A Bitch Called Hope (21 page)

“The complaints are dropped when Bill buys them off,” Kline said, stating the obvious. The waiter appeared with her wine and Kline’s scotch.

“The problem is the murder required planning, some finesse,” she said. “I don’t think he’s organized enough.”

Kline hesitated, then finally asked, “What about Engstrom?”

They all looked at each other.

“Nothing,” Ham said.

“Lennox?”

She shook her head. “Other than becoming engaged to our client, prescribing her inhalers and refusing to cooperate? Nothing. But for all the reasons we’ve talked about before, I’m not ruling him out until we’re done.”

Kline clicked his pen in and out. “Next moves?”

“I have a few loose ends I need to clear up with the investigation, but I think I’ve figured a way to prove the tie between the death of our witness and Bill Pike’s death. The murderer most likely left a trail of electronic crumbs.”

Kline leaned forward in the booth, all ears.

“We have four suspects that could’ve run Gabe down. We pull their cell phone logs for that night and see if any of them were in the neighborhood when Gabe was hit.”

Kline said, “We would need a subpoena.”

“You think a judge would issue one with what we’ve got?” Ham said.

“The cops run these logs all the time without a subpoena,” she said. “We’ll get Fish to do it for us. He’s leading Gabe’s hit-and-run.” She turned to Kline, “Look Gus, this could be our first real break.”

Every hour they were closer to the trial with no real defense strategy. Kline knew that better than anyone. He nodded his head slightly in the affirmative. “Go for it,” he said.

Chapter 33

We’ll get Fish to run the cell phone logs for us.
That was going to be as easy as peeling a turtle. But it was Fish or a judge and Lennox knew that without tangible proof the two deaths were connected she hadn’t a prayer. Lennox called Fish. He didn’t pick up. Twelve days until the trial and no one was taking her calls.

It started snowing hard and sticking. Lennox walked the two blocks between the bar and the jail.

She had collapsed her umbrella under the portico just as she met Dr. E unfurling his. Aurora stood next to him. Aurora, her own mother. Aurora, the disappointed woman, wearing a red coat and a fresh coat of red lipstick. Both the doctor and her mother were smiling. They looked like a couple.

“Aurora, what are you doing here?” Lennox said.

“Visiting Delia. Why else would we be here?”

The snow blew up the steps of the jail. There was so much more Lennox wanted to ask her mother, starting with how could you? Instead she turned to Dr. E. She said. “I’m glad I ran into you, Doctor. I have a couple questions.”

His smile vanished. He made a big deal of looking at his watch. “We have a reservation.”

Lennox said, “How long were you friends with Delia before Bill was murdered?” A question as much for her edification as for mother’s.

“I’m late,” he said. His umbrella popped to life. He held Aurora’s arm just above the elbow. Aurora glanced once at Lennox and smiled her most infuriating smile, the one that meant you don’t understand and I’m not going to explain. She and the doctor started down the stairs.

“I’m working for Delia’s defense,” she called after him. “Why won’t you answer my questions?”

“Shall I tell her how you’ve refused to cooperate with this investigation?” Lennox said. The whole time she watched her mother’s back.

Engstrom turned back from the bottom step, his lip curled in what passed as a smile. “Do that.”

Each visit to the jail found Delia looking more gray and drawn. Michael still found her beautiful, she said. Had Lennox seen him? He was just here with your mother, she said.

“He’s not cooperating with me on this case.”

Delia said, “He’s done everything I’ve asked of him.”

“Delia, there’s been another murder, a witness that night that Bill was murdered.”

“Who?”

“One of the caterers. He was blackmailing the person who killed your husband. You need to be absolutely honest with me before someone else gets killed.”

“I have been honest!”

“No, you haven’t. Everybody’s happy, everybody gets along. If that were even possible, how do you explain the murder?”

“Do you remember when we use to camp at Timothy Lake, our two families? You had that cute little red one-piece swimsuit?”

“You’re going to prison,” Lennox said. “You think jail is bad? This is nothing compared to what’s in store for you.”

“You can’t talk to me like that,” Delia said.

“Two men have been murdered. We’re going to trial in twelve days.”

