by N.L. Wilson
“Well!” It was Mrs. Presley’s voice that broke the silence. “If that don’t beat all! I had the secretary pegged for sure.” She nudged Dylan. “Just look at those beady eyes on her, will ya.” She opened her purse, turned toward Kenny Kent the baker, and handed him twenty bucks. “You won that bet, Baker Boy,” she said. “Double or nothing on Round Two?”
Swiftly pocketing the money, Kent replied, “I’ll quit while I’m ahead.”
Luanne wasn’t my favorite person in the world, and Billy Star wasn’t topping my warm and fuzzy list either. But neither of them had killed Jennifer. I was sure of it. Despite his initial reasons for wooing Jennifer, Billy had loved her too much to hurt her, and Luanne loved Ned too much to hurt him.
I began again. “You’re all forgetting something here. Whoever killed Jennifer, also did a damn good job of covering their tracks. Arranged for a mysterious Flashing Fashion Queen to come to my office disguised as Jennifer, and ask me to tail Ned Weatherby for the week. And I had to wonder why.”
“To frame you!” an enthusiastic Mrs. P shouted.
“That’s exactly what I thought at first, Mrs. Presley. But then I thought maybe it was more. Maybe it was so that Ned’s whereabouts would be alibied very carefully. So that he couldn’t be blamed for the murder of his wife.”
Ned looked at me, clearly shocked. “Surely... surely you don’t think I hired someone to pose as Jennifer, then killed her myself?”
“Actually, Ned,” I said. “That very thought has crossed my mind.”
“Ms. Dodd!” Jeremy Poole leapt to Ned’s defense. “If you’re going to accuse my client of murder, I’d make damn sure that you know just what you’re getting yourself into here. With all the charges against you now criminally, I don’t think you really wish to add a civil suit to your legal woes. As Mr. Weatherby’s legal counsel I must advise him not to participate in any further discussions with you here today. In fact, I strongly suggest to Detective Head that this meeting is a sham, a travesty, and that this meeting should be over.”
“Oh, I’m not accusing Ned Weatherby of murdering Jennifer Weatherby, Mr. Poole. Not at all. As I said the thought crossed my mind, then kept on walking.” I turned and walked over to the lawyer. “I’m accusing you.”
“Yes!” Elizabeth Bee hissed, pumping her arm in the air. She held her hand out flat and Mrs. Presley grumblingly pressed a twenty-dollar bill into it, which Elizabeth quickly secreted into her bra.
“What the hell are you talking about, Dix?” Dickhead said. But he didn’t say it with quite so much of a snarl this time. He didn’t say it with a ha ha belly roar of a laugh. He said it like a man who wanted to hear what I had to say. I had his attention.
Hell, I had everyone’s attention.
Dylan handed me Jennifer’s journal. Or rather tried to, but with my hands cuffed behind my back, that wasn’t an easy task. I looked at Detective Head. “Things would go a lot easier from here detective if you’d let me out of these handcuffs.”
He stared at me hard for a long minute, then moved to unlock the handcuffs.
“Don’t make me regret this, Dix,” he said as he removed the bracelets. “Because if I do, I guarantee you will too.”
“Understood.”
More out of reflex than because of any soreness, I rubbed my wrists quickly before I held up Jennifer’s journal. I read from the homemade jacket of the book. “The Secret Life of the Bombay Dung Beetle, by Elizabeth Bee.”
Loudly, Elizabeth hmphed.
“This is Jennifer’s journal,” I explained. “Her secret journal.”
“I never knew she kept one,” Ned said.
“No, she hid it well. But as we already established, you knew she kept it, didn’t you, Luanne?”
“Once or twice a week I’d let myself in... when Ned and Jennifer were out of the house. Yes, I’d read it. I needed to know everything to protect Ned.” Guilt free, she answered. “That’s how I was able to inform Ned of the affair between Billy and Jennifer. Once I put all the notes and pieces together.”
“But you didn’t tell Ned how you came by that knowledge, did you?”
“No,” she admitted.
“And,” I continued, “usually you just read Jennifer’s journal, said nothing, did nothing and put it back where you found it. Right?”
She sucked in a breath. “Yes. But the last time... the last time Jennifer made an entry, I... accidentally did something.”
“Because the last entry Jennifer made angered you so greatly that you wrote a comment back. Didn’t you, Luanne?”
