by Bill Bernico
“If it was murder,” Gloria said. “We don’t know yet that it is.”
“How about if we look a little further into that later?” I said. “Right now I’m more curious about where those two point seven acres are located. Come on, let’s get my car and pay a visit to the register of deeds.”
I learned that the register of deeds job was held by a man named Stuart Polk. When we got to his office, we learned that Polk still hadn’t returned from lunch and decided to wait for him, since it was already ten minutes to one. Gloria and I found a bench in the lobby and planted ourselves there.
Gloria turned to me. “If Sammy Shapiro had the stock and the land, I wonder why he needed to stay with his sister and live off his social security checks. All he had to do was cash in the stocks and sell the land and he could have lived like a king.”
“Who knows why people do the things they do?” I said. “Maybe it had been a while since he’d looked into their values or maybe he got senile and forgot that he even owned them. Hell, we don’t even know if his sister or brother-in-law even knew of their existence.”
“If they didn’t before,” Gloria said, “they will now, once the will is read.”
Stuart Polk was punctual and returned to his office at precisely one o’clock. He unlocked the door and let us in, taking his place behind the counter. He turned to us and said, “Yes, may I help you?”
I gave him a card, introduced myself and Gloria and pulled out my notepad. “If I give you the co-ordinates of a parcel of land, could you provide us with the physical address?”
“Certainly,” Polk said. “What are those co-ordinates?”
I turned my pad around so that he could read my writing. He pulled up a screen on his computer and punched those numbers in. Once he had the location on the screen, he wrote down the physical address along with simple directions to the area. We thanked him and took his printout with us.
“Would you drive?” I said to Gloria. “I’d rather navigate this time.”
“Sure,” Gloria said, sliding in behind the wheel. She started the car and I told her where to make the turns. Within half an hour we found ourselves on the outskirts of the city limits. There were no house numbers, only street signs, so we had to approximate the location of Shapiro’s parcel. I got out of the car, printout in hand, and walked around, looking at the surrounding area.
“You sure you have the right place?” Gloria said, looking up at a four-story building.
I took another look at the printout and said, “That’s it, right there. No two ways about it.”
Gloria scanned the immediate area. “What do you suppose two point seven acres is worth in this neighborhood?” she said.
“Possibly a hundred fifty thousand, maybe more,” I said. “But that is sitting right smack dab in the middle of it.” I pointed to the four-story building, which had long since been abandoned. The windows on the first two floors had all been broken, probably by kids with rocks. The sixty-foot smokestack next to the building looked as though a stiff wind might send it toppling at any time. The doors had all been boarded up with warning signs telling trespassers to keep out. The sign directly over the main door read, ‘Condemned.’
“This is some prize,” Gloria said.
“If there was any money to be made with the sale of the land,” I said, “it would all be eaten up by the cost of demolishing the building and hauling away the rubble. Whoever took on a job like that to get the land would end up in the red. I’ll bet that’s why the original owners just walked away from it or let the bank take it.”
“Then what would Shapiro be doing with it?” Gloria said.
“Back when the company first left it,” I said, “the property was probably offered for sale for some ridiculous price, like a dollar. They probably figured someone would snap it up and resell it for a quick profit. Shapiro no doubt got a hard lesson in economics when he bought it and found out no one else wanted it. Oh, he might have gone through the building and stripped it of the copper pipes and anything else worth selling, unless the sellers already did that before they left.”
“So what does that leave Shapiro with?” Gloria said.
“A money pit,” I said. “He was stuck with it.”
“I guess that just leaves the stock,” Gloria said.
“And we’re going to find out what that’s worth right now,” I said. “Come on.”
We drove back to the office and rode the elevator to the third floor. Back at my desk, I picked up the phone and dialed the number of Marshall, Marshall and Liebowitz. I got Helen the receptionist again and told her who I was and asked to be connected to John Marshall. She put me on hold and a moment later Marshall came on the line.
