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After I’ve given it to her she dials the number.
“Total Towing,” I hear a loud voice answer her call. Nora explains the situation.
“Let me look into that for you, ma’am,” the voice booms, making Nora wince and pull the phone from her ear. “Kenny! Kenny!” We both hear the man holler. With a shake of her head, Nora switches the call to speaker and we both listen as Kenny’s voice comes on the line.
“What are you yelling about, Leroy! I was taking a nap.”
“This lady on the phone wants to know where you took her Chevy truck last night, ya meathead.” Leroy has lowered his voice and seems to think we can no longer hear him. “Said she called the place she told you to take it to and it’s not there. Gee whiz, Kenny, why do you always have to be such a moron?”
“Hey,” Kenny blares, not worried about volume control, “I’m not a moron. I took that car where the lady told me to. She got all snooty with me and told me to take it to Northview Auto Repair.”
“What? I did not!” Nora exclaims indignantly, forgetting that we’re not supposed to be privy to their conversation. A second later Leroy is on the line.
“Ma’am, I do apologize but it seems the car was taken elsewhere,” he drawls. “It’s mighty hard to get good help these days.”
“Good help!” Kenny is irate. “That’s some kind of uh way to talk about your own brother, Leroy. I did what the lady asked. She was all upset with me because I walked in on her smooching that security guy. I just wanted to double-check I was right about where to take the truck, and it’s a good thing I did, since she changed the location. Mind you, she wouldn’t even look at me, just started hollering about me taking the dang truck to Northview. Crazy lady. Seemed right pleasant when she first got there, butchya never can tell.”
“Kissing Frank?” Nora is aghast. “I did not…would never…someone was kissing Frank?”
“I’m awful sorry, ma’am,” Leroy says again. “But at least we’ve located your vehicle. Please be sure to remember Total Towing for all of your future towing needs.”
And with that Leroy hangs up.
“Oh my gosh, can you believe that?” she cries, looking at me. “Frank had a woman there! And Kenny thought it was me!”
“You know, I thought I saw someone move past a window on the upper floor when we first got there,” I muse. “Must’ve been Frank’s lady friend.”
“Do you think she has anything to do with all of this?” Nora makes a vague gesture to my garage, like it’s the new headquarters for our murder coverup.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’m not sure what to think…unless…”
“Unless what?” she prods.
“Well, what if the woman was Connie Wharfman?”
“Connie Wharfman?” Nora’s mouth drops. “You think I look like Connie Wharfman?”
“Not from the front. And I guess she is a few inches shorter than you. But you two do have a similar build and shorter dark hair. I suppose I could see how, in the dark, from behind, he could mistake her for you.”
“Frank and Connie,” Nora murmurs, shaking her head at the thought.
“If he exposed her husband’s affair, I could see that driving her into his arms.”
Nora digests this.
“But if they were both at the office building, neither of them could’ve moved the body to my front yard, and didn’t we think she was involved with that somehow?”
“Maybe we were wrong,” I say with a shrug. “Or maybe it wasn’t Connie he was kissing.”
“Frank and Connie,” she repeats in dismay. I take her by the elbow and tug her forward.
“We still have a lot of unanswered questions,” I remind her. “Let’s stick to our original plan and go find Cleo.”
“Right, sure, of course,” she agrees, falling into step beside me, still looking shell-shocked.
We reach my car and I grab Nora’s door for her, then walk around back to my side and hop in. I’m settling in when Nora’s door opens back up.
“Where are you going?” I begin to ask, but the question dies on my lips as I see what she’s doing: retrieving a manila envelope from under the windshield wipers of my car. Silently she gets back in the car, envelope in hand. She turns it over in her hands. It’s unmarked, giving us no indication of what’s inside.
