Read Dead Men's Tales (Olivia Grant Mysteries Book 2) Online
Authors: Phyllis A. Humphrey
Dead Men's Tales (Olivia Grant Mysteries Book 2)
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DEAD MEN'S TALES
by
PHYLLIS A. HUMPHREY
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Copyright © 2016 by Phyllis A. Humphrey
Cover design by Estrella Designs
Gemma Halliday Publishing
http://www.gemmahallidaypublishing.com
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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I suppose I first heard the saying, "Dead men tell no tales," when I was nine or ten, at a Hollywood movie where the pirates made the aristocrats walk the plank. However, I never expected to have to disprove it. Not me. I'm Olivia Grant—Livvie to my friends—age 39, widowed and divorced once each, brown hair and five pounds overweight. All right, seven pounds, but who's counting? I live in a suburban, split-level house, teach bridge, and deliver teddy bears to children in the hospital. I'm not the type to try to solve crimes and end up in a confrontation with a killer. Right?
Wrong.
On a scale of one to ten, I considered working from time to time in this office a minus three. Boring. About on a par with watching water freeze. However, I hadn't agreed to help out for excitement. Yes, my brother, Brad, had been a San Francisco cop and was now a private investigator, but how much excitement could there be in finding a few missing persons—once a missing dog—and solving an occasional case of insurance fraud?
Just a few months before, while visiting relatives in England, I'd helped solve the murder of my uncle's trophy wife and decided that qualified me to join Brad in his new PI footsteps. Or at least keep him organized.
Yet, on that Monday morning in February, I attempted to unlock the hallway door and found the knob turned at my touch. Brad—or maybe the cleaning crew—had forgotten to lock it the night before.
I muttered a G-rated curse. Anyone could have gotten in. In fact, someone had. In one of the two straight wooden chairs against the left-hand wall of the secretary's office sat a young woman. She looked a mess: red-rimmed eyes, disheveled hair, ashen face. Familiar ashen face.
Although I'd known her since she was three, another beat went by before I recognized Debra Hammond, daughter of Rose Hammond, who'd once been my best friend.
"Daddy's dead!" The words exploded before I could say hello. "He's been murdered."
Sometimes time doesn't fly. It gets stuck in a holding pattern. Like at that moment. My heart pumped as if I'd run up the four flights of stairs to the office. I dropped into the chair next to her.
"Your father was murdered?" It didn't compute. That just didn't happen to people I knew. Not Harry, anyway. Although I hadn't seen him in years, I couldn't imagine Harry Hammond, a pleasant man, pillar-of-the-community type, being murdered.
"The police think Mother did it."
Impossible. Rose Hammond couldn't kill anyone, much less her husband, who'd become wealthy enough to give her a house in Hillsborough—the town where Bing Crosby once lived—and enough fur coats to carpet the former Candlestick Park.
"She didn't do it." Debra returned to crying into a soggy handkerchief. The long blonde hair on either side of her pretty face hid large blue eyes coated with thick, wet lashes.
Rose and I met when her daughter Debra and my twin brother and sister—Brad and Samantha, now 29—started preschool. We became good friends, and, together with our husbands, enjoyed dinner on a free Saturday night. Then my husband Stephen died, and, being the odd woman, I stopped accepting her invitations. I married again, but as it turned out, I chose a man with more raging hormones than brain cells. A year later, I divorced him. My friendship with Rose had dwindled to notes on Christmas cards. A heavy mantle of guilt dropped on me. I
should
have kept in touch anyway, invited her for lunch in the city. Something.
"Tell me what's happened. When? How?"
Her words came in spasms. "Saturday night…the Awards Banquet… Someone killed him… Not Mother!"
"Of course not." I confess I felt a little queasy at the thought. In spite of the passage of time, I still considered Rose my best friend. She'd been there for me when Stephen died in that awful freeway accident, bringing dinner, holding my hand, and letting me talk or cry. Tears threatened to erupt again. This time Rose needed
me
.
