by Joel Travis
“Well, that lets me off the hook,” Sheila said, “and Susan, too. I’m sure you’ll agree that we wouldn’t know the first thing about how to jimmy anything. I have to give you credit, though. That was pretty smart, figuring out that it was the maintenance man who locked the door.”
“Unfortunately, I outsmarted myself when I concocted that cockamamie theory. Earlier tonight I realized that no jimmying skills or stolen keys were required to enter the apartment.”
“Then how did they get in?”
“With a key.”
“But you just said—”
“I said the key wasn’t stolen.”
“Oh, I know!” Sheila said. “The maintenance man! He wouldn’t need to steal a key. Nobody would have thought twice if they saw him enter the apartment. Someone paid him to—”
“Hector didn’t plant the photos. Nor did he didn’t lend his key to anyone. But you’re on the right track when you say that nobody would have thought twice if they saw the perpetrator enter the apartment.”
“I’m lost,” Sheila said.
“Me too,” Ace said.
“We’re all lost,” Marty said.
“I’m not,” the Stork said. “The solution to the locked apartment mystery is obvious. Consider what Brit has told us. The perpetrator wouldn’t want to risk breaking into the apartment or the leasing office. He or she got in with a key, yet the key wasn’t stolen. The maintenance man is not a suspect. That leaves only one possibility.”
“Well, what is it?” Sheila asked. “How did the perpetrator get in?”
“I let him in with my key,” I said.
Chapter 22
“Ace smuggled the photos into my apartment in his garment bag,” I said. “He went into the bathroom, locked the door, and removed the photos and tape from the bag. Then he plastered the wall with the Codger collection, took a shower, changed into his date clothes, and came out of the bathroom innocently asking if the photos in the bathroom were of my dad.”
Marty said, “We know Ace. He wouldn’t—”
“Yes, he would,” I said. “You say you know him, but how long have you known him? Two months? And how did you meet him, Marty?”
“I met him at the supermarket. In the parking lot. I helped him change his flat tire.”
“One that he deflated himself. He made it appear to be a chance meeting, but it was no accident that you met him that night.”
Ace finally spoke up for himself. “He’s lost his mind.”
“I haven’t lost my mind,” I said, though I felt foolish saying it. “You told me that you met my brother in a supermarket parking lot when he helped you change your flat tire. When I said that was nice of him, you said he had no choice because you were double parked.”
“Hey, that’s right,” Marty said. “He had me blocked off.”
“I’m sure it didn’t take long to fix the flat,” I said. “Ace was in good practice. It was the second tire he’d changed that week.”
“The second tire?” Ace said. “Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do, Pedro.”
The name “Pedro” left my audience awestruck. Even Ace had a surprised look on his face. I expected him to deny that he was Pedro, but he just sat there. Perhaps he was waiting to hear how much I knew. I didn’t keep the man waiting.
“You were in a tight spot when Sergio Moreno quit sending your money orders to Mexico. One day, you informed Hedgeway that he was a goner if you didn’t get a money order in the mail by Friday. In a last-ditch attempt to save his life, he convinced you that I owed him a hundred grand from a football wager. He said he’d give you half if you took him back to Dallas. To lend credibility to his story, he gave you directions to my house.
“Unfortunately, you had a flat tire on the trip to Dallas and he was able to escape into a nearby field under cover of darkness. There was no hope of recapturing him that night. He was free to roam in any direction and he could cover a lot of ground before daybreak. Even if you waited until morning, your chances of finding him were slim to none.
“So you returned to Dallas, confident that Hedgeway would soon find his way back to collect his hundred grand from me. All you had to do was watch my house and wait for him to drop by. When you saw a pool under construction in the backyard, you tossed Hedgeway’s keys, wallet, and watch over the fence and into the pit. Your plan was to kill Hedgeway after he collected the money, and let me take the fall for his murder.
