Show Time

by Suzanne Trauth

  “Dodie, I’m sorry I missed the last three numbers.”

  “We have the plate color, probable state, and three letters. Bill should be able to do something with a partial number.”

  Lola’s eyes were shining. “I hope so.”

  After delivering Lola to her doorstep in one piece, I drove twenty miles an hour through town to my place. I collapsed on my bed, but my eyes were wide open. Sleep was going to be a challenge.

  * * *

  At seven AM, I dressed and headed for Coffee Heaven. I decided to drink caffeine until Bill got to the station. Probably closer to eight. I had the partial plate and a plan of action. What more could he want? I was getting an image of his dimple, laser blue eyes, and turned-up mouth as he listened to my report, grateful for a job well done. I scribbled on a scrap of paper: Jerome, Mary, Lincoln.

  “Refill, Dodie?” Jocelyn asked, coffeepot in hand.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re here early.”

  “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “This murder keeping you up?”

  “A little,” I said and sipped from the fresh cup.

  “It’s all anybody talks about in here now.” She paused, hand on hip. “I saw this TV show last week about criminals and their motivations. This detective from New York was saying that the obvious suspect in an investigation was most often the guilty party. Do you think that’s true?”

  “I have no idea.” But it made sense. Who knew about the Lincoln letter? As far as I knew only Jerome and Mary, and now Bill, Lola, and me. But who had the most to gain from its theft? Jerome was dead; Mary had turned it over to Bill, who I assumed would keep the document safe. Lola and I certainly had no designs on it....

  I remembered a philosophy class in college where the professor had spent an entire session clarifying a principle he referred to as Occam’s razor. Basically it stated that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. Jocelyn might be right. And that meant just one thing.

  I glanced at my watch. Bill should be at work by now. I dropped some bills on the table and waved good-bye to Jocelyn, who was now filling cups at the counter.

  Edna was at dispatch with her nose buried in the Romeo and Juliet script. She looked up as I entered and struck a pose, one hand flying into the air to gesticulate, the other hanging on to the play for dear life.

  “‘Romeo is banished; and all the world to nothing that he dares ne’er come back to challenge you; Or if he do, it needs must be by stealth. Then—’”

  “Edna!” Neither one of us saw Bill enter the hallway.

  Edna, startled, dropped her script onto her container of coffee, which teetered before she could catch it and splashed liquid on her headset. “Chief?” she said as she swiped Kleenex over the microphone.

  “Is that play all anybody can think about these days?” he asked grumpily. “Get Ralph and if he’s at Coffee Heaven, tell him I said to get his tail over to the Shop N Go. One of the Banger sisters swears someone stole her purse and she’s been calling my private line. How did she get my private line, anyhow?”

  Edna shrugged. “10-4, Chief.”

  He turned toward me. “Dodie, you’re up early.”

  “Do you have a minute?”

  Ralph’s voice shot out of the speaker, whose volume level was at ten. “Edna, don’t tell the chief I called in, but I have to stop by the bakery and pick up a cake for Ricky’s birthday.”

  Ricky was Ralph’s five-year-old.

  “Uh, Ralph . . .” Edna shifted her gaze upward to Bill’s face, which was quickly becoming a light shade of crimson.

  Ralph chuckled. “Oh yeah, and I found this toy fire truck with a fireman who looks just like the chief. You know, face all scrunchy and stuff.”

  “Ralph?” Bill said.

  There was silence except for Ralph’s audible gulp.

  “Is that you, Chief?”

  “Get over to Shop N Go. Edna will fill you in.”

  “Copy that,” he said meekly.

  “And Edna, lower the volume on that speaker,” Bill said. “Dodie, we can talk in my office.”

  I followed him down the hall, practically running to keep up.

  Bill crossed behind his desk, staring out his office window into an alleyway where a delivery truck was dropping off cartons for Betty’s Boutique next door.

  “Bad day?” I asked tentatively. It was much too early to have everything crumbling around you.

