Ashleigh leaned in to examine the blood stains more closely. “No touch,” Tredwyn warned her, quite unnecessarily.
She pointed to a dented toolbox without a lid, which contained a few rusty tools and a cylinder of propane. “Isn’t that leaking?”
“Too right, love. Valve cracked just enough to put the doggies off the scent.”
“Off the scent of what?”
He held up two of the plastic bags, and with a rubber-gloved finger spread open the slashes someone had made in them to reveal traces of a white crystalline powder inside. “If that’s not pure cocaine, I’m the caliph of Baghdad. There’s the reason somebody sent friend Smythe on an all-expenses-paid trip to Hell.”
Ashleigh cocked her head to one side and examined him sharply. “Don’t you believe in Heaven?”
“Oh, I do, love, I do. But it’s for blue-eyed blondes like yourself and your Mum. When gents like Mr. Smythe and yours truly pop off, we go to the Other Place.”
Further search of the trunk disclosed an empty ammunition clip but no weapon. “Assuming that’s Smythe’s blood in there,” said Doyle, “he was probably shot here last night. The killer used this car to transport the body to the trash receptacle behind the hardware store, and then had to drive it back here again to pick up his own car.”
“Smythe was bringing in cocaine from Canada week after week in this car,” said Mary, “perched on top of the carrier where the customs inspectors just gave it a friendly wave. He set up shop here on Fridays, catching people on the way home from work at the end of the week — people who might be willing to blow a whole paycheck on stardust.”
“Okay,” said Roger, “but who gets paid in cash these days?”
“The sign on that bar,” remarked Ashleigh, “says ‘Paychecks Cashed.’ ” She stayed in her mother’s car listening to the radio, with the engine running for warmth, while the others walked to The Spatterdash Bar and Grill.
The place was empty except for a few regulars whooping it up at the dart board. The lone bartender was wearing a silk shirt with ruffles and a red bow tie, their effect somewhat marred by a hand-written name tag reading “Gage Skyhugh.” At sight of Lieutenant Doyle’s uniform he put on a lemon-sucking smirk. No, he didn’t recognize the face on Smythe’s driver’s license, but then he saw a steady flow of transients week in and week out and couldn’t swear that the man had never been in.
A brandy snifter for tips stood at each end of the bar, and in each of them three or four Sacajawea dollars glinted among the greenbacks under the pale fluorescents. Doyle looked closer to make sure they weren’t Canadian dollars, then glanced inquiringly at Skyhugh.
“The dollar coins? I give one out with each check I cash. Lots of people don’t like them, so they give them back as tips.”
“You must start out with a bountiful stash of bills in that cash register on Fridays,” suggested Roger.
“Correct. And on Fridays there are three other guys behind this bar with me.”
No one at the convenience store or the gas station recognized Smythe’s picture.
Doyle had meanwhile received a report from headquarters on the VIN of the red car. It had been reported stolen almost a year ago by an Alan Sharpe of Des Moines.
When they got back to the parking lot they found Ashleigh kneeling on the cold ground studying the front plate on the red coupe.
“Not the most brilliant forgeries, are they?” asked Doyle.
Ashleigh chose not to notice that he was needling her for having been taken in by the fake plates. “I was just thinking,” she said, “that these letters and numbers probably mean something to the person who had the plates made. So maybe he’s Greek. And maybe he used forty-nine because that’s the year he was born, like... lots of other people. Or it could mean Alaska, the forty-ninth state.”
“It could,” conceded Doyle. “Or it could mean eighteen forty-nine, the year of the Gold Rush. But I don’t see us getting much further guessing who ordered the plates.”
“We don’t have to guess.” Ashleigh stood up and dusted off her jeans. “The company that made them has a Web site — GreatPlates.com. Why don’t we just ask them who ordered these plates?”
“Because,” said Doyle, struggling to remain in control of the inquiry, “they’d probably tell us to go pick daisies. I mean, we’d never get anything out of them without a court order. And if they happen to be in Taiwan, or Honduras...”
After some persuasion from Roger Tredwyn, who had resumed his examination of the red car, the lieutenant called in a request to headquarters for contact information on GreatPlates.com.
“Smythe had three U.S. dollar coins in his pocket,” Mary reminded Doyle. “And everybody who cashes a paycheck at The Spatterdash gets one. So at least three of those people probably bought cocaine from him yesterday.”
Doyle nodded agreement. “He put the coins in his pocket and the bills in his wallet, which the killer cleaned out before he dumped him behind the hardware store. Along with any dust he hadn’t sold yet. But whether this was premeditated robbery and murder, or just a sudden blow-up—” He broke off as his cell phone rang, and moved away from the others to take the call.
For several minutes he paced briskly up and down in the chilly wind, conversing volubly and, at times, with considerable vehemence. Lieutenant Doyle owed his present rank largely to his ability to express himself forcefully and with uncompromising authority when circumstances demanded — a faculty that seemed to desert him when he was confronted by a certain blonde fourteen-year-old.
Long before he finished his conversation, the others took refuge in Mary’s car to enjoy the heater, the CD player, and one another’s company, during which it wasn’t entirely clear which of the women was chaperoning the other. At length Doyle unceremoniously climbed into the back seat with Roger.
“The plates were ordered,” he said, “by somebody in Anchorage calling himself Ari Simonides. Which even I can figure out is probably Greek for ‘Archer Smythe.’ ”
“Sure,” agreed Ashleigh, “but I think maybe you’ve got it... backside foremost. I mean, Simonides is his real name—”
“Whatever. Anyway he owned a car dealership up there, which he’d obviously been using as a cover for his drug-dealing operation. The stuff was probably coming in over the Pole from Asia. The wonder is that he crossed two borders with it week after week and never got caught.” He turned his attention to Roger, who was scrolling through images on his digital camera with mounting concentration. “Something interesting?”
“See what you think. These are all prints left on different parts of the coupe by a thumb in a canvas glove — a glove with little gobs of wax or glue that had soaked into the fabric and hardened. These marks are every bit as distinctive as the ridge pattern of a naked thumb.”
“What do you think? Do we have a prima facie case or do we need a warrant?”
Roger looked at his watch. “You’re the copper. I’d say frontal attack before he shuts down for the weekend.”
He locked Smythe/Simonides’s car, leaving a NO trespassing notice on the dashboard. Then the three-car motorcade returned to AAA Upholstery. When they got there Mary, by police order, maintained a prudent distance to the rear. Roger went around to the street entrance of the upholstery shop while Doyle knocked at the back door. They were inside for a long time, during which Ashleigh had visions of Roger being slashed to ribbons with one of those savage-looking knives she’d seen on Mack Bogenrife’s workbench.
Finally the officers reappeared, with Bogenrife in handcuffs, and bundled him into the back seat of Doyle’s cruiser. Tredwyn threw a beguiling grin of triumph in the direction of the Deventers and waved a brown paper sack that looked as if it might contain a pair of canvas work gloves, if not indeed a quantity of cocaine as well.