Who Killed My Boss? (Sam Darling Mystery #1)

by Jerilyn Dufresne

  I didn’t call George or Rob, since I’d see George in a few hours. There was only one person on my caseload because of the confusion after the funeral, so I decided to take off early, go home and relax before my dinner with George.

  I had walked to work today. The frigid crispness of the January day was just what I’d needed to uncloud my mind. Walking home was even better. The late afternoon sun danced over the ice and snow and brought fanciful notions to my head. I imagined that I was an owner of one of the mansions instead of just a renter. The thought made me walk taller. This was a great neighborhood.

  Clancy was waiting at the door for me. Leash in mouth.

  “Gee, Clance, can’t you give me one minute before we go for a walk?”

  The answer was “No.” It was comforting to have her in my life, but I could understand why she was upset. Normally we spent a lot of time together, but with my accidents and two dates in a row, it’s no wonder she was feeling left out.

  I thought about calling Pete, but he had told me he was working evenings this week. The rest of the tribe would be busy at this hour, coming home from work and spending a little time with their families before dinner. I didn’t want to disturb anyone just to run my ideas by them. Maybe Clancy would suffice. She was my best bet anyway, at least until I could talk to George or Michael. It seemed like a good idea to solidify my thoughts before I tried to talk to either one of them. Neither was convinced that I knew what I was talking about. And Clancy didn’t think I was crazy—at least she didn’t tell me so.

  “Okay, let’s go. I guess I could use the exercise myself. I need to talk about some stuff too. Maybe you could help me.” I threw my purse on the couch and opened the door, letting Clancy lead the way. She took off for her favorite haunts with me dutifully following at leash length.

  “I’m positive Carolyn killed her husband. But I’m also sure she had help. She’s much too prissy to stick a scalpel into someone. Now who was her accomplice?”

  Clancy turned and looked at me thoughtfully. She cocked her head in her thinking mode, but didn’t say anything. Gosh, Sam, of course she didn’t say anything, you nitwit. She’s a dog.

  “Here’s the list of possibles. Gwen Schneider. I know she didn’t do it, because she feels innocent. She sure acts strange though. But that’s no reason to consider her a murderer. Just because she semi-confessed to me twice doesn’t mean she did it. Also, she and Carolyn certainly wouldn’t be accomplices in this kind of thing. I do wonder why they left the clinic together though.

  “Charlie Schneider. I think he just loves his sister a lot and relies on her to keep him almost sane. He doesn’t feel guilty to me either, even though he confessed. He does have a motive though. He feels protective of his sister—she’s the only family he has.”

  “Michael O’Dear. I know, Clance. He can’t be guilty. He’s too cute and he likes me. The only reason he’s on the list is that I’m dizzy when I’m around him, the same as when I’m near Carolyn. So that’s the list. I’m sure there are other possibilities. I mean, there’s gotta be. Those three are all innocent. So we gotta find Carolyn’s accomplice. Or maybe find out more about her. I mean, I could be wrong about her not being able to stick the scalpel in Burns. Maybe she used to be a surgical nurse, or a knife thrower in a circus or something.”

  Or maybe she’s a psychopath. I didn’t express that notion aloud; afraid that even Clancy would think it was too much.

  On that note, we arrived at the park. I let Clancy off the leash for a while so she could run and tire herself out. I didn’t feel like running. All of this brainwork was tiring. When Clancy came back to me with her tongue hanging out, we headed for home.

  The return to our place passed quickly, with Clancy and me taking turns leading.

  When we arrived, Clancy went to her corner, got a drink of water, and circled around for a nap.

  It was time to decide on the all-important outfit. I climbed into my closet to begin the familiar ritual. What to wear. It was only George, so I grabbed a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.

  As I put them on I let Clancy in on my thoughts, “If I wear these clothes, he probably won’t be consumed with desire for me, and then I wouldn’t have so much fun being cold to him. So perhaps I ought to dress up a bit more.” I looked over my shoulder for her opinion. She agreed.

