by Leslie Leigh
"I'm sorry. That's the funniest thing I ever heard."
"Do me a favor and don’t share it for now."
"You gotta meet some of these guys. Hoo boy."
"Tell me what made you laugh," she said, concealing the depth of her annoyance.
"Like I said, you gotta meet these guys. They’re good men, most of 'em. But they're, you know, blue collar. Like me. I'm blue collar and proud of it. We keep America runnin'. But these guys and a girl like Honey Reilly? It's just funny. It's like a construction worker datin' the queen of England. It would never happen."
"You don’t think so?"
"Not in a million years."
"You're sure about that. Even if Honey Reilly liked to slum it?"
"Listen, if she liked to slum it, she slummed it with retail managers or small business owners. Not working class. Nope. Didn’t happen."
"You knew her that well?"
"Nope. But I knew what she was like."
"Can you show me around a bit? And if you don’t mind, there's someone here I'd like to have a word with. Guy by the name of Matson?"
"Sure. Lemme take you to him. You'll probably want a hardhat. And put this on." He handed her a tag on a lanyard to wear around her neck. It had the company's logo – a rock with a crack down the middle against a green mountain – and it read simply, "Visitor."
Brugel was a gracious host, despite his rough exterior. He obviously knew his trade backward and forward, and seemed proud to impart his hard-earned knowledge. Describing the years of carving, their international contracts, how they still do some things the old-fashioned way, all imparted with a pride that Allie seldom encountered in the world of Verdenier social events and posturing, Brugel talked extensively on all subjects granite.
They entered a machine shop with about a dozen workers all involved in cutting, splitting, washing, and stacking. A barrage of hammer blows assaulted Allie's ears. Eight hours of this a day, five days a week, would drive her to throw herself over the precipice of the chasm in no time.
They passed by a table of tools. Every single one looked like a holdover from a more barbaric time, and yet every one still had a great deal of use. Brugel described the functions of each, using rocky terminology she'd never heard before. She found herself overwhelmed suddenly. But not because of the onslaught of specialist verbiage, but because this whole time, she'd been keeping her eyes open for a possible murder weapon.
Mashing hammer, jointer, blocking chisel. The tools of the trade all had names that implied the violence for which they were designed. It was then her mind began to wander away from Brugel's lecture as she considered the tools.
The hammers were the most imposing, with heads of solid steel. Any one of these could feasibly crush rock. She recalled what she knew about Honey Reilly's head wound. Though fatal, it wasn't bad enough to have been caused by a hammer like any of these. The murderer would have to have had a light touch with it. Honey obviously knew her murderer, and it certainly seemed like she didn’t see the attack coming, meaning the guy couldn’t have been holding one of these as he entered. So it had to have been sudden. And sudden meant very little time to build up strength with a wind-up swing of the weapon. Moreover, nothing on this table before her was large enough to cause a wound that size. Not even the largest of the masonry hammers. Unless, Allie thought with a shudder, you turned it sidewise.
But then she returned to the problem of an assailant entering Honey's home with a hammer like this. She wouldn’t just casually turn around if she felt threatened in any way. It just didn’t make sense that someone would be standing in your kitchen brandishing a masonry hammer and not have it be oddly threatening in some way. Maybe he snuck up on her?
Brugel gestured to one worker over the din of banging, whirring, and cutting.
"That's him," he yelled.
The man he'd pointed out was tall and broad, thick-browed and mustachioed, with short brown hair that jutted out slightly from beneath his hardhat. He looked as though he'd been born with safety gloves and goggles on. She watched this man guide giant slabs of granite through a machine that cut it into manageable chunks, and then take the chunks and split them into smaller pieces.
Brugel called the man and motioned him over.
"Take your lunch now."
Allie offered her hand warily. "Mr. Matson? Hi. Allie Griffin."
A deep, gruff voice erupted from the man's chest. "Oh yeah, hey there!" He took her hand as if he was going to kiss it. "You're the girl on the news. Yeah I heard about you."
