1st Impressions Read online

  “I can’t thank you enough,” she said, following me to the door.

  “I haven’t done anything yet,” I answered. “Just keep your fingers crossed. Maybe this thing will be over as quickly as it started.”

  She crossed her fingers and waved them at me as I walked down to the dock, where the Cedar Hills Sheriff, two uniformed officers and Sergeant Grimes were tying up behind my boat.

  “Good morning,” I said to Sheriff Tom Booker, who eyed me curiously.

  With his thick white hair and dark tanned face, he was as handsome as ever, but his usual cheerfulness was gone. “Cassidy James. What brings you out to the Trinidad place this morning?”

  Surely he didn’t think I had snuffed the poor lecherous bastard! “Well actually, I’m on a case.”

  “A what?” He peered at me from the boat while the others scrambled awkwardly onto the dock. It was obvious none of them was accustomed to life on the water. I reached into my boat where I actually had some brand new business cards stashed in a side pocket and handed one to the sheriff.

  “Erica Trinidad has hired me to find out who killed her uncle,” I said, thinking I sounded somewhat absurd.

  “That’s absurd!” the fat Sergeant Grimes barked from behind me, confirming my suspicion. It was clear, no one was going to take me seriously as a private eye. But that was their problem.

  “Don’t you think this is a job better suited to the police?” Sheriff Booker asked, not unkindly. “And since when are you a private investigator anyway?”

  I wished I’d brought my license with me so I could flash it at him, but I hadn’t come prepared for detective work that morning.

  “Yes, I do think this is a job for the police,” I said somewhat testily. “I have no intention of impeding your investigation in any way, and I’m happy to share whatever I find with you, in the spirit of collaboration.”

  “We don’t need no effing collaboration, missy,” Sergeant Grimes growled. “Just be damn sure you stay outta the way. You so much as touch one piece of evidence, mess up our investigation in any way, and I’ll haul your ass in for interfering with police business.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said, losing my resolve to remain polite, “you must be Sergeant Grimes.”

  “That’s right. What of it?”

  “Your reputation for charm precedes you,” I managed, straight faced. “Good day, gentlemen.” With that, I finished untying my bowline and hopped into my pretty, blue boat. I couldn’t help noticing the amusement in the other officers’ eyes. Grimes himself was red-faced and seething.

  Sheriff Booker grabbed onto the side of my boat and said in a low voice, “Cassie, you best stay out of Grimes’s way. He’s got jurisdiction on this, and he takes that kind of stuff seriously. Since it happened on the lake, I’ve got some pull, but the bottom line is, it’s his baby. And for God’s sake, be careful,” he added. “Whoever did this, well, they weren’t messing around.”

  “Thank you, Sheriff. I appreciate the advice. I’ll be just as careful as I can.” I eased the throttle into forward, pulling away from the dock.

  Chapter Four

  I headed back to my place, mulling over the morning’s events. A couple of things bothered me, and I wanted to sort out my thoughts before I drew up any kind of action plan. For one thing, I didn’t like the fact that Trinidad’s boat was back in his boathouse.

  How had it gotten there and when? I also didn’t like the fact that his penis had been cut off, although the police had not yet made that official. I supposed Trinidad hadn’t liked that part much either. Cutting off someone’s privates, I thought, tended to be a very personal kind of thing and reeked of some warped sense of revenge. That meant someone had to be extremely ticked off at him. I doubted even Trinidad could make the average Joe that mad. And where was the missing penis, anyway? Had someone whacked it off in a fit of rage à la Lorena Bobbitt? No doubt Sergeant Grimes would be pursuing that angle, with Erica Trinidad as his prime suspect. Which of course wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility. It’s true she’d hired me to find the killer, but perhaps that was a ploy on her part to convince us of her innocence. But somehow I didn’t think both Martha’s and my instincts could be that far off. And it seemed to me, if she had killed her uncle, she was smart enough to have constructed an alibi for herself. There was something else niggling at the back of my mind that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Something that might be important, but no matter how hard I tried to bring it into focus, it danced away.

