The Labor Day Murder

by Lee Harris

  “She says in the book that she hopes not,” Joseph said. “Although I guess she could have written that to protect herself.”

  “Then why write anything?” I was beside myself with disappointment. “Why even mention she was going to his house?”

  “I gotta tell you, I owe Bernie La Coste a big apology,” Jack said. “Remember what I said about his tale about ‘Uncle Bill’?”

  “You’re forgiven,” I said. “The way he told it, it sounded like the whole thing was made up.” I turned to Joseph. “It was really hard to take Chief La Coste’s story seriously, but it’s exactly what Tina has in her book.”

  “I feel very sorry for the poor child,” she said.

  “Well, ladies, it looks like we have as many unanswered questions as we had before and we have guests coming in a little while. I think we can be pretty sure Tina got back across the street in a panic. I remember what you said, Chris, about when you followed her. She came to a fence she couldn’t scale and she was practically screaming with frustration.”

  “That’s right. Whether she killed Ken or found him dead or just walked into the house and found the kitchen on fire, it must have really panicked her. And then when she was trying to slip away without anyone seeing her, I recognized her under the coat and started to follow her home.”

  Joseph stood up. “I’m waiting for my assignment. Set the table? Carry food somewhere? Stir something? I’m at your service.”

  Jack closed the notebook and slid it back into the plastic bag. “Dinner first, homicide later. Here we go.”

  —

  It was a wonderful evening and the three of us almost forgot what had riveted us at the kitchen table earlier. The Jorgensens brought an excellent bottle of wine—well, Jack said it was excellent; my taste buds still haven’t matured—and we never seemed to run out of conversation.

  Before we ate, I talked to Al privately for a few minutes and said I had come to believe that his friend whose daughter had been involved with Ken Buckley probably had no part in his death, and Al said he’d never thought he did. He took Joseph and me by the arms and walked us along the beach heading west, as he and I had walked together a few nights earlier. The last of the sun was still streaking the clouds with a vibrant pink, and Joseph exclaimed her pleasure.

  I looked around for the solitary man on his beach chair, for the glow of a cigarette on the dune, but there was nothing. “I don’t see Chief La Coste tonight,” I said to Al.

  “He’s probably gone to bed early. He went to the funeral, didn’t he?”

  “No, he didn’t. He said Eve told him not to come because he might get too upset.”

  “Good advice. Eve’s a wonderful woman. Ken was lucky to have her.”

  I felt uncomfortable. Bernie La Coste was too old not to worry about. But Al was talking about other things, showing Joseph the nighttime vista. There were the lights of Fire Island, stretching for miles. He named the towns in order, giving each a brief description. He showed us where the tide had reached the last time it came in. He was voluble and easygoing, and when we finally turned around and walked east again, I was surprised how far we had come.

  “And down at the eastern end of the island,” he said, pointing ahead of us, “is the preserve, twenty-five miles set aside for the deer. The deer, in this case, get three times the land that the people get.” He kept talking, describing what Joseph would not have time to see on this very brief visit. “Yes, everything’s changed,” he said nostalgically. “Those ferries they run nowadays? Before they got those going, they used to use old rum-runners from the Twenties. Took forever to cross the bay and only held twenty, twenty-five people. These new ones hold a hundred and twenty and only take half an hour. But you know that if you took one out.”

  It was cool and breezy. There were no evening swimmers and few people sitting on the beach. Joseph had decided to go home tomorrow. I had offered to take her to the Catholic church for mass tomorrow morning and again on Sunday, but I think when she saw the price of the water taxi, seven dollars each round trip, she decided against it. I was happy to pay, but she said it was better if she returned on Saturday and attended mass Sunday morning at St. Stephen’s. Joseph is a very decisive person, and I’m sure she knew that my offer was genuine, so I did not press her.

  Jack’s dinner was marvelous and the wine struck him as a perfect accompaniment. Joseph offered a toast to all of us, and I felt very happy that she had been able to come, to share our vacation home, to eat well and talk to pleasant people.

