Everybody Loved Roger Harden

by Cecil Murphey

  “Yeah! Great soup,” he said. “It’s a little fishy, but great.”

  “It’s supposed to have a fish flavor,” Reginald said, “But how would you know the difference?”

  Lenny didn’t respond but finished off the first bowl, shoved it aside, and spooned out the second. I assumed he could have been eating canned tomato soup and would have said, “Great soup.”

  Burton had stayed in the dining room. He picked up a glass of water from his place, but he didn’t sit down. He moved around as if he were Hercule Poirot or maybe a better dressed and more graceful Columbo.

  Without going through a lot of who-cares details about who said what, it came down to this. Except for Burton and me, everyone else had arrived in time for tea that began promptly at 5:00. He and I had been invited for tea—an English high tea, complete with cucumber sandwiches—but both of us had sent our regrets. I had to see a patient at 2:00, and I couldn’t have made the trip from Atlanta in less than four hours. I don’t remember why Burton couldn’t get there in time.

  Everyone agreed they all took tea in the “drawing room” (a term that seems a bit pretentious to me), and Roger left them about 6:25, as far as anyone could remember. He went up to change clothes—something he always did. He had come to tea dressed informally—slacks, loafers, and polo shirt. For dinner, he always put on a dark business suit. He was wearing a pinstriped, dark gray suit when we found his body.

  They all had alibis to account for their whereabouts and thus prove their innocence.

  My instincts shouted, They’re lying!

  I never doubted my intuition.

  In the next few hours, I learned that my instincts had been correct.

  Three

  All the guests claimed to have gone upstairs a few minutes after Roger left them. Simon said that when he picked up the last of the tea dishes at 6:50, no one was in the dining room or the drawing room. He had helped Mrs. Wright set the table.

  Beth Wilson said she was the first one to come downstairs, and when she did, she turned on the TV. She wanted to see how well her substitute did. “It was a man,” she said in a disgusted tone. She said it was about ten minutes to seven, because she endured the last portion of the dull local news and three minutes of advertisements before the weather.

  “Wayne and I came in immediately behind Beth,” Paulette said. “We met at the top of the stairs and came down together.”

  Jason and his mother were the last ones. They said they had been together in Jason’s room.

  No one heard anything unusual.

  Except for Jason and Amanda, who arrived about 7:20, the other guests claimed to have been in the drawing room from 7:00 until 7:30 for the evening news on CBS. Reginald remembered Beth’s weather commentary. Beth had pointed out all the wrong moves made by her substitute—a man with the beginning of male-pattern baldness, which she verbalized three times. “I taught him—or tried to—but he’s simply not very good at it.”

  At 7:30 Wayne Holmestead had turned the TV to CNN and they had watched Headline News until a few minutes before eight when they headed into the dining room.

  “Why the TV in the drawing room?” Burton asked. “Didn’t any of you watch TV in your rooms?”

  “TV here only,” Simon said as he came back into the dining room.

  Burton arched a brow. “One TV set for a house this large?”

  “It’s the only place where we can get decent reception,” Amanda said. “Roger has arranged for a satellite system hookup or whatever they call it, but it won’t be in effect for another couple of weeks.”

  “Still no phone service?” Burton asked Simon.

  Simon shook his head.

  “Could someone have cut the phone lines?”

  He shook his head a second time. “Checked.”

  “We have only two phones in this house,” Amanda said. “One is in Roger’s office, and the other is in the kitchen.”

  “Couldn’t you have installed more?” I asked.

  “Roger liked it that way,” she said and looked away.

  That seemed odd to me. The flicker in Burton’s eyes said he agreed.

  “We have had trouble with the telephone most of the week,” Mrs. Wright said. She shrugged, probably an unconscious imitation of Simon. “We are used to it. If the phone works, we use it. If it does not, we wait for one or two days.”

  Something about Mrs. Wright seemed odd. Her language carried a stiffness to it. I decided to watch her more closely, although I’m not certain why.

