You Know Who Killed Me

by Loren D. Estleman

  We drove west to Telegraph, then north. She turned into a strip mall, scampered into a florist’s shop with a spectacular show of roses, peonies, and poppies looking like orange crepe in the lighted window. Ten minutes later she came out carrying a multicolored bouquet in a small basket covered with cellophane. I backed out of a space in front of a pet-grooming parlor and turned onto Telegraph a couple of beats behind the Flex. Traffic was heavy with commuters in a hurry to get home to a beer, a fight with the spouse and kids, a late night, an early morning, and the same day all over again. She was a careful driver but an aggressive one, changing lanes approaching stoplights in favor of the one with fewer cars between her and the intersection, and timed her speed to catch most of the lights on the green; either that, or God changed them for her.

  Despite all the changes locally, ice crystals trickled down my spine when we entered the Iroquois Heights city limits. I felt like a Jewish refugee going back to Germany for something he’d left behind in 1939.

  I’d flipped the rearview mirror to nightside when she turned into a narrow drive with an iron fence on each side and a brass-embossed sign nested in a slumbering flowerbed reading:

  HENRY GLADWIN MEMORIAL CEMETERY

  Gladwin had been the commander of Fort Detroit when Chief Pontiac laid siege in 1763. If the town disliked Indians that much, it seemed easier just to change its name.

  I idled at the curb for a minute. A cemetery drive is a lonely place every day but Memorial Day, and you tended to notice your fellow visitors. I poked a butt out the window and turned in. A hundred yards ahead shone a pair of taillights, which stayed the same distance as I crept forward, then brightened when the brakes came on. I cruised fifty feet, then took the first turnoff and stopped a few yards in, cutting the motor and the lights.

  I spent a lot of time twisting the focus wheel on the binoculars I kept in my trunk and squinting through the gloom to make out her substantial silhouette in the gathering dusk, carrying what I assumed to be the spray of flowers. I’m still saving up for night goggles and a rocketship to the moon. She stopped at a grave, crossed herself, stooped, straightened minus the basket, crossed herself again, and went back to her car.

  I ditched the binoculars, slid under the wheel, and waited while she turned into a side path and made her way back to the state highway. By the time I got to the grave, it was dark enough to need the flash. I slid the switch and pointed the beam at the headstone, red marble with a bronze plaque:

  DONALD WARWICK GATES

  b. 1976

  LOVING HUSBAND AND FATHER

  “GOD’S FINGER TOUCHED HIM AND HE SLEPT”

  Date of death was problematic, given which side of midnight New Year’s Day it had taken place.

  There was nothing in it. No law prohibited a pastor from honoring a friend and supporter of the church. There was nothing in it, except friends and church supporters died every day; old lovers less often.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Barry met me at the door of his apartment downtown. He had on plaid pajama pants and a Louisville Slugger in one hand. The titanium shaft of his utilitarian prosthesis stuck out the bottom of one leg. His other foot wore a big ugly black oxford.

  “You need to talk to your tailor,” I said.

  “You need not to wake people up in the middle of the night. You know how many home invasions started with somebody getting his toes stomped on?” He slid the bat into an umbrella stand. I hadn’t seen one of those in years.

  “It’s six thirty P.M.,” I said.

  “Not in Aspen. You couldn’t call?”

  “You didn’t answer.”

  “Right. I turned off all my phones.”

  I told him what I needed.

  “Tall order,” he said. “I need to know what she looks like.”

  “The church must have a Web site.”

  He sat down in front of a flat-screen monitor on an L-shaped desk. His connection was first-rate: He had the Christ Episcopal Church’s site in no time, and scrolled down a stack of smiling faces until he came to Florence Melville’s, a good likeness.

  “I like that hair streak,” he said. “Makes things less difficult.”

  He was faster on the keys than most people who had all ten fingers. I watched a lot of sped-up images whiz past: people entering and exiting shopping malls, restaurants, hotels, walking on sidewalks. Security footage. I asked him how he got the stuff.