“At some point you discovered that I no longer lived there. My phone number was unlisted, but the current residents provided you with the forwarding address they had for me, which was this house. Of course, I had moved out of here and into an apartment by then, but you didn’t know that. Marty’s mailbox has “MORAN” stenciled on it in bold white letters, so you had every reason to believe that you had located my new residence. Surely Hedgeway, with a hundred thousand dollar incentive, would find it as well.
“The only problem was that he didn’t show up. You couldn’t watch the house forever, but you didn’t want to give up on your get-rich-quick scheme. That’s when you came up with the idea of getting to know me. If you could insinuate yourself into my life, you could verify Hedgeway’s story. You could find out if I really was a bookie. I might even tell you about the time I lost a hundred grand to an old man who’d never bothered to collect.
“So one night you followed Marty to the supermarket, thinking he was me. You double parked your car, deflated your tire, and waited for me to come back out of the store. You must have been disappointed when Marty introduced himself. But you made the best of it, striking up a friendship with my brother.”
I turned to Marty. “While you were helping Ace change the tire, did he ask about your family?”
“Yeah, he did. I told him I was married, no children. Then he asked if I had any brothers or sisters. I told him I had a brother, Brit, who lived in Dallas.”
“Did you tell him what I did for a living?”
Marty nodded. “We were talking about sports. I told him you took bets.”
“I thought so. That was all Ace needed to know. From that moment on he stuck close to his new friend, so close that he was at your side when you were called to my deathbed. He heard my deathbed confession, including how I double-crossed Cesar to take a hundred thousand dollar bet from Hedgeway. At the time I honestly believed I owed the Codger a hundred grand, so my story matched the version Hedgeway told him in Mexico.
“After I finished my confession, Ace stepped up to my bed and introduced himself. I remember thinking, ‘Who the hell is this guy?’ A total stranger. And yet, a few weeks later he was willing to join my team to investigate a case in which he seemed to have no personal stake. I should have suspected—”
Before I could finish the sentence, a killer had me in a paralyzing headlock. I heard horrified gasps from the stunned onlookers.
“Stay where you are!” Ace said. I assumed he was addressing the onlookers, since I was clearly immobilized. “Anybody moves, I’ll break his neck.”
My neck was already twisted at a precarious angle. This headlock was even more painful than the ones that security man, David, used on me last month in Vegas. In spite of all my experience with them, I still don’t know how to get out of headlocks. I’m good at getting into them, no good at getting out.
Ace started to drag me toward the doorway. We were almost there when Barbara Crenshaw boldly moved to block our path. In one swipe of his free arm, Ace sent the Stork flying into the bookshelves.
It wasn’t far to the front door. Ace jerked it open and dragged me outside by the neck. Oxygen was hard to come by. I must have passed out. When I woke up, my wrists were bound with duct tape and we were speeding down I-35 in Ace’s car. The killer had one hand on the wheel. In his other hand was a gun. The gun was pointed at my Adam’s apple, so I was on my best behavior.
#
Ace seemed tense and nervous. Almost trigger-happy, you might say. I decided to loosen him up
by starting a conversation.
“Where are we going?”
“South.”
“To Mexico? I hope you’re not taking me to the same place you kept Hedgeway. He didn’t care much for the accommodations.”
“Shut up.”
“Nothing good can come of this, Ace. Surely you can see that. You can’t possibly hope to get away. It’s only a matter of time before the police put out an Amber Alert for me.”
Ace laughed. He said I must be stupid as shit. Amber Alerts were only for children.
That didn’t seem fair at all. Don’t get me wrong, no one loves kids more than I do. When I’m not helping them with their homework, I’m taking them to the park, or I’m telling them a bedtime story. Yet it seems to me that when a life is at stake, the police shouldn’t play favorites. Age discrimination is just plain wrong. I had thirty-five years invested in my life. What kid can top that?
“They’ll put out something on my behalf,” I said. “An APB, maybe. You can’t possibly hope to escape an APB, if that’s what they decide on. You have personalized plates.”
