Homicide for the Holidays Read online

  “You act like you know me, yet we’ve never met,” I said. “You practically admit to killing that woman and still you sit here chatting like we’re old friends. Answer me. Do you know this woman?”

  “What do you want me to say? That she and I had been very close…once?”

  “So you do know who she is.” I was regretting that I came here on my own and was thinking about how I should simply arrest him.

  “Yes, Anne, you and I have had…” Reichl stopped. “Pardon me. You and I will have a long and stimulating relationship. At least for awhile.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I felt like I had walked into the third act of a Tennessee Williams play. Maybe I shouldn’t have drunk that wine.

  Reichl rose and strolled toward the bookcases. “You surprise me, Anne. I thought you would have figured it out by now. The uniforms, the insignia. Those bodies. What if I told you neither one of them has been born…yet.”

  “You’re crazy.” They had to be born before they could die. “Then how do you explain this?” I shoved the photos of the dead couple at him.

  “I don’t need to. You see, that’s the genius of what I do. The problems of the future disposed of in the past, like these annoying police officers,” he said, waving his hand at the photo.

  Police officers? All three victims were police officers?

  “And me, was I one of those future problems?” My head was spinning.

  “Not always. You’ve been a challenge, but the game we were playing began to bore me so I decided to change it up,” Reichl said, pushing against one of the bookcases to reveal a room on the other side.

  As he stepped through the doorway, I drew my gun and commanded him to stop.

  “You won’t shoot,” he said.

  “Jeffrey Reichl, you’re under arrest for the murder of…” I started to say.

  “For what? The murder of you? Those two poor bastards?”

  He was right. I would be laughed out of the department if I tried to charge him with murder considering his Christmas morning alibi and no way to connect him to the bodies on his property.

  “Why are you telling me all this? Some kind of sick game?”

  “Not a game,” Reichl said, then stopped. “Not entirely a game. It’s a business and a very lucrative one. People are willing to pay a princely sum to deposit the refuse of their world in the past. And this past, with its guns and violence, is perfect.”

  I raised my weapon and aimed at his midsection. “I can stop this right now.”

  “Don’t be melodramatic.” He extended his hand to me as he took a step into through the doorway. “Anne McGraw, I am giving you the chance to change your future. Come with me. Join me in this grand venture.”

  I lowered my gun, physically recoiling from this monster. “Grand venture? You murder people. I’m no murderer.”

  “Yet,” he replied with a certainty that cut through me. I hesitated and in that split second Reichl turned and slipped through the doorway.

  I darted across the room to stop him, but he was beyond my reach. I charged through the opening to find myself in a room the size of a closet. Reichl had vanished, but he left his business card lying on the floor:

  Reichl Inc: Bury your troubles yesterday.

  I picked it up, studying it as I considered my next step. I knew there was little I could do here and now, but I had thirty years to figure it out, thirty years to stop a killer…my killer.

  Bloody Good Christmas Cookies

  2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

  1 teaspoon baking powder

  1 teaspoon baking soda

  1 tablespoon corn starch

  1 teaspoon salt

  2 sticks unsalted butter, softened

  2 large eggs

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  2 cups white chocolate chips

  1 to 2 tubes of red food gel

  Preheat oven to 350°F. In bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cornstarch, and salt. Set aside.

  In a separate bowl, combine at medium speed the butter, eggs, and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix (low speed is recommended) until dough is combined but not whipped. Scrape dough from sides of bowl to make sure all ingredients are combined.

  Add white chocolate chips to the dough and mix at low speed.

  Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Scoop 1/8 to 1/4 cup of cookie dough onto prepared tray.

  For the bloody effect:

  Take the tip of a tube of the gel and insert it into a cookie. Gently squeeze a small amount of the gel into the cookie. Repeat 2 to 3 times into each cookie.

  Bake for 8 to10 minutes, rotating mid-way through the cycle to assure an even bake.

