Murder by Candlelight (11 page)

Worker inferiority, was a Susan theme.
Verbal diarrhea, Z's father would have called it. Running off at
the mouth.

Z's love affair with Susan was
increasingly difficult. They rarely saw each other -- where it
counted. Until recently, they'd been able to alternate weekends,
one Saturday or Sunday at Susan's apartment, the next weekend at
Z's place. (Z's apartment was crummy, sure. Purple linoleum had
gone out of style sometime in the 50's. What counted, though, was
being together.)

Z didn't much care for Susan's
apartment, either.

Too clinical.

Too modern.

Too cold.

But once in bed ....

Thinking about bed
reminded Z of Jamie Stewart, the girl rating quite a
number
of second
thoughts to be truthful. And about her threat to meet Susan, to say
nothing of Jamie's outrageous demand to see the very bed where Z
and Susan made love.

Z had also been trying to make sense
of what he'd discovered in Howard Kunkle's house. Funny, how a
number of little things that escaped you when you first saw them,
came back to haunt you later. For instance, Howard Kunkle's money.
Z had put it back in the secret drawer. (All of it except what he'd
taken to defray Bud's expenses for hiring Z.) Far from big money,
but .... And yet, Teddy Newbold had said that no money was found in
the house.

Leading to the next, logical question.
Who swiped the dough? The sensible answer: the cops who'd tossed
the place.

It was the rest of the items he'd
found in the secret drawer that troubled him. In the first place, Z
had to ask himself why Kunkle had taken the time and trouble to
conceal what looked like mixed junk. A bunch of card decks -- new
and old. A tiny mirror. Super glue. "Sunglasses." A bottle of wood
alcohol.

An odd assortment, Z
thought.

"Z? ... Z!?"

"What?" It hurt Z's mind to be reined
in that hard.

"You weren't listening.
You
never
listen
to me."

"That's not true." And it
wasn't. Z
sometimes
listened to Susan, though it was a fact that he'd
rather
look
at
her. What man wouldn't? She was gorgeous. Rich, brown skin. Fiery
blue eyes. Shiny, rumpled-curly, medium-length hair. White teeth,
just crooked enough to put a man at ease. And that was just her
face. She had a neck to wake up a vampire who'd been dead a
thousand years. Plus a figure, one sight of which would clean out
monasteries. Today, she was wearing a white, raglan-sleeve sweater
dress, large white buttons down the front. (Z liked dresses that
announced what you had to do to get them off.) Below, he could feel
Susan's knee against his, Susan's legs long enough to foster under
the table conspiracies.

"What I was telling you," Susan was
saying, "was why I'm having salad today. It's not so much the
calories you eat that make you put on weight, it's the fat
content."

Glorious Susan was talking
about
dieting
? "I
like you the way you are."

Susan frowned and shook her
head.

If
that
wasn't the right thing to say,
what
was
?

"Speaking of losing a little weight,
you could stand to take off some flab," Susan countered, rounding
on him.

"Me?"

"Big surprise." Susan scowled
again.

Z
had
gained a few pounds over the
years but found the extra weight useful for intimidation. "It's not
how much you eat, it's
what
you eat," Susan lectured. "You practically live
on peanut butter. Do you know what the fat content of peanut butter
is?"

"No." Z's tone saying,
enough.

Susan frowned again.

She was cute when she
sulked that way, wrinkling up her classic nose.
Cute
: one of the words Susan had
taught Z
not
to
say.

"It's just that it doesn't help me to
lose weight if you're not supportive."

"OK."

"OK,
what
?"

"I'm supportive."

"I guess that'll have to
do."

Susan sighed. Drummed her
fingers on the table. She still wasn't happy, but was trying to
make the best of it. "So, tell me what
you've
been doing
lately."

"Nothing."

"That's just
like
you, Z," Susan
growled. "You don't talk to me about anything. Here you have this
interesting job, and you won't talk to me about it."

"
Not
interesting."

"Let
me
be the judge of that."

"OK." This was an old quarrel, Susan
wanting Z to talk more. About his job. About his life. About ...
everything. When she got like that, he had to tell her
something.

"Had some liability work."

"Go on."

"Guy claimed to be injured. I followed
him. Took some pictures of him playing softball."

"Yes. My insurance company writes
injury policies, though we're more an insurer of big business. What
else?"

"A friend asked me to talk to a man
who was hassling him."

"And ...?"

"I did."

"And?"

"He won't again."

"Surely, you've been doing
more than
that
."

This was not the right
time -- there would
never
be a "right time" -- to tell Susan that Jamie
Stewart had called, even though Z had turned Jamie down for what
she
really
wanted
from him. Men got blamed for giving
in
to temptation, but never got
credit for being virtuous. Z wondered why.

Oh, yes. Something else he could tell
Susan.

"Got a call from a radio
guy."

"Oh? That's interesting. What did he
want?"

"An interview."

"Who was it?"

"Some D.J." Z shrugged.

"
What
D.J.?"

"Some guy from my old class. Name of
Dan Jewell."

"What!? Dan Jewell? Only the hottest
shock jock in Kansas City?"

Z shrugged.

"The girl next to me listens to his
call-in show every morning. He's ... terrible ... but I can't help
but overhear, she's got the radio turned up so loud."

