by Earl Emerson
Herman Percy strode into the apartment again, looked at me and said, “You get ahold of anyone yet?”
“Almost,” I said, grinning weakly.
“I want you downtown when you get done. You’ll have to make a statement.”
“Sure thing.”
“By the way,” said Percy, smiling like a man who had just won a coveted trophy, “we nailed the nephew. A prowl car nabbed him trying to thumb a ride off the freeway.”
“What’d he say?”
“Don’t know yet. But he tried to take a swing at one of the officers who picked him up. I’m going down to interrogate him now. It doesn’t look good.”
It took me a long while and a lot of imagination before I could conjure a picture of Burton taking a poke at anyone, much less a city cop with a pistol strapped to his hip. ?
Chapter Twelve
SHEETS OF RAIN SPATTERED THE CONDOMINIUM WINDOWS noisily. I pored through Mary. Dawn Crowell’s small personal phone directory twice before discovering the notation on the inside cover, feeling like an absolute fool for not looking there first. It said:
To whom it may concern:
Should anything happen to me, please contact my brothers:
Stephen J. Crowell
Shady Lane Rest Home
Sedalia, Missouri
or
Edward and Clarice Crowell
1-213-777-4358
29 Beach Rd.
Malibu, California
So, she had at least two additional brothers besides Angus. That made sense. Families were larger sixty or seventy years ago. I dialed the number in Malibu. An old man who had a very slow and very deep voice answered on the first ring, as if he were sitting next to the telephone.
“Edward Crowell?”
“This is Ed Crowell speaking.”
“My name is Thomas Black. Im calling about your sister, Mary Dawn Crowell.”
“Yes, of course. What is it? Is it her heart?” He spoke slowly and lugubriously.
“I’m afraid she passed away this morning.”
He paused, and then said, “Are you the manager of her condominium?”
“No, sir. I’m a private detective. I came up here early this afternoon to speak to your sister and found her dead.”
“Had she been ill? We hadn’t heard anything.”
“Im afraid someone murdered her.”
“Murder?”
“That’s right.”
“A detective? Why on earth would a detective want to speak to Mary?”
“It’s rather complicated, but I assure you Mary had done nothing wrong.”
“My God. My God. Murder? Who? A cat burglar? A rapist? Some young thug?”
“Good questions, Mr. Crowell. Nobody seems to know anything right now. Can you fly up here today and take care of…”
“On my way. Im on my way. Let me call the airport and make arrangements. I’ll phone you back in a few minutes so you’ll know when to expect me.”
I told him where I was and we hung up. For ten minutes, I watched a couple of sleepy-eyed bumblers trying to shove Mary Dawn into a large plastic body bag. The bag was too big, the men were in too much of a hurry, and they zippered a lock of the corpse’s thin, graying hair grotesquely outside the bag. A squat oriental officer dusting for fingerprints shuffled over and asked me what I had handled in the apartment besides the phone, which he had already checked. I told him.
The phone rang. ‘Black here.”
“Ed Crowell. Clarice and I will be in Washington in
about three hours. Ive a lodge brother who flies and he’s bringing us up. I’ll lease a car at the airport.”
“The body will be downtown, Mr. Crowell. It won’t be pretty.”
“Don’t fret about me. I was a funeral director for thirty-five years. Now, who should we speak to when we get to Bellingham?”
“A detective named Herman Percy is in charge. Id like to speak to you also, if that’s all right.”
“By all means. Where do we get in touch?”
“I’ll wait for you downtown.”
I liked his no-nonsense approach to life. Or to death.
Percy sent me to a vacant office for an hour where I dictated my statement to a bespectacled police officer who was straining to grow a mustache. Percy came in, coatless, perused the statement, had me sign it and then asked, “How well do you know this nephew, Nadisky?”
“Not well. I’ve been around him. We haven’t cut our thumbs or anything.”
“You want to see him for a few moments?”
“Is that kosher?”