Delia’s mouth looked pinched and unhappy. She pulled on the hem of her shirt with her eyes looking at the slate floor. It remained to be seen whether she would cooperate or not.

“Let’s start with your Doctor Engstrom,” Lennox said. “He was your doctor for a year and a half. During that time did you date?”

Delia shook her head.

“Were you friends? Did you confide in him?”

She looked up from the floor. “You don’t think Michael murdered Bill?”

“He very well could have. Were you friends before Bill was murdered?”

“Maybe five months ago?”

Delia had sought his help losing weight. He suggested that Delia was a nervous eater. Delia told him about Bill’s womanizing, her unhappiness, and the good doctor was so very, very helpful.

“Was he in love with you back then?”

“We were just friends. I was married and I thought he was interested in Aurora.” Delia had the grace to look embarrassed, as well she should.

How many women did Doctor E have on a string? Much as Lennox hated to think this way, maybe Dr. E was merely an opportunist and not a murderer.

They talked about Dan. It was true, Dan didn’t come home often. There was friction between Bill and Dan. When Delia asked Bill about it he complained that both Dan and Scott were a disappointment. That maybe they should change their will, leave their money to charity. Delia talked him out of it.

Had there been words between Dan and Bill? Delia had forgotten all about it. Bill had one of those quick tempers that blew over before you knew it. In less than an hour, he’d forget he’d ever been angry.

“Did Dan give his father a box of cigars for Christmas the night before the party?”

Dan was trying to be thoughtful. He hadn’t been home for three years. Was unaware that Bill had developed asthma.

“Delia, did Bill smoke the night before your party?”

She warned Bill for all the good it did. He didn’t sleep worth a darn. Did he use the inhaler that night? Yes.

“That means the murderer swapped the inhalers the day of the party.” Lennox felt a surge of adrenaline or something. Whatever you called it, it felt like hope.

Then it came to her. Those hundred plus pictures of the Christmas party. “You wore a red sequined top to your party. What color was your lipstick?”

Red.

Chapter 34

Lennox called Alice again to see how she was doing. And reached her. Alice was at the apartment even though Lennox had made her promise to stay the hell away. Alice went to her finance class, and when she got back to their apartment, it had been trashed.

Lennox came on the run.

“Thank God,” Alice said. She slid the security chain off and opened the door. Her face was blotchy, her eyes ringed in mascara. The apartment smelled rotted like the spent water in a flower vase. Their fish tank was tipped on its side and Alice was in the process of mopping up water with bath towels. The floor was littered with aquarium gravel, art pencils and sketches.

“They killed our goldfish.” Alice wiped her nose on the back of her arm. “The bastards ripped up all his plants. The poor little guy must’ve been terrified. He was on the floor where they dumped him.”

From the looks of it, everything in the apartment had been dumped: clothes ripped off hangers, CDs and books pulled off bookshelves, the trash basket upended. No question, the place had been tossed.

Lennox handed Alice a tissue. “Have you called the police?”

Alice shook her head.

“What did they take?” Lennox said.

“Only thing I can tell so far: our laptops, both of them.” Alice scanned the empty shelves, Gabe’s work table. Then she wrung the wet towel out in a scrub bucket, her foot grazing the plastic fronds from the aquarium.

“I’m calling this in,” Lennox said.

Lennox pulled her cell phone from her bag and called Fish. He answered on the third ring. “You still on the Gabe Makem hit-and-run?” she asked him.

“For now. Why?”

“Someone just tossed Makem’s apartment. It was a thorough job.”

“What are you doing there?” Fish said. “Never mind. Don’t touch anything. I’ll be there in ten.”

Alice shoveled handfuls of gravel into the garbage. She was crying. Lennox told her to sit.

“Fish will be here in a few minutes.” She looked at Alice’s stricken face. “Sorry,” she said. “Fish the cop. You’re not going to like him. He’s a total pain, but copwise he’s straight up.”

“Why would anyone do this?” Alice scanned Lennox’s face. “You think it was the guy Gabe was getting money from?”

“Yeah, and I think the killer came here looking for anything that might incriminate him.”

Alice hugged herself tight. “Oh my God,” she whispered.

“Why didn’t you stay with your folks like I told you?” Lennox said.

She shook her head.

“How about Gabe’s mom?”

