by Jude Hardin
There were babies crying in the background, and the woman who answered didn’t speak English.
“Pamela Wade,” I said, trying to enunciate every syllable slowly and clearly.
“Oh! Pamelita. Un momentito, por favor.”
Approximately un momentito later, Pamela Wade came to the phone.
“Sorry,” she said. “That was my neighbor. She was expecting a call from her husband.”
“I’m looking for the Pamela Wade who was involved with a man named Phineas Carter,” I said.
“Phin’s dead. What do you want?”
So it was her. On the Tone of Politeness meter, where zero is receptionist-pleasant and ten is flat-out hostile, Pamela’s voice had gone from a one to a four.
“I was hired to investigate his murder,” I said. “I just wanted to ask you a few questions.”
“Who hired you?”
“His daughter.”
“Now I know you’re full of shit. Phin didn’t have a daughter.”
I explained the situation, told her about the research I’d done. “He might not have told you about it, but he definitely had a daughter. She has a terminal illness, and she’d wanted to meet him before she dies.”
“OK. Whatever. So what can I help you with?”
The dying client thing doesn’t work every time.
“I’ve read everything that was printed in the newspapers,” I said. “But I don’t have access to the police files. I was just wondering—”
“So you want all the gory details? Well, today’s your lucky day, then, Mr. Colt, because I’m the one who found him. He was shot once, through the forehead at close range. There was blood and bone and brain tissue splattered on the wall behind him. The police retrieved a bullet, a single thirty-eight slug, but they never found the weapon it was fired from. There was no sign of forced entry, and they couldn’t find a single shred of forensic evidence. Not even a fingerprint. Whoever killed him did it execution-style. Apparently he’d been on his knees with his hands behind his head. No signs of a struggle, no evidence whatsoever that he’d put up a fight.”
The needle on the Tone of Politeness meter had crept to a five: edgy. The colicky kids and I were doing our best to push it into the red zone.
I decided to cut to the chase. “Was he involved in the use or sale of illegal drugs?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? Phin didn’t even drink. He’d been sober for over six years. No drugs, no booze, nothing.”
I wanted to believe her, but addicts lie. Addicts lie, and they hide things. It’s what they do. Pamela Wade was under no obligation to talk to me, so I figured she was telling me what she thought to be the truth. She had no reason to lie. At any given moment she could have said “fuck you” and hung up and that would have been it. She thought she was telling me the truth, but Phin might have hidden some things from her. He might have been into some things she didn’t know about. She said he’d been sober for six years, but I still wasn’t convinced.
“How long had the two of you been together?” I asked.
“We started dating six years ago. We actually met in rehab. I’d been living with him for the last five, and we’d been married for the last three. I think I would have known if he was using or selling drugs. I’m telling you, the man was a teetotaler. He was into organic foods and herbs and vitamins and all that. He rarely even drank a cup of coffee.”
“You were married?” I asked.
“Yeah. We took a trip to Vegas one time and…yeah. We had the piece of paper, but we really didn’t advertise it much. I never changed my name or anything.”
“Do you use illegal drugs?” I asked.
It caught her off guard. Silence, and then, “I might take a hit on a joint every now and then, but nothing any harder than that. Not that it’s any of your business. And it’s not like I do it every day. Just occasionally, if I’m at a party or whatever. Phin’s murder had nothing to do with drugs, Mr.—what did you say your name was?”
“Colt.”
“Mr. Colt. I was in love with Phineas T. Carter, and we were together practically all the time. I told the cops, and I’ll tell you. He was straight as an arrow.”
“What kind of work did he do?” I asked.
“He was self-employed. He did some carpentry, light plumbing, and electrical. You know, handyman kind of stuff. He did all right.”
“Did he have any enemies? Were any of his customers pissed off about anything?”
