“Busy day at the club, huh?”
“You could say that.”
Chad pointed at the red welts left on my arm. “Robert?”
Robert’s actions still stunned me. I’d never seen that side of him, didn’t ever imagine him capable of violence. Maybe I’d been blind, ignoring the signs. Inexplicably embarrassed and unable to speak, I just nodded.
Eyes red and swollen, a smear of snot trailing across his cheek, Paul walked up. He kept his eyes averted, refusing to look at me. Chad reached out, cuffing him on the shoulder in that strange man-code that translated to “I’m here for you, brother.”
“I’m not. . .” I cleared my throat, started again. “I don’t know what would have happened if Paul hadn’t come out. I can’t believe Robert would have. . .” My voice deserted me again.
“Listen, I don’t know what’s going on with Robert,” Chad said. “I know he’s freaked out about Randy’s murder and the police questioning him. But that doesn’t excuse this.”
“Wayne,” I said automatically. “But what’s the big deal? They can’t seriously believe he killed Wayne, can they?”
Paul listened avidly, Robert’s woes perking him up.
“I guess he didn’t mention the wrangle he and Wayne got into at the restaurant, huh?”
“They fought?”
“Wayne showed up drunk—not the best move for a meeting with your sponsor. Robert refused to talk to him, which is natural”—I nodded agreement—“and Wayne got pissy. Sounds like there was some pushing and shoving, and a whole lot more cussing. The restaurant manager threatened to call the police, and Wayne took off.
“Anyway, he was killed later that night, so it looks bad. Plus, I know breaking up with you is weighing heavy. Not that it wasn’t the right thing for him to do.”
“He didn’t break up with me. I broke up with him.” It shouldn’t matter who broke up with whom. Even if it did.
Chad smiled. “Even worse. For him, I mean.” Turning to Paul, he said, “Anyway, I guess we can thank you for stepping in. How about we go get some coffee?”
I pulled out, heading for home. Chad could handle the rest.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I woke up to one of those rare Wisconsin freebies—a warm, spring morning. The air smelled fresh and green, the kind of scent laundry detergent manufacturers try to conjure up out of a bunch of chemicals. I cracked some windows and watched Siggy poke his nose at the screen. I wished I could enjoy it as much as he obviously did.
For me, the morning alternated between anger at Robert and worry for Paul, worry for Robert and suspicion of Paul, and, finally, a generalized disgust and suspicion toward the male species altogether. That about covered everything.
I got the time line out. The flowers could have come from Paul. He’d have had to find out where I worked, but he’d proved capable of that. Maybe he sent them to make me feel better, after learning about Wayne’s attack. The enclosed card “Thou hast all the all of me” certainly fit with the idolization Paul revealed last night. Or was I overreacting? Was it just a crush?
Paul’s social skills rated just higher than a house plant’s. He was a nerd’s nerd, a born victim. He had to realize how the guys avoided him, how he was the butt of so many jokes when they couldn’t. Most of the jerks didn’t even wait until his back was turned to treat him like crap. How long could a man take that kind of treatment without retaliating?
He was so hungry for acceptance that he licked up the crumbs of civility dropped by chance from those around him. The only thing I’d ever done for him was to not be overly mean, and he’d been attached to me like a wood tick ever since. I didn’t know anything about him, other than how long he’d been sober, and I even dated that in terms of how long he’d been around to annoy me.
Could he have sent the sonnets? I could imagine him reading Shakespeare. Burying himself in the dusty pages of old books, shutting out the present day where he was picked on, maybe feeling pride at understanding and appreciating a literary icon, while those around him watched Jon and Kate reruns. Too much pride? Did it morph into superiority, contempt?
I didn’t know.
There were times I’d felt uncomfortable with Paul, but mainly that involved the type of social embarrassment that came from geek-adoration. Although, there had been that time in the AA parking lot when I’d been so frightened, but the fear had emanated from Wayne’s presence, not Paul’s. Hadn’t it?