  “Stay from office,” said Simon as if we hadn’t remembered. “Locked until police.” He held up a key and then put it inside his pants pocket. I assumed that was the only key.

  “Good idea,” I said, and several others nodded. I couldn’t think of a reason why anyone would want to go into a room containing a dead body.

  Wayne Holmestead insisted he had spent most of the newscast time writing emails on his BlackBerry, even though he hadn’t been able to send them. He held out his BlackBerry for Burton to examine.

  I liked the way Burton went around the room. His manner was so gentle that no one seemed to feel he interrogated them. I wondered why he had wasted his time to become a minister. He would have made an excellent therapist. I would have hired him, and I’m a good judge of people.

  “This must be difficult for you,” Burton said and made direct eye contact with Amanda. “If you want to talk about it now, it might make it easier for you later on when the police come.”

  Tears glistened in her eyes, and she brushed them away with her hand. She wore clear nail polish, and it looked perfect on her. I wished I were as graceful or had beautiful hands like hers.

  “Jason and I came downstairs. The news had been on perhaps ten minutes, but it might have been longer. I sat in the chair at the far side of the room and stayed there until Mrs. Wright announced it was time for dinner.”

  “That’s right, and I sat next to her,” Jason said. “Just like I’m sitting next to her right now. So that means neither of us could have hurt Dad.”

  “Or both of you did it,” Beth said. Then she smiled.

  “How dare you say that!” Jason said. “That was totally out of line.”

  “Of course. You’re right. I apologize.” The smile pattern was so firmly in place that it seemed to me as if she couldn’t talk without the smile. That’s always something serious to watch. No normal person smiles all the time.

  Each of the guests claimed to have been in the drawing room. It was a high-ceilinged room about forty by thirty feet with no windows. The house was amazingly large, with ten bedrooms on the second floor and five on the third. Roger had decorated with commissioned paintings and busts from artists he liked. I liked the paintings but didn’t think much of the sculptures. They might have been artistic masterpieces, but they all had a kind of sameness to them. Their drabness didn’t do anything to accentuate the rosewood rococo furniture.

  While Burton asked routine questions, I gazed at the paintings on the walls. I don’t know anything about art, but these particular pieces had a cold gloominess about them. For example, I recognized the lighthouse at St. Simon’s Island—which was located less than twenty miles away. The artist painted it at dusk with fog moving in, and I could see a tiny light at the top. Aside from the light, the colors ran from light gray to black.

  “And no one left the room until after Mrs. Wright called you to dinner. Is that correct?”

  “Oh, but yes, I did get up at one time,” Tonya Borders said. “Just once.”

  Tonya spoke with a slight Slavic accent—at least most of the time. I have a fairly good ear for accents, and she confused me. Sometimes she sounded like she was from Eastern Europe or Russia and at other times like she was from the Deep South. That accent made me decide to watch her more carefully. She tried to smile but wasn’t very good at it and could have taken lessons from Weather Girl.

  She patted her silvery-brown bun and smoothed out her hair. “I, uh, went to the little girls’ room.�
�� She leaned forward as if she wanted Burton to have her undivided attention. “A commercial had just begun, and the news was just coming back on when I returned.”

  Why, that old prune is flirting with Burton, I thought.

  “So that gave you a good two minutes,” Paulette said. “And it would have been so easy for you to make a detour to Roger’s office.” She turned to Burton and said, “She would have had to walk past his office to get to the only restroom on this floor.”

  “Yes, I did pass his office,” Tonya said, “but I must assure you that I did not stop and shoot him on the way. I loved Roger. I truly loved that gentleman.” The Slavic accent was really thick. “I owe him so much for my career and have always had such deep personal feelings for him.” She made another attempt to smile at Burton after she spoke the last words.

  “Yes, dear, we all loved Roger,” Amanda said to Tonya in a tone that wasn’t quite convincing. She leaned over and patted Tonya’s hand. “And, Burton, although I realize someone here killed my husband, I find it nearly impossible to believe that any of the people in this room would want to hurt him. These were his friends. They all loved him—at least as far as I know—and he had helped each one of them. They weren’t just his friends, but close friends.”

