Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 07 - Mad as the Dickens

by Toni L. P. Kelner

  “Just a thought.” I had another one. “If Seth was there,” I said, pointing, “doesn’t that mean that he was between the door and the killer?”

  “That’s how it looks,” Junior said, “but the killer could have walked past him and turned around. Why?”

  “I was just wondering about these other rooms. Did you look in them?”

  “Just to make sure there was nobody hiding in there, so it wouldn’t hurt to look again.”

  The first two doors had hand-printed signs identifying them as “Men’s Dressing Room” and “Women’s Dressing Room”; the third was being used to store props and scenery flats; and the fourth was tiny—barely big enough for the sink and cleaning equipment it held.

  “All of the windows are intact,” Junior said.

  “The locks have been painted shut,” I added, looking them over. “Nobody came in or out that way. What about the kitchen?” The door that led from the auditorium to the kitchen was just a few feet away from the door to the hallway.

  But Junior shook her head. “I looked in there the first day of rehearsal to make sure there wasn’t anything in there my nieces and nephews could get into. There’s an emergency exit, but it’s got an alarm on it. All the windows are the louvered kind; they’re not big enough for anybody to get through.”

  I looked up at the solid ceiling. “No way to get through the roof.”

  “Not without a wrecking ball,” Junior agreed.

  “That means that whoever it was either came from outside or through the auditorium.” I was still hoping to blame somebody from the outside if I could come up with something halfway reasonable. “Are we both agreed that Mark’s idea of a sneak thief is completely bogus?”

  “Do you even have to ask?” Junior said dryly. “I’ll admit there are some pretty dumb criminals out there, but I don’t think that we have any that dumb running around in Byerly.”

  “Seth could have set up a meeting with somebody, and told him to come to the door.”

  “I suppose, but I don’t see how Seth could have known he was going to be free at that particular moment. He would have still been on stage if Richard hadn’t thrown that tantrum.”

  “Could he have provoked Richard just to make sure he was free?”

  Junior just looked at me.

  “Never mind. Still, it’s possible he set something up.”

  “Or another cast member could have gone outside and come back in again.”

  “Good point,” though I wasn’t thrilled about more evidence pointing to the cast. “I suppose it’s theoretically possible that somebody snuck in the front door… .”

  “Without anybody noticing?” Junior said skeptically.

  “You’re right; I don’t believe it, either.” I wasn’t happy about it, but I was going to have to face facts. “So it does look like the killer was somebody involved with the play.”

  “That’s what I think, unless we find something to point us in another direction,” Junior said.

  With that decided, I moved on. “Was there anything about Seth’s body I should know?”

  “Just what you already know: he was hit over the head with something. I’m no medical examiner, but it looks to me like it was long, like a bar or a stick, rather than round like a ball or square like a brick. Whatever it was, the killer probably brought it with him, because there wasn’t anything that would fit the bill in the hallway beforehand or afterward.”

  “Then Mark hasn’t found the murder weapon?”

  “I don’t think so, but I don’t know for sure. Not only is he not telling me anything; he’s doing all the work himself so even Trey doesn’t know anything.”

  “Rats!” I’d been hoping we could use Junior’s little brother as a source of information.

  “Laurie Anne, you’re going to have to stop using such strong language after the baby comes.”

  “Don’t start, Junior,” I said. “So we’ve examined the scene, and we’ve learned absolutely nothing. What would you do next?”

  “Normally I’d have witness statements, and possibly the autopsy report. Had any physical evidence been found, I’d usually have more information on that.”

  “It must be nice to have so much to work with.”

  “How do you manage without it?”

  I carefully kept my face straight. “Oh, I usually break into your office at night and take a peek at the files. Or hack into your computer and get the information.”

  She blinked. “Are you serious?”

  “Of course I’m not serious,” I said, laughing. “If I can’t get it from you, I do without.”

  She relaxed. “Lord, you scared me there for a minute.”

