Peter Pan Must Die: A Novel

by John Verdon

  The tic was back in full force at the corner of Hardwick’s mouth. Twice he started to speak and stopped. On the third try he said, “This is what you wanted from the start, right? To toss the whole fucking thing up in the air and see what happened when it hit the ground? To take a straight-ahead examination of police misconduct—something as simple as Mick the Dick, CIO, screwing potential suspect Alyssa Spalter—and turn it into the reinvention of the fucking wheel? Already you want to turn one murder into two! Tomorrow it’ll be half a dozen! What the fuck are you trying to do?”

  Gurney’s voice grew even softer. “I’m just following the string, Jack.”

  “Fuck the string! Jesus! Look, I’m sure that I speak for Lex as well as myself. The point is, we need to focus, focus, focus. Let me make this clear, once and for all. There are only a handful of questions that need to be answered about the investigation of Carl Spalter’s murder and the trial of Kay Spalter. One: What should Mick Klemper have done that he did not do? Two: What should Klemper not have done that he did do? Three: What did Klemper keep from the prosecutor? Four: What did the prosecutor keep from the defense attorney? Five: What should the defense attorney have done that he did not do? Five fucking questions. Get the right answers to those questions, and Kay Spalter’s conviction gets reversed. That’s it, pure and simple. So tell me, are we on the same page here?” Hardwick’s high-blood-pressure complexion was deepening.

  “Calm down, my friend. I’m pretty sure we can end up on the same page. Just don’t make it impossible for me to get there.”

  Hardwick stared hard and long at Gurney, then shook his head in frustration. “Lex Bincher is fronting the bucks for the investigatory out-of-pockets. If you’re going to spend money on anything beyond getting the answers to those five questions, he’s going to need to approve it in advance.”

  “No problem.”

  “No problem,” Hardwick echoed vaguely, looking back out the window. “Wish I could believe that, ace.”

  Gurney said nothing.

  After a while Hardwick sighed wearily. “I’ll fill Bincher in on everything you told me.”

  “Good.”

  “For Christ’s sake, just don’t … don’t let this …” He didn’t finish the sentence, just shook his head again.

  Gurney could sense the strain inherent in Hardwick’s position: desperate to get to a desired destination, horrified by the uncertainties of the proposed route.

  Among the various addenda to the case file was the address for the final residence of Mary Spalter—an assisted-living complex on Twin Lakes Road in Indian Valley, not far from Cooperstown, about halfway between Walnut Crossing and Long Falls. Gurney entered the address in his GPS, and an hour later it announced that he was arriving at his destination.

  He turned on to a neat macadam driveway that led through a tall drystone wall, then separated at a fork with arrows indicating KEY HOLDERS one way and VISITORS AND DELIVERIES the other way.

  The latter direction brought him to a parking area in front of a cedar-shake bungalow. An elegantly understated sign next to a small rose garden bore the inscription EMMERLING OAKS. SECURE SENIOR LIFE COMMUNITY. INQUIRE WITHIN.

  He parked and knocked on the door.

  A pleasant female voice responded immediately. “Come in.”

  He entered a bright, uncluttered office. An attractive woman somewhere in her forties with a tanning-bed complexion was sitting at a polished desk with several comfortable-looking chairs arrayed around it. On the walls were pictures of bungalows in various color and size variations.

  After giving him an assessing once-over, the woman smiled. “How can I help you?”

  He returned the smile. “I’m not sure. I drove up here on an impulse. Probably just a wild goose chase.”

  “Oh?” She looked interested. “What wild goose are you chasing?”

  “I’m not even sure about that.”

  “Well, then …” she said with an uncertain frown. “What do you want? And who are you?”

  “Oh, sorry about that. My name is Dave Gurney.” He took out his wallet, a little awkwardly, and stepped forward to show her his gold shield. “I’m a detective.”

  She studied the shield. “It says ‘Retired.’ ”

  “I was retired. And now, because of this murder case, it seems that I’ve become un-retired.”

  Her eyes widened. “Are you referring to the Spalter murder case?”

  “You’re familiar with that?”

  “Familiar?” She appeared surprised. “Of course.”

  “Because of the news coverage?”

  “That, and the personal element.”

  “Because the victim’s mother lived here?”

  “To some extent, but … Would you mind telling me what this is all about?”

  “I’ve been brought in to take a look at some aspects of the case that were never resolved.”

  She gave him a canny look. “Brought in by a family member?”

  Gurney nodded and smiled, as if to acknowledge some acuteness on her part.

  “Which one?” she asked.

  “How many of them do you know?”

  “All of them.”

  “Kay? Jonah? Alyssa?”

  “Kay and Jonah, of course. Carl and Mary when they were alive. Alyssa only by name.”

  Gurney was about to ask her how she knew them all when the obvious answer came to mind. For some reason he hadn’t immediately put the name of the place, Emmerling Oaks, together with his recollection from Willow Rest that Emmerling was Carl’s grandfather’s name. Apparently the family company owned more than apartment houses and cemeteries. “How do you like working for Spalter Realty?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You need to answer my question first. Why are you here?”

