The Cleopatra Murders

by Mic Palmer

  No, he ultimately decided. Everything seemed to point to the fact that the merchant had figured it out. The single photograph, the lack of childish mementos, the absence of fatherly banter – it all seemed to add up.

  Things are going on all the time with children, soccer games, exams, concerts. Why only mention the kid’s height?

  “I don’t know,” Jack found himself mumbling, but the fact was that he had already come up with a hypothesis:

  Pelletier has the boy tested, most likely through a strand of hair. He is crushed. Just as he had suspected the child is not his. On top of that his wife has cheated on him. As a result, he snaps, killing not only his wife, but the boy. Quite understandably, though, he continues to pretend that they are still alive, even while he keeps the usual parental references to a minimum.

  “Pretty weak,” Jack thought to himself. Where’s the woman’s family? Wouldn’t they want to see her? How could he possibly keep this sort of thing a secret?

  The possibilities were endless. For all he knew the child could have simply been the product of a previous marriage, in which case Pelletier might have left the parenting to boy’s father. The fact remained, however, that he wanted Jack to believe that the child was his.

  “What am I missing?” he asked himself. Even beyond the latent paternity issue, he had a sense that the photograph had more to offer. For the life of him, however, he wasn’t able to put his finger on it. “Think!” he insisted.

  What he recalled was that the woman was dressed in a pinstripe pantsuit and holding some sort of a black bag. Unfortunately, he couldn’t recall whether it was a valise or a pocket book, which in his mind was an important distinction. The pantsuit alone might not mean anything, and likewise the briefcase, but taking the two together might very well indicate that despite Pelletier’s representation to the contrary, his wife continued to work.

  Wearing jeans and a tee-shirt, the boy was all smiles. The straps of a backpack could be seen around his shoulders, meaning that he had probably just gotten out of school.

  “What else?” he thought to himself, but all he could think of were some outdoor tables, a coffee shop, assorted pedestrians, and the rectangular shadows of a couple of skyscrapers.

  “Shit,” he exclaimed, as he turned down a side street. While he couldn’t yet figure out exactly what it was, there was something about the photograph that was important. Most likely it was something obvious too – that’s just how it worked – but the fact was he’d never remember until he gave up trying. His mind was tricky that way, possessive, evasive, hyper-vigilant. If it sensed any degree of pressure it would lock itself down, like a prison reacting to a security breach. His only option, therefore, was to relax, play it cool, watch for it without actively looking.

  In the interim, however, he’d see what he could find. Having already looked up Pelletier’s home address, he decided to head right over.

  Although Great Neck was only about twenty miles away, the rush hour traffic would probably stretch the trip out to about an hour.

  “Bastard,” Jack grumbled. Only in five boroughs will people attempt to back up on a parkway for the purpose of avoiding congestion. Not needing a confrontation, however, he let it go, instead channeling his anger to the man he was visiting.

  “Pelletier,” he whispered, as if he were the devil himself, and yet again he was overcome with thoughts of violence, the upshot of which was a strong rebuke. “Don’t be a jackass!”

  By the time he reached the exit for Junction Boulevard, the cars were bumper to bumper, causing him to speculate whether it was due to an accident, construction, or something less tangible. As a matter of fact he made a game of it. Picking the last of the three options, he promised himself that if he were correct, he’d reward himself with a hamburger, but the truth was he wasn’t taking much of a chance.

  Rush hour traffic after all is the product of rush hour, making the bet in large part an exercise in tautology. In Jack’s mind, however, the real problem was not so much the congestion as the way people reacted to it. Changing lanes, tailgating, jamming on their brakes – that’s what did it.

  If everyone would just stay in their own lanes and not try to rush things, they’d all be a lot better off, but there’s something about being behind a steering wheel that makes otherwise rational people crazy. They need to be accelerating, passing, moving, and when this is not possible they become frustrated if not enraged, especially when those in the lane right next to them appear to be coasting. While cautious and thoughtful in every other aspect of their lives, they suddenly become maniacs. Safely ensconced within their motorized armor, they feel powerful, imperious, infallible. Thus when they see an opening, they punch the gas, the result of which is a sweet burst of adrenaline, but before long they’re right back at it, coveting that which so unfairly eludes them.