“Everyone loved Phin,” she said. “And his work was first-rate. He would get the occasional complaint now and then, like you do in any kind of business, but whenever that happened he would always go back and fix whatever it was. At no extra charge, I might add. Phin wasn’t happy until the customer was happy. And that’s the way it should be. Hell, I wish more people were like him.”
“Sounds like a good guy,” I said.
“He was.”
I was trying to dredge up something that might remotely resemble a lead, but I was running out of ideas.
“Did he have any hobbies?” I asked. “Golf or anything? Did he belong to any organizations? A lodge or a church or anything?”
“He played chess.”
“Chess?”
“He hung out at a little grocery over on Eaton Street. He would go over there for a few hours on his days off and play chess and shoot the shit. It was basically his only social outlet. Aside from me, of course.”
“What’s the name of the shop?”
She told me the name of the place, and I wrote it down.
“And what about you?” I asked.
“Excuse me?”
“As a social outlet. Did you have any relatives or ex-boyfriends or anything who might have—”
“Like I said, everyone loved Phin. And all my exes were long gone by the time he was murdered.”
There was a knock on my door. I looked through the peephole. It was the pizza man.
“OK,” I said. “Well, I certainly appreciate your time, Ms. Wade. Would it be all right to call you again if I think of any other questions?”
“Please don’t. I’ve given you all I have, and I’m really just trying to move on with my life.”
The babies had quieted down, and Pamela’s voice had eased off to a three. She sounded almost sleepy now.
“Thanks again for your time,” I said. “And I’m truly sorry for your loss.”
She hung up.
I answered the door and paid for my pizza. I ate two pieces and watched some television and tried to fall asleep but couldn’t. Finally I put my clothes back on and walked down to the lounge. After three more drinks, Wesley West started sounding better. I bought him a shot of tequila when he went on break. We talked for a while, and I ended up leaving the bar at 4:00 a.m., when it closed.
CHAPTER SIX
Rex is still standing at the grill flipping brains, trying his best not to laugh as the other zombies pig out on the sheriff. The sheriff is still alive, convulsing on the floor, but you get the sense there is no hope for him now.
“Hey, Boomer, come here,” Rex says.
The zombie named Boomer looks up. He opens his mouth, revealing one of the sheriff’s eyeballs rolling around on his tongue. He closes his mouth and swallows.
“Be right there,” he says.
He walks behind the counter and stands beside Rex at the griddle.
“Crack me some eggs,” Rex says.
Boomer grabs a carton from the refrigerator, starts cracking them into a steel mixing bowl. Then he gets the inexplicable idea to launch one of the raw eggs at the other zombies. It lands on the top of one of their heads with a moist crack.
Boomer laughs. “Look at Grady. He’s an egghead now.”
Grady reaches into the open wound on the sheriff’s massive belly, sticks his arm in all the way to the elbow, and emerges with the sheriff’s heart in his hand.
The heart is still beating.
Grady throws it overhand like a baseball. It whizzes by Boomer’s head, barely missing him, an
d lands on the hot cooking surface with a splattering sizzle.
“Food fight!” Boomer says.
Boomer and Rex start throwing eggs and pies and pork chops, and an assortment of other food items from the kitchen, while the other zombies throw an assortment of the redneck sheriff’s internal organs…
I got up around nine and took a shower and grabbed a cup of coffee from the continental breakfast downstairs. I drove over to Eaton Street, to the store Pamela Wade had told me about.
Kenny’s Organic Grocery.
From the plate-glass storefront I could see bins of fresh produce against the left wall, and two aisles of shelving straight ahead. The counter and the cash register were on the right, but the station appeared to be unmanned at the moment. A little bell jingled when I opened the door. I walked in and looked around. The apples smelled wonderful. The shelves were full of expensive things that were supposed to be good for you. Noodles made from spinach, low-sodium soups, vegan mayonnaise. Stuff like that. I could see right away that it would cost a small fortune to shop there all the time. It seemed like a racket to me, but maybe there was something to it. I wondered if I would live longer if I choked down a handful of goji berries with my next chimichanga.
