Voice Mail Murder

by Patricia Rockwell

  “Cheers,” he said, clicking his glass to hers.

  “Cheers,” she responded, “Here’s to the first day of class. May the rest of the semester be far less exciting than this day.” They sipped their drinks.

  Pamela sighed and Rocky put his arm around her, eventually guiding her into their living room where he seated her on their sofa. He pulled up a large, matching hassock and the couple stretched out their legs.

  “This is so good,” she said, moaning. No sooner had the couple relaxed in their living room, but a small, furry head popped out from underneath an arm chair in the corner. A miniature poodle stretched himself out from an obviously long nap and paddled authoritatively over to the couple where he leaped effortlessly onto the sofa and into their laps.

  “Candide, no food. Just alcohol,” she admonished the small dog. Seemingly satisfied with the verdict, the little dog hunkered down between Pamela and her husband and quickly dozed off again.

  “Just a taste of delicacies to come,” Rocky reminded Pamela, giving Candide’s head a scratch. “Enjoy. Enchilada casserole will be ready in a half hour or so.” He squeezed her shoulder and she dropped her head next to his. How lucky she was to have this perfect house-husband who loved to cook—and who cooked so well, especially when she hated the chore. Theirs was a match made in heaven.

  “His poor wife,” she said, thinking out loud. “It’s bad enough to have your husband die, but to have your husband murdered!”

  “And murdered in a motel room,” added Rocky. “The coup de grace.”

  “Don’t you ever get murdered—especially in a motel!” admonished Pamela, turning to Rocky, brandishing her glass of Sangria.

  “I promise,” he replied. “If I ever get murdered, I’ll make sure I’m not in a motel.”

  “I mean, just don’t get murdered,” she said. “I mean, just don’t die.” She cuddled up closer, feeling his body warmth, a delightful contrast to the cool beverage. Suddenly, she turned to him. “His wife is a paraplegic, you know.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what Mitchell says. He met them at a function. She’s in a wheel-chair.”

  “Even worse,” Rocky said, chewing on his lip. “Horrible situation. Horrible for the family—and for Grace. I mean, he’s a figurehead for the school, and this will point national attention on us—attention that we don’t need.”

  “You’re right. When Charlotte was murdered there was attention. She was famous.”

  “But Charlotte was just a Psychology professor and researcher, Pamela. She was not a football coach. This is bigger. Even a coach of a regional football team like Grace is going to draw scrutiny like crazy. Just you wait.”

  “You’re probably right. And him being found in the motel. That adds the extra sexual angle. What a mess! Just what Grace doesn’t need!”

  Rocky glanced at his wristwatch and reached over to the end table beside the sofa where he grabbed a remote control device. Candide growled as Rocky disturbed his comfortable position. Rocky clicked several buttons and soon a television set in a bookshelf across the room blinked on.

  “Let’s see what the media has. Surely, the local channel will report the murder as their top story. It’s just after 6:30.”

  A young blonde woman holding a microphone appeared in the center of the screen. To her left was a photograph of a man’s face. Under the photograph, text declared “Wade Croft, Grace University Head Football Coach, Dead.”

  “Police officials are now telling us,” said the young reporter, “that Wade Croft, Head Coach of Grace University’s varsity football team, was found murdered yesterday morning in a room at the Shady Lane Motel on Highway 85, south of Reardon. Cause of death is said to be stab wounds to the back. Reardon police are questioning motel employees, staff and faculty of the Grace University Athletic Department, members of the football team, and the victim’s family and friends. Police do not have any suspects at the moment.”

  The screen suddenly changed to a view of a man with a microphone held in front of his face. Across the bottom of the screen were the words “Jeff Dooley, Assistant Football Coach.” The young reporter’s voice continued from off-screen.

  “Assistant Coach Dooley,” she said softly, “You worked closely with Coach Croft. What is your reaction to this horrible crime?”

