LAURA LEE (ALTON RHODE MYSTERIES Book 2)

by Lawrence de Maria

  “This guy died happy,” Smith said. He picked up a package of novelty shop condoms that were camouflage-colored and read the label aloud. “She’ll Never See You Coming.”

  I opened the second drawer. There were two neatly stacked rows of porno movies. They appeared to be alphabetized.

  “Who the hell buys porno movies anymore,” Mac said. “You can get anything you want on the Internet.” He paused. “Or so I’ve heard.”

  “Nothing probably improves the mood more than a porno movie rising on a 50-inch TV at the foot of your bed,” I said. “Denton covered all the bases.”

  “I thought bankers were supposed to be dull,” Smith said. “You know, conservative.”

  “Don’t you read the papers,” Mac said. “They’ve fucked the country. They had to practice on somebody.”

  I went into the master bath, which could have qualified as a small locker room. It had been dusted. The medicine cabinet was almost empty. The crime scene investigators had presumably removed any suspicious pill bottles for analysis.

  We went downstairs to the den, which doubled as a small library. It felt closed in. The musty smell of the house had a burnt-wood overlay from the cold fireplace. I walked over to the bookshelves. Denton’s reading taste was eclectic. There were the predictable classics, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the like. Some of those volumes even had bookmarks, so they might not have been for show. One entire case was devoted to Civil War and World War II histories. Another held only thrillers. Denton had apparently collected all the James Bond, Spenser and Jake Scarne novels. There was a Kindle on the table next to a dark brown leather lounger. Apparently not all of the dead man’s time was devoted to money and women. The bookshelves, books, Kindle, the table and all the other furniture in the den had a small film of dust, just like everything else in the house. It badly needed a cleaning service. I walked to the double doors leading out to a real patio and opened one side. There was a nice breeze which started to air out the room. The other door had a small patch over the hole in a glass pane made by the bullet Elizabeth Olsen fired. Smith came up behind me.

  “Never found the round. We hoped it hit a tree, there’s enough of them, but no luck.”

  “They’re 90 percent air,” I said.

  “You must be a golfer.”

  I laughed.

  “Yeah. And I never miss them.”

  “I hear you.”

  “One of these doors was open, right?”

  “That’s what the responding officer said.”

  I looked back from the doorway toward the chair by the fireplace where Denton died.

  “Shot is consistent with what Elizabeth Olsen said, unless the bullet made a 90-degree turn.”

  “Or she walked around the side of the chair and wanted to put one in his ear and missed.”

  “Whoever shot him didn’t miss much.”

  “She might have shot out toward the door to give herself a story.”

  “Or she’s telling the truth. Even if she killed him she had no way of knowing that there would be a security guard waiting for her outside the house. She would have fled with the gun and dropped it in the harbor.”

  Smith looked at me.

  “Killers sometimes don’t make sense,” he said, finally.

  But I could tell I had raised a glimmer of doubt in his mind. A doubt that might work with a jury. Long would be happy. We walked to the lounger facing the fireplace. There was a large purplish stain on the carpet under the left armrest. It wasn’t blood. I pointed it out to Smith.

  “Wine. He dropped a glass when he was plugged.”

  “Could he have dozed off and been asleep when he was shot?”

  “No, his eyes were open, according to the autopsy report.”

  “The lids?”

  “Yeah. Mostly intact. He saw it coming, if only for a second.”

  Had John Denton been sleeping, his closed eyelids, if not obliterated, would have been driven into his brain and beyond. I would mention that to Long. Shooting a sleeping man implies premeditation. It wasn’t much, but every little bit might help the defense.

  “There don’t appear to be any other carpet stains.”

  “No, the M.E. said his brain stem was destroyed and his heart stopped almost immediately, so there wasn’t much blood and what there was soaked his clothing and pooled in the chair. Two of the rounds went through his head, though.”

  “Webley .45’s have a low muzzle velocity,” Mac said. “I’m surprised any rounds got through. First rounds must have cleared a path. But nothing got through the back of the chair.”

