AHMM, January-February 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  And thus it ended, or so I thought. Goldsmith had given me the next day off, as he should have, and I decided to spend it doing nothing but loafing around home. The weather had warmed up nicely, so I was relaxing on the front porch swing enjoying the escapades of Perry Mason in the latest Earle Stanley Gardner novel until Mrs. Bauer called me to the telephone. It was Jack Eddy on the line with a curt message, “Get down here, buddy, pronto."

  I did, but reluctantly and grudgingly. Ben Goldsmith was my boss, so I didn't mind taking orders from him, but those coming from Jack Eddy were getting a little annoying. I lingered on the elevator at the Metropolitan Building, though, and made a date for the next night with the cute operator.

  I was surprised to find Gertrude Slade coming out of Jack Eddy's office. Mac McKelvey was gripping her arm as he escorted her to another room down the hall. “We've had her stashed away next door at the Howe Hotel,” Jack told me. “One of our female operatives was in the room with her, and Mac and another man rotated on keeping watch in the hall outside."

  Before I could ask why, Cliff Austin came in prodding Prudence Longfellow, the Stauffers’ nanny, toward us. She appeared angry, but it was just a facade. In reality you could see she was frightened half out of her mind. Jack wasn't gentle with her. After sitting her down in a chair, he said, “The jig's up, Prude, so let's not waste time. We know all about it, so come clean and have it over with."

  She tried to brazen it out, but her voice was quivering as she said, “I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Have it your way, kiddo.” He picked up his phone. After a few seconds he said, “Bring her in."

  When half a minute later Gertrude Slade was brought into the room, Prudence Longfellow blanched and gave a little gasp. “It's all over, Prude,” said Jack, “so let's hear it in your own words."

  Prudence knew he was right as soon as she saw Gertrude, the erstwhile next-door maid. She began crying. In a teary, choked-up voice she began, “I was coerced into going along with it by that horrible woman."

  "Florence Slade?"

  She nodded her head, wiped away the tears on her cheeks, blew her nose, and continued, “She found out about something in my past. I'm not going to tell you what it was, but she said if I didn't help them she would tell the Stauffers and then see that I never got another job."

  The gist of the matter was that Prudence had just handed the boy to Gertrude and then hurried into the house, pretending she had to use the bathroom, making sure the Stauffers’ maid saw her. Gertrude in turn said that she gave the child to Florence, who had been waiting. Anse Slade was there as well. He and Florence drove away in his car with the boy on Florence's lap. They headed straight for Gharkeyville.

  "And it was Anse who took the money from you on Seiberling Street, then gave you a light tap on the head,” Jack Eddy said to Prudence. “You were lucky he didn't kill you so they wouldn't have had to split the ransom with you."

  Prudence nodded her head. “I only got a third of the ransom. How did you find out about it?"

  "I did some checking on you,” said Cliff Austin. “The first thing that seemed odd was that you moved into a more expensive apartment even though you were out of a job for the time being. When I found out you had bought a used car, that was the clincher in my book. I dug a little deeper and learned what it was that Florence held over your head to make you cooperate. It wasn't that big a deal, lady. You should have told her to get lost."

  So now it really was all over. It gave me another good story, of course, but I was sick of the whole affair. The four participants were headed for lengthy stays in Federal prisons, but someone else could handle those stories.

  * * * *

  My date with the elevator operator, Gail Robinson, didn't turn out too good. She was cute as could be, pleasant too, but she didn't have much upstairs except the blond curls on top of her head. To say the conversation lagged at times would be an understatement.

  My heart, I had to admit to myself, belonged to my old girlfriend, Sue Baney. For months now she wouldn't talk to me, just banged down the phone as soon as she heard my voice until I quit even trying to call. It was Jack Eddy's fault, or so it seemed to me, because Sue had given up on me when I had tagged along on another of his cases that involved shooting. She didn't want a dead boyfriend, she said. I had to laugh ruefully when I thought of what she would say if she knew that now my car sported a bullet hole.

