by Tim Cockey
“Nada.”
That’s all he said. One word. Nada. I know that word. That’s Spanish for “You ain’t got shit, Buster Brown.”
I protested, “What do you mean nada? Just exactly which part of it is nada to you?”
“Don’t be offended, Hitch. It’s a good story. You’ve really done the work on this one.”
“So, what don’t you like about it?”
“Oh, I like it. I actually think you’ve nailed it. The problem is, you can’t prove any of it. You have nothing concrete to take to the police. It’s a great story, and possibly an accurate one. But that’s all it is, a story. A maybe. A what-if. In a word, nada.”
“Christ, Adams, you sure know how to deflate a guy.”
“I’m sorry. You asked me down here to give you my assessment. I like your conclusions. But they don’t get you anywhere. Unless this Bob character surfaces and fills in the blanks, or confirms enough of your account, it’s all speculation.”
He picked up his glass. “But really, what’s the difference? If you’re right about all of this, most of the bad guys are dead anyway.”
“But Bonnie has no story,” I said. I must have sounded even less convincing than I thought. Either that or the reporter on the barstool next to me had a very well-tuned ear.
“You don’t care about that,” he said flatly.
“Says who?”
“Look, Hitch. You and Bonnie are none of my business.”
“Like you and her are none of mine?”
He took a beat, then cracked a crooked smile. “It’s all fucked up, isn’t it? What’s going on here.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Is this where we fight each other to the death? I recall that was part of your invitation.”
“I don’t think so,” I said to the slender reporter. “I’d slaughter you.”
“Don’t be so certain.”
“You mean you’d kick my bum leg?”
“I’d do what I have to do.”
“Well, look, I suggest we remain civilized about the whole thing. It’s an imperfect world and that’s never going to change. So, there must be a reason. Why don’t we just keep it at ‘it’s all fucked up,’ and let it go at that.”
We clinked glasses and toasted all things fucked up. Of course, my glass was already empty. But I suppose that’s fitting for such a toast. Julia caught my eye, but I waved her off. After the long day I had had previous, I needed a little more clarity in this one. I decided that I’d take the oath. At least until sundown. Maybe the seltzer-sipping reporter was inspiring me.
Adams and I left the bar together. The show outside was spectacular, the snow was still coming down in large lacy flakes. Soft, white humps had appeared where once there had been cars. The red tug in the harbor wore a frosty beard on its bow, frosty eyebrows on its windows and a frosty tuft on its exhaust stack. Adams said that he was parked over on Bond Street. I was going in the opposite direction. He headed off. I considered making a snowball and beaning him in the back with it, just to seal our newfound truce. But I decided against it. I still wasn’t quite sure what I felt about Bonnie and me. I decided it was better to reserve the right to dislike this guy all over again. He vanished in the snow.
I went directly to the funeral home. Jeffrey Kingman’s body had already been released by the hospital, and Sam had picked it up. It was down in the basement. Aunt Billie was standing in the front hallway when I came in the front door, talking with Daniel Kingman. Until they invent a better description than “hangdog” to describe the kind of look that was on the obstetrician’s face, that one will have to do. The two turned toward me as I came in.
“Hitchcock, I believe you know Dr. Kingman.”
“Yes, I do.” I took the baby doctor’s hand and shook it. Gently. There was nothing there. “I’m very sorry about your nephew,” I said. “This is certainly the last thing that your family needs.”
The obstetrician was there to handle the arrangements. I asked after his sister-in-law. “How is Mrs. Kingman holding up?”
“Ann? I … I can’t honestly say. She phoned me at the office and asked if I would handle this for her. She said she really didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Did she say anything else?” I asked. I had the man’s dreary eyes directly in mine. If he were lying, I’d know.
“Anything else?”
“Never mind.” The image of the little silver pistol suddenly popped into my head. “Someone should be with her,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if she says she wants to be left alone. Someone should be there. What about the daughter?”
“I spoke briefly with Joan before I came down here,” Kingman said. “Naturally she is devastated. Jeffrey was such a fine young man.”
This was the wrong setting for me to argue the point. I let it pass.
“Someone should be with Mrs. Kingman,” I said again. “You should call the daughter again.” He saw in my eye that I was deadly serious about this.
“I’ll call her.”
I left the two of them to their funeral plans. Billie told me that she had already informed Pops. He and his happy crew would be out at the cemetery already, digging a hole in the snow. I went into my office and plopped down in my chair. Tahiti was sounding good about now. Sky and sea a matching blue. Maybe there was some sort of New Year’s package to paradise that I could dig up at the last minute. I looked over at the Magritte. A sailboat on a lake. Sunshine. Sounded just perfect. I realized that the person I was envisioning lounging on the bow in my perfect Magritte vacation was not Bonnie; it was Vickie Waggoner. I guess that pretty much told it. Like the wind they come, like the wind they go. And just how the hell is a person expected to hold on to the wind for very long anyway?
I came out of the office when I saw Daniel Kingman in the hallway, preparing to leave. He got into his overcoat as if it was made of lead.
“Is everything set?” I asked.
