Hearse of a Different Color (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries) (41 page)

“I guess part of the irony here,” I said, “was that Jeffrey was angling some of his inheritance from the old man to pay for knocking off the old man’s lover, who I’m sure Jeffrey considered at that point nothing more than a gold digger and not at all deserving any of his daddy’s money.”

“So Jeffrey talks to Fenwick? Fenwick has some sort of connection with kindly old Popeye, and the hit gets set up?”

“I can go with that.”

“And Bob’s little tantrum the night of Helen’s murder?”

“Something pissed him off.”

“Money,” Adams said. “When it’s not sex, it’s always money.”

“That’s my guess too. Maybe Popeye was siphoning off too much as the middle man and he got caught. I can see both Bob and Fenwick getting a little riled about that. Whatever the case, the bodies fell. And this morning, another one fell.”

Adams showed the patience of Buddha as I took another sip of my beer. It was for dramatic effect, of course, though the instant I did it I felt like a heel.

“Jeffrey Kingman,” I said. I told him about Kingman’s car going off the Falls Road bridge and into a gully earlier that morning. “Maybe this guy Bob did have a number on Jeffrey, and Jeffrey knew that he was a goner. Or maybe guilt finally caught up with him. Or maybe it really was just plain old ice and a slightly pissed off God.”

I finished off the rest of my beer and—a slave to cheap theatrics—landed the empty glass heavily on the bar.

“The end.”

Adams didn’t say anything for a full minute. His eyes traveled languidly around the bar, almost as if he were looking for the source of a leak or trying to determine an alternate way to get out of the place besides the front door. But I could tell that he wasn’t noticing a thing about the bar. Not really. He was letting the details of my story sift into place. He was poking them and prodding them, sending them out into the air like they were paper airplanes and seeing just how well they flew. I didn’t interrupt. After about a minute—maybe even longer (time in a dark bar, in the daytime, behaves mysteriously)—he turned back to his seltzer, pursed his lips and began shaking his head.

“Nada.”

That’s all he said. One word. Nada. I know that word. That’s Spanish for “You ain’t got shit, Buster Brown.”

I protested, “What do you mean
nada
? Just exactly which part of it is nada to you?”

“Don’t be offended, Hitch. It’s a good story. You’ve really done the work on this one.”

“So, what don’t you like about it?”

“Oh, I like it. I actually think you’ve nailed it. The problem is, you can’t prove any of it. You have nothing concrete to take to the police. It’s a great story, and possibly an accurate one. But that’s all it is, a story. A maybe. A what-if. In a word, nada.”

“Christ, Adams, you sure know how to deflate a guy.”

“I’m sorry. You asked me down here to give you my assessment. I like your conclusions. But they don’t get you anywhere. Unless this Bob character surfaces and fills in the blanks, or confirms enough of your account, it’s all speculation.”

He picked up his glass. “But really, what’s the difference? If you’re right about all of this, most of the bad guys are dead anyway.”

“But Bonnie has no story,” I said. I must have sounded even less convincing than I thought. Either that or the reporter on the barstool next to me had a very well-tuned ear.

“You don’t care about that,” he said flatly.

“Says who?”

“Look, Hitch. You and Bonnie are none of my business.”

“Like you and her are none of mine?”

He took a beat, then cracked a crooked smile. “It’s all fucked up, isn’t it? What’s going on here.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Is this where we fight each other to the death? I recall that was part of your invitation.”

“I don’t think so,” I said to the slender reporter. “I’d slaughter you.”

“Don’t be so certain.”

“You mean you’d kick my bum leg?”

“I’d do what I have to do.”

“Well, look, I suggest we remain civilized about the whole thing. It’s an imperfect world and that’s never going to change. So, there must be a reason. Why don’t we just keep it at ‘it’s all fucked up,’ and let it go at that.”

We clinked glasses and toasted all things fucked up. Of course, my glass was already empty. But I suppose that’s fitting for such a toast. Julia caught my eye, but I waved her off. After the long day I had had previous, I needed a little more clarity in this one. I decided that I’d take the oath. At least until sundown. Maybe the seltzer-sipping reporter was inspiring me.

