Murder in Store Read online

  A few moments later I was watching the white limousine wind its way down the road toward the entrance to the cemetery and almost jumped out of my skin when a voice behind me said, “Can I get a lift from you?” I whirled around. It was O’Henry. Just what I needed.

  “How did you get here?” I asked.

  “My wife dropped me off. We just came from visiting her sister.”

  I studied the stocky man. “You really take a lot for granted, don’t you?”

  “Only when I think I’m right about someone.”

  “I’m parked over there.” I gestured toward my Honda. What else could I say?

  19

  DRIVING OUT OF the cemetery, O’Henry asked, “Have you had lunch yet?”

  I looked at him. “You buying?”

  He grunted something that I interpreted as a yes, and I instinctively drove to the White Hart.

  We both ordered sandwiches and Guinness. O’Henry took a long swig. “Great stuff,” he said. Perhaps I’d misjudged the guy.

  He devoured half his sandwich and sprinkled vinegar on his french fries. He tasted one, added a little more, tried another, and nodded in satisfaction. Finally he said to me, “Don’t you think it’s time we started pooling information?”

  “Why would you want to give me any information?” Once a skeptic, always a skeptic.

  “Two reasons.” He had drained the glass of stout and waved the empty glass toward the bartender. “One. I figure that’s the only way I’m going to get any information from you. And two. You check out all right, even though people around you are dropping like flies, and I think you play both ends against the middle when it comes to women. Also, to tell you the truth, I’m not convinced you don’t have something going with that Hauser woman.”

  I didn’t answer. I figured at this point anything I said might get me in trouble.

  “You think she killed her old man?” he asked.

  I waited until the bartender exchanged O’Henry’s empty glass for a full one. Then I said, “Maybe. I think Diana

  Hauser is probably very unstable, but I don’t know if she’s the best suspect.”

  “There’s a lot of evidence that says she did it.”

  I wasn’t going to fall for this. “Like what?”

  O’Henry smiled.

  “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?” I asked. “Something like that.”

  “Okay. You first.” I lit a cigarette and placed the pack on the table.

  “Well.” O’Henry leaned back into the booth, glass in hand. “She needed Hauser’s money.” He punctuated that with a long pause, watched for my reaction. He picked up my cigarettes and removed one from the pack while he waited. “You mind?” he asked. I shook my head. He lit the cigarette and absently pocketed my matches.

  “What does she need his money for? From what I hear she comes from money.”

  “The family inheritance, and it is a big one, doesn’t apply to her anymore.”

  “Oh, really?” This was getting interesting.

  “Really. She didn’t stand to inherit a penny from her father. Apparently she posed in the altogether for one of those men’s magazines, and Daddy didn’t like it one bit. Wrote her out of his will so fast she didn’t know what hit her. Some people think that’s why she married Preston.”

  “For the money or because she was looking for a replacement for her father?”

  O’Henry shrugged. “I hadn’t thought of it that last way. Guess there might be something to that.”

  “And if she married Preston as a father replacement, then the scenario that says she killed him for his money doesn’t work.”

  “Maybe not, but I’d need some convincing there.” He leaned forward. “Now. You tell me something I don’t know.”

  I considered this. I could tell him about the rat, but that

  was personal and bound to make him more suspicious of my relationship with Diana. If I told him that Diana wrote the letters, he’d have to charge her. If I didn’t, I’d be real close to withholding evidence. Besides, I was starting to like the guy.

  “She sent him the letters.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “She says she did it for attention, the same way she lifted underwear out of his store. He was ignoring her. That was how she fought back.”

  “She stole stuff from her old man’s own store? Her own store?” He added, more to himself than to me, “That’s not even stealing.”

  I shrugged. “You had to be there.”

  “I guess,” O’Henry said.

  He drained his Guinness and waved for another. I finished my first and nodded my thanks as the bartender brought us two more.

  “It’s too neat, too obvious.”

