A Bias for Murder

by Sally Goldenbaum

  “Adele!” Po reached her a minute later and crouched down beside her. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  Adele was grasping her ankle, her face white and shadowed with pain.

  “Oh, Po,” she began, an artificial bravado forced into her voice. And in the next instant, the always composed body of Adele Harrington collapsed into sobs. Emerson wedged his way in between Po and Adele and began licking his master’s face.

  Po rubbed the dog’s head, then wrapped her arms around Adele’s shaking shoulders and held her while tears ran down her cheeks. Finally, the sobs subsided, and Adele reached for the tissue Po had pulled from her pocket. “What a fool I am,” she said softly.

  “Your ankle is swelling, Adele. Let me help you into the house.”

  “Thank you,” she said and allowed Po to reach beneath her arms and help her to an upright position. “I fell, you see. I was having trouble sleeping, so Emerson and I took an early walk around the grounds.” She hobbled beside Po to the back door leading into the kitchen.

  Po braced Adele as she pushed open the door and helped her inside. Emerson and Hoover, their sniffing of one another complete, followed.

  Po pulled a chair from the table and carefully settled Adele on the cushioned seat, then pulled out another for her throbbing foot.

  “Now, let’s see if I can remember my first aid training,” Po said, grabbing a stack of towels from the counter and positioning Adele’s injured ankle on the soft cushion. Gently she moved her ankle to make sure there was nothing broken, then carefully pressed the skin around her foot.

  Adele, with Emerson’s head resting in her lap, wiggled her toes. “I don’t think there’s anything broken,” she said.

  “I don’t either. But you have a nasty sprain. Sometimes that’s worse.”

  Po went to the sink, poured Adele a glass of water and spotted a bottle of acetaminophen on the windowsill. She handed two small pills to Adele. “Take these for now—it will help the pain, and I’ll run you over to the emergency room when it has settled down some.”

  Adele shook her head. “Not necessary, Po. I can tell it’s a sprain. There’s nothing you can do.”

  Po found a bowl in the cupboard and filled it with ice from the freezer, while Adele directed her to an ice bag in the butler’s pantry. Po filled it, wrapped it in a towel, and gently placed it on her ankle.

  “Did you trip on something, Adele?”

  Adele took a drink of water and set the glass down on the table. Perspiration dotted her brow. She wiped it away with the back of her hand and sighed. “It was silly. I looked up at the carriage house as I was walking with Emerson and realized I was going to have to go in there at some point to see what could be salvaged. So Emerson and I started up the stairs. But I tripped and fell. Clumsy. Foolish.”

  “Neither of those. But certainly unfortunate.”

  Adele reached for a tissue from a box on the table. She dabbed at her eyes. “Thank you. It was nice of you to stop.”

  Po smiled. “You can thank Hoover. He spotted you as we were going by.”

  “You run in the morning, Po? I used to run, when I lived back east.”

  “You should start again.” Po looked at her ankle. “Well, maybe not for a while but when you’re feeling better. I’ll stop by someday, and we can run or walk together. It’s beautiful down by the river early in the morning.”

  Adele looked at her carefully, her eyes clearing. “Why are you being so kind to me? I haven’t been very nice to you. Not to any of you.”

  “It’s not calculated, Adele. After all that’s happened lately, you are probably suspicious of anyone who speaks to you.”

  Adele managed a slight laugh. “And anyone I speak to is suspicious of me. Or worse. I know what people think, Po.”

  “People are frightened, that’s all. We’re a quiet town, peaceful neighborhoods. And anything that disrupts our lives makes people nervous and wary. It’s the curse and blessing of small-town living.”

  “How could anyone think I’d kill my twin brother?” she asked suddenly.

  Po shook her head. “I don’t know, Adele. But you swept down on us so suddenly, took over this house. People don’t know what to think.”

  “And what do you think, Po?” Adele’s shoulders stiffened with the question. She looked directly into Po’s eyes.

