Trick Question

by Tony Dunbar

  “How about a drink?” he offered.

  “What are you having?”

  “I hadn’t quite decided. I was thinking about an old-fashioned.”

  “Whew. What’s that?”

  “Lots of bourbon and a cherry. It’s something my aunts all drink. I like to see if bartenders know how to make them.”

  Their waiter returned.

  “White wine for me,” Lane said.

  Tubby ordered his old-fashioned.

  “What’s the occasion, Tubby? It’s been a couple of months since I heard from you.”

  “Why do you think that it’s anything other than me wanting to keep up with an old law school buddy? I like to reminisce sometimes.”

  “Right. You enjoyed law school about as much as I did, Tubby. I remember how you were killing yourself all the time, riding the Freret jet downtown between classes.” She was referring to the public transportation that ran in front of the law school.

  “And I remember how you used to come to school in uniform, which made most of our classmates afraid to talk to you.”

  “They weren’t afraid. They were just happy preppy kids and didn’t know what to say to me. We didn’t come from the same part of town.”

  “Yeah, those were sure good times, all right.”

  “I got something out of it,” she said.

  “I’m glad to hear it. I obviously did too. My whole career. But I don’t think the police department has ever appreciated what they have in you.”

  “Why thank you, counselor. There are some who do and some who don’t. Used to be, some were suspicious of me because I had a law degree. But you know, the only thing most people hate more than cops is lawyers, so I get the sympathy vote. I’m a double outcast. The force can relate to that.”

  Tubby chuckled and sipped the drink in his hand.

  “Hey, this is pretty good,” he said.

  “What are you going to have for dinner?” she asked.

  “Oh, I thought maybe I would try the ‘Filet of Gulf Fish and Salad Nicoise and Tapenade.’”

  “Hmmm.” She studied her menu.

  “I yearn for olives,” he said. “And you might like the fried green tomato with shrimp remoulade for an appetizer. It’s excellent.”

  “What do you think of the roasted quail with grilled portobello mushrooms and bacon?” she asked.

  “That’s a good idea,” Tubby said appreciatively. He liked his guests to eat well.

  A bearded man with a black apron over his crisp white shirt took their orders. He did not hover too long.

  “And?” Fox Lane prompted after the waiter left.

  “Okay, I’ve got a case. It’s in your department, but it’s not one you’re handling.”

  “And?”

  “Well, I mean it’s one of Detective Porknoy’s files, and he is giving it his normal lack of attention and leaving his typical trail of unprofessional screw ups behind him.”

  Detective Lane coughed and, despite herself, smiled briefly.

  “Tubby,” she said, “I don’t want to hear your complaints about Porknoy. Other people get along with him just fine and have no problems.”

  “The guy’s a disaster. What’s your honest opinion of him?”

  “No comment.”

  “Exactly. I think it’s a wonder he’s still on the force.”

  “He’s got a lot of seniority.”

  “Well, anyhow, he has built a case against my client, Cletus Busters, for murdering one Dr. Valentine, and the DA has bought it. But it’s so flimsy you could almost drive a truck through it.”

  “So you may win.”

  “Actually, I may not. It’s all circumstantial evidence, but it’s the kind that a jury might convict on. The problem is, Porknoy has done nothing, so far as I can tell, to develop any other possible suspects.”

  “If this is the man caught holding the frozen head, I’m familiar with the case.”

  “Right, well, the victim had an adultering wife, he was in bed with one of his students, and he was involved in mysterious medical research, the reports of which are missing. Wouldn’t you say there’s a lot of ground that hasn’t been covered here?”

  “Have you brought this to Porknoy’s attention?”

  Tubby spread his hands. “Are you kidding? For what purpose? He has no attention span.”

  “So why are you telling me?”

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe you could get involved. I’ve got the services of one investigator, I think you know Flowers, but my trial is in three days.”

