Murder in the Hearse Degree (25 page)

“I’m not sure I should have bothered,” I said.

A pair of policemen were approaching the building. Talbot and I stepped aside to let them pass. They nodded tersely at their boss. Talbot caught the glass door before it swung shut.

“It’s been nice talking with you, Mr. Sewell.” A patent lie, but I let it slide. “You have a good day now,” Talbot said, then turned and followed the officers inside the building.

 

Billie was sitting out on the stoop when I returned to the funeral home.

“Hitchcock, there’s a man inside to see you. He wanted to know if he could lie down in one of the caskets.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said if he took off his shoes.”

It was Nick Fallon. He was in our display room, stretched out in an Ambassador model. His arms were crossed behind his head like he was lounging on a chaise. His eyes were closed.

“Comfortable?” I asked as I came into the room.

Fallon’s eyes opened slowly. “I feel dead.”

“You’ve got the moves down.”

Fallon scooted up in his casket. “There’s some nice padding in this. Real snug. It’s a damn shame you’ve got to waste these things on corpses.”

“I’m glad you like it. You’d be surprised how many people have one in their homes.”

“No kidding. Their own personal coffins?”

I named a well-known actress.

“No shit,” Fallon said.

I named a local sports figure.

I named a popular writer of self-help books and his rock-star wife. “Matching caskets,” I said. “His-and-hers.” I was making it all up, of course, but I saw no reason to spoil Fallon’s fun.

Fallon clambered out of the coffin.

“You’ve got to give me the whole scoop here, padre. I could pull a story out of this.” Fallon leaned up against the wall and started to put his shoes on. He didn’t appear to be too steady on his feet. Rather, his foot.

“You look beat,” I said. “What brings you here?”

The answer walked into the room. “I do.”

It was Julia. She floated forward on an invisible cloud. Her smile was the size of Wisconsin. Fallon had one shoe on, one shoe off. He waved the loose shoe in Julia’s direction.

“That woman isn’t human.”

“She’s a national treasure, isn’t she?”

Fallon met his foot halfway and worked on the shoe. “Jesus. You have no idea.”

Julia came over to me and tipped her head onto my shoulder.

“Oh, he does.”

All three of us were starving. Billie had come back inside and she offered to whip up a lunch for us. Julia said she would help. I gave Fallon the nickel tour. The highlight of the nickel tour is our embalming room, downstairs in the basement. Nick studied the table with a jaundiced eye as I explained the process. Some people find it fascinating, others go as green as a Granny Smith. Fallon was leaning toward the Granny, so I kept the explanations tame.

“What’s with the posters?” Fallon asked.

He was referring to a pair of posters on one wall of the room. One of them showed Groucho Marx in a pith helmet down on one knee, arms spread. Directly next to it was a poster of Sophia Loren in a tight peasant dress.

“Stand here.” I positioned Fallon at the opposite side of the embalming table. “Now, picture a corpse laid out in front of you. You’re going to be down here with it for at least an hour. Maybe longer. Just you and silent Joe. And let’s face it, you’ll be doing some pretty strange stuff when you stop and think about it. Okay? You got all that?”

“Got it.”

“Now, look up.”

He looked up from the table at Groucho and Sophia. His eyes flitted from one to the other.

“I got it.”

“Let’s go eat.”

Billie and Julia had put together a platter of BLTs and Billie was still whipping up a large bowl of potato salad. We gathered around Billie’s kitchen table and started in on the sandwiches. Fallon ate like a feral child having his very first indoor meal.

“I’ve got news,” I announced.

“So does Nick,” Julia said.

“Mine’s about the nanny,” I said.

Fallon had a mouthful of sandwich. He bobbed his head madly and waved a thumbs-up. Julia translated.

“So is his. I told Nick last night why you and I were at Crawford Larue’s party. I told him all about Sophie Potts.”

“Well, I know who got her pregnant.”

They listened as I told about Faith’s running into the midshipman the day before and how she had immediately inferred something having transpired between Bradley and Sophie. I told how Faith had arranged for Bradley to be at Pusser’s Landing so that I could meet him, and I described how guileless the young man had been, how cooperative and readily truthful.

