Aunt Bessie Needs

by Diana Xarissa

  “And she seems to have been a typical adult, as well,” Pete told her. “She’d been married for about four years, had a part-time job she seemed to enjoy, had friends. There isn’t anything unusual in her life that suggests a motive for murder.”

  “She may have had Humphrey Randall as a teacher after she moved to Douglas,” Bessie said.

  Pete made another note. “He’s about ten years older than she was, so I suppose that’s possible. They’ve only been married for four years, but I’ve been told they’d been together for many years before they married. I would be shocked to learn that they’d been together since she was sixteen, though.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting that they had been,” Bessie told him. “And I really hope they weren’t.”

  “I will ask Mr. Randall about that, though,” Pete said. “Especially in light of what you’ve told me about Mr. White.”

  “Even if they did start a relationship when she was a student, how does that lead to murder now?” Hugh asked.

  “I have no idea,” Bessie admitted. “What’s he like, Humphrey Randall?”

  Pete shrugged. “He’s sixty and getting close to retiring after a lifetime of teaching teenagers about algebra and geometry. From all accounts he loves his job and has real enthusiasm for it. He seemed totally devastated by his wife’s death when I interviewed him, but some people are capable of faking those emotions.”

  “You’ve been with the police long enough to be able to see through that,” John remarked.

  “Maybe. If I’m going with my gut, he didn’t have anything to do with his wife’s death,” Pete said.

  “Does he have an alibi?” Doona asked.

  “He was home alone, waiting for his wife to get home,” Pete said. “She’d rung and they were planning to go out for a drink.”

  Hugh looked up. “What about means?”

  “The knife was just a basic one that ShopFast sells. There weren’t any others like it in the Randalls’ kitchen, but it wasn’t part of a set, either. Anyone on the island could easily have acquired it, and the same model is also sold in the UK at a large supermarket chain there,” Pete replied. “I’m not telling you anything that hasn’t already been in the local paper, or will be tomorrow, by the way. We are holding back one or two little items, but I won’t be discussing them tonight.”

  Bessie nodded. “So if the husband is probably out of it, who else is on the short list?”

  “There isn’t a short list, as such,” Pete said. “At the moment, we’re considering just about everyone the woman knew, from her closest friends to her most casual of acquaintances.”

  “That’s a lot of people,” Bessie said. “Especially considering her job. She must have talked to dozens of people every day.”

  “Indeed. And any one of them might have decided that she did something wrong with his or her account and got just angry enough about it to kill her,” Pete sighed.

  “Were there complaints about her at the bank?” Hugh asked.

  “Aside from her supervisor making a note that she was occasionally late, we couldn’t find any record of any complaints,” Pete replied. “And she hadn’t been late for over a year.”

  Doona got up and refilled everyone’s teacups. “Could it have been completely random?” she asked as she sat back down.

  “That’s possible. Anything is possible,” Pete told her.

  “I read the local paper and they seemed to hint at who the main suspects were,” Bessie said.

  “Yes, Dan Ross is in some trouble over that,” John said, smiling. “I believe Mr. and Mrs. Harris are threatening to sue, and the bank is considering it as well. He’ll be sorry he didn’t dig further into her background, considering what you’ve uncovered.”

  “Should we talk about the men and women the article identified?” Bessie asked.

  “Absolutely,” Pete replied. “Ross was right. They are certainly suspects, at least at this point.”

  Bessie pulled out the notes that she’d taken from the paper. “What about Alan Rossini? What’s he like?”

  “He’s middle-aged middle-management at a retail bank,” Pete replied. “He’s bald and heavyset and he thinks he’s someone quite important, really, because he has ‘assistant vice president’ in front of his name on the door to his tiny, windowless cubicle.”

  Bessie nearly laughed out loud. It wasn’t like Pete to be so brutally straightforward about people. Mr. Rossini must have done something to upset him, she surmised.

  “No chance he was having an affair with Julie Randall?” Hugh asked.

  “There’s always a chance,” Pete said, “but I would be surprised. From everything I’ve heard about her, I don’t think she would have been interested.”

  “She didn’t cheat on Humphrey?” was Doona’s question.

  “If she did, she was very discreet,” Pete told her. “I picked up a hint of something from one of Humphrey Randall’s comments, but it was just a hint. I’m inclined to think that he suspected that she might be cheating, but wasn’t sure.”

  “But maybe not with Alan Rossini,” Hugh said.

  “No, when I pushed him, Mr. Randall insisted that as far as he knew she was faithful,” Pete replied.

  “So why would Alan Rossini want to murder Julie Randall?” Bessie asked.

  “I have no idea,” Pete admitted.

  “Maybe he was embezzling money from the bank and she caught him at it,” Doona suggested.

  “The bank is having a comprehensive audit of that entire branch in light of the murder,” Pete told them. “It’s pretty much standard practice after something like this, even though she was only a part-time customer service associate. Senior management has told me that they’ll be shocked if the audit finds anything out of the ordinary, though.”

  “Maybe he wanted to have an affair with her, but she turned him down,” was Hugh’s guess. “That might be enough to drive some people to murder.”