“Not usually. Me, I get creative once in a while. He seems to have a grudge against you. I was thinking if he came face to face with you, he might blurt out something stupid.”
“Like a confession?”
“Or a motive.”
“I doubt if he did it.”
“You let me worry about that.”
Burton was ensconced in another office similar to the one I had been in. The only furnishings were file cabinets, a coffee machine, which wasn’t percolating anything, and a desk buried in papers. A small mirror was bracketed in the wall. It was obviously a one-way window connected to the next office. Percy would observe from behind it.
When Percy and I walked into the room, Burton leaped up and tried to take a poke at me, both his hands cuffed in front. A burly uniformed officer. restrained him, shoving him back down into his chair with one thick hand.
“You prick!” Burton bellowed.
“Burton,” I said.
“You prick. You squealed on me the first chance you got.”
“What’s the matter? You get into the catnip?”
“You ask me what’s the matter? You people think you’re all one cut above someone just because you have more money than they do. That’s it. Judge everyone by their income. That makes Al Capone upper class and Carl Sandburg lower class. That makes Herod upper class and Christ lower class. Good way to do things. It never occurs to you that some people may have different values. You think because I write poems and don’t have a master’s degree in business administration that I’m some sort of slime that crawled out from under a sidewalk. I’ll tell you something. You people are wigged out. You don’t know what life is all about. None of you.”
Percy looked at me and spoke calmly, in stark contrast to Burton’s shrillness. He had seen it all too many times and he was tired of waiting for the second-act curtain.
“Claims he didn’t kill her. Claims the old lady was going to meet someone else. That he was only there for a few minutes and she shooed him out the door because she had a visitor coming.” Percy looked away from the huffing, wild-eyed Burton distastefully. Nobody liked a killer. “Well, I’ll leave you two here with Simmons. I’ve got some other business to take on.”
“Are you holding him?” I asked, more so that Burton could hear the answer than anything else. If they were true to form, they had left him up in the air over his fate. Percy stared down at Burton for a moment and surveyed the prisoner almost sympathetically. Almost. Him? You bet.”
I walked over behind the desk so that Simmons was between myself and Burton, glancing out a dirty window at the rain and the dingy buildings across the street. Simmons didn’t seem to give a hoot what happened. He pawed through a Sports Illustrated, twisted his hips and farted loudly. I hoped they were getting all this on tape.
Glowering like a cat that had just been de-balled with a pair of rusty shears, Burton’s face reddened even more, the veins bubbled out on his neck and he tried hard to think of something vicious to say to me.
“Jesus, you’re a sneaky bastard,” he said.
A mouse under his eye, his lip split, wearing faded jeanshe did not look like much. Except for his baby face, he looked like one of the thugs on the local news being led, shackled, down a dark hallway, a gang of cameramen tagging along. He fit the mold. Sullen. Indigent. Unshaved. Belligerent. Disrespectful.
“Did you kill her?” “Sneakiest sonofabitch I eve
r ran across.”
“I don’t know why you’re ticked off at me. All I did was tell the cops those were your poems in the living room. They would have found out anyway. Your name was on them. You must have left prints all over the place. They were going to pick you up sooner or later. Why all the pandemonium?”
“But you had to help them along.”
“A guy gets mad this way, Burton, especially a mild-mannered guy like you, and it makes people suspect he’s trying to hide something.”
Burton glared at me and mulled it over for a few minutes. “Eat shit,” he said, finally.
“Flowery words won’t turn my head.”
Suddenly Burton’s face collapsed. He slammed his forehead onto his folded hands on the desk.
“You okay, guy?”
“What do you care?” he asked, bitterly, his lips an inch off the desk top.
“I want to see you and your wife and your little girl back together. That’s all I’m in this for.”
Burton swiveled his head up at me, his pale blue eyes trying to discern whether or not I was conning him.
“Have you seen Melissa?” he asked, a trace of hope lacing his voice.
“Nope. You?”
