“I’m sorry to bother you right before the weekend,” he began. And again, I didn’t think he sounded sorry at all. He looked more irritated, like he thought I shouldn’t be leaving my office before five o’clock. If he only knew the erratic hours I kept. Ah, the life of a detective. “I took off work early to swing by your office, so I really wanted to be sure I saw you today,” Jack continued. “I can’t afford to take the time at all, but it seems necessary.” He hesitated, glanced at his watch, then back at me. “I want to hire you.”
Obviously, considering he was here, I chose to think.
Jack paused to gather his thoughts. Then he leaned forward in the chair. “I want to hire you to find my brother’s killer. Or killers.”
I stared back at him. “You’ve got my attention.”
His gaze seemed to say, “About time.” “I suppose I should start at the beginning,” was what he did say.
“That would be good.”
And so he did, loosening his tie as he talked. “My brother Ned was killed a month ago. He fell while cycling in the mountains. We think he lost control of his bike and ended up over the side of a cliff.” I vaguely remembered seeing something about that on the news, but kept silent. Jack sighed. “He broke his neck in the fall and was killed instantly.” A pained look crossed his face, and he stopped.
I waited a beat before saying, “I don’t understand. How could there be a killer or killers if your brother fell? It sounds more like a terrible accident.”
“I don’t believe it happened that way.” Jack glared at me with grim determination. “The police ruled it an accident. The autopsy indicated that Ned was drunk and on barbiturates and didn’t know what he was doing, but I know better.”
“How?”
“First of all, Ned didn’t drink much, and he didn’t do drugs. And he never went cycling. He hated being in the mountains, hated driving on the winding roads. He wouldn’t have gone up there, and certainly not when he was drunk.”
“Where did this happen?”
“Outside of Buena Vista. There’s a trail that runs near Mount Princeton. They found his car parked at a trail head. He died on a Saturday but his body wasn’t found for three days. There’s no way anyone will convince me that he went there alone, or willingly. Not Ned.”
I contemplated Jack’s straightforward gaze. He seemed sure about what he was saying. “How can you be so certain that your brother wouldn’t go cycling, or that he could fall while doing it? That could happen to any of us.”
“Ned was afraid of heights. Pathologically afraid. He never went cycling, hiking, climbing, or anything like that in the mountains. He wouldn’t even sit by a window in a high-rise building.”
This piqued my interest. “The police checked into this, right?”
He nodded, chewing at his lower lip. “Sure. But everything pointed to it being ruled exactly like they said. There wasn’t a shred of evidence to make them think differently.”
“Did you tell them your suspicions?”
“Yes. But with the evidence they had, they said they concluded that accidents happen.” He picked at the perfect crease in his trousers as he talked. “They dropped it. But I know it couldn’t have happened that way. If I have to pay someone myself to find out the truth, I’ll do it.” He stopped with the pant leg and looked up at me. “Are you willing to find out what happened to my brother?”
I did a quick mental inventory of my schedule in my head. Nothing coming up. Last case finished a week ago. I’d spent more time playing pool in the last seven days than I had in months, and my game still wasn’t very good. I’d never solve the Best Actor argument with the Goofball Brothers. “I’ll take it,” I said.
“Sounds good.” Sounding just like Burt Lancaster.
CHAPTER TWO
The goldfish looked hungry.
That was the first thing I thought as I followed Jack Healy into the living room of his brother Ned’s house in Commerce City. Maybe it was the way the little guy was gaping at me, with his big black eyes, and his mouth puffing out like he wanted someone to put something in it. He swam around the rectangular tank, gazed at me with big, sad eyes, swam, then turned back to me. What a life.
Ned had been in dire financial straits.
That was the second thing I thought as I turned from the fish tank to survey the rest of the room. There were exactly two pieces of furniture in the room. The fish tank, sitting on a stack of cinder blocks, if you could call that furniture, and opposite the tank, a threadbare couch that literally leaned on three legs.
