The Hearse You Came in On (6 page)

I pressed. “This woman. Can you tell me anything at all about her? Was she ever here at the same time as Guy Fellows?”

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “I am not looking out my peephole twenty-four hours a day if that’s what you are saying.”

“Not at all.”

A cross-eyed calico cat leaped up onto the couch next to Mr. Castlebaum and gave off a horrifying cry.
The old man encased the cat’s face in his bony hand and the animal collapsed in silence.

“There is one time,” he said, “that I almost saw them together. This is maybe a week or so before they discovered the poor girl in her car out there.”

“You
almost
saw them together?”

“I am passing my door and I can hear the bum over there. He is yelling. I hear something breaking. What? A lamp? I don’t know. Something hard hits the wall. The bum is still yelling. So something tells me to look through the peephole. Someone is there, but all I see is the person’s back. They’re standing in front of the door. And then the back disappears and the apartment door opens. It’s the bum. He looks angry, but what’s new? You might as well say the pope looks Catholic. And then off he goes. You see what I am saying? In and out of the place like he owns it. He slams the door. So he goes. And I open my door and step into the hall. And over there by the stairs, in the shadows, there is the woman.”

“With the dark hair?”

“Yes, yes, that woman. The mouth, the eyes. She is hiding. That’s obvious to me. She ran into the shadows so that the bum wouldn’t see her.”

“Did she say anything?”

“I did. I said, ‘Hello, what are you doing here?’ A person has to watch out these days.”

“And?”

“And nothing. She comes over and knocks on the door. I can see the young woman just a little bit when the door opens. She is crying, the young woman. There is blood on her face. Before I can say anything else, this other one is inside and the door is closed.”

“And you got the definite impression that she was hiding from Guy Fellows.”

“I tell you what I saw. Am I a mind reader?”

I was thinking he was an exhausting old man who ought to let some fresh air into his apartment. He slapped his hands down on his bony knees. End of story. It wasn’t much. I thanked him for the tea and for his time. He waved his arms impatiently.

“Forget the tea. It was lousy.”

At the door, he hesitated. “There is one more thing I can tell you. When this young woman dies. She is found in her car in the garage. The police come by and they ask me who is the landlord so that they can inform him. Well, I am the landlord. I own this palace. I get the key and I let them into the apartment. It was a mess. But I don’t mean she is a messy person, this poor dead girl. I mean a tornado has come through, Drawers are hanging open. Pillows and clothes are on the floor. Books. Dishes. A lamp is broken. It is a mess.”

“Like someone was looking for something? That kind of a mess?”

He nodded. “It could be.”

“Are her belongings still in there?” I asked.

“No. The bum came by the next day and threw most of it in boxes and told me to call the Goodwill truck. I told him to call the damn Goodwill truck himself, what do I look like? The place is for rent right now. Do you know anyone?”

I was staring at the stairwell, at the darkened corner where the fake Carolyn James had hidden from Guy Fellows. What exactly was the connection between the two women? According to Mr. Castlebaum, Guy Fellows had total access to this apartment, coming and
going at will, and slapping poor Carolyn James around in the bargain. What would have happened if he had spotted the fake Carolyn James lurking there in the stairway?

Mr. Castlebaum was waiting for an answer to his question.

“No,” I said absently. “I don’t know anybody.”

I
took the Jones Falls Expressway north to the Falls Road exit, then north again, a right on Seminary Road, and then left on something or other, then northeast, south, west and north again … a curvy country road that took me eventually to the manicured acres of the Baltimore Country Club. I pulled into the large lot next to the club’s mighty Georgian mansion, slipping my Chevy Nothing in amongst the BMW 750s and the Mercedes SLs. It was a lovely spring day. The country club’s gardeners had done a good job. Jonquils and tulips and columbine bloomed everywhere amidst large sculpted ponds of myrtle, which is a ground-hugging ivy that looks as soft as hair.

I spotted a miniature tractor with a small wiry fellow behind the wheel. He had a baseball cap pushed back on his head and he was giving marching orders to a pair of slouching guys in matching green overalls who were standing there holding rakes. As I headed over, the guys with rakes dispersed. Boss man remained in his saddle. The little white oval on his overalls told me that his name was Rudy. The baseball cap suggested that he favored Pepsi, though he was
clearly of a different generation. His boots were the color of meatloaf.

