“Will you at least give me my gun back?” David said. He sounded a bit like a kid asking for his stolen lunch money back. I admired his chutzpah if not his good sense.
“No,” I said.
I left. Unlike David’s men when they had left my office, I closed the door behind me. My parents had raised me right. I had manners.
CHAPTER 15
I called Detective Pearson on my cell on the drive back to my office from David’s.
“I have a present for you,” I said to him once he picked up the phone.
“Oh joy. Lemme guess—you’re retiring from the detective business,” he said.
“I can’t retire. If I did, who would catch all the criminals?” I said. “If you’re at the station, I’ll swing by in a few minutes.”
“I’m out and about right now. I’m conducting a poll of city residents as to whether they find you funny. So far the results are not looking good for you,” he said. “I’m not too far from your office. I can be there in around an hour.”
We hung up. I drove back to the office uneventfully. No one tried to pull a gun on me on the way there. Perhaps I had used up my quota for the day.
When I got into my office, I put David’s gun into one of my desk drawers. It was a Glock 9mm pistol. I flipped through the mail that had been left in my mailbox downstairs. It was all bills. Didn’t those people realize I was out striking blows against the wicked? Who had the time to pay the water bill? On second thought, the water bill was pretty important for someone with my powers.
I wrote checks for the bills at my desk. While I did so, part of my mind mulled over the question of who the woman was who had hired David to sic his men on me. Since I had no other information to go on, I had no answer to that question. On the plus side, the pool of people who were out to get me had been narrowed somewhat by my conversation with David: I had gone from everyone being out to get me to only the female half of everyone being out to get me. That was progress of a sort.
There was a knock on my office door. Glenn entered. He was wearing a rumpled, cheap brown suit and a black tie. I suspected he bought his suits pre-rumpled. Glenn was carrying a box.
“I brought doughnuts,” he said. He put the box down on my desk. I opened it. I eyed the doughnuts critically.
“There any jelly filled in here? Those are my favorites,” I said.
“No. I hate jelly filled,” Glenn said.
“Who hates jelly filled doughnuts?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure that’s unpatriotic. Are you a terrorist?”
Glenn took a bite of a doughnut.
“Who looks a gift horse in the mouth?” he asked. “I’m pretty sure that’s rude.”
“You make a good point. I am anything but rude,” I said, thinking of my earlier encounter with David. I had, after all, shown good etiquette by closing his door on the way out.
I tried to avoid making a face as I picked out of the box a doughnut with red sprinkles on it. I took a sample bite. Not bad. It was no jelly filled doughnut, but not bad. Maybe doughnuts were like sexual encounters: even the bad ones were still pretty good.
“Speaking of not rude, I displayed my good manners today,” I said. I filled Glenn in on what had happened at David’s. I left out the part where I threatened to stick David’s head into boiling water. Police frowned on assault, even in the furtherance of a good cause.
Glenn watched me closely with his bulging eyes as I recounted the tale.
“Why do I get the feeling you left out of that story almost as much as you’re telling me?” he said once I had finished.
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “Perhaps all these years on the force have made you cynical.”
“I rather think it’s all these years on the force having people lie to me. There’s an old cop joke: How can you tell when a suspect is lying? His lips are moving.”
“I’ve heard the same joke told by women about men, by men about women, and by everybody about lawyers,” I said.
“I guess everyone is a cynic, and not just cops,” Glenn said. “I still think you are leaving some stuff out about your encounter with David. That’s not me being cynical, that’s me knowing both you and David Hoff. David wouldn’t tell his own mother she was on fire unless there was something in it for him.”
Glenn took another bite of his doughnut. His movements were precise and exact. It was as if he had planned out exactly how he was going to eat the doughnut beforehand and he was following that plan of action to the letter. It was one of the reasons Glenn was such a good cop: not only did he remember everything, he planned for every contingency, every eventuality. Plus, he handled a gun like he was the Sundance Kid. His odd appearance belied how good he was. Criminals had made the mistake of underestimating him before, and would no doubt do so again. Not me, though. I knew how good he was. He might have been as good as I, and he did not even have superpowers. If I were not such an intrepid, fearless crime-fighter, Glenn might have scared me a little.
“‘She’ll kill me,’ you say David said?” Glenn asked. I nodded. Glenn looked thoughtful.
“I wonder who he could have been talking about. If David knew what the word meant, he’d probably describe himself as a misogynist. He hates women; he’s known for it. Probably has Mommy issues. If a woman has David so scared he won’t talk, that woman is bad news,” Glenn said.
“Beats the heck out me who he could have been talking about,” I said. “I was hoping you would know. After all, I’m just a lowly private detective and you’re an all-knowing, all-seeing homicide detective.”
“And don’t you forget it,” Glenn said. “So, do you think David had anything to do with Mr. Chase’s murder?”
“You never can be too sure, but David says no. I believe him,” I said.
“What makes you think so?” Glenn asked. The corner of his mouth twitched. “Hero’s intuition?”
