It's Murder at the Buy-Right

54

 "Deke!" Daisy Ann cried.

"Daisy Ann! Look at this mess!" Deke said. "If I didn't know better, I'd swear the Bodine boys were in here."

"Oh, Deke," she said, "are you alright?"

"Yeah," he said. "I feel like I been run over by an eighteen wheeler on the Interstate, but I'm okay. And I never thought I'd say this, but thanks, Richmond."

"No problem," Eades said.

The doctor was examining Deke. Eades had called in reinforcements, and Monroe had been handcuffed, given a clean bill of health in the ER, and carted off to jail.

Daisy Ann and Richmond Eades sat in a waiting room a few doors down. Albion had ordered him to hang around for a statement from Deke.

"It was touch and go there," Eades said.

"Yes, it was," she said. "I just hope that since he's awake, everything will be fine."

"Yeah," the deputy said, "but I was talking about the standoff in the room."

"Oh," she said. "Yeah, that too."

"What tipped you off I was telling the truth?"

"Eye for and eye."

"I don't understand," Eades said.

"It was the glass eyeball," Daisy Ann said.

"The what?"

"It always bothered me," she said. "why put an eyeball in that fake fur with the trap?"

"A warning?"

"Yeah," she said. "But I didn't know it at the time. That's what kept bothering me.

When Deke and I found the snake in the case and the trap with the glass eyeball, we assumed it was just some pranks committed by kids. When Monroe said that about an eye for an eye, there was something in his voice I'd never heard before. Evil, Richmond. Pure evil. I guess the rubber snake was about Deke. I didn't put it together. But Deke has that fine tattoo on his arm."

"Monroe was trying to get Deke to back off. My guess is, he broke into the store."

"But how?" asked Daisy Ann. "There were no marks where any door had been jimmied."

"Tex's tools," Eades said. "He was robbed, remember? I think Monroe removed the hinges off that side door in the back."

"The one nobody uses," Daisy Ann said.

"Exactly. That door was wiped clean as a whistle. If nobody used it, it should have been covered with dust."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"I noted it in my notes. I'd grown suspicious of Monroe. He'd been disappearing or hanging around Albion's sandwich shop."

"Everyone knows what that place is," she said.

"You're right. But since Albion's my boss and the owner, my hands were tied. That's where I ran into Burnell and Niles. They were fighting the night you dropped out of Foslo's plane."

"I remember. Deke and I were on the way to have my ankle checked out."

"We separated them. I lucked out and got Nile's side of the story. Burnell kept up his dropout routine. Monroe was suspicious, but Burnell kept his yap shut.

Niles, on the other hand, was running his mouth like a bad case of diarrhea. He kept saying Burnell was a rat. Wasn't what he appeared to be.

I caught up with Burnell a few days later. He admitted to me he was a reporter. It didn't take a nuclear scientist to figure out he was here investigating some of the sleazy things that were going on in the county.

I assured him I was on his side, but he still had doubts. I told him if he needed a friend that Deke Dewitt was about as good as he would find.

He thanked me. I warned him that Niles was on to him, and he'd better be careful.

When Burnell turned up dead and looking like beat meat, I was pretty sure Monroe had something to do with it."

"But why not go after Niles?" Daisy Ann asked.

"Niles was living off the county," he said.

"I don't follow."

"In jail," Eades said.

"Oh, yeah," she said. "Midge was saying something about him being arrested on some trumped up charges."

"Niles was off the streets. I kept asking myself who wanted Burnell out of the way."

"But Monroe has always seemed to me to be like such a . . . well, slow type."

"I know what you're saying. Dimwit. But that was just an act. I've seen that boy when he thought no one was watching. He was sly and smart.

Let's put it this way, a lot of stuff got 'missing' down at the station. Dope. A few guns. Even some cash.

Politics is a nasty business. The deputies were divided between Albion and Hillerby Tillis. I threw my hat in with Hillerby. But Monroe was smart. He refused to pick sides.

Told Albion that it was all too deep for him.

Albion's mind was focused on the election. He wants to win, and he wants to win bad. But even Albion knows that if higher ups are brought in, it would look good to have an unbiased person handling the allegations that have swirled around the department for a while now.

Who do you think he put in charge of the investigation?"

"Deke's nephew, Monroe," Daisy Ann said.

"Bingo," said Eades. "The very one I believe has been responsible for a lot of what's wrong in the sheriff's office."

"You could have objected to Albion's choice," she said.

"And had them throw up the fact that I hold my liquor a little too well."

"I see," she said.

She looked at the shining tiles. There was something more she wanted to say.

"I really liked Monroe," she said, flatly.

"Everyone did. Just a good ole' country hick deputy not too big on brains but nice."

"Uh-huh. What do you think Deke will say when you talk to him?"

"I hope he remembers the night of the attack," Eades said.

"Do you think he'd feign forgetting to get Monroe off?"

"Not Deke."

"No," she said, "not Deke."

"It might break his heart," said Eades.

"No," said Daisy Ann. "I know that man. It will fire up his sense of justice that his own nephew tried to knock him off to cover his crimes."

"I'm just sorry Burnell's notebook was burned up in the fire."

"Wait a minute!" Daisy Ann said. "You talk to Deke all you want when the doctor's finished with him, but don't go anywhere until I get back."

"What are you talking about?"

"Just promise you'll stay here, Richmond."

"Sure," he said.