Jessica Fletcher & Donald Bain

by She Wrote 33 - Nashville Noir (v5) Murder

  “They?”

  “His type. Suit yourself. Goodbye.”

  She waited until I left by the second door and locked it behind me. I opened the fire door and peered down the stairs, seeing in my mind someone rushing down the steps, realizing what he or she had just done, desperate to flee the premises.

  I slowly descended, reached the steel fire door, which opened from the inside with a bar release. I pressed it, and the door swung open easily. I stepped outside and looked around. The parking lot was half full. The door slammed closed behind me. I turned and tried to reopen it, but there was no latch on the outside, only a pull and a keyhole. Clearly, anyone who would enter the building through this door needed a key. Marker & Whitson might require their staff who parked in the lot to walk around the building and come in the front entrance, but there could be a select few who were given the key and used this door, even people who didn’t work in the building.

  I peered up into a pewter sky that promised rain, and followed a sidewalk around to the front of the building, where I entered again. A guard, who hadn’t been there earlier, was standing at the counter. A burly man with a paunch hanging over his black leather belt, he wore a gray uniform with a shoulder patch on which the letters SMSS were superimposed over an embroidered image of a mountaintop. Detective Biddle had said the guard who caught Cyndi was from the Smoky Mountain Security Services.

  “By any chance, are you Clevon Morgan?” I asked.

  He straightened. “Yes, ma’am. How can I help you?”

  I didn’t want to confess that I was looking to find evidence to exonerate Cyndi, especially to the man who’d been hailed for catching a killer. Instead I put on my best impression of a gossipy biddy and batted my lashes at him.

  “I read about you in the Tennessean,” I said, slapping the counter. “Terrible shame about Mr. Marker. I heard you were the one who found him—and the girl.”

  He smiled. “Yes, ma’am. Got her red-handed. In fact, really red-handed; the blood was still on her fingers. Told the police that. Gave them a good description. That’s how they found her. Took a coupla days, though. I should’ve locked her up good, so’s she couldn’t run. Still riled about that.”

  “No need at all. My goodness, you’re a hero! Your family must be so proud.”

  “Yes, ma’am. They are.”

  “It’s got to be so difficult trying to guard this place, what with people coming and going all the time and using the back door to the parking lot.”

  “You got that right. That back door is a pain in my butt, if you’ll excuse my French.”

  “Of course,” I said, injecting my voice with sympathy. “When she escaped, did the killer run out that back door?”

  “No, ma’am. She sneaked out the front when I was callin’ the cops.”

  “How can you be so sure she went out the front?”

  “Easy. Mr. Marker, he had a second door in his office, right outside them stairs leadin’ to the parking lot. If she’d gone out that way, I’d know.”

  “And you can see right through his door. Is it glass?”

  “No, ma’am. It’s wood, but it was open.”

  “Of course. How silly of me.”

  “If I’da seen her, I woulda caught her again. She wouldn’ta got away from me then.”

  I left the building and paused on the sidewalk, peering down the street in hopes of spotting a taxi. As I stood there, someone in a shiny silver Jaguar with tinted windows pulled up next to a fire hydrant and turned off the engine. Lewis Whitson emerged from the passenger door and walked around the car to the driver’s side. He held out his hand to the driver. A long black-stockinged leg appeared, and then the rest of the woman in black. It was Marilyn Marker. Whitson’s back was to me, but Marilyn scanned my face, and there was a fleeting hint of recognition in her eyes. However, she said nothing. Whitson took her elbow and they hurried into the building.

  I looked at my watch. It was almost three. How interesting, I thought, that the widow of the victim and his business partner arrived together. And what business could they need to address at the office on the day of Marker’s memorial service?

