Once Bitten, Twice Dead Read online

  “Very thin air. I’d never even heard Randall mention any one of them. He knew the kind of curious person I am, so he also told me that I was not allowed to conduct any kind of inquiry on these people. I had forgotten about his change of the will until Randall’s horrible death. He was only 45 when he died and in good health. So I wasn’t expecting any imminent demise.

  “At least not by gasoline and fire.”

  “Right. The coroner told me that probably the death was pretty quick, but not instantaneous. What awful last seconds!! Someone must have really hated my client.”

  “Was there any association in Randall’s life with fire?”

  “Not that I know of, but he did have dealings with oil companies. You might want to check them out. I don’t know if the murderer wanted to leave his calling card, though. I wouldn’t think he or she would be that obvious.”

  “Did Randall have any enemies?”

  “Almost everyone he came in contact with. All Randall ever wanted to do in life was make money, and he didn’t care how he did it. He told me even in elementary school he carried a Monopoly board with him, and during lunch he would play other kids so he could win a few pennies each day. He said no one ever beat him at Monopoly, which symbolically tells you a lot.

  “But maybe I can help you, Detective Stolle. Randall did have one secret that, as far as I know, he told to only me.”

  “What was that?”

  “He was gay.”

  “You may have been the only one who knew. Recently I’ve read articles about him in business magazines, and there wasn’t a whisper about that. Why did he tell you?”

  “Funny you should ask. It’s very appropriate to you being here now. Randall said if he died a suspicious death—and certainly getting doused with gasoline and being thrown into a fireplace isn’t a natural death.—if he should die a suspicious death, it would be one of his male lovers who killed him.”

  “Nothing like naming your killer.”

  “That’s why he didn’t leave any money to either one of them.”

  “There were two??”

  “Both of them seemed to stick with him even after he told them they weren’t ever getting a nickel from the estate. And believe me, Detective, Randall was a real irritating prig to be with. There must have been some true affection that these guys felt for him to endure that officious personality.”

  “You didn’t like him?”

  “I. too, like money, and Randall was paying me well.

  Possibly my prayer interlude had helped me. Suddenly I was beset by some suspects: two lovers, oil companies, and three mysterious soon-to-be rich people to check out. Was I suddenly going to start attending church services? No, but I did feel I had made the right decision to switch cases. At least there might be progress somewhere.

  I thought I’d start with the oil companies. Headley told me that Randall’s main dealings were with East Coast Petroleum (ECP), and Sunbright Oil. I made an appointment with the managing director of ECP, Marshal Hawkins.

  Hawkins was a scarecrow of a man, with the straw hair to match. All he needed was a corn cob pipe and a pitchfork. However, his dark grey suit was a far cry from farm clothes. The cost of what he was wearing could probably outdo the price of my monthly house payment. He smelled like “oil,” reeking of wealth. He was also high energy.

  “If you ask me to tell you how I’m doing, which you didn’t, I would tell you right off the bat, Detective Stolle, that the public is still fussing at us even though there’s been quite a drop in the price at the pump the last couple of months. However, in Randall Procopius’ case, I was glad to see gasoline especially put to good use.”

  “You weren’t a fan of his??”

  “I detested him. He was a despicable man, who used everyone for his own personal gain.”

  “Did you dislike him enough to kill him?”

  “Of course, but then I’d be a hypocrite because I do some of the same things that Randall did. I’m just as interested in profit as he was, but possibly I could be slightly nicer than he was. Randall was rude and crude. Even at some of the lavish parties he’d throw, he couldn’t behave himself. He’d be sitting at a table and stick his hand up a woman’s dress. And some of the women he hung around with liked it.”

  I held back my thought about Randall being gay. Maybe the hand up the dress was disrespect rather than foreplay. It could have been Randall saying, “I’m not your type.”

  “Did Randall personally cheat you, Mr. Hawkins?”

