by Harper Lin
Why? Why stay put at a crime scene for an extra couple of minutes to clean a wall? Perhaps the killer had accidentally touched the wall and left bloody fingerprints?
Then something else struck me. The pattern of the killer’s footprints—right foot back, left foot forward—was the natural attack stance for a left-handed person. Plus, the wall was to the killer’s right, meaning he or she swung from the left to the right, spraying blood to the right and onto the wall.
I checked the distance from the killer’s stance to the wall then looked up the length of your average hedge clippers. A hedge clipper’s blades ranged from thirteen to thirty inches. I also learned topiary experts only use hedge clippers, when they use them at all, for the rough work right at the beginning of spring, after which they use pruning shears. Investigating crimes led me to know all sorts of odd bits of information that would, hopefully, never be useful again. I don’t think I could take another hedge-clipper murder.
Anyway, there was enough room for a right-handed swing, so it wasn’t a right-handed person having to swing left-handed. It was a left-handed attacker.
I kicked myself for not seeing this before. If I had, I would have checked out every man, woman, and criminal thug in that covert casino to see which hand they favored.
So I had a left-handed attacker with a shoe size of around ten or eleven, someone who had killed on impulse but had the presence of mind to clean the wall but not wipe away the footprints. A reasonably cool-headed amateur.
I wondered why I didn’t see any other footprints in the area. Whoever had found him—I didn’t even know who that was since I was really working in the dark on this one—had not come close to the body. From the description of the wound, Archibald had been so obviously dead that the person had fled to call the authorities rather than bend down and check on the body. When the police and EMTs arrived, they had obviously not wanted to contaminate the scene. That was standard procedure. So the cover-up came later.
But if the coroner and police chief decided to cover this whole thing up, why hadn’t they wiped the footprints? Perhaps they didn’t think anyone would investigate?
My next task was to do some more internet research. My first stop was digging up what I could find on Travis Clarke, the county coroner who had signed off on the obviously erroneous conclusion that Archibald had killed himself. Clarke owed money to the loan sharks and had been past due until his account was wiped clean.
State employee salaries are public since they are paid by the taxpayers, and I discovered Clarke earned sixty thousand a year. There was no way he had paid off a fourteen-thousand-dollar loan himself in one lump sum. The notation hadn’t shown him paying it off bit by bit. It simply showed a line through the amount as if it had been paid in full. I suspected the loan sharks had most likely forgiven his debt in exchange for covering up the murder.
Could he be the murderer? Unlikely. Even if he was in charge of the investigation, he would have made the “suicide” look more believable. As a coroner, he was an expert on death and evidence of wrongful death. He would not have made such a basic mistake as killing someone with hedge clippers. Martin would call that a “n00b move.”
Then I discovered something even juicier—a wedding announcement from fifteen years ago. Clarke had married Alice Grimal. A quick check revealed she was Police Chief Grimal’s sister.
Clarke and Grimal were related, and they had conspired to cover up a murder.
But I still did not think they were the killers. Like Clarke, Grimal wouldn’t have killed someone in such a sloppy fashion, and I couldn’t picture him as a murderer, anyway. He was too weak.
So why were they covering up the murder? For a measly fourteen thousand dollars? That didn’t make sense. If Clarke was that desperate, he could spill everything to his brother-in-law, and Grimal could shut the place down. The loan sharks wouldn’t be so stupid as to take vengeance out on the relative of the local police chief.
No, there was a more likely explanation—that Grimal knew all about the gambling operation and was taking bribes. When the murder happened, he probably got some shut-up money, as did his brother-in-law.
I needed to tread carefully. If the law was against me, I wasn’t sure who to turn to even if I did find the murderer. I also didn’t know how far up this went. I’d already determined this was a professional operation that almost certainly had branches in other towns and cities, perhaps dozens or even hundreds. The corruption might reach up to the state level or beyond.
