Say No to Murder Page 16

  “How will I start a conversation about events that happened two years ago?”

  “You’ll think of something,” he said, unhelpfully.

  Thus far, I had not. Maybe if I could recall what was going on in the world and this town on that long-ago date, I could devise some conversational gambits. I searched my mind, trying to remember the headlines of stories that had appeared in the February papers I had perused, but couldn’t. I had been concentrating on the search for Lobster’s obituary to the exclusion of everything else. Still in the phone booth, I sighed again. It looked as if another trip to the Times was in order.

  I picked up the receiver and dialed again.

  “Port Frederick Times,” said a male voice. “All the news you want to know and some you don’t.”

  I laughed. “This must be the reception desk.”

  “Speaking. Woodenly. That’s how desks speak.”

  “I think you’re a splinter faction,” I returned, and he laughed. “This is Jenny Cain. I want to thank you for helping me escape the clutches of your reporters this morning.”

  “All in the line of subversive duty.”

  “I need another favor, uh . . . what is your name?”

  “Timothy Isley.”

  “Son of Hilda?”

  “The same.”

  “Well, Timothy Isley, I need to get back down to that basement to look up some additional articles, and I need to do it without being seen or recognized.”

  “There is a door,” he said, “at the rear of the basement. We will station our troops there to admit you. Just say the secret pass phrase.”

  “Which is?”

  “Smoking causes cancer in laboratory rats and mothers.”

  “She’ll love that, Timothy, but I’ll tell her.”

  “Thank you. When should we expect you?”

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ll post a guard.”

  I hung up, feeling conspiratorial.

  During the February in question, the United States was accused by a Pan American organization of shipping illegal arms to an embattled Latin American country; the yen rose in value against the dollar, the Italians installed two different governments, one at the first of the month and the second around Valentine’s Day; a Beirut businesswoman was kidnapped by terrorists who were variously linked to Israel, the PLO and the Red Guard; a blizzard closed the Denver airport for two days; and a Russian head of state died of ailments associated with old age.

  “Hell,” I muttered to myself as, once again smeared with newsprint, I sat cross-legged on the basement floor surrounded by the news of many yesterdays, “Why am I going to all this trouble, when I could have used today’s paper just as well to find out what was going on two years ago?”

  On the local scene that month, Hardy Eberhardt’s church sponsored a black leadership forum which was attended by nationally known figures. One of them, when asked about a supposed resurgence of the KKK, said, “These days, racist activity advances our cause, because most white Americans are appalled by it and ashamed of it. It plays into our hands because it produces guilt feelings that encourage white America to give us the next thing we want.” She was pictured with her arm linked with Mary Eberhardt who was described as “a leading local champion for minority rights.”

  In the business section for February 12, I found Ted Sullivan pictured in his role as the newly elected president of the local board of realtors. That same day, the after-luncheon speaker at the Rotary Club was Webster Helms, expounding on “The Architect’s Role in Fast-Track Construction.” Web told the members that, “architects, engineers, builders, contractors and developers all have an important role to play in streamlining the design, engineering and construction process in order to save time and money while at the same time retaining the quality and integrity of the building. Fast track is the future.” He must have had the Rotarians nodding over their cherry cobblers. I wasn’t surprised to find Jack Fenton’s bank mentioned throughout the business sections that month, and the man himself frequently photographed as he shook variously grateful and beseeching palms.

  In that same February, Barbara Schneider was sworn into her second term on a platform of economic revival; she also appeared in photographs of one banquet, two meetings and a ribbon-cutting. “We nearly lost this election to the high-spending Democrats,” she was quoted, as telling her partisan audience at the banquet, “but we will not lose the battle of the recession to them. This administration will pull this city out of the doldrums, or I will hear from you at the next election.” At one of the ribbon-cuttings, I spied the looming figure of Goose Shattuck and the smaller one of Web Helms, they having joined forces on the project as they did so often. Goose and Web were the odd couple physically and in temperament, but Goose got along with the persnickety little architect as few other builders could.

  But it was in the police blotter for the twelfth of that month that I came upon the most interesting item by far; One Elizabeth Tower, forty-nine, had been picked up for DWI, booked and released.

  “I’ll be damned,” I breathed. I reread the paragraph to see where she’d been arrested: on the highway overlooking the future site of Liberty Harbor. “I’ll be double damned.”

  The only committee members who were not represented in the papers that month were Pete Tower and Jennifer Cain. Why, I asked myself, was Pete’s wife drunk that night? Where had she been, where was she going, what had she done, seen, heard, who was with her, was she alone? And why was she driving that highway, far across town from her suburban home, that night?

  I returned the papers to their original stack once again, wheeled the step stool back to Hilda, thanked her again and made for the backdoor.

  “Hello!” she called to me. I turned to find her peering at me through a fog of smoke. “A reporter was down here after you left the first time, wanted to know what you was here for. I told him you was mighty interested in one particular month of one particular year.”

  I tried to keep my face from showing dismay.

  “September,” she said. “Nineteen forty-five.”

  I began to laugh.

