The Now-And-Then Detective

by William Wells

  Kids today. At least she could have, like, called the hospital to, like, check on my, like, condition.

  I told her I was fine and she smiled and skated away. Discovering that I remained ambulatory, geezer that I was, I went into five more bars without finding Scooter, so I walked back to my hotel, called Marisa to say hi, and asked about Joe, because she was taking care of him in my absence. Joe always enjoyed staying with Marisa because she made gourmet cat meals for him such as poached salmon, diced roasted chicken, and, his favorite, hamburger gravy, which I also was partial to. It was always difficult to reacclimate Joe to my cooking, which mainly involved a can opener.

  Then I killed some time by continuing my editing of the manuscript of Stoney’s Downfall. I made only a few minor edits, nothing to do with grammar or punctuation because Bill was better with the native tongue than I was. Usually I just wrote some notations in the margins about police procedures or handgun calibers and the like. I suspected that Bill made those errors purposely, just to give me something to do.

  After an hour, I put the manuscript aside, went to the hotel’s exercise room, ran on the treadmill and lifted weights, trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to not stare at a young woman in yoga pants and a tank top climbing a StairMaster, and then ordered room service and watched one of my favorite sports movies, Bull Durham, on TV before drifting off to sleep.

  The next morning, I asked the hotel desk clerk for a good place for breakfast.

  “We’ve got a free buffet,” the clerk, a skinny young man with a shaved head, earring, and runaway case of acne, told me. His name tag said Lester. “But if you want some decent food, and are willing to pay for it, I recommend Mazie’s Café over on Pico.”

  Lester gave me directions and I walked to Mazie’s. I could tell before going in that it was my kind of place. It was one of those classic diners that looked like an Airstream trailer, with shiny aluminum siding and colored neon tubing around the front door, like The Baby Doll’s jukebox in Bill’s novels and in real life. The name of the place was spelled out in flashing red neon in the window near the front door, along with the statement, “We Never Close.” Hopper could have used Mazie’s as a model for Nighthawks.

  I walked in. There was only one open stool at the counter. All of the booths and tables were full. You walk into a restaurant at meal time and you’re the only one there, beat feet out of the place.

  I slid onto the stool. A middle-aged waitress with dishwater-blonde hair and the build of a WWF wrestler came over immediately, filled my coffee cup, and put a menu on the paper place mat in front of me. The menu had stains on it that looked like ketchup and gravy. Another good sign.

  “Specials this morning, darlin’, are biscuits with sausage gravy, rib-eye steak with eggs and hash browns, a western omelet, and a blueberry belgian waffle. Need a minute with the menu or are you ready to order?”

  “Born ready, ma’am,” I told her. “I’ll take the biscuits with sausage gravy.”

  “You want fries with that or fruit?” she asked me.

  I just smiled at her and she said, “Fries it is, sweet pea. And save room for the pecan pie à la mode.”

  I did as I was told.

  After breakfast, I drove back to Scooter’s house and rang the doorbell again. Same result as before, so I decided to head for the beach where I could show Scooter’s picture to a girl or two or three sunning herself or playing volleyball. In the detecting biz, we call that canvassing a neighborhood. A less kind term would be voyeurism.

  It was seventy-two degrees and sunny, with low humidity, according to the weather app on my cell phone. Ragged, wispy scud clouds scurried overhead. I was wearing a white polo shirt, jeans, running shoes, and Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses. As I strolled along the beach, I noticed that everyone else was wearing Oakley sunglasses and bathing suits. Guess I didn’t get the memo. Many of them had their sunglasses pushed up onto the top of their heads, a fashion statement that always seemed the height of foolishness to me. If you did that, you should be wearing a second pair to protect your eyes.

  I didn’t notice him come up behind me. Not Scooter Lowry, but a bodybuilder wearing a sleeveless tee shirt and cargo shorts, with his sunglasses on top of his bald head. I decided not to mention that. If I had biceps like his, I too would cut the sleeves off all of my tee shirts. Maybe my dress shirts too.

