Maurice - B R Stateham Read online

  Pink, fer chrissakes.

  He did it without batting an eye. Walked out of the detention center, walked straight toward the mass of pink metal, opened the passenger side door, flipped the backrest forward so the little guy could climb into the back and waited for the little guy to sit down before closing the door. He then walked around the front of the car and slid in behind the steering wheel. He didn’t look once at the hundred or so reporters and cameramen who stood around and watched the whole show in stunned silence. He started that Caddy’s engine up and drove out of the parking lot as if he was natural.

  Sumbtich.

  Now look at him.

  Standing on a street corner sidewalk, hands in the pockets of a brand–new pair of slacks, wearing a brand new shirt that cost him more money than he’d make in three days off his last job. He wore a blue sport coat that matched perfectly with the color of his new slacks and he felt like a million bucks. He grinned and admitted to himself he looked like a million bucks. When he got dressed in his daughter’s old apartment he glanced at himself in the full length mirror she had put up on her closet door. He looked tall, hard, with a good span of shoulders still and a flat stomach. Sure, fifty years of a hard life had left him with a few scars and some gray hair. But all in all, and in these new threads, he didn’t look bad at all.

  Humming to himself he walked two more blocks, then turned a corner and came to a halt when his eyes dropped onto the small red brick building. It was a blood red brick building with brilliant white shutters flanking each of the long bronze tinted windows. He thought the word Georgian was the right description for the building’s architecture. Dark green bushes lined the foundation of the building. A curving sidewalk came out of the double green doors and curved to one side to join the wide driveway entrance which led to a small parking lot behind the building shaded by huge over hanging trees. Beside the driveway and up against the building were three parking slots of which two were empty. In the third, the one closest to the green doors, sat the pink Caddy with its white canvas top in the upraised position.

  Twenty feet to the south of the law offices of Maurice sat a long building filled with three shops. A boutique flower shop. A boutique baker of wedding cakes and a small coffee shop. To the north was a large grocery store. The street in front of the lawyer’s building was filled with traffic. Not heavy, but a constant flow back and forth which didn’t die down until well past the dinner hour.

  The smile on his thin lips grew slightly. Whatever anyone said about the eccentric lawyer, one had to admit the man had a certain style and an eye on finding the perfect site to set up his office space. Looking left and right quickly, he saw a gap in the traffic flow and dashed across the street. Walking up to the green doors he paused for a moment, a flash of surprise surging through him electrically at the sudden turn of events in his life. He then reached down, pressed down with a thumb on the antique door latch and stepped through the door.

  Maurice stood in the middle of the large outer office carpet looking down at the object he was holding in both of his hands with a look of puzzlement on his oval face. He was again dressed in the off white three–piece suit of a Southern plantation owner. But this time with a pink button down shirt underneath the white, with a bright turquoise green silk tie for accent. In his hands was a heavy looking bright orange variable speed electric drill.

  “Ah! Randall, my boy. Your prompt arrival is so opportune. I am afraid you are here just in time to save me from a costly mistake.”

  “What kind of mistake?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow suspiciously.

  “There must be something wrong with the building’s electrical wiring. I cannot get this drill to work no matter which socket I plug it into. Most discouraging. Most discouraging, indeed.”

  “Boss, just what are you trying to do with the drill?”

  Boss. It rolled off his lips naturally. Felt comfortable even. He towered over the pudgy little man by a good foot and a half. The little man was soft, elegantly dressed, naturally darkly tanned. He was hard. Hard as granite. Hard and angular. Not a soft spot or an ounce of fat to be found on his tall frame, yet it just seemed natural. The pudgy little man was the boss. He was the employee, the muscle, the go–to guy: the fixer.

  “Ah, yes. A small project I was doing in preparation for your arrival. A simple chore actually. But apparently, one beyond my capabilities. I may be a good lawyer and a moderately talented piano player, my boy, but when it comes to tools and electronic gadgets. I am afraid I am beyond hope.”

  “Here,” Randall said, walking across the thick gray carpet and gently taking the drill out of Maurice’s hands. “I’ll take care of it. Just show me what you want done.”

  “Um . . . yes.” Maurice nodded, turning and walking over to a beautifully hewn high backed Victorian style chair and lifting from its seat an old looking bass bell of tiny proportions dangling from ornate, definitely Chinese, brass fixture. “This is a Chinese Spirit Bell. Very old. From the legendary first dynasty of China. The Xia Dynasty I’m told. I found them while I was vacationing in Shaanxi province in China. I found a set of ten. I was trying to attach two of them to the walls in each of the offices before your arrival.”

  “Beautiful,” Randall admitted, gripping the heavy drill in one hand naturally while opening the palm of his other hand to allow Maurice to deposit the bell into it. “What are they supposed to do?”

  “They let us know when we are in the presence of spirits and ghosts.”

  “What?” he asked, surprised, and looking down at his smiling employer.

  “They are magic bells, Randall. They take in a ghost’s aura, magnifies it, and gives it a substance which allows anyone standing in the room to be aware of their presence. I wanted them up before you arrived so that the three of us could greet you accordingly.”

