by Tim Cockey
Mr. Castlebaum was waiting for an answer to his question.
“No,” I said absently. “I don’t know anybody.”
CHAPTER 7
I took the Jones Falls Expressway north to the Falls Road exit, then north again, a right on Seminary Road, and then left on something or other, then northeast, south, west and north again … a curvy country road that took me eventually to the manicured acres of the Baltimore Country Club. I pulled into the large lot next to the club’s mighty Georgian mansion, slipping my Chevy Nothing in amongst the BMW 750s and the Mercedes SLs. It was a lovely spring day. The country club’s gardeners had done a good job. Jonquils and tulips and columbine bloomed everywhere amidst large sculpted ponds of myrtle, which is a ground-hugging ivy that looks as soft as hair.
I spotted a miniature tractor with a small wiry fellow behind the wheel. He had a baseball cap pushed back on his head and he was giving marching orders to a pair of slouching guys in matching green overalls who were standing there holding rakes. As I headed over, the guys with rakes dispersed. Boss man remained in his saddle. The little white oval on his overalls told me that his name was Rudy. The baseball cap suggested that he favored Pepsi, though he was clearly of a different generation. His boots were the color of meatloaf.
I gave him an Our Town greeting.
“Howdy.”
I got one back. “Howdy.”
“Rudy is it?” I swung out my hand. Why I was acting so folksy I’m not sure, but I felt like an idiot. Rudy’s hand felt like finely ground glass in a baseball mitt.
“What can I do ya fer?” he chirped. I was pretty sure he was making fun of me.
“My name is Hitchcock Sewell.”
“That’s quite a name.”
“It’s a family name.”
“I imagine so.”
“People call me Hitch.”
“That would’ve been my guess.” His eyes were twinkling. “People call me Rudy.”
“So the sign says.”
“What can I do ya fer, Hitch,” he said again. This time he cracked an obvious smile.
“I’m looking for Guy Fellows. I understand he’s the tennis pro here.”
Rudy nodded. “You looking to take lessons?”
“Well, no. I just wanted to talk to him.”
Rudy looked me up and down. “Are you married?”
“Excuse me?”
“Are you married? Hitched. Hooked up. Got yourself a steady gal? Spoken for? Engaged?”
I cocked my head at the elfin man. “Are you asking me for a date, Rudy?”
Rudy laughed at that. “Afraid I’m spoken for. No, it’s just, well, you’re not looking to take lessons and if you’re not here to tell Fellows to steer clear of any lady friend of yours, that just about makes you an oddball.” He put a finger to the brim of his cap and nudged it further back on his head.
“Is he here?”
Rudy glanced over his shoulder at the tennis courts. They had a green mesh netting running along the fences. I could only make out flashes of white to go along with the irregular boink of a ball.
“Funny thing is, he isn’t. His first lesson is at ten o’clock and it’s already past one, but he hasn’t showed up.” The little guy chuckled. “Some of these ladies haven’t been stood up since they were twelve. You want to see some real fireworks, come around when they catch up to him.”
Just then a red BMW pulled up in the parking lot and a Grace Kelly look-alike got out. She was well-tailored and posture-perfect in that look-don’t-touch kind of way. The air parted for her as she made her way on clicking high heels along the walkway to the mansion. Rudy and I suspended all conversation as she moved by, which is what men generally do when a stunning woman passes within, say, a quarter mile of us. The fake Grace Kelly stepped coolly through the large oak door of the club’s mansion as if it weren’t even there.
“There’s one,” Rudy muttered.
“One what?”
“A former student of your tennis pro.” Rudy gave me a big old-fashioned wink. “They were pretty dedicated doubles players for a while there, if you hear me.”
I heard him. “Popular guy, huh?”
“Fellows? Well he’s not my type.”
“Rudy, you wouldn’t know anything about his girlfriend, would you?”
“You want to narrow that down for me a little?”