  The man, who had a gold ring in his pierced left ear, studied me, tilting his head like a dog, in his case a pit bull, trying to make out what you’re saying, and asked, “You the detective who’s looking for Scooter Lowry?”

  I said yes. I had no idea how he knew who I was. Maybe it was the Ray-Bans. Or the fact that I was several decades older than everyone else on the beach. Or maybe he knew that girl bartender at The Misfit. Or all of the above.

  I guessed that he wasn’t carrying a weapon because, given his outfit, I would have noticed the bulge in his shorts. Actually there was a bulge in his shorts, but not pistol-shaped. Guys like him didn’t need to carry a weapon. He looked like he could bench press a Volkswagen.

  “Scooter’s a friend of mine,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me what this is regarding.”

  What this is regarding. He sounded like the receptionist at Alan Dumont’s law firm in DC.

  “I just want to follow up on a phone conversation we had,” I said. “About his uncle.”

  He folded his massive arms over his chest and looked at me as if deciding whether to believe my story or to pick me up, flip me upside down, and pull apart my legs like a turkey’s wishbone. Snap.

  Then he slipped a cell phone out of the back pocket of his shorts, made a call, had a brief conversation I couldn’t hear over the sound of the surf, and said, “You can meet with Scooter in twenty minutes at the Starbucks on Ocean Avenue.”

  Then he walked down the beach, his calf muscles bulging.

  What a show-off.

  9.

  Huh?

  Scooter was seated at an outside round metal table under a green umbrella at Starbucks, with a tall paper cup in one hand and a cell phone in the other, texting with his thumb, an excellent display of manual dexterity.

  He looked just like his driver’s license photo, and I knew from the DOB on the license that he was thirty-eight years old, but I would have otherwise guessed that he was a college frat boy, or a surfer in the middle of an endless summer. He had thin, longish blond hair and glowing bronze skin that said he’d never spent money on sunblock. Guess where his Oakley sunglasses were.

  Marisa was a Starbucks aficionado. I was not. Whenever I went there with her, which was not often, I was confounded by the Starbucks argot. She always asked for, and I’m paraphrasing, “A grande-skinny-no-whip-pumpkin-spice-caramel” something-or-other, hold the something else. It was a secret society, like Scientology, and I was not an initiate. When it was my turn to order, I’d ask for a black coffee, and the young barista would stare at me as if I was hopelessly déclassé, or maybe the barista just didn’t understand what I meant.

  I walked over to Scooter’s table and said, “Hello, Scooter. I’m Jack Starkey.”

  He ended his texting, looked at me, smiled, and said, “Join me. You wanna get coffee first?”

  I took a seat and said, “No, these places scare me.”

  He didn’t ask why.

  “Have you ever seen a Kevin Costner movie called The Bodyguard?” I asked him as he took a drink of his coffee.

  “Yeah, with Whitney Houston. One of my all-time favorite flicks actually,” he said.

  “Which prompts me to ask about the Incredible Hulk you sent to find me.”

  “Stanley? He’s not my bodyguard, he’s a pal. I helped him buy a gym. In gratitude, he says he’ll always have my back.”

  “I’m curious about how you knew I was in town and about how Stanley located me at the beach,” I said.

  “Word got around that a detective from Florida was asking about me in the bars,” Scooter said. “Stanley was a skip tracer for a bail bondsman before I bought
the gym. He can find people without much trouble. Are you comfortable at the Wyndham?”

  I ignored that show-off comment and said, “When we spoke on the phone, I told you that your Uncle Henry had been shot in the head at his house in Naples.”

  “Right. Right. Right.”

  I’ve always thought that saying, “Right. Right. Right.” should be at least a misdemeanor, along with wearing your sunglasses on your head. By that test, Scooter was a two-time offender. I continued, “But I didn’t tell you the whole story.”

  “Uncle Henry is still dead, isn’t he?”

  Scooter’s attempt at humor. He wasn’t ready for stand-up at The Comedy Store.

  “Very much so,” I assured him. “The fact is, it looks like Henry was targeted, and not killed by a random burglar.”

  I’d taken the trouble to travel to Santa Monica to see Scooter’s reaction to that news. He looked at me as if he couldn’t process what I meant, and finally said, “Huh?”

