A Murder in Mohair

by Anne Canadeo

  “But he was. He really was working. Someone in an apartment came down and knocked on his door and saw him. They were complaining about the noise. He told the police that and it all checked out. Dana told us. Don’t you remember?”

  “Oh . . .” Lucy sat back. “I guess I forgot. I’m not sure then. Maybe the two crimes are not connected.”

  Maggie didn’t answer. She got up and poured a cup of coffee. “Want some?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.” Lucy didn’t mean to act deflated but she did feel that way.

  “Hey, what’s up? Looks like a serious conversation going on here.” Dana was coming up the path and they both turned to look at her.

  “We are having a serious conversation,” Maggie replied. “About the Gordons.”

  Lucy wanted to ask Dana about Richard’s alibi for the night of Cassandra’s murder, wondering if Maggie had remembered it incorrectly. But Dana spoke before she could.

  “Did you hear already? I just ran down to tell you.”

  “Tell us what?” Lucy turned to look at her, blocking the sun with her hand.

  “The police found the missing mat from Nora’s car. In the recycling center. It wasn’t stained with paint. They used an infrared light and found traces of blood. The blood type matches Cassandra Waters’s. They don’t know about the DNA yet, of course. But they’ve arrested Nora and charged her with Cassandra’s murder. They went to her house early this morning and took her down to the police station again.”

  Maggie stood up from her seat. “I still don’t believe she did it.”

  “I don’t, either,” Dana said. “But if not her, who? Richard?”

  “We were trying to work that out, but he has a good alibi, with a witness for that night. That’s what you heard from Jack anyway,” Lucy said.

  Dana thought a moment. “Yes, I do remember now. Richard said he was working in his shop all night. Then he packed up his van and went to pick up Dale at a party, around one a.m. A tenant in one of the apartments nearby came down and talked to him about the machinery sometime before that. The noise and complaint were all within the time frame of Cassandra’s murder, so the police eliminated him early.”

  Lucy sighed. “That’s what Maggie recalled. More or less. I was hoping there was some wiggle room in there. But sounds airtight.”

  Dana glanced at her curiously. “Seems so. Do you really think he killed Cassandra?”

  “I’m not sure. Something doesn’t fit. I do think Richard killed Jimmy, but I’m not sure now about Cassandra. And I don’t think Nora did it, either,” Lucy added, feeling very sure of that conclusion.

  Maggie turned the sign on her shop door to closed and locked the door. “I’ve already made too many speculations. I’m going over to the Schooner, to see if Edie’s there.”

  “Good idea. I’ll come with you,” Dana said. Lucy was glad Dana was going, too. Edie would surely be in emotional meltdown mode. Dana could help calm her.

  Lucy walked down to the sidewalk with them, then turned toward her bike. “I have to get going. I have to call a client soon. I’ll talk to you later, Maggie, and check in.”

  “Yes, do that,” she called back over her shoulder. “Maybe Edie will know something more about Nora.”

  Lucy rolled her bike out of the driveway as her friends crossed the street and headed to the diner. But instead of pedaling up the hill toward home, she headed toward the harbor, deciding it would be nice to get a little extra exercise before starting the workday. Plus sitting by the harbor a minute or two might clear her head of all these distressing questions.

  As much as she wanted now to figure out this Rubik’s Cube of betrayal, blackmail, and murder, her head was spinning and she had to give it all a rest.

  And leave it to the police. Who might actually know what they’re doing? Most of the time, she silently amended. Not this morning, when they had arrested Nora.

  Nora did not kill Cassandra. Nora Gordon did not kill anybody. As Lucy pedaled past the lovely Gilded Age antique shop, she felt a pang of sympathy for the poor, misjudged woman. Down the alley beside the store, she saw Richard’s workshop. Both buildings looked deserted.

  Surely Richard would be at his wife’s side right now? Not at her side exactly, if the police had her in custody. But certainly at the station, waiting to see her, dealing with her lawyer. Nora would be charged and booked and held a while, before she could come before a judge. But she could soon be out on bail. Very soon, Lucy hoped. Her mental state was frail. Surely a good lawyer could use her condition to some advantage?

