Everybody Loved Roger Harden

by Cecil Murphey

  I couldn’t stop the tears. They kept coming. Burton handed me his handkerchief and whispered, “It’s okay. Sometimes there’s good tears and they need to be freed.”

  Fifteen

  How could I have figured out what happened next? I want to be sure and get all the details right.

  I was ready to say good night to Burton, go upstairs, and try to get some sleep. Shortly after I had opened up to Burton, the clock struck eleven.

  “Are you sure you’ll be all right?” he asked as we started out of the drawing room.

  Before I could answer, we heard a gunshot followed by a scream. Both of us raced toward the stairway where the shot had come from. I didn’t think of it then, but I outran him on the steps.

  By the time I reached the landing, Burton was two steps behind me. The others had come out of their rooms and stood in the hallway.

  “I heard a shot!”

  “And a scream.”

  “Is anyone hurt?”

  I don’t remember who said what, because everyone seemed to talk at once. All of them looked as if they had just jumped out of bed. Jason was the only one without a robe. He stood in jeans, bare feet, and bare chest.

  Just then Wayne Holmestead poked his head out of his room, and the light was on behind him. His was the room at the end of the hallway.

  When he saw us, he stumbled out of the room. He visibly shook. His glasses were askew. He slumped against the wall as if he feared he might fall. He seemed unable to move or to say anything.

  Within seconds everyone focused on Wayne. He opened his mouth several times before words came out. “Somebody shot at me! I could—I could have been killed.”

  “Who shot at you?” Burton asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  He straightened his glasses and pushed himself away from the wall. He wore a robe over pajamas, and he tightened the belt. Those minor actions seemed to put him back in control. He stepped forward. “I had gone down the hallway and visited Paulette—perfectly innocent—just to borrow a Percodan—which I know she takes. I hadn’t thought to bring any. I have an old football injury, and sometimes my sciatica acts up and the pain is excruciating. She gave me two pills, and I was returning to my room.”

  “There are the pills!” Lenny said, pointing. “So scared he dropped them, huh?”

  We stared at the floor, and they were both on the carpet, about four feet apart from each other.

  “Look! The door! Isn’t that a bullet hole?” asked Reginald. He walked past Burton to the frame of the door. Embedded in the door frame was a bullet.

  No one seemed to know enough about bullets to give any opinion about what kind of gun had been used.

  Just then Jason stepped forward and looked at the bullet lodged in the wood. Beth walked down to where Burton, Wayne, Reginald, Jason, and I stood. She stared closely at the hole and the casing. “Beretta—.32 caliber,” she said.

  “How did you know that?” I asked.

  “I know things like that.”

  “That’s probably right,” Jason said. “Because I think it’s the gun from Dad’s desk—we presume the one that killed him.”

  It took several seconds for all of us to absorb that information. I realized not only did we have two murders, but now we had an attempted third. What was going on here?

  “Hey, sounds like the old Agatha Christie novel, And Then There Were None.” Lenny laughed. “You know the story? There were ten people on an island or an estate. One by one, they all died or something like that.”

  “Except the murderer killed himself, which made the last couple of people mistrust themselves and they killed each other,” said Reginald. “Or something like that.”

  “That’s so—so horrid,” said Amanda. “Please. That’s not something to joke about.”

  “I wasn’t joking. Not this time,” Lenny said and laughed. “Or maybe I was.”

  “Or maybe you have the gun?” Jeffery asked.

  “Search me. Search my room,” Lenny said. “Stay for tea in the morning.”

  “What do you think is going on?” I asked Burton. I kept my voice low, and most of them didn’t hear me. By then, a gaggle of voices repeated to each other what they had heard, and most of them insisted they had been sleeping soundly.

  “Are you afraid to be in your room alone?” Burton asked Wayne.

  He shook his head. “I’m safe now, and I’ll lock the door. I won’t come out again until I hear others moving around in the hallway.”

  “I’ll call your room from the kitchen for breakfast,” Amanda said. “As I said earlier, I’ll have some kind of breakfast ready by 7:30.”

  Burton didn’t tell anyone not to touch the bullet. In the TV shows, the hero always says that, and it always sounds stupid to me. Why would anyone want to touch it? Who wanted to feel a spent bullet in the door frame?

  “Let’s all go back to bed,” Burton said. “Go inside, lock your doors. You’ll be safe tonight.”

  “Aren’t we going to search everyone’s room?” asked Lenny. “That could be fun. I’d love to know what people brought into their rooms.”

  “Good night, Lenny,” I said. “We’ll leave that kind of thing to the police.”

  “Good night, everyone,” Burton said. “I’ll stand out in the hallway until everyone is locked inside.”

  The others turned and went into their rooms. That is everyone except me. I had been ready for bed, but now I was wide awake. I stared at Burton.

  “I’m awake too,” he said. “You want to find some sweet tea or something downstairs?”

  “I’d prefer a snack. If I eat something, that relaxes me.”

  We walked downstairs to the kitchen. Burton made himself an instant hot chocolate, and I found a box of Oreos. I planned to eat two but finished off eight without a pause. Burton just watched and smiled.