  “Porknoy’s not going to expand his investigation at this stage of the investigation. Not right before trial.”

  “Wouldn’t he, if you went to him?”

  The food came. “Hot plates,” the waiter said, sliding the china onto the table.

  “Looks just fine,” Tubby said.

  “My, my,” she said.

  They each tasted their dinners, and they agreed that they were pleased.

  “Porknoy would be mad if I tried to tell him what to do,” she resumed.

  “But couldn’t you just peek around the edges? I’d bet Porknoy’s too intimidated by you to say anything. I mean, we’re talking about a potential embarrassment to the whole police department. Here, let me pour you some wine.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Denise pulled the cork out of the bottle. One little glass wouldn’t hurt, no matter what Coach said. She could fix a nice tomato-and-onion salad and relax for a while at least. Later on she had to go out with Carmella, her sparring partner, and she was kicking herself for agreeing to do that.

  But while Denise was slicing up the tomatoes, the doorbell rang. She placed her glass on the kitchen counter and went to the front. Through the spyhole she saw the inflated face of Roger DiMaggio.

  Bracing herself, she opened the door.

  “By what right do you think you can have some lawyer stick his nose into my business?” her uncle demanded without preamble, barging past her into the living room. He was white-haired and red-faced, dressed in peach and green golfing attire, and built like a bear. He turned fiercely to face Denise.

  “If you think you’re going to scare me, you’re dead wrong.”

  Denise kept the door open and her hand on the knob.

  “I’m not trying to scare you, Uncle Roger, I just want what’s fair.”

  “You don’t know what fair is,” DiMaggio yelled. “Your father didn’t have the brains God gave a crawfish. If I hadn’t been around to tell him what to do he couldn’t have gotten his pants unzipped, and he sure couldn’t have run an oil company.”

  “That’s a very mean thing to say,” Denise protested angrily.

  “It’s the damn truth!” her uncle retorted. “He never was a strong man. He couldn’t even run his own house. Your mother and even pretty little you would have starved if I hadn’t bought the groceries.”

  “We would have been better off if you had never set foot in our house.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Denise was fighting hysteria. “Don’t you think I remember what you did?”

  “I never did anything that wasn’t intended to help you both. Nothing that wasn’t good for you.”

  “Then you’re a liar, Uncle Roger. You made me feel guilty, and used, and worthless…”

  Roger’s face had gone from red to purple.

  “Enough of that, you dumb little bitch!” he yelled. “I’ve got a good mind to…” He raised his arm as if to strike her.

  Denise dropped into her stance.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she threatened.

  Slowly, Roger lowered his hand.

  “You never were very smart, Denise,” he said.

  “But I’m getting there,” she prayed through her teeth.

  Roger set his jaw and stomped out the door. She immediately locked it behind him. Then she went quickly into the kitchen and downed her glass of wine.

  That was about the bravest thing I ever did, she
thought to herself. All these years he had been a cloud over her life. Roger’s hardly secret affair with her mother. Taunting her father. Taking liberties with her. Telling them to call him Papa Dom DiMaggio.

  Would she ever get free of him, and all the men like him that she kept letting in the door? Denise filled her wineglass up again.

  What do you suppose Roger will do now? she asked herself.

  It didn’t occur to her that she might have won the round.

  Watching the late news on television, his feet propped on a black leather trial case full of material about Cletus Busters, Tubby unaccountably had the feeling he was being observed. He took his eyes away from the footage of a blizzard in Buffalo and fixed them on the narrow horizontal blinds that covered the windows across the room. It was as though they were staring back at him. He shivered. Somewhere in the neighborhood a dog was barking.

  Nonchalantly he stood up, left the room, and went upstairs to the table beside his bed. He pulled open the bottom drawer and carefully extracted his aging Smith & Wesson .38. He loaded it and, holding the pistol by his side, slipped back downstairs.

  As quietly as he could, he turned off the lights in the kitchen and opened the back door. His yard was almost completely dark.

