Corpses Say the Darndest Things: A Nod Blake Mystery

by Doug Lamoreux

  “I'm sorry,” she said, sounding as if she was, with a voice that could float a yacht. “I missed your first name.”

  The voice could stay, the question had to go and I waved it away. “Don't worry about it; I don't use it. Call me, Blake, everyone does.” I smiled so she wouldn't take offense (my parents weren't her fault) and found my chair behind the desk. Aching, feeling as on the ball as a ceramic bobblehead, and out of respect for the first-rate job the alley had done on my other parts, I sat gingerly. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  “Well,” she said, “I'm the executive secretary for the Reverend Conrad Delp.” She paused, waiting for my reaction. When I didn't offer one, she proceeded. “The Reverend has a crusade appearance in Atlanta tonight.” She checked a stylish watch on her slim white wrist. “The advance team is already there and set up, we'll be flying out shortly. Usually the Reverend's wife, Katherine, goes along but she isn't feeling up to it this evening.”

  Any other day a drop-dead beautiful woman like that could sit in my office talking until the cows came home and I'd listen without interruption trying merely to swallow my saliva before it reached my shirt. But, truth be told, just at that moment, it hurt to sit and focusing my eyes wasn't a gimme either. “Miss Bridges,” I said, smiling but squirming forward in my chair. “I apologize if I seem abrupt,” I bit my lower lip, adjusting, “but, I've had a rare morning.” I found a position that offered some relief and exhaled to prove it (which just made me dizzier). “How, specifically, can I help you?”

  “I'm sorry. The Reverend would like his wife looked after.”

  There weren't any crickets but there should have been. “Now I'm sorry. He wants what?”

  “He wants to hire you to make sure his wife is safe… while he's gone.”

  “Oh, I see.” I needed the work, I could always use the money, and I was amenable to sniffing her perfume until my Medicare kicked in, but without knowing it she had just given me an out and, the way I was feeling, I was gratefully taking it. “I don't do that sort of thing,” I told her. “Some private investigators do; bigger firms with more manpower. I work alone. What you're looking for is a security firm or a private bodyguard.”

  “You don't understand, Mr. Blake.”

  “Blake. Just… Blake, please. My old man was Mister and he took it with him.”

  She smiled. She understood me. She'd do anything to please me. “Blake.” See, I told you. “I know this is short notice but it isn't just anyone we want looked after. It's Reverend Delp's wife. He needs someone he can trust. I've been told he can trust you. You come highly recommended.”

  “I do?” It took an effort not to laugh but I made it. “By whom?”

  “Mr. Blake… Blake… I don't know.” I'd have felt bad, but she sounded so defeated herself I let it go. She took a breath deep enough to test the top two, insanely-secure, buttons on her blouse and championed on. “I'm doing as I was instructed and telling you what I was told. Among the things I was told was that you come highly recommended.”

  I nodded to demonstrate how much the compliment meant to me. Then I stood, turned, and opened my little fridge. With effort, I ignored all the fixings inside that might have contributed to a lovely and well-deserved late morning toddy and, instead, grabbed a handful of ice from the freezer box. “Would you excuse me a moment?” I took a last look to remember her by, enjoyed a fleeting dirty thought about the girl who looked like Bo Derek but acted like Bo Peep, and left the office pulling the door closed behind me.

  Lisa swiveled her chair. “The first rule of being a detective,” she said, proudly shoving a sheet of paper at me. “Investigate the client first.”

  Holding the ice to the back of my head, I took the paper with my dry hand. “She's not the client. The client is Conrad Delp.”

  “Reverend Delp?”

  I nodded and scanned the sheet. Ice water ran down the back of my neck. I didn't mind at all. “You know him?”

  “Everyone who isn't going to hell knows him,” Lisa said. She bit several inches off a black licorice whip to emphasize her disgust at my ignorance. You've got to be hateful and mean to eat black licorice. Then she talked around it while she chewed. “He's a biggie in the television preacher industry – and not just in Chicago. He's huge all over the country; TV specials, weekly radio show, books, newsletter. He's his own cottage industry, and you ought to see the marble cottage God gave him in thanks. My mother dotes on him. In fact, that VCR you tried to bribe her with really comes in handy; she tapes all his crusades, never misses a radio broadcast.” She paused to suck candied spit.

