The Axeman's Jazz (Skip Langdon Mystery Series #2) (The Skip Langdon Series)

by Julie Smith

  “Then I went down there and knocked on Linda Lee’s door myself. Now, I know I’m not s’posed to enter a tenant’s apartment without giving notice—I hope I’m not in trouble—”

  “Of course not.”

  “—but Miss Kitty was so pitiful. I could hear her meowin’ like she’d lost her best friend right at the door, like she knew I was there and she needed to talk to me.”

  “Linda Lee had a cat?”

  “Beautiful white longhair. I just couldn’t resist—’course, I did knock first, but that poor animal was just so pitiful. All I did was try the doorknob—didn’t even have to unlock it. And when it opened I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t noticed the odor—guess I had and just thought it was garbage. There she was, lying on the floor right in my line of vision. And Miss Kitty was all over me, rubbin’ against my legs like I was a hundred pound bag of catnip.”

  “Did you go in?”

  He flushed. “Well, I didn’t.”

  Skip knew what he wanted to hear, and she provided it. “You did exactly the right thing.”

  “There might have been something….”

  “No, there wasn’t. You knew she was dead. A ten-year-old kid would have known. Anyway, if you had gone in, it would have interfered with the investigation. Where’s the cat, incidentally?”

  “Oh, I … well, I hope I didn’t do wrong. I brought her here and fed her. Then she went under the bed and hasn’t come out yet. Don’t blame her, do you?”

  “You had cat food?”

  “I, uh … gave her some chicken. What’s going to happen to her?”

  “I guess that’ll be up to Linda Lee’s relatives. Meanwhile, we could call the humane society.”

  “Oh, no, I’ll take care of her. I mean, if that’s all right.”

  “I think that’s fine. But I have to ask you something painful, Mr. Ogletree. Did you see the body well enough to be able to identify it?”

  “It isn’t Linda Lee?”

  Skip’s heart sank. Not only didn’t she know that, she didn’t even know who Linda Lee was.

  “Well, sir, you’re the only person who knows Linda Lee who’s seen the body.”

  Ogletree flushed, obviously once again embarrassed at not having done a good enough job.

  “It’s okay. Someone else can identify her.”

  “I’ll look again if you like.” His frown was two deep slices flanking his nose.

  “No need, sir.”

  “I’ll be glad to.”

  Sure you would, Mr. Ogletree. If ever anyone gave the lie to studies linking stress and early death, it’s got to be you. You probably also eat an oyster po’ boy a day, never exercise, and drink a six-pack before breakfast. I bet you live to a hundred and twelve.

  She said, “Tell me about Linda Lee. What was her full name?”

  “Linda Lee Strickland from Indianola, Mississippi. She moved in about six weeks ago, right from Indianola, didn’t even have a job yet. Then she went to work for that restaurant-supply place … I forget their name.”

  “Simonetti’s.”

  “Got a good job, she said. I don’t really know—maybe she just said that so I wouldn’t worry about the rent.”

  “How well did you know her?”

  “Pretty well, I guess. I used to take over little seafood scraps for Miss Kitty and we’d talk awhile. Come to think of it, I guess I could tell you about every cat she ever had and all the cute things they did, but I don’t really know much else about her. I sure wish I could help you on that, but I don’t think I can.”

  “Did you meet any of her friends?”

  “I never saw anyone there. She was a quiet girl—real good tenant.”

  “Was she friendly with anyone else in the building?”

  “I don’t know anything about her personal business.”

  He spoke so primly Skip suspected the other tenants were men. Sure enough, they were Mr. Davies, who “traveled for” a cosmetics company, and Mr. Palmer, who worked “for the city.”

  Honorifics only. Curtis Ogletree, you should be in a museum.

  After reassuring him once more that he’d done just fine, Skip returned to Linda Lee’s. The body was gone; Paul Gottschalk from the crime lab had removed the purse and said she could go through it.

  In it was a wallet containing Linda Lee Strickland’s credit cards and driver’s license, comb, blusher, and address book. No lipstick.