  “I’m shocked,” answered the man, noticeably distraught. “I can’t imagine why anyone would do this to Coach. We love Coach Croft; he’s a super guy. I mean, the whole team loves him. Coach Croft would do anything for his team. He built this team and made this team something Grace can be proud of. His record speaks for itself. He wins. He’s a winner. He was a winner. Why would anyone want to hurt him? I just don’t get it.” The man’s face contorted into a grimace. The reporter continued to hold the microphone at his mouth, but the man pushed the device away and the camera jerked back to the female reporter.

  “There you have Assistant Football Coach Jeff Dooley,” said the woman. “Dooley is the person who probably works-worked most closely with Coach Croft. As you heard, Dooley claims to be mystified as to any possible motive for anyone to murder the Coach.”

  At that point, a man’s voice cut in from the studio. The screen picture changed to the face of the local station’s anchor.

  “Cindy,” asked the anchor, “Did you speak with anyone who might shed any light on this senseless crime?”

  “No, Ed,” answered the field reporter, “We spoke with several members of the football team and they were horrified. They all told me that Coach Croft was universally loved by the entire team. They claimed there was no animosity towards him. They were simply flabbergasted that someone would hurt a man who—to them—was a hero.”

  “Were you able to speak to anyone from the Shady Lane Motel?” asked the anchor.

  “No, Ed,” replied Cindy, “the Reardon Police seem to be keeping them fairly incommunicado.”

  “We heard rumors that the Coach had been stabbed numerous times. Can you confirm that?”

  “I can’t confirm that officially,” answered Cindy. The wind now starting to pick up outside the Shady Lane Motel, whipping her hair around. “But I’ve heard those rumors too. Some team members told me that they had heard that he was stabbed as many as seven times.”

  “Unbelievable,” said Ed, his face immobile, belying his words. “Thank you, Cindy. We’ll check back in with you later. Maybe you’ll be able to find additional information for us about this heinous crime that will surely impact every person who lives in Reardon, whether they’re associated with Grace University or the football team—or not—“

  “I’ll do that, Ed,” said Cindy, her face stolid. The camera clicked back to the anchor who immediately went on to another story.

  Rocky and Pamela turned to each other. Rocky hit the remote and the television set turned off.

  “Stabbed seven times in the back,” he said to her, shaking his head.

  “Everybody may have claimed to love him,” said Pamela, “but somebody obviously didn’t.” Candide moaned in his sleep.

  Chapter Six

  Friday, the second day of the fall semester at Grace University proceeded less dramatically than the first. Pamela met with her Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes for the first time and, although there was still a lot of talk among the students about the football coach’s murder, she was able to distract them to course content for most of the hour of their scheduled time. When she had first arrived, Jane Marie had informed her that her secretary friend Rosemary in the Athletic Department had told her that the police had expanded their questioning from staff and faculty members of the Athletic Department to members of the football team. It seemed evident to Pamela that there was no obvious suspect or surely the police would have arrested someone by now.

  Now it was noon and she was able to relax in her office with one of Rocky’s spectacular bag lunches that he prepared for her each morning. Sometimes she liked to eat out with Joan and Arliss, but most of the time, it was too much of a hassle t
o find a new parking space, so the three women either ate together in Pamela’s office or—as she was doing now—she dined alone, seated on her comfy couch, heels removed so she could stretch her toes out a bit before another several hours of standing and lecturing in tight shoes. Today Rocky had packed a lovely corned beef on rye with a delicate Thousand Island dressing. He’d included a small container of Asian salad complete with Mandarin oranges, Chinese noodles, cabbage, and a spicy dressing. She sipped a cup of iced fruit tea from her thermos. It was unlikely that she’d get a better meal at a restaurant. She was a lucky woman.

  As she savored the delicate flavors of her tea, a man appeared in her doorway. He wore a ragged raincoat and scuffed brown shoes. His head of thick, wiry grayish brown hair and matching full eyebrows contradicted his intense dark eyes.

