Corpses Say The Darndest Things E-Book

Doug Lamoreux

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

It was a simple job: keep an eye on the minister's wife until she goes safely to bed. Then all hell broke loose.

The death of a beloved Chicago televangelist’s wife is only the beginning; someone is homiciding their way through the Temple of Majesty Church. Private eye Nod Blake - an aging throwback to an era of detecting on the mean streets - has been dumped in the middle of it all, on his head.

The resulting injuries seem to have opened a door to the hereafter: Blake believes dead people are talking to him. But are the victims really begging the gumshoe for help from the other side of the grave? When his nemesis, Detective Lieutenant Wenders, finds evidence that Blake is the murderer, the private dick's life becomes a great big soup sandwich.

Doug Lamoreux's 'Corpses Say the Darndest Things' is a riveting murder mystery with a sly sense of humor, set in 1979 Chicago where a maniacal killer on the loose in The Windy City... is the good news.

Leseprobe

Corpses Say the Darndest Things

A Nod Blake Mystery

Doug Lamoreux

Copyright (C) 2013 Doug Lamoreux

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter

Published 2019 by Next Chapter

Cover art by Cover Mint

This book is a work of fiction. The characters and incidents are fictitious, original, and drawn from the Author's imagination. They are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to real persons, living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental.

Dedicated to -

Edwin Lamoreux,

and the Lamoreux clan, with love.

Acknowledgements

Jenny McDonnell - My rock; my shelter in the storm.Carole Gill – For asking the question that led to The EndThe folks buying and selling Geraniums at the flower stand at Post & Kearny.

Chapter One

Imagine, if you will, an all but washed-up private detective pursuing a uniformed cop down the street as fast as either of us could run. Yeah, we were a sight.

Not that it mattered to anyone. In The Windy City like any other metropolis, with a million people passing at any given time, few bothered to look and nobody put in a hand. No, sisters and brothers, I was on my own and chasing him for all I was worth. I'm the private dick. I could describe the sounds, the smells. I could name the streets, the twists and turns, the folks we almost knocked down, the things we ran around, jumped over, the vehicles that nearly hit us. What would be the point? We ran until I could barely breathe and wished the same for him and then some. We ran till he made a mistake.

He was passing two hookers, a skinny blonde with roots that matched her vinyl knee-high boots and a tall apple-bottomed girl the color of rich dark chocolate wearing gold and green zebra-striped spandex loitering near a deserted building on North Avenue, when he shouted and turned into an alley that I knew was a dead end. The sap. As sure as a frog has delicious legs, I had him. I passed the working girls myself, too fast to take real notice, turned the corner, and nearly collided with a dumpster that smelled like fish hell at low tide. The man in blue was just ahead. From one of the open windows above, as if pleading his case for him, the Electric Light Orchestra begged Don't Bring Me Down. Nuts to that. Sucking wind, my heart ready to explode, I leapt and landed on his back.

He couldn't just go down of course. Because luck is non-existent in my life, and good fortune only a fantasy, the cop took a header. I rolled ass over tea kettle over him onto the pavement and, as I still had a grip, he returned the favor. Garbage, newsprint, cardboard and, I'm sorry to say, gravel flew. I rang my own bell on an inconveniently discarded concrete block using the back of my skull as a clapper. A conjoined scream, our pain, my anger, his fear, went up like a mushroom cloud. Before the noise and dust settled, and despite my blurred vision and bleeding road rash, I scrambled to my feet.

He did too. Then he went for the holstered gun on his hip.

“Willie,” I screamed. There was no time to think, just enough to kick him hard in the groin. He collapsed like a marionette with cut strings and rocked on the ground in a fetal position. “No guns, Willie, ever,” I barked. “I hate guns.”

Then, and only then, did they show up.

By they I mean Detective Lieutenant Frank Wenders and his sidekick Detective Dave Mason, two more frauds passing themselves off as real cops; these paid by the city. Wenders, a few years short of retirement but ages past his sell-by date, belonged in New Orleans rather than Chicago. He was made for Mardi Gras. For him, every day was Fat Tuesday and he could chomp a king cake whole and never taste the baby Jesus. His shadow outweighed his partner. Speaking of which, Mason, who was too young for his promotion out of patrol, had not failed to make the worst of it. In no time at all he'd become every bit the jerk Wenders was, only stupider. Together they were always a day late and a dollar short; two scabs constantly picking at me.

