Murder by the Slice

by Livia J. Washburn

  “No, I reckon I better not. I don’t want to be sexist about it, but comfortin’ grievin’ folks just seems to me like something that ladies are better at. When it comes to death, women bring food and men carry the coffin.”

  Carolyn said, “That is sexist … but I think you’re right. Too many people have forgotten that there are differences between men and women, and that’s the way the Good Lord intended it.”

  “I’ve never forgotten that,” Eve put in, smiling at Sam.

  Somehow, that made Phyllis feel better in a way. Eve was nothing if not consistent.

  Phyllis and Carolyn left a few minutes later in Phyllis’s Lincoln. Carolyn gave her directions. Marie and Shannon had lived in the same neighborhood, an upscale residential area on the south side of town, across the interstate. Traffic was bad part of the way—the huge boom in new business construction along the highway made the traffic almost as thick as in Fort Worth, Phyllis thought—but soon enough they found themselves following a winding street lined with large, expensive brick homes. It was a very nice neighborhood, but Phyllis preferred the older, more sedate part of town where she lived, with its massive trees shading the houses and the yards, and its air of history and gentility.

  The curb had house numbers painted on it. “This is it,” Carolyn said when they reached Marie’s address.

  Phyllis parked at the curb. Marie must have been watching for them, because she came out the front door of her house before either of the older women could get out of the car. She was dressed in a brown skirt and jacket and looked nice. The cold wind plucked at her skirt as she came down the walk carrying a casserole dish of her own.

  She got into the backseat and said, “Hello. This is very thoughtful of you ladies. I wanted to take something over to Shannon’s, but I wasn’t sure if I ought to or not.”

  “I just hope somebody’s home,” Carolyn said, as Phyllis pulled away from the curb.

  “There should be. Surely Becca isn’t going back to school yet. I know Joel planned to move back into the house for a while. He has his own apartment now, of course, but he wanted Becca to be in the most familiar surroundings for her.”

  “That’s wise,” Phyllis said. “Dealing with her mother’s death will be hard enough for her without being uprooted from her home at the same time.”

  “And I guess Kirk is still around, too,” Marie added. “He doesn’t have anywhere else to go, as far as I know.”

  “You’ll have to tell me how to get there,” Phyllis said as she drove between houses where many of the yards had Halloween decorations up. Most people didn’t decorate as elaborately for Halloween as they did for Christmas, of course, but she still saw a lot of jack-o’-lanterns. They reminded her sadly of her jack-o’-lantern cake, which as far as she knew was still somewhere in the sheriff department’s crime lab.

  “Oh, sure,” Marie said. “Turn left up here at the next corner. It’s not far.”

  After a moment, Phyllis asked, “How do you know that Shannon’s exhusband was moving back home?”

  “That’s what Joel told Russ he was going to do. They’re still friends.”

  That was news to Phyllis. She hadn’t known that Joel Dunston and Russ Tyler were friends. That made Russ’s behavior even more despicable if he had been carrying on an affair with Shannon.

  Marie went on, “That’s one thing that bothered Shannon. I think she assumed that when she and Joel split up, the people who knew them would take her side and stay friends with her. Instead, even though we all tried to act as neutral as possible around her, I’m pretty sure she knew we all felt a little sorry for Joel. That drove her crazy.”

  Marie fell silent, and when Phyllis glanced in the rearview mirror she saw that the young woman was biting at her lower lip.

  “I shouldn’t say things like that,” Marie continued after a few seconds. “Nobody should speak ill of the dead.”

  “You’re not speaking ill of Shannon,” Carolyn said. “You’re just stating facts. Nobody is really neutral when it comes to divorce. They all blame one party or the other.”

  “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” Marie looked out the window. “It’s just a shitty situation all around.”

  Phyllis tried not to sigh at Marie’s language. She had more important things to think about.

  “You said that Joel Dunston and your husband are friends,” she said, trying to sound like she was making idle conversation. “Your husband’s not a doctor, too, is he?”