  Watching his competitors as they darted and lunged, Jack found himself laughing at how pointless it all seemed. Every once and a while, however, one of the more aggressive drivers would get a good lead on him and he would feel discomfited. Whether it was through wits, instinct or just plain dumb luck, some people just seemed to have the ability to make good and timely choices.

  “Maybe I’m the crazy one,” he considered. Fortunately, he was able to take solace in the fact that he had won the bet. The traffic cleared and just as he had predicted there wasn’t the slightest hint of an impediment. There were no flashing lights, broken glass, road flares or orange pylons – just a bunch of impulsive commuters doing what they do best.

  Having picked up a hamburger at a drive through, he parked in the lot and quickly devoured it. The mostly vegetarian diet he had been on had made him feel weak and edgy, but now, with a quarter pound of beef in his stomach, he felt healthy and relaxed, so much so that he leaned back in his seat back and took a ten minute nap.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  By the time he reached his destination it was after seven and dark outside. The neighborhood was preternaturally still, like a test village for a nuclear bomb. Nevertheless, it conveyed a certain sense of elegance and grandeur. Although Great Neck borders Queens, it has a rural patrician quality, full of large houses on big plots of land.

  Pelletier had done alright for himself. Not visible from the road, his home was a massive Tudor, complete with pitched roofs, dormer windows, and an egg white facade crisscrossed with brown wooden strips. Despite the size of the property and the number and variety of shrubs and bushes, it was almost as well kept as Bundy’s.

  “What’s with these nuts?” Jack queried.

  Whereas Bundy’s place was cold and sparse, Pelletier’s had an artificial almost saccharine quality to it. With its cobblestone walks, running waterfall, and tandem lawn jockeys it reminded Jack of Hershey Park or even Disney World.

  Skulking about the well lit grounds, Jack scrutinized the place, as if the closer he looked the more he could tell about its occupants.

  As for the garage, it was as big as a small house. Directing his flashlight through its window, he could see a green pickup truck and silver Mercedes; otherwise, it looked not only clean, but spotless. Nevertheless, just as he was about to walk away, he turned around to give it a second look. Where were the shovels, rakes, tires, hoses, hedge clippers, and lawn mower? Where were the screen doors, old pieces of wood, greasy rags, broken chairs and thousand other things people throw into a garage?

  His only conclusion was that Pelletier was allergic to clutter. He must have left everything to gardeners and mechanics, and yet he couldn’t help but take one last futile look.

  Cognizant of the fact that he frequently overlooked things, no matter how obtrusive, Jack often times assumed that there was more to see than there actually was, and so he’d check and then re-check, until finally he convinced himself that he had compensated for his lack of acuity.

  “Hmmm,” he murmured, upon directing his flashlight into the yard.

  Pelletier claimed to have a son, but where were the swings, bicycles, toy soldiers
, and miniature cars? Surely something of the child would have been manifest in the grounds, if only some crushed flowers or worn out pieces of sod, but yet again everything was immaculate.

  “What am I missing?” he wondered, still kicking himself over the boy’s eye color, but unable to spot even a stray ball, he couldn’t help but believe that Pelletier had indeed lied.

  Toward the back of the yard Jack caught sight of a series of concrete steps, so he thought he’d take a look. As it turned out they led to a large rectangular in-ground pool surrounded by twelve foot high brick walls.

  “It’s like a pit,” thought Jack to himself, “and yet there’s no fence!”

  If anything pointed to the absence of children, it was this. Even for adults it was dangerous.

  More confident than he had been in weeks, he headed back up to the house to do some spying. Fortunately, the curtains hadn’t been closed on the window bordering the dining room, which is where Jack focused his binoculars.

