Once Bitten, Twice Dead Read online

  “Don’t say anything,” I told him just as the manager appeared down at the end of the aisle.

  The manager looked at the cans of corn. “What’s happened here??”

  “I’m very sorry, sir, I was talking with Mr. Felder here, and I inadvertently knocked over this display. I was very clumsy as a child, and I guess it’s followed me into adulthood.” That last part was the truth.

  The manager looked at Felder, then at me, then back at Felder. Luckily my nose didn’t seem to be bleeding. “All right, Ari, clean this up so the lady can get on her way.” I was glad I hadn’t told the manager why I wanted to see Ari.

  After the manager left, I helped Ari pile the cans back up. It took awhile because like the cereal boxes, Ari had to have the cans placed “just right” as he reconstructed the pyramid of corn. After ten minutes of exact building he turned a sad face to me and said, “Thanks, I needed that.”

  “I do want to talk to you about Ed’s murder, Ari.”

  “That’s fine. I’m calmer now. I used to go to therapy for anger management, but I can’t afford it anymore. I go on break in exactly twelve minutes. Meet me in the back—there’s an eating area for the employees there.”

  After shopping a little and buying two scented candles for $7.99 each, I headed back to the employee lunch section, hoping to avoid any further punches.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Ari and I sat across from one another. I was far enough away from him where I didn’t think his short arms could reach me. My nose still hurt.

  There was no one else eating there. Ari said his boss had everyone take breaks separately so no conspiracy could rise up against him. As Ari put it, “The guy is paranoid.”

  “Why did you do what you did, Ari?”

  “What did I do??”

  “Have you forgotten? You punched me.”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m sorry.”

  “That makes everything just right then.”

  “I did say I was sorry. I just get so angry when I think of my brother. I hate him, or I should say I hated him because he is dead.”

  “Did you kill him, Ari?”

  “What did you say!” Ari rose up out of his chair. I braced myself for another onslaught. But Ari flopped back down, and I thought I could hear numbers.

  “Are you counting?”

  “My last therapist told me to count up to twenty whenever I felt my anger coming up. I guess I forget to do that out there in the store. He told me to think of something I liked and then count twenty of them. I like puppies, so I just pictured twenty, which I’m almost done counting.”

  “Do you have a puppy?”

  “They cost money.” It looked like Ari was going to cry again. “I can’t afford anything. I’m a total failure.”

  “Did Ed criticize you?”

  “No it was the exact opposite. The man was a saint. He was generous to me. But that made it worse. I didn’t want a handout. I hated him for being so nice. The day before his death I yelled at him to stop helping me—we had a big blowout. I told him I wasn’t accepting any more money from him. What he should have been doing is kicking me in the ass. He said he couldn’t abandon me; that’s what brothers were for. We kept yelling at each other. It got ugly. That’s the last time I saw him. A fine ending to a relationship. But I have been off drugs for three weeks now.”

  To Ari that time probably seemed like years the way he glowed when he said it.

  “That’s great, Ari. Stick with it.”

  “I will make it.”

  “I’m sure you will. I’m not going to report you to the manager, but please don’t go around attacking people.”

  “I don’t really like violence, but I get so damn mad sometimes, mostly at myself. But I’m working on it.”

  “Keep thinking about those puppies. Before I leave I have one more question. Is there anyone you know who would want to harm your brother?”

  Ari did reflect on that. “No one that I can think of. Like I said, the man was a saint. He would have given me a job and paid me well, but I had to have some self-respect. It’s all I have left.”

  “Here’s my card, Ari. If you think of anyone who could be connected to Ed’s murder, call me immediately.”

  “Thanks again for your help. I will call if I think of anyone.”

  And Ari did exactly that. He called me the next day.

  “Ms. Stolle, it’s me, Ari. I thought of something. I’m at work now. Come and see me—but hurry.”

  It took me only thirty minutes to get to the K-Mart, but I was too late. Ari was gone.

