by Tracy Clark
“Could be a ‘wrong place, wrong time’ kind of deal,” Ben said.
I put my phone away, my mood even darker than it had been before. “Sure.”
“If it was Flower Guy, you’d think he’d go after somebody she might miss, like Chandler.”
I turned to face him. “You think she’d miss Chandler?”
“You might have a point there.”
“Kendrick told me they got into it a few weeks ago. He didn’t know what about, but it apparently blew over.”
Ben snorted. “Maybe not all of it.”
“What if this guy’s starting slow, playing with her? He puts a good scare into her, makes her jumpy as he gets closer. He takes out Hewitt as kind of a calling card. Makes her worry about his next move.”
Ben frowned. “Or a mugging’s just a mugging. I’m keeping it there till I know different. One thing’s for sure, we won’t get a thing from Jones. Why? Because you threw him out like yesterday’s cabbage, and he knows I hate his brownnosing guts. Add to that he and Farraday are like two vampires in a pod now, and he knows his guy’s hanging on to his job by bloody fingernails. Add to that, overall, he’s an oily operator who, if he keeps goin’ how he’s goin’, could end up being my boss, and that’s the day I either turn in my gun or eat it.”
I sighed. “You need to breathe.”
“And Tanaka’s suspect, you ask me. She’s partnered with him, and she looks like she’s all in. That’s strike one.” He jabbed a thumb toward Allen’s door. “She’s in there now, tap-dancing all over this thing. You know that, right?”
“Just a week of standing around, looking intimidating. That’s what you said.”
Ben’s eyes narrowed. “Uh-oh. I don’t like the sound of that.”
“For a boat. White people’s mess is what it is. Out in the middle of a lake all day, with a pole and a cooler full of cheap beer and mushy sandwiches. At the end of it, what do you have? Most of the time nothing. Not one fish. If you do happen to luck up on one, all you’ve done is sign yourself up for some work, because now you have to gut and scale the bug-eyed sucker. Stupid is what it is. Stupid. I could be at home now. I could be out on my bike. Where am I? Here.” My eyes narrowed to reptilian slits. “With her. And him.”
Ben stared at me. “I’m still on white people’s mess.”
I buried my face in my hands and took a breath. “I knew he’d get somebody killed. I should have done more, screamed a little harder at the right people.”
“Hey, that’s not on you.”
I scrubbed my hands across my face, and then slumped in the chair. “Feels like it. It feels like it’s all on me.”
When Allen’s door opened finally and Marcus and Tanaka came out, Ben and I stood and were divided up and escorted into offices. I, unfortunately, got Marcus. I wondered as I took a seat whether it had shaken out this way because he’d asked for it, or if it’d just been the luck of the draw. Bad luck.
He sat on the edge of the desk. I sat in a chair inches from him, my arms on the armrests, my legs crossed. I was tired of people looming over me from desks, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. He hadn’t changed much physically in two years, except for the mustache. There were a few more worry lines at the corners of his eyes, a few more gray hairs. I’d lost the ability to gauge his mood by his expressions. Our connection had been long broken; now we were just two people sitting in a room, talking about a dead man. Keen eyes peered out of his dark face. Most women would consider him handsome. I had. Until I found out what came with it.
“I knew our paths would cross again,” he said.
“Like Ben said, small world.”
“You two are still thick as thieves, I see. You know, I always wondered if there was more to that.” Our eyes locked. I wasn’t going to talk about Ben, not with him. “Right. So, Hewitt. Tell me what you know.”
“I met him yesterday. We talked briefly.”
“About?”
“Job satisfaction. He didn’t appear to have any.”
Marcus lifted off the desk, walked around it, and sat behind it. “Why’d you care about his job satisfaction? What’s going on?”
I hesitated, remembering the nondisclosure I’d signed, weighing Hewitt’s death against Allen’s obsession with keeping her business to herself and against the likelihood that she’d sue me and take me for every cent I didn’t have. “You’ll have to ask Ms. Allen.”
“Maybe I did.”
“And maybe she told you to go fish, which is why you and Tanaka are trying to get Ben and me to fill in the blanks.”