  I could see two holes in the chair’s headrest, which was stained darker than the rest of the brown chair.

  “Funny looking chair,” Smith said. “Doesn’t really go with anything else in here. Looks like something from Mad Men.”

  “It is,” I said, “or at least from that era. It’s an original Eames. Classic. Probably worth a fortune now.” Both men looked at me. “If it didn’t have bullet holes, I mean.”

  Despite its incongruence in the room, it was a handsome piece, as was the ottoman that went with it. Both were on pedestal legs and swiveled. The lounger was segmented in three sections and undoubtedly a comfortable place to read a book or just look at the fire. Or to have sex. Unless , of course, you were a woman on top. That would be awkward. Balance would be a problem, particularly in a chair that moved on more than one axis.

  “Just holding on ….”

  “What’s that, Alton?”

  It was Mac. I realized that I had spoken aloud. I turned to Smith.

  “I presume the chair was dusted for prints.”

  “Of course,” he said. “And all the blood and brain bits were collected. I don’t think the prints helped one way or the other.”

  “C.S.I. process the back of the headrest?”

  Mac looked at me and grunted. He got it.

  Smith looked confused.

  “Why would they do that? Bullets didn’t go through. They dug them out the front.”

  Mac and I both said “prints” simultaneously.

  “I’ll call it in,” Mac said. “Get a C.S.I. team back here. Got a camera in the car. I want to take some time-stamped shots of that chair.”

  “I don’t get it,” Smith said.

  “Denton liked to get it,” I said, “in this chair. But he claimed he had a bad back so his women were always on top. They would have had to put their hands somewhere.”

  “How do you know that?” A look of comprehension came to his face. “Your client?”

  I was saved from answering when Mac came back with his camera. There was another man with him wearing a brown uniform. I almost took him for a U.P.S. delivery man until I saw the Glock on his hip.

  “The techs are on the way.” Mac said. “This is the security guard from the company that patrols the grounds. He’s the one who detained the Olsen woman for the cops. Thought you might want to talk to him.”

  The rent-a-cop took off his cap and nodded at me. He was a tall, strapping kid with slicked-back, jet-black hair and a pencil-thin moustache.

  “Saw all the cars and wondered what was up,” he said.

  “I’ll meet you outside in a few minutes,” I said, “if it’s OK with you.”

  “Mind if I stick around and watch? I’m on the waiting list for the police academy. Might learn something.”

  I looked at Smith, who shrugged a yes.

  “So you figure the broads Denton was bopping in the chair might have wrapped their hands around the headrest,” Smith said to me. “Jesus. That’s good thinking. Son of a bitch. There was nothing like that in the case file. But that might not help your client. Maybe her prints are there.”

  “Don’t care. We know they were intimate. I’m looking for anyone else Denton ‘chaired’.”

  “Better check the ottoman, too,” Smith said.

  Mac looked at him.

  “The ottoman?”

  “If she was facing away from him, she’d have to
put her hands on the ottoman.” The young detective smiled. “I think you can see it on the Internet.” He smiled at Mac. “Or so I’m told.”

  We spent a few more entertaining minutes debating the sexual positions possible in a lounger-chair combination. There were a surprising number of them.

  “I gotta get me this chair,” Smith said.

  “I bet that wasn’t on the test for the academy,” I said to the security guard, motioning him to follow me outside.

  CHAPTER 14 – LITTLE LEAGUE

  We leaned on his company patrol car. His name was Raymond Ricks and he couldn’t quite hide his Southern accent.

  “Alabama?”

  “No, sir. Vidalia, Georgia. Onion country. Sweetest in the world.”

  Southerners, I knew, were inordinately proud of their Rebel heroes and root vegetables. Ricks had a baby face that made him look younger than he was. Probably why he was trying for a moustache. He had a lot of work to do on that.

  “Play a little football?”

  It was a safe bet. He was a big kid. About my height, but heavier. Southerners also loved their football.

  “Just high school.”

