Mike Faricy - Devlin Haskell 07 - Ting-A-Ling

by Mike Faricy

  Somehow in the past ninety seconds she had angled herself across the bed, completely stretched out and was still snoring with a Prosecco accent. But she’d pulled me back from the brink last night. Stopped me from flipping out. Nurse Ratched? I don’t think so, more like the sexiest guardian angel ever.

  I was on my second cup of coffee when she came downstairs. She’d pulled one of my hockey jerseys on and was barefoot. She stared when she saw the plate piled high with caramel rolls.

  “You go out and get those?”

  “No, I baked them. Yeah, not to worry, I hit the bakery up the street.”

  “God, I shouldn’t,” she said as she pulled a roll off the pile and onto a small plate I’d set out. Strands of caramel fell across the granite counter top. “Any coffee left?” she asked as she bit into the caramel roll.

  I poured a mug and slid it across the counter toward her.

  “What?” she said, and stuffed a large bit of caramel and a small piece of roll into her mouth.

  “You know what, thanks for being there for me last night.”

  “Yeah, can’t tell you the last time someone kept their pants on when they climbed into bed with me.” She laughed.

  “You know what I mean.”

  She reached out and squeezed my hand. “You better get that checked out, Dev. That wasn’t the first time.”

  I nodded, but didn’t say anything.

  “I’m serious. Have the VA…”

  “How’s that caramel roll?”

  She gave me a little smile, but her eyes looked sad and had watered just a bit.

  “They can help, you don’t…” But she stopped, blinked and said. “It’s delicious, I could eat the whole plate.”

  “I might just hold you to that.”

  “God, believe me I could do it.”

  Chapter Forty

  I’d carried Heidi’s suitcase out to her car and then watched from the sidewalk as she backed out of my driveway. She lowered her window as she pulled alongside of me.

  “Thanks, Heidi. I really mean it, thank you for being here for me.”

  “I really meant what I said, Dev. Get it checked out.” She stared at me for a long moment before she backed into the street, then gave a little wave and drove off.

  Louie phoned about a half hour later.

  “How we doing?”

  “Just peachy. Now all I have to do is figure out what in the hell is going on.”

  “You coming in today?”

  “I don’t know, maybe see how I’m doing after lunch.” Besides, I wanted to see if there was a movie on Netflix that wasn’t a total waste of my time.”

  “You hear anything from the cops yet?”

  “About the hit and run?”

  “No, their daily updates on all the other cases they’re investigating. Yes, the hit and run.”

  “Not a peep.”

  “Well, I’d guess they’re probably just trying to sort out the paperwork before they get hold of you.”

  “Manning knows how to get hold of me.”

  “This probably hasn’t even come onto his radar screen yet. When it does, you can bet you’ll have that guy’s undivided attention.”

  “Gee, I can hardly wait. You’re not thinking I should get in touch with him again, are you?”

  “As a matter of fact, since it worked so well for you the last time, no. The thought of talking with that guy hadn’t even crossed my mind.”

  “I’d still like to know what the other night was all about.”

  “Well, you touched a nerve somewhere, and I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet it’s got nothing to do with job applications for that insurance company. That would seem to narrow the field down to your former client, Princess Danielle or super-jerk, Renee Paris if he’s even alive.”

  I wasted another portion of my life clicking through a sub-par selection of B grade free movies on Netflix. Then I taxied down to the office after eating the two remaining caramel rolls for lunch.

  I ran into Louie on the sidewalk outside. The subzero temperature had him walking like there was actually a purpose in life. He had climbed back into his wrinkled gray suit. He was carrying a newspaper and not wearing a coat. I guessed he was just heading back from a liquid lunch at The Spot.

  “Well, the things you see when you don’t have a gun,” Louie said.

  “Don’t even joke. Anything shaking over at The Spot?”

  “Usual. How you feeling?”

  “A little tender around the edges, but I’ll live.” I glanced over to where the bus bench used to be. The metro transit folks had already been out and cleaned up the debris. If you weren’t familiar with the corner you’d never know the thing was missing. There were still bits of my windshield and head lights glimmering along the curb near the intersection.

  I sort of shook my head to get rid of any thoughts about the car incident, then held the door open for Louie as he scooted in, muttering his usual, “God, I hate this shit.”

  I was three steps behind him as he waddled up the stairs. I couldn’t see around him and I felt the vibrations in my feet as he thundered up one step after another.

  I glanced at the headlines in the paper when Louie tossed it across the picnic table. Not what you’d call a big news day. The Timberwolves lost again and some poor guy’s car caught fire in a mall parking lot. We didn’t have time to take our coats off before my phone rang.

  “Haskell Investigations,” I answered. A second later I heard the gum snap on the other end of the line. My heart sank as a voice growled my name.

  “Haskell.”

  “Speaking,” I said in a soft voice, knowing that might get to him.

  “Haskell. This is Detective Norris Manning.”