“Yes, Mr. Cooper,” he said. “What can I do for you now?”
“Mr. Marshall,” I said. “All I need to know is the purchase date of the stock Mr. Shapiro purchased, if you would be so kind.”
“Hold the line,” Marshall said and put me on hold. He came back on a short time later and said, “Mr. Shapiro bought those hundred shares on April the twenty-third.”
“Of 1986?” I said, holding my breath.
“Heavens no,” Marshall said. “I’m talking about April of this year. Can you imagine what those shares would be worth today if he had purchases them in 1986?”
“One million, four hundred twenty-eight thousand, six hundred seventy-seven dollars and fifty-nine cents,” I said, reading the figure from my notepad. “Yeah, too bad. Thanks again, Mr. Marshall. I shouldn’t have to be bothering you anymore. Goodbye.”
I hung up and turned to Gloria. “Strike two,” I said. “Shapiro bought the Microsoft stock in April of this year. And if I recall, Microsoft stock was selling for just over thirty dollars a share last April. That means that Shapiro would have shelled out a little more than three thousand dollars.”
“Is that good?” Gloria said.
“Not so much,” I said. “Today the stock is trading for around twenty-eight dollars a share. That means if Shapiro was still alive and wanted to cash in his stocks, he’d take a two hundred dollar hit, plus the cost of the commission for selling it.”
“So we’re back to square one as far as motive goes,” Gloria said. “No one’s going to kill a guy for twenty-five hundred bucks, are they?”
“But what if they thought like we initially did and counted on the stock being worth over a million?” I said. “What if they didn’t know the location of the land parcel and didn’t know it created a negative cash flow? Then they’d still figure they had enough reasons to kill him.”
“When are they going to read the will?” Gloria said.
“Monday morning,” I said. “John Marshall will be reading the contents of the will in his office. As far as I can tell, Shapiro’s only living relatives are his sister, Sylvia his daughter, Gail and one grandson.”
“Oh, to be a fly on the wall during that reading,” Gloria said.
“I’m sure Sylvia will tell us once she finds out,” I said. “She’ll probably want to end the investigation unless we give her something she can use.”
“Like what?” Gloria said.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “We still have the rest of the weekend to keep snooping. Something’s bound to turn up.”
“Don’t you think it’s about time we talked to Shapiro’s daughter and son-in-law?” Gloria said.
“It’s like you can read my mind,” I said, and gestured toward the door. “After you, my dear.”
We made the drive to the east end of town, just inside the Pasadena city limits and pulled up in front of the Grimes’ house. Gloria didn’t get out of the car immediately, but instead turned to me. “How about if I handle this one?” she said. “I think I can get through to the wife.”
“And I can’t?” I said.
“Elliott,” she said, “you’re good at what you do, but sometimes you have a tendency to come on a little strong and that puts people on their guard. Let me give it a try and if I don’t seem to be m
aking any progress with her, then you can badger, er, I mean question the woman. Okay?”
“I’ll just observe,” I said looking sideways at her. “I won’t interfere. Let’s see what you got.”
I rang the bell and Gail Grimes answered the door. She looked out at the two of us standing there and said, “Can I help you?”
Right away I knew she wasn’t nearly as classy as Helen Moore, the receptionist at Marshall, Marshall and Liebowitz.
“My name is Gloria Campbell,” Gloria said. “And this is Elliott Cooper. We’re looking into the death of your father, Samuel Shapiro. Could we talk to you for a few minutes?”
Gail Grimes looked us over the way a woman looks over her blind date when she first lays eyes on him. She must have decided that we looked all right, because she opened her door wide, stepped aside and let us in. She invited us to sit on the sofa in the living room and asked if we wanted anything to drink. We both waved off the drink request. Gloria pulled out a notepad and a pen and looked at Gail Grimes.
