The Headstone Detective Agency, page 12
“Nope, I’m still on the job.”
“And you want to know what we’ve got.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Ask your employer. Once the D.A. gives him all that we have, he can give it to you.”
“That’s not very cooperative of you.”
“Well, suppose you give me what you’ve got,” Leon said, “and then maybe I’ll return the favor.”
“Maybe?” I said.
“If your information’s any good.”
“What about professional courtesy?” I asked.
“Cop to private cop, you mean?”
“How about cop to ex-cop?”
“Ex-cop? When?”
“A long time ago.”
“And what happened?” he asked, leaning back in his chair and looking up at me. “Did you lose your badge the way you lost your license?”
“You told me you checked me out,” I reminded him. “You know all about me.”
“Yeah, I do,” he said. “Youngest to ever make detective in the department, the golden child quits a year later to open his own agency. Things go great, he builds the agency to a twelve-man operation and then, boom.”
“Yeah,” I said, “boom. That’s old news, Detective.”
“Once your suspension was up, how could you go back to work as a one-man operation? I probably would’ve crawled right into a bottle.”
“No point in that, Leon,” I said. “I like this work, and I’m just happy to be able to keep on doing it. The rest of that stuff is behind me.”
“Well, I gotta give you credit,” Leon said. “I’d be an angst-ridden mess.”
“Come on, what about it?” I asked. “I don’t happen to think the wife did it.”
“Well, she’s got motive, she was in the city that night.”
“What motive?”
“The angry wife.”
“You got a murder weapon?”
He hesitated, then said, “No, that we don’t have.”
“What does the M.E. think it was?”
“Something blunt and heavy.”
“Heavy? And you think the wife swung it?”
“You’ve seen her,” Leon said. “The lady stays in shape.”
“Okay, Detective,” I said. “Thanks.”
Yeah, for nothing.
I left the bullpen, took the elevator down to the lobby. They still managed to keep a few phone booths there, I sat in one and used my cell. I had a contact in the M.E.’s office from the old days. I just didn’t know if the guy was still talking to me.
“Johnny Headstone,” he said. “It’s been years.”
“Yeah, it has, Max. How you been?”
“Good. Still got the same job, but it ain’t so bad. How are you doin’, Johnny? I gotta tell you, I never believed all that shit that went down about you years ago. You still in the business?”
“Still got my license, Max,” I said, “and I’m still working.”
“So this ain’t a social call.”
“Not exactly. I haven’t called you because—well, I figured you might not want me to.”
“Well, you figured wrong. What can I do for ya?”
“You got a body about a week ago, maybe a little more. Templeton Kessenger is the name.”
“I remember that one. Didn’t they just arrest the wife?”
“That’s right. I’m working the case for her lawyer.”
“What do you need from here, Johnny?”
“I talked to Detective Leon and he wouldn’t give me much. He said the murder weapon was a blunt instrument of some kind. I just need to know if there’s anything else about it.”
“Okay, hang on. I’m here alone, so I can pull a file.”
“Thanks, Max.”
I waited a few minutes, watching people walk back and forth in the police plaza lobby. They needed to identify themselves and say who they wanted to see to get any further.
“Johnny? The report says he was struck with a blunt instrument over twenty-seven times.”
“Jesus,” I said, “somebody was mad at him.”
“I guess that’s why they figure the wife. It also says he must’ve been killed by the first or second blow.”
“Okay, Max. Listen, can I give you my cell number in case you find out anything else?”
“Sure.”
I’d called the morgue landline, so he had to write the number down.
“Johnny, before you hang up, I’ve got one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“They found something in the victim’s head wounds and bagged it.”
“What was it?”
“According to this,” Max said, “they found microscopic bits of clay.”
“Clay?”
“That’s right. Must’ve come off the murder weapon.”
“Clay,” I said, again. “Thanks, Max.”
“Any time, Johnny.”
“Same price, Max?”
“Inflation, Johnny.”
“It’s on the way,” I promised, and hung up.
Clay, I thought.
The kind that Henry Lewis Devereaux used in his sculptures? The kind that was missing from the base of that statue Miranda Cortez had?
That was what I had to find out.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
“Nothin’!” Ally complained. “I spent all day in that neighborhood and nobody told me anythin’ about the Kessengers.”
“No gossip?” I asked. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Most of the neighbors said that everyone there kept to themselves. That if they wanted to talk to somebody, they’d go to their country club, not their neighbor’s house.” She shook her head. “Rich people!”
“Well,” I said, “I’m sure you did your best.”
I was sitting at my desk and she was standing in the doorway. It was already taking on the feel of a comfortable position for both of us.
“I did get propositioned,” she said.
“Really?”
