The Now-And-Then Detective

by William Wells

He offered a firm handshake and said, “Jack, I’m Tom Sullivan. I appreciate you agreeing to meet with me about our murder case.”

  He gestured toward a grouping of furniture near the windows and said, “Please, have a seat and I’ll tell you what I know. Were you offered coffee, or something else to drink, or a doughnut?”

  I hadn’t been, but told him I had, and declined. I didn’t want to get the young officer in the reception area charged with dereliction of duty. Maybe I’d ask her for a doughnut on the way out.

  “I’m told by Mayor Hansen that you helped us with a case a few years ago and did excellent work,” Sullivan said. “If you choose to help us again, the same fee will apply.”

  That fee had been generous, a lot more than the dollar Cubby Cullen paid me for helping him on my last homicide case.

  In that case, an assassin had skillfully made all six deaths appear to be from natural causes, and the fact that they were not was never made public. It was a truly bizarre investigation. Three old men, bored in retirement from high-paying careers, decided to even scores around town by hiring a Miami hit man who’d almost succeeded in adding me to his murderous roster.

  Sullivan said, “The murder of Henry Wilberforce has already been in the news. He was a prominent person, being a billionaire and a generous charitable donor, very well-known here.”

  “Cubby Cullen said you’ve told the public that the murder happened during a random burglary, but you really believe that the victim was targeted,” I said. “And you don’t want the real killer to know you’re after him.”

  “Right. Mr. Wilberforce, who was eighty-two, was the heir to a big Chicago company called Wilberforce Foods. He was found shot once in the forehead with a .22-caliber bullet while asleep in bed in his canal-front mansion in the Port Royal neighborhood.”

  I’d heard of Wilberforce Foods, one of Chicago’s biggest companies. Its name was on food products in grocery stores. I should check to see if they made Pop-Tarts. Maybe I’d be granted a lifetime supply if I solved the case.

  “What about Henry’s wife?” I asked Sullivan.

  “Miriam Wilberforce died about ten years ago from a fall down a stairway in their Lake Forest, Illinois, house. Their son, Peter, was a marine officer killed in a helicopter crash. Henry and Miriam had been winter residents of Naples for more than thirty years. The Lake Forest police chief told my detective via a phone call that, for the past several years, Mr. Wilberforce has been behaving strangely.”

  “What do you mean by behaving strangely?” I asked.

  “He was said to walk around town wearing costumes, mixing up the past with the present, and talking to an imaginary dog named Buddy.”

  “Sounds like a rather common case of dementia,” I said. “Not unusual for an older person, much less someone who was eighty-two.”

  “Yes, but here’s the unusual part. Henry and Miriam’s charitable foundation made generous gifts for many years. But recently, my detective was told, Henry had also been giving major gifts to people and institutions, apparently randomly. You might have heard about his gift of three million dollars to build housing for migrant workers in Immokalee, and for a Naples day care center for their children. It made national news. And a lot more such gifts up in Lake Forest.”

  I had not heard about that. If he’d have paid for a major refurbishing of Wrigley Field, I would have taken note.

  “How did people react to gifts like that?” I asked Sullivan.

  “It was known that Mr. Wilberforce suffered a mild stroke, in Lake Forest, just before his odd behavior began, and that he had good days and bad days. His butler and cook, Franz and Anna Mueller, took care of him, and neighbors and the local police kept an eye out, so no one worried about his well-being.”

  “Tell me about the gift giving here,” I said.

  “For years, the Wilberforce Foundation was a major supporter of Naples cultural institutions,” Sullivan said. “But, beginning a year or so ago, there were reports about him doing things like finding a stray dog and giving a million dollars to the Collier County Humane Society. Setting up a college fund for the son of his lawn man. Buying a Range Rover for a guy who delivered pizzas to his house while driving some sort of old car. Things like that. Mayor Hansen considered Henry to be a very special person. A pillar of the community. A pillar who also gave money to the mayor’s campaigns. He wants the killer apprehended, and soon.”

  I felt confident about apprehending the killer, but not so much about the soon part.

