Mayhem, Mystery and Murder

by John A. Broussard

  I went all out and took her to Chez Pierre. I primed her with cocktails beforehand, figuring a little lubrication wouldn’t hurt. Damned if it didn’t turn out just one drink was like pouring oil on a mudslide. Some women are that way. Just a whiff of the cork loosens them up like you’d never believe. Sure as hell you wouldn’t believe the effect on Lita.

  So in a few minutes I found out old Jed is putting the make on her. She’s resisting, but she needs the job. And she more than confirms Toomy’s suspicions. Only she’s not in on the financial finagling. She describes to me how Jed’s been negotiating contracts behind Toomy’s back and getting more than his share every time. In fact, it turns out he’s systematically getting two contracts signed—one for Toomy’s benefit, and the real one for his own benefit. Lita knows about all this because she got a glimpse of one of those real ones when she and Jed checked out his safety deposit box.

  The box had been Jed’s own personal one before he teamed up with Toomy to start the company. He told Toomy there wasn’t much point in spending money on a company box when there was plenty of room in his “to keep important papers in.”

  “It was maybe two months ago,” she says, filling me in on the details. “Mr. Lowe asked me out to lunch. I didn’t particularly want to go, but you can’t say ‘no’ to the boss, you know. We’ve been so busy lately, that I’ve been eating my lunch at my desk. Poor Mr. Toomy is really swamped, you know. But, as I say, I couldn’t really say ‘no’. I really got nervous when lunch dragged on and on, because I had so much work to do back at the office. He just kept talking about all the businesses he had, and how much money he was making.”

  That was when I had to readjust my first impressions of Lita Summers. She wasn’t just a nice looking accountant, she was also smart enough to recognize at the outset the old fart was coming on to her.

  On the way back from lunch, Jed stopped by the bank, “To put a couple of deeds into his safety deposit box,” he said, according to Lita. Actually, she was convinced he just wanted to impress her with how the bank employees, including the manager, would bow and scrape when they saw him. So then he dragged her back to show off his oversize deposit box—one big mistake. As he was putting the papers away, she caught a glimpse of what she was sure was a separate agreement with one of the big developers in town. It didn’t take a sharpie like her very long to figure out Jed was double-dealing, maybe on all the contracts.

  All of which didn’t make much sense to me, but she explained it. “Mr. Lowe knows all these builders and developers and real estate people. So he gets them to agree to sign two different contracts with him: one with a high amount for our services and one with a low amount. He probably pays them some cash up front for signing off. Lowe Enterprises receives the low amount, the amount specified in the other contract. Mr. Lowe personally collects and pockets the difference between the two contracts.”

  Ordinarily, I’m pretty tight-lipped when I’m out doing work for a client, but I felt I was making a pretty good impression on my dinner companion. The booze, along with the nice company, loosened my lips maybe more than they should have been. I told her that Toomy suspected he was getting the shaft, and thought she was in cahoots with Jed, which of course forced me to clarify my role.

  How Toomy found out he was being flimflammed, was something she couldn’t explain since she didn’t think he knew anything about accounting. And she blubbered all over my shoulder about what a disappointment it was that Toomy could ever think she was in on Jed’s crooked schemes. The news so overwhelmed her she really didn’t seem too upset at finding out I’d been hired to investigate her.

  All this came out after a great meal, a couple of rounds of drinks and my admission the only time I’d ever been near a loan company was on the customer side of the desk. I even went so far as to admit I probably knew less about accounting than Toomy did.

  Lita wasn’t the least upset at seeing my bared soul. In fact, she seemed pleased when she discovered who I really was and what I was really after, and she was more than cooperative. She actually became a fellow conspirator, as we both tried to figure out how to get the goods on Jed. We agreed the safety deposit box was the answer, but getting to it wasn’t going to be duck soup.

  I hold my drinks pretty well, so I wasn’t so fuzzy I couldn’t recognize an impossible situation when I saw one. All we had to do was to get Jed and Lita to go to the bank, open the box and have Jed let her go through the contents. Fat chance!

