Murder in Store

by DC Brod

  “Why not hire someone who does this sort of thing for a living? Discretion is included in the price of service.”

  “Two reasons. First of all, I did hire a private investigator initially. A fellow named Ray Keller. He did some work for me, the results of which I will show you if you accept the job. Unfortunately, he was killed by a hit-and-run driver two weeks ago.” He frowned to himself and quickly added, “I’m certain his demise had nothing to do with the investigation. He was quite a drinker and, as I understand, was stumbling out of a bar at two a.m. when he was hit. Unfortunate, of course, but purely coincidental.”

  I’m not a great believer in coincidences, but I didn’t argue.

  “The other reason is that, as I said, it is possible that these threats come from within this company. An outside investigation would only create suspicion, and I believe the entire matter would best be handled by someone who knows the company and the people who work here.” He paused a beat. “Are you interested?”

  No. For a lot of reasons. The money would be nice, but I don’t really need it. And even though I was a cop for a few

  years, I don’t have much experience in this kind of investigative work. Hauser must know that. And what’s more, investigating fellow employees can be awkward and uncomfortable.

  I looked at Hauser. Despite his reassurances, refusing to accept a job offered by the owner of the company was tantamount to professional suicide. Not that I really cared anymore. Since yesterday, my vision of the future had undergone drastic changes. The image of Maggie beaming proudly as I accepted my gold watch at a retirement party thrown by Hauser’s had been replaced with the image of an old and wizened Quint McCauley sitting in an old wizened rocking chair outside a little cottage somewhere in northern England, alone except for a Lassie-style dog and maybe a few sheep.

  But this whole situation was intriguing. Yesterday I was sure the guy was going to fire me. Today he was handing me ten grand and taking me into his confidence. Not only that, he had aroused my curiosity. Death threats to the Preston Hauser, but that wasn’t the reason I took the job on. What swayed me the most was all those Maggie-less hours I was going to have to fill.

  I swallowed my common sense and said, “Yes, I am interested.”

  Hauser regarded me for a moment, then took a large brown envelope out of his middle desk drawer. From that he produced two smaller envelopes and handed one of them to me.

  It was a plain white envelope addressed to Preston Hauser, in care of the store. The address was typed and, judging from the uneven shade of the letters, probably on a manual. The envelope was postmarked Chicago. Inside was a newspaper clipping folded once—a photo of Preston Hauser congratulating a recipient of a foundation grant. The attractive young woman was all smiles and so was Preston. It would have been one of those typical grin-and-grip poses but for one

  difference. Someone had severed Hauser’s head with a knife or a pair of scissors and spattered the picture with blood. At least I assumed that the dried brown substance was blood. I looked up at Hauser, who was watching me for a reaction.

  “When was this picture taken?” I asked.

  “About two months ago. That photo appeared in the Chicago Tribune. I received that particular rendition approximately seven weeks ago.” He handed me a second envelope. This one was larger, the kind an eight-by-ten photo could be mailed in. The address was the same and the lettering could have been from the same typewriter. “This one came four weeks ago.”

  As I pulled the picture out, Hauser explained, “The photo came shredded in that envelope. It had to be assembled like a jigsaw puzzle to get the full effect.” Hauser had taped the pieces together on a piece of gray cardboard. The photo was a head-and-shoulders publicity shot of him and was probably the standard one his PR staff used to fill requests. And, except for the paraphrased nursery rhyme typed across his forehead, it was a good likeness.

  I read his brow out loud. “'All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Preston together again.’ Well, at least we know this person’s literary leanings.”

  Hauser looked annoyed. “I shouldn’t have wasted my time putting the damned thing together. Anyone who resorts to childish puzzles and Little Bo Peep threats probably isn’t capable of committing a crime any more serious than jaywalking.”

  I almost smiled at the image of Hauser assembling this picture, searching for pieces that fit, matching and rematching. Somehow he didn’t impress me as the sort of person who liked puzzles. I suspected he had a low frustration level.

