by Joel Travis
“Ace and I will handle this one. As I said, it’s an important interview.”
Sheila and the Stork protested that it was only fair that they should be the ones to follow up on their lead. I congratulated them on their fine detective work, explaining that it was just the kind of lead Ace and I had been waiting for so we could leap into action.
My popularity rating—never high to begin with—plummeted to a record low. But being a leader is not about popularity. A leader must trust his instincts. My instincts told me to make a break for the door.
“Meeting adjourned!” I said, dashing from the room.
#
I don’t know if you’ll ever have the opportunity to participate in an important murder investigation. If you do, don’t undermine the mastermind. Show some respect. Always remember that the mastermind wouldn’t have attained the position of mastermind if he didn’t know what he was doing. If he politely asks you for an address that he needs to conduct an important interview, don’t refuse his reasonable request and put him in a situation where he has to sneak into your room and dig it out of your handbag.
On the drive to Cynthia Moreno’s house on Inwood Road, I briefed Ace on Sheila’s report. I hadn’t called ahead. For all I knew, the Codger’s niece could be vacationing in Europe for the winter. If she wasn’t in, we’d swing by Lori’s apartment and pick up the Pinto, assuming it hadn’t been towed away.
Ace parked on the street in front of Cynthia Moreno’s house—three stories of red brick and white trim. I counted three chimneys, two garages, and one skinny little girl playing football alone on the large lawn. She looked to be seven or eight years old. Watching her throw passes to herself, I felt sad that she didn’t have a playmate. As if she could read my mind, she threw a pass to me. I lobbed the ball back to her. She threw it to me again. The game might have gone on forever, or at least until dark, so I threw one last pass a good thirty yards over the child’s head.
“Sorry!” I said.
She gave me a puzzled look, smiled, and chased after the ball on her spindly legs.
I met up with Ace on the porch. I asked him if he had rung the doorbell. He said he couldn’t remember. I shook my head in wonder. He said it was like when a group of people are waiting for an elevator and no one pushes the button because everyone assumes it has already been pushed. I didn’t see any group of people, just one guy with his head up his ass. I told him he had it backwards anyway, that what really happens is that everyone waiting for the elevator pushes the button out of habit or nervousness. Like idiots, we began to debate the issue.
“I’ve seen it both ways,” said a feminine voice.
We stopped arguing long enough to notice the door had been opened by a brunette of medium height, wearing jeans and a form-fitting, white T-shirt. Her lips parted, revealing a sensual smile. Her shoulder-length hair had a windswept aspect, reminiscent of a painting I once saw where an angel floated above a garden wall. I stared at her chest for two or three seconds. It’s disrespectful to stare any longer before you’ve said hello. Or so I’ve been told.
“I saw you playing catch with my daughter,” said the beauty.
“Are you Cynthia?” I asked.
She said yes, and I felt a rush of adrenaline, elated that my interview would allow me to spend more time with her. “My name is Brit Moran,” I said.
“I’ve heard your name somewhere.”
“Possibly from your Uncle Melvin. He was—is a friend of mine.”
She slammed the door in my face, very nearly on my face. I heard her footfalls rapidly receding, and it sounded to me like she was running deep into the interior of the house. I put my hand on the doorknob. I had an impulse to open the door and follow her. I glanced at my partner. He nodded, removing any doubts I had. I rushed in, Ace close on my heels.
I raced past the marble-floored foyer, following the sound of her hurried breathing. I caught up to her in the kitchen, where she was fumbling the phone. She screamed as I grabbed her wrist, and the phone fell to the floor. She struggled to break free.
“Please!” I said. “We’re here to help you.”
“You’re that man!”
That man? Suddenly, it clicked. That man whose name she’d heard somewhere. And I had a hunch where she’d heard it. The police would have kept her abreast of any developments in her uncle’s Missing Persons case. My name must have been mentioned, possibly as a suspect with a monster motive who’d buried her uncle’s wallet, watch, and keys in his backyard. No wonder she was afraid of me. I released her wrist.
“Look,” I said, “I know you think I had something to do with your uncle’s disappearance. I didn’t. Give me five minutes to explain. If you still want to call the police after I’m finished—”
I felt a jolt at the back of my head and heard a ball bouncing on the kitchen tile.
“Leave my mother alone!” Cynthia’s daughter said.
In a way it was good that the child had thrown the football into the back of my head from point-blank range. I suppose it was her daughter’s feisty spirit—or the way my head had lurched forward—which made Cynthia laugh. Ace got a charge out of it as well. I rubbed the back of my head while I waited for the laughter to subside.
“Can we sit down somewhere?” I asked Cynthia.
She scooped the child up in one arm and led us into a large living room where two leather couches were separated by a marble table. Ace and I took seats on one couch. Cynthia sat down opposite us on the other one, her daughter in her lap. She whispered something and the little girl hopped off her mother’s lap and raced away.
“Five minutes,” Cynthia said. “I sent Andrea into the kitchen. She’ll dial 911 if she hears me scream.”