  “I don’t think you killed Ollie, Adele. Not for a minute. And I don’t think you killed Joe Bates or set fire to that garage, though you’ve given people reason to believe you might harm Joe.”

  “That’s nonsense.” Adele’s voice became stronger as she spoke. But the familiar edge was softened. “Joe Bates and I never got along. Even when I was a child. He loved Ollie and he loved my mother, but I was always a nuisance to him. He watched over Ollie—my mother charged him with his care—and that was a good thing. But when I came back and Ollie was gone, but Joe was still here. Along with all those memories. I was resentful, I think. Irrationally so, perhaps. And I took out my frustration on him. But God knows I didn’t kill him.”

  Adele lowered her head as her eyes filled.

  “Maybe I resented him for doing what I didn’t do—come back here to help Ollie after my mother died. All those things. Seeing him every day made it worse.”

  “Well, he did a good job of caring for Ollie, so you can take solace in that. He was a good friend to him.”

  “I think he understood him better than I ever did.”

  The sound of a truck on the driveway broke into their conversation, and Po rose to look out the window. “Workmen,” she said to Adele.

  “Yes,” Adele answered.

  Po watched as she took another drink of water, wondering if Adele would be able to manage here by herself. Without her makeup and fine clothes, she looked younger, and even though her face registered discomfort, she looked oddly beautiful. The stony façade that kept people at a distance was gone, along with the piercing look that caused others to look away or shift their weight from one foot to another. But also gone was the look of being impervious to outside forces.

  Adele Harrington looked vulnerable.

  “Po,” Adele started, looking up from her chair. “Po, do you think—”

  Po waited, but the sentence hung there in the air for so long, Po wondered if Adele had forgotten what she was going to ask. “Yes?” she prompted.

  “Do you think it’s time I threw in the towel?”

  It wasn’t what Po expected. And for a minute, she wasn’t completely sure what Adele was asking. But as she watched her swivel her head and look around the room, the big, beautiful old home, she knew exactly what Adele was suggesting.

  “And move away, you mean? Sell the home, pack up your dream?”

  Adele nodded slowly. “I’m a strong woman. I’ve had to be independent for a long time. My mother urged me out of this house and into a world in which women had the disadvantage. But I’ve always held my own. Always. I’m not sure I’ve ever really been happy. But I succeeded in everything I tried.”

  Po sat down and listened as Adele went on. “This house was never mine, you know. Coming back after Ollie died, I thought maybe I could make it mine. Fill it with people. Pull up the memories I have that are good, bury the others. I thought I could bring back my mother and my brother somehow, adding beauty to this place they loved.”

  “You can, Adele. It’s going to be a magnificent place.”

  “But what is happening around me? Someone doesn’t want me here. That’s clear. Someone wants this house in a terrible, insane way. And how many people will be hurt while I stubbornly hang on to it?” Adele winced as she tried to shift in the chair.

  “You can’t let others rule your life.” Po walked over to the sink and refilled Adele’s water glass. She looked out at the workman pulling ladders and toolboxes from their trucks. A gardener pushed a wheelbarrow out to the backyard, and in
the distance, she heard someone whistling a light cheerful tune. She turned from the sink and felt an enormous resolve.

  “Adele,” Po said. “You can’t let anyone take this away from you. This is your home. Somehow, I promise you, we will bring an end to the bad things happening here. And you will be at home again. Now let’s get on with it.”

  Chapter 20

  Despite the fact that gossip sometimes ran rampant in Crestwood, when push came to shove, it was a place where neighbors looked out for neighbors. And when Po made a call to Leah’s husband, Tim, and asked him to stop by on his way home from his busy pediatric practice to check the sprained ankle of a fifty-two-year-old woman, she knew the favor would be granted.

  “She’ll be fine, Po,” Tim assured her when he called later that evening. “Adele has a couple of crutches to help her around for the next few days, but she’s one determined lady, and I don’t think anything as minor as a fat ankle will keep her down for long.”

  Po smiled into the phone at the description of Adele. She was a strong lady, for sure. But she also had a soft spot. And Po suspected that it would widen in time.