  There really wasn’t much of a choice. I had already worn my power suit several times. Last night I wore my black cocktail dress with the black blazer. I had a brainstorm. Maybe jeans, a black camisole and the black blazer. Yes. Cool, sophisticated, and with just a hint of animal magnetism. I didn’t want to bowl the poor guy over after all.

  It was a clear, crisp night, so I put on some snow boots, placed my shoes in my large purse, found my “good” coat and bade farewell to Clancy.

  “Clancy, old girl, watch and learn. I’ve had two dates in a row, with two different men. This is something you may never see again in either of our lifetimes.” She raised her head and I swore she rolled her eyes. “Okay, don’t look at me like that. I know the dinner with George isn’t really a date, but it’ll look that way to anyone who is watching, so it will still count. Give me a break.”

  I walked slowly to The Rectory, deliberately arriving twenty minutes late so George would be forced to wait for me. Anthony greeted me effusively at the door.

  “Sam, what a pleasure. Two nights in a row. Are you meeting someone?”

  “Yes, but I don’t see him. Is Detective Lansing here?”

  “No, but I do have a reservation in his name for two. Why don’t I seat you and I’ll stay on the lookout for him?”

  “Okay, Anthony. And bring me a—”

  “Beer in a long neck bottle, no glass.” He chuckled. “Sam, you’ve been coming in here for a long time. I know what you drink by now.”

  This felt wonderful. I thought I only moved back to Quincy for the support of my family after my divorce. But I also moved back for this. People who have known me since I was born. People who care about me. There was comfort in being served by a man who knew that I sometimes had wine with dinner, but otherwise it was always beer in a long necked bottle. No glass. Did he suspect the phallic connotations?

  The beer arrived quickly. I exchanged my boots for shoes, then I sipped and looked around. The Rectory always had a nice crowd. Some people came for a meal. Some people came for drinks. Some came to ease the loneliness a bit. All came to be catered to by Anthony—a great bear of a man with a heart that filled his entire body.

  My mind stayed occupied, just looking around and saying “hello” every now and then to acquaintances. No relatives here tonight.

  I finished my beer before I thought to look at my watch. I’d been here over twenty minutes. And that damn George wasn’t here. He stood me up again. He did the same damn thing that he did in high school. This was stupid and I was steaming. I slammed some money on the table for the drink. I wouldn’t stiff Anthony even though I’d been shafted.

  Just as I stood up to get my coat, my glance caught the smiling face of The Late One.

  I didn’t reciprocate with a smile of my own. “What are you grinning at?”

  “I’m happy to see ya, Sam. Why shouldn’t I be smiling?”

  “You think it’s funny that you could stand me up again? You think it’s funny that I’m waiting here and you didn’t call?”

  His smile disappeared, replaced by a frustrated frown and a furrowed brow. “Did you check your voice mail? Did you check your e-mail? I left a message on both since I was gonna be late and I didn’t want you thinking I was standing you up.”

  Feeling stupid was not something I relished, but I did it well. “Sorry, I didn’t check. I just assumed.”

  He resumed his original smiling expression. “I recall you’ve always done a lot of assuming. We used to say that you’d die by committing ‘assumicide.’ Why, I remember the time when we were juniors when you—”

  I interrupted, “George, I’m not really interested in walking down memory lane
with you. It’s lonely there.”

  He looked uncomfortable. “Now that we’re middle-aged…” he blanched at my stare, “Now that we’re adults, don’t you think it might be a good idea to get rid of that stiff-necked pride long enough to let me explain what happened on prom night?”

  I lifted my empty bottle toward the bartender and ordered a second beer. Feeling magnanimous, I ordered one for George too. “Okay, explain away.” I still wasn’t going to forgive him. After all, I was the one who had been left all dressed up with no place to go. My friends had been solicitous, but that didn’t relieve the pain of being left with my pink organza formal, bunny fur, and high hopes.

  He looked me in the eye and without blinking he began. “I was excited about prom too. Don’t talk.” He lifted a hand in a stop signal. “Don’t talk, Sam.”

  He stopped me in mid-breath. He knew me well, this old beau of mine.

