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Murders always seemed to happen late at night, or very early in the morning. This time it was the latter, and Columbo arrived on the scene with his eyes half closed from sleep, and drool dried on his chin. Officers greeted him as he stumbled through the mansion of another rich person who had died abruptly. 'Hm g'morning' he said from the side of his mouth where his unlit cigar did not dangle. He wondered how those young officers had so much energy at 4:30 in the morning.
Coming up the second staircase of the house, he ran right smack into something.
‘Oh dear I'm so sorry- Columbo?’
'Wilson!' It was a certain familiar sergeant, with his smart little camera dangling from his neck.
'You know what you remind me of Wilson' he said, continuing up the stairs.
'What's that sir?'
'One of those dairy cows you see driving in the country, with those big bells hangin from em.'
Columbo rubbed the railing experimentally, thinking he had seen perhaps a scuff mark. Was the body carried up the stairs, or down?
'Why sir, they ought to put one of those bells on you they way you almost knocked me off the stairs just now, so we could hear you coming and get out of the way!'
'Wilson what an odd thing to say, I’m surprised at you' he said smiling, and paused at the door to a room, not the one they said the victim had fallen out of, but the one adjacent to it, there was something off about the bed, which was supposed to belong to one of the guests who stayed regularly there.
'You know the wife thought we should get a bell for the Dog, ya know in case he ever got the urge to run off, but I never hear the damned thing, because all that dog does is lay around. Wilson, can dogs hibernate?’
‘I don’t think so sir.’
Columbo continued to wander around the house with Wilson at his heels, occasionally snapping a picture of something that Columbo would point out to him, they were quite a team.
The gentleman of the house, the son of the victim, insisted that he was just about to go for an early morning ride when he found his father on the ground outside with a broken neck. It was possible, if he had fallen from the fourth story where his bedroom was, that he could have gotten his injuries that way, Columbo wrote in his notebook (with Wilson’s pencil). But there were certain things that bothered him about the case, things that didn’t match up right.
Wilson noticed how when they came to speak with the victim’s son, how he crinkled his mouth slightly when he looked over Columbo, and how he was continuing to address Wilson, while ignoring the lieutenant. Columbo never seemed to mind this kind of treatment. It bothered Wilson though. The lieutenant may not be up to date on all the latest technology and journals, but he thought Columbo was the best detective at the LAPD, bar none.
‘Uh excuse me sir, Lieutenant Columbo is actually the one in charge of this case, I believe there are some things he would like to ask you.’ He hoped his interjection wouldn’t be seen as insolent by the Lieutenant, or like he thought Columbo couldn’t handle himself, but he actually beamed at him and went on with his questioning. The suspect was chastened enough to direct his attention toward him instead, though dourly.
After finishing up with the routine questioning, the two headed outside, Columbo going in the opposite direction of where the police had parked their cars.
‘Columbo where are you going?’
‘There’s just one thing I want to check, I want to look at the stables.’
While Columbo was looking at the floor of the stable, examining the piles of straw and even the light bulbs, Wilson noticed something about the horse.
‘Huh, the grey one is the kid’s right? This horse has just been ridden, it hasn’t been brushed down, she has sweat marks on her.’ All the other horses in the stable were pristine.
Columbo came over from what he was doing to look at the horse, with his index finger to his mouth.
All the other cars were gone when they got back to the main part of the estate, except Columbo’s Peugeot. Wilson looked a little sheepishly at him.
‘It looks like my partner took off without me. What a guy.’
‘Wilson,’ the lieutenant said, prying at the passenger door of his car ‘let’s get some coffee.’
Wilson put his hand over Columbo’s, and the door became unstuck in one pull.
They drove off in the direction of some diner Columbo knew of that was open at this time of day, and Wilson didn’t even mind that there were no seatbelts.
The sun hadn’t risen yet so the diner shone out onto the street, like that painting Nighthawks which Wilson had learned about in college. Except it didn’t look much like it on closer inspection. It was squatter, and the windows weren’t as glorious. But there was something Wilson liked about it instantly because it was a bit like his lieutenant.
Columbo exchanged pleasantries with the manager while Wilson went and found a table, and started to tinker with his camera.
“Wilson, over here, we’re sittin’ at the counter!’
The counter when a perfectly good table was available?
He slid onto a stool next to Columbo, who was already slumped over onto his elbow with his eyes closed. He certainly was right about that coffee being a necessity; the alertness from being on the case was starting to wear off. The manager poured coffee for them into two clean tan mugs.
‘Can I get some cream and sugar for this? Thank you.’ Wilson stirred his coffee and the smell was enough to rouse Columbo into a position to raise his own plain coffee to his lips.
‘This is good coffee.’ Wilson said.
