by Harper Lin
The odd thing was, Garfield apparently didn’t know him at all. The murderer could sit in the same room as his intended victim without fear of being spotted.
The next morning, I called Grimal. The desk sergeant tried to fob me off with some story of Grimal being busy. I knew better. Grimal was almost never busy.
Once I got him on the line, I grilled him about what progress he had made.
I was not surprised to find out that he hadn’t made much headway.
“The lab reports came back,” he said. “That plastic capsule we fished out of the toilet had no traces of anything. Whatever it contained, getting flushed cleaned it out. The coroner found out some interesting things about Garfield. Serious liver damage due to long-term heavy drinking. No trace of alcohol in the blood, though.”
“From what I’ve learned, he was trying to kick the habit.”
“He must have started that recently. The coroner said his liver was bad. He explained that it starts to heal itself pretty quickly after you quit the booze. Within a few weeks. That hadn’t happened, though.”
“Does that work for kicking a serious Chinese takeout habit?”
“Very funny. My fortune cookie today said I’d have some luck this week. Maybe you’ll decide to move away.”
“More likely, I’ll solve the murder for you. Did the coroner say anything else?”
“Yes, the murderer was left-handed and pretty strong. One determined stab straight into the body. This guy had no hesitation, no scruples.”
Albert had described a fit man in his fifties. A bit of cocaine would have added to his strength.
“What else do you think the plastic container could have had?” I asked.
“Cocaine is the most likely answer,” Grimal said. “Cheerville has all the usual types of drugs, but for the upper class, it’s most likely cocaine.”
“Arrest any dealers lately?”
“No.”
Of course not. “Do you have anything else to tell me?”
“No.”
Of course not. I felt pretty lonely when I had to solve murders in this town.
I hung up. Next I called Albert, my dope-smoking waiter friend.
It took several calls before he picked up.
“It’s about time,” I said.
“Who is this? Your number isn’t appearing.”
“That’s because I have it shielded. This is the nice old lady you met in the men’s room.”
“Oh God.”
“Not God, young man, but I have equal authority over you. Are you sober?”
“I’m at work.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Yes, I’m sober,” he said with the same tone my grandson used when I asked him if he’d done his homework.
“Where are you now?”
“In the kitchen. I’m moving to the back hall so no one can hear us.”
“Yes, I suspect you’re accustomed to clandestine phone calls. Can you remember anything more about the man who sent James Garfield the free drink?”
“Uh, no.”
“You never saw him before?”
“Not that I can remember.”
“You never sold him cocaine?”
“I don’t do that!”
“Oh yes, you only sell marijuana. You’re such an angel. Was the man left-handed or right-handed?”
“How am I supposed to remember that?”
“Did you notice what kind of car he drove?”
“I don’t work parking the cars, only inside serving members.”
“Very well. Do you know who in the club drives a black Mercedes?”
“Tons of people.”
“Hmm, I suppose you’re right. What about photos of members? Is there some sort of collection of pictures? For the golf players or member of the month or something like that?”
“Uh, no. Sometimes members end up in the paper. Most are bigwigs in town, so they get into the papers sometimes.”
“Aha! Now we’re getting somewhere. Once you get off work, I want you to do a search through articles on the Cheerville Gazette website. Search for news about members and look at the pictures for that man who wanted to buy Garfield a drink. Oh, and try to sneak a peek at the membership records and see if any members besides Garfield moved here from Ohio.”
“I have things to do,” he moaned.
“Like smoke dope and eat too many Doritos? You have more important things to do than that, like helping me solve a murder. Now get to it. I’ll call you later this evening to check on your progress.” I hung up before he could make another objection.
Now what to do?
I brewed myself a tea and thought things over. I was at a bit of a dead end. Albert had given me some vital clues, but I had to rely on his initiative to move the case forward. Hardly an ideal situation.
Besides, even if he did match the man who sent the drink to Garfield with an identifiable member of the country club, Albert would make a terrible witness. Any halfway-decent defense attorney would be able to rip his testimony apart.
I needed more solid proof. The problem was, I had no idea how to find it.
As usual when I got stuck on a mission, opportunity opened up along another avenue, one I hadn’t anticipated—Octavian called.
“Hello, pretty lady!”
The sound of his voice always cheered me up.
“How are you today?” I asked, going from pensive and worried to bright and chipper in one second.
“Just fine. Guess what? You’re talking to the newest member of the Cheerville Country Club.”
“Why? You said you couldn’t stand the people.”
“I can’t, but you need help with your case. You got caught in that bathroom, so everyone there will be on the lookout for you. Who knows? The murderer might even know about you. Nobody will suspect me, though. I can be your eyes and ears. The Dynamic Duo fighting crime. Like Batman and Robin, or the Green Hornet and Kato, or Bert and Ernie.”
“Bert and Ernie fought crime?”