  I'd been studying the bare-bones sketch of Miss Bridges but I turned from it to ogle my secretary. I have as many prejudices as the next guy, but I'm way too lazy to be an -ist and too contemptuous of society in general to form specific -isms, still I couldn't help myself and asked, in genuine confusion, “Aren't you Jewish?”

  “Oy,” she answered. “But Reverend Delp is special. He makes Mom cry. And, for an older man, he is kinda hunky.” Sometimes my arched brows and dismal head shakes (even pained dizzy ones) just happened on their own, like then. “It's a girl thing,” she explained.

  I raised one hand in surrender while I chucked the last of the ice bits into the wastebasket with the other. “It doesn't matter,” I said, drying my hand on my pants. “It's babysitting. You know I don't…”

  “I know you don't,” she cut in quickly, nearly lashing me with licorice in her excitement. “But it sounded simple and you could use the money. Besides…” Lisa had that frightening gleam in her eye and, believe me, if you haven't seen it, you just can't know. Worse, beneath the gleam she was still talking. “I thought, if you didn't want to do it, it'd be a good case for me to get my feet wet.”

  I hate that gleam. Did I mention Lisa wanted to be a detective? Yeah, well, she did. Like Ahab wanted fish for dinner, Lisa wanted to be a detective. “We've had this talk before,” I said with a sigh. “You're not an investigator. You're barely a secretary.”

  “Well, what am I then?”

  “The word thorn comes to mind. Or bane, burden, irritant. Nuisance, pest, plague. Oh, and pain, of course; you're definitely a pain.” I handed the paper back. “I'm going to cab over and get my car, if it isn't already, `Please God, No,' up on blocks. Then I'm going home to soak in hot water; very hot water, for a very long time. Explain my departure to Miss Bridges, please, offer her our deepest apologies that we cannot be of service, and send her on her way.”

  Done with my secretary, fed up with the day, the back of my head throbbing, I turned to exit. As I opened the outer door, from behind, Lisa said, “Don't you think, since Reverend Delp is who he is?”

  “Lisa Solomon,” I said, cutting her off like a naughty child. “I am turning down this job.”

  “Even,” she asked, “at the risk of your immortal soul?”

  “I'm closing the door now,” I said. And did, as I left.

  Chapter Three

  I found my Jaguar exactly where I'd left it and, to my astonishment, unmolested. No, I'm not rich. I'm a working-stiff (just then a stiff working-stiff) like, I imagine, most of you. One of the few things in this world I'd ever really wanted was a Jag and, like the fabled merchant and his pearl of great price, I'd given most of what I had to buy it, used. Imagine the sexiest 150-mph super car ever, an erection on wheels, and you have the '61 Jaguar. Now, add power-sapping Federal emission controls, discontinue the elegant fixed-head coupe for a long wheelbase, perfection stretched on a medieval rack. Replace the reliable 4.2-liter six for a monstrous 5.3 V12 that's a bitch to keep tuned and makes the front anchor-heavy. Spoil the smooth lines and sleek contours with plumped fenders. Then nail the coffin closed with horrendous rubber pads to meet senseless 5-mph bumper standards. And, voilà, you have my deep blue '74 Jaguar. It will go down in history as one of the worst cars of all time, but it was still a Jag and it was mine. Now you understand my relief at finding it intact. Without further ado, I fired it up and took it and my battered sel
f home.

  Much later that night, soothed if not softened by a hot bath and partially recharged by several hours shut-eye, but with my head still aching and my senses tingling from a feeling that something was just not right, I gave Lisa a call. No, I was not receiving any psychic messages, I just had a hunch. I got her answering machine, considered the fact she never went anywhere, then got a chill. Hating myself for it, I dressed again and drove, not to her place, but to the north side of town or, financially speaking, to the other side of the tracks. I turned down the winding road that fronted the residence of Chicago's (perhaps even the Almighty's) gift to television worshipers everywhere, the Reverend Conrad Delp. What little of the columned mansion could be seen from the peasant's side of the ornate wrought-iron gate and walled fence, beyond the curve of the substantial drive, through the myriad trees was, I'll admit, impressive, and I whistled to show my respect as I slowly cruised by. Then I came abreast of a speck of a car, a 1970-something Volkswagen Cabriolet, an electric-yellow roller skate fueled by lead-free gas and pretension, that was parked at the curb. I stomped on my brakes.