  Panic and Gammon greeted me vociferously at the front door, as they always did, butting their heads against me as I tried to enter without letting them out.

  Half Bengal and half Egyptian Mau, they were a stunning pair. Where tabbies had stripes, these two had spots, but their coloring was as different as their size. Panic, as lithe and agile as her Bengal father, had black spots on a silky, silver background. Her tail was unusually long, as were her legs. Her eyes, the color of gooseberries, matched her sister’s, but weren’t as large, or as beautiful.

  The bigger sister, Gammon, was a striking beauty and terribly fat. She had rich brown spots on a silver, cream and caramel background. Her fur was so plush you could lose your fingers in it. Somehow, little Panic had gotten her sister’s share of tail, and poor, fat Gammon had an embarrassingly short, thick one. When she ran, her belly swayed back and forth, which never failed to make me laugh. It was hard to say which cat was my favorite—beautiful, fat Gammon with her intelligent, green eyes that made me wonder what she spent so much time thinking about, or the skittish, playful huntress Panic, who feared no other animal but leaped a foot at the sound of twigs rustling in the breeze.

  They had been Martha’s house-warming gift three years earlier, two tiny balls of silky fur no bigger than my palm. Somehow she had known that it would take more than just one cat to fill the void left by Diane. And while not even a dozen cats could have done that, these two had turned into loving, wonderful companions.

  “Come on you little rug rats,” I said, hefting fat Gammon up and hoisting her onto my shoulder. “Let’s see what we can scrounge up for lunch.”

  After opening a can of Gourmet Kitty which they politely shared, I fixed myself a ham and Swiss on rye with mayo and mustard, with a dill pickle for good measure, and sat down at the kitchen table to organize my thoughts. I was deep into my reverie, when the annoying whine of a speedboat buzzed my dock. Looking out, I could see Jess Martin’s son, Dougie, at the wheel of a bright red Jet Boat. The boat was full of laughing boys, some of whom I recognized from town. Their bare chests were tanned from the summer sun, and they laughed as they threw a wake onto my dock. While I knew Jess would get after Dougie if he saw him driving his boat this way, for a moment I envied the boys and their carefree summertime mischief. I watched them do a three-sixty in front of my neighbor’s dock, sending a spray of water into his moored dinghy, and then they raced off across the lake, leaving giant waves in their wake that rocked my boat violently against the dock. Unable to concentrate any further, I decided it was time to change and get busy with my investigation.

  Chapter Five

  While the Cedar Hills Lodge was the preferred watering hole for tourists, most of the locals I wanted to talk to would be at Loggers Tavern. By five o’clock the place was nearly packed, and there was an undeniable touch of festivity in the air. It seemed the death of Walter Trinidad had cheered a good many souls in Cedar Hills.

  “Well, look what the cat drug in,” I heard a familiar voice shout as I entered. I peered through the dimly lit, smoke-filled room and made out the hazy but unmistakably tall outline of my friend Jess Martin, who waved me over to a stool next to him at the bar. “I thought you was hot on the trail of the Cedar Hills Killer,” he teased as I plunked myself onto the stool. I’d noticed that whenever Jess was around other locals, his Cedar Hills accent tended to increase tenfold. Laughter rippled around the horseshoe-shaped bar, and as my eyes adjusted to the dim interior, I made out the faces of Buddy
Drake, the mail carrier who’d found the body, and Gus Townsend, the marina owner.

  “I see you boys have been celebrating,” I said, settling into my own adaptation of the Cedar Hills drawl. I didn’t really do this intentionally, but for some reason, whenever I was in the company of two or more locals, I found myself mimicking their peculiar accents. I’d tried to stop myself from doing this at first, but of late I’d sort of given in to it. It seemed to be an irresistible urge.

  “Buy this good-lookin’ lady a drink!” Gus shouted to Lizzie, the bartender, in his usual raspy voice. His craggy, weather-worn face made him appear much older than his fifty some-odd years. “She’s gonna track down the man who done snipped off Walter Trinidad’s pinky,” he croaked, a wicked grin cracking his leathery face. This brought on a whole slew of guffaws from around the bar.

