“Yeah,” I said. “Hold a sec.” I handed the phone to him as he leaned across the desk to take it.
“Yeah?… I’m just leaving… Yeah… Yeah?… Okay. See you in a while.”
He handed the phone back to me with a shrug. “Well, Farnsworth remembers the truck, so if it was there around the time of Jefferson’s murder, I guess we’ve just lost our prime suspect. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear from the electric company.”
He left me with the firm conviction—however lacking in actual evidence it might be—that Grant Jefferson’s killer and Crandall Booth’s killer were one and the same. Now all I had to do was one: find out who that one person was, and two: prove it.
The police had only begun their investigation into Booth’s death, but it occurred to me having two different sets of detectives working independently of one another on one murder was counterproductive. It would have been far more logical for only one team—preferably Marty and Dan, considering my relationship with Detective Couch—to handle both cases, and I couldn’t imagine I was the only one to immediately see the two murders were related.
But then, I’m not the one who makes the determination of who gets assigned to which case and why. And granted, Booth’s murder appeared at first glance to be a robbery. When the call came in, I’m sure no one had the time to sit down and wonder if it might be related to another murder.
Perhaps they would see the error of their ways and consolidate their investigations, especially if the links between the two became more evident than they now were to everyone but me.
I sat down at my desk with yet another cup of coffee and opened the windows of my mind. In Grant’s murder, the potential-suspect list included practically every member of the chorus, Stapleton, Jerry Granville, Roger Rothenberger, Farnsworth/Johnson/Smith, and Crandall Booth.
But with Booth dead, the list shrank considerably. Several members of the chorus had a strong motive to kill Grant, but I couldn’t see any of them, or Jerry Granville, having that same level of animosity toward Booth, whom most of them barely knew.
So that left me with…
Charles Stapleton had good reason to want both Booth and Grant dead, though, if he were going to kill them both, he could have figured out a way to get them at the same time, or one right after the other. No, as I’d considered earlier, the fact that Booth was killed so soon after his withdrawal of support from the chorus linked his murder more closely to the chorus than to his business and Stapleton.
Roger Rothenberger had motive to see both Grant and Booth dead, though I honestly couldn’t bring myself to think of him as a murderer. Still, very few people walk around wearing a sign saying “Potential Murderer.” I’m sure Death Row is sprinkled with some really nice guys who, for whatever reason, murdered someone.
The pressures on Rothenberger as director of both the chorus and the M.C.C.’s choir had to be tremendous without the added headaches of people like Grant and Booth trying to undermine or destroy everything he’d worked for.
It was also conceivable that, despite what I believed, Booth’s death might, in fact, have been a random act of coincidental, albeit an on-the-brink-of-disbelief-coincidental, violence.
One avenue I had not explored and had no practical or immediate way of exploring was that of Booth’s possible gambling addiction. It was quite possible that his letter to the board about financial reversals and cash-flow problems might have had more validity than Rothenberger realized. For someone like Booth to admit to having financial problems might well indicate their seriousness. Could he have gotten in over his head with the wrong people and suffered the consequences?
I made a note to ask Marty to follow up on what detectives Carpenter and Couch might have found out about it. If, by some chance gambling was behind Booth’s murder, that meant it and Grant’s death were unrelated, which meant…
Why the hell does life have to be so complicated?
*
Not a word from Marty on Tuesday, and I didn’t want to make too big a nuisance of myself by calling him. I knew he’d get in touch when he had something to tell me. I concentrated instead on the eternal and losing battle to control my impatience.
Jonathan was off to rehearsal right after dinner, and I awaited his take on the current gossip, which I was sure would center almost totally around Crandall Booth’s death. Sure enough, it did.
Jonathan returned later than usual with an ample supply. Someone—he didn’t say who—had somehow heard about Booth’s gambling problems, which sparked a couple more, supposedly involving Grant’s having bragged several times about the amount of money he and Booth spent on their trips to Las Vegas. There was widespread, if totally unjustified, bitterness that the chorus had to suffer by losing the Chicago trip because of Booth’s gambling. Everything Booth had done for the chorus over the years immediately took a back seat to what he didn’t do for them.
Human beings are an odd species.
When I caught Jonathan nodding off during the late news, I realized that everything he’d been doing lately was taking its toll. I turned off the TV and got off the couch, leaning forward to take his hand and waking him up in the process.
“Too bad you’re not in the mood for a little game-playing,” I teased.
He grinned. “Wanna bet?”
I was happy to lose.
*
Marty called around ten Wednesday morning.
“I meant to get back to you yesterday,” he said, “but wanted to follow up on a couple other things first.”
“Hey, no problem. I appreciate your telling me what you can when you can. What did you find out?”
“Two things, actually. A patrol car on a late-night drunk sweep picked up a wino wearing a very expensive watch with the initials C.D.B. engraved on the back. The manager at Central Imports identified it as Booth’s. The wino claims he found it in a dumpster on Hawthorn, about five miles from Central Imports.
“And some kid tried to use one of Booth’s credit cards at a convenience store on School. He ran out when the clerk questioned it. So, it looks like the robbery motive won’t wash, and that the items were taken to make it look like one.
“Second, and more significant, Earl and Ben checked with a couple of the major bookies in town, and it appears Booth was a big-time player who’d been on a serious losing streak in the past few months. Rumor has it he got in pretty deep with Charlie Tours—you know him?”
“A loan shark, right?”
“Not merely a loan shark. Charlie’s the great white of our local loan sharks. He has a rap sheet three feet long and a history of playing rough. They’re going to have a talk with him as soon as they can find him. They’re also looking into the state of Booth’s finances.”
