Stiff Arm Steal Read online

  "What?" I asked.

  "You are not going to believe this."

  "What?"

  "Someone just stole another Heisman trophy."

  Chapter Nine

  THE BELLINGHAM RESIDENCE was situated in the Tropicana Palms Mobile Home Park, in an enclave of similar parks that sprouted up north of the airport between I-95 and the Turnpike. The homes were all single-wides in pastel blues, peaches, or white. The lawns were green and only a week overdue for a cut. There were no sidewalks but the roads were smooth asphalt. Danielle stopped the cruiser behind an old but well cared for Dodge Ram.

  We walked up the side of the mobile home. It was a misnomer. The home was about as mobile as a school bus with no wheels. It was a basic rectangle, thin end out to the street, the long edge at seventy degrees to the road. The door was a little over halfway down the long edge. There were no foundation plantings. There were no plantings of any kind.

  Danielle knocked and a short woman with a utilitarian haircut answered. Her hair was blond but not naturally so. She was a little plump, and pink-cheeked, like a cherub. She saw the uniform and ushered Danielle in. The inside was basic, but neat and clean. A well-loved brown sofa sat opposite a television that itself sat in a cabinet surrounded by shelves of family portraits. A man in a blue tank top and jeans sat on the sofa. He was resting a soda can on his gut. A floor fan blew directly on him. He looked at Danielle, then took a second look.

  “Bout time,” he said.

  Danielle spoke to the woman. “Mrs. Bellingham, is it?”

  The woman nodded.

  “You called about a burglary?”

  The man on the sofa snorted and spilled some Mountain Dew on his belly.

  “Yes,” she said. “A man broke in.” She was looking at her shoes and picking at her fingernails.

  “What time was this?”

  The woman looked at the clock on the wall, then back at her feet. “About two hours ago?”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “Yeah, Jenny, tell us all what happened,” said the slob on the sofa.

  “Sir, who are you?” said Danielle. She unconsciously put her hand on her waist, an inch above her sidearm.

  “Who am I? I am the Lord of this Domain.” He smiled at his wit.

  “Your name, sir?”

  “Bellingham.”

  “What is your first name?”

  Bellingham nodded at me. “Who’s this guy?”

  “This is Mr. Jones. And your name is?”

  “He’s not a cop.”

  “No, Mr. Jones is assisting us with our inquiries.”

  He snorted. “The hell does that mean?”

  His attention was diverted by a segment on SportsCenter. He looked at the screen and sucked on the can. I stayed leaning against the back of the door. I was tempted to give the guy a clip around the ears, but this wasn’t my show.

  Danielle turned back to Mrs. Bellingham. “Ma'am, do you want to tell me what happened?”

  “Well, I got home from work.”

  “Which is?”

  Mrs. Bellingham looked at Danielle. I couldn’t tell if she was on the verge of tears or was one of those people who always looked like they’d just lost their favorite puppy.

  “I’m an ER nurse. At St Mary’s.”

  Danielle nodded. “So you got home.”

  “I came in through the front door and there was a man. There.” She pointed to the pine shelving around the television.

  “What happened?”

  “He was standing there, rubbing my daddy’s trophy.”

  “How do you mean, rubbing it?”

  “It’s a man playing football, with one of those old fashioned helmets on. He was sort of rubbing the helmet with the palm of his hand.” She made a fist with her left hand and rubbed it with her right.

  “Then what happened?”

  “I think I startled him. He looked up at me and we both froze. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Understandable,” said Danielle. “So you saw him. You could identify him?”

  “Yes. No.” She shook her head. “I mean, he was wearing sunglasses, big ones. Like Newt wears at work.”

  She turned to the sofa. The man looked up.

  “Newt,” said Danielle.

  “That’s what they call me.”

  “You wear glasses for work?”

  “Protective eyewear.”

  “What do you do?” asked Danielle. She even slipped him a little smile.

