An Intimate Murder (The Catherine O'Brien Series) (13 page)

“You and Catherine have something in common,” Louise said. “She’s always looking for mob connections too. I think both of you have seen too many movies.”

There are times I envy Louise and times I wouldn’t want to be her for the world. Times like these were the latter. Louise didn’t see enough movies growing up. I made her watch
The Untouchables
at my house one weekend to try to educate her on the thrill of Elliot Ness, but the whole concept was lost on poor Louise.

“So you’ve never been involved with any mob cases.”

My lips turned down involuntarily and I shook my head.

“Not one,” I said.

“No gang hits either?”

“Plenty of those.” Louise wheeled us off the freeway and onto a frontage road. “Believe me this wasn’t a gang hit.”

“How do you know?”

I glanced at what Jane jotted in her notebook. She was writing directions to where we were going.

Perhaps we were underestimating Jane. She knew she could only print what we gave her authorization to run, yet she was still mapping the route. She was up to something. Quizzing us on procedures and gangs was only an attempt to disguise what she was really doing.

“Gangs are particularly bloody,” Louise said and looked down at the directions on her Post-It-Note. “They also usually kill in public places – while their victim is walking down the street, driving in a car, or standing in front of their house. Gang hits are more of opportunity than planning.”

“So you believe the Luther’s murder was premeditated?” Excitement burbled in Jane’s voice.

I became fascinated with the suburban landscape rolling by my window, and waited for Louise to pick up the reigns – she didn’t. Instead, she was more concerned with finding the address listed on her pink Post-It-Note.

“You’re leaving me to infer a lot from your silence, Detectives.”

“Infer whatever you choose.” Louise pulled up to the curb on a tree-lined street, and jammed the car into park. “We’re here.”

“Wait.” Jane Katts unbuckled her belt, slid to the center again, and put a hand on each of our shoulders. “Please let me go in with you.”

I opened my door. Jane tightened her grip.

“Please.” Her gaze morphed from one of pure cunning to pleading. “We don’t have to tell them that I’m a reporter. I won’t use my tape recorder, or my notebook. We can tell them I’m an observer from the P.D.”

Here to make sure the story in this morning’s paper wasn’t true no doubt.

“You said it yourself, I can’t print the story. My editor says you’ll be giving us an exclusive on the case when it’s over anyway.”

She took her hands from our shoulders.

“You’ll just be giving me a head start on the background information.”

Louise and I looked at each other trying to perform some sort of telepathic communication across the front seat of the Toyota. After a few moments, I realized that I had zero telepathic ability.

I pointed to Jane Katts. “You wait here.”

Then pointed to Louise. “You, conference.”

I pointed to the roof of the Toyota. Louise understood.

We stepped outside, closed the front doors, and spoke across the roof of the car.

“What do we do with her?” I asked.

“I told you at the office, you are the puppet master.” She splayed her hands as if to say, nothing up my sleeve. “Whatever you say goes.”

I drummed my fingers on the roof. “Part of me wants to be mean to her.”

Louise nodded. “Understandable.”

“Then again, the image of her waiting in the car like a dog at a supermarket makes me feel bad.”

“Understandable as well.”

“So what do we do?”

“No.” She shook her head. “What do
you
do?”

I grimaced, reached down, and opened the back door.

“Come on out, Fido.”

Louise pointed at me across the roof. “You are such a softy.”

“I must be.” I tapped my temple. “Soft in the head.”

She bounded from the back seat and onto Walter Wren’s front lawn. Envy gnawed at the edges of my consciousness to see her enthusiasm. I couldn’t recall, from the dusty recesses of my mind, if I had ever been so eager at the beginning of an investigation. Of course I must have been.

“All right, settle down,” I said. “Try to remember you’re supposed to be an observer. Observers are never happy to be anywhere. They’re usually bored.”

“Got it.” She aimed her finger like a gun and hammered her thumb down.

“No, you don’t
got it
,” I said. “Look bored, right now.”

Jane opened her mouth to speak but I preempted any protests.

“If Mr. Wren is watching us from a window –” I snagged her wrist and tugged her forward before she could turn toward the windows in Walter Wren’s home.

“He would see you out here bouncing around on your toes and know you’re lying. In this job, it’s not good enough to spot a liar. You also have to be a good liar.”

I gave her a sly grin.

“It shouldn’t be that hard for you.”

Jane stopped fidgeting and her enthusiasm changed into cold flint. “How authentic do you think it would look if he saw you holding my arm like that? You wouldn’t do that to a real observer.”

“You could just wait in the car.” I parroted her snotty voice and let go of her arm.

She feigned boredom.

“Perfect.” I looked at Louise. “I think we have an Oscar winner on our hands.”

“At least a Golden Globe winner,” Louise said. “Now can we get going? Mr. Wren has taken note of our arrival.”

The front door was open. Behind a rusted out screen door, hung on a crooked wooden frame that could have been, and probably was, original to the house, stood a silver-haired, hulk of a man.

He waved us toward the porch.

“Are you coming in or not?”

He opened the screen door partially as we strolled up the sidewalk.

“No, just take your time. I enjoy heating the outside.”

We hit the porch double time.

“Mr. Wren?” Louise asked.

“Yes, come in.”

He shooed her through the door, then shoved Jane and me inside. The three of us huddled in the four by four entryway. We pressed ourselves flat against the wall to allow Mr. Wren to close the door.

“Take your shoes off and come inside.” He locked the door. “Normally I wouldn’t make you take your shoes off. It’s not like I have new carpet or anything. But the lawn is wet from the frost this morning, and I hate to step on wet spots in my stocking feet.”

