Total Sarcasm (Mary Cooper Mysteries #1, #2, #3) Read online

  Braggs introduced each new arrival to Mary, and gave her a brief rundown of their background. Mary recognized most of them from Margaret Stewart’s files. She noted each one as they were introduced, adding their faces to her mental Rolodex.

  Jason Prescott. Really tall. 6’6” easy. Former stand-up comic turned MC of old folks comedy shows.

  Mark Reihm. Average looking except for the severe acne scarring on his face. A gray buzz cut heightened the disastrous effect.

  Franklin Goslyn. A little bowling ball of a man.

  Todd Castro. A white-haired, dark-skinned guy light on personality, heavy on horrible cologne. Most likely purchased at Marshalls, TJMaxx, or Ross Superstores.

  Eventually, the names, faces and handshakes, and hugs bordering on ass grabs were over and Mary got down to business.

  “All right,” she said to the assembled group. “We’ve got work to do, fellas. You guys can jerk each other off later.”

  The group slowly quieted down.

  “Nice hooters!” a voice shouted out. Chuckles and guffaws filled the air.

  “Save it for your Inflate-A-Mate.” Mary said.

  More laughter followed Mary’s comment.

  “Now that's what I call ‘junk in the trunk’!” one of the old men said.

  “Baby got back, front, top, and bottom!” another guy said.

  “That’s some quality material guys,” Mary said. “I can’t believe no one else noticed your talents.”

  Braggs, sitting in the front, turned back and gave the stinkeye to the rabble rousers. They quieted down and Mary used the opportunity to lay out the files of the five people she had failed to identify.

  “Look, she’s spreading herself out,” a voice said.

  “Right on the table?”

  “Giddyup!” Someone added the sound of horse hooves. Clip clop, clip clop.

  Mary picked up the first file, ignoring the barely concealed laughter.

  “Martin Gulinski,” she said, and held up the first file.

  “Farty Marty!”

  “He’s been dead for ten years, and while he was alive, he smelled like he’d died ten years ago!”

  Mary took out a pen and sighed.

  “As much as I enjoy the colorful commentary,” she said. “Let’s try to stick to dead or alive, current whereabouts, next of kin.”

  “He changed his name,” this from a guy sitting in the middle of the group. He sort of looked like Mickey Rooney. “Gulinski was too ethnic. He thought he wasn’t getting work because of it. So he changed it to Gulls and then got cancer and died. Should’ve stuck with Gulinski.”

  “He had children,” another man added. “I think in Portland. He could never figure out why they were black kids. Looked just like the UPS man.”

  Mary rolled her eyes. “The kids. Boys or girls?”

  “Two boys, I think.”

  Mary wrote down “Gulinski,” and “Portland.” She’d look the sons up and call them, try to confirm that their father was indeed dead. She’d leave the flatulence part out.

  Next file.

  “Marie Stevens,” she said.

  “Dead!”

  “She’s not dead. She just disappeared.”

  “OD’d in the seventies.” This was from Braggs.

  “She was always a partier,” another guy added. “I think I tapped that.”

  “You couldn’t tap a quarter barrel, Roger.”

  “Children?” Mary said.

  “Thank God no. The Devil’s Spawn. She was crazy.”

  “Where was she from?”

  “Wisconsin.”

  “Texas.”

  “She wasn’t from anywhere else. She was from here. A native.”

  “No way! Marie was crazy! You couldn’t believe a word she said.”

  “Family?” Mary asked.

  “No way,” a man said. “She was too ‘out there.’ I think she probably didn’t have family – that’s why there’s nothing on her.”

  “Pauper’s grave, probably.”

  “You know what they call dead bodies in L.A.?” a guy in the back called out.

  “What?”

  “Studio audiences!”

  Mary tried to keep her patience.

  “Jesus Christ, you guys don’t know anything,” a guy standing near the doorway to Alice’s kitchen said. “Marie’s buried at Forest Hills, for fuck’s sake. Harvey Mitchell paid for the whole thing. The burial and stuff.”

