Another Word for Murder

by Nero Blanc

  Carlyle’s stock in trade were stories like these; Lever merely nodded his response, hoping the end was in sight. There was no point in eliciting the M.E.’s lugubrious tales of death and disaster if they could be avoided.

  A uniformed police sergeant approached the two men; in his right hand was a navy blue nylon-and-mesh bag. “Looks like Tacete’s gym bag, lieutenant.” Gonzalez handed it to Lever. “It’s got the usual equipment, plus photo ID from the Body Works Gym on Ninth Street…. I guess the bag must have been stowed in the trunk, then bounced out when the car hit the slope and the latch opened.”

  Lever took the bag in silence while Carlyle wrapped this newest piece of information into his proposed scenario. “Okay … okay … Doc walks out on the missus … hits the treadmill, where he’s surrounded by a bunch of happy-go-lucky hardbodies … then he decides to get tanked, because no one’s looking his way…. ” Carlyle glanced at both Gonzalez and Lever for confirmation that they found the notion credible, but neither said a word.

  “I’m wondering when he traded the Explorer for the Corvette?” Lever finally pondered aloud while Carlyle shrugged.

  “What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?” He smiled and stood. Like his other facial expressions, this also bore a trace of the spectral. “Hell, since he’s a local, we sure won’t have to have to hunt high and low for dental records, will we? Makes my job a lot easier. Where was his office?”

  “Smile! is the name of the practice,” Gonzalez said. “It’s on South Charleton Street.”

  Carlyle chortled. “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard a lot about that sleazeball. My sister went to see him a while back. She said he was a real crook. Tried to talk her into a few thousand dollars worth of work; all sorts of cosmetic rebuilding, implants, bonding, orthodontics, crowns: you name it. He even had the gall to offer her his own payment plan with special interest rates. I mean, my sister’s sixty-two years old; what’s she need all that bunk for? She told him to take a leap…. But, I thought his name was something else, like Wagner, or something?”

  “That’s the partner,” Gonzalez replied. He cocked his head toward the ravine. “You had to make sure you got Tacete and not Wagner. Dan wasn’t into jacking up the bill.”

  “Jacking … That’s the one, Jack Wagner.” Carlyle dropped his cigarette onto the asphalt and crushed it with his shoe. “Leave it, lieutenant; this isn’t a crime scene. Your wandering dentist was either flying high or it was a suicide … maybe both; it’s less painful that way.” The M.E. began to move away. “I’m going to bag this baby up. As soon I can reach the folks at Smile!, I’ll confirm your boy’s ID.”

  “Good. I’d rather not have to ask the wife to come down to the morgue and look at this. It’s going to be hard enough as it is.” Despite the medical examiner’s injunction, Lever tamped his own cigarette out on the guardrail and slipped the butt into his pocket alongside the match and grudgingly picked up the M.E.’s butt as well. Then he looked at his own watch. “What are we talking about, Herb? Five? Six hours?”

  “Max.” Carlyle walked toward his morgue wagon, where he retrieved his tool satchel and a black plastic body bag. He and his assistant then worked their way back down the ravine to the Corvette.

  Lever looked at Gonzalez and folded his arms across his broad chest. “I just can’t figure out why Tacete was driving the Corvette and not the Explorer. If he returned, why didn’t his wife call us and have him taken off the missing persons list?”

  “Maybe Polycrates knows,” Gonzalez offered. “He was friendly with the wife, right?”

  Out of habit, Lever glanced his watch again. “It’s tempting to call him, three forty-five or not. I was getting some strange vibes from him and Belle yesterday morning at Lawson’s. I had a feeling they knew more about our missing dentist than they were letting on.”

  “So, call him, lieutenant. You’re into hour number twenty, and now you’ve got to be back at it at seven. Let someone else lose a little sleep. And to be honest with you, I don’t think Rosco would mind…. Besides, like you said, someone’s going to have to notify Dan’s wife, right? Why not let Rosco do it?”

  Lever seemed to give it all some serious thought, but in the end he said, “No. I’ve got to do it. But I’ll get Carlyle’s report in my hands first.” Then he paused and stared into the night. “It’s all part of the job, isn’t it?”