  “The owner of the Blue Heron isn’t the only person I’ve done favors for. You never know when some drug lord who’s been deported to Sicily might walk into the local Seven-Eleven.”

  “Didn’t the feds catch a Nazi war criminal that way?”

  “September before last, in Southfield. It was my call.”

  “Branching out?”

  “I should try and compete with the Israelis. Bread on the waters, for when I need Washington.”

  His eyes never left the screen. Mine did; watching someone surf the Net is like watching grass grow. The apartment was sparsely furnished, no sofa or TV set, no decoration, not even his Pulitzer. When Sam the Butcher came calling, all Barry had to grab on the way out was a toothbrush.

  “Hello.”

  I turned back. He’d freeze-framed on a full-length shot of a man and woman standing in a plush lobby of some kind. The woman was Florence Melville, caught in the act of removing a pair of sunglasses and looking over one shoulder. The white streak in her hair was prominent. She wore a lightweight dress with half sleeves. The man had on a short-sleeved sportshirt and pleated slacks. A time stamp flickered in the lower right corner: 3:57 P.M. 7/8/12.

  “Hilton Garden Inn, downtown,” Barry said. “They’re waiting for the elevator.”

  “The man’s face is blurred.”

  “Sec.” He tapped a key. The image moved. He tapped again, freezing it.

  I held my breath. It couldn’t be that easy.

  “Can you zoom in?”

  Tappity-tap-tap. Donald Gates’s mild, slightly pudgy face filled the screen.

  * * *

  “Could be a church benefit,” I said. “Even a lady pastor prefers an escort.”

  “Know in a minute.” He stroked the mouse. Rows of square stills came up onscreen. He clicked on one, and now we were looking down at a steeper angle at a carpeted hallway with numbered doors on both sides. The couple, dressed as before, scampered down it at accelerated speed. They stopped in front of one of the doors. Gates swiped a key card through a slot, opened the door, held it for Melville, and followed her inside. I caught a glimpse of a sleek bureau and the corner of a snugly made bed.

  “Hotel room’s a funny place for an auction,” Barry said. “Things have come to a sorry pass when a man can’t step out on his wife without winding up on a reality show.”

  “Melville told me they dated before he met Amelie. She sort of left out just when they stopped.”

  “She wouldn’t be the first clergyperson to break the Sixth Commandment.”

  “Seems a harsh trade for breaking the Seventh.” I studied the screen. “Can you print out that last shot showing their faces?”

  “Sure. Can I cut myself in, or are you a solo blackmailer?”

  “Now, what kind of hell would I be bound for if I tried to shake down a priest?”

  “If it’s as bad as Detroit, I wouldn’t risk it.”

  “It’s just a shock treatment.”

  “Who for?”

  “I haven’t worked that out yet. I’ve been in the dark on this one since the beginning.”

  “So throw shit on your head and call yourself a mushroom.” He loaded a sheet of photo paper into his printer.

  “Keep this under your hat, Barry?”

  “I might as well. Looks like my Ukrainians sprouted wings and flew out the window.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  I crossed the MacArthur Bridge for the fourth time in a couple of days. I was beginning to spend more time on the island than James Scott, and he was a bronze statue standing near the fountain named for him. I for
get just who he was, philanthropist or robber baron or just a man with money left over when they put him in the ground. Like the city itself, its history was sliding out from under my feet.

  Amelie Gates entered the parking lot while my engine was still cooling, accompanied by a woman I’d seen working the food tent. The other woman had on civilian outerwear like her companion’s, but when I opened the window to call out to Amelie the smell of baked beans and onions reached me from twenty feet away. She recognized me—or the car—touched her friend’s arm, and left her standing there while she came over.

  “I’m sorry you came all this way, Mr. Walker. I have a ride home.”

  “I need to talk to you about Don.”

  “Not tonight, please. It’s been a trying day. One of the people we’re trying to help threw a fit and dumped over the warming table. Island security Tased him, but not in time. Our best cook was taken to Detroit General with third-degree burns.”

