The Fruitcake Murders

by Collins, Ace;

  The cop scribbled the room number on the page, tore off the paper, and stuck in his pocket. “Okay, Sister Ann, I’ll get right down there with a team. Where are you right now?”

  “At our kitchen.”

  “What about Joe?” Lane asked.

  “He’s with me.”

  “Let me ask you something,” the cop continued, “and answer it using what you have observed and your own instincts. Could Joe have done it?”

  Her answer was quick and precise, “No.”

  “Then why was he there?”

  “I sent him to deliver a meal to the man who lived in that room,” she explained.

  “So you knew the man?” Lane asked.

  “Yes,” the nun admitted. “He was a retired policeman named Henry Saunders.”

  The fact the victim was one of the city’s veteran cops suddenly made this case even more personal. “Can you and Joe meet me at the hotel in twenty minutes?”

  “We can,” she assured him.

  “Thanks, I will see you soon.”

  Slamming the phone down, Lane jumped up, opened his office door, and looked at those working at the desks in the building’s center room. “Stan, Tyrone, and Lester, we’ve got a body at the Cattlemen’s Hotel, and it’s murder. Let’s grab our gear, get a car, and get out there. I’ll call Doc Miller and tell him to meet us.”

  24

  Saturday, December 21, 1946

  1:05 P.M.

  Lane Walker intently studied the scene in room 233. Except for the location, it looked very similar to one from earlier in the week. As he stood in the door, the homicide cop’s main focus was on a short man in an ill-fitting suit examining the body.

  “What was the cause of death?” the cop asked the coroner.

  Leroy Miller was a fair-skinned balding man, fifty-five, and perhaps a hundred and fifty pounds. His two most dominating characteristics were his deep-set dark brown eyes and his small pug nose.

  “Well, Lane,” Miller began, “logic would tell us that the man was killed when someone plunged that red-handled kitchen knife into his back, but if I told you that I would be making the same mistake as I did the other night with Elrod.”

  “Let me guess,” Lane cut in, “the knife was inserted well after Henry Saunders died.”

  “Yep,” the coroner announced as he pointed to a deep gash on the rear of the victim’s skull. “The back of his head was bashed in with one single blow.”

  Lane pointed to a tin of Jan’s Old World Fruitcake resting on the nightstand. “Could that have been our murder weapon?”

  “Based on the paint flecks I’m seeing in the victim’s hair,” Miller noted, “I’d bet on it.”

  Lane walked across the room and looked at a half-empty glass of a brown liquid sitting beside the fruitcake. “Stan, I want Morelli to test that glass for us. If my hunch is right, there will be some kind of knockout drug in it.”

  “Got it, Lieutenant.”

  “And we need to dust this room for prints,” Lane ordered, “and the can too.”

  Stan nodded before offering an observation. “It will be the first time this joint has been dusted in a long time. What a horrible place to die.”

  “It’s a worse place to live,” the lieutenant noted. Turning his attention back to the victim, Lane signaled for a tall, thin older cop to join him. “Tyrone, you’ve been on the force a long time, did you know this guy?”

  “Almost forty years,” Tyrone Jordan noted, “and, yes, I knew this man. His name was Henry Saunders.”

  As Lane studied Saunders’s unshaven face and dirty, alcohol-stained tan slacks; torn, gray flannel shirt; and scuffed shoes, Jordan filled him in on the life story of the very dead cop. It was not a happy tale.

  “He joined the force before World War I. As I remember it, he served about thirty years and never did much other than walk a beat. He lost his job because he had a problem with booze and it got so bad it cost him his family, too. None of us could help him either. He just had to have the stuff. Said it was the only way he could sleep at night. Based on all the empty bottles tossed over in the corner, I’d say he’d been sleeping a great deal.”

  Lane shook his head, “Could he have had any connection to Ethan Elrod?”

  “I don’t see how,” Jordan replied. “The difference in the two men is like day and night. I’d be shocked if they’d ever met. You ready to get the body back to Morelli?”

