by Nic Saint
“Well, if that were the case, why would she bury our John Doe deep in the woods where no one was supposed to find him except for the fluke appearance on the scene of your cats? Look, the body wasn’t buried in some shallow grave where it would easily be found. It was buried deep, and far from anywhere. It’s obvious that Karl—”
“Or the killer.”
“Fine, or the killer, didn’t want that body to be found. The fact that we did was just a fluke. And don’t you think that if Grace Kramer wanted to frame her ex-husband she would have buried that body where it would be found immediately? Or maybe even leave it out in the open. If she shot him with Karl’s gun, why not dump that body in the park? Or even prop it up on a bench in front of Town Hall? Why bury it where no one was supposed to find it? And before you tell me people would have looked for John Doe, no they wouldn’t. It’s obvious this is a man who’s not missed. No missing person report, and no one has come forward, even after we put a sketch on the local TV station.”
“So maybe he’s not local.”
“No, I’ll bet you he isn’t local. But you see how ridiculous that Grace Kramer theory is if you get right down to it?”
“Okay, I’ll grant you that. So how about Max’s theory?”
“And what is Max’s theory, pray tell?” he asked with a magnanimous smile.
“That Suzy Bunyon took that gun from her stepdad’s safe, and gave it to her raver friends to have some fun with. And so they went out and shot a homeless man for kicks.”
Chase sat back and thought about this for a moment. “Huh,” he said finally.
“Right?”
“I like this theory a lot better than the Grace Kramer one, I’ll tell you that.”
“Why don’t I go over to talk to Suzy Bunyon and find out what she says?”
“You do that,” Chase agreed. “She’ll probably talk to you a lot faster than she would me.”
“Deal,” said Odelia, and got up.
“So what’s happening with your folks’ house? Think they’ll be able to rebuild it?”
“Talk about a mess,” said Odelia. “Now the contractor is blaming the builders, and the builders are blaming the contractor, and when all is said and done it’s going to take a while before my parents will have their house back.”
“And a lot of money.”
“Unless the insurance kicks in.”
“Will it? Kick in?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether the contractor has insurance.”
Chase grinned. “Good luck with that.”
“Usually newlyweds move in with their folks until they’ve saved up for a place of their own,” said Odelia, “but this time it’s the other way around.”
We found Suzy Bunyon at home studying in her room. If Kathleen thought it was odd for us to pay her daughter a visit, she didn’t mention it. She’d asked Odelia to do anything in her power to get her husband out from under this murder charge, and Odelia had given her word that she would, so this was all part of the process of eliminating suspects and trying to find out what exactly had happened that fateful night.
“Hi, Suzy,” said Odelia as she approached the pink-haired teenager. Suzy glanced down at Dooley and me, and frowned. “Do you always bring your cats with you?”
“Yeah, I guess so. They like to follow me around, and I find it’s easier to let them.”
“Uh-huh, okay,” said Suzy dubiously. She was seated at her desk, a book on geometry open under a reading lamp, but the presence of a large box of Kleenex told me that she still wasn’t over the tragic death of her boyfriend.
“So your dad is in jail on suspicion of murdering a homeless person,” said Odelia, opening the interview with a shot across the bow, so to speak.
“My stepdad,” Suzy immediately corrected her. “Karl isn’t my real dad.”
“Okay, your stepdad. So your mother has asked me to find out what happened, because she just can’t imagine that your stepdad would be involved in a thing like this.”
“So?”
“So you know that the gun he kept in his gun safe was used to murder this person?”
“Yeah, Mom told me.”
“So I want to ask you this straight out, Suzy, and I hope you’ll give me a straight answer: did you ever take that gun out of your stepdad’s gun safe?”
“What? No, of course not.”
“But you did know the combination of the lock?”
“Duh. The guy used his own birthday. How dumb do you have to be?”
“So you admit that you opened the safe?”
“I did open it. Once. Just to see what was inside. I figured Karl kept his stash of dirty magazines in there, but instead I found that he kept a gun.” She smiled. “I never knew that dopey Karl was a gun nut. Turns out that he is.”
“Karl swears up and down that he only kept the gun in case of an emergency.”
“What kind of an emergency could an accountant possibly have? A paper cut?”
“She doesn’t seem to think very highly of her stepdad, Max,” said Dooley.
“No, clearly she doesn’t,” I agreed.
“Look, I opened that safe only once, all right? And I never opened it again. I mean, what am I going to do with a gun? I can’t even shoot. Besides, guns kill people.”
“I thought that maybe you took it for your boyfriend?”
“What boyfriend?” asked Suzy, suddenly suspicious.
“Darryl?”
“Who?”
“Darryl Farmer. I know he was your boyfriend, Suzy. I talked to Todd Park this morning, and he told me all about it. And so did Lucy Hale, Darryl’s girlfriend before you entered the scene.”
“Okay, so fine. Darryl was my boyfriend.” She grabbed the box of Kleenex and moved it closer to where she was sitting. “But he never asked me to take that gun, okay? Darryl wasn’t into guns. Like, at all. In fact he was as anti-gun as a person can possibly be.”
