Framed for Murder

by Edward Kendrick

  I was right, and since he had appointments all morning, I settled in the break room to read and drink coffee. Or tried to. I was restless. Too restless to concentrate. I finally gave up and began walking the hallway. I knew looking for a connection between Pender and Wilson couldn’t be the only thing Ben had to do today, so I figured he might not find anything until afternoon, or maybe not until tomorrow.

  I wished I’d told Trent I’d rather remain at the condo. At least there I could have spent the day on the balcony, enjoying fresh air and sunshine. It would have been better than what I was doing now.

  On my third lap up and down the hallway, Gwen stepped out of her office.

  “Bored?” she asked with a smile of sympathy.

  “Very,” I admitted. “I’m not used to being cooped up in one place with nothing to keep me busy.”

  “Give me a couple of minutes to go to the restroom, then I’ll give you a crash course on handwriting.”

  She did. She was working on a contract, trying to determine if the signature and other information written on it had been forged as the client claimed. It was interesting, not that I’ll ever have a use for what she taught me. In the end, she determined the client had been telling the truth. She called him to let him know, telling him she’d mail him her written report, along with a bill.

  After thanking her for letting me watch, and learn, I went back to the break room feeling a bit less at loose ends. Roger came in to make coffee and we chatted a bit, with him telling me about a stakeout he would be doing later. When he left, I went back to reading.

  Around noon, Trent came in to let me know he was going to lunch. “The sandwich place, again, so if you want another corned beef…”

  “Maybe turkey, instead?”

  He grinned. “Maybe? You’re not sure?”

  “Okay, turkey on rye, with mayo and mustard.”

  “You got it.”

  He was back half an hour later and sat with me while I ate.

  “I know you’re bored,” he said, patting my leg then quickly pulling his hand back. Too intimate? I wondered. Hard to tell from his expression. “I would be, too,” he admitted, “if I were you.”

  “I’ll survive,” I replied. “If I’d been smart, I’d have stayed at the condo.”

  “I’d rather have you here, in case Ben comes up with anything.”

  “I was thinking,” I said. “Are there any pictures of Wilson with his family online? Primarily ones of his daughter? If there are, and she has any resemblance to Pender, it might go a long way to proving he’s her natural father.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that, which I should have. I’ve got a few minutes so let’s find out.”

  As soon as we were in his office and he was on the computer, he brought up Wilson’s political website. “We’re in luck,” he said, which we were. There were two photos under the heading ‘My family. The reason I work so hard to help our city become the best that it can be’.

  “By tearing down single-family houses to build ugly high-rises,” I muttered.

  Trent nodded while getting two of the photos of Pender from our earlier search on him. He cropped the Wilson family pictures to cut out everyone but his daughter, whose name it turned out was Abigail.

  “She’s blond, he had brown hair, so that’s out,” Trent said when he had her picture side-by-side with Pender’s.

  I studied them. “Nothing in the eyes or the shapes of their faces, but look at their noses and lips.”

  Trent nodded. “It’s nothing we could take to court, not that we would, but yeah there’s a definite resemblance.”

  “So maybe we are on the right track.”

  “Yep. It won’t help prove that Wilson was behind Pender’s murder, but it helps connect them, if she is Pender’s daughter.”

  The receptionist called Trent to tell him his next client had arrived, so I went back to the break room.

  It was mid-afternoon when Ben came to the doorway. He was smiling as he said, “I found what we need. I’m going to report to Trent, if you want to join us.”

  That was a no-duh suggestion. Of course I did.

  Once we were all seated around Trent’s desk, Ben said, “It took all my considerable hacking skills, but I found the adoption records for Kailee Harrison Pender. It was done through a private, but legitimate agency. The adoptive parents were, are, Norman and Irene Wilson. They were approved after the usual checks and took her home when she was three months old.”

  “Pender?” I asked. “Doesn’t that prove he was…Never mind, we knew that already. We just didn’t know who adopted her until now.”

