by Joel Goldman
“Look, if this is some kind of sensitivity test, let me know. I’ll tell you the story about my Jewish ancestors sneaking out of their Lithuanian village in the middle of the night so that they wouldn’t be killed in the monthly pogrom. They ended up here with a set of candlesticks and nothing else. My great-grandfather helped cut the stones they used for those streets and my grandfather slaughtered his share of those animals. Nobody said it was fair. I don’t need for you to know about that or to give a shit. I just want to know if you found my drunk.”
Blues looked at him with a half smile. “Just wanted you to know, that’s all.”
“Know what?”
“I’ve got more faith in my system of justice than in the one you’re going to use to squeeze a few bucks out of your drunk’s insurance company. I’ll help you when I want to and you’ll pay me. I don’t like what you’re doing or I decide I don’t like you—that’s it. That’s my justice system.”
“Fair enough. But if I don’t get my drunk, you don’t get paid.”
“I’ve got your drunk. By the way,” he added with mock surprise, “I didn’t know Mason was a Jewish name.”
Mason couldn’t hold back his grin. “Yeah? Well, I guess that means we’re even since I didn’t know there were any Indian piano players.”
Their arrangement had worked well over the years. Blues could find just about anyone who didn’t want to be found and find out most things that people didn’t want someone else to know. And he did it with a confidence and fearlessness that made it difficult for people to resist. When they did, they regretted it.
Blues didn’t volunteer much about himself. Eventually Mason strung together enough bits and pieces to know that he’d been married and divorced before he was twenty, served in the army special forces, and spent six years as a cop in Kansas City.
He quit the police force after he shot and killed a woman suspected of smothering her baby to stop her from crying. Blues never went into the details except to say that the brass gave him the choice to quit or be fired. He quit being a cop but kept playing piano and moonlighting as a freelance problem solver.
Mason suspected that something more than reading history had shaped Blues’s uncompromising solutions for the problems people brought to him. But Mason had yet to turn over that rock. Nor could Mason explain why Blues had agreed to help him with the drunk and his other cases he’d needed help with since he quit playing piano. The one time he’d asked, Blues told him it was the only way he could make certain that Mason didn’t start playing again.
They met for breakfast Wednesday morning at a midtown diner where the upwardly mobile have breakfast and the down-and-out spend hours with a cup of coffee.
“Sounds like you and your pinstriped partners are in deep shit, man,” Blues said after Mason finished telling him what had happened over the last three days. “You want me to watch your back until this is over?”
“You think my back needs to be watched?”
“Oh, I don’t know. You’ve got one dead partner and somebody wants you to either join him or be convicted for killing him.”
Mason couldn’t ignore the warning in Blues’s offer. His willingness to accept it after he’d turned down a similar offer from Kelly was more than a little sexist. He resolved to work on his gender insecurity just as soon as people stopped trying to kill him.
“I’ve never had someone watch my back before. Is that a hard thing to do?”
“Easier than teaching you to play the piano.”
“Do I get more than one hour a week?”
“I’ll be around as much as I can. Most of the time, you won’t know it, but I won’t have you covered all the time. You’ll have to be careful.”
“I’ll just talk into my collar so the bad guys will think I’ve got backup around the corner. In the meantime, I don’t have a clue who planted the bug. St. John says it’s not one of his.”
“He’s right about that,” Blues said as he rolled the microphone in his palm. “Every low-life PI in town has a drawer full of these.”
“Sullivan’s funeral is at one o’clock today. The office will be closed. Find out if any more of these toys are lying around. Where are you playing tonight?”
“I’ve got a gig at The Landing.”
“I’ll see you there around nine.”
“Any suggestions if someone decides to skip the funeral to catch up on paperwork?”
“Anyone who’s there instead of the funeral will have more explaining to do than you. The elevator to our floors will be locked out and you’ll have to use our access code.” Mason handed Blues a slip of paper with a series of numbers on it. “Use that sequence on the elevator control panel. It’s the only way to get to our floors.”
“Why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff?”
“I hate being the last to know what’s going on.”
“What about your partner who found the bug?”
“Sandra Connelly. We agreed not to say anything to anyone else.”
“But you didn’t tell her about me, did you?”
“No, and don’t start interrogating me. I’m being careful, just like you told me. See you tonight.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
MASON DECIDED TO SKIP the office and visit Ellen Philpott instead. He knew that dropping in on a witness unannounced was better than calling for an appointment. It was easier to hang up than it was to close the door in someone’s face.
He had followed the same rule when he met Kate for the first time. He was at a lecture, which was thin cover for a chance to meet women who didn’t like getting picked up at bars. He stared at her from the moment she walked in. She was slender and slick, with thick, wavy black hair. And she knew how to move. She didn’t walk. She shimmied and shimmered. What she lacked in cover-girl credentials, she made up in mystique.
It was a combination of things; the arc of her smile, the promising cup of her hands, the scent that lingered on her very kissable throat. Some of these things he guessed at that night and some he discovered in the fever of their time together.
