Murder at First Pitch

by Nicole Asselin

  She wasn’t crazy though. She wouldn’t just go there alone without letting someone know where she was going. Also, it would be good to have some back-up just in case.

  Madeline dashed off a quick message to Davis and her brother, letting them know where she was going. She knew they wouldn’t have wanted her to go out by herself, but the afternoon was fast approaching and she didn’t want to waste time. Plus, she thought it was relatively safe since it was early enough in the evening to still be light out. Nothing too bad could happen to her in the daytime. She made sure she had her cell phone and grabbed a little can of mace that she used when she was in the city. One could never be too careful.

  Since it was summer, the days extended into early evening and the sun didn’t set until well after 8 p.m. It was going to be broad daylight, and she didn’t get the sense that William wanted to hurt her. She didn’t have any proof that he was involved in the murder, just had some connections with the victim. She’d be fine. Nothing to worry about.

  An hour after she texted Davis, she pulled into the Barnstormers parking lot. There were a few cars in the lot, but there didn’t seem to be too many people out and about. She knew the team had a game that week, one of the only teams to play during the week as well as weekends. Lots of tourists in the summer made the Barnstormers team invaluable to the local economy. She would’ve thought there would be more hustle and bustle so close to game days. Then again, she didn’t know how the owner and manager ran their team; maybe they just did things differently. As a newbie to the industry, she probably shouldn’t judge too harshly.

  She still hadn’t heard back from Davis yet, but checking her email she saw another email from Esther. It confirmed what she said earlier about not going to school with Jennifer Roberts or anyone who looked like her. She must have been faking the connection to try and get more information from Madeline regarding the team and her family. As if she would know any more than the public knew about the investigation.

  With that mystery solved, she took a deep breath and made her way to the front office door. There wasn’t any movement at the front desk, which provoked a sigh of relief from her. She just wasn’t sure she could’ve faced the old battle axe receptionist that day. The past few weeks had been so stressful, and she didn’t need that woman’s attitude to pile it on. She tried the door handle and found it opened easily under her hand.

  “Hello? Is anyone here? Mr. Chase?” She cautiously entered the offices. Most of the doors were shut tight, and the only light was coming from the windows behind her. Slowly stepping around the receptionist desk and peering down the hallway, she tried one more time.

  “Mr. Chase? It’s Madeline Boucher. You wanted to meet with me?”

  She heard a small groan from the last office. William Chase’s office. She ran down the small hallway and found his door ajar. Pushing it open, she found William lying on the floor clutching his head. Blood seeped through his fingers and his eyes were closed tightly. The office was a mess. Papers were strewn about the floor and his desk. His baseball memorabilia was tossed around and the glass from picture frames was shattered all on the floor.

  Madeline ran to William’s side and pulled out her cellphone.

  “Don’t worry, William, I’m calling an ambulance right now. You’ll be okay.”

  His eyes opened and looked at her unfocusedly. They were glazed over and she wasn’t even sure if he knew who she was or what she said. Madeline gave the nice dispatcher on the other end of the phone all her information and promised to stay on the line until help showed up. While she waited to hear the sounds of sirens, she took another moment to look around the room closer. What a mess. Someone must have been looking for something pretty important to cause such chaos.

  William grasped her free hand and pulled her down towards him. “My daughter.” Those words were all he said before he promptly passed out.

  Daughter? She didn’t know William had a family. He never mentioned it in the press, and he sure as heck didn’t act like a settled down man. She looked around the office again to see if there was anything to confirm what he just said. Madeline saw a tiny silver frame peeking out from the corner of his desk. She didn’t want to touch anything, but she could see a child’s face and moved closer. It was a blonde girl, about four years old, holding William’s hand. That must be his daughter. She wondered why he wanted her to know about the girl. And who was the mother? Why the big secret about his family?

  She made her way back to his side and hoped he had regained consciousness. “William, what do you mean about your daughter? Is she in danger? Who is the mother?” She leaned over his prone body and tried to get a response, but he was still out cold.

  As she pondered the new information, the paramedics and police burst through the office door. They started to attend to William right away and the police ushered her out of the office to a waiting Detective Stephenson. Shaking his head, he pulled her out the front door to the parking lot.

  “Madeline, I admit. When they called me and said Madeline Boucher called in an assault victim in Barnstable, I was surprised. It was out of my jurisdiction, but the local police chief and I are friends, so he gave me a call when he heard your name. He’s been keeping me in the loop about the Barnstable team. I have been in touch with him about William Chase for a while now. But the real question is, what were you doing here today?”

  “Look, I know it seems weird. But William sent me a text this morning asking me to meet him here. I can show you the message.” She fished her phone out of her pocket and thrust it in the detective’s face. “See! I was just meeting him to discuss something. When I got here, no one answered at the front desk and I heard a groan from the back office. That’s when I found him.”

  He nodded as he jotted things down in his notepad. “Fine, wait here for a moment. I’m going to check on things.

