The False-Hearted Teddy

by John J. Lamb

  “I love you, too. Is there really any point in me telling you to be careful?” Ash tried to sound light-spirited, but there was an undertone of wistfulness.

  “I like hearing it…and I do listen. It’s just that things seem to happen to me.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “And I hope you’ve also noticed how much I love you. Now, go back downstairs to the teddy bear show.”

  “But the reporters—”

  “Are going to be leaving there very shortly to come here for a press conference. Promise me that you’ll try to relax and enjoy yourself with all the bears.”

  “And you’ll be here as quickly as possible?”

  “Just as soon as I can get a talking Pomeranian to come here to take over the case.”

  Hanging up, I hobbled along the aisle between the desks to a cramped office where Mulvaney and Delcambre were working themselves into a fairly credible imitation of the Battle of Guadalcanal. A black plastic nameplate on the door said it was Mulvaney’s workplace and the first thing I noticed was the small and lovely Tiffany-style leaded-glass lamp on the desk. The lamp shade was a rich mosaic of pastel-colored wildflower bouquets and looked as out of place on the stark and utilitarian desk as a DVD player in a hearse.

  Next, I looked at the wall to my immediate right, where about a dozen framed color photographs were hanging. All the images featured Mulvaney posing or shaking hands with a bunch of other anonymous people. If my life depended upon it, I couldn’t have identified any of the other folks and that included the guy wearing the Baltimore Orioles baseball team uniform. My guess was that the other people were minor politicians, obscure entertainers, and local TV newscasters—the archetypal big fish in the small ponds. Suddenly, I felt a small spark of pity for the lieutenant, because the pictures told me that she was so insecure and felt so inconsequential that she’d plastered her wall with photos of her brief encounters with a bunch of nonentities, in order to be “somebody.” It also explained why she so desperately craved the spotlight.

  Somebody once wrote that “To know all is to forgive all.” I think that’s mostly nonsense; however, now that I had some notion of what made Mulvaney behave the way she did, I couldn’t find it in my heart to continue to ridicule her. It was like making fun of a cripple—and being a fellow cripple, I know how that feels. At the same time, I don’t want to give you the idea that I was ready to sit around a campfire with her, eating s’mores and singing “Kumbuya.” She’d behaved recklessly by arresting me and committed the unforgivable sin of threatening my wife. I didn’t like Mulvaney and never would, but as long as she believed I was intent on destroying her career—and therefore, her life—we wouldn’t get anywhere.

  I guess I’d been gathering wool, because I realized that the argument had stopped and Mulvaney and Delcambre were watching me. I said, “I know things are a mess, but what do you do when life hands you lemons?”

  “The only thing I hate more than lemonade is advice from get-well cards,” Mulvaney said sourly.

  “I’m not talking about making lemonade. You permanently stop the flow of lemons by getting a backhoe and digging the tree up by the roots.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Look, we got off to a bad start, but that doesn’t mean it has to continue that way. There are three of us. We’re all good homicide detectives. Let’s get some lunch in here and sit down and solve this murder.”

  “But the press conference…”

  “Call it, but they can wait in the lobby until you’re ready to talk to them. In fact, it might work to our advantage if the real killer thinks I’m still under arrest.”

  “The real killer? You told us it was Donna,” said Delcambre.

  “Yeah, and up until I talked with my wife, I thought so, too. Hey, is there anyplace to get decent Chinese takeout here? I love living in the Shenandoah Valley, but it isn’t exactly famous for its Szechuan cuisine.”

  “Chin’s has pretty good food,” Mulvaney offered in a cautiously friendly voice. “It’s just down the street.”

  “And if this is a real detective bureau, I’ll bet you have their menu and one from every takeout and delivery restaurant in a five-mile radius.”

  “They’re tacked to a bulletin board in the squad room.”

  “Then let’s eat and get to work.”

