Miss Smallwood's Goodies: A Pilgrim Hugh Incident Read online

  Miss Smallwood’s Goodies

  A Pilgrim Hugh Incident

  Dean Wesley Smith

  Miss Smallwood’s Goodies

  Copyright © 2013 Dean Wesley Smith

  Published by WMG Publishing

  Cover design copyright © 2013 WMG Publishing

  Cover Illustration by Rudolf Tittelbach/Dreamstime.com

  Smashwords Edition

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  One

  Pilgrim Hugh stared at the lifelike statue of the naked and blue woman.

  Actually, she wasn’t completely naked. She wore a large cowboy hat and carried a large revolver in her right hand pointed upward. Her finger was on the trigger like she was about to blow a hole in the rim of her hat.

  The last days of summer were just starting to fade, but the temperature for the Portland, Oregon area still seemed too high at eighty-five. The statue stood in a park in a suburban town of Portland called Hillsboro. The Chief of Police of Hillsboro had called Pilgrim to figure out where the statue had come from. The statue seemed to have just appeared late last night and a couple mothers of small children had complained this morning.

  Hillboro, it seemed, wasn’t used to getting statues donated to their parks in the middle of the night.

  Over the last few years as a freelance private detective and lawyer, Pilgrim had gotten some strange calls, and this was another of the strange ones, of that there was no doubt.

  After he’d gotten out of law school, he had tried to work in corporate law. He had managed two years, the exact same amount of time his first marriage lasted. Basically he had become bored with both.

  Then his grandmother on his long-dead mother’s side, a woman he barely knew, died and left him more money than even he could imagine or try to spend.

  Two months after being divorced and out of work he had become free to do what he wanted.

  His choice, as any young person might do, was a year of drinking and traveling around the world. Somewhere in the alcoholic haze, there was another even shorter marriage.

  Eventually he went back to school to become a private detective, figuring that wouldn’t be as boring as the law practice was.

  Most of the training was not like the books about private detectives he loved to read. In fact most of what he had done was learn how to track someone by computer and look up financial records.

  Finally, out of desperation to do something interesting, he set up his own combination law and private detective firm, hired a couple of talented associate lawyers to handle the really boring cases, and offered his services for free to the different city police departments around the Portland metropolitan area.

  Hugh and Associates now occupied three floors in a downtown Portland high-rise. He had started out rich from his grandmother and managed to get even richer by hiring the right people and taking the right cases over the last few years.

  Carrie, Pilgrim’s assistant, limo driver, and best friend, stood beside him, staring at the blue statue. Today Carrie had on a green University of Oregon sweatshirt (that didn’t hide her figure much at all) and a pair of white shorts that also hid little. Even in her late thirties, she could still have been modeling.

  Pilgrim was over six feet tall and Carrie usually seemed to tower over him because of tall heels. But today they were the same height since she had on a rare pair of tennis shoes that matched her outfit perfectly.

  Carrie was about to finish her last year of law school at the University of Oregon and join the legal side of Pilgrim’s firm. But until that day, she paid for her apartment and food and school by being his assistant and driver when she wasn’t in class.

  He was going to miss her when her last year of law school started back up later in the month. They were such a good team.

  The statue was anchored to what looked like a concrete slab and on the face of the slab was a name. “Miss Smallwood.”

  “Very lifelike,” Carrie said, moving around the statue.

  The blue statue did look very, very lifelike. No question there. Except the skin was perfectly smooth, the naked breasts had no nipples and were perfectly smooth, and the crotch of the statue looked like it came from a doll, also perfectly smooth with no attempt to make it lifelike in any way.

  The eyes were open, yet showed no detail.

  The entire thing felt creepy. Even in the bright sunlight and hot day.

  Two

  The park that now held the Miss Smallwood stature was only one block wide and a block long, surrounded by a sidewalk. A few other sidewalks wound into the trees and to a new playground in the far corner. A very nice neighborhood park, very well maintained.

  The statue had been placed near the sidewalk facing an apartment complex across the street. In fact, it seemed to really be staring at that apartment building.

  Pilgrim looked over at it, following the direction of the statue’s look. The apartment looked to be a renovated old hotel of some sort. Stone and brick exterior, large windows. A nice place from the looks of it.

  Pilgrim moved over and stared at the large revolver in the statue’s hand. It looked real and from what he could tell the artist had depicted it with one shell missing.

  “Know anything about guns?” Pilgrim asked Carrie.

  “It’s a revolver,” Carrie said. “That’s about it.”

  Pilgrim laughed. “I knew that much.”

  “Frank from the estate planning part of your office is a gun nut,” Carrie said. “You want me to send him a picture?”

  “Might as well,” Pilgrim said. He doubted it would make any difference but it never hurt to get the details together.

  Carrie started back toward the limo that served as an office for them. Pilgrim had every possible modern device he could think of in that car, from high-speed computer connections to sophisticated camera and listening equipment.

