Death, Deceit & Some Smooth Jazz

by Claudia Mair Burney

  Jazz nearly choked. He looked confused. “A kiss?” He set his beer down on the floor.

  “Yeah. You changed the rules to this process at the jazz festival, remember?”

  “Dad, what are you talking about?”

  As soon as Jack mentioned the jazz festival, I knew.

  Dad expounded like he was trying to explain something to a small child. “Jazzy, when your mother and I walked up on you and Bell at the festival in September, you were about to kiss her.”

  Jazz’s expression changed from confusion to disbelief. He could see it now, too.

  “Your mother said, ‘Jazz Brown, what do you think you’re doing?’ And you said you and Bell were working on a case. Do you remember that, son?”

  “Dad——”

  “Do you remember?”

  Jazz nodded.

  “So you must have changed the rules, and now we have to kiss to work through a case. Frankly, I like the new rules. Now, kiss your girlfriend. She’s been giving us some good stuff to work with.”

  “We agreed not to see each other anymore.”

  “I didn’t agree to that,” I said.

  “Of course you didn’t, sweetie,” Addie said. “That’s why you’re here.” She cast a disdainful eye at Jazz, as if he were a complete buffoon. “Now, give Bell a kiss.”

  Jazz looked flustered. “Bell, do you want me to kiss you?”

  “Not now,” I said.

  “See,” he said smugly to his parents.

  I reached into my purse and pulled out a tin of wintergreen Altoids I kept for breath-freshening emergencies. I opened the container and shook a heaping amount into my palm. “But as soon as I finish these…” I popped several minty orbs into my mouth.

  Jack and Addie cracked up.

  Jazz blushed furiously.

  While the three of us waited for my mints to dissolve, Jack went on. “Let’s look at the police’s first suspect: Jazz. Why would they think you’d want her dead?”

  Jazz sighed. “Because she was in my place and in my bed. They want an open-and-shut case, and I can’t say I blame them.”

  Jack agreed with a nod. “Besides the fact that nobody wants to work hard, whyyou for this, son?”

  “Maguire’s tack, at least in the interview, was that I was still seeing her, and we’d had a lovers’ quarrel.”

  Addie snorted. “Wrong! And even if you were still seeing her, why kill her?”

  “You got that right,” said Jack. “You two had a nasty divorce. If you wanted to kill her, you’d have done it when it counted.”

  Jazz added, “She was still living with Christine. Maguire implied he thought I was jealous.”

  “Yeah, but she’s been with Chris for almost four years. A little late for that. Plus, everybody knows you’ve got a love jones for Bell.”

  “Everybody?” I said, Altoids nearly slipping out of my mouth.

  Jack waved away my concern. “Pretty much. Cops talk.”

  Addie joined in. “And speaking of cop gossip, it’s common knowledge that Miss Kate loved some other boys——and girls——in blue.”

  “And it didn’t matter if they were married or otherwise unavailable,” Jazz said. “Which brings me to my question: Who would want her gone? I’d look first at the people she’s closest to.”

  “Spouse or significant other,” Addie said.

  “Christine?” I asked.

  “Exactly,” Jack said to me. “That reminds me. You said she was wearing Jazz’s shirt, and her own clothes were in a pile by the bed. Let’s dissect that, but first Jazz has to kiss you. Go ahead, Jazzy. Make me proud.”

  Jazz cocked his head to the side. A bit of pink spread across his cheeks and ears. “Dad! She doesn’t want…” His face had to be red-hot.

  “Kiss her.”

  His eyes pleaded with me. “Will you tell them you don’t want me to kiss you?”

  I loved that Jack and Addie were determined to play matchmaker. The least I could do was participate. I crunched the last of the mints and swallowed them. “Bring it on, Jazzy.”

  His parents practically roared with laughter. Addie sat upright for the show.

  Jazz nodded slowly, undoubtedly plotting to bring me down. “I’m gonna make you pay for this, Bell.”

  “Bring it, don’t sing it, okay?”

  He laughed. “A’ight. Come here, heifer.”

