Hearse of a Different Color (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries) (32 page)

“I take it you’re feeling better,” she said.

“Bored out of my gourd.”

“From one day? Boy, you would make a lousy patient.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

We went into the room and Bonnie shut the door. I hoped she didn’t have any funny ideas. I wasn’t feeling
that
great.

“Your pretty face is a mess,” she said.

“The doctors assure me I’ll be looking like Abe Lincoln in no time.”

“Terry Haden is going back to jail. Parole violation.”

“Trying to kill an undertaker?”

“The drugs they found in his system. And in his car.” Bonnie stepped over to the window and dented the blinds to have a look outside. Nothing but a facing brick wall.

“There’s no way that Haden’s running you down had anything to do with the murder of Helen Waggoner, Hitch.”

“That’s a question or a statement?” I asked.

“Both, I guess.”

I agreed. “As far as I’m concerned, Terry Haden is free to go off and serve jail time for any or all of the many crimes he has no doubt committed. But no, it doesn’t look like the murder of Helen is one of them.” I filled Bonnie in on one of the discoveries of the day before. Her wide eyes went even wider as I told her how I had discovered that it was Richard Kingman who Helen had been seeing.

“Son of a bitch.”

“I’d say that’s a fair assessment.”

“Good Lord, Hitch, that’s amazing. You know, you’re getting good at this. We’re going to have to buy you a magnifying glass and one of those droopy pipes.”

“Elementary.”

“So, have you told any of this to Kruk?”

“I’ve been a little preoccupied or perhaps you haven’t noticed. I’ll get to it.”

“I think so. You should call him right now.”

I wheeled myself over to the bedside table and poured myself a cup of ice water. I held the pitcher up to Bonnie. She shook her head.

“I don’t see the hurry,” I said. “Kruk has put Helen’s murder on the back burner. It can keep.”

“But Hitch, this is important. You’ve got to tell the police.”

“Kingman isn’t the killer. He can’t be. He was already dead.”

“That’s not the point. He’s the reason that Helen was dumped in your lap in the first place. This definitely advances the investigation.”

“I thought you wanted to come up with the killer yourself,” I reminded her. “Where’s your scoop if we hand it off to Kruk at this point?”

“It’s a crime, Hitch, withholding information.”

“Murder is the bigger crime. Look, I’ve just suffered a massive head trauma. I’m supposed to be clearheaded enough to run to the police?”

“So, what are you saying?”

“What I’m saying is that we give ourselves … forty-eight hours. What can that hurt? If we can’t cough up a killer by Christmas Eve, we give Kruk the news about Helen and Kingman. But if we do cough up the killer, you run to management with your scoop and the world becomes a better place. Is there any harm in that?”

Bonnie thought it over. “Okay. Sure. Why not. Forty-eight hours.” She paused. “Hitch … I know you’re going to throw a fit. But let’s bring Jay in on this.”

“Adams? Why?”

“Because it couldn’t hurt, that’s why. He has done this sort of thing before. He might come up with some ideas that you and I haven’t thought of.”

“I came up with Kingman,” I reminded her.

“True.”

“I’m the one who nearly got killed.”

“Not related to the case. Not technically.”

“I was going over ‘the case’ with Vickie Waggoner. I got run over by Helen’s ex-boyfriend and pimp as I was leaving. I’ll take a merit badge for that one, thank you.”

“Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

A merit badge was also due Vickie Waggoner—Bo, actually—for coming up with the name of Bonnie’s obstetrician. But this was a piece of information I was holding onto for the time being.

“Okay,” I said. “Hand it to Adams on a silver platter. Tell him about Kingman. But is it possible to keep the guy on a leash? He sandbagged me the other day you know, with that photograph, taking it out to Sinbad’s.”

“So what? He saved you the effort.”

She was right. Why not call in a seasoned hound dog like Adams at this point? I was close to the killer. Maybe Adams could help me get even closer. Of course, Bonnie won either way. So long as both Adams and I reported back to her and let her have her scoop, she would come out of this better off than when she went in. I suspected that she and Jay Adams had already reached an agreement that she would be allowed to bring the identity of the murdered waitress’s killer to the public first. Adams had plenty of notches in his belt already.