  “Exactly,” Trent replied. “Now, we do.”

  “Okay, but if it was a closed adoption…” I looked at Ben in question.

  “It was,” he said.

  “Then how could Pender have found out the Wilson’s adopted her?”

  Ben chuckled. “The same way I did? From what I understand he was a mover-and-shaker. He undoubtedly knew how to find someone with hacking skills who could do a search for Kailee. Pay them well enough to keep their mouth shut when they did and he’d have been home free.”

  “Now that we’ve proved there’s a link between them,” I said, “how do we prove Wilson had Seaver kill Pender and frame me?”

  “Or that Wilson did the actual murder, once Seaver let him know he’d found a patsy,” Trent replied.

  “You know Wilson will have an ironclad alibi for his whereabouts at the time it happened,” Ben pointed out.

  “True, although he knows people who might be willing to back up his story in order to curry a political favor, if he swore he wasn’t the killer, but had no solid alibi,” Trent replied dourly, getting nods from me and Ben.

  “You could take our theories to the police,” I said to Trent. “At least that way they’d have someone else to look at beside me.”

  “They’d want to know why I was involved in the first place. Also, the way Ben got the information was iffy, at best. The cops frown on investigators hacking into files that are supposed to be closed. So do the courts.”

  “Then why bother?” I asked.

  “It gives us a starting place. As you said, knowing that Kailee, or Abigail now, is Pender’s daughter links him to Wilson.”

  “Which doesn’t help me one damned bit,” I replied angrily.

  “Easy, Charlie,” Trent said, resting his hand on my arm. “We’re going to get there.”

  “If you don’t need me,” Ben said, getting up.

  “Not at the moment. Thanks for digging this up.”

  Ben grinned. “It is what you pay me for. Now, about that raise…”

  Rolling his eyes, Trent said, “Get out of here.” Ben did.

  I got up and began pacing, while Trent watched. “It’s nice to find a motive for Wilson,” I said. “But how the hell will we prove I didn’t kill Pender?”

  Trent tapped his fingers together, lost in thought. When he finally spoke, he asked, “How willing are you to put yourself on the line?”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  His smile was positively evil as he replied, “Just a bit of blackmail.”

  “Who and how?” I asked, retaking my seat.

  “I still haven’t figured that out. It has to be either Seaver or Wilson, obviously. If it’s Seaver…Does your phone have a camera?”

  “Yeah. Don’t all phones? It’s not the greatest but what can you expect for the price I paid?”

  “Not ‘great’ is good. With some manipulation, we can make it look as if you caught Seaver at Pender’s house when the murder happened.”

  “When the hell would I have had time to take a picture, and why would I?”

  “You took it when you got to the backyard, because you were beginning to wonder if there was something hinky going on when you saw Seaver through the kitchen window. We can timestamp it to correspond to the time of the murder.”

  I nodded. “I guess that could work. It doesn’t explain how I know his name.”


  “Yeah. I’ll have to figure that out.”

  “What would I have to blackmail Wilson with?”

  “You went back to Pender’s house, today or tomorrow. You know you didn’t kill him so you wanted to find out if there was anything there that could tell you who did.”

  “How would I get in without anyone seeing me, especially the cops if they’re watching the place?”

  “Through the basement window the fictitious neighbor said they saw you trying to pry open,” Trent replied.

  “If I did, his security system would let someone know.” I frowned. “If I had tried that, the night of his murder, it would have gone off then. I wonder if the cops considered that. Technically, it should have when I broke in—” I made finger quotes, “—through the back door. I wonder how the police explain that it didn’t.”

  “How many homeowners keep the system on while they’re in the house?”

  “Don’t ask me. I have no clue,” I said. “B&E is not my thing.”

  “I would hope not,” Trent said dryly. “Most people turn their systems off when they’re home until they go to bed.”

