Murder in the Hearse Degree

by Tim Cockey

  Billie brought a large serving bowl of potato salad to the table. Fallon was downright Pavlovian as he heaped his plate full.

  “Tell Hitch about your phone call, Nick,” Julia said. She looked over at me. “I think you’re going to like this.”

  Fallon shoveled a huge forkful of potato salad into his mouth and masticated with a steady deliberateness. He looked as happy as that clam we always hear about. He held up a finger, indicating for us to hold on. He continued chewing. The earth hurtled around the next corner.

  “Got a call,” Fallon said at last. “A couple of weeks ago. Maybe more, I’d have to check. It was at the paper. A girl. Woman. Whatever the hell I’m supposed to call them these days. She didn’t identify herself. I’ve got caller ID, but it turned out she wasn’t calling from a private phone. The call was from a phone booth.”

  “Tell him where,” Julia said.

  “Call came from Annapolis.”

  “What did she want?” I asked.

  “She wanted money. For a story. Now you’ve got to remember, we get these calls all the time. A couple of high-profile stories over the years that The Cannon has paid big bucks for and everyone thinks we’re just sitting by the phone with a big bag of dough just waiting to give it away. I told her it didn’t work that way. She said I should listen to her, that she had a nice juicy scandal.”

  “Can you believe that?” Julia said. “In The Daily Cannon? I’m mortified.”

  “Well, here was the thing. She told me that it had to do with the ARK.”

  My little ears perked up. “The ARK? My old buddy Larue?”

  “That’s right. Crawford and company. Now you’ve got to remember what they’re all about, okay? It’s the Alliance for Reason and Kindness, for Christ’s sake. They’re do-gooders. I mean there’s nothing wrong with that as far as it goes. They tell people to make their beds in the morning and be good to one another. But I think you see what I’m saying. They’re straight shooters. Family values. Upright and uptight. No hanky, no panky.”

  “Where do you suppose adultery would fit into that?” I asked.

  “The scarlet letter?”

  I gave them the lowdown on my backyard snooping down at the Gellman ranch. Fallon continued shoveling the potato salad into his maw as I told the tale.

  “Do you think it could have been Sophie who called?” Julia said. “Do you think she saw something similar and tried to cash in on it?”

  “I can buy that,” I said. “Mrs. Larue was not exactly behaving like the ARK poster child.”

  Fallon was shaking his head. “Let me tell you what the people in Washington say is stenciled on that woman’s undies. ‘Virginia Larue’s Home for Wayward Boys.’ Ginny Larue is a regular one-woman men’s club. That’s common knowledge inside the Beltway, but if that’s all this call was about, there’s no scandal there. I mean, there is. The ARK is all about being preachy and morally upright and here you’ve got the wife of the damn joint running around town spreading a hell of a lot more than the gospel. But as a story, it’s a fizzle. It’s all accuse and deny. It’s just never been worth going after. It’s Washington, after all. There’s a hell of a lot of dirty laundry that you just don’t even bother with. We need a little more zing to our sex scandals.”

  “What about Crawford Larue?” I asked. “Is he in the dark about all this?”

  “Does Crawford know that his wife is a public popsicle? Who can say? She sure as hell didn’t marry him for his looks. Look, here’s the thing. Virginia Hallowell had been bouncing around the D.C. party circuit for a number of years. She was one of those gals who just loved the smell of power in the morning, you know? You can’t run a political city without them, just check your history books. Anyway, a couple of years ago she fell pretty hard for a low-level something or other at the White House. He was married. There was a bit of a mess there and then suddenly up she popped on the arm of little Crawford. Mr. Purity and Light himself. His first wife had died a few years back. Talk was that Miss Hallowell was mending her salacious ways, but of course that turned out to be a crock. Old dog old tricks. She married the guy. You’ve seen the house. Crawford’s doing all right for himself with his little dynasty. I guess Virginia just decided she needed to get herself a harbor. Nobody gets any younger.”

  I jerked a thumb at Julia. “This one does.”

