by Nic Saint
“So if our mystery woman had a copy of this lost movie in her possession somehow…” said Chase slowly.
“She would take it to Dan in his capacity as leading expert on all things Maria Power,” said Odelia, nodding.
Chase’s phone rang out the A-Team tune and he picked up, walking into the corridor.
“Do you think Dan is a killer?” I asked.
“Absolutely not,” said Odelia. “Dan is one of the kindest people I know. He’s not a killer.”
“Did you find this Gnomeo movie on Heather Gallop’s person?”
“Nope. And neither did we find her phone, which I think is very suspicious.”
I nodded. Odelia was right. What person doesn’t take their phone nowadays? For most people the tiny gadget is practically glued to their hands. “Is it possible that the killer phoned Dan to lure him away and then entered the building and struck?”
Odelia smiled. “Exactly what I was thinking.” Her smile disappeared. “Though my uncle doesn’t seem to agree with me. He seems to think Dan is Heather’s killer.”
“Your uncle has been known to be wrong before,” I pointed out.
Chase had returned and said, “They found the victim’s hotel room. She was staying at the Star.”
It was our cue to hurry out of Odelia’s office and head over to the Hampton Cove Star, the town’s premium hotel. Odelia and Chase hurried over, with Dooley and I following at a slower pace.
“A priest, a rabbi and a woolly mammoth walk into a bar,” said Dooley, and I eyed him strangely.
“Dooley, what’s with you and these lame jokes?” I asked.
“Do you really think my jokes are lame?” he asked, looking a little hurt.
“Well, they’re definitely not funny.”
“Oh, but Max, you have to laugh. It’s very important. Maybe we shouldn’t even be involved in this murder case. Murder is not a laughing matter, and you should be laughing, laughing, laughing!”
Now I like to laugh as much as the next cat, don’t get me wrong, but this obsession with jokes that Dooley was displaying frankly struck me as unhealthy.
“Look, if you want to laugh, Dooley, maybe we can watch a funny movie tonight. I’m sure Odelia and Chase would love nothing more than to sit down after a long day and watch something funny.” Because in that respect Dooley was right, of course: murder is not a funny business.
“Oh, that would be so great,” said Dooley, cheering up considerably. “We could watch funny movies every day from now on. It’s very important.”
We’d arrived at the hotel, and walked in. A police car was parked right in front, and all we had to do was follow Abe Cornwall into the elevator to be taken to the right place.
Abe, whose hair was pointing in every direction as usual, eyed us with amusement. “Why is it that wherever Odelia is, you guys are hanging out there, too?” he asked. It was a rhetorical question, I presumed, for Abe doesn’t exactly speak our language.
The elevator jerked to a stop and we got out. Abe heaved a weary sigh. “You know, this murder business is getting old,” he said, even though I assumed he didn’t think we’d understand. “Why do people insist on killing each other? Why can’t they just get along?”
“You’re absolutely right,” I responded. “It is getting old.”
My words made the coroner look down at me in wonder. Then he laughed. “For a moment there I thought you knew what I was talking about!”
And shaking his grizzled head he walked into a room whose door was open, and where plenty of people were milling about. And the moment I entered there was that pervasive scent again: the one that was also in Dan’s office. And it only took me a moment to know why: on the little desk, a nice collection of garden gnomes had been placed, and behind them a large, signed and framed picture of Maria Power.
10
Odelia glanced around the room. Whoever this Heather Gallop had been, she wasn’t one of those people who make a mess of their hotel rooms. The woman’s clothes were meticulously hung in the closet, and as she checked the small collection she saw that Heather had impeccable taste, too. Three very nice dresses that must have cost a pretty penny, and even an evening dress. Judging from the pile of underwear she hadn’t come to stay for a long time, at the most a week or so.
“I found her driver’s license, sir,” said the cop who’d phoned Chase. “Illinois,” he said as he handed the card to the detective.
“Why does a woman from Illinois travel all the way to Long Island to meet with Dan Goory?” Chase muttered. “To sell him a copy of a movie that doesn’t exist?”
The room was otherwise sparse: apart from the clothes in the closet, the suitcase under the bed and the gnomes and portrait on the table, there was nothing that gave a sense of the woman’s personality, or offered a glimpse into her life.
“I’ll see if I can’t get in touch with her folks back home,” said Chase. “See if we can’t lift the veil of who this woman was and what she was doing here.”
Odelia nodded. The receptionist had told them Heather had checked in three days ago, but he couldn’t recall her having received any visitors. He also knew she drove a rented car, which she’d parked in the hotel lot, and that she’d paid with a credit card, not cash, but apart from that, there wasn’t a lot he could tell them about the mystery woman.
“I doubt she flew in simply to engage in an affair with Dan,” said Odelia. As her uncle seemed to think, and presumably the entire population of Hampton Cove. At least no one would be holding Odelia’s pen when she wrote her article detailing that morning’s shocking events. She wasn’t going to allow the Gazette to become a forum to slander its founder and editor, so she’d already put the newspaper social media pages on lockdown. No one was going to slander her boss on his own platform. She’d see to that at least.
