Hearse of a Different Color (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries) (36 page)

“Not at all. He didn’t substantially alter the financial arrangements he had set up for Ann Kingman. He left those intact. He restructured from other parts of the will.”

“What a good old romantic,” I said bitterly. “Keeps a nest egg for his wife of thirty-five years. I wonder if he thought he was buying his way out of guilt.”

“Who can say? But I thought you’d find this bit of news interesting.”

“I do, Constance. I find it very interesting. It almost makes me believe in a vindictive God. Richard Kingman didn’t live long enough to enjoy his new life with Helen Waggoner, and Helen didn’t live long enough to cash in on her newly minted good fortune. This is a major argument for family values, don’t you think?”

“It’s a major argument for something fishy is what it is.”

“Well, you’re right. But there’s nothing fishy about Kingman’s death at least. His big magnanimous ticker blew up in the middle of surgery. That’s just the way that the world goes round.”

“I was thinking of Helen Waggoner. Come on, Hitch, think about it. The woman was killed within days of her lover’s death and deposited on the door of his wake, for Christ’s sake. What’s that all about?”

The waiter returned with our calamari. He asked after my merlot. I told him its jaw was pretty firm, but that it had loose teeth. He walked away puzzled. I hope. The calamari was good. Sometimes it’s like eating deep-fried rubber bands. This time it wasn’t. Henry’s did it right. I wolfed down a few squid and chased it with a splash of the dentally challenged merlot.

“I think I can tell you what that’s all about. And I’ve certainly been trying to figure it out.” I set my elbows up on the table and gave Constance the short version of what I had learned over the past several days. I told her about my figuring out in the first place that it was Richard Kingman with whom the waitress was having her affair, that it was Kingman who had purchased her sporty little car for her and who was financing her new wardrobe and preparing to locate a new apartment for her and all the rest. I told her how Kingman had directed his new gal to go see his brother, the baby doctor, to look after her pregnancy, and how Dr. Dan had immediately scurried off to Kingman’s wife to tell tales out of school.

“Daniel Kingman loathed his brother and envied him at the same time. The closest he ever came to getting back at him was to have an affair with Kingman’s wife. It lasted several months and then, I guess, simply petered out. Not exactly a rousing revenge.”

“But killing his brother’s lover
after
his brother is already dead … you think that’s a worthwhile revenge?”

“Well, for me it wouldn’t be, no. I like to stare into the eyes of the person I’m getting back at. I’m a gloater. But Daniel Kingman … He strikes me as preposterously spineless. He could never stand up to his brother. I mean, here’s this guy, an obstetrician. A good solid practice. He has probably brought hundreds and hundreds of babies into the world. Thousands, I suppose. But every time his brother waltzes in and needs someone to take care of some woman he’s knocked up, Daniel is ready to jump just as high as big brother says.”

“So then what are you telling me, that after Richard Kingman dies, this Daniel Kingman orders a hit on Helen Waggoner? I’m not sure if I buy that. It sounds much more plausible to me that the wronged widow would be the one.”

“She said she wasn’t. And I believe her.”

“Yeah, but you’re a sucker.”

“I won’t take that personally.”

She started to laugh, then held back. “You should.”

I leaned back and folded my arms over my chest. “Now explain something to me. If you knew that Helen Waggoner had recently been added to Richard Kingman’s will, why didn’t you take that information to the police? Why am I hearing this from you now?”

“I didn’t even hear the name Helen Waggoner in connection with Kingman’s wake until a few hours ago.”

“You can explain?”

Constance dabbed at the side of her mouth with a napkin before answering. “Of course I can. For starters I wasn’t even in town the night this all happened. I was up in Boston. The storm locked me in for an extra day. I was stuck on the runway at Logan for four hours before they finally canceled my flight. In fact, when I got back to the office I swapped war stories with Michael about the blizzard. He told me how he had spun out in his car and flipped it onto its side.”

“Where was this?”

“Down there along the Jones Falls. Near the Streetcar Museum?”

“Interesting. Was he hurt?”

“Enough to be taken over to Mercy Hospital. He said he was knocked out for a little bit. He had a slight concussion, and there was something about his elbow. Bone chip or something. But he was lucky. He said the emergency room at Mercy was a zoo. People were just flooding into the place. He was there for hours just waiting to get X-rayed.”

