Tony Marcella 05 - Witch House

by Dana Donovan

“Down at the Percolator. She’s a waitress there.”

  “I see.” Carlos slipped his notepad back into his pocket. “Just for the record, do you own a gun?”

  That seemed to catch him by surprise. “I hate guns, Detective, even more so now.”

  “Then you don’t own one.”

  “No.”

  “All right then, I guess that’s it.”

  Adam Landau walked us to the door and saw us out. As I suspected, the rain came in on a swell of cold air pushing in from the Atlantic, soaking us to the bone on our run to the car. I asked Carlos why it is that murderers cannot wait until calmer weather to commit their crimes. He reasoned that crimes usually take only an instant to commit, whereas solving one takes the passage of time in which no weather can wait. I swear, sometimes he is a philosophical whale in an ocean of minnows.

  “What do you think of Adam?” I asked.

  Carlos gave me a lazy shrug. “He seems all right. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What? You don’t think he is mournful enough. It’s not like he was that close to his father.”

  “No, that’s not it.”

  “What then?”

  “It’s probably nothing, but did you notice when we first got to the house, he asked if his father had gotten into trouble already?”

  “I remember.”

  “And then he said, ‘I told him last night not to….’, but I interrupted him, telling him his father was dead.”

  Carlos started the car and backed it out of the drive. “I don’t get it. What is so suspicious about that?”

  “Nothing, by itself. It is just that later when I asked him when he last saw his father, he said noon yesterday. Then he said after his dad called the taxi and left for Stephanie’s, he never came back and they never spoke again. Therefore, he could not have told him anything last night.”

  “So, he said last night when he meant yesterday.” Carlos dropped the car into gear and headed east. “What’s the difference?”

  “Okay, how `bout just before we left? In talking about Stephanie Stiles, he said that if he found out she capped his dad, he’d let us know.”

  “You don’t think he would?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he would. What I want to know is how he knew someone capped his dad. I didn’t say he was shot.”

  “I think capped can be used generically when talking about someone getting murdered.”

  “Really?”

  “Tony, come on, the kid just found out someone killed his father. Cut him some slack. You really do get too analytical sometimes, you know that?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and I thought he was right. Sometimes I do get too analytical over things. I know it can bog down an investigation if you let it, but it can also place the proverbial nail in the coffin if it is sharp enough. The trick is learning how to chew it up and spit it out without losing the taste. “You’re probably right,” I told him. “That’s why I keep you around, to keep me grounded.”

  “And to remind you when it’s time to eat.”

  I looked at my watch. “It’s barely eleven-thirty.”

  “I know,” he said, as if that were late. “Aren’t you glad I reminded you?”

  “All right, fine.” I gestured a forward course with the flip of my wrist. “I see you are already heading to the Percolator anyway. Maybe we can interview Trish Rosado while we are there.”

  “Hey….” He turned his head to me. “That’s good thinking. Then you could write lunch off as a business expense.”

  “No, Carlos, it doesn’t work that way.”

  “Why not? You’ll be paying for two lunches. Who would know?”

  “Are you kidding?” I did not think he was, but I thought I would give him the benefit of the doubt. “You know what? I am going to pretend I did not hear that. I hope that’s not what you’re teaching Spinelli.”

  I watched his lips draw together tightly to the point where prune lines gathered on his chin. He kept his focus straight ahead, but from the way they narrowed, I could tell he wanted desperately to say something about it. He waited until I turned my head again before mumbling just loud enough for me to hear. “Was only tryin` to help.”

  I could not help smiling. I know he saw me through the corner of his eye, and I think it pissed him off. Not that pissing off Carlos is such a bad thing. It has its rewards. For one, Carlos gets extremely quiet when he is pissed, which leaves me with peace of mind to digest newly acquired information. In this case, the information that just did not sit right with me was something Adam said about Stephanie Stiles. He made no bones about his feelings for her, calling her a slut bag. Clearly, he knew something about her that René Landau did not know on the morning of his release. At the risk of forfeiting what little quiet time I had for the duration of the ride to the Percolator, I turned and asked Carlos about her.

