Julius Katz Mysteries (8 page)

“The question you should be asking, Archie, is when I first became suspicious of Norma Brewer, which was immediately.” Julius stopped to sample one of the finer Rieslings that he kept in his cellar. “Boston has more than its share of excellent facilities, so why move her mother to Vermont?”

“Because she was afraid her mother might give up her secret while in a confused state.”

“Precisely. And then you had her trying to bluff me, claiming how she didn’t want Helen helping out because she didn’t think her sister could handle it. The woman was a fool to hire me. Regardless of how desperate she might’ve been.”

“So that’s it. That’s what tipped you off.”

“There was more.” Julius frowned thinking about it. “It was absolute rubbish about her being afraid her brother would tie up any guardianship challenge in court. She could’ve received an immediate injunction—any competent lawyer would’ve told her that. But her brother obviously had something damning on her. Once I researched the missing brother-in-law, the pieces fell into place.”

“You knew Helen Arden was going to kill her sister.”

Julius shrugged. “You never know with something like that. But it was clear that something clicked with her when her mother reacted to me the way she did, and when she mistook her for Norma I could see the light go on in her eyes.”

“Why the big show?” I asked. “Was it really necessary in order to coax a confession out of her? The woman seemed pretty beaten down as it was.”

Julius made a face. “Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “I had no direct evidence linking her to the murder. It was all pure conjecture on my part. More importantly, though, I had another task at hand—and that was seeing that Emma Brewer would be properly taken care of. The only way I could force Lawrence Brewer to cooperate was to hang the threat of a murder charge over his head, the same with Willie Andrews.”

I digested all this and decided I had a lot of work still to do on my neuron network.

“Quite a day’s work,” I said. “You solved two murders, one that the police didn’t even know about. And both your clients turned out to be cold-blooded killers.”

“And one of them found you utterly charming,” Julius said, chuckling.

“I don’t believe she used the adverb
utterly
. By the way, why the urgency? Why did this need to be done today?”

Julius’s smile turned apologetic. “I’m sorry about this, Archie.”

And blast it! He turned me off!

Julius turned me back on several hours later. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of asking him why he had shut me off. Instead, I hacked into his phone company’s billing system and saw that he had placed a two-hour call to Lily Rosten.

The next day was business as usual. At six-thirty in the evening, Julius unclipped me from his tie, and without any explanation left me in his desk drawer. At seven, he left the townhouse. I called around and found the restaurant he had made dinner reservations for. They were for two. I settled in, not expecting to see him until morning, but again he surprised me by arriving home at midnight. Even more surprising, he was in a good mood about it. He even had me send Lily Rosten another dozen roses.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “You obviously struck out, so why so chipper?”

“Goodnight, Archie,” he said.

It went on like this for the next three days. When Julius blew off a high-stakes poker game for yet another date with Lily Rosten, I knew something was seriously askew. I’d been trying to uncover this anomaly in his behavior through mathematical models, but I decided to go at it from a different angle and instead search for similar patterns in literature. It was after analyzing the text of a Jane Austen novel that I realized what was going on. Mystery solved. When Julius once again arrived home at midnight, I asked him how his evening went.

“Very well, Archie, thank you for asking.”

“You know, we could double date. Why don’t you ask Lily if she has one of those ultra-slim iPods that she could bring along?”

He chuckled at that. “I just might,” he said.

“While we’re on the subject, I guess I’ll be needing to update your standard press release,” I said. “Should I remove the reference concerning your being a confirmed bachelor now, or should I wait?”

That brought out the barest trace of a guilty smile. “Good night, Archie,” he said.

As I said before, mystery solved.

ARCHIE’S BEEN FRA
M
ED

Originally published in the Sept/Oct 2010 issue of Ellery Queen
M
ystery
M
agazine. Won 1st place in Ellery Queen’s Readers Choice Awards.