  “Okay. But with him dead, now, wouldn’t the police or someone have made sure the system is on to keep nosy parkers out, if nothing else?”

  Trent grimaced. “You do keep putting up roadblocks.”

  It was my turn to be pensive as I thought about the two men. “Let’s go for Seaver.”

  “Any particular reason why?”

  “Yeah. He’s the tough guy. If he feels threatened he might come after me. Or he’ll get with Wilson and they’ll come up with a plan to eliminate me since they were probably in it together.”

  “Charlie…” Trent shook his head in dismay. “We’re trying to prove you didn’t kill Pender, not put you dead in the killers’ sights.”

  “Do you have a better idea?” I asked.

  “I wish I did. You can’t go to the police. The chances they’d believe you are slim to none and we both know it. I don’t think you want to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder for cops or killers.”

  I almost laughed as I thought about the book of his I’d read about how to disappear—and my life for the past two years. “I know the finer points going into hiding. Of course I don’t have any credit cards to cut up, or utility bills to destroy, or any personal ID other than my driver’s license. I don’t have a presence online, so I don’t need to worry about that, either. Shall I go on?”

  “Take it from a man who makes part of his living looking for people who don’t want to be found. If someone who knows what they’re doing starts searching for you, they will find you eventually. That especially goes for anyone in law enforcement.”

  “Way to make me feel better,” I replied ruefully.

  “I’m not trying to. I want you to come out of this free and alive. I still care about you, even though we’re not together anymore.”

  His expression said he meant what he was saying in a very personal way, and he seemed to be watching me to see how I would react. The problem was, I didn’t know how I felt about it. We had no future together that I could see. Our differences were what broke us up to begin with, and God only knows the changes in my life since then have made the gap a hell of a lot wider. All I could say in reply was, “Thanks,” which didn’t seem to please him.

  Wanting to get off that subject, I went back to talking how we would catch Seaver, saying, “Okay, I won’t go into hiding. I wasn’t planning on it anyway because it wouldn’t solve the problem. Put together the photo of him in the kitchen window, please. I’ll take it from there.”

  “And if he wants to know how you found him?”

  “I saw him the next day, recognized him, and followed him. Hell, he can’t stay indoors twenty-four-seven. Not when…Yeah, there we go. Did Wilson do any campaigning in the last couple of days?”

  “Let me check,” Trent replied. At that point he seemed to be as glad as I was to move beyond what he’d said about his still caring for me. He returned to Wilson’s campaign site and a moment later told me, “He met with a homeowners association last night to speak about, and I quote, ‘his bold vision for the city’.”

  I snorted. “By turning it into high-rise central with all the accompanying problems, like parking and traffic congestion?”

  Trent chuckled. “Somehow I doubt he’s going to put it quite like that. Anyway, it happened in a conference room at one of the downtown hotels.”

  “Perfect. That covers me when Seaver asks how I located him. I’ll tell him I was hiding out in an alley across the street from the hotel, because I know the cops are looking for me. I saw him going in with Wilson, recognized him, and decided to wait and follow him. When they left, the doorman said ‘Good night Mr. Wilson, Mr. Seaver’, which is how I know his name. Does that sound logical?”

  Trent tapped his fingers together, then nodded. “It does. There’s one problem though, all your clothes are clean, now. They aren’t new by any means, but they don’t look like you’ve been sleeping in them in some dirty alley for the last few days.”

  “On the way back to the condo, I’ll do some dumpster diving.”

  “God, Charlie, you can’t be serious.” Trent shuddered.

  “Where do you think I get my spectacular wardrobe? Neiman Marcus?”

  “No, but…Okay, I was off base saying that. I’m sorry.”

  “No harm, no foul,” I replied with a brief smile. “Can you get me Seaver’s home address? I need a place to find him that’s not public. I really don’t want the cops grabbing me before I can have my little talk with him.”

  “I can do better than that. I can show you.” He brought up a map site and zoomed in on Seaver’s house.