I told her that was fair enough, that we hadn’t meant to frighten her or her daughter. Starting with the deathbed confession, I explained why the police thought of me as a suspect and how it was all a massive mistake. If I was involved in her uncle’s disappearance, would I be presenting myself on her doorstep? I told her someone was trying to frame me and I intended to find out what happened to her uncle. I reasoned with her, pointing out that the police hadn’t been able to solve the case over the past year, and that I was her last, best chance to uncover the truth.
“I guess I’m desperate enough to try anything,” she said. “How can I help?”
#
I’m not one of those know-it-alls who thinks he has all the answers. Ask me to explain the difference between partly sunny and partly cloudy, and I’ll tell you I haven’t the foggiest. Knowing you don’t know forces you to ask questions as you go through life. You learn how to suck information out of other folks, a skill every detective needs.
I led off with an easy question. “Besides you and Andrea, who lives in this house?”
“It’s just us and Uncle Melvin’s best friend, John Enright.”
“Make a note of that, Ace.”
“I’m not your secretary.”
“Make a note of it anyway.”
“I don’t have a pen or any paper.”
Cynthia went to get a pen and some paper. I cut Ace a dirty look for back talking me in front of her. When she handed Ace the writing supplies, I noticed she wore a wedding ring.
“You’re married,” I said. “Your husband doesn’t live here?”
“Sergio lives in a condo two streets over. He comes by three or four times a week to see Andrea.”
“And who is this Sergio?”
“My husband.”
“Oh, okay. That makes sense. I was wondering why you started talking about Sergio when I specifically inquired about your husband. Take that down, Ace. Sergio is her husband.”
“Yeah, I knew that.” Acting like he knew, making me look stupid again.
“How long have you and Sergio been separated,” I asked.
“A year and a half.”
“How long have you lived in this house?”
“Practically my whole life.”
“How long has your whole li
fe been so far?”
“You’re asking how old I am? You shouldn’t ask a girl’s age.”
“It’s too late.”
“I’m twenty-nine. My husband is fifty-eight, if that’s your next question.”
“I’m thirty-five,” I said.
Our hostess asked if we’d like a beverage. I’m sure she meant a non-alcoholic beverage, but Ace said he was up for a beer or two. Cynthia smiled and said she felt like a glass of Merlot, so just to be easy I suggested we share a bottle.
Cynthia brought a tray of drinks into the living room. She handed Ace his beer. Then she poured two glasses of wine and handed me one. I put my nose over the glass, as I’d seen aficionados do on that Martha Stewart program.
“Smells French or Italian,” I said.
“It’s a domestic.”
I took another whiff. “California, isn’t it?”
She nodded.
I was pleased with myself. I don’t know much about wine, yet I had pegged the state—a one-in-fifty chance! Actually I cheated, glancing at the bottle’s label, though all I saw from my angle was the nia ending. I almost guessed Virginia.
She took a sip; I took a few swallows. Between you and me, it didn’t knock my socks off. Had I been in an expensive restaurant, I’d have told the waiter to send it back to California. Just drink it fast so she doesn’t know you don’t like it. I smiled pleasantly and refilled my glass.
Ace drank his beer, quietly observing my expert interrogation. I learned that Cynthia and Sergio had been married nine years. He was a big shot businessman. Met her in a club when she was nineteen and he forty-eight. Fabulous dancer, Sergio was. Snappy dresser, handsome as hell. All her friends were after him; all his rich friends pursued her. One night, out of the blue, he proposed to her. When she told her Uncle Melvin, he went ballistic.
“What about your parents?” I asked. “Were they okay with the age difference?”
“I was adopted as an infant by Uncle Melvin’s brother and his wife. She died before I could walk. And he … he was killed when I was five. Uncle Melvin raised me.” She lowered her head. “Now he’s gone, too.”
“Melvin’s brother was killed?”
“Yes. When I was five.”
“What happened?”
“It was horrible. His face … the shovel hit him in the face.”
“And it killed him?”
She nodded, her head still lowered.
I could imagine how it might have happened. Cynthia’s father is walking across the yard. Never sees the shovel lying in the grass. He steps on the handle end and the other end jumps up and slams into his face. A bizarre, tragic death which could have been prevented if folks would put the damn tools back in the tool shed when they’re finished using them. I’d seen the same thing happen on The Three Stooges, except it was a rake. Yet something didn’t add up.
“Was your father a short man?” I asked. “Under five feet tall?”
She shook her head and I realized that it couldn’t have happened the way I’d imagined. Shovels aren’t as long as rakes. Only a midget or dwarf would have been hit in the face.
“I saw the whole thing from my bedroom window,” she said. “I was only five.”
“Might as well take that down, Ace. She was only five.”
I hoped she’d quit repeating it once she knew it had been duly noted in the transcript. She was upset, so I gave her a few seconds to pull herself together.
“Can you tell us exactly what happened?” I asked.
“Why?”
“It could be important.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet. Just start at the beginning, take your time, and tell us what happened to your father’s face.”
