Hearse of a Different Color (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries) (43 page)

All eyes in the room were on Daniel Kingman. Slowly he unballed his fists and looked up, searching for a sympathetic face. He didn’t find any. He settled on me. I was the only one not staring daggers.

“Richard was getting away with it again. Like he always did,” he said calmly. “After all those years of taking care of his ‘problems,’ now he had me hooked up in another one of his secrets. And this one he was actually thrilled about. I can’t explain it, but once he adjusted to the fact, Richard was very happy about this new daughter. That doesn’t mean he thanked me for what I had done. He was angry about that. And somehow … I don’t know. Somehow my taking this girl on as a patient and having to keep this secret for him … It was all just becoming too much for me. I wanted to hurt him.”

“Correction. You wanted Ann to hurt him,” I said. “But why didn’t you just tell Ann the truth about Helen? She would certainly have had plenty to blow up about hearing that her husband has had a love child all the years of the marriage.”

Kingman locked his gaze on me. He didn’t dare let himself look elsewhere. Especially not at the woman seated right next to him. “First she would have blown up at me.”

This time I heard the word that escaped from Ann Kingman. “Pathetic.” Daniel Kingman lowered his head and stared again at his hands. Then he brought them up to his face and began to weep into them. Hands that giveth and hands that taketh away.

Russell Bennett again broke the uncomfortable silence.

“So, come on now, what are you getting at with all of this? Are you saying that Dan killed that girl? That’s completely ridiculous.”

I ignored him and instead addressed Ann, “Are you aware that your husband made some changes in his will several months ago?”

“This is the first I’ve heard about it,” she answered.

“So, the will that your lawyer produced after the funeral … it made no mention of Helen Waggoner?”

“Not a peep.”

“And yet your husband did change his will. I happen to know this for a fact. He had been taking care of Helen and her son. He was planning to move them into a new apartment. He put Helen in the will. Just so that you know, he didn’t alter any provisions concerning you. Those arrangements remained intact. What he did was to slice away a portion from his other children, from Joan and from Jeffrey, so that he could give something to Helen. That’s only equitable, after all.”

“Richard’s will never mentioned that woman,” Ann said again.

“No. I’m sure you’re right. It didn’t. The will that you saw didn’t. It was the one that your husband had drawn up before he even knew that Helen Waggoner existed.”

“Then how—”

“Michael Fenwick,” I said. “I’m sure that your husband gave no indication to Fenwick at the time he requested some changes in his will that he was going to be doing anything drastic. That would be why Fenwick gave it over to Constance Bell to handle. Once he reviewed it, however, and saw that this Helen Waggoner person was cutting into Joan and Jeffrey’s portion of the pie … Well, I guess a sense of loyalty to the family moved in and … How do you want me to put this, clouded his professional judgment.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning he put his foot into the shit, Ann. He started a ball rolling that ended up getting Helen Waggoner killed.
That’s
what I mean.”

“Michael was a good friend of the family,” she said simply, as if that fact alone forgave everything that transpired.

“A good friend of the family. I gather that he was,” I said icily. “Since high school, in fact. Michael Fenwick spent a lot of time in this house when he was a teenager, didn’t he? He and Jeffrey attended St. Paul’s together, am I right?”

Ann waved a hand lazily.

“Then Fenwick went on to the University of Virginia. That is where he went, isn’t it? UVA?”

“Correct.”

“Didn’t one of your children also attend Virginia, Ann?”

“I believe you know the answer to that question already, Mr. Sewell.”

“You’re right. I do. I’m just looking for someone to volunteer a little goddamn information here, Ann. I know it looks like I’m having so much fun, but I’d be just as happy if we could end this.”

“Then end it,” she said curtly.

“Did Jeffrey attend Virginia?” I asked.

From behind me, still facing the window, Joan Bennett spoke up. “You know full well that he didn’t.” She turned to face the room. Her arms were as tightly crossed as if she were wearing a straitjacket. “Jeffrey went to Washington and Lee.
I
attended UVA.”

“And you went to St. Paul’s too? St. Paul’s for Girls, I mean. That’s the one down the hill from the Boys School, right? You dated Michael Fenwick in high school, didn’t you? His picture even appears on your senior yearbook page.” I hadn’t seen this, but Jay Adams had seen it. He had seen a lot of other things too, during his deskside investigation. “The two of you decided to go to Charlottesville together. If I’m not mistaken, there was even a brief engagement? That one of you then broke off?”

