Murder at First Pitch

by Nicole Asselin

  After a quick change behind her desk, she took out a compact mirror and made sure her face and hair were on point. Deciding that she looked good enough for the gala, she grabbed a black clutch and threw a few things in to tide her over for the night. The gala was only supposed to go until eleven, so she hoped to be back home by midnight. She also hoped that the event wouldn’t be marred by all the hoopla surrounding the murder, but she knew how gossip tended to spread in a small town.

  She made her way back out into the hallway and caught up with her parents as they proceeded to the event space. Like the concessions party, they were holding the event on the concourse. Food and drink were set up at several concession stands and white shirt clad waiters were walking around with appetizers for people to enjoy. Music was provided by the team DJ, a kid who attended college nearby, and the place looked like it was filling up when they arrived.

  Madeline followed behind her parents as they entered the party area. Ben was already there, schmoozing with the guests with a drink in his hand. When the crowd saw her parents, they gave a hearty round of applause. Her dad walked to the small podium set up near the booths and waved a hand to acknowledge the applause.

  “I want to thank you all for coming tonight and supporting your Abington Armadillos as we begin our season. We had a great game today and hope to continue with the great season we have planned. You are the supporters that provide us with joy and love every year, and so we thank you. Enjoy the party and enjoy the season.” He stepped from behind the microphone and walked off towards his wife to the sound of applause.

  Gradually everyone went back to their own conversations. Madeline tried to eavesdrop as much as she could to what people were saying. She figured it wouldn’t hurt to see what the gossip about the murder was.

  About fifty people were at the party, a majority of them older folks who have followed the team for a while. There weren’t many opportunities to own season tickets for sporting events in the area, and the Red Sox were a hefty price tag for some people. Plus, access wasn’t that great either. This way, they got the best seats at low prices, and got to see some stars of the future play in the area. The team also provided a chance for aging MLB veterans to continue their careers a little longer after they washed out of the majors. It was a fascinating group of players, and Madeline found a lot of their stories interesting.

  Madeline couldn’t remember why she was so hesitant to come back to the team before. The people at the ballpark were nice, the fans that came out to the games were exceptional, and all her co-workers made her feel welcome right away. The only thing marring her return was the murder of Chris Dailey. Her family was acting pretty normal even though their son was a possible suspect in a murder. There was no other family drama outside of the murder, and she had been enjoying herself in the lead up to the opening of the season. Maybe working for the family business thing could work permanently. She knew her grandpa would’ve loved to have the team stay a family affair for as long as possible.

  Madeline grabbed a glass of wine and snagged a slider off of one of the passing waiter’s trays. She was glad she didn’t drink too much at happy hour earlier. White wine was her weakness and, if left unchecked, she would have quite a hangover in the morning. She wanted to stay sharp just in case she heard any gossip that could help her investigation.

  As she circled the small party area, she picked up on a few conversations. Most of them concerned family updates or local events. Madeline thought that was a good sign, no one was talking about her family or the murder. She bobbed her head along to the music that the DJ was playing. The family had made sure he mixed it up between current hits and classics for some of the older patrons. No one seemed to mind the music. Several couples were already dancing on the makeshift dance floor on the concourse.

  Madeline glanced over at her parents. She saw they were deep in conversation with someone who looked sort of familiar. She couldn’t quite place where she had seen him before though. He looked to be about her age, tall, dark hair, and an ice gray summer suit. Catching her mother’s eye, she waved Madeline over with a smile on her face.

  Uh-oh. Madeline knew that look. It had to be a possible matchmaking trick. It was her mother’s specialty. She hoped the guy didn’t turn out to be a complete dud like the accountant she set her up with a few years ago. Not that all accountants were bad, just that numbers bored her and so had this particular guy.

  Madeline weaved her way through the crowd and approached her mother. The guy turned around and reached out a hand to introduce himself. Now she remembered him. It was Tom, the scout from the other day. He was much cuter up close and not being screamed at by an old baseball dad.

  “Madeline, this is Tom, one of our scouts. Tom, this is our daughter, Madeline, who put everything together for the game and this party.” Her mother introduced the two of them with a smile on her face. “Oh, would you look over there.” She pointed vaguely in the opposite direction. “I see a friend that I must simply talk to right now. You kids have fun.” She patted Madeline on the arm and flitted off. Talk about transparent.

  “So,” Madeline said. “That wasn’t too obvious, was it?”

  Tom smiled back at her. “I get it. My mom’s always trying to meddle in my life, too. My mom is constantly telling me about people in her office that would be perfect for me. I prefer to rely on my own skills to meet someone. That said, it’s nice to officially meet you, Madeline.”

  They spent the rest of the party chatting in a corner. She found out that Tom was a really good guy. He spent his free time coaching little league baseball and tried to volunteer as much as he could at the local animal shelter as well. His parents lived in the area and he made sure to visit them for Sunday dinner every week. He was perfect. Almost too perfect.

