The business’s main lobby made most of Europe’s royal palaces look like well-worn tenements. It was three stories high and had almost as many lights as Times Square. The carpets were imported, the ornate walls covered in detailed paintings, and the artwork on the ceiling might have been more complex than that found in the Sistine Chapel. The room’s liberal use of brass likely required the hotel to purchase Brasso by the truckload.
As Garner entered, several hundred well-heeled people of all ages milled about the lobby and a small choir sang carols on the stairs. It was a scene begging to be etched onto a Christmas card, and, the visitor mused, there were likely cards with that image on sale in the Palmer’s gift shop. Unlike earlier in the day, when he’d been in a hurry, this time the investigator tried to imagine what Sunshine must have been thinking when she strolled into the place earlier in the day. After all the nights she’d spent in flophouses and cheap dives, checking into the lap of luxury would have been a dream come true. Therefore, he couldn’t believe she would not have carried through on her plan.
As a now determined Garner crossed to the main desk, a small, well-dressed man, sporting slick-backed dark hair and a pencil-thin mustache, greeted him with a forced smile and two short words. “You’re back.”
“I am.”
“As I told you this morning,” the clerk explained, “we have no Sunshine registered here.”
“I’m not surprised,” Garner quipped, “who needs sunshine when you have all this artificial light. But, as I told you earlier, I dropped Sunshine off at your front door and watched her walk in last night. She had enough money in her purse to set up residence in your place until well into 1947. Now, before you shake your head at me, let’s go over this again. She was a small, frail, bottle blonde wearing too much makeup and a bright blue suit. She was also chewing gum.”
“That’s not our kind of customer,” came the quick response. “We only cater to the best. Our clients do not smack on gum.”
“What’s your name?” Garner demanded.
“Smith.”
“Okay, Smith, I want to look at your register from early this morning and talk to your people who were working in the lobby then.”
“I can’t show you the register,” came the curt reply, “that is against company policy. And if you want to visit with our overnight crew come back at midnight. Now, if you will excuse me, I have business that is actually important calling me.”
As the man turned his shoulders to start back to an inner office, the investigator reached over the counter, grabbed Smith’s right arm at the bicep, and spun him back to where they were face to face. Leaning close, Garner smiled and made a suggestion. “You will be helping me. Do you know the reason why?”
“Let me go or I’ll call the house detective,” Smith whispered.
While continuing to tightly grip the hotel employee’s arm, Garner reached into his inside coat pocket and grabbed his investigator’s badge. He pulled it out and flashed it just long enough for Smith to see it but not so long that the clerk realized it only identified him as a private cop and not a member of the Chicago Police.
“Now, do you still want to make that call?”
Smith slowly shook his head.
“Good, let me see the register.”
“So,” the clerk asked, as he pulled his coat down and smoothed the wrinkles, “this is an official police matter.”
“Let’s just say,” Garner coolly explained, “this involves a murder, and I don’t think you and your establishment want to be seen as impeding the department’s search for the party or parties responsible.”
Smith nodded and motioned for the investigator to follow him down to the far end of the counter. Grabbing a large book from under the desk, he opened it and spun it to where the visitor could easily read the page. “You’ll find the early morning entries on the right. The times they registered are in front of the names. The list won’t be long as not many folks check in after midnight.”
A quick search of the seven who registered around the time he dropped off Sunshine proved a disappointment. There were five men and two women and none of them matched his needs. Yet, as he studied the register a second time, something jumped out.
“What room is this woman in?” Garner demanded as he pointed to a rather unusual name.
“Oh, my,” Smith cracked, “do you suppose that is her real name?”
“I doubt it,” the investigator assured him, “but we can figure that out later. For the moment just let me know the room number for Mary Noel.”
The clerk checked the hotel log list of registered guests, nodded, and chuckled. “You’re not going to believe this, but Mary Noel is in room 1225.”
“If,” Garner solemnly answered, “this woman is the person I am looking for, she probably requested it. She came in here last night convinced Christmas had come early for her.”
“Do you want to go up and see her?” Smith asked. “Or would you rather call her room?”
“We’ll need to go up.”
“We?”
“Yes,” Garner explained, “you will need to come with me and bring your pass key. I doubt she’ll be there to let us in.”
Three minutes later the two men were at the door to room 1225. Not surprisingly, no one answered the investigator’s knocks.
“Open it up.”
The clerk slipped the key into the lock and turned it to the right. Grabbing the knob and twisting, Garner pushed the entry open. As he expected the room was empty and the bed hadn’t been slept in.
“She doesn’t appear to be here,” Smith noted.
“Would you ring the switchboard,” Garner suggested, “and see if there were any calls made from this room in the hour or so after Miss Noel checked in?”
As the clerk made the call, the investigator went to work searching the room. There was nothing in the dresser’s three drawers. Except for a Gideon Bible, the nightstand was empty. The guest hadn’t hidden anything under the mattress either. In the bath, Garner did find a brush containing strands of dyed hair matching Sunshine’s.
“Mr.—” Smith began, then paused and noted, “you didn’t tell me your name.”
