Jack in the Box

by Blake Banner

  “That is subtle.”

  “Too subtle?”

  “No… Well, we won’t know if it’s too subtle until we meet the man and talk to him, but on the face of it, I can see a man going to those lengths for a woman he is obsessed with.”

  “What other options have we got?”

  “Stephen, whom we know nothing about, a number of unknown quantities from her class…”

  “Yeah, by all accounts she seems to have been a fascinating, captivating woman. It is possible one of her students became obsessed.”

  “It certainly is. And then there is Helena herself.”

  “Wow, yup, that is a definite possibility. Only…”

  “Only everyone says they were deeply in love?”

  She nodded.

  “The biggest motive for murder known to man. Or woman, as Helena herself pointed out.”

  “Huh… A kind of confession?”

  “I don’t want to overstate it, Dehan, but it is a possibility. And there is another possibility which we haven’t considered so far.”

  “Penelope.”

  “Indeed. So far we only have her side of the story. The most convincing lies are the ones that are nine-tenths truth. It is not hard to imagine that everything she said about Stephen was true, except that it wasn’t Stephen she was falling in love with, it was Jack. If she was falling for Stephen, why has it taken them almost five years to get hitched?”

  “That’s true. But wouldn’t she have killed Helena instead?”

  “Not if it was Jack who rejected her. It almost feels like an act of spite, like a child who is forced to give back a toy she wants to keep, and smashes the toy so that the other child can’t have it either.”

  “Yeah, I get that. Samurai sword?”

  “Hmm, that’s tricky, though from a Freudian perspective, it is a pretty powerful symbol of castration.”

  “Nnyeah… no.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not just cut off his balls? If you want to castrate a guy, and you’ve got something razor sharp in your hands, why waste your time on his head?”

  “Fair point.”

  An ice bucket arrived with a half bottle of white wine in it and while the wine waiter opened it, our mussels arrived. When the waiters were gone, Dehan said, “You hear about the clam who joined the Ocean Gym to try and get a date?”

  I sipped my wine. “No, Dehan, I never did.”

  “He pulled a mussel.”

  It made her laugh and that made me laugh. After that, we ate in silence for a while, enjoying the food and the excellent, ice cold wine. When we had finished, she sat back in her chair, wiped her lips with her napkin and wagged a finger at me.

  “You know what this reminds me of?”

  “Nope.”

  “Peter Smith, Revere Avenue, two arms found in his lock up.[1]”

  I nodded slowly, thinking back to the second case we had worked together. “Jealousy…” I said absently.

  “Different kind of jealousy, or maybe not. Somebody has something you haven’t got.”

  “The dismembered body parts left in a place where they are sure to be found… There are parallels, that is true.” I frowned. “As I recall…”

  The wine waiter appeared by my side and poured me a drop of the red wine to taste, then, respectful of the new age of equality, he poured Dehan a drop too. We both sniffed and tasted and he poured. Meanwhile the meat arrived, and we fell to with the kind of appetite you get from being by the sea. The meat was superb and so was the wine, and we got sidetracked into talking about all sorts of things that had nothing to do with Jack Connors’ head, or the box it was in. But I didn’t forget Dehan’s observation, and it played on my mind all that night and into the next day.

  We rounded off the meal with black coffee and Bushmills, and then a little more Bushmills, and finally left the dining room as they were switching off the lights and putting the chairs on the tables. By that time, Dehan was giggling at things that really were not funny, and I was smiling because I thought I was the luckiest man in the world.

  I was.

  * * *

  The next morning, a cold shower followed by eggs, bacon, fried mushrooms and lots of black coffee dispelled a small hangover, and by eight o’clock we were on our way back to New York, with Dehan looking up Shaw Line Defense on her phone. As we turned onto the I-95 and started to accelerate west, she sighed and shook her head.

  “If we just turn up, they are going to stonewall us. I think we’ll save time calling and making an appointment.”

  She dialed and put the phone to her ear. After a moment, she said, “Morning! This is Detective Carmen Dehan of the NYPD. I would like to make an appointment to see Mr. Grant Shaw… No, I don’t want to tell you what it’s about. That is something I will discuss with Mr. Shaw, when I see him. And believe me, I don’t think he would appreciate my telling you either.”

  She went quiet, looked at me, sighed quietly and raised her eyebrows. Then she listened attentively, sighed noisily and said, “Ten-thirty, we’ll be there, and pal? If we need more than thirty minutes, he’ll have to delay his damned flight. We’re from the New York Police Department, we’re not coming to measure him for a suit.” She hung up. “Dickwad.”

  “I guess he knows who we are now.”

  “He can grant us—grant, note!—he can grant us thirty minutes at ten thirty and then he has a flight to catch.”

  “I gather you spoke to his secretary.”

  “Yeah. And I get the feeling the secretary is going to be pretty typical of the company.”

  I nodded. “I guess it goes with the territory. Arrogance.”

  At ten fifteen we pulled into 5th Avenue off West 23rd and parked just past the bus stop. I got out and looked up at the building. It was one of those attractive, gray stone, early 20th century buildings, with discreet moldings on the outside, and big, white, sash windows. Penelope had been right, it didn’t look like much, but to those in the know, to run that business in that location meant something. Dehan came and stood beside me.

