Read Online The Suicide Murders by Howard Engel - Free Book Online

not a Ms. I’m not one of those women’s libbers.”
    “Miss Tracy, then, I want to thank you for being so helpful.”
    “You’re breaking my heart. I told you I haven’t anything else to do, except try to find a hat to wear to the funeral on Monday. I used to have one around here someplace. Oh, well. Now, before you get on your high horse and hightail it out of here, what’s all of this in aid of? Who are you working for? You beating the bushes for Bill Ward?”
    “Why do you think I might be working for him?”
    “William Allen Ward moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform.”
    “And …?”
    “Well, I’ve never seen him ask any questions, so I always guessed that he had other people collecting answers for him. He’s organized that way, if you know what I mean.” I had finished my coffee and had memorized the view of her long rectangle of backyard visible through the kitchen window. We both got up and she walked me to the front door. “You think that there’s something that’s not kosher about Chester’s suicide, Mr. Cooperman, if you’ll pardon the expression?”
    “Miss Tracy, I don’t know.” I shifted my weight and held the screen door open.
    “Somebody did the bugger in, eh? Well, it figures. It could make very good sense, Mr. Cooperman. Goodbye, and let me know how you make out.”
    “I will,” I shouted over my shoulder as I went down the walk to my Olds at the curb.
    I drove across the CN tracks on a rickety wooden bridge and kept on past more stucco fronts and kids playing jacks and marbles in the sunshine out Pelham Road. Beyond the rooftops, the ridge of the escarpment hogged the horizon, with the green water tower on the edge commanding the best view of the city below. The creek valley followed me out on my left. Gradually the curbing came to an end, the houses gave way to deserted farms and acre upon acre of former vineyards, all cultivating real estate signs. Occasionally, the stream below curved, and I could catch the glint of it in the sun. After a couple of miles of this, I could see the ten blue pipes running down the scarp to the creek. It was a domesticated
    Niagara Falls, where nearly the same amount of water fell nearly as many feet as the famous cataract, but encased in steel, so it was a wash-out as a tourist attraction. Nobody was interested in falling water as long as it was in pipes.
    Zekerman had his name stencilled on his mailbox in such good taste I nearly drove by his gate. It was a big, rambling house, what they still call “ranch style” in the area even if it rises to two floors. There were three cars in the carport, which was an extension of the line of the green roof. I drove up his lane and blocked at least two of the cars from getting out. There was an Audi and two Mercedes-Benzs.
    I got out of the car, stretched my back muscles and walked up to the aluminum screen door. A red-faced woman with tortured red hair answered the bell, and told me that the doctor was down at the potting shed by the creek or in the shed behind the house. I thanked her and walked around the left side of the house, past half a dozen green garbage bags stuffed with the outlines of cans and cartons, and a sick-looking Irish wolfhound with swollen joints in his legs. He gave me a quarter-hearted wag of his tail, then went back to his worries. By now I could hear Zekerman, or somebody, making a racket in the aluminum-sided shed. In the gloom at the far end, he was bashing a piece of machinery on a workbench.
    “Dr. Zekerman?” I said as I came up behind him.
    Zekerman filled a tall track suit with a college letter on it without letting middle age spill through the middle. He was balding the same as I was only I was doing it more neatly. He had let his remaining hair grow into long ringlets of protest against the unfairness of his genes. His foxy nose was sweaty, as was his brow. His eyes hid behind fashionable lenses that he had paid a bundle for. The face, concentrated now, looked