  He moved closer and tapped the hard surface of the statue. It felt like a plastic resin of some sort.

  He moved around the statue, studying every tiny detail. Clearly the statue had been made by a mold. And then polished and finished with a clear, thick blue resin compound. The resin looked to be almost a quarter inch thick in some places.

  Fantastic work. Not a mark or seam anywhere.

  The statue was clearly made from the mold of a real woman. Her legs were slightly too long for her final height, her hips just a touch too wide, and the right breast was slightly larger than the other.

  A perfect statue, no marks at all, yet not a perfect woman as the subject.

  Pilgrim stepped back and realized he was shivering slightly even with the heat of the day.

  This statue just flat gave him the creeps.

  He walked in a large circle around the statue, just trying to let his mind take in the details. It had been placed near the entrance to the park, between where a sidewalk split. But it hadn’t been placed looking directly at the walkway, but instead at a slight angle staring off at the nearby apartment across the street.

  With as perfect as this statue was done, why mess up the placement? Pilgrim would bet it wasn’t messed up. It was intentional.

  Carrie came back with the camera, snapped a couple of close-ups of the revolver in the statue’s hand and then sent the images from the camera back to the office.

  Then she placed the camera down and picked up what
looked like an iPad and aimed it at the statue.

  “Shit!” she said, staring at the device in her hands.

  “What?” Pilgrim asked, moving over toward her.

  She had turned her back on the statue and was clearly trying to catch her breath.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  She shook her head yes, then showed him the image on the device.

  “I wanted to see what the inside of the statue looked like,” she said.

  All Pilgrim could do was stare at the image on the device. No wonder the statue wasn’t perfect. It was an actual woman inside that resin.

  He could see every detail of her skeleton. Her insides had been cleaned out like they did with embalming. Metal bars ran up both legs. Another was up her spine and through her neck to hold her head.

  Pilgrim turned to look at the woman frozen like a statue. “Whoever did this cut off the woman’s nipples and smoothed over any sign.”

  “And covered or removed her crotch as well,” Carrie said. “And covered or removed her eyes.”

  “Took and kept all the goodies,” Carrie said.

  “Better call Chief Benson,” Pilgrim said, “tell him he has a crime scene here. The statue isn’t a statue, it’s a body.”

  “He’s going to love this,” Carrie said. “To find the killer he has to look for a woman’s nipples and crotch.”

  “Might not want to tell him that on the phone,” Pilgrim said.

  “Not a chance,” Carrie said, heading for the limo again, picking up the camera along the way.

  Three

  Pilgrim did another slow walk about the woman’s body, looking at it with a new perspective. He was convinced that the placement in this park, in that exact position had something to do with all this.

  He needed to find out what she was looking at with those blank eyes.

  He headed back for the coolness of the limo and crawled into the back just as Carrie hung up. “Detectives and crime scene crew on the way. Benson said he would be here in fifteen minutes and we’re not to move.”

  “Yeah, I bet,” Pilgrim said.

  “So,” Carrie said, “any idea on The Case of Miss Smallwood’s Goodies?”

  Carrie loved to give each of the investigations they did with a strange case name that almost always stuck.

  “Some,” Pilgrim said. “Search the area data bases for a woman of that height and size and age being reported missing in the last month. Might want to go all the way down to San Francisco and up to Seattle as well in the search.”

  “Got it,” Carrie said.

  She was sitting with her back to the front compartment and a large computer complex of keyboards and screens opened out of the seat beside her, sliding out to almost surround where she was sitting with a keyboard on her lap and a large screen in front of her.

  Pilgrim was on the seat near the wet bar. He turned and punched a hidden button on the bar, letting it turn into another computer center with a large screen and two small screens where the drinks had been.

  He loved this limo. He felt like a super hero at times. The car was the most sophisticated computer center on wheels that he knew of. He loved it and never once questioned the costs to build it and keep it completely outfitted with any new device that would help him with a case.

  In this car he could almost see through walls, hear something whispered two hundred yards away, and tap into any phone line he wanted to. This was a dream car for any private detective.

  He immediately typed in the address of the apartment complex the woman statue was looking at.

  Then on one screen he pulled up a floor plan of the building and on the other a list of tenants.

  The landlord, a man by the name of Steven Frome lived in a large apartment on the main floor with his wife, Sue. It was the only apartment on the first floor, the rest of the space was filled with a large lobby and entrance area. He had been right, the building had been an old hotel at one time in the past called The Wellington Inn. It had been converted to apartments in 1962 and Frome had bought it in 2001.

  There was nothing in the full basement that showed on the floor plan and four apartments per floor from the second floor through the fifth, all fairly large.

  Pilgrim couldn’t see anything at all odd about any of the tenants or the building or the landlord.

