Murder in the Dog Days

by P. M. Carlson

  “I see.”

  “I wonder if Dale Colby might have somehow been a step ahead of us in his investigation. Maybe that’s why this tragedy occurred.”

  “That’s possible.”

  “So if you discover anything that might help the congressman, please let us know right away so we can protect him.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Carson.” Holly stood with a surreptitious glance at her watch. Almost eleven. She’d better make her calls now, because by the time they got back to Virginia everyone would be at lunch. She asked, “May I use a phone?”

  “Of course. Use line five, from Dot’s desk.” She walked around the desk and opened the door for them. “Oh, good, Maggie. You want to come back in? I’ll get your mom’s picture out.”

  Holly nodded curtly at Maggie and headed for the receptionist’s phone to make her calls to Latents and the ME. Gabe occupied himself with Dot.

  They started for the elevator. “God, that prissy suit of hers is hiding some real bazooms,” Gabe said with relish.

  “Yeah, and did you notice the congressman?” Holly faked enthusiasm. “Hung like a stallion.”

  Gabe reddened. Amazing how shocked men were to discover that women had eyes too. She let him think it over a moment because they had other things to discuss. Finally he said, “Uh, so what has Latents got?”

  “Confusion,” Holly reported glumly. “Two unidentified prints, both in the living room.”

  “Well, they may work out.”

  “Probably the kids’ friends. Not much progress on the locked room, either. So far all they’ve done is confirm that the crowbar Ryan said she used really was the one used. They haven’t found anything on the windows.”

  “Shit. I was betting on them. What about the ME?”

  Holly stabbed the elevator button. “Doc said he wasn’t finished.”

  “Wouldn’t even give you a guess?”

  “Oh, yeah. I pressed him and he got huffy. Said if he had to go to court this afternoon, he’d have to testify that the guy died of a heart attack.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “He said it wasn’t a simple concussion. Doc has to do some more work. And the toxicology results aren’t all in but what they’ve got is all negative.”

  “Shit. What about time of death?”

  “Sometime between noon and nine p.m.”

  “We know that already! He won’t pin it down?”

  “He was edgy, Gabe. Says there’s been a fuck-up somewhere. Body temperature, rigor and lividity all pointing different directions. So he won’t even guess until he double-checks everything.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah. It means no shortcuts for now. Us, we better keep all our options open.”

  The elevator doors slid open and they entered the cubicle. As Holly turned around to face the front she saw that someone had boarded behind them. “Hi,” said Maggie soberly, hoisting Sarah and balancing her on her hip. “Turning into a tough case, isn’t it?” Holly rolled her eyes toward heaven.

  Holly left Gabe to write up the reports on the Knox and Carson interviews and headed through a fresh thunderstorm for Leon Moffatt’s office. It was not far from the Dulles access interchange, on the less fashionable side of a collection of low office buildings. A shiny maroon-on-buff sign that read Moffatt and Pulaski was stuck onto a gray-painted cinder-block wall next to double glass doors. Inside, the small reception area featured brown carpeting and a dramatically made-up young woman attempting to look like Raquel Welch. She was poking carefully at a typewriter keyboard, trying to keep long fingernails intact.

  “I’d like to see Mr. Moffatt, please,” said Holly.

  “Oh, okay. What’s it about?” Grateful to be released from her nail-threatening chore, the secretary stood up. Her slinky red blouse was slit most of the way to her belt.

  “Police business.” Holly held out her ID. “I’m Detective Schreiner.”

  “Oh, my God. The Blankenship thing?”

  Blankenship? Holly hadn’t heard anything about Blankenship. But experience had taught her that the best reaction to unexpected information was often silence. She inclined her head but didn’t answer. The young woman knocked on the door at the back of the room and then pushed it open. “Mr. Moffatt, sir. Lady here says she’s police.” She turned back and nodded to Holly, her thick-lashed eyes wide with interest. “He says go right in.”

  “Thank you, Miss—um—”

  “Rosalie York.” She watched curiously as Holly entered Moffatt’s office.

