by Lane Stone
They came in and he looked to me. Lady Anthea had turned on a lamp at some point.
“So, you haven’t changed your garage door code,” John said.
Chapter 31
Lady Anthea had insisted on making tea and we sat at the dining room table. John, who was back to being Chief Turner, was not a fan and hadn’t touched his mug. He stared at his little black notebook, and Officer Statler, with a computer tablet, was typing away. We had seen what the intruder had done to the garage side of my poor door. No one had a guess at what he’d hit it with, but it had been heavy and the blows had been powerful.
“If you want to file a claim against your homeowner’s insurance policy for replacement of that door, stop by the station and we’ll give you the documentation you need,” he said.
I shook my head. “That door is like my best friend right now.”
“Mine, too,” Lady Anthea said. She had put a robe over her nightgown, but kept pressing her hands against her hair. She was obviously unaccustomed to being seen in such an intimate state. I was wearing flannel pajamas and socks. “Seeing the other side, I can’t believe he didn’t knock it in.”
“I think it was a he, too,” Chief Turner said. “I only saw an outline when I chased him down the street, but…” He let the sentence go when he went back to writing in his notebook.
In the background Officer Statler typed away on the keyboard screen. “Neither of you heard him speak?” she asked us.
Lady Anthea and I shook our heads.
“So we have no idea who it was,” Chief Turner said, closing the notebook, and Officer Statler closed the tablet. “Damn.”
“It was Billy B.’s killer,” I said.
Chief Turner looked at me and raised his eyebrow. A hint of a grin was the tipoff that I was right, or at least onto something. “You know that how?”
“He saw the garage door code Billy B. used. Only Billy B. didn’t get all the numbers entered. He would have seen it when he was behind him about to hit him over the head. And it was someone who doesn’t know me.” I added the last part just to show off.
“Now you’ve lost me,” Lady Anthea said.
“Those blows showed a lot of anger. If you really wanted to hurt me, and knew me, what would you do?” I asked.
Chief Turner smiled and answered, “You’d whack that Jeep, at least on your way out.”
Lady Anthea exclaimed, “And, why not? Obviously, he had something to do that with right in his hand.” She showed us her palm, as if that proved her point.
John stood. “I want to look at the garage again just to be sure the weapon wasn’t something he picked up in there.”
Officer Statler stood to go with him. “Lady Anthea, would you go over your recollections again, just to be sure we have it all?” The officer sat back down and looked at Anthea. “Sue?” Chief Turner said.
I took that as a hint that I was supposed to go with him and so I led him through the kitchen.
When we got to the garage he looked at the collection of pooper scoopers, garden tools and brooms hanging on the wall.
“Nothing looks bent,” I said.
He turned and looked down at me. “Uh, that guy today?” At first I thought he meant the person who had tried to break in. Then he added, “Was he anybody?” Oh, he meant Kyle.
I shook my head no. “I hope he’s somebody to someone, but to me, he’s a friend.”
“I’m sorry about, well, that.” He pointed toward the inside of the house.
“You mean for grabbing me? Like this?” Of course, his feet stayed on the ground when I lunged and caught him in a bear hug.
Chapter 32
On my Friday morning run, once again I had Elvis’s song, “Suspicious Minds,” in my head. I figured it must be there for a reason. I just didn’t know what it was yet. Maybe my brain needed something to think about other than last night’s near break-in. I had been terrified. I had tried to act as if it was nothing, and now I felt like if I made one wrong move I would be exposed for the fraud I was. And I knew I would go through the day pretending and hoping John Turner would only see me “exuding leisure,” the way he’d described me on Tuesday night. The Lewes police hadn’t caught him. Yet. Whoever he was, he had used gloves when he entered that ill-advised, former, code on the keypad for the garage door opener. And now I was having a hard time getting in enough air.
When I got back home, Lady Anthea was up and having breakfast.
“I thought you’d be having a lie-in,” I said, still playacting, joking and using one of her British-isms as an easy prop for my disguise.
“I couldn’t get back to sleep,” she said, pouring hot water over a tea bag, and gazing down on it as if mentally saying, “Look what’s become of me.”
“If you want to go back to bed, I can wake you in time for the trick class,” I offered.
She shook her head. “What are we going to do?”
I started to say lock the doors but she wasn’t done. “The Fouries are leaving tonight and Julie Berger could be going with them.”
She wasn’t talking about last night; she was referring to Billy B.’s murder. That change of subject reassured me of her emotional state and I smiled.
“Julie won’t be going with them if the father has anything to do with it,” I said. “For some reason he disapproves of her.”
“My father was like that about several of my boyfriends.”
“But not the man you eventually married?” I asked.
“Oh, my, no. He was a catch.”
“I wish I could have met him,” I said. “I bet he would be proud of all you’ve done in the last few years.”
“If he was still alive I wouldn’t have moved back to my family home, Frithsden.” She put her teacup in the dishwasher, humming a bit. “I have a tune in my head,” she said.