“Probably. And if they did, I’m sure they could bust this case wide open.”
“Which one of us is Bert?”
“I don’t know. Why does it matter?”
“Because Bert is yellow and grumpy. I don’t want to be yellow and grumpy.”
“Don’t take this literally. It’s a metaphor.”
“Simile.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s a simile. A simile is a comparison that uses ‘like’ or ‘as.’ A metaphor doesn’t.”
“What did you do in the CIA, teach English?”
“No, but we learned to be precise. I really don’t want you getting into this, Octavian. It’s too dangerous, and you lack the training.”
“What’s the danger? I’m going to be hanging out in a country club, for Pete’s sake!”
“With a man who sticks silver steak knives into the backs of people he doesn’t like. This is a bad idea, Octavian.”
“I’ll be careful. Even more, I’ll be useful. I thought up a neat trick in that miniature submarine, didn’t I?”
I was about to object again, but the words died in my throat because I suddenly saw where he was coming from. It was the same place I had come from when I rushed to solve the first murder I came across after my retirement. You couldn’t infiltrate bases and get in gunfights for a living and just give it all up to do needlepoint and watch daytime television. For a while, I was bored stiff and completely directionless for the first time in my adult life. Having a member of my book club get murdered was like a gift from heaven.
Then I started digging under the skin of this inconspicuous little town. What I found shocked me—murders, deadly rivalries, organized crimes, weird subcultures. It delighted me too.
Octavian was feeling the same boredom, the same lack of direction. He had been a star in the business field. While that wasn’t as dangerous as my career, it was just as demanding. You couldn’t switch from that to seniors yoga without feeling a sense of
loss.
Octavian craved some excitement in his life, and I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t stop investigating just because I asked him to.
He was too much like me.
“Oh, all right,” I conceded. “Just be careful, okay? Oh, and the murderer is left-handed and might drive a black Mercedes. Keep an eye out for a healthy man in his fifties with graying hair.”
“All right. How do you know all that?”
“A stoner, a Chinese takeout addict, and a fake Native American told me.”
He laughed, not because he disbelieved me but because the whole thing excited him.
“You’re a thrill a minute, Barbara. Talk to you soon.”
He hung up. While I had been talking with him, another idea popped into my head.
If I were a rabid history buff who had just moved to a town that was founded before the American Revolution, where would I visit?
I headed to the Cheerville Historical Society.
The historical society was located just on the edge of the town square in a little one-room schoolhouse built in the early nineteenth century. It was an attractive structure made of stone, but I always thought it was rather small for a historical society. Not that I had ever been inside. No one I knew had ever mentioned visiting either.
I parked and walked across the village green, remembering how just a few weeks before, I had been given a supporting role in a major motion picture called Freedom’s Hero: The Fight for America, a historical action picture about the American Revolution. My smile at the memory of being in a movie with Cliff Armstrong, Hollywood’s greatest male star, dimmed as I approached the schoolhouse. Someone had tried to murder Cliff Armstrong as he did a scene while coming out of that schoolhouse and had nearly killed the entire crowd, my grandson included. It was remarkable how many seemingly lovely spots had been the site of tragedy and madness.
The heavy wooden door to the schoolhouse had a little sign stating “Cheerville Historical Society, established 1897.” That made it quite an old historical society, I supposed.
I entered, and a little bell above the door jingled. Inside, the schoolhouse was preserved as it would have been 150 years ago.
Well, almost.
A row of scarred wooden desks complete with inkwells and slate boards stood in three rows facing a blackboard. A few old maps adorned the walls, showing the British Empire owning much of the globe and the French owning much of the rest of it. My, how times had changed. The back wall had a few displays about the history of Cheerville and some shelves of modern books and a microfilm reader.
In a corner at a desk sat a middle-aged woman dressed as a nineteenth-century schoolmarm, or at least the stereotypical severe, humorless schoolmarm of every old movie. She wore a starched black dress with a high collar that looked unnecessarily uncomfortable. She had that frown the old movies and paintings always gave schoolmarms too.
The smartphone in her hand sort of ruined the effect.
She was playing a video game, which blooped and bleeped and blarped as she frantically tapped away.
“Hello,” I said when she didn’t look up.
Bloop, bleep, bloopity-bloop, blarp.
“Hello,” I repeated, louder this time.
She glanced up, fingers still dancing across the screen.
“One second,” she said breathlessly.
Blarp. Bloop. Bloopbloopbloop, blarpity-boop.
“Yesssss!” She pumped her fist in the air. Somehow, I didn’t picture nineteenth-century schoolmarms being much on fist-pumping.
She put down her phone. “Made it to level ten. How can I help you?”
“I’m new to town, and I was curious to see what you had here.”
She stared at me. When no words were forthcoming, I added, “I’m interested in history. I feel that if I’m going to spend my golden years here, I should know something about the history of Cheerville.”
