Dead in D Minor

by David Crossman

  “The thing he didn’t figure on, though, was cancer. That’s where the plan fell apart.”

  Albert had been listening with his whole head. Suddenly, he knew what happened next! “He told you where the money was, didn’t he?”

  Tanjore didn’t seem amazed at the deduction. He nodded. “Just before he died.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “He put it in the trunk of his car, in a plastic bag.” His eyes sparkled briefly with admiration. “Then he drove the car into a lake; up in the mountains. Not more than fifteen or twenty feet deep, he reckoned.”

  He laughed. “He was taking scuba diving lessons in prison! At the taxpayer’s expense!” The smile that followed dissolved like butter on grits. “Special program they had set up at the local “Y”. It was a good plan.”

  “It was stealing,” said Albert. It was.

  “Well, the insurance paid it. Nobody lost anything. It’s not like stealing from people.”

  “The insurance company lost it. That money comes from people who pay for insurance. Like me,” said Albert. He’d learned all about insurance when Mrs. Bridges found out about the moped and insisted he not drive it without being properly insured. She’d even made him get a license to drive it. “I pay insurance for Agnes. Everybody pays. That’s whose money it is. Ours.”

  Tanjore was silent for a long time. He sketched in the sand with the end of his stick. “You’re right, Professor,” he said softly. “You tell yourself things, you know? Anything to justify what you want. Pretty soon, it sounds like the truth – and you start to agree with anyone who agrees with you.

  “You start thinking you can buy yourself a life.”

  “With someone else’s money,” said Albert.

  There was another protracted silence.

  “You should give the money back,” said Albert, finally.

  “You know, Professor, I just might, feeling the way I do right at this moment. There’s just one little thing . . . ”

  Albert was supposed to say “what’s that?” but he seldom said what he was supposed to. He just waited.

  “The car was right where he said, but it turns out the lake is a good sixty to seventy feet deep. It wasn’t manmade like so many around here. They’re shallow. This is glacial. Probably a couple hundred feet deep out in the middle.

  “That’s not to say I didn’t try. I saw it there – the car. But way too deep for me. And cold? I didn’t know anything could be that cold! More snow melt than spring water this time of year. And I wasn’t the one who took scuba lessons.”

  “That’s what you were doing when you were missing,” Albert said to himself aloud. “You’ll have to tell the police.”

  “Do you know how much money is in that bag?” said Tanjore. He could feel his little tower of rationalization crumbling before the onslaught of naked innocence. He stuffed the breach with cold hard cash. “Over seven-hundred thousand dollars!

  “Do you know how long I’d have to work to earn that kind of money?”

  “But . . . if you earn it, it’s yours,” said Albert. “Not somebody else’s. And no one is going to put you in prison for it.”

  Tanjore’s muscular frame had been animated for argument. Suddenly the braces were knocked out from under him. His arms dangled from their sockets. His chest collapsed as if he’d been hit in the stomach, his chin fell upon his chest, and he muttered some meaningless syllables.

  “And you have to turn yourself in,” Albert concluded.

  Tanjore sank to the ground.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Still waters there, my dear.”

  Kitty Odum had just gotten into bed and tucked the covers under her chin. How did Sarah manage to get her sheets to smell so nice?

  “Tanjore?” said Heather, emerging from the bathroom in her bathrobe.

  “No. The Professor,” said Kitty.

  “The Professor?” Heather laughed. “Still, perhaps, but I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable leaving a two-year old to wade in them. I mean, he’s a very pleasant man, in an odd sort of way.”

  “And a genius,” Kitty reminded.

  “There are those who say he’s an idiot savant – and more one than the other, if you get my meaning.” She took off her bathrobe and sat on the edge of her bed. “Don’t misunderstand me. He’s a dear. A genuine dear. But . . . ”

  “Well, all I know,” said Kitty, picking up her large printReader’s Digest from the doily-draped bedside table, “is that police detectives from three states were beating the woods for Tanjore, but the Professor is the one who brought him in.”