"Is she in jail? Did she call her lawyer?" I visualized Rose in one of those interrogation scenes from television cop shows with a detective behind the one-way glass. I put my arm around Debra's shoulder.
"She's not in jail, but they took her in for questioning last night. She's taking it very hard. On medication, asleep when I left. She talked to her lawyer, but, knowing Brad is a private investigator, she wants him to help." Her voice rose to a high pitch,
and she leaned toward me, clutching my hand in a painful grip.
"You have to help us. That is, Brad. If you'll just ask him. He can find the real killer."
"Of course he can." I had no idea if Brad could find a murderer. Although he might have done so while on the San Francisco police force or during the six months he spent apprenticed to an older, experienced PI and just never told me. However, I suspected he'd jump at the chance to try. As for me, boredom had just cartwheeled out the door. Tension spread through my body along with conviction. Not only would Brad help Rose,
I'd
help Brad!
He accepted me because I had an independent income and came cheap. He planned to hire a secretary to answer the phone and do his typing and filing, while I learned the business and watered the philodendrons, which were my idea anyway. He didn't really expect me to meddle in his cases, although he sometimes—perhaps trying to impress a client—called me an associate. Besides feeling my London caper gave me the needed credentials, I wanted to feel needed and put my experience to good use. Once I'd been wife, older sister, chauffeur, and comforter. I'd been surrogate queen of the castle and looked up to as Miss Know-it-All. Now, I was none of the above and pretty sure there were no openings anywhere for benevolent dictator.
As if summoned by my confident words to Debra, Brad himself came into the office. He wore a suit, but his tie dangled casually from around his collar. His top shirt button was open, and he wore no coat. Although I wished he'd dress more warmly on cold days, at least he'd grown up without embarrassing our parents too much. He had his father's height—six feet—his dark, wavy hair and blue eyes. He also had his perfect nose and chin, which also didn't hurt his popularity with girls or even mature women.
Our parents hadn't approved of his choice of occupation, but twenty-nine-year-old men never listened to parents or their ten-years-older sisters or even substitute mothers, which is what I'd become when our real mother found unexpected twins too much to handle. Both he and Samantha began making their own decisions at twelve, so they'd had plenty of practice.
Brad paused in the doorway, and I introduced him to Debra, whom he hadn't seen since junior high. He didn't comment on the fact she appeared to have been in a car wash with the top down. Instead, he scanned the trim figure not totally concealed by a designer sweater and jeans.
Debra didn't appear willing or able to repeat what she'd told me, so I did. As I spoke, differing emotions flashed across Brad's face. He'd have to learn to disguise them if he hoped to emulate Philip Marlowe or one of his other fictional detective heroes.
"Right. I just read it in the paper." He raised the folded
Chronicle
he'd been holding in his left hand and pointed it at me. "I didn't connect it."
I told him about Rose wanting a private investigator. "So Debra wants you to find the murderer."
"Damn right…I mean…yeah." He opened the inner door to his private office. "Let's discuss this inside."
Brad's idea of the appropriate office would have been Sam Spade's in
The Maltese Falcon (
an old movie he'd watched dozens of times on television) and not just because we lived in San Ricardo, a suburb south of San Francisco. To him, the more closely his office resembled a dingy bus depot, the better.
Instead, he'd had to rent a sterile section in one of those glass and concrete monoliths that had sprung up all over the Bay Area during the last building boom. Rents there were cheap so the owners could keep a floor or two occupied. Even with that price concession, he sometimes had to supplement his income by dipping into the inheritance from our wealthy, recently deceased British grandfather. Both of the offices were stark white, with gray Berber carpeting, but he'd furnished his in black desks and chairs, a file cabinet, and coat rack, all from Repo Depot.
We arranged ourselves around the desk, Brad in his swivel chair behind it, his back to the window that provided a view of the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge, and Debra and I in the two chairs in front.