  “I know it’s hard for you to sit and listen. Your specialty is interrupting me and putting words in my mouth.” I opened my mouth but couldn’t get a word out. “Don’t talk.”

  Shutting up was hard for me. “Don’t say ‘don’t talk’ again or I’ll explode. I promise I’ll be quiet unless you order me to. If you give me a royal command to shut up, then I’m gonna talk. Deal?”

  He smiled in spite of himself. “Deal. Now may I get on with my explanation?”

  I nodded. And didn’t talk.

  “Okay. I was excited about the prom too. It’s hard for a guy to admit that at any age, but it was especially hard when I was seventeen. But prom was a big deal. Renting that baby blue tux, borrowing my dad’s car, looking forward to some real making out at the all-night party.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “You wouldn’t have gotten to second base.”

  “I didn’t care. Rounding first was enough for me.” He grinned again and made me forget that I hated the ground he walked on.

  He continued. “I was all set to walk out the door when the phone rang. It was my best friend, Cal. His car was stuck in the mud out on Columbus Road and he wanted me to pick him up. Remember that he lived way out in the country?”

  “And…?” I arched my eyebrows. This had better be good.

  “And he was my best friend and I was a little early, so I drove out there and found him. He was about twelve miles out of town. Now there are lots of houses out that way, but back then there was nothing, no lights, no houses, no phones, no nothing.”

  Nothing is what I said.

  “His car didn’t look like it was stuck too badly, so instead of just giving him a ride into town, we decided to try to push the car out of the mud. And don’t roll your eyes at me, Sam Darling. We were kids. Maybe we didn’t think it through very well, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

  I raised my hand. “May I speak, sir?”

  “Skip the sarcasm. It doesn’t become you. It might have been cute when you were a teenager. But, now…” He took my beer bottle that I’d been squeezing the life out of and took the last swig.

  “Okay,” I said, “this isn’t about me, it’s about you. So cut to the chase. You and Cal decided to push his car out and you probably fell and got all muddy. You are going to use that as a pathetic excuse for not picking me up for prom. Puh-leeze.” The waiter delivered the beers just in time. I grabbed mine and took a big gulp.

  “Do you want to hear the truth, or do you want to continue making the story fit your misguided notions of what happened? We can play it either way.”

  I stared at the ceiling. I stared at the floor. I stared at the condensation on my bottle of beer. Anywhere but at George. Just before I was going to break under the pressure, he spoke again.

  “Okay, you were right. Don’t speak. Yes, you were right. I fell in the mud and got my tux completely ruined. I was embarrassed beyond belief and didn’t know how to deal with that.”

  “So you decided to wait twenty-five years to tell me this?”

  “That night I was embarrassed and scared and I didn’t know how to tell you. I felt so stupid and didn’t have enough self-confidence to admit what I’d done. I swore Cal to secrecy. It was too late to rent another tux and I didn’t even own a suit. The next day I called and your mom said you ‘weren’t accepting phone calls from anyone named George Lansing.’ I called you every day for two weeks and you wouldn’t talk to me. I came to your house, I wrote you letters, and finally, I admitted to myself that it was over. You were so angry that you wouldn’t let me explain. Remember that I was a kid too. I made stupid choices, Sam, but so did you. You chose to stay mad all these years, when it could have been over the day after prom.”

  For a moment, I noticed the sweet guy I had known. I almost felt some sympathy for him, but I quashed it as it was developing in my heart. “Okay, now you told me. Are you happy?”

  “Of course I’m not happy about it. You and I had a great time together all through school. That ended the night of prom. I’ve missed you as a friend. Now that you’re back in town, maybe we can rekindle our friendship.”

  I wasn’t going to be that easy, although I wasn’t completely against his suggestion. “We’ll see. Listen, I really want to talk about the crime. That’s the only reason we got together tonight. So tell me what you know.”

  “You are such an incurable romantic.” He tore off a piece of Italian bread and began picking it apart absentmindedly.

  Yeah, yeah, funny, funny. “Tell me what you know.”