  But Lita was resourceful. That was when she convinced me she had a smart, as well as nice-looking, head on her shoulders—though for a few minutes there, I kind of thought the head was facing the wrong way. She said she knew where Jed kept the key. She’d been to his house, and had seen him hang it up in a cupboard containing several sets of keys.

  “So what does that do for us?” I asked, getting the first whiff of what it might do for us—to me especially.

  “Well. Couldn’t his house be burglarized?” She’d gotten over her crying jag, and was making a lot of sense, even if I wasn’t any too pleased at the direction the sense was heading. On the other hand, I’d already pulled off a couple of capers like this one. My best was the diary I’d lifted from an ex-wife’s apartment. I’d even been able to return it undetected, after making photocopies of the important passages that pretty much won the custody battle for the guy I was working for.

  Lita wasn’t affected by my doubts. In fact, you could see her enthusiasm for the scheme swell as she kept talking. “His house is going to be empty for the next five days. He’s off visiting his son in LA.”

  I snorted. “So all I have to do is swipe the key, then we waltz up to the bank and they say ‘Good morning, Mr. Lowe. Do you want us to open up your safety deposit box for you?’ Su-u-ure they will!”

  Lita didn’t miss a beat. She was getting more and more excited. “But they will. They will! Jed’s got an agreement with the bank to let his son take his place in an emergency. He told me all about the agreement when we went to the bank. He even has the form to fill out and sign for that purpose. I’ve got a copy, and plenty of samples of Jed’s signature. All you’d need to get into the box is the consent and some reasonable ID.”

  By then there was absolutely no question about it in my mind. Lita was one sharp cookie. I mulled over the scheme for a few minutes, and it wasn’t hard to see the possibility of a dime or too extra. I could hit up Toomy for the expenses of a first class forging job and a fake ID. I knew where I could get them. And a rush job would cost extra. A lot extra.

  It all went like clockwork. The burglary was a cinch. It was a quiet neighborhood, and there weren’t any houses nearby where anyone could spot me. The old boy didn’t even have a dead bolt on his basement door. I opened it with a charge card, which I hadn’t been able to use any other way for months, went up the stairs and found the key exactly where Lita said it would be. Smart girl!

  I still had my doubts about the bank end of the scheme, though. Slipping into and out of an empty house late in the evening unobserved was one thing. Undergoing the eagle-eyed inspection of bank employees was another.

  As it turned out, the bank teller didn’t blink even one of those eagle eyes. In fact, she hardly glanced at the form and my ID. Of course, the fact she recognized Lita pretty much cinched it. The three of us, Lita with her brief case at the ready, crowded into the vault. The teller took my key and put it and hers in the right slots, the door opened, she pulled out the big metal box and handed it to me. Then the two of us were marched off to a five-by-five foot cubicle containing two chairs and a small folding table extending from the wall. The teller left us and I turned my attention to the hefty box.

  My eyes must have popped out of my head when I saw the contents. There weren’t any contracts, legitimate or otherwise, just stack after stack of U.S. currency. Big denominations and big stacks! Seeing more money in one heap than I’d ever seen in my whole life, even in separate piles, kept me from realizing right away how my head had become the resting pla
ce for the muzzle of a gun, the closest I’d ever come to one in all my investigating career.

  She really didn’t need to tell me to be quiet. And I didn’t argue when she told me to lean my hands against the wall. I dimly remember her stuffing something into my suit pocket, while the smell of chloroform from the cloth she’d pressed against my nose was sending me off to drowseville.

  The rest is history. I woke up in the local emergency room, with a doc telling me I was lucky to survive whatever it was Lita pumped into my veins after the chloroform. She’d given the bank employee some song and dance story about my staying behind to clip coupons. It was enough to keep them from finding me before closing time.