“I’ll steal a car in Waxahachie.”
“You could let me go in Waxahachie if you wanted to.”
“I need a hostage.”
“Well, I know. But the hostage doesn’t have to be any certain person. You could switch out hostages when you steal the car. Take you about two minutes. If you think about it, an old lady or an infant would make a much better—”
“I told you to shut up.”
Is there anything worse than a killer with a lousy disposition? I decided not to talk to him anymore. It wasn’t like we were at a cocktail party where you had be sociable and make small talk to keep the conversation going.
“Five more miles to Waxahachie,” I said, in case he hadn’t seen the sign. I wondered what time it was. My watch was concealed by duct tape. When I extended my neck to look at the clock on the instrument panel, I noticed that the gas gauge was on empty. “Looks like we’re running low on fuel.”
Ace made no reply. He was a man lost in his own thoughts.
“No need to stop for gas,” I said. “Like you said, we can steal a car when we hit town.”
Ace swerved the car to the right, recklessly crossing two lanes. He slammed on the breaks and my head slammed into the dash as we skidded to a halt on the shoulder of the road. He killed the engine. I looked over at the killer, wondering what had gotten into him.
“How did you know?” he asked.
“I read the gauge.”
He pressed the gun up against my temple. “How did you know I killed Hedgeway?”
“Please, Ace, put the gun down,” I said. “There’s been enough bloodshed.”
I don’t know why I said that. Probably because I’d heard that same line in lots of movies. It never works. Every killer knows how much bloodshed he or she is comfortable with, and even if they’ve exceeded that amount, they seldom put the gun down just because you ask them to. However, when it became apparent that I was incapable of forming a coherent sentence with a gun at my head, Ace lowered the weapon. “Answer the question!” he said. “How did you know?”
“Hedgeway told me.”
“He didn’t tell anybody anything. He was dead when I left him.”
“You left him for dead, but he had enough life in him to make a last second phone call.”
“He called you?”
“I was at the park with Andrea. When I answered, I heard a gurgling sound. Then I heard the word ‘blackmail’ and he was gone. I didn’t know what to make of it. Later, when I learned he’d been stabbed to death, I realized that the word ‘blackmail’ must have been a clue to lead me to his killer.”
Unfortunately, I had been baffled by the Codger’s crappy clue. I mean, if you expect me to solve your murder and all you give me is one word, it had better be the killer’s name. I had no idea what he was trying to tell me. Was he trying to say that his killer was a blackmailer? Or was the Codger himself the blackmailer? Was that why he had been murdered?
“I knew it was a clue,” I said, “but I didn’t know what he was trying to tell me. The fact that he hadn’t given me his killer’s name told me that he didn’t know his killer. That didn’t help much. The killer had to be someone who knew where he was hiding, but out of that group, Cynthia was the only person he knew. I could eliminate her as a suspect. That left Marty, Susan, Sheila, and you.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“I didn’t know until tonight, when I was helping Andrea with her homework. Her homework assignment was to make a list of homonyms. I was sitting there racking my brains for a homonym to add to our list when I saw Cynthia sorting the mail in the kitchen, and it made me think of one. That’s when it hit me. I realized I had misinterpreted Hedgeway’s clue ‘blackmail.’ It wasn’t one two-syllable word. It was two one-syllable words.”
“Huh?”
I had to spell it out for him. “First word, B-L-A-C-K. Second word, M-A-L-E. Hedgeway’s clue was a physical description of his killer—a black male.”
All the energy seemed to drain out of Ace’s body. I’m sure it was a bitter pill to swallow. If not for a simple homonym, he’d have gotten away with murder.
#
I didn’t know what would happen next. It occurred to me that Ace might kill me, now that I’d told him everything. My only remaining value was as a hostage. I wished I hadn’t pointed out earlier that the hostage didn’t need to be any particular person.
A sudden sound startled us. Someone was rapping on the driver-side window. Ace checked the rearview mirror.
