Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

The Aura of an Alpha Wolf by Jeremiah Healy

Jeremiah Healy is the author of 18 crime novels (including Turnabout,a 2005 Leisure Books mass-market reprint) and over 60 short stories, some of each under his pseudonym “Terry Devane.” He was the first North-American president of the International Association of Crime Writers and also the American Guest of Honour at the 35th Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in Toronto.

“Mr. Cuddy?” said the woman in the corridor, peering like a Marx Brother around the edge of my partially opened office door.

I stood from behind my desk, gesturing to the stenciled “JOHN FRANCIS CUDDY: CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATIONS” on the pebbled glass above the midway point of my door. “That’s right.”

The woman now shuffled over the threshold. “I thought there’d be, like, a secretary, you know?”

The influence of television. “If I had an assistant of any kind, I’d have to charge twice my hourly rate.”

The woman nodded uncertainly, as though she’d have preferred to hear that my assumed secretary was home sick, but she still came fully into view, closing the door behind her. She shrugged out of the heavy coat that Decembers in Boston require, which gave me a chance to gauge her.

About thirty and medium height, with a stolidness beyond baby-fat. Matte-brown hair framed a face that once had battled acne and lost, leaving a pitted surface makeup didn’t quite cover. Her eyes — brown also, as she approached my desk — appeared bloodshot, which I sensed was from crying over some recent tragedy rather than from drowning it with a bottle.

“I’m Tamara Sinclair, but everybody calls me Tammy.”

She extended her right hand and we shook, the surname ringing a vague bell.

As Sinclair settled into one of the two client chairs across from me, I sat back down in mine. “What can I do for you?”

She fidgeted a bit, as most people will in talking with a private investigator. “It’s about my father. And his murder.”

The penny dropped. “Professor Brant Sinclair, at Corbin University?”

“Yes.”

I’d had a past case involving Corbin, a small but prestigious school past Fenway Park that had stepped up from “college” to “university” during the interim. “The news stories said your father was killed in his loft apartment last week, apparently by a burglar?”

“So the police think.” An emphatic shake of her head, the eyes closing for what I thought might be a wave of tears. But when the lids raised again, there was more fire than water in them. “I know different, though those same police don’t want to hear it.”

“Who’s the homicide detective on the case?”

“A man named Guinness. He called himself ‘Sergeant Detective’ Guinness.”

A quirk of the Boston department, placing rank before duty. I’d dealt with Guinness while he was still just a patrolman in plainclothes, and I didn’t think his promotion to sergeant would have made him any nicer.

Or smarter.

I drew a legal pad from the side of my desk. “Ms. Sinclair, what makes you ‘know different’ about your father’s death?”

My apparent client resettled in her chair, less fidgety now and getting down to business, the fire in her eyes banking but not yet burning out. “After the police... took down all that yellow tape from Dad’s loft door?”

Sinclair seemed to be prompting me. “Released the crime scene, you mean?”

“Yes. I went in there to... well, you know, get his things. And there were some valuable items missing, yes, like a Goya print and some small statuary. But also oddities, things no random ‘burglar’ would care about. Or probably even notice.”

“Such as?”

“Dad was very proud of earning a Phi Beta Kappa key in college, an honor he always believed launched him as an alpha.”

I was getting a little lost in her Greek letters. “An alpha...?”

“Dad’s field was zoology, and within that, the study of wolves. In every pack, there’s an ‘alpha’ male who leads the rest by personality and will. Dad always thought that his gaining Phi Beta Kappa status would make him the leader of any organization he might join.”

One way of looking at life. “And did it?”

A nod as emphatic as her earlier head shake. “Dad used to say that believing was more than half the battle. That belief — that bedrock certainty — would produce the ‘aura’ that let every other ‘wolf’ know that Dad was the indisputable alpha in every situation.”

I began to have the feeling that “alpha” in her father’s context might translate to “egomaniac” in normal English. “This key is missing, then?”

“Yes. And its chain, too. When Dad would wear his best suit — and only his best, because of his reverence for that key and what it represented — he’d always thread the chain...” Sinclair demonstrating with several fingers on her own clothing, “...through a buttonhole on his vest, so the key would be visible.”

Just in case the other wolves missed the “aura” part, I supposed. “So, your father favored three-piece suits?”