  And, of course, Lita is long gone, along with Toomy. By now they’re probably in Rio, sitting at a café, gloating over their success at conning me and robbing Jed. How she figured it all out—and I’m sure she was the brains behind it—is beyond me. Getting the money into the box in the first place must have been quite a stunt. I suppose she held out the promise of something more to Jed to convince him to put all his cash there. On the other hand, maybe the money was already there—some sort of ill-gotten gains he was hiding from the IRS. Who knows? I never will.

  I came out of the mess a disaster, but not as big a disaster as I could have been. My license was lifted, of course, which was inevitable. But Jed went on to his ancestors shortly after finding out he’d lost his dearest worldly possessions. His heart just couldn’t deal with the terrible fact. And his sudden demise was especially fortunate for me, since the authorities couldn’t get even an estimate of how much money he’d stashed away in the bank vault. So that, and a sharp lawyer, got me a long probation and no jail time.

  What hurt, more than the thought of having to go out and peddle encyclopedias, was the note Lita stuffed in my pocket before she stuffed all those bank notes into her briefcase and took off.

  It was in Toomy’s unmistakable scrawl. Dear Mr. Banks, it read. You are more than welcome to Louise. The note was signed, Silly.

  MURDER CAN’T WAIT

  The woman sitting behind the registration desk reinforced the impression the hotel lobby had made on him. She was probably in her twenties, but the fact of her blowing gum bubbles—something he hadn’t seen since junior high school—seemed to indicate she hadn’t left that stage of life very far behind. Reading Cosmo Girl—or at least looking at the pictures—and picking absentmindedly at the flaking metallic-purple polish on her nails while doing so, she barely looked up as he approached.

  “Could I leave this for room 205?” He placed a business-size envelope on the counter.

  “Sure, why not?” Reluctant to tear herself away from her magazine, she swiveled in her chair, flipped the envelope into one of the pigeonholes and turned back a page to something she must have missed because of the interruption.

  The man’s heavily sarcastic, “Thanks,” didn’t penetrate.

  ***

  Cordell Lauder wasn’t sure where he was. He wasn’t even sure at first that he was lying down. Gradually, through the pain and fog, he settled on the fact he was stretched out on his back as a central item. Other facts began to intrude. The place where he was lying was a bed, he was fully clothed, the room was third-class hotel basic. Morning, or perhaps noon, was shining through some frayed drapes. And there were no memories of the previous evening. At first, he tried to piece together what might have been fragments of the past twelve hours or so, then he decided not to. What preceded those hours was bad enough.

  Moneta had made it clear. She’d had it with his drinking, and had told him so in no uncertain terms. Not that she hadn’t gone through that litany before, but never in front of twelve-year old Milton and sixteen-year old Colleen. No begging would ever change her mind. No new promises of reform would do it. Too much had happened this time. The five-day binge had finished off his job with Lester Wold Accountants. The second DUI had marked paid to his license for at least a year. No, there would be no going back.

  Somehow he managed to swing his feet to where the floor could meet them. The effort reverberated in his head. The next step was a stumbling one in the direction of the bathroom. Relieving his bladder into the rust-stained toilet bowl, he felt some extra relief at realizing he hadn’t peed on himself in the night. While the shower dripped spasmodically, the faucet in the washbasin yielded barely enough tepid water for him to splash on his face. He felt no better after the ritual. He felt worse on seeing his reflection in the mirror. His eyes, the color of his skin, the two days’ growth of beard made his thirty-seven years seem fifty-seven. And then he knew what he needed.

  The need cleared his mind of everything else. He made a pass at brushing off his slept-in suit, then found his way out to a balky elevator, which finally creaked its way down to the lobby. Had he already paid for his room? He felt his pockets as he walked toward the desk. His wallet, surprisingly still there—even more surprising, some bills. It was seldom his blacked-out nights left him any cash. Oh yes, the key. This would be one hotel, which would definitely require him to leave the key. A room here might well have a succession of guests in one evening. Keys had to be returned, he was sure. Had he locked his room? Little matter. Nothing left behind. More important things to think about.

