65 Proof

by Jack Kilborn

  “But you’ve been alone in bed all day…”

  “Did I say I was alone?” There was a slapping sound, and my mother said, “Behave, it’s my daughter.”

  I felt myself flush, but worked through it.

  “Mom, do you remember that old Hitchcock movie? The Man Who Knew Too Much?”

  “The Leslie Banks original, or the Jimmy Stewart remake?”

  “Either. Was it based off a book?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. I can check, if you like. I have both versions.”

  “Can you? It’s important.”

  Herb nudged me. “Can I have that Swedish Fish candy?”

  I nodded, and Herb waddled off.

  “Jacqueline? On the Leslie Banks version, the back of the box lists the screenwriter, but doesn’t mention it is based on a book. And…neither does the Jimmy Stewart version.”

  Damn.

  “Can you give me the screenwriter’s name?”

  “Two folks, Charles Bennett and D.B. Wyndham-Lewis. Why is this so important?”

  “It’s a case. I’ll tell you about it later. I was hoping The Man Who Knew Too Much was a book.”

  “It is a book. By G.K. Chesterton, written in the early 1920s. But that had nothing to do with the movie.”

  “Chesterton? Thanks, Mom.”

  “Chesterton was a wonderful author. He did quite a few locked-room mysteries. Not too many writers do those anymore.”

  “I’ll call you tonight. Be good.”

  “I most certainly won’t.”

  I put away the phone and went to the blood-stained bookshelf. The Chesterton book was easy to find. I put the gloves back on and picked it up. Wedged between pages sixty-two and sixty-three was a thin, plastic flash video card, a recent technology that was used instead of film in digital video cameras. And camcorders…

  I met Herb in the kitchen. He had his mouth full of red gummy candy. I held up my prize.

  “I found a video card.”

  Herb said something that might have been, “Really?” but I couldn’t be sure with his teeth glued together.

  “Is your new laptop in your car?”

  He nodded, chewing.

  “Do you have a card reader?”

  He nodded again, shoving the candy box into his pants pocket and easing though the back door.

  Two minutes later Herb’s laptop was booting up. I pushed the flash card into his reader slot, and the appropriate program opened the file and began to play the contents.

  On Herb’s screen, a very-much-alive Edward Wyatt smiled at us.

  “Hello,” the dead man said. “Congratulations on reaching this point. I thought it fitting, having spent my life enjoying puzzles, to end my life with a puzzle as well. Though I commend you for your brainpower thus far, I regret to say that this video won’t be providing you with any clues as to how this seemingly impossible act was committed. But I will say it has been done of my own, free will. My oncologist has given me less than a month to live, and I’m afraid it won’t be a pleasant month. I’ve chosen to end things early.”

  “Pause it,” I said.

  Herb pressed a button. “What?”

  “Go back just a few frames, in slow motion.”

  Herb did. I pointed at the screen. “See that? The camera moved. Someone’s holding it.”

  Herb nodded. “Assisted suicide. I wonder if he moved the camera on purpose, to let us know he had help.”

  “Let it finish playing.”

  Herb hit a button, and Wyatt began again.

  “Undoubtedly, by this point you know I’ve had help.”

  Benedict and I exchanged a look.

  “Of course,” Wyatt continued, “I wouldn’t want to put my helper in any legal jeopardy. This friend graciously helped me fulfill my last wish, and I’d hate for this special person to be arrested for what is entirely my idea, my wishes, my decision, and my fault. But I also know a little about how the law works, and I know this person might indeed become a target of Chicago’s finest. Steps have been taken to make sure this person is never found. These steps are already in motion.”

  Herb paused the recording and looked at me. “I’m fine stopping right here. He says it was suicide, I believe him, let’s clear the case and grab a bite to eat.”

  I folded my arms. “You’re kidding. How did the body get inside when everything was locked? How could he have jumped to his death in his living room? Who’s the helper? Don’t you want answers to these questions?”

  “Not really. I don’t like mysteries.”

