Читать книгу The Fruitcake Murders - Ace Collins - Страница 8

Chapter 2

2

Wednesday, December 18, 1946

9:55 p.m.

For over an hour, Lane Walker had been impatiently sitting on an overstuffed leather couch waiting for a black desk phone on the walnut end table to ring. During that time he’d read the latest issue of Life, worked a crossword puzzle from today’s Herald, and counted and recounted the seven bills—three ones, two fives, a ten, and a twenty—that made up the sum total of the cash in his wallet. Picking up a Montgomery-Ward Christmas catalog, he spent a few minutes considering what might be the best use for those forty-three bucks before tossing the catalog to one side, taking his handkerchief from the pocket of his suit coat and knocking the dust from his black wingtips. As a mantel clock in the mansion’s cavernous living room struck ten, the dark-haired, blue-eyed Walker pulled his lean six-foot frame from the soft cushions and strolled over to a large mirror. Staring into the glass, he studied his reflection.

He was no Robert Taylor, but he wasn’t Edward G. Robinson either. His jaw was strong, his eyes expressive, and his mop of wavy, dark hair showed no signs of turning loose or gray. While his thirty years of living had etched a few crow’s-feet outside his deep-set eyes and along the corners of his thin lips, he nevertheless still maintained a bit of a baby face. Retaining any kind of appearance of innocence after three years spent fighting battles on a half dozen Pacific islands was quite an accomplishment. During that time, many of the Marines Lane had fought beside aged a couple of decades. Worse yet, more friends than he cared to remember were buried on those islands and would never age at all. So, emerging from the war with a few minor scrapes and some mental baggage meant he was lucky. Yet, if he were so lucky, then why did he feel so guilty for making it home alive, and why did his good fortune eat at his gut and cost him sleep? Why did surviving carry such a huge cost?

Checking his watch for the tenth time in the last fifteen minutes, Lane adjusted the Windsor knot on his blue-striped tie and smoothed the lapels of his gray suit before turning away to study something you wouldn’t find in his cramped apartment—a six-foot cedar tree standing proudly in the room’s far corner. On this night, no one had plugged in the lights, so the tinsel didn’t shine the way it should and the blue and red balls looked less colorful, but, even in its darkened state the evergreen still clearly spelled out that the holidays were on their way. Smiling grimly, Lane noted that under the fir’s bottom branches were a half dozen carefully wrapped presents each decorated with red bows that blended perfectly with the green-striped paper hiding their contents. It didn’t take a cop’s keen observation skills to deduce someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make this holiday special. Yet, some things just don’t work out the way they are planned and that was a crying shame. This holiday was going to be anything but bright for the family who lived in this Windy City mansion. Death had a way of stealing the light even from Christmas.

Just to the festive tree’s right was a console radio. The Zenith was almost four feet tall and at least thirty inches wide. The front veneer featured a half dozen different types of wood including maple, white oak, and mahogany, but the cabinet was mainly walnut. Strolling over to the impressive radio, Walker flipped the set on and waited for the unit’s seven tubes to warm up. Forty-five seconds later the strains of Bing Crosby crooning “White Christmas” filled the eight-hundred-square-foot room and, at least for a moment, it not only looked like the holidays, but sounded like them as well. As the modern carol’s lyrics spoke of hopes that the coming days would be bright, the visitor leaned against the unit’s cabinet and closed his eyes. In a matter of moments, he was transported to a better time and a much happier place when he still believed in Santa Claus and the holidays were filled with wonder, hope, and excitement. Whatever happened to the innocent days of his youth surrounded by family and friends? How had they so quickly evaporated into little more than faded memories? If only his parents were still alive to once more welcome him home with a hug, a cup of hot chocolate, and a cheery Merry Christmas.

Lane became so lost in thoughts of Christmases from long ago, he almost didn’t hear the doorbell’s chime, now just barely audible over Crosby’s sincere crooning. Snapping out of a dream centering on his mother’s pumpkin pie, he shook the fifteen-year-old memory from his head, quickly crossed the room, and marched out the open, ten-foot pocket doors leading to a hall. Turning left, he made his way to the towering front door. Glancing through the oval leaded glass set into the walnut entry, he saw a face he knew all too well. In an instant, for a reason that really made no sense, a very bad day had just gotten worse. Against his better judgment, he twisted the knob allowing a personal ghost of Christmas past to enter.

“It’s freezing out there!” Tiffany Clayton grumbled as she pushed through the entry. “By the way, that’s the strongest, coldest wind I’ve felt since . . .” When the visitor unwrapped the red scarf from her neck and took a moment to look up at Lane’s face, her jaw dropped. Frowning, she studied her unexpected host for several seconds before taking a quick inventory of the room, and, after setting her duffle-bag-size purse on a table just to the right of the entry, demanded, in a tone harsher than the frigid breeze, “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same thing of you,” he shot back.

