The Original Alibi (Matt Kile) Read online

  My life had become much different from what I expected while growing up. It started for me, like it may have started for you. Mom could make any hurt go away. Dad could fix anything. The nuns who taught at the Catholic school weren’t gods; they just demanded to be treated as such. But we learned. We had to, our lives depended on our doing so. None of this mushy treatment kids get today in the public schools.

  When my age rolled into double figures I started to see the world differently. Mom and dad weren’t perfect. They didn’t have all the answers. By the teen years, my head was where most teens’ were, angry at my folks for letting me down. For not deserving to be on the pedestal I had put them on, a pedestal I now realize they never claimed they deserved. At that point, in ever growing gobs, I turned to the real source of knowledge, other teenagers. My pals became the center of my universe. Along about that same time the girls started sticking their noses under the boys’ tent and things changed again. Tits. Legs. I still don’t understand how the girls all seemed to instinctively know how to look from the corner of their eyes, or turn to display the profiles of their breasts. Billy Bataglia, my tightest bud, said the girls learned it watching the vamps in the movies. That was about the time the girls started riding the cotton pony a few days each month, while we struggled to learn that women had two personalities when one was more than we were ready to handle. That last point, still hasn’t changed all that much.

  Life kept advancing. I no longer carried my Hopalong Cassidy lunchbox. I spent mornings watching the clock in the classroom, urging it to move quicker. When lunchtime finally came, I dashed to the cafeteria and sat near Marilyn who had just transferred into our school from who knows where—heaven would have been my guess. She wore tight sweaters. Tight enough that rumors claimed the school had once called her mother to come and take her home to change clothes. One of the boys who happened to be in the office at the time said Marilyn’s mother had bigger bazooms and wore a tighter sweater than her daughter. That boy, who had been sent to the vice principal’s office for a paddling, likely smiled all the way through it.

  By the age of sixteen, Mom and Dad’s image was totally tarnished, and Hoppy was out of my life except for watching him on TV when no one else was home. Life had lost its black or white clarity. I started knocking ever bigger hunks out of my childhood ideas about good and evil, reshaping it all into what I somehow concluded was reality. When I got confused my friends had the answers. The world of teens is the world where the blind arrogantly lead the blind, feeling smarter while the whole bunch of them stumble through puberty.

  In those years, the only thing I ever did without my buddies was devise a plan to get hired to wash Marilyn’s mom’s car and mow her lawn. I longed to find out firsthand how accurate the one boy’s description of Marilyn’s mom had been. Fortunately, for me at least, Marilyn’s parents were divorced so her mom needed help with those chores. To me, their divorce spelled opportunity. My price was the lowest, lunch with them at their outside table after I had cleaned it and swept off the patio. It was here that I learned even more about the gray in life. Marilyn spent one weekend a month with her father and when she did, her mom fleshed out the things that had theretofore lived only in my private fantasies. This expanded my circle of teaching adults from Mom and Dad and the nuns at school, to Marilyn’s mom who took charge of teaching me the extracurricular stuff. I knew it was bad, maybe more bad for Marilyn’s mom than for me. I had the semi-excuse of being young, an excuse I would eventually grow out of so I wanted to use it to full advantage as long as I could.

  I never told my buddies what went on at Marilyn’s. I just quietly prayed for summer when the grass grew faster. And, believe me, keeping my trap shut about what Marilyn’s mother taught me was really hard.

  Don’t get me wrong. I grew up knowing, and still know, what good is. It’s that, for me, getting good done has become more important than how I get it done. At least that’s the way I see it. And I don’t have a lot of patience with the rest.

