Detective Fiction

by William Wells

  Hansen pulled a notepad from his pocket, flipped to a page, looked at it, and said, “Ashley’s prescription was for a drug called estazolam. Her doc said that this is one of a class of sleep medications called benzodiazepines, or however the fuck you pronounce it. He said that taking a whole bottle of the stuff can cause death by impairing breathing and stopping the heart. The bottle was empty, but until the autopsy we don’t know how much she took, if any.”

  “Any sign of forcible entry?” I asked.

  “None,” Hansen answered.

  “Any sign of a struggle?”

  “No.”

  Beaumont spoke for the first time, anger in his voice. “No matter how Ash died, we’ve got a freakin’ serial killer running loose in our town. It’s a goddamned disaster. Maybe it’s time to bring in the FBI.”

  Hansen said, “I don’t know that we can keep a lid on it if we call in the feds, but we’ve got to put a stop to this, and fast.”

  “I think we should pursue the lead on the Russian,” I told them.

  They both looked at me. “A lead?” Beaumont asked.

  “The Russian,” I said. “Vasily Petrovich. Who we now know is really someone else.”

  “When we got the report about him, I assumed he was just another scam artist,” Beaumont said. “We get a lot of them here.”

  “All of the victims were invested in Vasily’s—or Boris’s—hedge fund,” I told him. “I don’t believe in coincidences like that.”

  “Christ, I’ve got a shitload of money in that fund,” Beaumont said. “I was about to pull a portion of it out and buy some investment real estate, now that the market’s strong again.”

  “I’d hold off on that,” I told him.

  After all, if the mayor was dead, who would sign my checks?

  22.

  GOING HOME

  The report of Ash’s autopsy showed a nontoxic level of estazolam in her blood. It also showed she had an undiagnosed obstruction of the two major coronary arteries. She’d died of a heart attack. I decided I had to get control of my eating habits.

  Her will, which I found in Sir Reggie’s desk, stated that she wanted to be buried in her family’s plot in a cemetery in her hometown of Mount Clemens, Michigan, a small city near Detroit. She left generous sums to Martin, her butler, and Suzette, her cook, and the rest of her estate to the various charities she and Sir Reggie had supported over the years. Those included the Mount Clemens and the Naples Centers For Abused Children, as well as the animal shelters in both cities. Those bequests made more sense when Mayor Beaumont told me about Ash’s earlier life. He said she had confided in him but that he no longer felt obligated to keep her secrets from her friends.

  Her maiden name was Ashley St. Claire. She was sexually abused by a stepfather and ran away from home when she was thirteen. Obviously, as evidenced by her will, she felt great sympathy for other abused children, and for abused animals as well. She supported herself with different jobs and got her high school equivalency diploma. She had a sister named Irene who drowned in a pond at age nine. Ash suspectred that Irene had been abused by their stepfather too, although they never talked about it, and that Irene, who knew how to swim, may have drowned herself as a result. How very sad all of that was.

  Ash was working as a model, attending a community college, when she met Sir Reggie. His family disliked her. They saw her as a fortune hunter. He had a son and some nieces and nephews. When they found out they weren’t in her will, Beaumont told me, they wouldn’t attend her funeral.

  SAINT STEPHEN’S Church, which I knew she had attended, was packed to overflowing for Ash’s memorial service. Beaumont and a long list of her other friends spoke about what a fine and generous lady she was. Frank Chance said a few kind words too. Lady Ashley Howe, aka Ashley St. Claire, had played the bad hand she was dealt as well as anyone could.

  A large contingent of her Naples friends, including the mayor, flew to Michigan aboard the plane that carried her coffin to be at her funeral. Ash was buried in a family plot near her mother and sister. Beaumont made certain that Ash had a nice headstone and he personally gave the cemetery an amount of money to make certain that all of the St. Claire family graves were properly maintained, and flowers put on Ash’s grave on her birthday. Despite all the unpleasantness of her youth, the pull to return home at the end was obviously very strong for her.

