First of State

by Robert Greer

  “Then we better not let whoever the hell they are find out,” said CJ.

  Henry flashed his nervously fidgeting friend a quick smile. “Hope that lab coat of mine you’re trying your best to split the seams on holds the nosies at bay, Dr. Floyd.” Adjusting the slide on the microscope’s stage, he hunched forward and said, “The news could be bad.”

  “Well?” CJ asked after Henry had scanned the slide for a good half minute.

  Henry sat back in his chair, glum-faced. “Doesn’t look good. Just about every cell in the prep is atypical. Nuclei twice their normal size, cells with no cytoplasm—I’m afraid it’s probably cancer, CJ. Can’t tell you for sure without seeing a lung biopsy, but I’m pretty sure.”

  CJ felt the back of his throat begin to tingle, then tighten. He’d known people who had cancer. A high school classmate of his had died from leukemia their senior year. But he’d never had so ominous a diagnosis hit so close to home. “What are his chances?”

  “I don’t know. I’d have to know a lot before I could give you any kind of prognosis.”

  CJ shook his head and bit back what he realized was not sadness but anger. “Ike won’t let them treat it. I can tell you that right now.”

  “Let’s get a definitive diagnosis before we get into that,” Henry said, rising from his chair, walking over to CJ, and patting him reassuringly on the shoulder. “And let’s get the hell out of here before somebody starts to get nosy.”

  When CJ didn’t respond, Henry started for the door. He was almost through it before CJ followed. As they walked through the adjoining tissue preparation lab and he struggled out of Henry’s ill-fitting lab coat, CJ resisted the urge to scream, “No!” at the top of his lungs.

  Molly Burgess was pacing the Idaho Springs, Colorado, motel room where she and Cheryl Goldsby had stayed for the past two nights and staring down at wax buildup on the badly warped linoleum floor.

  “Would you sit down?” Cheryl implored from where she sat uncomfortably on a lumpy, calico-covered sofa.

  “How the hell can you be so calm after this morning?” Burgess shot back.

  “It’s something I’ve learned to do over the years.”

  “Well, would you please pass your prescription on to me? I feel like throwing up.”

  Cheryl rose from her seat, walked over to Molly, and hugged her. “You’re not at Carnegie Hall preparing for a concert, Molly. Marquee will cough up the money. Things will smooth out.”

  Looking disappointed, Molly said, “And this was supposed to be such a special weekend for us. Camping and hiking in the mountains, less than forty-five minutes from downtown Denver, and enjoying the seclusion. It’s been more like a bad acid trip, if you ask me. Why did you have to get tangled up with Marquee?”

  Cheryl laughed. “Money, Molly. Money. Something artists like you often have a hard time understanding.” Cheryl ran a finger affectionately across her lover’s cheek.

  “I understand money, Cheryl. What I don’t understand is the need for anyone to kill for it.” Slipping away from Cheryl, Molly returned to pacing the floor, head down, her eyes focused on the linoleum, unwilling to turn the discussion into what she knew would only escalate into another argument.

  CJ had been sitting alone in the darkness in Ike’s office, in Ike’s chair, for close to an hour, suffering as he recalled all the things his uncle had done to try to turn him into a decent human being. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t remember Ike ever letting him down, even during the heaviest days of his drinking. Ike had never passed judgment on CJ, never told him that he needed to do this or that, or insisted that he be more like someone else and less like who he was. Ike had simply always been there for him—occasionally inebriated but always and absolutely there.

  Over the past couple of hours, the words lung cancer had worked their way so deeply into his subconscious that CJ swore those two words alone were responsible for his headache and the ringing in his ears.

  It had taken CJ, Henry, and Marguerite the better part of a half hour to get Ike to agree that he needed to be admitted to the hospital. CJ, Marguerite, and DeeAnn had left Denver General knowing that the doctors wouldn’t have a definitive diagnosis on Ike’s condition until late the next day after a lung biopsy.

  He would very likely have sat all night in Ike’s chair, staring into the darkness and wishing away his anguish, if Ike’s phone hadn’t rung. He let it ring five ear-piercing times before he slipped a cheroot out of the soft pack in his shirt pocket, toyed with it briefly, and finally picked up the receiver. “Floyds Bail Bonds.”

