by Don Bruns
“Now, what did you want?”
“Professor Brandt, I’m Skip Moore.”
I stuck out my hand, but he made no effort to shake it, so I withdrew the offer and concentrated on my short speech.
“I am a private investigator looking into the murder of Amanda Wright. I would like to ask you a few—”
“Get the hell out of here.”
I hadn’t expected the interview to be this brief. But I’d seen the interview with Kevin Kahn cut short when I mentioned Amanda’s name, so it didn’t totally surprise me.
“Professor, this is simply—”
“I’ll call campus security.”
I wondered if there was such a thing. If there had been when James and I were students at the school, we would have been arrested a number of times.
“Look, I’m not here to open any wounds. Okay?” Poor choice of words. “Amanda was murdered several days ago and I’m simply trying to—”
“What are you insinuating?” He was ghost white, his hands clutching at the desk calendar in front of him.
“I’m insinuating nothing.” I wasn’t sure that I shouldn’t put this guy on the front list of suspects. He was paranoid from my opening statement.
“Then why are you here?”
“I want to find out who killed Amanda Wright. And you have a history with her.”
“Oh, yeah. A history, you call it? Kid, you can’t imagine what kind of history we have.”
“Well, I wanted to explore that.”
“Let me be very brief about your exploration. The girl is, the girl was, serious trouble. And now, after she’s gone, I still have to deal with her?”
Brandt spread his large hands on the wood-topped desk in front of him.
“She ruined my life. She lied to authorities, and damn it,” he pointed his index finger at my head like the barrel of a gun, “she should have been prosecuted for what she claimed. But for all the fairness in our litigious society, she remained above the fray. What are you even doing here? Are you suggesting I had something to do with her murder?”
Both of us still stood, Brandt on his side of the desk, me still in the doorway. I was afraid the guy might come over the top to get me.
“No. Nothing like that. I’m trying to figure out what she was like. I thought if you’d talk to me maybe I could understand her a little better. Get into her head and possibly that would help me find her killer.”
Finally, he sank into the swivel desk chair, staring at his hands.
“It doesn’t matter anymore.” His voice had gone from combative to subdued.
“What doesn’t matter?”
“The whole thing.”
“You’re still here, still employed. You’re doing seminars, I even saw where you recently had a book published on business ethics. I mean, it doesn’t sound like your life is too bad.”
“Ever been accused of something you didn’t do?”
Almost everything I’d been accused of, I’d actually done.
“We had an affair.” The fight seemed to have left him and he let out a slow breath.
“She wanted it to continue and I called it off. I’ve admitted all of that.”
“So this was the way she paid you back? Accusing you?”
He nodded.
“She got mad, furious is more like it. Threatened me, told me she’d ruin my career and it came down to a matter of he said-she said. She couldn’t prove the charges and as there were no witnesses—”
“It just went away, or did she drop the charges?”
“Why should I tell you this? You’re a detective, go look it up.”
He looked up at me and shook his shaved head.
“All right. You want to know what happened, it’s there for anyone to see. She dropped the charges and dropped out of school. I have not seen or heard from her since then. Of course, I was surprised at the news about her murder. I hated the girl, but I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
There was not much more to ask, but I needed his answer to get this thing straight in my head. “One final question.”
“That’s it.”
“I know. This is the last one. When she dropped the charges,” I wasn’t sure I could go through with it, but it seemed like the logical conclusion, “was there any compensation?”
He stood up and came around the desk as I backed out of the cramped office.
“I think it’s time for you to leave.”
“If there was even a request for money, it might follow a pattern. Just a yes or no and I’ll never bother you again.”
“Damn straight you won’t. Get the hell out of here. Leave. Now.”
I started down the long corridor, hearing my steps echo off the walls. The hallway was eerily empty, and I figured everyone was in class. I hadn’t really found out what I wanted to know. Either he was never going to tell anyone, or I just hadn’t asked the right questions.
“Kid.” I turned, and he was still in the doorway watching me, the scowl etched on his face. “Don’t come back.”
“I won’t. You won’t hear from me again.” I had no intention of visiting this place again. I didn’t need this kind of aggravation. Maybe I’d find a job as a retail clerk or insurance salesman, but I didn’t need this kind of pressure.
“Kid.”
“Yeah?” I didn’t want to hear any more. I felt certain the guy had been set up, and I was just picking at old wounds.
“It’s complicated.”
His voice was barely above a whisper. I had to strain to hear him.
“When something as meaningless as that happens, when you are just having a fling with someone of the opposite sex, and then you realize it’s not only a mistake, but that fling is going to cost you everything that’s important in your life, you’ll do just about anything to make it go away. Almost anything.”
“Did you make it go away?”
There was a long pause as he took a deep breath.
He nodded. A confession that he’d kept bottled up inside.
“I did. I did.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
With my last couple of bucks I bought the cheapest WD-40 I could find and sprayed it heavily on the door hinges. It made the inside of the truck smell even worse than it normally did, but I was amazed at the difference. The doors weren’t that much easier to open, but there were almost no squeaks and squeals.