“Garner,” the investigator barked as he walked out of the bath. “Now what did you find out?”
“Mr. Garner, there was one call to this room at just after four this morning. It originated from the phone in our lobby.”
“How do you know that?” the investigator demanded.
“While we can’t give you locations for outside calls, the switchboard shows where all the calls originate in this building and makes notes on those.”
Garner grimly nodded. That likely meant that he’d been tailed everywhere he went last night. If that were the case, by simply giving her a ride and dropping her off at the Palmer House he’d set up Sunshine to be murdered. That wasn’t the news he was hoping to uncover.
“Will there be anything else?” Smith asked.
“Don’t rent the room,” Garner suggested. “And don’t let anyone come in or go out.”
“I’ll make sure that we block this one off,” the clerk assured him. “Should I close the door on the way out?”
“Please.”
Garner rubbed his chin as he sank onto the bed to think. The man tailing him must have not only seen Sunshine but also the blue jade ring he forgot to retrieve from her hand. That ring marked her as the blonde the crime boss had hired him to kill, and since the investigator had dropped her off very much alive, Delono must have felt he was being double-crossed. After all, the crime boss had earlier questioned if Garner could kill a woman. Therefore, to ensure the hit was carried out, Delono must have had a second man ready to do the job just in case Garner went soft. It appeared the crime boss had every angle covered.
Glancing down to the nightstand the investigator once more noted the Bible. From this angle he observed that it was not completely flat. Something had been placed between some of the pages. Retrieving the book, Garner flipped it open to the ei
ghth chapter of John. Marking the spot was the money he’d given Sunshine. Setting the bills to the side, he scanned what was printed on the page. Someone had underlined the eleventh verse. Was it the woman? Had she read the story found on that page?
Putting the money back into the Bible, he closed it and returned the book to the drawer. He then picked up the phone and asked for an outside operator. When the phone company’s employee came on the line he said, “Please connect me with the homicide department. I need to speak to Lieutenant Lane Walker.”
The cop answered on the third ring. “Walker here.”
“Lane, it’s Bret. Come over to the Palmer House and meet me in Room 1225. I think I can fill you in on what happened to Sunshine. By the way, it looks like her murder had nothing to do with robbery.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Just get over here. I’m in the room and I’m not going anywhere. Once you see what I found, I doubt if you’ll need any explanation.”
14
Thursday, December 19, 1946
7:15 P.M.
Tiffany wasn’t completely surprised when Bret Garner called her at work. After all, even when he held a gun on her, she still observed a glint of approval in his eyes. Yet, she was more than a little taken aback when, after he apologized for kidnapping her, he asked her out for dinner. That didn’t happen every day. She was about to turn him down until he mentioned he’d like to take her to J. H. Ireland’s Oyster House. In fact, in hopes she’d say yes, he’d already made reservations for the high-class joint’s Lobster Grotto Room. In the Windy City, the elite met at Ireland’s and a reporter didn’t get into that place unless there was a murder. So, even though her date was with the same man who threatened to rub her out the night before, suddenly she was more than willing to dig out and iron her nicest evening dress, bundle up to fight off the Arctic cold, and ride with the investigator over to 632 North Clark Street.
Six finely dressed employees greeted them at the door, and just inside the lobby, Tiffany spotted a half dozen millionaires, two professional athletes, a Broadway star, and a member of President Harry Truman’s cabinet. As they were escorted into the Lobster Grotto Room, she picked out at least two dozen members of Chicago’s high society and two semifamous Hollywood actors. When the couple was seated at their wall-side table covered with a blue tablecloth and lit by a ornate lamp, she realized that her date had seemingly missed the long parade of Who’s Who. For the moment, he seemed to only have eyes for her.
Garner studied her as if she were a work of art, then took a deep breath and announced, “Your dress is amazing.” He paused for a moment allowing his eyes to linger on her floor-length, dark green holiday frock before adding, “it hugs your curves like a Rocky Mountain road.”
“Is that good?” she asked.
“No,” Garner replied, “it is well beyond good. My goodness, you’re a vision. Your eyes are as blue as the Pacific Ocean in late summer and, might I add, it should also be a crime to have skin that creamy.”
“Let’s go back to the eyes and the sky,” she suggested, “the cream comment reminds me of my teenage years living on a farm in Wisconsin. Let me assure you that getting up on cold mornings before school to milk the cows is not the way to spend your childhood. So please stay away from any compliments that have cream, butter, milk, or cheese references.”
“Got it,” he laughed.
Throughout the meal, as Garner entertained her with stories of growing up outside Little Rock, Arkansas, and his days of playing football at Ouachita College, Tiffany found herself becoming more fascinated by the man’s wit, surprisingly gentle nature, and intelligence. By the time they’d finished their dessert of New York cheesecake and coffee, she’d almost given in to his charms. Yet, each time he leaned close enough for her to smell his bay rum aftershave, she remembered the previous night and the way he’d allowed her to believe he was going to kill her. Thus, just like a room with a faulty thermostat, she was running hot and then cold and then back to hot in a matter of minutes. Sensing a need to gain control of the conversation, she shifted the subject away from his old stories and her appearance to the much more pressing subjects of murders and mayhem. Surely, guts and gore would make him forget love and romance.
