“Just that she has a business manager and a boyfriend who are very protective of her. But I suppose that’s not surprising. She’s only nineteen, with lots of crazy fans.”
“You think one of them killed Santillo?”
“It’s possible. Both claim they were at the Concert Center watching Lily’s performance, but either one could easily have slipped away. We’re only two blocks from there.”
“I have to go out,” Mike told me a bit later. “I’m meeting Vance Oberline for lunch.”
“I thought you were through with him.”
“He says it’s important.”
I went back to my computer and found a phone number for the Cedar Rapids Gazette. When I reached them I identified myself and told them I was searching for news of a fatal auto accident involving a family named Lafferty, some sixteen years ago. The clerk kept me on the line for a few minutes while he searched, then came back with the information. “Here it is, on March twenty-seventh of that year. There’d been a late winter storm and the roads were slippery. Roland and Sally Lafferty were both killed instantly and their three-year-old daughter Lily was injured.”
“She was in the car with them?”
“That’s right.”
“Thanks. You’ve been a big help.”
I hung up and thought about it. I was still thinking fifteen minutes later when Stacy Cline showed up at the office. “Hi. Is Mike around?” she asked.
“He had a lunch date.”
“Too bad. I was going to buy him lunch in return for the ticket last night and taking me home after.”
“I’m his partner. You can take me to lunch if you’d like.”
The phone rang and I excused myself to answer it. “This is the Cedar Rapids Gazette. You phoned us for some information about an accident earlier.”
“That’s right.”
“I followed up on reports of the accident for the next several days. I thought you might want to know that the little girl died too, three days later.”
“Did you know about this?” I asked Stacy when I’d relayed the news to her.
“I — no, he didn’t tell me everything. I was just a file clerk, to make the office look legit.”
“But you knew he collected information on Lily Lake, among others. You knew he had a copy of her birth certificate, under her original name.”
“I knew that, yes,” she admitted.
“But you didn’t know the real Lily died at age three?”
“I—” She was interrupted by a new arrival, Sergeant Ramous.
He walked in the door behind her and said, “Just the two people I’m looking for. We’re finished with Santillo’s office, Miss Cline, if you want to retrieve any belongings from it. I took the tape off the door.”
“Thank you, Sergeant.”
“Now about you, Al. Trapper tells me he’s discovered the dead man was bugging your office. That true?”
“It seems to be. Mike’s been selling some celebrity news items to the tabloids and I guess Santillo was trying to hijack them.”
“That must have made Trapper pretty angry.”
I shook my head. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. He didn’t discover it till after the murder.”
“Who’s this fellow Vance Oberline? We checked on Santillo’s phone calls and there were several to and from Oberline.”
“A tabloid stringer. He was Mike’s contact, and I suppose he might have been Santillo’s, too.”
“Would he have had any motive for killing the man?”
“Not that I know of. I think the killing might have had something to do with Lily Lake’s concerts here this week, though. Maybe there was something about her past that would have harmed her popularity. Information that might have been reason enough for Sly Morgan or her business manager, Brunner, to have visited Santillo two nights ago.”
“You might know more than you’re telling,” Ramous said.
“Talk to them. Ask them about it.”
Sergeant Ramous was noncommittal, but as he left I knew I’d planted the seed in his mind. After he’d gone, Stacy asked, “Why’d you want to do that? If the killer thinks you know something damaging, he might come after you like he did Santillo.”
“That’s what I’m hoping for. I’ll be sitting here tonight about the same time and see what happens. Meanwhile I’ll be going over every scrap of paper about Lily Lake in Santillo’s files. If she’s not Lily Lafferty, or Lake, who is she?”
Later that afternoon I told Mike what I’d done. “You’re asking for trouble, Al. Oberline says Santillo had a really big story. He’ll pay big if I can get it to him before the national press gets hold of it.”
“I want you at the concert hall tonight. Try to keep an eye on Brunner and Sly Morgan. If either of them leaves, follow him.”
He didn’t like that. “You got your gun?”
“In the safe.”
“Get it out, Al.”
I promised I would, and then sent downstairs for a sandwich and beer. I wanted to finish going through Santillo’s files before I had any visitors. Lily Lake’s file was first, and that was easy. The real Lily was long dead. He had another file labeled Identity Theft and I turned to that next. I knew all the tricks about forging a false identity — taking a name off a tombstone, procuring a birth certificate for the person, and then using it to obtain a social-security card. That might have been what Lily Lake had done, but why would that be shocking enough to cause a murder? As Sly had pointed out, this was the twenty-first century, when virtually anything goes, especially when it comes to a young, attractive rock star.
I’d finished my sandwich and beer and was near the end of the file when I found what I was looking for. I didn’t know how Santillo had come across it in the first place, when all the tabloids missed it, but then I remembered they’d missed the real Lily’s death too, probably because they’d never followed up on the auto accident that killed her parents. It was just after eight o’clock and I heard the outer office door quietly open.
“Come in,” I called out. “I’ve been expecting you, Lily.”
“Have you?” she asked. She was wearing a black hooded raincoat that did a perfect job of concealing her identity.
