“What a trooper,” he praised.
I bent to stare into the poorly stocked refrigerator, then shoved the door closed. “Hey, the larder here is bare, and you still owe me the Elmore story.” He didn’t balk when I asked him to meet me at Connery’s.
Connery’s was a downtown landmark in Havens, and it was packed every day. Every mayor in the town’s history frequented it. More political deals were hatched there than inside City Hall, the courthouse, and the board of elections combined.
The smell of grease in the air over Connery’s was to Havens what white smoke over the Vatican was to the Catholic Church. When the grease was changed at Connery’s, it was an event. People came to watch. The greasy smell permeated the air inside. It hung on your clothes when you left. Carryout orders used to be triple bagged in paper before plastic became common.
Everyone remembered the first time they ate at Connery’s. It was a rite of passage. Fathers took their sons. Girls went with the bad boys their mothers didn’t want them to date.
Birds never roosted on Connery’s roof. It was too slippery. They couldn’t land. The fryers were vented up there.
I arrived to find Clay Addison seated at the far end of the restaurant. I moved between two rows of square tables, all identical chrome and Formica. Rotating stools lined the lunch counter, and an expanse of glass overlooked Berretta Street. The linoleum saw better days. Framed memorabilia of life in Havens covered the walls. At nearly one-thirty, the place was still three-quarters full. I took the seat at Clay’s right elbow, since the duct tape patching the red vinyl chair across from him looked like it would snag.
Our waitress, Betty, showed up right on the mark. I ordered chili because I was starved and it meant no waiting. She brought me extra saltines and a saucer of butter pats. I liked to slather up a cracker good and thick, drop it in the bowl, and watch the butter melt and wend its way into the spicy soup.
Clay ordered chili, too, and did something with coleslaw I never saw done before. It was a two-stage operation. He got a bit of coleslaw on his spoon, then dipped it into the chili. Thankfully, he stayed well over the bowl and mopped his chin frequently.
After ten minutes of slurping, buttering, mopping, and only intermittent conversation, we delved into the murder investigation.
“Elmore questioned me at length at the house,” Clay said. “The next time, he’ll need to drag me into headquarters, since crime-scene tape is blocking the drive on Hattersfield now.”
He didn’t know that the grim scene he painted held more than a few of my careless brushstrokes. It seemed best to confess while the canvas was still damp to the touch, so I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and admitted, “I screwed up, Clay. I spent part of the morning appealing to K.C., but he’s in favor of the hand’s-off approach. This is all my fault, and I can’t fix it.” I expected his initial look of puzzlement to change to betrayal, but what he gave me was amusement.
“How could this possibly be your fault?”
“When Elmore questioned me, he suggested that you might have argued with Trey over the house. I knew you never met him before, so that was ludicrous. But when he said Trey would want his family’s house back, I said you’d do anything to keep it.”
“Ah.”
For an agonizingly long moment, I waited while this one word hung in the air and his expression turned reflective.
Suddenly, a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “According to Elmore, your part in this started long before your interview this morning. He says I involved you intentionally to set up the murder.” His pause and my mouth-gaping reaction were timed to the split-second. “He said the reason I canceled yesterday’s meeting and arranged this morning’s meeting accomplished two things: It gave me time to commit the murder and be assured there’d be someone with me to walk in, find the body, and attest to my surprise. Even my tardiness was premeditated. If I got there ahead of you, I would have naturally opened up, ruining everything. But you were guaranteed to wait because you wanted your money. He called you my gullible pawn.”
“Gullible pawn.” My explosive words drew the attention of nearby diners. “He’s got a real knack for fiction.”
“I thought you might light on the slander angle. And, yes, he’s an imaginative fellow.”
“But he’s imagining you as a person-of-interest.” Immediately, I shook my head. “No, those were K.C.’s words, just trying to lessen the impact. Let’s just say it, you’re the prime suspect.”
He ran a paper napkin across his mouth and shrugged. “And he has every right to proceed as if I am a suspect.”
