by Jim Pascoe
I went through a door underneath a small tin sign that told me it was the office. I was alone. On the right, a couple of lonely padded benches rested below a paint-by-numbers flower picture. Straight ahead, a short hallway opened into a large room filled with ill-arranged furniture and a small television against the far wall. To my left, the office proper reminded me of a dentist’s waiting room. Above the narrow counter was a pair of sliding glass windows, beyond which was a small room with desk and chair. But no receptionist.
I waited a moment, the silence antiseptic around me. Losing patience, I slapped the metal bell that sat on the ledge. Its tinny sound seemed too loud in the emptiness.
Sooner than I thought, but not as soon as I would have liked, the door on the opposite side of the small office opened and a plump woman wearing a gray nurse’s outfit and too much hairspray stumbled in. She looked annoyed.
“Yes?” She glared at me as she smoothed the wrinkles in her skirt.
“I’m Ben Drake, a private detective.” I pressed my card to the glass. “I’m looking for Elizabeth Biggs.”
“Oh, this must be about her son?” It was a statement, but she turned it into a question.
“Yes, that’s right. Where can I find her?”
She bent over the desk and consulted a long list of names that lived under the clear blotter. “Uhhh, she’s in D-109.” More smoothing.
I waited to see if she’d give me directions. It seemed that was too much to ask. I started to doubt this woman’s ability to help the elderly. “And where can I find that?”
“Go out the door there,” she said, indicating the door I came in. “Take a right, and it’s the third building on your left.”
“Thanks.”
I turned to leave. She stopped me.
“By the way, there’s no smoking in the Desert Flower Retirement Complex, sir.”
“I’m not smoking.”
She flashed me a smile that wasn’t a smile. “Just for your information.”
I flashed back. “Right. Thanks.” I turned again. This time I got out.
I followed my friend’s directions and took a right down the path. I knew I was going to have a little trouble. The crooked trail ran around and between the eight buildings that randomly littered the courtyard. I couldn’t tell which building was the third on my left, and I sure wasn’t going back to ask for directions again, so I forged ahead.
The courtyard was a regular Garden of Eden. A variety of well-tended plants and trees grew along the curving path, filling the air with a not unpleasant fragrance. Some would have called it serene. Others would have described it as pastoral. To me, it was just a confounding maze. Occasionally, I bumped into an elderly Adam or Eve, wandering about as if they were on a mission to wander.
I’d been wandering for a while myself, when I noticed a big F on the building in front of me. I turned around, retraced my steps, and it wasn’t long before I was pushing the button labeled 109 at the front door of the D building. An old woman’s voice crackled through the small speaker.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Ben Drake, ma’am. I’m from the Always Reddy Detective Agency.”
“Oh, I’m glad you found me. Hold on a second.” I waited until the buzzer sounded to let me in.
Her room was easier to find. I knocked on the door.
“Who is it?”
“It’s still Ben Drake, ma’am.”
“Oh, come in.”
I grasped the doorknob. It resisted my attempt to turn it. “Ah, could you unlock the door, please?”
A moment passed before the door opened. “I’m sorry, this horrible business has me in a state.”
Elizabeth Biggs was a small, white-haired woman, but she was far from frail. She wore a navy cardigan over a conservative white blouse and tan slacks. On her feet were a pair of orthopedic shoes, the type nurses wear. Although her smile beamed brightly under her sapphire-blue eyes, it didn’t hide the pain.
“No problem, ma’am. Can I come in?”
“Oh, yes. I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten my manners. I just put on a new pot of coffee.” She gestured toward the kitchen. “Could I offer you a cup?”
Apparently she hadn’t forgotten them for long. I accepted.
She switched off the television and told me to take a seat on the sofa, which filled most of the small living room. The opposite wall was nothing short of a shrine to Gentleman Joe, with numerous portraits of him at various ages, pictures of him in action, and pictures of him brandishing trophies large and small. There was something missing, though, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
My thoughts were interrupted when Elizabeth brought in a tray holding two steaming cups of coffee along with a pitcher of cream and a bowl of sugar. She placed her burden, appropriately, on the coffee table and sat down next to me.
