Chuck was the first one to break in; his face lit up with the wonder of it all. “Are you going to charge her with murder, like on TV?”
The sheriff grinned. “No, son. We’re going to need a lot more proof than what we have before we can do that. But we can hold the two of them until we do have the proof. We can charge them with driving a stolen vehicle in the meantime.”
That got me to worrying and wondering if my insurance company would repair my truck but up my rates, claiming they couldn’t charge the other owner’s company since the vehicle had been stolen.
THE NIGHT OF THE KILLER BEES
Dominic Finzi was consumed with hatred, and he was well aware he was. The only thing he couldn’t understand was how he was managing to keep from showing it as he sat across the table from his partner, Cosh Williams, who was swilling down one James Beam on the rocks after another while Finzi nursed along his diet soda.
The relationship had seemed so mellow and right just three years before. Finzi had bought into Williams’ thriving real estate business with the agreement that Williams would be in charge, but Finzi would get the business when the old man retired or kicked the bucket, which—considering the way Williams put away the booze—should have happened long ago. But it hadn’t. And he wasn’t showing sign one that he was going to retire.
In the meantime, ABC Realty was rapidly going downhill because Williams was either too stupid drunk or just plain too stupid to keep up with the times. No web site, five years behind the times in even getting an email address, passing up an option on the now ultra-successful Kline Shopping Mall development—the stupidity went on and on. Finzi ground his teeth at the thought, managed a half-hearted grin and ordered another for Williams.
The worst of it was that brother-in-law Anton was breathing down Finzi’s neck about that last racing bet which had gone sour. Not that Anton would kneecap welshers. But he could make Finzi’s life miserable and, one way or another he’d collect. Damn! What a bad run of luck. Plastic maxed out, and a sure thing coming up between the Broncos and the Forty-Niners. Maybe Anton would carry him for a small wager. Maybe a big one, if he owned ABC Realty outright—and that was going to happen tonight. For sure.
Finzi had been hoping he could get Williams to drink himself to death, and had several times paid out princely sums on Jim Beam with just that purpose in mind. Pass out, he would. Die, he would not. Five hours of snoring and drooling, and then he’d wake up looking around and fumbling for his glass.
No! Booze alone wouldn’t do it. But Finzi had come up with a foolproof scheme for moving Williams off to the Big Agency in the sky. The world would be better off without him. Certainly his long-suffering wife, who no longer gave a damn what the old man did, would heave a sigh of relief. And it would be in the public interest to keep this drunken yahoo off the road. Lord, how many times had Finzi seen Williams come out of a stupor and wheel away from the curb, probably not knowing where he was or where he’d been. Yes! Tonight was the night.
The idea had occurred to Finzi right after he’d been out in the scrub area around Dayton Flats looking over some worthless real estate to foist off on the unsuspecting. He must have been a hundred feet from the dead log when he saw what looked like a cloud rising from it. He’d heard about killer bees, so he didn’t wait for the cloud to reach him. A race to the car—none too soon—since the windows were soon covered with the angry creatures, was all that saved him. After getting his breath back and a reduction in the adrenaline rush, he gave the incident a lot of thought and headed to the local library. The computer brought up all he wanted to know about killer bees and a good deal more besides.
Finzi’s father had had a hive of honeybees, so he knew a little about them—and hated them. In spite of his father’s assurance that he’d get used to the stings, he didn’t. The few he got still hurt, and the welts seemed to get worse each time. He hadn’t been a bit sorry when a neighbor started spraying poison on his flowers, poison that soon depleted the hive.
According to beeworld dot com, killer bees were indeed monsters. Unlike the relatively tame honeymakers of his own childhood, these savages took umbrage at anyone coming within yards of their hives. Numerous deaths had been recorded as the result of unprovoked attacks by these hybridized insects that had worked their way up to the U.S. from Brazil. Knowing-that was the first step to solving his business and finance problems.
Williams was still ambulatory but passing out fast when they left the bar. Even so, Finzi was glad he had taken no chances. A spare pint of Jim Beam was safely stashed away in the company car’s glove compartment, just in case. It was getting dark and would be pitch black by the time they could make it out to Dayton Flats. Williams was beginning to nod. He would definitely be out of it for hours, plenty of time for Finzi to locate the dead log and drape old man Williams over it. A few hammerings on the log would bring the monsters from hell out looking for something to kill. They wouldn’t have far to go. And Finzi had all the equipment he needed to protect himself in the satchel he’d tossed in the trunk. Coveralls, gloves, a bee veil, the works.
It had taken a little reading to check on the planned scenario. Bees don’t fly at night, and even killer bees probably wouldn’t bother anyone near the hive after dark but, upset them, and it would mean a whirlwind of stinging brutes. Williams wouldn’t last five minutes. Even experienced beekeepers didn’t fool around with their charges at night—not even tame ones, never mind killer bees.
Easing off the highway onto the dirt road leading out to the lots he’d been checking on, Finzi watched the odometer. He knew down to the tenth of the mile where the log was.