“You… all… right, Blake?” Wenders asked. I thought I was breathless. He was huffing like a paint junkie. I nodded. (Okay, I was winded myself.) Between gasps, I pointed at the little man in blue, still suffering on the alley floor, and told the city boys, “For a sawbuck, tell you where he got the uniform. He looks better than your guys.”

Wenders gawped at the fake cop, balled up like a baby, cupping his package with both hands and whimpering like a whipped dog, and seemed to decide that (outside of Willie's white socks) he couldn't disagree with my assessment. The rest of the costume looked genuine. Still he frowned. Apparently he didn't need a wise-acre like me pointing it out to him.

As long as I had him annoyed, I kept going. “Frank,” I said, because the lieutenant loved it when I got chummy, “meet Willie Banks. Willie,” I told the whining slug on the pavement, “this is Detective Lieutenant Wenders. He'll be your arresting officer this morning.” The smoke rolled from Wenders' ears. Apparently he didn't need me introducing him to low level perps like we were all guests at a garden party either. He stared daggers at me then told Mason, “Scoop him up.”

The counterfeit cop went without resistance and only a little crying. The barely real junior detective followed behind yanking on the handcuffs and shoving him like he was less than human. As they reached the mouth of the alley, in a high, nasally voice, Willie shouted back over his shoulder, “Blake, take care of my car, will ya?”

That didn't help. Wenders looked at me like I was a bug. He shook his head in dismay (but not surprise). A lifetime ago, when I was a cop, the pre-lieutenant Wenders, along with the rest of the boys in the precinct, gave me a bad time because of my habit of picking up strays. My heart, to hear them tell it, bled all over for one scumbag after another. I couldn't say they were wrong and I don't pretend things have changed. Things never change.

Wenders noticed the gun on the pavement and grunted as he picked it up. He didn't know much but he knew it wasn't his. Without thinking he held the weapon out to me. “Yours?” My vision was only just clearing, my head was still vibrating like a drum, and I wasn't in the mood. I growled and turned as if the weapon smelled bad. I couldn't help it. It was automatic like the kick after a quack taps your knee with a rubber hammer. Knowing what he knew, Wenders couldn't blame me. “Sorry,” he said. “Must be his, huh?” He tucked the gun in his belt (a trick with his gut). Then he took another swipe, “You know, Blake, you ain't Broderick Crawford. You gotta quit acting like a cop.”

I lit a smoke (which, truth be told, didn't help my dizziness) and blew it in his face. “You could say, Thanks,” I said, “for helping us get the guy.”

“You're not a cop anymore,” he said, pretending he hadn't heard me. “You're a lousy gumshoe.”

That wasn't nice but, then again, neither was Wenders. He rotated his girth and, trailing Mason and their phoney cop prisoner, walked away like the bovine he was. Always one to look on the bright side, I noted with thanks that he didn't raise his tail. “You're welcome,” I told his back.

There are three theories as to how the word gumshoe became a stand-in for private investigator. The first suggests the term was a tribute to the unflappable sticking power of the detective. Like gum, you can't shake us. The second says private dicks spend so much time poking around bad neighborhoods they end up with gum on their shoes. While neither of these are absolutely untrue, as to word origin they are highly suspect and probably half-baked. The third theory, the one that holds water if you ask me, says the name came from the gum-rubber soles on shoes worn in the late 1800's. They walked quiet and a gumshoe could sneak around. Handy if you wanted to avoid detection or take a run-out powder with somebody's stuff because, yeah, a gumshoe was a thief. By 1910 or so, and don't ask me how, I'm no historian, the term had come over to the other side of the law and from then on referred to those who quietly went about detecting crime.

Seventy years later (it's 1979 as I confess this to you), with shoe power all but replaced by high-tech security firms, personal computers, a Fotomat in every car lot, news eighteen hours a day, and a half-dozen law enforcement agencies holding concurrent jurisdiction over every inch of the U.S., the hard working private detective (and his gumshoes) had, like pre-Star Wars special effects and backroom book-making, gone the way of the dodo. With the exception, that is, of me.