“Now what did you want to ask me, Mr. Drake?”
I selected my cup and began with the basics: “I know the police came by earlier—”
“Those hooligans!”
Judging from that, I guessed it was Duke Wellington who had paid her the visit. “Yeah, the police don’t know how to treat a lady. What’d they say to you?”
“Only the most terse and uncouth comments about Joey.”
“Such as?”
“They wanted me to believe he was into bad things like gambling . . .” She paused and made a face as if she had just eaten something disagreeable. “And drugs.”
“We know that isn’t true.” I did my best to sound matter-of-fact.
“Absolutely not. He was a perfect gentleman. I raised him myself, you know. Ever since my husband Barry passed away. He’s the one who taught my Joey to bowl.”
“Did Joe have a lot of friends?” Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to call him Joey.
“Friends? Sure. Everybody was Joey’s friend . . .”
I sensed she wasn’t quite finished talking, so I took a sip from my cup. It was a pause I regretted; she started to cry. It made me feel like leaving, but I knew I had to stay.
I got up and grabbed a couple of tissues from the box on the end table. As she took them, she struggled to compose herself.
“Thank you. He really was a good man. He was all I had.”
“Did you see him often?”
“All the time. He came by and spent some time with me every day.”
“So you were close, then?”
“Oh yes. I raised him, you know. Barry, Joey’s father, died when Joey was only ten. That’s how he got into bowling.”
“You said that Barry taught Joe how to bowl.”
“That’s right. But Barry, God rest his soul, was not that good. Not that he was bad, he just wasn’t good enough to bowl professionally. After he died, Joey practiced real hard every day. He was a natural, they said. He got on the pro circuit when he was nineteen—the youngest bowler ever on the tour. And he won. I was so proud of him. And I know Barry was too.”
As interesting as this was, I had to get to the heart of the matter. I needed to know if Joe had any enemies. I started to transition with the old standard: “I know this is a hard time for you and his widow . . .”
Without warning, the soft warmth of Elizabeth’s face grew hard and cold—looked like that was the wrong thing to say. Then it hit me. I realized what was bothering me about the Joe Biggs photo gallery: no pictures of him with his wife—nor any other woman for that matter. Maybe it was the right thing to say after all.
“Ooooh! I don’t like her.” Elizabeth’s voice was filled with hatred now. “She’s such a spiteful woman. I’ve known plenty of women like her before, always looking for something for nothing. And she’s the type who always gets what she wants.
“I used to live with Joey—until he married that fast-moving hussy,” she continued. “They got married two years ago, and she moved in with us. She didn’t like having me around, so she told Joey it was either me or her, and Joey stuck me here. Not that I blame him. He was in love. We do such stupid things
for love.”
I told her I couldn’t argue with her.
“You talk to that girl, Mr. Drake.” It wasn’t a request. “If I were a gambling woman, I’d bet good money she had something to do with Joey’s death.”
“I plan to do that later today, Mrs. Biggs,” I assured her. “Look, I’d best be going. I have a few things to do before I talk to her.”
“Oh, won’t you stay just a little longer? There’s more coffee . . .”
I glanced at my watch. I did have a little time to kill. And the coffee was good. Damn good. “All right. I’ll have another cup.”
She smiled, delighted, and took the cup from me as she hurried into the kitchen. Any trace of her anger over Suzi Biggs had disappeared with my decision to stay. And I found myself feeling good about that.
“Let me show you some pictures, Benny,” she invited when she returned with my coffee. Only two people called me Benny, my grandmother and my wife. Both were dead. It was hard to take, but if I was going to let anyone call me Benny, it would be Elizabeth Biggs.
