Murder by Candlelight Read online

  Murder by Candlelight

  Book #3 in the Z-Detective Series

  John G. Stockmyer

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2010 John G. Stockmyer

  Discover other titles by John G. Stockmyer at www.johnstockmyer.com/books

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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  About this Smashwords Edition

  This version of the book you are reading is a product of the automatic file-conversion process used at Smashwords.com. As a result, much of the original formatting has been stripped out, or simplified. If you want to read a version that looks much more like a traditional printed book (with a table of contents, proper chapter breaks, and text formatted for maximum readability), you may get it (for free) from the author's web site. To download the lovingly hand-coded version of this book in .epub or .mobi format, visit the author's web site at www.johnstockmyer.com/books

  NOTE: This is the third of 10 books in the Z-Detective Series. Book #1 is Of Mice and Murderers. Book #2 is Good Lord, Deliver Us. The first three books are free. The other books in the series can be purchased for $5.00 each at the author's web site.

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  Acknowledgements

  Cover Art: Ronald L. Brink

  Ronald L. Brink, a self-taught artist and illustrator, has been drawing and painting most of his adult life. Watercolor is his medium of choice. He has illustrated the covers of several published works. His work was chosen for the President's Christmas card at William Jewell College for six years. He has created over 40 paintings for the College; most of them for clients and has sold many works of pets and homes. He has taught at Maple Woods Community College in Kansas City for over 40 years. His works are displayed annually at the on-campus gallery. Brink received a B.A. degree from Missouri Valley College in 1964; an M.A. degree in 1967 from the University of Denver; and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1983. He served as Chair of the Communications Division at Maple Woods from 1990-1998. He resides in Kansas City.

  Ebook Conversion: John L. Stockmyer

  John L. Stockmyer is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, New Mexico. In his spare time, he dabbles in ecommerce, audio-book production and eBook design. He is also an avid disc golfer. His current ambition is to help talented "undiscovered" authors (like his dad) find an audience through the use of non-traditional media and innovative technology. Thank you for helping us shake up the publishing industry!

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  Introduction

  The time: 1991.

  The place: Kansas City, Missouri.

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  Chapter 1

  Finished with the most important of his preparations -- zapping the little man, tying him to a chair, and slapping a piece of duct tape over his mouth -- Big Bob Zapolska was ready to do a little quiet searching of the Kunkle "mansion." Just another Sunday night in the P.I. trade.

  Z had dressed carefully for this evening's work in his "night fighter" outfit -- black pants, shirt, jacket, and "gum" shoes.

  Before entering the house, he'd pulled on his ski hood -- only his lifeless eyes showing through the holes -- the clingy black fabric not only sweaty, but also itchy in the barely reduced heat of this August, Kansas City night. He'd slipped on his skintight, black leather gloves, of course. (Fingerprints had not tripped up a professional for twenty years.)

  He'd staked out the place from the Cavalier; letting two hours pass after the house lights went off.

  Certain that Kunkle would be asleep by then, Z had eased out of his car, padded down the walk, and slanted across the street, pausing to give Kunkle's junker of a car a fast toss, the trunk yielding old oil cans and rusting tools -- crescent wrenches, tire iron, screwdrivers, and a greasy scissor-jack. The glove compartment had the usual insurance and registration papers, a flashlight, and a box of pre-lube Trojans.

  The back seat was littered with McDonald's cartons, empty beer cans, old newspapers, a wadded-up grocery sack, gum wrappers, and a scattering of muscle magazines.

  Finished with the car, Z had sneaked up the grass-grown walkway to the front door stoop. Stepping up, he'd slipped a plastic card through the door crack, a flick of the wrist putting Z inside.

  Z's penlight the only light necessary to the immobilization of shrimpy Howard Kunkle -- muscle magazines indeed! -- these early preparations had taken less than an hour.

  Everything going well, detective case in hand, Z now had time to take a peaceful look around, first ducking into the bathtub-dominated crapper, the "powder room" a separate privy at one time, now enclosed by the back wall. The indoor "outhouse" ... smelling ... like shit! The reason? Two floating turds and a soggy mass of toilet paper were "marinating" in the bowl's yellow-brown water.

  Z backed out of there fast into what passed for a kitchen, a niche so small it was overwhelmed by an apartment-sized stove and a chipped "camper" refrigerator.

  Not much food in the fridge -- cheese, bologna, a couple of six-packs, and three wine bottles lying on their sides, the vino of a vintage featuring screw-on caps.

  The kitchen workspace was a yard-long counter top, under it, two pull-out drawers containing bent-up "silverware," a pack of plastic sandwich bags, torn wash clothes, and five cheap candles -- for when the power went out?

  The stove used bottled gas. One end of the rusty porcelain sink featured a pump handle for drawing water, helping to explain why Kunkle hadn't flushed the stool. To flush, he had to pump water to "prime the toilet tank" -- too much trouble just to get rid of two turds and a mess of toilet paper. (He'd have to lug a ton of water to fill the claw-footed, worn-out bathtub in the john -- not that he'd ever get it into his head to take a bath.)