  “You can take the murder book with you,” Sullivan told me. “Look it over and let me know what you think.”

  “I assume one of your detectives started the book,” I said.

  “Right. A young woman named Allie Duncan.”

  “Won’t Detective Duncan resent me taking over her case?” I asked.

  “Allie got her gold shield only five months ago,” Sullivan said. “She doesn’t mind that we’re taking advantage of your experience. She thinks she can learn from you.”

  Reality check: In the real world, one-third of all murder cases were not solved. My close rate was better than that, but no one bats a thousand. Ted Williams, the greatest hitter in the history of baseball, with a lifetime average of .344, failed at the plate 65.6 percent of the time.

  Just as Sullivan and I were finishing, Wade Hansen, the mayor, who was police chief when I first worked with the Naples department, appeared in the doorway, came in, and shook my hand.

  “Good to have you with us again, Jack,” he said.

  “Happy to help out.”

  “Can you believe a hit man in our town again?” he asked. “This isn’t friggin’ Miami.”

  “I’ll do my best, but no guarantees,” I told him.

  “No guarantees needed. Your best is enough.”

  Hansen left and as I stood to depart, Sullivan said, “One more thing, Jack.”

  He opened a desk drawer, took out a black leather case, and handed it to me. I flipped it open and saw it held a Naples Police Department gold detective’s shield. I put the case into the inside pocket of my sport coat. Truth be told, I never felt fully dressed without a badge and a gun.

  “We can issue you one of our 9mm Berettas, but maybe you’d rather use your own handgun,” Sullivan said.

  I nodded, shook his hand, and said, “My Glock and I have been through a lot, so I’ll stick with it.”

  And just like that, I was off and running with The Case of the Dead Philanthropist. It would prove to be as complex and challenging as any I’d ever had.

  4.

  Professor Jack Starkey

  “Say more about how you’re partnering with a young female O detective,” Marisa commented while we were having dinner that night at the Tarpon Lodge on Pine Island in the Gulf of Mexico. “You like women and you like guns. A woman with a gun seems an irresistible combo. Do you have a photo of her I can see?”

  Ten years younger than I am, Marisa had lustrous, shoulder-length black hair, sparkling dark eyes, and a body that turned heads, which she kept fit by running marathons and practicing power yoga. She owned a real estate agency in Fort Myers Beach that did well enough for her to live in one of the waterfront estates she bought and sold for her clients, but she preferred her cozy Key West style pink stucco cottage on Mango Street in Fort Myers Beach. Sometimes, after a nice dinner she cooked, I spent the night at her house. She rarely spent the night aboard Phoenix, saying it was “unsuitable for civilized habitation.” “But you found it,” I said. “For you, not me,” she said.

  “I haven’t met her yet,” I told Marisa. “And she’s not my partner. She’s more of an assistant on the case.”

  “Ready to cater to your every need?” she asked with a raised eyebrow and impish grin.

  “I wouldn’t characterize her help as catering,” I said. “She’s new to the job, and the Naples police chief said she wants to learn from me.”

  “Professor Jack Starkey,” Marisa said. “How very nice. You’ll need a tweed sport coat and bo
w tie.”

  It was a warm evening, the stars shining in a clear sky, the moon full, as we sat at a table on the lodge’s front porch. It was one of our favorite restaurants.

  “So where are you with your investigation?” Marisa asked as our food arrived.

  After meeting with Sullivan, I had driven back to Fort Myers Beach, stopped at my houseboat to change out of my dress-up clothes, and fed Joe a can of salmon for lunch. Then I took the Naples murder book to The Drunken Parrot. I’d checked in with Sam Longtree, a Seminole Indian who was my bartender, sat in a booth with a burger and a diet root beer, and read the murder book before attending to some bar business and then meeting Marisa for dinner.

  “So far, I’ve narrowed the suspect list to the Naples and Lake Forest, Illinois, telephone directories,” I answered her.

  “So this case presents a challenge, and that’s what interests you,” Marisa said. “The old fire-horse-answering-the-bell kind of thing.”

  A statement, not a question. After a few years of dating, Marisa knew me well.

