Falafel Jones - The Kewpie Killer (29 page)

Her trademark high heels showed off her shapely legs. She wore a loosely cut amber print sundress, the color complementing her butterscotch skin. The dress tied around her neck with a thin string and clung to her flat stomach and thin thighs. Despite her petite figure, Mariel filled out the top nicely. The dress fit her well. Everything did.

I wore shorts, a shirt and sandals. My birthday was a “special event”, so we “dressed up”, meaning we both wore our wedding rings and underwear. Most of the time, we lived in our bathing suits and left our drawers in our drawers, along with the jewelry.

After a lifetime in the frigid northeast, living seven days a week in our bathing suits became a symbol of the casual island life we came here to live. Much like invitations that specified “Black Tie”, we began categorizing a few of our own events as “Underwear Required”.

So far, aside from special occasions like this one, trips to the airport and infrequent cold days, there weren’t many other items on the list. We even extended the rule so that wedding rings were only required when wearing underwear. When Mariel would ask me if I was wearing underpants, I would show her my ring finger and then she would know her answer.

Jack’s meandering around the bar led him back to us, “Refills?”

Mariel and I shook our heads. “No. thanks.” I said.

He glanced down at the packaging on the bar. “What’d you get?”

I showed him the iPod. “Birthday gift from Mariel.”

He raised one eyebrow at her and nodded. She beamed back at him, happy he approved of her gift selection.

“Hey, happy birthday. “ He pushed the bills I had left on the bar back at me. “Then, this round’s my treat.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.” I raised my glass to him.

“Thank you, very much, Jack.” Mariel touched his wrist. “You’re very kind.” Then she turned to me, “Max, you promised that man. We have to go.”

We said our good byes to Jack and headed out. When I agreed to help Ed, I thought the job would be a snooze. How could I know things would go so wrong? Who knew retirement could be dangerous?

* * *

We walked west on Flagler Avenue, stepping on the engraved bricks sold by the Flagler Merchants Association. For $50 a pop, tourists and locals had the chance to immortalize themselves with three lines of text for all to see. Mariel stopped to view the brick she bought to memorialize her Dad.

After a few blocks, we turned left to Ed’s office. The address he gave me led to a single story, concrete-block house. A sign in the front window displayed a phone number and advertised the place was “For Rent 2Bd 1 Bth”. We walked up to the door and I knocked anyway. Nobody answered. I verified the address against Ed’s business card and decided we were at the correct place. While searching for a doorbell, I noticed a stone walkway leading to the left of the building.

We followed it and found a second entrance. I knocked again and this time, the door opened. The house included a small side bedroom converted into an office with its own entrance. Ed ushered us inside.

He grabbed my hand and shook it, “Max, Mariel. Thank you for coming.”

“Please, have a seat.” Ed directed us to two upright wooden client chairs with upholstered seats. The chairs didn’t go with the rest of the room. I wondered if they might have come from a dining room set, maybe one broken up in a divorce settlement.

“What do you think?” He asked, gesturing around the room. The décor was half-beachy and half-lawyerly. Amid sailing icons and an Ivy League diploma, requisite bookshelves had the requisite books. He seemed to have everything he needed if not everything ever published.

“You appear to be well equipped,” I told him.

“Thank you,” Ed walked across the room to a stereo receiver next to a CD player and speakers. Classical music played.

He turned down the music and sat behind a huge, old wooden desk. It was heavy and dark and could have come from some Captain’s quarters. I couldn’t imagine how he ever got it in the door. I also couldn’t imagine how he could ever find anything on the desktop.

So much paper covered the surface that if I hadn’t noticed the wire leading up from the floor, I wouldn’t have known there was a phone on the desk. Besides the shelves, chairs and desk, there wasn’t any other furniture in the room. If there was more, I doubted there would have been room for Ed.

“It’s ah, very cozy,” offered Mariel.

Ed opened his mouth to reply a second before a muffled ringing sound come from under the papers on his desk. “Um, excuse me, please.” He lifted a manila folder and then answered his phone.

