Julius Katz Mysteries (7 page)

“He’s not going anywhere you won’t be able to find him later.”

For a moment I thought Cramer was going to tell Julius to go to hell. Instead, the steam went out of him. He told Julius that he had until the end of the day and after that he wasn’t going to put up with any more of this nonsense, although Cramer used a far more colorful word than that. Julius watched while Cramer left to join the two other police officers in a late-model sedan. After they drove away, he went back inside, first making a detour to the kitchen, where he picked up a tray of hors d’oeuvres that he had prepared earlier—buffalo mozzarella wrapped in prosciutto along with assorted cheeses and olives—and then returning to his office. A bottle of Californian Petit Syrah had already been poured into a decanter and was waiting there. It was a fair vintage at best, one that Julius had bought out of curiosity, and one which he normally wouldn’t serve to company, which showed his level of disdain for Brewer.

Julius placed the tray in front of Brewer, then sat behind his desk so he faced him. Julius next poured a single glass of Syrah and left it within arm’s reach of his guest.

“I promised you refreshments and, if nothing else, I’m a man of my word,” Julius said. “But, Sir, let me say that without that promise you’d get nothing from me.”

Lawrence Brewer sat slumped in his chair. He looked worse than he had at the dog track the other day. A weariness tugged at the corners of  his mouth, pulling it into a slight frown, and dark circles under his eyes gave him a raccoon-like appearance, especially with the paleness of the rest of his skin. Physically he resembled Norma more than his other sister, and like Norma he had too much nose and not quite enough chin. He took several pieces of the prosciutto and mozzarella and popped them into his mouth, then followed that with a long sip of wine.

“It’s not as black and white as Norma made out to you,” he said in a tired monotone as he stared bug-eyed at Julius. “My mother has some bad days, but she also has some good ones, and the fact is, she doesn’t want to leave her home.”

“I’m not interested in what you have to say,” Julius said. “Nor would I believe a word coming from you. We both know that you are more concerned with your mother’s money than her well-being, so don’t insult me with this act.”

“How dare you—”

“Shut up. All I want from you is to sit there and listen. We both know what you are, Brewer, make no mistake about that. I’m going to prove that you have borrowed large sums of money from a known gangster, Willie Andrews, so that you could finance your gambling addiction, and further, that you’ve been using your mother’s assets as collateral. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that you’ve in some way been responsible for her recent weight loss and obvious malnutrition with the hopes of getting your hands on her money all that much sooner. Take this as a promise, Brewer: by the end of the day I’m going to make sure that her money is off-limits to you. You’re going to need another way to satisfy your growing debt with Andrews. That’s all. Get out of here.”

The two man sat staring at each other, Brewer bug-eyed and Julius as still as if he’d been carved out of marble. Finally, Brewer broke off the staring contest and got to his feet.

“You better be careful what you say in public, Katz, or I’ll be suing you for slander,” Brewer said, a notable quaver in his voice. “This is a nice townhouse; I wouldn’t mind having the courts award it to me.” He left the office, and seconds later the sound of the front door opening and slamming could be heard.

“Bravo,” I said.

Julius didn’t bother responding.

“That accomplished a lot,” I said after giving him suitable time to answer me. “You chased a murderer out of your office without trying to get a single bit of information from him. You could’ve asked him about his current relationship with Thomas Arden, or where he was when your client was having the life choked out of her, or any number of other things of interest, but no, you had to have the satisfaction of telling him off. Again, Bravo.”

That brought a thin smile to Julius’s lips.

“Patience, Archie,” he said. “I accomplished exactly what I had hoped.”

I didn’t believe him for one second. What he’d done was indulge in a childish impulse instead of focusing on the job at hand. I realized I was feeling something that must’ve been akin to annoyance—I was so close to having a draw with Julius, and his actions put the actual proving of it in jeopardy.

I was in no mood after that to continue with my scenario simulations, and instead spent the afternoon analyzing classic chess games and trying to find flaws in the winning player’s moves. I found a few. Julius, after pouring the Syrah down the kitchen drain, spent his time mostly puttering around, at times reading, at other times distracted and staring off into space. Neither of us saw any reason to talk to the other, so we didn’t. At five-thirty-eight the doorbell rang. Julius checked the webcam feed that covered the front entrance. Willie Andrews was standing outside the door rocking softly back and forth on his heels, his hands behind his back. Standing on either side of the door were what looked like hired muscle. One of them was grim-faced, the other showed a wide smirk, obviously thinking he couldn’t be seen when Julius opened the door.

