1 The Reluctant Dick - The Case of the Not-So-Fair Trader (40 page)

The three detectives and Tiffany stand stock still at the back of the room. They seem to be enjoying my little show-and-tell.

“This is when one of you, probably D
iane
because the others are too scared, take
s
out a syringe, plunge
s
it into his vein and load
s
him with a concoction of drugs. Heck, you shoot enough drugs in him to open a pharmacy. The deed is done
.
Alvin’s not moving, a clump of rubberized humanity on the floor. The plan now is to get him home and make it look like a drug overdose.” I pause. “Next time, if there is a next time, spread his cheeks and inject him in his butt crack, so someone at an autopsy can’t see the needle prick on his arm.”

No one is arguing
. E
ach participant sits back in his or her chair, pretending this isn’t happening. “I’m pretty sure it is Clayton
’s
and Brewster’s job to get daddy downstairs
,
into a car and back to home
-
sweet
-
home in Kenilworth, because it had to be someone who knew to take the back way in.”

I clear my throat. I want to make sure I get this next part as clear as possible.

“You park on the sand
. G
ood move, no tire tracks. You lift Alvin out of the car, get him to the edge of the trees and bushes and what does he do? He comes to.
H
e’s alive. You stand back as Alvin flounders around to the bushes at the edge of the sand and vomits.”

Clayton’s mouth drops open a bit. Brewster swigs his beer.

“He’s not dead. You can’t believe it. If you two would have done your homework, you would have known that most druggies do vomit before they die, but you didn’t learn that. You figure daddy is making a miraculous recovery. You probably look at each other as Alvin vomits what’s left in his stomach with
what do we
do now?
on your faces. You argue. ‘You kill him. No, you kill him.’ I have no clue how long this goes on, but neither of you ha
s
the guts to finish the job. So,
“
m
o
mma’s boy
”
Brewster gets on the phone and calls mom. Doris calls Joan. Joan calls Lizzy. This is what I meant about technology
. A
ren’t cell phones wonderful?

“Lizzy, the only good criminal in the group, immediately cuts a deal to get adopted into the family for a full share. She knows the perfect man for the job and in no time whatsoever, Augie arrives in Kenilworth.”

“I didn’t go nowhere and I didn’t do nothing and I don’t know none of these people,” Augie says
. S
poken like a true criminal.

“Augie, my good man, we have pictures of you at your motel with Lizzy in your room.” This is a lie, but how would he ever know
?

“I want to see
a
lawyer,” he says.

“Doris has one that will work for a hundred dollars,” I tell him. “And I think you’ll like his suit.”

I take a moment, move to Christina and ask, “You and Lizzy didn’t share a bed that Friday evening, did you?”

“We certainly did,” Lizzy belts out.

“You said you weren’t feeling well, got up in the middle of the night,” Christina says.

I move behind Augie. “So Augie shows up before daylight, has some choice words for the idiots who can’t finish the job, picks one rock out of the lined path and whacks Alvin right on the forehead. How difficult was that? But suddenly, there is a whole new problem: How do you make this look like an accident? The overdose idea won’t work anymore, nobody would believe a Kenilworth mugging and y
ou
can’t drown him in the lake.

“Necessity, being the mother of invention, one of you comes up with a brilliant idea. Alvin is dragged along the path to the base of the rock garden, where he starts to twitch, which leads everyone to believe he has once again cheated death
. S
o Augie drops a boulder on his head. Finally, with Alvin’s brains draining on the path, there is no doubt whatsoever.” I take a deep breath. “Whew.”

No comments or questions or arguments from the assembled.

I change my tone of voice. “This reminds me of a joke. One guy tells another that he had a fire in his factory and got a million dollars from his insurance company. The other guy says he had a flood in his factory and got two million. The first guy asks, ‘How do you start a flood?’”

Only my fellow detectives and Tiffany laugh.

“As is the case with most on-the-spot criminal decisions, something again is amiss. The crushing idea wasn’t as complete as first thought. It doesn’t look natural that one boulder could have rolled off and landed so perfectly on Alvin’s skull. More must be done, but what? I can imagine the three of you standing there, trying to come up with the next great idea.

“You give up. Augie calls Lizzy, the junior architect, and she comes up with the idea in no time. She
gives you directions
,
and  the wall of rocks
came
tumbling down, covering Alvin’s body. The deed is done. It is time to go home, except for one thing. One of you remembers Alvin has a pack of cash in his pocket
;
and to leave that behind would be a crime. So, you uncover the rocks from the left side of his body, remove the wad, split it up
,
and now you’re finished. Talk about a long night.

“I will admit, you did an excellent job cleaning up
. A
ll wore gloves
be
cause nary a fingerprint was left
,
and you even smoothed the path back to the car so no footprints were evident. Bravo, good work. The party’s over.”

Clayton says, “This is the most absurd idiocy I’ve ever heard.”

“And now comes the real tragedy of the story. The next day, Lucy, the dog from next door takes a break from playing fetch to eat Alvin’s drug-filled
,
puke and less than an hour later Lucy the Labrador drops dead. Killing Alvin is bad enough, but killing a dog
. T
hat’s cold.”

Norbert holds Lucy’s autopsy report, “What was in Alvin ended up in the dog. Got to be careful where you eat,” he says.

