#2 Murder Is No Dancing Matter

When I got the call I was wandering deep in the land of Nod. I had just wrapped a murder case that kept me up for a week straight. By day three of no sleep I could feel my heartbeat in my finger tips. By day five I was seeing colors and hearing voices not yet known to man. I had been sleeping for almost 14 uninterrupted hours when a grating ring dragged me out of somnolent bliss.

“This call is from a person currently detained in Tampa, Florida. All calls are logged and recorded and may be listened to by a member of jail staff. If you do not wish to accept this call, please hang up now.”

Well, that forced me to shake off any latent weariness I had in me. I blinked myself awake and tried to think of anyone I knew who would be in jail and need to call me. I will say, that list was longer than I would have liked.

“Hello? Carolyn?”

Ahhh. It was Candy. Honestly, I was a little surprised. She was one of the most straight-laced people I knew. We had been on the same speed puzzling team for two years. She can do masterful things with monochrome jigsaw puzzles. And don’t even get me started on how good she is at putting together edges. Besides the fact that she is a stripper, she is a total square. She even does her taxes every year! (Which I also do, if anyone from the IRS is reading.) 

“Candy? Why’re you in jail? Did the club get raided or—”

“They think I killed someone!”

“Woah, woah, woah, you what?”

“I found him. I was dancing. It was a private room, I just left for a little bit and when I came back he was … Carolyn, I’m scared. You’re the only person I thought could help. You have to help me.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course I’ll help you. Just, quick question, did you kill him?”

“Carolyn!”

“Hey, I’ll still help you if you did, you just gotta tell me. But don’t be stupid. Say it in code or something—”

“Carolyn, I did not kill Henry.”

“Oh. Great. That’ll make everything a lot easier. So, what happened?”

“It was like all the other nights, you know. I came into work. I was on the floor for a couple of hours and then Henry walks in. Henry’s one of the regulars. He’s not a bad guy, really, at least he’s not pushy like some of the others can be. He’s just really sad. He always pays a lot for a private room and he just talks and lies in your lap and asks you to pat his head. Right now a lot of what he talks about is his divorce and how sad he is that he'll never start a family with his wife. It’s really depressing stuff and no one really likes it, so we shuffle it around every week. Tonight I was on Henry-duty. So, he paid me for the private room and I took him back there and I barely sat on the couch before he started crying on me. Now, sometimes he cries when he starts talking about how much he misses Maureen—like a couple of little tears—but this was sobbing. Like he’d been shot or something.”

“Jesus. Okay, but Candy, how’d he end up dead?”

“I don’t know. He was still crying and it just got to be too much. I don’t come to work for that kind of thing, you know? So, I stepped out. I wanted to get him some tissues and give him some time to get it together. I was gone maybe 7 minutes. Maybe 10. Then I come back and he’s lying limp on the floor and there’s a pillow right next to him. I guess I was making noises, like, scared panicky noises the whole time, because the bouncer came in and now I’m in jail because they think I killed him.”

I let out a deep breath. There were a thousand things racing through my mind, none of them particularly constructive.

“This is really bad, Candy.”

“I know,” she shrieked, “God, what am I gonna tell my mother?”

“Hey, hey, hey, you didn’t say anything to the cops, right?”

“Um, besides the interrogation, I’ve been—”

“The interrogation? Did you have a lawyer?”

“Uh, no, it was—”

“Jesus,” I rolled out of bed, and slipped into the clothes I’d tossed on the floor the night before. “Don’t say anything to anybody else. If anybody asks you for anything, say no. If they ask any questions, don’t say anything. Just say you plead the fifth, alright? ‘I plead the fifth’ just like that, alright?”

“Okay.”

“Perfect. I’m headed down right now. Don’t worry, I got you.”

***

Things I would not recommend: being at a police station at 3:30 in the morning. It smells funny. Everyone looks terrible, there’s not a donut in sight, and it encourages self-reflection. An awful start to the day. 

Things I would recommend: having a close personal friend as a police detective. This is especially good if you are a private detective like me. You’ll always be brought in to consult on cases. People feel more reluctant to arrest you even when you’re doing things you probably should be arrested for. And, best of all, no one looks at you twice when you sneak into the precinct to snoop.