“Everything is in place,” Billie said. She turned to Kingman. “Thank you for coming down in this weather, Dr. Kingman. I know this isn’t easy.”
He muttered something, I couldn’t make it out. As the three of us turned to the front door, as if by magic, it opened. In stepped a hooded figure. It was Vickie.
“Hi. I know you said to wait for your call, but I got antsy.” She stomped her feet against the rubber mat that Billie had set out. “Hello, Mrs. Sewell.”
“Hello, dear. How are you?”
Vickie threw me a dark glance, then aimed a smile at my aunt. “I’m fine. Thank you.” She pulled the hood down off her head.
“Miss Waggoner, this is Dr. Kingman,” Billie said, making the introductions. Vickie freed her hand from its glove and extended it. The doctor was frozen in place, staring at Vickie as if she had two heads.
“I’m sorry … I …” he stammered. “I missed the name?”
“Victoria Waggoner,” Vickie said.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Miss Waggoner.” Kingman was not quite on automatic pilot, but he was close. Belatedly he took her hand and shook it. He moved over to the door.
“You’ll give me a call if you need anything, Dr. Kingman,” Billie said to him. “Anything at all.”
“Thank you,” Kingman muttered. He looked back once more at Vickie, who was getting out of her coat.
“It was nice to meet you, Miss Waggoner,” he said again.
Vickie looked up. “Thank you.”
The doctor left. Billie closed the door behind him.
“The poor man is distraught,” she said.
Vickie looked from Billie to me. “That was him, wasn’t it? That was Helen’s doctor.”
“Why don’t you come into my office,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder and turning her to the left. “I’ll catch you up on everything.”
CHAPTER 27
The storm had reached blizzard conditions. It was falling frantically, as if it couldn’t come down fast enough; at the same time it was being wind-whipped in all directions at once
, creating a virtual whiteout. Across the street, the baby Jesus was completely covered over. The wise men were knee deep. A snowplow moved past, all but invisible except for its blinking amber lights and the large yellow scraper, good for a momentary redistribution of the snow at best. Clearing was out of the question. For all practical purposes, the plow’s tire tracks never even existed.
Billie, Vickie and I sat in Billie’s living room upstairs, watching the storm. Well, Billie and I were watching it. A fire was going in the small fireplace. True to my oath, I had declined my aunt’s offer of hot rum cider and was working on a mug of hot chocolate. I had dashed out into the snow after my talk with Vickie and fetched Alcatraz. He was curled up now in front of the fireplace. Vickie was on the floor next to him, her thoughts lost in the flames, her hand buried in the hound’s multiple folds. Billie sat in her rocking chair, sipping her cider. Any minute now, Robert Frost was going to step gently into the room, whispering, “Whose woods these are, I think I know …”
Vickie had listened almost completely without comment to my account of her sister’s murder. Only a few times had she halted me to clarify a point, for the most part she had taken in the information with a blank mask on her face. She was still wearing that mask. Though as I stole glances at her on the floor there next to my pooch, I could see in the flame’s light dancing about her face that the mask had become heavy. Somber and wounded. I had made the mistake of telling her that Jeffrey Kingman’s body was downstairs in the basement waiting for Billie to come down and take up her needles and tubes. Kingman was stretched out on the very table where Vickie had last seen her sister’s body. Now the man responsible for putting Helen there was there himself. But, as I had predicted, the news that Jeffrey Kingman was dead had given Vickie no real satisfaction. Her motivation for wanting to learn the circumstances of her sister’s murder had never been revenge. She had simply wanted an explanation. Vickie sat on the floor next to Alcatraz and continued to stare into the flames. Her family was gone, beaten up by cancer and by uncaring men. After I had explained everything to her down in my office, Vickie had asked if she could use my phone to call her neighbors. The kindly old folks were—again—looking after Bo. She dialed the number and asked if Bo could be put on the line. I’m assuming that he could. I don’t really know. Vickie’s expression didn’t change one iota. The placid mask was in place. But tears had suddenly filled her eyes and immediately overflowed, running down her cheeks. She sat and cried, finally managing to whisper a few words into the phone—I missed what they were—before hanging up.
Billie was putting off going to work on Jeffrey Kingman until Vickie was gone. This was beginning to present a dilemma, for the storm had reached the point where going out into it in a car had become increasingly unwise. Nobody was saying anything yet, but it was becoming ever evident that Vickie was not going to be driving home anytime soon. Billie signaled me to join her in the kitchen where she told me that she would suggest to Vickie that she stay over.
“I can put her up in your old room,” Billie suggested.
“What about Kingman? You need to get to work on him.”
“I know. I thought that maybe the two of you could go out for a walk.”
“In that?” I pointed at the window.
“It’s only snow.”
“And wind gusts up to a million.”
“Why don’t you take her over to the gallery and show her some of Julia’s paintings?”
“You have funny ideas, old lady.”
Vickie wasn’t in the living room when I came back out of the kitchen. I assumed she had popped into the bathroom. I heard the phone ringing in my office downstairs. By the time I got there, the machine had picked up. I played back the message. It was Jay Adams.
“Call me as soon as you get this. I’ve got some information.”
