Voice Mail Murder

by Patricia Rockwell

  “What!” shouted Joan.

  “I. . . I . . .” said Arliss, continuing to blush. “Really, Pam! I was going to tell you.”

  “You just did!” said Pamela, smiling. She stood up and reached over the table and gave her friend a warm hug.

  “Were you ever going to tell me?” asked Joan, getting in a sideways squeeze. “When did this happen? Well, I don’t mean actually—when--did this happen. I don’t need to know when, but when did you find out? When is the baby due? What does Bob say?”

  “Could you get Pablo’s attention and maybe order me a Sprite?” whispered Arliss to Pamela.

  “I’ll go get him,” said Pamela. She slipped out of the booth and accosted the waiter with a few words and then quickly returned to their booth.

  “The answers to your many questions, Joan, are that the baby is due in May. We found out just a few days ago and Bob is thrilled.”

  “Of course he is,” said Pamela. “How wonderful! Isn’t it wonderful, Joan?”

  “It’s wonderful, all right,” agreed Joan, “It’s wonderful right up until the moment they turn thirteen.”

  “Now, Joan,” cautioned Pamela. “Arliss, she’s just touchy because of Jack. . .”

  “I know,” said Arliss. “I know all about it.” Obviously, Joan had bent Arliss’s ear about her constant altercations with her youngest son.

  Pablo arrived with a Sprite and a slice of lemon which he placed dramatically on a small square napkin in front of Arliss. “For the new mother,” he said reverently.

  “Good Lord, Pamela,” said Arliss, cringing when the waiter had retreated, “you told Pablo I’m pregnant.”

  “I’m so happy for you!” declared Pamela, biting her lower lip, “I’m sorry if I just blurted it out!”

  “No, it’s okay,” she responded, “but I’m not even showing. I’d kind of like to keep it quiet for a while, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course, Arliss,” said Pamela. “Pablo will never tell.”

  “I can attest to that,” said Joan, bending close to Arliss’s ear, “that man knows things about me that the two of you don’t know.”

  “I don’t believe that, Joan!” hooted Pamela. Joan merely smirked and took another swig of her margarita.

  “Of course, Arliss,” pronounced Joan. “The most joyful part of parenthood is this part right now—the nine months before the baby arrives. You might as well enjoy it while you can. The impossible part comes soon enough.”

  “Joan!” hissed Pamela. “You make it sound as if being a mother is a horrific burden.”

  “It is when you have an ungrateful child, who walks in on your life and disrupts your every daily moment for months—then just as suddenly—and right when you’re actually becoming accustomed somewhat to their presence—storms out of your life without even so much as a ‘thanks for the grub, Mom’ as they slam the door.” Joan was getting worked up into one of her speeches, an occurrence that was much more common when she held an alcoholic beverage in her hand.

  “Let’s order some food,” suggested Pamela and the three women suddenly buried their heads again in their menus. The perusal of the offerings was unnecessary as they ordered their typical entrees with chips and salsa as appetizers. Pablo being the perfect waiter had anticipated their order, and had brought their appetizers. They munched on the salty wafers while waiting for their meals.

  “So, Pam,” said Arliss, elbows on the table, sipping her Sprite, “you were going to tell us the whole story of your car wreck.”

  “I slammed into a lamp post on Jackson to avoid hitting a van in front of me. My brakes went out.”

  “What happened?”

  “To my brakes? They were cut,” she said succinctly and let the statement hang in the air. The women stared at her and then at each other.

  “Someone cut the brakes on your car?” asked Joan, astonished.

  “Why would anyone do that?” asked Arliss.

  “That’s the question,” responded Pamela. “Shoop says somebody probably thinks that I’m getting too close to figuring out who the Coach’s murderer is.”

  “Are you?” quizzed Joan, twirling the margarita glass by its stem, a devilish look in her eye.

  “If I am,” she explained, “I don’t see it. I’ve been listening to recordings of everyone connected to the Coach—that is, the people the police have been questioning.”

  “You mean,” said Arliss, leaning over the table, “you’re listening to all the suspects the police are interviewing?”