  “The mayor’s on my case about the murder. Says it being unsolved isn’t good for business. If it drags out until summer, the tourist trade will be affected.”

  Mayor Bennett was Bull’s brother, and anything Bill did was not going to measure up to his older bro. If the mayor had his way, Bull would be policing Etonville from the grave. And the tourist trade? Etonville was named after Thomas Eton, one of George Washington’s army officers during the American Revolution. Sometime in the early nineteenth century, Eton’s farm had become a village, then grown to a town. Mr. Eton’s farmhouse was renovated into the Eton Bed and Breakfast in 1910—a white clapboard affair with black shutters surrounded by a white picket fence—and placed on the historical register. It remained Etonville’s claim to fame, along with an ancient cemetery that dated from 1759. The mayor must have been referring to the odd couple or two who showed up at the Eton B-and-B after getting lost on State Route 53.

  “I don’t think I’d let Mayor Bennett worry you too much,” I said.

  “Well, he’s right in one sense. The longer this investigation takes, the colder the trail.”

  “But now we have the letter.”

  “And no suspect.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” I said. I laid the slip of paper with the three license tag letters in front of him.

  “What’s this?” he asked suspiciously.

  I proceeded to relate Lola’s and my adventure last night, as we chased the SUV around town, concluding with our triumphant acquisition of a partial plate. I assumed he’d be ecstatic or, at a minimum, grateful.

  “Only three letters? Where’s the rest of it? What good is a partial plate number?”

  I felt the air whoosh out of my internal balloon. “It’s a New York plate. Can’t you run black Escalades with the three letters through the computer and limit the search?”

  “I guess so. But it’s going to take time. There’s probably a bunch of black SUVs with those first three letters.”

  I doubted that, but there would be no arguing with Bill in this mood.

  “Well, you’re welcome, anyway,” I said, miffed.

  He rubbed his hand over the top of his head. “Sorry. I’ll put out an APB to surrounding towns. And notify New York. Thanks for the information. But I wish you had called me. I might have been able to catch up with him.”

  “Called you in the middle of the chase? We’re lucky we survived intact,” I said.

  Bill exhaled. “Bad morning.”

  I felt sorry for Bill. He was right, things were stalled. “I have this idea.”

  “Dodie, I have to get—”

  “But first, I think you’d better sit down.”

  He slowly let himself sink into his desk chair. “Okay.”

  I proceeded to tell him about Jerome’s email contact with Forensic Document Services and my conversation with Marshall Wendover. His face registered the five stages of unlawful investigation: disbelief, skepticism, impatience, irritation, and astonishment.

  “I can’t believe you actually went through with—”

  “Just hear me out. Of all the people connected to Jerome, and admittedly there aren’t many, who would know the most about priceless documents? And who was in contact with Jerome?”

  “Forensic Document Services?” he said cautiously.

  “Yes!”

  “But you said according to Jerome’s email, Marshall Wendover wasn’t even in touch with Jerome for two weeks before he died.”

  “True. But what about his brother?”

 
“What about him?”

  “Marshall said Morty runs the document services. I think someone should talk with him.” I pulled out the business card Marshall had given me.

  Bill took the card and studied it. “Well . . . I guess I could give him a call.”

  “Not you. Me.” I smiled confidently.

  “Huh?”

  “If you go, you are the police chief interrogating him about a murder. But remember, I’m Jerome’s niece and can say I have the document but still need it to be authenticated.”

  “I think this theater stuff is going to your head,” he said. “Not to mention the detective stuff.”

  “Look, Bill, you said it yourself. We need to solve the murder. Now that we know about the document, this could be the break we need.”

  He tapped a pencil against his blotter. “Okay. I’ll run the plate number to see if there’s any connection between the SUV and the company.”

  I picked up the business card off Bill’s desk. “I’ll call and make an appointment for tomorrow morning early so that I make it back to the Windjammer for lunch.”

  “Okay, but I want to be in the vicinity. Just in case.”

  “Your own car. No uniform?”

  He nodded. “It’s not smart that you meet this guy alone.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said.

