Slow Burn

by G. M. Ford

  “Yes. I was hoping…”

  “I’m on it,” I said. It was the least I could do. I’d squandered bales of his cash, and although I had accomplished a number of significant tasks, none of them were what I’d been hired to do. Yesterday, I had offered Lawrence a chance at redemption. Could be it was my turn now.

  When I poked my head out of the elevator, I caught the briefest glimpse of a pair of King County Mounties waddling up the stairs behind Dixie and Bart. They must have been merely delivery boys, because by the time I topped the three stairs, they were already headed back my way. I gave the boys a smile and walked around them.

  “Afternoon, fellas,” I said.

  Nothing.

  My timing was perfect. I pulled open the door and stepped inside just as Detective Lobdell said, “May I have your attention.”

  Apparently not. The group went wild, erupting into a melee of curses, threats, and recriminations. At the far end of the room, Sir Geoffrey sat with his arms folded over his chest, glowering off into space. To my immediate right, Abigail Meyerson, Brie, and Spaulding all seemed to be yelling at once. No Francona? No Hill?

  The Del Fuego contingent was sans its namesake. Bart and Dixie, Rickey Ray, and Candace Atherton. That was it. They were all shouting too. Detective Lobdell sensed my presence in his peripheral vision. As he turned to Lawrence, I could hear his voice above the din.

  “What’s he doing here?”

  Lawrence said something to him that I couldn’t hear. When he began to reply, I scooted across the room, dragged a chair over next to Sir Geoffrey, and sat down. His lordship favored me with a curt nod.

  Lobdell glanced back toward my former position, noted my absence, and rotated his head until he found me with his eyes. I tried to read them. Was he going to throw me out? No. He wanted me to see whatever was about to come down. As if in confirmation, he sneered at me and then raised his arms. The bozo was showing off.

  It took a full two minutes to quiet the crowd. Twice during that period, just at the moment when it seemed that order was about to prevail, a final pithy insult was hurled, and the mob scene escalated anew.

  “If you are through…” Lobdell began.

  “You’re the one that’s through!” Spaulding shouted.

  “I’m in no hurry here, ladies and gentlemen. You want this to take all night, that’s okay with me.”

  Behind him on the dais, Lawrence all but rolled her eyes at Lobdell’s stirring vice-principal impression. Even the tall, skinny cop up there with them had to suppress a smile by pulling himself back to rigid attention. For the first time, if you didn’t count the curses left hanging in the air, the room was silent. Lobdell began again.

  “This afternoon, the Seattle Police Department, in conjunction with the Office of the District Attorney, conducted a search—”

  Again the room overflowed with sound. Spaulding rose, hefted his groin with his hand, and yelled, “Search this.”

  If I read Brie’s lips correctly, she said, “That shouldn’t take long.”

  Lobdell waited it out.

  “In the course of that search, a forty-caliber automatic was discovered in the possession of Mr. Del Fuego. A computer trace reveals the weapon to be registered to Mason F. Reese.”

  Even the echoes were quiet now. I could hear Spaulding breathing through his mouth. Lobdell had ’em right where he wanted ’em.

  “Furthermore, a copy of Mr. Reese’s Best Steak House list, dated the first of next month, was found among his effects.” He paused. Now even the breathing had stopped.

  “Ms. Meyerson is number one on that list, while Del Fuego’s FeedLot does not appear at all.”

  I joined in on a group “Oooh!”

  Satisfied that he had our attention, he laid the wood on us.

  “Seattle police officers have, this afternoon, arrested Mr. Del Fuego and charged him with the murder of Mason F. Reese.”

  Sir Geoffrey actually smiled. Not the slight straightening of the lips that generally passed for mirth with him, but a wide, toothy grin.

  “I regret that this meeting may have been inconvenient. The arrest of Mr. Del Fuego makes it necessary to formalize each of your depositions. That way, if all goes well, perhaps you can avoid the need to return to Seattle whenever this matter comes to trial. This meeting—”

  “This meeting is an abduction, is what it is.” It was Abby, who stood, clearly pissed off. “Your gestapo tactics with my staff—”

  Lobdell cut her off. “Messrs. Francona and Hill were interfering with an officer in the performance of his duty and have been so charged.”

