AHMM, Jan-Feb 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The TV crew, having captured that bit of history on tape, went their way. Some time later Stamaty and Kestrel left the scene also. At the house next to Ida Blanford's, a woman in a housecoat was shaking a dustmop into the breeze while her dog ran sniffing around the front yard. A pale, frail man with a cane was promenading slowly up and down the sidewalk in the late morning sun. Auburn sat on behind the grimy window with the painted green fish.

  It wasn't the standard way to conduct a homicide investigation. He should have been leafing through Ida Blanford's private papers in search of suspicious associations, requesting a background probe on her and her nephew from Records, canvassing the neighborhood to learn if anyone had heard a shot, checking on recent holdups, muggings, and similar crimes in the district—in particular, the two holdups at the grocery across the street. Instead, he sat here soaking up the atmosphere of the bar and grill—the smell of cooking varied by an occasional whiff of liquor, the babel of voices, the jangling of music.

  At a few minutes before eleven he went to the men's room and called headquarters on his cell phone. His immediate superior, Lieutenant Savage, had received a radio report from Dollinger and Krasnoy, who had questioned neighbors up and down the block without finding anyone who had heard a shot the night before or observed anything unusual in the vicinity of Ida Blanford's house. Savage had ordered a background probe on the victim and was talking to Fire and Rescue about having the river dragged for the weapon.

  "I don't know if you remember it,” he said, “but they found the gun that killed Stan Karlowski on the bottom of the river about a quarter of a mile from where you are right now."

  "I remember. It looks like the killer tried to toss her body in the river. I wouldn't be surprised if he tossed the gun in too."

  Auburn indicated somewhat vaguely that he'd be at the scene for a while yet. He didn't mention that he was hanging out in a bar and grill.

  On his way back to his table in the window he was intercepted by Scotty Casteven, who was sipping a soft drink in the back corner of the bar during a lull in activity. Auburn wondered if Casteven had just overheard his half of the phone conversation.

  "What does it look like, Officer?” he asked. “A stickup, or just some psychopath?"

  "We're still checking. There wasn't any cash in her purse. You saw the bullet hole."

  A glass-fronted cabinet next to the side entrance was crammed with every imaginable kind of green fish—figurines in china, wood, plaster, and plastic, coffee mugs, bottle openers, key-chain guards, a small pillow, a large light bulb, a electrified singing rubber bass mounted on a plaque.

  Casteven shook his head and looked at the floor, which needed a good scrubbing. “It's pretty scary, you know? Your neighbor getting blown away right across the street.

  "We had some pretty rough stuff going on when we lived in the Drysdale District, but that was just break-ins—kids with crowbars. Did they ever catch those guys that held up the grocery here last winter? Highmore swore it was the same guys both times."

  "That case is still open,” said Auburn, winging it. “Have you ever had any trouble like that here?"

  "Not yet.” Casteven rapped on the bar for luck.

  "Do you own the building?"

  "Oh no. Lease."

  "Your business seems to be good."

  "Don't you believe it. My business is rotten. I can't compete with the fast food places across the river, or the bars over there that cater to the neurosurgeons and the stockbrokers from downtown.” He finished his drink and filed away the empty can under the bar. After a glance toward the dining room, he assumed a more confidential air. “When my wife died, I lost my bartender and cashier. And I have to pay Darla a lot more than she'd get downtown because the old soaks and deadbeats that hang out in this place would rather blow their Social Security checks on booze and cigarettes and lottery tickets than leave tips."

  "I'll keep that in mind,” said Auburn. “Is it just the two of you all the time here?"

  "My brother-in-law Greg takes over the bar a little after three, when he gets off his other job, and he stays till eleven. We shut down the kitchen at eight, and that's when Darla and I knock off. We're closed Sundays."

  Darla sang out, “One country up and a side of Murphy, no dash.” Casteven cinched his apron tighter around his ample middle and went back to the grill.