"I was wondering if maybe you and I could go someplace to talk."
He motioned to her. "Hang on." He disappeared and then reappeared holding a brown paper bag. "Follow me."
She followed him to the rim of the quarry. There were tables set up here where men could take their breaks. The view overlooking the deep, rocky chasm was breathtaking, illuminated as it was by the bright sun beneath crystal blue skies, and the green mountains off in the distance, rising up out of the landscape like ancient gods.
They sat, and he brought up the brown paper bag from which he extracted a wrapped chicken salad sandwich and a can of grape soda.
"Do you mind if I eat while we talk?"
"I don't."
He took large, healthy bites and chomped with his mouth respectfully closed.
"Well, Mr. Matson. I'm here to talk about Honey Reilly."
"Ok," he said, covering his food-filled mouth with a napkin he kept clutched in his left hand. His face was solid and serious.
"For starters, how did you know her?"
"I didn't."
"You didn’t?"
"No."
"Hmm," Allie said, narrowing her eyes at the man. "Because I have it on pretty good authority that you did know her somewhat."
"Nah, that was a rumor. I bragged about, you know, scoring with her. But it was all lies."
"You dislike her husband?"
He smirked. "Who doesn't?"
"Why do you dislike him?"
The man shrugged. "I don’t know. He's got a way about him that kinda grates on you."
"There was some tension between you at one point?"
"Yeah, he was on my case about quality control. I told him what he could do with that clipboard of his."
Allie chuckled. "Ok then."
She looked at this large man's hand as he dabbed daintily at his mouth. And she looked at his ring finger.
"So you didn’t have an affair?"
He chuckled. "Now, why would I wanna do that?"
"She was attractive."
"Maybe to some."
"You know," Allie said, "you look a little familiar. Where did you go to high school?"
He put the napkin to his mouth and spoke around his food. "St. Augustine in Ludlow. But I dropped out."
"Really. Why?"
"I don’t know."
"Catholic school?"
He nodded.
"Did you find it too rigorous?"
"Listen," he said flatly, "I had a lot of trouble all my life with learning. School and me don’t mix. I got trouble with letters. I mix 'em up."
"Dyslexia."
"Yeah, I guess that's what they call it. Plus... I didn’t get along in Catholic school."
Allie studied the man's face, his features, and his gentle, polite way with the napkin. "You know, you're a pretty big guy. I bet the other guys don’t give you much trouble."
He shook his head and smiled. "Nah."
"They're probably afraid of you. I know I'd be."
"You got nothin' to be afraid of."
"Well, I know one thing: If I worked here I'd be sitting in this very spot all day, just staring at this gorgeous view, thinking and daydreaming."
He smiled and took a sip of his soda.
"I'd probably think a lot about my life — how it didn’t go the way I’d wanted it to. You know, my parents wanted me to be one thing, but I wanted to be another. And it's hard, you know, when you grow up with that."
He
nodded. "Yeah, it sure can be."
"You get sorta stuck in a rut, you know? And then pretty soon, before you know it, you've become that thing that they wanted you to be, even though you know it's a lie."
He was no longer eating or drinking, but focused on her.
She continued, looking him straight in the eye.
"I know that if I worked here. I'd be thinking the whole time, 'How the hell did I get here?' and I'd feel like I had to put on airs. I mean, I wouldn’t fit in at all. After all, I bet it's all boy talk here."
He kept her gaze in his. "Pretty much."
"Anyway, after a while, you start thinking about what a shame it is that you could never be that thing you wanted to be. Instead you're in this fake zone. That's what would be on my mind. And then you see a woman like Honey Reilly, that superficial, on the surface femininity, and you say, 'that's what men want.' And for a moment you forget about what you are and become what everyone wants you to be. I wouldn’t want to live like that, but I guess some folks have to. Around me, people don’t have to live a lie that way. That's all I'm saying. Anyway, I've talked enough. And I think I've got enough information to set the record straight."