  An empty cab turned the corner. I hailed it and asked the driver to take me to central police headquarters. If Detective Biddle was serious about meeting to, as he put it, compare notes, I didn’t want to waste any time taking him up on it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Biddle was in a meeting when I arrived at the central precinct, but sent out word that he’d be free in fifteen minutes. I sat in a hallway outside the honeycomb of offices until he emerged. “Come on in,” he said. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  “This is the cold case office,” Biddle said, as we passed a half-dozen cubicles in which other detectives were on the phone or working with their computers. We reached the office he’d said was his temporarily while the department finished renovating the west precinct, and he closed the door behind us.

  “Cold cases,” I said. “How successful are you in solving old cases?”

  “Do okay. Have a seat.”

  We looked at each other for a few seconds without saying anything. He broke the ice by opening the desk drawer and holding out a Goo Goo Cluster to me. This time I accepted his offer. He took one, too. “Don’t want to give you the wrong impression, Mrs. Fletcher, by asking you to come by,” he said, tearing the wrapper off the candy. “I’m not looking for a partner. But—well, it’s just that there’s something gnawing at me about the Marker case, and I hate it when something gnaws at me.” He took a bite of the candy and chewed thoughtfully.

  “Like a circumstantial case?” I said, nibbling at the marshmallow, chocolate, peanut, and caramel confection.

  He smiled. “Something like that,” he said. “I got a call from Marker’s office a few minutes ago.”

  “Oh? And?”

  “It was the deceased’s partner, Whitson, complaining that you’d been there using my name to get inside Marker’s office.”

  “I did go there,” I replied, “and I’m afraid I did use your name to gain access. But it’s not what you think. All I said was—”

  He waved his hand in the air. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I don’t care about Whitson. Guy’s a loudmouth. I bring it up because you’re obviously somebody who won’t take no for an answer.”

  I nodded cautiously. I certainly couldn’t deny the truth, but I wondered where he was taking this.

  Biddle continued. “You’ve gotten yourself on Gabriel’s defense team—nice work, by the way, getting her out of jail without bail—and you’re letting it be known around town that you’re playing detective.” He waved a copy of the morning newspaper at me. “Not good for my reputation. The duty officer passed a comment.”

  “I don’t consider it playing detective. But I do believe in Cyndi’s innocence and feel a responsibility to do everything I can to help her.”

  “Like showing up at Marker’s memorial this morning.”

  “Is there something wrong with my being there? You were there, too.”

  “No, no, nothing wrong at all.”

  “I was hoping that your presence meant you’re interested in developing other leads,” I said.

  Biddle hesitated a long time, contemplating the candy wrapper as if it held a secret he was trying to divine.

  “Are you?” I asked. “Developing other leads?”

  “Matter of fact, Mrs. Fletcher, I’ve come into some information that might—and I stress might—have a bearing on the case.”

  The news buoyed me, but I was careful not to react too strongly. “I’d love to hear about it,” I said, breaking off a piece of candy and popping it in my mouth.

  “Between us?”

  This time I was the one who hesitated, then said, “If it helps Cyndi, I’d naturally want to share it with her attorney, Mr. Washburn.”

  “But nobody beyond him.”

  “Fair enough.”

  He leaned back and finished off his Goo Goo, chewing while he decided what to say,
and how to put it. “Okay,” he finally said. “We put out some feelers around town, people who know the music scene and what’s going down.”

  “Informants?”

  “Yeah, one of them, too. Learned that Marker had been having a fling with a young country singer. I’m thinking it might have been Sally Prentice, the one who sang at the memorial service today.”

  “Sounds like something for the tabloids,” I said.

  “You didn’t hear it from me.”

  “Of course not,” I said, wrapping up what was left of my candy and tucking it in my bag. “This was delicious, by the way. I’m going to save the other half for later.”

  “We’ll make a Southerner of you yet.”

  “I’m afraid you have a long way to go with this dyed-in-the-wool Maine Yankee.”

  Biddle shrugged. “You know, this sort of philandering isn’t exactly a shock,” he continued, relaxing into his subject. “In any glamour field, guys in top places, guys with influence, have been known to take advantage of the vulnerable ones. In Hollywood you’d expect it. It’s no surprise it’s here in Nashville, too.”