I gave him an
Our Town
greeting.

“Howdy.”

I got one back. “Howdy.”

“Rudy is it?” I swung out my hand. Why I was acting so folksy I’m not sure, but I felt like an idiot. Rudy’s hand felt like finely ground glass in a baseball mitt.

“What can I do ya fer?” he chirped. I was pretty sure he was making fun of me.

“My name is Hitchcock Sewell.”

“That’s quite a name.”

“It’s a family name.”

“I imagine so.”

“People call me Hitch.”

“That would’ve been my guess.” His eyes were twinkling. “People call me Rudy.”

“So the sign says.”

“What can I do ya fer, Hitch,” he said again. This time he cracked an obvious smile.

“I’m looking for Guy Fellows. I understand he’s the tennis pro here.”

Rudy nodded. “You looking to take lessons?”

“Well, no. I just wanted to talk to him.”

Rudy looked me up and down. “Are you married?”

“Excuse me?”

“Are you married? Hitched. Hooked up. Got yourself a steady gal? Spoken for? Engaged?”

I cocked my head at the elfin man. “Are you asking me for a date, Rudy?”

Rudy laughed at that. “Afraid I’m spoken for. No, it’s just, well, you’re not looking to take lessons and if you’re not here to tell Fellows to steer clear of any lady
friend of yours, that just about makes you an oddball.” He put a finger to the brim of his cap and nudged it further back on his head.

“Is he here?”

Rudy glanced over his shoulder at the tennis courts. They had a green mesh netting running along the fences. I could only make out flashes of white to go along with the irregular
boink
of a ball.

“Funny thing is, he isn’t. His first lesson is at ten o’clock and it’s already past one, but he hasn’t showed up.” The little guy chuckled. “Some of these ladies haven’t been stood up since they were twelve. You want to see some real fireworks, come around when they catch up to him.”

Just then a red BMW pulled up in the parking lot and a Grace Kelly look-alike got out. She was well-tailored and posture-perfect in that look-don’t-touch kind of way. The air parted for her as she made her way on clicking high heels along the walkway to the mansion. Rudy and I suspended all conversation as she moved by, which is what men generally do when a stunning woman passes within, say, a quarter mile of us. The fake Grace Kelly stepped coolly through the large oak door of the club’s mansion as if it weren’t even there.

“There’s one,” Rudy muttered.

“One what?”

“A former student of your tennis pro.” Rudy gave me a big old-fashioned wink. “They were pretty dedicated doubles players for a while there, if you hear me.”

I heard him. “Popular guy, huh?”

“Fellows? Well he’s not my type.”

“Rudy, you wouldn’t know anything about his girlfriend, would you?”

“You want to narrow that down for me a little?”

“Do you know if he has a girlfriend? I mean, a steady one?”

“Well if he does he’s smart enough not to bring her around here.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

Rudy and I chatted a bit more. I complimented him on the landscaping. He told me that he had a crew of four men plus himself. He told me about the recent major re-landscaping project. He told me about his useless son-in-law, whom he had hired to help out and then fired for hot-rodding in the golf carts. He showed me a photograph of his granddaughter—the only good thing his useless son-in-law had ever produced—who, I was to understand, might be an actual genius in the field of mathematics. She was being tested for it later this month. He told me about a hurricane and a problem with the wiring in the house that he and his wife—another photo—owned down in Bethany Beach. Rudy was a sweet fellow but he was blind to body language. I was holding a forty-five-degree angle toward the parking lot for what felt like ten years until I finally just had to insert a handshake into the middle of it all and thank him for his time. I left the wiry Scheherazade perched atop his miniature tractor and headed back to the parking lot.