  “Yeah,” the Lieutenant answered, “I’ll talk to the nun and the guy named Joe and then meet you back at the station.”

  Lane exited the small, dirty room and stepped into the dank hallway. Waiting for him was a disheveled man who looked to be somewhere between forty and fifty, a small nun, her blue eyes shining in spite of what she’d witnessed, and a very familiar reporter.

  “Tiffany,” he jabbed more than asked, “how did you find out about this little party?”

  “I have my sources,” she assured him. “I had a chance to peek in the door, and this sure looks familiar.”

  “I’ll fill you in after I visit with these two,” Lane announced with a frown.

  The lieutenant looked toward the man who found the body. Joe was dressed in all black, about six-foot four, his thick hair partially covering his ears and collar. If he was nervous, he didn’t show it. His dark eyes were clear and focused and his thin lips relaxed. “So you discovered the body.”

  “I was bringing him lunch.” Joe’s voice was so strong and steady the cop figured this wasn’t his first encounter with death.

  “And you didn’t touch anything?” Lane asked.

  “I knocked,” the man explained, “and when he didn’t answer, I let myself in. I found him the same way he is now.”

  “Was this your first visit to Mr. Saunders’s room?”

  “No, I’ve been coming here bringing him meals for a couple of months. So, I was here two times a day almost every day. In fact, I was here last night about six.”

  “And he was fine then?” the cop inquired.

  “He was inebriated,” Joe explained.

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “I sat with him for a while as he ate. He knew me well enough to realize I carry a Bible with me, so he asked me to read the story of Christmas. I read a few chapters out of the Gospel of Luke and left when he fell asleep in that same chair.”

  Lane glanced to the nun. She was a small woman with a gentle but strong face. “How well did you know the victim?”

  “He’d been coming to our kitchen for about two years,” she said, her voice clear and inviting. “About two months ago, he got to the point where he had problems walking that far. So, I had Joe bring him his meals. I’d come and visit with him about once a week.”

  “Did he have any enemies?” the cop asked.

  She sadly smiled, “There was only one I know of.”

  A suddenly hopeful Lane leaned closer, “Who was that?”

  The nun nodded, “Himself. He never talked much about his past, but it was easy to see that it haunted him. Maybe it was because he was an alcoholic who couldn’t stop drinking, maybe it was that he lost his family, or perhaps it was something else he just couldn’t get over, but whatever it was, it constantly ate at him. At least now he has found some peace.”

  The cop nodded, “His finding peace is not bringing any into my life. Thank you for your time.”

  Sister Ann reached out and took Lane’s hands and whispered, “Merry Christmas and may God bless you.”

  As Joe and the nun walked down the stairs, Tiffany stepped to the cop’s side and posed a question. “You can’t have twin killings and no connection. It can’t be a copycat as no one has printed how Elrod was killed. So, an alcoholic former cop and the city’s most beloved leader have to be tied together in some way.”

  “But how?” Lane demanded.

  Lane knew even the talkative blonde would not try to answer his question. In fact, the only people who might have a clue were either dead or the killer.

  25

&nb
sp; Saturday, December 21, 1946

  3:05 P.M.

  With two identical murders that on the surface had seemingly no connection, it was time to put the “Case of the Fake Santas” on the back burner and dig through what was now becoming the top story of the holiday season and perhaps the most explosive series of murders to hit Chicago since the days of Al Capone. So, while Lane turned to Morelli for possible clues, Tiffany Clayton opted to check out Sister Ann’s soup kitchen.

  The charity operation was not much to look at. Located in the front part of an old factory building, the dark dining room consisted of little more than forty wooden tables and two hundred chairs that had been salvaged from a closed stockyard café. The walls were brick, the floors wooden and sagging, and half the building’s windowpanes were covered with plywood. The nun’s staff consisted of Joe and four older men who cleaned up the place and served the meals. For those few hours of labor each day, Sister Ann let the men eat as much as they wanted and sleep in a bunkroom on the second floor.

