by Bill Bernico
The first Mrs. Stewart had disappeared mysteriously less than six months after saying, “I do” to Grant. She had no immediate family and probably had had no one looking for her or concerned about her. The authorities did a cursory investigation but dropped the matter within weeks, saying something about no grounds for an extended investigation.
That was as much as I’d learned by digging around on my own. I decided that there were enough coincidences to warrant my looking into it further. I called Andrew Donovan and arranged to meet with him in my office later that day. He agreed and thanked me again for taking the case. I told him to hold off on the thank-yous until I finished my investigation. I hung up the phone, pulled my lunch bag from my bottom desk drawer and withdrew a sandwich. I swiveled around and pulled my book from the shelf and opened it to the page with my bookmark.
Maxine had made it down the hall and had almost made it to the stairwell when the elevator door opened and Jack stepped out. He smiled at her and smoothed his hair back on his head.
“Hiya, babe,” he said, walking toward her.
She smiled briefly before pulling the small automatic from her purse and leveling it at Jack. The smile quickly dropped from his face and his eyebrows turned up. He held his hands in front of him in a futile effort to shield himself. Maxine pulled the trigger three times and each bullet found its mark in Jack’s chest. He fell over backwards, dead before he even came to rest on the floor. Maxine gave his head one last kick before stepping into the elevator. She pressed the button for the lobby and descended to street level, apparently not bothered by the presence of the dead body lying at her feet.
Before I got a chance to see who greeted Maxine in the lobby, my own office door opened and I slipped my bookmark back in where I’d left off. Maxine and her trouble could wait. I had a paying client to deal with.
Andrew Donovan walked in with a look of hope on his face. He shrugged, pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows and waited for me to say something.
“Andrew,” I said, pointing to my client’s chair. “Good morning.” I looked at my watch and corrected myself. “Good afternoon. Won’t you have a seat?”
Donovan paced, anxious to hear what I’d found out. “So, what did you find out, Mr. Cooper?”
“Did you know there was another Mrs. Stewart before Lila?” I said and waited for some sort of reaction.
“Huh?”
“Seems Grant was married once before,” I said. “It didn’t last, though. Six months or so, from what I’ve been able to find out.”
Donovan stopped pacing. “And where is she now?”
I sat on the edge of my desk. “Disappeared a while back. The D.A.’s office did a minimal search and closed the case. I guess they classified it as a dissatisfied wife who’d run off looking for greener pastures.”
“I don’t like it,” Donovan said. “I don’t like it one bit. Sounds fishy as hell, don’t you think, Mr. Cooper?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Aren’t there lots of women these days who are out there looking to better their lot in life? Maybe she was one of ‘em. Maybe she moved to Keokuk, Iowa and is happy as a clam with some other guy. Maybe she joined a traveling circus. There are just too many possibilities.”
Donovan sat in the client’s chair and chewed on his fingernail. “Did you talk to Grant Stewart yet?”
“And say what?” I said. “That his neighbor was wondering where Mrs. Stewart was? Not a good idea. Especially if you don’t want Stewart wising up to the arrangement you and Lila have had going. That tends to make the husband mad.”
“So that’s it?” Donovan said. “Isn’t there anything more you can do?”
“I don’t think so, Andrew. But like I said, if I don’t think there’s anything I can do for you, there’ll be no charge. But I do wish you luck.” I extended my hand. “Good luck, Andrew.”
Donovan stood, still shaking my hand. He shook his head and released the grip he had on me. “Well, you may think it’s over, but I’m not letting it drop. I’ll look into this thing myself if I have to.”
“I wouldn’t advise that,” Andrew. “If you get too aggressive and storm over to the Stewart, Mr. Stewart could shoot you and not even face any charges. He could claim he was defending himself against an intruder and you wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. Or you could end up dead. Think about this before you do anything you’re going to regret later.”
