by Nero Blanc
Cleo returned home, yelling for Effie, and the decibel level in the house increased one hundredfold. “Belle, honey bunch,” she called up the stairs. “Sorry I had to rush out, and leave you hanging. I’ll fill you in in a minute.”
Effie spoke before Belle had a chance to reply. “She tried to call Uncle Rosco. He’s hiding just like Daddy does.”
Belle heard Cleo laugh uneasily; her voice grew more boisterous in compensation. “I’ll make us some coffee. At least I can still heat water in that mess of a kitchen!” Then she was gone amid yips, yelps, bursts of “Mom!” “Mommy!” and her own clamorous responses.
Belle looked at her watch. Twelve minutes remained. “Quote, part 1” she muttered. “Quote, part 2,3,4, and 5.” Her pen scribbled furiously; she gnawed her lip in concentration. Finally, she gasped and sat very still.
“ALL THAT WE SEE OR SEEM IS BUT A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM.” They were lines from an Edgar Allan Poe poem. She stared at the cryptic’s title, “Not Dreaming,” suddenly recalling other lines. As she did, an eerie suspicion crept over her. Was it possible that the person who’d constructed the crossword was aware of her love of poetry? Or was this merely coincidence?
“O, God! can I not save/One from the pitiless wave?” she recited silently. “ALL THAT WE SEE OR SEEM/IS BUT A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM.” Pitiless wave, she thought, then added a wary, Rosco!
Belle stood; in six short minutes, the hour would be up. She hurried downstairs, where Cleo met her, carrying two mugs brimful of syrup-thick Greek coffee. The two women almost collided.
“Any word from your fellow?” Cleo’s face bore a taut and worried expression.
“Nothing.”
Cleo studied Belle. “Geoffrey said you had a phone call … here.… Someone contacted you here.”
“A crank call. I get them on occasion.”
Belle assumed a nonchalant attitude as she put her coffee mug on a table, then surreptitiously folded the crossword into ever smaller pieces. “Our secret,” the mystery caller had warned; and until she knew more, there was no point in causing Cleo further alarm. “Is the basset hound okay?”
Cleo sipped at her coffee, but her thoughts were clearly far from the ailing dog. “Oh, sure. Buster ate something that made him sick. A big fuss for nothing. Why would you get a phone call at my house?”
Belle skirted the question, instead saying, “Rosco’s a private investigator, Cleo. Before that, he was a cop. You know his schedule’s not an easy one and that he can’t always check in—”
“‘Missing in action’ is what the weirdo said.”
Belle put her hand on her future sister-in-law’s shoulder. “There are a lot of kooks out there … folks who get their jollies from placing obscene or harassing phone calls … and with the wedding so near …” Belle affixed a hopeful grin. “Did Geoff tell you Sharon is on her way back?”
Cleo ignored the information. “But why does this sicko call now? When there’s no man in the house! This thing has given me the willies!”
“Geoffrey’s here,” Belle offered while Effie, who had crept close, added an enthusiastic: “And Sharon! She’s strong! She’s coming back!”
Cleo snorted angrily. “I got kids. I don’t want a nut case prowling around!” Then she spun on her daughter with an abrupt: “Effie, take that stuff off now! You can’t eat lunch in that dopey getup.”
The princess burst into tears; Belle found herself consoling her petite rival and murmuring soothing phrases of encouragement. The child’s unhappy snuffles changed to wounded pride. “Aunt Belle likes my costume, don’t you Aunt Belle?” Gone in the twinkling of an eye was the odious Tinker Bell; Belle had been promoted to Aunt.
She beamed in gratitude. “I think you look just like a queen—”
At that moment, the phone rang. Both women jumped; the healthy dog started barking ferociously; Effie noisily shushed it while and Cleo and Belle simultaneously grabbed for the receiver. Cleo won.
“Yeah? … What? … I’m having a hard time hearing you.… Effie, be quiet for a second, will ya … Hello … Hello?” She handed the cordless to Belle; beneath her pancake makeup, her blue eye shadow, and outlined lips, her skin was gray. “Guy for you.… Talks like a stupid answering machine.”