  “CJ Floyd, please.”

  “Speaking.” CJ tapped one end of the cheroot on the desktop.

  “Mr. Floyd, glad I caught you. This is Ramona Lepsos. I got your message.”

  Still less than focused, CJ said, “Thanks for calling back. I’m hoping you can help me with a little more info about that Englishman, Gaylord Marquee, the guy Cheryl Goldsby was playing stolen-goods-fencing footsies with.”

  “How can I help?”

  Deciding he might as well be blunt, CJ asked, “Think Marquee’s the kind of person who could kill someone?”

  “What?”

  “Do you think Marquee’s capable of murder?”

  “Not really. My impression was always that Marquee and Cheryl’s uncle Wiley were just a couple of bumbling old farts.”

  “What about Molly Burgess?”

  “She’d be capable of anything, in my book. Why all the questions about murder, anyway?”

  “Because a friend of mine who was staking out Marquee’s house for me was killed in a hit-and-run accident this morning. It’s possible Marquee was behind the wheel of the vehicle that killed him.”

  “What on earth did your friend find out about Marquee that could’ve possibly driven Marquee to commit murder?”

  “Not much, as far as I can see, other than the fact that he’d spotted your old girlfriend, Cheryl, and Molly Burgess outside Marquee’s house recently.”

  “Maybe the three of them were exchanging seashells,” Lepsos said with a chuckle.

  “Yeah. And then again, maybe they’d spotted my friend and they were busy planning how to get rid of him. No way you would’ve had an inkling of what they were up to, is there?”

  “No. I’m just a fifth wheel, remember?”

  “So you’ve told me.”

  “Well, it’s the truth!”

  “That’s always the best tack in my book. Here’s another question for you. Did you ever meet Quan Lee Chin, that Chinese guy who was killed along with Ames? He was a concert cellist just like Molly Burgess, you know.”

  “Never met him.”

  “I see,” said CJ, trying to gauge whether Ramona was lying. “Any idea where Burgess and Cheryl might be now? I tried calling them at the ranch, but no one answered.”

  “Haven’t the foggiest. I’m trying to forget the past and live in the present, Mr. Floyd.”

  “Good idea. By the way, any chance Cheryl owns a Suburban?”

  “Nope. Just a couple of pickups.”

  “And you drive a …?”

  “A Dodge Ram Charger, midnight black. I didn’t run down your friend, Mr. Floyd.”

  “Of course you didn’t.”

  “Hope you find his killer.”

  “Or killers,” said CJ. “Appreciate the call back.”

  “Sure,” said Ramona, hanging up and leaving CJ staring once again into the darkness.

  Within moments of cradling the phone, Ramona was out of her chair in the living room and back in the bedroom of the Denver apartment she’d recently leased. Retrieving the four absolutely pristine early-1900s porcelain license plates and half-dozen rare seashells she’d stolen from Cheryl Goldsby the day Cheryl had left her from a small box beneath her bed, she took a seat on the edge of the bed and examined each item. “Steal from me, and I’ll steal from you,” she whispered as she slipped the pistol her father, an Albuquerque former cop, had carried most of his career out of the box. Checking
the gun’s fully loaded clip, she muttered, “Payback’s a bitch, Cheryl. Sooner or later we all find that out.”

  CJ was still sitting in the chair when DeeAnn stepped into Ike’s office and turned on the lights. Startled to see CJ there, she said, “In my rush to get Marguerite home, I forgot I left the keys to my apartment here. I spent the last couple of hours consoling her. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good.”

  “Did you know Marguerite was once a prostitute?”

  CJ nodded.

  “She had to have been as tough as nails to dig herself outa that hole.”

  “She still is.”

  Sensing that nothing she said would draw CJ out of his shell, she said, “You can’t sit here all night,” walked over, and clasped CJ’s right hand in both of hers.

  “I know. I was just thinking about when I was a kid and how Ike, half drunk at the time, taught me how to ride a bicycle.” CJ shook his head and smiled. “And on a hill, no less. Said I’d pick up speed going downhill, and that would help me keep my balance.”

