1 The Reluctant Dick - The Case of the Not-So-Fair Trader

by Jim Stevens

  I’m about ten feet from the covering when Norbert Keaton gets in my face.

  “Sherlock, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Probably a lot more than you.”

  “Are you looking for bail business?” Norbert, the great detective, has read the inscription on my shirt.

  “No, I’m making a fashion statement.”

  Steve Burrell positions himself beside Norbert, making somewhat of an impenetrable wall. Each so-called detective tips the scales at two-twenty-five-plus, with a body fat index well above the fifty percent range. They were known as Tweedledum and Tweedledee when they partnered at the CPD.

  “We don’t have to allow you entrance to the crime scene,” Steve informs me.

  Dumb comment since both Norbert and Steve watched me arrive, pace across the Augustus property, survey every inch, and pick up scraps along my way.

  “Insurance investigator, I have a right to be here.” This they already know, but can’t admit.

  “You’re supposed to get a waiver.”

  “Listen,” I speak with about as much authority as I can muster. “If it was up to me, this certainly wouldn’t be my first choice for a Saturday night out on the town.”

  The two detectives stand, shifting their weight from side to side.

  “Just you keep in mind who is in charge,” Steve informs me in no uncertain terms.

  “I promise; if anyone asks ‘who is the head ramrod of this wagon train?’ I’ll tell ’em it’s you.”

  There is a slight pause as I move toward the tarp.

  Norbert blocks Tiffany from following me. “Who are you?”

  Tiffany’s tongue wets her perfect collagen-filled top lip and answers, “Tiffany, nice to meet you.”

  The four of us gather round the mound beneath the plastic tarp. Steve grips the top edge and asks, “Ready?”

  Tiffany steps forward for a closer look, a bad idea, because when Steve whips off the tarp, a raft of foul air hits her nostrils like a blast of baby diarrhea. Her head jerks backward, then luckily forward, as she vomits the remains of a latté colored bran muffin.

  I allow her to finish before I lend assistance. “You okay?”

  “I haven’t done that since going off my purge diet.”

  I position her behind me and turn to witness Alvin J. Augustus, or at least what’s left of him.

  The victim is a disgusting, gruesome pile of rotting flesh, mostly underneath some very attractive stones. I move around for different angles and see through the rocks that his bones are broken, limbs twisted, and feet point east and west. There is one large rock resting in the indentation of his skull. Charming. Amazing how one rock could find the exact mark.

  I usually dislike what I have to do to make a living, but at scenes like this I downright despise the job.

  “Coroner been here, yet?”

  “He wasn’t too thrilled with it, either,” Steve says.

  “Can’t say I blame him.”

  “He still around?”

  “Said he had dinner reservations and left.”

  “Who could eat after this?” Tiffany asks.

  “I’m certainly planning on it,” Norbert says.

  The stones cover Alvin like autumn leaves. Blood, which has turned a dark, almost brown crimson, has drained from his wounds and down the brick-designed lane, pooling like a puddle after a thunderstorm. Bits of brain, bone, tissue, and other bodily residue lie in the thick liquid. It reminds me of a Cajun etouffé on a bed of white rice; I’ll ask Norbert if that’s what he has in mind for his entrée tonight.

  “Accidental death, Sherlock,” Steve says.

  I turn to Tiffany, who has recovered from her gastric mishap. “Hear that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I go home, now?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? The police say it’s accidental,” I plead.

  “That’s not what Daddy wants to hear, Mister Sherlock.”

  Steve waxes poetic, “He’s out taking a Saturday morning stroll, minding his own business, when something happens, like an earthquake. The rocks come off the ridge and crush him like a cockroach under an exterminator’s boot.”

  “I didn’t feel any earth moving,” Tiffany says.

  “It was a small quake, its epicenter was right here in Alvin’s backyard.” Steve further explains.

  “But I didn’t feel anything,” she says, “and I’m very sensitive.”

  “You just haven’t found the right man, yet,” I conclude.

