“In the beginning there was trouble and it remained there all my life.”
Wilson rolled the paper out of the typewriter carriage and called Kendall, his partner, over to check it out.
“Looks like a suicide note to me,” Kendall said around the cigar in the corner of his mouth. He pushed his sleeve back and looked at his watch.
“Yeah, but typed?” Wilson took the sheet back.
“You satisfied that the uniforms who found him pancaked on the sidewalk out front got it right? Cause we got a lotta shit to do today.”
Wilson looked from his partner to the open window of the seventh-floor office and back to the note.
“He was an attorney. Had everything going for him. Why would he do it?”
Kendall snorted. “Kid, you may be a detective, but you gotta learn that you can never really know somebody. His widow will straighten all this out. Now, let’s go.”
Before he followed Kendall out the door, Wilson cast one more look over the desk, piled high with paper. Bills, invoices, half-finished manuscripts … and a life insurance policy that left fifty thousand bucks to the wife. Enough for her to start over.
• • •
“She said she didn’t know about the insurance.” Wilson slumped in his chair in the precinct house.
“I told you that going to see the widow would be a waste of time, kid,” Kendall said. “So he didn’t tell her he’d taken out the policy. He sounds like a guy who regretted a lot of things in his life and wanted to make up for it at the end.”
“She’s got a nice place all to herself, though,” Wilson said.
Kendall grunted and rummaged through stacks of papers on his desk.
“What’re you looking for?”
“My cigar case. I just refilled it too, dammit.”
Wilson nodded toward the desk closest to them. “Looks like Peterson’s been smoking your … is that a new brand?”
“Avanti, the pride of Italy,” Kendall said, distracted. He snatched up the small leather case. “I’m gonna give that mook a piece of my mind as soon as I get back.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Vacation time, huh, partner?”
Kendall poked a finger at Wilson. “Don’t keep spinnin’ your wheels with the widow while I’m in Sorrento, kid. Move on.”
Wilson nodded. “Have a good trip.”
• • •
Kendall had rolled up the top on the widow’s Bonneville in the airport parking lot and was struggling with her luggage. He stopped when he spotted Wilson, who stood between them and the terminal.
“What’s goin’ on, kid?” Kendall looked away long enough to tell the widow to go back to her car.
“You two made friends real quick, huh?” Wilson let out a breath. “Or maybe you’ve been seeing her for a while now?”
“What the hell you talkin’ about?”
“When I was looking at the attorney’s desk, I found an invoice for a case of Avanti cigars,” Wilson said. “Why would a guy who was gonna jump out a window buy a case of cigars, imported from Italy by way of the Big Apple?”
“How the fuck would I know?” Kendall shifted from foot to foot. He reached into his coat and Wilson tensed. Kendall pulled out his cigar case. “You tryin’ to make something out of me smokin’ the same brand as a dead guy? It’s a popular brand.”
Wilson shook his head. “Remember when you taught me about tells? How people do things when they’re lying … or guilty?”
Kendall didn’t answer.
“You pulled out your cigar case … the one you found on Peterson’s desk.”
“So what?”
“I found that cigar case on the widow’s coffee table and brought it to the station.”
“It’s a cigar case, kid.” Kendall shifted again.
“But you recognized your own cigar case. The one you left at your girlfriend’s house, maybe right after the two of you typed up the suicide note.”
They stood frozen, staring at each other. When they heard over the PA that the flight to Rome was departing at Gate 12, Kendall sat on a suitcase and lit a cigar.
~ fin ~
Keith Roysdon is a Tennessee writer whose 1984-set crime novel That October is being self-published spring 2025. A newspaper reporter and editor for 40 years before taking a buyout in 2019, he’s the author of hundreds of pop culture and news articles for CrimeReads and other sites. His short fiction has been published by Shotgun Honey, Punk Noir, Cowboy Jamboree Press (in the MOTEL anthology), Rock and a Hard Place and Hoosier Noir.
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