“If you want me to help you find the killer, just say the word, you guys,” said Fifi. She sighed. “It gets boring just sitting at home and going out twice a day for a walk. I could do with a bit of excitement, to be perfectly honest.”
“Sure,” I said. “If you see or hear anything about Willie, anything at all, please tell us.”
“Oh, absolutely,” she said. “He didn’t have a pet by any chance, did he?”
“No, unfortunately he didn’t.”
If he had, it would have made our jobs that much easier. A cat or dog belonging to Willie would have been able to tell us exactly what had transpired last night. Now all we could do was some good old-fashioned police work to find out what was going on.
“One thing we do know for sure,” said Dooley, “is that Willie was a blackmailer.”
“A blackmailer!” said Fifi, her eyes shining excitedly. “Oh, my.”
“He was blackmailing Odelia’s client.” And we proceeded to give Fifi the short version of the events as they transpired the day before. She was duly impressed by the fascinating tale, and promised to let us know if she heard anything relating to Willie’s murder.
Chapter 10
We moved to the house next to Marge and Tex, where Ted and Marcie Trapper already stood talking to an unknown female. When we walked up to the small group, the woman smiled at Chase and said,“Mr. and Mrs. Trapper knew Mr. Dornhauser well, detective.” Chase stared at the woman, and no recognition registered on his face, so her smile faltered somewhat and a blush crept up her cheeks. “I’m sorry, sir. Sally Mortensen.”
“Officer Mortensen, of course,” said Chase, though clearly he had no idea who she was.
“I’ll go and interview the people next door,” she murmured, and hurried off.
“A new colleague?” asked Odelia.
“Looks like,” said Chase. “I didn’t recognize her.” He turned to the Trappers. “I’m sorry, Ted—Marcie, but what can you tell us about Willie Dornhauser?”
“I think he did some work on the house not so long ago,” said Ted. He turned to his wife with a quizzical look on his face. “Or am I thinking of some other person, honey?”
“No, I remember him well,” said Marcie as she stared at the picture Chase was holding up to her. “He fixed the roof. And after the job was finished, he broke into the house.”
“I’m sorry, but are you saying Willie broke into your house?” asked Chase.
“We don’t know it was him, Marcie,” said Ted.
“The hell we don’t. Who else could it be?”
“Did you go to the police?” asked Odelia.
“We did, yes,” said Ted.
“Nothing ever came of it,” said Marcie, who’d folded her arms across her chest and looked angry at the memory.
“What was stolen?”
“Not much,” said Ted, who looked almost apologetic. “Just some money.”
“And my rings!” said Marcie. “Don’t forget about my rings!”
“Did you give a description when you filed a report?” asked Chase.
“I certainly did, and provided pictures, too.”
Chase and Odelia shared a look.“We’re checking Willie’s house right now,” said Chase.
“If you find my rings, I’d like to have them back.”
“Like I said,” Ted said, “we don’t know it was Willie.”
“Look, when you talk to the other people on this block you’ll hear the same story over and over again,” said Marcie. “Willie did some work on the house, then the next night, or at least within the week, the house would be burgled and stuff would be stolen. And okay, so maybe he was never caught, so we can’t know for sure it was him, but I’m pretty sure it was. I mean, what are the odds?”
“Could be that he was staking out the place for a partner,” Chase suggested.
“Could be,” Marcie agreed. “But whoever it was, those burglaries had something to do with Willie. And you’ll see that now that he’s gone, those burglaries will magically stop.”
“Unless his partner is still at it,” said Odelia.
“Do you know if he was also into blackmail?” asked Chase.
Marcie shook her head decidedly.“I don’t know anything about that. Though it wouldn’t surprise me.”
“I think Willie got involved with a bad crowd,” said Ted. “I always found him an agreeable sort of person. And the man had hands of gold.”
“That’s true,” said Marcie. “Willie could do anything. And the work was always great. Then again, I never had any complaints about his work. What I didn’t like was him breaking in and stealing my rings.”
“And my gnome,” Ted said quietly.
Like Tex, Ted is a big gnome aficionado, and loves his gnomes almost more than he does his wife. Then again, aren’t a lot of men like that? They dive headfirst into some weird hobby, and never look back. Ted and Tex have their gnomes, but other men collect cigar bands, or stamps, or toy trains. Or comics or soap bars or everything Coca Cola. Lucky for us Odelia had married a man who suffered from none of these quirks. Chase just liked to spend time with our human when he came home after a long day at the office. And of course he was proud of his arrest record. But there’s nothing wrong with that.
“Who was the officer that Chase didn’t know, Max?” asked Dooley as our humans thanked the Trappers for their cooperation and moved on to the next neighbor.
“I don’t know, Dooley, and I guess Chase doesn’t either.”
“I think she’s probably one of those invisible colleagues,” my friend remarked.
“Invisible colleagues?”
“There are always colleagues that nobody notices, aren’t there?” he said. “They work diligently at their desk for years, but they are, well, invisible.”
“You don’t mean that literally, do you?” I asked, just to make sure.
“No, of course not,” he said with a laugh. “I just mean that nobody seems to take any notice of them. They do the work, but stay in the background. Like this officer. Probably she’s been working at the precinct for months, or even years, but Chase has never seen her before—nobody has noticed her, and that’s because she’s one of the invisible ones.”
He had a point, of course. There’re always colleagues everybody notices, and then there are the ones who stay in the background, unobtrusively putting in the hours.
Just then, Uncle Alec came driving up, and called his deputy and Odelia over for a quick chat.“And?” said the Chief, crawling out of his car with some effort. His belly had gotten stuck behind the steering wheel, and he had trouble getting it unstuck. “Any luck?”
“Well, as far as we can tell Willie Dornhauser was a handyman with a particular hobby,” said Chase, leaning against the hood of the car while Uncle Alec hoisted up his pants.
“Stealing from the people who hired him,” Odelia clarified. “He would fix their heating and then a couple of days later he’d break into the place and steal their valuables.”
“He was never arrested, though,” said Chase, “which either makes him very good at what he did….”
“Or very lucky,” said Odelia.
“Or he had an associate who did the dirty work,” Chase said.
“I think you’re right there, son,” the Chief grunted. He handed a piece of paper to Chase. “I did some digging, and turns out that Willie was arrested once, ten years ago, for a B&E, and served time with this guy.” He tapped the document.
“Edwardo Yuhas,” Chase read.
“And Edwardo is not a stranger to the Hampton Cove PD,” said Uncle Alec. “His MO was to break in and abscond with people’s valuables. And a lot of his victims were located in this very neighborhood, until he moved on to other, more affluent parts of town.”