  “You’re fired.”

  Herb ignored me. I fire him several times a week. He let the recording play.

  “However,” Wyatt went on, “all good mysteries have a sense of closure. With me dead, and my helper gone, how will you know if you’ve figured out everything? There’s a way. If you’re a sharpie, and you’ve found all the clues, there will be confirmation. Good luck. And don’t be discouraged…this is, after all, supposed to be fun.”

  Benedict snorted his opinion on the matter. The recording ended, and I closed my eyes in thought.

  “Herb—the stereo upstairs. Was it on or off?”

  “Off.”

  “Fully off? Or on standby?”

  “I’ll check.”

  Benedict wandered out of the kitchen, and I went back into the basement. I found a hammer in the workbench drawer and brought it to the back door. Once again, when I opened the door, it caught on the linoleum flooring. The floor remained shiny, even where the door touched it.

  The lack of scuff marks struck me as a pretty decent clue.

  Since the door looked old, but the decorative trim around the frame appear new, I decided to remove a section of trim. After a full thirty seconds of searching for a nail to pull, I realized there were no nails holding the trim on.

  How interesting.

  Using the claw end of the hammer, I wedged off a piece of side trim. And in doing so, I solved the locked-room part of the mystery.

  Three gunshots exploded from the floor above, shattering my smugness. I tugged my .38 from my shoulder holster and sprinted up the stairs, flanked by Perez.

  “Herb!”

  Three more gunshots, impossibly loud. Coming from the room at the end of the hall. I crouched in the doorway, my pistol coming up.

  “Jack! All clear!” Herb stood by the stereo, a CD clutched in one hand, the other grasping his chest. “Damn, you almost gave me a heart attack.”

  I put two and two together quickly enough, but Officer Henry Perez wasn’t endowed with the same preternatural detecting abilities.

  “Where’s the gun?” he croaked, arms and legs locked in full Weaver stance. “Who’s got the gun?”

  “Easy, Officer.” I put a hand on his elbow and eased his arms down. “There is no gun.”

  Perez’s face wrinkled up. “No gun? That sounded just like…”

  Herb finished his sentence, “…the gunshots you heard when you arrived on the scene. I know. It’s all right here.”

  Herb held up the CD.

  “It’s a recording of gunshots,” I told Perez. “It was used to get you to break into the house. Probable cause. Or else you never would have gone in—the 911 call talked about a bad smell, but the corpse is fresh and there is no smell.”

  Perez seemed reluctant to holster his weapon. I ignored him, holding out my hand for the CD. It was a Maxell recordable CD-R. On the front, in written black marker, was the number 209. I held the disc up to the light, checking for prints. It looked clean.

  “Maybe this is one of those clues the dear, departed Edward Wyatt mentioned in his video.” Herb said. “You ready to get some lunch?”

  “I figured out how the doors were locked from the inside,” I said.

  We went downstairs and I showed Herb the fruits of my labors, prying off another piece of trim.

  “Smart. What made you think of it, Jack?”

  “The trim is glued on, rather than nailed. Which made me wonder why, and what it cove
red up.”

  “Impressive, Oh Great One. Did you also happen to notice the number?”

  “What number?”

  “Written on the back of the trim, in black marker.” Herb pointed at the number 847.

  “What did Wyatt say in his recording? About being a sharpie? What’s the most popular black marker?”

  “A Sharpie.” Herb grunted his disapproval. “Wyatt’s lucky he’s dead, because if he were still alive I’d smack him around for making us jump through these hoops.”

  “Are you saying you’d rather be interviewing a domestic battery?”

  “I’m saying my brain hurts. I’m going to need to watch a few hours of prime time to dumb myself back down. Isn’t that reality show on tonight? The one where the seven contestants eat live bugs on a tropical island to marry a millionaire who’s really a janitor? My IQ drops ten points each time I watch that show.”

  I stared at the black marker writing. “Eight four seven is a local area code. The two zero nine could be a prefix.”

  “Almost a phone number. Maybe there’s another clue with the last four digits.”