  “By the way,” Tim added. “Leah mentioned to me that Adele had boarded her dog the day of the fire and it was raising some eyebrows. Sounded suspicious, I suppose.”

  “Yes?” Po hadn’t addressed that with Adele. But she knew—she hoped—there was a reason, because Tim was correct—it was very suspicious.

  “Well, she mentioned to me that she had had the yard sprayed,” Tim said. “She wondered if I thought she was being overly protective by not wanting Emerson around the chemicals. I told her no, that I thought she was one wise lady who cared a lot about her dog. I’d have done the same. Those chemicals are awful for dogs. And kids,” Tim added, before hanging up the phone.

  For a brief moment, Po felt a wash of shame for doubting Adele’s motives. And then great relief, and then she sighed in a satisfied way and continued with her phone calls.

  A call to Eleanor assured Po that Adele would have food the next day. Eleanor would stop by with groceries, a stack of her travel magazines, and a deck of cards. And Kate said she’d check in on Adele periodically as she biked by the house.

  And Po herself would help out by donning an old pair of jeans and a Canterbury sweatshirt, and begin rummaging through the charred remains of Joe’s apartment, saving Adele the grief of doing so herself.

  “Thank you, Po,” Adele said when Po showed up the next Thursday morning. “I don’t know why you are all pitching in like this. But I—”

  “Oh, shush,” Po said. “It’s what we do.”

  “Well, you do it well,” Adele allowed. She sat in a sunroom just off the kitchen, her foot wrapped in a flesh-colored bandage and elevated on a small stool. Windows surrounded her on three sides, and she could easily monitor the activity and comings and goings of the workman without moving an inch. To the side, spread out on a low coffee table, were piles of papers, forms, and a laptop computer.

  “This looks like command central, Adele.” The color had come back into Adele’s high cheekbones, and she was dressed comfortably today in loose slacks and a silky teal blouse. She looked quite beautiful, Po thought.

  Adele nodded. “They don’t know it, but with that window open,” Adele nodded to a window next to the couch, “I can hear everything they say. It’s an education, believe me.”

  “I’ve no doubt.” Po laughed.

  “But the sad thing is,” Adele continued, watching the men beyond her window, “some of them are refusing to come to work. The crew has diminished considerably in the past week.”

  Po frowned. “I didn’t realize that.”

  “They don’t want to be connected to what’s happening here. They hate it that television cameras stop by and film them. But the real reason, I know, is that they hear the rumors, too. They know that some people think I killed Joe—and some who think I killed my brother. I can’t say I blame the workmen for not wanting to be here. But I can’t afford to be without them. Every delay costs me money.”

  There was genuine sadness shadowing Adele’s face, and Po had a powerful urge to find the contractor and give him a piece of her mind. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty. “Would you like some coffee before I tackle the carriage house?”

  Adele shook her head no. “I don’t know how bad it is up there, Po, but it should be safe. The fireman said they were able to control it before the foundation was weakened.” She looked across the drive at the open windows and charred sills of the garage apartment. “If it’s too awful and the smell is too bad, please don’t stay. I don’t think there’s much of value up there. My mother filled the place with old cast-off books from our library, hoping Joe Bates might educate himself. He never seemed very interested though. All I really care about are things of Oliver’s—please save them for me. Contrary to that librarian’s rantings, I would never have thrown anything of my brother’s away.”

  “I think Halley is still emotional over Oliver’s death, Adele. I don’t think she means those things.”

  “Oh, Po, that’s where you’re wrong. She means them. But for the life of me, I don’t know where her accusations are coming from.”

  Po picked up her work gloves and a couple of cardboard boxes she had brought with her. She didn’t want to argue with Adele. Besides, she had a point. Halley did seem to attack Adele rather severely. She wondered about that, and also what the young woman thought she could possibly find in Joe’s apartment that was worth trespassing and angering Adele. Maybe once she spent a little time up there herself she’d have a better understanding of Halley’s obsession with it.

