by Dorien Grey
I decided to take the bus rather than bother trying to find a parking place, and it let me off in front of the City Building, directly adjacent to the City Annex, which housed both the police department and the civil and criminal courts. Crossing the street to Etheridge’s, I was, as always, early but went in to be sure Glen’s table was available. I was delighted to see Alex, a very nice, very attentive and very attractive waiter whom I’d seen on duty nearly every time I’d been there for the past few years.
Though I’d not been in in a couple months, Alex saw me, smiled, and gestured for me to follow him to what I thought of as “Glen’s table” in the back of the restaurant. We exchanged pleasantries, and he handed me a menu as I sat down. Leaving another menu opposite me for Glen, he moved off long enough to bring me a cup of coffee.
I was on my second cup when Glen slid into the seat across from me.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said as we shook hands across the table.
“No problem.” I was used to it.
Alex appeared with coffee for Glen and a refill for me then disappeared to give us—well, Glen, since I’d already looked at it—time to study the menu, as good waiters do.
“I’m sorry we haven’t had a chance to talk since Crandall’s murder,” Glen said, placing his napkin on his lap. “I’ve really got to start cutting back on my case load before I have a coronary.”
“I figured you’d been busy.”
“I’ve been hearing things,” he said, glancing at the menu, “but I didn’t have time to concentrate too much on them. I knew you were doing your job, and you’d let me know what was going on when you were ready.”
I smiled. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. And I did want to talk to you about where the case is going. Were you aware of the degree of Booth’s gambling problem?”
Alex appeared to take our order, and after he’d gone, Glen picked up where we’d left off.
“I knew he was a high roller,” he said. “Always has been. But I never had any idea it might have gotten out of hand.”
“It seems it might have done exactly that,” I said. “It’s possible that not only was he killed for his inability to pay his debts—I hear his businesses were in serious trouble because of it—but that Grant Jefferson may have been killed as a warning to Booth, who either didn’t get the message or couldn’t do anything about it.
“But my problem is that I was hired by the board to investigate Grant’s death on the assumption that it might somehow be linked to the chorus or someone associated with it, maybe even Booth. Everything I’ve been able to find out indicates that, while several people might have done it, there is no firm evidence they actually did. This whole Booth’s gambling thing came out of left field and sent the whole case off in a totally new direction, one the police are far better equipped to deal with than I. If the chorus isn’t involved, my entire reason for being hired is negated.”
Alex brought our food, and we ate in silence for a bit until Glen looked at me and said, “So…?”
I shrugged. “So, I’m not quite sure what to do next. On the one hand, I don’t want to waste any more of the board’s money if it turns out that Booth’s gambling was behind both deaths, but on the other hand, if it turns out that it wasn’t, we could be right back to the chorus connection and I really hate to close the door and leave a case dangling.”
Glen dabbed at the corner of his mouth with his napkin. “Closed doors can be reopened easily enough,” he said. “You’ve done what you could so far. Let’s see what happens with the police investigation. In the meantime, though, why don’t you send us a report of where things stand and a bill for your time up to now. You can’t go forever without a paycheck.”
He was certainly right about that, and I appreciated his bringing it up before I had to.
*
I spent the rest of Friday putting together my report, which I was a little surprised to see looked like it might be only a few pages short of War and Peace.
Saturday morning, Jonathan left for his gardening project right after breakfast, leaving Joshua and me in charge of chores. Luckily, Joshua seemed to equate helping out with being a grown-up and was enthusiastic about stripping his bed and stuffing dirty clothes into the clothes bag. His bed-making skills left something to be desired, though he certainly got an A for effort.
I helped him put the fitted bottom sheet on, and he insisted on doing the rest of it himself while I did Jonathan’s and my bed. I returned to find he’d done a very nice job, though the bedspread was about a foot and a half longer on one side than the other and a large lump under the bedspread proved to be one of his shoes, which had apparently come off in the process. Neither of us had noticed he only had one shoe, since he frequently went around the house like my son John in the nursery rhyme—one shoe off and one shoe on.
