The Killer Wore Cranberry: A Fifth Course of Chaos Read online

Layla stayed behind when the others moved across the hall to the big-shot lawyer’s office. “I wasn’t stalking you, you know. We’re staying at the Stanhope and they said you might stop by. I just wanted to meet you, to be sure you were the right investigator for us. I’d like to take you to dinner, to make up for my presumption.”

  Which was nothing compared to my asinine assumption.

  The steely-eyed P.I. knew it was important to hear her take on the accident. The jackass accepted her invite because he might dream about her forever otherwise.

  3. She didn’t wear red. I wore a clean shirt. Layla didn’t try to hide her sorrow. I didn’t try to hide my limp. She swore her grandfather would never kill himself.

  “Make me believe it.”

  So she told me of his devotion to his family, his employees, his charitable foundations. Auggie and Ceci were going to host a benefit in the spring to raise money for a new wing at the local hospital. For Thanksgiving, he sent turkeys to every food pantry. At Christmas, he handed out truckloads of teddy bears with cranberry-colored ribbons at the hospital and homeless shelters.

  “Does that sound like someone who would take his own life?”

  No. It sounded like some kind of saint, not a suicide. “So what do you think happened?”

  “After that lying phone call about an affair and embezzlement, I knew someone wanted to hurt him, hurt us. “You’ll tell us who and why.”

  I wish I were as confident. I liked her grandmother, liked what I knew about Mr. Barr, and liked this woman. More and more. Too much more, which was why I took her back to the hotel right after dinner and left her at her room, my brother’s words echoing in my head: “Hands off the client or the case is in the toilet. And just so you know, we get a million if you get the insurance company to pay up; two million if you get shot.”

  I was a good detective. I stayed objective. I stayed out of the investigation, too, hiring true professionals to do the work for me, and quickly. Everyone wanted to wrap this up before Christmas, and it was almost Thanksgiving. This year the Barrs were gathering at Sally and Rudy’s home, with everyone making a dish that had cranberries in it, as a weird testament. They invited me.

  “I’ll think about it.” And see how I stood with a certain member of the family by then. So far I stood tall.

  I read reports and made lists.

  My expert mechanic called to say he’d found nothing wrong with the car—or its pieces. He did collect dusty residue from the shattered windshield, likely from fire suppressant after the crash, but he sent samples away anyway. He also took pictures of some strange tracks in the same stuff on the roof; maybe from the heavy equipment used to cut it off to get the body out. He seconded the accident inspector’s conclusion that all the damage to the car was from the bridge, not from a rock or a brick being tossed from above.

  My files already had a letter from the Mercedes dealer assuring me that no one could hack into the electronic systems to disable the vehicle.

  I did drive Mr. Barr’s path to the bridge to see the scene for myself. Not many cars traveled the narrow road; a lone housepainter in his van had called in the accident.

  I walked along the edge of the road looking for anything the police might have missed. All I found was some windblown trash, a couple of new-looking cigarette butts, and a piece of white plastic under a pile of leaves I kicked up. I stuck it in my pocket.

  My copy of the police evidence list had photos of endless trays and plastic bags. I checked that my own tech guy had signed the damaged laptop and cell phone out to his own lab already.

  The elder Barrs’ family physician had no hidden diagnoses or referrals, only sorrow. Lillian Carpentier, Barr’s secretary for the last twenty years, had nothing for me but tears. “Everyone loved him. And no, there has never been a hint of scandal.” I chatted up some other employees. They all had black armbands and nothing bad to say about the boss. Sally had started going back into work, but she had nothing new to tell me. Her husband, Rudy, was out of the office, frantically trying to coordinate suppliers and buyers and everything else his in-laws had handled.

  My forensic crews better have answers, because I had nothing. Despite that, I reported to Layla—that is, to my employer, Ceci Barr—at the Stanhope every day, often having dinner with them. Just doing my job. Layla stayed on at the hotel to keep her grandmother company. She kept me company sometimes too. We took in a movie, a jazz combo and a stand-up comic, coffee, ice cream, a beer tasting. We accompanied well.

