Hearse of a Different Color (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries)

by Tim Cockey

  “Her obstetrician? Not at all. Why?”

  “That friend of hers at the funeral. The redhead. I had lunch with her. She told me that she’s pretty sure that Helen was seeing some guy who didn’t mind spending his money on her. It occurred to me that if he happened to also be the guy who got Helen pregnant, maybe he’s been footing the baby doctor bills.”

  There was silence for several seconds on the other end of the line.

  “That’s very smart,” Vickie said.

  “Thank you.”

  “But I have no idea who her obstetrician might have been.”

  “Maybe there’s a bill or something like that, a phone number, lying around her apartment.”

  “I don’t know. The police have been all over Helen’s apartment.”

  “Did they mention anything?”

  “Not to me. Not about anything like that anyway.”

  “I’m just trying to kick start some ideas here. I really shouldn’t have called you today. I’m sorry. I—”

  Just then I heard a voice in the background. I heard what I guessed was Vickie muffling the phone. I heard her—dimly—say, “It’s the police.” Then she spoke back into the phone, overarticulating her words. “Is there anything else, officer?”

  “Haden’s there, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, officer,” she said artificially.

  “Are you okay? Is there some sort of problem?”

  There was a pause. “That’s quite possible. Yes.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  I let my sleeping dog lie. Somewhere between the Oyster and my car—at a full-tilt run—I sobered up. Or maybe not. The fuzzy bits left me. But there was still a slightly angular skew to things as I skidded to a stop twenty minutes later in front of Vickie’s house. The skew grew even sharper when I saw a yellow cloth clown with an ink-stained arm lying facedown on the sidewalk leading from the front door. At the curb, where the sidewalk ended, was an available parking spot.

  I had a sinking feeling that it hadn’t been there for long.

  Vickie’s front door had been left unlocked and I let myself in. I discovered nothing in the house that might help me figure anything out. I guess I hadn’t expected anything so helpful as a note sitting on the kitchen table. The pillhead and I are out for a drive. We’ll be back by dinnertime. I felt a little guilty wandering through the place. I had no business there. And I couldn’t imagine what I thought I was looking for. Vickie had converted what appeared to be a study—a desk with a computer, gray filing cabinet, bookshelf—into a bedroom for Bo. The half-sized sofa was folded out into a single bed. Kids’ toys and books were tossed all around. Back downstairs I sat down in the same chair where Haden had been sitting the first time I came over. I could see the wall phone in the kitchen from where I was sitting. I imagined Vickie on the phone: Yes, officer. That’s quite possible. Yes. I imagined her hanging up the phone and turning to Haden with a little shrug. And in less than a minute the creep is hustling her out the front door, the kid scooped under his arm.

  Before I left I phoned police headquarters and left a message for Kruk. There was nothing else I could think of to do.

  Mimi Wigg was bantering with the sports guy, Brett Brown. She was cooing with congenial envy about Brown’s upcoming trip to Florida to cover Super Bowl week.

  “Bring back a tan for me,” Mimi chirped.

  “You betcha, Mimi.”

  The cameraman standing next to me made a gagging gesture.

  “And watch out for those cheerleaders,” Mimi warned.

  “Hey. You got it. I will be watching out for them.”

  The two floor cameras slid noiselessly forward toward the sports desk. Mimi Wigg, out of the picture, leaned back in her chair and gave the chattering jock the finger for a full ten seconds. When it was clear she wasn’t going to throw him, she quit. Bonnie was tiptoeing over to me, careful not to step on any cables.

  “I’m mad at you,” she whispered, then put her tongue halfway down my throat. What fresh madness was this? She pulled back just as I started to respond. “My makeup.”

  She pressed up against me in the partial darkness. “You smell like a distillery,” she whispered, then made her way back over the cables to her weather corner. Brett Brown was still gassing about the Super Bowl. Mimi Wigg was getting a perspiration pat down from the makeup man. She was a very tiny woman—less an hourglass figure than perhaps an egg timer—with a very large head of hair and a severely pretty face. As with our football team, we nabbed her from Cleveland a number of years back. They must really hate us out there.

