Two Bites Too Many

by Debra H. Goldstein

  Both Emily and she started toward their mother, but Alvin, using his bulk, prevented them from moving any closer. “I’m sorry.” His gaze fluttered between Emily, Sarah, and Harlan and finally focused on Harlan. “The chief, crime tech, and coroner are all on their way, but until they get here, the chief ordered me to secure Mr. Knowlton’s office and keep the media and everyone outside.”

  “But these are Maybelle’s daughters and I’m representing her. Surely that makes a difference.”

  Sarah stifled a smile at perhaps the only amusing thing in this entire situation. As if to add credibility to his assertion, Harlan had pulled himself up to his full height. Whenever he did this with her, her being a few inches taller than him negated the move’s impact. With Alvin towering at least three inches over her, any benefit from Harlan’s power effort was completely mooted.

  The bigger man softly chuckled. His wide grin showed two rows of matched pearly whites as he spread his arms and hands almost to the point of an embrace. “Look, Harlan, you know how it is with the chief. Right now, he’s only got the job on a temporary basis. He’s hoping things go right so he lands the job on a permanent basis. What happened today is the last thing he needed or wanted while he’s being considered for the position. That’s why he’s trying to go by the book, separating witnesses and such. He isn’t going to be happy with me letting you in before he takes statements, but Mrs. Johnson’s pretty upset. She found Mr. Knowlton.”

  “That’s what we heard and why she needs her daughters. Alvin, you can always blame my forcing my way in, insisting I’m representing Mrs. Johnson.”

  Alvin glanced down at his own bulky figure. “I doubt the chief will believe you forced me to do anything, but I don’t think he can object to her representative being present.” He came closer to Sarah and Emily and winked. “As for you ladies, he’s not going to be pleased with you being here, either, but I think Eloise needs a break. Despite her being upset, Eloise has been mothering everyone. She’s done the best she can with your mama. Still, I reckon if I were Ms. Maybelle, I’d prefer my daughters being with me now, too.” He gestured in their mother’s direction as if shooing them toward her.

  Without giving him a chance to change his mind, Emily and Sarah ran across the lobby to where their mother sat embraced by Eloise. As the twins crowded into the space near their mother and Eloise, it dawned on Sarah that the smeared makeup of the two older women belied their jointly shed tears.

  Eloise whispered something too quietly for Sarah to hear. She gave Maybelle a tight hug and relinquished her seat to Emily, who almost knocked Eloise over in her rush to embrace her mother and pull her close.

  As Eloise struggled to keep her balance, Sarah placed her hand on the older woman’s arm to steady her.

  Eloise regained her balance. “Thank you.”

  “No. Thank you for taking care of my mother. I know this is a difficult time for you, too.”

  Eloise nodded. A tear escaped from the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek. She reflexively raised her hand to brush it away but only succeeded in making her mascara run more. “It doesn’t seem real. I keep expecting him to buzz me at any moment. It’s hard to think, after thirty-four years, he won’t ever call for me again.”

  With tentative strokes, Sarah patted Eloise’s arm as another tear dropped but was ignored. She felt unsure how to comfort Eloise. Even ashen-faced with streaked makeup, not a hair of her helmet-like coiffure was out of place. Eloise gave off the scent of Chanel No. 5 mingled with a take-charge air. Perhaps that was how Eloise kept it together when she cared for Maybelle. Then again, maybe being busy kept her mind off her boss’s death.

  Sarah didn’t think she’d have been able to do anything, let alone for others, if she’d just lost her longtime boss. Her feelings would be too raw. She stared again at Eloise, who was telling her to let her know if there was anything else she could do for any of them. Sarah couldn’t believe how strong Eloise was, while her own mother trembled in Emily’s arms.

  After being assured they’d call on her if they needed anything, Eloise made her way across the lobby. She repeatedly stopped for a moment to touch or talk to any employee she passed. As Eloise paused to apparently exchange a few words and help the blond teller replenish the cup supply at the coffee table, Sarah was envious.

