Eighth Witness

by Kathi Daley

  “Wait,” I said. “A ten-year-old boy saw the murder but no one took him seriously?”

  Jack nodded. “According to this summary.”

  George picked up a stack of papers he had printed that had been sent by his friend. He began to sort through them. “If there was a witness, maybe there is a name in the full report.” After a few minutes, George paused. “Here we go.” He read from the page he held in his left hand. “‘The police officer who later responded to the report of the stabbing made a note that the only person on the dock other than the three men who had come across Groverson and tried to detain him was a ten-year-old boy named Toby Wells. He had been fishing and claimed to have seen the murder. The boy had not revealed his presence to the officer who initially responded to the scene, although the responding officer did think that a follow-up interview with Wells was warranted.’ It appears as if Toby didn’t say anything about what he saw until later, when the detective assigned to the case came by for a second look. The detective determined that Toby was too young to be considered a reliable witness, so he never followed up on his assertions at the time.”

  “Did Jeremiah’s attorney bring up this eyewitness at the trial?” Meg asked.

  “I don’t know,” George admitted. “I haven’t had a chance to go through the entire trial transcript.”

  “If this kid was ten in 1941, he would be in his late eighties now,” I said. “I wonder if he is still alive. If he is, I wonder if we would be able to track him down.”

  Jack frowned. “Toby Wells is not all that uncommon a name.”

  “I’ll take a closer look at the original police report to see if I can find additional information about him,” George offered. “Maybe the officer who initially responded to the call jotted down Toby’s address or the names of his parents.”

  I sat back and took a minute to digest things as Jack and George continued to read the documents they had selected to look through. Meg picked up a file she had brought from the museum and began to look though it as well. If Toby was fishing on the dock when Mrs. Willoby was stabbed, and if he did see a man in a suit kill her, perhaps what we really needed was a suspect, other than Jeremiah, with a motive. Perhaps the woman had a lover. Illicit love affairs certainly provided good motives. Or perhaps the man in the suit had a secret he didn’t want revealed. Of course, unless we were able to find Toby and he knew who the man in the suit was, I didn’t know how we would be able to find a solution to this very old puzzle.

  I picked up a stack of papers that had been set to the side and began to scan through them. The pages in my hand appeared to be copies of witness statements from the three men who had stumbled across Jeremiah standing over the body of the wife of his former boss. All three men had said much the same thing, which wasn’t surprising because they had been together at the time.

  “These witness statements appear to have been provided by three businessmen who were there for a meeting about a new development that was proposed to be built on the land where the cannery stood at the time of Mrs. Willoby’s death,” I said. “A lunch break had been called and the men decided to go for a stroll. That was when they happened upon Jeremiah.”

  “All right,” Jack said.

  “Earlier, when you were reading the summary, you said that one of the three men, Davis Jagger, made an official statement confirming that it was Jeremiah Groverson he saw standing over the body. My question is, if the men who happened upon Jeremiah were all well-to-do businessmen who did things like attend meetings about new developments, how did Jagger know Jeremiah, a poor laborer who worked for the man who owned the building that stood on the plot of land under consideration for development?”

  “Good question,” Jack said.

  “What do we know about this new development?” I asked.

  Everyone agreed that we didn’t know a thing, so George logged onto his computer and initiated a search while the rest of us continued to look through the paperwork his friend had sent. Even for what had seemed like a simple investigation followed by a short trial, there were a lot of papers to get through.

  “Okay I found something,” George said. “It appears as if an exclusive, high-end hotel was built on the land where the cannery stood when Jeremiah worked there. The oceanfront plot was considered to be a prime piece of real estate and the old cannery sold for top dollar.” George looked up. “I guess that makes sense. I know of other towns where the commercial strips that used to line the coast have been replaced with upper-end condos, exclusive resorts, and fancy hotels.”

  “So, based on the fact that the three men who happened upon Jeremiah standing over the body of his ex-boss’s wife were in town to discuss a new development, I am going to assume that the project was still in the idea stage then,” I said. “Do we know when the land actually sold?”

  “I’ll see if I can find out,” George said.

  “Using the address provided for the old cannery I pulled up a visual of the current landscape,” Jack said as he turned his laptop toward me.

  “It certainly doesn’t look like an industrial center now,” I said.

  “Do we know exactly where the old cannery once stood?” Meg asked.

  Jack turned the laptop back around and punched in a few additional commands. “It looks like the cannery was located right about here.” He pointed to a tall building that featured the logo of a popular resort chain.

  “Do we know when the new building was built?” I asked.

  “Nineteen forty-four,” George provided. “The cannery was permanently closed just four months after the death of Willoby’s wife. Long before Jeremiah was arrested. The old building was torn down in 1943 and the new one was constructed within a year.”

  “Does anyone else feel like the fact that the cannery was closed down and sold almost immediately after Mrs. Willoby’s death is a significant factor?” I asked.

  “Discussions about selling the land were already underway before her death,” Meg pointed out.