She didn’t notice him that night until after the speaker had shared her life experiences, none of which he could repeat since he didn’t hear a word the speaker had said. He introduced himself like a thirty-second commercial, probing her education, career, and relationship status, closing the sale by asking her out, figuring it was harder to say no in person than over the phone a couple of days later when she’d struggle to remember they’d ever met.
When she said yes, he peeled the name tag off of his sweater and stuck it on top of hers, making certain she wouldn’t forget his name. Later that night, he looked at himself in the mirror, toothpaste still leaking from the corner of his mouth, and declared that Kate was the woman he would marry.
Ellen Philpott didn’t surrender as easily. She didn’t even come to her door. She summoned Mason from within.
The Philpotts lived in Crystal Lakes, a gated community in the suburbs of south Kansas City that offered neither crystal nor a lake. Gated community meant a high-dollar development enclosed by an eight-foot wrought-iron fence to keep out the 99 percent of the economic food chain that weren’t otherwise admitted to visit or clean. So much for surprise, Mason thought.
Each resident’s name was engraved on a burnished brass panel mounted on a limestone post outside the automated gate barring the private entrance. A white marble button was provided beneath each name so that a visitor could announce his or her presence. Mason pressed the button below the Philpott name and waited.
“Speak,” a disembodied sharp-toned female voice commanded from the speaker.
“It’s Lou Mason to see Mrs. Philpott.”
“Of course it is. Third house on the left past the gate. I’m on the patio.”
The first house on the left past the gate was a Country French limestone McMansion. The second house on the left was a pale pink Mediterranean stucco with a tiled roof. The third house on the left was a rounded two-story white brick structure that loo
ked more industrial than residential. Flower beds were paved with lava rocks. Stainless-steel figure eights skirted the high-gloss ebony front door. Home is where the bunker is, Mason thought as he walked around to the back of the house.
Morning sun baked the inlaid Spanish tiles and red bricks that crisscrossed the patio. Ellen sat on a high-backed, red-lacquered oval stool, her slender shoulders ramrod straight, her wide eyes fixed on a canvas stricken with ill-matched strokes of black and blue acrylic paint, brushes and palette at her feet. Sodden men’s clothes, reeking of mildew, were heaped in a pile behind the easel.
“Painting is supposed to soothe me, but I don’t want to be soothed,” Ellen said. She brushed her close-cropped auburn hair with both hands. “All things considered, I’d rather be crazy.”
“Go with your strengths,” Mason said.
She laughed so hard she slipped off the stool, stepped on her paints, cursed, and wiped her shoes on an Armani shirt at the edge of the pile. Warren Philpott may have been tough, Mason thought, but he couldn’t compete with crazy.
“Now, that’s real good advice,” she drawled after catching her breath. Her Missouri twang was just another contradiction. Though he’d not heard her speak during the trial, Mason would have guessed that she was more city than country.
“Thank you for seeing me.”
“That’s not much to thank someone for. It doesn’t take much effort and the payoff can be kind of skimpy.”
“Mrs. Philpott, I’ll be honest with you. I’m still working on the case against your husband’s company for Tommy Douchant. I know that you’re divorcing him. I was hoping you might be able to help me.”
“Warren already kicked the snot out of you once. What makes you think I can help you or that I would?”
“I don’t know if you can. That’s what I’m here to find out. I read the story in the newspaper about your divorce and thought you might be willing to try.”
She squared up and glared at him, hands on bony hips, elbows flared like a human pelican, the veins in her long neck pulsating. Captain Queeg would make a better witness.
“You must think I’m no better than he is. Yes, my husband did me dirty. Shamed me with women no better than twenty-five-dollar whores. And you want me to get my revenge by telling you his secrets. Betray him to get even. Is that what you want me to do, Mr. Mason?”
“Tommy Douchant is my best friend. He’s got a wife and two kids who don’t eat if his social security disability check is late. You can call it betrayal or getting even. I call it doing the right thing.”
She gave him a calmer, more studied look. “Do you think I’m crazy?”
He laughed. “No, I don’t. I think you’re one powerfully pissed-off woman who’s trying to figure out what to do with a pile of wet clothes.”
“Are you married?”
“Divorced. My wife left me. She said she just woke up one day and was out of love with me.”
Ellen chewed her lower lip, digesting Mason’s answer. “I don’t know which would be worse. At least Warren claimed he still had feelings for me. He said he just wasn’t built to be faithful.”
“I think the worst one is the one that happens to you.”
“You are surely right about that.” She picked up her palette and brushes. “What would you need to help your friend?”
“The jury decided that there was nothing wrong with the design of the safety hook on Tommy’s belt.”
“So wouldn’t you have to prove that something went wrong when it was manufactured?”
“Exactly.”
“So why didn’t you do that at the trial?”
“My expert witness said that the hook was made just like the design called for.”
“Then you’d have to prove that your own witness was mistaken, wouldn’t you, Mr. Mason?”
Ellen Philpott’s crazy act evaporated. Her country-cousin accent vanished. And her questions cut to the bottom line. Mason wondered if she was leading him along, hoping he would ask the right question and relieve her of the burden of outright betrayal.