“McCarthy Law, how may I help you…?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m in a meeting now…”

“No, it was good seeing you again too…”

“No, I don’t know if that’s a good idea…”

“Well, it’s a little bit too close…”

“No, no one else is interested in renting it…”

“Yes, I did have a good time, but…”

“Yes, I’m sorry. I really can’t talk now…”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can. We can talk about it then…”

“OK”

Ed hung up, and avoiding eye contact with us, pulled a folder from the pile on his desk. “Thank you and now to business.” He continued our conversation as if the phone never rang.

We agreed on an hourly rate and while Mariel and I read the service agreement, Ed called the police. He was right about the money. We just finished reading when he put down the phone and said, “The police will release the notebook to me tomorrow morning. Why don’t you give me your address? I’ll pick up the notebook and then come by.” He rummaged through the piles on his desk, and pulled out a piece of paper.

“Sure,” I said and told him the address. He wrote it down, and the paper disappeared back into the desktop.

“Just don’t make it too early,” Mariel added. “I think the birthday boy is going to be up tonight.”

Asleep and dreaming I was in a concert hall, I heard the music start, but the orchestra played only two notes. A high note followed by a low note. The combination sounded familiar and the two notes played repeatedly, a high note and a low note. As I woke up, I realized the two-note song was the “Ding Dong” of my front doorbell.

My glasses stared at me from my night table. After putting them on, I jumped out of bed, pulled on running shorts left on the floor and ran for the door. An oblivious Mariel snored softly, her head buried under the cover. She was such a tiny lump under the blanket; I almost couldn’t tell she was there.

I barely rounded the corner from the bedroom to the hall, then the one from the hall to the living room. Narrowly avoiding these collisions, heading for the foyer to answer the bell, I felt guilty being asleep when other people were out of bed. It was silly, but that’s how I felt. My parents must have imprinted this on me as a kid. I was never a morning person. For a long time, I battled with my parents about getting up for school. The fights ended one morning when my father poured a pitcher of water on my head to wake me up.

Ed was at the door. His head went back and his eyes widened when he saw a shirtless, bleary-eyed old man with bed head hair. I knew I made an impact on him, but I couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed about waking me up or disturbed by hiring someone who looked this way and was still in bed at 9:30 am.

“Here’s Ray’s computer. Kathleen signed the release, it’s in the case. Um, I hope I’m not too early. I came straight from the police station.”

I assured him there wasn’t a problem. Actually, anytime before noon, visitors had a good chance of catching us asleep. We preferred later hours and if no one interrupted, we kept them.

“When I picked up the computer, the Detective told me the M.E. confirmed it’s a homicide. There weren’t any skid marks because Ray died before the crash. He had a heart attack but no history of heart disease. They found nothing in his cardiac system to explain the attack. They’re going to run some more tests… try to see if they can figure out what caused it. Then, maybe, the cops’ll figure out why…and maybe who…”

He had the notebook case in one hand and a paper coffee cup and a cigarette in the other. His face was red and blotchy and he wore what he had on yesterday. I looked past Ed and saw a silver Mercedes sedan in my driveway. My view wasn’t clear, but I thought I saw a blonde in the passenger seat. I guessed Ed was hung over and upset, anxious to get rid of the notebook and intent on getting to the next thing on his agenda. It probably included more coffee and maybe Alka Seltzer. I took the notebook case. Ed took his leave.

Eyeglasses are fine if they don’t slide down your nose, fog up when you enter a warm building, get speckled with rain or limit your peripheral vision. Unfortunately, mine did all of these things so I only used them to find my contact lenses. I went into the master bathroom, passed a still sleeping Mariel, placed the notebook on the counter and put in my lenses.

Once I could see well again, I took the notebook into the third bedroom, which we used as a combination office and secondary guest room. This room contains a TV and a desk for my computer equipment. Against the opposite wall is a sofa bed, which grants the room status as a secondary guest room. The main guest room is next door, furnished with a real bed, another TV, an empty closet and a view of the pool.