I might’ve not been simply fighting a group of casino operators and loan sharks; I might’ve been fighting some very powerful political figures.
If I interfered with their operation, the next set of hedge clippers might be aimed at me.
Nine
The memorial service couldn’t have been lovelier. Archibald certainly had a lot of friends, and since so many of them were gardening and topiary buffs, he had one of the lushest memorial services I had ever attended. The best smelling too.
It was held on the spacious back lawn of the funeral home of Charles Fowler, a friend of mine from my reading group. Oddly enough, poor old Charles had been a suspect in the last murder I solved, when Lucien Rogers had dropped dead from poisoning at a meeting of that very same group. I was happy to say Charles had done an excellent job cleaning up his corpse and that he’d had nothing to do with turning him into a corpse in the first place.
Charles had done a good job here too. Thankfully there was no open casket (I hate those), just a lectern decorated with a large photo of Archibald, rows of seats, and a buffet off to one side.
The gardeners and topiary experts had done the rest. Flanking the lectern was a series of splendid wreaths donated by various members of the two societies of which Archibald had been such a large part, plus a floral arch over the front of the central aisle between the rows of chairs. Arranged around the area were several smaller examples of topiary in pots. Angels figured prominently, plus a scattering of cheerful animals and a few geometric shapes. I saw no shamrocks like the one Archibald had been tending when he had been killed. His luck had run out.
Unfortunately, Octavian led me to the front row, where I wouldn’t be able to observe anyone. I recognized Archibald’s two grown children who I’d spotted at his house, plus another man, a little younger, I suspected was his third child. We sat down near them. They talked in low tones, and I couldn’t hear much of what they said over the buzz of the crowd. I could tell they were still talking about their late father’s credit cards and bank account, though.
Poor kids. No matter how old you were, it still couldn’t feel good to find out something embarrassing about your father. Especially when you think he killed himself over it.
I felt a twinge of guilt. How would they feel when I proved to them their father had been murdered? Ten times worse, and yet I couldn’t let his murderer go unpunished.
Before the service began, I took the opportunity to scan the crowd for people I recognized. Once the service started, I’d be stuck facing forward and wouldn’t be able to see anyone’s reactions. I managed to spot most of the gamblers and gardeners I’d met. Ivan and Gary were there, both sporting black eyes and standing on opposite sides of the yard. I felt a chill when I noticed Tim Harding, the quiet landlord, move up and speak to Ivan.
After dropping my grandson off at school that morning, I’d gone to the county records office to look up the owner of the property where the Cheerville Social Club was located. It was owned by Samantha Ingold. A quick internet search turned up only one Samantha Ingold in the state, and she was a freshman at the city university. A property owner barely out of high school? Unlikely.
I did some more digging, both online and at the county records office, and found a certain Tim Harding had sold it to her a few months before for a dollar. I also found Tim had once been married to a woman whose maiden name was Ingold. They had divorced a few years before.
So Tim had given the property to his daughter as a gift, a gift of the s
elfish variety. He’d given it to her to mask the fact that he was, in all likelihood, the real owner. It would certainly be him collecting the rent and dealing with the tenants. And I bet those tenants were paying a lot more than the usual rate. I wonder if they let him win at roulette too.
So Tim had a financial stake in the business. He’d want to keep it protected. I remembered that glare he gave me when I tried to speak with him after the fight. Could he have been the murderer? How could I prove it?
Tim and Ivan sat down together. Gary shot a nasty look in their direction but did not go over. I also spotted Cynthia McAlister in the crowd, sitting alone and looking sad, as well as George Whitaker, also sitting alone and busy texting on his phone. Some people will text anywhere, and given his poor manners, it didn’t surprise me one bit.
