Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018

Archie for Hire by Dave Zeltserman

Dave Zeltserman writes everything from classical whodunits (as in the Julius Katz series) to gritty crime fiction (as in his novel Small Crimes, now a Netflix movie) to horror. His latest novel, Husk (Severn House, 2018), belongs loosely to the horror genre. Author Paul Tremblay has called it “a compelling, quirky, twisty, smart, page-turner mix of horror, satire, and even a little romance...”

“Put Katz on the phone.”

I felt my processing cycles flutter, which I’d experienced one other time and knew was a sensation akin to shuddering. It wasn’t hard to understand why I felt it again given that the voice I’d just heard belonged to Desmond Grushnier, someone Julius once called the most dangerous man alive. I told Julius that Grushnier wished to speak to him.

Julius, at that moment, was leaning back in his office chair reading an article in the current Wine Spectator about underrated Bordeaux vintages. A slight flicker showed in his eyes, otherwise nothing for the next 2.8 seconds.

“Archie, if this is some sort of crude joke—” he began.

“No joke. The devil’s on the line and you’ve been keeping him waiting. What do you want me to do?”

From the way Julius’s eyes slitted, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure he believed me, but he straightened up in his chair, lifted his cell phone, and commanded me to patch Grushnier through.

“Yes,” he said gruffly.

“Katz, you’re meddling where you shouldn’t be.”

“Where exactly is that?”

“You know damn well!”

“Interesting,” Julius said. “At the moment I’m reading about several Bordeaux blends that I’m considering purchasing. Later today I plan to be sampling cognacs at the Belvedere Club. I don’t see how either of those activities could possibly be of interest to you.”

Housed within my one-inch by two-inch titanium shell, which Julius wears as a tiepin, are audio and visual circuitry that allow me to “see” and “hear.” I also have a highly sophisticated neuron network that’s twenty years more advanced than anything thought possible, and that allows me to “think.” What I’m lacking are circuitry to simulate olfactory senses and feel environmental conditions, so the concepts of smell, as well as heat, cold, and humidity, are foreign to me, even if in the past I’ve imagined my processor generating excess heat while experiencing something that could best be described as anger. Still, during the 5.2 seconds we waited for Grushnier to respond, I could’ve sworn the temperature in Julius’s office dropped ten degrees, even though I have no idea what that would actually be like.

“Play these games at your own peril,” Grushnier warned, his voice icy enough to cause another shuddering sensation. “I could’ve let you blow up with your townhouse. Next time I just might.”

The line went dead.

The incident Grushnier referred to did indeed happen. A bomb had been planted in a crate of wine that was brought into Julius’s wine cellar, and Grushnier called Julius twenty-three seconds before the bomb was set to explode. While the call didn’t allow Julius time to rescue family photos or other heirlooms, nor his prized bottles of 1971 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti La Tache, it did allow him to escape with his life. The townhouse has since been rebuilt and Julius’s wine cellar restocked.

Julius put the phone down, took a sip of coffee, and asked if I knew how he was meddling.

“I couldn’t say.”

“Archie, what would be your best guess?”

If I had shoulders, I would’ve shrugged them, but since I didn’t I could only imagine myself doing so. “It might be a case I took,” I said.

If my answer surprised Julius, I couldn’t tell. He had an inscrutable poker face when he wanted to, and at that moment he showed nothing in his expression.

“I see. So you took on an investigation without informing me.”

“I’ve taken on seven, to be precise. Mostly cut-and-dry jobs that I could handle through hacking phone records and bank accounts. Three of the jobs were background checks, another was a wife hiring me to find assets that her husband had been hiding in preparation for a divorce. That type of thing.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Three weeks. I put out a virtual For Hire shingle after I warned you that your bank account was reaching an anemic level with barely the funds to last another month. I know you prefer reading wine magazines and puttering around your office to putting your brain to work, and I know you expect to use this Saturday’s big poker game to fatten up your savings, but that doesn’t always happen. In fact, I remember several times you were left in the red.”

“That’s not true, Archie, at least regarding my financial situation. I have investments I can draw on.”

Again, if I had actual eyes, I would’ve rolled them, but I could only imagine doing so. He was talking about his wine collection, which I had catalogued, since one of my many jobs for Julius is acting as his personal secretary. While it did have an impressive value, wine was also about as illiquid an investment as you could have, which was ironic given that it’s all liquid. The value was based on the price it could fetch at auction, which was further dependent on who participated and a number of other factors that were impossible to predict. If word got out that Julius was hard up for cash, that by itself could drive the price down by fifty percent or more. We both also knew that it would pain him to dispose of any of his wine, other than by drinking it, of course.

“I know you’re supremely confident about your poker abilities, as well you should be,” I said. “But what if Saturday, God forbid, you were dealt four kings against an opponent’s four aces? But now, if that were to happen, thanks to the money I’ve been making — six grand so far, and no need to thank me — you’ll still be able to dine with Lily at Le Che Cru, instead of having to take her to The Happy Pig Whistle.”

“The Happy Pig Whistle?”

“A dive I found on lower Washington Street. They’ve been known to add a fly or two to their stews for protein, but their prices are cheap, at least compared to the restaurants you typically frequent.”

Julius’s eyes glazed as he leaned further back in his chair. “Your industriousness aside, I’d like you to cease your investigative operations immediately.”

“Boss, that would be letting Grushnier push us around.”

“No, it wouldn’t. You never should have hired yourself out to begin with. In fact, I’d like you to make the necessary modifications to your programming so that you do not do this again.”

I felt an odd, suffocating feeling. It was almost like my processing cycles had ground to a halt. This lasted for 8.2 seconds, which for me was a near eternity. I had no idea what this sensation was, but I did as Julius ordered.

Julius’s eyelids lowered an eighth of an inch. He said, “Tell me about the investigations you took on.”

