Case #5: Strange Bedfellows
Date: April 16, 2002
Location: Logjam, CA and Beverly Hills, CA


I drove back to my place in the mountains early the next day. Parker had fixed me a nice breakfast several hours before Iris would be getting up, and sent me off with a thermos of rich espresso coffee and a couple of ham sandwiches in case I got hungry along the way.

I spent most of the drive smiling to myself, pleased over the job Chalkie Parker the jewel thief and I did for Iris. It was done out of friendship even though she insisted on paying my expenses. I gave her a bill for $30.52. Twenty-five dollars for the day and five-fifty-two for gas. It cost more than that, but I couldn't charge Iris the full freight. And anyway, I was out of the private detective business.

There were days when I regretted my decision to put that life behind me, especially when a sensational newspaper headline had me itching to start snooping again. The bloodhound in me enjoyed the hunt, but the pit bull hiding deep inside kept telling me to bury my past in case it reared up to bite me.

And I'd do anything for Iris Sherwood. Maybe it was because she had given me so much pleasure while watching her in all those old movies when I was holed up in some ratty hotel room after beating some poor shlub senseless when he wouldn't pay up. Or maybe it was the few times she invited me over when she was giving a party for a gaggle of Hollywood's finest. She knew I was a movie junkie and she fed my addiction with those outrageous dinner parties, her great stories of Hollywood's Golden Age, and a video collection even larger than my own.

I wasn't thinking about much else as I pulled into my gravel driveway up in Logjam. The car window was rolled down so I could enjoy the brisk mountain air above the haze in Los Angeles. When I turned off the engine, I could hear a phone ringing. It wasn't my cell. It was the house phone.

It was a bit of déjà vu all over again. I had just solved a small case for Iris that started with a phone call. Then I thought maybe it was Iris calling to thank me one more time for handling her problem.

That's when I realized my front door was standing wide open. I stepped out of my car, ran up the steps to the porch, pulled the .38 Smith & Wesson that rested comfortably under my left armpit, and cautiously peered inside.

He was sitting in my favorite chair watching my TV and talking on my telephone. All I could see was the back of his head. I stepped into the room, but before I could speak I felt a cold piece of steel in my back.

"Drop the gun, pal," said a deep voice.

I scooted the gun across the floor, and then twisted clockwise, my right elbow moving his weapon away from my vitals. I grabbed the guy's forearm with my left hand. The look on his face said he wasn't used to being on the receiving end of grief. As I prepared to break his arm over my knee, I heard somebody say my name.

"Johnny!"

I hesitated, but not before backhanding the bum across the face. I wrenched the pistol from his hand and then turned to get a better look at the guy getting out of my chair.

I recognized the face. Everybody in the country had seen it recently. The headlines read: THE POLITICIAN AND THE PLAYMATE. Only thing, this politician was married and the playmate was missing. Come to think of it, it wasn't such an odd story. A middle-aged politician fooling around with one of his interns. Sounded more like the six o'clock news. Half the locals up here in Logjam knew about the affair and they voted for him anyway. Then one day the girl disappeared. Now everybody in the country was talking.

"Congressman. Did I forget about giving you a key to my place or are they going to add breaking and entering to your rap sheet?"

"I wanted to talk to you, Johnny." He put the telephone down.

"So you break into my house?"

"This is important."

"And the law isn't?" I said to the politician.

"Okay, I'm sorry. But I need to speak to you."

"Lose the goombah and I'll give you five minutes."

I wouldn't hand back the bodyguard's weapon. He made himself scarce on the redwood deck overlooking the lake while I retrieved my gun and then heated some day-old coffee in the microwave for my guest.

"Have you seen the TV coverage?" asked the congressman.

Some people miss the Super Bowl, some skip the Oscars, but nobody misses a juicy murder, especially if it involves somebody famous. Anyway, that's what everybody presumed, and here was the prime suspect in my living room.

"Everybody loves a circus, Jerry."

"That's what it is, Johnny. A freaking circus." He plopped down on my sofa and took a long sip of his coffee. Then he looked up at me. Not a hair was out of place on his perfectly coiffed head and his over-whitened teeth gleamed back at me with all the sincerity of a used car salesman. "You know I don't have anything to do with Sheila's disappearance."

"No, Congressman, I don't know that. But you do have a reputation."

"You can't believe those rumors," said the politician.

"Most people I know up here saw you with her."

"That was a long time ago."

"It was last month," I clarified.

"Well, we broke it off."

"You didn't happen to break her neck at the same time, did you?"

He slammed down his half empty coffee cup, stood up and said, "No! I didn't kill her. I don't know what the hell happened to her."

"Jerry, you were the last one to see her."

"The killer was the last one to see her," he said.

"The police know she's dead?"

"How should I know?" he said, dropping onto the couch again, frustrated. "Nobody tells me anything."

Small wonder, I thought. National television indicted, tried, and convicted the guy twenty-four hours after the news broke that he had an affair with the missing woman. Even if he had been Joe Six-Pack, he was the prime suspect. And being a politician, even a mediocre congressman from Nowhere, California, he was news. Nothing else was going on nationally or internationally, so Congressman Jerry Shoemaker was the main topic of discussion from the water cooler to Washington.

….Continued.

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