“So,” he said, adjusting the razor-sharp crease of his right pants leg, “the Pendleton killing.”
“Yeah, the Pendleton killing. Who’s got it?”
“Guy named Carson Wykcoff.”
“What’s his take on it?”
“Oh, Carson’s sure it’s a simple case of a mugging gone bad. Figures that one of the brothers came down off the Hill that morning, saw Pendleton walking along, decided to take advantage of the situation. Pendleton put up a fight, the brother panicked and shot him, and then, quote, fled the scene, unquote.”
“This was at 7:00 a.m. What’re we talking here, some kind of early-bird mugger, out to get a jump on the rest of the criminal element?”
“I ‘spect you’d have to ask Detective Wykcoff about that.”
“Let me take a stab in the dark here. By any chance, would Detective Wykcoff be a bit on the racist side?”
“Detective Wykcoff is about every kind of “ist” you can think of, in addition to being a world-class screw-up and, probably, the laziest detective on the force.”
“How’s he manage to keep his job?”
Denny grinned and said, “Naivete, thy name is Barnes. Word is that Carson owns a couple of our city councilmen. Caught’em both in a raid on one of the city’s more notorious after-hours gay bars a while back. Carson must have loved it. For him, it was a two-fer. Apparently, he managed to hustle both of them out of there without anyone else seeing what was going on, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
“So much for my belief in the sanctity of city government. What do you think of his must-have-been-a-brother theory?”
“About what you do. It’s probably bullshit.”
“You have a chance to talk with him about the case?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. Ran into him yesterday afternoon, asked him how he was doing with it. Told me it was cut-and-dried, no mysteries.”
“Terry Pendleton’s widow told me her husband was expecting to be promoted to partner soon, and that he never would have resisted a mugger. Just wasn’t in his makeup to do something like that.”
Denny was silent for a minute. Then he said, “That’s interesting. Might be you’d want to ask Detective Wykcoff about that, too.”
“I will. Do you know if he bothered to talk to anybody at Chaney and Cox?”
“Oh, yeah, Carson paid them a visit. Told me everyone over there was a tight-ass, wouldn’t tell him anything.”
“You got any take at all on this thing, Denny?”
Our salads had arrived, and he waited until the waitress left before he answered.
“I know they checked into Pendleton’s background a little. He didn’t have a record, not even a speeding ticket. No money problems, no evidence of any drug use, either. And what little his colleagues said about him to Wykcoff was all positive.”
“So . . .?”
“So on the surface, the panicked mugger theory looks good. But there’s a smell around this thing that I don’t like, especially after hearing what the widow told you.”
“I guess I’ll try to set up a meeting with Wykcoff. You mind if I use your name?”
Denny gave me one of his super-wide grins.
“Are you kidding? I’d pay good money to be there when you and old Carson get together. Maybe he’ll share his secrets of super detectin’ with you.”
“And maybe I’ll be sure to take my super-large bottle of Excedrin.”
“Couldn’t hurt,” said Denny. “Couldn’t hurt at all.”
At that point, the good-looking lady who’d been staring at Denny the whole meal got up and sauntered over to our table.
“Excuse me,” she told him, “but don’t we know each other?”
“I don’t think so,” Denny said.
“Well, then,” she purred, “perhaps we should.”
“Check, please,” I said, as Denny pulled out the chair beside him.
Chapter 7
When I left the Pleasure Bar, I decided to walk around the neighborhood for a while. It was early April but felt more like early May. We’d had a mild winter, and all the signs pointed toward a hot summer. El Nino, said the weather people. A change for the worse in the commercial fishing industry in some of the South America countries, they said. I didn’t yet get the relationship between the number of tunas frolicking off the coast of Peru and the number of rainy winter days in southwestern Pennsylvania, but the evidence appeared to be pretty solid. I guess you had to have a degree in meteorology to actually understand it. Or, at the very least, perfect teeth and an expensive haircut.
I wandered down the street with no particular destination in mind. I just wanted to walk a bit and think about Terry Pendleton. At the beginning of a new investigation, I often organize my thoughts while walking or running or hitting the weights. Any sort of repetitive physical act will do. It seems to help me clear my mind, a task Angie once described as being “no big deal.” As I walked, I was peripherally aware of the people I passed, the kids on skateboards, the young mothers pushing baby strollers, the sexy businesswomen in Ann Taylor ensembles, but my thoughts were focused on the case. So far, I didn’t have much of an opinion as to why Terry Pendleton had been shot, but the mugging theory wasn’t very high on my list of probable explanations. I try to keep an open mind, but after talking with Rachel, I had a gut feeling that there was something else at work here. It didn’t seem likely that Terry would have resisted a mugger, not if what his wife had told me about his personality was true, and I generally try to believe what my clients tell me, at least until I’m given reason not to. That has