  O’Henry nodded. “I used to feel that way. Then I remembered that sometimes it is obvious because the murderer doesn’t, for whatever reason—stupidity, conceit—the murderer doesn’t think he or she will get caught”

  I didn’t say anything. He had a point.

  Finally O’Henry said, “Okay. If you don’t think she’s the best suspect, then who is?”

  “What about Griffin?”

  O’Henry raised his eyebrows and didn’t respond for a minute. Finally he asked, “Why?”

  This opened a whole new set of decisions for me. Should I tell him about the files and put everyone who gave Preston Hauser the creeps under suspicion? But if I wanted to enlist O’Henry’s aid for this afternoon, since I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to go see Griffin without any backup, then I’d have to tell him something. I decided to test out how

  little I could reveal and still be effective.

  “Let me just tell you a few facts. Then you have to talk for a while. I’m way ahead of you in dispensing information. First, it looks like Griffin had a mistress named Melinda Reichart. Very beautiful and also, as it happens, very dead. Shot in what was officially listed as a robbery. I’d be real curious to see if the bullet that killed Melinda and the one that killed Art might have come from the same gun.”

  “I was going to get to Art. Looks like that wasn’t a mob hit. He owed them money but he was paying them off. They usually don’t blow away paying customers.”

  “Bad PR,” I agreed, swishing the stiff foam around in the glass. “Any idea where Art was getting the money to make those paybacks?”

  O’Henry shrugged. “Hauser and him were pretty buddy-buddy.”

  I shook my head. “Not anymore. That relationship was dissolved some time ago.”

  “What are you thinking?” O’Henry squinted at me and ran a hand over his mouth. “Blackmail?”

  “It happens,” I said. “If he knew about Griffin and Melinda. Even if he didn’t know she was dead, if he knew Griffin was having an affair, Griffin might be willing to pay to have him keep his mouth shut.”

  “You think maybe Art got too greedy?”

  I shrugged. “It’s possible. I wouldn’t put it past him. A debt like that can make you do some pretty desperate things.” I considered again whether to tell O’Henry about my meeting with Griffin for later in the afternoon and decided it might be to my benefit to have some assistance. Griffin didn’t have a lot of conscience to struggle with when eliminating members of the human race. “I mentioned the woman to Griffin at the service this afternoon. He’s concerned enough to want to hear more.”

  “Oh yeah?” O’Henry was way ahead of me. “What if we

  wire you. Where you meeting him anyway?” “His office at five-thirty.”

  “Okay. I’ll have ballistics check on those bullets and see if we can get a match. You going straight home, or whatever it is you call it?”

  “Not right away. I have to stop and see someone first. I’ll be there in an hour.”

  He glanced at his watch. “Two-thirty. I’ll call you at four. If it looks like we might be onto something, we can have you wired up before you go to Griffin’s.” He finished the glass of stout and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “I’m still not convinced that the lovely Mrs. Hause
r didn’t engineer the whole thing.”

  “To tell you the truth, neither am I.”

  I dropped O’Henry off at the station and drove over to Pam’s. I figured Elaine would still be there. She was. Pam was in pretty good shape, considering. They had been talking for a while when I arrived, and the strain of listening and comforting was beginning to show on Elaine. She looked relieved to see me.

  “Have you talked to the police?” Pam asked. “Do they have any idea who killed Art? They won’t tell me anything.”

  “Pam,” I said, trying to sound convincing. “They don’t know anything yet. It’s really too soon.”

  I could tell by the look Elaine was giving me that she didn’t believe me, but if Art had been killed because he was blackmailing someone, I wanted to be damned sure of my facts before I laid that one on Pam. Meanwhile, there was one other thing I wanted to check out.

  “Can I use your phone, Pam?”

  “Sure,” she said like it couldn’t possibly make any difference.