  This time it was the manager who was angry. “He just walked out. He said he had some place to go. I fired him on the spot.”

  “Was anyone with him?”

  “No, that’s just it. It was as if he just decided to leave. We can’t have our employees doing what they want when they feel like it. They have to respect the organization and respect me.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  “Not at all. He just strolled out of the place, footloose and fancy free.” I thought maybe the manager was going to break into song.

  I hurried to Ari’s garage-shack, but there I was also too late. There was Ari sprawled on the floor with spittle coming out of his mouth, the needle right next to him. In my mind, I had already begun to drop Ari as a suspect because when I sat across from him during that break, I could tell for sure he couldn’t reach me. His arms were much too short, and he was much too short to have killed his brother. I remembered Henry saying that the cleaver that killed Ed Butcher was wielded with a downward stroke. The killer was taller than Ed, who himself was over six feet. As he lay there, Ari Felder didn’t look even a hair over 5’6.”

  There had been a couple of stools and benches around that meat locker, and I suppose Ari could have jumped on one and then plunged the cleaver into Ed’s forehead. But I didn’t think a person bent on killing would think to jump on a stool before he did it.

  Then, there were no prints on the murder weapon. The killer was wearing gloves, and I didn’t think Ari would have the premeditative state of mind to plan that killing ahead of time. When Ari had punched me it was totally spontaneous, and that seemed to be a character trait of the man. Ari would definitely have left prints on the cleaver. And, finally, when Ari punched me he hadn’t hurt me very much even though he had been extremely angry. I didn’t think he had the physical strength to sink a meat cleaver three inches into someone’s forehead.

  Later, my exoneration of Ari was just about complete when Larabella told me he never would have used a needle. “He snorted and ingested, Detective Stolle—no needle for him. He had a constant fear of the needle every time I took him for flu shots as a kid. That “suicide” was a setup.”

  So I guess Ari did have something important to tell me, and it did pertain to his brother’s murder, but the killer got to him first. Perhaps Ari even told the killer he knew. Nothing like inviting your own death

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

  I had gone back to talk to Mrs. Butcher, primarily because I had no where else to go. When Henry and I had interviewed Larabella before, Henry had fired questions at her like he had a machine gun in his brain. Maybe I wasn’t the greatest talker in the world, but I did know how to listen. Even as a kid, I was always interested in what people were thinking.

  Larabella picked up right where she had left off in my previous talk with her. “Ed lived quite a lifestyle—as I told you earlier I didn’t always share it. My own parents were deeply religious and felt we should all give up the things of this world. But I couldn’t give Ed up. When I first met him he was working at the Chicago stockyards. We had to struggle to make ends meet. Oh, my gosh, I made a joke. You know—meet an d meat.” When Larabella laughed she swung her pendulous breasts from side to side as if she were swatting flies. She laughed quick barks which shook her whole body. In her day, Larabella must have looked pretty good, even though now her day was long past. She had gained probably fifty pounds t
oo much. Everything was sagging.

  She continued: “During those tough days in Chicago, Ed decided to take a gamble. He borrowed some money—I don’t know where he got it—it wasn’t from a bank. Suddenly we had cash, and Ed used it as a down payment for his first meat market. For three years we scrimped and saved, and gradually we began to climb the hill, as Ed put it. We began to own many shops, and we eventually moved to Philadelphia. That was my fault. I didn’t like the Chicago snow storms.”

  “From my investigation, Mrs. Butcher I know that Ed had made quite a bit of money, and yet you both seem to live in an unassuming house in an average neighborhood.”

  “Ed saved his money to use when he himself went out. Everywhere he went he threw away money as if he had trillions. He didn’t really have as much as he let on—at least I didn’t think he did, but I don’t really know because he controlled all the bank accounts. He gave me a kind of allowance every month.”

  “Wasn’t that a little demeaning?”

  “No, I didn’t mind it.” Her tone didn’t convince me.

  “Did people ever take advantage of your husband?”

