by J. A. Jance
“If you don’t mind,” Shandrow interjected, “I think I’ll go use the facilities.”
More than ready to be rid of the jerk, I wouldn’t have minded if he’d walked straight out the door. He eased his somewhat ungainly body out of the booth and then made for the corridor that led to the restrooms while Jamison put away his notebook and pencil.
“So that’s it, then?” I asked.
“For the time being,” he told me. “Like I said earlier, we just needed to ask you a couple of questions. Now we’ll get out of your hair.”
That was pretty laughable in itself because I don’t have any hair. When my hairline started receding, I went for the Kojak look and shaved it all off. Jamison stood up just as Shandrow emerged from the hallway. Jamison was between us, and Shandrow was looking at his partner rather than at his reflection in the mirror. I caught the small secretive nod he sent in Jamison’s direction. Since neither of them was looking at me at that precise moment, I doubt they realized I had seen it. That nod told me that Detective Shandrow had not only gone down the hall looking for something, he had found it.
“What’s the deal with the trophy case and all the photos back there in the corridor?” he asked. “You got yourself one of those dimwit kids?”
I don’t have any kids of my own, but I do coach a Special Olympics team, the Roundhouse Railers. When one of my athletes comes into the diner, they always eat for free, and they always want to go visit the trophy case in the restroom hallway. Hearing Shandrow call those sweet folks dimwits left me wanting to punch the man’s lights out.
“Those are my athletes.” I told him in tight-lipped fury. “And no, I don’t have any children of my own, dim or otherwise.”
They got the message, Jamison most likely more than Shandrow, and left then, while I stayed where I was. This wasn’t a social call. It wasn’t my job to see them out. Besides, I was so pissed at Detective Shandrow that I was afraid I’d say something to the man that I’d end up regretting. I was still sitting in the booth when Amanda came over and wiped down the table.
“Who were those assholes, and what the hell was that all about?” she demanded, both hands on her hips. “Were they from down the street?” She jerked her head in the direction of the police academy campus.
“No such luck,” I said. “It turns out my ex-wife got murdered, and they’re operating on the assumption that I did it.”
“Right,” she said. “When would you have time?”
“That’s what I told them.”
“You want something to drink?”
“No,” I said. “Not right now. I need to take a run up the road and have a chat with an old friend of mine.”
By “up the road” I meant up Highway 60 to Sun City. And by “old friend” I mean old—a spry eighty-two, or, as Tim O’Malley himself, liked to say, “Older than dirt.” Tim had retired from the Chicago PD after living and working—much of it as a beat cop—through far too many Chicago winters. He and his wife Minnie had retired to Sun City and, through mere coincidence, happened to own the house next to the one my grandparents bought a couple years later. Tim and Minnie were there for my grandmother when Grandpa Hudson was sick and dying, just as, years later, Grandma was there for Tim during Minnie’s slow decline through the hell of Alzheimer’s.
And after that? It’s difficult to call a pair of octogenarians boyfriend and girlfriend, but that’s what they were. Grandma told me once that Tim was far too young for her to consider marrying. They never lived together, either. After all, propriety had to be maintained. Even so, they were good for each other, and over time Tim and I became friends if not pals. Right that minute, I needed some sage advice, and Tim’s house was where I went looking for it.
He listened to the whole story in silence. When I finished, he shook his head. “Aggie always said that Faith woman was trouble,” Tim commented. “She was of the opinion that anything that looks too good to be true probably is too good to be true. Unfortunately, Faith turned out to be far worse than any of us could have expected.”
“I should have expected it,” I muttered. “When the gorgeous blonde walks into the room and sweeps the short bald guy off his feet, anyone with half a brain should have figured out something wasn’t right. By the time I did, it was far too late.”
“Okay, then,” Tim said, nodding impatiently. “Enough about her. Let’s get back to those cops. Did they come right out and say you were a suspect? Did they read you your rights?”
“No,” I answered. “Jamison insisted I was just a ‘person of interest,’ but I find that hard to believe. They must have been doing some serious poking around in order to learn that I’m considering selling the Roundhouse to that hotel developer. That isn’t exactly common knowledge.”
Tim nodded again. It was common knowledge to him because I had confided in Tim O’Malley about that, but I hadn’t told anyone else.
“How long have these bozos been in town, again?” he asked.
“They didn’t say.”
“Vegas is a long way from here. It doesn’t seem likely that they would have sent two detectives down here to question you if they thought it was some kind of wild goose chase. They must have a pretty good reason to suspect you.”
“Yes, but I didn’t do it,” I insisted. “I had no idea Faith was living in Vegas.”
“What about the guy she ran off with?”
“My old pal Rick? She evidently shed him, too, somewhere along the way. I have no idea where he is now.”
“What’s his name?”
“Austin—Richard Austin.”
“He’s the guy who stole your wife and your money?”
“I don’t think he stole Faith. She probably pulled the wool over his eyes, the same way she did mine, but between the two of them, they both stole my money.”
“How much money are we talking about?”
“Over a million,” I said.
Tim whistled. “That’s a lot of money.”
