The Miser's Dream

by John Gaspard

  Deirdre and her husband exchanged a look.

  “Mr. Cavanaugh, is there other information about the deaths of Tyler James and Clifford Thomas you possess and haven’t shared with us?”

  He gave her a long look and started to smirk, but apparently thought better of it. “I have told you everything I know on the topics.”

  “I hope for your sake, Mr. Cavanaugh, you are correct on that point.”

  That was essentially it for Chip Cavanaugh’s interview. As the group exited the interview room, I spotted Sherry Lisbon, standing impatiently in the hall outside the room, flanked by two intense-looking women.

  A small traffic jam formed as the two groups came head to head, but the first group went left and Sherry and her team went right and a pileup was avoided.

  It might have been my imagination, but it really looked to me that both Chip Cavanaugh and Sherry Lisbon went out of their way not to look at or acknowledge each other as the two groups passed. I leaned forward in my chair to try to get a better look, but my view was blocked by the doorframe and Sherry’s legal team as they moved into the room.

  I remembered my odd encounter with her in the parking ramp the previous evening and considered what time it had taken place. I couldn’t place it to the minute, but I reasoned that it was well before eight thirty p.m., as Quinton Moon’s seventy-five-minute show had started promptly at seven p.m. and I had left just as it was concluding.

  For what it was worth, that meant I couldn’t be used as an alibi for Sherry Lisbon.

  I took no small amount of relief in that fact.

  “What was the name of the song you sang when we interviewed you?”

  I had almost forgotten Detective Wright was in the room with me.

  “What?”

  “The song.”

  “What song?”

  “When Fred and I were interviewing you about that whole psychic murder thing a couple years back—right there in that interview room—you sang a song into the recorder while we went out of the room.”

  The memory came back fast and I couldn’t help but smile. “The song is called ‘Mediocre Fred,’” I said.

  “‘Mediocre Fred,’” Wright repeated. “That’s a funny name for a song.”

  “It’s a funny song.”

  “You write it?”

  His level of interest in this long-ago event really surprised me. “No, it’s a Smother’s Brothers song. I think Loren Paulsen wrote it.”

  “Oh, I always thought you wrote it.”

  “Nope. Wish I had.” I didn’t really wish I had, but I wouldn’t have minded if I did.

  “That thing really went viral. I mean, viral here at the station.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  Deirdre had read me the riot act about it after the fact. Apparently, all police interview recordings are transcribed and when the transcriptionist had gotten to that point in the interview, he or she found it so amusing they made a copy of the recording and emailed it to select employees. And those employees sent it to others and they sent it to others and before they knew it, the email server was overloaded, Homicide Detective Fred Hutton was made the fool, and there was hell to pay.

  At the time my relationship with my ex-wife’s new husband was, at best, strained. We’ve warmed to each other over the years, if only a little, and were I in the same situation today, I doubt I would sing the song while alone in the interview room.

  Well, certainly not the entire song.

  The tone of the second interview was different, but I doubt either Deirdre or Homicide Detective Fred Hutton would have characterized it as better.

  Sherry Lisbon’s two attorneys made the following abundantly and immediately clear: their client was here as a favor to the police, her time was both valuable and limited, and they should understand in advance that she was unlikely to have anything of substance to add to their ongoing investigation.

  And, oh, did they mention her time was limited?

  There were only four chairs in the room, so one of the attorneys—the junior one, I assumed—stood behind the other, while Sherry Lisbon sat back in her chair and languidly checked her makeup with a pocket mirror.

  Deirdre’s first three questions elicited the identical reply from the senior attorney.

  “Our client, Ms. Lisbon, has already offered all the insight she has on that point.” After this third response, the junior attorney produced a stack of papers and flipped to a particular page. She handed the sheet to her superior, who glanced at it, made three quick checkmarks on the sheet, and then pushed it across the table to the two interviewers.

  “Those questions have been answered. As you can see in this transcript of her previous interview with the Homicide department,” she added.

  While I was by now well aware the police recorded and transcribed their interviews, this was the first instance I’d seen where the interview subject had done that as well.

  Deirdre studied the transcript for a long moment, with Homicide Detective Fred Hutton looking over her shoulder. While they reviewed the paperwork, the two attorneys looked through their notes. For her part, Sherry Lisbon finished touching up her makeup, closed her purse and then stared across the room. It felt very much like she was staring right at me, although the gaze lacked any warmth or interest. I looked back at her, fascinated at how cold and blank a person’s eyes could be.

  “Boy, if I didn’t know better,” I said out of the corner of my mouth to Wright, “I would swear she was looking directly at me.”

  “Yeah, you get that sometimes,” Wright said, with a patronizing tone in his voice I could have done without. “But as long as this room is dark, the nature of the physics of the mirror make it impossible—”

  I cut him off. “But this room isn’t dark,” I said in a rushed whisper. “You left the door open.”

  Wright sat up suddenly in his chair. “Oh, crap. I hadn’t planned on sitting down. Maybe I should shut that,” he added as he scrambled across the room and eliminated the light source by slamming the door shut.