  “Where is that bastard anyway?” someone said. “Is he at the proctologist again or is he just too good for us?”

  “The procto’s – he goes every day!”

  Mary wrote down ‘Forest Hills’ next to Marie Stevens’ information.

  She pulled out the next file.

  “Matthew Bolt.”

  “Fatty Matty!”

  “He’s in the union. An electrician or something.”

  “That fuck couldn’t change a light bulb!”

  “Hey, how many proctologists does it take to change a light bulb?”

  Silence.

  “As soon as he takes his finger out of my ass I’ll ask him!”

  Again with the proctologist gag, Mary thought. No wonder these guys were bagging groceries at the Albertson’s.

  Mary wrote down “Union electrician” next to Matt Bolt’s name.

  The next file.

  “Betty Miller.”

  “Ready Betty!”

  Too bad nicknames weren’t a lucrative industry, Mary thought. These guys would have been rich.

  “Man she was great,” said the Castro guy. With all the cologne. “You could always count on Betty for a good screw. At one party she did like six or seven guys.”

  “Yeah, in six or seven minutes.”

  “Speak for yourself, Speed Shot,” Castro snapped back.

  “She moved back to New York,” someone added. “Got married. Did some plays. Bulked up and died of a heart attack, I think.”

  “Anyone know her married name?” Mary said.

  “She married a poor Jew. Didn’t know there were any in New York.”

  “Guy’s name was Schneider.”

  “If you find her,” one old man advised Mary. “Lift her up and check underneath – he might be squished.”

  Mary wrote down “New York” and Betty Schneider, left out the squished bit.

  “Last one,” Mary said, and picked up the remaining file.

  “David Kenum.”

  There was silence.

  “No cool nicknames?” Mary asked. “Venom Kenum?”

  The men stared back at her.

  Finally, Braggs spoke for the group.

  “That guy’s bad news,” he said. A low whistle followed his comment.

  “Don’t follow up on that one, unless you want to go out to Chino.”

  “A regular Boy Scout, huh?” Mary said.

  “Well, he sure knew how to use a knife,” one of the men said. “He cut up a woman one night. Raped her. Murdered her. Claimed his doctor gave him the wrong medication.”

  “Anyone know if he’s still alive?” Mary said.

  “Doubt it.”

  “That his real name? David Kenum?”

  “Far as we know,” one of the men said.

  “You know, he didn’t get life,” the tall guy said. Prescott was his name.

  “Why not?”

  “The whole medication thing.”

  “What’d he get?”

  “Something like 80 years.”

  “I heard he didn’t have to serve it all, though.”

  “How would you know?”

  Prescott looked around the room.

  “I heard he got out last week.”

  Forty

  Mary started with David Kenum. The guy who had already killed once. And as much as she believed that some people could change, the coincidence in this case was too great to ignore.

  She ran his name through her programs and knew it would take several hours to get back all of the results. Mary desperately wanted to
use Jake for research, but she wasn’t yet ready to tip him off.

  In the meantime, while she waited for Kenum’s information, Mary turned to the old guys themselves.

  One by one, she used her notes to check them off. Prescott. Castro. Reihm. She had no way of determining guilt or innocence, she simply sought confirmation that they were the people they said they were.

  Two hours later, she had managed to confirm the basic details of all the men in the room, as well as Harvey Mitchell, who had not been in attendance.

  Satisfied that Brent’s gang was at least superficially verified, she then turned to the files.

  And started with the least likely first.

  It took two phone calls and one visit to a public records website to confirm that Martin Gulinski, a.k.a. Martin Gulls, had in fact died, leaving at least one son in Portland. Mary took the Gulinski folder and filed it with the others that she had eliminated as possibilities.

  She did as much as she could with Marie Stevens. The manager of Forest Hills told her that there was a Marie Stevens “resting” there, but inquired as to which one she was interested in. When Mary described what she needed to know, he cut her off and said that kind of information wasn’t allowed over the phone.