  Gurney had to make a decision fast, based on what his gut told him about this woman, as he weighed the potential risks and rewards of different levels of disclosure. He had little to go on. In fact, just one tiny glimpse of something that he might very well have misread. All he had was the fleeting sense that when she’d spoken the name “Carl” she’d done it with the same distaste as Paulette Purley had.

  He made his decision. “Let me put it this way,” he said, lowering his voice to give it the tenor of confidentiality. “There are certain aspects of Kay Spalter’s conviction that are questionable.”

  The woman’s reaction was sudden, excited, open-mouthed. “You mean she didn’t do it after all? God, I knew it!”

  It encouraged him to open the door a bit wider.

  “You didn’t think she was capable of killing Carl?”

  “Oh, she was capable of it, all right. But she’d never have done it like that.”

  “You mean with a rifle?”

  “I mean from so far away.”

  “Why not?”

  She cocked her head, gave him a skeptical look. “How well do you know Kay?”

  “Probably not as well as you do,… Miss?… Mrs.?”

  “Carol. Carol Blissy.”

  He extended his hand over the desk. “Nice to meet you, Carol. And I really appreciate your taking the time to speak to me.” She took his hand briefly but firmly. Her fingers and palm were warm. He went on, “I’m working with her legal team. I’ve had one face-to-face meeting with Kay and one long phone call. Our meeting gave me a good sense of her as a person, but I have the feeling you know her much better than I do.”

  Carol Blissy looked pleased. She absently adjusted the neckline of the black silk blouse she was wearing. She had glittery rings on all five fingers. “When I said she’d never have done it like that, what I meant was that it wasn’t her style. If you know her at all, you know that she’s an in-your-face kind of person. There’s nothing sneaky or long-distance about Kay. If she was going to kill Carl, she wouldn’t have shot him from half a mile away. She’d have walked straight up to him and split his head with an ax.”

  She paused, as though listening to her own words, and made a face. “Sorry, that was disgusting
. But you do understand what I mean, right?”

  “I understand exactly what you mean. I have the same feeling about her.” He paused, looked admiringly at her hand. “Carol, those rings are lovely.”

  “Oh?” She looked down at them. “Thank you. I guess they are pretty nice. I think I have a good eye for jewelry.” She moistened the corners of her mouth with the tip of her tongue and looked back up at Gurney from her desk. “You know, you still haven’t told me why you’re here.”

  He had to make a choice—a choice he’d been postponing—regarding how much to reveal. There were significant risks and rewards attached to various levels of candor. In this instance, the inner picture he was developing of Carol Blissy persuaded him to go a bit further than he normally would. He had a feeling that openness would be rewarded with cooperation.

  “It’s a sensitive issue. Not something I could just blurt out without knowing who I was talking to.” He took a deep breath. “We have some new evidence suggesting that Mary Spalter’s death may not have been an accident.”

  “Not … an accident?”

  “I shouldn’t be saying this, but I want your help, and I need to be honest with you. I think the Spalter case was a double murder. And I don’t think Kay had anything to do with it.”

  It seemed to take her a few seconds to absorb this. “You’re going to get her out of prison?”

  “That’s my hope.”

  “Wonderful!”

  “But I need your help.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “I assume you have security cameras here?”

  “Of course.”

  “How long do you retain the video files?”

  “A lot longer than we need to. In the old days, we had those clunky video cassettes we had to keep recycling. But the capacity of the new system is huge, and we never physically touch it. It deletes the oldest files automatically when capacity becomes an issue, but I don’t think that happens for about a year—at least not with the files from the motion-activated cameras. It’s different with the files created by the cameras that run continuously in the gym and in the nursing care unit. Those deletions happen quicker.”

  “Are you the person in charge of making sure it’s all working the way it should?”

  She smiled. “I’m the person in charge of everything.” Her ringed fingers smoothed an imaginary wrinkle on the front of her silk blouse.

  “I bet you do a very good job.”

  “I try. What is it in our video files that interests you?”

  “Visitors to Emmerling Oaks on the day Mary Spalter died.”

  “Her visitors specifically?”

  “No. All visitors: delivery people, repairmen, maintenance crews—anyone who came onto the property that day.”

  “How soon do you want it?”

  “How soon do you want Kay to get out of prison?”

  Gurney knew he was implying an immediacy in results that was, charitably speaking, an exaggeration, even if the video files contained the sort of smoking gun he hoped to find.

  Carol set him up at a computer in a room that occupied the rear third of the bungalow. She then went to another building and emailed several large video files to Gurney’s computer. When she came back she gave him some navigation instructions, leaning over his shoulder in a way that made it hard to concentrate.

  As she was about to return to the front office, he asked again as offhandedly as he could, “How do you like working for Spalter Realty?”

  “I probably shouldn’t say anything about that.” She gave Gurney the kind of playful look that suggested she probably could be talked into any number of things she shouldn’t do.

  “It would help me a lot to know how you feel about the Spalter family.”

  “I do want to help. But … this is just between us, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well … Kay was terrific. Hot tempered but terrific. But Carl was awful. Cold as ice. All he cared about was the bottom line. And Carl was the boss. Jonah stayed away, because Jonah wanted nothing to do with Carl.”