  Leon Moffatt was big, thick-lipped, pink as a boiled ham. He smiled quickly and offered Holly a damp hand. “Well, the police are prettier every day! How are you?”

  “I’m Detective Schreiner, Mr. Moffatt. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  He looked out into the reception area, puzzled. “You here alone, Miss Shiner?”

  “Yes. I’m in charge of the investigation.”

  “Yeah. August, everyone on vacation, right?” He closed the door when Holly said nothing. She’d decided it would be a waste of time to tell him she was competent. Occasionally being viewed as a dumb broad had its advantages, lulling witnesses into saying more than they might to a man. But she drew the line at acting like Raquel Welch. He smiled at Holly again. “A lady detective!”

  “I have a few questions for you. About Dale Colby.”

  “Yes, poor guy. I’ll be glad to help you if I can.” He motioned for Holly to take the big leather chair near the desk. She sat and found herself sliding back into its depths. It had been sized for football players like Moffatt, not for women. She put her notebook on her knees and looked coldly at Moffatt until he finished examining the fit of her trousers and sat down too. She wondered what he’d think if he knew there was a .38 strapped to her ankle under the flare legs.

  Interesting, wasn’t it, that he already knew that Colby was dead. Of course, by now Olivia Kerr and her buddies at the newspaper had probably phoned everyone that Dale Colby had spoken to the whole last six months.

  She opened her notebook. “Now, my understanding is that Mr. Colby was interested in the plane crash last January.”

  “Yeah, that’s true enough.” He leaned back in his big chair.

  “Had he been asking you about it recently?”

  “God, honey, what didn’t he ask about? He kept coming back with questions all the time. Don’t know why he did, I could never tell him anything. I mean, I could tell him a little about Dad’s business, but that was it, right? All this other stuff—” His hands gestured argumentatively. “I mean, how was I supposed to know anything about that crash? I wasn’t there!”

  “What do you think caused the crash?”

  “Well, like I told Colby, the experts are saying terrorism. I’m no expert but I think that makes sense. I couldn’t figure out why Colby was asking me.”

  “Maybe he thought you’d know if someone had a grudge against your father.” Holly thought about scooting forward in the big chair but it was steeply slanted as well as slippery. She settled for a steady gaze.

  “Who knows?” Moffatt, despite filling his chair better, didn’t seem very much at ease either. “I don’t know all that much about my father’s business, honey. I didn’t work with him.”

  “Did you think the investigation was progressing well?”

  “God!” Moffatt snorted. “I don’t know why they haven’t quit by now! You know that congressman hasn’t found a damn thing that wasn’t in the first report. But it just goes on and on!”

  “Don’t you want them to find out why your father died?”

  “Oh, yeah, yeah, of course,” Moffatt conceded. “Except they should know when to quit, honey. Doesn’t do any good to keep going over the same old stuff. Beating dead horses. The facts don’t change, right? No matter how often you go over them?”

  Wrong, Moffatt. A fact that made no sense the first time through might combine with another later on in a way that made the whole configuration shift. But aloud she said only, “It must b
e a problem for you that the investigation is still open.”

  He shrugged. “No big deal. Of course I want to settle the estate, honey, who wouldn’t? But the lawyers say we gotta wait. So we wait.”

  “They’re sitting on a lot of money that’s rightfully yours?”

  He didn’t blink, he’d seen it coming. Probably Colby had asked him too. Or Olivia or the ever-present Maggie. He said smoothly, “I don’t know how much. Doesn’t matter anyway. The important thing is that they get it settled eventually. Damn slow lawyers! It’s not just me, but all the others—you know, prolonging the agony. We just want to get it behind us, not have all these questions all the time.” He smiled quickly. “Present beautiful company excepted!”

  “What was your relationship with your father?”

  A grimace of disgust. “It was fine! Someone’s been trotting out that old stuff about college for you. Don’t listen to them, honey.”

  “I’d like to hear your side.”

  “Look, it’s no big deal. I’m not the only guy who wanted to break away on his own at that age. Dad was a successful man and had a lot of strong opinions. So I get to Maryland, football scholarship, coeds falling at my feet, fraternities lined up wanting me to pledge…” He had forgotten her legs, was blinking out the window now at the rain drenching the brick commercial row across the street. Holly wondered if he had ever again reached the ego-gratifying pinnacle of those heady days.