  “Russ? A doctor?” Marie laughed. “Lord, no. He gets so sick at the sight of blood that if one of our kids scrapes a knee, I have to put the Band-Aid on it. Russ is a lot more comfortable with things that aren’t alive. He’s an engineer at Lockheed. He can compute airplane structural stresses and things like that all day, because steel doesn’t bleed and doesn’t have any feelings.”

  Neither Phyllis nor Carolyn said anything, and after a second Marie went on, “Geez, I didn’t mean to make him sound all cold and heartless. Believe you me, Russ is plenty alive, especially in the bedroom, if you know what I mean.”

  Phyllis knew what she meant, but she didn’t particularly want to think about it. On the other hand, the fact that Russ Tyler evidently had a healthy appetite for the pleasures of the flesh might mean that he would more easily stray from his marriage vows. But then again, Phyllis had read that men who paid plenty of attention to the wife they had at home were less likely to be involved with some other woman.

  Feeling uncomfortable with the whole subject, she asked, “Am I still going the right way?”

  “Yeah, the house is right up here,” Marie said. “There on the left, where that pickup is parked. You can pull in the driveway.”

  Phyllis did so, glancing as she did at the pickup parked at the curb. It was an old, rather beat-up vehicle, and she guessed that it belonged to Shannon’s son, Kirk. It certainly didn’t look like the sort of vehicle a doctor would drive.

  As they got out of the Lincoln with their casserole dishes and closed the doors, the front door of the house opened and a couple of young men stepped outside. One of them was Kirk. The other, who had close-cropped fair hair and wore a leather jacket over a dark T-shirt, looked vaguely familiar to Phyllis, but she wasn’t sure where she had seen him before. He said, “See you later, man,” to Kirk, then gave the three women a smile and a friendly nod as he cut across the front yard toward the pickup. He was obviously one of Kirk’s friends, Phyllis decided.

  Kirk didn’t look particularly happy to see them. “Hello,” he said warily.

  “Hi, Kirk,” Marie said. Since she was a friend of the family, at least sort of, she knew him the best. “Is your stepdad here?”

  Kirk leaned his shaven head toward the door. “Yeah, he’s inside with the kid.” He turned briefly and called through the open door. “Hey, Joel! More people here with food!” Then he muttered, “I gotta go,” and stalked toward the double garage.

  Marie said after him, “We’re sorry about your mother, Kirk.”

  Without turning around he said curtly, “Yeah, thanks.” Then he disappeared inside the garage. That left Phyllis, Carolyn, and Marie standing somewhat awkwardly on the doorstep.

  The awkward moment didn’t last long, because Joel Dunston appeared in the doorway, summoned up a smile, and said, “Marie. It’s good to see you. Why don’t you and your friends come inside? The air’s cool out here today.”

  Thinking about the way Kirk had reacted to Marie’s expression of sympathy about his mother’s death, Phyllis decided that the air wasn’t the only thing cool. Kirk’s attitude had been downright cold. Hadn’t he felt anything for Shannon?

  Or was his heart so hardened against her that he could bring himself to murder his own mother?

  You’re getting way ahead of yourself, Phyllis thought as she went into the house with Carolyn and Marie, all three of them bearing sympathy in casserole dishes.

  Chapter 17

  Sheriff Haney paused at the door of the interview room and crooked a finger at
Mike. “Sit in on this with me, Deputy,” he said.

  Mike nodded, trying not to appear too eager. He followed the sheriff into the room where Gary Oakley, a dejected figure with his head hung low in despair, sat alone at a scarred wooden table. Oakley didn’t even glance up as Haney and Mike sat down in empty chairs across the table from him.

  “I’m Sheriff Haney, Mr. Oakley. We want to ask you a few questions.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Oakley mumbled, speaking so quietly that Mike had to lean forward to make out what he was saying.

  Haney pressed the RECORD button on a small tape recorder that sat on the table. He gave the date and time, and then said, “Interview with Mr. Gary Oakley. Present are Mr. Oakley, Sheriff Royce Haney, and Deputy Mike Newsom. Mr. Oakley has been apprised of his constitutional rights. Mr. Oakley, do you waive the right to legal counsel?”

  “I don’t need a lawyer. I didn’t do anything.”

