The Case of Moomah's Moolah (A Richard Sherlock Whodunit)

by Jim Stevens

  _____

  The only items not broken were the big screen TV and the liquor cabinet. Thank God for small favors.

  Whatever once rested on a table, a shelf, or in a case was now on the floor, which resembles a 7-11 aisle after an earthquake. A number of the dining room chairs are overturned, as well as the coffee table, and a high-backed chair. Somehow a number of pots and pans had made their way to the front room, as did the plates and dishes, which are in pieces wherever there’s hardwood flooring. The glass covering the appalling, tasteless framed art on the walls is either shattered or dented, because it was plastic and not glass.

  “This looks like it was really fun,” Kelly says.

  “You think they were looking to find something, Dad?” Care asks.

  “It looks like they were looking to make a mess.”

  “This is the reason the cleaning crew was invented,” Tiffany tells the girls.

  I begin to take my own personal survey, which means I walk every inch of the room and search for something of interest. “By the way, where’s Kennard?”

  “Closest bar, probably,” Tiffany says.

  “Schnooks?”

  “If we’re lucky, back in the trailer park.”

  I go back to sleuthing, as well as listening to the girls converse about shoes, clothes, and spending my money.

  “Tiffany, why don’t you go find Kennard while Kelly, Care, and I spend a little family time together.”

  I can almost see the cogs turning in Tiffany’s brain when she says, “Come to think of it, I could probably use a Bloody Mary.”

  “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

  “What do you want me to do if I find him?” she asks.

  “Bring him back.”

  “I don’t know if anyone could bring Uncle Kenno back. He’s so far gone a GPS System couldn’t find him.

  “Seek, and you shall find, Tiffany.”

  Tiffany scoops up her Prada tote like a big league shortstop and takes off.

  “Now, you two stand over there, where the pots and pans are.”

  The girls reluctantly do as they are told. I move around the kitchen, searching for the best line of sight to where they are standing. After a few moves, I’m satisfied. I move to the front room.

  “Move to your left.” I point to where many of the knick-knacks, books, and shelf pieces now rest on the floor.

  Out of their line of sight, I pick up one of the last pans in the kitchen and hurl it like a tomahawk right where they were standing. The pan lands at their feet with a thud, then bounces upward to take out a souvenir Stardust Hotel cocktail glass and an autographed photo of Harry Caray, the baseball announcer, not the actor.

  Care and Kelly dive for cover and scream out, “What are you doing, Dad?”

  I walk into the room and survey my damage. “I’m re-enacting the crime.”

  “What crime?” Care asks.

  “The break-in, dummy,” Kelly tells her sister.

  I focus on my eldest and ask, “How do you know it was a break-in? There aren’t any signs of forced entry, broken down doors, or picked locks.”

  “Tiffany said it was a break-in,” Kelly snaps back.

  “Don’t focus on the obvious, Kelly,” I tell her. “Focus on the facts.”

  Care seizes the opportunity to nail her sister. “I love it when Dad tells you, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, maybe somebody scaled up the side of the building like Spiderman?” Kelly suggests.

  “No, this was an inside job.”

  “That’s what I was going to say.” Care gives her sister a mocking glance.

  “Stand over there in front of the busted artwork.” At this point I’m sure of what happened.

  As if on cue, Tiffany re-enters the apartment with a large red plastic cup in hand. “Mission accomplished.”

  “You found yourself a Bloody Mary?” I ask. “Anything else?”

  “Yes, of course.” Tiffany goes back out the door and drags her stumbling half-uncle inside.

  Kennard finds his favorite spot on the lumpy couch, and crumbles down like a hunk of dough landing on a baker’s workspace. “It was awful.”

  “What was awful?”

  “I leave, come home, and find the place ransacked.”

  “Where was Schnooks?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was she here last night?”

  “Yes, but she left, then came back.”

  Tiffany asks, “Where’d she go, the cheatin’ side of town?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you two have an open relationship?”