“So then he didn’t even make it to the wake.”

“No. He didn’t.” Constance pointed her empty fork at me. “But what he did do, Hitchcock, was he pulled the Kingman will. Rather, he already had. I was out of town when Kingman died, so Michael handled things with the family. I mean, he probably would have in any case, given his connection with them.”

“So what do you mean you only made the Helen Waggoner connection a few hours ago?”

“This is the thing. You have to remember, Michael and his wife were murdered just a few days after the Kingman funeral. I think you can understand how that took most of my attention for awhile. It’s a horrible thing. Of course Michael’s accounts had to be covered by others at the firm. Divvied up. I reinherited the Kingman estate, so to speak. It was only this evening that I took a look at them.”

“This evening?”

“Hitchcock, despite what people might think, lawyers work hard for the money. Even though this is Saturday, I was working on some briefs at home and I realized that I needed to pick up a few other files from the office. So I swung by there on my way to symphony hall. I don’t know what made me look at the Kingman file, but I did. And that’s when I saw that the will Michael had pulled was the old one. It wasn’t the one I had worked on with Kingman.”

“The one that named Helen Waggoner as a beneficiary.”

“Exactly. So I kept looking. It’s standard practice for our paralegals to keep the files on our clients updated. The Kingman file included several newspaper articles concerning this peculiar event that had taken place the night of Kingman’s wake. And there it was. Or rather, she was. Helen Waggoner.”

Constance took a sip of her wine. I sat with the information while our waiter came by to check on us. He was a young guy. Wire-rim glasses. A thought came to me. As soon as he had taken off I asked Constance if she had ever met Jeffrey Kingman.

“No. Why?”

“Because he knew about this, too. Or at least some of it. He knew about his father’s affair.”

“He told you that?”

“Jeffrey? No. I found that out just today. I knew that Helen had had a fight about a month ago with some guy at the bar where she worked. One of the waitresses out there remembered. At first I thought maybe this was the guy who killed her. Maybe it was just a customer with a loose nut. Later on I figured it might have been Helen’s lover, that he had come out to the bar and the two got into a lover’s quarrel. But when I was out there at Sinbad’s today, the bartender recognized Jeffrey Kingman from a picture I had with me. He remembered this was the guy who had gotten into it with Helen.”

“So then what? Kingman’s son knew about the affair and he was out at the bar to confront Helen?”

“That’s my guess. Jeffrey Kingman apparently never got along with his father. He definitely sided with Mama. It makes sense to me that if he learned about the affair, he might go out there to stir things up.”

“And how would he learn of the affair?”

“Well, Daniel Kingman knew. He passed the news on to Ann Kingman. What do you think? Mommy has sonny over for dinner and tells him that Daddy is screwing around again? I can buy that.”

“Did you ask her if she told her son?”

“No. At the time I was out at the Kingman house I didn’t know that Jeffrey was even in the picture. I didn’t find that out until I went back out to Sinbad’s glorious cave.”

“So you’ve got two suspects, Hitch. Not just one. Kingman’s brother and Kingman’s son. And frankly, since I wasn’t there to get the snow job you got, I’d say you actually have three.”

“Ann Kingman.”

“She doesn’t sound like a milquetoast to me.”

I held up my hand and waggled everything but my thumb. “Four,” I said. Constance lifted an eyebrow. “Michael Fenwick. Fenwick was not in attendance at Kingman’s wake.”

“He was in a car crash.”

“So you say. So he says. And if he really was at the emergency room at Mercy like he said, then fine.” I curled down one finger.

“Why in the world would Michael Fenwick want to murder Helen Waggoner?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, Constance. I’m just turning over the cards here to see what we’ve got. You said that Fenwick was a family friend of the Kingmans. How so? Do you know the connection?”

“I think he went to college with the son.”

“Jeffrey.”

“I’m almost positive. I know that Hal Stern was very pleased when Michael brought the Kingman accounts over to the firm. I’m pretty sure I recall that it was a college connection.”

I finished off my merlot. Constance was close behind. “Do you want another?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. I’m getting tired. This is going to be a short evening for me. Is that all right?”