Adams and I left the bar together. The show outside was spectacular, the snow was still coming down in large lacy flakes. Soft, white humps had appeared where once there had been cars. The red tug in the harbor wore a frosty beard on its bow, frosty eyebrows on its windows and a frosty tuft on its exhaust stack. Adams said that he was parked over on Bond Street. I was going in the opposite direction. He headed off. I considered making a snowball and beaning him in the back with it, just to seal our newfound truce. But I decided against it. I still wasn’t quite sure what I felt about Bonnie and me. I decided it was better to reserve the right to dislike this guy all over again. He vanished in the snow.

I went directly to the funeral home. Jeffrey Kingman’s body had already been released by the hospital, and Sam had picked it up. It was down in the basement. Aunt Billie was standing in the front hallway when I came in the front door, talking with Daniel Kingman. Until they invent a better description than “hangdog” to describe the kind of look that was on the obstetrician’s face, that one will have to do. The two turned toward me as I came in.

“Hitchcock, I believe you know Dr. Kingman.”

“Yes, I do.” I took the baby doctor’s hand and shook it. Gently. There was nothing there. “I’m very sorry about your nephew,” I said. “This is certainly the last thing that your family needs.”

The obstetrician was there to handle the arrangements. I asked after his sister-in-law. “How is Mrs. Kingman holding up?”

“Ann? I … I can’t honestly say. She phoned me at the office and asked if I would handle this for her. She said she really didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Did she say anything else?” I asked. I had the man’s dreary eyes directly in mine. If he were lying, I’d know.

“Anything else?”

“Never mind.” The image of the little silver pistol suddenly popped into my head. “Someone should be with her,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if she says she wants to be left alone. Someone should be there. What about the daughter?”

“I spoke briefly with Joan before I came down here,” Kingman said. “Naturally she is devastated. Jeffrey was such a fine young man.”

This was the wrong setting for me to argue the point. I let it pass.

“Someone should be with Mrs. Kingman,” I said again. “You should call the daughter again.” He saw in my eye that I was deadly serious about this.

“I’ll call her.”

I left the two of them to their funeral plans. Billie told me that she had already informed Pops. He and his happy crew would be out at the cemetery already, digging a hole in the snow. I went into my office and plopped down in my chair. Tahiti was sounding good about now. Sky and sea a matching blue. Maybe there was some sort of New Year’s package to paradise that I could dig up at the last minute. I looked over at the Magritte. A sailboat on a lake. Sunshine. Sounded just perfect. I realized that the person I was envisioning lounging on the bow in my perfect Magritte vacation was not Bonnie; it was Vickie Waggoner. I guess that pretty much told it. Like the wind they come, like the wind they go. And just how the hell is a person expected to hold on to the wind for very long anyway?

I came out of the office when I saw Daniel Kingman in the hallway, preparing to leave. He got into his overcoat as if it was made of lead.

“Is everything set?” I asked.

“Everything is in place,” Billie said. She turned to Kingman. “Thank you for coming down in this weather, Dr. Kingman. I know this isn’t easy.”

He muttered something, I couldn’t make it out. As the three of us turned to the front door, as if by magic, it opened. In stepped a hooded figure. It was Vickie.

“Hi. I know you said to wait for your call, but I got antsy.” She stomped her feet against the rubber mat that Billie had set out. “Hello, Mrs. Sewell.”

“Hello, dear. How are you?”

Vickie threw me a dark glance, then aimed a smile at my aunt. “I’m fine. Thank you.” She pulled the hood down off her head.

“Miss Waggoner, this is Dr. Kingman,” Billie said, making the introductions. Vickie freed her hand from its glove and extended it. The doctor was frozen in place, staring at Vickie as if she had two heads.

“I’m sorry … I …” he stammered. “I missed the name?”

“Victoria Waggoner,” Vickie said.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Miss Waggoner.” Kingman was not quite on automatic pilot, but he was close. Belatedly he took her hand and shook it. He moved over to the door.

“You’ll give me a call if you need anything, Dr. Kingman,” Billie said to him. “Anything at all.”

“Thank you,” Kingman muttered. He looked back once more at Vickie, who was getting out of her coat.

