Murder in the Hearse Degree

by Tim Cockey

  “Are you trying to squeeze me out, kid?” I said.

  “I’ll be dead one day, Hitchcock,” Billie said. “Perhaps Darryl could be your new partner.”

  “Sandusky and Hitch? I don’t know. Sounds like a bad cop show.” I considered Darryl again. “You look pretty scrawny to me.”

  “You were scrawny at his age,” Billie remarked.

  “Yeah,” Darryl said.

  “I’ll tell you what, next body we get you can help me scrub it down.”

  Darryl flicked his cigarette into the street. He looked over at Billie. “Is he shittin’ me, Mrs. Sewell?”

  “No, Darryl. Hitchcock is a man of his word. I’m sure he’s not ‘shittin” you.”

  “All right!”

  “Don’t go planning on any big busty blondes,” I warned him. “You take what you get in this business.”

  Darryl pawed the air. “You’re nuts.”

  Who told him?

  Billie finished her cigarette and handed it to Darryl. The boy flicked it out into the middle of the street. Billie smiled up at me.

  “My minion.”

  I went inside to my office and leafed through my mail. Big yawn there. I had a fax dangling out of the machine. A mortician in Columbus, Ohio, was being sued by the family of a customer who—there is no way to put this delicately—had blown up about a week after his interment in the family’s mausoleum. It’s rare, but it happens, and when it does it usually suggests a lousy embalming—or no embalming whatsoever. The explosion can be surprisingly powerful. In this case the door of the mausoleum had literally cracked when a piece of the concrete vault slammed into it at mach speed. The mortician was professing his innocence in the grisly event and was faxing newspaper articles concerning the trial to his colleagues all over the country. I wasn’t quite sure how we were supposed to show our support. Were we expected to travel to Columbus in our hearses and ring the courthouse? As best I could tell the guy had simply botched the embalming and that was pretty much the end of it. Naturally, he was being sued for millions. Nobody sues for reasonable amounts anymore; it’s all this bonanza seeking. Anyway, I set my feet up on my desk, skimmed the latest installment, then balled the fax and missed the three-point attempt into my doorstop spittoon.

  About an hour later I popped down the street to my place and changed out of my suit, then swung down to the Cat’s Eye Saloon to see if pretty Maria was playing. She wasn’t. The Ferguson Brothers were playing. Neither of them is particularly pretty. I chewed on a mug of Guinness then angled over to John Steven’s for a plate of mussels and an argument with Greasy Kevin about which member of the 1966 World Series–winning Orioles, Paul Blair or Frank Robinson, had almost drowned in a swimming pool during a team party about midway through the season. Kevin swore that it was Blair. My money went on Frank Robinson, who had been acquired that year from Cincinnati to help the Birds nab the pennant. Kevin could simply not stomach the idea that a man who was batting a season average of .316, a slugging average of .637 and who was well on his way to MVP and Triple Crown honors could not negotiate a backyard swimming pool. We both agreed, however, that it was the O’s catcher, Andy Etchebarren, who had noticed the floundering ballplayer in the deep end and had dived into the pool to save him, but that was about all we could agree on. After that it was rankle, rankle, rankle.

  Alcatraz was working on a quantum physics problem when I got back home, but he managed to shove all the papers into a folder and stow it away before I closed the front door behind me. He looked for all the world like a long-sleeping hound dog when I came in.

  There were three messages on my phone machine. One was from my ex-wife, Julia. She was calling to tell me a joke she’d just heard but she couldn’t remember how it went. “It was very funny,” she said on the machine, and she laughed hysterically at the memory. The second message was a recorded voice telling me that I had a free hotel room waiting for me at a resort somewhere in Florida if I acted now. I didn’t act. Neither then nor later.

  The third message was from Libby. I was standing on one leg pulling off my shoes when her voice came on.

  “Hitch? Hello, it’s me. Listen, I appreciate your offer to help out this afternoon and everything, but . . . well, it looks like you don’t have to. Sophie’s been found.”

