Of Mice and Murderers
Book #1 in the Z-Detective Series
John G. Stockmyer
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 John G. Stockmyer
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Acknowledgements
Cover Art: Ronald L. Brink
Ronald L. Brink, a self-taught artist and illustrator, has been drawing and painting most of his adult life. Watercolor is his medium of choice. He has illustrated the covers of several published works. His work was chosen for the President's Christmas card at William Jewell College for six years. He has created over 40 paintings for the College; most of them for clients and has sold many works of pets and homes. He has taught at Maple Woods Community College in Kansas City for over 40 years. His works are displayed annually at the on-campus gallery. Brink received a B.A. degree from Missouri Valley College in 1964; an M.A. degree in 1967 from the University of Denver; and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1983. He served as Chair of the Communications Division at Maple Woods from 1990-1998. He resides in Kansas City.
Ebook Conversion: John L. Stockmyer
John L. Stockmyer is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, New Mexico. In his spare time, he dabbles in ecommerce, audio-book production and eBook design. He is also an avid disc golfer. His current ambition is to help talented "undiscovered" authors (like his dad) find an audience through the use of non-traditional media and innovative technology. Thank you for helping us shake up the publishing industry!
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Introduction
The time: 1990.
The place: Kansas City, Missouri.
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Chapter 1
After supper, Bob Zapolska (Z, for short) was back in front of the Maddox house, prepared to stay until he was certain no one inside could still be awake. Six-thirty was Un-Daylight-Savings-Time dark in January, the night unusually black because someone with an air rifle had shot out the streetlight down the block. Dark enough to have frightened off the trashy Ford; dark enough to bury the Cavalier in deepest shadow; dark and cold.
For this job, Z had put on his heavy black jacket, thick dark pants and black boots. Then gotten his detective case out of its hidey hole under his fireplace -- had the satchel on the passenger's seat.
Prepared to wait for hours if necessary, he caught a break at 7:30 when the silver car zoomed out and off again, the lady remembering this time (unfortunately) to close the garage door by pressing the Miata's "genie" button. Was the young wife off to spend time with girlfriends? Could she be out on this frosty night to tend a "sick aunt"? (When a Sugar Daddy bought the high school queen, he got what he deserved. Not much. And not often.)
The young woman whizzing off, Z had a wrenching thought about where Susan was at that moment -- remembered about her night school class. At least, that's where she should be; where she'd told him she would be.
The wife gone, Z took the black ski mask out of his detective suitcase on the seat beside him, pulling on the wooly hood to complete his all black, nighttime rig.
Next, he stretched on the skin-tight leather gloves he'd packed under the ski mask, then shut the case, the rubber band-wrapped catch locking silently.
Though he wouldn't need all the items he had with him, his modified black bag held the standard tools of the detective trade, each secured with wide elastic bands: lock-picks, jimmy, a length of nylon rope, straight razor, small jar of gas plus the rubber tubing he'd used to siphon it from his tank after getting home that afternoon. (He hated siphoning gas! Always sucked some into his mouth.)
He'd also brought the coil of dynamite fuse -- never could tell what he might need until he'd looked over the situation -- and the honed hunting knife. The padded blackjack with its flexible, woven leather handle was already in the pocket of his night fighter jacket, his "dog detector" in his right pants pocket.
An elasticized pocket in the traveling bag contained his insignias of authority: authentic-looking paper or embossed metal badges proclaiming him to be an inspector for K.C. Power and Light, insurance investigator, dog catcher, or the license he could use to knock on any door, pastor of the Church of the Living Word. (Forged credentials like these were the kind of thing Johnny Dosso could get for him. Looked like the genuine article. Even came in billfold-worn plastic protectors.) Z also had his camera in the suitcase.
Ready, Z pulled back the car's door trigger, the greased fastener releasing the door with little sound.
Elbowing the door open, picking up the valise, swinging his body out with a single, fluid motion, Z eased the door shut behind him with only the lightest of metallic clicks.
A half moon in a cloud-patched sky had Z staring into every shadow. Little snow left, but still a danger of slipping on black ice.
Seeing no one, he allowed himself to limp across the blacked-out street, pulled himself over the rough, unmortared limestone wall, and disappeared into the shrubbery.
Once on the Maddox grounds, taking his time, he quick walked from decorative grove -- to shrub -- to statuary; keeping to the shadows; approaching the mansion downwind of the outside dog. What little smell he could detect in the quiet night was of pine trees and clipped, fur hedge.
Confident he had what he needed (he'd left his air rifle in the Cavalier's trunk,) Z worked his way up the Maddox lawn, across the front, then turned right to hug the left side of the mansion, coming to the last of the three, garage bays, ducking around it to hide in the inky dark of the house's far side.
