Corpses Say the Darndest Things: A Nod Blake Mystery Page 3

  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.

  The lights were out downstairs, suggesting play had continued without me, and one was now burning in an upstairs window that had been dark. Certain where things were headed, and eager for another disappointment, I looked the yard over. No ladders, no walls, no rises in topography whatsoever. There was probably a garage somewhere on the estate, deep in the dark back forty, but I had neither the urge nor the inclination. There were, I noted, plenty of trees. I'm not an arborist, wouldn't know my oak from my ash, but as a kid running from his insane mother on a tear I learned that trees were tall and you could hide in them. The game was afoot or, by that time probably abed, and I needed to either use it or get off the pot. I sighed, shook my head in dismay and, camera over the shoulder, picked one and started climbing.

  Midway up, I heard something somewhere in the yard below. The snap of a twig? The rustle of leaves on a moving branch? I didn't know for sure. From my precarious position, I took in the shadowed surroundings, the expansive grounds, the trees and bushes swaying in the breeze but saw nothing of consequence. I resumed climbing and reached a limb level with the mansion's lighted upstairs window. It was a bedroom, hers surely by the silk, satin, and opulent softness of the surroundings. Katherine and Nicholas were there, in equal stages of undress and again in a clinch. Her physical promises, hidden by the red dress, were splendidly fulfilled. Nicholas' bronzed body brought back memories of a sculpted youth that I would never see again (if I'd ever seen it at all). I might have stewed in a broth of jealousy had I not been so worried I was going to fall out of the fucking tree. Instead, I situated myself in relation to the window and bedroom beyond, threw a leg lock on the limb to secure my perch, and found and focused on the lovers in the camera's viewfinder. The young man had a hold of Katherine's breasts from behind and was biting her back. She seemed to be enjoying it.

  “Because of her delicate nature,” I mumbled. Then, because I didn't know what else to do, telling myself I was collecting evidence, I started taking pictures.

  Chapter Four

  It was after 3 am when I got back to my apartment. My head was aching from the tumble I'd taken the previous morning wrapping up Willie Banks, the faux police officer, and it was full to overflowing from the X-rated scene it had just witnessed at Delp's palatial mansion. Between sips of gin, it occurred that vultures made a cleaner living than I did. I went to bed and didn't sleep.

  The morning took me to AC's, a friend who developed all my film for me, then to my office to examine in detail the results. I sat looking at the photos of Katherine Delp and Nicholas Nikitin, whoever he was, and was, I must say, impressed. Not with my photography, that was only passable, but with the gymnastics on display in the pictures. Nikitin looked like the captain of the copulating team ready for the Olympics in Moscow, while Katherine did a fine job representing thirty-something ministers’ wives everywhere. I was whistling, wondering at the physics involved in a particularly interesting shot, when a sledge hammer hit me in the back of the head. That's what it felt like. A pain smacked the tender part of my skull so severely I had to hunch my shoulders. It was followed by a flash of heat that raced around to my face. I felt the flush. I nearly cried out. I did drop the pictures onto my desk. My vision blurred. Though it lasted only seconds, it seemed longer and scared the living hell out of me. I thought I was going blind. When it cleared, through tears, I looked the office round grateful to see it was still there. I didn't know if I was crying owing to an acute physical problem, the pain, or just good old-fashioned fear. As I wiped them on my sleeve, my eyes fell on the photos that I'd dropped. You wouldn't believe it. I didn't. The top picture had changed.

  I mean just that. The picture I had been looking at had undergone a complete change. It was the same setting, angle, distance but the guy, Nikitin, was gone from the image. Katherine Delp remained in the photograph, alone, surrounded by a bright blue, pulsating aura as if she were a character in that Star Trek movie they were making. I know it sounds idiotic. Had it not been for the pain in my head, I would have laughed. But that's what I saw. Then things got really stupid. Katherine looked up. No, that's not it. The image of Katherine, glowing with this otherworldly blue outline, looked out of the photograph, staring right at me, and cried, “Help me!”

  No, I couldn't and wouldn't argue with what you're thinking; send in the nets. Worse, I can't prove any of it. For just then, after the picture of Katherine Delp had called for help, like snapping your fingers, the sharp pain was gone. The heat flash went with it. I felt a huge sense of relief like a prisoner unbound. I caught my breath and, when I had my wits about me again, looked back to my desk. The photo was exactly as before with Katherine and her young lover having at each other with wild abandon. The blue science fiction haze was gone and neither of the characters in the image were paying me the slightest notice. All was as it was when I took the shots.

  It was the damnedest thing I'd ever seen; not to mention felt. I rifled the pictures and saw plenty, but only plenty of the same tits and tongues I'd seen when I took them; nothing from the Outer Limits. I shook my head wondering whether or not I was cracking up. I was still wondering, so deeply that I jumped, when Lisa stuck her head in the office door.