  “Maybe you should,” I agreed, turning back to the glass. Sherry Lisbon was still staring at the same point, her expression unchanged by the sudden shift in the lighting in our room.

  She sighed dramatically and uncrossed her arms.

  “Perhaps we can cut to the chase here,” she said, her tone such that the other four people in the room immediately stopped what they were doing. She was turning on the CEO thing and it clearly worked for her.

  “The issue, as I see it,” she continued, “is one of motive. Insofar as I don’t have one.” She let this sink in for a moment, and then continued, as if to a child. “Alibis and timelines aside, it’s quite simple. I had no motive to kill Tyler James and even less to kill Clifford Thomas.”

  “However—” Deirdre began, but Sherry cut her off without taking a breath.

  “As I have explained ad infinitum, I had no dealings with Mr. James on his most recent investment opportunity and I certainly had no desire to buy the alleged movie from him or from Mr. Thomas.”

  “You can certainly sit here and say that, but how do we know that to be true?” Deirdre had switched to her courtroom voice, which I knew well, but I wasn’t convinced it would hold up against the sheer force of Sherry Lisbon’s will.

  “If you’re working from the premise that something went awry in the sale of the movie, you can remove me from the list of suspects for one simple reason: I can assure you, if I wanted to buy it, I would have bought it. And that would have been the end of it, with perhaps a few tears but no bloodshed.”

  “You’re saying if you want it, you buy it and that’s that?”

  “Yes, dear. That’s that.” I could see Deirdre’s shoulders tighten at the use of the word “dear.”

  “Do you buy everything you want?”

  Sherry Lisbon gave Deidre
her coldest smile. “Without exception.”

  She then stood up and headed toward the door. No one made any move to stop her.

  Chapter 18

  “For some reason I was hoping he would bring his monkey.”

  Miles Wright turned his head slowly and looked at me, his eyes becoming narrow slits. “Excuse me?”

  I scrambled to explain my odd outburst. “This guy, Randall Glendower,” I said, gesturing to the new occupant in the interrogation room. “He owns a monkey—a little Javan macaque monkey—and for some reason I hoped he would bring it in today.”

  Wright continued to stare at me. “To an interrogation?”

  I shrugged. “A guy can dream.”

  I was saved from any further monkey talk by Randall, who moved suddenly, shifting our attention back to the interview room. He had been waiting patiently, sitting at the table and checking his phone for messages, but he suddenly jumped up and scurried over to the door. Extending his phone at arm’s length, he took a quick selfie, standing and smiling in front of the lettering on the door, which read “Interrogation Room One.”

  He checked the photo, apparently pleased with the results, and returned to his seat just as Deirdre and Homicide Detective Fred Hutton came back into the room.

  “Thanks for your patience, Mr. Glendower,” Deirdre said. The tension that had been in her voice during the interview with Sherry Lisbon had vanished.

  “No problem,” Randall said, sounding far more chipper than a person being interrogated about a murder should sound. If he recognized this, he made no attempt to modify his good cheer.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard about the recent passing of Clifford Thomas, and consequently we’re revisiting some of the people we spoke to after Tyler James’ murder.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Randall said with a nod.

  Deidre looked up from her notes. “And why would that be?”

  This question seemed to throw him for a second. “Well, um,” he said, now choosing his words with some care, “I figured Cliff was probably the one who won the bid for London After Midnight, and so his death would pretty clearly be tied to Tyler’s in some way, right?” His sentence evolved from a statement to a question while he said it.

  “Yes, we’re proceeding on that assumption,” Deirdre said, returning her attention to her notes. “Now, during your last interview, you admitted to having put in a bid on the movie, is that right?”

  Randall, feeling on firmer footing here, nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, I must have been outbid. I never got the chance to ask Tyler about it,” he added. “I mean, obviously.”

  Deirdre looked up and—even though I couldn’t see it from my position behind the one-way mirror—I suspect she gave him a reassuring smile.

  “And how did you feel about not winning the bid?” she asked, sounding offhand, although I knew she wasn’t in the least.

  Randall shrugged. “I didn’t think I had much of a chance,” he said. “I mean, there are people out there with far deeper pockets than mine. However, if I had known it was Cliff who was buying it, I wouldn’t have been all that concerned.”

  “And why is that?”

  “With Cliff, I knew the movie would get out there. People would be able to see it. Some collectors,” he continued, lowering his voice, “I don’t know, they’re all about hoarding. About keeping it and hiding it, and they never let anyone see their stuff.”

  If he wasn’t specifically describing Chip Cavanaugh, he certainly could have been. I leaned forward, straining to hear Randall through the small speaker.

  “And neither you nor Clifford Thomas would have done that?”

  “I can’t speak for Cliff, but I doubt it. And if I had bought it, I certainly would have made sure it got out there. I mean, it’s London After Midnight after all, right?” He waited for a response that matched his enthusiasm, but it wasn’t coming.

  “It’s very rare,” Deirdre finally offered.

  “You bet your ass,” Randall said with a big smile. “It’s basically the Holy Grail of lost movies. I mean, they found the scene in Frankenstein where the monster drowns the little girl. They put Touch of Evil back together in the right order. But London After Midnight? I’ve been lusting after this movie since I was twelve years old and saw photos from it in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine.”