  He responded. “I’m a construction foreman. Sometimes we wear protective eyewear on site.” He bent over and pulled a pair of glasses out of a canvas tool bag that lay at his feet. The glasses were black and had large dark lenses, like a giant fly, or an Irish rock star.

  Danielle nodded. “Like that?” she said to Mrs. Bellingham.

  “Uh huh. And a cowboy hat and mustache. Fake one.”

  “How do you know it was fake?”

  “No one would shave at the angle this thing sat. ‘Sides, I work with people up close every day. Shave a lot of folks before OR. This wasn’t human hair. More like polyester.”

  Danielle wrote that down. “Then what happened?”

  “What happened is, she blew it,” said Newt, rising from his sofa. “Like always. Blew it, blew it, blew it.” He took a step towards his wife and she recoiled back into the small counter separating the kitchen from the living space.

  “Sir, I need to ask you to sit down,” said Danielle.

  “Newt, he had a knife!” said Mrs. Bellingham.

  “A knife, ha! Why don’t you ask her how come we’re stuck in this crapper of a trailer park?”

  “Sir.”

  “And how come she’s always sneaking around? Ask her that.”

  “Sir, I won’t ask you again. Sit down.”

  I bumped off the door, ready to evict Newt Bellingham from his own home. But he stopped mid-rant and grabbed a pack of Marlboros off the picture shelves.

  “Ask what you want. I’m going for a smoke.”

  He stepped to the door but I was in the way. Standing, you could see he had once been fitter, maybe a high school athlete back when. His forearms were strong, but his midriff showed the hours spent in front of the idiot box.

  I looked at Danielle who shook her head. I stepped aside. He threw open the door and stepped down onto the grass. I nodded to Danielle and stepped out, closing the door behind me.

  The morning had lost its early dew and the grass was dry. Bellingham was sitting on a cheap plastic chair that was part of a set. A matching table had a sun-bleached umbrella through it. The umbrella wore the Miller High Life logo. Bellingham lit a cigarette and watched me walk along the side of the mobile home. I looked around the park. It was neat enough. No trash or cars on blocks. All the same, it was the kind of place a news crew would flock to after a hurricane. I stood by the table, the sun over my shoulder. Bellingham had to look straight into it to look at me.

  “What’s your story?” he said. He didn’t appear to be smoking the cigarette. He held it in his fingers and let it burn.

  “I’m a private detective.”

  “Like Columbo?”

  “No, not like Columbo.”

  He tapped some ash onto the ground. “So what are you doing here?”

  “I’m working on a case that might have something in common with yours.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You had a trophy stolen.”

  “You say so.” He squinted and turned his head. The cigarette burned.

  “You didn’t have a trophy?”

  Bellingham coughed a laugh. “Yeah, we had a trophy.”

  “What was it?”

  He shook his head and curled his lip like he’d eaten a sour grape. “A Heisman.”

  “Real?”

  “Oh, it was real.”

  “How’d you get a Heisman trophy?”

  “Who says I didn’t win it?”

  “I do. You’re too young that I wouldn’t recognize you if you’d won i
t. Besides, to win a Heisman you have to play college football, and you look like you sweat opening a pickle jar.”

  “Funny guy.”

  “So how’d you get it?”

  Bellingham glanced at the side of the trailer. Then he put his hand up to his forehead to shield the sun. “My wife’s father won it. Years ago. Never saw him play. But the old man passed it to us when he died.”

  “Which was when?”

  “Few months back.”

  “You get on with the old man?”

  “He was a crotchety bastard.”

  “So he wasn’t keen on his daughter marrying down.”

  “Hey.”

  “You put in a good word to get the Heisman?”

  He shook his head. “Never even knew he had it. Until he kicked the bucket.”

  “Anything else go missing?”

  He shook his head.

  “You think whoever broke in was looking for the Heisman?”

  He shrugged and dropped the cigarette butt to the ground and crushed it with his foot. “If there was a break in.”

  “You think your wife made it up? Why would she do that?”

  “To piss me off.”