  No lipstick? Did the asshole open the bag, take out her lipstick, write the A on the wall and leave with it? Keep it for a souvenir, maybe?

  “Paul, was she wearing lipstick?”

  “You mean you didn’t notice?”

  “I don’t think she was.”

  “She was. Tiny trace left. Like she’d put it on a long time before and maybe eaten or drunk something that took it off.” He sounded bored, nodded at the A on the wall. “We’re comparing samples.”

  “Any other lipsticks found in the house?”

  He shrugged. “Two or three. Wrong colors, but we’re checking anyway, Officer Langdon.”

  “Excuse me, but do I detect a note of testiness? Am I being pushy or something?”

  “Shit.” He shrugged again. “It’s the heat.”

  Understanding completely (but resenting the fact that he hadn’t apologized), she more or less tiptoed around after that, trying to figure out who Linda Lee Strickland had been.

  Everything screamed small-town girl without much money or education. A nice respectable girl from a blue-collar family grown into a woman who had to get married or go back to school if she didn’t want to live on the edge of poverty the rest of her life.

  Apparently, Linda Lee had been working on the former; the only books in the apartment were the ones on the front table, most of which had titles like Smart Love. There were two by John Bradshaw on other subjects, but all the rest seemed to be self-help books geared to relationships. Skip sighed. Linda Lee had been Cinderella looking for her prince. But what had she had to offer him?

  It was almost eerie how little of herself she’d left in the apartment. There were no magazines, no letters—she had probably gotten her news from television, and phoned her relatives rather than writing.

  The address book was the only thing remotely useful—and all it contained were Curtis Ogletree’s number, that of Simonetti’s Restaurant Supply, and ten or twelve more in Indianola, Mississippi.

  Neither of the building’s other occupants, Mr. Davies nor Mr. Palmer, was home. Skip canvassed neighbors in nearby buildings, those few who weren’t sweating it out nine to five, but no one had known Linda Lee, had ever seen anyone of her description, or had heard or seen anything relevant.

  So Skip went over to Simonetti’s and asked for Lucy McKinnon. McKinnon was an older woman, apparently what passed for an office manager at the small operation, and she seemed to have taken quite a shine to Linda Lee, who’d answered the phone and done clerical work. A “gal Friday” in less enlightened times.

  She’d often asked Linda Lee to lunch, but Linda Lee had usually said she “had plans.” McKinnon thought that a little odd, since often Linda Lee walked out of the office carrying her brown bag. But not too odd—it occurred to her that Linda Lee couldn’t afford to go out for lunch but didn’t want to say so. Or perhaps met someone for picnics. McKinnon doubted that, though, because sometimes she brown-bagged it in the rain.

  Skip went back to the office, hoping the coroner had had time to notify Linda Lee’s next of kin, Mr. and Mrs. Garner Strickland of Indianola, Mississippi.

  TWO

  WHAT DID YOU say to a small-town woman whose daughter had been murdered after less than two months in the big city?

  If you were Southern, you said you wished there was something you could say, and please let you know if there was anything you could do. Even Skip knew that and she knew virtually nothing about how to be Southern. You had to say that, when all the while what you really wanted was for her to do something for you. Tell you everything.

  As it happe
ned, Skip had found no one was more motor-mouthed than those suffering the first pangs of grief. Later they would talk only about themselves—what they’d been doing when they got the call, how the news had been broken, how they’d reacted. But at this stage they’d talk about the victim.

  Linda Lee was a good girl, took care of her baby brother when she was only six and a half, didn’t make straight A’s but did well enough, active in the MYF (“that’s Methodist Youth Fellowship”), and didn’t deserve the life she’d had. Her marriage hadn’t worked out and now she was dead.

  Skip tried to keep her voice neutral. “She was married?”

  “Five years. To Harry Beaver. Everybody liked Harry. He seemed like a wonderful husband for Linda Lee.”

  “But he wasn’t?”