  The clerk, a middle-aged man—red-eyed and equally in need of a shave—grunted as Lauder pushed the key across the scarred counter. Lauder’s query as to the location of the nearest bar elicited a thumb gesture. “Two blocks south.” In his eagerness to be on his way, Lauder almost missed the, “Letter, here. For you.”

  Still with thoughts fixed on his goal, Lauder accepted the envelope without a “thank you” and didn’t realize he had it in his hand until he’d hit the sidewalk. Curiosity nudged him at that point. No one knew he was at the hotel. Hell, he didn’t even know it himself. There was no address, nor any return address. No identifying clue on either side. Walking as fast as his aching head would allow, he slipped a finger behind the flap, tore it and tossed the envelope in the general direction of a street trashcan. One small folded sheet of notepaper was the total content. Opened, there were only ten words, in printed block letters: I’m going to kill you because of what you’re doing.

  The words broke through his single-mindedness. He looked around, as though expecting one of the many passersby to come at him with a knife. His next thought was to seek refuge in the room he’d so recently vacated, until it occurred to him that the author of the note knew only too well where his intended victim was staying. The bar? No, this was one time where alcohol couldn’t possibly help. A murderer was stalking him. He needed a clear head as he had never needed it before. He had to think, but he couldn’t. Backing against the wall of the building, he ignored the glances cast in his direction, the visible efforts to avoid eye contact. MINIT-CAFÉ—a neon sign, with part of its letters obscured—beckoned. He crossed the street without looking, barely escaping contact with a vehicle and impervious to the angry driver’s gesture.

  Two cups of coffee and several rereadings of the note did nothing for him. For the third or fourth time he crumpled it up and shoved it back into his pocket. Something to do with last night. He had to remember. BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU’RE DOING. What had he been doing? Faces floated in front of him. Someone, a burly male with ill-fitting false teeth, laughing. A woman. Two women. Lots of makeup. Was that really last night or was it some other lost night in the past? How could he protest innocence to someone he didn’t know, about something he didn’t know he’d done?

  Somehow he had to unravel the previous night. Could he? The erasures were too complete, the scant smudges left behind too indistinct. He needed help and needed it badly. The police? His laugh startled the young couple at the next table who quickly turned back to their own interests. He could envision the expression on the officer’s face when asked to find out where Cordell Lauder had spent yesterday afternoon and evening, what he had done during that time and whom he had offended so badly that they would want to kill him. For that matter, he wonder
ed once again who might have known he was staying at the hotel. Had he brought someone to the room? The answers to the questions were clearly beyond him.

  If not to the police, then where should he turn? Moneta? Hardly. Perhaps, in fact, she was the one who wrote the note. This time his laugh didn’t disturb the young couple, but merely reminded him that Moneta wouldn’t have bothered. Her rage of the previous day had been more than sufficient to wish him dead. But she would never have warned him of her intentions, never written a note. No. This was someone who not only intended to kill him but who wanted him to know ahead of time his death was imminent. It was someone who knew that death isn’t the ultimate terror, it’s the fear of impending death that is.

  Who else could he turn to? His parents? His siblings? If anything, his drinking had alienated them even more than it had his wife. And then—Harold! That friendship went back to high school, along with the drinking. Indulgence hadn’t been much back then. College was when it became serious. No blackouts, but long nights of weekend drinking. Harold had bottomed out first. His marriage had wallowed and foundered within months. But the very suddenness of the wreck had been his salvation. While Lauder went through years of barely-controlled drinking, Hal Krosniak had gone to AA and succeeded in spite of a couple of lapses. Despite their divergent paths, twelve years of sobriety hadn’t prevented Krosniak from maintaining contact and even friendship with Lauder, who began drifting in and out of alcoholic hazes.

  But Krosniak had never pushed, never so much as suggested AA for his friend. He’d rescued him several times and sobered him up enough to deliver him home. He had even bailed him out once after an arrest for public drunkenness. No recriminations. But, best of all, Krosniak had the kind of background that might help. A successful private investigator was exactly what Lauder now realized he needed.