Strange Brew Part 5

By noon Sunday, we'd chased away roofing contractors, tree trimmers, electricians, junk haulers, carpenters, and even a burglar alarm salesman. Once the city tree crews had cleared fallen trees from the streets, we were treated to a steady stream of cars cruising past the house, their occupants pointing fingers and even video cameras at our plight.

Edna and I saw them all, because we spent the whole weekend trying to clean up the mess the tornado had visited upon us. With old Mr. Byerly next door, we managed to drag most of the smaller branches and debris down to the curb, where it joined all the other piles of debris springing up along Oakdale. After one of the friendly "tree men" quoted us a price of $800 to chop up and remove the oak tree on the front porch and the one on the hood of my van, Edna decided to look up her family tree for help.

On Sunday afternoon, my brother Kevin and my sister Maureen's husband, Steve, showed up with Kevin's chainsaw, two six-packs of Old Milwaukee, and a portable radio only slightly smaller than my van.

Steve spilled a gallon of gas on the front porch trying to figure out how to get fuel into the chainsaw, while Kevin finished off two cans of beer just searching for the Falcons football game on the radio.

"I can't watch this," I told Edna, fleeing into the house. Rufus loved all the excitement. Over the whine of the chainsaw, I could hear him outside, chasing around and around the yard, barking happily at every car that pa.s.sed by. Maybelline had better sense. She hid under my bed. I went out in the backyard for a while, making piles of brush, picking up shingles that had blown off the roof, and raking acres of leaves that had swept in from Alabama, apparently. I tried to ignore the mayhem taking place out front, telling myself that the tree trimmers were family, after all, and they were doing us a favor.

I'd gone into the house in search of Band-Aids for Steve, who'd mistaken the tip of his pinkie for the branch of a dogwood, when the phone rang. The bleeding wasn't all that bad, but Steve drives an ambulance for a living, which makes him the equivalent of a neurosurgeon, in his own humble opinion.

The phone's ringing was a welcome distraction. Finally, I thought. The Southern Bell crews had been up and down the street all day. We still didn't have any power, but at least we had phones. Maybe I would be able to run my business come Monday.

"h.e.l.lo?" I was out of breath by the time I made it out of the bathroom and into my bedroom and the nearest phone.

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Probably the phone company, testing out the repaired lines, I thought. I was in the process of hanging up when I heard a voice.

"Don't hang up." It was a woman.

"I'm here," I said, putting the phone back to my ear.

"Callahan? Is this Callahan Garrity?"

"Yes," I said, ever cautious. Now that the phones were back in service, the aluminum-siding telemarketers wouldn't be far behind.

Outside, the chainsaws started up again. Steve must have started to clot. For him, this was an accomplishment. The woman's voice was faint; it sounded scratchy, sort of far off. "It's uumph," she said, swallowing the name. There was static on the line, and I could hear the m.u.f.fled sounds of other people's conversations in the background.

"What's that?" I yelled. "You'll have to speak up. There's a lot of sawing going on around here."

"It's Wuvvy," she said, her voice only a little louder. "From YoYos."

"Where are you?" I asked bluntly.

"Nowhere," she said. "I mean, I'm around. That's all."

"Have the police talked to you? You heard about Jackson Poole, right? The police are wanting to talk to you, Wuvvy."

"I know he's dead," Wuvvy said. "At my place. The cops think I did it, right?"

"They want to talk to you," I said, trying to avoid the issue.

"I'm not talking to the pigs," Wuvvy said. "Look. I need a favor. Can you do me a favor, Callahan?"

"What kind of favor?"

"My stuff," she said mournfully. "All my stuff's over at the store. Everything. My alb.u.ms, my clothes. All my Dead stuff, my Frisbees, s.h.i.t, all my papers."

The word dead seemed to echo on the phone. "What dead stuff?"

"The Dead," she said, annoyed at my stupidity. "Grateful Dead. I've got T-shirts from every tour since the '67 Monterey Pop Festival. Except Watkins Glen. Then there's all my rock 'n' roll stuff. I got a poster from the first Atlanta Pop Festival. You remember that? 1969? Grand Funk Railroad played their first major concert right here in Atlanta."

"Uh, no," I said. "I was in junior high back then. I was more into the Monkees and the Archies. The Cowsills."

"Bubblegum," she said, her voice dripping contempt. "Hey. What about it? Think you can get my stuff for me?"

Talk about a s.p.a.ce cadet. She was a suspect in a homicide and all she was worried about was some moldy old rock c.r.a.p.

"A guy was murdered at your place Friday night, Wuvvy," I said. "The cops aren't going to let me come in there and take any of your stuff away. It's a crime scene. A homicide investigation. Besides, they want to talk to you."

"I didn't kill that f.u.c.ker," she said. "Why can't people leave me alone?"

"You should probably get yourself a lawyer," I pointed out. "Then go talk to the cops. Talk to Bucky Deavers. He's the detective on the case. He's a good guy. Talk to him."