  I yanked the shoe off. The power of the pull sent me falling against the wall. I had to play back the message to be sure I’d heard the final part.

  I had.

  “. . . she’s dead.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  Sophie Potts’s life ended in the Severn River. An account executive for a local radio station had gone down to the river to do his morning stretches out on his boat pier and had seen what appeared to be a human leg bobbing against the roots of an old hickory tree that stood half in and half out of the water. The account executive was enterprising enough to fetch a ten-foot pole from his neighbor’s pool house and prodded around the vicinity of the leg until suddenly an entire body rose to the surface, but he wasn’t strong enough to haul the body out of the water. In fact, he had been forced to slip the pole’s net around the head and shoulders to keep the body from drifting from the shore and back into the current. He used his cell phone to call 911, and when the ambulance arrived the account executive was nearly epileptic from the strain of holding the body against the morning currents of the Severn.

  I picked up this information from a woman named Judith, who was manning the front desk at the Annapolis police station. It turned out that Judith was a sister of the account executive and in her excitement over the single degree of separation from a real live corpse—so to speak—she was incapable of anything even approaching professional discretion. Mike Gellman had been called in late in the afternoon yesterday, Judith told me, to identify the body, after which the police had managed to track down Sophie’s parents. They had been vacationing in Florida in the town of Rat Mouth (you’ll see it translated on most maps as Boca Raton) and, according to my loquacious source, had flown in first thing this morning to claim the body.

  Judith rapped a painted fingernail against her blotter and gave me a knowing nod.

  “They’re here.”

  Libby was taking a beating. She was standing in a dimly lit hallway that was lined with plaques. A tall woman was seated in a chair along the wall, her face buried in her hands. It was a stout man with small ears and a flat nose who was working Libby over. The sneer on his face was a cross between Edward G. Robinson’s and Elvis A. Presley’s, which is only to say it wasn’t a pretty sight to behold. The man was mainly bald—a few errant wires poking out of his skull—with a narrow horseshoe of dyed black hair. There was a small egg stain on his tie. I picked up on the harangue as I stepped over to them. His voice was loud and instantly irritating.

  “. . . I just don’t understand. The girl goes missing and what do you do? You wait for an entire day before you call the police? What the hell is that about?”

  I could tell from the look on Libby’s face that she’d been getting this treatment for some time now. She spotted me and threw out an S.O.S. The guy had started slapping the knuckles of one hand against the palm of the other.

  “. . . she lived in your house, for Christ’s sake, under your roof—”

  I stepped in. “Excuse me. I don’t mean to interrupt.” Libby’s relief was so palpable I could have torn off a piece and taken a bite of it. The man gave me a nasty look.

  “Who’re you? You the husband?”

  “I’m not.” I introduced myself. The experience didn’t seem to rock the stout man’s world.

  “Hitchcock is an old friend of mine, Mr. Potts,” Libby said. “He was trying to help locate Sophie.”

  Potts studied my face. His eyes looked like little black raisins. “Well, I guess you can stop looking.”

  “I’m very sorry about Sophie, Mr. Potts,” I said.

  But Potts wasn’t listening to me. “Where the hel
l’s the husband?” he snarled. “That’s what I want to know.”

  “Mike should be along any minute,” Libby said. The strain in her voice matched the strain in her eyes. “I don’t know what’s keeping him.”

  “What are the police saying?” I asked.

  “What I’ve heard so far is they don’t have signs of anything criminal,” Libby said. “They’re thinking Sophie jumped from—”

  “No!”

  The word came out on a roar from the woman who was slumped in the chair. Her hands dropped from her face and she rose on wobbly knees. She was tall, much taller than Potts, with deeply set eyes, rimmed in red from crying. There was something quietly regal about her; maybe it was the way she roped her arms over her small breasts and straightened to her full height. The woman had high round cheekbones and a slender hooked nose. Frosted blonde hair caught up in a green scarf.

  “No,” she announced again. It was a husky voice, thick with accent. “Sophie did not jump.”

