Murder by Candlelight (8 page)

Something that
should
have made Z feel
good ... but didn't.

A more recent puzzle had been solved,
however: about Bud Izard's exaggerated reaction to Z scaring off
Howard Kunkle. The sickly grin on Bud's fat face; the sweating; the
offer to pay two hundred; the vow of eternal gratitude; owing Z a
favor; the two of them swearing never to speak of the incident
again. All of it, just ... too much.

It was now clear why Bud had been so
... strange.

He was scared of being involved in
murder, scared of being swept up as an accessory before, or after
the fact. Just plain scared.

Maybe, even afraid Z would find some
way to blackmail him for being in on the kill .......

Could be, even scared
of
Z
, people
generally afraid of murderers.

For it was clear as could
be that Bud
already
knew of Howard Kunkle's death -- thought Z had killed the
little man on purpose.

The difficulty was how Bud could know,
when Z, himself ...........

Easy.

Z had tipped the cops
sometime after 2:00 in the morning. By the time they'd
responded,
The
Kansas City Star
had been "put to
bed," so, no mention of the Kunkle affair in yesterday's morning
paper. Nothing that night, because the
Star's
greedy owners had shut down
the evening paper, Z having to wait until the next morning
--
this
morning
-- to discover what had happened.

What was clear was that Bud knew about
the murder by the time Z arrived at 4:00. Probably got it from
noontime TV.

Except it
wasn't
murder -- just an
accident.

That's what it was all
right, an accident; that's what Z had to keep reminding himself;
that accidents ...
happened
.

It was not his fault that something
had gone wrong.

Not his fault.

At least, that's what he told himself
... to stop his hands from shaking.

* * * * *

Chapter 4

Another day had passed with nothing
else happening. Another day meaning that, while Z was still
concerned about what had gone wrong in the Kunkle affair, the odds
of Z being discovered were falling. He was eating again. Sleeping
again -- though he'd been having bad dreams. Something he never
did.

What
were
dreams, anyway? God, or nature,
or something "out there" trying to reveal hidden information? He
didn't know. Nor could he remember just
what
he'd been dreaming about. Only
that he would wake up dripping with sweat, the bedclothes twisted
into nightmare shapes.

Surely, those dreams would go away in
time. If not, he could put in a call to Dr. Calder at Bateman
College.

He'd worked for Calder on another
case; had come to know and like the chubby little psychologist. If
anyone knew about dreams, Calder would.

All this thinking done while Z was
sitting at his battered desk in his sweltering office, trying to
read a detective novel -- having a tough time even doing that, his
mind wandering.

Since the telephone repairman had just
fixed his desk phone, Z was again located in the second of the
connecting cubbyholes that passed for his office. As before, when
the telephone on his "secretary's" desk rang, Z's phone would also
ring in back: a blessing because Z's knee made it difficult for him
to reach the front phone in time.

Not that Z had that much call-in
business to take care of -- or any other kind of business, for that
matter.

Since Bud's plea for help,
no other cases had materialized, leaving Z hurting for money.
Z
could
have
accepted Bud's two hundred, adding it to Kunkle's contribution ...
but that would have been against the Zapolska Code. (One of these
days, Z's "code" would starve him to death.)

Z picked up the novel again; a good
one about a black detective back in the fifties; by a writer named
Mosley.

But ... couldn't keep his mind on the
plot.

Damn! There was simply no way that
five candles of wax could have plugged up Kunkle's nose! For Kunkle
to smother, the wax would have had to have been snorted up inside
....

The phone rang -- right there on his
desk -- startling him.

Recovered, Z picked up the
receiver.

"Bob Zapolska Detective Agency." If
Z's pipes were only stronger, he'd sound more impressive
....

"This is Dan -- 'the D.J.'-- Jewell,
fourteen hundred and ninety-two!" The voice that boomed out this
sing-song gibberish was deep, cultured ... and unrecognizable. Z
waited. "Am I speaking to Robert Zapolska in person?"

"Yeah."

"Well, how are you, Big Bob?" Had to
be someone from Z's past; no one called Z "Big Bob"
anymore.

"Fine."

"Didn't get to renew old acquaintances
with you at the party. Too sad. But that's the way of life,
sometimes."

Renew old ....? Ah! Someone coming out
of the left field of Z's high school days.

"The reunion?"

"But of course. We ran in different
circles in the olden days. You, Mr. Football. Me, Mr. Journalism.
But, of course you've heard me since ...?"

"Ah ...."

"On fourteen ninety-two radio? Shock
jock with town talk? Shock plus rock. The Morning Show? Dan -- 'the
D.J.' -- Jewell?"

"Ah ...."

"No matter. There are only two kinds
of listeners. Fans and soon-to-be fans. Just a question of tuning
in once or twice." Followed by a dry chuckle. "But, to business.
Within a week, I begin a new feature. Not yet titled. Something
like 'Law and Disorder.' Something like that. Discussion of law
enforcement in the Kansas City area. With call-ins, always with
call-ins. Dan 'the D.J.' wants to hear from his people. Vox populi,
don't you know.

"I've already lined up all the big
names in town. Cops. Politicians. It was at the reunion where I
heard that you're now a detective. And voila!, there you were in
the Yellow Pages."

The Yellow Pages was about
the
only
place Z
was, his business hardly more than his ad: "Bob Zapolska Detective
Agency: Quick, Inexpensive. Results Guaranteed."

