Dead in D Minor

by David Crossman

  “That house,” he nodded at DuShane’s after a thought-filled moment, “is the only one that uses it. How does the smell get from there . . . to there?”

  “Have you ever been to Fenway Park, Professor?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “That’s where the Red Sox play ball,” Standish explained in response to the blank stare on Albert’s face.

  “Red socks,” said Albert. “Yes.” He preferred yellow. Trying to make sense of this was going to give him a headache.

  “I’ll have to take you to a game there some day,” Standish resumed, unaware that the blank on his companion’s face remained unfilled. “There are lots of vendors on the street outside. They sell T-shirts, hot dogs, cold drinks, popcorn, souvenirs, that kind of thing . . . but you know the one smell that stands out?”

  No, he didn’t, though he felt sure it was the popcorn. The smell of popcorn always made his mouth water. So did the thought of the smell, apparently. He licked his lips and swallowed.

  “Onions,” said Standish.

  “Onions?” repeated Albert. A mound of hot buttered popcorn had been doing the dance of the seven veils for the all-male audience in the theater of his mind. Its sudden replacement by an undulating heap of onions had a sobering effect. “I don’t like onions.”

  “Well,” said Standish, “like them or not, there are these little wagons where they sell Italian sausages, and they cover them with grilled onions. The smell’s so thick it curls up in your brain, ‘til you can’t think of anything else. I love it.”

  “Onions,” Albert re-repeated.

  “Anyway,” said Standish, “for blocks around, that’s all you can smell. Those onions. So,” he concluded, “I’m not surprised the smell of garlic gets caught up in the curtains when Maudanne’s cooking some Italian dish for DuShane – which is often.”

  “He likes Italian food?” Albert asked.

  “With a passion, I understand,” Standish explained. “His mother was Italian, you know? Gloria Mastriani. Must be in his blood.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “What? That she was Italian?” Standish dragged deeply on his cigarette. “Most people will talk your ear off without a penny’s worth of encouragement. Half a penny in Maudanne’s case.”

  “You’ve spoken to her?” If so, Albert was impressed. Maudanne was one of those abrupt, efficient people that always made him feel his fly was open.

  “Well, I arranged a little meeting,” said Standish with a wink.

  “With a wink,” said Albert, not aware that he’d spoken.

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing,” said Albert. “You arranged a meeting. What do you mean? You called her on the telephone?”

  “Hardly,” said Standish. “No, I simply waited up the street until she came out to water the flowers at the end of the walk, then casually strolled by and mentioned how much I liked the tulips and begonias.”

  “You knew what they were?” said Albert, his admiration overflowing.

  “No. I’m not much of a flower person. I mean, I knew what they were – the tulips anyway, but nothing about them. So I asked Sarah,” Standish replied. “Then I looked them up in a book of flowers at the library.”

  “A book of flowers?” said Albert. Some people will print anything. “You planned the whole thing?”

  “It wasn’t difficult,” said Standish self-deprecatingly. He wedged his cigarette butt between his thumb and forefinger and snapped it from him. Albert couldn’t do that. The only time he’d tried, the burning ash fell in his shoes.

  It was the closest he’d ever come to dancing.

  “I just observed her habits; she doted on those flowers. They’re the only ones DuShane will allow; he’s allergic to them.”

  That explained the desert of green in an ocean of flowers aspect of DuShane’s house.

  “That’s why they’re at the end of the walk,” Albert observed.

  “Every day, like clockwork, somewhere between nine-thirty and ten, she’d be out there watering away. All I had to do was learn a little flowers talk, and wait.”

  Detectives may come by such knowledge instinctively. Perhaps they ingested it with their mother’s milk. But to Albert, a mere musician, it was a shock and a revelation; that Standish could devise a plan, involving not only himself, but someone else, and could arrange events in such a way that the other party complied without even knowing it – enlisting that person’s personal habits as accomplices – was an epiphany. A double epiphany.

