Dead Parrot Read online

  There was still the question of how the guy ever came to own a Ferrari to start with. Billy was curious about that.

  “I hope he’s home.” Paige knocked on the door, then saw the doorbell and pushed it too. It was just a regular old doorbell, not one of the fancy new ones with the camera in it. It probably didn’t even work. He didn’t hear anything when she poked it.

  “Do you have the money?” Billy asked.

  He scanned other obvious places a person might put security cameras, like up in the corner of the porch ceiling. He didn’t see any. Somebody who lived in a place like this probably didn’t have much use for a security camera.

  “It’s in my purse,” Paige said. “Is this a wrap-around porch?”

  She walked to the edge of the porch and around the corner. If the guy looked out his window and just saw Billy standing there, he wasn’t going to open the door. Worse yet, maybe he would open the door and Billy would be forced to make awkward small talk until Paige came back up. It didn’t occur to him to follow her.

  “Get back up here in case he’s home and he comes to the door,” he said. She obeyed.

  “I really like this porch,” she said. “Can we get one like this someday? Will you build me a nice wrap-around porch?”

  “Sure, I will,” he said. “I don’t think your old neighbor is home. Let’s go and come back later.”

  “I’m home.”

  Billy’s heart stopped. Without him noticing, the man had managed to get the front door open and he stood there watching them through the screen. It was stupid, but for half a second, Billy felt like the man could see right into him, like he could read his mind. He shook off the feeling and forced a smile.

  “Mr. Skelton!” Paige rushed to the door.

  “Paige Hiffernon, I didn’t think I’d ever see your face again.”

  Mr. Skelton came out onto the porch and she hugged him. He wasn’t as old as Billy thought he would be. He was a little hunched over like he was older. He had wrinkles around his eyes, and his hair and beard were mostly silver. He looked like he was supposed to be old, but he didn’t quite strike Billy as old. At least, when he hugged Paige, it gave him a twitch of jealous rage he didn’t think he would have felt if she was hugging some old man.

  “How could I stay away?” Paige said. “Sweetest man I ever knew.”

  “And who have we here?” Mr. Skelton nodded toward the young man on the porch.

  “This is Billy,” Paige said. “My knight in shining armor.”

  “Well, hello, Prince Charming.” Mr. Skelton forced his hand into Billy’s, and Billy made sure to give a solid handshake. Old people always complained about young men being wimpy when it came to handshakes. “Come on inside. I was just about to put on a kettle for some tea.”

  They followed him in, and he kept going on about the tea. “I say a kettle, and you think I mean hot tea. Have a seat anywhere. The couch is comfy.”

  They did, and it was.

  “What I do is I boil the water and put a couple tea bags in it,” Skelton continued. “You know, let it steep a bit in the hot water, but then what I do is I put ice in it. Too hot outside for hot tea.”

  If the whole visit was going to be some old man talking about how to boil water and make tea, Billy had half a mind to tell Paige he’d just pick her up later. What was next? Was Skelton going to pull out a blackboard and chalk, and walk them through how to fill up an ice cube tray? He hoped it didn’t cross the guy’s mind to offer them food. They could be here all night learning about what a toaster was.

  Over the next couple hours, Billy tried to broach the subject of money with Skelton, but he wasn’t making any progress. All Paige and her old neighbor wanted to talk about was what flowers and vegetables do best in what kind of garden, what books really capture the essence of the human condition, and how what we really need is another Mr. Rogers on television.

  “Today, he might not even be on TV,” Skelton said, “The modern-day Fred Rogers might have a pretty good Twitter following.”

  “How’d you afford that Ferrari?” Billy finally asked, flat-out, straight like that.

  “Billy!” Paige was taken aback. She looked at him with wide eyes and an open mouth. “That is not an appropriate question.”

  “It’s fine,” Skelton said. “I’ve had a lot of fortunate moments in my life. A few of them were financial. I’m not proud to admit it, but I am as vulnerable to shiny things as the next man. Once in a blue moon, a time of financial prosperity and capitalist materialism would strike on the same day. That’s where the car came from.”