  Mary accepted the fact that she would have to drive out there and speak to the guy in person. She tried to find out more about Marie Stevens, including records of arrests in California and public information regarding mental institutions, but to no avail. However, she felt reasonably confident that one of the Marie Stevenses at Forest Hills would be the one she was looking for.

  So she set that folder aside, instead of filing it.

  Matt Bolt. One unofficial visit to a Union website confirmed that a Matt Bolt was employed in the Los Angeles area. The site listed an address and a phone number for Mr. Bolt.

  She called the number.

  “Hello?” a woman said.

  “Hi, I’m looking for a Matt Bolt.”

  “Oh, yes. Who is calling?”

  “I’m a secretary with the union,” Mary said. “I just need to confirm his withholding allowances.”

  “Okay, hold on.”

  Mary heard the phone being put down, the sound of a television’s volume being lowered, and then a gruff voice came on the phone.

  “’lo?”

  “Mr. Bolt?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Fatty Matty?”

  A sigh. “Who is this?”

  “My name is Mary Cooper. I’m a relative of Brent Cooper.”

  “Ah. I heard he’s dead.”

  “Last time I checked, yes, he was.”

  Bolt gave a little grunt, not of apology, just recognition.

  “Had you kept in touch with him at all, Mr. Bolt?” Mary asked.

  “Why? What is this?” he asked.

  “In addition to being Brent’s niece, I’m a private investigator and have been asked by some of his associates to aid the police investigation. Now, tell me…”

  “What am I, a suspect?”

  Mary didn’t even bother answering that one.

  “You watch too many movies, lady.” Bolt laughed.

  “Thanks for your input,” she said. “Now, do you know anything at all about my uncle? Anything that could help me in the course of the investigation?”

  “Look, honey, I’ve been in New Zealand for the past two months shooting a film called TO THE LAST BONE. I just got back yesterday. You can check with my boss, or my union or whatever. I wasn’t even in town when he was killed.”

  “So you do porno?”

  “What?”

  “TO THE LAST BONE. It’s a porno flick?” Mary said.

  “No! It’s not porno. It’s an action film. Knife-fighting and crap like that.”

  “So tell me how you made the change from comedy to being an electrician,” she said.

  “Guess I wasn’t funny enough. Look, what do you want from me?”

  “Do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill Brent?”

  “Lots of people.”

  “Do any of these people have names?”

  “Look, I don’t want to hurt your feelings but he could be an ass.”

  “What about that group you used to run around with? Whitney Braggs, Noah Baxter, Harvey Mitchell.”

  “Ah, those guys. Why don’t you ask them?”

  “What makes you think I haven’t?”

  He didn’t answer and Mary heard the sound of a television being turned on in the background.

  “What do you know about David Kenum?” Mary said.

  “What?”

  “David Kenum.”

  “Have you talked to him?” he said.

  “Just through the mail, I wrote him and asked him to marry me,” she said. “I’m one of those prison groupies.”

  “Yeah, right. You’re a Cooper. I can tell.”

  “Stop with the compliments. So? Kenum?”

  “No, I don’t know anything about the sicko,” Bolt said. “The guy’s bad news. Killed a girl. That’s all I know.”

  “Did you hear he was out of prison?”

  A sharp intake of breath and then, “He is?”

  “Yep. Paid his dues. Thoroughly reformed. Ready to be an upstanding citizen.”

  “Look,” Bolt said. “I gotta go. You need anything else from me?”

  “Nope, got everything I need.”

  “Good. Bye.”

  “Oh, wait!” Mary said. “Is the red positive or the black? I always get those mixed up.”

  All she heard was a dial tone.

  Forty-One

  Next up: Ready Betty. Does six or seven guys at a party. Moves to New York. Does a few plays. Marries and dies of a heart attack.

