The Sixth Mystery

by Lee Semsen

  “How do I get hold of you if I need to talk to you again?”

  “Call my namesake. Leave a message and I’ll call you back.”

  “Sorry, sir,” Driscoll said after the door had closed behind Marconi.

  “Sorry for what, Driscoll?”

  “I should have followed up on that address in Boise.”

  “No matter,” said Inch. “I don’t think he’s our murderer.”

  “Neither do I,” said Driscoll.

  “Although if he is,” said Inch, “he certainly played his hand well. But that’s what he does for a living, isn’t it? He plays his hand, and gambles that it’s the best at the table.”

  Chapter 8

  Charles Evans had been dead for a week, and if finding his murderer was a twelve-step program, Inch figured he had taken two, maybe three steps so far, the most recent one this morning when he’d learned from Jody Graham how Evans had been blackmailed into resigning. If, however, he thought of the investigation as a ladder, then the next rung was missing. His encounter with Philip Marconi had been interesting but tangential to the case; the conversations that had followed were interesting in their own ways, too, but ultimately no more informative.

  He phoned Eugene Alderson in Scottsdale early in the afternoon. A woman answered; he asked for Mr. Alderson; she asked who’s calling?; and he identified himself. That led to several seconds of dead air, and finally Inch asked if he was speaking to Mrs. Alderson. After another few seconds she said yes, she was Mrs. Alderson; and she was sorry, but Mr. Alderson wasn’t taking telephone calls today. Inch replied that it was important, and could he call back tomorrow, or could Mr. Alderson return his call when he was available? That brought on another moment of silence, which she ended by saying in a slightly elevated tone that she regretted that she hadn’t made it clear; that Mr. Alderson was ill and couldn’t come to the phone today or any other day. Inch, who had lost whatever sympathy he might have had for the ex-commissioners halfway through his meeting with Roderick Fowler, asked her bluntly what was the matter, and with her voice pitched even higher, she told him that Mr. Alderson suffered from dementia; that he was lucid on occasion but there was no telling when those occasions would be, and if Inch had talked to Rod Fowler, as she knew he had, he should have known about Mr. Alderson’s condition and not bothered her or her husband. Unabashed, Inch responded that Fowler had not said anything about Mr. Alderson’s illness, nor had he been helpful in any other respect except that he had confirmed Inch’s suspicion that he and Mr. Alderson had used their influence as commissioners to make a great deal of money for themselves and that they had done everything in their power to keep it a secret; and furthermore, their activities appeared to be connected with the recent murder of the former county sheriff. That was greeted with another extended silence, and then she said quietly that she didn’t know anything about that, and hung up.

  Ann Lamott, the former commission secretary, still lived in Walla Walla – not far from Inch’s own house, as he discovered when he looked her up in the telephone directory. He decided to interview her in person rather than over the phone, and at 3:30 he left the office, telling Driscoll he wouldn’t return until the next morning.

  Mrs. Lamott was at home – she rarely strayed far from her neighborhood, she said, and hadn’t left Walla Walla for years – and unlike Roderick Fowler, she recognized Inch immediately, and would have known him, she said, even if he hadn’t been wearing his uniform. Also unlike Roderick Fowler, she lived in a house that was small, modestly furnished, and probably priced at less than a hundred thousand dollars when she and her husband had purchased it 40 years ago. Inch took that to mean that she hadn’t been a party to the commissioners’ money-making schemes, or if she had, she hadn’t spent the money on herself. On her grandchildren? Inch wondered. But before the conversation was a minute old, she referred to herself as “one of those old ladies who kept cats instead of children.” She and her husband, who had passed away a few years ago, had been childless, which was one of the reasons she had taken a job. “If Douglas had wanted me to stay home and dust the furniture and scrub the floors all day, I would have done it. But he was one of those men who enjoyed working around the house, not only fixing leaky faucets and patching the roof, but helping with the cooking and the dishes, too. So I had time to work outside the home, and he encouraged me to keep working as long as I enjoyed it.”

