The Look of Murder: Chris Fries

Part 1

I was nearly broke with few prospects, and had my feet up on the desk, debating my options over a warm shot of cheap bourbon, when the door opened and a ritzy brunette sashayed in.  She was a sultry broad, dressed to the nines, and completely over my pay grade.  I figured she must be lost.

“Yeah? Can I help you?”  I said, pulling my feet off the desk to at least be polite.

She scowled slightly at the half-empty bottle on the desk, glanced around my office, and then turned her dark eyes to me.  “I’m looking for Vanguard Investigations.  Could you tell me where they’re located, please?”

I set the glass on the desk.  “You found it.”

She tucked her purse under one arm and put her other hand on her hip.  “You’re Mr. Sharpe?”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m Nick Sharpe.”  I stood behind the desk and offered my hand.  If this dame was looking to hire me, I wanted to show my best manners.  If the size of the rocks on her hand were any sign, then she might just be driving my gravy train.  “What can I do for you?”

She hesitated then briefly shook my hand.  “Samuel Dotson is one of our attorneys.  He suggested that I speak with you.”

I gestured to the chair next to her and she sat, crossing her legs and giving me a glimpse of a silky white slip caressing a supple calf.  I tried not to stare and sat back down behind the desk.

“Dotson’s one of the few decent lawyers in Detroit,” I said.   “Most of the sharks out there would rip your heart right out through your chest if they thought they could make a buck on it.  At least Dotson would ask ‘please’ first.”  I smiled at her.  She didn’t smile back.  Her face was grim, but even with a frown she was still a blistering beauty.  She turned to gaze out the window.

I slid the bottle off the desk and tucked it into the drawer.  “I’ve done some work for Dotson the last couple of years,” I said, trying to prod her to spill the beans.  So far she hadn’t given me much to go on.

“He recommended you highly.”  Her voice was soft as she looked outside.  There wasn’t much to see out there besides the rusty fire escape on the rear of the dingy building across the alley.  I guessed it was different than what she usually saw from the windows wherever she lived.

She turned to face me again.  “I’m sorry.  I should introduce myself.  My name is Margaret Thurston.  My husband is Charles Thurston.  Have you heard of him?”

Charles Thurston?  Christ, who hadn’t?  He’d taken the small auto company his father had started and turned it into a giant thanks to a blizzard of military contracts during the war.  With the war over they were making cars again, but still churning out tanks for Uncle Sam, just in case we ended up fighting it out with Stalin and the Russians.  This doll had to be worth millions.

“Of course,” I said.  “He builds cars, right?”

This made her smile.  I don’t normally go all goo-gah over a swanky dame, but she was hitting me like a ton of bricks.  I felt like someone had just turned off the gravity in the room.  Maybe it was the bourbon.

Her smile quickly faded.  “Yes, Charles is president of Thurston Motors.  He’s very well-known and respected in this city.”  She uncrossed her legs, set her purse on the floor next to her, and leaned forward.  “Which is why I can’t go to just anyone, Mr. Sharpe.  Mr. Dotson assured me that you could be…discreet.”  She made it sound like she was asking me to break the law or something.  For her, maybe I would.

“Of course, Mrs. Thurston.  All my clients expect discretion.  It’s part of the business.  Whether I’m helping Dotson dig through the trash to keep one of his clients out of the joint, or hired by some poor schmuck to find out if his frigid wife is really having a torrid affair with the milkman, I always remain discreet.”

She nodded and leaned back slightly in her chair.

“So what is it you’d like me to be discreet about, ma’am?” I said.  “Do you think Charles is fooling around with someone else’s wife?”  I had to ask, even if I couldn’t picture it.  If he wasn’t coming home at night to be with her, I would have to assume he was insane.

“Oh no, Mr. Sharpe.  I have no concerns along those lines.  Charles is much more interested in other men’s money then other men’s wives.”

“Then how can I help you, Mrs. Thurston?”

She crossed her arms in her lap and lowered her eyes.  “Charles is missing.  I’m…  I’m afraid to imagine what may have happened.”

I sat back.  “Missing?  Why not go to the police?  Especially if you have reason to think that something’s wrong.  The cops have better resources than I do.  Radio cars.  Teletypes.   Hundreds of flatfoots pounding the street.”

“I can’t risk the news coming out if I’m wrong.  It could ruin Charles.  But…  I have to find him.  He could be hurt.  Or worse.”

“Worse?”

She looked up to meet my eyes with hers.  They were as dark as a starless night and just as deep.  You could get lost in them and never want to be found.

“I–,” she hesitated.  “I just want you to find him, Mr. Sharpe.”

Just what sort of tempest was this temptress trying to pull me into?

# # #

Part 2

Margaret Thurston sat in my cheap metal chair, her dark eyes holding me transfixed as she waited for my reply.  She wanted me to find her missing husband, Charles Thurston, president and owner of Thurston Motors, and easily one of the biggest of Detroit’s big shots.  But she didn’t want me to let anyone to know I was looking, because it might embarrass Charles if he wasn’t really missing.  She wasn’t sure — maybe he’d just taken a powder for the last week without telling her.

This dame was a piece of work.

“Look, Doll,” I said, “I don’t want to give you the brush-off, but I don’t know what I can do for you.  If you want me to find your husband, I’ve got to ask questions, go to his office and talk to his secretary, gab with his partners.”

She shook her head, her silky black hair bouncing as she moved.

“No-one can know,” she said.  “I’m aware that my story must seem apocryphal but my concerns are real, Mr. Sharpe.”

Apocryphal, she says.  A six-dollar word for hooey.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Thurston, I just don’t know how I–”

“I can pay you extremely well for your time, Mr. Sharpe.”

That stopped me.  I sat for a second, admiring her curves.  Maybe I needed to review my priorities.  My landlord had already come smashing in here yesterday demanding last month’s rent payment.  So if this broad wanted to pay me for what turned out to be a wild goose chase, who was I to deny her service?  A paying client was a paying client.  Besides, she was damn easy on the eyes.

“Alright, alright,” I said.

She gave me a brief smirk and pulled her one leg under her, like a smug feline pausing to lick its chops at the mouse it had just cornered.

I sighed and thought about bringing back out the bottle of bourbon I’d just tucked away.  But my head was ringing enough as it was.  Getting soused wasn’t going to get me anywhere.

“Let me go over this one more time, just to make sure I’m not missing something,” I said, looking down at my ratty desk and rubbing my temples.  If was easier to think when I wasn’t looking at her.  It was hard to focus on details when I kept picturing her naked — my filthy mind getting in the way again.

“You think your husband may be missing.  You haven’t seen or talked to him in nearly a week.  You don’t know where he is and you haven’t heard anything from him.  This in itself is not unusual; he’s been known to take off from time to time without so much as a ‘by your leave,’ right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“But now you have come to fear for his safety, and think he may have come to harm.”

“Yes, although I pray I’m wrong.”

“You base this on a phone call you got two nights ago.  Where no-one was on the line, although you say you heard what sounded like a crash before the call was disconnected.”

She didn’t reply and I looked up.  She was nodding.

“And yet, you don’t want me to ask any of Charles’s known associates about his whereabouts.  You don’t want me to go to his office, or talk to any of his friends.”

“I know this must sound insane, Mr. Sharpe.  But if Charles is not in trouble, he would be furious to find out I had hired a private detective.”  She paused.  I got trapped in those bottomless eyes again.  “Please — At least check one place for me.  Charles has a cabin north of Flint.  He uses it for hunting and fishing trips.  He calls it his private oasis.  If you would discretely go up there to see if Charles is there and not in any danger, it would ease my mind.  But afterwards, if you find that he’s not there, then maybe we can talk bout you speaking with his secretary and business associates.”

“Does the cabin have a phone?  You could just call.”

“Yes, yes.  Charles had a dedicated line ran at enormous expense.  But I’ve called several times and there’s no answer.  I need you to go up there and let me know what you find.”

I agreed, and she seemed relieved.  She didn’t even flinch when I quoted an outrageous price of $50 plus expenses.  She gave me the cash, doling out fifty clams from a hefty wad in her purse, and wrote down directions to the cabin.  Then she gave me a picture of Charles and rose to leave, smoothing her skirt as she stood.  I watched her hands travel over her hips and enjoyed every inch of the trip.  I knew that I wouldn’t like drive up North nearly as much.

See paused when she got to the door, and turned to again look over my dingy office.

“You really should do some decorating, Mr. Sharpe,” she said.  “New paint, a few pictures on the walls, perhaps even a colorful kilim on the floor.  It would spruce the place up.”

“A kill ‘em?” I asked.

She faced at me with a glimmer in her eyes and a Mona Lisa smile on her lips; a mix of tenderness and mystery.  “Goodbye, Mr. Sharpe, and thank you again for your help.  I’ll be waiting for your call.”  Then she left.

Like I said; she was a piece of work.

* * *

The drive up north was long and tedious.  My ’39 Ford was ten years old and acted every bit its age.   By the time I reached the turn-off onto the two-track lane, the sky was a black, moonless, and star-filled tapestry, and my kidneys were aching.

I parked at the end of the two-track and slid on my overcoat and hat, and stretched a bit.  Then I hoofed it down towards the cabin.  I didn’t want Thurston to hear me driving up; Margaret had insisted I be discreet.  Funny how somewhere between Lake Orion and Flint she had become ‘Margaret’ instead of ‘Mrs. Thurston.’   But now we had a business relationship, so I figured a little familiarity was allowed, at least in my imagination.  Hell, we’d been a lot more familiar there already.

I worked my way down the wooded lane, trying to not stumble over the rough ground, and hoping to not come across a bear, or wolf, or wolverine, or whatever lurked in these woods.  I fully expected to near the cabin and see Charles moving around inside, maybe finishing off dinner from the day’s catch of fish.  But I didn’t smell any smoke.

I rounded a curve and came to a clearing, and the cabin was a dark shadow on the other side.  There was a car parked next to it.  I couldn’t clearly make it out, but it was big and long, and definitely worth a pretty penny.  It had to be Thurston’s. I could make out a series of wooden steps and a railing leading from the cabin and down the hill to a lake.  There was a pier with a speedboat tied up next to it.  There was no sign of any other cabins on the lake — Thurston seemed to have it all to himself.

There was no light in the cabin, and no fire burning in the fire-pit in the middle of the clearing.  The outhouse at the edge of the woods was quiet.  I saw no hint of motion anywhere, and heard nothing but a gentle breeze through the trees.  I moved closer until I neared the cabin and tried to quietly peer in one of the windows.  It was very dark, and I couldn’t make out much more than some basic shapes — a sofa, a table, some chairs.  I slowly stepped up onto the wooden deck and moved from window to window but couldn’t make out much more than I’d already seen.  There were two bedrooms, both of which had curtains that hid the insides.  I could make out a bed through the crack of the curtains in one room, but couldn’t tell if it was occupied.

I thought about leaving and just telling Margaret that her husband was here, but something didn’t seem right.  I’m no woodsman, but it was too quiet and too desolate.  It wasn’t that late.  If Charles was here, there should be some sign — a lantern burning low, embers in the fireplace or in the fire-pit, even the creak of a bed as he moved in his sleep.  I’d been at the windows for over a half-hour.  I should have heard or seen something.

I moved to the door at the back of the cabin and tried the handle.  It turned.  It was unlocked.  I could slip in and just see if there was some sign of recent activity — dirty dishes, food in the trash, an open bottle of champagne or whatever the ritzy Mr. Thurston drank.  Then I’d quietly slink away, confident that I’d confirmed Charles was here.

I gently swung the door, opening it slowly to avoid any creaking of rusty hinges, and it opened almost all the way, until it hit something.  I looked down and could make out a shape crumpled on the floor, a large one blocking the door.  My instincts raised the hair on the back of my neck even before I realized what it was.  I bent down and reached out to touch it.  Soft, like clothes, and then I felt the feel of skin.  An arm.  Cold, still, and stiff.

I stepped in to the side, careful not to step on the shape, but no longer concerned about making noise.  I went toward the table and found a lantern and some matches, then filled the room with light.  The cabin was a mess, and the body sprawled across the floor was the worst part.  I didn’t have to pull out the picture from my pocket to confirm that it was the former Charles Thurston.  He’d been roughed up pretty good, and there was dried blood covering his face and pooled on the floor, but it was definitely him.  On top of him was a smashed camera on a dented tripod.  Evidently someone had taken a few close-ups of Charles by beating him across the head with the camera.  There was a dent and a deep gash above his ear, and his broken and jagged mandible was jutting out through the skin.

I bent down to look closer and moved the camera and tripod off to the side.  That’s when the door at the back of the cabin burst open.  Two state cops barged in with their guns drawn.  Two more came across the deck and stormed in next to me, hitting Thurston’s stiff legs with the door.

“Don’t move!” the two of the flatfoots from the deck were yelling, while the other two were shouting “Step away from him!”  I raised my hands and stood up.  I figured that was the best compromise I could come up with.

They came close and stood there, guns raised, agitated and adrenaline-filled.  One of them went to search the bedrooms and returned.  “All clear,” he said.

“Why’d you kill him?” the tallest one asked as he holstered his gun and reached for his handcuffs.

I was going to deny it, but I figured they’d ignore me anyway.  I’d wait to talk to the detectives.

# # #

Part 3

Samuel Dotson met me in the Flint post of the State Police.  He wasn’t technically my lawyer; I couldn’t afford ten minutes of his time.  But he was one of the few lawyers I knew in Detroit, I’d done some work for him over the years, and he’d been the one that had suggested Margaret Thurston hire me.  Hell, if you looked at it that way, it was his fault I was in this mess.  So he was the one I’d called and he said he’d come right away.

But it had taken him until mid-afternoon to get up here from Detroit, and the cops had left me to cool my heels in a cell until he finally arrived.

When the cop led me into the small room where we could talk, Dotson rose from the chair.  He didn’t look too happy to see me.  He looked at me with a heavy scowl and there was no warm greeting when we walked in.  Instead, he spoke to the cop who’d brought me.

“Can you take his cuffs off?” Dotson said.  “Then leave us to talk?”

The cop gave his own scowl to Dotson.  “Yeah, sure.  But I’m going to be right outside the door.”  He removed the cuffs and I grabbed one of the chairs at the small table.  The table was cheap and shaky and covered with cigarette burns along the edges.  You’d think the cops could afford an ashtray, but maybe they thought it would be used as a weapon.

Dotson sat and offered me a cigarette after pulling one out for him.  He didn’t seem to mind the lack of an ashtray.  I declined the offer; I’d never gotten the taste for cigarettes.  I guess I was missing out on all the soothing health effects they advertised on the radio, but I still hated them.

“So what the hell’s going on?” Dotson said, white smoke billowing out of his mouth.  “Did you kill Thurston?”

So much for small talk.

“Of course not,” I said.  “That’s a bunch of malarkey.  I’d never even seen the guy before finding him in a pile on the floor of his cabin.”

Dotson’s face didn’t register any change.  Maybe he didn’t believe me.  “The desk sergeant said the coppers had come in with you standing over Thurston with the camera and tripod in your hands. He almost squealed with glee when he told me.”

I could picture it.  The fat oaf had been a huge smart aleck when I’d been put in the cell.  “Yeah, OK, I was standing there, but I didn’t knock him off.  I’d just gotten to the cabin and didn’t see any signs of activity other than Thurston’s car.  The door off the back deck was unlocked, so I stepped in to check, and there he was.  I almost fell over him.  I had bent down and moved the tripod off of him right before the cops burst in.  I wasn’t holding it in my hands.”

“It’s still a pretty awkward position to find you in. Enough to incriminate you.”

I shook my head and crossed my arms.  This was ridiculous.  “Come on, Dotson.  The guy had been dead for at least a couple of days.  The blood was dry.  There were flies all around him, and he was starting to get pretty ripe.  The cops can’t be stupid enough to think I’d just killed him.”

Dotson took another drag off his cigarette.

“I don’t think they’re stupid.  They haven’t charged you.  They said they’re only holding you as a material witness.  Temporarily, of course.  But it’s clear they consider you a potential suspect.”

“Witness?  So why haven’t they interviewed me?  All they’ve done is shove me in a cell and leave me there.  Doesn’t seem like they’re too interested in making any progress in finding out who dusted off Thurston.”

Another drag, and Dotson’s face was lost in a swirl of smoke.  No wonder he didn’t have to worry about an ashtray — he never set the damn things down.

“My guess is they’re waiting for the Detroit detectives to come up and give them the background on Thurston,” Dotson said.  “Then they’ll have enough suspects to film a Cecil B. DeMille epic.”

“What about you?”  I said.