“Me, too! Wouldn’t it be something if it was the same song!” We would be like those sorority girls whose periods come at the same time each month when they live together. “You go first. What’s yours?”
“Mine is quite well known, and we’ve been thinking a lot this week about German operas.” I wanted to stop her there to correct the we part, but between Billy B. and Pauline, she was right. “The songs in our heads could be the same.” She was smiling. I think she had even forgiven her tea for being the bag kind. “It’s the prelude to act one of Wagner’s Lohengrin. ‘The Wedding Chorus’ is in act three, though you probably know it as ‘Here Comes the Bride.’ Hold on there. Was that the music you were hearing, too?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “I feel like mine is trying to tell me something. Do you think your song means anything?”
“Suuueee, tell me your song.”
I told her it was “Suspicious Minds” and she shook her head. “Are you saying Elvis was psychic?”
“No, I’m not saying that.”
“Then how could he have presaged last night’s attack?” Presaged is the kind of word Lady Anthea threw at me from time to time. “Or are you saying he knew we would be stuck solving this case?”
“We are stuck! I have no idea who killed Billy B.” I grabbed a banana. “What was that opera about? Let’s see if Wagner, the composer, not the dog, helps us out any more.”
“In Lohengrin, a knight in shining armor asks the heroine if he can be her protector, and he asks her to marry him, but tells her she must never ask him his name or where he came from. She promises never to pose the forbidden question,” Lady Anthea explained with a dreamy look in her eyes.
“I always thought Chief Turner was secretive about his life before Lewes, but your guy beats him. She can’t even ask?” I rolled my eyes. “That is a perfect example to show why I’m not interested in getting married. But look on the bright side, she’ll be keeping her maiden name. Good for her.”
“Don’t you see? Fourie is not the family’s real name.
They changed it when they relocated to South Africa. David isn’t telling Julie his real identity,” Lady Anthea said on her way to her bedroom.
“He’s certainly acting as her protector. I see that parallel, but maybe he doesn’t know his old family name,” I offered. “I think Elvis is going to be more help getting us unstuck.” Then I walked away with my song back to ear worming in my head. “A trap!” I held my banana aloft. “We need a trap,” I called to her over my shoulder. “I’ll be ready in ten.”
* * * *
When we got to Buckingham’s, Shelby was already hard at work. The three of us checked in the campers, boarders and dogs in need of grooming.
Mayor Betsy Rivard was in the early group, leaving Paris and Riley to stay overnight. “I’ll be presiding at the commemoration festivities this afternoon and tonight, so I thought it best not to have to worry about running home to take these two out.”
I smiled and thanked her. I was thinking about how I needed to contribute to the Lewes rumor mill and she’d be a good person to start with, but it wasn’t the right time. She seemed to have more to say to me, though. “I wanted to thank you and Lady Anthea for testifying yesterday,” she said.
“I don’t think my statement got us very far,” I said with a laugh. “All the credit goes to Lady Anthea.”
“Your suggestion to use a 3-D facsimile was genius.” She paused and looked around the lobby to be sure we were alone. “This extravaganza his organization has planned has so many aspects and contractors there would be no way we could pull it off without him on site. The man is truly a visionary and a force of nature. Wait until you see the afternoon educational events and tonight’s entertainment. You’ll be amazed!”
“I can’t wait,” I said.
“I don’t know how he stays in business,” she went on. “He personally kept up with every detail. I asked his administrative assistant if he was this hands-on with every project and she said she’d never seen him give as much special attention to a project as he had in Lewes.”
“His son helped, didn’t he?” I asked.
“He wasn’t even expected to be here. Howard was surprised when he learned David would be joining him.” She checked her phone and gasped. “Look at the time. I’ve got to run.”
I waved goodbye and went back to my office and texted Rick. “Bring your wetsuit with you tonight.”
“Sue, can we talk?” Dana stood in the doorway. She was holding her laptop. Mason and Joey were behind her.
I motioned them in and they lined up in front of my desk.
“I used HooRU on someone else,” Dana said. “You had Julie Berger in the photo you took of the Fouries.”
“What did you find? The suspense is killing me.”
“That’s just it, I didn’t find anything.”
“So, she’s never done anything to get her photo in a newspaper or on the internet? Isn’t that unusual for someone her age?” I asked.
“Never? Ever?” asked Mason, with loads of skepticism. “No social media? Yeah, it’s unusual.”
“No relatives that look a lot like her?” Joey asked.
“I didn’t see a resemblance between her and Billy B., but with the age difference and him being her great-uncle, it didn’t seem like a big deal,” I said.
“Shelby told us she was trying to get into acting. How can there be no photographs of her on the internet?” Dana asked. “She hasn’t gotten any parts?”
“I know of another source of information on her.” I picked up my phone and dialed Chief Turner. “Have you finished reading the emails between Julie and Billy B.? I’m putting you on speaker.”
“I’m doing it now. We thought we had something a half hour ago. She wrote to him about two brothers fighting in her kitchen and she had to throw a cup of water on them to break it up.”
“The brothers were cats?” I asked.
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“Everybody knows that. Can I come over and look at them?” I asked.
