Three Cheers and a Tiger ~ Gold
Miguel A. Rueda

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They told me to “Beware.” Warned me to “Let dead men stay dead.”

The anonymous posts starting popping up on my Facebook business page—Max Haas. Bonded Private Investigator.—the day after I accepted the gig.

I’m not good at remembering random dates: my ex-wife’s birthday, my second ex-wife’s wedding anniversary, but the day the messages began stuck with me, March fifteenth, the Ides of March. Together with the use of the word, “beware.” Yikes.

Not that I’m superstitious but I’ve been known to call off a stakeout if a black cat wanders between me and my suspect.

I did a quick sign of the cross and knocked on my desk, y’know, just in case.

Misty Magnussen had hired me to investigate her late husband’s death. Two weeks earlier, her now-late husband, Lance, took a header out of a back window on the second floor of their brownstone. He landed on the patio in their backyard.

If the plan were to do yourself in, a two-story fall isn’t usually fatal, unless you’re lucky enough to land on the top of your head.

Lucky Lance.

Misty didn’t believe he’d done it. She said the police wouldn’t tell anyone what the note said until their investigation was over. I guessed that her husband’s self-inflicted homicide meant she’d get zip of a fairly hefty life insurance policy.

She told me how they met—she was working a party at his posh Upper West Side home—and that they were making plans for a family. It’s why the note didn’t make sense.

I told her my fee and she pulled a wad of bills from the matching purse she was carrying. In hindsight I should have asked for double.

Lance didn’t have a social media presence, but I did find the public info about him: his obit, how he made his money—investment banker, that Misty was the latest in a long line of brides for Lance; she was his fifth. I guess the rich can afford to keep a priest on retainer.

In contrast, Misty was the proverbial open (Face)book. Although her profile was set to private, I sent a request and she accepted immediately.

A quick look showed that she had the art form down, she had selfie game.

The posts went back to high school. Prom photos, cheerleading… she got a job working catering for high class parties. In one of those, I recognized Lance with his arm around a woman who must have been his previous wife. The couple was standing behind Misty and she was looking over her shoulder at him. Maybe this is when she first set her sights on bagging him.

Photos dated just six months later were of Misty and Lance on a beach together, and two months after that, together at a lavish wedding.

Her last posts were somber, and although her attire didn’t show any real bereavement, maybe that’s just Misty the party girl. Sadness never gets in.

I did everything I could online; I had to get into the house.

*

Yellow police tape was strung across the front doorway and a blue-and-white NYPD cruiser sat in front of the house. I recognized the officer, Patrolman Daniel Hulkenberg, and knocked on the window.

After exchanging enough small talk to make it appear that I wasn’t plying him for information, I asked about the investigation and he confirmed what the widow had told me and said closing off the house was merely a formality. He had been the one to respond to the frantic calls from neighbors about a body with a pool of blood in the backyard.

Hulkenberg said that the body had been there all night.

Thanking him, I asked that he AirDrop me the info for the lead investigator and if he minded if I looked around a bit.

He shrugged, tapped his phone a few times and waved me off.

My phone chirped as I walked up to the door and I saw two drops. One from Hulkenberg and one from an unknown sender.

I clicked on the second.

It was close-up photo of Lance’s bloody skull and the single word: “BEWARE.” Dude was definitely into drama.

An AirDrop meant the sender was within Bluetooth range, couple hundred feet at best.

Looking down the street, the only thing out of place was a pearl white Saleen Mustang. It’s a rare car; it stood out among the nondescript sedans and SUVs. I didn’t see anyone in any of the parked cars.

Hulkenberg had said he had to break down the door because both it and the rear door were locked and chained from the inside. All of the windows, except for the one Lance took his swan dive through, were latched.

I headed up to the second floor. A gem-encrusted dream catcher hung askew from above the window. Unknotting the strings let me see that one spider-web shaped piece was missing.

I walked out the back door and looked up. It wasn’t that far a drop. Lance had to be dead set to die, forgive the pun, in order to jump head first. He’d be more likely to end up a vegetable, than a corpse.

The townhouses ringing the block created a private park for the residents. I walked around, not looking for anything in particular, when I noticed an extension ladder against the back of another house. As I got closer, something glinted in the sunlight. I walked around—not under, I’m not stupid, knock on wood—climbed up and found the source of the reflection, the missing piece of the dream catcher.

That’s when I knew who killed serial-groom Lance.

When I nonchalantly asked Hulkenberg for the address, he didn’t ask if I had found anything or why I needed to see the ex-wife. I then asked him about the note.

He said it was the one thing that struck him as odd; Lance apologized to his former wife, the ex, not the widow. He was sorry he had betrayed her and had made a mistake.

*

She lived just outside the city in a neighborhood with big lawns and bigger tax bills. I noticed the rear end of a car just visible in one bay of the three-car garage. The taillights of a pearl white Saleen Mustang.

I thumbed the safety off my .38, sent out a quick text with a dropped pin, and knocked on the door.

It was answered by a woman who resembled the one I had seen standing in the photo next to Lance, but she appeared different than in the picture; she had definitely taken up a workout regimen. Lance’s ex was buff.

She invited me in as though I was expected.

I had to play the game as though she knew everything I knew, which of course she did.

I talked about the neighborhood and the weather a bit before offering my condolences. She said she had made peace with it since he had apologized for betraying her in the note.

Casually, I mentioned it was unusual for the police to release a note since the investigation was still ongoing.

She smiled a bit, and that’s when all hell broke loose.

She was on me like a shopper on the last new game console on Black Friday.

I didn’t even have time to pull my gun and she had me in a headlock and was flinging me around the room. My adrenaline kicked in just in time to keep my face from smashing a mirror.

If a woman kicks my ass in a fair fight so be it, but seven years of bad luck? No, thank you.

Everything was going dark when the front door busted in and my new best pal Hulkenberg was standing there, gun drawn, barking for her to drop me. Which she unfortunately did.

Right into the mirror top table. Dammit, almost made it out unscathed.

*

Hulkenberg got my text and pin and raced into the suburbs at full lights and siren speed.

Lead Detective berated me for not calling her, and after I shared the who and the how of Lance’s unapparent suicide, she told me the why.

Lance had a habit of providing for his ex-wives and their children in the event of his death by splitting up his fortune between all of them. Whoever his current bride was would only get his life insurance, nothing else.

Ex number four decided that she was good with that arrangement and decided to stage his death. And it turns out that in addition to being a gym rat and a tad homicidal, she was a big fan of Shakespearean plays. Tragedies mostly, what with all the murder and whatnot.

Email: waynehillsauthor[at]gmail.com