  To be so caring didn’t come naturally to her. For Sarah, hugging was foreign and forced, even if she was deeply concerned about someone or something. She certainly couldn’t imagine keeping up the behavior Eloise was exhibiting if she’d lost someone so important to her.

  Watching Eloise frown and take the cups from the teller, Sarah let a random thought nag at her. Maybe what she saw as caring behavior in the face of a devastating loss was all an act? How many stories and crimes involved longtime employees who felt unseen and unsung? Realizing she was being ridiculous and demonstrating having read far too many mysteries, Sarah focused her attention back on where her mother and Emily sat. Harlan knelt next to them.

  Bending, Sarah placed her hands over her mother’s. They were as cold as ice. Sarah tried picking up on what Harlan was saying in an urgent whisper.

  “Maybelle, we only have a few minutes. You need to tell me what happened.”

  “Lance, dead.” Her mother looked at Sarah. “Someone killed him.”

  “How? Did you stay and visit with Eloise like you said you would?”

  When her mother blinked but didn’t disagree, Sarah pressed on. “After you killed time with Eloise, did you go around the alley and have Mr. Knowlton let you in the back way?”

  Maybelle took a deep breath. Taking her hands from Sarah’s, she grasped the sides of her chair. “I talked to Eloise for about ten or fifteen minutes after you left. By then, I figured Lance would have had time to review the file, so I walked around the building to the alley. When I got to the door to Lance’s office, I was about to knock when I noticed the door was open.”

  She wiped her tear-soaked cheek. “In all the years I’ve gone in and out of that door, it’s always been locked. Lance had to let us in.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a normal security practice for a bank.” Emily took her mother’s hand again.

  “In the old days it wasn’t, but when the bank installed alarms and security cameras, they put one above the doorway so Lance could see who was in the alley or knocking on the door.”

  Harlan pumped his fist. “That’s great.”

  Sarah stared at him.

  “If there’s a security tape of the alley and back door, we’ll be able to see who, besides your mother, used the back entrance into Lance’s office. Hopefully, the camera was angled in such a way we can demonstrate the door was already open when she approached it.”

  “You make it sound as if Mother’s the prime suspect.”

  “She probably is. Your mother found the body in what, for all intents and purposes, will be considered by the police to have been a locked room.”

  “But it wasn’t locked,” Maybelle protested. “The door was already open when I got there. Anyone could have come and gone that way or through the lobby entrance. They certainly all came running in from the lobby when I screamed.”

  “Knowing the door was always locked, why did you go into Lance’s office from the alley instead of reporting the door being open to the security officer?”

  “Harlan, I never thought about security. When I saw the door was ajar, I pushed on it. It opened all the way.”

  “And you went in?” Sarah prompted. “Weren’t you afraid someone was in the office?”

  Her mother shook her head. “I could see the entire office. Lance was slumped over his desk, instead of sitting upright in his chair. With his head down, he looked like a schoolboy taking a nap. I would have chided him if it wasn’t so close to the council meeting. That’s why I knew something had to be wrong. I was afraid he’d had a stroke or heart attack. When I went in, I wasn’t thinking about anything except Lance being in trouble.”

  Harlan leaned closer t
o Maybelle. “This is important. Tell me exactly what you did next.”

  “I walked across the room to him and touched his shoulder. That’s when I realized his head and shirt were covered in blood.” She paused.

  Emily and Sarah simultaneously squeezed their mother’s hands

  “He was so still. I knew then that he wasn’t sleeping.”

  Harlan pointed at Maybelle’s pants. “How did you get blood on you?”

  Sarah looked to where Harlan was pointing. Faint red streaks ran across the upper part of her mother’s pants in the same dirty pattern Sarah often created when unconsciously wiping her hands on her jeans. She raised her gaze, so it met her mother’s.

  “I tried to find a pulse. There wasn’t one. That’s when I started screaming.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Any further discussion was interrupted by the sound of people coming across the lobby. Sarah immediately recognized the one lumbering a few steps ahead of Alvin as the desk sergeant, who only a few months ago kept Harlan and Sarah waiting for almost an hour in the police station’s waiting room before telling them Emily was in an interrogation room twenty yards away. From the way Alvin was fawning over him, the mayor must have appointed the Keystone Cop to be Wheaton’s acting police chief.

