A Study in Crimson

by Chris Orcutt

  Instantly all of the color drained out of Greg’s face. Sweat beaded up on his brow. I’d questioned a lot of suspects and witnesses in my time, and not one of them ever exhibited these physiological responses so quickly. Greg loosened his tie.

  “Listen…lady…I was only joking around, I swear. I didn’t mean to—”

  Svetlana hissed something at him in a language I didn’t recognize—it might have been Russian or Ukrainian—causing the man to stagger backwards and bump into the table behind him, as if a witch had just cast a spell on him. Even though I didn’t understand what she said, the viciousness of her tone made the hairs on my neck stand up.

  “I’m sorry!” Greg said, backing away. “Really, I am! Please, I have kids!”

  At his table, the man whispered something to the others. Within seconds they all got up and left.

  “Voilà,” Svetlana said, waving at the now empty dining room. “See…no need for violence.”

  “No, just the threat of it.” I smiled and shook my head. “Impressive. But…what you said about Oleksander Krush being your father—is that true? Your father is the Oleksander Krush?”

  She nodded. “He is a card I never play…unless I am faced with a lout who refuses to leave me alone. Only then do I exercise the nuclear option. As you can see, it is quite effective.”

  “Yes it is,” I said. “So, are you ready to do some investigating?”

  “I am and have been looking forward to it. Are you feeling better?”

  “Some. The food helped.” I stood and dropped my napkin on the table. “Let’s get to work.”

  15

  Tommy O’Toole, P.I.

  Outside beneath the hotel porte cochère, I handed a valet the ticket for my car. When my Mercedes pulled up to the curb with its embarrassingly flatulent exhaust, the valet looked like he wanted to comment on it. At first I considered silencing him with a deftly palmed ten-dollar bill, but since I was running out of cash, I gave him a mean look instead. A mean look was cheaper, and with my sunglasses and hangover, I wasn’t running out of them anytime soon.

  Once Svetlana got in, I set out for South Boston. I needed to search the office of the dead PI. Every time I accelerated, the muffler blared and Svetlana slid down a little more in her seat.

  “My, what a lovely automobile,” she said.

  “Hey, be nice,” I said. “This was my grandfather’s. It’s vintage.”

  Svetlana held her purse on her lap. A biography peeked out of the top. The spine read, “Tragic Genius: The Brilliance and Madness of American Chess Wunderkind Paul Morphy.” I nodded at the book. “I thought you Soviets scoffed at American players.”

  “I used to,” she said, “but I am American now. So, tell me again—what is it we do today?”

  “We’re gaining illegal entry to an office,” I said. “The office of the PI who preceded me.”

  “I see,” she said. “And by ‘gaining illegal entry,’ you mean…”

  “Breaking and entering,” I said.

  “Ah. Then it is a good thing I wore my incognito outfit.”

  “You mean the sunglasses?”

  “Yes, and this.” She fished a long silk scarf out of her handbag, draped it over her head and tied it in a bow under her chin. “Tell me about the PI who preceded you. Why are you on the case now? Was he fired?”

  “No, murdered,” I said.

  “Murdered?”

  “Afraid so. Why, would you like me to take you back?”

  “No,” she said, “but if the PI is dead, why are you searching his office?”

  “I need to see if there’s a connection between his murder and Dr. Malone.”

  “Yes, which reminds me.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a note. “Doctor Malone invited me to his lab tomorrow, to observe his ‘study.’ I was going to throw this away, but perhaps you would like to accompany me? If Sally is there, you could drive a wedge between her and Malone.”

  “That’s a great idea,” I said. “She’s working at the lab tomorrow. I take it you’re not busy.”

  “That is correct. I have no engagements until the evening, when the chess team will be playing a charity exhibition match against Yale.”

  “Okay, let’s do it. But this morning, South Boston.”

  On our way past the MIT campus, I told her about my studying chemistry and criminalistics there, then going to work for the FBI. As we continued down Mass Ave into Boston, I described a few of the major cases I worked on while with the Bureau, including the infamous Hagerstown Kidnapping case. With both of us wearing sunglasses, I couldn’t tell if Svetlana was listening to me until I stopped talking and she said, “I envy you, Dakota. You have been free to have a far more adventurous career than I.”

  Svetlana proceeded to tell me how she was raised from the age of three to become a chess champion, and how, until recently, her father Oleksander had controlled her career with an iron fist. I glanced at her. This woman was manifestly beautiful and brilliant, not to mention internationally famous, but she envied me. Something about her demeanor told me that, deep-down, she was very sad and craving a change in her life.

  When we reached South Boston, I was amazed at how gentrified the neighborhood had become. Places where I remembered burned-out storefronts and junk-ridden vacant lots were now galleries and cafés, bistros and real estate offices. And the sidewalks, formerly garbage-strewn, were pristine.

  I found the office of “Tommy O’Toole, P.I.” in a brick building on the corner of E Street and West Broadway. I parked across the street and looked the place over. The faded lettering on the entrance awning said this business had been here a long time—perhaps as far back as the 1970s—and the encroaching trendy eateries said that if Mr. O’Toole hadn’t been murdered, he soon would have been priced out of this location. I patted my pocket to be sure I had my lock picking set, and nudged Svetlana.

