Hearse of a Different Color (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries)

by Tim Cockey

  “Is that what you think black olives smell like?”

  “I haven’t touched one ever since you told me that story.”

  “Julia, that’s the closest you’ve ever come to sounding prudish.”

  She raised her glass. “Well, there you have it.” We sipped and fell into silence. Julia was studying the rim of her glass. I was flipping through my mental snapshots of the girl from Scarsdale. It’s a nice collection. She’s married now. Lives in Manhattan. Has a couple of kids. And is still very pretty. I get a holiday snapshot every winter.

  Julia set her glass down and languidly ripped a page from her magazine. She folded it into a paper airplane and tossed it in my direction. It nosedived into the mesh of the hammock.

  “So, what’s the latest on your dead waitress?” she asked. “Or, actually, on the sister. Was I right? Victoria Wagner? Queen of the sleazy screen?”

  “No. It’s the murdered woman who had the telltale tattoo. The butterfly. Just as you said.”

  “Then she used her sister’s name.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “That’s twisted. Why do you suppose she did that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You didn’t ask the sister?”

  “She’s disappeared.”

  “As in … disappeared?”

  For the second time in an hour, I rattled off the pertinent details of my amateur sleuthing. Julia rolled her eyes as I described how Haden had been sent to prison for his little Dundalk Lolita action. She tried to slow me down for a more detailed accounting of my journey to The Kitten Club.

  “Was she pretty, this Miss Dew?” Julia cocked an eyebrow. “And don’t tell me, ‘She’ll do.’”

  “Me? You must have the wrong guy.”

  “You’re the right guy all right. So tell me already. Was your stripper a looker?”

  “She was the stripper,” I said. “I was the looker.”

  Julia gave herself a head slap. “See! God, Hitch, it’s like a sickness with you, I swear.”

  “Look, do you want to hear the rest of this, or do you want to just park it at the strip club?”

  “Is that a snit I detect?”

  “I don’t know what it is. Maybe. Helen Waggoner was dumped off at my place a week ago, and I’m nowhere nearer figuring out who killed her. All that’s really happened is that her son and her sister have disappeared, but it doesn’t seem now that it’s Helen’s murderer who they disappeared with. On top of it all, someone’s running around Baltimore shooting people in the foot.”

  It was this last bit of my rant that got Julia interested enough to hear the rest of my tale. As I concluded, she was rubbing her own foot. Whether consciously or not, I couldn’t tell.

  I picked up the paper airplane and smoothed out its nose. “So that’s about it. Kruk doesn’t think Terry Haden killed Helen and neither do I anymore. Granted, his alibi isn’t the best one in the world. But even so, Haden as the killer is just making less and less sense. He just got out of prison a month ago. But I’m missing the logic of his getting out and then immediately tracking Helen down and killing her.”

  “Oh, I see. You’re looking for a logical reason for murder.”

  “You know what I mean. Twisted logic. But logic. Something. Why would he come out of prison and shoot Helen Waggoner? I don’t see it. Haden is shaking out as a no-account piece of sleaze, but he’s losing his grip as our best murder suspect.”

  “You know who I think it is?” Julia said, plunging into her Bloody M.

  “You’ve been thinking about this?”

  “Not really. But I’m a quick study.”

  “Who do you think?”

  “I think it’s the sister.”

  “Vickie?”

  “Yes. I think it’s her.”

  “Based on what?”

  Julia fluttered her hand in the air. “Based on nothing. It’s strictly a hunch. You’ve said that she and her sister didn’t get along. Maybe they got into a fight.”

  I reminded Julia about the Pontiac Firebird and Kruk’s theory that the murder was premeditated. “I don’t think Vickie Waggoner would be running around stealing cars so that she could murder her sister.”

  Julia sniffed. “You’re looking for logic again. I’m simply choosing the most provocative suspect. Women are always the most provocative suspect.” She dipped a finger into her drink and dabbed the sides of her neck. “Maybe I did it. I’m a woman.”