  When the mayor returned, he told me that Ash had named him as executor of her estate and, as such, he’d like Marisa to supervise an inventory of her possessions so they could be sold and the proceeds distributed according to her will, and to sell her house. He said I could remain living in it until my assignment was completed.

  IT WAS time for me to tell Vasily that, because of my aunt’s death, I’d decided to leave Naples, and that I wanted to withdraw all of my money from The Atocha Fund and have it managed in New York, where I’d decided to live. Then I would wait, like a chunk of raw, bloody beef on a hook, dangling in the water, for Vasily’s shark to come for me. By then, I was all but certain he was behind the crimes, in part because no other suspects had turned up, and in part because of The Atocha Fund connection to the victims.

  Once again, I didn’t have to call Vasily, because the next day he called me. Martin found me standing in the library, admiring Sir Reggie’s collection of rare books. There were also popular fiction titles on the shelves, which I assumed belonged to Ash. Martin handed me the phone and withdrew. Does anyone but a butler withdraw from a room, as opposed to just leaving it?

  “Frank, this is Vasily Petrovich,” he said. “I want to again express my deepest sympathy over the passing of your aunt. Ashley was a friend and a fine lady. She will be missed.”

  “I was going to call you,” I said. “Now that my aunt is gone, Naples has lost its appeal for me. I’ve decided to go back to New York. I have a financial advisor there and I want him to handle all of my money.”

  “I understand completely,” Vasily said, sounding sincere. “As soon as you give me the instructions, the funds will immediately be wired to your account.”

  He’s good, I thought. But maybe he meant that the funds would be wired to me posthumously.

  23.

  KILLING MONET

  It happened at three the next morning. That’s the hour when a pro does a home invasion and law enforcement officers choose to take down a sleeping perp, because that is the time of deepest REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. By the time the target is fully awake, it’s too late, Elvis has left the building.

  I didn’t actually hear a noise, but Joe must have, because he jumped up onto the bed and batted my cheek with his paw. He’d never done that before. I woke up and started to say something to him, but stopped, because then I did hear something. Nearly imperceptible, it was a sound that the big old house had never made on its own since I’d been there. It was not breaking glass, or a door lock being picked, or the tread of a foot on a stairway, or a doorknob being slowly turned.

  I’d have to say that it really was not a noise at all. Rather, it was a feeling that something was not right, of a presence in your space that should not be there. Bad karma was in the air. We know that animals have the ability to sense something like that. Marines develop it too, when in harm’s way, and learn to trust it.

  I slipped out of bed, looked at Joe, and put my finger on my lips to indicate that he should be quiet. I’d never done that before, and had no idea if he knew what I meant, but he did not meow.

  I found my boxer shorts on the floor (another item on Claire’s list of things about me that annoyed her), took my Glock out of the drawer.

  In a situation like that, you’ve got two choices: wait for trouble to come to you, or go to meet it head-on. Depending upon the circumstances, there are advantages to both responses. But I was never good at waiting, so I moved toward the closed bedroom door. As I did, I recalled a scene in one of Bill’s books, where Jack Stoney hears a noise in the night and heads toward the trouble; a guy with a gun was coming for him, and
the guy, of course, didn’t have a chance. I pushed that out of my mind because that was fiction. If Bill didn’t like the way a scene turned out, he could do a rewrite. But this was real, and there were no do-overs.

  I eased the door open, waited a moment, listening, then went into the hallway, just like you see in the movies: crouched low, gun extended in both hands, swiveling from side to side.

  Clear.

  Rather than trying to check all of the bedrooms on the second floor, I decided to go downstairs to look for a point of entry. I thought about Joe and hoped he was hiding under the bed. I hadn’t been in a gunfight in many years. Maybe I should have been under the bed too.

  I kept my back along the wall as I made my way down the staircase. Bright moonlight through the windows illuminated the scene. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I heard two noises simultaneously: a gunshot, and a meow. If Joe was trying to tell me to duck, he was just a fraction of a second too late.