  “Were you a yuppie, Mr. Skelton?” Paige asked, amused.

  “Oh, I suppose I had my yuppie days,” he said.

  “Hard to imagine you in a pink silk shirt and a white linen leisure suit,” she said.

  “Something like that,” he said. “And loafers with no socks.”

  “Please tell me you have pics,” she said.

  Unfortunately, I do,” he said. “Pics or it didn’t happen, as they say.”

  “Let’s see them,” she said.

  “This house is obviously smaller than the one I owned back in Greenville. Most of what I kept is in boxes out in the shop,” he said. “I wanted to show you what I’ve been up to anyway. Shall we?”

  They followed him through the back yard to a shed. Just inside the front door was a bookshelf packed with old World Almanacs, paper phone books, and photo albums. The building smelled like mildew or mothballs, or something old and dusty. Billy wasn’t a smell scientist. Skelton slid one of the albums off the shelf and opened it on a counter.

  And then they were off to the races, flipping through old photo albums, laughing at some of the trends that came and went in Skelton’s years. If Billy had doubted the old man’s age before, he didn’t now. He had photos that could only have been taken even before Billy’s own grandparents were born.

  “Sorry, Charlie!” Paige and Billy were both startled by a sudden outburst from further back in the shop. “When it rains, it pours!”

  “Is someone else here?” Paige asked.

  “It sounds like Arturo is ready to meet you.” Skelton closed the photo album and slid it back onto the bookshelf. He walked them back through the shed, and Billy understood why he had called it a shop earlier. “This is what I’ve been working on.”

  He waved his hands toward the wooden bookshelves, tables, chairs, and other furniture, but he kept walking. Billy realized the smell he couldn’t identify earlier was sawdust.

  “You built all this?” Billy asked.

  “I had some help,” Skelton said. “The tools and the wood do most of the work. I just get them where they want to go.”

  “When it rains, it pours!” Whoever was talking was on the other side of a curtain in the corner. Light streamed out around the drapery.

  Mr. Skelton pulled the cloth aside, and revealed a large antique bird cage sitting in a large window. In the cage was a green and yellow bird.

  “When it rains,” Arturo squawked. “When it, when it, when it rains, it pours!”

  “Meet Arturo,” Mr. Skelton said.

  “Arturo’s a parrot,” Paige said. “He’s so cute.”

  “Indeed, he is,” Skelton said. “A yellow-crowned Amazon.”

  “I never knew you had a parrot,” Paige said.

  “Arturo came with the house.”

  “Sure, he did,” Billy said. “Did you used to be a guy works at the zoo with birds?”

  “Something like that,” Skelton said.

  “It looks like you’ve really settled in here,” Paige said. “You’ve got a lot accomplished. All of these wood projects, a new friend, right down the road from the ocean. Curious Beach seems really nice.”

  “I am loving it here,” Mr. Skelton said. “And to tell the truth, I made a lot more from selling the house in Greenville than I expected I would. If I knew it was going to sell for so much, I would have retired years ago.”

  “You could have bought one of those palace
s out on the ocean,” Billy said. “Have you seen those things? A man who appreciates a Ferrari would appreciate a fancy house like that.”

  “Oh, I don’t need anything that grand,” Mr. Skelton said. “This is nice and comfortable. It’s all I need.”

  “I love it,” Paige said.

  “It’s a shame I had to move away from Paige, though. She’s a good girl. A wonderful neighbor. She’s like a daughter to me, you know.”

  “You’re such a sweetheart,” she said.

  “It’s true,” he said. “Your visit means everything to me. Will you stay for dinner?”

  She said they would, and he cooked for them. Three more hours later, there wasn’t a topic in the World Almanacs those two hadn’t covered in excruciating depth. It gave Billy time to formulate a question.

  As they were leaving, Mr. Skelton shook Billy’s hand and told him to take care of Paige and treat her right, and all that, and Billy asked the question.

