Mixed Up With Murder

by Susan C. Shea

  “I’m not sure—” I began.

  “Hold it, hold it,” Dickie shouted, jumping up and waving with his free hand. “Not you, Jerry. There’s a cop here. Don’t move, Dani. No Jerry, she’s not being forced. Wait a minute, you.”

  This last to McManus, who had transferred his mirrors to my ex and moved his hand to his utility belt, a maneuver I didn’t like.

  “Sir, who exactly are you?” Macho Cop said, taking a step into the room.

  “I can explain,” I said, but was drowned out by Dickie talking to all of us at once.

  “He’s in the room, Jerry, he’s in the room. Dani, sit down. You, you, what do you think you’re doing? My wife isn’t going anywhere.”

  “Ex-wife,” I said, but I wasn’t sure anyone heard me.

  “I’ll ask the questions,” Macho Cop said, dropping his voice half an octave as he went into what I assumed he picked up from TV as the role of the manly policeman. Or, maybe he was still channeling Arnold Schwarzenegger. “Ma’am, if you’ll come with me—”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Dickie said, dancing over to stand between me and McManus. I was thinking that this room wasn’t really large enough for three people to walk around in when a new head poked around the doorframe.

  “Pardon me, but should I make up the room now?” said a thin, middle-aged woman with steel gray hair and a vacuum cleaner hose in one hand. She glanced curiously at the tall cop and Dickie.

  “It’s probably not the best time,” I said from my position behind Dickie. She nodded sagely and backed away. The door swung shut behind her with a click.

  Dickie was still on the phone with Jerry, explaining the situation in overly dramatic terms that made it sound as if the policeman had handcuffs and pepper spray out and ready. I did a double take. Actually, he was now holding a can of something and was trying to speak loud enough to be heard over Dickie.

  “Sir, I’m going to ask you one more time to put the phone down and tell me who you are. You are interfering with police business, sir. Put the phone down.” Macho Cop had a booming voice when he chose, and he had used it on Dickie, who stopped moving all of a sudden.

  “Um, okay, Jerry. I will, but only if…okay. But…okay.” A sudden quiet descended on the small space. Dickie looked from the pepper spray to Macho Cop and back to the can. “Okay, officer, no need to shout,” he said.

  I cleared my throat into the silence. “I can explain, officer. My friend was on the phone with a lawyer and…” I ran out of explanation.

  “He says he’s your husband,” Macho Cop said, holstering the pepper spray carefully.

  “Ex-husband,” Dickie and I said at the same time.

  “Uh huh. And he needs a lawyer?”

  “Of course not, but Dani does,” Dickie said. We were both sitting on the bed and I kicked his leg. “Well, she doesn’t need one, really. She didn’t do anything, but she should have one, just in case.”

  “In case? For a hit and run report?”

  “What?” Dickie turned to me with a look of such horror that I couldn’t help myself. I began to laugh and once I started I couldn’t stop. Both of them stared at me in what I assumed, through my tears of laughter, was complete confusion. Twice, I started to say something, only to dissolve in involuntary giggles again.

  When the fit had passed, I took a deep breath and let it out into a completely silent room. “Look, this has gotten far too complicated. Dickie, my rental car was hit at an intersection in town yesterday and this officer came to take an accident report.”

  Dickie opened his mouth, but I held up my hand. “It was a minor accident, I’m fine. Officer, are you sure Detective Kirby wants me to go to the station? That’s not what he said when we talked.”

  “Yes, ma’am. He gave me the command personally.”

  I wondered if Kirby already had information about the anonymous caller, but thought I’d keep that whole part of the incident to myself, at least until I heard what he had to say.

  “I’m happy to speak with the detective. After that, we’ll see what legal help I do or don’t need. Dickie, I promise I’ll be careful, but the sooner I talk to him, the sooner I can clear this up once and for all.”