  Before the evening was over, I asked the Jorgensens if they had somehow come into possession of our second set of house keys.

  “We have our own set,” Marti said. “Have you misplaced yours?”

  “They disappeared from the board in the kitchen and we haven’t been able to find them. I didn’t really think you had them, but I don’t know who else to ask.”

  “Well, you know keys. They have a habit of getting lost and turning up in the strangest places.”

  “Maybe we’ll find them tomorrow when we clean up.”

  “I’ll keep a good watch on the house, Chris. Al’s going back home on Sunday but I’ll stay for a while. It’s always so nice and quiet when the summer people leave.”

  But I couldn’t help wondering about the keys. Could someone have come in when we weren’t home and snatched them? Could it have been Kyle?

  After the Jorgensens left and we were all in the kitchen cleaning up, I mentioned to Jack that Chief La Coste hadn’t been sitting in his usual spot on the beach.

  “Want me to run over and check?” he asked.

  “It wouldn’t be a bad idea. Take the bike and I’ll finish up the dishes.”

  “We’ll finish up,” Joseph said.

  Jack needed no more encouragement. I filled the dishwasher and got started on the few pots and the dishes that we preferred to do by hand.

  “A wonderful evening,” Joseph said. “I never imagined such luxury.”

  “You must be exhausted. Why don’t you go up to bed so you don’t miss your sunrise?”

  She hesitated, but this time I pushed and she went off to bed. Jack took longer than I expected and I began to worry. What if the chief had become ill? Even avoiding the funeral would not keep him from thinking about the terrible events of the last few days.

  But Jack returned eventually, and in good spirits. “He says he dozed off after dinner and then it was too cool to go to the beach. I joined him for a brandy and did a lot of listening.”

  “I’m glad you went.”

  “Me, too.” He kissed me. “It was damn good brandy.”

  21

  When I came downstairs with Eddie the next morning, Joseph and Jack were fixing a sumptuous breakfast. While I fed Eddie, or at least tried to guide the food into his mouth, Joseph described the sunrise with great enthusiasm.

  “I don’t remember the last time I saw the sun rise over the ocean,” she said. “It was just wonderful. Even without my usual sleep, I feel energetic.”

  We ate heartily, Tina’s notebook on the table.

  “You know I have to turn that over to Curt Springer,” Jack said.

  “It’ll probably just reinforce his theory that Tina killed Ken, and Dodie killed Tina.”

  “Tina may well have killed Ken,” Jack said. “What do you think, Sister Joseph? You haven’t expressed many opinions on our double homicide.”

  Joseph laughed. “And it’s presumably the reason for my visit. Well, I’ve been accumulating facts and opinions, and I do have a few things on my mind. First, it’s not out of the question that Tina murdered Mr. Buckley. But if she did, I would have to assume that she did not walk into his bedroom, put a bullet in the back of his head, and walk out, whether she set fire to the house or not. No one has come up with the slightest motive for her to kill him, including her notebook. So we would have to imagine that she had a conversation with him in which he disclosed something quite terrible to her, so terrible that she used the gun she had brought a
long just in case.”

  “So what’s the motive?” I asked.

  “Since, according to Tina’s own notebook, she did not find any indication that ‘Uncle Bill’ was killed in a fight, drowned in the ocean, fell down dead of a heart attack or stroke or any other event in the police file, it would have to be something that Mr. Buckley was himself involved in or had direct knowledge of. Now, it’s rather too unlikely that Buckley himself killed ‘Uncle Bill.’ It really stretches the imagination to think that Tina stumbled on the killer quite by chance when looking into the Great Fife. It’s more likely that Bill’s disappearance is connected with that fire, and that Buckley knew about it because, as a fireman, he was personally involved in it.”

  “I don’t mean to break your train of thought,” Jack said, “but it’s been nagging at me that there’s one person we haven’t talked to who might have direct knowledge of that fire, the police chief at that time, Jerry O’Donnell.”

  “He’s in Key West, I think,” I said.

  “I can do better than that. Curt gave me his phone number on one of my visits and I just haven’t thought about calling him. How’s about now?”

