Once Bitten, Twice Dead Page 6

  Ed’s other business “venture” was even more flagrant. When I looked over Ed’s receipts, there was quite a lot of business he did with a company called Puree Products. When I checked, I found that the company was based in Argentina, which I thought was unusual to be doing business with a company so far away. Maybe it is a Global Village, like they say, but I thought I’d investigate anyway.

  Puree Products had a local distribution center near Norristown, maybe twenty miles from center city Philly. I found it to be mainly a refrigeration warehouse, with a skeletal office crew, which consisted of a secretary and one overweight individual by the name of Quentin Toals.

  Mr. Toals was wearing a grubby sweatshirt and stained jeans when I met with him. I talked with him for maybe ten minutes, during which time he smoke four cigarettes.

  “You’re right, Detective Stolle, we did do business with Ed Butcher for two years. He was a good customer.”

  “Why would he want meat all the way from Argentina??”

  Toals gave me a little crooked grin. “Ah, that was our little secret, between Ed and me.”

  “Secret?”

  “And then suddenly Ed quit us, about two months before he died. He didn’t give a reason. He just said to stop shipments. So, what the hell, I might as well tell you. I don’t really think that if his wife takes over the business, she’ll contract with us.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “She probably has higher principles.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We were shipping Ed Butcher straight horsemeat.”

  “What!”

  “That’s our main business. It’s legal in many countries.”

  “You mean Ed was selling horsemeat to his customers?”

  “Yep. He said it was about 30% of his business. In fact, he would laugh about it with me, saying that the people who bought it raved about it and actually increased their purchases. He was making a lot of money off of it because he could buy it so much cheaper.”

  Quentin squinted at me. “You could report me, but I’ll just deny it, and I’m pretty sure the product is gone from Ed’s shops by now since he had stopped our deliveries a while ago. We also do deal with regular beef and hide our other operation pretty well, so it’d be hard to prove that we weren’t shipping legitimate stuff to Ed. But I’m not for murder, Detective Stolle, and if my information helps you catch Ed’s killer I’m glad to help. When I heard Ed had been murdered, I thought maybe one of his customers caught on to the horsemeat scam, and had it tested. Maybe people in certain families got sick because of their new “diet,” and someone wanted Ed to pay for what he had done.”

  “Why wouldn’t they just report him?”

  “Human nature isn’t like that. People don’t like to be fooled, and some individuals respond in a crazy way. They react two or three times more severely than they should. You know the expression, Once bitten, twice shy. Some people react extremely. I had a brother-in-law, if someone bumped into him in a crowd, he’d beat the daylights out of the person. Crazy people are just, well. . .crazy. Maybe one of Ed’s customers was a little off to begin with.”

  What Quentin said was possible, but when I poured through Ed’s customer receipts that Larabella had given me, I had no way of telling which meat was horse and which was beef. Ed probably had his own codes. If someone had actually discovered Ed’s trick and gotten revenge, that person seemed protected from discovery.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Looking over Ed Butcher’s family documents, I was surprised to learn that he had an older sister. She lived in Baltimore. Maybe my old partner, Henry, was too lazy to make the trip down there. He could have at least called.

  Possibly I was still aggravated at Henry for his slip-shod way of handling these cases, or maybe I just needed to get away from Philly for awhile, but for whatever reason I decided to make that two-hour trip.

  Gretta was a nurse. When I phoned her she said she was working the kind of shift that was six days on and three days off. This was her second day off, she said, so she’d be home all day.

  Even a year ago, taking a ride down to Baltimore or Washington would show me I-95 packed full of cars. Today I zipped right on through, with light traffic. People were definitely not driving as much as they used to. Maybe the recession was good for us all—it probably wouldn’t hurt us to cut down on our spending, staying closer to home and our families. Since I didn’t have much of a family left, I felt I was excluded from my moralizing. To myself I pretended that my brother, Mark, was just too busy for me to see him, but I always knew deep down I should have made more of an effort to connect with him, no matter what shape the economy was in.

  Those thoughts occupied me on the way down, and in no time I was on the outskirts of Baltimore, near the Inner Harbor. The address Gretta gave me was near the baseball stadium, where the Orioles weren’t having much to cheer about the last five years since Cal Ripkin retired. It does seem that sports is all about winning as the Phillies proved two years ago when they captured the World Series, and the town went bananas. It was said that at least a million people jammed the downtown area to celebrate. The last Phillies’ World Series triumph had been almost thirty years earlier, around Ed Butcher’s high school time. I did join the downtown revelers, but after a couple of hours, it all wore me out. I do love baseball and the Phillies, but forced celebrations are not for me. On New Year’s Eve I usually stay home, watch a video, and then at midnight raise my Diet Pepsi high and go to bed. I’m just a bundle of excitement.

  Gretta’s neighborhood looked to be refurbished with new roofs and siding, but I couldn’t say the same for Gretta. When she greeted me, she took up most of the entire doorway. Her brother had been stocky, but his height had made up for some of his girth. Gretta, on the other hand, possibly weighed as much as her brother, but she was only a little over five feet tall. It was bad of me because I again did my staring bit before I started speaking, and she noticed.