Bonnie kissed me gingerly on the unbruised portion of my face. She had to get off to work. After she left, I wheeled myself out to the nurses’ station. I thought a little flirting might cheer me up. But my heart wasn’t in it. I wheeled myself back into my room and slept for fourteen hours.

•••

Billie sent Sam to fetch me from the hospital. He picked me up in the hearse. By hospital regulations I was wheeled out the front door in a wheelchair, then allowed to rise up under my own power like a man newly healed at a revival meeting. Sam had brought along a wooden cane that he had used some years back after breaking his ankle in a melee at one of his clubs. He helped me hobble into the passenger seat of the hearse and away we went. And yes, people stopped and stared.

I had Sam for the day. He could always use the cash, and I needed a driver. What was left of my Chevy Nothing—now less than nothing—was already off in a junkyard somewhere. I’d have to pick up a new set of wheels as soon as possible. Meanwhile, I had the hearse and the human wall to drive me around. A little hint about hearses: Turn on the headlights at intersections and you can cruise right through the red lights. Sam is especially good at this. We covered the distance between the hospital and Cathedral Street without stopping once. Sam pulled over to the curb and pulled out a book.

“What are you reading?” I asked.

“It’s new.” He showed me the cover. I didn’t recognize the title.

“What’s it about?”

“A guy and a girl. They get together.”

“Oh, yes,” I said, taking hold of my cane. “I think I heard something about that one.”

Walking on the injured leg didn’t kill me. It just hurt like hell.

“Do you have an appointment?” the receptionist asked me. She was behind a sliding glass window. She wore cat’s-eye glasses and a permanent pucker and was flipping through a magazine of people wearing nothing but their underwear. She gave me a slow once-over. Probably imagining me in my Calvins. Or wondering about the cane.

“I think I’m pregnant,” I said. I had intended it to sound like the joke it was, but between the cane and the banged-up face, I apparently needed to put more levity into my delivery. She frowned, and I bagged it.

“I don’t have an appointment. Just give him this.” I handed her the little prescription container. She took it from me as if it were a urine sample and disappeared through a door behind her. She reappeared almost immediately.

“The doctor will see you now.”

“How about that,” I said, and she buzzed me through the door next to her window. I hobbled into the office.

Daniel Kingman didn’t rise to greet me. He remained in his chair, his hands out in front of him on the desk as if he were handcuffed. The prescription container sat just beyond his knuckles. The two-inch high container held the doctor’s complete attention.

“Come in,” he finally said, without looking up. I was already in. I dropped into the leather chair in front of the desk and hooked my cane on the arm. Richard Kingman’s brother finally pulled his gaze from the little container and looked sadly across the desk at me. Of course, I remembered him from his brother’s wake and funeral. I especially remembered his outlandishly blue eyes, the only part of him that really showed any spark. He looked even paler now than I remembered, but that might have had something to do with the overhead fluorescent lighting in his office. Then again, it might have had to do with the plastic prescription container sitting there on his desk.

“I wondered when someone would show up,” he said finally. “I figured it would be the police.”

“Nope. Just me.”

He let out a large sigh. “I didn’t kill her.”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know.”

Well, so much for that. The doctor picked up the prescription bottle and looked at it. He lingered on the label. I lingered too.

“That wasn’t so smart, I guess,” he said at last.

“What wasn’t?”

“Writing out a prescription. Paper trail.” He tried out a smile, but it didn’t work.

“What wasn’t so smart about it? You just said you didn’t kill Helen. So, why would you have thought about not leaving a paper trail?”

“My brother.”

“What about your brother?”

“
He
wouldn’t have wanted a paper trail.”

“Maybe you’d better explain this to me.”

The doctor sighed. “I suppose I owe an explanation to the police.”

“Consider this a practice run.”

Kingman leaned back in his chair. Despite his silver hair, there was a slightly boyish look to his face. Or possibly I simply imagined it from the expression he was wearing, which was that of a person who has most definitely been caught and who most definitely feels small and rotten about it.

“My brother …” he began. “He … I know it’s not nice to speak ill of the dead. But Richard could be a real bastard sometimes. Most of the time actually. Even as a boy, he had a very forceful personality. Everyone knew that Richard would make a big success at whatever he chose to do. Which, of course, he did. Richard was one of the best heart men they’ve seen at Hopkins. He was terrifically gifted.”

