by K. K. Beck
“Did she ever say anything about a radio program or about this Teresa, Queen of the Night, business?” asked MacNab.
“No. There must be some mistake.”
“Is there anyone who might know what her connection was? Any friends or other relatives?”
“Not really. I’m afraid she outlived a lot of her friends.”
“There’s the guy upstairs,” said Sara, pointing to the ceiling.
“Yes. This nice young man in an apartment on the second floor. He ran a lot of errands for her.”
“Like maybe her banking?” said Lukowski.
“That’s right. We met him just this morning. He was on his way to work. He was awfully sweet.”
“What’s this guy’s name?” asked MacNab.
“I didn’t get his name. Aunt Teresa wrote us about him, how he brought her groceries and stuff. She just called him the nice young man upstairs. Her legs would get so swollen it was hard for her to walk very far.” The detectives were silent, and Janet Wright said defensively, “Naturally, I would have done more for her if I’d lived here in town.”
Lukowski handed her a card. “When you see this guy again, have him call us. It’s very important.”
Outside the building, the detectives checked the names next to the doorbells. A C. Weeb lived on the second floor.
“Isn’t that one of those nerds we ran into at the radio station?” asked MacNab.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The next morning, Alice was horrified to see that someone had been in her cubicle and gone through the papers there. She had definitely put a pile of leads right next to the phone. Now the pile was on the other side of the desk. The Rolodex was facing the wrong way, and the box of Ed Costello’s papers looked different—as if everything had been taken out and put back in reverse order.
She immediately suspected Judy. Perhaps the surly receptionist wasn’t content with simply eavesdropping on phone calls. Alice was highly indignant. It was unreasonable to be expected to work under these conditions. Now that she had made a couple of sales, she felt bold enough to complain to Caroline, but Caroline, as usual, was nowhere to be found.
Maybe she should confront Judy directly. She glanced over the cubicle wall toward the reception desk and the back of Judy’s head. No, she realized she didn’t have the stomach for it. Judy had a ruthless, self-righteous quality that scared her. Maybe she should do something sneaky, like smear rancid bacon fat all over Judy’s vegetarian organic lunch.
Alice told herself to calm down and not to sink to the depths in which Judy herself apparently wallowed. Instead, she walked slowly over to the receptionist’s desk and said with a carefully contrived puzzled expression, “You know, Judy, I actually believe someone has gone through my desk. My papers seem to have been shifted around slightly.”
“Why are you telling me about it?” said Judy angrily. “Do you think I would do something like that?”
“Of—of course not,” stammered Alice. “It just seems weird.”
“Listen,” said Judy with her usual irritating self-importance. “That Detective Lukowski is coming around to talk to some of the staff in about an hour. I may have some important information to discuss with him, and I’ll be conferring with him privately. Could you get the phones?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have time,” said Alice. “Why don’t you turn on the machine?” She knew exactly how people like Judy operated. Help them out with their job once as a favor, and next thing you knew they expected it all the time.
Alice was excited. The detective in charge of Ed Costello’s case was coming around in person.
Just then Caroline walked into the office with a seedy-looking man in a frayed and battered tweed jacket. “Here it is,” she said to him. “My baby, KLEG.” She gestured at the pathetic surroundings, then introduced Alice and Judy. “This is Jeffrey Fleming, a very important photographer with a fabulous show coming up.”
“Wow,” said Jeffrey, holding his hands in front of his eyes in a little square and squinting. “I wouldn’t mind taking some pictures here.” He had the yellowing plastic busts of Bach and Beethoven and the dying plants in his sights, then swung around to frame Judy and the dented file cabinet behind her.
“Jeffrey usually takes pictures of decrepit trailer parks and emotionally disturbed people,” explained Caroline, unconscious of any irony. “I brought him in so someone can interview him. I guess Daphne is on the air now, right?”
Judy compressed her mouth into a disapproving line. “You’d better speak to Phil about any schedule changes,” she said. “After all, he is the program director. And we do publish our listener guide. It won’t have anything about an interview with him.” She pointed at the interloper.