  “I think I’m ready to head toward bed now,” Burton said.

  “Sounds like a good idea.”

  We left the kitchen and walked down the hallway. Just as we approached Roger Harden’s office, I heard a soft, brushing noise—as if someone moved something inside the room. Burton paused. Our eyes met, and he put his index finger to his lips.

  Burton turned the knob slowly and pushed open the door.

  The lamp on Roger’s desk was on. Paulette’s back was to us, but she was rummaging through his desk. She was so focused on her search she didn’t see or hear us. She lifted a pile of file folders from the right hand drawer and skimmed them as if she wanted one particular paper.

  “What are you searching for?” Burton asked.

  Paulette jumped and gasped. Her hand went to her breast. “Oh, you startled me.”

  “You were so intent on your search, you never heard us,” I said. “And obviously you haven’t yet found what you want.”

  “So what papers are you looking for?” Burton asked. “They must be important to you.”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “How did you get in here?”

  “Roger kept a spare key over the door ledge. He locked his office only when he had a party because he didn’t want guests to wander in here accidentally.” She smiled—and it was obvious it was forced—and added, “You know how it is with powerful men like Roger. They constantly fear someone will steal from them.”

  Burton held out his hand. “Why don’t you give me the key? We can lock it behind us when we leave.”

  She handed him the key.

  “What did you hope to find?” I asked.

  “I’m not clever enough to think up a safe or evasive answer, so I think it’s wiser if I say nothing.” She pulled the top of her heavy hot-pink robe tighter around her neck. She may have been dressed for bed, but she hadn’t taken off her makeup. I wondered what she wore under that robe.

  “It might help us believe you didn’t kill Roger if you tell us,” Burton said as he walked closer to her. “If you don’t tell us, it becomes easy to believe you killed him because he had something you wanted and wouldn’t giv
e it to you, so you shot him, and you came back to find it when you thought everyone had gone back to bed.”

  I walked over and pulled open her robe. She still wore the same black dress from earlier in the evening. “You haven’t been to bed, have you?” I asked. I noticed her purse on the corner of the desk and decided to see if she had already taken anything.

  She saw what I was going to do, and her hand reached the purse before I could touch it. “You may choose to believe whatever you wish.” She opened her purse, fumbled around, and closed it angrily. “I forgot. I quit smoking two weeks ago.” She laughed—a bit forced from my observation—and said, “Grabbing a cigarette was a nice way to give me a few seconds to collect my thoughts.” She opened the purse again and shoved it toward me so I could look inside before she snapped it shut. “Satisfied?”

  “Want to try a stick of gum instead?” Burton held out a pack.

  She shook her head.

  I couldn’t understand how she could search through Roger’s desk when his body lay on the floor less than two feet away. What kind of woman is she? I wondered.

  From behind the desk she had carelessly tossed file folders around. Burton came around on one side of the desk to face her, and I came around from the other—the side away from the covered corpse. Without discussing it, I sensed both of us wanted her to feel intimidated by our presence.

  She stared at me and then at Burton but said nothing. She sat down in Roger’s chair. Her face was a mask and she wasn’t going to reveal anything.

  “You disliked Roger, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “Disliked him? I loathed him.” She laughed. “But I’m not a murderer, even though I’m glad someone took care of him.”

  “Why did you loathe him?” Burton asked.

  “Let’s just leave the statement at that, shall we? You’re not a police officer, so I don’t have to answer, do I?”

  Burton sat on the edge of the desk, and he invaded her space just enough to intimidate her. “You’re right, of course; however, I’d like to leave this office believing that you’re not the cold-blooded killer who’s already taken two lives. You don’t have to say anything.”

  “Do you think I killed Roger? Do you honestly believe that?”

  “What do you want me to think?” As Burton talked to her, his voice softened and took on a kind of intimate confidentiality. An act or not, if Burton had talked to me like that, I would have spilled every secret I had ever learned.

  “Let’s just say I had no love for him or even that I detested him. Now that he’s gone, I haven’t shed any tears, and I won’t. I think the world is better without Roger. I feel sad about Elaine. I didn’t particularly like her, but she didn’t deserve to die.”

  “And you have some way to know who deserves death?” I asked. “You are some kind of judge?”

  “No, I didn’t mean—”

  “What did you mean?” I reached down, pulled the chair around so she faced me. I grabbed her shoulders. Burton had tried the let’s-be-sweet approach. Now I would try mine. I shook her twice. “Don’t try to play games with us. Someone has killed two people and shot at a third. If you didn’t kill them, I would expect you to do everything you can to turn suspicion away from yourself.”

  “Take your hands off me.”

  Her words lacked conviction. I didn’t shake her again, but I didn’t let go. I had suspected that, although she was cool on the outside, she was fragile on the inside. “Then tell us.”

  “I want to be able to believe you,” Burton said in his still-soft voice.

  “Is this some kind of good-cop-bad-cop deal?” Her voice shook as she asked.

  I knew we had her.

  “I wouldn’t play games with you,” Burton said. If anyone else had used those words, I would have cried, “Yuck,” but they came across with sincerity. “Please.”

  I released her and stepped back. I pushed the file drawers back into place and sat down on the other side of the desk.