Her angry blue eyes once again locked onto the unhappy doorman and, after sweeping her wavy blonde hair from her shoulder, she snapped, “As if I have to tell a dumb cop anything I’m doing. But just to keep you from putting me under a hot lamp and grilling me for five hours, I’m here to interview Mr. Ethan Elrod. I was supposed to meet him about thirty minutes ago, but the snow and all the Christmas shoppers created one long traffic jam from downtown until about a block south of my final turn. Where are the city services when you need them? The plows need to be clearing those streets! If the streets become impassable, the merchants are going to lose money.”

“You always have an excuse for being late,” Lane groaned. “It’s as much a part of you as those blue eyes and that red lipstick you always slap on.”

Glaring, the guest shot back, “You don’t slap on lipstick. It is applied. Besides, I wasn’t the one who missed the Independence Day fireworks show. In fact, I was there early and watched it all by myself. You arrived just as everyone was leaving and you still owe me for the tickets.”

“That was five years ago,” he sighed. “As I remember, that same summer you weren’t just late, but completely missed a play, two movies, and three dinner dates.”

Tiffany set her jaw, locked her knees, and roared, “You gave me the wrong address and time on two of those.” Shaking her finger in his face, she added spitefully, “It was your fault.”

“I gave you the right address and times,” he argued, “you just couldn’t remember them. I’ve noticed that information pours from your mind like salt out of a Morton’s box. You need a little Dutch boy to follow you around and plug up that hole in your head.”

“Fine,” she almost growled, “twist the facts any way you want. That’s what cops do. Now I’m here for a legitimate reason, so why don’t you let me go to work rather than harassing me. Oh, that’s right, that’s what cops do—they harass people . . . especially reporters!”

Leaning closer to her face he barked, “Yeah, I live for it. Nothing I like better than making your life miserable.”

“Well,” she jabbed, “at least you’re very good at something. Isn’t there a donut shop you could be haunting? Now where are you hiding the district attorney?”

In the light of what had happened earlier tonight, the sparring session had been mildly amusing. Yet, as the cold reality of life pushed its ugly truth back into one of life’s lighter moments, it was time to end the war of words that had been going on for years and spell out the hard, cold facts to the misguided member of the fourth estate. Rather than level her with a verbal left hook from out of nowhere, Lane uncharacteristically opted to employ a bit of tact. “Tiffany, why don’t you shake the snow off your shoes and head into the living room.”

Digging her high heels into the carpet, she demanded, “Where’s Elrod?”

Lane shook his head. So much for kid gloves. It was time to blow the impertinent woman out of the water. “You’re not going to be talking to the district attorney tonight or any other time.”

“You can’t keep the press away from him,” she shot back, pushing her five-foot-two-inch frame as high as it would go by lifting her heels off the floor and perching on her tiptoes. “I have my rights guaranteed by the constitution.”

Lane leaned forward to a point where they were nose-to-nose and forcefully quipped, “I’m not trying to deny you the opportunity to interview an elected official. It’s just that it’s pretty hard to get quotes from a dead man.”

“What?” As she pushed the word between her lips, the color drained from her beautiful face and her heels once more met the carpet. The news had deflated her ego as well as taken her voice. In another place and another time, that would have been something to celebrate, but not now.

“That’s the sad fact,” the cop quickly explained, his tone lower and softer. “Now, if you’ll pick up that steamer trunk you call a purse and join me in the living room, I’ll give you what I know.”

He didn’t wait for a response but turned on the heels of his brown wingtips and made his way across the hall through the pocket doors and into the home’s largest room. He waited in front of a dark green, velvet-covered reading chair as the woman removed her coat, laid it over the arm of the couch, dropped her bag on the cushion, and folded her arms.

“I’m guessing it is murder,” she sadly observed as she pulled a pad and pen from her purse.

“Your observations always were brilliant,” he cracked.

“Not much to it,” she noted, “you’re from homicide. They don’t pull you out into the snow to investigate a death by natural causes.”

He shrugged, sat down in the velvet chair, pushed his shoulders deeply into the high-backed cushion, and said, “The maid discovered the body about five hours ago. He was at his desk, phone in his hand, his head resting on his calendar, and a knife sticking out of his back.”

After jotting down the information, Tiffany looked back to Lane. “So where’s the body?”

“At the morgue.”

“It looks like the crime scene boys are gone,” she noted, “so why are you house-sitting?”

“Because the chief wanted to make sure the scene was kept fully secure just in case the medical examiner discovered something we might have missed during our initial investigation. You know the drill, something that might give us a hint as to who killed Elrod. Therefore, rather than spending my evening visiting with interesting people, I’m listening to the radio and hosting a pesky elf while waiting for the call that allows me to head back to my office and start filling out reports.” He frowned and then dryly added, “Merry Christmas!”