  “You know what they say about good deeds. I wouldn’t bother you, except I think the case is breaking wide open.”

  She frowned, showing middle-age for the first time in the wan sunlight. After a beat she nodded and went back to her friend. The woman glanced my way—suspiciously, I thought, but after a few years you don’t expect to get any other kind—then shook loose a set of keys and veered toward a red Escalade with frozen slush on the rocker panels. I got out in time to hold the door for my passenger.

  I left the car in park and twisted in the seat to face her. The picture Barry had printed out was in a manila envelope on the backseat; I could see it from the corner of my eye.

  “What have you found out?” she asked.

  “Couple of questions first.”

  “You can’t talk to Michel.” She raised her chin.

  “We’re past that—maybe. Was your husband faithful?”

  Her head snapped back as if she’d been slapped. “What?”

  “I’m not accusing you, although it’s a possibility. A love triangle adds more than three sides to a murder case.”

  “Where are you getting this?”

  I said nothing. I could still see the manila envelope.

  “Mr. Walker, my husband wasn’t perfect, but he’d never have done anything to hurt our family.”

  I looked from one of her pupils to the other. “Okay. I had to know if you suspected anything.”

  “There was nothing to suspect.”

  “Did you and Don have money trouble?”

  A tight little smile drove the angry flush from her features.

  “He always said the only people who don’t worry about money are those who have tons of it and those who don’t have a dime.”

  “I mean serious debt. Is your house mortgaged?”

  “Yes, but the payments are reasonable.”

  “Did you see the papers?”

  “I signed them.”

  “Did you read them?”

  “Well, not in detail. Don had. He explained the conditions.”

  “Did he mention the balloon payment?”

  Her eyes flickered. “I don’t—”

  “No one does except bankers. It had to be dumbed down for me the first time I heard of it. In order to get the lowest possible rate, you agree to pay off a substantial part of the loan in one future payment. It’s usually a whopper. Sometimes the entire remaining principal.”

  “Sounds like a fool’s paradise.”

  “Was Don a fool?”

  She shifted positions to face me full-on. “Just what are you suggesting?”

  “I’m speculating, not suggesting. A sudden hit to the pocketbook can play hell with someone’s sense of right and wrong.”

  “You’re saying he was involved in something illegal, and that’s why he was killed.”

  “He was killed because of something. Why not money?” I forced myself not to look at the envelope on the backseat. I needed it for shock value.

  “Who told you there was a balloon payment?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Well, there wasn’t.”

  “How do you know, if you didn’t read the documents?”

  “I don’t know much about such things, but doesn’t it make sense the bank would offer that option near the end of the loan, instead of at the beginning? I mean, anyone would have to be worse than a fool to agree to such an expense just to save money for two years.”

  “Who said anything about two years?”

  Her eyes remained on mine. “We refinanced year before last, when the rates were at rock bottom. That’s when we signed the papers.”

  I said nothing.

  “Whoever told you that story was lying,” she said. “I can prove it just by producing those documents. They’re in a safety deposit box at the bank; not the same bank that’s holding the mortgage. Don made a point of that.” She shook her head. “No, Mr. Walker. My husband had his faults, but being a fool wasn’t one of them. And he never committed a crime.”

  After a moment I faced the wheel. “Okay.” I put the car in gear.

  She didn’t stir. “That’s all you have to say, ‘okay’? After calling a good man who can’t defend himself a cheat and a crook?”

  “I got a bum steer. I get more of those than the other kind.”

  I drove her home without further conversation. In her driveway she got out and slammed the door. She never looked back. I backed into the street with the photo still in the envelope.

  The woman who answered the phone in the federal building told me Deputy Marshal Thaler had gone home for the day. She wouldn’t give me her home number and her cell wasn’t answering.

  Someone was lying. It wasn’t Amelie Gates. Only a stone psychopath could lie without her pupils changing size. Or a government spook trained by experts.