  “Ready?” I said.

  “That is the establishment?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “You seem to be feeling better.”

  “I am. The hangover’s still there, but it’s kind of in the background, and the Tabasco is making me sweat.”

  “Delightful,” she said. “Now what exactly am I doing?”

  “You’re keeping lookout while I pick the lock.”

  “Oh, goody.”

  We got out and crossed the street. The entrance door was in a shady alcove, so I couldn’t see the doorway clearly until we were beneath the awning. The doorway was composed of two side-by-side glass doors, the metal handles of which had been chained together and locked with four heavy padlocks. Ordinarily I’d welcome the challenge of picking four locks, but today I felt like a hit-and-run victim. I stopped in my tracks and breathed out the first part of a naughty word. I sounded like a tire leaking air.

  “What?” Svetlana raised her sunglasses, saw the snarl of chains and locks. “Oh. This is problem, yes?”

  “Yeah, it’s a problem, but”—I deepened my voice to sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger—“I’ll be back.”

  Svetlana stared blankly at me.

  “The Terminator?” I said. “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen that movie.”

  “I have not.”

  I shook my head. “Your loss.”

  We drove around for an hour before I found a hardware store, where I bought the biggest pair of bolt cutters they had. When we returned to O’Toole’s office, however, the inside lights were on, the front door was open, and the chains and locks were gone.

  “Shoot.”

  I glanced at the bolt cutter handles jutting between the front seats. Svetlana tapped the handles and made a pouty frown.

  “And you were so looking forward to using them,” she said.

  “As a matter of fact, I was.” I thumped the steering wheel and opened my door. “Come on, let’s go talk to whoever�
��s in there. Maybe it’s O’Toole’s partner.”

  We crossed the street and walked inside the office. All the way in the back, a white-haired woman was pulling files from a filing cabinet and tossing them on a desk. Each time she did it, the files made a loud slap.

  “Hello?” I said. “Ma’am?”

  The woman didn’t hear me. She just kept pulling files and dropping them on the desk.

  “Excuse me, ma’am?” I continued toward the back. “Could we speak with you? Ma’am?”

  Svetlana leaned into my shoulder. “She seems hard of hearing, Dakota.”

  “Seems?”

  We walked slowly down the middle of the room. Halfway toward the back, I bumped into a chair. It screeched against the floor. When I looked up next, the old woman was leveling a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun at us. Instinctively I stepped in front of Svetlana with my hands raised.

  “Who the hell are you?” the woman shrieked. “State your business!”

  “Ma’am,” I shouted, “this woman and I are private detectives! We need to ask you a few questions about a case Mr. O’Toole was working on! Lower the gun, please!”

  “Detectives, eh?” She partially lowered the shotgun. “Let’s see some ID. Right quick—on the desk there.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I slowly reached into my jacket, pulled out the Mass PI license and tossed it on the desk. She doddered toward us and peered down at the license. With a nod, she laid the shotgun on the desk and sat in the chair.

  “All right, Dakota Stevens,” she said. “What do you want?”

  “Well, first, ma’am…may I ask who you are?”

  “I’m Mrs. O’Toole,” she said.

  “We’re very sorry for your loss,” I said.

  I pulled up chairs for Svetlana and myself. When we sat down, I explained to Mrs. O’Toole that after her husband’s murder, Mr. Standish had hired me to take over the Malone investigation. For a second I wasn’t sure she’d heard me because she just sat there.

  I was about to repeat myself, louder this time, when she slumped over in her chair and began to sob. While I went over and patted her shoulder, Svetlana disappeared into a back room and returned with tissues and a glass of water. She handed them to Mrs. O’Toole and sat down again.

  “Oh, you’re a dear,” she said to Svetlana. “Sorry, young man, but I’m still grieving.”

  “I understand, ma’am. Let me ask you, do you think Malone is behind your husband’s death?”

  “Oh, yes, definitely.” She blew her nose and sipped some water. “But I can’t prove it, of course.”

  “Did your husband obtain any evidence the police don’t know about?” I asked.

  “Yes indeedy, he did.” With surprising spryness, she sprang out of the chair and tottered to the back of the office. She rifled through a desk drawer, pulled out a photo and returned to Svetlana and me.

  “The night before he was killed, he entered Malone’s apartment and took this picture. I think it’s a page from one of those Franklin planners, you know the kind I mean?”

  “I do,” I said. “May I see the picture, please?”

  She handed it to me. It was a close-up of a day planner page from early September, with a handwritten list of items in the “Notes” section:

  1. perky brunette, very short hair, nose and tongue piercings

  2. Asian girl with long hair (very black hair), athletic

  3. young Jane Fonda lookalike

  4. debutante, society-type girl; tall, long legs, nice posture

  5. mousy brunette, glasses, petite; saddle shoes & short skirt

  6. buxom girl, early 20s, blonde, like a German barmaid

  7. pale-skinned redhead with pale blue eyes, foreign accent

  8. female athlete, hardbody type; blonde or Latina

  “Strange.” I handed it to Svetlana. “Mrs. O’Toole...what did your husband think of it?”