  CHAPTER 17

  Breaking bad news to loved ones: Despite what Lever had told Gonzalez about the task being part of a homicide detective’s job description, it wasn’t one Al relished. In fact, he downright hated it. Dealing with the investigatory aspect of a murder was one thing—unraveling clues, searching blind alleys for leads, even dealing with recalcitrant and often dangerous suspects had a certain cerebral methodology—but “method” and “process” were of no use when it came to meeting with the victim’s next of kin.

  Every time Al was called upon to sit down and talk with the bereaved, he thought of the men and women of the armed forces who had to inform families of their losses, who had to put on their dress uniforms and present themselves at unfamiliar front doors and explain to the parents or wives or husbands that the person they dearly loved and took such pride in would never be coming home. Al simply didn’t know how anyone could face such heartbreaking duty.

  Which is why he ultimately opted to leave urgent messages on both Rosco’s and Belle’s answering machines the moment Herb Carlyle had made a positive ID on Dan Tacete’s body. Al wanted Karen’s friends close at hand when he told her about the wreck. At least Tacete went quickly, he reminded himself as he drove out to Halcyon Estates. There’s some consolation in that fact. Not much, but some.

  Pulling up just short of the Tacetes’ driveway, Al was dismayed to see that neither Rosco nor Belle had preceded him. He made two more hurried calls, but was still greeted by recorded messages. For a split second, the seemingly callous and cantankerous detective considered slinking away, hightailing it back to the station house until he could muster sufficient backup for the unwelcome job at hand. He lit a cigarette for moral support, but the nicotine and smoke didn’t help; he stubbed it out and left it crumpled and bent in the ashtray.

  Then duty won out—as it always had, and always would—and Al turned into the drive. As he parked, unfastened his shoulder belt, and prepared to take his first heavy steps toward the house, both Belle and Rosco came roaring into sight: Belle in her own car, Rosco in the leased sedan that was currently replacing his dearly departed Jeep. In Lever’s estimation, the only thing the car had going for it was its color: an opalescent white that made it look so much like an airport rental that Al was certain Rosco could effect any number of out-of-towner disguises while driving it.

  Rosco’s face, as he approached his former partner, was grim. Belle looked close to tears. Al noted that both were wearing dark clothes; the civvies he’d chosen for this particular mission were equally austere, making the trio appear almost threatening amidst the abundant morning sunshine. Without a sound of acknowledgment or greeting, they stepped up onto the Tacete porch and rang the bell.

  The first words Karen uttered after she opened the door were “I told you not the call the cops! And not to come back here, either! They’ve been watching the house!” But the brief diatribe was uttered after she’d turned dangerously white and shaky. She stared at Al with eyes gone terrified and huge.

  “May I come in, Mrs. Tacete?” Lever’s tone was hushed and formal. He didn’t ask how she’d pegged him as NPD, and he was so intent on his prepared speech of sympathy that it took a moment for him to recognize the importance of what Karen had just said. Then he looked at Rosco and Belle before returning his concentration to the new widow. “No one called me, Mrs. Tacete—”

  “They’re probably watching the house right now!” Karen all but shrieked.

  “Let’s go inside,” Belle suggested, moving forward as she did so. “Is Lily around?”

  “No. She has playschool on Tuesday mornings…. ” Then Karen gasped. �
��Oh, my God! They got her, too, didn’t they?” She glared at Al. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To tell me those creeps took my baby! The school has security guards. We pay a lot for that!”

  “Is there someplace we can sit, Mrs. Tacete?” Lever asked, but Karen was no longer paying attention to him.

  “I shouldn’t have listened to you, Rosco! The guy told me if I screwed up, he’d hurt Lily!” She opened her mouth as if to scream, but instead clamped her hand over her lips. “I did everything they said … drove the Corvette to Gilbert’s Groceries … put the twenty-five thousand dollars in Dan’s gym bag. I left it in the trunk like they said—”

  Lever interrupted, his gaze taking in both Karen and Rosco. “Are we talking about kidnapping, Mrs. Tacete? Your telling me your husband had been kidnapped?”

  Karen spun back to Al. She opened her lips, but no sound came.

