Murder by Candlelight (22 page)

Millie could be blunt.

"Yes, Ma'am," Z said.

"Unless ...." Snagging on her
wire-frame temple pieces, adjusting both lenses, tapping the nose
bridge to lock the heavy specs in place, she stared at Z across the
clutter of her desk. "Unless you've been failing to report
everything to me."

"What?"

"Do a cash business, do you? To avoid
paying your rightful due? Not that I haven't suspected it. Nobody
can live on what you're reporting. Didn't you think I'd figure that
out?"

"No, Ma'am. That is, yes, Ma'am. What
I mean is I report everything."

Millie snorted. "Your business a
front? Money laundering? What illegal activities are you involved
with, young man?"

"No. That is, none."

"Selling drugs, are you?
Marijuana? That's the third leading cash crop in America. There's a
lot of it in Missouri. Most planted during the war. There's a
monument to it somewhere in the state, I hear tell. 'Course, they
didn't call it marijuana. In those days, they called it hemp.
Planted this 'hemp' to help the war effort. Made rope out of it.
But it was marijuana. Once you get it growing, it's like a weed.
You can't root it out. It's like crabgrass. I got crabgrass growing
in my front yard and can't get rid of
it
, either. Even had the Lawn-Guard
men out. They said to spray. So I hired them. What they did, is
they sprayed poison that killed every sprig of green in the lawn.
Said they had to kill everything to get the crabgrass. But they
didn't get it. I called the company and demanded
satisfaction!"

She glared at Z.

"I'm not into drugs."

"Well, give me the letter,
then."

Stepping forward, leaning across the
paper-piled desk, Z handed it to her.

Snatching the envelope, Millie
extracted the page. Unfolded it. Adjusting her glasses, read the
letter, then looked up at Z again. "This your idea of a
joke?"

"No, Ma'am."

"'Cause if it is, it's in bad taste.
Yessiree. In very bad taste."

"Joke?"

"You're trying to tell me this is from
the IRS?"

"That's what it says."

"Well, things aren't always the way
they seem. You can't judge a book by its cover, you
know."

"But ...?"

"This isn't from the IRS. Wrong logo,"
Millie was stabbing at the paper. "Wrong paper. Wrong sentence
structure. Wrong ... everything!"

"Not ... from the IRS?

"How many times do I have to say it?
It's not from the IRS. It's a joke. And not a very funny one, if
you ask me. The IRS is no one to fool with, you know."

"No, Ma'am."

Cramming the page back in the
envelope, with a flick of her wrist, she handed the letter back to
Z.

What Z was feeling, was ... relief.
"What do I owe you?"

"Owe me? For what?"

"For telling me the letter is a
phony."

"You don't owe me anything. Unless you
waste any more of my time, that is. I don't know what this world's
coming to. People always barging in, asking foolish questions.
Always interrupting a body when they're busy. And I'm busy. So much
to do and so little time to do it in."

"Yes, Ma'am," Z said. "Sorry to bother
you."

"And next year, try to get your
records -- such as they are -- in to me earlier than you did this
year. Even though you don't have that much to report, it's never a
good idea to be late. You should have more ...."

By this time, Z had back-stepped to
the door and slipped out, easing the door shut behind him, Millie's
voice still audible as she continued to berate his
afterimage.

Quickly across the hall again, safely
inside his own office, retreating to the back room to barricaded
himself behind his splintered desk, Z turned the letter over in his
blunt hands.

A joke.

Not a funny joke. He could agree with
Millie on that.

Not something any of Z's
friends would do -- not that Z
had
that many friends.

Jamie Stewart? .......

Not her style.

Z was relieved, of course, that
Internal Revenue wasn't breathing down his neck, but still bothered
by who'd sent the letter and why.

In fact, was still thinking about the
"joke" in the late afternoon as he pulled the Cavalier into the
sagging back alley garage behind his "pad" in Mary Urquhart's
house-cut-into-apartments.

Was still considering the
joke's "punch line" on the way up the cracked back walk, past the
litter that
was
the backyard.

Thinking .... when he
looked up to see Peg-Leg Mary hobbling along the walkway from the
front. Clearly, she'd been watching for him out the back window on
the elevated first floor where
she
lived.

Z didn't think it was about his rent.
He remembered being paid up. Anyway, Mary wasn't that concerned
about money. He'd gotten to "rent" the apartment in the first place
because Mary Urquhart had been unable to pay him for a little job
he'd done for her. In addition, she liked to have a detective
living on the premises. Made her feel safe. So when he fell behind,
she never complained, to say nothing of his having enough money,
lately, to catch up. Taking him full circle to the original
question about why Mary was waiting for him along the
walk.

Mary had been in terrible
shape last winter because of her diabetes. In January, had to
use
two
crutches
to get around. But had stabilized. Maybe having only one leg left
had helped.

Z came up. "Ma'am," he said, nodding
down at her.

"Mr. Zapolska." Except that Mary
pronounced it Thapothka because she had to lisp his name through
missing teeth. Mary's voice was as weak as Z's, but was more the
grate of gravel than a tiger's purr.

Z noticed she was holding a piece of
paper.

"I got this," she continued, waving
the page, "in the mail." Balancing on her crutch, bird-bright eyes
upon him, she handed Z the sheet.

