Death on the Rocks (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  “No, it hasn’t.”

  “Mr. Lomax, I am not asking you. I am telling you. Do not harass Mrs. Townsend again and do not pry further into the affairs of her late husband. Now please take your check and good day.”

  I sat back and crossed my legs. DeWitt looked confused. I tried to straighten him out.

  “In the first place, DeWitt, I don’t respond well to commands, let alone threats.”

  “Now see here—”

  “And in the second place, Maryanne Townsend hired me to look into the circumstances surrounding her husband’s death. I have been doing so. In the process I’ve dug up a few things that warrant further examination.”

  Dewitt gave me a wave of the hand. “If you are speaking of the mutual fund …”

  “I am. And I don’t buy your so-what attitude. Eighty-seven thousand dollars is serious money, even to a man with Townsend’s resources. He couldn’t have lost that much and not felt it. And it is lost. Gone. Vanished.”

  DeWitt made a feeble effort to sound unconcerned. “I’m certain it will turn up.”

  “I’m not. But there’s more than just money involved.”

  “Oh?”

  “Townsend had a mistress.”

  “Somehow, that does not surprise me.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  DeWitt sneered. He was good at it. “Phillip Townsend could be at times a most irresponsible man. He lacked … breeding. In many areas he rarely did what was best for Maryanne and Jennifer. Now he is gone and best forgotten.”

  “I don’t agree.”

  “That is irrelevant.”

  “Crimes have been committed, DeWitt.”

  “Adultery is hardly a crime.”

  “Rape is.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Townsend raped a girl.”

  “What?”

  “Someone videotaped him in the act. I have a copy of the tape.”

  DeWitt’s face gradually lost all signs of emotion. It became neutral. Stone.

  “Where did you acquire this tape?”

  “I found it in Townsend’s office. There’s a strong possibility he was being blackmailed.”

  “You have proof of this?”

  “What, blackmail? Not yet.”

  “Does any of this bear upon Mr. Townsend’s accident? By that I mean the tape, the mutual fund, and his mistress.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You have no evidence.”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any evidence, other than the videotape, that should be turned over to the police?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have proof that a crime was committed against Mr. Townsend?”

  “No, not really. Not yet.”

  He leaned forward and looked right through the back of my head.

  “Then you will leave it alone.”

  “I can’t believe you mean that.”

  “Believe it, Mr. Lomax.”

  “Christ, DeWitt, it’s likely your client’s husband was being blackmailed. If not as her friend, then certainly as an officer of the court, it’s your duty to—”

  “I do not need you to remind me of my duty,” he said loudly. Then, in a more moderate tone, “My duty lies with Maryanne Townsend.”

  I started to argue, but he held up his hand.

  “Maryanne is like a niece to me. I was a friend of her father before she was born. Her welfare is my major concern, Mr. Lomax, and she is one step away from a nervous breakdown. Another piece of disturbing information could push her over the edge. I’m not prepared to take that risk. It’s her life that we are talking about. Hers and her daughter’s.”

  “Maryanne’s stronger than you give her credit for, DeWitt. The important thing is, if Townsend was being blackmailed, she could be vulnerable to the same threats.”

  “There are no blackmailers.”

  “Then how do you explain the videotape?”

  “I would not attempt to. In fact, you should destroy it at once.”

  “No. Not yet.”

  DeWitt’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps it is you who are considering blackmail.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “This conversation is over, Mr. Lomax. If that videotape surfaces or if in any way you further harass Maryanne Townsend, you will find yourself either in jail or involved in a costly lawsuit. Do I make myself clear?”

  “More or less.”

  “Then take your money and leave.”

  I got up and walked out, the check still adrift on DeWitt’s ocean desk.

  Back at my office I phoned Maryanne Townsend.

  “We need to talk,” I said.

  “Yes. I have some news of my own.”

  “I’ll come over now.”

  “Oh. Well, Jennifer and I were just on our way out the door. Thursday is her golf lesson.”

  I said nothing. After all, Jenny was probably still bothered by that nasty old slice.

  Maryanne said, “Why don’t you meet me at Cherry Hills. We can talk over lunch.”

  Half an hour later I was sitting with her at a table in the Sports Grill, a cozy if plain room overlooking the ninth green. A fat man in plaid pants was lining up his putt.

  “Jennifer has her first playing lesson today,” Maryanne said. “She’s so excited.”

  “Who wouldn’t be.”

  The waitress brought our menus. She was polite to the point of subservience. Maryanne ordered a fresh garden salad with vinaigrette dressing on the side and I got a ham sandwich and a beer. When the waitress left, I gave Maryanne the news.

  “DeWitt just fired me.”

  “He what? For what reason?”

  “According to him I’m investigating things better left alone. He ordered me to stop. When I didn’t respond, he tried threats and money.”

  “Oh, he did, did he? And what did you say to all that?”

  “I told him I was working for you.”

  “You most certainly are.” She got out her checkbook and wrote me one. Not as much as DeWitt offered, but she was throwing in lunch. She said, “It is obvious that Clarence DeWitt has ulterior motives.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I told you I was going to look into my husband’s spending habits. Yesterday I had Mr. Sturgis bring me the balance sheets on Eagle Oil for the past few months. I found something most disturbing.”

