The Hearse You Came in On (7 page)

I looked at him like he was crazy. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Now!”

Aunt Billie made a shooing gesture.

“Just go, Hitchcock. The officer won’t take no for an answer. Isn’t that right?”

“Detective,” Kruk grunted.

Billie rolled her eyes.

In twenty minutes, I was in the hot seat at district police headquarters. The place wasn’t quite how it always appears on television, though it looked like they were making every effort. There were no tube-topped hookers, no wild-haired guy proclaiming his innocence to the ceiling, no just-found runaway boy on a bench getting a life lesson from Detective Sensitive. However, there did seem to be a phone ringing endlessly somewhere off in the background. And the coffee was downright toxic.

Joe Friday beat me with a rubber hose until I cracked and told him where the loot was stashed. Then we moved on to the matter of Guy Fellows.

I was assured that I was not a suspect. Then I was asked several dozen questions about my dustup with
the dead tennis stud, all of which made me
feel
like a suspect. Apparently, Mr. Castlebaum had already been grilled. He was the one who gave me up.

“Who hit who first?” Kruk asked me.

“Him. And it’s whom.”

“What’s whom?”

“Never mind,” I said. “Anyway, I didn’t hit him. I shoved him.”

“Why?”

“Because he hit me.”

“And why did he hit you?”

“Because I was breaking up his fight with Mr. Castlebaum.”

“We have Mr. Castlebaum’s statement.”

“Then you know all this already.”

The interview was taking place in Kruk’s office. The detective was somewhat dwarfed behind his large gray desk. I was in the only chair in the room other than Kruk’s, a small wobbly wood thing which
I
dwarfed. Detective Kruk and I really should have traded places. The dirt-stained windows behind the detective deflected any hope that the incoming sunshine would cheer up the place. The office smelled vaguely of a gas leak. Summing up, the place fit Kruk like a perfectly ill-fitting suit.

“Mr. Castlebaum says that you hit Mr. Fellows.”

“Mr. Castlebaum is wrong.”

“Are you saying he’s lying?”

“I’m saying he got it wrong. He was on the ground after all.”

“And why is that again?”

“Because Guy Fellows had just hit him.”

“That was before or after you hit him?”

“I didn’t hit anybody. I shoved him.” I was getting tempted to show the little detective how I did it. Kruk glanced at his damned notebook. I was beginning to guess it was all tic-tac-toe. Or girlie doodles.

“Mr. Castlebaum didn’t say anything about any shoving.”

I sighed. “I can’t help that. I shoved. I’m saying it now. Write it down in your notebook. Suspect shoved dead man. Dead man was still alive at the time.”

“You’re not a suspect, Mr. Sewell.”

“So you’ve said.”

“At least not a very good one.”

I threw up my hands. “I’m sorry, Detective. I’ll try to do better next time.”

Kruk actually showed the beginnings of a grin. He leaned back in his squeaky chair and crossed his short arms on his chest. “Why were you at the country club today?”

“Is that a crime?”

“I didn’t say it was. I’m just curious about the chain of events that has you in a fight with Guy Fellows yesterday and then off asking a lot of questions about him today when somewhere in between those two days someone is twisting a knife into his gut.” Kruk spread his hands. “You can see why I might be curious?”

Of course I could. But I didn’t think that he would find any of my explanations satisfying. The conveniently absent Mystery Woman. It would sound like a rotten lie told by a rotten liar.

“I didn’t kill Guy Fellows,” I said. Might as well get it on the record.

Detective Kruk laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. He was apparently a bottomless
storehouse of stock gestures. I shook my head slowly. What in the goddamn hell was I doing here?

“Kruk. What is that? Finnish?”

“Dutch.” He leaned forward on his desk. “Do you have any ideas who would want to kill Guy Fellows?”

“Like I told you… ten times. I never set eyes on him until yesterday at the funeral.”

“Look. If you have any information that is pertinent to this case, you are bound by law to tell me, Mr. Sewell. Do you?”

“No,” I lied.

“Then I guess that’ll be all for now.” He picked up some papers that were on his desk.

“That’s it? Are you going to ask me to stay close to the city for the next several days?”

“Were you planning on taking a trip?”