  The bullet hit the wall a few inches high and to the right of my head, probably because I’d just stepped down from the stairway. Although it was a tactical mistake, I looked back up behind me and saw Joe standing there, looking down at me from the top of the staircase. He had my back.

  I heard the sound of running footsteps and found the door to the patio open and one of the chairs at the table turned over. A pane of glass in one of the french doors was broken.

  I went outside and stopped to scan the backyard. Nothing. I heard the sound of a boat motor starting and ran toward the dock. By the time I got close to the beach, a small black rubber inflatable boat, called a Zodiac, the kind commandos use, was speeding out into the gulf, too far away for a pistol shot.

  I went back inside and to the stairway. The bullet intended for me had hit the Monet painting. The insurance company wouldn’t like that.

  24.

  TRY AGAIN, OVER DINNER

  It was 3:10 A.M. I decided not to awaken Hansen from his REM sleep. No way I could nod off after being shot at, so I read the book I’d selected from the downstairs library. It was a crime novel. Even though I didn’t usually read them, except for the ones by Bill Stevens, who paid me to, I wasn’t in the mood for The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

  The book was Hard Stop, written by a guy named Chris Knopf. The main character, Sam Acquillo, was a former corporate tech specialist who became a carpenter in the Hamptons, a wealthy resort area of Long Island not unlike Naples. Sam thought he’d signed up for a serene existence, but gets drawn into an investigation of a crime that threatens his life. It’s one of a series. I liked the book, because I identified with Sam’s situation.

  Joe went back to sleep in his favorite bedroom chair, confident that I had the watch and he’d be safe.

  AT SEVEN A.M., I heard a commotion downstairs and knew that Martin and Suzette had reported for duty. I decided that I’d go down for some breakfast before calling Hansen to tell him about my night visitor. Remembering Ash’s coronary arteries, I had coffee, oatmeal, and some fruit. Then I used my cell phone to call Hansen.

  “I had a bite last night, but the fish got away,” I told him when he answered on the first ring.

  “Where?”

  “At Ash’s house.”

  “Anyone hurt?”

  “Just Claude Monet.”

  I told him what had happened and that I was certain Vasily had sent someone to kill me.

  “It would be nice to actually have some proof of that,” Hansen said, with a touch of sarcasm in his voice.

  I’d been at this awhile, and proof was in short supply.

  “Wait there, I’m coming over with a crime scene tech,” he said. “And don’t touch anything.”

  As I was having a second cup of coffee while waiting for him, Martin came out of the house with the phone, handed it to me and said, “Mr. Petrovich for you, sir.”

  Which was, as we say in the detective trade, an unexpected development. Maybe Vasily was checking to see if his man’s bullet had hit me, not Claude.

  “I hope I’m not calling too early,” he said.

  “No, I’ve been up for a while,” I told him. Since three a.m., to be precise.

  “Good, good. Let me buy you dinner before you leave. How about tomorrow night at Provence? It is my favorite French restaurant in town.”

  Interesting. His assassin blew the assignment, so now Vasily’s strategy was to kill me with cholesterol-laden french sauces. Or maybe take me out while I was on the way to the restaurant. I had to hand it to him. The man had brass testicles.

  Marisa liked the Provence too. Whenever we went there together, I always began my meal with escargots. I’d remove the disgusting little snails from each hole in the round serving dish, set them aside, and sop up the garlic butter with crusty french bread. The first time I did that, Marisa just shook her head and said, “You can take the boy out of Wrigleyville . . .”

  “I know the place,” I told Vasily. “I’ll see you there.”

  “Eight o’clock then. And again, I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Meaning, I thought, he was sorry that the loss didn’t include me.

  HANSEN ARRIVED ahead of the crime scene tech. I walked him through the events of that morning, beginning in my bedroom, and ending down at the dock.

  We found nothing anywhere that looked like a clue, except for the broken window on one of the french doors leading out to the patio. I also filled the chief in on the details of everything that had recently occurred between Vasily and me, including the dinner invitation.

