“We should have a plan,” I said. I pointed toward Kendra’s place of business.
“You mean like ‘good cop, bad cop’?”
“More like a list of questions.”
Chris smiled, a little crooked, the cutest kind. “We really are amateurs, aren’t we, Charlie? And I call myself a journalist. If this were an interview with a baseball coach or a town representative about a new housing bill or the recall of a blender or—”
“I get it. This is new to me, too. For one thing, there’s more at stake in this situation than whether Elkview beats Palmer.”
“And it’s a lot more personal.”
“It certainly is.”
* * *
* * *
Kendra was not on vacation. I found myself wishing she were. Yes, I’d ridden two-plus hours, left my diner and my cat, only to hope that it all turned out to be for nothing. Some investigator.
Kendra fit my stereotypical image of an office worker. Mid-to-late fifties, I guessed, graying hair neatly pulled back into a French twist, modest skirt and mint green sweater set.
Kendra was more subdued than her brother, informing us immediately upon introductions that she was a supervising administrator and had been in the real estate business for almost thirty years. Older than she looked.
We offered our sincere condolences on the death of her brother. She mumbled a thank-you, without further comment. I was mildly surprised that we didn’t hear something like “He was a good brother” or “I’ll miss him,” which would have been on my list of expected responses.
“Is the business good in this part of town?” Chris asked, skipping ahead.
“I suppose so. I don’t really participate in that part of the business. My job is support—phones, distribution of correspondence, expense reporting, calendar and scheduling, meeting coordination, and maintaining tenant, vendor and property files, including insurance certificates, lease abstracts, and so on, in accordance with prescribed standards.”
Kendra couldn’t have explained it better if she’d been reading from a job posting, which I’d have bet she was in charge of preparing.
Chris and I had managed to put together a presentation of sorts. We hand waved a vague sentence about how we were here to help with the investigation into her brother’s murder. For a moment, I wished I could have shown her a badge, if not a gun. We sat across from Kendra at a table in the staff break room. The smell from the large metal coffeepot was overpowering, and not in a good way. Also lingering in the air were the remnants of lunches. Chili? Salad dressing? Tuna? An everything bagel? Again, not in a good way.
We launched into our questions, many of which sounded like those in every crime drama we’d ever watched. People, presumably staff, wandered in and out of the small room, some heating items in the microwave oven, others lingering over choosing a snack from the vending machine. Trying to decide who we were and why we were there? I thought so. Mildly intimidating, but Kendra paid no attention to them. She let us ask our questions.
“When was the last time you had contact with Oliver?”
“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Oliver?”
Here, a young man, with a head as completely shaved as Chris’s was, stood peeling his orange. At last, a pleasant odor. He shifted his body closer to our table and resumed his task, removing the bright orange rind and sacs more carefully than the task warranted. I was glad neither he nor anyone else took a seat at the only other table in the room. Perhaps it was an unwritten protocol for the break room.
“No, and no” was all the young man got for his attempts to tune in.
“Had Oliver seemed different in any way lately?”
“Did he seem anxious or worried?”
“Was he on good terms with his neighbors?”
We were getting nowhere with Kendra’s perfunctory responses.
We did learn that Oliver didn’t like to make the drive to the highly trafficked (his words, she said) Anchorage, so she went north to visit him on holidays. She hadn’t seen him since just after Christmas. He seemed the same as always, worked his regular hours while she was there, didn’t introduce her to anyone new. She couldn’t keep up with Oliver’s girlfriends, some of whom were bad news.
“Can you say which ones were bad news?” I asked.
“And what kind of bad news?” Chris added.
Kendra twisted her lips to the side and waved her hand, as if to say, “Never mind,” which she did ultimately say out loud.
Finally, before burgeoning nausea from the lunch odors took over, I decided to break away from our list.
“Would you mind telling us a little bit about your brother, Kendra? Maybe how he was as a kid or other things you remember?”
“He’s not actually my real brother.”
Way to bury the lede, Kendra.
SEVEN
Both Chris and I leaned forward in our chairs, in one stunned, choreographed movement.
To her credit, Kendra admitted, “Oliver was adopted. I guess I should have told you that already.”
To my credit, I did not respond, Ya think?
Kendra stood abruptly. “I haven’t even offered you a drink. Coffee? Soda?”
We said we’d love some water. And a lot more information, now that we had plastic cups of water from a cooler that looked like it had barely survived the last century.
Chris recovered from the surprising news faster than I did. “Did Oliver ever find or want to find his birth parents?”
“My parents adopted Oliver when he was about eight. I was a teenager, so I can’t say I was overly nice to him, if you know what I mean. I mean, I was wrapped up in my own things. High school stuff. And here was this little kid encroaching on my perfectly fine life. I remember I used to get peeved when I had to babysit him.”
Kendra sat back and pushed her hands up through the sleeves of her sweater. Maybe protecting herself from how we might judge her. My mind turned over and over with, Does Mom know this? I felt sure she would have mentioned it.