  “I was a pretty good match for him. I actually like the competition. He did outdo me a few times, but it’s all according to the fortunes of war. If you can’t lose money, you shouldn’t be in this fight.”

  “And Randall could fight well?”

  “Very well. He told me, like maybe he told everyone, that the Monopoly game he had as a kid taught him everything he needed to know about business. The only thing I didn’t like was that Randall was just a bit too friendly with my wife. Even without drinking much, he’d start touching her all over—I had to stop him a number of times,”

  Maybe you stopped him permanently, I thought to myself. It would be high irony if Marshal Hawkins killed Randall Procopius to keep a gay guy from seducing his wife. My conclusion as I left his office was that, despite his protests to the contrary, Hawkins seemed to have been quite unsettled by good old Randall.

  The head of Suncoast Oil, Richard Greene, was also honest about his feelings for Procopius.

  “I hope he rots in hell.”

  “Not exactly a friend of yours, Mr. Greene?”

  “The man was unscrupulous. He’d try anything he could to get every dollar away from me. There was no personal caring on Randall’s part—what he wanted was domination. He bankrupted one of my subsidiary companies by giving them bad investment advice so they would fail and he could then buy up their stock cheaply. He did all this while he was supposedly working for me. He would have been good in espionage as a double or triple agent.”

  Mr. Greene didn’t know how insightful he was being. With further investigation I found out that Randall worked for our own government as an envoy to Russia to check out the then Russian President to see if a new dictatorship was rising in that country. Procopius was sent under the guise of a businessman, but he was really trying to gather as much information as he could about the future direction of Russia. The people I interviewed in the State Department would not talk much about this area of Randall’s life, but their very silence made me think Procopius brought back vital information. Soon I hit a complete dead end: no one would talk to me at all about Randall’s connection to our government. I did make a note to pursue this further.

  Now it was the day for the reading of Randall’s will, where I was hoping to discover the identity of the three shadowy people who were going to be millionaires. Little did I know at the time that this reading of the will would be more dramatic for me than when I seen on the classic movie channel Marlon Brando, as Marc Anthony, reading Julius Caesar’s will.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The day had been refreshingly breezy and sunny as I entered Linton Headley’s office. Again the other name on the door—Edmund Burrows was no where to be found—was he an invention, to give weight to the firm? I was beginning to not trust anything, anymore.

  Headley greeted me with an energetic handshake. “Ready for the big show?”

  “You could have at least been serving popcorn. I always like that with my entertainment.”

  The first to arrive was Loretta Traxell. Headley had told me he was going to ask each one of the inheritors how they knew Randall Procopius. After all, a person didn’t give a hundred million dollars to just anyone on the street, or did they??

  Loretta was a petite brunette who could have been fifty but still looked vibrant.

  “How did I come to know Randall? I was his high school girlfriend. When Randall broke up with me he said I had helped him tremendously because the experience with me convinced him that he was gay. He said
I was so attractive, yet he couldn’t get connected to me, so he must be gay. I guess it was a kind of a compliment.”

  “Have you seen Randall recently?” Headley asked.

  “Not recently. He’s dead, you know.”

  Headley rolled his eyes. “I know he’s dead, Ms. Traxell, that’s why we’re here. I meant have you seen him since high school, say in the last year or two?”

  “Oh, I get it. No, I haven’t see Randall since that graduation night when we broke up. I was very surprised when you called me. But I sure could use the extra thousand or so that Randall might be giving me.”

  She was a little bit far off from the one hundred million that she was getting, but Headley was saving that part for last. “What do you do now for a living, Ms. Traxell?” he inquired.

  However, Headley’s question was interrupted by a knock on the conference room door, and his secretary showed two more brunettes into the room. I guessed that Randall had a thing for dark-haired ladies. Also both ladies bore a resemblance to Loretta Traxell. Was all this Randall’s idea of a joke from the grave?