  I stood up. Dickie protested, saying Jerry would call back right away with the name of a local attorney. I said that would be great and that I’d be the first to holler for one if the circumstances merited it. I told Dickie to come looking for me if I wasn’t back in an hour, grabbed my bag, and marched out without looking at Officer McManus, whose attempts to be important were beginning to get on my nerves. A great body was not enough compensation for his movie-cop dramatics. “Order me a cobb salad,” I called over my shoulder. “Iced tea, no sugar. See you downstairs in an hour.” There are times when action is called for, and I had reached the snapping point somewhere around the moment the pepper spray appeared. I was pissed, and Kirby was about to hear me roar.

  CHAPTER 17

  I was still in a bad mood thirty minutes later after sitting in the reception area filling out a three-page form that wanted more detail than I could dredge up. Detective Kirby was waiting for me. As we moved into the stuffy little room where they interviewed me before, Macho Cop swaggered away down the hall. Maybe it wasn’t fair, but I could only hope that was the last time our paths would cross.

  “We don’t have anything useful about that call yet, by the way. Maybe someone can pry something out of the computer records, but it’s not as easy as it looks on TV.”

  “But you’ll tell me if you do get anything? I feel really exposed and vulnerable.”

  “Understood. Anything we do find will become part of the Flores investigation, but if it suggests you’re in danger, we’ll let you know right away.”

  Thanks, big help. I was hoping for around-the-clock police protection, but I just nodded for now.

  “In looking over my notes, I have a few more questions. Probably nothing, but we’re still trying to make sense of this. You don’t mind doing it today, do you?” Kirby said, pulling up a chair. “I want to keep this investigation moving.”

  “Not if it won’t take long and certainly not if it helps find the person who killed Gabby”.

  “One thing that I’d like you to try and think back on,” he said, “is the timing of the events. As much as you can, can you put your story in the context of minutes passing? For example, how long was Ms. Flores down the hall before you heard voices?”

  “I think five minutes, not much more or I would have noticed. She was making copies for me.”

  “How many copies?”

  “Maybe a dozen pieces of paper. Wouldn’t have taken long.”

  “Do you have any idea of the time?”

  “When I heard the other voice talking to her, I looked at my watch. Her husband was to meet her at six, and I assumed it was him, so I looked at my watch to see if we’d been there almost an hour. It was about five minutes of six, I remember.”

  “And was it her husband, Mr. Kennedy?” he said.

  I stopped to think. “I can’t say. The voices weren’t clear. It was a man. I’ve only spoken with Dermott a couple of times and I’m not sure I’d recognize his voice.”

  “Then they weren’t arguing?”

  I hesitated. Their voices had been raised, but I wasn’t about to pass along something vague that could get Dermott in more trouble. “I couldn’t hear what they were saying and it didn’t jump out at me as a fight. You know, I saw Dermott come into the building later, after I found Gabby, so it couldn’t have been him.”

  “Unless he left the building and came back in later.”

  “Dermott kill Gabby? No way. They were madly in love. You could see it.”

  “As you say, you only saw him a couple of times.”

  I was uneasy. Dermott, doubtless still in shock about his wife’s death, and now a suspect in her murder? Even though I’ve heard the police always look at the spouse, it was ludicrous. If anyone needed a good lawyer, it was Dermott, not me.

  “How long af
ter the voices started did you hear the gunshot?”

  “Not long. At the time I didn’t know it was a shot. It was kind of muffled. I think I registered it as a car’s backfire or some other noise from outside the building.”

  “And that’s why you didn’t come to Ms. Flores’s aid right away?”

  Go ahead, lay more guilt on me. “I didn’t know she needed help.”

  “Then why did you come down the hall?” he said casually.

  “Because it was time to go. Gabby told me she and Dermott had a meeting that night, and I didn’t want to make them late. I had everything I needed, so I thought I’d meet her at the copy machine and head out.”

  “And did you pick up the copies?”

  “No. I found Gabby and I never did get them.”

  “Are you sure she made them?”

  “I could hear the machine.”

  “Was it still on when you got there?”