  “No missing person meets her look size or shape,” Carrie said, “anywhere in the Pacific Northwest in the last six months.”

  “Yeah, that would have been too easy,” Pilgrim said, shaking his head.

  “So why would someone do this to a person and put them in this park?” Carrie asked as outside the first police car arrived on the scene.

  “Figure that out and I bet we find Miss Smallwood’s goodies,” Pilgrim said. “I’ll go talk to the police. Bring up pictures and background checks of anyone in that building there. I’ll bet anything there is a reason she’s looking in that direction.”

  Carrie nodded and went to work as Pilgrim crawled back out in to the heat.

  “Where’s the body?” the dark, heavy-set policeman asked. His name on his uniform was Wells.

  Pilgrim pointed at the shiny, blue statue that seemed to be glistening in the sunlight as if she was sweating, even with the big cowboy hat and revolver.

  “You’re kidding?” Officer Wells asked. “That statue?”

  “I wish I was,” Pilgrim said.

  Pilgrim went back to staring at the statue for a moment as Officer Wells started to tape off the area. More than likely the hat and gun the woman had were clues as well, but damn if Pilgrim could even figure out how to start on them.

  At that moment Chief of Police Benson pulled up and got out into the heat.

  “You’re telling me that’s a body?” he asked, as Pilgrim met him halfway across the lawn toward the statue.

  “Sealed in resin and disguised, yes,” Pilgrim said.

  “You mean like that traveling science exhibit where bodies were frozen in movement in some sort of resin. The one that showed all the body’s muscles and other parts most of us didn’t want to see or even know about?”

  “Might be like that,” Pilgrim said, shaking his head. “I didn’t know you were into science, Chief?”

  “The kid loves the Omsi Center. That exhibit just grossed me out and I’ve seen a lot of bodies in my day.” Chief Benson stopped a few feet from the statue. “What happened to her nipples and crotch?”

  “The killer must have wanted to keep them. Or thought them too private to show,” Pilgrim said.

  Suddenly he realized what he had just said. The missing parts were the answer after all.

  Four

  “Hang on, Chief. I’m not so sure this is a crime after all. At least not a murder.”

  Pilgrim turned and headed back for the limo with Chief Benson right behind him.

  Inside the cool interior, the Chief sighed as he closed the door. “I sure wish the city would spring for one of these for me.”

  “More than the city budget for a year,” Carrie said, not looking up from the computer screen in front of her.

  “Carrie,” Pilgrim said, “can you do a search of death notices in the last year. Pictures of woman the age of the statue out there.”

  “Sure,” Carrie said, frowning.

  While she was doing that, Pilgrim looked up the occupations of all the tenants in the building, including the landlord.

  He found exactly as he figured he would find. Steven Frome, the owner of the building, owned three of the area funeral homes.

  “Look for a death notice for Sue Frome,” Pilgrim said to Carrie.

  “Already found her,” Carrie said, swinging around he computer screen showing a picture of Sue Frome. “Maiden name Smallwood.”

  There was no doubt it was the woman in the statue.

  “She died three months ago of terminal brain cancer,” Carrie said. “She went very quickly. In fact, this park is named after her since her husband donated a ton of money in her memory to upgrade it and p
ut in new kid’s swings and such.”

  “He made her into a statue and stuck her here?” Benson asked. “Creepy.”

  “Death makes people do strange things at times,” Pilgrim said.

  “She liked to spend time in the park her last weeks,” Carrie said. “And she was a top shot and loved to ride horses. All in the obituary.”

  “That explains the gun and the hat,” Pilgrim said, nodding.

  ‘Oh, shit, now what am I supposed to do?” Benson asked. “I’m fairly certain there’s a rule against this somewhere.”

  “I’d go talk to Steve Frome, get him to remove her to a more appropriate place and then put a real statue in her place.”

  “Yeah, makes sense,” Benson said. “Better than the press getting wind of this. Can you imagine the news?”

  “Ask him what he did with her goodies,” Carrie said as the Chief started to climb out.

  “Her what?”

  Pilgrim shook his head. “Never mind. Just Carrie’s name for this case is all.”

  “You two are weird,” Benson said, smiling. “But thanks.”

  After Benson got out and the computers were back into their hiding places, Carrie said, “Don’t you want to know what happened to the woman’s goodies?”

  “Not even in the slightest,” Pilgrim said, shaking his head. “Curiosity about another man’s wife’s private parts can only lead to problems.”

  “And you know this how?” Carrie asked, smiling.

  Pilgrim dug out a Diet Coke for himself and handed Carrie a regular Coke. “How about we just let your imagination and memory work on that one while you drive us back to the office.”

  “You are no fun at all, boss,” Carrie said, smiling as she took the offered can and started to climb out of the limo to move up to the front seat.

  “That’s not what she said,” Pilgrim said, smiling.

  All Carrie did was groan and then slam the door.