The Beholder, a Maddie Richards Mystery (19 page)

Maddie wasn’t even sure how to spell viaticals, let alone what they were.

“Don’t feel bad, Sergeant,” Sternberg said, allowing a brief glimpse of his darting tongue. “Few people are familiar with viaticals. We locate people, mostly elderly, who have paid-up whole life insurance policies and need immediate cash for healthcare or living expenses. We purchase the beneficiary position on their policies and broker them to our investment clients. But let’s get down to business. I assume your inquiry concerns the unfortunate murder of my neighbor, Mrs. Mills Knight.” He leaned down to again tidy up the crease in his trouser leg.

“That’s correct,” Maddie said. “Thank you for seeing me so soon after getting back in town. I’m sure you’ve followed the case in the media. Tell me about your relationship with Abigail Knight?”

“What do you mean, Sergeant?” He said, his gaze rushing around the room.

“The Knights lived next store. What can you tell me about them?”

“My wife, Ashley, and I were, at best, casual acquaintances of the Knights.” He stiffened. “They appeared to be fine folks, but we live very busy lives, as do they. I can tell you nothing about her social life, her friends, or whether or not she had trouble with anyone. I’m sorry … Is there anything else, Sergeant?”

Most people’s curiosity drove them to ask the police a few questions, if only in the hope of picking up an inside tidbit. Sternberg was the type who always wanted to impress others by having something only known by insiders. To the contrary, Sternberg seemed in a hurry to get Maddie out of his office.

“Our crime scene technicians found hairs belonging to several men who are not as yet identified. I’d like you to provide a skin scrape and a few hairs to help us reduce those that remain unidentified?”

“No need,” Sternberg said, his reptilian tongue making another brief appearance. “They could not be mine. I’ve never been in the Knight’s home. We spoke only near the mailbox or over the side fence, so to speak.”

Maddie had long ago learned that people often lied to the police and not just because they were guilty. They lied when they had something to hide, maybe just something personal or embarrassing.

“If you’re going to be an amateur at something, Mr. Sternberg, lying isn’t a good thing to pick.”

“I resent that, Sergeant Richards.” He stood. “This interview is over.”

“Very well, Mr. Sternberg, but you should know that we can put you in the Knight’s home on more than one occasion. So you will leave me no alternative but to move for a warrant to force a DNA sample.”

Sternberg’s facial expressions began changing rapidly, as if he were playing solitaire with a deck of sneers, leers, and insincere smiles.

“Sergeant,” he finally said, “can we keep this off the record?”

“The odds on that will be better if you come clean, give me the sample, and it all checks out. The odds get really lousy if you keep lying and trying to play hardball.”

He intertwined his fingers as a child might when kneeling for a bedtime prayer.

“My wife travels quite a bit, Sergeant,” he said solemnly. “She breeds poodles and enters the damn mutts in dog shows. When she was gone, I sometimes had dinner with the Knights.”

I’ll bet you had more than dinner, Maddie thought.

“You should know we didn’t find the male hairs we can’t identify in the dining room or the kitchen. This is your last chance if you hope to keep this off the record.”

He pinned his upper lip between his teeth and then pulled it free. He did it again, then a third time. When he stopped, so did his superior act.

“Mrs. Knight is … was an uninhibited woman.” He ran the back of his hand across his mouth before continuing. “One night when my wife was gone and I was having dinner with the Knights, Mills got called out on some kind of patient emergency, and … well, she seduced me.”

He looked at Maddie as if he expected her to be surprised by the revelation.

“Please buzz your secretary and have her make me a copy of your calendar of appointments for the past ninety days.”

Clearly thrown off by Maddie’s abrupt change of subject, he picked up his phone and made the request. “I hope we can keep this confidential,” he said again after hanging up, his smile, tentative at best.

“So I’m to understand that Mrs. Knight … seduced you, several times, over several months. Correct?”

“My God. I couldn’t help myself. She could be very, very—” he stopped, perhaps searching for the right word.

“Sensuous?” Maddie offered.

“Oh, that’s not the half of it. Can you imagine walking into your garage and finding a beautiful woman wearing only a thong and high heels reclining back onto the hood of your Jaguar convertible, her heels hooked behind the bumper? No, I doubt you can.”

