Gracie Greene Mystery Box Set

by Jack Parker

  Jerry took the case somewhat gingerly, as if it might bite. He opened it and pulled out the papers, spread them out on the desk and mumbled to himself as he checked them off against some mental list. Finally he looked up and said, "Everything looks in order, far as I can tell. A copy of the presentation, the contracts, his itinerary, some notes on other clients. Thank you very much, Lieutenant, for letting me have these. But it wasn't Charles' car."

  "What?" Ken asked in mild shock. He pulled out his notebook for the details. "A gray 2007 Jaguar XJS, license number LJS…"

  "4328," Jerry finished, in unison with Ken. "It's my car. Something happened to break the back window of his car yesterday, so he borrowed mine." Jerry smiled a little sarcastically. "Charles thought imitation would be flattering to me, so he bought a Jag that looked just like mine. 'Cept his was a year newer."

  "So where's Mr. Greene's car?" Ken asked.

  "Guess it's still in the parking garage across the street," Jerry said. "I had to call my wife to take me home last night."

  "So he stopped here to borrow your car before going to Bixby's?"

  "No, Sir. He came in to talk about the pending contract, I guess. You know, let me know he was about to go meet the man. He seemed pretty wound up, guess he was a mite nervous, this was a pretty big sale." Jerry stopped to remember the details.

  "But he left the office and then came back a few minutes later yellin' about his car. Said the back window was broken and the alarm was going off. I asked if anything was missing but he said 'no'. I told him he should report it to the police, but he was in a hurry, said he'd do it when he got back," Jerry explained.

  "I will definitely check on that next!" Ken said.

  The two men continued to talk for several minutes. Jerry had been in the office all day, but it wasn't unusual for Mr. Greene to be out. Ken learned that Greene was, in Jerry's words, "a high-pressure salesman", and a man who always "liked to win". Jerry didn't know of any enemies, but it was clear he thought Greene had probably rubbed many people the wrong way.

  Just as Ken was about to leave another man stuck his head in the door.

  "Hey Jerry, have you got the numbers on the Thompson account?"

  "Yeah, just a minute," Jerry replied. "Jack, this is Lieutenant Freeman," he said indicating Ken.

  Jack stuck a half-eaten powdered sugar donut between a finger and the coffee cup in his left hand so he could free up his right to shake. "Jack Dunbar, nice to meet you," he said.

  Jack was a little man with a pronounced slouch, a pasty face, and he sported an obvious comb-over of graying dark hair. Ken introduced himself and explained why he was there.

  Jack rocked back on his heels in surprise at the news. "Well! I can't say that I liked him very much, but I'm sorry to hear he's dead."

  "Why didn't you like him?" Ken asked.

  "Oh, well, he thought he was a real hot-shot," Jack replied diffidently. "He was always bragging and putting me down."

  "That seems pretty vague," Ken commented.

  "Well, how's this?" he asked with a little irritation. "The guy stole some of my clients. I don't know if he went through my desk or what, but more than once I'd call on a renewal and find Charles had already talked to them."

  Having said that Jack seemed to deflate, as if the accusation was enough to satisfy him. "I can't prove it, of course," he ended a bit lamely.

  After what he'd already learned about the victim, Ken wasn't surprised to hear about inter-office rivalries. Greene was apparently a jerk, but so far he hadn't heard anything specific that would make a good motive.

  He thanked the men for their time and left Jerry's office. He stopped to talk to the secretary for a minute. She confirmed Jerry had been in the office all day yesterday, but the salesmen were in and out and thus difficult to keep track of. She did remember Charles' ruckus over his car, said he'd finally left a little after 1:00 pm.

  After a little thought she also remembered Jack had been in the office during the afternoon. She'd just been leaving her desk for a break when he'd insisted she make some copies for him first. She was vague about the exact time, but it was around 3 PM. Ken figured that was close enough, Dunbar hadn't shot his co-worker over stolen clients.

  * * * *

  Jeanine breezed into the grocery store's small office, looking for her manager. She spied him at a desk, working on a computer and flipping through a large stack of papers to find the one he currently needed.

