by Carla Coupe
“What was I supposed to do?” she wailed to the group of thirty or so alcoholics. “Break up with him every time he had a slip?””
I heard a few quiet mutters of “Yes!” and “Go to Al-Anon!” The woman next to me said, “Stop going to the hardware store for oranges.” It’s what people trying to recover from addictive relationships tell each other.
“I told him I’d move in with him,” Suzanne said, “when he got a year together. I thought it would motivate him to stay sober.”
More mutters and a sigh or two from the folks who had mentioned Al-Anon.
“But he didn’t want me to move in. He said he wanted to leave his options open. Ha!” For a moment, the rage broke through. “He was seeing someone else, I know he was. And now he’s dead!” She broke down sobbing.
Afterward, Suzanne came over to the woman next to me. I eavesdropped, pretending to take part in the conversation of a group of guys I didn’t know, as they rattled on.
“In Al-Anon they talk about the three Cs,” her friend said. “You didn’t cause it, you can’t cure it, and you can’t control it”—“it” in this case being Tim’s drinking.
“I don’t get it,” Suzanne said. “I loved him. How could I not try to help him stay sober?”
They also talked about Tim’s infidelity. Her friend tried to give her some tough love about jealousy, possessiveness, and paranoia being shortcomings that could only hurt her in the end. That went right over Suzanne’s head as she obsessed about who the woman Tim was seeing on the side could be. She thought it might be somebody Tim had met at Manny’s, if not a program person. Her friend didn’t think it could have been a program person, but she got flustered in the middle of telling Suzanne why not. I understood. No alcoholic with good long-term sobriety would have thirteenth-stepped—the polite term for hitting on a newcomer—someone whose recovery was as shaky as Tim’s. And of course Suzanne had done just that.
She might have killed him. She was plenty messed up herself. And messed-up alcoholics have some predictable symptoms, including poor judgment, impulsive behavior, denial, and simmering rage that could blow any time. All it would have taken was an angry confrontation, a moment when she lost control, and a blunt instrument.
We also found Tim’s sponsor, Malcolm. He’d been in the program for ten years or so, and Jimmy knew him. Jimmy reported back to us that Malcolm had talked mostly about his own moral dilemma. Did he owe it to society to tell the police what he knew? Or did he still owe it to Tim to protect his anonymity?
“What did he know?” I asked.
“He wouldn’t tell me,” Jimmy said. “And no, I didn’t try to pry it out of him. I told him that if his conscience was bothering him, he should go to the police.”
Barbara and I had a good time speculating about what Tim might have told Malcolm and nobody else. Sponsees are supposed to be completely honest with their sponsors. Maybe Tim had turned over a resentment list. The idea is that you’re supposed to let go all your grudges with the help of a Higher Power. But Tim, with his periodic relapses, could have made the list of resentments without being ready to let them go.
I uncovered one of Tim’s secrets when I ran into a guy I knew, Gary, in a church basement that hosted a lot of meetings. I was on my way to AA; he had just come out of a Debtors Anonymous meeting.
“Did you hear about the program guy who got murdered?” he asked.
Gary had never been Mr. Anonymity. If I told him I’d not only found the body, but also been the last person to see him alive, it would be all over the city in a week.
“Yes,” I said. “Did you know him?” Hey, if my Higher Power hadn’t wanted me to hear Gary’s gossip, I wouldn’t have run into him.
“I owed him money,” Gary said. “He got me a couple of power tools I wanted at a discount. I just started DA, and if I want to be solvent, I have to make a plan to repay all my debts and not incur any new ones. I cut up all my credit cards, but to tell the truth, I’m not so sure I can get by without them. Say, do you think now that he’s dead, that cancels the debt? It’s not as if he had a wife and kids or anything.”
“Ask your DA sponsor, dude.”
I had never been crazy about Gary. He’d just confirmed my low opinion. Still, he’d opened up a whole new area of speculation. Could Tim have been stealing from his employer? Selling stuff out the back door? Maybe not while he was clean and sober. But when you’re getting high, you’ll do anything for the money to score. Maybe Gary wasn’t his only customer. Maybe somebody else thought a blow to the head was a good way to cancel an inconvenient debt.
