Howard Engel - Dead and Buried (A Benny Cooperman Mystery)

PENGUIN CANADA

DEAD AND BURIED

HOWARD ENGEL is the creator of the enduring and beloved detective Benny Cooperman, who, through his appearance in twelve best-selling novels, has become an internationally recognized fictional sleuth. Two of Engels novels have been adapted for TV movies, and his books have been translated into several languages. He is the winner of numerous awards, including the 2005 Writers Trust of Canada Matt Cohen Award, the 1990 Harbourfront Festival Prize for Canadian Literature and an Arthur Ellis Award for crime fiction. Howard Engel lives in Toronto.

Also in the Benny Cooperman series

The Suicide Murders

Murder on Location

Murder Sees the Light

The Ransom Game

A City Called July

A Victim Must Be Found

There Was An Old Woman

Getting Away with Murder

The Cooperman Variations

Memory Book

East of Suez

Also by Howard Engel

Murder in Montparnasse

Mr. Doyle & Dr. Bell

HOWARD ENGEL

A BENNY COOPERMAN MYSTERY

PENGUIN CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published in a Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1990; Published in Penguin Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1991; Published in this edition, 2008

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Copyright Howard Engel, 1990

Excerpt from Bless 'Em All, words and music by Jimmy Hughes, Frank Lake and Al Stillman. Copyright 1940 by Keith Prowse and Company Ltd for all countries. Copyright 1941 by Sam Fox Publishing Company Inc., New York, New York for the United States of America, Canada and all countries of the Western Hemisphere. Used by permission.

Excerpts from "Desiderata" from The Poems of Max Ehrmann, copyright 1927 by Max Ehrmann. Reprinted with permission of Robert L. Bell, Melrose, Massachusetts, 02176, U.S.A.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publishers note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in Canada.

ISBN-13: 978-0-14-316750-1

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For my friend

David Berger

19361989

I would like to express thanks to my friend Doug Monk for his help in getting the business, corporate and taxation details as nearly correct as they appear. Any errors, of course, are mine, not his. I would also like to thank my friend Gary Thaler for putting me in touch with Hesperis matronalis, upon which so much depends.

Dead

and Buried

ONE

Irma Dowden looked over my office. She took in the convenient downtown location, the active business files scattered in front of me and the framed licence behind my desk. Furtively she gave the cotton-draped mannequins in the corner a rapid scrutiny. Their breasts were peeking out from under the cloth again. I cleared my throat before she formed a question. My father closed out his ladies ready-to-wear business downstairs, I explained. Im temporarily minding some of his things. You may speak quite freely in front of them.

She nodded like she knew already. Come to think of it, the mannequins had been around for a few years now. Even without their wigs and wearing a dusty remnant of factory cotton, the trio had become indispensable for second to fourth opinions. As company, they still made me nervous. But Mrs. Dowden didnt want to know about that. She sat there, cheeks daubed with half-hearted rouge, straight as a post, with her black purse in her lap.

How can I help you, Mrs. Dowden? I pushed the files to one side. I didnt want to discourage her by suggesting that I had other business on hold while we shot the unprofitable breeze. I sat there, giving her all my attention and trying to look affordable. That little black purse could buy my time for a few days at least.

Irma Dowden hadnt just walked in my door that Tuesday in early October; shed phoned first for an appointment. I was impressed. Id cleaned things up a little and cursed the dirty windows which didnt give my place of business the cachet I was trying to inspire. But in Grantham theres only one reliable man for windows and I hadnt seen him in months. Waiting for Mrs. Dowden to keep her three oclock appointment had made me nervous. I had even thought of getting up and opening the door for her, but the last time I did that it was a patient of Frank Bushmills, the chiropodist who shares the running toilet, the rent and the second floor overlooking St. Andrew Street with me. I realized I was rambling in my thoughts, so I asked my question a second time.

Did you read in the paper about Jack? she asked, her eyes like two black currants rolling in my direction. I told her Id not read anything about Jack, whoever Jack might be, but I was prepared to be sympathetic. She pulled a clipping from her purse and handed it to me. A pencil scrawl in the white space on one side of a heading said: 16 July. That was nearly three months ago. I recognized the type as belonging to the local paper, the Beacon. It was a small item, insignificant enough so that I was now no longer guilt-ridden for missing it in the first place. The heading read: LOCAL MAN CRUSHED BY TRUCK. The story described the death of Jack Dowden on the 13th at the yard of Kinross Disposals. The truck had apparently slipped off the brake and pinned Dowden against a cement brick wall. I read the details and handed the clipping back to Irma, who was now looking like she was Jacks widow.