“Can I help you?”
A woman appeared at the end of the aisle. She had very long black hair accented with the occasional strand of gray. She wore a blue dress with a flower print on it and a lace collar. Stout leather shoes from the Little House on the Prairie collection.
“Do people play chess here?” I asked.
“We have a little café in the back. You’re welcome to check it out if you want to.”
“Thanks. I think I will.”
“My name’s Barbara. Let me know if you need anything. I’ll be around.”
“OK.”
There were two doors at the back of the grocery. One of them said Restrooms and the other said To Café. I opened the latter and walked in. There was a lunch counter on the left, and four tables on the right. Four deuces, as restaurant people tend to call tables for two. Every one of them had a black-and-white chessboard painted onto the solid wood top. Three of the tables were vacant, but a couple of guys sat at the one farthest from the door I’d come in through. They were older guys. Retirement age, maybe. One with thick white hair and the other completely bald. They were both intensely focused on the game in front of them. I sat at the counter and ordered a cup of coffee and watched them play. When Baldy took Whitey’s queen, I figured it might be a decent time to interrupt.
“Good move,” I said.
They glanced my way.
“I’ll beat his ass without a queen,” Whitey said. “I’ve done it before.”
I slid down from my stool and walked over to the table. “Did y’all know a guy named Phineas Carter who used to come in here and play sometimes?”
“Who are you?” Baldy asked.
“Just an old friend.”
“Phin got killed, man. Someone came into his house and shot him in the head.”
“I know. So tell me, you guys ever play for money?”
Whitey laughed. “We always play for money.”
“Did Phin play for money?” I asked.
“Of course,” Whitey said. “What are you getting at?”
“I’m not a chess player,” I said. “But I imagine it’s not all that different from any other sort of gambling. Guys get pissed off sometimes when they lose, especially when substantial amounts of money are involved.”
“You trying to say someone killed Phineas Carter over a chess game?” Baldy asked.
“I’m not saying anything. Just wondering if it could have happened.”
“Chess is a thoughtful game,” Whitey said. “Played by thoughtful people. It doesn’t get rowdy, the way poker does sometimes, and it’s not a game of chance. You win at chess because you outthink the other guy.”
“Strictly skill,” Baldy said. “We play for five dollars a game, and I never saw Phineas Carter play for any more than that. Nobody’s going to kill anyone over five or ten bucks.”
“And people who play chess at this level aren’t like that anyway,” Whitey said. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“I guess so,” I said. “Thanks for your time. I’ll let you get on with your game.”
I walked back to the counter and sat on my stool.
“You want another cup?” The guy minding the café looked to be in his mid-fifties. He had curly salt-and-pepper hair, and a thick black mustache. He wore jeans and a red T-shirt and a white chef’s apron.
“Sure,” I said. “Are you Kenny, by any chance?”
“That would be me. Head cook and bottle washer.”
“And the lady watching the grocery store up front. Is that your wife?”
“For Twenty-six years,” he said.
“Ken and Barbie?”
He chuckled. “I know. We hear the jokes all the time. For Twenty-six years we’ve been hearing them.”
He brought the coffeepot and filled my cup.
“Did you know a guy named Phineas Carter who used to come in here?” I asked.
“Yeah, I remember him. He was a good chess player. Hardly ever lost. In fact, I played him myself a few times. It was a real shock to the community when his wife found him shot to death in their apartment. That was before all this Zombie shit we’re dealing with now. It was a real shock.”
“Did you ever know of anybody who might have had it in for him?”
“Are you a cop?”
“No.”
“There was a cop in here asking me the same questions, soon after Phin was killed. Guy named Sullivan.”
“I’m not a cop,” I said.
“Anyway, no, Phineas Carter didn’t have an enemy in the world. Not that I know of. He was always smiling and cutting up. He was the kind of guy everyone liked to be around.”