  He paused and sighed deeply, truly emotional on this topic.

  “I would have killed to see that movie,” he finally said.

  It took several seconds for it to really sink in, but Randall Glendower finally realized what he had just declared. He looked at Deirdre and then at her husband, his eyes searching their faces.

  “I mean…” His voice trailed off.

  His demeanor was suitably low-key during the rest of the interview and, on second thought, it was probably best that he had not brought his monkey.

  For reasons I can’t completely comprehend, after I left the police station I found myself heading toward St. Paul instead of back home. The whole situation with Clifford Thomas felt strangely unresolved, and several minutes later I found myself standing in front of his house on Summit Avenue, looking up at the ghoulish and cartoonish mansion.

  Crime scene tape on the front door was the only remaining indicator that anything untoward had taken place in or around the residence. The creepy Santa leered down at me from the widow’s walk and the decapitated snowmen on the front lawn were beginning to look a bit droopy in the semi-warm afternoon sun.

  I knew I couldn’t get into the house, and didn’t know what I would do in there if I could, so instead I retraced our steps from the house down the block and across the street to The Summit Club. Clifford Thomas must have made this same round trip the night before, celebrating the completion of what was likely to be his next bestseller, never realizing that it would also be his last.

  I stood in front of the exclusive club for several minutes, running my meeting with Clifford Thomas over in my mind. As I did, I absently turned and took in the view of downtown St. Paul below. The Cavanaugh Bank tower was the centerpiece of the vista, and I thought about Chip Cavanaugh and his offhanded joke about standing over Clifford Thomas’ dead body the night before. It was a sick joke, perfectly in keeping with his dark sense of humor, but I couldn’t help wonder if it held a deeper truth somewhere within. He admitted that he knew Clifford via their shared membership in the Summit Club. They were both ridiculously rich, and both oddball collectors of the rare and the obscure. Had they both been vying for ownership of London After Midnight?

  No answers were forthcoming and as I turned my attention away from the scene below, one other building caught my eye: the St. Paul Hotel, nestled snugly across from Rice Park. That wacky Swiss, Quinton Moon, was probably somewhere within, charm oozing from every pore. I’m sure he would have made quick work of the handful of disparate clues I was struggling with, and probably would have cured cancer at the same time.

  Annoyed at how quickly just the thought of him could overtake my normal faculties, I did the best to shake him from my mental processes as I headed toward the car and the short, unproductive drive home.

  It had been unseasonably warm all day, resulting in lots of melted snow and running water trickling down Chicago Avenue as I pulled into a parking space that afternoon. As pleasant as the day had become, this sort of thaw in mid-January is always a double-edged sword. Wet streets and sidewalks at three p.m. can turn into icy nightmares by evening.

  The movie theater didn’t appear to be open yet, but I noticed Tracy had updated the marquee to another movie mash-up, yet one more that didn’t derive from a suggestion of mine. Tonight’s Parkway Double Play, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Fever, looked to be a fun combo, but I still felt many of the options I’d presented had been punchier.

  As I headed toward the magic store, I nearly convinced myself Quinton Moon had thought of it and called it into Tra
cy and that there was a vast title mash-up conspiracy going on behind my back. I was still swirling in this loop of self-doubt and paranoia as I went to open the door to the magic shop and found it was locked.

  This didn’t surprise me, as Harry and I have always had a very casual relationship with traditional business hours. I unlocked the shop, flipped on the lights and, in a very determined fashion, set about to begin the long-delayed and much-needed inventory process.

  But first, I thought, I should check online to see if I’d gotten another response to the ad I placed on Randall’s website. This was clearly a delaying tactic, but it had the ring of legitimacy to it and so I went with it.

  A quick check via the store computer confirmed the only answer so far was the vague response from ClassicSeller58 I’d seen the night before. I surfed around the site, looking for further clues, but instead ended up falling down a rabbit hole of reasonable discussion topics which quickly escalated into flame wars.

  Then I remembered a ring routine that Quinton had performed at his show the night before, during which he had acknowledged it was based on a Tommy Wonder classic. This led me to YouTube where I lost who knows how much time delighting in Mr. Wonder’s various miracles.

  I was roused from this video clip coma by the tinkle of the bell over the door and looked up, expecting to see Harry returning from some errand. But it wasn’t Harry.

  “You’re the guy who found Tyler’s body, right?”

  It was Mrs. Tyler James, in all her big-haired glory. Standing behind her was her constant companion, still wearing the too-small hipster hat on his too-big hipster head. He peered around her, scanning the shop, his eyes going a little wide as they adjusted to the dim lighting which is our hallmark.

  “We talked to you in the theater the other night,” she continued, her tone suggesting it had been a trifle of a conversation which I could have easily forgotten. “About getting into the projection booth.”

  “I remember,” I said slowly, scanning the shop to see what object might become a quick and handy weapon if the need were to arise. Unlike the theater next door, we didn’t keep a baseball bat handy for occasions such as this. I noticed a can of fart spray on the gag gift shelf and considered it a likely first choice, as it had proven to be an effective impromptu defense in the past.