  Cautiously Tubby stepped outside, holding the gun down. The night was cool and misty. He could feel the dew on the grass seeping into his sneakers.

  Trying not to feel like a paranoid ninny, he made a furtive circuit of his home, peeking around each corner as he went, praying that none of the neighbors could see him. He checked the den window and found to his surprise that you actually could see the television show inside, if you came up close to the glass and looked through the slats at a sharp angle. If you moved your head up and down you could get a pretty good view. A car door slammed somewhere, and Tubby almost discharged his weapon into his foot.

  Muttering to himself, he unlocked the front door and went back inside.

  Across the street a tall figure stepped out of the shadows of a gnarled oak tree and walked swiftly down the block.

  * * *

  A light rain was falling, and Denise and her friend Carmella crossed the street in the middle of the block, dashing between the cars waiting for the light to change. Laughing, complaining, and covering their hair, they made it to the shelter of the Old Bull, a new pub boasting 101 beers. There was a crowd inside, mostly clean-cut and noisy.

  Neither woman had been there before, but they tried not to show it. They moved swiftly into the place and found a couple of stools halfway down the bar.

  Guys began hitting on them even before the bartender took their orders.

  “Why, hey there,” a charmer on the stool next to Denise, eyes a bit crossed, began.

  She looked him over and raised an eyebrow.

  “Can I buy you a beer?” he inquired loudly, propping himself up with his elbow on the bar.

  “No, thank you,” Denise said primly. “I’m waiting for someone.”

  She turned her back on the young man, who took it well, and said to Carmella, “I don’t like it here. It’s smoky.”

  “We don’t need to stay long,” Carmella said. “He should be here.”

  “Why did he pick this place?”

  “I don’t know. He just said to meet him here at eight o’clock.”

  “What’ll it be?” the bartender asked. He was good-looking, with curly ringlets of hair trailing down his neck and a gold ring in one ear.

  Carmella ordered a Pfefferneusse Lite. Denise ordered a cranberry juice.

  “I don’t see how you can breathe,” Denise complained again.

  Carmella dug around in her purse for some bills.

  “I shouldn’t have asked you to come,” she said, “but I was worried, that’s all.”

  “I know,” Denise said, “but you’ve got to get over that.”

  “I’m just not very good at handling things. You’re a much stronger person than I am.”

  “That’s a laugh,” Denise said. She had never felt very strong. “When I was a kid they called me Little Bambino at home because that’s the way I acted. I was afraid of my own shadow.”

  She was jostled from behind by one of a group of marauding college students, to judge from the boys’ baseball caps, who were mashing their way deeper into the tavern.

  “Do you have brothers and sisters?” Carmella asked.

  “No. Just me. The way my father and mother got along I’m surprised they even made one baby.”

  “Bad, huh? My parents fought a lot too.”

  “Mine didn’t fight. They just didn’t talk to each other,” Denise said. “My mother was one of those big whiners who know everything. She kept my father pretty much under her thumb.”

  “I guess nobody’s childhood is perfect,” Carmella said.

  “Are you sure he said meet you here?” Denise was getting impatient.

  “Yeah, when I called him and asked about the, you know, stuff, he told me about this place. He said it would be inconspicuous.”

  “I never did like the guy.”

  “I can’t stand him,” Carmella said.

  “Can’t stand who?” a voice behind them asked.

  Both women jumped a little and turned around together to behold the rather pale face of Dr. Randolph Swincter.

  “Can’t stand who?” he repeated, moving his eyes from one to the other.

  Alone at a table near the front door, Flowers grinned, then straightened out his face. He took a deep swallow from the draft beer the waitress put down before him and licked his lips in satisfaction.

  Tubby got the call just as he was falling off to sleep.