  Before Kennard has a chance to answer, Care asks, “What’s an open relationship, Dad?”

  “It’s when a couple agrees not to read each other’s cell phone messages,” Kelly explains.

  “We had a tiff,” Kennard admits. “You people don’t realize how stressful a kidnapping can be on a relationship.”

  “You suspect Schnooks might have trashed the place?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Word got out that I had a million dollars in here and some crook must have broken in to find it,” Kennard explains with an extra slur in his words.

  “Nobody broke any doors down to get in.” I say.

  “Or, picked the lock,” Kelly adds.

  “Spiderman would have left some webbing if he’d been here,” Care sums up.

  “I always forget to lock the front door,” Kennard admits. “Maybe I’m too trusting.”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” I tell the group.

  Heavy beads of sweat form on Kennard’s brow as he sits on the couch. In the few days I have had the pleasure of knowing him, he seems to be growing pudgier around the middle and fleshier around the neck. He better start working out or those pounds are going to be hell to get rid of.

  “All I know is when I got back home this morning, the place was a disaster.”

  “Where did you go this morning?” I ask.

  “I went to visit Moomah.”

  “That was thoughtful,” Tiffany says.

  “It was the least I could do.”

  I step back and take one last look at the scene. “We’re going girls.”

  Tiffany is shocked that I would leave right in the middle of questioning. “You’re not going to call the Police and have them investigate?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Yeah, Dad, why not?”

  “For the same reason Kennard didn’t call them.”

  “What was that?” Tiffany asks. Her eyes go from me to her Uncle and back to me.

  “He didn’t want to appear to be a lousy housekeeper.” I end the discussion.

  We gather as a clan and make our way out into the hallway. It’s as hot and humid as before. Tiffany pulls a small battery operated fan out of her tote, and cools her face before a bead of sweat forms.

  “Where are we going to now?” Tiffany asks.

  “To the Museum of Science and Industry.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s educational.”

  “Mr. Sherlock, we can’t. We’re right in the middle of a case,” Tiffany argues. “Moomah’s necklace and the million dollars are still missing.”

  “Would you rather stay here and help your uncle clean up?”

  The mere thought of any type of physical labor drives Tiffany into crisis mode.

  “Oh, no. I’d better come with you so we can discuss the particulars of the case.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “I’ll drive. I hate that car of yours.”

  _____

  The Museum of Science and Industry is one of the greatest places on the face of the earth. It’s the last remaining structure of what was once was the Chicago Columbian Exhibition of 1893, where the Ferris wheel, the ice cream cone, and women’s fan dancing were first introduced to the American public. When you walk in the place, the first thing you see is
a United Airlines 727 hanging from the ceiling. How they ever flew that in here beats the heck out of me. There’s also a jet flight simulator, a three story fulcrum, and the best exhibit of all, a World War I German U-boat. Many of the exhibits are interactive, so the girls can play along, answer their own questions, do projects, or hang around and get smarter by osmosis. You can burn five hours out of a kid’s day in the blink of an eye. As I stand around and watch the kids and Tiffany frolic in the knowledge and accomplishments of others, I review the timeline of the case.

  It begins with Kennard going off on a mid-morning drinking binge at a yacht club he doesn’t belong to. While he gets tipsy, his so-called girlfriend Schnooks abruptly rises from her pedicure chair, wanders out onto busy Lincoln Avenue and with no fight or fuss gets kidnapped in broad daylight. Yeah, this sounds kosher, so far.

  Next, Kennard does nothing for the entire day, except ask his mother for a million dollars in cash so he can pay off a ransom he received in a text message. Moomah, who spends most of her days in the Land of Oz, treks down to her massive safe-deposit box and extracts a million dollars in fifty dollar bills. Kennard takes the money home as if it were groceries, and leaves it on the dining room table. Boo, Kennard’s daughter, stops by to visit and ends up protecting what she hopes to be her money someday. The rest of the family somehow gets wind of the withdrawal and begins to circle their wagons.