The key to sneaking is to look like you’re not sneaking at all. Be as loose and casual as possible while you look for the holding cell where they’re keeping your friend. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), I was not in the precinct often enough to know exactly where Candy was being held. I managed to open three of the wrong doors, before Malachi found me. 

Malachi Swanson is many things. A lover of small dogs. My best friend. A pretty good detective when he doesn’t get in his way. A bad guitar player. A lover of the law. But above all things, he is a complete and total pain when he wants to be. 

“What are you doing here?” His eyes narrowed behind his thick coke bottle glasses.

“Just coming to say hello,” I smiled. “Hello. Goodbye.”

I tried to dart past him, but he is built like a filing cabinet. His bright expression dimmed to a suspicious scowl. He pushed his glasses up his nose and slipped his hands in his pockets.

“My office.”

He marched down the hallway, and it was clear I had no choice but to follow. We walked in silence for a few moments, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Candy Reynolds. You guys picked her up at Chiclet over on Dale Mabry. You know where she is?”

“The murderer?”

“Oh, so if you find a body you have to be the killer? Why would she wanna kill him anyway?”

He steered me into his office, shut the door, and closed the blinds. I sunk into one of the deeply uncomfortable and very unstylish office chairs that were meant for overbearing bosses and wives who were about to hear life-shatteringly bad news. I kicked my feet up on his desk and he unceremoniously knocked them to the floor.

“Running theory is that they were getting hot and heavy back there. He asks her to do a little erotic asphyxiation. She puts a pillow over him, he starts to struggle, she doesn’t notice, he’s too drunk to call for help, she doesn’t realize she’s killed him till it’s too late.” He gives a half-hearted shrug and starts sorting papers on his desk.

I think if I had been better rested I could have given a more appropriate and polite response, but at the time I was so tired that the best he got out of me was a bark of a laugh and some well timed four letter words.

“That’s it? Death by snu-snu in the boom boom room? Have we all lost our minds? That’ll never hold up in court. And even if that was what happened—and it’s definitely not—then that would be manslaughter. Not even close to murder.”

“The detective on the case, Roberts, wants to run for Sheriff soon. Getting trumped up charges against sex workers will make him number one with his voting base.”

“But you know she didn’t do this, Malachi.”

“And how do I know that?”

“Because she’s good at her job. It would be way too easy to accidentally suffocate someone with a pillow that way and murder isn’t professional. Tell me you don’t actually believe any of this?”

He looked down at his desk. I don’t know how long he was going to pretend to straighten those papers. You know, as much as I love him, sometimes it’s hard to tell what he’s going to do. Most of the time he gives in to my suggestions and plans. I’d like to think my powers of persuasion are what convinces him in the end, but I know I’m not that good. He wants to be a hero, I think. And I’d like him to be a hero too, but being heroic can be difficult if the laws you’re meant to enforce steer you down a different path.

The longer he stayed silent the more I started weighing my options. If he wasn’t going to help Candy, then I would have to start pulling some very serious, very big strings to keep her out of prison. I don’t know if I’m a hero, but I do know that I help people. If I had to make the devil’s bargain I had in mind in order to keep Candy free, I wouldn’t be able to help anybody else for a very long time. Hell, I  wouldn’t even be able to help myself. Was it worth it? She was my friend. Could I really leave her to rot in a cell for a crime she didn’t commit just to save my own neck? Was I that kind of person? I prayed Malachi would listen to the angel on his shoulder. I didn’t have time to find out a hard truth about myself.

“No. It doesn’t make any sense.”

I let out a breath and my racing mind slowed to a happy crawl. I smiled and slapped his shoulder. He fought back a smile of his own as he pretended that the little slap actually hurt. 

“That’a’boy. So, you geniuses got any other suspects or were you gonna jump right to hanging her in the town square?”

“Yeah, we got a couple other suspects. Roberts wants to make it look thorough.”

“Great. Can I talk to them?”

“No.”

“Malachi—”

“I’m sorry, Frost, it’s above me.” 

I would have been more upset with him if he didn’t look genuinely miserable. He hunched over as he tapped his fingers against the desk. I wanted to break something. What’s the point of solving mysteries if no one wants you to solve them? His eyes flicked to mine and a moment of understanding passed between us. He straightened up and cleared his throat. 

“Well! I forgot I had something else to do right now. Something … important! I guess I can just leave you in here and you can wait for me to come back in, say, an hour. Just make sure to stay off my computer. All of the department’s active case files are on there. It's not fit for a civilian such as yourself.”

