Murder, She Wrote: A Slaying in Savannah

by Jessica Fletcher

  She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, wiped her eyes, and shook her head. “I don’t know why I’m so weepy. She wasn’t always nice to me, you know. She could be mean, play tricks, always teasing.” She dabbed at tears that coursed down her cheeks. “But I haven’t spent a day of my life since I was a little girl without seeing her or speaking to her. Even when she married Roy, we talked every day, laughed—until now. I don’t know what to do.” She rocked back and forth on the bench.

  Charmelle was surprisingly coherent considering the description her brother had given of her mental state. I wondered why the judge wanted to keep people away from her. Perhaps she floated in and out of consciousness, in and out of awareness of who and where she was. People who do that are said to be in a fugue state. Maybe Charmelle was subject to fugue episodes and I’d just happened to catch her in one of her more lucid moments.

  “Jessica?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you the writer Tillie brought down to help with her literacy campaign?”

  “Yes. I’m flattered that you remember.”

  “You live in New England somewhere.”

  “I live in Maine. You have a good memory.”

  “I do. I remember one Christmas we hired a man to fix up my study.” Her voice drifted off, but I could see her visualizing the scene in her mind. “So handsome.”

  “Who?”

  “The painter.”

  “Was that the man fixing up your study?”

  She nodded and a small smile played around her lips. “Miss Tillie was batting her eyes at him, distracting him from his work.” She waved her damp handkerchief around. “He spilled paint all over my desk.”

  “What a mess that must have been,” I said.

  “She always claimed I was man-hungry, but she was the worst flirt of all.”

  I was glad to give Charmelle an opportunity to reminisce about Tillie. She needed to talk about her friend. It would help her face the loss. Yet her mind seemed to jump around from one thing to another. I wondered if she was falling into a fugue state.

  “That’s why, you know.”

  “Why what, Charmelle?”

  “Why I stopped sending you Christmas cards.”

  “Because of the painter?”

  She looked at me now. “He spilled paint all over my address book.”

  “Oh, my goodness.”

  “It was such a loss. I could have kept the pages that weren’t ruined, but I just threw the whole thing away, in the garbage. I stopped sending cards to everyone. I hope you weren’t angry.”

  “Not at all,” I said. “People get busy with their lives and lose touch with acquaintances all the time, especially when your address book is covered with paint.”

  I glanced across the square to see Beverly and her friend wandering back in our direction. I turned my back on them, hoping Beverly wouldn’t recognize me. At that moment, a movement in the O’Neills’ house caught my eye. The judge, holding a telephone to his ear, was walking back and forth in front of the window that overlooked the park. Walking!

  “Charmelle, do you mind if I ask you a question about something that happened a long time ago?” I asked. I knew I had limited time to question her.

  “I suppose so. I don’t remember things the way I used to. Things seem so—so fuzzy sometimes.”

  I tilted my head and looked at her sideways. “I think you’re sharper than you let on, Miss O’Neill.”

  She tried not to smile. “You’re very kind to say that. It isn’t true, but go ahead and ask me what you want to. I’ll try to remember.”

  “I understand the judge is a member of the Forest City Gun Club. Did you ever go there with him?”

  “Not really. It’s for gentlemen. They only let the ladies come for a Low Country boil or other some such occasion.”

  “Is your brother a good shot?”

  “Very good, yes. Took the skeet prize one year.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I used to beat him in target practice when we were children.” She smiled at the memory.

  “Do you still keep a gun?”

  She frowned. “Not anymore. It was always just for protection.”

  “What happened to your gun?”

  A tear trickled down her cheek. “I lost it a long time ago. I lost it.”

  “Do you recall the night Wanamaker Jones was killed?”

  She nodded solemnly.

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  Her lower lip began to tremble. “Why do you want to know that?”

  “I’m trying to find out who killed him.”

  “Why? It was so long ago. And he was a bad man, a liar and a cheat. Why do you care?”

  “Because Tillie did. It was in her will. A donation to the literacy foundation depends on my finding the murderer.”

  She gasped. “She’s going to blame me, isn’t she?”

  “Who?”