  “The three of you?”

  “Yes,” nodded the smiling cherub. “Myself, your lovely daughter and your precocious grandson.”

  “Tammy and Randy are here, in this room, as we speak?”

  “They are indeed,” Maurice nodded, a huge smile of genuine pleasure on his face. “But for you to see and communicate with them, you must put two bells up on walls directly opposite each other at precisely the same height. Mind you, now. You will only be able to see and touch them while you stand between the bells. Nowhere else will this be possible. Understand?”

  For an answer the big man grinned, gripped the drill in his hand then turned and looked at the nearest wall for a suitable anchoring point. Finding one, he sat the bell and drill onto a chair and then walked over and plugged the extension cord into the wall socket before turning to look at the elegantly dressed lawyer.

  “What rooms do you want the bells in?”

  Maurice indicated three rooms. His office, the large outer office, and the very small, almost closet sized, little office that would be the big man’s own space. Randall, surprised, stepped into the small room of his new office, glanced at the small but expensive desk sitting in the middle of the floor, noted the large, comfortable looking leather office chair behind it, glanced at the freshly painted gray with blue trim bare walls, and then turned and looked at the little Buddha–like man standing behind him.

  “Although you will, admittedly, be a kind of jack–of–all trades for me, my boy, nevertheless you will be doing some serious investigative work for the firm. It is only fitting that the chief investigator should have an office of his very own.”

  Randall Cooke, the ex–con. The master safe cracker and one time jewel thief, found himself unable to speak. Emotion, of a kind he had never before felt, flowed through his veins and squeezed his throat just enough to keep words from coming out of his mouth. The best he could do was cough gently once in an effort to clear his throat and then turn back into the large outer office and begin working on the first bell.

  What followed twenty minutes later deserved someone to take a photograph. If a stranger decided to walk in unannounced he would have stopped dead in his
tracks and stared in amazement at the sight before him. It would have been that of a tall man, his arms stretched out and bent into semi–circles as if he was holding someone in his arms. But there was no one there. He the man would be laughing and seemingly kissing the empty air in front of him. There would be tears flowing down his cheeks and a look of spontaneous joy on the man’s scarred, rugged face.

  Beside the oddly acting tall man would be a smaller man dressed in a three–piece off–white suit, hands stuffed in his sharply creased slacks, his pleasantly tanned face painted in the portrait of someone laughing in delight as if he was witnessing a friend of his suddenly being reunited with a long lost family.

  Which, indeed, was exactly what was taking place.

  Chapter Six

  Maurice heard the soft tingling sensation of a Spirit Bell speaking. Across his large, spacious office, the second bell answered just as gently. Looking up from the newspaper he was reading, a smile played across his lips as the Tammy’s ethereal form came sliding out of a wall and walked into the room. She was dressed in a pair of cut off blue jeans and an oversized sweater with the word WILDCATS splashed across the front in big purple and white letters. She looked exactly what someone would think a nineteen year old tomboy should look like. Short cut, brown hair, freckles, a slightly up turned nose and eating an apple. It was a big, unnaturally red apple, half concealing her face, as she gnawed on it, hungrily.

  Randall walked into the office at almost the same time. He glanced to his left, and then to his right, and then stopped and turned to look at his daughter.

  “Where’s Randy?”

  Tammy lowered the apple from her face and lifted her free hand up, threw her index finger out and began writing in her patented fire–script in the air in front of her.

  Safe. Found a baby–sitter for him. An old fart by the name of Dracul. Or something like that.

  Color drained from Randall’s face as he turned and looked worriedly at Maurice. For his part, rising up from behind his desk and moving around it, even the mystic cherub looked a little worried.

  “My dear, he did not say he was Count Dracul from Transylvania, did he?”

  I dunno. Just some foreign dude with a nice face and a kinda sexy sounding accent. He’s showing Randy how to play with a cool looking sword. Don’t worry. Randy’s in good hands.

  Maurice’s frown did not diminish from his features as he sat down on the edge of his desk and looked up at the tall man standing in front of him. For a couple of seconds the two looked at the other with various levels of concern and confusion on their faces before each, at the same time, came up with the same conclusion. The girl and her son were already dead. What other harm could befall them?

  Shrugging shoulders eloquently the tailored image of Maurice stood up and glanced at the apple eating ghost.

  “We need to begin an intense search for your killer. If Wilbur Harrows is not our man it stands to reason that someone who is familiar with both Harrows and your father is. This cousin of his comes to mind. What’s his name?”

  “Vince,” Randall grunted with obvious distaste. “Vince Harrows. The last time I saw him it was, well, let’s just say it wasn’t in a nice place and let it go at that.”

  Maurice’s eyes played across the tall man’s face with interest for a second or two before nodding curiously and continuing.

  “Let us agree then that Wilbur Harrows clearly did not see your father leave the apartment just after your death. But I suspect he did see someone. Someone he knew. Someone he feels compelled, for one reason or another, to hide his identity and use your father for a scapegoat.”

  Tammy lifted a finger up and began writing fire script in the air in front of her.

  The asshole, Harrows, we will have to talk to this guy sooner or later.