Dotson met my eyes, his jaw set.  “What do you mean?”

“You were one of his lawyers.  You could probably suggest plenty of people who wanted to rub out Thurston, right?”

“Not really.  I was merely a junior lawyer with the firm that handled his business, so I wasn’t that involved.  After I started my own personal law practice, I only worked with them on a few minor matters.”

“But you were close enough that Mrs. Thurston would come to you for advice.  Close enough that she’d take that advice and see me based on your recommendation.”

Dotson paused, pulling another cigarette and lighting it off the dwindling butt of the first, then snubbing that one out on the heel of his shoe and tossing it in the wire trash can by the door.

“One of those minor cases I worked with the family on had involved Margaret.  She’s come to trust my judgment.  But we’re not what I would call close.”

Margaret, not Mrs. Thurston.  That was enough validation for me. Dotson wasn’t being totally up front with me.  But he’s a lawyer.  It’s natural for him.

“Has she been told?”

“Yes,” Dotson said.  “I spoke with her this morning before I drove up.  A couple of detectives from Detroit had informed her during the night.”

I pictured her being woken by the knock on the door, answering the urgent pounding, and then collapsing when she got the news, maybe knocking an expensive ceramic statue off its plinth as she fell.  I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead.  I didn’t like how deeply the image could affect me.

The door opened and I looked up to see a burly man in a bad suit stroll in.  He had that cocky air of a cop, but he didn’t immediately start throwing his weight around.  He stood for a moment, looking over Dotson and me before speaking.

“I’m Detective Sergeant Don Alden, stationed here in Flint.  I’ve got a few questions, if you gentlemen don’t mind.”  He pulled out the seat next at the end of the table, and sat down with a smile, like we were gathering in his basement for a Saturday night poker game among friends.

“And I’m going to ask them even if you do mind,” he said.  His smile broadened.

Dotson shifted into his lawyer role and began to protest, but I cut him off.

“It’s no skin off my nose,” I said.  “I got nothing to hide.”  Dotson shrugged and took another drag on his cigarette.

I turned to face Alden.  “But I have a few questions of my own, Sergeant.  And I’m a man who likes answers.”

# # #

Part 4

Sergeant Alden of the Michigan State Police kept me in the tiny interview room of the Flint post for the better part of two hours.  Nothing much came of it.  All I could tell him was that Margaret Thurston had hired me to quietly find her husband, Charles Thurston, and suggested I start at his lake cabin.  And I’d found him there, sure enough, but deader than a door nail, bludgeoned with a hefty camera and tripod.  Although it was easy to tell that he’d been dead for a few days, I was examining him for signs of life right when four state troopers had barged in and found me there.

Alden kept grilling me, coming at it from ten different directions, his language getting pretty colorful at times, but there wasn’t anything more I could tell him.  He wanted to iron out the details of the killing, but there weren’t that many details I could provide, other than what he already knew.

Samuel Dotson, the lawyer who’d suggested that Margaret hire me, sat across from me at the empty table, chain-smoking and keeping his yap shut while Alden went on and on.  Finally Alden gave up.  He wasn’t stupid.  He realized I wasn’t giving him a scam; this wasn’t some jazz improvisation I was making up as I went along.  I was telling him all I knew.

But it bothered me.  It seemed like something more going on here than what I was in on.  Dotson acted like he was holding something back and I knew there was something stewing in Alden.  I could see it beneath the surface.  Like a caterpillar changing inside its cocoon, there was some sort of hidden idea taking shape in Alden’s mind.

I didn’t like not being in the know.

“All right,” I said.  “You’ve kept me on ice overnight and most of the day and you’ve grilled me six ways from Sunday.  Now let me ask you something.”

Alden shrugged.  “Sure.  I’ll answer what I can, but I won’t compromise the case.”

“Fine.  First off, what tipped you off to come to the cabin?  That’s a Hell of a coincidence your boys just happened to show when I was checking the place out.  And to show up with two cars and four cops with guns drawn makes me think you were expecting trouble.”

“We got a call with a tip that Thurston had been injured,” Alden said.

“You get the name of the caller?”

Alden paused.  “It was an anonymous tip.”

“But you took it seriously enough to send two cars?”

“Thurston’s an important guy, and the caller said there were screams coming from the cabin.”

“Thurston’s got a private lake with no other cabins nearby.  His joint’s a good half-a-mile off the road.  You ask the caller how he happened to be close enough to hear the screams?”

I could see Alden’s jaw tighten.  “The caller didn’t give details.”

I didn’t push it.  I’d made my point.  “One other question,” I said.  “What about the camera?  Since it appears to be the murder weapon I’m sure you’ve brought it in.  You get any evidence off it?”

“Like fingerprints?  There weren’t any.  It had been wiped clean.”

“Any film in it?”

“Nope.”

“That’s kind of odd, too, don’t you think?”

Alden’s eyes narrowed.  “Why’s that?”

“I remember seeing the open camera case sitting open on the table.”

Alden shrugged again, but Dotson pulled his cigarette out of his mouth and leaned into the table.  I went on.  “So Thurston, or whoever, goes to the trouble of getting this fancy camera out of its case, and setting it up on a tripod, then leaving it close where it’s handy enough to grab and beat the poor schmuck’s brains out, but there was never any film put in it?”

“Maybe Thurston hadn’t gotten that far yet,” Alden said.  He crossed his arms.  “That all you got?”

“For now,” I said.

Alden stood and moved towards the door.  “Then you’re free to go.  But keep yourself available in case I need you to come up and visit us again.”  Dotson and I stood and followed Alden out.  I got my things and Dotson gave me a ride over to the impound lot to get my car.  Everything from the glove box had been strewn out onto the seats.  It had been gone through pretty good, but at least it looked like nothing had been broken.

I headed back towards Detroit.  I didn’t envy Alden.  Thurston was rich and important and I knew Alden would have a lot of high-pressure bigwigs breathing down his neck to solve this case.

As for me, I supposed I was finished.  I’d done what Mrs. Thurston had asked, so there was really no reason for me to worry about it any more.  I’d even been paid already, so I didn’t have to wait for the money.

Still, all the way back to Detroit and to my office off of Woodward, I kept stewing about it.  It was like the place I launder my clothes had put too much starch in the back of my shirt; like some absent-minded seamstress had forgotten to take a couple of pins out of my collar.  It kept gnawing at the back of my neck and wouldn’t let me go.

I reached my building and parked the car and went up to the office.  The door was still locked, and nothing had been disturbed.  Not that I expected it.  But I was on edge.  I didn’t even take off my coat before I grabbed the phone book and looked up Thurston.  I figured them to have an unlisted number, but there it was, as big as day — Charles Thurston Jr. in Grosse Point.

I copied the address, then left and drove over.  I could have tried calling, but I felt I needed to see her; to see how she was doing; to tell her that I was sorry I had found her husband that way.  And, mainly, to let her know for sure that no matter what the cops said, I had nothing to do with it.

I reached the address, a huge sprawling brick home with a sweeping front lawn, manicured landscaping, and a wrought iron fence around the property.  The gate was open so I pulled in and parked and then went up to the front door.  I rang and a stern-faced maid answered.  I explained who I was and asked for Margaret.  The maid tried to give me the brush off, but then I heard Margaret speak from inside.  “Its fine, Elizabeth.  I’ll see Mister Sharpe.”

The maid gave a faint bow and stepped aside to let me into the foyer, then she vanished down one of the hallways.  I took off my hat.  Margaret was coming down a wide staircase, wearing an expensive-looking pink robe, with “MT” embroidered on it; Large, ornate letters like calligraphy done in bright red thread. There were silky swirls of white bedclothes peeking out under the robe as she descended.  Her raven-black hair was pulled back, but was in place other than for one wisp that swirled around her left eye.

“I’m sorry if I seem a little groggy,” she said as she reached me.  “The doctor’s given me a sedative, but I’m afraid it’s not working.  I just can’t seem to sleep.”

Her words were clear with no slurring. I looked in her eyes.  They were red, like she’d been crying, but they weren’t dilated.  Maybe the quack had given her a placebo; she seemed as sharp as ever.

“I wanted to stop and offer my condolences,” I said.

“I appreciate that Mr. Sharpe, and also for your help in finding Charles.  I’m sorry you had to find him that–”

“That’s not a problem,” I said, cutting her off.  Here I’d come to give her an apology, and she was giving one to me.  “I wanted…”

She raised an eyebrow.  Even after rehearsing everything I had planned to say, I was speechless.  I looked around the foyer.  It was richly decorated, with polished marble floors and intricate statuettes tucked into nooks carved into the walls.  There was a large brown and orange rug on the floor.  It looked Middle Eastern.

“Is that your kilim?” I said.  “It does spruce up the joint.”

She smiled.  It helped make it easier to tell her what I wanted to.

“Look, I’m really sorry about what happened to your husband,” I said.  “But I hope the cops didn’t put any screwy ideas in your head.  I want you to know that I didn’t–”

“I know Mr. Sharpe.”

I felt better, relieved that she didn’t hold me responsible in any way, but yet I didn’t want to say goodbye.

“Do your children know?” I asked.

“Charles and I never had any offspring.  I would have liked to, but, well it just never happened…”  She looked down.

Offspring, she says.  What a piece of work.

I didn’t know what else to say, so I was getting ready to tell her goodbye when there was a crash and a scream from the back of the house.  Margaret’s eyes gaped and she pulled her hands to her mouth.  I didn’t stop to think, but ran down the hall towards where the crash had come from.

I guess Margaret wasn’t quite rid of me yet.

# # #

Part 5

As I came through the doorway from the hallway into a large kitchen, there was another scream.   It was the maid.  She had her back against the wall and was staring out through the French glass doors across from her.  A shattered pile of dishes was at her feet. She saw me come in and pointed outside.  “He was there.  He had a gun.”

I looked through the window.  An attached sun room was on the other side, dark and filled with shadow, but I couldn’t see anyone, only a door standing open to the darkness outside.  I’m normally not the type of guy who boldly rushes headlong into danger, but I pulled the French doors open and bolted through the sun room to the patio behind the house.  I wanted to at least catch a glimpse of whoever the maid had seen.  Fortunately, I wasn’t greeted by a hail of bullets, but I still didn’t make it past the patio.  My shin collided with a concrete bench and I stumbled, my arms flaying as I fell, and cursing loudly when my knee hit the stone block edging along the patio.  I was certain I’d broken my kneecap.

So much for the heroic knight protecting the damsel from distress.

I hobbled to my feet and gingerly put weight on my left leg to test my knee, then limped around the grass, peering into the shadows of the tree-lined property, but there was no-one in sight.  I paused at a stack of firewood near the row of bushes at the back of the yard and leaned against it, gripping the top log to take the weight off my knee. I looked in all directions, but saw nothing and heard nothing.  If the maid had really seen someone out here, they were long gone.

I headed back, returning through the sun room into the kitchen.  The maid was sweeping the remaining shards of the broken china into a dust pan.  Margaret wasn’t in the room.  The maid looked up when I walked in, favoring my sore knee.

“Did you see him?” she asked.

I shook my head.  “No.  Nobody was there.  Are you sure you saw someone.”

She stood straight and looked at me, one hand on her hip.  “I know what I saw, Sir.  He was big as day.  Had on a black coat and hat, and was peering in at me with wild, evil eyes.  And holding a pistol big enough to shoot an elephant. Liked to scare me to death.”

“Well, there’s no-one out there now.  We’ll make sure to lock the doors.”  Profound advice from the master detective.  “Where’s Mrs. Thurston?  Is she all right?”

“Missus went to call the police,” she said.

I limped towards the hallway as the maid locked the doors to the sun room.  When I reached the entryway, Margaret was again coming down the stairs.  My concern over the intruder was interrupted by my enjoyment of watching Margaret descend.  The gentle sway of her hips was mesmerizing.

“I phoned the police. They’ll be right here,” she said, shaking my mind away from the naughty stuff I’d begun thinking.

“I didn’t see anyone outside,” I said.  “But your maid is certain she saw someone with a gun.  I’m not sure.  It might have been anyone.  Maybe a reporter who’s gotten an early scoop on the story.  You’ll probably have carloads of them out there by morning.”

She reached the bottom of the staircase then looked down.  “You’ve torn your pants,” she said.  “And your leg is bleeding.”

“It’s nothing.” If I couldn’t be the defending knight, then maybe I could impress here with my tough-guy shtick.

“Well, Mister Sharpe, it looks like we’re safe for the moment.”

I cringed inside, figuring this is where I get the brusb off.

She turned and lightly gripped my arm.  “But would you be willing to stay for a short while?  At least until the police arrive?” She let me down the other hall to an ornate sitting room.

She took a seat on a stiff-back couch and I took the seat next to her, happy as a clam to stay right there.  I knew this would eventually blow up in my face — the poor broad’s husband’s just been knocked off, and I’m hanging around like a dopey teenager hoping to get a date with the star cheerleader.

Not good, Sharpe.  Not good at all.

# # #

Part 6

It didn’t take long before the cops came; first the locals and then a car with a couple of schmoes from Detroit homicide who’d heard the call and decided to drop in and offer assistance.  More likely eager for an opportunity to case the house and grill some of the suspects.  Charles’s name never came up, but I could tell the detectives were more interested in him than in a report about some vague prowler.

Margaret was composed and charming and was as smooth as silk, greeting each one of them with a dismissive, “I’m sure this is all nothing, but…”  I raised a few eyebrows by being there, but nobody gave me too much grief and I drifted into the background.  The cops all made a big point of patrolling the back yard, but didn’t see anything more than what I’d seen.  At least they didn’t trip over the furniture to land sprawled across the patio like I had.

The local cops spent plenty of time interviewing the maid, asking her the same questions over and over to try and flesh out a description of the guy she’d seen, even asking her if she’d noticed anything before nightfall.  She hadn’t.  The Detroit detectives seemed more interested in the surroundings and mainly questioned Margaret about where she had been.

Around 10:30, I started feeling useless and decided to slip away.  I put on my hat and coat and worked my way towards the entrance when the door burst open and two men came in; didn’t even bother to ring the bell.  The first one was tall and dressed to the hilt in an expensive suit.  He stomped in like he was lord of the manor.  The second one I figured for a lackey of the big guy, especially when he took the coat and hat of the first guy.

The big guy drew up short when he saw me.  It was obvious he hadn’t been expecting some stranger to meet him at the door.

“Are you with the police?” he said.

“No, the name’s Nick Sharpe.  I’m a private investigator. I was—“

“Where’s Margaret?  Is she alright?”  Without waiting for my answer, he turned and headed down the hallway, the other one scampering along right on his tail.

Obviously the guy wasn’t big on conversation.

I had planned on leaving and probably still should have. These high-dollar muckity-mucks lived in a totally different world than what I was used to.  Margaret had asked me to stay until the cops had arrived and they’d been here for over an hour.  Since then I hadn’t done much more than stand around with my hands in my pockets, feeling awkward.  I really had no business here.  Yeah, OK, my filthy mind started playing tricks with me when I thought of Margaret, but her husband had just been killed, and even without that, I had as much chance with her as an ice-cube had sitting on a sand dune in the Sahara.  In truth, there was little good that could come of me hanging around.

So of course I pulled off my coat and hat and went back into the living room.  I was curious, that’s all.  I wanted to see who Mr. Important was.  Hell, he could have been Margaret’s godfather or the president of the Thurston’s charitable foundation for all I knew, but something about him had rubbed me the wrong way, and not just his lack of gab.

He had Margaret’s hands in his when I came in, squeezing them as he leaned close.

“Margaret, I am so horribly upset to hear about Charles,” he said.  “I am utterly shocked that anything like this would ever happen to our family.  How are you holding up, my Dear?”

Margaret leaned away from his onslaught and her face brightened when she saw me.

“Lawrence,” she said as she pulled her hands away from him. “Have you met Mr. Sharpe?”  She walked towards me.  “Mister Sharpe, this is Lawrence, Charles’s brother.”

Lawrence gave me a brief nod and a slight sneer.  “Yes, we met in the foyer.”

It hadn’t been much of a meeting, but at least it was more than the other guy; I guess the lackey didn’t merit an introduction.  He hovered alongside the wall, still holding Lawrence’s hat and coat.

“Yeah.  Pleased to meet’cha,” I lied.

“Mister Sharpe is a private detective,” Margaret said. “He’s the one who found Charles.”

This seemed to get Lawrence’s attention.  He stood and looked me over.  “That must have been dreadful, Mr. Sharpe.  But I do so appreciate the help you’ve been to my family.”  He walked towards me with his hand out, clearly intending to herd me towards the door.  “If we ever need any further investigative work, I’m sure we’ll give you a call.”