“No. But I just figured—”

I was interrupted by Kruk’s phone.

“Yeah … Uh-huh … Okay. I’ll send him over.” He hung up the phone. “Well, you seem to be a popular fellow, Mr. Sewell. Before you go, Detective Zabriskie wants to see you.”

“Who’s Detective Zabriskie?”

Kruk gave me his poker face. “Detective Zabriskie is the person who wants to see you. Take a left out the door here, end of the hall, last door on the right.”

As I reached the door of his office, Kruk said, “Oh … and I’d like you to stick close to the city for the next several days.” I stopped and turned around. Kruk was fiddling with the papers. He looked up at me. I guess that thing he was doing with his mouth was a grin.

Such a card. I left him to masticate on our interview and followed his directions to the office at the end of the hall. I stepped inside. For a moment I thought that it was empty. There was no one behind the desk. Suddenly the door was swinging closed behind me. I turned to see a familiar pair of hazel eyes and a small mouth, all linked up to a nice long pair of legs.

“Mr. Sewell. I’m Detective Kate Zabriskie. It’s nice to see you again.”

Lady X motioned for me to take a seat.

“I think we need to talk.”

D
etective Kate Zabriskie stared at me as she spoke on the phone. It had buzzed the moment I took a seat. Her end of the conversation was minimal and terse. Mainly she bobbed her head. “No … uh-huh … right.” All the time she held me in the tractor beam of her eyes, as if I might flee the moment she glanced away.

Fat chance.

The conversation ended and she put the phone back down on the cradle.

“How are you, Mr. Sewell?” she asked.

“Oh, let’s see, I’m fine. You?”

She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “I guess that depends.”

“On what?”

“On you.”

The great and powerful me. I leaned forward and rested my arms on Detective Zabriskie’s desk. I motioned the woman forward as if I had a secret I was sharing and didn’t want anyone else to overhear. She leaned in. I hissed.

“What the
fuck
is going on here?”

It startled her. But she recovered instantly. “Fair
question. Let me see if I can answer you.” She leaned back in her chair again and took a moment to sort her thoughts. “For starters, I’m not Carolyn James. I gather you picked up on that.”

“A little dead bird told me.”

“I’m very sorry about that. That was stupid of me. It was reckless. I was… a little rattled that day.”

“Impersonating a soon-to-be suicide can shake a person up. Or at least so I’m told. I’ve never done it.”

“You’re angry with me.”

Well where should we deliver the new car, Johnny? “Yeah, I think you could say I’m a little out of sorts, Miss—” I double-checked the nameplate on her desk. “Miss Zabriskie. Or if I turn this around will it say something else?”

“No. That’s it. Kate Zabriskie. I’ll show you my driver’s license if you’d like.”

“I’ll believe you,” I said. “Again.”

She made a tent of her fingers and brought it to her lips. She was staring hard again. Right through me. More accurately, she was staring at me the way a person does at a half-finished puzzle. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

“Would you mind not staring at me that way?” I asked.

She blinked, snapping out of it. “I’m sorry. I was … I was just thinking.”

“Well how about just talking? I mean, I hate to say that I think you owe me an explanation, but etc., etc., you owe me an explanation.”

“You’re right. I do.”

“So what’s this all about? Why did you tell me that you were Carolyn James? Why did you ask about
funeral arrangements? How did you know that she was going to kill herself? What exactly is—”

I cut myself off. I’ve heard that intelligence can be measured by the time required for synaptic sparks to flare between two seemingly random thoughts. I suddenly felt very synaptically challenged.

“Carolyn James didn’t kill herself,” I said. “Did she?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you
knew
she was going to be dead. Unless you run a damned good psychic hotline in your spare time the only way you could know something like that is by knowing that she was going to be killed.”

“Are you suggesting that I killed Carolyn?”

I didn’t much care for the poker face that came with that question. But it was the right question.

“I don’t know what I’m suggesting,” I said cautiously. “But you might be on to something.”

Detective Zabriskie lowered her finger tent. Her face softened. So did her voice.

“I was trying to save Carolyn James, Mr. Sewell.”

“From killing herself?”

“From being killed.”

