The Now-And-Then Detective Page 11

  It was none other than Libby Leverton, one of Henry Wilberforce’s two nieces, come all the way from Boston.

  Sam nodded toward me and Libby walked over to our booth. I stood and said, “You’ve come a long way for our happy hour, Libby.”

  She smiled. “I hear it’s a very good one.”

  “Libby, this is my friend Marisa Lopez,” I said. “Marisa, this is one of Henry Wilberforces nieces.”

  I moved to Marisa’s side of the booth and said, “Please join us.”

  Libby slid in where I had been sitting and said, “Pardon me for just dropping in like this, Detective Starkey. But I have something I need to discuss with you and I thought it better to do it in person.”

  Marisa looked at her wristwatch and said, “You’ll have to excuse me, I have a house showing.”

  I stood so she could get out of the booth. When she was gone, I sat down and Libby looked at me, hesitated, then said, “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

  Which was a guaranteed way to get my full attention. I made a mental note to tell Bill Stevens that that would be a great first line for a novel. How could you not keep reading?

  “I’m afraid I wasn’t entirely straightforward with you when we met before,” Libby continued.

  “In what way?” I asked.

  “I really didn’t know that Uncle Henry was dead before you told me,” she said. “But, several months before your visit to Boston, I was called to a family meeting at Alan Dumont’s law firm in Washington. Alan is the husband of my cousin June. Alan, June, and Scooter Lowry, who is my other cousin, were there, in a conference room, along with a private detective Alan had hired, a most disagreeable man, to follow Henry around and document what we heard was his odd behavior. I was opposed to that, but I was outvoted. June had found out, I don’t know how exactly, that Henry was giving away large amounts of money. She said that, as his only heirs, we should do something about it. The detective had a list of some of Henry’s recent gifts, and photos of him around Lake Forest, wearing outlandish costumes. Alan said we could petition the Lake County Probate Court in Illinois to have Henry declared mentally incompetent to handle his own affairs, and have June appointed as his guardian.”

  “And you did that?” I asked her.

  “No,” she said. “Alan told us that the proceeding could take a very long time. Scooter was very upset about that. He’s never made much of himself, truth be told. It was clear that he really needed our uncle’s money. When the meeting ended, Scooter said, ‘Wouldn’t it be a shame if Uncle Henry had an accident.’ He didn’t mean it would be a shame, I’m certain. Then Uncle Henry died, even before that detective finished his work looking for proof Henry couldn’t take care of himself, so there was no reason for the court petition.”

  She paused, looked down at her hands, then up at me, and said, “Well, I never imagined that Scooter was capable of harming anybody, but …”

  “But now you think he might have?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t. I hate to even think it’s possible that Scooter could kill Uncle Henry, or have him killed.”

  “What about your cousin June?”

  “To me, June is less likely than Scooter to commit such a horrible crime. She and Alan are very well-off financially.”

  “Thank you for telling me this, Libby,” I said. “I’m glad you did, despite your reservations. I’ll look into Scooter’s possible involvement in your uncle’s death.”

  I didn’t say I would look at Scooter again.

  “Please let me know what you find,” she said. “One way or another, it will put my mind at rest.”

  “Can I give you a ride to the airport?” I asked her.

  “Stewart arranged for me to use his company’s airplane, and he hired a car and driver for me here,” she said.

  We stood and she left to fly back to Boston without having to go through the TSA line.

  It was interesting that neither she nor Scooter nor Alan Dumont had suggested that someone other than one of the would-be heirs was responsible for Henry’s murder. Which told me I was on the right track.

  “So it’s back to California to see Scooter Lowry,” Tom Sullivan said when we met in his office later that afternoon.

  “I have no idea if Libby Leverton is telling the truth about Scooter,” I said. “But I need to check it out before drilling down on the Levertons.”

  Drilling down. Showing off my high-tech knowledge.

  At that point, I felt like the Duncan Yo-Yo I had as a boy, being jerked up and down my suspect list.

  “What will be your approach this time, given that the first go-round apparently didn’t work?”