“Are you a schoolteacher planning a trip for your class?”
“No.”
“Are you an academic writing a book?”
“No.”
“You’re not with the state inspection board, are you?”
“Um, no.”
“So why are you here?”
She stared at me with open suspicion. I blinked. Had I said something wrong?
“I’m here because I’m new in town, and I’d like to learn some local history,” I repeated.
“That’s odd,” she muttered, glancing at her phone. She looked back at me. “So what would you like to know?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure, since I don’t know much about the history of the area.”
She let out a weary sigh. Obviously, she wanted to get back to her game and was not happy with this unexpected, and unwelcome, interruption. She pushed a sign-in book and a pen across the desk to me.
When I looked at the page, I saw why my appearance had struck her as so unusual. The last person to visit had done so a week ago.
Then I noticed who it was.
James Garfield.
Nine
James Garfield had signed in early one morning exactly a week before. There was a column listing the time when each visitor came in and when they left. He had stayed nearly three hours. I filed the time and date away in my memory. It was the only secure confirmation of his whereabouts for any time before the murder.
Garfield had a distinctive signature, very elaborate and old-fashioned. It looked familiar, and after a moment, I realized he had imitated the president’s signature.
When looking up President Garfield, I had noticed that all the history pages on presidents included their signature, just in case you came across one in a rummage sale or something. The murder victim had taken his hobby one step beyond to outright imitation.
Pity he got assassinated just like his namesake.
The schoolmarm gestured to the bookshelf. “There are some local history books over there. The microfilm machine has all the old issues of the Cheerville Gazette.”
“Aren’t those all on their web page?”
She looked at me like I had just passed wind.
“The Cheerville Gazette was founded in 1827. The online back issues only go back to 1998.”
“I see,” I said, somewhat abashed. Historical research had never been my forte.
It still wasn’t. I went over to the bookshelf and rummaged through the books. The schoolmarm went back to her game.
Bloop. Bleep. Bleepity-bloop. Blarp-bloop.
I found several books on the early colonial days, the little battle that had happened on our village green during the American Revolution, and books on Cheerville’s more recent history. There was even a book on the history of the Cheerville Historical Society. A history of people studying history? I would have to keep that one in mind in case I ever suffered from insomnia.
One slim volume was titled Presidents in Cheerville. I flipped through it. Almost half of the text was taken up by the story of a brief visit George Washington had made to the town. He had been passing through and prayed at our lovely old church. Then he left. He couldn’t have been in Cheerville for more than two hours, but the book managed to draw that out to thirty pages of description. Apparently, not much happened in Cheerville back then either.
A few other presidents had stopped by. Grover Cleveland had even stayed the night. But the most important chapter was the one on James Garfield.
I felt a little prickle in my neck, knowing that the victim had held this very same book almost exactly a week before.
The bleeping and blooping had stopped.
I turned. The schoolmarm was staring at me.
“Find what you need?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She went back to bleeping and blooping.
I read the chapter. In 1868, Garfield, who was not yet president but was already a prominent congressman, had passed through town and stopped at the town square to give a speech in support of the gold standard and against those newfangled greenbac
ks, which weren’t backed by anything. It was hard for people in the age of debt and credit to understand, the book explained, but in the nineteenth century, consumers didn’t trust money that wasn’t either made of precious metal or backed by precious metal. The issuance of paper currency had blossomed in the United States during the American Civil War as a stopgap measure to bolster the economy. After the war finished, the government moved to make paper currency permanent and get rid of the gold standard. Garfield had been against that because he said that path “would lead this nation to a ruination of debt and speculation.”
I rummaged through the rest of the materials for a time and found nothing else of interest.
I headed for the door. The bleeping and blooping stopped again.
“You haven’t signed out,” the schoolmarm said.
I turned. “Excuse me?”
She pointed at the ledger. “Every visitor must put the time they entered and the time they leave.”
I had visions of her picking up a ruler, smacking my wrist, and making me sit in the corner, wearing a dunce cap.
She certainly looked like she wanted to do just that.
I dutifully signed out and, just to be irritating, wasted a couple of more minutes inside the schoolhouse, looking at the displays. As I left, I saw her correcting my departure time.
That had me chuckling all the way across the village green.
As I got into my car, my phone rang. It was Grimal.
That surprised me. The chief of police never called me. He tried to avoid me as much as possible.
“What are you up to?” he demanded.
“Eating some Chinese takeout. Delicious stuff.”
“Don’t be cute. What were you doing at the historical society?”
I blinked. “How did you know I was there?”
“The woman who works there just called me. She said you were snooping around, looking into what Garfield had been researching. She read about the murder in the press and thinks you’re the murderer.”
“Oh dear. She was staring at me while I was reading. If anyone is a snoop, it’s her. Quite an unfriendly woman.”
“Never mind. I told her you were nosy. That’s what I tell everyone.”