  Chapter 10

  I spent the early hunk of the morning getting Axel familiar with the three good witnesses whose testimony provided Eddie with his real-life get-out-of-jail free card. I had prepared a bit of a dossier on them the night before from what had been in the police file. I had asked Axel to put together a team in the likely event I needed someone followed. He put up a thumb, “all set, boss.” The day shift would be comprised of him and Buddha, with the night shift staffed by another of the ex-cons who hung at Mackie’s. Buddha had been a full-time cabbie in New York, with a part-time side job of driving getaway cars for pros, no thugs. “Buddha has ethics,” Axel said. Buddha was also Axel’s driver’s education teacher. Axel said he could add more men if they were needed. At this point I hadn’t even decided if it would be Cliff, or Eddie, or perhaps one of the solid-citizen witnesses who would need following. Axel had the effort poised to launch. I also promised Axel a tenth of my two-hundred grand fee if we got someone arrested; he understood it had to be a legit pinch.

  Axel would do the Internet search stuff himself, generally following the procedure he used inside to search people the warden wanted looked into without going through state personnel. Often this would be new guards, screws or bulls in Axel’s language, but sometimes guests of the state who were checking in. The big names mostly, high profile crooks usually had scads of background stuff. This group included the white collar criminals who used brains and smiles to grease their Ponzi schemes and other swindles as they fleeced overly trusting seniors and others out of their life savings. Those fellas liked to think of themselves as businessmen, not crooks. Yeah, right.

  I called Fidge, who told me the department had made the connection between Cory Jackson and the Ileana Corrigan homicide. Still, they had nothing with any meat on it that hooked Jackson’s death with the eleven-year old Corrigan homicide. Their take was that Cory bought it as a result of his drug activities, or money he owed his bookie for NFL games in which the players had not sufficiently met Cory’s expectations.

  The day became one of those that flittered away without being productive, beyond learning that certain alleys were dead ends. Finding that out did had value; it just didn’t feel like it did. A lot of the time consumed in discussing articles and rumors Axel had found on the Internet about the general, Eddie, and also Ileana Corrigan. A few of those led to phone calls and one to my taking a trip across town. In the end, all of it went nowhere and meant less.

  *

  Over dinner that night, Karen told me she came to live with her father and her nephew, Eddie, about a year and a half before Ileana Corrigan was murdered. At that time, she had two more years to go at University of California at Los Angeles, where she was majoring in finance. She and her mother weren’t getting along. From the general’s house, she would drive farther to school, but she had structured her schedule of classes into three days a week. She knew the general thought of Eddie as his son, rather than his grandson, putting her, the daughter, in second position for his largess. The general had raised Eddie for most of his life after Eddie’s father had died in Desert Storm in 1991. During her college years, Karen admitted she preferred being with her father. He left her to live her own life and didn’t interfere as much as her mother had.

  “How do you feel about that, now I mean?” I asked her. “Eddie is the general’s grandson while you’re his daughter.”

  “That’s true,” she said, “in an official kind of way. But in a life kind of way, Eddie is the general’s son. I’m the daughter he really didn’t know all that well until I was a grown woman. It’s different. Besides, the general is a sexist. I don’t mean that nasty like, he just is. He’s a man of his times.”

  She said she hadn’t seen the will. That a copy had been mailed to her a couple of years ago by Mr. Franklin, the general’s attorney, but she hadn’t opened it. The general had sat her down and explained that his estate was his to do with as he wished. That she would be provided for, but the lion’s share would go to Eddie. T
he general told her he was leaving two million to Charles, and a half million to Cliff. That she would get two and a half million and the rest, about fifteen million, would go to Eddie who would also get the house. To me, it seemed everyone in the general’s circle patiently or eagerly awaited the inevitable reading of the will.

  “You didn’t open the will?”

  “No. I didn’t go to him, the general came to me. I don’t figure he’d do that to tell me lies. The general has always been straight with me. Everyone knows his word is good. Would I rather have Eddie’s cut than mine? Sure. But, hey, Mom and I struggled some, financially, so from my perspective two and a half million seems like all the money in the world. I’m cool with it.”

  “The general’s wealthy,” I said, “very wealthy, so your mother should have gotten a fat marital settlement.”

