The Fedora Fandango: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 5)

by Richard Levesque

  “Jack?”

  “Don’t look so surprised. We get bored, Jed. You can only listen to the radio for so long. I’m not sure I’m cut out for this long-term babysitting thing, you know?”

  “I’ll make it up to you,” I said. Then, squeezing her hands a little harder, I added, “Please be careful tonight. More than you have been if that’s possible.”

  “I don’t think it is,” she said, “but I’ll do my best.”

  Nodding, I took a breath and said, “There’s one other thing.”

  “Just one?”

  “Hmm. Yeah. Let’s call it just one. You know what’s been happening with the other Jeds. The ones who hijack me.”

  She looked concerned and said, “Yes.”

  “Well…I think there’s one in particular who’s gotten me in his sights. I don’t know how, but he keeps crossing into me. If I ever say something like ‘I’ll see you around,’ I want you to be very wary of me. Do you understand?”

  “Not really. ‘I’ll see you around’ isn’t the most specific thing. What if you say it accidentally?”

  “I might. I’ll try not to. We need to have some sort of a code between us. A word you can ask me for, and if I don’t give it, you’ll know it’s not me. Not the real me.”

  “All right,” she said, looking doubtful. “What should this magic word be?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “How about fedora? Does that work?”

  “Just that one word?”

  “Yes. Let’s keep it simple.”

  She nodded. “All right. And if you fail this test, what am I supposed to do then?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Depends on how I’m acting. If I’m behaving out of character, then get the hell away from me. If I’m just seeming…confused about what’s going on, then try to calm me down and ease me through it. I’m usually back quickly, but sometimes they’ve been in the driver’s seat for an hour or more.”

  Letting out a long sigh, she said, “I don’t like any of this, Jed. I really don’t. But…all right.” Then she gave me a sad smile and in a shift to a sharper, accusatory tone, asked, “What’s the magic word?”

  “Fedora,” I said. “Fedora.”

  “Good enough,” she responded. “For now.”

  Movement from beyond her caught my eye, so I looked past Sherise’s left shoulder to see Jack coming out of the bedroom. He had different clothes on than I’d left him with.

  “You took him shopping, too?” I asked.

  “Like I said, we were bored. Plus, he can’t keep wearing the same clothes endlessly, can he?”

  “I suppose not.” Then, to the boy, I said, “Good afternoon, Jack.”

  He stared at me silently for a few seconds and then said, “Hello, Mr. Jed.”

  I hoped the smile I gave back looked friendly and that it also masked the wave of uneasiness I’d just felt without being able to say where it had come from.

  “You be good now,” I said. “I’ll see you again tomorrow. We’ll go back to my place and play guitar a little. Maybe go visit Mr. Osvaldo some more.”

  He smiled but said nothing. Then he turned and went back into the room.

  I gave Sherise another kiss and said, “We need to go. You promise you’ll be careful? Just there and back? No other stops even if you’re bored?”

  She mock-pouted and then said, “I promise.” Then, before I could turn toward the door, she grabbed my hands again and, with real concern in her eyes, said, “You have to be careful, too. Please?”

  “I will,” I said, and I meant it.

  Back in the car, I asked Carmelita if she had one of Guillermo’s other phones.

  “It’s in my purse,” she answered.

  This sent me digging into her handbag, and I came out soon enough with the portable phone, opening the case and starting the process of unspooling the roll of copper wire that served as the antenna. “Guillermo needs to go back to the drawing board on these things,” I said as I clipped the lead to the back of the phone. “There’s got to be a less cumbersome way.”

  “Maybe if you stop cavorting around in other worlds, he’d have time to get back to work on things like that,” she answered, her tone telling me she was ribbing me.

  Ignoring her effort at humor, I switched the phone on and dialed.

  “Jed Strait, Private Investigations,” came the greeting when the line picked up.

  “Hi Peggy,” I said.

  “Jed! I’ve been waiting to hear from you. Is everything all right?”