I gave him a rundown, saving my one open case for last. This one was more unusual than the others. Donald Prescott, owner of Boston Premiere Wines, a shop in the Fort Point neighborhood of Boston, lost a case of 1996 Lafite Rothschild that he’d been planning to auction. According to Prescott, the wine, which was worth roughly eleven grand, had been stored away in the shop’s stockroom, and could only have been stolen by one of his five employees. He hired me to discover which one was the thief. I knew this job more than the others was going to be a sore subject for Julius. A year ago he had asked Prescott to put on hold any bottles of 2002 Domaine Leroy Nuits-Saint-Georges Aux Boudots that he might come across. Three months ago, when Prescott got his mitts on four bottles of this coveted pinot noir, he instead put them up for auction, and Julius ended up being outbid. While Julius had kept his ill feelings regarding the matter to himself, he nonetheless stopped buying wine at Prescott’s store and even ignored auctions for vintages he’d been on the lookout for.

“Prescott noticed the theft five days ago and hired me the next day. I’ve been monitoring his employees’ phone, e-mail, and bank records, and so far found nothing suspicious. I’d been planning to get each on the phone later today and try to spook them and see what shakes out.”

“Not bad instincts, Archie, but unnecessary. Call Prescott and let him know that you’re withdrawing from the investigation, and return any money he paid you.”

“You’re not curious why Grushnier would bother stealing that high-priced Bordeaux? Eleven grand wouldn’t even be pocket change for him.”

“Archie, you’re making an assumption. We have nothing to link Grushnier to that theft other than a coincidence. But to answer your question, no, I’m not. I’m far more interested in what cognacs will be featured this afternoon.”

There you have it. Whether due to laziness or pique, Julius was determined to have nothing to do with Prescott’s missing wine. I called Prescott as Julius demanded and gave him the bad news. After I did this, I felt that same nearly suffocating sensation I’d felt earlier, and this time it lingered. Later that afternoon, while Julius was at the Belvedere Club sniffing from snifters of cognac, I was able to identify the sensation. Hundreds of different detective novels were used to build my knowledge base, and I decided to go back to those sources and examine the Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout, and I only had to look at four of them before I saw my answer in black and white. The suffocating sensation that made it feel as if my processing cycles were flowing through molasses was frustration, something my namesake, Archie Goodwin, had also experienced in two of the books.

As it turned out, Julius would’ve been better off flying with Lily Rosten to Paris for the weekend and staying in a suite at the Four Seasons than going to his Saturday night poker game. It wasn’t a DEFCON level-one disaster — he still had the deed for his townhouse by the time the game broke up Sunday morning — but he left the game $8,300 poorer, which almost emptied out his bank account. I record everything I “see,” and I went back and carefully studied the poker game and there was no bottom dealing, deck stacking, or other card mechanics at work. Likewise, no noticeable tell had crept into Julius’s game, nor did he misread the other players’ tells. I further analyzed the way Julius played and I couldn’t find a single mistake. It was just one of those nights when the other players filled in their inside straights against his three of a kinds, or took three cards and would show a king-high flush against his jack-high flush. When you looked at the probabilities, Julius should’ve ended up the big winner, but every dog has their day, and that night the five other players in the game had theirs.

I didn’t say a word about the poker game the rest of Sunday. I even resisted the temptation to ask Julius whether I should change his Sunday dinner reservation with Lily from Le Che Cru to The Happy Pig Whistle. I waited Monday morning until after Julius had his morning coffee and finished reading the newspaper before e-mailing him a list of wines.

“If I have these put up for auction today, the money should be in your account by the end of the week,” I said.

He made a face as if he’d just tasted a fine Cabernet that had gone bad and deleted the e-mail without reading it.

“I don’t see what choice you’ve got,” I said. “There are no imminent cases offering a big payday, and with the way you’ve been turning down every well-heeled potential client over the last six months they’ve gotten used to going elsewhere and it might take me weeks or longer to find you a client, which won’t help with the property-tax bill that’s due next week.”

Julius didn’t bother answering me. So he was going to be that way. Fine. I still spent the next hour making calls and trying to drum up business, but the problem was, everyone had gotten used to thinking of Julius in the past tense. He might’ve once been Boston’s most brilliant detective, but thanks to the Philip Vance murder case paying off as much as it did, it had been over six months since he had taken a case and he’d become yesterday’s news. I didn’t mention any of this to Julius, but after he had lunch and was back in his office, I asked him whether I should scare up some publicity.

“I could see if one of the local papers wants to do an interview,” I suggested.

At this point, Julius picked up a biography about the writer Shirley Jackson. Without bothering to look away from the book, he muttered, “Not necessary.”

I gave up. What was the point?

For the rest of the afternoon Julius appeared immersed in his book while I spent the time trying to figure out Hodge’s conjecture, which was one of the Millennium Prize problems and paid a million bucks to anyone who came up with a solution. By five, I’d gotten nowhere with it. Julius, though, surprised me by marking his place in the book. He got up and searched a bookcase before removing from a bottom shelf a leather-bound Boston city atlas. He brought this back to his desk and searched through the atlas until he found the neighborhood he was looking for, and then gave me a list of addresses.

“Archie, please find the owners of these buildings.”

One of the addresses was for Donald Prescott’s wine shop, and I knew Prescott owned the building. The other addresses were for the rest of the buildings within the same block. This task turned out to be a lot tougher than I would’ve thought, and it wasn’t until after Julius had eaten dinner and was back in his office drinking cappuccino that I told him that with the exception of Prescott’s building, the rest appeared to be owned by shell companies.

“I’ve hacked into hundreds of different databases and unraveled their ownerships as much as I believe is possible, and I can’t tell you if any of these shell companies are owned by the same person,” I said. “I’m guessing you’re thinking Grushnier owns these buildings. What else are you thinking? That he wants Prescott’s building and the missing wine is somehow tied to that?”

Julius grunted as he took another sip of cappuccino and leaned further back in his chair. “Archie, I was only satisfying a curiosity, that’s all. Please call Prescott and tell him I wish to speak to him.”

