Murder by Candlelight

by John Stockmyer

  Mary had built that extension out back a lot of years before Z had moved in, of course.

  "Did you get a building permit?" Z asked.

  "I did. I very well did. I couldn't'a b'ilt on if I'd'a not got it."

  "You had a regular contractor?"

  "I did."

  "Then you've got nothing to worry about."

  "About the paper, I don' know if I got that."

  "You remember the contractor's name?"

  "Ace. The name'a h's company."

  "Still in business?"

  "Th'll on the TV."

  "Then you call them. Tell them about this. I think they'll straighten it out."

  "I hope," Mary said doubtfully, but giving Z a big, toothless grin. (Not that there was no such thing as a small toothless grin.)

  Z stopping that way of thinking. He liked Mary; didn't want to make fun of her afflictions.)

  Satisfied for the moment, Mary pivoted on her crutch and hobbled off around the corner.

  And that was that.

  Except that Z's experience told him that was rarely that.

  Going inside his own -- now threatened -- apartment, Z switched on the two, window air conditioners, then lit the fire in his firebox.

  Snapping on the ceiling light, he sat down at the kitchen/dining room table to listen to the kindling pop and to savor the smell of heating oak: all the while considering what was happening.

  Coming to the conclusion he didn't have to "conjecture" any longer.

  Because Mary's letter, added to the phony message from the IRS, had told him the name of the game, the name being: Captain Scherer!

  The police chief had gotten someone to send the fake IRS letter to Z, then fired up the building code department to question Mary's right to have built Z's add-on apartment.

  Not that any of these dodges would come to anything. They were just Scherer's way of letting Z know that the "good" captain had heard about Z's radio "attack" and was striking back.

  Threatening Z's financial situation -- such as it was.

  Threatening to have Z's apartment torn down, Z to be thrown out in the street.

  The real question was, what would come next? .....

  All Z could think of was arrest. (Z wondered if the Gladstone department owned any rubber hoses. Didn't think they did.)

  Still, when the cops had it in for you, there were ways they could make your life miserable.

  Thinking about this nasty situation from another perspective, Scherer had already screwed up -- in much the same way the captain had messed up the Betterton bust -- by being overeager. He'd struck out at Z the quickest way he could think of, but in directions that put Z in no real harm. Had Scherer been more patient, he might have caught Z doing something "criminal." Like speeding. (Hardly likely, with Z driving the old clunker of a Cavalier.) Or, Z might have run a red light, or done something else that the captain could have used as an excuse for cracking down.

  Now that Z was warned, he'd be looking over his shoulder for unmarked cop cars; be driving a good five miles under the speed limit.

  The phone rang.

  Getting up, crossing the space to the telephone, Z turned to sink into the sagging green sofa as he picked up the receiver."

  "Z." At the office, he used his full name. At home, since his unlisted number weeded out everyone but ....

  "It's Susan."

  "Yeah."

  "It went well, don't you think?"

  Z didn't want to answer that. Last night had gone well for him, but ....

  "I mean, I think I got rid of the noises. I haven't heard anything since."

  "I'm sure," Z muttered.

  "I don't know what I believe about poltergeists. I really don't. But she was impressive, wasn't she."

  She certainly was, Z was thinking. "Who?"

  "Jamie."

  "Oh."

  "A bit too tricky for my taste, though."

  Tricky.

  "All that about how she wasn't going to cheat like other spiritualists. I kept remembering the old saw about how, when people begin talking about their honesty, you should count the spoons."

  Z's mother had used that saying, also. "Yeah," Z agreed.

  "And I know something else that you don't know I know," Susan said, mysteriously.

  Oh, oh.

  "Something that makes me about as good a detective as you."

  Z's mind was a blank.

  "At the end of the evening. When each of us was in a room? I know what you were doing!"

  "What ...!?"

  "And I'm ... flattered ... really I am."

  Z's mind was a double blank.

  "In my bedroom. What you were doing in my bedroom."

  Normally, Z didn't know what to say to women. This time, he really didn't know.

