“I used to come here a lot when I was working,” Sean remarked as he joined McCready in a booth at the back of the diner. It was between lunch and dinner and except for an elderly couple studying cruise brochures the place was empty.
“Me too,” McCready said. “Where’s your chauffer?” he asked.
“I Ubered,” Sean told him.
“I’d go nuts without a vehicle,” McCready noted.
“I am going nuts,” Sean told him.
“I got my ex-daughter-in-law’s father’s vehicle in the garage and he’s not coming back from Oakwood cemetery for it. Neither is she, for that matter. Interested?”
“I wouldn’t mind taking a look,” Sean said. Then the waitress came over and Sean told her there’d be one more.
“Good. Who’s coming?” McCready asked as the waitress left. She came back a minute later with another place setting, plus three white coffee mugs, set them on the table, and left.
“Eckleburger,” Sean said.
“I thought he was dead.”
“No. He’s ninety.”
“Close enough,” McCready said.
“He opened an agency in Yonkers when he retired from the Longely PD,” Sean said.
The waitress returned with a carafe of coffee and began to pour. Sean added milk and sugar to his mug and took a sip. He loved his daughters’ coffee, but there was something about diner coffee that was special. He just couldn’t figure out what it was.
“So, did you bring it?” he asked McCready as he studied the menu. He was trying to decide between the corned beef hash and a sausage and pepper two-egg omelet when McCready pushed a manila envelope across the table.
“Here,” he said.
Sean opened the envelope and shook out the pages. A residue of dust came with them.
“I need those back,” McCready said as Sean looked through them.
“I assumed,” Sean said. “Not that anyone will miss them.”
“Probably, but why take a chance,” McCready replied. He’d had to go into the old records storeroom to get what Sean had asked for. Fortunately, the records were housed in a former warehouse a half a mile away from the police department. “Just be glad Hollingsworth PD hasn’t gotten around to digitizing their records yet.”
“Believe me, I am. I’m surprised you found them,” Sean told him, thinking about the state of the Longely PD record storage room.
McCready shrugged. He was too, but he wasn’t going to say that. Instead he said, “I take it you don’t think she did it?”
“She, meaning Ada? Obviously not,” Sean answered. “Do you?”
McCready shook his head. Sean noticed he hadn’t hesitated. “I can’t see her for this.”
Sean took a sip of his coffee. “Then who do you like?”
McCready added another packet of sugar to his coffee while he considered his answer. “If I were betting I’d say the stepmother,” he answered after a minute had gone by.
Sean raised an eyebrow. “Why Vicky?”
“Because she and Peggy Graceson hate—hated—each other.”
“How do you know that?”
McCready stirred his coffee. “They had a big fight two years ago come March. Lots of yelling and screaming. My guys were called. They calmed everything down. Then that evening, Graceson went over to the stepmother’s house and rammed the stepmother’s Mercedes with her car. Claimed it was an accident. Her foot accidentally pressed down on the accelerator instead of the brake.”
“Seems to be a family pattern,” Sean observed.
“Yeah. They have a thing with cars. Anyway, those two hate each other.”
“Fine. Two questions.”
McCready polished his fork with the paper napkin in front of him. “I’m waiting,” he said, looking up.
“One. Why kill the uncle?”
McCready shrugged. “I heard the stepmother had a beef with the uncle, too. He scammed some money off of her. A lot of money.”
“Predictable,” Sean said, thinking of Rose and the twenty grand. “But still . . .” His voice dropped off. Everything about this case was too much. It was like it was hyped up on steroids.
McCready continued. “Plus, he had one of her kids arrested for taking his car. The kid got community service, but she never forgave him.”
“Yeah, but why now?” Sean asked.
McCready frowned. “Who the hell knows. The only thing I do know is that I don’t know how that company has stayed in business all these years. No one talks to anyone else. Second question?”
“Why make Ada the fall guy, or gal, if we’re being PC.”
