The Angel Singers

by Dorien Grey

  Why did I have the distinct impression he had just thrown a stick into the bushes and yelled, “Fetch!”? If he had sufficient suspicion about Smith to send me chasing after him, why wouldn’t he want to tell the police himself?

  “If you’ll excuse me,” I said, following up on the thought, “I’m not sure why you’re so reluctant to mention it to the police.”

  “It’s not a matter of reluctance. But I have my position to consider, and all these details could be taken in a rather negative light by law enforcement. I’d prefer they don’t know any more about my personal life than they have to.”

  “You don’t think they know you’re gay?”

  He gave me a small smile. “I’m sure they do, but that’s totally immaterial to the matter of Grant’s death, and there’s no need to go around waving dirty linen that is better left in the hamper. And with these problems at work…”

  “Problems?” I asked, finding it mildly interesting that Booth could put work problems on the same level as finding who killed his…uh, I wasn’t exactly what to call him. Anyway, it struck me as more than a little peculiar.

  “Yes,” he said with a sigh, “the head of my accounting department died of a heart attack three days before Grant’s…accident.”

  Well, I’m happy to see you have your priorities straight, I thought.

  “Interesting,” I said. “Did I understand someone’s having said Grant also worked in the accounting department?”

  “Yes, and Grant would have made a brilliant accountant. Unfortunately, Irving—Irving Stapleton, head of the department—apparently wasn’t the man I thought he was. He’d been with me for fifteen years, but I was not aware of how badly he was running the department.”

  Let me guess how he found out. “I assume Grant was the one who alerted you to Mr. Stapleton’s inadequacies?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. I could tell Stapleton was increasingly ill-at-ease ever since Grant was hired, and I couldn’t understand it. I suspect he knew Grant was on to him.”

  Or he recognized a shark in the goldfish bowl when he saw one.

  From what I knew of Grant Jefferson, I sure as hell could understand Stapleton’s being “ill-at-ease.” Booth couldn’t possibly be so naive as to not realize what Grant was up to by, as Eric had described it, running to Booth with tales about his supervisor. Booth certainly could never have gotten where he was without knowing everything about his business, and most particularly the accounting department! So, why was he pulling this “I was not aware” routine?

  Booth had been watching me steadily all during our conversation. As a businessman, I’m sure he was pretty good at reading people, but that he apparently read me as being an idiot wasn’t particularly flattering.

  “The evening Irving died,” he continued, “his son, Charles, showed up at my home, totally distraught, blaming Grant for having caused Irving’s heart attack. A totally ridiculous accusation! Irving had had a heart condition for years.”

  Which, I was sure, had not been materially alleviated by the stress of having the boss’ insufferable boyfriend underfoot and undoubtedly reporting his every move back to Booth.

  “Did you mention the visit to the police?”

  He shook his head. “No. As I said, Charles was understandably upset. He’d just lost his father; I couldn’t see causing him any more pain than he was already enduring by reporting the incident to the police.” He paused then, dropping his voice slightly to convey sincerity, added, “Most people see me as more of a hard-nosed businessman than a human being. You don’t get ahead in the business world wearing your heart on your sleeve. But you must believe me when I say that I sincerely and deeply cared for Grant.”

  “I’m sure you did,” I said, though I was not really sure at all. “But I do feel you should mention Smith—and the incident with Charles Stapleton—to the police. In the meantime, I’ll give Bernie Niles a call and see what more I can find out about Smith.”

  I paused only briefly before saying, “So, other than Smith and Stapleton, do you know of anyone else outside of the chorus who might want to harm Grant?”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not. And I’m quite sure even Roger Rothenberger, duplicitous and power-hungry as he is, wouldn’t stoop to murder.”

  A smooth bit of damning with faint praise, there, Boothy, I thought. I especially found modifying sure with quite a nice touch.

  I knew my next question would go over like a concrete dirigible, but I had to ask it. “And was everything going okay between you and Grant?”