“Three times. Once by an older man who assured me his wife wouldn’t be home for hours, and once by a woman who told me the same thing about her husband. You know, I’ll bet those neighbors don’t talk to each other, but they fuck each other in the afternoons.”
“And the third time?”
“Well,” she said, wrapping a lock of hair around her finger, “that was a younger guy, pretty handsome and in good shape…”
“Ally—”
“I didn’t go in,” she said, “but…I did give him my number, told him if he gets to town—”
“You can’t do that in this business, Ally,” I warned her. “Not when you don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
“Oh come on,” she said “don’t tell me you never got laid while on the job—I mean, when you were younger.”
That hurt, but I still didn’t tell her about my blunder with Beth Munnings.
“You have!” she said, when I didn’t answer right away.
“When I was younger,” I said, thinking, a few days younger. “Okay, never mind. I might have come up with something.”
“Ooh, tell me about it.” She grabbed the chair in front of my desk and sat, her eyes shining. “Is it the partner? Or the wife?”
“Neither, I don’t think,” I said. “What I got came from his building.”
I told her about my visit to Kessenger’s building and my conversation with his neighbors.
“See?” she said when I was done. “More neighbors who don’t talk, but fuck.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Well, the divorcee and the artist,” she pointed out.
Yeah, I thought, and Beth Munnings with whomever. I wondered if Crazy Beth ever took a run at Kessenger?
“So what else did you get?”
“I put in a call to the morgue, a fella I know who does me favors.” Favors I paid for. “He told me the M.E. found bits clay in Kessenger’s head wound.”
“Clay? So he was killed with…clay?”
“He was beaten with something made of clay.”
“Like what? Pottery?”
“No,” I said, “but maybe a statue.”
“Well, were there statues there, at the scene.”
“No,” I said, “but there was, one floor down.”
“What?”
“Where the artist lives,” I said. “He paints, and he sculpts.”
“So you think he killed him?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I saw this statue in the neighbor’s apartment, across the hall.”
“The divorcee?”
I nodded.
“It had a chip in the base.”
“The clay!”
I nodded.
“So then she did it?”
“That’s the question,” I said. “Is that the murder weapon, and did one of them do it?”
“So,” she said, “how do we find out?”
“Well,” I said, “we could just ask them.”
I typed up my day’s proceedings, and had Ally do the same. She suggested that she do it on my computer, because if she did it on hers and gave me a flash stick, my machine wouldn’t be able to read it. I wasn’t sure what all that meant, but I let her at my machine and she had it done in record time. Then she put both hers and mine went into the same file.
“So when do we start, boss?”
I looked up, saw Ally leaning against the doorjamb, again.
“Start what?”
“Askin’ the questions.”
“I thought I’d go back there tomorrow and talk to both of them.”
“Do you think they’ll tell you the truth?”
“I won’t know until I ask.”
“Let me go with you,” she said. “Maybe we can figure out a way to get it out of them—or whichever one did it.”
“Like how?”
“I’m goin’ home,” she said, “but I’m sure by mornin’ you’ll think of somethin’.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
I thought of something.
In fact, I thought of several somethings.
I thought of calling the police, giving them all I had, and leaving it to them. Then I rejected that plan. I was sure my employer, Griffith, would not approve of that.
So I considered going over to the building, somehow stealing that statue and then having it examined, forensically. I liked that idea, but I wasn’t a burglar. I wasn’t sure I could get it done.
Then I thought that all I needed from Devereaux, the artist, was a sample of the clay he used. If I gave that to the police, and they matched it with the bits in Kessenger’s head, then I could leave the rest to them. Let them go in, get that statue, confirm it’s the murder weapon, and then sweat both Devereaux and Miranda Cortez to see which one did it.
I left home and got to the office first. By the time Ally arrived, I had decided which way to go.
“You want me to what?” she asked from her now customary doorway position.
“Model.”
“I’m not a model.”
“I’m sure if you knock of Devereaux’s door and he sees you, he’ll ask you in.”
“What makes you think that?”
I thought about him asking Beth to pose.
“Because he’s a man, and you’re a pretty girl.”
“What about my tattoos?”
“Show them,” I said. “He loves colors.”
“And then what do I do?”
“Get us a sample of his clay.”
“What will you be doin’?”
“I’ll be across the hall talking to Miranda Cortez,” I said. “If anything goes wrong and you call out, I’ll hear you.”
“And do you have a gun?” she asked.
“I do.”
“I’ve never seen you with it.”
I opened a drawer and took out my .38 and belt holster. I never carried it, even though I had a permit. Now I clipped the holster to my belt and slid the gun home.
“There you go,” I said.
“Well,” she said, “I guess I feel a little safer.”
