The Original Alibi

Chapter 32

After getting home from having braced Eddie Whittaker, I was met at the door by Axel. In the span of this case he had been promoted from houseman to houseman-case nanny.

After I ran tonight’s events past him, Axel said, “Congratulations boss. It looks like Eddie’s the guy the general hired you to find. The no-good bastard rubbed out the Corrigan dame and his own baby.”

“It sure looks that way, Axel, but it’s not conclusive. Eddie could have been offering to pay the bribe to keep the general from learning he was behind my being abducted and beaten. He wouldn’t want the general to know that. It doesn’t establish that he killed his fiancee or bribed Cory Jackson, Tommie Montoya, and threatened the Yarbroughs, but the general might be suspicious enough to change his will.”

“Now wait a minute, boss. You got Eddie connected to Podkin who said the way he was paid was the same way the stiff Cory Jackson got paid and that gas station jockey. How ‘bout them apples?”

“Eddie heard all those detail from his grandfather who heard it from me. They all know, even Cliff. No, it only means Eddie knew how Jackson and Montoya were bribed, not that he had bribed them. By doing it that same way, he made his using of Podkin look like the same guy who had arranged the shakedown alibi. And yeah, that could’ve been Eddie, but not necessarily.”

Axel just shook his head.

“Hey, we got any of that rocky road ice cream left?”

“Nearly the whole carton, boss.” We headed for the kitchen. While he got out bowls, he said, “Who else you got in mind if not Eddie?”

“A few days ago you and I brainstormed that it could have been Eddie, but also that it could have been Karen, or Charles, or even Cliff at Karen’s direction, maybe even the general himself. All of that’s still true. All we have is proof that Eddie hired Podkin to work me over. The rest of it is supposition, but not probative.”

“You got Cory Jackson’s story.”

“No. I got that explanation from Cory’s half brother, Quirt Brown, who heard it from Cory, and Cory’s dead. That’s all hearsay now, and it’d likely be ruled inadmissible. The only thing we have Eddie on is his having paid to have me beaten and even for that we’d be better off to have Podkin testify and he’s God knows where. May I remind you that the two-hundred grand fee you keep talking about will not be earned unless someone is arrested for the murder of Ileana Corrigan. No one could be arrested off what we have. Not even close.”

“So what do we do now, boss?”

“Rinse out our ice cream bowls.”

“Boss. You know what I mean.”

“I need to sleep on that. I’m not certain yet.”

An hour after going to bed I woke up abruptly. The brain is a strange thing. How it makes decisions. The way unresolved things marinate on your mind until the simple core of complex things suddenly slap you across the face. The Corrigan killing was way short on facts, always had been. We all knew that. Over time memories had faded, one supposed witness had been killed, and even when the murder occurred eleven years ago there had been a dearth of clues. I would never find the answer the general wanted through a dogged pursuit of evidence that didn’t exist. It would take sneaky doings. And right then, sitting up in bed, the sneaky doings came into focus. A plan rose from my mind mud. Not a guaranteed, slam dunk kind of plan, but one with a reasonable chance. I had to get these people to tell me what they hadn’t yet told me. I needed to crawl into the crevices where the things that frightened them hid from the light.