Donovan was out the door before I could think of anything more to say. He mumbled all the way out of my outer office and down the hall. I had a feeling I’d be hearing more from Andrew Donovan.
The elevator doors opened to the lobby and Maxine stepped out, calm as a Good Humor man. She walked right into the grip of Sergeant Beaudry.
“What are the odds?” Beaudry said, grabbing Maxine by the upper arm. “I mean, I’ve got half the force out combing the city for you and you walk right into my arms. That’s what I call co-operative. Let’s go. There’s someone downtown who has a few questions for you.”
“What are you talking about?” Maxine said indignantly.
“We have a witness who’ll put you at the scene of Logan’s murder last month. You’ve been a busy girl, haven’t you? Come on.”
Maxine tried her darndest to squeeze out two fresh tears. She managed one from her right eye and wailed like a mourner at a funeral. “I didn’t do it,” she insisted, breaking away from Beaudry’s grip.
She wiped at her wet eye as Beaudry reached for his handkerchief and handed it to her. Maxine refused it and snapped open her purse and withdrew a frilly, monogrammed handkerchief of her own. Beaudry looked down momentarily and put his own handkerchief back in his pocket.
Maxine’s small automatic tore a hole in her frilly, monogrammed handkerchief as the bullet passed through it and into Beaudry’s neck. Beaudry clamped his left hand on the wound and reached for his service revolver with the right. He was too late. Maxine drilled him again right over his heart and Beaudry fell back onto the woven lobby rug.
“Outta my way, copper,” Maxine said, stepping over Beaudry’s body and exiting to the street.
A large, black sedan screeched to a halt at the curb and Maxine climbed in. The sedan sped off into the midtown traffic as sirens wailed in the distance.
I might even get to finish this book someday soon. Right now I couldn’t stop thinking about Andrew Donovan and Grant Stewart. The two of them were bound to clash and it’s a sure bet that one of them wasn’t coming out of it in one piece.
It had been three days since Andrew Donovan had left my office in search of the answers I hadn’t been able to provide. I couldn’t get Lila Stewart out of my mind but I had nothing that pointed to fowl play and I had to let it be.
I tried to pick up my book where I’d left off but I found myself reading the same paragraph over and over. I set the book back down and decided to pay a visit to Grant Stewart, even if just to satisfy my own mind.
I drove over to the Stewart house and knocked on the front door. I waited. No answer. I knocked again with the same results. I looked next door at Andrew Donovan’s house but didn’t see him looking back at me. I don’t know if I expected him to but I looked just the same.
I stepped off the Stewart’s porch and walked between the houses and around to the back. The proximity from Donovan’s back yard to Stewart’s back yard made it clear to me why it had been so easy for Andrew and Lila to get acquainted so easily. There was a clear view between the two properties.
I walked over to Stewart’s back door and raised my fist to knock when I spotted movement out of the corner of my eye. It was a pair of legs sticking out of the Stewart’s basement window. I stepped over to the wiggling legs and tapped on the bottom of one of the shoes with my own. The legs disappeared into the basement and in a moment a face appeared. It was Andrew Donovan.
He looked up at me and smiled a sheepish smile. I looked down at him the way a schoolteacher looks down at a student caught making mischief. “What are you doing down there? Come out
of there right now.”
“I, um, oh hell,” he said more confidently, “I’m doing an investigation on my own. I just have to know. It’s been one big loose end gnawing at me and I have to find out what happened to Lila.”
I pursed my lips and shook my head. “That’s no way to go about it,” I said. “You could be looking at some hard time for B and E.”
“B and E?”
“Breaking and entering,” I said. “I think you’d better come out of there right now before you get into serious trouble.”
Donovan looked down and then behind him. “Oh, all right,” he said, “but I’m not coming out the way I came in. I’ll come up the stairs and meet you at the back door. Stay right there, Mr. Cooper.”
The basement window closed behind Donovan and I waited outside the back door. I waited for several minutes and decided that it couldn’t possibly take Andrew that long to walk up a flight of stairs and out the back door. I knocked and waited some more.
