The Secret Keeper

by Dorien Grey

  The rest of the morning was spent on paperwork and paying bills and general office puttering. At around eleven forty-five, I took the bus to Sandler’s Restaurant, about two blocks from police headquarters in the City Annex building. I didn’t worry about the police showing up while I was gone; I figured they’d be taking their lunch at the same time.

  As usual, I was early and was able to get the last available table. The waiter was just on his way over to refill my coffee when Marty appeared. We shook hands as he slid into the padded bench opposite me.

  After the usual small talk, the pouring of coffee, the looking at menus, and the ordering, he got right to the point.

  “So. I’m really sorry to hear about Jonathan, but do you really think someone deliberately shot at him? And that it had anything at all to do with Clarence Bement’s death?”

  “Odd as it may sound, yes and yes. Exactly why and what I don’t know.”

  He took a sip of his coffee before saying, “Well, Al Pardue and George Stein have been assigned to investigate the shooting, and I think they were planning to go see him today.”

  “Why aren’t—Angell and Garland?—looking into it? Having two sets of detectives on the same case is bound to be confusing.”

  He shook his head. “Yeah, but that’s just it—we aren’t sure it is the same case yet. I ran into Howie and Dave after I talked with you and asked them if there were anything new in the Bement case.

  “Howie’s a great guy, but he’s up for retirement in a couple of months, and he’s pretty much just going through the motions. Dave’s been on the force for eight years, but only recently made detective. He pretty much takes his cues from Howie, and Howie says there’s not much doubt but that it was a suicide. They said they were going to talk to a few more of Bement’s relatives, but it sounds like they’re pretty much ready to pack it away.”

  I knew Marty well enough to tell he wouldn’t have gone into the detectives’ backgrounds unless he had a reason.

  “But you’re not so sure they’re right?”

  The waiter came with our food, and we devoted the next few minutes to eating, until Marty said, “Well, unless Howie and Dave decide to consider it a homicide, there’s nothing much I can do. But if you do come across a solid link between Jonathan’s incident and Bement’s death…”

  “Yeah, I definitely do plan to do a little poking around,” I said. “Somebody took a shot at Jonathan, and whether it was accidental or deliberate, I want to know more about it.”

  Marty grinned. “I figured that’s what you’d say.”

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d been churning over something Marty had told me when he first described the report on Bement’s death, and suddenly it all gelled.

  “You know,” I began, putting my thoughts into words for the first time, “something about that report on Bement’s death has really bothered me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The fact that it supposedly took him two tries to kill himself. The report said he had a contact wound on the skull and residue on his hand, right?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Well, if the killer had come up behind him, put the gun directly to his head and fired, it would cause the powder/contact burn at the site of the wound. But in order to get residue on Bement’s hand, the killer would have had to put the gun in Bement’s hand and use it to fire the second shot, the one that went into the wall. That’s why there were two shots—to cinch the suicide theory. And because Bement was ninety, nobody questioned it as they might have done if he were thirty.”

  Marty just sat there staring at me, then slowly raised an index finger to his temple and tapped it. “Good thinking, Detective Hardesty. How many people would have thought of that? If it walks like a duck—I can’t say that’s what happened, but you can bet I’ll have a talk with Garland and Angell.”

  We finished lunch and went our separate ways with promises to keep in touch and let each other know what was going on.

  *

  I stopped at the parking lot across from work to see if the police had been there, and was told they hadn’t, so I went on up to my office to see if I had any phone messages. There was one from Jonathan.

  “Hi, Dick. I’ve got to get back to work but wanted to let you know the police were here and I talked to them. They wanted to know everything about how and where it happened, and I told them. They said people were always shooting off guns in the woods, and it was probably just a stray bullet.

  “When I told them I thought it might have something to do with Mr. Bement’s death, and said I thought I’d been followed the other day, they didn’t seem impressed. Maybe they thought I was just being paranoid. They took down the information and said they’d pass it on to whoever is looking into Mr. Bement’s death, but I don’t know if they will or not. Anyway, we’ll talk when we get home. Oh, and did you call the airline? Bye.”

  Considering that two separate sets of partners were looking into what they all probably considered two separate incidents, it was unlikely they would have the time or the inclination to exchange speculations. I wasn’t overly confident that much would be done.

  I’d had occasion in the past to drive out Woods Road several times and remember noting that the few signs along the way were riddled with bullet holes from being used for target practice. So, I didn’t feel overly confident the police would assume it was anything other than a stray bullet that had hit Jonathan’s truck.

  I waited another half-hour then decided to go back downstairs to check with the parking lot attendant to see if the police had been there yet. As I walked into the lot, I could see an unmarked police car—I don’t know why they don’t mark them, I can spot them a mile away—parked in front of Jonathan’s truck, with one guy standing beside the passenger door and another inside.

  I walked over as the guy inside got out and joined his partner at the front of the truck. I introduced myself, telling them I was a P.I., which sometimes helps and sometimes doesn’t. They did not introduce themselves.

  “Yeah,” the one who’d been inside the truck said, “your buddy told us.”

  “And you are…Pardue or Stein?”

  They seemed surprised I’d know their names.

