Blood Relative (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 4)

by Michael Allegretto

  “No. Neither my husband nor I cared much for Samuel Butler. He was a crude, loud-mouthed bore.” She pressed her lips together. “I still can’t believe he murdered her.”

  “He may not have.”

  “But the police…”

  “The police are convinced he did it. But there’s some evidence to the contrary.”

  “Well, if not him…then who?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out. Butler seems to think Clare was having an affair and that her lover ended her life. So far, I haven’t learned who the lover was.”

  Madeline looked away from me and chewed her bottom lip. There was a lot of it to chew.

  I asked, “Do you know who she was seeing?”

  “The only one I knew about for sure was Christopher Pruitt. But that was months ago.”

  “I’ve met him. A terrific individual. They broke up when Butler learned of the affair.”

  Madeline nodded. She did not look happy.

  “Clare told me about that affair when it started,” she said. “She told me it was therapy.”

  “Therapy?”

  Madeline gave me a crooked smile. “Clare made it clear to me that the only reason she married Butler was his money. But she also wanted an active sex life. And according to her, Butler was—if you’ll pardon the expression—a ‘bum fuck.’”

  “I see.”

  “Also, Pruitt wasn’t the only one she saw during that time. There were others.” She made a face. “Quickies, she called them. You see, I’d recently separated from my husband, and Clare said I should get out of the house, meet some men. So I went with her to a few nightclubs. I’d never really cared for that scene, but I did need to get out of the house. Except it was Clare who always picked up a man, and I’d go home alone. Which was fine with me. Once she even suggested…”

  “What?”

  She smiled with one side of her mouth. “Clare was adventuresome. One time, after she’d met some guy, she proposed that we make it a threesome.”

  “Oh?”

  “Of course I declined.”

  “Of course. Not counting these one-night stands, was she seeing anyone at the time of her death?”

  “Well…she never said so, but I got the impression that she was.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Her attitude seemed different. I mean, she’d get pretty stressed out when she talked about Samuel, but otherwise she seemed, well, satisfied.”

  “I see. Could it have had anything to do with drugs?”

  “No. I mean I never saw Clare do drugs.”

  “Did she ever mention one called ice?”

  “Ice?” Madeline frowned and shook her head. Then she looked away, her delicate eyebrows still scrunched together.

  “What is it?”

  “I was thinking about one of Clare’s men,” she said, “one she’d been looking for.”

  “Looking for? You mean another bar pickup?”

  “No, I believe this was something else, something more. What she said was, let’s see, how did she put it—this man would be her ‘ticket out of here.’”

  “ ‘Out of here’ meaning…?”

  “Out of Denver. Out of her life with Samuel Butler.”

  “Could this be the person who was ‘satisfying’ her?”

  “It’s possible. The time was the same, a few months ago.”

  “If she was satisfied, then she must’ve found him.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. If it was the same man.”

  “And you’re sure you don’t know his name?”

  “Clare never said. But I know she was trying very hard to find him. She even hired a private eye.”

  “She did? Who?”

  Madeline shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t—Although…” She tapped a tapered, unpainted nail on her top right incisor. “Although she did say hiring this man was poetic justice.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “It was the same private eye who’d found out about Pruitt. The one Butler had hired to spy on her.”

  CHAPTER 18

  I KNEW THE INVESTIGATOR’S NAME—Gil Lucero. When I’d interviewed Butler in jail, he’d said Lucero was “one of the best.” I hoped he was right. If so, I might be near the end of my search.

  I asked Madeline for her phone books.

  There was no Lucero in the yellow pages under DETECTIVE AGENCIES or INVESTIGATORS. Under “Lucero” in the white pages there were five “G’s,” four “Gilberts,” and one “Gilroy.”

  “Would you like to use the phone?”

  “This could take some time. I’d better do it somewhere else.” I stood. “I want to thank you for—”

  “I have coffee,” she said, standing, raising her brows above her incredibly violet eyes. “That is, if you’d like to stay.”

  “Thanks just the same, but I really should make the calls.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s, well, I’d like to help. No, that sounds stupid. But I want to contribute something. Clare wasn’t exactly my dearest friend, but in many ways she was dear. And despite her…extracurricular activities, I liked her. It’s horrible that she died. The way she died. And if, as you say, Samuel Butler didn’t kill her, then—”

  “I said he may not have killed her.”

  “May not.” She gave a small shrug. “Anyway, I feel sorry for him.”

  “Samuel?”

  “Yes.”

  Before I could ask why, she said, “The phone’s in the kitchen.”

  I followed her there and sat at a small, round oak table in what I supposed was called “the breakfast nook.” Madeline laid out place mats, cups, and saucers. Tobey and I watched her every move. She seemed a bit nervous, as if she weren’t accustomed to having a man here after dark. She removed a glass pot from a sleek machine on the counter and poured. Tobey lay down on the floor beside her chair, facing me, staying within striking distance.

  I began calling Luceros.

  Out of ten possibilities I got six definite noes, two busy signals, one answering machine, and one disconnect. Madeline and I sipped coffee and waited for the busy signals to clear.

