Murder, She Wrote--A Time for Murder

by Jessica Fletcher

  “She was released?”

  I shrugged. “She must’ve been. She accepted that guilty plea and was sentenced to twenty-five years, all of it to serve. Her prison term would have ended—”

  “Don’t tell me,” Mort said, fingering his chin dramatically. “Around six months ago maybe?”

  “Maybe even sooner, if she got time off for good behavior, or whatever they call it these days. I also seem to remember Alma Potts had two teenagers when she was arrested for Walter Reavis’s murder. Twins, I think, a boy and a girl. I heard they went to live with an aunt and uncle when their mother went to prison. You may want to look into their whereabouts, too, Mort.”

  “Any other orders?”

  “No, that should do. For now,” I added, enjoying the rise that got out of him. “But if Alma Potts really did kill Ginny Genaway and Wilma Tisdale, how do we know she’s finished? Maybe she’s got a longer victims’ list, many of whom are still here right now.”

  Mort nodded deliberately. “I’d better call in some more deputies.”

  “I suspect so.”

  “And, Mrs. Fletcher?”

  “Yes, Sheriff Metzger?”

  “Don’t stray too far yourself.”

  “Worried for my safety, too?”

  “No, ma’am. You’re not just working the case now. You’re the only witness I’ve got, and I need to take your statement.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Viewing murder from a distance, either writing about it in fiction or coming in on it after the fact in reality, leaves a far less indelible mark than the up-close-and-personal experience I’d had that night. I tried to remember another time—in reality, anyway—when a murder victim had literally fallen into my arms. It wasn’t something I’d soon forget. In fact, I shivered now just thinking about it.

  Because I was a material witness myself, Mort told me that under no circumstances could I participate in the interviews with all the potential witnesses.

  “But I know these people,” I said.

  “No, you don’t, Jessica.”

  “A few, anyway.”

  “Our killer went to great pains to avoid being seen,” Mort reasoned properly. “I wonder if we can take that to mean he or she was afraid to be recognized.”

  “I had another thought on that subject,” I told him. “What if the killer was one of the invited guests?”

  “You think he or she may have come complete with that dark outfit to change into at the proper time?”

  “Wilma was pretty adamant about it being a ‘she,’ Mort.”

  She’s here. Tell him she’s here! I recalled her pleading to me.

  “Interesting, Mrs. F., because, if you’re right, the killer would be one of the guests we won’t be able to account for after the murder took place.”

  I recalled the surge of panicked guests streaming for the exits. “I’m guessing several would have just jumped in their cars and gone home.”

  “We need to account for them as well as those who are still on the premises now. Try to get a notion as to where everyone was at the time of the murder.”

  “You may also want to have your men lock down the parking lot. The killer ran off, but their car would still be here. That means any vehicle that’s still here after all the guests are freed up to leave might belong to our killer.”

  “Gee, I hadn’t thought of that,” Mort said sarcastically. “Those twenty-five years with the NYPD didn’t teach me a darn thing.”

  “What about the entire guest list that you obviously won’t be able to get from Wilma Tisdale herself?”

  “No, but the club has a version of it that includes the main-course selections. They’re making me a copy, and I believe there were seventy-two names on it. Any way you can think of determining which of them actually showed?”

  “The gift table would be my first thought.”

  “I do believe you’ve done this before,” Mort said, flashing a wry grin.

  “Unfortunately. Cataloging the gifts should go a long way toward determining who’d already arrived and who was a no-show by dinnertime.”

  “One of my deputies is already in the process of sorting through all that. I’ll add the gift table to his to-do list.”

  “I’d think he should pay special attention to the women on the list,” I said, recalling that Wilma Tisdale had clearly indicated it was a woman who had so terrified her.

  “Can you say whether the figure you were chasing was definitively a woman, Mrs. Fletcher?”

  “No.”

  “Then, if you don’t mind, we’ll pay the same attention to all the names for now,” Mort said, gloating ever so slightly.

  “I also wouldn’t rule out any of the no-shows as suspects,” I told him.

  “That’s where a careful check of the cars left over in the lot could come in very handy, indeed.”

  “The killer couldn’t have escaped across the golf course and made it back to the parking lot before your arrival, Mort. It’s impossible to build a timeline to that effect. That means if the killer’s on the premises now, she or he would’ve almost surely joined those who’d gathered outside a bit later, hopefully late enough to stand out.”

  “I’ll make sure questions to that end are included in the queries we pose to everyone.”

  As we spoke, his deputies continued checking for evidence, a painstaking process in which the upgrades in personnel Mort continued to incorporate at the Cabot Cove Sheriff’s Department were clearly on display. All three deputies currently crisscrossing the room were wearing evidence gloves and, to a man or woman, had plastic evidence bags at the ready. But their efforts seemed fruitless at this point; none of those bags contained anything of note, save for a number of cloth napkins lifted from the table close to the area where the dark-clad phantom had seemed to originate. Those napkins would provide the fingerprints of anyone who’d used them, among which might be our killer’s. I doubted that, given the clear precautions the killer had taken. But Mort’s thinking was spot-on when it came to first determining, above all else, who among the guests gathered couldn’t definitively account for their whereabouts around the time of the murder.