  “Here, here,” added Sir Geoffrey.

  Abby pointed out over the crowd. “You people are my witnesses.”

  Amazingly, the whole group nodded its head as one. Political Science 101. Disparate groups can be united against a common enemy.

  Sir Geoffrey rose and pointed at Detective Lobdell. “You, sir, are a nincompoop. You have embarrassed both yourself and your department. First, you have the temerity to drag us down here so you can posture, and now…this.”

  Dixie was in Lobdell’s face. “Jack wouldn’t hurt a little bitty bug,” she assured the detective. “That old boy’s all bark and no bite.”

  I stood up. “I want to confess,” I shouted.

  All eyes turned my way.

  “Confess to what?” Lobdell sounded hopeful.

  “I want to confess that I always wanted to do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Have the cops and the suspects all crowded into one room at the end of the case so I can tell everybody what actually happened and who actually done it.” Nobody had a clue, so I tried again.

  “You know, like at the end of a Nero Wolfe novel, when everybody crowds into Wolfe’s office and he sets them straight.”

  The blank looks suggested a disturbing lack of literacy.

  “Detective novels,” Lobdell mocked. “This is what you get, ladies and gentlemen”—he chuckled for effect— “when you hire one of these so-called private investigators. Detective novels.” He laughed again. “A murder investigation isn’t about fiction, folks. It’s not accomplished by amateurs or wannabes. It’s about good, hard-nosed police work. It’s about knocking on all the doors. It’s about motive, means, and opportunity. A competent investigator knows that when you have those three elements, you have your perpetrator. Period. Mr. Del Fuego stood to be ruined and possibly subject to criminal charges if Mr. Reese’s rating system was adjudged to be fraudulent.” Lobdell looked right at me. “And I think you’d have to say his sudden omission from the list makes that pretty clear.” He held up one finger.

  “Motive.”

  He reached into the speaker’s stand and pulled out a large ziplock bag. The black automatic rested upside down in the ziplock bag. The proud papa. I could see the relief in his face. The search had been his idea. With high rollers like these, coming up empty might have taken a serious divot out of Lobdell’s career. “Forty calibers’ worth of means,” he said, checking the crowd for worshippers before returning the bag to its place.

  “Mr. Del Fuego signed a statement claiming that he remained at his restaurant until just before six on Monday evening and then took a cab back to the hotel. A statement”—Lobdell paused for effect—“which he has now recanted.” He made it sound like he was shocked. “Since his arrest, Mr. Del Fuego has claimed that from four-fifteen that afternoon until nearly six-thirty, he was out on an errand. Supposedly to purchase farm supplies for his restaurant opening. In a cab.” He chuckled again. “Of course, Mr. Del Fuego is unable to provide a name for the store, or even a general neighborhood in which it might be found. But I suppose we should take his word for that, him being a noted restaurateur and all.”

  He glanced over at me in mock surprise. “Isn’t that what your pal Nero Wolfe would do?”

  “Nah,” I said. “Nero would send his man Saul Panzer out to find the feed store. Then Saul would come back with a card like this.”

  I
fished the business card out of my wallet and brought it up to Lobdell. Lawrence stepped forward to look.

  “What’s this?” Lobdell asked.

  “Just what it says. It’s the business card of an old guy named Orville Whitney. He works in a feed store on old Ninety-nine, just south of Everett. He’s the guy sold Jack the feed. Give him a call. You’ll find out Jack was there casting racial aspersions just before six o’clock Monday night. There’s a delivery kid who can corroborate.”

  The crowd gave a low rumble. Lobdell turned red, then white.

  Sir Geoffrey spoke up. “And to think Mr. Waterman was, only the other day, extolling the virtues of your department. Phooey.”

  Lobdell forced a sentence out through his teeth.

  “I warned you about withholding relevant information.”

  His lordship jumped to my defense. “Mr. Del Fuego’s activities were in no way germane,” he said. “Until that unfortunate moment when you decided to arrest him.”

  “What he said,” I added.