  “It’s called ‘observe and engage’,” said Standish, strewing his pearls before Albert. “O.E. The shortest way to reliable information is through someone who doesn’t suspect you want it. Or that they’re giving it.”

  Albert knew he had a very small compartment in which to store the treasures that were being shoved at him. He was glad when Standish changed the subject, so he could ignore him for while.

  “I’m not a diver,” Standish said, “but I’d sure give a nickel to find out if the money’s in the trunk of that car. There’d be a finder’s fee. Maybe I’ll hire one.” He snapped an intentional look at Albert who was miles away by then. “Beam me up, Scotty,” he said to himself, shaking his head.

  People often did things like that in Albert’s company.

  “By the way,” he said after a while. “The girl who’s staying here?” he nodded toward the yellow house.

  “The reporter?”

  “Right. I was talking to her . . . “

  “You arranged to meet her, too?”

  Standish smiled a detective smile. “You might say I positioned myself in the flow of events,” he said.

  ‘Positioned myself in the flow of events!’ Wasn’t anybody taking this down? Albert wished he had a pen, or pencil, and a notebook, and someone who knew shorthand. If they gave prizes to him for something as ordinary as music, surely there must be one for these epiphanies that were rapidly disassembling themselves in the landscape of Albert’s overwrought brain.

  “I was right,” Standish continued. “She’s hungry for an exclusive. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d help watch your back . . . if you’d agree to give her an interview. Let her take a picture or two. That’s all it would take.”

  “Then . . . she knows,” Albert deduced, stroking his disguise. He may as well shave.

  “She knows,” said Standish. He slapped his knees and stood up. “Think about it.”

  He already had. He had often heard the phrase ‘when hell freezes over’ and wondered what it meant. Now he knew. The girl was wasting her life.

  Standish already knew they had garlic. And he didn’t have to pick locks to find out.

  Still, there was something curiously satisfying about picking locks. It was becoming sort of a hobby, if not a habit. It would probably be easier to quit smoking . . . and he’d never do that.

  There was something else on Albert’s mind, something he wanted to know, but was afraid to ask. He was a devout adherent to the precept that ignorance was bliss, but there was no way around it. “The police were at DuShane’s again last night,” he said as off-handedly as possible.

  The statement put all its weight in the middle of Standish’s left eyebrow and pressed down. “I know,” he said. “I can’t make sense of that.” He was staring at the DuShane house as if he might learn something by osmosis. “Nothing was taken, as far as anyone knows. Then again . . . ”

  Albert waited.

  “Nobody noticed anything missing last time, either . . . when the knife was stolen.”

  Standish didn’t know. If he hadn’t figured it out, no one had. Cindy and Albert had perpetrated the perfect crime. That concern disposed of, the pawl ascended, advancing the gears another notch. The thought that took its place must have been hiding somewhere, for it was new to him.

  “The knife,” he said. “It was stolen four days before the Judge was . . . killed.”

  “Right,” said Standish. “At least, that must be when it was.” His mind was else
where. “But, it’s awfully difficult to know if something’s missing, especially if it’s not something you use every day.”

  “No,” said Albert. He’d been struggling to shape a thought. When it finally came, he still couldn’t tell what it was, but he knew what it wasn’t. Sometimes that was just as important. “Tanjore was . . . he got out of prison three days before the Judge died.” He looked at Standish to see if the mental fermentation process would create the same sweet wine of reason he had so unexpectedly tasted.

  “Then, Tanjore wasn’t the one who stole the knife.”

  “And?”

  “And, if he didn’t have the knife, then he couldn’t have used it to kill the Judge.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Albert. A deep, knowing smile spread across his face.

  Albert had never smiled knowingly.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “You’ve got the Professor to thank,” said Matt Harvey. He had removed a small plastic bag from a drawer in his desk and passed it to Trelawney.

  “The Professor?” said Tanjore. He shook the few items from the bag onto the counter and handed the bag back.