“No.” Sinclair now looked down at her fingers and seemed to silently order them to be still. “No, only one three-piece suit — this year’s model was a gray herringbone — to wear on special occasions with the key. And the suit is missing, too.”

“Could it be at the cleaners?”

Sinclair barely deflated. “Maybe, though I didn’t find any claim ticket in his recent papers. But the Phi Beta Kappa key and its chain? No way he’d let them out of his possession. And even the Goya print and the statuary I mentioned? All involved wolves.”

She had a point there. “Are you an only child?”

Another closing of the eyes. “I am now.” Sinclair opened them again, but this time, no fire. “After me, my mother had a son, Colin. But she died giving birth to him, and three years ago, my brother committed suicide when his grades weren’t going to get him into what Dad felt was a sufficiently prestigious grad program.”

Didn’t take much to fill in the blanks on how it could happen. “Ms. Sinclair, I’m sorry.”

She squared her shoulders, let out a ragged breath. “No need to be. You couldn’t have prevented it. You see, Dad truly believed in this ‘alpha wolf’ self-image that he had. And an alpha is supposed to breed and produce next-generation alphas to lead the pack.” A grunt that, in other circumstances, might have been a laugh. “All you have to do is take one look at me and know the ‘aura’ isn’t there. Colin didn’t have it, either. And Dad really couldn’t... accept that. So he pushed both of us into trying to be something we weren’t, and when we couldn’t, he... well, kind of abandoned us.”

The opening I needed. “If that’s the way your father treated you, why are you interested in my investigating what the police’ve already branded a burglary gone bad?”

Now the tears did begin to flow, and Sinclair delved awkwardly into her handbag, probably for some tissues. “Because he was all I had left as family, Mr. Cuddy. And despite his being a cold and insufferable son of a bitch, God, I still loved him, you know?”

As Tamara “Tammy” Sinclair plucked out her tissues, I told her I’d give it a few days. Then, “Do you have any ideas on who might have wanted your father dead?”

A sniffle and another dip into her handbag. “I brought a list.”

Of not only names, but addresses and telephone numbers, as it turned out. If I ever have the money to hire an assistant, Tamara Sinclair would find herself on the top of that list.

But first, I pulled my old Honda Prelude — the last year of the original model — into the parking lot of the Boston Police Headquarters at Shroeder Plaza to avoid a longish walk in the wintry air. Slipping the guard there twenty dollars to avoid a tow, I made my way into the building. I was approaching the reception area, a raised wooden bulwark like an old district-station booking counter, when Sergeant Detective Guinness — I realized I’d never heard his first name — came out of the elevators to the left and walked toward the security turnstiles.

And, therefore, toward me.

He’s younger than I am, but his puffy features and long-lost hair made him look five years older. I hoped.

“Cuddy, get out of my sight.”

The personality hadn’t changed any. “What makes you think I’m here to see you?”

“Congratulate me on making sergeant, maybe.” A glance around, a drop in decibel level. “Now that some judges with brains in their heads finally decided that the Ubangis aren’t entitled to every slot in the department.”

No change in personality or prejudice. “I’d like to talk with you about the Sinclair case.”

“ ‘The Wolfman’?”

Leave it to Guinness. “That’s the one.”

“For who?”

No sense in not disclosing my client. “The daughter.”

You could almost see the smoke coming out of his ears as Guinness processed the options.

“Tell you what, Cuddy. You buy me lunch, and I give you a couple of appetizers. No look at the file, just some background.”

“Okay.” I turned. “Since we’re both already here, how about the commissioner’s banquet room?”

Sour expression. “Cheap bastard.” But he led me down the main hall to the cafeteria.

After we’d gone through the line and taken a table, I registered that nobody else in the large, half-full room had said hello to Guinness, or even acknowledged him with a nod or smile.

No surprise.

Chewing with his mouth open, my lunch date said, “So ask.”

I swallowed first. “I seem to remember from the news coverage that Sinclair was found stabbed to death.”

Now Guinness pursed his lips. “You could say that, yeah.”

“Meaning?”

Another forkful of food. “Try seventeen times.”

The police almost always withhold certain details, to help them screen out nutcases who come in to confess but won’t have all their ducks in a row on the murder itself. “Sounds kind of enthusiastic for a burglar caught in the act.”

