I got my check from Connie, and I drove my dented piece of junk back to my apartment building. I said hello to Rex, got a beer from the fridge, powered up my MacBook Air, and downloaded Ranger’s report on Butchy.
William Boone, better known as Butchy, was twenty-two years old. He was born and raised in Barre, Vermont. His mother was a cashier in a supermarket. His father was an unemployed auto mechanic. Butchy graduated from high school and disappeared for three years. Interviews with relatives suggested he was in Nashville, trying to break into the music industry. He resurfaced in Trenton and got a job at Bogart Ice Cream. He had no arrest record. His credit score was nonexistent. He bought his F-450 six months ago and he’d paid cash. It was estimated that with the custom additions the truck was worth in the vicinity of $60,000. He was making $20 an hour at the ice cream plant. Clearly Butchy had supplemental income. He was high on my list of suspected homicidal lunatics. He had all the right access. He had unexplained money. And it was hard to believe he was as stupid as he seemed . . . because he seemed unbelievably stupid.
According to Butchy’s employment file and Ranger’s research, Butchy lived on the edge of the Burg. He was renting a house on King Street. I couldn’t place its exact location, but I knew the area. It was typical Burg. Mostly blue-collar. Small cottage-type houses on tiny lots.
It was Friday night, and I traditionally had dinner with my parents. Morelli had a standing invitation to join us, but he usually begged off. I couldn’t blame him. At some point during the dinner the inevitable question of marriage would arise. I had no good answer.
My mother called at four-thirty. “Is Joseph coming to dinner?” she asked.
“I’m pretty sure he has to work,” I said. “I think it’s only going to be me.”
“It’s just as well. Your grandmother invited some stranger. She said she met him at Bertha Webster’s viewing, and he might be the man of her dreams.”
Okay, I know this sort of thing drives my mother nuts. She worries about my grandmother. I don’t worry about Grandma so much as I do about the rest of the world. It seems to me Grandma is livin’ la vida loca. Truth is, I’m a little jealous. It looks to me like she’s having more fun than I am.
SIXTEEN
I LEFT MY apartment at five o’clock and drove to the Burg. I wound around the jumble of streets and finally found King. Butchy’s place was a little box of a house in the middle of a block. One floor. Probably two bedrooms and one bath. Detached single-car garage. It wasn’t a total shambles, but it wasn’t in immaculate condition either. The paint was peeling around the windows. The postage stamp front yard was clean but barren. No shrubs, flowers, gnomes, or plaster statues of the Virgin Mary. Butchy’s truck was in the driveway.
I stared at the truck for a bunch of beats. It was chilling to think that it might belong to a killer. Even more creepy that the killer might be Butchy. Butchy wasn’t on my radar when I was working the loading dock, but he was a big blip on the screen now.
I slowly cruised down the street and made my way to my parents’ house. I parked in their driveway because the front of my car was less visible there than it would be at the curb. My mother was at the door with my grandmother when I stepped onto the porch.
“What happened to your car?” my mother wanted to know.
“It got a little smushed,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. I’m getting a new one.”
“What kind are you going to get?” Grandma asked. “Are you going to get a Corvette? I think you should get one like Ranger. His cars are hot.”
“I haven’t thought about it,” I said. “I’ll have to see what I can afford.”
A chopper slowly rumbled down the street and parked in front of my parents’ house. The rider was in full black leather with a long gray ponytail sticking out from under a black Darth Vader helmet.
“There’s my honey,” Grandma said.
My mother went pale.
“He could be okay,” I said to my mother. “He’s probably a lawyer.”
“Nope,” Grandma said. “He tends bar at Kranski’s in north Trenton. His name’s Bertie. And he’s got tattoos all over the place.”
Bertie took his helmet off, hooked it onto the back of his bike, and walked toward us.
“He reminds me of someone,” my mother said.
“Willie Nelson,” I told her. “But I think he’s older than Willie. Willie’s only in his eighties.”
“Bertie isn’t that old,” Grandma said. “It’s that the smoke in the bar’s aged him. He’s still a handsome devil, though. Wait until you see him up close. He’s got bedroom eyes. The one bedroom eye you can’t see so much on account of it’s behind the cataract, but the other one is a beaut.”
We all said hello to Bertie and moved inside to the living room where my father was in his favorite chair, watching television.
“This is my honey, Bertie,” Grandma said to my father.
My father looked over at Bertie. “Are you going to marry her?” my father asked.
“Not tonight,” Bertie said.
My father gave up a sigh and turned back to the television.
“Dinner is ready to go on the table,” my mother said. “We have pot roast.”
We all shuffled into the dining room and took a seat. I helped my mother with the pot roast, potatoes, green beans, gravy, and red cabbage. There was red wine, beer, and a pitcher of water on the table.
“It’s too bad Joseph couldn’t come to dinner tonight,” Grandma said. “We would all be couples.” She turned to Bertie. “Joseph is Stephanie’s boyfriend. He’s a homicide detective.”
“That’s got to be a pretty interesting job in Trenton these days,” Bertie said. “Was he assigned to the Bogart Bar murder?”
I shook my head, no. “He wasn’t working that night,” I said.
“Stephanie was there,” Grandma said. “She saw the whole thing. The Bogart Bar man fell out of the freezer truck, right at her feet.”
Bertie looked impressed. “No kidding! How did you manage that?”
“I was involved in a car accident,” I said. “It was a coincidence.”
My father was at the head of the table, barely tolerating the conversation, waiting for the food to be passed to him. My mother always put the meat platter directly in front of him, but the rest of the food was distributed along the length of the table.
“Potatoes,” he barked, leaning forward, knife in one hand, fork in the other.
Everyone jumped in their seat, and Grandma handed him the potatoes.
“I heard another Bogart worker got frozen,” Grandma said. “And it doesn’t look like they have any suspects.”
“It’s obvious to me,” Bertie said. “They should talk to Kenny Morris.”
“Who’s Kenny Morris?” I asked him.
“He’s Mo’s kid,” Bertie said. “He’s a regular at the bar where I work. He’s got a real grudge against Bogart. Gets a snootful and all he can talk about is how he hates Bogart and wants to ruin him.”
“Why does he hate Bogart?”
“He had a thing for Bogart’s daughter. Asked her to marry him and she turned him down. He blamed it on her father. He said her father wouldn’t have her involved with a Morris.”
“Gravy,” my father said.
Grandma passed him the gravy.
“That’s so sad,” Grandma said. “It’s just like Romeo and Juliet, but instead of Romeo and Juliet dying, Romeo turns some people into Popsicles.”
“It seems like a stretch,” I said. “Did he ever say anything that would make you think he killed the two Bogart men?”
“Not directly,” Bertie said, “but he hated Bogart Bars. He said they were his father’s idea, and Bogart stole it. And he said he had a plan to get even. He said that a lot. Personally, I think he turned that Bogart worker into a Bogart Bar to torture old Harry. And I think one day it’s going to be Harry Bogart who gets dipped in chocolate and nuts.”
“You should be a detective,” Grandma said to Bertie. “You have this all figured out.”
“People talk to bartenders and barbers,” Bertie said. “Occupational hazard.”
“What about the man who was frozen today?” I said. “He wasn’t turned into a Bogart Bar.”
“Yep,” Bertie said. “That presents a dilemma.”