Closure: An Eli Quinn Mystery Page 4

  She was persistent, that’s for sure. I said, “I tell you what. Let’s see how I do. If I solve this, you can pay me something when it’s all over. If I don’t, I really wouldn’t feel right about taking your money.”

  “So again,” she said, “what’s your fee?”

  Even though I’d already decided I didn’t want Mrs. Bernstein’s money, I tried to imagine attaching a fee to finding a murderer, to giving closure to a grieving widow. A thousand dollars? Ten thousand? A hundred dollars an hour? Plus expenses? That would mean paperwork. I hated paperwork. But I had my first client now, and she wanted there to be a transaction, maybe just to legitimize the relationship. Perhaps it was an issue of trust, of not feeling like a charity case.

  “How about a dollar?” I said.

  “A dollar?” Delores Bernstein laughed. It was a brief outburst, from deep inside, as though it’d been suppressed by recent events. I knew that feeling. She sounded and looked younger and more vibrant when she laughed. I felt good for giving her that. I was coming to like Delores Bernstein. I would have to look up the appropriateness of that feeling in my detective manual.

  She put the checkbook back in her purse, extended her hand. I shook it. So did Sam. “Thank you, both of you,” she said. “I hope you find out who did this.”

  Chapter 5

  I had almost nothing to go on in my first case as a detective. And no thoughts came to me just now. So I ran. I kept a slow, steady pace up the hill, listened to my breathing, paid attention to my body, found a rhythm.

  The rocky trail lead up one of the lesser known routes just south of Pinnacle Peak up a small but steep and rocky razorback mountain, all a quarter mile from home. A roadrunner darted across the trail. Saguaros dominated the landscape. Ocotillos sprung improbably here and there, sometimes alone, sometimes in clumps of three or four, each splaying up and out like a fountain, or Keith Richards’ hair. The ground was firm but rocky. I concentrated on my footing.

  It was in the mid-nineties, and within a half mile I had a good sweat going. As the blood flowed, my mind began to work on its own. Facts and assumptions popped into my head unprompted.

  Delores Bernstein didn’t kill her husband. I didn’t think. Can’t rule that out. Hiring a private detective with no experience might be a smart diversion. If she didn’t do it, she wants me to exonerate her and provide closure on the ugliest chapter in her life. If she did it, and she’s confident she can’t be caught, hiring me makes her look innocent, maybe discourages the sheriff from looking into it further. Assume she didn’t for now. Odds at seventy-thirty.

  They were broken into. The thieves took only a TV and a computer from the garage of a house full of art. They didn’t break into the house. Probably not the work of anyone who knew them well, who knew Tinker Bernstein was an art collector. Or maybe they knew enough to know there was something of value to steal without setting off an alarm. Yet they left a really expensive 3D printer and scanner. Common thieves wouldn’t have known the value of those. And they were heavy—not the sort of thing you imagine a thief carrying under his arm as he runs from a crime scene.

  My mind logged the presence of a large, loose rock several paces ahead and somehow knew it would be navigated by the right foot. A few steps later my right foot obeyed.

  Three days later someone walked into Tinker Bernstein’s garage, which may have been wide open, and shot him. For some reason, the clock is also shot, stops dead at 6:59 p.m. Apparently nothing is stolen other than a few tools and a toolbox. That makes no sense. The alarm wasn’t set, so whoever it was might’ve entered the house. If so, it’s not clear what they might’ve done inside the house, but Delores isn’t aware of anything being stolen. She says.

  Only close friends and a few people in the art community knew Tinker was an art dealer. If the killing wasn’t about love, power or revenge, it was probably about money. All those valuables sitting there, and two crimes in three days. Eight percent chance it’s about money. I was missing something important.

  My breaths had become gasps, my arms were working hard but had lost their form. I concentrated for a moment on the breathing, made it more efficient, pulled my elbows in. Then I let my thoughts drift again.