“Hey, Cuddy, I feel like I’m turning on the wheel of life in this job, get me? When I first come on the force, it was heroin. Then angel dust. Then coke. Then crack. Now we’re back to heroin again. Who knows what goes through a junkie’s head when he needs money for a fix?”

“Odd choice of loot, though, don’t you think?”

“What, the little statues and stuff? You think only lowlifes go on the junk? Heroin’s chic, or haven’t you heard? For all I know, somebody from an art gallery did this one.”

“Any prints in the decedent’s loft?”

“Just the ones you’d expect. Sinclair’s, his student sweetie of the semester, and a cleaning woman’s got a birthday-party alibi for our professor’s time of death that you couldn’t break with a backhoe.”

Sinclair’s lover was on my client’s list. Which made me think about something else Tamara Sinclair had mentioned. “How about the suit and school key the daughter says are missing?”

“Look, Cuddy, I got the impression from both the people we talked to and Tammy herself that the old man thought she was kind of an ugly duckling, get me? And, for all I know, she’s the one who did him.”

“And then Ms. Sinclair hires me to investigate, when you already have her off the hook?”

“Hey, what do I know? The daughter tell you she works at an art gallery?”

Kind of a conversation-stopper, I admit.

Sergeant Detective Guinness grinned with his whole puffy face as he stuffed another wad of food into his mouth. “I didn’t think so.”

I left the rest of my lunch on its plate and went out to the Prelude. Unfolding Tamara Sinclair’s list, the people at Corbin University won first place, being the most clustered and the closest as well.

As I pulled up to the guard shack at the entrance to the school, I was reminded of why it was such a little gem in a city of many jewels. Coed, good academic standards, beautiful buildings and grounds behind a high granite perimeter wall.

Only problem? The neighborhood outside that wall.

Fortunately, the campus policewoman who slid open the window of the shack had gone to high school with me back in South Boston. “Deirdre,” I said, “how’ve you been?”

“Glad to get off my feet and onto this stool, truth to tell. What’re you here for?”

“I drew the daughter in the Sinclair case.”

Deirdre glanced around. “Since he wasn’t killed on campus, and there’s no thought someone here’s involved, I’ll let you by. But anybody raises a fuss, my fellow centurions will toss your butt over the fence.”

“Fair enough.”

“Here’s a parking pass. On your dashboard, facing forward.”

“Got it. And thanks, Deirdre.”

She just waved me on.

From a space sandwiched by a minivan and an SUV the size of an Abrams tank, I walked to the Science building designation under the name of “Jillian Wayne, Associate Professor” on Tamara Sinclair’s list. The structure was red brick, the ivy climbing around its white-framed windows now browning and thinning from the first hard frosts. Wayne’s office turned out to be on the second floor, but when I knocked on the closed door and got no answer, a student-type male in baggy cargo pants suggested I try “Dr. Sinclair’s” instead.

I found it farther down the hall, occupying what I guessed to be a corner position that would offer cross-vent in hot weather and nice views year-round. The door was ajar, but I knocked anyway.

“Yes?”

A female voice, modulated for public speaking. I pushed gently into the office.

And into a combination of the magazine National Geographic and the television series Wild Kingdom.

In front of a fireplace, wolves were depicted in the kind of realistic taxidermy I associate with museum exhibits. Skulls and skeletons graced the tops of bookshelves going swaybacked from the weight of the volumes on them. And framed photos and paintings of wolves with their cubs — or pups, maybe? — on all three walls I could see.

“Can I help you?”

That same modulated voice, now obviously coming from a striking woman of forty standing behind the desk, a large-format book in her hand showing three more wolves on its cover. She stood about five-five if she didn’t wear heels, with dishwater blond hair that fell to her shoulders. If this was the associate professor on my list, though, she believed in coming to school in sweats with Corbin’s name and mascot on the shirt.

“Jillian Wayne?”

“Doctor Wayne, actually. Who are you?”

I’ve always thought that people who lead with their titles must wonder if they’re worthy of them. “John Cuddy.” I took out my ID holder and crossed the room toward her. Cradling the wolf book, Wayne came out from behind the desk to take it, and I could tell she was wearing just sneakers below the sweats. In profile, she also had that nose-pointed-at-chin feature that might remind you of clan Kennedy in Hyannis Port.

Handing the holder back to me, Wayne said, “A private investigator? Let me guess. Tammy?”