  “I heard that Tanjore turned himself in.”

  “You know perfectly well what I mean,” said Kitty. “The Professor talked him into it. That sounds like a pretty savvy idiot, if you ask me.

  “Then there was that business up in New England. Sarah was telling me.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Heather intervened, tossing her head to shake her braid loose. She began brushing her hair out. “I simply dispute that there’s any more to the Professor than meets the eye. He’s . . . he’s not . . . he’s like a child. Seems on a par with Maylene, sometimes.”

  Crickets and peepers took over the conversation as Kitty opened her book and read while Heather finished getting ready for bed.

  “Do you think he did it?” she said, as she crawled under the covers. She could tell by the sigh when Kitty had reached the end of her chapter.

  “I was sureMarchant did it,” Kitty replied. “I think I’ll let the judge and jury decide this time.”

  “I wish he did.”

  “Who?”

  “Marchant,” Heather huffed indignantly. “We’d still be in our own beds instead of imposing on poor Sarah.”

  “Why Heather, that doesn’t sound like you.” Kitty put her book on the bedside table and propped herself up on an elbow, facing her roommate.

  “Me?” said Heather. “It’s not me. It’s you. I still can’t believe the Judge only left you . . . ”

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” Kitty said flatly. “It’s done and can’t be undone. Life goes on. Besides, that’s got nothing to do with Marchant.”

  “I don’t see how you can take it so calmly,” Heather persisted. “If I was you I’d sue . . . ”

  “An epidemic of litigation has preceded the downfall of every great civilization,” Kitty intoned. “Did you know that?”

  Heather didn’t know that. But she did know Kitty was a history buff, and always very careful about her facts.

  “It’s true,” Kitty continued. “So, if you think I’m going to jeopardize the democratic experiment just because my feelings are hurt . . . ”

  “Feelings!” Heather exclaimed. “What about the money?”

  “What about it?” Kitty said calmly. “Like I told you before, I had a good job all those years. I got good pay. Regular raises. Free room and board . . . so I managed to put a fair amount aside. And I liked my work.

  “That twenty-five hundred dollars is extra. A gift. What have I got to complain about? I just knew I wasn’t coming in to any fortune, is all. Like I said.Myexpectations were satisfied, even ifyours were not.” She lay back down, picked up her worn old New Testament, as she did every night, and read silently, moving her lips but making no sound.

  Heather fell back against her pillow, crossed her arms and knit her brows into an afghan of condemnation. “You’re infuriating, Kitty.”

  Eventually, Kitty closed her Bible and shut off her light. Heather waited for her lips to stop moving. “What are you doing to do?” she asked.

  Kitty smiled. “I’m going to take each day as it comes.”

  “What about tomorrow?” said Heather, turning off the light.

  “There’s no such thing,” Kitty replied. Heather could tell by the sound that she was smiling.

  “Stop smiling,” said Heather.

  Kitty laughed.

  “A reporter’s moved in across the street,” said Standish. “That yellow house.”

 
; “That’s the Padevski’s,” said Sarah. “They’re in Florida most of the year. I don’t recall them renting out before. They surely don’t need the money.”

  Standish withdrew a small notebook from his pocket and flipped through it. “That’s right,” he said. “Apparently Mr. Padevski owns one of those supermarket tabloids in West Palm Beach, and has a large interest in a legitimate news weekly up north. This reporter . . .” he referred to another page, “Candace something or other – Polish name – works for him. I don’t know how long she’s been there. A week, at least.”

  “And you think it’s because of the Professor?”

  “What else?”

  Sarah didn’t know what else. “Vacation?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Well,” said Sarah, folding the newspaper and scanning the neighborhood. “There’s the Judge’s murder, and Tanjore’s arrest, that’s a big story.”

  “Locally,” Standish pre-empted. “The people covering that story are all day-trippers, from Spartanburg, Greenville, Asheville. Maybe Charlotte,” he nodded toward the yellow house. “She’s from New York City. It’s not like they don’t have enough murders of their own. No,” he asserted. “She’s onto the Professor.”