  Mulvaney telephoned the BCPD’s Public Information Officer to announce the impending news conference to the media outlets, while Delcambre went to get lunch. Thirty-five minutes later we were seated around Mulvaney’s desk and the air was redolent with the aroma of spicy food. Mulvaney and Delcambre were eating with plastic forks while I used chopsticks for the first time since leaving San Francisco. The food was excellent and hot enough to be considered a violation of the Geneva Convention rules prohibiting chemical assault, which is exactly the way I love it. As we ate, I brought them up to speed on what Donna had told me. When I got to the part about Jennifer stealing the teddy bears and selling them at a craft fair, both detectives gaped at me in disbelief.

  Delcambre dropped his fork into the cardboard box containing shrimp lo mein. “That’s so sick, I just lost my appetite.”

  “Yeah, and isn’t it funny that Tony didn’t mention that part of the story? The only thing he told us was that Donna broke off her friendship with Jennifer because she was envious of how well they were doing with the angel bears,” said Mulvaney.

  “What else did he say?” I speared a chunk of Szechuan shredded beef and popped it in my mouth.

  “Not much. He lawyered up right after we found the sabotaged inhaler in his room. But you don’t think he’s the killer, do you?”

  “You talked with him. Unless the guy is periodically channeling the spirit of Albert Einstein, does he impress you as being bright enough to have come up with such a sophisticated murder weapon?”

  “No. What made you believe Donna might have done it?”

  “Because she was in the Swifts’ room last night during the cocktail reception.” I wiped some perspiration from my scalp and snared another piece of blistering-hot meat. “God, this food is great.”

  “I’ll take your word for it, because it’s making my eyes water just being in the same room with that stuff. So, what made you change your mind about Donna?” said Mulvaney.

  “Part of that’s going to depend on what your evidence people found in the Swifts’ room. Did it look like the maid had cleaned before you guys got there?”

  “No.”

  “Then they should have found a color picture of Donna’s little boy. More than likely, it was in the trash.”

  “The CSI team is still there. I’ll call and see.” Delcambre grabbed the phone and began pressing numbers.

  I used the chopsticks to push some steamed rice into the fiery sauce and braced myself for another bite. “By the way, where is Donna?”

  Mulvaney grimaced. “At the hospital. She started hyperventilating so badly that she got chest pains and someone decided she was having a heart attack. I’ve got no idea of when they’re going to release her.”

  “The same hospital where they took Jennifer?”

  “Yeah. It’s ironic, now that you mention it.”

  “And for sheer weirdness, how about this: ‘breathe,’ which Jen couldn’t do and Donna is having trouble doing, is an anagram for ‘the bear.’”

  Mulvaney looked over at me with arched eyebrows. “You’re a very strange guy.”

  “It’s been remarked.”

  After about a half-minute of conversation, Delcambre hung up. “There was a photo in the waste basket that’d been torn up into little pieces, but it looks as if it was a picture of a young boy.”

  “And that’s why I don’t think it was Donna. She told me she went into the room to drop off that picture to remind Jen that her success was the result of having betrayed a friend and committing the next best thing to grave robbery. The photo corroborates her story.”

  “Because if her actual purpose was to sabotage Jennifer’s inh
aler, the last thing she’d do is leave a piece of evidence that would lead the cops directly to her,” said Delcambre.

  “Precisely.”

  “So if it wasn’t Tony or Donna…or you”—Mulvaney paused to give me a faint sardonic grin—“we’re back to square one.”

  “Which is your star witness, Todd Litten,” I said.

  Realizing her partner had told me about the police interview with Todd, Mulvaney shot Delcambre a hard look and then said, “Why him?”

  “I’d love to pretend I’m being brilliant, but it’s simply because we’re running out of innocent people to suspect.” I gave her a crooked smile. “But the question of Todd brings us to one of the lynchpins of this case: Access to the hotel rooms—first, the Swifts’ room to sabotage the inhaler and plant the evidence and then, later, ours. Now, we know that there were a total of three card keys issued for room seven-forty-six.”

  The forkful of tangerine chicken stopped just short of Mulvaney’s mouth. “We knew that. How did you?”

