by Carl Schmidt
I opened the drawer and got a zip-lock bag.
“If you don’t mind, unload some of your saliva into the baggie.”
He grinned sheepishly, then complied with my request and tried to hand me the open bag.
“Why don’t you go ahead and seal that yourself?” I suggested.
“Oh, sure. Sorry,” he said.
“We have a couple of other leads that we haven’t discussed with you, Xavier,” I said. “We will do everything we possibly can to get to the bottom of this. In the meantime, you will have to wait and see what transpires. We’ll provide you with a contract that spells out the details, and we’ll keep you informed of our progress. If there’s anything else that you can tell us that might be helpful, please let us know.”
“That’s about it,” he said. “I can always phone you if I remember something significant. How much do I owe you?”
“When you sign the contract, we’ll require a $1000 retainer,” I said. “Our schedule of fees is spelled out in the document. A murder has taken place, so we are taking on considerable risk. That will put your case in the ‘A’ category. We’ll be armed during all phases of our investigation.”
“I want to sign the contract now, and then I’ll be on my way,” he said. “I have a plane to catch.”
The contract was completed in a couple of minutes. He signed it and made out a check for $5000 because, as he put it, “I want you to make this your highest priority.”
I assured him that it was.
21
Honky Tonk Angel
“What do you make of it?” I asked.
“It, or him, Jesse?” Angele replied.
“The whole story,” I said.
“He’s obviously pretty scared,” she replied.
“Do you believe him?”
“Well, yes. Why not?”
“I’m just asking.”
“There’s one thing that troubles me,” Holly said, “aside from the brutal murder of a woman.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“The timing,” she replied.
“Do you mean the fact that she was murdered two days after she vacated her apartment?” I asked.
“No, I mean the fact that Xavier LaGrange showed up in Maine the next day. That’s rather coincidental, don’t you think? It’s like a grand convergence of events.”
After we had thought about that for a few seconds, Holly continued, “I think we can safely assume that Tina Woodbury notified Nicole that we were investigating her. Then in little more than forty-eight hours, Xavier LaGrange meets her in Portland, and she is murdered. Why did he choose to come here in the middle of winter to determine whether Diana was his daughter or not?”
“Well, he said he was in New York for the holidays,” Angele offered. “Maybe he doesn’t get to the east coast very often.”
“Possibly,” Holly replied, “but something other than Diana might have brought him here.”
“Like what?” Angele asked.
“Like blackmail,” Holly said.
“You mean like…Nicole needed a lot of money in a hurry, and she was going to rat him out if he didn’t fly here immediately with loads of cash?” I ventured.
“Something like that,” Holly said. “Maybe she was afraid of being arrested for fraud and wanted to get out of the country.”
“Are you suggesting that Xavier might actually have killed Nicole?” Angele asked in a slightly argumentative way.
“It’s a possibility,” Holly replied. “On the other hand, maybe he paid her a lot money, and Vince killed her for it. For that matter, maybe Tina killed her for it.”
“But if Xavier killed Nicole, why on earth would he hire us to figure it out?” Angele asked.
“Plausible deniability,” Holly replied.
The three of us sat quietly for a minute. Ranger must have felt edgy about the silence, because he nuzzled up to Holly, gave her a long face and wagged his tail.
Holly said, “Here you go, boy,” as she gave him the last piece of jerky from the drawer.
“I’m just thinking aloud,” Holly admitted. “It seems to me there are any number of possible explanations for what happened. Obviously, we have to keep an open mind and follow every lead. We may be busy with this for quite some time.”
“Right,” I said. “In fact, let’s make a list.”
For the next ten minutes we tossed around ideas. Angele took notes. Eventually we came up with two lists. Starting with the highest priority items in each, they read like this:
Questions
What do the police know about the victim and the murder?
What do the security cameras at the Rutland Arms show?
Why did Nicole return to Portland?
Why was Nicole willing to show Xavier his “daughter,” but not willing to show Father O’Reilly his? (And, of course, is that what really happened?)
What does Tina Woodbury know about the murder, and how are we going to extract that information?
Things To Do
Go to the Rutland Arms and snoop around.
Talk to Father O’Reilly. Get Nicole’s DNA profile from him and tell him about the murder.
Take the hair and saliva samples to Paternal Affairs for analysis.
Run a search on the name, Stephanie Goulet, and check out her cell phone number.
Go to the Hilton and snoop around.
Investigate Xavier’s summer stock work on Cape Cod. Search for news stories and photographs.
Ask Xavier to write down the times and dates of every phone call he had with Stephanie during the past month.
Talk to Sergeant Brock Powell. Get the status of the murder investigation and a list of owners of black Jaguar convertibles through the Massachusetts DMV.
Send Eric back to Tina’s house to snoop around and see what’s happening there.
Find out if Frank Richards knows Nicole and Xavier.
Get studded snow tires for Angele’s car.
That’s a lot of snooping; it was going to be a busy week.
• • •
“Jesse, what would you like me to do first?” Holly asked. “Should I continue with the Allied Shipping account or work on the LaGrange case?”
