Murder in the Dog Days

by P. M. Carlson

  Maggie beamed at her.

  “But college is expensive,” Olivia pointed out.

  “You said it! And damn it, he’s shortchanged Mark all his life. I mean, maybe I could have gone after him earlier, but you pay a lot of legal fees and they get one month’s payment and say case closed. But for college—” She poked at her egg again.

  “Who took care of Mark?” Maggie asked. “He was pretty small back then, right?”

  Felicia nodded. “Yeah. My mom watched him a couple of years. Pretty soon he was in school, but she kept on helping out while I went to night school. Wasn’t easy, but we made it, Mark and I.” She smiled proudly at her son.

  “Did you ever see your father, Mark?” Maggie asked.

  “Yeah. Not at first. But he did send those cards. And later he’d send me copies of articles he’d written. About five years ago he took me to the World Series. Mostly to explain about his disease, I think.” Mark cleared his throat. “To tell me it wasn’t hereditary.”

  Olivia was touched. Maybe Dale had run out on his financial responsibilities, but it showed some thoughtfulness to try to head off worries in a son he barely knew. But Felicia, lighting a cigarette, muttered, “Too bad he didn’t send us the ticket money instead. Mark doesn’t even like baseball.”

  “So how was he supposed to know?” Mark flared at her. “Last thing he’d heard, I was in Little League. He was trying, Mother!”

  “Well, he never tried hard enough.”

  “Shit.” Mark leaned back in the booth, arms crossed, a frown on his young face.

  Maggie said gently. “It’s tough to lose your dad twice.” Mark’s sullen face crumpled and he looked away.

  “Hey, come on,” said Felicia angrily. “We’re not here to fish for sympathy!”

  Maggie nodded. “I know. I can see you managed very well without him. But he owed you both, and there’s a lot of questions now that may never get answered. Mark’s right to feel bad about that.” She leaned forward toward Felicia, bony elbows on the plastic tabletop. “But we’re back to the first question, aren’t we? Why are you here? What do you want to know from us?”

  Felicia ground out her cigarette and asked without looking at them, “Do you know if Mark inherits anything?”

  “Rabbit book!” exclaimed Sarah imperiously.

  Mark sputtered with choked laughter. Maggie and Olivia joined in, and even Felicia managed a halfhearted smile at the little girl. Sarah beamed, pleased at the effect of her comment. “Rabbit book,” she repeated proudly.

  “Yeah, okay,chouchoute, just a minute.” Maggie removed Sarah’s sticky plate from in front of her. The original stack of French toast had disappeared. “Do you know anything about his will, Olivia?” she asked, dipping a napkin into a water glass.

  “Not offhand. But we could check with Donna. Though she didn’t have any idea about insurance so I don’t know if she’ll know about the will.”

  Felicia snorted. “That one’s never had to manage for herself.”

  Maggie had swabbed off Sarah’s face and hands, and now handed her the book again. “We’ll find out for you,” Maggie promised. “The police will probably let Donna back in the house today, and she can check her papers then. If it’s not there it may take longer to find out.”

  “Yeah. It’s just that they want tuition,” Felicia explained. “And I’m afraid if I ask the police, that detective will look askance.”

  Maggie grinned. “She probably will. Now, do you mind telling me about—well, about how you happened to marry Dale?”

  Felicia looked at her sharply but answered with nonchalance. “What’s to tell? I was nineteen. No crystal ball around to tell me it wouldn’t work. I thought a reporter was real glamorous. Admired his brains. He was smart.”

  “Yes,” Olivia agreed.

  “And ambitious. And he had everything organized, under control. There was a fire in my building, where I was a secretary. And he came to cover it. And everyone was running around tearing their hair, but Dale was so cool, taking notes. Really impressed me. My golden lad.” She shook her blonde head, bemused by her remembered younger self. “That’s why finally I couldn’t take it. He had to be in control, everything had to be just so. I could never come up to his standards.”

  “What were the grounds for divorce?”

