by Carolyn Hart
‘She’s innocent.’ But I knew Sam didn’t agree.
‘I recall that at one point you were unsure she needed your assistance. I can assure you she does. Except I thought you were sent to aid the innocent. Maybe you got it wrong and Gage is the one to help. Looks like you have a screw-up in your orders this time.’
I repeated my claim forcefully. ‘Iris is innocent. Your investigation is headed in the wrong direction.’
He frowned. ‘Nobody can fault my investigation.’
That got my dander up. Mama always used to tell us kids, ‘I know you’re a passel of redheads, but think before you speak. Words said in anger are harder to swallow than a mouthful of marshmallows and not nearly as sweet.’
I stood. Remembering Mama’s declaration, I was polite. But firm. ‘Except you won’t consider a motive big enough to buy up most of Adelaide. If you won’t look at the Kirks or the Mayers, I will.’
He stood, too. He was equally polite, equally firm. ‘On your own time, Bailey Ruth. I better not hear of any knocks on their doors by Officer M. Loy. The Adelaide police do not harass outstanding citizens.’
Oh my, how thankful I was that I’d not boarded the Rescue Express. I told Wiggins I had a hunch and now I knew how right I was.
TEN
Oh for the long-ago days of phone books. This might well be a generation unfamiliar with the concept. Long ago, before devices reigned supreme, the telephone company produced a phone book, which contained the names and addresses of every phone subscriber. If I wanted to know where the Mayers and the Kirks lived, the listings would be in the phone book. Not now. Heaven does provide for emissaries, such as proper clothes, which in my case includes a purse. But a cell phone with access to Google? This was not the moment to try. I was in a hurry and wished to move from place to place merely by thinking of a location.
Sam’s office – and his computer – would be off-limits to me until he left for the day. I would return later to keep on top of the investigation, but right now I wanted addresses for the Kirks and the Mayers. I went to the public library. I found an office with the computer on. However, a librarian occupied the swivel seat at the desk.
In the hallway, after making sure no one was near, I Appeared, choosing a shirtdress with a paisley patchwork design. Cheerful and light. White sandals. I knocked.
‘Come in.’ The tone was crisp.
I opened the door, smiled. ‘The director would like a few minutes of your time.’
The librarian, short and plump with piled-high chestnut curls, looked surprised. ‘I don’t think I know you.’ She studied me.
I hoped my smile wasn’t too strained. ‘I’m new.’ A chirp. ‘First day on the job.’
‘I suggest you be sure of your information in the future. The director is on holiday. In Italy. You may close the door.’
Iris Gallagher looked up from The Passionate Witch. ‘Please stand on the floor. It unnerves me when you hover.’
I settled in a rattan chair opposite her. ‘It isn’t easy being a spirit.’ I tried not to whine. ‘The simplest tasks are fraught with challenges. Can you get me the addresses of George and Melissa Kirk, and Jill Mayer.’
She put the book aside, picked up her cell phone, tapped. ‘The Mayers live on King’s Road. Three eleven.’
King’s Road was Adelaide’s old-money street on the crest of a hill.
‘The Kirks live on Comanche. Nine fourteen.’
Comanche is a lovely road that winds around part of White Deer Park.
‘Thank you.’ I was grateful for her help.
‘Any time.’
Her cell phone rang.
I gave her a farewell wave.
The Mayer house of gray stone was substantial, but it was old wealth, not new. There were no turrets, no copper spires, and no battlements. Inside, there was formality – French furniture, tapestries, cabinets with china, fine paintings – but there was also dog fur on a damask-covered sofa and a plump brown tabby atop a Sheraton table.
It was late Friday afternoon now. A golden retriever wandered into the main hallway, came near, pressed a moist pink nose in my hand. I patted her head.
I heard faint strains of Debussy.
Upstairs I found Jill Mayer. She rested on a chaise longue in a living area adjacent to a bedroom. She was frail, perhaps all of five feet two inches tall, weighing around ninety pounds. She looked to be in her seventies. Her thin face was kind. A cane leaned against the side of the chaise longue. She kept time to the music with a slight waving motion of her left hand. Her right hand was withered. Perhaps from a stroke.