My name, as you've already heard, is Blake. Don't ask about the first name. Yeah, I have one. No, I don't use it; and it's not because I want to be all private dick-ish. That name alone proves my parents were child abusers. My old man paid for his crime ages ago and is serving his sentence in the city cemetery with no possibility of parole. My mother, on the other hand, what with the world so full of Bingo parlors and people she's yet to annoy, has so far managed to push back her trial date. Some day I'll see justice done; enough said. In a modern Chicago, filled with agents, cops, and rent-a-cops, I'm still just a private eye. I admit, I've out-lived my time. As the eighties approach and the new age shoves the old out and over the hill, I still smoke, I drink before, during, and after business hours, I still think of women as dames though I rarely say it aloud. (While I often find trouble, I'm not as a rule looking for it.) And I still wear gumshoes. They're quiet, as comfortable as can be expected for a job where the only time you're off your feet is when you're knocked on your can, and they're handy for those times when it's necessary for a middle-aged, out of shape, throwback to a by-gone era of detecting on the mean streets to move fast, like that morning.

I headed, slowly and painfully, out of the alley but was stopped before I reached the sidewalk by the little blonde hooker. “Hey, Blake,” she exclaimed. “I thought that was you I seen running.” She was twitching like Howdy Doody, involuntary muscle spasms proclaiming her addiction. Fucking junk. Suddenly, it dawned and I could have kicked myself. I knew the girl, knew her well, but hadn't recognized her for the hell the street was beating out of her. She was still in her early twenties, but couldn't have passed for forty.

“You look awful,” I told her.

She took me in with her huge doe eyes and I can only imagine what she saw from her side; a thickening gut, thinning salt and pepper hair, a dirt and blood-caked, sweaty, dated suit of clothes hung on a rumpled knot-headed former cop that was now… What was I anymore? “You think you're Gregory Peck?” she asked. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

I took her point and changed the subject. “Have you been eating?”

“I get by,” she said with a twitch.

I pulled a twenty from my pocket and pushed it into her shaking hand. “Don't smoke it up,” I told her. “Buy some food.” She nodded without looking me in the eye.

“Hey, Charisma!” The shout came from the other girl, her huskier, flashier co-worker, who'd moved their trollop shop to the corner across the street. “Who's the boyfriend?”

I looked from the loud one in the distance to the soiled dove beside me. “Charisma?”

“I found a book of names at the library,” she said with a shrug. “I'm trying it out.”

“Okay. But I'm still calling you Connie.”

She pecked my cheek, turned and, zigging as the traffic zagged, headed back to her girlfriend shouting “Love ya”' over her shoulder as she went.

As I watched her, skinny and street-worn, heading back into the hell that made up her existence, I shook my head and wondered at how lousy life could be. That led to thoughts of the crap week I'd had so far and to the dandy morning it had been. Like most ruminations of the past, these thoughts in no way altered the present and in no way put me wise to two vital facts: One, that though I had not fatally injured myself, the head shot I had just taken was the first of several I had coming over the next eleven days that would permanently scramble my brains and forever alter my future. And two, that one week prior, almost to the minute, a heavily guarded gate at the Stateville prison near Joliet had ratcheted open and disgorged my worst nightmare.

Chapter Two

Smoke billowed in great gray swirls from the exhaust of Willie Banks' old Ford as I pulled it into the lot outside of my office. I suppose I should have been grateful, with the bald tires, shattered left headlight, dented green left and rusted blue right quarter panels to highlight the faded Madagascar Orange of the Mustang's original body, I might well have been pushing it in. With the things I let myself in for a sucker like me ought to have a hook in his mouth. Anyway, somewhere behind the smoke was the small red-brick two-story building I rented, and sometimes paid the rent on, on the near southwest side; the former campaign headquarters of someone running for something. It featured a vestibule that was too tight to change your mind in, an outer office for my secretary, an inner office where I thought great thoughts, met clients, and hid from bill collectors, and a one-room second floor filled with boxes of long-forgotten junk. Someday I'll hire a detective to see what's up there. Though I shut it off, Willie's car continued to cough. Finally the engine gave a great last gasp and shuddered to a halt. I sighed, grabbed an envelope from the seat beside me and, as beat as Grandma's rug, went inside.