“You know, Bret, Lane still considers you a suspect in Sunshine’s death.”
She immediately realized her ploy had worked, as Garner frowned, leaned away from the table, and looked across the room. A few seconds later, he rested his elbows on the table while touching the fingers from both hands together in front of his face. As if frozen in place, he remained that way for several minutes, until he finally shifted his eyes back to her. His verbalized thought was short, but hardly sweet.
“Lane thinks like a dumb cop rather than a smart one.”
“When he called me this afternoon with an update,” she explained, “he said you could have planted the money in the Bible and the brush in the bathroom.”
The investigator dropped his hands back onto the table and shook his head. “He doesn’t really buy that for a moment. He’s just trying to plant suspicion in your mind. He doesn’t want us getting too close.”
She laughed, “Lane doesn’t really care about me, he just likes to string me along. He’s stood me up more times than he’s actually taken me out.”
“If you buy that,” the investigator quipped, “you really are a dumb blonde.” He let his words hover in the air for a few seconds before asking, “What’s he told you about the war?”
“Well,” she snapped, “that came from out of left field.” She paused and looked deeply into the man’s face. For the first time tonight, it was etched with what looked like concern. After tracing the rim of her coffee cup with her index finger, she admitted, “Other than the fact we won, he’s not mentioned it.”
“I’m not surprised,” Garner quietly answered. “Let me fill you in on a couple of things. I sold myself to Delono as a hit man by pretending I had Mr. Walker’s war experience. Lane was such a crack shot the Marines made him a sniper. He picked off countless men who never knew they were in his sights. One minute they were alive, the next, after Lane squeezed a trigger, they were dead. They had no warning their lives were about to be snuffed out. Most times it happened during lulls in battle.” The investigator loosened his tie and frowned before explaining, “There are some snipers who love their jobs; he didn’t. It gave him nightmares. So, while he avoids talking about those days, he can’t escape thinking about them. For that reason, he’s likely never going to let himself get too close to anyone. So he’s not playing a game with you, he’s playing a game with himself. You just happen to be in that game from time to time.”
“I didn’t know,” she whispered. She carefully considered what she’d just learned before adding, “I just thought he was a jerk, because that was his nature.”
“Well,” the investigator laughed, “maybe he is that, too. But you need to know this. There are a lot of men, and I’m one of them, who can take what we saw and experienced in war and leave that baggage behind. There are others who carry it with them. Lane carries it with him. Inside that suitcase are the faces of every man he had in his sights and killed.”
A suddenly chilled Tiffany looked away from her date, rubbed her arms through her dress, and studied the bright red lobster painted into the opulent dining room’s ceiling. There had been a change in Lane. She’d noticed that in Hawaii during the war and even more so when he’d returned to Chicago last year. In the past, he’d been inconsiderate and irresponsible, but he’d never been cold and distant.
“Back to the present,” Garner suggested. “Lane tells me while we are trying to smash organized crime, you have your sights set on a Santa ring.”
She smiled now, thankful the investigator had changed the subject. “There are too many Santas in Chicago right now.”
He chuckled, “More every year it seems.”
“I’m serious,” she resolutely explained, “there’s too much money coming into those c
harity buckets and not enough making it to the city funds designated to buy gifts for war orphans and widows. So, to find out what’s going down, right now I have newsstand operators and paperboys secretly watching those Santas and taking notes. I’m going to find out which of the jolly elves are being naughty and which are being nice.”
He grinned, “The bad Santas really better watch out.”
“It’s no joke.”
“I get it,” Garner assured her. “Maybe I’ll do some digging, too. If I find anything, I’ll let you know.” He leaned close enough for her to once again get a whiff of his aftershave. “How about catching a movie with me tomorrow night?”
She almost agreed, but the thought of the bogus Santa racket caused her to shake her head. “I’ve got to work late tomorrow. In fact, I need to be getting home right now and catching any calls that come in from my spies. Maybe we can do it another time.”
“Maybe,” the investigator cracked, “if Lane doesn’t toss me in the slammer or Delono doesn’t pick me off.”
15
Friday, December 20, 1946
9:25 A.M.
Tiffany Clayton, dressed in a gray suit, light blue blouse, charcoal pumps, and carrying her huge black purse, was escorted by a law clerk into the plush office of Judge Ben Jacobs. The tall, distinguished man was seated behind his paper-covered desk reading what looked to be a law journal, but when he became aware of her presence he immediately set the magazine to the side, stood, and smiled. His thick, mostly dark hair was streaked with gray, his eyes were small and brown, his brow pronounced, and his jaw firm. Though he was well into his fifth decade, the man who most felt would soon be the state’s next governor maintained a slim, athletic body. He wore a dark, pinstriped suit, white shirt, and conservative black-and-red tie. His black shoes sported a military shine and his only jewelry appeared to be a thin, gold wedding band.
The Fruitcake Murders Page 10
