The Now-And-Then Detective

by William Wells

  When I got home from the beach, I called Brandon Taylor and found out that the nephew, Nelson Lowry, lived in Santa Monica, California; one niece, June Dumont, lived in Washington, DC; and the other niece, Libby Leverton, resided in Boston. Taylor gave me their phone numbers and addresses.

  Using my cell phone to connect with my sleuthing partner Google as I sat in my regular booth at The Drunken Parrot, I found newspaper articles in the Santa Monica Mirror and the Los Angeles Times reporting that Nelson “Scooter” Lowry won a lot of sailboat races, was an alternate on an American boat for an America’s Cup race six years ago, was named one of Santa Monica’s “Most Eligible Bachelors” eight years ago, had twice been arrested for drunk driving, and had partnered with two other men in starting a vineyard in the Napa Valley which, before it could produce any wine, burned up in a wildfire. There was no mention of Scooter having a job, other than the failed vineyard investment. I found an obituary for his father, Langdon Lowry, who had been a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, indicating that Scooter was a trust-funder. Good for him. I wouldn’t have turned down a nice, cozy trust fund.

  I called Scooter and left a voice mail, explaining who I was, why I wanted to speak with him, and that his Uncle Henry’s lawyer had given me his name.

  He called back the next day, saying that he’d just come back from the Baja 1000 race, held on the Baja California Peninsula. It was a race in which cars, trucks, motorcycles, ATVs, and dune buggies competed, he told me.

  “How’d you do?” I asked him.

  “Dumped my Suzuki an hour in,” he answered.

  “Bad luck,” I told him. “As I said in my voice mail, I’d like to talk to you about your uncle, Henry Wilberforce. Your late uncle, I should say.”

  After a pause, Scooter said, “My late uncle? You mean he died?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Well, Uncle Henry was in his eighties. He had a long and happy life.”

  “Right up until the moment that someone shot him in the head in his home in Naples, Florida.”

  “What? That’s awful!” Scooter said, sounding truly shocked. “Did you catch the person who did it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Is there a motive?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said, adding, “Your uncle was a very generous person.”

  “Uncle Henry’s and Aunt Miriam’s charity did a lot of good work,” he said. “Clean drinking water for Africa, AIDs research, arts grants … I read a story about that in the LA Times some years ago.”

  I wondered if he knew that Henry’s giving had gone far beyond the foundation’s. I decided not to tell him that yet in case he did know it and wasn’t telling me, which could be an indication of his guilt. Or not.

  “When was the last time you saw your uncle?” I asked him.

  “Hhmmm … A long time ago. I can’t remember when. I wasn’t able to attend Aunt Miriam’s funeral, so it was before then.”

  He was probably in a sailboat or motorcycle race at the time of his aunt’s funeral, or maybe he had a hot dinner date. But he had the time to cash his check for the five-hundred K. Never too busy for a trip to the bank.

  “Thanks, Scooter,” I said. “This has been helpful.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

  “I will. I may have to talk to you again,” I said.

  “Let me ask a favor,” he said. “Can you tell the lawyer that I’m available to help with any of Uncle Henry’s affairs, me being a relative and all?”

  Meaning: Just in case I’m in his will.

  “I’ll do that,” I promised.

  “Okay then, Detective Starkey,” he said. “I’ll let you go.”

  When someone ended a phone call by telling me they’d let me go, it always seemed like they were firing me. Just a minor annoyance on the scale of things. I concluded that either Scooter did not know his uncle was dead until I told him, and therefore was innocent of the crime, or that he was a very good actor.

  Next up was June Dumont in our nation’s capital. It was clear from online newspaper and magazine articles that her husband, Alan, was one of Washington’s most powerful and successful lawyers. His law firm, Chesney, Hartson, Dumont & Hamilton, also had offices in New York, Los Angeles, and London. The partners shuffled back and forth between the firm and top jobs in Republican presidential administrations. One senior partner had been secretary of state, another ambassador to the Court of Saint James, and another US attorney general. June Dumont was active in the city’s social scene, and she served on the boards of a number of charitable institutions. All the right ones, I was certain.