She left the ballroom at Rose Bower. She did not crush Matt Lambert’s neck with a homemade blackjack.
The Kirk house had an inviting air, windows framed by recently painted white shutters, flower beds bright with red and cream roses. Daisies lifted smiling faces in a huge blue porcelain pot on the front porch. Elm trees shaded a circular drive with an assortment of cars, a red Ferrari convertible, a cream Lexus sedan, a black Jeep, a tan Camry, and a blue Ford.
The number of cars surprised me. I’d assumed there would be two people in the house. George Kirk, an amiable young man. Melissa Kirk, an intense, possibly abrasive young woman. Opposites often do attract.
A siren shrilled in the summer air. The sound came from beyond the house. One siren. Another. I rose in the air, passed over the house, came down to the terrace to stand by a sparkling swimming pool with patio furniture and striped umbrellas that fluttered in the hot afternoon breeze. The pool was gorgeous with a waterfall at one end. I looked down the hillside at a lake rimmed by willows and a pier. I realized I was looking at the lake in White Deer Park.
I immediately felt at home. Bobby Mac and I often walked to the end of the pier. We gloried in swaths of Monarchs in the spring, watched mama ducks launch broods in early summer, felt the year ebb as geese flew south against gray skies in the fall, stood arm-in-arm on chilly winter days, bundled in down jackets.
Another siren shrilled. The alarming shriek was joined by another and another, shattering the late summer afternoon calm. Four police cars, a fire truck, and an ambulance squealed into the park, one by one. They jolted to a stop, forming an ominous line of vehicles next to the carousel.
White Deer Park was somnolent in the heat. Only a certified idiot would jog – oh, here came one, a sweatband on a red face, bronzed skin, brief sweat-drenched nylon shorts, expensive running shoes. He slowed for a moment to scan the official vehicles and the carousel next to a willow tree.
The carousel looked hot and cheerless. During the summer, the ride opened at seven in the evening for an hour and from six to eight on Saturday and Sunday evenings. The carousel was operated by a volunteer group, the Merry Merry-Go-Rounders. The old-fashioned wooden animals, everything from a unicorn to a tortoise, were kept in tip-top shape, freshly painted every spring. My favorites were a pair of flamingos and a buffalo. We called him Buffalo Bill, of course.
The only movement was the willow fronds blowing in a hot breeze and then a woman moved out from the willow. A woman … There was no mistaking Iris Gallagher, even from this distance. She held a cell phone to her face and walked toward the line of official vehicles.
The jogger veered to skirt the congestion, picked up speed. Fire, famine, or forensics, no matter, a runner runs.
I dropped down beside Iris.
She looked at me, her elegant features bleak, shock and horror in her eyes. She was speaking into the phone. ‘… I’m sure she’s dead. Her neck is … bent. I won’t leave.’ A pause. ‘Officers are walking this way.’
Another police car, a forensic van, and a low-slung MG pulled into the park. In a moment, Jacob Brandt, the ME, swung out of the sports car, walked fast, head down toward the carousel.
Sam Cobb’s brown sedan squealed to a stop. Sam heaved out of the driver’s seat, moved fast. Detective-Lieutenant Hal Price slammed shut the front-seat passenger door, hurried to catch up. Sam’s black shoes sent up little plumes of dust from the heat
-cracked ground. His heavy face was rock hard, eyes cold, jaw set. Hal looked grim as well.
I left Iris, went to the carousel. A young uniformed officer with a golden ponytail stood rigid next to the seats with swan sides. Sweat beaded her upper lip. She was trying hard to stop a quiver of her lips.
Nicole Potter looked even slighter in death than in life, white shirt sloping over her shoulders, black slacks obviously too large. She lay on one side. Blood welling beneath the skin turned her throat a dark purple and her neck, as Iris said, was bent. So young to die. Too young to die.
The ME knelt beside her. ‘Just a kid.’ His voice was brusque.