I also saw the final member of my hit list—Travis Clarke, the county coroner. I’d never met him before, only studied his photo in a newspaper article I’d dug up, but I was sure it was him, sitting near the back and wearing a pair of sunglasses while shifting nervously in his seat. I noticed he kept glancing to the right and left. While his eyes remained hidden, I suspected he was watching Ivan and Gary. That little explosion of rage at the gardening meeting had sent ripples through Cheerville society, and the last thing someone involved with a murder needed was people sending ripples.
My observations kept getting interrupted by Octavian making small talk. I couldn’t act too suspiciously and had to spend half my time looking at him instead of a crowd containing a murderer. It was most frustrating. So far in our short acquaintance, it was the first time I’d wanted him to shut up and go away. Not his fault, the poor fellow, but I really didn’t have time for him at the moment.
And my time to observe the crowd had run out. People began to take their seats. Conversation ebbed away as people looked toward the lectern with an air of expectation. I turned to face forward.
Ricardo Morales hovered near the lectern, looking nervous and shuffling a few notecards in his hands. A Baptist minister stood nearby.
The minister spoke first, giving a standard sermon about life and death and faith. He also added a few personal details about how Archibald had been a regular member of the Cheerville Baptist Church. I suspected the good preacher didn’t know about Archibald’s gambling habit. I wasn’t a Baptist, but I’d heard they took a pretty dim view of games of chance. Ah well, as an African Methodist minister in a particularly rough area of Los Angeles once told me, “If the people in my congregation were without sin, there would be no need for them to come to church.”
Besides, a bit of gambling on the side was nothing compared to the sin of murder. Some nice, respectable member of the prosperous community of Cheerville had committed the gravest sin of all.
The minister kept it short, and then Ricardo Morales took over. He gave a nervous speech about how Archibald had been a good friend and upstanding member of the community who had beautified the city. He gave a few anecdotes about their time together as friends and about the volunteer work he did beautifying the lawns of the local seniors home and library. It was all pretty standard. I’d never liked memorial services, particularly the speeches. Everyone already knew what the deceased had accomplished, and any jokes inevitably fell flat. Still, it was tradition, and you couldn’t say goodbye without some sort of send-off.
I listened with half an ear, hoping to catch an important detail while paying more attention to Ricardo’s mannerisms. Why was he so nervous? Simple stage fright or something else? Most likely the latter. He kept glancing at Ivan, probably worried he’d cause more trouble. Ricardo hadn’t been at the gardening meeting, but the way gossip ran through Cheerville like wildfire, he would have almost certainly heard about the fight.
Ricardo was also talking faster than normal, as if he was in a hurry to get through the speech. I guessed he wanted to finish this service without any trouble.
But whatever was going through that handsome Hispanic head was not fear of being caught for murder. When he gestured, it was with his right hand. When he shuffled his notes, it was the right hand that was dominant. Ricardo Morales was right-handed and therefore not the murderer. How much he knew about Archibald’s death was another question. I seemed to have uncovered quite a nasty little web in that suburban strip mall.
Only when Ricardo’s speech came to a conclusion did he give me something of interest.
“And as hard as he worked in his garden and in the gardens of so many others, Archibald Heaney always knew how to relax with a nice glass of wine. The rich, fruity flavors of Spanish Rioja were his favorite. There are several bottles of his favorite vintage over at the buffet. I think he’d be very happy if we all got a glass and drank a toast in his honor.”
A toast. Perfect. All the righties toasting with their right hand and all the lefties toasting with their left hand. Thank you, Ricardo.
Everyone moved over to the buffet. It took a fair amount of self-control on my part not to rush over there, grab a glass, and stand on the table so I could see everyone. That probably wouldn’t do my reputation much good.
We gathered around. There must have been more than a hundred people there, and it was going to be impossible to see everyone. Three young waiters had already poured wine into glasses, and everyone went en masse to pick them up. Already, people were walking away with glasses, while others stood in the way of my line of sight. We were in the middle of a shuffling crowd moving toward the table. I’d never been so dissatisfied with my short stature. Why couldn’t I have been six foot ten, at least for today? This golden opportunity was turning into a disaster.
