Money & Murder Read online

  The cook came in, eased the swinging door shut, and used her hands to smooth the front of her apron.

  I smiled. “Take a seat, Rebecca.”

  She had taken two steps when she realized she’d fallen into my simple trap through having responded to her real name. A smirk flitted across her face. She shrugged, and then said, “I usually sit there on the end.”

  I moved next to the sheriff. She walked the rest of the way to the table and sat in what she had claimed to be her regular chair.

  After a quiet minute, Gretchen patted her hands against her coned white hair and whispered, “He’s dead.” Her shoulders collapsed as if a puppeteer had released invisible strings. She crossed her arms on the tabletop. Her chin settled onto her forearms, her eyes open and dry. Only her lips moved. “I did it.” After a brief pause, she spoke a little louder without raising her head. “And I’m glad.”

  Maybe, had she wet a couple more tea bags and put them in the trash, left a second cup on the drainboard, wet inside, or dried and put away the teapot she could have gotten away with it. No. In the end, PQ had selected his own killer and then caught his own killer. He had brilliantly scattered the pieces to the puzzle. He had underlined Rebecca in the book using the Old Maid card. Spoke to me of having called his first wife Rebecca an old maid to tie those clues into a tight circle around Gretchen. Told me Rebecca hated him and let me know she had not long ago gotten out of the mental ward.

  PQ had been brilliant, a murder victim who arranged and then solved his own murder. He had hired me to simply fit the pieces together.

  Chapter Six

  I slept past noon. Prior to going to bed the night before I called and left a message on my house phone. Axel would get it this morning telling him to stop his research related to PQ and his family. The case was over. My message also said I would be home in the next day or two and I’d answer all his questions then.

  I didn’t need to leave until tomorrow. That would get me back to Long Beach for the weekend. My next novel was ready to go. The only thing that remained was a little fine tuning on the cover.

  After returning a few phone calls, cleaning up, and packing most of my bag, I drove PQ’s Suburban to a diner near the interstate to get something to eat. While there I read the local paper about the murder and Sheriff Tallon’s arrest of PQ’s new cook, Gretchen. The inside page carried an article opining that Cord and the family should remain in Copper City and keep PQ Industries operating. There was also an editorial which took a different slant from that article. The editorial largely assumed the estate would sell the company. Then PQ’s children would sell the ranch and move out of Copper City. The mine had rich ore, but the vein was small and PQ had primarily used it to fund his ranch and other investments. Long ago, the experts had said the mine would soon play out. PQ had scoffed at that idea. The mine was still producing. At this point all the talk about the future of PQ Industries was mostly doomsday conjecture by people who didn’t know and would neither make nor influence the decisions.

  Later, around six, I slipped into a pair of the swim trunks and left the casita to dangle my feet in the deep end of the pool while reading the metropolitan newspaper, the Arizona Republic. PQ was known statewide as a wealthy, eccentric curmudgeon. His murder symbolic of the death of one of Arizona’s last historical eras. The front-page spread talked about his beginning a few years after World War II, no one was certain exactly when, as a grubstaked copper miner with a pick and a mule. After reviewing his life, the big city newspaper article detailed his murder and his failed marriage to Rebecca, and lastly his marriage to his young widow, Robyn. The article said that the cook had not spoken since being brought to the jail. So, for the moment, the killer was simply Gretchen, the cook, who had for some inexplicable reason, murdered her employer. The discussion of Gretchen and Rebecca being one in the same and his alleged murderer would likely come out tomorrow, or after her arraignment when her true identity would be revealed. Another story was built off core facts seasoned with rumors about the various members of PQ’s family. The comments about his offspring and widow Robyn were coarser than the references I had read about his family while PQ and his political influence had been alive.

  The sun, after seeming to pause atop a saguaro-covered mountain ridge to the west, slid behind the hill as I slid into the water and took a long swim.

  I had my forearms spread on the deck edge with my chin resting on my hands when clicking from Tedy’s stub-heeled sandals against the pool decking made me look up. She wore a green, two-piece bathing suit I doubted could survive a rigorous swim.

