A Fatal Four-Pack

by P. B. Ryan

  “How do you know that?”

  I pulled out the wrinkled envelope. “I found this in his desk the other day.”

  Richard studied it. “This doesn’t prove anything.” He handed it back.

  “Not by itself. But it wouldn’t be hard for the cops to get a copy of the letter. Our Ms. Walker had strung Sumner along for over four years and, with the gravy train about to end, she wasn’t about to let him have the last word.”

  “What about Sumner’s wife?”

  “Sharon went after his estate. No way was Claudia going to let her have any of the money. But she’d underestimated Sharon. Thought she could reason with her.”

  I sipped my coffee. “It bothers me that Rob Sumner called her. Told her I might be out to visit her. Why would he do that?”

  “Maybe he’s afraid of her,” Richard suggested. “He, of all people, knows what she’s like. He may suspect she killed his father—and his mother.”

  “He knows something,” I agreed. I thought about it for a moment. “Maybe he wants her to get caught. She’s practically living in poverty. She could go after him for child support now that his father isn’t paying her. Maybe he wants her out of the way. So he called her to make her angry—”

  “At you,” Richard finished. “He may have deliberately set you up as a target.”

  “How? Sharon only knows my name. The cops and Sumner’s family know I don’t work for the insurance company. But only Detective Hayden and Sam Nielsen know where I live. I haven’t left much of a paper trail here in Buffalo ... yet.” That last word seemed to hover over the table like a prophetic curse.

  We sat in silence for long minutes. Dishes clattered in the kitchen. Static-laced Muzak came from a speaker in the ceiling.

  Richard indicated the plate in front of me. “Eat up.”

  I did my best, but neither of us could finish.

  “Where to?” Richard asked once we were back in the car.

  “Let’s get this envelope of stuff to Detective Hayden. After that, I don’t want anything more to do with Sharon Walker.”

  o0o

  It was Hayden’s day off. I tried his home phone number and found him in. He wasn’t exactly happy to hear from me, but told me to come over anyway. He lived in one of the older neighborhoods in Orchard Park.

  Two boys’ bicycles, covered in fresh mud, were clashed on the soggy ground in the front yard. The basketball hoop over the garage door had no net. It started to rain as I knocked on the side entrance door. Richard looked morose and huddled into his jacket. I knocked again, and a matronly woman answered. “Mr. Resnick? Won’t you come in? My husband is in the den.”

  The tidy, dated kitchen reminded me of a set from a sixties sitcom. The aroma of meat loaf and boiled potatoes filled the air. An unfrosted chocolate cake, cooling on wire racks on the counter by the sink, added to the sense of unreality. We followed her through the orderly house to the den. She ushered us inside and closed the door behind us.

  This was obviously Hayden’s domain. Family photos were scattered over the walls, including a large color portrait of Hayden, his wife, and two preteen boys. Bowling trophies shared shelf space with a clutter of books, magazines, and other memorabilia.

  “Still joined at the hip, I see. Sit,” Hayden commanded. “I don’t like my weekend interrupted,” he warned without preamble.

  “With any luck, you’ll never see me again after today.” I handed him the envelope.

  “What’s this?” He lifted the flap and dumped the contents on his desk.

  “My case against Sharon Walker.”

  “Who?”

  “The woman who killed Matt and Claudia Sumner. It’s kind of a long story. I hope your meat loaf will keep.”

  I repeated what I’d told him at the police station earlier that week, catching him up with the events that had occurred within the past few days—leaving out the part where Maggie and I found the second victim. While I spoke, he pawed through the envelope’s contents. He didn’t ask where I got the copy of Sumner’s calendar, and I wouldn’t have told him. Richard handed over his handkerchief with the fabric swatches.

  Hayden leaned back in his Naugahyde swivel chair. “All circumstantial. You haven’t got a thing I can go to the DA with.”

  “I know that. But once you subpoena the lab report, that alone should give you a new angle to investigate.”