  Felicia looked at Maggie levelly. “Abandonment,” she said after a moment. “Because he ran off to Virginia. It was easiest, my lawyer said.” She leaned back against the antique-textured plastic. “My turn, okay? Tell me about the brass lamp.”

  Maggie complied. “He was in his den, working on the story. The lamp was in his den too. Apparently someone came in and struck him. Liv, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Where was that lamp sitting when you saw him?”

  Olivia cringed to hear her dropping facts into Felicia’s lap. But they did owe her something for telling about her soured marriage. At least Maggie had said nothing about the room being locked. Olivia said, “It was at the right end of the desk, near the edge.”

  “So it would have been easy for someone to grab.”

  “And you found him when you got back from this trip to the beach?” Felicia asked.

  “Yes. He talked to Olivia before we left, and was dead by the time we got back.”

  “So that woman probably didn’t do it. Well, what the hell. Dale never made things easy. I just hope it doesn’t mess up the settlement of the will. Not that we really expect anything,” she added grimly.

  “We’ll find out what we can for you. Um, one other question. Mark didn’t come in last night when you came to Dale’s.”

  “No. He waited in the car. I was going to show Dale the papers alone. Then depending on how he reacted, Mark would see him or not.”

  “Mark?” Maggie asked. “Did you want to see him?”

  “I didn’t want to beg,” the boy said stiffly.

  “God, how many times do I have to tell you, it’s not begging! He owes you!”

  “Not any more, Mother,” said Mark bitingly. “Maybe his estate owes me. But he’s out of our control now. For good.”

  “Yeah.” For the first time Felicia looked regretful. “Poor old Dale. Maybe he’s happy at last.”

  They paid the bill and said their farewells.

  On the way out Olivia called Detective Schreiner to tell her about Donovan’s Bar. But Schreiner couldn’t come to the phone. Olivia left a message that she’d be at the newspaper and hurried to the car through gusts of rain-laden wind.

  “Felicia did pretty well, raising Mark alone,” Olivia observed as she switched on the windshield wipers and lights.

  “Yeah. Though it wasn’t exactly alone.” Maggie was arced over the seat back, buckling Sarah into the backseat.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Dale stuck around for a couple of years. And for a few more years her mom did a lot of babysitting. Twelve hours a day at times, by my calculation. With that kind of free help you’re not raising a kid alone. Still, I think Felicia made the right choices. Got herself and Mark out of the situation as fast as anyone could in those circumstances.”

  “That’s what I meant. She’s got a right to feel bitter, too.” The rain intensified as they drove out of the parking lot. “Do you suppose Felicia and Mark could have come down early and then pretended they’d just arrived?”

  “It’s possible. But if one of them killed him, I’d think they’d want to get back to Harrisburg and pretend they’d never left. Still, they may have reasoned that if they were seen they should have an excuse for being here.” Maggie frowned at the sheets of rain chopping at the road. “And someone did go into the Colby’s around three-thirty, when Bo was looking out the window.”

  “Not Felicia, though. Bo said it was a man, right? Not a blonde woman.”

  An impressive boom of thunder delayed Maggie’s reply. “Felicia’s fairly tall and broad-shouldered. And when Sarah and I were in her bathroom, we saw a wig form.”

  “A wig?” Olivia banged a fist against t
he steering wheel. “You mean that pile of blonde hair is a wig?”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Jesus Christ. I thought it was the blue-ribbon winner in the Clairol County Fair.”

  Maggie grinned. “Maybe that too.”

  “What’s a wig?” demanded Sarah.

  Maggie looked over her shoulder at the little girl, her hands shaping a phantom wig around her head. “It’s like a hat that you can put on or take off, but it looks like hair.”

  “Like my hair?”

  “Your hair isn’t a wig. But a wig might look like your kind of hair. Or it might be blonde, or brown, or red like Aunt Liv’s.”

  “A wig,” said Olivia. “So Felicia could take it off, and maybe put on Mark’s clothes—or Mark could have done it himself, of course.”

  “Unless they really were in Harrisburg.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And there’s a second car. Bo saw a blue Ford, not a red Vega.”