"So I said to myself," Mr. Radio
continued, Z getting the idea the man was talking more for his own
benefit than for Z's,"you've got to call this man." There was a
pause.

"Why?"

"To get a private detective's input,
of course."

"Why?"

A booming laugh over the line. "The
strong, silent type, is that it? Part of the old P.I.
image?"

Just what
did
this Dan Jewell guy,
a man Z had never heard of, want? More to the point, what could Z
do to get him to
say
what he wanted?

"Look," rumbled the big voice over the
little phone, "I'm not telling you anything you don't know when I
say that the reputation of private detectives is less than good.
Crooks, with licenses to snoop around, is what most people
think."

In Z's case, without
a
license
. But Z
did take the man's point. A "gumshoe's" reputation was a seedy one,
his own included.

"But I want to be fair about it. I'm
covering all kinds of law enforcement: street cops, big city
detectives, county sheriffs, highway patrol." Z could sense the man
counting on his fingers. "And private detectives, who are quasi-law
enforcement. If the police can't get action who do you call? Not
Ghostbusters, but your friendly, neighborhood private investigator.
Private dicks are society's back-up to failed police
work."

Z had always considered himself to be
in law enforcement, whether regular cops, like Captain Scherer,
agreed or not. It was just that Z was such a little fish in the
private investigator pond ....

"Why me?"

"Why
not
you?"

"There are big agencies."

"True. But, I feel I know you. Even
though we didn't run around together back in high school. I saw you
play. Anyway, I live north-of-the-river. It'd be easier to
interview you. We could do it in the evening. You wouldn't have to
come to the station. There's no money in this, you see. Just public
service."

Z didn't know what to say.

"I'm doing this series because crime
has gotten out of hand. Even in the Northland. Take that murder a
few days ago, for instance."

Suddenly, Dan -- the whatever --
Jewell had Z's full attention!

"The police are no nearer a solution
than they were when they found the body. Could be mob-related, of
course, professional killings always more difficult to solve than
family murder. Nonetheless, something must be done!"

What
Z
wanted to know was if the talk
show host had special knowledge about the Kunkle death -- one of
Jewell's "fans" calling in a tip that implicated Z -- or if
Jewell's bringing up the Kunkle affair was just a
coincidence.

"Actually, you'll be doing me a favor
either way. Now that I've invited you, if you give me a little of
your time, that's just great! If you refuse, I'll be forced to say
I asked a certain local P.I., a Mr. Bob Zapolska, to talk to me but
that, for some reason, he refused. The way the public takes a
refusal like that is to figure the person who's ducked out has
something to hide. So my advice is to talk to me. That way, you can
put whatever spin on things you want, if you get my
meaning."

"Yeah." And Z
had
gotten the D.J.'s
meaning. The man would stoop to blackmail to get what he wanted.
Not that Z gave a damn. Wanting to see if Jewell knew ... anything
... was why he said: "Yes."

"Great!"

"A condition."

"Shoot."

"That we just talk."

"You don't want to go on the air, is
that it?"

"Right."

"No problem."

"And not quoted."

"Actually, the detective segment is a
small part of the show. I just want to hear an honest P.I. tell of
the services to the community a detective agency can offer. Skip
tracing runaways. Deprogramming kids enslaved by cults
...."

"Never done that."

"I was just putting you in the
picture. ... So. I'll get back to you. Probably be an evening.
Probably soon. In my pad at the Valley Forge
apartments."

"OK."

"Until then, this is Dan -- 'the D.J.'
-- Jewell, signing off!"

Click.

Feeling like wreckage in the wake of a
cyclone, Z recovered to regret agreeing to talk to the radio show
idiot. Would never have done so except for the possibility the man
might know something about Z's involvement in Kunkle's
death.

Was it possible, just as a for
instance, that Bud Izard had said something to Dan -- the Asshole
-- Jewell?

Paranoid! Z was getting
paranoid.

The phone rang again, Z snatching it
up reflexively, half expecting it to be the police. "Hi, guess
who?" Said before Z could get in a word.

"Who?"

"You mean to say you've
forgotten me
already
?"

Unfortunately, no, now that he'd heard
more of her sexy voice.

"Jamie."

"That's better. A girl's ego is a
fragile thing."

Jamie -- the girl Z had been with on a
recent stakeout -- Jamie Stewart, girl ghost hunter. Alone with her
in an abandoned house -- night after night -- the inevitable had
happened; tricky, given Susan's attitude about "something on the
side.") Though Jamie had been exhausting fun, Z had hoped that,
like the ghost they'd hunted, little Jamie would fade
away.

"Hi."

"As uncommunicative as ever, I see,"
Jamie said in her "pouting" voice. "I got to thinking about you the
other day and decided to ring you up."

Z didn't know what to say.

"Thought we might get together again
sometime, for a drink maybe. To talk over old times."

No way. A drink wouldn't be enough to
satisfy sex-mad Jamie Stewart.

"Can't."

"No? Why?"

"Susan."

"Ah, yes. Susan." There was a pause on
the line. "I think I've been insulted."

"No." Z's fears that there could be
repercussions from his Jamie-fling were being realized. Not that he
could have done anything about it, thrown together with such an
attractive -- and eager -- girl. Shorter than Susan by quite a bit,
clipped blond hair, blue eyes, Jamie was ... built! Fun ... but
touchy.