More Julius Katz and Archie

by Dave Zeltserman

  Of course. Still, as I chewed on that I couldn’t see how Julius could possibly know that he’d solve this murder by six tomorrow, and I told him this.

  “The original plan must have been to slip the counterfeit Lafite Rothschild back into the storeroom without the theft ever being noticed. I have to believe framing Prescott for Duncan’s murder was hastily improvised.” Julius snorted, which was the first time I’d ever seen him do that. “If I can’t uncover the murderer by tomorrow evening, I deserve to eat only at The Happy Pig Whistle until my last day.”

  Julius might’ve been knee-deep in a murder investigation he had promised to solve by six p.m., but that didn’t deter him from his usual routine. The next morning he awoke at six-thirty, spent the next two hours engaged in a rigorous martial arts workout inside the private studio he had built on the top floor of his Beacon Hill townhouse, and then showered and shaved before dressing in a conservative gray suit and dark gray tie, slipping on a pair of light gray oxfords, and heading downstairs to the kitchen. He brewed a pot of his favorite French roast, then brought a cup of coffee, a croissant slathered with imported strawberry jam, and the day’s newspaper to his office. After he was settled comfortably behind his desk, he gave me a list of instructions and commenced with his breakfast and reading the paper.

  At ten-thirty on the dot Julius’s internal clock must’ve dinged, because he put the paper down, wiped his hands with a cloth napkin, then used the same napkin to dab at his mouth. He was finally ready to turn on his brain and go to work.

  “Archie, are Tom, Saul, and the others available?”

  The Tom and Saul he referred to were Tom Durkin and Saul Penzer, two of the best freelance private eyes in the business. The others were Stan Green and Alvin Stubbs, a couple of freelancers that Tom recommended.

  “They’re ready and waiting.”

  “Good. Any trouble scheduling the appointments?”

  “Just a little. So far Griff has lived up to his word and kept Duncan’s murder out of the press, and I was able to use the pretense that Prescott hired you to find out which of his employees stole the Lafite Rothschild. I had to strong-arm one of them to agree to come here, hinting that you’d pick him as the thief if he didn’t. No fuss with the other three.”

  “Which one was resistant?”

  “Gary Parker. He manages the stockroom, and my money’s on him. His job involves receiving and shipping the high-priced fermented grape juice, and doubtful anyone would’ve noticed him sneaking out an extra case.”

  I filled Julius in on the background information I’d been able to collect for the four suspects, and there wasn’t much. I couldn’t find a link between any of them and Desmond Grushnier, nor could I find any large sums of money being recently transferred to any of their bank accounts. Whichever one of them was acting as Grushnier’s stooge was being extraordinarily careful to keep that fact a secret

  At eleven o’clock I saw on the outdoor webcam a skinny, smug-looking thirty-two-year-old man walking up the private path to Julius’s door. I knew he was thirty-two because I had earlier hacked the DMV to get copies of all the suspects’ driver’s licenses so I’d know what they looked like.

  “Your first appointment is right on time,” I told Julius. “Bill Haisley, Boston Premiere Wines’ webmaster.”

  Julius waited until the doorbell rang before pushing himself out of his chair so he could greet his guest and bring him back to his office. Something about the amused cat-who-ate-the-canary grin etched on Haisley’s face made me wonder whether he could be the murderer. It made sense that someone savvy with computers would be able to keep his contacts with Grushnier hidden.

  Julius’s tone took on a brusque note as he asked Haisley, “Do you find something amusing?”

  Haisley’s grin turned sheepish. “Nothing,” he admitted. “This is just so surreal, that’s all. I’ve read about you in newspaper stories, of course, but I never thought I’d be sitting in your office being questioned by you, especially over something as trivial as a stolen case of wine.”

  “Would you rather that I question you about a murder?”

  Haisley’s grin froze. “No, of course not,” he said.

  “The stolen wine was valued at eleven thousand dollars, which in Massachusetts makes the theft grand larceny, a crime punishable by up to five years in prison. Do you still find this amusing?”

  Haisley’s grin was now completely gone. “I never found this amusing, only interesting,” he stated.