“Do you know if he has a girlfriend? I mean, a steady one?”
“Well if he does he’s smart enough not to bring her around here.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
Rudy and I chatted a bit more. I complimented him on the landscaping. He told me that he had a crew of four men plus himself. He told me about the recent major re-landscaping project. He told me about his useless son-in-law, whom he had hired to help out and then fired for hot-rodding in the golf carts. He showed me a photograph of his granddaughter—the only good thing his useless son-in-law had ever produced—who, I was to understand, might be an actual genius in the field of mathematics. She was being tested for it later this month. He told me about a hurricane and a problem with the wiring in the house that he and his wife—another photo—owned down in Bethany Beach. Rudy was a sweet fellow but he was blind to body language. I was holding a forty-five-degree angle toward the parking lot for what felt like ten years until I finally just had to insert a handshake into the middle of it all and thank him for his time. I left the wiry Scheherazade perched atop his miniature tractor and headed back to the parking lot.
A police car pulled in just as I was about to get into my car. A uniformed cop was behind the wheel. His passenger got out. No uniform. He wore a dull tweed jacket over a white shirt and a snot green tie. He was very short—in the Napoleonic range—and stocky. A wrestler’s physique. He had small ears, a pink face and yellow hair that was either cut in a horrendous style or was one of the world’s worst ever toupees. He gave me the look that a lot of short men give me, the one that says “I could knock you over, big guy, if I felt like it.” I resisted the urge to pat him on the head and waited until he had slammed his door closed before getting into my car and firing her up. A cloud of blue exhaust belched onto his knees as he crossed behind me. I caught his sneer in the rearview mirror. The uniformed cop was picking his teeth and staring straight ahead, but I was pretty sure I saw him chuckling.
As I pulled away, I saw that the keeper of the yellow hair was approaching Rudy. I watched as Rudy tilted back his hat and rubbed his overused jaw.
What can I do ya fer?
Two hours later Billie called me out of a wake in Parlor Two. She was frowning.
“There’s a man here to see you.”
It was the guy with the yellow hair. He was standing at the front door. He made no sign of recognition, so I didn’t either.
“Are you Hitchcock Sewell?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Detective John Kruk.” He flashed a badge. “I’d like to talk with you.”
“About what?”
“I’d like to talk with you.”
“You said that. I’m in the middle of a wake.”
“This is important.”
People were still arriving. I saw several of them eyeing the police car, which was parked out in the street, angled behind the hearse as if it had pulled the wagon over for speeding.
“Can it wait?” I asked.
“Not really.”
“Well, could you at least move the car?” He was tapping a pencil impatiently against his notebook and didn’t answer. “I have bereaved people here,” I explained. “A police car can be unsettling.”
“That’s funny. I always thought that police cars made people feel safe.”
“Not at funerals.”
He aimed his pencil at me. “You mean wake.”
I wasn’t in the mood. “Can you just tell me what this is about?”
“That was you out at the country club this afternoon, wasn’t it.”
“Yes, it was. What did you do, follow me here?”
>
“Have you been out there to the club before today, Mr. Sewell?”
“The country club? Oh. Sure. I’m a big deal up there.”
“Are you being sarcastic, Mr. Sewell?”
Before I could reply (sarcastically, I’d bet on it), Aunt Billie came up behind me.
“Hello. Is there a problem?”
“No problem,” I said.
“You two should get out of the doorway,” Billie said.
“I’m trying to get him to move the car.”
Kruk broke in. “Forget the car. The car isn’t what’s important here, Mr. Sewell.”
I snapped. “Then move the damn thing. We’ve got a dead person in there, Detective, and that’s the important thing here. People are here to pay their respects. Don’t they give you sensitivity training where you work?”
Aunt Billie took in a sharp breath. She hates it when I get belligerent.
Kruk hooked his thumbs into his belt and rocked back on his heels. Classic ham.