Her head nodded almost imperceptibly.

“You’re the one who got Michael’s firm and your father together, aren’t you, Joan? Constance Bell had that wrong. She told me she thought it had been Jeffrey. But Fenwick was much more your old chum than he was your brother’s. And so, when he got this news about someone named Helen Waggoner nosing her way into your and Jeffrey’s inheritance, he came running to you, didn’t he? Not to Jeffrey. You didn’t know who Helen Waggoner actually was any more than your mother did. I doubt she even shared with you her erroneous information that your father was mixed up with this young woman. Though I’m sure you were able to leap to that conclusion all on your own. I’m guessing you didn’t like it much, yes? This woman coming in and stealing money from you and your children? Then suddenly, your father dies. What exactly happened Joan? Did you simply freak out? Or were you calculating about the whole thing? You got Michael Fenwick to pull the old will, the one that didn’t mention Helen. And then what? Were you worried that whoever this Helen Waggoner was she was going to rise up and make a stink? Expose your father’s extracurricular activities and demand her part of the pie? Was that what you were afraid would happen? I’d love to know just how much of it was you wanting more of your daddy’s money and how much of it was you wanting to protect his reputation. Why don’t you tell all the good people here just which it was?”

“Why don’t you just go to hell?” she said calmly.

“Give me one more minute first. So, how did it work? Did you ask Fenwick outright to find someone who would”—I tipped my head in the direction of the couch—“take care of this little problem for you? Did he agree? I gather he was the type to go the extra mile, so to speak. Was it his idea, Joan, or yours? Did he tell you that he could dig around and come up with someone who would be willing to kill Helen so long as the price was right? And what was the price anyway? I’m dying to know.”

She said nothing. She had her mother’s steely reserve; I could feel it from all the way across the room. I glanced over at Vickie, who stood up from her chair and crossed over to me. I turned away from Joan Bennett and addressed my question to the entire room.

“Let me ask my question again. From earlier. Does anyone in this room want to take responsibility for the death of Helen Waggoner?”

Joan Bennett uncoiled her arms and stepped calmly over to where her husband was sitting. She made a small gesture that her husband read as her wanting a cigarette. He pulled a pack from his jacket pocket and handed one to her, along with a plastic lighter. Joan Bennett looked over at me as she was flicking the lighter.

“Sure. I’ll take it.”

That’s when I gave Vickie the signal to remove her sunglasses. Russell Bennett was the first to see it, or at least he was the first to react. “Oh, my God!” Cool, calm, calculating Joan was a beat behind him. She hadn’t even exhaled the first puff of her cigarette; her jaw literally dropped and the smoke curled over her teeth like dry ice.

“In that case,” I said, taking hold of Vickie, who was shaking now, “you really ought to apologize to your sister.”

A gasp came up from the couch. Ann Kingman.

“Oh, my God in heaven.”

N
o pun intended, but Billie did a bang-up job with Jeffrey Kingman. Most of the injuries he had sustained from his accident—that’s what it was, an accident—were internal, not counting, of course, the lower abdomen, where the steering column of his car had impaled him as the car tumbled down the icy embankment. His face had been left relatively unmarred, and Billie had been able to fashion it into the peaceful-sleep contour that is so soothing to the bereaved. Jeffrey’s glasses had been snapped in two, a clean break on the bridge that Billie was able to repair with a teardrop of Super Glue. Billie hadn’t had the chance to get around to repairing the eyeglasses until after Vickie and I left to go over to the Kingman house. When Vickie went down to the basement on her own—slipping quietly out of the apartment while Billie was puttering about in the kitchen—Jeffrey Kingman’s glasses (in two pieces) were sitting on a shelf, along with his wristwatch, which had survived the crash and was still ticking. And so Vickie had been able to see, when she pulled the stiff sheet away from Kingman’s face—the little star-shaped dot on the side of his nose, the small, bluish birthmark that was hidden from sight so long as Jeffrey Kingman was wearing his glasses. The small, oval nosepiece of his glasses came down right on top of the nearly insignificant blemish, just as the nosepiece of Sam’s sunglasses came down over the very same blemish on the very same location on the side of Vickie’s nose. That’s what she saw when she went down to the basement. That’s why she screamed.

