Sweet Smell of Sucrets Read online

  “So you last had your gun at the casino?”

  “Yes. Since you found it at Farrell’s, I guess those thugs stole it from me. Or it magically teleported there.”

  She sat back and threw up her hands, exasperated. “Ferguson…”

  “I’m telling you everything I know,” I said. “Look, Willie knows I left my place around four o’clock. I have a parking ticket from the Ameristar Casino Hotel, stamped just before five. You think I made it up to Black Hawk to get that ticket, then drove back down to Denver and killed Farrell around six, drove back out to Golden Gate Canyon, drank a bunch of whiskey and then crashed my car in order to make it look like I wasn’t at the murder scene? Wouldn’t there be an easier and safer alibi I could create?”

  She tapped a finger on the legal pad, but her eyes stayed locked on mine. “Here’s the problem,” she finally said. “I’ve got your gun at the scene, and I have a calendar in Farrell’s office that shows an appointment to meet with you in Black Hawk, and I have his cell phone records showing a call to you at three-thirty yesterday.”

  “See, he did call me! It’s just like I said.”

  “Yes, but I have no idea what you talked about, or if you saw him in Black Hawk or not.”

  I grimaced. “Yeah, I see your point. Hey, what about the gunshot residue tests? That would prove I didn’t fire the Glock, right?”

  “I won’t have those results until tomorrow.”

  “And then you’ll know I’m innocent.”

  “You could’ve cleaned your hands.”

  “Not that good,” I protested. “For the last time, I don’t know what Farrell wanted, and I have no idea how my gun came to be at the crime scene.”

  “And those thugs killed Farrell.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I. Don’t. Know.” My patience was wearing thin.

  She looped around and asked the same questions again, but worded slightly differently, hoping that if I were lying, I’d get tripped up. Finally, she seemed satisfied, either that I was telling the truth or that I was a great liar.

  “All right, I’m going to let you go for now. I wouldn’t do anything stupid if I were you.”

  “No worries there,” I said, grateful the interrogation was over. My stomach gurgled from coffee and stress, and I thought I might be sick. Then I remembered throwing up on Blankenship’s shoes. Oh, could this get any worse?

  I stood up, put on my coat and followed Spillman to the main entrance. “We’ll be in touch,” she said cryptically as she held the door for me.

  I walked outside and stood for a moment, letting the cold clear my brain. Then I pulled out my cell phone to call Willie. One thing was certain. I had to find out as much as I could about Noel Farrell, and I had to do it fast. It was the only thing that might help me clear my name.

  CHAPTER THREE

  After Willie picked me up, we stopped at a Subway for lunch and then dropped by a rental car agency, where I got an all-wheel drive Subaru Forester. Then I followed her back to the condo. She was a nurse at nearby St. Joseph’s hospital and she had to work the swing shift. So while she got ready, I worked for a while in my home office.

  My office is an ode to my love of film noir and detective fiction. On one wall hangs framed movie posters from The Big Sleep, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and The Maltese Falcon, one of Bogie’s most famous movies. A former client had given me the latter poster after I’d found his brother’s murderer. Another wall has floor-to-ceiling bookshelves full of film noir and detective movies and Alfred Hitchcock DVDs, as well as rare first-edition detective novels. And a glass case in the corner holds my most prized possessions: A first edition of A Study in Scarlet, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and a first edition of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. My office is my sanctuary and I love it.

  “So,” I said, “it’s time to find out about you, Noel Farrell.”

  I logged onto the internet and typed his name into the search engine. The website Farrellpi.com came up first in the results, so I clicked on it. The banner at the top of the page said Farrell Investigations, with a phone number to the right, and below that was a picture of Noel Farrell. I’d had no idea what he looked like until now. He looked to be in his fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair slicked back, brown eyes and a big nose. I thought back to the parking garage and the man approaching me. If I could trust my memory, then that man was Farrell, but I still couldn’t remember if I’d talked to him.