The phone call, too. I’d never discovered how he’d gotten my phone number; it indicated a resourcefulness that I hadn’t expected. Slyness, even. And enough disregard for a person’s privacy to go ahead and call despite AA’s doctrines about anonymity.
Had Paul been the one messing with Wayne’s truck? Carrie hadn’t been very specific, but I could imagine Paul keying the side of Wayne’s vehicle or something similar. Something that didn’t involve direct confrontation, of course. Some type of slap-and-dash retaliation that only required secrecy and a sharp instrument. Was that what Paul had meant when he’d assured me he had an idea?
I tried to recall what I knew about Paul, but he was a blank. I’d always imagined him as some kind of computer techie, but that was probably just stereotyping. Thanks to anonymity and complete disinterest, I didn’t even know his last name or where he lived.
And Robert? Had I ever really known him? On the one hand—charming, attractive, athletic. Cheating, self-centered, and a bully, on the flip. I felt stupid. Of course, I’d only dated the guy a few months. It could’ve been worse.
The police apparently weren’t taken in by his good-guy charm. What had they seen that I hadn’t? Perhaps I’d spent an inordinate amount of time admiring Robert’s butt.
Although on the surface Robert seemed confident, his difficulty with relationships was obvious and predated our dating. He preferred to keep people at a distance, requiring little investment on his part. The two that he’d taken a risk on—myself and Wayne—had blown up in his face within days of each other. Did that trigger the violence?
I supposed it was conceivable that he’d killed Wayne.
I grabbed the time line again. The first sonnet, the doll “present,” arrived literally on my door step the Friday after I broke up with Robert. In fact, all of the sonnets arrived on a Friday, although the last was early morning, a time when Robert was supposedly at work. Or so he said.
He’d certainly been able to adjust his work schedule around his booty calls with skanky Sandra.
As with Paul, there were few people I could ask. I’d never met any of Robert’s friends or family. I had his home and office numbers in Minnesota, but I’d never been to either.
I could, however, ask Chad. He’d been willing to help last night and was the best resource for both men that I could think of. The only resource, as far as that went.
The phone rang interrupting my plotting. Sue’s number popped up.
“Hel—”
“Letty!” Sue’s voice boomed through the receiver. I could hear a car engine and assumed she was driving.
“Sue? Are you okay?”
“Listen! I’m on my way to Robert’s. You’re not going to believe this, but Sandra just busted into the club saying Robert is dead!”
“What?”
“Yeah, I know! She said he was shot. Sound familiar? Anyway, Pete was there, right? At the club, I mean, not Robert’s. We were going to brunch and—”
“Sue!”
“Oh. Right. Okay, so Pete took off to secure the scene or whatever, and I’m heading over, too. He doesn’t know that part yet. It’s a surprise.”
“I’m sure it will be,” I said.
“Are you coming?”
“Already on my way.”
I made the half-hour trip to Robert’s rental in eighteen minutes. Durrant must have called it in en route because the road was clogged with police cars and curious neighbors. Parking a block away, I raced up the sidewalk, searching for Sue, whom I wanted to find, and Durrant, whom I didn’t.
The house was a
small ranch, typically rented by college kids for the school year. It had been deserted back in January; the students bailing out of college and rental lease simultaneously. They’d left a dozen holes in the walls, trashed the floor, and for some obscure reason, re-hung the kitchen cabinets in the living room. During the extensive remodeling, Robert had taken to using it as a base when he came up on weekends and planned to lease it out again come fall.
I’d only been over a couple of times and, in my panic, had forgotten that the detached garage and driveway were located at the rear of the house. Two police officers were stringing yellow crime scene tape around a wide perimeter while several others worked at keeping the looky-loos away. And probably ex-girlfriends, too.
They hadn’t figured on deranged, former schoolteachers, however.
A row of overgrown lilac bushes separated Robert’s from the house next door. An oak stood in the back of the neighboring property, branches hanging over the rental’s back yard. A dilapidated treehouse, really only a bunch of warped two-by-sixes crisscrossing each other, balanced precariously in the spring-bare branches.
Said deranged, former schoolteacher perched like a vulture, peering into the rental’s backyard. Oh shit. Bad image, the vulture and all.