  Nothing in the 8 X 10 bedroom but a cot and a scuffed wood chest of drawers, a dark-splotched mirror on the wall behind the bureau. The drapery-covered closet had a rod sporting "Good Will" shirts and pants, plus a shelf holding a couple of dented felt hats and a medical, neck brace.

  Dirty laundry festered inside a wicker hamper at the far end of the clothes closet.

  And that was the house -- no place to bring a ten-cent whore, to say nothing of a hundred-dollar hooker.

  Back in the living room, Z took another quick look at the furnishings, nothing there of interest. Except for a tied up, but still passed out Kunkle.

  Garage sale sofa. Mismatched chairs.

  All trash ... except for a single high-dollar piece, a walnut desk with locking roll top, linen-fold scroll work on either side of the lower drawers. Prompting Z to wonder how a low-rent loser like Howard Kunkle came to own such an expensive piece.

  Probably stole it.

  Or bought it at a Mafia outlet.

  The experienced detective attracted by anything out of the ordinary, Z approached the desk, the excitement of prowling in the night easing the pain in his knee. That, and the handful of aspirin Z crunched down before jobs like this.

  Setting his satchel to one side, he began by examining the desk in the razor-thin beam of his penlight. Roll top and drawers -- locked, Z learning a thing or two about locks the year he worked for Sam Picket of Picket Locks. For instance, that a desk this old probably had one locking mechanism controlling the whole shebang. Not enough time to search for the key.

  Nothing else to be done, Z eased himself down to the dirty floor to stretc
h out on his back, scooting around until his head was toward the desk.

  Drawing up his knees (as far as the bad one would go,) he "footed" his upper body under the desk -- a tight fit through the leg hole for a man his size.

  Wiggling his way in, shining his light up at the back, Z located the locking device, reaching up with his free hand to pry the flat connecting bar toward the center of the desk. Was rewarded with satisfying clicks as the upper and lower locks snapped back.

  Squirming from under the desk, levering himself up, he paused to brush the floor dust off his pants. .... Disgusting!

  The desk unlocked, Z turned to roll back the louvered top, impressed already by the solid smoothness of the old piece's works.

  Nothing was quality-built anymore; modern stuff just knocked-together. It was like his Mom had predicted: the world had gone to hell in a hand basket.

  Directing the penlight inside the open desk, Z found nothing but bare surface -- not even the usual paper, stamps, and envelopes in the pigeonholes at the back. Ditto for the tiny pull-out drawers to either side of the paper slots, there for pens, pencils, rubber bands, paper clips -- anything along that line you might want at a moment's notice.

  Stooping down, Z pulled out the deep, ball bearing-smooth side drawers, inspecting them as carefully as he had the tiny drawers up top. Found the same "nothing."

  So, why lock a desk to guard a lot of lint?

  Could it be that Howard Kunkle was the orderly type? (Just a joke to keep himself amused. Even to pose a "tidiness" question about Howard Kunkle -- friend to roaches -- was to court insanity.)

  The first question -- what such an obvious antique was doing here in all this filth, had "hatched" a second query: why lock an empty secretary?

  Unless ... the desk was more than what it seemed.

  Remembering how he, himself, had fixed a hiding place beneath his surprisingly movable fireplace (Z not wanting to have to answer the questions that would follow someone discovering his detective satchel,) Z had to consider that the desk might be similarly rigged.

  Hidey-holes were often built into desks of this vintage, he remembered.

  With secret spaces in mind, Z examined the desk again.

  Found zilch.

  Clamping the penlight in his teeth, Z ran both hands over the surface of the desk, feeling for irregularities through the rubber-thin leather of his gloves.

  A dead end.

  Taking the little light out of his mouth, wiping it off on his jacket sleeve, he flashed it at the bottom drawers again, pulling each drawer open once more, this time pausing to caress the insides of each. ..... Discovering that the drawers seemed to be ... of different depths?

  Standing back to eyeball the drawers, it did seem that the right one was ... shallow .....

  Bending down to feel under the right drawer bottom, Z thought he detected an irregularity .......

  Snap -- the false bottom of the drawer popping up and swinging to the back!

  Glad to be getting somewhere at last, Z flashed the light inside at the true bottom .... Saw... a three-inch stack of folding money, padded together with a red rubber band. (A fact that explained Howard's ownership of the desk; Illegal currency had to be hidden someplace.)

  Thumb-scuffing the bills at one corner of the neatly banded pile, Z counted out a hundred dollars, pulling out the bills to jam them in his back pocket.

  Not stealing! Only following today's judicial practice of making the criminal, Kunkle (not the victim, Bud Izard) pay for his crimes.

  Z put the rest of the money back. (Big Bob Zapolska was a P.I., not a thief.)

  Reaching into the drawer again, he took out a leather notebook; flipped it open to see names and phone numbers on the first page -- the rest of the pages blank.

  Yes. There was Bud Izard's name, followed by what had to be Bud's phone number. Next in line: Lee Dotson. Beside that listing, another phone number.

  Other numbers seemed to be stores.

  Leo's -- probably Leo's Pizza. They delivered.

  Standard -- had to be a service station.