Of course she couldn’t control what people would say in the Hampton Cove Facebook group, or on the streets and in the shops.
All she could do was find the real killer, because she was absolutely certain Dan was innocent.
Chase got another phone call, and when he returned moments later he looked a little baffled.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Well, I called UPS after what you told me. That was them returning my call.”
“And?” she asked. “What did they say?”
“That there never was a delivery at the Gazette this morning. Whoever this UPS man was, he most certainly wasn’t sent by them.”
She shared a look of concern with her partner. “Which means he was probably the killer,” she said as she voiced the thought that was going through both their heads.
“Come on, Dan,” Chief Alec said, leaning back in his chair. “How long have we known each other? And here you sit insulting my intelligence by lying to me!”
“I’m not lying, Alec!” said Dan. “I’m telling you the truth!”
They were seated across the table from one another in interview room number one, and frankly Alec was quickly losing his patience with the newspaperman.
“Look, we both know how this is going to go,” said Alec. “No judge will believe you when you tell your cockamamie story about your windshield wipers.”
“But it happened! Just check my phone!”
“I did. You got a call at the time you said you did. Unknown caller. Could have been an insurance company trying to sell you life insurance. Could have been a mobile phone salesman. Could have been anyone.” He leaned forward. “Just get it off your chest, Dan. Trust me, you’ll feel much better when you do. So who was she, huh? Old girlfriend? Was she pregnant, is that it? You lost it when she said she wanted to keep the baby?”
“Look, how many times do I have to tell you: I never saw the woman before. She called me out of the blue, and told me she wanted to meet. So I said sure, drop by any time. So she said she’d come in at eight thirty, and later sent me a one-word text.”
“Gnomeo.”
“Exactly. Which is how I knew it had something to do
with the club.”
“The Gnomeos.”
“Right. Happens all the time that complete strangers come up to me with information they think might be relevant for the Gnomeos, or the magazine.”
“So if you arranged to meet at eight thirty, why was she dead when Odelia walked in at eight ten?”
“I told you—I stepped out for just a minute.”
“Your windshield wipers.”
“Exactly!”
“You actually told her to meet you at eight, didn’t you? So you could avoid her meeting Odelia? You didn’t want nosy parkers around when you two hooked up?”
“It wasn’t like that!”
“Only Odelia was early, wasn’t she? Arrived before you could get rid of the body. Is that why you ran out of your office, to bring your car around so you could get rid of the body?”
“In full view of the whole street? You’re crazy, Alec.”
Alec wagged a finger in the man’s face. “Watch what you say, Dan. I’m still chief of police.”
“You’re also a fool if you think I’d murder a woman I’ve never even seen before and try to get rid of the body by shoving her body into the trunk of my car.”
“Ha!” said Alec with a note of triumph in his voice. “I never said trunk.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake…”
“I don’t know, Dan,” said the Chief, shaking his head. “I’m disappointed in you, that’s all I can say.”
“Well, at least that’s something we have in common,” Dan snapped. “Cause I’m disappointed in you. I thought you were smarter than this.”
“What did I tell you about watching your tone?”
“You’re wasting time. While you’re harassing me the real killer is getting away.”
“Oh? And who do you think the real killer is?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Jack Warner, of course.”
“The chairman of the Maria Power Society?”
“Of course! He must have found out this woman was going to hand me something of value and wanted to stop her. So he killed her and took whatever it was she was going to give me and is now laughing his ass off at the incompetence of our local police force.”
“And what could possibly be so valuable that it would be worth killing for?” asked the Chief, not hiding the skepticism in his voice.
“The only remaining copy of Rupert Finkelstein’s Romeo and Juliet,” said Dan.
The Chief stared at the man. “That’s just an urban legend.”
“An urban legend that just might be real.”
As a big fan of Maria Power himself, and a member of the Gnomeos, it struck Alec that Dan was probably playing him. “Finkelstein destroyed every single copy of that movie. It’s the story we all know and regret.”
“Well, I heard differently, and trust me when I say that Jack Warner believes it is true, too. There must have been a copy left, and somehow Heather Gallop managed to get her hands on it and was about to offer it to me.” He slumped. “And so Jack killed her for it.”
11
Once again Dooley and I were invited to sit in on an interview with a suspect. This particular suspect was a man named Jack Warner. When Chase got the call from his superior officer—Odelia’s uncle—to have a quiet word with Mr. Warner, Odelia had pleaded successfully with her future husband to be included in the tête-à-tête, and of course she’d negotiated for Dooley and me to be included, hoping we could chat with the man’s pets, if he had any.
Much to my dismay, though, Jack Warner was a man utterly devoid of pets of any persuasion, though by his own admission he’d once owned a Chihuahua, whose urn now took pride of place on his mantel. A notion I found a little creepy, to be honest with you.