“So did you get the feeling that the guy was getting it off his chest?” Fallon asked.

“That was definitely part of it.”

“He knocks her up and leaves her out to dry. Maybe the girl threatened to make a stink. His future is on the line. He’s feeling the pressure.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Take a look at it,” Nick said. “That bridge. It’s awfully damn close to the academy. Watery grave? What do you think? I can see the navy angle on this one.”

“Nick, you’re thinking like a cheesy tabloid writer.”

The cheesy tabloid writer made a face. It had “duh?” written all over it.

I went on. “I figured that finding the guy who slept with Sophie would clear things up,” I said. “But that was when I figured it would turn out to be Gellman or even Tom Cushman. Frankly, the navy boy was something of a wild card.”

Billie brought a large serving bowl of potato salad to the table. Fallon was downright Pavlovian as he heaped his plate full.

“Tell Hitch about your phone call, Nick,” Julia said. She looked over at me. “I think you’re going to like this.”

Fallon shoveled a huge forkful of potato salad into his mouth and masticated with a steady deliberateness. He looked as happy as that clam we always hear about. He held up a finger, indicating for us to hold on. He continued chewing. The earth hurtled around the next corner.

“Got a call,” Fallon said at last. “A couple of weeks ago. Maybe more, I’d have to check. It was at the paper. A girl. Woman. Whatever the hell I’m supposed to call them these days. She didn’t identify herself. I’ve got caller ID, but it turned out she wasn’t calling from a private phone. The call was from a phone booth.”

“Tell him where,” Julia said.

“Call came from Annapolis.”

“What did she want?” I asked.

“She wanted money. For a story. Now you’ve got to remember, we get these calls all the time. A couple of high-profile stories over the years that
The Cannon
has paid big bucks for and everyone thinks we’re just sitting by the phone with a big bag of dough just waiting to give it away. I told her it didn’t work that way. She said I should listen to her, that she had a nice juicy scandal.”

“Can you believe that?” Julia said. “In
The Daily Cannon
? I’m mortified.”

“Well, here was the thing. She told me that it had to do with the ARK.”

My little ears perked up. “The ARK? My old buddy Larue?”

“That’s right. Crawford and company. Now you’ve got to remember what they’re all about, okay? It’s the Alliance for Reason and Kindness, for Christ’s sake. They’re do-gooders. I mean there’s nothing wrong with that as far as it goes. They tell people to make their beds in the morning and be good to one another. But I think you see what I’m saying. They’re straight shooters. Family values. Upright and uptight. No hanky, no panky.”

“Where do you suppose adultery would fit into that?” I asked.

“The scarlet letter?”

I gave them the lowdown on my backyard snooping down at the Gellman ranch. Fallon continued shoveling the potato salad into his maw as I told the tale.

“Do you think it could have been Sophie who called?” Julia said. “Do you think she saw something similar and tried to cash in on it?”

“I can buy that,” I said. “Mrs. Larue was not exactly behaving like the ARK poster child.”

Fallon was shaking his head. “Let me tell you what the people in Washington say is stenciled on that woman’s undies. ‘Virginia Larue’s Home for Wayward Boys.’ Ginny Larue is a regular one-woman men’s club. That’s common knowledge inside the Beltway, but if that’s all this call was about, there’s no scandal there. I mean, there
is
. The ARK is all about being preachy and morally upright and here you’ve got the wife of the damn joint running around town spreading a hell of a lot more than the gospel. But as a story, it’s a fizzle. It’s all accuse and deny. It’s just never been worth going after. It’s Washington, after all. There’s a hell of a lot of dirty laundry that you just don’t even bother with. We need a little more zing to our sex scandals.”

“What about Crawford Larue?” I asked. “Is he in the dark about all this?”

