Foxy Roxy Part 9

"She may not want to hear I've seen you." Bug grinned a little. "She's still mad about her brother Darrell."

"I didn't do anything to Darrell."

"Took his girlfriend. Hid her for a month."

"He was beating her up, Bug, and you know it."

"She could have gone to a shelter."

"Where her kids would get onto some CYS list? Once that starts, she'd be living in constant fear they'd be taken away from her. Which would have made Darrell perfectly happy, by the way. It was only a matter of time before he started beating on them, too."

"Darrell went to jail."

"For a grand total of five weeks."

"And somebody put an open can of anchovies under the seat of his car. Only he didn't find the can for weeks. He had to get rid of that car. It stunk permanently."

Roxy grinned. "No kidding?"

"Marie's whole family blames you for everything."

"I can take it. His girlfriend couldn't."

Bug shrugged. "The system would work, if you'd let it."

Roxy knew better.

Bug said, "You're looking good, though, Rox. I hear you're singing, too. For a couple of bands on the South Side, right? You're just as hot as you were in high school. I had a crush on you back then. But who didn't?"

"Believe me, I'm feeling my age at the moment." Roxy popped open her c.o.ke and slurped off the foam. "How old are your kids?"

"Justin's seven. Trevor's five."

"Wait till they're teenagers, then we'll talk."

Bug popped open his Red Bull, too, and held it away so the foam dripped on the floor. "What's wrong? Your daughter giving you trouble? How old is she?"

"Seventeen, going on thirty."

"Wow. Has it been that long? You have any more kids?"

"h.e.l.l, no."

"Married?"

"Nope."

"Seeing anybody? I heard Flynn's back in town. He's got a job working as a chef, right?"

"What are you, some kind of dating service?"

There had been no flirtation in his tone, and Roxy found herself glad that Bug was one guy she hadn't seduced in high school. For her, the teenage years had been a struggle figuring out how to make the world spin in a way that gave an iota of power to a girl who didn't have any to begin with. Plus the s.e.x had been fun.

She shook off the memories and said, "Can you tell me about the Hyde murder? I heard the rainstorm messed up your crime scene."

"A little."

Roxy hoped the rain had obliterated all footprints and-more important to her-the wheel tracks of the handcart. She said, "I saw a homeless guy on the TV. He's really the shooter?"

Bug rolled his eyes. "That's the prevailing theory. Seems he lived behind a garage off and on for months. Had a few run-ins with Hyde and the chauffeur. That'll all be in the newspaper tomorrow. For the last year or so, various people from the house called us to sweep him out. So there was a history of antagonism. We're spending a lot of man-hours on him but you know as well as I do it's a long shot. It keeps the media off our backs, though."

"The news said something about you guys not finding any sh.e.l.l casings at the scene."

"Whoever killed Hyde either used a revolver or had the presence of mind to pick up the sh.e.l.l casings after shooting him."

"Professional hit?"

Bug laughed. "You a conspiracy theorist? Some international cartel decided to visit Pittsburgh to terminate Julius Hyde? We doubt it. Maybe the homeless guy ate his sh.e.l.l casings. Me and sixteen other cops are trying to dig up somebody else who had a reason to kill Hyde."

"Good luck."

Bug took a slug from his can. "I'm supposed to run down all the guys who were stripping stuff out of the house that day. When I saw your name on the list, I figured I'd come here first." He smiled. "I mean, you've always had a temper, Roxy."

"I hope you shared that opinion with everybody at the station house, too."

"Nah, I want all the credit for arresting you."

"Maybe somebody will give you a parade. Here's the list of stuff I took from the Hyde house."

She had ruffled through the mess on her desk. She found the paperwork for the Hyde job under the hammer she used to weigh down the stuff that hadn't made it into the file cabinet yet.

Bug set his Red Bull on the floor and accepted the papers. He glanced down the list of items she'd been authorized to take from the burned-out mansion. "You still have everything here?"

"Yep. I sold some of the staircase spindles to an antiques dealer, but he won't show up until tomorrow. You want his address? Phone number?" She reached for her Rolodex.

Bug asked, "When did you pick up the stuff?"

"Friday night. I was there until about six."

"I heard that. Who else did you see?"

Roxy noticed he had waited for her to volunteer her whereabouts. "A couple of other contractors. And Julius, of course."

Bug couldn't hide his surprise. "You saw Hyde? Talked to him?"

Roxy propped her feet on the desk and linked her hands behind her head, making herself the picture of relaxed calm. "Yeah, I did some business with him before, so we were old buddies."

Bug sat back on the sofa. "h.e.l.l, Roxy, maybe you know more than I thought. What was going on up there?"

"Last I saw him, Julius was peeing in the pool. Otherwise, nothing much."

"Did you see our homeless guy?"

She shook her head. "Sorry."

"Anybody else?"

"Couple of morons moving a stove."

Bug nodded. "The Delaney brothers. Not exactly upstanding citizens."

"I know them a little. Maybe one of them shot Julius?"

"Not likely. Jimmy was the one who called 911 when they heard shots."

"They see anybody else?"