“Somebody wanted to kill her?”

She nodded. When she spoke, there was no mistaking the sadness in her voice. “They didn’t get their chance. Carolyn took care of the problem for them.”

The detective redirected her gaze to a water spot up on the ceiling vaguely in the shape of South America. Or inverted Africa. Outside the window directly behind Kate Zabriskie’s head a flashing neon sign with burlesque
letters reading: “She Feels Guilty” was being hoisted into view. I blinked and it was gone.

I cut into her reverie. “Are you going to explain any of this to me?”

“It’s complicated,” she said.

I laughed out loud at that. I couldn’t help it. Detective Zabriskie went cold on me.

“I said it was complicated, I didn’t say it was funny.”

“I know it’s not funny. Two people I never knew are dead and Napoleon down the hall there has dragged me down here so that he can stick a few pins into me. So I know it’s not really funny. That weird stunt you pulled on me, that wasn’t funny. But now you’re saying it’s complicated.
That’s
worth a definite chuckle. It had sure as hell
better
be complicated, Detective. What I’d like is for you to uncomplicate it for me.”

“Wouldn’t you rather just drop it?”

“What do you mean, ‘drop it’? You mean, drop it drop it?”

“I mean forget about it. Let it go. Chalk it up as a peculiar week. A
funny
week if you prefer. I’m suggesting that you just file this away as someone else’s business, Mr. Sewell, and go on about your life.”

I shook my head slowly. “Can’t do that, Detective.”

“You should.”

“Let’s say I’m uncommonly curious.”

“Let’s say you’re unwisely curious.”

“Okay, doc, let’s say that. That’s fine. But unwise or not, I’m still curious. And you still owe me an explanation.”

“I am trying to keep you from getting involved in something unpleasant,” she said tersely.

“Then you should have thought of that before you sashayed into my place of business under the assumed name of a soon-to-be-dead person and asked me to bury you.”

“I know I should have, damn it. I was having a
bad day.
Do you know what that is?”

“I think I’ve read about them.”

She slammed her hands down on her desk. “Why are you being so sarcastic?”

“Why are you being so secretive?”

“I’m a cop! It’s part of my job!”

“I thought your job was to serve and protect.”

The next thing I knew, the woman was on her feet. She snatched up a staple gun from her desk and threw it against the wall. Her face was flashing crimson. A light on her telephone lit up and she picked up the receiver. “No. No problem. Thanks.” She slammed the phone down and glared over at me. I kept my trap shut. After all, somewhere in this office this woman had a gun. Kate Zabriskie waited a good ten seconds, maybe more then she measured out her words.

“It
is
my job, Mr. Sewell. That’s exactly what it is. And I did a rotten job of protecting Carolyn James, okay? And I don’t feel very good about it. Okay? In fact, I feel horrible about it. So now I am trying to protect you and you’re not letting me.”

“I’m not in any danger.”

“That’s true. You’re not. So how about we keep it that way? How about you let me serve and protect?”

We squared off for another ten seconds of silence. She spoke first.

“Are you going to back out of this, Mr. Sewell?”

“No.”

She let out a most unhappy sigh. “Then we need to talk.”

I spread my hands. “Voilà.”

“Not here. I would prefer that we take our conversation out of this building. Can you meet me …” She consulted a desk calendar. “Tomorrow night? Say, six?”

“Six.”

“How about we meet at the Museum of Art? Behind Hopkins. They stay open late on Mondays.”

“This is to be a cultural date?”

She looked at me coolly. “This is not to be any sort of a date, Mr. Sewell. You’re insisting on an explanation. That’s what you’ll get. Do you know the Cone Collection?”

I nodded.

“Why don’t you meet me there. By the big Matisse. The big blue one.”

“The big blue Matisse. Six o’clock.”

As I got up from my chair a thought occurred to me. “Does Detective Kruk know about your coming to the funeral home?”

Her face was expressionless. “Let’s talk about this later.”

I headed for the door. She stopped me with a question.

“Did you tell him?”

I stopped and turned back around. “I didn’t know it was you. Remember?”

She had once more made a tent of her fingers. “But did you mention anything about a woman posing as Carolyn James?”

I pulled open the door.