  “We’re early.”

  I offered her a small shrug and we went in. The lobby was small and mainly white. There was a metal detector and beside it a young, athletic security guard all in blue. He inspected our badges and called up to the top floor. They must have told him it was OK because he let us through and pointed us at the elevator.

  The elevator was all shining steel and mirrors that concealed cameras and microphones. The only indication you had that it was moving at all was the changing number on the digital display, which went from one to seven in fifteen seconds, then stopped and the doors slid silently open.

  Reception was an almost featureless room, fifteen feet by twelve, without windows. Comfortable chairs on either side of the elevator faced a white desk that was made of a material that was hard to identify, but looked bulletproof. On the desk there was a logo, and the same logo appeared on the wall behind the desk. It was a circle bisected by a diagonal red line. The upper section was blue and the lower section was white. I figured that was the Shaw line.

  The receptionist was an expressionless blond guy who seemed to be constructed of pale granite. His hair was very short and almost white, and his eyes were a shade of blue you could use to halt global warming.

  We showed him our badges and I said, “We’re here to see Mr. Shaw.”

  “You’re early.”

  “Yeah, we’re early.”

  He took an electronic pad, like a tablet, and put it in front of us. “Can I have your thumbprints, please, then look at the laser for an iris scan.”

  Something about him, his boss and his company made me feel irrationally uncooperative. I gently moved the tablet to one side and held my badge a few inches in front of his face.

  “See this badge? This is all the ID that you need to see. Now we can do this in Mr. Shaw’s office, or we can do it at an interrogation room at the 43rd Precinct. It’s all the same to me. But as Mr. Shaw has a plane to catch, I suggest you t
ell him we’re here and we would like to talk to him. Now.”

  He sized me up, and then he sized Dehan up, and he thought about kicking us out. I guess he decided it wasn’t such a good idea, because he picked up the phone and after a moment said, “Sir, the cops are here early. They want to see you now.” He waited a moment and said, “Yes, sir.”

  He hung up and pressed a button on his desk, then jerked his head at a featureless, white door in the wall to my right. “Through there. At the end of the corridor. His secretary will let you in.”

  The door was steel and probably blast proof. I pulled it open and followed Dehan down a short passage to an antechamber with an oak desk in front of an oak door. Behind the desk was another Aryan clone with platinum hair you could sand rocks with. He looked at our badges without interest and said, “You’re early.”

  “We covered that.”

  He curled a lip that said it was cops like us that were sending the country to the dogs and pressed a button on his desk. The oak door behind him buzzed and he jerked his head at it. “You can go in.”

  Clearly the big thing here was to have a button on your desk and jerk your head at the doors. Dehan sighed loudly and pushed through. The office was big, old world and luxurious, with oak paneled walls, a burgundy Wilton carpet, chesterfields and an open fireplace that now stood cold. On the walls I saw two drawings by Matisse and a painting by Picasso. Grant Shaw was standing behind his desk putting things into an attaché case. He didn’t look up as we came in. He just spoke loudly.

  “We’re on the clock, gentlemen. Make it snappy. We have ten minutes, then I am out of here. What can I do for you?”

  I didn’t answer him. We crossed the floor to his desk and got there as he was snapping his attaché case closed. Then he looked up and saw Dehan. The twitch of his eyebrows said he was surprised. I showed him my badge.

  “This is the fourth time I’ve shown this badge since I stepped into your building. You’re on the clock, Mr. Shaw, we are not. We are on a homicide investigation. I am Detective Stone, this is my partner Detective Dehan, NYPD, and we need to ask you some questions. Is that a problem?”

  He listened to me carefully, with no expression on his face. When I had finished, he said, “No problem at all. But I’d appreciate it if you make it quick.”

  “We haven’t got time to waste either, Mr. Shaw. Can you tell us about your relationship with Penelope Peach?”

  He laid his case down on the desk and stared at it for a moment. I moved around and sat in one of the two leather armchairs he had facing his desk. Dehan sat in the other and after a moment Grant Shaw sat in his own big, black leather chair on the far side.

  “Penny, what has she been up to?”

  “Please don’t answer my questions with questions of your own, Mr. Shaw, especially if you are in a hurry. We’ve all been around the block a few times, let’s not waste time. Tell me about your relationship with her.”

  He shrugged. “What’s to tell? I met her at some party, I think. She was a party girl. It’s what she does for a living; at least it was back then. I’m going back about five years. We hit it off. She looked good, she was fun, so we went out for a while.”

  Dehan looked down at her hands, puffed out her cheeks and blew.

  “We have to do this, huh? We know. You know that we know. We know that you know that we know, but we still have to go through the bullshit.” She looked up at his face. “We’re not going to go away just because you bullshit us a bit, Mr. Shaw. Exactly the opposite is true. The more you bullshit us, the more we are going to keep coming at you, because here’s the thing, bullshit and guilt smell just the same.”

  He went very still. “Guilt? Guilt of what?”