  “Yes. Everything’s fine. I just wanted to see where you are with our Elsa stand-in.”

  “She’s ready to go. Will you be picking her up?”

  “I don’t think so. There’s a good chance I’m going to be able to get the real thing in another hour or two. Can you give the actress a call and tell her to stay available just in case? I’ll give you another update in a bit if I can.”

  “Got it,” she said, and we clicked off.

  I dialed again.

  “Detective Division. Crashaw,” came the answer on the second ring.

  I grimaced and said, “Hello, Detective Crashaw. I was trying to track down Detective O’Neal.”

  “She’s in the field. Who is this?”

  I sighed. “It’s Jed Strait.”

  “Ah,” he replied, his know-it-all tone coming through the wires all sharp and shiny. “I’ll have her call you back when she gets in.”

  You will not, I thought, imagining him hanging up O’Neal’s phone and going back to his desk without writing anything down.

  “Any idea when that might be?” I asked, doing my best to keep a civil tone.

  “Not at all,” he said, another lie. The smugness in his voice told me he didn’t care that I knew he was giving me the brush-off. In fact, I was pretty sure he wanted me to know, would have been a little disappointed if it turned out that I took him at his word. He likely figured I had no recourse, and I expect that was just fine with him.

  “Thank you,” I said, a bit overly sweet, and hung up.

  “Did you strike out?” Carmelita asked.

  “He thinks so,” I said, starting to dial a third time. “But that was just the first pitch as far as I’m concerned.”

  A call to the main police department number got me a few other lines to try. On my next call, I got what I was after.

  “Detective Dietrich speaking.”

  “Good afternoon, Detective. This is Jed Strait.”

  The pause on the line told me this had just taken her aback, but when she answered, it was with complete poise. “Hello, Mr. Strait. Are you calling in reference to the Mulligan case?”

  “I’m not, actually. I was trying to track down another detective who I’ve worked with before, and I’m not getting anywhere. I was hoping you could do me a favor and see if you can figure out where she might be found.”

  “And who would that be?” she asked, playing it perfectly cool. It wasn’t just O’Neal who was expecting there to be extra ears on the line.

  “Detective O’Neal,” I said, “out of the downtown division.”

  “Ah. I see. Well, I don’t know where she is at the moment, but I can put in a call to dispatch and see what I can find out. Can you hold?”

  “I can,” I said, playing up the politeness. Turning my head toward Carmelita, I winked and said, “I think I hit the ball this time.”

  “Good for you.”

  It took less than a minute for Wanda Dietrich to come back on the line. “Mr. Strait? Dispatch tells me that Detective O’Neal checked in on a lunch break at Perry’s Deli. Do you know it?”

  I looked at my watch. It was close to four o’clock—a bit late for lunch. I told myself O’Neal was probably having a long day.

  “It’s on Sunset, right?” I said.

  “Yes. Sunset and Silver Lake. It’s one of our—it’s one of her favorites.”

  “That’s good to know. I’ll head over there and see if I can catch her.”

  I hung up and directed C
armelita to pull over when we got to Silver Lake, which turned out to be only another four blocks away.

  The deli was small but crowded despite it being somewhere in between the lunch and dinner rushes; I figured if it was this crowded now, the place knew nothing but rushes. O’Neal sat in a corner booth, her back to the wall and her eyes on the door despite the sandwich in front of her, piled high with pastrami. Thus situated, she spotted me before I had finished scanning the room; she waved me over as soon as I picked her out of the crowd.

  “Hungry?” she asked as I sat across from her.

  “Actually, yes,” I said, realizing I hadn’t eaten anything since throwing together a utilitarian breakfast in Jetpack Jed’s kitchen that morning.

  She grabbed a napkin from the dispenser and pushed it toward me before pulling half of the sandwich away from its mate. “Every time I order one of these things, I tell myself I should just get half, but then I forget when I come back. Everything smells so damned good that my judgment goes out the window.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Can I pay you for half?”

  “Forget it. What’s going on?”