“Should I call the police?” I asked.

Julius shook his head. “Not necessary,” he said. He took off his shoes and socks so that he was barefoot, then he headed to answer the door, moving with a catlike grace. When he opened the door, Willie Andrews pushed his way in and tried to back Julius up by poking him hard in the chest with his index finger, all the while yelling that he was going to teach Julius a lesson for interfering with his business. Andrews was seven years younger than Julius, narrower in the shoulders and several inches taller and with a longer reach. He never had a chance, not even with his two hired hands rushing in behind him to help. A fact that Julius keeps out of his press releases is that he’s a fifth-degree black belt in Shaolin Kung Fu, as well as a long-time practitioner of Chen Style Tai Chi. In the blink of an eye, Julius deftly stepped aside and broke Andrews’s finger, and in the same motion sent the gangster tumbling headfirst so that his chin cracked against the hardwood floor. Even though both of Andrews’s hired goons outweighed Julius by a good forty pounds, it took him less than five seconds to leave them crumpled and bleeding outside his front door. He gave me a signal and I called an associate of his to pick up the rubbish that had been left outside.

Willie Andrews sat up, his eyes dazed as he clutched his broken finger and wiped his wrist against his bruised chin to see if he was bleeding. He wasn’t.

“You broke my finger,” he said to Julius, his lips contorting into the classic Hollywood bad-boy sneer. I found dozens of photos on the Internet that matched it exactly.

“You’re lucky that’s all I did. I could have you arrested for home invasion and battery.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll take my chances.”

Still clutching his injured fingered, Andrews pushed himself to his feet and started for the door.

“I could also see that you’re tried and found guilty of murder,” Julius said. “Norma Brewer’s death means a larger inheritance for Lawrence, and you’re the only person that would benefit from that.”

That stopped Andrews. He turned around to face Julius, his sneer mostly gone. “What do you want?” he asked.

Julius told him. Andrews thought about it, realized he had no choice in the matter, and agreed.

Over the next hour Henry Zack arrived first, then Lawrence Brewer, followed by his sister Helen, next a mystery man who I knew from his conversations with Julius was one Roger Stromsby, although no one else in the room other than Julius had any idea who he was, and at last, Cramer, with four uniformed police officers, escorting a frail-looking but lucid Emma Brewer. It was clear from her eyes that she was having one of her good days. Julius waited until she was seated before he bowed his head to her and introduced himself.

“Ma’am,” he said. “I’m sorry I have to bring you here under these circumstances. Unfortunately I have disturbing news to tell you, some of which I’m sure you’re already aware of.”

Emma Brewer’s mouth weakened a bit, but her eyes remained dry. “I know you came by my house several days ago,” she said, her voice stronger than I would’ve expected. “I wasn’t having a good day then. I am now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Julius said.

He took a deep breath and held it, his eyes fixed on Emma Brewer as she sat across from him. The rest of the setup had Helen and Lawrence sitting next to each other on a sofa to Julius’s left, Willie Andrews holding an ice bag to his injured finger as he sat in a chair to Julius’s right, Henry Zack standing behind Andrews, Roger Stromsby sitting in a corner trying to look inconspicuous, and Cramer and the other police officers standing in the background. Lawrence Brewer sat motionless in a bug-eyed stare, Helen looked mostly out of it as if she didn’t understand what she was doing there, and Andrews’s face was frozen in a half-grimace and half-smirk.

I asked Julius when Thomas Arden was going to be showing up. He ignored me and let the air slowly out of his lungs. “Ma’am,” he said, still addressing Emma Brewer, “if you’d like I could offer you refreshments. Coffee, maybe? A sandwich?”

“No, thank you. Please just get on with it.”

“Very well,” he said more to himself than to her. “You’re aware that your daughter, Norma, was murdered two days ago?”

Still dry-eyed, she nodded.

