A Candidate for Murder

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  He’d had companies and partnerships under a number of names, and all his partners and company officers were listed. I studied the lists of names carefully. Lamotta was there, but it wasn’t John. It was Francine. I bet her father hid behind her name. It was easy to see why Mr. Lamotta couldn’t let it be known he was one of Ben Cragmore’s partners, since he was on the governor’s staff and probably had a lot of influence in deciding where contracts would be awarded.

  There was information about Mr. Cragmore’s professional and social clubs; the taxes he paid; the value of his property; and even the members of his family, which included a wife, Mabel Broussard Cragmore, three grown children, Ben, Jr., Robert, and William, a brother, Horace, and Mabel’s mother, Nora Broussard.

  Nora!

  I nearly swept the papers off the desk. Nora! It had to be the Nora who’d called me, didn’t it? The Nora who’d know why I was in danger. The printout even listed all their addresses.

  I had to talk to Nora. She held the key to this whole thing. Nora had wanted to talk to me before but had chickened out. I might get her to change her mind and tell me what she’d wanted to say. Should I tell that detective, Jim Slater, about Nora? No. I was sure Nora would never talk to the police.

  I called Justin. “You said you’d help me,” I told him.

  “I will,” he said. “Anything you want, Cary.”

  “I think I found out who Nora is. I want to go and see her.”

  “Right now?”

  “No,” I said. “Can you make it after school tomorrow?”

  “Sure. Want me to pick you up, too?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’d like that a lot.” I wished I could reach through the phone and hug him. Everything was better than ever between Justin and me. He couldn’t possibly know how lonely I’d been without him. I was selfish enough to hope that he’d missed me just as much.

  All everybody at school could talk about was Cindy and the crazy driver. It hadn’t occurred to anyone that the driver’s actions were deliberate. Things like that didn’t happen at schools like ours.

  After classes, when I climbed into Justin’s car, I said, “Could we stop by the campaign office for just a couple of minutes, first? I’ve got some questions to ask Mr. Sibley.”

  Justin grimaced. “As long as those women don’t make me carry heavy boxes around.”

  “You can stay in the car if you want to. I won’t be long.”

  Justin parked on Commerce Street, just a few doors from the office, and I went inside. As I came through the front doors, I saw Mr. Sibley going down the hallway toward the back offices.

  I followed him, but Delia grabbed my arm and managed to pat my shoulder at the same time. “Thank goodness you’re here,” she said, as she steered me toward a table near the back of the room. “There are jillions of things to get done, and two of our steady helpers are home with some kind of virus.”

  “I can’t stay,” I told her. “I just stopped by for something.”

  Delia rolled her eyes as though it was all she could expect from me and strode toward the front door to greet a woman who had just come in. I ducked down the hallway after Mr. Sibley.

  He saw me, I know he did, but he scooped up a large, heavy cardboard box that was probably filled with trash and staggered with it out the back door into the alley. Good. A private place where we could talk was exactly what I wanted.

  I slipped through the door just before it shut. “Mr. Sibley, could I please talk to you?” I asked.

  His eyes were frightened. He dropped the box on the ground, looked to each side as though searching for an escape route, then suddenly slumped, his shoulders rounding, as though he’d given up.

  “What’s the matter, Mr. Sibley?” I asked him. “I just want to talk.”

  “You want to ask me questions about the address I gave.” He sounded so defeated I hurt for him.

  I spoke softly, the way I would to a skittish animal. “Yes. I wondered why you gave the address of a vacant store on a nonresidential street.”

  “Because I’m no longer clever,” he said. “I picked a street name at random from the Dallas phone book. I should have chosen the right kind of house on the right kind of street. Then no one would have suspected.”

  “I don’t understand,” I told him. “You gave a phone number where you could be reached but the wrong address.”

  He raised his head and looked into my eyes. “And you want to know why. Is it so important?”

  “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t.”

  He just stared at me for a few moments, his pupils distorted and blurry behind the thick lenses, so I said, “Mr. Sibley, there have been some—some threats.” I didn’t know what to call them.