  I wasn’t sure where I’d find Grace Hunnicutt after her

  brother’s memorial service, but I had a hunch she’d be minding the store. I was right. I had to give my name before getting through to her. When she came on the line, she sounded like she was greeting an old friend.

  “Quint,” she said. “It’s good to hear from you. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I hope you can clear up something for me.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “How much did you know about Diana’s financial situation before she married Preston?”

  “Well.” She paused as if giving my question careful consideration. “Her father owns a very successful law firm on the West Coast. I believe she is an only child so I suppose she stands to inherit a sizable fortune. Why do you ask?”

  “Do you know anything about a falling out she had with her father?”

  There was silence for several seconds, and when she spoke again it was with great reserve. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, I have heard that Diana was cut off from her father’s inheritance. It doesn’t matter why, the point being that she didn’t stand to gain a penny from him.”

  “What?” was all she said.

  “Grace.” I was still not quite comfortable calling the wealthy matron by her given name. “Do you think that Preston would have married her if he had known that?”

  “I … I.” She seemed genuinely disconcerted. “I don’t know. Forgive me, Quint, this news has really caught me off guard. I don’t know what to say. Preston never said anything to me about Diana’s, uh, misfortune. He usually did confide in me. I don’t know what to say.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “Sorry I dumped this one on you.”

  “Oh, please, Quint,” she said quickly, “don’t apologize. I admit I am a little shocked, but I want to be able to help

  you find whoever did this to Preston. If that means a few shocks in my life, well, I can certainly live with them.”

  “Okay, Grace, thanks.”

  “Can I do anything to help?”

  “No, but please, don’t tell Diana what I just told you.”

  “I doubt she’d be able to grasp it anyway. I’m not sure that very much of reality is seeping into Diana’s life at this point. She is quite beside herself.”

  “Have you called a doctor?”

  “Oh, yes. The family doctor knows what is going on.”

  “Well,” I said, “keep me posted.”

  “I will,” she said before hanging up.

  Elaine watched as I replaced the phone in its cradle. “So it’s beginning to look like the beautiful, wealthy widow might have had murder on her mind.”

  I sighed. “I don’t know. Are you going to be here for a while?”

  Pam had gone into her bedroom to lie down. “A little longer. Why?”

  “I’ve got to stop at the apartment. I thought if you weren’t going back there for a while I’d take advantage of your parking space.”

  She smiled. “Be my guest.”

  I didn’t tell her what O’Henry and I were cooking up. I figured I’d keep her informed on a need-to-know basis, and she didn’t need to know that I had a date to keep with a prime suspect.

  My Honda slid into Elaine’s parking spot like it belonged there. I decided I could get used to that. There were a lot of things about Elaine that were very pleasant getting used to. I got out of the car with my coat draped over my arm.

  Maybe I was thinking about the intensity of the few days we had had together. Maybe I was thinking about the list

  of suspects in Hauser’s death. Or maybe I was reveling in the fact that not only did I have a parking space, it was in a garage—a heated garage no less. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t one hundred percent attentive to the present, and I didn’t have so much as an inkling that anything was out of order until I heard a footstep behind me. I started to turn, but before I could, a blinding explosion went off inside my head.

  As I started to reel into the blackness, it occurred to me that this might very well be the end, and that there must be something seriously wrong with my priorities if my last conscious thought was to be that I was dying in a heated garage.

  20

  At first i thought I was dead, and eternity must be a sensory deprivation tank—the joke at the end of the universe. Then it occurred to me that I shouldn’t be smelling grease and that whatever was jabbing me in my right shoulder didn’t belong in a vacuum. Besides, I hurt too much to be dead.

  A tequila hangover was the only thing I could think of that might inflict this kind of pain, but I didn’t remember drinking myself into this state. In fact, I didn’t remember anything. I rubbed the back of my head where the pain seemed to originate. There was hardness and swelling that hadn’t come from the contents of a bottle, but maybe from the bottle itself. Was that it?