  Norbert offers an additional treatment to corroborate his partner’s theory. “Or Alvin’s out here, sees a stone out of place, tries to fix it, and the Walls of Jericho come tumbling down.”

  “This all sounds really good to me,” I agree with two of the stupidest theories since the world was considered flat or Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

  Tiffany pulls at my sleeve. “Remember, a twelve-million-dollar policy, Mister Sherlock. Daddy will want no stone left unturned.”

  “No pun intended.”

  “Wrap it up, write it up, and seal it shut,” Norbert says hopefully.

  “No,” Tiffany says, “Mister Sherlock doesn’t even think this is where he was killed.”

  The two detectives pause to consider her revelation.

  “You were certainly right about not being able to keep a secret,” I tell Tiffany.

  “So,” Norbert asks Tiffany, “how does Mister Sherlock arrive at this conclusion?”

  “That’s the secret,” Tiffany says and smiles to me, looking for a compliment.

  “So, come on,” Norbert says.

  “I don’t know how I know. I just know.”

  “No shit, Sherlock?” Steve says.

  Norbert and Steve are not stupid. They both had the brains to coast through twenty years in the Chicago PD, retire with seventy-percent pensions, and take similar jobs with the Kenilworth department, where the worst crimes are committed by drunken teenagers whose parents have very deep pockets for immediate “Let’s keep this in the family” verdicts. The two dicks work nine to five, trade on-call weekends, get eleven paid holidays, three personal and three sick days.

  I should be so lucky.

  They are also smart enough to know this is definitely a murder and that I will do the bulk of their work if they play their cards right.

  “He was dragged here,” I say.

  Norbert and Steve wait for me to explain.

  “The path, it’s too smooth. The indentations all run in one direction.”

  “There’s lots of other ways he could have got to this spot,” Steve says.

  “The pattern is too perfect,” I answer. “Alvin’s body was pulled by his feet, left here, and crushed by a dumptruck load of rock.”

  “Why would anybody want to do that?” Norbert asks.

  “You’re the detective,” I answer.

  I squat down like a baseball catcher, turning toward the body. I know this position is going to come back and haunt me. “Got a time of death?”

  “Six to nine hours ago,” Steve says.

  “Gardener found him around four-ten,” Norbert adds.

  “What else did the coroner say?”

  “Blunt trauma.”

  “He’s really going out on a limb there.”

  I take a closer look at Alvin’s blood-soaked, beige clothing. “The resale value of his suit is virtually nil.”

  “Linen.”

  “What?”

  “Linen,” Tiffany says. “I know because I never wear linen, looks like it always needs ironing.”

  “Tiffany, I think you cracked the case,” I say. “Alvin died of a fashion faux pas.”

  “Oh, Mister Sherlock.”

  I wipe at my eyes with both my hands in a last ditch attempt to see if this will all go away. It doesn’t.

  “You don’t really believe that nonsense about this being accidental?” I ask the two burly detectives.

  “Let’s just say,” Norbert says, “we want to.”
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br />   “People in this town don’t like words like murder, homicide, or phrases like ‘buried under an avalanche of rock,’” Steve says.

  “Can you blame them?”

  I move to the head of the body. I am thoroughly disgusted at the rock which scored the direct hit.

  “Leave me alone for a few minutes, would you?”

  “No problem,” Norbert says, leading Steve and Tiffany away.

  There is something wrong here, besides the body of a man crushed by a load of stone. His upper body is covered, as are his feet at the other end. A few of the rocks have slipped off the slope and rested on the flat ground. But on his right side, a little past his waistline, there is a clearing and I can see right into his pants and belt. I never studied any laws of physics, but this doesn’t seem mathematically correct. More troubling is the one big rock crushing his face and skull. This would be a one-in-a-million shot.