  “Him and that friend of his from up north convinced the Judge you couldn’t’ve done it,” said Harvey, deleting the fact that his own testimony on Trelawney’s behalf was pivotal in swaying the Judge.

  “I didn’t,” Trelawney snapped defiantly.

  Harvey shrugged. “Seems so.” He leaned on the counter. “Listen, I got a job to do, Tanj. If you don’t want to get caught up in things like this in the future, don’t go threatening people . . . ” He wiggled his fingers. “And don’t put your fingers where they don’t belong.”

  Trelawney exchanged the blue short-sleeved shirt the town had supplied for his own.

  “It’s a good thing you ain’t a diver,” said Harvey.

  Tanjore’s arms froze in mid-air, with the shirt half-way over his head. He lowered them slowly, pulling the collar down across his face. “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean, if you’d come up with that money, your butt would be back in the slammer, big time.”

  “What money?” Trelawney stammered.

  “Don’t bother,” said Harvey. “The Professor spilled the whole story.”

  “Why, that miserable . . . !”

  “Hey!” Harvey interjected in Albert’s behalf. “You’re out, aren’t you? You’re a free man, thanks to him. That money wouldn’t do you no good where you was headed.”

  “It would’ve been mine, free and clear!”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “The statute of limitations had run out on it.”

  Harvey smiled. “You should’ve cracked the law books while you was inside, Tanj. The statute of limitations may have run out on the crime, but not on the money.

  “If you’d taken that cash – that’s defrauding the insurance company. It’s still their money. They paid for it.”

  “But . . . Double Jeopardy!” Trelawney protested.

  “For the original crime, and the original criminal,” said Harvey. His grin went a little lop-sided. “If you’d taken that money, it would’ve been a whole new crime.”

  Trelawney looked as if his skeleton had been surgically removed. He slumped on the counter.

  There was one more irony to be parceled out. “Seems there was a finder’s fee. Fifteen percent on money that old.”

  “Fifteen percent? That’s . . . that’s . . . “

  “One hundred twelve thousand and five hundred dollars,” said Harvey, who’d written it down for the occasion. “Looks like the Professor and Standish will be splittin’ that.”

  “They already brought it up?” said Trelawney.

  “State Sheriffs and the insurance company did. Didn’t take long, once they knew where to look.”

  There was a dollar bill and some loose change on the counter. Trelawney looked at it as if it was the end of the world, wiped it off into his open hand, and dropped it into his pocket. “If there’s anything I thought I’d learned in all this time,” he said philosophically, “it’s don’t trust anyone.” He raised his eyes and dropped them on Harvey. “No one.”

  Harvey shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “Here, don’t forget this.” He drew a crisp piece of paper from the crisp shirt pocket nearest his badge. “It’s a note from the Professor.”

  Trelawney snatched it, opened it and read.

  “It’s a check,” he said. “For $56, 250.” He showed it to Harvey, whose eyes had to widen to embrace that large a figure. “Must be his share from the insurance.”

  “What does he want me to see it for? To gloat? I’ve got a half a mind to tear it up and toss it out the window.”

  “Well,” said Harvey. “I guess you can if you want.” He reached out, took the check, and tapped it. “Been signed over to you.”

  Trelawney’s face awaited instructions from his brain, which was not up to the task of absorbing unexpected messages from other planets.

  “That’s not all,” said Sarah, who had drawn Basil Carmody to the edge of his seat. “The Professor also made the Judge see sense about Tanjore’s fingerprints – why they were only outside and not inside –and that the knife was stolen before Tanjore was even out of jail.”

  “Our Professor?” said Basil, when he had had time to digest the information. It was difficult enough to discover that a cadre of females had dispossessed him of his room, and having to share with the Commander, who snored. Despite returning a week early, he’d been gone too long. “Of all people.”

  “Which brings us back to square one, doesn’t it?” said the Commander. “If young DuShane didn’t do it, and Trelawney didn’t do it, who did?”

