The Murderers boh-6

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I’ll park this,” Woodrow said.

  When he came back from parking the car, he recognized the man driving the car.

  “This your boy, isn’t it, Foster? He wasn’t nearly so big the last time I saw him.”

  “How do you do, sir?” Tiny said politely.

  “Well, I’ll be. I recognized him from his picture in the paper. When they arrested those dirty cops.”

  They went in the small neighborhood restaurant. An obese woman brought coffee to the table for all of them.

  “Miss Kathy, this is Lieutenant Foster, and his boy,” Woodrow said. “We go back a long way.”

  “Way back,” Lieutenant Lewis agreed. “When I graduated from the Academy Officer Bailey sort of took me under his wing.”

  “Is that so?” the woman said, and walked away.

  “When Foster here finished the Academy, they sent him right to Special Operations, put him in plain clothes, and gave him a car,” Lieutenant Lewis said. “Things have changed, eh, Woodrow?”

  “You like what you’re doing, boy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I was thinking the other day that if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t,” Bailey said.

  Lieutenant Lewis laughed.

  “You don’t mean that, Woodrow,” he said.

  “Yes, I do mean it. Don’t take this the wrong way, boy, but I’m glad I’m not starting out. I don’t think I could take another twenty-some years walking this beat.”

  “I was telling Foster that walking a beat is what the police are all about,” Lieutenant Lewis said.

  “Well, then, the country’s in trouble,” Bailey said. “Because we’re losing, Foster, and you know it. Things get a little worse every day, and there doesn’t seem to be anything that anybody can do about it.”

  “What I was trying to get across to Foster was that there’s no substitute for the experience an officer like yourself gets,” Lieutenant Lewis said.

  “Well, maybe you’re right, but the only thing my experience does is make me tired. Time was, I used to think I could clean up a place. Now I know better. All I’m doing is slowing down how fast it’s getting worse. And I only get to slow it down a little on good days.”

  Lieutenant Lewis laughed politely.

  “I was thinking, Woodrow,” he said, “that since Foster hasn’t had any experience on the streets, that maybe you’d be good enough to let him ride around with you once in a while. You know, show him the tricks of the trade.”

  “Good Lord,” Officer Bailey laughed, “why would he want to do that?”

  Lieutenant Lewis glanced at his son. He saw that it was only with a great effort that Officer Foster H. Lewis, Jr., was able to keep his face straight, not let it show what he was thinking.

  “My father is right, Mr. Bailey,” Tiny said. “I could probably learn a lot from you.”

  That response surprised and then delighted Lieutenant Lewis, but the delight was short-lived:

  “The only thing you could learn by riding around with me,” Officer Bailey said, “is that Satan’s having his way, and if you have half the brains you were born with, you already know that.”

  Officer Lewis looked at his watch.

  “Is there a phone around here, Mr. Bailey? I’ve got to check in.”

  “There’s a pay phone outside,” Bailey said. “But most likely somebody ripped the handset off for the fun of it. You go see Miss Kathy, and tell her I said to let you use hers.”

  “Thank you,” Tiny said.

  When he was out of earshot, Officer Bailey nodded approvingly.

  “Nice boy, Foster,” he said. “You should be proud of him.”

  “I am,” Lieutenant Lewis said.

  Men in light blue uniforms, suggesting State Police uniforms, with shoulder patches reading “Nesfoods International Security,” stood at the gates of the Detweiler estate. They were armed, Matt noticed, with chrome-plated Smith amp; Wesson. 357 caliber revolvers, and their Sam Browne belts held rows of shining cartridges.

  “Anyone trying to shoot their way in here’s going to have his hands full,” Matt said softly as he slowed and lowered the window of Amy’s station wagon.

  “You really have a strange sense of humor,” Amy said, and leaned over him to speak to the security man.

  “I’m Dr. Payne,” Amy said, “and this is my brother.”

  One of the two men consulted a clipboard.

  “Yes, Ma’am, you’re on the list,” the security man said, and the left of the tall wrought-iron gates began to open inward.