  “Fair reason.”

  “You’re a comedian.”

  I looked around the park again. The mobile homes looked like shipping containers. Couldn’t be too many places to hide a Heisman.

  “You working?” I said.

  “Yeah. Left just after six. Came back when she called.”

  “Your wife was getting home?”

  “She works nights, on and off.” He picked out another cigarette. “So you’re looking for BJ Baker’s Heisman? I saw it on TV.”

  I nodded.

  “Maybe you find his, you find mine.”

  “Or your wife’s.”

  He shrugged. “You got a card?”

  I pulled my wallet out and took out a card. It was bent to the shape of my right butt cheek. I handed it to him and he looked at it.

  “Miami Jones?” He looked at me. “That’s your name? Geez, what’s your brother’s name? Kansas?” He grinned again at his own hilarity.

  “Guy called Newt making fun of other people’s names. Now that is funny.”

  Chapter Ten

  “COULD HE BE the same guy?” Danielle said as we got into her patrol car.

  “Two Heismans in a matter of days. Got to consider a link.”

  Danielle turned the key and the deep engine rumbled.

  “You think he might be escalating?” I said as Danielle pulled the car out of the trailer park.

  “Hard to say. Mrs. Bellingham said the guy had a knife.”

  “Did she tell you what sort of knife?” I said.

  “Kitchen. She thought it was one of those Japanese style ones. Santoku.”

  “Question is, did he have it last time?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Gut says no. Last theft was during an event, so too public to carry a knife.”

  “Unless he was supposed to carry one,” Danielle said.

  “Like a caterer?”

  “Just a thought.”

  “You guys come up with anything on the staff yet?”

  “The PD are doing more of that, but not that I’ve heard. How about you guys? You checking?”

  “Yeah,” I smiled. “Ronzoni wasn’t too happy about it. But we haven’t come up with anything much, either.”

  “What about the husband? He say anything?”

  “Newt? Nice guy. He thinks his wife is making the whole thing up.”

  Danielle pulled onto Australian Drive to scoot around Clear Lake. “Why? Attention?”

  “Maybe. Attention might be something she craves. I don’t think spooning in bed is too high on old Newt’s nighttime routine.”

  “Could he be right, though? Could she have heard about BJ Baker’s trophy going missing and saw a chance to get some attention?”

  “I can’t rule it out. People do funny things to get some attention. Even the bad kind.”

  Danielle pulled the patrol car into the lot beside my building. The solid concrete nameplate advertised the tenants. An insurance agent. Three sets of attorneys. A computer software company. A couple of companies whose names gave no clue as to what they did, and were run by people I’d never met in the elevator. Then the nameplate for Lenny Cox Investigations. It was a new building with double-glazed windows and environmentally-friendly HVAC. Not the usual ratty space detectives inhabited in the books I’d read as a kid. Danielle didn’t switch off the engine but I didn’t get out. The air conditioning was cool.

  She turned in her seat to look at me. “What is it?” she said.

  I let out some air. “Just something nagging. On the one side, how did the burglar, if it is the same guy, know about the Bellingham’s trophy? They haven’t had it for long, and they weren’t making a big song and dance about it. Maybe he showed it to a few buddies. But how does that get back to our guy?”

  “Maybe Jenny Bellingham is making it up.”

  “Well, that’s the other half of it that doesn’t sit right. Her description of events.”

  “How so? She walks in on the perp, they freeze, he pulls a knife, tells her to get on the floor and if she looks up for ten minutes he’ll cut her. She does what she’s told and he flees.”

  “Sure it all fits,” I said. “Whether it’s real or she’s faking it, that’s a plausible story. But I’m talking about when she described him. When she first walked in. She said the guy was holding the Heisman and rubbing its head. She even showed us with her hands.”

  “Right.”

  “So Mrs. Bellingham doesn’t strike me as the creative type. She’s a nurse, working nights, tired from her shift. She wore boring, practical shoes and had a haircut the military would have been proud of. So I buy the idea of making the burglary up, but the head rubbing? That’s one detail too far. She didn’t make that up. She saw that.”