  “Did it?”

  “Sure did. I went flying down that hill like a bat outa hell. Never felt even once like I was going to fall. I also had no idea how the shit I was going to stop. A cottonwood tree at the bottom of the hill solved that problem. When I looked back up the hill, with one knee bleeding and a busted lip, all I could see was Ike looking horrified as he raced toward me screaming, ’Are you okay?’ He picked me up and squeezed me so hard I could barely breathe. It was probably the first time I realized how much he cared.”

  DeeAnn took a seat on the edge of Ike’s desk and nodded understandingly. “I’m guessing the two of you are a lot alike.”

  “In a lot of ways we are, and in some ways we aren’t.”

  “He’ll make it through this, CJ. So will you.”

  “Yeah,” CJ said with a sigh. “You ever lose anybody that close to you?”

  “My brother, but you already knew that, and of course my dad. He was a jazz musician. I never really saw a lot of him when I was growing up. He was on the road a lot. Even so, we were close. He was killed in a car wreck just before I turned fourteen. I hurt real bad after that for a long, long time.”

  “Guess I’ll be luckier. At least I’ll be prepared,” CJ said, rising from his chair.

  “What you need to prepare for is doing what you’ve always done. Ike’s being sick won’t change the need for that.” Realizing that CJ was staring directly into her eyes and feeling suddenly self-conscious, DeeAnn asked, “Is my hair out of place?”

  “Nope. Just wondering where you get all your insight.”

  “From living life, Mr. Floyd. Where else?” she said, easing off the edge of the desk.

  CJ slipped his arm around her waist and started walking her to the door. When they reached the doorway, bumping hips as they squeezed through, DeeAnn said, “Tomorrow’s gonna be rough.”

  “Yeah,” said CJ, feeling the softness of her body press against his. Suddenly remembering, as if the devil were sitting there on his shoulder to remind him, that he was scheduled to take Mavis to the airport at eleven the next morning, he repeated, this time more softly and with a bit of uncertainty in his tone, “Yeah.”

  With his lip curled upward into a snarl, Gaylord Marquee, just awakened by Molly Burgess’s phone call, said, “In case you don’t have access to a clock, Ms. Burgess, it’s midnight.” He glanced at the three-chime antique alarm clock on the night-stand next to his bed and frowned.

  “I know what time it is, Marquee. I’m calling to find out if you’ve heard about what happened to that man you mentioned had been casing your house.”

  “I understand he had a minor accident.”

  “Minor! He’s dead.”

  “A major accident, then.”

  “I hope you or Cheryl didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “I certainly didn’t,” said Marquee. “As for your girlfriend, I really can’t say.”

  “You’re a lying manipulator, Marquee.”

  “And you’re a bloodsucking opportunist, my dear. Who’s to say you didn’t run that snooper down?”

  “Screw you, twerp.”

  “Afraid you’ll never have the pleasure. But then again, that’s something someone with your sexual preference couldn’t possibly appreciate.”

  Marquee’s lips curved into a sly, judgmental smile as he heard Molly Burgess slam the receiver down.

  Chapter 23

  Deciding that office busywork wasn’t going to help take his mind off Ike’s plight and knowing Henry wouldn’t have a solid diagnosis of Ike’s condition until late the next day, CJ decided to drop by GI Joe’s and see whether Harry Steed might have some insight into the whereabouts of Gaylord Marquee. The last time he had mentioned Marquee to Harry had been months before on the telephone, when they’d discussed Marquee being a possible suspect in the murders.

  Except for a fresh coat of paint on the front door and different merchandise in the windows, GI Joe’s hadn’t changed much since that day in 1971 when he’d walked in looking for the license plate he’d hidden there.

  Harry was busy waiting on a customer when CJ arrived a little after nine. Steed waved and went back to what he was best at: dickering, selling, and wrangling a deal.