Margaret interrupted his brush off.  “I asked him to stay, Lawrence.  And I’d like him to remain for a while, please.”

Lawrence stopped, a slight scowl on his face, but he recovered nicely.  “Oh, of course, Margaret.  If there’s anything at all we can do to help you during this dreadful time, I’m sure Mr. Sharpe and I will be eager to do.”

Great.  Now suddenly the guy was my partner.

# # #

Part 7

Standing in Margaret Thurston’s elaborately decorated sitting room, waiting for the cops to leave, I was mentally kicking myself for getting sucked deeper and deeper into this highfalutin family drama.  I could have stayed at my office and not bothered to come over.  I’d done what Margaret had asked; I didn’t need to poke my nose in further.  I could even have scrammed as soon as the cops showed, but instead I’d stupidly decided to stick around.

So now, here I was, a huge dope getting more and more intertwined in the life of a woman whose husband had just been killed, with enough money to buy me ten times over, shaking my head as I watched her pompous brother-in law parade around like he was king of the castle.  I guess I could blame it on a couple of flaws in my nature — an unhealthy curiosity on top of a soft spot for gorgeous rich women who I kept picturing in the raw.

Margaret lounged on the divan, her long legs crossed beneath her, as Lawrence went on about how he would be willing to set aside his grief and step in to take over the reins of Charles’s company, for the good of Margaret and the family.  Behind him, a mousy man sat quietly against the wall.  I hadn’t figured out if he was Lawrence’s servant, business partner, or what; no-one had bothered to introduce him, and he evidently didn’t feel like taking the initiative to do so himself.

Four policemen still patrolled the house and grounds.  Two of them were local Grosse Pointe cops who’d come to the Thurston home, south of Kercheval, when Margaret had called them after the maid had seen a prowler with a gun, and the other two were Detroit detectives who were working with the State Police on Charles’s murder case; they’d heard the call and come to ‘assist’.

Even though it was pretty clear to me that any intruder or prowler that the maid might have seen was long gone, the cops didn’t appear too eager to leave.  Surprisingly, neither Margaret nor Lawrence seemed to mind.  I wondered if Samuel Dotson, the lawyer who had worked with the family and suggested that Margaret hire me to find her missing husband, would approve of giving the cops free rein of the Thurston home.  Probably not when they had an open murder case they were looking to close.

But Margaret evidently didn’t have anything to hide, and it wasn’t really my worry.  Even though she’d asked me to stay, she rarely looked in my direction while Lawrence prattled on, so I couldn’t read what her thoughts were, but they didn’t seem to involve me.  It didn’t take too long before I’d had enough.  I was going to join the exodus when the cops finally decided to leave the joint.

Then Lieutenant Walls, the lead Detroit cop, came in with a small silver canister held lightly in his gloved hand.

“Mrs. Thurston?” he said, and I could almost taste the smug sense of satisfaction in his voice.  “May I ask what this is?”

She turned, and I couldn’t see any recognition on her face. “I have no idea, officer,” she said.

“I found it sitting on the dresser in your bedroom.”

“My bedroom?”

“Yeah.  I wanted to make sure the windows were secure.  The prowler might have tried to get in that way.”

Margaret frowned.  “My bedroom is on the second floor, with no way to climb up from the outside.”

“Just making sure, ma’am.  Do you recognize it?”

“No. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen it before.”

“It’s a film canister, and from the weight, it feels like there’s film inside,” Wells said, with a slight smirk.  “Do you have a camera?”

“No, although I believe Charles did. He…”  She paused and her face hardened as she realized where that camera had been found.  She stood.  “You don’t think that came from his camera, do you?”

“We’ll have to see.  But interestingly enough, there appears to be some splotches on it.”  He held it up and pointed with his other hand.  “It looks like blood.”

Margaret’s face blanched.

Lawrence spoke up, an irritated huff in his voice.  “What does this have to do with anything?”  He might not have known about the murder weapon.

Walls ignored him, still focusing on Margaret.  “You don’t know how this came to be in your room?  It just appeared through some sort of happenstance?”

Margaret held a hand to her mouth. “I… I have no idea.”

Lawrence moved closer.  “What is this, officer?”

Walls answered, but held his eyes on Margaret.  “Your brother was killed by being beaten with a heavy, professional camera.  This may be film from that camera.”

“Oh, this is ridiculous,” Lawrence said, giving a dismissive wave of his hand.  “Surely it’s some other film.  Purely a quirk of synchronicity that a film canister shows up on Margaret’s dresser.  I’m positive that it’s completely unrelated.”

“Maybe.  We’ll take it downtown and examine it and see if it’s the right size film, and if there are any fingerprints on it, and if what on it is actually blood, and if that blood matches Charles’s blood type, and just what might be on this film.”  The other cops came into the room, with the second detective moving to stand next to Margaret.

“I’m sure you won’t mind coming along with us while we find out, ma’am,” Walls said as he pocketed the canister.

Margaret acted like she might faint, and I moved towards her to catch her, but she recovered.  Lawrence gave some bluster of protest, but Margaret only looked downward.  “Of course not.  May I change into something more appropriate?”

“Sure, you can bring some clothes,” Walls said.  “But I think it would be best if you changed at the station.”

I looked closer at Margaret’s face.  I didn’t know what her fate would be with the cops, but I trusted my gut.  In spite of that film can, I was pretty sure she hadn’t bumped off her own husband.

And I was determined to stick my nose in deeper to the family drama to find out for sure.

# # #

Part 8

When Lieutenant Walls said he was taking Margaret in for questioning, her brother-in-law Lawrence huffed and harrumphed, but his stuffy and inept powers of persuasion had no effect in convincing Walls to refrain from carting her away.  Margaret seemed too stunned to make any attempt at using her alluring charm to slip out of the grasp of Walls.

I had to admit it; that film canister seemed legit, so it would be hard for anyone to schmooze their way out of a trip downtown once that turned up, even an attractive rich woman.  Attractive rich women have been known to rub out their husbands, and Walls was no dolt.  When a stiff turns up, any decent cop is going to suspect the spouse, and an incriminating piece of evidence sitting on their dresser is going to make them damn appealing as a suspect, whether they’re a sultry heiress like Margaret or some feeble old grandmother.

But I didn’t for one second believe that Margaret had left that canister on her dresser.  She was too smart of a broad to do something as stupid as leave something like that out, even if she had knocked off Charles.  Which I didn’t believe either, and not just because I’d fallen under the power of her seduction.  I’d seen the look on her face when she realized what it might be.  She’d been shocked.  And if she’d killed the guy, why the hell would she have left the body lying there and then sent me to the cabin to find it?  It didn’t make sense.  So as tempting as it might be for Walls to consider her as a suspect, I wasn’t buying it.

After I watched them drive off with Margaret in the back seat, I came up with a plan.  I needed to talk to Dotson, the lawyer who’d recommended me to Margaret, and I needed to find out from the cops what was on that film.

Then I might be able to get to the bottom of this.

For Margaret.

# # #

Part 9

It had been two long frustrating days.  I should have been pounding the pavement looking for a new client so I could pay the bills, not beating my head against the wall over something out of my hands like the Charles Thurston killing.  It really didn’t concern me, and I’d never see a dime beyond what Margaret Thurston had already paid me to find her husband.  But I couldn’t let it go.  Maybe it had been the sweet and sultry lilac scent of Margaret’s perfume; maybe it had been the way her hips enticingly shifted when she’d strolled in her black satin pumps; maybe it was the way her eyes bored through me when she looked in my direction, like she could read my innermost thoughts.

I’m normally a pretty reasonable guy — I don’t usually turn into a blithering sap over every swanky dame, but something about Margaret knocked me for a loop; all I had to do was think of her and it felt like my heart was getting gored by hundreds of golf tees.  It was completely incongruous with the image I tried to maintain — the jaded hard-nose tough-guy PI turns into a pile of mush at the thought of some high-rent broad who’s way out of his league.

And a lot of good all my stewing did me.  It got me nowhere fast with anyone that had anything to do with the case.  Margaret was still held by the Detroit cops, hidden away like some kid’s Christmas present at the beginning of December.  They must have found some additional evidence, or maybe something incriminating enough had turned up on the film, but they weren’t sharing it with the press, and they sure as heck weren’t telling me.

Samuel Dotson, the family’s lawyer who I did some work for time-to-time, wasn’t taking my calls and wasn’t returning my messages.  Maybe he was busy working on Margaret’s behalf, but I felt like I was getting the brush off.  I’d even tried calling Lawrence Thurston, Charles’s brother, but never made it past the guy running interference; probably the same fop who’d silently hovered in the background at the Thurston’s house the night they took Margaret away, but he was earning his pay now and doing a dandy job of keeping me hanging on seemingly heartfelt but ultimately empty promises of never-be-returned calls from Lawrence.

Being left in the dark was driving me batty, and I’d reached my limit.  I was ready to head down to the station to try and get the scoop from the main cops themselves.  Maybe Lt. Walls would talk to me.  Maybe I could offer to help with the case.

Sure.  Maybe Walls would also give me a license to import all the Canadian Club I wanted from Windsor, free of duty.  Maybe he’d even give me a framed certificate on rare Egyptian parchment naming me honorary Chief of Police, too.

Yeah, fat chance.  Walls had no reason to give me anything, so that’s just what I could expect from him.

So I decided to call Johnny Mangano.

Johnny was a former Detroit cop who’d been forced into retirement following the riots back in ’43.  He’d been right there along Woodward, trying to speak up to stop the white mobs beating the Negros, while the rest of the cops stood by and watched it happen, or worse, joined in with their own batons.  Johnny’s protests hadn’t done any good, and he was quickly pulled off the line and reassigned.  But he refused to let it go, even after the US Army troops had finally been brought in to put an end to the pandemonium.  Johnny made no bones about his disgust towards the behavior of the cops during the riots and how supervision had swept things under the rug afterwards, and he hadn’t been afraid to make a stink about it.

But all it got him was his walking papers; they soon shoved him out the door just to shut him up.  Now it was six years later, but he still wasn’t popular among many of the cops who thought that he’d broken the blue line and spoken out against his brother officers.  But there were also a few decent cops who respected Johnny because they knew he’d tried to stand up for what was right.

So now, after being turned away from police work, Johnny worked for some of his distant cousins in the Italian Partnership, helping with what he called “security.’ I preferred to not know the details, although I think he avoided anything that was clearly a crime — he hadn’t completely turned his back on all of his values.

I’d gotten to know Johnny about four years ago; we’d met through a mutual acquaintance that we were both following.  The schmuck was cheating on his wife — that was why I was tailing him — but it turned out he was also sifting from some of the Partnership’s business, which was why Johnny was involved.  The guy’s jilted wife ended up being the least of his worries.  Johnny was a big, burly man of around forty, with an icy glare that could make a church bell stop ringing, and he was hard as a jackhammer, but he was also one of the fairest men I knew, and he was a priceless source of information from both sides of the law.

If Johnny didn’t know what was happening with Margaret Thurston, then I figured he’d at least be able to find out.

I made the call.

# # #

Part 10

It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the dim light of the bar, but I still had no problem picking out Johhny Mangano sitting in the corner booth, his back to the wall, watching the door as I came in. It was only two o’clock in the afternoon, so he had the joint to himself, but even so, his size and harsh expression would be enough to make a man take notice, if only to immediately classify him as someone to avoid.   Not that anyone might mistake him for a crazy psychopath or some two-bit thug just out of prison.  Johnny was dressed in a precisely-tailored pin-striped suit, he was freshly-shaved, and every hair on his head was slicked tightly into place.  But his thick neck, massive hands, tight-lipped scowl, and piercing eyes showed he was clearly a man who was best to give a wide berth to.

I stopped at the bar and ordered a Pfeiffer beer, gave the barkeep a buck and told him to pocket the change, and watched the guy smile as he rang the cash drawer open with a loud, “quark-clang.”  I took my beer to join Johnny in the booth.

“Hi Johnny,” I said as I sat, “I appreciate you looking into this for me.”

He nodded, slowly, his eyes never leaving my face.  I noticed he only had a glass of ice and water in front of him.  “Buy you a beer?” I offered.

“No thanks,” he said, without a flutter of inflection.

“Too early?  Well, it’s five o’clock somewhere.”  I shrugged and took a sip off my glass.

“So tell me again why you’re interested in this information.”

That was Johnny — direct and to the point, and if he had a question, he had no hesitation asking, right to my face, without a hint of warm empathy or joking, cockeyed curiosity.

But what could I tell him?  That I was smitten with some rich broad who was currently in jail for the murder of her husband; who’d I only known for a few days; who probably considered me less significant to her life than the guys who cleaned her fireplace or raked her yard?  Johnny would think I was nuts — that I’d developed some sort of muscle weakness in my heart that was preventing the blood from reaching my brain.

Hell, maybe I had.

Still, Johnny deserved the truth.  In spite of his gruff exterior, I’d gotten to know the man underneath, and not only did I respect him and trust his judgment, I truthfully owed him my life.  He’d saved it at least once.

“Look, Johnny,” I said.  “I got pulled into this mess when Margaret Thurston came to me to find her husband Charles, and sure enough, I found him right where she thought he’d be, up in his fancy fishing cabin north of Flint.  Except he wasn’t sitting merrily on the dock, smiling at me as he dipped his hook; he was sprawled across the cabin floor, deader than a doornail, his brains knocked out with a camera, of all things.  So now the cops have her locked up tighter than Mae West’s corset, thinking she rubbed out her hubby, and are all hush-hush about whatever they have on her.  But I’m not buying that she did it.”

Johnny took a sip of his ice water, his face rock still as he gazed at me. “Why not?” he said as he sat the glass down.

“Come on.  I don’t need the war department to run this through one of their rooms of vacuum tubes to tell me that it don’t compute.  If she did it, why would she leave the stiff there and then hire me to go up and find it?  And, ok, so maybe she wasn’t in a puddle of tears, but she still seemed pretty knocked over by the fact that the guy was dead; she didn’t seem like she was ready to throw a fancy jubilee celebrating her new widowhood.  For that matter, I can’t find a reason why she’d want to knock the dolt off in the first place.  She seemed to have a pretty good setup.  Something’s missing.”

Johnny nodded.  “And you think you can get to the bottom of it and find that missing piece.”

I shrugged. “Maybe, if I had something to go on.”

“Because of your deep and abiding love for truth and justice, right?” There was the slighted twinkle in Johnny’s eyes.

I snorted and toasted him with the glass as I lifted my beer to take another sip.

“Ok,” he said, leaning back into the cushion of the booth, “so we come to the reason for our surreptitious meeting.  I can at least give you the motive.”

I sat my beer down.

“I talked to a few contacts in the department,” he said.  “The film canister they found had blood on it, and they believe the tests will prove it was Thurston’s blood.  There were no clear prints on the canister, but there was film in it, and they’ve developed the film.”

He paused.  His cop instincts had been stroked.  He was enjoying this.  “Yeah, so what was on the film?” I said.

“Pictures of a nude woman.  But not the wife.  Blonde, short, young, and very attractive, or so I’ve been told.  The pictures seem to have been taken at the cabin; in the bed, on the couch, even outside on the deck.  It appears Mr. Thurston had a friend he enjoyed fishing with.  Not to mention photography.”

I was stunned. “Do they know who she is?”

“Not yet.  The cops are keeping the information under their hats, although they’ve made a few low-profile inquiries.  So far, the people they’ve spoken to all seem certain that Thurston never strayed and no-one knows who the woman in the pictures might be.”

“How do they know Charles even took the pictures?”

“It seems a man’s hand was visible in one of the close-up shots.  He was reaching out and caressing the woman’s chest.  The cops identified the wedding ring.  It was Thurston, all right, and it sure provides a motive for the wife.  ‘A woman scorned,’ as it were.”

I finished my beer, my thoughts a jumble.

I still didn’t believe it.

# # #

Part 11

The corporate office of Thurston Motors was a hulking, granite building with only a scattering of tiny windows along its sheer face.  It towered over the street in downtown Detroit, a dreary, dark-grey structure with corner statues of sad-faced angels that, from the outside, made the building seem more like an above-ground catacomb than the central hub of a thriving automotive empire.  There was little sign of activity, and I thought that the place might be closed because the president of the company, Charles Thurston, had been killed.  Still, I decided to give it a try since I’d come all the way down here.

I climbed the steps and found the place open and entered through a heavy brass rotating door.  Inside, the lobby was cavernous, with artwork of automobiles along the walls, and a full-sized sedan in the middle of the lobby.  I wasn’t sure how’d they’d gotten it in.  Maybe they’d built it here.