  “Sorry,” the one who’d talked said, extending his hand. “I’m Al Pardue. This is my partner George Stein.”

  We exchanged handshakes, and I asked if they had come to any conclusions after talking with Jonathan and looking at the truck.

  “Well, we found the bullet under the seat,” Pardue said, “but I can’t see it will do us much good. Looks to be a twenty-two. But the angle from the hole in the window to the hole in the seat indicates it was fired from slightly above. There’s an old railroad bridge that crosses Woods Road just inside the city limits, and from what your buddy said, we figure that’s probably where the shot came from.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “For one thing, it’s just the place some idiot teenager out to scare the shit out of somebody would choose. For another, if the shot had come from ground level, it probably wouldn’t have penetrated the windshield.

  “Most people don’t realize it, but most bullets fired head-on will bounce off a windshield. It has to do with the angle of incidence, the slant of the windshield, and a bunch of other technical mumbo-jumbo. A shotgun blast at close range would have been a different story, but a small-caliber rifle fired from a distance…”

  “So Jonathan was lucky to have swerved just before the bullet hit,” I observed.

  “Depends on which way he swerved,” Stern replied. “If the shooter had seen the passenger’s side of the cab was empty and aimed there, the swerve could have moved the bullet closer to the driver.”

  Well, that was a helpful bit of information, I thought. But I still chose not to dwell on what might have happened if he hadn’t swerved.

  “There’s a couple of teenagers who live around there who’ve been in trouble before for this sort of thing, and there’s a crossroads with
a stop sign just beyond the bridge and right near where your friend described being hit. The city has to replace that particular sign just about every year, it’s so riddled with bullet holes. They might have been aiming for that.”

  Uh-huh, I thought.

  “We’ll check those teenagers out,” Pardue said.

  “What about Jonathan’s belief that it might have something to do with Clarence Bement’s death, and the fact that someone was following him yesterday?”

  “We don’t have the Bement case,” Stein said. “But we took down the information, and will pass it on to whoever has it.”

  “Howie Garland and Dave Angell,” I said.

  “Ah, okay. So we’ll pass it on to them. But frankly, it seems a little unlikely that there’s any real connection. He said he only worked for Bement for a short time, so I can’t see why someone might be after him.”

  I could certainly see their point. “Well, I appreciate your letting Garland and Angell know about it anyway,” I said.

  They left shortly thereafter, giving me the okay to take the truck in for a new windshield. “You might ask them to give you the old one, just in case it might be needed as evidence somewhere down the road,” Pardue said.

  As soon as they’d gone, I returned to my office to call the auto glass company.

  Chapter 3

  I left work a little early to get the truck in and took the bus home from there. I’d just walked in the apartment door when the phone rang.

  “Jonathan Quinlan?” an odd, androgynous voice asked. It might have been my imagination, but it sounded as though the caller was deliberately altering his (?) voice, and I shifted into alert mode.

  “No, I’m sorry, he’s not here,” I said. “Can I help you?”

  “Uh…no, I don’t think so. When do you expect him back?”

  “Can I ask what this is about?”

  There was a long hesitation before, “I wanted to speak to him about a landscaping job.”

  “Well, if you’ll leave me your name and number, I’ll have him get back to you as soon as he can.”

  Another pause. “That’s all right. I’ll try him again later,” was followed by the click of the phone being hung up, and the dial tone.

  I held the receiver away from my head and scowled at it as though it might tell me something more. It didn’t, and I eventually replaced it on the cradle. I wondered how the caller had gotten our number, and I was not happy.

  Jonathan and Joshua got home without incident. I didn’t mention the call, but asked if he’d seen the black Mercedes; he said he might have but wasn’t sure.

  “I was out with my boss most of the day,” he said. “He said it’s fine if I want to take one of my weeks’ vacation now, by the way. Anyway, when we came back just before closing. I think I might have caught a glimpse of it about a block away but couldn’t be sure. I’d parked the car on the grounds, and I left through the back exit onto Freeman. If it was the guy, I’m sure he didn’t see me. It may not have been him, anyway. But I didn’t want to take any chances.”

  Smart kid.

  “I’ve been thinking,” I said as we fixed dinner, “that it might be a good idea for me to answer the phone until you and Joshua leave for Wisconsin. And I know it might be a little awkward, but could you ask whoever answers the phone at work to say you’re not in and just get a number if any calls come in for you?”

  He looked a little puzzled. “Yeah, I can do that. But why?”

  “Well, if anyone calls and leaves a number, it’s probably legit. But if they won’t leave a number, I don’t think you want to talk to them anyway.”

  As if a light had gone on in his head, he said, “Oh.”

  *

  We waited until near the end of dinner to tell Joshua he was going to take an airplane ride to go to see his grandpa and aunts and cousins. He seemed far more excited about the plane ride than seeing the relatives.

  After dinner, Jonathan called his dad who, from what I could understand without actually hearing both sides of the conversation, had no problem with the short notice for the visit. After confirming the basics, Jonathan turned the phone over to Joshua, who had been all but hopping up and down to talk to his grandfather.

  “I’m coming to see you!” he said happily. “On an airplane!”