  “On the contrary, between the years 1992 and 1995, you committed at least three burglaries for which you were charged, tried, and convicted. You served time in the Dallas County jail and the Collin County jail for your first two convictions, and at your third trial, you were sentenced to a term of two to seven years in the state penitentiary. You served three years of that sentence and were released on parole in

  1998. What have you been up to since then, Gary?”

  Oakley finally looked up from the table. “You know what I’ve been doing,” he said in a flat voice. “I worked as a school custodian in Poolville and then at Loving Elementary here in Weatherford.”

  “You lied on your job applications about being a convicted felon,” Haney said. “That’s a crime in itself.”

  “I knew I wouldn’t get hired if I told the truth. But I thought it would be all right, because I never intended to break the law again. I still don’t.”

  “You’re admitting to lying on your job applications?”

  “What’s the point in lying about that now? You know who I was. You know what I did.”

  “What do you mean by saying we know who you were? Aren’t you still the same guy?”

  With a solemn expression on his face, Oakley shook his head. “No. I’m not the same guy. I’ve changed.”

  Haney gave a harsh laugh. “Yeah, every convict claims that he’s a changed man … right up until the day he deals drugs or molests a kid or murders somebody again.”

  Oakley leaned back and drew in a sharp breath as if the sheriff had struck him across the face. “I never did any of those things,” he said. “I broke into businesses and stole things when I was younger, but I never hurt anybody. I never would!”

  “What about Shannon Dunston?”

  “I never hurt Mrs. Dunston! I … I know somebody killed her, but it wasn’t me. I swear it wasn’t. I didn’t have any reason to.”

  “What if she caught you stealing something?” Haney didn’t mention the PTO cash box in particular. Mike knew the sheriff wanted to keep that card to play later. “Maybe she walked in on you and started to scream, or threatened to tell somebody what you were doing, so you had to kill her to shut her up.” Haney dropped his voice a little, skillfully. “You probably didn’t really mean to hurt her. Things just got out of hand… .”

  “No.” Oakley whispered the word. He looked across the table at them, and then said it again, stronger this time. “No. I didn’t steal anything, and I didn’t hurt anybody. The only times I’ve broken any law since I got out of prison were when I lied on my job applications. I don’t even drive over the speed limit!”

  “Gary, if you don’t cooperate, things aren’t going to go well for you—”

  “You don’t have any evidence,” Oakley broke in. “You can’t, because I didn’t do it. If you’ve found the murder weapon, it won’t have my fingerprints on it.”

  “How do you know that, Gary?” the sheriff volleyed right back. “Do you know because you wiped it clean?”

  “I know because I never touched it,” Oakley said stubbornly.

  Haney leaned back in his chair. “Let’s set the murder aside for a minute,” he said. “What about the burglary at the school a week or so ago? That’s got your fingerprints all over it, Gary.”

  Oakley’s breath hissed between his teeth. “I heard about that. I prayed nobody would find out about my record, because I knew if they did, you cops would blame me for what happened! But I didn’t have anything to do with that, either.”

  Haney looked over at Mike, bringing him into the interrogation for the first time by asking, “Deputy Newsom, you’ve read the reports on that case. Tell Mr. Oakley, were there any signs of forced entry at the school?”

  Mike shook his head. “None. It looked like somebody must have used a key to get in.”

  “And as a custodian at Loving Elementary, you’d have the keys to every door in the school, wouldn’t you?” Haney asked Oakley.

  “There are other custodians,” Oakley said, but his momentary show of strength was beginning to fade. “A lot of people have keys to the school.”

  “But none of the rest of them are convicted burglars,” Haney said heavily. “We checked. You’re the only employee with a record.”

  Oakley put his hands over his face, and for a second Mike thought the man was going to cry. Instead, Oakley just said in a ragged voice muffled by his hands, “You’re not going to believe me, no matter what I tell you. You’ve made up your minds that I’m guilty, so it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  Haney leaned forward intently and clasped his hands together on the table. “That’s right. It doesn’t matter, so you might as well tell us the truth. What happened Saturday during the carnival? Did Mrs. Dunston come into the office and catch you while you were taking the cash box out of the secretary’s desk?”