Jack had signed a standard contract and paid my retainer fee last night, but by that time he was already late for a dinner appointment, so we decided to meet at Ned’s house today. I needed more than Jack’s gut feeling to determine if Ned had really been murdered. Maybe Ned’s house would tell me something.
“The house is exactly as Ned left it?” I asked. Maybe Ned killed himself because he didn’t have anything, like furniture and decorations, I thought wryly.
Jack nodded. “I’ve been through his bills, that’s it.”
My eyes darted around the bare room and blank walls. “Why would someone want to kill your brother?” I asked, avoiding the couch as if it might have fleas.
Jack shrugged his shoulders as he focused on the fish, tapping out a generous serving of food from a tiny canister on the tank stand. “I’ve racked my brain trying to answer that one. That’s another reason why the police don’t think Ned was murdered: there’s no motive.” The fish gulped at the food with a vengeance.
“Did he have any enemies? Any trouble with the law?”
“No and no.” Jack screwed the lid back on the fish food, and turned back to face me. “Ned was just an ordinary guy. I’ve looked over his financial statements, checked his bills and mail. Nothing stands out.”
I gestured around the room. “By the looks of it, he didn’t have much money.”
Jack sighed. “That wasn’t always the case. Ned was a realtor, he sold houses. He did quite well for himself.”
“What happened? This isn’t the home of a wealthy man.”
“He made a lot from the huge boom in housing sales and values,” Jack said. Denver was on the A-list for many people in the latter part of the 1990’s, which helped cause a huge rise in the housing market. “Ned had a great life. At least until recently.” Jack rubbed a hand over his face, as if trying to wipe away bad memories. “Everything seemed to be going fine. He had a beautiful wife, a big house, not like this old place. He had nice cars, took great vacations. He had the dream life. Then it all went south.”
That explained the house we were in. “What happened?”
Jack moved as if he was going to sit on the couch, but thought better of it. He motioned for me to follow him into the kitchen. It was tiny, with barely enough room for one person. The cabinets were stained a seventies dark brown, and the appliances carried on the theme, all of which was once fashionably called gold. The walls were grayish white. Nothing hung on them, but you could make out lighter spots where decorations had once hung. Jack crossed to a miniscule table in the corner of the room and sat down on a rolling chair next to it.
“I’m not sure what happened,” Jack began. “No, that’s not true. I know what happened, he lost it all. I just don’t know all the whys. Ned and I didn’t talk a lot about our work.”
I opened the refrigerator door. A can of Pepsi, an opened box of Arm & Hammer baking soda, and a jug of water. “Did you clean this out?”
Jack shook his head. “That’s all there was. There are a few frozen dinners in the freezer. I need to go through the house and clean it out, but I haven’t felt like it.”
“What do you do?” I checked the cabinets while he talked, but other than a few dry goods and some mismatched dishes, they were bare.
“I own a computer consulting firm. We do all kinds of programming, all over the United States.” He crossed his hands, resting them on the table. “It has very little to do with real estate, so there wa
sn’t a lot of common ground between Ned and me. And we didn’t talk as much anymore.”
“What about things not related to work?” I sat down on a chair opposite him. “Did you talk about other stuff?”
“No, and I’ll regret that until the day I die.” Jack stared at his hands for a moment. “We used to be closer.”
“Then how can you be sure that he wouldn’t have gone cycling?”
He planted a firm gaze on me. “I may not have known everything that happened in his life, but I know Ned wouldn’t go cycling in the mountains. That would’ve meant Ned conquered his fear of heights, and I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t mention that.”
“Why weren’t you close?”
“He married Samantha.” Jack said her name like it was a four-letter-word. “We, my wife and I, were never fond of Samantha.” The same vile sound to the name. “Fond” was definitely an understatement.
“How long were they married?”
“Two years.” Jack exhaled noisily. “Two years too long.”
“What’s Samantha like?” I asked, bracing myself for the negative vibes.