“But why? He won’t be able to make a case against you stick.”
“Oh, I didn’t say it won’t blow up in his face. It will.” His melted-chocolate eyes settled on me. “You see, our story goes back a long way.”
“That’s why I’m here,” I said, sitting back in the chair, folding my arms over my chest. “Start at the beginning.”
Shoving his bowl away, he looked past me toward the door. The change in his expression was almost undetectable.
“What is it?”
“Elmore at three o’clock.”
His three o’clock matched my six. I didn’t turn to gawk, but followed Elmore’s progress through Clay’s eyes. Elmore entered my peripheral vision, pulled out the chair beside me, and turned it around to straddle the seat. He folded his arms over the back and fixed a gaze on Clay. A smile appeared on his face that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Clay returned Elmore’s stare. “Wrenn, would you excuse us for a moment?”
I recognized this as more of a directive, than a question. Clearing my throat, I said, “Sure. No problem. I’ll just visit the ladies’ room.”
Our table met the wall separating the dining room from the restrooms. While my departure appeared casual, I had no intention of waiting this out, primping before a mirror. Once I rounded the corner, I rushed the ladies’ room door. I pulled it open just to let it bang shut, then crept back to the end of the corridor, where I cocked an ear to listen.
Elmore spoke. “I’m coming for you, Addison. This morning was just a taste.”
“You come after me, and you’d better be prepared to bring an army. I’m not going to give up like Goheen did. This is not going to be Mendelssohn’s all over again. You should’ve learned that lesson. You got a reprieve you didn’t deserve.”
“What I didn’t deserve was you on my back for fifteen goddamn years. You were jealous because I made the bust, because I got the glory you’d tried over and over to get, and all you did was fuck it up.”
My eyes shot open with the expletive, then I felt my face crumple into a frown when I heard, “Something hot from the kitchen?” Those timid words were spoken by our waitress. Betty apparently heard the tail end of Elmore’s sentence. I was sorry I missed what must have been her shocked expression.
Elmore’s response came immediately. “No, nothing. As they say, revenge is a dish best served cold.”
With begrudging surprise, I gave Elmore credit for knowing the quote. In fact, I gave both men credit. This seemed an affable standoff, as standoffs go. Given the public setting, they kept their voices under control. Poor Betty, whose footsteps hurried off, acted as the surrogate for Elmore’s message to Clay.
“Stay out of my way, Elmore, and start now.” Clay’s tone brooked no argument.
Elmore’s voice was muffled slightly by the scraping of chair legs. “Think of this as a courtesy call, Addison. Now, the gloves come off. You may want to get someone besides a girl to cover your back.”
A girl, I thought hotly. Then I poked my head out and boldly stared after the man who made tracks to the door. It felt like I took cover from a fifteen-second drive-by. I held Clay’s eyes and reclaimed my seat, utterly speechless.
“Don’t worry. He’s all form and no content.” Then he generated a smile. “You know, Pepper used words to that effect to describe our marriage.”
The humor involving his ex-wife was
a dodge. In his hand, he was kneading a wad of napkin.
“I don’t think so, Clay. Elmore meant every word of that.”
He shrugged. “I suppose you want to know what that was all about.”
I gave him a look that said he better spill it, or I’d come over the table and beat it out of him with his soup spoon.
“As you can probably guess, Elmore and I haven’t been friends for a long time, not since I was a sergeant and he was in his second year on the force. He was always fired up. Looking to get noticed. Not much different than you saw today. Anyway, we had a task force put together for a sting operation. We were trying to prove illegal gambling and a few other things were going on at the Mendelssohn Lodge over on the Parkway. We planned raids, but they got leaked.”
“Was Elmore on the task force?”
“No. We kept him out of the loop. In fact, he was told specifically to stay away because he knew one of Mendelssohn’s movers and shakers. A guy named Freddie Goheen. They were childhood friends.” He shifted in his seat. “One night, I had the club under surveillance, and I saw Elmore going in the back way. He wore civilian clothes, so I snuck in the back door behind him. He had his service weapon pulled and pointed at Goheen when I found him.”
