Coco Butternut Read online

  “I fed Buffy already,” Leonard said.

  “Thanks, bro.”

  “Leonard makes good coffee,” Chance said.

  “It’s a Keurig,” I said. “Anyone makes good coffee with that. You turn it on, the water heats, you stick a pod in and wait.”

  “Gave it my loving touch,” Leonard said. “Waved my magic black hand over the pot. Gives it a kind of richness.”

  “I’m going to have to agree,” Chance said.

  Strands of her dark hair were loose from her hair tie and some of it clung to the side of her face. It made her look cute and young and made me feel even more fatherly, more protective. I had found out about her late in life, but I hoped I could be as good a father as I could from each day forth, but considering who I was and what I sometimes did, I had my doubts.

  Leonard had gone all out with the cooking, scrambled eggs, bacon and cinnamon rolls. I ate a small amount of eggs and one piece of bacon and a cinnamon roll. As I got older weight and I fought it out on a daily basis. I won for awhile, and then it would come back and sneak up on me, climb into my belly and swell it. I worked out, but it didn’t seem to matter, least not the way it used to. Fat was tenacious in middle age. I guess middle age is a silly term when you’re fifty.

  Brett came down in a bit. She was wearing sweat pants and a sweat shirt and her hair was tied back and her eyes were half closed. Time had stopped for her, and her aging was done in inches while mine was done in yards.

  “I’ll have a cinnamon roll and that’s it,” she said, and sat down.

  I knew what that meant. I stood up from the table and got her a cinnamon roll and poured her a cup of coffee and sat it in front of her. When she had a couple sips of coffee, and had dunked her roll into the big cup, she said, “I think what we got to do is go to Farmer’s business and see how things were there.”

  “He paid us to deliver money and pick up a coffin, and we did that,” Leonard said. “Since he’s dead, I don’t see any more money forthcoming.”

  “That’s never stopped us before,” Brett said.

  “You can’t let it go either, can you?” I said.

  “Nope,” she said. “I don’t like unsolved mysteries. I want to know who Jack the Ripper was and if Bigfoot lives in the woods. It’s how I am.”

  “I’m curious,” Chance said. “I know it’s not my right to be curious about your work, but I am.”

  “Sure it is,” Brett said, and reached out and patted Chance on the arm. “You’re family, and we’re a family business.”

  “I’m actually a reporter, and I need to go to work,” she said. She stood up from the table and gave Brett a hug, went around and gave Leonard one, and then me. “I’m still curious though.”

  “We’ll keep you in the loop,” Brett said.

  Chance went to get showered and dressed. When she left the room, Leonard said, “I think that DNA test was flawed, brother. She can’t have come from you.”

  Me and Brett drove over to the mortuary and cemetery owned by Farmer. Leonard went to the cop shop to see if he could pry any new news out of his new friend Officer Carroll.

  The cemetery and mortuary was off the main highway and down a dirt road. The road would be dusty in the summer, but for now, during the cool and dry times, it was solid and smooth. We wound our way between trees and pastures and came to the mortuary and cemetery. There was a section for humans, and one for animals. As we drove by, I glanced over the rock fence around the cemetery. Both sections appeared to be pretty full.

  The metal bar gate was wide open, and we drove through it and stopped in the circular drive close to the curbing near the main building, which was a goodly size and at first glance looked nice, but at second looked worn around the edges; I knew how the building felt.

  I had combed my hair and put on dark jeans and had tucked my shirt in and had on a nice jacket. Brett thought it might be the thing to do, going there. She thought they might see us as more professional. She had on a black business suit with a white shirt, and a business looking tie made of silk that she wore loose around the collar. The black boots she had on added to her height.

  Inside it was a little too cool and it didn’t look all that clean either. There was a lady behind a long desk. She was well dressed and a little plump, but it was a firm looking plump. Fact was, she looked healthy enough to turn over a truck and make it beg for gasoline.

