William Diehl - Seven ways to die

She stopped and started to tear up. She took a couple of swallows of the Colombian java.

“Was he a switch hitter?” Cody asked.

“No. No.” She shook her head. “It was always about girls. And not all the time. I mean, maybe once a month he’d go off on one of his tantrums.”

“It’s tangent. Go off on a tangent.”

“Come on, Captain, I know the difference between a tangent and a tantrum. These were tantrums. He was really upset. It was a strange thing. Like…it was like he was talking in his sleep.”

He stopped and they took a breather.

“Want another cup?” she asked.

“I’m fine, thanks. So these were kind of like ramblings, getting something off his chest?”

“Exactly. When I was through he’d smile and pay me and go back over to his place.”

“Anything else you can remember?”

She shrugged. “He was a nice guy. He was polite. He said ‘Thank you.’”

“And you never asked him about any of these things?”

“He wasn’t a Chatty Cathy. I’ve got some clients who like to chat. Talk about movies, casual talk. There was nothing casual about Raymond. His monologue was part of his working out emotional kinks. He was there to get the knots ironed out, period.”

“I’ve got to ask you this. Where were you last night?”

“Here. I was reading. Sitting over there.” She pointed to a chair near the door.

He could see her sitting there, and the thought oddly pleased him. “Did you hear him come in?”

She shook her head.

“Would you have heard him? If he had come in?”

“Probably. We just heard your people.”

“What time did you go to bed?”

“I finished reading about quarter to eleven. Went back, turned on the TV. Watched the top of the news and then put in the plugs. I was asleep by, I don’t know, eleven-fifteen maybe.”

“What kind of slippers do you have?”

“Slippers?”

“You know, for your feet?”

She smiled, a big smile for the first time since he had entered the apartment.

“Big fuzzy ones with little balls of stuff on the top. You want to see them?” She gave him an elfish grin.

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“I didn’t kill Raymond, Captain,” she said almost sternly.

“Okay,” he answered.

“I mean, I hardly knew him personally,” she said, still staring straight into his eyes.

Cody smiled. “You probably knew a lot more about him that a lot of his friends.”

Amelie didn’t disagree with that. She blurted out the rest of what she knew until Cody finally stood up to leave. “Thanks for the coffee,” he said. “It was good.”

“Where’s your tape recorder?” she asked.

He tapped the fountain pen in his breast pocket. “This is the mike. The recorder’s in my pocket.”

“Isn’t that cute,” she answered, following him to the door. He took out his card and handed it to her.

“My name and number is on that. You can call anytime, I’m always available. If you think of anything else.”

She flipped the card with a finger, smiled and took her card out and slipped it in the breast pocket of his jacket.

“May I ask a question?”

“I suppose so.”

“What’s with the ponytail?”

He stared at her for a moment and said, “My barber cut my ear with his scissors so I never went back.”

She shook her head and giggled. “Little wonders. A cop with a ponytail and a sense of humor. I bet you’d eat nails for breakfast if you had to.”

“It’s never come up.”

She stared at his neck and shoulders and then back into his eyes.

“You’re tight as a fist, Captain Cody. You could use a good loosening up. Give me a call. I’ll work you in. On the house. Civic duty and all that.”

“Thanks. Goodbye, Amelie.”

“So long for now. If I don’t hear from you I may just make up something and call you.”

“That’s against the law.”

“Then you can come over and give me a ticket.”

Cal Bergman was still intent on the black book he had found in Handley’s briefcase. He was seated sideways on the sofa in the hallway with the case opened beside him, a forefinger sliding down a page in the book as he dictated information into his headset.

It was not a little book. It was custom-made black leather, six inches wide by eight inches long, with a twenty-four-carat gold lock flap. It was indexed with colored dividers and was about four inches thick. He snapped around, startled, as Cody left Amelie Cluett’s apartment.

Cody laughed. “A little jumpy, aren’t you there, cowboy?”

Cal laughed along with him.

“Nothing wrong with having fast reflexes, Cal,” Cody said approaching the sofa. “And one of the reasons we picked you for liaison was your ability to focus. You were as focused on that page as a pitcher zoning on a catcher’s glove.”

“There’s a lot to zone on.”

“No laptop? Blackberry? Cell phone?”

“Nope. There are slots for them, though. But the book is amazing. This is an autobiography of Handley’s life in shorthand. Other than this…” He held up a baggie into which he had placed several receipts, “the cupboard is bare. Some personal photographs and other stuff but the book and the receipts are a gold mine.”

“Bag the book and the receipts and close the case.”

“Right. There is one other thing.” He held up a baggie with a black Halloween mask in it. “This was in the briefcase.”

“I’ll be damned,” Cody said. “Bring it along.”

Cody heard a vacuum cleaner at work in Handley’s apartment. He opened the door and leaned into the apartment.

“Wolf?”

The pathologist stuck his head around the corner of the library. He was suited out and had a surgical mask covering his nose and mouth.

“You and the kid made a pretty clean entry,” Wolfsheim said. Then added, “You may have missed a thing or two.”

“Such as?”

“I’m busy,” was his muffled reply. “We’ll get to that later. What do you want? We got work to do.”

Cody took the briefcase from Bergman and sat it on the floor inside the apartment.

“You’ll probably want to check this out. And you might be looking for a laptop, and a Blackberry. They weren’t in the case. We’re taking these.” Cody held up the bagged book, receipts, and the mask.”

“Just make sure they’re dusted before you go messing around with them.”

Cody chuckled and snapped his fingers. “Gee whiz,” he said. “I never would’ve thought of that.”

“Don’t be a smart ass.”

Wolf walked back into the library. As he did, he said over his shoulder. “We need to get that maid back here.”

“Frank took her home,” Cody said to the empty library entrance. “My guess is she’s probably napping by now. She was hot-wired.”

“Well, if she was as meticulous as I hear, we need her back here.”

“Looking for a trophy?”

“Didn’t you?”

“Yup.”

“Get her highness back as soon as we clean this mess up. This wasn’t a robbery. I want to know if anything strange is missing or was left behind.”

“Well, while you’re sweeping the apartment you might keep an eye out for a safe.”

“No kidding,” Wolf replied.

“Any ideas about the blood?”

“Yeah. I don’t think whoever whacked this guy was planning on selling it to the Red Cross.”

“Let’s get back to the loft,” Cody said to Bergman, closing the door. “Or the chateau as he calls it.”

“Wolf’s a little grumpy today.”

“Are you kidding? He was born grumpy,” Cody answered. “He growled at the nurse when she cut his umbilical cord.”

As they started down the stairs, Bergman said, “Ms. Cluett’s still peeping at us.”