By the day before New Year’s Eve, I hadn’t found the murderer. And neither had the police. They had come by a couple of times to go over exactly what I’d done, seen, and touched between the front door of Manny’s and the puddle around Tim’s head. But I could account for all of it. By now, they knew that Tim had been in AA. They’d probably found the Big Book on his night table and program phone numbers in his address book. But I’d never given him my number. And they didn’t have probable cause to search my apartment. So I played dumb and shook my head politely when they asked me if I went to AA too.
“Now what?” I asked Jimmy and Barbara. I picked a strand of tinsel off the tree and ran it through my fingers. “I’ve been to tons of meetings, and nobody’s raised their hand and said, ‘Hi, I’m Bob, I’m an alcoholic. I killed the guy in the hardware store, and I want to turn it over.’”
“Tomorrow is Amateur Night,” Jimmy said. He peered at me over the row of lights Barbara had run across the top of his computer monitor.
“So?” I had been only seven days sober and pretty fogged out last New Year’s Eve, but I knew that’s what sober alcoholics called it: the one night a year when all the civilians went out and got what they naively thought was drunk.
“There’ll be a marathon only a few blocks from Manny’s.”
He didn’t mean a race for runners, but round-the-clock AA meetings to help us get through the holidays clean and sober. I’d gone with Jimmy on Christmas Eve. We’d stayed for a couple of hour-long meetings. It hadn’t been boring. Recovering alcoholics telling holiday war stories can be very, very funny. Then I’d gone to sleep on Barbara and Jimmy’s couch with the Christmas lights, all present and accounted for, glowing softly, the tinsel shimmering, and the smell of pine in my nostrils. In the morning, there’d been stockings—Barbara had insisted—and presents under the tree. And between one thing and another, I hadn’t missed the booze.
“Did you get any clues at the Christmas marathon?” Barbara asked.
“No,” I said, “but I was kind of distracted.”
“Of course you were,” she said. “You were dealing with the holiday and having found Tim dead only a couple of days before, and it was the first anniversary of your Christmas hitting bottom in detox on the Bowery.”
Barbara never leaves anything to the imagination. But I could see the love in her eyes, so I responded with a token snort and left it at that.
“It has to be someone with anywhere between ninety days and one year sobriety,” Jimmy said. “More than that, and I don’t think they’d have gotten entangled with him either financially or emotionally.”
“Suzanne did,” Barbara said. “But she’s a total codependent. Can I come with you guys to the AA marathon? I do have boundaries, but it is New Year’s Eve, and I hate to get left out.”
Understatement.
The meeting was packed. The holiday season was tough on the clean and sober. There was an AA joke about the “threefold disease” being Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. But everyone in this room tonight had made it through without picking up. As people shared, the word “gratitude” came up a lot. It didn’t even embarrass me much any more.
Since the meetings would run all night, even people who usually didn’t raise their hands got a chance to share. We heard from guys with forty year
s’ sobriety and newbies who had crawled in after celebrating Christmas with a binge and blackout, like me last year. In the back, people milled around chugging coffee and scarfing down Christmas cookies. I grabbed a styrofoam cup of java and leaned against the wall alongside the rows of folding chairs, where I could see as many faces as possible.
“Tomorrow,” one guy said, “the civilians will all be making New Year’s resolutions—and breaking them within a week or two.”
Everybody laughed.
“I don’t make resolutions any more,” he said. “I live one day at a time, and it works for me.”
A pillar blocked my view of the woman who spoke next. I was wondering if one more cup of coffee would make me hyper, so I didn’t hear her name. But I tuned back in when she said, “I made my ninety days right after Thanksgiving.” I started to work my way around to where I could see her as she went on about how things happen the way they’re meant to happen. “Sometimes life doesn’t come out the way you expect,” she said, “but maybe it’s for the best.”