  Brett Brown wrapped up his sports report with a high speed recitation of local high school basketball scores and threw it back to Mimi with one more dig about the cheerleaders in sunny Florida. She ignored the dig and swung in Bonnie’s direction.

  “Well, for the rest of us who aren’t scampering off to follow the bouncing balls in Florida, what’s in store for us, Bonnie? Any break in the temperature? It’s like one big refrigerator out there!”

  “Yes, it is, Mimi. But I’m afraid we’ll just have to get used to it.” Bonnie swiveled to look directly into the camera that had been sneaking up on her. “Folks, we’re going to have to hunker down for a while longer, I’m afraid. Mother Nature has more of the same in store for us. And that’s more record-breaking cold temperatures. The conditions right now …”

  Just off camera, Brett Brown and Mimi Wigg were throwing daggers at each other. It was all silhouetted gestures and silent mouthing, as the lighting in their areas had been dimmed. It looked like a puppet show; especially with Mimi’s big hair bobbing furiously. Bonnie appeared oblivious to the shelling as she stepped smartly over to her blue scrim and began pointing out high and low pressure areas that on viewers’ TVs would appear as locations on the various maps that were electronically burned onto the scrim. At the conclusion of her segment, Bonnie told Baltimore to keep bundling up, then threw it back to Mimi Wigg. The diminutive newslady was calm and smiling again under her three thousand watts.

  “I guess Mother Nature must have a new winter coat that she’s been dying to try out, huh?”

  Off to the side, Brett Brown let out a snort. Mimi ignored him and went into her wrap-up. The news music came up. The moment the cameras were off, Mimi yanked the lavaliere mike from her collar and marched off the set.

  “It’s beautiful,” Bonnie said. She wrapped the scarf around her neck and tucked it into her cleavage. “I love it, Hitch. Thank you.” Kiss, kiss, kiss. Wampum saves the day.

  I told Bonnie on the drive over to her place what I had learned from Tracy Atkins. I decided to forgo the details of how Julia had filled in some of the pertinent blanks for me. Instead, I simply attached Julia’s brief history of Terry Haden and Helen’s skin flick days to the redheaded waitress’s account. I included the fact that Helen had followed in her mother’s footsteps, dancing barefoot and all the rest down at The Kitten Club. This brought Bonnie pretty much up to speed. I told her of my phone call with Vickie that afternoon, and how it looked to me as if Haden had dragged her and the kid out of the house the moment she hung up the phone. I didn’t mention that I had snooped through the house.

  “She was pretending I was the police,” I said.

  “Do you figure that was so Haden wouldn’t know she was talking to you specifically?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know why he’d care. I think it was more a matter of her calling for help. Or trying to scare Haden off.”

  “It looks like it worked.”

  “Only he took her with him.”

  “Hitch, you can’t be sure about that. I mean, you don’t know that she didn’t agree to go with him.”

  “It didn’t have that voluntary feeling to it.”

  “So you’re saying that Haden thought Vickie was talking to the police and then he hightailed it out of there. Taking her and the boy along. Against their will.”

  “Yes.”

  “So the idea
of the police spooked him?”

  “Yes.”

  “So he’s guilty.”

  “Of something, I’m sure. The guy is a sleaze. But did he kill Helen Waggoner?”

  Bonnie steered her car through the gates of the Mount Washington Apartments. She cleared the gate on my side by an inch. “Well, from what you’ve said, Terry Haden tops my list. I don’t know about you.”

  “I don’t know. What about Helen’s mysterious boyfriend? This guy with the deep pockets that Tracy was telling me about.”

  “What about him?”

  “Well, you see the word ‘mysterious’ that’s attached to him? Call me nuts, lady, but that provokes my interest.”

  Bonnie pulled into the slot in front of her building. “So, you need to figure out who he is.” She turned off the car.

  “I know. But the first thing now is to locate Haden.”

  “Why? He’s my number one, not yours. You think it’s somebody else.”

  “Still. He’s got Vickie and the kid.”