  ___

  Ever since I was a kid I’ve had this oddball memory. I can take one gander at a scene and literally remember it for eternity. This is not always a big plus when you consider some of the stuff I have witnessed over the years. No matter what the scene may be, the picture enters into my head and prints somehow in my brain forever. Plus, I remember everything I read, every movie I see, person I meet, and food I eat. I have never lost a game of Trivial Pursuit. The only things I can’t remember are names; why, I have no clue. I can be introduced to a guy, talk with him and, three minutes later, can’t remember if he’s Spencer or Spud. But twenty years later, I run into the same guy and recall he lived in Berwyn with his mother and had a cat named Shoes who had to have her tail amputated.

  I begin to take a number of mind’s eye Polaroids. I move from position to position and lodge into my brain exactly what I see. My pictures have a depth, definition, and feeling that no ordinary camera can capture. The only problem will be how to take the pictures of a blood-oozing, decaying, flesh-peeled-off bones protruding from Alvin and arrange them into an attractive photo scrapbook inside my brain.

  Tiffany returns to peer over my shoulder at the rock resting on Alvin’s face, as if she were bent over the railing of a pier trying to spot a fish in the water below.

  “I think the only thing cracked in the case this far is the victim’s head, Mister Sherlock.”

  “So nice of you to mention.”

  “But I really think it’s great you think he got murdered. We’re going to have such a good time finding out who did it.” Tiffany adds a giggle of excitement.

  The ambulance drives right through the yellow tape and parks ten or twenty feet away. This will do wonders for keeping the crime scene pure.

  Norbert and Steve usher over the two paramedics, who take one look at the victim, grab their mouths with their hands and back up quickly.

  “Don’t feel bad,” Tiffany tells the boys. “I let loose when I saw him, too.”

  I’ve had enough.

  I walk alone up the path to a stone stairway where Xanadu rises before my eyes.

  The Augustus home stands as an edifice to the blood of busted stock and commodity traders Alvin was able to financially break and mentally destroy. This multi-thousand-square-foot Greek Revival structure is a testament that a person in business need not invent, manufacture, service, or design in order to reap financial rewards of an incalculable magnitude.

  I knew about Alvin J. Augustus; everybody in Chicago knew AJA unless they “lived” under a rock. He was in the financial pages, quoted on the news, threw lavish parties, consulted the mayor. Alvin was to the Board of Trade what Morgan was to banking, Gates to software, and Carnegie to steel.

  I notice footprints all over the path and grassy area to my left. Picking the perpetrator’s imprint from the many will be impossible. My biggest disappointment is there are no broken branches, ruined pansies, or indented rose bushes -- no sign of an area of final struggle. My hunch that he wasn’t killed here is now a certainty.

  I’m maybe fifty yards away, but I can see the two detectives and paramedics argue as they clear the smaller rocks off the victim. A wooden stretcher board rests perpendicular. Tiffany is freshening her make-up.

  “Hey, Sherlock,” Norbert yells out. “Can you give us a hand over here?”

  I pretend I can’t hear.

  Burrell calls out, even louder, “Sherlock, get your ass over here.”

  I might be stupid, but not that stupid. I walk the other way, deep in detective thought. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Norbert ask Tiffany a question and I can imagine Tiffany’s “you’ve got to be kidding” response.

  I take a few more steps and turn around to see the detectives and paramedics circle Alvin’s upper body, squat down, each grip the rock on Alvin’s head, and “on three” lift the weight upwards. Alvin’s flesh sticks to the rock like a suction cup and his entire upper body sits up. The four men stop, mid-lift, not sure how to proceed. No doubt the expletives are furiously rolling off tongues. Norbert finally raises his left orthopedic shoe, places it on Alvin’s chest and pushes it downward. The pressure holding the skull to the stone releases and Alvin slams back down into a clump of worthless body parts.

  Tiffany comes up to me as Alvin is loaded into the ambulance. “Now what do we do?”

  “We?”

  “Daddy said I should assist.”

  “Then why didn’t you help lift the rock off Alvin’s skull?”

  “Oh,” Tiffany sighs, “was that totally disgusting to the max or what?”

