* * *
“What’s going on with the two of you?” I asked as I filled up our cups. Ned stirred sugar into his, then motioned over to the sofa. I leaned back against the cushions and took a sip from my cup. There wasn’t any milk in the fridge, but I didn’t care. Even black, this was the best coffee I’d ever had.
“Let me ask you a question, Mollie. Would you ever take something that was important to Scooter, that he had spent days organizing, and completely undo all the work he had put into it?”
“Well, he’s pretty disorganized with laundry. He always leaves his dirty socks on the floor, and I end up having to put them in the hamper. Does that count?”
“Wow, that’s brave. If I ever did that, Nancy would kill me.” He smiled. “But that really wasn’t what I was talking about.”
“So tell me. Maybe I can help.”
“I don’t know if anyone can help,” Ned said, wringing his hands together.
“Well, maybe I can’t help, but I can listen. It might make you feel better to get it off your chest.”
“You know how I like old movies?” I nodded. “I’ve been collecting DVDs for years and keep them in plastic storage tubs in the spare bedroom. Nancy started complaining about how much space they were taking up. Then our son suggested I transfer them to the computer. It sounded like a good idea. Nancy would be happy that there was more room, and I could play them directly from my laptop.”
“That is a good idea. I’ve heard that lots of people who live on boats do the same thing.”
“Right. Same reason that e-readers are so popular. Cruisers can’t afford to carry lots of books, considering how many spare parts they need to stow on board.”
“How does Nancy figure into all this?”
“I spent a long time separating them into different piles based on the type of movie they were—westerns, comedies, thrillers, epics, that sort of thing. I even had a stack dedicated to films featuring Peter Lorre.”
I smiled, remembering how Ned had been the one to name our cat after Peter Lorre’s detective character in his Mr. Moto films. Only he hadn’t realized at first that it was a she, not a he, which was why she was now known as Mrs. Moto. Her black markings in the shape of eyeglasses and the fact that her breed had Japanese origins had reminded Ned of the lead character in the movies.
Ned took another sip of his coffee. “I had it all planned out. I put the discs in groups to make it easier to save them in separate folders on my computer. That way, if I was in the mood for a World War II movie, for example, I would be able to go straight to that folder and find one easily.”
“Sounds like a great system. So what happened?”
“Nancy’s what happened. She got a bee in her bonnet that I wasn’t doing it right. She said my approach didn’t make sense. I told her I had it set up just the way I wanted. Then one day when I was out, she decided to reorganize everything alphabetically. When I came back and saw what she had done, I was furious.”
“Maybe she was just trying to help,” I said tentatively.
“That’s what she said. But I didn’t ask her to help, and I certainly didn’t want her help.” He walked over to the window and stared outside.
While he collected his thoughts, I refilled our coffee, stirring extra sugar into his. After a few moments, he sat back down.
“Thanks,” he said when I handed him his cup. “I’m sorry to dump this all on you.”
“Don’t worry about it. Sometimes you need to get things off your chest.”
“When it comes to running the marina, her organizational skills are great, second to none,” he said. “She enjoys doing all the paperwork, managing suppliers, and overseeing the staff. I’m happy she takes care of all that. Believe me, I don’t want to be in charge of making arrangements for the garbage dumpsters to be emptied. But when it comes to my movies, I wanted to be the one in charge of that.”
“Have you tried talking to her about it?”
“Lots of times, but she can’t or won’t admit to what she did.”
“I have a feeling that kind of thing doesn’t come easily to Nancy.”
Ned smiled. “You’re probably right.”
“I can kind of relate to how she feels. I hate admitting when I’m wrong.” I leaned forward and patted his hand. “You guys will work through it.”
“You’re right, we will. When I think about couples like Norm and Suzanne, I’m grateful that we’ve got a solid marriage at the core.”
“Do you think he could have killed her?”
Ned hesitated, then said, “I can’t say for sure.”
“What can you say?”
“He has a temper.” He shrugged. “Although everyone around town already knows that. But…”
“But what?”
“I saw him put a guy in a choke hold once. We’re not talking an ordinary fistfight that sometimes happens when guys have had too much to drink. This fellow was standing outside the Tipsy Pirate having a smoke, and Norm grabbed him from behind, totally unprovoked. I saw him say something to him before letting him go, and then he laughed when the guy collapsed on the ground.”
“That’s awful!”
Ned chewed on his lip. “The worst part about it was that I was across the street and should have rushed over to stop it, but I just froze. By the time I came to my senses and went over to help, Norm had already taken off.”
“Did you mention it to the police?”
“I did, but the guy didn’t want to press charges, so nothing came of it.”
Ned looked at me grimly. “So yeah, could I see Norm murdering someone? Sure. But his own wife? That I’m not so sure about.”
11
FUN WITH MARKERS
Okay, so remember when I’d told Chief Dalton that I didn’t touch anything at the crime scene, or accidentally borrow it, stash it away, and forget about it? Well, that wasn’t exactly the truth. But it wasn’t a lie either. I actually did forget. You would have, too, if you’d been confronted with a dead body. Finding Suzanne had really thrown me for a loop. It wasn’t until later that I remembered the incident with the shoe. Of course, the chief didn’t see it that way.