  She carried a tray with two croissants, some cut watermelon pieces, and a pitcher of something crowding around a lot of ice cubes. She flashed a smile I would have felt in my pockets, if my swim trunks had pockets.

  “We’re all staying at Cord’s place,” she said, “until Sheriff Tallon releases the main house. I saw you get in the car and drive away earlier. You weren’t carrying your bags so I knew you’d be back. I hoped you’d stop by Cord’s.”

  “Figured you and your brothers could use some family time.”

  She put the tray on the table and stood above me. The pool water had not fully calmed. Its movements danced light across her bronzed skin. The small band-aid I had seen in the study no longer featured on her thigh. The blemish it had protected while healing, gone.

  “Come over and sit with me,” she said.

  I hoisted myself over the edge and lightly patted my face and chest with the towel I had left on the diving board. She moved her shoulders and crossed her legs. I held the towel loose in front of me as I walked toward her and sat down. The cool watermelon tasted sweet and wet.

  “You liked my daddy, didn’t you?”

  “I liked PQ very much.”

  “I liked him too,” she said. “I’ll always regret not telling him.”

  “Lots of folks never get around to telling their fathers how they feel. Then, one day, their fathers are gone. PQ loved and respected you. That’s why he made you the personal representative for his estate and left you the majority of shares in PQ Industries. Those controlling shares make you, not Cord, the new boss of the business.”

  “I needled him too much.” She grinned. “It was such fun. I think he liked it too. Although, I wish I’d told him about Vegas. I left him believing … you know.”

  I took her hand and told the time-honored white lie. “PQ knew the truth about Vegas.”

  She sat forward. “What did he say?”

  “Let me see if I can recall his words. ‘A well-bred filly don’t just trot into any corral. She picks her stallion.’” It was a line I wished I had written for one of my novels. I may use it one day.

  “That’d be Daddy. The kinda thing he would say. They don’t make men like him any longer. He was tough enough to endure the early copper days. To fight his way to the top, and smart enough to put it all together into a well-run enterprise.” Her upper body eased back against the chair. “God, I miss him already.”

  “We have all lost loved ones. Their memories alive in our minds, keep them alive.”

  We sat in the warm night chatting until the rest of the ice cubes melted.

  She uncrossed her legs. “Can you stick around, Matt? Help me carry out Daddy’s wishes.”

  “Is that the only reason?”

  “No.” She smiled, lowered her eyes, and then looked straight at me.

  “I have to go back to Long Beach,” I said. “I’ve got a condo on the ocean. I’ve got a book to finish getting out. I’ll need to come back to testify at the trial. You’ll need some time to take care of the funeral and whatever. We’ll stay in touch. If you need me before the trial I’ll come back over. If not, when you have things wrapped up here, maybe you can come out for a visit. By then, a change of scenery will be good for you. You can meet Axel, and try a taste of beach living.”

  Tedy stood and slipped out of her sandals. “Let’s go for a swim.”

  The End

  Bonus Cont
ent

  The following pages contain some bonus content offered for your further entertainment.

  On the following pages are the prologue and a few chapters from the novel that started the Matt Kile phenomenon: Who Murdered Garson Talmadge, a Matt Kile Mystery. The second novel in the Matt Kile Mystery series, The Original Alibi, is also currently available. The short story you have just read is the third Matt Kile story. There will be more. If you will send your name and email address to me at [email protected] I will let you know when the next Matt Kile Mystery will be available. Thank you for reading this story, and please see my other novels listed near the front of this book.

  With appreciation,

  David Bishop.

  Who Murdered Garson Talmadge

  Prologue

  It’s funny the way a kiss stays with you. How it lingers. How you can feel it long after it ends. I understand what amputees mean when they speak of phantom limbs. It’s there, but it isn’t. You know it isn’t. But you feel it’s still with you. While I was in prison, my wife divorced me; I thought she was with me, but she wasn’t. She said I destroyed our marriage in a moment of rage in a search for some kind of perverted justice. I didn’t think it was perverted, but I didn’t blame her for the divorce.