I pause. “Guess what happens next?”

“Oh, tell us Sherlock, tell us,” Brewster says.

“Worry sets in, which is usual in a case involving amateurs. So much worry, one of you actually places a phone call to the house that evening to be sure all went well.”

“That was me on the line, if you didn’t know,” Tiffany says. “At first I thought you were a telemarketer.”

“Next day, you see on the news and in the paper the Kenilworth PD has labeled it an accident and the c
h
a-ching floodgates will open. All that is left is
for
Alvin’s money
to be
disbursed.” I take a deep breath.

“What you didn’t know, but Heffelfinger and Waddy did,
is that
before Alvin died, he not only changed his insurance policy, but also removed the bulk of his cash from his account at Northern Trust. Why?”

I pace around to Millie and Heffelfinger. “Because there is one string still hanging out there: Joey Villano. The money is Joey’s reward for all his fine work.”

It is Horace’s turn again on the hot seat. “Heffelfinger sees three things. One: a personal four-hundred grand payday;
t
wo: the last link to the one guy who can blow the lid off the scam
; and
three: personal retribution for Joey being the one who discovered and told Alvin his accountants were stealing him blind.”

“You are out of your mind,” Heffelfinger says.

“You followed Joey to the condo when he went to pick up his money, killed him, and stuffed him in the chest. To make it look like a break-in you trashed the place, but not very convincingly.”

“I did not,” Heffelfinger screams.

Millie sits contrite
. S
he looks up at me and says, “I didn’t have anything to do with killing anyone. I want you to know that.”

The weakest link in the chain breaks. It is the first confession of the day. I have a feeling there will be more.

“Thank you, Millie. I never thought you were the type.”

“How can you say such a thing?” Heffelfinger continues to scream.

“He was a nice boy,” she says
,
“
a
little overweight, but a nice boy.”

“Surprise, surprise, there is no
400k;
but you do find a portion of that amount. You figure Alvin screwed Joey too
. I
t certainly would be in character, wouldn’t it?”

“I want to see a lawyer,” Heffelfinger says.

“You visit his house in Kenilworth, flip off the alarm and trash it, looking for the rest of the money missing from the chest.”

Heffelfinger clams up tighter than, what else, a clam.

“At the funeral you all play it pretty cool, but people are getting antsy. You can’t wait to get your money and split. At Conway Waddy’s office, the day of the disbursement, it all falls apart.”

The detectives in the room begin to position themselves for the inevitable.

I continue on a roll. “It must have been one painful moment when you all heard that Alvin had outsmarted the lot of you. Not only was there no money in the corporation
,
but the life insurance policy holds a rider that could tie up the money forever. Four-hundred grand has disappeared. Most of you are already broke. Instead of one for all and all for family, it becomes every man and woman for his or herself. Let the other guy take the rap, and you take the money.

“Doris, figuring Heffelfinger knows more than anyone else, casts her lot with him and phonies up some of the most obviously forged travel documents imaginable. Clayton tries to pin it on Lizzy. D
iane
is so pissed at Brewster
, that
she plants drugs on him and has him busted. Alexis wants her money out of the deal, so she and D
iane
finagle to tap into whatever is left of the estate. Lizzy and Augie are the maddest of all
. T
hey did the deed and have only Christina’s money to show for it
;
and they have to split the amount with Didi. One of you even has the audacity to write a phony confession note to throw us off tract. Talk about an amateur stunt. And to make matters even worse, there is a sting at the Board of Trade. Then you read in the newspaper that an eyewitness has popped out of the woodwork. What a set of revolting developments this has become.”

I stand at the head of the table where I began
,
and look at the players. What a sorry bunch of losers.

“The scramble is on. Millie decides to sell her house,
and
move to Florida with a sister she doesn’t have. Doris
,
or Conway Waddy
,
rehires Joan’s hit man to miss Brewster this time, to throw off suspicion o
n
them
selves
. Heffelfinger leaves town for the Cayman Islands, where he transfers the money from the account he shares with Millie to an account of his own. Lizzy and Augie have to hang around and hold out
hope for a disbursement of the I
nsurance money or at the least wait for Christina to get hers, so they can clean her out again. Clayton’s company is broke and in danger of an IRS investigation of his accounting practices. Brewster starts drinking again, which for Brewster is par for his course. Didi remains in Boston, happily spending Christina’s money.

“The fact is, there is no way that Richmond Insurance will ever pay out
. T
he police have changed the case from accidental to murder,
and
the IRS and FBI are involved
. O
h, what to do, what to do
?
And that’s pretty much brings us to the next party, which is today. Go ahead, have some cake.”

I allow my stew to simmer for a minute or two before I add a pinch of salt. “And by the way, Agent Romo had your cell phone companies list all your calls over the last few weeks. Cell phone technology is great
;
but also is the technology of recording which calls you made. We needed something to tie it all together and your record of calls certainly helped. I would like to thank the four of you for being on the
f
amily
p
lan, which made it especially easy to link this all together.”

There is but one innocent face in the crowd around the table
, and
she speaks up. “How could you people do this?”

“He deserved it,” Doris says, as good as a confession in my book.

“If you would have had the guts to kill him,” Brewster says to Clayton, “
w
e would have been home free.”