  “Let me know when you’ve confirmed contact.”

  “10-4.”

  “Dodie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is my face really all scrunchy?”

  Chapter 25

  I invited Lola to join me for lunch at the Windjammer.

  “Henry’s shrimp salad is wonderful today,” Lola said, wiping her mouth and taking a sip of water.

  “I’ll tell him,” I said. “I made the appointment with the document place for eight-thirty a.m.”

  “So let me get this straight. You’re going to act as though you are Jerome’s relative—”

  “Niece. That was my story with Marshall. I’m there to see what this Morty knows about the document.”

  “Won’t he want to see it?”

  “I’ll say it’s in a secure place. For the time being. But we need to know if it’s the real deal. Kind of a probate matter.”

  “Sounds believable,” she said. “Are you afraid to go alone?”

  “Bill is riding backup in plainclothes. I’ll be fine.”

  Lola scrutinized me. “I think you like playing detective. You need to audition for the next ELT production. If there is one,” she said gloomily.

  “So tonight is Act V, if I remember correctly.”

  “Walter rearranged things a little bit. He’s running the wedding night scene. God help us, with the Ladies-in-Waiting doing a kind of dream sequence.”

  “He changed the rehearsal schedule?”

  “The Ladies have been complaining, and Walter feels like he has to give them more to do.”

  “But Romeo and Juliet’s wedding night?”

  “Oh, you’ll see. I think it’s unnecessary, but Walter has a vision. Ever since Elliot became assistant director, Walter’s been a little manic.”

  “Dodie, Henry needs you in the kitchen,” Enrico said, appearing at my side.

  “Tell him I’ll be right there. Lola, see you tonight.”

  * * *

  Despite the seriousness of the scene on stage, I had to struggle to prevent myself from bursting into guffaws.

  “This way, ladies,” Walter said and demonstrated an upper-body-flapping-in-the-wind kind of gesture. Lola and I exchanged dubious looks, and Penny bit off a chuckle with clamped lips. “Lift your arms. Sway. Let your heads roll.”

  Walter had the six Ladies-in-Waiting/Servants/scenery movers lined up across the back of the stage trying to imitate his movement. Probably not what Shakespeare had intended: a break in the action so the “chorus” could interpret the emotional transition from Tybalt’s death to the Romeo/Juliet wedding night. The Ladies looked confused, slightly embarrassed, and painfully awkward—none more so than Abby, who swung her arms defiantly as if daring anyone to laugh. She’d been sending ocular death rays to Juliet for several nights now.

  “They look like insane chickens with their heads cut off,” Lola stage-whispered.

  Her voice carried to the stage and made it seem as if we were making fun of the actors. Walter glowered, and Abby’s eyes darted into the house, her face bitter.

  “I don’t think this whole thing works,” muttered Penny.

  Romeo and Juliet, both looking slightly bored with each other, rehearsed their wedding night on a makeshift bed, two four-by-eight platforms on short legs. They lay side by side like two dead fish on ice.

  Beads of sweat clung to Walter’s forehead, and one or two had trickled down his face.

  “The two of you are reclining in each other’s arms,” he said. Not a bit of warmth between them.

  Walter instructed the Ladies to circle the bed, still flapping and swaying. They spun faster and faster, running really, around the marriage bed creating a dizzying effect. Walter moved downstage, turning his back for a split second, and Abby pivoted around a corner of the platform, driving her elbow into the Lady ahead of her, who unintentionally bumped Juliet, sending her squarely into Romeo’s chest. Their faces smashed together and—ready or not—lips locked. Juliet rebounded off Romeo’s face, checking to confirm that all her teeth were intact, Abby sneered, and the other Ladies collapsed in exhaustion.

  At nine-thirty, Walter gave up for the night, probably because the gaggle of Ladies tromping around the stage like demented seagulls was becoming too much even for him.

  * * *

  I took my time dressing, wanting to appear as mature, and also mournful, as possible. I settled on a brown tweed suit I hadn’t even tried on in a year. With a dark green sweater, I looked professional but approachable. I pulled my Metro in front of the Municipal building and rolled down my window. Bill was waiting next to his BMW. He looked fantastic in a blue blazer, white button-down shirt, and khaki slacks.