  In spite of the proprietor's grim report, the place seemed to be filling up for the lunch hour. A group of six East Indians dressed as workmen came in together and took adjoining tables. An elderly man, his features blurred by age like the face on a well-worn coin, sat down at the table next to Auburn's. Obviously a regular, he put on a pair of reading glasses and studied a morning paper he'd brought with him instead of the menu. His hands were bony and gnarled like those of a retired plumber, the nail of the left thumb permanently cloven.

  Darla appeared at Auburn's side. “You working up an appetite for lunch? Our special on Thursdays is Cajun-style chicken giblets and rice."

  Auburn already knew that from the slate over the lunch counter. At the very mention of the word “Cajun,” his stomach performed the preliminary steps of a war dance. He chose Salisbury steak, which, although sometimes scarcely worth the effort of chewing, is hard for even a novice chef to ruin.

  Time passed. Auburn was so absorbed in his watch on the empty house across the street and his attention to the pulse of life around him that he didn't even realize that he'd gone through his soup, salad, and main course until Darla swept away his empty plates. “How we doing here? How about some dessert? The peach cobbler's fresh today."

  "Just some more coffee, thanks.” Glancing yet again across the street, he saw a pickup truck pulling into Ida Blanford's driveway and canceled the order. He paid his check at the cash register and left all his change from a ten and a five on the table, partly because of what Casteven had said about tips and partly because he expected to spend more time later at The Green Fish.

  By the time Auburn got across the street, the driver of the truck, a lanky man in his late thirties, had mounted the bank and was staring down at the spot where Ida Blanford's body had been found.

  "Mr. Blanford?” Auburn showed identification.

  "Yes, sir.” Wearing a housepainter's cap with the visor turned backwards, sunglasses with small round lenses, and time-tattered camouflage fatigues, Blanford looked like an alien in a low-budget sci-fi flick made in the 1960's. Underneath these trimmings he had a crew cut and a square, matter-of-fact face.

  "We talked on the phone earlier."

  "I was going to call you from the house."

  "Have you been downtown to the mortuary?"

  "Oh, yes.” Blanford shook his head as if to dispel the grim recollection. “That's where they found her, huh? I can remember standing down there throwing rocks in the river when I was about a year and a half old, and Aunt Ida yelling at me to get out of the mud.” He stared unseeingly out over the water through the midday haze.

  "Do you know if she'd had any kind of trouble lately with neighbors, vandals ... ?"

  "If she did, she didn't tell me about it. What I can't understand is what she was doing outside here after dark."

  "She may not have been outside when she was killed. Would she have been likely to let anybody in the house that she didn't know?"

  "Not unless they forced their way in. Caution was her middle name.” He turned to face the house. “Look at those lightning rods. And I'm sure you saw the smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors all over the inside."

  He took out a ring of keys, the same bunch Auburn had found in the dead woman's purse, which Stamaty had evidently handed over to him. “I better check inside and make sure everything's okay. She kept a lot of money upstairs. Whoever shot her could have made a real haul if they used these keys instead of just cleaning the cash out of her purse."

  They climbed down from the levee to the sidewalk. “This was prime real estate when my grandfather built the house in the twenties,” Blanford said.
“And there wasn't any saloon across the street back then, either."

  "Did your aunt ever have any trouble with the people over at The Green Fish?"

  "I wouldn't say trouble. Mostly she acted like the place wasn't even there. She used to complain about the noise around closing time, especially on Saturday nights. And the lines waiting for green beer at six o'clock in the morning on St. Patrick's Day."

  They went through the gate with the squeaky hinges and up the walk. “When was the last time you saw your aunt alive?"

  "We had dinner here a week ago Sunday—my wife and I and our two kids."

  "You said you and your sister are the only living relatives?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "So you're probably the only heirs?"

  "I guess so.” The thought didn't seem to distress him unduly.