“No, of course not. God forbid.” I couldn’t keep the smile out of my voice.

“I trust you, Frost. You have a good head on your shoulders. Be good.”

“Aren’t I always?”

Malachi patted me on the shoulder as he left the room. God, it’s good to have a police detective as a friend. I wasted no time. I ran behind his desk and unlocked his laptop. It didn’t take long for me to find the files on Candy’s case. The interrogation transcripts, witness statements, suspect descriptions—everything I would need to solve the case. At the very least, everything I would need to show that Candy wasn’t a legitimate suspect and should be released. I opened the first file and started poring over it for any kind of clue:

Read The Files Above Before Moving On To The Solution

Malachi did come back in exactly an hour. Not a minute sooner or later. He quietly closed the door as I looked up from the computer screen, eyes blurry from reading the glowing screen in the dark. I blinked hard twice.

“So,” he said, “did you find enough reasonable doubt to keep your friend out of jail for today?”

“Um, yeah. In fact, I think I might have solved another murder?”

“What!” Malachi rushed behind the desk to look at the files he had certainly seen already.

“Yeah. Wilma, that Brian guy’s missing wife. I think he killed her.”

Malacahi sat on the desk, eyes glued to me, waiting for me to explain. I opened up the tab showing Brian’s interview.

“Okay, so Wilma’s gone missing, right? That’s what that jerkoff boss of yours opens up Brian’s interview with. That’s why Brian thinks he’s been called into the police station. And Brian says that Henry never even visited him after his wife disappeared, despite the fact that they lived right next to each other. But,” I opened up Maureen’s interview, “in this interview Maureen says that Henry used to be the kind of guy that would go to his wife’s friend’s house every week to clean and cook when she had cancer. Can the guy who cooks and cleans for a wife’s friend, not even bother stopping by his best friend’s place after his wife disappears?”

Malachi took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He looked so much older than he should. He slipped them back on his face.

“Okay, but Ms. Wilder did say that Henry changed.”

“Sure, but in Candy’s interview and the head bouncer’s they both mention that Henry was a very sweet man at present. I don’t think he wouldn’t walk next door to check on his best friend after his wife goes missing. So that brings up the question: If Brian is lying, why?”

“Okay. Why?”

“See, that’s the thing. Candy said that Henry was talking like something interrupted one of his plans. He was talking crazy, and was really freaked out, and he was saying that—” I scrolled until I found the exact words Candy used. “He said he was supposed to ‘get it all fixed today.’ Get what fixed? And then in Maureen’s transcript, she said that he owed a lot of people money. That he even owes Brian money. And here’s another weird thing. Roberts never told Brian when Henry was killed, but Brian says, and I quote ‘well, my boy was gonna be a big spender tonight.’ How did Brian know Henry was gonna spend money tonight if Roberts never told him when he was killed?”

Malachi took a deep breath, his aspiration and the whir of the computers were the only noises filling up the small office. 

“So, you think that Henry was going to pay Brian back and what? Saw something? ”He asked. 

I rolled the facts around in my head until the answer hit me like a particularly reckless driver. I figured it out. “The shoes!”

“What about them?”

“He knew the shoes were white. Brian said the guy who stole Henry’s shoes was ‘probably some freak who’s into white sneakers.’ Roberts never said the color of the shoes.”

“Oh wow.”

“The shoes were covered in brown splotches. Blood dries brown. What if that’s what he saw? The blood? What if he stepped in it? Or it splashed on him. It doesn’t matter—if he saw it, which I think he did, and Brian knew, which I’m pretty sure he did, Brian would need to get rid of Henry soon. The bouncer, the Brighton guy, said he saw a tall man leave with some splotchy white shoes. According to this report, Brian is 6’3. He could have followed Henry, snuck into the club, seen Candy leave the private room, come in, suffocated Henry,  stole his shoes, and left. The blood could have traced back to Wilma and that would have traced back to Brian. Boom.”

“Wait, wait, wait, what about Maureen at the convenience store?”

I waved him off. “She’s having an affair with Ivan, her divorce lawyer. His apartment is two blocks away from the convenience store. It was on a piece of paper in Henry’s wallet. I.B. Home address 143 32nd street. Ethically it’s not great for Ivan, but hey, it’s not murder.”