Julius continued, “Unfortunately there’s far more that I have to tell you. That man sitting to your left is named Willie Andrews. He’s a well-known gangster and your son owes him a great deal of money.”

Julius leveled his stare at Andrews. Without looking up, Andrews told the room that Brewer owed him six hundred thousand dollars. “He promised his ma’s money and house to cover it. If he killed his sister for the money I know nothing about it.”

All eyes turned to Brewer, but he didn’t say a word. He just sat looking as if he had an upset stomach.

“Ma’am,” Julius said, again addressing the mother, “when you saw me the other day, I had the sense that you mistook me for your son-in-law, Thomas Arden.”

“I don’t know. I might’ve.”

“I do look somewhat like him.”

“You’re older than he was when I last saw him,” she said with a weak smile. “But yes, you do resemble him.”

“Twelve years ago he abandoned your daughter, Helen.”

She nodded, some wetness appearing around her eyes.

“Do you know what happened to him?”

Emma Brewer looked like she was trying to fight back tears. She didn’t say anything.

“Ma’am, this is no longer a matter of protecting your daughter, Norma. She’s beyond protection. After twelve years it’s time for the truth. From the way you reacted when you thought I was Thomas Arden, it was as if you’d seen a ghost. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

Emma Brewer squeezed her eyes shut and nodded.

“Norma had an affair with him. She murdered him, didn’t she.”

Helen Arden’s jaw dropped as she stared at her mother. I was dumbfounded—yet another new emotion for me to experience. “How in the world…?” I heard myself asking Julius.

As if to answer me, Julius explained it to Emma Brewer.

“After you confused me for Arden, you confused your daughter Helen for Norma. They look nothing alike. I already had my suspicions regarding Norma, but this along with other facts that I uncovered all but told me about the affair.”

Tears leaked from Emma Brewer’s eyes. “I saw them together once. Norma later confided in me about the affair. Much later, she also told me about what happened to him. According to her it was an accident.”

“It wasn’t. She had him embezzle half a million dollars from his company, then she killed him for the money.”

Roger Stromsby spoke up then. Stromsby was CEO of the company Arden stole from, and he confirmed what Julius said. “We suspected Arden, but we couldn’t prove it,” Stromsby added as straight-faced as he could. The real reason was what Julius had said earlier—that they were in fact covering up the theft so as not to scare off investors, but Stromsby wasn’t about to admit that in a room filled with police officers.

Julius asked Cramer what he had been able to uncover about the business Norma Brewer claimed she had sold.

“We couldn’t find anything,” Cramer said gruffly.

Julius turned to Lawrence Brewer. “She didn’t sell a business, did she?”

Lawrence shifted uneasily in his seat. “No, she didn’t,” he said. “Sometime after Tom disappeared, Norma came to me, telling me she had half a million dollars that she wanted to put into a Swiss bank account. I had no idea where the money came from, she never told me, but I helped her with the transfer. Several years ago, when she took the money out, I set up the fake business sale for her so she could explain the source of the money.”

Something in my neuron network clicked and I could see as clearly as Julius had all along who the murderer was. I studied her then, and could tell that she wanted nothing more than to bolt from the room, and she probably would’ve if she thought she had enough strength in her legs to do so. Slowly other eyes turned towards her. When her mother joined in, it was too much for her and she seemed to shrink under the weight of it all.

“You should’ve told me,” Helen Arden seethed at her mother. “The way you looked at me when you called me her name, I knew…”

She tried running then. It didn’t do her any good. One of the police officers stopped her and had her quickly cuffed. Emma Brewer started to sob then. Cramer helped her out of her chair. He was going to have a lot more questions for her.

Things went quickly after that.

The police officers, Andrews and Stromsby cleared out, leaving Julius alone with Henry Zack and Lawrence Brewer, and they quickly reached an agreement whereby Zack transferred guardianship of Brewer’s mother to Zack, as well as agreeing to a new will for his mother that would leave him with no inheritance. He had no choice; it was either agree to all that or have Julius destroy him, and he knew Julius had the means to do so. As it was, he was facing enough legal problems without having Julius after him. Once the paperwork was done and Julius and I were alone, I asked Julius when he suspected Helen Arden.