  “Can we talk freely in here?” I asked.

  She nodded. “No reason to keep up the dog story. It’s so loud in here that even if I were being watched, no one would be able to catch a word we’re saying to each other.”

  “You think that’s still going on?”

  “I do. Speaking of, how’d you find me?”

  “Detective Dietrich pulled a few strings for me after Crashaw threw a wall up.”

  “He’s a charmer, isn’t he?”

  “I can think of other adjectives,” I said around a bite of pastrami.

  “So, how’s the boy?”

  “He’s fine. I’ve been shuttling him around between Guillermo and Sherise. They’re keeping him plenty entertained.”

  “You’re keeping him out of that burlesque house, aren’t you?”

  “Well…we might be stretching the definition of ‘out of,’ but he’s definitely being kept safe. And maybe getting a little education, too.”

  “From strippers?”

  “They’re dancers, Detective. Just dancers. And when they’re fawning over the boy, it’s all quite proper. I promise.”

  “He say anything yet?”

  “Nothing of substance. Not since that nightmare. He’s saying please and thank you and Sherise’s name now. Mine, too. So, that’s something.”

  “It is.”

  “Have you been getting anywhere on what happened to his parents or Dietrich’s brother?”

  “No,” she shook her head while she dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “The investigation is being kept incredibly tight. It’s looking like the murder/suicide angle is going to stick. The homicide team told Wanda they’d keep her informed of any developments in Wayne’s killing, but they haven’t spoken to her since. I doubt they’re stonewalling her. Just seems to me they’re not getting anywhere. If I can’t break something soon, there isn’t going to be any connection made between the two crime scenes.”

  I nodded but said nothing right away.

  After a moment, she added, “I picked up a rumor that Mrs. Wheatley had a safe deposit box at her bank. A warrant’s been submitted to access it, but that should have already gone through given the stakes on this one. Far as I know, nothing’s come of it yet.”

  Setting down the last bit of the half-sandwich she’d given me, I said, “Have you picked up any chatter about Wheatley having had any romantic attachments before he married the missus?”

  “No. Should I have? Do you think he had a jealous ex? The Wheatleys were married about ten years. Seems like a long time to hold a grudge.”

  “What if it wasn’t an ex?”

  “You think he was having an affair?”

  “I don’t know. Just a hunch.”

  “If the wife found out, that would still point to her as the killer,” O’Neal said.

  “True.”

  “Do you have someone specific in mind, or just spinning your wheels?”

  “I heard something,” I said. “I can’t say where I heard it, so don’t even ask.”

  She raised an eyebrow and waited.

  “The thing I heard was that when they were all younger, Wheatley and Chief Buckman were both wooing the woman who ended up as Mrs. Buckman. You ever catch wind of something like that?”

  The raised eyebrow went up another step. I didn’t think those things could go that high, but then again, I’m no expert.

  “No,” O’Neal said. “If Carrie Buckman was ever romantically linked to Seth Wheatley, then that’s something I’m sure the papers would have dug up by now. As far as I know, the Buckmans and Wheatleys have all been good friends for years. Doesn’t seem likely if there was some romantic rivalry in their past.”

  I nodded. “The rumor I heard was that it was all very amicable, all very much in the past. And…” I added, not sure how much more I should spill.

  “What is it?” O’Neal prompted, leaning forward in her seat.

  “Mrs. Buckman had a pet name for her dead beau, if that’s what he was. ‘Sweetly.’ Like S. Wheatley, you get it?”

  She nodded, a look of disgust clouding her face. “I get it. And you can’t tell me where you got this information?”

  “Like I said, it’s impossible.”

  “Even if I pull you in and let Crashaw have you?”

  I smiled, and I think she knew there was a part of me that wished she would do just such a thing. Nothing would give me more satisfaction than stonewalling her obnoxious partner to the point of apoplexy.

  “Even if,” I said.

  She let out a long breath. “Play the rest out,” she said. “Like that silly song of yours they keep torturing people with on the radio.”

