Hearse of a Different Color (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries) (13 page)

“Is it okay with you if I smoke in here?”

“It’s a free country.”

Haden sniffed at that. “Used to be.”

He had taken a seat on the sofa, directly underneath the starving artist’s painting of mountain bliss. The smoke from his cigarette curled right up past the deer.

“So what’s this about Helen’s funeral? You’re the undertaker, right?”

“All your mortuary needs.”

“What? You make house calls?” He laughed at his own joke. And he laughed alone.

“We’ve been having trouble getting the grave dug in this weather,” I explained. “Murphy’s Law, you know. Everything we’d normally use seems to be broken.”

“That Murphy is a pain in the ass.”

“He’s good at what he does.”

“So, why don’t you burn her?”

Oh, the charm just oozed from this guy. You just wanted to run up to him and hug him. “In fact that’s what I’m here to discuss with Miss Waggoner,” I said. “By the way, we call it cremation.”

“I know what you call it.” He leaned back and draped his arms out along the back of the sofa. “I think
Miss Waggoner
just wants it over with. I think you can go ahead. I mean, with the cremation.”

“I need her to tell me. She’s the next of kin.”

Haden took a long pull on his cigarette as he crossed his legs. He was attempting to affect a worldliness of sorts, and it wasn’t working. I was seeing very few traces of the rakish young hustling filmmaker of only a few years back. Haden’s budding Von Stroheim aura seemed to have abandoned him. I suppose veering off into pornography—not to mention uppers, downers and whatever else he was into (or was into him)—can do that.

“I’m the boy’s father,” Haden said. “Helen and me. Bo. He’s our kid.” He picked something off his tongue. Tobacco, probably. I hope. “So I’m next of kin, too.”

I corrected him. “Well in fact you’re not. Your son is, but you’re not.”

“What do you mean? I just told you.”

“Were you and Helen married at the time of her death?”

Haden let out a little snort. “What do you mean ‘time of her death?’ You mean like, two days ago?”

“Were you ever married to Helen?”

“Hell no. But that’s her fault. Stubborn goddamn woman. The moment she finds out she’s knocked up she shows me the door. Hardheaded bitch. Helen turned into a real pain in the ass, I’ll tell you.”

He swore again as he savored the memory. Apparently nobody had covered the concept of not speaking ill of the dead with the gentleman on the couch. He took another long pull on his cigarette.

“Bitch.”

I’d heard him the first time. “So I take it that you two were madly in love.”

Haden squinted at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Christ, what
was
this guy on? “Love. It’s a term of endearment? Affection? I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It was invented by Cole Porter? It means never having to say you’re sorry? Rhymes with June and moon?”

“What is … ? Is this supposed to be some kind of a joke?”

“Skip it.”

“You’re a pretty fucked up guy, aren’t you?” Haden said.

It was too easy a straight line to even bother with. I simply shrugged.

“Anyway, what’s love got to do with it?” Haden grumbled, stealing a line from Tina Turner. This spawned an image of Ike. Which—given this guy’s exploitation of Helen Waggoner—maybe wasn’t such an irrelevant image.

“Skip it,” I said again. “I’m just accustomed to the idea of people being a little upset when someone close to them has been murdered, that’s all.”

“Helen was shot, man. That’s fucked up. You think I’m some kind of hard-ass? Just because she was killed doesn’t mean I suddenly got all these fond memories of her, that’s all. I mean, we were cool for awhile there, okay? But pain in the ass is pain in the ass. Can’t change that, man.”

“Nobody’s asking you to, Terry.”

“I’m here, aren’t I? I mean, I heard that Helen was killed and here I fucking am.” He slapped a hand against his chest. “I don’t have to be here.”

I was tempted to ask him if he’d let me hold his Mr. Congeniality Award sometime. Instead I asked, “How did you hear about Helen’s being killed?”

“What do you think? I can read. I saw it in the paper. Dead fucking waitress. There was her name.”

I decided to go fish. “So Vickie didn’t call you to tell you? I mean, as Bo’s father?”

Haden’s expression screwed up. “Her?”

“Yes. Her.”

An ugly grin stretched across his face. “She’s all right, isn’t she.”

I ignored his appraisal. “Did Vickie know that you were Bo’s father?” I realized that Vickie had skirted that same question the day before in my office. Or maybe she didn’t skirt it; but she didn’t answer it. Neither did Haden now. He stubbed out his cigarette, his gaze wandering to the window.