  “I want to stop by a bank on the way out of town and get some money out of an ATM machine,” he said. “What bank do you recommend?”

  “I wish I could help you,” Skelton said. “I don’t use a bank.”

  That’s what Billy wanted to hear. Skelton sold that house up in Greenville for a wad of money. He obviously hadn’t spent any of it. The final piece of that puzzle was right there. He doesn’t use a bank. That money had to be in cash, somewhere in this house.

  He’d look up landscaping companies that had something to do with a lawn-mowing alligator, and he’d make a phone call in the morning.

  “I hope you’ll come back to visit again,” Skelton said as Billy backed the Ferrari out of the gravel driveway.

  Oh, I’ll be seeing you again real soon, Billy thought.

  Chapter 3

  Today

  Duke growled when Detective McGregor’s black BMW rolled into the duplex parking lot and stopped next to the Pathfinder.

  “Can’t you take a day off?” McGregor asked Stella.

  Stella was still on the roof, and even though Charlie walked up to meet him, McGregor still directed his question to Stella.

  Stella shrugged, but didn’t answer.

  “The body’s in here,” Charlie said.

  “Come down here and tell me what happened,” McGregor said, still only talking to Stella.

  “Charlie will tell you,” she said. “Or I can tell you from up here.”

  “Do you want her to tell you from up there?” Charlie asked.

  “There’s a dead body stuck in a freezer in Curious Beach,” she shouted down, loudly enough to be heard on the pier.

  “Stop,” McGregor said. “The neighbors...”

  “Do you want the bloody details about the horrible murder on Curious Beach? Maybe how it smells or if any of the body parts were grotesquely sawed off with a rusty knife?”

  “Okay, okay, stop,” McGregor relented. “I’ll talk to Charlie. Whatever. Good grief. You’re supposed to be the smart one.”

  Stella shrugged again.

  “Shall we?” Charlie held out his arm, as if to gallantly escort the detective to the crime scene. McGregor walked past him without acknowledging the gesture.

  Inside the apartment, McGregor instinctively covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve.

  “She said it smelled bad.” He lowered his arm. “It doesn’t smell like anything. The body’s in the freezer?”

  “Where else would it be?” Charlie asked. The place was completely empty, scrubbed clean, except for the freezer sitting in the exact center of the room. Even the bathroom door was open, giving a full, unobstructed view of the toilet and shower. There was nothing to see besides the freezer.

  McGregor lifted the lid, again shielding his face from a smell that wasn’t going to come.

  “Kept cold,” he said. “Examiner’s not going to be able to give a specific time of death. Probably not even a specific date. Body doesn’t break down the same when it’s preserved like this. Whoever killed him knew that.”

  “Or else they watch TV at all,” Stella walked through the front door. Apparently, she didn’t think Charlie could handle this on his own after all.

  “Maybe they watch Law and Order,” Charlie said. “They probably watch CSI.”

  “Maybe even CSI: Miami,” Stella said.

  “CSI: Curious Beach.”

  “Law and Order: Curious Intent,”

  “Alright.” McGregor dropped the freezer lid closed. “This is a crime scene. Everybody just go outside.”

  Charlie and Stella stepped out the front door and watched McGregor inspect the floor, the walls, and the bathroom before he returned to the freezer. He searched the corpse’s pocket and found a wallet.

  “Speaking of CSI, aren’t they supposed to be here? Or something?” Charlie asked. “At least put on some gloves? You’re getting fingerprints all over everything.”

  “Deputies are on their way,” McGregor said. “They’ll look for prints and take care of the body. If there’s anything here, they’ll find it. I don’t think there is.”

  “What’s that?” Charlie asked about the wallet.

  “Jack Emeric Riskin,” McGregor read from the dead man’s identification. “That name sounds familiar. Jack Emeric Riskin. Name mean anything to you?”

  “Never heard it before,” Charlie said.

  McGregor dropped the lid closed and shoved the wallet into his pocket before coming outside. “I want to know exactly what happened here.”

  “Should you split us up to make sure we both tell the same story?” Charlie asked,

  “Are you going to lie to me?”