He shrugged. “That’s how it’s done, or have you forgotten?”
“I haven’t forgotten anything.”
He eased back in the chair and let silence sit for a time.
“What’s your take on Hewitt?”
“Angry, stressed. He and Allen seemed to have a difficult working relationship, but as I said, I talked to him only briefly.”
“Why’s Allen need overqualified body work?”
I shrugged. “You’ll have—”
Marcus jumped in to finish. “To ask Ms. Allen, right? His wallet was gone, no watch. There was an iPhone in his pocket. Street thug would have made him turn it over, wouldn’t you think?”
I tapped my fingers on the armrest, impatient, eager to be away from Marcus. “Unless he was sloppy or high. Maybe he heard someone coming and didn’t have time to go for the phone. Maybe he went for the wallet because there was something in it he wanted besides money. Maybe Hewitt never had a wallet on him in the first place. Lot of things to look at.”
Marcus nodded slowly and made a show of straightening his tie. “Or maybe it was about the killing. Too bad Hewitt didn’t have you two following along behind him.” He waited a moment. “You heard about Farraday, of course. Happy?”
I straightened. “That a cop’s dead?”
“That he’s likely drummed out, done. You ever think that maybe he wouldn’t have charged in so hard if he didn’t think he had something to prove? You tarred and feathered him pretty good on your way out the door, got the bosses looking at him suspect.”
“Not hard enough, obviously.”
He shot me a wan smile. “Cass Raines, cop slayer.”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t want to. I didn’t care if I talked about Farraday ever again or thought about how Marcus Jones, even now, was perfectly satisfied to carry his water.
“Nothing?”
I gripped the armrests. “When Philip Hewitt left the office yesterday, he didn’t say where he was going. I don’t know if he had problems with any of his coworkers. He gave no indication that he was afraid of anyone. On the contrary. He appeared to be a bit of a bantam rooster, cocky, a little full of himself. Ben and I escorted Allen home at the end of business. That completed our duties. We picked her up again at six thirty this morning and headed straight to her club, then here.”
“All business, that it?”
“It’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?” I shot back.
He didn’t like it. I knew he blamed me for Farraday and he wanted to throw his troubles in my face. I remembered another thing about Marcus just then. He didn’t have the ability to let a single thing go—not a slight, not a rude remark, not an argument, not anything—and he always kept score.
“Anything else?” he asked.
I cleared my throat. “Hewitt subscribed to a particularly liberal policy on borrowing office supplies.”
His brows lifted. He was confused but didn’t follow up. “And this morning, in the wee hours, when Hewitt was getting himself killed, you were . . .”
“Define ‘wee hours.’ ”
He shrugged. “One, two.”
“At home in bed, like a normal person.”
“Can anybody verify that?”
I didn’t answer.
He grinned. “Anyone I know?”
I took a moment. “Tell me the name of Farraday’s partner.”
“Excuse me?” He didn’t know it. I
knew he didn’t. She hadn’t been important enough; her coattails, long enough.
“Maria Russo,” I said. “That’s her name. She won’t be going home to her family tonight or any night. Thanks to your buddy.”
His face grew grim, stern. “This doesn’t have to get ugly.”
“It got ugly about two minutes ago.” I pulled the card I’d gotten from Sewell out of my pocket, the one for the high-priced lawyer, and sat it on the desk. Let him think I could afford the representation. He glanced at it, then back at me. Nothing slowed a cop’s roll faster than expensive sharks in thousand-dollar suits. In my defense, I never said the lawyers worked for me. I couldn’t help him making assumptions. I just laid a business card down, but then I goosed it, and that was all me.
“I can do ugly, though. But when you make your play, it better be good, or Farraday won’t be the only cop walking out the door.”
He flicked a look at the card, then he looked at me. “So, let’s go over this again.”
I leaned back. “I met Philip Hewitt for the first time yesterday. . .”
Chapter 10
Allen kicked off early, which meant Ben and I got to kick off early, too. We escorted her home, made sure she was secure, and then left her to it. I was glad for the time, because my new tenant was moving into the building. I’d asked Mrs. Vincent and Barb to oversee the move when I thought I couldn’t be there, but now I could, and I got home just as the first moving van pulled up to the back gate.