  “Did you steal the wine?”

  “That’s rather blunt.”

  “I thought I’d be blunt,” Julius said. “Please answer the question.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Of course not.” Julius showed a razor-thin smile. “But if you were lying to me right now, I’d probably never know it. Is that right?”

  “You might, you might not. I couldn’t say.”

  “Because you’re a clever liar?”

  “When I want to be,” Haisley admitted. “But I’m not lying.”

  Julius leaned further back in his chair as he considered the suspect. Haisley was likely a clever man and could’ve been a clever liar, as he suggested. In any case, he seemed to have little trouble meeting Julius’s stare.

  I remarked to Julius that this seemed to be a game to Haisley and if he was trying to rattle him, it wasn’t working. He signaled me to wait, and then asked Haisley, “Did Jim Duncan steal the wine?”

  “Smiley? I couldn’t say.”

  “Why Smiley?”

  “That’s Jim’s obviously ironic nickname. He’s got what could only be kindly called a sourpuss personality, which you’ll have a chance to witness firsthand when you question him.”

  “I’m afraid I won’t have that opportunity.”

  Haisley raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”

  “Because Duncan was murdered late yesterday evening.”

  Haisley looked at Julius with a half grin, as if he were expecting a punchline for a joke. The reaction could’ve been genuine or he could’ve been faking it. Hell if I knew which.

  “This is a bad joke,” he insisted.

  Julius didn’t answer him and for the next one point two seconds Haisley did his best Prescott impersonation by blinking three times in rapid succession. “This isn’t about the stolen wine then?” he sputtered out.

  “Of course not.”

  Julius had Haisley rattled then. Or he could’ve been a very clever actor as well as a liar. Whichever it was Julius let up on the throttle and began asking him routine questions about what he did after leaving work yesterday, trying to walk him step by step from when he left the building until after Duncan’s murder had occurred. While Boston Premiere Wines was primarily an auction house for rare wines, they were open to the public Monday through Saturday from nine to five, and Haisley claimed that he needed until five-thirty to finish adding a new auction to the website. He then hoofed it to the Faneuil Hall marketplace, where he used cash to buy food from a vendor, and after that sat on a park bench across the street and read a book for two hours before heading home. He doubted anyone would be able to vouch for him, claiming he wasn’t someone people noticed.

  “If you ask me, he’s trying a little too hard to create an unverifiable alibi,” I told Julius. “Notice how he made it a point to say that he paid with cash? And how nobody would be able to either remember him or dispute him?”

  Julius grunted for my benefit, and then proceeded to no avail to shake Haisley from his story. After an additional fifteen minutes of this, Julius gave up and told Haisley they were done and that Haisley should be able to find his own way out. The Premiere Wines’ webmaster looked stunned by that.

  “You mean I’m free to go?” he asked.

  “I have no authority to hold you. You were always free to leave whenever you wanted.”

  Haisley pushed himself to his feet, looking somewhat shaky. Julius waited until Haisley had his hand on the door knob to ask him how Desmond Grushnier first establish
ed contact with him. Haisley turned back and looked at Julius as if he had no idea what he was talking about.

  “I don’t know anyone named Grushnier,” he said.

  Julius didn’t bother to say anything further, and his eyes glazed as he watched Haisley leave his office. I watched Haisley over several webcam feeds to make sure he left the townhouse without causing any mischief, and once he was out the front door, I remarked to Julius that if I had to make a wager I’d bet Haisley hadn’t heard Grushnier’s name before.

  Julius made a sour face. “Even if the man’s involved, Grushnier would’ve used an underling to deal with him, and there’s only a slight chance Grushnier’s name would’ve been mentioned. But it still serves our purpose to further rattle him.”

  One of the reasons Julius wanted to rattle Haisley was that I had arranged with Stan Green to follow him the moment he left the townhouse. If Haisley was shaken up enough, maybe he’d try to go on the run or lead Stan to incriminating evidence. If Haisley attempted to go back to Boston Premiere Wines, Green would intercept him and take him somewhere to babysit him until Julius had a chance to question the other suspects. Julius didn’t want any of them being warned in advance about Duncan’s murder. Obviously, Duncan’s murderer would know, but Julius was hoping that the killer would slip because of that fact—either letting the tension of the moment get to him (or her), or put on a poor show of acting surprised when told the news.

