CASE OF THE GUILTY GROCER - EPISODE 5

THE CASE OF THE GUILTY GROCER


EPISODE 5

The Payoff

I can only guess what I looked like with my yap gapin’ open like some Reuben off the turnip truck. It finally registered what Arlene said. The money was gone. Over seventy-five mill. Everything fell into place.

“Where’s the blower, Arlene?”

“The phone? Over there. So what happened? Where’s the money?”

Arlene seemed like her old self. Too bad, too. She was getting’ pretty easy on the eyes. I pulls up a kitchen chair next to her and spins her’s around so’s we’re facin’ each other. I flip my chair around backwards so’s I can lean my arms on the back. I pushes my fedora back, lights a ciggy, and starts explainin’.

“It’s like this, Arlene. Ol’ man Wexler’s pullin’ a con … an insurance scam. Him and Smythson was in on it together. The way I sees it, Wexler trashed his own stores, or hired some goon to do to for him, see? That’s the only way it coulda happened. He had the keys and the alarm entry codes, and he controls the film system.

“Video system, Greyson. V-I-D-E-O!”

“Will ya stop interuptin’, Arlene? So he ain't fessin’ up ... like he don’t know from nothin’ about how the films—the tapes—was altered, but it hadda be him. Then I figures he gets Smythson to counterfeit up some police reports for the insurance claims. He does just enough damage to make it look legit.”

“The cereal?”

“Now you’re on the trolley.”

“Greyson, there haven’t been trolleys in Baltimore for fifty years.”

“I know that, Arlene. I meant … now you’ve got the picture … the right idea. Anyway, Wexler uses that so it looks like all his stores was gettin’ hit … like he’s the victim of a protection racket, see?”

“Yes … I think so.”

“So now Smythson moves the insurance payoffs to the Cayman’s. Numbered accounts. The Feds can’t touch ‘em.”

“But, there’s something I don’t understand. Why did Mister Wexler hire you, if it was him all along?”

“He was playin’me for a sap, Arlene. Hirin’ me makes him look like the victim, see? At first, I thought it was Smythson all by his lonesome. But when O’Riley called and said somebody took him for a ride, I had to figure he was the fall guy.”

“Why would they take Mister Smythson for a ride? Where would they go? You can’t drive to the Caymans and….”

“Aw fer cryin’ out loud, Arlene. Somebody bumped him off. Killed him … murdered. As in dead.”

“Oh….”

“So when I sees the bogus paperwork and found the gun at Wexler’s office, it all fell into place.”

I see Arlene’s eyes drop and hears the hurt in her voice.

“I guess it was lucky you spent the night with Beulah, then....”

I puts my hand on her arm. A little white lie is better for her than the truth now.

“Nothin’ happened, Arlene. Honest.”

She looks up and smiles a little. I want to get her mind off it, so I keeps goin’. “So, Wexler double-crosses Smythson. Probably played him for a patsy all along. He kills him and takes all the dough. But there’s still a couple of things I can’t figure; the threatening phone call, that dive bar, and Smythson’s business card. I’m guessin’ Wexler tried to frame Smythson. Maybe he thought we’d pinch him and he’d have the money to himself. But we didn’t. So he had to bump him off. But now, the cash is gone an’ I gotta figure he’s makin’ his move. Now I gotta get O’Riley on it before he takes it on the lam. So, where’s the blow… Where’s the phone?”


I rolls into the office the next mornin’ wonderin’ where my next paycheck’s comin’ from. I doubts Wexler’s gonna pay me for throwin’ him in the hoosegow. But at least I got the advance and Arlene got to pay her rent. I figures I chalks this case up to experience. I toss my fedora on the rack, unbutton my vest and lights a smoke. I was makin’ a pot o’ joe when I sees the message light flashin’ on the answerin’ gizmo. I walks over and presses the switch.

“Hi, Greyson. This is Colleen. I thought I’d bring you up to speed on your case. After you called last night, which was quite a pleasant surprise I might add, we acquired a search warrant for Wexler’s office and found the phony documents and the pistol. His prints were all over them, and ballistics matched the slugs from Smythson’s body to the gun. We checked the Cayman accounts, but they were empty … except for a couple of hundred to hold them open. We also found a cufflink belonging to Smythson … matched one he had on when we fished him from the river ...”