  We went back to the game of Clue, but nothing was written on or inside the box. Another ten minutes were wasted going through the pile of puzzle magazines.

  “Okay, what have we figured out so far?” I said, thinking out loud. “We figured out the gunshots that brought us to the scene, and we figured out the locked room part. But we still don’t know how he fell to his death in the living room.”

  “He must have jumped off a building somewhere else, and then his partner brought the body here and staged the scene.”

  I rubbed my eyes, getting a smudge of eyeliner on my gloves.

  “It’s a damn good staging. ME said the blood spatters indicate he fell into that room. Plus there are carpet fibers embedded in his face.”

  “Maybe,” Herb got a gleam in his eye, “he jumped onto that carpet at another location, then both the carpet and the body were put back into the room.”

  “The entire living room is carpeted, Herb.”

  “Maybe the helper cut out a section, then put it back in.”

  We went back into the living room, wound plastic food wrap around our shoes and pants, and spent half an hour crawling over the damp carpet, looking for seams that meant it had been cut out. It was a dead end.

  “Damn it.” Herb stripped off some bloody cling wrap. “I was sure that’s how he did it.”

  I shrugged. My neck hurt from being on all fours, and some of the blood had gotten through the plastic and stained my pants. “Maybe the fibers embedded in the body won’t match the fibers from this carpet.”

  Herb sighed. “And maybe the blood found squirted all over the room won’t match, either. But we both know that everything will match. This guy was so meticulous…”

  “Hold it! You said ‘squirted.’”

  “It’s a perfectly good word.”

  “I think I know why the living room looks that way. Come into the kitchen.”

  I opened the dishwasher, showing Herb the mason jars and turkey baster. Herb remained dubious.

  “That turkey baster wouldn’t work. Not powerful enough.”

  “But what about one of those air-pump squirt guns? The kind that holds a gallon of water, and can shoot a stream twenty feet?”

  I led Herb into the basement closet, holding up the squirt gun I’d seen earlier. Written on the handle, in black marker, was the word ‘Charlie.’”

  “Okay, so we’ve got two three-digit numbers, and a name. Now what? We still don’t know how the fibers got embedded in the victim.”

  Herb rubbed his chin, thinking or doing a fair imitation of it. “Maybe the helper embedded the fibers by hand after death?”

  “Phil would have caught that. I think Wyatt actually leapt to his death and landed on carpeting.”

  “I’ve got it,” Herb said. He explained.

  “Herb, that’s perfect! But there’s no way you can put black marker on something that isn’t here. What else do we have?

  “Got me. That revelation taxed my mental abilities for the month.”

  “The only other obvious clue is the Swedish Fish candy.”

  Herb pulled the box out of his pocket. The package, and contents, seemed normal. So normal that Herb ate another handful.

  I racked my brain, trying to find something we’d missed. So far, all the clues made sense except for that damn candy.

  “I’m going back upstairs,” Herb said. “Want to order a pizza?”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not kidding. I have to eat something. We might be here for the rest of our lives.”

  “Herb, you can’t have a pizza delivered to a crime scene.”

  “How about Chinese food? I haven’t had Mu Shu Pork since Thursday. You want anything?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “You’re not getting any of mine.”

  “Get me a small order of beef with pea pods.”

  “That sounds good. How about a large order and we split it?”

  “What about the Mu Shu pork?”

  Herb patted his expansive belly. “I’ll get that too. You think I got this fat just looking at food?” He turned, heading for the stairs. “Where’s Wyatt’s phone book?”

  “It’s on his desk.” Insight struck. “Herb! That might be another clue!”

  “Chinese food?”

  “The phone book! It’s open to a page.”

  I squeezed past my portly partner and raced up the stairs. The phone book was where I left it, BURGLAR ALARMS covering the left-hand page. I went through each of the listings, put there was no black marker. I checked the other page, and didn’t see anything unusual. But on the very top of the right hand page was spillover from the previous entry. A listing called CHARLIE’S, with the phone number 847-209-7219.