“She wasn’t nice, I can tell you that. Samantha is the most self-absorbed, possessive, ruthless, and greedy person I’ve ever met. She set her sights on Ned and wouldn’t be denied. When he met her, he was making money hand over fist, and she decided she was going to partake of it. By the time she got her hooks out of him, she’d taken every dime from him.”
I scooted my chair back a bit, away from his intensity. “Ned didn’t notice that she was bad news?”
Jack stood up and stared out the sliding glass doors onto a weed-choked lawn the size of a cardboard box. “He was in love. Or lust.” He emitted a rasping laugh. “That was my take on it. Samantha was a looker, no doubt. It wasn’t like she was a model or anything. But Ned fell for her.” He whirled away from the window. “Let me show you a picture of her.”
I followed Jack down a short hallway to a room that was designed to be a small bedroom, but had been converted into an office. A paint-splattered, worn oak desk sat against one wall, with an older model Dell computer and monitor on it. A beat-up metal file cabinet stood to the left of the desk. Jack opened the bottom file drawer and pulled out a snapshot.
“I don’t know why he kept it, but I found it when I was going through his bills.” He handed the photo to me.
Samantha was pretty, but not quite perfect enough to be considered beautiful. Her brown eyes seemed just a bit cold, her long blond hair was cut a little too plain, and her nose was maybe just a bit too big. But she had full lips that pursed into just the right kind of sexy pout. She had her arms crossed over large breasts, and gold jewelry glinted from her wrists. A huge diamond ring rested on her left ring finger. “She is a looker,” I repeated Jack’s description.
“Don’t let that fool you,” Jack said, putting the picture back. “She was nothing short of a bitch.” At least he was honest.
“Maybe she wanted him dead,” I said, reaching for a motive.
“Maybe,” Jack agreed. “By the time they divorced, she hated him, and she was mean enough to want him dead.”
“Did Ned owe her any money?”
“Not that I know of. She gets his inheritance, but that isn’t much.”
“Why didn’t he change his will? Why let her inherit?”
Jack shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“How much will she inherit?” Never underestimate the power of money. What seems like a little to one person is a fortune for another.
“A few thousand dollars is all.” Scratch that motive, I thought. Jack grimaced. “She had more to gain with Ned alive, believe me. Samantha was getting hefty alimony checks. That’s part of what finally broke Ned, having to pay her each month.”
“But that alone couldn’t have left him with nothing. What else led to his financial downfall?” I asked.
“Ned didn’t tell me a lot, but I know that he bought a lot of real estate in some other states, speculating that the values would rise like they have here in Colorado. It didn’t turn out that way, though, and Ned wasn’t able to pay some of his creditors. He had to file for bankruptcy, and then his house sales tumbled. I thought he had things under control, but apparently not. Once he was headed toward financial ruin, Samantha left him. But that didn’t stop her from gouging him. She got the house in the divorce settlement, and alimony.” Jack waved his hand in the air. “Ned could barely afford this.” He paused, contemplating the sparse surroundings. “Ned was a smart guy, and I just don’t understand how he could let all this happen to him.”
I could see how his bewilderment would make him want to find a reason for Ned’s death. But I wasn’t finding much to convince me that Ned had been murdered. “Mind if I glance through his records?” I asked.
“Help yourself.” Jack stepped aside and stood leaning against the wall while I perused Ned’s files. With the exception of his real estate files, his records were as bare as the house. The top two drawers were crammed with real estate contracts and other paperwork, going back a number of years.
“Why doesn’t Ned keep all this on the computer?” I asked.
Jack shrugged. “He was working in that direction, but he was a bit old-school and liked to have hard copies as well.”
After glancing at a few of them I moved to the bottom drawer, where Jack had retrieved the picture of Samantha. I found a few credit card statements, all close to maxed out, an electric bill that was two months behind, and a phone bill, also past due. And the picture of Samantha.
“He was in a lot of debt,” I said.
“Like I said, it was tough for him lately.”
“Anything in the closet?” I pointed at folding doors on the opposite wall.
“It’s empty,” Jack said as I opened it. Not a thing in it – except dust.
