Murder in Store

by DC Brod

  Her voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “At least that’s what they told me.” She paused and sighed. “I think they just wanted to get rid of me.”

  I couldn’t tell whether she wanted me to pursue that so I kept quiet.

  Finally she said, “So what it boils down to is I need a roommate or I’m not going to be able to pay the mortgage on this place.”

  “You seem pretty certain you aren’t going to get another job.”

  “I don’t have any college, let alone an MBA. Nobody hires you for the kind of money I was making without an MBA.”

  I wanted to tell her that employers look for more than a diploma. They look for character and assertiveness, and a little bulldog tenacity didn’t hurt either. She seemed to have more than her share of all that, but she wasn’t looking for a pep talk right now. She wanted to allow herself the luxury of wallowing in her own misery for a while first. I knew how she felt.

  “So. You need a roommate.”

  She nodded. “This is a one bedroom with a den. There’s a pull-out sofa in there. I can sleep on it.” I guess she interpreted my silence as reluctance. She was right. “You could leave whenever you wanted to. It would be cheaper than a hotel.”

  As insane as the idea was, it was beginning to make sense, but there was one point I wanted to air out. “I thought I was scum.”

  Elaine shrugged. “Actually, what Pam said was that you were a nice guy having a tough time handling the aging process.”

  “The aging process? Pam never told me she was a certified psychologist.”

  “She said you thought you could recapture your youth with a self-centered twenty-one-year-old.”

  “Twenty-three-year-old,” I corrected her, then folded my arms across my chest. “She said that, did she?”

  “Uh huh. She also said this woman was a ball-crusher.”

  I shrugged. “I like that in a woman.”

  She smiled. “You want to try this arrangement for a while?”

  I’d like to think I did it for convenience’s sake—no apartment hunting, no hassling with landlords over security deposits—but I think deep down, while I knew that

  there are a lot worse things than being alone, there are also a lot better things too. I figured I could invest a week or so in that possibility. Still, I didn’t answer immediately. There was something else to consider here. The woman needed me. More specifically she needed my money. My bargaining position would never be better. “Who gets the parking space?”

  6

  IT IS AGAINST my nature to admit that I have made a mistake of colossal proportions. So, as I drove to Harry’s lab on the northwest side to give him the photos for analysis, I made a point of not thinking about my new living situation.

  I wondered what Diana Hauser did with herself when she wasn’t lining her pockets with underwear. Volunteering at the local children’s hospital didn’t seem a realistic assumption. I only had a couple psych courses, so my knowledge of the subject is pretty meager, but you don’t need a PhD to realize that a woman who shoplifts out of her husband’s store is executing one of the all-time great look-at-me ploys. But was it working for her? And if it wasn’t, what came next? Plop down in the middle of the designer casual section, douse herself with kerosene, and light a match?

  When I got to the lab, Harry was bent over a lab table and didn’t see me in the doorway. I watched him sprinkle donut crumbs into a cage containing several rodent-like creatures. They could have been mice, gerbils, or guinea pigs. I can never tell the difference. I lurched into the room, Quasimodo-style, dragging one foot behind me.

  Without turning, Harry said, “Be with you in a second, Quint.”

  I stopped. “Dammit, Harry. Next time I‘m wearing swim fins.”

  Harry shrugged and dropped the last piece of donut into the cage. “Quint, you could wear high heels. I‘d recognize

  that size-ten shuffle of yours no matter how you disguise it.”

  He was probably right. Harry had an uncanny ability to know people by their footstep. I hadn’t been able to trick him yet. “Yeah,” I said, “but I’m gonna try. It gives my life purpose.”

  Harry turned and looked at me for the first time. He took a step backward in exaggerated surprise. “Quint. You’ve changed.”

  Motioning for him to drop the subject, I approached the rodent cage and peered in. “You always make friends with these little guys before you shoot ‘em full of sugar substitutes?”

  Harry’s expression was sober. “There is no progress without sacrifice.”

  I looked at him. “Seriously. What are you going to do to them?”

  “I feed these gerbils junk food to observe how it affects their ability to procreate. A fanatical bunch of nutritionists wants to know.” He gestured toward one of the creatures. “So far, he’s sired eighteen litters.”

  I looked at the animal. “No kidding,” I said, not knowing whether, for a gerbil, that was a good record or not. “Nice goin',” I said to the animal. It studied me for a moment and then went back to snuffling for crumbs.

  I straightened up. “It’s damned near impossible to find a parking space around here.”

  Harry rolled his eyes. “Quint, you’d have trouble finding a parking space in a mall on Super Bowl Sunday.”

  “You’re probably right,” I conceded.

  “What’s this I hear about you and Maggie?”

  “I don’t know. What do you hear, and from whom?”

  “Nothing really. Maggie called. Figured you guys had a spat.”

  “More than that. I was replaced with a newer model. So was my car.”

  Harry grunted in sympathy. “I never thought that was a match made in heaven, even though Carol did. Who’s to tell?” He scratched his chin, thinking, then said, “You going to tell me where you’re living?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned against one of the tables. “Harry, did you ever do something so impulsive, so devoid of any input from the reasoning part of your brain that you had trouble admitting it to yourself, let alone someone else?”