  At this he jerked as though he’d been given an electric shock. His voice was a whisper as he asked, “You think I’ve had something to do with threats?”

  Mr. Sibley sat on an upturned crate near the trash bin and rested his forearms on his thighs. “These clothes I wear,” he said. “Have you ever wondered why I wear the same clothes, day after day?”

  Of course I had, but I couldn’t tell him that, so I didn’t answer.

  “I wash my shirt and iron it each day. I take my pants and vest to the dry cleaner when I can because I have no other clothes suitable to wear to this office, only a set of khaki work clothes to change into.”

  “Mr. Sibley,” I began, miserable at his embarrassment, but he interrupted me.

  “The telephone is not in my name because I don’t live in a home of my own. I live in a recovery house, a halfway shelter for former drug abusers.”

  “Oh,” I mumbled and frantically searched for the right thing to say. I couldn’t find it.

  He sat upright, and again his eyes met mine. “I used to be a successful accountant for an oil company—not your father’s,” he quickly added. “But I’ll never be able to go back to the kind of life where I work and socialize with intelligent and interesting people. This political volunteer work is the closest I can come to the lifestyle I once knew.”

  Tears came to his eyes, and he grunted, “Now this is over, too.”

  “No!” I cried out. “I won’t tell anyone what you told me. I promise!”

  “I believe in your father’s ideas,” he said as his face flushed a deep red, “even his tough stance against drugs.”

  “Then please keep working for him,” I begged.

  Mr. Sibley got to his feet and tried to lift the large cardboard box up over his head to drop it into the trash bin, but it was so heavy he couldn’t raise it that high. I hurried to help him, taking one side of the box, but just in time I jerked it back, nearly knocking poor Mr. Sibley off his feet as I shouted, “Stop! Wait! These are some of the brochures!”

  Mr. Sibley stared at the contents of the box in astonishment and blushed again. “It was next to the trash box,” he said. “I picked up the wrong box. I made a mistake.”

  I hoisted the box into my arms and walked to the back door, waiting while Mr. Sibley opened it for me.

  “I make mistakes sometimes, even though I try not to,” he whispered, and I hurt, not knowing how to answer him.

  We couldn’t just put the box back quietly. Coming through the door, we bumped head-on into Delia.

  “What’s this?” she asked and took possession of the box.

  “I picked up the wrong box,” Mr. Sibley said. “I won’t do it again.”

  “Thank you.” Delia spoke with an exaggerated distinctness. As Mr. Sibley scurried out the door, this time with the box of trash, she muttered, “Oh, what I have to go through!” and looked to the heavens. Then, in almost the same tone of voice, she said to me, “Are you coming here to work tomorrow?”

  “I’ll try to.” I moved close to Delia and quietly asked, “What do you know about Mr. Sibley?”

  “Not much,” she said. “As I remember, Edwin’s son-in-law told me there were some health problems, but he reassured me that Edwin would be a good, conscientious worker.”

  “His
son-in-law?”

  “Yes,” Delia snapped with impatience. “Edwin lives with his daughter and son-in-law.”

  I was too stunned to speak. I tried to go over what Mr. Sibley had told me. What kind of story had he given me? And if it was right, then what kind of garbage had that supposed son-in-law told Delia?

  I didn’t have the answer.

  So far I’d been getting nothing but phony stories from those I’d questioned: Dexter and Mr. Sibley. Would I do any better when I talked to Nora?

  Nora Broussard lived in a block of apartments. Behind a bus stop the entrance to the main building was impressive with huge colonial pillars and brass lamps, but tiny apartment windows skittered out to either side like poor relations. Justin and I parked under the overhang and followed the arrows to the door with the large brass plate inscribed OFFICE.

  We walked through a narrow foyer, its inner wall filled with rows and rows of mailboxes, and entered a large lobby. The lobby was decorated in whites and blues and lots of chrome, and a woman who looked as though she tried to follow the same color scheme, from her huge balloon of white hair to her blue dress, watched us as we crossed the thick carpet to her desk.