“How about the rest of the house?”
“Come with me.” Jack led the way into the only other bedroom in the house. It was slightly bigger than the office, with a tiny bathroom with a shower stall off one side. I opened the medicine cabinet over the sink. It contained a number of toiletries, but no prescription drugs of any kind. I didn’t see any indication of drugs in the rest of the bathroom either.
I searched the bedroom next. A mattress on a box spring was centered on one wall under a window, with threadbare blue sheets covering it. By their rumpled appearance, I assumed that making the bed had not been a priority for Ned. A phone and a small brass lamp stood on the floor beside the bed. Stacks of T-shirts, blue jeans, socks, and underwear lay against the wall by the door to the bathroom. I noticed nothing unusual, unless you categorized not having a dresser as odd. But what did catch my eye was a poster on the wall above the clothes.
I took a good look. “Ned liked old movies?” I asked.
The poster was an advertisement from the movie The Maltese Falcon, with Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor. A classic movie, one of my favorites, with my favorite actor. Bogie – the man, the detective. On my better days, I liked to think I was as good as he was. It rarely happened, which says something of my amateur skills.
The poster wasn’t in great shape, somewhat faded with some wrinkles on the paper, and a few small tears in it. But for a movie buff like me, it was like gazing at a Picasso.
“I don’t think so,” Jack said, barely giving it attention.
“You know, an original can cost a fortune these days, depending on how rare the poster is and what condition it’s in. There’s a huge market in old Hollywood memorabilia.”
Jack nodded, but based off the bored look on his face he’d already lost interest in what I was saying. “Maybe he was trying for a new style after his divorce.” He headed for the door. “That certainly wasn’t Samantha’s taste.”
“It’s good taste,” I said, showing my bias. I had a similar poster hanging in my office. An original. And it was expensive, upwards of ten thousand dollars. I hadn’t paid that much for it, but enough that it was an extravagance. I had to buy it –
it was Bogie.
“You might as well see the rest of the house, although I don’t know what you’ll find.” Jack stalked back down the hallway. I took one last longing look at the poster before I dashed after him.
The remainder of the house consisted of a pint-sized unfinished basement, and a one-car garage, with a beat-up Honda Civic parked in the available space. Two hooks penetrated the cross beams above the hood of the car, where a bike would’ve been stored. I pointed to them.
“Are you sure Ned didn’t ride?”
Jack studied them. “I guess he could’ve. I’ve never heard him talk about it. But he probably would've owned a road bike, not a mountain bike.”
“Did they find a road bike with his body?”
Jack scowled. “It was a mountain bike.” He kept looking at the hooks. “I don’t understand. Ned never said anything about taking up cycling, either road or mountain riding.”
“People change,” I said.
While Jack continued to muse about Ned, I carefully rummaged through the ten-gallon trashcan in the corner and found some old newspapers and more than a dozen frozen dinner boxes. And plenty of Pepsi cans. I guess Ned didn’t believe in recycling. But if he was a drinker, or if he used drugs, I didn’t find any evidence in his house. And I also found absolutely nothing that would indicate that he had met his end through foul play, and I told Jack this.
“My money’s good,” he said, determination etched in his tense jaw lines. “I may not have been close to Ned recently, but I’m still his brother, and I know he wouldn’t go riding in the mountains like that, alone or with someone. Even if that's there.” He jabbed a finger at the hooks. “I need to know what really happened. Otherwise I’ll always have questions.” A guilty tone crept into his voice, and I wondered what brought it out. The lost connection with his brother, or something else?
“Where does Samantha live?” Maybe Ned’s former wife could shed some light on his untimely death. “I’ll have a talk with her.”
“In Highlands Ranch,” Jack said, naming a sprawling community of newer homes in south-suburban Denver. “She still lives in the house they bought after they were married.” We traipsed back through the tiny kitchen and into the living room. “Watch yourself. She’s brutal. Samantha took everything from Ned.”
Reed Ferguson 1-3 Page 18