  Lucy wasn’t sure why, but she suddenly steered the bike in a big U-turn, swooping by the antique store again from the opposite direction. Then, on impulse, she crossed the street and turned down the alley.

  She hopped off the bike and balanced it against the trash bins near the wood shop. Then she peered in the small, grimy windows, shaded from inside with a film of sawdust. She couldn’t see a thing and hardly knew what she was looking for. She tried the doorknob and the door opened with a soft creak.

  Surprised at that, she stuck her head in and called out. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

  No one answered. The space was dimly lit, slants of thin sunlight, filled with dust motes working their way through the shadows. Long beams of wood were tilted at angles against the walls like giant chopsticks.

  Other piles of wood—sheets of plywood, two-by-fours, strips of carved molding, and types she didn’t recognize—were balanced on sagging metal shelving that extended up to the peaked ceiling.

  A countertop ran along the walls, where an array of professional power tools sat ready for use—jigsaws and drills and many she didn’t know by name. Most looked sharp, jagged, and dangerous, especially to someone who didn’t know how to handle them.

  What was she looking for? Lucy wasn’t sure. She searched for electric sockets, following a twisting network of extension cords. One led to a nearby wall and she knelt down under the counter. At the hub of a tangle of wires, she saw a small white box that covered the outlet, the plug stuck in the box, like a surge protector.

  Only it wasn’t a surge protector. It had a timer dial. It was the gadget Richard had described to her. And I’ll bet my new bike that this one is not attached to an outdoor spotlight, to scare off burglars, Lucy thought as she followed the length of wire to its source. As she suspected, it led to a large tabletop saw. One that could buzz all night long, with no one at the controls.

  “You shouldn’t wander around in here, Lucy. You could get hurt.”

  She saw the shoes first. Heavy brown work boots stained with varnish. Then the paint-splattered jeans and flannel shirt. It was Richard. No longer the neat suburban husband she had chatted with at the barbecue, but bleary-eyed, unshaven, and haggard-looking again.

  Possibly a little crazy, too. The glint in his eyes nearly set off an automatic scream for help. But she didn’t dare.

  “What are you doing in here? Lost something?”

  “I’m sorry . . . I just wanted to ask about Nora,” she fibbed. “Why aren’t you with her?” she challenged him. “She must be scared.”

  “I was on my way home for a change of clothes. I saw your bike out there. How did you get in?”

  “The door was open. Honestly.”

  “What’s in your hand? Are you stealing from me?”

  “No . . . of course not.” She quickly dropped the timer on the counter.

  “You’re a very clever woman. For a blonde,” he said snidely.

  Lucy bristled at the dumb joke. She stood up straight and stared at him. “Very funny. Listen, sorry to hear about Nora. But I’d better get going.”

  “Not so fast, Blondie.” He stepped closer, blocking her only path to the door. “You could have an accident in here very easily. This metal shelf, for instance? Way too much weight on there. Say you bumped into it? You could be buried alive. It would be very painful.”

  He grabbed a thin metal strip supporting the shelves and shook it. Hard. Showers of dust and splinte
rs and even some bugs rained down on them.

  Lucy squealed and covered her head with her hands.

  She heard Richard laugh.

  “You’d better stop . . . it’s going to fall on both of us,” she warned.

  “But I don’t care. That’s the difference between us.” He shook the shelf again, laughing even louder at her reaction.

  “Stop, Dad. That’s enough!”

  Lucy looked all around but couldn’t tell where the voice had come from. Then she saw Dale in the back of the shop, making his way up a narrow space between the machinery and shelves of wood.

  Richard turned to face him. And Lucy began to slowly back up, desperately seeking another escape route. Or at the very least, a safer spot. The door was totally blocked. No way out there, she realized with a sinking heart.

  “I told you to stay home, Dale. Go on. I’ll deal with this!” Richard shouted.

