The Question of the Dead Mistress

by E. J. Copperman

  In another three minutes Ms. Washburn pulled the car up to the curb directly across from the office of Fontaine and Fontaine Real Estate. She did violate the law by parking the Kia Spectra in front of a fire hydrant, but there were no available legal parking spaces on the street and she said she would move if fire department representatives needed to use the hydrant. “Besides,” Ms. Washburn said, “I don’t think we’ll be here very long.”

  “Indeed. I believe we can continue on our route now,” I said.

  “Already?”

  I made a point of looking at each building on the street including the one directly to our left. “There are no likely spots for Brett Fontaine to have been assaulted here,” I said. “The buildings are very close together. Notice that there are people prominently walking on both sides of the street. This is approximately the time of day when Mr. Fontaine was killed. It is unlikely the event could have happened without anyone at least hearing something unusual. The police would probably have been notified, but Detective Monroe had no record of any such call having been made.”

  Ms. Washburn put the Kia Spectra’s transmission back into the Drive gear. “So we’re looking for a spot where there would be more space between the buildings or with less foot traffic, is that it?” she asked.

  “Yes, and the availability of at least some olive oil,” I answered when it was appropriate.

  “The bodega would probably have olive oil,” Ms. Washburn noted.

  “Agreed.”

  Luckily, after a six-minute drive we found a parking spot two buildings south of the bodega where Brett Fontaine had stopped on the morning he was killed. The business, which according to the sign over its doorway was named B-B-Big Food, was a small space, contradictory to the name, horizontally three doors north of the nearest corner. It was, as are most such enterprises, crammed with products on shelves from ceiling to floor with very little space for customers to maneuver through its aisles.

  Ms. Washburn turned the engine off and we walked to the doorway of B-B-Big Food. “Should I look for the olive oil right away?” she asked me. “Is that the idea here, or is there something else we are looking for?”

  “The entire floorplan of the store is significant, but it will probably be best for us to divide our focus,” I answered. “You search for the spot where olive oil might be found and I will walk through the store to see what I might observe that would be significant to the question we are considering.”

  “Should we go in separately? Should I wait a minute after you go in?”

  “Why?”

  Ms. Washburn thought for exactly one second. “Good point,” she said.

  I held the door open for Ms. Washburn, as I have been taught it is what one does when a woman is entering one. This is a social construct that appears to have survived the thought—in my view, quite correct—that women are equal members of society and do not require special treatment. Customs are fluid things, rarely based on empirical data.

  Once inside the store Ms. Washburn moved to the left and began scanning shelves of various products to determine where bottles or cans of olive oil might be displayed. I took the cramped route to the right of the store from the perspective of a customer entering the business and simply observed the conditions of B-B-Big Foods on what I could only assume was a typical day.

  It was an unremarkable store, a neighborhood bodega meant to serve basic needs. The only fresh produce was represented by a bowl of red apples on the front counter and another of slightly overripe bananas to its right. Otherwise virtually every product in the store was in a sealed container of some sort.

  There was a rather elderly man of Asian descent behind the counter, watching a small television playing a program that to my ear sounded like it was being broadcast in Mandarin. I approached him while observing the rest of the surroundings: One door behind the counter, no doubt leading to a storage area, clean if not necessarily neat shelving and floors, very little free space. The aisles were narrow and made me somewhat uncomfortable. I felt my left hand begin to move involuntarily and since the movement was slight and made me feel better, I did not check it.

  “Excuse me,” I said when I reached the counter. The man did not turn down the volume on the television but he did look in my direction. He said nothing. “May I ask about your cleaning procedures?”

  The elderly man looked at me with an expression I took for concern but turned out to be suspicion. “Are you from the Health Department?” he asked.

  “No. Allow me to introduce myself. I am—”

  “You want to buy something?” The man was glancing at the television screen but still directing most of his attention at me.

  “I do not,” I said. “I am Samuel Hoenig, proprietor of—”

  “If you don’t want to buy anything, why should I listen to you?”

  It was a fair, if not a polite, question. “A man who purchased coffee here recently was murdered,” I said. “I am—”

  “You think a guy was killed because I sold him coffee?” The man looked angry.

  “I do not think that at all. I am wondering if you remember anything about the man.”

  The elderly man looked again at his television and then regarded me with something resembling derision. “A guy comes in and buys a cup of coffee and I’m supposed to remember him? You know how many people come in here every day and buy coffee?”

  I looked to my left but did not yet see Ms. Washburn approaching. “I have no idea,” I told the man. “But perhaps you might recognize him from this photograph.” I had saved to my iPhone a photograph of Brett Fontaine provided by Virginia. I showed it to the man, who regarded it briefly and shook his head.

  “Not a regular,” he said.

  “Did he buy any olive oil?” I asked.

  “I just told you I didn’t recognize the guy and now you want to know about him buying olive oil?” The man shook his head. “If you don’t want to buy anything, just go, okay? I’m working.” He sat back down and paid more obvious attention to the television, whose screen was not visible to me. I did not know enough Mandarin to decipher the dialogue being spoken by the actors.