  “Your dad must have been pleased,” she prompted.

  He slammed a heavy fist onto the table. “Never satisfied! He wanted me to go the executive route. Didn’t like the courses I chose, didn’t like my grades…” He looked at his fist, still clenched on the table, and pulled himself together. “Well, fathers are like that. They think they know what’s best. I don’t hold it against him.”

  Yeah, tell me another one. Holly turned the page. “He made you leave Maryland?”

  “In a way. I got to drinking—you know, at that age, you want to try everything, and the parties were fun. It’s easy to get carried away. And I was under all this pressure from him.”

  Pressure. Sure, Moffatt. Were your buddies maimed and dying all around you? Or were you maybe working twenty-hour shifts in the operating room? Holly damped the licking flames of contempt and asked levelly, “How did he find out you were drinking too much?”

  “Well, my grades were shot sophomore year.” Moffatt was not looking at her any more. His elbows were on his desk, his fleshy fists against his eyes. “I coulda got that under control, you know, it was just I was young yet. And one night I hit a tree and this girl I was with got hurt. Goddamn cunt sued.” He cleared his throat. “Pardon my French. Anyway, Dad had to pay a whole lot even out of court. That was the end for me.”

  “What happened to her?” Holly inquired mildly.

  “She said her face and arm got hurt. I mean, big deal, you face that stuff in a game all the time!”

  Holly noted it down without asking if the goddamn cunt had been supplied with helmet and protective pads. If the elder Moffatt had paid up, the young woman must have had a damn good case against young Leon. Enough smashed bones and stitches to convince Moffatt’s high-priced lawyers they couldn’t win. Holly decided to look up the case later. She said, “So you had to leave college.”

  “Yeah. And Dad said he was finished with me, to get out on my own. Join the Army or something.” He uncovered his eyes. “Well, that seemed dumb. I had a good lottery number. So I signed onto a construction crew.”

  “I see. Did your father stay mad?”

  “For a while. But I got my act together, married Judy. He liked her. Came to the wedding and everything. Then I got a chance to buy into this outfit with Horse Pulaski. Dad came round then. It’s a good business, too.”

  “Your dad invested in it, then?”

  “Yeah, sure. Like I say, it’s a good business.”

  So the official line was wild oats followed by mature reconciliation. Ho hum. But possibly true. Holly asked, “When Dale Colby talked to you, did he have any particular line of questioning?”

  He smiled. “He asked pretty much the same questions as lady detectives ask.” When she didn’t smile back he coaxed, “C’mon, honey, loosen up! You could be real pretty if you’d smile!”

  Holly turned crisply to a new page. “Now, just a routine question. Can you tell me where you were yesterday afternoon?”

  “Sheesh.” He looked at her a moment, frowning, then shrugged and answered with exaggerated businesslike coolness. “Windover Country Club. Had lunch there with a client about one o’clock, went to golf with another at two-thirty. Finished about five.”

  “And after that?”

  “Drinks, home to the wife. Normal day.”

  Holly looked at him directly. “On a normal day are you angry enough at Colby to visit the Sun-Dispatch office and complain?”

  A spasm of pain crossed his face. “God. I’ve never had good timing.”

  “Could you explain what made you so angry yesterday morning?”

  A look of cunning that didn’t suit his jowly face flickered through his eyes and was gone. “He just asked so many questions. He was asking about Tracy again.”

  “Tracy?”

  “The girl who sued. I was fed up. But, listen, I bet when you ask other people, they’ll be fed up with his questions too. Maybe he was just doing his job but it gets on a guy’s nerves after a while.”

  “Yeah. Who else do you think was fed up?”

  He became vague. “Oh, you know. Maybe somebody connected with that congressman Dad liked so much.”

  “Okay. Can you tell me anything else about Dale Colby?”

  “Not really. I didn’t know the guy.”

  “Anything else about your dad? Did he have enemies?”

