by Tim Myers
“It was fine,” I said. I knew there was no way she was going to accept that answer, but I wasn’t in a sharing mood.
“It was more than that; I see that gleam in your eye. Are you seeing her again?”
I reluctantly admitted, “If you must know, we’re going out tonight.”
Cindy all but squealed with delight. “I knew it; I just knew you two would hit it off if you ever had a chance. Where are you taking her?”
My decision the night before sounded kind of foolish in the cold light of morning. I admitted, “Actually, she’s coming over to my apartment. I’m cooking dinner for her.”
When Cindy saw that I wasn’t kidding, she exploded. “You’re what? Ben, are you out of your mind? You could burn water; I’ve seen it. What makes you think you can cook an entire meal?”
“Hey, I’ve been practicing. I’m getting pretty good at it, if I say so myself.”
Cindy ignored me and said, “Here’s what we’ll do. Kate can make the main course, I’ll bake a cake for dessert, and Louisa can handle the salad. We can have it at your apartment before Kelly gets there. Hey, you can even take credit for the meal if you want to.”
I took my sister’s shoulders in my hands and said, “Cindy, listen to me. I’m the oldest kid in this zoo we call a family. I’m doing this on my own, with no help from any of you ladies, no matter how well meaning it is.”
She shrugged when she saw that I wasn’t going to budge. “Well, you can’t say I didn’t try. If you’re determined to wreck this on your own, there’s nothing any of us can do about it.”
“Thanks for your unbridled optimism. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some work to do.”
I went upstairs to my office, trying to wade through the paperwork collecting on my desk, but my thoughts kept drifting back to Jerry Sanger’s murder. The man had certainly generated enough enemies to last a lifetime. How could someone make that many folks mad at him at one time? He’d generated his share of dislike, but which of the suspects on my list hated him enough to kill him? I wasn’t any closer to answering it when there was a knock on my door.
“Come in.”
My brother Bob poked his head in. “Listen, I hate to bother you, but I just wanted to say I was sorry.”
The past few days had been filled with firsts, but that might have been the most surprising. “Apology accepted. Now what exactly are you apologizing for?”
“For doubting you before. I just wanted to ask you something. Don’t you think you’re a little old to be dating a teenager?”
“She’s not a teenager, we’re not dating, and I’m not that old. Some women prefer a mature man.” It felt like my family was absolutely going out of their way to drive me crazy.
Bob looked uncertain, then said, “So you’re not dating her, I get it. Does that mean you’re not going out with Kelly Sheer, either?”
I threw my hands into the air. “You caught me. That one I’ll admit to.”
Bob appeared to ponder that for a minute, then said, “What’s Molly think about all that? Or does she know?”
I’d had enough of my siblings and their prying. “Bob, Molly and I have an agreement. We date whoever we choose to.”
“But does she know?” he asked stubbornly.
“She saw us together last night. We talked about it. It’s cool. She knows.”
Bob said, “You should treat her better than that. She deserves it.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” I said.
“She deserves better,” he repeated.
“Then tell Jeff to ask her out and stop pining away for her,” I said, fully tired of that particular conversation.
“I might do just that.”
“Be my guest. There’s just one thing, though.”
“What’s that?” Bob asked.
“I don’t want to hear about it, one way or the other. It’s really none of my business. Let’s keep it that way, okay?”
“It’s a deal.”
After he left, I wondered what I really thought about the prospect of my youngest brother dating my onetime and sometime girlfriend. A part of me had wanted to object, but what sense did that make? The agreement that freed me to date Kelly had to work both ways. I wasn’t sure how easily I’d handle it if Molly and Jeff hit it off and started dating, but I figured I’d burn that bridge when I came to it. For the moment, I needed to talk to John Labott and see how much truth there might be to the rumor that he might have had something to do with Jerry Sanger’s death, no matter how remote the possibility seemed to me.
Chapter 10
I called John’s office to track him down and was surprised to discover that Where There’s Soap was already on his calling schedule for later in the day. It was beginning to look like my suspects were all going to come to me. Great, just when I wanted an excuse to get away from my family, it appeared that I was going be at the shop all day. I waded through some of the paperwork on my desk, worked on the line for ten minutes with my brothers—despite their protests—and then helped Louisa with her monthly inventory. I hadn’t hung around with the guys very long; Bob was acting odder than usual, no doubt because of our earlier conversation.