  She looked a little sheepish, it was the first time I'd seen her since chasing her out of the reverend's yard the previous night, and even more concerned. “You all right?” she asked, licking frosting from her fingers.

  “Ye-ah,” I said, stuffing the pictures back into their envelope. “Yeah, I'm fine.”


  “Gr-eat. Okay. Uh, sorry to barge,” she said, “but Lieutenant Wenders…”

  She barely got that out and I barely got the photos slid into the top desk drawer when the Chicago Police Department's only indigenous water buffalo shoved past my secretary and in. Maybe I should pause and sweeten the pot with Wenders' full description so you can be as sick to your stomach as I was. He was five foot-nine and, though he wasn't quite there, was working on a corresponding circumference. He was wearing the same threadbare gray suit he was born in, with a gut like a broken barrel of jello, a disposition like a bucket of bent nails, and two mean and beady black eyes that shot holes through you like you were a paper target. What little of his once-red hair remained had gone gray. Dave Mason, his left hand man, as always, followed on his heels like a humping Chihuahua. There's no point adding to his description, in the flesh Mason was practically invisible.

  “Blake,” the detective lieutenant grunted, reminding himself who he'd come to harass. He had a rolled newspaper tucked under his arm and he snatched it free with his puffy pink hand as he plonked his quarter-beef butt in the chair opposite my desk, all familiar territory to Wenders.

  Lisa disappeared and Mason, none too subtly, started sniffing around my office like a drug dog in a waterfront warehouse. I noted it, then ignored it. “Well, Frank,” I said instead, giving the lieutenant the attention he so desperately sought. “What brings you out in the sunlight?”

  “Oh, I don't know,” he lied, rolling the newspaper tightly in his hands as if he intended to swat something. “Just thought we'd have a little chat.”

  The notion of me chatting with any but a handful of cops still on the department amused me greatly. The idea of chatting with Wenders darn near split my sides. I controlled it and smiled pleasantly (though the back of my head still ached). Mason was starting to make noise as he snooped through my stuff, sliding things around, lifting and peeking, not putting anything back. That amused me less but I kept it to myself and returned to my fascinating conversation with his boss. “I'm intrigued, Lieutenant,” I told him. “About what are we going to chat?”

  “I just thought we'd chat.”

  Like talking to a puddle. I continued to smile. “Well, that would be special,” I agreed, “but, as you're so fond of pointing out, I'm not a cop anymore, Frank. I have to spend my time working. So, if you could point to the general area on the map we're going… that would be just grand. While you're at it, unless you brought a search warrant, tell your chimp to stop looking around my office.”

  “Dave,” Wenders said without looking at his second, “go hit on Blake's secretary for awhile.”

  Like the good little brown-shirt he was, Mason obediently made his exit to the outer office. I watched him go and, when the door had closed behind him, couldn't help but ask, “Is he any good?”

  Wenders shrugged his disinterest. “I don't carry a watch. Dave keeps time for me.”

  Hey, whatever works. In response to the weird morning it was quickly turning into, I rose and opened the small, well-stocked and equally well-used liquor cabinet. It was the closest I had to an island get-away and just then I needed a vacation.

  “Where were you last night?” Wenders asked my back.

  Emily Post insisted I ignore his rude personal question and who was I to argue with her? I withdrew a bottle of whiskey instead, making Emily and I both happy. Then, remembering the baboon in the chair I usually reserved for paying clients, I made a friendly offer in spite of myself, “Drink?”

  “Jesus, Blake, it's ten o'clock in the morning.”

  I frowned. “I thought telling time was Dave's job?” I waved the bottle, renewing the offer.

  “No, thanks.”

  I shrugged, poured a double into a tumbler that thinks it's a shot glass (who am I to argue with it either?), and kneed the cabinet closed with the bottle still on my side.

  “So,” Wenders said, reminding me he was still there, “where were you last night?” It was awful early in the day for my first lie. And I wanted to be helpful. While I tried to think of some version of the truth that wouldn't tell him anything he got impatient. “What? Suddenly you're the quiet type? You think you're Lee Marvin or something?”

  I downed the drink, clenched my teeth while it exploded in my chest, exhaled (surprisingly without breathing fire) and, when I was able, took in a bushel of air. My, that stuff was good. Yet, Wenders was still there. “Try a different question.”

  “All right,” he said, studying me. “How about: Have you seen this morning's city edition?”

  In what had to have been the moment he was waiting for, the lieutenant unrolled his flyswatter and laid the world's greatest newspaper (by its own admission) front page up. Then he oozed back in the chair with a cold stare and a palpable satisfaction as if he'd thrown the switch and was really looking forward to my catching fire. It was routine to see Wenders full of himself but this had a different smell to it. I set the glass down and, warily, stole a look at the newspaper. Like tacks to a magnet, my eyes went straight to the bold above the fold headline. I could not believe it said… what it said.