  Larabella thought. “Two people come to mind. One is a man by the name of Vance Brighton, who I called ‘Minnie, the Moocher.’ Ed met him through a mutual friend. When I was out with Ed and Vance was around he would keep coming up to Ed for more drinks, constantly playing up to him. And then about a year ago Vance asked Ed to loan him some money to start a business. I think it was some kind of nightclub in Philly.

  “Of course Ed always had sympathy for people who were trying to make it because he had been in the same boat himself years back, so he loaned Vance the money. However, with the recent downturn of the economy, this year Vance’s nightclub wasn’t doing well, causing him to miss some of his loan payments to Ed. Then just two weeks before Ed’s death, Brighton asked him for more money. Ed was going to do it, but I put my foot down and told him that generosity didn’t mean making a fool of yourself.

  “For once, Ed listened to me. He turned Vance down, and Vance was angry. One day, soon after, he came to the house and unleashed about five minutes of profanity at Ed. Imagine doing that, after all that Ed had helped him.”

  “I think I’ll have a talk with Vance Brighton. Who’s the other person you thought of?”

  “This may be silly but the month before Ed’s murder he was visited by an old school chum. That night they talked for hours—I don’t think Ed even went to bed. I felt they probably had a lot of years to catch up on, and at that time I didn’t think anything about it. I didn’t have anything to share with the guy because I went to a different high school than Ed did, so I didn’t listen to their conversations.

  “But then for the next couple of weeks Ed went out drinking with this guy almost every night. Finally, I did complain, and Ed just laughed it off. He said they had a lot to reminisce about.”

  “Why was this all so unusual?”

  “I could see where they could talk over old times, but the night after night thing got extreme. Howe much could you talk about with a guy you haven’t seen for thirty years? Even though Ed did hit the party nightlife, he wasn’t much of a real social person. He never did get close to people. He told me that he never knew if someone wanted to be his friend just because of his money, like Vance had done.

  “For a part of our marriage Ed didn’t have time to socialize. Our son, Roddy, kept us pretty busy.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Even as a little kid, Roddy was rebellious. He caused constant conflict, most of it centering around him and Ed. For a couple of years Roddy ran with a gang who called themselves, ‘The Crusaders.’”

  “The Crusaders??”

  “They were going to right the wrongs in the world, Roddy told me, but all they seemed to do was get in trouble—fighting and stealing. Ed had to bail Roddy out of jail three times last year, mostly for disturbing the peace. There was also one robbery where the boys broke into a house. Roddy had told his father that the people they steal from deserved it, but Ed wasn’t buying any of that. My husband, for all his good natured manner, could be quite strict sometime. He and Roddy would go at it verbally, sometimes coming close to blows. A couple of times I had to step between them. So you see, Detective Stolle, Ed had enough to do trying to keep Roddy under control without trying to seek new social contacts. It’s true that Ed could throw lavish parties, but after the fun was over he didn’t attach himself to anyone. That’s why his new “buddy” was such a surprise to me.”

  While Larabella talked I made a note to check on “The Crusaders” to see what kind of Holy Grail they were seeking, and I also began seeing Roddy (The Rock) as a possible suspect. Sons are capable of killing their own fathers.

  Before I left, Larabella told me that Ed’s old school bud was named Tommy Granger.

  “When I asked Ed about Granger, he wouldn’t say much. Usually Ed was very talkative about what he did during the day and night. But with Granger, Ed wouldn’t say a word about their meetings. Nothing about where they went or what they talked about. It seemed that Ed, on purpose, was keeping stuff away from me. That bothered me. Ed always said he could be real with me, and I always wanted to know his thoughts and feelings. I loved the bum. Every day I still expect him to be coming through that door, running his mouth.”

  I put Tommy Granger on the list to talk to.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Maybe I was making some progress. I had some suspects in Ed Butcher’s murder. A hanger-on, a mysterious man from the past, a mother and a son. Four people completely innocent, or possibly a killer in their midst.