  “When I figure that out, you’ll be the second to know,” I told him.

  “And who will be the first?”

  “Me.”

  I knew that Cubby Cullen would be interested in the new developments, so I called him. As I began to tell him about them, he cut me off and said, “You know, Jack, I can focus better when there’s food in the vicinity.”

  I couldn’t argue with that concept. We met at a little place called Pastrami Dan’s in Naples. As we stood in line at the counter, Cubby said, “I just had my annual physical. Gotta watch my cholesterol level, so I’m just having one sandwich.”

  That was his problem. I got my usual two.

  As we tucked into our sandwiches, I updated Cubby on my investigation, with all of its complications. He listened with interest, pausing to wipe the pastrami juice from his chin with the back of his hand, and asked, “Do you think this Scooter fellow has the skills to pull off a pro-style hit like that?”

  “Nothing in his background indicates that he does,” I answered. “But he has a friend who might. A big guy who has Scooter’s back. He doesn’t seem like a killer, either, but it’s possible. I need to find out.”

  “Did your computer hacker lady turn up anything incriminating about Scooter?”

  “She didn’t. But if this pal, or Scooter himself, is responsible for Henry’s murder, there wouldn’t necessarily be any message traffic about the crime.”

  “In a situation like that, you need a confession,” Cubby said. “Short of waterboarding, how you gonna pull that off?”

  “The reason I offered to buy you that cholesterol torpedo, Cubby, is that I was hoping you’d tell me.”

  Cubby finished his sandwich, blotted his chin with a napkin this time, used the napkin to wipe a gob of mustard from his uniform shirt, leaving a big yellow stain, and said, “Sorry, Jack, but you’re on your own with that. Let’s just say I owe you a pastrami sandwich.”

  17.

  A Night at the Races

  So it was back to the Left Coast, back to Santa Monica, back to the Wyndham Hotel. If Libby Leverton’s story was to be believed, Scooter Lowry needed money and he thought he would inherit some from Henry. To do that, he needed to stop his uncle from giving it all away.

  I had to find out if Scooter had a financial problem, and, if he did, if it was serious enough to cause him to commit murder.

  My computer hacker, Lucy Gates, had been unable to discover Scooter’s problem, maybe because Scooter and his pal Stanley would talk about it in person, no texts, e-mails, or phone conversations, so I’d have to rely upon the ages-old detecting technique: shoe leather. Boots on the ground. A full-out infantry assault. Woody Allen said, “Showing up is 80 percent of life.” I had to show up.

  Again.

  You can’t do surveillance while driving a car like a Dodge Charger GT, so I rented a generic tan Nissan sedan at LAX. A car so ordinary that you might not notice it if it was parked in your living room. The allegedly half-hour or so drive north along Pacific Coast Highway to Santa Monica took twice as long due to a gapers’ block caused by a multi-car pileup in the southbound lanes, headed the other way from me. Gapers’ blocks usually drive me absolutely batty. Why slow down when there is no problem in your lanes? Haven’t you ever seen an accident before, people? But it was not a problem this time, because one of
the Nissan’s radio tuning buttons was set to KJAZZ FM, a very good LA jazz and blues station. Which would have been even better if the car had a good audio system, but renters can’t be choosers.

  I checked into the Wyndham, had lunch at Izzy’s Deli on Wilshire Boulevard recommended by the desk clerk. I got a large coffee and three glazed doughnuts to go, then motored over to Scooter’s house and parked on the street to begin my surveillance.

  It was late afternoon, California time. I didn’t know if Scooter was at home. I’d considered wearing a disguise, like Elizabeth and Philip Jennings in the TV show The Americans, but decided that Scooter had only met me that one time at Starbucks and wouldn’t be expecting to see me again. I didn’t know how in the world anyone was ever fooled by the Jennings’s disguises, which consisted of cheesy wigs, nerdy glasses, and sometimes, hats. They still looked like themselves, wearing wigs, glasses, and hats. You’d think that the makeup people could have done better, given that they’d made Gary Oldman look so much like Winston Churchill that he could have fooled Hitler, up close.