  Unlike many charity kitchens there were no sermons before the meals and those who entered came and went as they pleased. The only rule, clearly spelled out on a three-by-three-foot hand-scrawled sign, was there was no alcohol allowed on the premises.

  A quick inspection revealed the food served at Sister Ann’s was hardly fine cuisine. Depending upon donations from grocery stores, meals consisted of baloney sandwiches on day-old bread, some watery soup, and weak black coffee. Yet, as unappealing as it seemed to the reporter, for the men and a few women who lived on the streets and had nothing, the kitchen was a lifesaver and the meals were as much appreciated as the one she’d had just two nights before at J. H. Ireland’s Oyster House. And this place of charity and hope, a light in one of the darkest sections of the city, was open three hundred and sixty-five days a year simply because of the drive of one small, determined woman.

  As Tiffany sat at a corner table and watched the nun work, the reporter tried to get a line on Sister Ann. Hidden by her habit and its hood, the woman could have been anywhere from twenty-five to fifty, but, even though only a small portion of her face showed, what was clearly obvious in her sparkling eyes and ready smile was her passion for the work. It seemed she knew each of the sad souls who wandered into her establishment. They had no more entered when she called out their names and asked them a question about their lives. As Tiffany observed the nun interacting with those she described as “the least of these,” the reporter made a mental note to do a feature on the woman when this fruitcake mess was put to bed. Perhaps this was a bigger story than even the Santas, and with a bit of publicity maybe this mission could be ungraded and expanded.

  At three-thirty p.m., after hugging a small man, his face twisted as if in pain and his movements almost spastic in nature, Sister Ann finally made her way over to where the reporter was sitting. Tiffany allowed the woman to catch her breath before noting, “I can tell you love what you do.”

  The nun nodded. “Caring for those no one cares for is not a job for everyone.” She turned her eyes from the reporter to the half dozen men sitting in various places in the room. “Old Sam over there is from Mississippi. He was injured in a railroad accident a dozen years ago. He came north looking for someone who’d hire a man with a bum leg, but sadly he didn’t find much. He sleeps in alleys and digs through trash for things to sell to pay for clothes. He might not look it, but under all that dirt and grime he’s as honest as the day is long.”

  The nun subtly shifted her gaze to a small, thin man dressed in a coat four sizes too large. “That’s Elmo, he’s from Chicago, he grew up on the South Side, he’s a good guy when he’s sober, but he just can’t stop drinking. Thus, he can never hold a job for long.”

  Tiffany glanced to the man the nun had just hugged, “I guess he has a story, too.”

  “They all do,” came the quick reply, “but he’s a pet project and has been one for a long time. Because of a childhood accident, Si’s mind is warped, he doesn’t always think straight and he has fits. You don’t have to worry about him, he’s not dangerous, but with the crazy things he says and the wild look in his eyes, he scares people. Like all the others, he’s just looking for a place to fit in and be accepted.” She shook her head. “That’s the real problem. These people just don’t have anywhere they do fit in. As a society, we have standards, and folks have to meet those standards to be accepted. Thankfully, God doesn’t have standards that have to be met to be considered a part of His family.”

  The reporter nodded, “And what’s your story?”

  “I was orphaned,” she explained, “and nuns raised me through my teen years. That was likely what saved me from a pretty bleak life. So I guess it’s just natural I look out for those who weren’t as fortunate or blessed as I was.” Sister Ann, her blue eyes misting, tapped her fingers on the table and added, “Life is not fair. The good don’t always win and when they don’t, when they get ready to give up, they need someone just like I needed someone twenty years ago. That’s why this place is here.”

  The conversation died for a few moments as both women studied those coming in and going out of the soup kitchen. It was a sobering scene. In the midst of so many spending so much on holiday gifts, there were so many others who had nothing. Finally, pulling her eyes from hopeless faces back to the nun, the reporter remembered her reason for coming and posed her first meaningful question.

  “What about the man who was killed? Did you know him well?”

