Murder by Candlelight

Book #3 in the Z-Detective Series

John G. Stockmyer

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 John G. Stockmyer

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* * * * *

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NOTE:
This is the third of 10 books in
the Z-Detective Series. Book #1 is
Of Mice and Murderers
.
Book #2 is
Good Lord, Deliver Us
. The first three books are
free. The other books in the series can be purchased for $5.00 each
at the author's web site.

* * * * *

Cover Art: Ronald L. Brink

Ronald L. Brink, a self-taught artist and
illustrator, has been drawing and painting most of his adult life.
Watercolor is his medium of choice. He has illustrated the covers
of several published works. His work was chosen for the President's
Christmas card at William Jewell College for six years. He has
created over 40 paintings for the College; most of them for clients
and has sold many works of pets and homes. He has taught at Maple
Woods Community College in Kansas City for over 40 years. His works
are displayed annually at the on-campus gallery. Brink received a
B.A. degree from Missouri Valley College in 1964; an M.A. degree in
1967 from the University of Denver; and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and
Instruction from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1983. He
served as Chair of the Communications Division at Maple Woods from
1990-1998. He resides in Kansas City.

Ebook Conversion: John L. Stockmyer

John L. Stockmyer is an Associate Professor
of Marketing at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, New
Mexico. In his spare time, he dabbles in ecommerce, audio-book
production and eBook design. He is also an avid disc golfer. His
current ambition is to help talented "undiscovered" authors (like
his dad) find an audience through the use of non-traditional media
and innovative technology. Thank you for helping us shake up the
publishing industry!

* * * * *

The time: 1991.

The place: Kansas City, Missouri.

* * * * *

Finished with the most important of
his preparations -- zapping the little man, tying him to a chair,
and slapping a piece of duct tape over his mouth -- Big Bob
Zapolska was ready to do a little quiet searching of the Kunkle
"mansion." Just another Sunday night in the P.I. trade.

Z had dressed carefully for this
evening's work in his "night fighter" outfit -- black pants, shirt,
jacket, and "gum" shoes.

Before entering the house, he'd pulled
on his ski hood -- only his lifeless eyes showing through the holes
-- the clingy black fabric not only sweaty, but also itchy in the
barely reduced heat of this August, Kansas City night. He'd slipped
on his skintight, black leather gloves, of course. (Fingerprints
had not tripped up a professional for twenty years.)

He'd staked out the place from the
Cavalier; letting two hours pass after the house lights went
off.

Certain that Kunkle would be asleep by
then, Z had eased out of his car, padded down the walk, and slanted
across the street, pausing to give Kunkle's junker of a car a fast
toss, the trunk yielding old oil cans and rusting tools -- crescent
wrenches, tire iron, screwdrivers, and a greasy scissor-jack. The
glove compartment had the usual insurance and registration papers,
a flashlight, and a box of pre-lube Trojans.

The back seat was littered with
McDonald's cartons, empty beer cans, old newspapers, a wadded-up
grocery sack, gum wrappers, and a scattering of muscle
magazines.

Finished with the car, Z had sneaked
up the grass-grown walkway to the front door stoop. Stepping up,
he'd slipped a plastic card through the door crack, a flick of the
wrist putting Z inside.

Z's penlight the only
light necessary to the immobilization of shrimpy Howard Kunkle --
muscle magazines
indeed
! -- these early preparations had taken less than an
hour.

Everything going well, detective case
in hand, Z now had time to take a peaceful look around, first
ducking into the bathtub-dominated crapper, the "powder room" a
separate privy at one time, now enclosed by the back wall. The
indoor "outhouse" ... smelling ... like shit! The reason? Two
floating turds and a soggy mass of toilet paper were "marinating"
in the bowl's yellow-brown water.

Z backed out of there fast into what
passed for a kitchen, a niche so small it was overwhelmed by an
apartment-sized stove and a chipped "camper"
refrigerator.

Not much food in the fridge -- cheese,
bologna, a couple of six-packs, and three wine bottles lying on
their sides, the vino of a vintage featuring screw-on
caps.

The kitchen workspace was a yard-long
counter top, under it, two pull-out drawers containing bent-up
"silverware," a pack of plastic sandwich bags, torn wash clothes,
and five cheap candles -- for when the power went out?

The stove used bottled
gas. One end of the rusty porcelain sink featured a pump handle for
drawing water, helping to explain why Kunkle hadn't flushed the
stool. To flush, he had to pump water to "prime the toilet tank" --
too much trouble just to get rid of two turds and a mess of toilet
paper. (He'd have to lug a
ton
of water to fill the claw-footed, worn-out
bathtub in the john -- not that he'd ever get it into his head to
take a bath.)