  I looked over the rest of the page. It was cheesy and amateurish. A few pages were dedicated to services for cheating spouses, process serving, judgment collection, nanny background checks and more. My best friend, Cal Whitmore, was a computer whiz and he’d recently set up a website for me, and it was so much more professional-looking than Farrell’s. Most of my business came from word-of-mouth, but having a web presence made me look more professional, or so I’d been told. I didn’t get many calls from the website, but so far that hadn’t meant I was without work. Out of curiosity, I clicked on a page labeled “rates”.

  “Damn, I should be charging more,” I muttered.

  I poked around the site a bit more. Farrell Investigations boasted “a team of investigators who up critical information no one else can get their hands on.” Not very catchy, I thought. But if there were other operatives, maybe one of them knew why Farrell wanted to talk to me.

  I picked up the phone and dialed the number listed. Four rings and then the call went to voicemail. “All of our operatives are currently in the field. Please leave a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.”

  Something itched my subconscious. Where had I heard that message before? I snapped my fingers, then pulled out my cell phone and scrolled through the call history. I found Farrell’s number. Another fleeting memory fell into place. I’d called Farrell when I’d arrived at the garage because I wanted to know where he’d parked. But the number on my phone was different number than the one on his website. I dialed his cell phone and waited.

  “All of our operatives are currently in the field. Please leave a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.”

  I ended the call and mulled that over. Farrell must’ve had the office phone forwarded to his cell. Was he a one-man show? Or did all the operatives have the same voicemail? I checked the website and found that Farrell Investigations was located at 3rd and Broadway, just south of downtown Denver. Looked like that would be my next stop.

  “But one thing first,” I said out loud. I put my office phone on speaker and dialed a number.

  “O Great Detective, what can I do for you?” This had become my best friend Cal’s standard greeting.

  “How’s your day going?”

  “Not bad,” he said. “I’m working with a nasty virus that attacked one of my client’s systems.”

  Cal and I had been friends since we were kids, and he’s my sidekick, Doctor Watson to my Sherlock Holmes. Besides being an IT whiz who specializes in computer viruses and virus protection, his IQ is off the charts. He seems to know everything about everything, and yet he has little common sense. He’s the smartest person I know, and the quirkiest. He rarely ventures from his house in the foothills west of Denver and he lives on the fringes of the law. But with his expertise, he could get his hands on information that would take me hours, if not days, to find.

  “Sounds fascinating,” I said.

  “Give me this over your work any day.”

  “Ha ha. Hey, can you do me a quick favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “A quick background check on a PI named Noel Farrell.”

  “Spell the last name.”

  I did and then heard a click-clack sound. I could picture his fingers flying over the keyboard.

  “He’s a private eye like you, huh?” Cal said.

  “Yes.”

  “Only not as good looking.”

  “You’re too kind.”

  “Why do you want to know about him?”

&
nbsp; “He called me yesterday and asked for my help.”

  “And you want to know if he’s got any ghosts in his closet before you help.”

  “He’s dead.”

  That stopped him cold. “What happened?”

  I told him about the last twenty-four hours. “Since I don’t fancy spending the rest of my life in prison for murder, I thought I’d better clear my name,” I concluded.

  “No kidding. What can I do to help?”

  “Other than what you’re doing now, I’m not sure. I’m clueless right now.”

  “Well,” he said slowly. “Noel Farrell wasn’t a saint. He was busted a couple of times for DUI, and he spent time in the clink for drunk-and-disorderly. He’s ex-military, back in the late ’70’s, honorable discharge. Hopped from job to job, looks like he worked at some security companies, and he was a bail bondsman for a while. You have no idea why he wanted to talk to you?”

  “None. He sounded so desperate, I finally gave in and agreed to meet him.”

  “What’s your next move?”

  “I’m going to check out his house and office, see if I can find what he was working on.”

  “That sounds harder than me finding his background information.”

  “You may be right.”

  Turns out his were prophetic words.

  I let him get back to work, and I went into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed.