  “Maybe he means to take you out on the way to the restaurant,” Hansen said as we stood on the dock looking out over the tranquil gulf. “He wouldn’t try it in a public place like a restaurant. Car accident, sniper, something like that.”

  “I’ve thought of that,” I said. “I’m not going to give him the chance.”

  “Do you have another one of your plans that I shouldn’t know about?”

  “That would be correct,” I admitted.

  “Okay,” he said as we walked back to the house. “For some reason, it seems Vasily’s given up on trying to make the murders look accidental. Or maybe he thought shooting you last night would look like a burglary gone bad.”

  “If it’s him,” I said.

  “Yeah, there’s still that ‘if.’”

  “To go to the next step, I’ll need some help,” I told him.

  “Such as?”

  “Tonight, during hours I designate, I’ll need the electrical power to a certain downtown building turned off. Can you arrange that?”

  “I can do that. I know a guy in the city engineer’s office. Just say where and when.”

  We went outside and sat at the table. Martin came out and took our drink order. “I’m going to miss having a butler,” I told Hansen.

  25.

  CAT BURGLAR

  Three A.M. again. Two can play the REM sleep game. I parked my car on a side street four blocks from Fifth Avenue South in downtown Naples, got out, and started walking through a residential neighborhood toward the building where Atocha Securities was located. I’d decided to break into Vasily’s offices to see if I could find any incriminating evidence of fraud and murder.

  I was wearing a black, long-sleeved turtleneck shirt, black nylon workout pants, and black running shoes, which I’d purchased that day for the occasion, my neon green Nikes not right for the job. I was carrying a small black canvas satchel containing burglary tools. If I ran into a member of the local constabulary, I’d have some “splainin” to do, as Ricky said to Lucy.

  It was not likely that Vasily would leave any evidence of his involvement in serial murder lying around his office, but you never knew. Sometimes, in my experience, white-collar criminals were so arrogant that a search warrant of their places of business and homes yielded paper and electronic trails that led directly to the slammer.

  I’d cased the joint that afternoon, pretending to be a customer, locating the stairways and other significant features. I went to the back
of the building where there was a metal double-door entrance for deliveries. No one noticed me when I went out that door and put a strip of electrical tape across the lock. If someone had found and removed it, I’d pick the lock.

  I went around back, opened the door, removed the tape, put it in my pocket, and went inside. I took a Maglite out of the satchel and followed the powerful beam up a stairway to the sixth floor, occupied only by Atocha Securities. It was easy to jimmy the outer door lock.

  I went into the lobby and down the hallway to Vasily’s office, went in, and looked around for a place to start. Moonlight through the open blinds illuminated the room, so I switched off the Maglite and put it on the desk.

  I assumed that Vasily had a hidden safe somewhere. Guys like him always had hidden safes containing diamonds, gold bars, bundles of cash, and false identity papers. Maybe his also contained a video of him making a full confession of all of his crimes. Or maybe there was nothing but a handwritten note saying, “The joke’s on you, Jackie Boy.”

  There was a laptop computer on his desk and a wooden filing cabinet along one wall. I didn’t have the skills to hack my way into his password-protected computer, so I moved to the filing cabinet. The drawers were locked. I put my satchel on the floor, opened it, and took out a small universal key to see if it fit in the lock. I could have easily pried open the drawers, but then Vasily would know someone had been there.

  I inserted the key into one of the drawer locks, fiddled with it, and the lock popped open. I rolled out the top drawer and found a line of hanging files with labels stating their contents. There were no files marked “Murder Victims” or “Ponzi Scheme.” Nor was there one saying it contained “Nude Photos Of Lena And Elena.” Maybe those were on his iPhone.

  I was thinking about whether or not to spend time going through files marked with benign titles such as “Charity Wine Auction,” “Boat Insurance,” and “Naples Ferrari Club.” Not worth it. His business files must be in another drawer. I put my key into the lock of the second drawer. Before I could open it, I heard what every burglar dreads: a noise behind me.