“What do you mean, you forgot?” The burly man leaned forward across his desk. “You picked up a shoe and went in search of another one. You just spent five minutes describing the exact shade of blue it was…” I waited while he referred to his notebook. “Here it is—robin’s-egg blue. And you went on in excruciating detail about what type of skirt she was wearing…” He made another check. “A pencil cut skirt. Why would anyone name a style of clothing after a writing implement?”
“Can I go now?”
“No. Back to the shoe. You held it in your hand just minutes before I questioned you, and you forgot about it?”
“But I dropped it.”
“So when you drop things, you no longer remember them?”
He made a show of dropping a pen on the floor. He bent down and picked it up, then removed the cap in a dramatic fashion. “Good thing I remembered I was holding this just a second ago,” he said. “It’s one of my favorites.”
He jotted down a few notes on a piece of paper while I tried to make myself comfortable on the hard wooden chair in front of his desk. I don’t think the townspeople would object if he spent a little bit of our tax money on some cushions.
He raised his head and caught me squirming. “Officer Moore is going to be back in a few minutes with some photos of the crime scene. I’ll want you to review them, so you can point out where the evidence was originally before you contaminated the crime scene.”
While he was scribbling things down—probably specifications for a more uncomfortable chair for visitors to sit on—I looked around his office. There was a stack of file folders on one side of the desk next to a coffee cup crammed full of markers. Maybe he spent his spare time coloring in drawings of jail cells and squad cars.
I watched as he pulled a green marker and an orange one out. After debating between the two, he jam
med the orange one back. Good choice—green was much easier on the eyes. Next, he underlined something on his notepad.
“What does green stand for?”
“Things to follow up on,” he said without looking up.
“Like the message spray-painted on Norm’s boat,” I suggested. The chief ignored me and selected a pink marker.
“Okay, since you’re not exactly in a talkative mood, how about if I make an educated guess? It has to do with the suspects in the two murders.” I pulled the cup closer to me and selected a dignified marker, a fine-tipped black one. I got my notebook out of my bag and opened it up to a list of names.
The chief looked pointedly at the black marker.
“Do you mind if I use this one?” I asked.
“I do.” He pulled open the top drawer of his desk and handed me a run-of-the-mill ballpoint pen. He pointed at the container of markers. I replaced the black one, then examined the pen in my hand.
“You don’t happen to have a blue one I could use instead of this one, do you?”
“Does this look like Walmart?” He glanced at his watch and muttered something about Officer Moore taking a long time.
I put a star next to a couple of names on my list. The pen left annoying globs of ink on the page. “Okay, why don’t we start with people who had motive to kill both Darren and Suzanne? Now, that’s the tricky part of this investigation, isn’t it? Who would want to murder both of them? Melvin wouldn’t have killed Darren—he’s his own flesh and blood—and one would think Norm wouldn’t have murdered Suzanne—she’s his wife. Rather, she was his wife.”
I noticed the chief had paused his scribbling. I took that as a sign to continue. “But what about Liam? He and Darren got into a fight over Alejandra at the marina barbecue. He could have killed Darren in a jealous rage.” I tapped my pen on my notebook. “Did you know that Scooter doesn’t think anyone would kill just for love? But I happen to know for a fact that it’s the number one cause of spousal homicide.”
“And how do you know that?”
“I read an article on it. A scholarly article.”
The chief smirked. “You do realize that what you read in the National Enquirer isn’t exactly written by academics.”
I slammed my pen down on his desk. “I’ll have you know that I read it in Extraterrestrial Studies Quarterly, which is a highly regarded, peer-reviewed journal.”
Chief Dalton plucked a purple marker out of the container and went back to his notepad.
“Although there did seem to be some issues between Suzanne and Liam.”
I watched as the chief’s eyebrows twitched slightly. He was definitely listening. “Suzanne went on and on about her son and how much better he would be as a successor to Norm. She didn’t exactly think Liam had a lot going for him in the intellectual department. Maybe he got tired of her attitude?”
Both of his eyebrows shot up on his forehead. He quickly scribbled something down.
“Of course, Norm had his share of enemies. Maybe someone killed his wife to send a message to him.”
“You do realize that the murders might not be related,” the chief said. He tore off the colorful pages from the pad and stuck them in a file folder.
“I guess,” I said. “But what are the chances that two murders happened within days of each other, in a small town, and they aren’t related?”
The door to the chief’s office opened, and Officer Moore poked her head in. “Do you have a sec, chief?”
“Sure.” The burly man rose. As he walked around the desk, he pointed at the markers. “Don’t touch anything while I’m gone.”
I held out for a minute, but there was this one pen that looked like it might be a nice shade of robin’s-egg blue. I couldn’t help myself. As I reached across the chief’s desk, my foot got caught in my purse strap and I stumbled, knocking the markers to the floor along with the file folders.
