Shots in the Dark

by Allyson K. Abbott

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That we thought he might have been wrongly convicted. That made her gasp.”

  “Really? I wonder why.”

  “I don’t know, but she sounded spooked. She wanted to know how I’d found her. I made up some story about hiring a PI and said that all he found was a phone number. I promised her I wouldn’t share the number with anyone, but she still said she didn’t want to talk. I asked her why she’d quit grad school and dropped out of sight, but all she told me was that she’d needed some time away from the grind.” He paused and frowned.

  “What?” I said, sensing there was more.

  “I don’t know,” Clay said, pulling at his chin. “I got the sense that she did want to talk to me, even though she said she didn’t. She could have hung up on me several times, yet she didn’t. She kept skirting around the issue and asking me why people were looking into Ben’s case.” His frown deepened, and he scratched his head. “My reporter instincts kept telling me there was a story there, but maybe I was reading more into it than there was.”

  I pondered his information for a few seconds. “Think she might talk to me?”

  “I doubt it. But I can give you the number if you want to try.”

  “I do,” I said.

  He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out one of my bar napkins with a phone number written on it. “Here you go,” he said. “Good luck.”

  I took the number, stuffed it in my pocket, and thanked him.

  “I have to go finish an article for tomorrow’s paper,” he said. “Let me know how it goes.”

  He donned his coat and headed downstairs.

  I took a moment to think about Melanie Smithson and how to approach her. If Clay was right, the woman was scared of something. But what?

  While I was thinking, Cora came up the stairs, carrying a stack of papers and her laptop.

  “Hey, Cora. Do you happen to recall whether or not we’ve recorded my reaction to the smell of Opium perfume?”

  She squinted in thought and shook her head. “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “Duncan had me take a look at Gary’s car last night, and I detected a smell on the passenger armrest. Duncan had it analyzed, and it came back as Opium perfume.”

  Cora’s eyes grew big. “Does that mean the killer is a woman?”

  “Possibly. I want to know the specific reaction I have to that perfume, because there were other smells there, too, and that complicated things.”

  “I’ll check the database, but I’m pretty sure we haven’t logged that particular one. I can order some for you if you want.”

  “That would be great. Thanks. I’ll reimburse you for the cost.”

  “Did you open that box from the cemetery yet?”

  “We did.” I filled her in on the contents of the box and our interpretation of them. “Mal and I are going to hit up the casino tomorrow and see what we can find.”

  “Be careful,” she said. “It sounds like this letter writer is ramping things up.” She handed me back my office keys. “Did Clay have any luck with the Smithson girl?”

  “He was able to talk to her, but she didn’t tell him anything. He said she sounded scared.”

  Cora nodded, looking thoughtful.

  “I’m surprised you trusted Clay enough to tell him you were accessing confidential IRS files to find a number for Smithson,” I said. “What if he prints that information?”

  Cora gave me a sly smile. “That wasn’t exactly the truth. It was a test of sorts. I don’t do any work for the IRS, but I do handle security for some banking networks. I was able to dig up Smithson’s credit card info and saw that she had purchased several burner phones over the past year. I gave him the number for the most recent one she bought, and told him that she was living out in Washington State somewhere. That was a lie. She pays her credit card bills online, and I was able to trace her ISP to somewhere in Pennsylvania.”

  “I should have known you’d be smart enough to cover your tracks,” I said with a smile.

  “Did he give you the number?”

  I nodded.

  “Are you going to call her?”

  I nodded again.

  “Well, good luck with it. I’m going to go hand over these drawing copies and see what the group comes up with.”

  “Good luck to you, too. Tell Mal I’m headed for my office. He can join me if he wants.”

  She nodded, and we parted company. Cora returned to the Capone Club room, while I made my way down to my office.

  Chapter 30

  By the time I reached my office door, Mal had caught up to me. “What are you up to?” he asked.

  I told him about Clay’s talk with Melanie Smithson and my intent to call her.

  “Mind if I sit in?”

  “Not at all.”

  We went into the office and locked the door behind us. I settled in behind my desk, and Mal sat across from me. I took out my cell phone and started to make the call but stopped. I set the cell aside and picked up my landline desk phone instead.

  “If the woman is paranoid about people finding her and discussing this case, it might be better if I call her from a number with a caller ID that she can verify,” I said as Mal gave me a curious look.

  He made no comment, and I dialed the number. Then I switched over to speakerphone. We listened as the phone on the other end rang several times, and I felt my hopes flag. Just as I was about to disconnect the call, someone answered.

  “Hello?” said a tentative female voice. Melanie’s voice manifested with a visual reaction rather than a taste, something that sometimes happened with women’s voices. I saw falling flower petals.

  “Is this Melanie Smithson?” I asked.

  “Who is this?”

  “My name is Mackenzie Dalton. I own a bar in Milwaukee called Mack’s Bar. You can look it up and call me back at the listed number if you want.”

  Silence.

  “I’m calling you about Ben Middleton.”

  She let out a perturbed sigh. I waited, expecting her to hang up, but she didn’t.