  Whoever it was, they conveniently killed Tinker while Delores was out for a drive. Did the killer know she was out? Was he parked down the street watching the house? If so, a neighbor might’ve seen the strange car. People in Pleasant made a point of noticing strange cars, which stood out since just about everyone parked in their garages most of the time. And anyone who came in or out of the country club, there’d be a record of them at the gate.

  Without thinking about it, I’d stopped running. My hands were on my hips, eyes staring at nothing in the distance. Breathing heavy but even.

  I looked left, northward, and took in a scene I’d enjoyed a hundred times. The ground rose gradually into the base of Pinnacle Peak, which shot up abruptly and was capped by a cluster of bare rocks huddled together and pointing skyward. Around to the southeast was a long range of taller peaks that formed the east border of the Valley. Below and to the south, the horizon raced away, a steady drop in altitude down to the Valley floor. Scottsdale and the rest of the Metro area was enveloped in a slight, low-lying haze.

  My mind was putting some facts together in meaningful ways, I hoped. So I resumed running and let it continue.

  The fact that Delores Bernstein was out for an hour, precisely when her husband was killed, three days after a break-in, was too coincidental to be a coincidence. Not exactly a clue, but at least a lead. And there was something else: Dribbs Security, the outfit that ran security for the country club, might be able to tell me who went through the gate around the times of each crime. My experience as a reporter suggested there was much I didn’t know yet, a lot more rocks to look under, several clues big and small, and even more information I’d have to sort through and ignore to eliminate as clues. But I had a place to start. Some threads. I’d just need to pull on them, see what unraveled.

  That was all I’d needed to work out for now. I reached an outcropping that marked the two-mile point, turned around and looked down the trail. I felt good, decided today would be a six-miler. I turned and headed up the steeper part of the mountain to put in another mile, fell back into my pace, and willed my mind to focus on nothing but breathing and footsteps, breathing and footsteps.

  Chapter 6

  Jack Beachum had been a cop most of his adult life. In his early seventies now, he’d joined the Pleasant Sheriff’s Posse, a group of a dozen men of varying age, but mostly not spring chickens, who had all the clout a uniform implied, without the authority to go with it. He could spot a crime, but regulations required he call it in and wait for the real deputies to arrive and take over. Mostly he directed traffic during the annual Veteran’s Day Parade and guided school kids at a crosswalk each morning. Sometimes he got bored doing only that.

  Jack Beachum and I were best friends. Neither of us had ever said so.

  “Morning, Beach.”

  Beach was sitting at his usual table on the patio of Lulu’s Grind, the coffee shop on the northeast corner of the town center, not two-hundred feet from Ringo, the two-hundred-year-old saguaro that sat in the middle of the traffic circle where Pleasant Way and Happy Lane met. It was the site of an infamous, brief, non-lethal shootout back in 1881, which left a bullet imbedded in the cactus and a big mystery surrounding who had really shot at Johnny Ringo. Locals said it was Doc Holliday, but some experts disagreed. Nobody was injured, so the shootout wasn’t as widely known as ones like the OK Corral. But it was a big deal in Pleasant lore.

  Beach unfolded his six-foot frame, stood, and gave me his customary firm handshake. We exchanged good mornings. Beach was about an inch shorter than me, and I noticed only because he always seemed to try and stretch himself tall so our eyes would be nearly level. Like me, he had broad shoulders. That’s where the similarities ended. Beach had giant calves, thick thighs and outsized forearms. I considered myse
lf muscular compared to the average male, but if I were a running back, Beach would be the blocking fullback who powered open the holes for me. He wore his usual tan posse pants and tan short-sleeve button-up shirt, which matched his hair color. Pants and shirt neatly pressed. Straight hair neatly cropped, the front pushing forward but too short to be called bangs.

  He sat back down, folded his arms, leaned his chair back against the outer wall of the Grind, and adjusted his black leather belt loaded with posse stuff. His 9 mm was holstered. On his right shoulder was a blue and yellow sheriff’s patch, complementing the metal star on his left breast.

  I pulled out a chair, turned it around, and sat on it backward. “Shoot anybody today?”

