A Bitch Called Hope (17 page)

What had happened to her powers of persuasion? Used to be, thirty minutes into an interview the witness would cave, especially a witness like Gabe. He was no kind of criminal. Why couldn’t she get him to come clean?
You’re not a cop anymore.
When was she going to catch on, figure out a different strategy? Lennox drove home with her tail between her legs.

She spent the rest of the afternoon looking into the councilwoman on her “A” list. Bill Pike had been a big supporter in Geri Davis’s last campaign. According to Geri, Bill was a rare bird, a man of business and a liberal democrat.
Did he ask you for any favors?
Lennox had asked. And had listened to the woman turn cagey. There were a few zoning issues, but Ms. Geri Davis always voted her conscience. While Lennox was on the phone with the councilwoman, a call came in from Dan. He told her he’d acted like a kid over breakfast. He told her he was glad she was on his mother’s side. As soon as the trial was over the two of them would have a do over. He made do over sound sexy as hell.

That night when she opened the door to the Shanty for poker night she practically skipped past the twinkle lights strung over the bar. Neon candy canes blinked red in the Shanty’s front windows. A two-foot Santa tricked out in waders, a fly rod over his shoulder, stood behind the bar next to the scotch. Lennox passed Katy, the cocktailer, told her please she’d have a Blitzen, then entered the back room.

Even though poker night didn’t begin until eight o’clock and it was only a quarter to, all the guys were there: Ham, Fulin, Jerry, Fish and Sarge. They were seated around the table looking a whole lot like they were in the middle of a board meeting.

“Happy holidays, gents,” she said.

“Oh yeah,” Fulin said. “That’s coming up.” He shook his head so his hair swung back and forth way past his shoulders and on to the table like a very long and beautiful black silk scarf.

“Watch it with the hair,” Jerry said. “I don’t want that shit in my drink.”

Then the room went very quiet. Lennox could hear the Blazers game from the main bar. She hung her leather jacket on a hook next to the door and took the empty seat next to Sarge, who smelled cleanly of baking soda toothpaste. She’d been to his house a couple years ago. Not a weed in the lawn, not a blade of grass overhanging the curb and inside, not a speck of dust or whiff of cooking fumes. Lennox suspected Sarge and his wife, Jan, spent all their free time polishing the bathroom tiles and edging the driveway. There was something attractive and comforting about that.

She nudged him. “So. How’s Jan?”

“Fine,” he mumbled, looking at his fingernails. For the record, they were bitten to the quick.

The room went quiet again. Eight plus years she’d played with these guys; if they didn’t have anything to say they talked trash. Or belched. This silence was starting to interfere with her good mood.

Sarge took a tone of voice that sounded both hopeful and reproachful, like he could go either way. “A little birdie tells us you have a new sweetie.”

All of them looked at her like she’d disappointed the hell out of each and every one of them. Most of all her best friend, Ham, who riffled a deck of cards with his thumb and looked like he was going to cry.

“I don’t have a new sweetie,” she said. “I don’t have an old sweetie. I stand before you without any kind of sweetie.”

Fulin said, “Cooper, what the hell could you be thinking?”

“What’s the problem?” she said.

Fish in a plaid shirt on his high horse. “Nothing, Cooper. Nothing at all. Oh, except you’re banging a murder suspect.”

“Does Jesus know you use that kind of language?” she said.

“Tommy’s telling everyone he saw you having breakfast with Dan Pike,” Fulin said. He looked down. “He said you had sex; he could smell it on you.”

All of them looking at her like she was some kind of whack-job prison bride. There was nothing to do but deny and keep on denying. “That’s a total lie,” she said. “Tommy is a fucking liar.” She’d better not see him again; she’d eviscerate him.

“And Ham told us someone in that family had to have killed the guy,” Fulin said.

“Stop right there. You’re all law enforcement. You know Dan hasn’t been accused of a thing.”

“You and Ham suspect him of murder,” Fulin said.

“Number one.” Lennox jutted her thumb in the air. “The state doesn’t suspect him of any crime. Dan’s just a guy whose dad was murdered, period.” She wagged her index finger back and forth. “Number two: I like him, I admit, but I’m not seeing him romantically until after the trial.” She tucked her index finger back under her thumb and raised her middle finger. “Number three. So back off.”

