Some Like It Hot-Buttered (7 page)

“Swell,” I answered. “We’ll put that in the ads.”

7

The cops threw Dad and me out on the street with a comment about “contaminating the crime scene,” so we had a quick lunch then parted ways. I was covered with speckles of paint, and Dad looked like he could be teeing off at Augusta. Some guys have it, and then there’s the rest of us.

I rode home and took a shower. Small white dots fell off me, giving the strange impression that I had a weird skin rash I could wash off, but I felt better when I was done.

O’Donnell had actually ordered me not to return to my own place of business without asking his permission first, which was both insulting and understandable. But what he expected to find there was a mystery. Another one I could add to my list.

This left me with remarkably little to do. I had eaten already. Most people I knew were at work. The two young people I worked with on a daily basis were either at school or missing and presumed guilty. My wife was married to someone else. Daytime television can be hazardous to your mental health and, worse, didn’t include baseball this afternoon.

I considered calling the Midland Heights Police Department, but I couldn’t think of a plausible reason to ask if Officer Levant was on shift right now. She wasn’t listed in the New Brunswick area phone book, which meant nothing. But calling the cops as a dating technique was a little too blatant a tactic for a guy just sticking a toe back in the pool after a divorce.

So I turned on the computer, scoured through my address book, and came up with the number for Margaret Vidal, which I dialed carefully, on the assumption that she would know if I misdialed her number the first time. She’s a stickler for accuracy.

“Homicide. Sergeant Vidal.”

“Ah, Meg, you charmer,” I said. “The very sound of your voice is enough to thrill me down to my socks.”

That voice added a growl now. “Is this my ex-husband?”

“Not yet. Meg, it’s Elliot Freed.”

I could hear the relief spread through the phone. “Jesus, Elliot! Stop sounding like my ex-husband. You practically gave me an embolism. What’s up? Working on a new book?”

Meg had been my most reliable source of cop info when I was writing
Woman at Risk.
The first female detective on the Camden, New Jersey, police force, she let me follow her through a homicide investigation that I’d rather not describe, as it interferes with my digestion when I think about it. She’d answered every question, and had only gotten testy when I did something unbearably stupid—which was about once an hour—and we eventually achieved the kind of closeness that two people who know they’re going to drift apart in a very short time can have. We held nothing back.

I’d seen her divorce coming, and if she’d seen mine, Meg had been kind enough not to point it out. If she hadn’t been six years older than me and endowed with good taste (and if we hadn’t both been married to other people), we might have been an item, but we weren’t, and never considered it. That gives a man and a woman a real freedom to be themselves.

“If I ever tell you I’m writing another novel, Meg, you have my permission—no, my sincere request—to come and blow my brains out with your service revolver.”

“I’d never do that, Elliot,” she said warmly. “They’d catch me.”

“You could plant another gun in my hand, make it self-defense, ” I suggested.

“It’s sweet how you’re always looking out for me,” Meg answered. “So, you’ve called me for the first time in two years, and we’ve bantered. What do you want?”

I gave her a very quick rundown on my activities, my ownership of Comedy Tonight, and Vincent Ansella’s untimely departure from this earth. “So here’s what I want to know, Meg: how do you investigate a homicide?”

I could hear her brow furrow. “Okay. Get a pencil and paper, and write this down, because it’s complicated.”

What could I do but comply? “Okay. I’m all set, Meg. What do I do?”

“Let. The. Cops. Handle. It.”

I’d actually written down
Let the
before I stopped. “That doesn’t help me.”

“Yes, it does. Professionals will find the answers. You won’t. Don’t get in their way. Do you trust the detective on the case?”

I thought about Dutton, then O’Donnell. “One seems good, but he’s an administrator, the local police chief. The county guy might know what he’s doing, but I can’t tell. He irritates me.”

“He irritates
you
?” Meg is a riot when she wants to be.

“Imagine such a thing,” I said.

“Elliot, I’m not kidding. You’re not the guy for this. You’re intuitive, and you have a good eye for what’s wrong at a crime scene; I know that. But you’re not as smart as you think you are, and you have no practice. You can get yourself in trouble.”