  With no other interrogative techniques at my disposal, I walked back in the direction I had seen Ms. Washburn taking after we entered the store. I found her sitting on the floor of the most distant aisle to the left. She was perusing various bottles of olive oil. I did not understand the perplexed expression on her face.

  “There appear to be only two brands available in this store,” I pointed out. “Is there a reason you seem to be thinking so deeply about them?”

  “I’m trying to figure out what could have happened that makes sense,” Ms. Washburn responded. “Brett Fontaine walks into this store and toward this aisle. Someone comes up behind him and beats him to death with a tire iron. When he falls he knocks over a bottle of olive oil, which is in plastic, from the bottom shelf. It falls maybe three inches to the floor and breaks, getting enough olive oil on Brett that the autopsy report will show it mixing with his blood. Then the killer dresses up in Brett’s clothing and somehow carries him out of the store, blood and olive oil dripping all over the place, gets him into his car and drives him to Wyckoff Street, presumably in the trunk of the car, gets out dressed as Brett, goes to the property he owns there, does something, gets back in the car so I can see him being Brett, drives to High Street in the hope that I’ll get caught in a two-minute traffic jam, which will give him enough time to lay Brett out on the sidewalk in front of the building where Virginia Fontaine’s husband first died so I can find him. Is that about it?”

  “Perhaps this is not the stop where Mr. Fontaine was murdered,” I said. “Let’s go to Wyckoff Street.”

  “Help me up.”

  twenty-three

  The property on Wyckoff Street—whose full address I have been asked not to divulge—was a typical one in this area of New Brunswick, wh
ere students of Rutgers University often spend their post-freshman years. It was not very new, not especially well maintained despite Virginia Fontaine’s suggestion, and had two front doors, one for each of the apartments contained within the structure. It sat on a residential street that also included a small warehouse which appeared, from our vantage point four doors away in the Kia Spectra, to have been closed by its owner at least a few years previously. It was, in other words, not a very notable property or area.

  “Is this where you parked the day you were following Brett Fontaine?” I asked Ms. Washburn.

  “No, I wasn’t able to get this close that day,” she said. “I was there, by the oak tree.” She pointed toward a mature oak on the opposite side of the street.

  “What did Brett Fontaine do when he got here?” I was unable to see much of the rental property from this position so I opened the door of the Kia Spectra and stood next to the vehicle. My height added a little to my viewing ability, but not much. The leaves from the completely sprouted trees were making everything on the other side difficult to see.

  “I couldn’t see him perfectly because I didn’t want to be obvious about watching him,” Ms. Washburn answered. “So the trees didn’t exactly block me out, but they weren’t making it any easier. I saw him get out of his car. He was parked there.” She indicated a spot on the other side of the street where no legal parking appeared to be available.

  “How did he do that?” I asked. “He would not have been allowed to park his vehicle there.”

  Ms. Washburn smiled and shook her head. “He did it by not caring about stuff like that, Samuel.” She also exited the Kia Spectra and walked around the car to join me. “But he walked over there and went into the building he owns. Owned. You know.”

  “You saw him go inside?” I was paying more attention to the closed warehouse than the residential property, but I was interested in her answer.

  “More or less. He walked in that direction and then I saw his feet turn toward the house.”

  “Did you have your photography equipment with you?” I asked. Ms. Washburn is a former photographer for the Home News-Tribune, a local daily newspaper.

  “Of course, but I didn’t think a picture of his shoes would have been all that interesting.” Ms. Washburn looked at the house and then at me. “Why? What are you thinking?”

  “You are probably correct. Photographing Mr. Fontaine’s feet would not have provided much in the way of useful information.”

  Ms. Washburn clapped her hands loudly, causing me to glance away from the warehouse and back at her. “Samuel! What are you looking at?”

  I looked to the left and then to the right, and then to the left again. I would have walked to a crosswalk but none was marked on the roadbed. “Come with me,” I said to Ms. Washburn, and then proceeded across the street.

  She did not question me, probably assuming I wanted to have an unobstructed view of the property owned by Fontaine and Fontaine. Instead I stopped once we had reached the opposite sidewalk to consider the unused warehouse.

  “Why are we here?” Ms. Washburn asked. “Brett went into the other house.”

  “We can’t be certain of that,” I told her. I pointed at the warehouse. “Notice the sign.”

  Ms. Washburn looked up. Over the front entrance of the warehouse was an admittedly dirty and long-neglected sign reading, in what had once been white letters over a black background Triple A Cannery Storage.

  “I give up,” Ms. Washburn said. “So they stored cans here a long time ago. What does that have to do with … olive oil?”

  “Exactly,” I answered. Ms. Washburn has always been quick to connect pieces of a question’s facets. “If there was, for example, tuna being stored for distribution here, it might very well have been packed in olive oil. Surely the facility would occasionally suffer some damage or a shipment would have been compromised. Olive oil could certainly be so well saturated into the floor that it would show up on the body of a man who had been beaten severely inside.”