“Mrs. Grimes,” Gloria said. “I think I should start out by saying that Elliott and I have been hired by Mr. Shapiro’s sister to look into her brother’s death.”
Gail looked surprised by this revelation. “Aunt Sylvia hired the two of you?” she said. “You mean you two aren’t with the police department?”
“No,” Gloria said. “We’re private investigators and at this point, all we’re doing is gathering information about what happened. We haven’t formed any opinions or taken any sides in this matter yet. We’re waiting until we’ve spoken to everyone involved.”
“Does Aunt Sylvia think that Dad’s death was anything other than suicide?” Gail said, her voice a little on edge.
“She doesn’t know,” Gloria said. “She just wants to know all the facts leading up to her brother’s death. It’s been a traumatic couple of days, as I’m sure you are aware from your own experience.” Gloria could see suspicion playing on Gail’s face and decided to change the subject. She glanced at the playpen and asked, “Where’s your son this morning?”
“His father took him to the park,” Gail said. “I told him I needed a little time to myself. I just needed some room to think.”
“How old is your son, Mrs. Grimes?” Gloria said.
“He just turned three,” Gail said, “last month.”
“What’s his name?” Gloria said.
“Lloyd, junior,” Gail said. “He’s the spitting image of his daddy.”
“I’ll bet he’s a handful at that age,” Gloria said.
I wondered where she was going with all this, but kept my word and remained silent.
“He can be,” Gail said. “That’s why it was so nice to have Dad here to babysit when we needed it.”
Gloria looked around the room and pointed with her chin to several stuffed toys lying on the living room floor. “Aren’t those adorable?” she said. “Does Junior have a favorite?”
“He loves that brown Teddy Bear with the red ribbon around his neck,” Gail said.
Now I really thought Gloria was getting way off track and thought it might be time for me to step in with questions of my own. Before I could open my mouth, however, Gloria thought of some more questions.
“What about that one?” Gloria said, pointing to another stuffed bear up on the mantle that was sitting there looking like it was overseeing the rest of the toys on the floor.
“Oh, that’s not one of Junior’s toys,” Gail said. “That’s our nanny cam.”
“Nanny cam?” Gloria said. “What do you mean?”
Gail stood and walked over to the mantle and picked up the stuffed animal. She lifted it high enough off the mantle to expose a wire that ran out of its back and down the left edge of the mantle. Gail set the bear down again and pointed to a spot around the corner from the mantle and said, “The recorder is back there.”
“The recorder?” Gloria said. “I don’t understand.”
Gail pointed to the bear on the mantle again. “There’s a tiny camera behind the bear’s nose, see?” She pointed to the round opening in the end of the bear’s black nose. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d miss it completely.
“Why do you have a camera on this room?” Gloria said.
“It was Lloyd’s idea,” Gail said. “He didn’t trust Dad to babysit Junior. He was always afraid that Dad would fall asleep and wouldn’t be watching Junior so he installed the nanny cam to find out.”
“And what did you find out?” Gloria said.
“Lloyd set it to record after we’d left the house,” Gail explained. “He’d check the tape when we got home again. So far he hadn’t found any video of Dad falling asleep while he was supposed to be babysitting, but he wasn’t going to give up on it.”
I couldn’t remain silent any longer. I looked at Gail and held up one finger. “Mrs. Grimes,” I said, “was the bear recording the day your father died?”
It was as if I’d turned a light on in her head. Apparently I’d said something that she hadn’t even thought of up to this point. Her eyes got a glimmer of hope in them for the first time since we’d sat down. She got up and walked back over to the recorder around the corner from the fireplace. She pressed the Eject button and a three-hour tape popped out. She grabbed it and brought it over to me. I looked at it and noticed that the entire contents of the tape were wound onto the take-up reel. That’s just where it would have stopped after it had recorded three hours.
I looked beneath Gail’s television set and saw a VCR connected to the set. I turned to Gail. “May I?” I said, gesturing toward the VCR.