  Ceci wanted more of her clothes and such but she could not bear to go home to her empty house yet, not to begin clearing out Auggie’s closets and his study. I decided to look around the house myself. Ceci gave us keys and combinations.

  Layla and I set out in her Escalade on a perfect fall day. I’d have enjoyed the ride better if she didn’t drive so fast.

  She laughed. “No wonder they call you Chicken Little.”

  Somehow we reached the gated entrance to the place she called the Bog. The Barr mansion had the typical long winding driveway, arched stone entry, turrets and mullioned windows that bespoke old wealth, but good taste too. The housekeeper had lunch laid out for us in the kitchen, which was bigger than my whole apartment. After that, Layla wanted to get the hard part over, so she led me up to the master bedroom suite, with two separate walk-in closets, two separate sitting rooms, two separate bathrooms, one king-size bed.

  She started packing for Mrs. Barr. I started detecting. Or prying. I checked every drawer, pocket, medicine cabinet shelf. No condoms, sex toys, love letters or Viagra. Nothing.

  We moved to Barr’s study. More nothing until I opened the safe under the liquor cabinet and finally found Mr. Barr’s guilty secret: a baggie of rolled joints.

  Layla took the grass.

  “I didn’t see that,” I said.

  “Good.”

  And it was good on our tour of the house and grounds.

  We ended up at the guest cottage. Layla quickly had the covers turned down on the bed and her clothes on the floor. I hesitated; she gave me no choice.

  Keep your hands off the client? Old Bill should have told Layla to keep her hands off the private…eye.

  She wanted to be on top. “Your leg,” was all she said.

  She drove too fast.

  It wasn’t that I couldn’t keep up, literally and figuratively, but I wanted this moment to last forever.

  The second time I took over.

  “Your leg?”

  “Made of steel, sweetheart, made of steel.”

  *

  “Now you have to come for Thanksgiving.”

  4. Sally’s husband, the CFO of Cran-baree, hated me. Rudy thought I was scum battening on defenseless, wealthy women. “You keep digging and you’ll break that old bat’s heart.”

  I didn’t like him much either after that. “So what are you saying?” I asked. “That there really is something to find?”

  “The old man was going to sell the company, take the money and run, leaving the rest of us on a sinking ship.” At my dubious look, he went on. “I keep the books, don’t I? I know he siphoned money into accounts offshore, and I know he transferred funds from them to a woman and child somewhere. He admitted it to me when I uncovered discrepancies in the accounting. Is that what you want to tell his family?” He straightened the papers on his desk.

  “Okay, maybe he was dirty. But if he had it all planned, why’d he kill himself?”

  “Because I couldn’t keep covering his ass, lying to his wife, my wife and stepdaughter. They all thought he could walk on water. I told him it had to stop or I’d go to the IRS.”

  I didn’t have any papers to straighten so I scratched my head. “So why not kill you instead of himself?”

  He pointed to the door. “Are we done?”

  “I’m not half done, but thanks for showing me where to look. Oh, and I have two last questions: Did you know about the suicide clause in the insurance?”

  He looked me straight in the eye. “How the h
ell would I know that? I wrote the checks; the legal department cleared the contracts.”

  “Did you make that anonymous phone call to the police?”

  “Why would I?” But he went back to lining up the papers without looking at me.

  *

  I went to the hotel, but didn’t report what I’d heard from Fredrickson. Neither did I commit myself to Thanksgiving dinner with the family, not at the bastard’s house. At my own office, I looked over the latest reports trickling in, and started a new file. I took the printout into my brother’s office and went over the list point by point.

  “It’s still all suspicion and speculation, Chick. Granted you’ve got bits and pieces of stuff that look hinky, but no proof. You need hard evidence to take to the family, the insurance company or the police. You need a confession.”

  “That means a confrontation.”

  Bill shrugged.

  That meant I was going to Thanksgiving dinner at Layla’s mother’s house.

  5. By the time Thanksgiving arrived, I was certain I had my ducks in a row, but they still wouldn’t quack loudly enough to call in the officials. Like Bill said, a good lawyer could see it all thrown out in court. A bad brother-lawyer still wanted to see me go head to head with a killer.