I saw the white-on-black hair before I saw her face. It was Cruella. For the best, huh? For her, maybe, but not for Tim. She must have been the other girlfriend. She’d met him behind the store before she came around the front to use me as her alibi. Once I told the cops, they’d find someone who’d seen her. They might even find the murder weapon. They sell a lot of stuff at Zabar’s. But not blunt instruments.
_______________
Elizabeth Zelvin is a New York City psychotherapist whose mystery series includes Death Will Get You Sober, Death Will Help You Leave Him, and, Death Will Extend Your Vacation. Three of Liz’s short stories, including “Death Will Trim Your Tree,” have been nominated for the Agatha Award. Liz’s work has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and various anthologies and e-zines. Her author website is www.elizabethzelvin.com. Liz blogs on Poe’s Deadly Daughters.
DEATH PLAYS SANTA CLAUS, by Johnston McCulley
Deep disgust formed a picture in the face of Detective-lieutenant Mike O’Hara as he sat before his desk in the Homicide Squad’s room at Police Headquarters. It was nine by the clock on Christmas Eve.
O’Hara had anticipated a Christmas Eve at home with his wife and their two young children, for it was his regular time off duty. He had intended donning a Santa Claus costume and giving the kids the time of their young lives. A Christmas tree had been prepared, and a closet was filled with presents.
But lots had been drawn to decide which members of the Squad would spend Christmas Eve on duty and which would serve through Christmas Day, and O’Hara had drawn a Christmas Eve position.
So had Detective Sergeant Ed Rassman, who was busy now with the radio in a corner of the room, and bringing in Christmas music. In deference to O’Hara’s fit of gloom, he kept the radio turned low. “So it’s Christmas Eve,” O’Hara growled. “When a man should be at home, if he’s got kids. The only homicides we ever have on Christmas Eve are simple killings, the result of fights which are the result of too much Christmas firewater. There’s never any question about ’em. No mysteries to solve. The patrolmen on the beats could handle ’em and make a report. Right?”
“Right!” Rassman agreed. “But you never can tell. And by workin’ tonight, Mike, we get tomorrow off. We can eat Christmas dinner with our folks.”
The telephone bell on O’Hara’s desk gave three quick jangles, the alert signal. O’Hara’s face grew stern, and he reached for the phone. Those three jerky rings meant business.
“O’Hara at this end!” the lieutenant barked into the mouthpiece.
“Maybe you’d better take that call, lieutenant,” the telephone desk sergeant answered. “Sounds important.”
“Switch ’em on.”
The desk sergeant made the switchboard connection.
“Homicide Squad!” O’Hara barked. “Lieutenant O’Hara speaking.”
A cultured, well-modulated masculine voice came to him over the wire.
“This is Dr. Morgan Stampf. I am at the residence of Cecil Fargall on Empire Boulevard. I regret to report that Mr. Fargall passed away a few minutes ago under circumstances that appear suspicious to me. Though I have been his personal physician for several years, I thought it best to notify the police and have an investigation made.”
“Quite right, sir!” O’Hara replied. “We’ll be right there.” He cradled the phone and got out of his chair. “Punch the button, Ed,” he ordered Rassman.
“We roll?” Rassman asked.
* * * *
O’Hara nodded assent as he reached for his hat and overcoat. Rassman pressed a button and started things moving. The Homicide Squad was going out!
The speedy sedan with daring chauffeur would be waiting for them when they hurried into the basement garage of Headquarters. The police photographer and the fingerprint expert would follow in a car always ready and carrying their equipment, and two minor Squad men would be with them. “Doc” Layne, the medical examiner on duty, would be notified promptly and chase them to the address.
With its siren wailing a warning to traffic, the sedan rushed and skidded through the streets, with red lights burning. It cut across a corner of the busy retail business district where throngs were making the usual last-minute purchases.
It turned into broad Empire Boulevard and sped along that toward an old residential part of the city where imposing mansions sat far back from the street in groves of trees, and expressed the grandeur of an earlier era.
