“Hard sell in our culture.”
“You know much about Ashtoreth and the Phoenicians?”
“Must have been fishin’ the day old Mrs. White covered that in World History.”
“We can discuss that over drinks while I prepare our evening meal,” he said.
“I’m a captive audience.”
Walters opened a bottle of chilled Chardonnay while I relaxed on the couch to watch him prepare our dinner. I never liked Chardonnay, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him that.
“I need you to call your friend with the Boston police. Since they have closed the case on Melody Legrand and ruled it a suicide, I figure they might share whatever facts they gathered in reaching that conclusion,” I said.
“The recording of the incident seemed to suggest strongly that she did herself in,” he said.
“It appears to be such. I was wondering if they considered any other options.”
“I seem to recall you asking that earlier. I will take care of it presently.”
He sipped his white wine delicately as he reached for his phone. I swigged mine in an effort to down the stuff as quickly as possible. Faster is often better when trying to empty one’s glass. The taste of this particular vintage was palatable, but nothing to write home about.
While Walters was talking on the phone, I called Rogers for some more history on Ashtoreth. No doubt there would be volumes of information on the web about an ancient fertility goddess. Perhaps she might uncover some trivial fact to help me, but I wasn’t holding my breath.
“You want what?”
“Just do the research. Let me know what you find.”
“You are not kidding, are you?”
“Not this time.”
“Suicide, possible murder, weird church, and now an ancient goddess of fertility. Where do you find these cases?” Rogers said.
“They find me.”
“You should hide better,” she said and clicked off.
Walters was still on the phone so I called Lenny Johnstone. He answered on the sixth ring. Good thing I was persistent.
“Yeah, Lenny here.”
“This is Clancy Evans. I spoke with you about Melody a few days back. I need to borrow that recording you have.”
“Why?”
“I want to watch it again.”
“It’s all I have of Melody.”
I thought briefly just how disturbing that was for him, but decided not to comment.
“I will return it safely. You have my word. I just want to be sure I am not missing something.”
“Yeah, whatever. Come by tonight and I’ll loan it to you,” he said.
“How about tomorrow morning?”
“Make it noon. I don’t do mornins’ too well. Hangovers and the like. Make it noon. Here.” He hung up without further comment. No polite exchanges of goodbyes. No grunts, no groans. Abrupt. Terse. I doubt if Lenny was into anything that covered polite these days. Wallowing, no doubt.
“My friend with the Boston police will see you tomorrow.”
“Your friend have a name?” I said.
“He does,” Walters said as he sipped his wine.
“You gonna tell me?”
“Need to know.”
“Why so secretive?”
“He will meet you, but not at the station. We will join him at a sandwich shop downtown. He really doesn’t want anyone to know that he is talking with you.”
“Am I already that famous?” I said.
“It seems that word has come to the Boston police that there is a female detective from Norfolk checking into the suicide of one Melody Legrand. They apparently do not like to have PI’s looking over their shoulders after they have closed a case,” he said and finished his Chardonnay.
I watched him pour another glass of that dubious wine. He gestured in my direction. I placed my palm down over the top of my wine glass. To each his own. I was maxed out.
“He’s doing me a favor by speaking with you. You will be nice, right?” he said.
“I try to always be nice.”
“Failure often occurs in our attempts to become more humble,” he said.
“I once read that humility is the one virtue that is completely lost the moment you believe that you have achieved it,” I said.
“So you’re not quite there yet?” he said.
“Like tryin’ to climb Mt. Everest in a snowstorm. It eludes me more often than you know.”
“I know you well, Clancy Evans. While you are certainly not egotistical, humility does not often appear on the horizon of your character-scape.”
“Likely a trait that is over-priced in my profession. I do what I have to do. No brag, just fact.”
“Sounds a bit like the old Sergeant Joe Friday in the black and white television era. And, like Sergeant Friday, you are good at what you do,” he said and raised his wine glass as a toast to me.
“I work at it. My losses bother me more than my wins inflate me,” I said.
“Ah, so there is a touch of humility floating around in that blunt sarcasm you churn out,” he said. “Chicken and rice?”
“You have the master chef’s touch. Whatever you devise will likely feed me well. I am at your mercy,” I said.
“Doubtful, but, let’s eat and see,” he said.
23
We met Uncle Walters’ police contact at Sammy’s Sandwich Shop a few blocks from the center of Boston. At least it felt like the center. I was surrounded by tall buildings, none of which I could leap over with a single bound.
A tallish, skinny balding man was seated at a table near the side window of Sammy’s place. I followed Walters to the table. The bald man remained seated. He was eating an enormous sub with items falling from his mouth and sandwich onto both table and plate. He wiped his mouth with a dirty napkin. My appetite was waning.
There were no introductions.
Walters and I sat down. The bald man was focused on his sub.
“Thanks for meeting us,” Walters said as if an ice breaker might be necessary.