  “Good. He’s got a garage in back and no fence around the yard. That will make it easier. Any bus stops close by?”

  “Probably, but I’m going with you.” When I started to protest, he said, “Not when you talk with him, but I’m not leaving you unprotected.” He checked the map. “We can park a block away, then go to the alley. I’ll wait by his garage and…yeah. I’m wiring you.”

  “Come on, Trent. Is that necessary?”

  “Absolutely. I can hear, and record, everything and I’ll know if you’re in trouble. Or, better yet.” He didn’t elaborate which made me wonder what was going on in his head.

  “He’s hardly going to shoot me in his own living room,” I said.

  “Probably not, but he won’t be a happy man when you show him the photo. Speaking of which…” He left the office. I figured he was going to have one of his people grab a screen shot of the back of Pender’s house from the map site or one of the news reports on his murder and add Seaver’s face in the window.

  I was right. When he returned he put a box down on the desk then told me I’d have the picture I needed, with a timestamp, before we left. “When do we want to do this?” I asked.

  “The sooner the better. Even if Wilson is campaigning tonight, Seaver will go home afterward.” He opened the box. “This is a parabolic microphone. It’s better than wiring you, in case he smells a set-up and scans you for bugs or wires.”

  To me, it looked like a gun with a clear plastic dish on the end of the barrel. There was also a set of headphones. He explained that he could listen to everything Seaver and I said while recording it. “If you’re in trouble, or think you will be, say ‘back off’.”

  I smirked. “And you’ll show up, guns blazing?”

  “This isn’t a joke, Charlie. It’s a logical thing to say under the circumstances and, yeah, I’ll come to the rescue. Also, say something like ‘nice living room’ or whatever to let me know where you are.”

  “Got it.” I was beginning to feel like someone in a spy movie, and in a way I guess I was going to be.

  Chapter 6

  As soon as Trent had picked up the doctored photo from Regan, his photo expert, and closed for the day, we returned to the condo. On the way, I pointed out an alley where I knew I could probab
ly find clothes to wear for tonight’s foray. He parked close to it then insisted on joining me while I went dumpster diving. It was a lower-class neighborhood made up primarily of older homes and inexpensive apartment buildings. I got lucky and found what I needed. It amused me to watch Trent’s expression at one spot as I pulled out and then discarded some T-shirts which I told him I’d probably have kept if I really was searching for anything wearable. They were stained with God only knows what—even I didn’t want to know—but other than that, and the fact the necklines were ragged and stretched out, they would have been useable once they were washed.

  When we got to the condo, I put my booty on the dresser in the bedroom then went into the kitchen to see what we could put together for supper. For damned sure I wasn’t facing down Seaver on an empty stomach. Trent had already taken hamburger from the freezer and was defrosting it in the microwave. As soon as it was ready, he tossed it in a frying pan with the contents of a jar of marinara sauce and added spices. While it cooked, he boiled spaghetti and put me to work creating a salad. It reminded me of the old days when we were a couple. Apparently it did him, too, because he looked at me and smiled softly.

  We set the table and when everything was ready, sat down to eat.

  I’ll admit, I watched him when he didn’t seem to be aware that I was. I wondered what our lives would have been like if we’d been able to reconcile our differences. To talk about them and try to compromise. Maybe I should have been more willing to go to clubs or parties with him instead of putting my foot down, saying I was too tired after working all day. When I’d say that, which was way too often, I’ll admit, he’d say he understood and he’d stay home, too, but it was obvious he wanted to do more than watch TV or a DVD movie. There were times when I’d go out with him to be with his friends, then sit silently in the background while they talked and drank, or whatever. He deserved better than that from me. I knew that, now. Then, I…well, we were both being selfish and stubborn, but we never admitted it. It drove a wedge between us until in the end we gave up, and broke up. Oh, there were other smaller problems, too, as with any couple, but that was the major one.