The Omelet Affairby Lewayne L. White |
Part 1 appears in this issue. |
| Part 2 |
The dwarf checked a date, and I realized it matched the date we got the Dumpty call.
“You’re smiling,” he said. “What’s so fuddy?”
“Nothing,” I replied. “Anything else?”
He shook his head. “Guess I’ll head back to work.”
The dwarf sneezed again, and I said, “You better get that cold looked at.”
“Allergies.” He pointed to Mrs. Little. “Feathers.”
With a final sneeze, he headed back down to the OCI office.
Dagan helped Mrs. Little to her feet as I approached.
“Mrs. Little,” I asked. “Do you know if Chickie was actually involved with Humpty Dumpty?”
Mrs. Little shrugged. “She knew lots of guys at Eggron.”
“Anyone who might know which guys? A close friend of hers, maybe?”
“Henny Penny might. They been friends since they was barely hatched.”
We got an address for Henny Penny, gave Mrs. Little a ride back home, and waited with her until her sister arrived.
Then, in the car, we discussed looking for Henny Penny.
Dagan looked at his watch. “Roosters won’t crow for a couple hours. You want to catch a nap, get started first thing in the morning?”
I rubbed my eyes. “Yeah, bring the unmarked by around eight and pick me up. We’ll go see Penny.”
I dropped him at Gingerbread House so he could pick up his car. Then we went our separate ways.
I got a few hours sleep, a shower, and when Dagan arrived, we were back on the road. Luckily for us, Henny Penny worked in a bakery.
Coffee, doughnuts, and an interview all at once.
“Sure, Chickie’s always snuggling up with guys that got money,” Penny said as she poured Dagan another cup. “She used to hang with thugs cause they had money. Plus they was everywhere in our ’hood. But it got too scary.”
“So she moved on to business men?” Dagan said.
“Yeah, she’d dress nice and talk sweet, and hook up with guys in suits. Figured they made good money, didn’t carry guns.”
“Not as dangerous?” Dagan added.
“Mostly,” Penny replied. “But....”
“But?” I said.
“The guys she hung with at Eggron... I don’t know. I mean they weren’t doing drive-bys and stuff, but Chickie heard things.”
“Like what?” Dagan asked.
Penny shrugged. “She heard a dude say “they have all their eggs in one basket. Time to cut them loose.” She told lots of stories, though. After a while, you tune them out.”
“Who did she overhear?”
“A big shot. Laid, maybe.”
I asked, “Know anything about Humpty Dumpty?”
“Chickie was ‘friends’ with him, too.”
“How so?”
Penny shrugged again. “He was an accountant. He fiddled with money, and she liked money.”
“Are you suggesting he was doing something illegal?” Dagan asked. “Maybe embezzling a little to keep Chickie happy?”
“I don’t know. Chickie said Humpty controlled the money. She didn’t say he was giving her none.”
Round and round we go.
Laid, Dumpty, Eggron, Little.
All connected, but it’s not clicking.
My cell phone rang. I rose and walked away to answer. A loud sneeze blasted from the earpiece.
“Sorry,” said the dwarf. “The lab tode me to tell you that they god prints from the shell you foud. The bad newds is that they’re not on file.”
“Nothing?”
“Says, ‘no print matches’.”
I glanced over at Henny Penny. “All right. Thanks for the update.”
The dwarf sneezed again, then rang off.
I walked back to the table, looked at Penny, and announced, “They’ve got prints off the shell from the Little homicide.”
Henny Penny dropped the coffeepot. Dagan and I both leapt back.
“I’m sorry,” Penny said. But, I could tell she wasn’t.
“I’ll get some towels from the back,” she added, and headed for the kitchen.
Dagan and I nodded to each other.
I went after Penny. Dagan went out the front door.
Penny flapped through the kitchen, knocking over everything in her path- pots, pans, dishes. Then she got hold of food, and started pitching.
I dodged as best I could, but when this was over, I was getting another shower and throwing out the clothes I was wearing.
Penny hit the back door, burst into the sunlight and right into a chest-high strait-arm from Dagan.
They both went down in a flurry of feathers, curses and clucking.
“I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!”
“No kidding,” I said. “You don’t have fingers. How could you leave prints?”
Penny stopped thrashing around.
“Hey, yeah. Get off me, cop.”
Dagan helped her to her feet.