  I could picture the Dumonts at White House state dinners and opening their home for GOP fundraising events. Their house was in Sheridan-Kalorama, one of Washington’s highest-end neighborhoods, my online research told me. The French ambassador lived on one side of their house and a Supreme Court justice on the other, an article in Washingtonian Magazine said. The Dumont house was once owned by Woodrow Wilson, according to that article. Barack and Michelle Obama lived nearby. I wondered if Alan, Barack, the French ambassador, and the Supreme Court justice had a regular poker night or got together to watch football games and down a few brewskis. That’s what my pals and I did in Wrigleyville.

  I called the Dumonts’ home number and got no answer and no prompt to leave a voice mail. Then I looked up the number for Alan’s law firm.

  “Good morning, Chesney, Hartson, Dumont & Hamilton,” the receptionist said. “How may I help you?”

  By the time she got to the question after saying the name of the firm, I’d almost forgotten why I called.

  “This is Detective Jack Starkey,” I said. “I’d like to speak to Alan Dumont.”

  “May I ask what this is regarding?”

  “You may,” I assured her. “It is regarding a death.”

  “Oh my,” she said.

  “Not to worry, it’s no one you know,” I assured her.

  “One moment please,” she said. “I’ll put you on hold and see if Mr. Dumont is available.”

  The on-hold music was John Coltrane blowing a jazz riff on his tenor sax. Points for that.

  “This is Alan Dumont,” a voice said after I’d listened to Coltrane for around five minutes. I could have held on much longer. “Now what’s this about a death?”

  Alan sounded extremely annoyed. I was taking him away from whatever job he was over-billing a zillion dollars an hour to.

  “Your wife’s uncle, Henry Wilberforce, died in his home in Naples, Florida,” I told him, hoping he wouldn’t bill me for the conversation. “I’d like to speak with June about that. There was no answer at your home.”

  “June hasn’t been in touch with Henry for many years,” Alan said. “I’m certain she doesn’t know he died. I can tell her about that, so you don’t need to.”

  “I’m interviewing all of Mr. Wilberforce’s friends and relatives,” I said. “I have a few questions about the way he died.”

  “June is very busy,” he said. “She has no time for you today.”

  Probably busy with her Pilates class or shopping at Cartier or having a ladies’ lunch. A killer schedule.

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d have her call me when she’s available,” I said.

  “I’ll do that, Detective,” Alan Dumont said.

  He hung up without asking for my phone number. No matter, June Dumont wouldn’t be calling me anyway.

  Then I called Libby Leverton in Boston. She answered on the fourth ring. I told her who I was and why I was calling.

  “Oh … my … I didn’t know that Uncle Henry was dead,” she said.

  Maybe she really didn’t know, or maybe she and Scooter had studied with the same acting coach.

  “When is the last time you saw or spoke with Henry?” I asked her.

  “Let me think … I must have last seen my uncle at Aunt Miriam’s funeral in Lake Forest. That was about ten years ago. Not since then.”

  I deci
ded I could get nothing more from that call, so I said, “I might have to speak with you again.” I said that to everybody during an investigation, whether I needed to or not. Kept them on the hook.

  “Yes, that would be fine,” she said, and we ended the call without her telling me that she was letting me go.

  I needed to digest my conversations with Scooter and Libby and to figure out how to connect with June. But first I needed to digest a cheeseburger for lunch. A burger contained all the important food groups, as long as you didn’t consider vitamins, minerals, and fiber to be important food groups.

  That night, over drinks at my bar, I gave Marisa an update on my investigation.

  “Is one of them a more likely suspect than the other?” she asked me.

  “I still need to connect with June Dumont. At this point, I’d pick the nephew, Scooter Lowry. He comes from a wealthy family, but he seems to be a slacker. Maybe his family cut him off, or he spent all his money on drugs, or gambling, or fast women. June’s husband is a partner in a hotshot law firm, so probably not her. The other niece, Libby Leverton, is married to a big real estate developer in Boston. So probably not her either. I’m hoping that self-preservation is kicking in and that they’re not talking to each other about my investigation, each of them hoping to point me at one of the others.”