"Ask her to turn it down."

Z got another of Susan's dirty looks,
her face then softening into a smile.

"And he wants
you
to do an interview?
On what?"

"P.I.s and crime."

"Will you?"

"Will I what?"

"Do the interview?"

"I said OK."

"I'm proud of you, Z!" Said with more
enthusiasm than Z had heard from Susan in a long time. "One of your
faults is that you're too modest. You need to push yourself more.
Be more assertive. Getting on the radio will help you get new
clients."

"Not
on
the air."

"No?" Susan was
disappointed.

More than disappointed.

Testy.

Something in her
life
had
to be
messed up.

"What's wrong?"

"What do you mean, what's
wrong?"

"Something."

Susan shook her head. But didn't say
no.

The waiter came with the
food.

One lonely pork chop, with a dab of
slant-cut green beans and a spoonful of corn casserole, these
tidbits cuddled in some tastefully arranged, but inedible, leaves.
The "saver" was a basket of hot rolls you could fill up on after
you'd inhaled the main course.

At least Rembrandt's food was good,
what there was of it.

Both starving, they ate in silence,
the waiter pouring more tea and bringing Z another glass of
Coke.

After Susan had waved off the waiter's
suggestions about dessert, Z tried again. "Tell me."

Carefully avoiding her problem for an
hour -- like women do -- Susan was ready, at last, to
"share."

"It's ... the apartment."

Z remembered
Susan's
old
apartment where, because Susan's ex kept threatening to kill
her, she'd hired Z as a bodyguard. One thing led to another, Z
planning a setup, the husband popping up right on cue to make good
his threat. That was when Z had been shot in the lung. Bad, but a
whole lot better than what had happened to the husband, an
undercover cop on that stakeout zapping Susan's ex into the
morgue.

It was in the hospital, and later
during Z's recovery, that Susan and Z had fallen in
love.

Because of the bad memories associated
with the old apartment, Susan had moved to her new set of rooms in
the Bircane complex.

Could it be that Susan was bored with
the Bircane and would find an apartment closer to Z's rooming
house? Hope. Hope.

"Neighbors?" A likely reason for Susan
wanting a change.

"You could put it like that, I
suppose."

What Susan meant by that was anybody's
guess.

She explained. "Not so much neighbors
as ... noises."

"Plumbing?" Even new apartments had
such cheap fixtures anymore they didn't hold up.

"No. Just ... noises."

Z thought of the many noises offensive
to apartment dwellers. In addition to the enthusiastically
copulating couple overhead, were creaking floors, rain on poorly
insulated roofs, rattling windows, buzzing furnaces, moaning wind,
"Bigfoot" pounding up the stairs, and assorted settling sounds.
He'd had enough experience in carpentry to know that for every
noise, there was a solution. At least, something that could be
tried.

Before he could offer his services as
Mr. Fix-it, Susan took another crack at explaining. "Noises.
Banging noises. No, not banging. Knocking."

"Loose shutter, blowing in the
wind?"

"I thought of that. Except the
apartments in the complex don't have shutters." She looked down at
the table. Swallowed. Straightened to stare across at Z.

"Late at night, there's this ...
moaning sound. To say nothing of the furniture being ...
rearranged."

"Rearranged?"

"Yeah. I leave for work in the morning
with everything in place. When I return at night, something has
been ... moved."

"Maintenance?" There was a service
that cleaned apartments at the Bircane. Part of the
lease.

"On days when no
one
should
be in
the apartment. I checked with power and light and the gas company.
They sent people out to look, but couldn't find what was making
those sounds. ... Spooky sounds."

People who heard "unusual noises"
generally tried to hide it. Didn't want to end up in a padded cell
in Tri-County.

"I don't want to admit it," Susan
began again, suddenly whispering, "but I may have ... a poltergeist
in my apartment."

"A ... what?"

"A noisy spirit. One who moves things
around. It sometimes happens when a teenager is nearby, but not
always. For the first few nights, I was scared. But I've almost
gotten used to it."

"Can I help?" Z was expected to offer,
even though ....

"Nothing you can do, Z. This is job
for an expert."

"A priest?" When Susan got like this,
Z had to jolly her along.

"No. The only thing that will help
someone like me, with no connection to a church, is to have a
seance in my apartment. Discover what the spirit wants so it will
go away."

"Where'd you get that
idea?"

"I know it sounds ... crazy. But
that's what it takes. I found that out because I've been talking to
a lady who knows all about these things. She came into the
insurance company. Lost. Wanted to talk to someone about purchasing
a policy. And while she was waiting, we struck up a conversation.
It turns out she's quite knowledgeable in the field. Pretty soon,
we were chattering away like old friends. Even went to lunch
together.

"Anyway, talking about this and that,
the topic came around to ghosts. And that led me to tell her about
the noises. She seemed to understand just what I was talking about,
because the same thing had happened to her, once. That's how she
got so interested in the subject. She's done a lot of reading in
order to find out what to do.

"So here's where we left it. She's
going to conduct a seance in my apartment next Wednesday night.
Several of the girls at the office are going to come. And I want
you to be there too, Z. To sort of hold my hand." Susan gave Z a
crooked smile.