  Potts moved to put a hand on her shoulder. “Now Eva—”

  “No!” The woman shrugged the hand away. “Sophie did not do this! I want this to stop. I do not want to hear it.”

  There was a slight smirk on Murray Potts’s face as he turned back to me. Women. They can be so emotional.

  His wife glowered at me. “You were looking for Sophie?”

  “I have a friend who is a private investigator, Mrs. Potts,” I explained. “I spoke about it with Mrs. Gellman. She was terribly concerned.” I aimed this last line at Potts.

  The woman played her deep eyes all about my face. It was a remorseful and heavy scrutiny.

  “Sophie did not kill herself,” she said again. “I know my daughter.”

  Potts aimed a stubby finger at Libby. “I want a goddamn accounting. Be sure of that.”

  “We can probably do without the pointing,” I said to him. I made no friends with Potts in saying it, but somehow I had already sensed that the relationship was doomed.

  Two policemen came into the hallway. The one with the cowboy swagger—the older of the two—had a brushy patch of rusty hair atop a creased ruddy face. The stale smell of tobacco arrived seconds before he did. The brass plate on his shirt said his name was Talbot and I didn’t have any reason to believe it wasn’t true. The younger cop was black. He had soft brown eyes and was essentially expressionless. His name was Croydon Floyd. Officer Floyd nodded solemnly at Libby.

  “Ma’am.”

  “Hello again.” Libby turned to me. “Officer Floyd was the one who came to the house to take the original missing persons report.”

  Talbot was the acting police chief. Apparently the regular police chief was in a nearby hospital hugging a teddy bear to his chest. Open-heart surgery. The teddy bear is one of the postoperative therapies they use these days. It helps to keep the staples together. Judith the receptionist had told me all about it.

  Talbot rocked back on his heels as he addressed the parents. “Mr. and Mrs. Potts, Officer Floyd here was first on the scene yesterday at the . . . where your daughter was found. Croydon’s a good man. He’s in charge on this.” The man had a folksy sort of delivery that could cut two ways, only one of them being genuine. “It’s an awful thing that happened,” he went on. “I know you both must be in shock. But I want you to know that Croydon here can answer any question you folks have. Anything you need, you check with him. We’re here to help you in any way we can.”

  The acting police chief tipped his head toward Floyd and gave the officer a hard look. It seemed to me that Floyd made a point of not looking at his superior.

  Eva Potts spoke up. “I want to see where it happened.” Her voice was quavering. “Where was Sophie when this happened?”

  “Officer Floyd can take you there. He’s all yours. Croydon, you take the Pottses along now.” Talbot reached out and patted the officer on the shoulder. It seemed a trifle patronizing to me. Floyd showed no reaction, but my guess was he didn’t like it. Talbot turned to Libby. “Give my regards to your husband, will you, Mrs. Gellman?”

  “I’ll do that,” Libby said. Talbot flashed an inappropriate smile all around as he took hold of his belt and gave it a tug. His hardware jangled. He turned and walked off. The sense that he had just palmed this whole thing off on the young officer was palpable. It was my bet that halfway back to his desk the acting police chief was already sorting out what he was going to have for lunch.

  Murray Potts slapped his chubby hands together. He’d probably hoped to make a larger sound than he did.

  “Okay then. Let’s get rolling.”

  “No Mike,” I noted as Libby and I got into her car.

  Libby pulled a pair of sunglasses from the visor and put them on. One of her wide-brimmed hats was on the seat next to her. “You noticed that, too.”

  Eva Potts had requested that Libby accompany them to see where it was the police believed Sophie had entered the water. Eva had—she said—more questions for Libby. We watched as the Pottses got into their rental car. Croydon Floyd was leading in his police cruiser.

  “So warm, so cuddly,” I said. “What does he do, do you know?”

  “Potts? Sophie told me that he owns a chain of dry-cleaning establishments on Long Island.”

  “In that case, he needs to take that tie of his into work.”