  “The general’s wealth came from his parents who died the year after mom and he divorced in ‘78. Their marriage had lasted only three years. After his inheritance, the general stepped up and paid Mom more than she was entitled to under the divorce. So, I guess I’d say our struggles were somewhat comfortable. The general paid for all my schooling and bought me a car when I started college. He still sends mom something now and again when she gets in a bind. He’s really been there above and beyond. But let me not leave an incorrect impression. While the general inherited a lot of money from his parents, he has more than doubled his net worth since his inheritance. He has a shrewd head for investments.”

  “Have you helped him with his investments? You majored in finance.”

  “I help some, but the truth is for most of the years he didn’t need my help. I do some company specific research for him. We kick stuff around. The last few years I’ve been more involved in helping him keep up with all of it.”

  “And still you’re okay with the lion’s share of his estate going to your nephew Eddie?”

  “Eddie and I don’t think of ourselves as aunt and nephew. I mean, I’m thirty-five and he’s thirty-two. But, no, Mr. Kile, if you’re looking for bad blood between Eddie and me over this, there is none.”

  “Does Eddie think the setup’s fair?”

  “It’s not up to Eddie or me, the money is the general’s and he can do with it as he chooses. I’ve already explained how I feel about that. Besides, if need be, I’ve got the qualities to hook a man who has even more than the general. If I ever decide I need to go that route. I don’t see why I’ll need to. Did that sound conceited? I didn’t mean it that way. Everybody ought to have an honest talk with themselves about their strengths and weaknesses and then strive to improve their weaknesses. I’ve done that and I continue to do it.”

  I couldn’t argue with her assessment. She played ladies golf and tennis at UCLA. She was educated in a wealthy man’s subject, has a good sense of humor, and is conversant. She enjoys visually tempting men while still coming across as classy, and from what I know, men enjoy being visually tempted.

  “I’ve gathered that nephew Eddie is a player. That true?”

  “Did I mention Eddie likes the ladies and he enjoys his trips to Vegas.”

  The waiter stopped to tell us about their tempting dessert specials. We said no, but ordered a second bottle of the Krupp Brothers Cabernet Sauvignon we had enjoyed with dinner. When he left to get the wine I asked, “Seriously, what gets Eddie’s attention? Career, charities, what?”

  “Eddie likes the ladies and he enjoys his trips to Vegas.”

  We laughed before I asked, “What other women has he been serious about? Before or after Ileana.”

  The waiter brought and opened the second bottle of wine. I put my hand up for him to leave the bottle to breathe and I would pour when we were ready.

  “None that I know of and I would know,” Karen said. “We talk pretty openly. Ileana was the only one that made him think about settling down, about getting serious about life and what to do with his. But no dice. Eddie seems a fellow content with the superficial.” She laughed. “Look at me, like I should talk.”

  “You and Ileana were friends, right?”

  “For a while, before she and Eddie became an item.”

  Karen knew of no jealous boyfriend or sugar daddy. She also said Eddie didn’t buy the expensive jewelry found in Ileana’s house.

  “Eddie couldn’t afford that kind of stuff,” Karen said. “None of us knew she had it. I agree the jewelry suggests she had a man bringing her gifts. But, if she did, I doubt that man killed her.” When I raised my eyebrows, she said, “If he had, why wouldn’t he take back the diamonds he had bought for her?”

  While I had listened, I poured our wine. “Could be, then again, if he did kill her and the cops ever put his name with their suspicions, the fact the jewelry hadn’t been taken could argue against him being the killer.”

  “Or, if he did take it, it might have suggested a killing during a robbery. Somebody could have seen her wearing it and followed her home to take it by force.”

  “You have a point,” I said. “Such is the grist of investigating homicides. The possible theories, winnowing them down, and then finding or not finding support for each.”

  She nodded. “Apparently, the robbery theory lacks support as the jewelry remained. The sugar daddy theory has support in that it is the best argument for how the jewelry came to exist in the first place, yet the police could never identify him.”