  Madeline tapped her foot impatiently as she waited for the detective to return. Her mind swirled with questions about the attack and if it was connected to Christopher Dailey at all.

  The Detective returned a few minutes later and guided her to a bench near the front entrance. “First of all, the medics say William will be fine. Just a nasty concussion. Hopefully he’ll be able to remember his attacker. Second, I see from the text message that he wanted to talk to you. Do you have any idea of what it was about?”

  She squirmed under his gaze. She didn’t think he knew that she had been continuing to investigate behind his back. She didn’t want him to yell at her. “Well, I’m not one hundred percent sure, to be honest. A few weeks ago, he had cornered me at the Abington ballpark to say that we needed to talk, but I got pulled away. This is the first time he’s reached out to me since then. I assume it had something to do with the murder investigation. With all the rumors going around and whatnot, he must have had something to tell me. Why else would he contact me?”

  “That what we have to figure out.” The detective looked at her closely. “Did he say anything to you before he lost consciousness?”

  Madeline wasn’t sure what was important and what wasn’t important anymore. Did William actually call her to his office to tell her something about the murder? Did he know something about the rumors being spread about the Armadillos? Was it something else entirely? And who was his daughter? Who was her mother? The questions swirled around in her head until it made sort of a muddled soup. She didn’t know how to make heads or tails of the situation anymore. She kept finding more questions and not getting any more answers.

  Before she could respond to the detective’s question, there was a screech of tires in the parking lot and she looked up to see Davis’ black SUV tear into the lot. He frantically put the car in park and looked towards the entrance. Detective Stephenson waved him over.

  “I took the liberty of informing Davis that you had called 911. Since he’s been involved in the investigation and helping us out, I thought he would have liked to know that you were okay.”

  Madeline didn’t tell the detective that s
he already informed Davis where she was going to be. He would’ve heard about this whole situation anyway. She was oddly touched that both men seemed to be concerned with her well-being. Davis approached her and the detective with a quickness that surprised her.

  “Maddie! Are you okay? I literally just read your text when the detective called me. Is William okay? Did you get hurt?” He awkwardly held out his hands as if to engulf her in a hug, but quickly dropped them and ran a hand through his hair.

  As he asked the questions, the paramedics wheeled the stretcher bearing William out the front door towards the waiting ambulance. William seemed to be still passed out, and the paramedics let the detective know they were taking him to Cape Cod Hospital for further observation. His injuries didn’t seem life threatening to them, but since he hadn’t regained consciousness yet, they wanted to keep monitoring him at least overnight.

  “Well, since this is outside my jurisdiction, I’ll get back over the bridge. If you have any other information Madeline, please call me. Anything at all. No more running off without letting someone know what’s going on. You’ve had threats sent to you and there is still a murderer running around. Don’t forget about that.” Detective Stephenson sauntered back to his waiting unmarked car after pausing to talk to the local police.

  Madeline stood there awkwardly with Davis. Clearing her throat, she said, “Thanks for coming down, Davis. I just wish I knew what he had wanted to talk to me about. I wish I could’ve talked to him more before he passed out. He seemed insistent that he had something important to tell me.”

  She thought for a moment, staring out into the now quiet parking lot. “Oh! He did say one weird thing though. I meant to tell the detective, but things got crazy there for a minute.”

  “What did he say?” Davis asked.

  “Something about his daughter. And I saw a small picture broken on the ground of a little girl that might have been who he was talking about. I didn’t even know he had a daughter or a family, did you?”

  Davis rubbed his chin and then shook his head. “I didn’t really know all that much about him to begin with. But he certainly didn’t seem or act like a devoted family guy. And he never wore a wedding ring, so I would’ve assumed he was unmarried. When he became owner of the team there would have been profiles of his life outside of baseball, and I definitely don’t remember family ever being mentioned.”

  Madeline wondered why William would keep the secret of a family or a daughter. Then again, she hadn’t gone out of her way to learn about him too much, so maybe it wasn’t an active secret. Maybe other people knew. He was still on her list of people to find out more about, but she hadn’t done a deep dive on him yet. She made a mental note to check out what she could find on the good old internet when she got home.

  “Are you going to be okay driving home?” Davis asked.

  “Of course, finding William Chase alive is much less scary than finding a dead body. I’m going to just head back home to hunker down for the night. The plans for the team later this week are going to take a lot of energy that I should probably rest up for.” She didn’t tell him that she was also going to start diving into the William Chase and his daughter mystery. If she found anything important, that’s when she’d tell him.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Madeline’s three cats wound themselves around her feet when she arrived home later that night. After all the rigmarole at the Barnstable stadium, she didn’t get back to her house until a bit after 8 p.m. She didn’t fool herself that her cats were really glad she was home, but rather they were just really glad she was home so they could be fed. She popped open some wet food cans, placed them on the floor, and walked to her bedroom shedding her clothes.