After we sat, Brad opened the newspaper to the story. I hadn't read the paper that morning. Although the murder took place Saturday night, it apparently happened too late to make Sunday's paper, despite that edition being the size of an SUV. Brad glanced at it.
"Most of this stuff is probably from old newspaper morgue files." He looked up at Debra. "It says your father was founder and president of Hammond Jewelers—turned it into a successful California chain."
She had regained some composure, although her face seemed pale enough to disappear into the wall behind her. However, she didn't say anything.
"He was found Saturday night at the Delbert Hotel," Brad read. "How'd he come to be there?"
Debra cleared her throat. "He attended the annual awards banquet of the Bay Meadows Mall Association and expected to give a speech and hand out the award statues."
"Apparently someone used one of those statues as the murder weapon."
"That's what the police told us."
"You were there?" Brad pulled out a yellow legal pad and scrawled some notes.
"Yes. Mother and I had driven to the hotel…"
Brad stopped her. "Wait a minute. Your father and mother didn't go together?"
"No." She took a deep breath. "According to my mother, Father had gone to Los Angeles Wednesday morning. He expected to come home Friday night, but something came up, and he stayed another day."
Brad paused a moment. "You live with your parents?"
"No, I have my own apartment. I went to this awards banquet since Daddy is—was—president of the Merchants Association this year." She cleared her throat again. "He said he'd go straight to the hotel from the airport, so Mother phoned and asked me to pick her up. Then they wouldn't have two cars to drive home later."
"Okay. So how'd he end up"—he glanced at the newspaper again—"in the linen storage room?"
A linen closet? I supposed there were worse places to die. Better surrounded by fresh-smelling tablecloths, napkins waiting to be stuffed artistically into wine glasses, and a smattering of fake candles, than in some rat-infested alley.
Debra took her time describing the evening. "First, we had cocktails, and then Daddy asked someone where he could go to read over his notes before dinner."
"Did you see him go into the linen room?" Brad tilted his head up, his pencil poised in midair, like a miniature javelin he planned to hurl.
"No." She frowned. "One of the waiters escorted him to the far end of the dining room, and then they went behind a wall. I didn't see him enter any door after that."
"Okay, what happened next?"
"After a while, someone announced dinner was being served and told us all to be seated."
"Who sat at your table? How many?"
"They were round tables for eight. Besides us, there was Amanda…"
Brad stopped writing and glanced at the newspaper account again. "That would be Amanda Dillon?"
"Yes, my father's assistant. Also John Ziegler, the vice president of Daddy's company, along with his wife, and Carl Novotny, the marketing director."
"No Mrs. Novotny?" Brad asked.
"No, they're divorced—or perhaps still in the process. They separated last year."
Brad jotted a note and looked up again. "That's seven. No eighth person at the table?"
"No. Amanda is single and didn't bring anyone."
While Brad studied his pad, I visualized Amanda Dillon as one of those over-the-hill spinsters, an all-business harpy who wore no-nonsense shoes and got aroused over a balance sheet.
"Novotny is the man who found the body," Brad said.
"That's right. Daddy still hadn't returned, so Carl said to begin, and he'd get him. He left and didn't come back."
"How long was he gone?"
"I'm not sure. Finally, we noticed a commotion going on near the doorway, and the next thing we knew, policemen showed up, guarding the exits. Then a man came over and got my mother and…" Debra dropped her gaze and put her handkerchief to her face again.
Brad filled in the silence. "Okay, I've got the picture. Between the time your father went into that room and the time Novotny found him, someone apparently went in, picked up one of the metal statues to be handed out as awards, and bashed him over the head with it."
I wished Brad hadn't been so blunt. As if he weren't discussing Debra's father but some derelict who just happened to be living-impaired. Yet, she only nodded.
"You never went near the linen storage room yourself?" he asked her.
"No, I didn't."
I wondered where Brad intended to go with this line of questioning. Did he just want to know if she'd seen anyone suspicious, or did he somehow suspect her?