I stepped off the back porch and knelt by the basement window. I pushed the frame inward and peered in. It was dark but I could hear movement.
“Andrew?” I said just above a whisper. “Donovan, are you there?”
A door on the far side of the immediate space opened and Donovan poked his head in. He looked up at me. “Matt, I found something. Go back to the back door and I’ll let you in.”
I let the window close and took my place on the back porch again. This time the door opened in a few seconds and Andrew Donovan stood there, wide-eyed and out of breath.
“Come on,” he said. “You gotta see this.”
“See what?” I said. “We better get out of here before Stewart comes back.”
Donovan ignored my warnings and hurried back down the basement stairs so I followed. The stairs ended in what appeared to be a laundry room. To the left was another door that Donovan was opening.
“This way, Matt,” he said, holding the door open for me.
Inside the second room Donovan stood pointing to the floor. “Look here, Matt. This floor looks newer than the rest of the basement floor. How much you wanna bet he’s hiding something under here?”
I shrugged. “Even if he is, and we find it, neither of us has a search warrant. Whatever’s under there, if there is anything under there, wouldn’t be admissible as evidence if it ever came to that.”
“So we don’t present it as evidence,” Andrew said. “If what I think is under there is under there, we just find it, get out and make an anonymous call to the police and let them find it. If it’s Lila, I’ve got to know. If not, I’ll go on searching. Now, you gonna help me or do I have to do this alone?”
I thought for a second, looked at my surroundings and shook my head. “I must me crazy. I could lose my license for this.”
Donovan pointed to a length of pipe standing in the corner. “Grab that,” he said.
I took the pipe section while Donovan pulled a hammer off a hook on a pegboard wall. He began pounding away at a corner of the cement patch until he had a small hole in one corner. He did the same on the other three corners and then smacked a line between the four points.
“Stick the pipe in there,” he said, pointing to one of the corners. He laid the hammer near the corner and I used the head for a fulcrum and pried with the length of pipe. Donovan grabbed the pipe next to my hands and we both pushed downward until the slab moved. I held the pipe down while Andrew grabbed another hammer off the wall and hit the cement near where I had the pipe inserted. A corner of the slab broke off and we did the same with the next corner.
Donovan removed enough of the cement on one corner to get the head of a shovel into the space. He scraped away and shoveled out some dirt when he stopped and pointed. He dropped the shovel, clasped his hand over his mouth and stepped back.
I looked down at the hole where Donovan had been digging. It was a small female hand with a red ring on her finger. It was a bony, decayed finger and it almost pointed up at us.
“It’s Lila,” Donovan said. “Oh my god.”
I laid the pipe down and knelt at the opening in the cement, my hand near the pointing, dead finger. After a few minutes the basement door opened and a hand appeared, holding a revolver, and it was pointing directly at us.
“Don’t move,” a voice said. “Put that stuff down and back away.”
Andrew laid the hammer down and stepped to one side as the door opened fully. I remained kneeling. The revolver led the way for the person holding it.
Donovan’s took a step toward the person, his arms held out and his eyes all lit up. “Hi Babe. Where have you been? You had me worried sick.”
Lila Stewart came into the room, looked at Donovan and then down at me. She pointed at me with the gun. “Who’s this?”
Donovan smiled and took another step toward Lila. She held the gun up, higher than before. Donovan stopped in his tracks, a puzzled look playing over his face.
“I said, who’s this,” she repeated.
The smile left Donovan’s face and he stood there dumbfounded. “His name’s Cooper. I hired him to find you. I was worried about you, Babe.”
“Well, I’m not lost,” she said. “I wasn’t lost. I was out of town visiting my aunt, if it’s any of your business. Now what are you two think you’re doing down here?”
Donovan turned toward the broken slab and then back to Lila. “We thought, that is, I thought you were…”
“Were what?” She said. “Under there? Don’t be silly. I’m right here.”