By itself solving the PanzerCo corporate espionage case had left Julius flush with cash, but after following that up with a few very good weeks at the track and an even more exceptional night at a high-stakes poker game, Julius currently had over six months in reserves in his bank account. There was little chance I would be able to talk him into taking another case until his reserves reached a more anemic level, so unless Julius bought Lily Rosten the antique pearl and sapphire necklace he’d been eyeing or was successful in his bid for a case of 1945 Château Petrus or hit a rough patch with his gambling, it was doubtful that I would have another chance to refine the deductive reasoning module for my neuron network for at least another four months.

Let me explain. While Julius refers to me as Archie, and I act as his private secretary, research assistant, unofficial biographer, and all around man Friday, I am in actuality a two-inch rectangular piece of advanced technology that Julius wears as a tie clip. When I say that I’m made up of advanced technology, I’m not kidding. Any laboratory outside of the one that created me would be amazed at what they discovered if they were allowed to open me up. Not only would they find computer technology that they wouldn’t think possible for at least another twenty years but also a fully functional self-adapting neuron network that simulates intelligence and consciousness, as well as many all-too-human emotions. I don’t think the emotion element was expected, but it’s what has happened, and one of the emotions that I find myself more and more experiencing is desire, specifically the desire to beat my boss, the great detective Julius Katz, at solving a case. So far it hasn’t happened; in fact I haven’t come close yet, but I know if I can keep refining my neuron network eventually, I’ll accomplish this.

So that’s my dilemma. Julius being as lazy as he is means he won’t take a case until he absolutely has to in order to replace dwindling funds, and that would only be so that he can continue engaging in the activities that he enjoys so much: collecting and drinking fine wine, dining at gourmet restaurants, gambling, and entertaining Lily Rosten. Until recently, womanizing would’ve been high on his list, but since meeting Ms. Rosten he has quit that activity. So given Julius’s recent financial successes, it would be months before I’d be able to nag him into taking another case, and as a consequence, months before I’d be able to refine my neuron network, at least by observing Julius’s genius at work.

That morning we both fell into our recent patterns. Lily Rosten had left a week ago to visit her parents in upstate New York and wouldn’t be returning for another week, and this had sent Julius into a bit of a funk. Since her departure he’d been spending his days performing his usual calisthenics and martial arts routines, then puttering around his Beacon Hill townhouse until four in the afternoon, when he’d open a bottle of wine and sample it along with a platter of cheeses and smoked meats outdoors on his private patio. Later, he would forego dining out to prepare his own meal. The nights that he didn’t go to the track or have a poker game waiting for him, he’d spend quietly reading. As much as ever, prospective clients were calling to try to arrange appointments, but Julius barely bothered listening to me as I’d report on them, so I’d stopped relaying even these to him unless I thought there was a chance that the details would annoy him. But even from these I was getting little reaction. I suspected that until Lily returned, Julius was determined to stay mired in his funk.

At that moment Julius sat scowling at a novel that a local area Boston author had pestered him to read. He made a face that was nearly identical to one he had made months earlier when he found a bottle of Domaine de Chatenoy pinot noir had turned to vinegar. Wrinkling his nose in disdain, he tossed the book into his wastebasket, the impact making a loud thud.

“That painful, huh?” I asked.

“Excruciatingly so,” Julius admitted. “Pedestrian writing at best.” His nose wrinkled even further with disgust. “The author has his hero performing a self-defense technique that in real-life would accomplish little more than getting his dunce of a hero shot.”

“You gave up on it pretty quickly,” I noted.

“Usually, Archie, all you need is one bite to know a piece of fruit is bad.” Julius sighed. “It was my fault for letting myself be bullied into reading it.”