I scurried down the line of lilacs hissing, “Sue!”
She shushed me with a finger to her lips, pointing at a row of boards nailed to the back of the tree trunk. This was supposed to be a ladder. Right. Taking a deep breath and sending a brief 911 to a god I’d always avoided, but who suddenly seemed handy, I climbed.
Each rickety board had been nailed with enough metal to build a space ship, although only a bare minimum of nails had actually made it through the wood to the trunk beyond. Seemed like an important detail to have been overlooked. The majority of nails had only kept the desired course (straight) part way and then folded over on themselves from inexpertly wielded hammers clutched in chubby, boy hands. The remaining nail stubs were then re-pounded, burrowing the shank into the boards sideways and askew, so that several dozen rusting and completely superfluous nail bits decorated the rungs.
About midway up, the board I clung to creaked ominously; I nearly wet my pants. I was suddenly convinced that I was either going to fall on my head, thus becoming a quadriplegic, completely at the mercy of the Shakespeare stalker a la “Rear Window,” or one of the cops would see us and shoot us out of our perch.
I also realized I was just high enough to see over the lilac barrier. Somebody in a white space alien suit and booties was videotaping the scene. Three others likewise bootied but still in street clothes, stood in a half-circle about twenty yards from a recumbent figure on the patchy grass. I thought I recognized Durrant’s back. Thankfully, the group was facing away from our tree. I scrambled up beside Sue.
“Are you crazy?” I whispered.
“Pete knows I’m here. Every few minutes he glares and waves at me to go away. I’ve got permission from the Sterlings though.” She hitched a thumb at the house behind us. “I taught their kids.”
“Can’t they arrest us or something?”
“I don’t see how. We’re not interfering with the scene or getting in their way. We don’t even have cameras. The most they can do is sneer.
“Can you see anything?” she asked.
I’d been avoiding looking at poor Robert, but I did now. At first, because of the milling investigators, I could only see legs. Grey slacks speckled with what I hoped, but didn’t believe, was mud. All I could think of was how badly he would hate lying on the dirty ground like that. Then a cop moved.
“Unh…” we both said. Recoiling, I almost took a header out of the tree. Robert lay on his back, arms splayed out like his body had been flung forcefully back and down. As indeed it had. His face…
I gulped and shut my eyes. Dizzy. Right when I could have used it most, the adrenaline ebbed away, leaving me weak and shaky, a tinny aftertaste sliming my mouth. This, every part of this, was a terrible mistake. I turned to climb down, but Sue grabbed my arm.
“Do you see that?” she asked in a voice that had shrunk to a brittle whisper.
“I can’t look. I don’t want to see any more.”
“I know. Just…I don’t know…just look at his chest. Not the rest. Is that blood?”
“Sue, there’s blood all over!” I gestured wildly at the body, accidentally forgetting my pledge not to look, almost plunging headlong out of the tree for the third time in as many minutes.
She was right. There, centered on his favorite blue, button-down shirt was a heavier saturation of blood, not the splattered spray pattern of the head wound. A pooled concentration the size of my fist, just over the heart.
“You think he was stabbed?” I asked. I wrapped my arms around the trunk as much for solace as for security. The raspy bark scratched my forearms.
“It would fit. If they were looking for a knife in Wayne’s murder, maybe this explains why.”
“So, somebody shoots him—Robert, I mean, and Wayne, too, for that matter—and then, what? Stabs him, too? Why? And why would anyone shoot Robert? He was an ass, but this is crazy!”
“Those are real good questions, miss.” A voice spoke from the bushes, and I felt an entirely unexpected kinship with Moses. But not in a good way.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Tree climbing down is markedly more harrowing than tree climbing up, especially with Blodgett waiting impatiently below. If I fell, I planned to land on Blodgett, thus ending both our problems.
Fortunately—or, unfortunately, if Blodgett succeeded in throwing me in a dark cell for the rest of my life—I made it to the ground without mishap. Sue was still three-quarters of the way up, stuck and grumbling. I ignored her.