Lisa was at her desk. That's Lisa Solomon, my secretary. When she stood she was a tall brunette drink of water. Sitting or standing, she was as bright as light, efficient as a well-oiled machine, and nearly as awkward as she was gorgeous. As usual, one long, boney hand scribbled madly on one of the piled papers on her desk while the other dug, equally as madly, into a bag of five and dime candy. I saw Lisa once when she wasn't eating; once. How she stayed so skinny is one of the world's great mysteries. She looked up when I entered, offered no discernible expression from behind her big owl-like glasses, but said, “You look like a lump of Grade A ground chuck.”

I gave the comment all the consideration it was due, meaning, I ignored it. “Willie Banks is in the jug,” I told her. “If his mother wants to spring him, and I would assume that's a big if, we should let her know.” I handed her the envelope. “Add that to the bill and remind her I don't take checks.” I tossed his keys on the desk. “Those are Willie's, to that wreck outside lowering the property values.”

“Is that what that was?” She glanced out the window. “I thought the Sydney ghost train rekindled.”

I ignored that too. “Ask her what she wants done with it. I'm going home and…”

Some detective I was. It was only then, from the corner of my eye, I saw the blonde sitting crossed-legged in one of the two chairs in my waiting room. The chair never had it so good and my eyes were feeling better about the day too. If Lisa was gorgeous but awkward, this dame was just gorgeous. She smiled and what could I do but smile back. Her smart, if business-like, skirt and jacket, in soft canary yellow, deserved attention but I couldn't supply it because her legs were hogging the show. Then she stood and, as if they hadn't caused enough trouble, the legs made a perfect ass of themselves. Outside of my aching skull I heard Lisa mumbling. “Huh?”

“I said,” Lisa said, “this is Gina Bridges.”

“Blake,” I said, taking her hand. I indicated the door to my office with my free mitt. “Please.” She followed directions like a champ and I champed to follow her. Behind me, under her breath, I could have sworn I heard Lisa ask, “Who do you think you are, William Holden?” I ignored that too.

*

For the uninitiated, entering my office must be something like walking onto the set of a Skid Row stage production of The Front Page. The massive oak desk, no doubt gorgeous in the first three or four offices it had served, was so buried by stacks of paper it could have passed for the working space of a haggard newspaper editor. I'm not a news editor of course, I'm merely disorganized. And, though I wasn't much of a writer, that day at least I was certainly haggard. A book shelf behind held stacked files, phone books, atlases and outdated city directories. None had been touched since we'd moved the new computer in and a fine layer of dust had settled. Beneath another stack of files, a fire proof safe sat like a rock in the far corner protecting papers of importance, a frosted brownie I'd hidden from Lisa then forgotten, and my gun. (Just because I hate the damned things doesn't mean I don't have one. It is, after all, a tool of the trade.) A small refrigerator, from a motel that went bust, sat next to the safe cooling mixers and limes and holding up its own stack of files. Beside that, ready for action, was the liquor cabinet, the top of which was the only cleared flat surface in the room. There are two framed photos on my wall; one of a cabin I stayed in outside of Mammoth Hot Springs, and one of a woman I do not know. The first reminds me of one of the only weeks in my life I want to remember. The other came with the frame and tries, but fails, to remind me to replace her with my detective's license. Both bring the same phrase to mind; some day… Miss Bridges gave no indication she was bowled over by the opulence, but she didn't look ready to run either. I took it as a sign she meant to go through with whatever it was she'd come for, shut the door, and showed her to a chair.

“I'm sorry,” she said, sounding as if she was, with a voice that could float a yacht. “I missed your first name.”

The voice could stay, the question had to go and I waved it away. “Don't worry about it; I don't use it. Call me, Blake, everyone does.” I smiled so she wouldn't take offense (my parents weren't her fault) and found my chair behind the desk. Aching, feeling as on the ball as a ceramic bobblehead, and out of respect for the first-rate job the alley had done on my other parts, I sat gingerly. “Now, what can I do for you?”

“Well,” she said, “I'm the executive secretary for the Reverend Conrad Delp.” She paused, waiting for my reaction. When I didn't offer one, she proceeded. “The Reverend has a crusade appearance in Atlanta tonight.” She checked a stylish watch on her slim white wrist. “The advance team is already there and set up, we'll be flying out shortly. Usually the Reverend's wife, Katherine, goes along but she isn't feeling up to it this evening.”

