by Bill Alive
At the next bench over, a bulky teenage couple was seriously entwined. She was doing the one-leg-on-his-lap-thing, her formidable Goth-white face pressed against his shoulder. I wouldn’t have gone for the black leather miniskirt with those legs, or the fishnet stockings, but her man’s lip rings gleamed in a dreamy smile as he patted her ample thigh.
Beside me, Mark closed his eyes and took deep, calming breaths.
“Um,” I said. “This is kind of weird.”
“What do you mean?” he said, not opening his eyes. “That old lady’s doing the same thing.”
On the far side of a kitschy fountain, an old woman wearing two layers of clashing sweater was watching the couple with a fond, motherly smile.
“Never mind,” he said. “You’re right.” He opened his eyes. “They’re getting horny.”
He leapt up and walked away. I trailed after him, relieved.
“Feel free to ratchet down the contempt, though,” he said over his shoulder. “Maybe that girl feels like she’s super hot. Would you rather she didn’t?”
I winced. “How do you know what she felt?” I said, deflecting. “Weren’t you vibing the guy? Don’t tell me you could feel both at the same time?”
“I’ll tell you when you’re older.”
We found the cafe and got a table. It was one of those mall restaurants where they try to cram the floor with so many tables and drape the walls with so much fake foliage that you’ll forget you’re in a mall. Totally works.
Mark opened a menu and gasped. Sweat beaded on his bare brow.
“Are the prices that bad?” I said.
“Yes. But it’s not that.” He was starting to pale. “Some idiot’s all terrified.” He twisted around to look. “There.”
At the table behind us, a pasty subordinate was clearly getting grilled by an irate boss. Briefcases were gaping wide, and papers were scattered around the table like career carnage.
“He’s making you scared?”
He grit his teeth. “Working on it.”
“You can’t be scared now, we’re about to meet a murder suspect! I mean, this guy’s wife just mysteriously died and left him millions of dollars! He could totally be a killer.”
“Not … helping …”
“Great, now I’m scared,” I said.
“Hey!” a strange voice interrupted.
Mark and I both jumped, and one of us may have shrieked.
“Sorry!” the man said. “Are you the detectives?”
He was wearing an apologetic smile, and stretching out a well-cuffed hand for a handshake. His short gray receding hair pegged him in his late forties, early fifties, but his mild, roundish face and relative lack of wrinkles, plus the easy way he moved in his suit, suggested that he was one of those rare souls who’d spent the last few decades as an executive and actually enjoyed it.
On the other hand, maybe most office types really do enjoy it, but we only hear from the disgruntled few who make Dilbert and The Office.
Nah.
“Sorry I was stressed on the phone earlier,” he said, as he shook our hands. His hands were cold, but powerful. “Caught me just before a meeting with the higher-ups. You know how that goes.”
“Absolutely,” said Mark. He had visibly relaxed, but I could tell he was still straining against the idiots behind us. “We really appreciate your time.”
“No, no, I’m so glad someone’s doing something. I should have thought of it myself. They sent some clueless cop out to talk to me, utterly perfunctory. I told them to investigate that damn antiquated airport, they haven’t had a safety inspection since the Korean War. But you’re detectives…” He leaned back in his chair and stared at us, as if processing our significance for the first time. “You don’t think, you can’t actually think…”
“We’re only exploring possibilities,” Mark said gently. “We have no conclusive proof—”
“My God.” He frowned, then said slowly, “It makes perfect sense.”
Just then, a chipper waitress with serious eye shadow interrupted. Thankfully, judging from Mark’s lack of response, she did not have any current medical issues. That or his shield was working.
We ordered, Crowley getting a steak entree and Mark and I splitting a bowl of onion rings, which was the only appetizer under ten dollars. Crowley noticed and protested, but we assured him we’d already eaten, which we had. At breakfast.
When she’d gone, Mark said carefully, “So. Why would someone want to kill Lindsay?”