  I come on the scene, bring an unwelcome friend named Oland and we sit around eating junk food while waiting for the instructions from the kidnappers, or for one of Schnook’s body parts to appear on our doorstep like a UPS package. The ransom for Schnooks, which is to take place in the midst of one million people viewing a fireworks extravaganza, isn’t a switch, but a subsequent kidnapping of the drop-off man, Kennard. He disappears. Schnooks never surfaces. Oland is stumped. Hours go by. Kennard reappears in a Bozo the Clown suit.

  The following day, Schnooks wakes up on an “L” station bench, and Tiffany discovers Moomah is not merely down a million bucks for Schnook’s recovery, but also a jewel encrusted necklace that makes the million in cash seem like chump change. In the evening I meet my first real live gigolo and the next morning Kennard’s condo is shaken, not stirred. Now, what is wrong with this picture?

  Everything.

  CHAPTER 16

  I never trust a banker wearing a hat, fishermen, women who kickbox, how much the clerk tells me I save each week at the grocery store; and any appraisal of a house, a car, an antique, or piece of jewelry. An item is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it, when you want to sell it.

  I’m at a point where my life has become especially difficult. Thanks to their being unceremoniously kicked out of horse camp, I have two highly impressionable pre-teenage children in tow, plus a naïve, sheltered, quasi-adult whom I must incessantly chaperone thanks to the demands of her father, who just happens to be my boss. If I try to convince them not to come along, the only course of action that will silence them is to spring for a shopping spree at the mall, and I can’t afford to consent to that. If I ask them to stay in the car while I drop in on some of my more unsavory “associates,” they won’t stand for it either. By taking them along, I will expose them to the seedy underbelly of life, which I come in contact with on a daily basis. Am I being fair to them by putting negative dents in their positive upbringing? What a dilemma. So, I am forced to investigate this case with this unsolicited trio of “women” tagging along. For someone who already hates his job, having to add camp counselor to his job description, causes me to hate it all the more.

  We enter the Once A Pawn A Time pawn shop, located beneath the Blue Line “L” tracks on the Northwest side of town. During rush hour, every eight minutes the store shakes to a level of seven on the Richter scale.

  “Is Freddy in?” I ask the creepy clerk.

  “No,” he emphatically informs me.

  “Tell him Sherlock’s here to see him.”

  As the creepy clerk passes through a door into the back of the shop, I turn around to see my loyal wards checking out the merchandise. Tiffany peers down into the jewelry cases, Care stands dumbfounded at the number of musical instruments hanging on the walls, and Kelly can’t wait to start trying on the hundreds of different timepieces. My oldest has a penchant for telling time on expensive watches.

  The creepy clerk re-emerges from behind the curtain. “You can go back.”

  I don’t bother to inform the group that I will return soon, they’re all too busy wishfully thinking, but I do give the clerk instructions: “The younger ones aren’t allowed to buy anything.”

  “They are if they have cash,” he tells me.

  The back room of the pawn shop is more cluttered than the front. Freddy the Fencer, as he is affectionately known in the underworld of maligned merchandise, is seated in his wheelchair, jeweler’s loupe in his eye, examining a diamond ring. “You just don’t see the quality you used to see in my better days, Sherlock.”

  “Freddy, how you feeling?”

  “If you take away the arthritis, bursitis, conjunctivitis and in-grown toe nails, I’d feel great.”

  Freddy has been in the business before Chicago’s own homeboy Tony Accardo, a.k.a. “Big Tuna,” was a minnow.

  I pull up a chair and sit across from the old man. He claims he’s retired, but I know better.

  “How’s business?” I ask.

  “Terrible.”

  “I need a favor.”

  “Sherlock, you always need a favor.”

  “At least I’m consistent.”

  I pull out Mona’s picture of Moomah’s necklace and lay it in front of Freddy.

  He picks it up slowly, as if to assess its weight, and examines it with his non-louped eye.

  “What do you think?”

  “I didn’t know you were an artist.”

  “I’m not.”

  “This a rendition of the real thing?”

