Tip a Hat to Murder, Page 3

  “You two like Ben?”

  “Better before the a-hole screwed us over about tips,” Nick said.

  Marti’s eyes widened. “Are we, like, suspects? Do we need a lawyer?”

  Elizabeth smiled. “You’re two people who had the misfortune to find Ben at the same time my officer did. You’re helping me. But, if you want to seek a lawyer’s advice, or have one here, you can. You aren’t being held here. You can go anytime.”

  “I already missed my organic fertilizer class,” Nick said. “Can you write me a note?”

  “In college you need a note?” Elizabeth asked.

  Marti threw in, “You don’t know Mr. Bander.”

  “We call him Bandy Legs,” Nick said.

  “Because he is.” Marti’s tone was serious.

  “I’ll write you a note. Anybody not like Ben? Anyone seem to be threatening him?”

  “Logland isn’t Chicago,” Nick said. “No gangs or payoffs to, you know, not get beat up.”

  Marti puffed her cheeks for a second and blew out air. “It isn’t just gangs who beat up people!”

  “Like you would know, I…”

  “You two, focus! Unless people regularly came down from Chicago, it’s not relevant. Now, did anyone seem especially angry at Ben?”

  Nick studied at the ceiling for a moment. “Ben said if he cut people off at two AM, the heavy drinkers would go home. Be less rowdy.”

  Marti frowned. “Looks like it didn’t work.”

  “So, like the TV show cops ask,” Elizabeth continued, “any known enemies?”

  They both shook their heads, and Nick spoke. “We were all trying to find new jobs.”

  “Jobs with tips,” Marti said. “We got a lot of tips.”

  Nick frowned, “Umm.”

  Nick’s pause made Elizabeth think he might have thought better about what he wanted to say. “What, Nick?”

  Nick glanced at Marti. “What about Gordon Beals?”

  Elizabeth arched her eyebrows. “The insurance actuary?”

  Marti nodded. “He was mad at Ben, because he added crackers to the hamburger.”

  “Crackers?”

  “He wasn’t supposed to have any gluten,” Marti said.

  “Not even a cookie,” Nick threw in.

  “Did Mr. Beals threaten Ben?”

  They spoke together. “No.”

  “Unless,” Marti added, “you count him saying gluten gave him bad gas and he wasn’t going to step outside anymore.”

  “To fart,” Nick added. “They are pretty lethal.”

  “Okay.” Elizabeth studied her note pad, not sure whether to laugh or beat her head against the table. “Other than fart threats, do you think anyone was mad enough at Ben to hurt him?”

  They glanced at each other and then back at her as they shook their heads.

  Elizabeth’s instinct was that Nick and Marti were thinking of someone in particular, but she decided not to press just then. She would talk to the pair again, probably separately.

  She flipped back through the several pages of notes from that morning, and stopped at one. “You guys know where Ben kept his keys?”

  “On his belt,” Marti said.

  Nick nodded. “He used to keep them in his pants pocket, but they made a hole. He clipped them to his belt.”

  “Usually on the left side, and then he reached for them with his right.”

  “If he took them off, where would he put them?” Elizabeth asked.

  Nick and Marti looked at each other and she said, “I don’t think I ever saw them on the counter or anyplace else.”

  “And not in the can,” Nick added.

  As Elizabeth jotted that point in her notebook, Marti said, “They’re easy to spot. The key for the outside diner door is red white and blue.”

  “Plus a flag on it. A small one,” Nick added.

  Marti frowned. “If you can’t find them, he usually kept a spare on a hook in the kitchen. A lower cupboard, beneath where we cut up vegetables, near the fridge.”

  Elizabeth stood. “Good to know. You can go. If you don’t mind, I’d like to get you fingerprinted so we know which prints are yours and which belong to Ben or others.”

  “Like the killer?” Nick asked.

  “Finding the killer’s would be ideal,” Elizabeth said.

  They mumbled yes, and she let them leave the room ahead of her, en route to the sergeant. When they were almost to the bullpen, Nick turned his head, but kept walking. “I think Ben was mad about something to do with Fantasy Football.”