  The police had determined that Sophie Potts had entered the Severn River several miles north of where her body had been discovered, at the Naval Academy Bridge. Despite the condition of the body—I didn’t see it, but I’m going to assume swollen and pearly blue and generally wretched—the initial observations lined up to the idea that Sophie had entered the water at a speed commensurate with that of a body of roughly 115 pounds falling from a height of approximately six hundred feet. Which is to say, she didn’t slip quietly into the Severn River from its lapping banks. The girl slammed into it. Libby told me on the drive over to the bridge that the autopsy was being performed that morning.

  We parked our cars at the foot of the Naval Academy Bridge and walked up onto it, to the middle. It was windy; Libby had to keep a hand on her hat to keep it from blowing off. Libby and Croydon Floyd and I kept back some twenty or thirty feet as Eva Potts stood gazing down into the water. Her husband stood by, twice checking his watch and once taking a short call on his cell phone.

  “So what do you think?” I asked the officer.

  Croydon Floyd was gazing off into the distance. For a moment I thought he hadn’t heard me, but then he turned and looked over at me.

  “About what?”

  “What do you think? The lady swears her daughter didn’t jump.”

  Floyd let his gaze rest on my face a few seconds. “It’s a hard thing for a parent to accept,” he said. His tone was affectless.

  “But you’re keeping open to other possibilities?”

  “Such as?”

  “There’s more than one way to fall from a bridge,” I said.

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “Nothing, Officer, except that it’s possible the girl was tossed from the bridge. Those things happen. I was just wondering if the police were keeping that possibility in mind.”

  “We’re doing our job,” the officer said flatly. He didn’t look too happy saying it. I indicated the couple at the guardrail.

  “I’m sure they’d appreciate that. At least she would.”

  The officer returned his gaze to the horizon.

  As we were waiting for the Pottses, a blue car pulled up at the base of the bridge and a man got out on the driver’s side. Libby frowned.

  “God. What’s he doing here?”

  The man came up onto the bridge. He was tall, nearly my height, and as he approached I saw that he was somewhere in his late fifties or early sixties. His hair was silver and he had a yachtsman’s tan. He was wearing a light gray suit and a concerned expression. The face reminded me of Douglas Fairbanks, minus the must
ache.

  “Libby. I’m sorry I’m late.”

  Libby was still frowning. “What are you doing here, Owen?”

  “I tried to get a message to you at the police station. Mike’s been called in to a conference with the D.A. It’s looking very bad, Libby.” The man threw a glance at me.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, of course,” Libby said curtly. “I still don’t understand why you’re here.”

  “Mike can’t get away just now. He planned to be here but he’s putting out fires all over the place. I’m very worried for him, Libby. He told me you’re still in Baltimore. This really isn’t a good time, Libby. I think it would be good if you two could talk this out.”

  “Thank you very much for your opinion.”

  The man coughed into his hand. “Well, as I was saying, Mike told me he was supposed to meet with the young woman’s parents this morning. He feels terrible, but—”

  Libby cut him off. “Stop it, Owen. I really don’t want to hear it. Mike’s not coming. Is that the message?”

  “He can’t. He—”

  “Don’t. The answer is no, he’s not coming. Fine. If Mike can’t find the courtesy to meet with the Pottses in person, well, that’s that. But sending you as his proxy? I know you mean well, Owen, but that’s pathetic.”

  “You have to understand, Libby, Mike is under intense pressure right now.”

  Libby exploded. “And I’m not? For God’s sake, Owen. Mike hit me. Did your cherished nephew tell you that? Has it occurred to either of you that I could be putting on a little pressure of my own? I could file a report on him. You want pressure, how about that?”

  “Libby—” He reached for her arm.

  “Don’t.” Libby pulled away from him. “Look, I’ve moved out of my own home with two small children. Do you know what that’s like? And now this. This was our nanny, Owen. Sophie lived in our household, Mike’s and mine. She looked after our children. Mike should be here. That’s all there is to it. He’s got a hell of a lot of nerve asking you to come down here in his place.”