  “There are disreputable people in every business, Detective. I don’t have to tell you that.”

  “Sources tell me Marker’s gone through quite a few women, most of ’em young and looking for a break, or a mentor, or a king-maker, maybe I should say ‘queen-maker.’ Easy pickin’s.”

  “You’re not suggesting that Cyndi Gabriel was one of them, are you?”

  “No, ma’am. I wouldn’t have ruled her out, but fact of the matter is she doesn’t fit Marker’s MO, method of operation. For one thing, she’s not blond—his preferred . . . well, let’s say game. And she’s not an especially provocative dresser. Plus, even though I don’t know her well, your girl doesn’t strike me as the kind of young woman to sacrifice her scruples on the altar of fame.”

  “I agree, which is why I don’t believe she’d kill anyone just because he didn’t live up to his promises. This is a young woman who’s had a lot of disappointments in life. Nothing’s been given to her. Anytime she’s been faced with obstacles, she’s simply worked harder to achieve her goals. She was disillusioned with Marker—I know she was. She was upset and angry—with justification. But vengeful or violent? No. I just don’t believe that’s true.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  But I had a feeling he was coming around to thinking Cyndi wasn’t the best candidate for prosecution in this case.

  “To fuel you with a bit more gossip, Mrs. Fletcher, the talk says Marker’s wife, the grieving widow, has been known to show up in somebody else’s bed as well.”

  “Whitson’s?”

  “Don’t have a name yet.”

  “Or one you’re willing to reveal,” I said. “Well, if Whitson and Marilyn are having an affair, that could give both of them motives to get Marker out of the way.”

  “Could.”

  “Where is all this leading, Detective Biddle?”

  He’d been leaning back in his squeaky chair and now let the seat propel him forward. “Don’t really know,” he said, sighing. “Yeah, there are others might’ve had a motive to kill him. Problem is, I keep coming back to the fact that your girl is the one who sent the threatening letter.”

  “I know you think that’s strong evidence against Cyndi,” I said. “In fact, if my memory serves me, you said it tied up the case in a neat bow for you. But if Marker was in the habit of stealing songs from young, unrepresented songwriters—and if that’s a valid motive to kill—then there’s a good chance there are others who’ve suffered that same fate. You could even take it further and say that if anyone knew about Cyndi’s letter, he or she could use it to set her up as the killer.”

  “You think she’s been framed?”

  “It’s not out of the realm of possibility,” I said.

  He chuckled. “In crime, nothing is out of the realm of possibility.” He leaned back in his chair again. “So,” he said, “tell me about your visit to Marker’s office.”

  “I wanted to check out the second door in Marker’s office,” I said, telling him what the guard said about it being open, and laying out for him my theory of how the murderer used that door and the fire stairs to access the office, and to flee the scene.

  “We dusted all of them, including the one leading to the parking lot, for prints. There were so many prints we couldn’t come up with a specific one.”

  “I’m not surprised,” I said.

  “There’s always at least one surprise in a murder investigation,” he said through a chortle.

  “And I hope that’s the case with this one,” I said. “If we knew the names of everyone who had a key to that outside door at the foot of the fire stairs, and to that second door to his office, we’d have a pretty good list of suspects.”

  “Nice theory,” he said, “but I doubt we’d ever be able to get all the names.”

  “The office probably has a list. Did you ask for keys to those doors as part of your investigation, Detective?”

  “No. What would that accomplish?”

  “If we know what those keys look like, we could check other suspects’ keys to find a match.”

  “What’s to keep the murderer from throwing away the keys?”

  “Nothing, of course. But it would still help to know who was issued a key. And if the killer didn’t think to throw away the keys, finding them in someone’s possession, someone without an alibi, perhaps, could point us in a different direction.”