  Once inside the house, Blanford took off his cap and slid his sunglasses up to the top of his head. He cast a wary and perhaps now a proprietorial eye here and there as they moved through the immaculately kept rooms. At the foot of the front stairs he got out the keys again. “I haven't been allowed upstairs since I was about six,” he said, “but I remember exactly where she kept her money."

  He led Auburn to Ida Blanford's bedroom and on into a windowless alcove fitted out as a dressing room. Here, concealed by a wall hanging, was a squat antique safe with the manufacturer's name splashed across the front in fancy script. Without hesitation, Blanford selected a key and opened the safe. Except for a few papers, which didn't include a will, the safe was empty.

  "There ought to be a lot of cash here,” he said, moderately agitated. “She inherited a couple million from my grandfather—he owned a brass foundry, Kingmark Castings. And she used to lend money to people starting up in business—young doctors, lawyers ... she even staked me when I started up my construction business."

  "Seems like a tough racket for an elderly lady to be in."

  "You didn't know my aunt Ida. She could stir her tea with one hand and whip a tiger with the other. You get like that after teaching seventh and eighth grades in an inner-city school for about forty years. She'd still be at it if her eyes hadn't gone out on her. Glaucoma and a bunch of other stuff."

  "Where did she conduct her business with these people she lent money to?"

  "Right down in the front room. Always late in the evening. She tried to keep it hush-hush. I told her a thousand times she could get higher interest with better security if she just put that cash in the savings and loan. But she said the savings and loan people already had too much of her money. My wife thinks lending money at low interest was just her way of helping people who were in a bind but wouldn't take charity."

  "But surely these loans weren't cash transactions?"

  "Oh yes they were. And she kept the cash right in here, along with the IOUs. Anyway, she did when I was a kid, and Aunt Ida was one of those people who never change anything from one year to the next except their clothes. My Dad used to say she could never bring herself to do anything for the first time."

  "Would she have had jewelry in here?"

  "She never wore any. Teachers weren't allowed to wear jewelry when she started out, and she never changed that either."

  "Okay. Let's not touch anything else here. I need to get an evidence technician back on the scene. Your aunt was evidently killed inside the house and then dumped on the riverbank to make it look like a street killing. Who besides you would have had access to the house or would have known about the safe? A boyfriend?"

  Blanford grunted. “If she had a boyfriend, that would be the biggest revolution since bottled beer."

  They found the name of Ida Blanford's lawyer in her address book downstairs. Blanford arranged by phone to meet the lawyer immediately and took off, leaving the keys with Auburn. After reporting the latest developments to Lieutenant Savage, Auburn went back to The Green Fish.

  By now the place was getting to be a bit too familiar. The heavy smell of grease and fried onions, the cracked sugar bowl at the cash register where patrons could drop pennies they received in change, the squeaky place in the floor on the way to the restrooms. Scotty was busy behind the bar, where nobody was paying attention to the talk show on the large-screen TV. Darla was apparently taking a break in a back room. The dining room was practically deserted. Auburn sat at the same table in the window and resumed his watch on the street.

  Darla eventually reappeared, plied him with more coffee, and asked if he was making any progress with the case. When Kestrel, the evidence technician, arrived back at the scene to go over the house, Auburn went across the street just long enough to give him the keys and confer with him briefly.

  A little before three o'clock, a fresh flurry of activity on the levee told him that something was happening down by the water. A motley gang of neighborhood children, probably bored to death after only a week or so of summer vacation, had been drawn to the scene of action as surely as flies to spilled ice cream. Auburn crossed the street again.

  There wasn't enough open water within the city limits to justify a standing team of river investigators under the Department of Public Safety, much less the purchase and maintenance of the necessary equipment. But Fire and Rescue had both the equipment and trained underwater investigators. Three men, two of them in diving gear, were working in a small motor launch just opposite the point where Ida Blanford's body had been found. By the time Auburn reached the top of the levee, the kids were already down at the edge of the water. “You gonna use radar?"