  Harry studied me for a minute before asking, “What’s her name?”

  I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter.”

  Harry grinned and chuckled. “Wait’ll Maggie finds out.” Then he became more serious. “She’s been trying to get hold of you, you know.”

  “I know.”

  He smiled again. “Ain’t love grand?”

  I shrugged and pulled the letters out of my pocket. “Love stinks. Most of the time.”

  “Spoken like a veteran of the wars.” He turned his attention toward the envelopes. “What’ve you got for me?”

  I handed him Hauser’s photos, and Harry spent several minutes looking them over, studying them from all angles as I filled him in on the details. When he was hovering over an experiment or coaxing answers from mathematical equations, Harry seemed much older than his fifty years. His incredibly slow, methodical movements could easily be interpreted as feebleness. Then, when he was explaining the results of an experiment or relating the data behind some new hypothesis of his, he dropped ten years. His gestures became animated and expansive and his barely controlled excitement and enthusiasm were contagious.

  He had a more cautious reaction to something he was dipping his toes into for the first time. When Harry looked up from the pictures, it was the Harry I remembered from

  my days on the police force. He was both excited and reserved.

  He held up the pictures. “This is your boss, isn’t it?” I nodded.

  “Preston Hauser. Heir to the department-store dynasty.” He looked at the letters again. “As I recall, he’s married to a beautiful young woman. Restless though.”

  “Restless?”

  He shrugged. “It may be nothing. Hauser was a guest speaker at some university function. He brought his wife, who apparently spent most of the evening in the company of a man more her age. She didn’t try to hide it either.”

  “Do you know who the other man was?
”

  “No, I don’t. But you might ask Carol. She pays more attention to things like that.” He laughed. “By the way, I have instructions to invite you over for dinner.”

  “Please Harry, not yet.”

  He nodded his understanding and went back to examining the pictures. “So, you want me to see what I can find here.”

  “That’s what you do best, isn’t it?”

  “Well,” he said, ignoring my statement, “just off the top of my head, I’d say you’re looking for a right-handed individual with a pretty good telephoto lens and a fondness for nursery rhymes.”

  “That really narrows it down, doesn’t it? You say right-handed because of the direction of the slash through Hauser’s neck?”

  “And you said you needed me.” Harry squinted at the photo. “And I’d guess the slash was made with a razor blade. Aside from that,” he continued, “I’m not sure how much I can tell you. I can check for fingerprints but there are probably a number of sets on here already. Including yours and mine. I can do a blood analysis”—he moved the photo under a lab light for a better view—“but I’m not

  sure how much that’s going to help you. Unless it’s a rare blood type. But I’ll do what I can.” “That’s all I’m asking.”

  “Quint. Does this fall under an obscure clause in your job description at Hauser’s?”

  “No. I’m doing a little freelance work for Hauser.”

  “Tell me. How is Hauser taking all this?”

  “For a man who’s received three death threats, he’s remarkably composed.”

  “Interesting,” Harry said.

  I nodded.

  He peered at me over the top of his reading glasses. “Who do you think?”

  I shrugged. “Too soon to tell.” I wasn’t ready to make educated guesses. “How soon can you have something for me?”

  He looked at the schedule on his calendar. “This afternoon soon enough?”

  “Perfect.”

  “You talk to Maddox yet?”

  “Yeah, I did,” I said, realizing this was my cue to satisfy Harry’s curiosity. I explained about Keller’s accident and told him what Maddox had said. Harry waited until I was through.

  “Don’t like the sound of this,” Harry said. I shrugged. “I don’t much either, but it’s probably nothing.” Harry eyed me. “Right.”

  It’s hard to tell when Irna Meyers is angry. Try to picture a wasp in a snit. When beady eyes and crossed brows are the norm, then I guess it becomes a matter of degrees. This morning, however, Irna seemed more irritable than usual. Was there something there besides fierce protectiveness?

  “You don’t have an appointment.” End of discussion.

  “I most certainly do.” I tried a show of force, pulling a

  small appointment book out of my breast pocket and flipping it open to a page. Any page. “It says right here. Preston Hauser. Ten o’clock,” I lied. I replaced the book. “Please. Check with Mr. Hauser. He’s expecting me.”

  Irna glared at me for what seemed a very long time, then finally got up and walked over to Hauser’s closed door. She shot me a look that said, “Do you realize what you are asking me to do?” and knocked on the door so softly it was as if she were afraid of waking him. Maybe she was. I didn’t hear a response, but Irna apparently did. She entered his office and closed the door behind her.

  While she was gone, I took the opportunity to check the appointment book on her desk. She was right. My name wasn’t there. Yet Hauser had told me he would have Irna pencil me in. I had the feeling this was an appointment Hauser wasn’t anxious to keep. He wanted me to figure it out without his help. Too bad for him. I had some questions that required answers and was willing to push as hard as necessary.

  The door finally opened and Irna emerged. “Mr. Hauser will not be able to see you at this time,” she said, closing the door. She sat down and gazed at the door to her boss’s office before turning her attention back to me. “You’ll have to reschedule.” She made no move toward her appointment book, but there was a note of apology in her voice that I hadn’t thought her capable of.