  “Stop,” Elizabeth said. “Who was he mad at?”

  They faced her.

  “I think at himself. You know, for betting,” Marti said.

  “Did he lose a lot?”

  Again with the shrugs.

  “Did he play online?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Yes,” Marti said. “He had to play with a credit card.”

  “It sounded like he was getting maxed out,” Nick added.

  “Did he say he was hard up for cash?”

  Marti and Nick exchanged glances, and she spoke. “We all thought he wanted to raise prices and get rid of tips because he thought it would mean he’d get extra income.”

  “From the customers,” Nick added.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AFTER AN HOUR with the students who had been relegated to the cells, Elizabeth knew nothing more. Several regular picketers confirmed that the lowered blinds were different. Early in the morning Ben usually raised them.

  The guy who had been knocked on the head earlier said he had been the first one at the picketing spot. He remembered Ben had raised the blinds not long before shutting them.

  From eating in the Bully Pulpit occasionally, Elizabeth knew they were the old, metal blinds. At least the ones at the huge glass windows in the front were. Newer vinyl blinds graced windows in the shorter side of the L shape, what she now thought of as the beer area.

  As she drove back to the crime scene, Elizabeth wished she’d fought harder for a detective position during the city budget process six months ago.

  She parked her car in front of the diner's door and got out.

  Because she had not found a key, Elizabeth could not lock the Bully Pulpit as she and Skelly left. Now she planned to check for the spare in a kitchen cupboard door.

  Elizabeth had left Officer Mahan to watch the place, but the teacher-cum-campus cop had come back an hour or so later, after teaching a class. Elizabeth told Mahan to get back on regular patrol and leave the man at the diner.

  She also told Mahan to give strict instructions that no one was to make coffee or otherwise disturb anything. Given how haggard the chemistry cop had appeared when she’d seen him rounding up students on the street, she doubted he’d followed that order.

  When she got to the diner, a man in his mid-thirties was leaning on the counter eating a powdered donut. Elizabeth tried not to scream at him. Since he stopped mid-chew when he saw her, she figured the guy knew how ticked she was.

  She took in his wrinkled blue uniform and hair that was a true buzz cut. “I don’t think I know your name, sir.”

  He swallowed. “Afternoon, Chief. Wally. Walter. Walter Kermit.” He tapped his breast pocket. “Left my nametag at home.”

  Elizabeth could only imagine what the students did with that name. “You mean your badge?”

  He grinned and shrugged. “Yeah, that’s right. In the Science Department we wear name tags. Badges when we’re doing campus security duties.”

  “Anybody come in asking for Ben?”

  He wiped his hands together and specks of confectioner’s sugar fell onto the customer counter.

  “Officer Kermit, this is a crime scene. We can’t add anything to it.”

  He pointed to the floor not far from the door. “I thought he got killed over there.”

  “Did you ever watch CSI?” Elizabeth watched him process the question and reach some sort of conclusion about police procedures and how he could have screwed up poss
ible evidence.

  He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Sorry.”

  “Again, did anybody come in asking for Ben?”

  “Not since I put the closed sign on the orange cone out there.”

  “A traffic cone?” Elizabeth moved to the still-shut blinds and used a pen to lift up one slat. “No cone out there.”

  “Damn frat boys!” Kermit walked toward her and started to use his fingers on the blinds.

  “No, use my pen.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He took her pen and squinted as he peered out. “It’ll probably be on their homecoming parade float.”

  She sighed. “Marti told me where the spare key was, so you don’t have to stay. Why don’t you go by the frat house and ask about the cone. Will they tell you?”

  Kermit stuck out his chest a good two inches. “I got three of ‘em in class. I’ll grill ‘em.”

  “Please, no grilling. And if they have it, make them give it to you or tell them I’ll come over.”

  He shrugged. “Bunch of ‘em are local. I’ll tell their parents. They’ll be a lot more scared of them.”

  As he started toward the door, Kermit turned to her. “Can I get your card?”

  “Uh, sure.” Elizabeth took one from the breast pocket of her uniform.