  Sadly, appointing him made sense. Unlike bigger cities, like Birmingham, Wheaton didn’t have a defined hierarchy of officers descending from police chief to patrolmen. Here, things pretty much were limited to a chief, sergeant, and one or two others who performed duties as assigned.

  As the chief approached, Sarah glanced at Harlan and Emily and saw they, too, were aware of the approaching officer and bank security guard. With the grace of her former cheerleading days, Emily gave up her seat to Harlan and glided in the direction of where a coffeepot had been set up near the bank teller counter. Sarah couldn’t be sure, but the way Emily felt about the acting chief after her last encounter with Wheaton’s finest, Emily and Harlan probably wanted to minimize any connection between Maybelle, Emily, and Wheaton’s police department.

  Sarah consciously blocked the memories and feelings welling up in her. She could give in to them later, but, for now, the only thing that mattered was protecting her mother, since it appeared her mother wasn’t in a state to do so herself. Sarah couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen her mother subdued like this. She prayed for her real mother’s quick return. This calm before the storm was frightening.

  Sarah felt certain once the shock of Lance’s death wore off, the Maybelle gale, like the winds of a hurricane or tornado, would destroy anything in its path. Hopefully, until then, Sarah’s mother wouldn’t say or do something that inadvertently harmed her. In the meantime, it was up to Sarah to buffer the officer’s actions and her mother’s inaction.

  “Officer . . .” Sarah cut him off before any words came out of his open mouth. She searched deep into the recesses of her mind for his name but came up blank. Reading his name tag also proved impossible. His ample chest and the other items he’d pinned to his shirt caused the tuck of his pocket to block his name. She didn’t think he’d take kindly if she called him one of the Barney Fife–type nicknames she’d associated with the first time they met. Much as she hated it, she realized things might go better if she got into the habit of calling him Chief.

  “Chief,” she began again.

  He held up his hand.

  She couldn’t help but stare at it. Although he was a big man, his hand was smaller and pudgier than hers. If handshakes could be associated with personalities, she bet his was soft and limp. Compliant, Sarah waited, her hands pressed to her sides. She had no intention of confirming her hypothesis. Instead, she watched him scan the lobby and eavesdropped on his conversation with Alvin, who’d glued himself to the chief’s elbow.

  It wasn’t clear to Sarah from the chief’s queries and the guard’s responses if the chief was getting his bearings for what to do next or simply taking stock of who was where. Sarah decided it was the latter when he told Alvin to keep everyone in place until he was ready for them. Apparently satisfied Alvin understood his instructions, the chief ignored her waiting presence and instead pushed open the door of Lance’s office.

  Interested and protective of her mother, Sarah watched the chief’s every move. She was anxious for him to get on with it. Instead, he simply stood in the doorway. She couldn’t tell if he was assessing the room or if his reluctance to cross the threshold mirrored her own distaste for looking at a dead body. If that was the case, the chief had gone into the wrong line of work. Then again, despite the incidents a few months ago, Wheaton wasn’t a town where law enforcement officials frequently viewed people who died of anything except natural causes. It was more of a place where the police responded to calls to rescue a cat or the burglary in process was merely a door blown open by the wind. The town’s high point, every Sunday afternoon, was the five minutes the police and firefighters turned on their sirens and lights to make sure their equipment still worked.

  When the chief moved nearer to the desk, Sarah inched closer to the office to observe him better. He slowly approached the desk, keeping at least a two-foot distance from it as he examined the scene from various angles. She wasn’t impressed. From his speed and casual approach, it appeared his visual inspection was exactly the cursory type she expected from him. Moreover, he hadn’t covered his shoes or put on any gloves.