“They’ve already closed my business. How much bigger can the trouble get?” I asked.

“Suppose you find something out—by accident,” she said. “You could piss off somebody who knows where you work and has access to poison. Is that worse than your movie theatre getting closed for a couple of days?”

“I dunno. We were showing
Young Frankenstein
. It’s practically a crime against humanity to shut that down.”

Meg sighed, which is not an uncommon sound when I’m talking to women. I consider it a plus, so long as the sigh doesn’t become a groan. “What does Sharon say?” she asked.

“We, um . . . that is, Sharon and I . . .”

Her voice got very quiet and low. “I’m so sorry, Elliot,” Meg said.

We caught up for a while longer, she admonished me a time or two more, and I hung up, promising to call sometime when I didn’t have police questions. We both knew I was lying, but it was a sincere lie, if such a thing were possible.

I knew Meg was right: I shouldn’t investigate Ansella’s murder. But maybe investigating film piracy was exactly the job for a theatre owner. Sure: I had a background in movies. I’d have knowledge and abilities that those trained in crime detection wouldn’t have. I’d be invaluable to . . .

Nah. That argument didn’t even sound convincing to
me.

This left me with few options for the rest of my day, so I read the newspaper.

I won’t comment on the national headlines, as some people think that I’m a . . . what’s the term? Oh yes, a throwback/liberal/bleeding-heart/tax-and-spend/pansy/ unpatriotic/left-wing fanatic. Which is ridiculous. I’ve never taxed anyone in my life, unless you count my ex-wife’s patience.

Locally, Midland Heights mayor Sam Olszowy was resigning his office to “spend more time with his family,” which meant that the Middlesex County prosecutor was about to indict him for tax fraud. A special election was being quickly organized, but candidates hadn’t been selected yet. In Midland Heights, whoever wins the Democratic primary will win the election, but in this case, there wasn’t going to be a primary. Therefore, whichever candidate the Democratic Party decided to nominate would take the prize—which was by my count a part-time job whose only benefit was a parking space with your name on it in the municipal parking lot, where no one ever parks unless they’re interested in being mayor. It’s cyclical.

The entertainment section boasted a number of ads for new movies, and my tiny one for “Comedy Tonight: The Only All-Comedy Movie Theatre in New Jersey!” (I could have also listed it as the only all-comedy movie theatre in the Western Hemisphere, or on Earth. I’m only limiting myself because I have no idea if there are any all-comedy movie theatres on Jupiter.) Of course, I couldn’t pull the ads in time to make a difference, and the two dozen people who were planning on attending tonight would become disappointed ex-almost-customers. Even my only “regular, ” a guy named Leo who showed up every night no matter what was playing, would probably desert me out of a sense of abandonment. My business plan was not exactly being executed with colossal skill. As if I
had
a business plan.

In the sports section, a good number of teams had beaten other teams in games. I didn’t especially care which, but it’s always fun to watch some baseball when you can. It’s the only sport that can’t exist without elegance.

That left the obituary page, and I found myself reading it, something I very rarely do. I told myself it was out of boredom, but the item at the bottom left-hand side of the page was the real reason I was scanning the newspaper at all.

Vincent Ansella, forty-three, insurance executive, had left a wife, Amy of Piscataway; a mother, Mrs. Olivia Ansella of Little Ferry; and a sister, Lisa Ansella Rabinowitz of Red Bank. No children, which I confess made me feel a little better. Apparently, his whole life had been about insurance, since the four-paragraph obit mentioned little else. Once captain of his high school track team, he had still run six miles a day. Until recently. Very recently. Two nights ago.

Because the medical examiner’s report wasn’t complete, the body hadn’t been released to Ansella’s family yet (the obit didn’t mention this, only saying he had “died very suddenly”). But there was a memorial service planned for the next day at Carmeliso’s Funeral Home in Edison.

Suddenly, Ansella wasn’t just a dead guy to me anymore. I hadn’t actually considered his life before, well, his death, until now, and it was gnawing at me. The guy had died under my roof, if you wanted to see it that way. I owed it to him to find out a little bit more about who he was.