Of course, the idea of Julius being bullied into doing anything was laughable. He had his ulterior motive for agreeing to read the book. By cross-referencing obvious attributes of this author with characters I found from a number of crime novels used to build my personality, I was able to figure it out. Julius viewed this author as a world-class pigeon waiting to be plucked, and he badly wanted to invite him to a high-stakes poker game so that he could do the plucking. This author had three qualities that Julius found appealing for an invitation to his poker game: He was very wealthy, about as equally smugly arrogant, and not nearly as bright as he believed himself to be. So there it was. Julius accepted the book simply to appease this author’s ego, and he picked it up to read so he could further size up the author. It must have only taken Julius twenty or so pages to do this and he saw no reason to waste any more of his time than was necessary.

I was about to inform Julius about this piece of detective work of mine and then ask whether he wished me to send this author an invitation to Julius’s next private poker game. It would have been a perfect setup, since Julius would first deny having any such mercenary objective, and then he’d have to sheepishly admit that he would like an invitation sent. But as I was about to do this, a news item came across one of the local news Web sites that I monitor, and this story had me instead muttering, “Uh-oh.”

Julius raised an eyebrow at that. “What is it, Archie?”

“A Denise Penny, age twenty-seven, was found murdered in her Cambridge apartment.”

“Of course, it is tragic when any person is murdered, especially one as young as this woman. But why are you telling me this? Do I know her?”

“No, you don’t know her, but I do.”

Julius showed a thin smile that reflected his skepticism. “Please explain, Archie.”

“Sure, I’ve been dating Denise. I was actually supposed to see her at eleven o’clock this morning, which was near the time that she was murdered. I feel kind of strange now about standing her up, given what has happened. Sort of like my battery power is being drained out of me.”

Julius’s eyelids lowered an eighth of an inch as he leaned further back into his chair. “Enough of this nonsense,” he said.

“No, it’s true. Denise and I have been dating for three weeks now.”

“And how did all this start?”

Julius didn’t believe me. From his tone I could tell he was trying to decipher my reason for fabricating this story. If I had shoulders I would’ve shrugged them, but I didn’t, so I simply told him how it happened.

“Denise called the office three weeks ago hoping to hire you. I knew there was no chance of that given the large bonus you received from the PanzerCo case. I also knew that it would be months before I’d have another chance to refine my neuron network, at least by my usual methods. When Denise started flirting with me, I saw a way to expand my experience base, so I flirted back. That was the beginning of a beautiful and ultimately bittersweet relationship. If I had a throat I’m sure I’d be feeling a lump forming right now.”

Julius’s eyes glazed. He still didn’t believe what I was saying, and in a humoring tone, he remarked, “I’m sure you would, Archie. And how did the two of you date?”

“The usual methods. Phone conversations. E-mails. Online chatting. Swapping photos.”

“You swapped photos with her?”

“Well, not of me as a piece of technology, but as how I imagine myself.”

“Can I see these photos?”

“Sure.”

I e-mailed Julius the photos that I had sent Denise as well as the ones she had sent me. He looked at her photos first and murmured, “A very pretty girl, Archie.”

“Yeah, I found her very attractive,” I said. “She rated well when I compared her features to Hollywood actresses who are considered beautiful. Maybe not as well as Lily Rosten rates, but Denise did rate highly. My heart’s breaking now.”

Julius grunted at that but didn’t comment further. When he looked at my photos, or at least the photos of my imaginary self, he did so without any change of expression, even when he came across a copy of my Massachusetts driver’s license.

“Is this real? he asked.

“Yes, sir. I hacked into the Department of Motor Vehicles computer system and added my license.”

“I see that you picked the last name Smith. Why was that?”

“I thought it would be advisable to have a more anonymous last name. Something that wouldn’t call undue attention to myself. And since Smith is the most common surname in the United States, I decided to use it.”

“A sound decision, Archie. This photo that you used, is it from an actual person or did you generate it?”

“I generated it. It wasn’t too difficult.”

Julius made a hmmm sound. “According to your driver’s license you’re thirty-five, five foot seven, and a hundred and ninety pounds. The same as Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op. The photo is also how I’d imagine him. Stocky, thinning brown hair, tough bulldog countenance. Is this how you picture yourself?”