  I knew the least about the enigmatic Tommy Granger, so I thought I’d start with him. While I was there, Larabella had looked through her husband’s desk and gave me Granger’s address. When I went there I found it was a vacant lot. Tommy was getting more shadowy by the moment.

  The next day I made a trip to Headquarters to see if Granger had made any of our files, and sure enough, there were two entries, both for smuggling illegal aliens over the Mexican border. Granger was never brought to trial on the charges because of insufficient evidence. Had Tommy wanted Ed’s help and especially Ed’s money, to finance more illegal transport? Our records listed no recent address for Granger, so I wasn’t any closer to finding the man.

  As I was walking out, Chief Brown stopped me.

  “How’re the cases coming, Stolle?”

  “Slowly, Chief.”

  “That’s how all police work is. Get used to it.” And he walked away. He hadn’t exactly barked those words at me, but it was a line drive toward my face, and all I could do was duck. During my training sessions, everyone said that Brown keeps his distance and never gets chummy, but he will back his people in a pinch. I could feel myself already being pinched by those cases. One thing I knew for sure that Chief Brown was telling me—the same thing that Henry Gullick had told me—I was on my own.

  I stepped outside and was hit with a downpour of rain. I think I saw somewhere that Philly actually gets more rain per year than Seattle. As I ran to my car I had two thoughts: one, Vance Brighton might be easier to find than Tommy Granger; and secondly, why hadn’t I ever bought an umbrella in my lifetime?

  Vance’s nightclub, The Starlight, was not open for business until the dinner hour I saw by the sign in the window, but when I tried the door it opened. I walked into total darkness and felt my way down a narrow hallway. I could see a dim light at the end of it. Suddenly I was grabbed and spun around. I was now looking into the chest of a very tall man. I tilted my head upwards to see his face and immediately regretted it. One side of that face wasn’t totally there—it was all valleys and pits—while the other side was totally smooth. I couldn’t help staring.

  The large person spoke, in a soft voice. “Before you have to ask, it was a mortar that hit our vehicle. The other two guys didn’t make it home.”

  “Iraq? Afghanistan?”

  “Viet Nam.”

  The guy was older than he looked
. I guess size can skew age. The face again spoke to me, “Who are you? What are you doing here? We’re closed.”

  “I’m Detective Stolle. I’ve come to see Vance Brighton.”

  “What makes you think he wants to see you?”

  “Can you ask him? It’s about a murder.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’ll want to talk to you about a murder. Now get lost, lady unless you’d want to come to work for us as one of our ‘pole girls.’ You just might have an acceptable body under those clothes.” I had seen a stage and that infamous pole as I was going down the hallway.

  I decided that this was one of those times I wasn’t going to get pushed around. I had a sudden flashback to fifth grade and Gloria Jenkins, the school bully, who challenged me and ended up eating the gravel playground. I didn’t start fights, but I usually didn’t let others finish them. But of course there was also the coy feminine way to deal with things.

  “I’m sure you don’t want to use all those big muscles on poor little old defenseless me. I promise I’ll talk to Mr. Brighton for only ten minutes. You can stand guard outside the door and keep us protected. I’m sure no one could get past you.”

  He knew I was sweet-talking him, but he also liked it. “All right. Ten minutes.” We walked to that light at the end of the hall.

  Vance Brighton was sitting at his desk, apparently playing a video game on his computer. I recognized some of the sounds of the war game I knew from watching Saturday morning commercials while I delighted in a mix of my favorite cartoons. As I remembered that particular game, it was advertised as being for ages 8-12. I was proud to be dealing with such high level intelligence possessed by Vance and the cyborg who had accompanied me down the hall. Possibly their combined I.Q. was below average.

  Vance was so engrossed in the game that he didn’t look up when we entered. He leaned his face almost into the screen, and carefully pressed a key. “Rats—I missed!!”

  When was the last time I heard anyone says, “Rats”? Maybe it was in a film of the “40’s or ‘50’s that I saw on Turner Classic Movies.