  Bessie frowned as she remembered a very recent case of that exact thing.

  Pete nodded. “It’s a possibility, but I don’t think that’s what happened here.”

  “So you don’t think that he’s the killer?” John checked.

  “He’s still on the list, but he’s not at the top,” was as far as Pete would commit.

  “The only other people mentioned in the paper were Sidney and Stephanie Harris,” Bessie said. “He worked with her, too, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, although he works in the bank’s corporate offices, rather than at that particular branch. Anyway, apparently the couples have been friends for many years,” Pete confirmed.

  “Grace knows them both slightly,” Bessie said. “Her father works for the same bank.”

  Hugh frowned. “She told me she wants to go to the memorial service and the thing at the bank, whatever they’re calling it. I’m not sure I want her mixed up in a murder investigation.”

  “She’s already involved, as she knew the victim,” Bessie pointed out. “She should attend the memorial service out of respect for Mrs. Randall, however she died.”

  Hugh didn’t look as if he agreed, but he didn’t argue.

  “Could Julie have been having an affair with Sidney Harris?” Doona asked after a moment.

  “Maybe?” Pete made the reply sound like a question. “He seemed upset about her death, but not devastated. But he does seem like the type who might play away from home.”

  “What’s his wife like?” Hugh asked.

  “She’s, well, she’s, she seemed a bit odd when I spoke to her. She apologised halfway through the interview for being distracted. She told me that she was worried about her sick child who was home alone.”

  “That seems reasonable,” Bessie said.

  “Except her kids are seventeen and nineteen and should be more than capable of looking after themselves for half an hour while their mum talks to the police about the murder of her closest friend,” Pete replied.

  “Grace thought she was a stay-at-home mum,” Bessie said after c
hecking her notes again.

  “She is,” Pete agreed.

  “Maybe one of the children has special needs or problems,” Doona suggested.

  “I checked that,” Pete replied. “The older one is taking classes at the local college and the younger one is at the Douglas high school. Neither qualifies for any special educational assistance.”

  “So she’s a worrier,” John concluded. “Many women are, at least where their children are concerned.”

  Doona slid what was left of the cake closer and then sliced off a very thin piece for herself. “Do you think she cheats on her husband? And does anyone else want more cake?”

  Bessie made a fresh pot of tea as everyone decided to have more cake. Pete swallowed his first bite before he answered Doona.

  “I doubt she cheats. She didn’t seem the type. If her husband is cheating, she also didn’t seem the type to notice, or maybe I should say she seemed the type to ignore it.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Bessie wondered.

  “Some women prefer to keep themselves in the dark about their husband’s extramarital activities. Anything to avoid upsetting their happy home,” Pete tried to explain.

  “Surely it can’t be very happy if the husband is cheating?” Doona suggested.

  Pete shrugged. “I’m just telling you what I’ve observed over the last twenty-odd years,” he said. “I’m not trying to justify it or anything.”

  “They both had the means and the opportunity?” Hugh asked.

  “She was home alone for much of the evening,” Pete replied. “Their daughter was staying over at a friend’s house and their son didn’t get home from wherever he was until two in the morning. Sidney was working late.”

  “That late? And on a Saturday?” Bessie asked.

  “So he says,” Pete replied. “Which rather tends to support the idea that he’s having an affair.”

  “Maybe he was having an affair with Julie Randall and she threatened to tell his wife,” Doona said. “He could have followed her home and stabbed her to death before going back to the office, assuming that’s where you found him after Julie was discovered.”

  “Actually, we found him and his wife at home the next morning. He reckoned he’d arrived home the previous evening around ten and found his wife already asleep. She told me that she’d gone to bed around nine and hadn’t woken when he came in.”

  “So one of them is the killer,” Doona said stoutly. “You just have to work out which one.”

  “Which is easier said than done,” John pointed out.

  “I’m not sure I’m convinced that one of them did it,” Pete said. “But they are at the top of my list, at least for now.”

  “Which one is at the very top?” Bessie asked.

  “That depends on my mood,” Pete said with a wry smile. “I didn’t like either of them, really.”

  “I’m looking forward to seeing them all at the memorial service,” Bessie commented.

  “Take Doona with you,” John told her.

  “I was going to go with Grace,” Bessie replied.

  “Go with Grace and Doona,” John insisted. “There truly is safety in numbers.”

  Bessie thought about objecting, but she didn’t want to argue with John.

  “I have to work tomorrow,” Doona said. “I’m on the schedule from nine to five. What time is the service?”

  “Two o’clock,” Bessie told her.

  “I’ll clear the time off,” John said. “Except it won’t be time off. You’ll get paid for your time; I’ll just have to find a budget line to put it on.”

  Doona laughed. “I don’t mind taking the afternoon off, unpaid,” she told him. “I can afford it and the memorial service promises to be interesting.”

  “It does at that,” John agreed.

  “I really don’t want Grace there,” Hugh said quietly. “She’s taken the day off work to go, though.”

  “She’ll be with me and Doona. We’ll take good care of her,” Bessie assured him. “Is there anyone else that I should be looking for at the service? Any other suspects that the local paper missed?”