"I heard you're some kind of private eye," Wuvvy said. "I want to hire you. Get the police to leave me alone, okay?" Her voice had a pleading quality. "Tell Deavers I didn't do it. He's your friend. He'll believe you. Then you can get my stuff back for me."

"Callahan?" My idiot brother-in-law was standing in the hallway, his arm swathed, fingertip to elbow, in what looked like my best bath towel. "What about those Band-Aids? I'm gonna need a transfusion if you don't hurry up."

"I'm coming," I said, slamming my bedroom door in his face.

"Listen, Wuvvy," I said. "I gotta go. Call a lawyer and then call me back."

"So you'll do it, right? You'll get my stuff back? Tell the cops I didn't do it?" She still wasn't paying attention. She was still fixated on Grand Funk Railroad.

"Where are you?" I asked. "I need a phone number."

"I'll call you," she said, and she hung up.

"Hey, Callahan," Steve said, banging on my bedroom door. "You got some stuff that'll take blood out of carpet? I'm dripping here."

My mother invited Maureen and Steve and Kevin and his wife to come over for Sunday supper. Shortly before four, when they were all due back to eat, I decided it might be prudent to take a long walking tour of our tornado-stricken neighborhood. "Don't wait supper," I told Edna.

After I'd walked up to Ponce de Leon and back down to DeKalb Avenue to see the extent of the damage, I felt slightly guilty about my own fortune. Our house was still in one piece, but there were whole blocks of Candler Park with houses whose roofs or porches had been torn off. Huge old oaks had smashed onto cars, houses, and garages. I saw two concrete foundations that had been swept clean of their houses. The tornado had skipped to and fro like a mischievous kindergartner, wreaking havoc in no pattern I could discern.

"G.o.d," I found myself muttering. "We really did miss the big one."

After an hour of wandering and muttering, I realized I was headed in the direction of Little Five Points. If I went home now, I rationalized, Steve would be sitting in my favorite chair in the den, staring at professional wrestling on television, Kevin would be tanked out of his gourd on Old Milwaukee, and my sister and sister-in-law would be discussing the fine points of ovulation. And the dinner dishes would all still be stacked in the sink, waiting for me.

They could just wait a little longer.

The late afternoon light did a funny thing at Little Five Points. The amber sunlight burnished and softened the old storefronts, giving them a romantic Old World quality. If you overlooked the knots of skinheads hanging around in front of the bars, you could mistake L5P for a quaint little village, maybe in the South of France or Brussels or Tuscany someplace. Not that I've ever been to any of those places. But I've seen pictures.

The front door of YoYos was open, and two men were carrying out plastic garbage bins full of Sheetrock and wood lathe, loading them onto a flatbed truck that was pulled up on the sidewalk. The bed of the truck was piled high with construction debris, and the sounds of hammering and power saws echoed from inside the store. From the look of things, it would take more than a pesky little murder to stop the progress of Blind Possum Brewing.

"I knew you'd be back over here."

Deavers stepped out of the doorway, dodging around one of the garbage cans. He had plaster dust in his hair and a Polaroid camera hung from a strap around his neck.

"Just out for an evening stroll," I said. "How about you? Is this the APD's new crime-scene unit I've been reading about in the paper? What do you do, take the whole building apart and run it through the state crime lab?"

Deavers kicked at a chunk of concrete with the toe of a dusty cowboy boot and sent it spinning down the sidewalk. He didn't look happy.

"We had a warrant, got what we needed. Or what we think we need. The building's new owner has been ragging on us since yesterday to let his contractor back in. He called his friendly local city councilwoman this morning to complain that we were holding up construction on a valuable new addition to her district. Juanita Davis called the chief. The chief called Major Mackey, Major Mackey called me. We signed off two hours ago, and when I got down here to see if any loose ends needed tying up, these clowns were already in there, ripping out the walls."

"I'm confused," I said. "I thought the new owner was your homicide victim. Jackson Poole."

"Co-owner," Bucky said. "Blind Possum Brewing turns out to be an outfit out of Houston. They're putting these brewpubs in six different cities this year. Poole was owner-manager for this one."

"But not the money person," I said.

He shrugged. "He was living in a three-hundred-thousand-dollar condo overlooking Piedmont Park. Very nice. I'd say Mr. Poole was not hurting for money."

I popped my head inside the storefront. If the contractors had been on the job for only a couple of hours, they were the world's fastest workers. The walls inside had been stripped down to the old brick, and the water-stained acoustical-tile ceiling lay in a pile on the floor. A man in a dust mask and a hard hat looked up from a set of drawings he'd spread across a sheet of plywood nailed to some sawhorses.

"Wow," I said, inviting myself inside. The stacks of crates and pipes I'd seen Friday night had been shoved into a corner, and the wall separating the toy store from the living quarters had been demolished. It was all one big, high-ceilinged s.p.a.ce now. The scarred brick walls were already begging for fern baskets and blackboard menus.