  “Of course!” he said, scowling.

  “Grant wasn’t getting wanderlust?”

  “I’m not sure that I understand—or appreciate—the implication of your questions. My relationship with Grant was strictly that of a caring mentor. I am not some sort of sexual predator lusting after young men.”

  Of course you aren’t, I thought. And I am the King of Romania.

  “Sorry,” I said, even though I wasn’t, “but I’d heard Grant had set his eye on Broadway.”

  “That’s true,” Booth admitted. “Grant was incredibly talented, and he had my full support in everything he wanted to do. But we realized it would be some time before he was truly ready. And when he was, well, I would send him off with my blessing.”

  I wondered who was going to make the determination as to when he was ready. I suspected Grant had a somewhat shorter timetable than Booth.

  He looked at his watch in a way that would have conveyed his meaning to the top row of the balcony.

  “I have a staff meeting in ten minutes,” he said, “so if we’re through here…”

  I got up from my chair. “Yes, I think so. I may well have some other questions later. Thank you for your time.”

  He did not get up, just gave me a lips-only smile. “You’re quite welcome,” he said, and I deliberately stepped up to the desk to extend my hand so he had to partially rise to reach across to take it.

  He sat back down as I turned and walked from his office, not looking back.

  *

  Well, that had been an interesting if water-muddying visit. I didn’t buy the “caring mentor” line for a nanosecond, and I doubted that Booth was as unaware of Grant’s activities as he let on. So Grant had “never missed a weekday sectional,” eh? And this whole Robert Smith story still struck me as a patent attempt at putting up a smokescreen—to hide what, I had no idea.

  But that he wanted me to go off looking for a convicted felon named Smith in the Georgia or New York—it occurred to me that he might have been extradited from Georgia—prison system? That would keep me distracted until Joshua’s Social Security benefits kicked in.

  I also wanted to know more of the story behind the death of Irving Stapleton. I had little doubt that Charles Stapleton’s accusations about Grant’s contributing to the heart attack had merit, but whether his justifiable anger might have motivated him to murder was yet to be determined.

  And I needed to get in touch with Bernie Niles in Atlanta.

  But first I wanted to have a talk with Marty Gresham and/or Lieutenant Mark Richman at police headquarters to see what they’d be willing to tell me about their investigation into Grant’s death.

  *

  Rather than return to the office, I headed on home, stopping at the store to pick up a few things from a list Jonathan had given me that morning.

  After dinner and dishes, while Joshua played in his room, I decided to call Tony Breen to see if I could get Jerry Granville’s number. Jonathan volunteered to talk to Tony for me, on the logical grounds that Tony might be a bit more comfortable talking with someone he knew from the chorus, but I thought it might be easier if I did it myself rather than Jonathan’s having to go into details as to why he wanted Jerry’s number. I think Jonathan had probably told nearly everyone in the chorus what I did for a living, so if Tony wanted to know why I wanted the number, I could tell him I was looking into Grant’s death.

  So, we compromised. Jonathan called Tony
to talk about a few chorus-related things, then said I had a question for him and transferred him over to me.

  I could tell from the way the tone of his voice changed the minute I mentioned Jerry’s name that I was treading on sensitive ground; and when I asked for a phone number, he said Jerry was staying with a mutual friend, whose name and number I wrote down. As long as I had him on the phone and had already reopened the wound, I thought I might as well take it a step farther.

  “Look, Tony, I realize we’ve only met once and that this is probably a touchy subject for you, but since I’m checking into all the circumstances surrounding Grant’s death, I was wondering if you might give me a little further insight into what kind of guy he was.”

  “Other than a first-class prick, you mean?”

  “Well, I understand he was pretty much of a troublemaker,” I said, “and I was wondering which other of the guys he might have pulled his little number on? Especially anyone you know of who might have been unhappy or angry enough to want to see him dead. I understand Jerry has a pretty bad temper, and I’d like to be able to look elsewhere, if I could.”