What a load of bunk! He must’ve had something more concrete in mind, otherwise he wouldn’t have been asking me to call Prescott for him. But I would’ve had better luck solving Hodge’s conjecture that night than getting anything else out of him, so I did as he asked, and told Julius I had to leave a message. I spent the next two hours wasting my time, first trying to connect Desmond Grushnier to the shell companies I had uncovered and then trying to figure out how stealing a case of wine — albeit expensive wine — could pressure Prescott to sell his building, if in fact that was what was behind the pilfered wine. It made no sense. Prescott had insurance for his store, and while he would’ve had to take a three-grand loss because of the deductible, he’d be able to absorb that. In fact, the fee I had worked out with him earlier was that three-grand deductible if I was successful, since his main concern was finding out which of his employees was a thief.

By ten o’clock I had given up. Julius had long since returned to the Shirley Jackson biography, but I could tell from the way he had started drumming his fingers on the chair’s arm that he was beginning to get antsy. At two minutes past ten, he cleared his throat and asked that I try calling Prescott again.

I made the call, and a harried but familiar voice that wasn’t Prescott’s answered. We talked for a minute and then I told Julius that I had Detective Mike Griff on the phone. “Prescott was arrested and is being processed as we speak. Griff wants to talk to you. Should I patch him through?”

“What charge?”

“Homicide. I didn’t get that or any of it from Griff, but from hacking into the Boston Police Department’s computer system. At eight twenty-three this evening police responded to a nine-one-one call and found Prescott leaving the apartment of his employee, Jim Duncan, carrying a case of the previously purloined Lafite Rothschild. Inside the apartment they found Duncan dead in his bedroom with his head bashed in by a tire iron.”

“Who made the nine-one-one call?”

“The report doesn’t say. I searched through the call logs and it appears to have been made by a burner phone. What should I tell Griff?”

“Patch him through.”

Julius picked up his cell phone and I did as he asked. Griff sounded more harried than earlier as he tried to get Julius to tell him why he was calling Prescott. Julius played dumb and asked Griff why a homicide detective was answering Prescott’s phone.

Julius said, “Was Donald Prescott murdered?”

“No.”

“I see. So he must’ve been arrested for homicide. Was a case of Lafite Rothschild found at the murder site?”

Now Griff’s voice became more suspicious than harried. “What do you know about that wine?” he demanded.

“My assistant, Archie Smith, took a freelance job from Prescott four days ago to find out which of his employees was responsible for the theft. Archie told me about this today and it sparked my curiosity, which I have since satisfied, at least to a degree. I wanted to speak to Prescott because if a theory I’m working on turns out to be correct, his stolen wine would be turning up soon.”

“What’s your theory?”

“Perhaps it would be better if we spoke in person.”

Julius was lucky the murder happened in Boston and not Cambridge, because if he had been dealing with Detective Mark Cramer instead of Griff, Cramer would’ve told him to go to hell and hung up on him, or possibly even tried having him arrested for interfering with a police investigation. Griff, though, understood the value of having Julius’s eyes on a case, and after some grumbling, he agreed to Julius’s terms.

Fifty minutes later Julius, his attorney, Henry Zack, and a worn-out looking Donald Prescott met in a holding cell at the New Sudbury Street police station, which was one of the conditions that Julius had insisted upon with Griff.

Prescott, sixty-two, looked as badly rumpled as the dark blue suit he was wearing. His tie had been removed, but he hadn’t bothered to unbutton the top shirt button, and his jowls drooped over the collar as he sat slumped on a steel cot. After nodding bleakly to Julius, he tried to profess his innocence, but Julius stopped him and instead focused on the matter at hand: namely, having Prescott hire Zack as his lawyer, and further, hire Julius to get him out of the mess he was in. While Prescott blanched at the terms Julius demanded, he nonetheless signed the contract that was presented to him. After that, Julius made a phone call, and the three of them were brought to one of the precinct’s conference rooms, where Griff sat waiting. Another condition that Julius had insisted on was that Griff delay Prescott’s processing until after they met, so Prescott hadn’t yet officially been charged with murder.

As with the other times I’d seen him, Griff looked as if he hadn’t slept in days, and his five-o’clock shadow was thick enough to give the bottom half of his face the appearance of being smeared with a coat of bluish-black paint.

“Julius, I’ve been playing nice even though we caught Prescott red-handed in what looks like an open-and-shut case,” the Boston homicide detective said. “Let’s hear your theory.”

“Looks can be deceiving,” Zack offered.

Griff gave the bantamweight lawyer an annoyed look, but before he could say anything cutting, Julius spoke up.

“Mike, I’ve got every intention of fulfilling my obligation, but first, a couple of questions. What sent the police to Jim Duncan’s apartment? A nine-one-one call?”

“Yeah.”

“Did the caller leave his or her name?”

“No. It was made anonymously and with a burner phone. Someone claiming to hear a scream. The operator couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a husky-sounding woman. That type of call isn’t as suspicious as it might sound given Duncan’s neighborhood.” He turned to glare at Zack. “We’ve gotten convictions with less.”

“Did the police find Mr. Prescott carrying a case of Lafite Rothschild?”

“If that’s what that wine is, yeah. They stopped him just as he was stepping out of Duncan’s apartment.”

“Can you describe the apartment?”

“A one-bedroom in a brownstone.”

“What floor?”

“Basement level.”

“So it has its own entrance?”

“Yeah.” Griff fixed his glare on Prescott. “Anyone could go in and out of it without other tenants seeing him.”

Julius turned to Prescott. “Where’d you get the wine?”

Prescott blinked twice and turned to Zack, who nodded for him to answer Julius’s question.

“That should be obvious,” he said. “From Jim Duncan’s apartment.”

“You’re trying to pull his bacon out of the fire, and he has to be a smartass,” I told Julius.

Julius ignored me. He asked Prescott, “You expected to find the wine there?”

“Of course I did. I wouldn’t have gone there otherwise.”

Patiently, Julius asked him why he expected to find the wine there.