“It wasn’t something we talked about,” Kendra continued, circling back to Chris’s question. “It wasn’t like now with open adoption and how everyone knows everything, or you can find it on the Internet. I have friends who adopted an infant last year, and the birth mother is a regular visitor to the baby. She’ll be part of that child’s life as if she’s a favorite aunt or something, and the child will know everything from the start. It wasn’t like that with Oliver. Or anybody else who adopted back then. Privacy meant something.”
There was no doubt in my mind that Kendra preferred the old model of adoption. I wasn’t about to offer an opinion and derail the track we were on. Chris and I had a long way to go before we left Kendra. I was glad the room had quieted down. No more coming and going. No more whirring microwave oven or slamming of the vending machine when it didn’t deliver the goods smoothly. Lunch hour was over, it seemed.
The next questions in my mind were of such a personal nature, I didn’t know how to start. Questions like Why didn’t her parents have more children?; Why would they adopt an eight-year-old?; and, of course, Does any of this matter in terms of who killed Oliver?
Then it was too late. Kendra announced that she, too, had to get back to her desk.
“We do have more questions,” Chris said.
“Only a few more,” I added, hoping my pleading voice would keep her in the room.
Kendra took a deep, audible breath, most likely mulling over whether she wanted to deal with us another minute. Surely, she knew the next questions would be tougher.
“If you can, come back around three thirty. A student intern will be coming in then, so I’ll be able to leave my desk.”
We’d spent less than a half hour with Kendra. Now we’d have a two-and-a-half-hour wait for the next session. And there was a good chance we’d be driving home aft
er sunset. We looked at each other. Chris gave a slight nod.
“We’ll be back,” I said.
* * *
* * *
In the end, it seemed like a no-brainer.
“We’re here with our devices and a café nearby, no distractions, and we have research to do,” I said.
“My thoughts exactly. But this time we need a real lunch.”
It was true, the pre-packaged peanut butter crackers and trail mix on the road and the experimental bear claw were not going carry us through the day. We went back to the café next door, which had a much more appetizing aroma than the break room, and ordered fish chowder and sandwiches.
“Wow,” Chris said. I knew he wasn’t referring to the food but to the newfound information that Oliver had been adopted.
“Ya think?” I was finally able to say.
“We need to find out where Oliver came from.”
We’d been told as we were leaving Kendra’s office building that we were welcome to stay in a conference room, but we’d agreed it was better not to risk Kendra’s walking by and getting a look at our searches. In a good faith gesture toward the coffee shop staff, we ordered more coffee and fresh cookies to go, and promised a big tip.
We took turns manning the table and going for brief walks around the block. I texted my mom—who knew where she was? I’d lost track of the time zones she’d be passing through. If she’d even left the ship by now. Besides wishing her bon voyage and sending her a photo of Benny looking like he knew she was on her way, I asked a couple of questions.
Oliver adopted?
Lana and Gert. last names? addresses? emails?
They were long shots, but who better than girlfriends or ex-girlfriends for the inside scoop on any man? And weren’t intimate partners always the prime suspects in a murder? And bosses, I reminded myself. I remembered reading an article claiming that fifty-nine percent of male victims were killed by an acquaintance. It was a pretty broad-brush statistic meant to play down random violence—everyone’s worst fear—as a major factor in murders. My cynical side said this was a tactic used in the tourist trade.
When Chris returned from a trek to stretch his legs, he logged in to the Bugle’s archives, then used his credentials to dig into those of surrounding local papers.
“We don’t know where he and/or Kendra grew up,” I said.
“Shall I run next door and ask her?” Chris asked.
“I don’t think . . . oh, you’re kidding,” I said.
“Eventually you’ll pick up on it faster.”
“It? On what?”
“When I’m kidding.” He lowered his head to his keyboard as if he, too, felt awkward about how the conversation had veered toward the personal once again. One might even have said toward the flirty.
I checked my phone for a text from my mom. Nothing. There was a voicemail from Victor, however, asking what he should do about the new design for the menu. The printer needed an answer ASAP. It had been Oliver’s idea, redoing the menu with a retro drawing on the cover. A lineup of people sitting on stools, their backs to the viewer, wearing fifties-style clothing. Other clues about the era were the hairdos sported by the figures and, perhaps the biggest giveaway, the fact that everyone was reading paper copies of a book or a newspaper. I told Victor he should have Nina proof the text, then give it his seal of approval if he was happy with it.
“I already see they spelled ‘hollandaise’ wrong for the eggs Benedict. I fixed it right away. We have to keep Benny happy,” he said.
Victor knew the way to my heart. “Yes, we do.”
“I’m wondering if we should put that cherry cheesecake mousse back on the menu?”
The item that Oliver had wanted removed for some unknown reason.
While I was thinking about what to do, Victor continued. “It’s a big favorite, Charlie.”
“Put it back on,” I said.
