The False-Hearted Teddy (12 page)

“That’s so sweet. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to meet a man with principles.” She stood up, gave her tresses a shampoo commercial flip, and smiled warmly. “I have to go now, but we’ll talk more later. Bye.”

I’ll tell you, I was feeling pretty good about how I’d handled the situation, which only goes to show you that as far as the subject of women and how they think is concerned, I haven’t seen the ball since kickoff. That point was firmly driven home when Ash returned to the table a few minutes later and I casually told her of the encounter, while striving to keep the self-satisfaction from my voice.

When I finished, she asked incredulously, “And you actually think she understands that you’re off-limits?”

“Umm . . . yeah.”

“Wrong. Honey, all you did was encourage her.”

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“Okay, I’m officially confused. How did I do that?”

“Because you’ve made the prospect of seducing you more challenging. You’re a much bigger prize now, because there’s the extra thrill of knowing that she’s trying to take you away from another woman.”

“The fruit from the Forbidden Tree being the sweetest, huh?”

“And what could be more forbidden than a man who says he’s in love with his wife?”

“But what’s the attraction?”

“Brad, one of the nicest things about you is that you don’t realize how wonderful a husband you are. There are probably a couple of hundred women at this show that envy and despise me because I got one of the few good ones. She—you said her name was Lisa, right?—Lisa just happens to be a little less moral than most.”

I looked down at the tabletop. “Well, if that’s the case, it makes me wonder if the only reason she picked Dirty Beary was because she had ulterior motives. Maybe he really isn’t good enough.”

“Which is another excellent reason to break that chick’s neck the next time I see her.” She took my hand and continued in a more tender tone, “Honey, your bears are wonderful and I’m convinced that Beary would have been nominated regardless of who was on the judging team. So, don’t let a bad and selfish person ruin everything.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. Now, forget about Lisa and tell me what your next move is on the investigation.”

“To go upstairs and run some quick computer checks and then change clothes. We didn’t bring a tie did we?”

“No, this was supposed to be a casual event. Why do you need a tie?”

“If I’m going to commit the felony crime of impersonating a homicide detective, I’d better be dressed like one.”

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“And why do you need to impersonate a cop?”

“Because we need to know if there were any extra card keys issued to the Swifts’ room and the hotel staff won’t give that sort of information to an average citizen.” I kissed Ash on the cheek and pushed myself to my feet.

“Love you. I’ll be back in awhile. Oh, and I’m assuming you found that woman. Is she coming back for Brenda Brownie?”

“She said she might, but I don’t think so. Mulvaney really scared her off.”

“You know, taking into account we’ve so far dealt with domestic disputes, drunken rants, murder, bullying cops, and predatory trollops, I vote that we pass on the Baltimore Har-Bear Expo next year.”

“The motion passes unanimously. Please be careful, honey.”

Tucking the steno pad under my arm, I headed for the exit, passing crowds of happy people and table after table loaded with sweet-looking teddy bears. This was my life now and I wondered for just a second why I was voluntarily going back into the revolting universe of murder investigation. I guess the bottom line is that although I’d been removed from the homicide bureau, the homicide bureau hadn’t yet been removed from me.

Leaving the exhibition hall, I noticed the doors to the adjoining banquet room were closed and a plastic do not disturb sign hung from one of the handles. I knew that meant there were Baltimore detectives and CSI techs inside, photographing the murder scene and searching for evidence. The last thing I needed was for any of the cops to spot me, so I continued on down the corridor.

I went through the lobby, avoiding the registration desk, and saw a sign pointing the way toward the gift shop, which was apparently down a side corridor. Passing the hotel’s glass entrance doors, I saw the rain was coming down in gray sheets and caught a glimpse of a parking 96

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valet standing out in the storm, his old-fashioned fisher-man foul weather gear billowing in the gale. I applauded the Maritime Inn’s commitment to creating a wooden-ships-and-iron-men atmosphere, but that was just insane, especially since I knew the valet was probably making nothing more than minimum wage, tips, and whatever personal information he could boost from the cars to commit identity theft.

