Julius Katz Mysteries (4 page)

“Quite a morning,” I told him. “One woman finding me absolutely charming, another terrified merely at the sight of you.”

“I never heard her use the adverb
absolutely
in describing your charm,” Julius muttered somewhat peevishly. He had taken out his cell phone so that the driver wouldn’t think that he was muttering to himself. The cell phone was merely a prop. Whenever Julius needed to make a call, I’d make it for him and patch him in through his ear piece.

“It was implied,” I said. “Would you like me to brief you on the reports I generated for Lawrence Brewer and Willie Andrews?”

“That’s not necessary.” A thin smile crept over his lips. “I researched both of them myself last night while you were
unavailable
.”

“Yeah, but I bet you don’t have Lawrence Brewer’s last seven years’ worth of tax returns, unless you were able to hack into the IRS’s mainframe and, given the level of encryption they use, that’s not very likely. I also bet you don’t have Willie Andrews’s court documents.”

“No, I don’t, but I don’t need them now. Sometimes, Archie, too much information is worse than too little. It distracts from what’s important.”

That made no sense. The only way you can analyze data is if all the data were available—or if you are able to extrapolate what was missing. I ignored the comment, and instead asked him if he wanted me to arrange for appointments with either the brother or Andrews.

“Willie Andrews is not the type of man you make an appointment with. As far as Lawrence Brewer goes, now is not the appropriate time.”

“So that’s it, then?”

“For now, yes.”

I expected that. As far as Julius was concerned, he had already worked hard enough for one day. I knew there was little chance that nagging him would change that. Still, I tried.

“I can see your point,” I said. “After all, you have just put in an arduous twenty-seven minutes of work, more than enough to justify the twenty-thousand dollar fee you extorted from your client.”

“An hour and seventeen minutes once you factor in the cab rides.”

“Wow. An hour and seventeen minutes, then. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.”

“Archie, now is not the time. I’m not about to tackle the brother until I’ve given the matter more thought. So please, some quiet so I can think.”

Yeah, it was pointless. The only thing he was going to be thinking about was lunch at one of his favorite local restaurants, along with the bottle of Gewurztraminer I had reserved for him. With nothing else to do I spun some cycles figuring out why I hadn’t made the connection between the photos I dug up earlier for Lawrence Brewer and the visual images I recorded at the dog track, and then worked on readjusting my neuron network so I would recognize patterns like that in the future. I have to admit I was impressed with Julius’s ability to recall seeing Lawrence Brewer at the dog track and told him so. Julius grunted out that it was simply luck.

“The only reason he made an impression was because he was so obviously losing badly that I considered for a moment inviting him to one of my poker games. Now please, Archie, I’d like quiet the rest of the trip.”

Julius put his cell phone back in his inside jacket pocket. I spent the rest of the cab ride constructing simulations involving Julius interviewing Lawrence Brewer, but none of them led to a reasonable probability of success.

Julius surprised me. On our return home he had me cancel his luncheon reservation and he spent the rest of the day either reading or puttering around the townhouse. All I could figure was he was trying to bluff me that he was onto something and that he planned to stay holed up until he had the case solved—that way he could loaf for days without me nagging him. A couple of times he put me away in his desk drawer while he got on the computer. He wouldn’t tell me what he was doing, only that I had as much information as he did at that point. He seemed genuinely distracted during that first day, at times becoming as still as a marble statue while his facial muscles hardened and his eyes stared off into the distance. Of course, it could’ve been an act. When I tried asking him about what he was considering, he mostly ignored me, only once telling me that whatever it was, it was still percolating. That night he had me cancel his dinner reservations. Instead of going out he spent the evening making fresh gnocchi and then pounding veal until it was nearly paper thin before sautéing it with shallots and mushrooms in a white wine sauce. He picked a Montepulciano d’Abruzzo from his wine cellar to accompany his dinner.

The next day he appeared more his normal self as he performed his morning rituals, then spent the rest of the morning reading wine reviews. My attempts to pester him into action went nowhere. He mostly ignored me, and when I tried briefing him on the dossier I had compiled on Willie Andrews, he stopped me, telling me that he was otherwise occupied.