A good heavy-duty flashlight would help him zero in on the log. Then it was put on the protective gear, drag Williams through the brush to the log, beat on it until the air was full of bees, then back to the other company car he’d hidden away down the road earlier, and off to home, full ownership of ABC Realty, and a nice fat wager on the Broncos. The Broncos couldn’t possibly lose. Anton would carry him for sure if he knew the company would be all Finzi’s in a few days.
That last point had bothered Finzi a bit. It was important to have Williams’ body found soon. The game was less than a week away. Well, he’d file a missing person report next morning when his partner didn’t show up for work. Sure as hell William’s wife wouldn’t bother to do that. If needs be, he’d make an anonymous call to the state health officials. They’d send some vector control people out to check at the very mention of killer bees. Pulling off in the wide spot in the road he’d stopped at before, Finzi smiled, took up his flashlight and decided to make one last check to be sure he was in the right place. “It sure would be hell at this stage to dump him on the wrong log,” he said, half aloud.
***
Police Captain Schuyler, in the company of several of his crew, looked at the ambulance and line of police vehicles strung along the dirt road. Even though they’d found an abandoned car in the vicinity, it still certainly seemed like overkill—all on the word of a vector control person who said she’d found a body out in the brush. She was coming his way at that moment, pulling up her bee veil and taking off the long gloves. The diminutive woman seemed lost in the bulky clothing.
Her first words were, “My partner is out there burning hives, but there are still plenty of bees around.”
Schuyler wasn’t happy at the report. Bees were not his cup of tea. “Any idea how long he’s been dead?”
“Not really. Now, if it were a dead rat, I could do a pretty good job of guessing.” She stopped, thought, then shrugged. “Maybe two days. I can’t be positive it’s the bees that did it, of course, but it sure looks like it. His face and hands are black with stings and he’s surrounded by dead bees. They die once they’ve stung a person. And bees don’t sting corpses.”
“Could you tell anything about him? His age? Could he have just been a bum?”
“You mean from the clothes? Actually, he did have expensive shoes on. I’d guess he was an upstanding citizen
—probably a wealthy one, or one with good credit. As far as age is concerned, his face is so swollen, there’s no way to tell. I’d hate to have to identify him from his looks, and I’m leaving it up to you folks to pat him down for ID.”
The captain turned to one of the officers in a squad car. “Call the station and see if we have any males in the missing reports for this area—last week or so. It’s worth a try.” To vector control, he added, “OK. I guess we’ll have to go and stake out the area.”
The vector control woman grinned. “Not without veils and tight clothing you won’t. I’ve got some extras in the van. Any volunteers?”
The captain returned the grin and pointed to a pair of the nearby patrolmen. “There are two, right there.”
While the reluctant volunteers were getting ready to accompany vector control out into the brush, the return call from the station crackled over the car speakers. “One of the owners at ABC Realty reported his partner missing two days ago. Didn’t show up for work then. Still hasn’t, either there or at home. That’s the only missing report on anyone in the past two weeks.”
***
Hanging up the phone, he was visibly relieved. The police had reported no evidence of foul play. They were sure the bees had killed him. There was no reason to think otherwise. Apparently he’d tripped and fallen right on top of a nest. The vector people said it was only a small one, apparently a spin-off from the mother hive nearby in a dead log. Small though it was, there had been enough of the little devils to kill him in a matter of minutes.
He leaned back in his chair and thought back to the last time he’d seen his partner, sitting across from him in the bar. It was a damn shame. He still couldn’t remember if he’d told him he was turning the business over to him the next day. He rather hoped he had. If a man’s going to die, it’s better for him to die happy.
Reaching into the bottom drawer of his desk, he took out the half-full bottle of Jim Beam, uncapped it, took a healthy swallow and put it back. For no reason at all, he suddenly remembered the satchel he’d found in the trunk of the car and which was now sitting on a shelf in his garage. One of these days he’d have to find out Finzi’s mother’s address and send it off to her.
The radio, which had been playing away, briefly caught his attention. The sports announcer proclaimed, “Broncos win in a walk.”
THE PACEMAKER
At sixty-two, Orson Roddenberry was now giving occasional thoughts to retirement, but not because he was unhappy with his work as a private investigator. On the contrary, his thirty-seven years at that stint, almost twenty of them with his own company in Southern California, had been satisfying if not exciting. A fan of all TV-PI shows, he enjoyed seeing the myths the public was exposed to when it came to his profession. What a contrast!
Orson had never so much as touched a gun during his entire career. The most serious physical danger he’d ever been close to was when he’d been sideswiped by a drunken driver while on stakeout. Much harm done to the car, none to Orson.
But, then, he’d always been choosy about his jobs. His specialty was investigating insurance scams, and what that required more than anything else was patience. It involved hours of watching the woman who claimed to have slipped and sprained her back on a wet floor at the Safeway, but who had no trouble carrying her TV off to the shop for repairs. And there was that marvelous series of photos he’d taken of the train victim with the “serious leg injury” coming swiftly and gracefully down an Aspen ski slope.