“If I were a woman, I’d combine my woman’s intuition with Hero’s intuition. I’d never have to leave the office. I would just sit here and intuit the solution to crimes,” I said. “But, until I lose my head and get a sex change—”
“Thereby losing more than just your head,” Glenn interjected. The corner of his mouth twitched again. First the doughnuts, then two mouth twitches in one day. Glenn was positively gleeful today. He must have shot some criminals.
“As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted, until I can rely on just intuition to solve cases, I have to rely on legwork. My legwork with David today turned up something,” I said, reaching for the drawer I had put David’s gun in. Glen suddenly looked especially alert. I stopped reaching, remembering who I was speaking to. Glenn was a cop, and though I liked him, he would be the first to say we were not friends. More like friendly associates. I did not want to trigger his Sundance Kid impulses by pulling a gun out without warning. Giving him an excuse to shoot me would put the cherry on top of what was already apparently a banner day for Glenn.
“I’m reaching into my drawer to pull out a gun I took off of David,” I said. Then I continued my reaching for the drawer, opened it, and took out David’s gun. I held it by the butt with only my thumb and forefinger. I put it on top of my desk. Glenn pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and used it to carefully pick up the gun. He examined it.
“It’s a nine millimeter,” he said. “The medical examiner tells me Mr. Chase was shot with a .45 between eight and eleven at night.”
“So, this was not the gun used to shoot George,” I said.
Glenn’s mouth twitched again.
“Wow, that’s an impressive conclusion,” he said. “It really is a privilege to watch a professional detective’s mind at work.”
If I were not a licensed Hero, I might have pulled my own gun out and shot Glenn at that moment.
“This gun might have been used in other crimes, though. You never know with David. Though he’s small fry, he’s ambitious and he and his men get around,” Glenn said. He pulled out a clear plastic bag, put the gun in it, and pu
t it in his pocket. “I’ll have its ballistics compared to those from unsolved gun cases. Only problem is, if it is linked to a crime, I’m not sure it will do us any good. I’m no lawyer—thank God—but I’m not sure of the legality of how you obtained the gun from David. Fruit of the poisonous tree, I think they call it.”
“Maybe I should have left the gun with David, let him shoot me with it, and then you could have sauntered in, arrested him and confiscated the gun all nice and legal like,” I said.
“Next time, you do that,” Glenn said. He had finished his doughnut, and was working on a second in his systematic way. He looked at me with those eyes that missed nothing. “Your mysterious client got anything to do with George’s death?”
Aha, I thought. And now we have the real reason why Glenn wanted to see me. He wanted to ask me this question and look at my face when I heard it.
I shook my head.
“She has an ironclad alibi. Her husband too. Unless they hired someone to off George, neither of them had anything to do with it,” I said.
“She keeping you on to look into George’s death?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“You find out anything yet I should know about?”
“Other than what I already told you about David, no,” I said. “You?”
“No,” he said.
I looked at him.
“This is not the most fruitful meeting I’ve ever had then,” I said.
“Hey,” he said in protest, “you got some free doughnuts.”
“You’re right. I stand corrected,” I said.
CHAPTER 16
Visiting David Hoff had not given me any clear leads on who had shot George. The only clue I had gotten from the visit was that a woman was involved somehow. “She’ll kill me,” David had said. Perhaps David had been referring to one of the women George had slept with. Since George had slept with more women than Genghis Khan, I was not sure how much the clue was helpful. If the woman David had been referring to was not in fact one of George’s paramours, the pool of people I should be investigating was the entire female population of the world. Though it was a life goal of mine to see as many women as possible before I died, taking a hard look at all the women of the world as murder suspects was not the kind of hard looking I originally had in mind.
Thinking David could have been referring to any of the women in the world was not helpful from an investigatory standpoint. But, assuming he was talking about one of George’s paramours was in that it limited the scope of my inquiry quite a bit. If I could figure out the woman David had been talking about, perhaps she would lead me to who had shot George. Heck, maybe it was she who had shot George. Who had a greater motive to kill George than someone who was being blackmailed by him?
I decided to start with the woman I had observed with George when I first started to tail him, namely the well-preserved Claire Morganthal. I called her up and made an appointment to go see her at her house.
Finding Mrs. Morganthal’s house was not, of course, an issue as I had already been there before. The Morganthal mansion was everything I remembered, and even more impressive viewed close up. As I rang the bell on the front door, I thought about the fact that perhaps I was in the wrong line of work. No one ever got to buy a mansion like this with the money a solo private investigator brought in. Maybe I should have tried something more lucrative, like being a drug dealer or serving in the U.S. Congress. I shook my head at myself at the thought of it as I waited for the door to open. I had way too much self-respect and dignity to do one of those jobs. So, becoming a drug dealer it was.
Mrs. Morganthal opened the door. The curves of her body were as improbable as I remembered. We introduced ourselves to each other. I followed her into the home’s living room. As I did so, I alternated between checking out the house and checking out Mrs. Morganthal’s lush body. Instead of dealing drugs to make a fortune, maybe I could have just done what Mrs. Morganthal did and marry into money. If I were to totally follow in her footsteps, I would have to get breast implants like her, though.