  The detective was smart enough to know I wasn’t bluffing, but too stubborn to let go. He said something to Lawrence. They went back and forth a couple of times. He left the room at a lope, holding the card in one hand, flipping open his cell phone with the other.

  Lawrence stepped down from the dais and walked over to me. She was looking for something in my eyes. I hate it when they do that.

  “Is that card on the level?” she asked.

  “Absolutely. I tried to tell you about it the other night, but you weren’t interested.”

  She massaged her forehead. “You could have stopped him, before he made such an ass of himself,” she said.

  “You’re right, I could have. What about you?”

  “He went over my head, to my boss. He claimed I was treating them with kid gloves and the investigation was going nowhere.”

  “Your colleague has most certainly remedied that, now, hasn’t he?” Sir Geoffrey remarked.

  “Why don’t you rescue this whole thing right now, Lawrence?”

  “And how am I going to do that?”

  “I’ll give it to you free of charge.”

  “It’s not that ‘no button for the fourteenth floor’ thing again, is it?”

  “No. Better.”

  After another eye-searching session, she threw her hands up in the air and climbed back onto the platform. She gestured out over the crowd.

  “You were saying, Mr. Waterman…”

  “Let’s start with the fact that there’s no way Miss Brie Meyerson went to the movies with Mr. Tolliver and Miss Atherton on Monday afternoon.”

  “Oh, I’ve reached my limit. Spaulding, Brie…” Abby turned to Lawrence. “You may arrest my children and me if you choose, Ms. Lawrence. But we will no longer be subjected to this—this—”

  Abby was about to make a grand exit, so I stepped on the gas.

  “She couldn’t have, because Miss Meyerson spent the afternoon…” I searched for a verb. “Shacked up” seemed too judgmental, so I went with, “She was holed up in room eight fifty-nine with our friend over here…Mr. Bart Yonquist.”

  We had a nice freeze-tag moment where everybody stood still and ran that one through his or her respective circuits a couple of times.

  I spoke to Bart and Brie. “Help me out here, kids. The toothpaste isn’t going back in the tube.” I shrugged and looked from one to the other. “We can drag the room-service waiter in here if we have to. Come on. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Abby began to march out, Spaulding in tow.

  Brie Meyerson saved the day. “It’s true,” she said, then addressed her mother. “Bart and I are having a relationship.” She took a deep breath. “You can shut me out if you want to, just like you did Penny—” Her voice broke, and she took a moment to compose herself. “But that won’t change anything. All you’ll have is another daughter you don’t talk to. I’m going to Cleveland with Bart. We’re going to—”

  “Don’t you dare…” Abby began.

  “No!” Brie shouted.

  Abby’s jaw clamped shut.

  “Just this once, Mother, just this once, let me finish a sentence all by myself, okay?”

  Bart walked over and put a sheltering arm around the girl.

  Abby’s lower jaw resembled that of a large-mouthed bass.

  “I’m taking a semester off from college; I’m going to Cleveland with Bart. I’m sorry if that’s not what you had planned for me, but that’s how it’s going to be.”

  For a fleeting moment, I harbored a sentimental vision seen so often in old Mickey Rooney movies, where the hardbitten authority figure is finally won over by young love. Later, the kids borrow a barn and stage a show to raise money. You know the plot.

  In that version, Abby would melt right before the camera, run over, eyes streaming, throw her arms around her daughter, and cry, “Oh, my dear, I’m soooo happy for you.” So much for that version.

  In real life, Abigail Meyerson merely opened the door, beckoned Spaulding out before her, and left without a word.

  The lovebirds played it just right. Without a way to gracefully leave, they waited to see what I knew. I’d have done the same thing.

  Dixie, on the other hand, was enthralled with the idea.

  “Well, I’ll be,” she said, looking from Brie to Bart and back again. “If that isn’t just the cutest thing.”

  Brie tried to stay upbeat. She was on the verge of tears, but she looked at me and said, “It was the Josta, wasn’t it? That silly Josta drink?”

