Gracie's Game: Sudden Anger, Accidentally on Purpose (17 page)

"I understand. One last question, then. Do you own a gun?"

"No, I don't," Clay said. "Some of the guys like to carry 'em on site, we sometimes come at odd times to see how the construction's going. A site feels pretty lonely if the crews aren't around, but I've never felt the need to arm myself."

"OK, then." Ken shook hands with Clay. "Thanks for taking the time to talk with me."

Clay returned to his perusal of the blueprints as if this had only been a minor interruption.

As Ken walked back to his car he thought about where he wanted to go next. He
really
wanted to talk to the sister, but the medical tower wasn't far away so he figured he'd go talk to the doctor first.

* * * *

"Candy? This is Dad. Call me soon as you can, it's important. Bye."

Clay closed his cell phone and went back to studying the blueprints, but he was having trouble concentrating. He'd laid the phone on the upper right corner of the table and his eyes kept straying to the phone instead of looking at the area where he'd found a problem with the construction.

"Dammit," he muttered under his breath. "I've got to figure out where they screwed up, but I can't see it. I sure don't need this, not right now. C'mon Honey, call me." He glared at the phone and commanded, "
Ring
."

The phone complied, and Clay jumped in surprise. He put his hand to his chest and sighed, releasing the sudden shot of adrenaline. On the second ring he managed to pick the phone up and answer.

"Hi, Dad!" It was Candy.

"Oh good," Clay said. "I thought maybe you'd already left for work, and I didn't want to leave a message."

"I was in the shower," Candy replied. "But I need to get going if I'm not gonna be late."

"OK, I'll make it short," Clay told her. "Lieutenant Freeman just dropped by, and I explained away the call just like we talked about. I think he bought it, but I don't think we ought to count on that. You'd better dig through your trash and find those receipts."

"Oh, ick! Do I
have
to?" Candy asked.

"Yes, you do," Clay said authoritatively. "Do it now and you'll have them just in case. You paid cash, so we can always claim I was there to give the money to you." He smiled fondly, and Candy could hear it in his voice. "I'll even give you my permission to be late to work, just this once."

Doctor Holloway had just come in from his morning hospital rounds and had a few minutes before seeing his first patient. He invited Ken into his office and shut the door for privacy.

"Hello, Lieutenant. Come to talk to me alone? See if my story changes when no one else is listening?" Jim asked. "Well, it will a little bit. There were some things I didn't want to say in front of the ladies, especially Gracie. She's a good kid and this is a very trying time for her. Some things a child shouldn't know about her parents."

"Fair enough. What kind of things?" Ken asked.

"I'm sure you've heard that Charles wasn't a very nice guy," Jim began. "He cheated on both his wives, lied to them of course. He could lie with a straight face, and did whenever it suited his purpose. He lied to clients all the time, promised them benefits that weren't in the contracts."

"Don't all salesmen do that to some extent?" Ken asked with a smile.

"Not like that!" Jim exclaimed. "He'd tell me about things like swearing a homeowner's policy included flood coverage, or an auto policy would pay double if you wore your seatbelt. Then he'd laugh at how stupid the client was to believe such a thing."

"So you think a client found out he didn't have the insurance coverage he thought he'd been paying for and shot the salesman?" Ken had heard crazier motives.

Jim grinned. "It's always a possibility, but I was just trying to show you what kind of man Charles was. He was very likable on the outside, but he'd go to any length to get what he wanted. For instance, he cheated at poker."

"You know that for a fact, or are you guessing? Did you play with him?" Ken asked.

"Yeah, a bunch of us in the neighborhood get together about once a month. You know, boys' night out. Charles always brought a box of expensive cigars, though he rarely smoked anywhere else.
Cubanos
, you understand. I got the feeling he just did it because he thought they went with the setting – Scotch, cigars, and cards. He even wore one of those green eyeshades," Jim explained.

"Did you catch him cheating, or is this sour grapes because you lost?" Ken asked.

"It did seem like Charles won most of the time," Jim said. "So one night after the guys had left my place I got to thinking about it. Charles had won the last hand, a really big pot. We'd all just dropped our cards on the table and decided it was time to go home. I was picking up the cards and decided to check the hands. Charles had won with a full house, aces over threes; the missing ace was Hearts. Tom's hand had the ace of Hearts – and another ace of Spades. I threw the extra ace away."

"How big were the pots?"

"Couple of hundred dollars," Jim answered. "I think maybe that one had climbed to $500. Nothing we all couldn't afford to lose. But here's something else, Lieutenant. Things went missing after a game. Just little things. A wrist watch that had been left on a desk, an autographed baseball, sometimes cash from a desk drawer. Not every time; whoever it was didn't go snooping, just picked up stuff that was lying around."

"Obviously you think Charles took these things," Ken said.

"It never happened if he didn't play. I asked around, the other guys said the same thing. When I asked Charles he claimed he'd never missed anything when the game was at his place. He just laughed and said I was imagining things." Jim locked eyes with the detective. "I have no reason to doubt the other guys when they say they didn't do it. I realize that doesn't constitute proof, but I'm sure in my own mind it was Charles."