  “Yeah.” Buddy was sitting on my left. “And when she do, we gonna give the sonofabitch a medal!” The laughter that followed was accompanied by palms slapping the bar and a whole array of hoots and hollers. Obviously these fellows weren’t recent arrivals at the tavern. By the general ruddiness of their cheeks and the gleam in their eyes, I’d say that most of them had been there since lunch, which I assumed had been of a primarily liquid nature.

  Lizzie Thompson set a pint of draft beer in front of me and cracked a toothy grin. “Is it true, Cass? You really a private detective like Jess here says?” Her husky voice spoke of too many nights keeping up with the boys in booze and cigarettes. She winked at me, and not for the first time I wondered if Lizzie Thompson wouldn’t be happier running a women’s bar.

  “That’s right, Lizzie. I am. And not that I wouldn’t normally just drop in to enjoy the company, but truth is, I was hoping someone here might be able to give me a hand.”

  “What do you need, Cass?” Jess asked, sliding his empty mug toward Lizzie, who promptly refilled it.

  “Well, first off, I’m trying to figure out when was the last time someone actually saw Walter Trinidad alive.”

  “I seen him late Wednesday afternoon, struttin’ around the marina with some out-of-town broad,” Gus said. “He was bitchin’ and cryin’ about the fact he couldn’t park his boat right without scratching his precious paint job.”

  “I saw him too.” Lizzie’s dark eyes were shining. “Came by the bar to criticize my wine selection. I didn’t pay him a lick of attention, but I did notice the girl. Way outta his league, if you ask me.”

  Buddy Drake cleared his throat, and the whole bar quieted. Since having found the body, it seemed Buddy had acquired a certain hero’s status. He tugged on his scraggly black moustache and sat up straighter on his bar stool. He was in his forties and his coal-black hair was beginning to thin, a fact nearly concealed by his ever-present baseball cap. Not much over five feet tall, Buddy still carried himself with a distinct air of confidence, and despite his short stature, most folks in Cedar Hills seemed to look up to him as a leader.

  “The way I figure,” he said, pausing for effect, “the girl’s your best bet, Cass. Usually, when a guy gets his dinger bobbed, it’s what you call a crime of passion.”

  Apparently Buddy Drake had also become an expert on the psychological profile of the murdering mind.

  “But I hear the girl’s still here, holed up at Trinidad’s place this whole time,” Jess said. “If I was her, and I’d killed someone, I’d have hightailed it out of here long before now.”

  “Well, Sheriff Booker told me the girl in question was the niece,” Lizzie said. “I don’t see how a blood relation is apt to do to an uncle what was done to Walter Trinidad.”

  “He didn’t seem to be treating her in no uncleish fashion that I could see,” Gus said, downing what looked like straight bourbon.

  “Maybe he tried to get a little too friendly and the lady just freaked,” said Buddy. The others nodded.

  “Is that who hired you?” Jess asked. “The guy’s niece?”

  “Actually, Jess, that’s confidential information.” I knew that this would automatically confirm it. The last thing Erica needed was the whole town thinking she’d killed her uncle. Maybe if they knew she’d hired someone to find the killer, they’d be less inclined to suspect her. On the other hand, maybe that’s why she did hire me, to throw people off. I pictured her face, those intelligent, blue eyes, and wondered if I could be that wrong about her character. “Did anyone see Walter Trinidad after he left the marina? Anyone call him, or hear of someone else calling him?”

  General silence filled the smoky room, and as if on cue, most of the men reached for their cigarettes. The rest of the nation may have heard that smoking was hazardous to the health, but the news had apparently not yet reached Cedar Hills.

  Since my query had received no answer, I tried another tack.

  “If someone had called him, who would it be? I mean, he must have had some friends in town.”

  “Not that I ever saw,” Jess said.

  “Weren’t nobody could stand him much,” added Gus. “Only reason I even let him have a slip at the marina is ’cause I charge him price and a half and he was too damn arrogant to complain about it. Now I gotta find some other cowboy to fill the slip.”

  The others chuckled, but the mood was beginning to turn from boisterous to nasty. I imagined Gus Townsend was not a pleasant drunk, and having seen him at the marina on many a morning sporting a hangover, I knew that his night of drinking was far from over.

