“Can he swing a golf club?”
“He can barely put his hands together.”
Okay. He’s not exactly svelte, but neither was Craig Stadler, aka The Walrus, who managed to win the Masters.
“Did he know about O’Reilly trying to buy this place?”
“He never saw him or Al Jones,” Randall insisted.
The cousin continued grinning like the idiot he was. Could he swing a club? He weighed more than two Craig Stadlers, plus Michael Skakel.
“You sure?”
“I can assure you that he has not come out of this room in years.”
“Is he left-handed?”
“I have no idea.”
“Which hand does he eat with?”
“Both.”
I decided not to give the obvious reply but merely asked, “Mind if I look around?”
Randall hesitated, but he knew he was shielding a suspect and had better cooperate.
“Go ahead,” he said, grudgingly.
I looked around and found a closet containing pants tailored by Omar the Tentmaker and shoes the size of rowboats. Cousin Gregory couldn’t have gotten his big toe into the golf shoes with the missing spike from Al Jones’s locker. I found no five iron or any other lethal weapons. The only dresser contained a few pairs of oversized socks, several undershirts, boxer shorts, and scads of prescription bottles.
“What are these for?” I asked. Without my reading glasses, which were in my car along with Murder on the Moor, I could not read the labels.
“Nitroglycerin.”
“Bad ticker?”
“Any exertion could kill him. I told you he was harmless.”
“And he never leaves this room?”
“You’re catching on.”
And you’re an arrogant prick, Mr. Randall. But you could be off the hook, for the moment.
“What’s this?” I noticed a shopping bag that was shoved underneath the cot.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Randall shrugged.
I pulled out the bag and picked it up. It was heavy, but the weight instantly disappeared, leaving me holding only the bag by the handles. The bottom had split and hundreds of golf balls bounced crazily across the attic floor.
“Good Lord,” said Randall, looking genuinely surprised.
Gregory rolled with laughter, nearly collapsing the cot.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It was dawn when I left the clubhouse. Desperate for sleep, decrying man’s inhumanity to man. Why can’t we all just get along? And then I ran into Dr. Fitch on a cart path between the first tee and practice putting green.
“Good morning,” he said, smiling broadly.
“What’s so good about it?” I mumbled. He was wearing a puce polo shirt, tangerine Bermudas, canary yellow socks. His varicose veins looked like a road map of Long Island. There’s the road to Ronkonkoma.
“Cheer up, Detective,” he said. “It’s a great golf day.”
“God’s in His heaven,” I told him, “all’s right with the world, and the course is still closed.”
“But I have an early tee-off time.”
He tried walking past me. I stepped in front of him, like a traffic cop, and said, “Al Jones has been murdered.”
“That is a shame,” Fitch said, “but he was not part of my foursome. Is he dead?”
“What part of murder don’t you understand?”
“Then you understand that I cannot bring him back.”
“I understand that you doctors are used to death, but I would expect anyone to show more emotion.” I studied his eyes, which saw right through me.
“I hardly knew him,” he said.
“He was your golf pro.”
“Not mine, Detective. I took only one lesson from him and he could not help me. He was not a good swing doctor, as they say.”
“That’s all that matters to you?” I was practically stuttering.
“That and playing on this perfect morning. Please move aside.”
“No way. We believe the Jones murder also occurred somewhere out on the course. It’s closed indefinitely.”
“Are you sure it was murder?” Fitch glared at me. “I could have your badge if he died of natural causes.”
“Get in line.”
And get in my lineup of suspects. You could have murdered O’Reilly, then Jones found out and threatened to turn you in or tried to blackmail you. But I’ll question you later, when I’m good and ready. Now I’m bone tired and borderline irrational. I can’t risk flying off the handle. At least I’m pleased to see the patrol cars I ordered coming to close the joint. Fitch noticed them too and started to leave.
“Don’t leave town,” I told him. “I’ll need to question you.”
“Catch me if you can,” he said. “I am a busy man, with friends in high places.” He gave me a cheery wave of dismissal.
