“Come this way, please.” He led her to a large comfortable office with a couch and easy chairs. Boxes of Kleenex were placed strategically throughout the room. He searched briefly through a cabinet and returned to the desk with a file folder. “Here it is. I can have a duplicate in a few minutes.”
“We’re from Connecticut and weren’t present for the services. I hope they were adequate.”
He looked at her with a worried frown. “But there weren’t any services. Mrs. Strickland said that since the deceased had so recently retired from Connecticut that memorial services would be held in …” He looked at the file. “Lantern City.”
“They were, but I thought that some of his friends in Florida would have wanted …”
“To view?”
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Strickland said she wanted nothing of that nature, just final preparation and cremation. Florida law requires embalming, and we made the arrangements with the crematorium and took care of the disposal of the ashes at sea ourselves. You will notice those items on the bill.” He handed her the original of the invoice.
L.C. glanced at it a moment and then up at the man across the desk. “I see items here for casket and slumber room.”
“Well, yes. It’s possible to have a cremation without a casket, but we felt that since Mr. Wadsworth Strickland was a man of dignity that the family would have wished that all preparations be of the first order. We included a casket and the use of a slumber room until cremation.”
“That was very thorough of you,” L.C. said and wondered how much additional money that cost the Strickland estate.
“We try to be thorough with taste.”
“Then no one came by?”
“Mrs. Strickland said she wanted the Lantern City Press notified, but that it wasn’t necessary to have any publicity concerning the passing in Florida.”
“Then there wasn’t any obituary in Florida?”
“The ordinary alphabetical listing in the local paper. You’ll see on line fourteen a very reasonable charge for that service.”
“Thank you very much.”
“I’ll have a copy of the bill for you in a moment,” the mortician said as they walked to the door. “You know, one friend of the family did come by. He became quite agitated and told me there had been an error.”
“What sort of error?”
“That sometimes happens when a friend or relative comes by the slumber room and hasn’t seen the deceased in some time, particularly when there’s been a long illness. They often don’t recognize the loved one.”
“This man who didn’t recognize Mr. Strickland, would you remember him if I show you a photograph of him?”
Will Barnes had his feet on the desk, his chair pushed back against the wall, and was staring at the ceiling. “You know, L.C., you sound almost hysterical.”
“I haven’t slept. Now, let me finish. I took the photograph of Hal Warren from the bulletin board at the motel and showed it to the man at the funeral home.”
“And …?”
“He positively identifies Hal Warren as the man who came by to pay his respects to Wadsworth Strickland and became very upset and talked of the mistake they’d made.”
“What did Warren do about it?”
“Left the funeral home in a hurry.”
“And went back to the boat to be murdered by Bennie Filigree.”
“Poor Bennie. They’re still holding him.”
“All right, now where is all this leading?”
“Someone else, someone not Wadsworth Strickland was cremated in Florida.”
“Then where’s Wadsworth?”
“He was killed and tied under the pier. That was the body I saw that day.”
Will’s feet banged to the floor as his chair creaked forward. “Far out, L.C. Far out.”
“You’re not letting me put it all together.”
“I wish you would. Right now, all I hear is that some bodies disappear and some bodies that aren’t who they’re supposed to be, appear.”
“Let’s start over again. Wadsworth Strickland was murdered and tied under the pier.”
“By his son.”
“Probably. Now, they just couldn’t have Wadsworth disappear. There’s a large estate involved, lawyers, insurance, they had to have documentation of his death. They got someone to impersonate Wadsworth, someone shorter and younger. When that person died, a proper death certificate was issued, the cremation was held and …”
“The memorial service was held 1,500 miles away by the friends and family.”
“Everything was in order.”
“That accounts for the body under the pier, but still …”
“It all ties together, don’t you see?”
“No.”
“Mauve fell through the ice the day of the murder, the same as I did later. She saw, or the killer thought she saw, the body under the pier. That’s why she was killed.”
“And why was Hal Warren in Florida? Wait a minute, Hal saw the small obituary in the Florida paper, went to the funeral home and found out that the corpse was not Wadsworth. He’d be one of the few people down there that knew Strickland, except for …”
“Toby Strickland.”
“So, Hal accosts Toby, asks her what in hell is going on, and is killed.”
“Yes,” she said triumphantly.
“Except that there isn’t any body under the pier. Where are the remains of Wadsworth Strickland?”
“I don’t know, but all we have to do is find his body and you’ve got a case.”
“And who was cremated in Florida?”
Her voice dropped. “I don’t know that either.”
“There’s no case, L.C. We’ve got lots of nothing. In the first place, for all this to fit together, Herb and Toby had to find someone to impersonate Herb’s father. Someone who is virtually on his last legs himself, and is fool enough or dumb enough to go through with the charade.”
“Or drunk enough.”
Will looked at her for a long moment, jack-knifed from the chair and left the office. He returned in a few moments carrying a bulky file folder which he began to search through.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“The complete file on the Bridger murder: autopsy report, affidavits, investigation reports, the whole works. Here it is.” He held up a page. “Wally McNulty.”