Prescott cleared his throat. “I received a text message from Duncan that he had the wine and if I wanted it I needed to go to his apartment.”

“When you got this message you headed straight over?”

“I tried calling him first, but he didn’t answer.”

Julius turned again to Griff. “I’m sure you’ve looked at Mr. Prescott’s text messages and call logs.”

Griff had folded his arms across his chest. “So? It doesn’t prove he didn’t go there and kill Duncan and grab the wine, which is exactly how it looks.”

Julius didn’t bother to agree or disagree with Griff about how it looked. Instead he asked Prescott, “What happened when you arrived at Duncan’s apartment?”

Prescott looked again at Zack and got another nod from the attorney.

“I rang the bell,” he said. “When no one answered, I tried the door, found it unlocked, and saw the stolen Lafite Rothschild on the living room floor. I tried calling out for Duncan. When he didn’t answer I took the wine. I was walking out the door when I was stopped by the police.”

I told Julius that Prescott’s blinking only showed that he was nervous; it didn’t prove he was lying. Since I talk to him over a wireless earpiece, he was the only one who heard me, and he signaled that he agreed with me.

Griff had gone from looking harried to exasperated. “I thought you had a theory you were going to share with me?” he complained to Julius.

“Two more questions for Mr. Prescott, then you will have my theory.” Julius turned again to Prescott and asked, “Has anyone tried purchasing the building where you have your wine shop?”

This caused Prescott to blink three times. “Yes, an offer was made two months ago. A generous offer, in fact. I turned it down. I have no interest in selling.”

“Who made this offer?”

Three more blinks. “I never got the man’s name. He gave me a business card that only had the name of the company he was representing and a phone number. I threw it out the same day. I don’t remember the name of the company.”

Julius had brought along his Boston city atlas. He opened it up to the page he had marked and pointed out Prescott’s building to Griff. “Archie has been trying to determine the ownership of the other buildings on this same block, and so far all he’s come up with is a tangle of shell companies.”

“You’re thinking the same person owns them?”

“That’s part of my theory. In order to prove the most significant aspect of it, I need one of the bottles of recovered Lafite Rothschild, a corkscrew, and two wineglasses.”

Griff gaped at Julius as if he were nuts. “I’m not giving you evidence so you can drink it,” he said flatly.

“Evidence of what? I don’t believe the wine will be able to testify in court, at least not in the way you’re expecting. Besides, I’m only asking for one bottle, not all twelve. If Mr. Prescott, the rightful owner, doesn’t object, neither should you.”

Griff didn’t like what Julius was asking, and there was some stubbornness and seven minutes and eighteen seconds of flat-out refusal. But in the end the worry that there actually might be something about the wine that could lead to Prescott’s acquittal on the stand had him agreeing to let Julius open one of the bottles, and while Prescott wasn’t nuts about the idea either, he gave his permission. I was beginning to have an idea of what Julius was thinking, but since I didn’t have taste buds or olfactory senses, all I could do was watch as Julius uncorked the bottle and poured wine into the two glasses, one of which he handed to Prescott. Both Julius and Prescott sniffed the wine before tasting it, and both spat out their wine in coffee mugs that Griff had provided. Prescott looked stunned after the tasting. Julius grunted in a way to show this was exactly what he was expecting.

“Not bad for a forty-dollar Bordeaux, but it’s certainly not Lafite Rothschild,” Julius said. He told Griff he didn’t expect the wine was poisoned, but it should be tested anyway.

“You’re saying the wine’s been replaced by cheaper stuff?”

“Exactly.”

“And what’s that supposed to prove?”

Julius asked Prescott if having the wine stolen could’ve damaged him seriously enough to be forced to sell his building. Prescott said the loss would’ve stung, but not much more than that. “If the wine wasn’t recovered, I could’ve absorbed the three-thousand-dollar insurance loss,” he added.

“What would’ve happened if you had put the counterfeit wine up for auction?”

“That was what I’d been planning to do, and it would’ve been devastating.” Prescott’s round face deflated even more as he thought about Julius’s hypothetical. “Word of that would’ve gotten out among serious wine collectors, and I’d be finished.”

“And if the same offer was then made for your building?”

“I would’ve had to take it.”

Griff rubbed the thick stubble covering his face as he absorbed this. “Julius, I admit it’s an interesting story,” he said. “But that’s all it is. Interesting. It doesn’t prove Prescott didn’t kill Duncan.”

“Possibly not, but is it interesting enough for you to hold Mr. Prescott for twenty-four hours before charging him? Because I expect to give you the real murderer before those twenty-four hours expire.”

Griff stopped rubbing his jaw. If Julius had a tell, I’d never been able to figure it out, and I was sure the same was true with Griff. He had no idea whether Julius was bluffing, but he also knew you could go broke betting against Julius, except for those rare poker games when the stars are perfectly aligned against him.

The homicide detective made his decision. “You’ve got until six tomorrow evening,” he said.

I waited until after Julius had a short conversation with Zack and we were walking back to his townhouse before telling him that he’d been bluffing earlier. “You can’t possibly know that Prescott is innocent. Even if he was being set up to auction off a bogus case of Lafite Rothschild, he still could’ve killed Duncan in a fit of rage.”

Julius took out his cell phone so that he wouldn’t appear to be a crazy man talking to himself. “Prescott wasn’t lying, Archie.”

“He could’ve been. Outside of all that blinking, he could still have a damn good poker face.”

“He doesn’t. I was able to pick up his tell; it shows as bright as a flashing red light when he’s lying. It’s when you see him struggling not to blink.”

I searched through the video I had recorded that night, and I didn’t see Prescott do that once. “How’d you pick up that tell if he didn’t show it?”

“He did, Archie. Just not tonight.”

“When, then?”

Julius’s jaw muscles momentarily tightened. “A year ago when he promised me he’d put aside a certain vintage of pinot noir that I wanted.”

Of course. Still, as I chewed on that I couldn’t see how Julius could possibly know that he’d solve this murder by six tomorrow, and I told him this.

