It Happened One Knife (21 page)

I took a sip and made a face. “Ugh.” I can play along.

Honig nodded. “I know,” he said. “It’s really amazing. You can go out and buy the best coffeemaker on the market, and if you install it in a police station, the coffee comes out tasting like mud.” He slurped down much of his freshly poured cup, and sat behind his desk. “Now then,” he said, lumping two words with opposite definitions against each other. “Harry Lillis.”

It’s possible that at the drop of Lillis’s name, I was supposed to go to my knees and confess, because Honig just looked at me for a long moment. I didn’t confess, because I was relatively sure I hadn’t killed Lillis, so Honig eventually moved on.

“Harry Lillis,” he repeated, but didn’t wait as long for my tear-soaked breakdown this time. “The body was discovered in an unrecognizable state in a gazebo seventy-five yards from the rear entrance of the Lillian Booth Actors’ Home. Firefighters on the scene reported it was there when they arrived, lying on the wooden floor of the gazebo, which was engulfed in flames.” He was reading from a report he held on a clipboard. Underneath the report, also attached to the clipboard, was today’s
New York Times
crossword puzzle, folded neatly to fit on the board.

“Thank you,” I said. “Can I leave now?”

“We haven’t even gotten to you yet,” Honig said, apparently having missed my masterfully ironic tone. He went back to the report. “Body was badly burned, no fingerprints left, no hair, no clothing, except for a few pieces of burned cloth that appear to match the shirt Lillis was seen wearing earlier that evening.”

“Dental records?” I asked. What the hell; I was drinking the man’s coffee, and actually got up to refill the cup.

“Lillis had a full set of dentures, which were found next to the body. Took us a while to find them in all the ash, but they were there.”

I stopped in mid-refill. “Next to the body? Not in his mouth?”

“Apparently they fell out as the body burned. They were a few inches away, on the floor, a little melted.” Honig wasn’t wearing glasses to read, unlike Dutton, who favors half-glasses. Maybe he was wearing bifocal contact lenses.

“We sure they were his?” I asked.

Honig gave me a look that read, “What’s this
we
stuff, kemosabe?” He said, “Dentures are made with the patient’s name on a small piece of paper that is molded directly into the plastic. They were Lillis’s teeth, all right.”

That took the wind out of my sails.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Homicide detectives must say that in their sleep.

“He was a legend. And he was getting to be a friend.” I bent my head, and my right thumb and forefinger went to the bridge of my nose. Harry was dead. I looked up at Honig. “Lieutenant, why am I here?”

He glanced back down at the report. “Four nights before Lillis died, he called you from the Booth Actors’ Home. Is that correct?”

I nodded.

“He told you that his ex-partner had threatened to kill him.”

I blinked. “How did you know . . . ?”

“Chief Dutton in Midland Heights told me about that. We also have reports from the NYPD of two complaints you made, and then withdrew, against the ex-partner, Mr. Townes, and his son. Said they shot at you and sent you a cartoon character clock in a box.”

“Well, when you say it like that, it doesn’t sound scary,” I said.

“Did Lillis tell you Townes wanted to kill him?”

I thought about exactly what Harry had said. It seemed like months ago, but it had only been a little more than a week. “He said that Townes had implied he
could
kill Harry if Harry made any more comments about Townes possibly killing his wife.”

Honig’s jaw dropped a couple of feet. “Townes killed Vivian Reynolds?” Oh lord, another classic comedy freak. Somehow, they all find me, eventually.

“That’s what Harry said. I don’t know if it’s true.”

“How?”

I grimaced. “Harry said he strangled her and then . . .”

“And then what?” Honig’s eyebrows had merged.

“And then set their house on fire to cover his tracks.”

Honig sat back in his chair and blinked a few times, digesting the information. “Lillis set the fire in Bel Air?” He
was
a fan. “Did he use kerosene?” he asked.

That made
me
blink. “To set the fire?” Honig nodded. “How the hell would I know? Why? Was there kerosene found in the gazebo?”

“We’re not sure yet,” Honig answered. “Could be kerosene, could be chemical fertilizer from the garden shed. That stuff is pretty flammable.”

“Was it in the gazebo?”

“It was on the body,” Honig said. “A
lot
.”