‘Same MO. Lambert kill. Blunt-force trauma, broken neck, death instantaneous. Estimate death within the last hour. Could have been minutes ago.’ He used his stethoscope. A formality. He curled the stethoscope in his hand, pushed it into the small back bag, came to his feet, looked at Sam. ‘You got ’em dropping like flies, man. Who’s the silent assassin who leaves no trace?’
Sam half turned, stared across the dusty ground at Iris. He gave the ME a brief nod, then started toward Iris and the weeping willow.
I got there first, whispered, ‘Call Megan Wynn, Smith and Wynn, attorneys-at-law. Decline to answer any questions until your attorney is present.’
Iris heard me, but she made no reply. She watched Sam’s determined approach, tried to calm her breathing. She struggled not only with the reality of Nicole’s death, but the growing awareness that her presence here put her at risk of arrest.
I had time for a few words more. ‘Tell Megan that Bailey Ruth gave you her name.’ I’d been in this park with Megan Wynn when she was upset and when she was exhilarated. Megan had faced an accusation of murder and she understood how black facts can look for an innocent person.
Sam stopped a scant foot from us, recited the Miranda warning rapidly. He gazed at her with a hint of anger. He must have felt that Nicole would still be alive if he’d moved faster, taken Iris into custody. ‘You came to the park to meet Nicole Potter.’
How did Sam know the identity of the dead girl in the carousel? Perhaps they’d already looked at her billfold, found her ID. She was in her uniform, but her name tag read N. Potter, not Nicole. Had Sam confirmed the reason for Iris’s disgust with Matt Lambert? Very likely someone in the office knew about Nicole’s job interview, that she had been recommended by Iris, that Iris confronted Lambert the day he died. Sam would also know that Nicole Potter had been a server at the banquet. Now Nicole Potter was dead, struck down just as Matt Lambert had been, and Iris Gallagher was on the scene.
That’s all the information Sam needed to reach a deadly conclusion: Nicole Potter saw something to incriminate Iris in Lambert’s murder, she contacted Iris, asked to meet with her at the carousel, and that call signed her death warrant.
Iris’s mouth opened. I gripped her arm. She glanced at me. I put a finger to my lips.
She took a quick breath. ‘I decline to answer.’
‘You can,’ his voice was cold, ‘decline to answer at the station.’
He made an abrupt gesture at a group of officers near a car. Detective Judy Weitz hurried toward us, the hot humid wind ruffling her brown hair. Her magenta top, though short-sleeved, looked hot. A poor color choice for July. Her long skirt was gray with vertical magenta stripes. I longed to take her shopping.
Sam turned a thumb toward Iris who, as always, appeared elegant and contained. ‘Take her into custody. Handcuffs. Material witness. Book her. One phone call. Put her in a cell.’
When Detective Weitz snapped handcuffs on Iris’s slender wrists, I knew Sam had no doubt about Iris’s guilt. There was no need for handcuffs. Sam was bringing pressure to bear. You are accused. You are a prisoner. The detective and Iris walked toward a police car.
I felt utterly alone and desperate.
Iris was the only occupant of the cellblock in the basement of City Hall. Bed, toilet, cement floor, bars. The air was cool but stale. No nice whoosh of air conditioning. The bed sheets looked grainy. I don’t know if it would have been better or worse if other cells were occupied. Even untenanted, the cells held memories of despair and fear.
Iris stood in the center of her small square of space. I joined her. She looked at me with a sad, grave face. ‘Poor Nicole.’ Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. ‘That’s what breaks my heart with some students. When I know where they came from and the effort they’ve made to try and start up a steep ladder. Nicole was a cast-off. How would you like to be a cast-off? Father disappeared years ago. Mother on street drugs. Had an aunt but she was mad at everything, her sister, her long-gone husband, at life, at Nicole. She was homeless at fourteen. Somehow she made it through high school. Smart. Worked all kinds of jobs, plucked chickens, emptied trash, cleaned toilets, got a scholarship here. Scholarships don’t cover everything. Now she’s dead.’