  I wanted to forget the Stauffer-Slade case, but it keep popping up in my mind. So many lives ruined, so much worry and despair, all because a mentally unstable woman was fixated on having a child to replace her own that was stillborn. And not just any child, only the Stauffer boy would do. I took up my old habit of walking the streets of East Akron at night. I was looking for answers, I suppose, but didn't find any along the empty streets or by staring at the same old displays in the windows of locked stores. The world wasn't a pretty place, but it was foolish of me to think I could do anything to make it better. Even so I wanted to.

  I was surprised when I walked into Kippy's at lunchtime one day and saw Sue Baney seated at the counter. I was even more surprised a few minutes later when she came over and stood by my stool. I looked around, opened my mouth, but found I was tongue-tied. Sue hesitated a moment, then cleared her throat before saying, “I just want to say that it was heroic of you to do what you did in rescuing that kidnapped little boy, Bram."

  I cleared my throat, too, and croaked, “You read about it in the paper?"

  "Yes, and Jack Eddy called me to elaborate on the part you played. He said you were the key to the success of the whole operation."

  That was so like him. Jack Eddy didn't hesitate to involve me in something that might easily get me killed and then turn around and make it seem that I was the hero. And to phone my estranged girlfriend in hope of getting us back together.

  Sue turned and walked toward the door, then looked back and said, “Call me sometime ... if you feel like it."

  My heart leaped up to my throat. I watched her walk away, admiring her trim little body and the swaying of her hips. When she was gone I checked my watch. It was going on one o'clock, so I would have to wait six more hours before picking up the phone.

  Copyright (c) 2007 Dick Stodghill

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  Fiction: NUMSKULDUGGERY by John H. Dirckx

  "I told you we should ask the guard at the desk for directions."

  "It's got to be right around this next turn."

  Jim and Judy Jenclaire's footfalls echoed wetly in the deserted corridors on the tenth floor of the Bossart Tower. To the right and left, as they pursued their quest, they passed a long succession of office doors showing darkened glass. Around the last turning, which brought them almost back to their starting point at the elevators, they saw one frosted glass door standing ajar with lights still aglow behind it.

  "That's it. Ten eighteen."

  Fully accustomed to Jim's habit of stating the obvious at every opportunity, Judy followed him without comment into the reception area of Canavalt Industries. They wiped their still-sleety shoes on the mat and peered inquiringly around the deserted office. A counter separated them from a work area occupied by two desks, beyond which two doors evidently gave access to private offices. Except for the faint hum of the fluorescent lights, the place was as silent as a burial vault at midnight.

  "Anybody here?” called Judy. “Hello?"

  "Probably in one of the inner offices,” said Jim. “Might as well sit down and wait."

  "Do you smell something burning?"

  "Mmm. Probably a cigarette. It figures. No ashtrays out here, Thank You For Not Smoking sign..."

  They waited for five minutes, and another five, during which Judy repeatedly bounced up out of her chair, craned her neck around the office, called “Hello?” and sat down again.

  "Could be stuck on the phone,” said Jim. “He said he'd be here till five thirty. And that's probably his coat folded up on the desk. He wouldn't leave
without—What are you doing?"

  "Trying to read the Quote of the Day on that message board. It starts out ‘A man who plants his garden...’ but I can't see the rest of it around that cabinet."

  Jim stood up and leaned across the counter to see if he could make out the conclusion of the saying, then abruptly recoiled and staggered back to his chair.

  "What's the matter?"

  "There's a guy lying right there on the floor, on the other side of the counter."

  "What's he doing?"

  "Nothing. I think he's dead."

  "Then why are we whispering?” She was already groping for her wireless phone.

  * * * *

  If it hadn't been for the filthy weather, Detective Sergeant Cyrus Auburn would probably have walked the five blocks from headquarters to the Bossart Tower instead of joining the downtown rush hour traffic. After circling the building twice in a haze of fog and freezing rain, he gave up the search for a parking place on the street and pulled into a parking garage.

