“Yep,” Leonard said, “and I have noticed something that we elite in the crime business like to call a clue.”
I turned the picture left and right. I said, “The shoes are clean.”
“Yep,” Leonard said. “If they were new, and he did a bit of jogging before he got interrupted and shot in the head, maybe they’d look kind of clean, but these look really clean. I think someone at the police department thought the same. Otherwise, why would they take a close-up of the bottom of his shoes?”
“Damn, Leonard,” Marvin said, “that may be the first time you’ve ever had a good idea. You’re like a regular Miss Marple.”
“And her shoes are missing,” Leonard said. “So maybe they got taken away before she was dumped. They got the clothes dropped all right, but forgot the socks and shoes.”
“So, you’re thinking they weren’t shot on the trail?” I said.
Leonard nodded, and now he had about him an air of superiority. That’s how he was, one good idea and for a day he thought he was Einstein. “And the car, it could have been left there when the killer dumped them. Or maybe the car was dropped off later. I don’t know. It’s just an idea.”
“It kind of makes sense,” I said. “I was bothered by the fact the bodies lay there that long and no one found them. Could have been that way, but I been to that place, and it’s pretty busy with people running, walking, picnicking, screwing in the bushes. But if they were killed somewhere else and dropped off early… Any information on time of death?”
“They were killed in the morning, was their determination,” Marvin said. “That’s all the report there is about that. As I said, half a day maybe, if they were lying there the whole time. It’s a guess. They’re country cops and country doctors. Not stupid, just not geared toward that sort of thing. The place doesn’t have a real coroner.”
“What about blood evidence?” I asked. “That would let you know something about where they were killed.”
“There’s no blood evidence information here,” Marvin said, shuffling through some pages with writing on them. Leonard and I shuffled through the same pages. I said, “Isn’t that a little odd? I mean, they got all this information, but nothing on that?”
“Again, the Camp Rapture police aren’t noted for efficiency,” Marvin said. “They do have a hell of a fund- raiser with an assortment of different kinds of barbecue, including raccoon and possum, and a country band once a year, but blood evidence tools… not so much. The chief over there is new, and the one before him was an educated idiot. Degrees out the ass and all the common sense of a duck. Anyway, the new lady they got is all right. Before her it was just good old straightforward corruption, so they’ve moved up a notch.”
“You think this is something the cops of that time were in on?” I asked. “Some kind of cover-up?”
“I think they were just incompetent,” he said.
We sipped coffee, looked at the photos and the information for a while. When I was through, I looked up, said, “There’s a kind of neatness about it.”
“That’s what Mrs. Christopher thinks. That it’s all too neat.”
“What does she think really happened?” I asked.
“She thinks it was a hit,” Marvin said. “She thinks he made someone mad, or knew something he shouldn’t, so they killed him, made it look like another kind of crime. A lot of that is just motherly instinct, but Cason thinks maybe there’s something to it.”
“So you care about what he thinks?” I said.
“He is an investigative reporter. You grow some instincts, you do that enough.”
“And maybe,” I said, “Mrs. Christopher is just grieving and trying to make more sense of this than just a standard old murder. The idea that anyone can die for any kind of stupid thing is hard to take, especially if it’s someone close to you.”
“That’s also possible,” Marvin said. “The daughter, June, Ted’s sister, thinks there’s nothing to it.”
“You talked to her?” I asked.
Marvin shook his head. “That will be your job. Mrs. Christopher said Ted and his sister didn’t get along well, not even when they were kids. She also said June was bothered that Mrs. Christopher planned to leave her money to Ted. Which on the surface sounds tough, but she said she planned to do that because June married into money and divorced real well. Ted, without family money, would have ended up with the lint in his shorts. I should note too, that the private detective she hired didn’t believe it was a hit either.”
“So we’re sloppy seconds?” I said.
“Yep,” Marvin said. “She told me that right up front. I knew the guy she hired, Jimmy Malone. Used to run into him from time to time doing police work. Not exactly on the up-and-up. When he didn’t find anything, Mrs. Christopher let it lie for a while, then got it on her mind again that it was a setup, and hired us.”
“So,” Leonard said, “she thinks Malone took the money and did nothing?”
“My guess is,” Marvin said, “that’s what Cason thinks and is afraid we’re gonna do the same. Me, I don’t know. Jimmy was a shit, and a womanizer, and he liked money too much, but he usually did the job. He just didn’t always do it the way it ought to be done. He didn’t mind playing angles. But the thing is, he didn’t find out any more than the police knew.”
“We could talk to him,” Leonard said.
“Only if you talk to the dead,” Marvin said. “He retired, then promptly drowned in a boating accident out at the lake.”
Leonard said. “What’s this?” He was holding up one of the photos of the dead girl.
“Kind of obvious, don’t you think?” Marvin said.
“Not the girl. The tree.”
“Let me see,” Marvin said. “I’m going to go for Hoss apple.”
“The other tree,” Leonard said.
“Hickory nut,” I said.
“No. What’s on the tree?”
We each found our copy of the photo and looked at the hickory tree. There was something on it all right. It was an angled view but it was some kind of drawing. What I could make out was a horned head and a partial face. It was painted there in red. Spray paint, most likely.
“Graffiti,” I said.
“Yeah,” Leonard said, “but is there anything about it in the notes?”
“No,” Marvin said. “And that’s because no one thought it meant anything. Kids paint on trees and underpasses and walls all the time. Why would someone kill them and then make a design on a tree?”
“All I’m saying,” Leonard said, “is Mrs. Christopher may be right. It might not be a random murder.”
“That whole mystery clue thing with paintings on trees and feathers and moles in the shape of the state of Rhode Island on a blonde’s ass, in real life, it doesn’t happen much,” Marvin said.
“He’s working his way through the Sherlock Holmes series,” I said. “He’s gotten a little obsessive about mysteries. He found a pair of socks he’s been missing for a couple of months, and he thinks he’s full of deductive reasoning now. Like maybe the socks had some kind of plan to hide out.”
“Listen, Ace,” Marvin said. “You and Hap just go out and ask questions and bumble around. I’ll do the real detective work from the office.”
“Ouch,” Leonard said.
13
So that’s how it went. Now we were sitting on the couch looking at those same photos and reading the information that came with them, thinking back on our meeting with Marvin.
It had started raining hard again, and the atmosphere had settled on the house like a woolen cap. The electricity blinked and crackled a few times but stayed on. It was so dark outside we had to turn on a light.
“So,” Leonard said. “Where do we start?”
“Same place the cops did, with the people who knew the victims.”
“There’s a long list here,” Leonard said, flipping through the folder.