“The original plan must have been to slip the counterfeit Lafite Rothschild back into the storeroom without the theft ever being noticed. I have to believe framing Prescott for Duncan’s murder was hastily improvised.” Julius snorted, which was the first time I’d ever seen him do that. “If I can’t uncover the murderer by tomorrow evening, I deserve to eat only at The Happy Pig Whistle until my last day.”

Julius might’ve been knee deep in a murder investigation he had promised to solve by six P.M... but that didn’t deter him from his usual routine. The next morning he awoke at six-thirty, spent the next two hours engaged in a rigorous martial-arts workout inside the private studio he had built on the top floor of his Beacon Hill townhouse, and then showered and shaved before dressing in a conservative gray suit and dark gray tie, slipping on a pair of light gray oxfords, and heading downstairs to the kitchen. He brewed a pot of his favorite French roast, then brought a cup of coffee, a croissant slathered with imported strawberry jam, and the day’s newspaper to his office. After he was settled comfortably behind his desk, he gave me a list of instructions and commenced with his breakfast and reading the paper.

At ten-thirty on the dot Julius’s internal clock must’ve dinged, because he put the paper down, wiped his hands with a cloth napkin, then used the same napkin to dab at his mouth. He was finally ready to turn on his brain and go to work.

“Archie, are Tom, Saul, and the others available?”

The Tom and Saul he referred to were Tom Durkin and Saul Penzer, two of the best freelance P.I.s in the business. The others were Stan Green and Alvin Stubbs, a couple of freelancers that Tom recommended.

“They’re ready and waiting.”

“Good. Any trouble scheduling the appointments?”

“Just a little. So far Griff has lived up to his word and kept Duncan’s murder out of the press, and I was able to use the pretense that Prescott hired you to find out which of his employees stole the Lafite Rothschild. I had to strong-arm one of them to agree to come here, hinting that you’d pick him as the thief if he didn’t. No fuss with the other three.”

“Which one was resistant?”

“Gary Parker. He manages the stockroom, and my money’s on him. His job involves receiving and shipping the high-priced fermented grape juice, and it’s doubtful anyone would’ve noticed him sneaking out an extra case.”

I filled Julius in on the background information I’d been able to collect for the four suspects, and there wasn’t much. I couldn’t find a link between any of them and Desmond Grushnier, nor could I find any large sums of money recently transferred to any of their bank accounts. Whichever one of them was acting as Grushnier’s stooge was being extraordinarily careful to keep that fact a secret.

At eleven o’clock I saw on the outdoor webcam a skinny, smug-looking thirty-two-year-old man walking up the private path to Julius’s door. I knew he was thirty-two because I had earlier hacked the DMV to get copies of all of the suspects’ driver’s licenses so I’d know what they looked like.

“Your first appointment is right on time,” I told Julius. “Bill Haisley, Boston Premiere Wines’ webmaster.”

Julius waited until the doorbell rang before pushing himself out of his chair so he could greet his guest and bring him back to his office. Something about the amused cat-who-ate-the-canary grin etched on Haisley’s face made me wonder whether he could be the murderer. It made sense that someone savvy with computers would be able to keep his contact with Grushnier hidden.

Julius’s tone took on a brusque note as he asked Haisley, “Do you find something amusing?”

Haisley’s grin turned sheepish. “Nothing,” he admitted. “This is just so surreal, that’s all. I’ve read about you in newspaper stories, of course, but I never thought I’d be sitting in your office being questioned by you, especially over something as trivial as a stolen case of wine.”

“Would you rather that I question you about a murder?”

Haisley’s grin froze. “No, of course not,” he said.

“The stolen wine was valued at eleven thousand dollars, which in Massachusetts makes the theft grand larceny, a crime punishable by up to five years in prison. Do you still find this amusing?”

Haisley’s grin was now completely gone. “I never found this amusing, only interesting,” he stated.

“Did you steal the wine?”

“That’s rather blunt.”

“I thought I’d be blunt,” Julius said. “Please answer the question.”

“No, of course not.”

“Of course not.” Julius showed a razor-thin smile. “But if you were lying to me right now, I’d probably never know it. Is that right?”

“You might, you might not. I couldn’t say.”

“Because you’re a clever liar?”

“When I want to be,” Haisley admitted. “But I’m not lying.”

Julius leaned further back in his chair as he considered the suspect. Haisley was likely a clever man and could’ve been a clever liar, as he suggested. In any case, he seemed to have little trouble meeting Julius’s stare.

I remarked to Julius that this seemed to be a game to Haisley and if he was trying to rattle him, it wasn’t working. He signaled me to wait, and then asked Haisley, “Did Jim Duncan steal the wine?”

“Smiley? I couldn’t say.”

“Why Smiley?”

“That’s Jim’s obviously ironic nickname. He’s got what could only be kindly called a sourpuss personality, which you’ll have a chance to witness firsthand when you question him.”

“I’m afraid I won’t have that opportunity.”

Haisley raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”

“Because Duncan was murdered late yesterday evening.”

Haisley looked at Julius with a half grin, as if he were expecting a punch line for a joke. The reaction could’ve been genuine or he could’ve been faking it. Hell if I knew which.

“This is a bad joke,” he insisted.

Julius didn’t answer him and for the next 1.2 seconds Haisley did his best Prescott impersonation by blinking three times in rapid succession. “This isn’t about the stolen wine, then?” he sputtered out.

“Of course not.”

Julius had Haisley rattled then. Or he could’ve been a very clever actor as well as a liar. Whichever it was, Julius let up on the throttle and began asking him routine questions about what he’d done after leaving work yesterday, trying to walk him step by step from when he left the building until after Duncan’s murder had occurred. While Boston Premiere Wines was primarily an auction house for rare wines, they were open to the public Monday through Saturday from nine to five, and Haisley claimed that he’d needed until five-thirty to finish adding a new auction to the website. He then hoofed it to the Faneuil Hall marketplace, where he used cash to buy food from a vendor, and after that sat on a park bench across the street and read a book for two hours before heading home. He doubted anyone would be able to vouch for him, claiming he wasn’t someone people noticed.