An attractive young receptionist sat stiffly at the counter on the far side of the lobby, with two burly men sitting along the wall behind her.  I took those goons for security.  There was soft big band music being filtered in from some speakers along the wall.  At least the place was open for business, but I could tell from the look of the goons behind the counter that this still wasn’t going to be a piece of cake.

As I approached the counter, I considered trying to schmooze my way in under some false pretense.  Maybe I could tell her I was an insurance auditor, or a reporter, or something that would get me into the inner circle where I could ask the questions about Charles I wanted to ask.  Sure.  Or maybe I could just be a friendly Joe and prattle away about the weather until we were all chummy-like, and then she’d simply invite me upstairs to meet the folks in the boardroom.

Ok, maybe, if she’d been alone, I might have tried to charm my way past the cute young thing at the counter.  But her buddies behind her seemed like they’d have no problem showing me the door at the first indication that I was any kind of panhandler or wrongdoer, booting me out in a pile to fester on the sidewalk like a dried up bonefish tossed out of the surf.

So I tried the direct approach.

“May I help you?” she said as I reached the counter.

I took out one of the last of my few business cards and gave it to her.  I figured this was worth the full spiel.  “Yes, my name is Nicholas Sharpe.  I’m a private investigator who was hired by the Thurston family.”  It wasn’t a lie, and technically Margaret had never dismissed me from the case, even though Charles had been found.  “I have a few questions I’d like to ask those who worked most closely with Charles, if I may.”

She raised her eyebrows, but kept her cool.  The attention of the goons in the back was focused on me, but they remained seated, at least for the moment.

“Is anyone expecting you?” she asked.

“Not that I know of. I was downtown and just came into some information that I’d like to corroborate, and I think some of Charles’s closest associates might be the best ones to speak with.”

“I see.  Let me put you in touch with Edna Hoover.  She is…or, was, Mr. Thurston’s executive secretary. Please have a seat, and I’ll let you know if she’s available.”

I hesitated, but she kept looking at me with a thin smile.  She wasn’t rude or treating me with a hoity air of self-important waspishness, but she clearly wasn’t going to make the call while I was at the counter.  I walked to a circle of modern, uncomfortable chairs on the far side of the lobby and took a seat where I could still watch the counter.

The receptionist picked up a phone and spoke into it briefly, keeping her voice low enough that I couldn’t make out what she was saying, and then looked up and smiled at me from across the room.  “Someone will be with you shortly,” she said, loud enough for me to hear.  The goons gave me a look over, and then went back to their staring at nothing in particular out the entranceway.

In about ten minutes, one of the elevators opened and a short, matronly woman in a too-tight black dress came across the lobby.  “Mr. Sharpe?” she said as she neared me.  “I’m Edna Hoover, Mr. Thurston’s executive secretary.”  I stood and introduced myself and gave her the same lines I’d given the receptionist.  Up-close, Mrs. Hoover seemed to be about sixty, bookish and nervous, with a habit of clasping her hands together as she stood there.  I wondered how much of it was distress over the loss of Charles, and how much was simply neurotic energy.

“I’d ask you up into the offices,” she said, “but I’m afraid this is not a good time.  The whole organization is a maelstrom of shock and confusion following the loss of Mr. Thurston.  But if you’d like to give me some time to find you an appointment, I’m sure either Mr. Edgars or Mr. McGuinn will be happy to meet with you as soon as possible.  They’re two of our executive Vice Presidents, and both worked very closely with Mr. Thurston.”

I glanced at the counter.  The receptionist was looking downward as if reading and the security muscle didn’t seem too interested in what was happening between Mrs. Hoover and me, so I figured I could speak softly and avoid any prying ears.

“Actually, Mrs. Hoover, you might be the person who could help me the most.”

“Really?  I’m not sure how I can.  What is it exactly that you’re trying to do?”  Her fidgety hands did not match her eyes — her gaze never left my face.  This old broad might not be as flighty as I first assumed.

“Did you know Mrs. Thurston well?” I asked just to keep her off-balance.

“Yes, I did.  I’ve worked for Mr. Thurston for almost thirty years, and knew both him and his wife quite well.  Why do you ask?”

“Do you believe she killed him?”

She inhaled and looked down, her hands smoothing the sleeves of her dress. After a moment, she met my gaze again.  “That’s a very forward question, Mr. Sharpe.  The police are holding her for it, aren’t they?”

“Yes, and I’m sure they’ve asked you many questions about Charles and her, their marriage, and his activities before he died, and for any other information you might provide, isn’t that true?”

“Well, yes.  I’ve tried to help as much as possible.”  She paused and looked towards the door as if seeing something or someone out there.  “I want to do whatever I can, but truthfully, I don’t believe I’ve been any help.  Honestly, I beat myself up thinking that maybe I could have done something to prevent his death.  I always tried to perfectionate his schedule, to make sure he had whatever he needed, that his time was never wasted, and I just flagellate myself, wondering if I could have stropped him from going to the cabin for that week.”

She sighed and nodded her head slightly. “But I’m not sure why I should be telling you this, Mr. Sharpe.  If the police think Margaret did it, they must have their reasons.”  She looked up at me.  “Don’t they?”

The old broad sure liked big words, but she also seemed like she also had her doubts about what the police were thinking, unless I was reading her wrong.  “They have their suspicions,” I said.  “But frankly, Mrs. Hoover, I’m not convinced.  What do you think of that?”

“And so you’ve been hired by her to try and find who did kill Mr. Thurston?”

“Actually I was hired by her to find Mr. Thurston.  He’d left for the week without telling Mrs. Thurston where he’d gone, and she’d gotten worried.  Then I found him at the cabin, murdered.  She doesn’t know I’m working on this, but I think I owe it to her.”

“I see.”  She held my gaze for a moment.  “So how can I help you?  What can I tell you that I haven’t already told the police?”

“Did you know Charles was having an affair?”

Her eyebrows flew up. “Absolutely not.  He never gave any sign of being anything but a loving and devoted husband. I told the police the same thing.”

“So you have no idea if there was a young lady who might have met him at the cabin?  Were there any women in the office he was known to flirt with?  Anyone in the secretarial pool that he particularly liked to give dictation to?  Short and blonde, maybe?”

“Of course not.  I’d have noticed if so.  But knowing Mr. Thurston, I find it almost impossible to imagine.”

Just like Johnny had said; exactly what everyone was telling the police, and she seemed genuine.  I went in another direction.

“Alright, let me try and reconstruct his activities before he went up to the cabin.  What did Mr. Thurston do before he left?”

“Again, I’ve shared this all with the police.  Mr. Thurston had what I would construe as a very normal day.  He dictated some letters, made some business calls, and had a few meetings regarding the new models of autos that are scheduled to begin design work next month.  He only had two personal appointments that day — a gentleman named Warren Powell who was interviewing for a lead designer position, and a Mr. Albert Silari regarding some other design issues, I believe.”

I pulled out my notebook and wrote down the names.

“I regret that there’s not much more I can tell you, Mr. Sharpe,” she said, “and unfortunately, I need to get back up to the office.  Things are excessively hectic right now, I’m afraid.”

I gave her the last of my business cards.  “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Hoover.  If there’s anything more you can think to add, give me a ring.  In the meantime, please go ahead and make those appointments with the VPs.  They may be able to add some additional information.”

She nodded and then went back towards the elevators.  The goons and the receptionist all looked up expectantly at me.  I knew there wasn’t much more I could do here, at least until Mrs. Hoover could get me in to meet with the Vice-Presidents.  I noticed the music coming from the speakers — some jazzy muted trumpet playing a slow, mournful melody that swung between the mediant and submediant tones.  It matched my mood.

I headed for the door, frustrated but still determined.

# # #

Part 12

Joan Dawkins was a reference librarian at the Main Library branch on Woodward.  She was sweet, stacked, and as sharp as a tack, and we’d had a fling several years ago, and like it had gone with most of the dames I’ve been keen on, it didn’t last too long.  But unlike all the others, I still kept in touch with her.  For a gumshoe like me, a smart broad who knew her way around the library and the city records department downtown was a godsend, so I tried to stay on her good side, even though all the romance had dried up and blown away.

After leaving Thurston Motors, I tried getting the addresses or phone numbers of Albert Salari and Warren Powell from an operator, but hadn’t had any luck, so I decided to pay a visit to Joan.  She was great at dredging up esoteric information and helping me find shifty people who didn’t want to be found. I figured she’d have no problems giving me a few tips on the whereabouts of two upstanding professional gents who’d be among the last to meet with Thurston at his office.

You mention ‘librarian’ to most any Mac on the street and he’ll picture some frumpy old spinster, but in my book, Joan was a bombshell.  Curvy and brunette, she looked as good as ever when I slid up to her at the reference desk.  The only bow to the librarian image was a plain sweater and glasses on a chain that she currently had perched at the end of her nose.

“Hey, Doll,” I said.  “Take any plugged nickels lately?”

She looked up from a thick, musty book filled with drawings of rope and splicing.  She frowned and removed her glasses.  “Well, if it isn’t the elusive Mr. Sharpe. To what do I owe the extreme honor of your distinguished presence?”  She crossed her arms.  “Oh wait, let me guess — you must want something, right?”

I saw her expression and then I remembered that I’d stood her up for dinner last month.  Damn.

But it hadn’t been intentional.  I’d been hot-tailing a client and forgotten about the date.  Not that it had even been a date; that was all in the past.  It was just supposed to be dinner.  No big deal.  But it wasn’t hard to tell that she was still irked.

“Look, Sweetie.  I’m really sorry about dinner; I never meant for the night to be spoiled.  I already tried explaining and apologizing weeks ago; you don’t have to keep on being so cantankerous.”

I gave her my best smile, raised my right hand, and put my left over my heart, “I swear: bona-fide business beckoned, my beautiful and best-beloved babe.”

She snorted. “Don’t give me your alliterative Hoodoo, Sharpe.  I’ve known you too long, and am I’m too jaded to fall victim to your empty sweet talk.”

But she at least was grinning. I just blinked innocently as she looked at me, and then she laughed.  “Alright, Sharpe,” she said, “you’re out of the dog house. So what do you need?”

“Thanks, Hon.  I’m looking for information on two men; a guy named Albert Silari and a Warren Powell.  Both have had dealings with Thurston Motors.  Powell has interviewed for a job in the past week, and Silari may even work there.  Let me know what you can find on them.  Home addresses would help a lot.”

“So when do need this by?  Yesterday, as usual?”

“Yeah,” I nodded.  “The sooner the better.  I’d like to pay a call on the gents today if possible.”

She shook her head.  “I don’t know why I let you do this to me.”  Then she sighed, stuck a piece of paper in the book she had open on her desk, and then closed it with a soft thud. “Fine.  I’ll save the research on rare marlinspikes I was doing for Professor Kline and see what I can find on your Joes.  Go grab a bite and I’ll see what I can dig up.”

“Thanks, doll, I really appreciate it.”  I turned to leave.

“Hey wait a second,” she said before I’d taken two steps.  I looked back.  “The least you could do for a girl is buy her a sandwich, so hold off on eating.  Take a walk and have a cup of java, then you can take me to lunch when you get back.  Give me at least an hour.”

“Sure thing, kiddo.”

I left and walked around for a while to kill time, thinking about Margaret Thurston and Charles and his unidentified girlfriend.  Could Margaret have known about the girlfriend?  That was the question I kept coming back to.  She didn’t seem to give any hint of being the betrayed woman when she’d come to my office.  Yeah sure, I’m not always the best at knowing what women are thinking or even what they want, and my judgment may have been affected by how attractive I’d found Margaret, but all I picked up on was a woman genuinely concerned over her husband’s absence.  She just didn’t seem like some broad who’d already knocked off a cheating husband.

So in spite of what the police had with the film, or whatever they might be thinking, I still couldn’t picture it.  But I needed to find the girlfriend to get more of the real dirt.  In the meantime, I was sure hoping I wasn’t wasting time by trying to re-trace Thurston’s steps before he’d gone to the cabin.  But Thurston might have mentioned something to either of them before he’d left.  The only way to know for sure was to talk to Powell and Silari.

I kept checking my watch as I walked, and after an hour I headed back to the library.

“So did you find anything?”  I asked Joan when I returned.

“Some, but nothing too exciting,” she said. “It’s all just mundane information about two men who work in the automotive industry.  If you’re looking for two seedy criminals, I doubt these are your guys.  Neither one’s probably ever even held a pistol.”

“Well, give me what you got,” I said and took out my notebook.

“No war records on either; they both evidently stayed civilians.  Silari’s the one I was able to find the most info on.  He’s been published several times in the design journals.  Received awards.  Pretty well known in those circles, it seems.  But I can’t find any link between him and Thurston Motors.  He’s worked for Fulton Automotive for years.  Powell, on the other hand, had almost nothing on him, but he does work for Thurston Motors.  He’s been listed in their company directory for the last three copies I checked, and that’s as far back as I looked.  Other than that, I couldn’t find much on him.”

“Well it’s a start,” I said. “Did you get phone numbers or addresses?”

“Yes.  I checked the Wayne County housing records and was able to find addresses and phone numbers on both of them.”  She gave me the details and I wrote them down.

“Thanks, Doll,” I said, and started to leave.

“Whoa there, Silver.  What about lunch?”

I looked at her, flustered, and felt stupid.  I’d already forgotten.  “Well, how about–”

She laughed and interrupted me. “Yeah, I know.  How about a rain-check?”

I shrugged.  “Well–”

“Jeez, Sharpe.  I can’t believe it; isn’t this just swell?  stood up again,” she said, but at least her smile was still there.  “Fine.  Go.  You can make it up to me.”

“I will.  I owe you.  Really.”  I started walking away.  I’d try Silari first.  He seemed more important and was closer.  I looked back at Joan.  She was re-opening her book on hooks and ropes and looked up as I left.  She gave me a wink.

I smiled back, tipped my hat before putting it on my head, and then headed for the door.  Like I’d said:  A godsend.

# # #

Part 13

Joan Dawkins had given me the home addresses of Albert Silari and Warren Powell, and both were near downtown; I could be at either place within a half-hour.  But it was only midday, and odds were that I wouldn’t find either of the gents at home; they’d probably both be in their offices.

I didn’t want to wait, and I didn’t want to go back to Thurston Motors to try and find Powell — I doubted the security gorillas behind the counter would smile at my return.  So that left Albert Silari and Fulton Automotive.  Luckily their office was not far from the library.

Where Thurston Motors had settled for one receptionist and a pair of muscle-bound wallflowers to keep an eye on the joint, Fulton Automotive had a curved granite counter with three good-looking ladies eager to greet me as I walked in, and there wasn’t a thug in sight.  It might have been the lobby of an exclusive hotel instead of a thriving automotive company, although I doubted a hotel would have had much use for the shiny roadster sitting in the middle of the floor.  I guess it was tradition for the auto companies to thrust out a glimmering sample of their top-of-the-line car for all their visitors to drool over.  A part of the advertising for the launch of their latest models, I suppose.

I approached the nearest woman, gave her my name, and asked for Albert Silari.

“Do you have an appointment?” she said, all chipper and cheerful.

“No,” I said, “but it’s a matter of some importance.  You can tell him it’s in reference to Charles Thurston.”  I hated spilling the beans even before talking to the guy, but I figured I had to play my ace if I wanted to get past the receptionist.

She picked up the phone and called upstairs, speaking in a low voice, and then hung up the phone and looked up at me, the ever-present smile just as big as ever.

“Mr. Silari is in a meeting, but it should be ending soon.  You may go up to his office and wait there if you would like.”

I liked.  She directed me to Silari’s office on the seventh floor.  There was a small seating area outside, and a frowning secretary at a desk guarding the office door.  “Hello,” she said, speaking through a dour scowl.  You may have a seat and wait.”  Then she looked down at papers she was reading, giving me an attitude of what seemed to be a well-practiced, “I’m ignoring you, but I’m still keeping an eye on you.”  Evidently the smiles ended once you got above the main floor.  Maybe it was altitude sickness or something.

In about ten minutes, two men came out of the office and it was easy to tell which one was Silari.  I figured he had to be the guy holding the door and brow-beating the other one.  That poor schmuck was apologizing and promising to make things right as he cowered and backed his way away from the office.

Then Silari noticed me. “Who the Hell are you?”  He didn’t wait for an answer before turning to his secretary.  “Gladys, who the Hell is this?  I shouldn’t have any further appointments.  Did you screw something up?”

Gladys said, “He’s a drop-in, Sir.  Said he had important information about Charles Thurston.  I thought you might want to speak with him.”