“Right the first time.”

A smile that could have been sly or coy. “An easy deduction. I’m afraid Brant’s daughter is the only one who sees conspiracy beyond tragedy.”

“Conspiracy?”

“Oh, no,” said Wayne, using the side of her free hand to slide some other books over and put the one she was holding back on the shelf, if in a slightly different spot than it seemed to occupy originally. “No, I don’t mean in some legal sense of cabal. Just that there’s more to the incident beyond some drug addict gone berserk when Brant surprised him in the act of robbing his loft.”

“You’ve been there, then?”

Wayne stopped with the books and turned toward me. “I’m sorry?”

“You didn’t say Dr. Sinclair’s ‘house’ or ‘apartment.’ You specified his ‘loft.’ ”

That ambiguous smile again, and a little swing in the hips as she turned back to choose another volume to rearrange. “I see I’ll have to watch my vocabulary around you, sir. But yes, last Christmas, Brant hosted a holiday party for the Science department, and I attended.”

“Dr. Sinclair’s daughter seems to think that if it wasn’t a burglary gone violent, you might have some information on who would have a reason to see him dead.”

“Does she?” A light laugh, like a minor riffle on a garden pond. “No, Mr. — I’m sorry. Is it ‘Curry’?”

She’d read it off my license. “Cuddy, with two d’s.”

“Well, Mr. Cuddy, I suppose I’d have the most ‘reason to see him dead,’ since I’ll now be the head of our department and probably be elevated to full professor as well. However, I also have the least reason, since without Brant, Zoology will have a much harder time seeking — both within Corbin and without — funds for research.”

“Because?”

“Because, in zoological circles, the man was a giant. ‘Brant the Grant,’ a lightning rod for attracting money.” Wayne motioned toward the tableau of stuffed animals at the hearth. “As colonists, we killed this magnificent beast off, and now, thanks to people like Brant Sinclair, there’s renewed interest in them, and renewed enthusiasm for averting their extinction.”

“You’re a wolf expert, too, then?”

“No.” Another rippling laugh. “No, an institution the size of Corbin is lucky to have a Zoology department at all. We certainly couldn’t afford two professors with the same subspecialty. But Brant’s absence will mean that he won’t be bringing in the outside funding for his projects that allowed all our inside funding to be spent on mine and others’ efforts.”

“Maybe even close the department down?”

A frown. “No, Mr. Cuddy. Whatever gave you that idea?”

I gestured at her clothing. “You look like you’re dressed for clearing Dr. Sinclair’s things out of here.”

Wayne looked down at herself, then back up at me. “Dressed more for ‘sorting’ his collection, toward reducing it to the most valuable volumes for a special section of our library.”

“And after which,” I glanced around the spacious, desirable space, “who gets this office?”

The sly/coy smile again. “I’m hoping I will. Which also brings us rather full circle, to my ‘reason for wanting Brant dead,’ and makes it time for you to leave so I can complete my task and you can get on with yours.”

Picturing my client’s list, I said, “Any suggestions where I might go next?”

“There’s a former student whom Brant scuttled by not approving his thesis topic.” Wayne tapped a finger to her pointed chin. “In fact, I’ve heard the young man’s now tending bar at an establishment two blocks down from Corbin’s front gate. Now, talk about a reason.”

Maybe more fox than wolf, Dr. Jillian Wayne, but definitely found within the “predator” band of the animal spectrum.

My client’s list showed the name of that tavern where the former student, James Odom, supposedly now worked. Approaching the place — and stepping around two sleeping drunks and one aggressive panhandler with a serial-killer’s tic in his eye — I hoped young Mr. Odom could take care of himself.

Inside, the lineoleum was tacky and as colorless as indoor-outdoor carpeting. More stale beer than urine hung in the air, but not by much. The bar itself started about three feet inside the door and on the left wall; some chipped and faded wooden booths with shabby upsholstery shared the right one.

I moved toward a vacant stool a few seats away from a black guy in an MBTA motorman’s outfit on my left and two burly whites wearing near-rags on my right, but with a six-pack’s worth of empty long-necked Buds standing before them.

The raggedy guy closer to me aimed his voice downward. “Hey, Jim, let’s have another round.”

“The name’s James,” from below bar level, “and you’re both past your limit.”