Maddie briefly wondered if that would work on Linc’s car, but she didn’t know what kind of car he had?

“My God,” Sternberg went on, “this can’t come out, Sergeant. The scandal of having had an affair with a married woman who is now dead would ruin my business. End my marriage. I’m being honest when I tell you that I didn’t know anything about anyone else in her life, but there had to be others. She was insatiable. If I give you the DNA sample, can you clear me? Can we keep this out of the papers? Please.”

The door opened and Hips came in, smiled, and handed Mr. Sternberg an envelope, then spun sprightly on the balls of her feet and walked out, shutting the door behind her.

Sternberg handed the envelope to Maddie, “The copy of my calendar that you requested covering the past 90 days.”

Maddie stood. “Thank you for cooperating Mr. Sternberg. I’ll have a technician contact you about getting your samples, but we’ve verified you were out of town when Mrs. Knight was killed.”

“Then why did you make me tell you things I … I didn’t need to tell you?”

“I wanted to learn more about Mrs. Knight’s private life. That’s my reason for asking. As for your reason for telling, look up conscience and guilt in that dictionary on the shelf behind you. Good day, Mr. Sternberg, thank you for your time.”

The jerk cheats on his wife, then pleads with me to keep his secret. If I knew witchcraft, I’d put a hex on him that would make his dick fall off the next time he took it out with anyone other than Mrs. Sternberg. Hell, if I knew how, I’d have already put that curse on my ex-husband.

***

After four aspirins and forty minutes of stop-and-go driving, Maddie got back to the station. The rumor Sue had passed on was true; Vice Detective Gilbert Ortega was Maddie’s new homicide partner. Sue had also, amazingly, finished organizing the murder books. Maddie knew that for her, the task would have eaten a full weekend or at least a long, sleepless night.

“The only thing we’re still missing is the final autopsy report on Abigail Knight,” Sue said. “I called Dr. Ripley’s office and his assistant, Steve, said he could get it over here tomorrow, midmorning. Other than that, the books are complete.”

“Good job. Thank you.” Maddie said. “Please call Steve and tell him not to send over the report. I’ll stop there tomorrow around eleven.”

It was a little after four when Maddie picked up the freshly organized Beholder case file and the recently created murder books on each of the victims. She would go over them tonight after she and Bradley had read a few more pages of the Hardy Boys mystery.

Maddie wondered if the day would ever come when she could spend most evenings with her family, maybe get laid, or just relax and enjoy some peace and quiet?

Chapter 28

Maddie was nearly home when she remembered this was the day her son had been pleading for her to attend his baseball game. “It’s against our biggest competitor, Mom. It’s for first place. It’s our last game. I’m gonna pitch. You gotta come. Pleaaaaase?”

She had promised her best effort, which Bradley had taken as a no. She couldn’t blame him for seeing it that way.

“I sure ain’t gonna be no cop,” he had grumbled. “I’ll be a pro baseball player. Or maybe I’ll sell stuff and make lots of money to take care of you and Grandma.” Bradley’s grandmother had been there all his life so her son simply assumed his grandmother would live forever. Maddie also realized that, on some level, she thought the same thing.

The ball game had already started when she parked in the graveled lot just east of the ballfield. The other team was at bat and Bradley looked over from the mound and smiled briefly. He was at the age where boys wanted their mothers to be there, but figured none of the other fellows felt that way, so it wouldn’t be cool if the other guys knew. After the second out, she caught her son’s eye and threw him a kiss. He sent back one of those, Gosh, Mom, I wish you hadn’t done that looks. Bradley struck out the third batter, and then ran into the dugout without looking toward the stands.

In the bottom of the fourth inning, Gary Packard walked up the levels of backless bench seats to sit next to Maddie. He took off his Chicago Cubs hat and said, “Hi. I’m sure Bradley is thrilled you’re here.”

“Hi, Gary,” She touched his arm, “it’s nice to see you.”

They stopped talking when Bradley came to bat with the score tied at two and two. They both cheered when he hit the ball. It went foul down the left field line. He struck out swinging to end the inning.