A police car pulled in just as I was about to get into my car. A uniformed cop was behind the wheel. His passenger got out. No uniform. He wore a dull tweed jacket over a white shirt and a snot green tie. He was very short—in the Napoleonic range—and stocky. A wrestler’s physique. He had small ears, a pink face and yellow hair that was either cut in a horrendous style or
was one of the world’s worst ever toupees. He gave me the look that a lot of short men give me, the one that says “I could knock you over, big guy, if I felt like it.” I resisted the urge to pat him on the head and waited until he had slammed his door closed before getting into my car and firing her up. A cloud of blue exhaust belched onto his knees as he crossed behind me. I caught his sneer in the rearview mirror. The uniformed cop was picking his teeth and staring straight ahead, but I was pretty sure I saw him chuckling.

As I pulled away, I saw that the keeper of the yellow hair was approaching Rudy. I watched as Rudy tilted back his hat and rubbed his overused jaw.

What can I do ya fer?

Two hours later Billie called me out of a wake in Parlor Two. She was frowning.

“There’s a man here to see you.”

It was the guy with the yellow hair. He was standing at the front door. He made no sign of recognition, so I didn’t either.

“Are you Hitchcock Sewell?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Detective John Kruk.” He flashed a badge. “I’d like to talk with you.”

“About what?”

“I’d like to talk with you.”

“You said that. I’m in the middle of a wake.”

“This is important.”

People were still arriving. I saw several of them eyeing the police car, which was parked out in the street, angled behind the hearse as if it had pulled the wagon over for speeding.

“Can it wait?” I asked.

“Not really.”

“Well, could you at least move the car?” He was tapping a pencil impatiently against his notebook and didn’t answer. “I have bereaved people here,” I explained. “A police car can be unsettling.”

“That’s funny. I always thought that police cars made people feel safe.”

“Not at funerals.”

He aimed his pencil at me. “You mean wake.”

I wasn’t in the mood. “Can you just tell me what this is about?”

“That was you out at the country club this afternoon, wasn’t it.”

“Yes, it was. What did you do, follow me here?”

“Have you been out there to the club before today, Mr. Sewell?”

“The country club? Oh. Sure. I’m a big deal up there.”

“Are you being sarcastic, Mr. Sewell?”

Before I could reply (sarcastically, I’d bet on it), Aunt Billie came up behind me.

“Hello. Is there a problem?”

“No problem,” I said.

“You two should get out of the doorway,” Billie said.

“I’m trying to get him to move the car.”

Kruk broke in. “Forget the car. The car isn’t what’s important here, Mr. Sewell.”

I snapped. “Then
move
the damn thing. We’ve got a dead person in there, Detective, and that’s the important thing here. People are here to pay their respects. Don’t they give you sensitivity training where you work?”

Aunt Billie took in a sharp breath. She hates it when I get belligerent.

Kruk hooked his thumbs into his belt and rocked back on his heels. Classic ham.

“Well you know something, Mr. Sewell. We’ve got a dead body too. Except nobody’s come by to pay ours any respects. Ours has a knife in its gut.”

Aunt Billie gasped.

“What dead body,” I said. “What are you talking about?”

Kruk kept up with the pencil-tapping. I wondered if it was supposed to unnerve me. “If the sight of a police car out front here has you so upset, maybe you should just come on down with me to the station, Mr. Sewell, where it’s an everyday occurrence.”

I asked again. “Who’s dead?”

The detective glanced down at his notebook. “A man by the name of Fellows.”

“Guy Fellows? The tennis pro?”

“You know him?”

“You know I know him. At least, I know who he is. That’s why you’re here?”

Kruk rocked back on his heels again. “That’s right.” He consulted his notebook again. “I understand you and Mr. Fellows had a fight. Just yesterday I believe.”

“You’ve done your homework.”

“He hit you.”

“So?”

“So sometimes that pisses people off. It would piss me off.” He turned to Billie. “Excuse me, ma’am.”

“It did piss me off,” I said. “But are you suggesting that I stabbed him because of it? I don’t usually go around stabbing people who piss me off.”

He looked at me sharply. “Don’t
usually?”

“That was a little joke, Detective.”

“So you think this is funny? You think a man found dead with a knife in his gut is a funny joke?”

“Not to him it’s not.”

“And not to me either.” Kruk flipped his notebook shut. “Okay, that’s it. We’ll do this downtown. I don’t want to disturb these people any more than I already have. Why don’t you get in the big bad car, Mr. Sewell.”