The Case of the Ice Man

by Shannon D Wells

  I turned to find the coat check. A pale girl with hair so dark and frizzy that it looked like it was covered in boot-black stood guard over the counter. A ridiculous beaded headband crossed her forehead and a single feather stuck up from the back of her head. That must have been the Apache part of the club.

  “May I take your coat, ma'am?”

  I stepped up to the desk, fiddling with my coat, and wondering where to start. She looked at me, and her jaw dropped.

  “Larry?”

  “Kitty?” The owner of my best coat gawped back at me.

  12

  “When did you start working here?” I asked Kitty over our cups of soup. She had quickly found a cigarette girl to take her spot at the desk after we recognized each other.

  “Oh, a couple weeks ago, I guess.”

  I took a spoonful of soup into my mouth and wondered what she’d done with the cash she’d been given. It was a gift, I reminded myself. She could have done anything she wanted with it. “That’s nice.”

  “Yeah, I moved out of Miss Toogie’s place into a real nice hotel, made some new friends, and then got a job here!” She was enthusiastic and happy, I’d give her that. Last time I had seen her, I was dropping off a cash gift from her “boyfriend.” It was out of my share of the spoils of some unpleasantness.

  “That’s wonderful, Kitty. I’m happy for you.”

  “Thanks! Why are are you here? This doesn’t seem like someplace you’d sneak into. And where’s your... husband?” She looked at me, bright-eyed and eager, and still looking all of sixteen. I didn’t want to find out what her real age was.

  “I’m working a case right now, is why I came.”

  “I’m glad you’re here anyway. I’ve been wracking my brains with what I’m going to do. My boyfriend’s in some trouble.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice.

  “Oh, is he?” I said, wondering who this boyfriend was and hoping there wasn’t a dead body involved.

  “Yes. Well, it’s all a mess. I’m not sure what to do.”

  “I have a question for you, before you go too far into your story,” I interrupted. “Were you working here on Saturday night?”

  “Yes, how did you know? That’s part of what I wanted to talk about!” She looked amazed. I sighed. Oh lord. I’d spent the better part of a day chasing a goose named Kitty, it seemed.

  “It’s part of my case then. What happened on Saturday?” She looked down at her cooling soup and then watched the waiter speeding by the door to the kitchen.

  “Well, it’s complicated.”

  I waited. The flecks of some green leafy garnish were starting to stick to the oily surface of the soup. She finally started again.

  “I met an older man on Saturday night who says he’s my father.”

  I squeaked.

  “I know. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it either.” She frowned now and picked at the green garnish.

  “Why don’t you tell me everything that happened Saturday night.” I succeeded at sounding calm, I thought, and signaled the waiter for coffee.

  He looked at Kitty and said, “Shouldn’t you be doing something?”

  “Taking a break, lay off me, why don’t ya.”

  He growled at her and left.

  “I don’t know, some older couple and a sour puss came in on Saturday night, nothing seemed wrong. The guy though, he looked at me like he’d seen a ghost. Every time I looked up, he was staring at me. His wife didn’t seem too happy. She kept talking too loud to the old chubby guy with them, but kept her eye on him and me. I figured him for a creep, but then he came and found me a little later.”

  The waiter returned with the coffee, and poured it for me while Kitty frowned over the next part of the story.

  “Anyway, he asked who my mama was and said I looked exactly like his sweetheart. I told him, then he got all white and asked when I was born. I told him that too. He said, ‘I think you’re my daughter!’”

  “You don’t say. Did anyone see you?”

  “The old fat guy did. Mr. Ey— He said to call him Gerald for now, but he wanted to meet for coffee the next day and talk, get to know each other, he said. I didn’t know what to say, I don’t know that I believed him. He said I could bring anyone with me I wanted to, so I figured I’d take Pete—”

  “Who’s Pete?”

  “My boyfriend.” She blushed a little. “I’ve known him a long time, didn’t expect to ever run into him again.”

  “Where’d you meet him at?” I didn’t mean to sound suspicious of Pete, but well, she didn’t have a great track record.

  “We were at the Buckner Home together.” I nodded. A children’s home in the area. “He left a few years ago, too old. I thought he’d gone and bought a farm by now, but it didn’t work out like that.”

  I nodded again. Things were starting to get a little clearer.

  “So you met Gerald on Saturday night and set up a coffee for Sunday with him. What happened at the coffee?”

  “He asked me a bunch more questions. Was sad to hear about my mom, she died in the flu.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “I don’t really remember her. I was only three or four. All I remember is the Home.” She shrugged.

  “What else did he say?”

  “He was real nice to me, and was real nice to Pete even when he was, well….” She looked uncomfortable. “He didn’t like any of the questions or how Ger—Dad was talking about how he was going to make up for everything.”

  “What happened?”

  “Pete told him he didn’t trust him, and we didn’t need any of his damn money and walked out.” She looked down at the table remembering.

  “Sounds like Pete worries for you.” I tried to make it sound encouraging. She nodded.

  “He does, probably too much. He thinks everyone wants something, said there’s no such thing as a free horse.”