  We stood in front of the desk and she smiled at us. Brett said, “We were working for Mr. Farmer. Private investigators. We are doing some follow up, and would like to ask a few questions, if that’s okay?”

  The woman studied Brett, then she studied me, and then she leaned back in the desk chair and smiled a smaller smile than before.

  “He didn’t really operate this place, or had anything to do with it,” she said. “He inherited money. Got a chunk of it every month and didn’t so much as come in to see if the plumbing worked. It does, but not as well as it should.”

  “You sound a little unhappy with him,” I said.

  “I guess I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but I couldn’t speak about him at all until he was dead. Living, he had too much control here.”

  “Does that mean ownership has changed?” Brett asked. “I mean, the boss is dead so life goes on.”

  “Like I said, he was no boss. Just collected money. But he was the owner.”

  “Who owns it now?”

  “I guess I do.”

  “Guess?” I said.

  “The will is still being examined, but it looks that way. Jimmy quit having anything to do with this place five years ago, when his wife took off.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “No one knows. She supposedly ran off with the dog mortician.”

  “How do you mortician a dog?” Brett asked.

  “Not with mortician putty. We cremate them and we stuff them with chemicals after we pull out their insides, and sometimes we mummify them. That’s extra. Got to be honest. The chemicals don’t keep the fur from falling out, so some like the idea of mummification.”

  “Who in the world would be checking on a dog after it’s in the ground?”

  “It’s the idea of it that the bereaved like. Frankly, it’s nothing to me.”

  “You don’t sound like a dog lover,” I said.

  “I’m not. But I can have them burned up or wrapped up for a nice fee.”

  “Question?” Brett said.

  “Ask it,” she said.

  “First, to whom am I speaking?”

  “Jackie Bridges,” she said. “I guess I should throw in that I’m Jimmy’s ex-wife.”

  “Ah, that’s how you got in the will,” I said.

  “Nope. His mother did that. She never liked the second wife. I didn’t either, but I wasn’t married to her. I don’t think Jimmy liked her too much. She looked good but wore badly.”

  “How’s that?” I said.

  “She was a bitch on wheels. Jimmy kept me on here after the divorce, and she didn’t like it, but he wouldn’t change it. Okay, not true. He couldn’t change it. It was part of his mother’s will that I could work here until I didn’t want to or I died. The second wife was given a piece of it too, as his mother didn’t want to alienate Jimmy. She loved him even if he didn’t care that much for her.”

  “Why didn’t he?” Brett asked.

  “He wanted the entire thing to go to him. He went to a shrink of some kind and got told he had potty training issues, like not being able to shit right is going to cause you to make stupid choices. They got a lot of stuff for that problem in the drugstore. I don’t think Jimmy minded me working here because that meant he didn’t have to deal with someone new who didn’t know the business, but the wife didn’t work here, not a day, and still got a cut, and I won’t lie to you, that chapped my ass. His mother, bless her soul, had it in her will that if she died I got half of the business and got to stay on. That was a big bite out of things for him. Meant his wife’s share came out of his half, instead of what ought
to be my half.”

  “So this places makes big money?” I asked.

  “Nope. But she has a lot of other businesses and property rentals, so they make big money, and this is a nice foundation. Me and Jimmy and Betty Sue, that’s the wife, all got a cut of that. Still do. This place does better than you think, but not as well as I would like. I haven’t exactly been on the ball the last five years due to the fact Jimmy wouldn’t allow me to make certain changes to upgrade. I had some power, like I said, but there were certain things I couldn’t do without his permission, and he wasn’t giving it. He didn’t want anymore cuts to his money, and I couldn’t convince him we could make more money by upgrading here and there. Way people are about their pets, hell, we could convince them to dress them in suits and sweaters that we provide. There’s all manner of possibilities. One woman wanted us to have her dog put in capsules that she could take every morning until the dog was gone. Nice idea, but it’s not sanitary and there are laws against it.”

  “One more question,” Brett said. “Is it possible we could see where the body of Coco Butternut was buried?”