  “Though if you want me to hack into Mark’s computer—”

  “I’d just as soon you didn’t.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “As I was saying, I’d have a lot of information to go through, but I’m not sure that any of it would help in this case. Maybe I don’t have the autopsy report, but I was there when the doctor gave his preliminary opinion that Seth died from a blow to the head—possibly in combination with a bad heart—and I know about when he died. Whoever hit him did it from the front and was right-handed. It was a hard blow, but not so hard that any adult couldn’t have done it.”

  “That lets your nieces and nephews out.”

  “I was kind of leaving them off the list, anyway,” she said. “I don’t think there was any useful trace evidence. No muddy footprints or blood drops or anything like that. Any fingerprints on the walls and door knob and such would be meaningless, because so many people have gone up and down that hall.”

  “If there were anything obvious, Mark would have made an arrest by now.”

  “I would hope so. Now, I haven’t talked to everybody who was here when Seth was killed, but I’ve talked to enough of them to know that everybody was moving around so much that we can’t rule out anybody as the killer.”

  “Except Richard.”

  “Right. He was on the stage pretty much the whole day, except when he stomped outside, and Vasti was watching y’all then because she was afraid he was going to leave. But the rest of us were milling around like ants on an anthill. There’s not a single alibi that would hold up.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “It’s not that bad. It would be better if we could eliminate some of the possibilities, but I do hate playing the alibi game. Who left where when, and whose watch is set fast, and all that mess. What we’ve got is this: nobody knows exactly when Seth came down this hall, and that means that pretty much anybody in the building could have come after him.”

  “Great.”

  “Though I’m assuming that you’re in the clear, too.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll return the favor. While we’re at it, I’d just as soon we leave the rest of my family off the list.”

  “I can go along with that. That leaves us with everybody else in the cast and crew.”

  “I guess we should be grateful that the cast isn’t any bigger than it is. So, having exhausted all your reports, what would you do next?”

  “I’d go talk to the folks who knew the victim: his family, friends, neighbors, and so on. So I’d start with the Murdstones.”

  “What if they won’t talk to you?”

  “Laurie Anne, I’m chief of police. People talk to me, or I’ll know the reason why.”

  “That definitely gives you an advantage,” I said. “People can blow me off anytime they want to, and they don’t have to give me a reason. So I start by talking to people who will talk to me, and hope that they know something about the victim.”

  “What if they don’t?”

  “I talk to somebody else. Eventually I find somebody who both knows something and will talk to me.”

  Junior looked doubtful and I didn’t blame her. “What can I say? It’s haphazard, but it’s worked before.”

  “That it has. Since I’m just a citizen this time around, we’ll try it your way. I take it this mean
s we won’t be talking to the Murdstones right off.”

  “Lord, no. They’ve just had a murder in the family. I wouldn’t want to intrude at a time like this.”

  “What if one of them is the killer?”

  “Then I don’t want to talk to them before I know more.” We left the hall and went back into the auditorium, where I surveyed the prospects. Aunt Nora and Aunt Daphine were usually my best sources of gossip, but neither of them was there. Vasti knew lots of gossip too, but she got as much wrong as she got right. “Let’s go talk to the triplets,” I finally decided. “They’ve been around the rehearsals long enough to have gotten a feel for everybody.”

  “I’ll just listen in if that’s all right.”

  “Richard usually takes notes for me.”

  She didn’t say anything, but the look she gave me was answer enough.

  “Okay, we’ll skip the notes,” I said.

  Idelle, Odelle, and Carlelle had taken over a corner of the auditorium for their costumes and sewing equipment, with a long rack to hang clothes on. When Junior and I got there, Idelle was consulting a stack of papers on a clipboard while Odelle pulled a coat off the rack and Carlelle put together a stack of shoes, socks, and other garments.

  Odelle held a tattered morning coat up for her sisters to see. “We’re going to have to completely remake this.”

  Carlelle threw her hands up. “When am I supposed to do with that?”