  “No, it got quiet right about the time I got to the end of the hall. The whole building was quiet by then.”

  “So where were the copies and, come to think of it, the originals?” he said.

  “I have no idea. I told you, I was looking for Gabby.”

  “Were there papers on the floor in the room or the hallway?”

  “No, I’m sure not. I would have noticed.”

  “In the office where you found Ms. Flores?”

  “No, I didn’t see anything.”

  “Did you have any sense there might be someone else on the second floor?”

  The thought chilled me and I went back to that awful couple of minutes when I tried to understand what might be happening, and that motionless hand lying there. “I don’t think so. But, like I told Officer McManus, I don’t remember much except seeing her.”

  “When did he interview you? The night of the murder?”

  “No, when I saw him at President Brennan’s office later. He asked me some of the same questions.”

  Kirby jiggled his pen against the little notebook he had open on the table, making a rapid-fire tapping sound. “Okay. We’re almost finished, I promise.”

  “I yelled for help. If anyone was there, they would have heard me,” I said, shrugging my shoulders to get rid of some of the tension from remembering the scene. “I did have a feeling someone was using the elevator, but I’m not sure. It’s a big building and the elevator was out of sight. I can tell you no one showed up to help before Dermott came up the stairs.”

  “Can you tell me, as precisely as possible, where he was when you first saw him?”

  “This is ridiculous, you know?” I said. “It’s a waste of time.” The detective opened his mouth to argue. I said, “Okay, okay, I’ll tell you, but I hope you don’t waste any time on Dermott as a suspect while the real murderer gets away. I was on the floor, trying to get Gabby to respond when I heard someone open the door downstairs and climb the stairs. I looked over my shoulder and saw Dermott as he got to the top of the staircase.”

  “Could you tell from the sound where he entered the building?”

  “Which door? Not really.”

  “And you came in the back.”

  “The street in front is blocked off to cars and I had to park in a visitor’s spot in the lot out back.”

  “Was there anyone in the parking lot?”

  “Yes, it was quitting time when I got there at five, and several women were talking to each other as they left the building and went into the lot. There were at least a dozen cars in the lot. Isn’t there a security camera you can check?”

  “The camera that focused on the parking lot behind the building where Mr. Saylor had his office wasn’t functioning properly. When our people looked at the tape, all they saw was a patch of ground near the door, tops of heads, too fuzzy to identify, mostly leaving, but a couple heading in toward the building.”

  “One of those might have been me. Could you tell?”

  “Not really. The images are bad enough, but the camera uses black and white film. Your hair is kind of red.”

  “Chestnut. My driver’s license says brown, but that’s only because there aren’t enough options when you fill out the form.”

  His gaze moved to my hair, which he examined for a moment with the same expression I imagine he would have had if I had said it was green. “Okay. Let’s get back to Mr. Kennedy. What did he do when he came up to the second floor and saw you?”

  “He didn’t know what was going on at first. I think he started to speak and then realized something was wrong.”

  “Was he carrying anything?” the cop said.

  “I don’t think so.”

  He flipped to a fresh page. “I’d like to go back to what you saw in the copy room for a minute.”

  “There was a long counter in the room with lots of papers in stacks.”

  “What were the papers Ms. Flores was copying?”

  A picture of Rory Brennan’s face in the dark car popped into my mind, the vaguely threatening tone of voice telling me it wouldn’t be in Lynthorpe’s best interests for me to mention Vince Margoletti. My hunch was it had everything to do with Gabby’s death, and Saylor’s. Taking a deep breath, I proceeded to lay out the basics of the consulting project, Saylor’s concerns, Gabby’s involvement, and the puzzling aspects surrounding Margoletti’s proposed donation. I didn’t share the questions about his character that the magazine article ticked off because, as Rory Brennan had said, they were mostly gossip. I felt a weight lifting from me as I spoke. I knew this was the right thing to do, consulting protocols or not. When I was finished, Kirby was silent for a full minute.