We were heading out for the grocery store when Eric called, apparently to chat. I told him Jonathan was at his landscaping job at the Conrads’, which I was sure he knew.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, “I forgot. Well, I wanted to see how you were doing, too.”
“I’m great,” I said. “Joshua and I are getting ready to go to the store.”
“I’ve got to have a talk with that boy,” Eric said. “He puts way too much on you.”
I assumed by “that boy” he meant Jonathan and not Joshua.
“Not at all,” I said. “I put a lot on him, too.”
“A lot in him too, I’ll bet.”
“My reputation precedes me, I see,” I joked, but I was once again more than a little uncomfortable.
We talked for a few more minutes about everything and nothing. I have never been able to spend much time chatting on the phone under any circumstances, so as soon as I had the chance, I said, “Well, I hate to cut this short, but we’d really better get going. I’ll tell Jonathan you called. Do you want him to call you back?”
“Nah, that’s okay,” he said. “I’ll be gone most of the day. I’ll talk to him later.”
I didn’t have time or desire to ponder the call or why it had been made, but I strongly suspected Eric knew full well Jonathan wasn’t home when he made it.
Our other chores went so smoothly we were able to spend an extra half-hour at our local park, where Joshua managed to get probably irreversible grass stains on a relatively new pair of pants. I knew I was going to catch hell from Jonathan for not keeping a closer eye on him, but grass stains are part of being a kid.
I managed to dodge the bullet, though, when Jonathan came home so tired from his day at the Conrads’ he didn’t even notice. He never complained of being tired, but it was clear the poor guy was really beat. Instead of either fixing dinner or going out, we ordered in a pizza, and he fell asleep on the couch long before Joshua’s bedtime.
*
The next thing I knew, it was Monday and I was back at my desk at the office working on my report to the chorus board. At about ten o’clock, the phone rang.
“Hardesty Investigations.”
Pause. Click.
Damn!
I went back to the report until, less than ten minutes later, the phone rang again. This time, someone was there.
“Not much went on over the weekend,” Marty said after a brief exchange of greetings, “but Earl and Dan worked most of it and have checked with every loan shark and bookie in town, from Charlie Tours on down, and it seems that Booth owed everybody. Tours claimed everything was fine between him and Booth, and that they’d played poker together the week before Booth died. Talk about swimming with the sharks! But several of the bookies said they’d been refusing to take bets from Booth for the past couple of months. They all have alibis for the time of his death, but what self-respecting bookie doesn’t make sure he always has one?
“The major problem with the possible link between Booth’s death and Jefferson’s is that, other than coincidence, we really don’t have a hook to hang our hat on. While I can see Jefferson might have been killed as a warning to Booth—and putting the
bomb in one of Booth’s expensive cars was a nice touch—if the purpose of killing Booth was as a caution to others to pay their debts, I can’t help but think that it would have been done a little more spectacularly, like with another bomb. The majority of professional hits are done with a gun, execution style. Not too many use bombs and fewer still bash the target’s head in. I don’t know—I may be way off base here, but something’s not right. Dan agrees with me.”
I did, too, as a matter of fact.
“So, what are the chances of combining both investigations under one team?” I asked.
“Well, neither Dan and I nor Earl and Ben really want another case added to our docket, but I agree it would make sense. We’ll talk about it, and if we get any sort of clue that there’s more than coincidence involved, we’ll go to Captain Offermann.” He paused before adding, “I don’t suppose there’s anything new on your end.”
I sighed. “Unfortunately, no. I’ve been sort of hanging fire waiting to see if the gambling angle paid off.”
“So have we,” he admitted. “The leads on Jefferson have gone nowhere fast. Nothing from the chorus members, nothing solid from Stapleton. Well, we’re still working on it, so something still might show up. And we’ll work as closely as we can with Earl and Ben.”