  Matt raised the window.

  “And you’re back on Peter’s list, too, I see,” Matt said.

  “Matt, I understand that you’re under a terrible strain,” Amy said tolerantly, either the understanding psychiatrist or the sympathetic older sister, or both, “but please try to control your mouth. Things are going to be difficult enough in here.”

  “I wonder how long it’s going to be before Mother Detweiler decides that if I had only been reasonable, reasonable defined as resigning from the Police Department and taking my rightful position in society, Penny wouldn’t have stuck that needle in her arm, and that this whole thing is my fault.”

  “That’s to be expected,” Amy said. “The important thing is that you don’t accept that line of reasoning.”

  “In other words, she’s already started down that road?”

  “What did you expect?” Amy said. “She, and Uncle Dick, have to find someone to blame.”

  “Give me a straight answer, Doc. I don’t feel I’m responsible. What does that make me?”

  “Is that your emotional reaction, as opposed to a logical conclusion you’ve come to?”

  “How about both?”

  “Straight answer: You’re probably still in emotional shock. Have you wept?”

  “I haven’t had time to,” Matt said. “I didn’t get to bed until about three.”

  “More people showed up at your apartment?” Amy said, annoyance in her voice.

  “No, I went to the bar where the Homicide detectives hang out with Jason Washington. He was trying to make me palatable to them.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “When I go back on the job, I’m going to spend some time in Homicide.”

  “What’s all that about?”

  “It’s a long story. What I will ostensibly be doing is working on the Inferno job.”

  “What’s the ‘Inferno job’?”

  “Washington and I walked up on a double homicide on Market Street, in a gin mill called the Inferno Lounge.”

  “The bar owner? They killed his wife? I heard something on the radio.”

  “The wife and business partner had their brains blown out. The husband suffered a. 32 flesh wound to the leg.”

  “Is there something significant in that?” Amy asked.

  “Let us say the version of the incident related by the not-so-bereaved husband is not regarded as being wholly true,” Matt said.

  “But why are you going to Homicide?” Amy asked.

  She didn’t get an answer.

  “Jesus Christ, what’s this?” Matt exclaimed. “It looks like a used-car lot.”

  Amy looked out the windshield. The wide cobblestone drive in front of the Detweiler mansion and the last fifty yards of the road leading to it were crowded with cars, a substantial percentage of them Cadillacs and Lincolns. There were five or six limousines, including two Rolls Royces.

  “Dad said family and intimate friends,” Amy said. “It’s apparently gotten out of hand.”

  “Intimate friends, or the morbidly curious?” Matt asked. “With a soupcon of social climbers thrown in for good measure?”

  “Matt, have those acidulous thoughts if they make you feel better, but for the sake of Uncle Dick and Aunt Grace-and Mother and Dad-please have the decency to keep them to yourself.”

  “Sorry,” he said, sounding contrite.

  “What were they supposed to say when someone called, or simply show
ed up? ‘Sorry, you’re not welcome’?”

  “Oh, shit, there’s Chad,” Matt said. “And the very pregnant Daffy and friend.”

  “Why are you surprised, and why ‘oh, shit’?”

  “I would just as soon not see them just now.”

  Mr. Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV glanced down the drive as the station wagon drove up, recognized the occupants, and touched the arm of his wife. Mrs. Nesbitt in turn touched the arm of Miss Amanda Chase Spencer, a strikingly beautiful blonde who was wearing a black silk suit with a hat and veil nearly identical to Mrs. Nesbitt’s. All three stopped and waited on the lower of the shallow steps leading to the flagstone patio before the mansion’s front door.

  “How are you holding up, buddy?” Chad asked, grasping Matt’s arm.

  “Oh, Matt,” Daffy said. “Poor Matt!”

  She embraced him, which caused her swollen belly to push against him.

  “Hello, Matt,” Amanda said. “I’m so very sorry.”

  “Thank you,” Matt said, reaching around Daffy to take the gloved hand she extended.

  “I still can’t believe it,” Daffy said as she finally released Matt.