“My mistake,” I said. “I thought you depositing our client’s check actually obligated you to earn the fee you were paid.”

“Archie, I
am
earning it.”

“By sitting around reading wine reviews?”

“Precisely. Sometimes the best action is waiting. Patience, Archie, patience.”

So there you had it. Maybe he was waiting on something, but more likely he had fallen into one of his lazy funks and was only trying to bluff me, and as part of the bluff he was going to stay holed up inside his townhouse. The thing with Julius was he had no “tell”—no visible indication of when he was bluffing, at least none that I had yet been able to detect. When he played poker, I could identify the other players’ “tells” pretty quickly, not that Julius needed my help in that area. He was astute at reading other players and detecting the slight behavior changes that indicated as brightly as a flashing neon light when they were bluffing or holding what they thought were winning cards. Sometimes it would be the way their facial muscles contorted or their breathing patterns changed or maybe they’d scratch themselves or shift slightly in their chairs. The list was endless, but it was simple pattern recognition on my part to identify these “tells” by comparing recorded video of when they were bluffing and when they weren’t. I’d spent countless hours trying to identify Julius’s “tell” and so far had come up with nothing.

The rest of the day Julius spent mostly reading, cooking, and drinking wine. I was beginning to think if it were a bluff he would try to play it out for weeks if he thought he could get away with it. I tried several times to nag him into action, but failed miserably, with him smugly insisting that he was waiting for the right time before taking any direct action. That day his client called several times to find out when Julius was planning to talk to her brother. Julius had me answer those calls and directed me to tell Norma Brewer that he was in the midst of investigating certain issues regarding the case, and once he was done he would be interviewing her brother. It was utter hogwash, but I didn’t tell her that.

The third day it was more of the same, with Julius not venturing outside the townhouse, the only difference being that he seemed more distracted than usual. Also, the client didn’t call. At six o’clock he turned on the evening news, which was unusual for him. He rarely watched TV. During the broadcast it was reported that a local woman named Norma Brewer had been found murdered in her Cambridge home.

“Is that what you were waiting for?” I asked.

Julius didn’t answer me. He just sat grim-faced, his lips compressing into two thin, bloodless lines.

“So I guess that’s it. Your client’s dead and her money is in your bank account. Now you don’t have to do anything to earn it. Bravo.”

“No, Archie, that’s not what it means,” he said, his jaw clenching in a resolute fashion. “I’m going to be earning every penny of what she paid me.”

“Did you know she was going to be murdered?”

“I didn’t know anything with certainty.”

“How?”

“Not now, Archie. We’re going to be very busy over the next few days. For now, please call the sister, Helen, and find out what you can about the murder. In the meantime, make the earliest dinner reservations you can for me at Le Che Cru. The next few days I expect to be roughing it. If the police call, I’m out for the evening and you have no idea where I have gone. If Helen Arden asks to speak to me, the same story. You have no idea where I am.”

I did as Julius asked, first making him reservations at Le Che Cru for eight-thirty, then calling Helen Arden. She sounded dazed, as if she barely understood what I was saying. I had to repeat myself several times, and after my words finally sunk in, she told me that the police had contacted her about Norma’s murder, and she was now trying to reach her brother and figure out how they were going to take care of their mother and at the same time make the arrangements for Norma’s funeral. She wasn’t even sure when the police were going to release the body.

“What if it were weeks before they let us have Norma?” she asked. “How are we supposed to bury my sister?”

Her voice had no strength to it. It was as if she were lost and had completely given up any hope of being found. I told her it wouldn’t be more than a few days—however long it took for the coroner to perform an autopsy. I gave her the phone number for a good criminal lawyer that Julius recommended to clients who had dealt with this type of problem in the past. I tried asking her whether the police had given any details about the murder, but she seemed to have a hard time comprehending what I was saying. After I tried asking her several more times, she finally murmured that they told her nothing other than that her sister was dead.