Any other day a drop-dead beautiful woman like that could sit in my office talking until the cows came home and I'd listen without interruption trying merely to swallow my saliva before it reached my shirt. But, truth be told, just at that moment, it hurt to sit and focusing my eyes wasn't a gimme either. “Miss Bridges,” I said, smiling but squirming forward in my chair. “I apologize if I seem abrupt,” I bit my lower lip, adjusting, “but, I've had a rare morning.” I found a position that offered some relief and exhaled to prove it (which just made me dizzier). “How, specifically, can I help you?”

“I'm sorry. The Reverend would like his wife looked after.”

There weren't any crickets but there should have been. “Now I'm sorry. He wants what?”

“He wants to hire you to make sure his wife is safe… while he's gone.”

“Oh, I see.” I needed the work, I could always use the money, and I was amenable to sniffing her perfume until my Medicare kicked in, but without knowing it she had just given me an out and, the way I was feeling, I was gratefully taking it. “I don't do that sort of thing,” I told her. “Some private investigators do; bigger firms with more manpower. I work alone. What you're looking for is a security firm or a private bodyguard.”

“You don't understand, Mr. Blake.”

“Blake. Just… Blake, please. My old man was Mister and he took it with him.”

She smiled. She understood me. She'd do anything to please me. “Blake.” See, I told you. “I know this is short notice but it isn't just anyone we want looked after. It's Reverend Delp's wife. He needs someone he can trust. I've been told he can trust you. You come highly recommended.”

“I do?” It took an effort not to laugh but I made it. “By whom?”

“Mr. Blake… Blake… I don't know.” I'd have felt bad, but she sounded so defeated herself I let it go. She took a breath deep enough to test the top two, insanely-secure, buttons on her blouse and championed on. “I'm doing as I was instructed and telling you what I was told. Among the things I was told was that you come highly recommended.”

I nodded to demonstrate how much the compliment meant to me. Then I stood, turned, and opened my little fridge. With effort, I ignored all the fixings inside that might have contributed to a lovely and well-deserved late morning toddy and, instead, grabbed a handful of ice from the freezer box. “Would you excuse me a moment?” I took a last look to remember her by, enjoyed a fleeting dirty thought about the girl who looked like Bo Derek but acted like Bo Peep, and left the office pulling the door closed behind me.

Lisa swiveled her chair. “The first rule of being a detective,” she said, proudly shoving a sheet of paper at me. “Investigate the client first.”

Holding the ice to the back of my head, I took the paper with my dry hand. “She's not the client. The client is Conrad Delp.”

“Reverend Delp?”

I nodded and scanned the sheet. Ice water ran down the back of my neck. I didn't mind at all. “You know him?”

“Everyone who isn't going to hell knows him,” Lisa said. She bit several inches off a black licorice whip to emphasize her disgust at my ignorance. You've got to be hateful and mean to eat black licorice. Then she talked around it while she chewed. “He's a biggie in the television preacher industry – and not just in Chicago. He's huge all over the country; TV specials, weekly radio show, books, newsletter. He's his own cottage industry, and you ought to see the marble cottage God gave him in thanks. My mother dotes on him. In fact, that VCR you tried to bribe her with really comes in handy; she tapes all his crusades, never misses a radio broadcast.” She paused to suck candied spit.

I'd been studying the bare-bones sketch of Miss Bridges but I turned from it to ogle my secretary. I have as many prejudices as the next guy, but I'm way too lazy to be an -ist and too contemptuous of society in general to form specific -isms, still I couldn't help myself and asked, in genuine confusion, “Aren't you Jewish?”

“Oy,” she answered. “But Reverend Delp is special. He makes Mom cry. And, for an older man, he is kinda hunky.” Sometimes my arched brows and dismal head shakes (even pained dizzy ones) just happened on their own, like then. “It's a girl thing,” she explained.

I raised one hand in surrender while I chucked the last of the ice bits into the wastebasket with the other. “It doesn't matter,” I said, drying my hand on my pants. “It's babysitting. You know I don't…”

“I know you don't,” she cut in quickly, nearly lashing me with licorice in her excitement. “But it sounded simple and you could use the money. Besides…” Lisa had that frightening gleam in her eye and, believe me, if you haven't seen it, you just can't know. Worse, beneath the gleam she was still talking. “I thought, if you didn't want to do it, it'd be a good case for me to get my feet wet.”