I directed a uniform to escort him to his car, mostly to annoy him. I got friends in low places, with blue uniforms.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I felt like a fool for watching Al Jones’s car while he was dead in the trunk and for not searching the mansion earlier and finding Randy Randall’s cousin. Bet I’m a big joke down at headquarters. Bet they’re saying I can’t find my nose in front of my face, and it’s time to take a desk job or retire. I’ll show ’em. But what to do next?
Back home in Bayville, I was so tired I couldn’t sleep. I have trouble sleeping during the day anyway. Carol was great at it. She could curl up anywhere and take catnaps. I loved to watch her sleep. She looked so contented. Until she got sick and her naps grew longer and longer. Eventually deep, uncontrollable sleeps. Day and night, until the big sleep.
I lay on my bed and wrapped a pillow around my head, but the sun kept finding my tired eyes. Light has too much pressure. All those waves and particles coming at you so fast, like so many murder suspects.
The young couple upstairs was also keeping me awake by moaning louder than usual. Bedsprings squeaking to beat the band. Why don’t they get up and go to work? How can they make the rent money while making the beast with two backs every hour of the day? That was an expression my wife preferred to “humping like camels.” She told me Shakespeare said it.
I retrieved Murder on the Moor from my bedroom trash can, where I had tossed it when I first got home, displeased with Detective Peter H. Couloir’s antiquated methods and frustrated by my own fuckups. At least the little tome could put me to sleep and I needed that. Perhaps it had put Carol into that final coma.
I collated the loose pages and finally found my place. Couloir had just discovered Algernon Spotswood’s body in the steamer trunk on the Orient Express. Algie must have been pretty ripe. But Couloir seemed not to notice, another detail, or lack thereof, which annoyed me. Maybe it’s mentioned in the few pages beyond that are missing. Now Couloir’s back at the earl of Cranbrook’s estate, where the brash American, Marty Phelps, was murdered on the moor. Couloir is confronting the earl in his study.
“We know that Monsieur Spotswood was murdered with a Webley-Vickers .44 caliber pistol. Precisely the type of weapon that was used in the first murder. Perhaps the very same weapon that is missing from your collection.”
Too bad there was no ballistics back then. Couloir could easily match the bullets and nail whoever has the gun. If he can find it. It must be this earl character. At least it was easier to find a particular gun in the old days, before everyone and their brother were packing.
“Would you like some brandy?” asked the Earl, ringing for a servant. “You’ve had a long trip, to the continent and back. And in so short a time. Truly an Herculean effort, my dear fellow. You must be exhausted.”
You cunning SOB. Trying to throw the little tec off the scent by blowing smoke up his butt and getting him loaded. I’m sure he can see right through you.
“I must decline, monsieur,” said Couloir. “I napped often during the trip, and I am quite rested. In fact, I have all my faculties.”
Goo
d case for napping, and a good slap at the arrogant earl. Also a warning that he’s hot on the killer’s trail.
“I would ask one favor,” Couloir continued, “if you would be so kind.”
The Earl said, “Name it.”
“I would like to search the premises.”
“That may be arranged. But why? There was no foul play in here. Of that I can assure you. The first unfortunate incident occurred well out on the moor. And Algie was surely shot on the Orient Express.”
Watch it, Couloir. This earl’s full of crap.
“I have reason to believe that Monsieur Spotswood was shot right here, in this very house. And it was here that his body was placed into one of your own steamer trunks, then shipped to La Gare du Nord, where it was placed on the train.”
“By whom?”
“Porters, of course, merely doing their duty.”
“One of my steamer trunks, you say?”
“Précisement.”
“Preposterous!”
“We shall see. Now, if you please, I shall get on with my search.”
“And you expect to find the murder weapon?”
“Your Webley-Vickers? Perhaps.”
Another slap at the earl. I liked it. Couloir is stubbornly searching the earl’s mansion. He’s coming up empty, however, like my initial search for Al Jones. A few more pages are missing, but they don’t seem to matter. The story continued with Couloir and the earl proceeding down a long, dark hallway filled with sinister-looking family portraits and an arras, as Randy Randall calls those big curtains, ending at a locked door leading to what the earl claims is an abandoned wing.