  “Took him three hours,” she said, “to rummage through all those back issues. Sure hope he found what he was lookin’ for, don’t you?”

  “Hilda,” I said gratefully, “you give a whole new meaning to the Freedom of Information Act.”

  “Thank you, honey,” she said, and coughed. She was still coughing when I closed the door on that stronghold of subversive activity in the basement of the Port Frederick Times.

  Minutes later, I called Geof from yet another pay phone to apprise him of my latest activites.

  “So I’ll start with the Towers,” I suggested.

  “Good. Uh.” When he spoke again, he was trying to sound casual, but not succeeding. “Say, Jenny, I might take a run out to see your father this afternoon. Where’d you stash that dingy anyway?”

  “I don’t think you can find it without me,” I lied. “Why don’t you wait until tonight? I’ll row you out there myself.”

  “All right,” he said slowly, reluctantly.

  “Later,” I said quickly. Much later.

  chapter

  29

  With all the talk about the French café that Pete and Betty would be opening at the harbor, I tended to forget they were already the proprietors of a couple of franchise taco stands, which must have been the collateral Jack Fenton had mentioned. Or, maybe it was the food they served that gave me amnesia: watery tacos, doughy burritos, tough enchiladas, all slathered with sour cream. That was the dead giveaway; the quality of the food at a Mexican restaurant is always in inverse ration to the amount of sour cream used. The Towers must have owned a dairy; maybe that was one of Pete’s little investments on the side. My stomach recoiled at the thought of their imminent ethnic leap from Tex-Mex to French. But who was I to argue with the wisdom of the commercial loan department of the First City Bank? Although I did wonder if the bank had relied too much on economic and n
ot enough on culinary advice.

  “May I help you?” asked the youth behind the counter at the first of the two restaurants. She wore a yellow peaked cap that proclaimed, “El Biggo Taco.”

  “I’m looking for Pete or Betty.”

  “Try their other place.”

  “May I help you?” inquired the youth behind the counter at the second restaurant. His peaked cap was orange and it said, “Head Honcho.” I gathered he was the manager.

  “Betty or Pete around today?”

  “Try their other place.”

  I finally found them at home. Neither of them was wearing a peaked cap, either yellow or orange. Either color would have clashed with the basically flamingo pink decor. Even the robe in which Betty answered the door was flaming pink, and ruffled to within an inch of its life.

  “Jennifer?” She looked about as pleased as if I were collecting for a charity. It was early afternoon and she was wearing pink mules—those backless high heel slippers—with pink feathery stuff around the toes. I resolved, if she let me in, to look around the house for the Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog. She said, with evident regret, “Well, don’t just stand there, Jenny, come on in.” She left the front door open. Subtle.

  I got as far as the entryway. She draped an arm across the doorway to the living room, effectively blocking my access to the rest of her home. I was rapidly losing the desire to be tactful.

  “Jenny,” she said, “I hope you haven’t come here to enlist our help in support for your father. As Webster said, it’s nothing personal, you understand, but we have to think of the good of this town, and your father is not good for this town.”

  Out the window with tact went my additional original intention to be kind.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, smiling gently. “I thought you’d be just the person to give us the benefit of your experience with the law.”

  She stiffened, so that with her arm still propped against the doorsill, she looked like a store mannequin that somebody had stashed and forgotten.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she said aggressively, but I noticed that she lowered her voice when she said it, and her eyes registered a fear she wasn’t able to hide.

  I kept my voice silky, my smile on straight. “After all, Betty, it’s a matter of public record. I just thought you might be able to give us some good ideas about lawyers and dealing with the police.” Ruthlessly, I added an insinuating, “You know.” Then on a hunch, I added, “Pete around?”

  “For God’s sake,” she hissed. “Be quiet.” The arm came down from the doorsill and her lacquered nails landed on my arm. She brought her face so close I could smell her breath. She’d recently used a mouthwash that was about eighty proof.

  “Doesn’t Pete know?” I said, forcing myself to keep my eyes fastened on hers. “It was in the paper, Betty. How could he not know?”

  “Pete knows what I tell him,” she said, and I didn’t doubt it. “For Christ’s sake, Jenny, I even read the papers to him every day! I got myself home that night, I paid the fine, I called the lawyer, Pete never knew one damn thing about it, and you’re not going to tell him now.”

  Was that a threat? I wondered. Had she made a similar threat to Lobster McGee, and then carried it out?

  “Nobody told him?” I said. “Nobody mentioned seeing it in the paper? Come on, Betty, you don’t believe that, do you?”

  Suddenly there were tears in those eyes that were already red-rimmed from secret drinking. “Yes! I believe it! I do!”

  I loosened her fingers from my arm.

  “Why don’t you tell him, Betty? What could he do? If he loves you, he’ll stay with you; if he doesn’t, you can make it on your own.”

  “Can I?” she said bitterly. “What do you know? Did it ever occur to you that maybe I love him?”

  “No,” I said truthfully, “it never did.”

  “Don’t say anything to him,” she begged, suddenly pathetic. “Swear to me you won’t tell him.”

  “You need help, Betty.”