  “And you knew about this, Polycrates?” Lever was so perturbed he didn’t bother to use Rosco’s butchered nickname. “You knew the doctor had been kidnapped?”

  “Lily’s fine, Karen,” Belle interjected as she put her arm around the distraught woman’s shoulders. “Why don’t we phone the playschool so you can talk to her yourself?” Even as she uttered this soothing suggestion, Belle was praying that what she said was true.

  She steered Karen toward the kitchen, where they made the necessary phone call, after which Karen burst into tears of unconstrained relief. “I couldn’t stand it if they took her, too!” she wailed. “At least with Dan … well, he’s an adult, he can look after himself…. But my little girl …” Finally, she refocused on Al Lever, and then on Rosco. Her brow was furrowed in concentration. “They told me not to call the cops,” she repeated in a leaden voice. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  Al took a breath. “No one called me, Mrs. Tacete, but I’m afraid I have some unfortunate news…. Your husband’s body was found this morning. It looks like his Corvette didn’t make that sharp turn out on East Farm Lane. Death was instantaneous.”

  Karen’s eyes fluttered across Lever’s face before moving to Rosco’s, to Belle’s, and then back to Al’s.

  “He can’t be dead. I did everything they told me to…. Why would they kill him when they had the money? Why would they do that? They wouldn’t do that, would they?”

  But Karen’s queries were answered by the grave expressions that continued to regard her. “You’re not telling me those creeps killed Dan, are you?” Anger and disbelief burned in her eyes. “You’re not telling me that, are you?”

  “I’m afraid I am, Mrs. Tacete.”

  Karen sagged, then steadied herself, and at length allowed Belle and Rosco to lead her to the table in the breakfast nook, where Belle kept a consoling hand on her arm while Rosco made her a cup of tea and Lever posed the gentlest questions he could. Karen’s recitation rambled, punctuated by grief, confusion, and denial; and it took several retellings of the story before Al felt appropriately apprised of the necessary facts.

  “But what made you decide not to use the recording device Rosco put on your phone?” Al asked during a break in Karen’s anguished monologue. “It would have been much better if … A voice recognition expert could have—”

  “I didn’t decide! … I just … I just forgot…. I was making lunch for Lily … and she was having a hissy fit over how she wasn’t going to eat peanut butter ever again. She’d gotten all mixed up over something Dan had told her about ‘fat’ versus ‘lean.’ … When the phone rang, I … I just answered it. I didn’t think about going upstairs … because Lily was …” Karen looked at Belle for emotional support. “That’s when they put Dan on the line. That’s when the guy threatened my Lily.”

  “And the next call?” Al prompted.

  “I wasn’t expecting it so soon…. I wasn’t in my bedroom…. I know I thought that would be the best place for you to install the thing, Rosco, but … well, I guess I imagined they’d be calling at night, and I’d be …” She hung her head and stared sightlessly into her untouched cup of tea.

  “So we have no recordings of the kidnapper’s voice.” Rosco commented to no one but himself.

  “I’d recognize that creep anywhere!” Karen spat out. Then she glowered at Al. “He told me no cops, and look what’s happened!” Finally, her rage turned on Rosco. “You’re all alike!” she hissed. “This is nothing more than a game for big boys to play, isn’t it? … Catch the crook … who cares what you use for bait—?!”

  “Karen,” Belle interrupted. “Rosco’s not to blame, and Al’s not to blame—”

  “Get out of my house!” Karen raged. “If it weren’t for you, my Dan would still be alive! Get out! All of you!”

  Standing in the driveway, Al and Belle and Rosco didn’t speak for several moments. An air of gloom mingled with a disconcerting level of mistrust had settled around them.

  “You should have persuaded her to call us, Poly—crates,” Lever finally offered. The use of the nickname removed some of the edge of harshness from his tone.