Belle took the phone, pressed it hard against her ear, and walked from the room, but the familial noise pursued her. “Get back here, Effie! No, Buster’s gotta stay outside.”
“Hello?” Belle said; she could feel her breaths growing shallow and nervous.
“‘A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM’: I hope you were suitably impressed, Belle. I may call you, Belle, may I not?”
“Who is this?”
“Someone who’d like to get to know you better. It sounds as if you are in the midst of a most delightful gathering. Family life is gratifying, isn’t it?”
“Who is this?” Belle repeated. She avoided looking back at Cleo.
“I think we’ll keep that another secret for the time being.… You haven’t told anyone about our little game, have you?”
“No … I haven’t told anyone.”
“Except Rosco.”
“Pardon?” Belle’s heart felt as if it had stopped.
“You shared my first missive with your paramour. Silly girl … Don’t you know what we’re doing here?”
“No … no, I don’t.…”
“We’re building a working relationship, dear heart.”
The line went dead, then immediately rang a second time.
“Yes?” Belle almost shouted into the receiver.
“Hey, Hey! Tinks!” she heard. “You don’t need to bite my head off. It’s Geoff.… I’m on the cellular. Tell her regalness I’m heading downtown to the hardware store. Anything she needs, have her beep me.… Oh, Sharon beamed in a couple of minutes ago. Her ride’s on the fritz. She’s catching a bus and will call from the depot.” Then that connection also ended.
Belle stared at the now quiet machine. Punching in the code to retrieve the last caller’s ID would only reveal Geoff’s car phone. The mystery crossword constructor’s number had been obliterated.
CHAPTER 20
Abe Jones drummed the fingers of his right hand on the pink Formica countertop, while he rolled a packet of Sweet’n Low through the fingers of his left. The move resembled a Mississippi River gambler manipulating a weatherbeaten ace of hearts. The packet appeared and disappeared: pink paper fluttering briefly in the air. Abe watched his fingers work, then stared pensively across the coffee shop.
At twelve-fifteen, Lawson’s was a madhouse. The lunch-hour rush was in full swing. Waitresses flew by, laden with armloads of sandwich platters and fried fish entrées, alternately shouting harried greetings to regular customers and orders for additional chips and extra mayo to Kenny, the short-order cook. Jones took it all in, while remaining silent and seemingly unaffected.
He dropped the sweetener packet back into a chrome bowl as Al Lever slid his beefy frame onto the stool beside him. “Sorry I’m late.… Thought I’d walk over; get some exercise.… I’ll never try a crazy stunt like that again.” He looked around the coffee shop. “This place is a zoo. I was hoping we could get a booth.”
“We’ve got a better chance of winning the lottery.”
“Coffee, doll?” It wasn’t Martha, but a Martha-in-training who interrupted.
“Thanks, Lorraine.” Lever looked at Jones. “Did you order yet?”
Jones shook his head. “I was waiting for you.” He looked at Lorraine and smiled his signature grin. “How about a pastrami on rye?”
“You bet, sugar. What about you, doll?”
“BLT … white toast … extra mayo on the side.”
Lorraine cocked a skeptical eyebrow as she jotted the order onto a pad; then she turned, pushed the slip of paper through the pickup window, and shouted, “Two live ones, Kenny. Extra mayo for big Al, here.”
Lever ignored the jibe and focused on Jones. “So, what have we got?”
Abe pulled a small spiral notebook from
his breast pocket and flipped it open. “Let’s start with the first one: Freddie Carson and Adams Alley. It’s fairly simple; Carlyle places the time of death at three-thirty or four in the morning. Our weapon is the cobblestone, as we suspected, but the angle of the blow is odd in relationship to the placement of the body.”
“Meaning …?”
“Meaning, he was standing when he was struck, then our killer placed his body onto the bed of newspapers. The stone crushed the right side of his skull behind the ear. The angle doesn’t work if Carson was prone.”
“Okay.”
“Next: Polycrates was right about the pooch. There were no traces of dog food in Freddie’s digestive tract, and we lifted canine samples from both the open can and plastic fork; also from the newspapers. We lifted no identifiable fingerprints from the scene other than Carson’s.”