“Yes!” she shouted. “I couldn’t help myself.” She looked around the room, as if seeking an ally for her behavior. “Jennifer wrote ‘J cancelled caterer.’ After all Ned was doing for her, she was canceling the caterer and thus I assumed she was canceling the renewal of the vows. That she was going to hurt Ned all over again. I just lost my temper. I just snapped! That’s why I wrote what I did.”
Kenny Kent, really interested now, shifted from foot to foot.
“The ‘NO WAY IN HELL’ written in the journal, Luanne?” I asked. “That was yours, wasn’t it.”
“Yes.” She lowered her eyes. “I know it was stupid! Very stupid! But I was just so angry!”
“This is ridiculous,” Jeremy Poole said. “It proves nothing whatsoever about my guilt. If you ask me, it’s Luanne Laney you should be pointing a finger at.” He stretched his arm and shook a pointing finger himself for emphasis.
I pretended to mull that over. “Ummmmmmm... no,” I said. “You see it wasn’t the person who wrote the NO WAY IN HELL that killed Jennifer. It was the person who cancelled the caterer.”
“Oh for Heaven’s sake!” Jeremy said. “It’s Jennifer’s journal. She cancelled the caterer. Obviously, her intention to renew with Ned was false. She was using him, again. Still.”
“No, Jennifer didn’t cancel the caterer. Jennifer always wrote in the future tense when she entered her plans; never what she’d done. Ever. This note was a done deal. This note wasn’t on her to-do list. This note was something else. This ‘J’ wasn’t for Jennifer.”
“I took that canceling call myself, and I was surprised to receive it,” Kenny spoke up nervously. “I always handle the Weatherby business personally.” He smoothed a nervous hand over his baker’s jacket. “Mr. Weatherby had been planning this event for weeks. It meant a lot to him. We’d gone over the menu a half dozen times. We had the ice sculpture ordered; the Cornish hens set to be flown in. And all of a sudden, I get this call canceling from a woman claiming to be Jennifer Weatherby.”
“And so you scrapped everything? Just like that?”
“Of course not! I called Mr. Weatherby’s office, he was tied up in meetings. So I called Mrs. Weatherby back. I wanted to tell her that she’d still have to pay the bill. I mean, after all, we’d gone to a lot of expense and trouble for this event.”
“And what did Jennifer say when you called her?”
Kenny ran a hand through his hair. “She assured me the job was still on. Assured me that it wasn’t her who’d called. And she... she also told me she knew damn well who’d called to cancel, pretending to be her. She was really, really angry.”
“Do you remember the date, Mr. Kent?”
“Of course. It was the 30th of May. I remember precisely because that’s the day I did inventory.”
I held the journal up for everyone to see the date. “It was a week before Jennifer was killed. And I’m betting ‘J’ who cancelled the caterer killed her.”
“That ‘J’ was for Jeremy. Not Jennifer.” Ned spoke slowly, disbelievingly. “You killed my wife.”
“Ned,” he said. “You... you have to understand. As your lawyer, I have to protect you. As your friend, I have a duty to not let you make such a big mistake as renewing your vows to that... that—”
“She was my wife!”
Detective Head was getting antsy. “Canceling a caterer is hardly evidence of murder, Dodd,” he said. “I suspect you have more.�
�
I caught it as he said it—the subtle nod to two of his uniformed officers to advance in Jeremy’s direction. Not so subtly, they did.
“Oh, do I ever have more. You see, someone tipped me off that the murderer was Jeremy Poole.”
“Do tell, who was that Ms. Dodd?” Jeremy was trying to act cool—trying to remain calm. He failed miserably. “A little birdie?”
“Well as a matter of fact, you told me Jeremy. You tipped me off.” I was smiling now. Okay, it was more like I was smirking in an I’m-so-smart kind of way. I held up the newspaper—the one that Mrs. P had provided the morning I went to break into the Weatherby house, the one with that horrible picture of me splashed all over the front page. “I have here proof positive that it was Jeremy Poole that killed Jennifer and set me up. The interview he gave to the reporter. The one where he so gleefully trashed me.”
“I read the interview,” Detective Head said. “I read it a few times. There’s nothing in there pointing to Poole as the murderer.”