  “But how can we be sure Brett went inside?” Ms. Washburn asked. “I didn’t see him head this way.”

  “Could you have seen if he changed his direction after walking a few steps toward the house?” I asked.

  Ms. Washburn considered the question. “Not from the angle I had. You saw what it looked like. With cars parked on that side of the street and the leaves on the trees hanging low, I had a very small window to look through.”

  I looked at the warehouse again. It was obviously in a state of near collapse. The metal on the hinges and fixtures on the front door had rusted. Again I questioned the wisdom of traveling anywhere without at least two pairs of latex gloves. I felt my head begin to shake as it does when I am frustrated or angry with myself. The inside of my lower lip scraped against my teeth.

  “Samuel,” Ms. Washburn said gently.

  Her voice made me refocus my attention and emotions. My involuntary responses eased but did not immediately cease entirely. I remembered to breathe. I closed my eyes for a moment and counted to three slowly. Then I looked at Ms. Washburn again.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “What was bothering you?”

  “I am angry at myself for not bringing latex gloves,” I explained.

  “Why do we need latex gloves?”

  “Because we need to go inside the warehouse and observe the scene.”

  Ms. Washburn reached for the canvas tote bag she had brought with her. “I have some latex gloves, Samuel,” she said.

  I should never have doubted it.

  With our hands protected—I had two gloves on each hand—we approached the warehouse door, which a quick attempt indicated was locked, chained, and padlocked. That was not unexpected.

  “Is there another way in?” Ms. Washburn asked, I believe rhetorically. She walked toward the left side of the building and looked down into the alley beyond. Then she turned back toward me and shook her head negatively. I did the same, more carefully, on the right side of the warehouse. There was no obvious entrance there, but there were windows lining the wall, approximately six feet from the pavement of the alley.

  “There are windows,” I said when Ms. Washburn was again by my side.

  “On the other side too. Should we try to climb up and break in?”

  “That would not be my first choice,” I admitted. “There must be a loading dock in the back. Did you see an entrance for trucks on your side?”

  “Yeah. There’s a very wide skirt in the curb by the parking lot. Must be to allow bigger vehicles in for deliveries. Maybe there’s a way in back there.”

  I was not enthusiastic about the experience but saw no alternative. We walked into the alley and then all the way along the side of the warehouse. I concentrated very diligently on not looking down for fear of any urban creatures that might have inhabited this space. Ms. Washburn made no noise to indicate she had been startled so I simply chose to believe there was nothing there. It seemed a very long time, but in truth we reached the rear of the warehouse in seventeen seconds.

  There was a small parking lot, presumably for employees. The white paint delineating individual spaces had almost completely faded and could be seen only when one was making a specific effort to do so. But the roadway was clearly intended to allow for deliveries, as were the two large loading docks that took up almost the entirety of the back wall.

  “This was where they had stuff delivered for sure,” Ms. Washburn said, and although she was stating the obvious her comment did start my mind imagining what the operation must have been like.

  There would have been at least ten employees working in the facility at any given time to accommodate a warehouse of this size. I could envision men and women opening and closing the bay doors in incidents of extreme temperatures during both winter and summer. Inside there would be forklift operators bringing the deliveries to the desig
nated spaces.

  A door to the left side of the bays would have been where the supervisors and company executives would have entered. Because there was a roof over that entrance, the door was not as badly damaged or rusted as the ones in front. I walked toward it.

  “There is no chain or padlock,” I said aloud, although I’m not certain Ms. Washburn could hear me. She stood approximately thirty feet to my right and behind me. It sometimes helps my process to hear the words out loud. “There are no visible hinges; they must be on the inside.” With my peripheral vision I saw Ms. Washburn examine something on the rocky ground in front of her and bend down on her left knee. “There do appear to have been security cameras here but I would be very surprised if they were still operational.”

  Ms. Washburn reached for something and stood up but I was concentrating on the door. “If this is indeed the place where Brett Fontaine died, someone had access to the building. There is no sign of forced entry,” I said.

  At that moment I saw violent movement to my right and instinctively stepped back. That was the right move to make because suddenly a large rock was being pushed hard into the lever being used as a doorknob. The impact, coming with an impressive strike downward, instantly caused enough damage to the mechanism that the lever was obliterated and the door showed an open hole where it used to be.

  Ms. Washburn, holding the stone in her right hand, pushed out two large breaths. “That oughta do it,” she said.

  Indeed, now I could work the lock from the inside, being careful to wear the latex gloves, and within a minute we were inside the warehouse. “I marvel at your ability to take a situation in hand, Ms. Washburn,” I told her as we stepped from the parking lot into the building.

  She shrugged. “Sometimes it’s just the simplest thing that works.”

  As we had expected, the warehouse was almost entirely empty. It was a large open space with very little interior construction cutting into its utility. There was what appeared to be an office to our right and almost nothing else in the building other than wooden pallets that had no doubt kept the stock off the floor in the case of flooding from heavy rain. Those ringed the perimeter of the warehouse. Other than that and two obviously unused forklifts, there was nothing here.