Mr. Warner lived in an apartment on the second floor of a new building, and was scrupulously clean for a man who lived alone. On the wall over that same mantel a huge portrait of Maria Power hung, smiling at all and sundry from her vantage point, and there were several glass display cases, much of the same design as the ones in Dan’s office, and they even contained much of the same type of paraphernalia: film posters, pictures of the same Maria Power in what I assumed was her Hollywood heyday, a bust of the actress, and another one of her dresses hung on a mannequin.
It almost seemed to me as if the woman had decided to give away all of her dresses and now had nothing left to wear.
“So tell me, Mr. Warner,” said Chase, launching into the interview with his usual aplomb. “You’ve been accused by Dan Goory of having snuck into his office this morning and murdering his visitor, a woman who had something valuable to share with Dan, something associated with Maria Power. What do you have to say to that?”
Jack Warner laughed heartily. He was a man in his late sixties dressed in a nice pink polo shirt, gray slacks, his hair neatly coiffed, his mustache nicely clipped. All in all he looked just like his apartment: perfectly appointed and squeakily clean.
“Dan said that? You have got to be kidding.”
“I never kid when I’m on duty,” said Chase seriously.
Mr. Warner quickly sobered. “Well, what can I say? It’s ridiculous, of course. Perfect nonsense. Are you sure the woman is dead? Dan is a great practical joker. He could simply be playing a trick on you—and me. At my expense, of course.”
“You and Dan don’t get along?”
“Oh, everybody knows that,” said the man with an airy wave of the hand. “I run the Society, he runs the Gnomeos, and the water between the two clubs runs very deep indeed.”
“So you’re the chairman of the Maria Power Society,” said Chase, jotting down a note.
“That’s right. The oldest and most popular official Maria Power fan club.”
“Which is exactly what Dan says,” Chase remarked.
“Of course he does. Look, we launched in October 1976 and he launched his Gnomeos—ridiculous name, if you ask me—in November. So I ask you: which one of us is the oldest? We are, of course, and it’s something that’s always stung. To this day Dan can’t help but smear my good name and say the most horrible things about the Society.”
“But… you’re both fans of Maria Power, right?” said Odelia.
“Look around,” said Jack. “What do you think?”
“So… shouldn’t you be best friends instead of enemies?”
“It’s frankly impossible to be friends with that man,” Jack scoffed. “In the past I’ve suggested we join forces but he shot me down each time. Take the Maria Power retrospective, for instance. That was my idea! But of course Dan had to muscle in and take over. And now he claims it was his idea all along. Which of course is a blatant lie, but since he’s the big newspaperman everyone believes him.” He shrugged and flicked a piece of lint from his slacks. “I’ve learned to simply ignore Mr. Goory’s delusional antics.”
“Can you tell us where you were this morning between eight and eight fifteen, Mr. Warner?” asked Chase, getting down to brass tacks.
“I was right here, enjoying my breakfast and reading the newspaper—not the Gazette, mind you. How anyone can read that drivel is frankly beyond me—no offense to you, my dear. I’m sure you’re a wonderful reporter. Working for the wrong man.”
“Can anyone verify that?”
“Well, no. I live alone, you see. My dear wife passed away three years ago, and it’s just been me and Maria ever since.” He gestured to the portrait of the actress above the mantel, a wistful expression on his face.
“Dan claims that Heather Gallop might have had a copy of Finkelstein’s Romeo and Juliet in her possession,” said Odelia, causing Mr. Warner’s eyes to twinkle with delight.
“Oh, goodness gracious. Another old wives’ tale. When are you going to stop believing that man? Of course she didn’t have a copy of Finkelstein’s Romeo and Juliet. No one does. The director destroyed every single print of that movie. Everybody knows that.”
“So you don’t think she was going to hand over a copy to Dan?” asked Chase.
“Of course not! There are
no copies. A pity, naturally, because by all accounts it must have been the most amazing picture. It established Maria Power as a leading lady straight out of the gate, and destroyed the career of its director in the process. A beautiful story, don’t you think? Out of the ashes of Rupert Finkelstein’s career rose the most wonderful actress the world has ever seen. A little bit like A Star is Born, though without the dreadful music.” He heaved a sigh and showed us his arm. “Look. Just talking about it gives me goosebumps.”
“So you wouldn’t know anything about Heather Gallop or why she was in town to meet Dan?”
“Don’t know and don’t care. If you ask me she’s probably an old flame of Dan’s—the man is an inveterate Lothario, even at his advanced age. She must have told him she was leaving him for another man and he must have flipped. Goory has the most horrendous temper. But you know that, don’t you, dear?”
Odelia said, “Actually, I don’t. And I must say I don’t recognize the Dan I know in your description.”
“Then you’ve been very, very lucky, Miss Poole.” He gave a little shake of the head. “By the same token that dead woman could have been you.”
12
Tex arrived home feeling only slightly more uplifted than when he’d set out for the office that morning. Examining strange and multi-colored spots on patients’ backs and gazing deeply into hairy earholes, infected throats and even poking his (gloved) fingers into one man’s backside for a prostate exam were all things designed to take one’s mind off any problem vexing it, and so by the time he’d sent his last patient on her way he’d almost forgotten that some dastardly demon had absconded with his gnomes the previous night.