  “What?”

  “On June twentieth, two weeks after Phillip died, a piece of property belonging to Eagle Oil was sold. The property is undeveloped land between Denver and Castle Rock. It brought four hundred and eighty thousand dollars. But only four hundred and twenty went back into Eagle Oil. The other sixty thousand was diverted to the personal account of Clarence DeWitt.”

  “You’re saying he stole that money?”

  “It would appear,” she said.

  Our food arrived. The waitress poured my Heineken into a glass, tipping it to keep the head down to country club standards.

  When she left, I asked, “Have you confronted DeWitt?”

  “No. I … I’m not certain what to do. I have always trusted him implicitly.”

  “Did you know anything about the sale of this land before yesterday?”

  “No. But Eagle Oil holds a number of undeveloped properties here and in Wyoming. I knew there were occasional sales. When the price was right.”

  “Who decides that?”

  “Phillip did,” she said. “Now it would be my decision.”

  “Tell me, Mrs. Townsend, have you ever before taken an active interest in Eagle Oil?”

  “Why … no.”

  “You left everything up to your husband and DeWitt and the accountants?”

  “Yes.”

  “DeWitt knew this, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then he might naturally assume you’d continue to let others handle things. After Phillip died.”

  Fear shaded her eyes. “You don’t think that Clarence DeWitt had anything to do with my husband’s de
ath.”

  “I don’t know. His actions are suspicious, no question about it. It could be, though, that he’s just taking advantage of the present situation.”

  “What are you … what are we going to do?”

  The “we” part was encouraging.

  “There’s someone I need to check out. Leonard Reese. Do you know him?”

  “No,” she said. Perhaps too quickly.

  “His initials fit those on your husband’s calendar on the day he died.”

  “Does Clarence know this man?”

  “He says no, but we can’t be sure. What I’d like you to do is look through the books on Eagle Oil for the past year or so. See what you can find.”

  She nodded.

  “Do you trust your accountant, Sturgis?”

  “I suppose so,” she said.

  “Tell him to keep this a secret from DeWitt. If DeWitt finds out, we’ll know where Sturgis stands.”

  Maryanne Townsend looked at her salad as if there were a spider in it. “These men have been involved with my family for years. It’s … frightening.”

  She almost sounded melodramatic. It occurred to me that all this could be an act. But if she was acting now, she was damn good at it.

  I finished my beer and told her I’d be in touch. I left her staring out the window. The fat guy was still lining up his putt.

  CHAPTER 19

  WHEN I GOT BACK to the office, I found the usual message from Cassandra O’Day. No message. Apparently, she would let me wait forever. But I had to see her again.

  I called Monroe and gave him the license of her new blue Porsche. He said it was registered to a Sandra Daley in Aurora.

  I hung up and pointed the Olds east.

  The city of Aurora sprawls east and south of Denver. It consists of roughly equal parts of the three evolutionary stages of suburban blight. One, the original vast undeveloped perfect fields of wild grass and prairie dogs and rusted barbed wire. Two, shiny clusters of high-tech industrial parks and condos and shopping malls. And inevitably three, faded offices and tract homes and storefronts that blended together in terminal monotony.

  Sandra/Cassandra lived in the shiny part. Well above my class. But well below Phillip Townsend’s.

  I parked in front of her townhouse. It had two stories, a double garage, and a front lawn the size of a bath towel. There were flowers along the front and a potted plant hanging by the door.

  I went up the brief walk and rang the bell.

  Inside, a dog barked. He moved from deep within the house to the front door. He sounded big, probably a German shepherd. His steady “rorf-rorf” vibrated the door and raised the tiny hairs on the back of my neck. I dug out my notebook and on an empty page wrote my name and numbers and “Please Call Me.”

  I tucked the page in the screen door. The monster inside didn’t like it.

  I drove to the office and waited for the phone to ring. It didn’t. I went home. The phone didn’t ring there, either.

  The next morning I pounded out six miles under a hard blue sky.

  The ground was touched with the faintest trace of moisture. Clouds had come and gone during the night, creeping away like guilty parishioners who’d dropped too little in the collection plate. The few drops they’d left behind were quickly sucked up by the hungry white sun.

  I showered, shaved, and ate breakfast. Two cantaloupe halves, four bran muffins with no butter, and a cup of black coffee. I felt healthy. Wholesome. Ready for East Colfax. Ready to mingle with scum.

  Heat or no, the street was alive. Hookers and hippies, bums and suits, straights and gays, blacks and Chicanos, Indians and Anglos. Walking, slouching, crouching. Looking around. Looking for something. Some of them found it at Pussy’s.

  I parked the Olds and walked past a black pimp giving a whore a hard time, then around two guys holding hands and dressed for the beach, then over a smelly geezer huddled under a trench coat, and finally through the front door.

  Pussy’s was a sexual supermarket.

  The walls were hung, literally, with assorted rubber items in all the popular shapes and sizes. Also on display was a new shipment of leather masks, harnesses, and whips. For the shy, there was a wide variety of inflatable dolls. For the timid, stacks of books and racks of magazines. An arched entryway in the rear wall led to the triplex-X cinema and the photo studios. The studios provided live nude models. Only a hundred bucks. You didn’t even need a camera.