“It is, but once it’s gone, it’s gone. That’s one thing I’m grateful to Grandma Hudson for—she helped me see that it was just money, and water under the bridge besides. In order to get on with my life, I needed to let it go, and I did.”
“Cops won’t see it that way,” Tim cautioned. “Those guys are probably thinking you’re still pissed about it.”
“Turns out I am still pissed,” I corrected. “But not enough to kill her over it. I’m not the murdering type. So what should I do, call a lawyer?”
“Do you have one?”
“No, but . . .”
“You see,” Tim said, “here’s where those dicks have you by the short hairs. If you don’t call a lawyer you look stupid, and if you do call a lawyer, you look guilty.”
“What should I do, then?”
Tim considered for a long time before he answered. “For right now, go back to work. Don’t stress over this. Stress is bad for your health. Let me see what I can do. I may have been off the force for a long time, but ex-cops have some pull that most civilians don’t. I’ll get back to you.”
He glanced at his watch. He didn’t say, Here’s your hat; what’s your hurry, but I got the message and left. When I got back to the Roundhouse, the parking lot was full and so was the bar. The white-haired, blue-plate special folks, sporting their walkers and canes, were wandering into the dining room. That was the other thing I didn’t like about selling the place. Any hotel that might replace it—full of polished granite floors and stylish modern furniture—wouldn’t be the same kind of comfortable gathering place this one had become for that particular demographic. The new establishment on the block might be slick and cool and hip, but it wouldn’t do what the Roundhouse did—remind people of places back home.
I went upstairs, showered, changed into clean clothes, and came back downstairs to the bar to lend a hand. Some of the golf
ers, a little the worse for wear several hours later, were still there. I told Amanda to collect their car keys and make sure they called cabs before they left. That’s when it hit me—all the earlier talk about pay phones. Shandrow hadn’t gone down the hall to spend time looking at the Roundhouse Railers’ trophy case. He had been in search of the bar’s pay phone. I went down the corridor and looked at it myself. I’d had them install it low enough on the wall so it’s wheelchair accessible. I stared at it for a long time, but the phone wasn’t talking, at least not to me.
Grandma Hudson always claimed work was the best medicine. “It’s good for what ails you,” she advised me when I came dragging into Phoenix. She must have known how close I was to the abyss. She had insisted that I see a doctor for a checkup, and had seen to it that the doctor prescribed some antidepressants for me as well. Between the two medications—daily doses of hard work and the prescription drugs—I had gradually pulled out of my funk.
That night, the hard work part did the trick again. The Friday night crowd, larger than usual, was more than I had staffed for, and I helped pinch-hit in the bar. Right around midnight a guy I’d never seen before sauntered into the bar and ordered a St. Pauli Girl, N/A—nonalcoholic—the drink of choice for some of those folks who no longer care to imbibe the hard stuff. The new arrival had the nose of a heavy drinker, and the familiar way he settled his hulking figure on the bar stool told me he had spent plenty of time in bars.
“You Butch?” he asked when I brought him back his change.
“You got me,” I answered. “Who are you?”
“Pop told me to look for a bald guy with a mustache,” he said. “Had to be you.”
“Pop?” I asked.
“Tim O’Malley. My father-in-law—used-to-be father-in law.”
There was a hint of regret in that last phrase. I couldn’t tell if the regret came from losing his wife or from losing Tim O’Malley as part of his family.
“Name’s Charles,” he told me. “Charles Rickover. Charlie to my friends. Me and Amy have been divorced for about ten years now. I still stay in touch with Pop, though. He’s a good guy.”
I remembered being introduced to Tim’s daughter Amy at Minnie O’Malley’s funeral. If I’d been told her last name back then, I didn’t recall what it was.
“Yes,” I agreed. “He is a good guy.”
“I used to be a cop,” Charles went on. “Put in my twenty. My career came to an abrupt end about the time Amy left me. Turned out she hit forty and decided she liked women more than men. That was tough on the old ego. I spent some time drowning my sorrows, if you know what I mean.”
Wondering where all this was going, I nodded. Had Tim sent Charles by so we could cry on one another’s shoulders about the women who had done us wrong? If that was the case, I wasn’t exactly in a mood for commiserating.
I had started to walk away when Charles reached into his pocket and pulled out one of those little business card holders. He extracted a card and then lay it on the bar in front of me. When I didn’t reach for it right away, he added. “Go ahead. Pick it up. It won’t bite.”
In the dim light of the bar, I had to pull out a pair of reading glasses to make it out: CHARLES RICKOVER. PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS. The only other line on the card was a phone number with a 602 prefix. There was nothing else printed there—no address, city, or state, but 602 indicated the business was located somewhere in the Phoenix metropolitan area.
“Pop says he thinks you’re being framed for murder and that maybe you could use my help.”
I know a little about private eyes—enough to know they don’t come cheap. I wasn’t of a mind to be bamboozled into hiring one.