  “Hitch, can I remind you of something? It’s his kid. He’s the father.”

  “I know that. But look. From what I can tell of the guy, he had nothing to do with that kid since the moment the boy was conceived. And now suddenly, what? He’s back on the scene and he wants to play poppa? I don’t buy it.”

  “Well, what if he did kill Helen? Maybe he at least feels guilty enough to want to take responsibility for the child of the mother he murdered.”

  “This guy didn’t by any chance win a Heisman Trophy in college then go on to star in car rental commercials, did he?”

  “You’re funny,” Bonnie said. “And I’m freezing.” She pointed at the building in front of the car. “You’re free to join me.”

  We quit the car and went inside. Bonnie’s place is new and modern and clean. Hit one wall switch and the whole place lights up. Wall-to-wall carpet. Open kitchen with a large green counter. Matching navy sofa and armchair and a large pinewood wall unit that includes books, CDs, TV and VCR and numerous framed photographs of Bonnie through the ages: Bonnie on a tricycle; Bonnie on a diving board; Bonnie in braids posing with her father in front of a weather map; Bonnie in long straight hair, perched atop the shoulders of a lacrosse team. …

  For the record, there were no photographs of me to be found in Bonnie’s apartment. I hadn’t expected any. Believe it or not though, Bonnie and I had actually discussed marriage the very first time we met. I was fifty-five sheets to the wind and had proposed to her nonstop for a solid hour. In several languages. Some of which I don’t even speak. We were at John Stevens Pub. She was trying to play pool, and I was trying to get her to marry me. Bonnie politely refused me throughout the hour. But she must have seen something in this tall, dark and winsome drunk, for she eventually offered up a consolation prize for all my efforts. In the morning she had asked me if the marriage proposals still stood, but I told her no, they were like eclipses and the time had passed. “Why?” I wanted to know. “Have you reconsidered?” She told me that a guy like me could grow on a girl like her and I told her that she made me sound like a fungus and she told me that I was an awfully sexy fungus. People do talk funny right after sex, don’t they? At breakfast we had discussed whether this was to be a one-night stand or if we were going to attempt to see if the two of us—as a unit—might have legs. I warned her that I was divorced, though not damaged by it, but that my inclinations were to let considerably more water pass under the bridge before I decided whether or not I wanted to jump back in. “What if the water simply rises up and comes over the bridge?” Bonnie had wanted to know. She looked so damn luscious with her perfect hair mussed up and her large blue eyes racooned with makeup. I told her that I’d wash off that bridge when I came to it, and that had pretty much concluded our serious conversation. We retired to the bedroom to strike up a silly one instead.

  Bonnie threw down her purse, shrugged out of her coat and inched her new silk scarf from her cleavage with the moves of a stripper. I was powerless against the name Ruth Waggoner as it invaded my brain. Bonnie backed me up against the wall. We moved like a pair of Siamese twins into the bedroom, plucked away at our garments and then plucked away at each other atop Bonnie’s goose down comforter. At one point Bonnie whispered huskily, “My makeup,” but her cheek was tracking across my stomach at the time, so I paid no attention. Sometime later I came to rest with my face against her thigh. Her fingers were strolling through my hair. The comforter was bunched at the headboard and halfway off the bed. Somebody was purring. I think it was me.

  “Shit!” My head jerked suddenly from Bonnie’s drumstick.

  “What?”

  “What is Terry Haden doing back on the scene?”

  Bonnie frowned down at me. “I love it when you talk sexy to me.” She scooted up, dragging a portion of the comforter over her alabaster charms. “What do you mean?”

  “Haden. Why didn’t I think of it? He and Helen split up after she got pregnant. Right? Now, three, four years later, she’s pregnant again, and look who’s hanging around.”

  “Your point?”

  “The point is, Haden is back on the scene.”

  Bonnie slid off the bed and stepped into the bathroom. She called out, “You’re just repeating what we already know.”