“I’m sure we can arrange all this with Phil,” said Caroline, taking Jeffrey Fleming by the hand and leading him away. “Follow me, darling.”
Judy leaped at the phone on her desk and jabbed at a few buttons. “Phil! Caroline’s coming your way with her new squeeze,” she whispered hoarsely into the phone. “She wants Daphne to do a live interview with him right now. Hang in there. Don’t let her push you around. Remember, you’re the program director, not her!” She replaced the receiver with a gimlety look of triumph.
* * *
Daphne, well into Debussy’s La Mer, drifted into the reception area. She was carrying a lipstick and a compact. “God!” she said. “What happened in the bathroom?”
“I don’t know,” said Judy angrily. “I’m not in charge of the bathroom.” Alice remembered that Franklin had suggested she clean it.
“The window’s broken, and there’s glass all over the floor. The mirror’s still intact, though.” She grabbed a tissue from Judy’s desk and blotted her scarlet lips.
“Tell Caroline,” said Judy. “Oh, by the way, she wants you to interview her new boyfriend. Some kind of a photographer. Probably another gigolo after her money. He’s definitely younger.”
“What happened to her old boyfriend?” said Daphne. “That puppeteer?”
“Last I overheard, she told him he was too controlling,” said Judy confidentially. “She accused him of treating her like one of his puppets, and then they had a big fight about his getting his junk out of her house. He said he didn’t have anyplace to put it because he had to move back in with his mom in her little retirement apartment. I actually heard him start to sob. You know, a little catch in the throat? So Caroline left all his stuff in her driveway with a plastic tarp over it, but he claimed that it all got wet anyway, and then—” Judy cut off her report as a tall man with a tanned face and a shock of prematurely white hair came in and presented himself at her desk.
This must be the detective. Alice liked the look of him immediately. He was more attractive than any of the real-life detectives she’d seen on her beloved Cops or testifying on Court TV .
Judy gave Detective Lukowski the nicest—perhaps the only—smile Alice had ever seen her produce. “Oh, hi,” she said. “I guess you’ll want to talk to me.”
“Um, well actually,” he said, “I was hoping to have a word with Carl Weeb first.”
“Carl?” Judy looked surprised and disappointed.
“Are you the detective trying to find out whatever happened to poor Ed?” said Daphne, favoring Lukowski with a heavy-lidded vampy look. “I’m Daphne Hamilton. Perhaps you’ve heard me on the air. I’ll take you to Carl.” He followed her swaying hips down the corridor toward the record library.
Alice resolved to stick around until he finished talking to Carl. She wanted to tell him she thought someone might have broken into the station last night through the bathroom window and gone through Ed Costello’s papers.
* * *
In his law office, Franklin was amusing himself by writing a series of pompous, harassing memos, which he intended to distribute to the KLEG staff in his sister’s absence:
To: All on-air staff
From: Franklin Payne, acting station manager
In future, announcers w
ill spell out the station’s call letters. KLEG sounds like “cleg” which my OED tells me is a horsefly or gadfly (Old Norse: kleggi). Even if the meaning is unknown to most listeners, KLEG pronounced phonetically is not euphonious. I’m well aware that my late mother, whose maiden name was Klegg, named the station after herself, but even she agreed it wasn’t a particularly attractive name. Thank you for your cooperation.
Rereading the memo gave him grim satisfaction, and he launched into his second effort:
I have noticed that announcers are referring to “Ludwig van Beethoven” and “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.” This strikes me as patronizing to our listeners and makes you seem like pretentious little half-educated jerks. I’m sure none of you would want to create such an impression.
For God’s sake, of course it was Ludwig van Beethoven who wrote Beethoven’s Ninth. Who else could it have been, his cousin Fritz Beethoven?
Please use first names only for more obscure composers or—as in the case of the Strausses, for instance—when there are multiple composers of the same last name. When referring to Johann Sebastian Bach, simply say “Bach,” unless of course you mean less important members of the Bach family, such as Johann Christian.