“Please open it,” Couloir said.
“Surely, there is no need,” the Earl said indignantly.
“With all due respect, I must insist.”
“I do not believe I have the key.”
Don’t believe him, Couloir. Randy Randall tried the same stall on me. I should have made him open the door to his cousin’s room, or busted it down. If I had discovered the fat cousin sooner, I could have found Jones’s body sooner and avoided looking like a fool. Don’t make my stupid mistakes.
“I am in no hurry, monsieur. I shall wait right here, until the key is located.”
Good-bye, Earl.
Grudgingly, the Earl patted his jacket pockets, produced a small key . . .
I knew that the earl, and Randy Randall, had the key all along.
. . . and unlocked the door . . .
Now I’ll never get to sleep.
. . . then he slowly pushed it open, saying, “Wait here a moment, while I find the light switch.”
He slipped through the doorway, and was lost a moment in the blackness within. Suddenly, there was the sound of a struggle, a flash of light, and the deafening roar of a gunshot. The lights in the room came on, and the Earl, a smoking Webley-Vickers .44 in his hand, was standing over a man’s body.
“My word,” said the Earl. “It’s Uncle Esmond! Is he dead?”
“Certainement, monsieur. The wound is massive, and directly through the center of his chest.”
“He tried to strike me with this.” The Earl examined the Webley-Vickers.
“Would it be the weapon that has been missing from your collection?”
“I-I am afraid it is.”
“If you don’t mind, monsieur, I will feel safer if you give it to me.”
Is he nuts? The earl just drilled a hole the size of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel through his weird uncle Esmond, he’s holding the smoking gun, and Couloir’s politely asking for it? Grab it, you wimp, and slap the arrogant earl silly.
The Earl handed over the gun, but added indignantly, “I must inform you that I am quite capable of handling all sorts of firearms. Especially this particular Webley. As I have already told you, my good man, it served me quite well in the Crimea.”
“And it discharged by accident in the struggle?”
Now he’s got him. The gun didn’t go off by accident. The earl’s obviously lying through his aristocratic teeth.
“I nearly had control,” said the Earl, “but he was fighting me. Uncle Esmond took the Webley from my collection, used it twice for his dastardly deeds, and was about to use it on me.”
“His motive?”
“Jealousy, one would suspect. He and Martin Phelps were rivals for the affection of a certain lady, as I have already told you.”
“So you . . .”
So you asked him again to see if he sticks with his story. I do that all the time. I also theorized that Phelps was fooling around, as his wife was doing with Spotswood.
“. . . but what about Monsieur Spotswood?”
The Earl shrugged as though the second murder also did not matter, and said, “Perhaps old Algie saw my uncle removing the Webley from my display case, or trying to get rid of it in some manner. And as for shipping him out on the Orient Express, that’s a dead giveaway, if you’ll pardon the pun. Uncle Esmond had that sort of imagination.”
“Hmm, an interesting theory.”
Don’t believe it. More than a few modern-day homicide detectives I know would swallow it hook, line, and sinker, not because they lack little gray cells but because they worry about pressure from politicos, the brass, the media, and adding to their murders-solved column. There’s also too many pages left in the book to support the earl’s theory.
The young couple upstairs was still making the bedsprings squeak. The sun was slanting directly through my blinds and into my face. The plot was thickening, with Peter H. Couloir hot on the trail of the arrogant earl. I nodded off anyway, letting the little paperback hit my bedroom floor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Running a murder investigation is like running a marathon. You gotta go the distance and you can’t stop for long. I slept about an hour, hopped out of bed, downed a cup of instant coffee, and drove to Al Jones’s condo.
He rented a place at the Hamlet, an agglomeration of trendy apartments with an Anglophile name designed to attract yuppies and lothario golf pros. Long Island has more Hamlets than Olivier ever performed. No wonder Dame Winifred settled here.