He shook his head despondently. “Gawd. What’s happening to me?” he said, with a hiccuppy sigh. “What the hell’s happening?”
“It’s just pressure, kid. It downs all of us. Don’t let it depress you.”
“What can I do?” he whined.
“Tell me what happened this morning.”
“I hitched up to talk to Aunt Mary. You said she knew where Melissa was.”
“I said she got a call from Melissa.”
“Yeah. That’s what she told me, too. She got a call. She never did like me much. She couldn’t believe the way Melissa and I were living.” A touch of pride infected his voice, as if the way he and Melissa were living was something they had worked very hard to achieve.
“I guess that was part of the whole trouble. Melissa’s parents didn’t approve of the way we were living either.”
“The evidence doesn’t suggest Melissa was too keen on things herself.”
Burton looked at me for a moment, ice in his eyes. Although he was acting like a three-year-old, he had more strength of character than I’d given him credit for.
He inhaled deeply and said, “Maybe you’re right. I just want to find her. I need her.” He stared down at some obscene graffiti on the desk, his strength dissolving suddenly. I feared he was going to start crying.
“Melissa was supposed to marry a doctor. That’s what her folks wanted. Especially her mother. Or an executive. Someone with money. Me…my folks wanted me to be an architect. Then Dad decided I should be an accountant because I got A’s in math. All I ever wanted to do was write poems. You should have seen the cop’s face downstairs when he asked my occupation. You should have seen it!”
I said, “It’s not very practical.”
“You too? I knew it. You’re cold. People are cold. You should have seen all the stiff faces on the freeway. They won’t give rides easy. I heard one of the cops mention a private dick from Seattle and right away I knew it was you. I’m sorry for what I Called you. You’re right. They would have pinched me anyway. I guess I must look guilty as hell.”
In the other room, Percy summed it up. Burton had come to Bellingham angry, demented, looking for his wife. When Mary Crowell wouldn’t tell him where Melissa was, he flew into a rage and clubbed her. In his haste to escape, he forgot his poems. Plain and simple.
“Nice theory,” I said. “But anyone who knows Burton will tell you it isn’t possible. He’s not the violent type.” Percy laughed. “Not the violent type? He tried to hit you. He took a swing at my two officers when they arrested him…”
“He’s scared. He’s almost paranoid of cops. He’d never hit an old lady. His lawyer will get a couple hundred people on the stand to testify to that.”
“We’ll see,” said Percy.
“Besides,” I said, “she had an appointment this morning. She told me that. She told him that. I didn’t prompt him. He brought it up himself.”
Percy said, “I doubt if this phantom appointment showed. And if they did, Mary didn’t answer her door because she was already in never-never land.”
“What about Holder?”
Percy gave me a look of incomprehension.
“The guy outside in the parking lot,” I said, refreshing his memory.
“He was tailing you. He admitted that.”
“And?”
“What you want me to do? Arrest him? No law against tailing somebody.”
After the dust settled and they had led Burton away to a cell, I sat down and tried to clear my mind. Someone had killed my dog. A woman was missing. Someone had attacked Kathy and ransacked her apartment. Someone had murdered Aunt Mary. I could assume all these events were related in one manner or another. Maybe they were. Maybe they weren’t.
I went outside and trundled two blocks through a light rain until I found a pay phone booth that smelled like a wet poodle. It was two-thirty. Kathy answered on the third ring.
“June
Im home,” I said.
“Ward?”
“You’re early.”
“I cut class.”
“How’re things?”
“Oh, miserable,” said Kathy. “Professor Creighton and I and Burton all went before a judge this morning but Crowell has a lawyer and he’s really good. He said Melissa was hiding from Burton because Burton beat her and the reason they snatched the little girl was because they were afraid Burton would run off with her and abuse her too. They claimed they had Melissa’s permission to get Angel. It was confusing even to me, and I knew what was happening. He knows how to muddle anything. The judge was so mixed up it wasn’t even funny. Now he wants more information before he’ll do anything.”