There was no sign of any of the previous tenant's pitiful rain-soaked cardboard cartons.

"What happened to all of Wuvvy's stuff?" I asked.

"Who wants to know?" Deavers has a very suspicious mind. It's what makes him such a good cop.

"Just wondering," I said, walking quickly toward the rear of the store.

The man in the hard hat frowned and flipped off his dust mask. "Detective, I thought you people were done in here. I got a construction site, and I can't have your people just wandering around getting in my sub's way."

"We're done," Bucky a.s.sured him. He caught me by the elbow, but I kept walking toward the back door, which had been propped open.

A huge Dumpster was parked outside in the alley. The local street people would be very pleased. It had a lid and a big window on the side. Four or five of them could happily take up residence in it.

"What are you doing, Garrity?" Bucky asked. "What are you looking for?"

"Nothing," I said. "I found a body here Friday night. I used to be a cop. I'm curious, that's all. Shop talk. Humor me, can't you?"

"You know where Wuvvy is," Bucky said flatly. "That's what this is about."

"I don't have any idea where Wuvvy is," I said. It was the truth.

"Don't get cute," Bucky said. "Wuvvy's a suspect in a homicide investigation. The base of Jackson Poole's skull was bashed in with something blunt. At least four blows, by the way the blood spatters look. This wasn't some little harmless shove or love tap, Callahan. The b.i.t.c.h meant business. She meant to kill him. I want her."

I let out a sigh and thought about my obligation to Wuvvy. She wasn't really a client. I hadn't agreed to do anything for her. Besides, I didn't really know anything.

"She called me about an hour ago," I admitted. "But she wouldn't say where she was. All she did was ask me to get her stuff back for her."

"You're working for her? You are nuts."

"I'm not working for her," I said. "She claims she didn't do it, you know. All she's worried about is getting her Grateful Dead s.h.i.t back. Have you considered that maybe somebody else whacked Poole?"

"She did it," Bucky said grimly. "If she calls back, tell her to give me a call. I've got her s.h.i.t down at headquarters, locked up tight in the evidence room. She wants it, she's gonna have to give me a statement. You tell her that."

8.

Bucky stood in the alley and watched me walk away. I turned around and watched him watching me.

It was then that I noticed Hap's jeep, the one with the EAYC logo on the door, parked by the Yacht Club's back door.

I started walking back.

"What now?" he asked. "You're not going back inside Wuvvy's."

I could have argued with him. After all, the crime scene tape was down, and the new owners were in charge, not him.

Instead, I told him what was on my mind.

"This alley was completely empty when I found the body. So where was Jackson Poole's car? He didn't strike me as somebody who would have Rollerbladed over here from Midtown."

"No comment."

"Come on, Bucky," I said. "It's me, Callahan. Not the press."

Bucky looked around the alley. "He had a Lexus. Or rather, the company had one. It was leased to Blind Possum Brewing. We found it in the parking lot over at Sevananda."

"How'd you know it was his?" I asked. I was thinking about that expensive-looking suit Jackson Poole had been wearing Friday night. And about all the attention it would have drawn from the skinheads and bikers in the neighborhood.

"We're the cops," Bucky said. "That's what we do." He was getting testy, defensive.

"Was his wallet on him?" I asked. "Car keys? How about cash?"

"We didn't find a wallet," Bucky admitted. "So what? I'm not carrying a wallet right now." He knew what I was thinking.

"But your shield and ID are stuck in the visor of your city unit," I pointed out. "You still didn't tell me about the car keys. How'd you figure out the Lexus was Poole's?"

Bucky started ma.s.saging his temples with his fingertips. The nails were still painted a discreet Jackie shade of pale pink. I wondered if anybody else had noticed, but I decided not to mention it. I didn't need to antagonize Deavers right at this moment. Not on purpose, anyway.

"How stupid do you think we are, Garrity?" he snapped. "It was the only car left in the lot at four A.M. when you called us."

He knew what I was getting at, but he was being deliberately obtuse.

"No wallet, no keys, no cash on the body," I said. "Doesn't that look more like a robbery-murder than the kind of spite murder you're trying to hang on Wuvvy? Look around you, Bucky. You said it yourself. Every kind of lowlife in the world hangs out around Little Five Points. What about that homicide last year? Where the German guy was strangled and his body dumped down the street at the old Ba.s.s High School building? You guys never closed that one, did you?"

"Totally different deal," Bucky said. "The German guy was gay. He thought he'd picked himself up a date in the Yacht Club. Somebody saw him leave with a leather type around two A.M. It was an S & M thing gone wrong. We've got a Vice guy working that one, along with another similar homicide at Ansley Mall. In both those cases it was clearly rough s.e.x. There's nothing like that here. So don't even try to suggest it."

I wasn't convinced. "Were the S & M victims robbed?"