Without the uniformed cop posted outside, Jones’s condo would have been difficult to find. It shared too many sharp roofs, slanted windows, snug balconies with all the others. Residents could easily reach out and mistakenly, or unmistakenly, grab a neighbor’s martini or main squeeze. Part of design these days? I only know there are too many angles in this architecture for uncomplicated cops. Like too many plot twists in Murder on the Moor and too many suspects at Broken Oak.
I parked close to Jones’s condo, hopped out of my car, and walked briskly toward the uniform, a rookie I recognized. I pretended I had a good night’s sleep and was ten years younger.
“Any breaks yet?” the rookie asked.
“You get all the breaks with gigs like this,” I told him.
“Yeah,” he said. “I love guarding evidence.”
“We’ve all paid our dues,” I reminded. “But what do you college kids know?”
“Only that we know nothing.”
“That’s a good lesson. Forensics been here yet?”
The rookie shook his head.
I slowly opened the front door, wary of smearing any fingerprints, and stepped carefully inside. It’s always creepy examining the effects of murder victims. I get the feeling they’re watching, upset that a stranger’s poking through their private stuff. I’m only trying to bring their killer to justice. Somewhere along the line, precious articles, carefully collected and jealously hoarded, lose all their sentimentality. Treasures become junk. I would never be able to throw out Carol’s clothing and junk. While they filled her closets and dresser drawers, it seemed she was coming back home.
The condo was too damn tidy. A bachelor boy from Texas should have left his bed unmade and most of his dirty clothes lying around, along with a few empty Lone Star long-necks. But this place was neater than a pin or a putting green. It bothered me. There was also no golf paraphernali
a. Not a single club, bag, tee, ball. I would not find the five iron that whacked O’Reilly, or much else.
Jones’s choice of reading material, or lack thereof, also bothered me. I had not expected to find the complete works of Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn or Dame Winifred’s mysteries, but I thought I might find a copy of Golf Digest, Stock Car Racing, World Wrestling, Baseball, The Ring, Hustler. You can learn a lot from the victim’s reading material. But I was learning nothing. There was only a crisp new issue of the New Yorker, which I suspected did not belong to Jones, lying conspicuously alone on a coffee table.
All of Jones’s clothing was clean and carefully folded. Either he was a neat-freak or someone had tidied up. Was there a maid? I made a mental note to check. Or a girlfriend? There seemed to be a woman’s touch here. Mrs. O’Reilly’s?
Apart from clothing, the lack of personal effects was distressing. No jewelry, loose change, lucky pieces, golf trophies, memorabilia from his baseball days, card decks, condoms. The condo felt like a fresh motel room, minus Gideon’s Bible. A nonsmoking room. No cigarette butts, traces of snuff, partial plugs of chewing tobacco.
In years of poring over personal effects of the suddenly deceased, I always found the remnants of at least one bad habit. Except for boffing O’Reilly’s wife, Jones appeared to be a Boy Scout. Even the kitchen was clean as a whistle. Only milk, butter, and eggs were in the fridge. What manner of man would not be chilling a six-pack? I could have used a cold brew for breakfast. Even at the risk of smearing a few prints and disillusioning the rookie.
Forensics should be here by now. They probably stopped for coffee. Cops do too much waiting because, contrary to popular movie and TV images, there are no convenient time warps and jump cuts.
I soon grew impatient. I had places to go and people to see. I sat on the living room couch, where I was least likely to disturb anything. At least I had not brought Murder on the Moor with me. I risked flipping through the New Yorker, however, past brummagem blow-ins begging subscriptions and mail orders for bubble bath and bomber jackets.
Something other than tawdry ads and blow-ins was also among the pages. I slipped it out with the point of my penknife. A newspaper clipping with a group photograph and caption. Al Jones was displaying his trophy for winning the Long Island Open, held at Broken Oak. He was also shaking hands with the tournament chairman, none other than Dr. Fitch. The Gothic mansion and its turrets loomed in the background. Randy Randall looked on like Gomez Addams. Mr. and Mrs. O’Reilly were also in the group, along with Vince Henry, the black greenskeeper. Slim, Jones’s caddy, stood off to the side, grinning and displaying his rotten teeth.
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