  “As long as we’re getting along so well, I suppose it’s time to tell you that I kind of falsely identified myself as a Baltimore PD homicide detective to the hotel clerk. I had to find out if and when another card key was issued and that’s what led me to Donna.”

  Delcambre chuckled. “Now it makes sense. The desk clerk copped a major attitude and told us that she’d already given the information to another detective. We were wondering who the hell Detective Callahan was.”

  “That’d be me.”

  “As in ‘Dirty Harry’ Callahan?”

  “It seemed cute at the time.”

  Mulvaney slowly put the food in her mouth, carefully chewed it, and swallowed. Delcambre and I waited for the explosion, but it didn’t come. She carefully dabbed her lips with a paper napkin and then said, “You were telling us about the card keys.”

  “There were three issued. Donna said she threw hers away last night, which means some lucky cops get to search the hotel dumpsters in the rain. In the meantime, can we account for the other two key cards?”

  Mulvaney and Delcambre stared at each other and I could see that they were silently asking each other if they could remember whether they’d seen the key cards.

  “Let me go back to the holding cell and get Tony’s property envelope,” said Delcambre, standing up and heading for the door.

  “Jennifer’s purse was still in the room. And I’ll get a squad car to bring it over here from the hotel,” said Mulvaney, grabbing for the phone.

  “And I hate to be a pest, but can they bring my cane, too, please?”

  “Who’re you kidding, Lyon? I’ve known you less than half a day and I can tell that you love being a pest,” Delcambre called as he left the office.

  “You really shouldn’t believe everything my wife says about me.”

  I gathered up the food containers and looked for a trash can.

  Mulvaney said, “For God’s sake, please take that stuff out of here. The fumes from your lunch are like being pepper-sprayed.”

  There was a break room just across the corridor. I dumped the rubbish there and went back to the office. Delcambre returned a couple of minutes later with a large and slightly bulging manila envelope. He dumped the contents onto the desktop. There were car keys, a cell phone, a handful of coins, emergency provisions in the way of a bag of peanut butter M&M’s, and an overstuffed and shabby-looking gray nylon wallet.

  Delcambre opened the billfold and removed the paper currency. “Just so there aren’t any questions later on, I see a total of one, two…nine whole dollars.”

  “Yeah, he and Bill Gates were going to have dinner together later tonight,” I said.

  “And we have a driver’s license and a credit card, and a credit card, and a credit card.” Delcambre tossed each item onto the table as he spoke. “And a credit card, and a health insurance card, a gym ID card, another credit card, and I believe this is what we’re looking for: a Maritime Inn card key.”

  Mulvaney took the card and put it into a separate evidence envelope. “There’s the first one.”

  While we waited for the purse to be delivered, I went to the restroom. I was returning to the office when a young uniformed cop in a dripping wet yellow rain jacket slipped past me. He was carrying a rain-spattered brown grocery-sized evidence bag in one hand and my cane in the other.

  I said, “Whoa there, son. Ginger Rogers and I are going dancing tonight, so I need my cane.”

  The officer handed me the cane and continued on to the office. By the time I got there, Jennifer’s purse was on Mulvaney’s desk and my stomach did the sort of nasty flip-flop that’s like the sudden onset of seasickness. The brown shoulder bag was the one I’d seen Todd Litten reaching into yesterday morning as I’d passed the Cheery Cherub Bears booth. Jennifer’s back was turned to him and her eyes had been closed, so she couldn’t have known he was rifling her purse.

  With a start, I remembered something Donna had told me and realized that her words were far more important than either of us could have guessed at the time. When I’d asked her if she knew who the murderer was, she’d replied something to the effect that it was probably someone else that Jennifer had stabbed in the back. There was only one other person present at the teddy bear show who might fit into that category and I began to wonder if Todd had come to view Jennifer’s refusal to return his love as a stab in the back…or maybe, more appropriately, the heart. Then I realized that I’d completely overlooked a pivotal piece of information, but I kept silent until we confirmed that the key card wasn’t in the purse.