  “Son of a bitch.” It was Lisa's car.

  I only thought I'd had a headache before. Now it was pounding. On top of that I was deeply annoyed but not in the least surprised. The reason I was there, seeing her car, was because I had somehow known my eager secretary was going to ignore my direct order. And, as sure as the Ayatollah Khomeini was back in Iran, there she was. Chewing my lower lip in frustration, I continued on and parked in the shadows down the street.

  I walked back to Delp's estate, scaled the wall and slipped into the yard. I wound through the trees and bushes, playing commando from one shadow to the next until, within shouting distance of the mansion, I made out the thin but graceless form of Lisa standing beside a tree. She was dressed in black like a Ninja, pointlessly, because she was leaning directly into an amber pool of light from one of the windows of the house. She was sucking on a blue and white swirled lollipop (raspberry ripple?) that, when she pulled it from her maw, was as big around as a bar coaster. She held a metal file, doing her nails between licks of her candy and, I imagine, telling herself she was watching the house.

  Sue me. I sneaked up behind her.

  “What are you doing?”

  Lisa jumped. She rammed the file under her fingernail and had herself a moment. Then she recognized me, got mad, recognized the injury she'd done to herself, felt the pain, recognized she was caught where she had no business being, and raced from embarrassment to defensiveness faster than a pimply teen reaches his first orgasm. “God!” she shouted in a whisper. “Who do you think you are, Chuck Norris? You scared me half to death!”

  “Yes,” I said without a hint of compassion. “What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing here?” she shot back indignantly.

  “I'm a licensed private investigator. I'm trained to know when someone is doing something really stupid. Now, I repeat, what…?”

  “You're here.” She was angry but still whispering. “So you know why I'm here. I took the job.”

  “You can't take the job. You're not…”

  “An investigator, I know. I took the job for you.”

  “Without telling me?”

  “You wouldn't take it.” She furled her brow. I stared back so hard that, had I had a couple more chins and forty rolls of fat, she'd have thought I was Frank Wenders. She cocked her head, an embarrassed coquette owl behind the glasses, and raised one corner of her mouth to smile. “I thought it could be a really good case,” Lisa said. “Not too hard but really interesting.”

  “What's interesting about it?” I asked doubtfully.

  “You left too soon,” she exclaimed. “There was more to Gina's story.”

  “Gina? The last time we talked it was Miss Bridges.”

  She ignored that. “Reverend Delp has been getting threatening letters, so he didn't want his wife left alone.”

  “What sort of threats? From whom?”

  “Gina didn't know. Just threats, I guess.”

  “She didn't show them to you?” Lisa had a habit of gaining speed as she talked. My questions were as much to slow her down as to harvest information.

  “She couldn't show them to me, she hasn't seen them. She's just heard about them.”

  “Rumors? Gossip?”

  She clicked her tongue because I wasn't playing fair; asking questions to which she didn't know the answers. “Gina said they weren't the kind of thing Reverend Delp would speak about.” For emphasis, she added, “He is a powerful and influential man.”

  “Yes, so you've said repeatedly. But you don't know anything about these threats? Whether they were mailed or from where? Cut from newsprint? Written in blood?”

  Lisa shook her head. I was spritzing her with questions about unimportant details and she was trying to keep the windshield clear enough to barrel forward. “All I know is Katherine, eh Mrs. Delp, was unaware of the threats and the reverend wanted it to stay that way because of her delicate nature.”

  “Her delicate nature?”

  “That's the way Gina, eh Miss Bridges, put it. Because of her delicate nature. That's why I'm out here. He doesn't want her to be alone but he doesn't want her to know she's being watched either. I'm just supposed to make sure she's safe. Once she's asleep, I'm done and I can leave. I mean, you're done and you can leave.”