Lever dumped sugar into his coffee, stirred, then took a long and happy swallow. “And you checked out those tire tracks?”
“Right,” Jones answered. “And that’s where things start getting interesting. The tread is a standard Goodyear radial, but a problem arises when we try to narrow down the vehicle’s make. Ford, Chrysler, GM: all those manufacturers drop their SUVs onto oversized pickup truck frames; and that’s exactly what we trace these tire tracks back to: an oversized pickup.”
“But what you’re saying is: The vehicle could also have been one of those tanks everyone’s driving?”
“Yes. My gut tells me it was an SUV, but I won’t swear to it; not yet. See, if the vehicle was a pickup truck, and the bed was empty, there would have been noticeable fishtail action when the driver punched the gas.… No weight over the rear wheels.”
“Yeah,” Lever said as Lorraine placed the BLT in front of him, “but if the truck bed wasn’t empty … if it had some weight …”
“Exactly. That’s why I won’t swear to my SUV theory. But on the other hand, think about this: If you swing by Dancin’ Darby’s Barbecue late at night and look at the pickups lining the lot, you’ll notice that nobody leaves anything in a truck bed after dark. There’s no security.”
“Of course, we have no reason to believe the tire tracks had anything to do with Freddie’s death.”
Jones smiled briefly. “Not so fast. Hold that thought while we move on to our second body: our Jane Doe. We still have no positive ID on her. Missing persons has expanded their search to include a wider radius; nothing, so far. I’m betting there’s no way this woman was from the region. Point two: Carlyle says she’d been dead over forty-eight hours when we found her. We’re looking at two days or more before the newspaper she was found lying on was even printed. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that she was dumped behind the station and did not arrive in Newcastle via bus … at least not on Saturday. Murder weapon? I’m working on it. It had to be something smooth—like chrome—because I’ve found no residue. I keep thinking golf club, but then I look at her attire, and it doesn’t match. No way she just walked off the fifth green at Pinehurst.”
“You gonna eat your pickle?”
“Yes, I am.”
Lever groaned slightly. “What else?”
“You can ask Lorraine for another pickle, Al.”
Lever shook his head. “I’m watching my waistline—”
“By giving up a second pickle?”
“You gotta start somewhere.” Al sighed. “So, what else ya got?”
“Do you remember how muddy her boots were?”
“Yeah.”
“At first, I figured the dirt came from the construction site near the park on Third Street, but it didn’t check. In fact, the soil’s not from around here.”
“Where would you peg it?”
“No idea at this point, but I’m thinking west of here. Berkshires, maybe. It’s organically very rich with a high clay content, i.e., it ain’t city slime.”
“Someone could’ve hauled it in … for a garden or backyard.”
Jones shrugged. “Possibly. But, since I live on the eleventh floor, I don’t immediately think gardens. Anyway, here’s the kicker, here’s what brings the whole thing together: I found samples of the same type of substance in the tire tracks left near Freddie Carson’s body in Adams Alley.”
Lever stopped chewing the last morsel of his BLT and swiveled on his stool to face Jones. “You’re sure? I mean, how long does dirt stay in tires?”
“Depends on tread depth, but there was a hit-and-run case out in Ohio a year ago; pedestrian got creamed crossing the street. The driver fled the scene, then got the car fixed on the sly and sold it to some unsuspecting schmo in New York State. But the cops tracked it down on an anonymous tip nine months later. The lab boys were still able to pull the victim’s DNA, hair, and blood samples from the tires.”
“Jeez, remind me not to buy something with big tires.… So, you think Freddie was dumped there, too?”
“No. That cobblestone came from Adams Alley, and that’s where Freddie was killed.”
“And our Jane Doe couldn’t have killed him because she died first. Any theories, Abe?”
“Not really … but clearly, this soil business is the best lead we have. If we can locate the SUV, identify the material caught in the tire treads, we’ve got something. And if that same vehicle dumped our Jane Doe behind the bus station, which I’m sure it did, we’ll find traces of the same soil on the interior as well.”