  “I’m Amelia Payne,” Amy said to Amanda.

  “How do you do?”

  “I thought this was supposed to be family and immediate friends only,” Matt said, gesturing at all the cars.

  “Matt, I can’t believe you said that!” Daffy said, horrified.

  Matt looked at her without comprehension.

  “Amanda’s been staying with us, for Martha Peebles’s engagement party,” Chad said coldly.

  “Oh, Christ, I wasn’t talking about you, Amanda,” Matt said, finally realizing how what he had said had been interpreted.

  “I know you weren’t,” Amanda said.

  “I didn’t see you out there,” Matt said.

  “I didn’t want you to,” Amanda said simply.

  “Penny and Amanda were very close,” Daffy said.

  “No, we weren’t,” Amanda corrected her. “We knew each other at Bennington. That’s all.”

  Good for you, Matt thought. Cut the bullshit.

  Chad Nesbitt gave her a strange look.

  “Shall we go in?” he said, taking his wife’s arm.

  Baxley, the Detweiler butler, opened the door to them. He was a man in his fifties, and wearing a morning coat with a horizontally striped vest.

  “Mr. Detweiler’s been expecting you, Doctor,” he said.

  The translation of which is that Mother D is about to lose control. Or has already lost it, Matt thought.

  “I’ll go up,” Amy said. “Thank you, Baxley.”

  “Coffee has been laid in the library,” Baxley said. “Miss Penny is in the sitting room.”

  “Thank you, Baxley,” Chad Nesbitt said. He put his hand on Matt’s arm.

  “Take care of him, Chad,” Amy said. “I’ll go see Aunt Grace.”

  “I will,” Chad said. “Coffee first, Matt?”

  “Yeah.”

  As they walked across the foyer, Matt glanced through the open door of the sitting room. He could see the foot of a glistening mahogany casket, surrounded by flowers.

  Shit, I didn’t even think about flowers.

  Mother certainly sent some in my name, knowing that I wouldn’t do it myself.

  Heads turned as the four of them went into the library. There were perhaps twenty-five people in the room, most of whom Matt knew by sight. A long table had been set with silver coffee services and trays of pastry. A man in a gray jacket and two maids stood behind the table. A small table behind them held bottles of whiskey and cognac.

  Chad propelled Matt to the table.

  “I need a little liquid courage myself to face up to going in there,” Chad said, indicating to the manservant to produce a bottle of cognac. “Straight up, Matt? Or do you want something to cut it with?”

  I don’t want any at all, strangely enough. I don’t need any liquid courage to go in there and look at Penny’s body. For one thing, it’s not Penny. Just a body. And I’m used to bodies. Just the other day, I saw two of them, both with their brains blown all over the room. If that didn’t bother me, this certainly won’t. I am not anywhere close to the near-state of emotional collapse that everyone seems to think I’m in.

  “It’s a little early for me, Chad,” Matt said. “Maybe later.”

  “Suit yourself,” Chad said, taking the cognac bottle from the man behind the table, pouring half an inch of it into a snifter, and tossing it down.

  “I wish I could have one of those,” Daffy said.

  “Baby, you can’t,” Chad said sympathetically.

  “If it’s a girl, I want to name her Penelope,” Daffy said.

  Matt saw this idea didn’t please the prospective father, but that he was wise enough not to argue with his wife here.

  “You’re not having anything?” Amanda asked, at Matt’s elbow.

  “Probably later,” he said.

  “Let’s get it over with,” Chad said.

  “That’s a terrible thing…” Daffy protested.

  “Unless you want to go in alone first, Matt?” Chad asked solicitously.

  Anything to get away from these three. Go in there alone, stay what seems to be an appropriate period for profound introspection and grief, and then get the hell out.

  “Thank you,” Matt said softly.

  “ Thank you,” the hypocrite said, with what he judged to be what his audience expected in grief-stricken tone and facial demeanor.

