the Women's SurgiCenter at 7 A.M. Tuesday and not to eat or drink anything after midnight. "Oh, and can you bring someone with you to drive you home? You'll probably still be woozy from the sedative we're going to give you."

  "I'll take care of it," I said, and hung up.

  "What was that about?" Edna asked. "Can't what wait?"

  "Oh—uh, that was the podiatrist's office," I said, trying to think fast. Luckily I'd had two cups of coffee, so the old cerebrum was in gear. "I'm going to have that darned corn on my left little toe removed, and he says tomorrow is the only time he can do it. He's going to a medical convention in Puerto Rico on Wednesday."

  "Ain't that the way?" she said. "You know why doctors and lawyers never have conventions in places like Pahokee, Florida, or International Falls, Minnesota? It's all just a big scam so they can take a vacation and write it off on their taxes."

  32

  TO CHANGE THE SUBJECT, I handed Edna the list of calls we needed to make. "Do we know anybody who works in the business office at Rich's?"

  She closed her eyes and thought about it. "Bunny Levine. Remember her from the beauty shop? Always got a pedicure and a bikini wax? I think Bunny's daughter Heidi works at Rich's someplace. She got married a couple of years ago, though, and I don't know what her name is now."

  "I remember Heidi from college at Georgia," I said. "She was in my sociology class. Call Rich's and ask for Heidi Levine. She was a real ball-buster. I bet she kept her maiden name."

  "Then what?"

  "Find out if any of these people ever worked at Rich's," I said, handing her the list. "If they did work there, find out where and when."

  "And what are you going to be doing?"

  "I'll use the house phone. I know Lilah lied about going to Beaufort that Sunday. Now I want to check and see if I can't find a leak in Bo's alibi."

  First I tried calling every air charter business in the Atlanta yellow pages. But it was next to useless trying to pry information from the efficient secretaries and receptionists who answered the phones. "Our clients demand discretion," one secretary told me. "If you want our flight records, you'll have to get a court order."

  Exasperated, I went back in the kitchen, where Edna was working on the books. "Say, Ma, what's the name of that travel agency you and Agnes used the last time you went to Las Vegas?"

  "Golden Age Globetrotters," she said. "You can't believe the package they got us at Caesar's Palace. Prime rib dinner for two ninety-five, tickets to see Siegfried and Roy, and a bus trip to the Hoover Dam."

  Marcy, the friendly travel adviser at Golden Age, told me that, yes, there was a small airport on Hilton Head Island, serviced by a commuter airline called Air Palmetto. They had a Sunday night flight leaving Hilton Head at 10:30 P.M., but it went to Charlotte, North Carolina, before heading for Atlanta, where it arrived at around 1 A.M.

  "And what time does the flight return to Hilton Head?" I asked, crossing my fingers tightly.

  "That'd be two A.M., going back through Charlotte and arriving in Hilton Head at four-thirty."

  Lilah Rose had told Bohannon that she and Bo had gone to bed around 10 P.M. Saturday and that she had fallen asleep reading. But Beemish could have left the condo and taken either a charter or the Air Palmetto commuter flight to Atlanta. He could have rented a car at the airport, driven home, strangled Kristee, then hopped a flight back to South Carolina and still have been in bed in time to kiss Lilah Rose good morning. Unless Lilah was lying and covering up for her cheating husband or herself.

  I wondered whether Bohannon had already discovered the hole in Lilah's story. Despite her petty, grasping ways, I still found it hard to believe Lilah Rose Beemish was a murderer. On the other hand, though, if it meant protecting her husband and kids, not to mention her home and social position, Lilah Rose could be capable of anything.

  As for Shaloub, he'd made no pretense of having a good alibi. He'd gone to bed early that night, he'd said—alone.

  I tried to call Dinesh to ask him about getting a court order for the flight records for Air Palmetto and the most likely air charter services, but the secretary in the PD's office said he'd gone to lunch and after that he was due over at the jail.

  Oh, yeah, lunch. In the kitchen, Edna's head was half buried in the refrigerator. She was setting covered dishes and unidentified aluminum-foil-wrapped objects on the counter and talking to herself. Other items she was slam-dunking into the kitchen trash can. "Disgusting. This has got to go," she muttered.

  "What's for lunch, Ma?" I said.

  Her head popped up over the door. She was wearing yellow rubber gloves, and she had a plastic clothespin on her nose. "Leftovers," she said, in a weird nasal voice. "I can't squeeze another thing in this icebox until I clean it out. We've got pot roast, some string beans, some macaroni and cheese, squash casserole, a little bit of coleslaw, and half a deep-dish apple pie. I'm gonna heat it all up, and we'll pretend we're at Morrison's Cafeteria."

  The front doorbell rang just then. We were both surprised, because the only people who ever come to our front door are strangers and salesmen.

  "Go see who it is," Edna said. "And if it's the goddamn Mormons again, set the dog on 'em."

