Rust on the Razor

by Mark Richard Zubro

  I put my hand on her arm. “Is Mr. Carpenter okay?”

  “He spoke and recognized everyone this morning.”

  I looked at her. Her face was deeply wrinkled around her chin and mouth. Her gray hair was pulled back, but wisps had gotten loose. I saw a bit of Scott around the eyes.

  “Can I get you something?” I asked.

  She sniffled. She took her hands off the tissue and placed them flat on the table.

  In front of her on the tissue was a rusty razor blade with what looked like flecks of dried blood on it.

  She looked down at the razor and back at me.

  She spoke very softly. “One of my children is a murderer.” She sighed deeply. “A parent goes through a great deal with children. Illness and worry. Tragedy and happiness. This is wrong.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “I gave my husband a sponge bath this morning. It was in the folds of the cuff of his pajama bottoms. It isn’t his. He never uses this kind.”

  I sat next to her, patted her hand.

  “Someone came into his room who was a murderer. At least one member of the family has been with him all that time. I’ve talked to the hospital personnel and my children. You haven’t been in his room since you found the sheriff. You couldn’t have put it there. I can’t believe one of my children would do this and then try and implicate an innocent person.”

  I said, “Maybe one of the hospital personnel dropped it.”

  “No,” she said. “Daddy didn’t want strangers touching him. We’ve cared for him. I’ve washed his hair and given him sponge baths. My children have changed the sheets and helped him up.”

  I agreed it was probably one of her kids, but I couldn’t absolutely rule out a doctor, nurse, or orderly.

  She pulled another tissue out of her purse and wiped her eyes. “I am going to question my children about this. I will know the truth.”

  Nathan entered the room. “Mama, I found everybody except Hiram. They’ll be along in a minute.” He saw her crying. “What’s wrong, Mama? This guy trying to hurt you?”

  “Oh, hush, Nathan.” A few minutes later, Nathan, Mary, and Shannon stood in a circle staring at the razor blade. Mary called into the CCU and Scott came out. He sat down next to his mother.

  Mrs. Carpenter told them of finding the razor blade. Shannon began to cry and slumped to the ground. Nathan caught her.

  Hiram hurried in. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “One of you killed the sheriff,” I said.

  Hiram lunged at me.

  Mrs. Carpenter stood up. “Stop it!”

  Everybody stopped.

  Mrs. Carpenter eyed each of her children in turn. She slowly sat down. “No matter what, I want the truth.”

  Tears ran down Shannon’s face. Her muffled sobs were the only sound in the room.

  Nathan explained the situation to his brother.

  Hiram said, “Anybody who came into the room could have put it there.” He pointed at me. “He could have.”

  “He hasn’t been in there since the murder,” Scott said.

  I said, “Hiram, why did you tell Richardson you saw me with the sheriff? You know I wasn’t. You’re lying.”

  He began to protest, but I cut him off. “I know you think it’s going to be my word against yours, but I know I wasn’t there. Therefore you are trying to save yourself or cover up for someone else.”

  Shannon burst out sobbing.

  “Peter raped me!” Her voice shook with rage. “He humiliated me. He demanded I see him again. I refused. I’d stolen money from my job. They made me quit. He found out. I don’t know how. I had to put a stop to that horrible man.”

  Scott gave me an agonized look. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Hiram slammed his fist against the wall. “Shannon, don’t say anything!” he commanded.

  “She’s got to tell the truth,” Scott said.

  Hiram looked like he might attack Scott.

  Mrs. Carpenter said, “Y‘all hush.” She moved to Shannon and embraced her distraught daughter. She glanced up for a moment. “Y’all should leave now.”

  We left to the sound of Mrs. Carpenter murmuring to Shannon.

  Three days later we said good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter in their front parlor. The prognosis for Mr. Carpenter’s full recovery was good and the Carpenter home had survived the flood unscathed. This was tempered by the arrest of Shannon for the sheriff’s murder.

  Todd Bristol in Chicago and a team from Atlanta had been hired by Scott to defend his sister. He had paid her bail. That morning Mrs. Carpenter had gone with her daughter to the lawyers to find out what to do next.

  Shannon had barely blinked in the past few days. She had refused to speak to Scott. He had tried talking to Hiram before we left. Hiram filled the air with a string of imprecations at his brother.

  “It may have been self-defense,” Mrs. Carpenter told me over breakfast that morning. “That son of a bitch sure provoked her.” She was the only one in the family with whom Shannon had spoken in the last three days.

