Soon my dining room table was abuzz with compliments to the chef. I wasn’t the least bit embarrassed to give Henry all the credit. The aroma of warm, friendly conversation filled the room and Maddie’s smile was wider than I’d seen it all weekend.
There wasn’t a whisper of murder.
Even dessert was accounted for. With a little more notice we would have enjoyed making it together, but instead Maddie and I had stopped at a bakery on the way home, after seeing the hanging lady from Henry’s SUV. We’d chosen a lemon chiffon pie as a “light dessert” to go with the beef. Maddie was always happy to be in charge of the last course and offered to serve it as soon as the last tip of beef disappeared from Skip’s plate.
Beverly had caught up with me in the kitchen between dinner and dessert and helped me rinse plates. “This is nice, Gerry. Just like old times,” she’d said.
I assumed she meant three days ago.
Susan called just as my guests were leaving. She sounded so depressed, I wanted to give her a little hope.
“I’m working with Skip,” I told her.
“I’d like to have the little construction scene I made for Oliver. Can I come and get it?”
“Why don’t you let me fix it up first, Susan? I’ll try to drop it by tomorrow.”
“Okay, thanks, Gerry. Good night.”
Susan’s voice sounded melancholy and resigned. I guessed that her acquiescence on all counts was facilitated by medication.
Maybe I should look into that for myself.
I hoped Maddie would want to turn in early. I was in the mood to go out to the garage and tackle the rest of Ken’s boxes.
“Who do you think killed Mrs. Giles’s brother?” Maddie asked. The question seemed to come out of the blue as we were straightening chairs and pillows and filling the washing machine with the table linens.
“I don’t know, sweetheart. You shouldn’t be thinking about that, anyway. Let’s talk about your Halloween costume. I’m still planning to go to your house that weekend so I can see you all dressed up and help Mom and Dad give out the candy.”
Even with a big frown, her face was sweet. “I can’t think of anything good to wear this year. Witches and ghosts are too boring. I’m too old to be an animal and, besides, I’ve done all the animals I like.”
I had a whole album of Halloween photographs to back up Maddie’s animal costume claim. Maddie as a tiger, a bear, an elephant, and three species of dinosaur, were the first six that came to mind.
“Did you get any ideas from our driving around today with Henry?”
Oops. As soon as I asked the question, I regretted it. The last thing I wanted Maddie to remember before bedtime was the swinging mannequin.
For once, Maddie didn’t pick up on something that might lead to a “Case” discussion.
“A kid in my class is coming to the school party as a control freak. He’s collecting all the remote controls he can and he’s going to attach them to his body and frizz up his hair like a real geek.” She laughed in anticipation of seeing him.
“That’s very creative. Maybe we can think of something like that. Instead of trying to look like a person or a thing, you could go as a theme or even a word or a phrase.”
Maddie’s face brightened. “Like something from Shakespeare.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” I said, wondering what was happening to my family. I thought of calling my son, to see what he was reading these days. One of the Richard plays? Maybe they’d all gone Elizabethan on me. Why hadn’t this happened when I was trying to push it on them years ago? I guessed there was something to be said for not trying too hard to win people over.
Shakespeare always seemed to me the perfect source for Halloween material. One of my students at ALHS had written as much in an essay. I remembered the gist of his closing remark: “Witches, ghosts, and that awesome skull. What’s not to like?”
“We can Google Shakespeare quotes. I’ll bet we’ll get, like, a gazillion of them,” Maddie said.
“I’ll bet you’re right.”
It had been tricky to make Shakespeare appealing to adolescents. I’d tried all sorts of gimmicks, one of the most successful being what I called Insult of the Week. My students picked up on the idea immediately. It gave me great pleasure to hear one teenager say to another, “If you spend word for word with me, I shall make your wit bankrupt,” from Two Gentlemen of Verona or “Peace, good pint-pot, peace, good tickle-brain,” from Henry IV.
Was it more civilized for one student to call another a “diffused infection of a man” or a “scurvy jack-a-nape priest” than to use the rude epithets they learned from television and movies? I liked to think so.
Maddie had found several possibilities for a costume, all the while expressing amazement at how many common expressions dated back to Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets.
When she saw the expression, “Can one desire too much of a good thing?” on the list, her comment was, “Dad’s always saying how you can have too much of a good thing.”
I wasn’t prepared to reveal the bawdy connotation of that and many other phrases in the Shakespearean lexicon.
She considered using the expression “wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve, for daws to peck away at it” until she learned that a daw was a kind of crow.
In the end, we decided we could have the most fun with the words of the second witch in Macbeth: “Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog, adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting, lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing.”
We’d make a sign for her back with the quote spelled out for those who didn’t recognize the reference.
Shakespeare was back in my life. At one time it would have been all the joy I could have wished for.
When Maddie was finally tired enough to sleep, I was at loose ends. Should I return to searching Ken’s files as I’d planned? Or work on the damaged room box for Susan? Should I work up a list to try to link Patrick Lynch, Max Crowley, or the Ferguson family to Oliver’s murder? I could do any of those things. Or I could take out my worn copy of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare and treat myself to a comedy.