Patience, something Orson had plenty of, was an obvious prerequisite. To that, he added a scrupulous honesty, which he was proud of, and which his regular clients appreciated. “I’ll never make a fortune at this business,” he had said to Vivienne Stowe four years ago, on the day he interviewed her for the job as his assistant, “but I never have trouble sleeping nights.”
Only recently, Vivienne had confessed to him she had accepted the job in large measure because of that comment. He had hired her because she had the gumption to argue that the very nature of surveillance—spying as she called it—required considerable compromises with one’s conscience.
The one problem Orson had envisioned was at least a minor amount of resentment from Lucille, his wife of almost forty years, at the prospect of a young, attractive woman sharing his office space. To forestall troubles from that source, he had invited Vivienne and her “significant other” out to the house for dinner shortly after hiring her. When the other proved to be an equally attractive female, Orson—and best of all, Lucille—knew that no incipient office romances were in the offing.
The intervening years had proven to the two investigators that their joining of forces had been a wise decision, and Vivienne had now become a full partner in the enterprise, with an office which included—as Orson had commented—“Electronic equipment up the yin yang.” They continued to argue, but they complemented each other well—Vivienne with her mechanical, computer and electronic skills; Orson with his long experience at dealing with people, both amateurs and professionals, who specialized in scamming. What they didn’t argue about was the fact that Vivienne carried a gun.
Orson had never seen it—didn’t want to. He recognized that a lone woman on a stakeout at two in the morning was justified in having that kind of protection. As a Tae Kwon Do brown belt, with the ability to render a hefty male unconscious with a blow from the side of her hand, she also had additional protection he’d never even considered for himself.
Today, Kristina Daren was putting Orson’s experience of dealing with people to a test. He had had a brief encounter with her in the past, when one of her employees had developed a severe backache from handling computer-monitors at Daren Electronics. The claim had been quickly, efficiently and quietly scotched by Roddenberry Investigators, Inc., to the satisfaction of the State Board for Workmen’s Compensation, ABC Insurance Associates, and Mr. and Mrs. Daren—though not of the employee.
As Kristina, a matronly forty-five, plain until she flashed her Julia Roberts smile, immediately informed the partners that that earlier successful investigation was the reason she was now requesting their services. In an unusual twist, Orson and Vivienne were now confronted with the possibility of having an insurance company on the other side of the fence from them. Orson’s request for clarification from his prospective client produced a far more coherent story than he ordinarily encountered in his line of business.
“You may not have heard about it,” Kristina began, “but my husband died in an auto accident last week. He was on his way home from the shop, and his car crashed through one of those flimsy guardrails along Carnap Gulch and went several hundred feet down into the creek. He was dead when the medics reached him.
“The police are not very forthcoming about the details, except that he was apparently using his cellphone at the time. The autopsy report is unclear as to whether he suffered a heart attack, which might have caused the crash, or the crash caused a heart attack. Frankly, I think his pacemaker failed, and his cellphone may have had something to do with the failure.”
Olson was about to protest that their specialty was surveillance, when Vivienne broke in. “Did the cellphone survive the accident? Is the pacemaker available? Can you…”
Kristina’s attractive smile erupted at the sudden show of enthusiasm and the obvious difference in the partners’ reaction to her. “Perhaps I should explain what I want you to do and exactly why I want you to do it, before you decide whether you can accept me as a client.
“First, our—or rather my—company sells the cellphone that Arthur was using. Obviously, we have a responsibility to our clients if it did in fact interfere with the pacemaker. I, personally, don’t want to sell such a device if that’s the case. And, of course, I don’t want to open myself to endless lawsuits if someone else should suffer because of such interference. Naturally, my insurance company might be interested in knowing what you find out.
“Second, I want you to check to see if the pacemaker might have been defective. I
know that won’t bring Arthur back but, knowing whether or not it was, will help to provide closure.” She paused, and her expression changed. “And I must admit it would give me considerable satisfaction to take the manufacturer and their insurer to court if we find the phone was responsible.”
“There’s a third reason why I want to settle this matter once and for all. I’m convinced the police suspect that I killed Arthur.”
Vivienne and Olson exclaimed “What?” at exactly the same moment.
Kristina smiled again. “If that sounds farfetched to you, then think how I feel. I really don’t know why they suspect me, but it’s obvious they do. A Lieutenant Riordan is handling the investigation, and he’s done everything short of charging me with causing the accident.”
“Did you request an attorney?” Olson asked.
“No. I have nothing to hide. I told the lieutenant where I was at the time and, as far as I’m concerned, that ends it. On the other hand, if the police suspect there was foul play, I’d like to have someone look into that possibility. That calls for a private investigator rather than an attorney.”
Vivienne eagerly, Olson reluctantly, accepted Kristina Daren as a client. The door had barely closed behind her when Olson said, “Your work is cut out for you, Vivienne.”
“What do you mean, my work is cut out for me. You’re the one with all the police contacts. Riordan is even one of your drinking buddies. I’ll handle the electronics, you get the scoop from him.”
“Do you think she was telling the truth?”
Mayhem, Mystery and Murder Page 38