  “You don’t have to say it—I’m a little overweight, just by a couple of pounds, though.” Maybe it was good she could kid about it, but also perhaps she used humor to avoid working on losing the weight.

  “Please come in. When you called, Detective Stolle, and said you were coming I baked a cake. I’ll cut you a piece.”

  As I began to eat my huge piece of German Chocolate cake with a ton of dark frosting on it, my glance at Gretta’s plate told me her piece was twice as big as mine. But I had to quit being such a diet censor and get on with why I was here.

  “Like I said on the phone, Gretta, I want you to talk about your brother.”

  “First of all, I was shocked at his death and especially at the fact that he was murdered.”

  “Are you saying you didn’t think Ed had any enemies?”

  “Actually, we were never close enough for me to ever know much about Ed. I’m four years older and when I left home for college Ed was just beginning high school. In our growing up period our differences were just too great for much sharing.”

  I thought about my brother and our five year gap in age. But Mark always tried to maintain a closeness while I didn’t. I think it was all a matter of deciding to do it, but again this reasoning wasn’t why I was here. Once more I had drifted off into my own thoughts. I’m not here to investigate myself.

  Gretta tried to fill in the silence. “Our parents did instill a desire to succeed in both Ed and me. I do know that my brother was very successful in business, and I’ve done well at the hospital. Just last month I was named Head Nurse—I supervise forty people.”

  Gretta paused here so that I could applaud, and I did say, “They must think highly of you.”

  “They do.”

  However, Gretta didn’t seem to be satisfied with my applause ringing in her ears because in the next minute she ran herself down. “I’ve been heavy since I was young, and I always knew no boy would look at me except if he wanted a good laugh, so I decided to avoid most social situations and put my energy into schoo
l and eventually into the medical field. And I have achieved. Marriage is going out of style, anyway, except if you’re gay.”

  In one breath Gretta had insulted herself, boys, marriage, and gay people. Gretta seemed to be trying to convince herself that her lack of a social life was fine, but she didn’t convince me. There seemed to be a hole in her heart.

  “Back to that growing up period, Gretta, was there anything in Ed’s younger days when he did something that someone would want revenge for?”

  “No, I can’t really think of anything. Ed was always the athlete of the family. I never played sports so we had no sharing there. Oh, now I do think of a tragic incident that happened right after Ed graduated from high school. He was in a terrific car accident. He escaped with broken ribs, but his passenger wasn’t so lucky. He suffered a spinal injury that put him in a wheelchair for life.”

  Instantly I thought of my dad and his gimp leg.

  “How did Ed react to all that?”

  “He was sick about it for awhile, but there wasn’t anything he could do—the damage was done. He visited Kurt often in the hospital and then during his home recuperation, but then Ed told me the visits made the both of them feel worse about the accident. It kept it fresh in their minds. So Ed stopped going over, and I don’t think he ever got together with Kurt again. It was bad because Kurt had been one of Ed’s best friends in high school—they did everything together. I don’t know where Kurt is now, but during those younger years he lived near the high school.”

  As it turned out when I did some checking I discovered that Kurt Ward still lived near the high school in the same house he grew up in. I expected to see a person whose life had deserted him, but I found something quite different.

  Yes, Kurt was still in a wheelchair. He said despite extensive therapy after the accident, he had been unable to walk. “So, Detective Stolle, I decided I really wasn’t dead; therefore, why don’t I try to live as fully as possible. Lucky for me the computer was just coming into greater use. I took some courses, and for the last twenty years I’ve run my own service fixing them and helping people with the technical angles. I can’t move my legs, but my fingers make up for all that. Last year my computer business netted me about $200,000. Many people still come to me for help even in this slow economy.”

  As I listened to the man, it was apparent that the accident had not sent this young person into a suicidal depression. It was almost as if the car crash had been a boon to him. However, I wanted to see what feelings lay beneath his success.

  “At the time, though, Kurt, that accident must have really devastated you.”

  Kurt didn’t say anything. He rolled the wheelchair back and forth a couple of times. I could almost feel his mind backpedaling to that day.

  “I won’t try to sugar coat it. It was a total shock. I couldn’t move my legs.”

  “Did you ever blame Ed?”

  “Blame Ed?? Of course not. It was an accident.” But then something seemed to grip Kurt. “An accident. An accident—that’s what I kept telling myself during those days in the hospital. I was angry back then.”

  “But it was an accident, wasn’t it?”

  “It could have been avoided!” A vein began to stand out on Kurt’s forehead.

  “Explain what you mean.”

  “That night Ed was wasted—totally drunk. I’d always told him, not to drink and drive, but when I said those words again that night he just laughed at me. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to me,’ he said. That’s the way Ed was. Totally confident, even cocky. And he was right, nothing did happen to him because of the crash. It all happened to me!”

  Kurt had raised his voice. And he kept raising it.