The hotel gift shop was about what I expected. The clerk was a young woman playing some sort of computer game on her cell phone who paid no attention to me as I entered the store. Inside, I found usuriously priced candy bars and bags of salty snacks, a small and well-thumbed assortment of glitz, financial, and computer magazines, cheap sunglasses, Maritime Inn commemorative teddy bears made from shoddy tangerine plush and looking as if they’d been stuffed with sawdust, a collection of royal blue Maritime Inn baseball caps that had obviously been on the shelf since the mid-1980s because the brims were decorated with that hokey military-style gold braid so popular back then, and since a high-class shopping expedition always works up a big thirst, twenty-ounce sodas at five bucks a pop in the small refrigerator. I also found the small collection of men’s ties at the back of the shop hanging next to a display of T-shirts the color of baboon rumps, silk-screened with the message, “My Mom and Dad Went to Baltimore and All I Got Was This Stupid Shirt.”

The selection of ties was limited—again, no big surprise. My choices were either second-team Warner Brothers cartoon characters such as the Pepe LePew and Sylvester the Cat, or hideously asymmetric geometric designs in neon tones reminiscent of Japanese anime that looked as if they’d been designed by a nine-year-old boy who couldn’t draw and who’d consumed way too much sugar. In the end, I selected one of the ugly Pokemon ties The False-Hearted Teddy

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and managed to attract the clerk’s attention away from her game long enough to pay her $22.95 for the polyester assault on the eyes.

A few minutes later, I entered our room on the fifth floor. The bedclothes were still in disarray, which signified the maids hadn’t gotten to our side of the hotel yet. It also meant that there wasn’t anything but a package of decaf for the room’s miniature coffee brewer, so there wasn’t any point in starting a pot because hot water from the tap would be much quicker and be just about as tasty.

Windblown rain spattered against the window, creating a gloomy, Monetlike, monochromatic view of the Baltimore Inner Harbor cityscape off to the west.

Turning on the laptop, I accessed the hotel’s high-speed Internet connection and whimpered with joy. I love living out in the country and wouldn’t dream of moving back to a city, but our house is so isolated that the only Internet service available is telephone dial-up that moves at a speed best measured by geological epochs—that is, when the connection isn’t dropped. Anyway, before long I was typing Jennifer Swift’s name into the search box on my Internet provider’s homepage.

The reason why I started my inquiries with the dead woman is that I look at murder as being very similar to investigating a two-vehicle traffic accident. A crash doesn’t just happen; it’s the result of different vehicles on separate routes that somehow violently collide, which is also how most murders occur. I didn’t know who the killer was, but by studying Jennifer’s journey toward death I might develop some insights into the path she’d been following and how that might have played a role in causing someone to hate her enough to kill her.

There’s a surprising amount of personal information available on the Web and I soon had her home address and telephone number in Basingstoke Township. Running another search, I found that the Basingstoke Township 98

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Blade-Tribune
newspaper had a Web site with a wonderful archive section and I located a feature article from 2004

about her burgeoning success as a teddy bear artisan.

Then the well went dry. All I could find after that was her Cheery Cherub Bears Web site and a long list of e-tailers and stores selling her stuffed animals.

Next, I entered Tony’s name into the search engine and had greater luck. The newspaper Web site contained a story about how Tony had pled guilty to felony domestic violence against Jennifer, who’d suffered a broken wrist during the attack. The piece included the requisite idiotic statement from his defense attorney that the big guy was undergoing “anger management” therapy. Just for fun, I considered looking up the liar-for-hire’s telephone number and calling him to break the news that the therapy hadn’t worked and Tony was in jail for murdering his wife, but it was Saturday, so I knew the law office was closed and the lawyer wouldn’t have cared anyway.

I clicked on another newspaper story and read about Tony receiving some twenty-five-dollar gift certificate from the big-box retailer where he worked for being salesperson-of-the-month. Having briefly worked retail myself before joining the army, I suddenly understood why Tony wanted so badly for the Cheery Cherub Bears business to take off.