  “Dr. Barnes,” said the man, coughing to get her attention.

  Pamela looked up and gulped. “Oh dear,” she choked, setting her thermos lid on the end table by her sofa. “Lt. Shoop.”

  “You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here,” the man said, ambling a few steps into the office.

  “Yes,” said Pamela, blinking rapidly and standing to greet her guest, slipping awkwardly into her shoes beside the sofa. “It’s been—what? Easily a year, hasn’t it?”

  “More,” concluded Shoop. “All that rigmarole about the disc jockey. Quite a lot going on.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “Exciting, but it was rewarding. We helped that young woman in a very difficult time.”

  “You did, Dr. Barnes,” said the detective. “And we probably never thanked you properly. That is, the Reardon Police Department probably never thanked you . . .”

  “Please,” she countered, “Detective, it was gratifying to help you solve that case and bring that scoundrel to justice.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, “I see we see it the same way. I figured you’d see it . . .”

  “Detective,” she edged towards her desk as she continued to glare into his piercing eyes, “Why are you here? I take it this isn’t just a social call or some belated recognition of my efforts from the Reardon Police.” She leaned against the back of her desk and tipped her head to the side, expectantly.

  “Oh, Dr. Barnes,” said Shoop, shrugging, his eyes now glancing around the small office as if to avoid eye contact. “You are always so perceptive. That’s what I like about you. That, and your constant willingness to jump in and do your civic duty—when that civic duty calls.” He wandered into the small office, looking around.

  “What civic duty?”

  “I’m sure you’re aware of this rather high profile murder case we’re investigating. The one that concerns your football coach.”

  “He’s not my coach,” said Pamela, cringing, and sitting at her desk. Shoop wandered back to the door, and shut it behind him. He poised himself on the edge of Joan’s straight back chair by the door and smiled knowingly at her.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” she blurted. “There’s no way I can get involved in this murder investigation. I’ve heard nothing about the murder being recorded. That would be the only way you’d come asking for my help. I mean, I heard his body was discovered in a motel room. Don’t tell me there’s a recording of the murder?”

  “No, nothing quite so helpful as that,” sighed the man.

  “Then what? You wouldn’t be knocking on my door asking me for assistance unless you had some sort of recording of the murder . . .”

  “Not the actual murder . . .”

  “Then what?” she demanded.

  “Here’s the story, Dr. Barnes,” he said, arms held wide in a gesture of disclosure. “We’ve got virtually nothing to go on in this case. The coach was found murdered in a motel room yesterday. He had no enemies, it seems. Heck, he had tons of friends—he was the winningest coach this college has ever seen. Everybody loved him—students, faculty, staff. Doesn’t appear that anyone had any motivation to kill him—or know of anyone with a motivation to kill him. He was a saint.” Shoop was rattling off the Publicity Department’s party line if she ever heard it.

  “Somebody obviously didn’t think so,” she offered.

  “No, somebody didn’t,” he agreed. “We just don’t know who that somebody is. “

  “What about the motel?” she asked. “Why was he there? Did you question the motel staff?”

  “That’s one of the problems,” he said, sheepishly. “The room wasn’t registered to him.

  “Who was it registered to? Seems that would be your primary suspect.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “Unfortunately, the room was registered to a woman—who paid cash. No record of her, and the clerk who signed her in remembers virtually nothing about her.”

  “Are they allowed to register people like that in motels?”

  “No, but it happens. And it happened here. Whether the clerk remembers and won’t say or truly doesn’t remember a thing about the woman, I don’t know. All we know is a woman paid for that room two days ago, but when the coach’s body was discovered yesterday morning by a very surprised cleaning lady, said woman was nowhere to be found. And unfortunately, the Shady Lane Motel has no security cameras so we have no video of anyone entering or leaving the room.”

  “Detective, that’s all well and good,” continued Pamela, sitting forward at her desk, hands on her knees, “but I don’t see how it affects me. It seems that this unknown woman is probably your killer and your job is to find her. What can I possibly do to assist you?”