“Strange that the bomb fragments didn’t take you anywhere,” I said.
“Actually, they took us to every hardware store and home improvement center in the area, which got us exactly zip. We made a list of all the components and took them around on the outside chance somebody might remember someone buying combinations of the materials. No luck. Whoever built the bomb may not have been a pro, but he was pretty damned smart and probably spent a good deal of time going from store to store to collect everything, being careful not to buy too many components from any one place.”
“Hey, if you wanted an easy job, you sure made a bad career move when you became a cop,” I pointed out.
He laughed. “You’ve been talking to my wife, obviously.”
We hung up after the usual agreement to keep each other posted.
*
I went back to work on my report for Glen and the board. Going over what I had written, I was far less than happy—this case had more loose ends than a bedspread has fringe. Need I add that I hate loose ends?
I was about ready to put it in the drawer for a couple of hours and go have lunch when there was a knock at the door and Eric walked in, carrying a large paper bag from the diner.
“Hi,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind my dropping in without calling, but I had to make another run to our store down the street and since it was so close to lunch time, thought I’d stop by. I figured you might be busy, and I don’t mean to interrupt, but since you have to eat…well, I took the liberty of getting us a couple B.L.T.s and thought we could eat them up here.”
Okay, now what do I do? I wondered. I didn’t buy the “just stopped by” story for a second, and saw it as yet another strand in whatever web it was he was weaving for me. God knows I’d tried to snip them off several times already.
“That was nice of you,” I said. And it was. But… “Did you try to call earlier?” I was thinking of the hang-up.
“Yeah,” he said, putting the bag on my desk, “but the line was busy so I figured you were in.”
“I am kind of busy today,” I said, hoping he’d catch the hint.
He didn’t. “Yeah, I figured that, but you’ve got to keep your strength up.” He opened the bag to extract two Styrofoam boxes, a soft drink and a carton of milk, which he reached across the desk to set in front of me. “I got some fries in case you were hungry.”
He stood there until I said, “Grab the chair,” which he did immediately, sitting down while moving it as close to the desk as possible.
I opened the box with the sandwich and fries and when I looked up at him, he was smiling at me.
“Glad we could get together,” he said. “I hate eating lunch alone. I don’t know why I should—I do almost everything alone.”
I got it, but let it pass.
Maybe I was being too hard on the kid. I could appreciate his being lonely but hadn’t realized it was apparently a real problem for him.
“What about your other friends?” I asked, giving in to my curiosity. “Nobody you hang around with at work?”
He shrugged. ‘Sometimes, but it’s all real casual. I only see them at work.”
“Well, I’m sure Jonathan would love to have lunch with you whenever he could.”
Subtle, Hardesty, a mind-voice said.
“Yeah, that would be nice, and we did have lunch last time I was out in his area around noon, but I don’t get out to the Placid store much. But with running back and forth to the one near here so often…”
That made sense, I guess. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions. Jonathan was his friend, I was his friend’s partner, therefore…
I relaxed a bit and concentrated on my sandwich.
“You got any brothers or sisters?” Eric asked after taking a long swig from his can of soda.
I set down the sandwich to open the carton of milk.
“Nope,” I said. “I’m an only child. I always did sort of want to have a brother, someone a few years younger I could boss around.”
I was surprised by the look that flashed briefly across his face. I couldn’t describe it, but it was not a happy one.
“Oh, sorry,” I said. “I seem to remember your saying you didn’t get along very well with your brother. He was older than you, wasn’t he?”
He took another swig of his soda before replying. “Yeah, older and smarter and more talented and…I don’t know why my folks even bothered having me. The sun rose and set on Walter, and he never let me forget it.”
Sensing I was once again getting into an area best avoided, I switched the subject.
“So, is there anything new with the chorus?” I asked.
He looked at me with a semi-smile, the meaning of which I couldn’t figure out. “Jonathan doesn’t tell you things?”