I didn’t want to bother his wife. I decided to call the office where he had worked, Mutual Life, Home, and Auto, in Bridgewater. I didn’t know who his supervisor was, so I asked for the actuarial department, where the obit mentioned (at great length) Ansella had been a vice president.

It would have been, let’s say, awkward to explain to the receptionist that I was the guy in whose theatre Vincent had been murdered, so I decided on a slightly less scrupulous approach. Okay, I lied outright.

“Hi, this is Elliot Freed of the
Press Digest
,” I said, making up the name of a newspaper on the spot, and mumbling just a bit. “I’m following up on the death of Vincent Ansella, and I’m wondering who I should be talking to there.” Let them decide.

“Hold on,” the receptionist said, no doubt looking for someone to take this problem off her hands. I waited through two recorded explanations of an exciting new term life product while she no doubt ran around the office trying to foist me off on the least suspecting actuary.

Just when I was considering getting the insurance, but unsure who my beneficiary would be, the phone clicked back to life. “This is Marcy Resnick,” a rather tentative voice said. “Is there some way I can help you?”

I reiterated the bogus story about being with a newspaper, although I think this time I was working for the
News Digest
. I’d have to work at my phony profession a little more diligently next time. “I’m just trying to get some background on Mr. Ansella,” I added. “We’re considering running a follow-up piece.” I felt the “considering” would ease the blow when Ms. Resnick went to pick up her fictional newspaper the next morning and found no fictional article there. No doubt she would assume that not only was the story unworthy of print, but the company had decided to fold the whole publication, having decided that the public no longer had a right to know anything. It’s a philosophy that has worked wonders at Fox News.

“Well, I don’t know what I could tell you,” she said. “We weren’t exactly close friends.”

“Did he have any close friends at the office?”

“Not really,” Resnick said. “I don’t like to say it, with him being gone, and all . . .”

Oh, go ahead and say it,
I thought.

“. . . Vincent wasn’t really the kind of guy who told you much about himself,” she continued. “He was very friendly, but he kept it casual. Everybody liked him.”

“So you don’t know much about him, I guess,” I said. I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for, anyway, and might as well terminate this conversation.

“No, not much he ever told me,” she answered. “Listen, I don’t like talking this way on company time. Do you want to meet for lunch or something?”

That was just what I needed, an hour’s worth of conversation with a woman who didn’t know anything about the subject I wasn’t sure what to ask about. Not to mention, I’d already eaten lunch. There had to be some way to get out of this gracefully.

“Well, I don’t want to take up your time,” I said.

“Oh, it’s no bother. I was going to go for lunch in a half hour, anyway.”

I sighed, but inwardly. “Why don’t you give me the directions? ” I asked.

Moe Baxter wasn’t pleased to see me hanging around his auto repair shop on Edison Avenue. “You leeching off me again, Freed?” He moaned, his voice a rusty hinge. “Why don’t you just buy a car?”

“Don’t you see how this is a better deal for both of us, Moe?” I grinned. He was going to give in, like he always did, but we had a ritual to perform, and Moe was giving it his all. “I get the ride I need for the afternoon, and you get someone reliable to test out the cars you repair. It’s a mutual benefit. This way, you don’t lose valuable time from one of your mechanics, and I don’t charge you a dime.”

“
You
don’t charge
me
? I like that! I should charge you a rental fee. What happens if you smash up the car, Mr. Mutual Benefit? Which, by the way, is the name of the insurance company that’s going to sue my ass.”

“I’m the best driver you ever had, Moe, and you know it. Besides, if the car undergoes any damage at all, I’ll pay to have it repaired. You get paid to fix the same car twice. How’s that?” We had been through this at least once a month for the past six years, and had honed the routine down from twenty minutes to two.

He threw me a set of keys from a pegboard he had on the wall. “The red Mazda,” he said, pointing. “Watch for a shimmy in the front wheels.”

“I’ll report back in excruciating detail, Moe,” I told him.

He closed his eyes and sighed. “I know, I know.”