  At six thirty, having been sustained by KJAZZ and the coffee and doughnuts, I saw Scooter come out of his house, go into the detached garage, and back out in a beautifully restored Ford Woody Wagon, probably early 1950s, with a roof rack suitable for transporting a surfboard. Think Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ Safari.” If Scooter went down for murder, maybe I could buy that cherry Woody at a police auction. Marisa would love it.

  I followed the Woody at an appropriate distance as Scooter drove across town and parked in a lot at a one-story, green cinder-block building with a neon sign identifying it as Stanley’s Gym which, I’d learned, Scooter had purchased for his friend. Scooter went into the gym. I parked on the other side of the street, down a ways, and waited. Scooter didn’t look like he lifted anything heavier than a beer mug, so I assumed he was at the gym to see Stanley and would be out before too long.

  Which he was, just minutes later, along with Stanley. They got into Scooter’s Woody. I pulled out and followed them toward the beach until they arrived at The Misfit Restaurant + Bar and parked in front.

  I pulled into the beach lot across the street and debated whether or not to go into the bar to see what they were doing. Just having a drink? Or meeting with a loan shark who had Scooter by the short hairs?

  They came out of the bar twenty minutes later. I followed them to the 10 Freeway entrance ramp, on the 10 to the 405, then to an exit for a town called Cypress. Heavy traffic all the way. It took so long that I needed a shave when we arrived. I didn’t know why Californians called their expressways “freeways.” Just to be different, I guessed. Surely, we’d passed a lot of bars along the way, so why the long drive in traffic?

  I found out when we arrived at the Los Alamitos Race Course. I followed Scooter and Stanley into the large parking lot, stopping to pay the five-dollar fee to an attendant in a booth, and took a space one row over from Scooter’s. I decided I’d follow them inside. If Scooter had a murderous money problem, betting on the ponies could be the reason.

  I stayed back as Scooter and Stanley headed toward the track building. A sign advertised daytime thoroughbred racing and nighttime quarter horse racing. It was dark, so we’d see the quarter horses. I didn’t know one equine from another. I’d watched the movie Secretariat while at home recovering from one of my gunshot wounds and found it to be very moving. At one point, I shouted out, “Let the big horse run!” Probably the aftereffect of the anesthesia.

  I mingled with the crowd as we entered the building, paying another five bucks for clubhouse admission, because I’d seen Scooter and Stanley walking toward an elevator marked “To Clubhouse.” I hadn’t even placed a bet yet and I was already ten bucks down. That’s why I don’t gamble.

  They got into the elevator along with a group of other people. I waited for the next one, rode it up, got out, and spotted them in a large, open club room, seated at a high-top table next to a wall of windows overlooking the track. A waitress arrived, spoke with them, walked away, and soon returned with two tall mugs of foamy beer. They looked good to me. Day at a time. I hung back beside the bar, out of sight. They sipped their beers. A man’s voice over a loudspeaker announced that it was ten minutes to post time, so place your bets.

  There were four betting windows on the other side of the bar from me. Scooter and Stanley went to the windows, waited in line, then walked back to their table holding paper betting receipts.

  The race began. Secretariat wasn’t entered. Even if the big horse was alive and in California, I did know from the movie that he was a thoroughbred, not a quarter horse. A horse named Sunny Side Up won by a length. It was apparent that Scooter and Stanley hadn’t bet on him, or her, to win, place, or show, because they ripped their receipts in half and dropped them onto the floor. Littering, but track officials were unlikely to hassle customers who paid their salaries, and then some.

  Nine races and three more beers later, the boys left the building, all of their receipts ripped in half and dropped onto the floor. I went over and picked up the receipts. All were twenty-dollar win bets. They’d each dropped two hundred simoleons. Not their lucky night. If Scooter had a serious betting jones, wagering on horses at the track and on sports, political elections, and whether or not Punxsutawney Phil would see his shadow, with a bookie, could land him in a financial jam.

