The Eleventh Hour

by Anina Collins

  I needed to speak to the woman who’d been his assistant during the entire time he was in office. I’d met her only once, but it had been in passing and I didn’t even think I remembered her name. I’d have to find out when I went into work.

  Reaching over to the nightstand, I grabbed my phone and saw a message from Oliver, my boss at The Bottom Line, reminding me that my work on the Pennsylvania politician story was due the day before. Damn! I hadn’t so much forgotten it as gotten preoccupied with working on the case with Alex.

  Who was I kidding? I’d forgotten all about my deadline. Quickly, I keyed in a message to him promising my work by end of today and pressed SEND. My work at The Bottom Line may not have been that important, but it was my job and I always tried to do my best. At least I always had until this murder case and I partnered up with Alex. I needed to remember how important my word was and find a way to fit my research for The Bottom Line into my schedule.

  I typed in a message to Alex about going to speak to Girard’s assistant and asking him to join me and sent it off. Maybe he’d come up with some ideas overnight too that he’d share with me when we met for our morning coffee at The Grounds.

  Our morning coffee. In such a short time, I’d begun to think of my trip to the coffee shop every morning not as merely a stop on my way to work but as a chance to speak to him about the case. I didn’t know how it happened, but after only a few days he’d become someone I looked forward to seeing every day.

  As I rolled out of bed to head to the shower, I couldn’t help think it was odd how quickly we’d become the type of friends who thought of each other like that. Well, assuming he thought of me like that. I honestly didn’t know what he thought of me. Had dinner the night before at Diamanti’s been a date? I didn’t think so when all was said and done, but there had been moments during the night that he acted more like a man taking me out than a partner having me join him on a case.

  It didn’t really matter what it had been because we’d gotten some important information about one of our suspects, and I intended on following up on that as soon as I’d had my morning coffee.

  The morning working stiff crowd had cleared out of The Grounds by the time I’d gotten there just before nine o’clock. Nearly all the empty tables were littered with dirty plates and empty coffee cups, so I headed toward the one in the back of the shop where Alex and I had sat the day before and threw my bag on one of the chairs to save it just in case anyone other than he decided they wanted to join me. Desperate to get some caffeine into my system, I bought my coffee and returned to the table.

  Taking my seat, I waited for Alex as I realized I didn’t know how he took his coffee so I could have it waiting for him when he arrived. Mentally kicking myself for not picking up on that detail, I looked over at Jennie wiping down the bagel toaster and asked, “Jennie, how does Alex take his coffee each morning?”

  Scrunching up her face, she thought for a long moment and said, “Hmmm. You know, I’m not sure. He’s gotten a few different coffee blends recently, but I think I remember he always gets them with extra cream.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “Don’t you know? You’ve been in here a couple times with him and he knows how you take yours already,” she said, not knowing how lame I felt that I hadn’t noticed.

  “I’ll make sure to pay attention to exactly what he gets when he comes in today,” she said with a smile before she returned to cleaning after the morning rush.

  Me too, I thought as I sipped on my dark roast.

  By ten, not only had he not arrived but he hadn’t answered my text either. Unsure what could be holding him up, I texted again.

  Hey, I’m at The Grounds. I had an idea about the mayor I wanted to share with you. See you in a few?

  As I sat waiting for his text back, I wondered where he could be. When he’d walked me to my door after dinner, he hadn’t seemed odd or unhappy. He had been quiet on the drive from Diamanti’s, but that wasn’t strange for Alex. Quiet seemed to be his natural state.

  I heard someone come in and looked up from staring at my phone, but it wasn’t him. A few more people came in and gave Jennie a mini-rush for mid-morning, but none of them were Alex either. By ten-thirty, I couldn’t wait any longer if I wanted to finish up all the work I had to do for the day. I checked my phone one last time to see if I’d mistakenly turned off notifications. I hadn’t and he’d never answered either of my two texts, so I reluctantly left the shop, missing my chance to talk about our case with him.

  After a short but pointed discussion with my editor about how important the ladies of the Founders’ Day committee were to the paper, I returned to my office at The Eagle and began my search for Jefferson Girard’s former assistant’s name. It didn’t take long, and after skimming a few articles in the paper’s database, I had my answer.

  Jeannette McMurphy worked for then Mayor Jefferson Girard for ten of his twelve years in office. She left her job just before accusations of his tax cheating surfaced and retired to live a life of part-time volunteer work at the Sunset Ridge Memorial Library.

  So that’s where I would look for her first.

  But before I could leave to walk the three blocks down Main Street to the town’s library, Bethany popped in with an expectant look on her face. I knew what she was curious about. Too bad I didn’t have anything to really tell her.

  She sat down in the chair next to my desk and immediately asked, “So what happened? Did you wear the little black dress like I said? What did he wear? Tell me everything!”

  “There’s nothing to tell. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I have no details.”

  Bethany’s eyes grew wide. “Did he stand you up? God, men are pigs! I swear there isn’t a good one left in the world. I’m so sorry, Poppy.”

  I held my hand up to stop her attack on Alex. “No, no. He didn’t stand me up. We went out for dinner, just as planned. He had the steak and I had the bourbon pork chop. It was nice but nothing happened.”