  "I gotta talk to you, Tony," she said without preamble.

  Tony looked up from the computer screen, swiveled his head to glance at the clock, then turned back to her. "You're late! Your shift started thirty minutes ago – and you're not even in uniform."

  "You gotta do something for me," Jeanine began.

  Tony interrupted with, "People who want favors generally begin their request with the word 'please'."

  "I said 'please'," Jeanine declared much to his surprise. "I need to take the week off."

  "No," Tony said succinctly.

  "But it's bereavement, the law says you gotta give it to me," Jeanine told him.

  "Bereavement?" Tony asked. "What happened, your grandmother die again?"

  "My brother! Didn't you read the papers this morning? Oh, Jeez, it was awful – he was murdered yesterday," Jeanine said very emotionally.

  "Jeanine, I'm sorry," Tony said kindly. "No, I don't read the paper, I hadn't heard. What happened?"

  "Someone shot him," she said dramatically. "Right through the heart. Around 3:00. I'm so upset, I just can't work right now. Got to help his kids with the funeral and all that. So you see, there's just no way I can come to work this week, I gotta have it off."

  "How horrible," he responded. "Do the police have any suspects?"

  "They talked to us all last night. You know, 'did he have any enemies' and 'where were you yesterday afternoon', that sort of thing. Like they thought I might've done it!"

  "They have to ask those questions. They'll figure it out eventually. When's the funeral?" he asked.

  "Don't know yet, he won't let us have it," she said somewhat cryptically.

  "Who won't let you have what?" Tony asked with some exasperation.

  "The body," she replied.

  "You mean the coroner won't release the body yet."

  Jeanine merely nodded as if he were an idiot who needed everything spelled out.

  "Well, let me know as soon as the funeral's set and you can take that day off. But you know we're short-handed right now, there's no one to cover your shift. So you need to get out there and get to work right now." Tony told her.

  "But I just told you, I can't work today. Not after all I've been through," Jeanine's voice alternated between whining and outrage.

  Tony sighed heavily. "Jeanine, you're always complaining about not getting enough hours, I'd think you'd need the money."

  "I'll get some of his money, now that he's dead," Jeanine said smugly. "Then I won't have to work at this crappy job anymore."

  "It'll take months to get the will probated. You'll need to work until then, or can you afford to wait that long without pay?" Tony asked.

  "You're not gonna let me have the week off?" she asked angrily.

  "No! You can have the day of the funeral off, but that's all. Don't count your chickens before they hatch, and be grateful I don't fire you for that 'crappy job' remark. And you're not on the clock 'til you show up in uniform and ready to go to work."

  Ken walked across the street from Wilkins' Insurance Agency to the parking garage. It was easy enough to spot Greene's Jaguar, it was parked not far from the door to the street. The parking spaces were at a right angle to the wall with the door and the car was nosed-in to the space. That meant the back window was facing him as he turned to his left - and the window was clearly shattered.

  He walked around the car, checking out the damage. The back seat was covered in broken glass but the rest of the windows were rolled up. He peered in the driver's side window, careful not to touch the glass,
but saw nothing unusual. He didn't try to open the door because that might compromise any prints. The boys in the lab would handle that.

  The view through the passenger window didn't shed any light, either. He did notice something dark on the edge of the seat and made a note to have the lab check it out. But he could see the dash clearly enough to tell that the sound system was still in place. He had to admit the man kept his car clean, there was no trash on the floors and nothing in the cup holder. He looked carefully at the back seat, but couldn't see a rock or anything else that might've been thrown through the window. There was, however, a long scratch down the right side of the car.

  Ken wandered on to the back of the car to check it out more closely. There! It was a small hole in the edge of the trunk, just below the left-hand taillight. In the dim light of the parking garage it was hard to tell, but it looked like it went all the way through the metal. A man who kept his car so spotlessly clean would've fixed any damage immediately, so this must have been recent. Could it be a bullet hole?