  “Well, see, Harry drank. Nobody knew it, of course, because he was always so jolly and nice. I mean we knew he drank; we just never saw him drunk. Did you know you can be a complete alcoholic and never get, you know, commode-huggin’ or anything? When she told us, that did help explain why she never did get pregnant. I guess if you’re always full of booze—oh, well I shouldn’t talk about that. And also why he never had no real ambition. Like to broke Linda Lee’s heart, though.” She stopped to get control. “Oh, that poor, poor girl.”

  “How long have they been divorced?”

  “Oh, I don’t even think it’s final yet. She filed just before she left town.”

  “How did Harry take it?”

  “Well, he was broken up about it. He just loved that little girl to death.”

  “Do you know how I could reach him?”

  “Oh, are you gon’ break the news? Thank you so much—I just don’t think I could stand to do that. Here’s his number.” She rattled it off. “Or else you might try over to the sheriffs office. Harry’s a deputy here in Sunflower County.”

  “Mrs. Strickland, could I just ask you something? Do you know if your daughter had any enemies?”

  “Linda Lee? She was the most popular girl in town.”

  “I see. Then perhaps someone was jealous of her.”

  “I didn’t mean she ran around. I meant people liked her.”

  “Did she know anyone whose name began with A?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I can’t tell you why I’m asking, but it’s important.”

  “First or last name?”

  “Either one.”

  “I sure can’t think of anyone, except maybe Tommy Axelrod, used to live next door to us. But he and his folks left town about ten years ago. Linda Lee used to babysit for him. ’Course, she knew his folks too, but that was different.”

  “Has she heard from Tommy at all?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Does the letter A mean anything else to you?”

  “Nothin’ except ‘angel,’ and that’s what my baby was.” A freshet of tears drowned her voice.

  Skip kept her on the phone long enough to assign Miss Kitty to Mr. Ogletree. Then she phoned the Sunflower County sheriff’s department, and got a lieutenant named Mike Bilbo, who said Harry Beaver was out. He said Harry was a good officer and didn’t have a mean bone in his body, but he hated to see what was gon’ happen when he found out somebody’d killed Linda Lee. They’d been living apart for six months before Linda Lee left town, but Harry never could accept it—said Linda Lee’d come back to him, it was just a phase she was going through.

  Not only had Harry been at work every day of the last week, but he was reliable as a Japanese car, never did miss a day. Bilbo had personally seen him at church on Sunday and a barbecue Saturday evenin’.

  So if he’d killed his ex-wife, he’d have needed wings.

  Time to discuss the case with Cappello and Joe, a not unpleasant thought. She called Joe “lieutenant” now, out of respect for his rank, but she still thought of him as “Joe,” a friend. A warm friend. He’d turned into the kind of executive who liked to shoot the breeze with his detectives, find out how each case was going, help out when he could, and she looked forward to running things by him, enjoyed the hell out of their rapport.

  Cappello wasn’t nearly so warm. She was all business, almost brusque, but she was a dynamite officer. When Skip got her transfer, she’d wanted Cappello for a partner, but had ended up working under her instead. Which was okay. Very much okay. Skip had wanted to learn from her. This way she could do that and still work alone, a situation she cherished sometimes. Skip found she tended to reinvent police work with each new problem, and she didn’t always like to be observed. Cappello was a straight by-the-book type who might not appreciate a lot of free-wheeling creativity.

  Skip checked with Cappello, then Joe. Both were free and ready to listen. Neither said a word until she got to the part about the A. Joe had started to look grim at the mention of the bag slung over Linda Lee’s shoulder, and the A did even less for his mood.

  “I got a bad feeling, Skip. Writing on the wall isn’t normal.”

  She bit her tongue, forebore to say the obvious. She understood what he meant, and murmured, “No.”

  “Look, girl with a good reputation, in town for six weeks, doesn’t know anybody—it doesn’t wash. How does a girl like that get killed in her own apartment? If nobody’s mad at her, and nobody knows her, who’s gonna kill her? Pervert, right? That’s bad enough, but she had all her clothes on. All right then, maybe not a pervert. So what’s left?”