  Florence Melville would have some answers. But I’d retraced enough of my own footsteps for one day. I made a meal out of my survivalist rations and rented a movie, a lobotomy job about a bunch of grown-up frat boys trying to get laid. I laughed my head off and turned in.

  * * *

  I slept late enough to eat lunch for breakfast. I called downtown. A different woman said Deputy Marshal Thaler wasn’t in that day. I didn’t think I was so important she was ducking me; she’d just have another plausible story to substitute for the one she’d sold me, and an equally plausible story to explain why she’d lied. Trying to brace a cop, any kind of cop, is like playing a shell game when you know there’s no pea.

  Today’s tail was a burgundy Trailblazer. There would be room in the back for a parabolic microphone and whatever other toys they’d drawn from the company chest. By now she knew I’d spoken with the widow, but unless the tech team had found a way around Barry Stackpole’s state-of-next-year’s-art scramblers, she didn’t know what I had on the Reverend Melville.

  For once I was ahead of her. I planned to keep it that way.

  The guy was good, blending in and out of traffic and giving me as much as a block when the lights were right. I tried shaking him twice, the first time using a city bus for a blind, the second cutting across the site of a demolished crack house bumper-deep in weeds. He stayed on me without visible panic. There were two heads in the car, so parking and ducking into a building and out the back way wasn’t an option; the passenger would get out and follow me on foot while the driver staked out the Cutlass in case I circled back.

  When I finally lost him it was almost by accident. A DPW crew was digging a tunnel to China on Mound Road, leaving only one lane open. I caught the signalman just as he was turning his sign from SLOW to STOP. I started to slow down, then gunned it.

  “… Cocksucker!”

  The signalman at the other end had already turned his sign around and a panel truck had started to ease forward heading toward me; I tickled its front left fender swerving around it. The man holding the sign had to step back to keep from getting clipped by my right side mirror. He, too, had an opinion on my sexual preference; but by then I was free from surveillance.

&
nbsp; Not counting satellites, radar guns, and cameras on street corners. Privacy’s as dead as Wild Bill.

  THIRTY

  “You’re getting to be more faithful than most of the congregation,” Florence Melville said.

  I didn’t jump nearly as high as the belfry. I’d been striding down the center aisle between the rows of pews, intent on the rectory, when she spoke. The acoustics at Christ Episcopal were perfect; she might have been whispering in my ear. I turned and slid my hands nonchalantly into my pockets while my heart dribbled down to a steady beat. She was seated sideways in one of the pews with her ankles crossed, a breviary or whatever spread open on her lap. It was a casual day: blue pullover, black pleated slacks, flat heels. She’d taken off her gold-framed glasses and twirled them in one hand by a bow.

  “Hiding from the devout?” I asked.

  “This time of day I like to do my reading here. The stained-glass is cheerful in the east light. For some reason it’s more mellow than the afternoon sun coming from the west.”

  She was right. Pink and green triangles and octagons fell across her, making the pale streak in her hair stand out.

  “Mysterious ways,” I said. “Got a minute?”

  “Sure.” She closed the book and folded her hands on the cover.

  “Someplace less public than Comerica Park.”

  She lifted her brows, got up, and led me to the rectory. Dust motes did arabesques in the beam slanting in through the east window. “Is this an occasion for brandy?”

  I said, “Help yourself. I’ve been hitting it a little hard lately.”

  She tilted a palm and sat behind the desk. I didn’t sit. I drew the manila envelope, folded lengthwise, from the deep inside pocket of my overcoat and laid it on her calendar pad.

  She looked at it, pushing out her lower lip. She stirred, lifted the flap, drew out the picture Barry had printed out. Her face paled a little.

  “Where—?” She looked up at me.

  “Big Brother’s got cousins all over.” I sat down then. “I’m listening.”

  She laid the photo facedown on the envelope.

  “I told you we dated. I may not have been entirely forthcoming about the level of our intimacy. My position—”