My work ethic triumphed and I headed for the garage. I’d get Maddie to help me tomorrow with the room box, and I could pay a visit to the Fergusons’ factory on Tuesday, once I’d dropped Maddie off at school in Palo Alto.
As for revisiting Comedy of Errors, that would have to wait.
Now, why would I think of the play with two sets of twins as main characters?
The task seemed daunting as I surveyed the cartons piled on either side and in front of my car in the garage. I walked around my car, pulled a stool up to the workbench along the inside wall, plunked down the cup of tea I’d fixed, and prepared to dig into history.
Each time I cut the seal on a box, I held my breath. I couldn’t have been more nervous if I’d been told that one of the boxes contained anthrax or a poisonous snake. I didn’t know which I dreaded more—finding another set of baffling photographs or uncovering evidence that would forever color my memory of my husband as a law-abiding, scrupulously honest businessman.
For about an hour, I sifted through routine material from Ken’s office—drawings, proposals, impact statements, and telephone messages. I was never so happy to be bored.
I had on three layers of clothing—a turtleneck, a vest, and a jacket, plus heavy socks, but the cold had now caught up with me. One more box, I decided, then I’d call it a night.
This box, labeled Memos, was filled with neat packages of letters, clipped together by month. I couldn’t possibly read every one of them. I was beginning to see the advantage of keeping correspondence on a computer where you could easily search for key words. Which words would I try to find, I wondered, if I had the choice? Would I search for “bribe”? “Graft”? “Hush money”? The whole activity was depressing.
I ruffled the pages of one or two packages, barely paying attention to the contents, until my crude searching came up with a grammatica
l error. The phrase “an arrangement which benefits many” caught my eye.
This needs a comma, I mused, or else it should read “. . . arrangement that . . .” The memo couldn’t have been written or reviewed by Esther, who was more of a stickler for grammar and punctuation than I was.
It didn’t surprise me that I noticed a small infraction while looking for something of great import. I was one who took comfort in rules. I liked to focus on the compactness of a tidy sentence, the perfect posture of capital letters used correctly, and the elegance of a well-placed exclamation point.
I slipped the memo from the stack to see what the context was.
The first bad news was in the “From” line. Patrick Lynch.
The memo was brief and somewhat vague:
With regard to our conversation of 2/1, I’m pleased that you are on board.
I’m confident this will be an arrangement which benefits many. I’m glad you’ll be one of the EELFS.
At the bottom was written: Enc.: Draft Contract.
My head dropped to my chest, and not because of the misuse of “which.” I supposed it was too much to hope that Ken was signing up to be “on board” for a cruise. Or to build a ship. And that the many who would benefit were the ordinary homeowners of Lincoln Point. And that the misspelled reference to elves meant that this was all about a holiday party. I had a tangential thought that I should write a book on the uses of “that” and which.”
I plowed through at least a dozen more memos looking for similar language. Maybe “arrangement” was a word commonly used in memos between architects and builders. Before this weekend, I’d never have suspected anything nefarious about the term “arrangement” in a business deal. What made me think this was anything but a normal, above-board deal?
The goons-with-guns scenario, for one thing.
It didn’t help that all of the other memos I sampled were of an entirely different, more specific character, with names, addresses, contract deadlines, and dollar amounts.
The prospects of finding the draft contract that had been enclosed with the memo were dim. There were entire boxes labeled Contracts. Having the date, without a year at that, would be of only minimal help.
I pulled my jacket closer around my body. When I finally stepped into my kitchen, I had no idea how long I’d sat in the cold garage.
Chapter 13
Still in my nightgown and robe, I went out to my atrium early on Monday morning. I needed to sit for a while with a mug of coffee before Maddie woke and confused me with her innocent, happy outlook.
I looked up through my skylight at the bright morning light, as if answers to my burning questions might stream down from outer space.
But nothing came easily; I was on my own.
It was time I constructed a concrete plan to solve the nagging issues that were keeping me from enjoying my granddaughter and all that was good in my life.
Oliver Halbert, whom I’d never met, had turned my world upside down. I was convinced that if it weren’t for his “potentials” list, I never would have opened the cartons that had been gathering dust high on my garage shelves. One day, Richard or Maddie or Maddie’s child would have had to deal with them, and I’d have gone to my rest oblivious of their contents.
Whether or not the list might have come to light eventually, Oliver’s murder had precipitated my investigation. If he were alive and moving from potential to actual, I’d have had the chance to confront him and ask him just what complaint he had against Ken Porter.
Now I was left not only trying to humor his sister by pretending to work closely with the police but also dealing with the question of my husband’s complicity in misconduct and—I could hardly think it—a “personal” secret he hadn’t shared with me.
I tried to step back and take an objective look at how to confront the three ghosts that were haunting me more effectively than the scariest Halloween campfire story.
I breathed in the fresh air provided by my favorite plants and began to talk it out with myself.
First on my mind were the photographs and the accompanying child’s clothing I’d found—had it been only two days ago? I seemed to have been worrying over the discovery for years. But this wasn’t a worry session; it was an action session.