  She shrugged. “Tommy never mentioned it. But Malone’s been doing that Sexual Attractiveness Study around the country, right? Maybe the girls on this list were ones he observed during one of the sessions.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “The thing is, this page was dated early September. It’s doubtful Malone’s study was up and running that soon.”

  Svetlana handed the photo back to me. “Yes,” she said, “it would take him time to acquire subjects.”

  “Good point,” Mrs. O’Toole said. “What do you think it is then?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “But the fact that this was in a day planner might be significant.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Well, if these were observations taken during one of his sessions, they’d probably be in a lab notebook. They’d include other details, too, like the girls’ behavior. Also, I’m not sure why half the entries are crossed out.”

  Mrs. O’Toole drank some more water. When she put the glass down again, she smiled grimly and nodded.

  “You seem like you know what you’re doing, Mr. Stevens. Are you a good detective?”

  “I was good when I was with the Bureau,” I said, “but I’m fairly new to private work.”

  She looked at Svetlana. “And what about you, dear?”

  “I am a professional chess player,” Svetlana said.

  Mrs. O’Toole tapped the stock of the shotgun. “Sorry I pulled this on you when you came in.”

  “It’s understandable,” I said. “But you really shouldn’t be here alone.”

  “My nephew’s coming this afternoon with a truck to help me clean the place out.”

  “That’s good.” I held up the photo of the list. “May I keep this, ma’am?”

  “Yes, on one condition,” she said. “If you find out Malone killed my husband, you have to promise me you’ll take him down.”

  “I’ll do my best, Mrs. O’Toole.”

  “Okay, take it then. And be careful, you two.”

  “We will, ma’am,” I said. “Thank you.”

  Svetlana said goodbye to Mrs. O’Toole and we returned to the car. For the first part of our ride back to Cambridge, the two of us were quiet, but when we passed the Christian Science Church on Mass Ave, I glanced at the photo of the list again and had an epiphany. I tossed the photo on Svetlana’s lap.

  “What do you make of it?” I asked.

  “It does not read like a list of girls Malone observed,” she said.

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “It reads like—”

  “—a wish list,” I said.

  “No, Dakota.” Svetlana slowly turned to me and removed her sunglasses. A look of horror shone in her eyes. “A shopping list.”

  A fresh wave of the hangover nausea, combined with a sensation of dread, came over me.

  “Damn, I think you’re right,” I said. “When people go shopping and find something on their list, what do they do?”

  “Cross the item out,” she said.

  “Right,” I said. “One of the girls on the list sounds a lot like Sally Standish. Read number five aloud, would you?”

  Svetlana picked up the photo. “ ‘Mousy brunette, glasses, petite; saddle shoes and short skirt.’ ”

  Even though my head was sweating from the Tabasco, a tingling chill cascaded down my neck and back. Somehow I knew, without a scintilla of doubt, that the “mousy brunette” described was Sally Standish, and that she was in danger. I had no idea what kind of danger she was in though. I needed evidence. Good thing I had Malone’s key in my pocket.

  At Boylston Street, I veered sharply toward downtown.

  “Where are we going?” Svetlana asked.

  “The North End,” I said. “It’s time to take a closer look at Dr. Malone.”

  16

  A Time-Honored Secret of the Detecting Trade

  Few city neighborhoods are more problematic
for a detective than Boston’s North End. It’s a maze of narrow streets with no parking, and many of the buildings, including Malone’s, have been converted to lofts with solid steel doors at the entrances.

  After spotting Malone’s building, we had to drive all the way to the Old North Church before we found a parking spot. Then, as we walked back along the main drag of Hanover Street, all of the old Italian men at the sidewalk cafés rubbernecked watching Svetlana pass.

  This was another problem with Boston’s North End: it’s an insular community where outsiders—especially exotically beautiful outsiders like Svetlana—are conspicuous. Suddenly I questioned the wisdom of bringing her along.

  I bought a box of latex gloves at a pharmacy, and when we finally reached Malone’s building, I discovered that the key from Sally’s planner didn’t fit the outside door.

  “What now, detective?” Svetlana said.

  “Watch and learn, Miss Krüsh. You’re about to witness a time-honored secret of the detecting trade. Ready?”

  “Yes.”

  I paused for effect, then swiped my hand down all the intercom buttons. Svetlana stifled a laugh. The speaker blared with six different voices asking, “Who is it?” I replied with gibberish, and the door buzzed open.

  “Voilà.” Waving Svetlana inside, I glanced at the intercom directory. “He’s in unit four-A.”

  The staircase was wide and metal, and the building seemed to have once been a factory or warehouse. When we reached the fourth floor landing, we were faced with two giant sliding steel doors, about twenty feet apart. Neither one was labeled, so I couldn’t tell which one was unit A and which was B. I tried the key in the lock of the first one, but it didn’t fit. I pointed at the other door.

  “That must be unit A,” I said.

  “Amazing deduction, Holmes,” Svetlana said.

  I sneered at her. I knocked on the door a few times, waited, and inserted the key in the lock. Pocketing my sunglasses, I opened the box of latex gloves and slipped on a pair.