  "How ... did you ...?"

  "The smell. Isn't that the way you told me you solve some cases? That you have a keen sense of smell?"

  "Ah ...."

  "Guess what I smelled. In my bedroom. When I was getting ready for bed."

  "Ah ...."

  "And, like I said, I'm flattered. I promise I'll make it up to you. I know we haven't been able to get together as much as both of us would like. But I'm going to make every effort to remedy that situation. I don't know. We both get busy. And then, I've been worried about this ghost business. It's been taking a lot out of me."

  "I don't know what you're talking about." While playing dumb wasn't part of the Zapolska Code, you couldn't go far wrong that way.

  "About what I know about ... the bedroom?"

  "Yeah."

  "It's not the first time I've smelled ... you know ... sex there. So I figured out what had happened. You were in the bedroom. And got to thinking about me being in there with you. And that got you hot and bothered. So, since you were alone ...."

  Alone?

  "Well ... you know. What men sometimes do when they're alone," Susan finished plaintively.

  "Yeah," Z said, grateful to whatever-might-be-out-there-in-the-universe that Susan wasn't as good a detective as she thought!

  He'd been lucky so far ... not to say the situation couldn't turn against him any time Jamie decided to pull another fast one. Unless ... Z could defuse whatever that out-of-control lady might try.

  "Something else," Z said, knowing that what he'd say next could mess everything up. Depending on Susan's reaction.

  "What?"

  "Jamie Stewart?"

  "What about her?"

  "I wasn't sure before when you told me her name, but I think I've met her."

  "What?"

  "I think I mentioned her to you. We worked different sides of the same case."

  "She didn't seem to know you."

  "No. We barely met. Even I wasn't sure it was the same person. But I think it was." Better to admit a little, than have to confess a lot. "Even after I saw her at your place, I wasn't that sure. But it fits. The lady I met does occult work for the city. This one did the seance. Has to be the same one."

  "Could be."

  And that was that, as in take that, Jamie Stewart! No way now that little Jamie could raise suspicion by just sort of "letting it slip" to Susan that Jamie had known Z before.

  Off the phone at last, Z was unable to remember what else Susan had gone on about, except that they should both reserve the weekend for each other.

  Getting up, needing fresh air as much as anything, Z decided to take a little stroll; to go up the walk to the front of the house; suck in a couple of calming breaths while seeing if one of the daily "shoppers" someone kept throwing might still be in the yard. It always calmed Z to read a newspaper, no matter how inconsequential.

  Which is what Z did, or at least, started to do, until -- approaching the front of the house -- Z saw something that locked in his theory about Captain Scherer having it in for him. For there, across the street and down the block, was what had to be one of the police department's unmarked cars.

  Brown.

  Old.

  A st
akeout -- Z now alert enough to make out the driver, hunched down as far as his stork-like body would let him. None other than one of Gladstone's finest -- Detective Paul Bayliss.

  The Scherer counterattack had begun in earnest!

  * * * * *

  Chapter 13

  It was a day later that Z was dragged out of the abyss of dreams that had dark creatures clawing at him.

  The sheets were wet and twisted.

  So, what else was new.

  He heard a banging on the front door.

  Groggy from poor quality sleep, Z couldn't make out the dial of his watch.

  Holding it at any distance.

  Morning, he thought, the angle of light through his single bedroom window backing that idea.

  Again, banging.

  Fumbling up the aspirin bottle from the night stand, pouring himself a generous handful, Z palmed then into his mouth and crunched them up, the acidic taste generating the necessary saliva for him to swallow.

  Giving his throat a moment to stop burning, Z sat up.

  Swiveling to the side, he put his foot on the linoleum and tested his trick knee.

  Standing, Z reached inside his open closet, getting his old terrycloth robe off the hook to the right. Throwing on the robe, belting it, not bothering to find his bedroom slippers, he shuffled out of the room, down the short hall, and left past the sofa to the front door.