  It was five minutes to six when he sloshed through the revolving door into the main lobby of the Bossart Tower. At the security desk Nick Stamaty, the investigator from the coroner's office, was awkwardly juggling his field kit and camera case while showing identification to a uniformed guard. Auburn flashed his badge and joined Stamaty in the elevator for the ride to the tenth floor.

  "You guys got anything on him in Records?” asked Stamaty.

  "No, but I understand this is the same Canavalt who's always in trouble with the Feds and the newspapers because of his toxic landfills."

  "Right.” Stamaty shifted his burdens and shook moisture from his coat sleeves. “He was going to run for state senator till some citizens’ group skewered him."

  "Sounds like somebody skewered him for good this time with some hot lead."

  They stepped out into the tenth floor lobby to find Patrolman Jake Schottel chatting with a couple in their thirties who were sitting on a bench opposite the elevator. Schottel came to attention briefly, pointed along the corridor to their right, and resumed his chatting.

  "I see Kestrel's already here,” Stamaty muttered, as they approached the offices of Canavalt Industries. “Nobody hangs yellow tape like our boy."

  Sergeant Kestrel, the police evidence technician, was working with camera and tape measure behind the counter. He favored them with a hostile scowl, such as a bank teller might throw at a gaggle of befuddled senior citizens joining the queue at his window two minutes before closing time. Instead of greeting them, he barked out the monosyllable “Fritz” and went on with his work.

  Patrolman Dollinger appeared immediately from an inner office. He made a careful detour around something that lay on the floor out of sight behind the counter, opened a low gate, and held it open for Stamaty to pass through.

  "I'm not finished in here,” said Kestrel. They all ignored him.

  Auburn leaned over the counter without touching anything to view the remains of B. J. Canavalt. The deceased, a heavily built man in his fifties, lay flat on his back staring at the ceiling with unseeing eyes. A round hole, nearly black under the fluorescent lights, gaped in the front of his shirt.

  "Weapon?” asked Auburn.

  "Not here,” said Dollinger.

  Stamaty moved to a remote corner of the office and put down his equipment. “What about next of kin?” he asked.

  "Wife,” said Dollinger. “She's been and gone already. Their apartment is right around the corner in the Underwood."

  "Any sign of robbery or damage here?” asked Auburn.

  "Not so far. That's his wallet on the desk, with forty-four dollars in it. His wife checked the petty cash drawer in that office I just came out of. It hasn't been touched. Are those people still waiting outside by the elevator?"

  "Are they the ones who found the body?"

  "A Mr. and Mrs. Jenclaire. They had an appointment with Canavalt after regular office hours. Walked in and found him dead."

  "Office staff?” asked Auburn.

  "There's a business manager, name of Simms,” said Dollinger. “The dead man's wife says he would have left around five. We tried to reach him at his home phone but got no answer. Possibly still in transit when we called. The wife works here as a secretary when she's needed, but she hadn't been in the office since one day last week—till Schottel brought her in today."

  Before leaving the office to interview the Jenclaires, Auburn took a good look around to fix the general topography and relevant details firmly in his mind. Although Kestrel and Stamaty would both make precise drawings of the scene and take numerous photographs, two-dimensional records were no substitute for a clear mental picture of the solid reality.

  The main office measured about five yards by six, from which the waiting area outside the counter subtracted a small space less than six feet square. Behind the counter were two large steel desks, one of them in front of a window facing out on the wet blackness of a winter's evening and the other set against the wall opposite the window. The usual array of file cabinets, utility cabinets, and credenzas ran around the perimeter of the space. The desk at the window was equipped with a computer, the other with thick looseleaf binders and a shelf of reference books.

  When Auburn returned to the tenth floor lobby, Patrolman Schottel moved away from the Jenclaires to pace the pattern in the floor tiles in front of the elevators.