A bell went off in my head. There was something Charles Stapleton had said when I first talked to him. Something that had gone right by me until now. What the hell was it?
My father spent fifteen years trying to keep Booth afloat.
It hadn’t meant a thing at the time, but now that I knew of Booth’s gambling debts…
“You might have them talk to Charles Stapleton about that,” I suggested. “His dad was Booth’s chief accountant, and if there were problems, he surely had an idea of them. Maybe he mentioned them to Charles before he died.”
“Good idea,” Marty replied. “Thanks.”
We hung up shortly thereafter, and I sat pondering Marty’s information. Even though they had confirmed that Booth might well have been in serious debt to Charlie Tours and others, the fact was that for a loan shark, even a great white, to kill a client was somewhat counterproductive to getting money back from them. A broken leg, perhaps, might encourage the client to find a way to repay what is owed, but it’s difficult to get money from a dead man. And Booth had plenty of assets he could have cashed in on—unless his financial situation was a lot worse than anyone suspected.
The phone interrupted my thoughts.
“Hardesty Investigations.”
Silence, then a click and a dial tone.
I hate people who don’t at least have the decency, when they get a wrong number, to say “Sorry, wrong number” before hanging up.
At eleven thirty, as I was thinking about lunch, there was a knock on my door. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and prospective clients seldom dropped in without calling first.
“Come,” I said.
The door opened, and Eric stepped in. “I’d love to,” he said with a big grin.
“Well, this is a surprise,” I said truthfully.
“I should have called first,” he said, coming over to my desk, “but I wasn’t near a phone. I had to deliver a special order to our store down the street, and when I realized how close I was to your office, I thought I’d see if I could buy you lunch.”
“That’s nice of you, Eric, but…”
He looked mildly chagrined. “Oh, I’m sorry. You’ve probably got plans.”
“No, not at all,” I said, “but you certainly don’t have to buy me lunch.”
“Sure I do. You guys have been really nice to me, and this is the least I can do.”
“Well, okay,” I said. “I guess it is time for lunch. Where would you like to go? There aren’t all that many places right around here, other than the diner off the lobby.”
“That’s fine with me.”
“Okay,” I said, getting up from my chair. “You want to go now? I imagine you have to get back to work soon.”
“I’ve got time,” he said. “But now’s as good as ever.”
*
Neither of us said much as we rode down on the elevator, which I found mildly uncomfortable. I really didn’t know what to say, which made me even more uncomfortable, and Eric was uncharacteristically quiet.
Finally, seated at one of the diner’s red plastic-upholstered booths, I said, “So, what do you think of Crandall Booth’s death?”
He looked up from his menu and directly into my eyes. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”
“I’m sorry?” I said and, he grinned.
“Crandall was a prick, pulling the rug out from under the chorus like he did.”
“Aren’t you being a little unfair?” I was a little surprised by the intensity of his reaction. “He did a lot for the chorus.”
Eric shrugged. “That he did. But I think we’d have been better off if he’d never gotten involved with it in the first place. Teasing us along, promising us things, getting us to depend on him—not because he gave a damn for the chorus, but so he could throw his weight around. Roger would have kicked Grant out of the chorus the very first time he started pulling his shit if it wasn’t for Crandall. Roger knew exactly what Crandall was doing, but he wasn’t able to do anything about it for fear Crandall would do exactly what he ended up doing anyway.”
The waitress came to take our orders.
“What do you recommend?” Eric asked.
“I usually get the B.L.T., it’s pretty good.”
“Sold.” He smiled at the waitress and said, “I’ll have a B.L.T. and a Coke.”
“Same for me,” I said, “but make it milk.” When she’d gone, I said, “So, any ideas on who might have killed Crandall?”
He looked at me carefully before saying, “Yeah, I do. Word is he was killed because he owed more in gambling debts than he could pay. And I’ll bet Grant was killed as a warning to Crandall to pay up. When it didn’t work, they killed him, too.”
Well, that was an interesting theory, and one that had never occurred to me but should have. I was mildly ticked at myself that it hadn’t. It made some sense, except for the basic fact that while killing Grant might have been meant as a warning to Booth it still didn’t make sense to kill Booth.
“Interesting idea,” I said. “And at least it would take all the pressure off the chorus.”
“Right!” Eric said. “And I never believed for one minute that anyone from the chorus could have done it.”
I decided not to pursue the subject any further, but I didn’t have to. Out of thin air, Eric asked, “So, how are you and Jonathan getting along?”
That one caught me totally by surprise. “Fine,” I said. “What made you ask?”
The waitress appeared with our food. Nothing was said until she left, but I certainly was curious.
“Oh, nothing,” he said. “Jonathan mentioned that you’d had a fight last week.”
A fight? What the hell was he talking about? I searched my memory for a clue.
“We had an argument,” I said, remembering what he must be referring to—Joshua’s still being up when Jonathan got home from chorus practice. “I certainly wouldn’t call it a fight. We argue all the time. It never means anything.”
Eric raised an eyebrow. “Sorry,” he said. “Guess I misunderstood. So, no problems?”
I had no idea why he was asking all this and was definitely uncomfortable with it.
“No problems.”
“Good,” he said, and took a large bite out of his B.L.T.
However, since he’d opened the door to personal lives, I thought I’d put my foot in the door of his.
“You’ve never had a relationship?” I asked.
He wiped the corner of his mouth with his napkin and smiled. “Nobody wants me.”
“Bullshit!” I recognized a bid for sympathy when I heard one. “Not anybody?”
“I’ve had a string of disasters,” he said, “but only one I’d really qualify as a relationship. He died.”
Died? Was that what Rothenberger had meant by Eric’s “tragedies”? I wanted to know more, but didn’t think it was proper of me to ask.