  Jackie had a paper with all the graves listed on it, the names of the pets labeled. She gave it to me and I folded it up and put it in my shirt pocket.

  “Just for the record, what’s your view on cats?” I said.

  “Don’t like them either. Neither did Jimmy. His mother was the animal nut. I only like to eat them. Not cats and dogs, but animals like cows and such. Them I like with a side salad. Though, I don’t know, you fix a dog or cat right, I might eat them too.”

  We went out and around the side of the building, having been given permission to look about.

  “She doesn’t like cats and dogs,” Brett said, “so she’s on my shit list. But at least she’s an asshole on top of it all.”

  “Her husband was probably a worse asshole,” I said.

  “Could be. But I don’t like her.”

  “I think she was checking me out. You see the way she looked at me?”

  “You have scrambled egg on your shirt.”

  “Oh. Right. I do.”

  Around back we looked out over the field of markers and stones.

  “That’s a lot of cats and dogs,” I said.

  Walking through the rows of animal graves we came to one that was nothing more than a hole and there was a large marker there made of granite. It read: coco butternut, champion and friend. There were no dates on it.

  “Odd,” Brett said. “Someone broke into the dog cemetery and dug up the coffin and carried it out and no one noticed.”

  “It is off the main road,” I said.

  Brett nodded. “Yep, but it would have taken awhile.”

  “Looking at the grave, I think they used a backhoe.”

  “So he drove up on a backhoe?”

  “Seems unlikely, but not impossible.”

  Brett nodded again. I could see she was working some ideas around in her head.

  A young man walked up. I hadn’t even noticed him. “Can I help you?” he asked.

  He was tall and thin as a shovel handle and had a wad of blond hair on his head that looked to have been styled into a bird’s nest, something for a condor to sleep in. I had never seen hair bunched up like that and so blonde it was nearly white. He had a nice face though. At first he looked young, in his thirties, but the more I looked at him the older he looked. Forty or so, I reckoned.

  We explained what we were about, and when we finished he nodded.

  “Of course. Look about all you want.”

  “So, obviously,” I said, “you work here.”

  “I’m Jackie’s son.”

  “So you’re Jimmy’s son too, I take it,” Brett said.

  “I’m Scanner. Mom named me after part of a science fiction book title. She was married before Farmer, but her husband, my father, James Sundrey, died when I was about ten.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “No sweat. He was a son-of-a-bitch too, just like Farmer. Can’t say I miss him. He was about as fatherly as an earthworm.”

  “I take it earthworms are poor parents,” I said.

  “That’s my take,” he said.

  “So what’s your job here?” Brett asked.

  “Whatever is needed. I have my own business. I make prosthetics and sell them.”

  “Your own company?” I asked.

  “Online, but I make good stuff. Have some patents. I’m catching on. I’m anxious to get out of the pet smoking and wrapping business.

  “There’s another branch to the cemetery, though,” I said. “People.”

  Scanner pointed. “It’s over there, but I don’t care that much for smoking or burying people either. What I want to do is end up going to Hollywood, make special effects for movies. I can really do some cool things with prosthetics, you know foam, make-up.”

  “Good luck with that,” I said.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I guess I’ll go now. I have to attend to a few things. Hey, you got something on your shirt there.”

  “Scrambled eggs,” I said.

  “Ah.”

  “Question,” Brett asked. “When you do deep burials, and it looks like Coco here got a nice one, how do you dig the holes?”

  “Backhoe,” Scanner said. “We keep it in the shed.”

  And he pointed to the back of the cemetery where there was a long, high-roofed building made of aluminum.

  A lot of things were clicking as we drove away, and we discussed them.

  “Okay,” Brett said. “The ex-wife didn’t like him, and her son didn’t like him, and there’s a backhoe in the shed, and yet, it doesn’t quite come together.”

  “If she knew there was a body under Coco Butternut, she didn’t mention it.”

  “Because she knows she’s not supposed to know. She’s in on it, I bet you an enchilada dinner on it.”

  “What kind of enchiladas?”

  “Focus, Hap.”

