Page 152 of Hello, Summer
Evancho shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “I can’t get into that.”
“You paid him under the table, in cash, and there was no paperwork, right?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t even know if that was his real name, do you?”
“Nobody’s real name is Buddy Bright,” Evancho protested. “Lots of folks in this business have radio names.”
“But don’t most station managers and owners actually know their employees’ real names?” Conley asked.
Evancho fiddled with a paper clip, bending and twisting it. “You didn’t happen to be listening toUp All Nightlast night, did you?”
“No,” she said. “I was on deadline at theBeacon.”
“Right,” he said slowly. “The competition. Anyway, I’m not normally up that late, but my lady friend fixed enchiladas for supper, and I had some awful acid reflux. I did happen to be listening. Buddy had a caller—guy called himself Pooh Bear—and he said he recognized Buddy’s voice from when he lived in Detroit. Buddy was playing it cool, but then the guy said he knew Buddy wasn’t even his name, that it was really Robert Breitweis, that he had killed some girl and then walked away from jail and was a wanted man.”
“What?”
“I can tell youthatgot my attention,” Evancho said. “Buddy cut the guy off, and then he cut his shift short. Put on one of his old ‘Best of Buddy’ tapes, and that was it. Didn’t even sign off. When my morning girl got here today, the station was locked up tight, and Buddy was gone.”
Conley was taking notes as fast as she could. She looked up at Evancho. “Did you tell that to the cops?”
The station owner nodded and sighed heavily. “That detective? I forget his name. He looked the name up on some database he had on his phone and got all excited. Said it was true about Buddy being a fugitive.Can’t hardly believe it. I hate like hell this happened to Buddy. He was born for radio. Not many like that these days. Folks really liked him. We’re gonna miss him.”
Winnie, Conley thought, would be brokenhearted. Like a lot of other people.
“Did he ever talk about his personal life? Family? Friends?”
“Not really. He knew a lot about music. Could tell you anything about sixties and seventies rock. That’s mostly what he talked about. Music. And his car.” Evancho gave Conley an appraising look. “That cop told me Buddy saved your life by running over that dude, then ramming it into your house. Buddy must’ve thought an awful lot of you to do something like that.”
“Yeah,” Conley said. “Guess so. Do you know where Buddy lived?”
Evancho scribbled an address on a piece of paper. “I had to drop off his pay one time, when he was off work sick. It’s just a bitty little apartment, round back of the house.”
58
Skelly was in the car, waiting in the parking lot. “Did you get what you needed?”
“Sort of.” She gave him a quick recap of what Neal Evancho had revealed about the late Buddy Bright.
“That’s pretty damn odd,” Skelly said. “What’s our next move?”
She showed him the slip of paper from Evancho. “We’re going to 505 Oleander Trail.”
“That’s not too far away. What’s there?”
“It’s Buddy’s place.”
The house was a modest, pale-yellow, concrete-block bungalow on a block of modest pastel houses of the same fifties vintage, with jalousie windows and a row of citrus trees in the front yard and an unpaved crushed-shell driveway.
“The guy at the radio station said it’s around back,” she told Skelly.
They heard the cat’s plaintive yowling as they walked down the vacant driveway.
“Sounds like kitty’s missing Buddy,” Conley said.
The apartment had once been a garage. Conley turned the door handle. It was locked.
