The Headstone Detective Agency, page 6
As I entered, he was working behind his register. It had been a while since I’d had Burger World, and now I got in line to get it for the third time in two days, from him.
When it was my turn, he looked at me and said, “Mr. Headston.”
“That’s right.” And it was!
“Thank you for coming. I’ll be going on break in fifteen minutes. Would you like something?”
“I’ll just take a World meal,” I said.
“Comin’ up.” He charged me for it. I waited, and when he called my number, I picked it up and managed to get a booth by the front window. I had taken a few bites when he came over carrying a drink and sat across from me.
“I can see your window from here,” I said, “across the street.”
“I know,” he said. He was a handsome man in his late forties, who looked fairly ridiculous in his Burger World outfit. “I spent a lot of time standing at that window, looking down here, imagining what a stress-free job this must be.”
“So that was your motive for disappearing and getting the job here?”
“I didn’t disappear,” he said. “I’m right here, across the street from my old office. I just haven’t gone back home.”
“And you have a new place to live?”
“Yes, I took an apartment in Tribeca.”
Tribeca was a trendy section of downtown that would afford him easy access to Wall Street.
“But why stay on Wall Street?” I asked. “Why not get a job in a Burger World somewhere else?”
“I told you,” he said. “I’m not hiding.”
“But you know that no one from your office comes to Burger World.”
He shrugged.
“What if they did, and they saw you?”
He shrugged again.
“Mr. Kessenger, is there some reason I shouldn’t tell your wife, or your partner, where you are?”
“Probably not,” he said. “I knew I’d have to talk to them eventually.”
“What about your share of the company?”
“That’s what I was going to have to talk to them about,” he said. “How to split my part up.”
“What were your intentions?” I asked. “To sign it over to your wife? Or let your partner buy you out?”
“I hadn’t decided, yet,” he said. “After all, I only walked out and got this job a few days ago.”
“So you were waiting to see if you liked it here? And the stress-free life it offered?”
“I suppose,” he said. “I didn’t want to make any rash decisions.”
“This wasn’t a rash decision?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “I told you, I stood at that window every day for a long time, looking down here.”
“That was what your girl, Ally, told me.”
“She’s a good kid,” he said. “Did they fire her?”
“They let her go.”
“Damn,” he said. “I was hoping they’d just give her to another executive.”
“Well, they didn’t. She was a consequence of your decision. And there will probably be others.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ll make it up to her.”
“How? Give her part of the company?”
He laughed at that.
“Look, Mr. Headston, I never intended for my decision to harm the company.”
“Or your wife?”
“My leaving my wife would not harm her in the least.”
“But leaving your company would harm it. I’ve been told you’re the reason it’s a success.”
“Scott will be able to keep it going,” he said. “He’s got some young go-getters on the staff.”
I looked out the window at the people walking by. One or two turned their heads and looked inside. I wondered when someone from Herman James would have looked in and spotted Kessenger behind the register? Or maybe one of them would have had a sudden urge for onion rings.
I finished my food and pushed the tray aside. We both held our cups.
“Well,” I said, “you haven’t given me a reason not to notify your wife.”
“She’s your client,” he said. “I understand.”
“I don’t suppose you’d like to give me your new address so I can pass it on to her?”
“Well,” he said, “I don’t want to make things too easy for her.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll just tell her I found you working in a Burger World across the street from the Herman James building.”
“That’ll blow her mind,” he said, with a grin. “What about Scott?”
“He’s not my client,” I pointed out. “I’ll let her tell him.”
“And she will,” he said, shaking his head. “He won’t believe it.”
“So the stress,” I said, “it came from…what? Your marriage? Your job?”
“All of it,” he said. “My life. I was getting too depressed about it.”
“Did you see a psychiatrist?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, “I’ve been in therapy for two years. Nobody knows about that, either. But it didn’t help. I knew the only thing that would help was a change.” He gestured with his hand. “This.”
“This?”
“For now,” he said. “Mr. Woodley was nice enough to hire me off the street. It surprised me, but I thought it was also an indication that I had made the right decision.” He looked at his watch. “I have to get back. I don’t want to get fired.” He extended his hand and I shook it. “Thank you for giving me a chance to explain. Now you can make Nancy understand it.”
“Believe me,” I said, as he got up, “I’m going to try.”
I thought about going to Westchester County to tell Mrs. Kessenger about her husband, but it was a long trip. I decided to go to my office, write out my report, call her and tell her about it, and then mail it to her with my bill. I figured that ought to put “the end” on this case.
Yeah, right!
CHAPTER TWENTY
“He works where?”
“Burger World.”
Her tone was incredulous.
“Is he crazy?”
“He seemed pretty sane to me.”
“You spoke with him?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say why he did it?”