“Helen, man … She was a piece of work. Maybe we should have stayed together, you know. I don’t know. Even a pain in the ass the way she was, she was something else. I mean, when she really had it.” He fell back on the couch and looked up at the ceiling. “Fucking Helen … Just like her mother.”

This brought me to attention. “Her mother? What about her mother?”

Haden steadied his gaze at me. His pupils were doing sidestrokes. “What about her? Ruth Waggoner. Now there was a fucking pistol, man. That woman was something in her day.”

“Just how far back do you go with this family?” I asked.

Haden was looking at me as if I had sprouted a gourd. “You were a teenager once, weren’t you? Didn’t you ever go down to The Block? You know, use a fake ID and get in to see a show?”

“I never needed a fake ID,” I said, unable to keep my own smarmy smile off my face. I stretched my legs out, just in case he forgot how much taller than him I was. If this guy wanted to talk about pain-in-the-ass, I can get in my licks.

My efforts sailed right past him. “Well, if you missed Ruth Waggoner, man, you missed the real deal. She could’ve gone places, you know, except by the time she came up they were already closing down the fucking Block. It’s shit now. I hate that place. Ruth could’ve been another Blaze Starr. You know Blaze Starr, right?”

Sure. The Two O’clock Club. Stripper, proprietor and philanderer of southern governors. The last big thing on The Block. She has long since hung up her strings and retired to the family home in West Virginia.

“Of course I do,” I said.

“Well, Ruth had some of that shit going. Most of these girls you see now, man, they’re idiots. They’re just pretending. It’s all fucking coo coo coo and wrap themselves around the goddamn pole. Big deal. Ruth was for real. She gave you your money’s worth.”

I needed to straighten out the scenario. “So … when you met Helen you already knew that her mother was Ruth Waggoner? Your childhood idol?”

“Hey, what’s your fucking problem, man?”

“I just asked a question.”

“No, I didn’t know who the hell she was. I just met her. I flipped when I found out though. I couldn’t believe my luck.”

Interesting way to put it. “But Ruth wasn’t still … she wasn’t still dancing by then, was she?” I asked. “She must have retired already.”

Haden chuckled at that. “She pulled her clothes off for a living. You want to call that dancing, go ahead. She was a working girl, man.” Haden pulled out another cigarette, then forgot to light it. It remained in his fingers.

“No man, when I met her she was beat. Saddest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. Here’s this woman who did a real number on me when I was a kid, you know? I mean, Ruth Waggoner. A kid’ll take a woman like that home in his dreams in a fucking heartbeat. I hook up with her daughter and so I go and meet her … and she’s a wreck.”

“The years took their toll, did they?”

“The hell with the years. The booze took its toll. The pills took their toll, man. And then the cancer on top of it all. She was a mess. All that good stuff she used to strut around on that stage, man. … I told Helen flat out. I told her look at your mother. I told her she better make sure she didn’t end up like that. Fucking Helen never listened to anybody though. A goddamned kid. She was already pill crazy. I mean, you know, there’s nothing wrong with a little pick-me-up, but keep a handle on it for Christ’s sake. I mean, Jesus …”

He trailed off. He looked down at the cigarette in his hand like he didn’t know how it got there. Then he looked over at me the same way. I got the feeling that whatever it was he was on had suddenly clicked into its next phase. Whatever handle he had on the situation looked like it had just dropped off. He had the gaze of a goat. Just then, Vickie stepped into the room. She stopped just inside the archway, looking at the two of us as if we were at a dance and she was deciding which was going to be the lucky one.

“I put Bo down for a nap,” she announced.

“We were just talking about your mother,” Haden said, snapping back to life. “The one and fucking only.”

Vickie stiffened. “What about her?”

“I was just going down memory lane. Back to the good old days.”

“That’s what some people might call them.”

“Don’t you know it’s not right to speak bad of the dead? Your mother made a lot of people happy in her day. What the hell’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing’s wrong with that,” Vickie said in a tight voice. “So did Helen. They made the world a happier place.”

“Goddamn right.”

“They just didn’t stick around to enjoy it themselves.”

Vickie spat this last comment directly at the man on the couch. I saw the color flare up in her cheeks. Haden didn’t seem to notice.

