I nodded. “Yeah, and by using a little bit of the jewelry to railroad Steve for the job, he’d be getting rid of the boy he couldn’t stand seeing his daughter with, killing two birds with one stone.”
The big cop nodded. “Kennedy’s confessed to stealing Roccardi’s tools and planting the jewelry in his car. He’s also admitted to gimmicking his own car to sound like one of your hopped-up jalopies. He planned his fake burglary to coincide with Ben Schyler’s rounds to throw more suspicion on the Roccardi boy, gambling that Roccardi wouldn’t have a solid alibi for that time. It almost worked.”
“So what happens now? How bad is Mr. Kennedy going to get it?”
“That’s hard to say. Judge Johannson and the D.A. are working that out now with Kennedy’s lawyer. Kennedy has a couple of things going for him. For one, he hadn’t filed an insurance claim yet, so he technically can’t be hit for insurance fraud. And for another, Steve Roccardi has refused to press charges. That’ll help. Still, the Kennedys have some hard times ahead.”
Across the street, a little group of people left the courthouse. The Roccardis plus one. Julie Kennedy was with them. Steve’s arm was around her shoulders and his mom and dad were walking family-close. No matter what, Julie wouldn’t be facing her hard times alone. And who knows? Maybe even Mr. Kennedy would come to realize that his future in-laws were pretty good folks after all.
“Okay, Pulaski,” Dooley went on. “Now you can tell me something. All that business with the cars was pretty cute, but what I want to know is what put you on to Kennedy in the first place. Was it just because he had a grudge against Roccardi?”
“Sure, there was always that,” I replied, taking a last drag off my Lucky. “But there was something else, too. Something that, when you thought about it for a while, pointed straight to Mr. Kennedy and no one else.”
The Dewlap looked puzzled. “Okay, I’ll bite. What was it?”
“The jewelry you guys found in Steve’s rod. Look at what you call the ‘chain of events’ yesterday. Steve goes over to the Kennedy jewelry store late in the afternoon to visit with Julie. Her dad walks in, there’s a big blowup, and Steve honks out of there, feeling frosted.
“He’s so frosted, in fact, that he cruises around the county all evening working off his mad. When he does hit town again, he goes over to Julie’s place, picks her up, and goes straight out to the diner where you found him.
“Get it? Like everyone was saying, there was no way anyone could have stowed that jewelry in Steve’s rod after the break-in because, from the time of the burglary on, Steve was sitting in his car. Those pieces of jewelry must have been planted several hours before the burglary was ever committed. And the only person who could have done that was Mr. Kennedy himself. Probably he planted the loot and lifted the tools just before he picked that big fight in the jewelry store.”
I ground my smoke out on the edge of the bench. “You dig the scene? Kennedy was counting on Steve being seen as the tough-kid JD while nobody would figure on the respectable buisnessman burglarizing his own store.”
Dooley nodded and gave a grudging grin. “Yeah, I ‘dig the scene.’ That was a pretty good piece of detective work.”
“You think?” I shrugged. “I don’t know. All I had to go on was this feeling down in my guts that Steve didn’t do it.”
“Brains and guts are what it takes, Pulaski.” Dooley paused for a second. “Say, did you ever think about going on the cops?”
“Me, a cop?” I threw my head back and had my best laugh of the day. “Come on, Dooley!”
After a second he started laughing, too.
Copyright (c); 2005 by James H. Cobb.
Silk Road
by Beatrix M. Kramlovsky
This is Beatrix Kramlovsky’s second appearance in Passport to Crime. The Austrian writer returns with a story that was nominated for Germany’s Friedrich Glauser prize for short crime fiction in 2004. Ms. Kramlovsky worked as a professional painter before starting to write fiction and she continues to pursue both careers today. She also describes herself as an enthusiastic “mother, gardener, and traveler.” She belongs to the Austrian chapter of Sisters in Crime.
Toward seven in the evening, Armin Pewlacek headed quietly up to his bedroom, double-checked the pens and papers he had spread out on the desk, looking for telltale signs that would reveal an unannounced motherly visit to his room, breathed a sigh of relief as he pulled off his clothes, and enjoyed a leisurely shower. A short time later, the telephone rang downstairs. He heard her light step, the creaking of the pearwood floor as she stood before the telephone, shifting her weight restlessly, waiting, as she always did, for the ring tone to finish before she picked up the receiver. Wasn’t it comforting, this predictability in all she did?
“Pewlacek.” Her voice was high when she spoke, rising on the last syllable like a question, as if she were unsure, after all these years, that this really was her name.
He stood motionless, and waited.
“Papa won’t be home till later; we’re supposed to go ahead and eat.”
Armin grunted his agreement, even though he knew she couldn’t hear him, and pulled on a sweat suit. One more look in the mirror. He hadn’t missed anything. Everything was under control. Whistling cheerily, he pounded down the stairs into the kitchen, where his mother stood working at the stove, her skin shiny from the steam.
The table had already been set for three. Armin hesitated only a moment before he cleared away the extra place setting and got out the candles and matches and the round glass candleholder he had given her for her last birthday. She turned around when she smelled the smoke, first startled, then smiling. To Armin, her pleasure felt like the softest flannel, warm from sleep. For a moment he closed his eyes and was, once again, a small boy lying in bed in the evening.
Why can’t I fly, Mama?
Because you have no wings.
If you were a bird, I would sit on you like Nils Holgerson on his goose, and we could fly out into the big wide world. Far, far away.
Oh, but that would make Papa sad.
Well, I hope so, he had thought, but he hadn’t said it.
She set down the steaming pot and lowered the ladle into the thick broth. He loved her economical movements. She didn’t fumble unnecessarily like some other mothers, artificially spreading their manicured fingers. She rarely wore anything but her wedding ring. Only once had he seen on her arm the ruby bracelet that his father had given her on their fifteenth wedding anniversary. In her simple way, Mama had a touching beauty, and it annoyed Armin every time his father felt it necessary to enhance it. But now she reached for her spoon, and smiled at him before she began to eat.
“Isn’t it cozy here, just the two of us?”
Her lips opened wider and the spoon, full of soup, vanished between them. It hurt so much to watch her, and at the same time it made him so inexplicably happy.
“Papa will be late again tonight. Work. Much too much work.”
Armin said nothing.
“I hope nothing will hold him up on Saturday.”
“Saturday?”
“Oh, Armin, now don’t tell me you’ve forgotten his birthday!” She laughed. He listened as she planned the dinner, named the guests. In a voice that was light and suddenly young.