  Olivia thought about it a minute. “I’ll check the motel desk. Find out what time they checked in, what license number they gave. Because she already had her motel key when she arrived at Dale’s, right?”

  “Yes,” Maggie agreed.

  “Of course that’ll only help if they did check in much earlier than they said. If they waited to check in until after they’d done it—”

  “Still, it’s worth a try. Ouch! Sarah, don’t grab my hair! It’s not a wig!” Maggie untangled small fingers from her curls. “And you’re supposed to keep that seat belt on!” She twisted back again to resettle the lively child.

  Olivia glanced sidelong at her sister-in-law. With caffeine coursing through her veins, she had finally located the source of her puzzlement at this foray into the dawn. “I’ve got a question for you,” said Olivia.

  “What?” asked Maggie.

  Olivia looked back at the sluicing rain. “Last night you said leave it to the police. You said you didn’t want to snoop. You said I shouldn’t snoop. So why did you wake me at dawn to go snoop?”

  “Oh, that,” said Maggie guiltily. “It’s just—well, I told you I had to go back to fetch Tina’s dolls last night.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I talked to Detective Schreiner when I was there. Just for a moment. And Liv, she’s shattered. She’s a very competent woman but she’s living right on the edge of a breakdown.”

  “Shattered?” Olivia asked.

  “Emotionally, yeah. Behind that cold facade. And Josie and Tina need gentleness now. Not coldness.” She gazed out at the Mosby business strip, cafes and hardware stores, florists and frame shops. “Wish I could keep Schreiner from interviewing those kids—Anyway, the quicker this thing is cleared up the better. So I decided maybe this time snooping was the least of the possible evils.”

  “I see.”

  “For starts, there’s a friend of my mother’s who works in Representative Knox’s office.”

  “Hurray!” Olivia grinned at her. “Welcome to Snoopers Inc!”

  9

  “Well, my freckled friend, what are you doing here so early?” Nate Rosen swung into the Sun-Dispatch city room, hooking his umbrella onto the rack and casting a glance at the clock. Seven-thirty, she saw. He turned back, beaming the smile that never quite brightened his mournful eyes. “And why are you playing in our illustrious colleague’s file cabinet?”

  Olivia looked at him bleakly. “He’s dead, Nate. Dale’s dead.”

  “Dead?” Nate stopped in midstride to stare at her. Implications chased each other across his face. “Dead?” His smile wavered. “You’re kidding!”

  Olivia closed her eyes and shook her head. “No. Didn’t Edgy call you? I told him last night.”

  “How the hell can he be dead? The Parkinson’s? But they said it wasn’t fatal!”

  “No, no. Worse than that.” Olivia pushed back from the files and collapsed into Dale’s chair. “He was murdered.”

  “You’re kidding!” Nate said again. He dropped his rain-beaded briefcase onto his own desk and came around the big central table to stare at her accusingly. “At the beach?”

  “No, no. I’ve got to ask you—well, first let me tell you what happened.”

  “Please!” He propped himself half-sitting against the shorter of the file cabinets. His yellow shirt was already rumpled.

  “Okay. We went over to pick them up. They were all ready except that Dale was on the phone.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I went back to his den to tell him what you said about going easy with Moffatt. And he seemed glad that Moffatt was upset. He decided instantly to stay and work on the story. Said it was getting interesting. Called for his wife to leave him some lunch and sent us on our way.”

  “Wait a minute. You’re saying that after all that planning he didn’t go with you?”

  “Right. Just sent his wife and kids with us, said he could work better alone. But when we got back about nine, he was dead.”

  Nate shook his head in disbelief.

  “And it’s weird, Nate. He’d been hit on the head with his own brass lamp. But the door was bolted from the inside.”

  “Liv, you’re putting me on!” He straightened with an impatient flip of his hand.

  “No, Nate. I know it’s crazy, but it’s true.”

  He studied her suspiciously. “God, Liv, if you’re lying …”

  Olivia felt her mouth trembling and willed it still. “About something like this? I only wish I were, Nate.”

  “Shit.” He licked his lips. “You say he was working on the plane crash story?”