The bald man chewed a little, nodded, kept his eyes on the sub, and then took another bite before it was necessary to do so. His mouth runneth over more than before.
I looked away to keep from saying something which might embarrass my uncle, spotted a waitress and raised my hand like a fifth grader.
“Yeah, sweetie. What’s your poison?” the redheaded waitress said as she approached us.
“Two coffees,” I said as I looked at Walters for some agreement on the selection. He nodded.
“No food for the soul?” the waitress said.
“No, thank you. We’ll just watch him relish his cuisine,” I said and gestured with my head in the direction of the bald man sitting across from me.
“Yeah, ain’t that a sight,” the waitress said and walked away.
“You the private dick?” the bald man said to me between chews.
“Something like that.”
“I expected you to be uglier.”
“Sorry to disappoint. I did a stint at charm school.”
“Yeah? And what’d you learn there?” the bald man said.
“Manners,” I said.
The bald man put what was left of his ever-imploding sub down on his plate with a little force. Lettuce, tomatoes, and some meat strips dislodged and ran towards the edge of his plate. He took his napkin and wiped his mouth while he chewed the last several bites. After he wadded his napkin and threw it down on top of his remaining sub, he looked in my direction.
“I don’t need no criticism from no damn broad from Virginia,” he said.
“We just need some information about the death of Melody Legrand,” Walters said hoping to head off any retort that might be coming from my earnest desire to tell this disgusting man what I really thought.
“She’s very dead,” he said.
“We got that part. Anything peculiar about the way she died turn up in your investigation?” I said.
“Nope.”
“You didn’t think it was strange for her to set fire to herself and then shoot herself?”
“Overkill in my book. She must have really hated herself.”
“No note, no emails, no text messages of remorse or regret?”
“Nada.”
“You satisfied it was suicide?” I said.
“You see the recording?”
“I did.”
“And I can assume you are not blind?”
“Sometimes I miss things.”
“Well, I don’t. I’ve been a Boston cop for thirty-nine years. I don’t miss much. It was a lousy way to go, to say the least. But for my money, suicide is a no-brainer here.”
“Thanks for your time,” I said.
The waitress brought our coffees, but our conversation was over with the bald sub man. I stood up and Walters followed. I gulped a mouthful of coffee and then turned to leave.
“You must have a contrary opinion,” the bald man said.
I turned back to him.
“I do.”
“You got reasons or you just don’t like cops?”
“I was a cop. No reason not to like them, unless they’re lousy cops.”
“You callin’ me a lousy cop?”
“Not yet.”
“So what’s your problem here?” the bald man said.
“This overkill, as you refer to it, that’s the problem.”
“You don’t think someone can hate themselves that much?”
“I do, but I’m not sure that Melody falls into that category. I haven’t turned up anything to suggest the utter hopelessness it would take for her to do that to herself.”
“Drugs would do it,” he said.
“They would.”
“So, you’ve been on this case, what … a few days now?” he said.
“Something like that.”
“I worked it for two months, found nothing suspicious to merit anything but suicide. Open and shut, as they say. You turn up something, get back to me.”
“You’ll be on the list to know,” I said.
“Why not the first?”
“You didn’t hire me and you don’t like me checking behind you.”
24
We retrieved the DVD from Lenny Johnstone and were sitting on Uncle Walters’ couch watching it for the umpteenth time. That’s a technical detective word that was generated by PI’s after spending that amount of time on stakeouts, waiting for suspects to do something stupid. Or, just waiting for suspects to do anything. Earlier than the umpteenth time I had a conclusion about that DVD. It was disgusting, to say the least, but I had to watch it to see what I could see.
I have often discovered that those few times I watch some violent movie and I see it more than once, I get immune to the violence in front of me no matter how horrific it is.
My immunity was not kicking in with this recording. I gasped silently each time I saw what was happening to the figure on the screen, the gasoline, the fire, and then the flash of light coming from the gun. The balding sub man was definitely correct. It was overkill.
“How many times are you going to watch that?” Walters said to me from behind the kitchen counter where he was preparing our evening meal.
“Can’t say.”
“It makes me sick,” he said.
“I know.”
“Are you looking for something in particular?”
“Not really, but I am looking.”
“For?”
“Clues.”
“Clues to what?” he said.
“Ah, the great perennial question of life. The why question.”
“So, clues to why, not what. And you think answers are on that gruesome recording you have watched all afternoon?”
“It’s all I have.”
“You have that church and the preacher and his daughter. And those friends of hers.”
“Yeah, I have all that, too.”
“You don’t think they’re all connected?” Walters said.
“Probably, but the manner of her death is too much. Women generally exit the world with poison. You know, go to sleep and never wake up. The so-called easy way out.”
“So-called. But, isn’t that a generalization that is oftentimes dangerous? Some sort of type-casting? The sort of thing that good detectives fight hard to avoid doing?”