  “I wasn’t a close friend,” I blurted out.

  “Yes, but he had deep regard for you. Very deep,” Wayne said. “He told me so.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “I would never hurt him in any way, let alone kill him,” Tonya said. “Death is, well, so . . . so final. And so very, very sad.” Now her voice sounded like an imitation of Katharine Hepburn with a Slavic accent.

  “I also left the room once,” Jeffery Dunn said. “My doctor has me on a prescription antibiotic, and I take one with each meal. I had forgotten to bring down a pill, so I went upstairs.” He turned to Amanda. “I walked right past you.”

  “Perhaps you did,” she said. “I honestly don’t remember. My mind was on the news.”

  “Yes, I remember seeing the good Dr. Dunn get up,” Wayne Holmestead said.

  “How long was he gone?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. It did seem like several minutes, maybe as long as ten minutes.”

  “It was nine minutes. You see, I could not find my medication. I had to search through my luggage.”

  “Did you find it?” I asked.

  “Yes, I did.” He went into a lengthy and boring-as-usual explanation that he couldn’t find the medicine but remembered having packed it. He took us through every step of his search through his luggage. He explained that he always made a list of everything he needed for the trip and had checked every item to indicate that it was inside one of his two suitcases. His antibiotic was the seventeenth item on the list. So he knew he had to search until he found it. He found the pills finally, because the container, which was only one inch high and three inches long and made of clear plastic, had slipped inside one of his folded shirts. He also unpacked everything while he was there. “I was gone exactly nine minutes. I have a habit of timing myself when I do things like that.”

  “Very thorough,” Burton said, and I wondered if that was sarcasm in his voice. Probably not from him.

  I had listened to everyone talk, but something bothered me. Perhaps it was the therapist part of me at work. I turned to Weather Girl, the smile lady. “Did you like Roger—I mean really like him?”

  “Didn’t I say I did?” She did her facial thing before she added, “I adored him, simply, simply adored him. He was so much older, of course, so there was no romantic involvement.” She paused, and another plastic smile filled her face before she spoke again. “I assure you, I owed him so much. He was, uh, like a dear uncle or an older brother.” This time she smiled at Burton.

  Doesn’t he get it? That yucky every-second smile—she’s such a phony, I thought. Maybe Burton isn’t as sharp as I thought he was.

  I turned to Jeffery and asked, “Did you like Roger?”

  “Like him? What a strange and positively absurd question. I was his guest, his friend, and he was someone I’d known and liked,” he said. “We’d been close for many years.” He started to explain how they had met and where, but Burton interrupted and thanked him.

  I winked at Burton for doing that. Had Jeffery been allowed to continue, I’m sure we would have had to hear what he ate for lunch the day the two men met, and he may even have taken us on an endless journey back to his childhood days.

  Burton’s eyes caught mine and locked for perhaps one second. I was sure he sensed what I was feeling. Maybe he did catch on to Beth’s one facial expression.

  “Hey, I’m the most unlikely one to have shot old Rog,” Lenny said, “but that would probably make me the most likely suspect.”

  He laughed at his little joke. Or what I assumed was a joke.

  “Really! I meant that. Don’t you people watch TV? It’s always the one—”

  “You never left the room?” I asked.

  “Hey, babe, exactly right,” he said and winked, “but I would have left the room with you anytime!”

  “You are rather crude, you know,” Reginald Ford said. Before Lenny answered, he looked at me. “I apologize for him. He’s not my friend, merely an acquaintance. We rode together from the mainland, and he assumes we are now chums or buddies or at least that I like him. I assure you he’s equally offensive to everyone.”

  Lenny burst out laughing. “I love this guy. What a sense of humor. He absolutely kills me.” As he heard his own last words, he had enough sensitivity to blush and mumble, “Sorry.”