  “You brought up enchiladas.”

  “I also brought up I think she’s involved in all this.”

  “Guy that drove that truck was a big dude, not a woman and not as skinny as Scanner.”

  “Still think she’s involved. Maybe we should come back tonight and look in the shed?”

  “So they have a backhoe?” I said. “Scanner said as much, and a business like this would have one.”

  “Yes, but maybe they have a big truck as well, like the one that brought the coffin. As for the big guy, maybe they got a third partner. It could easily be that way.”

  “If they’re the ones did this,” I said.

  “I don’t have the proof yet,” Brett said, “but I think we can bumble along until we do based on that assumption.”

  “I’m a good bumbler.”

  “You and Leonard both,” she said. “It makes me proud.”

  Me and Leonard made an appointment with Marvin while Brett went to the office to hold down a chair in case a new client came in, one that wasn’t dead and was paying. What we were doing was now gratis, but damn if we wanted some skunk to use us as a way to get money and kill Farmer.

  Day before Leonard had visited with Officer Carroll and asked him a few questions, things that could help us nail the murderer. I called Marvin and let him know we hadn’t been good, and that we were snooping, just what he’d asked us not to do. But when I told him what Brett and I had learned at the mortuary, about the financial arrangements and the will, it stirred his interest.

  “I kind of hate you guys,” he said. “You never do what I ask.”

  “We’re like teenagers,” I said.

  “Assholes,” he said.

  Marvin was seated with his feet on his desk and there was a steaming cup of coffee on the desk as well. He had a file in his hand.

  “Officer Carroll seems to be talking out of school,” Marvin said.

  “He might have been led to think I had your permission,” Leonard said.

  “He might have been led that way, might he?”

&nb
sp; “Yep,” Leonard said.

  “Alright, to hell with it. Maybe you boys are actually onto something.”

  We seated ourselves in chairs in front of the desk and Leonard perched his fedora on his knee.

  “Can we have some coffee?” I said.

  “Go to the break room and get it,” Marvin said.

  “Don’t you have minions?” I asked.

  “For police work.”

  “Get mine too,” Leonard said. “And if they have any cookies, vanilla in particular, bring some of those.”

  “We don’t have any cookies,” Marvin said.

  “If I ran this place vanilla wafers would be a constant.”

  “If you ran this place there’d be a lot of fat cops,” Marvin said.

  “I’m not fat,” Leonard said.

  “You’re a freak of nature,” Marvin said.

  “Actually,” I said, “he’s showing his age some. He recently had to drop ten pounds.”

  “So did Hap, and he could drop ten more.”

  Marvin eyed me. “I was thinking twenty.”

  “You’re probably right,” Leonard said. “He doesn’t work out as much as he should.”

  “I have other things to do,” I said.

  “He’s lazy,” Leonard said.

  “Well,” I said. “That too.”

  “Okay,” Leonard said. “About that coffee, Hap. Stir my sugar in good. You know how to fix it.”

  “Fuck you,” I said, and got up to get the coffee.

  When I came back, Marvin had pulled his feet off the desk and tucked them underneath it. He had the file open in front of him.

  “I’m assuming that file has to do with the death of Jackie Farmer’s first husband,” I said.

  Marvin smiled. “You arrived at the same place I did. Here she is with two husbands, and they are both dead and with their deaths money is to be made. The first there was a fat insurance policy, and with Farmer she made money as a business partner as well as a wife, and when they split, she made money just as a business partner. But Farmer’s mother liked Jackie, and it seems that gave Jackie a home court advantage. Then Farmer got a new wife and that led to new complications, until the new wife disappeared. Way I think Jackie had it figured was she was in a good position to get it all, due to Farmer’s mother making her a big dog at the mortuary. With Farmer and his new wife gone, she would own the mortuary, the cemetery, the whole business. And there’s the insurance on Farmer too. The mother put in her will should Farmer die, a sizable amount of the insurance money she had on him would go to Jackie. That’s a really large incentive for murder, you ask me.”