  Kermit studied it. “It doesn’t have your cell number.”

  It was hard to tell another officer, even a campus security cop who ate powdered donuts at crime scenes, that he couldn’t have her direct cell. Elizabeth wrote it on the back of the card, careful not to do as she wanted and make a three look like a five.

  Kermit beamed at her. “Thanks, Chief.”

  Elizabeth shook her head as he went out the front door.

  She walked toward the kitchen to get the key. She hadn’t wanted to be chief, or even a deputy, of a large department. Now she was seeing the downside of having such a small force of her own. “Powdered sugar,” she muttered.

  She stooped in front of a cabinet that was under a counter that clearly had been used as a place to chop food, except without the cutting board. Knife slices were so prevalent there was hardly an unscarred surface. Elizabeth tried not to think about salads she’d eaten at the Bully Pulpit.

  After putting on latex gloves, Elizabeth started to reach for the cupboard handle. She stopped.

  The area around the handle was a lot cleaner than the rest of the cupboard’s exterior. Maybe the murderer wiped it clean? “Damn it all.”

  The empty hook confirmed her suspicion. Whoever killed Ben wanted to let himself, or herself, back into the diner.

  CHAPTER SIX

  LOCAL BUSINESS OWNERS gathered for their regular afternoon coffee in the back of Doris Minx’s cookie and donut store, which was across from the police station. As Elizabeth stood just out of attendees’ sight, she heard that Ben Addison was the only topic.

  Gene Dirksen owned Man Up Tattoos. His upper arms, in a sleeveless leather vest despite the fall temperature, were the size of Thanksgiving hams. “I tell you, if we’da had guns in every store, this would never have happened.”

  Nancy Foster, owner of Ringlets Hair Salon, laughed. “Get real, Gene. You’d shoot yourself in the pinky just pulling it out of a drawer.”

  Gene pointed a finger across the table at Nancy, but before he could say anything, Elizabeth spoke from the door that led from the main store into the back room. “Please, keep the guns in their cabinets.”

  They stared at her for several seconds – Gene with his mouth open and finger still pointing, Nancy rolling a long blonde curl around her index finger, and Squeaky Miller, who owned the dry cleaning business. Cookie shop owner Doris Minx gave Elizabeth a sad smile.

  When they didn’t say anything, Elizabeth asked, “Where’s Alice?”

  Elizabeth had dropped by the coffee club, as she thought of it, several times. Usually the owner of the used bookstore sat closest to the old coffee pot.

  Gene cleared his throat. “She’s kinda upset.”

  “We all are,” Nancy added.

  Doris raised her mug and gestured to the pot. “Coffee? Or would you like a donut?”

  “I’ve been going for hours. I could use a recharge.” Elizabeth went to the pot and took a Styrofoam cup from a stack of them. No one said anything as she poured.

  Gene stood from his chair. “You sit.”

  “Oh, I can…”

  “Nope. Ladies sit.”

  Elizabeth nodded at him. Gene, with a voice higher than his size belied, always acted more like a prototype southern gentleman than the rough biker he dressed like. Not that he let his customers see his refined side when they came in to get inked.

  Squeaky asked, “Who killed him, Chief?”

  Elizabeth sat. “I have no idea. I figured if you folks knew anything, you’d have called me, but I thought I’d stop by.”

  Several “yes’s” came from the group, and Nancy added, “When I got in at nine-thirty this morning, one of your officers came by. I wish I’d been downtown to see something.”

  Elizabeth had been told that two of her officers had visited every business within two blocks of the diner. It had taken little time, because most were closed when Ben was found. “I know you all weren’t open yet. How about the last few days? See anyone holler at Ben when they left, or anything out of the ordinary?”

  “His chili was extra-crappy yesterday,” Squeaky said, “but if he was gonna be killed for that it woulda happened a long time ago.”

  “The man’s dead!” Nancy trilled.

  “I didn’t mean no disrespect,” Squeaky said. He folded his hand across his ample belly and let them rest on his bright orange golf shirt.

  Elizabeth smiled. “I know.” She pulled out her notebook. “It was always pretty bad.”