  I cracked up. “Oh, I’m ‘heifer’ now? You’d better kiss me good, ’cause don’t nobody call me ‘heifer’ but my mama.”And my sister. And my secretary.

  Before I could lick my lips, that man had me hemmed up against the love seat with some sugar so sweet I thought I’d go into a diabetic coma. He released me with a satisfied grin. “Did I bring it?”

  I couldn’t answer because he’d stunned me into silence. Jack tried to revive me with “Now, about Kate…”

  Oh yeah. We’re on a case.I cleared my throat and continued, “Jazz told me last night that she’d tried to seduce him and got mad when he didn’t take her up on her offer. According to him, she was dressed——”

  “Shewas dressed.” Jazz scowled at me. “She had on her little black getup.”

  I ignored him. “As I was saying,if she was dressed when Jazz left, she had to have taken off her clothes with the intent to try to seduce him again when he returned.” Now I turned to Jazz. “What time did she get to your place?”

  “Maybe eight-fifteen.”

  I started calculating in my mind. If she arrived at eight-fifteen, and by eight-thirty or-forty they were at it and he stormed out, she could have sat there stewing until nine and then decided to switch gears and seduce him again. Light the candles.How long does it take to light all those candles? He didn’t come back because he was en route to see me, which meant she’d been there alone for some time. So she was angry. She was in his shirt. The candles were burning.

  I said none of this aloud because of the candle connection.

  Addie took the Corona from Jack’s hand and had a sip. “Maybe she got to thinking he’d reject her again. You know what they say about a woman scorned.” She handed her hubby his beer.

  I let Addie know I had the same suspicions. “I can see that——Kate fuming, feeling rejected after she’d gone to such an effort. She had on false eyelashes, for heaven’s sake!”

  Addie went on, “So she got mad and called the police with the story that he’d beaten her up. It wouldn’t have been the first time she’d done that.”

  Jazz agreed. “That was definitely Kate’s MO. The uniforms would have taken their time getting to my place. They knew Kate. They wouldn’t have wanted to deal with her.”

  “So you think they purposely made her wait?” I asked

  Jazz answered, “They’d have dispatched somebody right away. It would cover their butts if anybody ever had to investigate what happened. But would they have gotten there ASAP? That depends on the uniforms who got the call. The rookies would want to please the good lieutenant and get there quickly.”

  Jack added, “But not so much the uniforms who resent you because they think your pretty face——which bears a striking resemblance to your dad’s——got you further than good, solid police work did.” He turned his gaze to me. “Not everybody on the force likes Lieutenant Pretty Boy.”

  “Dad,” Jazz warned.

  Addie asked, “What if the killer got two for the price of one?”

  “What do you mean, baby?” Jack put his arm across the back of the couch.

  “I mean, what if the killer had a bone to pick with both Kate and Jazzy?”

  Jack nodded enthusiastically. “Oh yeah, baby. Come to Daddy.”

  Mom went to “Daddy,” lifting her torso to kiss him as if Jazz and I weren’t even in the room. I nudged Jazz. “I want to be like them when I grow up.”

  “Who says you have to wait till then?”

  Oh yeah. This was going to be an interesting night.

  When the sweethearts finished nuzzling, I brought up Christine again. “Wouldn’t Chris be
the first one on the list of people who had a bone to pick with both Kate and Jazz?”

  Jack stroked Addie’s arm. “I know I’d be ticked off if my woman was half-naked in her ex’s apartment.”

  “How would Christine know Kate was with you, Jazz?” I asked.

  He raked his hand through his hair. “Kate wasn’t known for her discretion. She was crazy enough to tell Chris.”

  “That doesn’t sound right,” I told him.

  “We’re not talking about right. We’re talking about Kate,” Jazz responded.

  “What was she like, Jazz?” I asked

  He sighed. Slumped back into the love seat. “Pretty. Model-pretty but nuts.”

  With perfect double D’s,my mind tortured me. Before I could calculate how long it would take to afford my own surgery, Jazz went on, “She could be very flirty. Fun, even. She knew how to make you feel like you were the most important person in the world. For a minute. Then she’d turn on you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I watched him carefully. His eyes shifted left, and his head tilted slightly up. He was remembering. Eyes shifting right indicated lying. “She’d, like…” He shook his head as if he were seeing something unpleasant and trying to shake it out of his mind. “She’d consume you. She was so intense. Her need for you would just…obliterate you.”