“Because Ada is the official weirdo of the family. Not that the others aren’t in their own unique ways,” McCready said. He sat back. “And then there’s this. With three people gone there’s more money for everyone when the company goes public.”
“But that’s true for everyone,” Sean pointed out.
“Yeah, but some people need more money than others and I happen to know that Vicky Sinclair is up to her eyeballs in debt. More so than the other family members. In fact, the word is she’s going to sell her house and move into an apartment. She likes blackjack and she’s not very good at it,” McCready concluded.
Sean was about to ask McCready how he knew this when Jack Eckleburger walked through the door. As Sean watched him approach, he reflected that Eckleburger used to be a lot taller, but then he supposed that that applied to him as well. He only hoped that when he got to Eckleburger’s age his gait was as steady and his back was as straight as Ecklebergur’s was. Maybe the trick was to keep working. Eckleburger had opened his agency the day after he’d retired from the Longely Police Department.
“That’s quite the jacket,” McCready noted as Eckleburger reached their table.
“Pendleton,” Eckleburger answered as he took off the white wool jacket with the wide yellow and blue stripes, and hung it on a hook. Then removed his cap, hung that up on the lower hook, and sat down. “Warmest thing I own. I’ve had it for fifty years.”
“Looks like you’re wearing a blanket,” McCready observed.
“Good to see you, too,” Eckleburger retorted as the waitress filled his mug with coffee.
McCready smiled. “Always a pleasure.” He’d thought of Eckleburger as a snotty know-it-all, so he was surprised that he was as glad to see him as he was.
“Ready?” the waitress asked as she stood there, pencil poised above her pad.
“Yes,” Eckleburger said and ordered the corned beef hash with an egg on top without looking at the menu. The other men did the same.
“This is the only place I eat it,” Eckleburger explained.
“Me too,” Sean said, wondering why his daughters didn’t serve it. Maybe he’d suggest it to them.
“Definitely an old-school dish,” McCready observed. “My mom used to make it every Sunday morning.”
The men spent the next half hour eating and exchanging war stories, talking about the times before DNA testing, before cell phones, before texting and computers and surveillance cameras, when all you had to rely on were your instincts and your smarts to solve cases.
“We should do this more often,” Sean said after he’d eaten the last speck of hash on his plate.
Eckleburger nodded. So did McCready. It felt good to talk to people from the old days, they all thought. To remember who they’d been and what they were instead of what they were becoming.
“I’ll tell you one thing I don’t miss,” Eckleburger said as he pushed his plate back. “Testifying on the stand.
“Me neither,” McCready said.
Sean cocked his head. “I don’t know. I kinda enjoyed screwing with the defense.”
Eckleburger shook his head. “You always were a competitive son of a bitch.” He leaned forward. “So, what have you got for me?”
“This,” Sean said and he took the notebook Bernie had given him and the pages McCready had filched and placed them in front of Eckleburger.
“I didn’t kn
ow you’d gone private,” Eckleburger said while he glanced at what Sean had given him.
“I haven’t,” Sean told him. “My daughters are working this. I’m just helping them out.”
Eckleburger smiled. “You didn’t say that last night.”
“Why?” Sean replied. “Does it make a difference?”
“Not in the least.” The corners of Eckleburger’s mouth went up. “I like being back in the business. Taking the cases I want. Maybe you would too.”
“Could be,” Sean said.
Eckleburger tapped the papers in front of him with his fingers. “You know what I’m doing has no legal status,” he told Sean.
“Obviously. Do I look that far gone?” Sean demanded.
“Frankly, yes, you do,” Eckleburger shot back as he opened the notebook.
Sean smiled and signaled the waitress for more coffee. He decided it felt good to be insulted again. He was tired of being mollycoddled.
“This is Jeff Sinclair’s writing?” Eckleburger asked after the waitress left.
McCready nodded. “Yeah. His written statement from a past case.”