  “It was the Josta catalyst,” I said. “When I remembered that I’d seen those bottles on a room-service cart while I was standing in the hall talking to Mason Reese, that opened up a whole new range of speculation for me. The minute I considered that the room-service order might have been yours, suddenly a whole bunch of other stuff fell into place.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Oh, like how your brother spends all day every day making fun of people and you ignore him, but he makes a little fun of Bart and you punch him in the mouth with a burger.”

  “You kids let me know when you get a pattern picked out. I’ll send you down a little somethin’ for forty,” Dixie said.

  I suddenly turned on Candace and Rickey Ray. “When you two got off on the eighth floor the first time, Brie and Bart were in the hall, weren’t they? That’s why you had to jump back on the elevator, and that’s what set you off your feed so bad you had to stand there for five minutes figuring out what to do next.”

  Lawrence looked confused, so I told her about the tape. As I spoke, Rickey Ray colored slightly and shifted in his chair. I said a silent prayer that the skinny cop up on the dais was a lot badder than he looked.

  Candace had the right idea. Stonewall it. She said, “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can’t speak for Mr. Tolliver, but I, for one, have never been on the eighth floor of this hotel.”

  The tips of Rickey Ray’s ears were bright red. He’d been running his own movie and hadn’t heard what she said. Like all the rest of us on the planet, he’d have been better off if he’d listened. Instead, he said, “Ain’t you never pushed the wrong button, podna?”

  The moment would have made a good silent movie. In a single glance, Lawrence and I exchanged one “holy shit,” two “told you so’s,” and one “damned if you weren’t right.”

  On the far side of the room, Detective Lobdell slipped back through the door. He looked like somebody had stolen the shoulder pads from his suit. Jack’s alibi had checked out. Lobdell was in deep sewage. He’d sacked the rooms of the rich and famous, been duped by a planted gun, and arrested the wrong millionaire. Today, he might have been eligible for Heaven.

  “That explains everything,” I said to Candace. “Why you jumped in when Brie needed an alibi. How you knew for sure she’d go along with the program. You weren’t trying to give her an alibi, you were strengthening your own. And you knew she’d go for it because her alternative was t
o tell her mother she was sleeping with Mr. Yonquist.”

  Candace rose and smoothed her skirt.

  I kept talking. “That was what had me stumped. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how you could be sure Brie would go along with the lie. Especially when it was bound to get her in hot water with her mother. It was a brilliant, gutsy move,” I said. “It was Sir Geoffrey who pointed out to me that the only reason anyone would willingly jump into the frying pan was to get out of the fire.”

  Miles made an “it was nothing” face.

  Candace Atherton reached down and picked up her purse. “As much as it pains me to admit,” she said, “I fear Ms. Meyerson had the right idea. This is absurd.” She started for the door. Rickey Ray got to his feet and hustled after her. Lobdell moved away from the door.

  “Don’t let them leave,” I told Lawrence. “They killed Mason Reese. If you let them walk now, you’ll never get them again.”

  I didn’t say any more because Rickey Ray had spun on his heel and started back my way. Sir Geoffrey rose and stepped behind his chair. I thought about getting under the table.

  “No,” Candace said. Rickey Ray slowed, then stopped about five feet away from me, his eyes wild in his head, his hands stiff and straight.

  “No,” she said again. “Don’t dignify these lies.”

  I knew what the look meant. He was right. I was lucky.

  Lobdell, his self-confidence in shambles, edged aside and allowed the pair to leave the room. I looked at Lawrence.

  “Those two have systematically ruined Jack Del Fuego,” I said. “They’ve stolen from him. They’ve turned him against his most trusted advisors. They’ve repeatedly sold him out to his enemy, Ms. Meyerson. They’ve used his own money to buy up his notes. They’ve played on his vanity and encouraged him to do absolutely insane things, and then, for their grand finale, they tried to frame him for murder.”

  “But Mr. Del Fuego is their meal ticket,” Lobdell protested.

  “Jack’s also their stepfather.”

  Rickey Ray meant to break his arm. I still contend the skinny cop would have been okay if he’d gotten out in front of the pair, held up his arms, and ordered them to stop. God only knows what might have happened then. Hell, they might have walked. They had the millions they’d bilked from Jack and a sob story guaranteed to reduce Oprah to jelly. These days, that’s all it takes.