  “Problems?” I asked.

  “Hey, Laurie Anne, Junior,” Idelle said, looking up from her clipboard. “We just realized how much work it’s going to be to make Scrooge’s costume fit Big Bill.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that,” I admitted. Seth had been a big man, in height and in girth. Big Bill, despite his nickname, was shorter and much trimmer, which was why he looked so good in blue jeans.

  “And we’re going to have to come up with a whole new costume for Oliver to be a collector,” Odelle said.

  “That’s right,” Idelle said, flipping furiously through her papers. “It’s all well and good for Richard to hand out parts like they were candy; he doesn’t have to dress everybody!”

  “Vasti told me y’all were renting costumes,” I said.

  Idelle rolled her eyes. “Don’t get us started! We ordered from Morris’s Costumes in Charlotte, and don’t you know it took some sweet-talking! Do you know how many productions of A Christmas Carol there are at this time of year? But they promised us they’d get them to us—even claimed it was the last available set in the state. Only the costumes never showed up.”

  “Personally, I think they took something under the table to rent them to somebody else,” Odelle put in.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Ideile said. “In the meantime, they’re claiming the costumes were delivered, and even faxed us a copy of the signature of the person who signed for them. It’s completely illegible, so it wasn’t one of us.”

  I nodded sympathetically. Everybody knew that the triplets had beautiful handwriting. I’d gotten them to address the invitations to my wedding.

  “So with us going round and round with them, we decided to bite the bullet and make the costumes ourselves,” Odelle said. “Which wasn’t as bad as it could have been because we’d already planned to make some of them.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Carlelle grumbled as she started picking at the seams in Scrooge’s coat. “You’re not the one doing the sewing.”

  “Who was it who spent half a day with a glue gun putting chains on Jacob Marley’s costume?” Odelle retorted.

  Then the three of them stared at one another in horror. “Marley! We’ve got to redo his costume, too!”

  Ideile frantically consulted her list. “Maybe not. Pete Fredericks is only a little smaller around than Big Bill. We can pin him in if we have to.”

  “Maybe we won’t even have to do that!” Carlelle said excitedly. “He’s dead, isn’t he? His clothes should be hanging on him.”

  “You’re right!” Ideile said.

  “What about the length on the pants?” Odelle wanted to know. “He’s a couple of inches taller than Big Bill.”

  Carlelle’s face fell again.

  “Can you fray the hems?” I suggested. “If you’ve got enough threads hanging loose, people won’t be able to tell it’s too short.”

  “That might do it,” Ideile said speculatively. “Odelle, go get Pete to try on the pants and see if it will work.” While one sister rushed off, the other two went back to their respective lists and sewing.

  “I had no idea that doing the costumes was so much work,” I said.

  “It wouldn’t be so bad if we were doing something modern,” Idelle said. “Sally Hendon’s show is all contemporary costumes. They’re buying most of them off the rack. We had to do research on Victorian clothes, and figure out what colors we could use, track down patterns, and all kinds of trouble. Plus making everything from scratch.”

  “Which would be a whole lot easier if I could use my sewing machine when I need to,” Carlelle said, glaring up at the stage. “But every time I get going good, Richard makes me stop because I’m disturbing his concentration.”

  I really didn’t want to have to apologize for my husband again, so I sidestepped the issue. “Why don’t y’all use one of the back rooms so the noise won’t bother anybody?”

  “We tried that,” Idelle said. “But after somebody wadded up a stack of costumes that I’d just finished ironing, and somebody hid every cotton picking spool of thread so we couldn’t find them for an hour, we decided to keep our things out here where we can keep an eye on them.”

  “That prankster is getting pretty bad,” I said. “Any idea of who it could be?”

  Idelle shook her head. “If we did, we’d have a word or two with him. I like fun as much as the next person, but we don’t have time for this!”

  “You sure don’t,” I said sympathetically. “Is there anything I can do to help?” Admittedly, I was doing well to sew on a button, but surely there was something suitable for unskilled labor.