‘How’d you know about the horses? Haven't always been a city boy, huh.’ He said resting his cheek on his hand. ‘Me, I couldn’t tell a poodle from a pony. You know I was just thinkin how we could use an animal psychic on these homicide cases, you know with many pets are witnesses to these things. Why I’ve seen cockadoos, uh, cockatiels, cats, and you shoulda seen these two Dobermans Wilson, what sweethearts. I bet they’d have a lot to say.’
From the few other times Wilson had worked with him, he knew Columbo could get a little erratic when he was tired, and so he let him talk about this story about a pet psychic he had heard on the radio, and how he had tried it on Dog but nothing happened, but that didn’t mean anything because Dog was a bit slow to begin with.
For the next few days they continued to work on the case together, and it began to look like the son was covering up for someone; perhaps his girlfriend, who they often found riding with him. But as always, when everything about the case began to fall into line, Columbo would pick at it because ‘something was bothering him.’ Wilson suspected that the girl killed the boyfriend’s father so that she would be able to share in the will that would inevitably fall to the boyfriend, inheritance was a standard thing to look into. But Columbo just wouldn’t buy it.
Today they were out on the horse trail that the son took every morning, casually scanning the ground, the scenery, the cows with the bells in the next field over, not really expecting to find anything substantial. It was nice to be able to get out of the city once in a while, but it made him homesick. If the house had been a few miles to the east, it would have been out of their jurisdiction.
Columbo’s hair ruffled in the wind and he had his hands locked together behind his back in deep thought. On some impulse Wilson brought his camera up from where he was snapping pictures of some tracks, and took a picture of his lieutenant standing there.
He was embarrassed immediately after, even though Columbo didn’t appear to have noticed, and he had bought the camera with his own money so he could take pictures of whatever he wanted. Still, it seemed unprofessional.
‘Wilson?’
“Yes?’ had he been caught after all?
‘Would you like a hard-boiled egg, I brought two of them.’
He thought of his lunchbox, which he had left in his locker at the station.
‘Uh yes, thank you.’
They sat in the grass beside the track, and Columbo also brought out a thermos and a sandwich wrapped in foil, which turned out to be corned beef on rye with mustard. Columbo insisted that he have half of this too, and handed him the lid of the thermos. He drank, expecting coffee, but was surprised to find that it was sweet iced tea, one of his favorites. There was also a little shaker of salt for the eggs. They were having a picnic on the literal trail of a murder.
Columbo knocked his egg against something metal driven into the ground to crack it. It was the nail of a horseshoe, and another clue.
Within the next few hours they went to question the groom, who said that a new horseshoe had just been put on Farra, the grey horse the night before the murder. They examined the horse to find it was in fact missing a nail from the new horse shoe, and that the nail they found matched the other nails in the shoe. The horse needed these special horse shoes, had delicate feet, the nail couldn’t have come from another shoe or another horse on the estate. Soon, they were able to place the victim’s brother as the one at the trail on the night of the murder, trying to frame the son by using his horse to transport the body. His big mistake was that the kid was an expert rider, and he was not.
The rest of the clues all fell into place. The bed seemed off because in that perfect house it was in disarray, the uncle had brought the body to the wrong bedroom at first, a mistake someone who lived in the house wouldn’t make. The body was carried up the stairs and then dropped. Wilson was right about the inheritance, the victim’s brother had somewhat ironically lost all his money on horseracing, and needed to pay off his debts fast.
‘Well Wilson, it looks like we’ve got our man.’ Columbo said to him standing outside the mansion while the arrest was being made by the plainclothes cops.
‘May I light that for you sir?’ Columbo leaned forward, his eyes focused on the tip of his cigar, and Wilson carefully lit it for him.
‘Uh, lieutenant, why is it that you never stay after the arrest is made, you never stick around long enough to take credit for anything. You always fade into the background, disappear. ’
‘Oh well, that’s not really my area, see I’m not very good with what happens afterwards. Besides, there’s all that paperwork to do. No, no, that’s not really my area.’
‘I suppose you would want to go home right away to spend some time with your wife, having taken so many late nights.’
Columbo looked thoughtful for a second, like he was going to tell him something, but then merely nodded.
‘Sure. But I want to go and look at them horses one more time before I go, comin’ with me, Sergeant Wilson?’
Of course he was going to, they’d practically spent every day together that week, working on the case, eating burgers in Columbo’s rickety old car, which frankly scared him, consulting with the horses’ vet, lighting his cigars…
‘This horse should become a detective, she’s the one who really cracked the case.’
Columbo patted the mare’s head, and Wilson in a parallel motion, picked something out of Columbo’s curls.
‘You’ve got straw in your hair.’ Everything about him was so disordered. A far-cry from what he had expected when the captain had told him about this high-powered detective who solved every case he came across. Yet, he thought he wouldn’t like him any other way.
‘By the way Wilson, whateva happened to that new partner of yours. Aren’t you supposed to be workin’ with him?’