Taking the stool, I could see the bartender, squatting under the bottom shelf of hard liquor with his back to me, loading a metal cabinet from a case of ale. I guessed he heard the movement and rustle of my clothes behind him. When he rose and turned, I decided James Odom could indeed take care of himself.

Head shaved and shining in even the tavern’s poor lighting, Odom went about six-four and two-thirty, an inch taller than I am, twenty pounds heavier, and I didn’t even want to think how many years younger.

The white guy closer to me wouldn’t give it up. “I told you we’ll have another round, boy.”

The MBTA motorman quietly said, “Say your prayers, man.”

Odom acted the way I was thinking, that the guy to my left was speaking to the two whites, not the bartender. Then Odom’s eyes left me and turned to the slur. “Get your sorry asses out of here or I’ll put the two of you through that door.”

The white guy doing all the talking took one of his empty Bud bottles by its neck and smashed the base on the bar, coming up with a nasty weapon for gouging and disfiguring. Back in the military police, I’d been taught how to deal with such, but this wasn’t my place, much less my fight.

Odom acted like it was his. Taking a wipe-towel from the sink in front of him, he wrapped it tight around his right hand, which to me meant he was a lefty. Then Odom vaulted on his flat left palm over the bar, catching the surprised and beer-slowed guy in the shoulder with the ball of his foot. The guy went over as Odom landed catlike on the linoleum. The guy’s friend, though, dropped off his stool and scooped the broken bottle into his own right hand, coming up quickly to jab at Odom with it.

Odom used his towel-wrapped hand to parry the first two thrusts, then on the third brought both forearms together in an X, the white guy’s wrist being caught at the cross formed by Odom’s wrists. The bartender pivoted to the side, brought the second white guy’s arm up behind his back, and snapped it at the shoulder.

Classic, textbook move.

The second white guy was screaming in pain now, the first trying to decide whether to get up off the floor or risk being thrown through the door as promised. Finally, the first helped the second to his feet, and together they stumbled out onto the sidewalk.

Odom watched them go, then walked over to a closet, coming back with a broom and a dustpan. As he began sweeping up the shards of glass, I said, “What branch were you in?”

Odom glanced over to me. “Say what?”

“What branch of the service?”

Not a smile, but not a frown, either. “Navy. Shore Patrol. You?”

“Military Police, long time ago.”

Odom went back to sweeping. “But the training, it don’t change much, huh?”

“Not some of it, anyway.”

Odom seemed to finish with the glass, then leaned the handle of the broom against the bar and laid the dustpan atop it. “You want a drink?”

“Irish whiskey?”

“I got Bushmill’s?”

Impressed, I said, “That’d be fine. Straight up.”

The motorman, maybe sensing something further that was none of his business, emptied his glass and left a ten on the bar. By the time Odom and I were alone, my Bushmill’s was in front of me, half-filling an Old Fashion glass.

I said, “This looks suspiciously like a double.”

Odom shrugged. “Brothers in arms, right?”

I stuck out a hand. “John Cuddy.”

“James Odom.” My fingers nearly disappeared in his grip. “You ain’t a cop, because I’ve never seen you before and you wouldn’t be cadging drinks off me the first time.”

I sipped the whiskey, using my now free hand to produce my ID holder. “Private investigator.”

Odom cocked his head, apparently confused for the first time since I’d entered the tavern. “Investigating what?”

He didn’t look at my license, so I put it away. “The death of Brant Sinclair.”

A slow nod, then a faster one. “The cops say burglary, somebody else says something else.”

“The daughter.”

“Well, I can’t tell you nothing about it.”

“Mr. Odom?”

“What?”

“I plan to pay for the drink, so could we please drop the street talk and speak to each other like the college grads we both are?”

A laugh, seemingly genuine. Odom looked to the door, then reached behind him, took the Bushmill’s down again, and poured himself a single shot. Clinking his glass to mine, he said, “That would actually be a pleasure, my friend.”

“Not a lot of intellectual discourse in here?”

“Not anybody who’d know what the word ‘discourse’ means.” Odom threw back his whisky, snorting as the booze would have seared the lining of his throat. “Somebody at Corbin told you the Wolfman and I had our differences, eh?”

First Guinness at headquarters, now the same nickname from Odom here. “Sounded like it went deeper than that.”