  “And now?”

  “Now, with Carl gone, Jonah’s in charge.” She looked at Gurney cautiously. “I don’t know him that well yet.”

  “I don’t know him at all, Carol. But I’ll tell you the things I’ve heard. He’s a saint. He’s a fake. He’s a fantastic person. He’s a religious nut. Is there anything you can add to any of that?”

  She met Gurney’s inquisitive gaze and smiled. “I don’t think so.” She licked the corners of her mouth again. “I’m really the wrong person to ask about guys like that. I’m not what you’d call religious.”

  Over the next three hours Gurney reviewed the video files from the three security cameras he considered most likely to have captured something useful—the cameras positioned to provide coverage of the parking area, of the interior of Carol Blissy’s office, and of vehicles utilizing the automated entry gate for residents.

  The videos from the parking area and office were the most interesting. There was a painting contractor who got Gurney’s attention by seeming to play the role of a cartoon painter, stopping just short of stepping in a bucket of paint and falling on his face. There was a pizza deliveryman with wild eyes who seemed to be auditioning for the role of a teen-movie psychopath. And then there was a floral delivery person.

  Gurney replayed half a dozen times the two short video segments in which that individual appeared. The first showed a dark blue minivan pulling into the parking area—nondescript, except for a sign on the driver’s door: FLOWERS BY FLORENCE. The second, with audio, showed the driver entering Carol’s office, announcing a delivery of flowers—chrysanthemums—for a Mrs. Marjorie Stottlemeyer, and asking for and receiving directions to her condo unit.

  The driver was small and frail-looking—just how small was hard to tell from the high, distorting angle of the camera—wearing tight jeans, a leather jacket, a scarf, a headband, and wraparound sunglasses. Despite repeated viewings, Gurney couldn’t say for sure whether the thin little person was a man or a woman. But something else did become clearer with each viewing: despite the mention of only one name, two bouquets of mums were being delivered.

  He went and got Carol Blissy from the front office and replayed the segment for her.

  Her mouth opened in surprise. “Oh, that one!” She pulled a chair over and sat quite close to Gurney. “Play it again.”

  When he did so, she nodded. “I remember that one.”

  “You remember … him?” asked Gurney. “Or was it a her?”

  “Funny you should ask. That’s exactly what I remember, that question in my mind. The voice, the movements, they didn’t seem quite like a man’s or a woman’s.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “More like … a little … pixie. That’s it—a pixie. That’s the closest I can come to it.”

  The echo of Bolo’s use of the word petite struck Gurney. “You directed this person to a particular condo, correct?”

  “Yes, to Marjorie Stottlemeyer’s.”

  “Do you know if the flowers were actually delivered to her?”

  “Yes. Because she called me later about it. There was some problem about them, but I can’t remember now what it was.”

  “Does she still live here?”

  “Oh, yes. People come here to stay. The only turnover is when a resident passes away.”

  Gurney wondered how many of those who passed away ended up in Willow Rest. But he had more urgent questions to resolve. “How well do you know this Stottlemeyer woman?”

  “What do you want to know about her?”

  “How good is her memory? And would she be willing to answer a few questions?”

  Carol Blissy appeared intrigued. “Marjorie is ninety-three years old, clear as a bell, and very gossipy.”

  “Perfect,” said Gurney, turning toward her. Her perfume was subtle, with the slightest hint of roses. “It would be a big help if you could call her, tell her that a detective has been ask
ing questions about the person who delivered those flowers to her last November, and he’d appreciate a few minutes of her time.”

  “I can do that.” She stood, her hand just grazing his back as she passed him on her way out to the front office.

  Three minutes later she returned with the phone. “Marjorie says she’s just about to take a bath, and then she’s going to take her nap, and after that she’ll be getting ready for dinner, but she can speak to you on the phone right now.”

  Gurney gave Carol a thumbs-up and took the phone. “Hello, Mrs. Stottlemeyer?”

  “Call me Marjorie.” Her voice was high and sharp. “Carol tells me you’re after that peculiar little creature who brought me the mystery bouquet. What for?”

  “It could be nothing, or it could be something quite serious. When you say he brought you a ‘mystery bouquet,’ what did—”

  “Murder? Is that it?”

  “Marjorie, I hope you understand, at this point I have to be careful about what I say.”

  “Then it is murder. Oh, my Lord! I knew there was something wrong from the beginning.”

  “From the beginning?”

  “Those mums. I didn’t order anything. There was no gift card. And anyone who ever knew me well enough to send me flowers is already senile or dead.”

  “Was there just one bouquet?”

  “What do you mean, just one?”

  “Just one bunch of flowers, not two?”

  “Two? Why in heaven’s name would I get two? One was ridiculous enough. How many admirers do you think I have?”

  “Thank you, Marjorie, this is very helpful. One more question. The ‘peculiar little creature,’ as you put it, who delivered your flowers—was it a man or a woman?”

  “I’m ashamed to say, I don’t know. That’s the problem with getting old. In the world I grew up in, there was a real difference between men and women. Vive la différence! Did you ever hear that? That’s French.”