  Fallon said, “I already told you, this one ain’t human.”

  “This one could stand for a better compliment than that,” Julia said.

  I pressed. “So this scandal your girl was trying to peddle. You don’t think it had to do with the indiscretions of Lady Larue?”

  Fallon shook his head. “I was getting a bigger pitch than that. The thing is, she refused to go into details unless I promised her a cut of cash, but what she did tell me was that she had the dope on the ARK being involved in all sorts of anti-ARK things. Abortions, for one thing. And you know the ARK lobbies long and hard to the right on that one. Even creepier, though, she said they were involved in forced sterilizations. Of minors, no less. Of course if any of that were true, that’s the stuff that topples empires. But like I said, I tried to get her to fill in the details and she wouldn’t really give me anything I could work with. She wanted money first and I told her I’d have to take that up with the publisher. I tried to wrangle a number from her where I could reach her but she wouldn’t bite. Said she’d call me back.”

  “And when was this again?” I asked.

  “I’d have to check to be sure, but it was at least a few weeks back.” He shrugged. “I figured it was probably a load of crap, but I went ahead and rang up the ARK and put it to them for comment. You can guess what they told me. They wouldn’t dignify this filth with a comment. I was also told that if the Cannon even trotted out so much as a teaser article on garbage like this, the ARK would drag our asses into court faster than we could blink. It was Russell Jenks I spoke with. You met him, right?”

  “Briefly.”

  “He labored long and hard not to look at my breasts,” Julia said. “With limited success.”

  “Mrs. Larue described him as her husband’s loyal soldier,” I said. “Or maybe it was the Lord’s loyal soldier. I can’t remember.”

  Fallon smirked. “Jenks is high up there on the ARK food chain. Of course nabbing the boss’s daughter doesn’t hurt. You remember her, don’t you? The girl with kaleidoscope eyes?”

  “Odd fish,” I said.

  “I’ll say. Girl’s in la-la land. Bird like that you can park in the corner and not even have to worry about her.”

  “Anybody tries to park me in a corner,” Julia said, “I’d throw it in reverse.”

  “So did you hear back from your mystery caller?” I asked Fallon.

  “No. I waited, but she never called. Ninety percent of the time that’s how it goes. People fish for money then they disappear. Turns out there’s no story, of course. It’s either a fruitcake who just gets off on making these kinds of calls or it’s a disgruntled employee or a pissed-off spouse or who knows. I considered poking around a little more to see if the ARK had recently dumped anybody who might want to be getting back at them. But then I just forgot about it.”

  “If it was Sophie she’d have a damn good reason for not calling you back,” I said. “That old ‘being dead’ thing.”

  “Who do you see killing her?” Fallon asked.

  “How about Virginia Larue? Maybe she got tipped off somehow that Sophie was stirring up the mud.”

  Fallon waved his fork in the air. “Hold on. That’s another thing. Julia told me about that whole ‘adopt my baby’ routine. I don’t buy that. There’s no way for me to know for sure, of course, but I don’t see Crawford and Virginia Larue suddenly deciding to become parents. Ginny Larue couldn’t care less for kids. That woman’s just not the mommy type, if you ask me. And Crawford? Maybe, I guess. Old guys do get that immortality thing going sometimes. Though that’s usually about f
athering the child themselves, to show the world that they’ve still got the stuff.”

  “But if Sophie wasn’t really meeting with the Larues so that they could adopt her baby, then what was it?”

  “Let me try to get this straight,” Nick said. “This girl calls me up and blathers on about all sorts of nefarious bullshit going on at the ARK. At the same time she’s meeting with Crawford Larue personally, allegedly about his and Ginny’s adopting her kid? Do we know for a fact that she was actually pregnant?”

  “We know that,” I said. “Coroner’s report.”

  “Right. Okay. So then what? Next thing we know she ends up in the river. That’s what we’ve got?”

  “And there’s also Tom Cushman,” I said.

  “Tom who?”