  EVANGELIST'S WIFE FOUND MURDERED.

  I read it three times, my eyes desperately trying to convince my brain (for the second time that morning) they were seeing what they saw, before I moved to the kicker line below: Katherine Delp Bludgeoned. I sat, my mind doing a mental lap around the fact I'd just been handed, coupled with the bizarre image (Wenders knew nothing about) that I'd seen in the photograph a few minutes before, and finally mumbled, “Holy shit.”

  “How'd you know her?”

  “I didn't know her.”

  Wenders snorted like a pig. “It's a little late for that answer.”

  “I didn't know her.” I rose again and brought both glass and bottle back with me. “I've heard of her husband.” I poured, sat, and returned my attention to the news article.

  “You've heard of him?” Wenders didn't bother to hide his incredulity. “Come on, Blake, let go of my crank. No horseshit, what were you doin' at her place last night?”

  I'd like to think that few things catch me off guard. But that did. I looked up, examining Wenders, wondering just how in hell the fat s.o.b. could have known I was… I didn't finish the thought because the lieutenant was studying me. I got my face back under control, changed the look of surprise to one of pure snowy innocence, then took another drink without saying a word.

  Wenders sighed like an aggravated bear. “I'm slippin' right out of friendly mode,” he said. “An informant called in the license number of a butt-ugly Jaguar leaving the scene…” When I showed no sign of life, he asked, “What, I gotta finish that sentence?”

  “You know,” I said brightly, “come to think of it, I was driving down Del Mar last night. The Delps, they live on Del Mar, don't they?” I stole a look at the paper. “Yeah, Del Mar, it's right there. That's a hell of a coincidence, huh?”

  “What time?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Ballpark it.”

  “Late. I'm certain of that. It was late. Or early, I guess, depending on your point of view.” I smiled, taking pride in being so much help. “How did she die?”

  Wenders hesitated but not long. Figuring, I guess, that he might as well give me some rope, he said, “She was found in her bed. Her head was beat in with a rock.”

  “That's a strange way to die in your bed.”

  “Yeah, ain't it just,” Wenders agreed. “That's why your bein' there made so much sense to me. You working a case, Blake?”

  I shrugged because how the hell would I know.

  “Or were you just fixin' her hair for her?”

  “Now,” I warned, “be nice.”

  “Nice my ass. What were you doin' at the Delp mansion last night? And what do you know about this murder?”

  “I don't know anything about this murder,” I told him, one detective to another. “That is the god's honest truth. I know nothing of it, other than that my presence on Del Mar had
nothing to do with it. Eh meaning, of course, that the reason for my presence there is none of your business.”

  “Damn it, Blake. Katherine Delp ain't even cold yet and I'm gettin' heat from upstairs.”

  “You're exaggerating.”

  “The hell I am. We're not talking about the wife of some Skid Row missionary. The Reverend Delp has got connections all around town.”

  “You can say that about a sewer pipe.”

  “I'm not laughin',” Wenders said. And he wasn't. “Delp rubs noses with all the muckety-mucks, you see. And the police commissioner, who the reverend numbers among his friends, is so beside himself this morning there are two of him calling to chew on my ass. I need everything you got on this woman from last night and I need it yesterday. Now how is that exaggeratin'?”

  “You said Mrs. Delp wasn't cold yet. That's just silly. If this is right,” I flipped the newspaper across the desk at him, “by now she's room temperature at most.” If Wenders got the joke he was keeping it to himself. No matter. “Was it a robbery?” I asked.

  In answer, the cop pulled himself up from the chair like a hippo from a swamp and headed for the door. He'd apparently given out all the information on the murder of Katherine Delp that he intended to. “Play it your way, Blake,” he said. “For now.” He left with a slam of the door.

  I was a whole lot of emotions shook up in a burlap bag. Who or what had done the shaking, and why? Who had killed the beautiful, sleeping Mrs. Delp? Was it all a rotten coincidence that had nothing to do with me? Or had somebody used the head of the minister's wife to knock on my door? Not to belittle her sad end but, as far as heads went, what the hell was wrong with mine? Was the pain from the spill I'd taken with Willie Banks? Or was there something wrong with me? And what had gone on with the picture? Had a dead woman in a photograph actually spoken to me? Called for help? Before I'd known she was dead? The whole thing made as much sense as an eight-fingered glove. I finished my drink. Then, because I couldn't think of anything worthwhile to do, I poured another. I retrieved the envelope from my desk and extracted the photos I'd taken the night before. I drank and studied the images of the couple, the young and handsome Nicholas Nikitin, whose presence at the scene Wenders either was keeping to himself or didn't know about, and the smoking sexy and unbelievably dead Katherine Delp.