  “Tillie.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She buried her face in her hands. “Oh, God, I knew she’d get even. I’ve been dreading this day.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder. “Why would she blame you for Wanamaker’s death, Charmelle?”

  “Why? Because—because he was in love with me, not her.”

  Beverly, the nurse, had been across the square during most of my conversation with Charmelle. When she caught sight of me talking with her, she hurried over to rescue her charge, but not before Charmelle had let me know that she and Wanamaker Jones had been lovers. The more I learned about this man, the more I understood why someone would want to kill him.

  He had insinuated himself into a tight-knit society, courted the most popular—and wealthy—woman he could find, then betrayed her with her best friend. Anyone in Tillie’s house that night—assuming they knew what I now did—would have had a motive to kill him. Anyone who loved Tillie, from her housekeeper to her lawyer to her best friend’s brother, might have gone after the man who’d broken her heart. That was assuming, of course, that her heart was broken, I told myself. That was assuming that she even knew about the affair at the time. Even if she’d been ignorant of Jones’s duplicity, she’d had a lot of other beaus waiting to console her.

  Mrs. Goodall had told me that in Tillie’s moment of grief, she’d found solace with Dr. Payne, who had taken her aside into a private room after the police had left and presumably calmed her. I couldn’t help but wonder why he hadn’t mentioned that to me. What had he said to her? Did he know more about Wanamaker’s past than she did? The housekeeper also indicated that the good doctor had had a crush on Tillie and had pursued her romantically. Had he killed her fiancé in order to get rid of his competition for her affections? Whatever the content of their conversation that night following the discovery of Wanamaker’s body, it had soothed her. It had also shored up her determination not to cooperate with the authorities. Was she protecting someone? Dr. Payne? Charmelle? Judge O’Neill? Her deceased husband’s relatives who’d been invited to the party along with their two children, Rocky and Rose? From what I’d learned, the relationship between Tillie and them was anything but cordial. She wouldn’t want to protect them, would she?

  The list was growing.

  I limped across the square toward Tillie’s house, where a white van with OGLETHORPE PLUMBING CONTRACTORS, ELLIOT BASKER, PRESIDENT painted in large blue and gold letters on its side partially blocked the entrance. The rear doors of the vehicle had been left open to expose a jumbled assortment of pipes, wrenches, ladders, and other metal materials piled on the floor. A tall tool cabinet leaned against one side, its drawers partially open. A plumber’s helper in white overalls and work boots—not the man I’d seen the previous week—skipped down Tillie’s front steps and rummaged in the back of the van. He pulled out a black box that looked like some sort of electrical equipment—didn’t Artie Grogan have something similar?—slammed the doors shut, and jogged up the stairs.

  “You get any dirt on my floors, I’m goin
g to send you a bill,” I heard Mrs. Goodall say to him.

  I climbed the stairs, hoping my face didn’t reflect the twinges I felt in my knee, but Mrs. Goodall was too preoccupied with her workmen to notice my entrance. There were heavy cables draped across the floor and plugged into the wall. The cord from the little hall lamp had been pulled from its outlet and lay curled on the table like a molting snake. I stepped around the wires, aware that if I tripped, I could do permanent damage to a joint I had taken for granted up to this point in my life.

  I hobbled over to Tillie’s study and poked my head in the door. Mrs. Goodall, Melanie, the plumber, the plumber’s helper, and Samantha and Artie Grogan were clustered around an aluminum case balanced on the box the helper had brought in. They were all peering at a flickering screen. A tall ladder was set up, its heavy legs resting on terry-cloth towels to protect the carpet. Dangling over the ladder from a hole in the ceiling was a long cord attached to what looked like a hose reel on the floor, next to which a huge toolbox lay open.

  “Mrs. Fletcher,” Melanie called, detaching herself from the huddle. “Come look. You can see inside the ceiling.”

  I joined the group scrutinizing the monitor, and tried to make sense of the dim picture.

  “See, here’s the water,” the plumber said, pointing a grimy finger at a streak of light. “And that there’s where it’s coming from. Jason, git up that ladder and move the camera closer to the drip. Be gentle now. It ain’t paid for yet.”