He paused and brought his fingers together, holding them up to his lips. He might almost have been praying.

“I won’t bore you with all of the sibling rivalry silliness I had growing up as Richard’s younger brother. It was there. That’s all you really need to know. I became a doctor as well. Like Richard. Like our father in fact. But I became …” His fingers moved out like a pair of wings, indicating the various framed diplomas that were on the walls of the office. “I became an obstetrician. The baby doctor. I have a solid practice. Richard, of course, went into cardiac medicine, the so-called sexy stuff. I bring lives into the world. Richard saved them.” He paused, and the slightest of smiles brushed his lips. “One thing though.
I
saved Richard.”

“What do you mean, you saved him?”

“I saved him. I got him out of trouble. Numerous times.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not following.”

Kingman picked up the prescription bottle and rattled it. He made a curious face and twisted the cap off. “What’s this?”

“Colored glass,” I said. “Helen’s son keeps colored glass in it.”

“God forbid he swallow it.”

“Childproof lid,” I said.

“Of course.”

“So you were saying, Doctor?”

Kingman set the prescription bottle back down. “Yes. I was saying. My brother. Richard had what is euphemistically called a roving eye.”

I know this euphemism. It means he had a roving weenie. “He had affairs,” I said. No big surprise. Affairs happen. Just ask anyone.

“I’m not sure I would even characterize them as affairs. Flings might be more like it. Affairs are something that a person might actually take seriously. They’re also something that loved ones might actually worry about.”

“And you are referring to his wife?”

“I am. Yes.”

“She knew about his … flings?”

“Some of them, yes. She did. You see, Richard didn’t always go to any great lengths to cover his tracks. The word you need to plug in here, Mr. Sewell, is ‘arrogant.’ My brother was extremely arrogant. You find this a lot with gifted people, these people who have been told since childhood how special they are. Richard always insisted that the world come to him. It’s as simple as that. And he had the charisma to make it happen. As well as the power. On those occasions when he got a girl in trouble—” He smiled thinly. “I’m afraid I’m addicted to euphemisms. When Richard got a girl pregnant, a woman pregnant, he sent her to me. The family obstetrician.”

“And euphemistically speaking, you took care of things?”

“My brother had his own personal abortionist handy whenever he bloody well needed it. That’s how it was.”

“You don’t sound like you were too crazy about that arrangement.”

“That would be one way of putting it.”

I glanced about at the diplomas on the wall. “I know this is none of my business, but if it bothered you so much, why didn’t you just say no? Why didn’t you refuse to help him out? Tell him to get some other sap to do his dirty work.”

“Sounds simple enough, I know. But … let’s just say, I didn’t. He had his sap, and his sap was me.” The doctor paused again. “Brothers, Mr. Sewell. Rivals. And at the same time … Well, you don’t need to hear a lot of analytical nonsense. As much as I hated myself for doing it for him, I did it. That’s all. Let’s just leave it at that.”

“How often are we talking here, Doctor?”

“This is something I really do not want to discuss with you further. Richard was … I’ll just say, prolific.” He tilted back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Richard was what would probably be called these days a sexual predator. He preyed on women, usually women he felt were well beneath him. These weren’t affairs of the heart, Mr. Sewell. They were … let me be blunt. For Richard, they were snack food.”

“So there were a lot,” I said.

He nodded gravely. “There were a lot.”

The way the man was sitting there with his arms crossed so tightly, he looked as if he were wearing a straitjacket.

“So, then Helen,” I said. “Just the latest in a long line?”

“No. Helen Waggoner was different. Yes, Richard sent her to me. But this time he wasn’t asking me to bail him out. He wasn’t asking for an abortion. This time was different. A first. Richard asked me to take the woman on as a patient.”

Kingman loosened his grip on himself. He came forward in his chair and picked up the prescription bottle again.

“He said that he wanted me to look after her pregnancy, to give her the best treatment I could provide, and when the time came, deliver her baby. Naturally I was stunned. As far as I could tell, it meant only one thing. He was leaving Ann.”