  He straightened up and sighted along the path a bullet would've taken. That bullet wouldn't have broken the window, it was likely embedded inside the trunk somewhere. But he could see another hole through the headrest. Had someone shot at Greene as he sat in his car? He could've heard the shot to the trunk and ducked so that while the second shot was aimed much better it still missed him.

  Greene hadn't driven away, possibly because his only escape route was backwards towards his assailant. Why didn't the gunman stick around and finish the job? Maybe because the broken window set off the car alarm and that scared him away. So did that mean he'd hung around and followed Greene to the Bixby mansion? That meant it could be someone who wasn't at the party and wouldn't have known ahead of time where Greene would be at 2:00 yesterday afternoon.

  That made a little more sense, Ken thought. Anyone who knew about the appointment would probably prefer the more remote location for a murder; besides, how would they know he'd drop by work beforehand? It certainly widened the pool of suspects, and left open the question of motive.

  Ken called Forensics and requested a crew come get the car. While he was waiting he made a few more calls. First he called Jerry Wilkins and asked if Greene had said anything about being shot at. He hadn't, and in fact hadn't seemed to know what had caused the shattered window. Jerry was adamant about that. Could Greene have been lying so he wouldn't have to get involved with the police which would make him miss his big presentation? If so he must've felt sure he was safe, maybe he saw the guy drive off.

  Next he called some of the specialists who were checking various pieces of data. The resident department techie confirmed that a phone call was made from the Greene home to Cindy Stone's number at 2:56 PM, lasting three minutes. Ms. Stone did not have voice mail or an answering machine and an unanswered call would show up on phone company records as "failed", so someone had to be there to answer the phone. It didn't have to be Ms. Stone of course, but add to that the fact that she had arrived at the Greene residence fifteen minutes later and, at least at this point, had little obvious motive it was enough to move her way down the list of suspects.

  Mrs. Greene's credit card was used to make a purchase at Jayne's Boutique at 10:19 AM Tuesday in the amount of $387.56. That would be the dress she'd bought for the evening's celebration. It seemed odd that she'd bought the dress almost as soon as the store had opened but claimed she'd shopped all day. Well, maybe so, rich women liked to shop. However there were no other charges that day, so what had she done for lunch? She could've paid cash – and a vain woman (which she certainly seemed to be) might skip lunch for her figure's sake, especially since she was planning a big meal out that evening. But it didn't help prove where she'd been for approximately four hours.

  Mrs. Greene's call to her husband's cell phone was also verified. The voice mail message was time stamped 3:07 PM. The message was short, a frightened woman's voice talking about the break-in and begging Greene to come home. Ken wondered if the man had already been dead at the time.

  The coroner confirmed time of death to be consistent with 3 PM. Body temperature, rigor, and lividity all indicated the man had been dead approximately an hour when the ME had arrived. Put that together with the facts given by Bixby's staff and the murder must have been committed at 3:00 or within a very few minutes thereafter. The bullet had been sent to ballistics.

  His next call was to the forensics team that had checked out the murder site. They reported marks indicating a scuffle, but it had occurred on a grassy area and nothing was very clear. By measuring the footprints it appeared there were only two people involved, but that wasn't certain. Two people could've had approximately the same size feet, and they hadn't been able to get any clear footprints from the grass so there could have been more than one assailant. The driveway was graveled and dry as it hadn't rained recently, so there were no prints there either. Impossible to know if Greene got out of the car under his own steam, or was dragged out.

  They'd noted bicycle tracks in the grass, going to and from a clump of trees growing beside the mansion's high stone wall. Again there were indistinct footprints among the trees, indicating perhaps that the assailant had biked to the scene and waited for Greene in the trees. The guy hadn't been kind enough to leave cigarette butts or any other evidence that might help identify him. It might mean there was only one murderer – and it might only mean that some kid had hidden in the trees the night before, probably trying to get inside the walls for some kind of midnight mischief.