  My mind whirred. “Was she insecure?”

  “Unbelievably so. She was avery good-looking woman and knew how to work what she had, but by the end of your first date, you’d have figured she thought she was a troll.”

  Does he have to keep mentioning how good-looking she was?

  “Was she self-destructive?”

  Jazz didn’t need to think about that one. “Not just self-destructive. She was destructiveperiod. She knew how to make an enemy, and she was her biggest.”

  “Did you know she was a cutter?”

  His eyes cast downward. “It was pretty hard to miss, even in the short time we were together. I didn’t know how to help her, Bell. Honest to God I didn’t.”

  In my quest for information, I’d almost forgotten about Mom and Dad.

  “Bell, what did you mean she was a cutter?” Addie asked, her brows drawn together in genuine concern.

  I let Jazz answer. “She cut herself with razor blades, Mom.”

  “On purpose?”

  “On purpose.”

  Addie looked at me. “Bell?”

  “I’m afraid it’s not uncommon, Mom. It’s a way to escape internal pain by shifting the focus to physical pain. It’s a symptom of a very hurting person.”

  Addie pressed a hand to her heart. “I didn’t like her very much, but Lord, I hate to think the poor child was that bad off.”

  Jazz put his head in his hands. “She was so messed up. I feel bad for her. For all the times I had wished she was out of my life, I wouldn’t have wished what she suffered on a dog. I should have just let her rage at me the other night. She’d have calmed down and gone home.”

  “She attacked you, Jazzy. You don’t know what she would have done,” I said. Poor Jazz. He looked like he bore the weight of the entire world on his broad shoulders——and the weight was beginning to crush his spirit. “Which brings me to this question,” I said. “Maguire said Kate called the police at nine minutes after nine. Could she have called someone besides the police, too? Someone she may have believed would comfort her? Even if it was unknowingly at her own peril?”

  Jack, Addie, and Jazz said in unison, “Christine.”

  “Is Christine strong enough to strangle Kate to death?”

  “Chris could rumble with the big boys,” Jack said.

  “Strong woman?”

  Jazz smirked. “Yeah. A real soldier, and she and Kate had been known to play Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots.”

  I chuckled at Jazz’s reference to another popular seventies toy. Me with my Weebles, and him with his battling robots. I thought for a moment. “Would Christine want to frame you?”

  Jack answered, “She would if she didn’t want to go down for Kate’s murder.”

  Jazz shook his head. “I don’t think she would have tried to frame me. She felt bad about her affair with Kate. Not bad enough to end it, but she tried in the best way she knew how to let me know she was sorry. Chris didn’t really have beef with me.”

  “The way the killer posed her really bugs me,” I said, thinking out loud.

  Jazz shuddered. “I don’t even want to try to picture it. What’s your take on it?”

  I loved it when he got into my work. “My take is that somebody wanted to punish her. I like a man for this,” I said. “I’d like to have a peek at Kate’s little black book——the book that you all say is filled with cops’ names.” I asked Dad, “Do you think they’ll pull phone records?”

  “Absolutely. What all did Kate have with her?”

  I thought about the scene. “I recall seeing her dress, undies, panty hose, and shoes, but no purse. That seems strange. A girl without a purse.”

  Jazz said, “Kate never went anywhere without her purse. It was where she kept her makeup. She wouldn’t be caught dead without her makeup.”

  “She wasn’t caught dead without it.” I could have kicked myself like Jackie Chan for my jealousy. I took a deep breath. “Maybe whoever killed her took her purse.”

  “Good cop thinking, baby,” Jack said, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “Jazzy. I think you’re going to have to marry this girl.”

  Addie grinned like a wedding planner on the make. “I’m a licensed missionary. I can marry you two right now.”

  Jazz dropped to his knees and picked up my hand. “Will you marry me, Bell? ’Cause your crime-solving expertise…”

  I gave him a stern look. “There’s the small matter of a dowry.”