“The will!” said Crowley. “There’s millions of dollars on the table!”
Mark stared in disbelief.
“Um,” I said. “Didn’t you get those millions?”
He blasted a bitter laugh. “I don’t get a penny. My God. That damn inheritance. It destroyed our marriage, and now it got her killed.” He covered his face. “I’m sorry, guys, you’ve got to give me a minute.”
“Of course,” Mark said.
We sat quiet in the hubbub of banal chatter. Behind us, the boss was threatening to replace his entire staff with virtual assistants in Bangladesh, starting with his lunch companion.
“Thanks,” said Crowley, sitting up straight. His cheeks were flushed, but his expression was grim. “So what do you want to know?”
“Everything,” I blurted.
“Fine,” he said. “Let’s start with her mother. I called her Old Moneybags.”
Old Moneybags, it turned out, had inherited a controlling share in some major corporation before she even got married, and she’d always used her wealth to rule her family. Including her husband. He’d had his own “moderate” fortune once (”a million or so”), but he’d blown it all on some stupid investment back when the dot-com bubble burst.
According to Crowley, Old Moneybags had always hated him (Crowley), because unlike her husband, Crowley was his own man with his own successful career. Plus, she’d never wanted Lindsay to marry anyone.
“Marrying me was the first independent step Lindsay ever took,” he said, then paused his tale as the food finally came and we dug into our respective meals.
If you can really say ‘meal’ about two-and-a-half onion rings. I finished my share in about fifteen seconds. “Those rings just made me more hungry,” I whispered to Mark.
“I know,” he muttered. “Me too. Don’t sit so close!”
Crowley was slicing into his scrumptious steak with gusto. “You know what her mother’s wedding gift was?” he continued, around a hearty mouthful. “Cutting Lindsay out of her will.”
“She gave up millions to marry you?” I blurted.
“Yes, she did. Lindsay was quite a woman.” He sighed. “Didn’t matter. Old Moneybags struck again. It took her a few years, but by then we had a son, Vincent, so she could use that against us. She made a new will — Lindsay would get the millions if she divorced me.”
“Oh my gosh,” I said. “And Lindsay did it! That’s terrible!”
Mark flashed me a warning glance, but I didn’t care.
Crowley picked at his napkin. “I can’t say I completely blame her. I’m doing well, but I’m not going to get a two million dollar bonus.”
“But your wife divorced you! For money! What about your kid?”
“Honestly, I think Vincent was why. Moneybags waited and knew when to strike. My work just keeps getting crazier, and we’d been having a hard year. Lindsay couldn’t stop talking about how all that money could set Vincent up for life. No long hours in his future. No office slavery. Freedom.”
Quietly, Mark asked, “Does Vincent get those millions now?”
“Nope. It all goes to her sister.”
We both exclaimed.
“I don’t know the details,” Crowley said. “I’m not even sure it was intentional. Moneybags was trying to be so careful that I didn’t get a dime, she made everything complicated. She never imagined that Lindsay might … damn.” His face clouded.
“So her sister … that’s Sibyl, right?” Mark said.
“Yes
, Sibyl Samson,” Crowley said. “As of her wedding last month. Which is a whole other story.”
“Right,” Mark said. “So now she gets a double inheritance?”
“That’s what’s interesting. Moneybags only died quite recently, and it was only when they read her will that we all discovered that while Lindsay was going to get a big lump sum, Sibyl was going to get … installments.”
“Installments?” I said. “Why?”
“Probably because Sibyl is a full-time alcoholic and an intermittent crackhead. Or heroin. Whatever. That much money at once, and she’d be dead in a week.”
“Great family,” I said.
“You have no idea.”
“What about the father?” Mark said. “Did he get an equal share?”
“No sir. He got a pittance. I’ve heard the will says she thought he’d gamble it away in another terrible investment.”
“What happens if both daughters die?” I said.
“Pete!” Mark said.
“I’m just saying!”