  “I’ll tell you, Dr. Barnes,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his overcoat and bringing out a cell phone. “Whoever this mystery woman is, no one seems to know. No one on the staff or faculty was aware that the coach was sleeping with someone—and, believe me, his wife and daughters were not aware of it. That was not a pleasant interrogation.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “We seem to be at square one,” he continued, palming the little phone and looking at its small screen, “except for this.” He held the phone out to her.

  “A cell phone?”

  “The coach’s cell phone. We found it under the bed in the motel room, next to his body. The only prints on it were his. There are a number of voice mail messages for him that he hadn’t yet deleted—going back to January it seems, according to our techs. Seems he didn’t delete his messages very often—if at all. Not a very wise thing to do if you’re having an affair.”

  “No, I would think not.”

  “Anyway,” continued Shoop, “our techs have gone over the messages thoroughly, attempting to identify the speakers. There are seven messages—all short, all apparently from women.”

  “More than one?”

  “Yes. They all seem to be calling the Coach to verify or change an appointment—probably an afternoon motel appointment, if you get my drift.”

  “Yes, I get it,” she sighed.

  “We’ve gone over all of the messages and we can’t identify any of the speakers. None of them appear to be family or close colleagues. All of the messages were apparently sent from disposable cell phones that are no longer in service. In fact, when we examined the Coach’s car left at the murder scene, we found a box of new disposable phones in his trunk,” he said. “Unfortunately, we’ve come up empty-handed.”

  “So how do I fit in?” she asked, anticipating where this line of reasoning was leading.

  “We’d like you to listen to the recordings,” he suggested, reaching into his other large overcoat pocket and retrieving a CD case. “I’ve made a copy of them for you.” He handed her the CD case. “Maybe you can listen to the voices and tell us something about these women that we don’t know. “

  “That you don’t know?”

  “You know,” he said, shrugging, “anything about them. Starting with how many women there are. We have seven messages, but we aren’t sure that there are seven different women. There might be just one woman who has left seven messages—or there might be seven women each leaving one message—or any variation in
between. We don’t know for sure. We figured you could tell us that—and more—with all of your acoustic expertise.” He smiled at her. He was schmoozing her—and it wasn’t something he did well—or often, so he wasn’t very good at it.

  “Oh, Shoop!” she lamented, stretching her arms over her head. “I can’t believe you’ve dragged me into another murder investigation.”

  “You won’t be involved, Dr. Barnes,” he said with a grimace. “We’d simply appreciate any authoritative input you can give us about the women who are speaking on this recording. Right now, these women are our best leads as to the Coach’s killer—maybe one of them is the killer. We don’t know, but we need to find out who they are—and the more we know about them, the more likely it’ll be that we’ll be able to track them down.”

  Pamela looked down at the square plastic case in her hands. The black disk inside was labeled “Voice Mail Murder.” Wonderful, she thought. Already, the crime had a label and it involved voices—her specialty. Of course, she could listen to the voices and determine a variety of information about the speakers. She couldn’t, however, determine which speaker—if any of them—was the murderer. She told this to Shoop.

  “All right, Detective,” she huffed. “You knew I wouldn’t be able to say ‘no’ to you, didn’t you? Particularly as this case involves a victim from Grace. I guess I feel a sense of obligation to help you in any way I can and—if as you say—this recording of the Coach’s voice mail is now your primary lead, I guess I’ll have to give it a try.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Barnes,” replied Shoop, standing and pulling his overcoat around his body. She rose to see him out. “But, Dr. Barnes,” he added, as he turned back to her at the door. “Be careful. This is a murder investigation. Someone killed this man—possibly one of the women speaking on his voice mail—likely one of the women speaking on his voice mail. Don’t go doing anything foolish as you have done in the past—if you remember.”

  “Don’t worry, Detective,” she said, nodding. “I have every intention of staying very safe this time.”