St. Patrick's Day Murder by Lee Harris Read Free Book Online Page A

I sat at the little table, most of me was there.
    “Feel OK?” Jack asked.
    “A little tired.”
    “You didn’t sleep well, did you?”
    “I’m fine.” I leaned over and kissed his freshly shaved cheek. “You smell good.”
    “So do you.”
    “Fiancé,” I said.
    “Yeah.” He kissed my lips. “I didn’t give you anything to seal it.”
    “Yes, you did.”
    “That doesn’t count.”
    “We should talk about this morning, about seeing Ray.” I was inordinately nervous about it. Everything he had told us was very likely already known by the District Attorney. If Ray had written to Scotty at the precinct house to ask for the money back, and Scotty had left the letter in his locker, it was now part of the case against Ray. The witnesses to thelocker room fight had probably all made statements by now. If there were any other little secrets, it was unlikely Ray would disclose them to me or in my presence. I felt I would have to work around him, rather than with him.
    “Let me tell you a couple of things about Ray,” Jack said. “He and Betsy haven’t had the smoothest ride together. This isn’t the first time they’ve lived apart and it may not be the last. Whatever goes on between them, he keeps quiet about it, and I respect him for that. I think he was nuts to lend Scotty money—anyone would be nuts to lend him money—but whatever you think of Ray, he’s got a heart.”
    “That’s a lot of money to have lying around,” I said.
    “He’s a careful guy. Betsy does some part-time work. I think her folks may have given them the down payment on the house, or at least some of it. I have money put away,” he said, looking at me. “OK?”
    “You’re single.”
    “And I don’t drive an expensive car. Ray doesn’t, either.”
    “You think Scotty really used that money to buy the BMW?”
    “I’m afraid to ask.”
    Boys and their toys, Jean had said on St. Patrick’s Day. How could Scotty have thought he could return the money in two months if he’d sunk it into a car?
    “There are three things we have to look into,” I said, drawing together the fruits of my several sleepless hours. “Scotty’s beat. Jean said that was his life and I still think the answer to all this is likely to be there. The second is unsolved murders of cops. I know there are some, and I know they’ve been investigated to death, but there could be a connection. And the third is these crazy things about Scotty himself, the lies he told his friends and his wife about his military service, and where he was born, and who knows what else.”
    Jack had taken a sheet of plain white paper from under the saltshaker and folded it in half once, then once again, in his familiar pattern of note-taking. As I spoke, he wrote 1, 2, and 3 along a folded edge and made brief notes.
    “Because the homicide occurred on his beat, it’s been canvassed, I can tell you that. And since it’s about ten blockslong, with a lot of stores and apartment houses, it’s much too big for you to go over by yourself. I’ll get hold of the D.D.5s from the interviews and the unusuals and anything else that’s been put in the file and either we’ll go over them together or I’ll pull out what I think should be looked into again.”
    “Fine.”
    He glanced at his note sheet. “I’ll get the files on the unsolved cop killings. There aren’t many. The guys break their backs on those cases and even if they can’t bag the killer, they often have a good idea who he is and they’re waiting to find him or waiting for him to make a false step so he can be picked up. The third thing, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how it fits in or what it means. We’ll just have to keep digging.” He looked at his watch. “We should get going.”
    We took care of the dishes quickly and left the apartment. We were a little later than we’d planned. Jack works the ten-to-six shift and then goes off to law school four nights a week. We took two cars, so we could