  “It’s over, Dad. I can’t do this anymore. What I did was wrong . . . and what you did was wrong, too. I’m going to the police. I’m going to tell them everything.”

  Richard’s eyes widened with anger. He pounded the countertop with his fist. Drill bits, tools, stray nails, and screws flew in all directions.

  “No you’re not. We already talked about this. Just do as you’re told.” Richard’s voice was loud and angry, then suddenly, soft and pleading. “Please, son . . . please. I know what to do. Just listen to me, okay?”

  “What about Mom? Don’t you care about her at all?”

  “Your mother will be fine. She’ll never go to trial. I told you that. She’ll never have to know.”

  “But I know. I know everything.”

  Richard sighed and met his son’s gaze, holding it. “It’s going to be all right, Dale. If you just go home now. Why can’t you just believe me and do as I say?”

  Lucy knew from the look in his eye that if Richard won this debate it would be anything but all right for her. Her slow backward creeping had created a little gap, but led her to a dead end. She turned to find her back pressed against the edge of another countertop.

  Richard’s gaze slipped down to the workbench, and he selected a long, heavy piece of wood. It looked like a table leg or a piece of fencing. He tested the weight against a callused palm. Then he moved toward Lucy again, who skimmed along one side of the shop, like a small animal, trapped between a hunter and the proverbial hard place.

  “Get help, Dale! Please . . . hurry!” she shouted.

  Dale paused a moment, then turned. He looked about to go, to exit the shop from wherever he’d entered—a back door or window maybe?

  But Richard was already marching toward her, the wooden weapon swung back over his head. Lucy wondered if she could dodge his blows long enough for help to come.

  Suddenly Dale spun around and ran at his father. He jumped on Richard’s back and grabbed for the wood. Richard gasped and fell, his son’s arm squeezed around his throat.

  Though the two were nearly the same height and Dale had an athletic build, Richard had at least thirty pounds on the boy. It was hardly an even match, but both fought fiercely.

  Lucy screamed and narrowly squeezed clear of their tumbling, flailing bodies, nearly pulled down to the ground on top of them.

  Gravity. The force of gravity, it just pulls you down, Dale had said to her.

  They rolled and grunted and fought each other in the narrow, dusty space. Lucy scrambled for some way to help Dale but couldn’t think of anything. And she couldn’t seem to step around or over them. Their twisting, grunting bodies entirely blocked her path to the door and her fate was the prize of whoever won this battle. A frightening thought.

  “Police! Break it up! Put your hands up, where I can see them!”

  Charles ran in, holding out his badge. Lucy saw a gun hanging from a holster under his jacket but he didn’t reach for it.

  Two uniformed police officers rushed in behind him. They grabbed Richard and Dale and pulled them up from the floor. “Hands above your heads,” they repeated.

  Father and son raised their grimy hands, panting and gasping for air—their faces, clothing, even their hair covered in sawdust and sweat.

  The uniformed officers quickly handcuffed the Gordons and led them out of the shop.

  Charles made his way to Lucy, who had collapsed from sheer relief against a counter. He briefly touched her arm. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded, still too shaken to speak. “What made you come back here?”

  “You can take the cop off the beat, but you can’t take the beat out of the cop.” He shrugged and offered a small smile. “Just an instinct. I drove by Maggie’s shop and saw it was empty, then noticed the CLOSED sign on the door. That got my radar going.”

  Maggie never closed, even if she was sick, or there was a hurricane blowing. Well, maybe a hurricane. But she stayed open until the last possible minute. He knew that about their mutual friend by now.

  “So I drove by again, very slowly. I passed this place, too. Slow enough to notice a bike back here. And Richard’s van. I thought that was suspicious, him being here. He should have been at the station with his wife. Or at home.”

  “That’s what I figured,” she said.

  “What were you doing here?” His tone was a bit more stern now, she noticed.

  “I have to confess, I was snooping. Looking for this.” She picked up one of the timers and showed it to him. “It was connected to the table saw. I think that’s how Richard killed Jimmy Hubbard and appeared to be working at the same time, so he had a solid alibi.”