  “Does Reverend Delp know you're here?”

  “No, remember, he's in Atlanta,” Lisa said. Then under her breath she added, “He understands that… you`re… here.”

  I sighed and looked to the heavens. There were a few stars up there beyond the leaves and a lot of clouds but not a thing that looked like help. “Go home, Lisa.” She started to say something but I cut her off. “I'll see Mrs. Delp is tucked in. Go home.”

  She made one last offer to stay and help, tap danced a final shuffle-ball-change on my nerves, then decided she'd pushed her luck as far as it would go. She said goodnight and headed in the direction of the street. It was just after eleven o'clock at night. I watched her disappear into the dark then, resigned to the evening my secretary had selected for me, moved into the shadows near the house.

  I looked through a window and for the first time saw Katherine Delp. More accurately, I saw the woman that presumably was Mrs. Delp. (I'd never seen her and wouldn't have known her had she bit me.) She was well worth the look (and welcome to bite me anytime). She was slender and tall from the shag white carpeting to her short-styled blonde hair. In-between, though her figure wasn't exactly an hour-glass it still knew what time it was. Aside from her obvious personal attractions, two things about Katherine Delp stood out. One, for a homebody at that time of night, the lady was exceptionally well-dressed in a clinging red drape that more than hinted at the firm contours beneath. Two, she was visibly on edge, pacing like a caged panther, and stealing uncounted looks at a bold Broccato wall clock I could have hocked for my rent. She paced the length of an inviting couch the same non-color as the carpet, threw a cube of ice into a cut-glass tumbler, and gave it a bath in Tanqueray and tonic. She wet her whistle, examined the clock again, and went right back to pacing. She kept it up, the pacing and the drinking, for a long time as if waiting on a late train. Something was on her nerves and she was getting on mine. Then the phone rang and we both started.

  The minister's wife snatched the instrument from the end table so quickly she nearly spilled her drink. She put the glass down and, forgetting the gin altogether, lifted the receiver to answer. Trailing the cord, Mrs. Delp and her phone disappeared from the room and my view.

  *

  She was gone for several minutes during which, as far as I could see, absolutely nothing happened. I was bored to tears. Little did I know they would be the last few quiet moments I would have for the next week and a half and that my life was about to become a soup sandwich.

  I heard a car motor at the front of the property and saw fingers of light, headlights bisected by the iron bars of the fro
nt gate, stealing through the trees. I couldn't see the car itself but it was there. There followed a barely audible clank of metal and the grating swing of the gate. The engine revved and the car started up the crescent of the paved drive. I'd had to move forward to a new position to clearly see the visitor without being seen. He made that easier when the headlights suddenly went out. The motor continued to purr softly and, moving slowly in the dark, the vehicle, a dark sedan, came into view. It was brought to a stop by the wide columned front porch and shut off. The lone occupant, the driver, a tall athletic-looking man in his late twenties got out. He took the front steps in two brisk hops and the porch in three long strides; an eager beaver. But, if he was champing at the bit, he had nothing on Mrs. Delp. Before he could even take aim at the doorbell, the minister's wife opened the door, grabbed him like a dog latching onto a meaty bone, and hauled him inside.

  I checked my luminous watch, saw 1:00 am straight up (an interesting time for visitors when your hubby was away preaching), then headed back to the side of the house. Flickering shadows showed they'd returned to the living room in which I'd first seen our client's wife. But now I really needed a closer look. I entered and navigated, as best I could by the spill light, a small rock garden to a spot just beneath the window. I was almost in place – when I tripped. I'd been fairly successful up to that point in keeping the noise to a minimum but I knew I'd make a hell of a racket if I fell and, sisters and brothers, I was falling. I grabbed the sill to catch myself. Then, quick as I could, ducked back from the window into the shadows. I leaned there, against the house in the dark with my eyes closed, trying to quietly catch my breath, hoping I hadn't given myself away. I wasn't at all confident because, as one does sometimes, I had the feeling I was being watched.