I hate that gleam. Did I mention Lisa wanted to be a detective? Yeah, well, she did. Like Ahab wanted fish for dinner, Lisa wanted to be a detective. “We've had this talk before,” I said with a sigh. “You're not an investigator. You're barely a secretary.”

“Well, what am I then?”

“The word thorn comes to mind. Or bane, burden, irritant. Nuisance, pest, plague. Oh, and pain, of course; you're definitely a pain.” I handed the paper back. “I'm going to cab over and get my car, if it isn't already, `Please God, No,' up on blocks. Then I'm going home to soak in hot water; very hot water, for a very long time. Explain my departure to Miss Bridges, please, offer her our deepest apologies that we cannot be of service, and send her on her way.”

Done with my secretary, fed up with the day, the back of my head throbbing, I turned to exit. As I opened the outer door, from behind, Lisa said, “Don't you think, since Reverend Delp is who he is?”

“Lisa Solomon,” I said, cutting her off like a naughty child. “I am turning down this job.”

“Even,” she asked, “at the risk of your immortal soul?”

“I'm closing the door now,” I said. And did, as I left.

Chapter Three

I found my Jaguar exactly where I'd left it and, to my astonishment, unmolested. No, I'm not rich. I'm a working-stiff (just then a stiff working-stiff) like, I imagine, most of you. One of the few things in this world I'd ever really wanted was a Jag and, like the fabled merchant and his pearl of great price, I'd given most of what I had to buy it, used. Imagine the sexiest 150-mph super car ever, an erection on wheels, and you have the '61 Jaguar. Now, add power-sapping Federal emission controls, discontinue the elegant fixed-head coupe for a long wheelbase, perfection stretched on a medieval rack. Replace the reliable 4.2-liter six for a monstrous 5.3 V12 that's a bitch to keep tuned and makes the front anchor-heavy. Spoil the smooth lines and sleek contours with plumped fenders. Then nail the coffin closed with horrendous rubber pads to meet senseless 5-mph bumper standards. And, voilà, you have my deep blue '74 Jaguar. It will go down in history as one of the worst cars of all time, but it was still a Jag and it was mine. Now you understand my relief at finding it intact. Without further ado, I fired it up and took it and my battered self home.

Much later that night, soothed if not softened by a hot bath and partially recharged by several hours shut-eye, but with my head still aching and my senses tingling from a feeling that something was just not right, I gave Lisa a call. No, I was not receiving any psychic messages, I just had a hunch. I got her answering machine, considered the fact she never went anywhere, then got a chill. Hating myself for it, I dressed again and drove, not to her place, but to the north side of town or, financially speaking, to the other side of the tracks. I turned down the winding road that fronted the residence of Chicago's (perhaps even the Almighty's) gift to television worshipers everywhere, the Reverend Conrad Delp. What little of the columned mansion could be seen from the peasant's side of the ornate wrought-iron gate and walled fence, beyond the curve of the substantial drive, through the myriad trees was, I'll admit, impressive, and I whistled to show my respect as I slowly cruised by. Then I came abreast of a speck of a car, a 1970-something Volkswagen Cabriolet, an electric-yellow roller skate fueled by lead-free gas and pretension, that was parked at the curb. I stomped on my brakes.

“Son of a bitch.” It was Lisa's car.

I only thought I'd had a headache before. Now it was pounding. On top of that I was deeply annoyed but not in the least surprised. The reason I was there, seeing her car, was because I had somehow known my eager secretary was going to ignore my direct order. And, as sure as the Ayatollah Khomeini was back in Iran, there she was. Chewing my lower lip in frustration, I continued on and parked in the shadows down the street.

I walked back to Delp's estate, scaled the wall and slipped into the yard. I wound through the trees and bushes, playing commando from one shadow to the next until, within shouting distance of the mansion, I made out the thin but graceless form of Lisa standing beside a tree. She was dressed in black like a Ninja, pointlessly, because she was leaning directly into an amber pool of light from one of the windows of the house. She was sucking on a blue and white swirled lollipop (raspberry ripple?) that, when she pulled it from her maw, was as big around as a bar coaster. She held a metal file, doing her nails between licks of her candy and, I imagine, telling herself she was watching the house.

Sue me. I sneaked up behind her.

“What are you doing?”