  His tone softened slightly. “You can’t seriously think Jerry had something to do with it. He’s got a short fuse, sure, but he always gets over it quickly and he could never do anything like that. Never.”

  “I understand,” I said, trying to worm my way into his good graces. “But I’m sure the police investigation will get around to him, if it hasn’t already, and it would probably help to know that he wasn’t the only one with a motive.

  “So, who else did Grant jerk around?”

  “Just about everybody at one time or another. He was a real prick-teaser. I know he really hurt Barry, and he pissed off a few of the other members’ partners, but…”

  “None of them might have gotten angry enough to want to kill him?”

  There was a long pause before, “No. Honestly. Wanting to kill someone is one thing, doing it is another. I can’t believe that hating a guy’s guts could really be a motive for murder.”

  Frankly, neither could I. But the fact remained that somebody had killed Grant for reasons that probably went deeper than the guy’s being an asshole.

  I figured I’d gotten about as much from Tony as I was likely to get for the moment, so I thanked him for his time, we exchanged good-byes, and hung up.

  I immediately tried calling the number he had given me, but there was no answer and no machine. I folded the paper with the number and put it in my billfold for the next day.

  *

  The first thing I did Tuesday morning, before even starting the coffee, was to put in a call to Marty Gresham. Since I knew he spent most of his time out of the office, I wanted to try to catch him before he left. Luck was with me when his extension was picked up and I heard the familiar voice.

  “Detective Gresham.”

  “Marty, it’s Dick. Glad I caught you.”

  “Sorry I didn’t get a chance to return your call yesterday,” he said. “So, you’re working on the Jefferson case.”

  I hadn’t mentioned that in my message to him, but it wasn’t surprising that he’d figured it out.

  “Can I assume you and Dan…” Dan Carpenter was Marty’s work partner. “…have the case?”

  “Yeah. Dan says we get all the gay cases because I know you. Dan’s brother is always ribbing him about it.”

  Dan’s brother Earl was also a homicide detective, a nice guy whose partner was an old-school homophobe with whom I’d had some nasty run-ins on past cases. Earl, however, seemed to have inherited the Homo sapiens genes his Neanderthal partner so clearly lacked, and we got along fine.

  “When can we get together to talk about it?” Marty asked.

  “You name it.”

  “How about your office. One o’clock, one fifteen?”

  “It’s a date,” I said.

  “Don’t you wish,” he teased.

  Though Marty was hopelessly straight, with a wife and daughter and a second child on the way, he and Dan Carpenter were, unlike Carpenter’s brother’s partner and many others on the police force, totally comfortable with my being gay. Not that it would have mattered if he wasn’t, but it did make it a lot easier this way.

  “Oh, and one more thing while we’re on the phone,” I said. “Is there any way you can look into someone’s juvenile records? They might have been sealed.”

  “Well, that could be a problem, but not impossible,” he said. “What’s the name?”

  “Barry Legget,” I said, spelling the last name for him. “He’s in his mid-twenties now, and I don’t have any exact dates.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The number Booth had given me for Bernie Niles got me no further than his answering machine, and I left both my numbers in hopes he’d get back to me, though, especially if he were still pissed at Booth, there was no particular reason to think he would once he recognized the area code.

  *

  I decided to hold off trying to reach Jerry Granville until that night, when there’d be a better chance of finding him in.

  At exactly one fifteen, shortly after I’d finished the downstairs diner’s Meatloaf Special and taken the trash to the disposal room on my floor, the shadows of Detectives Gresham and Carpenter appeared on the opaque-glass half of my door, followed by a crisp knock.

  “Open,” I called. “Coffee?” I asked as they took seats on the two chairs facing my desk.

  “No, thanks,” Carpenter said. “We just finished lunch.”