  “What made you retire, finally?” said Inch.

  “I was 69 years old, Mr. Inch, and I’d had that job for almost 50 years.” She looked at him shrewdly. “But there’s more to your question than that, isn’t there. Or rather, you’re hoping there’s more to my answer.”

  “You retired on the day that the present commissioners took office,” Inch said. “You could have stayed until the end of the month, or the end of the biennium….”

  “Or until my 70th birthday, or until I collected my 50-year pin. People never say, ‘I think I’ll retire three weeks from Tuesday.’ They pick a day that means something. I chose the day that Mr. Alderson and Mr. Dubois and Mr. Fowler left office. It seemed as good as any.”

  “I suppose it was,” said Inch. “Tell me about your last few years on the job.”

  “There was nothing remarkable about them.”

  “Then tell me about the commission. How it did its work; what the commissioners did when they met. You recorded the proceedings, didn’t you?”

  “I did,” she said. “Usually there wasn’t a great deal to record. I rarely needed my shorthand.”

  “Then you didn’t write down everything that was said?”

  “Goodness, no! What a waste of ink that would have been! If it wasn’t on the agenda or if it wasn’t connected with the county, I ignored it.”

  “So a lot of what was discussed during those meetings had nothing to do with the commission’s regular business?” said Inch.

  “Nothing at all,” she said. “It was just chit-chat.” Inch must have looked puzzled, because she added, “Would it help if I described the meetings?”

  Inch said it would.

  “Mr. Dubois was the chairman, and he always typed up the agendas. He would begin by calling the meeting to order and saying ‘Let the minutes show that the commission convened at such-and-such a time and that Mr. Alderson, Mr. Fowler, Mrs. Lamott, and I were present.’ Then he’d ask for additions to the agenda, although there never were any, and next he’d ask if there was any old business. There never was any of that, either. Then he would call for reports to the commission – from county departments and contractors and so on. These were presented in written form by Mr. Alderson. Mr. Dubois would ask if the reports should be accepted as presented, which they always were; there was never any discussion. Then he would ask for new business. It was Mr. Fowler’s responsibility to prepare summaries of the new business if there was any, and these, too, were always accepted as presented. Last were the action items. They were never discussed, just put up for a vote, and the votes were always unanimous. That was it. The whole process usually took less than half an hour, and for the next hour or two, they would talk about the weather, or sports – Mr. Alderson was a great baseball fan – or their plans for the weekend. Or read magazines. I always brought a book. Finally, after enough time had passed, Mr. Dubois would adjourn the meeting.”

  “But,” said Inch, no less confused than before, “if that’s all they did, why did they meet in executive session?”

  “Well,” she said, “they never gave me a reason, but it wasn’t hard to guess why. You’re a bright young man; you ought to be able to guess, too.”

  “I’m not young, and lately I haven’t been too bright. I’d rather you do the guessing.”

  “They didn’t want anyone to know that they spent most of the time gossiping. People would wonder what they were paying for. You know how upset they get when they think they aren’t getting their money’s worth from a public employee.”

  “So the three of them were just trying to cover up the fact that they
weren’t doing their jobs?”

  “Oh, they were doing their jobs,” she said. “But they weren’t doing them then and there.”

  “They were meeting somewhere privately, you mean.”

  “How else could they have been so efficient with their reports prepared and their votes precast?”

  “Did they ever allude to these other meetings?” said Inch.

  “Not directly,” she said. “Not at all, really, except once I remember they were taking a vote, and Mr. Alderson – he usually voted first – Mr. Alderson said ‘aye,’ and Mr. Dubois was about to ask Mr. Fowler for his vote and then he stopped and gave Mr. Alderson a funny look. Mr. Alderson looked at him blankly and finally said, ‘Did I say ‘aye’?’ and Mr. Dubois said, ‘Yes, Gene; you did. Did you mean ‘nay’? Mr. Alderson said, ‘Aye – I mean yes, I meant ‘nay’,’ and Mr. Dubois said, ‘I thought so. Mrs. Lamott, let the minutes show that Mr. Alderson voted ‘nay.’ And that was that, except that afterwards, Mr. Fowler always voted first.”