  Paulette swiveled her chair back so that she faced Burton. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back in the chair. “I’m too ashamed to talk about it.”

  “Please tell us,” Burton said. “We’re both professionals, and we’ll respect your confidence.”

  Paulette opened her deep blue eyes. “Is that a promise?” She didn’t look at me. Her full concentration was on Burton. I suspected that was part of her charm in the business world. She stared at him as if he were the only person in the room.

  This time I was smart enough to keep my mouth closed. Burton was doing a good job, and I was willing to let him do it.

  Sixteen

  “Roger Harden was my mentor,” Paulette said without looking at either of us.

  “And you loved him and he was your best friend,” I said. “We read that novel. Now let’s try a little nonfiction.”

  She nodded two or three times as if trying to decide where to start. “We met when I was nineteen years old and struggling to finish my degree in business at the University of Tennessee—in Knoxville—and I worked full-time at Faces.”

  “What’s Faces?” Burton asked.

  “It was a high-level cosmetics firm. It was fairly small by industry standards, but they made only quality products—not the kind you find in Walgreens or Kmart. I was in sales. I mean, I spoke only to top buyers—Macy’s, Nordstrom—that kind of place. We had a few independent stores, but mostly it was the upper-end chains. Apparently, I was extremely good at what I did, because week after week I brought in the top sales for Faces, and there were eleven salespeople on staff.”

  “And how did Roger discover your talent?”

  “Oh that? He decided to buy the company. We were located just outside of Knoxville, and he wanted to take us over, move us down here to the coast, and make Faces a megabucks outfit—or so he said.”

  “I didn’t realize Roger was into anything like that.”

  “Roger was into whatever would make him a profit. He bought Faces, reorganized it, brought in top talent, and made the company big—really big—and six months later he sold it to Bristol-Myers. They downgraded the products—cheapened them, if you want my opinion. But Roger didn’t care what they did as long as he made a profit. In the process, he netted a few million and moved on to the next project. That’s how he operated.”

  “And how did you fit into all of that?”

  “Simple. Roger was brilliant. Anyone will tell you that. He had an intuitive instinct about him. It was almost as if he looked at a product or a line—even if he knew nothing about it—and could sense what would sell and what wouldn’t. He was the same way about people. In the twenty years I was with Roger, not once did I ever see him make a bad deal. He was that good.”

  “I’m still not clear—” I said and remembered I was supposed to keep my mouth shut.

  “Roger knew I had potential. He spotted it within minutes of our meeting the first time he came to Faces. Privately, he asked me if I would meet him for lunch—strictly business, he said. But I had classes at the university, so we settled on dinner. That night he offered to make me a vice president—one of four in Harden Enterprises.”

  “Just like that?” I said, and I admit skepticism rang out in my voice.

  “Just like that. He said he would give me flextime to finish my degree—which he did. He even backed me so I could do an MBA. In those regards, Roger was the best.”

  “And in other ways?” I prompted. As I asked, Burton raised an eyebrow. I caught the message. I’d try to keep my mouth shut.

  “Roger taught me many things, and always he acted as a man of discreet conduct—”

  “You mean he didn’t make a pass at you?” I said and wondered if I needed to literally bite my tongue.

  “Never. He was a total professional. I knew he was married—he married a few months after I started to work for him. You can believe this: No matter what a jerk he was, it was always business. Totally, strictly business. No, Roger was one of those people for whom the ultimate aphrodisiac w
as money, which meant success, and success meant power.”

  I had a comment ready, but this time I said nothing.

  “I loved my work with Roger—at least I did for the first ten years. I learned more on the job and from him than I ever could have learned on my own.” She paused and smiled. “Both Harvard and Princeton offered me a teaching position last year—which I turned down. But that’s to make it clear how much Roger taught me, and to explain that I had become well-known for my business sense.”

  “But you despised him?” I said softly. This time Burton didn’t raise an eyebrow.

  “He did teach me—I received a great education from him, but that instruction came at a price. Roger would coach me or open any doors I wanted to go through. There was just one catch.”

  “Total control,” I said without thinking.

  “Exactly that. I had to turn down Harvard and Princeton because I would be too far away from him. Everything, anything—it didn’t matter what it was—Roger Harden had to be in total control.” She shook her head, swiveled in her chair several seconds. “He liked my ideas—that was never a problem. But I had to bring every idea and every innovation to him. No matter what, it was as if he had to put his imprimatur on it.”

  “But you said he liked your ideas?”

  “He never rejected one of them. Two or three times he made suggestions to improve the concepts or figured out ways for me to get more mileage, but that’s all. I didn’t mind that, and he never demanded credit. He didn’t seem to want that kind of power. It wasn’t anything like that.”

  “But it was the control issue, right?” I asked.

  She nodded. “If I didn’t consult him on every single thing, he would go berserk. One time he yelled at me for almost twenty minutes in a board meeting. Do you know why? Because I had forgotten to hand deliver to him a copy of our profit-and-loss statement—and we had netted nearly three million dollars. Hand deliver. Can you imagine that? I sent it by the office messenger because I was running late for an appointment.”