Alice dabbed her nose with the tissue. “I’d rather sleep in my car.”

“You could bunk with me,” Lennox said.

The look Alice gave her was so full of gratitude, it almost made the last year doing all those surveillance gigs feel worth it.

Fish knocked on the door. Lennox let him in and said, “When you’re done, we got to talk.”

God, she wished the guy had a forehead. She had to hand it to him, though, as she watched him from the open door, he was respectful, he was thorough, he asked the right questions. If it was anybody but Fish, she’d say he did a good job.

Forty minutes later he closed the apartment door behind him and joined her in the hallway. “What do you want?” he said.

She motioned him to follow her. She walked past the elevator and stopped at the window at the end of the hall.

“My murder case is tied up with your hit-and-run,” Lennox said.

He smiled crookedly. “Last I heard old lady Pike’s still in jail.”

“Come on,” she said. “Gabe Makem was a witness the night of the Pike murder. Ten days later he’s quit his job and he’s waving around a shitload of cash.”

Someone was frying onions in apartment 504. Lennox watched Fish think about what she said. He was a hard one to read with all that hair.

“I give you my lead, you give me yours,” she said.

“Trust you?” That look she could read: call it skeptical.

“Cooperation,” she said. “You need cooperation when you run an investigation. Come on Fish, it’s up to you. Do you want to make detective or not?”

The look on his face, tight as a lock-up, you’d think she’d asked him to drop his drawers. “You first,” he said.

“I’ve narrowed my suspects on the Pike murder down to four.” She reached in her bag and handed him a list with the cell phone numbers for Father Mac, Dr. E, Dan and Scott Pike. “If you get the phone company to track these cell numbers the night of the hit-and-run, I’m sure one of them is going to be in that neighborhood the same time Gabe got struck down.”

“Wasn’t Dan Pike your latest squeeze?”

“Yeah. The guy I was banging.”

“Whatever,” Fish said and folded the list in half, slipped it in his pocket.

“Now what do you got for me?” she said.

He laughed.

“Cooperation,” Lennox said.

Fish looked at her for what seemed like forever. Eventually he said, “We found traces of dark blue paint on Makem’s clothing. Came from a Cadillac. Any of your guys drive a gangsta-mobile?”

Dan was what she should’ve said. Nope, was what she did say. Dan didn’t own the truck, it was his dad’s and it wasn’t a gangsta anything, but it was a Cadillac. An Escalade four-door pickup, one of those big-dog rides you can take your banker pals in or haul lumber from a building site. And it was dark blue.

Why give Fish all the cards, she’d find out for herself if the Escalade was the hit-and-run vehicle. She deserved to know first if Dan was involved. And if he was, well then, Fish could have the collar, she’d solved the murder. She ignored the knot in her stomach.

Fish walked to the elevator, hit the down button.

“How long until you get those cell logs back?” she said.

“I’ll call it in today, then it’s up to the phone company.”

The elevator door opened. Fish pressed the lobby button. He looked like he was having a hard time believing they weren’t insulting each other. Lennox probably looked the same. That she would ever find herself doing anything with Fish was certifiably miraculous.

“And you’ll let me know,” she said.

He shrugged his shoulders. The elevator doors shut.

Lennox walked down the hall back to Alice’s apartment. Alice let her in. She had a backpack and a black nylon bag stuffed with clothes leaning next to the door.

“Give me a minute,” Alice said. “I can’t leave his book like this.”

She knelt beneath Gabe’s worktable smoothing the pages of Gabe’s comic book and stacking them in a pile. Lennox knelt beside her. Some of the pages were wet from the aquarium plants. Lennox found a towel and carefully blotted them, set them on top of the table to finish drying. She looked at the drawings, the burnt-out futuristic city, the angels, and found herself getting impressed all over again. One drawing in particular: the beautiful angel that was modeled after Alice. “These are really well done,” Lennox said. In that moment a patron of the arts didn’t seem quite as ridiculous.

“They’re all I have left of him,” Alice said.

Underneath a clump of plastic aquarium grass was a picture of Alice’s character, Rafaella, on the ground under the heel of a man in church robes. He wore a pope’s hat. His eyes were blue like a stained glass window, his nose was beaky.

“What the hell?” Lennox said.