Tip a Hat to Murder Read online

  Tip a Hat to Murder

  Elaine L. Orr

  Copyright 2016 by Elaine L. Orr

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-0-9863380-4-5

  Tip a Hat to Murder, first of the Logland series, is a work of fiction. All characters are products of the author’s imagination.

  Logland Mystery Series

  Tip a Hat to Murder

  Final Cycle

  Final Operation (March 2019)

  www.elaineorr.com

  www.elaineorr.blogspot.com

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  LINKS TO ELAINE’S BOOKS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  EARLY OCTOBER WAS USUALLY one of the quietest months in the Bully Pulpit Diner. Students at Sweathog College were six weeks into their semester and scared they would fail at least one class. The Frisky Heifers had lost at least three football games. That shut up the loud mouths. At least during the week.

  This was not a quiet October.

  “What do you mean no one can tip us?” Marti Kerkoff glared at her boss, one foot tapping on the black and white tiled floor. The right side of her mouth started to turn down. “I pay my chiropractor with that money.”

  Nick Hume’s five-foot-ten frame was almost rigid as he stepped closer to owner Ben Addison. “That’s my beer money.” He looked at Marti. “What the hell do you need a chiropractor for? You sit on your butt half the time.”

  She stood up from the counter stool, faced Nick, and balled her fists. Marti was short, but no less fierce because of it. “I sit down sometimes because I work my ass off bringing water to other people’s customers.”

  Ben stepped between the two of them, which gained his nose some of Nick’s spittle. “The Weed and Feed stopped tips last week. This is how it’s gotta be.”

  Nick’s face reddened. “The potheads who eat there don’t care what they pay. You try to increase prices to,” he raised his fingers in air quotes, “pay us more so no one has to tip,” he stopped air quoting and pointed a finger at Ben’s still-damp nose, “and no one will eat here.”

  “Leave him be, Nick,” Marti said.

  When Nick stood back a few inches, Marti stepped between the men. Because Ben matched Marti's height of five-six, they were eye to eye. Marti glared at him. “Everyone knows you’ve been putting cracker meal in the hamburger.”

  Ben reddened. “Only if you told them!”

  “The gluten-free mafia said they have to use the can more,” Nick said.

  A raised voice came from a nearby booth. “Hey!” Gordon Beals was an actuary with a local insurance firm. “I don’t eat gluten. What you doin’ to me, Ben?”

  Ben regarded Gordon and shrugged.

  Gordon, his deep voice grumbling, went back to his morning Sudoku puzzle.

  The glass front door banged and the three Bully Pulpit staff turned. Just-Juice Jenson and Herbie Hiccup entered and made for the counter.

  The wait staff might not have called them these names behind their backs if Herbie’s hiccups didn’t stink so much.

  Just-Juice sat down and spun on the stool to stare at the now silent workers. “What’s up? You squeeze any fresh OJ yet?”

  Ben used the towel he always had over his shoulder to wipe an imaginary spot from the Formica counter. “Marti’s just getting on it. Nick’ll take your order.”

  Saying nothing, Marti moved to the right of the customer counter and headed for the kitchen. She walked flat-footed, her version of stomping. It let everyone within thirty feet know she was ticked.

  Ben turned and headed to a booth at the far left of the counter. Unlike the other booths, its red plastic seats had half-inch wide slits through which white stuffing poked. Ben said it was his office, but half the time he checked his phone for football scores so he could decide which teams to bet on that weekend.

  Nick took out an order pad and stood across from the two customers. “Early for you guys. What’ll it be?” He glanced at the pass-through window that separated the kitchen from the eating area and watched Marti mouth two of the expected words.

  “Just juice. I’m on that fruit diet thing again.” He shifted his hefty frame on the stool.

  “We studied all night,” Herbie said. “Two eggs over easy, and coffee.”

  “Except when you slept under the library table.”

  “Except for that,” Herbie agreed.

  Just-Juice’s voice rose and he laughed as he pointed at the wall. “Check out that sign, Herbie. No more tipping. We gotta tell all the guys!”

  Ben called from his booth. “Maybe I’ll put up signs on campus.”

  Nick turned toward the kitchen without saying anything else to Just Juice and Herbie. Marti’s slam of the huge refrigerator’s door was probably heard on the street.

  Yes, raising Bully Pulpit prices ten percent instead of requiring customers to leave tips seemed like a good idea, but it ended up being a blunder. A really bad one.

  Not only did wait staff see no point in smiling when their backs or bunions hurt, the talk around town was that it could have been what got Ben killed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  LOGLAND, ILLINOIS POLICE CHIEF Elizabeth Friedman studied the profile of Ben Addison’s face. The eye she could see was open and unblinking. The only clue he’d sustained an injury before death was the blood pool that seemed to begin under his left leg.

  The position of the diner owner's body offered few clues. Elizabeth’s guess was that someone had thrust a sharp object into his leg near the knee, which was slightly bent. The pressure the killer exerted probably made Ben fall forward, onto his stomach. He might not have even seen his killer.