I entered Todd Litten’s name next and came back with next to nothing. The
Blade-Tribune
Web site had a couple of small articles about car crashes and medical emergencies where he was mentioned in passing as one of the paramedics. Another news story said that he’d been a presenter at a fire department safety fair, back in September.

The only other information was from the sports page, which reported he’d bowled a three-hundred game in 2005. A check of the person-locator Web site revealed that he lived in the town of East Stroudsburg.

Then I began running Donna Jordan. She also lived in The False-Hearted Teddy

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Basingstoke Township, was cross-referenced with a few teddy bear e-tailers, and her name also appeared connected with James Polk High School, in nearby Lititz. I clicked on the high school Web site and clicked again on the faculty icon. Scrolling down the page, I found her name and my pulse began to pound as fast as Buddy Rich doing a drum solo on meth. Donna Jordan taught chemistry, which meant that she would know the lethal effects of superglue on human lungs.

Donna clearly had a motive and the technical know-how to commit the crime and I felt bad for so cavalierly dismissing Ash’s theory that the confrontation at breakfast was deliberately intended to provoke an asthma attack. Suddenly, it made perfect sense. The important thing now was to prove Donna had the opportunity to sabotage the inhaler and that meant going down to the lobby and trying to find out how many card keys had been issued for the Swifts’ room, to whom they were given, and when those cards were handed out.

Shutting the computer off, I quickly—well, as quickly as I’m able with this bum leg—changed clothes. I put on my dress slacks, a twill shirt, knotted the retina-searing Pokemon tie around my neck, and slipped my sports coat on. Studying myself in the mirror, I hoped I could still generate some of my old homicide dick persona. I switched my wallet containing my gold SFPD “retired”

inspector badge from my trousers to the left inside pocket of my jacket, where I’d customarily carried it during my career as a cop and felt a little more comfortable.

However, I had a far more challenging task in recaptur-ing some of my arrogant swagger long enough to fool the hotel staff and that was my need to abandon my cane while I was at the front desk. I had to appear as if I were fully ambulatory, otherwise the clerks might suspect I was a fraud. Theoretically, I can walk short distances without my cane, just as, theoretically, Carrot Top is a comedian.

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I knew it would be impossible for me to make it from the room to the elevator and then to the registration desk without my cane, so I decided to use it until the last moment and then find someplace to hide it temporarily.

Another potential problem was if the same desk clerk who’d checked us in yesterday morning was working today. Then again, what were the odds that he’d recognize me? It was a huge hotel, hundreds of new guests had registered the previous day, and it was unlikely he’d remember me . . . especially when he’d been paying such close attention to Ash.

I rode the elevator back down to the first floor and decided that I’d attract far more attention to myself if I wandered around trying to find the perfect place to hide my cane, so I leaned against an end table beside some chairs that were just around the corner from the registration desk. Then, taking a deep breath and steeling myself for the effort, I began walking as normally as I could. The first few steps didn’t hurt, but after that the pain started in my shin and began working its way upwards to my hip.

By the time I reached the desk, I was gritting my teeth.

There were two female clerks behind the counter and I guess, what with my angry grimace and white complexion, I must have looked a little intimidating. When the older woman saw me, she gave her younger counterpart a he’s-all-yours look, snatched up a phone, and pretended she was handling a call.

The younger woman sighed and said, “Yes, sir, can I help you?”

Reaching into my jacket, I pulled the badge case and flipped it open and shut quickly, hoping she didn’t notice that I’d just shown her a seven-pointed gold star as opposed to the silver shield worn by the Baltimore detectives. “I’m Detective Callahan from Homicide. Lieutenant Mulvaney told me to come down here and get some information.”

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“Yes, sir. Are you all right, sir?”

“Sure. Why?”

“You look like you’re in a lot of pain.”

“Acid-reflux. I shouldn’t eat doughnuts, but I do and I pay for it afterwards,” I said as if confiding a slightly shameful secret.