  “Great piece of equipment,” Artie said. “Mind if I ask you where you got it?”

  “Plumbers’ supply. It’s usually used for lookin’ into pipes, but I find it handy for this kinda thing, too.”

  Jason, who appeared to be no more than sixteen, shot a glance at Melanie, climbed up, and wrapped his hand around the dangling cord.

  “Not so fast, dang it,” the plumber yelled when Jason, his eyes still on Melanie, pushed the cable deeper into the recess overhead and the picture on the screen jumped around. “That ain’t no fishing line you’re holding. Git on down now.”

  “But, Mr. Basker,” the boy said.

  “Don’t ‘Mr. Basker’ me, boy. Quit cuttin’ a fool, and pack up them tools.” He shook his head. “A body cain’t get good help no more.”

  Mr. Basker turned the monitor so he could see it from the ladder, clambered up himself, and delicately maneuvered the tube through which the camera cable ran closer to where the water was leaking down from the second floor. Then, eyes trained on the ceiling, he came down and stepped off the distance to the door and into the hall. “My best guess is right about heah,” he said, pointing to the second floor.

  “That looks to be under where you said you heard the water, Mrs. Fletcher,” Mrs. Goodall said to me.

  “Yes, it does,” I replied.

  Mr. Basker disconnected the pieces of the camera, laying them in a foam-lined case. Leaving Jason to patch the hole in the ceiling, he hauled all the equipment to the second floor. Mrs. Goodall, Melanie, Artie, Samantha, and I followed like ducklings in his wake.

  Mr. Basker stalked back and forth in the upstairs hall, trying to get his bearings.

  “You gonna make another hole?” Mrs. Goodall asked.

  “Gotta. Cain’t fix a leak if you cain’t see it.”

  “This is where I thought I heard water running the other day,” I said, tapping on the wall between my room and the adjacent bedroom.

  Mr. Basker pressed his ear to the place I’d indicated, just as I’d done, and held his hand up for silence. We all held our breath.

  “Oh, man,” he said. “Somethin’ just started happening in there. Take a listen.”

  We didn’t have to move closer to the wall to hear what he was referring to. A sudden sound of rushing water could be clearly heard from wherever we stood.

  Mrs. Goodall’s eyes widened. “It sounds like a waterfall,” she exclaimed.

  Basker went to the top of the stairs and bellowed to Jason to bring up the saw. But he didn’t wait for his young assistant to follow his orders. He reached down, picked up a small sledgehammer that was on the floor next to him, and opened a hole in the wall four inches across. He pulled a flashlight from his tool belt, and shone it inside. “I’ll be,” he said.

  “What is it?” Mrs. Goodall demanded. “Can you fix it?”

  Basker turned to us with a confused look on his face. “There’s a damn shower running in there,” he said.

  “That can’t be,” Mrs. Goodall said.

  “I bet it’s from when they were constructing the new bathrooms,” Melanie said. “They must have covered up an old one.”

  “That they did,” said the plumber.

  We continued to watch as Basker, using the saw Jason had handed him, cut a much larger hole, exposing a showerhead protruding from an inner wall. He reached through the opening, and with considerable effort twisted one of the on-off valves to turn off the flow of water.

  “Good thing I was here when it come on,” said Basker.

  “I’ll second that,” I said. “If it had been allowed to run full force like that, the entire house would have been flooded.”

  “What would have caused it to start runnin’?” Mrs. Goodall asked.

  “Beats me,” Basker replied. “That on-off valve was real tight. Took plenty ’a muscle just to turn it off.”

  “But somebody turned that shower on,” I said.

  “Who could it be?” Melanie asked.

  Artie and Samantha Grogan looked at each other and smiled.

  “You aren’t suggesting that some spirit turned on the shower, are you?” I said.

  “Do you have a better explanation, Mrs. Fletcher?” Samantha asked smugly.

  “No, but—”

  I went to the hole that the plumber had bashed and cut in the wall and tried to look through it. I asked him for his flashlight, which he handed to me. Using it, I moved its beam around in an attempt to find some reasonable explanation for this bizarre event. I heard Mrs. Goodall behind me bemoaning the damage to the house, and Melanie trying to quiet her mother.