“To relieve the stress in his life,” I said. “Any more than that you’ll have to get from him.”
“Do you know where he’s living?”
“Somewhere in Tribeca,” I said. “He wouldn’t give me the address.”
“Couldn’t you have followed him home?”
“I could have—”
“I’d like you to do that, Mr. Headstone,” she said, still getting my name wrong—but she was paying for that privilege. “Please follow him home, and then give me the address of where he lives, and the…the Burger World.” She made them sound like the two dirtiest words in history.
“I’ll pay you well,” she added.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Kessenger,” I said, “I’ll take care of it—and you’ll get my bill at my usual rate.”
“Thank you…John? May I call you that?”
“Sure,” I said.
At least she’d stop calling me “Headstone.”
I had mixed feelings about following Kessenger home from Burger World. But it was Nancy Kessenger who was my client, so later that day I was standing across the street, in a doorway, waiting for him to come out. When he did, I fell in behind him, followed him all the way home.
It was a short subway ride to Chambers Street, but eventually I watched him go into a warehouse building which had been renovated into apartments. This was not the kind of neighborhood Robert DeNiro and Beyoncé lived in, but the rents would have still been considerable.
DeNiro co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival, which was supposed to—and did—revitalize the area following the 9/11 attack. The actor also had a restaurant on Greenwich Street called The Tribeca Grill, co-owned by the Myriad Group, which also owned the famous Nobu Restaurant.
I didn’t spend a lot of time in Tribeca, which bordered Soho, another part of the city I didn’t spend much time in. Not my scene, as we used to say when we were kids. I’m a lover of old New York, so gentrified neighborhoods are not my favorite thing—not in Manhattan, and certainly not in Brooklyn. Give me old Sheepshead Bay, any day.
But here I was in Tribeca, watching Templeton Kessenger enter his new home. He may have been looking to reduce stress in his life, but he was still a wealthy man with certain tastes and living well was one of them.
Once he had gone inside, I approached the building to locate the exact address somewhere on the side of it. I also tried to enter, but found it locked. Nancy Kessenger was going to have to settle for the street location, and not the apartment number or floor.
As I started down the steps, I heard the front door open behind me and a woman came out. I tried to dart back up the stairs to get inside before the door closed, but she wasn’t having it.
She blocked the way with her stocky body and said, “Whoa. Private building, bub.”
I watched the door close and latch behind her.
“I just wanted to find out if there were any vacancies,” I lied.
She was dressed well, but not a clothes horse, being kind of lumpy as she approached fifty.
“Nope,” she said, “you’re outta luck. Fella just took the last one last week.”
That would’ve been Kessenger.
“So no available apartments?”
“No apartments, at all,” she said. “You’ve got to take half a floor. This fella took the fourth—the top floor.”
“Wow, that must’ve been expensive,” I said.
“They’re all the same price,” she said, “and yeah, expensive.”
She moved around me and went the rest of the way down the stairs.
“Well, thanks for the information,” I said. “Have a nice day.”
She waved a hand without turning back to look at me as she walked down the street.
I went back up the stairs to look through the glass on the door. There were four rows of mailboxes. They all looked like they had name tags—which I couldn’t read from my vantage point—except one. The boxes were in line according to floor, that would’ve been the fourth.
Since I’d gotten as much as I was going to get—which was probably enough—I went back down the stone steps and headed off in the lumpy lady’s wake.
I went back to the office, got on my computer and emailed Nancy Kessenger my final report, and bill. Sending bills out that way was something I was playing with.
Three days later the check arrived, paying my bill in full. Sending it by email worked. It was paid promptly.
Four days after that, Templeton Kessenger was dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I had spent the four days serving papers, taking photographs for an insurance company, and following a wayward husband who turned out not to be cheating on his wife, but on his diet.
I was writing up a report when I heard the outer door of my office open. Footsteps approached my door, which was open, and two men wearing suits entered.
Cops.
“John Headstone?” the older one asked.
“Headstone is the name of the agency,” I told him. “My name is John Headston.”
“Right.” He took out his wallet, flipped it open for me to see his NYPD ID and detective shield. “I’m Detective Leon, this is my partner, Detective Stokes.”
Leon was in his forties, starting to show thickness around his middle and grey at his temples. Stokes was black, in his thirties, and at this time in his career, took in everything around him.
“Where’s the rest of your staff?” he asked. “That’s a lot of empty desks out there.”
“They’re on vacation.”
“All of them?”
“It’s a group trip,” I said. “Can I help you?”
“Yes,” Leon said, “we want to ask you about a man named Templeton Kessenger. Do you know him.”
“I know who he is, yes.”
“How?”
“His wife hired me to find him.”
“He was missing?”