  Danielle nodded, then turned as her radio crackled. The dispatch came over with a call out. “Duty calls.” She smiled and I seriously missed a beat.

  “I’ll keep on it.”

  As I got out of the car she said she’d drop by if she could.

  “If not, I’ll be home later. In case you get swamped,” I said.

  “Or in case I spend my day chasing tails for BJ Baker.”

  “Go save the world.” I slammed the door and she drove around the parking lot in a loop and came out by me. She waved as she drove out onto the street.

  Chapter Eleven

  RON WAS AT the water cooler when I came in the door. He wore a lightweight linen suit, blue shirt and a red striped tie.

  “Nice costume, bro,” I said.

  “You only wish you could look this dapper.”

  “If you only knew how true that is.” I turned to Lizzy who was retrieving something from the printer behind her desk.

  “Miss Lizzy, how are you?” She ignored me and packed a sheath of papers into a presentation folder. She handed the folder to Ron.

  “You’re good to go,” she said.

  “Gorgeous, thanks.” He winked at her, which earned him a small smile. It would have earned me a slap.

  “Good news?” I said.

  “Indeed,” said Ron. “The Melito insurance fraud case. What I have here is going to make the insurance company very happy. They won’t have to pay him a dime. So some of those dimes will come to us.”

  “Making a livelihood. Way to go Ron. How’d you get him?”

  “The spinal injuries he suffered in his fall may be catastrophic, but they aren’t enough to prevent him from smoking a very long and true ball down the eighteenth fairway on the Links course at Bear Lakes.”

  “For him it truly will be a good walk ruined.”

  “Indeed. And how about you. You’re rather tardy today.”

  “Got a call out with Deputy Castle.”

  “I’ll bet you did.”

  “Guess why.” Ron shrugged.

  “Somebody
stole another Heisman trophy.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I do.”

  “A serial snatcher?”

  “Possible. I’ve just got to figure out where it takes us with the Baker case.”

  “Here,” said Lizzy. She handed me a pile of post-it notes. “Your Mr. Baker has called four more times. His assistant has called eight times. I think they’ve got me on speed dial.”

  “How were his manners?”

  “The assistant was brought up right. As for Mr. Baker, he knows he won’t get far with me using his gruff voice, but he certainly won’t be getting his manners merit badge anytime soon.”

  I looked at the handful of notes. “I guess I’d better give him a call.”

  “I’ve got a meeting to get to,” said Ron. “You know, if it is a serial snatcher, that might help.”

  “How so?”

  “We just need to know where he’s likely to strike again. And it isn’t lightning. He has a specific target.”

  “Other Heismans.”

  “You just need to find any other Heismans in Florida.”

  I shook my head. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “But you know someone who does.” He raised his eyebrows.

  “No. No way.”

  “You know she’ll know. If anyone has their ear to the ground on this, it’ll be Beccy.”

  “I’m sure there’s another way.”

  Ron opened the door and smiled. “There isn’t a better way.” He was grinning like the proverbial cat as he stepped out and closed the door. Performance exits were becoming a thing with him. I looked at the notes from BJ Baker. The idea of reporting to him that I had gotten nowhere didn’t fill me with joy. And the road forward was a thorny one. I looked at Lizzy. She shook her head like a school teacher giving a pupil an emphatic no. I stuffed the notes in my pocket and headed out to Longboard Kelly’s to ruminate on my options.

  Chapter Twelve

  TWO BEERS AND a turkey sandwich did nothing for me or the case. Thinking about Ron in a suit, out earning our pay packet while I sat ruminating over a beer drove me from the bar. I walked into the office, grabbed a cup of water from the cooler and asked Lizzy to get BJ Baker for me. I sat behind my desk and kicked my shoes off. My phone beeped and I picked it up and Lizzy told me she had Mr. Baker on the line.