  What he saw was a well burnished oak table, a fully stocked china closet, and several paintings of pretty children, idyllic landscapes, and rosy cherubs, all of which suggested the input of a woman.

  Past the dining room, he observed a burgundy velvet sofa and matching love seat. Perpendicular to one another, they shared a rather small but impressive ottoman. Covered in grey paisley with a green background, it rested upon a large, colorful, Moroccan carpet.

  “That’s one thing Pelletier told the truth about,” Jack reflected. “But didn’t he say he had a few?”

  Trying to be as thorough as possible he took another look, mouthing to himself what he saw. A book on Napoleon lay atop the ottoman, along with a pair of reading glasses. Otherwise, he noted shiny hard wood floors, coffered ceilings, and polished chrome chandeliers.

  For a furniture dealer, however, the place was somewhat sparse, even the bookshelves, which in many ways gave him the same feeling he had gotten at Bundy’s.

  Could it be that he was in the process of moving?

  Entering the scene for the first time, Pelletier was wearing loafers, slacks and a white T-Shirt. Unfortunately, he didn’t stay long. Grabbing a set of glasses from atop the sofa, he disappeared into what appeared to be a hallway, never to return.

  “Where the hell is he?” Jack asked himself. After nearly three hours of sitting on a damp clump of grass behind an ancient silver maple tree, he was becoming cold and stiff. Thus, at about 9:30 he decided to leave, but not before a potentially telling development – the high pitched buzzing sound of some sort of electrical device.

  “Sounds like a saw,” Jack immediately thought to himself. Thus, he sat and waited, and finally, after about ten minutes, it stopped.

  “Come on,” he mumbled, hoping that Pelletier would again return. If indeed it was a saw, surely there’d be some splatter, but minutes turned into hours, and Jack could barely keep his eyes open. Suddenly, however, there was some movement, causing him to raise the binoculars.

  Not surprisingly, it was Pelletier, but his shirt and pants were just as spotless as ever. Turning off the lights, he was apparently calling it a night.

  “Shit,” Jack grumbled. Perhaps he was just vacuuming. He was after all a neat freak.

  Exiting the backyard Jack squeezed past a large evergreen by pressing his chest against the side of the house. “Idiot,” he muttered. For the dead branches had raked against his back while at the same time a stray nail caught hold of his abdomen, tearing open his coat and exposing his belly to the cold air.

  His anger, however, was quickly displaced by the glorious sight of a black garbage bag. Looking upon it as if it were a sac of gold, he quickly stuffed it into the back seat of his car and took off. Maybe the night wasn’t a total loss after all.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  During the drive back, he was consumed with calculations. One minute he was sure that he had the killer and the next that he had again been on a flight of fancy. Thus, he decided to make a phone call.

  Having pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store, he took a couple of swigs from the whisky bottle he kept in his glove compartment.

  “Jeez,” he complained, upon picking up the receiver. It was covered with some kind of sticky substance, causing him to hold it away from his ear.

  “Mr. Pelletier?” said Jack, speaking through his nose.

  “Yes.”

  “Actually, I was looking for Mrs. Pelletier.”

  The merchant was understandably annoyed. “It’s late. Who is this?”

  “Rupert Garfinkle. I’m sorry, but your wife ordered some invitations and she was pretty adamant that she wanted them done by tomorrow. I just needed to straighten out a few details.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Like I said, Rupert Garfinkle. Your wife was in yesterday. She’s throwing some sort of charity function.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “How’s that?”

  “She’s been away, besides which I’d know if she was throwing a party. Is this some kind of a joke?”

  Fearful of raising his suspicions, Jack toned it down. “I’m sorry,” he went on. “To tell you the truth we received an order from someone named Pelletier, but lost the phone number. I got your number from information.”

  “I’m not listed.”

  “Well they gave me your number.”

  “Really?”

  “Sometimes the settings get changed. The same thing happened to me.”

  “Assholes.”