  "We don't have a dog," I reminded her as I headed for the hallway.

  "We'll get one," she hollered. "A rabid pit bull."

  It wasn't the Mormons, though. It was a tall guy with spiked blond hair. He wore a pair of brief red nylon running shorts and an oversized Pittsburgh Pirates baseball jersey, with the name Clemente written in cursive script over his breast.

  "Bucky," I said, waving him inside. "You're just in time for lunch."

  He sniffed the air expectantly. "What're we having?"

  "It's an Edna Mae Garrity
smorgasbord," I said. "All you can eat and the price is right—absolutely free."

  I could tell Edna didn't recognize our lunch guest. "Ma, remember Bucky Deaver? You talked to him on the phone the other night."

  Her face brightened, and she rushed over and gave him a big hug and kiss. "Of course I remember this rascal," she said, laying it on thick. "I just didn't recognize him without his ponytail."

  "Ponytail?" he said blankly. "When did I have a ponytail?"

  "Remember, when you were working that Jamaican drug case and went undercover? Edna is always after me to let my hair grow out like yours was back then."

  "Takes a lot more time to take care of, though," he said seriously. "That's why I got mine cut."

  In the meantime, Edna was pushing Bucky over to the table, pulling out his chair, and pouring him a tall glass of tea. "You still dating that girl who works at Georgia Power?" she asked sweetly. "The one with the eyes that were kind of googly-like?"

  Bucky had his mouth full of squash casserole, so all he could do was shake his head no.

  "Edna thinks I need a steady gentleman caller,

  Bucky," I said. "I believe she's under the impression that you are from the Deaver family who owns the Toot 'n' Tote convenience store."

  He swallowed quickly and wiped away a stray piece of cracker-crumb topping from his upper hp. "Oh, no, Mrs. Garrity. I'm no kin to those Deavers. I'm from the Waycross Deavers. My cousin Fay-Anne used to cashier at the Toot 'n' Tote over in Ocilla, but the rest of my people mostly work in my granddaddy's tire recapping business. He's the recap king of southwest Ware County."

  "I knew that," Edna lied. "How are your mama and daddy and them, Bucky?"

  "Fine, ma'am, just fine," Bucky said. "You reckon I could have a smidge more of those butter beans?"

  Watching Bucky inhale Edna's leftovers sort of put me off my own feed, so I sat there and watched his knife and fork action. The boy could flat put away groceries.

  He was polishing off a piece of apple pie when I realized he hadn't told us why he'd come.

  "Oh, yeah, Callahan," he said, setting down his fork with a sigh of ecstasy. "I came by to give you some news I think you're going to enjoy."

  "Yeah?" I said, helping myself to just an eensy sliver of pie.

  "You remember Tommy Manetti, the FBI guy who worked the missing-and-murdered case with us?"

  "Short guy with bushy eyebrows? Sharp dresser?"

  "That's him. I saw him at the pistol range this morning, and we got to talking about what he's doing these days. They've got him working on a special public servant corruption unit."

  "How interesting."

  "He let it slip that they're working on a case up in north Fulton County."

  "Kensington Park," I said excitedly. "Yes! The feds are working Kensington Park!"

  Bucky glanced over at Edna. "Uh, is it all right to talk about this in front of your mama?"

  Edna looked hurt. She got up abruptly and started clearing the table.

  "It's all right, Bucky. Edna's been helping me investigate. Come sit back down, Edna."

  "I absolutely did not tell you any of this," Bucky started out. "Understood?"

  Both of us flashed him our Girl Scout oath.

  "It seems some developer, whose name I can't mention, approached a person on the Kensington Park City Council over a year ago, to suggest that he might make a sizable campaign contribution if the councilman would look favorably upon his request to have his property annexed into the city."

  "Beemish," Edna and I said in unison.

  "I didn't say that," Bucky said. "The councilman, some guy who manages a K-mart or something, thought the offer was odd. He'd only spent eight hundred dollars on his last campaign. So he called his sister-in-law, who happens to be in her last year of law school, to ask what he should do. The sister-in-law called in the FBI."

  "That's got to be Edwin Strong," I told Edna. "He manages the Wal-Mart."

  "Since then, the guy has been cooperating with the FBI, voting in a bloc with two other council members who've been backing the development. He wore a wire to all his meetings with the developer and the other two council members, but the developer was real cautious. He never mentioned money or favors or anything not kosher for all those months. Tommy said the feds were ready to dump the whole investigation. Then, Sunday night a week ago, the shit hits the fan. Another council member, who's also been on the developer's gravy train, calls, like at ten o'clock at night. Says the developer wants to meet all three of them at the De Kalb-Peachtree Airport, at like one-thirty A.M. The K-mart guy calls Tommy, they put his wire on, and everybody meets out at De Kalb-Peachtree. The developer's flown in all the way from South Carolina. He's scared. A woman, he says, the family nanny, has stolen his file on the Kensington Park project. It's got names and amounts and dates. She's blackmailing him, demanding a hundred thousand dollars in exchange for keeping quiet about what she knows about the developer's payoffs to the council members."