  But enough sad stuff. Yesterday I left the smells and perversions of men and, wearing the same clothes I had worn the last day of my trial, reentered the world of three-dimensional women, and meals you choose for yourself. Things I used to take for granted, but don’t any longer. My old suit fit looser and had a musty smell, but nothing could be bad on a con’s first day of freedom. I tilted my head back and inhaled. Free air smelled different, felt different tossing my hair and puffing my shirt.

  I had no excuses. I had been guilty. I knew that. The jury knew that. The city knew that. The whole damn country knew. I had shot the guy in front of the TV cameras, emptied my gun into him. He had raped and killed a woman, then killed her three children for having walked in during his deed. The homicide team of Kile and Fidgery had found the evidence that linked the man I killed to the crime. Sergeant Matthew Kile, that was me, still is me, only now there’s no Sergeant in front of my name, and my then partner, Detective Terrence Fidgery. We arrested the scum and he readily confessed.

  The judge ruled our search illegal and all that followed bad fruit, which included the thug’s confession. Cute words for giving a rapist-killer a get-out-of-jail-free card. In chambers the judge had wrung his hands while saying, “I have to let him walk.” Judges talk about their rules of evidence as though they had replaced the rules about right and wrong. Justice isn’t about guilt and innocence, not anymore. Over time, criminal trials had become a game for wins and losses between district attorneys and the mouthpieces for the accused. Heavy wins get defense attorneys bigger fees. For district attorneys, wins mean advancement into higher office and maybe even a political career. They should take the robes away from the judges and make them wear striped shirts like referees in other sports.

  On the courthouse steps, the news hounds had surrounded the rapist-killer like he was a movie star. Fame or infamy can make you a celebrity, and America treats celebrity like virtue.

  I still see the woman’s husband, the father of the dead children, stepping out from the crowd, standing there looking at the man who had murdered his family, palpable fury filling his eyes. His body pulsing from the strain of controlled rage that was fraying around the edges, ready to explode. The justice system had failed him, and, because we all rely on it, failed us all. Because I had been the arresting officer, I had also failed him.

  The thug spit on the father and punched him, knocking him down onto the dirty-white marble stairs; he rolled all the way to the bottom, stopping on the sidewalk. The police arrested the man we all knew to be a murderer, charging him with assault and battery.

  The thug laughed. “I’ll plead to assault,” he boasted. “Is this a great country or what?”

  At that moment, without a conscious decision to do so, I drew my service revolver and fired until my gun emptied. The lowlife went down. The sentence he deserved, delivered.

  The district attorney tried me for murder-two. The same judge who had let the thug walk gave me seven years. Three months after my incarceration, the surviving husband and father, a wealthy business owner, funded a public opinion poll that showed more than eighty percent of the people felt the judge was wrong, with an excess of two-thirds thinking I did right. All I knew was the world was better off without that piece of shit, and people who would have been damaged in the future, had this guy lived, would now be safe. That was enough. It had to be.

  A big reward offered by the husband/father eventually found a witness who had bought a woman’s Rolex from the man I killed. The Rolex had belonged to the murdered woman. Eventually, the father convinced the governor to grant me what is technically known in California as a Certificate of Rehabilitation and Pardon. My time served, four years.

  While in prison I had started writing mysteries, something I had always wanted to do, I finally had the time to do. During my second year inside, I secured a literary agent and a publisher. I guessed, they figured that stories written by a former homicide cop and convicted murderer would sell.

  My literary agent had wanted to meet me at the gate, but I said no. After walking far enough to put the prison out of sight, I paid a cabbie part of the modest advance on my first novel to drive me to Long Beach, California, telling the hack not to talk to me during the drive. He probably thought that a bit odd, but that was his concern, not mine. If I had wanted to gab, I would have let my literary agent meet me. This trip was about looking out a window without bars, about being able to close my eyes without first checking to see who was nearby. In short, I wanted to quietly absorb the subtleties of freedom regained.