“It was nice to meet you, Miss Waggoner,” he said again.

Vickie looked up. “Thank you.”

The doctor left. Billie closed the door behind him.

“The poor man is distraught,” she said.

Vickie looked from Billie to me. “That was him, wasn’t it? That was Helen’s doctor.”

“Why don’t you come into my office,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder and turning her to the left. “I’ll catch you up on everything.”

T
he storm had reached blizzard conditions. It was falling frantically, as if it couldn’t come down fast enough; at the same time it was being wind-whipped in all directions at once, creating a virtual whiteout. Across the street, the baby Jesus was completely covered over. The wise men were knee deep. A snowplow moved past, all but invisible except for its blinking amber lights and the large yellow scraper, good for a momentary redistribution of the snow at best. Clearing was out of the question. For all practical purposes, the plow’s tire tracks never even existed.

Billie, Vickie and I sat in Billie’s living room upstairs, watching the storm. Well, Billie and I were watching it. A fire was going in the small fireplace. True to my oath, I had declined my aunt’s offer of hot rum cider and was working on a mug of hot chocolate. I had dashed out into the snow after my talk with Vickie and fetched Alcatraz. He was curled up now in front of the fireplace. Vickie was on the floor next to him, her thoughts lost in the flames, her hand buried in the hound’s multiple folds. Billie sat in her rocking chair, sipping her cider. Any minute now, Robert Frost was going to step gently into the room, whispering,
“Whose woods these are, I think I know …”

Vickie had listened almost completely without comment to my account of her sister’s murder. Only a few times had she halted me to clarify a point, for the most part she had taken in the information with a blank mask on her face. She was still wearing that mask. Though as I stole glances at her on the floor there next to my pooch, I could see in the flame’s light dancing about her face that the mask had become heavy. Somber and wounded. I had made the mistake of telling her that Jeffrey Kingman’s body was downstairs in the basement waiting for Billie to come down and take up her needles and tubes. Kingman was stretched out on the very table where Vickie had last seen her sister’s body. Now the man responsible for putting Helen there was there himself. But, as I had predicted, the news that Jeffrey Kingman was dead had given Vickie no real satisfaction. Her motivation for wanting to learn the circumstances of her sister’s murder had never been revenge. She had simply wanted an explanation. Vickie sat on the floor next to Alcatraz and continued to stare into the flames. Her family was gone, beaten up by cancer and by uncaring men. After I had explained everything to her down in my office, Vickie had asked if she could use my phone to call her neighbors. The kindly old folks were—again—looking after Bo. She dialed the number and asked if Bo could be put on the line. I’m assuming that he could. I don’t really know. Vickie’s expression didn’t change one iota. The placid mask was in place. But tears had suddenly filled her eyes and immediately overflowed, running down her cheeks. She sat and cried, finally managing to whisper a few words into the phone—I missed what they were—before hanging up.

Billie was putting off going to work on Jeffrey Kingman until Vickie was gone. This was beginning to present a dilemma, for the storm had reached the point where going out into it in a car had become increasingly unwise. Nobody was saying anything yet, but it was becoming ever evident that Vickie was not going to be driving home anytime soon. Billie signaled me to join her in the kitchen where she told me that she would suggest to Vickie that she stay over.

“I can put her up in your old room,” Billie suggested.

“What about Kingman? You need to get to work on him.”

“I know. I thought that maybe the two of you could go out for a walk.”

“In
that
?” I pointed at the window.

“It’s only snow.”

“And wind gusts up to a million.”

“Why don’t you take her over to the gallery and show her some of Julia’s paintings?”

“You have funny ideas, old lady.”

Vickie wasn’t in the living room when I came back out of the kitchen. I assumed she had popped into the bathroom. I heard the phone ringing in my office downstairs. By the time I got there, the machine had picked up. I played back the message. It was Jay Adams.

“Call me as soon as you get this. I’ve got some information.”

I dropped into my chair and dialed the number that Adams had given.

“Hitch, you got it wrong,” he said the moment I identified myself.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you got it wrong. I’ve been doing some digging since I got back to the office. You got it wrong, Hitch. But you were close. Listen.”