‘I’m sorry.’ And I was. Sorry for Nicole. Sorry she’d made a wrong choice that cost her life. We all make bad choices. But she didn’t get a second chance to be the person she could have been. ‘I know you are upset, but right now we have to focus on what we can do to save you.’
Those violet eyes widened. ‘What do you mean?’
I talked fast. ‘We don’t have much time. They’ll come for you pretty soon, take you upstairs to an interrogation room. Don’t say anything, demand your lawyer. You are in a tight spot because you were present at the scene of Nicole’s murder. How did you end up at White Deer Park?’
‘Remember the call I received just before you left? The call was from Nicole, so of course I answered.’
‘How did you know the call came from Nicole?’
‘She’s in my contact list.’ She saw my puzzlement. ‘Her number was on my contact list on the phone so her name came up on the screen.’
I feel fairly au courant with communication devices I encounter, but I’m a little fuzzy on the fine points.
Iris’s voice was thin. ‘She was whispering. I could barely hear her. Just scraps of words. Fast. Something about seeing someone and she needed a witness and please could I come to the carousel at White Deer. And then she said, “I have to go. Please come. Hurry.” The call ended.’
‘Are you sure the caller was Nicole?’
Iris slowly shook her head. ‘A voice whispered. The call could have been made by someone else. But the call was made on her phone.’
‘Would you be in her contact list?’ I could learn fast when I had to.
‘That’s possible. And my number would be in her list of “recent calls” because I called her earlier today to arrange to meet at her apartment.’ She looked frightened. ‘Do you think the murderer called me. Why me?’
‘Maybe it’s as simple as your number being the most recent one that rang Nicole. The murderer called back to ask whoever answered to come to the carousel. The murderer didn’t care who came, but it would be someone who had been in contact with Nicole and possibly the police would be suspicious of whoever found her body. Or perhaps Nicole told the murderer she’d spoken with you, that you’d been downstairs Thursday night too and Nicole could ask you to confirm she was downstairs if she ever decided to go to the police.’
Iris thought about the call and how she might have spoken with a murderer. ‘If she mentioned me, it was easy for the murderer to call me because my number was right there at the top of her recent-call list.’
Cell phones contained more powers than I knew. I thought about a whisper and how either a man or a woman could hide behind breathy indistinct speech. ‘I don’t think Nicole called. Nicole met someone at the carousel. Now she’s dead, killed the same way as Matt. After she was dead, the killer got her cell out of her pocket, called you, put the cell back in the pocket. Nicole may have seen someone enter the room where he was killed. Maybe she saw Lambert open the door, greet someone. Maybe she waited at the end of the hall in the shadows. She was mad. Maybe she planned to knock and tell him his car had been broken into or he was wanted at the president’s table, the
re was some kind of problem. Something, anything to cause him some discomfort. She didn’t care if she interrupted a meeting. She probably thought he had time for somebody rich, but not for her. So she opened the door and went in and found him. Nicole should have called for help. Instead, she hurried upstairs.’
Iris shivered. ‘I saw her going up the stairs. No wonder her face looked so strange.’
Nicole must have been shaken by what she had seen. But she must already have been thinking, fast and hard. ‘As she served, she looked around, spotted the person she saw with Lambert. Somehow she found out who the person was. A rich person. She couldn’t be sure that person was the murderer, but there was one way to find out. She called, probably using a landline in an office at the college. She said something like, “I saw you go into the Malone Room last night. Meet me at the carousel in White River Park at four o’clock. Bring five thousand in cash.” Then she hung up.’
Iris walked the few feet to the bed, sank down. ‘I’m afraid that’s what happened.’ She sounded tired, sad. ‘I’m afraid Nicole lied to me. I asked if she talked to Matt. She gave me a derisive smile, said, “If I was starving and Lambert was the last person on the planet and had a key to the pantry, I’d look him up. Otherwise, no way.”’ Iris was grim. ‘The police will find out I went to Nicole’s apartment today, talked to her. They’ll either think she saw me go into the Malone Room and was worried about not telling the police or that she tried to blackmail me. Either way, they’ll say I met her at the park. Killed her.’