“Oh really?”  He turned towards me.  I stood up.  Silari continued talking to his secretary.  “Fine. I’ll see what he wants.  In the meantime, get me some coffee.  Black, and strong.  Not like the crap you got last time.”  It was easy to tell why Gladys wasn’t big on smiles.  Frequent doses of Silari’s abuse probably went a long way to stifle them.

I walked across to him and extended my hand.  “Mr. Silari?” I said, “I’m Nick Sharpe, a private investigator.  I’d like to talk to you regarding Charles Thurston, if I may.”

Silari ignored my hand and went back into the office.  “Fine, but make it quick.”  He took a seat behind a wide, heavy desk.  He didn’t offer me a seat.  I took one anyway.

“So you have some information on Thurston?” he asked.

“Actually, I’m not here with information, but to ask some questions.  You’re aware he was murdered, correct?”

“Hell yes, and I jumped for joy when I heard it.  I can’t think of anyone who deserved being killed more than him.  The bastard needed to die.”

Not quite the reaction I expected.  “Why do you say that, sir?”  I said.

“He was a crook and a thief and a dirty, lying, cheating S.O.B.  That enough reasons for ya?”

“Cheating?”  I wondered if Silari knew about the girlfriend.  “In what way?”

Silari opened a box on his desk and took out a cigar, then lit it from a heavy lighter on his desk.  He didn’t offer me a cigar either, but I left them alone.  Those he could keep.  He blew out a swirling gust of smoke.  “Eleven times in the last six years — at least, if not more — Thurston Motors has stolen my designs.  I’m VP and lead designer here at Fulton, and I should know.  Our innovative new brakes, our new engine components, our body styling — you name it, and Thurston’s pilfered it.  They may have made some small cosmetic changes to try and make them seem original, but every one was our idea.  This past year was the final straw, but I finally have the evidence I needed to nail the bastard.  I presented my case to the board and we’ve filed suit.  We’re going to drive Thurston Motors completely out of business, if I have my way.  But with Charles Thurston gone — and good riddance — I was hoping you were from them offering a deal.”

He seemed pretty smug about the whole matter.

“You saw Thurston in his office before he left for his cabin.” I said.  I didn’t put it as a question.

“Yeah. So?”

“So why’d you go over there at all if there was such animosity?”

He laughed and put his feet up.  “To gloat, actually.  To look that bastard in the eye and let him know that we were going to sue, and that we were going to win.”

“So what was his response?”

Silari snorted.  “He denied everything, of course, and accused me of harassment.  He even claimed to have information on me that would force me out of the industry.”

I paused.  “Did he say what it was?”

“Pfft.  Who cares?  It was all bluster and lies — the only way Thurston knew how to deal with people.”

“Mr. Silari, it appears that you were one of the last people to see him alive.  Did he say anything about his planned trip to the cabin?”

“No.  Only some rude comments about ‘needing some fresh air’ and getting away from me.”  He stood up, the cigar clenched in his teeth.  “Look, you don’t have any information for me regarding a settlement, and there’s not much more I can tell you, so let’s call this meeting closed, alright Mr. Sharpe?”

I stood, and decided to throw one more question at Silari.  “Did you have any information on Mr. Thurston’s…personal life?”

Silari walked towards the door, his arm out as if to herd me out the door.  “Personal life?  Like what?  He was a Commie or something?”

I moved towards the door.  “No, Mr. Silari.  But your beef with him was all business?  There was nothing personal?  Nothing regarding his marriage?”

“No.  Why?  His wife’s a knockout, but I didn’t mess with her.  I never figured what she saw in a snake like Thurston, so I assumed she’s just a gold-digger, and I can get plenty of those on my own.”  He opened the office door and held it open.  “Look, I’ve got other things to attend to, Sharpe.”

I left, and Silarli slammed the door behind me.  At least he wasn’t still ranting at me like he’d done with the last poor sap to leave.  I gave Gladys a smile and a tip of my hat on my way to the elevator.

I figured she deserved it.

# # #

Part 14

I returned to my car and checked my watch; it was almost 4:00.  Warren Powell should be home before too long, so I decided to pay him a visit.  Albert Silari had been a real bundle of joy — Powell couldn’t be any worse.

According to the information Joan had given me, Powell lived not far off of Gratiot in East Detroit.  I headed towards his house, doing my best to make it through the early evening traffic, trying to beat the few traffic lights and narrowly avoiding getting flattened into a speck by the streetcars in the process.

I didn’t understand Salari.  How did he get to be some big muckity-muck hotshot at Fulton Automotive?  He wasn’t much of a jovial Joe; he was a regular vinegar-in-the-vein sourpuss.  I guess he had to have brains, because he sure didn’t get to the seventh floor on stupid charm.

But was he right about Thurston?  Had Thurston Automotive really been lifting design secrets from Fulton?  Silari had sure blown a fuse over it, even if it wasn’t true, but would he actually go as far as to clobber Thurston with a camera because of it?

Maybe.  Maybe not.

Or maybe it depended on whatever dirt Thurston claimed to have found on Silari.  If that wasn’t just so much bluster — Silari had given it the brush off.  Why would he even mention it if he thought there was any hint that Thurston’s threat might be legit?  It at least gave me a few new things to look into, and that was a lot better than staring at the walls of my office, brooding about Margaret.

In the meantime, I’d finish working on the first step — trying to get the scoop on the blonde from the film.  Posing for private girlie pics were one thing, but what evidence was there that she’d actually been romping in the sheets with Thurston?  I needed to find her, and preferably before the cops.  Powell might not know any more about the dame than Salari did, but it couldn’t hurt talking to him.  If nothing else, it might help fill in some of the void in my understanding of who Charles Thurston was, what really happened to him at that cabin, and if — if — Margaret knew about any of it or actually had anything to do with it.

Warren Powell’s house was a clean and tidy bungalow, complete with a well-groomed front yard, flower boxes, and a white picket fence.  The mailbox had “Warren & Vivian Powell” painted on it in a friendly blue script.  The only thing missing was a couple of cute kids and a dog frolicking in the grass.

I parked in front and went to the door, but there was no answer.  There was also no barking dog.  I went back to the car and cooled my heels for a bit; I assumed Powell would be home from work soon, and I didn’t have to wait long.  A man in a sedan arrived within a half-hour, and the car pulled through the gate and along the driveway to a garage behind the house.  I got out of the car and walked around to catch the driver as he came out of the garage.

“Warren Powell?” I said as I came close.

The man’s head jerked up at the sound of my voice and he stopped in his tracks.  “Yes?” he said.  “What do you want?”   Powell was average height and appeared to be about forty years old.  He was a little pudgy, probably from too much desk-sitting.  His dark shirt was stretched tight over a doughy middle that overflowed his suit slacks.  He was also acting jittery.  Maybe I’d just spooked him, but I could tell something was bothering him.  His hands bobbed and fidgeted with his jacket and keys as we stood there; he seemed to have a lot of pent-up nervous energy.

“I’m Nick Sharpe,” I said. “A private investigator.  I’d like to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind, sir.”

This made him even more skittish.  He looked rapidly around, his gaze flitting across the yards of his neighbors.  But he didn’t protest or question me as to what I wanted to know.  He just lowered his voice as if he were suddenly very self-conscious.  “Ok,” he said.  “Let’s go inside where we can talk.”

He led me in through the back door and up some steps into a neat and tidy kitchen.  He dropped his jacket and hat on the table, but we didn’t sit.

“So what do you want to ask?” he said.

“You work for Thurston Motors, correct?” I said.

His hands couldn’t stay still.  They kept sliding in and out of his pockets, brushing off his sleeves, clasping together. “Yes. So?”

“You’re aware of what happened to Charles Thurston, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “I heard. How horrible.”  He walked to the window and looked out, then crossed the room to lean against the stove.  “Are you working with the police?”

“No. Like I said — I’m a private investigator.  Did you work for him?”

“Well, he was the head of the company, so, yes, in a way.  But I work in design.  I’m a mechanical engineer.”

He crossed back to the table to lean against that, hands busy all the time.  The guy was definitely spooked about something.

“I understand you met with him before he left to go to his cabin.  Is that correct?”

“Yes.  There’s a supervision position open in the department, and I’d been interviewing for it all afternoon.  Mr. Thurston was the final person I met with.”

“Did he mention anything about his plans for the trip? Anthing at all, even in passing?”

Powell didn’t take any time to think about it.  “No, not at all,” he said, with a quick shake of his head.

I wanted to ask about a girlfriend, but I decided to try a different direction, to maybe calm the guy down first.  “I heard something about a potential lawsuit from Fulton Automotive about design infringement.  You know anything about that?”

He laughed.  “Everyone in the department knows about that.  Ablert Salari is certifiably nuts.  The guy probably thinks he invented the automobile.”

“So there’s nothing to it?”

“No, not at all. At least not that I know of.”

His hands had stopped fluttering and he seemed a little more at ease.  “Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Powell.”  I took a few steps towards the front of the house and he moved as if to follow, but then I stopped.  “Oh — one more thing.  Was there any office scuttlebutt about Mr. and Mrs. Thurston?  You know, dirt shared at the water cooler about how their marriage was doing?”

I notice Powell take a deep swallow.  “Um, no.  Nothing that I ever heard.”  His hands were fidgeting again.

“No rumors about Thurston fooling around on his wife?”

He shook his head.  “Oh, no.  None that I was ever told.”

I wasn’t buying it.  This guy was acting squirrelly about something.  I thought about being the tough guy and leaning on him to get him to spill his guts.  But I could always do that later.  In fact, I planned on it, as soon as I’d dug a little deeper into his background first.  I decided a call to Johnny was in order.

“Alright, Mr. Powell,” I said. “Thank you for your time.  I may want to speak with you again later, if possible.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said.  “That would be fine with me.”

Another lie.  I walked through the doorway into a small living room on my way to the front door.  Powell was right on my heels.  The living room was cozy and had a comfortable selection of homey furniture. I took stock as I walked through — lace doilies on the end tables; a crocheted rung in front of the davenport, a short bookcase with some books, knick-knacks, and pictures neatly displayed.  Several of the pictures were of Powell and a woman I took to be his wife.

She was good looking, short, and blonde.

I stopped and faced Powell.

“Hey, bud, one last thing — You’re married right?”

He looked as shocked as if I’d just up and slapped him.

“Why do you say that?” he said.

“Your mailbox says ‘Warren and Vivian’ and you’re wearing a wedding ring.”

“Well, of course I’m married,” he smiled, a thin smile.  “You just surprised me with asking something like that right out of the blue.”

“Well, would you mind if I briefly spoke with your wife?”

His head jerked back and forth.  “I’m sorry, but no.  She’s not here right now.  She’s visiting her parents.”

Maybe it was time for the tough-guy routine after all.

# # #

Part 15

I stared at Warren Powell.  His face was ashen, his eyes moving quickly in their sockets as he glanced around, refusing to look me in the face.  His hands wouldn’t stay still; he’d rub them on his pants, then clench them together, and then stick them in his pockets in some sort of nervous hula dance, just without a grass skirt.  But it was clear to me that he was trying to skirt the issue of where his wife was.

“I really can’t think of anything else to help you,” he said, “and I’m expecting someone, so I’m afraid you should probably go.”

My guess was that he could actually help me a bunch, and I was just starting to dig, so there was really no need to rush out the door, at least as far as I could tell.

“So you say your wife’s at her parents’ place?” I said.  “Where about is that, exactly?”

“Vivian’s from Flint originally.  Her parents still live there.  Look, Mr. Sharpe, I’m afraid that I –”

“So how long has she been gone?”

“I honestly don’t see where this matters, I –”

I took a step closer to him.

“Well, about a week,” he said as he stepped back. “But –”

“And when did you last receive word from her?” I said, leaning closer.

“Not since she left.  Now, I’m afraid I must really insist –”

“And that doesn’t seem odd to you, Mr. Powell?” I said.

“No, why?  Her mother’s been ill.  I know Viv’s busy.”

“Mr. Powell, did Vivian know Charles Thurston?”

He paused for a second, his brows lowering, his neck tilting, his lips pursing, and his flittering hands going calm for a moment.  I seemed to have thrown him by the question, like he had some sort of script in his mind he was expecting me to follow, and I just wouldn’t adhere to it.

“No, not at all,” he finally said.  “Well, they’ve met, at company dinners and events, so she knows who he was, but that’s all.  Why would you ask?”

Maybe 100 years in the future, when they figure out how to use those rooms full of vacuum tubes to computerize investigative work, then they might be able to be absolutely certain when a guy’s telling the truth and when he’s lying through his teeth, but all I had to go on was my gut, and my gut was telling me that Powell was telling the truth, at least about Thurston.

But he was sure as Hell trying to cover up something.  I was thinking about how I could drum it out of him when a knock at the door interrupted my thoughts of violence.

Powell raced past me and threw open the front door.  A tall, muscular man stood there.  He was dressed in a well-tailored suit with a ruby red handkerchief in the pocket, and carried a thick walking stick with an ornate gold crown.

“James,” Powell said, “please come in.”

The guy strolled into the house like a two-legged panther, eying me up like I was a wounded lamb as he removed his felt hat.  He dropped the hat onto the chair by the door, but held onto the walking stick.

“Good day.  I don’t believe we’ve met,” he announced in a deep voice, all slick and high-brow like we’d just bumped into each other at the opera or something.

Powell kept the front door open, but stepped over and introduced us.  “James, this is Nick Sharpe, a private investigator.  Mr. Sharpe, this is James Anderson, an acquaintance of mine.”

“A private investigator?” Anderson said and raised his eyebrows, but still held out his hand and I shook it.  He had a grip that was light, but his hand was meaty enough to tell there’d be plenty of force if he wanted to get rough.  “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,” he said.

“How you doing?” I said.

Powell continued on.  “Mr. Sharpe was asking me some questions about Charles Thurston, the president of the company where I work.  Mr. Thurston was murdered.”

“Really?” Anderson said.  “I’d heard about that; just dreadful.  But Mr. Sharpe surely doesn’t believe you had anything to do with it, does he, Warren?” Anderson smiled, a predatory grin that kept all the humor out of his eyes.

Powell laughed, a giddy giggle.  “Oh, no.  Of course not.”

I smiled and said nothing.

“But Mr. Sharpe was just leaving,” Powell said.

Yeah, OK. I’d gotten enough to plant a few seeds of curiosity in my mind, and I didn’t think leaning on Powell any harder would get me any farther at the moment.  But then, I generally try to use more brains than brawn anyway; my tough-guy act is usually just that.

“Yeah, sure,” I said.  “But I may want to speak with again later, if I may, Mr. Powell.”  I slipped my hat on and went out through the door.  It shut behind me as soon as I’d stepped through and I heard the click of the lock.

Powell didn’t even bother to say goodbye.

# # #

Part 16

It was around six o’clock when I pulled away from Powell’s home in East Detroit.  He’d claimed his wife Vivian was at her parents’ house, supposedly in Flint.  I wanted to drive up there right away, but Powell hadn’t bothered to share Vivian’s maiden name, so it would have been pointless to spend an hour to get there and then go driving around in the dark trying to smoke her out.  I needed more information first, on both Powell and his wife.

I went back to my apartment and used the phone to call Joan at home.

“Hello, Princess,” I said when she answered. “How’s tricks?”

“My tricks are fabulous,” she said. “Right now I’m practicing one where I turn a pineapple into a pterodactyl.  Works great, but the hard part is changing the darn thing back.  Now I’m stuck with piles of pterodactyl poop all over my rug.”

I laughed.

“So what’s cooking, Sharpe?” she said.  “Is this another something-for-nothing phone call where you use me to get what you want and then crush my heart by kicking me to the curb afterwards?”

“No, Doll, I swear.  I’ll take you out to a fancy dinner, I promise.  We’ll paint the town red.  I just need you to look up a few things for me tomorrow at the Library.”

She snorted.  “Sharpe, I don’t know why I fall for your lines.  Your promises are usually forgotten as soon as they’re off your lips.”  Then she sighed.  “Alright — but you really owe me, so I want dinner at the London Chop House.  I want to dine with all the blue blood muckity-mucks.”

Ouch.  A meal like that was going to cost an arm and a leg.  But she was worth it, and I owed her many times that.

“Ok.  You got it, Toots,” I said.  “Now, here’s what I need — Remember that Warren Powell from Thurston Motors you dug up dirt on today?  I need more on him, and on his wife Vivian.  She’s supposedly from Flint.  See if you can excavate any info on when they were married, her maiden name, and an address for the parents.  Maybe they put something in the Flint papers, maybe five to ten years ago, announcing that their daughter was getting married.”