  The tow truck crew finally arrived and Ken pointed out the two possible bullet holes. They began loading up the Jag and Ken left them to their job. It was time to start checking out alibis, and see if he could stir up any motives while he was at it. Someone had certainly had it out for Mr. Greene, he thought. They broke into his house in the morning, took a couple shots at him around 1 PM, then finally managed to kill him at 3:00. Whoever had done all this would be missing in action for most of the day. The man's family and friends had all had alibis for at least part of the day, maybe he could shake some of them.

  Ken decided to go to the Northwest Medical Tower and check out the neighbor's story. Jim Holloway had seemed on pretty good terms with Greene, though there was always the possibility of unpaid loans or advances to the wife.

  Dr. Holloway's staff assured Ken the doctor had indeed seen patients all afternoon, even showing him the man's schedule on the office PC. He'd made his rounds at the hospital in the morning, and been in the office since 10 AM, had left at 4:30. No need to check any further at this point, unless he discovered a more likely motive. It would be difficult for a busy doctor to disappear for even an hour, much less several.

  From the upscale medical tower Ken drove to the shabbier side of town. The Lots-O-Luck Bingo Hall was housed in an ex-grocery store. The interior space was huge, filled with long tables, lots of chairs, and cigarette smoke. The caller's voice over the PA system echoed off the bare walls so that Ken could hardly understand the numbers. Apparently no one else had that problem, as the players hurriedly dobbed at their cards with each call.

  He asked to speak to the manager, but the man didn't recognize Jeanine Thomas' name. Ken showed him a picture and that produced a response. Jeanine was a regular player, but he couldn't say if she'd been in yesterday. Other employees were called in to have a look, but their memories weren't any better. Ms. Thomas' name was not listed among the winners on Tuesday; she had said she hadn't won anything.

  Ken requested a minute to address the players, and after the current game ended he took the stage with mike in hand. He simply asked if anyone remembered her being there, and held up the picture, leaving them to wonder why he wanted to know. He saw a lot of heads shake, but no one volunteered any information. He hung around during the next couple rounds. A few women came up to get a better look at the picture, and several of them recognized the face but the best he could get was "she might've been here yesterday, I'm not sure, might've been last Tuesday."


  Having had enough of the noise and smoke, Ken left. Jeanine had motive in that her brother had turned her down for a loan. Possibly she'd needed the money to pay gambling debts, or to pay her bills after she blew her paycheck on bingo. She might actually have been here hoping for a big score since she couldn't get a loan, but it was going to be hard to prove. He'd get a uniformed cop to ask around here some more, and see if by chance the laundry attendant remembered her. Jeanine Thomas moved up the list.

  Ken drove over to North Central High to speak to the school secretary. Attendance records showed both Justin and Gracie had been present for all classes yesterday. His suspicion that Justin was a troublemaker was proven right; Justin and his buddy Zack had caused a disturbance in their 5th hour class, and had spent the rest of the day in the principal's office, only leaving when school let out at 3:30. He disliked the idea of checking up on kids, but he was thorough.

  To complete that thoroughness he put in a call to older son Clarke's college. The woman who answered eventually came up with Clarke's class schedule which showed his last class of the day at 11:40. She transferred him to the professor's office but he got voice mail so he left a message and hung up. Not having met Clarke he had no intuition about the young man's personality. But the woman had said it was an hour and a half class, standard for a Tuesday-Thursday schedule. The college was a couple hours' drive, but if he'd gotten out of class after 1:00 he probably wouldn't have had time to make the drive by 3:00.

  Next he drove to the architectural firm where Clay Wilson worked. Wilson was out at a construction site, but the secretary confirmed he'd been at work yesterday morning. She hadn't seen him during the afternoon, but he was often out of the office. So he couldn't have been the burglar, but was unaccounted for during the two shootings. If the victim's ex-wife inherited anything, as her boyfriend Wilson might want to hurry that money along. The trouble was, most ex-wives didn't inherit in their own right, maybe as trustee for minor kids like Gracie. He couldn't see Gracie letting her mother's boyfriend get his hands on her inheritance, but that might not stop Wilson from trying.