“Yeah, it is,” I said and stood up. “I need to talk with daddy Legrand.”
“I think he’s out of the country.”
“You know when he’s coming back?”
“No, but we could call his office tomorrow.”
“Well, that leaves the Duchess.”
“We can go there tomorrow.”
“I think I’ll drive up there now and see her first thing in the morning.”
“You’re leaving now?” Walters said as if he could not believe my timing.
“Now is good.”
“But we haven’t eaten.”
“After our encounter with your Boston cop at lunch, food is the last thing on my mind.”
“But it will take you an hour or so, and in this traffic … well, you will arrive late tonight.”
“Duty calls,” I said and grabbed his keys off the table by the door.
“Let me make you a sandwich to take with you.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I said and left.
It took me a little over two hours to arrive at the home of Duchess Legrand. It was dark but there were some lights on in the house. Luck might still be with me. The society lady was perhaps home.
I parked my uncle’s car in the vast circular driveway and knocked.
“What on earth are you doing here this late?” Duchess said by way of greeting me at the door.
“I have more questions.”
“I was just getting ready to retire for the evening,” she said.
“I won’t be long. Fast questions, fast answers. We’ll be done before midnight,” I said as I walked past her into the hallway without being invited inside.
“Follow me,” she said after she closed the door and walked past me toward the back of the house.
I followed her to a step-down den-like area at the very back of her home. I had been inside of castles smaller than this. She gestured to the soft, leather sectional sofa in front of a walled television screen the size of Cleveland.
“Limited vision?” I said as I sat down.
“I beg your pardon.”
“Nothing. I want to talk about Melody when she was a little girl.”
The Duchess was pouring herself a drink at the bar. I watched her mix some vodka with what I surmised to be tomato juice. The classic. She joined me at the far end of the sofa without offering to make a Bloody Mary for me. Duchess hospitality.
“What does her childhood have to do with her death?” she said after drinking half of her glass.
“Maybe nothing, maybe something.”
She drank the majority of what was left. “You always so succinct in your explanations?”
“I try.”
The Duchess got up, mixed another drink like before, and returned to her spot on the couch. The television was on the local news but the sound was muted.
“Oh, my. Where are my manners?” she said and took a gulp of the bloody mixture.
“I wouldn’t know,” I said.
“Aren’t you the funny one?” she laughed and stood up. “Would you care for a Bloody Mary?”
“I have a long drive,” I said.
“And that means?”
“I’d like to get there in one piece.”
“Oh, you mean like drinking and driving not mixing well?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“How prudish of you?”
“That’s me, Clancy the prude.”
“You’re funny, you know that?”
She was getting high rapidly.
“Most people do not appreciate my humor,” I said.
“Their loss, I must say. Now, what can I tell you about m
y dear, sweet Melody?”
Lubrication is a grand thing for cars and humans, especially humans that are generally wound tight like the Duchess. I was starting to appreciate the finer qualities of good vodka.
“Did Melody like to play with fire when she was little?”
“What on earth are you …,” she gulped down the remainder of her drink and stared at me as if I had asked if her daughter had been raped, or some such horrid thing as that.
“It’s just a question,” I said.
“Are you implying that my daughter had some fixation or some …,” she paused and seemed to grope for the right word that would not come. She stood abruptly, found her balance, and returned to the bar for another round.
I watched her closely as she poured one part tomato juice and three parts vodka. After her careless measuring of the ingredients, she added another splash or two of the vodka. No wonder my humor was receiving such a welcoming audience. Over-lubrication will do that to just about anyone. Until they pass out from the sheer exposure to the lubricant.
She swallowed half of her drink.
“No, she did not,” she said after several minutes. She was still standing behind the bar. She downed the remainder of her latest Bloody Mary and was now staring at the bottom of her empty glass.
She wiped something from her eye.
“It’s my fault,” she said. Her voice cracked a little.
“What do you mean?”
“I killed my baby girl. I set her on fire,” she said just before she collapsed to the floor behind the bar.
25
After I put the Duchess to bed, which was no small task, I slept on the sofa in the vast den area where we had met and talked and she had drunk herself to sleep. It took every ounce of strength I had to get her to bed. She was, thank heavens, a petite woman, but ample in some usual places causing me strain and concern. I finally did the manly thing and carried her over my left shoulder as I would have a heavy sack of potatoes. Good thing I was a runner and had strong thighs and supportive calf muscles.
I discovered her bedroom on the second floor after a diligent search for feminine extravagance. I guessed that her room would be the largest, the gaudiest, and would have every remembrance from her life. It turned out to be the third room I walked into. Her beauty contest photos were the dead giveaway, as was the ceiling mirror over the king size bed. The bathroom off of this half-acre room was large enough to parallel park three cars. I must discover a way to get rich and have a house like this one day.
Desperate Measures: A Clancy Evans Mystery (Clancy Evans PI Book 5) Page 9