  The longest the chief paused in his examination, and it wasn’t much longer than he had from any other direction, was when he faced the back of Lance’s head. His momentary hesitation staring at Lance’s head seemed to indicate Lance had been hit from behind. She wondered if Lance had seen his killer? Was he surprised or for some reason had he chosen to ignore his murderer’s presence? Considering the proximity of Lance’s office to the lobby, was he killed by a bullet from a gun with a silencer or by being struck by a heavy object?

  Sarah inched toward the door, hoping to see if there was an obvious weapon lying on the desk or floor, but the chief, apparently finished with his study of the crime scene, stood in front of the desk, his back to her. His spread-legged stance, as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and made a call, blocked her view.

  When the chief slipped his phone into his back pocket and turned toward the door, she backed away from her vantage point. She moved closer to her mother as the chief, with a final peek in Lance’s direction, again brushed right by her as he made a beeline for Maybelle.

  When the chief touched the brim of his hat and addressed “Miss Maybelle,” Harlan moved forward in his chair, placing his shoulder partially between Maybelle and the police chief.

  The chief flashed a look of disdain in Harlan’s direction.

  Harlan seemed oblivious to it as he addressed him using the relaxed good-old-boy persona he often used with his clients. “Chief Gerard.”

  Gerard. That was the Keystone Cop’s name. Something Gerard. Sarah mentally repeated it until she remembered. Dwayne, his name was Dwayne Gerard. Pleased, she almost missed the next part of Harlan and the chief’s conversation.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen you since the mayor announced your acting appointment. Congratulations.” Harlan waved his hand toward Lance’s office as he ignored the chief’s grunt of acknowledgment. “Horrible about Lance.”

  “Yes, it is.” With the barest movement of his thumb, Chief Gerard repeatedly thumped one of his suspenders. That, combined with his whiny drawl, made Sarah think of the southern stereotypical mayors and law enforcement folks portrayed in bad car-chase movies, but his words belied that impression.

  “Harlan, stand down. All I want to do is ask Ms. Maybelle a few questions. After all, in case you’ve forgotten, she’s the one who found Lance.”

  “And that’s why she doesn’t want to talk about it. Emotionally, finding her old friend dead has been a real shock to her system.”

  Sarah moved closer to her mother. She put her arm protectively around her mother’s shoulders. The chief took advantage of Sarah’s postural shift
to push himself into the space in front of Maybelle. Sarah realized from his new position he could maintain direct eye contact while speaking with her mother.

  “Ms. Maybelle, I’m Chief Gerard. I’m know you’ve been through a shocking situation, and I certainly don’t want to do anything more to upset you, but, as you can well imagine, time is of the essence in situations like this. It would be a real big help if we could talk for a moment. Any details of what you remember about finding Mr. Knowlton could be crucial.”

  He paused, keeping his gaze locked on hers.

  Sarah wasn’t sure if he needed to catch his breath or was letting his words sink in.

  “If we’re going to have our best chance to wrap this matter up quickly, I really can’t delay finding out your impressions,” he added.

  Under her arm, Sarah felt her mother tense. She didn’t know if her mother was reacting to her memories of finding Lance or something in the chief’s words or tone. Even if he wasn’t coming across as doing anything more than his job, Sarah was worried. She couldn’t decide whether to compare his tone to the pouring of honey or molasses or simply consider it plain sap, but there was something about his demeanor that sat wrong with her. Probably because it was her mother on the hot seat. He might want to wrap this matter up, but she wasn’t about to let him run roughshod, no matter how sweetly, over her mother.

  Speaking up, she clung to Maybelle more protectively. “I don’t understand your insistence on taking her statement right now. You already know my mother found Mr. Knowlton. Rather than badgering her, shouldn’t you have a crime tech or the coroner examining the scene and the body? I bet their findings will give you a lot more than trying to talk to my mother in her shocked state.”

  “Don’t worry. The tech and the coroner are on the way, but this isn’t a television show. Good police work dictates I obtain her statement while everything is fresh in her mind. I realize you’ve had prior dealings with criminal matters, but for everyone’s own good, especially your mother’s and yours, why don’t you leave this one to the professionals?”