  He rolled his eyes up. “Everybody asks the same thing! Look, I really didn’t know the details of his business. Ask his partners, his employees.” He looked at the watch that dented his pudgy wrist. “Now, Miss Shiner, I do have an important lunch appointment soon.”

  Holly sat still. “Yes, I understand that you’re very busy, Mr. Moffatt. Just a couple more questions. Can you tell me about Blankenship?”

  For an instant Moffatt looked as though she’d walloped him with a two-by-four. Then he shrugged again, very casually. “That’s all settled. Last fall it was settled.”

  “And how did the settlement affect you?”

  “We could manage!” he said vehemently. “Obviously we weren’t that happy about it because we weren’t to blame. But it’s a good business, like I say. We can swing it.” He looked at his watch again. “I really do have to get ready for a meeting.”

  “Did Colby ask you about Blankenship?”

  “No more than he asked about anything else! Now—”

  She cut him off by grabbing the arms of her chair and shoving herself erect. “Thank you, Mr. Moffatt. I’ll get back to you as the case develops.”

  “Yes.” He smiled his thick-lipped smile and got up to open the door for her. “Good-bye, Miss Shiner.”

  “Detective Schreiner, Mr. Moffatt. Good-bye.”

  The reception area was empty. No people lined up for important lunch meetings, not even a receptionist at the moment. Holly started down the hall, spotted the ladies’, and went in.

  Moffatt’s secretary was at the mirror, carefully arranging an elaborate Raquel Welch hairstyle. “Oh, hi,” she said.

  “Hi, Rosalie.” Holly dropped her bag on the sink counter next to Rosalie and pulled out her own brush. “Your hair’s gorgeous,” she said in an admiring tone.

  “Thanks. Takes time, though. You ever think about dying yours?” Rosalie asked, in the instant comradeship of two women sharing a mirror.

  Holly looked at her own dull sandy-brown mop. “I’ve thought about blonde,” she admitted.

  “Oh, you’d look great! Course you’d have to use a little more mascara so you wouldn’t look too washed out.” Rosalie replaced her hairbrush and began to hunt through her big
bag.

  “Yeah, that’s the problem,” Holly told her confidingly. “This is a crazy job I’ve got. I got maced once at a demonstration. Cried for ten minutes, and my face looked like a zebra’s. I never wore mascara to work again.”

  “God, I never thought of that! Me, I get caught in the rain like today and it takes two hours to recover.” Rosalie produced a lip brush and began lining her mouth carefully.

  Holly edged toward the topic she wanted. “You like working for Moffatt?”

  “Sure. See, I’m not that fast at typing. Probably have to do grocery checkout except dear old Porky likes my style.” She gave a quick hip-wriggle and grinned at Holly in the mirror, then sobered. “What were you asking him about?”

  Holly pulled out her own light lipstick. She looked faded next to the younger woman. Eyes hollow, face permanently taut in a way that Rosalie’s lipliners and purple eye shadow could never help. “We talked about a lot of stuff,” she answered. “Like Blankenship.”

  “God, what a mess!” The heavily made-up eyes fluttered at Holly’s image anxiously. “Is it going to be all right? I mean, I want to know because after the ruling Leon said he might have to let me go.”

  Holly colored her upper lip in two strokes before she said, “I don’t think it will come to that. You’re an important employee, right? The firm needs you.”

  “Yeah, sure. But if the firm is bankrupt?”

  “Well—” Things were slipping into place. Holly asked, “But isn’t Moffatt getting an inheritance?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think that’s coming through soon. The lawyers are sitting on that money.”

  “Still, they should be able to hang on for a while.” Holly finished her mouth and dropped the lipstick into her purse.

  “Maybe.” Rosalie looked glum. “But it’s been a year since Leon lost the suit, and he’s just about run out of excuses.”

  “Lawyers can usually think of new ones.”

  “Yeah. Hey, thanks, that cheers me up.” Rosalie tossed her makeup back into her bag and carefully tucked her shiny blouse into her belt to give maximum emphasis to her cleavage. She knew what Leon liked about her, all right. She picked up her bag, said, “Well, see you,” and teetered toward the door in her high heels.