“Is it enough?” Sean asked anxiously.
“Yes,” Eckleburger said. “It should be fine.” And he got to work.
Sean and McCready watched Eckleburger’s finger moving along the lines of writing, his eyes darting from a page in the notebook to Jeff Sinclair’s statement and back again. Occasionally, he would murmur something to himself like “interesting” or “aha.” then take a sip of coffee and return to what he was doing.
“So?” Sean asked after five minutes had elapsed.
Eckleburger held up his hand. “Give me a few more minutes.”
Sean did. Finally, Eckleburger looked up and cleared his throat. Then he began.
“I think I can say with a certain amount of surety that the person who wrote the notebook is not the same person who wrote the statement,” Eckleburger asserted. “There are numerous inconsistencies. To mention just a few, the a’s are different, the p’s have different loops, the writer of the notebook puts a lot of pressure on his pen, whereas the writer of the statement doesn’t. I could go on and on, but I don’t think I have to.”
Sean leaned forward. “You’re positive?”
“I’m seventy-percent confident.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Sean told him as he put his hand over his coffee cup to indicate to the waitress he didn’t want anymore. “So,” he asked, thinking out loud, “if we know that Ada’s dad wrote the statement, then who the hell wrote the entries in the notebook?”
“An interesting question,” Eckleburger said, pushing the papers and the notebook back across the table.
Sean turned to McCready. “I need to talk to Ada.”
McCready shook his head. “Don’t look at me.”
Sean held up his hand and wiggled his fingers. “Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking.”
McCready pointed to the papers on the table. “That’s what you said about getting you Sinclair’s statement.”
Sean drew himself up. “I didn’t say that.”
“Maybe not the five-minute part, but definitely the this-is-all-I’m-ever-going-to-ask-you part.”
“You know what they say,” Sean told McCready. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”
“Yeah, McCready,” Eckleburger said, his eyes sparkling. “Be a mensch. Help the man out. You know you want to.”
“Even if I did, I can’t,” McCready said.
“Sure you can,” Sean replied.
“Things are different. I’m not in charge anymore.”
“But it wasn’t that long ago that you were, McCready. You still have friends,” Sean told him.
“Admit it,” Eckleburger said to McCready, “you haven’t had this much fun in years.”
Which, McCready had to confess, was true. What the hell, McCready decided and made the call.
“Rodriguez says Ada doesn’t want to see you,” McCready informed Sean after he’d made his request to the deputy sheriff and the deputy sheriff had spoken to Ada Sinclair. “She says you were mean to her.”
Sean snorted. “Tell her to get over it. Doesn’t she realize I’m trying to help her?”
“Evidently not.” McCready grinned. “You always were the charmer. So, what do you want me to do?” he asked when Sean didn’t say anything else.
“I’m thinking,” Sean snapped.
“Think faster,” McCready told him.
Sean straightened up. “Okay. Ask Rodriguez to ask Ada if she’ll answer a question for me.”
McCready relayed Sean’s request. “She wants to know what kind of question,” McCready told him a moment later.
Sean contained his temper. “Tell her a simple one.”
McCready did. A minute later, he handed his cell to Sean. “Keep it short,” he told him.
Chapter 35
Bernie pulled Mathilda into Linda Sinclair’s driveway, put the van in park, and looked to her left. Peggy Graceson’s house was empty at two in the afternoon, which was what Bernie had anticipated considering that Peggy had lived there by herself. More importantly, Linda Sinclair’s house and the house on the opposite side of Peggy Graceson’s home appeared to be empty as well, as did the other houses on the block.
The street looked forlorn in the dim light of the dreary, gray January day, with only an occasional holiday light remaining to brighten the gloom. It was silent. No one was out. Its inhabitants were either at work, at school, or in day care, the empty trash cans littering the sidewalks and driveways bearing witness to the fact that no one was home to put them back in the garage, where they belonged.