  “I think you should,” Joseph said.

  Jack dialed, as I worried about the phone bill we were leaving behind. Mel would have to get it for us so we could—

  “Yes, I’m looking for Jerry O’Donnell…Chief O’Donnell,” Jack began, explaining the who and what of his phone call.

  We sat back and listened, although it sounded as though Jack wasn’t getting very much from the retired policeman. There was more small talk than substantive conversation, but when Jack hung up, he looked like someone who had just made chief of detectives.

  “O’Donnell had the day off. Someone in his wife’s family got married that day, and he didn’t get back till late Tuesday to see the ashes.”

  “Then we haven’t missed anything from him,” Joseph said.

  “There was one titillating bit of information,” Jack said, his lips curling in a smile. “O’Donnell said that when he was away from Fire Island, he always appointed someone to stand in for him. Usually it was the fire chief—who’s dead now by the way; he died a couple of years ago—but the fire chief turned him down that day because of the picnic, and he was going home that afternoon. So he got someone else. He picked Ken Buckley.”

  There was a collective “Ahh” from Joseph and me, and Eddie, sitting on the floor, looked up and pointed at Joseph, calling, “Doe, Doe,” as though he wanted to join in the fun.

  When we finished laughing, I said, “This is really very neat. Whether the firemen were called or the police were called, Ken Buckley would be there. And I bet he wrote up the police file on the Great Fire.”

  “Which we’ve never seen,” Jack reminded us. “All we know about that file is what Chief La Coste told Tina and Tina put in her book. Which wasn’t much.”

  “If Ken Buckley was trying to hide something,” Joseph said, “I doubt whether the police file would tell us much.”

  “But what are we talking about? Did Tina’s Uncle Bill burn down the Norrises’ house? And if he did, what happened to him? And why would he do it?” I turned to Jack. “I wish we could find Dodie Murchison. Maybe Tina told her something she didn’t write in her notebook.”

  I got up and dialed the number yet again with no success. This time I waited for the machine to answer and I left a message: “Dodie, this is Chris Bennett Brooks. Please talk to us. We’ll be in Blue Harbor till Sunday afternoon, then at our home.” I dictated the numbers, although I was sure I had already left them yesterday.

  “Sister Joseph, I have to apologize. I interrupted you when I called Jerry O’Donnell. You were telling us what you’ve come up with, and I hope you can still remember what you were going to say.”

  “Yes, absolutely. Don’t worry about interruptions, Jack. Each one seems to add something important, and that call was no exception. I agree that it would be nice if you heard from Attorney Murchison, but it would be especially nice if it turns out she didn’t murder Tina. Because if she murdered Tina, it’s simply an angry lover getting revenge. If someone else murdered Tina, the reason may lie in what happened at the Great Fire, and that’s what interests me. I can’t tell you who Uncle Bill is or whether he was Tina’s father, as she hoped he was. But I think something happened that night in the Norrises’ house that led all these years later to Tina spending the summer across the street and to the death of Ken Buckley. More than that, I believe there are people here on Fire Island, including the Hersheys, who know exactly what happened and who have kept it secret all these years.”

  “Because they were involved in it?” I asked.

  “Possibly. Possibly because withholding information is a crime and they have reasons why they can’t tell what they know. Possibly because they were involved in some way in whatever happened. And I don’t think Mrs. Norris left a pot of stew on the stove when they went home. And she doesn’t think so, either.”

  “I see why you dash up to St. Stephen’s whenever you need help,” Jack said. “I like the way you think, Sister Joseph. I like the way you look at things.”

  “This has been a new and really very gratifying experience. I was able to look at the faces of those who had direct knowledge, to see their discomfort, to observe their dodging the truth or how they explained away facts that displeased them.” She turned to me. “I see why doing this kind of work holds your interest. It certainly complements the teaching of poetry.”

  “It’s different,” I admitted. “And it’s very satisfying. I gather from what you’ve said that you think some of the people we spoke to yesterday were lying to us.”

