An Exaggerated Murder: A Novel

by Josh Cook

  “You got it, boss.”

  “And you’re scheduled to meet Lola for coffee and a shake soon?”

  “I am.”

  “Keep that schedule,” Trike said. “The diner is a more fuel-efficient place for a materials exchange, it’ll save her cell-phone minutes, and I’ve got to find the hare before I release the dogs.”

  “Sure, boss.”

  “And keep an eye out for the police report when you get back. It’ll be here via bike messenger between three p.m. and five p.m. today.”

  “That’s unusually … precise for this department.”

  “Well, Max, the victim is rich and white, so he’s getting society’s platinum service package, but enough idle banter. Max, phone and FBI,” Trike said, pointing at Max and the phone, “Trike,” he said, pointing at himself, “coffee and brain, directly after which I am going to have a word with The Butler.”

  Max picked up the phone. Trike carried the three-fifths-full carafe into his office and sat down at his desk. He leaned back, put his feet up, and sipped coffee.

  For fifty-three minutes, he analyzed his investigation of the Joyce House. Continuing the processes begun while walking to his car from the house, Trike began to create a psychological profile of Joyce, building a visual list of potential escape routes, and reviewing his mental database of criminals to generate a pattern-of-behavior-crossed-with-known-ability list of potential suspects. For his efforts, along with being almost certain Joyce dropped out of law school, Trike knew where he needed to look next; he needed Joyce’s dirty sheets from The Butler, and, since the FBI wouldn’t let him into the basement, he needed the architecture of the house from Lola.

  Trike picked his feet up off the desk, carried the empty carafe back to the coffee maker, and got on the outside of what was inside the plain black mug.

  Max was on the phone. Trike gestured that he needed to speak with him. Max held up a one-moment finger.

  In the moment, Trike projected all the weapons and wounds that could account for the blood on the carpet onto a massive screen in his brain, blanking out in a hiss of white noise the ones evidence proved impossible.

  “Yeah … just a sec,” Max said to the phone. “Boss?”

  “Sic Lola on the architecture of the house. Blueprints. Records of renovations. Contractors’ contracts. All that stuff. We need to know about all the possible egress from the study. Might give us an idea about what the FBI is up to, as well. And most buildings with a secret door have secret doors.”

  “Architecture … got it. I’ll put a folder together.”

  “And Max?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m passing along an informal greeting to you from The Man with the Facts.”

  “Thanks, boss. Success with The Butler.”

  “And you with the Feds. Catch you later.”

  As he walked to the car, Trike muttered, “… whether through the ill-formed comments of armchair detectives flailing about the chaos of existence for convincing illusions of order, or the string of abductions perpetrated by the man living next to the playground.”

  The full ashtray in Trike’s car was a talisman he was incapable of considering, let alone exorcising.

  The Butler’s house was covered with knitting. Quilts; some patterned in the mathematical abstractions of Mondrian, others more traditional, and one with hand-embroidered squares depicting the settling of the West by the white man. Lace on nearly every flat surface; Nanduti, Irish Crochet, Carrickmacross, Bretonne Needle-Run. There were porcelain dolls with knit dresses, throw-pillows with knit cases, kitchen towels, amigurumi animals. Small-gauge cabled toques. Mittens, gloves, scarves. Even a Mary Tudor in a frame on the wall.

  “I’m sure they would have given me Ritalin or something if I’d grown up today,” The Butler said as Trike’s ass hit the seat. “I was all over the place as a child. Just an explosion running around on two little legs. Knitting was actually my father’s idea. He figured it would be a way for me to use up some of my energy and sit still for more than a minute at a time. It’s the only thing that really ever connected the two of us. You see, the thing about knitting—”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Oh,” The Butler chuckled smally, “sorry. People always ask me about my knitting so I figured—”

  “I don’t give a fuck about your double-loop toe-up feather-and-fan lace socks on your addi turbos.”

  “Oh,” The Butler gasped. “So you’re a knitter too.”

  “No. I’m a genius, I need a fucking cigarette, you never seem to be able to return your library books on time, and I’m here to talk about Joyce.”

  The Butler’s eyes flashed a kind of panic as his brain tried to parse the information Trike fired at him. The library books were upstairs in the bedroom. He settled into a kind of acceptance.

  “Yes,” The Butler sighed. “Joyce then.”

  “I know the kind of stuff you told the cops, so you can skip the formal profile. I want to know what winds his clock. What kind of guy is he? Unusual habits? Tastes? Hobbies? Benign but weird activities domestics can’t help but experience in the due diligent execution of their duties? That kind of stuff.”

  “Well, Mr. Augustine, I’m going to have to disappoint you.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t really know any of those things.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, Mr. Augustine, that I don’t really know any of those things. I’m not sure what else I could mean.”

  “But you would’ve spent your days with him. He doesn’t have a job, so he would have been home most of the day. Even if you didn’t wipe his ass, you shined his shoes. Responded to his requests, catered to his foibles, dusted in a Greek water closet. You can’t hide much from the guy who washes your sheets, if you catch my listing. You’d be the first to know if he were a lorry paperhanger or the head agent of the alibi store.”