  “I’m trying to see how the gift you described could be the trigger for this mess,” he said, “unless it’s the amount of money. Twenty million is a hell of a lot of cash, at least in my world. I don’t know much about donations like this, much less art. Was there something potentially illegal in the papers Flores showed you?”

  “Not that I saw. There were some small irregularities. What we didn’t know was if they were clues to something we hadn’t spotted.”

  “Anything confidential in them—Social Security numbers, bank account information, wills, stuff like that?”

  “No, all public information, some of it on the provenance of paintings.”

  He raised his eyebrows in a question.

  “Provenance? It means the formal history of who owned and traded a painting or other piece of art. It’s common to keep a record of buys and sells as a way of assuring owners the work isn’t fraudulent.”

  “Did you think these works were frauds?”

  “Nothing that I could see suggested forgeries.”

  “I’m struggling here, Ms. O’Rourke. The anonymous call you got would seem to point clearly to something in your work with the college that’s got someone scared. But you don’t know what it is. You’re telling me everything, right?”

  “Believe me, if I understood what was so terrible in those papers I would tell you, I’d tell the president of Lynthorpe, I’d tell my attorney.”

  “You have a lawyer?”

  “I will by the end of the day, at the suggestion of a couple of friends. Just as a precaution.” My face probably reflected my feeling that even wanting a lawyer made me feel somehow less than innocent.

  “Well, where do you think the papers went, if you don’t have them and you didn’t see Mr. Kennedy holding them?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. Until he started asking me to reconstruct the scene, I hadn’t thought much about the papers as the key to all this. The question burned inside me now. Whoever killed Gabby must have taken the papers. They must have hoped to cover up something deeply wrong signaled by those few sheets, but who other than the man who owned the art described in them would understand their significance?

  CHAPTER 18

  They let me go soon after. I was itchy to get away from Lynthorpe and the mess in which I had landed. I was even ready to smile and listen to the fight song at Dickie’s old school if it would get me out of
town.

  McManus, standing in the hall talking to another uniformed policeman, crossed his muscular arms and tightened his teeth around his toothpick as I passed by on my way to the door. With biceps on display, he tipped his head and smiled at me from behind his mirrored shades. I smiled back, entertaining a mental image of him walking into a wall in a dark room because he was too vain to remove those glasses.

  Dickie was waiting for me in the reception area. The lawyer Jerry recommended was in court until two, but would meet us at his office soon after. Around bites of salad, I filled Dickie in on my session with Good Cop.

  “Don’t call him that, Dani. No cop is a good cop. He’s trying to trick you.”

  “Compared to Macho Cop, he’s a sweetheart,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “You know. Mr. Cool, the uniform with the shades.”

  “Oh, him. I don’t trust the guy.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far, but he’s probably not the brightest bulb on the force. I think he likes to hang around on campus and be—what do they say?—studly for the coeds.”

  Dickie rolled his eyes. “I have an idea. Let’s get away for a bit after the meeting with the attorney, head over to my alma mater and watch a lacrosse game. It’s the traditional big rivalry game, and I hear there’s a hell of a forward on our team.”

  Lacrosse is that thing with little baskets on the ends of poles and there’s lots of running around and very little scoring. My high school had a team. The one time I went to cheer for a boy I had a mad crush on, I was so confused that I immediately transferred my affections to a clarinet player in the band. My vow to embrace Dickie’s homecoming activities melted away.

  I had another idea, one I didn’t want to share with my ex. I couldn’t get Larry Saylor’s supposedly accidental death out of my mind and I wanted to look around while it was still light, and definitely without Dickie. Maybe if I saw the area with my own eyes, I’d be able to accept the notion of the two deaths as a freak coincidence, which would ease my own fears. There would be golfers around, so it couldn’t be dangerous. I was bothered by the idea that no one saw the college executive fall into the water, and wondered how that could be. If a friend were here, I’d ask her to come with me, but the only friend around was Dickie and I knew if I told him what I wanted to do, he’d be insufferable unless I let him come along, and then he’d be insufferable anyway.