  “Yes.” I replied, sounding like I was anticipating some positive news. I think it gave him pause for a second, but only a second. Louie was giving me a questionable look. I made a scary face back at him, popped my eyes out and bared my teeth.

  “Manning?” he whispered.

  I nodded.

  “I’d like you to grace us with your presence. Today if possible.”

  “I’d like to contact my legal representation, if I may. Would sometime tomorrow be acceptable? I’ve a pretty full afternoon scheduled.”

  “I’d prefer to see you today.”

  “I want to have counsel present. I’ll have to get in touch with him and let you know.”

  “I could send a squad.”

  “You could.”

  There was another pause and I could hear Manning breathing on the other end. I was ready to joke about an obscene phone call when he said, “Get in touch with me the moment you hear from Laufen.” Then he hung up.

  “So?”

  “You pretty much heard it. He wants to see me. I scammed some time for us, however long it’s going to take me to contact you.”

  “I’m guessing that hit and run just popped up on Manning’s radar screen.”

  “He didn’t sound all that happy.”

  “How could you tell?” Louie chuckled.

  Chapter Forty-One

  “This is Detective Norris Manning. I’m located in interview room two, at approximately nine-o-seven AM. I’m joined by Mr. Devlin Haskell and his counsel, Mr. Louis Laufen. Gentlemen, could I have you state your names for the record, please?”

  “Louie Laufen.”

  “Dev, Devlin Haskell.”

  “Thank you for joining me this morning. I’d like to start…”

  “Excuse me, Detective, I’d like to start, if I may.” I placed my briefcase on top of the Formica table and snapped open the locks. I reached in and grabbed what I was after, then watched the stunned look spread across Manning’s face. The officer at the door had pushed himself off the
wall and was watching me, nervously. Both his hands were resting on his webbed belt.

  “I picked up these cinnamon rolls at a little bakery just up the street, Bon Vie. Are you familiar with it?” I smiled and drew a plastic wrapped paper plate with four frosted cinnamon rolls out of my briefcase. Manning’s face grew a shade redder. The officer near the door visibly relaxed. Louie had a look of horror on his face that softened once he focused on the pastry.

  “Come on, I got enough for all of us,” I called over to the uniformed officer, relaxed again and leaning against the wall.

  He gave a cautious glance at the back of Manning’s shinny red head. “Thanks, but no thanks.” He smiled.

  “Perhaps later,” Manning replied.

  “Doughnuts more your thing?”

  Manning took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. It struck me as possibly a calming routine he might have picked up from an anger management session. He pushed a manila envelope off to the side and opened the file in front of him. The typed form on the top of the file was upside down, so I couldn’t read it.

  “They’re really good,” I said and Louie slapped me on the thigh under the table.

  “I know you’re both busy. Let’s get down to business, shall we?” Manning said, back in control.

  “By all means,” I said and smiled.

  Manning took a long moment to pause and stare, reminding me this was his interview.

  “What would you like from us, Detective?” Louie said, trying to calm the waters.

  “Mr. Haskell, if you could account for your whereabouts over the past few days. What have you been up to?”

  “Work mostly.”

  “In your office?”

  “Sometimes. Up until three days ago I was in the office pretty much most of the day. Let’s see, I got down there about ten, skipped lunch. I made a call on someone around two, back behind my desk right after that. I was gone I’d say probably no more than an hour. I had a planning meeting with Mr. Laufen early that evening, then on my way home I was involved in a hit and run accident. I woke up in the hospital the following morning. I was discharged that afternoon…”

  “Back up for a moment and let’s start at the beginning. Tell me more about your call that afternoon. You visited a client?”

  ‘Here we go.’ I thought. “Actually, no. It was a business call, personal business.”

  “To see?”

  “An attorney by the name of Richard Hedstrom.”

  “And you went to his office?”

  “No, sir, his residence.”

  “Not his office?”

  “Actually, I didn’t know where his office was to be honest. I still don’t know. I took a chance he might be at home and hoped he’d have time to see me. Unfortunately, it’s a gated community and I couldn’t get past the security guard.”

  Manning nodded like the security guard not allowing me in seemed the natural thing for anyone to do. He waited another long moment. “And then?”

  “And then I went back to my office. Mr. Laufen and I had a planning meeting early that evening and I was on my way home when I was involved in an accident.”

  Manning nodded and looked hopeful at the mention of my accident, like it just might have been the most positive occurrence of my day. Then he said, “I’m not quite following. The security guard wouldn’t admit you?”

  “That’s right. He tried to reach Mr. Hedstrom by phone, but couldn’t and so he told me I’d have to come back later. I get it. I mean, after all it is a secure area, theoretically.”

  “So you just left?”

  “Yep. The guard had been kind enough to provide me with Mr. Hedstrom’s phone number. I attempted to phone him, but I got a recorded message. Something about his message center being full, if I recall.”

  “You went to his residence without an appointment?”

  “Yeah, I just hoped to get lucky. And obviously, I didn’t.”

  That seemed to please Manning and he nodded again.