"You and Nooch." Bug went back to studying the paper. "Except Vincent thought you were some kind of city inspector." He glanced up. "You didn't disabuse him of that idea, did you?"

Roxy smiled, remembering the twenty bucks she'd scored. "Nope. You gonna bust me for taking a bribe?"

"Split it with me?"

"Sure." Smiling.

Bug said, "They also saw some other people. Hyde's youngest brother, for one. Thomas the third."

She nodded. "He goes by Trey. I didn't see him there."

"You know him? Wow, Rox, you get around better than ever, don't you?"

She shrugged. "Julius paid me to dispose of some stuff when he tore down part of the old carriage house last February. Two gargoyles. I sold 'em to a company in New York-and I made some real money on them. Just in time to pay Sage's spring tuition, thank heaven. Trey was in town at the time and thought his big brother should have gotten a piece of the profit, though, and the three of us had an argument. Eventually, they saw it my way. Nothing unusual in my business."

"Which business is that, exactly?" Bug asked in a different tone.

"Salvage," Roxy said evenly. "I buy and sell stuff from old buildings."

Bug let a pause fill the s.p.a.ce between them before he said, "And what about your family business? The Abruzzos have had their fingers in a lot of pies over the years. Heck, Carmine was making book back when we were in school."

"He probably still does," Roxy said.

Most everybody in the old neighborhood knew a little about Roxy's uncle Carmine and his crime organization-or they pretended they knew all about it-and certainly all of the cops in the city kept pictures of Carmine and his crew handy.

Roxy said calmly, "I don't know what Carmine's doing these days, except getting old."

"I hear he's sick."

"News to me."

"Okay," Bug said. "What about you? With Nooch as your knee breaker, you got anything else going on?"

Roxy had grown up fielding questions about her family. Carmine's operations were loosely connected to the larger, more complex Abruzzo family activities in New Jersey and New York. Locally, Uncle Carmine was smart enough to stay out of jail, but his various employees had done time for loan-sharking, illegal gambling, fencing stolen goods, and other, even less savory offenses.

Most of the time, Roxy had kept her distance from the Abruzzo family businesses. With Sage to protect and Nooch to keep out of trouble, she'd found her own path, which didn't stray into Carmine's territory unless she could keep her involvement completely quiet. The cops came nosing around with questions now and then, though.

Roxy looked him dead in the eye. "You're fishing, Bug. If you had something on either one of us, you'd have come here with more backup than your lady driver."

Bug said, "With Carmine sick, everybody's wondering what happens to his empire."

"Empire? You mean some old video poker machines and a restaurant that serves lousy spaghetti? C'mon, Bug, I'd make a better living if I sold burgers out of a drive-up window."

He smiled again and shrugged. "I figured I have nothing to lose by asking. As far as I know, no Abruzzo ever killed anybody in this city."

"As far as you know?"

Easily, Bug switched topics. "So you know Trey Hyde, too?"

"I know him a little. He isn't part of the family company-Hyde Communications, or whatever it's called. You talk about organized crime, that cable TV business is a license to print money. But Trey pays for those deep-sea exploration things-ships that go looking for old treasure."

"I heard about that. He get along with his family?"

Roxy pulled a face. "Does anybody get along with their family?"

"Sorry. I forgot about your folks. You ever hear Trey and his brother argue? Anything to make you think Trey held anything against Julius?"

"We didn't get into that kind of conversation." Truth be told, her conversations with Trey were mostly about where to put which body part and how fast. But telling Bug might make him blush.

Bug said, "In your acquaintance with Julius, did you ever get a hint that anyone thought ill of him? Might want him dead?"

Truthfully, Roxy said, "He was a pretty easygoing guy, as far as I could see. Paid on time. Enjoyed a dirty joke. Didn't blow a gasket if Rooney peed on his lawn. I don't know why anybody would want to kill him."

"Yeah, that's what we hear from everybody. So far." Bug put the papers on his knee. "Okay, here's the deal. I'm going to report back what you had to say, and somebody else will probably come calling. The two guys running this case are under a lot of pressure to wrap things up fast. Could be you might remember something they think is important. Between now and then, if you think of anything, here's my card. Call me. I mean it, Roxy. If you've got some real information, everybody including you is going to be much happier if you call us, not the other way around."

He flipped his card onto her desk.

She didn't reach for it. "Is that a generic threat you use with everybody, Bug?"

"It's a friendly suggestion, that's all. I mean, we could put you in one room and Nooch in another and see if the two of you remember the same stuff."

"You aren't going to do that."

"I probably wouldn't, no, but I can't speak for the whole department. Nooch is a scary-looking guy, and he hasn't been an angel all his life. They're looking at everyone for this murder, Rox. If anything comes to your mind, give me a call. You might spare Nooch an interrogation."

"Thanks for the preferential treatment." Roxy used her toe to kick Bug's crutches toward him.

"You're welcome."

After Bug left, Roxy turned up the s.p.a.ce heater. She sat in the barbershop and thought about things. The Hydes, d.a.m.n them. She should have known better than to get mixed up with that family in the first place. It didn't pay to stray too far out of her own neighborhood.