Breathing hard by this time, Z took time to rest. And to rub the pain out of his knee.
This job had been phoned in by a Professor Hugh Calder, a psychology instructor at Bateman College in nearby Liberty, Missouri, Dr. Calder saying he needed help in recovering money from a bungled construction job. The Dr. had tried to reason with Maddox Construction, but had gotten nowhere. He'd called the Better Business Bureau. No dice. Phoning his home owner's insurance company, he's also struck out. It was when he'd looked in the Yellow Pages for his insurance agent's parent company that he'd seen Z's ad; noticed that the Zapolska Detective Agency was located North-of-the-River.
Dr. Calder didn't think he'd need a private detective, but.....
Before taking the case, Z had gone to the young prof's home to assure himself Calder had been wronged, finding that the sunroom Maddox Construction had been hired to build had been butchered -- rain allowed to destroy the insulation's "R" value, windows crooked, walls cracking. From what Z knew about construction, Maddox owed Calder two thousand in damages.
Phone calls plus a visit to the construction firm failing to se
ttle the matter, it had come to this: a "black bag" job in the elegant Briarcliff section of Kansas City North.
Z had taken a look at the property this afternoon, of course, arriving at seventeen twenty-four Willow Drive without difficulty.
Drifting past the Maddox mansion in the old Cavalier, Z's first helpful discovery was that the "estate" was so large no other houses were in sight, Z glimpsing the Maddox property through a screen of woods, plantings, and sculptured hedge. Tudor-style. Dark-stained half-timbers; used brick; diamond-pane windows of antique glass.
He'd also noticed the streetlight on the corner, detectives supposed to pick up on details like that.
Another discovery was a eight feet high, chain link fence -- enclosing half a football field of timbered lawn out back.
Big money.
At least two thousand dollars of it stolen from Dr. Calder.
Z had kept on driving down other streets-of-the-rich-and-Northland-famous, pushed to the side of the road as luxury cars (Lincoln, Caddy, Jag) sighed by -- all the while considering his first problem: how to stake out the target property. Stated simply, could his sheep of a Cavalier graze near the Maddox place without attracting attention in these Jaguar-haunted hills?
Circling back to the Maddox home, Z had been able to hide the Cavalier behind a leprous '64 Ford ... a car that had to be owned by the "help" (cook, cleaning lady,) the old car giving Z's Chevy protective cover.
Shutting off the motor, he'd levered back the thinly padded, reclining bucket seat until, like a hippo in a slime-scummed lake, only his nose and eyes were visible above the dash.
The result of three hours of boredom? A silver Miata backing out of one of the three garage doors, coming down the curving drive, and buzzing off into the late afternoon, Z getting a glimpse of the young, pretty woman at the wheel. Late twenties. Too old to be a daughter; must be the wife. Fur coat. Dressed up to go to work which, in the case of that gift-wrapped package, was shopping on the Plaza.
At least the second wife. Probably the third, later wives of successful men with that glossy, never-had-to-sacrifice-to-build-the-business look.
Cute, but careless, the bimbette forgetting to push the remote that would lower the garage door.
Finding what he'd come for -- a crack in the Maddox armor -- Z had started the Cavalier, at the same time having a guilty thought about a middle-aged Robert Zapolska's relationship with beautiful, glamorous, and much too young for him, Susan Halliwell; banished the ugly thought with the certain knowledge that Z had won Susan, not bought her! Unless stopping a Susan-bound bullet could be conceived as payment for her continued services.... No!
It hadn't been like that. At all!
The engine warm enough not to stall, Z had pulled a U-turn, then turned right at the street flanking Mr. M's estate.
Drifting by, Z looked into the whale mouth of the far garage bay through which the little minnow of a Miata had escaped.
Small garage window at the end of the left stall.
Past the house, a twist of the rear view mirror had given him a fast look through the open garage door.
Three, unpartitioned stalls.
No cars inside.
A door leading from the far bay into the house.
No cars meaning that hubby was out humping on the job. Working hard to steal the kind of money that would have his girl scout of a wife keep selling him her cookies.
So, what were the problems?
First, that long, tall fence enclosing the grounds out back.
Not to keep in little nippers. Any children old man Maddox might have whelped by his cast-off wife now grown to be the cheating image of their Dad.
No babies by Barbie. Stretch marks were a violation of the third wife deal.
Back to the fence, a fence like that meaning....
Dog.
Outside guard dog. Shepherd, Doberman.
No way the lady of the house would have a vicious inside dog. Not even let "Adolf" in the garage, would be Z's guess. Might chew up -- then bury -- her Miata.
Good.
Outside dogs were no problem.