‘We agreed to work separately on this assignment.’ In truth, his partner preferred Wilson to do all the work for them. He couldn’t remember if he had ever done any paperwork for them, it seemed like Wilson was always the one stuck at the station late at night on his typewriter, making out reports for the two of them.
Columbo made a tsking noise at him, ‘that ain’t right, partners should work together, help each other out.’
‘You’re one to talk sir, you’re the only detective at the station who doesn’t have a partner. And it just goes to prove how you don’t really need one, with your record.’
‘That’s different.’ Columbo murmured, scratching his chin, still gazing at the horse, leaning up against the stall with his hands shoved in his trenchcoat pockets.
‘I don’t see how, I may be a little younger but I know my stuff.’
‘To be perfectly honest, it had nothing to do with age or experience. It’s just no other detective wants to put up with me.’
Wilson blinked in surprise.
Columbo continued, “Yep they just run outta patience with me. The last guy, ten years ago, he said it was my singin if you can believe it. I tell ya I laughed at that.’
‘I guess I just start to grate on people. The guys at the station, they like me just fine, they help me out when I need labwork done and all that, but it’s not a longterm thing y’know, like with a partner.’
The same feeling Wilson had when Columbo talked to a rude suspect welled up in him again, hearing him talk about this so casually.
‘Don’t look so down kid, I’m sure everything will work out with you and your partner, you ain’t gonna be like me.’ Columbo said this as he was walking out past him, his arm raised over his head briefly in his customary way.
In his pocket Wilson touched the photo he had developed of Columbo. He hadn’t known what to do with it when he was putting the other photos with evidence, so he had just slipped it in his pocket before leaving work.
Columbo left in his Peugeot, Dog was waiting in the car for him. And Wilson begrudgingly left with his partner, and that was all they saw of each other for a while, not too long of a while, just long enough for Wilson to notice something.
Between cases, during the time when he was supposed to be filling out paperwork for the last one, Columbo often felt his attention wander aimlessly like a bird with nothing to land on at sea. He set down on murders like an albatross, sometimes he wasn’t even assigned to them, he just saw them floating out there with all the telltale signs, and it really wasn’t in his control.
One afternoon about a week after the horseshoe case, Columbo stopped in at his favorite diner for a late lunch. No high-profile cases had turned up for him yet so he was still in that limbo over the water, head right up there in the clouds.
The manager said to him as he came through the door, ‘that kid that was with you the other night, he’s been waiting here for an hour. I tried to tell em’ you might not even come in today. Guess he knows your schedule better than I do.’
Wilson sat at the counter on the far side of the diner, he had a technical journal open on crime scene photography at night, and a bowl of splitpea soup that looked untouched.
‘Hey, your soup is gonna get cold,’ he said pointing at it.
‘I’m not that hungry right now I suppose, I was when I ordered it.’
‘Well,’ Columbo said, sliding the bowl over to his own part of the counter ‘what’s on your mind Sergeant Wilson.’ He reached over Wilson’s book to take his spoon.
‘To tell you the truth sir, what’s on my mind is you.’ Columbo glanced at him for a moment, then started to eat Wilson’s cold soup. It wasn’t as good as chili but he hated to see something go to waste.
Wilson didn’t say anything more. He looked like he wanted some prompting. Columbo wasn’t on a case though, he wasn’t going to question him like he was a suspect. So he kept eating, he could wait. There was baseball game being announced over the radio.
‘Ahem, ah, this may be presumptuous of me, sir, Columbo. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to keep lighting your cigars. Unless you have someone else, that is.’
‘Wilson look at me.’ Wilson looked up abashedly. Columbo gestured with his hand, ‘is this something you’d like to elaborate on here?’
Wilson took a deep breath and pulled out the photo from his pocket and placed it neatly on the journal.
‘Gee, does my hair always look that messy,’ he said smoothing it over absently. ‘And my raincoat, I know I should take it into the drycleaners soon but I was waiting for the wife-‘
‘That’s just it sir, I don’t think you have a wife. The first thing that clued me off, excuse me but I’m not as observant as you, I had to uh, look at this, you don’t wear a ring,’ he said tapping the picture.
‘Boy that was a nice day. Sunny, but there was a cool breeze.’
‘Now I know of people who are married but don’t wear a ring, my brother in construction for example, but there are other things too. I don’t mean to pry but it’s become a personal matter for me.’
Columbo was stumped, he scratched the back of his head. He could have easily thought of an explanation for whatever ‘other things’ Wilson had come up with. He’d always been able to slip away when the hounds had him cornered. But he didn’t believe he was a fox this time, and Wilson sure wasn’t a hound. He seemed earnest, and Columbo liked earnest people.
He beckoned Wilson to lean towards him. He whispered into his ear, ‘you’re right.’
They stared at each other for a long time, and then Columbo took a new cigar out of his pocket, stuck it in his mouth and leaned over the counter, the picture and the journal.
Wilson lit the cigar for him.