  “Stiles?” he said, seemingly snapping out of a distant train of thought. Although with Carlos, he may have only been debating over what to eat for lunch: meatball sub or chicken parmesan over linguini.

  “Stephanie Stiles,” I repeated. “Did you call Spinelli like I asked you to and request he send you her picture?”

  “Oh, yeah, I sent him a text form Landau’s place while you were questioning him.”

  “And?”

  “He sent this.” Carlos pulled his phone from his top pocket, thumbed the screen a few times and then handed it to me. “It’s a picture from her driver’s license. Quite the chassis, eh?”

  “Chassis?”

  “Sure, look at her.”

  “Carlos, how do you know these things?”

  “What things?”

  “This lingo crap, like back there at Landau’s. I thought I lost that interview and you stepped in with your whale-tail badunk-a-dunk whatever and saved it.”

  “Yeah? You think I saved the interview?”

  “You know it. What is a badunk-a-dunk, anyway?”

  “Oh, that’s a….you know, a fine booty.”

  “You mean like Lilith’s?”

  He laughed. “No. hers is a badink-a-dink, more petite.”

  “You’re making that up.”

  “Seriously! I wouldn’t punk you. You’re my peeps.”

  “Your peeps?” I shook my head. “Never mind. Drive.”

  FOUR

  Carlos and I have been going to the Percolator since long before we were detectives. It is the quintessential diner for cops, offering free coffee and two-for-one donuts for anyone in law enforcement. Besides that, they do have one hell of a lunch menu. Carlos knows it by heart; the weekly specials, the killer combos, the mix and match seafood ferry and the never advertised but always available potluck power plate, which is actually a ridiculously large plate of random leftovers from the Saturday afternoon buffet. Frankly, I think they made it up just for Carlos, as I mentioned, they never advertise it.

  A small bell over the door chimes softly when you enter the Percolator. It is a subtle precursor to the harsh, sometimes dirty sounds that bleed in off the street for the few moments the door is open. Over the years, I have learned to use that bell as a trigger to shut out those sounds and embrace the cacophony of a working diner, its dishes clanging, glasses and silverware pinging, and the murmur of blurred conversations peppered with laughter chirping from booth-to-booth like so many crickets in a field. Combine that with the smell of bacon, coffee and a hint of Pine Sol disinfectant, and you have the makings of heaven on earth, especially on a cold, rainy day.

  Mary Higgins, perhaps the oldest soul still working the diner from those early days, met Carlos and me at the door and offered to seat us. I asked her if we could sit in Trish’s section, and she looked at me strangely.

  “Trish?” She gave Carlos a similar look. “We don’t have a Trish working here.”

  “You don’t?”

  She shook her head lightly, and I watched her scan the floor briskly as if dredging up all the girls named Trish that she had ever worked with through the years. W
hen she looked up at us again, I concluded that nary one could she recalled. “No,” she said flatly.

  I gave Carlos a bump to the arm. “Adam lied to us. I don’t believe it.” I said to Mary, “He told us his girlfriend worked here.”

  “Wait,” she said. “Adam Landau?”

  “Yes.”

  A smile came to her slowly. “Oh,” and she laughed lightly. “You’re talking about Pat.”

  “Who?”

  “Patricia.” I must admit, I still did not get it. She slowed it down for me. “Pa-trich-a?”

  “Oh, Patricia, of course.”

  “Yes, around here she goes by Pat.”

  “I see.” I turned to Carlos. “I should have mentioned her last name.”

  He pulled back a cocky grin. “It’s all in the details.”

  To Mary I said, “Is Pat working today?”

  She pointed toward the back of the diner. “Pat’s got section four today. Come on, I’ll seat you.”

