Hearse of a Different Color (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries) (8 page)

The tears on my cheeks weren’t mine. They were Vickie’s. They got there when she wrapped me in a grateful hug as she was leaving my office.

“Is that ink?” Billie asked, coming up to me at the front door. Vickie and Bo were making their way carefully down the frozen sidewalk. Holding hands. I dabbed at my cheek. A smear of black came off on my fingers.

“It’s mascara.”

Billie glanced out the door as I was closing it. “Oh. I see.”

“It’s not what you think,” I said.

Billie clucked. “I’m not worrying about what
I
think.”

A
waterpipe under the street in front of the Oyster had cracked and ruptured from the cold. The flow had been shut off, but not before a large ice sculpture had formed on the edge of the street and up on the sidewalk. Depending on who you listened to—and from what angle you viewed the ice—the frozen mass resembled a large hawk in flight, a castle, Abraham Lincoln’s profile, or a pair of obese copulating angels. Baltimore Gas & Electric had ringed the tabula rasa with plastic tape, which only served to make the frozen chunk even more of an attraction. By the time I saw it, someone had already placed a Christmas wreath on one of the jagged points.

“Ain’t that shit?” Sally said to me as she pulled the door open wide. I had an armload of logs. I carried them into the bar and over to the far wall and dumped them atop the pile next to the small fireplace. I made three more trips to my car to fetch the rest of the wood. A mother was crouched down next to her son, who was staring at the ice hemorrhage with pie-pan eyes. Someone else was snapping its picture. Two teenage girls were approaching, giggling. One carried a string of gold tinsel.

Sally whipped up some hot chocolate while I got a fire started for her. I used some empty liquor cartons for kindling and soon had a roasty toasty going. We pulled up a pair of chairs and gave the flames a good look. I’ve always held that if music itself could get up and dance, it would make these sorts of moves. Sally had poured a taste of rum into our hot chocolates. It was an atrocious addition. But the bite was nice. After a few minutes, there was a low rumble from outside. I turned my head just in time to see several pounds of snow falling from the roof past the bar’s window.

“There’s my signal,” I said. “Time to go.”

“Good talking with you, Hitchcock,” she said. “Thanks for the wood.”

I rounded the corner to find my good friend John Kruk reading the riot act to a group of sullen-faced policemen out on the street. The first piece of hard evidence in the murder of Helen Waggoner had showed up. It was on Anne Street, one block over from the funeral home. Actually it didn’t show up, it had been there all along. It was a car. A white Pontiac Firebird. I recalled Alcatraz sniffing around the car during one of his romps. I had assumed he was looking for love in all the wrong places. I hadn’t realized he was sleuthing.

The car had been parked illegally, directly in front of a fire hydrant. Because of the mild anarchy brought on by the recent storm, it had taken several days before a patrol car had noted the violation and run a routine check of the car’s plates. That was when it was discovered that the car had been reported stolen several days before, the same day that Helen was murdered. And that’s when the gears started rolling.

Helen had been shot in the front seat of the Pontiac. Traces of her blood were recovered from the front seat. A pair of bullet holes were located, one in the floorboard and one in the door. Helen’s fingerprints were all over the door handle and the window.

Kruk was ballistic. His officers should have spotted the car the night Helen’s body was dumped off. The entire area should have been canvassed. In fact, it
had
been canvassed. Sloppily, it now appeared. The miserable icy, slushy, snowy, windy, bitter, crappy weather of that evening would no doubt be floated as an excuse. Kruk would no doubt give less than two seconds to such an excuse. The stolen white Pontiac Firebird, illegally parked, containing the murder victim’s blood and fingerprints on the seat, door handles and passenger window had “lousy police work” written all over it.

I stood on the corner and watched the police going over the inside and outside of the Pontiac trying to pick up additional clues. Kruk ordered two of his men to practically crawl on their hands and knees from the car all the way around the block to the front door of Sewell & Sons. It wasn’t too likely that whoever brought Helen down here bothered to drag her body all that way. More likely she had been dumped off, and then the car had been pulled around the corner and abandoned there. The inch-by-inch assignment carried the whiff of penance.

“You are a vengeful god,” I told Kruk.

He ignored the compliment.