  Crestfallen, she slumped in the chair. “Oh. Nothing happened?”

  “Not a thing,” I answered half-truthfully, sure she had no interest in the scene we’d witnessed between Dominick and the mayor or our discussion of Candy Skerrit’s being a suspect.

  Her blue eyes looked at me full of concern. “I don’t understand. Why would he ask you out to dinner at Diamanti’s and then do nothing? Maybe he’s shy.”

  Closing my laptop, I pushed my chair away from my desk and stood up to leave. “We’re friends, Bethany. That’s all. It’s no big deal.”

  She stood and looked at me. “So you’re saying if I made the moves on him and we started dating that you’d be okay with that?”

  “I guess,” I said, unsure of where she was going with this. “But you don’t even know him.”

  She smiled. “I saw him yesterday afternoon. He’s delicious and I was going to keep my distance because I knew you were going out with him last night, but if he’s on the market…”

  I cut her off before she went any further. “I have no say in what Alex does, so go for it.”

  As I walked away from her, I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I suddenly felt unhappy, which was stupid since Bethany was one of my closest friends and a great person. Why shouldn’t she date Alex, who was a great guy?

  The Sunset Ridge Memorial Library was located in the oldest building in town, the former Northern Maryland Abolitionist Society building. Classically designed with a red brick face, it stood out against the rest of Main Street, which had changed over the years to be more modern.

  I walked in and inhaled deeply, as I always did when I entered a library. For me, the smell of books brought back a feeling of comfort from my childhood that always reminded me of my mother. Every Saturday morning, we’d make our weekly pilgrimage to get a new book for me to cherish for the upcoming seven days. Then every night before I went to bed, my mother would sit on the edge of my twin bed and read to me. When I got old enough to read well enough on my own, she still
sat there with me every night and listened to me tell that week’s story. It was one of my favorite childhood memories.

  The elderly librarian with the white hair and rosy cheeks behind the circulation desk gave me a knowing smile and a tiny wave. A fixture since I was a little girl, Mrs. Olsen hadn’t seen me in years, but she still recognized me, probably because of how much I resembled my mother with my long light brown hair and blue eyes.

  “Poppy McGuire! How are you?” she asked as I walked toward her desk in the center of the main room.

  “I’m good, Mrs. Olsen. This place always smelled so great, and it still does.”

  She smiled in that gentle old lady way she always had and sighed. “You were one of my favorite little bookworms. I remember you coming in every Saturday with your mother. You were always so excited to get a new book, and she was one of our staunchest supporters.”

  “She was. She loved this library.”

  Mrs. Olsen’s mouth turned down into a frown between her chubby cheeks. “When so many people in town didn’t want to give to the library fund because they didn’t think we served a purpose since computers were everywhere, she was right there at the fundraisers convincing people to give whatever they could because no matter what, she believed libraries were one of the most important places in a town. I still remember her saying that to Mrs. Scanlon right before she got out that checkbook of hers to make a donation.”

  That was my mother. Always fighting for a cause. I loved that about her, and it was nice to hear people outside my family had appreciated that about her too.

  For a moment, Mrs. Olsen and I stood there each remembering her in our own way. Finally, I broke the silence before I got too lost in my memories of all those Saturdays.

  “I’m looking for Jeannette McMurphy, Mrs. Olsen. I was told she still volunteers here. Is she in today?”

  “She is,” she said as she walked around her desk to point toward the side room where the stacks were located. “You should be able to find her in the cookbooks.”

  Thanking her, I headed toward where she’d pointed to and just a few steps into the stacks found who I was looking for. A tiny woman, Jeannette McMurphy reminded me of one of those China dolls that used to be popular. She had a dainty look to her, and when she turned to look at me, I couldn’t help but be struck by how smooth her face was for a woman who was said to be in her early sixties.

  “Can I help you?” she asked in a little voice that matched her frame perfectly.

  “I’m Poppy McGuire, Mrs. McMurphy. Do you have a minute to talk to me? I wanted to ask you a few questions about your time as the mayor’s assistant.”

  She looked up at me with faded brown eyes and nodded. “You’re from the newspaper, aren’t you? Are you doing some kind of write-up on him?”

  I’d planned on easing into my questions, but looking around, I didn’t see a chair I could sit in and there didn’t seem to be a better time than the present, so I dove in and said, “Not exactly. I’m hoping you can tell me if he knew Geneva Woodward.”

  A look of recognition flashed in her eyes and she took a deep breath in. “Knew her? She was the bane of his existence. Well, one of them. That woman, God rest her soul, was difficult.”

  “What was the problem between the two of them?”

  “Oh, what wasn’t the problem? One time she demanded to see him about her neighbor’s dogs. They were keeping her up nights with their barking. Another time she insisted that he do something about the parking situation in the alley way behind her house.”

  I thought back to when Alex and I went to check out that alley. Far too narrow to fit even two cars at the same time, it was more of a walking path than anywhere really meant for driving or parking.

  “What was the problem?”