  “It was whoever I saw dodging across the back yard that night,” Sarah declared.

  “Afraid not,” said Standish. He put down the book he hadn’t been reading. “That was Trelawney. He’d gone to the Judge’s to put the fear of God in him.”

  “That’s when he left the fingerprints,” Alice conjectured.

  “That’s right,” continued Standish. “Outside. But he took sense at the last minute and never went in.”

  “Hightailed it across Sarah’s back yard,” Alice concluded.

  “Right through the hydrangeas,” Sarah eulogized thoughtfully. “Well, then, whodid kill the Judge?”

  “Someone who should be getting awfully nervous right about now,” said Standish.

  Angela Marie dropped her fork onto her plate and tipped over her water glass as she reached to retrieve it. “Sorry,” she said.

  Albert couldn’t get to sleep, even though he’d gone to bed early feeling very tired. Kathleen was staring holes in the dark. She was trying to tell him something.

  Everything was trying to tell him something.

  He sat up in bed and put on his glasses, symbolic of wanting to see things more clearly.

  Daylight.

  The word kept resounding in the tuneless score of his thoughts. Like a cymbal crash.

  Daylight.

  ‘In broad daylight.’ Kathleen’s words.

  He turned on the bedside light, removed her letter from theDeuteronomyless Bible and read: ‘ . . . and in broad daylight, too.”

  Broad daylight.

  Did that mean morning, or afternoon? Albert didn’t know.

  The Judge had been killed in the afternoon, but no one had seen the killer come or go.

  Afternoon was daylight.

  All these things happening in broad daylight. Girls getting pregnant. Judge’s getting murdered. Slaves and cats coming and going – right under everyone’s nose.

  Right under somebody’s nose. That was familiar. Who had said that? Rupert Runyan. ‘Hiding slaves right under his nose.’

  Like garlic.

  Like old photographs under attic stairways. All these thoughts tumbled over one another to the cadence of the little piece of music at the end ofJeopardy! played over and over. Over and over.

  It probably would have made perfect s
ense to someone. It almost made sense to Albert.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  It started with a scream that had the effect of jerking Albert’s boxers up around his armpits. Before it dawned on him that it was Maylene, the door had opened and shut, admitting a Maylene-shaped blur of agitation. She said not a word, but went straight to the closet and closed the door behind her. A series of heartfelt sobs marked the spot.

  Albert got out of bed and pulled on his pants. It was a good thing to do in an emergency. “Maylene?” he said softly, but already his voice was drowned out by a commotion downstairs.

  “I’ll go with you, Jimbo. We’ll go talk. Just let’s get out and leave these folks alone. They ain’t done nothin’!”

  It was Cindy. She was in tears, and not paying attention to her grammar. Why didn’t people stay in jail, once they were put there, at least the guilty ones? Albert opened the door a crack so he could see. The two of them were at the bottom of the stairs, surrounded by Sarah and Alice.

  “Well, come on then,” said Jimbo, maliciously.

  Sarah reached out, took Cindy by the arm and pulled her back. “You’ll do no such thing!” she said sharply. “No brute off the streets is going to come into my house and start harassing the residents. You turn out now, young man, or you’ll get a face full of more angry than you can handle.”

  Those were the most intimidating words Albert had ever heard, and Sarah had delivered them with the full force of her personality. Had Albert been Jimbo, he would have been soldered to the spot. Had he been a hoard of Visigoths advancing on Rome, he would have halted in his tracks and become a docile agrarian community and, for the moment, it seemed the words had worked their magic.

  Jimbo removed his black cowboy hat and nodded politely at Sarah. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “But this woman stole money from me some time back and I come for it, is all. I apologize if I got a little angry, but, last time we met, I ended up gettin’ tossed in the pokey – and not a penny to show for it.” His voice was soft and gentle. “She gives it to me, I’m off like a dirty shirt,” he concluded. “I don’t want no trouble.”