  I crumpled the plane in my hand. “I’d noticed that. A pretty arch one.” I got off the hammock and went over to where Julia was sitting.

  “I’ve got to go.” I leaned over and gave her a kiss on the forehead.

  “I’m down here,” Julia grumbled. She tilted her head and looked up at me. Her wicked eyes were soft and a little doughy from the vodka. Her lips were plump and red, already slightly parted. “You don’t have to go running off.”

  “I’ve still got to find Terry Haden.”

  “Why?”

  “Haden has attached himself to Vickie Waggoner and I don’t know why. Maybe it really is the boy. Whatever it is, I don’t like it. I don’t trust him. I don’t think she’s safe around him.”

  Julia leaned back against the wicker. Her long fingers ran absently along the silk lapel of her robe. “Hitch, are you about to show poor judgment again?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It might not be my place to remind you that it’s not your place to run off saving damsels in distress. Especially ones who, if I understand correctly, haven’t even called out for help. You’ve made this mistake once already, if you recall.”

  I grumbled. “Of course I recall. This is different.”

  Julia’s big Bloody Mary eyes blinked out in code: W-H-Y?

  “It just is,” I said. I wondered if it sounded as lame to her as it did to me.

  “Oh, then, by all means.” She waved her hand dismissively. I stepped over to the fireman’s pole. As I grabbed hold of it I looked back over at Julia, still draped on her wicker settee. She was worth a painting herself.

  “You could stay.”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  Her chin floated in my direction. “You do know what you’re missing.”

  •••

  I moved a large stack of papers from one side of my desk over to the other and then back again. I did this maybe three times. By the time I was finished, and the papers were back where they had started, the pile was half its original size. That’s how we laugh our time away in the merry old land of Oz.

  The phone rang.

  “Sewell and Sons.”

  “What in the goddamn hell is going on?”

  It was Bonnie, my sweet. She had heard about the snuffing out of Popeye the strip club owner and about the apparent connection between his murder and that of Mr. and Mrs. Lawyer (Michael and Sheila Fenwick; they’ve gone unnamed long enough now). I didn’t even bother to ask how it was that she had learned of my being on the scene just moments after all the fun. I know snakes; I know how they slither.

  “Same old same old,” I answered her, my gaze coming to rest on my Magritte. “People are going way too far out of their way not to talk with me. First Haden, now good old Popeye.”

  “I’ll talk with you.”

  We agreed to meet at the Belvedere Hotel, in the John Eager Howard Room. The Belvedere is a gem of a building over on Chase Street that was nearly demolished in the early seventies to make room for nothing that anybody can even recall anymore. The John Eager Howard Room is a mouthful that translates into: bar. It is woody and stuffy and plushy and comfortable. Its walls are decorated with portraits of the highbrows and blue bloods who came over from England in days of yore to escape persecution for their religious and social beliefs and who subsequently set up aristocracies and pecking orders of their very own here at the gaping mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. I got there before Bonnie. The bar was filled. I took a table, parking myself in front of Lord Somebody-or-other. A waiter came over and I
ordered an ice water. I gazed at Lord Something-or-other as I waited for my water. He won the staring contest.

  Bonnie came into the John Eager Howard Room looking good enough to eat. Legs, hair, breasts, eyes, skin, attitude, the wiggle in her walk, the giggle in her talk … the whole package. The old walruses and young sharks at the bar all thought so too. I stood up from my table as she crossed the room. I wanted everyone to see me. I even tracked slowly along the bar, making eye contact where I could. She’s mine, you drooling fishbones. Hands off. I’m not exactly sure what had gotten into me. Another few seconds and I might have thrown my head back and started to crow.

  Bonnie was pleased that I had stood up. She loves good manners.

  “What’s wrong with your eyes?” she asked suspiciously. “You’re looking kind of demonic.”

  “I’m just in a weird mood,” I said, sitting back down. “I was throwing back beers at eleven this morning in a strip club with a woman who was wearing little more than a filament, then the guy I was going to talk with over lunch was filled full of lead moments before I got there.” I picked up my glass of ice water. “You know. One of those days.”