  “True. But what if while the folks who eventually did redevelop the land had the desire to buy the cannery building, they faced some obstacle? What if Mrs. Willoby opposed the project? The boy did say that a man in a suit killed her. Can we find out who owned the land at the time it was sold?”

  George nodded and went to work.

  “I like the direction you are taking with this,” Jack said. “Maybe Mrs. Willoby inherited the property from her family and Mr. Willoby just ran the cannery? Maybe he did need his wife’s signature to sell to the developers, but she was sentimentally attached to the land and refused to sell.”

  “It’s a theory,” I said.

  “And a good one,” George said. “According to these documents, the land was owned by Celeste Willoby, who inherited it from her father, Frank Olson, in 1933. Olson had run the cannery prior to his death, and Willoby, who met Celeste while working as Olson’s second in command, took over. I guess we can assume that the men interested in redeveloping the land approached Willoby, who, for the purposes of this discussion, we will assume wanted to sell. If we are going to assume that Celeste was killed as a means of getting her out of the way, the plot seemed to have worked out because all her assets, including the cannery and the land on which it stood, were left to her husband, who sold the land less than a year later.”

  I sat up taller. “Okay. We have motive and we have an eyewitness who may still be alive. What do we do next?”

  “We look for the witness,” Meg said. “This theory is a good one, and while we can demonstrate actions taken, we can’t prove the motive behind them. We can speculate that either Celeste’s husband or perhaps the developer seeking the land killed her to get her out of the way, but I don’t see how we can prove it without something more.”

  “I’ll work on trying to track down Toby Wells,” George said. “I know it is a long shot, but I would like to see this through.”

  “I would say that we should interview people who knew Celeste to see if anyone knew anything not provid
ed in the reports, but it was so long ago, I’m sure almost everyone who knew her is dead,” I said.

  “I can help George finish reading through all the documents his friend sent him,” Meg said as she leaned in toward him. “If we find anything relevant, we’ll text to let you know.”

  “I appreciate you both pitching in to help out with our story,” Jack said.

  “We are happy to help,” George responded. “I find the whole story quite fascinating. As you know, history has always been a bit of a passion of mine.”

  “And mine as well.” Meg smiled. I imagined that a shared love of history was one of the things that had drawn the two seniors to each other from the start.

  Jack and I chatted with Meg and George a while longer before we took Kizzy back down the path to our cabin. It struck me once again how really perfect this situation was. Not only did Jack and I have close friends nearby, we had partners in the frequent cold cases we enjoyed tackling.

  “That was a delicious dinner and an interesting conversation,” Jack said as we strolled under an overcast yet momentarily dry sky.

  “I was just thinking the same thing. When Gertie first told me that Jeremiah was a convicted killer, I really thought it might be a good idea to drop the story immediately. Now I’m hooked.”

  “It is turning out to be an interesting case,” Jack agreed.

  “And while I know that proving that someone other than Jeremiah killed Celeste is a huge long shot, it would give me a lot of satisfaction to do it,” I said.

  “Short of locating Toby and obtaining a statement from him, it seems pretty impossible. And even if he is still alive and we can find him and he is willing to officially state that he saw someone other than Jeremiah kill Celeste Willoby, I’m not sure that will be enough to have Jeremiah’s conviction overturned. Not that it matters all that much now.”

  “It matters to Gracie,” I said, “which I totally understand. If it was my parent who had been convicted of something so heinous, I would want to do whatever I could to clear their name.”

  “I guess that much is true. I’m sure that having a parent who has even been accused, let alone convicted of such a horrible thing is very hard to deal with. I’m just not sure that pulling off what we’d like to do is even a possibility.”

  I laid my head on Jack’s shoulder. “Yeah. The case is so old, it is unlikely we will uncover anything resembling evidence. What we really need is a confession, but I’m sure whoever killed Celeste is long dead, so we are unlikely to get that.”

  “Unless the killer confessed to someone else,” Jack suggested.

  “Confessed to someone else? You mean like a priest?”

  “Well, yeah, a priest would be a good possibility, but I was thinking more of someone who might be holding on to a secret they would be willing to share. Perhaps a child or a grandchild. Or perhaps the real killer, if it wasn’t Jeremiah, wrote about it in a journal, or confessed in a letter that someone kept.”

  I sighed. “Finding any of those things would be even more of a long shot than tracking down Toby.”

  “I don’t disagree. But sometimes things that appear to be impossible aren’t that way after all.”

  Chapter 11

  Monday, January 14

  The weekend flew by and very little progress was made on either of the cases we were working on. George had been in close contact with the retired FBI agent who had provided the documents we’d examined on Friday evening, and while both men seemed committed to tracking down Toby Wells, they still felt it was a long shot. Still, in the spirit of giving it the old college try, George had actually traveled north to spend the weekend with his friend in the hope that a focused effort would make all the difference.

