Blue Goodness (Michael Kaplan Mysteries)

by David W. Cowles

  Michael scratched his head. “Not exactly. I estimated the total value to be about nine million dollars, give or take a couple hundred thousand,” he replied casually, with a wave of his arm.

  Mark’s brows tightened. “Nine million dollars. That’s a good round number. I’ll use that figure in my report.” The detective made a note on his pad. “Who else, besides the two of you, knew you kept the gold ingots in Kimberly’s closet?”

  “No one. Nobody else knew we had them,” Michael replied.

  “Not even your wife?” Mark quizzed skeptically.

  “No. Not even Myra,” Michael asserted.

  “Especially not Myra,” Kimberly added mischievously.

  Mark turned toward Kimberly. His voice started out patronizingly, almost coy, and very quiet, but ended as a roar. “This may seem like a silly question,” he began, “and, perhaps it’s none of my damn business, but, why in hell did you keep nine million dollars in gold sitting in your closet?” he bellowed.

  Kimberly, who was still quite nervous from the burglary, nearly spilled her coffee because of Mark’s outburst. Her turquoise eyes became large liquid limpid pools. “Because I’d already used all the space under the beds for storage boxes. Winter woolens, electric blankets, that sort of thing,” she replied innocently.

  Mark could contain himself no more. “I can see this question and answer routine is getting us nowhere. Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me how you acquired the gold bars. I know the Times didn’t give ’em to you for a Christmas bonus.”

  “Not hardly,” Michael laughed. “Okay, Mark, here’s the scoop. About a week ago, when I was inside the abandoned mine out in the desert—that’s where I found the animal carcasses—a big rat startled me. I jumped back and fell through a rotted wooden wall into a small room, a room that was completely sealed off from the rest of the mine,” he explained. “We found the gold bars inside a wooden crate in that room and brought them here for safekeeping.”

  Mark Caruso frowned. “You do realize, don’t you, Michael, you should have turned them in to Metro immediately, so we could try to find the rightful owners?” he admonished. “If the owners of found property can’t be located within a period of sixty or ninety days—I’m not sure which, but it’s gotta be spelled out somewhere in the Nevada Revised Statutes—the property will be returned to the finders; in this instance, to you and Kimberly.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that,” Michael admitted. “That’s exactly what we intended to do. I thought we should wait to turn in the gold bars until we learned who had dumped the animals into the mine. It wasn’t until this morning that I knew for sure the culprit was Gunther Hogg.”

  “I know. I saw your story in this afternoon’s paper. Hogg’s in quite a bit of hot water these days—the juvenile seduction matter, his Veterinary Board license revocation hearing, and, now, disposing illegally of dead animals,” Mark observed.

  “You can also charge Hogg with the attempted murder of Stewart Lamb,” Michael informed him. “I have a videotape of Hogg telling his attorney, Oscar Stein, that he was going to murder Lamb to prevent him from testifying at the Veterinary Board hearing.”

  Mark slapped a palm to his forehead. “Whaaat! I don’t believe this, Michael. You have evidence that exculpates you in the Lamb matter and points the finger at Hogg, and probably incriminates Stein as well, and you haven’t brought it to me? For heaven’s sake, why not?”

  “I didn’t come into possession of the tape until late last night. I planned to take it to you this afternoon, but I ran out of time. And then, there was the burglary. It’s been a very hectic day for me, Mark.” Michael wiped his brow with his sleeve.

  Mark had been writing furiously on his legal pad. “Where’s the tape now?”

  “It’s locked up in the safe at the Times,” Michael told him. I’ll hand-deliver the cassette to you the first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Be sure you do. Okay. Back to the gold ingots. If we do locate them, can you positively identify that they’re the same ones you found in the mine?” Mark looked first to Michael, then to Kimberly.

  “I don’t know,” Michael answered truthfully. “I suppose all gold bars look pretty much alike. Of course, we know the quantity and approximate size and shape of the ones we had, if that’s any help.”

  “What about markings?” Mark questioned. “I’ve never actually seen a gold bar, but I have seen pictures of them. As I recall, the bars were always stamped with something—the name of the smelter, perhaps, or the weight, or a serial number.”

  Michael thought for a few minutes. “No, I don’t think the bars we found had any markings on them at all. Do you agree with that, Kimberly?”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “I don’t believe they were marked in any way. I’m sure I’d remember if they were.”

  “So,” Mark summarized. “You can’t prove ownership, because the gold bars didn’t belong to you; you can’t prove possession, because no one knew you had them, except for the two of you. And you can’t give a complete description of what they look like. Therefore, even if we do catch the thief red-handed, it will be your word against his. He could maintain that the ingots had been in his family for years, and nobody can prove otherwise.”

  “Yeah. I see your point,” Michael accepted glumly. “Wait a minute. There might be a way to prove the gold was taken from this house. There might be a witness to the burglary.”

  Mark looked at Michael expectantly. “Oh? How’s that?” he asked.

  “A man’s been following me around all day. A private detective, I think.”

  “Why would a private detective be following you?” Mark scowled.