Ham went red to the tips of his ears. She was lying, and he knew it. He wouldn’t make eye contact. He was disappointed in her. She hated it when he was disappointed in her.

Sarge changed gears and turned conciliatory. “Good enough. You say you’re not seeing him, you’re not. Which is a good thing on account of if he did kill his father—” He left that thought hanging midair.

“I’m not seeing him, goddamn it.”

“Shuffle the cards,” Jerry said.

The sound of the shuffle with all its feeling of adrenaline and rightness was enough to keep her in the room.

Katy, the cocktailer, delivered Lennox’s Blitzen, asked the table if anyone wanted another drink. They all put their hand up, even Sarge, who Lennox had never in her life seen drink more than one beer.

Someone played “Run Around Sue” on the jukebox in the bar.

Jerry cleared his throat. “Back in the late nineties I dated a shoplifter,” he said. “She was a nice girl in a lot of ways, except, you know, her moral compass.”

“Don’t make me say it again, Jerry,” Lennox said.

Fulin tossed in his chip for the ante. Everyone followed. Ham dealt two down. Lennox drummed her fingers on the tabletop and waited for everyone to pick up their cards before she looked.

A lovely pair of jacks. She threw in her chip and raised. She kept on raising when she got her third jack, daring any of them to fold. Let it be said they played humbly and no one said a word about her drumming her fingers.

She’d admitted she’d been an idiot to fall for Tommy. And she’d been an idiot before Tommy, but she was trying not to make the same mistake twice, goddamn it. And look at these guys. Married or hooked-up, every one of them and thinking they were somehow morally superior. Who was to say they weren’t just plain lucky? One thing for sure: it was a lot easier for them. Plenty of women were cool with getting involved with a cop. Lady cops: that was a different deal, the whole image too intimidating, too butch for most guys.

“Raise five,” Fulin said. He leaned forward. He was bluffing.

“I’ll meet five and raise five,” Lennox said.

Say what you want about her choice in men; you couldn’t deny her card playing chops. She met the next two raises. Sarge dropped out, then Fulin. The third raise Ham and Jerry folded which left her Fish. Lennox hit him with the maximum bet. He caved. The look on his face meant more to her than all those lovely chips. Towers of them: red, blue and white. She placed them like sentries on either side of her. Those towers would pay off her credit card bill for the month.

Jerry shook his old dog head back and forth like he had something in his ear. “I ought to know better than to piss off a woman,” he said.

Fulin dealt the next hand. Lennox waited, like always, for the peek.

The queen of spades and eight of diamonds.

Talk about being kicked to the curb. The combination queen-eight was so diabolical it had its own name:
a bitch called hope
. Just enough promise to make you want to hang on. The way she hung on to Tommy thinking some day he would leave his wife. That ray of hope broke her heart and wrecked her career. When you drew the queen bitch, you were a damn fool not to go with the odds.

Jerry dealt the third card up. Lennox drew the jack of spades.

“Lennox,” Jerry said.

“What?”

“In or out?”

Dan was low man on the suspect list. He had money problems. So did his brother. All the suspects gained from Bill’s death. Dan had only been in town a day, but a day was plenty of time to plan and execute a murder.

How do you tell the difference between plain hope and just plain stupidity?

Lennox lifted the jack and slid it face down over her hold card.

“Fold,” she said.

Chapter 27

Ham arrived on Lennox’s porch at eight the next morning carrying a hot pink bakery box. Voodoo Donuts: the craziest, best pastries in the city.

“I brought provisions,” he said.

It was going to take more than a box of donuts, even Voodoo Donuts, to make Lennox forget the ambush last night. She said, “Thanks for the stink-eye.”

“I’m sorry,” he said in a voice that wasn’t.

“Well, come in,” she said. “We need to get to work.”

He followed her into the dining room where she had propped a whiteboard on a chair at the head of her dining room table. Ham helped himself to coffee and studied the murder suspects starting with Dan and ending with the doctor, their names lined up in one column, another column for means, another for motive.

“What happened to the Davis woman and the carpenter?” he said.

“They checked out. We’re down to the family,” she said. “All five of them have a motive and any of them could’ve pulled it off. But the way I figure, Scott, Priscilla and Doctor E had the most access to the Pikes’ medicine. I can’t picture Father Mac sneaking around Bill and Delia’s bedroom. As for Dan, he’d only been back home twenty-four hours. Not living in town, he might not have been aware that his mother used an insulin inhaler.”