After showing me all the framed photos of Joe, she started in on the photo albums. We were halfway through the second album before I’d finished the pot of coffee, and it was time for me to go. It was still a fight to get out the door, and I felt a small pang of guilt about leaving.
I wound my way back through the courtyard, lighting a cigar as I got to my car. Then I headed back into town. Like I’d told Elizabeth, I had a few errands to run before I took on the widow Biggs.
Chapter Four
In the Cutting Room
Eventually my errands took me to the county morgue, a facility that smelled like stale cigarettes and dead bodies. Laid out in front of me on an aluminum autopsy table was the lifeless body of Gentleman Joe Biggs. His broad chest was neatly stitched with the traditional post-autopsy “Y.” His head was deformed, with a strange, oblong appearance and eyes that popped out, giving him a permanent expression of cartoon-like, eternal surprise.
My tour guide was Testacy City’s medical examiner, Rebecca Hortzbach, a woman of academic beauty, the type of girl you find attractive but are afraid to approach. A bob of red hair framed her pale, lightly freckled face. Over her bright green eyes she wore pointed glasses that accentuated her already feline appearance. A lit cigarette was almost always dangling from her mouth—even when she talked. Today was no exception.
“The proximate and immediate cause of death was extreme trauma to the head,” she explained, indicating Biggs’s misshapen skull. “And I mean extreme trauma to the head.”
Rebecca wiped her hands on her white lab coat and sucked in a lungful of smoke. “In layman’s terms, his head was crushed between two bowling balls. I’d say sixteen pounders.”
She had an uncanny eye for detail. She had solved more cases for the TCPD by simply looking at the crime scene than they’d care to admit. The police often referred to her as the crazy cat lady, as much for her curiosity as for her appearance. It was not meant as a compliment. Although I didn’t care for the nickname, I had to admit she was a little freaky. There was something about a cute gal who likes cutting up dead bodies that gave me the willies.
She was also a collector of conspiracies and arcane facts. Every time I visited, she launched into some crazy theory. My last time here, she told me the story of how, in 1933, the US government made a secret deal with the Illuminati to bring the country out of the Depression. In exchange for their aid, the Illuminati demanded their thirteen-story pyramid appear on the reverse of the new dollar bills. She went on to say that this pyramid represents the impending destruction of the Church and the establishment of a one-world government in its place.
“Any questions?” she asked.
By the look of his corpse, Biggs kept himself in pretty good shape. It would have been quite a task to wrestle him down and stave in his head with a pair of bowling balls. It made me wonder: “Was he drugged?”
“Toxicology shows no drugs or alcohol in his system. The guy was in excellent health. Hell, when I cut him open, his lungs were bright pink.” The cigarette between her lips bobbed and danced as she spoke. “You normally only see that in kids.”
“So, he just lay there while they cracked his head open?” I asked, hoping for her take on the murder. I got it.
“Probably not. Here’s how it went down. This contusion,” she lifted what remained of Biggs’s head and pointed at a black-and-blue spot at the base of his skull, “is the result of him getting whacked from behind by a blackjack. My guess is that someone kept his attention while a second guy came up from behind and brained him.
“Then while he was down, they bound his hands behind his back and propped him in the ball return. Look here.” She indicated Biggs’s wrists. “You can see ligature marks from where he was tied. I found fibers of common household twine embedded there.”
“Seems like a lot of trouble to go through to rub a guy out,” I offered.
“Maybe not,” she postulated. “My guess is that he knew something our perps needed to know, otherwise why tie him up? When he came to, they grilled him again. He still wouldn’t cave, so smash!” She slammed her hands together. “They caved him.”
I nodded. It was a good hypothesis. I had the how, now I just had to find the who and the why.
“Do you want to see the crime scene photos?” she invited.
“Sure.”