Barb Covey, the youngest of nine rabble-rousing Irish ruffians, and I had grown up together, gotten in scrapes together, and grown out of it together. She was a nun now, a teacher, and would be starting classes at our old school right after Labor Day. Until then, she was playing it loose, or as loose as a nun played it. There’d been three of us punching back at the world back then before Pop put us all straight. Charles Mingo, whom we’d nicknamed Whip, filled out our little trio.
We three had run the same streets at the same time, doing the same stupid stuff. It was funny how we all ended up on completely different life tracks. I had become a cop, Barb a nun, and Whip had spent the better part of his twenties in the state penitentiary, mostly for taking stuff that didn’t belong to him. He was reformed now and worked the griddle in a diner on the West Side, so it was all good.
Barb and I watched the van action in the alley from Mrs. Vincent’s back porch. Barb had stuffed her unruly red hair under a Cub’s hat and looked as though she’d dressed for a Jimmy Buffett concert—Bermuda shorts with little blue dolphins all over them and a Bon Jovi T-shirt. A simple gold cross, the only hint of her vocation, dangled from a chain around her neck. Sometimes it was hard even for me to believe she was married to God.
“This is exciting,” she said. “New people, a fresh start.”
I kept my eyes on the van. It looked big enough to carry contraband. “Yippie. Two things I hate.”
Mrs. Vincent came out of her back door with two glasses of iced tea, handed one to Barb, one to me, then took a seat in her rocker to watch the action with us. “You two going to watch them bring in every box?”
“Barb is,” I said before taking a sip.
Barb gave me serious side eye. “Everybody who knows me knows I’m curious by nature. And not every box. Just maybe the first ten or so.” She sipped some tea. “Too bad Whip couldn’t be here.”
I took another sip from my glass. The tea was good, sweet. “I don’t think he’d give a hoot about what comes out of that van.”
Mrs. Vincent’s rocker kept up a slow, steady pace. “You said he works for the city? But he’s not a policeman. That’s not a lot to go on. Don’t know why it’s all such a big secret, seeing as he’s going to be living under our roof.”
I hadn’t told anyone much about the new tenant other than what Mrs. Vincent knew. I wasn’t being secretive, not really, just cautious. I hoped I’d chosen wisely, but I wouldn’t know until he settled in and the honeymoon period was over.
“Kinda big van,” Barb said. “Must have a lot of stuff.”
“Big enough to fit a piano in,” Mrs. Vincent said. “Hope he doesn’t have one. I need my sleep, and unless he’s that Billy Joel fella, I don’t want to hear all that plunking on the keys at all hours of the day and night.”
I squinted at the movers as they ambled toward the van doors. “He didn’t say anything about a piano. Who moves a piano into a person’s building, anyway?”
Barb faced me. “Since when are you anti-piano?”
I shrugged. I was thinking mostly about the weight. Second floor. Old building. Insurance liability. Mrs. Vincent flattened in her bed by a baby grand. A gray Subaru Forester pulled up behind the van, and my new tenant got out, waved at us. We waved back.
“There he is,” I muttered. “Hank Gray, fireman.”
The rocker stopped. “Good-looking fella. Sturdy. Looks like he can handle himself.”
Barb sipped her tea. “Quite imposing.”
I looked at them one at a time. “He hauls people out of burning buildings for a living. What’s your point?”
Barb avoided looking at me. “No point.”
Mrs. Vincent cleared her throat. “I got one. You swung that pendulum mighty far to the right, you ask me. From the Kall-ishes and little Nate all the way to the big fireman, who’s probably got a big fireman’s ax in one of those boxes. You won’t have to worry over him, that’s for sure. Almost as big as a tree, I’d say. I just hope it don’t come back to bite you, is all. And that’s all I’m saying on the subject.”