  Headley had also noticed the similarity. “Do you all know each other—you aren’t related are you?” Traxell shook her head, and the taller of the other two ladies spoke up, as she turned toward her partner, “No we just met in the elevator. I’m Vanda Patton, and this is Renee Boyston.” Apparently none of the three women had noticed their resemblance to each other.

  Headley continued, “This is Loretta Traxell. She, along with you two, are to be the only recipients of Mr. Procopius’ estate. I’ll ask each of you two what I just asked Ms. Traxell, how did you know Randall Procopius?”

  Vanda spoke up first. So far, she seemed to be the most aggressive of the three. “My association with Mr. Procopius was a little. . .uh. . .private, but since he’s gone now he wouldn’t mind my revealing it. I work for an escort service, and I had been ‘escorting’ Randall for two years now. We had gone to plays together, out to dinner, and even to an Eagles game.”

  “Did you do more than accompany him, Ms. Patton?”

  “At times we did become intimate.”

  Suddenly I was beginning to know that Randall could swing from both sides of the plate.

  Headley kept going, as formal as ever. “Now, Ms. Boyston, how did you become acquainted with Mr. Procopius?”

  “My contact with him was very brief. His car had broken down on the highway, and I stopped to give him a hand. My husband’s been a mechanic for fifteen years, and he taught me everything there was to know about a car. A quick look under the hood, and I got Mr. Procopius’ car going again. He asked me for my name and address to reward me, and I was hesitant at first but he did seem like a nice gentleman; moreover the car was a Rolls Royce, so I felt this wasn’t some drifter. After that day, I never heard from him again, that is, until you called, Mr. Headley. I can’t imagine why Mr. Procopius would have wanted me at this legal proceeding.”

  “He wants to give you some money, you dumb broad.” Vanda had dropped her polite demeanor and abruptly became hostile. This was all becoming pretty bizarre.

  However, the voice of reason, Linton Headley, looked sternly at Vanda, and she relaxed back into her seat. Headley then picked up an envelope from in front of him. “Mr. Procopius instructed me to open this envelope at the reading of his will. I do not know its contents.” Headley took out a single sheet of paper. He read: “Being of sound mind, I wish all the candidates for my will to solve the following riddle. . .”

  All of us in that room heard the word, “candidates.” That word seemed to alter the present reality. Then the word, “riddle,” seemed to place us all into another sphere of reality.

  Headly read on: “. . .The person who solves the riddle will receive my entire estate.”

  We all were stunned, even Headley. “I didn’t know of this development,” he repeated somewhat apologetically.

  “All right—read the stupid riddle!!” Again, Vanda had spoken up.

  “Of course.” Headley cleared his throat. “Here is the riddle: ‘What is not able to be seen but carries us all into the future?’”

  “This is totally ridiculous,” Vanda snorted, it’s like some god damned quiz show.” And, with those words, she rose up and marched out the door.

  Loretta Traxell was the next to speak. “I didn’t think I was really supposed to be here. High school was a long time ago. Besides, now that I’ve been sitting here thinking, I’ve decided that Randall’s last words to me were meant to insult me. If you’ll excuse me, I’m leaving also.”

  The three of us sat in silence as Loretta wiggled out the door. Headley finally spoke, “I guess that leaves just you, Mrs. Boyston.”

  Renee Boyston had a half smile on her face. “You mean I could inherit the old man’s estate because I helped him start his car??”

  “Not exactly, Mrs. Boyston—you have to give me the answer to the riddle first.”

  “That’s easy. The answer is, ‘The Internet.’”

  Headley’s glasses fell off the edge of his nose and clattered to the table. “That is correct!” he said with a resounding voice like some game show host would proclaim.

  Mrs. Boyston did not seem to be impressed. “O.K., so what do I get? The guy was probably in debt up to his eyeballs.”

  “Not at all, Mrs. Boyston. You will be getting four hundred million dollars!”

  We were able to revive Renee Boyston after she fainted.