“Some kids like to play a game,” said Odelia, cutting a quick glance in my direction.
The girl gave Odelia a suspicious frown. “What game? What are you talking about?”
“The game is called shoot a homeless person. So I thought—”
“You thought I would be involved in something like that? You are crazy, lady.”
“Not you, necessarily. But maybe some of the people you know—the people in the rave scene.”
“No way,” said Suzy, shaking her head adamantly. “They like to party and have fun, but not at the expense of others. And they would never use violence against anyone, most definitely not people who are less fortunate. No, you’re way off base now, lady.”
“Okay, all right. It was just an idea. So if your stepdad didn’t kill that man, and your friends didn’t, then who?”
Suzy shrugged. “I have absolutely no idea.”
“Who had access to that gun safe, apart from you and Karl and your mom?”
Suzy thought for a moment. “Honestly? If you put it like that, then it’s almost obvious that Karl killed that guy, isn’t it?”
“Do you believe that he killed him?”
Another shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe he did.”
“But why? Why would your stepdad suddenly go and shoot a person?”
“For kicks? Just like you thought me and my friends would? I mean, Karl has issues, Miss Poole. Here’s a man who lived with a cat in the house for years, even though he hates cats and he’s allergic to them. So maybe he hates homeless people, too, and decided to start killing them, one person at a time? Who knows what’s going on in that goofy head of his. But one thing I can tell you: I didn’t kill that man, and my mother didn’t, so by the process of elimination it stands to reason that Karl did, right?”
“Do you think that maybe Karl was so scared to lose his kids that he’d kill to protect his visitation rights?”
“How should I know?” She glanced out the window for a moment, then added, “But it’s definitely a possibility. Karl
is crazy about those stupid brats. And I think he’d do just about anything for them.”
“Even murder?”
Suzy gave Odelia a pointed look. “Absolutely.”
Chapter 26
Odelia was back at the precinct. Kathleen Bunyon’s desperate plea had touched a chord but before she took on her case she wanted to look into Karl Bunyon’s eyes and hear it from the man’s own lips that he was innocent.
So she now sat in the interview room with the suspected killer accountant and it soon became clear that the man had no idea what was happening to him, and he was completely and utterly stunned to find himself in this predicament.
“I didn’t do it, Miss Poole, you have to believe me,” he said, wringing his hands. His left eye was twitching and he looked as close to a nervous breakdown as anyone could possibly get after spending a night in the precinct lockup.
“So what do you think happened?”
“I have no idea!” He scooted forward in his chair. “Look, I know I did a terrible thing, abducting those cats, but this murder business? I had absolutely nothing to do with that.”
“Your wife seems to think that Grace might be involved. That she took your gun from the safe and used it to murder an innocent man and put the blame on you.”
“Grace? Murdering a homeless man?” He frowned at this. “I don’t think she’d be capable of such a thing, Miss Poole. Grace has a mean streak—it took going through that awful divorce for me to discover that about her, but murder? I very much doubt she’d be capable of such a thing.”
“So what about Suzy? Is it possible she took your gun and gave it to some of those raver friends of hers?”
He shrugged. “Suzy and I get along, but that’s as far as it goes. She’s never really taken a great liking to me. I suspect she thinks I’m not the right man for her mother. Then again, Suzy was crazy about her dad, and she probably feels I pushed him out of the picture, which she resents me for.”
“She admitted that she knew the combination of your safe, and that she took a peek inside. So it’s not a big stretch to imagine that she would have taken your gun.”
“But if she did, wouldn’t her fingerprints be on the gun? Did the police say anything about that?”
Odelia sagged in her chair. “The only fingerprints found on that gun are yours, I’m afraid, Karl. But that doesn’t mean anything. It’s possible Suzy used gloves, and so did the person who shot that homeless person—our John Doe.”
“Would she be smart enough to think about such a thing?”
“Nowadays? With all the cop shows on television? Sure.”
Karl looked down at the table, a forlorn look in his eyes. “I’m really in a big mess now, aren’t I? I already heard from my ex-wife’s lawyers. They’re going to launch some kind of emergency procedure to have my visitation rights revoked once and for all.”
“Grace isn’t wasting any time, is she?”
“No, she’s got a perfect opportunity now, and she’s not going to waste it.” He tapped the table for a moment. “So do the police know who this man is? This John Doe that I’m supposed to have shot and killed?”
“Not yet. They’ve distributed his description to other precincts, and asked local TV stations to launch an appeal. So let’s hope someone recognizes him and comes forward.”
He gave her a wan smile. “Thank you, Miss Poole. Thank you for being in my corner. You’re just about the only one, I’m afraid. My former colleagues have all dropped me.”
“Your former colleagues?”
“Didn’t Kath tell you? I lost my job. Yeah, they’re not wasting any time either. Didn’t even wait to find out if I’m innocent or guilty.”
When Karl had been returned to his cell, Odelia decided to drop in on her husband, to see if there was anything new to report.
“As a matter of fact I do have a bit of news,” said Chase as he rubbed his eyes. “We finally have a positive ID on our John Doe.”
“You do? That’s great news! So who is he?”