  “Could you please give us Mrs. Nora Broussard’s apartment number?” I asked her.

  She shook her head. “We respect our residents’ privacy,” she said.

  “It’s important that I talk to her.”

  “I’m very sorry I can’t help you,” she said, but she didn’t sound the least bit sorry. She sounded smug, as though she’d been waiting all week for a chance to turn someone down.

  Justin gave a tug to my elbow, but I ignored it. “Please,” I begged the woman. “I have to see her.”

  “Sorry,” she said. She pulled something out of her desk and began to write. It was probably a poison-pen letter.

  This time Justin not only tugged harder, he said, “Cary, let’s go,” in a voice that meant business.

  As we walked out of the lobby and into the foyer he pointed to the mailboxes and whispered, “Look. There’s your answer.”

  Of course! Each mailbox had a name and number on it. We quickly scanned the names until we came to Broussard. Number 426.

  We followed garden pathways that wound through the buildings in this large apartment complex. The four-hundred building was at the very back, an alley running behind it.

  Justin and I climbed a stairway with concrete steps and wrought-iron railings that were beginning to rust. On the second floor the first apartment was 420, the next 422. Mrs. Broussard’s apartment should be the fourth.

  I knocked at the door and waited, but there was only silence. A very tiny, very old woman peered out of a crack in the door marked 424. “I’m looking for Mrs. Nora Broussard,” I said, but she shook her head.

  “I’m not Mrs. Broussard. I’m Althea Krump.”

  “I know,” I started to say, but she interrupted.

  “How could you know who I am? I’ve never met you before in my life.”

  “I meant I know that you’re not Mrs. Broussard.”

  “It won’t do any good, your knocking on her door, because she’s not home.”

  “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

  “Of course not.” Her face crumpled into tight wrinkles that might have meant a frown or a grin. “And don’t yell,” she said. “Just because I’m old doesn’t mean I’m deaf!”

  “I’m sorry,” I told her.

  I guess my apology satisfied her because she nodded to herself for a moment, then said to me, “Nora could be over to her daughter’s. Mabel’s married to that contractor, you know. Lots of money there, but he’s tight with a dollar. He could do a lot better by his mother-in-law, but don’t count on it.” She paused. “Maybe he thinks she’ll drink it away. Well, she probably would—most of it.”

  I had found the right Nora. My heart gave a jump of excitement.

  “Do you know when Mrs. Broussard is usually home?”

  Mrs. Krump shook her head. “I don’t keep tabs on my neighbors,” she said. “I keep to myself. I’m not a bother to anybody.”

  “Do you have Mrs. Broussard’s phone number?”

  “No,” she said. “Not that I don’t try to be friendly, but some people can be mighty stuck up. Why, the way she prisses around here you’d think she had something to be conceited about.”

  I pulled a scrap of paper and a pen out of my shoulder bag and wrote down my name and telephone number. “Mrs. Krump, it’s very important that I reach Mrs. Broussard. Please, will you give her this? Will you ask her to call me?”

  As we left I didn’t hear Mrs. Krump’s door close, and I knew she was watching us.

  “Do you think she’ll give Mrs. Broussard your phone number?” Justin asked as soon as we were out of earshot.

  “She probably will,” I answered, “because it will make her feel important and because then Mrs. Broussard will have to speak to her.”

  “I guess it’s worth a try,” Justin said. “The only alternative is to stick around here until Mrs. Broussard gets back, and that could take hours.”

  We had reached the drive in front of the apartment house, and I climbed into Justin’s car. As he drove around the pillars and headed toward home I asked, “Want to come to dinner?”

  “Can’t,” he said. “I’ve got a science club meeting tonight. What about tomorrow night?”

  “Tomorrow’s the big fund-raiser.” I moved a little closer and tilted my head to look up at him. “Come with me. There’ll be some boring speeches, but most of it will be fun. There’s going to be a band, and dancing, and some great food.”