“Yeah, well.” Odom used his glass’s bottom to make little, interconnecting rings on the bartop, like the Olympic logo. “I’ve been fascinated by animals ever since I was a kid. Went through the Navy to get my G.I. benefits for college at UMass-Boston, then started working my way through grad school at Corbin, just so I could pursue zoology with one of the masters.” The glass stopped. “Only thing was, Dr. Sinclair didn’t like the idea of a black wolf in the family.”

I had my own Bushmill’s halfway to my mouth when my elbow locked. “His daughter?”

The confused look again.

I said, “You were dating Brant Sinclair’s daughter?”

Now another genuine laugh. “No, man. I mean, I met the woman, the good doctor thinking he had to invite me to his little party at Christmas last year. But she... well, you know, doesn’t like guys?”

I brought the glass all the way to my lips and took a good slug of the whisky. “You think Tamara Sinclair is a lesbian?”

“From the horse’s mouth.” Odom stopped. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be, like, unkind to the woman, way she looks and all. But she herself told me so, maybe just... automatically, keep the grad student from hitting on Mr. Big Professor’s daughter?”

I shook that off for now. “The same man who shot down your career.”

“More put it on hold. I earn enough here, I start over somewhere else, a ways away from Corbin.”

“Since Dr. Sinclair is dead and can’t blackball you.”

A grin that had no hint of smile to it. “You see me before? With those two crackers?”

“I did.”

“I was going to kill Sinclair, I wouldn’t be stabbing him. I’d break his bones by my own hand. And slowly, like one of his wolves that got its leg caught in a trap.”

Odom made it sound credible.

I set my drink down and tented a ten next to it. “You have any idea who might have a reason to see Dr. Sinclair dead?”

Odom tapped his empty glass twice on the bar. “Leah Nordstrom, maybe. She was another one of his grad students.”

And another name from my client’s list. “Because he dropped her from the program, too?”

The good laugh, but followed by a thoughtful look. “More because Mr. Big Professor ‘popped’ her in the program. Word is, she’s carrying the man’s child.” James Odom took my glass but not my money before turning his back to me. “On the house, my friend, but time for you to go, too.”

Leah Nordstrom lived outside the tough neighborhood around Corbin University, but within easy commuting distance to the campus. In fact, if I had my geography right, her apartment house was on the route Brant Sinclair would likely have driven from his loft to the school.

The foyer of Nordstrom’s building had a buzzer system for visitors. When I pressed the button over her name, a female voice pitched like an electronic parrot’s answered. After I identified myself, there was a pause, then, “Come on up. Apartment Fifty-six.”

I went through the humming inner door and took the elevator to the fifth floor. When I exited, a young blond woman was standing in the corridor.

Before I could do much in the way of assessing her, she said, “I’m Leah. The guy across the hall is an off-duty firefighter, even bigger than you. Show me some ID, or I bang on his door.”

I’ve had warmer welcomes.

After Nordstrom looked at my license, she nodded once and gave me a jaded smile beneath bright, searching eyes. “Okay. Let’s get this over with.”

As Nordstrom turned to the door with “56” centered on it, I could appreciate some other reasons why Brant Sinclair, ever the alpha male, would have focused on her. About five-eight in shower flip-flops, she had shapely calves under a denim skirt that accented an athletically tight butt and breasts that pushed noticeably forward from inside her blouse. Up close, the blond hair was swaying cornsilk, no dark roots at the part in the center of her head.

Nordstrom opened the apartment door, and I followed her through a short hallway into a living room done in Southwestern pastels, a surprising amount of light coming through the windows, even on a December afternoon. She took a streaked-print easy chair, motioning me toward a matching loveseat.

“Nice place,” I said, meaning it.

The jaded smile still. “Brant took good care of me.”

I gave it a beat. “He paid for this apartment?”

“That’s right.”

“The university administration know about the arrangement?”

A huffed breath of impatience. “Look, every school has sexual harassment policies, okay? But nobody complains, nobody cares.”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell?”

“Functionally. What do you want with me?”

“Dr. Sinclair’s daughter thinks her father’s death was something other than a burglary gone violent.”

“She would.”

“Why?”

Nordstrom drew one of her shapely calves up under her rump, leaving the other dangling and jiggling its flip-flop. “Tammy saw Brant as the only successful aspect of her own life. His leaving it as a ‘victim of random chance’ didn’t jibe — couldn’t jibe — with her image of him. So it’s not just that she would think malice aforethought: Tammy would have to think that to get her through the night.”