I looked at the broken slab and then back at Lila. “It’s beginning to make sense now,” I said. “If that’s not you under there, then I can assume that it’s the first Mrs. Stewart. Correct?”
Lila’s face retained that frozen, non-expression. She said nothing.
“And can I also assume,” I said, “that Mr. Stewart knows as much as you do?”
Still she said nothing. She just looked at the broken slab and then at Donovan. “You dumb oaf,” she said. “Why’d you have to go and poke your nose into this?”
Donovan tried to smile. “But I thought you and I…”
“Why, you big simp,” she said. “What you and I? There was no you and I. You were just someone to help fill the empty nights when Grant was gone. Did you think I was going to run off with you?”
“But I…”
“But nothing,” I said. “Can’t you see she’s been playing you like a vintage Stradivarius?”
“Bright boy,” Lila said to Donovan while still looking at me. “Too bad neither of you is going to be able to tell anyone about this. By tonight Grant and I will be out of the country. So long, chump.”
Lila leveled the gun at Donovan and squeezed off a round. He flinched and it hit him in the shoulder. As he hit the floor, I grabbed a handful of dirt from around the open grave and flung it in Lila’s face. She shot blindly into the room but I rolled to one side and got to my feet. As she struggled to wipe her eyes, I grabbed the gun and jerked it from her hand. I think I may have broken one of her fingers getting the gun away from her. She held her finger with her other hand and wailed.
She kicked at me and tried to claw me with her fingernails but she still couldn’t see well enough to know exactly where I was. I dropped her gun into my pocket and got both arms around her and held on tight until she calmed down. She stopped struggling and I loosened my grip on her. She broke loose and came at me again. I cocked my fist and let her have a solid punch to the jaw. She went down like a scarecrow with no support.
I checked Donovan’s wound. He was bleeding pretty good but he’d live. I stuffed my handkerchief into the wound and placed his hand on it.
“Hold that there,” I said. “I have a call to make.”
I hurried upstairs and dialed Sergeant Hollister’s number at the precinct. He’d put out an all points bulletin for Grant Stewart and before nightfall, both Stewarts were in custody.
Andrew Donovan recovered after a few days in the hospital. Two weeks after the ordeal in the Stew
art’s basement, Andrew Donovan stopped by my office. His left arm sported a sling. He came in and sat in my client’s chair.
“Matt,” he said sheepishly, “I don’t know how I can thank you. You saved my life, in more ways than one.” He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a piece of paper. He slid it over to my side of the desk. “I hope that covers everything. If it’s not enough, just say so and I’ll make you out another one.”
I looked at the check. It was drawn in the amount of one thousand dollars. I swallowed hard. “That’s more than generous,” I said. “But I haven’t charged you for anything. I told you when you first came to me that I’d only charge you if I took on your case and if I thought I could do anything for you. Remember?”
“I remember,” Donovan said. “But I’d feel better if you took it. If it hadn’t been for you my life may have been miserable, that is, if I she hadn’t killed me right then and there.”
“Forget it, Andrew,” I said, folding the check once and slipping it into my pocket. “Why don’t you get out there and try to find yourself a nice girl and settle down?”
Donovan rose from my chair and headed for the door. He looked back once and said, “I may just do that. Thanks again, Mr. Cooper.”
The door closed and the sounds of his footsteps faded down the hall. I’d give him a few minutes before I closed up shop and took his check to the bank.
Meanwhile, I was anxious to get back to my book and see if Maxine got what was coming to her.
12 - Hard Bargain
A shadow fell across my office door. The handle twisted a half turn, the door opened and a man stepped in. He wore a gray double-breasted suit, buttoned up all the way with a white shirt beneath it. A splash of red leaked out between the lapels and a gray pork pie hat sat high on his head. His steel gray eyes scanned the room briefly before he settled in my client’s chair. He looked like he meant business. He looked like he wanted to share that business with me.