  Elizabeth checked the black and white tiled floor within a few yards of Ben’s body. The pad where he jotted customer orders rested about five feet from his extended hand, probably skidding away as Ben hit the floor. A skinny pencil sat on a black tile about two feet to the right of the order pad.

  Lying by Ben’s head was a white baseball cap that bore the Sweathog College logo – a black pig. The hat was tilted off Ben’s head, as if it had been jarred loose when his head hit the floor.

  A quick search by one of her officers had not turned up a shell casing and no object protruded from Ben. Since the restaurant served tough steaks, a knife seemed a likely weapon. It would also have been easy to carry one out of the place in a jacket pocket or wedged into a large text book.

  Elizabeth scanned the street in front of the diner. Minus the murder, it was a typical Tuesday morning in October. A mix of brown and yellow leaves waffled in the gutters, and the breeze had a hint of rain.

  So far Logland Press editor Jerry Pew wasn’t pestering the crime scene. Since he covered the entire county, he could be thirty miles away or more. Or at a Lions Club breakfast with his phone turned off until he finished his pancakes.

  Two groups of picketers had disturbed the pea
ce in the area around the Bully Pulpit during the two weeks since Ben had stopped letting customers tip the staff. The loud protestors had now been moved across the street. They would all have to be questioned before being allowed to leave, even the ones who swore they had nine o’clock classes.

  The four nerds from the debate team were separated from the pro-tip and anti-tip protestors by two orange cones. Elizabeth had done this herself, because the debaters had demanded strict separation protocols. It was easier to isolate the team from the picketers than to tell the four nerds they took themselves way too seriously.

  The team members had planned to interview the picketers to prepare for a weekend debate about the merits of tipping. Two of the backpack-wearing debaters were writing furiously in spiral notebooks, while two others shouted questions to anyone holding a picket sign.

  Elizabeth had asked Sweathog campus security to send a couple of their part-time officers to the diner. Her guys could maintain order, but the campus cops were better at shouting down students than her near-retirement age colleagues. In part this was because the campus squad also taught classes at the college and threatened to flunk people who didn’t do what they said.

  The two food servers who had come in just behind Officer Tony Calderone were in the kitchen, where he had placed them. Calderone had found Ben when he stopped by for coffee at the beginning of his seven AM shift.

  Elizabeth had spoken to the servers, Marti and Nick, briefly. Though they both seemed stunned and Nick had thrown up in the sink, she knew better than to assume that shocked people were innocent. Unless you did it a lot, killing would leave anyone queasy and almost speechless.

  With the medical examiner now squatting next to Ben’s body, Elizabeth turned toward the kitchen. Stainless steel appliances sat along the walls. The surfaces bore fingerprint smudges of probably anyone who had worked in the last week. These would only be useful if one of the prints wasn’t from a worker. Useless, really, because how many random murderers stopped to check the fridge?

  Marti sat on the floor with her back against the white-tiled wall and legs in front of her, eyes closed. Nick leaned against the wall, arms folded across his chest.

  Elizabeth nodded to Calderone, whose usually friendly expression had been replaced by pallor and a scowl. “I can handle this. Why don’t you take a break?” He exited the kitchen, leaving her to question Nick and Marti.

  As Elizabeth faced the two wait staff, she said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t let you sit in a booth. The fingerprint crew has to dust them.”

  Marti’s green eyes were open now. The whites were red and her lids were swollen. “Cleaning crew comes in at three AM. For the customer area.”

  Nick added, “But they only do half of the place each night. It’s how Ben saves…saved money. You can usually tell which half.”

  “No French fries under the tables,” Marti said.

  “Except Ben would crawl under a booth to pick ‘em up if he saw them,” Nick added.

  “Did you notice anything out of place as you came in the door?”

  Marti wiped a tear from her cheek and shook her head.

  Nick frowned, apparently concentrating hard. “Me either.”

  Elizabeth stooped to one knee to face Marti, nodding at Nick as she did so. When her uniform slacks touched the sparkling tile, she almost slipped forward. “You both talked to Officer Calderone, but I’ll want you to come to the station to give us some background information.”

  And help us figure out if you killed poor Ben.

  “There’s some crackers in that bowl on the counter. Can I eat a couple before we go?” Nick asked.

  Marti stared at him as she and Elizabeth stood. “You’re hungry?”

  “No. I feel like I’m going to throw up again.”

  Elizabeth and Marti backed away from Nick, whose large frame could probably project a lot of bile.

  “I’ll grab a couple for you.” Elizabeth went to the serving space that separated the kitchen from the counter and stools. She took a couple of saltine packages from the basket and tossed them to Nick.

  As the crackers sailed toward him, a bullhorn-enhanced voice came into the restaurant. “This is your only warning. Stop swinging your picket signs. I want pro-tippers in front of the dry cleaners and free-range tippers by the tattoo place.”

