The Heirloom Murders - Kathleen Ernst [76]
“Oh.”
“Have you found a group here?” he asked. “Maybe you and the policeman?”
Chloe made an attempt to picture Roelke McKenna dancing a schottische. Three seconds later, her head about to explode, she gave up. “No. I haven’t danced either.”
Markus was wise enough to let that go. “Well,” he said, as they reached the parking lot where she’d left her car, “thanks again for coming. It was fun. Maybe we can meet more informants while I’m here.”
Informants. The word rang in Chloe’s brain like a cow bell. In Roelke’s world, informants were people with information about crimes. Sometimes horrible, brutal, heart-breaking crimes, like the murder of Harriet Van Dyne. In Markus’s world, informants were people like Johann and Frieda Frietag.
“I’d like that,” she said, and got out of the car.
_____
T.J. Malone fought like a hooked muskie as Roelke snapped the handcuffs into place. “You can’t arrest me! I haven’t done anything!”
Mackenna’s Gold was well underway. Gregory Peck and Omar Shariff were arguing about the fate of some blonde woman. Still, half the movie-watchers craned their necks to watch Roelke tug the young man toward the squad car. “I’m not arresting you,” Roelke said as he levered T.J. into the back seat. “I’m detaining you while I go hear your girlfriend’s side of the story.”
“She’s a bi—”
Roelke slammed the door against both the unpleasant noun and the string of curses that followed. “I suggest you try to calm down,” he told T.J. through the glass, and left him.
T.J.’s girlfriend, a very pregnant brunette, was sitting on a picnic table a short distance from the area where Eagle residents, young and old, had settled in for Movie Night. “I didn’t do anything!” the girlfriend insisted as Roelke approached. Waterworks had left mascara streaks down her cheeks. “I said hello to a guy I went to high school with. That’s all! I wasn’t flirting or anything, but T.J. went nuts!” The young woman wiped her eyes with a crumpled tissue, doing further damage. “Ever since I got pregnant, he’s been acting like a big jerk!” She began to weep again. Noisily and sloppily.
In Roelke’s opinion, both parties needed to settle down before anything productive could happen. “Just sit tight, OK? I need to check on something. Then I’ll go talk to T.J.” Roelke waited until she nodded. Then he began a slow circuit of the park.
As far as he could tell, Movie Night was a complete disaster. First, his stitches and blossoming bruises attracted unwanted attention. Second, everyone and their brother wanted to talk about Harriet Van Dyne’s murder. Had the murderer been caught? What did Officer McKenna mean, county detectives and state police were handling the case? The crime may have happened on state property, but it was still an Eagle issue. Perhaps Officer McKenna should stay a little more involved.
Then there was the film itself. Skeet had evidently not previewed the old Western, which featured a scene where a naked woman tried to drown the blonde. Roelke was pretty sure that at least a couple of parents would not deem that family fare. The plot, about an ever-increasing bunch of idiots willing to risk their lives to find a legendary canyon of gold, kept pulling his thoughts back to Dellyn Burke’s suggestion that someone might go crazy over the legend of the Eagle Diamond. Watching the nutjobs in the film, all things suddenly seemed possible.
On top of that, the night was muggy enough to wring like a sponge. The popcorn machine had broken. The soda stand was a volunteer short. It was hard to breathe through a pervasive fog of insect repellant. It was hard to hear the soundtrack over the sound of a hundred hands slapping at mosquitoes which were, evidently, indifferent to the repellant.
Skeet, who was supposed to be working with him, had been called to an accident in the township. So the glory is mine and mine alone, Roelke thought. Were any Police Committee members in attendance? He really didn’t want to know.
Finally, he headed back to the squad. T.J. now sat slouched