  Then, he dropped the bomb.

  “So, you’re the one who found the body the other day?”

  Madeline started in surprise and looked at Tom with narrowed eyes. “Um, yeah. I didn’t know that was common knowledge though.”

  He laughed, disarming her suspicion. “No, it’s not. I was talking to your brother the other day and he mentioned it. I’m not some creepy guy who is obsessed with the situation. I was just wondering how weird that must have been to find a guy bludgeoned in the ballpark. I mean, he wasn’t a good guy, but no one deserves to die like that.”

  Madeline relaxed a little. “Oh yeah, it was weird alright. I didn’t know him at all, but it was the last thing I was expecting to see in this place.” She shuddered as she thought back to that day.

  “Do they have any idea who did it? I’ve heard rumors that he was involved in a lot of shady stuff in the baseball world. I think he was seen around the Barnstable team a couple of weeks ago talking to some people. Not a team-sanctioned conversation. In fact, I think security chased him off.” Tom shrugged. “I also had a couple of people tell me he promised them tryouts with several teams without anything to back it up. Some kids went to the ballparks and were turned away. It was a huge scandal in our world.”

  Madeline took this information and filed it away for future investigation. She added to the mental list along with the list of people she still had in her office drawer. Before she could ask Tom any more questions, he looked at his watch.

  “Oh, crap. I have to go. Early tomorrow with the little league. Hopefully we can get together for a coffee or something soon. I’ll talk to you later.” He handed her his business card and gave a jaunty wave before heading to the exit.

  She took the card in her hands and twirled it between her fingers. She thought he just asked her out on a date. And she wasn’t completely adverse to the idea. Davis didn’t seem like he was all that interested in starting a relationship, and she couldn’t wait around forever for him. Tom seemed like a good guy. Now she’d never hear the end of it from her mother. Especially if it turned into something serious.

  Of course, thinking about Davis reminded Madeline of the note she found earlier. She thought he was going to be here tonig
ht to tell him all about it, but apparently, he pawned the security for the event off to some of his underlings. She thought about maybe leaving a note for him to come talk to her in the morning on Monday. This stuff could probably wait until then.

  The party seemed to be winding down, so she took the opportunity to sneak off to the front office. The office hallway was quiet with only a few low-level lights on for emergency purposes. Madeline shivered. It was a little bit creepy. She could imagine someone sneaking up behind her in the dark. She knew that there were people still around because of the party, but with the murder, every dark corner seemed potentially sinister. She wanted to hurry up and leave Davis the note and get the heck out of there. As she wrote the note in her office, she heard a noise from her brother’s office on the other side of the hallway.

  Taking her shoes off, she crept along as silently as she could, not wanting to get caught in case it was someone out to do harm. The team didn’t keep any money or anything stored on site, the money was deposited after every game so they didn’t have cash lying around for long periods of time.

  The light was off in his office, so she figured it wasn’t her brother doing some extra work. Before she could reach the doorway of his office, someone outside the window cleared their throat. She turned towards the sound and whoever was in Ben’s office took off out the side door of the front office. She tried to follow after them, see if she could get a glimpse of who it was. She made it as far as the door before realizing she couldn’t run across the parking lot shoeless.

  She did think she caught a quick glimpse of the person, not that it mattered it was so dark out. She thought they were about her height, but they were wearing all black and a black hat. She couldn’t even tell if it was man or woman who she saw. She sniffed the air around her. There was a smell that seemed familiar, like a cologne or perfume that she was sure she smelled before. Unfortunately, her sense of smell and memory weren’t very good, because as hard as she thought, she couldn’t figure out where she remembered it from.

  Madeline sighed and put her shoes back on as she trudged back down the hallway. She turned the light on in her brother’s office and found it torn apart. Papers were shuffled about, his guest chairs were tipped over, and she couldn’t tell if anything had been taken. She went back to her office and grabbed her phone. Texting her brother down at the party, she let him know that she disturbed someone breaking into his office. Not two minutes later, he was by her side looking through his papers to see if the intruder took anything.

  The safe in his office held important contract documents for players, and team finance information, but it didn’t look disturbed at all. Instead, it just looked as if someone rooted through the papers on his desk and knocked some things over.

  “I don’t know, Maddie. I don’t think there was anything important here. Stuff that would be worth breaking into an office for are in the safe. And that’s still locked up tight.” Ben ran a hand through his short dark hair in frustration.

  They righted the chairs and took a seat across from each other in the office. Ben looked at her with concern in his eyes. “Are you okay, though?”

  Madeline shuddered as she thought about the person running in the dark of the parking lot. She didn’t even think twice about trying to catch up with them until she hit the blacktop. Probably not one of her best ideas. She had no clue if the person was dangerous or not, but she wanted some answers. They decided to seal off the office for the night and talk to the detectives and Davis in the morning. They seemed to be back where they started without any answers.