  It took The Butler a moment to sort through that too.

  “Well, I certainly spent my days there, but I didn’t wash his sheets, as you say, or whatever you said. Didn’t do much at all. In fact, with the exception of the times I brought him breakfast in the study, I almost never saw him. If the newspaper was in the box at the foot of the driveway, I’d know I needed to make breakfast and bring it to the study. If not, sometimes there would be a note in the foyer if he had anything for me to do. Sometimes he’d have me clean a particular room in the house, but most of the time I just did a little light tidying and sat around until seven p.m. or so when it was time to go home.”

  “And that was all you saw of him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where was he during the day?”

  “I would guess in the study, but since, as I said, I didn’t see him, he could’ve been anywhere.”

  “Then why did he hire you at all?”

  “Frankly, Mr. Augustine, I wasn’t about to risk an easy paycheck asking why the check was being cut in the first place.”

  “What about when you were hired? Didn’t he interview you?”

  “No.”

  “Then how did you get the job?”

  “My great-aunt made the connection. I don’t know how she knew him or what she said, but one day she called me and told me to show up at the Joyce House, follow the instructions, and I’d have an easy job that paid well.”

  “I don’t know about you, but that would make me feel like the cat didn’t finish her dinner.”

  “What?”

  “Fishy. It would smell fishy. Didn’t you ask your aunt anything about it?”

  “She’s my ninety-year-old great-aunt. I’m not going to interrogate her. I needed a job, and frankly, I didn’t particularly want to work. I figured the worst that could happen is I show up, don’t like the vibe, and leave.”

  “What about the sitting rooms? A lot of pretty interesting setups. Do you know about them?”

  “Nope. They were all like that when I started. I dusted and vacuumed sometimes, but Joyc
e never explained them to me and never asked me to change anything.”

  Trike leaned back in his chair. He looked around the house. At The Butler’s fingers compulsively fluttering socks into being.

  “Tell me about when you found the blood,” Trike said.

  “I thought we were going to skip the police stuff.”

  “Yeah, well, you lied about how you got the job.”

  “I beg your pardon. How dare you—”

  “The police could not locate a single friend who’d had any meaningful contact with Joyce in the last five years, and if your great-aunt was close enough with him to secure your sinecure, I would assume they had a pretty close relationship. Now, at present, I don’t give a fuck why you just lied to me, but I could be convinced to gift-wrap that fuck and send it to you for Ujamaa if you give me any more smarmy lip. Now, tell me about finding the blood.”

  The Butler’s fingers paused in the process for the first time in the interview. They restarted.

  “There wasn’t much to it. I saw the blood. I set the breakfast tray down on the end table in the hallway and then called the police.”

  “What did you say to them?”

  “Oh, something stupid and hysterical, that there was a big bloodstain on the carpet and that Joyce was missing.”

  “And what did they say?”

  “They said they were on their way.”

  Trike cocked his head. Leaned forward. “In your stupid hysterics, did you happen to tell the police the address?”

  “Well,” The Butler paused. His hands stopped knitting again. “You know, at the time I didn’t think about it, but now that you ask, I don’t know.” His hands restarted.

  Trike stood up. “Thank you for your time.” He went to the door.

  Halfway out, Trike said over his shoulder, “You shoulda used markers on that one. It’s gonna be a bitch finding that dropped stitch now.”

  He slammed the door closed behind him.

  CUT TO THE TRIKE GRIPES

  The diner had one row of red vinyl four-person booths and a ten-seat counter with matching red vinyl stools. It had a linoleum floor grayed in layers impenetrable to the mop and bucket. Every other customer-accessible horizontal surface was Formica that gleamed with a cleanliness only long, slow, overnight shifts can produce. During busy shifts, there was a waitress for the booths, a waitress for the counter and the cash register, and the cook. His name was Joe, but no one ever seemed to know how they knew that. Overnight, one waitress handled all who might stumble in, and the food they ordered came out, so somebody cooked. The coffee was bottomless and the manager knew how to create a get-your-ass-out-of-bed special if the week had been slow. The neon sign in the parking lot, on top of a twenty-five-foot pole, had been out for a decade.

  Even though she knew they were on a kidnapping case, Lola was still disappointed to see that Max hadn’t taken off his jacket. It had already been weeks since their last coffee and shake, and with the new case, it could be weeks before the next one.

  Max sat in the booth nearest the door, with a messy pile of newspapers. Lola kept her coat on and sat down across from him.

  “Sorry I’m late, Max. There was someone in a wheelchair on the bus.”

  Max shrugged. He folded a newspaper section onto the pile. “Gave me a chance to read the paper … without Trike radiating the scores.”

  The waitress appeared. She put a to-go coffee in front of Max and a to-go shake in front of Lola.

  “Ordered and paid,” Max said, “to speed the process … apologies to feminism.”

  Lola took a sip of her shake. “Apology accepted. But I got my eye on you, mister. What’s the assignment?”

  Max took a manila folder out of a briefcase and slid it across the table to her.

  “Architecture of the house,” he said. “Blueprints, renovations, construction … the like. Folder has the basic info from the police report.”