"Uh huh," Ken said neutrally. "Do you have any idea who might've wanted Charles dead?"

"Not a clue!" Jim answered. "There's so many possibilities. I can assure you I didn't do it."

"Maybe you discovered he'd been having an affair with your wife?" Ken suggested.

"Susan? Absolutely not! She's spent too much time listening to Clarissa cry on her shoulder about all Charles' infidelities, she'd never fall for a guy like that. Besides, she's too busy with her charity work to bother with a boyfriend," Jim told him with a grin.

Ken thought to himself that there were probably a zillion husbands that thought the same thing only to find out they were wrong. It'd been a long shot, the man wasn't likely to admit it if he thought his wife was seeing another man. But his response had seemed honest, with no hint he was hiding anything.

"Do you own a gun?" was Ken's next question.

"Yes, I do," Jim answered calmly. "A .38 automatic. I keep it in the drawer by the bed, for protection. Susan and I both take it to the range for practice every few months; I want her to be able to use it if I weren't home and she had to."

"I have to tell you that I've already spoken to your wife this morning and she told me the same thing," Ken said. "In fact I've sent an officer to pick the gun up for ballistics testing."

"Good!" Jim replied heartily. "More proof that neither Susan nor I did it. Anything else?"

"Not at the moment. If you should think of something, please let me know. And thanks very much for your time, Doctor.

As Ken walked through the parking lot his phone rang. It was the Medical Examiner with the results of the autopsy. COD was a bullet through the heart; no stippling so it hadn't been at close range. The man was probably dead before he hit the ground. No obvious defensive wounds, but there was a faint bruise running in a line across the inside of his right forearm. Also, a definite bump on the back of the man's head. The ME was sure the goose egg had been acquired a couple of hours before death because of the amount of swelling. The bruise hadn't had time to darken and had probably happened shortly before death. They hadn't yet figured out what might have caused it.

"Well, that was interesting," Ken said to himself as he drove towards the grocery store where Jeanine Thomas worked. Could Greene have hit his head as he dove for cover during the shots in the garage? The skin hadn't been broken so it wasn't like they could look for traces of blood. It didn't fit, either. There wasn't anything in the car that he would've been likely to hit his head on; not that would cause a big bump on the back.

Ken had to insist on talking to Jeanine Thomas immediately; her boss had tried to get him to wait until her regular break. This way was better, they could have the break room to themselves. He waited patiently until Jeanine waddled through the door and dropped heavily into one of the plastic chairs.

"Good morning, Ms. Thomas," he said. "Thanks for taking the time to talk to me."

"I should think so," Jeanine said gruffly. "Damn Tony'll probably dock my pay for this. I might's well have a cup of coffee while I'm here." She made no move to get up.

"Help yourself," Ken said, waving vaguely in the direction of the coffee pot.

"You wouldn't get a lady a cup of coffee?" she asked with what was clearly meant to be a coquettish smile.

Ken thought it looked gruesome on her large, sweaty face. But he got up to get it anyway, only because it might make her think he had accepted her overture; it might help loosen her lips.

"I'm talking to everyone today, Ms. Thomas. Sometimes people feel more comfortable answering difficult questions when I'm alone with them," he told her. He couldn't bring himself to flirt with her, but she seemed to get the implication anyway. He could swear she blushed a bit.

"Well, Hell, Lieutenant," she said. "I'd like to help, but I don't know anything more than I did the other night. My brother was a bastard and everybody knew it! But I don't have a clue who might've killed him."

"She's got
that
right!"
Ken thought.
"The man was a right bastard. Still, it seems cold to hear his own sister say so."

Aloud he said, "We haven't been able to find anyone that remembers seeing you at bingo on Tuesday."

"So that means I did it?" Jeanine's voice had turned ugly.

"It
means
," he smiled at her. "That we haven't verified your alibi yet, that's all."

"There must've been a hundred people there. I know someone will remember me, I'm there every Tuesday. And why the hell would I want to shoot my own brother?"

"You yourself told me he refused to give you a loan," he said.

"Don't know why I asked him anyway," she replied sullenly. "Damn selfish jerk. You'd think a man would help his only sister out, but
no
, not Charles."

"Why did you need a loan?" Ken asked.

"I wanna get out of this shithole." Jeanine didn't bother to keep her voice down in case her boss might hear. "The pay's lousy, the hours stink, and nobody here likes me."

"How much money did you ask him for, and what were you going to do with it?"

"If I got some schooling so's I could do something else I could get a better job," she told him. "I used to be a secretary twenty years ago, but I don't know how to run them damn computers and that's all they care about anymore. I can answer phones and file things and be real friendly with the people who come in, but I can't write their frickin' letters on no PC."

Jeanine drew breath to continue but Ken cut her off. "I see. What were you going to do after he turned you down?"

"I'll just ask somebody else," she said. "Got a second cousin on Daddy's side of the family tree, he'll help me. It's just that I'll have to come up with gas money to get there, he lives in BFE, a good hour's drive, take me a tankful of gas. Charles was closer, and anyway he's got more money."