  K-Mart -- undoubtedly the place Howard Kunkle purchased his terminally rusty car.

  What Z failed to find in the little book was an entry he expected to see there: Carrara Marble.

  Back to the drawer, a quick scramble turned up no evidence of drugs ... something of a surprise.

  What the drawer contained for the most part, was decks of playing cards, Z's preliminary toss scattering a loose deck about the bottom of the drawer. As for other decks, some were in their individual boxes, some out of their boxes but still sealed in plastic.

  He also found cellophane wrappers -- so carefully removed from card decks that the wrappers were intact, plus undamaged revenue stamps, the blue kind the feds stuck on the ends of card decks.

  Could that be what this secret drawer was all about? Instead of tearing the tax stamps like you were supposed to when opening decks of cards, was Kunkle steaming off the stamps? Did that mean he'd found a way to turn tax stamps into cash? ......... No way!

  First scraping up the loose cards to consolidate them, Z stacked that deck, then the unopened decks, on top the desk.

  Again reaching into the secret drawer, feeling around, he came out with an aspirin-sized bottle, inside the capped container, a clear liquid.

  Ah! Drugs dissolved in water, most likely. Heroin. LSD. Angel dust. Ready to be mainlined. ... Except there was no accompanying syringe. Also missing was the standard length of surgical tubing, for binding your arm to bring up a vein.

  Clamping the flashlight in his teeth, directing the stab of light at the bottle so he could see what he was doing, Z unscrewed the bottle's cap.

  Took a cautious whiff. ............

  Alcohol.

  Not grain alcohol, like you found in liquor, but wood alcohol -- found in ... trees?? Poisonous to drink.

  Screwing on the cap, more puzzled than ever, Z set the bottle on the desk.

  Dipping into the rigged drawer again, feeling around, Z fished out a pair of sunglasses -- only the faintest tint to the lenses.

  Could they be magnifying glasses, the kind K-Mart sold to people who couldn't afford corrective lenses? Didn't seem like it.

  The drawer's false bottom nearly empty, Z patted down the inside once more to discover, in a back corner, a small tube of super glue, the kind they advertised on TV by sticking a laborer's hard hat to the ceiling, the glue strong enough to hold up the worker hanging from his hat.

  And that was it ....

  No. Z had almost missed the last item -- the object so thin it hardly registered through Z's gloves. A circular ... something ... no bigger than a dime.

  At first, Z thought it was a sequin -- like those sewn on party dresses, a woman in that kind of get-up glistening like a wet-scaled mermaid. On closer examination, saw it was a mirror. Silver nitrate backing on it. Perfect reflection. The kind of looking glass an ant would hang on his living room wall ....

  Silly thought!

  The drawer empty at last, Z paused to reflect on the items he'd plucked out and carefully stacked on the desktop.....................

  Suddenly inspired, he picked up the loose deck -- its cards greasy, dog-eared. Holding the fading light in his mouth once more, brushing back other decks to make a space, he dealt the cards (face up and by suit), finding what he'd hoped he would: that the queen of spades was missing, Z pleased that the black queen's absence backed Bud's story.

  To be strictly truthful, one of the things Z hadn't liked about this case was taking it without checking out Bud -- a violation of the Zapolska code -- Z happy to find that Bud had told the truth about Kunkle's threat.

  And that was it for the desk.

  Replacing the money, cards, and other items in the drawer -- but leaving the false bottom up -- Z switched off the light.

  Leaning back on the desk, there was nothing for Z to do but wait.

  Then wait some more, his eyes adjusting to the dark enough to pick out shapes. All the tim
e, listening to ... silence. To the blood pulsing through his brain.

  Until he thought he heard a Howard Kunkle groan.

  An inspiration!

  Returning to the kitchen, Z pocketed the candles he'd found and took out one of the sandwich bags.

  In the bedroom, "borrowed" the neck brace.

  Returning to the living room, Z opened his case to got out the straight razor and what was left of the nylon cord, cutting off a short piece of cord, using the nylon line to bind the candles together at their base.

  Now came the tricky part. To keep what was left of the burned-up candles from setting fire to the house, Z returned to the kitchen to pump water into his confiscated plastic bag, after that, tying the top end of the bag to make it watertight.

  Returning to the living room, he got out his grey duct tape, taping the water bag to the candle bottoms.

  Holding the candles with their wicks pointed down, water bag on top, Z cut another short piece of rope, then got a straight chair, stepping up on its seat to tie the upside-down candle package to the living room's central ceiling fixture, the inverted candles dangling down about a foot.

  Oh, yes. The collar. Stepping over to Kunkle, getting the neck brace out of his pocket, Z "Velcro-ed" the collar around the little man's neck, Z then pushing Kunkle-in-chair to the center of the room, positioning the man's head under the upside-down candles.

  Light snapped off again, with nothing else to do for the moment, Z continued to stand in the dark, trying to detect Kunkle-movement by what little star shine penetrated the grime of the front windows. .......

  There! Another moaning sound from the man.

  Judging it to be the right time, Z switched on the flashlight to find that Kunkle was awake and struggling, the nylon cords pulling tighter with every jerk and twist.