Wait a second; I’m slow on the uptake. “So we’re talking about a murder here, for sure?” I asked.

“Unless Lillis decided to immolate himself, I’d say yes,” Honig answered. “And for that matter, even if he didn’t.”

“What does that mean?”

Honig’s lips flattened out; he looked like he’d tasted something awful. “It means—and I don’t want this repeated anywhere—that the head was set at a strange angle, and might have had a broken neck. As if . . .”

“As if someone strangled him, and then set the body on fire to cover his tracks.” I sat back and forgot the coffee.

“So I need to know from you, Mr. Freed, exactly how much you know about the Vivian Reynolds case, and how it relates to Les Townes.”

I spent the better part of an hour detailing for Honig the research I’d done on Vivian Reynolds’s death, and how none of it could be substantiated. I told him about my visit to Les Townes’s home, about his son Wilson, about the attack with the shotgun and the ticking package delivered to Comedy Tonight. I told him about Wilson’s visit to threaten me and about his breaking my snow globe. I talked for so long, I think I might have told him about the time my mother made me go trick-or-treating dressed as a stalk of celery. I went through a good deal of police station coffee. Honig made a new pot. I took two bathroom breaks.

He took notes. He wasn’t a great listener; he didn’t let me forget I was being questioned in a crime investigation. But he was a
good
listener. He didn’t miss anything, he asked for clarification when he needed it, and he asked questions that made sense. By the time I was finished, I felt like my brain had been emptied. Tomorrow, I’d relearn that “walking upright” thing I’d mastered a while back.

Finally, Honig stood up, indicating the interview was over. He reached a hand across his desk and I took it. “Thank you for coming in,” he said.

“I didn’t have much of a choice, Lieutenant,” I answered. “You sent a car.” I got up to leave, and did my best Peter-Falk-as-Columbo impression: “There’s just one thing, if I may ask.”

“I have no reason to tell you anything about an ongoing investigation,” Honig said.

I ignored that. “If you knew that Townes had threatened Harry’s life, and you knew that Harry had been murdered, and didn’t just die in an accidental fire, why didn’t you immediately go to Queens for Les and his son?”

Honig’s eyes narrowed. “What makes you think we didn’t?”

“And?”

“And, they were gone. The house was empty of everything but furniture. They’d taken their clothes and left. There was nothing there, and nobody has seen them for over a week.”

27

I
asked Honig if Officer Broeker, the uniform who had driven me up from Midland Heights, could take me to the Booth Actors’ Home before the return trip. He grumbled about it, but agreed after a minute or so. I figured that I’d already made the trip to Englewood, and was less than two miles from the Actors’ Home. It would be foolish to go home and then borrow a car to drive back up.

My chauffeur in blue came in with me, and followed silently wherever I went. When I inquired at the front desk about seeing Lillis’s room, the woman behind the counter looked worried, and called for Walter Lee, who arrived in less than a minute.

Luckily, Walt recognized me, and visibly relaxed. “We’ve been a little jumpy recently,” he said. When I asked again if I could see Lillis’s room, he glanced briefly at Officer Broeker.

“He’s not here to investigate,” I said. “He’s my ride for the day.” Broeker’s expression went from stony to . . . stonier.

Walt walked me back to the room where Lillis had lived. There were traces of police crime scene tape on the doorjamb, but most of it had been removed. He unlocked the door and let it swing open, but seemed reluctant to walk inside. Maybe Walt was squeamish. For that matter, maybe
I
was squeamish, because I hesitated for a second, and then went in. Walt said the room would have been cleared out by now to make room for a new resident—he was fond of mentioning the lengthy waiting list—but the police had insisted on not touching anything in there until the medical examiner’s report on Lillis’s autopsy was released, and that hadn’t happened yet.

The room was untouched—no, make that unchanged. The cops had been through it, had opened drawers and moved furniture, but had been respectful, not tossing the place like they would if it had been a suspect’s residence. It was still neat, but there had clearly been some activity recently.

The bed was made, waiting for Lillis to come back.

I looked for the wheelchair, but it wasn’t here. “Did they find his wheelchair?” I asked Walt.

“His wheelchair?” he responded.