  “Melanie, I work with a group of people who look into cold cases and adjudicated cases where we think an injustice may have been done. We have reason to believe that Ben Middleton is innocent. I’d like to talk to you about his wife, Tiffany, specifically about her life from several years back.”

  More silence. No, that wasn’t quite true. I heard a faint tapping sound in the background, and it made me smile and give Mal a thumbs-up. I recognized the sound as the tapping of computer keys, but Mal gave me a confused look, making me wonder if he was able to hear the sound.

  “Something happened to Tiffany when she was in high school, something that affected her deeply,” I said. “I’m trying to determine what that might have been, and I understand that you and she were close. Do you know anything about it?”

  More silence ensued, as the tapping sound had stopped.

  After a few seconds I said, “Melanie? Are you still there?”

  “You’re passing yourself off as some kind of mind reader?” she said finally.

  I looked at Mal and saw that he finally understood. “You must have found some of the news articles about me,” I said. “They aren’t totally accurate. I don’t read minds, but I do have a disorder that gives me a different perspective on things. It’s complicated. Suffice it to say that I can pick up on things others can’t.”

  “I can’t help you,” she said, and I felt my spirits tank. “Please leave me alone.”

  “Melanie, I promise you I won’t tell anyone we spoke. I don’t know what or who you’re hiding from, but your secret will stay safe with me. I promise you that. Please think it over. If you decide you want to talk to me, call me back. You can call on my landline here at the bar. You can find the number online. I live above the bar, and the phone rings there, too. If you call after two A.M. and before ten A.M., I should be the only one here. Or if you want, you can call me anytime on my cell.” I gave her the cell
number and then said, “I hope you’ll talk to me. If you really were a friend to Tiffany, don’t let her death be for naught.”

  I closed my eyes and waited, listening. I heard her breathing for several seconds, and then the sound was gone. I waited a little longer and then heard a sound that told me our call had been disconnected.

  “Damn,” I muttered, punching the speaker button. “She knows something. I can feel it.”

  “Even I can feel it, and I don’t have your sensitive . . . talents.”

  “I guess I’ll just have to wait and see if she calls back.”

  A knock came on my office door, and Mal got up and opened it. It was Tad.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said, looking at Mal. “I was hoping to have a chat with Mack.”

  “Come on in, Tad,” I said. Mal stepped aside and waved Tad in.

  “I have some information for you,” he said, and then he slid his eyes toward his left shoulder, toward where Mal was standing. I got the message.

  “Mal, would you mind letting me talk to Tad privately for a few minutes?”

  “Not at all,” Mal said. He stepped out of the office and shut the door behind him.

  “What have you got for me?” I gestured toward the chair Mal had just vacated.

  “I don’t need to sit,” he said. “I don’t have much to tell you. I looked over the finances of the Gallagher family, and I can’t pinpoint any unusual large expenditures, large being a relative term here, given their wealth. But Colin Gallagher pulls cash out of his accounts all the time. There’s no way for me to know what he does with it. As for Tiffany, her trust account had some transfers of money from time to time, out of her account and into the joint account she and Ben shared, but I saw nothing there to raise any eyebrows. And for what it’s worth, her father did have control over that account. His electronic or real signature was required for any money transactions. Ben pulled down a decent salary on his own, but—”

  His cell phone rang, and after a little hiss of annoyance, he pulled it from his pocket and looked at it. “Sorry,” he said, rolling his eyes again. “It’s Suzanne. I have to take it.”

  “Go ahead. Want me to step out?”

  “No need.” He answered the call with, “Hey, Suze. What’s up?” I watched as he closed his eyes and grimaced. The muscles in his cheeks twitched with annoyance, and after a few seconds he took a deep, bracing breath, then blew it out through pursed lips. “Yes, dear,” he said in a tone that belied his impatient expression. “I understand. I just have a few more things here in the office to finish up.” He listened some more and then said, “You know I don’t answer the office phone after hours. I’ve told you that.” He shot me a guilty look. “Give me an hour or so and I should be done. See you soon.” More listening. “I love you, too.” He disconnected the call and dropped the phone into his shirt pocket. Then he raked a hand through his hair. “Suzanne has been on me a lot lately about not coming home earlier.”

  “Why are you lying to her?”

  “She’s worried that I’m having an affair. I keep assuring her that’s not the case, but I think she knows I’m not in the office sometimes when I say I am.”

  “So tell her where you are.”

  “I can’t. I mentioned the bar once weeks ago and told her about the Capone Club thing and how much I enjoyed it. She had a meltdown, told me that the kind of publicity this place has gotten is bad for my reputation and hers. She said if I kept it up, I’d end up losing clients. I think she might have hired someone to follow me. That’s why I haven’t been here as often in the evenings. I feel safe coming here for lunch, but not so much in the evening.”

  “I’m sorry, Tad. You don’t think you can talk her into some sort of compromise?”

  He laughed at that. “Have you met my wife? The word compromise is not in her dictionary. She expects me to be at her beck and call all the time, and she drags me around to all these social events that are so boring, they make me want to kill myself.”

  With those words, an idea popped into my head. “What were you going to tell me right before Suzanne called?”