  There was a guy standing behind the counter. He more or less fit Gofman’s description of Reese.

  I told him, “I’m looking for Leonard Reese.”

  “Never heard of him,” he said and snapped his Spearmint. He was in his late twenties and lifted weights. He wore a red fishnet muscle shirt. His hair was black and shiny with oil and his neck was covered with zits.

  “I understand he works here,” I said.

  Muscles held up his hand for me to wait a minute, then yelled across the room, “All right, Mac, hit the road! Yeah, you by the door! You been in here all morning, so buy something, or get out!”

  The guy shuffled out.

  Muscles said, “Now, what?”

  “Leonard Reese. Didn’t he used to work here?”

  He shrugged. His deltoids moved like small pigs. “I wouldn’t know nothing about that.”

  “Who would?”

  “Oscar.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “The owner,” he said and nodded toward the far end of the counter. An ugly buddha squatted behind the cash register.

  I went over to him. “Oscar?”

  “That’s right, friend.”

  He was short and fat with a face that could scare a bull elephant away from a sack of peanuts. Most of the hair on his head was growing out of his ears. I figured he took a drink now and then since his nose looked like an eggplant. His left eye was squinched shut. His lips were blubbery and, at present, mutilating a wet cigar.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “You want to rent a model.”

  “Not really.”

  “A movie, then. We got kids, animals, S and M, fuck-suck, whatever you want.”

  “I’m looking for a guy—”

  “We got guys, too. Boys, old men, paraplegics, whatever you want.”

  “The guy’s name is Leonard Reese.”

  “Am I supposed to know him?” Oscar was playing dumb, not that he needed the practice.

  “I heard he works here. Or used to.”

  “Heard from who?”

  “Some guy.”

  “This guy got a name?”

  “Does it matter?” I said.

  Oscar shifted the soggy stogie from one corner of his mouth to the other. “Yeah, in fact, it does, seeing as how I don’t know you from the man in the moon.”

  “Gus Gofman.”

  “Gofman, huh. Yeah, I think I still got a couple of his movies around here. Too much talk, though. He thinks he’s an artist.”

  “What about Reese?”

  “He don’t work here.”

  “But he used to.”

  “Sure. When he felt like working.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  Oscar’s cigar moved back to its original corner.

  “Why should I tell you?”

  I laid a twenty on the counter.

  “What, are you kidding me?”

  I dug out two more. That put a gleam in Oscar’s good eye. He reached for the nice little pile. I slapped my hand over it.

  “Fair’s fair, Oscar. Talk to me.”

  “Yeah, right. First off, I don’t know where Reese is. He moved around a lot. From what I hear, he stays with whatever chick he’s balling at the moment.”

  He eyed the twenties. I let him take one. He jammed it in his pocket before Jackson could blink.

  “Try Donnelly’s,” he said, “a bar on the north side. He hangs out there. Used to, anyway.”

  I let him take another twenty.

  “When’s the last time you saw Reese?”

  �
�Would you believe last week? Three months ago he quits without a word, just stops coming in. Now he wants his job back. Says he didn’t quit, just took a leave of absence. Went to Vegas. Went to Mexico for a month. I said maybe you could’ve used a telephone. I said I already hired Bruce there and he comes to work regular. Reese tells me to fuck off. I say, sure, Reese, whatever you say. I don’t want no arguments with Reese, not even with Bruce around. I seen him kick the shit out of a guy one time and—”

  “He don’t sound so tough,” Bruce piped in from down the counter.

  “Nobody’s talking to you,” Oscar shouted. “Just shut up and watch the customers.”

  Bruce sulked, arms folded like pythons locked in combat.

  “You said Reese left about three months ago. Do you remember when exactly?”

  Oscar stared at the twenty under my hand. I let him take it. He grinned like a thief.

  “Just past tax time,” he said. “April eighteenth, twentieth, somewhere in there.”

  Townsend had liquidated his mutual fund on the seventeenth. I nodded toward Bruce.

  “Is that what Reese did for you?”

  “That and more. Mostly he handled the girls.”

  “The girls?”

  “Yeah. It ain’t easy finding whor—er, models that don’t look like baboons. And once you get one, try keeping her around. She wants more money, more time off, more whatever. Reese could find them and keep them. He’s got a way with the ladies, if you know what I mean.”

  “You think you’ll hear from him again?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  I got out a card, the one with just my name. I wrote the office number on the back.

  “If he comes in, have him call me.”

  Oscar squinted at the card.

  “Pretty small,” he said. “I hope I don’t lose it.”

  I started to give him another twenty, then stopped. I tried a long shot.

  “Maybe I should be spending my money on something better.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a model. Or is it too early in the day?”

  “Hell, no,” he said, smiling, showing me a mouthful of yellow stubs.

  I figured he’d send me through the arch and let me look over the girls stabled in back. Instead, he took a large binder from behind the counter and set it on top. A photo album. He began flipping through it. “Let’s see who we got today.”