  “Yeah. You were on it too for a while, right?”

  “Yeah. I was first on the scene, in fact. Picked up some talk on my CB and zipped over to Blue Hill. Edgy put Dale on it too because there was so much those first days, with Representative Knox’s office making pronouncements and the air investigation so complex.”

  “So what’s your feeling? If Dale got too close to the truth about that crash, do you think Moffatt or someone would kill him?”

  Nate shook his head again. “Christ, Liv, I can’t quite absorb this.”

  “Yeah, I know! Neither can I! But it happened. I saw him lying there. His wife and kids spent the night at our house because there were detectives all over theirs. It really happened. And I want to know about Dale’s work.”

  He was beginning to believe her. He shoved his hands in his pockets and went to stare out the window. He’d worked with Dale for ten years, Olivia remembered. Maybe twelve. Much longer than she had. They weren’t buddies, but they weren’t enemies either. Not like Nate and Corey on sports, who seemed to grate on each other and did their best to avoid each other. Ten years, though—that was a long time. Ten years ago she herself had been starting college. God, how much she’d changed! Getting into the peace movement, the women’s movement.How many times must the cannonballs fly?Woodstock, Kent State.And it’s one, two, three what are we fighting for? Editing her college paper, landing a mini-job on a suburban weekly and soon, miraculously, this one on the Sun-Dispatch, complete with salary. Well, in a manner of speaking. Meeting smart, loony Jerry, who understood her hunger to uncover truth and tell the world. A busy ten years. And all that time Nate and Dale had been slogging away together, cranking out the stories side by side.

  Nate still faced the window. “How do you think it happened?” His voice sounded thick. He cleared his throat.

  “I don’t know what to think, Nate. Maybe it’ll all come clear when the police find out what kind of Houdini got out of that locked room. But since I can’t figure out that part at all, it makes more sense to start looking for motives.”

  “So that’s how the plane crash story fits in.”

  “Well, I know that’s what he planned to work on that afternoon.”

  “Moffatt was mad as hell, all right,” Nate said, turning back toward her.

  “I know! What’s with him, Nate? Why is he so mad at Dale?”

  “Dale was keeping things stirred up. He and a Post
reporter were nagging at Knox’s office all the time.”

  “But wouldn’t Moffatt be glad of that? Wouldn’t he want to find out how his father died?”

  Nate pulled his hands from his pockets, frowned absently at the scrap of paper he’d pulled out, and walked across to his own chair. Olivia pursued him and sat on the center table facing his cubicle. Nate said, “I don’t know the answer to that. Moffatt the younger is a contractor. I talked to him a few times those first weeks. He was stunned, angry—well, that’s not unusual.” Nate still wore his thoughtful frown.

  “No. It would be more suspicious if he wasn’t. But I still don’t know why he’d be mad at Dale.”

  “Yeah. Mrs. Resler, now, she’s into appearances. Reputation. Almost from the first day she was full of anxiety about how her husband would want things to look. Really yelled at me when I suggested in one story that he was on suspiciously good terms with some of the scum he defended.”

  “Was he?”

  Nate looked hurt, his mournful face twice as piteous as usual. “Would I lie, Liv?”

  She gave him a little smirk. “Not in print. Not if they could catch you.”

  “No trust left in this evil world,” he grumbled. “Even the young and fair are cynical. But in fact, I know that one Bob Bates came back to Resler after he was released, and Resler got him a job at the water treatment plant.”

  “Hope he wasn’t a poisoner!” Olivia swung her legs from the edge of the table.

  “No. He’d conned his way into a bank job, then blew up their armored truck. Resler got him off most of the counts but Bates had to go inside for a couple of years. Most of the money was never recovered.”

  “And then Resler got him a job. No wonder you were suspicious! So how did Mrs. Resler dare object to your story?”

  “Well, her version is that her husband was humane, all milk of human kindness. He tried to help offenders because it was the moral thing to do. My story, she said, made him sound like a criminal himself.”

  “And did it?”

  Nate shrugged. “I thought it was neutral.”