  “Well, he may have a point. Did you see Gerald any after that?”

  “Kind of.” Now she was staring at the floor, definitely uncomfortable.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Well… the next time I saw him, he was dead.”

  “You’d better explain that pretty quick here.”

  “It’s not like that. He was already dead. We didn’t do nothing to him. I called Gerald to apologize for how Pete was with him and to let him know I still wanted to talk to him some. He was happy about it, I think. Said he didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot and was glad I had someone looking out for me. Wanted me and Pete to come back and have lunch with him today, to meet his missus.”

  “You were supposed to have lunch with him today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where were you supposed to meet at?”

  “His house. We were going to have a nice lunch he said, and Pete would see that he was legit and wasn’t trying to take nothing that was his. We were going to meet his wife and see the house, and he would show me things from his business—”

  “What things from his business?”

  She shrugged. “I dunno, things. He said there would be papers to sign, his lawyer was going to do something for him and bring it for me to sign.”

  “So why don’t you tell me what happened today then.”

  “Pete wanted to go watch the house we was supposed to eat at. He wanted to make sure it was the real deal.” I was starting to wonder why Pete had it in for people.

  “Were they the real deal?” She shrugged again.

  “It’s a real nice house. We got there this morning, like I said, and was sitting in the truck watching from a little bit away. An hour before we were supposed to go in and meet everyone, one of them trucks from a funeral home came squealing around the corner. It pulled up in front and the fellas ran up to the door. I got real scared, but Pete wanted to know what was going on.”

  “What time was this?”

  “I think around eleven thirty? Don’t rightly know.”

  I looked down at my notes and wondere
d how much this would help. It had to help somehow. Locating my client’s missing husband suddenly hinged on getting help from the little Indian in front of me.

  “What happened next?”

  “Well, Pete went to the door and said he was there to sell something. The black girl told him to scram, they’d had a death in the house and weren’t buying nothing. He saw the funeral fellas putting a sheet over Gerald though, so he took off and came back to the truck. He didn’t want me to see, but he said we needed to do something quick, or someone was going to get away with murder.”

  “What? Murder? How could he be so sure?”

  “Why else would a healthy man drop dead?” A tenor voice broke in, and Kitty jumped. She looked over my shoulder, and from her radiant expression I could only assume that this was the wonderful, much-mentioned Pete.

  13

  “How do you do?” I asked, extending my hand up to the hard-faced young man in shirtsleeves standing to my right. He didn’t put his hand out, but looked at me like he was trying to decide my fate. I decided to forge on. “Do you work here?”

  “You can say that. I work a lot of places,” he said cagily.

  “He delivers to all of Benny Franklin’s places,” Kitty broke in, sounding proud. He didn’t look like a knight in shining armor to me, but that’s what she saw.

  “Oh my” was the only response I could come up with.

  He shrugged, like it wasn’t that big a deal, but his chest puffed out a little.

  “Pays my bills and then some. What do you want.”

  “I’m having a nice chat with Kitty. I know her from… well, from before.” He swung to look at her, then back to me.

  “Pete, she’s the lady I told you ’bout that gave me the pretty coat—”

  “I remember, I remember,” he said, but he used a much gentler tone with her. “Thanks for helping her out.”

  “Don’t mention it. We were talking about Mr. Eymann. Kitty was going to tell me what happened to him this morning. Why do you think it was murder?”

  He pursed his lips and frowned at Kitty. I got the feeling he had no interest in telling a strange lady what was going on. I decided I might as well lay the cards on the table.

  “Look, I was hired to find Mr. Eymann’s body. I have reason to believe that you know where he is. The easy thing to do right now would be to find a police officer and let that whole mess get sorted out.”

  Pete was leaning in, between me and Kitty, and did not look happy or friendly at all. I continued talking. “But I don’t want to do that. I think something’s going on here that stinks, and I don’t want to be party to covering something up. But if you won’t tell me anything, my hands are tied, and I’m only left with the option to do exactly what I was hired to, so I can keep my job.”

  I said my piece and watched them. Kitty looked up at Pete, then touched his face after a moment. He looked down at her and nodded back.

  And then he told me a very short story, with no new information, except for a bit at the end. The bit where he ran the truck into the ditch and had Kitty hold the gun while he “gassed and whacked” the truck men. He’d hustled Gerald into the back of his truck and taken him to an “undisclosed location.”

  Ten minutes later, we had a plan worked out. I had told them about the lawyer and the doctor. We decided that the cemetery by the funeral home would be the best place for everyone to meet. Neutral ground, a good place for body thieves.

  Pete didn’t get finished delivering until about eleven he said, so we all agreed to meet at the cemetery at 11:15 p.m. I was to get everyone there separately, and we would see what shook out. I wanted to see who would offer what bribe so that the body would be quietly returned.

  The terrible doorman came over and jerked his thumb mutely at Kitty, pointing to the coat desk, and she bobbed her head at me and took her leave. Pete stood up, saying he had to go too.

  “11:15 at the cemetery.” He nodded curtly, then went out to his truck. I looked down at my notes and thought about who to call first. I went to the maître d’ and asked for the phone. He pointed to a bank of three in the back corner, and I was off to the races.