“Yeah, what do you want to do about Helen anyway?” he asked. “You want to cremate her? This guy’s got to do something with her. He can’t just keep her on ice until spring.”

I got to my feet. “I’m pretty sure we can get a grave dug by tomorrow,” I said to Vickie. I hadn’t spoken with Pops again, but I knew he would be doing everything in his power. “It’s your call. If you want cremation, I’ll arrange it for you.”

Haden snorted. “You’re next of kin. You and Bo. I’m just the fucking father. You see how much that counts.”

Vickie was looking extremely uncomfortable. And I didn’t think it was
my
presence that had her rattled. “Do I have to decide right now?”

“Not this minute, no,” I said. “Even if Pops … even if they’ve started on the grave, it’s fine. Nobody’s going to force you into anything you don’t want.” I half-directed this last bit in Haden’s direction. If he caught the inference, he didn’t show it. He was leaning forward on his knees, cracking his knuckles. His head was bobbing ever so slightly.

“I’ll call you later then,” Vickie stammered. “Is … is that all right?”

Haden mouthed off from the couch. “What’s that mean? The guy’s come all the way out here. He’s here. What do you have to call him for? Can’t you just make up your mind?”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Of course you can call me.”

Haden fell back on the couch, exasperated. Vickie trained her dark green eyes on me. The mind reading trick. “I’m sorry you had to come all the way out here.”

“No problem.” I held a moment, then started for the door. Vickie followed me. “Didn’t you say something on the phone about some papers you had for me?”

I pulled the door open. “They can wait.”

Haden remained on the sofa. He was shaking another cigarette out of his pack. Apparently he had forgotten about the other one. It was on the couch, next to him. I couldn’t say anything to Vickie without his hearing me. I wanted to ask her if everything was okay. This guy didn’t look like he was planning to go anywhere in a hurry.

“Thank you,” Vickie said. “I
will
call you.”

Her eyes were flashing like silent sirens as she closed the door.

K
ruk had no time for me.

“I can give you one minute, Mr. Sewell. I’ve got bodies dropping out of the sky.”

There was a sense of controlled frenzy at police headquarters. Everyone in the homicide section was either on the phone or dashing off.

“It’s the lawyer,” Kruk explained. “Prominent lawyer and wife gunned down as they were about to leave for Tio Pepes to celebrate their anniversary. Do you have any information about who might have done it?”

“Me? Of course not. I came down to—”

“Then you’re down to thirty seconds. The mayor wants an arrest in this case yesterday.”

“It’s about Helen Waggoner,” I said. I could tell that I was already losing him. A young woman hurried over and handed him a piece of paper. Kruk glanced at it, crumpled it and dropped it onto the floor.

“What about Helen Waggoner? Do you know who killed her?”

“You want me to do all your work for you today, don’t you, Detective.”

“Answer.”

“No, I don’t know. But I think you might want to take a look at the boy’s father. His name is—”

“Terry Haden,” Kruk cut me off again. “We’re not unaware of him, Mr. Sewell. I’ve got a man running him down. But right now, fact of life? A highly connected lawyer and his wife. Execution style. Dead waitress. You can do the math.”

“You’re dropping the investigation?”

“Of course not. I just told you, I’ve got a man looking into Terry Haden’s whereabouts the night of the murder.”

“That’s it? One cop?”

“You bring Helen Waggoner’s killer in here, and I’ll personally arrest him.”

“What’s with all this ‘me, me, me’ today? Do I get my ranger badge if I bring the killer in?”

Kruk sighed. “It’s a question of manpower. We’re doing what we can about the Waggoner killing. Unfortunately, the rest of the killers in our fair city decided not to wait until we were finished with that one. Time marches on. Bodies pile up. You know how it goes.” He consulted his watch. “Do you know what it says, Mr. Sewell?”

“Tick, tick, tick?”

“It says bye-bye.”

A phone on a desk next to us had been ringing. Kruk snatched up the receiver. “Kruk.” He listened intently. Then he scrambled the papers that were on top of the desk until he came up with a pen. “Go on.” He slid into the chair.

I was history here.

The police were putting Helen Waggoner’s murder on the back burner. But at least they had a tag on Terry Haden. I had no proof on the guy, I simply didn’t like him. If Haden did turn out to be Helen’s killer, it seemed likely to me that he would trip up sooner rather than later.