I looked at him as if he were an idiot. Mostly because I enjoyed looking at him as if he were an idiot. But also for the dramatics of the thing. “Wrong again, Detective. Jeremy Poole is a pretty smooth talker. Pretty good with the lawyer-ese. I’ll give him that. But there’s one word—one particular word that gives him away. He used it in this newspaper interview and he used in when he posed as Jennifer in my office.”
“What would that be, Dodd?”
“The f word.”
“Oh for f—” Detective Head stopped mid rant as he glanced toward the judge. “I don’t think Jeremy Poole is the only man to use that f word, Dix Dodd. If that’s all you’re going on, you’re pretty much f’d yourself.”
I shook my head. “That’s not the f word I’m referencing.”
“Tell him, Dix,” Dylan said.
“Floozy,” I blurted. It took every bit of restraint I had to bite down on an inappropriate laugh. “Jeremy used the word floozy when he was in my office posing as Jennifer Weatherby. And he used the word floozy again in the newspaper interview. Nobody uses the word ‘floozy’ anymore. Certainly not that much.”
“So you have a coincidence, Dodd,” Dickhead informed. “Nothing more.”
“I do have more.”
“I... I have to go to the bathroom,” Jeremy said. Judging by how pale he now was, I believed him. He stood, wavered sideways, stood straight.
“Oh no you don’t, Poole,” Dickhead said. “I’m not falling for that one again.”
An officer grabbed Jeremy by the arm and sat him down again.
“It was you who came into my office that day, wasn’t it, Jeremy? You threw me off there for a while, dressed as a woman. You were very clever. But I should have known you were a man all along. No woman carries that many different tubes of lipstick. Nor that many different brands of tampons in her purse.” I turned to Dickhead. “Do they, Detective? You were married, you know all about these things, don’t you?”
His eyes narrowed. “Just keep going, Dixie.”
I did. As if reading my mind, Dylan handed me the picture—the one with Jeremy and Ned coming out of the tennis court. The one where he was bent scratching his left leg under the white tube sock. “See this, Jeremy?”
Getting paler by the moment—so pale now I could see the stubble of beard on his white cheeks—he looked at the picture and nodded.
“This proves that you were posing as Jennifer.”
“I hardly see—”
I smiled. “You shaved your legs before you put on that purple dress and came into my office. You had to have just shaved your legs for them to be this smooth. And for them to be this glaringly white, you’d have to have not shaved them before, or at least not in a hell of a long time.”
“How... how would you possibly know that?”
“I just do, okay!”
Jeremy Poole crossed the legs under discussion and set his hands over his knees. “This is craziness. You’ve proven nothing here.”
Judge Stephanopoulos spoke up. “Well, maybe I can prove something here, Mr. Poole.”
All eyes turned to the judge as, shoulders back, she strode into the center of room. “I have here a restraining order, Mr. Poole. One taken out against Ms. Dodd advising her to stay away from the Weatherby house and Weatherby Industries. Ms. Dodd was kind enough to provide it to me this morning.”
Ned shot a look to Luanne, she shot one back at him. It was obvious that neither of them knew about this.
I didn’t think it was possible, but Jeremy turned even whiter. I imagine those legs of his would have the potential to blind now if exposed to the light of day.
“And, Mr. Poole,” the judge continued. “What most strikes my attention is the signature on this restraining order.” Judge Stephanopoulos stood before him now, towering over him as he sat cowering in the chair. She snapped the restraining order open under his nose. “You spelled my name wrong.”
“Oh shit.”
“And I would wager, Jeremy,” I said, “that when we manage to get a search warrant for the car and residence of a certain sweet little old lady—”
“I don’t know any sweet little old ladies,” he said.
He had me there.
“Okay, then if we manage to get a search warrant for the car of one cranky old woman with a broken ankle, a yappy dog and a sharp tongue, a.k.a. your aunt, we’ll find evidence you’ve been a very bad boy.”
Now it was Rochelle’s turn to jump into action. “I just happen to have a search warrant right here, Dix. Typed up and everything.” She turned to the Judge. “Your Honor?”
She pulled a pen from her purse. With a flare of pen to paper, Judge Stephanopoulos signed the order, and handed it to Detective Head.
“McGrath, Barnable.” Two officers stood straight. “Get yourselves over to Mrs. Levana Fyffe’s place.”
“Er, what are we looking for, Detective?” Barnable asked.