“Not necessarily. Tommy’s employer turned the safety belt over to your husband the day of the accident. I didn’t see it until after I filed the lawsuit. If there was something wrong with the hook, he could have switched it for a good one and no one would ever have known.”
“Why, Mr. Mason,” she said, her drawl fully engaged. “That would be dishonest and deceitful. It would be the act of a man who had no honor.”
“Would it also be the act of a man who would dishonor a fine woman?”
Bending over, she reached beneath the pile of clothes and pulled out a metal cash box.
“Warren is a collector. He fancies bad women and bad hooks. I suppose a psychiatrist would have a field day tying those two passions together.”
She handed the box to him. It contained ten hooks just like the one on Tommy’s belt. Mason couldn’t tell one from the other. He looked up. She was sitting on the stool, her back to him, adding strong brushstrokes of paint to her canvas.
“Is one of these Tommy’s?”
“I don’t know. Warren used to brag about switching the hooks. He said lawyers weren’t very smart. These may not be the only ones.”
“Does your husband know you have this box?”
“I doubt it, since I found it hidden in his closet. I suspect it’s one of those personal things he keeps telling me he wants to stop by and pick up.”
“Mind if I keep the hooks?”
“So long as you hang Warren with one.” She turned toward him from her canvas, smiled weakly, and wiped a tear from her cheek. “Damn paint makes my eyes water. Good-bye, Mr. Mason.”
On his way to Sullivan’s funeral, Mason stopped at the engineering department at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Dr. Webb Chapman, the chairman of the department, had been his expert safety engineer at Tommy’s trial. He wasn’t in, so Mason left him the box of hooks and a note asking him to call.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE WARD PARKWAY EPISCOPAL CHURCH was a massive limestone cathedral more suited to the Old World than to Kansas City. It was filled with several hundred mourners, many of whom were attorneys paying their last respects before picking off Sullivan & Christenson’s clients. Somber greetings and heartfelt condolences couldn’t hide their burgeoning appetites.
Mason saw his aunt Claire signing the guest book when he walked into the church. She was tall and big boned. She considered her size an advantage. There was nothing diminutive about her, in either appearance or demeanor. He caught her eye when she turned around and she nodded in reply, waiting for him to make his way through the line and add his name to the book.
“Thanks for coming,” he told her.
“I didn’t know the man, but he was your partner, so I decided to show the family flag.”
An older woman employed by the firm as a secretary interrupted their conversation and embraced Mason. “He’s gone to a better place, to paradise,” she said.
“I never knew a paradise that didn’t have a snake in it,” Claire said after the woman peeled herself away.
“That’s not a heaven-bound theology.”
“So what? I’m not heaven bound. Just plant me in the ground and call it a day. If I do enough in this life, I don’t much care about the next. And, by the way, next time your senior partner dies, tell me before I read about it in the paper.”
“Sorry. Things have been a little wild.”
“The paper said the police are investigating. What’s going on?”
Mason leaned into her to muffle his response. “It looks like he was murdered.”
“By whom?”
“The official position is person or persons unknown. Only the living are suspected.”
“Including you?”
“Including me.” Mason spotted Sandra Connelly heading for the seats cordoned off for members of the firm. “I’ll call you later.”
Mason joined Sandra in the third row, behind the family. The Sulliv
ans had no children. Pamela, Diane Farrell at her side, and an array of anonymous siblings, in-laws, and cousins made their black-clothed entrance as the congregation silenced itself.
The minister invoked a boilerplate eulogy praising Sullivan’s many civic contributions, his devotion to family and church, and the tragic untimeliness of his death. When he left Sullivan one miracle short of sainthood, Mason figured they’d never met. Harlan Christenson spoke briefly but movingly of their years of practice and the brotherly bond that had held them together.
“What a crock!” Sandra whispered. “Harlan needed Sullivan, but Sullivan would have dropped him like a bad habit if he could have found a way.”
Mason turned toward her, but his eyes found Kelly Holt slipping into an empty seat across the aisle. She smiled at him as she sat down before looking away. He kept staring.
“My mother always told me it’s not polite to flirt at funerals. Who is she?” Sandra asked.
“Kelly Holt, the FBI agent who quit the bureau and landed in the Ozarks. What in the hell is she doing here?”
“Put your tongue back in your mouth before you ask her.”
“No subtly, huh?”
“Zero. And it doesn’t do much for my ego either.”
“Remember what your mother told you.”
Christenson finished, the organ played, and the congregation stood as the family followed the casket out of the church. Mason and Sandra left to join the procession to the cemetery and had reached their cars when Kelly caught up with them.
“Hello, Counselor. Got room for one more?”
Sandra stuck out her right hand. “I’m Sandra Connelly, one of Lou’s partners. We’re running the firm’s investigation into Sullivan’s death. Lou tells me you’re handling the Ozark end of things.”
“I wasn’t aware of the firm’s investigation. Perhaps we can help each other.”
Mason opened the passenger door to his car before their serve and volley moved to the net.
“I’ll just follow in my car,” Sandra said, slamming her door closed.