  The next morning, I called Sullivan and said, “I’ve read the murder book. It’s a good start.”

  “I suggest you begin by getting together with Detective Duncan,” he told me. “You can arrange to meet at the Wilberforce house. The murder happened about three weeks ago, so it’s not an active crime scene anymore. The hurricane set back our investigation. But I think it would be helpful to check it out anyway.”

  Henry Wilberforce’s house was located on Galleon Drive in Port Royal. Marisa, my real estate expert, told me that Port Royal was one of the most exclusive and pricey neighborhoods in America. She said that, during the 1940s, a retired advertising agency owner named John Glen Sample decided to develop two square miles of mangroves and swamps in Naples by filling in peninsulas of land overlooking canals leading into Naples Bay. Sample gave the streets pirate-themed names like Galleon Drive, Rum Row, and Treasure Lane. He began building small homes, most of which had now been torn down and mansions built in their places. One of those mansions had recently sold for a mind-blowing $48.8 million, a record for Naples, Marisa told me. And then that house was torn down to make way for an even grander one. Unreal. The price I paid for my houseboat wouldn’t stock a wine cellar in Port Royal.

  I found the Wilberforce house and pulled into the circular driveway. A tan Taurus sedan with a government license plate was there. The house was a two-story yellow stucco with a tile roof and five-car garage. There was no crime-scene tape. Henry already had been buried in the Lake Forest Cemetery, according to the murder book.

  I walked along a brick sidewalk to a big brown wooden door, considered ringing the bell, then tried the knob and found it unlocked. I entered a large foyer that resembled the lobby of a Ritz-Carlton. There was a two-story ceiling with a huge crystal chandelier suspended on a gold chain, a curved staircase with an ornate black wrought iron railing leading to the second floor, oil paintings and tapestries on the walls, oriental rugs on the stone floor, a grandfather clock … Everything but a suit of armor, which maybe was in the library. It was a place that required a docent to give a proper tour.

  Marisa and I had taken an overnight trip to Sarasota to see the Ringling Circus Museum and the Ringling family mansion named Ca’ d’Zan. John and Mable Ringling would have felt right at home in Henry Wilberforce’s residence.

  I found Detective Allie Duncan in the kitchen, seated at a breakfast table with a Starbuck’s paper cup, talking on her cell phone. She looked up at me, smiled, and raised her index finger in a just-a-moment gesture. The kitchen was as elaborate as the rest of the house.

  She finished her call, smiled, and stood up. Allie Duncan was an African American woman, looking to be in her early thirties, lean and fit, and wearing a navy-blue pants suit and black flats, the shoes being more appropriate for running perps to ground than heels would be. A gold detective shield, just like mine, was clipped to her belt, along with a black leather holster containing a 9mm Beretta.

  Huh …

  An attractive woman with a gun …

  There was no upside in snapping her photo with my cell phone camera and showing it to Marisa. She would have approved of my Chicago PD partner, a man named Tommy Boyle. Tommy had maybe been lean and fit at birth, but by the time I hooked up with him, he had done his best to desecrate God’s Sacred Temple, and succeeded. One time, Tommy had been unable to run down a perp who was in a wheelchair. To be fair, they were going downhill.

  Duncan offered her hand, smiled, and said, “I’m Allie Duncan. You’re either Jack Starkey or the pool man.”

  I was wearing my Bruce Springsteen tee shirt so she couldn’t be blamed for wondering if I was there to solve a homicide or to test the swimming pool’s chlorine balance. I shook her hand and assured her that I was, in fact, Jack Starkey.

  “I’d offer you coffee, but I only have the one cup,” she said.

  “Not a problem, I stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts on the way here.”

  She walked over to double french doors leading from the kitchen to the back patio. One of the window panes was broken. The crime scene crew must have cleaned up the glass.

  “The killer broke this window and unlocked the door,” she told me. “No prints on the knob, other than those of Mr. Wilberforce and his staff, his butler and his cook. Let’s go up to his bedroom on the second floor. That’s where his body was found.”