  “I’d give them a call if I were you.”

  “I shall. Now if there’s nothing else…”

  “I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t wake your kids.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “You’re lucky. With mine a pin could drop and they’re bouncing off the walls.”

  “Alright then.”

  “Again, my apologies.”

  “That’s quite alright.”

  Before Jack could say anything else, the merchant had hung up. Fortunately, he had gotten what he needed.

  Chapter Sixty

  By the time he returned to the motel it was after 1:00. How had it become so late? Aside from the phone call and yet another stop at a drive-thru, this time for a vegetable pita, he had come straight back?

  “Oh well,” he wearily muttered. Dead tired, he was looking forward to finally relieving his bladder, but then he recalled the garbage bag and his eyes lit up.

  One of the few things that Jack enjoyed about his previous vocation was going through other people’s refuse. Full of checks, credit card bills, letters, and even photographs, it was like a doorway into another person’s mind.

  Nevertheless, one had to be careful. Jack recalled one case in particular, involving what appeared to be a cheating husband . For days at a time he’d tell his wife he was going away on business, when in reality he was checking into a nearby motel. Fortunately, the maid was obliging, charging just a couple of dollars per bag.

  “It’s just garbage,” she nonchalantly told them, not realizing the goldmine she had provided. Filled with cotton balls full of makeup, false eyelashes, torn panties, used up tubes of lipstick, and even some feminine hygiene products, it contained all the evidence they would need to guarantee a nice settlement. The husband, however, proved them all wrong. Coming forward with not only his psychiatrist but a storage unit full of dresses, he shocked everyone by convincingly demonstrating that the items found in the trash were in fact his. What he did with the sanitary napkins, however, remained a mystery.

  Having retrieved Pelletier’s refuse from his car, Jack felt like a kid at Christmas. Excitedly, he dumped the contents out into the bathtub, after which he tested the air with a couple of tentative sniffs.

  One of the down sides to this sort of thing was the fetid substances and awful smells one would invariably come across, but Pelletier’s garbage was oddly fragrant, almost like perfume. Then he saw why. There at the bottom of the bag was a vial of Eau De Or – probably very expensive. Tapping o
n the end of the glass, he was able to collect just enough to place a dab behind his ears.

  “Not bad,” he commented, turning his nose up and allowing the scent to waft through his sinuses.

  Being an old pro at this, he made sure to go through each item individually. Worthless items were placed back into the original bag, while items of interest, such as the cologne – which perhaps could be used to connect Pelletier to the victims – were placed into a cover he had removed from one of the pillows.

  As a whole, however, the stash proved somewhat disappointing. Although the telephone bills included calls to France, Morocco, and upstate New York, he was no longer able to check them out as Bullick had changed the passwords, but even if he could, he was fairly certain they’d prove to be business related or otherwise innocuous. Pelletier was too smart to implicate himself through something as traceable as a phone call. Nevertheless, he placed them in the pillowcase for future consideration.

  What Jack found next were some empty cans of salmon, which even with the cologne caused him to crinkle his noise, and two bottles of red wine, neither of which contained the words, Merlot, Cabernet, Pinot Noir, or anything else he was familiar with.

  Placing them in the pillowcase for fingerprints, he was reminded of Susan, who when it came to environmental issues could be rather obstreperous. Based on his recycling practices alone she would have not only had him convicted but executed, preferably by hanging.

  “You got to be kidding,” Jack said out loud. For at the bottom of the sack were a bunch of crumpled bags and wrappers from fast food restaurants. Maybe Pelletier wasn’t so bad after all.

  Otherwise, he found a bunch of newspapers, some of which had writing in the margins. As far as Jack could see they were references to furniture purchases, all but one that is. The word, “Wheels,” was followed by a phone number, probably a transportation company used for his business.

  In any event that was it. What Jack had hoped to find was a bloody rag, broken nail, chipped tooth, or discarded purse, but as it turned out there was nothing in the bag that could be tied to anyone else but Pelletier.