“You study law before turning to zoology?”

Nordstrom half closed her eyes, I suspect resorting to an “aspect” she’d found successful in her own life. “For a year. But I found it boring.”

“Why?”

“Because it seemed to involve a lot of conversations with plodders like you.”

Plodders. “And zoology doesn’t?”

“Brant Sinclair didn’t.”

I’d heard enough about his aura not to need further regaling. “So you and he became a couple.”

“One look, and both of us knew we were destined for each other.”

I wasn’t sure a “plodder” like me understood that. “Love at first sight?”

“Nothing so... romantic. Animal magnetism, he-male/female chemistry. Denying it would have been foolish, failing to act upon it a waste of valuable time together.”

Direct enough. “Some people believe you’re carrying Dr. Sinclair’s child.”

The jaded smile ratcheted up to full wattage now. “Some believe, but only I know for sure. And I am. It’s the last tribute I can give him, you see. To extend Brant’s exceptional gene pool, and to provide me an alpha offspring to raise in the nurturing environment that same trait in a mother can provide.”

I felt Nordstrom was talking more about breeding a particularly sharp sheepdog. “Forgive me, but you don’t seem all that sorry about Dr. Sinclair’s death.”

“Sorry? Of course I’m sorry. But I’m not crushed.” A shake of the head, letting her hair shimmer down onto her shoulders like the “after” part of a shampoo commercial. “Raising our child with Brant would have been a privilege. Raising our child without him will be a challenge, but the kind an alpha female must rise to meet. And surmount, to be worthy of the designation.”

Talk about positive self-image. “If a death by random burglary isn’t acceptable to Tamara Sinclair’s image of her father, then how can it be acceptable to yours?”

Another huffed breath. “Because, as I’d hoped even you would understand by now, my image of me was not dependent upon Brant: It was my appreciation of him that honed this image of myself.”

The straw that broke this camel’s back, so I plodded on out of there.

The night wind was howling as I moved along the row of stones to hers, and when I bent over the grave, I had to use two rocks to keep the roses in place.

Roses, John? At this time of year? Must be a bear of a case.

“More like a wolf, Beth.”

As I imagined her considering that, I stared at the piece of granite. MARY ELIZABETH DEVLIN CUDDY, the dates of her birth and death far too close to each other, both in reality and in my heart.

Tell me, John. About the case.

I did.

Another pause, and I looked down on the harbor at the foot of her hill. The water looked black in what little ambient light shone upon it, the wind causing whitecaps to roll like wave after wave of an attacking army, assaulting the shoreline but not having much evident effect on it.

John?

I came back to her headstone.

Maybe I’m missing something, but how are you going to sort out which of these people — including your own client — is the killer?

I’d given that one some thought. “Try to find the wolf’s new den.”

It took me awhile to get the candids I needed using a telephoto lens.

Calling my client first, I told Tamara Sinclair I needed to push the investigation a bit and asked her where she worked. Without any evident reluctance, she indicated an art gallery on upper Newbury Street in Boston. I camped out in a coffee shop, catching a full-face and profile of her as she arrived at the gallery that next morning.

Then I was off to Corbin University, Deirdre giving me another pass through their gate, where I snapped Associate Professor Jillian Wayne on her way into the Science faculty building. Then Leah Nordstrom, arriving by cab, I assumed from her apartment house, and moving lithely up the steps of the student center. Finally, I caught James Odom as he signed for a delivery of beer outside the tavern two blocks away.

Then I got my copy of the Yellow Pages from the trunk of the Prelude and began to let my legs do the walking.

For the sixth time that afternoon, I laid my array of photos in front of the operative person running a storage facility within a mile of the university, this building looking like a medieval fortress, even to the slotted turrets at all four corners of the roof. The stocky, fifty-something male behind the reception counter wore dusty pants, a sweater with holes instead of patches at the elbow, and a watch-cap on his head that read “NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS: SUPER BOWL CHAMPIONS 2004.” He had a dead cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth, and, introducing himself to me as “Roman, like Julius Caesar,” he also had what to my ear sounded more like a Russian accent than an Italian one.

However, regardless of his heritage, he clearly reacted to at least one of my photos.

“Why you want for me to see these things?”