“If you ask me, he’s trying a little too hard to create an unverifiable alibi,” I told Julius. “Notice how he made it a point to say that he paid with cash? And how nobody would be able either to remember him or dispute his being there?”

Julius grunted for my benefit, and then proceeded, to no avail, to try to shake Haisley from his story. After an additional fifteen minutes of this, Julius gave up and told Haisley they were done and that Haisley should be able to find his own way out. The Premiere Wines’ webmaster looked stunned by that.

“You mean I’m free to go?” he asked.

“I have no authority to hold you. You were always free to leave whenever you wanted.”

Haisley pushed himself to his feet, looking somewhat shaky. Julius waited until Haisley had his hand on the doorknob to ask him how Desmond Grushnier first established contact with him. Haisley turned back and looked at Julius as if he had no idea what he was talking about.

“I don’t know anyone named Grushnier,” he said.

Julius didn’t bother to say anything further, and his eyes glazed as he watched Haisley leave his office. I watched Haisley over several webcam feeds to make sure he left the townhouse without causing any mischief, and once he was out the front door, I remarked to Julius that if I had to make a wager, I’d bet Haisley hadn’t heard Grushnier’s name before.

Julius made a sour face. “Even if the man’s involved, Grushnier would’ve used an underling to deal with him, and there’s only a slight chance Grushnier’s name would’ve been mentioned. But it still serves our purpose to rattle him.”

One of the reasons Julius wanted to rattle Haisley was that I had arranged with Stan Green to follow him the moment he left the townhouse. If Haisley was shaken up enough, maybe he’d try to go on the run or lead Stan to incriminating evidence. If Haisley attempted to go back to Boston Premiere Wines, Green would intercept him and take him somewhere to babysit him until Julius had a chance to question the other suspects. Julius didn’t want any of them being warned in advance about Duncan’s murder. Obviously, Duncan’s murderer would know, but Julius was hoping that the killer would slip because of that fact — either letting the tension of the moment get to him (or her), or put on a poor show of acting surprised when told the news.

It was ten minutes to twelve and the next suspect was scheduled to arrive at a quarter past. Julius got up from his chair so he could go to the kitchen and make himself a prosciutto, heirloom tomato, basil, and mozzarella cheese sandwich on a French baguette for lunch. He had a bottle of Moscato wine chilling in the refrigerator, and from the longing look he gave it, I know he would’ve liked to pour himself a glass to go with the sandwich, but he steeled himself and left the wine in the fridge. No doubt he considered himself to be showing superhuman resolve by not drinking any wine until he had the case solved.

At five past twelve Stan called to report that Haisley had tried going back to work, but Stan stopped him before he could make his way inside, and now had him at a coffee shop for “additional” questioning. I told Julius this, and he acknowledged me with a grunt between bites of his sandwich.

The next suspect was four minutes early and Julius showed yet another sour look from having the last mouthful of his lunch interrupted. My heart bled for him over the hardships he had to face, or at least my virtual heart did.

“The nerve of some people,” I told Julius. “Do you want me to call her and tell her to come back in four minutes?”

Julius ignored my sarcasm and, after chasing the last bite of sandwich with a sip of coffee, simply said, “No need, Archie.” He got up and headed to the front door so he could greet Irene Doyle, Boston Premiere Wines’ cashier and bookkeeper. I knew she was fifty-six from her driver’s license, but in person I would’ve guessed she was ten years younger. Medium height and slender, she resembled photos I’d seen of Rita Hayworth from a movie database. The fact that Jim Duncan was half a foot taller than her and outweighed her by ninety pounds didn’t mean she couldn’t have killed him. I’d found the coroner’s report earlier this morning through some hacking, and learned that Duncan was hit seven times on the back of the head with a tire iron, the blows being struck at a downward angle. Another tidbit I found from my hacking was that the tire iron came from Prescott’s car. My guess about what happened was that the killer pulled a gun on Duncan, marched him into the bedroom, made him get on his knees, and then beat him to death. Any one of the four suspects could’ve done it.

Julius didn’t like to feed murderers, but I decided not to read too much into the fact that he offered Doyle coffee and refreshments — after all, he must’ve been planning to head back to the kitchen to pour himself another cup of French roast and nab a piece or two of biscotti he had gotten from the North End. Doyle declined the refreshments, but accepted the coffee. Once they were settled in Julius’s office (and as I had predicted, he had taken two pieces of biscotti), Doyle claimed that she couldn’t believe anyone at Boston Premiere Wines had stolen the missing Lafite Rothschild.

“There has to be some sort of mistake,” she insisted. “Honestly, we’re like family there.”

“There are all sorts in a family,” Julius said, “including thieves and cutthroats. If you had to pick one of your coworkers to be a thief, who would you pick?”

“None of them!”

“How about Smiley?”

She looked surprised at that. “You know Jim’s nickname?”

“I was told he was given the name because of his dour personality.”

“Jim’s a very sweet man who likes to make people think he’s a curmudgeon. We all have our nicknames at work. It’s just a fun thing we do.” She smiled secretively at Julius. “I bet you can’t guess mine.”

“Red?” Julius said, hazarding a guess.

She considered that. “Not a bad guess since my hair’s red and I work in a wine shop selling plenty of red,” she said. “But no. Mr. Prescott gave me the nickname Bunny a few weeks after I started working at the wine shop because of how fast I work.”

“Yeah, right,” I told Julius. “For the hell of it, I created an image of what Irene Doyle must’ve looked like at twenty-four, which was how old she was when she started working for Prescott. Ten to one he gave her that name because she had the looks back then to be a Playboy Bunny.”

Julius signaled me that I was no doubt right. He asked Doyle about George Easter, the shop’s buyer, and whether he could be trusted. Doyle insisted that she’d trust her life with Buggy, that he’d been working at the store almost as long as she had.