  During my long career as a homicide detective, I’d sat across from countless suspects in interview rooms, gauging their reaction to probing questions, such as, “Where were you on the night of the twenty-seventh between the hours of eight P.M. and midnight?” Or, “I know that you did it, I just don’t know why, so fill me in.” Responses from guilty people ran from: “You’re not implying that I had anything to do with it, are you?” to “Unless you’re arresting me, I’m out of here,” or “I want a lawyer.” Scooter’s “Huh?” most likely meant I’d wasted a trip to California.

  I took the red-eye back to Fort Myers that night, drove home, slept for six hours, got up, showered and shaved, made coffee, then met Marisa at her house to pick up Joe and tell her about my trip.

  She met me at the front door with a hug and a kiss on the lips, with Joe standing behind her. He walked over to me, rubbed against my leg and meowed. I was glad to see him too. I should have checked to see if the airport gift shop had a catnip mouse. I picked him up, ruffled the fur on his head, and said, “Hey, big guy, I missed you.”

  I realized I’d blown it with Marisa too. I should have stopped by the Gucci store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Next time, I’d do better by both of them.

  Marisa and I sat on her back patio with cups of espresso, which I didn’t mind drinking when she made it because I didn’t have to figure out how to order it. Joe was asleep on her lap, the turncoat. I told her about my interaction with Scooter Lowry.

  “Now you’ll try to see the two nieces?” she asked.

  “Starting with the one in Boston, Libby Leverton. Her husband, Stewart, is a real estate developer,” as I said. “At first glance, the Levertons don’t seem to need inheritance money. But now that Scooter is not the most likely suspect, that leaves the two nieces. I’ll go to Boston tomorrow, so Joe might as well stay here, if that’s okay.”

  Joe woke up, nuzzled Marisa’s hand, and she began scratching behind his ears, which made him purr as loudly as twin Evinrude outboards. Clearly they’d do well together if I was taking a trip to the moon. If I did, I’d better bring back some rocks.

  10.

  Can You Get Scrod Here?

  But I wasn’t going to the moon, I was going to Boston to see Stewart and Libby Leverton. I knew from my online research that they lived in a row house on Beacon Hill that was featured in an article about historic homes in Boston Magazine, and that, according to stories in the Boston Globe, they, like Henry, were active in the local charity scene. At first glance, it seemed unlikely they needed inheritance money. But a detective can’t rely on first glances, so I was on a flight from Fort Myers airport to Logan airport.

  It was cold in Boston when I arrived, thirty-one degrees with snow flurries. Having checked the weather in advance, I brought my leather bomber jacket. With the collar up, I thought I looked too cool for school. I’d been to Boston once before when I took my daughter, Jenny, to visit colleges during her senior year in high school. Ultimately she chose Stanford. Weather might have been a factor. She must have liked the Northern California climate because she also chose Stanford Law School. She now was an associate with the largest law firm in Chicago.

  Jenny said that, while on a campus tour of Boston College, her student guide told her a Harvard joke: A businessman flew into Logan airport for the first time and, on the way to the city, asked the cab driver if he could get scrod in Boston, scrod being a generic term for a small cod, haddock, or any other local white fish. The driver, who was a moonlighting Harvard student, replied, “Yes, sir, you certainly can get scrod here, but I’ve never heard it referred to in the pluperfect tense before.”

  Jenny got the joke and explained it to me. It had been a long time since I studied the conjugation of verbs at Saint Francis High School, where the nuns rapped our knuckles with a wooden ruler for giving wrong answers, and sometimes just because they could.

  My Boston cabbie was clearly not a Harvard student. He was a beefy guy with a ruddy face and bulbous nose, and he was wearing a Red Sox ball cap. He looked to be in his late fifties. Just for fun, I asked him if I could get scrod in the city. He said, “Yeah, sure. I recommend Legal Sea Foods.” I guess he didn’t know his colleague, that moonlighting Harvard student.

  I checked into the Hyatt, went to my room, and called Libby Leverton. She answered on the third ring and I said, “Mrs. Leverton, this is Jack Starkey, the detective from Florida. We spoke on the phone earlier about the death of your uncle, Henry Wilberforce.”