  I interpreted this as an opportunity to be brash. I approached her desk. “Irna. It’s very important that I see Mr. Hauser. I think you know that.”

  She straightened several sheets of letterhead and dropped a pencil into a holder before she said, “Mr. Hauser has experienced a loss.”

  It was apparent that I was going to have to work for every morsel of information I could glean from this woman. “Did someone die?”

  Before she could reply, Hauser’s door opened. I turned, expecting to see Preston himself, but instead a tall, elderly woman left his office. She nodded to me and then turned to Irna.

  “Call me, Irna, if he needs me.” The tall woman shook her head and sighed. “It’s such a shame. She was only seven.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Hunnicutt.”

  I thought I detected a note of disdain in Irna’s tone, but I could have been wrong. The elderly woman left.

  “Who was only seven?” I asked, moving toward Hauser’s door with little regard for my own safety. I wouldn’t have thought Irna could move so fast, but she positioned herself between me and the door before I was able to execute my maneuver.

  “Scheherazade.”

  I needed a bigger hint. “Who?”

  “Mr. Hauser’s horse.”

  It was beginning to sink in. “The one on his desk?” Irna nodded.

  It took a minute, and I had to conjure up some long-buried emotions I’d felt when my first dog, Alex, got hit by a car, but I finally understood that the man had a right to grieve in private for a while. Especially if that man’s name was on the store’s letterhead. I dug my hands in my pockets and assumed my defeated pose.

  “Can I reschedule for this afternoon?”

  I could barely detect the relief in Irna’s tone, but it definitely was there. “Certainly.” She consulted her calendar. “Three o’clock?”

  “That sounds okay,” I allowed.

  As I returned to my office, I tried to put the event into perspective. Failing, I allowed myself to speculate. What would Hauser do with the center picture on his desk? Would he replace it or just drape it in black velvet? And

  the woman I saw leaving his office. Irna had called her Mrs. Hunnicutt. So that was Hauser’s big sister.

  Lois stopped me as I was walking into my office, leaning across her typewriter to hand me a note. “You had a call.” She hesitated. “It was Maggie.” She said that like she was expecting an interesting reaction from me.

  “Thanks,” I said and walked into my office.

  The phone and I stared at each other for a while as I managed to transfer my anger and hurt to the block of beige plastic. It was a lot easier to rise above the will to succumb to the telephone than to deal with my feelings about Maggie. I was so intent on fighting the temptation to pick it up and use it that I almost jumped out of my skin when it rang. It was the second button—an inside call. I sighed my relief and picked it up.

  “Mr. McCauley, Irna Meyers. Mr. Hauser would like to see you immediately.” She paused, but not long enough for me to tell her about the appointment book I had to check. “It’s urgent.”

  Urgent or not, I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to get some information out of Hauser, so I grabbed my briefcase containing the files.

  When I got to Hauser’s office, Irna waved me on in. From the look on her face, I expected the worst. I was relieved to see the man standing, hands clasped behind his back, looking out onto Michigan Avenue. He heard me enter and turned. Then he picked an envelope up from his desk and handed it to me.

  “This just came.”

  There was an edge in his voice. I couldn’t tell whether he was just nervous about the letter or irritated with me for letting one slip through.

  I opened it and removed the contents—a photocopy of a newspaper article reporting on the fatal crash of a private plane. The first paragraph read: “A small twin-engine airplane />
  crashed shortly after takeoff from DuPage Airport, killing the pilot and his passenger. The cause of the crash is still being investigated but is believed to be the result of engine malfunction. Killed were Preston Hauser, 61, owner of the Hauser’s department store and president of the Hauser Foundation, and the pilot Nathan Rudman, 33.”

  It was eerie. Even though I could tell the article had been doctored, standing there talking to a man whose death I had just read about was macabre. Apparently someone had clipped Hauser’s name and description from another article, pasted it over the real victim, and gone to some length to make sure most of the cut lines didn’t show. At first glance, it looked like the real thing.

  “Is this your pilot’s name?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No. That must be the name of the pilot who died in the real crash.”

  To give the item the personal touch, the headline had been rewritten. “Two Die in Plane Crash” had been crossed out and “Fear of Flying Justified” was typed above it. The type appeared to be the same as was used in the other letters.

  Hauser sighed, removed his glasses, and rubbed his eyes and face. Then he looked in my direction the way someone does when he is only partially aware of your presence. Whoever was behind these threats had escalated the war. He or she had invaded Hauser’s privacy and opened a wound that had never healed well. I wondered if his preoccupation with horses started after he lost his family.

  “My dislike of flying is no secret. A lot of people know how my first wife and our son died. But it is often the most efficient means of getting from one place to another and I won’t allow this phobia to run my life.” He continued, “I’m intending to fly up to Green Bay this afternoon.”

  “Take a commercial flight.”

  He shook his head. “No. I won’t be dictated to by a madman. My pilot will meet me at DuPage Airport, where we will take off at two o’clock to arrive in Green Bay at four-fifteen.”