  The diner's blinds were shut, but through the glass in the front door Elizabeth could see that campus security people had arrived. Two vivid blue electric cars with Southern Illinois Agricultural College logos were parked haphazardly in front of the protesters.

  “We have rights!” someone called.

  The smaller of the two campus cops shouted while pointing a finger in the direction of the speaker. “You have the right to remain silent or collect your crap from the dorm and go home. Move your asses now!”

  Elizabeth gestured that Nick and Marti should stay where they were, and found Calderone. He was leaning on the counter, watching the ME make notes. He’d never found a body before, and his drawn countenance showed all of his fifty-two years plus a few.

  “Calderone, bring your car to the back so you can drive these two to the station without a lot of hoopla.”

  When he straightened and nodded, she added, “Tell Sarge to get them some coffee or water, and I’ll be there in a few minutes. After you deliver those two, sit yourself down and have some coffee. Leave your phone on, in case I have questions.”

  “Roger, Chief.” He smiled slightly, walked out the front door, and climbed into his patrol car.

  Elizabeth hoped that any onlookers would think Calderone was going on another call. They probably wouldn’t follow him to the alley behind the Bully Pulpit.

  She moved from the window to sit on a stool near ME Skelly Hampton. “Anything obvious?”

  “Just touching his skin makes me think he probably wasn’t dead more than a few minutes before your guy found him. Obviously I’ll check the temp more when I get him to my place.”

  Skelly peered at her through the shock of black hair that always seemed to fall across his forehead and over one eye. “It’s a twenty-four hour diner. Probably would have had an earlier call about him if he’d been dead more than a short time.”

  “Agreed.” Elizabeth glanced again at Ben’s pale face. “You know Ben well?”

  Skelly crooked his arm and used it to wipe his damp brow. “Talked to him some when I came in, which was a couple of times a week.”

  “About anything of consequence, or just hey-how-are-you stuff?”

  Skelly’s gloved hands gently moved Ben’s fingers as he spoke. “Mostly the latter. He talked a lot about the Cardinals and Cubs, but not to me.”

  “To anybody in particular?”

  Skelly’s tone was distracted. “Let me think about it. Not always the same people here.”

  Elizabeth took his tone as a hint to give the thirty-two year old ME some space. She strolled through the L-shaped diner. The main section, where customers entered, had the cigar shape typical of older diners.

  The back of all menus noted that the side aisle had been added in the 1960s, at the same time the kitchen was enlarged. The backs of the booths on the side, what she thought of as the short part of the L, were not as high, and the black and white floor tiles had smaller squares than the original section.

  Elizabeth studied each red booth and the large table at the back of the side section. The seats of the chairs were pushed under the table, and the napkin holders that sat atop each booth were neatly placed at the middle of each.

  She walked back to the cigar section, the long part of the L. She recalled that Ben had done most of his late night serving in this area, probably so he could keep an eye on his few customers.

  One booth had two plates and a coffee mug. Another’s napkin holder sat on its side. As messes went, it seemed inconsequential.

  Elizabeth studied Skelly from the far end of the cigar. He was close to her thirty-four years, young to have the ME job. She’d never thought his lack of experience h
indered results. Not that they had a lot of unexplained deaths in town.

  She smiled to herself. The ME, always a doctor, didn’t have to be the county coroner, the person who officially certified cause of death. However, Skelly had run for the position because he thought his predecessor, Dr. Stan Hogan, a.k.a. Dr. Do-Wrong, wasn’t thorough.

  Hogan ruled a young father’s death a suicide. The man had been hiking alone, and his body was found at the base of a highway bridge about a mile from town.

  Elizabeth hadn’t been in Logland then, but the circumstances were still talked about. The man’s wife was convinced he would never have abandoned her and their eighteen-month-old son.

  She asked several doctors to reexamine the body, and none would. They all knew Dr. Hogan too well and didn’t want to anger one of their few local colleagues.

  Skelly had just started working in the hospital ER. To give the young mom peace, he agreed, not expecting to have different results. But he found cause of death was heart failure, due to an undiagnosed enlarged heart. If the guy had dropped to the ground in a place with a defibrillator, and not from sixty feet up, he might have lived.

  Skelly stood and took a black body bag from its place on the floor near the body. He was apparently done.

  Elizabeth went toward him and nodded at Ben. “He didn’t deserve this.”

  “They rarely do. I’ll get you some basic info quickly.”

  Elizabeth peered across the street. “I don’t get all this passion about tips.”

  Skelly snorted. “That’s because you paid for college selling cars. If you’d waited tables, you’d know these servers work really hard to get big tips.”

  “Guess they can hide some from Uncle Sam,” she murmured.

  “Maybe. They just plain make a lot more money if they do a good job. For most of them, the extra dollar an hour Ben paid them after he quit tips meant they made fast-food wages. They did a lot better before.”

  He made a note on his clipboard and then shot Elizabeth a look. “Even so, it’s a lot less smelly than working at the hog processing plant.”