  She hesitated, then said, “And I told you I know nothing about that. Is there some reason you’re calling again?”

  “I’m in Boston,” I told her. “Better to talk about that in person.” As with Scooter, I wanted to check out her facial expression while I questioned her.

  She agreed to meet me for lunch, suggesting, coincidentally, the Legal Sea Foods restaurant at Copley Place.

  It was chilly and windy, but I walked to the restaurant from the hotel instead of taking a cab because I needed the exercise. I got directions from the desk clerk, who warned me that Boston streets were convoluted, gave me a map, marking the route with a red marker pen, and said it was lucky I wasn’t going to try to drive there on my own because I might never arrive. That reminded me of the Kingston Trio song about Charlie, who got lost forever while riding the MTA.

  The desk clerk’s map was clear. I arrived at Legal Sea Foods on time, at noon sharp, went inside, and approached a woman seated alone in a booth. She was pretty and well put together, with short dark hair with streaks of grey. She was wearing a pink sweater, accented with a string of pearls and matching earrings, jewelry like that of Leila Purcell, chairwoman of the board of the Miriam Wilberforce Art Museum. I guessed that women of Libby’s and Leila’s social class wore pearls like California beach boys and girls wore Oakley sunglasses.

  “Mrs. Leverton?” I asked.

  “Yes, and you must be Detective Starkey,” she answered.

  I slid into the booth and said, “I’m investigating Henry Wilberforce’s murder.”

  I watched her face closely. Her eyes widened, she gasped, put one hand on her chest, and said, “His murder? Oh, my god … you told me he was dead … I assumed it was because he was so old … how … where?” she asked.

  “He was in his house in Naples, Florida,” I told her. “During the night, an intruder broke in and shot him.”

  Libby teared up, took a handkerchief from her purse, and blotted her eyes, being careful not to smear her makeup. Either she didn’t know about the murder or she acted in local playhouse productions.

  “Do you know who did it?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” I told her. “Can you think of anyone who might want to kill your uncle?”

  Without hesitating, she said, “Oh, Lord, no. Uncle Henry is … was … a very good man.”

  Out of left field, I asked, “How is your husband’s business doing?” Thinking she might be caught unaware and let slip a motive for murder.

  “What?” she replied. “Stewart’s business? Wh
at can that have to do with my uncle’s … murder?”

  “I like to gather all the background I can,” I said.

  For example, did she or Stewart have a hit man in their contacts list.

  The waitress arrived. Libby ordered a small salad. The restaurant did have a burger for me.

  When the waitress departed, Libby said, “You were asking about my husband’s business. Stewart is doing very well. His company is the biggest commercial developer in the Boston area.”

  “Interesting,” I said, and it was, because it might mean that they didn’t need Henry’s money. Or it might not, given the ups and downs of the real estate development business. And it wouldn’t be unusual for a man to keep a business problem from his wife so that she wouldn’t think less of him. Whenever I failed to close a case, I didn’t tell Claire.

  Libby asked for details about my investigation, which I explained as we finished lunch, including the possibility of a professional assassin. She listened, shaking her head, tearing up again, and repeating her assertion that her uncle had no enemies. At one point in my narrative, she asked, “What do you mean, professional assassin?”

  “A person who kills people for money,” I explained.

  She shook her head and said, “What a sad world we live in, Detective Starkey.”

  She seemed sincere. By the time we finished lunch, I was pretty much convinced that Libby was innocent. I didn’t yet know about her husband, Stewart. Alan and June Dumont were better suspects at that point, if only because they’d been so elusive with me. I’d circle back to the Levertons later, if necessary.

  11.

  Honey Trap

  Iwalked back to the Hyatt, my jacket keeping me warm enough, checked out, and caught a cab to Logan. This time, my driver was a young woman who told me she was a Boston College student.

  “I went to Loyola in Chicago,” I said. “Another fine Jesuit institution.”

  “I’m thinking of transferring to a nonsectarian school,” she said, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “Because of the church scandals, and all.”