  “In a minute.” He had a strange look on his face. I wished I could read his feeble male mind. “I’d like you to go first. This is an official police investigation and I can’t tell you everything. I’ll be glad to share what I can, but you go first.”

  Was this a trick, designed to find out what I knew without giving away anything? I had a few minutes to think as our food arrived. My favorite meal again, pasta primavera and a house salad. I changed to white wine with the meal, although another beer would have tasted good too. George drove me to drink and that was a fact.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you what I know, but you gotta promise that you’ll tell me some stuff too. Promise?”

  Mouth bulging with food, he nodded. I took that to mean he agreed, but with George you never knew.

  “Here’s the scoop. I already told you that Carolyn killed her husband. Well, you know today I found Carolyn Burns snooping through confidential files in her husband’s office. She said she was looking for some insurance papers, but that file cabinet only contains patient folders. You came in and took her downtown, so I hope she told you the truth about what she was doing.” I waited expectantly, but he was mum. Not being real comfortable with silence, I continued.

  “What you don’t know is that a little later I was talking to Gwen Schneider and her brother in my office. I had a feeling something was going on again and for some reason Gwen kept looking at the door, as if she knew something was happening on the other side. The upshot is that I opened the door to Burns’ office, knocked Carolyn on her butt, and while I was laughing my head off, Carolyn, Charlie and Gwen left the scene.”

  He was surprised but not shocked. “Together?”

  I nodded. “She came back to the clinic after you let her go from the station. She was snooping through the files again, I bet.” I punctuated my accusations with my fork beating against the plate.

  “Did you see her snooping again?”

  “No, but I bet she was. Why else would she be there?”

  “Did you ever think that she might be getting some of her husband’s things from his office? Doesn’t that make more sense than assuming she was snooping?” He scooped another mouthful of pasta onto his fork.

  “Remember I told you that during my initial interview Burns got a phone call. I don’t know who he was talking to, but he got really angry and said something about having something for the person next week. He also said ‘Leave me alone or you’ll be sorry.’ Maybe he was talking to Carolyn.”

  George took a drink of beer before responding. “Maybe he
was talking to Fred Flintstone.”

  I didn’t get caught up in his sarcasm. “George, she did it. That’s all there is to it. She did it and you won’t believe me.”

  That stupid condescending look again. God, he made me mad. Just when I was almost ready to begin the long forgiveness process.

  “And she left with Gwen Schneider.” No reaction. “The widow left my office with the mistress.”

  God, what was going to make a dent in that Herman Munster countenance of his?

  I tried again. “Okay, listen. I get so violently dizzy around her that I sometimes pass out. Really. And you know I’m not a wimp, I’m not the fainting type. These feelings of mine are real. I guess I’ve never been around a murderer before, so this reaction is a lot more powerful than my usual ones.”

  “If that’s the case, I understand you’ve been dizzy around O’Dear, too. So, if that’s one of the criteria for being a murderer, it looks like he fits the bill also.”

  “Oh, don’t be stupid.” I dismissed his notion with a wave of a piece of bread. “Just arrest Carolyn and get it over with. Once you have her in your clutches, I know she’ll tell you who her accomplice is. And it’s not Michael O’Dear.” I wouldn’t admit to him that the same thought had been bugging me. Why was I off-balance around Michael so much of the time? It didn’t make any sense to me. Just because he was the first guy I’d really fallen for since my divorce, that was no reason for me to be sick. Or was it? I was confused.

  “I can’t arrest someone on your hunches. Stay out of it. Let me do my work. If Carolyn Burns did it, then we’ll find some evidence and arrest her. If she didn’t do it, we’ll find who did. You’ll only get in the way. So please stop. Now, let’s enjoy our meal and conversation.”

  Nice try. Thought he could pat me on the head and I’d shut up like a good little girl.

  “Nope, your turn. You tell me what I want to know. This stuff is driving me up the wall. I know she did it, but I don’t know how to prove it. Now you hold up your end of the deal. Spill it.”

  “Well, there’s a few things I can tell you. Things that are pretty well known around here.”