  “Aren’t you sweet to ask?” Idelle said. “But don’t you worry about us. You know doing something like this isn’t any fun unless we fuss about it. Aunt Daphine, Aunt Edna, and Aunt Nora have volunteered to come over to our place tonight and finish up the sewing.”

  “Besides,” Carlelle said, “don’t y’all have another project?” She looked at us significantly.

  “We were hoping y’all would be too distracted with the play to notice,” I said.

  “Laurie Anne, you’ve been living up North too long if you believe that.”

  “I said we were hoping, not that we believed it.” I wasn’t really surprised. It’s not like a five months pregnant woman and a police chief aren’t noticeable. Besides, the triplets had been at the baby shower, and I was sure that everybody there knew what we were up to.

  “Assuming that y’all didn’t come over here just to chat, what do you want to know?” Carlelle said.

  “Are you sure you’re not too busy?” I asked.

  “Lord, Laurie Anne, I can sew in my sleep; sewing and talking at the same time is nothing.”

  “Good enough.” I pulled a chair over next to Carlelle’s, and Junior did the same. “I want to know about the Murdstones. You must have seen a lot of them since the show started. Starting with Seth.”

  Carlelle said, “I spent right much time with him when I was working on his costume. I liked him, too. He was an awfully nice man—friendly and easy to talk to.”

  “What did y’all talk about?”

  “This and that. He was a bit of a flirt, to tell you the truth, though I think he’d have passed out from shock if I’d taken him up on it.”

  “What about his business?”

  “You know he makes porch chairs and little tables to go with them? I was thinking about getting a set for Mama and Daddy’s anniversary, and he said he’d do them for me for nothing. Isn’t that sweet? Only I’d have to let him know right away, because he wa
s thinking of retiring soon.”

  “How come? He wasn’t that old, was he?”

  “He turned sixty-four in June,” Junior said.

  “I guess that’s nearly retirement age,” I said, “but so many people work later these days. He must have done well to have put away enough money to retire early.”

  “He talked like he did,” Idelle said, “but I imagine the real reason was because of what happened to his grandson. I think Seth blamed himself.”

  “I thought it was an accident,” I said.

  “It was, but Seth said he’d told Jake that old space heater wasn’t safe to use around an active boy like Barnaby. He said he should have tossed it out himself before anything could happen. Besides, Seth was the only adult there when it happened. He and Jake shared a house, with Seth upstairs and Jake and Barnaby downstairs.

  “Anyway, Seth heard Barnaby scream, and ran down and found him. Then he panicked. He realized afterward that he should have called an ambulance, but all he could think of was getting the boy to the hospital. So he wrapped him up in a blanket, put him in the truck, and took off for Hickory.”

  “Would it have made any difference if he’d called the ambulance?” I asked.

  “Not a bit,” Ideile said, “and Seth knew that, but he said he kept going over and over it all in his head, thinking that he could have done something to save the boy.”

  I could understand that; I’d spent plenty of late nights replaying mistakes in my head. At least none of mine had ever led to a child’s death. Then I put my hand on my tummy, wondering what mistakes I would make with the baby.

  “What about Jake?” I asked. “He’s the one who left his nine-year-old son alone with a dangerous space heater.”

  “He didn’t know the heater wasn’t safe,” Carlelle objected, “and he wouldn’t have left Barnaby if Seth hadn’t been there. Seth said he tried to get Barnaby to come upstairs with him, but Barnaby was playing computer games and didn’t want to. Nobody could have known that would happen.”

  “I suppose not,” I said.

  “Poor Jake was so torn up about it,” Ideile said. “The little fellow didn’t die right away, you know. He was in the hospital for nearly a week, suffering. Mrs. Gamp volunteers up there, and she said he was just the bravest thing she ever saw. They thought he was going to make it, but he got an infection and that’s really what killed him. It was just terrible.”