  Let cool and you should have nice, blood-drippy white chocolate chip cookies.

  — Recipe courtesy of Sarah McKenzie

  The Reindeer Murder Case

  By J. Paul Burroughs

  I’d hoped to have a night on the town in Indianapolis with my best girl, Maisie, but instead, I found myself up to my elbows in a murder case.

  My name’s Mahoney. Nick Mahoney. I was born on Christmas Eve, so my mother named me after the blessed St. Nick. However, the good father at St. Anthony’s used to remind me that “Ole Nick” referred to the devil. I guess there’s more to me of the latter than the former.

  I’m a gumshoe, a private investigator. I used to be a flatfoot cop in Indy before Uncle Sammy put me into a uniform and sent me out to the South Pacific to fight the Japs. I did pretty good out there until I took some shrapnel in my leg at Guadalcanal and after some time in a military hospital eventually was sent home.

  I was tired of wearing a uniform, so I became a shamus. Good money for checking on cheating husbands, no good skirt-chasers and the like. No more dealing with dead bodies. Or so I thought.

  This was my first Christmas back from the war. It was December, 1947, and I wanted to treat my girl, Maisie, to a show and a movie. I was game for any entertainment that did not include Hope, Crosby or (forgive me, gorgeous) Betty Grable. I’d read in The Times that there was a bunch of dolls who called themselves, “The Rein-dear-ies,” who performed on stage in a show the newspaper columnist said, “shouldn’t be missed.” I’d heard from a buddy also back from the war that these babes had gams a preacher’s kid could kill over.

  My buddy was right. These ladies, dressed in reindeer antlers, bells, skimpy red and green skirts and sheer nylon stockings, knew how to strut their stuff. When they finished their first number, the audience went nuts with applause.

  When their act was over, the theater showed a short on some island paradise. I stepped out to use the john and have a smoke when that came on. I’d had enough of South Pacific islands to last me for the rest of my life.

  When I returned, the movie had already started. Jimmy Stewart was asking Donna Reed to dance with him in the school gymnasium. My keister was barely in the seat, when a terrible scream came from the backstage. It was followed by more screams.

  I leaned into Maisie. “Don’t go nowhere, gorgeous.” I got up to see what was going on.

  I knew the theater. When I was a smart mouth kid, I used to slip inside the back door to the place to catch Boris prowling about on screen as Frankenstein or Lugosi vamping the ladies in Dracula. When I got a little older, I’d take a peek at the dancers changing after a show. But that’s another story.

  I reached the dressing room and found the Rein-dearies peering inside a storage closet where a body lay on the floor. I could tell in a moment that the body was part of their troupe by the antlers and bright skirt.

  “It’s Lucy,” one of the girls sobbed. “We knew she probably ran late—too late to make the show, but we never thought we’d find her dead.”

  I bent down to look at the body. Even in death, this one was a looker, despite the nylon stocking wrapped tightly around her neck.

  Strangled. Tough way to go.

  “Step back! Step back, alla ya!” a voice called out fro
m the door to the dressing room. I recognized it immediately. The girls parted like the Red Sea, and Detective Danny Sullivan stepped into my sight. He looked down at me bending over the corpse and shook his head.

  “Mahoney, what the hell are you doing here?”

  Danny and I did our basic training together. However, he ended up in the European theatre, and I ended up in the Pacific. The war had aged him. Although we both were twenty-eight, he looked like a man in his forties.

  “I came for the show, but stayed for the murder,” I replied.

  He turned to the dancers. “Can any of you give me a name for this broad?”

  “I can.” A short guy in glad rags shuffled over to join us, a stogie in his hand. “Her name’s Lucille, Lucille Greenstreet.”

  “But we all called her Lucy,” a cute broad with eyes like twin topazes spoke up.

  “And whose little girl might you be?”

  “My name’s Beverly, if you hafta know.

  Danny turned to the guy who’d give him the corpse’s name. “And you, Mister?”