I knew I wasn’t wearin’ no cufflinks when I saw Beulah that night. But there wasn’t no sense in tellin’ Arlene that. She wouldn’t believe me anyways. I figured it was Wexler’s and Beulah got it wrong, and I could use it as an excuse to get into the office again ... if I had to.

“Looks like your former employer masterminded the insurance scam and murdered Smythson to keep him quiet. Oh, he denied everything, of course … said he didn’t know anything about the money and never heard of Smythson. He’s down at Central Booking now.”

Arlene walks in on the tail end of O’Riley’s message and gives me that look. I ignores it. I presses the erase switch and strolls over to the coffee pot.

“Wanna cup o’ joe?” I says to Arlene.

“Please, Greyson … its coffee. Coffee! And no thanks.”

“What eatin’ you?”

“Nothing,” she says … which means, 'somethin’.'”

“Wha’d I do now?”

“You could have stayed last night.”

“I ain’t goin’ to no pettin’ party with you, Arlene and I ain’t robbin’ no cradle. You’re too young.”

“There’s only twenty-three years between us. My mother and father are nearly twenty years apar…”

I tunes her out when I hears a knock at the door. Arlene stops beatin' her gums long enough to answer it.

“Is there a Mister Sloane here?” It’s a guy in a brown shirt wearin’ brown shorts drivin’ a big brown truck. And Arlene says I’m a bad dresser. I mean, the guy ain’t even got a hat. Arlene leads him to her desk and signs for the package, and the guy takes a hike. Then Arlene looks at me and I nods. She pulls the tab and reaches inside. There’s another envelope. A business envelope. She gives it a sniff.

“I think you better open it.”

I walks over, puts the joe on her desk and takes the envelope. It’s addressed to me in a woman’s handwriting. It looked familiar. Then I gets a whiff of Beulah’s perfume. The envelope ain’t sealed and there’s a note inside:

Martin’s Municipal Airport, Middle River. 10 A.M.

I looks at the clock. In rush hour traffic, I figures I can just make it. I tells Arlene I’ll be back in a couple o’ hours and beats it out the door.


On the way to the airport, I gets to thinkin’. I pulls the envelope from my inside pocket and looks at my name and the handwritin’. Then I gets Smythson’s business card from my wallet. My name’s written in the same hand. I still have Beulah’s note from when we met, so I looks at that too. It’s all the same. She wrote all three. I gotta figure Wexler used her to plant Smythson’s card in the bar and now she’s implicated in the murder. Hell, maybe she was part of it all along. Maybe she hustled Smythson, too; the way he got all goofy when I said her name. And with her looks, that ain’t much of a stretch.

I pulls into the airport and there’s only one plane on the tarmac. It’s a Lear jet. I sees this tall blonde standin’ by the plane’s stairs. I ain’t surprised to see it’s Beulah. I parks the car and strolls up.

“Hi, Doll. Goin’ someplace?”

“Greyson…. I was worried you wouldn’t make it. I’m so glad you came.”

“I think it’s time you leveled with me, Beulah.”

“Yes, I suppose it is. Why don’t you come with me? I’ll explain everything on the way.”

“Where ya goin’?”

“Rio.”

“You’re in this up to your eyeballs, ain’t ya, Beautiful?” She gives me this sly smile, see? “You know, I could arrest you right here.”

Beulah takes a step and presses her body against mine. She reaches up, takes off my fedora and puts it on. Then she wraps her arms around my neck, pulls me close and kisses me hard and long. She steps back and smiles at me like a mother feelin’ sorry for her kid when she’s patchin’ him up.

“Darling … you can’t arrest me. You don’t have the authority. Besides, Rocco would never allow it.”

She gestures back toward the hatch. I looks up and sees the gorilla who tossed me from the bar fillin’ the doorway. He’s bigger than I remembers.

“My brother. I made him promise not to hurt you too bad when you went to the bar that day. He could have, you know … if he wanted”

I eyes him up again. “Ab-so-lute-ly.”

“I knew you wouldn’t come with me, Greyson, so I wanted to explain everything to you before I left. I really care for you and I didn’t want you to have the wrong idea about me.”

“I’m all ears, Doll.”

She bit her lower lip like she was tryin’ to decide where to start and I watched those blue eyes twinkle as they started tearin’ up.