  Flowers told him what he had seen. The detective had followed Swincter home from work, to his apartment in the Garden District. Swincter had come out the door twenty minutes later and driven to the Old Bull Tavern on Magazine Street. Just trying to pick up girls, was Flowers’s first guess, but instead of going inside immediately, Swincter had remained in his car in the parking lot. He had seemed to slouch down in his seat when two young women parked nearby, as if hiding. Intrigued, Flowers had run their plates on his mobile phone, and it turned out the car was registered to one Denise DiMaggio. Wasn’t that one of Tubby’s clients? Finally Swincter had gone inside and joined the two women at the bar. Yeah, they were both well-formed and muscular and could be boxers.

  They had all talked for about half an hour. Swincter bought a round of drinks. And finally one of the women had gotten mad about something and stood up.

  Flowers heard her tell her friend that she could go or stay, it was up to her. Reluctantly, the friend had packed up and they had both left the bar. Swincter had stayed around a little longer, not talking to anyone, and then had gone home.

  “Odd coincidence,” Flowers called it.

  Tubby hung up, puzzled and angry. Was this Denise DiMaggio playing him for some kind of patsy?

  CHAPTER 22

  “You’ve got a hell of a nerve!” Bennett yelled. Tubby jerked the receiver away from his ear. “Serve me with a subpoena, will you. I’m going to see that you get disbarred for this.”

  “There’s nothing improper about subpoenaing you to testify at a murder trial, Mr. Bennett, or Dr. Bennett. I’m sorry you’ve taken such offense,” Tubby said.

  “Like hell you are. You and every other lawyer just trying to point the finger at someone other than your own client.”

  “I didn’t say you were guilty of anything, Doctor, but I do intend to question you about your relationship with the wife of the deceased. By the way, do you refer to chiropractors as doctors?”

  “I’ll have your license for this,” Bennett yelled.

  “Or you could explain to me now how long you’ve been seeing each other, and what Mrs. Valentine’s husband thought about your affair.”

  “Why you…” Bennett sputtered. Then he slammed down the phone.

  Tubby replaced his on the cradle gently.

  “Have a nice day,” he grumbled.

  Cherry
lynn was sitting cross-legged on the floor, sorting papers. She looked at him inquiringly.

  “I could hear that from here,” she said.

  “He’s a temperamental guy,” Tubby observed mildly. “If he does that on the stand the jury might believe he killed Valentine himself.”

  “Do you think he did?” she asked.

  “He’s a pretty good prospect,” Tubby said. “How are you coming?”

  Cherrylynn was collating copies of more than a dozen articles and academic papers published by Whitney Valentine. Flowers had collected them with the help of a very cooperative librarian at the university. Tubby didn’t know what they might reveal or even who might properly understand them.

  Then the phone rang again, and the second question was answered.

  “Good morning. Who is that gorgeous detective?” Dr. Tessier said cheerfully.

  “So, you’ve met Mr. Flowers. Did he ask you any embarrassing questions?”

  “Unfortunately, no. I’ve never met a detective before. He was far more polite than I would have expected.”

  “He’s known for his charm. What did he ask you?”

  “Oh, just about my work and who here either liked or didn’t like Whitney. There’s one thing I found out after he left, however, and I thought it might be important.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Dr. Valentine was scheduled to present a paper to the NeuroPharmacological Association meeting in Cincinnati this month. His co-presenter was Dr. Swincter. After Whitney’s death, Swincter canceled out.”

  “I wonder why.”

  “I don’t know. Dean Auchinschloss is the one who told me, and he didn’t know either. I haven’t seen Dr. Swincter to ask him. He’s working today, but I’m still at home.”

  “I’ll ask him myself. You’ve been very helpful, Trina. May I ask why?”

  After a pause, she said, “I think it’s only natural to be concerned when a colleague is murdered.”

  “Of course. I wish everybody felt the same way. You must have been good friends.”

  “Not really. We were professional competitors, in a way, but we respected each other’s research skills and attention to detail. I just don’t think Cletus had anything to do with it.”