  “That’s what I’ve been doing,” confirmed Pamela. “And from what I’m hearing, the man was a saint! At least, that’s what everyone says! But obviously, he wasn’t. He was cheating on his wife with multiple women. Somebody must have been mad at him.”

  “You’d think,” said Joan, slurping down the last of her second margarita.

  “And somebody killed him and now that somebody thinks you’re on to them,” whispered Arliss, eyes agog.

  “But I’m not,” said Pamela.

  “It must be something on those recordings,” observed Joan, ever the scientist. “Can’t you just play them over and over until you figure out who killer is?”

  “How?” asked Pamela. “I’ve listened to the recordings dozens of times already. The mistresses, the co-workers, the family—everyone who was connected to the man. I don’t know what it is I’m supposed to hear that I’m not hearing.”

  By now, the women had made short work of their main courses and three large oval platters sat empty in the middle of the table. Pablo delivered espresso in small delicate cups (decaf for the expectant mother-to-be) and removed the plates. The three women were head to head over the steaming brews.

  “Thank God it’s Friday,” mumbled Joan, “caffeine will keep me up until the wee hours.”

  “Not that you’d be heading to bed anyway,” said Arliss, punching her in the ribs.

  “You have a date?” asked Pamela of her friend.

  “I thought I might stop by the Starlight Ballroom,” responded Joan. Pamela knew that Joan had often ventured out to local singles’ hangouts before Jack had started to live with her. Now that her son had departed for his new job in Seattle, it appeared that Joan was back to her old weekend activities. The Starlight Ballroom was an elegant dancing club located in an old downtown hotel devoted to an older, more sophisticated clientele. A live orchestra typically played on Friday nights and both couples and singles could pay an entrance fee and dance the fox trot and other elegant partner dances. Joan specialized in the samba and had more than once found a gentleman friend at one of these events.

  “Jack has moved out?” asked Arliss.

  “Oh, he headed back to Seattle,” answered Joan. “Same company, new title. If you ask me, they just uproot people and re-name their positions to save the company a few bucks. He’ll probably be back in a week or two.”

  “Oh, Joan,” intoned Pamela, sympathetically. “Let’s hope not—for Jack’s sake. What a nice young man he is! I know he drove you crazy but I met him, remember, and he was thoroughly charming. . .”

  “He didn’t drive me crazy!” cried Joan, “I loved having him around. He just . . .”

  “Cramped your style?” asked Pamela. “Yes, I know. Anyway, your life is back to the way you like it.”

  Joan sighed and shook her head. A moment of honesty. “I can’t say that. It gets old after a while.”

  “Oh, Joan,” said Arliss, and gave her friend a hug. “If you need your life cramped, you can always come babysit for me.”

  “Yes,” noted Joan, turning and eyeing Arliss’s stomach “I suppose you’ll need a babysitter from time to time. You surely won’t want to take an innocent baby outside when you and Farmer Goodman go out to tend your critters!”

  “Joan!” cried Pamela, aghast.

  “Joan, our farm is a perfect place to raise a child.”

  “Of course, dear,” shrugged Joan. “A simply perfect place!” She smiled beatifically for Arliss as she continued to si
p her coffee. “What things we mothers won’t do for our children!”

  “True,” agreed Pamela. She thought of herself, Joan, and Arliss. Now that Arliss was pregnant—all three of them would be mothers. Being a mother changed the way you saw the world, she realized. It changed the way Joan behaved in the presence of her son—even though he was an adult. What about those three women who had slept with Coach Croft? They were more than just any three women, Pamela realized. They were three mothers. They all had sons. Maybe the motivation behind the murder wasn’t jealousy. Maybe it was mother love.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Her monitor gleamed with the lines of spectrographic data on the various suspects in what she was now calling the voice mail murder case. As she ran her cursor down the various samples of voices, she realized that they now had dozens of viable suspects. They could no longer maintain that the three mistresses who had left messages on the Coach’s cell phone were the only—or even—main suspects. Anyone who knew the man and who was aware that he was at the Shady Lane Motel that afternoon was a suspect—and that could be almost anyone.