“Mostly,” I admitted. “Although I picture myself shorter. No more than five foot tall. But after estimating Denise’s height from her photos at five feet and two inches, and performing additional research, I thought I’d better make myself five foot seven inches to give our relationship a better chance of succeeding.”

“Why do you picture yourself only five feet tall?”

“Probably because you wear me as a tie clip.”

Julius nodded, thinking about that. “I didn’t realize I was having such a detrimental effect on your self-esteem. Perhaps I should start wearing a hat so that you can be worn in a hatband. Archie, why did you send this woman a copy of your driver’s license?”

“A playful jest,” I said.

Julius didn’t appear convinced, which was reasonable since that wasn’t the reason I’d sent it. At the time I was experiencing a sensation that made it seem almost as if I were skipping processing cycles, and it was this sensation that made me send Denise a copy of my license. I didn’t understand what this sensation was then, and it was only later, after analyzing dozens of literary novels involving romances, that I realized it was insecurity. That was why I had sent Denise my license. I was afraid she wouldn’t believe I was real otherwise.

Julius sat examining the other photos I had manufactured of myself when I again involuntarily murmured, “Uh-oh.” This time Julius didn’t bother inquiring about my interruption, but I thought I should tell him. “A warrant is being issued for my arrest,” I said.

“Is that so?”

“Oh, yes. But it only makes sense. I was Denise’s boyfriend, after all, and I was supposed to meet her at her apartment near the time that she was murdered. It’s reasonable for the police to be focusing their attention on me. I thought I should tell you, since as you can see from the copy of my driver’s license that I had listed your townhouse as my residence, and the police will be here shortly.”

“And how do you know this?”

“I thought it would be prudent, given the situation, to hack into the District Court’s computer system and see if a warrant had been issued for my arrest, and one was just issued.”

“I see.” A thin smile crept onto Julius’s lips. “Very good, Archie. A clever and elaborate prank. You had me going there for a few minutes. I guess I should’ve expected this development, especially given your recent idleness, but Archie, I’d like you to reprogram your neuron network so that you do not perform any further pranks.”

I told him this was done, although no additional reprogramming was necessary. Satisfied, Julius picked up the latest issue of
Wine Spectator
from his desk and was browsing it when I involuntarily muttered again, “Uh-oh.”

At first Julius was going to ignore me, but a slow-building annoyance tightened the muscles along his mouth. Finally he put his magazine down and asked if I had anything additional to report.

“I’ve been monitoring police radio bandwidths. Two minutes ago I picked up a broadcast that the police are heading to this address to arrest me. I’m afraid I’m going to have to go on the lam or risk being thrown into the hoosegow.”

“Or more likely have me turn you off.”

Julius didn’t threaten lightly. The fingers on his right hand drummed impatiently against the surface of his antique walnut desk, which was a clear sign that he had about reached his limit. In a poker game Julius had no tell to indicate whether he was bluffing or holding winning cards, and he was similarly inscrutable with his clients, but when it came to just the two of us he didn’t bother disguising his feelings. Still, even given as close as I was to being powered off, I couldn’t keep from murmuring another involuntary “uh-oh” The flash of annoyance in Julius’s eyes caused me to quickly explain that the outdoor webcams were showing that the police were about to descend upon his doorstep.

“Detective Mark Cramer is one of the members of the mob,” I added. “If you would like I’ll identify the three other police officers with him. It shouldn’t be too hard once I break into the Cambridge Police Department’s computer system. Give me a couple of minutes.”

Julius took a deep breath and held it before shaking his head. “That you’re continuing this prank is very distressing, Archie. If you’re malfunctioning and unable to reprogram your neuron network as I requested—”

A pounding on Julius’s front door stopped him. His office was soundproof, but the office door had been left open and because of that Detective Cramer’s voice could be heard as he shouted for Julius to open the door, that he had a warrant for Archie Smith’s arrest and that Julius’s tactics would not be tolerated this time.