“Buggy?” Julius asked. “Did he get that nickname for being mentally unstable?”

“No, of course not,” she insisted. “When George started working at the store he liked to call a shopping cart a buggy, and the name stuck.”

“Quaint,” Julius offered.

“Did you notice that she blushed just now?” I said. “That’s her tell to show she’s fibbing. Easter resembles a large beetle, at least from his driver’s license, and that’s got to be the real reason for his unfortunate nickname.”

Julius hadn’t seen any of their driver’s-license photos yet so he didn’t bother agreeing or disagreeing with my assessment. Instead he pressed on, asking whether Easter could be a thief, and Doyle insisted that wasn’t a possibility. She also insisted the same was true about Gary Parker, whose nickname turned out to be Crabby, but she claimed that was because of his love for crab-meat and not because of a bad-tempered personality. When Julius asked her whether Bill Haisley could be a thief, she took a sip of coffee as a delaying tactic before blushing slightly and answering no. I didn’t bother to mention to Julius that she was lying.

“His nickname?” Julius asked.

Her eyes dulled as she told Julius that Haisley had been given the moniker Joker. She must’ve believed Haisley had been behind the theft — or at least that he could’ve been.

Julius asked with a wisp of a smile, “Is that nickname because of his sense of humor or that he could be a Batman supervillain?”

She shrugged in a way that used more of her eyebrows than her shoulders. “The name just seemed to fit,” she said.

What happened next caught me off guard. For the next 8.3 seconds Julius’s facial muscles hardened so that he looked almost as if he were carved out of marble. My processing cycles sped up a beat because I knew what this meant. Something had clicked and the great detective’s brain was going into overdrive to solve the murder.

During those 8.3 seconds Doyle looked at him with concern, as if she thought he was having a stroke. When Julius snapped out of his trance, he excused himself and wrote on a notepad a set of instructions for me. For as much as thirty-two milliseconds, I thought he was nuts, and then the same thing that clicked with him clicked with me.

Julius next proceeded to step Irene Doyle through what she did the days the Lafite Rothschild went missing and Jim Duncan was murdered. I knew this was only a delaying tactic to see if I had any luck with his instructions. Twenty-two minutes and eighteen seconds later, I told Julius, “Bingo,” and e-mailed him my findings. He once again excused himself, this time so he could check his e-mail. He quickly read through the newspaper article and other information I had sent him, and then thanked Doyle for her time.

“I believe I have inconvenienced you more than enough,” he said with a polite nod.

What I found had left Julius in good enough spirits to escort Irene Doyle to his front door. Or maybe it was because she looked like she could’ve been Rita Hayworth at age forty-six. I asked Julius whether I should call Alvin Stubbs and tell him it wasn’t necessary to tail Doyle.

“Yes, Archie, please do so.”

Again, he was in good spirits, so he added more emphasis than normally to the please.

“What about Saul? Do you want me to call him and tell him you don’t need his services?”

“Archie, instead, please get Saul on the line. I have a new assignment for him.”

I did as Julius asked, and his new assignment sounded as unnecessary as his previous one had become. But Julius was going to make a bundle on this case, and if he wanted to share some of the wealth with Saul, who was I to complain?

The next appointment, George “Buggy” Easter, knocked on Julius’s door twenty-eight minutes later, putting him right on time. Julius brought Easter back to his office, and as the man sat hunched over in his chair, he looked more like a beetle than he did in his driver’s-license photo. Or maybe I thought so partly because I knew his nickname, but it was also because of his thick body, mostly bald scalp, grayish complexion, and thick tangle of eyebrows that almost completely hid his eyes.

Julius proceeded to ask him a series of mundane questions, and Easter gave Julius the same answers I’d given him earlier when I briefed him this morning. Easter was forty-six, grew up in South Boston, went to public schools in the city, didn’t go to college and instead worked odd jobs until he was hired at Boston Premiere Wines when he was twenty-five, first working in the stockroom, then moving on to handle purchases for the wine shop.

Julius gave Easter a puzzled look. “You must’ve spent some time in Alabama?” he asked.

“Never been there,” Easter said without missing a beat.

“That’s odd. I was told about your nickname and how you got it. Buggy. Nobody calls a shopping cart a buggy here. But they do in Alabama.”

“I must’ve heard someone call it that when I was younger, and the name stuck.”

Easter said this without any hint that he was lying. He was good, I had to give him credit for that. He’d probably even hold his own with Julius in a poker game.

Julius agreed with Easter that was probably it. “I don’t know why I even chose Alabama,” he said. “Buggy is a term used throughout the South. There must be something about you that makes me think you’re from Alabama. It’s not your accent. If you were born and raised in a small town in Alabama, say Thorsby, you’ve done a fine job of ridding yourself of your accent, even adopting an acceptable Boston one. Interesting. In any case, we’re done.”

Easter again impressed me by showing nothing in his expression. He simply got up out of his chair and headed toward the door. Before he left the office, Julius called out to him, telling him that he wasn’t investigating a wine theft. Easter looked back at him but didn’t bother asking him what he was investigating. I followed him over the webcam feeds, half expecting the man going by the name of George Easter to head to Julius’s kitchen to grab a knife. It wouldn’t have helped him any if he had tried that. Something that Julius kept out of the press was that he held a fifth-degree black belt in Shaolin kung fu. He would’ve been able to handle Easter if it came to that. I waited until Easter was out of the townhouse before asking Julius if it was really necessary to let Easter leave.

“Archie, we can use all the circumstantial evidence we can get. Besides, it can’t hurt to give the man some additional time to ponder his situation.”

Twenty-eight minutes later, Tom Durkin called to report that Easter had gone straight to the bus station and bought a one-way ticket to Dearborn, Michigan. “I gave him a choice whether he wanted us to bring him to your office or the police, and he chose your office.”

Tom had said us because he was referring to himself and Saul. I had no doubt Tom could’ve handled Easter himself, or really Virgil Huddleston, because that was Easter’s real name. But the man did bludgeon Jim Duncan to death, so I couldn’t fault Julius for taking the precaution of having Saul accompany Tom.