  “How well did you know Mr. Hedstrom?”

  “To the best of my knowledge, not at all. I can’t recall ever meeting him.”

  Manning nodded like this made perfect sense. “So to the best of your knowledge you never met him?”

  “Like I just said, not that I can recall.”

  Manning jotted a quick note.

  “You were never in his office?”

  “Not that I can recall. To the best of my knowledge, I have no idea where it’s even located.”

  Manning made a check mark and jotted a couple of words after that.

  “And you’ve never been in his condominium?”

  “If you mean the one in the Viagra Triangle, no, I’ve only been as far as the guard station.” I smiled and shot a glance at Louie who remained straight faced.

  “By Viagra Triangle, you’re referring to the River View Terrace development?”

  “Yeah, that’s right, River View Terrace.”

  “And you’ve never been in Mr. Hedstrom’s condominium, nor his office, nor to the best of your recollection ever met the man. Is that correct?”

  I thought that pretty much wrapped things up nice and tight. “Yeah, that’s correct.”

  “Have you ever gained access to the River View Terrace complex, Mr. Haskell?”

  “Yes, once. I think it was six or maybe even seven years ago. I attended an anniversary celebration for Mr. and Mrs. Martin Dempsey. I accompanied their daughter, Monica.”

  “And that’s the only time you were allowed access to the complex.”

  “Yes, the anniversary celebration was actually in the Dempsey condominium. I haven’t been back since. I believe Martin Dempsey passed away a few years ago. I don’t know if his wife still lives there.”

  Manning flipped some pages in the file, and ran his finger down a list of some sort. “According to our records I see a Ms. Monica Dempsey filed a restraining order against you. Same individual?”

  “Well, she dumped me the next morning, after the party. It was sort of a misunderstanding between the two of us and a former acquaintance of mine. A sort of dancer woman we ran into later that night.”

  Louie shot me a quick glance.

  “A dancer, one can only imagine,” Manning said. He nodded, but didn’t make a note. Instead, he reached for the manila envelope lying next to his file. He gently held the thing and carefully reached his hand inside, treating whatever was in the envelope like it contained all of his future hopes and dreams. He began to pull his hand out of the envelope, then stopped midway. The envelope had some sort of bar code sticker affixed to the upper left hand corner and below that a six digit number written in black marker. I caught the hint of a plastic bag grasped in Manning’s hand.

  “Mr. Haskell, I’m wondering if you would be able to help us identify this item. Let the record show this is evidence file number one-three-two-zero-zero-nine,” Manning said, reading the number off the envelope. Then he pulled the plastic evidence bag from the manila envelope. There was a black leather belt rolled up inside the evidence bag. The belt had a silver buckle sporting a Celtic design.

  Manning didn’t have to remove the belt from the plastic bag. The moment I saw it I already knew the belt had a silver buckle as well as a tab with a Celtic knot design. The black leather was an inch and a half wide and expertly hand tooled, with a fairly involved Celtic border design that butted either side of script letters spelling out Devlin Haskell, my name, across the back of the belt.

  My pal Bobby had made the belt for me maybe two years ago. My mind wandered back to the last time I’d seen that the thing. Danielle was wearing it along with a contented smile. We’d been playing bucking bronco, her idea, and I had been hanging on for all I was worth.

  “Mr. Haskell?”

  “Oh, yeah, I was just thin
king. Well, that would appear to be a belt like one I had.”

  “Do you think it might be the same belt?”

  “Possibly.”

  “I wonder if we might examine that a little closer, Detective,” Louie asked, then extended his hand across the table.

  “By all means, please, be my guest.”

  “Dev?” Louie placed the plastic bag in front of me, then looked at me hopefully.

  There was a slim, half-percent chance there might be two belts like this in the world. Two guys in town with a belt that had my name tooled across the back of it. That chance quickly disappeared when I saw my phone number written on the inside of the belt just next to the buckle. “So when you leave it in the backseat of some woman’s car she can still call you and give it back,” Bobby had joked. Only right now it wasn’t sounding quite as funny, sitting here in Interview Room Two.

  “Does this belt look in any way familiar, Mr. Haskell?” Manning looked extremely pleased with himself, enjoying the moment.

  “Yes, this is my belt. It’s been missing for a week, maybe two.”

  “Really?” Manning smiled.

  “Yeah, I’ve been looking for it.”

  “Do you think it was stolen? Are you suggesting someone may have gained access to your home and stole this belt?”

  “Well…”

  “Did you report the break in?”

  “Well…”

  “You see Mr. Haskell, this belt was found in Mr. Hedstrom’s condominium. Under his bed, I believe our investigation indicates.” He smiled coldly, and then slid an evidence form across the table to me. Attached to the form was a photo of my belt lying under a bed. It was my turn to hit Louie on the thigh and I did, repeatedly.

  “I wonder if I might have a private moment to discuss with my client,” Louie said.

  “Certainly, five minutes enough time?” Manning asked just a little too sweetly for my taste.