Gail nodded. “Go ahead,” she said. “I would like to know what’s on there, too.”
I found the remote control for the unit and ejected the tape that was in there and slipped in the tape from the nanny cam setup. I pressed Play and sat back down with the remote. The tape began playing, showing nothing but an empty room at first. A few minutes later Gail came into the shot carrying Lloyd, Junior. She set him down inside the playpen and gave him one of his toys.
A moment later Sammy Shapiro came into the room carrying a glass of what looked like soda and set it on the table next to the overstuffed chair. A minute or two later Gail and Lloyd headed for their front door. Lloyd looked right into the camera once and then he and Gail left the house, closing the door behind them.
Gail watched the tape and recognized something in it and announced, “That had to have been last Sunday. Lloyd and I were only gone half an hour. I guess Lloyd wanted to do a trial run with Dad.”
The picture on the screen went snowy for a second and then jumped to another similar setup. Again, before they left the house, Lloyd, Senior looked directly into the camera again. Gail pointed at the television. “That was the day,” she started to say and then trailed off, absorbed with what was happening on the television screen.
Lloyd, Junior was sitting in the playpen, playing with his favorite stuffed bear. Gail and Lloyd had just left the house when Shapiro got up out of the chair and walked out of the shot to the left, toward the kitchen. He came back into view a moment later and pulled the top off some sort of tube. He hesitated for a few seconds and then tilted the tube up to his mouth and drank. He immediately dropped the tube and fell to his knees, his hands around his throat. He dropped over onto his side and began convulsing, his feet kicking wildly.
A few seconds later the front door opened again and Gail walked into the room. Her scream came through the television set loud and clear when she saw her father lying on the floor, white foam spewing from his open mouth.
At this point, Gail held her hand up to shield herself from the television screen. “Turn it off,” she screamed. “Turn it off, please.” She broke down and sobbed uncontrollably.
I hit the Stop button on the remote and the screen went snowy again. Gloria wrapped an arm around Gail’s shoulder and pulled her close. “I’m so sorry you had to see that,” Gloria told Gail. Gail turned toward Gloria and buried her head in Gloria’s shoulder.
The front door opened again and Lloyd came in carrying his son. He looked at me, his face showing alarm. Then he turned to his wife and saw her crying into some strange woman’s shoulder.
“What’s going on here?” Lloyd said.
Gail broke away from Gloria and ran to her husband. She threw her arms around him and their son and cried some more. When she was able to control herself again, Gail looked at her husband and said, “Oh Lloyd, it’s Dad, there on the TV. The nanny cam recorded his death.” Her lip trembled and she tried to go on. “These folks are private investigators looking into Dad’s death.”
Lloyd looked at me again, his suspicion fading. I introduced myself and Gloria and told him about his wife’s aunt hiring us. I also told him about the contents of the nanny cam tape and how it proved beyond any doubt that Shapiro’s death was, indeed, a suicide. I thanked Lloyd and Gail for their time and patience and told them to keep that tape in a safe place and that Lieutenant Hollister might just be asking to see it. He agreed he’d do that and showed me to the door.
Before we left, Gloria turned back to Gail and said, “Again, let me just say how sorry I am for your loss and if there’s anything we can do for you, please don’t hesitate to call on us.”
Gail thanked her and we walked back to my car and just sat there at the curb for a few minutes, absorbing this new information.
“So that’s it?” Gloria said.
“All except for reporting our findings to Sylvia Nash,” I said. “It’ll be a relief to her to find out that no one killed her brother. She may not be so happy to learn that he’d killed himself, but that’s something else out of our control. It is what it is.”
We stopped at Sylvia Nash’s house on our way back to the office and told her all that we’d discovered. She thanked us for our services and wrote out a check to Cooper Investigations. I reminded her about the reading of the will Monday morning at the offices of Marshall, Marshall and Liebowitz. She assured us that she’d be there and showed us to the door.