As I walked into the apartment, James was scowling.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What? What did I leave out?”
“That the cops were seriously looking at me as a person of interest.”
I had left that out.
“It didn’t seem that important, James. Em said that Ted Con -way mentioned it to her, but she didn’t think they were serious.”
“Well, they’re on their way over to sweep the truck.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No. They found some fibers on the body, and they can’t identify them. Hell, it couldn’t possibly be anything from the truck.”
“No, no way.”
Now I felt like shit. I should have told him.
“Listen, James, I saw Amanda, I talked to her that night. But even then, Em drove and I didn’t do so much as shake her hand. There’s no way any fiber, or whatever was at the scene, came from our vehicle.”
“Well, they’re apparently not having much luck with the case if they’re down to vacuuming my truck. I mean if that’s the best they can do—”
“Did you pick Amanda up in the truck? When you took her out?”
He hesitated for a moment. “Yeah, but that was months ago, and I can’t believe she still had fibers from a three-month-old date.”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“Em stopped by. I told her about the truck and that’s when she told me that the cops considered me a person of interest.”
“Listen, there’s no way you’re going to get implicated. They’re just covering bases. What did Em want?”
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“Wanted to talk to you. She said there was some friction between the two of you and she was hoping to talk it out.”
I let out a deep breath.
“What I learned today isn’t going to make it any easier.” I needed to debrief him on my meeting.
He leaned back on the sofa and I eased onto the recliner. “Amanda Wright had an affair with Brandt. When he tried to break it off, she filed charges of sexual battery. He fought it.”
“Dude?”
“His story. She can’t very well refute it at this time.”
James folded his hands. “You know, that doesn’t surprise me. I told you she was a needy little girl. The woman was out on a limb.”
“Charges were dropped, James.”
“And you found out why?”
“First of all, Brandt said there was no proof. But she could have kept it alive and done even more damage to his reputation. Instead, she dropped the charges.”
“I’m waiting for the payoff, amigo.”
“Surprise, James. That’s what it was. A payoff. Brandt pretty much told me he’d paid her to go away.”
“Wow. And how close were Amanda and Emily?”
“She’s admitted that Amanda wasn’t the nicest girl in the world, but I don’t think Em knows all there is to know.”
“And if you tell her—”
“It just strains our relationship.”
“So, you’re going to keep it quiet?”
“Nope. You just got pissed because I held back the thing about person of interest. I’m going to be open with her. No more secrets.”
They showed up twenty minutes later, two gloved officers with forceps, tape, and an official search warrant. I’d never seen one before, so I examined it thoroughly, then passed it to James while one officer tapped his foot and kept looking at his watch.
“We don’t have all day, guys. And we do have the official warrant.”
“Signed by a judge and everything,” James said. “It says here you can only search our truck, am I right?”
The impatient one nodded.
“And you’re going to vacuum the floor? Because,” he said smugly, “it needs a good cleaning.”
“There you are out of luck. A vacuum picks up too much extra stuff. We use tape and forceps. That’s it.”
The cop opened the door to the truck and sniffed. “What, you sprayed WD-40?” He spun around and stared at me, his forehead creased with a frown.
Standing on the blacktop, James looked at me and smiled. “You did it, pard. Lubricated the doors.”
“Look, you probably know that the lubricant will hydrate the fibers in the carpet, but if these fibers match the ones on the body, we’re going to know it.” The cop smirked. “You can’t mask it, pal. We’ll know.” He turned to his task.
Pressing the tape to the floor, the officer then lifted the sticky cloth and deposited the gray tape in a paper envelope. His partner pulled fibers up with his forceps. In a matter of minutes they were done. As the two of them climbed into their car, the driver turned to us and said, “Nice try, guys. But seriously, we’ll know.”
I couldn’t believe it. They thought we were trying to mask the fibers in the carpet with a lubricant. Maybe they really were going to make a case against James. With me as an accomplice.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“I’ve been doing a little research on stab wounds,” James commented as we drove to L’Elfe.
“What did you learn?”
“Men stab overhand. Women stab underhand.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, no, Skip, there’s a reason.”
A breeze was blowing through the open truck windows and I could smell the salty fish odor coming from the bay as we drove down the road.
“What’s the reason?”
“Guys are taller than women. It’s that simple. Guys are stabbing in a downward motion.” He took his right hand off the wheel and made a downward stab. I was glad when he put it back on the steering wheel as the truck swerved.
“Because the woman is shorter than he is. And because he is going for the heart.”
“God, I wish I didn’t even know this.”
“Women, when they are stabbing a guy, are stabbing upward. Toward the heart. Therefore, underhand.”
“The heart is most often the target?”
“It is. The heart and the neck. Most killers know that the heart will bleed out, that, and severing the carotid artery can also cause massive hemorrhaging.”