  “No. Look at it.” I swung my feet to the floor. My toes sunk into the plush. “Our suspect list has just been reduced by one. According to Tracy Atkins, some man shows up in Helen Waggoner’s life, right? What. Four or five months ago. He gets her pregnant. Well, presumably it’s him. He’s throwing money around. Helen’s buying things. She’s talking about a new apartment. About quitting work. All this stuff.”

  Bonnie chimed in, “This is the mystery boyfriend we’re talking about now, right?”

  “Right. Except, when has this happened before? When did Helen Waggoner last get pregnant and quit what she was doing for a living? Who was the man in her life then?”

  Bonnie popped her head out of the bathroom. She had a shower cap on. “I’m going to take a shower. I’ve got to get back to the station.”

  “Come on. Who was her guy?”

  “Terry Haden. So?”

  “Right! And now? Round two. Pregnant. Again. Quitting her job. Again. It’s him again. Terry’s back. I’m being stupid. There is no so-called mystery man. It’s Terry Haden again! They were getting back together. Or trying to. It’s so simple it’s boring.”

  “I thought you said the new guy in her life was loaded. I didn’t get the impression that Mr. Haden was exactly Rockefeller material.”

  “Who knows about that? He’s a hustler. Up one day, down the next. He probably had a big wad of money from somewhere, and he schmoozed his old gal with it. Promised her the world. And won her back. At least for awhile. This guy is a play-fast, lose-fast kind of guy. For all we know the two of them burned right through whatever money Haden had and ended up right back where they started. I can see Haden waking up one morning and realizing that the party’s over. Again. Helen’s pregnant again, and she’s counting on him to deliver the goods this time, like he’s been promising. I sure as hell wouldn’t put it past someone like Terry Haden to start looking for a way out.”

  “Isn’t murder a little extreme?”

  “Of course it’s extreme. But people still do it. I’m telling you, it’s him. Forget this psycho customer business or this moneybags mystery man. It’s Gentleman Terry, I’m telling you. And this afternoon he gets a whiff that the police are swinging by Vickie’s place … and he flies like the wind.”

  “Shower,” Bonnie repeated. A moment later the water started running. I went into the kitchen, to the refrigerator, and drank directly from the orange juice carton. I kept the carton in my hand as I paced back and forth over the carpet trying to slot the pieces together. I realized that I had too few details to paint a complete picture. But the outline remained clear and, for the most part, made sense. Haden was the one. For reasons that I could only guess at, he had weaseled his way back int
o Helen’s life. Maybe he had been working toward pulling her back into the smut business. Maybe he knew that whatever cash he had wasn’t going to last, and he wanted to reprise his golden goose days with Helen. Then suddenly she’s pregnant again, and the guy just can’t believe his rotten luck. Maybe Helen had told him that very day that she was pregnant. And in a snit, he grabbed a car, drove out to the place where she worked, told her to get the hell in and shot her.

  And now Haden was on the run. He had taken his son along, as well as the boy’s aunt. But why? Why drag Vickie along? If Haden was running from the law, he could run a lot faster without a third person along. Especially a person who presumably didn’t want to be there in the first place.

  Presumably.

  Bonnie found me naked, standing at the sliding glass door to her deck, holding the orange juice carton and staring out into the early twilight. Headlights from the Jones Falls Expressway blinkered through the trees.

  “This is how I want to remember you,” she said. When I turned around and held out the juice carton to her, a large smile grew on her face. “No. Like this.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Terry Haden wasn’t listed in the phone book. I checked, first thing the following morning. Even if he were, I doubted he was sitting at home watching game shows with Vickie and Bo, waiting for visitors. But I had to start somewhere. I had no doubt now but that Terry Haden’s loose cannon had gone off the week before, aimed at his former-and-possibly-once-again lover, and that now he was on the run. I had to find him. Bonnie had tried to convince me before heading back to the station the night before that this was a job for Superman, or at least the Baltimore City Police, but I refused to be swayed. I gave her a full-frontal view of the legendary Sewell stubborn streak.

  “I thought you were all hot to catch a killer. Why the cold feet now?”

  “I still am,” Bonnie said. “What I’m not so hot for is seeing him kill you.”

  “Why would you think he’d do a thing like that?”