“Well you know something, Mr. Sewell. We’ve got a dead body too. Except nobody’s come by to pay ours any respects. Ours has a knife in its gut.”
Aunt Billie gasped.
“What dead body,” I said. “What are you talking about?”
Kruk kept up with the pencil-tapping. I wondered if it was supposed to unnerve me. “If the sight of a police car out front here has you so upset, maybe you should just come on down with me to the station, Mr. Sewell, where it’s an everyday occurrence.”
I asked again. “Who’s dead?”
The detective glanced down at his notebook. “A man by the name of Fellows.”
“Guy Fellows? The tennis pro?”
“You know him?”
“You know I know him. At least, I know who he is. That’s why you’re here?”
Kruk rocked back on his heels again. “That’s right.” He consulted his notebook again. “I understand you and Mr. Fellows had a fight. Just yesterday I believe.”
“You’ve done your homework.”
“He hit you.”
“So?”
“So sometimes that pisses people off. It would piss me off.” He turned to Billie. “Excuse me, ma’am.”
“It did piss me off,” I said. “But are you suggesting that I stabbed him because of it? I don’t usually go around stabbing people who piss me off.”
He looked at me sharply. “Don’t usually?”
“That was a little joke, Detective.”
“So you think this is funny? You think a man found dead with a knife in his gut is a funny joke?”
“Not to him it’s not.”
“And not to me either.” Kruk flipped his notebook shut. “Okay, that’s it. We’ll do this downtown. I don’t want to disturb these people any more than I already have. Why don’t you get in the big bad car, Mr. Sewell.”
I looked at him like he was crazy. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Now!”
Aunt Billie made a shooing gesture.
“Just go, Hitchcock. The officer won’t take no for an answer. Isn’t that right?”
“Detective,” Kruk grunted.
Billie rolled her eyes.
In twenty minutes, I was in the hot seat at district police headquarters. The place wasn’t quite how it always appears on television, though it looked like they were making every effort. There were no tube-topped hookers, no wild-haired guy proclaiming his innocence to the ceiling, no just-found runaway boy on a bench getting a life lesson from Detective Sensitive. However, there did seem to be a phone ringing endlessly somewhere off in the background. And the coffee was downright toxic.
Joe Friday beat me with a rubber hose until I cracked and told him where the loot was stashed. Then we moved on to the matter of Guy Fellows.
I was assured that I was not a suspect. Then I was asked several dozen questions about my dustup with the dead tennis stud, all of which made me feel like a suspect. Apparently, Mr. Castlebaum had already been grilled. He was the one who gave me up.
“Who hit who first?” Kruk asked me.
“Him. And it’s whom.”
“What’s whom?”
“Never mind,” I said. “Anyway, I didn’t hit him. I shoved him.”
“Why?”
“Because he hit me.”
“And why did he hit you?”
“Because I was breaking up his fight with Mr. Castlebaum.”
“We have Mr. Castlebaum’s statement.”
“Then you know all this already.”
The interview was taking place in Kruk’s office. The detective was somewhat dwarfed behind his large gray desk. I was in the only chair in the room other than Kruk’s, a small wobbly wood thing which I dwarfed. Detective Kruk and I really should have traded places. The dirt-stained windows behind the detective deflected any hope that the incoming sunshine would cheer up the place. The office smelled vaguely of a gas leak. Summing up, the place fit Kruk like a perfectly ill-fitting suit.
“Mr. Castlebaum says that you hit Mr. Fellows.”
“Mr. Castlebaum is wrong.”
“Are you saying he’s lying?”
“I’m saying he got it wrong. He was on the ground after all.”
“And why is that again?”
“Because Guy Fellows had just hit him.”
“That was before or after you hit him?”
“I didn’t hit anybody. I shoved him.” I was getting tempted to show the little detective how I did it. Kruk glanced at his damned notebook. I was beginning to guess it was all tic-tac-toe. Or girlie doodles.
“Mr. Castlebaum didn’t say anything about any shoving.”