I placed the notebook on the desk and hunted for my gear. Since moving here, I had no need for my forensic tools, so they sat in a box — somewhere. Inside my office closet, I rifled through the cardboard shipping containers until I found my tool kit. My desktop computer already had the forensic software installed.

About six months passed since I used these things. It felt odd working with them outside of the lab, but good to use them again. It was a comfortable feeling. I had to admit that I didn’t miss the job but I did enjoy the work.

Despite what they do on TV, you can’t just turn on a computer without altering important information. Date and time stamps change and the system overwrites space from which you might otherwise obtain evidence. So, my first step would be to create an exact copy of Ray’s disk I could examine without compromising the original.

I removed the hard disk from Ray’s notebook computer and placed it on my scanner. I needed to record the serial number from its label for my report and this method eliminated any transcription errors I might make reading and writing.

Then I connected the disk to my desktop computer. I had to place a device in between the two that would protect Ray’s disk against any changes, so I used my write blocker. It’s a connector that allowed my forensic software to read Ray’s disk but which blocked any attempts to write to it.

Copying would take a while, so I got it started and went to the kitchen. Now, I had a tough decision. Eggs or cereal? I was awake now and there was time enough to cook, so I decided on a cheese, onion and pepper omelet.

If you like a challenge, try saying “Sharp Shredded Cheddar” three times fast while drunk. I used the Latin coffee, Bustello, advertised as muy sobroso y mas fuerte, (very tasty yet strong) made café con leche (coffee with heated milk) and poured some orange juice.

The aroma of onions, peppers and strong coffee filled the kitchen. Just as my omelet finished cooking, Mariel staggered out to the kitchen drawn by the smell of the coffee. She wore high-heeled slippers and a baby blue nightgown with white dots that could pass for a sundress. Even without makeup, she looked great.

With half closed eyes, she gave me that great smile of hers. Without a word, I handed her a cup full of coffee and a glass full of orange juice. She smiled again with half closed eyes and silently staggered back to the bedroom. We had a good night. Content, I peeled a Clementine, put it on my plate alongside my omelet and sat down to eat.

After breakfast, I checked on Ray’s disk. It was still copying so I showered, shaved and dressed while Mariel did her morning exercises. From the bathroom, I could hear the thumps of her jumping jacks and then the squeaks of the exercise bike. She spent a lot of time on that bike and had the legs to show for it. By now, she should be able to talk. I finished dressing about the time the disk finished copying. Now, I could get to work. I had what examiners called an image, a copy of the notebook disk, on my desktop computer.

I loaded Ray’s disk image into a forensic program, which would catalog every single one of his files, bypassing any logins or passwords he might have used to secure his computer. Since this process also takes a while, I got a second cup of coffee, went to the living room and watched a movie on the big 58” plasma screen TV.

Mariel, awake, fed, dressed and made up, came into the living room. She looked good enough to take my eyes off the TV. When I did, I saw she was waving one of my T-shirts at me. “Clean or dirty? I found it on the floor next to the bed.”

“Oh, that’s from last night. I like to have clothes handy in case I need to get the door in the middle of the night.”

“Clean or dirty? I’m doing the laundry.”

“Dirty. I guess laundry waits for no man.”

“That’s because no man will do it.” She left the room with my shirt.

I turned up the volume. After a bit of big screen, surround sound bliss, I went back to the office. The disk image completed processing and was ready for examination.

It took me a few hours, but as requested, I found Ray’s banking and investment accounts. His online passwords were in one of the computer registry files. I also found a number of spreadsheets, emails and other financial documents. The emails showed Ray Kenwood worked in sales for a local division of a worldwide corporation, A. V. Designs. The banking records indicated Ray had a lot more money than you’d think a sales guy would earn but nothing else stood out as unusual.

One of Ray’s documents was password protected and encrypted. When I made it readable, I saw it contained three columns. The first one was a list of dates, the second consisted of six digit numbers and the third contained six-character combinations of letters and numbers. People don’t encrypt documents unless they hold something important, but even after decrypting this one, I had no idea what it meant.