  “Well, I’m off,” she said to Adele. “You can call me on my cell if you need anything. I’ve left the number there beside your computer.”

  Adele waved her hand in the air. “I’m fine. I get around quite nicely on these crutches—and they make nice battering poles should anyone give me trouble.”

  Po took several plastic bags from the kitchen and hurried across the drive and up the back steps of the carriage house. It was a bright, crisp fall day, and the clean air was a sharp contrast to the awful stench on the other side of Joe Bates’s door. Po walked in cautiously, feeling the presence of the old man who had kept to himself so severely these past years.

  Light from the open windows and a skylight above revealed a soot-filled, damp room with a small galley kitchen at one end. Off to one side, Po walked into a room with a bed and dresser, cluttered now with burnt ceiling tiles scattered everywhere.

  Remnants of barely recognizable personal items—a hairbrush and floppy hat, books, and a reading lamp—lay like lumps of coal on the floor. Here and there small puddles of water remained, reminders of the firemen’s attack against the flames. And everywhere was the pungent odor of burnt matter.

  Joe’s place must have been cozy before the fire created such havoc, Po thought, walking back into the living room and looking around. Built-in blackened bookcases filled an interior wall, and a small brass telescope lay on its side on a table near a window. A gift from Oliver, Po suspected.

  Some things escaped the flames, Po noticed, but almost nothing escaped the force of the water that put them out. An old, overstuffed chair and couch, pushed now to the center of the room, was wet and lumpy, burned on one side but not the other. Po sighed. The remains of a long life reduced to rubble.

  The sadness that came over her was unexpected—and profound.

  To work, she told herself. There will be time for dealing with sad thoughts later.

  After slipping on her work gloves, Po walked carefully to the bookcase, stepping over broken dishes and burnt dishtowels, black flakes of newspapers and chunks of canned food that had exploded from the heat.

  Some of the shelves held nothing but charred clumps of the Harringtons’ old books that Adele had mentioned. But on other shelves, the books were still recognizable. She
carefully pulled one from the shelf and read the darkened spine. It was Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, and she tried to think of old Joe, sitting in his chair by the window, reading it. Perhaps Adele was wrong and Joe Bates read avidly, devouring these classics. One never knew everything about another’s life. The thought of Joe steeping himself in reading pleased Po. You could learn much about a person from the books they read. She set the book on the floor near her stash of garbage sacks, thinking it might be salvageable—and perhaps even a collector’s item.

  For an hour Po rummaged through books and charred papers, scattered across the shelves and on the floor. She collected those that were still intact and made a small pile near the door, then added some framed pictures of Oliver and his mother that were wavy beneath the glass but still intact. There was a picture of Oliver and Joe, and one of a young Oliver—perhaps twenty or so—standing next to a beautiful young woman. Po took it over to the window and looked at it more closely in the sunlight, rubbing the surface clean with her finger. Only in the bright natural light did Po realize the woman was Adele. She was standing next to her brother, smiling into the camera. Po took a piece of paper towel and rubbed the cracked glass. Adele and Ollie. Happy. Po wrapped the picture in folds of paper towel to protect it and added it to her pile.

  A solid old rolltop desk, its legs darkened by the fire but still holding up the top, stood a few feet from the bookshelf. It was a massive thing, Po saw, and seemed to have resisted the fire by its very boldness. The curved rolltop, swollen with water and singed by flames, stuck when Po tried to slide it up, but a few strong tugs and it gave way. Inside, Po found more of Joe’s life—pads of paper, damp bills, pens and pencils, and several small books, as well as some legal-looking documents that were waterlogged and curled.

  Po pressed one flat and could read Ollie’s name at the bottom, but the rest was smeared and indecipherable. She frowned. Odd. And somewhat unsettling. Po thought about all the claims on Oliver’s house, and the thought that he might have written up a will before he died surfaced briefly, then disappeared beneath the weight of the task in front of her. Po gathered what papers were intact and set them beside the door to look at later.