  It was late on Monday afternoon and she had spent the weekend pleasantly with Rocky. Her forehead was almost back to normal—only the vestiges of a blister remained, the vibrant colors that she had sported last week now subsiding.

  As she ran her finger down the spectrograph lines for each of the suspect voices, she compared each to a list on her clipboard. My God, there are so many possibilities. So many individuals apparently had a motive or an opportunity to kill Coach Croft—and Skye Davis. But who, out of all of them, had both, and acted upon them?

  She grouped the suspects mentally into categories. There was the family. The wife, Sheila Croft, was handicapped and ostensibly unable to get herself around, let alone injure or stab another person. At least, that’s what she appeared to be—and neither Pamela nor the police seemed to have any reason to doubt her condition. Pamela wasn’t certain if the woman could maneuver her wheelchair around or drive a car with handicapped attachments, but she guessed not from what she had seen of the woman at her home. Of course, it would seem that Sheila Croft had the most obvious of motives—a cheating husband, but her opportunity—and ability--to commit such a violent crime seemed unlikely.

  Her daughters, however, were another story. The eldest, Elizabeth, seemed incensed about her father’s misbehavior and extremely protective of her mother. That was also the opinion she had secured about the young woman from Margaret Billings, the girl’s advisor. Elizabeth Croft was intelligent, resourceful, and highly motivated—but was that enough to prompt her to murder her own father, even if said father had caused her invalid mother such horrific shame and hurt? The younger daughter Emily seemed much less likely to initiate any aggression, but who knew what teenagers might do. She was at that delicate age when everything tended to be blown out of proportion—and her father’s philandering would certainly count as an embarrassing event.

  The next group she looked at was Croft’s colleagues in the Athletic Department. Assistant Coach Jeff Dooley. The young man had an aggressive streak she had seen personally and the Coach’s death pushed him up the career ladder overnight. But would that be enough to cause him to commit murder and would he have known about his boss’s infidelities? The Coach’s long-time secretary Rosemary Ellis was also a candidate. Obviously she knew Croft well and was probably aware of his comings and goings, but did she know about his afternoon trysts or had he managed to hide this part of his life from her as she claimed? And if so, what would motivate the assistant to kill her employer? The cheerleading coach Hannah Schlegel was another possibility. She was an attractive young woman and probably spent a lot of time around the Coach. Was she one of his former conquests—or a possible future one? Or was she siding with Jeff Dooley, in an effort to help the young man obtain the older coach’s job? Pamela had seen Dooley and Schlegel together and they seemed tight. Could they have committed the crime together?

  She couldn’t ignore the mistresses themselves. Skye Davis was no longer around to defend herself and Pamela felt instinctively that she had not murdered the man. There was the testimony of her secretary regarding her return to work following her final meeting with the Coach—at a time before the coroner noted the Coach’s time of death. Also, the secretary Derlinda Washington had not noticed any unusual behavior on her boss’s part that day—unlikely if the woman had just killed her lover.

  The second mistress, Abigail Prescott, was also an unlikely killer—unless she contracted a hit man—but that would seem unlikely as the police had indicated that the Coach probably knew his assassin as he let the person into the room and then promptly turned his back on the person. The police had verified Abigail Prescott’s statement that she had never even been to Reardon and that her only involvement with the Coach occurred in Boston during one of the team’s away games the previous spring. They, of course, had confirmed this when the woman had called Police Headquarters the day after Shoop had contacted her home and had spoken to her in the presence of her husband.