  We followed her to a booth in the back of section four. I slid into the seat facing the front door, sticking Carlos in the one with a rip in the upholstery. I scarcely had the menu open when he said, “I know who she is now.”

  I peered up over the top of the sandwich page. “What?”

  “Trish, or Pat, or whatever she calls herself. I remember her now. She’s the cute blond from Ipswich.”

  “The one with the dimples,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s her. You said she reminds you of Shirley Temple.”

  “Sure, I remember. She’s a nice kid.”

  “I think so. She—oops, forget it. Here she comes.”

  Trish Rosado came to our table without the usual dimpled smile by which Carlos and I remembered her. She seemed not exactly nervous, but definitely tentative. I suspected that Adam had called her shortly after we left his house and told her we were coming. “Gentlemen?” She forced that smile I mentioned earlier. I noticed the nametag on her uniform said Pat, as Mary Higgins had pointed out. “How are we this morning?”

  I checked my watch. It was still morning, barely. “We’re good, and you?”

  “Fine.” She turned to Carlos. “Detective, have you had time to look at the menu?”

  “Don’t need to,” he said. “I’ll have the special and a large iced tea, no ice.”

  “Okay, and you, Detective?”

  “Toast and coffee, please.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Yes. That’s all.”

  She scribbled the order down on her pad. “All right, I’ll get your orders in immediately.”

  She started away, and I called her back. “Excuse me.” She returned, and I almost thought I saw a surprised look on her face, but I knew better. “Do you have a moment?”

  She tucked her pad and pencil into her apron. “Sure.”

  “Can I ask you a few questions?”

  That forced smile returned. “Of course.”

  “We were just up to see your boyfriend, Adam.”

  “Ah-huh.”

  “You know about his father?”

  I watched her lips thin to pale white lines. “Yes, I heard,” she said. “Adam called me. He said someone killed his dad?”

  “That’s right. Someone shot him outside a bar down on Jefferson last night.”

  She shook her head. “That’s awful. I know that has Adam very upset. He sounded on the verge of tears over the phone.”

  “I’m not surprised, but I am surprised you are not leaving work to be with him.”

  “I will later.” She hiked her thumb up over her shoulder toward the kitchen. “We’re short-staffed right now. Two girls called out sick and we’re coming into the lunch rush. I can’t leave just yet.”

  “I understand. I will make this quick. Let me ask you, have you ever met Adam’s father?”

  “Yes…I mean, no.”

  I looked across the table at Carlos. He seemed as curious about that answer as I was. “Which is it?”

  “No,” she said, more convincingly this time. “I never met him.”

  “Has Adam ever said anything to you about his father getting out of prison and maybe coming into a lot of money?”

  That made her laugh. “Are you talking about the money from the robbery?”

  “Why, did you hear something like that?”

  “No.” She shook her head faintly. “All Adam wanted to do was reunite with his father, maybe do some fishing up at the lake and make up for a whole lot of lost time.”

  “So, he never mentioned the money?”

  “Oh sure, he mentioned the money, but only to the extent of what a shame it was that it all got burnt up in the fire. He was just a kid at the time, you know. If the money was out there somewhere, I’m sure someone would have found it by now.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

  “Well, if you’ll excuse me, we’re getting busy.”

  I let her take only a step or two away before calling her back once more, only now that she had cleared the air; her attitude seemed less tolerant of my distractions. She returned to the booth, striking the same pose that Lilith assumes when she is fed up with my bullshit. “Yes, Detective?” Even sounded like Lilith.

  I smiled up at her. “Sorry, I forgot to ask; can you tell me where Adam was between, say, one and three this morning?”

  She hesitated only slightly, perhaps wondering if we already knew the answer. “Adam was home last night with me.”

  “All night?”

  “Yes.” She shied away some, her face turning a bashful shade of pink. “I sleep over sometimes,” she said, her ridged stance softening by degrees. “I think he is going to ask me to marry him.”