  My attendance there as a witness was now finished after Headly had gotten Mrs. Boyston to sign the necessary papers. I didn’t want to question any of the three ladies further. None of them seemed to be suspects in Procopius’ murder since all three seemed genuinely surprised that he had offered them a chance at his estate. Also I couldn’t imagine that any of these thin willowy ladies could have rolled good old Randall into his fireplace after dousing him with gasoline. Vanda Patton was a little stronger looking, but she hadn’t even tried to guess the riddle.

  However, I still had other prospects—Randall’s two “boyfriends.” I was going to see them next.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  One of Procopius’ lovers was a government official high up in the Philadelphia political scene. It was he who had secured Randall’s appointment as that envoy to Russia. Sean Merriman was the deputy mayor, and not only that—he also had a wife and three children.

  I was sitting with him in his City Hall office. Merriman looked to be all facial hair. He had a small face, but he possessed a growth around his mouth and chin that would defy most rain forests. His handshake was firm and his voice of good timbre as he said, “You didn’t tell my secretary what you wanted to see me about. Is it a police matter? I ran an open campaign, and nothing need be hidden from the public.”

  “How about the matter of Randall Procopius, your lover?”

  “Hey, how about that. It’s good you didn’t tell my secretary.”

  “How have you been able to keep your ‘association’ with Randall a secret?”

  “Outwardly I had met with him a number of times on city business since he had been one of the leading entrepreneurs in this locale. Sometimes we managed to sneak off for a little personal time. I’m only the assistant mayor—my boss is under much more scrutiny. I can pretty much come and go as I please.”

  “If this got out, could it ruin your career?”

  “Maybe. But for sure it would ruin my marriage. I do love my wife.”

  “I’m not here to moralize, Mr. Merriman, but you had a funny way of showing your love for your wife with your relationship to Procopius.”

  “As I said, we had a lot of business meetings, and we developed a fondness for each other. One night Randall told me he did occasionally dabble with women, but mainly he was gay. He said he liked going both ways, and he wondered about me. At the time I laughed it off, but a couple of weeks later we were conducting a meeting in the sauna, and Randall made a move on me. I wasn’t totally surprised, and I didn’t resist. I guess I both care for my wife, and I
cared for Randall.”

  “But you did worry about your wife finding out?”

  “I’ve given her plenty in my life: a no limit credit card, and also myself as a devoted husband and father. If she did divorce me, she’d get a settlement that would keep her comfortable.”

  “Maybe what she really wanted would be a man who was totally devoted to her.”

  “What can I tell you, Detective, possibly some people need all kinds of people to satisfy them. Maybe I’m one of those people.”

  “Let me ask you, Mr. Merriman, did that nice large ego of yours cause you to kill Randall Procopius to keep him quiet about the affair with him? The way he was killed seemed to be filled with personal emotion, say by someone who was his lover??”

  “You haven’t been listening to me, Detective Stolle. I cared about Randall. He showed me a whole new way of life. When I was a kid I was the shortest skinniest one, always picked last for gym class teams. I had no social life in school—the other guys were always trying to impress—I hated that, so I stayed away from any male companionship. Randall was the first male who seemed to recognize me for myself. I appreciated and eventually treasured that. I would never have thought of trying to hurt him, much less kill him.

  “I guess that male bonding was worth more to me than my marriage. To rise up as far as I have in such a short time in the political world, I’ve had to be a risk taker. I did take the chance I would never get caught with Randall, but if I did it would have been worth it. Haven’t you ever taken any risks, Detective Stolle?”

  I wanted to give Merriman a quick no, but instantly I flashed back to parties I had been at when I had driven home drunk, and even during my first week of training to be a cop, out with some girlfriends I had done the same thing—driven home when I could just barely see the road, risking not only my own career but other people’s lives as well. So I merely kept silent, as Merriman continued.

  “I was raised by parents, Detective, who taught me to respect all people. I never saw my dad ever raise his hand to my mother in anger. I’m a pretty peaceful guy—murder is not on my agenda.”