  He picked up the envelope. “Where’d you get this?”

  “Sumner’s office. It was jammed behind one of the drawers in his desk.”

  “And what were you doing there?”

  “I had permission. Ron Myers can vouch for me.” I waited, and when he said nothing, “Well?”

  “Well, what? There’s nothing here. No case.”

  “Will you at least look into it?”

  “Yeah, but it won’t come to anything. Guaranteed. Sumner slept with a number of women, but he was usually discreet. He was being blackmailed. He withdrew fifteen hundred dollars from his savings account every month for the past four years. That is, until this past month. He didn’t pay and was killed for it.”

  “It wasn’t blackmail. He considered it child support.”

  “Whatever,” the detective said.

  “And you don’t think a woman could’ve killed him?”

  “Arranged to have him killed? Certainly. Doing it herself? That’s another matter, especially considering how it was done.”

  “Don’t be such a chauvinist, Hayden. This isn’t the turn of the century, and Sharon Walker is no dainty little female. She can probably bench-press more than all three of us put together.”

  “That doesn’t prove a thing.”

  “Then what about her car? It matches the one Paul Linski saw.”

  “By his own admission, he doesn’t know for sure if he saw it on the night the body was dumped.”

  “What about the carpet fibers? She carted Sumner from Holland to Orchard Park in the back of her station wagon. There had to be fibers on his wounds, in his lungs, or under his fingernails.”

  Hayden continued to glare at me.

  I let out a long, quavering breath, trying to hold my anger in check. I’d wasted my time and his.

  “Well, you keep all that stuff, Detective. It isn’t doing me any good.” I stood. “And if the case is still open in a year or two, maybe you’ll be willing to take it under consideration. Come on, Rich, let’s go.” I paused at the door. “And thanks for telling Nielsen about me. My tax dollars at work.”

  I opened the door and started back through the house. Mrs. Hayden stood at the counter, assembling her layer cake. I walked past but heard Richard murmur, “Nice to meet you,” on his way out. He always did have good manners.

  The door closed behind him and he followed me to the car. The drizzle had turned into a steady downpour. We got in the Lincoln and sat.

  Richard turned to me. “I’m sorry, Jeff.”

  “What for? I didn’t really believe he’d go for it. To tell you the truth, I’m surprised he didn’t throw us out.” I took a breath to steady my shaky nerves. “I’ve done my civic duty. I reported what I know about a crime. If Hayden chooses to do nothing about it, it’s out of my hands.”

  “I just hope you haven’t set yourself up as a target.”

  Me, too, I thought.

  Richard silently fumed for most of the ride back to Amherst, more depressed about the situation than I was. It was time to lighten the mood.

  “Did you see the basketball hoop on Hayden’s garage?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Whatever happened to ours?”

  He frowned. “Grandmother had it taken down the day you left for the Army.”

  “But you put it up.”

  “I did it for you. She never bothered to ask me if I’d like to keep it. It was shortsighted of her.”

  “Why?”

  “It made it easier for me to take the job in Pasadena. That stupid basketball hoop was the tenuous connection I had with you. She wouldn’t understan
d that you could mean something to me. When it came down, it was the first step toward my freedom.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “I was just a possession to Grandmother. She’d won me from Betty. She saw your leaving as another victory. The job in California was my way out, but not without a lot of guilt. I wasn’t there when Grandfather died, and I wasn’t there when she died two years later, alone. Curtis found her in her bed.”

  “Did you come back to Buffalo?”

  He shook his head. “What was the point? There was no one to come home to. I made all the arrangements by phone. I’ve never even been to her grave,” he finished quietly, his gaze locked on the road ahead, his expression unreadable.

  I remembered then what Brenda had said to me the day I’d returned to Buffalo: It means a lot to him that you’re here.

  “You think we could get another one?” I asked.

  “Another what?”