I pushed my chair back, stood, and stretched. I really had no business being up this early. I leaned against the desk so I was shoulder to shoulder with Malachi.

“It’s all circumstantial, you know?” He said. 

“Of course, but it’s enough to get her out of jail and get you guys looking in a different direction. That’s a win as far as I care.” I crossed my arms, “So, should you tell your boss or should I?”Malachi did come back in exactly an hour. Not a minute sooner or later. He quietly closed the door as I looked up from the computer screen, eyes blurry from reading the glowing screen in the dark. I blinked hard twice.

“So,” he said, “did you find enough reasonable doubt to keep your friend out of jail for today?”

“Um, yeah. In fact, I think I might have solved another murder?”

“What!” Malachi rushed behind the desk to look at the files he had certainly seen already.

“Yeah. Wilma, that Brian guy’s missing wife. I think he killed her.”

Malacahi sat on the desk, eyes glued to me, waiting for me to explain. I opened up the tab showing Brian’s interview.

“Okay, so Wilma’s gone missing, right? That’s what that jerkoff boss of yours opens up Brian’s interview with. That’s why Brian thinks he’s been called into the police station. And Brian says that Henry never even visited him after his wife disappeared, despite the fact that they lived right next to each other. But,” I opened up Maureen’s interview, “in this interview Maureen says that Henry used to be the kind of guy that would go to his wife’s friend’s house every week to clean and cook when she had cancer. Can the guy who cooks and cleans for a wife’s friend, not even bother stopping by his best friend’s place after his wife disappears?”

Malachi took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He looked so much older than he should. He slipped them back on his face.

“Okay, but Ms. Wilder did say that Henry changed.”

“Sure, but in Candy’s interview and the head bouncer’s they both mention that Henry was a very sweet man at present. I don’t think he wouldn’t walk next door to check on his best friend after his wife goes missing. So that brings up the question: If Brian is lying, why?”

“Okay. Why?”

“See, that’s the thing. Candy said that Henry was talking like something interrupted one of his plans. He was talking crazy, and was really freaked out, and he was saying that—” I scrolled until I found the exact words Candy used. “He said he was supposed to ‘get it all fixed today.’ Get what fixed? And then in Maureen’s transcript, she said that he owed a lot of people money. That he even owes Brian money. And here’s another weird thing. Roberts never told Brian when Henry was killed, but Brian says, and I quote ‘well, my boy was gonna be a big spender tonight.’ How did Brian know Henry was gonna spend money tonight if Roberts never told him when he was killed?”

Malachi took a deep breath, his aspiration and the whir of the computers were the only noises filling up the small office. 

“So, you think that Henry was going to pay Brian back and what? Saw something? ”He asked. 

I rolled the facts around in my head until the answer hit me like a particularly reckless driver. I figured it out. “The shoes!”

“What about them?”

“He knew the shoes were white. Brian said the guy who stole Henry’s shoes was ‘probably some freak who’s into white sneakers.’ Roberts never said the color of the shoes.”

“Oh wow.”

“The shoes were covered in brown splotches. Blood dries brown. What if that’s what he saw? The blood? What if he stepped in it? Or it splashed on him. It doesn’t matter—if he saw it, which I think he did, and Brian knew, which I’m pretty sure he did, Brian would need to get rid of Henry soon. The bouncer, the Brighton guy, said he saw a tall man leave with some splotchy white shoes. According to this report, Brian is 6’3. He could have followed Henry, snuck into the club, seen Candy leave the private room, come in, suffocated Henry,  stole his shoes, and left. The blood could have traced back to Wilma and that would have traced back to Brian. Boom.”

“Wait, wait, wait, what about Maureen at the convenience store?”

I waved him off. “She’s having an affair with Ivan, her divorce lawyer. His apartment is two blocks away from the convenience store. It was on a piece of paper in Henry’s wallet. I.B. Home address 143 32nd street. Ethically it’s not great for Ivan, but hey, it’s not murder.”

I pushed my chair back, stood, and stretched. I really had no business being up this early. I leaned against the desk so I was shoulder to shoulder with Malachi.

“It’s all circumstantial, you know?” He said. 

“Of course, but it’s enough to get her out of jail and get you guys looking in a different direction. That’s a win as far as I care.” I crossed my arms, “So, should you tell your boss or should I?”