  "You mean sonar,” said one of the men from Fire and Rescue. “I think we can manage without it. The river isn't that deep here. Your favorite hoop star could walk across the bottom without getting his wig wet."

  Auburn waved to the men in the boat and watched while they staked out the area under investigation, laid down pattern lines of yellow polypropylene rope, and began methodically exploring the river bottom by touch and with magnetic grapnels. Since they weren't under his orders and obviously knew exactly what they were doing, he soon went back to his table at The Green Fish.

  He now had the dining room almost entirely to himself, but the bar trade was picking up as people got off work. In the business district north of the river, the posh bars would be having happy hour for people wearing silk shirts and handmade shoes. Here in The Green Fish, the men and women hunched over their drinks at the bar were palpably blue collar workers and practitioners of the manual trades. Pace Street was parked solid, mostly with panel trucks and pickups. A big Allied Bell truck with an overhead hydraulic platform stood near the corner.

  Since there was nothing to see across the street, Auburn, with yet another cup of coffee before him, turned his attention to the people around him. The atmosphere seemed to have undergone a subtle change. A man who was a stranger to Auburn, a tall curly-haired blond, was tending bar. That would be Scotty Casteven's brother-in-law Greg. He had a diamond in each earlobe, but he wore no rings.

  Casteven was busy at the dishwasher and Darla was helping at the bar and the cash register. It was obvious that relations between the two men were strained. When they communicated at all, it was in monosyllables, and their tone was stuffy, if not positively hostile. On the other hand, the chemistry between Darla and the new bartender, Greg, evidently went far beyond that of mere co-workers.

  Were there hidden alliances here, ancient enmities, smoldering resentments? Or did the electricity in the air stem from the murder of Ida Blanford? A fatal drama had been played out within a stone's throw of the bar and grill. The impression was growing on Auburn that somebody here knew more than they were telling about the murder across the street—that the solution to the whole thing might lie right here if only he could penetrate beneath the surface.

  He became so absorbed in that puzzle that, even when he saw Kestrel and the divers holding a lengthy conference on the levee, he didn't go outside. But that was partly because the TV crew from Channel 4 had just arrived back on the scene.

  Hours passed. The radio station sta
rted repeating R&B records that Auburn had sat through that morning. Evidently the dining room did little business in the evening hours. At five fifteen, the only patrons having dinner were two women with bulging shopping bags stowed under their table. In one of the two booths on the windowless side of the dining room, two college kids with his-and-hers spiked hair were lingering over soft drinks and wearing out their welcome. Auburn ordered Salisbury steak again.

  He felt so isolated in his nook in the window that, when his cell phone rang, he answered right there instead of seeking more privacy.

  "Where in the world are you, Cy?” asked Lieutenant Savage.

  "Still at the scene of the Blanford homicide, tying up a few loose ends."

  "Well, you must be well camouflaged. Even Kestrel of the hundred eyes couldn't find you. Have you talked to Dollinger and Krasnoy?"

  "Not since this morning."

  "Then you're about three days behind. Kestrel found fresh bloodstains on the basement floor in the victim's house. And the divers from Fire and Rescue struck gold."

  Auburn lowered his voice slightly. “They found the weapon?"

  "They found the weapon and more, nicely preserved in a waterproof plastic bag. Are you ready?"

  "As ready as I'll ever be."

  "Okay, first we've got an old Colt .38. Recently fired, one chamber empty. No ballistics match yet, but that's the caliber of the slug they took out of Blanford's chest. Not registered with any local agency. Next we've got a pair of leather work gloves. The right one shows what looks like powder burns. Chemistry tests are in progress. Both gloves have bloodstains, the same type as the victim."

  "What about latent prints?"

  "Kestrel's still waving his magic wand over the stuff, but no fingerprints so far. But there's something almost as good—a wadded-up strip of adhesive tape with the name Johnston printed on it in indelible marker. And on the sticky side there's another name, also in black marker but in reverse, like it was picked up from whatever the tape was stuck on. That name is Rakovy.” He spelled it.