  “I talked to Mr. Alderson’s wife earlier today,” said Inch. “Apparently he suffers from dementia.”

  “Oh, yes. Back then we thought it was absent-mindedness, but it may have been Alzheimer’s in its early stages.”

  “Do you remember what the vote was about?”

  “Let me see…. I should remember because it was one of the few times that the meeting didn’t go like clockwork. The county was buying some land. Or it might have been a building.” She rapped herself on the side of the head. “No; it just isn’t there anymore. I do recall when it happened, though. It was shortly before Mr. Evans resigned.”

  “What do you remember about that – about the day he quit?”

  “It was like watching a play, as if they were reading from a script. Of course it always was. Mr. Dubois handed Mr. Evans a sheet of paper – a letter, I think, although I never saw it – and Mr. Evans took it and read it and shook his head a few times. He said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ and Mr. Dubois said, ‘We want you to hand in your resignation.’”

  “Did Mr. Evans seem surprised at what they were asking? Or indignant or outraged?”

  “No,” she replied. “All he said was that they’d have his letter of resignation by the end of the day.”

  Inch wasn’t sure how to continue. So far his questions – and Ann Lamott’s responses – had been limited to a bare account of events. As secretary, that had been her job; to report what had happened, not to judge it. In the dealings of the commission, she had been a bystander, not a participant. She was an innocent bystander, too, up to a point, unless refusing – no; the word was too strong – unless neglecting to take action amounted to culpability. What action could she have taken? If she was telling the truth, the commissioners had kept their secrets from her, too, not only from the public. All she could have done was to ask what they were hiding – and she was certainly intelligent enough to see that the most likely reason for the commissioners’ secrecy was that they were hiding something. Had she ever asked? Inch hesitated to put the question too baldly; it would sound like an insult or an accusation. So he couched it in the vaguest terms he could. “Didn’t you think it was a little odd?”

  “The way Mr. Evans responded?” she asked.

  “That, for one thing,” said Inch.

  She peered at Inch as if she suspected him of equivocating, which he was. “Yes and no,” she said. “Yes, because it was so unexpected. I had no idea that Mr. Evans had done anything wrong. Before you ask, I never found out what it was, either. But in a way it wasn’t odd, because they undoubtedly had settled everything beforehand, as they always did.”

  “Then you think that Mr. Evans had met with the commission previously; that they had confronted him with whatever they thought he had done, and told him that he would either have to quit or be fired, and what you witnessed was a mere formality intended to put his resignation on the record?”

  “I think that was how they did everything,” she said.

  “And wasn’t that a little odd?”

  “It was efficient,” she said.

  He couldn’t avoid the question. “But was it wrong?”

  “Wrong in what way?”

  “The public has a right to know,” said Inch. “A right to know how their elected officials arrive at the decisions they make. Otherwise they can’t tell whether their interests are being represented.”

  Until then, she had kept her eyes on Inch. Now for the first time she looked down. “Mr. Inch, have you ever been pulled into something so slowly, so gradually that you aren’t even aware that it’s happening?”

  Inch wondered if his marriage would qualify, but he decided not to mention it. “Is that how the scripted meetings began?”

  “At first it was just one or two items, and I didn’t notice, or if I did, I thought that they were getting to know each other so well that they knew what to do without arguing or deliberating. I couldn’t see anything wrong with that. As they continued to do more and more of the commission’s business that way, I thought so much the better. And when it got to the point where the entire agenda was just open and shut, it seemed, well, normal. Maybe I felt a little guilty reading romance novels while I was supposed to be working, but that was easy to rationalize. I’d never been paid very well, and for years I’d worked 10 or 15 hours a week off the clock. So it all seemed fine, and the public didn’t care. Oh, once there was a newspaper reporter poking around and asking questions, but nothing ever came of it. And then there was a man who made a public records request; that was a little later; but Mr. Dubois took care of that –”

  “Do you remember the name of the man who made the request?” said Inch.