About an inch of snow was on the ground, and fine snow was drifting through the air. Perfect Christmas Eve weather, O’Hara thought.
“And I should be home playing Santa Claus for my two kids,” he growled at Rassman.
“If this turns out to be a twister case—” Rassman began.
To the sergeant, a “twister” case was one involving a mystery to be solved and calling for clever work on the part of the Squad, instead of routine stuff.
“Don’t even think that!” O’Hara barked at him, as the police chauffeur, who was listening, grinned into the rear vision mirror. “A twister, with us opening it up, means we’d have to stay with it until the end. Then where’d our Christmas Day at home be? If it’s a twister case, we’ve got to crack it wide open before morning, even if we have to beat the truth out of somebody. I’m going to spend Christmas at home! Let’s hope this Cecil Fargall died of a heart attack caused by indigestion.”
“I know, Mike, but there’s small chance of that,” Rassman warned. “Dr. Morgan Stampf is one wise medic, I’ve heard. He wouldn’t have called us for an ordinary heart attack.”
“Stampf is a fashionable society doctor,” O’Hara explained. “I’ve met him a few times. He reminds me of a human icicle. But some doctors and surgeons get like that, seeing so much misery and pain. They harden themselves against it, same as we do.”
“This Cecil Fargall has a lot of moola, huh?”
“According to common report, he has money stacked up in about a dozen banks,” O’Hara replied. “He’s about seventy. The family has been here since the town was only a wide place in the trail. Almost died out now. He has only one relative as far as I know—a niece named Penelope. Everybody calls her Penny. Sensible girl of about twenty-three.”
Behind their sedan, a siren wailed and indicated that the second Squad car was on their heels. O’Hara relaxed in the seat, lit a cigarette and took a few puffs. The sedan was making good speed on the wide boulevard which traffic seemed to have deserted at that hour.
Finally, the car turned into a driveway and ran up to the front of a huge, old-fashioned mansion and stopped. The second car was there by the time O’Hara and Rassman got out of the first. As O’Hara and the others started up the steps to the front porch, a third car whizzed up and skidded to a stop, and Doc Layne got out of it and hurried to them.
O’Hara called a couple of men to him.
“Wh
en this gets out, the news hawks will flock here,” he said. “I don’t want reporters messing around until I know what’s what. You two stand guard and keep ’em out. I’ll tell ’em everything later.”
O’Hara went up to the front door with the others of the Homicide Squad behind him, but before he could ring, the door was opened by a tall, distinguished-appearing man in evening attire.
“I am Dr. Morgan Stampf,” he announced. “Thank you for being so prompt. Please come in, and I’ll give you the scant details, so you can get at your work.”
Dr. Stampf ushered O’Hara and the others into an elegantly furnished anteroom and waved them toward chairs. He looked what O’Hara had called him—a human icicle.
“This is a tragic occurrence,” Dr. Stampf said, when they were seated. “I have been Cecil Fargall’s personal physician for years. He was a splendid cultured gentleman.”
“I know all that, Dr. Stampf,” O’Hara cut in. “Just tell us what’s happened here, and please make it as short as possible. It’s Christmas Eve, and we’re short-handed.”
“Very well. It was Mr. Fargall’s custom to have a sort of private family party on Christmas Eve. He always had a tree with presents heaped beneath it, and his old houseman, Fred Denshaw, always put on a costume and false face and acted as Santa Claus. His guests this evening were only threes—his niece and ward, Miss Penelope Fargall; Mr. Bob Blodger, her present romantic attachment; and myself.”
“You’ve been here all evening?” O’Hara asked.
* * * *
Dr. Stamp shook his head. “Oh, no!” he said. “I had a call to make on a patient, and telephoned that I’d be in a little late to partake of Christmas cheer, and for them to go ahead with their Santa Claus show and not wait for me. I arrived only a few minutes before I called you.”
“Where are the others?” O’Hara asked.
“In the living room. Mr. Fargall died in the library, where he had the Christmas tree. I left the body there and asked Miss Fargall and Mr. Blodger to retire to the living room and remain there.”