  “This one came last week,” he said, pulling another photo out of the large envelope. This was a blowup of Hauser and

  apparently a candid one. He was climbing into the backseat of a stretch limo and had turned to acknowledge someone or something behind him. The photographer had captured Hauser, mouth open in reply, wearing a slightly startled expression. And then, as if to justify that expression, the cross hairs of a rifle sight were superimposed on his forehead.

  “Unless I’m mistaken, that was taken a week and a half ago, after a meeting at the foundation,” he said and added, almost as an afterthought, “I was not aware that I was being photographed.”

  I looked at the three pictures he had shown me. “Are there any others?”

  “No. That’s it. You can see what I mean by subtle. Frankly, I think this person is more interested in scaring me than killing me. Nevertheless, I don’t like being threatened. I won’t stand for it.”

  “Does anyone else know about these letters?”

  “Irna. She often opens my mail for me.”

  Maybe that explained her dragon lady routine in the outer office.

  “Anyone else?”

  “My sister, Grace Hunnicutt. Actually, it was her idea to hire you. She’d been after me for some time to hire someone who knows the store and its people.” He shrugged. “After yesterday’s incident, with Diana, your name came up.” He paused and grinned sheepishly. “Elder sisters have a real knack for bending your will.”

  I smiled and nodded in agreement. “I know what you mean. I’ve got one of them too. Suppose I do find out who is doing this. Will you turn him or her over to the police?”

  “That depends entirely upon who it is. I won’t lie. There are some people I would rather see in police custody than others.”

  “What about Keller? What was involved in his investigation?”

  Hauser pulled a stack of manila folders from a drawer and placed them on the edge of the desk in front of me. “He was investigating a number of people in this organization who I thought might benefit from removing me from the picture. I looked over his files and nothing seems to indicate it was one of them. Maybe you’ll see something I didn’t.”

  I took the files. “This is fine,” I said, “but I need to know what it was about each of these people that puts them on your list of people out to get you.”

  He glanced at his instrument panel. “I’m afraid I have to be somewhere in a few minutes. Look those files over, do whatever it is you do to analyze the photos, and we’ll talk later.”

  Before I could respond, he pulled a bulky envelope with the Hauser logo on it from a drawer and handed it to me. The flap was folded in but not sealed so I was able to glance at the contents without making a show of ripping the envelope open. There was a crisp hundred-dollar bill on top of a large stack. I fanned a few of them, all hundreds. I didn’t bother to count them. “You were pretty sure of yourself, weren’t you.”

  He shrugged in a manner that was neither overly confident nor nonchalant. Instead, the gesture had a quality that was almost ingratiating. “I read people rather well.”

  If life was an open book to him, I wondered why he was hiring me to translate. I pocketed the envelope. “If you do, then you should know I have a thing about taking money. I won’t unless I earn it, and like I said, I need some questions answered.” When he didn’t respond I added, “Am I conducting this investigation or am I just your ten-thousand-dollar legman hired to
pacify your sister?”

  Hauser studied me for a long moment, then consulted his appointment book. “I’ll have Irna pencil you in at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. I’ll tell you what I can then.”

  He looked relieved when the telephone interrupted.

  I stood to leave. “You have a pretty good idea who did this, don’t you?” I said, fishing.

  He lifted the receiver to his ear and held it there without speaking as I turned to leave the room.

  I had a nibble.

  4

  WHEN I GOT back to my office, I found the day’s mail stacked in a neat pile in the middle of my desk. As I shuffled through the ads and correspondence, it occurred to me that the worst thing I could find here would be a bill, maybe an overdue one, or some really offensive junk mail. But Preston Hauser didn’t know if the next envelope he opened would be another sick threat or maybe the real thing. I made a mental note to make sure the mail room knew how to identify a letter bomb.