  The invitation list to the Thanksgiving dinner at Sally and Rudy’s house had expanded to about thirty, including my brother and his family. They were all bringing something with cranberries in it, all the easy things like pies and scented candles.

  I was busy nagging my experts and hired hackers, preparing myself to take on a killer and counting Layla’s freckles. What scant free time I had would be better spent in my basement lab than thinking of something brilliant, creative and cranberry-ish to impress Layla. The hard-bitten P.I. would have snarled a refusal to play. I brought all the ingredients for Cosmopolitans: vodka, Cointreau, a bunch of limes, a couple of oranges, and gallons of cranberry juice.

  A genius move. Sally kissed me, whipped out the martini glasses and made me the bartender for the cocktail hour. Layla kissed me too. Mrs. Barr just smiled as she held court on the sofa, her pink cocktail in hand.

  Rudy was out in the garage, showing off his model airplanes and his new drones to some distant cousins.

  I treated myself to a scotch and offered to fetch him in when it was time to carve the turkey.

  6. Rudy was alone and not happy to see me, even though I’d brought him a drink. I complimented his workshop, an OCD neatness exhibit for sure. “Nothing like my shabby basement setup.” I kept moving around. He kept watching me. “I heard you’ve expanded to drones. Built them yourself, did you? I’m impressed. These are a lot bigger than what I see at the park. I bet you could use them to deliver packages, like Amazon.”

  I smiled at his ingenuity and mentioned the turkey before he got suspicious of my lingering on. “Sally said to tell you ten minutes more.”

  So he started to use some antibacterial wipes to clean his hands.

  “Oh, and thanks. I managed to locate that woman Auggie was supporting.”

  He picked up a small red plane and wiped that down too.

  “She was devastated to learn that Auggie was dead, and at such a young age.”

  The red plane’s wing snapped off.

  “Yeah, that surprised me too, so I sent her a photo. Actually, I sent two. She recognized one.”

  He threw the plane in a trash barrel. “Are you going to tell Ceci?”

  “What, that her son-in-law takes a bad drivers’ license photo? That you’ve been using her dead husband’s name for your philandering? That you used his name to set up secret accounts, the ones you pointed me to? Problem is, my hackers found the passwords encoded on your computer, not his.”

  He knocked over a small jar of nails, spilling them across the immaculate space. “You had no business touching my computer!”

  “And you had no business keeping another set of books there. You were good, I’ll say that. My geek was better. The way I see it, Auggie found out. How?”

  Rudy gave up trying to gather the tiny nails; his hands were shaking too badly. “He got a phone call from the Bahamas, a new guy at the bank, confirming a transfer.”

  “So you had to get rid of him.”

  “He’d have ruined me.”

  By now I’d spotted another laptop computer, and a white large drone with a missing strut. “Know what else I found?” When he didn’t answer, I pulled that long piece of plastic from the bridge out of my pocket. It matched the damaged drone perfectly. “And I bet the police will find potassium nitrate on your shelves. They missed the traces on the roof of the car, but my lab didn’t. You know, I couldn’t figure how you crashed his Mercedes with a tiny remote-controlled plane, until I realized you’d set off a smoke bomb to blind him. With a drone big enough to carry it. The problem was, Auggie couldn’t see, but the smoke blocked the drone’s camera too, right? So it crashed into the top of the car. It left marks; I’ve got pictures.”

  He turned around. “You’ve got nothing!” And he had a gun.

  Shit. “Put down the weapon.”

  “Or else what, Chicken Little, or else you’ll piss your pants?”

  Maybe, but not yet. “How do you think you’ll get away with killing me? Everyone knows I came to get you.”

  “You attacked me because I didn’t like you screwing my stepdaughter. They all know you have a violent past, war wounds, trauma and all that crap.”

  “Yeah, but what about this?” I held out my cell phone. “It’s been recording everything.”

  “Give me that!”

  So I pushed three buttons in the proper sequence, threw it at him as hard as I could, hit the floor and rolled backward. The fake phone exploded in a small haze of pepper spray and the kind of blue dye they use on ransom money and bank robberies, only red. Nice touch, I thought, as he moaned and coughed and dragged himself to another work bench.