Nothing in the 8 X 10 bedroom but a
cot and a scuffed wood chest of drawers, a dark-splotched mirror on
the wall behind the bureau. The drapery-covered closet had a rod
sporting "Good Will" shirts and pants, plus a shelf holding a
couple of dented felt hats and a medical, neck brace.

Dirty laundry festered inside a wicker
hamper at the far end of the clothes closet.

And that was the house -- no place to
bring a ten-cent whore, to say nothing of a hundred-dollar
hooker.

Back in the living room, Z took
another quick look at the furnishings, nothing there of interest.
Except for a tied up, but still passed out Kunkle.

Garage sale sofa. Mismatched
chairs.

All trash ... except for a single
high-dollar piece, a walnut desk with locking roll top, linen-fold
scroll work on either side of the lower drawers. Prompting Z to
wonder how a low-rent loser like Howard Kunkle came to own such an
expensive piece.

Probably stole it.

Or bought it at a Mafia
outlet.

The experienced detective attracted by
anything out of the ordinary, Z approached the desk, the excitement
of prowling in the night easing the pain in his knee. That, and the
handful of aspirin Z crunched down before jobs like
this.

Setting his satchel to one
side, he began by examining the desk in the razor-thin beam of his
penlight. Roll top and drawers -- locked, Z learning a thing or two
about locks the year he worked for Sam Picket of
Picket Locks.
For
instance, that a desk this old probably had one locking mechanism
controlling the whole shebang. Not enough time to search for the
key.

Nothing else to be done, Z eased
himself down to the dirty floor to stretch out on his back,
scooting around until his head was toward the desk.

Drawing up his knees (as far as the
bad one would go,) he "footed" his upper body under the desk -- a
tight fit through the leg hole for a man his size.

Wiggling his way in, shining his light
up at the back, Z located the locking device, reaching up with his
free hand to pry the flat connecting bar toward the center of the
desk. Was rewarded with satisfying clicks as the upper and lower
locks snapped back.

Squirming from under the desk,
levering himself up, he paused to brush the floor dust off his
pants. .... Disgusting!

The desk unlocked, Z turned to roll
back the louvered top, impressed already by the solid smoothness of
the old piece's works.

Nothing was quality-built
anymore; modern stuff just knocked-together. It was like his Mom
had predicted: the world
had
gone to hell in a hand basket.

Directing the penlight inside the open
desk, Z found nothing but bare surface -- not even the usual paper,
stamps, and envelopes in the pigeonholes at the back. Ditto for the
tiny pull-out drawers to either side of the paper slots, there for
pens, pencils, rubber bands, paper clips -- anything along that
line you might want at a moment's notice.

Stooping down, Z pulled out the deep,
ball bearing-smooth side drawers, inspecting them as carefully as
he had the tiny drawers up top. Found the same
"nothing."

So, why lock a desk to guard a lot of
lint?

Could it be that Howard
Kunkle was the orderly type? (Just a joke to keep himself amused.
Even to
pose
a
"tidiness" question about Howard Kunkle -- friend to roaches -- was
to court insanity.)

The first question -- what such an
obvious antique was doing here in all this filth, had "hatched" a
second query: why lock an empty secretary?

Unless ... the desk was more than what
it seemed.

Remembering how he, himself, had fixed
a hiding place beneath his surprisingly movable fireplace (Z not
wanting to have to answer the questions that would follow someone
discovering his detective satchel,) Z had to consider that the desk
might be similarly rigged.

Hidey-holes
were
often built into
desks of this vintage, he remembered.

With secret spaces in mind, Z examined
the desk again.

Found zilch.

Clamping the penlight in his teeth, Z
ran both hands over the surface of the desk, feeling for
irregularities through the rubber-thin leather of his
gloves.

A dead end.

Taking the little light out of his
mouth, wiping it off on his jacket sleeve, he flashed it at the
bottom drawers again, pulling each drawer open once more, this time
pausing to caress the insides of each. ..... Discovering that the
drawers seemed to be ... of different depths?

Standing back to eyeball the drawers,
it did seem that the right one was ... shallow .....

Bending down to feel under the right
drawer bottom, Z thought he detected an irregularity
.......

Snap -- the false bottom of the drawer
popping up and swinging to the back!

Glad to be getting
somewhere at last, Z flashed the light inside at the
true
bottom .... Saw...
a three-inch stack of folding money, padded together with a red
rubber band. (A fact that explained Howard's ownership of the desk;
Illegal currency had to be hidden
someplace
.)

Thumb-scuffing the bills at one corner
of the neatly banded pile, Z counted out a hundred dollars, pulling
out the bills to jam them in his back pocket.