“Good question,” said Crowley. He looked thoughtful. “If all else failed, it might wind up with the old man. As much as she tried to micromanage her family, Moneybags hated charities worst of all. ‘Keep it in the family,’ that was her bedrock belief.”
“So he would have a motive to kill them both,” I said.
“His daughters, Pete,” Mark said.
“One’s already dead,” Crowley said quietly.
Neither Mark or I had anything to say.
Crowley rose. “Gentlemen, if you need anything further, here’s my card. Sorry to run, but you know how it is. And don’t worry about the bill for lunch.”
“Oh, thanks, you don’t have to—” Mark began.
“Least I can do,” he interrupted. “I really appreciate what you guys are doing. Thank you.”
And he walked out.
“Why didn’t he tell us he was treating?” I said. “We could have gotten actual food!”
“Next time,” Mark said, and he was dead serious.
“Anyway, what the heck?” I said. “That will is messed up.”
“We’ll have to confirm, but yeah.”
“Did you not trust him?” I said.
“I don’t know, he seems fine—”
“Did you get a weird vibe?”
“I didn’t get any vibe, I’ve been shielding that peon the whole time so I don’t wet my pants. Not to mention you trying to make me double hungry, like, hungrier than is biologically possible.”
“Sorry!” I said, scooting farther away. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I really don’t do restaurants.”
“Yeah. Well, I’d say the obvious suspect is Sibyl,” I said, smoothly changing the subject. “But how could anyone kill their own sister? Just for money?”
“Pete, it’s a murder. Is there ever a good enough reason?”
“I know, but … I’m not sure I even want to talk to her.”
“How did you think a murder investigation was going to work?” Mark said. “That’s the whole thing, you go around talking to people who might be psychopaths.”
“I guess I was hoping for more clever deductions.”
“Can we have this existential crisis outside? I’m about to hyperventilate.”
Mark won, of course. Sibyl was a prime suspect. No way we were going to skip her.
Even if, afterward, we’d really wish we had.
Chapter 16
Mark arranged the whole thing before we even reached the mall exit. The call lasted less than a minute.
“It’s all good,” he said. “They’re home for the evening. We can come anytime.”
“Was that her?”
“No, the husband. Fidelio. Seemed friendly enough. Really good on the phone.”
“I know I’ve heard that name before,” I said.
Just as we were getting into Thunder, Mark’s phone buzzed with a text.
“A client. Crap,” he said. “You’ll have to drive.”
“That’s cool. Need to call them back first?”
“Are you kidding? Try to have a professional conversation over the roar of Thunder?”
“You called him Thunder!” I said happily.
He grimaced. “I said ‘roar of thunder.’ It’s a certified cliche.”
I hopped in the driver’s seat and patted Thunder’s dashboard. “Don’t listen to him, Thunder. Deep down, he loves you.”
Mark scoffed, jammed his backpack on the floor between his knees, and slid out his massive laptop.
“Whoa! Big Bertha! In here?” I said. “Can’t you just use a tablet?”
“For actual work? I’d rather try to defuse a bomb with chopsticks. On a roller coaster. With frostbite in all my fingers—”
“Got it,” I said.
Mark proceeded to plug and connect a gazillion wires, entwining himself in a spiderweb of productivity. I’m hazy on the details, but I think he plugged some device into the lighter port that turned it into an AC outlet so he could plug in his laptop. Into his car.
He also needed Internet, so he “tethered” his cell phone so he could use his data as Wi-Fi. Apparently that sucks battery like crazy, so he also had to plug his phone into his laptop.
He also attached a mouse, a big mouse with a ball you turn instead of moving around the mouse, because I guess touch pads aren’t cool enough?
When he was all jammed in, with the devices balanced precariously on various ledges and the highway wind blasting through the open windows, he calmly opened the laptop screen and started typing in a chat window.
He was grinning.
“In their world,” he said, “I’m dutifully chained to my desk, eagerly awaiting their next whim.”