  “You said you felt sorry for Samuel Butler.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, if he’s been wrongly accused—”

  “Aside from that.”

  She set down her cup and brushed a stray curl from her cheek with the back of her fingers.

  “He idolized Clare,” she said. “And she slept around behind his back. No one deserves that.” She glanced away and added bitterly, “No one.”

  I supposed she’d had a similar experience. I was sure when she forced a smile and completely changed the subject: “How does one get to be a private detective?”

  “Would you like to apply?”

  Her smile became real. “No, thanks. I’m content being an architect.”

  “And how does one get to be an architect?”

  “By choosing parents with enough money to put me through six years of college. But you haven’t answered my question.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m better at asking than answering. Let’s see, how does one become a private detective? In my case, first I was a public one.”

  “A cop.”

  “We prefer the term policeman.”

  “No doubt,” she said with a grin. “Did you quit or—”

  “I quit.”

  “Why?” she asked, and then my look must’ve changed, because she added quickly, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “You’re not. It’s, ah, I had a bad experience. I guess I lost my enthusiasm for police work. For team work.”

  “Oh.”

  She wasn’t about to ask, but she wanted to know more. Or maybe I just felt like telling her. Test the old wound, see if it still hurt.

  “My wife was murdered,” I said, “and her killers were never caught.” There, now that wasn’t so bad. Althou
gh Madeline was looking at me as if I’d just spilled coffee in my lap. Or in hers. “It’s not that I blamed the police for not getting them,” I said, not wanting to stop, maybe not able to. “It was a random murder. Or I should say Katherine was a random victim, because the killers were definitely after somebody. They just didn’t care who. Three of them. They grabbed her in a supermarket parking lot in broad daylight. There were even witnesses, not that it mattered. Two men, they said, and a third person driving their late-model car. Out-of-state plates. That was it.”

  Madeline was staring at me, not moving, not speaking.

  “They found her body a few days later in a ditch east of the city,” I said, listening to my voice, searching for the slightest quaver, finding none. “She’d been beaten and raped and stabbed and— Well, anyway, I was a mess for a while, went a little crazy, stopped being a cop. I guess the worst part was having to admit that these guys would never be caught, at least not for this crime.”

  Madeline hesitated. “That couldn’t have been the worst part.”

  “What do you mean?” My voice was loud enough to make Tobey raise his head from his paws. This was my wound. Who was she to tell me anything about it?

  “The worst part was that you lost your wife.”

  “I know that,” I said sharply.

  Tobey growled. Madeline dropped her hand to his head.

  “I’m…sorry,” I said. “Of course, you’re right. Anyway, that was a long time ago, five years this June. I’m over it now.”

  “Are you?”

  “Sure.” Maybe I like living alone and having very few friends and not being able to sustain a relationship with a woman for more than a month. “Sure I am.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. There may have been sadness in her eyes, but I refused to recognize it.

  She asked me quietly, “Would you like more coffee?”

  “No. I’m sorry, I mean, yes. Please.”

  In only a few minutes our conversation had gone from Samuel and Clare Butler to Katherine. Why had I opened up to this woman, this stranger?

  Before I’d gone to Mexico, I hadn’t thought much about Katherine, not consciously, anyway. Sometimes a bad dream. That was it. But in Mexico I’d thought about her a lot, about our life together, about my life after her. I was still influenced by her. No, not by her—by my own sense of loss.

  An odd image came to mind, an East Indian monkey trap—a wide-bodied, narrow-necked vase with pieces of coconut in the bottom. A monkey would reach in and grab a fistful of coconut and try to pull it out. His fist wouldn’t fit through the narrow neck. He’d be trapped. Of course, all he had to do was let go of the coconut and he could free himself. But he was too stupid to let go. If he could only let go…

  Maybe that was the reason for my occupational crisis, or whatever the hell it was. I was trying to let go. But I was letting go of the wrong thing.

  Madeline poured us coffee, and I phoned the two “busy” Gil Luceros.

  This time they were both free. The second one was my man.

  After I introduced myself, he said, “Westfall told me you were my stand-in.”

  “Only until you’re back on your feet.”

  “I’m on them now,” he said. “With crutches. So what’s up? You didn’t call to socialize.”

  “I need your help. Clare Butler hired you to find someone, and I need to know his name. And if you found him, of course.”

  Lucero was silent for a moment. “Normally, I wouldn’t reveal that information unless I had permission from my client.”

  “Who happens to be dead.”

  He was silent a moment longer.

  “I don’t want to talk about this on the phone,” he said.

  “I’ll come to you.”

  He gave me his address, then added, “And bring some ID.”

  I hung up. “I have to go.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “I’m sorry to be abrupt.”

  “No, it’s okay. I understand.”

  She walked me to the door.

  “Thanks for the use of your phone.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I, ah, look, I’m sorry I made you listen to this stuff about my wife and all. I mean, here I am a stranger in your house and I’m unloading my morbid emotional baggage—”

  “Please don’t apologize. Or I’ll have to.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I unloaded first, remember?”