I sighed. “I can’t help that. I shoved. I’m saying it now. Write it down in your notebook. Suspect shoved dead man. Dead man was still alive at the time.”
“You’re not a suspect, Mr. Sewell.”
“So you’ve said.”
“At least not a very good one.”
I threw up my hands. “I’m sorry, Detective. I’ll try to do better next time.”
Kruk actually showed the beginnings of a grin. He leaned back in his squeaky chair and crossed his short arms on his chest. “Why were you at the country club today?”
“Is that a crime?”
“I didn’t say it was. I’m just curious about the chain of events that has you in a fight with Guy Fellows yesterday and then off asking a lot of questions about him today when somewhere in between those two days someone is twisting a knife into his gut.” Kruk spread his hands. “You can see why I might be curious?”
Of course I could. But I didn’t think that he would find any of my explanations satisfying. The conveniently absent Mystery Woman. It would sound like a rotten lie told by a rotten liar.
“I didn’t kill Guy Fellows,” I said. Might as well get it on the record.
Detective Kruk laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. He was apparently a bottomless storehouse of stock gestures. I shook my head slowly. What in the goddamn hell was I doing here?
“Kruk. What is that? Finnish?”
“Dutch.” He leaned forward on his desk. “Do you have any ideas who would want to kill Guy Fellows?”
“Like I told you… ten times. I never set eyes on him until yesterday at the funeral.”
“Look. If you have any information that is pertinent to this case, you are bound by law to tell me, Mr. Sewell. Do you?”
“No,” I lied.
“Then I guess that’ll be all for now.” He picked up some papers that were on his desk.
“That’s it? Are you going to ask me to stay close to the city for the next several days?”
“Were you planning on taking a trip?”
“No. But I just figured—”
I was interrupted by Kruk’s phone.
“Yeah … Uh-huh … Okay. I’ll send him over.” He hung up the phone. “Well, you seem to be a popular fellow, Mr. Sewell. Before you go, Detective Zabriskie wants to see you.”
“Who’s Detective
Zabriskie?”
Kruk gave me his poker face. “Detective Zabriskie is the person who wants to see you. Take a left out the door here, end of the hall, last door on the right.”
As I reached the door of his office, Kruk said, “Oh … and I’d like you to stick close to the city for the next several days.” I stopped and turned around. Kruk was fiddling with the papers. He looked up at me. I guess that thing he was doing with his mouth was a grin.
Such a card. I left him to masticate on our interview and followed his directions to the office at the end of the hall. I stepped inside. For a moment I thought that it was empty. There was no one behind the desk. Suddenly the door was swinging closed behind me. I turned to see a familiar pair of hazel eyes and a small mouth, all linked up to a nice long pair of legs.
“Mr. Sewell. I’m Detective Kate Zabriskie. It’s nice to see you again.”
Lady X motioned for me to take a seat.
“I think we need to talk.”
CHAPTER 8
Detective Kate Zabriskie stared at me as she spoke on the phone. It had buzzed the moment I took a seat. Her end of the conversation was minimal and terse. Mainly she bobbed her head. “No … uh-huh … right.” All the time she held me in the tractor beam of her eyes, as if I might flee the moment she glanced away.
Fat chance.
The conversation ended and she put the phone back down on the cradle.
“How are you, Mr. Sewell?” she asked.
“Oh, let’s see, I’m fine. You?”
She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “I guess that depends.”
“On what?”
“On you.”
The great and powerful me. I leaned forward and rested my arms on Detective Zabriskie’s desk. I motioned the woman forward as if I had a secret I was sharing and didn’t want anyone else to overhear. She leaned in. I hissed.
“What the fuck is going on here?”
It startled her. But she recovered instantly. “Fair question. Let me see if I can answer you.” She leaned back in her chair again and took a moment to sort her thoughts. “For starters, I’m not Carolyn James. I gather you picked up on that.”