  “You ought to get a brown holster,” I teased. “Black one clashes with your car and uniform. Nothing you can do with the Glock, I suppose. Maybe a blue finish. That would go better. And you don’t have to ‘sir” me. I’m private.”

  “I’m not going to be wearing this stuff much longer,” he said. “I should already be in the academy except for the city’s damn hiring freeze. I aced the test.”

  “Good for you,” I said. “Now, tell me everything that happened the night you grabbed Elizabeth Olsen.”

  “Told the real cops everything a dozen times.”

  I caught the ‘real.’ Even cops-to-be can be snotty to a P.I.

  “Humor me.”

  He did. When he finished, I said, “Did she say anything?”

  “Not much. ‘He’s dead.’ ‘Somebody’s still in there.’ ‘I didn’t do it.’ That sort of thing. She seemed pretty shook up.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  “Believe what? She came out waving a gun saying someone was dead and there might be someone else in the house. I wasn’t going in there. I’ve been in combat, but I ain’t stupid. Not my fight. I just waited for the cops and made sure she didn’t go anywhere.”

  “Where did you see combat?”

  “Iraq. Afghanistan. Couple of places they don’t tell anyone about. I was a sniper.”

  “Figures. You Georgia boys are born with rifles in your hands.”

  He smiled.

  “Yeah. Painful for my mom, but it worked for the Army.”

  If he was telling the truth about his military service, he probably was pushing 30. There were faint lines around his eyes, which had a slightly vacant look to them. Soldier eyes. Sniper eyes. He wasn’t lying. He had seen combat. I told him that at one time we had probably been in the same provinces at about the same time.

  “No offense,” he said, “but weren’t you a little long in the tooth to be over there?”

  “Not my first time, bud. My reserve unit was called up.”

  “That blows.”

  I traded a few war stories with him to establish rapport and then got back on point.

  “Did you know Denton?”

  “Sure. From my rounds. Good guy.”

  “What kind of ‘good guy’ was he?

  “Well, you know. Always said hello, smiled, you know. Some of them up here don’t. Snobby, especially the broads.”

  “Been inside the house before?”

  “Couple of times, when the alarm went off. We have the code so we can go in the houses where we have a key. Not all the owners give us keys, though. And even if we have them, we always wait for the cops. Unless it’s a fire or something.”

  “Happen often?”

  “All the time. I don’t mean this house in particular. Most of the homes up here have alarms. Just about every time it’s a false alarm, you know. Systems are too sensitive, or an animal sets them off, or a breeze or some fuckin’ thing. After a while the cops throw a fit and say they won’t respond anymore. But they do, anyway, at least up here. People in the club have a lot of pull, you know. And valuables. No false alarms at Mr. Denton’s lately, though.”

  “No alarm that night?”

  “No. He was home, remember. Most of them set the alarm when they go to bed.”

  “You must know Elizabeth Olsen.”

  “Sure. Seen her around. Her old man has a house up here.”

  “So you recognized her from seeing her at her father’s?”

  “Yeah. And maybe at the club. You know, playing tennis. She’s hard to miss. A looker.”

  “Ever see her going into Denton’s house? Before that night.”

  He paused.

  “Might have.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Means Mr. Denton had a lot of lady visitors. At night. All looked pretty good from a distance. Couldn’t swear she was one of them, but she might have been. She’s a small thing. Yeah, maybe. Don’t matter, does it? Everyone knows he was pounding her. It was common knowledge. Hell, it’s in the papers.”

  “Got any names for other poundees?”

  “No.”

  “If you saw any of his other visitors, could you identify them?”

  “Not to swear to. Like I said, saw them at a distance, at night.”

  “Do you think Elizabeth Olsen did it?”

  “Not for me to say. But I don’t like her chances.”

  “You said she seemed dazed. What about remorseful? Angry? Frightened?”

  Ricks shrugged.

  “Just shook up. Tell you the truth, once I had her on the ground I kept my eye on the front door. One person with a gun had already come out. Didn’t mean there wouldn’t be another.”

  I gave him my card.

  “You think of anything else, call me.”

  “Sure.”

  “Good luck with the academy.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Rhode.”