  “I’m the manager for these girls. You got questions, Flatfoot? I’m the man to see.”

  Danny bristled over being called a flatfoot. “And my name’s Sullivan—Detective Daniel O’Shaughnessy Sullivan. But you can call me ‘Sir.’ What can you tell me about this doll?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Smart guy, eh? What else can you tell me?”

  “She auditioned for my troupe two months ago. She was a looker, could dance well, and could do what she was told, so I hired her.”

  “Define, ‘do what she was told,’” Danny insisted.

  “Some of my girls—they have problems with the dance routines. When I see that, I have them stay after rehearsal for some extra practice.”

  “Yeah, practice in the horizontal position,” quipped one of the dancers.

  “Shut yer face!”

  “We shoulda known something was wrong,” Beverly again spoke up.

  “Why is that?”

  “It ain’t normal for her to be late. She has…had…this thing about getting places early. Until now, she was never late showing up here.”

  “Looks to me,” I added my two cents, “that she got here early after all. Someone wasted her and hid the body.”

  “Who found her this way?” Danny asked.

  One of the dames raised a hand. “I did.”

  “And your name?”

  “Arlene. When we finished our act and came back here, I noticed the door was open a crack. Normally it’s kept locked. I looked inside and found her.”

  “Anyone here knows where this Lucy was living?”

  A knock-your-socks-off beautiful redhead spoke up. “I do. She shares a flat with me.”

  “And you would be?”

  “Rosaline Lamour.”

  “That your real name or your stage one?”

  This time a doll with hair as black as coal spoke up. “Her real name is Myrtle—Myrtle Corcoran.”

  “Myrtle, can you give me your address?”

  The dame shot the other dancer a look that could freeze boiling water. She gave an address on East Washington Street. I took out a pad and wrote it down for further reference. Danny told her he’d stop by the following day and look through the dead doll’s things. Although I didn’t say it, I decided I’d drop in, as well.

  “I’d like to speak with each one of you in private before you leave the theater,” Danny told the dancers.

  A buxom blonde eased herself closer to him. “If you like, you can question me at my place. I’ll do anything you want to cooperate, Detective.”

  He cleared his throat and tugged at his collar. “I’ll question you all here, if you don’t mind. Mahoney, you want in on this? We used to work pretty well together. And to be honest, half of homicide is down with some sort of cold that’s goin’ around.”

  I knew Maisie was probably boiling that I wasn’t watching the picture beside her. I could hear Jimmy Stewart talking to some old coot who was insisting that he was an angel. Still, I already had one foot into this case, and decided I’d add the other foot as well.

  “Count me in…” I started to say Danny but changed my mind. “…Detective.”

  The theatre manager agreed to give up his office for Danny’s interrogation.

  “Your name?” he asked the first dancer. She was a brunette, possibly the tallest of all the girls. She had eyes like Lauren Bacall and legs like Ann Miller.

  “Lana DuVal.”

  “That your stage name?” I asked.

  “That’s my real name, Sugar.”

  “How well did you know the deceased?”

  “A little. After the show, we sometimes go down to a bar on Illinois Street for a beer. Give a gal a Pabst and she’ll spill about things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “Where she came from, the family back home.”

  “Where was home?”

  “She grew up in Kokomo. She got out of high school there and signed on with the USO in forty-four. Was a dancer to entertain the GI’s over in Europe. She had a boyfriend who was in the army.”

  “Where’s this boyfriend now?”

  “He died in France. Took a bullet, or so she said.”

  “Any new men in her life?”

  “Some stage-door Johnny’s come by a few times and left her flowers. I think she turned him down, when he asked her out, though.”

  We talked some more, and I noticed a bright green choker on her neck with the single name, Blixen.

  “Did all the dancers wear chockers with reindeer names on them?”

  She told me they did. I thought about the dead girl. What name had she been given? The only thing I’d seen around her neck was the stocking that had killed her.