“Well, a guy came forward who calls himself Charlie, though I doubt whether that’s his real name. He’s also a homeless person, and says that our guy called himself Pete.”
“Pete.”
“Yeah, Pete. And listen to this. According to Charlie, Pete owed him money. In fact Pete owed a lot of people a lot of money. Turns out Pete wasn’t just broke, he was also heavily in debt.”
“That’s interesting. So do you think it’s possible one of the people Pete owed money to might have killed him? Maybe this Charlie person, even?”
“Well, Charlie was seen wandering around the neighborhood where the Bunyons live, and it is conceivable, though highly unlikely, that he might have broken into the house, and it’s even conceivable, but even more unlikely, that he could have taken Karl Bunyon’s gun. But still, we’re really clutching at straws here wouldn’t you agree, babe?”
“But it is still a possibility, right?”
“A very, very, very remote one. Besides, like I told you before, the only prints we found on that gun are Karl’s, and from talking to my new friend Charlie I have to say he’s not the kind of guy who’d think about wearing plastic gloves when handling a gun. In fact I don’t think he’d know what to do with a gun if you handed him one. He’s more the type of person who’d settle a disagreement with his fists, if you catch my drift.”
Oh, she caught his drift, all right. And even though she didn’t like what Chase said, it all sounded very plausible to her. “So you still aren’t ready to release Karl?”
“Not a chance.”
Chapter 27
The four of us sat in the backyard of Marge and Tex’s place, taking in the devastation and the remnants of what once had been a fine family home—our family home. Workers were busy clearing the debris, loading it into a series of containers positioned on the street in front, and neighbors had come out in droves to gawk at the sad spectacle.
Gran, who seemed repentant but also reluctant to accept responsibility for what had happened, stood discussing things with the new contractor, both of them wearing their yellow hard hats, while Tex and Marge stood discussing things with their insurance guy, hoping to salvage what they could from their savings.
“It doesn’t look good, Max,” said Dooley, stating the obvious.
“No, it doesn’t look good indeed,” I agreed.
“At least we still have one home left, you guys,” said Harriet, striking the positive note.
We all darted a quick and frankly anxious look at Odelia and Chase’s house, just in case that had suddenly also collapsed under the strain. But luckily it still stood proud and erect, reluctant to follow its sister home into the abyss of contractor incompetence.
Marge had kicked Gran’s contractor to the curb, and had taken matters into her own hands by hiring one with an excellent reputation and track record, and an equally reputable architect. It would probably cost them a pretty penny, but at least they’d do a better job than the previous guy, who’d botched things to a great extent.
One of the workers now emerged from the rubble carrying a litter box and, after a moment’s hesitation, placed it in front of us, then gave us a kindly nod in greeting, and walked off again.
“Hey, what do you know? It’s your litter box, Brutus,” I said.
“Yeah, what do you know,” said Brutus somberly. “Even though I’m homeless, at least I can still do my doo-doo,” he added, though he didn’t sound particularly happy about it.
“Look, you guys,” said Harriet. “It’s all going to be fine, just you wait and see. In fact if anything, the new house they’re building will be better and bigger and nicer and more modern than before.”
“Yeah, it was a pretty old house,” I said, feeling we’d had enough of this doom and gloom for one morning. “The new house will be better built, better quality building materials, state-of-the-art insulation, roomier, lighter and brighter… All in all, I think we’ll look back on this day as the beginning of something new and pretty darn
exciting.”
“They say that building from scratch is always cheaper and better than renovating,” Harriet said, giving me a grateful look.
“I guess if you look at it like that, you just might be right,” said Brutus after a pause.
“I like roomier and brighter,” said Dooley, nodding.
And so we quickly turned what could have been a tragedy into a good thing. It’s the power of resilience, you guys, something us cats have got in spades. And while we were talking about turning a bad thing into a good thing, just then Odelia came walking up to us, a frown furrowing her brow, and obviously needing our urgent assistance.
“So I need your advice,” she said as she pulled up a lawn chair and sat down next to us. “Karl Bunyon is in jail, right?”
“Oh, is this about the murder case?” asked Dooley. “Cause I thought we were discussing the new house they’re building.”
Odelia darted a quick glance at what had once been her parental home, then dismissed it with a gesture. “No, this is about the murder,” she confirmed. “I want to run something by you and see what you think. I’ve got a couple of suspects for Pete’s murder.”
“Pete?” I asked.
“The homeless person’s name was Pete, according to another homeless person named Charlie, who knew him and to whom he owed money, by the way.”
“Okay,” I said. I confess the whole murder business had momentarily been relegated to the back of my mind, and the collapse of Marge and Tex’s home had everything to do with that, of course. But if Odelia needed our sleuthing prowess, she got it, of course. “So Pete was killed,” I reiterated, “and Karl Bunyon is one of the suspects.”
“He is. Likely motive would be that he didn’t want people to know that he enjoyed dumping cats in the woods, because if that became known it could cause him to lose his kids. So he panicked and killed the witness and tried to hide the body.”
“Okay, so the problem with that,” I said, “is that a clever killer would also get rid of the murder weapon, and definitely not put it back in his own gun safe.”