  Willie came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. She gazed down at me. “You look really tired. How’re you feeling?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve got a bit of a headache, but I’m okay.”

  “You should take a nap.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “I’m going by Farrell’s house and then to his office.” I eyed her legs, then let my eyes rove up to edge of the towel. “But I need to wait until it gets dark, so I have some time to kill.”

  She saw the look on my face. “I just got out of the shower.”

  “So?” I reached out and tugged on the towel. It dropped to the floor. Then she leaned down and kissed me, and we killed a little time.

  ***

  Later on, Willie left for work and I took her advice and took a short nap. Afterward, I looked up Noel Farrell’s address. He lived in a small house near Interstate 70 and Harlan Street, and I arrived there a little past four. I parked down the block and watched his house for a few minutes. Tan paint peeled from old siding, and a window to the right of the front door was broken. Yellow crime-scene tape criss-crossed the door. The street was quiet, so I got out and walked purposefully up the walk to the miniscule porch. I was about to try the knob and maybe break in with lock picks I had in my pocket when someone called out.

  “You looking for Noel?”

  I whirled around. A grizzled old man stood at the edge of Farrell’s yard, his hands on his hips. He looked surprised to see me, then he noticed my black eyes and stitches on my temple, and surprise changed to caution.

  “Uh, yes,” I said. Spillman had said something about the neighbors being wary because of some recent robberies, and she wasn’t kidding.

  “Noel’s dead.”

  I feigned shock as I stepped off the porch. “What happened?”

  “Someone shot him.” He clicked dentures around behind his lips. “Right in his living room. Terrible what this neighborhood’s coming to.”

  Something else popped into my head. Spillman had said someone about my size was seen leaving Farrell’s house around the time he was murdered. I hoped the neighbor didn’t mistake me for that guy and call the police.

  “You a friend of Noel?” the old man asked.

  “Acquaintance,” I said. “I wanted to talk to him.”

  I really wanted to get inside and look around to see if anything might explain why Farrell wanted to talk to me, but with the old man around, it didn’t look like that was going to happen.

  “Don’t think he had any family.” The old man worked the dentures some more, waiting for me to leave.

  I glanced over my shoulder. I wanted to ask more questions, but the old man was already suspicious, so I decided against that. I was chasing straws anyway, so it was probably best that I leave.

  “Okay, thanks.” I took the cue and walked back to my car.

  So far I hadn’t discovered anything, other than that there was a helluva neighborhood watch around Farrell’s house. I had to hope the same couldn’t be said about his office.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Noel Farrell’s office was located on South Broadway, in a tiny, nondescript house that was sandwiched between a liquor store and an antique store. The area was in the heart of Denver’s “Antique Row”, a number of blocks on Broadway known for a multitude of specialty shops that dealt exclusively in antiques. I was familiar with this particular block because one of my favorite stores, Classic Hollywood Memorabilia, was on the other side of the antique store next to Farrell’s office. I would much rather have been browsing through old posters, props and autographed pictures than casing Farrell’s office, but I also desperately needed to find Farrell’s killer.

  It was after five o’clock and most of the stores were closed, and few cars were parked on Broadway. I pulled to the curb across the street from Farrell Investigations and surveyed the house. Two small windows, one on each side of the front door, were black. I continued to watch from across the street. Five minutes later, the blue neon “Open” sign on the antique store winked out and the lights shut off. A car stopped in front of the liquor store. A man in a business suit hopped out, went inside and came back out carrying a six-pack. He got back in his car and headed down the street. Traffic passed up and down Broadway, but the offices of Farrell Investigations stayed dark.