“Finish up the three preliminary background checks for Allied Shipping, but don’t schedule the direct phone calls yet. Call Daniel Fairfield and ask him what he thinks about the Skype interviews. If he likes the idea, tell him we will arrange to do them in a couple of days, provided the three applicants are available. Finish the three reports as quickly as possible, hopefully by mid afternoon. We’ll see where we stand on the Xavier LaGrange investigation at that time, and then we’ll put you on it.
“Angele, I’d like you to go to the Hilton. See what you can find out about Xavier’s weekend. Don’t mention anything about the murder, of course. Oh, and take your press pass,” I added.
I opened the file cabinet and pulled out one of Billy Mosher’s artistic creations: a laminated badge that read, “Angele Boucher - Vanity Fair.”
“Put on the charm,” I said. “A badge will get you only so far. Take the Canon Rebel with you and let it dangle off your shoulder.
“When you get back here, run an Internet search on Stephanie Goulet and check out the summer stock work Xavier did on Cape Cod three years ago.
“I’m going to the Rutland Arms, and then I’ll see Father O’Reilly.”
After the room got quiet, we went our separate ways.
• • •
The Rutland Arms is a six-story, redbrick hotel on Commercial Street. In the summer, parking is a problem. On the sixth of January, after a two-day winter storm, there were plenty of spaces if you didn’t mind squeezing up against a snow bank. I parked on the street and walked into the lobby.
With its aristocratic name, I was expecting the place to be nicely festooned inside. Instead, it was a bit rundown. The best rooms, if you could call them that, overlooked the street with a view of seagulls and the harbor.
The two sec
urity cameras on ground level looked rudimentary. One was located behind the front desk. It had a standard lens, not a fisheye, so I doubted it would even capture images of guests coming through the front door. The second camera appeared to be identical to the first and was positioned to view guests entering or leaving the elevator.
The staircase was at the end of the hall to the left. To get there, you’d have to walk in front of the camera trained on the elevator, but if you passed near the wall, underneath its perch, I doubted it would catch much of anything other than the top of your fedora. There was no camera to observe the stairwell.
I walked up the first flight of stairs and opened the door to the second floor rooms. An overhead camera was aimed down the hallway. It was the only one on the floor.
The setup was the same on the third floor. Oddly enough, the fourth floor camera had been removed. Number 401 was the first room on the right. Yellow crime tape was secured across the door. I tried to open it, but it was locked.
Cameras were set up in the same manner on the fifth and sixth floors as they had been on the second and the third. I took the elevator to the lobby and walked to the front desk. After reading the nametag on the young woman’s jacket, I said, “Pardon me, Miss Wells, may I speak with you for a moment.” I showed her a laminated badge that read, “Arnold Strange - Portland Times.” Recent notoriety rendered “Jesse Thorpe” off limits on my fake IDs.
“Call me ‘Kitty,’” she replied in a down-home seductive sort of way.
“Kitty, those are great earrings,” I said, hoping that a compliment would lubricate her tongue. “You can call me ‘Arnold.’”
“Thank you, Ahnold,” she said in a heavy Down East accent. “Got em last summah at a street fayah up to Boothbay Hahbah. By the way, strange last name you have theyah.”
“Never heard that one before, Kitty,” I replied, referring to her pun.
“I bet you haven’t,” she replied with a smile that said, “I bet you have.”
“Kitty Wells? Wasn’t she a country singer before we both were born?” I asked.
“It wasn’t God who made honky tonk angels,” she replied.
“How can you be sure, Kitty?” I asked.
“It’s the name of a hit she recawded in 1952,” she said.
“Oh, it’s a song,” I replied, catching her drift. “1952, eh? Seems like only yesterday.”
“Well, handsome, what brings you heah? Is it the murdah?”
“That and one other thing.”
“Let’s get on with the othah thing,” she said provocatively.
“I’d rather talk about the murder first, if that’s OK.”
“I’m not suppos’tah talk ‘bout that.”
“We’ll keep it between you and me,” I replied.
“Sounds like a wahm place to keep it,” she said with a wink.
She was a chatty gal. I took that as a good sign.
“Kitty, I noticed that the security camera has been removed from the fourth floor. Is it being repaired?”
“Being replaced,” she said with conviction. “The lens was covahd in dahk paint. Someone sprayed it Satahday aftahnoon.”
“Do you know what time that happened?” I asked.
“Well, I didn’t see it happen, but prob’ly just before the murdah. The video stream of the fawth flooah hallway fades to black at three-fahty in the aftahnoon.”
“Were you working on Saturday?”
“Ah-yuh. From noon to ten.”
“So you were here when the murder took place,” I surmised.
“Guess so,” she said. “Like I said, I can’t talk ‘bout it, but theyah’s nothin’ much to say anyway. Whoevah did it got in an’ out, slick as hand lotion on a doah knob.”
She glanced to her left, in the direction of the door to a backroom, as if to be sure no one had recently come through it to eavesdrop on our conversation. She then leaned forward and spoke is a hushed tone, “Mistah Rutland’s none too happy ‘bout all this. Frankly, I think he’s goin’ to make a killin’ on the publicity,” she said with a wry look on her face, apparently hoping her second pun would work as well as the first.