“I’m disgusted. We should have discovered this car that night.”

“I don’t know. White car in a snowstorm. I think your men could make a decent case.”

“I’m not in the mood for you right now, Mr. Sewell.”

I didn’t bother asking if he ever was. Instead I asked, “So the car was stolen?”

“It was called in around noon the day of the murder. Taken right off the street in Federal Hill. Guy was having lunch at Sissons. Comes out, car’s gone.”

“So what do you make of that?”

Kruk shrugged. “The murder was probably planned. The killer picked up the car with the intention of getting Helen Waggoner into it. You can bet we won’t pull the killer’s prints off the car.”

Kruk was watching his two foot soldiers as they made their way
s-l-o-w-l-y
up the block. If a person can look both pissed and pleased at the same time, Kruk did. I noticed, not for the first time, that the short detective was underdressed for the extreme temperatures. No scarf, no gloves, only a flimsy overcoat. It didn’t seem to bother him. Maybe it was all the bad precinct coffee that coursed through his veins. Internal insulation.

“So, if it was preplanned does that count out crime of passion?”

Kruk lit a cigarette and pocketed the match. “It rules out an argument that just got out of hand. That will mean something when it gets to trial. It doesn’t get me any closer to the killer.”

“So the car doesn’t help you, does it?”

Kruk shook his hammy head. “Not really. No.”

I let the disgruntled detective go about his business. He ducked under the yellow crime-scene tape that had been stretched around the car and knocked a few more heads together. The two officers he had dispatched to cover the turf between the Pontiac and the funeral home reported back to him. They had found nothing. Kruk hadn’t really expected that they would, though I heard him chewing the men out anyway.
“A fucking dog found more evidence than you did!”
I’d have to remember to congratulate my celebrated pooch.

The scene was a bust. The tow truck Kruk had called in arrived to take the car away. The Pontiac was winched up onto a flatbed truck and secured with chains. As the truck moved down the street, it let out a huge backfire.

I met with Bonnie at Alonso’s Bar on Coldspring Lane. Alonso’s is a dark, toasty bar just across the expressway from Television Hill. People from the station have been hanging out here since the time of Jesus. The outside of the building is comprised of glass bricks and a heavy wooden door with a porthole window. There is a small package liquor section in the front, a long horseshoe bar right past that and a half dozen booths in the rear, off the open end of the horseshoe. The rest rooms are beyond the booths, and beyond them is the kitchen. Moscow is about eleven thousand miles past that. If we want to go that far.

Bonnie was at a booth. As expected. Jay Adams was there with her. Not such a nice surprise. The Sunpapers reporter gave me a smirking smile as I squeezed in next to my honey bunch. Bonnie and I didn’t kiss or otherwise show any outward signs that we were sharing the same sheets. Bonnie is rigid on this; she doesn’t want her personal life on display for gawkers. She reached over with her hand under the table and goosed me. That’s fine. Better than a peck on the cheek anytime.

“Jay is reporting on the Waggoner case,” Bonnie said to me.

“I know. We’ve spoken.”

Adams grinned out of one side of his mouth. “As I recall, you didn’t have a lot to say when we spoke.”

“Nope,” I answered. “I didn’t.”

“Well?”

“Well?”

“Do you have any more to say now?”

I shrugged. “You know what I know. Probably more at this point.” Of course, this wasn’t the case and I knew it. I knew about the white Pontiac. I decided to hold on to that tidbit for the time being.

Bonnie spoke up, “Jay thinks that you know more than you’re telling, Hitch. That’s why he called me.”

“Why didn’t he just call me?” I turned to the man himself. “Why didn’t you just call me?” I added, “Were you afraid I wouldn’t ask you out to lunch?”

“Hitch, I asked Jay to join us. He can help,” Bonnie said.

“Bonnie told me about your visit out to the airport last night,” Adams said to me.

“Well, I know how to show a girl a good time.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“And I’m glad to report it.” I couldn’t keep the irritation out of my voice. Then again, I wasn’t trying too hard. Bonnie was glaring at me. She wasn’t used to seeing me in a pissing contest like this. Frankly neither was I. The fine-boned reporter was having an immediate and unpleasant effect on me. And he knew it. And he was enjoying it.