  Clicking back the deadbolt, Z opened the door, squinting into the daylight to see a tall shadow, the figure gradually coming into fuzzy focus.

  A figure with a ... hat. Black snap brim. Black hair and eyes. Light shirt. Dark pants.

  Tall enough to be ....

  Bayliss.

  "Yeah?" Z asked, his mind not yet ready to crank up anything but questions.

  "Captain wants to see you."

  "Captain ....?"

  "Captain Scherer."

  It was gradually beginning to come back to Z. In reverse order.

  Mary's letter.

  The IRS.

  The radio show.

  "I'll be at my office in an hour. Have him call."

  "See," Bayliss corrected. "Wants to see you." Like Z, Paul Bayliss was a man of few words. Unlike Z, Bayliss had missed his calling as a funeral director; not a completely accurate thing to say. What Z meant was that Bayliss looked like a mortician. Tall. Gaunt. Solemn. Lincolnesque.

  "His office?"

  Bayliss nodded.

  "What's up?"

  "Think he'd tell me?"

  Four words, but enough to show that Bayliss didn't like Scherer any better than Z, plus indicating the captain didn't trust his own men enough to take them into his confidence.

  Z liked sepulchral Paul. Thought he was the best man on the force.

  "Can I get dressed before you cuff me?"

  Bayliss cracked a grin. Meaning, yes. Also showing he had no intention of putting handcuffs on Z.

  What this summons to Scherer's office boiled down to, then ... was nothing much. If the captain had anything important on Z, Scherer would have had Z brought in "in irons."

  Z invited Bayliss inside.

  Then visited the bathroom, after that, dressing in an almost presentable white shirt and dark slacks.

  Returning to the living room, he and Bayliss went out the door, the August heat smacking Z in the face!

  Shading his eyes, Z locked up, then followed Bayliss to a white city car out front.

  The short drive took them down 72nd toward Oak, then left on Howell toward the brick and glass front of the Gladstone "Public Safety" building. Going past the city's flag, hanging limply from its tall silver pole; past the cement ramp that allowed the "physically challenged" to roll up to the front door; past the rest of the less than impressive, but newly painted building, Bayliss hung a right, then another to turn into the back lot of the Gladstone Government Building/Police Station.

  One, deliberately dirty, surveillance car was pulled just off the asphalt, under a shade tree. Two white-with-blue-striped Public Safety (police) cars were parked at going-too-fast angles. Cops loved to hell about in their cars at public expense, demonstrating the point that cops and crazies had a lot in common. Z had long thought that courses designed to make you a cop should be taught to men in prison, criminals already having the skills to join the force: the ability to drive at citizen-endangering speeds, practice at breaking and entering, and strong arm tactics. All that your average jailbird needed to be rehabilitated into law enforcement was the motivation to change sides. .... (And, of course, a seminar on how to survive on an honest cop's pay.)

  Up the back steps they went, Z following Paul (who politely took off his hat,) the two of them going inside past a short line of mostly young men, paying parking and speeding tickets. (People with money and/or connections, never got caught speeding. For a price, their lawyers got "speeding" changed to "equipment failure." Looked better on the offender's record. Saved a little something in insurance costs.)

  Back, and to the left of the ticket-processing police person -- hidden from public view -- were Gladstone's holding cells.

  Skirting the bulletproof glass cage that protected the uniformed collector from self-righteous lawbreakers, Z and Bayliss veered right to take a cinder block hall past wood-framed photos of Gladstone's former mayors.

  Passing Teddy's narrow office further on, a glance through the tiny window showed Z what he'd always suspected about Ted's "work ethic," Teddy "resting his eyes," chair tilted back, highly polished shoes on top his desk.

  They went past Ed Tabor's office. ... Empty.

  Tabor was new. Short. Fat.

  Tabor and Bayliss were the Mutt and Jeff of the Gladstone Detective squad, Mutt and Jeff the kind of 'ol-timey remembrances that dated someone wishing to be ... younger.