I pulled my pistol.
Penny’s eyes widened. “Whoa, there. What are you doing?”
I ejected the clip, pulled the slide to eject the chambered round, and extended it to Henny Penny.
“Take it.”
Penny looked at it, then up at me. “What?”
“I’ve been trying to figure out how all you animals with no opposable thumbs can do the stuff you do. You might be able to lift a coffee pot or pour a bottle, but how can you grip a pistol and curl an index finger around a trigger?”
Penny took the pistol by curling the tip of her wing around the grip.
Nothing would fit through the trigger guard. Even if she could raise her little chicken legs high enough, the toes were too thick.
I took back the pistol, reloaded the clip, racked the slide, activated the safety and dropped into my holster.
“So why’d you run? You knew it couldn’t be your prints on the shell.”
Penny shrugged. “I panicked figure you guys used that ESP stuff to figure out that I hated Chickie. You came around asking, and I figured you were going to put it on me. Maybe fake some evidence and take me down.”
I shook my head, screamed, “This is ridiculous!” and kicked a garbage can.
“We’ve got a dead chick who’s connected to sleazy guys, including a suicide that no one thinks is a suicide. Nothing she says can be trusted, because she’s cried wolf so many times. We don’t even know if she had anything on anyone, including the sleazy guys. The sleazy guys are on everyone’s naughty list because they’re robbers in three-piece suits. Everyone thinks they might kill someone to shut them up, but no one seems to know anything worth getting killed for. Maybe they whacked Dumpty, maybe they whacked Chickie, maybe they destroyed the lives of their employees.”
I kicked the wounded garbage can. “Maybe!”
Kick.
“Maybe!”
Kick.
“Maybe!”
“To top it all off, the only piece of evidence we might have is a shell casing with prints that don’t match anyone in this mess.”
I kicked the can one last time.
“Murder is simple. It’s not like the movies. No vast government plots. No grand corporate conspiracies. Someone’s pissed at someone else and they kill them. Bang. Dead. Homicide.”
“Can I go back in?” Penny asked.
I glanced at Dagan. He shrugged.
“Go ahead.”
Penny dashed back into the kitchen.
“You have a point,” Dagan said.
“I do?”
“Maybe. Start with your theory, such as it was. Who’d be mad at Chickie?”
I shrugged. “Normally, we’d start with her husband or boyfriend.”
“Except the last boyfriend we know about is dead.”
I thought about the conversation with Casey. “He called his wife.”
“What?”
“Humpty Dumpty called his wife before he jumped.”
Dagan opened his phone and called Central. He identified himself, then said “Are there any firearms registered to a Dumpty, Humpty T. with an address on Fairy Dust Circle?”
He waited, tapping his foot.
“Excellent.”
He rung off.
“Dumpty’s got a twenty-two pistol. Justification is listed as home defense. Both Mr. and Mrs. Dumpty took the gun safety course.”
“That’s sounds promising.”
Dagan nodded. “It gets better. A few days before Humpty jumped, someone broke into the Dumpty house. The Dumpty’s claimed it was an attempted Eggron hit.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Shots were fired. CSW dug the bullets out of the wall as part of the scene processing. Ballistics is running one from the Dumpty house against one of them in Chickie.”
“I should rant more often.”
“Let’s not go there.”
A short time later, we arrived at the crime lab and went down to ballistics.
The same grouchy warlock from the Little scene met us with a report.
“Bullets match,” he said. “Same gun shot the Dumpty house interior wall and the dead chick.”
I tried not to do a happy dance right there.
Dagan’s response was a bit more restrained. “Let’s see if we can get some warrants.”
A few hours later, we hit the Dumpty house. Mrs. Dumpty screamed about brutality and harassment, but it didn’t stop us from finding the gun or dragging her down to Central.
She lawyered up, and he told her to shut up, and no one got anywhere for a while. But, then a judge refused to grant bail.
I figure a few nights in a cold cell with roommates nicknamed “Icepick” and “Lizzie the Axe,” and Mrs. Dumpty will start to crack.
Meanwhile, Dagan and I and our respective dates made another attempt to go out to dinner.
We barely got to the appetizers before Liv and Casey started off again. Liv left in a huff, then Casey’s pager went off and he split, too.
Dagan and I looked at each other across the table.