  “Backboard. I won’t be in this brace forever. It might be fun to play some one-on-one again.”

  He risked a glance at me, his smile tentative. “Sounds like a great idea.”

  I think we both knew then that I wasn’t ever going back to Manhattan.

  Chapter 23

  That evening, I spent over an hour out in the garage, rummaging through my boxes. The cold and damp seeped through my jacket. I was ready to give up my search when I finally found what I wanted. I scrounged some tissue used in packing my stuff, and wrapped the small object. I hoped Richard would like it.

  I also tramped through the loft apartment again and decided I’d wait until my arm was completely healed before asking Richard if I could live up there. Once I got a job, we could work out some kind of rental agreement. I wanted my own space; I needed a place of my own. But I didn’t want to go too far, at least not yet.

  That wasn’t the end of my evening, however. I had one more little mystery to solve. Without a word to Richard or Brenda, I set out on foot, headed down the neighborhood’s backstreets for Snyder. The brisk wind was at my back and the clouds overhead were heavy and threatening. I needed to talk—but not to Richard, or any other physician or academician at his old stomping grounds of UB. There were still so many things I didn’t understand about this crazy new ability I seemed to have acquired—like why had I been blessed with it? Only one other person understood my predicament.

  I crossed the parking lot to the darkened bakery and pressed the buzzer at the side of the door, held it for long seconds at a time. After a minute or so, a light came on in the back of the shop, then a large silhouette shuffled toward the door.

  “Stop already!” came Sophie’s muffled voice through the glass as she flipped open the lock. “Come in before you let in all the cold.”

  “Where have you been? I came to see you the other day and they never heard of you.”

  “You didn’t come at night. Alone.” Her tone was belligerent. Then she shrugged theatrically, as if that was explanation enough. “So, why’d you come now?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  She nodded and motioned me to follow her into the back room once again. “Instant coffee all right?”

  I nodded, taking my seat at the card table. She filled the same saucepan with water, set it on the hot plate above the sink. I remembered that, days earlier, the baker had sidestepped my question about electrocution.

  “Don’t you think that’s a dangerous arrangement?”

  She gestured. “This? I’m always careful.” She measured the coffee into cups. “So, you found the killer. I knew you would.” We’d never even discussed my case. How did she know? “How can I help you now?” she asked.

  “What do I do next?”

  “It’s in God’s hands now.”

  “That’s not the answer I was looking for.”

  “Who says I have answers?”

  “I guess you don’t, because you seem to answer most of my questions with questions.”

  Her eyes crinkled as her lips drew into a self-satisfied smile. Then she shrugged. “Tell me all about it.”

  She listened patiently, serving the coffee as I told her about Sharon, Sumner’s and Claudia’s grisly deaths, and all the other prominent players in this little drama.

  “You know who did it—you told the police. So what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is Sharon should be punished for what she’s done and nobody seems to care!”

  Sophie frowned. “You don’t think she’s being punished every time she looks at that child?”

  “What if she takes her anger out on the kid?”

  “That could happen. Jeffrey,” she said reasonably. “As long as one person knows the truth, she hasn’t gotten away with anything.”

  “But I don’t want to be the sole guardian of that truth.”

  She smiled tolerantly and patted my hand. “Trust.”

  “That’s your advice? Trust?”

  “Things have a way of working out the way they are meant to.”

  “Unfortunately, too often these days people literally get away with murder.”

  She shook her head sadly. “That’s not all you wanted to ask me, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Now that you believe, you want to know why, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe you’re just lucky.”

  “You call this lucky?” With a gesture, I reminded her of my partially shaved head.

  “Aren’t you doing what you always wanted to do?”

  I blinked in confusion. What the hell was she talking about?

  “You always wanted to help people,” she said. “You just never knew how.”

  “How will finding Sumner’s killer help anyone? It doesn’t even help him—he’s dead.”

  “Maybe you’ll help that little boy. The one you were worried about just now.”