He shuffled past us. His time hunched back made every step look painful.

Louise had stuck the pink Post-It-Note with Walter Wren’s address to the flap of her purse. I ripped the note off and examined the address. It was the correct address.

Maybe there was a Walter Wren Junior, because the Walter Wren who slithered away from us in his moth eaten socks didn’t look like he could lift a fork, let alone a shotgun or a knife.

“Mr. Wren,” Louise said. “We’re with the Saint Paul Police Department.”

She held up her badge. Wren didn’t turn back; he stayed the course toward a nubbly, plaid recliner in the corner.

“I figured that’s who you were.” Either the chair or Walter Wren’s bone creaked as he eased himself into a reclined position. “I don’t get many visitors these days, and I never get any unannounced visitors any more.”

“You’re not surprised that we’re here?” I kicked my shoes into the corner and moved into the living room. I sat on a sofa whose cushions had seen the better part of the nineteen-sixties.

Wren shook his head. “Naw. When I saw the news last night, I figured you’d be around to see me eventually. Frankly, I thought you’d show yesterday. I even made coffee for you, Detective O’Brien.”

He jerked a thumb toward the kitchen. “I could re-heat some in the microwave but it won’t be as good as last night.”

I stopped trying to pull myself out of the two sofa cushions that sucked down my ass.

“How do you know my name, Mr. Wren?”

His laugh sounded like the ember snaps from a roaring fire somewhere in his chest. “Your name was the top news story on the ten o’clock news, and every half hour this morning until the game shows came on.”

By this time, Louise and Jane had removed their shoes and neatly stacked them by the door. Both were smarter than I had been and took a seat in two wooden chairs opposite the sofa.

“Was I indeed.”

He crackled out another laugh. “You sure were. You are what in my day we used to call a spitfire.”

He winked then slapped his hands together.

“You’re full of fire. That’s why the good Lord gave you red hair.” He leaned forward as if he were sharing a secret. “To warn others.”

Jane and Louise shared a knowing laugh with Wren at my expense. I had the feeling that after our publishing ban on Jane Katts ended, Walter Wren and his commentaries would appear in the paper as a follow up to the original story.

“Mr. Wren.” It was time for a change of subject. “You threatened Jonathan Luther’s life.”

His laugh trailed away and then ended in a hard swallow. He nodded slowly.

“I did. I’m not proud of that fact, and I didn’t kill him, Detective O’Brien.”

“Why did you threaten him?” Louise asked.

“’Cause I’m cranky.” He thumped his chest like an ape and gummed his lips together. “I’m a curmudgeon who got his nose out of joint.”

“Being a curmudgeon doesn’t give you the right to threaten someone, Mr. Wren.”

I tried to sound as authoritative as I could but grilling him was like trying to interrogate my grandfather. Walter Wren even wore the same two-pocket, flannel shirts as my granddad. I could hear my mother scold me and tell me not to speak to grandpa that way.

“No, it isn’t.” He nodded. “But we were like two cocks in the hen house. I said things that I’m not proud of, and if Jonathan were still alive, he’d say the same. I was mad at him, that’s for certain, but I respected him.”

“Why did you file suit against Mr. Luther?” Louise asked.

He turned his gaze toward her and smiled. “Aren’t you the pretty one, but that doesn’t mean you can pull one over on me. I’m old, not blind.”

He jabbed a gnarled finger toward the floor.

“Isn’t that folder under your purse holding all the details of what went on between the two of us?”

Louise glanced at the folder and then back at Wren.

“If your memory is so short, pick up the damn file and check.”

He rocked back in the recliner and looked at me. “Are you going to play games with me too, Detective O’Brien?”

He winked.

“Come on, firecracker. I saw you last night. You’re more direct than that.” He looked at me through half-closed lids. “I respect the direct approach more than this pussy-footing around.”

“Fine.” I gave one final heave and succeeded in extracting myself from the cushions. I moved to the edge of the couch. “We know that you claimed Luther cheated you on an investment property. The court ruled against you and my theory, just by looking around this place, is that you lost your retirement nest egg. So, you killed him.”

The ember snap laugh returned, and he slapped his knee. “I knew she was a firecracker. You’re all hell-fired-up, but you’re wrong, Detective O’Brien.”

Of course I was.

“I have more money than my children will be able to spend when I’m gone – though they’ll try.”

I glanced around the dusty, sun-faded living room. “Are you sure about that, Mr. Wren.”

“Oh yes. The one thing my Father always told me was to love rich and live poor. It kept him in good stead for more than ninety years, and it’s done me the same.

I loved one woman for over fifty years, until she died last year from the cancer. For all those years, we owned six cars, four dogs, no cats, and one house. We didn’t chase what the neighbors had and we never bought on credit.”

“Then why the lawsuit?” I asked.

“Cause I was mad, damn it.” He pushed the chair to a sitting position and locked eyes on me. “As I said, the only woman I loved, the one I had been with for over fifty years, died. Then this young, real estate punk comes and tries to rip me off, and that’s what he did with the courts blessing.

Luther knew how much I would lower the price on my property, because he was supposed to be working for me. I found out later that he’d told the buyers what I’d let the property go for, because they’d gone to college together.

Jonathan Luther should have lost his real estate license for what he done to me. When they wouldn’t take his license, I threatened him. It was a heat-of-the-moment sort of thing. I wasn’t serious at all. I was real, real sorry when I heard he was killed.”

“Where were you yesterday afternoon, Mr. Wren,” Louise said.

“Right here watching
TV Land
.” He nodded to a big-screened television in the corner. “There was an
I Love Lucy
marathon on. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”