“We can totally stop at a coffee shop!” I shouted.
“Why? This is free,” he said. “Besides, we’ve got to head back now or we’ll get stuck in traffic for two hours.”
We got stuck in traffic for three hours.
But he billed for them all.
Then we got lost trying to find the Samson house. It was way out in the country, deep on the roads in the Land the Internet Forgot. When the reception died, our map apps stopped working. The Samsons lived up a mountain. We tried the wrong mountain first.
The sun was sinking and my hunger was rising when we finally crunched up the long, long driveway to their house. House? It was a McMansion.
The Shenandoah Valley, by the way, is infested with McMansions. You can see them sneering from their perches all over the mountains. Sometimes they cluster, which looks kind of silly, like they all got sold the same yard. But usually they maintain enough distance between them to each plausibly pretend they own the view.
The Samson household had chosen a McMansion that really did own the view. The driveway lasted at least twenty minutes. Through dense, dark, droopy forest, the edges choked with poison ivy. With the sun fading into darkness.
“I’m not going to say I’m creeped out,” I said, “but couldn’t you have asked to meet her not in her isolated lair?”
“Why? This is perfect,” said Mark, who had found enough signal again to work and bill another few minutes. “I’ll have no interference in getting a vibe.”
“I’m already a getting a vibe,” I muttered.
When the forest finally broke, their ski chalet / spaceship of a home rose triumphant on a wide expanse of obsequious lawn. The entire front of the house was a gigantic cathedral ceiling window, and it angled down the middle like the corner of a futuristic office building that had been installed sideways.
Two new sports cars gleamed in the circular driveway. There was a black Lamborghini, and a hot pink number that was somehow the Italian sports car version of a stiletto.
Thunder suddenly seemed very loud.
“Don’t worry, bro,” I said, patting the dash. “You’ve got character.”
“Please don’t talk to the car,” Mark said.
Up close, the house felt too new, even unfinished. The huge
front window still had installation papers plastered to a bottom corner, like a tag dangling from a new jacket. Somehow this creeped me out most of all, like we’d been lured to an abandoned construction site and they’d dump our bodies in a dumpster out back.
The door burst open, and a big, beefy dude waved us in with a huge grin.
“Welcome, welcome!” he cried. “You guys want a beer?” He offered us a bouquet of four beers, held by the necks in one hand, while he swigged his own beer with the other.
“Sick Dog Brewery?” I said. “Those guys are amazing!” They were also crazy expensive. Each of those beers cost at least ten dollars. I read the labels with mounting excitement. I’m committed to healthy eating, of course, but beer totally counts if it’s an independent brewery.
His eyes gleamed. “Yeah, man! Try the Cinnamon Licorice Stout.” He magically materialized a beer opener, popped the top, held it out, and then pulled it back. “Hold up, let me grab a sip.” He pressed the rim to his full wet lips. “Mmm, excellent.”
I don’t think I’m a germophobe, but I took what was left of the beer gingerly. Talk about crestfallen.
“Come on in, we’re just chilling,” he said. He led us into the enormous foyer with its immense cathedral ceiling. The gaping space flowed into several other “rooms” — a granite kitchen ahead, and to the right, a sea of couches and hardwood floor. Kind of like Mark’s multipurpose living room, except huge.
It felt like they’d just moved in, but they’d already filled the place with crap. The decor was “eclectic” to the point of bewildering, like a movie buff had won the lottery and cleaned out eBay. I didn’t know they actually made cardboard cutouts of David Bowie in Labyrinth.
The living room must have come furnished, because the furniture wasn’t horrendous, but they’d smothered every surface with beer bottles, DVDs, catalogs, junk mail, and shopping mall bags that hadn’t even been emptied yet.
Sibyl was sunk into an overstuffed leather couch, cradling a beer and watching Last Action Hero on a stupendous flat screen TV that was bigger than Mark’s. Behind the TV, a projector screen hung from the wall, but it looked like they’d ripped it trying to set it up.