“Well, yeah, but he isn’t nearly as aware as you are of everything that goes on. Nothing more about Grant, I assume?”
He gave me a raised-eyebrow look of surprise. “Grant who? No, I think he is slowly going away, and good riddance. Crandall Booth is still on the front burner, but ever since the rumors started flying about his ties with the mob, that takes a lot of the pressure off the idea that someone in the chorus could have done him in.”
Ties with the mob? Where in hell do these things come from? Not every heavy gambler or bookie or loan shark has links to La Cosa Nostra!
He took a bite of his sandwich and without looking up said, “It doesn’t make Crandall less of a prick, though, for what he did to the chorus.”
“I’m happy that things are getting back to where they should be, for your sake and for Jonathan’s. I know how much you have invested in the chorus. Jonathan really admires you for it.”
He smiled. “Yeah, well, I’d trade with him in a second.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, immediately wishing I hadn’t, since my gut knew exactly what he meant.
“I’ve got the chorus. Jonathan’s got you.”
Oooooo-kay, one of my mind-voices said. What he means is that Jonathan has somebody in his life and he doesn’t.
It was drowned out by a chorus of other voices, led by my ego, saying, Bullshit! He didn’t say “somebody,” he said “you”!
God, I really was uncomfortable with the idea that Eric was coming on to me. Monogamy wasn’t easy for me. If Jonathan wasn’t in my life I probably would have jumped at the chance to spend a little horizontal time with Eric, but Jonathan was in my life and Eric knew it, and part of me was mildly irritated at him for testing me like this.
I don’t remember much of what else we talked about as we finished lunch, but when Eric got up to leave, I stood up and reached for my wallet.
“What do I owe for lunch?” I asked, but he waved me down.
<
br /> “I’ll take it out in trade,” he said with a grin.
In your dreams, kid, I thought, but I managed to smile and say, “No, I’m serious. You got lunch the last time.”
“So, you can get it next time,” he said.
Next time. I heaved a mental sigh.
It looked for a moment as though he was going to walk around the desk and hug me but apparently thought better of it.
“You got a wastebasket?” he asked, indicating the now-empty Styrofoam boxes, napkins, empty soda can, and milk carton.
“I can get it, thanks,” I said, and he shrugged.
“Okay,” he said. “See you later, then.” At the door, he paused with his hand on the knob and turned his head back toward me. “Oh, and tell Jonathan I said ‘hi.’”
I recognize an afterthought when I hear one. I stood staring at the door as it closed behind him.
Chapter 14
Eric’s visit had put me in a bad mood. My partner’s friend was hitting on me, and if that fact ever got through to Jonathan, it might well jeopardize their friendship. I was firmly stuck between a rock and a hard place. I was the only one who knew what was going on—well, other than Eric. I simply had not wanted to believe he would knowingly risk hurting Jonathan, and I’d given him the benefit of the doubt ever since I first suspected a come-on.
But the doubt had been all but exhausted. True, he had never made an overt physical pass, or come right out and asked me to go to bed with him, but I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.
I couldn’t bring myself to talk seriously to Jonathan about it—bless his trusting heart, he simply didn’t pick up on it. Well, the next time Eric showed up unannounced, I’d tell him I was on my way out the door. I liked him and didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but there comes a point…
I forced myself to get back to putting the finishing touches on my report to the chorus board, and reading it over only deepened my sense of frustration. I’d spent a hell of a lot of time and effort—and the board’s money—based on the assumption that Grant Jefferson had been murdered by someone from the chorus. Then Crandall Booth’s murder, followed by the revelation of his gambling debts and financial crises, and the logical probability that Grant’s murder had been a warning to Booth, ruled out any chorus connection and left me in mid-air. I couldn’t help but feel that everything I’d done from the moment I took the case had been one gigantic wild goose chase. I hate wild goose chases. I hate being hired to solve a case and not being able to solve it.