  “Really?” Lola tossed the folder open dismissively. “That’s it?”

  She flipped through the first few pages of the file while sipping her shake. Address. Legal name of occupant. Other data.

  Max held his hands up. Leaned back.

  “All preliminary. We’ve got an exit through a secret passage … basement, probably. This is just where we’re starting.”

  “The police didn’t search the basement?” Lola asked.

  Max explained about The FBI and The Door Behind the Bookcase.

  “If that’s what Trike wants,” Lola shrugged. “Only take a couple of hours though. What are you going to be up to?”

  “Asking more guys I know about the door.”

  “Is it just me or does this seem weird already?”

  Max nodded. “Weird.”

  Four young men in their late twenties burst into the diner, one in a jacket and tie whose cuts and colors proved he didn’t wear jackets and ties very often. They sauntered to the corner and yawped orders for pie. The three others slapped Jacket and Tie on the back repeatedly, with the vigor of earnest congratulations. The key words sprayed from their banter told Max and Lola that they were grad students at the university in the English department, or perhaps Communications, or maybe even Media Studies. They were at the old-fashioned diner celebrating the successful defense of a thesis on “The New Information Being,” and Jacket and Tie was going to celebrate it with pie whether he liked it or not.

  “You headed home?” Max asked.

  “Yeah. Should be able to get most of this done on the Internet.”

  “Want a ride?”

  Lola checked her watch. The next bus was a half-hour away, if it was on time. “Yeah, I better. Clock is ticking.”

  “Always does,” Max said.

  As they made their way out of the diner to Max’s car, Lola asked, “So, how was your date, Max?”

  “Date? Long time since the last coffee and shake.”

  “Yep. My mom was in town last week, we had The Case of the Fuckers Who Won’t Pay Us the week before that, and then you had something the week before that.”

  “Godson’s wedding,” Max said, starting the car. “Date went okay.”

  “Just okay? Isn’t she the top match?”

  Max pulled out of the parking lot. “She is.”

  “Haven’t you been trying to set this up for like, three months?” Lola asked.

  “Three months.”

  “And it just went okay? I thought you were going to spend all night talking about Charlie Parker, vintage cars, and, wait, there was one more.”

  “Twin Peaks.”

  “Right. Charlie Parker, vintage cars, and Twin Peaks. What happened?”

  Max shrugged. “We talked. Had a good time.”

  “But?”

  Max rubbed his chin. “Perhaps we were trying so hard to be the ‘top match’ we couldn’t connect.”

  “So, it’s still the whole dating-site thing?”

  Max shrugged. Took the next left. “You can’t fix your car … mechanic … dating site.”

  “But you never meet anybody, Max. That’s the whole point. It’s not that you can’t get a date if you get the chance, it’s that you never get the chance. You work constantly, and the few times you ever hang out with somebody other than me and Trike, they never have any single friends. Just wait until your divorced friends start getting remarried. You’ll clean up at those receptions.”

  “Sounds … familiar.”

  “Because we had this exact conversation when you asked me if I thought you should sign up.”

  Max sighed. Took the next right. Turned on the windshield wipers again. “You’re still right.”

  “So, are you going to go out with Jessie again?” Lola asked.

  “We discussed it. She had a business trip last week … now we have a case. Could be a while.”

  “Well, if it doesn’t work out for anything more, you should be able to have a good conversation every now and again. And maybe she has some single friends.”

  “True. What about you and that g
uy … with the two first names?”

  “Tom Howard.”

  “Him … what happened?”

  Lola shrugged. “Nothing really. Janice knows him. He was nice and all and I wouldn’t mind hanging out with him or whatever, but I just didn’t see myself making time for him, you know. Like, I just didn’t see myself putting down my knitting or painting if he called.”

  “Many a young man has fallen to the needles and knives.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Max shrugged. “Same thing you said. We’re relationship perfectionists. We just … justify.”

  “It’s not just that, Max. We also have someone in mind.”

  “Someone not coming back.”

  “That’s the truth, Max.”

  They were stuck at a long light in the back of the line. The rain diminished, so Max turned off the wipers. Lola flipped through the manila folder again and began identifying keys to the research. Max drummed a short rhythm on the steering wheel. A man dressed in black as if coming from or going to a funeral walked by on the sidewalk. He was closing an umbrella, staring up at the sky, with a baffled expression on his face, as if confused by some puzzle posed by the rain itself.

  “We should cut to the Trike Gripes,” Lola said, “since who knows when we’ll get a chance to do this again?”

  “Mind if I … initiate?” Max asked.

  “Go right ahead.”

  “There is one thing I hate about debates with Trike.”

  “That he can have a fully functioning intellectual debate while thinking about something else entirely?” Lola offered.

  “No.”

  “That he passively absorbs complex information, meaning he can learn intellectually challenging material while washing dishes?”

  “Nope. Trike washes dishes?”

  “Benefit of the doubt.”

  “Right.”

  “That he is constantly referencing stuff, not because the reference is necessarily relevant, but just to keep himself entertained?” Lola persisted.