I stared at her. She met my stare, matched it, and threw one right back at me. I then turned to Barb, who still refused to look at me, which told me she agreed with what had just been thrown down by the old sage in the leisure rocker. I turned back to the van, the Forester, the fireman as big as a tree, wondering now about the ax, knowing Mrs. Vincent had nailed it, nailed me . . . again.
It was true, I didn’t have to worry about Hank Gray. He could take care of himself. It was my previous tenants whom I couldn’t protect from a drive-by shooting meant to send me a message. It was a failure I had no intention of repeating.
The rocker started back up. “You want cookies with that tea?”
Barb brightened. “Homemade?”
“I only got the one kind.” Mrs. Vincent stood. “Oatmeal raisin today.”
Barb grinned. “Yum. I love oatmeal raisin. I’ll come with you to the kitchen.” She elbowed me in the side. “Hold my spot. Yell if you see a piano come out.”
I sighed. “Go eat your cookie.”
* * *
No piano came out, but a lot of guy stuff did—a broken-in lounger, a massive flat-screen TV, stereo equipment, along with the usual necessities—bed, couch, rugs. When Gray was all moved in, Mrs. Vincent went up and gifted him a plate of cookies. I followed up with a “welcome to the building” visit and to check to make sure everything was okay. It was. He wasn’t half as big as a tree, but he was imposing—muscled arms, broad chest. He told me he was single and had no kids, but I hadn’t asked about his personal situation. It wasn’t my business.
“By the way,” I said. “We’re planning a backyard cookout for Labor Day. Last hurrah before winter snows us under. Join us. Invite a few of your friends, if you want.”
“I’ll do that. Thanks. Hey, what’s your take on overnight guests?”
I blinked at him. “Mine or yours?”
He chuckled. “Thought I’d ask, seeing as this is kind of a special setup, family vibe, and all.”
“I’m your landlord, Hank, not your mother. We’d just appreciate your being considerate and respectful of the space. Okay?”
He nodded. “Got it. I’ll bring the beer for the cookout.”
I turned for the stairs, smiled. “Good beer, right? Don’t bring crap beer to my barbecue, Hank.”
He laughed. “Wouldn’t think of it.”
Chapter 11
I would have thought that the tragic death of an employee would have prompted Allen to sus
pend her busy schedule, but I was wrong. The next day, after a full day of flitting around town, meeting with the producers working on her upcoming show and then hitting the printing facility to check on the run of her latest edition, she was as fresh as a daisy at seven and off to the bookstore for a signing, respect for the dead and any adherence to common decency be damned.
Allen was in a pissy mood, had been since Marcus and Tanaka busted in on her yesterday. Chandler had taken the brunt of her boss’s crankiness all day but had hung in there like a champ. It was mostly quiet in the limo for the ride over, and I longed for the day to be over.
“Full house,” Ben said as we eased past the Barnes & Noble. I peered out the window and saw the lights blazing inside the bookstore and a crowd moving around.
Chandler craned her neck to see. “Excellent. I knew there would be. Vonda has quite the following.”
I stared at Allen. She’d disengaged miles back. Her head was buried in her notes as she prepared for her presentation. Business. Always business. The limo had turned the corner, headed for the alley entrance, before Allen finally looked up at me. “You read, don’t you?” Her cool, needling smile told me she wanted to play.
I sighed. It really had been a long day, and I wasn’t in the mood to go toe-to-toe with her. “I’ve been known to.”
“What? Specifically.”
I brushed a slow hand over my slacks, making her wait for it. “Cereal boxes.”
Her smile faded. There came a low snicker from the front seat, followed by a round of fake coughing. Ben.
“Cheerios, specifically,” I added with a straight face.
Allen tuned me out again, which I appreciated. I was tired of her games.
Chandler tapped lightly on the privacy glass, rolled down partway for easy communication. “Pull up to the door, Elliott. Someone will meet us there.”
Chandler was taking it all so seriously. Obviously, this event was as important to her as it was to Allen, and she was making sure everything ran like clockwork. Chandler reminded me of a swan serenely gliding on a glassy lake, graceful, quiet. You only had to look beneath the water’s surface to see little webbed feet paddling like mad. This may have been Allen’s show, but it was Chandler’s production.