It made me sad that Oliver wouldn’t be able to complain about my decision. But I couldn’t dwell over whether it was the right one. It was just a dessert, wasn’t it? On the menu or not on the menu. What did it matter? I was going to have to deal with things like this for the near future.
Chris had been productive while I was mentally back in Elkview before things got turned upside down. Before Oliver was murdered. Before I was in Anchorage, practically deputized and trying to find his killer.
“Get a load of this.” I moved my chair around, and he turned his computer so I could read the screen. “I’m checking out the Anchorage papers for children in 1977. I found this in the Gazette archives.”
I read the headline—FIRE LEVELS LOCAL GROUP HOME—and the sub-headline—All but three children perish in middle-of-the-night blaze.
“Awful,” I said, wondering why he sounded so excited.
“Last year, before you came home, we had a big celebration for Oliver’s fiftieth birthday. So I went back to 1977, when he would have been eight years old. I kept asking myself, why an eight-year-old? I wanted to see if anything came up. Check this out.”
We read the article together, sitting side by side, mumbling key phrases at each other. The home had been in operation for decades. Not maintained very well. Faulty wiring was believed to be the cause, but inspectors hadn’t made a final determination. The facility sheltered children who were older or otherwise hard to place. The surviving children’s names were not released, but their ages ranged from five to eight. We tossed about what-ifs and it-could-bes as we learned that the state administrators made arrangements to place the surviving children in temporary housing.
It was impossible to be sure we’d found the beginning of one phase of Oliver’s life. It was also impossible to ignore.
When the bell over the door rang, for perhaps the tenth time, we both looked up. Was this Kendra coming in to check on us? What would her reaction be if she caught us looking into her personal history? We laughed together at our shared anxiety.
“We should check a couple of other things, like when Kendra’s parents were married,” I said.
“You’re thinking that if they married late, had only the one child, they might have been good candidates for taking in an eight-year-old.”
This time, both our keyboards were assaulted as we clacked away. Chris started with Burke, Kendra’s last name; I went for Whitestone, Oliver’s last name, which might have been a maiden name for Kendra.
“No wedding photo, but I found a twenty-year anniversary photo and announcement for a couple named Burke. A dinner was held at the church where they were long-time members, and”—he raised his fist in a victory salute—“they’re pictured with their daughter, Kendra, age sixteen.”
“Thus, possibly Good Samaritans. When that home burned down, they’d be likely to help.”
“Way to stereotype churchgoers,” Chris said. This time I knew immediately that he was kidding.
“Only in the FBI-profiling sense. Nothing wrong with that.”
“I suppose we could have gotten all this from Kendra. But now she’ll know what good researchers we are and maybe she’ll open up about other, less obvious things.”
“Hopefully things that will actually help find her brother’s killer,” I added.
We did a few more searches. If Oliver had a criminal record, it was sealed. The group home, the original article said, was no longer for juvenile delinquents, its original intent, but for children who had no homes for other reasons. Their parents were deceased or otherwise unable to care for them. Perhaps their parents were delinquents, I mused.
“I have an idea,” Chris said, as if it were the first we had all day. “What do journalists love?”
“Is that a trick question?”
“Follow-up stories. The ‘Whatever happened to’ kind of feature story. I don’t know if readers like them, but news writers certainly do.”
“The three
children who survived the terrible fire that took everyone else. ‘Where are they now?’” I put quotes around the last phrase to indicate I, too, knew some journalese.
“Uh-huh. Let’s start with nine or ten years later, when that eight-year-old might be finishing high school.”
With me back on my own side of the table, we each took an archive of a local paper and searched ahead to when Oliver would have come of age. It seemed likely that he’d stayed with Kendra’s family all the while up to then, since she did still keep up with him. I hit pay dirt with a Gazette feature.
“Here it is.” My eureka moment, thanks to Chris’s newsman’s sense. I sent him the link. “Good thinking,” I said.
“We make a good team.”
I liked hearing that.
We each scanned the article on our separate devices. The three children, all boys, had attended a school associated with the church where the Burkes had been members. They’d been on an overnight field trip, the winners of a contest sponsored by a service organization in town, when the fire broke out. The oldest was about to graduate.
Chris expressed embarrassment at the reporter’s questions.
“This is the worst one,” he said. “‘Do you feel guilty that you survived when so many of your friends did not?’ What kind of sensitivity training did people not have back then?”
I pointed out that we still heard similar questions these days, whether it was after a fire or a fatal accident or any other disaster. “You might be the only sensitive reporter there is,” I told him.
I spied the blush I had hoped for.
We skipped ahead to the grainy photos, almost as bad as the photos in our old family albums.
“It’s the middle guy,” Chris said. “The caption says his name is Oliver Quinlan.”
I strained my neck and squinted. “Yes, that could definitely be Oliver. Quinlan is a common name, but it sounds familiar to me.”
“In any case, Oliver seems to have changed it to Whitestone at some point, for some reason.”
Mousse and Murder Page 7