  “Cushman. He’s the actor who posed as the father of Sophie’s child when she went to talk with the Larues.”

  “But you just told me that the navy boy was the daddy.”

  “Bradley sliced it off with Sophie the minute she got pregnant. There’s no way he would have gone with her to meet Larue. Tom took it on as an acting gig. From the sound of it he failed the audition.”

  “And where is he now in all this?”

  “He’s dead in all this,” I said. “A car ran him over a few nights ago down in Annapolis. The police have it as an accident, a hit-and-run.”

  “And you definitely believe the navy boy?”

  “I hardly think he’d go out of his way to lie about something like that,” I said. “He wants to stay out of trouble. Why in the world would he say he was the father if he wasn’t?”

  Billie piped up. “To protect the real father?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t buy it. This kid wasn’t falling on his sword for anyone.”

  “What if this Tom character knew navy boy,” Fallon said. “Then he . . . Christ, we’re just running around in circles. I’m more interested in knowing why this girl really went to Larue in the first place. Something’s not kosher there.”

  “She was living in Mike Gellman’s home,” I said. “Maybe she found out about Gellman and Ginny Larue.”

  “Yeah, but I just told you, that’s a small potato.”

  “Sophie wouldn’t necessarily know that,” I said.

  “No, it’s something else.” Fallon linked his hands behind his head and sat back in his chair, closing his eyes. “I don’t know what the hell it is. But it’s something else. Give me a minute.”

  We did. And he took complete advantage. By the time it arrived Fallon was fast asleep.

  CHAPTER

  20

  The next day I got into my car and headed south. The day was warm and I rolled my windows down. On 95 South I passed an exit that read FUTURE. I was sorely tempted, but I resisted. Several years earlier on a visit to New York I’d taken the bait of a sign that read UTOPIA PARKWAY and had surely not found my bliss there. These signs can be misleading.

  Two exits past the FUTURE I found myself ingloriously stuck in the present for nearly a half hour. A jackknifed tractor trailer was hogging the road, leaving only half a lane and a narrow shoulder for the rubberneckers to squeeze by. The truck looked like a large animal that had decided to roll over on its side and take a nap. A half dozen policemen and an ambulance crew were standing around scratching their heads when I crawled past, so things didn’t appear to be too dire.

  A minute longer in traffic and I would have missed Virginia Larue altogether. As it was she was just coming out of her driveway in her little red sports car as I pulled up. She met me going in the opposite direction and stopped, her window gliding smoothly from sight.

  “Good morning,” I said. “Or good afternoon.”

  She answered with a wary, “Hello.”

  “Do you remember me?”

  “I do. Mr. Sewell.” I can’t say that the woman looked me up and down—for of course I was sitting in a car—but she took in the car. “Is this a coincidental meeting? Were you just passing this way?”

  “In fact I was coming by to see you,” I said.

  “Oh?” The word didn’t come out exactly like a purr. But close.

  “I probably should have called.”

  “That would have been wise. I’m leaving, as you can see. I have an appointment.”

  “It wouldn’t happen to be with a certain assistant D.A. from Annapolis, would it?”

  In less time than it takes to blink, Virginia Larue went all hard around the edges. I basked in her icy stare.

  “I’m running late. What do you want?”

  “I’m not really sure,” I said, glancing in my rearview mirror. A car was coming up on me. “A little chitchat, I suppose.”

  Virginia Larue looked as if she had eaten something distasteful. “Two o’clock. The Commodore Hotel. It’s near Union Station.”

  “Hotel?”

  “They have a restaurant,” she said flatly. “You can buy me lunch.”

  She drove off before I could respond, leaving me a little puff of oily smoke to chew on. The car behind me honked. On an impulse I turned the wheel and pulled into the Larue driveway. I decided that the swans and the cherub weren’t having sex; they were merely getting to know each other. A squirrel ran along the gravel up to my door, twitched his whiskers at me then bounded off to the lawn and spiraled up a tree. A flash of white off near the rear of the house caught my eye. There was a small lattice structure set back against a pair of large boxwoods. A wooden swing—like a porch swing—hung from a pair of chains. Someone in bare legs was sitting on the swing. The flash of white was from the legs, which appeared and disappeared behind the boxwoods as the swing moved backward and forward.