  “There’s one guest, by the way, who’s already said he’ll only talk to you and you alone,” Mort told me.

  “Who’s that exactly?”

  Mort checked his magical memo pad, which never seemed to run out of paper. “Jim Dirkson.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Mort’s deputies, eventually to be supplemented by the Maine State Police, were using the club lounge, where cocktails had been served prior to dinner, to conduct their interviews with the guests, who were being kept as comfortable as possible in the lobby as they awaited their turns on what promised to be a very long night. I imagined plenty of them were grumbling about being held in such a fashion, and that would only get worse as the hour drew later.

  “I don’t trust those cops,” Jim Dirkson said, seated across from me at a two-person bar table with matching stools on either side.

  “But you trust me?”

  “Your investigative abilities. Don’t forget I’ve seen them at work firsthand.”

  “I don’t recall you ever being much of a fan of them or of my efforts to help find Walter Reavis’s killer, especially when I exposed the story you fabricated.”

  “You just made my case for me in that respect, Mrs. Fletcher. I don’t want to end up a suspect in yet another murder, and I’ve got something to say I don’t want lost in the cracks by these yokels.”

  I let Dirkson’s remark slide. “Pertaining to what, exactly?”

  “Were you aware that Wilma Tisdale and Alma Potts had a bit of a history between them?”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Come to think of it, most of it transpired after you’d left our fair town for Cabot Cove. Alma had worke
d twenty years as a school secretary, first at the middle school and then at the high school. Back in those days that would’ve meant she had a sizable pension coming, and her lawyer fought to secure it for her children.”

  “Twins, weren’t they?” I recalled.

  “Yes, but they went to a different school system since Alma didn’t actually reside in Appleton. I don’t remember how old they were at the time or whether they were boys or girls.”

  “I’m guessing they never got the money.”

  “No, they didn’t. And as head of the Teachers’ Retirement Board for the state, Wilma Tisdale played a very big role in the union’s refusal to pay out, under the circumstances. Nothing like this had ever happened before, so there was no precedent to follow. The decision wound its way through some lower courts and was affirmed every step of the way.”

  I looked at Dirkson atop his matching stool. “Our sheriff’s department is checking on Alma’s current whereabouts, in the likelihood that she was released from prison after serving her time.”

  Dirkson looked at me differently than he ever had before, the stubborn bravado replaced by what looked like admiration, or at least respect. “And to think that twenty-five years ago was your first experience with all of this . . .”

  “All of what?”

  “Murder. I know you hated me for not following through on Walter’s plan to bring you on full-time to replace Bill Gower, but I probably did you the greatest favor anybody ever did. Who knows, Mrs. Fletcher? Maybe it’s me you owe more than anyone else for becoming rich and famous.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  When I got back to my suite at Hill House, Joe and Nails were camped out in chairs on either side of my door.

  “Boss called,” Joe explained, rising. “Told us to protect you on account of what happened tonight.”

  “And how did Mr. Genaway find out so quickly what happened tonight?”

  Joe shrugged. “Beats me,” he said, opening the door for me in true gentlemanly fashion. “Anyway, we’re supposed to stand watch.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until the boss tells us to stop.”

  “I assure you that’s not necessary.”

  “Said the woman who almost got turned into a campfire marshmallow a while back.”

  I didn’t argue the point. “I noticed you opened the door without a key,” I said instead.

  “Who needs a key?” Joe smirked.

  “Apparently, not you.”

  “Nails, actually,” he said, tilting his eyes toward the ever-silent man still seated on the other side of my door. “Just one of his many talents.”

  I slid by him through the doorway into my suite.

  “You need anything, Mrs. Fletcher, just holler,” Joe said, sitting back down and easing a well-worn paperback reprint of one of my mysteries from his jacket pocket.

  “Please thank Mr. Genaway for me,” I said, and closed the door behind me.

  * * *

  * * *

  I was exhausted, but much too keyed up to sleep. I couldn’t get my mind to shut off, and none of my tried-and-true means to drift off got me any closer. First, I tried channel surfing on the television, then reading a magazine and finally a book. But I couldn’t rein in my thoughts about the murder of Wilma Tisdale earlier in the evening and what it might mean. The killer had now struck twice in less than a week, and I was starting to seriously consider the possibility that the same person was behind the death of Lisa Joy Reavis as well. Why else would Ginny Genaway have sought Wilma out with questions about her older sister the week before she was murdered?

  Now they were both dead, and whatever information Wilma had shared with Ginny might well have explained the motive. Harry McGraw’s astute analysis of that butane found on the remnants of the blown tire indicated that the accident that had killed Lisa Joy was almost surely murder. Beyond that, I was convinced Wilma Tisdale had been on the verge of telling me far more than she had already when she was murdered.