  “Just that Colin Gallagher wielded a lot of control over Tiffany and her money. The house she and Ben lived in was owned by him, and while Tiffany’s name was on the deed, Ben’s was not. Same thing with the boat Ben and Tiffany had, and Tiffany’s car.”

  I thought about Tiffany and whatever demons had haunted her. Had the girl been so depressed and controlled that she wanted to kill herself? Was that why she hadn’t tried to get out of the car when Ben was wrestling with the gunman? It was a sad, dark thought, one that made me ache for the girl. Her life didn’t sound like a very happy one, which just went to show that money couldn’t buy happiness.

  Tad glanced at his watch and said, “I really should go. I still need to run by the store and pick up some perfume for Suzanne for Christmas. But before I do, tell me if you guys have made any progress on the case.”

  I updated him on what I knew, and then, curious, I asked him what type of perfume he planned to get for Suzanne.

  “Opium,” he said. “It’s the only thing she wears.”

  Chapter 31

  After Tad left, I sat in my office, trying to decide what to do about what Tad had just told me. Suzanne Collier wore Opium perfume. But then, hundreds, maybe thousands of women in and around Milwaukee probably wore it, as well. What possible motive would a rich woman like Suzanne have for taunting me? Then I recalled Tad saying that Suzanne suspected him of having an affair. Did she think I was Tad’s mistress? But that didn’t make any sense, either. If she was having Tad followed, she would know that he and I rarely saw one another. Plus, I’d been plenty visible courting around with Mal lately.

  I convinced myself that Suzanne’s choice of perfume was nothing more than a coincidence, and left my office. Business had picked up, and the bar was bustling. Billy looked a little frazzled, something I almost never saw, so I chipped in for the next few hours and helped out, propping myself up on my crutches and mixing drinks behind the bar. Mal settled in on one of the barstools and watched for a while, and then he headed upstairs to the Capone Club room. The customers were all hepped up on holiday cheer, and a group of people in the dance floor room started singing Christmas carols. More folks joined in, and at one point nearly the entire first floor was singing. It should have lifted my soul and put me in the holiday spirit, but I had too much on my mind.

  By one o’clock things had slowed down enough that I was able to head upstairs to the Capone Club room. The group had dwindled some. The Signoriello brothers had gone home, and Holly and Alicia had left, too. The remaining group was huddled around some tables that had been pushed together, and on top of the tables were dozens of papers with Carter’s drawing on the top half and different lower facial features drawn on the bottom half.

  “Hey, Mack,” Carter said. “We’ve been playing around with the facial characteristics, and it’s interesting, but we’re all a little confused as to just what it is we’re supposed to be looking for.”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I thought maybe you’d get lucky and come up with something that looked familiar.”

  “We haven’t,” he said.

  “Well, save them all. I’ll show them to Clay later and see if any of them resemble anyone he might have seen at the trial.” Thinking about Tiffany’s mystery lover from her senior year in high school, I decided I should probably show them to Teddy Bear, too. He knew a lot of the same people Tiffany would have known, and maybe he’d recognize someone.

  Tyrese said, “You might even take them up to the prison and run them by Ben Middleton. See if he can identify the shooter.”

  “Good idea.”

  Carter gathered up all the sheets and handed them to Mal. “Why don’t you guys hang on to these for now. I’m going to call it a night.”

  “Me too,” Sam said. And then, as if by some unspoken agreement, everyone in the room got up, gathered up their belongings, bid one another good night, and headed
out.

  “I think I’m going to head home, too,” Mal said. He held up the drawings in his hand. “I’ll walk you downstairs and drop these in your office.”

  Half an hour later, I was upstairs in my apartment. Mal had gone home, and Billy was closing up shop for me downstairs. I readied myself for bed and climbed in, feeling exhausted and certain I’d fall asleep quickly and easily. But I kept staring at the phone beside my bed, willing it to ring, hoping that Melanie Smithson would rethink her willingness to talk.

  It was well past four before I finally drifted off, and my phone remained silent throughout the night.

  * * *

  I awoke at ten the next morning, and after a quick shower I went downstairs. Pete was in already, readying the bar for the eleven o’clock opening time, and Jon arrived at ten thirty and fired up the kitchen. Debra and Teddy both came in shortly after Jon, and Missy showed up just prior to opening time. I unlocked the door at eleven, and Cora, Frank, and Joe all arrived minutes later. Other customers quickly followed, so I invited Cora and the brothers upstairs to the Capone Club room and filled the brothers in on the latest letter and my planned trip to the casino today. I barely had time to tell them everything before other members of the group began arriving.

  I went downstairs to wait for Mal, who arrived at quarter to twelve. I told Pete and Debra we were heading out to do some shopping for a few hours, and without further ado, we left.

  It had snowed some during the night—not a lot, but enough that everything outside was covered with a fresh, clean layer of white. The sun was out, and the new snow sparkled in its light. With only two more shopping days left until Christmas, the downtown traffic was heavy and the sidewalks were crowded. That plus the newly fallen snow made maneuvering with my crutches that much more difficult. Mal held my arm as we walked to his car, and then he helped me get inside.