“I thought it would have to be Sly or Art Brunner, because your show started at eight. But then I remembered you have a forty-five-minute opening act and an intermission before you take the stage, and Sly told me you like to be absolutely alone before each performance. It wouldn’t have been too difficult leaving by the stage door and walking the two blocks to this office to shoot Rich Santillo.”
“You don’t know a thing,” she told me.
“I know you mentioned Santillo’s office was right next to mine, even though you claimed never to have heard of him.” I opened the file on my desk. “And I finally figured out who you really are, with a little help from Santillo’s research. I know why you had to kill him.” I saw her hand move inside the raincoat pocket. “Don’t shoot me through the pocket. The powder burn might be noticed when you hurry back to the Melrose for your concert.”
Her hand came out, holding the little pistol. “I’m sorry about this,” she said as she raised the weapon. “I didn’t want to kill him but he would have ruined my career, everything I’d worked for.”
“There’ll be somebody else after me. You can’t kill them all to hide your secret.”
“I can try,” she said, and that was when Stacy Cline came up behind her and hit her with a bookend.
“We may have to hire you after all,” I told Stacy later, when Lily Lake had been taken under guard to the hospital and Sergeant Ramous was waiting for an explanation.
“We’ve got the pistol,” he said, “and it’s probably the murder weapon. But we still need a motive.”
I glanced over at Mike Trapper. “I’m sorry, Mike. This story might have made tabloid history, but every paper in the country will have it by morning.” I spread out the clippings and documents from Santillo’s file. “She had no time to search for these,
especially when she realized I was in the next office. You see, she stole the identity of a dead child to become a seventeen-year-old entrant on a TV reality show. She did better than she could have dreamed, winning first prize and going on to concert tours and gold records.”
“You really think an identity theft would have ruined her career?” Mike asked.
“Not that alone, but Santillo was able to trace her real identity. Her name was Naomi Crawford and she’d been living in New Zealand for several years. No one in America knew her. She was without a past, except for the one she invented.”
“And?”
“And what would her millions of teenage fans have done when they discovered their nineteen-year-old idol was a thirty-one-year-old woman?”
Crash Tackle
by Keith Miles
Copyright © 2007 by Keith Miles
Keith Miles worked in theater, radio, and television while pursuing his career as a novelist and short-story writer. The prolific author has some forty crime novels in print; the latest one in the U.S., under his popular pseudonym Edward Marston, is The Princess of Denmark: An Elizabethan Theater Mystery Featuring Nicholas Bracewell. (St. Martin’s Press; 8/06).
❖
The crime did not come to light until Tuesday evening when they arrived for the training session. As soon as they stepped inside the clubhouse, they were met by an overwhelming stink of beer.
“What the hell is going on?” demanded Neil Woodville, leading the way swiftly to the bar. He felt something moist underfoot and came to a halt. “Jesus!”
A string of expletives followed and even Peter Rayment, normally so restrained, gave vent to some foul language. The whole of the bar was awash with beer. Someone had opened the taps on every barrel and the alcohol had poured out in a series of small rivulets. Not only was the bar in an appalling state — its carpet sodden, the legs of its furniture inch-deep in brown sludge — but there would be no draught beer for those coming to Shelton Rugby Football Club that evening. It was nothing short of disaster. Training sessions were extremely hard. Players worked up a healthy thirst.
“I blame Doug for this,” decided Woodville.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“He forgot to check the taps last thing on Saturday.”
“Doug would never do that,” said Rayment, defensively. “You blame him for everything, Neil, and it’s not fair. He does his job well.”
“Not in my book.”
“You tried to stop us hiring him in the first place.”
“And now you can see why,” said Woodville with a gesture that took in the whole of the room. “Look around — he’s ruined the place with his incompetence.”
“This is not a case of incompetence — it’s sabotage.”
“Then you can bet that Doug Lomas is behind it.”
Neil Woodville was a chunky man in his forties, a former prop whose weight had gone up dramatically since he stopped playing. A sly punch off the ball had left him with a broken nose that gave his face a sort of crumpled dignity. Peter Rayment, by contrast, was a tall, thin, bespectacled man in his late thirties with a diffident manner. As club secretary, he was a tireless workhorse, handling all the paperwork and doing a dozen other important jobs behind the scenes. By profession, Rayment was an accountant. Woodville, the waddling vice-chairman of the club, ran his own scrap-metal business.
“I’ll call the police,” said Woodville, taking out his mobile phone.
“Wait for Martin.”
“Why?”
“It’s his decision,” warned Rayment.
“Well, I’m taking it instead of him. This is a crime scene. We need to report the fact straightaway. Wait for Martin!” he said with contempt. “What bloody use will he be in an emergency like this? The last thing we need right now is a man in a wheelchair. Besides,” he added, his lip curling, “it was Martin who foisted Doug Lomas onto us. Our chairman has a lot to answer for.”
Martin Hewlett knew at once that there was something wrong. When the clubhouse came in sight, he could see no players out on the pitch. Instead of going through their routines, they were clustered in the car park. None of them had even changed into his kit.
“What’s the matter?” he said, peering through the windscreen.