  “Fidge, ah, the department never found where the jewelry had been bought. So it could have been hot, but they found no record of stolen jewelry that matched up. Ileana seems to have liked bikers. Did she have a thing for bad boys? Maybe one of them could have heisted the jewels and gave them to her?”

  “She had sort of run through her bad boy thing. It ended after she met Eddie.”

  “But she had a sugar daddy, so perhaps her bad boy thing just morphed into married wealthy sugar daddy bad boys, sort of.”

  “Could be, but then maybe she got the jewelry from one of the bikers before she met Eddie and there was no sugar daddy.”

  “No. Not likely. Two different neighbors reported seeing luxury cars in her driveway now and again. She had at least one wealthy fella; one who could get his hands on quality jewelry that couldn’t be traced.”

  “I just don’t figure Ileana that way. I thought she was sold on Eddie. She loved him, and he would eventually be rich. Why blow that for a necklace or two? Ileana was smart. And she really did love Eddie.”

  “Could Ileana have had a sugar mommy?”

  “Not Ileana. She liked the real deal.”

  “Okay, enough on that, what about you? Career or charity?”

  “I won’t have enough money to do much for charity, not like Eddie will, but then his favorite charity is his ladies. As for me, I’d like to get into investment banking or something like that. But not now, I’m content being there for the general.”

  “You love him, don’t you?”

  “He’s a great man. A real man. When I think about how my life would have been. How my mother’s life would have been, would still be, if it weren’t for the general. Well, I figure I owe him. It won’t be long now. I mean I hope it is, but the doctors say no. He knows that. That’s why he brought you in now. We talked about it. He wants to know and he could no longer push off his doubts.”

  “Could Eddie have killed Ileana?”

  “He was in Buellton so it’s really impossible.”

  “I’m not asking could he in a procedural sense. I meant emotionally. Could Eddie kill?”

  “Millions of people in the our armed forces over hundreds of years, not to mention the armed forces of the rest of the world, have killed. Cops sometimes must kill, also executioners who work for various governments. On that level, with an aura of external justification, I guess many, even most, could kill. The dicey part is one finding the justification alone, inside, you know. On that level, I’d say no. Eddie couldn’t.”

  When dinner was over I asked her to come home with me.

  “Do you think that’s a goo
d idea?” She put her hand over mine, palm up, and kneaded me with her knuckles.

  “You’re damn right I do.” She smiled when I said that. “I got the idea from you,” I added as if that should cinch the deal.

  “When did I give you that idea?”

  “That first night. When we met. You were leaning on the banister.”

  “Oh. That was lust, Mr. Kile.”

  “Every relationship has to start somewhere. Lust seems as good a starting point as any other.”

  “You have to promise me you’re not going to get all gooey in the morning and start talking about love or something.”

  “You don’t believe in love?” I asked.

  “I just don’t understand it. Don’t know if I’d recognize it. And if I did, whether I could get into it.”

  “I can help you along if you get stuck.”

  “No. You get too serious, we’re history. I’ve never seen love work, certainly not between my mom and the general. Both good people, but it just withered and died. And not between my mom and all the men she’s tried on for size to replace the general.”

  *

  I woke Karen gently before setting the bed tray over her thighs. Axel had prepared mimosas, coffee, and buttered English muffins with fresh strawberries dipped in chocolate. He left a note on the kitchen counter saying he saw this in a movie. Axel was working out just fine. The talking parrot I considering getting instead would have left beak marks in the strawberries.

  Karen and I had enjoyed a wonderful evening of food and drink before we came back to my place. In a lot of ways she reminded me of Clarice Talmadge, only Karen liked the idea of staying the whole night. I suppose it’s a good thing that not all women enjoyed entertaining and seducing a man as much as these two ladies. If those two were the norm, the life expectancy for us men would be shorter, but then more of us would die with a smile on our face. And that’s not all bad either. When Helen, my ex, and I got married we were quite young and during our years together I imagined that other than hookers and in the movies, there were not all that many women who were so enthusiastic about sex. Man, was I wrong. And man, am I happy I was wrong.