  I went back inside to find Mac and Smith still debating the possibilities of ottoman sex. They had actually come up with a some variations we’d missed, although a couple of them would probably put a normal human being in traction. Mac said he’d wait for the C.S.I. team and get the results to us as soon as he could. I don’t think Smith was happy about my new status as an almost-equal on the investigation but, after all, the print idea had been mine. Besides, we had sort of bonded over the ottoman.

  I wanted to go to the Olsen house and ask Elizabeth a few more questions. I was debating how to phrase anything relating to where she might have placed her hands during sex – a conversation that would definitely take place without her father present – when Smith asked me to run him back to his office. Elizabeth could wait. The C.S.I. team might draw a blank anyway.

  After I dropped the detective off, I called Steve Long’s office. I wanted to tell him about the fingerprints before someone in the D.A.’s office did. He was in the midst of a trial but one of his staffers told me she would have him call me as soon as he was free. She also said the Olsen case files had been copied for me. I told her I’d stop by to pick them up. The law office was in West Brighton on Forest Avenue, near enough to Dick’s Deli, a local institution on Castleton Avenue, to make the trip doubly worthwhile. I hit Dick’s for a roast beef and Swiss cheese with Russian dressing on a hard roll and some potato salad, and took it all back to my office, where I spent the rest of the day plowing through the files and making phone calls. The files were comprehensive and filled with lawyer-speak, so I put on a pot of coffee to survive.

  Long called me during a break in his trial.

  “The prints might not pan out,” I said after I explained.

  “It’s a straw, and we’re down to grasping at them. Are you going to talk to Elizabeth?”

  “I guess I have to. I’ll make sure Konrad is at work and then go over there.”

  Next, I spoke to
Denton’s ex-wife and to the sergeant who was one of the two cops who initially responded to the Denton murder scene. Neither was particularly forthcoming, but said enough to confirm everything that was in the files.

  Denton’s ex-wife, who lived in St. Louis, was properly saddened by his gruesome end, but wasn’t going to throw herself into the Mississippi over it. She hadn’t been in touch with her ex in years and never thought about attending the funeral. She did send flowers.

  “Harry, that’s my husband now, thought it was the right thing to do.”

  I basically had to read the cop’s statement back to him verbatim and he just grunted appropriately. I rang off and called Mac and asked him to speak to the sergeant, cop-to-cop. But my gut told me there was nothing else there.

  “Cheer up,” Mac said. “We got finger and palm prints from the ottoman. Would’ve been something to see. Denton could’ve sold tickets.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Mac. Maybe it was the maid.”

  “You think he was porking the maid, too?”

  It was almost 6 P.M. when I finished. I called Alice. Got a message. I wondered what she was doing? I felt the first twinge of the green monster, as if I had any right to be jealous. Left my own message asking if she was free for lunch the next day in Manhattan. Feeling out of sorts, I drove home, changed and went for a run around and through the Snug Harbor Cultural Center. There were Little League games underway on the ball fields inside the Harbor and I stopped to watch. I knew some of the parents, who were contemporaries of mine. Except they were married and had kids who were now playing ball. Between innings I chatted with a guy I knew from my own Little League days who was now coaching the Pee Wee team his son was on. For the hundredth time we laughed at the memory of one of our teammates who showed up on the first day of practice wearing a cup on the outside of his uniform pants.

  There was a food stand where volunteers, mostly mothers, sold burgers, hot dogs and fries. So much for my healthful run. A tip canister on the counter was labeled: Buy a Kid a Glove. I put in a twenty. That got me some extra fries from a woman who noticed.

  I’ve been to a million baseball games, but in Little League there is always something new to see. On one play a kid, couldn’t have been more than seven, threw a runner out at the plate. What made the play unique was the fact that he chased the runner around the bases, right behind him, before throwing the ball to the catcher. It was a nice peg. The only problem was that the bases had been loaded and two other runners scored ahead of the last kid during the journey around the diamond. Still, we all shouted “great throw.” The adults laughed, the kid beamed.