  In all his years of digging into the lives and habits of people with connections to the GI Joe’s killings, CJ had learned more about Harry Steed than perhaps anyone else. Even so, he’d never truly interacted much with Steed. Anyone who’d ever offered an insightful comment about Steed, from the close-to-the-vest homicide detective who’d initially worked the GI Joe’s murders case to Cheryl Goldsby, had made no bones about the fact that Steed admitted that Ames and Chin had been fencing stolen goods. No one, however, could link any fencing activities directly to the pawnshop itself, and certainly not to Steed, whose cooperative attitude, meticulous sales records, and sterling reputation had him pretty much off the list of suspects early in the investigation.

  CJ had never had the sense that Steed had killed Ames or Chin, especially over a mere twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of stolen seashells. But knowing firsthand that Nobby Pittman had killed for less was enough to remind him to never eliminate anyone.

  As he strolled down the aisles of the pawnshop looking at things that hadn’t been moved from their dust-ringed spots in display cases for years, he had the sense that places like GI Joe’s weren’t long for this world. When he spotted a vintage American Library Association poster featuring a soldier and sailor posing for a World War I war-zone reading campaign, he stopped. The poster hung cockeyed on the wall above a display case less than fifteen feet from where Wiley Ames’s Wall of the West had been. He was still admiring the remarkably pristine 1918 poster when the customer whom Steed had been helping brushed past him, muttering, “Hope he offers you a better deal on that poster. Fuckin’ skinflint!” The man rushed out the front door in a huff.

  With the bell above the door still jingling, Harry appeared as if out of nowhere and positioned himself behind the glass-topped case in front of CJ. Squaring his shoulders defiantly, he said, “Unreasonable—wanting a hundred and fifty for some beat-to-crap, scarred-up old bootjack. Sent him packing is what I did.” He grabbed CJ’s right hand and began pumping it. “Good to see you, CJ.”

  CJ slipped his hand out of Harry’s weak, clammy grip and said, “Less than a satisfied customer, I take it.”

  “SOB wanted something for nothing. I’m not selling any of that today.” Eyeing the poster, ever the salesman, he said, “See you’ve got your eye on a real gem. Vintage World War I. I’ll let you take it off my hands for two hundred even.”

  “Steep.”

  “Aren’t many more around like that one, trust me.”

  “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Harry, deciding to save his hard sell for later. “Now, what else are you here to do me out of today?”

  “A little info if you’ve got i
t.”

  “Not murder-case information, I hope. Damn it, man. It’s been five-and-a-half years.”

  “And counting. What I’m after is anything you have on Gay-lord Marquee. Something that could have slipped your mind. Something you might’ve forgotten to tell me in the past.”

  “You planning some kind of assault on Marquee?”

  “Maybe. Yesterday a friend of mine who was tailing Marquee for me was killed in a hit-and-run accident. Haven’t been able to locate Marquee since.”

  “Damn. And you’re thinking maybe Marquee was behind the wheel?”

  “I don’t know. What I do know is that a Suburban parked in Marquee’s garage has serious front-end damage and that he’s recently been in contact with Cheryl Goldsby, that niece of Wiley’s, and a special friend of hers named Molly Burgess. Any chance you can connect the dots between those three?”

  “Don’t know Burgess. But like I’ve told you before, Cheryl and Marquee are plain and simple a couple of money grubbers.”

  Unwilling to tell Harry that more than a few people he’d talked to over the years had said the same thing about him, CJ said, “I think Marquee and Goldsby were dealing in rare stolen seashells. Cheryl even let me see her stash once. I don’t think she would’ve done that if she’d killed Wiley, or if she thought you could prove the goods were stolen. She’s smart. Real smart. I’ve been trying to wrap my arms around why anyone would kill what looks like three people now for a few stolen seashells. And to tell you the truth, Harry, I’m stumped.”

  Harry laughed. It was an insightful sound that as much as said to CJ, And you never will. “That’s because you’re not in the business of moving the merchandise, CJ. You’re purely and simply a collector. There’s a difference. When you deal with selling things, whether or not it’s mindless little trinkets, stolen seashells, or that vintage World War I poster up there on the wall, the bottom line is moving the goods, end of story. But if you’re a collector, it’s the demand for the thing you’ve got that sets the money bar.”

  “So what you’re saying is that I shouldn’t necessarily be looking at simply the value of something to establish a murder motive.”