  “I told you I tinker a bit. Lucrative business, self-defense. Uncle Sam loves me, but my brother and I hold the patents. Oh, and the real recorder is in my belt buckle, going out to my computer, the cops, and that lawyer in your living room. You have nowhere to go.”

  But he still clutched the gun. I doubt he could see well enough through his swollen, tearing eyes to hit me, but I scrambled behind the big floor heater.

  Then I heard the worst sound possible. Not a gun shot, but Layla. “What’s keeping you guys so long? The turkey will be—Holy shit!”

  “No, Layla, get out! Run.” Rudy spun in the direction of my voice, which was my intention. I threw my keys, the fake ones of course, at his red chest. There was no explosion this time, just a minor sizzle, like from a stun gun. Exactly like. The gun dropped, he dropped, and I grabbed the big drone and bashed him over the head with it to make sure he stayed down.

  Layla was screaming now, but she finally turned to run back to the house. I unplugged a power drill and used the cord to tie Rudy’s hands behind his back. “You move and I’ll have to use my credit card. You really don’t want to see what it can do.”

  I dragged him back to the house, away from the tools. Everyone knew what was going on, because not only did the killer wear cranberry, but soon he wore the turkey, the stuffing and the cranberry sauce, everything Sally could grab to throw at him. Layla guarded the antique cut-glass red dishes until Bill hauled Rudy’s wife away. Then Ceci came over, grabbed Rudy’s red silk tie and jerked on it so hard Rudy’s face turned even redder than the dye. Then the elegant elder lady kicked him in the balls with her pointy-toed red shoe.

  Police, sirens, neighbors fleeing, cousins hysterical, the old secretary out cold on the sofa. Chaos reigned, but I found my brother. “Where the hell were you? You were supposed to come out there as soon as he incriminated himself!”

  “You were handling it fine. I had confidence. So why are you so mad? The family has justice, we’ll have a million dollars, and you didn’t get shot.”

  He came over to hug me. I took a page from Ceci and kicked him in t
he balls.

  *

  The crime scene squad took over the house and the workshop, so the women left for Ceci’s place. Layla told me to call as soon as I could. Bill and I had to go to the police station to give statements and provide all the (legal) evidence we’d uncovered. By the time we were done, I just wanted to go home. I was hungry though.

  So the solitary private eye passed the open bars and a twenty-four hour convenience store, said the hell with a turkey sandwich and with Thanksgiving too.

  I went home and made myself some eggs. Hard-boiled.

  The Capo-Clipped Capon Caper

  Arthur Carey

  I looked up from my well-thumbed copy of Sports Illustrated magazine’s swimsuit edition as the door opened. I hoped to see a sexy, seductive woman who needed my help, the way they always seem to in movies. Business has been slow in the detective business in Los Angeles lately.

  Instead, it was Ahmad, thin and unshaven, peering through thick eyeglasses. “A couple of guys from the government are here, boss.”

  Ahmad isn’t my secretary. I can’t afford a secretary. He’s my intern because interns work for free. I don’t know if he’s legal and I don’t care.

  “Show them in,” I said.

  Two men in trench coats, one tall, the other short, strolled in and looked around. That didn’t take long. There’s not much to see: a couch with broken springs salvaged from Goodwill, a Miss November of 2011 calendar pinned to a wall, and a liquor cabinet with a half-empty bottle of no-name booze—all standard furnishings of a down-at-the-heels private investigator’s office.

  “Sam Spade?” the taller of the feds asked.

  “No,” I said, “Sam original equipment still intact.”

  His eyes narrowed, the way you see them do when people sense a joke’s been told but don’t get the punch line and worry it might be aimed at them.

  “The name is Spad,” I said helpfully. “Sam Spad…like the World War I French airplane.”

  The fed’s face went blank. Not a history buff.

  “Spad? Really?”

  “Really.”

  I get that all the time. I wish Dashiell Hammett had picked another name for his detective when he wrote The Maltese Falcon. It’s caused me nothing but problems.