  “What do you want,” Beach said, not gruffly, just matter-of-factly. Jack Beachum was from Texas, and one thing he never did was beat around the bush. With his left fist he gently and rhythmically squeezed a red rubber ball, the type used in racquetball.

  “Who says I want something?”

  “It’s generally why you offer to buy this old geezer a coffee. I have a meeting in twenty minutes, official sheriff stuff, so I figured we might skip the small talk today and get right to it. What’s up?”

  “Well, I really just wanted coffee. But since you ask,” I lowered my voice and leaned forward, rocking the chair onto its back legs, “I’m interested in the Bernstein murder.”

  Lulu herself came out and walked up to the table. She was Tanzanian, about five-seven and thin with short-cropped hair and dark, wrinkle-free skin. She might have been in her twenties, but when she smiled, which was often, creases around her eyes suggested she might be forty. It was a mystery the regulars all talked about. Even Jess, who had been her best friend, didn’t know how old Lulu was. Lulu let the mystery be. She was apparently single, spoke with a thick accent, was always in a good mood, and was sexy as hell. Nobody ever wondered why Lulu’s Grind was usually busy, even though three Starbucks were within four miles. People actually drove from Scottsdale and other surrounding smaller towns regularly just to visit Lulu’s in Pleasant, where the coffee was rumored to be a Tanzanian tribal secret, the omelets were five-star-restaurant quality, and the homemade pastries might’ve been FedExed in from Paris each day.

  “What you boys want today?” Lulu asked, her smile a mile wide, showing white teeth that were just imperfect enough—a mild overbite and one top front tooth crossing the other slightly—to make her even sexier.

  I leaned back and admired Lulu’s smile. I looked at Beach, who was clearly enjoying Lulu’s smile even more. “Two coffees for here,” I said. At Lulu’s, you didn’t ask for caramel or mocha or frappe-anything. There was no grande, no tall. It was coffee, with or without cream and sugar. To stay or to go.

  “No breakfast? Not even pastry?”

  “Not today,” I said. “Beach is in a hurry, has to go arrest somebody.”

  “Long as it’s not me,” Lulu said. “Be right back with coffee.”

  After Lulu was back inside, Beach finally shifted his attention back to me. “You looking into Tinker Bernstein’s murder for the paper? I thought you weren’t working these days. Anyway, your friend Sam and the other reporters all been around, we told ’em most everything we know. Case not closed.”

  “Actually, Delores Bernstein hired me.”

  “What the hay…what do you mean?”

  “Sam told her I might be able to help find her husband’s killer.”

  “What, you a dick now?”

  “I think I prefer private eye. Yeah, I guess. Sam suggested it. It’s something to do. I thought I’d try it out.”

  “Don’t matter what you prefer. Jesus. Eli Quinn a private detective, huh?” Beach looked around at the other tables, put his hands behind his head and leaned back, switched the rubber ball into his right hand and gave it a few slow, hard squeezes. “Son of a gun. Makes sense, actually. You’re a tenacious bastard when you start digging into something. You know you need a license, right?”

  “I haven’t looked into that yet.”

  “What you need is a Private Investigator Employee registration certificate, which proves you work for a sponsoring agency, or you need a Private Investigation Agency license.”

  “Sounds like a bunch of hoops. What’s that actually mean?”

  “In your case, means you need to convince the state you been doing this for three years, get a license to run your own agency, ’fore you can hang out a shingle.”

  “Or?”

  “Or you could just go ahead and play detective, and maybe get slapped with a misdemeanor charge.”

  “Or?”

  “Don’t know any other ‘ors.’ I guess maybe you do really good on your first case, some strings might get pulled and a few technicalities ignored. But I can’t advise you to do that, me being just a posse member and all.”

  Pleasant didn’t have its own law enforcement, relying instead on a contract with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. There was a little substation in Pleasant, right across the street from Lulu’s Grind, facing the traffic circle and Ringo, the saguaro. The contract called for one sheriff deputy to always be in town, manning the substation or driving around doing whatever sheriff deputies did in a relatively quiet town. Beyond that one person, the posse members did a lot of the routine police work in town.