  “Crime fighting.”

  “I wouldn’t say I’m fighting crime. I’m chasing. The crimes happen.” I smiled across the table at her. “So. How’s the weather?”

  “It’s out there, Hitch. Every goddamn where you look.”

  My Bonnie lass was becoming more beautiful to me before my very eyes. I was beginning to calculate how much a room at the Belvedere would set me back when she suddenly lowered the boom.

  “Hitch, I think we should stop seeing each other.”

  “What?”

  She lowered her eyes—the coward—and started fiddling with the place mat. I brought my elbows onto the table and leaned forward.

  “What did you just say?”

  Bonnie stammered. “I just think … I don’t know … I … We’re not … I mean …” She looked up at me, gave a large sigh. “It’s hard.”

  “What’s hard? Finishing a sentence?”

  “Don’t be angry with me,” she snapped.

  “I’m not, yet,” I said. “Right now you’ve got me at the confused point. But give me a minute. You go ahead and make a lousy case and I’ll move on to anger.”

  “No, you’re angry now. I can tell. I can hear it in your voice.”

  “Well what gives? Bonnie, according to my diary, boy and girl are getting along swimmingly. I thought I was the hunk of your dreams. What the hell is this all about? Is it Adams?”

  “No.”

  “Then what? Speak.”

  “I … can’t really explain it, Hitch.”

  “College try, little girl.”

  “That’s it!” She literally jumped in her seat. A flash of red stormed across her cheeks. Several heads turned in our direction. Bonnie lowered her voice to a loud hiss.

  “That’s it, Hitch. You’re patronizing, damn it. Listen to yourself. You pat me on the head like … like I’m Alcatraz or something. It’s this good little girl shit. I don’t think you even know you’re doing it.”

  “I’m a chauvinist is what you’re saying. Basically that’s it, right?”

  “Well, yes and no.”

  “Ah, the woman’s definition of definitive.”

  “See!”

  “I’m kidding.” I held up a hand—time out—while I took a sip of water. I needed the moment for a quick internal conference. I finished off three quarters of the glass. “I’m not perfect,” I said, swirling the glass. The ice didn’t tinkle; it clunked.

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  “No. Exactly. You said I wasn’t. And you’re giving that as your reason for why we should stop seeing each other.”

  “You’re twisting my words.”

  “Then untwist them for me. Bonnie, we should be having an argument. You should tell me you’re annoyed with the way I deal with you sometimes, and we should argue about it. Don’t you think breaking things off is a little extreme?”

  “You’re trying to manipulate me now.”

  “Fight back! Manipulate me. You’re a grown woman. Goddamn it, act like one!”

  “Don’t you fucking tell me what to do!” She made a small fist and rapped it against the table. Her beautiful nostrils flared.

  “Good, good—”

  “Stop that!”

  “That’s better—”

  “STOP THAT!” Bonnie lunged suddenly across the table and landed a perfect slap right across my cheek. It was loud. It caught us both by surprise. It caught everyone in the room by surprise. No one breathed. Except Bonnie, whose breath was coming out in little machine-gun bursts. I watched her face, wondering if it would melt into embarrassment for having just created a public scene. But it didn’t. Her lower lip quivered for just an instant, then she drew it in and secured it. Her eyes grew dark and a ripple went through her hamster cheeks.

  By God, she slapped me again! Harder. Much harder. This time with a primal gusto. Rehabilitative. Cathartic. Whatever. The woman practically knocked my teeth out. Her perfect hair flew and wispy strands rose with the room’s static electricity. We glowered at each other like gunfighters in the Wild West. We circled each other without ever leaving our chairs. Bonnie didn’t back down. Not one iota. And good for her. She needed that. And apparently, so did I. I could feel the eyes of every person at the bar. Even Lord Something-or-other looked a little bit smug. Out of the corner of my eye, I detected a waitress, black slacks, oversize men’s white shirt, tray in hand. She was frozen on the spot, too scared to move.