Lisa jumped. She rammed the file under her fingernail and had herself a moment. Then she recognized me, got mad, recognized the injury she'd done to herself, felt the pain, recognized she was caught where she had no business being, and raced from embarrassment to defensiveness faster than a pimply teen reaches his first orgasm. “God!” she shouted in a whisper. “Who do you think you are, Chuck Norris? You scared me half to death!”

“Yes,” I said without a hint of compassion. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” she shot back indignantly.

“I'm a licensed private investigator. I'm trained to know when someone is doing something really stupid. Now, I repeat, what…?”

“You're here.” She was angry but still whispering. “So you know why I'm here. I took the job.”

“You can't take the job. You're not…”

“An investigator, I know. I took the job for you.”

“Without telling me?”

“You wouldn't take it.” She furled her brow. I stared back so hard that, had I had a couple more chins and forty rolls of fat, she'd have thought I was Frank Wenders. She cocked her head, an embarrassed coquette owl behind the glasses, and raised one corner of her mouth to smile. “I thought it could be a really good case,” Lisa said. “Not too hard but really interesting.”

“What's interesting about it?” I asked doubtfully.

“You left too soon,” she exclaimed. “There was more to Gina's story.”

“Gina? The last time we talked it was Miss Bridges.”

She ignored that. “Reverend Delp has been getting threatening letters, so he didn't want his wife left alone.”

“What sort of threats? From whom?”

“Gina didn't know. Just threats, I guess.”

“She didn't show them to you?” Lisa had a habit of gaining speed as she talked. My questions were as much to slow her down as to harvest information.

“She couldn't show them to me, she hasn't seen them. She's just heard about them.”

“Rumors? Gossip?”

She clicked her tongue because I wasn't playing fair; asking questions to which she didn't know the answers. “Gina said they weren't the kind of thing Reverend Delp would speak about.” For emphasis, she added, “He is a powerful and influential man.”

“Yes, so you've said repeatedly. But you don't know anything about these threats? Whether they were mailed or from where? Cut from newsprint? Written in blood?”

Lisa shook her head. I was spritzing her with questions about unimportant details and she was trying to keep the windshield clear enough to barrel forward. “All I know is Katherine, eh Mrs. Delp, was unaware of the threats and the reverend wanted it to stay that way because of her delicate nature.”

“Her delicate nature?”

“That's the way Gina, eh Miss Bridges, put it. Because of her delicate nature. That's why I'm out here. He doesn't want her to be alone but he doesn't want her to know she's being watched either. I'm just supposed to make sure she's safe. Once she's asleep, I'm done and I can leave. I mean, you're done and you can leave.”

“Does Reverend Delp know you're here?”

“No, remember, he's in Atlanta,” Lisa said. Then under her breath she added, “He understands that… you`re… here.”

I sighed and looked to the heavens. There were a few stars up there beyond the leaves and a lot of clouds but not a thing that looked like help. “Go home, Lisa.” She started to say something but I cut her off. “I'll see Mrs. Delp is tucked in. Go home.”

She made one last offer to stay and help, tap danced a final shuffle-ball-change on my nerves, then decided she'd pushed her luck as far as it would go. She said goodnight and headed in the direction of the street. It was just after eleven o'clock at night. I watched her disappear into the dark then, resigned to the evening my secretary had selected for me, moved into the shadows near the house.

I looked through a window and for the first time saw Katherine Delp. More accurately, I saw the woman that presumably was Mrs. Delp. (I'd never seen her and wouldn't have known her had she bit me.) She was well worth the look (and welcome to bite me anytime). She was slender and tall from the shag white carpeting to her short-styled blonde hair. In-between, though her figure wasn't exactly an hour-glass it still knew what time it was. Aside from her obvious personal attractions, two things about Katherine Delp stood out. One, for a homebody at that time of night, the lady was exceptionally well-dressed in a clinging red drape that more than hinted at the firm contours beneath. Two, she was visibly on edge, pacing like a caged panther, and stealing uncounted looks at a bold Broccato wall clock I could have hocked for my rent. She paced the length of an inviting couch the same non-color as the carpet, threw a cube of ice into a cut-glass tumbler, and gave it a bath in Tanqueray and tonic. She wet her whistle, examined the clock again, and went right back to pacing. She kept it up, the pacing and the drinking, for a long time as if waiting on a late train. Something was on her nerves and she was getting on mine. Then the phone rang and we both started.