  ***

  “So what can you tell me about the Bernstein case,” I asked my friend.

  “Not a lot that you haven’t read in the papers,” Beach said. “I’m not on the case, of course. I’m never really on a case. But I’ve heard a few things. What do you want to know?”

  “Any leads at all?”

  “Nope.”

  “Any hunches?”

  “Nada.”

  “Any clues that point to a motive?”

  “Zilch.”

  “Anything you’re not telling me?”

  “Wouldn’t tell you if there was.”

  “You’re a fount of knowledge, Beach.”

  Lulu brought two coffees. We both leaned back, smiled at her. She put the coffee down, we thanked her, and she left. We sipped.

  “If we had anything to go on, we’d be pursuing it,” Beach said. “And I might tell you about it.”

  “You know you would,” I said. We both smiled at the shared truth. Beach trusted me, and I never betrayed him by letting anyone know where my tips came from. I said, “So we got nothing.”

  “Please don’t say we.”

  “OK fine. I got nothing. What are you going to do to help your friend?”

  “This private detecting thing ain’t so easy, huh?”

  I thought for a minute. We both drank some coffee.

  I asked, “What about the wife?”

  “Delores? Yeah, technically she’s the only suspect. Technically she doesn’t have an alibi. The clock thing is strange, and you could read that to mean it looks like she set things up. But there’s no murder weapon, and no motive other than the insurance policy. Thing is, I know Delores, and I don’t think she did it.”

  “People always say that.”

  “Yeah, but those people aren’t always posse.”

  “And being on the posse, you’re a trained observer of people.”

  “Gotta be an elite individual to join the posse.”

  “I hear you have to be at least eighteen, in good physical and mental condition,” I said.

  “And no criminal record.”

  “Tough standards.”

  “Don’t know how I got in.”

  “Probably because you’re eighteen times about four. That gave you a fourfold advantage on one quarter of the requirements.”

  “That and I don’t need the money.”

  “I thought the posse was all volunteer.”

  “That’s the money I’m talking about. You need some, you’re disqualified.”

  “What are there, twelve posse in town now?”

  “Yep, after the last recruitment meeting, two more kids signed up, couple guys in their sixties. Pleasant got
more lawmen per capita than any other town in America.”

  “That true?”

  “No clue. But it sounds good and probably ain’t far from the truth, so we say it now. We’ll wait for somebody to call the bluff and prove us wrong.”

  “Let me try a tangent,” I said.

  “Big word.”

  “I’m a walking dictionary. This maybe has nothing to do with anything. But the security system at the gate. How come they take down your license number, when they’ve got a camera snaps a picture of it?”

  “You’ve been detecting.”

  “Actually, I just paid attention when I went up there the other day.”

  “Lotta people don’t.”

  “Not everyone owns a Private Investigator Agency.”

  “Or hopes to,” Beach said. He leaned in and spoke lower. “Camera wasn’t working.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since about two weeks before the murder.”

  “Well that sounds suspiciously like a clue, or at least something to look into. Why’d it take so long to fix the camera?”

  “You remember the security gate used to be run by the Pleasant town council. A few years back, they contracted the work out to Dribbs Security. When the camera broke, Dribbs said it was council’s camera, council said it’s Dribbs’ camera. They argued until Tinker Bernstein was killed, then apparently agreed to split the cost and get it fixed lickety-split.”

  “Lickety-split?”

  Beach ignored me. “A new one was installed the other day. Meantime, while the camera was out, they recorded each license plate manually. Now they still do that as routine backup.”

  “So they have a record of what time Delores Bernstein came back through the gate.”

  “6:48.”

  “Enough time to get home, murder her husband at 6:59.”

  “Just.”

  “You guys run the list on who else came in before the murder?”

  Beach drank some coffee while rolling his eyes. “Course. We look like amateurs?”