  “I have a sizable Addie Lee artwork inheritance.”

  “Sold!” I said, loud and proud.

  “I now pronounce you man and wife,” Addie said. “Jazz, you may salute your bride.”

  Jazz stood and gave me a brisk military salute. With precision, he turned and reseated himself. Instantly, he was back in the groove. “We still need to consider who else, besides Christine, Kate could have contacted.”

  Addie leaned forward. “Let’s say she had another girlfriend, or even a boyfriend. She didn’t seem terribly particular about gender. So let’s say she was bored with Christine, got rejected by Jazz——”

  “Kate couldn’t stand rejection,” Jazz said. “It was like her kryptonite.”

  Jack added, “Maybe she called her other lover for comfort while she waited for the police.”

  “Maybe her other loverwas a police officer,” Addie said.

  “I don’t think a uniform called to the scene would have killed her, but in light of Jazz’s investigation——”

  “Dad!” Jazz seemed angry with his father.

  “What?” I said, confused, looking from Jack to Jazz.

  Jack caught himself. “Never mind, baby. Moving right along.”

  Jazz’s mouth became a hard line. “Game over.”

  “Game over?” I asked. “Why? What investigation is Jazz involved in?”

  The three of them looked at me like I’d caught them wearing white shoes after Labor Day.

  “Forget about it, Bell,” Jazz said.

  “What happened to the ‘no question is off limits’ clause? This is the second time I’ve gotten shut down.”

  “That question is.”

  I went kitten on him, stroking his leg with my shoe. “Aw, baby. Tell me. I’m your wife.”

  “Ha!” he said. “If you were my wife, I’d have you under control, and I wouldn’t have to worry about you trying to play Columbo.”

  Under control?

  I blasted him. “First of all, you sexist ape, if I were your wife, you couldn’t control me in any way, form, or fashion. Second,Lieutenant Brown, Columbo is a brilliant, deceptively disarming detective who always catches his killer.”

  “Woman, Columbo is a
television character who never got beat up likeyou did the last time you tried to play detective. And did you just call me an ape?”

  “No. I called you asexist ape. You called me a heifer. We’re even, Old MacDonald. E-I-E-I-O.”

  We glared at each other until Jack broke the tension. “Their first fight as a married couple. Ain’t that the cutest thing? Why don’t y’all kiss and make up.”

  I stood. I hadn’t slept well since Sunday night, and now it was Tuesday afternoon. All the drama abruptly settled on me, and all the coffee in the world couldn’t keep at bay the exhaustion now weighing me down. “Like Jazz said, game over. I’m going home.” I stretched, yawned, and walked over to the sofa to kiss my pretend mother-and father-in-law good-bye. I felt brave. “I love you,” I said to them both. “I’ll see you soon.” I hugged Jack first, then Addie.

  Before Addie let me go, she whispered, “Don’t be mad at him. He’s just trying to protect you.”

  I gave her a squeeze to acknowledge that I had heard her, but I didn’t make any promises.

  Predictably, Jazz stood up. “I’ll see you out. Maybe.” He put his arm around my shoulders, and I grudgingly let him lead me to the foyer. I made my resistance evident. “Stop it, wife, or I’ll pull the ‘submit to your husband’ card on you.”

  “I don’t have to submit to you. I’m not really your wife. If I were, you wouldn’t be holding out on me.”

  He reached into the closet, pulled out my leather jacket, and helped me into it. “I’m not holding out on you, Bell.”

  “You are.”

  “Did it even cross your mind that I do real police work——not the Columbo kind? I’m talkin’ the kind that can get even seasoned officers killed.”

  “I know you’re a cop, Jazz.”

  “Then you should know I can’t discuss with you everything I do. For your own safety.”

  “You told your mom and dad. How unsafe could it be?”

  “Dad is a retired cop, and Mom’s been a cop’s wife most of her life.”

  “Your mom just married us. I’m a cop’s wife, too.”

  “Nice try, Bell. Can you just drop it? For me?”

  I gave him a salty look.

  “C’mon, baby. You gotta see things are rough on a brotha over here.”

  I hated it when he was right, especially when it interfered with what I wanted.