  I was about to abandon my efforts when the flashlight’s beam came to rest on something. I squinted to see what it was, without success. I turned to the plumber. “Mr. Basker,” I said, “there’s something in there I’d like to see. Do you think you can reach it?”

  He joined me at the wall and looked to where I directed the beam. He pushed his heft against the wall and strained to extend his beefy arm far enough to grasp what I’d referred to. “Got it,” he said, and pulled his arm out of the opening.

  We all stared in shock at what he held.

  It was a revolver.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I asked Mrs. Goodall—who was still in shock—to call a taxi for me. It arrived five minutes later, and with the handgun in my purse, I asked the driver to take me to the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department. Police captain Mead Parker had told me when I called for an appointment that I could walk there, but with my bruised knee and the sense of urgency I felt, I wanted to get there as quickly as possible.

  As the cab pulled away from the curb, I caught sight of General Pettigrew leaving the hotel next door. He came down the stairs and walked in the direction of Tillie’s house. Behind him on the landing were the two men I’d seen with him the morning of Saint Patrick’s Day. I wondered what the general would make of the discovery of the shower. He’d made no bones about his skepticism regarding paranormal activities in general and the Grogans’ research in particular. But would evidence of a ghost increase the value of Mortelaine House to the hotel owners? Tourists had been known to flock to buildings with a ghostly past. Savannah offered many tours of haunted houses.

  The Grogans had been crowing ever since we’d found the gun, crediting Wanamaker Jones with pointing the way toward the missing murder weapon. Whether or not it was the murder weapon remained to be seen, but I tended to agree with their assessment on that point. As to Wanamaker Jones aiding the investigation, well, I can�
�t say I was convinced, but it certainly was an odd occurrence. What, or who, had caused the shower to suddenly come on?

  My driver came to a stop sign at the corner of Habersham and Oglethorpe. Immediately to my right was a small, tranquil park in the large median separating the two lanes of Oglethorpe. Just beyond it was police headquarters.

  “This will be fine,” I said, handing the fare over the back of his seat. “Thank you.”

  Although I was consumed with getting inside the stationhouse and delivering the weapon found behind the wall in Tillie’s house, my watch said I was a few minutes early for my meeting. I lingered a while in the park to put my thoughts in order. It seemed a perfect place to accomplish that.

  Just off the street, a statue of a police officer in uniform stood atop a large base. How appropriate having it right here, I thought and walked over to read the plaque on the monument: ABOVE AND BEYOND, LEST WE FORGET. Erected to honor police officers who gave their lives in the line of duty, the memorial contained the names of the fallen, beginning with the first, Harry L. Fender, in 1901, and going up through 1993. I suffered the same sense of sadness that I always do when visiting such memorials, including the much more expansive one in Washington, D.C. What a shame that good men and women have to die while trying to keep us safe from the criminal element.

  Sufficiently pulled together, I crossed the street and approached the Habersham entrance to the three-story redbrick building that had once been a police barracks erected back in the late 1800s. I climbed the few steps to the front door, using a black iron railing to avoid tripping, and stepped through the glass door. To my right was a desk staffed by two uniformed female officers. “Yes, ma’am?” one said.

  “My name is Jessica Fletcher,” I said. “I have an appointment with Captain Parker.”

  She picked up a phone and called the captain. “She’ll be with you in a few minutes,” I was told.

  As I waited for her, I inspected the police memorabilia displayed on shelves in a glass case in the lobby: hats and uniforms of other police units, batons, and tools, not all of them familiar to me. I looked around at the officers coming in and going out. I was acutely aware of their holstered guns and of the handgun weighing down my purse. It didn’t seem to be very large, although I admit to not having had a lot of direct hands-on experience with weapons. I’d considered giving it to one of the officers on desk duty the moment I entered the building, but was afraid that pulling out a weapon might bring about an unfortunate response. Better to give it to the captain once inside her office, where I could explain before retrieving it from my bag.