“Makes sense,” the woman admitted as she sat on the couch, crossed her legs, and pulled the hem of her gray wool skirt down below her right knee, “at least everything but the interesting people part. Based on my knowledge of your friends, you don’t know anyone even vaguely interesting.”

As she allowed the heel of her black pump to dangle off her right foot, Lane noted she still possessed a dancer’s legs. When his eyes moved upward, he was also reminded that as good as her pins were, they were not her best features. Not surprisingly, as his appreciative gaze arrived at her face, her full red lips, deep blue eyes, and high cheekbones dragged him into the kind of mental fog that all but caused the cop to miss her next observation.

“Not going to be a good Christmas for Elrod’s wife.”

“Nope,” he agreed as he recovered his focus by moving his eyes from the woman to the radio, “she’s downstate visiting her sister. Glad I’m not the one delivering that message.”

Sounds of Dinah Shore singing “I’ll Walk Alone” filled the room, and for the remainder of the hit ballad, neither of them spoke. When the station launched into a newsbreak, Tiffany made a rather pointed observation.

“That was Dinah’s first number-one record. Let me see, it has been two years since it was resting on top of the charts. You were in Hawaii on leave and were supposed to meet me at the Pineapple Club, but for some reason you didn’t show up. I wonder what her name was?”

He frowned, “I drew guard duty that night.”

She raised her eyebrows and slowly shook her head. “And you couldn’t call? I mean was it too hard to look up the number for The Stars and Stripes? You had no problem contacting me at work earlier that day.”

“I couldn’t get to a phone,” he explained.

“There was one in the guard house where you were supposedly patrolling.” She glared at the cop. “How do I know? Because you called me from there to make the date! In fact, you bragged about talking to me from a phone that was supposed be reserved for only official military use. So, Lane, I got dressed up, went to the club, and listened to that Dinah Shore song on the jukebox again and again, because I truly was walking alone.”

“I’m sorry, Tiff, I was . . .”

She waved her hand, “Don’t even try, none of the excuses you’ve ever given me held water. Let’s move past what was and into what is. Since you are confused about this case, I’ll move onto one that is twelve hours old. Have you made any progress tracking down a suspect in the Grogan murder?”

“Tiffany,” he said, bringing his eyes back to hers, “are you making small talk or digging for information for The Star?”

“A bit of both, Mr. Walker,” she admitted.

“For print purposes, and you may quote me, we are close to making an arrest in the hit on the known underworld figure Stuart Grogan.”

She cocked her left eyebrow and smiled, “So in cop jargon that means you don’t have a clue. You have found part of the body in a river and something to make an identification possible, but you have nothing else.”

“I didn’t say that,” he hastily shot back. “So you can’t print it.”

She shrugged, “Okay, I’ll cut you some slack. Now back to the case of the moment. Elrod was a good man. Straight as an arrow! He was trying to clean this city up. Shame this had to happen before he could reach that goal. Because if there was less crime we would need fewer cops and maybe the force would show you the door.”

“So,” he grumbled, trying to ignore her dig, “why are you here tonight? There has to be more of a purpose than just needling me.”

She shrugged, “There’s no reason to hold out on you now.” Tiffany tilted her head slightly, licked her lips, and frowned. “I guess, in the light of a murder, this doesn’t mean much now, but you know those Santas standing on the street corners ringing those bells?”

“Yeah.”

“I began to wonder how much money they brought in for charity,” she explained. “When I observed what was going into their pots and what was being deposited in the city charity account . . . you know we have that chart in the paper each day . . . well, things didn’t add up. In fact, the figures the charity gave us were only about 60 percent of what I figured they should have been.”

“My, aren’t you good at math,” he quipped.

“I’m serious,” she shot back. “Someone is diverting a big part of those funds somewhere else. There are tens of thousands of dollars in donations that are not going to ever get to the orphans or widows that the blasted war created. So, I had an appointment to give Elrod my information on this scam. He was interested.”

“Why didn’t you run with it?” Lane asked. “Most papers go with the story and hide their sources from the police. This sounds like a hot headline to me.”

“Ah,” she replied, “printing the story might have ended the scam, but it wouldn’t have gotten the money back. Plus, it would have caused folks not to give donations to the legit Santas. In this case, I don’t want a scoop or a byline, I just want to get the money back and have those responsible for this con game arrested.”

“So, Tiffany Clayton has a heart after all.”

“I also have something else you are lacking,” she chuckled.

“What’s that?”

“A brain.”

He shook his head. Why did she have to be so beautiful? She’d be so much easier to deal with if she were just average-looking. Then his mind could stay focused. And that was the big problem. Whenever he looked at her for too long he lost his train of thought. If fact, the train almost always jumped the tracks! It was one of the reasons he’d missed a few of their dates. He was afraid she’d look at him with those baby blues for several hours and he’d then say something that would trap him for life. Though, in truth, maybe that trap wouldn’t really be so bad. After all, weren’t these verbal wars just a way to keep from admitting he really liked her?