  I got out of the car and stepped across the grass. The legs continued to appear and disappear, and as I approached I could hear the faint creaking of wood from the swinging chains. A pale blue baseball cap was visible on the back swing. I rounded the boxwoods. It was a young woman, head down, reading a book that was open on her lap. She was in cutoff jeans and what looked like a cotton pajama top, loose and formless and patterned with pink angels. Her feet were bare and one of them—the left one—was pushing off the grass each time the swing came forward, to keep it rocking. I cleared my throat. She was very slender. Long neck, no waist, trim pale legs.

  “Hello.”

  She looked up. For a moment I didn’t recognize her; the baseball cap was pulled low on her head, shading her eyes.

  “Hello.” The word didn’t come out much louder than the creaking wood. But I recognized the twang. It was Sugar Jenks. Crawford Larue’s daughter. She pulled the open book up to her chest and hugged it.

  “I didn’t mean to disturb you,” I said. “I just . . . ah, I just ran into your mother.” I ticked my head to indicate the street and Sugar gazed off in that direction as if she expected to see something. She stopped kicking against the grass. “I’m Hitchcock Sewell. We met the other day. At the party. Very briefly.”

  “I remember.” She seemed uncomfortable holding eye contact for more than a few seconds. She gazed down at her knees.

  “What are you reading?” I asked. She mumbled her answer. “Sorry,” I said, “I missed that.”

  “Trash.” She made it into a two-syllable word. She looked back up. “I’m just reading trash. It’s about a woman who is an international spy and men fall in love with her.”

  “Are you enjoying it?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Then it’s not trash. It’s entertainment.”

  “Daddy thinks it’s trash.”

  “Well then Daddy shouldn’t read it,” I said.

  The swing had come to a halt. “I’m not dressed,” Sugar said in a husky whisper.

  “Of course you are.”

  “No, I’m not. I didn’t expect any visitors.”

  “Do you live here?”

  She cocked her head. “This is my home.”

  “You and your hu
sband?”

  “Russell and I live in the east wing. Daddy and . . . my stepmother have the rest of the house. Are you here to see Daddy?”

  “Not exactly. I was driving by and I spotted your stepmother as she was leaving. I was just turning around in your driveway and I saw you over here and thought I’d come say hi.”

  “Are you friends with Virginia?”

  I thought I detected a slight urgency in her question. She pushed the cap farther back on her head and her eyes appeared. Large, dark, and anxious.

  “I only met her the other day,” I said. “Same day as I met you.”

  “At the party?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It was a nice party, wasn’t it? There were a lot of people there.”

  She was speaking like a child. Or like a child might speak to her stuffed toys. If I’d happened to have a lollipop in my pocket I would have offered it to her. From the far side of the house came the sound of a lawn mower starting up. Sugar’s head flicked again in the direction of the noise.

  “Sugar?”

  Crawford Larue was stepping from the back of the house. He was wearing slacks and a pink dress shirt, unbuttoned at the neck. He did a lousy job of hiding his frown as he made his way over to us.

  “Sugar, honey, what’s going on?”

  “Manuel’s mowing the lawn,” she said dreamily.

  Larue aimed a pudgy finger at me. “What are you doing here?” He was also doing a lousy job of sounding friendly.

  “At the moment I’m enjoying a conversation with your lovely daughter,” I said as unctuously as I could. “Nice to see you again, Mr. Larue. Though I’m surprised. I’d have thought you’d be off at work.”

  “I conduct much of my business from home,” Larue said. He turned to his daughter. “Is everything all right?”

  Sugar nodded her head. “Yes, Daddy.”

  “To what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?” Larue asked me. I repeated my lie about having been passing by. It wasn’t a very good lie, which Larue seemed to sense. He turned back to his daughter.