  The room set me back a hundred and thirty-five dollars. Every penny worth it.

  The newly invigorated couple made plans to find the bad guys. Terry Haden was now officially deposed from his brief reign as Helen Waggoner’s mystery boyfriend. Haden had been cooling his heels in the state lockup in Jessup during the time that Helen had begun showing signs of making free with someone else’s money. On the latter count, however, Bonnie advised that we ought to remain cautious. It was still possible that Helen had come into some money all on her own, and that was what had been prompting her to make noises about quitting the Sinbad’s scene, getting a new place and all the rest of it. I conceded Bonnie her point without a second’s hesitation. The postslap Bonnie Nash was my heroine. Every fiber of the woman was buzzing with newly charged juice.

  We were still in our love shack at the Belvedere. Technically we had the place until eleven the next morning. Bonnie was fresh from the shower and was wrapped in one of the Belvedere’s plush towels. We had already determined that we were going to abscond with a few of the towels, for Bonnie. The large burgundy B on her towel hit her on the left-side rump, like a brand. I was by the window, wrapped in a bedsheet, looking out at the mere mortals twelve flights down. The two of us looked like a couple of Greek urn ornaments noodling about in the wrong century.

  “So we need to cover both possibilities,” Bonnie said. “We need to learn if Helen was onto something that was bringing in some authentic bucks. And we need to learn if there really was a boyfriend in the shadows at all.”

  “Somebody got her pregnant,” I reminded her. “Cash alone can’t do that.” Actually, these days it could. But I didn’t bring that up.

  “What’s-his-name.”

  “Well, that’s exactly the problem,” I agreed. “What is his name?”

  “No. What’s his name? The big guy. The piano man. At Sinbad’s.”

  “Oh, you’re talking about Gary?”

  “Didn’t your waitress friend say that Helen and that guy had a thing going on?”

  Did I detect a little edge in that phrase “your waitress friend,” or was I just being paranoid? The answers are: yes.

  “Tracy Atkins,” I said. “She thought that Helen might have slept with Gary a few times. She didn’t make it sound like she thought it was anything serious.”

  “She might not have known if it was serious. After all, isn’t this the woman who can’t even tell y
ou if her close friend was actually seeing somebody?”

  “You’re right. Except, I don’t know that Tracy Atkins was in the dark so much as that she’s just not telling all that she knows. I know that she was lying to me about Haden, for example. Though I don’t know why.”

  “But why would she lie about that if Haden had nothing to do with Helen’s murder?”

  “We don’t think he had anything to do with it,” I reminded her. “We only know that he’s not the one who got her pregnant, and he wasn’t the one who was spending his money on her.”

  “So the lying?”

  “I don’t know. She’s protecting somebody.”

  “Maybe she’s protecting herself.”

  “From what? You don’t think she killed Helen, do you?”

  “She wasn’t at the restaurant that night.”

  “I don’t see Tracy Atkins hot-wiring a car in Federal Hill so that she could have a nice cozy place to kill Helen Waggoner.”

  The moment I said this however, Tracy’s MG flashed across my brain—over the speed limit. Tracy was clearly fond of the little rusted gem. In fact she had just gotten it back from the shop. If, for whatever reason, Tracy had in fact planned to shoot Helen, she certainly wouldn’t have been foolish enough to do it in her little MG. And as for hot-wiring the Firebird … now that I thought about it, this didn’t seem to be a talent that would necessarily be outside the woman’s scope.

  For the time being though, we would shelve the question of Tracy Atkins and her questionable memory lapses. Bonnie and I decided that we needed to have a chat with big Gary.

  “How do you want to do this?” I asked. “According to Tracy Atkins, Gary is pretty much a howling wolf when it comes to women. Do you want to try the Mata Hari approach?”

  “You mean seduce him?”

  My cheek tingled. “No, no. Of course not. I was just thinking if you got him into a conversation you might be able to draw some information out of him.”

  “How do I do that, Hitch? Do I ask him if he got the dead girl pregnant? Or do I just go right to the point and ask him if he killed Helen?”