Yet someone drilled a .38 slug into his brain, I thought.
My cup was still half-full, but I’d had enough. And, I’d heard enough.
“Good coffee,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”
I paid, and then walked back through the grocery to the exit. The door jingled again when I pushed it open to walk out.
“Come back and see us,” Barbara said.
I smiled and waved and left the store. I doubted I would be back.
I tried to call Alison Palmer, the woman who owned the condo where Phineas T. Carter had been murdered. According to Darcy, the real-estate agent, Alison was living at the place now. I wanted to see if she knew anything about Phin, maybe some things Pamela Wade had left out. Phin had to have been into something shady. If it wasn’t drugs, it was something else. People don’t just waltz into your house and blow your brains out with a .38 for no reason. Not usually.
According to the newspapers, there had been nothing missing from the apartment, not even the dead man’s wallet. So that ruled burglary out. There were no signs of forced entry, which told me the assailant was someone Phin knew. Phin had opened the door for the perpetrator, and had willingly allowed him to come in.
Assuming it was a him. It could have been a female, but I didn’t think so. Most of your hard-core cold-blooded assassins are guys. That’s just the way it is.
There were no signs of a struggle, which told me Phin didn’t necessarily think he was going to die. That was important. When you’re on your knees with your hands behind your head and someone presses the barrel of a revolver against your forehead, nine times out of ten you’re going to think death is imminent. Nine times out of ten you’re going to do whatever you can to stop it. You’re going to hit the gunman in the balls or try to grab the gun or something. Phin wasn’t helpless. He hadn’t been tied up or anything. If he had thought he was going to die, he would have done something.
But he didn’t do anything. There were no signs of a struggle.
Which told me the guy with the gun was probably trying to get some kind of information from Phin.
&nbs
p; My first thought had been drugs, because of Phin’s alleged smuggling history, but it could have been something else. Gambling, prostitution, blackmail. I’d pretty much ruled chess out, but it could have been anything else. Most likely something illegal that involved large sums of money. I hadn’t pressed Pamela Wade on any of it. If Phin had been into something bad, Pamela might have been into it with him. I didn’t want to spook her. I didn’t want her to leave Fort Lauderdale, or maybe even leave the country.
She had been cleared of the murder charge, but I wondered how far the police had gone with their investigation into her personal life. Probably not as far as I wanted to go. I knew her address now, and I planned to drive up to Lauderdale and follow her around for a while. If she had any dealings with the wrong kinds of people, I would find out about it sooner or later. And if she did, the people she was involved with might be the same people Phin had been involved with.
I planned on driving up to Lauderdale, but today I wanted to talk to Alison Palmer. I tried calling several times, left several messages on voice mail, and finally decided to ride over there. If she was home, maybe I could get her to talk to me. If she wasn’t home, I could wait there until she came back.
She wasn’t home.
It was a fairly large complex, three buildings, three stories each. Weathered cedar lap siding with black architectural shingles. Balconies with folding chairs and barbecue grills. Alison’s unit was in the middle building, on the second floor. I walked up there and knocked and rang the bell and knocked again, but nobody answered.
I walked back to the parking lot, sat in the hot Jimmy, and waited.
And waited.
A spot by a tree finally opened up, so I pulled over there and parked in the shade. It was twenty degrees cooler. It was like paradise compared to where I’d been before. My throat was as dry as sandpaper, and I had a headache from drinking too much whiskey at the hotel lounge last night. I thought about driving down the road and buying a bottle of water and some aspirin, but I didn’t want to risk losing my shady parking place.
I sat there for another hour and was about to pass out from dehydration when a black Ford Ranger with a matching topper pulled up in front of Alison’s building. A man got out carrying a bag of groceries in one hand and a six-pack of beer in the other. Maybe he was one of Alison’s neighbors. Maybe he could give me an idea of what time she might be home.