  3

  Tell a marketer he's dead

  What I did for the back forty, I do for the remainder of the property. Up, down, back, forth, criss and cross, I search for something, but I don’t know what. Walk, walk, walk. This is the reason gumshoe detectives still wear ugly shoes with thick gummy soles.

  With Tiffany following, complaining of her footwear choice, I cover most of the property before darkness falls. There is no moon tonight and I have found not a clue of what went down with poor Alvin J. Augustus.

  We move inside to the mansion, where a Hispanic, live-in maid, Theresa, is getting pummeled with questions from Norbert and Steve. The woman speaks only broken English or at least speaks only broken English at this moment.

  Tiffany offers her help. “I speak housekeeper Spanish.”

  An obvious prerequisite for anyone who has never done, nor will ever do, a lick of housework.

  For the next fifteen minutes, I meander through the downstairs, trying to get a feel for the life once lived here.

  My first thought: uncomfortable.

  The furniture is austere, for lack of a better term. It may cost thousands for these high-backed chairs and straight-up sofas, but there is not a place where you could kick off your shoes, lay down and take a nap. The media room has a plasma screen more suited to a drive-in movie theater; but only one Barcalounger sits before it, as if no one could ever agree on which movie to watch. All the floors are made from dark, one-inch, oak planks with the same pattern running across the length of the room. The boards cut from one oak tree, no doubt. The crown moldings are mahogany. All the curtains are made from thick material, maybe chintz. I know little about material except for what I wear. There are six fireplaces, all stone or brick, one so wide a whole cord of wood could fit inside. The house is a newer structure, less than twenty years old, built to appear old and stately, but fools not even me. I guess you could call it faux-old.

  What impresses, or actually depresses, me are the windows. Each is huge with inlaid, painted glass artwork usually reserved for churches or cemetery crypts. I can imagine that little natural sunlight filters through during the day. What an awful way to live. One window, or the lack thereof, in the den intrigues me. The eight-inch pane is boarded up; way too high to be a burglar’s doing and out of reach for a maid’s mop handle during a fit of scrubbing. I make a mental note and continue on.

  After her stint as an interpreter, Tiffany informs me, “That woman could never work for me. She uses bleach on all the whites.”


  She follows me through the upstairs of the house and goes through one conniption after another at the design choices made. “Can you believe this, multi-colored carpeting? My God, we should be looking for a murderer with a sense of style.”

  I find one room especially curious.

  The master bedroom has a bed big enough to sleep the entire von Trapp family and still have room for the dog. The custom sheets alone must have cost a couple of grand, with enough pillows to stock a sultan’s harem. The mattress is rock hard on the left and soft on the right. The one blanket is actually two, one side being fat with a duvet cover and the other side thin. There are two plasma-TV screens, one on each side of the room. One nightstand has a phone, an alarm clock radio, and a box holding three prescription bottles. The only label I notice is Ambien. The other nightstand has a reading lamp and little else.

  “Like the place, Tiffany?” I ask.

  “No, I’m a penthouse kind of a girl.” She yawns.

  I sense Tiffany has had enough of this peculiar brilliance. “Why does that not surprise me?”

  “If we leave now, I can still catch a couple of clubs before closing time,” she says.

  Norbert is coming our way. I sense he’s not far behind Tiffany in his desire to exit.

  “Coming back tomorrow?” I ask.

  Before he answers, he asks, “Are you?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Damn,” he says. “What time?”

  “After church.”

  Norbert is surprised. “You go to church?”

  “No, but some people do; so I’ll wait for them to get home.”

  “I go to church.” Tiffany loves to fill in little tidbits about herself. “The Church of Saint Mattress, I worship upon it every Sunday until noon.”

  The telephone on the kitchen counter rings. As if on cue, Tiffany picks it up.

  “Hello.”

  She pauses between responses. “Hello. What? No. He’s here, but not available. Because he’s dead. Yeah, dead. She’s not here, either. If she is dead, she’s not dead here.”

  I speak up. “Ask who it is.”