  I followed her up the stairs and to the end of a long hallway, past a number of closed doors, which I assumed were guest bedrooms, and into the master bedroom. She walked over to the canopy bed. There were no blankets or sheets, just the mattress, which had a large stain on it. Henry’s blood.

  “He was found here, in his pajamas, lying under the covers, indicating he was probably asleep when shot,” Allie told me. “According to the medical examiner, the .22-caliber bullet shattered upon impact and bounced around in his skull, turning his brain to mush.”

  Which was why professionals used .22-caliber pistols. They were quiet when fitted with a suppressor, and as deadly up close as larger calibers.

  “Who found him?” I asked.

  “His butler, Franz Mueller, who lived in an apartment above the garage with his wife, Anna, who was Henry’s cook. The couple worked for him here and in his Lake Forest home. They’d been with the Wilberforce family for more than thirty years.”

  “You spoke with them?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Franz said he was delivering Henry’s morning coffee when he found the body. Neither he nor Anna heard anything during the night. The Muellers went back to Lake Forest.”

  “The time of death?” I asked.

  “The ME puts it sometime between one and four A.M.”

  Allie looked at the bloodstained mattress, drew in a breath, and asked, “You ever get used to this kind of thing, Jack?”

  “If you ever do, it’s time to quit,” I told her.

  She wanted to learn from me, Sullivan said. That was probably the most important thing I had to teach her.

  That, and wear your Kevlar vest whenever you were going in harm’s way. And that, as a cop, you were always going in harm’s way.

  We toured the rest of the house and then went out to the backyard: lush grounds landscaped with trees, bushes, and flowers, an outdoor kitchen and fireplace, an Olympic-sized pool, and a cement fountain that was a copy, on a smaller scale, of the Trevi Fountain in Rome. When my then-wife, Claire, and I visited the city on a vacation before our daughter, Jenny, was born, we sought out the fountain because we’d seen it in the movie, Three Coins in the Fountain. Showing off, I took off my shoes and socks and waded in, picking up a handful of coins that were Italian, American, and from other countries, and then dropping them back in, lest I be charged with theft by the Carabinieri. Maybe they would have granted a professional courtesy to a Chicago cop and let me off with a scolding. I looked into Henry’s fountain as I passed by. No coins.

  It was clear from the murder book that the Naples crime scene team had tho
roughly processed the house and grounds and found no clues. Still, I liked having a look for myself. I sometimes imagined that the ghosts of murder victims were still present at crime scenes and wanted to tell me who ended their lives. That never happened, but just in case they were watching me, I wanted them to know I was chasing their killers so that their souls could be at rest.

  5.

  The Eye of the Needle

  That afternoon, I stopped by Cubby Cullen’s office in the Fort Myers Beach police station to update him. The station was located in a single-story, white concrete-block building on Egret Drive. Cubby’s office resembled a man cave, with stuffed game fish on the walls, along with memorabilia of Ohio pro and college sports teams, and a photo of him wearing army camos and a parachute, standing in the open doorway of an airplane, looking back over his shoulder. Presumably that plane would at some point land, so why end the trip prematurely?

  “Sounds like just the sort of conundrum you like, Jack,” Cubby said as he sat behind his cluttered desk, with me in a chair in front. We both had cups of just-barely drinkable station house coffee. “What’s your approach to the case?”

  “I’m going to speak with people around town who knew Henry,” I answered. “Detective Duncan has already done that, but maybe I’ll pick up something she missed. Then, if Sullivan okays the expense, I’ll go to Lake Forest and do the same thing there.”

  I left Cubby’s office and drove to The Drunken Parrot, where I had an appointment to meet with someone from a roofing company. It wasn’t the first time that the bar’s roof had been damaged. A strong wind or heavy rain would do the trick. This time it was damaged by Hurricane Irena. Sam and I had covered it with a blue tarp. There were a lot of blue tarps like that on roofs around town. I wasn’t looking forward to the estimate.

  “Maybe it’s a teardown,” Bill said when I called to tell him about the roof. “Good money after bad?”

  “Then where would you go to meet college girls during spring break?” I asked.

  Without hesitating, he said, “Okay, I’m in for my half.”