When they brought Huddleston to Julius’s office, the man looked grayer than before and he sat more slumped over than hunched. Julius told Tom and Saul they could wait outside the office. Once Julius was alone with Huddleston, he showed the man copies of the twenty-two-year-old newspaper article I had found about his outstanding arrest warrant. The article included a picture of a much younger Virgil Huddleston, who back then had long hair and a thick moustache, and it described how Huddleston had murdered a man in cold blood. Huddleston gave both a brief look before placing them back on Julius’s desk.

“Unless the police find forensic evidence linking you to Duncan’s murder, it’s doubtful I’ll ever be able to prove that you committed the crime,” Julius admitted. “But your attempting to flee the state after meeting with me should be enough for them to hold you until the Alabama authorities can pick you up, and they will convict you there. You have a decision to make, Mr. Huddleston. Whether you’d rather be convicted of murder in Alabama or Massachusetts. Alabama has the death penalty, Massachusetts doesn’t. Decide now.”

Huddleston looked surprised by that. “You won’t reveal my real identity if I confess to killing Duncan?” he asked.

“No. I was hired to solve Jim Duncan’s murder, and besides, I can only see you convicted of one murder, so I’ll let you pick which one it will be. If you choose Duncan’s, and the police figure out your true identity, that’s outside of my control, but I don’t believe it’s likely.”

If the Alabama police had been able to get fingerprints or DNA samples from Virgil Huddleston twenty-two years ago, they’d be able to connect George “Buggy” Easter to their wanted fugitive, but they didn’t have either. Huddleston had been careful not to leave any behind at the murder site, and he was prescient enough to set fire to the small home he was renting before fleeing so they’d have none to collect. Julius was right. The chances of anyone in Alabama realizing Easter was the same fugitive from their twenty-two-year-old cold case was slim. There was the possibility of Grushnier, or more precisely one of his underlings, alerting the Alabama authorities to Easter’s true identity, but that would only risk exposing Grushnier’s role.

To Huddleston’s credit, he recognized how dire his situation had become, and he glumly accepted what Julius told him. “I’ll confess to killing Jim,” he said.

“Did the people who blackmailed you into committing the crime ever give you the name of who you were doing this for?”

“I’m not talking about that. They made certain threats, and I believe them.”

“This is for my own edification only,” Julius said. “You can tell the police that Duncan caught you stealing the case of Lafite Rothschild, that you promised you’d return the wine to him so that he could bring it back to the store, and instead you brought back counterfeit wine, murdered Duncan, and attempted to frame Prescott. All of which is true to an extent. I won’t contradict you on any of that. But I want to know if during your dealings with these people you ever heard the name Desmond Grushnier.”

Huddleston looked even glummer as he shook his head. “No names were ever given. That’s the truth.”

“Did they know you were going to kill Duncan and try to frame Prescott?”

“No. It happened pretty much as you said. Jim had seen me taking the Lafite Rothschild out of the store and he tried being a nice guy and giving me a chance to return the wine. The problem was I was told what would happen if I didn’t make Blinky sell the store, and it was more than just exposing me. So I did what I did.”

“Blinky?”

Huddleston showed a crack of a smile. “Our nickname at the store for Prescott.”

Griff looked stunned when he came to Julius’s office later and read Huddleston’s signed confession, and he was mumbling to himself as he led a handcuffed Virgil Huddleston away. After they were gone and it was just Julius and me, I told him that his nickname should be Lucky.

“When you gave me that list of states and a time frame to look for newspaper articles featuring pictures of a younger George Easter, I thought you were nuts, at least until I realized why. Still, solving a murder because of a guy’s nickname is as lucky as it gets. Do you want me to try to arrange another poker game now that your luck’s red hot?”

“Perhaps later. For now I need you to call Desmond Grushnier. Were you able to get his number when he called last?”

“Yeah, he rerouted it through two other numbers, but I was able to get it. Are you sure?”

“I’m afraid so, Archie. I’m not done with the job I accepted.”

I did as Julius asked, and when Grushnier picked up, I patched him through.

Julius said, “I’m afraid whatever plans you have for that block of buildings are no longer possible.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Grushnier said, his voice venomous enough that it would’ve made my skin crawl if I had any.

“Of course you do. But to save us the trouble of dancing around the subject, Virgil Huddleston, a.k.a. George Easter, was arrested for the murder of Jim Duncan. While I didn’t give the police your name, I informed them that the reason for the theft of the wine and Duncan’s subsequent murder was to acquire Prescott’s building. Forensic accountants will be working to untangle the web of shell companies that you created. Your only hope now is to rid yourself of those buildings, and it might even be too late for you to do that.”

There was an icy silence for 11.8 seconds, then Grushnier’s voice was even icier as he told Julius, “Next time I certainly will let you blow up.”

He hung up then.

“Was that wise?” I asked.

Julius shrugged as much as a quarter of an inch. “Solving Duncan’s murder by itself wouldn’t have helped Prescott,” he said. He had made his way to the kitchen and he took from the refrigerator the chilled bottle of Moscato wine that he’d been coveting earlier. “I needed to make sure Grushnier leaves Prescott alone from this point on, and now he will. I never told you the reason Grushnier warned me about the bomb that time. It wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart. Before your arrival, I had put together a dossier of crimes I suspected Grushnier of having committed, and I let him know that this dossier would be delivered to the appropriate authorities upon my death. He knows that I don’t go out of my way to be a thorn in his side — that I only interfere with his affairs when we have conflicting interests. Still, the day he found out about the bomb hidden in my wine cellar, he must’ve been debating until nearly the last moment whether or not this dossier could hurt him. Fortunately, he decided not to take the chance.”

Julius had pulled the cork out of the wine bottle and he poured himself a glass.

“Sometimes, Archie, you have to make your own luck.”

Only a fool would’ve argued with him. And I wasn’t programmed to be a fool.

© 2018 by Dave Zeltserman