  “I don’t even like children.”

  She shook her head. “Everybody loves children. Even you.”

  I wasn’t going to argue.

  “What does it matter why you have it? You have it. Now you have to learn to live with it,” she said.

  “You sound just like my brother.”

  “He’s a doctor—he should know.”

  “Now you sound like my—” Girlfriend, I’d wanted to say, but that wasn’t going to happen now.

  Sophie smiled. “I told you, things have a way of working out the way they were meant to.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “Time for you to go.”

  I got up and followed her through the shop, feeling like a child who’d just been scolded. “Will you be here the next time I come by?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Here, take a placek home for Easter breakfast.”

  I hefted the loaf. It felt real enough. “Thank you.”

  She drew me into a hug, kissed my cheek, then pulled back, held my face in her warm hands. “Good things will come of this. They will,” she insisted. “Now, take care walking home. Stay on the sidewalk where there’s lots of light. I’m too old to have to worry about you.”

  She radiated a sense of peace and deep affection. I recognized it, understood it. But again I wondered: why me?

  “I’ll be careful,” I promised, and kissed her goodbye.

  The lock clicked into place and she waved before turning and heading for the back room once more. I watched as first that light went out, and a minute later the light above the shop burned.

  The bakery sign over the door looked shabby, in need of repainting. Was it the same one I’d seen the other day? I couldn’t be sure. Maybe I didn’t want to know. Tucking the placek under my arm like a football, I turned and started for home.

  I followed Sophie’s instructions and stayed on the sidewalk under the intermittent flare of the street lamps. The long walk home gave me plenty of time to think. Maybe that was my problem—I was thinking too much.

  A car whizzed past, splashing dirty water my way. I checked traffic before cutting across Main Street, anxious to get off the busy road and
leave behind the stench of exhaust fumes. I headed down a quiet side street, pausing at the corner to pull up my jacket collar against the damp night.

  Turning left, I picked up my pace, in a hurry to get back to the warmth of my room, where I could lie awake for endless hours, thanks to my jumbled nerves. Frustration nagged at me. The fact that Detective Hayden wouldn’t consider my evidence against Sharon Walker reinforced the reality that I had virtually no control over any portion of my life, and probably wouldn’t for weeks, possibly months.

  I refused to take the thought any further. Frustration could also be a byproduct of my present physical condition. Before the mugging, impatience had never been a problem. I knew that damned feeling of impotence would eventually pass, but it couldn’t come soon enough for me.

  Richard’s driveway was in sight when I heard the roar of an engine, saw blinding high beams as the car barreled toward me. It fishtailed on the wet pavement and jumped the curb. I leaped into the privet hedge, out of its path, an instant before it would have nailed me.

  Heart pounding, I rolled onto my knees, watched the speeding car recede into the night, its taillights glowing. Some trained investigator I was—I couldn’t tell the make or even the color.

  I brushed uselessly at my muddy jeans. The adrenaline surge that had coursed through me seconds before was already waning. Probably a drunken teenager out joyriding, trying to scare pedestrians.

  Or it could’ve been Rob Sumner.

  Or worse, Sharon Walker.

  No! They couldn’t know where I lived. And how would they have known it was me on the street at eleven o’clock at night? Dressed in dark clothes, I could’ve been anybody out for a walk.

  Okay, maybe the sling on my arm was a dead giveaway.

  Maybe.

  I groped in the blackness, found the placek. One end was crushed but still salvageable. I stormed off across the lawn for the house. There was no point in even mentioning this little mishap to Richard and Brenda, yet I couldn’t dismiss it entirely.

  I hated feeling afraid.

  o0o

  Easter Sunday I awoke to the sound of rain pelting against my bedroom window and strained to reach my watch on the bedside table. Eight thirty, lots of time to get ready to go to the Basilica. Best of all, I awoke with no headache, so despite the gray start, it looked like it might turn out to be a good day.