I told her it was fine with me. My day was already a week long. I signaled the waiter. While we waited for the bill, I asked, “Constance, can you do me a favor? It’s a big one. If it’s at all possible, can you make as if you didn’t pick up the Kingman file today?”

“Well … I suppose I could. Though I don’t see why I should. The police will certainly want to know what I’ve come across.”

“Of course. And they will. But today’s Saturday. No one would expect that you’d been into the office anyway. And tomorrow … can’t this wait until Monday, Constance? What’s the harm? Can you give me just two days?”

“I don’t like this, Hitchcock.”

“I’m not asking you to like it. I’m just asking if you’ll do it.”

“And you’ll tell me why?”

I pawed through my ragged satchel of charm and dragged out the best imploring expression I could find. It probably wasn’t my best, given my fatigue, but it was apparently sufficient.

“I shouldn’t,” Constance said darkly. She allowed the implication to echo: she would.

My list of suspects was contracting and expanding like an accordion. No sooner had I tossed out Haden, Gloria, Gary, the mystery boyfriend who turned out to have already been dead himself at the time of Helen’s murder, and a non-existent irate psycho-customer at Sinbad’s, and had narrowed it all down to Daniel Kingman, then the list expanded again to take in Ann Kingman and Jeffrey Kingman and now there was even Jeffrey’s college chum, Michael Fenwick, to consider.

Constance dropped me off at my place and I took Alcatraz out for a much-delayed relief romp. We headed away from the harbor—our usual route—and went instead up the block a few doors, where I stood for a long time on the curb across the street from the funeral home—in front of St. Teresa’s—and gazed at the front steps, trying to picture Michael Fenwick dragging Helen out of the car and up the several steps. But then what? Did he ditch the Pontiac, hop into his own car and hightail it several miles north where he “conveniently” lost control on the slippery street and flipped his car over? The section of roadway that Constance described is not heavily traveled, especially at night. It’s possible that Fenwick could have fudged the time of his accident. He told Constance he had been knocked unconscious. If no one witnessed the spin out, Fenwick could have reported the incident having taken place a little earlier. Coupled with the time it took for Helen’s body to be discovered on my front doorstep, the lawyer would have laid the groundwork for a fairly decent alibi, in the off-chance that one would have ever been required.

I went across the street and sat down on the cold top step. Alcatraz remained over by the church, mingling with the plaster farm animals near the manger. He looked as if he was trying to get them to come out and play. I tried to replay the scene again, from this new perspective. From ground zero. I imagined the Kingman wake going on inside. Ann, Jeffrey, Daniel … all of us moving about in our somber slow dance. I pictured the white Pontiac pulling to a stop right in front of me. The door opening …

Damn it. Michael Fenwick was the one I wanted to talk to. The one person I couldn’t speak with. Alcatraz trotted across the street. “Thanks for nothing,” I muttered. I didn’t mean my dog. I was thinking about the guy who had so rudely seen to it that Michael Fenwick would be forever unavailable for comment. Just my luck. First Fenwick, then …

I was off like a shot.

•••

Misty Dew was dancing to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird” when I entered the club. I paused just inside the velvet curtain to adjust to the low lights. The dancer’s interpretation of the rock classic was both complex and primal all at once. “Freebird” is a very energetic song, once it gets rolling. One thing I noticed—and I had noticed this the last time I was here—the physically loquacious Ms. Dew was certainly feeling a different rhythm than the one suggested by the screaming guitars and slamming drums. She was swaying like a flower child at Woodstock, her showcase hips working a nifty figure-eight as she bumped and ground in front of the big whiskers on the mirrored wall. Misty was wearing pretty much the same ounce of costuming she had worn on my last visit. The trailing end of her string of glass beads were skipping and dancing about her hips like a little whip.

I slid onto a stool and immediately a hand reached out of the darkness and slid onto my crotch. Yes, nice to meet you too. The woman with the cellophane hair leaned in from the stool next to me. I got the picture. That was her hand. Her cellophane was a different hue tonight. Blue. She was pretty in a sexy, android sort of way.

“So you’re not working behind the bar tonight?” I asked.