Steve Demaree - Dekker 09 - Murder on a Blind Date (21 page)

Lou and I
went to church and out to eat on Sunday, before I took him home and came home
to hibernate. Lou and I selected another mystery to read, since we had solved
our never-ending murder case. Both of us finished reading that book and discussed
it on Monday. We both felt we needed some mischief, so I invited Lou over for
some indoor cornhole. Neither of us broke a window.

+++

Early
Wednesday afternoon Lou and I kissed the girls goodbye and headed to
Lexington
. Lou promised Jennifer that he
would make sure I got home early from my dates while I was there. I told Thelma
Lou to make funeral arrangements for Lou. Nothing eventful happened on the way
to
Lexington
, unless you count Lou changing
the radio station on me a couple of times during the trip eventful. I found out
that Lou was equally bad singing songs from the 40s, 50s, and 60s. None too
soon we arrived in
Lexington
, checked in at the hotel, and had
an early dinner. It was early to bed for us. We had a
4:30
wakeup call.

+++

Lou and I
were in place with Eve Sanchez and three other officers before
7:00
. Detective Gruber had a team together at another
location. All the rest of the possible victims had been whisked away from their
homes to a secure location.

I was starting
to feel uneasy when no one had approached the house by
9:30
, but a little before
10:00
a man in an upstairs window whispered down to us that someone had
stopped a car out front, and that whoever it was was getting out. A few seconds
later there was a knock at the front door. We had instructed the young woman
who lived there how to respond.

"Yes.
Who is it?"

"I
have a special delivery package for a Karen Doolittle."

"Can
you just leave it?"

"I'm
sorry, but you have to sign for it."

"Just
a minute."

Eve
Sanchez eased Karen Doolittle out of the way and opened the door a little. She saw
a man standing there holding a large envelope. She took her time unlocking the
front door. While the man didn't know who she was, she knew who he was, so the
element of surprise was on her side, not his. Little did he know that the woman
who was about to open the door to him wasn't Karen Doolittle, but a police
officer, and two other officers were coming up each side of the house.

The
murderer held the package back away from the door, one hand on the package, the
other on a syringe hidden underneath. Eve hit him in the nose before he could
fill her arm with poison. Just after Eve hit him the two officers outside shot
him with their stun guns. He fell and jabbed the syringe into his leg as he
fell. He wouldn't be murdering anyone else. We tried to get a confession out of
him before he died, but a minute later he was dead, silent to the end.

While we
waited on an ambulance to cart him away a call was made to Detective Gruber. He
wanted to thank me personally and asked if I would accompany Sanchez when she
came in to give her report.

+++

"So,
Lt. Dekker, we finally meet."

"Yes,
Detective Gruber. We finally meet. Maybe now I can get back to retirement, and
you can get back to an easier schedule."

"We're
in
Lexington
, not Hilldale. I doubt if our
schedule ever gets easy. But I'm curious as to how you solved this. Tell me
about these clues."

"Well,
the first clue I happened upon was "Martha's husband." It took me a
while to realize that we weren't talking about George Washington, but George
Wilson, Dennis the Menace's next-door neighbor. But even that didn't mean
anything to me until I started looking at my movie collection. See, one of my
favorite old movies is
The Postman Always Rings Twice,
and one of our
clues was "The name rings a bell. The name rings a bell." At first we
thought the fact it was repeated was because there were two murderers or two victims.
Well, there were two victims on the day Lou received the clue, but when I saw
the movie on my shelf, I put two and two together, and came up with the
postman, the only one other than the people who owned the business who had
access to all the information needed about everyone. He opened each of their
correspondences about the dating service, so he knew who sent back green cards,
and where they lived.

"So,
it was on to the other clues. The first one,
"They both live in the
same neighborhood,"
was the toughest for me to figure out. But then I
remembered when we received that clue and I was able to figure out who
"both" were. See, Lou was kidnapped and taken to a house in the
Smokies, a house that belonged to a couple who were vacationing in
Europe
. Well, their home in
Lexington
was on the same mail route as the
Comstocks, and the mailman had a key to that house, in order to leave any
packages inside while they were gone. Well, inside that house was the key to
the house in the Smokies, which the couple had talked to their mailman about
many times. It was a fitting location to leave a body of someone he had
murdered, as well as my friend and former partner on the force, who is lucky to
be alive today.

"The
songs
Winter Wonderland
and
Summer in the City
reminded us that
the mailman is out in all kinds of weather, like the old saying says. And
George Wilson, Martha's husband, was a mailman before retired to be terrorized
by Dennis the Menace full time. Now
Doc Hollywood
wouldn't have meant
anything to me two weeks before, but the movie was a Michael J. Fox movie, and
a few days earlier my mailman had delivered two Michael J. Fox movies to me. Everything
fit in place, so I called my man, Sam Schumann, who did all of my investigative
work for many years, and I asked him for his help.

"He
found out the mailman's name was Earl Potts, that his day off was Thursday, and
that he had a daughter who was killed on a blind date many years ago. That
caused his wife, a nurse, to commit suicide by injection, and for him to become
bitter, so when the Comstocks moved in and started a dating service, it brought
back memories that made him come unglued."

"Well.
I'm impressed. And I will certainly keep you in mind the next time we have
something come up that seems to be too much for us."

As Lou
and I walked out, Eve took me aside and told me that she had a case right now
where she could use some help with nighttime surveillance. I promised her I
would check with my girlfriend to see if it was okay with her. She laughed,
then caught me off-guard and gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek.    

Lou and I
walked out to my van, Lou laughing all the way.

"Cy,
I'm not in any hurry. Do you want to drop by and see Sarah Jane before we leave
town?"

I told
him that she was at work, and that I didn't want to be around any more needles
for a while, including any coming from his direction.

We walked
out to the van, got in and buckled up. I started the van.
Did You Ever Have
to Make Up Your Mind
was playing. Lou and I shared a big laugh and then I
stomped on the gas and took off.

+++

It wasn't
until later that day, after the
Lexington
police entered the murderer's home, that we found out why
Lou was kidnapped. Potts left a confession, which verified what I had deduced,
but some more information about why Lou was kidnapped. As it turned out, Potts
had learned that Heather had contacted me to find the missing man in Morehead. He
knew all about my reputation and how I had been able to solve a large number of
murders. He wanted to throw me off, so he found a stranded young woman and
agreed to pay her to take a sample of a new drink product to the people who
lived in an apartment building. When she completed her mission and returned to
him to be paid without knowing that each of the people who drank it were inside
of his or her apartment unconscious, he injected her with poison and put her
inside a commercial van  advertising a fake business. He laid her next to  his
most recent victim. Then,  when he figured the coast was clear with everyone
knocked out, he broke into Lou's apartment, and added him to his collection. He
refrained from murdering Lou, because Lou was a retired cop. But he took all
three people and dumped them in the isolated home in the Smokies. What he
didn't say was whether he planned to go back and release Lou or see if he too
died there. I just knew that I was glad and lucky to have my friend back, even
though he has a lot more flaws than I do. I never found out why the murderer
quit hiding the bodies and left each one where he or she fell, and it doesn't
matter to me that I didn't. The case was solved. My perfect record was still
intact. And Lou and I could ease back into retirement. I was ready for spring. Who
knows? Maybe in a weak moment I would take up another hobby. Lou suggested I
try skydiving or scuba diving. I suggested he go first.