Actions: Call the people who took over Ken’s firm and try to track down his partner, Artie Dodd. Check with Skip on whether he’s been able to identify the institution in the background of the photos.
It was a mystery to me why I continued to leave Beverly out of the equation, though I’d shared (almost) everything with Skip. Beverly and I had been close since the day Ken i ntroduced us; she was the one I’d turn to at a time like this. Admittedly, we’d seen less of each other since her relationship with Nick had begun in earnest, but I still considered my sister-in-law to be my confidante—up to now, when my strongest desire was to spare her needless pain. Especially if—when—it turned out that her older brother was completely innocent of business fraud and that the child in the photo was the son or daughter of a client.
I imagined a conversation with Artie where he laughs and tells me that Esther had mistakenly put the photos in a box with a present meant for a baby shower she’d been invited to.
Wouldn’t that be nice? (So what if the layette was meant for a three-to-six-month old?)
I took a few sips of coffee, enjoying the warm liquid in the chilly atrium. I was glad I’d pulled on thick socks before coming out here. I couldn’t imagine a less flattering outfit, but no one was around to criticize.
Back to work. The second, separate issue was Ken’s dealings with Patrick Lynch, and/or Max Crowley, and/or Oliver Halbert. Whatever Lynch and Max Crowley were looking for in Oliver’s apartment—I wanted to see it, too.
Action: make another visit to Oliver’s apartment. Corollary action: have a better exit strategy in case the next visit was also interrupted by uninvited (by me) guests. Ideas for backup: take Skip? Take Susan? Take gun? (There was nothing wrong with a little outlandish humor on my to-do list.)
Third, who killed Oliver Halbert? Since I became aware of his “potentials” list, solving his murder took on more importance for me than just supporting my friend, Susan. I needed to know more about a man who considered my husband dishonest and subject to legal action.
I had a feeling that Eliot and/or Emory Ferguson and their factory were at the heart of the Halbert murder. For one thing, I had the statements of a barista who had no reason to tell a lie, other than its contribution to the flirty atmosphere at Seward’s Folly yesterday morning. According to Kayla, the twins and Oliver were friends, and one of them had lunch with him the day he was murdered. Both assertions were in direct contradiction to what Lillian Ferguson had told me.
Another Ferguson link was that their prefire factory remodel was one of the last projects Ken ever worked on. There was a good chance that was the reason for Ken’s name being on Oliver’s list. Just a formality, where he included everyone who ever worked with Lynch during Crowley’s tenure as city building inspector.
Another nice outcome.
I thought of the janitor who died in the factory fire. As far as I remembered from Skip’s rundown of the case, the cause of the blaze was undetermined. A stairway next to the compressor had caught fire for one of three reasons: Eliot or Emory Ferguson forgot to turn off the compressor, leading to its overheating; or the developer decided to use inferior material for the electrical conduit near the stairway; or the architect’s specifications were substandard, not requiring a conduit at all, to save everyone money and time. And, by the way, to get a piece of the money saved.
I shook my head at the thought of the last possibility. Of course, it was negligence in the way the specifications were carried out—that was the culprit, I told myself over and over, not the specs themselves. Ken would never have agreed to anything that was in violation of a safety code, no matter what the cost. No matter what the temptation.
I sounded insensitive even to myself, focusing on provi
ng that Ken wasn’t responsible for the fire. Either way, the poor janitor was dead and I felt terrible about that.
I put “who was responsible for the fire?” on the list, out of deference to the Patterson family, and hoped the experts would give them closure soon.
Why was every sorrow and every joy so complicated once we passed Maddie’s age? A question for another time. I was sure there was an answer in Shakespeare, if I could only get back to him.
Since Oliver’s body had been found at the Ferguson home, I was sure the police had questioned the whole family. I needed to find out what they’d learned. It was hard to believe that a random killer, who had nothing to do with any of the family members, had decided to deposit a fresh corpse on a random Halloween porch on Sangamon River Road. Skip had slipped in a few more facts during our pre-dinner confab, and one of them was that Sam and Lillian’s otherwise festive porch had been the murder scene as well as the crime scene.
Back to my determination to include action items in this ad hoc organization session, I added: visit the Fergusons’ factory tomorrow once Maddie was safely at her school in Palo Alto.
Summary statement of important question to work on: was the fire in the Ferguson factory connected to Oliver Halbert’s death? Summary of suspects: Patrick Lynch, Max Crowley, and all the Fergusons (why not?).
I had to laugh at myself and at my list, so compact and exclusive, ignoring countless other motives for murder and countless other suspects. With the luxury of someone not in law enforcement, I’d dismissed an ex-wife, for example, usually at the top of a suspect list. So what if she was in Europe? That’s what hired guns were for.
Moreover, I knew nothing of Oliver’s habits. He might have been a gambler, with a creditor hot on his tail, or he might have been trying to break off an adulterous affair.
I’d visited Skip’s LPPD cubicle often and had seen the piles of paper connected to an investigation. He’d shown me a stack about four inches high that pertained to just one case. His homework that night had been to go through arrest reports, witness statements, warrants, police reports, property reports, medical records, transcripts, and faxes.
Monster in Miniature Page 15