It will forever remain anyone’s guess as to what Ruth Waggoner had had in mind when she decided to identify Helen to Richard Kingman as his bastard daughter. Perhaps she was still out to jerk poor Helen around. Old habits die hard, after all. Perhaps seeing her brief lover of so many years ago, Ruth Waggoner suddenly seized the chance to jerk
him
around, letting the man know that there had been a child of his out there all these years but failing to tell him that this particular woman, Helen, wasn’t really the one. Like I said, it will remain anyone’s guess. I asked Vickie on the drive back to her house if she thought that perhaps her mother had, in fact, simply decided to give her daughter a break after all these years. To finally just give Helen a father, even if it was not her true one.

“Look how it almost worked out,” I said. “Helen got the little princess treatment from Kingman, even if only for a few months. Maybe your mother was hoping it might work out like that. It’s possible, isn’t it? She knew she was dying. Maybe your mother had all the best intentions in the world.”

Vickie tried to buy it, but she couldn’t. “He was my father, not hers. It’s like that game I told you about that Helen and I used to play. But she cheated. They both did. Helen didn’t even know she was cheating. At least that’s what we have to think. But who knows. Maybe she knew full well. She stole my name once, didn’t she? Why not my father?”

Joan Bennett confessed. She told Kruk that Michael Fenwick had been informed by Popeye that if he could come up with fifty thousand, Popeye could arrange for Helen to be “taken care of.” Fenwick had been leaning on Popeye concerning a number of violations at the club as part of an effort to coerce the old man into selling the place to a group of investors who were eager to get their hands on the property. The lawyer promised that the harassing would all go away if Popeye could come up with a person who didn’t mind killing a total stranger in return for a nice chunk of change. Half up front, half on delivery. Popeye knew these kind of people. And apparently Popeye had taken his role of middleman seriously. He had arranged for this Bob character to kill Helen, promising him all of twenty thousand for the job. The other thirty thousand, Popeye planned to pocket for himself. But it all fell apart on the day of Richard Kingman’s wake. Joan Bennett told Kruk that she had had a change of heart—a panic—and had asked Michael Fenwick to call off the hit. She said she figured she would meet with Helen in person and see if she couldn’t buy the woman off. Joan figured that the twenty-five thousand was gone, but the rest of the money she would add to the pot in her attempt to get Helen to quietly go away. Her hope was that her father’s lover—so she thought—might not know that she had been added to the doctor’s will. But when Michael Fenwick contacted Popeye in an attempt to cancel the contract, the club owner had a difficult time tracking down the killer, who by that point had probably already picked up the Pontiac Firebird in Federal Hill and was on his way out to Sinbad’s. Popeye left him several messages. By the time the hired gun retrieved them, Helen was already in the passenger seat next to him. Dead. This was when Bob came storming into The Kitten Club and threw Popeye all around the office. The guy insisted he get paid the balance of the money for the job. Popeye balked, saying it wasn’t in his hands. With a little persuasion, he gave up Michael Fenwick’s name to Bob. Fenwick had been on his way to the Kingman wake when his car slid on the ice down next to the Jones Falls. His wife had stayed home. According to Joan, Michael told her that Sheila had taken a phone call from someone who needed to get ahold of her husband right away. An emergency. She told the caller that Michael was at a wake at a funeral home in Fells Point. The caller must have been Bob. The disgruntled killer proceeded to Fells Point where he dropped off Helen’s body on the front steps of Sewell & Sons Family Funeral Home. The message was clear. The job is done. Pay up. Or else.

Only, Fenwick wasn’t even there. As he had told Constance, he was at Mercy Hospital waiting for X rays. Joan Bennett reached him on his cell phone and told him what had happened at her father’s wake. Mercy Hospital, as it happens, is only a few blocks from Commerce Street and The Kitten Club.

Michael Fenwick had been able to tell Joan this much of the story. Kruk stitched the rest of the story together. Bob, he determined, had taken his issue directly to Fenwick’s apartment in Mount Vernon a few days later. Dissatisfied with the response he received, he killed them both. The man must have learned the full amount of the intended payment and realized that Popeye was holding out on him. A few days later he walked into Martick’s and put four bullets into the old man. That took care of anyone with a direct connection to Bob’s involvement in Helen Waggoner’s murder. Kruk concluded that Bob had no clue about Joan Bennett. If he had, the bulldog detective said to me when I went down to headquarters to receive my tongue-lashing, she’d be dead.