“I thought maybe we could pool our efforts,” Adams said blandly, pretending to ignore my snit. The reporter’s almond-shaped eyes flicked for a nano-instant from me to Bonnie. I didn’t much care for the flick. “I tried to talk to the sister. She wouldn’t talk to me. But you’ve talked with her, right? She’s given you some information? Some background?”

The pompous little prick.

“You tried to
interview
a woman whose sister has just been murdered? Christ, don’t you guys at least have some sort of forty-eight hour rule?”

“You spoke with her.”

“I didn’t
question
her. I’m handling her sister’s funeral arrangements. It’s customary to talk with members of the family when one is arranging a funeral. I was doing my job.”

“So was I.”

“I didn’t badger the poor woman.”

“Neither did I.”

“Good!”

Adams lifted his glass—it looked like iced tea—and took a tiny sip. Bonnie was looking confused and displeased. I was feeling a sudden onslaught of claustrophobia. I don’t like booths. I like barstools.

“What else did the sister tell you?” Adams asked as he set his glass back down. Delicately. “Besides the fact that the mother was a slut.”

Bonnie gasped. “I didn’t say that, Hitch. Jay, I didn’t say that.”

“It’s okay.” I patted her hand. To Adams I said, “Vickie Waggoner spoke to me in confidence. In case you don’t know what that is, let me explain. It means that it wasn’t her intention that I run to our intrepid Sunpapers reporter and recite our conversation.”

Adams brushed a nonexistent piece of lint from his sleeve. “Off the record then.”

“Out of the question.”

“What are you protecting, Hitch?”

“I’m protecting someone’s privacy, Jay. And don’t call me Hitch.”

“What do I call you?” he asked. The smirk was back on his face. If it ever truly left.

I ignored his question. “The police are investigating the murder. I know Detective Kruk. He’s good. He’ll figure it out.”

“I know Kruk too. It would be nice for Bonnie if she beat him to it.”

“For Bonnie. So you’re really just being a pal here, aren’t you.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, Jay old buddy, I know how to say bullshit in six languages, but English will do.”

“So you don’t believe me.”

“Your insight frightens me.”

And so goes a standoff.

I decided not to stick around for lunch. I told them that I had business to attend to. Bonnie’s big blues were filled with apology as she told me that she was going to stay put and talk a bit more with Adams. The lithe reporter insisted on shaking my hand as I got up to leave. His hand felt like the fish in my Magritte.

The bright sunshine was a welcome relief after the Alonso’s catacombs. Since I was in the area, I drove over to Homeland, which is a nearby section of town where the sufferers of higher tax brackets brave it out in their eight and nine hundred thousand dollar homes. It’s a neighborhood of large trees and nice lawns. The houses are primarily stone, many of them fronted with Tudor-styled patches of stucco. Neighborhood planning came to Baltimore early (one of the nation’s first official shopping centers is in nearby Roland Park) and provided a few gems, Homeland among them. I drove down Springlake Way and parked between a Mercedes and a BMW. My Chevy Nothing stood out like a sore.

Among the aesthetic visions of the long-ago planners of Homeland was their decision for Springlake to split at Tunbridge Road and have the single lanes border a bucolic little park for the next several blocks. The reason I went there—to be honest—was because I’m a sucker for a winter wonderland and this little park, when it is covered with snow, is downright Currier & Ives. There are three linked ponds, each with strategically strewn boulders along their shores. I sat on one of the boulders and watched as a couple dozen skaters wobbled and raced and twirled and fell about the ice. Here and there were parents who had wrapped their toddlers up in so much goose down that the kids looked like little Michelin men. There was a teenage couple on the ice sliding a Frisbee back and forth to each other with brooms. A big sister was trying to teach her little sister how to skate. A boy was playing fetch with his dog. There was a snowball battle under way. A snowman was being built. Norman Rockwell would weep.

I sat on my boulder and took in the scene. Opposite me, on a rock of their own, sat an elderly couple, identically pink-faced and wearing matching plaid hunters caps. They had a Thermos of something steamy—coffee or maybe hot chocolate—and only one cup, the plastic lid from the Thermos, from which they were sharing. They were seated under a branch made heavy with snow. The occasional gust of wind was bringing shavings of snow down onto them.