  The air conditioner was running full blast due to the summer-like temperatures that had been creeping up the last few weeks. That meant her house was a veritable ice chest. She made it to the bedroom and bundled up in her college sweatpants and a Red Sox hoodie. She pulled her computer from its place next to her bed and logged on. She needed to find out about William’s mystery family. It was causing her Spidey sense to begin tingling and she couldn’t ignore it. There were too many questions piling up and she needed to find some things out.

  First, there was learning about the familial connection between William Chase and Christopher Dailey. Then, there was the whole thing about William trying to get in contact with her so many times. That was definitely worth exploring in and of itself. Did the person who attacked William know that he had contacted her that day? It was just all so suspicious. Either he knew something about the murder that he wanted to tell her about, or he knew exactly who the culprit is. Either way, before passing out he had referenced a mysterious daughter so I had to start digging.

  She knew that it was getting late, but she needed to use the opportunity while things were fresh in her mind. Madeline pulled up Google and typed William’s name in the search bar. Luckily, he was one of the main hits after she included the word “Barnstable” in the search. She clicked on the images button and he was all over the site. She scrolled through a bunch of pictures of him, by himself, at different business functions in the area. Nothing immediately suspicious or even remotely to do with his family jumped out so she continued to the second page of pictures.

  There!

  She rubbed her eyes, not sure if it was the eyestrain from being so late, or if she was actually looking at a picture of William with Jennifer Roberts and Chris Dailey together at some event. She pulled the computer closer to her face, clicked on the image, and opened the page. It was a notice about a fundraiser held in the city for some local charity over five years ago. The caption read, “Local businessman William Chase poses with girlfriend, Jessica Jenkins, and friend, Christopher Dailey.”

  Jessica Jenkins, not Roberts? Girlfriend? That was definitely a picture of Jennifer Roberts as Madeline knew her in the picture. She did a quick Facebook search on Jessica Jenkins and found her right away. The profile hadn’t been active for over three years, and it seemed like she dropped off the earth after that. There weren’t any other sites for her, outside of her media page for the news. She was a social media ghost privately, which was hard to do in that day and age. Digging deeper into the old profile, she found another picture of her with Chris Dailey. They were hanging out on some beach together, and the caption read, “Having a great time on vacation!”

  Madeline sat back in her bed rubbing her temples and tried to sort out the new information. So, wait. Did she date Chris and then William? And they were all friends at one time? Were they still all friends? This just kept getting weirder and weirder. And did it have something to do with the murder or attack on William? She typed in the website of the local TV station to see if they had some sort of biography on Jennifer Roberts. Or Jessica. Whatever she called herself.

  Pulling up the profiles of their “on-air talent” pages, she found Jennifer on the bottom of the list under “new” talent. She clicked on the picture of the heavily made-up Jennifer and scanned the bio they had for her. It was pretty sparse. It had mentioned her arriving from down south to report on local news for the channel. No mention of family, friends, or any other personal information.

  Madeline took a minute to collect her thoughts, looked at the clock, and gasped. It was already one a.m.! She needed to get some sleep before work the next day. Now that she was older, staying up late hurt a lot more than when she was in her twenties. Her friends always joked that she was an eighty-year-old woman in a thirty-year-old body. Saving the pages of both Jessica and Jennifer that she found, she logged off the computer and burrowed under her covers. Sleep for now, investigation for tomorrow.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Unfortunately, with all the thoughts swirling around in Madeline’s head, sleep did not come easily. She tossed and turned most of the night and ended up with only four hours of uninterrupted sleep by the time her alarm rang at 7 a.m. She groaned and stretched, startling the cats on the bed. Lack of sleep was not going to
be an asset today, not if she wanted to get to the bottom of the Jessica/Jennifer/Chris debacle that she found out about last night.

  She showered, ran a blow dryer through her hair, put on a team baseball cap, and waltzed out the door in about half an hour. Before she left, she sent a quick text message to Davis letting him know the most recent drama she found out about last night.

  Hey Davis, Jennifer Roberts isn’t who she says she is. I’ll tell you more at the office.

  Madeline needed a caffeine jolt, so she stopped at the Dunkin’ Donuts down the street from the ballpark. Once she arrived at the ballpark, she enjoyed the sense of calm the early morning provided. Or at least, it provided a sense of calm until she started thinking about the murder again. She saw only two other cars in the parking lot belonging to the field crew, so she knew she’d have the place to herself for a while. She walked into the front office, threw her purse down on her desk chair, and walked towards the tunnel to the field.

  It was still early enough that the players hadn’t reported yet for practice. During the week there were voluntary practices at the beginning of the week for the games on the weekends. Some of the players had other part time jobs outside of the game since it was not as highly paid as the pros. The team had mandatory practices Thursdays and Fridays all day on game weeks since most of the games were on the weekend. Tuesday was a notorious dead time at the park. Even now, there were only a few groundskeepers out on the field trimming up the outfield and raking the infield dirt.

  The field looked pretty good considering the fact the last game was played just a few days previously. Madeline waved at Dave as he watered the pitcher’s mound. This time of the day was great to just enjoy the park. She sighed and turned away from the field to head back to her office. Making the quick trek, she found that the corridor in her office was still quiet.