“Did you ask him?”

“He says he didn’t.”

“I did find something on Scott,” Ham said. His favorite donut, the triple-chocolate voodoo doll, lay on its little white plate, uneaten. “You know how I told you Bill cut off Scott’s allowance six months ago? Scott’s taken a few pissant teaching gigs, not enough to make ends meet. It’s Father Mac who’s been kicking in a couple K every month to subsidize young Mr. Pike.”

“Why?”

“That’s your job.” He handed her a printout of Father Mac’s withdrawals and Scott’s checking account deposits.

“Have you found out when Bill and the priest signed the cross-purchase partnership?”

Ham paged back in his notebook. “Three years ago.”

“Anything else?”

Ham shook his head. Said he’d keep digging.

Lennox told Ham what she’d found about Scott. How ten years ago a twenty-six-year-old woman filed an assault complaint against him. Then withdrew the complaint. Then there was a drug possession charge that was dropped seven years ago. Family money was the only thing that had kept Scott out of jail.

“That said, I don’t think he has either the cunning or the nerve. This murder was ingenious. Which brings us to the good doctor. How far along are you with him?”

Ham dug through his briefcase and handed her a report. His practice was steady enough and, though it was true he and his business partner had gone their separate ways in the last year, the doc had been able to pay the partner off. Sure, Engstrom had some debt, but he also had a healthy income.

“He doesn’t need Delia’s money,” Ham said.

“Come on,” Lennox said. “You know rich people. They never have enough money. Remember the Hefflinger case?”

“Yeah, but that was different,” Ham said. “Hefflinger had a barn full of horses.” Horses, according to Ham, were the fastest way to go broke after gambling and drug addiction.

“Maybe with the doc it was love,” she said.

Ham shrugged. Admitted it was possible. She told him about the four patients who’d overdosed while in Dr. E’s care.

“What does he say about it?”

“He doesn’t. He still refuses to talk to me,” Lennox said. “It sucks not having a badge.” She opened the box from Voodoo. Ham had gotten her favorites, the peanut butter Oreo-crusted chocolate and the bacon-topped maple bar. She chose the maple bar and brushed the bacon bits from her fingers.

Ham looked up from his notebook. “What about Dan Pike? He’s seen his name on your whiteboard?”

She met his look. “I believe I mentioned last night that I’m not seeing him until after the trial.”

“Do you have anything on him?”

“He was a broker at Harkness-Deerborne Investments in Chicago for four years. The lady in HR wouldn’t say squat. You know how they are,” she said. “So I asked would they hire him again and she said no. Emphatically no. No criminal history, but there’s the two lawsuits he barely averted. I’m going to try to call his ex-girlfriend this afternoon.”

“You wanted me to run down the credit card receipt ending in 2331?” he said. “It belonged to Bill Pike.”

“Dan must have lifted the card and paid off a debt to Chase Bank with it. We’re talking forty-six-hundred bucks, Ham.”

Ham nodded, looking solemn. “Maybe his mother authorized it.”

“You can bet I’ll ask her.”

“What do you want me to do?” he said.

“Run his complete credit history, employment history and tax records. Go back as far as you can. Find out the story about the lawsuits.”

Ham’s expression cleared. He tore the legs off his donut and popped them in his mouth. Next he pulled off the donut’s arms one at a time and ate them. His mouth was so full he could barely keep his lips closed around the food. He finally swallowed without choking and dabbed at the corners of his mouth daintily with a paper napkin. The voodoo head still smiling from his plate.

“I never liked that Tommy of yours,” he said. “
Tommy
like he was still a baby. That flirty fucking thing he did, the dude flirted with little kids, with addicts, with hookers, he even flirted with me.” He shook his head.

She knew all this. The sheer fact Ham was saying it was the surprise.

“More coffee?” she finally said.

He nodded.

“What I never got,” he said, “was why you didn’t realize he was never, ever going to come through for you.”

“Jeez Ham, I guess we’re having a heart-to-heart here.”

“Yeah. I figured we needed to clear the air,” he said. “We both know the board shouldn’t have fired you. Nobody blames a cop who saves another cop.” He raised his finger. “What clouded the issue was everybody knew you were sleeping with the guy.”