  “But to answer your question before you ask,” Reginald said, “I did not leave the room. Neither did Lenny, so I can vouch for him. I tried to watch the news, and his mouth ran the whole time.”

  “Hey, Reggie boy, are you trying to insult me or something?” Lenny yelled and laughed.

  “I gave up trying. You’re immune.” He cleared his throat and said, “I am not Reggie and I am not Reg. My name is Reginald. Please—for at least the tenth time.”

  Lenny laughed again. “You got it, Reggie boy! From now on it’s only Reginald.”

  Reginald raised his hands in defeat. He got up from the table, took his chair, and moved to the end farthest from Lenny.

  “Why don’t I pour everyone a glass of sweet tea?” Amanda said and got up. Her hands were shaking. She tried to pick up the tall pitcher in front of her but couldn’t seem to coordinate. “Jason, come and help me.”

  As soon as Burton looked at me again, I motioned my head toward the door. He caught on immediately, and we both left. So that no one would overhear us, I didn’t say a word until after I led him outside the house and we stood on the antebellum-style porch. It had four large columns that were probably supposed to look as if it had come from Gone with the Wind. The porch encircled the entire front of house.

  Storm clouds flooded the sky, and within seconds they had hidden the moon. The heavens became black and forbidding. The wind felt damp; rain was certainly on its way.

  “Everyone keeps saying how much he or she loved Roger,” I said.

  “It doesn’t ring true, does it?”

  “That’s exactly the way I felt. What do you think is going on?”

  “You’re the therapist,” Burton said.

  “And that weather girl—” Okay, that was catty of me, but the words came out anyway.

  Burton laughed.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “Why are you jealous of her?” he asked. “She’s as self-closed as you are open.”

  I smiled—no, I grinned. I had to revise my opinion of him once again. This man was really bright.

  The first raindrops landed softly on the window next to me. Enough light came through from the hallway that I could see his warm smile. I felt it was genuine—the first truly genuine smile I had seen since coming into the house.

  “You’re leading this investigation,” I said, “so you tell me.”

  “They’re lying. I mean, r
eally lying,” he said. “They loathed Roger.”

  “That’s a bit strong—”

  “Yes, but it’s true—”

  “I absolutely agree,” I said, “but I wonder why. Why would they hate him? If they hated him, why would they come here? Roger hasn’t made it easy to visit—being on an island.”

  “Why did you dislike him? If I could understand that, maybe I could understand why the others didn’t like him.”

  His words shocked me. I thought I had covered my feelings well. After all, I’m a therapist, and we’re careful to remain objective and not to show our emotions. I wonder how he had discerned that I didn’t like Roger.

  “What do you mean?” I asked trying to equivocate while I figured out how to answer.

  Burton wouldn’t play my game; he waited for me to respond.

  “I didn’t want to see him dead. It wasn’t that kind of dislike.”

  “What kind of dislike was it?”

  “My dislike had nothing to do with his death or with any of the others. It was, uh, a personal thing with Roger.”

  “Do you think his murder was impersonal?”

  This man was good. Maybe he should have been on the police force. “Of course, it was personal,” I said. Burton had started to move in a direction I didn’t want him to go. “I didn’t kill him—as you know. My feelings were—well, something I choose not to discuss. Because you know I’m innocent, I’m sure you won’t push me.”

  “That’s an excellent answer, and you’ve also set the limits on how far I can go with you,” he said, and I saw his dimples up close. He could pose for a toothpaste ad on TV.

  “Good,” I said.

  “However, just this—you’re sure it has nothing to do with his death? Really sure?”

  “Positive.”

  And I was sure.

  At least I was then.

  Four

  Before Burton and I went back inside the house, we agreed on a strategy. He would ask questions, and I would listen. He laughed and added, “You know that’s what we preachers do—we talk—and you therapists listen.”

  Frankly, that juvenile attempt at humor didn’t deserve a smile, but I gave him one anyway because I liked the man. “I reserve the right to change my mind or to interrupt.”