Lever stopped the waitress as she passed. “Lorraine, can we get a check here?”
“No pie today, Al?”
Lever shook his head, although the movement was less than assertive. “Lunch is on me, Abe.… Give me a lift back to the station house, will ya?”
“I can wait for you to finish your dessert, Al.”
“And have Mr. Slim and Trim here counting each and every calorie? No way.”
“All you need is a little aerobic—”
“Don’t start, Abe. Weight rooms, power walks, jogging, rowing, for Pete’s sake: You can have it. Exercise and I are gonna keep a healthy distance.” Lever paid the tab, and the two men walked to Jones’s car. After they were seated, Lever said, “Let me ask you something, Abe? The Peterman brothers: They’re the managing agents for your apartment building, aren’t they?”
Jones spoke as he eased his car into the traffic flow. “Well, it’s a condo, and I make my maintenance checks out to a firm called Argus Enterprises. But yeah, once you sift through all the corporate mumbo-jumbo, it’s the Petermans’. They built the complex to be ‘integral to Newcastle’s upscale waterfront renovation’ … that’s according to the initial real estate listing. Why do you ask?”
“These guys stand to gain a lot if that empowerment zone goes through. They own a number of buildings in the zone. And the first thing they’ll want to get rid of are the homeless missions.”
“I’m with you so far,” Jones answered as he made a right turn. “I’m going to drive across on Eleventh. There’s construction on Ninth Street.… Anyway, back to the Petermans: I don’t know, Al, we’re talking double homicide. The Petermans are businessmen. High-pressure? Sure. Cutthroat with competitors? I have no doubt. But killing people?”
“A lot of folks don’t consider the homeless people.”
Abe thought. “Well … I’d start by finding out what kind of cars the Peterman brothers drive.”
“I intend to do just that.”
Jones made a right-hand turn in front of the Crier building and Lever said, “Whoa, whoa, hold up. Park here for a minute, will ya? There’s Rosco’s Jeep.” He pointed. “I need to ask him something, and the bum hasn’t answered his phone all day. He must be up at Belle’s office.”
Abe located a parking space halfway down the block from Rosco’s car. He flipped his sun visor down to display a Newcastle Police Department identification card, and the two men walked back to the Jeep. Lever reached across the hood, pulled a parking ticket from under the wiper blade, and laughed.
“I can’t wait to hand him this. It’s a good one, too: twenty
-five smacks.” He slid the ticket into his jacket. “I’ll only be about five minutes. Do you want to come in or wait out here?”
“I’ll wait.”
Lever was actually gone for almost fifteen minutes. When he returned, he wasn’t smiling. “I don’t know where this bozo’s gotten to. I phoned his apartment, his office …” Al cocked his thumb toward the Crier building. “Belle’s not at the newspaper offices, and no one knows where she is. The answering machine picked up at her home. I’ll tell ya, Abe, this is what drove me crazy when me and Polly—crates were partners. You never knew what the hell he was up to.”
“Looks like whatever terrain he was tackling, he was up to his ears in mud.”
“Huh?”
“Take a peek at his tires.”
Lever glanced at the Jeep’s tires. All four were caked in reddish brown soil. “Where’d he pick that up, do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Abe said as he pulled a plastic bag from his pocket, “but I don’t like what I see.” He bent down, took samples of the dirt, and placed them into the bag. “I think you should have this vehicle impounded, Al. If Rosco’s around, it’s the fastest way to get his attention.… But I have a real bad feeling that Rosco’s not around.”
“What makes you say that?”
“When have you ever known him to get a parking ticket?” Abe reached into the Jeep and flipped down the sun visor. Attached to it was the same Newcastle Police Department identification card Jones kept in his own car.
“How’d he get one of those?”
“Friends on the force?”
Lever only shook his head.
Jones didn’t speak for a long minute. “I gotta tell you, Al, this mud is bothering me.”
Lever didn’t respond; instead, he continued to stare at the Jeep.
“It looks like the same type of soil we found on the dead woman and in Adams Alley.”
“You sure about that?”