For, Mrs. Morganthal’s impressive measurements were clearly augmented. What had been evident in George’s naked pictures was even clearer once I was seated across from Mrs. Morganthal in her living room. Mother Nature did not construct women who looked like her without human assistance.
Mrs. Morganthal’s tight but expensive shirt was cut low enough to display cavernous cleavage. Her nipples and areolae were covered by the shirt, but just barely. I would have thought a blouse that cost as much as hers clearly did would have included a bit more fabric. She was also wearing tight jeans and heels so high I was not sure how she walked without toppling over in them. But, with shoes like that, walking was not the point. Being sexy was.
From her shoes to her improbable bust, from her impractically long red painted fingernails to her dyed blonde hair, everything about Claire was designed to highlight, accentuate, and exaggerate her femininity. She turned that femininity on me with a brazenness that was disconcerting. I felt like she was auditioning me to be her new George. So much for mourning the dead.
“Well you certainly are a big one, aren’t you?” she said. I was seated on the sofa. She was in a chair she had pulled so close to me, our knees almost touched. “Are you big everywhere?” Not that I needed a hint, but the light touch of her hand on my knee made her meaning clear.
I was uncomfortable. For someone who once dived into raw sewage to save someone without a moment’s hesitation, that was saying something.
“Mrs. Morganthal—”
“Please, call me Claire,” she said. Her hand was still resting on my knee. I resisted the impulse to shoot her. I was not opposed to older women. But, despite Claire’s obvious physical charms, there was something about her that was plastic and fake. And, I did not mean her enormous fake breasts. She was trying so hard to be sexy and alluring despite her age that she was almost a caricature. It was off-putting. I wondered what she was like under all that makeup, surgery, and her cougar persona.
I smiled at her despite my discomfort. I was Truman the Tirelessly Patient.
“Claire. I want to talk to you about George Chase’s death,” I said.
“I know. You said so on the phone. I saw reports of George’s death on the news. What a terrible tragedy. He seemed like such a nice man,” she said.
“Here’s the thing, Claire. Before George died, I followed him for a while. One of the places I followed him to is here. I know you were having a relationship with him,” I said.
Claire took her hand off of my knee.
“You followed us?” she said. The sex kitten act dropped for a moment and I got a glimpse of what laid behind it. Despite all the nips and tucks, Claire suddenly seemed her age.
I raised a hand placatingly.
“I’m not interested in your sex life or in telling your husband about it,” I said. “It’s your life and your business. I’m just talking to George’s acquaintances to see if I can get some clue as to who might have shot him.”
Claire visibly relaxed.
“I have no idea who shot George,” Claire said. “It certainly was not me. I liked George. He was fun.” The way she said the word “fun” made me think she did not find George to be so because of the way he told a good joke.
“Where were you the night George was shot?” I asked.
“I was at a charity function. I got there around 7 p.m., and did not leave until around midnight. My husband couldn’t go with me, so unfortunately I had to go to it alone,” she said. Claire leaned forward a bit, and I saw even more of her chest than before. I had not thought that was possible without her stripping naked. “I do so hate being alone,” Claire said with a slight coquettish smile. The sex kitten mask was back on.
I plowed ahead. I was Truman the Tenacious.
“And, where was your husband?”
“Edgar had to working late, which is not unusual,” she said.
“When did your husband get home?”
&n
bsp; “Late. His company is launching a new drug, so he’s been working crazy hours the past few weeks. Around 2 a.m., maybe? Him coming into the house and disabling our alarm woke me up, but I didn’t look at the clock or anything. It could have been earlier or later.”
“How did you meet George?” I asked.
“I met him at Zenith Fitness. I was working out there one morning, and he approached me and struck up a conversation,” Claire said. She smiled slightly. “We were in bed together less than two hours later.”
“You sound proud of that,” I said. I was just trying to keep her talking. If you make people comfortable and keep them talking, they will tell you all kinds of useful things, often without even meaning to.
“I am proud of it. Do you have any idea of how old I am?” she asked.
I knew she was 56-years-old because I had done my research. But, it did not seem diplomatic to say it, especially since Claire obviously put a lot of energy and money into not looking her age.
I looked at her, pretending to assess her age.
“I’m guessing you’re somewhere in your late thirties, early forties,” I said.
Claire positively beamed at my response.
“Aren’t you a doll!” she said. “I am, in fact, in my fifties. Though I do look good for my age, note the qualifier—for my age. I’m no fool: I look nowhere near as good as I did when I was younger. Though I fight like hell to fight the effects of aging, you can only slow down Father Time’s advance. You can’t stop him entirely.
“Despite my age, I still have a very high sex drive. In fact, it might be higher now than ever before. I’m not being satisfied in the bedroom by Edgar. We are more like friends and roommates these days than husband and wife. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Edgar and he makes enough money to allow us to live the way we do and so I don’t have to work,” she said. She smiled lecherously at me. “But, a girl’s got needs. I’ve taken lovers from time to time. Hell, Edgar might have even known about some of them. He’s not stupid. But, we’re at the point where he lives his life and I live mine, and our lives really only intersect when we need to go out socially to parties, charity events, that sort of thing.”
Superhero Detective Series (Book 1): Superhero Detective For Hire Page 10