“That’d make a catchy headline in the Times,” I said. “Rutland Makes a Killing on Hotel Murder.”
Kitty smiled as if her ship had finally come in.
“Were you on duty when the lady checked in?” I asked.
“You mean the murdahd woman?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Ah-yuh, but what makes you assume she was a lady?”
“Just a guess,” I replied.
I pulled out our photograph of Nicole Shepard, showed it to her, and asked, “Is this her?”
“That’s her,” she replied. “How’d you get that?”
“Dug it up in our files,” I said. “Was she alone?”
“When I signed her in, she was.”
“Was she with someone later?” I asked.
“Musta been,” Kitty replied. “Pretty hawd to strangle yourself.”
That’s why I’ll never move away from Maine; I’d miss the local charm.
“One more thing, Kitty. Did you hear that Xavier LaGrange was in town?”
“No. He’s a catch, though,” she replied. “He was hilarious in the Bond movie, Dead of Night.”
“I missed that,” I said.
“Didn’t win an Oscah, but I’da voted fah him. What’s he doin’ in Maine this time of yeah?” she asked.
“He told me he was getting a suntan,” I replied.
“Is that a fact? He does have a sense of humah,” she said. “Is he still heah?”
“No. He’s on his way back to New York by now,” I replied.
“At least you ah still around,” she said hopefully. “I get off work at five.”
“I’ll probably be up till midnight getting my story to print,” I replied.
“That’s OK, Ahnold, I’m a night owl.”
“By then, I’ll be a pumpkin,” I said.
“That’s fine by me. I’ve dated a few vegetables in my day.”
“I fancied you to be a steak and potatoes kind of gal, Kitty.”
“Pumpkin goes good in soup,” she replied. “Pie too,” she added. “I could pick up some whipped cream at the Safeway on my way home from work.”
She took my parries in stride with a look that said, “You can’t blame a girl for tryin’,” but the whipped cream remark was pushing the envelope. As I tried to figure a way to make a graceful exit, she squinted her eyes, and a ten-watt bulb lit them up from behind.
“By Jesus, you shuah look familiar,” she said and followed that up with, “I love a guy with a steady job.”
“Really? What’s his name?” I asked, like the straight man in a vaudeville routine.
“Heah’s my numbah,” she said, as she wrote it down on a note pad and handed it to me across the counter. “Wednesday’s my day off.”
I took the note, folded it carefully, put it in my wallet and smiled.
“Thanks, Kitty,” I said.
I was halfway to the front door when I heard her call out, “Mawnin’ Mistah Thawp.”
I hadn’t seen any of my relatives in the place, so I figured she was talking to me. I turned my head and saw her grinning in my direction, so I lifted my hand to the side of my head and gave her a two-finger salute.
“Mawnin’, Miss Wells,” I said. “Have a nice day.”
22
A Trip to the Morgue
The cold air was invigorating, but the sun had peeked through the clouds. The inside of my car had warmed up enough to be comfortable. I made two phone calls before driving away. The first one was to Sammy D’s Tire and Auto. According to Angele, Sammy had the best deals in town. He had rims and studded snow tires in stock that fit Angele’s Buick LaCrosse. I made an appointment for two-thirty that afternoon.
Then I called Monsignor O’Reilly.
“This is Father O’Reilly, may I help you?” he said.
“Father, this is Jesse T
horpe. There’s been a new development in your case. If you are available, I’d like to come over and discuss it with you.”
“Absolutely,” he said. “I finished morning mass ten minutes ago. I’m here alone.”
“I’ll be right over.”
And I was. It took just a couple of minutes to drive down Commercial Street to Our Lady of the Seas. The monsignor was waiting for me outside his front door when I arrived.
“Come in, Jesse,” he said warmly. “I wasn’t expecting to hear back from you so soon. What’s the new development?”
I wanted to be sure he was sitting down when I gave him the news. So I made small talk until we reached his living room and he was safely on the couch.
I took a deep breath, gazed softly into his eyes and said, “I’m sorry, but I have some disturbing news.”
His eyes grew wide, and his face tightened slightly as he braced for what I was about to say.
“Nicole Levesque was murdered on Saturday evening,” I said in a hushed monotone.
Father O’Reilly stared at me for a few moments, and then right through me into the Infinite. I was prepared to wait for as long as he required before offering any details. Tears welled up in his eyes, and he allowed them to flow. He didn’t raise his hand to wipe them away. He let them stream down his cheeks until they dried by themselves.
I wasn’t watching the clock, but it was several minutes before he spoke.
“I feared that was the case,” he said, finally. “On Sunday afternoon, the radio reported that a woman had been strangled downtown the night before. The instant I heard it, Nicole’s face flashed before me. Her story roamed my heart the entire night. I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours.”
He continued to contemplate life and death for a few more minutes until a new look appeared upon his face. His sadness morphed slowly into curiosity. Finally, he asked, “How did you find out that it was Nicole? The police haven’t yet identified her.”
I appreciated the fact that his question honored our information. True to form, Father O’Reilly believed first, and asked questions later. He was a trusting soul, the kind of man you’d want to be with when life became too difficult to bear alone.