“So some pineapple abducts his granddaughter and the judge says fine?”
“Temporarily. We could have asked to have her put into a home, put her on neutral turf, but Burton figures Angel’s had enough upset. We tried to talk Burton out of itafter all, it’s not a strategically smart moveto let his father-in-law keep Angelbut he wouldn’t budge. Unless we can find Melissa and straighten out this mess, Crowell’s likely to keep control of his granddaughter for a long while. That lawyer is smooth, Thomas. Real smooth. I thought Professor Creighton was pretty slick, but I guess he’s a little rusty. But we’ll work it out. Where are you phoning from?”
“Bellingham.”
“Did you talk with Melissa’s aunt again?”
“I drove up to see her but she was dead when I got here.”
“Cisco?”
“Pancho…”
“Did you say…”
“Somebody beaned her with a bottle of Heinz ketchup.”
“Cisco?”
“That’s what I said. They yanked it out of the refrigerator and clubbed her over the head with it. It was a Heinz economy size.” ?
Chapter Thirteen
WHILE WAITING FOR ANGUS CROWELL’S MORTICIAN BROTHER, I made arrangements for Kathy to stay with her girlfriend until I got back into town. I saw no point in taking chances. Maybe the burglary wasn’t related to any of this, but some peabrain with a penchant for mayhem was still loose and I didn’t want him stalking Kathy.
Edward and Clarice Crowell arrived within fifteen Minutes of when they had promised.
After he had identified his sister’s remains, discussed matters with the cops, driven behind me in their rented Subaru to Mary’s condo, and pawed lackadaisically through some of her things, Edward was ready to talk.
We ended up at an International House of Pancakes. Slow of foot and slow of mouth, Ed Crowell was tall, taller than I. He was somewhere in his late sixties. A certain timbre infused his voice, a timbre that undoubtedly had a soothing effect on the bereaved. I imagined he had been more than adept at his chosen profession. A cluster of diamonds on his pinky attested to his prosper
ity. He resembled his brother Angus, but he was without that definite sense of power. He was not, however, without a secure and implacable sense of his own grandioseness.
I sensed a gulf between the couple. Clarice was almost twenty-five years younger than Ed, had a Silly-Putty shine on her face, and looked at me in a way that wasn’t good, caught herself at it, and then, as if one of us merited punishment, virtually ignored my presence.
A waitress came to the booth. The mortician and his wife ordered coffee. I asked for hot chocolate. I hadn’t eaten a thing all day, but I wasn’t hungry yet. It was five-thirty and the place was beginning to fill up with the dinner crowd. Clarice ignited a Pall Mall and blew a lungful of smoke into my face. If I had to guess, I would have figured it was some sort of naughty signal.
“Now,” said Edward Crowell, speaking in his inimitable slow drawl, “what did you want to speak to us about?”
“Just some background information. That’s what I need, mainly.”
“I’m still not sure what your job is,” said Clarice Crowell, glancing around the bustling restaurant. “Do you work for the police?”
“I’m private. I was hired to find Melissa Nadisky.”
“Melissa?” Crowell tapped his fingertips together and focused his empty gray eyes on my face. “Melissa’s husband was the bastard who killed Mary, wasn’t he?”
“He’s the bastard the cops think killed Mary,” I replied. “I doubt if he did. Your sister had made plans to meet someone else this morning.”
“But they arrested him,” said Ed Crowell, as if that clinched it. “They arrested the little rat.”
“I was a cop for ten years. Cops arrest a lot of people. They make boo-boos just like you and me.”
Our coffee and hot chocolate arrived. Ed Crowell spent a few moments watching the waitress’s rump as she walked away. Clarice watched her husband’s eyes as he watched the rump and I thought I noticed a trace of lingering resentment in the way her lips twisted around the cigarette. Without thinking about it real hard, she blew another cloud of smoke into my face.
“And you believe this someone else killed Mary, whoever this was who had an appointment with her?”
“I have no idea. But I don’t think Burton had a motive.”