  Rick was most interested, naturally, in the open case of Malcolm Carlton and had spent much of the weekend working on identifying his killer. Vikki had returned from LA and, thankfully, seemed like the same down-to-earth woman who had left Gull Island earlier in the week. I imagined that whatever had occurred in LA had been left there, and for that I was grateful.

  Alex was still focusing on Gina Portland’s death. He had interviewed those island residents he’d identified as having known her, as well as the other agents in her office. The idea that she had been part of some sort of burglary ring had really appealed to him, and as far as I knew, that was the theory he was currently running with. Brit was back on Gull Island, and I had seen the two of them with their heads together in deep conversation several times over the weekend.

  I had a visit from my mother to prepare for and Jack had a novel to finish, so much of our time was spent on that. I’d cleaned the house from top to bottom, gotten my hair trimmed and nails manicured, and even gone so far as to buy a new bra and underwear. My mother had yet to say exactly when she was coming, just that it would be later in the month. Whatever that meant. To be honest, I didn’t have much time to worry about her. Tonight was Mystery Mastermind night, and I had a full day’s worth of tasks to accomplish between now and then.

  My first task of the morning, after a nice sunny walk with Kizzy, was to meet Brooke for coffee. She had called me over the weekend to let me know that she had the schedule of events ready and wanted to go over a few things with me before we printed it. I also needed to run by the market to pick up supplies for the dinner Clara and I planned to make for the gang that evening, and I’d promised Garrett I would run by the pharmacy to pick up a supplement his regular doctor wanted him to take in addition to the medication prescribed by the doctor at the hospital.

  When I arrived at the coffee shop where I’d arranged to meet Brooke, she was already there. I ordered a skinny latte and a bran muffin, then joined her in the booth where she was waiting.

  “It’s busy this morning,” I said as I set my coffee on the table.

  “The sun has finally decided to show up,” Brooke said. “I think most folks, including me, were getting pretty sick of all the rain.”

  “It did seem to go on and on. I haven’t looked at the long-term forecast. Is this sunny weather supposed to continue?”

  “For a few days at least. There is a storm lingering off the coast, but no one seems to know whether it is going to stay put or roll inland. What I do know is that I am going to soak up every ray of sunshine that I can while we have it.”

  “That’s a good idea.” I took a sip of my coffee, then looked toward the folder Brooke had set on the table. “It looks like you are prepared, as always.”

  “I am,” Brooke said. “I have everything scheduled and all the venues locked in. I even have a list of committed volunteers. I thought it might be nice to name-drop over the next couple of weeks. I’d like folks to get credit for giving up so much of their time. I figure it would be easy to weave the names into the articles, rather than just dump a list of names somewhere, You could mention that Stacy Friar and Paula Lundly have provided all the decorations when you talk about the cocktail party on opening night, or possibly list the ushers by name when you talk about each movie.”

  “I get the idea and I love it. I do think that the people who pitch in and help out with the local fund-raisers should get credit for doing it.”

  Brooke smiled. “Great. I knew you would work it out. Now, about the venues; they have all been set, but there is one dark horse that could change things up a bit. It seems that the church has been having some issues with the electrical panel in the auditorium. I spoke to Pastor Branderman, and he assured me that the panel is being looked at, but in the event the problem turns out to be something not easily dealt with, I have been looking for an alternative space not already being utilized. So far I’m coming up cold, but I plan to keep looking. If you know of a place, please let me know.”

  “How many people do you need to seat?”

  “At least a hundred,” Brooke answered. “We are already using the local theater, the community center, and the auditorium at the elementary school. I asked about using the high school gym, but the principal didn’t want a bunch of chairs se
t up, scratching up the floor.”

  “What if you rolled out something to temporarily cover the floor? I’m not sure what exactly. Maybe some sort of indoor/outdoor carpeting?”

  Brooke’s expression grew thoughtful. “I suppose that could be an option. I’ll talk to the principal about it to see what he thinks. We wouldn’t even need to keep the floor covering, only borrow it. I wonder if anyone has anything like that on hand.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t, but maybe you can find someone who does. You should speak to the woman who runs the community theater.”

  “Good idea. And thanks for the suggestion.”

  I put the list we had been looking at back into the folder. “There shouldn’t be any problem fitting everything you need into the two articles we have left.”

  “I knew I could count on you. Oh, I wanted to ask about your research into Gina’s murder before I go. Have you found out anything new?”

  “I’m not sure.” I leaned in close. I knew I could trust Brooke, but I didn’t necessarily want to advertise our current strategy to others who might overhear our conversation. “Apparently, Rick found a pattern between the open houses Gina oversaw and some home burglaries on the island.”

  Brooke raised a brow. “Really? That is interesting. Does he think that she was the one burglarizing the houses?”

  “Either that or she was working with someone who did. Probably the latter. I guess you heard about Malcolm Carlton?”

  Brooke’s expression softened. “I did. I was very sorry to hear about what happened. I didn’t know him well, but I did know him casually. He seemed like a really nice guy.”