A letter.

Typed.

Brief.

The gist of it, that someone in the
building department of the Gladstone Government was asking Mary to
produce her permit for adding the unit at the back of the house,
the apartment Z now rented, the letter claiming there was no record
of the permit, going on to say that, if Mary couldn't produce her
copy, the city would tear down the add-on.

Mary had built that extension out back
a lot of years before Z had moved in, of course.

"Did you get a building permit?" Z
asked.

"I did. I very well did. I couldn't'a
b'ilt on if I'd'a not got it."

"You had a regular
contractor?"

"I did."

"Then you've got nothing to worry
about."

"About the paper, I don' know if I got
that."

"You remember the contractor's
name?"

"Ace. The name'a h's
company."

"Still in business?"

"Th'll on the TV."

"Then you call them. Tell them about
this. I think they'll straighten it out."

"I hope," Mary said
doubtfully, but giving Z a big, toothless grin. (Not that there was
no such thing as a
small
toothless grin.)

Z stopping that way of thinking. He
liked Mary; didn't want to make fun of her afflictions.)

Satisfied for the moment, Mary pivoted
on her crutch and hobbled off around the corner.

And that was that.

Except that Z's experience
told him
that
was
rarely
that
.

Going inside his own -- now threatened
-- apartment, Z switched on the two, window air conditioners, then
lit the fire in his firebox.

Snapping on the ceiling light, he sat
down at the kitchen/dining room table to listen to the kindling pop
and to savor the smell of heating oak: all the while considering
what was happening.

Coming to the conclusion he didn't
have to "conjecture" any longer.

Because Mary's letter, added to the
phony message from the IRS, had told him the name of the game, the
name being: Captain Scherer!

The police chief had gotten someone to
send the fake IRS letter to Z, then fired up the building code
department to question Mary's right to have built Z's add-on
apartment.

Not that any of these dodges would
come to anything. They were just Scherer's way of letting Z know
that the "good" captain had heard about Z's radio "attack" and was
striking back.

Threatening Z's financial situation --
such as it was.

Threatening to have Z's apartment torn
down, Z to be thrown out in the street.

The
real
question was, what would come
next? .....

All Z could think of was arrest. (Z
wondered if the Gladstone department owned any rubber hoses. Didn't
think they did.)

Still, when the cops had it in for
you, there were ways they could make your life
miserable.

Thinking about this nasty situation
from another perspective, Scherer had already screwed up -- in much
the same way the captain had messed up the Betterton bust -- by
being overeager. He'd struck out at Z the quickest way he could
think of, but in directions that put Z in no real harm. Had Scherer
been more patient, he might have caught Z doing something
"criminal." Like speeding. (Hardly likely, with Z driving the old
clunker of a Cavalier.) Or, Z might have run a red light, or done
something else that the captain could have used as an excuse for
cracking down.

Now that Z was warned,
he'd be looking over his shoulder for unmarked cop cars; be driving
a good five miles
under
the speed limit.

The phone rang.

Getting up, crossing the space to the
telephone, Z turned to sink into the sagging green sofa as he
picked up the receiver."

"Z." At the office, he used his full
name. At home, since his unlisted number weeded out everyone but
....

"It's Susan."

"Yeah."

"It went well, don't you
think?"

Z didn't want to answer
that. Last night had gone well for
him
, but ....

"I mean, I think I got rid of the
noises. I haven't heard anything since."

"I'm sure," Z muttered.

"I don't know what I believe about
poltergeists. I really don't. But she was impressive, wasn't
she."

She certainly
was
, Z was thinking.
"Who?"

"Jamie."

"Oh."

"A bit too tricky for my taste,
though."

Tricky.

"All that about how she wasn't going
to cheat like other spiritualists. I kept remembering the old saw
about how, when people begin talking about their honesty, you
should count the spoons."

Z's mother had used that saying, also.
"Yeah," Z agreed.

"And I know something else that you
don't know I know," Susan said, mysteriously.

Oh, oh.

"Something that makes me about as good
a detective as you."

Z's mind was a blank.

"At the end of the
evening. When each of us was in a room? I know what
you
were
doing!"

"What ...!?"

"And I'm ... flattered ... really I
am."

Z's mind was a double
blank.

"In my bedroom. What you were doing in
my bedroom."

Normally, Z didn't know
what to say to women. This time, he
really
didn't know.

"How ... did you ...?"

"The smell. Isn't that the way you
told me you solve some cases? That you have a keen sense of
smell?"

"Ah ...."

"Guess what I smelled. In my bedroom.
When I was getting ready for bed."

"Ah ...."

"And, like I said, I'm flattered. I
promise I'll make it up to you. I know we haven't been able to get
together as much as both of us would like. But I'm going to make
every effort to remedy that situation. I don't know. We both get
busy. And then, I've been worried about this ghost business. It's
been taking a lot out of me."

"I don't know what you're
talking about." While playing dumb wasn't part of the
Zapolska
Code
,
you couldn't go far wrong that way.

"About what I know about ... the
bedroom?"

"Yeah."

"It's not the first time I've smelled
... you know ... sex there. So I figured out what had happened. You
were in the bedroom. And got to thinking about me being in there
with you. And that got you hot and bothered. So, since you were
alone ...."