  "A hundred thousand," I said. "Wow. I knew Kristee was blackmailing Beemish and Shaloub, but I didn't know she wanted that much. I figured she was just nickel-and-diming them."

  "I didn't say those names," Bucky protested. "Mrs. Garrity, did you hear me say any names?"

  "What names?" Edna said.

  "So they sit in this big gray Mercedes parked right at the edge of the runway. The developer lays out the whole thing, how he's given these people money, done 'em business favors, and how they are gonna have to help pay the blackmail money. Then the three council members get to arguing about who's done what for who and who got paid more and who should kick in some money."

  "Tell me they got it all on tape," I said fervently.

  "Most of it. The K-mart guy was so nervous he kept jiggling the wires. And a couple times planes landed and drowned out the conversation. But Tommy said they've got enough."

  "Enough to indict Beemish for murder?"

  "Not the feds," Bucky said. "Murder's not a federal offense. They're gonna kick that part of the investigation over to the Atlanta cops, eventually."

  "Eventually," I said glumly.

  "The good news is they've called a federal grand jury in to investigate," Bucky said. "That make you happy?"

  "I'm happy," I said, sliding the last hunk of pie onto Bucky's plate. "If Beemish flew back here for that meeting, depending on what time he flew in, he could have taken a quick spin over to the house and strangled Kristee. He could have stashed the body somewhere, even in the trunk of his car; then he could have run it over to Rich's first thing Monday after he got back to town."

  "That reminds me," Edna said. "Heidi Levine is married to a doctor. She's got two beautiful children and she's vice president of merchandising at Rich's. She was only too happy to look your names up for me. Bo Beemish worked as a menswear buyer downtown for a year after he got out of Tech, before he went back and got his MBA. Eddie Shaloub worked there and at the Lenox store for four years, off and on, moonlighting as a security guard. Even Lilah Rose worked at Rich's; she sold perfume there for a month one summer. Whit Collier worked there summers during college, in the cash office."

  "Just about everybody my age worked at Rich's at one time or another as a kid," I reminded my mother. "It was like McDonald's is now. Plus you got a discount."

  "Say, Callahan," Bucky said. "You know, speaking of discounts, your girls really did a great job cleaning my place last week. It hasn't been that clean since the last time my mama came up from Waycross. I was wondering—uh, do you have a special law enforcement rate?"

  "I sense a shakedown here, Edna," I said. "What do you think?"

  She picked up her bifocals, reached for the appointment book, and scanned it at length. "I can let you have Ruby on Wednesday afternoons," she said. "Let's see, with the professional discount, that'll run you—oh, forty bucks a week."

  Bucky's face fell. "That much?"

  "Did I mention she'll do your laundry and iron your shirts?"

  "All right!" Bucky said
, giving me the high five. "Clean underwear every week. Righteous."

  33

  "WIlona?" Edna said, drawing the name out lovingly. "Edna Garrity. Remember, from Women for Better Government? How in the world are you?" She rushed ahead with her spiel. "I feel so stupid for having to bother you about such a picky little thing, but I was wondering, on that Jell-O salad, is it all right to substitute a can of crushed pineapple for the fruit cocktail?"

  Edna listened intently as Wilona filled her in on Jell-O variations. Suddenly she shrieked.

  "What? Oh, I'm so sorry to have caught you at a time like this. . . . Oh, no! Oh, dear Lord, they didn't. You say they came right in without knocking? That many of them?"

  The conversation continued in a like vein for another five minutes. When Edna hung up the phone she looked deeply saddened.

  "Wilona says you can use pineapple, but if you do, she likes to add a cup of miniature marshmallows for texture."

  "Anything else?"

  "She did mention in passing that five FBI agents burst into the city clerk's office this morning with subpoenas for all the council meeting minutes for the past two years, plus all the files on the L'Arrondissement project."

  "Really?" I said. "How very interesting."

  "Poor Wilona was too upset to chat for long. Those awful FBI men! Can you imagine? They have nigger agents—her words, not mine. They interviewed her for two solid hours, asking questions about Mr. Beemish and Mr. Shaloub and the mayor, Mrs. Overmeier. Wilona was really distraught. And on top of that, right after the agents leave the office she gets a phone call from the Ali Baba Shrine Temple. They've canceled their appearance in the Kensington Park Founder's Day Parade."

  "Why?"

  "Seems their go-cart unit was in the line of march in the St. Patrick's Day parade down in Savannah, and the Grand Potentate was zipping in and out among the clown's legs when all of a sudden he suffered a massive coronary, right in the middle of a complicated double-figure-eight maneuver. The potentate's go-cart went out of control and ran over the drill team from St. Ignatius Parochial School."