  That was what didn’t fit. Hauser didn’t seem worried enough for a man who had received three letters from someone who apparently was not playing with a full deck. Regardless of whether or not the person who wrote the letters intended to kill Hauser, he or she certainly wasn’t trying to improve his mental health. I think I would have discreetly called in the police after seeing the wit and wisdom of Mother Goose tapped out on my forehead. But Hauser wasn’t sure he wanted the letter-writer exposed. To me, that’s the sign of a man who is afraid to look under the rock. I guess that’s where a man of discretion is useful.

  I began flipping through the files Hauser had selected as possibilities. There were seven folders. I noticed that Fred Morison was not among them. I guess I wasn’t surprised. Morison was a lowlife, but I’d be flattering him to think he would be devious enough or creative enough to concoct those letters.

  I opened the top folder. This was interesting. In addition

  to the surveillance log Keller had on each person, someone had inserted a handwritten page of notes regarding the history and personal life of the employee. I checked the other folders. Each had one of these handwritten profiles. If this was part of Keller’s work, Hauser had certainly been getting his money’s worth. This wasn’t exactly the kind of information a person would volunteer about himself. I’m sure I wouldn’t respond to the Previous Employment Experience part of an application with “Pressed uniforms at Joliet State while serving time for assault and battery.” But Hauser’s head of maintenance had spent two years in prison. As I read his file, I had trouble picturing this guy attacking someone, and I didn’t see this information as damning. He’d done all right for himself since prison. In fact he’d done real well considering the odds, and the incident had happened fifteen years ago.

  I was so engrossed in this guy’s past, I wasn’t aware that someone had come into the room until I saw, out of the corner of my eye, something pink flutter into my in-basket. I looked up, and Diana Hauser smiled down at me. It was a smile of triumph. She gestured toward the pink camisole draped over the basket like a carelessly tossed inventory report.

  “Your people are slipping,” she announced, settling into the same chair she had occupied the day before.

  I closed the file and placed it face-down on my desk. Then, I leaned back and studied her for a moment. She wore a brilliant blue-and-purple sweater, black stretch pants, and black suede boots. Instead of the silver fox coat she had on a short fur jacket that probably hadn’t cost the lives of quite so many small animals. Her hair was hidden under a beret except for one blond strand that fell against her cheek. If she was embarrassed about yesterday’s incident, she wasn’t showing it Was it a facade, I wondered, or did she consider the matter insignificant?

  I was betting on the former. “Care for a cigarette?” I said, drawing one out for myself and extending the pack toward her.

  She faltered for a second, then took one from the pack. “I’ve been trying to quit for a while. I’m lousy when it comes to self-control.” I lit the cigarette for her. “Preston asked me to quit as a birthday present for him this year.”

  “That’s what you gave him for his birthday? A smokeout?”

  She shrugged. “It was what he wanted.”

  I nodded. “Just out of curiosity, what did he give you for your birthday?”

  “A coat.” She smiled. “It was what I wanted.”

  I gestured toward her cigarette. “I suppose you gave him the coat back.”

  She chewed on her lower lip for moment before responding. “No. I just don’t wear it on days I smoke.”

  I couldn’t tell where this conversation was going and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I plucked the camisole from my in-basket. “I’ll see that this finds its way home.”

  She studied me for an uncomfortable length of time, then finally said, “How did you know I liked my men clean-shaven?”

  “I didn’t,” I responded.

  Undaunted, she continued, “Will you take me to lunch?”

  “I’ve got plans already,” I lied. “Sorry.” That wasn’t a lie.

  She stood up and walked toward the window. It was starting to snow and the large, fat flakes whirled by the window. “Is this what they call lake-effect snow?”

  “Probably.”

  “I hate winter,” she said and turned to me. “I’m from California, you know.” She looked back toward the snow. “My father owns a law firm out there. That’s where I met Preston.”

  “How did that happen?”