  “Yep.”

  Freddy takes the loupe out of his eye. “They really don’t make ΄em like this anymore.”

  A train passes over us. I notice. Freddy doesn’t. When the shaking stops, I continue. “In shekels, Freddy, what’s it worth?”

  “It’s hard to tell from a picture.”

  “Use your imagination.”

  The hunched-over man tries his best to straighten up. “As is, or in pieces?”

  “You pick.”

  The octogenarian puts the loupe back into his left eye; evidently feeling more comfortable with it on than off. “Nobody moves stuff like this anymore. Whoever steals it removes the diamonds and puts them out for bid. They cut out the jewels and send those overseas. Whatever gold is left they take to one of these new-fangled gold stores and exchange it for cash. Damn stores don’t have to report on the items like we do. It ain’t fair, Sherlock. There ought to be a law.”

  “Price, Freddy.”

  Freddy is slouched down, but finally straightens up slowly. “Did you steal it?”

  “No.”

  “Did you buy it?”

  “Me? I can’t afford Crackerjacks, much less the ring inside the box.”

  Freddy continues to admire Mona’s work.

  “Best guess, Freddy.”

  High side, maybe four. Don’t quote me, it’s only a picture. I can’t tell the quality of the stones, until I feel them in my hands.”

  “Four grand that’s all?”

  “Millions, you idiot.”

  “I knew that. I was just testing you, Freddy.”

  “Who’s the victim?”

  “Moomah Richmond.”

  “Excellent source.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “Her stuff pops up once in a while.”

  “It does?”

  “Again, don’t quote me on that.” Freddy hands Mona’s picture back to me.

  “One more favor?”

  “Sherlock, you ask for more favors than a made man holding a marker.”

  “Just let me know if the real thing pops up
.”

  “If this piece lands in my palm, you can find me out buying all new body parts.”

  I carefully fold the rendering of the necklace and turn to exit. “Nice to see you again, Freddy. Take care.”

  “I’m too old to take care.”

  Out in front, I find Care blowing into a trumpet, Kelly with six or seven watches on her wrist, and Tiffany modeling engagement rings. “Let’s go, folks.”

  “Dad, can I learn to play the trumpet?” Care tries to puff out a note.

  “Get that thing out of your mouth.”

  “Dad, I need a new watch,” Kelly tells me. “This Rolex is nice.”

  “Put it back.”

  Tiffany models a large diamond for my personal benefit. “A heartbreak for one is a sale item for another.”

  _____

  Since the kids have already been exposed to a crooked pawn shop, I might as well ruin their upbringing even further. We enter the West Side Police Station where Oland has his office. In the front foyer, where the sergeant sits at a raised desk, six ho’s and three pimps are being released after a slimy lawyer, who wears pajama tops under his blue and gold plaid sport coat, finishes counting out a stack of Hamilton’s.

  “Don’t get mixed in with the overnight guests,” I tell the girls, who stare at the motley rabble passing by. My daughters grab hold of my hands for protection. Tiffany grabs hold of Kelly’s hand.

  “Are they making one of those hip-hop videos here?” Care asks.

  “No, stupid,” Kelly responds.

  “They’re casting for the next Jerry Springer show,” Tiffany explains.

  “Hey, Sherlock, long time no see,” the desk sergeant says with a wide smile.

  “Not long enough, George. Not long enough,” I say with a smirk on my face. “Is Oland in?”

  George watches me pass by with my three girls in tow. “Take your kids to work day?”

  I don’t answer. What would be the point?

  We go through a door and enter the squad room.

  Detectives sip coffee, chomp on donuts, pick their fingernails, and sift through stacks of files littering their desks. Two people in handcuffs are being questioned and two people sit as their information is typed into a computer. The floors are filthy, the walls need paint, and the metal furniture is dented. There are blackened splotches on the floor and walls. Unless you were a cop or ER nurse, you wouldn’t recognize them as blood. The whole scene is loud, unstructured, messy, and fascinating to my girls.