  “Well,” Michael hedged. “I’m not absolutely sure, mind you, but I think Myra’s hired him to keep an eye on me. Why, I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense. If she wants a divorce, Nevada’s a no-fault divorce state, and—”

  “I know, Michael,” Mark interrupted impatiently. “Get to the point. Can you describe the guy who’s been following you?”

  Michael thought for a minute. “Yeah. I got a pretty good look at him. He looks like a derelict—about fifty, I’d say, with thinning gray hair and a scraggly beard, also gray. He drives an old blue Honda Accord.

  “When we left for dinner with a friend at a little after six this evening, I spotted the guy sitting in his car, parked a couple of doors down the street. I wrote down his license number.” Michael reached into his shirt pocket and retrieved a scrap of paper, which he handed to Mark.

  “On the way to the restaurant, I checked behind several times, but I didn’t see the man following us. His car was gone when we returned, but it’s possible he stayed around the house for a while, thinking we’d be right back. If so, he might have seen the thief. It would have been very obvious to anyone, especially a private detective, that the house was being burglarized. Nobody could have taken the gold bars out of the house in one trip—they were much too heavy—so the detective would have had a number of opportunities to observe the burglar.”

  “Michael, you’re trying to separate flyspecks from black pepper,” Mark ridiculed. He suspected that Myra’s private detective was born of Michael’s guilt over his cohabitation with Kimberly and his affair with Soozie.

  “First of all, I doubt if the man you saw parked on the street last night is a private detective. He was probably just some guy sitting there in his car waiting for someone. It’s probably your imagination that you’re being followed. A lot of people in Las Vegas drive blue Honda Accords; it’s a popular car and color. Once you convinced yourself you were being tailed, every blue Honda that happened to drive up behind you caught your attention and became suspect in your eyes.

  “However, assuming you’re right and a private detective was following you, there would be no reason for him to stick around after you drove off. He’d either continue following you—which you admit he didn’t—or go on about his business.

  “Taking my hypothesis a step further: On the off chance he did
wait for a while, for whatever reason, if a private detective saw anyone break into Kimberly’s house, he would have called Metro right away. I’ll check out the license number you gave me, but I don’t think it’s going to shed any light on the burglary or help locate the gold ingots.”

  SOOZIE WAS SITTING UP IN BED. Her television was on, the set tuned to an old horror movie about cannibalistic women from outer space. She was not paying attention to the tube, however. The sound was turned down and her eyes were closed. She had just read for the umpteenth time Michael’s article about Gunther Hogg dropping the animals into the mine shaft and had virtually memorized the entire article. Soozie gloated, knowing Hogg would soon have to pay the price for that malefaction. One more painful step in his gantlet. But the coup de grâce was still to come.

  All day, Soozie looked forward to Michael’s visit, but she believed him when he told her an emergency had come up. He could not lie to her. Not now. Not ever.

  No matter. There was no rush. After the spectacular results of the night before—Michael had followed her instructions to the letter and asked his wife for a divorce—she knew exactly what to do to manipulate him, to keep him under her complete control. And he would never be the wiser.

  Michael had been a challenge. He was stronger than the others. Usually, all it took was a little sex and any man would willingly do her bidding. Michael seemed immune to sexual lures, Soozie learned after they spent the afternoon in the house on Habanero Street, but she was resourceful and had other avenues. First, a little sodium pentothal, valium, and acepromazine in his coffee to relax him and remove his inhibitions, followed by hypnotic suggestions and the promise of sex, and he would do anything she asked. Last night, she had the foresight to lace the coffee beans with the drugs before Michael arrived, so there was no possibility of him catching her in the act. Of course, her cup of coffee was the same as his, but she took only a few sips and surreptitiously emptied her cup of the brew into a potted plant when Michael turned his head momentarily.

  Michael would become her love slave. She would have him leave his wife and move in with her. Tomorrow, she would empty a closet to make room for his clothes. And as soon as his divorce was final, they would be married.

  Soozie watched a few minutes of the movie, but the acting was terrible and the plot hardly noticeable. She turned off the television and the lights and put her head down. Her dreams tonight would be pleasant, blocking out the harsh memories that had been haunting her and tearing at her soul.

  GUNTHER HOGG PULLED THE TAB on the last can of a six-pack of Bud. He was still keyed up, unable to relax, unable to even consider trying to go to sleep. Every day it seemed his troubles multiplied. Today it was because of an article in the Las Vegas Times. How in hell did that damned reporter tie him to the animals in the mine? Tomorrow he would have to go back to Oscar Stein’s office and plead with the money-grubbing shyster to help him out. Gunther didn’t have any other option. His cash was nearly depleted, little money was coming in to the clinic, and his real property had been signed over to Stein.

  He flipped channels, stopping on an old sci-fi horror movie about cannibalistic women from outer space. He had seen it so many times he could mouth the dialog along with the actors, but the Amazon-type women, who wore the briefest of halters and shortest of shorts, turned him on.