  Skip shifted uncomfortably. “Another kind of crazy.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I’m worried about. Somebody she let into her apartment; somebody who didn’t grab her on the street; guy who looks okay to some girl from Mississippi. Where does she meet a guy like that?”

  “At a bar maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Okay, a bar. But why’d he kill her?”

  Skip sighed. “She was there.”

  Joe wagged his head back and forth, as if to rid it of the thoughts it was generating. “This ain’t normal. It just isn’t, that’s all.”

  “Maybe it was someone she knew—maybe the A meant something between them.”

  “Yeah. And maybe you want to go see your boyfriend so bad your judgment’s messed up.”

  Skip smiled. “Oh, it’s not that bad.” She produced a snapshot of Linda Lee, taken from an envelope in a vanity drawer. “I thought I could show this around.”

  “Yeah, but where?”

  That was the problem. As an army marches on its stomach, New Orleans staggers on its liver. If every cop in Louisiana were set end to end on a cat’s cradle of a bar tour, they still couldn’t cover the territory.

  “Bars,” she said. “But selectively. Maybe she had a favorite near where she lived. Also, I could hit other places in her neighborhood. The corner store, stuff like that.”

  Joe shook his head. “And hope somebody just happened to see her talking to the murderer? I hate to say it, but I don’t see it being very productive. What do you think, Sergeant?”

  Cappello shrugged. “Try the neighbors again. That’s all I can think of.”

  “Okay. I’ll do it tonight.” But it didn’t feel like enough. Not by a long shot.

  Still, it was a good night to be a cop, to have any assignment at all. She had a great excuse for cutting short her brother’s engagement party.

  Later, driving to Commander’s Palace in a silk dress—as tarted up as she ever got—she thought about what Joe had said when she’d told him that: “You don’t want to go? Why not just skip the whole thing?”

  He had seemed genuinely puzzled. Would a normal person do that, she wondered? Her relations with her family were so abnormal she didn’t have the least idea. Her dad hadn’t spoken to her since she enrolled in the academy. Her mother, whose lifetime ambition was to achieve greater and greater social prominence, preferably through her children, had virtually no use for her either. And her brother Conrad was a joke.

  New Orleans was a city rife with types, losers, and weirdos, and Conrad didn’t fit in—he was a misplaced, latter-day Sa
mmy Glick, clawing his way to who-knew-what in a milieu where ambition was considered almost embarrassing. Skip knew perfectly well he had about as much interest in her as in one of the roaches that skittered over her kitchen counters—and as much regard for her. She returned the sentiment.

  And yet he’d had to invite her; her mother’d felt obligated to phone and beg her to come; and Skip had known there was no choice. Otherwise it wouldn’t look right. The bride-to-be might ask ticklish questions. The Langdons wouldn’t look normal.

  She wondered what the hell “normal” really was. And why she was helping Conrad with his own egregious social-climbing—she had every idea that’s what the engagement was all about.

  She was doing it because she couldn’t bear too much more familial disapproval, she thought. Did anyone ever grow up?

  Joe must have—he hadn’t seen why she couldn’t just cash out of the whole sordid affair. But surely that wasn’t the usual thing in the South. You did what you did because things had always been done that way and because someone else wanted you to. Not because there was any point in hell in it.

  She took a deep breath.

  Come on, you wouldn’t be a cop if that were true.

  She answered herself: It isn’t always true, just too often for comfort.

  Ah, comfort. What about that one? Where did you go to find that one? Out in the stratosphere, she supposed, where “normal” lived. She wasn’t going to find it here tonight.

  It was a small party—just her family and the bride’s—which was going to make it interesting. Her dad really couldn’t ignore her without drawing attention to himself, which would brand him the odd man out in front of people he wanted to impress. The Whites were from Baton Rouge, but they were related to the Gilliats, a very important family, the one that Conrad no doubt thought he was marrying into. He had met his betrothed at their house.

  Skip’s mother had told her Camille had some kind of job at the Gilliats’ shipping company, but Skip hardly expected her to rise to CEO. Within two years, she’d bet, Camille would be a permanently retired shipping exec and full-time mommy with a wandering eye.