“You know,” I said. “In the movies, it’s always the cops that leave their dates sitting at the table while they run off to save the world.”
Dagan sighed.
“What?” I asked.
“Casey.”
“What about him?”
“You ever wonder why he was asking about Dumpty?”
I nodded.
“You ask him?”
“Nope.”
Dagan nodded.
“Dumpty did books for some of Wolf’s projects,” I said after a moment. “Casey was fishing to see if we were going to take another run at Wolf, using Dumpty as an excuse.”
“That bother you?”
I shrugged. “It might if I thought Wolf sent him to find out.”
“You don’t think he did?”
I shook my head. “Casey doesn’t think he’s got a lot of options. He’s protecting his own interests by protecting Wolf.”
I sighed. “At first I thought I could deal with being involved with a guy connected to a crime boss.”
“Alleged crime boss.” Dagan said with a grin.
“We both know Wolf’s dirty,” I said. “We just can’t prove it.”
Dagan nodded.
“Anyway, I figured I could handle the comments from other cops, or the questions from the Lieutenant. ADA Candlestick even called me in for a chat.”
Dagan raised his eyebrows.
I nodded. “Apparently, my relationship with Casey puts me in awkward legal positions. My integrity is in question, my loyalty to the department, etc. etc.”
“You’re going to break up with him.”
I nodded. “But not because I’m being pressured to. You’ve known me long enough to know that just makes me resist even more.”
“They should know it, too,” Dagan said. “You ended up in Fairy Tale Land because you weren’t a team player.”
I nodded again.
“So, why?”
“I’ll never stop wondering if he’s really interested in me or spying for Wolf.”
“From my perspective as a guy, I’d say he’s interested in you.”
“I’ll talk to him tomorrow and get it over with.”
Dagan took a drink, then said, “So, if you’re breaking up with him, does that mean it’s safe for me to keep dating Liv?”
I smiled. “No. She’s uptight, snotty, and holier-than-thou. Besides, she’s too cute, and too old.”
“She’s not even ninety, yet. She’s practically a teen-ager.”
“Well, then she’s jail bait. Get rid of her.”
“You’re just jealous because my girlfriend’s been approved by upper management.”
“Just for that, you get the check.”
He shook his head “We throw for it, just like usual.”
He threw paper. I threw scissors.
“Yours,” I said.
Dagan rose to pay, and his phone rang.
“Probably Liv calling to apologize,” I said, as he answered.
He looked at me.
“No, we’re just finishing up. We’ll be there in fifteen.”
He closed his phone.
“We got a dead puppet maker over on Blue Fairy Lane. You wanna grab your car while I get the check?”
I nodded and headed out.
Casey stood by the car, waiting.
“Wolf’s got some business out of town,” he said. “We may be gone for a while.”
I grabbed the door handle. “We’re on the way to a scene. I don’t have time to talk right now.”
He nodded. Then trying for levity, he said, “Anyone I know?”
“The puppet maker. That guy on Blue Fairy Lane.”
“Puss In Boots used to run protection over that way,” Casey said. “You might want to look into that.”
“Is that Wolf’s suggestion, or yours?” I asked, probably more sharply than necessary.
He shrugged. “Just trying to help you out.”
“Which conveniently helps out Wolf, who could be rid of a competitor if we took down Boots.”
“I told you before, Wolf’s not such a bad guy.”
“Then why’s everyone call him “Big Bad Wolf?”
He sighed. “Are we about to have a fight?”
“No,” I said. “I’m about to go to a crime scene.”
Before he could say anything else, I peeled out of the parking space, whipped around, and waited for Dagan to reach the car.
“Was that Casey?” Dagan asked as he got into the car.
I nodded.
“You tell him off?”
I shrugged.
After a moment, I said, “He thinks we should look at Puss In Boots. Apparently Boots ran protection in that neighborhood. The puppet maker may not have paid his insurance this week.”
“You want to start with Boots after we check the scene?”
I shook my head. “I want to do this like we would any other homicide. I want to go in clean.”
“Even though Casey gave you a lead?”
“I’m not going to use my relationship with Casey to further my own interests.”
“That mean you still have a relationship with Casey?”
I took one last look at Casey in the rearview mirror, then pulled away from the curb.
“Maybe I’ll find out when he and Wolf get back into town. For now, we have a dead puppet maker to see.”
Copyright © 2006 by Lewayne L. White