Fortunately, the coffee cup didn’t break. I set it back on the desk, scooped up the markers, and replaced them in the container. The file folders were a different matter. They had scattered across the room, sending the papers flying out of them into a jumbled mess. I sat on the floor and attempted to sort everything back into the right folder.
Nancy would have had a field day here. I’m sure she could have organized the documents in no time, probably developing a new and improved filing system in the process. I, on the other hand, was struggling to determine whether all the expense reports belonged together or were meant to be placed in separate folders based on date.
As I started to collate the papers, I found an evidence bag stuck between two autopsy reports. Inside was a piece of lined pale-green paper that looked like it had been ripped out of a notebook. The top corner was missing, and there were dark stains scattered on the page. But what really caught my eye was the message, written in block letters.
If you want to get it back, meet me on The Codfather at 9:00 PM. Bring $5,000 in small bills. Wait for me in the main cabin. Come alone. Don’t even think about going to the police. If you do, I’ll know about it and then I’ll destroy you.
While I tried to process what I had just read, the door opened. “What’s going on here?” the chief demanded. “I thought I told you not to touch anything.”
“It was an accident. These fell off your desk, and I was just picking them up.”
“Give those to me,” he barked. He grabbed the folders and papers, but I held on to the evidence bag.
“Do you want to tell me about this?” I asked.
“I most certainly do not.”
“I’ve seen this before.”
“Don’t tell me you touched that, too, at the crime scene.”
“I wasn’t actually sure it was found there, but now you’ve confirmed it.” He snatched the bag from my hand. “But I did recognize the paper. It’s an interesting shade of green. I saw what must have been the corner of the page get blown away by the wind.”
“So you didn’t touch this?” he asked, placing the bag on the center of his desk.
“The shoes, yes. The paper, no.” I leaned forward to have another look. “What do you think the message means? What did they have on Suzanne that she was willing to pay five thousand dollars for?”
Officer Moore knocked on the door. “I’ve got those photos ready.”
“Great. Why don’t you get set up in the conference room, and I’ll bring Mrs. McGhie down there in a minute?”
I picked my purse up off the floor and edged toward the door.
“I’m not finished with you yet,” the chief said.
While he paced back and forth behind his desk, I could hear Officer Moore in the hallway telling someone that they found an empty spray-paint can, but that there weren’t any prints on it or on anything else at the scene. This was turning out to be a very productive visit to the police station. First, learning about the message the killer had sent Suzanne, and now the spray paint. And, as a bonus, when I’d picked up Suzanne’s autopsy report, I’d noticed that the time of death had been between nine and ten in the evening.
“Are you listening to me?” The chief had stopped pacing and was staring at me.
“Uh, yeah.” I tiptoed over to his desk and set the ballpoint pen he had lent me down. “There you go.”
He threw his hands up in the air. “Fine. Let’s just go look at those photos and be done with it.”
* * *
After I had finished reviewing the photographs and explaining in excruciating detail exactly where Suzanne’s shoes had been originally, I sat on a bench in the police station lobby and gave Scooter a call. He had left a few messages checking to see if I was all right. I reassured him that I had recovered from the shock of finding Suzanne’s body and told him about the new leads I was going to follow up on.
Before he could try to dissuade me from investigating the two murders further and possibly putting myself in danger, I changed the subject and asked what he wanted to do about dinner. Apparently, he and Mrs. Moto had someth
ing special planned, provided I agreed to swing by the grocery store and pick up some Cap’n Crunch and half a dozen cans of Frisky Feline Ocean’s Delight.
After he promised that cereal and cat food weren’t involved in his secret recipe, I ended the call. As I walked down the steps from the police station, I ran into Melvin. He looked terrible. His face was gaunt, he had dark circles under his eyes, and his hands were shaking as they gripped the metal railing on the stairs. When he reached the top step, he stumbled. I rushed over to take his arm.
“Are you okay?” I asked. I pushed the door open, ushered him inside, and held his arm while he slumped on the bench.
“What is with these people?” he demanded angrily. “All I want to do is bury that boy in peace. I was at the funeral parlor with his parents making arrangements when the police chief summoned me here to answer more questions. How many more questions could they have of me? It’s their job to figure out what happened and bring his murderer to justice, not mine!”
“Maybe it’s not about Darren. Maybe it’s about Suzanne,” I said.
He cocked his head at me. “Suzanne? Why would the police want to talk to me about her?”
“You haven’t heard? She was killed yesterday in the boatyard.”
“Killed? How?”
“Someone untied the ladder from Norm’s boat. Then when Suzanne was climbing up it, they pushed it, and she fell to her death.”
“Are you saying it’s murder?”
“Looks like it.”
Melvin frowned. “No, I hadn’t heard. It’s no secret that Norm and I don’t get along, but I’d never wish that on him. I know what it’s like to lose your wife.” He slapped his hands on his thighs. “No, this can’t be about Suzanne. I didn’t even know about it.”
“I think it must have happened sometime between nine and ten. I’m sure you have a good alibi for then.”
Bodies in the Boatyard Page 14