Which didn't mean there wasn't a lapdog within. A yappy Pomeranian. Even worse, a Pekinese -- those little lions not afraid to jump a tiger.
Fortunately, Z knew a way to cancel the small dog threat.
And that had been that. All in all, a good day's work.
That was then. This was now.
His breathing back to normal, Z edged down the back wall to discover what he'd found on other occasions; that the far, end window was locked with nothing more than a simple, circular catch.
Strange, how nobody thought to safeguard the window in an attached garage.
To be fair, it was easy to overlook a small opening in a structure with big, wide doors to worry about.
His entry point discovered, Z popped open the case and took out the knife -- was able to reach up and slip the blade between the center window frames and snap back the catch.
The window unlocked, he gentled up its lower half, the rising sash making an acceptable squeal, the garage's insides smelling of gas, oil, plastic, polish, wax, and chamois.
So far, so good.
Knife back in the case, Z measured the window with his hands.
Small, but not too small.
And not that high. Ignoring the risk of further damage to his knee, he could pull himself up and in.
First, the case. Lifting the satchel, he pushed it through the window, lowered it as far as he could, and let it clunk softly to the concrete floor inside.
As ready as he was going to get, he put his head through the frame. Placing his hands on the sill to push himself up, at the same time "climbing" the outside walls with his rubber boots -- P.I.'s were not called gumshoes for nothing -- pushing, pulling, scraping, he got the upper half of his body inside the narrow window.
Now for the bad part. Taking a deep breath, he stretched out his arms in an attempt to cushion his fall.
Nothing else to be done, he wriggled past the balance point, turned loose the sash and let his body weight pull him the rest of the way through the window.
Thud!
Even breaking the tumble with his hands, Z hit in a heap.
Getting up slowly, painfully ... his head ringing ... his left arm paralyzed from the "funny" bone down, he checked for other injuries ... finding that, except for scuffing some meat off his ribs, he was in one piece.
Halted for the moment, Z fumbled out, then gulped down a number of the aspirin he'd poured in his pocket before leaving home this evening. (Not a doubt in his mind that he'd need them before the night was over.)
Rubbing feeling into his left hand and forearm, Z used the time to let his eyes adjust to the heavier gloom of the garages; made out a long, black shape in the middle garage bay.
A Lincoln.
Figured.
Another minute of rubbing to bring his arm back to normal, bending down, Z groped until he located the satchel.
Picking up the case, stepping quietly, he crossed the empty Miata bay, squeezed past the front of the Lincoln in the center stall, and crept through the other unused bay.
Stopped at the house wall, more by feel that by sight, he located the door handle, wiggling it ... to find that, true to form, nothing but a spring lock protected the door, the kind everyone knew how to open with a credit card.
Putting down the case, Z slipped out his wallet, again by feel, extracted the plastic card he always carried for these purposes.
Carefully, quietly, he inserted the stiff plastic in the crack between the leading edge of the door and the doorframe, slipped back the lock tongue, then shouldered the door forward enough to keep the latch from springing back.
Holding the door in that position, Z thumbed the card back in his billfold and returned the wallet to his back pocket.
The latest in locks and alarms had to be protecting the mansion's other windows and doors; the house was too big, too rich, and too alone to be left unguarded. He could o
nly guess (judging by the garage door slip-up) that Maddox had installed the security system himself, the builder too "know-it-all" to hire a professional.
Ready, Z pushed the door until the smallest possible crack appeared; put his ear to the slit; listened with absolute attention. Hearing ... for an eon ... nothing but his breathing.
Punctuated by the pounding of his tell-tale heart.......
No other precautions to take, he opened the door enough to peek inside.
Laundry room.
Partially open door across the way with a dim light coming through.
No doubt, the kitchen.
Carefully, the leather glove on his hand making it difficult, Z dug into his pants pocket for his silent dog whistle.
Found it; began raking out the small tube, feeling, at the same time, the inside of the pocket coming with it.
Stopping instantly, Z took his time working the whistle clear. (Attention to detail was his specialty. In his business, lack of concern for simple things -- in this case, the accidental raking out that pocket's car keys -- messing up his escape.)
The whistle out, Z shifted the small, metal cylinder to his other gloved hand, at the same time fingering the pocket back inside his pants.
Ready at last, putting the business end of the whistle in his mouth, he blew. Two long, inaudible shrills.
Soundless to humans.
A shrieking challenge to any self-respecting dog.........
No whining.
No barking.
No eager sound of slipping doggy toenails on the tiled kitchen floor.........................
No inside dog.
Satisfied (not liking the idea of dealing with a house dog), he slid the whistle back in his pocket. Z didn't like dogs, but didn't want to hurt them, either.
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