“I never told you my last name … my real last name. It’s Hastings. Harris Hastings was my father. When he found himself in that black-mailing jam a couple of years ago, Wexler saw it as an opportunity to take the entire business for himself. My father was the majority owner, but Wexler wanted it all. He had my father killed and got away with it. I swore revenge. I planned this for years. Then, when I was ready, I walked into his office and applied for a job as his personal secretary. I was so young when he killed my father, he didn’t recognize me.”

I takes a gander at her chassis those bubs o’ hers. “Yeah, I can believe that,” I says.

“It didn’t take long before he trusted me completely. He gave me all the codes to the alarms and the surveillance systems for all the stores. He signed anything I put in front of him without reading it. That’s how I got his signature on the insurance claims and the phony police reports and the deposit slips for the Cayman banks.”

“How’d ya pull that off? I didn’t take Wexler for a sap.”

“The same way a secretary of three weeks rates a company car, Darling.” She ran her hands down her hourglass figure and across those shapely hips, batted those baby blues and smiled the sexiest smile I ever saw. “Get the picture?”

“Yeah. I guess I do.”

“I made him want me … always promised it. But he never had me. A smart woman can always avoid it when she wants to.”

I was glad to hear that. “But I thought Smythson…”

“Smythson was … what do you call it? A patsy. Getting a momma’s boy like him to do anything I wanted was oh so easy. He thought we were going to run away to the Caymans together. He was the insurance adjuster when my father disappeared. Because they never found his body, he wouldn’t sign off on my father’s life insurance policy. He said my mother would have to wait seven years before the company considered him legally dead. She died before that happened. Since I wasn’t a beneficiary on the policy, they kept the money. I don’t feel bad about having Rocco kill him—the slimy little wease. And framing Wexler for his murder was poetic justice the way I see it. I knew, with an insurance scam, Wexler would be out in a couple of years. I wanted him to rot in prison for the rest of his miserable life for killing my father.”

“And the cash?”

“I transferred it to another account in his name yesterday. I knew you’d have him arrested after you found the gun. Rocco used it on Smythson. I planted all the documents you found in his desk, too. Except for the account where I transferred the money. I also had Wexler sign over Power of Attorney to me. Now I have my father’s business back, plus the insurance scam money. But I’ll probably sell the business. I don’t really need it, you know.”

“So, why me? Why’d Wexler hire me?”

“Because I told him to, Darling. You got my father out of that black-mail business and I knew I could trust you. You have a rare quality in a man, Greyson. Honor. But, I didn’t foresee falling in love with you. Listen, maybe in a year or so…”

“That ain’t happenin’ Doll … knowin’ what you did.”

“No … I didn’t think so.”

Then Rocco calls to her, she looks at him and he gives her the high-sign. The Lear’s engines start spinnin’ up. She turns back to me.

“I feel horrible. Please don’t think badly of me, Greyson. I did it for my father.”

“You better get goin’, Doll.”

She gives me one last kiss, turns to board the Lear then stops. She runs back cryin' and kisses me again—a deep, wet, lingering kiss. She pushes away and locks those eyes on mine. “We’ll always have Baltimore,” she says with tears streamin’ down her cheeks. She boards the Lear without lookin’ at me again and the hatch closes behind her. I stays and watches it take off. I know she ain’t comin’ back.


The return drive to the office seems longer than usual, and I know what O’Riley’s gonna say when I tells her what really happened. She’ll say there ain't no way to prove any of it. That it’s just hearsay in court. But I know I’ll tell her anyway, see? I have to. I walks into my office and Arlene’s starin’ at me.

“Well?” she says.

“Well, what?”

“Well what happened? And where’s your hat?”

“It’s a long story, Arlene. I’ll fill you in later. Where’d you put that bourbon I asked you to pick up?”

“Upper left-hand drawer. It’s a little early to start drinking, Greyson. What’s wrong?”

“Ya ever heard that song, Arlene? I heard it on the Motorola on the way back.”

“What song?”

“There’s a song that goes somethin’ like: ‘Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.’”

I pours a double into a cup o’ joe, throws my feet up on my desk and leans back. A few minutes later, there’s another knock at the door. Arlene answers it and it’s that same guy in the brown clothes. After Arlene signs for the envelope, I tells her to open it. She turns white.

“Wha?” I says.

She walks over, hands shakin’, and gives me the envelope. Inside there’s a check from H&W Groceries. It’s for twenty-five grand in Beulah’s writing. But better than that—it smells like her.

***

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