  “You know this tune as well as I do.”

  “Play it anyway.”

  With a shrug, I popped the rest of the sandwich in my mouth and, around my chewing, said, “We were speculating on the chief being the shooter when we were out on the lake. We just didn’t have motive. This provides it, at least if the story turns out to be true. Old affair or not, something got sparked between the DA and the chief’s wife. Maybe things never got completely put to bed between them, or something got started up again. Either way, Buckman gets wind of it. He goes to Wheatley’s place the night after the big announcement of his run for governor, confronts Wheatley. Maybe the DA cops to it. Maybe they argue. Either way, the chief pulls a gun and drills the DA. Then the wife. Makes it look like she did them both.”

  “And Wayne Dietrich?”

  “That’s easy. The chief knew about the boy, but maybe forgot in the heat of the moment. Then, when the smoke cleared, he went after the kid and found him gone. So, he puts out the APB with the special instruction that calls about the boy come right to him. When the dispatcher gets the call from Wayne Dietrich…what was her name? Lozano?”

  “Yes. Irma.”

  “Right. Irma gets the call, does what she’s supposed to do. Buckman goes to the coffeeshop, spots Dietrich. Kills him. Doesn’t find the boy. Makes sure Lozano has an accident…Is this all too far-fetched?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I wonder if the chief has an alibi.”

  “You probably shouldn’t get ahead of yourself,” I said.

  “I know. Digging into this in any way that’s obvious is likely to get me or Wanda hurt. Or worse. But I can’t leave it alone either.”

  “I get it. Start with the romance connection and see if my source was worth anything?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. I guess.”

  “And try to forget the rest of the way that record plays out until you know something more.”

  She shook her head. “Can’t do that. Once you’ve heard it, you can’t unhear it. Not completely.”

  “Is that what the defense attorneys call a rush to judgment?”

  “No,” O’Neal said. “That’s what I call keeping my enemies in sight. I can’t get complacen
t now.”

  “I know the feeling,” I said. Then, rising from the booth, I added, “Thanks for the sandwich, detective. Be careful with this one.”

  “I will. You’re still not going to tell me what you’ve got planned for this Hennigar fellow, are you?”

  “Wouldn’t want to incriminate myself now, would I?” I replied with a knowing smile. Then I threaded my way out of the crowded deli and back up the street to where Carmelita sat waiting for me.

  Chapter Twelve

  Back in Chavez Ravine, we found Guillermo and Osvaldo in the workshop—the old man poised on a stool at his scarred workbench and his assistant hovering near the doorway. Osvaldo clutched the light wand he’d been working on and amusing Jack with days earlier. It looked finished now, but rather than play with the lights, Guillermo’s helper held the wand like a club. My guess was that he felt bad about what had happened to Guillermo and was standing guard should anyone else try to harm his benefactor again.

  When Osvaldo saw the Winslow pull up in front of the house, he broke into a wide smile that only grew bigger when Carmelita and I got out of the car. I suppose the smile was all for Carmelita, but I’d like to think my return from the land of the lost inspired at least a few of those teeth to show.

  Inside the workshop, Guillermo turned on the stool and broke into an even broader smile. Carmelita had warned me about his head being bandaged, and I had expected a small dressing over a little wound. Instead, Guillermo’s forehead was covered in gauze that was held in place with surgical tape. He looked far worse than I’d expected. He sounded like his normal self, though.

  “Lobo!” he said and scooted off the stool to meet me halfway across the cluttered shop, offering not just a handshake but a brief embrace. “You’re all right?”

  “I am,” I said. Then, pointing at the bandage, I added, “What about you?”

  “Oh, this?” he replied, putting a finger gently on the gauze. “It’s nothing. A little cut. I told them I don’t need bandages, but…” He shrugged to indicate there was nothing to be done in the face of the medical community’s insistence that he play the role of the wounded man.

  “Well, I think it’s best you listen to what they said. You’re not overdoing it, are you?”