  “Fast women?” Marisa said, an eyebrow raised. I knew that phrase was a mistake as soon as I said it. “Isn’t that a chauvinistic, anachronistic, sexist concept?”

  “I was just thinking like Scooter would,” I explained.

  “Close, but no cigar,” she said.

  Not the first cigar Marisa had denied me for some male infraction.

  Changing the subject, I said, “I need to talk to Scooter in person. Sometimes, under skillful face-to-face questioning, a suspect will break down and confess.”

  “How many times has that happened?”

  “Never,” I admitted. “But there’s always a first time.”

  8.

  The Left Coast

  The next morning, I met with Tom Sullivan in his office. I told him about my current working theory of the case and said I wanted to go to Santa Monica to see Scooter Lowry.

  “You going to straight out ask him if he killed his uncle?” Sullivan said.

  “I hope to be a bit subtler than that,” I answered. I was going to add, “That’s why you pay me the big bucks.” But I didn’t want to remind him, in case things didn’t work out, and he might not want to cut me a check.

  “Okay, Jack,” he said. “But fly coach, don’t stay in a Ritz-Carlton, or order any menu item that says market price.”

  “I can live with that,” I said.

  Too bad though. I was looking forward to an expense-account surf-and-turf dinner at some fancy restaurant with a view of the Pacific.

  I boarded a plane for the flight from Fort Myers to Los Angeles for a face-to-face session with Scooter. I brought Bill’s manuscript to pass the time editing.

  I didn’t want to violate my agreement with Sullivan by flying first class, but I did opt for a main-cabin upgrade to a seat with extra leg room and priority boarding. The airlines had squeezed more seats into their coach cabins to the point where a man my size could barely fit. If that was a problem, Sullivan could take it out of my Christmas bonus.

  I hadn’t been to California in more than ten years, when I was after a murder suspect. I didn’t find him, by all accounts he’d crossed into Mexico, but I did succeed in angering the Los Angeles Police Department by intruding upon their territory without permission. They found out I was there when I happened upon a three-car accident on the 405 Freeway and stopped to help. One of the motorcycle patrolmen on the scene took my report. For some reason, maybe to be collegial, I told him I was a detective from Chicago, and I was busted, resulting in a complaint to my supervisor, who said, “Serves you right for being a Good Samaritan, something I never do.”

  Once again, I decided not to tell local law enforcement I was coming. Explaining who I was and why I was there would be a hassle. If someone needed help, I’d call 911 anonymously.

  The flight was full. I had an aisle seat. Looking out a window reminded me that we were up in the air, the province of birds, not people. A man next to me in the middle seat resembled the John Candy character Del Griffith in one of my favorite flicks, Planes, Trains and Automobiles. I didn’t ask what he did for a living, but shower-curtain-ring salesman was a definite possibility. When he asked me, I told him I was an insurance salesman, a sure-fire conversation stopper. No one wants to be trapped into a comparison of whole-life versus term-life policies. That allowed me to get some editing done.

  At LAX, I rented a black Dodge Charger GT muscle car with a 3.8-liter engine, a real beast, so I could hold my own on the freeways. It cost more than a Toyota Camry, but Sullivan seemed like a guy who understood the California car culture. If not, he could also deduct the upcharge from my bonus.

  I drove to Santa Monica, daring anyone to get in my way, but no one did. The locals drove fast, but, for the most part, skillfully, probably because they’d been trained to navigate the congested roadways like Indy 500 racers, running wheel to wheel, hell-bent for leather. Chicagoans drove fast, too, but not as well, and Floridians mostly ran into one another, on the streets and in parking lots.

  I checked into the Wyndham Santa Monica At The Pier at four o’clock local time, settled into my room, and thought about how best to approach Scooter Lowry. Given his background, it wasn’t likely he’d flown to Naples, snuck into the Wilberforce house, and shot his uncle. But a hired gun could do that for him.