  I waited another ten minutes, but no one entered or exited Farrell’s office, so I made sure my lock pick set was still in my coat pocket, got out and locked the Subaru, and dashed across Broadway. I waited for a lull in traffic, then rushed up the short walk and onto the house’s small wood porch. I glanced around. Satisfied that no one was watching me, I took out the picks and set to work on the door. I’d learned this unique skill from Cal. He’d had to come down to Denver and help me break into a house on my second investigation – which took him way out of his comfort zone and put him in danger. After that, he decided that it would be in his best interest if I could pick my own locks. It ended up being a good skill to have, as I’d had to illegally enter more places than I cared to admit. But picking locks still wasn’t easy, and the old lock on this door proved difficult. I worked for thirty seconds with no luck. My hands grew cold and my breath came out in white puffs. Traffic noise nearby interrupted me so I stepped away from the door and ducked down behind the porch railing. Once the cars had passed, I tried the lock again. After a bit more frustration, it finally released.

  I eased the door open, slipped inside, pressed the door closed and locked it. I relished the sudden warmth as I pocketed the picks and stood in the dark and listened. The faint hum of cars passing on Broadway filtered through the cheap windows with closed curtains, but nothing else. The interior of the house was pitch black and smelled of stale smoke and bad cologne. I took out my flashlight, flicked it on, and panned it around. I was standing in a front room barely big enough for a love seat crammed against one wall. I spied a short hallway on the opposite side of the room. A quick check revealed a tiny bathroom at the end. Back in the main room, an open door directly across from the front entrance led to an inner office.

  In three steps I crossed to the office door and stepped inside. The set-up was similar to the office I used to have: a heavy oak desk with two wingback chairs across from it, a floor lamp sitting it one corner, and a battered metal file cabinet in the other corner. Only where I’d hung a poster of The Big Sleep on my office wall, he had a cheap painting of a mountain scene. Behind the desk was a large window that looked out on the alley, and a door in the corner exited there.

  We all must’ve read the same detective manu
al, I thought wryly of the décor. And this certainly seems like a one-man shop, and Farrell was the sole “operative”. It was a good marketing technique – the website appearance of a big shop made some people think they were getting a better product. Except that meant no one else could provide me with information about Farrell.

  I stepped over to the desk. Besides a computer, monitor and printer, he had an old page-a-day calendar. An ashtray with a few butts in it and a half-full pack of cigarettes sat next to the calendar. I sat down and flipped through the calendar. As Spillman noted, Farrell had written down my name, “5 PM” next to it and “Ameristar Casino”. I turned back the days and saw various notations with times: Betsy L., J – Starbucks, Q.S. Nothing said, “Here’s the clue to clear your name, Reed.” I sat back, disappointed, and yet not surprised.

  I tried to open a drawer of the file cabinet, but it was locked. I stepped back to the desk and rummaged in the drawers. The middle one was cluttered with office supplies: notepads, paper clips, staples, pens, pencils and more. But no file cabinet key. I tried a side drawer that had stacks of empty folders in it. I pulled the stack out and noticed a small metal box underneath. I set the files on the desk, took out the box and opened it. In it was a cushion in the shape of a gun, but no gun. Did he have it on him when he was killed? If so, did he try to use it? Did any of that matter? I sighed as I pulled the box out of the drawer. Underneath, I found a small key.

  “Bingo,” I muttered.

  I went back to the file cabinet, inserted the key and popped the lock, then opened the top drawer. Farrell had alphabetized his cases, each one in a manila folder. I thumbed through them, but none of the names meant anything to me. On my second case, I’d spent time looking through a bunch of real estate files. It had been slow, boring process. I twisted up my lips, realizing I was going to have to do the same thing again.

  I pulled out the first folder and shined the flashlight on it. It was labeled “P. Allenbock”. Inside was a typed report detailing how Farrell had been hired by Phil Allenbock to investigate whether Phil’s wife, Jane, was cheating on him. Farrell had a day-by-day description of Jane’s activities, receipts of his expenditures, and pictures of Jane meeting a man in a suit at a Courtyard Marriott in south Denver. Turns out Phil’s suspicions were correct. I closed the file and put it back, feeling like a voyeur. After fifteen minutes, I’d gotten to ‘G’. Most of Farrell’s cases were cheating spouses or insurance scams, but he had the occasional missing person or legal investigation thrown in. Those were a little more interesting…but not much.