A Death of Convenience: A Dual Timeline Haunting Mystery by L. R. Trovillion

Author:L. R. Trovillion [Trovillion, L. R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hippolyta Books
Published: 2023-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28

Harold

Even though I’d seen Archibald Ward bend the rules a bit when it came to police procedures, he wasn’t a fool. He left the Egyptian eye where he’d found it in Wainwright’s office at the track and filed the paperwork for a legal search and seizure.

But young Wainwright had a powerful father who was a business partner with Joseph Pumphrey, who clearly had the police chief in his front shirt pocket. Word was Pumphrey was unhappy that his son-in-law, David Hunt, had been released without charges after he had put the machinery in motion to have him take the fall. As a result, two days after our visit to the track, Archie Ward was called in by the chief. The reward for his good police work was a proper dressing down wherein he was explicitly told there was insufficient evidence to upset the Wainwright family with a search warrant.

So, I wasn’t surprised to find Archie in a sullen mood the next day when I met him outside the precinct. As we walked to his automobile, I made a few polite inquiries about his wife, which, it seemed, was also a sore topic. Archie was on his way to the sanatorium where Mrs. Emerson Pumphrey was a guest. He hadn’t managed to interview her as yet, due to family concerns over her health.

“It may be prudent for me to come along with you,” I told him, “to assess her mental state under questioning. If the cure she’s undergoing involves heavy use of narcotics, anything she tells you will be called into question later.”

Archie gave a curt nod and slid behind the wheel. I got in the passenger’s side and shut the door only seconds before he took off down the road. The work waiting for me at the morgue was routine—obvious cause of death cases involving a crushed factory worker and a domestic multiple stabbings incident. Unless something surprising turned up, it would not require much time to perform the autopsies and start on the reports when I returned.

“No chance you’ll get permission to go back and search Wainwright’s office, right?” I asked.

Archie’s fists clenched the steering wheel. “Got the mitts-off directive from the chief. Seems I’m expected to solve this by talking to people—people who can’t remember anything or outright lie to me. No search warrant for Wainwright.”

“Besides the Egyptian eye card, was there anything else unusual in Wainwright’s office at the track?”

“I told you,” he said. I’d forgotten I had asked Archie this several times already. I was rewarded with a cross look. “I looked through some papers and a bloodstock book he had out with certain horses marked.” He made an exasperated sigh for my benefit, no doubt. “You know I don’t know a horse’s ass from its elbow. You think I’d recognize anything out of order?”

He stomped the brake to avoid plowing into the car ahead.

“I’m interested in the horses Wainwright is importing,” I said. “According to one of his employees, a number of them have trouble adjusting.

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