I must have added three permanent wrinkles to my forehead. “Harry had injured his hip in a fall,” I said. “Didn’t you know that? He could barely stand up the last time I saw him, and was complaining that the physical therapy on his hip wasn’t helping.”

“Physical therapy?” Walt seemed incapable of starting a response without repeating something I’d just said. “Mr. Lillis wasn’t receiving physical therapy.”

“Why not?”

“He didn’t need it,” Walter Lee answered, for once using his own words. “All the tests our doctors ran indicated he hadn’t injured himself. We assumed he’d done a pratfall to entertain the people watching, because he didn’t even land hard. Mr. Lillis insisted it was worse and requested a wheelchair, which we gave him gladly, but he never really needed it.”

My head started to hurt. It was as if all the strange information I’d been getting all day was collecting in my sinuses. “I don’t understand,” I told Walt. “I saw Harry just a few days before he died, and he needed me to wheel him outside. Everyone here saw me doing that.”

Walt nodded. “Yes, we did, but I can assure you that not two hours before you visited that day, Mr. Freed, Harry Lillis walked himself to the dining room and back with no sign of pain at all.”

“You’re sure?”

“I saw him myself.”

I felt like I had to prove him wrong. “So where is the wheelchair now?” I asked. Ha! Answer that, Mr. Smarty Pants!

“I believe it was discovered near the gazebo that night, wasn’t it, Officer?” Walt looked at Officer Broeker, who nodded so slightly it was hard to see the movement.

“So whoever killed him must have wheeled him out there,” I said aloud. “Why did you ask about it like you didn’t know he was using it anymore?”

Walt widened his eyes a little in a facial gesture meant to convey bafflement. “I knew he still had it, but I assumed it was a security blanket sort of thing, since I knew he had been walking under his own steam rather well for quite some time,” he said.

I walked to the desk, and gestured at it: “Is it okay if I touch this?” I asked. Walt glanced at the cop, who hesitated, then gave the eensy-weensy nod again. I opened the top drawer of Lillis’s desk.

There wasn’t anything special in any of the drawers, just some stationery, a few photographs, some cassette tapes (apparently Harry wasn’t much for the digital revolution), and a few bottles of prescription medication.

“What are these for?” I asked Walt, showing him the bottles.

He examined them. “Blood pressure,” he said, looking at the first, then “acid reflux” for the second.

Walt put a third bottle into his pocket. I thought about asking what it was for, but he deflected me by asking if I was ready to leave.

I gave the room another careful look, but there wasn’t much to see. There were books on two shelves over the desk and the bed, mostly about show business, biographies, and criticism. One section, however, seemed to be devoted to Shakespeare. A comedian never lived who didn’t have a serious side.

“Was anything removed from this room?” I asked.

“Nothing except . . .” Walt started to answer, but the cop in the corner moved suddenly, shaking his head “no,” and catching his eye. “No. Nothing.”

I started to ask about that exchange, but saw the look in the officer’s eyes, and decided to take the question up with someone more forgiving. Like Barry Dutton.

“Is that all you wanted, Mr. Freed?” Walt asked.

I took a last look. “Yeah, I guess so,” I said. We turned to leave the room, and just then, I noticed something in one corner, at the foot of the bed.

Lillis’s acoustic guitar was propped against the bed frame, and somehow, it looked so lonely and sad sitting there, I was reminded of my new friend’s loss all over again. I bit my lips, and walked to the guitar. I picked it up.

Walter Lee must have sensed my feelings, because he waited a moment, and then asked, “Would you like to take that with you, Mr. Freed?”

Harry Lillis’s guitar? For me? The offer was overwhelming. “Really?” I asked, sounding like a nine-year-old being given a valuable baseball card.

Walt nodded. “Mr. Lillis didn’t specify that it be given to anyone in particular,” he said. “He had no next of kin. You know, his brother died a number of years ago, and Mr. Lillis never had any children.”

I felt the polished wood in my hands, and was more overwhelmed than I should have been. “Thank you, Walt,” I said. “I’d like to take it.”

We walked out of the room, and Walt locked the door again. The three of us walked down the corridor, past the dining room, and toward the main entrance. Just before we made it to the door, I asked Walt if I could see the gazebo where Lillis died.