  Shannon had not confessed any details to her. She was strong and athletic, and certainly had the strength to drag the sheriff around. A clandestine assignation, drugs or knockout drops in a drink, lots of forests and swamps around in which to do the deed. I suspected Hiram had helped her—if not in the killing, at least in the aftermath. Putting the body in our car had certainly been aimed deliberately to ruin one, or both, of us.

  Scott had spoken to a few of his contacts in the press. After he recovered, Dennis would have a job far from Brinard. We’d stopped to see him each day and we promised him a long exclusive on Scott’s coming out.

  One road had been opened out of town the night before. The water was receding slowly. We were headed directly for New York and appearances on news and talk shows.

  Scott insisted we fly first-class so we wouldn’t be bothered by tons of gawkers. After we took off, we settled down. I engrossed myself in Dead Man’s Island by Carolyn Hart. I’d barely been able to get to sleep last night from reading it until Scott had finally ordered me to turn out the light. The book was so good it took my mind off the horrors of the past few days.

  Now, Scott sat very quietly, hardly moving, mostly staring out the window. I looked up after twenty pages. Tears ran down his face. I pulled out my hanky.

  “It’s clean,” I said as I gave it to him. I put my hand on his arm.

  He wiped his eyes.

  He said, “I had a long talk with Nathan yesterday. I should have years ago. I should have gone home more. I should have made them accept me. I shouldn’t have let it go so long.”

  “What happened is not your fault.”

  “I should have spent more time with them. I know most of my brothers and sisters have big hangups about you and me, but that shouldn’t have stopped me from going home and bringing you with. They’re my family. Wrongheaded as they might be, I love them.”

  I held his hand for a long while. I saw his eyes begin to nod and close when suddenly he turned to me and asked, “I told you my fantasy as a kid. You didn’t tell me yours. What was it?”

  “When I was a kid, I dreamed of standing next to a professional baseball player. If he suddenly maybe wanted something, I’d run get it, and he’d be grateful, and he’d thank me, and he’d talk to me, and he’d take me with him everywhere he went, and we’d be best friends. At the time it wasn’t a sexual fantasy, just a kid’s dream.”

  He smiled and pulled me close and kissed me.

  By Mark Richard Zubro

  The “Tom and Scott” Mysteries

  A Simple Suburban Murder

  Why Isn’t Becky Twitchell Dead?

  The Only Good Priest

  The Principal Cause of Death

  An Echo of Death

  Rust on the Razor

  The “Paul Turner” Mysteries

  Sorry Now?

  Political Poison

  Another Dead Teenager

  Stonewall Inn Myste
ries

  Keith Kahla, General Editor

  Sunday’s Child by Edward Phillips

  Death Takes the Stage by Donald Ward

  Sherlock Holmes and the Mysterious Friend of Oscar Wilde by Russell A. Brown

  A Simple Suburban Murder by Mark Richard Zubro

  A Body to Dye For by Grant Michaels

  Why Isn’t Becky Twitchell Dead? by Mark Richard Zubro

  Sorry Now? by Mark Richard Zubro

  Love You to Death by Grant Michaels

  Third Man Out by Richard Stevenson

  The Night G.A.A. Died by Jack Ricardo

  Switching the Odds by Phyllis Knight

  Principal Cause of Death by Mark Richard Zubro

  Breach of Immunity by Molly Hite

  Political Poison by Mark Richard Zubro

  Brotherly Love by Randye Lordon

  Dead on Your Feet by Grant Michaels

  On the Other Hand, Death by Richard Stevenson

  Shattered Rhythms by Phyllis Knight

  Eclipse of the Heart by Ronald Tierney

  A Queer Kind of Love by George Baxt

  An Echo of Death by Mark Richard Zubro

  Ice Blues by Richard Stevenson

  Mask for a Diva by Grant Michaels

  Sister’s Keeper by Randye Lordon

  Another Dead Teenager by Mark Richard Zubro

  Shock to the System by Richard Stevenson

  Let’s Get Criminal by Lev Raphael

  Rust on the Razor by Mark Richard Zubro

  Time to Check Out by Grant Michaels

  RUST ON THE RAZOR. Copyright © 1996 by Mark Richard Zubro. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  eISBN 9781466804487

  First eBook Edition : November 2011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Zubro, Mark Richard.

  Rust on the Razor : a Tom and Scott mystery / Mark

  Richard Zubro

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-15644-8

  1. Carpenter, Scott (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Mason, Tom (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Baseball players—Illinois—Chicago—Fiction. 4. Gay men—Illinois—Chicago—Fiction. 5. Murder—Georgia—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3576.U225R87 1996

  813’.54—dc20

  96-4244

  CIP

  First Stonewall Inn Edition: July 1997