  “The guy didn’t even have his seat belt on, and so he was thrown out the side window, while the belt held me in place as the car’s metal crushed my spine. I can still hear Ed’s pathetic attempts to apologize the next few months.”

  “I’m sorry, Kurt.”

  “‘Sorry’ doesn’t mean very much when you can’t walk.”

  By this time Kurt had worked himself up into a frenzy. His eyes were bulging and sweat had appeared on his forehead. But suddenly he stopped his diatribe. “I apologize, Detective Stolle. I got a little carried away there.”

  For a few more minutes we talked about his corporate business, and then I left. Heading back toward Philly, now in a relentless rainstorm, the cocoon-like atmosphere in my car put me in a reflective mood. Kurt Ward, in my presence quickly could relive the tragedy that had happened to him so long ago. He had not moved on. Possibly the wheelchair itself was a constant reminder. Could Kurt have wanted to get back at Ed for what he had done? Ed didn’t do it on purpose, but the drinking and attitude did give culpability, especially since Kurt had warned him about the danger. Ed’s laughter that Kurt could still hear had left a bitter taste in his mouth.

  I knew that Kurt in his physical condition could not have killed his old buddy. But Kurt did have the money to hire someone to do the deed. I’ve been amazed through the years to hear the true stories of hired killers who would take another person’s life for a few thousand dollars. Almost mesmerized by my windshield wipers, I was now mentally adding Kurt Ward to my list of suspects. I did know, though, that my list was just that—a list—like the others on that list there was nothing to link Ward to the killing.

  I eventually checked Kurt’s phone records for the months preceding Butcher’s death, but I could find only computer customers listed, and no one phone number kept repeating itself. Kurt was not married and had no siblings. As far as I knew he lived a solitary life with no known associates who could have done that killing for him. However, like with the other suspects, I wasn’t through looking into Kurt’s private life.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Walking into the church, I told myself this was madness. But I seemed to have nowhere else to go. After two more weeks of fruitless investigating, this was my decision.

  The church was dimly lit, with a lone figure kneeling in the first pew. I went up to him. He was old: his skin seemed like paper-thin parchment. His long bony fingers grasped the beads of the rosary he was hanging on to like a lifeline.

  He looked up at me. “Do you want to go to confession, my daughter?”

  “No.”

  He didn’t argue. He saw right away it would be futile. There is such a thing as practical wisdom. I remained standing. He kept kneeling, but now his gaze was fully fixed on me. He could see my feelings on my face. He knew there was desperation.

  “Father, what should a person do when she is up against a wall she cannot climb??”

  “Pray, my child.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Everyone can pray.”

  “What else is there besides prayer?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Will prayer bring me what I want?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Then why pray?”

  “Because there is nothing else.”

  And with those words the priest slowly and painfully stood and shuffled up the steps to the altar and into the sacristy, out of sight.

  So I tried it.

  “I knelt where he had been. His knees had barely made an impression on the cushion. I prayed, “God let me solve this case and the two others. Let me bring these murderers to justice.”

  I waited. Nothing happened. No lightning. No apparition. No sign.

  Maybe I should light a candle. As I turned the match sideways to fit into the glass, I burnt my finger.

  Spending those fifteen minutes in church, what I got out of it was a burnt finger. I hadn’t been inside a church for ten years. One day, in my second year of high school, I just stopped believing. I decided we just die, and that’s it. We were born for no reason, and we die for no reason. There’s no point.

  Ten years later, do I still believe the same thing?? Yes, but now I have a burnt finger.

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

  As I walked out of that church, I s
uddenly knew I had to quit the Ed Butcher murder case. Maybe not forever, but for now.

  I turned my attention to the second case: Randall Procopius, Wall Street troubleshooter, who even during this economic meltdown had made money. Since Randall had never married, and his immediate relatives—mother, father, and sister—had been killed in a plane in the Philippines two years ago, I called on maybe the only person who knew anything about Procopius, his financial adviser, Linton Headley.

  Headley was a lawyer, one half of the prestigious firm of Headley and Burrows, who handled most of the top money people in the USA. He said he could see me for a few minutes at 4:00 that afternoon. “I’m a busy man, Detective Stolle. I know it’s important to investigate poor Randall’s murder; but life is for the living, and now that Randall is dead I can’t be bothered by him anymore, other than to settle his estate, which I’m going to do in three days. We’re signing the final papers then.”

  Again I was looking for motive. “To whom is Randall’s estate going??”

  “Well, that plane crash took care of his family, and since he had no wife, Randall decided to leave his estate to be divided among three people. He was going to leave everything to various charities, but he came to me a month before he died and made this change. I’d known Randall for fifteen years, and I’d never heard of any of the people he named. When I questioned him, he wouldn’t say any more, just the three names. Come to the formal reading of the will and you can meet them yourself, along with me.”

  “How much was Procopius’ estate worth?”

  “Four hundred million dollars.”

  “Are you telling me that each of those people is getting over a hundred million dollars??”

  “That is accurate, give or take a few hundred thousand here and there.”

  “You seem to be saying that these three people appeared out of thin air.