Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

The garbage truck came to a screeching halt in front of my driveway, and a burly blond man in a red shirt and Levi’s came over to collect my cans. He took them both and emptied them one by one into the back of the truck. I hesitated, thinking of all the things I could do with Gordon Lively’s five thousand dollar bonus.

The guy in the truck gave me a curious smile.

“Is that it, lady?”

I shook my head. “Just one more thing,” I said, and tossed the tape in with the rest of the garbage.

Spare Change

by Chris Rogers

“The Jag don’t belong here,” Murley was saying, big belly grazing the side mirror as he faced the young cop. “Anybody could see that. Sticks out like a damn poodle at a dogfight.”

Jeff Rickey leaned his fifteen-year-old body across the hood of the Chevy he was detailing to swipe at a nonexistent smudge on the polished windshield. He’d never witnessed a real life crime investigation before and didn’t want to miss a word.

Officer Packet stooped, hands on uniformed thighs, to peer in the Jaguar’s driver-side window. Careful, Jeff noticed, not to touch anything and spoil the chance of lifting latent fingerprints. Jeff liked that. It meant the officer had some experience at crime scenes, and maybe something could be learned from him.

“Answer me this,” Murley said, meaty lips pooching in and out as he chewed on the stump of a carrot. He’d stopped smoking cigars, doctor’s orders, but said he couldn’t get through the day without something between his teeth. “Why would any sane human being steal an eight-year-old Dart and leave this spanking new Jag in its place? Don’t make sense.”

The officer straightened to his full six feet plus. Gazing around the car lot, he unbuttoned his shirt pocket to pull out a pencil and a small notepad.

Rookie, Jeff thought miserably, getting a first-time straight-on look at the cop’s youthful face. Just his luck. But Packet appeared intelligent and not completely green, and anyway, every cop had to be a rookie sometime.

“Those chains.” Packet nodded toward the north entrance where fifty-gauge chain links lay piled beside the foot-high steel barrier that kept thieves from driving Murley’s Used Cars off the lot at night. “Were they secured when you left here last night?”

“Tighter’n a new belt after Thanksgiving dinner.” Murley hitched his pants an inch higher over an expansive gut. “Hell, it’s the last thing I do of a night. Drag the chains across the exits, snap on the west side padlock, drive my Caddy out, and lock up the north side. Same routine every night, ten P.M., come hail or kinfolk.”

“Who else has a key to those locks?”

“Nobody.”

“Keep a spare key in the office?”

Murley plucked the mangled carrot stump from his mouth and spit. “Keep a spare set of everything locked up in the desk drawer.”

“Locked.” The officer made a note on his pad. “The drawer’s always locked?”

“Hell no, not during the daytime. We got to get in and out of that desk to get applications and such.”

“So any one of your salesmen could have borrowed the key long enough to make a copy.”

Murley tongued a speck of carrot from his lip to his fingertip. “Ain’t none of my salesmen dumb enough to steal a Dart and leave off a Jag.”

Packet made another notation. Jeff thought it was time the officer called in the license number and had Records run a trace on the Jaguar’s plates.

As soon as Jeff finished school and could pass the exams, he was going to be a cop. Not a patrol cop, but a genuine crime investigator. He was good at figuring things out. Two years earlier he had tracked down the Pattersons’ cat when it disappeared for three days, found it a few doors down, accidentally locked in a neighbor’s house when they left on vacation.

Catching Murley frowning at him, Jeff dropped to his knees and rubbed vigorously at the Chevy’s polished wheel cover. He couldn’t see quite as well now, but he could hear the oystershell ground cover crunching under the officer’s hard-soled shoes as he circled the Jaguar, scribbling on his tablet.

“It’s got a flat,” the cop said, apparently spying the right front wheel.

“Yep.” Murley’s tone said it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out. “These fancy foreign jobs get flats just like the homegrown variety when somebody slashes the tire wall.”

Jeff watched the reflection in the Chevy’s chrome as the officer folded his long body to examine the three inch gouge. He made another note on his pad and stood up.

“You have a look inside the car before you called us? Try to find out who it belongs to?”

“Didn’t touch nothing,” Murley said. “Told the kid not to touch nothing, either. Don’t belong to me, don’t want no part of it.”

But Jeff watched Murley’s eyes roaming over the sleek sports car, taking in the wire wheels and twin pipes, probably thinking that half the cars on the lot, lumped up and sold as a package, wouldn’t bring in as much as this gem was worth.

Gem or not, Jeff didn’t like Jaguars.