  It was ten minutes to twelve and the next suspect was scheduled to arrive at a quarter past. Julius got up from his chair so he could go to the kitchen and make himself a prosciutto, heirloom tomato, basil, and mozzarella cheese sandwich on a French baguette for lunch. He had a bottle of Moscato wine chilling in the refrigerator, and from the longing look he gave it, I know he would’ve liked to pour himself a glass to go with the sandwich, but he steeled himself and left the wine in the fridge. No doubt he must’ve considered himself showing superhuman resolve by not drinking any wine until he had the case solved.

  At five past twelve Stan called to report that Haisley had tried going back to work, but Stan stopped him before he could make his way inside, and now had him at a coffee shop for “additional” questioning. I told Julius this, and he acknowledged me with a grunt between bites of his sandwich.

  The next suspect was four minutes early and Julius showed yet another sour look from having the last mouthful of his lunch interrupted. My heart bled for him over the hardships he had to face, or at least my virtual heart did.

  “The nerve of some people,” I told Julius. “Do you want me to call her and tell her to come back in four minutes?”

  Julius ignored my sarcasm and, after chasing the last bite of sandwich with a sip of coffee, simply said, “No need, Archie.” He got up and headed to the front door so he could greet Irene Doyle, Boston Premiere Wine’s cashier and bookkeeper. I knew she was fifty-six from her driver’s license, but in person I would’ve guessed she was ten years younger. Medium height and slender, she resembled photos I’d seen of Rita Hayworth from a movie database. The fact that Jim Duncan was half a foot taller than her and outweighed her by ninety pounds didn’t mean she couldn’t have killed him. I’d found the coroner’s report earlier this morning through some hacking, and learned that Duncan was hit seven times on the back of the head with a tire iron, the blows being struck at a downward angle. Another tidbit I found from my hacking was that the tire iron came from Prescott’s car. My guess about what happened was the killer pulled a gun on Duncan, marched him into the bedroom, made him get on his knees, and then beat him to death. Any one of the four suspects could’ve done it.

  Julius didn’t like to feed murderers, but I decided not to read too much into the fact that he offered Doyle coffee and refreshments—after all, he must’ve been planning to head back to the kitchen to pour himself another cup of French roast and nab a piece or two of biscotti he had gotten from the North End. Doyle declined the refreshments, but accepted the coffee. Once they were settled in Julius’s office (and as I had predicted, he had taken two pieces of biscotti), Doyle claimed that she couldn’t believe anyone at Boston Premiere Wines had stolen the missing Lafite Rothschild.

  “There has to be some sort of mistake,” she insisted. “Honestly, we’re like family there.”

  “There are all sorts in a family,” Julius said. “Including thieves and cutthroats. If you had to pick one of your coworkers to be a thief, who would you pick?”

  “None of them!”

  “How about Smiley?”

  She looked surprised at that. “You know Jim’s nickname?”

  “I was told he was given the name because of his dour personality.”

  “Jim’s a very sweet man who likes to make people think he’s a curmudgeon. We all have our nicknames at works. It’s just a fun thing we do.” She smiled secretively at Julius. “I bet you can’t guess mine.”

  “Red?” Julius said, hazarding a guess.

  She considered that. “Not a bad guess since my hair’s red and I work in a wine shop selling plenty of red,” she said. “But no. Mr. Prescott gave me the nickname Bunny a few weeks after I started working at the wine shop because of how fast I work.”

  “Yeah, right,” I told Julius. “For the hell of it, I created an image of what Irene Doyle must’ve looked like at twenty-four, which was how old she was when she started working for Prescott. Ten to one he gave her that name because she had the looks back then to be a Playboy Bunny.”

  Julius signaled me that I was no doubt right. He asked Doyle about George Easter, the shop’s buyer, and whether he could be trusted. Doyle insisted that she’d trust her life with Buggy, that he’d been working at the store almost as long as she had.