  The nun shrugged, “As well as I do any of the others who come in here. Mr. Saunders never opened up much. About all I uncovered was that he used to be a cop who fell upon hard times. I just assumed his life was ruined by his battle with the bottle. Of course, there’s usually something else that drives men to drown themselves in booze, but whatever that was he never shared it with me.”

  “I know this will sound a bit off the wall,” Tiffany continued, “but did you ever meet Ethan Elrod?”

  Sister Ann smiled. “He used to come in at least once a week.”

  “Really?” The reporter’s tone revealed her shock.

  “He was one of my biggest donors,” she explained. “He could have mailed his gifts to us but for some reason always brought them in person. I’m not sure why. He didn’t interact with anyone but Joe and me, and the look on his face showed he received no joy from his visits, but he kept coming back anyway.”

  “So,” Tiffany cut in, “you didn’t know him before you opened the kitchen?”

  “Not that I remember,” she admitted, “his and my social circles are very different, and, as Elrod was a Methodist, I wouldn’t have run into him at church. I guess he just had a soft place in his heart for people like this. He did tell me once that he was poor as a kid and the Salvation Army had served him a few meals when times were really tough.”

  “Do you remember,” Tiffany asked, “If he ever talked to Saunders?”

  She shook her head, “As I said, Mr. Elrod didn’t really mingle with the folks who came through those doors. He pretty much sat where we are sitting and talked to either Joe or me. In fact, he never stayed more than fifteen minutes.” She smiled. “He did have one funny habit.”

  “What’s that?”

  Sister Ann shrugged, “Don’t understand why, but he wouldn’t leave without praying with me.”

  “Anything specific?” the reporter queried.

  “Not really,” the nun answered, “he just wanted me to ask the Lord to forgive him for his sins. When I assured him that they had been forgiven, he always left seeming to be feeling better.”

  “Sister Ann . . .” Tiffany began

  The nun cut her off with a whimsical look and a wave of her hand and asked, “Are you a Catholic?”

  “No,” the reporter admitted.

  “Then why don’t we just treat this as two women talking to each other? You just call me Ann.”

  “Okay, Ann,” Tiffany agreed. “I feel there has to be a connection between Elrod’s and Saunders’s murders. I
can’t fully explain why—the police are asking the press to hold back certain details about the deaths in order to dig a bit deeper into the motives and their bank of suspects—but my guess is that the two victims had to have known each other. Are you sure they didn’t meet and talk here?”

  The nun didn’t reply. Instead she looked toward the ser-ving line and waved. A few seconds later, Joe laid down a soup ladle, stepped around the counter, strolled over to the table, and sat down.

  “You remember Joe?” the nun asked. “He was with me at the hotel.”

  “Yes,” Tiffany assured her. “I do remember him.”

  “Then ask him the question you just asked me. He knows these men as well as, if not better than, I do.” The nun looked toward the man and announced, “This is Tiffany . . . what was your last name again?”

  “Clayton.”

  “Tiffany Clayton,” Sister Ann continued. “She is a reporter with The Chicago Star and would like to ask you a couple of questions.”

  Tiffany turned her face toward the middle-aged man dressed in black clothes. Though he was a bit untidy, he still carried himself with a sense of dignity that she hadn’t noted on the other men and women who had slipped into the soup kitchen.

  “Joe,” the reporter said after catching the man’s eye, “did Ethan Elrod and the man whose body you discovered today know each other? Did they ever talk?”

  “No,” Joe quickly answered. “I don’t even remember them ever looking at each other.” He paused and rubbed his mouth, “Mr. Elrod was a fine man. He spent so much of his life trying to do good things, and I think the burdens of his job weighed on him. Meanwhile, Saunders was just a lost cause. He really didn’t want any help. His desire was for absolution.”

  “Forgiveness for what?” the reporter demanded, all the while wondering why the man had used a fifty-cent word in describing the now-dead cop.

  “He never said,” Joe replied. After glancing toward the door and watching a bent, elderly woman dressed in a blue coat and using a tattered blanket as a scarf enter the front door, he pushed his chair back and stood. “I need to get back to the counter. Betsy is going to want some soup.”