“I haven’t forgotten what you told me the other night,” Gary said. “It’s just, well, I had promised Brad—Bradley I’d come to this game a few days before you asked me to back off. He told me then he didn’t think you’d get here and that it was his last game.” Gary turned his cap in his hands. “They only play seven innings so I thought I’d get here in time to see a couple of innings. If I’d have known you were going to make it, I wouldn’t have come.”

“Look, Gary, I was confused that night by what I had heard. It was unfair of me—”

“No. No, Maddie. I’m an uncharged suspect in a violent crime in another city. You did right. When I was an officer, I told lots of parents to not take unnecessary risks with their children. And right now I’m an unnecessary risk. No need for you to apologize or regret what you said. If the situation was reversed, I’d have done the same.”

Maddie sighed. “You’re right. I guess. But for what it’s worth, I’m confident the Chicago investigation will lead to someone else.”

They exchanged a brief uncomfortable smile before sitting silently during the rest of the game.

In the bottom of the seventh inning, Bradley Richards hit the game-winning home run. When her son crossed home plate, Maddie was standing—actually jumping up and down—on the other side of the low fence that ran from the end of the backstop over to the dugout. After crossing the plate he ran by, reached out, and gave his mother a high five.

Apparently, high fives were okay, but not kisses thrown from the stands, at least not until the boy got old enough for such kisses to be sent by a girlfriend. Maddie smiled at the thought that such behavior would be coming sooner than she would be ready for it.

Maddie turned back toward the stands. Gary Packard had gone.

***

On the other side of town, Jed Smith was shooting at a range. He didn’t often go to this one, but he needed to do something and he didn’t want to run into anyone from the department. He missed their comradery, but his friends on the force would be nervous about being seen with him—at least for a while. He just wanted to keep his skill up with a Smith and Wesson that had been his hideout gun for years. He’d been turning over in his mind the pros and cons of becoming a private cop, working security, or maybe being a bodyguard—some of those paid pretty well. Then again, with his pension for thirty long ones, he could opt to do nothing at all. As a single guy, he could do all right with just the pension. Right then, he decided the hell with being any kind of cop. He’d had a good run and didn’t need the grief, at least for now.

Jed had left several messages for Katie Carson on her cell phone and at her station. She hadn’t returned any of them and his head had cleared enough for him to know he wouldn’t be hearing from her. She had been his Jezebel and he, her Mortimer Snerd.

He had never liked shooting at the round nondescript paper targets, so he imagined the target was Katie Carson. He smiled and fired until his shots had ripped apart what he imagined to be her face.

***

Maddie went to bed but couldn’t settle down. On the one hand, it had been a great day because of Bradley’s performance on the field. He had been elated and she had been proud. On the way home she had bought chocolate milk and Oreo cookies so they could celebrate. And she had been amused, as always, when her mother, whose interest in sports was minimal to say the least, had turned a deaf ear to the details. Her questions were her usual inquiries about whether or not Bradley had tried hard, been a good sport, and respected the coaches and umpires.

On the other hand, the business about Jed, well, even the joy of the time with her son had not taken the edge off her anger. She needed what the talk show shrinks called closure. She had not faced Jed since he knew she knew and that needed to be done.

At ten she gave up trying to sleep, got dressed and headed for her ex-partner’s home.

***

She arrived at Jed’s a little before ten-thirty to find the door to his garage up. In the stark light of a lonely bulb at the end of a black cord, Jed stood pounding the heavy bag that hung from the rafters like a limbless body. He danced and weaved from side to side, each punch swinging the bag toward the light and back, washing him in alternating patterns of light and shadow. She stood silently in the dark street, watching and listening to the clash of leather gloves against the canvas bag. Whomp. Whomp. Jed wore black tennis shoes and shorts and a gray, sleeveless, sweat-soaked T-shirt. He had always worked out religiously to keep his body trim but, like most men, he left his face to do its own thing.

Maddie moved into the cone of light as if she were stepping through the ropes into center ring. He saw her and grabbed the heavy bag. The tug of his weight made the rafter moan, the chain slipping into a groove chewed into the beam by the jolts of a thousand punches.