I’d already taken Ricardo off my list, although he hadn’t ever been a strong suspect in the first place. That left Tim, Ivan, Gary, Travis, Cynthia, and George.
Cynthia walked past us, carrying a wine glass in her right hand. Good girl. Your life may be a mess, but you didn’t slash someone’s throat open with hedge clippers. Points to you.
I saw George move away from the table, his body obscured by the crowd. I almost wept with frustration. Then I saw Tim come right past us. My heart leapt. Here was my star suspect, the man who had rented property to the casino, the man who habitually met with the victim on the day of the week he had been killed, about to pass so close I could reach out and touch him.
Then my heart sank. He was carrying a wine glass in each hand. I never took him for a lush.
Oh wait, not a lush. He was heading back to Ivan, who had remained in his seat. I glanced around for Gary and saw him nearby with a wine glass in his right hand. Ivan may have thought it was Gary’s fault for Archibald dying, but if he was, it was only indirectly.
That left Tim, Ivan, Travis, and George.
Octavian and I got our glasses, and I lingered by the table, hoping to catch sight of another suspect. Motioning with his wine glass—held, I am glad to say, in his right hand—Octavian made a move to lead me away then stopped when I didn’t follow. Instead, I engaged in small talk with him, ignoring his body language telling me to move out of the way and stop blocking traffic.
“Let’s go back to our seats,” he finally said.
I let out a sigh of frustration. I couldn’t think of an excuse not to, and so I slowly followed him.
Slowly enough to catch sight of Travis Clarke, county coroner, pick up a wine glass with his right hand. Tick another one off.
Ricardo stood at the lectern, a wine glass in his right hand. The Baptist minister stood nearby. Unlike everyone else, he didn’t have a glass. Perhaps he was a teetotaler. Perhaps he objected to Archibald’s supposed suicide. It didn’t matter. Thankfully, he wasn’t a suspect.
“To Archibald Heaney!” Ricardo declared, raising his glass.
“To Archibald Heaney!” the crowd responded.
I made a slow turn, as if toasting the entire crowd. I caught sight of George Whitaker, the angry loser from the casino, raising his glass in his left hand.
Bingo.
Bingo?
I still couldn’t se
e Tim and Ivan. George made a good suspect—short tempered, owed a lot of money, knew Archibald well. Was he my man?
Impossible to tell without checking on Tim and Ivan.
Just then, I had a stroke of luck. Someone I didn’t recognize came up and talked to Octavian. I slipped away while his back was turned.
I made my way through the crowd to the far edge of the seating, and there I saw Tim and Ivan standing a little apart from the rest of the gathering. Ivan was holding his wine glass in his right hand and had just finished knocking back the last of it.
Tim was holding it in his left.
Oh great, two lefties in my list of suspects? What were the chances?
I had a way to figure out who did it, but it would depend on Ivan being impulsive again.
I was also banking on the hope that the murderer wouldn’t try something silly in front of all those people.
Oh, and I had my gun in my purse. Naturally.
I walked right up to Ivan with a cross look on my face.
“Well done,” I told him.
Ivan looked confused. Tim looked wary.
“Well done smacking that man. He has no esprit de corps.”
Understanding dawned on both their faces.
“You’re darn right about that,” Ivan said. “People have to help each other out.”
“You know, I asked Gary for a little loan yesterday, just fifty dollars so I didn’t have to go to the ATM. I didn’t want to miss any races. I could have paid him back that very same day, and he turned up his nose and walked away like I was the scum of the earth! That’s why Octavian and I left early.”
“Typical,” Ivan grumbled. Tim nodded eagerly.
Oh yes, Tim, I thought. You want me to believe this story, don’t you?
I took the next step.
“And not lending money to poor Archibald. They told me what Gary said to him. What was it? It was so rude I can’t even remember.”
“‘This is the very last time, you loser,’” Ivan quoted helpfully.