  Biddle opened the desk drawer and stared down at a small pile of silver-wrapped Goo Goo Clusters, as if debating whether he should have another. Apparently deciding against it, he closed the drawer and said, “I’ll send an officer to get a copy of the keys from the building manager and a list of who had them. Anything else you can think of ? Any other suspects you have in mind?”

  “I heard Marker tried to fire Edwina Anderson, but his wife intervened.”

  “Firing’s not a killing offense.”

  “It has been many times in the past. Have you done a background check on her?”

  He grunted, then shook his head. “We’ll look into it. Anyone else?”

  “Mr. Marker’s son was at the service this morning,” I said. “I’m told that their relationship was not particularly close.”

  “I interviewed him at the hospital while Marker was lingering on the edge. The son arrived in Nashville the day before his father was assaulted. He was pretty up-front about his feelings. He and his father didn’t get along, and had as little to do with each other as possible. But you could see he was worried that his father was dying. Of course, he was living off his old man, receiving regular checks. Maybe the father truly wanted to help, or maybe he was paying him to stay away. There was no love lost between him and his stepmother, either, the current Mrs. Marker. They barely said two words to each other in the waiting room.”

  “Not a Norman Rockwell family,” I commented.

  “Meaning?”

  “Not the sort of loving family the artist depicted in his paintings,” I explained.

  “Not at all.”

  “So where does this leave us?”

  “Until we have another viable suspect, it leaves us exactly where we are.” He picked up the newspaper again and tapped it on his desk. “I don’t object to you poking around, but I gotta ask you to be discreet. Not a good reflection on the department to have stories in the paper hinting we’re not doing our job.”

  “I certainly never said any such thing. May I see that?” I asked, pointing to the Tennessean. “It seems that everyone in Nashville has read about me except me.”

  “Go ahead and take it. I’m done with it. Brian Krupp is a pit bull when it comes to getting a story. He’s gravel in our craw here at MPD, but I have to admit he’s good.”

  I mentioned the call I’d received from him at the hotel.

  “Just watch what you say to him,” Biddle counseled. “He picks up on everything.”

  “Thank
s for the warning, Detective. I really appreciate having this chance to sit down with you. I’m sure we’ll be running into each other again.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a minute.”

  He walked me from the office, stayed with me on the elevator, and escorted me to the street, where we shook hands.

  “Mind another warning, Mrs. Fletcher?” he said.

  I cocked my head as an invitation for him to continue.

  “Whoever killed Rod Marker, assuming for the moment it wasn’t Cyndi Gabriel, knows that you’re here in Nashville to find out who that person is. I’d watch my back if I were you. Once someone has taken a life, it’s not as hard to do it again.”

  “I—”

  “Stay in touch,” he said, and walked back into the building.

  . Chapter Seventeen

  When I got back to the hotel, Cyndi was lying on her bed, watching a movie on TV. I went to my own room and used the time while she was distracted to read the Brian Krupp article in the Tennessean that I’d taken from Biddle’s office. While the details of Marker’s assault and subsequent death were rehashed in the piece, and Cyndi’s alleged involvement in it highlighted, much of the article focused on me and my trip to Nashville. It made me sound like a caped crusader who’d flown in to rescue a damsel in distress, an overly dramatic portrayal of my trip and its purpose. My inclusion on Cyndi’s defense team was duly noted, and the prosecutor was quoted as being shocked, as well as dismayed at the judge’s decision to release her into my custody without any bail to bind her to Nashville. And there was my photo, larger than either Cyndi’s or Marker’s.

  I wasn’t certain if I should show the article about Marker to Cyndi. She hadn’t shown any interest in watching the news or reading a paper since Jamal and I had picked her up in the jail and brought her to the hotel. Perhaps it was her way of avoiding the ugly reality facing her: She very well could be brought to trial for a murder she hadn’t committed. If she asked to see a newspaper, I would show it to her. But until then, I would take my cues from her behavior and let her decide when she was ready to see how the news was portraying the case against her.