“Does Crawford know that his wife is a public popsicle? Who can say? She sure as hell didn’t marry him for his looks. Look, here’s the thing. Virginia Hallowell had been bouncing around the D.C. party circuit for a number of years. She was one of those gals who just loved the smell of power in the morning, you know? You can’t run a political city without them, just check your history books. Anyway, a couple of years ago she fell pretty hard for a low-level something or other at the White House. He was married. There was a bit of a mess there and then suddenly up she popped on the arm of little Crawford. Mr. Purity and Light himself. His first wife had died a few years back. Talk was that Miss Hallowell was mending her salacious ways, but of course that turned out to be a crock. Old dog old tricks. She married the guy. You’ve seen the house. Crawford’s doing all right for himself with his little dynasty. I guess Virginia just decided she needed to get herself a harbor. Nobody gets any younger.”

I jerked a thumb at Julia. “This one does.”

Fallon said, “I already told you, this one ain’t human.”

“This one could stand for a better compliment than that,” Julia said.

I pressed. “So this scandal your girl was trying to peddle. You don’t think it had to do with the indiscretions of Lady Larue?”

Fallon shook his head. “I was getting a bigger pitch than that. The thing is, she refused to go into details unless I promised her a cut of cash, but what she did tell me was that she had the dope on the ARK being involved in all sorts of anti-ARK things. Abortions, for one thing. And you
know
the ARK lobbies long and hard to the right on that one. Even creepier, though, she said they were involved in forced sterilizations. Of minors, no less. Of course if any of that were true, that’s the stuff that topples empires. But like I said, I tried to get her to fill in the details and she wouldn’t really give me anything I could work with. She wanted money first and I told her I’d have to take that up with the publisher. I tried to wrangle a number from her where I could reach her but she wouldn’t bite. Said she’d call me back.”

“And when was this again?” I asked.

“I’d have to check to be sure, but it was at least a few weeks back.” He shrugged. “I figured it was probably a load of crap, but I went ahead and rang up the ARK and put it to them for comment. You can guess what they told me. They wouldn’t dignify this filth with a comment. I was also told that if the
Cannon
even trotted out so much as a teaser article on garbage like this, the ARK would drag our asses into court faster than we could blink. It was Russell Jenks I spoke with. You met him, right?”

“Briefly.”

“He labored long and hard not to look at my breasts,” Julia said. “With limited success.”

“Mrs. Larue described him as her husband’s loyal soldier,” I said. “Or maybe it was the Lord’s loyal soldier. I can’t remember.”

Fallon smirked. “Jenks is high up there on the ARK food chain. Of course nabbing the boss’s daughter doesn’t hurt. You remember her, don’t you? The girl with kaleidoscope eyes?”

“Odd fish,” I said.

“I’ll say. Girl’s in la-la land. Bird like that you can park in the corner and not even have to worry about her.”

“Anybody tries to park me in a corner,” Julia said, “I’d throw it in reverse.”

“So did you hear back from your mystery caller?” I asked Fallon.

“No. I waited, but she never called. Ninety percent of the time that’s how it goes. People fish for money then they disappear. Turns out there’s no story, of course. It’s either a fruitcake who just gets off on making these kinds of calls or it’s a disgruntled employee or a pissed-off spouse or who knows. I considered poking around a little more to see if the ARK had recently dumped anybody who might want to be getting back at them. But then I just forgot about it.”

“If it was Sophie she’d have a damn good reason for not calling you back,” I said. “That old ‘being dead’ thing.”

“Who do you see killing her?” Fallon asked.

“How about Virginia Larue? Maybe she got tipped off somehow that Sophie was stirring up the mud.”

Fallon waved his fork in the air. “Hold on. That’s another thing. Julia told me about that whole ‘adopt my baby’ routine. I don’t buy that. There’s no way for me to know for sure, of course, but I don’t see Crawford and Virginia Larue suddenly deciding to become parents. Ginny Larue couldn’t care less for kids. That woman’s just not the mommy type, if you ask me. And Crawford? Maybe, I guess. Old guys do get that immortality thing going sometimes. Though that’s usually about fathering the child themselves, to show the world that they’ve still got the stuff.”

“But if Sophie wasn’t really meeting with the Larues so that they could adopt her baby, then what was it?”

“Let me try to get this straight,” Nick said. “This girl calls me up and blathers on about all sorts of nefarious bullshit going on at the ARK. At the same time she’s meeting with Crawford Larue personally, allegedly about his and Ginny’s adopting her kid? Do we know for a fact that she was actually pregnant?”