  “Oh, yes. And it comes down to your lost keys, Chris.”

  “The keys. I don’t—”

  “You’ll see when you think about it. People don’t always lie to keep back the truth. Think about the photos we saw at the Hersheys’, their children now grown up and married. Recall the way people answered your questions or how they didn’t.”

  “If Dodie Murchison didn’t kill Tina in a fit of jealousy, what do you think her part in all this is? Why did she go to see Tina the night that Tina was killed?”

  “Perhaps just to find out what Tina knew. You told Murchison that you saw Tina leaving the Buckley premises. Maybe Murchison just wanted to check it out for herself, to see if Tina would confirm that she was at the Buckley house. After all, you claimed Tina was there; she claimed she wasn’t. You both gave statements to the police and they contradicted each other. You couldn’t both be telling the truth. Miss Murchison had a couple of reasons to care what happened to Ken Buckley. One may have been romantic. The other, if your sources are accurate, may have been legal. He was her client. She might decide to disclose Mr. Buckley’s legal business to someone who stood to benefit if he signed the papers. But before she does anything, she wants to know what happened, who killed him, who set the house on fire.”

  “I wonder,” I said, “if Tina’s search and Dodie Murchison’s business with Ken Buckley are connected.”

  “They may be. Murchison told you that what troubled him had happened a long time ago. There’s no telling what ‘a long time ago’ means to any person. But if she’s in her early thirties, a long time ago may mean when she herself was a teenager, and that could be fifteen years ago.”

  “I think this is getting more complicated instead of simpler.”

  “Means you’re getting there, honey,” Jack said.

  Joseph smiled. She seemed amused at how Jack and I interacted. Jack’s a pretty low-key guy, and he’s helped make me a somewhat more casual person than I was when I left the convent.

  “There’s another reason Tina may have lied about seeing you at the fire,” she said. “Among the possibilities are that she went to see Buckley, and she found him dead and she ran. Or she went to see him and they had then-talk, and she left before the murderer arrived. I’m not sure why she was there in that coat if that’s what happened, but who knows? Maybe she l
eft him upstairs and went to look for something in the house. Maybe she heard the shot and maybe she didn’t. But one possibility is that she saw the murderer, before or after he killed Ken Buckley, and, more important, that he saw her.”

  “And she got away,” I said. “So she had to pretend that she hadn’t been there and hadn’t seen him to protect her own life.”

  “It could explain why she lied.”

  “It also gives us another motive for her being killed, to keep her quiet. But you know, it doesn’t get Dodie Murchison off the hook. She could have killed Tina because Tina killed her lover, and she could have killed Tina because Tina saw her kill Ken.”

  “I’m sure Murchison knows something that will help you,” Joseph said. “I hope you find her before the police do.”

  “So do I.” Jack leaned over and helped Eddie find something that had rolled away. “Chris, would you give Ida Bloom a call? She seemed so sure that there was nothing going on between Ken and Dodie except business. Ask her if she knows what the business was.”

  Before I had a chance to ask Ida my question, she talked about the funeral yesterday, how many were there, which well-known people showed up, how Eve and her sons had looked. Finally, I asked her about Dodie Murchison.

  “You mean the lawyer? The one who came to the house a couple of times?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Eve just said Ken had business with her. I didn’t ask and she didn’t tell.”

  “Then Eve knew about it.”

  “Oh, yes. She mentioned it to me at the beginning of the summer.”

  I got off as quickly as I could and reported my news.

  “So whatever it was, whether it was the prenuptial agreement or something else, he confided in his wife,” Joseph said.

  “Or lied to her,” my cynical husband said.

  “I would guess by now Mrs. Buckley could tell a lie from the truth. The fact that she mentioned it to her friend would mean she believed him.”

  “That leaves the missing diamond earring,” I said.

  Joseph nodded. “My understanding is that earrings for pierced ears are quite secure. Since it wasn’t torn off, we have to assume that it fell off or that someone removed it carefully, either Tina or another person. If it was another person, why take only one? That may be the relevant question.”