  Chapter 1

  Six Years Later:

  I was about to walk out my door to have breakfast with the tempting Clarice Talmadge and her septuagenarian husband, Garson Talmadge, without knowing Garson would be skipping breakfasts forever, not to mention lunches and dinners. The Talmadges lived on my floor, at the end of the hall in a twenty-five hundred square foot condo on the corner with a balcony overlooking the white sand shoreline of Long Beach, California. Then my phone rang. It was Clarice, but she hadn’t called to ask how I liked my eggs. The cops were with her and they hadn’t been invited for breakfast.

  A uniformed officer halted me at the door to the Talmadge condo. “My name’s Matt Kile,” I said, “I was asked to come down—”

  The saxophone voice of Detective Sergeant Terrence Fidgery interrupted, “Let ‘im in.”

  For seven years before my incarceration Fidge and I had worked homicides together for the Long Beach police department. Fidge was a solid detective, content with his work, a man who appeared to need nothing else. Well, perhaps a diet-and-exercise program, but Fidge was a man who would do anything to stay in shape except eat right, exercise, and drink less beer. I left the force ten years ago, but stayed in touch with Fidge and his wife, Brenda, whose pot always held enough for one more plate. I often sought out Fidge for his take on the first draft of my mystery novels.

  The master bedroom where Garson Talmadge slept alone was immediately inside to the right. His door loitered partially open. I could see Garson on the bed, his arm in an uncomfortable position he could no longer feel. Clarice stood in the middle of the living room, clutching her little Chihuahua to her bosom, her wet eyes pleading for help. I envied the pooch. I put my open palm straight out toward her so she would not come to me, then my finger to my lips signaling her to stay quiet.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute Matthew,” Fidge hollered from somewhere deeper into the condo.

  I waited in the foyer while the police photographer finished shooting Garson’s bedroom. A liquid had been spilled or thrown against the bedroom door. I touched the wet carpet and smelled my fingers. Coffee. With cream, I thought. The photographer came out of Garson’s bedroom. I couldn’t pla
ce his name, but I’d seen him around. We exchanged nods as we passed in the doorway.

  Sometimes you strain so hard listening for the quietest of sounds that you don’t hear the loudest. The shot that had hit my neighbor just above the bridge of his nose had come so fast that before he consciously heard it, he had stopped hearing everything.

  The edge of Garson’s bedcovers was pulled back exposing a foot too white to be a living foot. A modest amount of dried blood soaked Garson’s pillowcase, and stippling surrounded the entry wound. My elderly neighbor had taken it from up close.

  I started toward the bed, heard a crunching sound and stopped. The gold carpeting between the door and the bed had been sprinkled with what looked to be cornflakes. I stood still and looked around. A man’s billfold sat on the dresser in front of the mirror, the corners of a wad of cash edging out where the wallet folded over. Five boxes of cornflakes stood at attention along the wall at the end of the dresser, the flaps on the end box erect in a mock salute. At the end of the row of boxes a bottle of Seagram’s Seven Crown played bookend to the cornflakes.

  A hissing sound led my eyes to the sliding door entry to their ocean-facing balcony. The slider was open two inches with the air fighting its way inside like folks at the door to a popular after hour’s club. The room was cold enough that I would have closed the door, but not in a crime scene. I pulled the sleeve of my sweater down over my fingertips, reached as high as my six-three frame allowed and opened the slider far enough to stick my head outside. Halfway between the door and the railing, a zigzag print from the sole of a large deck shoe smudged the dewy balcony. The sole print testified that the step had been taken toward the condo. I pushed the slider back to its original two inches. Moving carefully to avoid the cornflakes, I went into the walk-in closet. There were no shoes with that sole pattern, and no shoes of any kind under or beside the bed. Garson had always struck me as an everything-in-its-place kind of guy. His room proved it. Whatever he had worn had been hung up or dropped in a hamper. He would not have wanted to see the jagged out-of-place blood stain that defaced his pillow.