“Huh?”
“It could be the missing link.”
“What in the world does Wally have to do with the death of Wadsworth Strickland?”
“Not Wally. His friend Louis.”
Wally McNulty spooned milk toast into a mouth that was missing a great many teeth. L.C. and Will sat across the bare table from the aging derelict in the Alcoholic Unit of the state hospital. Wally picked up the bowl, tilted it to his mouth, and finished the last dregs.
“Tell us about your friend, Louis,” Will asked.
The old man’s eyes misted. “Louis’s gone. Took off on me. We always come here when the weather get cold, and stay until the snow melts. It works out better that way, you know.”
“What happened this year?” Will asked gently.
“Few weeks ago, before the weather turned bad, we were sitting on the stoop behind the liquor store. Louis had a bottle of red, and we were splittin’ it. Louis was good that way, anything he had I had, you know.”
“What happened then?” Will pressed.
“This big car drove down the alley, stopped, and this guy said for one of us to come over and talk. I was holding the bottle then, so Louis went. They talked for a minute and then Louis got in the car and they drove away. Funny.”
“What was so funny?”
“Him goin’ off in the car when we had almost a full bottle of red.”
“Could you recognize the man in the car?”
“I don’t think I could recognize my own mother more’n ten feet away.”
“And you never saw Louis again.”
“For a few minutes a couple hour
s later. He came back singing, like he was having a real good time and had drunk some good whisky. He gave me his overcoat and said he wouldn’t be needing it.”
“He didn’t say where he was going?”
“Nope. Hardly said anything, just that he was going South and he’d see me in the spring. Then he was gone in the big car again and that was the last I saw of him.”
“Did he ever sing ‘Kevin Barry’?” L.C. asked.
Will glared at her. “What does …”
Wally laughed. “Hell, yes. ‘Kevin Barry,’ ‘Out with the Black and Tans’, all them Irish songs. After a snootful, Louis loved to sing. Oh, how he loved to sing.”
They went by the medical records room and had the librarian pull last year’s chart on Louis O’Shaugnasy. The file indicated that during last year’s admission he had already been diagnosed as having acute cirrhosis of the liver.
Chapter Fourteen
They sat in Will’s car in the Bridget driveway and watched the water. In the fading light, L.C. could still make out the dock with its mounted floodlight. A fog had begun to move in from the Sound and obscured the end of the pier, making it appear as if it continued onward indefinitely.
“Whoever moved the body from under the dock couldn’t have taken it far.”
“Why not?” he asked flatly. “This is crazy as hell. Nobody but a small town cop would be so dumb as to be parked next to the house of one of the most powerful men in town, seriously considering knocking on his door to ask where he buried his father.”
“Why don’t you get a search warrant?”
“The judge would laugh me out of his chambers. You don’t seem to realize, L.C., we don’t really have much to go on.” He picked up the file on the Bridger murder investigation and shook it. “There’s not a shred of hard evidence here. Even if I could find a judge in his cups to sign the warrant, you don’t really think they’d keep the body in the house?”
“No.”
“Although I have to admit that if I found that Herb Strickland had been pouring concrete recently, I’d be a mite suspicious.”
“I don’t believe they’d be that obvious.”
“Neither do I.”
They sat silently as the day turned to dusk and the light began to fade across the water.
“Then why are we sitting here?” L.C. finally asked.
“For Herb Strickland to come home from the bank. We’ll go over as soon as his car pulls in.”
“That’s when we go in for cocktails and accusations of murder.”
“This is all your idea, L.C. I’m only doing what has to be done.”
“Which is?”
“Applying pressure. I’m not going to come right out and accuse them of anything. We can only hope that the innuendoes will be strong enough to force them into some sort of action. After we leave and I take you home, I’ll return and watch them all night.”
“Hoping they’ll make an error.”
“Right. And tomorrow, after I get additional information, I apply more pressure.”
“What will we know tomorrow that we don’t tonight?”
Will took a magic marker from over the sun visor and began to write on the outside of the investigation folder in clear bold letters:
“1. Obtain photograph of Wadsworth Strickland from the newspaper and Teletype it to Florida for identification by doctor, mortician, and others at Olive Bay Condominiums.’
2. Put out APB for the derelict, Louis. Derelicts always have some sort of record for D and D or breach of peace, pull his file, get prints and pictures and send for ID same as above.
3. Have Strickland condo dusted for prints—see if any match Louis’.”
L.C. looked over Will’s arm at what he had written. “I see what you mean. A positive answer on those items and …”
“More pressure on the Stricklands.”
A large car passed on the road behind them and pulled in the Strickland drive.
“Well,” Will said. “Here we go.” He left the car, slammed the door behind him, and stood by a snow bank waiting for L.C. “You sure you want to be present for this?”
“Like you said, it’s my crazy scheme. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Toby Strickland, with an incongruous frilly apron tied to her waist, opened the front door after they rang. “Chief Barnes, L.C., do come in. Herb’s in the sunroom having his cocktail.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Strickland,” Will said. “I wonder if I might talk to both of you?”