  She gave an elaborate shrug and pulled the corners of her mouth down. “I don’t know. You’re the one bullshitting, Mr. Shaw. What are you trying to hide?”

  I shook my head. “See how much time we’re wasting? And you in a hurry. How about we start again, you cut the bullshit, and maybe we won’t even have to take you in. So, tell us about your relationship with Penelope Peach.”

  He sighed deeply and flopped back in his chair. “There really is very little to tell. I haven’t seen her for a few years, but back then, four or five years ago, she…” He shrugged. “She made her living as a kept woman. That was what she did. And she was great. I really liked her. She already had an apartment that some joker was providing paying for, and she had a few other friends, that was what she called them, and me. So we started seeing quite a lot of each other, to the point where she actually phased out one or two of her other guys.”

  Dehan asked him, “So what are you saying? That you and she were getting serious?”

  He thought about it, sat forward, put his hands flat on the attaché case and drummed a tattoo with his fingers.

  “Yuh. Obviously she kept on the guy who gave her the apartment, there was some other attorney I think who seems to have been pretty sweet on her, and there was me.”

  “So where was it going? What kind of future did a relationship like that have?”

  He laughed and his eyebrows both rose in a high arch. “Well, obviously none, because here we are.”

  I said, “But what did you want from it, Mr. Shaw?”

  “You already know the answer to that.”

  “I’d like to hear it from you. Stop fencing with me.”

  “Fine! I had hoped for a wife. She suited me. She looked great, she had good taste and good manners, you could take her anywhere, people liked her. It would have suited both of us down to the ground.”

  I frowned, feeling suddenly curious. “But…?”

  “But she had suddenly got hormones or something, because out of the blue she became all doe-eyed and romantic and went and fell in love with one of her Johns. Suddenly she was hopelessly in love and wanting to get married to him, not me.”

  I said, “To whom?” Dehan turned and frowned at me. She was thinking we knew who, Stephen.

  Then her eyes opened wide as Grant said, “The guy, what was his name, who gave her the apartment. Jack, Jack Connors.”

  SIX

  I held up a hand to stop him.

  “Hang on a minute, Mr. Shaw. Let me just get this clear. Are you telling us that Penelope Peach told you that she was in love with Jack Connors and intended to marry him?”

  The small frown told me he was surprised by the question. “Yuh, in retrospect it’s not that surprising, really. He was the one who was willing to provide her with a luxury apartment on Riverside Drive, so I guess he got the prize.” A small shrug, more from the eyebrows than his shoulders. “I was willing to give her a monthly allowance, but for real estate I expected something more.”

  I thought about it for a moment. “Did you ever meet him?”

  He shook his head. “Nah, I’m not a jealous man, but I have my pride and I don’t care to socialize with the man who is fucking my girlfriend.”

  Dehan asked him: “How did you two break up?”

  He looked up at the ceiling, slightly to his left. After a moment he said, “We went out to dinner. I can’t remember where. I told her I wanted her to marry me. We’d discussed it a few times, but it had always been left in the air. Typical of a woman, she had a way of not saying no and not saying yes. It’s like, the door is open but you can’t come in—yet! So I had decided to press her.”

  “What happened?”

  “She told me she was pretty serious about this Connors character. I forget what he did, might have been financial services…” He shook his head. “Something in the services industry, anyhow. She said she was falling in love with him and they planned to get married.”

  Dehan had a face like she’d just got five out of two-plus-two and didn’t know how. She shook her head. “Wait, you are sure this is Jack Connors we’re talking about, not some other guy, an attorney maybe?”

  “Of course I’m sure. Aside from the fact that I have an excellent memory, it’s not the kind of thing you forget.”

 
; I scratched my chin and asked him, “So, what happened after she told you that?”

  He laughed. “We got drunk and had wild break up sex in her apartment, in the bed bought for her by Mr. Connors. Lucky old Jack. That was typical Penny.”

  “You didn’t row?”

  He sighed noisily. “No, we didn’t row, and I think, unless you’re willing to tell me what this is all about, we are pretty much done.”

  I stared at him for a long moment, thinking it through. “You really don’t know who Jack Connors was?”

  He frowned. “Did I not make myself clear just now?”

  I nodded. “You made yourself clear. Jack Connors was murdered the day after you broke up with Penelope Peach.”

  There was absolutely no change in his expression. He just nodded once and said, “You have to leave now. Any future communication will be through my attorneys. My secretary will give you their details.”

  I stood. Dehan leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. “Did you have Penelope followed?”

  “Get out now or I will have you ejected. Out. Now.”

  I gave him an empty smile. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Shaw.”

  We left.

  Out on the sidewalk, Dehan turned and squinted at me in the late morning sun. She fingered some strands of hair from her face and said, “What the hell was that about?”

  I nodded as though I was agreeing with something she’d said and moved toward the car, turning the key over in my fingers. She followed after me. “Our prime suspect didn’t even know who Jack was. He freaked out when he discovered he’d been murdered.”

  I unlocked the door and stood a moment, arranging all the people in my mind. She moved around the car and opened the passenger door. “Do you realize what this means, Stone?”

  I frowned at her. “That he is even subtler than you thought?”