  “Buggy?” Julius asked. “Did he get that nickname for being mentally unstable?”

  “No, of course not,” she insisted. “When George started working at the store he liked to call a shopping cart a buggy, and the name stuck.”

  “Quaint,” Julius offered.

  “Did you notice that she blushed just now?” I said. “That’s her tell to show she’s fibbing. Easter resembles a large beetle, at least from his driver’s license, and that’s got to be the real reason for his unfortunate nickname.”

  Julius hadn’t seen any of their driver’s license photos yet so he didn’t bother agreeing or disagreeing with my assessment. Instead he pressed on, asking whether Easter could be a thief, and Doyle insisted that wasn’t a possibility. She also insisted the same was true about Gary Parker, whose nickname turned out to be Crabby, but she claimed that was because of his love for crabmeat and not because of a bad-tempered personality. When Julius asked her whether Bill Haisley could be a thief, she took a sip of coffee as a delaying tactic before blushing slightly and answering no. I didn’t bother to mention to Julius that she was lying.

  “His nickname?” Julius asked.

  Her eyes dulled as she told Julius that Haisley had been given the moniker Joker. She must’ve believed Haisley had been behind the theft—or at least that he could’ve been.

  Julius asked with a wisp of smile, “Is that nickname because of his sense of humor or that he could be a Batman supervillain?”

  She shrugged in a way that used more of her eyebrows than her shoulders. “The name just seemed to fit,” she said.

  What happened next caught me off-guard. For the next 8.3 seconds Julius’s facial muscles hardened so that he looked almost as if he was carved out of marble. My processing cycles sped up a beat because I knew what this meant. Something had clicked and the great detective’s brain was going into overdrive to solve the murder.

  During those 8.3 seconds Doyle looked at him with concern, as if she thought he was having a stroke. When Julius snapped out of his trance, he excused himself, and wrote on a notepad a set of instructions for me. For as much as thirty-two milliseconds, I thought he was nuts, and then the same thing that clicked with him clicked with me.

  Julius next proceeded to step Irene Doyle through what she did t
he days the Lafite Rothschild went missing and Jim Duncan was murdered. I knew this was only a delaying tactic to see if I had any luck with his instructions. Twenty-two minutes and eighteen seconds later I told Julius, “Bingo,” and emailed him my findings. He once again excused himself, this time so he could check his email. He quickly read through the newspaper article and other information I had sent him, and then thanked Doyle for her time.

  “I believe I have inconvenienced you more than enough,” he said with a polite nod.

  What I found had left Julius in good enough spirits to escort Irene Doyle to his front door. Or maybe it was because she looked like she could’ve been Rita Hayworth at age forty-six. I asked Julius whether I should call Alvin Stubbs and tell him it wasn’t necessary to tail Doyle.

  “Yes, Archie, please do so.”

  Again, he was in good spirits, so he added more emphasis than normally on the please.

  “What about Saul? Do you want me to call him and tell him you don’t need his services?”

  “Archie, instead, please get Saul on the line. I have a new assignment for him.”

  I did as Julius asked, and his new assignment sounded as unnecessary as his previous one had become. But Julius was going to make a bundle on this case, and if he wanted to share some of the wealth with Saul, who was I to complain?

  The next appointment, George “Buggy” Easter, knocked on Julius’s door twenty-eight minutes later, putting him right on time. Julius brought Easter back to his office, and as the man sat hunched over in his chair, he looked more like a beetle than he did in his driver’s-license photo. Or maybe I thought so partly because I knew his nickname, but it was also because of his thick body, mostly bald scalp, grayish complexion, and thick tangle of eyebrows that almost completely hid his eyes.

  Julius proceeded to ask him a series of mundane questions, and Easter gave Julius the same answers I’d given him earlier when I briefed him this morning. Easter was forty-six, grew up in South Boston, went to public schools in the city, didn’t go to college, and instead worked odd jobs until he was hired at Boston Premiere Wines when he was twenty-five, first working in the stockroom, then moving on to handle purchases for the wine shop.