  Mary wondered if that was how her obituary had read. She idly wondered about her own obit. Would it be boiled down to a few pathetic facts like that? Worked as a private investigator. Never married. Owned lots of shoes. Killed a couple people. Died of an embolism while trying to sweat a confession out of a teenager.

  Nice, Mary. Keep up that positive thinking.

  She forced her negativity aside and focused on the task at hand.

  Mary used her paid subscription websites that helped her find a couple dozen Betty Schneiders. She eliminated all of the ones that didn’t fit the age range. Then she eliminated the ones that had never lived in southern California.

  By the time she was done she had a half dozen Betty Schneiders.

  Using the last known addresses and phone numbers, she eliminated another four.

  Two left.

  Within five minutes, she learned they were both dead.

  Mary considered stopping. Why not? They both couldn’t have done it. But then she chided herself and it took another half hour to figure out which dead Betty Schneider was the infamous Ready Betty.

  She spoke with a daughter who told Mary that her mother had in fact died of a heart attack, and that she had lived in L.A., trying to make it as an actress. The daughter had started to go into Betty’s life story but Mary begged off. The daughter did mention that Betty had weighed over three hundred pounds when she died. Heavy Betty.

  So Mary crossed her off the list.

  She pushed back from her desk and looked at the ceiling and took a deep breath.

  It was time to go all out on finding David Kenum.

  Forty-Two

  Years ago, Mary had been given the opportunity to obtain a username and password for non-classified state of California government websites.

  The opportunity had been presented to her by a happy client who also had these same privileges. Although her possession of access to the network was most likely prohibited, there had never been any questions or issues directed to Mary.

  Therefore, it was relatively easy to access David Kenum’s prison information, at least everything that was deemed non-classified. It appeared to her that everything about David Kenum was non-classified.

  It also listed the name of his parole officer.

  Mary picked up th
e phone and called him. His name was Craig Attebury.

  “Hi, my name is Laura Bancroft and I’m with Staffing Resources Management. I am doing a follow-up on behalf of a prospective employer who has been contacted by a…” here she paused and ruffled some papers. “David Kenum.”

  “Hold on,” Mr. Attebury said. Now it was Mary’s turn to listen to papers being shuffled. The beauty of the L.A. criminal system: of course the parole officer wouldn’t recognize Kenum’s name firsthand. He probably had a hundred or so files stacked on his desk.

  “What’s the name of your company again?” Attebury asked.

  “Staffing Resources Management. SRM. Not to be confused with Sado Rectal Masochism.”

  “Right, right. And Kenum applied for a job with you?”

  “No, sir. He applied for a job with one of our clients. We do all of the tasks associated with verifying a prospective employee’s information. Everything but urinalysis. That we outsource.”

  “I see, I see. Um…what’s the name of the company where he applied for a job?”

  “Our client information is private, sir.”

  “Figures.”

  Mary heard him dig through more papers before he let out a sigh.

  “Kenum. Here he is.”

  Mary gave him a moment to breeze through the paperwork and remember the facts about the person he was ostensibly responsible for protecting society from.

  “Okay,” he said. “What do you want to know?”

  “Let’s start with why Mr. Kenum was incarcerated.”

  The parole officer sighed. “Mr. Kenum was convicted of murder in the second degree.”

  “I see.”

  “Spent the last thirty years or so in prison,” the parole officer said. “He’s paid his dues.” That seemed to be the extent of Mr. Attebury’s sales effort on behalf of his charge.

  “I’ll be the judge of that, sir,” Mary said. “We certainly don’t take murder lightly here at SRM. Shoplifting and indecent exposure, yes. Murder, no.”

  Mary tapped some keys on her computer, then asked a few more trivial questions before she went for the treasure.

  “Under present address he wrote something indecipherable and then simply wrote Los Angeles,” she said. “If my client hires him, the first training he’ll receive will no doubt be a penmanship course. But in the meantime, do you have his correct street address? I’ll need it to mail the necessary forms as I believe my client will most likely offer him employment.”