Although I didn’t expect them to show me anything I didn’t already know, I followed her into her office. She handed me a folder that contained numerous black-and-white snapshots of Gentleman Joe at the crime scene taken from a variety of angles. It was a grisly sight. Biggs’s head lay in the ball return, a single black bowling ball on either side. His body was stretched out, arms tied behind him, with something—I guessed a small stool—supporting his back. Blood was spattered everywhere. The ball return track and the top third of Biggs’s bowling shirt were dark with blood. His pants were undone, revealing a pair of boxers, complete with cartoon bowling pins emblazoned upon them. For some reason, this disturbed me more than the manner of his death.
“Why are his pants undone?”
“That happens with a lot of dead bodies.” She finished her cigarette and ground its remains into an overflowing ashtray. “Mainly men.”
“No kidding. Why would that be?” I asked, a mix of dread and anticipation in my voice.
“I don’t know for sure, but here’s my theory.” She lit another cigarette. “It’s a red herring. There’s this long-standing tradition among more accomplished criminals to throw off medical examiners by introducing a bit of absurdity to the crime.”
“Come on,” I doubted as I joined her in a smoke. I had to get the smell of death out of my nostrils. “You can’t expect me to believe that.”
“Believe what you want,” she dismissed with a wave of her hand, “but it’s true. This goes back to the 1800s when forensic science was not so exact, and it was easier to throw a pathologist off the right track.”
She looked at her watch. “Say, Drake, you wanna grab some dinner? I haven’t eaten all day.”
I liked Rebecca. A lot. She was funny, intelligent, attractive—everything a guy like me looks for in a girl . . . if I were looking.
“I’ll take a rain check,” I responded truthfully, holding out for a meal that didn’t happen right after I’d seen a dead body. “I’ve got to see the mourning widow before it gets too late.”
“Next time, then.” A smile of disappointment.
“Next time,” I promised. I sent her a smile of encouragement, tipped my hat, and left, footsteps echoing hollowly off the walls.
I exited into the chill evening air, feeling a little depressed. I’d never be caught dead in cartoon boxer shorts.
Chapter Five
The Mourning Widow
Victory Gardens is all money. Looking around at the houses, you’ll see either modern opulence punctuated with an occasional Victorian quaintness or monuments to old money updated here and there with th
e best of contemporary detail. It all boils down to how you were raised and what you’re expecting. Me, I was expecting a bowler’s house and a bowler’s widow. When I navigated the car past the carved stone entranceway of Victory Gardens, I knew I was in for some surprises.
I pulled up to 300 Pine Lane and exhaled the last breath of smoke from my tiny cured cigar. The smoke formed lingering swirls in my car as I turned off the ignition and rolled up the window. Something made me want to stay there one moment longer. I sat looking at the façade of the Biggses’ residence until I instinctively grabbed for another smoke, then I knew my moment was over. So I brushed off my lapels, got out of the car, and headed up the walkway to meet Mrs. Biggs.
Next to its neighbors, the Biggs house looked small and old—someone involved in real estate might say cozy, though I was sticking to small and old. If I were forced to be poetic, I’d have said it was like a gingerbread house. But thankfully, no one was forcing me.
I cringed a bit when I saw the Beware of dogs sign, dogs being the scourge of mailman and detective alike. And even though the rain had stopped, it was still plenty wet. Just thinking of wet dogs made me cringe again.
At the front door, I pushed a small pearl-colored button. A low two-tone gong sounded, as if even the doorbell were grieving. I heard the yipping of dogs: small dogs, the kind you can kick if they get in your way. When I had begun debating whether to endure the doorbell again or simply pound on the door, the locks clicked and the door opened. And there stood Mrs. Suzi Biggs.
“Hello,” she said, wearing a skimpy red negligee meant to barely cover her, and doing a good job of it. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, probably you can.”
I could detect the lust in the air, but that had nothing to do with the fact that I’m a good detective and everything to do with the fact that I’m a man. When it comes to emotional distress, there’s nothing like a mourning widow. And let me tell you, Suzi Biggs was nothing like a mourning widow. She was more like a morning window. I could see right through her.