  When I noted what subject came alphabetically before BURGLAR ALARMS in the phonebook, I grinned like an idiot. Then I pulled out my cell and called the number. After four rings and a click, a male voice answered.

  “This is Charlie.”

  “This is Lieutenant Jack Daniels of the Chicago Police Department.”

  “That was fast. Edward would have been pleased.”

  “You helped murder him?”

  “No. He killed himself. I helped set up all of the other stuff, but I had nothing to do with killing him. I’ve got proof, too. Footage of him jumping to his death.”

  “Off of your crane. Or platform. What is it you use?”

  “A hundred foot platform. He went quick—in less than four seconds. He preferred it to the agony of cancer.”

  Herb sidled up to me, putting his ear next to the phone.

  “How did Wyatt find you?” I asked Charlie.

  “The want ads. He saw I was selling my business. I guess that’s how he came up with this whole idea. Pretty clever, don’t you think? He bought me out, plus paid me to assist in setting up the scene. Nice guy. I liked him a lot.”

  “You know, of course, we’ll have to arrest you.”

  “I know. Which is why my office phone forwarded this call to my cell. I’m on my way out of the country. Edward paid me enough to lay low for a while.”

  “One hundred and eighty-eight thousand dollars.” I remembered the number from the empty bank account.

  “No, not nearly. Edward lived very well for the last month of his life. He spent a lot of money. And good for him—what good is a life savings if you can’t have some fun with it?”

  “Not much,” Herb said.

  I shushed him.

  “Can I assume, Lieutenant, that you’ve figured everything out? Found all the clues? If you know everything, I’m supposed to give you a reward. Edward has this list of questions. Are you ready?”

  Not knowing what else to say, I agreed.

  “Okay, question number one; how were the doors locked from the inside?”

  “You removed the entire d
oor and frame while the door was already locked. Edward, or you, used a reciprocating saw to cut around the door frame. Then one of you glued new trim to the inside of the frame. When the door was pulled back into place, the trim covered the inside cut marks. Then you nailed the frame in place from the outside, and put more trim around the edges to cover the outside cut.”

  “What gave it away?”

  “Sawdust on the outside matt, a receipt from the hardware store, a new electric saw in the basement, and extra trim in the closet. Plus, the door didn’t open all the way.”

  “Edward purposely left all the clues except that last one. The door was heavy, and I couldn’t fit it back in the hole perfectly. Question number two; how did it appear Edward jumped to his death in his living room?”

  “He’d been drawing his own blood for a few weeks, using the catheter in his arm, and saving it in the refrigerator in mason jars. Then he used a turkey baster to fill a super soaker squirt gun with his blood, and sprayed the living room. I assume he read enough mysteries to know how to mimic blood spatters. He even faked the bounce that happens when a jumper hits.”

  “Excellent. How did the carpet fibers get on the body?”

  “He visited Charlie’s Bungee Jumping Emporium in Palatine and did a swan dive onto a pile of carpet remainders. We found carpet padding in the basement, but no remainders, and usually the installers give you all the extra pieces. A clue by omission.”

  “Very good. Question number three; where did the gunshots come from?”

  “The stereo upstairs. That was also a new purchase. The stereo faced the window, so you must have hit the PLAY button from the street, using the remote.”

  “I did. The remote is in a garbage can next to the payphone I called from, if anyone wants it back. Did you find anything else interesting?”

  I explained the suicide note, the Clue game, and the puzzle magazines.

  “How about the Swedish Fish candy?” he asked.

  “We have no idea what that means.”

  “That was Edward’s favorite clue. I’d tell you, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out eventually. Anyway, there’s a surprise for you in John Dickson Carr’s book The Three Coffins. Don’t bother calling me back—I’m throwing away this phone as soon as I hang up. Good-bye, Lieutenant.”

  And he was gone.

  We found the Carr book without difficulty. In the pages were a folded cashier’s check, and another flash card. We played the card on Herb’s computer.