Perhaps not. The birds seemed particularly hungry today.
Alex wiped the blood off his knife, climbed back up to the path, and had a second cup of coffee. This one he enjoyed immensely; Sue truly was a master with the espresso maker.
Later that night Alex returned home to find Sixty Minutes on, Jessica and Sue sitting on the couch in front of the tube sharing a huge bowl of popcorn. He was pleased that the show was about a government contractor’s malfeasance, and not murder or rape or anything that might upset the little girl. He hugged them both hard.
“Hey, Jessie-Bessie, how’s the world’s best daughter?”
“You okay, Daddy?”
“Right as rain.”
“Missed you!”
He winked at Sue and could see in her face that she was pleased to find him in such a good mood. She was more pleased still when he told her that all the fish he’d caught were below size and he’d had to throw them back. She was a sport, but fish, to her, was a dish brought to your table and deftly boned by a waiter.
“Did you bring me something, Daddy?” Jessica asked coyly, tilting her head and letting her long blond hair hang down over her shoulder.
Alex thought, as he often did: She’ll be a heartbreaker some day.
“Sure did.”
“Something for our collection?”
“Yep.”
“What is it? Is it a watch? Or a friend for Raoul?”
“No watches and no stuffed bears,” he said. “Look at this.”
“Oh, wow, Daddy,” she whispered. She carefully took the old-fashioned wire-rimmed glasses in her hand. “These are totally neat.”
“I thought it was time we started a new collection,” he told her.
“I’ll make a special box just for glasses,” she said. “I’m glad you’re home, Daddy.”
His daughter hugged him hard, and then Sue called to them from the dining room, saying that dinner was ready and could they please come and sit down.
Leopold Lends a Hand
by Edward D. Hoch
© 1995 by Edward D. Hoch
Edward D. Hoch’s Leopold is certainly not the first character in the history of detective fiction to be resurrected after an authorial decision to retire him from the scene (remember Sherlock Holmes and Reichenbach Falls). And of course, Mr. Hoch hasn’t had to bring him back from apparent death, hut in this new adventure the author has found it necessary to temporarily reinstate Leopold in the police department.
Leopold pulled up before the little brick guardhouse at the entrance to the Bellview Sound Estates and flashed the shiny honorary badge he’d carried since his retirement. “I’m with Captain Fletcher’s squad,” he told the uniformed guard.
The guard consulted a handwritten list on his clipboard, taking no chances. “Name?”
“Leopold.”
“Go on,” he said, waving the car through. “It’s the middle building — the unfinished one.”
There were three squad cars plus Fletcher’s unmarked Pontiac parked in front of the building. A truck from the technical unit stood off to one side and the medical examiner’s vehicle was just backing into position. One of the uniformed patrolmen stood by the elevator and Leopold headed for him.
“Hello, Captain. How’s retirement treating you?”
“Can’t complain, Cahill. Captain Fletcher gave me a call. What floor are they on?”
“Top one. Number ten.”
He found Fletcher and his men in one of the unfinished condominiums, standing off to one side while still and video cameras recorded the murder scene. The victim, a well-dressed man with black hair and a bushy moustache, seemed out of place on the bare concrete floor of the building, surrounded by boxes and piles of tile waiting to be installed.
“What have you got, Fletcher?” Leopold asked.
“Thanks for coming. What I’ve got is more cases than the violent crimes squad can handle at the moment. Connie’s working on a drug stabbing and I’ve got two people on vacation. I called you because I thought you might help with some of the routine questioning.”
“I’m always happy to help out. Who’s the dead man?”
“Vladimir Petrov, a Russian businessman who emigrated to America about five years ago. That’s really all we know so far. He’d purchased the condo on this floor — the most expensive in the building, by the way — and apparently had come here today to check on progress. He was shot twice in the chest at fairly close range.”
“Anyone hear the shots?”
“There are twenty men and a couple of women working on the building today. That’s what we have to find out. I thought you could help Spencer and Frawley interview them.”
“Glad to,” Leopold said. It reminded him of his early days as a detective, before he’d been in charge of the squad, before the age barrier had forced his retirement. Fletcher’s call for help wasn’t exactly in keeping with departmental regulations but Leopold was more than willing to lend a hand. His wife Molly was in court defending a rape suspect in a difficult case and he was pretty much shifting for himself these days.
The man who’d found the body was a crew chief named Al Haskins. His men had laid tile in the condo’s three bathrooms earlier in the week, working on a subcontract from the builder of the condominium. He was a tall, slender man with dark hair and glasses, dressed in a T-shirt and work pants. “Had you seen Mr. Petrov before the shooting?” Leopold asked, jotting down notes as they talked.
“Not today. But it wasn’t unusual for him to stop by and see how things were coming. He and his wife were anxious to move in.”
“The guards allowed him onto the grounds?”
Al Haskins smiled. “He paid a million three for this place. No way you’re going to keep him out.”
“That’s expensive real estate.” They’d walked out onto the screened-in terrace overlooking Long Island Sound. Ten stories below, a few yachts were visible on the blue water.
“Part of it’s the view,” Haskins explained. “The condos are pretty much the same, but the higher you go the more expensive they get.”
“What did Petrov do for a living?”
“Beats me. Some sort of art dealer in Manhattan, I think. Didn’t seem to work very hard at it, though. He hung around here a lot. Sometimes his wife came too.”
“So he was up here today — alone?”
A shrug. “You’d have to get that from the guard at the entrance. I told you I hadn’t seen him.”
“Didn’t you hear any shots?”
“I don’t think so. Sometimes there’s a little hammering and it’s hard to tell what you’re hearing.”
“What brought you up here?”
“Like I said, my crew had tiled the bathrooms.” He led the way into one of them. “The inspector for the builder was up yesterday to check out our work. See — she puts these little blue stickers wherever there’s a flaw to be corrected. I came up to see how many things had to be fixed.”
“And you found Petrov.”
“Yeah.” He patted the two-way radio hanging from his belt. “I called downstairs and told them to get the police.”
“Your people do nice work,” Leopold said, inspecting the tile that lined the walls and floor of a shower stall. A grouping of four larger ones had been painted with the unmistakable likeness of Cleopatra. “Fancy.”
“Petrov’s wife picked those out. They’re twenty-five bucks each.”
Leopold returned to Fletcher and the others as the medical examiner was supervising removal of the body. “Did you check to see if the victim’s wife came with him today?”
Fletcher nodded. “He was alone. The gatehouse checked him in at eleven-ten, about an hour before Haskins found the body. We haven’t been able to tell his wife yet. Come downstairs with me. Spencer has been going through his car and he found something.”