  “Mind your own goddamned business!” she flared then. “Get out!”

  I walked back out through the front door that she had never closed behind me, though it slammed hard enough behind me now. A rustling noise drew my eyes to the right. Pete Tower was on his knees, clipping shrubs.

  “Hello, Pete.”

  His head turned toward me as if it were being dragged that way. His round, bland face was suffused with an emotion that looked like hurt, but might have been hate.

  I made it to my car without a misstep, but I was breathing hard when I got there. Without pausing, I started the engine and drove around the corner. I parked, switched off the ignition and leaned my head back against the seat.

  Was this how detectives felt when they dipped into the dirty corners of people’s lives? Was I causing pain to innocent people—innocent, at least, of murder—in the name of saving my own family’s skin? I felt like a loose cannon on the deck of this investigation, but I started the car again, arming myself for the next skirmish.

  chapter

  30

  By the time I reached City Hall, the hourly employees had gone home. But I knew a Type-A workaholic when I met one, so I figured the mayor would be there, laboring late on the city’s business.

  I walked through the empty lobby of the low, one-story building, then down the long hall to the suite of city offices. Previous mayors stared down from the buff walls, none of them distinguished enough to stare back at. The mayor’s secretary had covered her typewriter and punched out, but sure enough, the ranking Republican of Port Frederick was still on the job, on the phone. Her voice floated out to me through the closed door of her office.

  Quietly, I opened her door just enough, to stick my head in to let her know I was there.

  The mayor looked up, startled.

  So did Ted Sullivan and Goose Shattuck.

  “Oh, sorry,” I said. “I thought you were on the phone, Barbara, didn’t know you had visitors. Is this a private confab, or is there an advisory committee meeting tonight that I have forgotten about?”

  “Jenny,” the mayor said overheartily. “Come in.”

  She was echoed in her enthusiasm by the two men, both of whom rose to offer their chairs. It was an unnecessary bit of chivalry, there being an empty chair between them. I took it, wondering, now that I had three birds in the hand, how I was going to feed them all at one time.

  “Nothing private going on here,” Goose boomed, then turned red. “We were just shootin’ the bull about . . . things.”

  “Things?” I said.

  “Sure,” Ted said. “Things. You know. Things.”

  “Right,” I said. “Things.”

  Barbara smiled graciously. “I can’t remember the last time you just dropped in like this, Jenny. Anything special on your mind today?”

  How could I find out from all of them what they were each doing the second week of February two years ago without arousing their suspicions? Stalling, I said, “I just dropped by to say hello.” The conversation was getting more inane by the second. “Well, actually Barbara, that’s not true. All right,” I said as if coming to a difficult decision, “we’re all friends here, right?”

  “Oh yes, Jenny,” they assured me, as one.

  “Well, friends . . . tell me what folks around town are saying about my dad. Do they think he’s guilty of anything more than bad judgment? I came to you, Barbara, because I felt that if anyone would have her ear to the pulse of the city, you would.” Speaking of pulses, I fairly throbbed with sincerity.

  The mayor avoided my eyes. Nor did Goose or Ted rush to be the first in the competition to answer me.

  “Since you’re here,” Barbara finally said, addressing a corner of her desk, “you might as well know . . .”

  “Barbara!” Ted said sharply. “Don’t you think . . .”

  “Hold on,” Goose said, quietly for him. “Maybe we ought to give this some more thought before we . . .”

 
; But the mayor looked squarely at me, ignoring them.

  “What the gentlemen are trying to discourage me from saying, Jenny, is that we are gathered here this afternoon to discuss your role on the Liberty Harbor Advisory Committee.”

  “Are you?” I said.

  “Yes. It’s nothing personal, you understand, but I’m sure you would be the first to appreciate the importance of the, well, reputable standing of the committee within this community. I’m sure you recognize, as well, the importance of our committee pulling together as one team for the good of the harbor, and therefore the town. Liberty Harbor and Port Frederick come first, as far as the committee is concerned.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “Let me guess.”

  “It pains me to say it,” she continued.

  “I’m sure it does.”

  “Now, Jenny.” Goose covered one of my hands, which rested on the arm of my chair, with one of his own great paws. I slipped my hand out from under his and placed it in my lap where even he was not likely to chase it

  “It pains all of us to say it,” Barbara persevered, “but we cannot help but wonder if your continued presence on the committee might not represent a rather indelicate conflict of interest.”

  Actually, I had been thinking of resigning for the very reason that Barbara put forth: it was an indelicate conflict of interest for a daughter to participate in a project that her father was suspected of wanting to destroy. But hearing her say so gave me an idea about getting the information I needed, so I decided to play it dumb. And angry.

  “You mean,” I said, putting a sarcastic edge on my own thoughts, “that folks might ask why I’m getting involved with a project they think my father wants to destroy?”

  “Yes,” the mayor said gratefully, “I’m so glad you understand. It’s really very decent of you.”

  “Nothing personal,” I said, with increasing bitterness, so that even she began to get my phony message. “Right, Barbara?”

  “Right!” Ted said enthusiastically.