  Chapter Ten

  Due to the excitement of the last few days, sleep was not immediately forthcoming when Madeline got home that night. Her cats looked at her with disbelief as she kept tossing and turning in her bed. Finally, they gave up on her and found other cozy places to curl up for the night

  Her Sunday was uneventful, and she took the time to get house things done. Three cats could cause havoc, and there was a lot of cat hair to vacuum and clean up. She caught up on all her shows, finished laundry, and was back in bed early before the start of the new workweek.

  Rising at five in the morning, she grabbed an iced tea from the fridge. She wasn’t a coffee drinker, but she definitely needed something to perk her up. She also needed the fortification to face Davis after the break-in the previous night. She probably should have called him as soon as it happened. But if she was honest, she wasn’t in the mood to hear a lecture about how she should be more careful.

  Madeline hopped into the shower, hoping it would help wake her up a bit. She decided to go casual for the day since there wasn’t a game being played and no big appointments she had to worry about. Pulling on jeans and a team shirt, she shoved her hair back with a headband and headed out the door. First and foremost, she had to pick up her morning iced tea from the Dunkin’ Donuts on the way to the ballpark. Just for fun she also picked up some munchkins for the office as well.

  In her pocket she carried the piece of paper she found on the floor of the restaurant. It was hard to believe that it was only the day before. So much had happened since then. She wanted to talk it over with Davis before handing it off to the police. She wanted to help Ashley get closure if she could. But why was Ashley carrying around that piece of paper? It definitely looked like a list of suspects. Plus, she also needed to tell Davis about the break-in if he didn’t already know.

  Madeline got into her office after saying a quick hello to Eliza and spread the paper on the desk. She copied it over to another sheet of paper so she could have her own copy when she handed it over to the police. She picked up the phone and dialed Davis’ interoffice extension.

  “Davis, can you come here for a minute? I need to tell you about something that happened at the restaurant after you left yesterday. Also, something happened during the gala that you need to know about.”

  Davis promised to get there in a minute, and she hung up the phone. He didn’t sound angry at her, so hopefully he didn’t know about her near miss last night. She leaned back in her office chair to think. Was Ashley investigating her boyfriend’s murder? Why didn’t she go to the police if she had suspicions? Of course, she thought he was on the straight and narrow, but if that was the case, why did she have a list of people who all apparently hated Chris?

  Davis walked into her office wearing a casual outfit of jeans and a nicely pressed button-down shirt. No T-shirts and cargo shorts for this guy. Madeline wondered if he had a girlfriend who helped take care of him. She hated to perpetuate stereotypes, but it was rare to see a man looking that good knowing how to work an iron.

  She shook herself out of her fawning of Davis and realized she was staring at him. Clearing her throat, she gestured to the other chair and shuffled some papers around on her desk. He looked at her quizzically as he sat down.

  “Hey, Maddie. I’m going to jump right into it. I heard about the break-in last night. Your brother called me. How are you holding up?” Davis looked at her as if waiting for her to spill her guts about the event.

  Well, she wasn’t going to indulge him. “It wasn’t great, that’s for sure. But no harm no foul. Maybe it was someone who had gotten lost during the gala. Whatever.”

  She shrugged and Davis raised an eyebrow. Clearly, he wasn’t buying what she was selling, but she changed the subject immediately.

  “So, as I was leaving the restaurant before the gala last night, I literally ran into Chris Dailey’s girlfriend, Ashley. She was a wreck. Upset and crying about Chris and not getting information from the cops on what happened. I guess I have a good listening face because she really opened up to me. I think she just needed to vent and I happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

  He looked at her and rolled his eyes. “And I’m sure you didn’t encourage her at all. Did you find anything out that should go to the police?”

  Madeline proceeded to tell him all about the phone call Ashley overheard. Angry phone calls are always suspicious. She then passed the p
iece of paper with the list of names over to Davis. “This also fell out of her purse and I found it before I left. It seemed interesting. It’s pretty much everyone who could be considered a suspect in the murder as far as I can see.”

  Davis took the list and looked at it thoughtfully.

  The list was pretty straightforward:

  Ben Boucher

  William Chase

  Brittany Marks

  Walter Lawson

  David Murphy

  Richard Murphy

  Some of the names Madeline knew, but some were unknown. She looked to Davis to see if any of the other names ring any bells for him. The names that surprised her the most, outside of her brother of course, were David Murphy and his father, Richard. What connection could they have with Chris, and was that why he was in our dugout when he was murdered?

  She waited as patiently as she could, tapping her fingers rhythmically on her desk. She willed him to read faster. He sat back, staring at a point somewhere behind her head with his brow furrowed. It was a thinking look. She wondered if he had the same questions she did. She didn’t have to wait too long to find out.

  “Richard Murphy? I know him through his son. Do you know anything else about him?” Davis asked.

  She thought for a minute. “No, I don’t know all that much about him. Just that he’s dedicated to his son’s career and he attends every game. Ben might know more since he’s been here longer.”