  He smiled wanly at Chad, Daffy, and Amanda and walked away from them, out of the library, across the foyer and into the sitting room. There was a line of people, maybe half a dozen, waiting for their last look at the mortal remains of Miss Penelope Detweiler. He took his place with them, and slowly made his way to the casket, looking for, and finally finding, behind the casket, a floral display bearing a card reading “Matthew Mark Payne” and then noticing the strange mingled smells of expensive perfume on the woman in front of him and from the flowers, and comparing it with what he had smelled in the office of the Inferno Lounge, the last time he’d looked at mortal remains. There it had been the sick sweet smell of the pools of blood under the bodies, mingled with the foul odors of feces and urine released in death.

  And then it was his turn to look down at Penny in her coffin.

  She looks as if she’s asleep, he thought, which is the effect the cosmetic technologist at the undertaker’s was struggling to achieve.

  And then, like a wall falling on him, and without warning, his chest contracted painfully, a wailing moan saying “Oh, shit!” in a voice he recognized as his own came out of it, and his chest began to heave with sobs.

  He next became aware that someone was pulling him away from the casket, where his right hand was caressing the cool, unmoving flesh of Penny’s cheeks, and then that the someone was Chad, gently saying, “Come on, ol’ buddy. Just come along with us,” and then that Daffy’s swollen belly was pressing against him as they led him out of the sitting room past those next in line, and that, when he looked at her, tears were running down her cheeks, cutting courses through her pancake makeup.

  “Inspector Wohl,” Peter answered his telephone.

  “The funeral’s over,” Amy said.

  “I was hoping you’d call. How did it go?”

  “Matt has a way with words. When we got here, he said it was ‘intimate friends, and the morbidly curious, with a soupcon of social climbers thrown in for good measure.’”

  “How did he handle it?”

  “He broke down when he saw her in the casket. Really broke down. Chad Nesbitt and his very pregnant wife had to practically carry him out of the room.”

  There was a moment’s silence before Wohl said:

  “You said last night you expected something like that to happen.”

  “That was a clinical opinion; professionally, I’m relieved. It’s the first step, acceptance, in managing grief. Personally, he’s my little brother. It
was awful. I felt so damned sorry for him.”

  “How’s he now? Where is he now?”

  “Oh, now he’s got his stiff upper lip back in place. He and Chad are into the booze. There’s quite a post-interment party going on out here.”

  “You want me to send someone out there and get him? I sent Tiny Lewis to sit on him, but…”

  “I know,” Amy said. “What I was hoping to hear was you volunteering to come out here and get the both of us.”

  “It was bad for you?”

  “As we were coming back here from the cemetery-I thought Grace Detweiler might need me, so I rode with them-I caught her looking at me as if she had just realized that if I had done my job, Penny would still be here.”

  “That could be an overactive imagination.”

  “I don’t think so. I got the same look here in the house when I was getting a tranquilizer out of my purse for her. She’s decided-seeing how Matt collapsed completely probably had a lot to do with it-that he’s still an irresponsible boy, who can’t be blamed. She needs somebody to blame. I make a fine candidate to be the real villain, because I really didn’t help Penny at all.”

  There was a moment’s silence, and then Wohl said, “I’m on my way, Amy,” and the line went dead in her ear.

  “It’s a good thing I know you’re a doctor,” Inspector Peter Wohl said to Dr. Amelia Payne as they came off the elevator into the lobby of the Delaware Valley Cancer Society Building on Rittenhouse Square.

  “Meaning what?”

  “The folklore among us laypersons is don’t mix booze and pills.”

  “That’s a good general rule of thumb,” Amy said. “What I gave Matt is what we doctor persons prescribe as a sedative when the patient person has been soaking up cognac like a sponge. It is my professional opinion that that patient person will be out like a light for the next twelve to eighteen hours without side effects. Any other questions, layperson?”

  Wohl smiled at her.

  “How about dinner tonight?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “I guess that makes breakfast tomorrow out of the question.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Amy said. “I said no dinner. I have to make my rounds, and then there’s a very sick young woman I want to spend some time with. But I didn’t say anything about breakfast, or, for that matter, a midnight supper with candles and wine, being out of any question.”