  One actress in particular always reminded him of his old girlfriend, Soozie. The woman on screen had red hair, somewhat darker than Soozie’s, cut short in a mannish style. She was the leader of the pack of women, all of whom groveled at her feet. The movie had been made in the fifties, before they filmed explicit sex, but it was easy to read between the lines and behind the innuendoes. The women were lesbians and their victims unsuspecting super macho males, although Gunther told himself that most of the actors were fags in real life.

  The movie ended, and Gunther turned to a rerun of the eleven o’clock news. The local TV station had apparently picked up the story about him disposing of the animals from the newspaper article. The newscaster went on to tell about the forthcoming Board hearing and alluded to Gunther’s possible involvement with the attack on Lamb.

  A few weeks earlier, Gunther was a happy-go-lucky professional with a successful veterinary practice, a wife and girlfriend, plenty of money to spend, and the respect of the community. Now he’d hit the bottom of the barrel. At least, he thought, nothing more can possibly go wrong. Gunther recalled the old expression: Cheer up, things could always be worse. But he failed to remember the rest of the saying: So I cheered up, and sure enough—things got worse.

  MYRA TURNED THE TELEVISION ON, hoping she could find something to turn her mind away from her troubles. An old science fiction horror movie had just started, something about cannibalistic women from outer space. It reminded her of Michael. She knew how much he loved campy old “B” movies. She wondered if he was watching it.

  Probably not. He was with some woman, doing God knows what. If he wasn’t with Kimberly, he would be with the carrot-top or the brunette or even someone else.

  When Margie—Myra’s so-called friend who worked with her at the Gold Crest—had called last evening and pretended to be so concerned because she had just spotted Michael having dinner with another woman, Myra ran out of her condo like a fool and sat in her car outside the restaurant and waited until Michael and the woman came out. She followed them to a veterinary hospital and watched while Michael used a key to unlock the door. He went inside with the woman, and a half hour or so later, after doing who-knows-what, they came out and Michael drove the woman to her apartment. Myra waited and watched, and after fifteen minutes or so, the lights in the living room went off, the lights in the bedroom went on for just a few minutes, and when they were turned off again, the only light coming through the drapes was the flickering glow of what she knew to be a television. An hour or so later, Michael, looking somewhat disheveled, left the apartment, walked to his car, and drove to Kimberly’s house.

  Why had she bothered checking up on him? It had been upsetting to get the call from Margie, but even more distressing to find out for certain her husband was cheating on her with yet another woman.

  And then, this morning, Michael came right out and told her he was in love with someone else and wanted a divorce. He said the words not just once, but twice. Then, he seemed confused, and said he wanted to talk about the divorce later, and promised to call her, and she had sat around the condo all evening waiting for his call, but it never came.

  What had gone wrong? Just a little over a week ago they were probably the most happily married couple in the world, talking about buying a house and planning to have a baby. Now she was sleeping alone, and her husband was sleeping around.

  AFTER MARK LEFT, Kimberly stepped behind Michael’s chair and rubbed his shoulders tantalizingly. “Do you still want to see Soozie tonight, or perhaps give Myra a call? It’s fairly early. They should still be awake.”

  “No,” he replied. “It’s been a grueling day, and I’m not up to any more confrontations tonight. Is it too late to see the movie you mentioned earlier?”

  Kimberly checked her watch. “No. It doesn’t start for another twenty minutes. Would you like me to make a bowl of popcorn?”

  “Yeah, that would be great,” Michael grinned appreciatively. “I’d also like something cold to drink, if it’s not too much trouble. Maybe one of your margaritas. I’m really keyed up and I need something to help me relax.”

  “It’s no bother at all,” Kimberly purred. “Why don’t you slip out of your clothes and into your bathrobe, so you’ll be comfortable, while I pop the corn and make us a pitcher of margaritas,” Kimberly suggested.

  “Good idea,” Michael agreed. “Maybe I’ll even take a quick shower to help me wind down.”

  Kimberly retreated into the kitchen and Michael went into his bedroom. When he came out a few minutes later, the popcorn and margaritas were sitting on the coffee table and Kimberly was lounging on the sofa in her short turquoise nightie.

&
nbsp; They cozied next to each other and watched the movie, a bloody horror film about cannibalistic women from outer space. One of the women reminded Michael of Soozie. They finished the popcorn, and Kimberly refilled the margarita pitcher twice. Another movie came on, a romance of unrequited love. Kimberly had to wipe her eyes at every sad scene, and openly bawled when the leading man finally realized he loved the woman he had spurned, but it was too late, as she was dying of some dread unidentified disease. Michael, however, missed the end of the movie, having fallen asleep shortly after it started.

  Michael was shocked when he awakened the following morning to discover he was lying in Kimberly’s bed. He was alone, however. Kimberly was in the kitchen, humming brightly to herself and making breakfast.

  Thirty

  MICHAEL BUTTERED A PIECE of whole wheat toast and spread a dollop of orange marmalade on top. Kimberly sat opposite him, smiling broadly as she sipped her coffee. She had on the same short see-through turquoise nightie she’d worn the night before—nothing else—and was gleefully aware her revealing attire was making Michael very uncomfortable.