“Be my guest,” he said. “Pretty boring stuff. She was a first-grade schoolteacher for a year and now doesn’t look like she does anything.”
“I’m on my way.”
* * * *
I thought I had read five hundred boring emails, but it was more like fifteen. I finished James Patterson’s latest Women’s Murder Club book. My favorite so far…. The diner on the corner has the biggest desserts! … Do you think I should paint my apartment light blue or…
I threw my head back. “Yeah, I can see she’s a real criminal mastermind. How can someone living in New York City, going on auditions, who looks the way she does have such a boring life?” I asked. “She’s got to be editing here, picking and choosing what she wanted him to know.”
“These emails may be boring to you, but they probably meant a lot to Billy B.,” John said.
“Why did she say they spoke on the phone, instead of saying they emailed?” I asked.
“Maybe they did both. I don’t have his landline phone records yet,” John said, shaking his head.
“What about a background check on her?”
“Yes, if you call that a background,” Chief Turner said. “It’s more like no-man’s-land.”
“Do you know what that term means?” I asked.
“Uh, yeah, I do.”
I told him anyway. “It’s land left unoccupied because of fear. Maybe that describes her,” I said. I thought about how Lady Anthea and I had speculated that they’d had sex after the dinner at Gate House, which was the day they met. “Well, there’s a man now. It’s David Fourie.”
Chapter 33
We had allowed extra time to get to Billy B.’s “celebration of life” service. Parking spots were at a premium because of all the tourists in town for the commemoration events. Martin Ziegler and Julie Berger stood outside the door to Mozart’s greeting everyone.
Lady Anthea took Julie’s hand in hers. “I believe I hear Beethoven’s ‘Fidelio.’” Still holding the young woman’s hand, she turned to Martin. “How thoughtful of you to play a German opera since I understand that’s what Billy B. sang to your customers.”
“Yeah. Howard Fourie picked it out,” he said. Letting go of Julie’s hand, she deftly walked off with Martin. She turned and motioned for me to keep up. “I’m an opera fan, but I also enjoy your Arthur Miller.”
“My Arthur Miller? I don’t have an employee by that name,” Martin said. “You must be mistaken.”
“Arthur Miller was an American playwright. He wrote Death of a Salesman, All My Sons.” She paused to see his reaction. “The Man Who Had All the Luck?”
Martin shook his head. “Nope, not ringing any bells.”
I was still following them, wondering if there was a point to all this, when she lowered her voice and said, “He often used the relationship between fathers and sons as a theme. One character says, ‘A child can never disappoint a father, but a father can disappoint a child.’”
“Excuse me.” We stepped aside for Howard Fourie to get to the door. I was about to say good morning, but he kept walking. He seemed distracted and despondent.
Lady Anthea drilled a look into Martin’s slowly comprehending face, before going on. “I believe you feel you’ve disappointed your son. That’s why you continue with these shenanigans. You’ve been ratcheting up the crazy, so to speak, all this week. Rick loves you very much. He will always love you, but your actions affect him. Your actions are beginning to affect those that care about Rick. I would ask you to remember that.”
“I want to make this right, but I don’t know how,” he said.
Lady Anthea turned around to me. “Sue?” Her tone suggested she’d served him up and the rest was up to me.
“If you know anything that can help Chief Turner find Billy B.’s murderer, you need to tell him today,” I said.
“I’ve told hi
m all I know,” he said.
I looked away from him. He hadn’t told us anything until he was confronted. “We’ll see you inside,” I said, and Lady Anthea and I walked into the deli. I leaned closer to her and whispered, “I wanted to get you away from him. You weren’t going to tell him about our plans, were you?”
“Goodness, no,” she said. She stopped walking and turned to me. “Do you think Howard Fourie could have changed his mind about Julie’s suitability for his son?”
“I doubt it,” I answered. “Why do you ask?”
“The overture he chose has to do with love being more important than freedom. I wondered if it was intentional.”
The bistro tables had been moved to the sides of the small restaurant and chairs were lined up in rows in the middle of the room. A large photograph of Billy B. was on an easel in the front.
“Here comes Chief Turner,” I said, in a desperate whisper. “Before he gets to us, just tell me something. Did it sound to you like Martin Ziegler just confessed?”
“What in the world do you mean? When?” Lady Anthea’s eyes darted from one side of the room to the other, like she sensed danger galloping toward us but couldn’t tell the direction.
“Just now! He said he wanted to make this right. What does he want to make right? What did he mean?” I asked, trying to keep the dread out of my voice.
John was closing in and he was smiling at me. I was getting more suspicious with every step he took.
“Let’s talk about it later,” she said.
“Did you see the look on Howard Fourie’s face when he walked by us while you were talking to Martin? It was strange. He looked sad,” I said.
Officer Statler came up behind Chief Turner and waylaid him. She said something that made his head jerk up to look at me. What had I done this time? Then he was walking toward me again, but without the smile.
Out of the corner of her mouth, like a really crappy ventriloquist, Lady Anthea said, “Incoming.”