  She stood, silently watching the snow for so long that I was beginning to think she had forgotten I was there. Finally, ignoring my question, she said, “Preston is a wonderful man. He just never has time to take me to lunch.” Then she turned toward me. “Thanks for the cigarette.” She extinguished it in the ashtray and gathered up her purse and a Nikon camera from the floor.

  “Pay a visit to the camera department on your way to lingerie?”

  “Can’t a person have a hobby?” She sounded more irritated than defensive, so I didn’t pursue it. She raised the camera with her right hand. “I guess I’ll play the photo-snapping tourist this afternoon.”

  It had a fisheye lens. The candid of Preston had been taken with a telephoto, but then it’s easy to change a lens.

  “Well, I’ll see you around, Quint. Maybe next time I’ll see what Hauser’s carries in the way of black lace. What do you think?”

  “Don’t go to any trouble on my account,” I said, beginning to understand how Maggie must have felt when her tomcat Brandeis would, in a feline gesture of warmth and appreciation, drop a dead bird at her feet.

  After Diana left I held up the camisole to get a better look at the offering. Maggie would have hated it. It had a lot of ivory lace and the kind of straps you couldn’t adjust. And it was pink.

  “I never would have figured you for the frilly type.”

  Pam was standing in the doorway, arms folded across her chest, head cocked slightly, and a bemused look on her face.

  “People change, Pam.” I lowered the camisole, hoping she had reconsidered the lunch invitation. “What can I do for you?”

  “Actually, it’s more like what I can do for you. By the way, it’s about time you shaved off that mustache.”

  “Why thank you, Pam. And what is it that you can do for me? Are you selling insurance?”

  “Better,” she said, sitting in the chair across from me. “I figure that unless you are working from unlimited funds, you are going to need your own apartment very soon.”

  She was wording this very carefully, so at no time would I get the idea that she wanted a roommate. That was fine with me. I wasn’t in the market for a relationship that was going to last any longer than a two-drink lunch.

  “I have a friend,” she continued, “who has a condo on Lake Shore Drive, just south of Addison. Her name’s Elaine Kluszewski.”

  “You mean as in Ted Kluszewski,” I interrupted her, “first baseman for the Reds and the White Sox?”

  Pam gave me
a quizzical look, as if I had just lapsed into tongues. “Never mind,” I said, recalling that Pam’s idea of sports was walking the dog along the jogging path.

  “Elaine works for one of these big computer companies. Does the training, I think. She’s in Europe right now working with some of their overseas clients.” She paused to digest what she had just said. “God, wouldn’t it be great to get to travel like that with your company picking up the tab?”

  “Join the army.”

  “That wasn’t quite what I had in mind. Anyway, she left this week. Before she left she tried to rent the condo, but was having trouble because she couldn’t be sure how long she would be gone. Three to six months, she thinks. So she told me if I found anyone who was interested in renting it, and I considered the person to be responsible enough”—her eyes laughed when she said that—“to go ahead and rent it. There would, of course, be a few dollars in it for me. Not to mention the fact that if you moved in, I wouldn’t have to run over there once a week to water the plants. Do you think you’d be interested?”

  “What’s reasonable?”

  “Six-fifty.” When I didn’t respond immediately she added, “It’s pretty big. One bedroom and a small den.”

  “Then you consider me a responsible person, I take it.” I couldn’t resist.

  “In terms of paying rent and not trashing a home, yes I do.”

  I probably deserved that. “So, I can stay there anywhere from three to six months. All I have to do is pay rent and water plants?”

  I couldn’t think of a reason not to take it. I probably could have found a place in a less desirable area that was cheaper, but I would spend some time looking and I’d have to pay a security deposit. If I wasn’t convinced, Pam’s next words put a cap on it.

  “It comes with its very own underground parking space.”

  “Sold.” I tossed the camisole in the air.

  I was able to coerce Pam into lunch under the condition that we go dutch, keep lunch to an hour and the conversation light. I was developing the distinct impression that Pam had a new personal life that she intended to keep that way.