  “Well, now that you mention it. So I guess we’re even.”

  “Even,” she said, and smiled faintly. “Good night.”

  I walked out to my car. The porch light stayed on until I’d driven away.

  CHAPTER 19

  GIL LUCERO WAS HURTING. I could see it in his eyes.

  He was an average-sized guy, around fifty, a bit hunched over because of the crutches. His round face was a pale shade of brown, and his hair and mustache were neatly trimmed, both once black, now mostly gray. He wore a baggy red sweat suit and worn-out slippers. He checked my driver’s license at the door, as if this were a nightclub and I might be underage.

  “You take a lousy picture,” he said, handing it back.

  “Who doesn’t.”

  He turned from me, wincing, and hobbled into the living room. There was an overstuffed couch and a couple of matching armchairs, one of which had been dragged to the picture window. The blinds were open, and the chair faced the night. I could see lights scattered in Washington Park, six floors down and across the street. Beside the chair was an end table with a pair of binoculars and a glass half-filled with amber liquid. A way to pass the time. Gil Lucero had been homebound for too long.

  He gritted his teeth, eased himself onto one end of the couch, and laid the crutches at his side. He let out his breath.

  “Goddamn legs,” he said. “I have more stainless steel and Teflon in them than I have in my kitchen.”

  I sat in the opposing chair.

  He asked, “How did you find out Clare Butler hired me?”

  “From her friend. Madeline Tate.”

  He nodded. “I remember her. Good-looking woman. I spotted her and Clare together a few times when I was watching Clare.”

  “For Samuel Butler.”

  “Right.” He winced and rubbed his right leg. “I don’t generally take on that kind of work, the suspicious spouse and so on. The money’s good, but there’s too much pain involved. On both sides. You know what I’m saying?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “But I do a lot of work for Westfall, and when he asked me to help Butler, well…as I said, the money’s good.” He winced again, then gritted his teeth and swung his legs up on the couch. He let out his breath, saying, “Son of a bitch.”

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “My drink, if you don’t mind.”

  I retrieved his half-full glass from the table by the window.

  “You might put in some more bourbon and a couple of cubes.”

  “No problem.”

  There was a wet bar at the end of the room. I fixed up Lucero’s drink. Then I made myself one.

  “Appreciate it,” he said when I handed him his glass.

  I sat in my chair.

  “So,” he said.

  “Who did Clare Butler want you to find?”

  “A guy named Jeremy Stone.”

  “Did you?”

  “Find him? No. But I barely started looking before this happened.” He nodded at his legs. “Are you thinking Stone was connected with Clare’s death?”

  “Well, somebody killed her, and I don’t think it was Butler.”

  We drank our bourbons. Macho private eyes. All we needed were a couple of dames to oil our .45s.

  “Why not Butler?”

  I explained how he’d spent the afternoon of his wife’s death, not exactly like a man who’d just committed murder.

  “Butler believes Clare was having an affair,” I said. “The night before her death, he’d overheard her arguing wi
th someone on the phone. A ‘lovers’ quarrel’ is how he described it. Maybe this Stone was the lover.”

  “Maybe…” He sounded doubtful. “Clare never said exactly why she wanted me to find this guy, but I got the impression it was about money, not love.”

  “What did she tell you about him?”

  Lucero said Clare had come to him about six weeks ago, around the middle of February. The first thing she’d asked him was could he work for her and not tell her husband.

  “I told her sure, but if she was worried about that, why not hire another investigator?”

  Clare said it was because she “enjoyed the irony.” She told Lucero the only things she knew about Jeremy Stone were his name and that he was connected with Butler Manufacturing Company—but whether as an employee, a customer, or a supplier, she had no idea. Lucero asked how she’d learned of Stone. She was reluctant to say. Lucero pressed the point, wanting as much information as possible. Finally, Clare said she’d heard the name from a salesclerk in a boutique, who’d heard it from Kenneth Butler’s wife, Doreen. She would say no more. She told Lucero it was crucial that neither Kenneth nor Doreen learn she was looking for Jeremy Stone.

  “Did she say why?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Did you talk to the salesclerk?”

  Lucero nodded. “She was the first person I questioned. Works at an upscale boutique in Cherry Creek, a place frequented by Clare. Apparently, Doreen occasionally shopped there, but never lavishly. That changed some months ago, when Doreen began going in there practically every week to buy a couple of dresses or sweaters or whatever. She said something in passing to this clerk, something about ‘being able to splurge, now that Jeremy Stone was involved in her husband’s business.’”

  Lucero shrugged. “That was it. That’s all I had to go on. I started hanging out at a bar near Butler Manufacturing. Some of Butler’s employees drop in there after work, and I was hoping to get close to one or two of them. But then I had the accident.” He winced, whether from the memory or the pain, I couldn’t tell.

  “You never found out anything about Jeremy Stone?”

  “No. I asked a few employees, but they’d never heard of him. At least that’s what they said.”

  “Which bar?”

  He told me. “But if I were you, assuming you’re going to look for Stone…”