“Copper, your eyes are burning holes in my new gray suit.”

And they had been. Maybe it would be better if the lights were out. No, that wouldn’t be any good. The darkness would just bring out her perfume. What was it? Oh yeah . . . Tabu. How he wished she’d changed to a scent that was not so intoxicating.

“Mr. Walker, do you have any thoughts on Elrod or does the cat have your tongue?”

He had to look at anything but her in order to make sense. That’s the way it had been since he met her on a summer day in Wrigley Field. Clearing his throat, he once more turned his eyes to the radio.

“Lane,” she all but shouted. “Speak up!”

“Sorry, Tiff,” he finally answered, “I was thinking about another case.” Shuffling in place, he continued, “Elrod, yeah, I have some thoughts.” As his eyes focused on the radio’s dial he added, “I probably knew him better than you did. Like you said, he was a good man, and more importantly, I think he was about to hit the Delono family’s operation with a blow that would have knocked them to their knees. Sadly, he didn’t share his information with anyone. He couldn’t. He knew there were spies all over the courthouse, so he kept everything in his head.”

“So,” she cut in, “you’ve got nothing to go on?”

“All we’ve got,” he admitted, “is that somebody stuck a knife in Elrod to keep him quiet, and therefore, the one person who might have stopped Richard Delono is dead.”

As he nervously looked back to her, the reporter shifted uneasily, her eyes finding a picture of Elrod and his wife hanging over the fireplace. It was easy to read the obvious sadness etched on her face.

“That photograph was probably taken on an anniversary,” she noted. “She’s dressed up, wearing a lily, and there are a lot of folks in the background. Must have been quite a party.” Turning her head back toward his she smiled, “And speaking of anniversaries, weddings, and such, I understand you and Lorraine Day have parted company.”

“Old news,” he quickly replied.

“Must be,” she punched back, “because she’s already engaged to George Carlisle. She sure wore a dreamy look as she showed off her new rock at the Holiday Charity Ball last night. That diamond must be five times bigger than the one you gave her. By the way, did you get the ring back and have you finished your payments on it?”

“Carlisle,” the cop spat, “wonder where she met that shyster? Hard to take the law profession down a notch, but when that guy passed the bar he did it.”

“Take it you’re not a fan,” she smiled as she applied another verbal jab. “Now don’t avoid the question, where’s the ring you gave her? Did the Cracker Jack Company repossess it and repackage it as a prize?”

His frown quickly turned upside-down, as he began his counterattack. “I see you’re not wearing your ring either. Does that mean you’re not soon becoming Mrs. Malcolm Diamonds? What a jewel he is!”

She quickly covered her left hand with her right and turned her head. Now it was her turn to change the course of the conversation. “Wonder if Mrs. Elrod will stay here in Chicago? Aren’t both of their children married and living on the West Coast? And I think she’s originally from Madison.”

Lane ignored the woman’s quick conversational detour. “Just as well he dumped you, I always thought your being called Tiffany Diamonds was nothing . . .” he paused for dramatic effect . . . “that carried much weight or class.”

She turned and once again their eyes met. This time hers were filled with fire. “He didn’t end it; I did.”

“Yeah,” he laughed, “I’ll buy that just like I’d buy one of those used cars Mr. Diamonds sells.”

“At least he’s more honest than George Carlisle.”

“Tiffany, I’d expect a more imaginative reply from one of the city’s best scribes. Anyone is more honest than a lawyer!”

“Why does it always come to this?” she demanded. “Every time we get together you have to turn it into a verbal war. A war, I might add, that you never win.”

“I would win,” he laughed, “I just don’t have your stamina. And even if I did, why would I hang around for hours just so you can get in that last feeble word? And, I might add, I didn’t start this, you did.”

“Flatfoot” she shouted while sticking out her tongue.

“Gossip monger,” he shot back.

Folding her arms across her chest she asked, “You know what your problem is? I mean other than looks and intelligence.”

He shrugged.

“Personality. When you walk into a room it feels like two people have left.”

“Then, Miss Clayton, why do you always follow me? I can’t make a turn anywhere in this city without bumping into you.”

She set her jaw and shot out a glare that carried the explosive power of an atomic bomb. “I’ve got better things to do than sit here and wait for you to get a phone call.”

“You know where the door is,” he countered. “It works both directions. Getting out of this house is just as easy as coming in.”

Grabbing her huge purse, she leapt off the couch and took four hurried steps toward the French doors. Her dramatic exit was stopped in mid-step by the ringing of the phone.

“You don’t need to stay,” he assured her.

“I’m not staying to talk to you, but I’m not leaving until I hear what that call’s all about.”