Blodgett wore a dirt-brown suit, as wrinkled as a basset, that matched his eyes. His expression hovered between somber and blank. Not a lot of range. He ran his gaze up and down my body without the slightest bit of seductive energy. Looking for blood or defense wounds, more likely.
“Hello, Detective,” I said. “What can I do for you?”
“You can stop playing Tarzan, for starters,” he said.
A voice from above grunted, “Me Jane.” Blodgett ignored her.
“I know,” I glanced upward. “It wasn’t my idea. I’m sorry. And I’m really sorry about Robert. I can’t believe he’s dead. It doesn’t make sense.” At best, I sounded fake as hell; at worst, heartless. The situation was so surreal that I hadn’t yet accepted the fact of Robert’s death—much less his murder—despite having seen his body with my own eyes.
“Gee, for a minute there, I thought you were confessing.”
Halfway up the tree, the branches rustled, assorted swear words drifted down like dead leaves.
“Of course not,” I said. “I didn’t kill him—or Wayne, either. But I want to help you catch whoever did.”
“Good.” Blodgett was a keep-it-simple kind of guy. “We found his driver’s license in his wallet, but the nature of the wound makes it impossible to use it as an I.D.” Then, he asked, “Would you be willing to identify him?”
“You mean now?” My voice sounded like it came from very far away.
He had his notepad in his hand, ready to go. “Not just yet. Why don’t you tell me what you know?” Another big, open-ended question—he liked them.
“I saw Robert last night at the club.” I swallowed. “The AA club. Um, a little after six or so. We argued.” I looked Blodgett straight in the eyes, hoping the admission wasn’t going to cause him to whip out the handcuffs. “Or, rather, I was arguing with Sandra, the sleaze he was cheating on me with while we were dating. And, yes, I know what that looks like, but if I was going to kill all the guys that couldn’t keep it in their pants, there’d be a whole lot more dead guys lying around Chippewa Falls and surrounding counties. A couple in Minnesota, too.
“Anyway,” I continued, “he left the club before I did.” I stuttered to a stop, realizing too late that I was about to provide Blodgett with another sacrificial la
mb. Or with the Shakespeare stalker, if my suspicion du jour were true. Sue provided a distraction by dropping the last few feet and falling on her butt. Blodgett reached a hand down and hauled her up.
“You were saying?” On the scent, not deterred by crazy women falling out of the sky.
“Well, he left before I did. And I haven’t seen him since, until…” I pointed over the lilac bushes.
“So, this Sandra? Is this the same Sandra that found Mr. Preston this morning?”
“Yes. Yes, it was.” I perked up. A silver lining. Maybe he’d arrest Sandra instead of me. Blodgett nodded as he wrote. “Actually, she was mad at Robert, too, because he took me out to Chandlers Friday night.”
Blodgett just looked at me. “I thought you just said you were broke up?”
Oh. Well, that might look bad. Behind Blodgett’s back, Sue rolled her eyes at my blunder. Her snort, however, could be heard from any direction. Without taking his eyes off me, Blodgett turned to speak over his shoulder. “How about you wait in the front yard, Ms. Reed.” It wasn’t a question.
“We did break up, but he came to my office Friday afternoon, asking to talk to me. We decided on Chandlers. Anyway, he wanted to… Well, he seemed to be worried about his alibi for Wayne’s murder. I don’t know why.” I studied Blodgett’s eyes while I said that, watching for a sign that Robert had reason to worry. Blodgett gave nothing away. “He seemed to think we could alibi each other, but, of course, that wouldn’t work since we’d already given statements.”
“Was he stupid, or did he just think we were?” Blodgett asked.
“Neither. I think he was just scared. His reputation is really, really important to him. He owns a real estate agency in Minnesota and is very active in the community. That’s why he comes up here on weekends for his AA meetings. He didn’t want to run the risk of running into anyone who might find out he was an alcoholic.
“From something he’d said earlier, I took it that he was in town that night, but if the police think he was trying to avenge me or something. . .” I shrugged. “Let’s just say that wouldn’t have been in character for him.
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