“That’s all?  You don’t want me to find Amelia Earhart, too?”

I laughed again.  “Not this time.”  Joan was a hoot.  “But I do thank you a bunch for all you do, Kiddo.  And we’ll have that dinner soon, I promise.”

“Yeah, sure.  In the meantime I’ll just spend my time looking longingly into all the fancy restaurant windows.”

“Thanks, Doll.  You’re swell.  I’ll call you tomorrow,” I said, and then hung up.

Next I called Johnny Mangano and told him I might have a lead on the girl in the pictures.  I filled him in on what I knew and then asked him to see what he could dig up on Powell and his wife, but to not mention that she might be the broad in the nudie pics.  I wanted to keep that under my hat; I didn’t want the cops barging in too soon.

Finally I tried calling Samuel Dotson, but there was no answer at his office.  It was still before seven, and I thought there was a chance he might be there.  I really wanted to talk to him about Margaret, so I drove across town.  It made me feel like I was at least doing something.

Dotson’s law offices were in a new single story, modern building in Highland Park.  He’d been there only about a year. He was working his way up Woodward, and would probably be in Birmingham by 1955.  I parked the car in the lot and noticed that there were a few other cars next to the building.  I figured the front door into the lobby was locked, so I tried the back door, closest to the polished black Cadillac that I guessed was Dotson’s.  The door was locked, so I pounded on it for a good thirty seconds.

Eventually it worked — I’d annoyed them enough for someone to come to the door.  It burst open and Dotson thrust his head out.  He was scowling.  “What the Hell is going on?” he said.  “This office is closed.”

Then he noticed that it was me.  He blinked, and he definitely didn’t seem pleased to see me, but at least his scowl softened to only a frown.

“What are you doing here, Sharpe?  Don’t you know how busy I am?”  He made no move to invite me in.

“Why haven’t you returned my calls?” I said.  “I wanted to know how the case was going, how Margaret is, when she’s going to get out.”

He glanced around the parking lot, then held the door open.  “Come in, but only for a second.”  I followed him in, but we didn’t go to his office.  He stopped right there in the back hall.  “I don’t have time to get into this now,” he said.  “But Mrs. Thurston is doing as well as can be expected, and I am planning on getting her out on bail by tomorrow.  There’s a lot of work to do, but I’m pretty certain I can get eventually her off.”

“Yeah, see?” I said.  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.  I’ve been doing some digging, and –”

“Why?  There’s really no need, Sharpe.  I appreciate all you’ve done for Mrs. Thurston, but I’ve got the case well in hand.”

I was floored.  I’d figured he’d been busy, but I also thought he’d welcome any information I could give him.  I hadn’t expected him to try to brush me off.

“Come on, Dotson,” I said.  “What kind of lawyer are you?  Don’t you want to know what I’ve found?  It might help the case.”

He sighed and shook his head, like I was nothing but some fink off the street, hounding him for spare change.  “Sure.  But make it quick — I need to finish the motions I’m going to file with the judge in the morning.”

“Do you know who Warren Powell is?”

He raised his face and his eyes met mine, and he slowly shook his head.  “The name’s not ringing a bell.”

“He works for Thurston Motors. He was in the Thurston’s office before Thurston took off to the cabin.”

“And so?”

“The guy’s married, but it seems his wife’s suddenly gone AWOL, and on top of that, she looks like she just might match the description of the broad on the film.”

Dotson’s eyebrows rose.  “You know what’s on the film?  Where’d you get that information?”  Dotson suddenly didn’t seem so eager to get rid of me.

I didn’t volunteer my source — that was between Johnny and me.  “These Powells kind of make you curious don’t they?”

Dotson paused, like he was thinking, then he went back to being impatient.  “Yeah, but there’s hundreds of reasons why the guy’s wife might not be home.  And there’s a million dames who might be the one on the film, so you’re just wasting your time on wild goose chases if you try to go after the floozy wife of every deviant you meet.”  He grabbed my arm and opened the door.  “Look, I am seriously pressed for time here, Sharpe.  Once I get Margaret out, we can sit down and I’ll fill you in on what’s really happening with the case.  Then I may need you to do a little investigating, on real leads.  Wait a day or two and I’ll call you.”

Dotson had maneuvered me out the door before I could even say anything.  I guess I was too confused to protest too heavily, and the door closed on me.

I didn’t get it.  But Dotson was a decent lawyer, and he’d certainly been talking to Margaret.  Maybe he already had inside information that would clear her, like he said, so he wasn’t interested in anything I could bring him.

I got back in my car and drove away.

Maybe Dotson was right about it being a wild goose chase, and so I’d go home, grab a bite and have a nightcap or two and mull it over.  Then I’d see how I felt in the morning.  Maybe I’d be able to talk to Margaret once Dotson got her out, and then it would make sense.

But with nothing else to do in the meantime but sit and wait, I’d probably still prefer to chase geese.

# # #

Part 17

Joan Dawkins was a master at her craft; I heard from her before 10:00 AM.  She’d been able to look through her resources and find a six-year old Flint newspaper announcement for the marriage of Warren Powell to Vivian Bennett, daughter of Russell and Nancy Bennett.  From that she was also able to find a Flint address for the Bennetts, and even an apartment address for a Vivian Bennett.  The apartment address was current.  Joan also managed to give me phone numbers for both places.

I lavished Joan with praise and appreciation, but she told me to cut out my empty smooth talk and to follow through for once on my promise of a fancy dinner and a night on the town.  I swore I’d take her out for a wild time soon but she put me on the spot and made me set a date.  So a week from Saturday at 7:00, we’ll be at the London Chop House followed by some stomping and jitterbugging in a few big band clubs around town.  Joan made me swear I wouldn’t forget her this time. I expressed my shock that she’d even consider such a thing.  She snorted and hung up on me.

I didn’t mind taking her our.  I’d dropped the ball on her too many times already and I owed her for more favors than I could count.  I just had to figure out who else I could owe, because I was going to have to borrow the bucks to take her somewhere as swanky as the Chop House.

I called and made the reservations anyway.

Then I tried both the numbers she’d given me, but neither one answered.  I wasn’t surprised about the apartment.  My guess was that the apartment listing was a mistake anyway — maybe it was an old place Powell’s wife had lived in before they’d gotten hitched and it had never been taken out of the directory.

I tried touching base with Johnny, but he wasn’t there when I called either.  I suppose I could have waited around for him to get back to me like he said he would today, but I hated the thought of sitting around — I could feel a rising need to move.  Joan’s leads had given me something to go on, even if they did mean driving over an hour to go to Flint.  But what else was I going to do?  Sure it might be a wild goose chase, but at least I wasn’t chasing random geese.  Joan’s tips would send me somewhere specific, and even if it didn’t pan out, it was movement.

Before I left, I made one last phone call to Dotson’s office.  OK, maybe I was being a pest, but I wanted to find out the latest on Margaret and if she was going to be released.  The secretary said Dotson was out of the office, and there was nothing else she would tell me, other than to promise to tell Mr. Dotson that I wanted to hear from him.  I wouldn’t hold my breath.

It had only been a few days since the last time I’d driven up to Flint, but it seemed like ages ago.  So much had changed.  The only common element was me thinking about Margaret for most of the trip.  With the nudie shots that had been on the camera, I suppose I could see a reason why any broad would want to rub out her husband.  But I still couldn’t get my thoughts around Margaret doing it, even if Thurston had been fooling around on her.  I knew it was a long shot, but if Valerie Powell turned out to be the “cute, short, blonde” bombshell on the film, then maybe she’d be able to fill me in on some details.  Hell, maybe she was the killer.  It wouldn’t have been the first time the other woman had flipped her wig because her two-timing Joe refused to leave his wife.

I wanted to go to Vivian’s parents first — that’s where Powell had said she was, after all — but the apartment address was right on the way.  I figured a five-minute stop and a short talk to the confused current tenant would quickly eliminate that lead, so I swung by there first.

The apartment was one in a small apartment building on the south side of the city.  It was nothing fancy, but at least it didn’t look like a dump.  There was a fresh coat of paint on the steps and the entry door was solid and swung smoothly on oiled hinges.  There was no lobby; just a narrow hallway with a row of locked mailboxes along the wall.  I scanned the boxes and was surprised to see a tag with ‘Bennett’ over the box for apartment 3-B.  The printing sure didn’t look that old.  Maybe there was another Vivian Bennett in Flint.  I took the stairs to the third floor, the creaking stairs blending in with the sound of a crying baby coming from the second floor.

Apartment 3-B was the second door on the right.  I knocked hard and waited, expecting to maybe see an old woman peek out through a crack, maybe even the old aunt of Powell’s wife, who she might have been named after.  But there was no answer, and as I stood there I caught a whiff of something rotten.  I stuck my nose closer to the door.  It was definitely coming from inside.  It was like raw meat that had been left sitting on the counter for a couple of days, but I was getting a feeling it wasn’t someone’s forgotten hamburger patties.

I knocked again and, not surprisingly, it went unanswered.  I thought about kicking the door in, but I’d already had a run-in with the cops after finding Thurston’s body and didn’t want to waste more time sitting in the pokey explaining to a bunch of flatfoots why I’d busted in the place.  But I couldn’t just leave; I needed to see what was in there.

I went back downstairs and checked the mailboxes.  The box for apartment 1-A had “Abbott / Superintendent” printed over it, so I knocked on that door.  A chubby guy in a faded grey shirt with “Abbott” sewn above the pocket answered.  He had white hair and glasses.

“Help you?” he asked.

“Mister Abbott? My name is Nick Sharpe.  I’m a private investigator looking into a missing person report.  Could you tell me about whoever lives in apartment 3-B?”

He squinted at me.

“Nope,” he said.  “I don’t go around spilling my guts about my tenants.  It’s bad for business.”

“I understand.  But it’s urgent, and truthfully, I think the tenant in that apartment might be hurt.  Do you have a pass key?”

He jingled a large ring of keys clipped on to his belt.  “Course I do.  Wouldn’t be worth a damn as a super if I couldn’t get into the apartments, now would I?”

“Look, Mac, I’m not trying to pull a fast one on you.”  I pulled out my wallet and showed him my card, but I didn’t give it to him — I was down to my last one.  “I’m legit.  Now, if I could just taken 5 minutes of your time so we can go up and have you poke your head into the door for 3-B, I’d appreciate it.  Just to ease my mind that no-one’s hurt in there.”

He rubbed his chin.  “Have you tried knocking?”

I was getting impatient.  I sighed and nodded.  “Loud and long, and there’s no answer.  But something’s not right inside there.”

“Then maybe we should just call the cops, don’cha think?  Let them do their jobs.  Could be some loony inside there.”

“You think so?  Is the tenant typically unstable?”

He snorted. “Hell no, least not where’s I’ve noticed.  Just a single gal.  Pretty little thing.  But Hell, she’s gone for weeks at a time, and when I do see her, it’s usually with some highfalutin guy who drives a big fancy car.  Maybe he’s the loony.”

So much for not spilling his guts.  I tried not to smile.

“Listen, I’ll go with you, so you don’t have to go alone.  Just to make sure nothing’s wrong.  I’d hate to have to disturb the police over nothing.  But if anything’s not kosher, we’ll just leave and call for the black-and-whites.  Deal?”

I think his curiosity was getting the better of him.  He shuffled from foot to foot for a moment, then nodded as he made up his mind.  “Alright.  Just to make sure nothing’s wrong,” he said as he stepped into the hallway.  I followed him to the stairs.  “Only for the sake of maybe helping one of my tenants.”

He scowled when we reached the door of apartment 3-B.  “Hoo-boy, what stinks?”

I didn’t answer, even though I had a good idea.  He unlocked the door and pushed it open.  The stench swept over us like a tidal wave slapping up against some breakers.  Abbott gagged and pulled away, probably heading to call the cops.  I pulled out my handkerchief and covered my mouth and nose, then stepped inside.

The apartment was small but nicely decorated.  There was a couch, a padded chair, and a coffee table with a bottle and a couple of glasses, one of them with the booze sill in it, and the other knocked over on the table with a stain on the linen cloth underneath.  To the left was the kitchen area.  A small drop-leaf table stood in one corner.  The counter was red tile, but like I’d guessed, there was no forgotten hamburger sitting out.

I went into the bedroom on the right.  Face-down on the bed was the body of a woman, her arms thrust out wide, and a mottled mess where half her head had once been, dried stains and pulpy matter all over the silky bedspread.  It looked like a shotgun blast had done the trick.

I assumed I was looking at Powell’s wife, and probably also the broad from Thurston’s camera.  It was almost like one of the pics; she was nude, blonde, short, and curvy.

She just wasn’t so cute any more.

# # #

Part 18

At least I wasn’t in a cell.

But I was still sitting in a Flint police station with nothing to do to kill the time, waiting to get through the chorus line of cops who wanted to talk to me.  The city boys had responded to the apartment super’s call and those uniforms had interviewed me first at the scene, and then the detectives, and then I was given the invitation to come down to the station to flap my gums even more.  I generally try to be an obliging guy, so how I could refuse?

After a couple of hours of saying the same things over and over again, going over every detail blow by blow, I was still sitting in an interview room, waiting for the State Police to show up so I could have another charming chat with Detective Sergeant Alden.

There’s nothing like a dead body to help motivate the cops and stir up their itch for some stimulating conversation.

I’d called Dotson’s office but hadn’t been able to get him.  His secretary said she thought he might be in court, although he had nothing written on his schedule.  I wondered if he was busy getting Margaret released, but the secretary either didn’t know or wouldn’t tell me.  She did say she’d continue to search for Dotson and would have him call the Flint Police Department as soon as she connected with him.  Not that it would help me — I was hoping I would be gone from here long before she found him.

The door burst open and I again saw the smiling face of Sergeant Alden.  He stood for a moment in the doorway, smirking at me, and then with a shake of his head and a sigh, he came in to the interview room.  Detective Jansen, one of the Flint detectives who’d wanted me to play blabbermouth earlier, came in behind Alden.

“Mr. Sharpe,” Alden said as he took a seat at the table.  “It seems every time you come to Flint, you stumble across a body.  I may have to ask you to stay away from our fair city.”

I started to mutter a smart-alecky comeback, but thought better of it.  I didn’t want to fight with these guys.  I wanted to get to the same answers they did.

“Look, Alden,” I said, “I could say something smart here, but I don’t want to waste time in a thrust-and-parry word-play dance.  Let’s just be straight with each other, OK?”

He raised his eyebrows and widened his smile.  “Of course, Sharpe.  I’m all for that.  So let me ask you straight up:  You have anything in particular you want to get off your chest?  Maybe feeling a twinge of guilt over something you might have done recently?”

I laughed.  “Nope.  Sorry.”

“Yeah, I figured as much, but I had to take a shot. So how ’bout you just fill me in on what brought you to that apartment today?”

“I’ve already gone over it twenty times with Jansen and his boys.”

“Humor me.  Bring it up to legal age by making it 21.”

“Fine.  Here’s the short of it:  I was given the name of Warren Powell by the secretary of Charles Thurston.  Powell works at Thurston motors and had interviewed for a promotion with Thurston on the day that Thurston had left to come up to the cabin.  I found Powell’s address and went to talk to him.  The missus wasn’t there, and Powell seemed a little skittish about it, which struck me as odd.  He said Vivian was visiting her parents.  I then discovered that Powell’s wife was originally a Miss Vivian Bennett from Flint, and her parents still had an address up here, so I decided to come up if she was there and if I could talk to her.  But it seems there was also another apartment address for Vivian Bennett, and even though it was a long shot, I thought I’d stop there first, just because it happened to be on the way.  I figured it was just an old address, but what do you know? Turns out Goldilocks was still there in the bed.”

Alden nodded.  He looked down and picked at a fingernail for a minute, then brought his face up to meet me eye to eye.

“So why do you care enough to go to all that fuss?” he asked.  “Someone paying you for the investigation?”

“Nope.  This was just for my own curiosity.”

“You got a habit of interfering in on-going police investigations, Sharpe?”

“No, Alden.  I just don’t think Mrs. Thurston’s a killer, even though the Detroit Police seem content to try and pin it on her.  That means the real killer is going to walk away scot-free.”

“Violates your sense of justice, does it?” Alden said, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair.

“Yeah. That’s it.”

“Well, she may still be good for it, and now maybe two charges, in spite of what you might think.”

“And what do you base that on?” I found my voice rising, and I fought to control it.  Alden gave another smirk.

“Well, if she’s going to rub out the hubby, it makes sense to rub out the other woman, too, don’t you think?”

“So you certain this broad was someone that Thurston was fooling around with?”