  “Then, why isn’t it in the papers?”

  “She’s waiting,” said Standish. “She senses a story in the making.”

  “What story?”

  Standish shrugged. “His involvement in another murder? That would be a story.”

  “But, you just said . . . ”

  “If the Professor gets involved, that’s where the national interest comes in. International, for that matter. Kid like her could make her name with that. Makes it worthwhile to bide her time.”

  “Oh dear,” Sarah sighed. “Can you do anything about her?”

  Standish shook his head. “Too late,” he said. “We don’t have to worry about her spilling the beans, though. At least not until things have played themselves out. It’s in her best interest to keep his whereabouts a secret ‘til then.”

  Albert would wait until dark. Maudanne had gone to church, like she always did on Wednesday nights. Marchant would drive to Asheville for dinner at the Deer Park Inn; a habit he could afford to indulge as sole heir to Kathleen Antrim’s fortune.

  He left at eight o’clock. Thirty minutes later, under cover of darkness, Albert climbed, fell, and slipped noisily down the hill from his aerie, landing in a heap just beyond the brambles in DuShane’s back yard. He thought of Tanjore dropping noiselessly from the trees. Where did people learn these things?

  “Professor?” Cindy called. How was he to know she, too, had snuck out under cover of darkness and was resting in the hammock in the back yard. She reached him just as he was sorting himself out and trying desperately to think of something to say.

  “I fell down the hill,” he said, before she could ask. The truth was sweet upon his tongue.

  Cindy helped him to his feet and looked up into the leafy darkness. “What on earth were you doing up there?”

  Albert brushed himself off. Nothing broken. “Sitting,” he said. Also true. “Thinking,” he added. Ditto.

  “Well, come to the house and we’ll get you in some clean clothes,” Cindy commanded. She took him by the elbow. “Are you okay?”

  He hesitated.

  “Professor?” said Cindy.

  “Just a second,” Albert replied, holding up his hand. An idea had come to him. He needed time to think it over. He needed an accomplice. Someone he could trust. “Cindy?”

  “What is it, darlin’?”

  “Will you help me do . . . something?”

  “Sure.”

  Albert held his finger to his lips. “Shh.”

  “Shh?” Cindy said. “You want me to ‘shh’?”

  “Yes,” Albert whispered. He pulled her into the shadows of a bush near DuShane’s kitchen porch. “I’m going to go into the house.”

  “What house?” Cindy asked, her eyes widening. They were both stooping now, face to face, holding one another’s elbows. “This house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Garlic,” he said.

  “Garlic?”

  “I want to know if this house has the same smell as the others.”

  “Why?”

  Albert wasn’t sure why. He just had a feeling. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I just have a feeling it might be important.”

  “Important for what?” said Cindy. She could be very exacting.

  “For Tanjore,” Albert whispered earnest. “Will you help me?”

  “There’s nobody home,” Cindy observed.

  “I know.”

  “You’re going to break in!?”

  “Shh!” said Albert. “No. I’m going to pick the lock,” he smiled. That would be his claim to fame. “I can, you know.”

  “Really?” Cindy said, sufficiently impressed to at least be curious. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Stay here,” he directed, squeezing her shoulders and moving her closer to the steps where he planted her like a seedling. “If anybody comes, whistle.”

  “Like this,” said Cindy. She stuck the first and fourth fingers of her right hand into her mouth and blew a deafening blast that silenced crickets, dogs, and crying babies within a quarter mile radius. A resounding silence imploded upon the neighborhood in its wake.

  “No,” said Albert, removing his hands from his ears, where they’d arrived too late to be of any use. The whistle’s echo seemed to be a solid mass in his brain. It would probably have to be surgically removed. “Just a little whistle,” he said, blowing a pleasant, even C sharp.”