The minister's wife snatched the instrument from the end table so quickly she nearly spilled her drink. She put the glass down and, forgetting the gin altogether, lifted the receiver to answer. Trailing the cord, Mrs. Delp and her phone disappeared from the room and my view.

*

She was gone for several minutes during which, as far as I could see, absolutely nothing happened. I was bored to tears. Little did I know they would be the last few quiet moments I would have for the next week and a half and that my life was about to become a soup sandwich.

I heard a car motor at the front of the property and saw fingers of light, headlights bisected by the iron bars of the front gate, stealing through the trees. I couldn't see the car itself but it was there. There followed a barely audible clank of metal and the grating swing of the gate. The engine revved and the car started up the crescent of the paved drive. I'd had to move forward to a new position to clearly see the visitor without being seen. He made that easier when the headlights suddenly went out. The motor continued to purr softly and, moving slowly in the dark, the vehicle, a dark sedan, came into view. It was brought to a stop by the wide columned front porch and shut off. The lone occupant, the driver, a tall athletic-looking man in his late twenties got out. He took the front steps in two brisk hops and the porch in three long strides; an eager beaver. But, if he was champing at the bit, he had nothing on Mrs. Delp. Before he could even take aim at the doorbell, the minister's wife opened the door, grabbed him like a dog latching onto a meaty bone, and hauled him inside.

I checked my luminous watch, saw 1:00 am straight up (an interesting time for visitors when your hubby was away preaching), then headed back to the side of the house. Flickering shadows showed they'd returned to the living room in which I'd first seen our client's wife. But now I really needed a closer look. I entered and navigated, as best I could by the spill light, a small rock garden to a spot just beneath the window. I was almost in place – when I tripped. I'd been fairly successful up to that point in keeping the noise to a minimum but I knew I'd make a hell of a racket if I fell and, sisters and brothers, I was falling. I grabbed the sill to catch myself. Then, quick as I could, ducked back from the window into the shadows. I leaned there, against the house in the dark with my eyes closed, trying to quietly catch my breath, hoping I hadn't given myself away. I wasn't at all confident because, as one does sometimes, I had the feeling I was being watched.

Outside of the window's light the yard was dark. Outside of a gentle breeze all was quiet. The shadows inside remained constant. Whatever they were doing in the living room, neither had come my way. Apparently this time I'd gotten away with being a klutz. I carefully edged back to the window, stole a look in, and found I'd been worrying about nothing. Mrs. Delp and her young man were locked in a passionate embrace and wouldn't have given a rat's ass if I'd been blowing a trumpet.

The right Reverend Conrad Delp would have been delighted. He'd gone to the trouble of hiring a gumshoe to ensure his delicate wife wasn't alone and he'd gotten his wish. He'd seen to it – and so had she. Whether or not I'm a pervert may be debatable, but I'm not an idiot. I could have stood there in the shadows watching the two of them grope each other for all they were worth but everything about that situation screamed tit in a wringer. The only question ultimately would be, hers or mine? I needed to get a handle on whatever the heck was happening there, for my client, for whatever protection I could give his wife, and for myself. It was time for the first rule of detecting: keep the detective safe (out of jail, out of the hospital, out of the morgue). I quietly escaped the rock garden, retraced my steps across the deep wooded property, and slipped back over the wall to the street. No, I wasn't running away (have faith, faithful readers). I dug into a satchel I kept hidden in the trunk of my car, a goodie bag filled with many of the fun things a private dick would love to have with him on a caper but usually can't; camera, latent printing gear, business card printer, and other handy devices, and lock jimmies, slim jims, and other completely illegal accoutrement. This looked to be one of those rare times when my toys would prove, not only useful, but lifesaving.

I returned to the house with a few choice items and, admittedly outside of the law, popped the door lock on the visitor's car. I didn't think he'd mind. And, even if he did, I didn't think he'd be out soon enough to know I'd done it. I didn't bother with ancillary details (what did I care if the guy's insurance was current), just checked the registration for his name and gave the interior a once-over for anything incriminating or informative. For all I knew Nicholas Nikitin, that was our guest, was nothing more than Mrs. Delp's passing fancy or rent-a-date. (In which case, I didn't care who he was.) I found nothing outside of his name and address that qualified as earth shattering. But at least I knew the players, or guessed I did (I was still taking it on faith the woman was Katherine). In the know, but no wiser, I returned to the side of the house to see how the game was going.