  “As I said, at this point just about everyone on the island is a possible suspect. If it was random, we may never find the killer. If you can try to talk with the women she worked with, you might find something there. They presented something of a united front when I talked to them. Apparently they all got along wonderfully well and had a really fun time working together every day. Julie was liked by everyone and no one had a single complaint about her in any way,” Pete replied.

  “That’s suspicious right there,” Hugh said.

  “It’s not unusual in a murder investigation, though. People don’t want to think about how the woman they bickered with about washing out break room coffee mugs on Friday was murdered on Saturday, so they sanitise their memories of the victim,” John said.

  “Or everyone remembers everyone else fighting with them about all sorts of things,” Pete added. “That sometimes happens when a victim is unlikable in some way, which doesn’t seem to have been the case here.”

  “She sounds like an incredibly ordinary person, possibly aside from her involvement with her teacher back in high school,” Doona remarked.

  “The only thing we haven’t talked about is whether or not Julie was the intended victim,” Bessie said as she finished her tea.

  “And that opens up an entirely different can of worms,” John said quietly.

  “The next local paper is going to lead with the striking resemblance between Julie Randall and Laura Meyers,” Pete said, clearly unhappy.

  “Laura won’t like that,” Bessie said.

  “She’s given Dan Ross an interview, so she can’t be too bothered,” Pete said.

  “She has?” Bessie gasped. “What did she tell him?”

  “I have no idea,” Pete replied. “I suppose we’ll all find out tomorrow when the paper comes out.”

  “She wouldn’t have told them about the problems with her ex-husband,” Bessie said, still feeling shocked.

  “She has problems with her ex-husband?” Hugh asked.

  Bessie flushed. She’d forgotten that she hadn’t told Hugh about anything Laura had told her. “Let’s just say they had a messy divorce,” Bessie said after a moment.

  Hugh nodded. “She seems like a nice woman, but she’s rather, well, high-strung, isn’t she?”

  “That’s a good way of putting it,” Bessie agreed. “But from what she’s told me, she has good reason to worry about her ex-husband.”

  “I’ve spoken to Marcus Porter, that’s the ex-husband,” Pete said. “As far as I can tell, he’s a good guy who has come to the island with the best of intentions.”

  “Laura said he was very convincing,” Bessie told him. “She told me that even her own mother believed him over her.”

  “If we consider Laura as the actual target, does anyone other than her ex-husband have any motive?” Hugh asked.

  Bessie sighed. “I don’t know very much about her life before she moved here,” she admitted. “Up until now, it never seemed to matter.”

  “We’re doing some very discreet digging into her life before she arrived on the island,” Pete said. “If the resemblance weren’t so strong, we wouldn’t even be doing that. Murderers are very unlikely to kill the wrong person, especially in stabbings.”

  “What about Henry?” Doona asked.

  “I’ve known Henry forever,” Bessie said. “I can’t imagine him killing a fly, let alone another human being. Anyway, what possible motive would he have for killing Laura? He’s more than a little in love with her.”

  “Maybe she’s trying to end it with him,” Doona suggested. “Maybe she told him that she wants to see other people and he doesn’t like the idea, or maybe she’s already seeing someone else and he’s angry.”

  “I can’t see Henry getting angry in any of those scenarios,” Bessie said. “I’m sure he’d be hurt, maybe even devastated if any of those things happened, but n
ot angry.”

  “I have interviewed Henry about his whereabouts on that evening. He claims he was home alone, studying his Manx,” Pete told them.

  “Which is probably true,” Doona said.

  “Has Laura had any trouble at work?” John asked Bessie.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Bessie said. “I could ask Marjorie, though.”

  “If you can do so discreetly, it might be useful information,” John said. “Without any direct evidence that Laura was the intended target, Pete can’t do too much digging into Laura’s life.”

  “I’ll try to find an excuse to ring Marjorie tomorrow,” Bessie promised. “And I’ll let you know what she says.”

  “Constables spoke to everyone in the building after the murder. When the neighbours were shown a photo of the victim, a few of them thought it was Laura, and about the same number thought it was Julie,” Pete told them. “No one seemed to know either woman; they just thought they’d seen her in the building. No one had ever heard either woman arguing with anyone about anything.”

  “I don’t think we’re getting anywhere,” Bessie sighed.

  “I’m actually most interested in Mr. White,” Pete said. “I’m going start digging into that first thing tomorrow morning. I might need your help, though,” he nodded at John. “I might need you to go to the school and look through their records.”

  “I’m happy to do that,” John replied. “In fact, I’ll start there tomorrow at eight. I’m sure someone will be in the office by that time. I’ll see what I can find out and then I’ll ring you.”

  “Excellent,” Pete said. “And then the memorial service is at two. I’ll be there, standing quietly at the back. Is everyone else going to be there as well?”

  “I won’t,” Hugh said. “I’m on patrol tomorrow.”

  “I won’t either,” John said. “Unless I can find an excuse to fit it into my schedule.”

  “But Bessie and I will be there,” Doona said. “We’ll try our best to talk to everyone and overhear as much as possible.”