“I’m not going to reveal details about key evidence, Sharpe, but I will tell you that we’ve been busy little bees.  We have positively identified the body as one Mrs. Vivian Powell, formerly Vivian Bennett of Flint.  We also already have sources that can put her together with Charles Thurston on multiple occasions, and even have reason to believe that Mr. Thurston was paying for the apartment.  So, believe what you want, but in situations like these, the wife is always a good suspect.”

Alden uncrossed his arms and leaned forward onto the table.  “We’ve spoken with Detroit police, and they’re going to hold on to her for a while longer, even though your friend Dotson was screaming to get her released.  We’ve also put out an A.P.B. for Warren Powell, and expect to have him in a Detroit stationhouse for questioning very soon.”

Alden locked his gaze onto me.  “That enough for you?” he said.

I thought for a moment.  Alden hadn’t mentioned the film, but I wasn’t going to say anything about it.  No need to tell him I knew about it and it only made his point stronger anyway.

“Ok, sure,” I said.  “All that may give motive, but it still doesn’t mean that Mrs. Thurston killed the dame or her husband.”

“That may be true, Sharpe,” Alden said.  “But we do think that she and Mr. Powell are both good places to start.  Don’t you agree?”

I just looked at him.

I couldn’t argue, but dammed if I was going to agree, at least about Margaret.

# # #

Part 19

Johnny Mangano sat across from me, his square jaw rising and falling as he devoured a hefty portion of steak and eggs.  The small café was filled with the early-morning breakfast crowd, and the background noise of clattering silverware, clinking glasses, and murmuring voices was a steady drone. It did little to ease the throbbing in my temples.  Too little sleep and too much stewing over Margaret and the murders of her husband Charles Thurston and his hide-a-honey Vivian Powell had given me a pounding headache.

Johnny looked up at me between bites and gestured with his fork.  “You should eat something,” he said.  “You got enough problems; you don’t need to add malnutrition on top of them.”  He laughed and returned to his half-eaten steak.

I just shook my head.  Coffee was plenty.  I thought anything heavier would only upset my stomach.  Yesterday had been a long day and I felt like I’d been run through the wringer.  I’d stayed at the Flint police station well into the evening.  Alden and the cops had continued hounding me with questions, and I’d even gotten the chance to ask more than a few of my own, but we never got past the point of them leaning towards Margaret or Warren Powell as the killer or killers, and me being certain that Margaret wasn’t involved.

But Warren Powell had me wondering.  He seemed like he should be an upstanding professional guy, but he’d been a pretty edgy jitterbug when I’d seen him; it was clear he’d been really keen about giving me the brush off as soon as possible.  So I’d like to learn a little more about the guy, and I was hoping Johnny could give me some information to go on.  I’d just have to claw him away from his steak to get it.  Either that or wait until he was done, and knowing Johnny, it was wiser to wait.

After the Flint cops and the State police had finally given me the boot, I went to the address I had for Vivian Powell’s parents, but there was no answer when I knocked, and no sign that anyone was home.  I figured the death of their daughter had been enough to make them change their residence, at least until the heat blew over.  I couldn’t blame them for that.  I wrote a note asking them to call me and stuck it in their mailbox, in front of the business cards from several reporters.  But I wasn’t going to hold my breath waiting for them giving me a jingle, even though I’d improved my odds by pocketing the reporters’ cards.

Johnny finished his steak and eggs, set the silverware on the plate, and took a deep drink of his ice water.  He ate like a horse, but I never saw him drink anything but ice water.  It was just one of his quirks.  He wiped his face with the napkin and folded it neatly onto his plate, covering the silverware.

“You done?”  I said.  “Now can we talk?”

“Sure,” he said.  “But you could have talked the whole time.”

“Not much I could say.  Everywhere I go I either get nowhere or find another dead body.  So all I got is questions.  I’m hoping you’re the man with some answers.”

Johnny smirked and shrugged.  “I talked to some people downtown like you asked, but there’s not much I can tell you, I’m afraid.”

“So what do we know?”

“First, it’s clear that Thurston and the Powell dame weren’t random killings.  They’re obviously related.”

I nodded.  Johnny was starting at the beginning and stating the obvious, but that was the way he worked, and I knew it was pointless to try and rush him.  It would only irritate him and waste time — he’d just go right back to the beginning anyway.

“In fact,” he said, “the Flint cops have already found plenty of witnesses and evidence that put Thurston and Mrs. Powell together on multiple occasions. It also looks like Thurston was paying for the apartment she was found in.  It was rented several months ago, so this has been going on for a while.”

“Not to mention the film,” I said.

Johnny nodded.  “Not to mention the film.  Vivian Powell was clearly the broad in the nudie pics.”

I exhaled and shook my head.  A husband stepping out on his wife was nothing new, and it did a lot to put food on my table as a private gumshoe.  But I was frankly surprised that any man would turn away from Margaret Thurston.  Vivian Powell had been attractive enough, but it still made no sense to me.  It was like Johnny tossing out his steak and asking for chopped liver to go with his eggs.

“And Margaret Thurston and Warren Powell are the suspects,” I said, “and Margaret’s still sitting in a Detroit cell even though she hasn’t been charged yet.”

“Not any longer,” Johnny said.

I gaped at him. “You mean they’ve charged her?”

“Nope.  Dotson was making a huge stink, saying the cops either needed to charge her or release her.  The window for questioning and protective custody had closed, so with Powell looking like the chief suspect, Dotson was able to get her out yesterday afternoon.”

My spirits picked up.  I’d finally be able to talk to her, and she could help some of this make sense.  Then I had a thought.  “Do the cops think Powell planted the film at Margaret’s place to try and take the heat off him?”

Johnny shrugged. “Won’t know for sure ’til the police talk to him, and he’s suddenly decided to take a powder.”

“So what do they know about Powell?”

“Not much.  As far as they can tell so far, he’s a model citizen; never even gotten a speeding ticket.  They’re digging into relatives and known friends, but my sources had nothing they could offer yet.”

Damn.  That was little help.

I rubbed my chin.  I’d tracked down Vivian Powell before the cops had found her.  Maybe I’d get lucky with her husband, too.  If I didn’t find him dead — so far I was batting a thousand in the stumbling-over-stiffs department.

But first I wanted to talk to Margaret.

I grabbed the check and told Johnny I’d get it.  It was the least I could do for all the information he’d given me, and in my current financial state, I was all for doing the least I could do.  I told Johnny he could leave the tip.  He smiled.  “Say hello to the Thurston broad for me,” he said with a wink.  I hadn’t said a word about her, but Johnny was pretty sharp.  Too sharp, sometimes.

The drive to Margaret’s place went quickly, even through morning traffic.  I parked in front, went to the door, and rang the bell.  I tried collecting my thoughts so I wouldn’t sound like a babbling idiot when I talked to her.  I had a lot of questions, but I also didn’t want to hound her too with too much too fast.  I wanted to know if she had any hint about Vivian Powell and her husband.  I wanted to know if she knew anything about Warren Powell.  I wanted to know if she was Ok, if I could help, if there was anything she needed from me.  I wanted to let her know that I was doing all I could to find the real killer.

The door opened and I was disappointed to see it was the maid.

“Hello,” I said.  “Is Mrs. Thurston available?”

“I’m sorry,” the maid said.  “She can’t come to the door.”

“Is she ok?”

“She’s resting.”

I paused.  Was she alright?  “I do hate to disturb her, but would you at least please tell her I’m here?  My name is Nick Sharp, remember?”

“Yes sir, I do.  Missus knows who you are, too, and she saw you drive up.  But she said to tell you, ‘thank you for all your help, but there’s nothing more she needs,’ and that she was resting and couldn’t come to the door.”

I didn’t know what to say.  My mouth was all open and ready, but nothing came out.  I didn’t understand.

“Thank you again, sir,” the maid said, and started to close the door.

I considered forcing my way in.  The maid was big, but I thought I could take her.  But then what would I say to Margaret?

The door shut and I heard it lock.

Maybe Margaret really did need to rest.

Or maybe someone had put the wrong thoughts about me into her head.  There were some Detroit cops who didn’t think highly of me, and the feeling was mutual.

What would it take to be able to see her?  And why did it matter so much to me?  I’d known her less than a week.  Thinking about it only made my headache come back. I had to do something — anything — to try and at least understand. Or, better, to get her to talk to me.

I walked back to my car and sat in it without starting the engine. What could I do to change things?

Maybe I could find Powell.

# # #

Part 20

I drove past Warren Powell’s bungalow in East Detroit.  There was no sign of life.  The garage was closed, the drapes were pulled, and a rolled-up paper was sitting to the side of the front step, probably left right where it had been thrown by the paperboy this morning.  I didn’t pull up to the house though; I’d seen a dark sedan parked in a line of cars at the end of the block with a guy hunched down in the seat, pretending to read a newspaper.  The cop had been nice enough to have brought his own paper instead of stealing Powell’s, but I had no doubt the flatfoot would still try to grab me if I got too close to the house.  Or tail me, and either way, I didn’t need the fuss of dealing with more cops at the moment.

It looked like Powell’s residence wasn’t going to be much use.  I doubted if I’d get much help at Thurston Motors, either, and odds were the cops had already been all over Powell’s office and the secretarial staff.  I needed to enlarge my list of options if I didn’t want my hopes of finding Powell to go swirling down the drain.

So I paid another visit to Joan Dawkins at the Detroit Library.  I didn’t take much of her time; I only wanted one address and she was able to quickly find it in the city registry.  I also let her know that the reservations were all set for the London Chop House, and assured her again that, while it might seem that I tend to take her for granted, I was going to make good on this promise, and she was going to scream for joy when she saw what a fancy night on the town I had planned.

I just needed to plan something first.

But in the meantime, I had a murder suspect to find.  I left with the address for James Anderson — the guy who’d shown up at Powell’s when I had been there.  It was a long shot, but at least it might be an avenue the cops hadn’t already gone down.

Anderson lived in a small two-story house off of Van Dyke, in a neighborhood that had a mix of small homes, neighborhood stores, and a local tavern or two.  It wasn’t upscale, but it had enough room between the houses that people could still breathe.

There was no garage, although several cars were parked in the street in front of Anderson’s place.  I parked a few doors down and began walking back towards the house, a well-maintained yellow home with a hedgerow along the walk.  As I neared the home, I heard the mechanical grind of a rusty hinge as a car door swung open across the street and behind me.  Then a gun shot.

I immediately dove for the deck, barely noticing the eruption of shredded leaves from the hedges in front of me from where the bullet tore through them.  There were two more quick shots as I rolled to the curb next to a car, hopefully on the other side from where the gunfire were coming from.

I hadn’t brought a gun with me.  Despite what the radio serials make detective work out to be, no-one had taken a pot shot at me since I’d gotten hit in Salerno, and I’d never needed to fire a gun since getting out of the army.  As I hunkered down behind the car, making sure I hadn’t been plugged, I heard a car-door slam and a motor rev and tires squeal as a car raced off.

I peered up through the glass of the car I was behind and saw the tail end of a dark sedan swing around the corner at the end of the street.  Maybe it had been Powell.  Or maybe someone else had thought I was worth some target practice.

I was just glad they evidently needed more practice.

# # #

Part 21

I pulled myself up from the ground.  Whoever had been in the car taking pot-shots at me seemed to have gotten the urge to scram.  That was fine with me.  I brushed myself off and looked around the neighborhood, and seeing a few faces peering out of windows, I guessed that the cops were likely already on their way.  I needed to move fast if I wanted to stay ahead of them, so I moved around the hedges and up to Anderson’s house.  I tried looking in the windows but the curtains were closed, so I went to the front door.  I didn’t bother knocking, figuring that getting shot at gave me a little leeway, but the door was locked anyway.

I ran around towards the back of the house and came to a side door off of the driveway.  I tried the knob, and this one was unlocked.  I pushed it open and came up a few steps into a kitchen area.  The house well well-kept and the kitchen looked spotless other than some dishes in the sink.  I moved down a short hallway and came to a living room.  It was dark from the closed curtains, but I could tell someone had been here recently.  Pillows from the couch were on the floor next to it, and on the far side of the room, next to an upright piano was a side table with a cocktail glass with several ice cubes still in it and a glass half-full of red wine.  I picked the glass up.  I don’t know if it was Merlot or Chianti or what, but whatever it was, it was still cold.

I heard a thud in the next room, like someone bumping against something heavy.  I moved next to the door and listened.  It was faint, but I was pretty sure I heard something rustling around inside.

Curiosity and adrenaline got the better of me and I pushed the door open.  Inside, there was a small bedroom.  A man was at the window, working to open it.  He turned and faced me, a gun in his hand.  It was Powell.

“Stay where you are,” he said.  The gun provided a good argument for following along.

“Look, Powell,” I said.  “The cops are probably already on their way here.  You can’t get away.”

“Just get back,” he gestured with the gun.  I raised my hands and took a step backwards into the living room.  He continued jerking the gun at me, and I continued backing up.  He followed me into the room.

“You don’t understand,” he said, sweat running off his pale face.  “It’s not like you think; I’m not some sort of evil villain.”

I nodded.  “Sure, sure.  It’s all a simple misunderstanding.”

“Don’t humor me!” he shouted.  “You think I killed Vivian, don’t you?  You think I murdered Mr. Thurston, too, right?”

I tried to shrug.  Hard to do when you’re reaching for the ceiling. “I don’t know what to think.  Maybe you can explain it to me.”

“You don’t know anything.  Why would I kill her?  I loved her, at least as much as I could.  And Mr. Thurston was going to make me a partner.  I’d given him some brilliant work; the archetype of a whole new car design.  He was going to make me rich.”

He was gesturing wildly with the gun, his eyes wide, his pudgy frame jiggling, and sweat stains forming on his shirt.

“Look, Mac,” I said, trying to calm him down.  “It’s ok.  I understand. Sometimes it just happens; a wife will get a little bored and decide to stray, and –”

“Shut up, you idiot.  You just don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, a weird, twisted smile on his face.

I didn’t get a chance to get him to explain more.  The door burst open with a sharp crack as the jamb was shattered, and three cops rushed in with shouts of, “don’t move!” and “drop the gun!”  Powell swung to face them, raising his gun, and the cops fired.  I dove to the side as the shots slammed Powell back against the wall.  The cops fired eight or nine times; Powell never used his own gun.  I watched Powell slide down the wall, a trail of bloody red ribbons left on the pale blue plaster as he fell.

The scent of spent gunpowder was heavy in the small room as more cops crowded in, including several from through the kitchen.  A few guns were pointed at me, and I raised my hands.  But it was clear that Powell had been the target.  Either they had gotten a call about shots fired and were focused on him because he’d had the gun, or they had come looking specifically for him.

But now they’d taken care of the murderer of Vivian and Thurston, in all likelihood.  Powell had been trying to deny it, but that was probably just the desperate ravings of a man at the end of his rope.

Probably.

But I still felt a pinprick of doubt.

# # #

Part 22

As usual, Johnny Mangano’s voice on the phone had been hard to read.  But I was pretty sure he was joking when he told me that my girlfriend was officially off the hook.

“She’s not going to the chair,” Johnny had said. “She don’t even need to worry about spending time in the joint.  She’s going to walk away without a hint of suspicion.”

He meant Margaret Thurston.

But she wasn’t my girlfriend.  Not by a long shot.

Still, I was relieved when Johnny said that both the Detroit and the Michigan State police had cleared Margaret.  They had determined that Warren Powell was solely responsible for killing his wife Vivian and Margaret’s husband Charles Thurston.  It made sense.  It was clear that Vivian and Thurston had been fooling around for quite a while, so why wouldn’t Powell have wanted to rub out both of them?  Powell had been seen in Thurston’s office the day Thurston went to his cabin north of Flint, and then no-one had seen him for several days.  That fit the timeframe of the murders.  He was big enough to have used the camera to kill Thurston. More importantly, Powell had a gun when police arrived, and Johnny said that ballistics had matched that gun to Vivian’s shooting.

Pretty cut and dried.  Any child could figure it out.

I should have been happy that Margaret was in the clear; thrilled that everything had been solved, and truth and justice had once again won the day.

But I wasn’t.  Two things were still bothering me.

The first was that neither Margaret nor Sam Dotson, the lawyer who’d first sent her to me to help her find her missing husband Charles, would take my calls.  They were avoiding me like I was some sort of pipe-wielding thug in a dark back alley, looking to smash them on their noggins and pirate away every red cent they had.  I’d even gone to Margaret’s place looking to talk to her, but the maid had said Margaret was staying at a hotel downtown and had refused to let the cat out of the bag as to which hotel it was.  Dotson’s secretary was just as useless.  She wouldn’t tell me a thing, but with her it wasn’t surprising. She was downright pedantic when it came to following Dotson’s rules; because he’d told her to say he was unavailable, that’s what she said and she wasn’t going to give an inch.