  “Probably?” Charlie said. “Is that, um... do you have a preference?”

  “Just tell me what happened, Charlie.”

  “Well, what had happened was-, Charlie started, but McGregor held up a hand to stop him.

  He turned to Stella. “No. You tell me what happened.”

  They explained that they were at the detective agency next door when it occurred to them they had never seen anyone coming or going from this apartment. It was the only other unit in the building, so they were just curious about it.

  “If anyone was living here, I would have seen them coming or going,” Charlie said.

  He said it several times in his testimony, before McGregor shut him down with, “You dangerously overestimate your skills of observation.”

  “I’m learning,” Charlie said.

  “Are you, though?” McGregor asked. “It’s literally your job to pay attention to things. You know what my job title is? Detective. You know what your job title is? Also detective. Except my job is real, and you play make-believe. People like you make my job harder to do. How did you get into the apartment? Was the door locked or unlocked?”

  They didn’t tell him that Stella picked the lock to get in, and tried to avoid giving a definitive answer at all. The fact was, they couldn’t give a definitive answer. Charlie had never checked the door to find out if it was locked. Stella had also assumed it was. Thanks to the arrival of a Gloriana County Sheriff’s Office patrol car, they were saved from vocalizing any of that to McGregor.

  “We’re going to CSI all over this crime scene for a while,” McGregor said. “So you two get lost for a while.”

  “You mean we aren’t suspects?” Charlie asked.

  “Why would you be a suspect?”

  “The body is in my building. I found it. Maybe I killed him.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re not a suspect.”

  Charlie didn’t have a rebuttal for this. Stella chuckled at the absurdity, but the fallacious logic also sent a twinge of horror through her. Chuckles and chills.

  “Come on, Stella,” Charlie said. “We can watch Magnum in the office.”

  “Nuh uh,” McGregor said. “I want you gone. Go get frozen yogurt at Dulce and Banana.”

  “My office is in this building,” Charlie said. “I have a right to be there.”

>   “It’s not your office. Where’s Melvin, anyway?”

  “You know he’s been missing. For weeks, he’s been missing.”

  “Missing where?”

  Charlie threw his hands in the air in exasperation. Defeated, Charlie headed for the Pathfinder, which was also Melvin’s.

  “We can go to my house,” Stella said. The house she inherited from her Uncle Beau was right across the street. “We can watch Magnum there if you want.”

  “I was thinking we could go to the lighthouse,” Charlie said. He didn’t have to say it twice. Stella liked going up in the lighthouse.

  * * *

  Charlie had only been to the lighthouse a few times, and most recently with Stella. She’d wanted to visit when she arrived in town less than a month ago. Since then it had come to hold some pleasant and not-so-pleasant memories for Charlie. Stella had been present for all of them, but she seemed completely unfazed by either. It was a high place and she liked high places.

  When they arrived, a man in an orange windbreaker and a bucket hat waved at them from the top of the lighthouse. He yelled something neither of them could make out. It sounded like a greeting.

  Stella waved back.

  “Is that the climber?” Charlie asked. Stella kept waving, and he figured she wasn’t going to stop until he joined in, so he did.

  “It is,” Stella said. “Let’s go meet him.”

  They’d met him before. He told them he climbs the lighthouse seven times per day. Charlie could barely manage to get up the lighthouse once, and he needed to take breaks on the way up.

  The windbreaker man met them halfway up the spiral staircase.

  “Looks like you two are making a habit of it too,” he said.

  “We’re not at your level yet,” Charlie said, “but we’re working on it.”

  “Keep it up,” the man said. “It’s great exercise and the best view on the whole island.”

  “You haven’t even broken a sweat, yet.” Charlie wiped his own red, sweat-dripping face. Stella was wearing a flannel, this guy wore a windbreaker, and all Charlie had was a light Pepper Rally t-shirt from a hot pepper eating contest. He should be the coolest of all. He was soaked. Windbreaker man was not even glistening. “You must have just started.”