  Thinking about the "olden" days, Z missed the regulation size requirements for cops -- like some New Yorkers pined for the "days of yore" when most cops were Irish.

  At the end of the hall was a large, open workroom, Bayliss threading Z though desks of female clerks -- sewage, water, recreation, city taxes, licensing -- to a wider front hall and another open space, Scherer's larger, but windowless office on the left. Bold black letters on the door said Captain Scherer, Scherer's office adjacent to the mayor's suite, Z couldn't help but notice.

  Birds of a feather flock together.

  Modified for the occasion:

  Politicians of the party, grouped to poop.

  Bayliss pointed at a maple chair opposite Scherer's door, close to the captain's secretary.

  Taking the hint, Z sat.

  To the captain's "desk person," Bayliss said: "Zapolska," Bayliss then "wading" off like a predatory stork with larger fish to catch.

  The secretary -- older, weathered handsome -- almost smiled at Z, before remembering she was Scherer's flunky. Instead, pointed at her phone to indicate Scherer was on the line inside his office.

  So, Z waited -- part of the cop game, keeping suspects waiting.

  Around him, Z watched the pleasant buzz of city government, women at desks or rummaging through files, phones ringing, citizens wandering in to ask directions to this or that agency.

  Though fairly new, the building smelled of ... upkeep.

  Z's general impression was that, while not much was going on in Gladstone, what business there was, was being done efficiently.

  Glancing occasionally at her phone, the secretary finally looked up to give Z the high-sign. Scherer was off the phone; time for Z to put in an appearance.

  Z stood. Crossed the vinyl floor. Rapped on Scherer's door.

  "Enter," said the inside voice.

  Z pushed open the door and stepped inside, the door closing automatically behind him.

  Scherer sat behind a small cherry desk at the room's far end, not a big room, but richly appointed compared to what Z had seen so far, the rest of the place furnished with government-issue schlock. The office floor was covered with light blue carpeting, the windows, draped with cream-colored cloth. />
  The visitor's chair had arms. Was done in brown leather. Looked comfortable.

  Far from where suspects where forged into felons, this place was where a politician-on-the-rise could glad-hand party hacks.

  "Be comfortable," Scherer said in his falsetto voice, indicating the chair.

  Z sat. Found the chair to be as easy to sit in as it looked.

  Across from him in the room's soft light, Scherer looked the same. (The paths of Scherer (social climber) and Z (just hanging on) rarely met ... except that time in court during the Betterton case.)

  Dressed crisply in a suit of midnight blue, the captain looked a little older than Z remembered him, grayer around the edges of his razor-cut. But in general, was the same ferret-faced bastard he'd always been!

  "I suppose," Scherer piped, a smile etching his narrow lips, "you feel you are here because of something you said on the radio."

  "Taken out of context," Z said. He'd seen enough TV to know how the game was played.

  "I'm ... sure," Scherer squeaked. "But let me just say this about that. When you're in the public eye, as I am, you're used to being a target. I've been unfairly criticized by better men that you, my friend. People jealous of my success. Fearful I may take advantage of my position to move up politically, thereby taking employment away from them or from their friends. It goes with the territory. One does not appreciate the libels told about one ..." Scherer's red rat eyes shot sparks, "... but understands the inevitability of it. That's politics."

  And that's what was wrong with Scherer, Z was thinking. Seeing his job, not as law enforcement, but as a stepping stone to Clay County stardom.

  "I'm not so naive as to believe that so-called talk radio has fairness as a standard. And, in particular, the Dan Jewell show. So I can almost believe you when you say you were misrepresented." Scherer, at his prissy, lying best.

  To clarify the situation, Z could have added that, though he'd told the truth about Scherer, what had gone wrong was that Jewell had promised not to reveal it. On thinking it over, decided this revelation would hurt more than help.

  "Mr. Slime," Scherer minced, a disgusted reference to Jewell, "called my office, asking for an interview for his Law Enforcement in Kansas City series. Knowing those types, I naturally refused." The captain smiled evilly. "Making me shrewder, media-wise, than you."