  They talked for a minute, until Joshua said, “Okay,” and handed the phone back to Jonathan to finish the conversation.

  While Jonathan had been very close to his mother and his brother Samuel, his family was not terribly close-knit. He was the baby of the family; Samuel had been five years older, and his three sisters were several years older than Samuel. They had all been married and starting families of their own before Jonathan finished grade school. His father had been too busy trying to run the family farm and working as a long-haul truck driver to spend much of what they now call “quality time” with any of his children.

  But Jonathan, being Jonathan, was devoted to them all, and it was he who initiated most of the contacts with them. He never missed a birthday or wedding anniversary.

  *

  Needless to say, Joshua was a handful all night. We’d intended to start calling the gang to let them know the two Js would be gone for a week but only managed one call, to Phil and Tim—a call made much longer than it would have been by Joshua’s insistence on talking to both of them. He seemed to fear that if he talked to just one, the other would be left in the dark. And a first airplane ride warranted as many people knowing as possible.

  After getting a still-hyper Joshua safely tucked into bed, Jonathan and I went into the living room to watch TV.

  “You know, I’m a little concerned about something,” Jonathan said as we sat on the couch.

  “Yeah? What?”

  “I’m worried about how he’ll react to going home.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, though the minute he said it, I think I knew.

  “You know how he loves Sesame Street? The other day we were talking about it on the way home from day care, and he was telling me that Big Bird was his favorite character. I asked him why, and he said, ‘He doesn’t have a mommy or daddy either.’ It nearly broke my heart. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you at the time.

  “Anyway, I’m a little afraid that going back to Wisconsin might really be hard on him. It was home until he came to us, and he hasn’t been back since…since the accident. I know he’s adjusted really well, but maybe going back might bring out a lot of things he’s covered over. I mean, he knows his parents aren’t coming back, but because he didn’t go to the funeral, he didn’t have the closure of knowing for sure.”

  “Well, I think you were right in not wanting to expose him to all that, and you weren’t in any shape yourself to handle the extra trauma,” I said. “We’ll just have to see how he reacts to going back and deal with any problems when and if they come up.” Even as I said it, I felt guilty, realizing that it would be Jonathan who had to deal with them, since I wouldn’t be there to help.

  “I was thinking,” he continued. “He came here with Bunny, and I think one reason he likes it so much is because it reminds him of his folks and before they…before.”

  Jonathan had bought Bunny, a large stuffed rabbit, while we were on vacation in New York, and it had been a fourth-birthday present for Joshua. The two had been inseparable ever since, and while Joshua was beginning to grow out of his doll stage, Bunny was still his bed partner.

  “I really hope he doesn’t want to bring Bunny with him on the trip,” he said. Bunny is entirely too big to carry on the plane.

  “I’m sure he will. But I’ll ask him if he would leave Bunny here to keep me company when I get lonesome. We’ll tell him we’ll get him something at the airport to take with him. And Bunny’s being here will help remind him that he belongs here now.”

  “That’s a good idea! Thanks!”

  Our conversation was interrupted by the ringing of the phone, which I hurried to answer.

  “Is Jonathan Quinlan in?” t
he voice asked. It was not the same one who had called earlier, but I was still cautious.

  “I’m sorry, he’s not. Can I take a message?”

  “Are you his partner?”

  That was an odd question.

  “Yes,” I said, leaving it at that.

  “You’re a private investigator?”

  I paused only a second, increasingly curious and not a little suspicious, before saying, “Yes.”

  “My name is Mel Fowler. Jonathan worked for my late grandfather, and I was calling him to get your name and number. I’d like to talk to you about looking into the circumstances surrounding my grandfather’s death.”

  Well, well, I thought. So Jonathan isn’t the only one who suspects Bement’s death may not have been a suicide.

  “I’ll be happy to talk to you, Mr. Fowler. When would you like to meet?”

  “I’ll be starting a three-day rotation Friday, so would you have any time at all tomorrow?”

  “I don’t have my schedule with me,” I said, knowing I didn’t have any specific appointments but finding it hard to break the old habit of always acting as if I were busier than I was. “But I think it’s fairly clear tomorrow morning. How about ten o’clock?” I gave him my office phone number and address.

  “Thank you! I’ll see you then.”

  We exchanged good-byes and hung up.

  Jonathan had been watching me, curious, ever since he heard me mention Mel Fowler’s name, and I returned to the couch to fill him in.

  “See?” he said. “I knew I was right about Mr. Bement not killing himself.”

  “Well, we still don’t know that for a fact,” I said, “but it’s nice to know you aren’t alone in your opinion.”

  *

  Jonathan and Joshua left a little early Thursday morning so Jonathan could tell the Bronson sisters of the trip. I took the bus to work so I could pick up Jonathan’s truck on my way home.

  Promptly at ten o’clock, a knock at the door pulled my eyes up to the silhouette of a male figure on the opaque glass. I got up from my desk and walked over to open it.

  I try not to think in stereotypes, but if the stereotype of a male flight attendant was of a strikingly handsome hunk all but radiating gay vibes, Mel Fowler was it. Not nelly, not fem, but unmistakably gay.