“Yes,” I said. “Is he missing again? Is that why you’re here? Why you and not White Plains? Or are they still not interested?”
“They weren’t interested when he went missing?”
“No,” I said, “they blew his wife off, and then blew me off.”
He paused to take something out of his pocket, unwrap it and stick it in his mouth. I couldn’t tell if it was a lozenge, a cough drop, or he just liked candy. At least it wasn’t a Kojak lollipop.
“Who’d you talk to there?”
I dredged up the name of the cop I talked to and gave it to him. Stokes wrote it down.
“So you found the hubby?” Leon asked.
“Yes, he was working in a Burger World across from his old job and living in a place in Tribeca. I gave his wife all the details.”
“Burger World?” Leon said. “He left a high-priced job to work in Burger World?”
“That’s right.”
“Did he say why?”
“To cut down on the stress in his life.”
“And did he leave his wife for the same reason?” They hadn’t sat down and I hadn’t stood up. Now I leaned back so that my chair creaked.
“Apparently,” I said. “Look, what’s this about? Are you guys missing persons, or what?”
“Or what,” Stokes said.
“We’re homicide,” Leon said.
“Homicide?” I said. “Who’s dead?”
“Kessenger.”
I came forward in my chair.
“How? When?”
They exchanged a glance, probably signaling each other as to whether or not they believed my ignorance.
“He was found yesterday morning,” Leon said. “In his apartment.”
“By who?”
“A cleaning lady.”
“How was he killed?”
“Bludgeoned,” Leon said, “apparently in his sleep.”
“Somebody beat him to death while he was sleeping, and he didn’t wake up and fight?”
“Apparently not,” Stokes said. “The first blow must’ve killed him, the M.E. said.”
“He must’ve been a heavy sleeper,” Leon said.
“Have you talked to his wife?”
“Oh yes,” Leon said. “We’ve done our job, Mr. Headston. We saw her yesterday. Made the notification and questioned her at the same time.”
“Does she have an alibi?”
“Do you have an alibi, Headston?” Leon asked. It didn’t escape my notice that he got my name right twice in a row.
I was shocked by the question. Why suspect me? What had Nancy Kessenger told them?
“For when?”
“Let’s see…that would be Tuesday night, between midnight and, let’s say, four.”
“What are most people doing at that time of night?” I asked. “I was home in bed.”
“Alone?” Stokes asked.
“Yes, alone.”
“Can you prove it?” Leon asked.
“No.”
“No neighbor who can corroborate your story?”
“It’s not a story,” I said. “I was asleep. Why do I need an alibi, anyway? I did my job.”
“Did you talk to him while you were doing your job?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Isn’t that unusual with wayward husband work?” Leon asked.
“He interested me,” I said. “A Wall Street hustler who gave it up one afternoon, just like that. Cold turkey.”
“So you asked him why?” Leon asked.
“I gave him a chance to convince me not to tell his wife I’d found him.”
“And?”
“He didn’t. He told me to go ahead and tell her, so I did.”
“What did she say?”
“I told her where he worked, but she wanted to know where he lived, too. So I spent another half-a-day getting her that information.”
“Did you talk to him again?”
“No.”
They exchanged another glance, I guessed they were trying to decide if we were done.
“Have you talked to his partner?” I asked.
“Like I said,” Leon answered, digging into his pocket again. “We did our job.” He unwrapped and put it in his mouth, and pocketed the wrapper. “Okay, Headston, thanks. We’ll be in touch.”
“Don’t leave town,” Stokes said.
“Am I a suspect?”
“Your name came up,” Leon said. “That’s all. Just routine.”
“Wow.”
“What?”
“I thought they only said that on Blue Bloods.”
Leon grinned. “I like that show,” he said, and they left.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I sat and brooded a while.
They couldn’t have really considered me a suspect. I had absolutely no motive. But they could label me a “person of interest,” and haul me in at some future time for more questioning.
I couldn’t believe Kessenger was dead—murdered in his sleep. How many people were aware of his new address, I wondered? He probably gave it to his job, and I had given it to his wife. One of those two must have passed it to someone else.
I didn’t know if the cops were working on that premise. I also couldn’t work on an active police investigation without risking my license. But if I had something to do with Temple Kessenger getting killed, it didn’t sit right with me.
It was my guess that the number one suspect was Nancy Kessenger. It was also my guess that she had engaged the services of a lawyer. What I needed to do was get that lawyer to engage my services. If I was working for him, then the cops couldn’t take my license away, even if I got in their way.
Despite the fact that my once twelve-man staff was down to one, that I had become a glorified process server at fifty years old, and that my career was going nowhere, I was good at what I did—or what I used to do. I was a good investigator at one time, and it was my belief that I still was.