She got up and offered her hand. He took it, as though he were about to kiss it.
7.
The Creek Falls café was jumping as usual at lunchtime. Allie sat with her favorite, the number three: Grilled pears and brie on focaccia. Opposite, Del sat before a salad of frisée and apricots, raking through it with her fork as if there were some hidden treasure within.
"It wasn't Matson," said Allie.
"How can you be sure?"
"I'm sure. It wasn't Matson. Just take my word for it. I mean, although he's a high school dropout and dyslexic, which would make a good match for the spelling errors in the note, he's not the one."
"If you say so." Del sounded skeptical.
"Listen," Allie said, lowering her voice a notch, "you're in theater. You know how some folks are..." she looked around at the other patrons, "comfortable...with people knowing their...preferences..."
Del's eyes lit up with recognition. "Say no more. Ok. So it's not Matson."
"You cannot breathe a word of that to anyone."
"Who would I tell?"
"Just don’t breathe a word of it."
"Ok. Not breathing. So where are you with this thing?"
"Back to square one, almost. The only thing I have to go on is the fact that someone knew enough about Bennett's schedule to know he wouldn’t be home that night. That's only if Honey was the intended victim. If Bennett was the intended victim...oh God. I am back to square one, aren’t I?"
Del put down her fork, evidently in frustration after not finding anything worthwhile to dig out of the greens. "Let's change the subject and talk about possible murder weapons."
This sudden dramatic burst, so characteristic of Del, drew suspicious looks from neighboring tables.
Allie mouthed a silent shush and kept her own voice low. "I was thinking about that. If it was someone from the quarry, he could have used a rock."
"Of course," said Del. "Then he could just toss it back into the pit."
"Right," said Allie. "Or on a scrap pile. Or, and I don’t even want to think about it, shipped it out to a client for use in a building or something. Can you imagine? The cops would have a helluva time finding it, wouldn’t you think? I mean, you should have seen the size of this place. It was like the Grand Canyon. No way you could find a specific rock among millions in that place. And no way, with how busy the place was, could it be traced if it was thrown into a delivery truck and hauled off somewhere."
"You're forgetting something," said Del. She sounded apologetic. "Didn’t you just tell me the foreman guy said he couldn't imagine anyone there having an affair?"
Allie jolted up with sudden remembrance. "He paid him! Oh my God, I forgot! Bennett paid the guy!"
More looks from the other tables.
"Who? He paid who?" Del said with mock astonishment.
"The guy who wrote the blackmail note. Bennett said he paid him in cash. He met the guy in some alleyway."
"So we just have to look for some guy down at the quarry throwing money around."
"If he is from the quarry. And no, Bennett said the guy wouldn’t be stupid enough to be throwing his money around, and I believe him. But listen. Frank Beauchenne told me about a convergence of evidence. If there isn't evidence of someone down there throwing money around, maybe there's other evidence that would point to someone having received a large sum."
"Like what?"
She thought for a moment, and then felt a sense of elation taking over. "Maybe someone cancelled paycheck withholding for benefits or 401K. Maybe there was a garnishment that's not there anymore."
"You'll have to go talk to your friend the foreman."
"No. He doesn't handle that stuff. He said it himself. He's able to talk to those guys the way he talks to them because he directly impacts their jobs. The paychecks come from up above somewhere in the ether. The pencil pushers, the calculators, and the clipboards – none of them impacts their physical jobs that they do every day. It's only the end result. Paychecks come from the parent company, and that's located in Montpelier."
Del flicked at the straw in her water glass. "Good luck getting paycheck information. It's probably crazy protected."
"I know."
Allie felt a nervous twinge turn into a full flurry of anxiety in her as she considered once again, like she'd done in the past, breaking the law in the name of catching a murderer.
It was a qualm of conscience easily overrun when she considered that somewhere out there, Detective Harry Tomlin was clutching a fistful of files on her husband's death, trying to connect the dots back to her. Easily overrun indeed.