“Why?”
“That’s what I asked him. He said Goheen called him at home, panicked, wanting to turn himself in, but only to Elmore, so he came over. It was clear by the look on Goheen’s face that turning himself in was the last thing on his mind. But that’s just what he did. Because of my report, Elmore was put on administrative leave for two weeks while the incident was investigated. He was cleared of any wrongdoing. Nothing could be proved, and Freddie stuck to the story—Elmore’s version, that is—and was found guilty. Did eight years.”
“Did you suspect him of leaking the raids?”
“I hadn’t. Not until that night.”
“He was kind of young to be working the system.”
“Like I said, he knew the guy. He probably had his hooks in him back on the schoolyard. Of course, he claims the whole thing put the brakes on his career. He had hopes of stardom. He planned on racing me to chief and didn’t make it. Then I promoted others over him to lieutenant.” Clay leaned forward to emphasize his point. “They had better exam scores, more seniority, and they kept their noses clean. All better choices. Elmore got me aside once, came out of nowhere in the parking lot, to tell me I was still working him over because of the Mendelssohn thing.”
“Obviously, he has a long memory.”
“I kept my eye on him all that time. I never got proof of anything. He may not be a dirty cop, but at the very least, he smells bad. Then last year, Montague gave him his promotion to lieutenant. This is the chance of a lifetime for him.” He tossed the balled napkin into his bowl. “How the hell did Rosemont get murdered in my house?”
His thoughts turned inward for a moment, and so did mine. And how, I asked myself, had the murderer locked Rosemont inside?
Clay ticked back to life. “You know what I’m glad I haven’t heard you say since Elmore left?”
“Give me a gun, and I’ll cover your back?”
He chuckled softly. “Well, that, too. But I’m glad the first thing out of your mouth wasn’t that you’d take this back to K.C. I don’t want that. This is between him and me.”
I stared at Clay. The look on his face was cold as stone. I would not disobey his wishes.
Clay snagged the check Betty left when we turned down pie. We stepped out into ninety-five percent humidity. Midnight was parked across the street. Clay’s truck sat three spots down. We headed that direction.
“Now that we’re out of earshot of the Connery’s crowd…”
I snapped my head around to Clay. The whirring sound you hear is my privileged-information antennae rising to full height. I was all atwitter. I absolutely love being on the inside of things.
“Do you know the name Jimmy Kushmaul? Anywhere in your research on the Rosemonts, did you run across it?”
I pushed up an eyebrow while I thumbed through mental notes. “No. Why?”
“That was the name in Rosemont’s wallet and on the car registration. He’d been using an alias.”
“No wonder he stayed hidden all these years.”
“Yeah. I’m going to start there and see what I can find out.”
“I thought you retired,” I teased.
He pulled keys out of a pocket. “I need something to do with myself. The house will be off-limits for as long as Elmore can get away with it. Did you talk with Ruby yet?”
My answer was unintelligible. I was disgusted with myself for not thinking to contact her about Trey Rosemont’s death. Clay signed on for that job and promised to tell her I would stop by tomorrow.
Before he got away, I nudged him toward Eastwood’s theft. “Did you hear anything?”
“I got a whiff from chatter on the hand-helds,” he said, referencing department radios. “They’re waiting for the guard to regain consciousness.”
Reviving my mud-wrestler analogy, I decided the good sergeant was mired in muck right out of the gate. “I know you know Gideon dated Sherrie Lippincott.”
He nodded. “That station is a cesspool for gossip.”
“Is she good? Will she get a handle on this?”
“She is good. And Monty is watching. Trust me on that.”
I waited on the curb with Clay’s reassurance while he got into his truck and pulled away.
Signed, God
I scooted up the six low-rise steps to City Hall’s recessed entrance, through the spacious semi-circular lobby, and into the main concourse where doors lined both sides. My footfalls were absorbed by the sounds of government making its slow grind forward. Midway down, I caught the elevator, rode up one level to the building’s top floor, and crossed the hall.