  I hoped I could find the right guard shack that Tom would be in. He would be able to help; I was sure of it. Cleaning bums out couldn’t take up all of his time, could it? He wasn’t happy, but he agreed in the end. I hoped for an easier time with the next calls.

  The next call was to the doctor’s residence. “Hello?” he boomed, “Do you know what time this is?”

  “Yes, sir, I do. This is Mrs. Robertson. I was calling to say that I’ve found who has Gerald’s body, but they want to be paid for it. I don’t want to agree to pay more than necessary….”

  “You found the body?”

  “I found who took the body. Did you know that Gerald had a daughter?”

  “What? No, of course not.” He sounded interested.

  “Well, isn’t that something. Prescott Hillman Cemetery around eleven thirty tonight, that would help out.”

  “You do realize that’s very late.”

  I sighed. Yes I did, I told him, and after much grumbling he agreed to go. Mayhew had a similar attitude; although, I told him that I needed a witness in case of police involvement later. He did fake being surprised about the daughter, I noted.

  Twenty minutes later, everything was finally wrapped up. I looked at my watch. I had a little more than two hours before the big event, and was sitting in a night club with music, dancing, and drinking going on all around me.

  I ordered a Bees Knee’s cocktail and started to sip it slowly, reading through my notes the whole time, trying to see who could have wanted the ice man dead. The rumble of male voices, the drink, and the smell of smoke took me back to a few weeks ago. I had been in a very different place drinking the same thing, and it had led to death. I shuddered and told myself that this time the death had already happened.

  14

  “This had better be good, Larry,” Tom said, feeling his chest tighten. It had been a bit of a night already. They’d been walking back to the guard shack for a rest after patrolling when the guard popped out and hollered that Tom had a phone call. Tom wondered how a guard could keep his job in this economy when he never left the shack and was no help with the bums.

  “It’s always good, Tom.” Her voice positively tinkled over the line, and he knew they were in for it then. She was laying it on thick already.

  “What on earth did you get yourself into?”

  “Well, I found out who took the dead man and why, so that’s a start isn’t it?” She did sound a bit proud about that.

  “The dead man was missing?”

  “Yes, he was, Tom, that was the whole thing!”

  “Huh.” Tom was out of answers, but had too many questions to know where to start.

  “I need you to help me with something. I set up for the body snatchers and the interested parties to meet later tonight, and I would like some backup, if you would be so kind.” He could practically hear her eyelashes batting through the phone.

  “What? Larry, we’re on the clock!”

  “I am too! This would be a quick thing. We’re trying to shake out who killed the man! I guess I can go in it by myself. Didn’t think you’d want me to meet in the dead of night in a cemetery with a murderer, but—”

  “Larry!” Tom shouted, then calmed down a bit. “You set up a meeting in the cemetery? That’s some piss-poor planning there. Call them back and cancel!”

  “I will not. It’s a good idea, Tom.”

  “The hell it is. God—” Goodall interrupted this time.

  “What’s going on? She set up a meeting in a cemetery? For what?”

  Tom looked up to his partner and repeated Larry’s side of the conversation back to him.

  Goodall pushed his hat back and scratched his chin.

  “Well, it sounds like it would be a quick thing.”

  Tom couldn’t quite believe that they were going to humor her this much, but surely Goodall w
ould make the right choice.

  “Ok, Larry, we’ll come. I guess we’ll take a lunch break and go do this, but we have to leave as soon as we can afterwards, you hear?” Tom hoped he sounded severe. She couldn’t come up with a harebrained scheme and expect him to bail her out every time.

  “Oh, thank you, Tom. And tell Major Goodall thanks too!” She hung up.

  Tom chuckled and shook his head at the phone, then hung up.

  “Whoever said marriage is boring was wrong,” he said, reaching for a mug of coffee.

  “You don’t say,” Woodall muttered, reaching for the one next to it. “Never tried it myself.”

  “Well, it’s different, that’s for sure.”

  “Gotta say, you’re the only guy I’ve heard say that. Might be the woman you’ve got.”

  Tom blinked at him and wondered what it would take for Goodall to get married. He didn’t seem interested much in anything besides work and hunting. His hunting dogs lived like kings; they boarded with some fellow in south Dallas who cared for them and kept them trained. Tom wondered if they even knew Goodall was theirs or not.

  15

  Tom stalked around the side of the funeral home for the tenth time in the few minutes that he and Major Goodall had been here. He was looking nervous as a cat and just as unhappy. Major Goodall had nodded greetings to me, then squatted with his back against the building. He commenced getting out his pipe and tobacco, packing it down for a smoke.

  “For heaven’s sake, Tom, can you hold still? You’re making me nervous,” I said, reaching for his arm as he neared me. He shook his head.

  “No can do. I don’t like this one bit. I told you on the phone I don’t like this, and I’m telling you now I don’t like this.”

  “I heard you the first time you said it.”

  “I don’t know that you did, Larry. Where’s everyone else? What’s the plan?”