  Charles nodded, taking the timer from her. She could see he got it. “Good one . . . but what motive would Richard have to kill Jimmy?”

  This part was harder to say. “Kyle didn’t die of a brain hemorrhage. It was an overdose. Or maybe a hemorrhage brought on by one. He worked at the theater for a while, before he died. Jimmy must have supplied him with the drugs that killed him. Richard found that out somehow and took revenge for his son’s death.”

  Charles let out a breath, his eyes narrowed. “Who told you the kid died from drugs?”

  “Dale did. More or less. At the barbecue. He was drunk and babbling. I would have told you but it took me a while to put it together.”

  Charles looked a bit cross now and folded his arms over his chest. “We can check that easily. Anything else you would have told me? Richard had an alibi for the night the psychic was murdered. An eyewitness saw him here. You don’t think he did that, too, do you?”

  “No, he didn’t play that card again,” she said. “Though I think he despised Cassandra enough to do it.”

  “It was Nora,” Charles replied. “She told everyone she was taking a sleeping pill, but she left their house, killed Cassandra, and went back home. Except she got blood in her car. And when she saw it, she threw out the mat. Her husband and son didn’t get home until at least one thirty. They found her sleeping in bed. Dale had been at a party and Richard picked him up, after working here. That was well after Cassandra’s time of death.”

  Lucy shook her head. “I don’t think it was Nora, either.” She knew Charles wouldn’t believe her, but she felt sure of it now. “I think Dale killed Cassandra. I’m not exactly sure why. But there’s a good chance Cassandra knew that Richard had killed Jimmy and was blackmailing the Gordons. Or threatened to. I think Dale found out and was trying to protect his parents. Maybe he was tired of seeing Cassandra exploit them.”

  Charles didn’t look like he was buying it so easily. But he was at least entertaining the idea. “So you think he went to the psychic’s house, after his mother’s session, and confronted her. And maybe she tried to brush him off, or they argued, and he flew into a rage?”

  “Something like that. Dale was under tremendous pressure keeping the secret of his brother’s death and knowing how his father had avenged that death by killing Jimmy. Cassandra was dragging out his family’s agony. And torturing his parents even more,” Lucy said.

  Charles considered this the
ory but didn’t look as if he believed it quite yet. “So you think the night Cassandra died, Dale left the party, killed the psychic, and went back to the party. His father picked him up and took him home. None the wiser.”

  “Yes . . . Richard picked him up, for some reason using Nora’s car instead of his van. Richard was delivering a table and set of chairs early the next day. Maybe he’d already loaded the van and there wasn’t any room for a passenger. I heard the bloodstain was on the passenger side of the car. Not the driver’s.”

  “Right, a bloodstain—Cassandra’s blood, we believe—is on a mat from the passenger’s side of Nora’s car. But you think it’s because Dale sat in that spot, with Richard driving,” Charles clarified.

  “Yes, I do. And one of them must have found it later and tried to get rid of the evidence.”

  “Richard was the one who told us he threw it away and ordered a new mat,” Charles said.

  “He must have realized what Dale had done. But of course, he would do anything to protect his son. His only child now,” Lucy reminded him.

  “Very true. There’s a partial footprint in the stain. Just a scrap. But we might be able to get a match to one of Dale’s shoes,” he mused aloud.

  Charles seemed to believe her theory now. But Lucy was not pleased to have to figure out this puzzle, as bleak and heartbreaking as any Greek tragedy.

  The night of the barbecue, Dale had been rambling about dominoes, falling one on top of the other, once the first was tipped over. The image fit so well for the demise of his family.

  “One more thing,” Charles asked. “Does Maggie know you came here?”

  Lucy shook her head. “She went to see Edie and she thought I went home.”

  “And she doesn’t know anything about this? About your theory?”

  “Well . . . we talked about it a little. I talked, mostly. She just listened.”

  He smiled a moment but didn’t ask any more questions. He touched her shoulder and led her out to the light.

  Police officers flanked both of the Gordons and helped them into the rear seats of two separate cruisers.