I had been searching the Internet, and so far no details had been reported on any of the Boston newspapers’ Web sites, and neither was there anything of interest on the police radio frequencies that I was scanning. I told her Julius would be in touch sometime the next day and hung up. I filled Julius in quickly. He was in the process of changing into one of his dining suits. After slipping on a pair of Italian calfskin loafers, he hurried down the stairs and to the front door. He asked me whether I was able to detect any police car radios broadcasting in the area, and I told him there weren’t any and that nothing was showing on the outdoor webcam feed. Still, he opened the front door only enough so he could peer out of it. Satisfied that the police weren’t lying in wait for him, he stepped outside and hurried down the street, his pace nearly a run. Once he was two blocks away from his townhouse, he slowed.

“Do you want me to call the brother?” I asked. “Maybe see if you can get an early read on him?”

“Not now, Archie. I’m sure he’s with the police presently, and it would be best to wait until tomorrow to call him.”

I remained silent while Julius briskly walked the five blocks down Pinckney Street to Charles Street. After hearing about Norma Brewer’s murder I started building simulations that modeled different scenarios that would explain Julius’s behavior since accepting the case. There was one scenario that stood out as having the highest probability. I asked him about it. Whether he was lying low waiting for the brother to kill Norma Brewer, knowing that if that were to happen it would make it easy for him to earn his fee, since all he’d have to do is wait for the police to arrest the brother and then have the courts vacate his guardianship.

“Are you asking whether I expected Lawrence Brewer to murder my client?”

“Yes, that’s what I’m asking.”

“No, that’s not what I was expecting.” A young couple were passing us on the sidewalk, and Julius took out his cell phone so he wouldn’t appear to be an insane person talking to himself. Somewhat amused, Julius asked, “Archie, what would be Lawrence Brewer’s purpose in doing that?”

“Because she engaged you. Maybe he was afraid you’d find leverage that you’d be able to use against him. Maybe he thought if his sister were out of the way, you’d be also.”

“It’s possible, Archie, but he’d have to be a dolt to think that. Then again, the way he was acting at the dog track, as well as his behavior regarding his mother’s well being, he could very well be a dolt.”

“So, you think he murdered his sister?”

Julius made a face. “It’s a possibility, Archie. But it’s just one of many and there’s no point engaging in idle speculation now. The next few days are going to be hectic enough and this could be my last decent meal before this matter has been put to bed. So please, Archie, no more discussion on this, at least not tonight.”

I wanted to ask him the obvious question, which was, if he hadn’t been waiting for Lawrence Brewer to murder his sister, then what had he been waiting for? What stopped me was detecting a hint of a threat in his voice that if I continued this line of conversation he would turn me off. That would be twice in three days, and I didn’t want to set that type of precedent. I remained quiet while he walked to Le Che Cru and took a seat at the bar. The maitre d’ came over with a complimentary bottle of Chardonnay that he knew Julius favored, and apologized profusely that he wasn’t able to arrange for an earlier table for his favorite patron. Before leaving, he told Julius that he would have an order of seared sweetbreads in chestnut flour brought over immediately, on the house, of course. Julius graciously accepted all this. The sweetbreads were brought over within minutes and, while Julius was having his second glass of wine, a Detective Mark Cramer from the Cambridge Police Department called. I connected the call to Julius’s ear piece so he could listen in. Rather gruffly, the detective asked to speak to Julius.

“I’m afraid Mr. Katz isn’t available,” I said.

“Yeah, well, get him available!”

“I would if I had any idea where he is, but I don’t, so I can’t.”

The detective used some choice invective on his end of the line, ending with the phrase, “
son of a bitch
.”

“Is that all, Detective?” I asked, to Julius’s obvious amusement.

“No, that’s not all,” he said, his voice growing more exasperated. “Your boss is a material witness in a murder case—”

“There’s been a murder?”

“Shut up,” he ordered, his exasperation growing. “I know damn well you called the victim’s sister within the hour, just as I know your boss is probably with you right now getting a good laugh over all this. The Boston PD filled me in on what to expect, so don’t think you’re fooling anyone with this, okay? You better just tell Katz to come in to Central Square station within the next fifteen minutes or I’ll be getting a bench warrant for his arrest. Ask him how he’d like a few days in lockup for contempt of court!”