  While Danny interrogated the redhead, I slipped out and asked the sleezeball manager.

  “Her? Lemme see. Yeah, she was Vixen.”

  I wondered if it was just the name she’d been given for the shows, or whether she’d tried to live up to the name, and that was what made someone want to off her.

  When I got back to where Danny was holding interrogations, the redhead was in there. The choker around her neck identified her as Dancer. Danny asked her the same questions he’d asked the blonde, but Myrtle was more defensive.

  “How should I know who she seeing? I ain’t her social secretary,” she said.

  “You two shared a flat,” he reminded her. “Shouldn’t you know if some bozo had a thing for Lucy?”

  “I got my own self to look out for.” Myrtle fell silent for a few moments. Then, “Yeah, come to think of it, some Romeo dropped by as I was going out the door one afternoon. I could tell Lucy knew the guy from before. He mentioned a message he was to give her from her folks back from wherever she came from.”

  “Kokomo,” I prompted.

  “Yeah…whatever.”

  “Did you catch this rube’s name?” Danny asked.

  “Like I said. I wasn’t her social secretary. She said it, but I can’t remember it.”

  “Do you recall what he looked like, then?”

  “He was short. I remember that. Had red hair—darker than mine. Freckles, too. I know—he looked like that kid in some comic books—the one who hangs around with the chump in the pointy hat. He was young—probably a coupla years younger than Lucy. There’ve been a few nights lately when she was gone for hours after the show, showing up at three in the morning. Didn’t tell me if she was out with a fella or simply grabbing drinks at some bar. That’s all I know.”

  The other members of the dance troupe had nothing more to add. While we’d been talking with the ladies, the meat wagon pulled up at the stage door and took away the body. I arranged to meet with Danny tomorrow at the address he’d been given for the dead dame.

  When I returned to Maisie, on screen a little girl was looking up at Jimmy Stewart and telling him some story about a bell and an angel getting wings. I’d missed almost all the movie. Maisie blew her stack. She
told me to take a hike. She was going home in a taxi. She told me to give the taxi driver a fiver, and the taxi shot off down Illinois Street like the devil was after it. I went back to where I’d parked my 1941 Studebaker and drove home. I’d blown my big night out with Maisie.

  At nine the next morning, I met Danny at a three-story apartment building on East Washington Street. Lucy and Myrtle had a flat on the third floor. We trudged up the two flights of stairs amid noise of a baby screaming its guts out, and someone on the second floor listening to a Benny Goodman record.

  We found the room and Danny knocked. There was no sound from inside. He knocked again, this time calling out, “Miss Corcoran, this is the police. Open up.”

  Still no response.

  He knocked a third time. He knocked the door so hard, it was a wonder his hand didn’t go through the wood. This time, I could hear someone moving about. The door handle turned. I could barely make out Myrtle behind a small chain.

  “What do you want? Do you know what time it is?”

  Danny checked his watch. “Nine fifteen.” He flashed his badge. “Remember me? Detective Sullivan? You agreed to let me look through Lucy’s belongings?”

  She grumbled some things that if my mother was to read this, I’d be in deep trouble. So, I won’t quote her word for word. Let’s just say she wasn’t happy. She took off the chain and let us in.

  One look at her that morning could make someone believe in the whole Jekyll and Hyde story. Her hair was a mess, her nightgown wrinkled, and her face—well, it definitely needed makeup. Judging by the empty bottle of gin on the table, she’d had a snootful after leaving us at the theater.

  “Where are Lucy’s things?” Danny asked.

  She made a motion with one hand directing us to a bed, a suit case, and a chest of drawers.

  “Anything else?”

  She gave a flick of a hand in the direction of a closet.

  Danny searched the chest of drawers, and I took the closet. I found a couple of day dresses, a robe, and two gowns that she probably used for hitting nightspots whenever a guy talked her into going out. Two pair of shoes were strategically placed in the front of the closet.