  I tailed Scooter for three more days. He surfed, showing considerable skill I could see from the beach, hit the bars, visited Stanley’s Gym, got a haircut, went for a spin on his dirt bike, and one night took a lovely young woman to dinner at a fancy restaurant called the Sea Salt Fish Grill.

  I waited in the parking lot, dining on two cheeseburgers, fries, and a strawberry shake from a Sonic Drive-In I’d passed. I was upset to see on the drive-thru menu that one of my all-time favorite burger joints now offered vegetarian burgers.

  It was three A.M. when I was awakened by a pounding on my hotel room door. Seal Team 6? Stand down, bin Laden’s not here, boys. Have you tried Pakistan, back in 2011?

  I took my Glock from my suitcase, which I could fly with because I had police credentials, jacked a round into the chamber, and said, with as much menace in my voice as I could muster: “Who’s there?”

  “Would you believe room service?” a voice answered that sounded like Scooter’s, if I remembered correctly.

  I opened the door to find Scooter and Stanley standing in the hallway, no weapons in their hands, so I invited them in.

  “Why have you been following me?” Scooter asked.

  “Was I that obvious?”

  “You’ll recall that Stanley was a skip tracer,” Scooter told me.

  Which made me feel a bit better about my tradecraft skills.

  “I’ll ask again, why are you following me?” Scooter said.

  I had a gun and they didn’t, so I decided to level with them.

  “I talked to your cuz, Libby Leverton. She told me about that family meeting at Alan Dumont’s law firm in Washington. Libby, June Dumont, Alan, and you were there, she said. All of you assumed at that time you were your rich Uncle Henry’s only heirs. Libby said a private detective hired by Alan reported that Henry was giving away large amounts of money, and that you mentioned that it would be a shame, meaning not a shame, if Henry had an accident before he squandered all of his wealth. Libby also told me about the idea to petition for an Illinois probate court proceeding seeking to have Henry declared mentally incompetent, and June appointed as his guardian. The problem being that it could take nearly a year for a decision, during which time Henry would keep spending. She said that you seemed especially upset by that. That made me wonder if you decided to rub out Henry because you have a financial problem and needed inheritance cash.”

  “Rub out” being an old-time crime-noir term I thought was kind of cool.

  Scooter asked, “Did Libby mention that her husband, Stewart, was also at the meeting?”

  “She did not,” I told him.

  “It was Ala
n’s idea to bring the probate court action,” Scooter said. “Thinking like a lawyer, and everyone thought it was a good idea except for the timing. I was just blowing smoke, like I do. However, Stewart seemed downright distraught. Maybe he’s the one with money problems. Developers go broke all the time. He should be at the top of your suspect list, not me.”

  I tended to believe him. That would explain why Libby had taken the trouble to come to Fort Myers Beach, all the way from Boston, to tell me about Scooter’s comments at that family meeting at the law firm, in order to divert my attention from herself and her husband. It worked.

  I was curious about something, and asked Scooter: “Why are you here at this hour of the morning? The witching hour.”

  “The witching what?”

  “Never mind that part.”

  “Ah, we were out having a few beers,” Scooter said. “Your hotel was on the way home, so we decided to stop by instead of coming back in the morning. Didn’t want to miss you.”

  As they were leaving, I said, “That’s a very nice Woody you have, Scooter. A real classic.”

  Sadly, there would be no police auction.

  “Thanks,” he said. “It was a twenty-first birthday gift from my father. He was a very successful businessman. He took care of me for life. Yes, I do a little gambling, and some partying, and I like nice cars, and cycle racing, and I don’t have a job per se, but I use my father’s financial advisor to manage my portfolio, and I’m doing just fine.”

  “And the gym makes a profit, if he ever needs any dough, which he doesn’t,” Stanley added.

  I nodded, they left, and I went back to sleep.

  I had a nine thirty A.M. flight from LAX to Boston. I was racking up enough air-mile points on this case to earn a trip on Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket to Mars. Or at least a set of steak knives. After my chat with Scooter, I now believed Stewart Leverton was my man and that Libby was his partner in crime. If he wasn’t, I was out of suspects.