  Oakley lowered his hands. Mike saw what looked like genuine surprise in the custodian’s eyes. But before Oakley could say anything, Haney pressed on.

  “Did you grab her and take her down that hall at knifepoint? You must know that school inside and out. You knew that if you killed her down there, it would be a while before anyone found her. That’s what you did, isn’t it? You killed her!” Haney slapped the table, the sound like the crack of a gun in the close confines of the room. “Admit it!”

  Mike could see Oakley wavering. Oakley wanted to confess. But at the same time, there was a mixture of stubbornness and bafflement in his gaze as it switched back and forth between Mike and the sheriff. Finally, Oakley said, “I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill Mrs. Dunston, and I didn’t steal anything from the school.”

  With an ominous glare, Haney shook his head. “You’re gonna be sorry about lying to us, Gary. You just blew your chance to get the best result from this.”

  Oakley dragged in a deep breath. “One of the deputies said earlier I could call somebody. I know I’ve got a right to call somebody.”

  “You said you didn’t want to make a call,” Haney snapped.

  “I’ve changed my mind. I couldn’t think of anybody then. But now … I know who I want to call.”

  Joel Dunston ushered Phyllis, Carolyn, and Marie through a very neatly kept living room and a luxuriously furnished dining room into a gleaming, spotless kitchen, without a speck of dust anywhere. On the refrigerator door were several photographs of Becca playing, lined up perfectly straight and held in place with tiny magnets in the corners. Phyllis wasn’t surprised to see that the photos were displayed so neatly. Even in the short time she had known Shannon, she had gotten the idea that Shannon was the sort of woman who wouldn’t tolerate any sort of mess.

  Except an emotional one.

  Phyllis put that thought out of her mind as Joel said, “Just set those dishes on the counter and I’ll put them away later. You’re all very kind to be thinking of us.”

  Marie reached for the handle of the refrigerator. “We can just go ahead and put them away for you now, so you won’t have to bother with them.”

  Joel started to make a motion like he was going to tell her not
to open the refrigerator, but then he stopped and said, “Okay, thanks.”

  Marie opened the door, and Phyllis saw that the refrigerator was already mostly full of covered dishes. Joel smiled weakly and said, “People have, uh, been bringing food all weekend. I don’t think Becca and Kirk and I will have to worry about going hungry.”

  Marie found a place for her dish, and then turned to take Carolyn’s green bean casserole. Phyllis’s sweet potatoes went into the refrigerator last. As Marie closed the door, she said, “I believe all those dishes have the name of who they belong to on them, but I’m sure there’s no hurry about getting them back.”

  “None at all,” Phyllis assured Joel.

  “I can even come by and pick them up when you’re done with them,” Marie went on. “How’s Becca doing?”

  Joel shrugged. “As well as can be expected, I guess. None of us are doing great, of course. That’ll take some time.”

  “She didn’t go to school today, did she?”

  “No, she’s in her room.” Joel took a step toward the hall. “I can get her if you want to see her… .”

  “Oh, no, let her rest,” Marie said.

  Actually, Phyllis wouldn’t have minded asking the little girl a few more questions, but this was hardly the right time or place. But then, was there ever a right time and place for a murder investigation?

  Joel stood there awkwardly. Phyllis was afraid that he was going to steer them back to the front door and out of the house, but then he said, “Where are my manners? Would you ladies like some coffee?”

  Marie smiled at him. “That would be very nice. Thank you, Joel.”

  He fussed around, opening cabinet doors until he found cups. There was already coffee made, so all he had to do was pour it. A sugar bowl sat in the middle of the kitchen table, along with a little ceramic box that held packets of artificial sweetener. Joel got a carton of half-and-half from the refrigerator. His movements were brisk and his hands were steady. He had the sort of crisp assurance that most doctors demonstrated.

  Within a few minutes, the four of them were sitting around the kitchen table, sipping coffee. Phyllis sensed that there was still a bit of a strain in the air, but that probably wasn’t going to go away any time soon. The occupants of this house would have to get over Shannon’s death first.