But I didn’t like getting the brush off.  Not one bit.

While the sudden silent treatment was pretty blatant, the second thing bothering me was much more subtle.  Like a tiny spider stuck inside my shirt, it kept biting at me — a little persistent pest that kept sinking a sharpened fang of doubt into my subconscious.

What if Powell hadn’t done it?

He’d seemed almost off his rocker with panic before the cops had plugged him, and I’d been around the block enough times to know that there no such thing as a guilty man in any prison cell, at least according to them, but maybe there really was something to his denials.

Maybe.

Of course, he’d never be able to tell me anything more about it now, because he was on ice in the morgue on his way to taking a long dirt nap and maybe fertilizing some daisies or a nice maple tree or two in the process.

I wondered about James Anderson, though.  He and Powell had clearly been close friends.  Powell had even been hiding in Anderson’s house.  But Johnny said the cops had taken in Anderson and grilled him pretty hard.  He hadn’t seen the light of the sun for a couple of days, but all he would say was that he didn’t know anything, although he was certain that Powell wouldn’t have done it.  He didn’t know where the gun had come from, and he couldn’t give Powell an alibi for the time Thurston and Vivian Powell had been rubbed out, but he just knew Powell couldn’t have been a killer.

Not much help.

Maybe I could get more out of him.

I drove back to his place and knocked on the door.  It was late evening, just after sunset.  Anderson’s neighborhood was quiet in the growing dusk; a barking dog several yards away and light traffic noise were the only sounds.

It took several minutes of knocking, but Anderson finally opened the door.  He cracked the door and gave me a scowl.

“You another police officer?” he said.  “I’m afraid there’s nothing more I can tell you.”

“No, Mr. Anderson,” I said.  “The name’s Nick Sharpe.  I’m a private investigator.  I met you at Warren Powell’s home, remember?”

He paused and then nodded.  There was no smile of recognition.  “Ah yes, indeed, Mr. Sharpe.  I do recall.  You were also here when the police killed Warren, weren’t you?”  His eyes were stony as they stared at me.

“Yes I was.  May I ask you a few questions about the Powells?”

He opened the door wider and stepped into the opening.  He was wearing a loose pair of pants and an undershirt.  He crossed his arms, accentuating the heft of his muscles in the process.  His frown deepened.

“To what end?” he said.  “There’s nothing I could tell you that I haven’t already told the police, and they didn’t believe me.  In any event, Warren is dead.  Nothing we discuss will change that.”

“That’s true, Mr. Anderson.  And the cops are satisfied with the way things turned out.  They have a suspect who was found in hiding, with clear motive and without any alibi, in possession of one of the murder weapons, who made motions as if to use it on them when they arrived, and so now that suspect is deceased and the cops have closed two murder cases in one neat little package.”

“So again — what purpose would any discussion between us have?  Are you working for someone in your investigation and simply looking to accumulate a few more hours of billable time?”

I smiled.  Everyone’s a comedian.

“I’m not billing anyone,” I said.  “I simply want to know the truth.  Before the cops barged in, Warren insinuated that he had no reason to kill either of them.”

“And you believe what he said?”

“Let’s say that I think there are some pieces missing.  For instance, when I first arrived at your house, someone took a couple of shots at me before taking it on the lam in a dark sedan.  You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

He smirked.  “Not at all, Mr. Sharpe.  I wasn’t here.  But I will tell you that I loathe weapons. I wouldn’t have allowed Warren to stay here if I’d known he had a gun with him.”

“Yet, in spite of the gun, you believe that he didn’t do it, right?  Why?”

His expression softened but he didn’t respond or move.  I spoke again.  “I’m not convinced he did it either, Mr. Anderson,” I said.  “Perhaps you can help me understand.”

He sighed.  “Why don’t you come in and we’ll speak for a few minutes.”  He opened the door wider and stepped aside.  “Off the record and only in memory of Warren.”

I followed him in to the house.  He shut the door but didn’t offer me a seat.  He faced me, his jaw set.

“Mr. Sharp, you seem like you’re more interested in the truth than in the easy solutions.  But I have much to risk by sharing the truth with you.”

I started to speak but he cut me off.

“No.  It’s not what you think.  The truth is that Warren did not kill his wife or his boss.  I can’t prove it, but I know it in my heart.  The police are all wrong as to the motive.”

“What do you mean?”

“Warren and Vivian were very close, but it wasn’t the marriage you would probably imagine, Mr. Sharpe.  He…  We…”  He paused and looked away.  I didn’t press him.

He swung his face back to me.  His eyes glared. “It’s not easy to live in fear because you could lose your job, your freedom, and everything you’ve worked to build up, simply because of who you are.  You don’t know what it’s like to be hated and judged a sick deviant.”

A deviant.

Suddenly it all clicked.

Anderson went on.  “Warren wasn’t happy that Vivian had chosen to satisfy her needs with his boss, but Warren knew it would be a short affair.  All her others had been, and she had always returned to Warren.  The marriage worked for both of them.  It gave him public respectability and it gave her stability, offsetting her wild nature.  Warren and I…  Well, we’ve known each other a long time.  And while I couldn’t tell the police why, I know that Warren would never kill Vivian or his boss.”

“I see,” I said.  “Thank you for your honesty, Mr. Anderson.  And I think you’ve given me the missing pieces I needed.”

Anderson’s face lightened.  “You think you’ll be able to clear Warren’s name?  Without having to drag it through the mud?”

I looked at him.  “You prefer for people to think he was a crazed murderer than to know the truth?”

He looked downward for a moment and then met my gaze again.  “No, Mr. Sharpe.  I don’t.”

I nodded, then thanked him again and left.

There was another defender of the truth I wanted to speak with.

# # #

Part 23

I’d had an epiphany while talking to Anderson, and there was someone I eagerly wanted to talk to, because I had a few questions for him.

Dotson.

All the things that were bothering me kept coming back to him.  He was avoiding me.  It seemed like he’d gotten pretty chummy with Margaret, and now she was avoiding me, too.  And something he’d told me before about Powell now kept ringing in my ears, and I wanted to pick his brain about it.

I stopped at my office.  First, I checked the phone book for Samuel Dotson, Attorney at Law.  It had his office listed, but luckily there was also another entry with a Grosse Pointe address.  Perfect — he and Margaret Thurston were practically next-door neighbors.

The second thing I did was retrieve my revolver.  I pulled it out of the locked file cabinet, loaded it, and slipped it into the pocket of my jacket.  I’m no gun-slinger, but I have to admit the heft of it felt good.

I swung by Dotson’s office, just to see if he was there, but the place was locked, dark, and quiet.  The black Caddy was still parked in the lot.  After seeing it again I realized how much it looked like the dark sedan that had sped around the car after I’d had a few rounds popped at me outside Anderson’s house.

Damn.

Things were falling into place; my mind was becoming downright engorged with revelations.  How could I have missed them all before?  I guess it’s just too easy to look past the people who you worked with closely.

I sped over to Dotson’s home address.  It was a white plaster-covered two-story manor, surrounded by a tall, spiked iron fence.  There was extensive landscaping — potted ferns and flowers were arranged around the yard; thick ivy climbed up one end of the house; and an ancient, wizened elm grew in the front yard, with white benches arrayed around it.  Lights were on outside, and a long, white car sat in the driveway.

Margaret’s.

I parked outside the gate and pushed it open by hand, then went up to the entrance.  For a half a second, I thought about knocking, but then decided I wanted Dotson to be caught off-guard.  If I gave him any time to think before talking to him, he could wrap even the wildest lie in lawyer mumbo-jumbo and make it shine with sham verisimilitude. I lifted the gun out of my jacket and tried the door.  It was unlocked.

The door creaked faintly as it opened and I stepped inside, onto a stone-tiled entryway.  I could hear soft voices coming from down the hall and I moved that way.  The low flicker of candlelight coming from the room ahead that seemed to imbue the stone floor with the cold chill of a mausoleum.

Or maybe it was just my nerves.

I turned the corner into a sprawling living room.  Candles were burning — white tapers in long holders set on tables around the walls.  A heavy stone-faced fireplace was lit, adding more dancing light to the scene.  Dotson and Margaret sat next to each other on an overstuffed leather sofa.  Her hands were in his; he was eying her like a wolf ogling a sheep.

I raised the gun and stepped into the room.  “Well, ain’t this cozy?” I said.

They both turned to look at me. “Mr. Sharpe,” Margaret said, and then gave a slight smile.

Dotson scowled at me like he wanted to jump off the davenport and eviscerate me with his bare hands.  “What in Hell’s name do you think you’re doing, Sharpe?” he said.  “Barging into my personal home and bringing a gun.  Are you insane?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.  “But then, if I was, I would probably still say the same thing, right?”

Dotson didn’t reply.  I moved closer.  “There are just a few questions I have, Dotson.  And for some reason, both of you seem to be unavailable.  So I thought I’d try and catch you at home.”

Margaret spoke first. “Sam felt it would be best to not return your calls,” she said.  “To give you some time to recover.  He said you’ve been so traumatized by all you’ve been through.  The bodies and the shooting, I mean.”  The firelight twinkling in her dark eyes almost held me transfixed.

“Be quiet, Dear,” Dotson said to her, patting her hands and setting them in her lap.  “I’ll handle this.”

He stood and I gestured with the gun. “Stay where you are,” I said.  “Dear,” I added with a sneer.

“Sharpe, there’s no reason to bring a weapon to my home,” he said.  “We’re all friends.  We don’t need these histrionics.  Please put the gun away; Margaret’s been through enough.”

“Just shut up for a moment, Dotson.  I only want to ask both of you a few things; just to see how your answers fit into the puzzle I’ve got in my head.  If I’m wrong, I’ll put the gun away, offer my deepest apologies, and leave you lovebirds alone.”  I jerked the gun towards Dotson.  “In the meantime, plant yourself for a moment.”

He lowered himself to the sofa and crossed his arms.  Margaret just looked at me.

“First,” I said. “What do both of you know about Vivian Powell?”

Margaret spoke first again.  “Only that she was evidently sleeping with my husband.  I might have met her at a company Christmas party or something, but other than that I didn’t know her.  I never picked up a single hint that Charles was cheating on me.”

I looked at Dotson.  He shrugged.  “Nothing.  She was evidently some floozy that Charles had connected with.  Vivian Powell hardly seemed like his type, but I can’t believe he would turn away from Margaret for anyone, so there’s no telling what his type was.  She might have been some sort of warped dominatrix for all I know.”

I kept my eyes on him.  I agreed with him about finding it hard to believe anyone would cheat on Margaret.  “You had no idea Thurston was involved with Vivian?”

“None at all.”

“What do you know about Vivian’s husband Warren?”

Dotson held out his hands, palms up and shrugged again.  “Never met the man and didn’t know anything about him.  It seems that he was obviously upset that his wife and Charles were involved.  Upset enough to kill them both.”

Margaret didn’t answer.  But I didn’t look at her.

I studied Dotson’s face.  There wasn’t a twitch, or a furtive look, or any indication that he was telling me anything but God’s own truth.

The man lied well.

I told him so.  “You’re lying, Dotson.”

“What do you mean,” he said, trying to feign surprise.

“When I saw you at your office the other day, you brushed me off when I mentioned Vivian Powell.  Told me I was wasting my time on a wild goose chase if I ‘went after the floozy wife of every deviant I meet.’  That struck me as an odd way to describe someone you’d never met.”

“Calling her a floozy?  There was the film of her posing nude.  I think that qualifies.”

“No, not her, Dotson.”  I held his eyes.  “Him.”

“What are you talking about?”  Dotson said.  “You’re crazy.”

“You called him a deviant.  Why use that term, if you didn’t know anything about him?”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying, Mr. Sharpe.” Margaret said. I turned to look at her.  She was beautiful, her dark hair shimmering in the firelight.  Thurston had to have been insane to even consider fooling around on her.

Dotson leapt off the couch and slammed into me, pushing my arm to the side.  I held onto the gun as he grabbed for it.  We fell, tumbling onto the thick carpet. I pulled the gun forward as he tried to wrench it from my hand.

It went off.

Margaret screamed.  I shoved Dotson off me and rolled to the side.  He tried to crawl but collapsed and fell over.  There was blood on his chest, seeping through his shirt.

He was rasping as he tried to breathe.

Margaret jumped up. “I’ll call an ambulance,” she said, rushing out of the room to find the telephone.

“I wish I’d killed you when I shot at you,” Dotson said in a gasping voice.  “I wanted to remove you like a cyst; a fast laparoscopic surgery. Just a quick, small cut. No mess. No scarring.”

“You killed Thurston and Vivian, didn’t you?” I said.  I wanted to hear the truth from him.

He didn’t say anything.

“Come on, Dotson.  Spill the beans.  You’re hurt bad. Admit it, while you still have time.”

He closed his eyes, and then nodded.  “Thurston was scum.  Margaret deserved better.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t plan on it at first.  I went to the cabin just to talk to him about the Powells.  But that tart was there, and they were playing peek-a-boo with the camera.  I guess I snapped.  I beat him with the camera and then made that wench take me back to her apartment.”  He winced and gasped.  “But I had to do it.  For Margaret.”

The blood was getting thicker, spreading fast down his shirt.  I tried pulling off my jacket and pressing it hard onto the wound.  It didn’t seem to help.  He gasped louder.

“How did Powell get the gun?” I asked him.

“It was one I’d had for years.  I left it at Anderson’s house and then called the cops.  I wanted them to find it.  Like they’d found the film I left in Margaret’s room.  But I guess Powell found it first.”

“That’s the other thing.  Why did you try to incriminate Margaret with the film?”

He coughed.  Blood came out of his mouth in a fine spray.

“I knew it wouldn’t be enough to convict her and I would take over her defense and put it all on Powell.  Margaret would see me as her rescuing knight.  Then she’d start to care about me.”  He coughed again.  The blood was heavier.  “It almost worked.”

I looked up.  Margaret was standing there.  The shock on her face let me know she’d heard enough.

Dotson coughed and gagged.  His eyes closed and he exhaled as his head slumped forward.  I felt for a pulse.  It was gone.

It looked like the cops were going to find me with yet another body on my hands.

# # #

Part 24

Margaret Thurston sat next to me with one shapely leg tucked under her, poised on her stiff-back couch, in her plush living room, in her luxurious home.  The lighting was low; her angelic face was bathed in a gentle glow.  She had changed into a slinky and silky dressing robe which now curled around her, revealing her supple ankles.  Her deep, dark eyes were turned in my direction, her moist lips were parted slightly, and she seemed rapt and eager to marvel over whatever profundity I might spew out of my mouth.

I was her saviour; her exalted rescuing knight, who had saved her, body and soul, from the demonic clutches of the evil murderer Samuel Dotson.  All hail the avenging victor, Nick Sharpe!

I let my gaze glide over her lounging form, relishing each tantalizing curve.  She was beyond beautiful.  Her presence was more intoxicating than six shots of high-powered liquor.

I could easily see why Dotson had fallen for her like a ton of bricks; why he’d lost himself in a twisted urge to somehow win her over by knocking off her philandering husband and his shack-up honey Vivian Powell.

In fact, I might want to make it sound like I’d been the tireless gumshoe on a relentless quest for justice and the truth, but the honest truth was that I’d only been doing all I did because I’d put her on a pedestal myself.

Margaret had only to look at you and you’d also be willing go to the ends of the earth to keep her from a killer.  Or maybe even to kill for her yourself.  Either one — whichever it took to be next to her.

And now I was.

But somehow, something had changed.  Maybe I’d had too many bodies show up at my feet.  Maybe I’d seen enough of the insanity that men were willing to commit when they were around her.  Maybe I’d somehow become repentant of all the lecherous thoughts I’d been having about her, now that they might actually come true.

Or maybe I just realized that a two-bit P.I. like me had no business with a ritzy broad like Margaret — Anything we started tonight could never last.

I wasn’t sure.

But I was sure of what I wanted to do.

I took Margaret’s hands in mine, thanked her for a wonderful meal, told her I’d always remember her, and wished her well.  Then I stood up and grabbed my hat and coat.

She looked at me with gaping eyes, like I’d suddenly gone insane. In some ways it felt like I had, but I think it was more like I’d come to my senses.

I smiled to myself as I stepped out to my car, light-hearted and amazingly eager to leave.

Because I had a date with a librarian.

# # # END # # #