  Justin looked as though he planned to turn me down, but he suddenly laughed. “Why not?” he said.

  “You won’t mind the speeches?”

  “I probably will,” he admitted, “but I’ve got this feeling, Cary, more than I ever had, that I just want to be with you. I guess I can live through a speech or two.”

  “Oh, Justin,” I said. For a couple of seconds I got choked up. I wanted Dad to win. I wanted him to be governor of Texas. But if he did win, I’d be moving away from Justin. I didn’t think I could stand that.

  When I arrived home dinner wasn’t ready. Velma was lifting lids on the pots and fussing at whatever was cooking inside. Was everyone in a bad mood today?

  “Dexter would have to go across town at a busy time like this,” she muttered at what smelled like carrots and slammed down the lid before they could answer back.

  “Let me help you,” I said. “Want me to set the table?”

  “It’s set, and I don’t need nothin’ right now. Maybe in about ten minutes or so you could lend me a hand in gettin’ the food on the table.”

  “Sure,” I told her. “I’ll be glad to.”

  Velma smiled, her frustrations vanishing. “All right,” she said. “Stick close and I’ll give you a holler when I’m ready.”

  “When will Dexter be back?”

  “Probably not for another half hour.”

  I turned to leave the kitchen, but Velma called after me, “That lady reporter telephoned and left a message for you. She won’t get back to Dallas until tomorrow. She’ll get in touch with you when she does.”

  There was so much I needed to tell Sally Jo. Why did she have to go out of town right now?

  Well, I wasn’t going to just sit and wait until she came back. I had other plans. I checked my watch and tried to walk casually without hurrying. I’d have time to take a look in Dexter’s apartment, to see if I could find out more about him, and I didn’t want anyone to even guess at what I had in mind.

  I knew where the extra house keys were kept, on a hidden nail in a cabinet in the storeroom. I found the key for the lock on Dexter’s door, grabbed it, and ran across the driveway. I climbed the outside stairs to the entrance to his apartment, fitted the key into the lock, and threw the door open.

  Fortunately, the window shades were up, so there was enough light streaming into the room from the outside lamps to help me disti
nguish shapes from shadows. I closed the door and leaned against it, for the first time letting my glance sweep across Dexter’s living room.

  By squinting I could make out the sofa and chair grouping against the right-hand wall. There was nothing on the coffee table, no magazines, no books, no personal things. Built-in shelves on the wall facing me were completely empty.

  Feeling as if I were viewing a room in which no one lived, I let my gaze drift to a large rocking chair at the left side of the room.

  There in the chair sat Dexter, the narrow slits of his eyes glinting in the darkness like a cat’s as he stared at me.

  Chapter 17

  I gasped, tried to speak, but lost my voice and had to start again. “I-I know I shouldn’t be here,” I stammered.

  I expected Dexter to say something or do something while I tried to think up a good excuse for breaking into his apartment, but he didn’t move.

  That scared me even more. What if he was dead? I whirled and fumbled for the light switch, then shielded my eyes against the immediate brightness.

  Dexter suddenly stirred, a puzzled look on his face as though he’d been awakened from sleep. “Cary?” he asked, and as he struggled to his feet the small pillow that had been behind his head fell to the floor.

  “Miss Caroline,” he said formally, taking a step toward me, “is something wrong?”

  My hand was on the doorknob. “Uh—Velma wondered if you were home. She’s almost ready to serve dinner.”

  I didn’t wait to hear what he’d say. I threw the door open and clattered down the stairs, not stopping until I was back in the storeroom, with Dexter’s key carefully tucked into place.

  Would Dexter tell Mom or Dad what I’d done? I didn’t think so. I suspected that Dexter had more to lose than I had. There was something strange about a man who had no personal possessions, who pretended to be a butler when he wasn’t, and who slept with his eyes open.

  At dinner, while Dexter served as correctly as always, the two of us avoided each other’s eyes. What was he thinking about my breaking into his apartment? I really didn’t want to know.