“Oh, then you’re here on official business? You want to send your men swimming off the pier again?”
Will laughed. “Not until the spring thaw, thank you. It’s about a homicide in Florida. Perhaps you might have some information since you were down there at the time.”
They sat on a sectional sofa in the living room. Herb smiled benignly at them. “Now, what’s this about another killing?”
“Hal Warren was found murdered on his boat. Mrs. Strickland, did you have an opportunity to see Mr. Warren while you were in Florida?”
“I don’t think so. At least I don’t think I did. He could have come by the house to talk to Dad. Dad and Mr. Warren were both boating enthusiasts, you know. Of course I never approved of Mr. Warren as he had a rather unsavory reputation with women.”
“Did he or didn’t he come by?”
“I’m just not sure, and of course I wasn’t always at the house. I had to do the marketing, obtain Dad’s medicine … he could have come by, it’s not clear in my mind.”
An excellent evasive answer, Will thought. In the event they found witnesses to place Hal Warren at the Strickland condominium, Toby was protected. “I see. Did you know that Hal Warren went by the crematorium to view your father’s remains before their disposal?” Was it his imagination, or did they both give an almost imperceptible start.
“No, I didn’t know that,” Toby replied. “We hadn’t invited anyone since the memorial service was held here in Lantern City.”
“Yes,” Will continued. “The mortician said he was quite agitated.”
“For whatever reason?”
“He seemed to feel there was some sort of mistake.”
“What kind of mistake?”
“He couldn’t recognize your father.”
“I’m not surprised,” Herb interjected. “Dad went downhill very quickly, lost weight, drank … a terrible shame, but it sometimes happens to men when they retire and lose all purpose in life.”
“And height?” L.C. asked.
Herb glanced at her. “What does that mean?”
“I think I should tell you that we’re Teletyping photographs and fingerprints of your father and Louis O’Shaugnasy to Florida,” Will said.
“What for?”
“Identification. Perhaps some error has been made, Mr. Strickland.”
Herb stood quickly. “I think you’ve made the error, Chief Barnes. A grave error.”
Will wondered if he hadn’t. Although he felt more assured of L.C.’s conjectures than he had before, knowing and proving in a court of law were two distinct questions. “I don’t believe so, Herb.”
“My lawyer will be made aware of your innuendoes. This will ruin you, Chief. You are a finished man in Lantern City.”
“Exactly what is your implication?” Toby asked.
“That one or both of you killed Wadsworth Strickland,” L.C. said.
“That is patently ridiculous,” the other woman replied. “I have never in my life heard anything so absurd. And what are we supposed to have done with the body?”
“Tied it under the dock,” L.C. said.
“Now wait a minute,” Herb said. “Is that why your man was diving off the pier?”
“Yes it was,” Will replied.
“And you found nothing.”
“I saw it down there,” L.C. said.
“There’s nothing there,” the Stricklands said almost in unison.
“Would you mind if I looked through the house?” Will asked. He re
alized that they had gone far further than he had intended, and might as well go the rest of the way.
“I most certainly would,” Toby said.
“If you prefer, I can get a search warrant.”
“Let him look,” Herb said. “Let him carry this idiocy as far as he wants. In the morning, my lawyers will deal with this whole question of slander.”
“Thaank you.” Will left the room.
They stared at each other with hostility for long moments until Toby spoke slowly and deliberately. “I blame you for this, Laura Converse. Everyone in town knows that you and that man are carrying on a flagrant affair. Somehow or other your dirty machinations have gone to your head. For some reason, you’ve got it in for Herbert, and this is the result.”
L.C. shook her head. “That’s not it, Toby. I know I saw something under that dock.”
“No one else has.”
“I know.” She walked to the end of the room and stood looking out the rear window. In the distance the pier loomed into the darkness, and she could barely make out the pole with the light on top. A wide path had been plowed to the dock with snow banked high on either side of the walk.
“You certainly must know, L.C., that without a body, this whole speculation is useless,” Herb said.
“That’s true,” she replied and continued staring into the quiet night. She thought of the man behind her. Herb Strickland, a banker like his father, a collector of piggy banks, a compulsive man. A man who once his initial plan was formulated would stick by it. Putting the body under the pier was at best a temporary measure. When spring arrived the estuary would be swarming with boaters, swimmers and fishermen … the body would have to be moved before then and taken out to sea where it could be concealed forever in the depths.
What had Bennie and Wally said.…
“The house is clean,” Will said from behind her. “I think we should go.”
“Before the snow melts,” L.C. said.
“Exactly. Like right now.”
“Immediately is not soon enough for me,” Herb grunted.
L.C. turned to face them. Will stood dejectedly at the doorway while the Stricklands sat primly on the couch. “Before the snow melts,” she said again. “Herb wanted the boat back from Florida as soon as possible. He couldn’t get it back fast enough.”
The Killing Edge Page 15