“Look,” I said, “Tim’s a great guy. As I told him earlier, someone knocked off my ex-wife a couple of weeks ago. A pair of cops came by earlier today and asked me a few questions about it. That’s all. I never said anything about being framed, and I don’t think it’s necessary for me to hire—”
“You’re not hiring me,” Charles said quickly. “I’m doing this for Tim. He stood by me when a lot of other people didn’t. When he asks for something, I deliver. He called me this evening and mentioned the framing bit. I still have friends here and there. Between his call and now, I’ve made a few calls of my own, and you know what? Either you’re the guy who did it, and they’ve got you dead to rights, or else Tim is right, and you are being framed.”
“How so?” I asked.
“An old friend of mine happens to work for the Las Vegas PD, and he did some checking for me. It turns out your ex, Katherine Melcher, had received a number of threatening telephone calls in the weeks preceding her death. She had recorded two of the calls—illegally, of course. The person on the phone whispered so it’s hard to tell if the caller was a man or a woman. With the right equipment, I’m sure a trained voice recognition expert will be able to sort all that out. Voices are like fingerprints, or so I’m told. The most immediate problem is this—the calls all came from a Phoenix area phone number. Wanna know which one? The pay phone you’ve got in your hallway there.” He pointed with the tip end of his bottle. “The one right outside your crapper.”
There was a long pause after that while his words sank into my consciousness. Threatening phone calls to Faith, aka Katy Melcher, had been placed from my pay phone? How could that be?
Charles slammed his empty bottle down on the counter. “Contrary to popular opinion,” he said, “I believe you do need my help. Your ex may be the one who’s dead, but Pop thinks you’re the real target, and I tend to agree with him. Given all that, we need to talk. Now where can a guy get a decent cup of coffee around here?”
I walked to the far side of the bar and tapped Jason, my evening and late night barkeep, on the shoulder. “I’m done,” I told him. “Will you close up?”
“No prob,” he said with a nod.
Beckoning Rickover to follow me, I ducked into the dining room and grabbed the most recently made pot of coffee off the machine behind the counter, then I led the way up the narrow stairway to what is a surprisingly spacious apartment. Because the stairway is situated in the alcove between the dining room and the bar, you enter the apartment in the middle as well.
When it comes to “open concept floor plans,” Grandma Hudson was a pioneer. The main room, situated over the restaurant portion of the building, is a combination living room, dining room, kitchen, and office. A master bedroom and bath as well as a guest room and bath are located over the bar. That’s not the best arrangement for sleeping, especially on raucous weekend nights, but Grandma probably figured—and rightly so—that whoever lived here would be downstairs working those noisy late nights anyway.
I turned to the right and led Charles into what an enterprising real estate sales guy might refer to as the “main salon.” I put the coffeepot on the warmer I keep on the kitchen counter and directed my guest past the plain oak dining table to the seating area in the center of the room. The rest of the place may have been decorated to suit my grandmother’s no nonsense, spartan tastes, but the seating area consisted of two well-made easy chairs and a matching sofa. The chintz upholstery may have faded some, but the springs and cushions had held up to years of constant use. With a glass-topped coffee table in the middle, it was the perfect place to put your feet up after spending a long day doing the downstairs hustle.
When I brought the coffee—a mug for Charles and one for me, too, I found him studying his surroundings. “You live here by yourself?” he asked.
I nodded. “Once burned, twice shy.”
He gave me a rueful grin. “Ain’t that the truth. So tell me the story. Pop told me some of it, but if I’m going to help you, I need to hear the whole thing—from the very beginning.”
There’s something demeaning about having to confess the intimate details of the worst failures of your life to complete strangers. For t
he second time in a single twenty-four-hour period, I found myself having to go back over that whole miserable piece of history, but I didn’t hold anything back. I understood that if the threatening phone calls to Faith had originated from my place of business, then I was in deep trouble and needed all the help I could get. In that regard, Charles Rickover was the only game in town.
He didn’t bother taking notes as I talked. He listened attentively but without interruption as I made my way through the whole thing, ending with a detailed description of my encounter with Detectives Jamison and Shandrow earlier that afternoon. When I went to refill our coffee cups, I returned to find him staring at the office space at the far end of the room. It consisted of an old wooden teacher’s desk that Grandma Hudson had liberated from a secondhand store somewhere in front of a bank of used and abused secondhand filing cabinets.
“Is that your computer?” Charles asked, nodding toward my desk and my pride and joy, a tiny ten-inch Toshiba Portégé. The laptop sat in isolated splendor on the desk’s otherwise empty surface. Having learned my lesson about allowing other people, namely Faith, handle accounting records for my business, I do those functions myself now, on the computer. The Toshiba also holds the first few chapters of my several unfinished novels.
“That’s it,” I said.
“Mind if I take a look?”
“Sure.”
Charles walked over to the desk, slipped on a pair of gloves, and flipped up the lid on the computer. It lit up right away. He leaned over, studied the screen, and then turned back to me with a puzzled expression on his face. “Dead men don’t lie?” he asked.
“It’s a story,” I explained. “Fiction. It’s the title for one of the novels I’m working on.”
“You leave your computer sitting here like this?”
I shrugged. “Why not? I’m the only one who lives here.”
“You may be the only person who lives here, but you’re not the only person who has access.”