  Rosco shook his head. “You heard her, Al. There’s no persuading Karen Tacete. I was caught between a rock and a hard place. I was treating her like a client. She deserved the kind of confidentiality I’d give anyone else—”

  “We were going to give the situation another day and then tell you, Al,” Belle interjected. “Rosco and I felt like total heels keeping this a secret…. When we saw you at Lawson’s yesterday morning—”

  “So, that’s what was eating you both. I assumed you guys had had a fight—”

  “Karen phoned us. Told us to butt out after she got the first ransom call,” Rosco added. “That was Sunday afternoon; almost evening really, by the time we picked up the message. Apparently, the kidnapper was quite clear in his threats to harm Lily, as well and insistent we stay away from NPD or the FBI. When we saw you on Monday, we knew nothing about the Corvette and the drop at Gilbert’s …”

  Lever laid a hand on Rosco’s shoulder. “It’s not your fault that Tacete’s dead, Poly—crates. Historically, the lower the ransom demands, the more brutal the perps. It’s almost as if they’re doing the job for kicks. And leaving witnesses behind is rare.”

  Rosco shrugged but didn’t otherwise answer.

  “Look, buddy, we don’t know how this thing went down. Maybe whoever was holding the doc did release him…. Maybe this was an accident, pure and simple. A high-powered car and a notorious curve. Or maybe Dan escaped and was being pursued…. Who knows? The goons could have drugged him, too…. Carlyle will be able to make that assessment in a day or so. But whatever happened, you can’t go around blaming yourself. You didn’t send Tacete into that ravine.”

  Rosco nodded. “Yeah, I know … but I still don’t like to see innocent people get raked over the coals on account of what I did or didn’t do.”

  “That’s law enforcement, pal—as you well know. It comes with the territory.”

  “Which is why I prefer dealing with situations like hoods doing simple things like swiping pricey cars from swanky eateries.”

  “Yeah, but some of those jerks are into more than grand larceny, Poly—crates. It’s not hard to graduate to homicide.”

  Throughout this exchange, Belle had remained silent. “There’s something else you should know, Al. Yesterday, I received a peculiar crossword. It had been hand-delivered to my office at the Crier.” She paused in thought before continuing. “What made it unusual was that it was the third I’ve received that employed a nursery rhyme theme. The other two came to the house—which is also strange, although I didn’t think much about it at the time … only that the coincidence of receiving two puzzles submitted by two constructors who both used Mother Goose is noteworthy.”

  “And you’re certain there were two separate constructors?”

  “One submission used a P.O. box for a return address; the other constructor had an email address.”

  Al nodded. “Which doesn’t necessarily prove anything. Both permit a degree of anonymity. What about the one
you got yesterday?”

  “There was a street address … I think …” Belle frowned. “To tell you the truth, Al, I didn’t pay much attention. I was too focused on what I believed might be a sinister message…. Karen’s phone call had gotten me worried about Lily’s safety, too; and the weird similarity of crossword clues and solutions only heightened my concern…. Then Bartholomew interrupted me—”

  “Where are the puzzles now?”

  “At home.”

  “I’ll tell you what; why don’t you bring them down to the station house, and we’ll have them scanned for prints. Then I’d like you two to talk to Carlyle, and tell him everything you’ve told me.”

  Rosco groaned.

  “I know … I know, Poly—crates. Mr. Personality, he ain’t.”

  “It’s not that, Al. I can handle rude and overbearing when someone’s good at their job. But Carlyle’s sloppy—you know that. He’s made too many mistakes in the past.”

  Lever sighed. “I’m not going to disagree with you, but as long as his brother remains mayor of our fair city … well, what can I say?”

  “What time do you want us, Al?” Belle asked. She touched Rosco’s arm as she spoke. It was a gentle, wifely warning. Carlyle’s reputed errors were no longer her husband’s responsibility or concern.

  “Let’s say noon? Right now, I’m heading over to Smile! to talk to Jack Wagner.”

  “Jack Be Nimble,” Belle mused aloud. “That was one of the clues in yesterday’s puzzle.

  “I’ll keep my eye out for candlesticks while I’m there.”

  CHAPTER 18

  When the electronic buzzer of Smile! rang announcing that the practice’s front door had opened, Bonnie O’Connell’s reaction was one of startled fright. She jerked upward in her office chair and made a sound that was half-whimper and half-sob. Her eyes were already red and swollen from crying, and the tissue in her hand was saturated. With blurred vision, she watched a heavy-set, balding man—one she didn’t recognize—cross the waiting area and approach the reception desk. He had an intense expression and a purposeful stride, both of which she mistook for anger.