  “Morning,” he said, smiling. “You ready for this?”

  “As I’ll ever be,” I said, smiling back. “Try to keep up.”

  We left Etonville via State Route 53 and entered the Garden State Parkway, traveling north to Exit 153B. It took only minutes to get on and off Route 46 West and find ourselves in the center of town. Such as it was. I’d never been in Woodland Park, but I had Googled the borough, population about twelve thousand, and discovered that it was home to a couple of business colleges, bounded on one end by Garret Mountain and the other by the Passaic River. I made a couple of left turns, as per my GPS, and arrived at an office park overlooking a reservoir and acres of undisturbed landscape.

  The office complex where the lab was located was in stark contrast to the nondescript building with yellow siding that housed Forensic Document Services in Piscataway. Here, the landscaping was intricate and impressive. Magnolia and dogwood trees were scattered throughout the lawn fronting the building and the flagstone walkway leading to the entrance was lined with purple coneflowers.

  I parked next to a handicapped area and watched Bill ease his BMW into a space a few yards away.

  In the marble-walled lobby, a directory indicated that the Forensic Document Services Lab was on the third floor, in suite 302. The elevator door shut, and I glanced at a security camera in the upper corner.

  I stepped into the third-floor hallway and found number 302 directly opposite the elevator. On the door was stenciled LABORATORY SERVICES.

  “Here we go,” I said to myself and clasped my bag tightly.

  The office waiting area was also a contrast to Marshall’s domain: leather furniture, indoor carpeting, potted plants, and Muzak. The feel was pleasantly comforting and reassuring.

  I approached the receptionist, a young woman with short blond hair, deep red lipstick, and earrings that dangled well below her earlobes. “Hello. I’m Dodie O’Dell. I have an appointment with Morty Wendover. I’m a little early.”

&
nbsp; “Please have a seat. I’ll ring Mortimer.” She picked up a telephone.

  I was doubtful “Mortimer” had anything to do with the car repair or trucking aspects of the family business.

  “Ms. O’Dell, Mortimer will see you now. First door on your right.” She pointed to a hallway on her left.

  I followed her directions and walked into his office. Between Marshall and Morty, one of them had to have been adopted—or switched in the cradle. Morty Wendover was tall and svelte, with neatly combed brown hair, a white dress shirt, and a pinstripe suit. He held out his hand. “Ms. O’Dell?”

  “Yes. Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.” I shook his hand.

  “My sympathy for your loss,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Please have a seat.”

  I settled myself into a maroon leather chair as Morty sat behind his mahogany desk. “What can I do for you?”

  “I understand that my uncle Jerome was in contact with your company about a document.”

  “Yes, I believe he emailed my brother Marshall. But nothing came of it. Every once in a while we get someone who cleans out an attic and thinks we’re Antiques Roadshow and really just wants free information.”

  Was it significant that Marshall used the exact same phrase?

  “I understand that my uncle, for some reason, never went ahead with the authentication. But now I want to proceed with the process.”

  Morty sat very still. “I see.”

  “Yes. I understand that the initial fee is a thousand dollars?”

  “That’s the retainer. It’s deducted from the final cost of the authentication,” he said.

  “Would you do the authentication in this office?” I asked.

  “Yes. We offer a whole range of services at this facility, from handwriting analysis and forgery identification to document authentication. Mostly we work with wills, deeds, arbitration agreements, that sort of thing, and, of course, historical documents.”

  Some of this sounded familiar from my research on the Internet.

  “Authentication of historical documents is a two-pronged process. First, there is identifying the physical evidence such as the age and type of ink and the paper the document is printed on. The fiber, etc. The second part of the process is establishing the provenance of the document, that is, its history. Who owned it, sold it, transferred it in a will, say, to another individual.” He paused. “Your uncle never discussed the details or provenance of the document. Do you have that information?”