  “No,” she said after some consideration. “I never spoke with him. Anyway, aside from those two, there were never any problems. The commission always completed its work on schedule. If something was wrong, it didn’t seem wrong.”

  “What about Charles Evans?” said Inch.

  “Well, that was unfortunate,” she said. “I thought he was a nice man, and I was sorry for what happened to him, but he must have done something that he shouldn’t have; otherwise Mr. Dubois wouldn’t have asked him to quit.”

  “I don’t think Mr. Evans did anything he shouldn’t have, Mrs. Lamott.”

  “How do you know, Mr. Inch? Even the best men can be corrupted if circumstances turn against them.”

  “I’m almost certain he wasn’t at fault. Did you hear that he was killed last week?”

  “Yes, I did. Poor man.”

  “I have reason to believe that his murder and his dismissal are connected,” said Inch.

  “Is that why you’re here? Because he was killed for something he did ten years ago?”

  “Not for something that he did,” said Inch. “For something that he wanted to do but couldn’t.”

  Ann Lamott had said that she’d seen no evidence of misconduct. Whether that was an honest assessment or a rationalized one, there was no sense in arguing the point – and besides, she hadn’t been in a position to question what the commissioners were doing. They had the power, and she didn’t, and if she had complained or objected, she probably would have been fired. And who would she have complained to? Not the county attorney. If what Fowler had said was true, the C.A. had colluded with the commissioners in covering up their illegal activities.

  But the interview with Ann Lamott hadn’t been a complete waste of time. Although she hadn’t been able to remember his name, she had mentioned a man who had filed a request for the commission’s public records, which implied that he’d suspected something was wrong and wanted to find out what it was, or that he was sure that something was wrong and wanted his suspicions confirmed. Either way, he might have information that Inch didn’t have, so the first thing Inch did Tuesday morning was to hand the problem over to Driscoll. And instead of opening his laptop, which was what Inch expected, Driscoll picked up the telephone. He had the man’s name in less than a minute.

  “Arthur Sim
pson, sir,” Driscoll said after he’d hung up the phone. “He lives north of town, just past the airport.”

  “Good work, Driscoll.”

  “Thank you, sir, but it’s not necessarily good news. He’s made dozens of disclosure requests in the last decade. City and state, too, according to the public records officer.”

  “So they could be nuisance requests,” said Inch.

  “Probably,” said Driscoll. “There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to them except that he’s hit every department in the county.”

  “Including the sheriff’s department?” said Inch. “I don’t recall seeing anything like that.”

  “You were in court, sir,” said Driscoll. “I sent the report to the records officer. I’m pretty sure I told you about it.”

  “What report did he ask for?”

  “The woman who shot the man who killed her father,” said Driscoll. “The antiques dealer. You remember that, don’t you?”

  Inch remembered it too well; the shooting was something he should have foreseen. He didn’t regret the man’s death, however, as much as the fact that he could have prevented it. “Did he ever follow up on the request?” Inch said.

  “No, sir. He must have been satisfied with what we sent.”

  “If he bothered to read it,” said Inch. “Apparently Mr. Simpson has been chivvying the county for at least ten years.”

  “Probably longer,” said Driscoll.

  “So that request you filled may not have been the first one he directed at the sheriff’s office.”

  “Do you want me to call back and ask?” said Driscoll.

  “If you would be so kind.”

  It turned out that Charles Evans had been the target of two public records requests, both filed by Mr. Simpson. One of them had concerned his investigation into the death of Emily Reed. Evans had refused the request, saying that with respect to the sheriff’s office, there were no public records because the investigation was a private one. The other involved the death of a farmer near College Place.