At her desk, Lucy Matthews swiveled my direction. “There you are.”
“K.C.’s speech,” I said, holding up the papers.
“Give it to me. He wants it typed up.” Taking the pages, she said, “Boy, do you have good timing. You just missed Dooley Torrance.”
I took another two steps before it hit me, and the murder scene materialized in my mind. “I forgot about the matches. Lucy, you’re brilliant!”
“What matches? What did I do?” she asked, repositioning her glasses to give me a better look.
I told her about the matchbook, remembering how it appeared ghostlike behind the white fabric of Trey Rosemont’s shirt pocket. “I should go out to Dooley’s and see what I can dig up.”
“Oh, I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” she said, concerned. “Dooley’s is a pretty rough place.”
I was about to assure her that Dooley Torrance would look out for me when K.C.’s voice rolled out his office door. “Wrenn? That you?”
Lucy looked down at her console. All the lines were dark. “He just got off with Earl Rubsam.”
I rolled my eyes at the county budget commissioner’s name.
When I entered K.C.’s office, I received a sour look. “Bad news. Rubsam found a calculation error. Our street fund took a hit. Two hundred thousand.”
We spent the next half-hour shaving down three projects. I re-entered them on an electronic spreadsheet under the broad heading, Public Works, then emailed the sheet to Rubsam for final certification.
That done, I sat across from Mayor Tallmadge. “Lucy said Dooley Torrance was here.”
“Yeah, a fistfight out at the bar Tuesday night turned into a free-for-all.” He leaned back until his desk chair seemed in danger of toppling. “Luckily, no one was maimed.”
“Did he call the sheriff?”
“He never does. You know that. And how many times have you heard me tell him that’s exactly what he needs to do?”
“Two, three times a year for at least six years.”
“Right,” he said, bringing his weight and the chair upright. “His clientele gets rowdy, and he always comes to see me. That bar is a disaster waiting t
o happen. He knows I don’t have jurisdiction out there.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, K.C.”
Dooley Torrance’s bar was located in Pleasant Stop, an unincorporated area no one wanted to claim. Because the sheriff was slow to respond, Dooley appealed to K.C. for the police presence he wanted.
I smiled over at the mayor. “Did he do it?”
What Dooley could do was straighten his right eyebrow, cocking it like a salute over his eye. First, he got that slow draw going, then his eyebrow did its thing. In a good imitation, K.C. spit back Dooley’s words: “But couldn’t officers just drive through, just to be seen? Even that would go a long way. You know, Mayor Tallmadge, citizens from Havens do cause some of the problems at my place.”
I laughed when K.C. tried to get his eyebrows to operate independently. “I’m sorry I missed him.”
“You are not. Both of us would run if we knew he was coming. Well, you could run. I’d have to hide,” he said, indicating his bulk. “Even that would prove difficult.”
“This time, I wish I’d been here. I saw matches from the bar through Trey Rosemont’s shirt pocket. I could’ve asked Dooley if he remembered seeing him.”
The animation drained from K.C.’s face. “You might let our police force take care of things like that.”
His tone was judgmental, and I felt my eyes flash. “How can you expect me to do that? You know they’ve zeroed in on Clay.” The animation was now mine. I opened my mouth to say more and Clay’s stony face at Connery’s appeared in my mind, forcing me to swallow my words. K.C. watched, questioning my abruptness, waiting for an explanation I could not give. This tested my promise to Clay not to involve Mayor Tallmadge. I wanted to tell him that our police force operated on a vendetta mentality. More accurately, Elmore did. And most probably Baines, who was still engaged in a “better bully” game of follow thy leader. Forbidden to elicit K.C.’s help, which then precluded an explanation of my anger, he would think the worst: My anger had been directed at him. With only one course open to me, I said, “I’m sorry, K.C. This isn’t your fault. I should not have raised my voice. You didn’t deserve that.”
Deadly Homecoming at Rosemont Page 7