“I’m surprised there aren’t more robberies here,” Libby observed, surveying the scene. “The block is deserted. It’s a thief’s paradise.”
Bernie smiled. “That’s why we’re here,” she noted. “And the word you want is burglary. A burglary is when you break into a place, a robbery is when you take something by threats or force.”
“It’s not going to matter what the correct word usage is if someone calls the police,” Libby retorted.
Bernie reached over and turned off the van. “Look around. Who’s going to call? There’s no one here.”
Libby finished the last of her coffee, crumbled up her paper cup, and stuffed it in the trash bag by her feet. “We don’t know that. Someone might be home and see us.”
“Like who?” Bernie demanded.
“Like someone who’s sick with the flu. Or pneumonia.”
“Or the bubonic plague. Or ebola.”
Libby shook her head. “I’m serious.”
“I know you are. Unfortunately.”
Libby thought of another possibility. “Graceson’s house could be alarmed.”
“If it was there’d be a sign out front,” Bernie told her sister.
“Maybe Graceson didn’t use a company,” Libby replied. “Maybe she was a do-it-yourselfer. Maybe she installed cameras herself. Have you thought of that?”
“But she’s not here to watch the feed. Have you thought of that?”
“Other people are, though.”
“Look,” Bernie said, deciding that this conversation could go on forever if she let it. “Do you want to help Ada or not?”
“Of course I do,” Libby protested. “How could you ask that?”
“I just did. Especially since Clyde can’t identify the SUV for us and it wasn’t in the Sinclair Enterprises parking lot.”
Libby took a triple ginger butter cookie out of the bag by her side, broke it in half, and offered one of the halves to Bernie. She and Bernie had spent the last hour and a half driving over to and around the parking lot of the Sinclair factory and had come up empty-handed. If there was a black SUV with the license plate they were looking for, they hadn’t seen it.
“Perfect,” Bernie noted, referring to the cookie after she’d eaten her half. They’d added freshly grated ginger to the recipe and that had made all the difference. “Listen,” s
he said as she held out her hand for another one and thought, Damn these are good, “Peggy Graceson’s house is a good place to start. Even Dad said that.”
“No. What he said was she was a good person to start the investigation with, by which he meant talking to people about her. He didn’t mean breaking into her house,” Libby told her sister as she gave Bernie another cookie and took the last one for herself.
“That’s all well and good, but no one is going to talk to us. Why should they? We’re not cops. And even if they will, we don’t know enough to ask the right questions. We need more information to do that.”
“That’s for sure,” Libby muttered.
“Who knows,” Bernie continued, “maybe there’s something in her house that will point us in the right direction, because we’re definitely floundering around now.”
“I’m sure the police have gone through the place already,” Libby objected.
“Probably. But they could have missed something. Listen, Libby, if you have any other suggestions, I’ll be happy to hear them.”
“I don’t,” Libby admitted after a minute had gone by.
“Fine,” Bernie said, slipping the van key into her jacket pocket. She was wearing her winter burglary outfit—black jeans, a navy hoodie, a black pea coat—and she’d tucked her hair into a navy wool watch cap. When in doubt, always go with the classics clotheswise. That was her motto. “Then let’s do this,” she told her sister.
“At least park around the corner,” Libby pleaded.
“This is better,” Bernie replied. She planned to cut across to Peggy Graceson’s house once she got to the end of Linda Sinclair’s driveway. The two houses were literally just a stone’s throw away from one another, separated by a line of scraggly fir trees. “This way we can claim we’ve come back to pick up a pan we’ve forgotten—in case anyone asks. It looks less suspicious that way.”
“In your opinion.”
“Yes. In my opinion. Obviousness is the best antidote to suspicion.”
“Says who?”
“Sez me.”
“I don’t know about that, but I do know that Dad would not approve,” Libby noted.
“Where we parked or what we’re about to do?” Bernie asked, playing the innocent.
A Catered New Year's Eve Page 22