“How do you find the heart?” I knew it was on my left, and if I concentrated I could hear it beating—sometimes—but I would have been guessing if I was trying to identify it with the point of a knife.
“Doesn’t matter, Skip.” He stared straight ahead, one hand on the steering wheel, one hand out the window, the ashes of his cigarette blowing behind us. “Anywhere in the chest can cause someone to bleed out. Big thoracic blood vessels cover almost as much area as the heart.”
I was impressed. James had gotten to the heart of the matter, so to speak. But I wasn’t quite sure what it all had to do with our murder investigation.
“But we’re not worried about that. We’re not worried because our killer stabbed Amanda in the stomach and abdomen.”
“And that means what?”
He tossed the cigarette and we pulled into the parking lot. I looked around for a ’96 Dodge Intrepid, hoping that Juan Castro had come back to wash dishes. That didn’t seem to be in the cards.
“I’m not sure what it means. It could have been, like, a guy who kept the knife in his hand, arm distended, and he just walked up to her and stabbed her from that position. I mean, I can picture that. Arm hanging down, you just walk into someone.”
Again, something you don’t want to imagine.
“Could have been a woman. Stabbing up, this person might have been a short woman.”
“Like Sophia Bouvier.”
“Bite your tongue. That’s the hand that feeds us, pal. But yeah, someone of that stature.”?
“What about depth of the wound?”
“We don’t know how deep the wounds were. And apparently it’s hard to tell, because the skin and other organs compact and contract as soon as they are invaded.” James reached across the seat and grabbed his chef’s jacket.
“Think about a five-inch knife. Five inches, and you stab someone. As you push into their abdomen, you can probably feel the cavity give another three or four inches. Maybe more. So,” he paused, probably for dramatic effect, “you could get a nine-inch-deep cut on someone’s torso with a five-inch blade. And apparently there is so much blood, that until the body is totally drained, the actual length, depth, and other damage done by the stabbing is almost impossible to decipher.”
“You’ve really done your homework.”
James smiled, proud of himself. “I’m not sure it does us any good. I still think Joaquin Vanderfield is the prime suspect. And I go for the knife hanging below the belt, and just pushing it in.”
Vanderfield was easily six foot or six one. I was trying to picture how low his hand would have to be to stab someone almost a foot shorter below their stomach. I knew it could be done, but it almost felt unnatural. And here I was, thinking that stabbing a young woman was unnatural? Duh.
“What kind of knife does the pirate wear?”
“Pirate?”
“Never mind. Just this kind of fantasy—” I was somewhat embarrassed. “Vanderfield. What brand, style of knife?”
“Same as I do. A Wüsthof.”
A very popular brand and style of knife.
“Tell you what, Skip. We need to contact Cheryl Deitering, the knife lady from the lab. Get her take on this. Seemed like a pretty sharp woman.”
James opened his door, leaning into it a little.
“Hey, pardner, no squeaks. No groans.”
“But we are minus some of the carpet fibers. That’s going to hurt the truck’s resale value.”
James laughed as we walked towar
d the kitchen door. Turning to me, he suddenly stopped.
“Oh, I got some information on Chef Marty.”
“Anything we can use?”
“He’s been sued a couple of times for firing people, and he’s written several articles about his cooking style. Oh, and Bouvier has had him on The Food Channel show four or five times. Not much there, really.”
“Married?”
“Yeah. One kid. So if he did have an affair, that could cause a problem. But the thing that I found interesting? Before he went to The Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago, before he got his culinary art major, he worked for a slaughterhouse. Right outside of Chicago. Butchering hogs and cows.”
I winced as James opened the door and we walked in.
“Think about it, Skip.” He turned to me, his eyebrows raised.
“About starting out as a butcher?”
“Yeah, but I’m talking about appearances on The Food Channel.”
“What about it?”
“If I play my cards right, amigo—”
Two cooks and Marty were already working prep. One guy with a green headband was stirring soup and Kelly Fields was busy putting dough in the oven.
I offered my services to Chef Marty who seemed genuinely surprised to see a dishwasher volunteering to do anything other than their mundane task of scraping and washing.
“Sure. Help with the baked goods. Kelly can tell you what she needs. Special dessert tonight. Okay?”
I walked up to the attractive brunette, tapping her on the shoulder.
“Skip?”
“Chef said you could use some help. And since I don’t have dishes until we open, just tell me what to do.”
She studied me for a moment, and even in the L’Elfe kitchen with its smells of onions, carrots cooking in the soup, garlic, and savory sauces, I detected the gentle floral tones from her perfume. If she wasn’t married, if I didn’t think things were back on with Em, I’d have been tempted.
“A caramel frosted cupcake is on the specials tonight.” All business.
“And what do I do?”
“The big mixer over there, you’re going to mix butter, brown sugar, milk, and confectioner’s sugar.”
“A couple of cups?” The few times I’d helped James make anything, a couple of cups was quite a bit. “That’s a pretty big mixer.”