  The garage, the noise behind me, the light and then the dark—sounds like you got clubbed, Quint. Now the hard part. Where was I? I was beginning to recognize the odors and the movement. New carpet and car smells combined with greasy rags. A car trunk. We were moving, and my guess was, from the consistent speed, that we were on the open road. Even with a garbled head, I knew I’d have been better off with the tequila hangover.

  Whose car was this? Griffin’s? My head was clearing a little, but not much. I wasn’t tied up. Maybe I was supposed to have been hit harder. Maybe I was supposed to be dead. I felt for the object that was jabbing me. It might be something I could use for a weapon. Jumper cables. Great. If he held still long enough, I could wire him up and cause his

  batteries to implode. I took one of the clamps in my hand and hefted the metal. These were the heavy-duty kind. Maybe I could use them after all. Maybe he’d figure I was still out and wouldn’t expect me to come out swinging when the trunk opened.

  Right. Just like Gene Autry. On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t do anything real stupid until my options were depleted. Maybe all this frantic scheming was a wasted effort. Maybe I wasn’t ever going to get out of this trunk at all. He was going to sink both me and the car in some desolate scummy pool of water in the middle of northern Illinois. They’d find what was left of me months later, when the sun had dried up some of the water and the stench was so bad that even the frogs refused to sit on the car and croak. Maybe.

  It was cold in the trunk; yet, despite the fact that I wasn’t wearing a jacket, I was sweating. Curled up like a fetus with my legs cramping and my head throbbing, it occurred to me that being locked inside a small trunk was probably a lot like being buried alive. I swallowed a lump of nausea, forcing myself to think, but that was difficult and hardly mattered anyway. There was no way in hell I could plan what I was going to do next.

  I had to believe that the trunk would eventually be opened. That was the only way I had a future. And wasn’t that logical? Otherwise, why didn’t he just finish me off in the garage? Why go to the trouble of hauling me off this way if he didn’t want some inf
ormation out of me? And, if it was Griffin, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what he’d want to know before eliminating me for good.

  The car slowed and after a sharp right turn, the ride became bumpy. Were we getting close to our destination? I felt around for something other than jumper cables, but the trunk was clean. I thought of my pigeon knife back on Elaine’s coffee table. Elaine. Somehow the thought of

  never seeing her again bothered me more than anything, and let’s face it, Quint. Someone didn’t dump you in a trunk, transport you to God-knows-where only to chat for a few minutes, then drop you at State and Madison with a quarter for a phone call.

  The car stopped. I estimated we had traveled about a mile on this road. A door slammed shut and I heard footsteps crunching in the snow. It had to be Griffin. I grabbed the jumper cables. You never know. A key slid into the lock and I gripped the cables harder. The key turned and the lid opened. My eyes adjusted quickly to the fading afternoon sun, and I released my grip on the cables. The man towering over me, holding what looked like a .357 Magnum, was not Griffin. He was too tall, too massive, and too black.

  He grabbed me by the collar and jerked me out of the trunk. My feet hit the ground and I had to grab onto the edge of the bumper. I felt dizzy and slightly nauseous, while the big man continued to hold onto my collar. He towered over me by at least six inches and seemed to be waiting for instructions. I glanced quickly at my surroundings. We were on a small dirt road that ended in the middle of nowhere in the middle of a heavily wooded area. My head cleared a little as another car door opened and shut. This time I recognized the voice.

  “Well, well, Quintus. Not quite the meeting you had planned, eh?” Griffin stepped into my line of vision. “Doesn’t say much for the head of security to let himself fall into a mess like this, does it? Thinking about the little woman? Let your mind wander? Or are you simply too inept to realize how high the stakes are here?”

  He studied me for a moment, sizing me up, nodding to himself. Then he turned to the big guy with the gun. “Take him away from the car, Deke.” Deke wrapped a huge fist around my arm and dragged me toward the trees. When we