“You’re from Russia, Roman?”

A stiffening, and he took out the cigar and pointed it at his chest. “Russia? Never. I am born in Ukraine. And I buy this place fair to square with loan from our credit union in Jamaica Plain.”

Another neighborhood of Boston. “I’m not questioning any of that. I just want to know if you’ve rented space to any of these people recently.”

Roman stuck the cigar back in his mouth and looked down at the photos again. “My customers, they want no trouble.”

“And I hope not to cause them any. But this involves a murder, Roman, and I think there’ll be a lot less trouble all around if you talk to me without the police being involved.”

As I’d figured — and, to be honest, regretted — the word “police” caused a different kind of stiffening in the man.

Drawing a deep breath, he looked down again, and pointed, this time with an index finger instead of the cigar. “Her, yes.”

“When?”

“Last week.”

Bingo. “I need to be here when she comes next. Without her knowing.”

Roman glanced at a clock next to him. “One half-hour you wait. She come same time, every day.”

I glanced at his clock, too. “Does she bring anything new to store with you, or take anything away?”

“Take? No. And she bring only the first time.” Roman turned and grabbed some keys I thought might work a freight elevator. “I show you where her locker.”

Fewer rows of lockers and more cellblocks of walled-in, walk-in closets with larger corridors and smaller halls lit by bare, hanging bulbs above us. Roman showed me an unused locker — also with a bulb on an old pull-cord — before tapping on my target’s padlocked door and then leaving me by the same elevator we’d taken to the third floor. The air was dank, even cavelike, and I imagined the storage locker served its purpose.

I settled on a position around the corner, figuring I’d hear footsteps before having to show myself. According to my watch, Roman’s prediction was off by only five minutes.

After the footsteps stopped, I waited to hear the padlock unhasp, the door of the locker creak open, and the pull-cord click, throwing an additional arc of weak light into the main corridor. Then I came around the corner quietly, saying only, “Professor.”

Jillian Wayne jumped forward, then wheeled on me. “What are you doing here?”

“Figured I’d do some scouting of storage facilities, since everybody I spoke with seemed way too smart to leave in their own dwellings any — what would you call them? ‘Artifacts of an Alpha Wolf’?”

Her face flushing, Wayne didn’t even try the sly/coy smile. “Get out of here. This is my personal property.”

I put my foot between the open locker door and its jamb. “From this hallway I can see pretty clearly it used to be Brant Sinclair’s personal property, which for some reason you stole and feel a need to visit.”

Prints and statuary of wolves were displayed on a shelf, a herringbone gray three-piece suit on a wooden hanger itself hanging from a nail. And, woven through a buttonhole of the vest, a short bronze chain with a memorial fob attached at its end.

“This is an outrage. No court will—”

“Actually, I’m not an agent of the police in particular nor the state in general. As a private citizen working for another, anything I see is admissible in evidence. At your trial for murder.”

The color that had risen so recently to her cheeks drained as quickly. “No. No, it... it wasn’t...”

“Then tell me in your own words.”

Wayne looked down at her hands. “Brant and I... After his son committed suicide, Brant was truly upset. He knew his daughter was a lesbian and didn’t plan on having any children.” Wayne lifted her chin now, defiant again. “And even if Tammy did get impregnated somehow, she wasn’t the kind of stock to produce an alpha offspring.”

“But you believed you were?”

“Brant believed, and yes, so did I. So we tried. For years. Fertility tests, fertility drugs. But it wasn’t him. It was... me. I just couldn’t conceive. We hadn’t given up, only then, this semester...”

“Enter Leah Nordstrom.”

Through clenched teeth, “Yes. Eager, fertile, and... younger, too. Which an alpha male would want. Could... demand. Our Ms. Nordstrom sensed that. And seized her opportunity, getting pregnant by him.” You could feel the glow of blood passion come off Wayne now. “Only Brant forgot one important aspect of the ‘alpha’ concept.”

“Being?”

Wayne drew herself up, straight and resolute. “That every pack has an alpha female, too. And she doesn’t easily let go of her status, either.”

Picturing Leah Nordstrom and taking out my cell phone, I didn’t think Brant Sinclair had forgotten that aspect at all. But I did let Jillian Wayne cling to her own “aura” for the twenty additional minutes it took the police to arrive.

Copyright (c); 2005 by Jeremiah Healy.