I answered; Dickhead let me. “Check the car for fibers and fingerprints. And oh, check the house for some flashing fashion.”
“Huh?”
“A purple dress that Jeremy here might have worn when he dressed up as Jennifer. Wide glasses. Fake boobs. Big floppy hat.”
“Wait a minute,” Detective Head said. “That still doesn’t explain the gun. We found the gun that killed Jennifer in your possession, Dix.”
Now it was Dylan’s turn to act. “Let me take this one, Dix.”
I smiled. “Go for it.”
He cleared his throat. It looked like he enjoyed being the center of attention too. “I did some checking around myself, Detective. That gun you found on Dix was used by Talbot K. Washington in that double murder years ago. If you recall, during the trial, it was discovered to have gone missing.”
“Holy hell, Foreman, tell me something I don’t know.”
“Okay, then I will. There was a young law student clerking at that firm when that gun went missing. He wasn’t on the regular company payroll, only worked one afternoon a week for one of the senior lawyers who paid him under the table. I guess the old guy felt sorry for him.”
“Let me guess,” Detective Head said. “That would be our friend Mr. Poole who was clerking there.”
Dylan nodded. “I went to law school with one of the lawyers who works there now. Apparently, Jeremy Poole was a poor, starving law student, but then quit working all of a sudden just after the Washington trial ended. Came into some fast cash somehow. And plenty of it.”
“You bastard,” Detective Head said. “You stole the gun didn’t you? Or caused it to be stolen. Washington could have walked because of you.”
“I... I think I need a lawyer.” Jeremy wiped a hand across his brow.
Detective Head snarled, “I know you do. Get this...”—with a glance at the Judge, he adjusted his language—“... gentleman downtown. Let him call his lawyer, then leave him for me.” The disgust in Dickhead’s voice was evident. And for a moment, I almost felt sorry for him. Then I realized the disgust
was probably over the fact that I wouldn’t be going to jail after all.
“Why?” Ned croaked, his voice thick with emotion, eyes filling with tears. “Why did you do it, Jeremy?”
Out of courtesy, the two officers escorting Jeremy Poole from the room stopped long enough for the question to be answered.
Jeremy’s bottom lip began to quiver, and his voice became that throaty voice he’d used in my office—his Jennifer voice. “Because... I love you, Ned.”
Collectively, we all did a double take.
“What’d he say?” Mr. Weatherby, Sr. asked.
“I think he said he loved him,” Mrs. Weatherby answered.
“Loved Jim? Who’s Jim?”
“No, not Jim. Him.”
Yeah, it was getting confusing. Not even I saw that one coming.
Unprompted now, Jeremy continued. “I’ve loved you for so long. When Jennifer got involved with Billy, I thought maybe... maybe then you’d throw her out for good. But you didn’t, you took her back.”
“But why? Why’d you have to kill her?”
“She was livid when she found out that I’d cancelled the caterer. It was a stupid thing to do, I know, but I was jealous. And I didn’t think Kenny Kent would call her about it. I thought he’d call you, and you’d finally, once and for all, just end it with Jennifer. I hoped. But it didn’t work that way. And when Jennifer found out, she called me. I went over to apologize but she wouldn’t hear anything of it. I begged her not to tell you, Ned. Begged her. And eventually she agreed.”
“But that wasn’t good enough for you, was it, Jeremy?” I said.
“I... I couldn’t take the chance. What if... what if someday she changed her mind, and did tell him? Ned would turn against me. I... I couldn’t have that. So I posed as Jennifer, and went to Dodd’s office. I was looking for a not-so-bright private detective, and given the dive she works out of, I thought I’d hit pay dirt. Dammit! All I wanted was for her to follow you around for a week! I did it to protect you, Ned.”
“Protect me? Protect me from what? From Jennifer?”
“No,” I answered. “He wanted to protect you from being blamed for Jennifer’s murder. I provided a rock-solid alibi, all week, in fact, until Jeremy had the opportunity to commit murder.” I turned to Jeremy, “You were protecting Ned, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” Jeremy whispered. “Always.”
“Then it was premeditated,” Dickhead said.
Jeremy’s mouth snapped shut so fast and hard I heard his teeth snap together. “I... I think I need that lawyer now.”
“Know any good ones?” Mrs. P shouted.
“Downtown, boys,” Detective Head said.