Under no circumstances, as I have heard you do, refer to Haydn (Franz Joseph, not Michael, of course) as “Papa Haydn.”
Feeling that he was on a roll, Franklin began a third memo.
To: All staff
Re: Personal hygiene and beach attire in the workplace.
* * *
Daphne led Lukowski into the record library. “Here’s Carl,” she said. She touched the detective’s elbow and lowered her thickly mascaraed lashes. “I’ll be in the broadcast booth if you need to talk to me,” she said. “Just make sure the On Air sign is off.”
“Fine,” said Lukowski, nodding at Carl, who stared at him through his screen of greasy hair. In the corner of the room an older man seemed to be arguing with a bucktoothed middle-aged woman, while a guy in a beat-up Harris Tweed jacket stood by.
“I’m sorry,” the old guy was saying. “I can’t let management usurp the authority of the programming staff when it comes to what actually goes out over the airwaves.”
“But, Phil,” the woman said, “we need more coverage of the arts in general. That was Mother’s vision. A world-class voice for the cultural life of Seattle.”
The combatants ignored Lukowski. He turned to Carl. “Is there somewhere quiet where we can talk?” he asked.
Carl nodded silently, came out from behind his desk and led Lukowski back down the hall to the break room. His rubber flip-flops made slapping noises on the linoleum.
“What’s up?” he said in a shy little voice, leaning on the old chrome dinette table, his arms crossed defensively.
Lukowski assumed a more aggressive posture, with his hands on his hips. “We’re looking for Teresa, Queen of the Night. Your neighbor, Teresa Hoffman, cashed her checks from KLEG, apparently with your help. What the hell’s going on?”
“Okay, okay,” said Carl nervously. “I’ll try to arrange a meeting. Teresa, Queen of the Night, calls me every couple of days to talk programming. I told her about your card when I found it in Miss Hoffman’s door. Did she get in touch?”
“What’s the deal here anyway?” demanded Lukowski. “You got a phone number for her? An address?”
“Yeah, well, not really. I’ve never actually met her. No one has. She’s really determined to be anonymous. So I fixed it that when I took Miss Hoffman’s Social Security check to the bank, I got her to endorse the KLEG check too, and I cashed it. Then I put the cash in an envelope and mailed it to the real Teresa’s post office box.”
“This doesn’t make any sense at all,” said Lukowski. “How did you get the check in the first place?”
“Teresa collects it. Then mails it to me. Then I get Miss Hoffman to endorse it. Then I send her the cash back.”
“Come on. Give me a break,” said Lukowski.
“I swear to God, it’s true,” said Carl in a defensive whine.
“Now that Teresa Hoffman is dead, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” said Carl. “I’m waiting for the other Teresa to tell me.”
“This is very screwy,” said Lukowski. “Do you have any idea why this individual is so reluctant to come forward?”
“I’ve thought about that a lot,” said Carl pensively. “In fact, she’s kind of hinted she’s in one of those federal protected witness programs. You know. Like she was some Mafia guy’s girlfriend or something.” Carl paused and Lukowski gave him a skeptical look. “Hey, it made sense to me,” said Carl, with the first hint of aggression. “She pronounces Italian really well. She back-announces all those arias beautifully.”
“Oh, really? Listen, when she calls, tell her if she doesn’t come forward, the police will find her. All we want to do is ask her a few questions about Ed Costello.” Lukowski stepped a little closer to Carl, who looked startled and bolted sideways against the edge of the dinette table like a frightened animal.
Lukowski raised his voice a little. “And I advise you to cooperate with us yourself, Mr. Weeb. This is a homicide investigation. We don’t have time to play games. You talk to her and get back to me or Detective MacNab as soon as you speak to her.”
Lukowski thrust another card at Carl, then left the break room fuming. If he couldn’t flush this witness out, he’d have to put someone on a stakeout by the P.O. box for days. The expense would be pretty hard to justify. He didn’t even know if this Teresa had anything of value to contribute to the investigation. All he knew was that she was avoiding him and wasting his time.