“Ally, you don’t have to do this,” I said. “If he’s the killer then this is dangerous. I’m just suggesting this because you want to learn the job, and because you did so well in White Plains.”
“With those rich drips?” she asked. “They weren’t dangerous, at all.”
“What about the men who came on to you?”
“I can handle that,” she said. “Don’t you read the papers? Sexual harassment has been happening for years. But this…this is something else.”
“Would you like me to come up with a different plan?” I asked.
“Are you kiddin’?” she asked. “This is gonna be exciting.” She pushed off the doorjamb, started to turn, then stopped and said, “So you think I’m pretty?”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
We went to Kessenger’s Tribeca apartment building, up the stairs and stopped in front of the door.
“Are you ready?”
She was wearing a tank top that showed off all her tattoos, as well as her toned arms and shoulders, and trim figure.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she assured me.
I rang Miranda Cortez’s bell, feeling fairly safe that she’d be there, and let me in.
“Who is it?”
“John Headston, Mrs. Cortez,” I answered. “I have a few more questions about the Kessenger murder. May I come up?”
She didn’t answer immediately, but suddenly the door buzzed open.
“Show time,” I said, and we entered together.
We went up the stairs. I was hoping to get by the second floor without running into Beth, and we did. When we got to three, I kept my voice down.
“Stay on the stairs until I get inside, and then knock on his door.”
“Right.”
I knocked on Miranda Cortez’s door and she answered right away. Although it was even earlier than last time, she still had a martini glass in her hand. She was wearing an old-fashioned peignoir that made her look like a Robert McGinnis girl on a Richard S. Prather Shell Scott book cover.
“Come in, Mr. Headston,” she said.
I stepped in and closed the door, peeking out first to see Ally come the rest of the way up the stairs.
She told me later what happened…
Ally stepped to Henry Lewis Devereaux’s door and knocked. She said she had her story straight in her head and was rehearsing it.
Devereaux opened the door. She said he looked exactly as I had described, very wide and a few inches shorter than she did. But she said she could also see how some of his models might sleep with him. There was a sort of magnetism to him. I let that part of the story go.
“Well, hello,” he said. “How did you get in here?”
“Somebody was comin’ in just as I got here,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind…”
“Well,” he said, leaning against the door, “I guess that depends, doesn’t it?”
“On what?” she asked.
“On what you want, honey.”
“I heard there was an artist livin’ here who always needs models.”
“And where did you hear that?”
“Ah…around the neighborhood.”
“Babe, I’m gonna need a little better reference than that,” he said. “A bar? A paint supply store?”
“Um…I hesitate to say this…but Beth told me.”
“Beth?” He looked surprised. “Beth Munnings? My downstairs neighbor?”
“That’s her,” Ally said “I know you and she aren’t, you know, friends or anythin’, but I saw her in the laundromat—”
“Beth,” he said, “Munnings.”
“Yep.”
He frowned and studied her.
“What’d she say, exactly?”
“You really wanna know?”
“I really wanna know.”
“That you were a loser who invited her up to your place to paint her, and then you wouldn’t even have sex with her. But she had to admit you were a decent painter.” This was Ally ad-libbing.
Ally said he stared at her a few minutes, then smiled slowly and said, “Well, that sounds like Beth.” He backed up and opened the door wide. “Come on in, doll.”
While that was going on, Miranda Cortez once again led me to her expensive furniture layout. Along the way I eyed the statue again, to make sure it was still there. She offered me a drink. This time, I took it, looking to form more of a connection. If I was a younger, handsomer man I would have flirted. At my age I’d have to do it with liquor.
“Oh!” She looked surprised. “How nice. I actually hate drinking alone, probably because I do it so much.”
“Really?” I asked, as she poured me a martini. “I would’ve thought Devereaux would be happy to come over and drink with you.”
“Why?” she asked. “What did he tell you?” She handed me the glass.
“He warned me off,” I said. “Said I better not try anything because you’re his woman.”
“Then he’s delusional,” she said. “I posed for him, we slept together, and that was the end of it.”
“Really? Yesterday you made it sound like a relationship.”
“Really?” She echoed. “How drunk must I have been? I suppose I made it sound like more than it really was. Truthfully, it was nothing more than a dalliance. It’s all I’m capable of, right now.”
“And yet he gave you that statue.”
She looked over at it.
“Yes,” she said, “I don’t quite know why.”
“Tell me something,” I said, “when was the final time you saw Temple Kessenger?”
Her eyebrows went up.
“We’re back to that again? And here I thought we were making progress.”
“I’m still working on the case.” I set my martini down, untouched, on the glass coffee table.
“Let me see,” she said. “I think it was that morning, while we were getting our mail.”
“Devereaux told me that Kessenger wasn’t here long enough to get any mail.”