  “Really? Congratulations, I hope.” She smiled again, and nothing about it this time seemed forced to me at all. “Thanks for your time.”

  She turned and walked away. I watched her until she had turned the corner by the cash register and disappeared into the kitchen. When I looked at Carlos, I realized he had been watching me watching her. He smiled teasingly. “You old dog, you.”

  My face grew flush. “What?”

  “You know what. You were watching her ass.”

  I pulled back in mock disgust at his accusation. “I most certainly was not.”

  “Yes you were. I watched you.”

  “I was thinking.”

  “`Bout what, how to get into her…” he did the cutesy finger quotation marks in the air, “good graces?”

  “No, I don’t want to get into her good graces.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No!”

  He leaned in across the table some. “Ahem, you do know that by good graces, I mean her pants.”

  “Yes, Carlos. I know that.”

  “Oh.” He looked back over his shoulder, I assumed to make sure Trish was not standing there. “Because I wouldn’t mind getting into her—”

  “Drop it, Carlos. She’s a subject in an ongoing investigation.”

  “What, you think she is lying to you?”

  “No, I happen to believe she is telling the truth, but this is an ongoing investigation and she may still have information pertinent to the case.”

  “Do you think when Adam called, he told her to provide him with an alibi?”

  “No,” I said, giving it more thought than it probably deserved. “I suppose if he needed her as his alibi he would have talked to her about it before now.”

  “But?”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t know. I thought I heard a but coming.”

  “Did you, now?”

  “Yes.”

  I smiled at that. Carlos really knows me better than anyone else does. I only wish that Lilith knew me half as well. “It’s the money,” I said. “I can’t shake the feeling that it is still out there somewhere and that Adam knows it. I think he and his father were planning to dig it up together.”

  “If that’s the case then maybe somebody else thought the same thing; only something went wrong last night and so that
someone killed Landau.”

  “Yes, but what someone?”

  “I don’t know, a silent partner maybe, an accomplice that had been waiting for him to get out of prison all these years.”

  I was about to challenge that notion on the grounds that Landau would have been worth more alive than dead to anyone like that, when Carlos got the call from Spinelli that we were waiting for.

  “You got it?” he said, after listening to Spinelli’s opening sentence. “Great.” I could tell from his end of the conversation they were talking about Stephanie Stiles. Carlos pulled out his notepad and started writing. “What is it again? Ah-huh, yes, okay. Thanks.”

  I waved to get his attention. “Ask him about the lawyer.”

  He held his finger up to stop me. “Okay, good. Got anything on the lawyer?” A short pause followed. “Yeah? Oh?” Another pause. “Really? I’ll tell him.”

  He hung up, and without looking at me, scratched something down on his notepad. “Well?” I said.

  “This is interesting.” He punctuated the last of his notes with a dart-like jab to the paper. “Paul Kemper was Landau’s attorney at his trial.”

  “What is so interesting about that?”

  “Nothing, except that the court considered Landau a non-violent offender, since he only drove the get-a-way car and was unarmed when apprehended. The eyewitness that put him at the scene of the crime also identified Johnny Buck Allis as the man who pulled the trigger on the armored truck driver, although she said that the driver shot first.”

  “That may be, however it is still murder when committed in the act of a felony.”

  “I know that. My point is this; even though the court did not consider Landau a violent criminal, it sentenced him to twenty years in Walpole, a level six super max facility typically reserved for the hardest of hardcore prisoners like Richard Reid, the so called Shoe-Bomber.”

  “And Albert DeSalvo.”

  “Yeah, the Boston Strangler.”

  “But just as strange, is why didn’t Kemper, a highly regarded up and coming hot-shot lawyer, object to the Walpole sentencing? He should’ve pushed for incarceration at a level four facility like Bay State Correctional.”

  “Or a level three like South Middlesex.”

  “I think it’s something we should ask him. Did Spinelli get you Stephanie Stiles’ address?”