I dropped into my chair and dialed the number that Adams had given.
“Hitch, you got it wrong,” he said the moment I identified myself.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you got it wrong. I’ve been doing some digging since I got back to the office. You got it wrong, Hitch. But you were close. Listen.”
Adams told me what he had uncovered—all from his desk at the Sunpapers, using the phone, the Internet and the paper’s extensive archives. It was my turn to sit and listen, though unlike Vickie Waggoner I didn’t take it all in silence. A few “What?’s” and “Holy shit!’s” later and I hung up the phone. At almost the exact same time, I heard a scream from the basement. It was Vickie. The sound of feet running on stairs followed. A few seconds later, Aunt Billie came rushing into my office.
“Oh, Hitchcock! Come! Hurry!”
Do the math. When visibility is down to around a foot and the length of the hood of the car that you’re driving—in this case, a hearse—is around eight feet, that leaves a good seven feet of hood and tires and engine pretty much just hanging out there somewhere in front of you, out of sight. The headlights were doing me no good, simply reflecting back into my face off the fuzzy wall of snow that appeared to be moving along at exactly the same speed as the car. Which was slow. I was creeping along on faith, somewhere between twenty and thirty miles an hour on an expressway that welcomes sixty and tolerates seventy. At the speed I was traveling, the trip took me nearly an hour door-to-door, as opposed to the twenty minutes it would have taken normally. With great relief, I finally pulled to the curb and shut off the engine.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked Vickie, who was seated next to me. I leaned over and opened up the glove compartment and took out the pair of sunglasses Sam always keeps there.
“Yes.”
“No police?”
“That’s for later. I don’t want any third parties. Not for this.”
If the family was surprised to see me, they didn’t show it. Joan Bennett answered my knock and stepped aside to let me in. She threw a confused look at the woman in the sunglasses, then held out her hand to introduce herself.
“I’m Joan Bennett.”
The hand floated there, untaken.
Marcus Bennett was sitting on the steps leading upstairs, his chin was in his hands. He appeared to be pouting. Joan Bennett breezed by me and stopped at the foot of the stairs.
“Marcus, you remember Mr. Sewell from the other day? And this is …”
She was fishing for my companion’s identity. Her hook remained empty. “My friend,” was all I said. Joan Bennett’s mouth pinched in a little, then she led us into the living room. My glance went immediately to the table where only thirty-some hours previous had set a little silver pistol. It was gone now.
Ann and Daniel Kingman were seated together on the couch. Joan’s husband—I had no memory of his name—was in the chair beside the pistol-less table. He stood up as the three of us entered the room.
“Russell, this is Mr. Sewell. You remember him from Daddy’s funeral.” The woman didn’t even attempt a third shot at cadging Vickie’s name. I stepped over and shook hands with Russell Bennett. The man was roughly my age, though on a faster track to middle age. A receding hairline, some puffiness already around the too-tight Brooks Brothers shirt collar, the slight whiff of bay rum. He reminded me a little bit of one of those guys in the sports bar in Towson, now congenially going to seed.
Daniel Kingman had risen as well, though somewhat slower than his nephew-in-law. I turned to him and surprised everyone in the room I’m sure with the glare that I put on him, accompanied by the raised index finger and the unequivocal “or else” in the tone of my voice. “You keep quiet.”
He lowered back to the sofa. His eyes were wet and pleading. But if the obstetrician was cowed, his niece was another story.
“What is this all about? You can’t just storm in here and order my uncle around like that!”
I wasn’t looking at her, I was looking at Ann Kingman, who hadn’t said a word since I—correction, since we—had come into her home. Our eyes met for just an instant and then she turned to he
r daughter. “Sit down, Joan,” she snapped. “Or stand, I don’t care which. But keep quiet.”
Joan Bennett crossed her arms and scowled at me as she stepped across the room. For a moment I thought she was going for the desk. But she stopped at the windows, turned to face the room and leaned back against the windowsill. The floor was mine.
I took Vickie by the arm and led her over to a small chair against the wall by the living room entrance. The sunglasses masked her true expression. But I had a pretty good guess. I turned back to the others.
“I apologize for barging in like this. I know full well what a horrible time this is for the family.”
No one spoke. And then the ham began to rise up in me, I couldn’t help it. But also, I didn’t try to stop it. The alternative was pure anger, and I really didn’t want to start breaking things. I stepped into the middle of the floor, and clasped my hands behind my back like an old-fashioned schoolteacher in an old-fashioned movie. God help me, I even rocked on my heels.
“So. Who here would like to take responsibility for the murder of Helen Waggoner?”
Silence. No show of hands. No big surprise there. I turned to Russell Bennett.
“Would you care to take responsibility, Russ?”
The man gave me an understandably contorted look. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’ll take that as a no,” I said. I whipped around to face the couple on the couch. Two more guilty-looking visages—one angry, one depleted—I could not imagine.
“Ann? May I still call you Ann?”
“That is completely up to you.”
“Ann. When your brother-in-law came to you several months ago with his gossip about your husband’s most recent … misadventure, what was your first reaction? Your first thought.”
“I don’t recall,” she said flatly.