  “So,” I said, knowing they were busy and probably wanted to get right to the point, “what can you tell me about the Jefferson case?”

  Marty grinned. “Odd, we were going to ask you the same thing.”

  “You first.”

  They exchanged glances before Marty said, “Well, whoever did it wanted to make damned sure they got their message across. They used not one but two pipe bombs under the driver’s seat and jointly wired them to the ignition. The bombs themselves were almost high-school stuff, literally. Anyone with a basic knowledge of chemistry and wiring could have done it. Trying to trace the individual components back to their source is next to impossible. And what hardware store doesn’t carry duct tape and wire? It’s all pretty generic stuff.”

  “And what about the explosive itself?” I asked.

  “You can find it in just about any school chemistry lab. Again, pretty generic stuff. The actual putting it all together probably takes a little research, but that wouldn’t be difficult for someone with any real desire to figure out how it’s done. And all the other components could be picked up in almost any hardware store.”

  “Any prints on anything you recovered?”

  Dan shook his head. “Nope. Whoever did it wasn’t a dummy.”

  “How long would it take to install a bomb?” I asked.

  Carpenter shrugged. “Once it was all put together? Maybe five, ten minutes. Bomb under the seat, wire from bomb to ignition—that’s the part that takes the most time.”

  “Yeah, but wouldn’t Grant have immediately noticed a wire running from under the seat up to the ignition?” I asked. “I can’t see how he could have missed it.”

  “Well, whoever did it slit the carpet just enough to run the wire under it, all the way up the firewall. We found small pieces of duct tape, which was probably used to hide the wire where it came out from under the carpet and ran along the passenger’s side of the steering column.”

  “Seems to me the bomber took quite a risk of being caught,” I said. “Somebody could easily have seen him screwing around under the dashboard,” I said. “And he had to be pretty confident that Grant wouldn’t show up.”

  “Well,” Carpenter said, “we think the plant probably was done in two stages. Most likely most of it was done while Jefferson was at work—employees park in the same lot as cars brought in for service, so it wouldn’t be unusual to see someone monkeying around inside one of them. We think he might have gotten most of it done except
for the actual connection to the ignition switch when something scared him off.

  “Most likely he followed Jefferson after work, waiting for the chance to make the final connection. He obviously couldn’t risk it in the supermarket parking lot, but when he saw Jefferson come out and drive off with another guy, he probably figured out what was going on and that he’d have more than enough time while the car was parked at the trick’s house. Jefferson was leaving the guy’s place when he triggered the bomb.”

  “Was this guy someone Grant knew, or a pickup?” I asked.

  “He’s just some kid who works at the supermarket. He said he’d met Jefferson as he was getting off work and that he invited him over. He claimed he’d never seen Jefferson before, and his story checked out. One of his buddies from the supermarket had seen the pick-up.”

  “Sounds like something Grant would do,” I said. “You’ve talked to Crandall Booth, I understand.”

  “Within an hour of the explosion,” Marty said. “And while he appeared to be duly shocked by the news, he wasn’t too helpful. According to him, Jefferson was simply a friend from Atlanta staying with him, and he claimed he knew very little about Jefferson’s private life. We took that one with about three pounds of salt.

  “He claimed he hadn’t left work until around eight and that checked out. So, he wouldn’t have had time to make it from work to the fifteen-hundred block of East Monroe to hook up the bomb. But anyone with his money could easily have hired someone else to do the job for him. We’re looking very closely at his recent financial transactions. It’s beginning to look like he has a rather serious gambling problem.”

  “Partly based on that, we also briefly considered whether Booth might have been the target rather than Jefferson,” Dan added. “It was his car, after all, and a man that rich, especially one with a gambling addiction, has to have enemies.”

  “Yeah,” Marty added, “but since the bomb had to have been connected to the ignition at the scene, that meant whoever did it was following Jefferson and knew who was driving.”

  “And you told Booth the circumstances of the explosion—where Grant was and why?”