  Google Maps told me Scooter lived in a house on Hart Avenue, a short walk from the beach. I drove over and found that the house was a tidy, tan-stucco bungalow with a red-tile roof. I pulled into the driveway, went to the front door, and rang the bell. If I’d brought a Bible, I could have told Scooter I was a Jehovah’s Witness, asked him for permission to come in to talk about Jesus and then turned the conversation to homicide. Or I could have told him the truth about why I was there and observed his expression. Like the old gambler in the Kenny Rogers song, “I’ve made a life out of readin’ people’s faces.”

  But Scooter didn’t answer his door. I decided to drive back to the Santa Monica Pier and have a look around. I didn’t imagine I’d spot Scooter on the Ferris wheel, but if I cruised the bars, I might find him prepping for another DUI arrest. At minimum, I could locate something for dinner. It wasn’t dinnertime in Florida, but I wasn’t in Florida.

  Strolling around the beach area, taking in the sights, I came upon a place called The Misfit Restaurant + Bar on Santa Monica Boulevard. Scooter’s kind of watering hole, I figured. I walked inside, found an open barstool, and ordered a diet root beer and a sandwich.

  The bartender was a young woman wearing a pink bikini top and skimpy white shorts. That wouldn’t be a good look for my bartender, Sam, but I might suggest he wear a muscle shirt to increase his tips from the ladies. She had short blonde hair, a body that went well with her outfit, and a full-sleeve tattoo on her left arm, all colors and swirls, with a dragon’s head spewing fire. Scary.

  When she served my food, I asked, “Do you know Scooter Lowry?”

  She scrunched her nose, as if she smelled an unpleasant odor, and said, “Are you a cop?”

  “Not in California,” I answered.

  “Huh,” she said. “Never heard of him.”

  True or not true, that was the question. They made portable lie-detector machines, but I didn’t have one with me, so I tried another tactic: “Do you know that, under the California Penal Code, it’s a felony to lie to a law enforcement officer?”

  “I thought you said you weren’t one here.”

  “That’s in your favor,” I said.

  I went with a backup plan that always worked. I took a fifty-dollar bill from my wallet, put it on the bar, and said, “I’m known as a generous tipper when someone helps me out.”

  I turned in the direction of a
commotion at the far end of the bar, two men wanting to hustle the same woman, apparently. When I looked back, the fifty-dollar bill had disappeared. If the bartending gig didn’t work out, the young lady could put together a Vegas magic act, opening for Penn & Teller.

  “Actually, now that I think about it, that name does sound somewhat familiar,” she said.

  I wanted to ask her where the fifty was hidden, but that would have been ungentlemanly.

  I showed her a driver’s license photo of Scooter on my cell phone. Tom Sullivan knew someone who knew someone at the California DMV who e-mailed the photo to me.

  “Does he come in here?” I asked.

  “Actually, he was here last night.”

  I produced another fifty, asked her for a pen, wrote my cell phone number on the bill and asked her to call me when he came in again.

  “I can do that,” she said.

  This time, I watched to see where she put the bill. It went inside her bikini top. Neither Penn nor Teller had a hiding place like that. I finished my sandwich and went out into the balmy California night.

  I was immediately knocked onto the sidewalk by a young woman on Rollerblades. She had brown hair done in braids and was wearing a white tee shirt and white shorts. The tee shirt said, “Don’t Make Your Problem My Problem.” An appropriate message for what had just happened.

  She skidded to a stop, took out her earbuds, looked down at me, and said, “Oh geez, like, I’m soooo sorry, sir. Are you, like, hurt?”

  When a young woman called you sir, she thought you were her father’s, or maybe grandfather’s, age. I stood up as agilely as I could and told her I was fine. If I needed to go to the ER, I’d wait until she was gone to preserve a shred of my virility. I didn’t want her telling her friends, “Like, I totally plowed into this old dude and he, like, broke, like, lots of bones, and had to, like, be taken to the hospital where he, like, maybe was DOA, for all I, like, know.”