She took a deep breath and exhaled. “It was early in the morning. I was standing at my bedroom window on the second floor, holding my doll. Her name was Dolly. I opened the window when I saw my father walking across the lawn. I called out to him and he turned around and waved to me. I said to Dolly, ‘Look, there’s Daddy! Say hello to Daddy, Dolly.’”
“So it was a talking doll. String-pulled model with a limited vocabulary?”
“No, she wasn’t much more than a rag. A cloth doll.”
“How did you expect her to say hello to your father if she couldn’t talk?”
“I did the talking for both of us,” Cynthia said, sounding irritated. “My father met the gardener in the middle of the yard. He was a temporary guy; our regular man was on vacation. I heard them talking, and then the gardener started to shout at my father.”
“Could you hear what he said?”
“No, but even as a child I knew something was wrong when he drew back the shovel.”
“He smashed your father’s face with the shovel.”
“Yes. I turned my head after he was hit the first time. The police said he was struck multiple times. He couldn’t even be identified by his face. It was … it was gone.”
Probably stuck to the shovel, I thought.
“My poor father,” she said. “Can you imagine a more horrible death?”
“Not off the top of my head. Makes you wonder why soldiers didn’t use shovels as weapons in the days before they had guns. I’d rather be run through with a bayonet than smashed several times in the face with a shovel.”
Cynthia was crying.
Ace said, “Cynthia, I’m sure your father didn’t feel anything. He would have died instantly, without suffering.”
“I don’t know, Ace,” I said. “The first blow probably sent him into shock, causing him to stagger on his feet and making him a sitting duck for the second blow. That crazy gardener would have had time to take a practice swing, if he thought he needed one.”
“Please,” Cynthia said softly, “I’m feeling sick.”
“It’s a miracle we’re not all sick,” I said, “when you think about how his brains must have shot out of his head, flying all the way across the yard, for God’s sake.”
Ace said, “Brit, her father died instantly from the first blow. We don’t need to think about anything else.”
“It really depends on whether he got his hands up in time to buffer the first blow,” I said. “Cynthia, do you remember if he had a chance to—hey, where did she go?”
“She ran out of the room.”
“When?”
“Just now, when you started talking about her father’s flying brains.”
I thought about that for a moment, from her perspective.
“Ace, I think I know why she ran out of the room. I’ll bet when we started talking about her father’s murder in detail, Cynthia started to relive the horrible episode she witnessed as a child. You have to remember that was her father. Not her biological father, but still, the only father she ever knew.”
Ace said we should leave. I felt awful. I asked him what I could do to make it right. He told me to write her a short note and leave it on the table. Here’s what I wrote:
#
Cynthia,
I was saddened to hear of your father’s death. I’m sorry about what I said. Your father died instantly from the first blow, no doubt about it. Please don’t hate me, I like you lots.
#
I signed my name and showed Ace the note. “Is that good?”
“Pretty good,” he said, “if you were in junior high.”
I thought I could improve it, but he grabbed my arm and pulled me to the door. On the drive back to Marty’s house we speculated about how far the bloody brains would have sailed across the yard.
“At least fifty feet, Ace.”
“Sounds about right for brains and blood,” he said. “Of course, the brains would go farther than the blood.”
“That’s interesting. What makes you think so?”
“Brains are heavier.”
“That’s a common misconception, Ace. The human brain is seventy-five percent water. Blood is thicker than water, so the blood would go farther than his watered-down brains.”
We argue
d about it some more, knowing we’d never find out who was right. There’s no practical way to test something like that.
Chapter 13
Sheila blasted a barrage of questions at me the second Ace and I hit the door. I told her to slow down so I could slip answers in between the questions.
“Did you talk to her?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“You weren’t gone very long.”
Ace said, “That’s because she broke down after a few questions.”
“Barbara, get out here!” Sheila shouted. “Come hear this!”
The Stork emerged from the study. She had a book in her hand—The Crooked Hinge, by John Dickson Carr.
“Barbara, that’s the book I’m reading,” I said. “I started it the other night when everyone else went to the movie. You’ll have to find something else to read.”
I stuck out my hand.
Sheila slapped my hand away. “Never mind that,” she said. “Tell us how you broke Cynthia Moreno down during the interrogation!”
“He made her cry,” Ace said. “She ran out of the room.”
“Oh, my God!” Sheila said. “She killed her own uncle.”
I sighed. “Ace, you can go home if you want. I’ll straighten out this mess. Just leave me the notes you took.”
“I didn’t take any notes,” he said. “I just pretended I was writing.”
“May I ask why?”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
“Why didn’t I take notes? Or why did I pretend to take notes?”
“I’d like to hear the whole story if you have the time.”
“The pen was out of ink. I pretended to take notes so Cynthia would think we had a record of everything. I fooled her completely.”
“Go home, Ace.”
I delivered an oral report to Sheila and the Stork in Marty’s study. With Ace out of the way, I felt free to omit extraneous details, such as the flying brains and some of the remarks I’d made. I think I covered everything else, as best as I could without the notes Ace didn’t take.
“What does she look like?” Sheila asked.
“Very pretty brunette.”
“Prettier than me?”