  Mulvaney carefully emptied the purse’s contents out onto the desk. There was an assortment of cheap cosmetics, a tube of skin lotion, another cell phone, and a maroon-colored leather wallet. Mulvaney went through the wallet, but as I now expected, there wasn’t a key card.

  “Nothing,” she said, tossing the wallet onto the table.

  “And the CSI team says that it isn’t in the room either.”

  “So, where did it go?”

  “Actually, I have an idea about that, but I need to use your phone first.”

  Fifteen

  Mulvaney stepped to the side and nodded for me to go behind her desk.

  I sat down, grabbed the phone receiver, and pressed the number for long-distance directory assistance for the 717-area code, which covers south-central Pennsylvania. A computer-generated woman’s voice answered, asked me what number I wanted, and I replied, “The Basingstoke Township Fire Department.”

  I listened as the artificial voice told me that in the event of an emergency I should hang up and dial 911 immediately, which is always helpful advice in the event your house is aflame. Then the computerized operator began reciting a series of telephone numbers and I jotted down the one for the non-emergency line. Disconnecting, I pressed the new number and a real woman answered this time, saying, “Basingstoke Township Police, Fire, and Rescue Dispatch. How can I help you?”

  “Hi, I’m Detective Sergeant Richard Delcambre from the Baltimore City Police, down in Maryland. I’m conducting a murder investigation and I need some information from your agency,” I said, glancing at Delcambre, who was rubbing his temple as if he had a headache.

  “What sort of information, sir?” asked the dispatcher.

  “You have an employee by the name of Todd Litten. He’s an EMT and it’s vitally important that I speak to his supervisor immediately.”

  “Has something happened to Todd?”

  “No ma’am. He’s absolutely fine. It’s just that he tried to assist our murder victim before she died and we need to follow up on a little information before moving on with our inquiries,” I said, figuring the simultaneously misleading and truthful reply would secure me more cooperation than stating point-blank that Litten was about to become a “person of interest” in a homicide investigation.

  “Let me see. Litten…” said the dispatcher. I could hear the quiet clicks of a keyboard being tapped and knew she was consulting a schedule. “He wo
rks for Captain Gallagher and…and that shift is off today.”

  “I know you can’t give me his home phone number, but will you please call Captain Gallagher and ask him to call me at the Baltimore City Police Department as soon as possible? It’s very important.” I waved to Delcambre, shoved a notepad in his direction and silently mouthed, “Write down the number and this extension.”

  “And can I have your name again, sir?” asked the dispatcher.

  “It’s Delcambre.” I spelled the name. “I’m a detective sergeant at the Southeastern District Headquarters.”

  “And your number?”

  I read it off from the notepad. “And will you please call me back to let me know if you couldn’t contact Captain Gallagher? Again, I can’t stress enough how important this is.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Once I disconnected from the call, Delcambre said in an amused tone, “Before we talk about Litten, I’ve got to know: Do you suffer from multi-personality disorder?”

  “No, I just asked the questions that you’d have asked fifteen minutes from now, if we had the time to waste. But if my using your name really bothers you, I’ll be Lieutenant Mulvaney if and when Gallagher calls back.”

  “Do you actually think you could do her voice?”

  “I’d probably sound more like Kathleen Turner after smoking a pack of Camel non-filters, but I’m willing to give it a try.”

  “Can we concentrate on the murder, please?” said Mulvaney. “You’re talking about Todd Litten, the guy who wrote the books that the Swifts sold with the bears, right?”

  “I didn’t know you’d met him,” I said.

  “He was in the hospital waiting room when we got there and volunteered to tell us what happened, up until the point when you and your wife stepped in.”

  “Did he happen to mention where he was while Jennifer was dying?”

  Delcambre said, “He told us that he was so upset and angry over people believing Tony’s insinuations about him having a romantic relationship with Jennifer…and you shoving him aside, that he went upstairs to his room.”