  Mrs. McMurphy sighed. “There was a car that parked there every Sunday for a few hours behind one of her neighbors’ houses, and she wanted that stopped. She didn’t think it was safe because the alley way was grass and not wide enough for cars, if I remember correctly.”

  “These don’t sound like more than nuisances, though. Not really bane of someone’s existence kind of stuff.”

  “It wasn’t so much the complaints as the way she made them. She’d storm into the office, walking right past me, and interrupt the mayor. It didn’t matter who he was in there with. She’d just start complaining loudly, and one time she even yelled at him. Every week, you could expect her to come in and be unhappy with something at least once.”

  “Interesting. It’s strange that she didn’t go to the police with some of her complaints. The parking issue probably would have been something they could handle.”

  Mrs. McMurphy nodded. “It was like that with a lot of her complaints, and every time she came in to see the mayor she always sounded like my mother-in-law did when she yelled at my father-in-law. I actually asked him one time if he’d been married to her in a previous life. You know, as a joke because her complaining always sounded so personal. But he wasn’t the type of man to ever marry a woman like that, not in this life or any other.”

  “Do you remember anything else about when they’d be together in his office all those times she came in to complain? Is there any chance things ever got nicer between them?”

  “No. If anything, they got worse. By the time I left, she was coming in a few times a week and she was full of venom every single time.”

  “One more thing, Mrs. McMurphy. Who replaced you after you left the mayor’s office?”

  “Nobody. The mayor didn’t think he could find anyone who could do my job like I could, so he had his wife take over when I left.”

  Geneva’s constant complaining may have gotten to the mayor, but if that was the case, why did he wait all these months to kill her, I wondered. Thanking Mrs. McMurphy, I headed back to my office to see if I could find out if there was any connection between Geneva and Jefferson Girard in that time after his assistant left since I certainly couldn’t ask the woman who’d replaced her.

  I was thankful Bethany had left on one of her client visits by the time I returned so I wouldn’t have to discuss Alex being single and available any further. I didn’t know why, but the whole time I was walking back to The Eagle’s offices my stomach felt like it was in a tight knot.

  Using the newspaper’s database once more, I searched for articles on the mayor and hoped I might be able to find something. It was unlikely the town newspaper would have printed anything derogatory about Jefferson Girard. To say The Sunset Ridge Eagle was partisan would be an understatement, to say the least.

  But if I could find some lead in a newspaper from elsewhere in the county that had been far less complimentary during his tax cheating scandal, I might be able to get a sense of what happened in those few months after Jeannette McMurphy left the mayor’s office.

  I searched for over an hour and found nothing more than I already knew about Jefferson Girard. One article stood out, though. He had ruffled some feathers in the neighboring areas when he refused to help out the town next to us after their firehouse burned down in a horribly ironic fire, which thankfully had hurt no one but completely destroyed their only firetruck.

  If Girard had been the one murdered, there was yet another reason for a murderer to off him, but none of that had anything to do with Geneva. Article after article said much of the same. Passable mayor who did questionable things.

  Rubbing my bleary eyes after staring at my laptop screen for so long, I wished for some kind of divine intervention to help me find something that would give me a lead to go on. Scrolling down the page of results, I got to the bottom and then clicked to the next page. By the time I was halfway done, I wondered if I’d ever find anything new on him.

  But then toward the bottom of page two there it was. A picture of the mayor from at least twenty years ago. I excitedly clicked on the link and saw Jefferson Girard as a man of about thirty, but under the photo in the article was the name Jonas Gregory.

  Was this a different man and the search resu
lts had gotten confused because he looked so like Jefferson Girard during his tenure as mayor? The pudgy face looked very similar, but the man in the photo had more hair.

  I read the article, my eyes racing over the words as I tried to ascertain if it was the very same man. A woman in a small Vermont town disappeared after being involved in a love triangle. This Jonas Gregory was the prime suspect since he’d been the other man who she cheated on her husband with. He was eventually cleared, but the scandal drove him out of town.

  Had the former mayor been this Jonas Gregory man? My brain raced through all I knew about Jefferson Girard. For as long as I remembered, he’d lived in Sunset Ridge. Even back when I was a child, he was a resident in town.

  Quickly I called my father to ask him what he knew about the former mayor. As soon as he answered, I blurted out, “Dad, has Jefferson Girard always lived in Sunset Ridge?”

  “Poppy, what’s wrong? You sound different.”

  “I just need to know if the former mayor has always lived here. Do you know?”

  “Let me think. Well, he served in office for twelve years, so before being elected he had to be a citizen for at least a year to be eligible, I think. But always? I don’t think so. He’s around my age, and I don’t remember him from high school. Why are you asking?”

  My heart leaped at the idea that I’d found something. “Just checking things out. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

  I hurried off the phone to get back to searching for even more information. Two pages of results later, I found something I wouldn’t have expected in a million years. There in an article from that same small town newspaper in Vermont was a picture of none other than Geneva! I read like a madwoman to find out what her picture would be doing in an article titled Missing Woman From Notable Family.

  Astonished, I saw that the Woodward family lived in that small Vermont town and Geneva’s mother had only left there after her daughter went missing. The article was dated twenty-five years ago, but there could be no doubt. The woman who had disappeared was Geneva Woodward.