  That seemed to relax them. Gene spoke from where he’d been leaning against a door jamb. “He did seem kinda stressed the last few days.”

  “Why do you say that?” Elizabeth downed a sip of coffee and wished she’d added a lot of sugar.

  Squeaky leaned forward and rested his arms on the table. “See, when Ben was hopped up, he talked faster. Moved around a lot.”

  “Paced?” Elizabeth asked.

  Nancy shook her head. “Jiggled change in his pocket. Just moved real quick. Like if he got up to get coffee here it took maybe five seconds and he’d be back at the table.”

  “He was like that a lot since he stopped letting customers tip.” Gene gazed at the others, one by one. “Right?

  “Pretty much,” Nancy said. “I mean, we liked it, but his waiters gave him a ration almost every day. You go there since?”

  “I saw the picketers,” Elizabeth said. “Didn’t want a story about the police chief crossing a picket line. One of the guys picked up sandwiches for me a couple times.”

  “Isn’t that kind of chicken for a police chief?” Gene asked.

  Elizabeth grinned broadly. “I pick my battles. Seriously, I thought it would die down and I didn’t want to make it a bigger issue.”

  Alice’s voice reached them from the door that led to the shop. “Ben died.”

  If Elizabeth had been holding her coffee, Alice’s cigarette-husky voice, at twice its usual volume, would have made her hand jerk enough to spill the goopy liquid.

  “He did. I’m sorry, Alice.” Elizabeth stood and gestured that the older woman should take her seat. “Let me pour you a cup.”

  “No thanks.” She took the chair and almost glared at the others. “How can you just sit here?”

  Doris said, “We aren’t sure what to do.”

  “The police are handling it, Alice,” Nancy added. “What else can we do?”

  Alice was in her late fifties and had grey-brown hair that was usually styled nicely or in a French braid. Today the braid was half undone, with stringy hair on one shoulder. “We need a posse or something.”

  “No posse needed. We’ll keep you posted,” Elizabeth said. “Is there anything you know that would be helpful?”

  She snapped a respons
e before Elizabeth could finish. “Help? You only want to help now that he’s dead!”

  “Alice,” Squeaky began.

  “Don’t ‘Alice’ me. You’re too addled from that chemical crap in your shop to do anything. We all knew Ben was upset about something.”

  Squeaky sat up straighter. “Dry cleaning fluid has been deemed safe in small...”

  Elizabeth kept her voice even. “Do you know what he was upset about?”

  Alice’s anger faded, and she slumped in her chair. “He wouldn’t say. And I asked plenty.”

  “Any idea if it was work-related? Or a family problem, maybe?”

  “His parents were dead. Sister in Idaho or someplace. One of the picketers bothered him a lot.” Gene paused. “Let’s see, the guy’s sign said, something about ass-kissing.”

  “Was it, ‘You want somthing from me? Bend over and I’ll kiss your ass?’” Elizabeth asked.

  Gene nodded. “Yeah. Guy couldn’t spell for shit.”

  “I know who you mean, I think. Odd. Seemed that guy agreed with Ben about not tipping.”

  Nancy pointed a coffee stirrer at Elizabeth. “Yes, but he was rude about it. It upset Ben, because he said he only stopped tips to compete with the Weed and Feed.”

  Elizabeth remembered Nick and Marti’s thought that Ben figured he’d net more profit with the higher prices. “Any financial problems?”

  “You could ask Gordon Beals,” Squeaky offered. “You know, the insurance guy.”

  “They friends?” Elizabeth asked.

  Alice spoke harshly. “No.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  She glanced away and then back. “I guess it’s gossip.”

  Elizabeth stared at her directly. “I can get into gossip in a murder investigation.”

  Alice shrugged. “I think he keeps a different kind of books than I do.”

  Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. “Really? Guess I missed that.”

  Gene frowned at Alice, and then quickly made his expression neutral. “Like she said, it’s rumors.”

  Elizabeth viewed Squeaky and then Nancy.

  “Sports betting,” Nancy said.

  “Gossip,” Squeaky added.