William Wells - The now-and-then detective : a Jack Starkey mystery

Other Titles by William Wells

Ride Away Home

Face of the Devil

DETECTIVE JACK STARKEY SERIES

Detective Fiction

The Dollar-A-Year Detective

THE PERMANENT PRESS

Sag Harbor, NY 11963

Copyright 2020 by William Wells

All rights reserved. No part of this publication, or parts thereof, may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotes in a review, without the written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, unless explicitly noted, is entirely coincidental.

For information, address:

The Permanent Press

4170 Noyac Road

Sag Harbor, NY 11963

www.thepermanentpress.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wells, William, author.

The now-and-then detective: a Jack Starkey mystery / William Wells.

Sag Harbor, NY: Permanent Press, 2020.

Series: Jack Starkey mysteries; 3

ISBN: 978-1-57962-588-7 (cloth)

eISBN: 978-1-57962-636-5

1. Mystery fiction.

PS3623.E4795 N69 2020

Printed in the United States of America

In a real-life whodunit, half the job is figuring out whodunit. The other half is proving it.

DETECTIVE JACK STARKEY

This book is dedicated to all those detectives who preceded Jack Starkey on the printed page, including, but not limited to, Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Spenser, Travis McGee, Archy McNally, Lucas Davenport, Virgil Flowers, Harry Bosch, Dave Robicheaux, Jack Reacher, Elvis Cole, Hercule Poirot, Columbo, Charlie Chan, and Miss Marple, who have entertained me over the years.

PROLOGUE

Good Old Henry

A May morning, the balmy wind off Lake Michigan bearing the sweet perfume of flowering lilacs, as an old man pushed an empty supermarket cart along a sidewalk on Western Avenue in downtown Lake Forest, Illinois, the carts wheels bumping and clacking on the cracks and fissures in the concrete.

The man wore a white pin-striped Chicago Cubs home-game jersey with the name Hartnett lettered on the back, blue cotton pajama bottoms, brown leather bedroom slippers, and a tweed Sherlock Holmes deerstalker cap, the caps brim shielding his rheumy brown eyes from the sun. A fringe of white hair was visible beneath the cap; bristles of stubbly hair obtruded from the mans nostrils and ears; his eyebrows grew wild as Scottish gorse. A curious apparition indeed in Lake Forest, one link in the golden chain of commuter towns stretching along Chicagos North Shore, where a vagrant tended to stand out.

Some passing motorists may have wondered about this man with momentary curiosity: Did grandpa wander away from a nursing home between head counts? But to the town folk who knew him, he was just good old Henry Wilberforce, recently eccentric in this manner, out and about on one of his quixotic errands.

A black-and-white-striped railroad crossing gate descended across Western Avenue, red lights flashing, bell clanging, announcing the arrival of the southbound 8:07 Metra commuter train at Lake Forest Station. Henry stopped to watch.

You know, Buddy, Henry said, when I was a young man, I rode the 7:10 every weekday morning into the city. Father believed public transportation, and not limousines or fancy cars, was more appropriate for someone my age on his way to work. He was driven to the office in his limo.

Although no Buddy, or anyone else, could be seen with Henry, Buddy answered, Yes, I know.

The train creaked and groaned to a stop, its air brakes whooshing, and its doors slid open for the men and women in business attire waiting on the platform. They stepped up into the line of silver-sided, double-deck Metra cars.

Look at them, Buddy, Henry said. Foot soldiers in Chicagos vast army of commerce! Ha! Got my honorable discharge from that outfit many years ago. He smiled. Used to be hog butchering, tool making, wheat stacking in my day. City of Big Shoulders. I could recite that Carl Sandburg poem as a boy, all of it; Father had me do it at dinner parties to amuse the guests. What they do in the city now is shout at one another in the commodity pits, and move money around with computers while sitting in their high-rise offices. Nobody actually makes anything anymore.

Buddy answered, Yes, I know.

As the train lumbered out of the station, a Lake Forest police cruiser pulled up to the curb and parked. The driver, Sgt. Stan Kowalski, powered down the window and greeted Henry with a smile: Morning there, Mr. Wilberforce. Taking note of the shopping cart, he asked, On your way to the grocery store?

Henry nodded and said, Yes, Sergeant Stan. I need a few items.

He stood erect, put his hands on his hips, tilted back his head, filled his lungs, and said, Its a fine day to be alive, thats for sure. Considering the alternative, Sgt. Stan responded. Their usual repartee.

Say hi to Sergeant Stan, Buddy, Henry said.

Sgt. Stan knew the drill; he looked down at the sidewalk beside Henry, nothing there, and said, Hi there, Buddy. Nice day for a walk. He knew that Buddy was the name of Henrys golden retriever whod died at a ripe old age many years ago. Whatever gets you through the day, the sergeant reflected.

I heard about all that money you gave the city to fix up the town beach, he said. That was real nice of you.

It was? Henry responded. Well, I dont seem to remember that.

Driving up, Sgt. Stan had noticed the name on the back of Henrys Cubs jersey. Whos Hartnett? he asked.

Oh, thats Gabby Hartnett, the starting catcher. Looks to me like a future Hall of Famer.

Huh. What happened to Contreras?

Now theres the mystery, Henry said. In the game yesterday, this Hartnett fellow was behind the plate without any explanation.

Sgt. Stan, who worshiped at Saint Leos and Wrigley Field, knew for certain that Willson Contreras was the teams starting catcher. He also knew that the teams schedule showed an off day yesterday, with no game that Henry could have seen. He eased the cruiser away from the curb, saluted, and called out, Take er easy, Mr. W!

Only way to take er, Sergeant Stan, Henry replied, clicking his slippered heels together as he returned the sergeants salute in the British army manner, palm out and vibrating. Then he said, Lets move along, Buddy, we need the exercise.

Henry arrived at the Jewel Supermarket, a single-story redbrick building three blocks north of the train station on Western. He guided his cart through the automatic entrance doors, one of which had a sign on it reading Service Dogs Only and exchanged greetings with the checkout ladies, baggers, and shelf stockers as he headed to aisle three, canned fruits and vegetables. Buddy was not a service dog, but he could go anywhere he pleased, being invisible to everyone but his master, including into this supermarket.

Henry moved along the aisle, Buddy at his side, selecting only certain brands of green beans (whole, sliced, dilled, French and Italian cuts), garbanzo beans, wax beans, lima beans, kidney beans, baked beans, peas of regular and baby diameter, beets (plain, pickled, and Harvard), mushrooms (whole, and pieces and stems), corn (regular and creamed), spinach, artichokes, mixed vegetables, asparagus, sauerkraut, carrots, okra, pearl onions, white potatoes, squash, tomatoes, peaches, pears, mandarin oranges, pineapple, cranberry sauce (jellied and whole berry), applesauce (regular, chunky, and chunky with cinnamon), apricots, blueberries, cherries, grapefruit sections, and fruit cocktail, all delivered from field to truck to canning factory to truck again to grocery shelf to the dining tables of the nation and the world, a cornucopian production line that Henry knew as well as anything in his life.