  The only other mistress that remained a suspect was Charlene Terlinger. She was a resident of Reardon and could have followed Coach to his meeting with Skye Davis, waited for her to leave, then gone to the room and stabbed the Coach. To do this, Pamela realized, Charlene would have had to be following the Coach around for days waiting for him to meet with one of his mistresses. As it was evident from the chronology of the voice mail messages, she would be following him for quite some time as the Coach did not indulge in these afternoon affairs with any regularity. The first recorded voice mail messages from Charlene had occurred, according to Charlene, in January. The second voice messenger—Abigail Prescott—left her message in February. The final message left by Skye Davis had occurred just a few weeks ago on the day of the murder—in early September. So, Pamela figured, over the course of seven months, Coach Croft had had relationships with three women—once with Abigail in Boston, and twice each with Charlene and Skye. That was five times—out of seven months—less than once a month. Of course, she didn’t know what he had done before January or if he’d had any meetings that had not been recorded for posterity on his cell phone’s voice mail. It was possible that at the end of the year, he had cleared his voice mail and that many other messages from the previous year had been sent. For all she knew, there were more mistresses than just these three. If there were, unless those women came forward, no one would ever know.

  There was obviously much they didn’t know about Coach and his mistresses. There were also the sons of these mistresses. Ricky Terlinger, Demetrius Davis, and Will Prescott. The interviews of these young men were heart-breaking for Pamela to listen to—especially that of Demetrius Davis—whose mother had been killed by the same person who had murdered the Coach—they assumed. She had listened to these three young men speak and she simply couldn’t detect any hint that any of them had known about their mother’s involvement with the man. She also remembered back to her conversation with Jesse Portillo—the young football player who wanted to register for her Psychology of Language course. He too seemed incredibly saddened and shocked about his Coach’s tragic death. Could any of these three young football players have discovered what was happening between their Coach and their mother and have taken it upon themselves to seek vengeance upon the man for their mother’s sake?

  How could a man who was so devious and so venal in his behavior had received such universal adoration from virtually everyone around him? The only person who seemed furious at the man for his actions seemed to be his eldest daughter, but she seemed an unlikely candidate for a killer. Pamela realized that she would have had opportunity—actually, almost all of the suspects had opportunity in that most of them could not account for their whereabouts during the time of the murder. Sheila Croft claimed to be at home, but it was only her word because both of her daughters had claimed to have been at school. The youngest daughter Emily was in school until 3:30 p.m. and after that she said she was driving a
round running errands. The oldest daughter Elizabeth claimed to be on campus in the library during the afternoon and early evening working on a paper. Neither of the daughters had anyone who could corroborate their stories for the later part of the day. Both girls had their own cars and came and went at will.

  Jeff Dooley said he was in his office—where he usually was most afternoons, waiting for practice which typically began around four o’clock. No player came to visit him that particular afternoon so there was no way to verify his statement. Even so, Dooley showed up for practice at four o’clock and took over for the absent coach. Likewise, Rosemary Ellis said that she was working at her desk the entire afternoon but that no one came in as she remembered. Again, there was no way to verify her claim. Hannah Schlegel said she was on the football field—alone—during the early afternoon working out a new routine for her cheerleaders until Dooley arrived at four to start practice. Her squad of young women typically practiced at the same time as the football players and she said she wanted to be ready for them at that time. She worked on her own. No one saw her or claimed to be looking for her.

  Abigail Prescott was in Boston on the day of the murder as was her husband. She had no contact with Coach Croft or her son during the afternoon. Charlene Terlinger was at work that day and her claim was verified by her employer—except for a brief break she took late in the afternoon around five to run an errand at a local drugstore. No one at the drugstore remembered her. The police doubted that she could have driven from the boutique in downtown Reardon where she worked to the Shady Lane Motel and back in the time that she took for her break.

  Pamela mulled over all the information before her. She listened to all of the voices again—trying to hear something that someone might be hiding. She considered all of the additional information the police had gathered and how it impacted the case.

  She glanced up and the shadows from the trees outside her windows floated over her curtains in a rolling pattern. It was starting to get dark earlier. She rolled her head around on her neck, carefully checking her forehead scar. It didn’t hurt, but she could still feel its presence. It served as a reminder to her to be careful. She looked back at her screen, using her mouse to scroll up and down through the voice prints. There were so many! So many suspects. Where they had originally thought they were only dealing with three suspects, the field had now opened up to dozens—and maybe even more, because they didn’t know for certain that they had included all the possible individuals who might have wanted to kill Coach Wade Croft.