  “Precisely,” the smiling lawyer nodded, pleased the young dead girl was getting into her role as a supernatural investigator. “Which is the reason I want you to follow him around and observe his every move for the next twenty–four hours. Our killer must be very nervous right now. His plan to frame your father for your murder falling apart has to be putting immense pressure on him to clean up this mess and leave town. I am positive there will be some kind of interaction between him and Harrows shortly. We need to be there to witness and record that event. So off you go. Hurry! Every moment here in the office is time not observing Harrows. Woosh! Woosh! Hurry!”

  Tammy grinned, tossed the core of the apple toward the waste basket setting beside her father’s desk and, taking one step to her left, completely disappeared from view. Maurice, ever smiling, pleased, nodded to himself and turned to stare up into the smirking face of a cynical Randall Cooke.

  “Smooth, boss. Very smooth. I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

  “Why, dear boy, whatever are you talking about?” Maurice chuckled merrily.

  “Sending Tammy off to watch Harrows like that. Wilbur Harrows knows who killed Tammy. He’s the weak link. The killer has to clean up if he wants to get away with her murder, meaning he’s got to come back and murder Harrows. You suspect the killer’s actually Harrow’s cousin, don’t you.”

  “Does his cousin look and sound like him? Does he have a raspy voice and calloused hands like Harrows?”

  “Spitting images, the two. Vince and Wilbur look more like twins than cousins. The only difference between the two is Vince doesn’t have half the mean streak as Wilbur has. In prison, it was always Wilbur making sure Vince didn’t get the shit beat out of him. I gotta admit, using Tammy’s description of who her killer was, it makes sense it has to be Vince if it wasn’t Wilbur. But on the other hand, it doesn’t make any sense. Vince ain’t the type of guy to just up and kill someone.”

  “Hmmm, I was afraid you would say something like that, my boy. Most unfortunate. Hmmm . . . most unfortunate indeed.”

  The tall ex–con, the one man in the room who knew how to kill someone in any number of ways, who actually had killed a number of people in any number of ways, watched with curious interest as the little man slipped hands into the side pockets of his tailored suit coat and screwed up his face into a thoughtful mask. Maurice, for his part, turned and absently walked out of the small office still in deep thought. Cooke followed. Walking across the outer office the tall man kept silent and waited for his employer to say something. He was in no hurry. There was no place for him to go to except here. As far as he was concerned the boss could take all the time he needed to think things through. Sitting down in a comfortable chair he threw one leg over the other and then put fingertips together, resting elbows on the chair’s armrest, and made himself comfortable.

  Two minutes later the smiling counselor came out of his thinking mode and twisted around to look at Cooke.

  “Call the prison the three of you last occupied. See if you can find some information about Wilbur and Vince. Information like who did they hang out with the most while they were there? Were there any confrontations Wilbur and Vince were forced to confront, things like that. There must be a connection there. The prison. I suspect someone is manipulating Vince. And the focal point has to begin at the prison.”

  “What do you mean? Someone has to be manipulating Vince?” the tall man repeated ominously as he came out of his chair slowly. “Does it mean what I think it means?”

  “Unfortunately, yes, dear boy. I’m afraid it does. Supernatural forces are at play here and I am afraid we may have inadvertently placed Tammy in harm’s way. It could very well be that someone in your past whom you’ve harmed might be coming back seeking revenge. Or it could be something else entirely. We must find the nexus of this killer’s motivation before he strikes again. And we must do it quickly!”

  Chapter Seven

  Being dead wasn’t all that bad. For one thing, you met the strangest people. Dead people of course. But strange, and so unexpectedly. Take for instance the Apache war party.

  She knew the odds were, at this time in the morning, Wilbur would be in his apartment still aslee
p. And probably drunk as well. So she began drifting across the city heading for the old apartment building she and her baby had last called home. Being a ghost meant ordinary obstacles like buildings and walls and trees were no longer solid objects to circumnavigate. She sailed along just above the heads of pedestrians walking the sidewalks and above the top of automobiles clogging the city’s main arteries. Or she went through the sides of buses and large eighteen–wheeler trailers unaffected and unhindered. Buildings were the same. She just slid through the brick and concrete as if they were not there.

  As she traveled across town she saw thousands of people going about their business. What made it interesting were the ghostly apparitions which followed along with them. It was a startling discovery, soon after her death, to realize all living mortals were irrevocably moored into the afterlife. Entities, and pieces of entities, were permanently attached to every human around her. Sometimes whole strings of entities. Mostly the souls of ancestors, or perhaps the souls of long lost loved ones, hovered near a living human. And most of the time radiating from the dead were emotions of love, warmth, and longing. Longing to be able to reach out and touch the one they had left behind.

  But love and longing were not the only emotions she felt as she sped past. Other emotional vibrations, like the strings and chords of a strumming guitar, played her soul as well. Hate being the strongest emotion of all. Hate had this jarring asymmetric crash of discordant chords that were, for a few of the living, were powerful enough to make her wince in pain. But the wall of hate emanating from the Apache war party made Tammy abruptly turn and flee from the scene.