  Call your sheriff! Call him now! She’s here. Tell him she’s here!

  I couldn’t shake Wilma’s final, desperate plea from my mind, and I fixated on the she part. Who could she possibly be? Had Wilma been on the verge of identifying her killer to me, fleshing out exactly what she and Ginny had discussed in Appleton last week that had led her to invite me to her retirement party?

  I found myself suddenly glad for the presence of Joe and Nails outside my door. When it was clear that I was fighting a losing battle to fall asleep, I switched on the computer in search of information about Alma Potts. There wasn’t much outside of her arrest, given that she had never formally stood trial in the wake of her plea agreement. That said, a few of the articles made mention of the fact that she had two children, teenage twins at the time. A boy . . . and a girl.

  She’s here. Tell him she’s here!

  Alma Potts’s daughter targeting Wilma Tisdale over a lost pension didn’t add up for me, but plenty of murders don’t make any real sense. That made me think of the newspaper headline fragment AMED PRIN F THE Y that Seth Hazlitt and I had found in Ginny’s apartment. The headline should have matched one from the Cabot Cove Gazette, but Seth’s efforts had thus far failed to produce it, and we still hadn’t heard back from Evelyn Phillips, the Gazette’s owner and chief editor.

  So with night at its darkest, I jogged my computer screen to an online Scrabble game and began trying to assemble the remainder of the headline. The problem, of course, was that I had no idea how many words preceded AMED and how many came after the word that began with “Y.” But it gave me something to do to while away the time, and—wouldn’t you know it?—the process finally made me begin to drift off after I failed miserably to assemble any combination of words that made any discernible sense at all. That said, something had started to occur to me—something I could almost reach out and touch but kept slipping away before I could get my mental hand around it.

  Slumped in my chair, I awoke to the sun streaming through the windows and my cell phone ringing. I grabbed for it, feeling the kink that had formed in my neck from dozing off awkwardly in my desk chair.

  “How many times have you been my wake-up call?” I greeted Mort Metzger.

  “Far too many, because they’ve all involved a murder. I’ve got some news I thought you’d want to hear immediately.”

  “What time is it?” I asked him, trying to stretch the stiffness out of my neck.

  “Just after nine o’clock. What happened to Jessica Fletcher the early riser?”

  “She didn’t fall asleep until after six a.m. Nerves.”

  “I knew I should’ve put an officer at Hill House.”

  “No need. Vic Genaway’s men have been camped outside my door all night.”

  “You really should consider keeping better company, Mrs. F.”

  I cleared my throat to clear the sleep from my voice. “So, what is it you have to tell me?”

  “We can safely cross Alma Potts off our suspects list. She died a month after being released from prison.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “Cancer,” Mort continued, “before you get any ideas.”

  “She had two children, Mort—twins, and one of them was a girl.”

  “Named Kristen, but everybody called her Kris. She became one of the greatest female athletes in the history of her high school and later went on to coach several sports at a number of schools where she taught gym over the years.”

  “Where is she now?” I asked him, figuring Kris Potts would likely be in her late thirties or early forties now.

  “That’s just it. We don’t know. She’s moved around a lot through a number of teaching and coaching jobs, and we haven’t been able to locate her yet.”

  “And should we read anything into her moving around a lot?”

  “She had a temper that got her in hot water
a few times but nothing actionable, if you know what I mean.”

  “In other words, she was never arrested and charged with anything.”

  “Not that I’ve been able to find, no. I’ve got a picture of her from the last school she taught at, apparently the most recent photo available.”

  “Can you e-mail it to me?”

  “It’s on the way . . . now.”

  “Did you manage to take all the statements last night?” I asked Mort while I waited for the picture to arrive.

  “Finished up the process just before dawn. The last batch of guests was none too pleased.”

  “Can’t say I blame them.”

  “Well, it couldn’t be helped.”

  “Did anything they have to say help?”

  “Not as far as identifying characteristics go. We did get an idea of the direction the killer came from, specifically an area consistent with an emergency exit door we believe may have been propped open. Those who witnessed anything recalled only seeing a shape move purposefully past them.”

  “‘Purposefully’?”

  “That’s how one of the guests described it.”

  “How many of those present were you unable to interview?” I asked Mort.

  “Around a dozen. File them under ‘unaccounted for,’ Jessica.”

  “Which makes them our top suspects.”

  My computer pinged, signaling the arrival of a fresh e-mail in my in-box. “Hold on—that picture of Kristen Potts just got here,” I said, jogging the screen back to my e-mail.

  I clicked on the attachment and waited for the picture to download. It must’ve been a large file, because it took longer than usual, the picture taking shape on the screen directly before me.

  “Oh my,” I managed, literally shivering even before Kristen Potts’s face was fully formed.

  “What is it, Jessica? What’s wrong?”

  “I recognize her, Mort. Kristen Potts was at Wilma’s party at the country club last night.”