“Perhaps they can’t get in,” suggested his wife, Rosie, at the steering wheel. “Maybe Neil hasn’t turned up with the key.”
“Neil always turns up with the key. It’s an act of faith with him. In any case, I can see his BMW. We’ve got problems, Rosie.”
“Then let someone else sort them out for a change.”
“But I’m the chairman.”
It was a matter of great pride to Martin Hewlett that he was chairman of a successful rugby club that ran three regular teams and a youth side. Every Saturday, sixty players took the field, wearing the colors of Shelton RFC, and they maintained the high standard of play that their many supporters had come to expect. Hewlett had been an outstanding captain of the First XV until a crash tackle had brought his playing career to a sudden end and left him paralyzed from the waist down. Others might have been disillusioned with the game as a result but Hewlett’s love of rugby seemed to increase. Unable to play, he threw himself wholeheartedly into the running of the club.
He was a big, broad-shouldered man with a ready smile and an unforced geniality. Hewlett was also very popular. When his car came to a halt, a number of players immediately came across to him. While they were helping him into his motorized wheelchair, they gave him varying accounts of what had happened. Neil Woodville pushed through the knot of players to give the newcomers a nod of welcome.
“I’ve rung the boys in blue,” he said.
“I’m more interested in the boys in blue and white,” said Hewlett, referring to the club colors. “Why aren’t they training? Cup match on Saturday. We need to be at our peak.”
“They wanted to see the damage, Martin.”
“They should think about the damage to their fitness instead. Go on,” he urged, clapping his hands. “Get changed and get out there. If you work hard, I’ll let you lick the carpet dry in the bar afterwards.”
After some good-natured badinage, the players drifted off to the changing rooms and left Hewlett and Rosie alone with Neil Woodville. The vice-chairman’s suspicions had had time to harden into certainty.
“I think that Doug Lomas is at the root of all this,” he said.
“Rubbish!” exclaimed Hewlett.
“It’s his revenge because we refused to put his wages up.”
“Doug is not a vengeful sort of person.”
“No,” said Rosie, stoutly. “He works hard. He has to, now that they have a child to look after. Doug needs this job. Why would he do anything that might make him lose it?”
“I don’t trust him,” said Woodville.
“You don’t trust anyone.”
“Rosie is right,” said her husband, twisting in his wheelchair. “You never give a man the benefit of the doubt. All right, Doug Lomas is no saint. We knew that when we took him on. But my brother vouched for him and that’s good enough for me.”
“Well, it’s not good enough for me,” snapped Woodville. “Once a thief, always a thief. That’s my feeling.”
“I can see why you didn’t become a probation officer,” said Rosie.
“Whereas my brother did,” noted Hewlett. “Adam deals with ex-cons all the time. His job is to keep them from reoffending.”
Woodville was blunt. “He slipped up badly with Doug Lomas.”
“This crime has nothing to do with him, Neil.”
“Then who did turn those taps on — the Phantom Beer Spiller?”
“I’d have thought there were two obvious suspects.”
“Go on — surprise me.”
“First of all, there’s our neighbors,” said Hewlett, pointing towards a nearby campsite. “I’ve lost count of the number of times the gypsies have tried to buy some of our land so that they can increase the number of permanent
caravans. They’ve got more reason for revenge than Doug.”
“You said there were two obvious suspects.”
“We’re playing the other one on Saturday.”
“Crowford?”
“Who else?” asked Hewlett. “This is just the kind of stunt that they’d pull. We’ve had a terrific season, Crowford have been crap. They know we’ll beat them hollow on Saturday in the elimination match. We’ll kick seven barrels of shit out of them.”
“No need to be vulgar, Martin,” said his wife. “We take your point.”
“Question is — does Neil take it as well?”
“Yes,” admitted Woodville, thinking it through, “and you may be on to something. Last time we played Crowford, someone let down the tires of my car as a joke. And we know how their team cheats like mad on the pitch. This could be down to them, Martin.”
“Or to the gypsies,” Rosie reminded him.
“Anyone but Doug,” added Hewlett. The sound of a motorbike made him turn his head round. “Talk of the devil — here he is.”
“Late as usual,” complained Woodville.
“Bang on time, I’d say.”
Hewlett checked his watch, then waited until the motorbike bumped its way down the rough track that led to the club. Shelton RFC was situated in a leafy corner of Warwickshire, a beautiful, isolated spot whose tranquillity was only ever shattered by occasional jet aircraft from Birmingham International Airport some four miles away. Reaching the club meant a long drive for Doug Lomas, yet he was invariably punctual. He switched off his engine, dismounted, then put his motorbike up on its stand. Pulling off his crash helmet, he gave them a wary grin.
“What’s this, then?” he asked. “A reception committee?”
“You’ve got some explaining to do,” said Woodville aggressively.
“Leave this to me, Neil,” said Hewlett, “and give the man time to get his breath back.” He smiled at the barman. “Hello, Doug. Looks as if you won’t be pulling too many pints this evening.”
“Oh?” Fearing dismissal, the barman was cautious. “Why not?”
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 787 & 788, March/April 2007 Page 30