  “Well, I sure appreciate you fellows helping out and all.” I downed the last of my beer. “If you all hear of anything that might help, just call me. I’d sure like to know who Trinidad was planning to meet that night.”

  This perked up their interest.

  “How do you know he was?” Buddy asked, fingering the bill of his baseball cap.

  “Because his niece says he got a call and then left to meet someone.”

  “She says! Huh! Sounds like she’s saving her own hide to me,” Gus said.

  “The only one I know of who ever called the guy was a bunch of school kids,” Jess said. “They used to call him up and say stuff like, ‘Hey, Mr. Trinidad, is your refrigerator running? Then you better go catch it!’”

  This brought on general laughter and I decided it was a fitting time to depart.

  “Well, thanks anyway, guys, and thanks for the beer, Lizzie.”

  Lizzie’s large hands had begun to fidget, and her eyes kept darting toward the little window that looked out onto Main Street. I shot her a questioning look, but she snapped back into focus and just like that, whatever had been bothering her was gone.

  “Hell, that’s okay, Cass. I put it on Walter Trinidad’s bar tab,” she said, her gravelly voice full of laughter. “The man once paid a hundred dollars up front to run a tab, but he never came back in after that first time. Said the smoke bothered him too much, and that I had a lousy wine selection. But he never asked for his money back. I figure he wanted folks to think he was so rich, a hundred dollars was pocket change. So tonight, the drinks are on Walter. How about another round, boys?” Glasses were shoved forward and, for the moment at least, it seemed the general good cheer had returned as I eased my way out, into the brightness of what remained of the day.

  By six-thirty, I’d talked to everyone I could find who ever knew Walter Trinidad, and the story was the same everywhere. No one knew anything. No one knew anyone else who might know anything. And most of all, no one was surprised or saddened that someone had done him in. There was a lot of head shaking, but no tears were shed. In general, there seemed to be a shared sense that someone, whoever it was, had done the world a favor by speeding Walter Trinidad into the next life.

  I was still in the mood for an artichoke and a good steak, so I walked down to McGregors, then decided to call my answering machine from the pay phone outside. One of the drawbacks to life in Cedar Hills was the complete absence of cell phone reception. Luckily, the popular phone booth was empty. I had two messages. One was from Martha, asking me if I’d solved the case yet. Her laughte
r held the warmth that always put me in a good mood. “Call me, Sherlock, when you get a chance. I’ve got some news that may interest you. Oh, and give my regards to the lovely Ms. Trinidad.” Again, that deep, rich laughter, and then the dial tone. The second call was from Ms. Trinidad herself, asking me to call her as soon as possible. I dug out another twenty cents, and she picked up on the first ring.

  “Oh. I’m glad you called, Cass. I was hoping that was you and not another crank call.”

  “What kind of crank call?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell you later. Listen. If you don’t have dinner plans, how’d you like to join me here? I’m still waiting for a call from my cousin, or I’d get out of here. Can you come over?”

  “Sure,” I said, my pulse quickening unreasonably. “I was just going to pick up a steak and artichoke at McGregors. If that sounds good, I’ll get two.”

  “That sounds like the nicest offer I’ve had all day.”

  By the time I pulled up to Walter Trinidad’s dock for the second time that day, the sun was just beginning to disappear over the ridge of giant cedars that lined the west bank of the lake. In the summer, the sky would stay light until almost nine, and dusk was one of my favorite times of day. Erica met me halfway up the walk and took one of the bags out of my hands. The fading light played upon her dark skin, and I noted for the third or fourth time that day that she was truly an attractive woman.

  “This looks like more than two steaks,” she said, peering into one bag.

  “Well, I didn’t know your status on charcoal and wine, and I thought we might as well make a salad. I hope you like blue cheese and raspberry vinaigrette. Oh, and I found a portobello mushroom we can sauté in olive oil.” I followed her into the house where she had already drawn the blinds on all the windows. “Tell me about the crank call,” I said, finding a corkscrew in the first drawer I checked.