“It’s not a cop,” he said. He reached under his seat, pulled out a newspaper, and tossed it on my lap to cover my bound wrists. “You want to keep living, don’t do anything stupid.”
He held the gun down between my seat and his and pressed a button. The tinted window slid down to reveal a smiling, stocky man with black, slicked-back hair. He was dressed in a three-piece suit.
“Car trouble?” the man asked.
His words triggered a memory. A memory of a man in a black Lexus pulling up beside me as I walked to the bus stop, asking if I’d had car trouble, offering me a ride I couldn’t refuse.
“No trouble, sir,” Ace said. “We’re just about to get back on the highway.”
“Well, that’s good. Saw your car on the side of the road, thought you might need help.”
“We don’t.”
“Nothing worse than car trouble late at night.”
“We’re okay. Thanks for stopping, though. Have a good evening.”
“Better make sure your car starts before I take off,” the man said.
This presented a dilemma for Ace. The gun was in his right hand, tucked down between our seats, but the only way to get rid of this Good Samaritan was to prove that the car would start. After hesitating a moment, he made his decision. I heard the gun drop softly to the floorboard as Ace raised his hand to turn the key in the ignition.
He never got the chance. The smiling Samaritan reached into the vehicle and grabbed Ace’s skinny neck with his left hand while his right hand produced a tiny gun from inside his vest. Ace stared at the gun in disbelief.
“I don’t know who you are,” Carl said, “and I don’t care. I’m taking your passenger off your hands. That okay with you?”
#
A few minutes later Carl was driving me back to Dallas in his black Lexus. He let me call 911. I told the operator where the police could pick up the fugitive, Ace Monroe. I knew he’d be right where we’d left him—on the side of the road, tied to the driver’s seat with duct tape. For good measure, Carl had shot a hole in one of Ace’s tires. Another flat for poor Pedro.
I asked Carl what was going on. How had he found me?
He said Cesar had sent him to my brother’s house to pick me up and bring me in for a talk. He’d been parked up the street when he’d seen a skinny black guy drag me out of the house and shove me into a car, so he’d followed us. When Ace’
s car unexpectedly veered over to the shoulder of the road, Carl hadn’t reacted in time. He’d had to take the next exit and circle back.
“You got there just in time,” I said. “Why does Cesar want to see me?”
“He told you to get your detective friend, Gardner, to quit bothering him. You didn’t do that, did you, Brit?”
“I can still do it.”
Carl shook his head. He called Cesar and handed me the phone. I had to listen to Cesar curse at me awhile, but he eventually agreed to give me a forty-eight hour extension on my life. I sighed with relief and reclined back in the comfortable leather seat. Carl tuned in a rap station on the radio and pumped up the volume. I bobbed my head to the beat.
#
We were sitting in Marty’s study the morning after I had single-handedly brought a devious murderer to justice. I was explaining to Sheila and the Stork how I had solved the case. My long-awaited moment of glory.
“When I thought of that homonym, I knew what the Codger’s clue meant. Once I knew the killer was a black male, it was simply a matter of working backwards with Ace in mind. Could he have arranged the meeting with Marty in the supermarket parking lot? Could he have planted the photos in my apartment? Could he have—”
“We get it,” Sheila said. “What I don’t get is how you can be so satisfied with yourself. Hedgeway would never have been murdered if you weren’t such a blabbermouth. If you hadn’t told the killer where he was hiding, the poor man would still be alive.”
I’ll admit that mistakes were made in the course of a difficult investigation. What burns me up is when someone ruins my moment of glory by pointing them out. Did Sheila think she was the only one who could spot obvious blunders? Hell, I can see them a mile away if I’m looking back over my shoulder.
Before Sheila could point out other blunders—losing a one hundred thousand dollar bet, blurting out a premature deathbed confession, inviting the killer to join the investigation—I addressed the Stork, who was sitting with perfect posture in a straight-back chair.