He frowned at Judy, who accosted him as soon as he emerged back into the reception area. “I left you a message about Franklin Payne and the escort service,” Judy stage-whispered. Carl Weeb scuttled past them both, his head down, his face obscured once more by his limp hair, and Judy maneuvered Lukowski back into the break room. “Let me tell you all about it.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Well,” said Judy urgently, “Franklin was carrying on, complaining about the station like he always does, and he said now that Ed’s escort service was gone, we’d lost the only profit center we had around here. That sounded to me like he was getting some of the profits.”
“I see,” said Lukowski. “You’re sure he wasn’t just kidding around?”
“Kidding? You mean like a joke?” said Judy with a puzzled frown.
“Yeah,” said Lukowski. “People kid around, you know. To amuse each other.” This woman struck him as less than a million laughs. “Did Mr. Payne sound like he was kidding or joking?”
“I didn’t actually hear him,” answered Judy. “Phil did.”
“We’ll look into it,” said Lukowski. “Now if you’ll excuse me . . .” He strode purposefully toward the door.
Waiting outside the break room this time was yet another employee. He’d noticed her when he came in. She was a sweet-faced, rosy-looking woman.
“If you don’t mind,” she said in a deferential little voice, “there’s something I think you should know. My name is Alice Jordan and—”
“Oh, yeah,” interrupted Lukowski. “You left me a message with the license-plate number of that Corvette. Thanks. We appreciated it.”
Alice Jordan looked thrilled to have been helpful. Behind him, Judy said testily, “What Corvette? What’s this all about?”
Lukowski turned and looked at her for a second, but didn’t bother to answer, then turned his attention back to Alice.
“You see,” began Alice, “I took over for Ed Costello, and I have all his papers on my desk. Last night someone went through them. I believe they gained entry by breaking the bathroom window.”
“Really? Let’s take a look.”
Alice took him into a spartan little bathroom that also seemed to function as a broom closet. Stuffed in with the toilet, sink and medicine cabinet were some mops and brooms, a vacuum cleaner and a gallon of some industrial
cleaning agent. A few mummified rags hung from the exposed elbow pipe beneath the wall-mounted sink. Judging by the look of the KLEG offices, and especially this room, Lukowski surmised that the cleaning equipment didn’t get much of a workout.
There were shards of glass in the sink and all over the floor. The window was clearly big enough to allow someone to get into the building. “Let’s see your desk,” said Lukowski, backing out of the bathroom.
Alice Jordan took him to her cubicle and pointed out that things had been moved around. Lukowski recognized the box of papers. He’d made copies of everything in there before returning it to Franklin Payne.
“Anything missing?”
“I’ve tried to figure that out,” said Alice. Her eyes got wider and she said rather breathlessly, “I thought I shouldn’t go through the papers in case the intruder’s fingerprints were on them. I didn’t want to contaminate the scene.”
Lukowski smiled at her. This woman clearly read a lot of detective stories or true crime books. Even the way she phrased things—“gained entry,” “contaminate the scene”—indicated she was a cop buff. Maybe she was even a genteel version of a cop groupie, a species known to every police officer. “That was smart,” he said.
A smile blossomed on her face. “It occurred to me,” she went on eagerly, “that seeing as Mr. Costello was apparently operating a vice ring, maybe one of the customers might have been looking for any evidence that might reveal his involvement.”
Lukowski thought the same thing. “I’ll get some technicians down here to go over the bathroom and these papers for fingerprints,” he said. He would also compare his photocopies of Ed’s papers with what was still here in the box to see what, if anything, was missing.
Most murders that got solved were solved quickly. This was trickier. It was the kind of case mystery fans and cop buffs like Alice Jordan loved but cops hated. Lukowski hoped that this apparent break-in might get the investigation moving at last.
He leaned toward her and said dramatically, in his best TV detective’s manner, “You better not touch anything here until the boys from the lab can go over it all.” He was rewarded by the look of pure delight on Alice’s face.