  "Thanks for waiting, folks.” Auburn took out a three-by-five-inch index card and a pen. “Can I get the exact spelling of your name and your home address and phone?"

  "We gave all that to the man who took our fingerprints,” said Judy Jenclaire, who was wearing gaudy jewelry and nail polish the color of bubblegum. Her husband, in horn-rimmed glasses and a plaid raincoat with matching hat, stood silently by with a general air of stodgy self-satisfaction.

  All in all, thought Auburn, the prototypical Mr. and Mrs. Dweeb. They had obviously gotten over their initial shock, if any, at finding a homicide victim.

  "About what time did you get here?” he asked.

  They looked at each other and agreed on five fifteen P.M. “We both work downtown,” said Jenclaire, “and I couldn't get off till five. We decided to meet downstairs in the lobby and come up together."

  "Did you have an appointment?"

  "Yes. Well, anyway, when I called he said he'd be here till about five thirty."

  "What was the nature of your business with Mr. Canavalt?"

  Jenclaire cleared his throat and squared his shoulders while he collected his thoughts. “Judy's father died about six months ago, and we're trying to settle his estate without paying a lot of legal fees. He had a construction business and there's about a ton of salvaged brass and copper in one of his sheds. We've been checking around to see what kind of a market there might be for it."

  "Had you done business with Canavalt before?"

  "No, sir. Just found him in the phone book."

  "Did you come up on one of these elevators?"

  "The middle one."

  "Did you see anybody here on this floor—in the halls or in the office?"

  "Not a soul. We walked the long way around by mistake. All the other offices were dark."

  "We didn't even see him,” added Judy with a shiver, “till we'd sat there on the other side of the counter from him for ten or fifteen minutes."

  Heavy footfalls announced Dollinger's approach. “See you a minute, Sergeant?"

  He waited till Auburn had accompanied him almost all the way back to the office before he broke the news in an undertone that wouldn't carry down the corridor. “Sergeant Kestrel found the weapon."

  Kestrel, silently aglow with pride in his achievement, was examining a snub-nosed .32 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver under a powerful inspection light. “Recently fired, one round gone,” he said, as if talking to himself. “No prints."

  "Where was it?"

  "Bottom drawer of that desk. Wrapped up in this. Don't touch.” He pointed with a gloved finger to a steel blue uniform jac
ket draped over the desk near the window. Next to it lay a flat cap with a black plastic visor. The jacket bore no insignia or name tag.

  "Holster?"

  Kestrel was so absorbed that he didn't bother to answer. Auburn left him to his work and went back to the Jenclaires.

  "Hey, Officer,” said Jim, “if you don't need us for anything else could we maybe go get some dinner?"

  "Sure, in a minute. Did you see any uniformed security guards in the building this afternoon?"

  "One, downstairs at the desk,” said Judy.

  "How would you describe him?"

  They consulted together and came up with a composite portrait: male, African American, skin color a little lighter than Auburn's, age forty to forty-five, medium height and build, short hair, maybe a little gray on the sides. This sounded to Auburn like a pretty fair description of the security officer, Hicks by name, whom he and Stamaty had seen in the main lobby on their way in. Auburn sent the Jenclaires off to dinner and went back to Canavalt's office just as Schottel and Dollinger left on a call.

  After getting clearance from Kestrel, Auburn made a careful search of the premises for an appointment book or calendar. One of the inner offices was Canavalt's private sanctum and the other served as a storeroom. Next to the phone on Canavalt's desk lay a memo slip on which the Jenclaires’ name, without the i, had been scrawled along with the succinct notation, “copper brass 5:15.” He found no appointment book.

  Stamaty and Kestrel were working around each other with the wary moves of two sharks that can't make up their minds whether to avoid an encounter or try for a kill. Auburn told them he was going downstairs to talk to the guard at the desk, but he wasn't sure either of them heard him.