"You'll have to excuse me," she said to Del, dropping a twenty on the table. "I have to go see an old friend about some stuff. Catch you later."
8.
Jimmy Welles's yellow Volkswagen Beetle with the one blue fender was sitting atop the mountainous driveway of his apartment, located in the home of Mrs. Virginia Needleman, age eighty-three.
Allie's leg muscles screamed when she got to the top. She rubbed her calves a few times and climbed six more aching steps to the door.
Mrs. Needleman answered with the same huge, gracious smile she always reserved for Allie Griffin. Now, the smile was held with even greater admiration.
"I saw you on TV!" she said. "There you were, pretty as ever! You’re a celebrity now."
"A local celebrity. Nobody knows me outside of Verdenier."
"Well, we’re all proud of you. I suppose you want to see Jimmy?"
"If he's not busy."
"I don’t think so." She went to the bottom of the stairs. "Jimmy!"
From a room at the top, "What!"
"You're friend Allie is here!"
There followed a series of thuds on the ceiling.
"He's coming," said Mrs. Needleman, who then added urgently, "I have to make him a fruit cup!" She disappeared into her kitchen and Allie waited for Jimmy Welles to come downstairs.
He came down, looking hastily dressed, unshaven, unshowered, and like a nervous puppy that’d done something terrible and couldn’t remember what it was. In other words, he looked exactly like Jimmy Welles.
"Hey there. I was sleeping."
"It's ok. Late night?"
"I got a job writing for Wired."
"Get out! Congratulations!"
"And I've been writing code for a-a project that my friends and I are working on."
"I don’t want to know." She leaned in and whispered. "I need another favor."
"She can’t hear you."
"You say that and yet she hears everything."
"I'm stone deaf," said Mrs. Needleman, who'd entered with a TV tray with a picture perfect cup of freshly cut fruit. "Say anything you want. Would you like one of these?"
"No, thank you," said Allie, who smiled graciously and then quickly foll
owed Jimmy up to his room.
Every trip to this den of technical wizardry was outdone each time she came here, for there was always more stuff, more wires, more hardware, and that burning chrome smell in the air from a ton of high-powered, humming equipment.
He closed the door and sat down at his desk without looking at her. "Shoot," he said, wiggling his computer mouse to wake up the machine.
"There's this guy, ok? And I think he may have paid some guy who works at his job a large sum of money. But the thing is, I don’t know who. So, I need to..." She thought of how to choose her words carefully. Somehow, "hack into the company's payroll records" wouldn’t roll off her tongue easily.
"I need to look at...the files...like, paychecks to employees, because I want to see if one guy is exhibiting behaviors that someone who’s received a whole lot of money would exhibit; am I making sense?"
"Yeah, you want me to hack into the payroll records."
She rolled her eyes. "Yes."
He thought for a moment. "So you want to look at one guy's info."
"Right."
"Are you sure your guy really paid out?"
"What? Yeah, I think so."
"How do you know?"
"He told me."
Jimmy turned to his screen. "Uh huh."
"Jimmy, I know what you’re thinking. But if we hack into this man's account, we won’t see anything. He didn’t want his wife to know. He paid his guy in cash."
"How'd your guy get the money?"
She was getting frustrated. "I don’t know."
"Uh huh." He took a deep breath. "Ok. What's the company?"
"Verdenier Granite."
The boy pounded furiously at the keyboard for several minutes. His lips became pouty and his eyes narrowed to points as he exhibited the air of a master chef or sculptor, complete focus and concentration.
"You call that a firewall?" he said under his breath, shaking his head. "When are these people going to learn?"
After a couple more minutes, he said, "I'm in. Turns out they got an employee access only site where their employees can log in to see their information. The company sends updates and notifications via a mailing list. There's a loophole there I'm exploiting. It's pretty easy to get in, actually. You may want to say something. Just kidding. My God, please don’t say anything."