  “Without my fingers I can only whistle in,” said Cindy, sucking air through pursed lips to demonstrate. Albert could hear her shirt buttons sweating. D flat. She must have been listening to that bird. Close enough.

  “That’s good,” said Albert. “If you see anyone coming, whistle like that . . . and . . . ” And what? “And I’ll know someone’s coming,” he concluded.

  The situation reminded Albert of an old movie from when the world was black and white. A man was trying to sneak into a house at night, while a lady stood watch outside in the bushes.

  There were subtle differences. The man was dressed in a tuxedo, and he wasn’t looking for garlic. Albert couldn’t remember what he had been looking for, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t garlic. The woman wore a shiny dress that went all the way to the ground, and a string of pearls and a shoe with a broken heel.

  It was a comedy. People laughed in the background. People were always laughing in the background.

  The differences were very subtle.

  It might help if he could remember what happened next, but it took all his concentration to remember what happened last.

  The door was locked, but Albert was not daunted by trifles. Not this particular trifle, at least. Lock picking was the other thing he knew, and he’d been practicing. Perhaps his affinity for the art lay in the fact that locks, like music, had keys. So did maps, come to think of it. Odd.

  He inserted a heavy-duty paperclip in the lock. Up, over, down, back, under. There! Pull out. Lift up. Left.

  The door swung open. The procedure took all of seven seconds.

  “Did you do that! Did you pick that lock just like that?” said Cindy, in the part of Grace Kelly, as she resolved among the foliage.

  ‘A man makes his own luck,’ Cary Grant had replied. Albert said nothing.

  There was a strangled scream from the bushes. “Oh my goodness!” Cindy cried as she bent to pick up a cat. “It’s Jebby! He rubbed against my legs. Half a second I thought it was a skunk. How you doin’, little one?”

  The cat’s front paws were draped over the circle of Cindy’s hands, the rest swung limply, trustingly in the night. He was purring.

  Albert entered the house.

  The cat leapt suddenly from Cindy’s hands and followed him. It was his house, after all.

  “How long is this going t
o take?”

  That depends, thought Albert. “Where is the kitchen?”

  “I don’t know,” Cindy shrugged. “Try over there.” She nodded toward a door on Albert’s immediate right. He opened it.

  The hall light tossed a yellow wedge into the darkness, revealing a triangle of floor, a trapezoid of sink, and a hexagon of cabinet.

  Albert directed an approving glance at Cindy, but she was busy swatting at bugs. He entered the kitchen, closed the door, and sniffed in the darkness.

  No garlic.

  He struck a match and sniffed again. A lot of sulphur. No garlic. He took a paper towel from a roll over the counter, wrapped it around his hands, and began opening and closing doors and drawers.

  There were knives, spoons, forks, hand towels, rolls of aluminum foil and waxed paper, candles, matches, tools . . . and a number of little odds and ends for which he could imagine no use whatever.

  He found food in cans, food in boxes, food in bags, food in containers of every shape and size.

  But no garlic.

  A soft whistle broke the cricket-heavy silence, igniting the fuse of Albert’s heart and sending it rocketing to his throat, where it remained with all engines at full throttle. He blew out his match and banged his way to the door. Cindy was standing waist-deep in evening.

  “What?!” said Albert.

  “You could hear that?” said Cindy. She was impressed. “I was afraid you wouldn’t.”

  “Is someone coming?” said Albert. It was difficult to force the words around the cardial impediment in his throat.

  “No,” said Cindy. She widened her eyes as if in horror at the thought. She looked again just to make sure. “I just wanted to see could you hear me, is all.”

  Albert tried to swallow, but his heart was too busy playing pinball with his brain. “Don’t do that unless someone is coming,” he said slowly. He held a finger to his lips. “Only if someone is coming,” he said. “I can hear.”

  “Did you find the garlic?”

  “No,” said Albert. Come to think of it, he wasn’t exactly sure what garlic looked like. The plan had been to sort of smell his way to it. “I don’t smell any.”