The brightest part of my morning was a call from Kelly just before lunch.
The second I heard her voice, I said, “You’re not bailing out on me, are you?”
“Not on your life. I just forgot to ask if there was anything I could bring tonight.”
“No, I’ve got it covered. I’m really looking forward to having dinner with you again.”
“Me too,” she said. “I’ll see you tonight.”
“Bye,” I said. I’d made a grocery list of all of the ingredients for the meal I’d be buying on the way home, and I pulled it out again to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. I had half expected John to come by Where There’s Soap in the morning, but he still wasn’t there by noon. I was hungry, but I didn’t want to leave the shop and take a chance on missing him. Kate found me in my office and said, “Come on, we’re ready to eat.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Did Mom forget to tell you, too? She’s instituting a new company policy. One day a week all employees will eat in the break room together. Today’s the day.”
My mother was notorious for instituting policy changes without a moment’s notice, but I had a suspicion there was something at work here besides one of her capricious whims. “All employees, meaning all of the family. She’s going to keep us together if it kills her, isn’t she? I suppose Grandpa is here, too.”
“Ben, you really are out of the loop. He left for England this morning. You’re doing the advertising while he’s gone. Don’t you and Mom ever talk?”
“I’ve been busy,” I said.
She tapped one of the piles of paper on my desk. “Well, it’s all in the memo. Now hurry up—we’re waiting for you.”
I followed her downstairs and asked, “So who’s minding the shop while we eat? I can’t imagine Mom shutting the place down.”
My sister shook her head. “If you’d read the memo, you’d know we’re on a rotating schedule. One of us watches the counter and eats later.” She grinned. “Even you boys have to take your turn waiting on customers.”
I could just see my brothers working the front. Mom must have really been desperate for some family time to allow that. “I’m not sure that’s all that great an idea. I’ve handled the front before, but the other guys aren’t exactly customer-friendly.”
She grinned mischievously. “I know; I can’t wait. Maybe then they’ll stop complaining about how they do all the real work around here. It wouldn’t surprise me if that was Mom’s plan all along.”
“No, it wouldn’t surprise me, either. So who pulled the cash register duty today?”
Kate said, “Louisa. She says she doesn’t mind being left out a bit.”
“I wonder if she’d trade places with me.”
Kate smacked my arm lightly. “Ben, you’re terrible. Come on, i
t won’t be that bad.”
“I can’t imagine how you could possibly think that. Just wait.”
Everybody was already in the break room when Kate and I arrived. Most of their plates were filled, and Mom had dragged in enough chairs so all of us could sit as we ate. Kate and I grabbed some plates and hit the buffet line, and I had to admit, it was kind of fun being together like that. I should have known there was more to my mother’s act than a mini family reunion, though. After we ate the fried chicken and fixings Mom had made for us, she closed the door and turned to me. “Ben, can you give us a progress report on the murder investigation?”
I nodded. The reason behind the new company policy had suddenly become clear. “So that’s why we’re in here and Louisa’s out there. I have to hand it to you, Mom, you’re good.”
My mother said huffily, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s just the way the schedule happened to work out this week.”
I couldn’t contain my grin. “And you’re the one who made the schedule. I give up, I’ve been played by a master. Okay, here’s where we stand. There are several suspects. They all had one reason or another for wanting to wish ill of our late supplier, but did any of them hate him enough to kill him? Obviously one of them did, since that’s what happened, but I haven’t figured out yet exactly which one did it.”
“So who are we considering?” Mom asked.
I ticked them off on my fingers. “Let’s see, so far I’ve come up with Monique White, Heather Kent, Steve Erickson, Melissa Higgins, John Labott, and all of you.”
Mom said, “Benjamin, that’s not funny.”
I put my plate down. “It wasn’t meant to be. Mom, you can’t tell me any of us wouldn’t have done something to protect Louisa if we thought we had to, including you.”
“So you suspect all of us?” Jim asked, not surprised at all by my statement.
“Of course not, you nit. I’m just saying, we all had reason to wish ill of that man.”
He looked disappointed by my admission, causing me to wonder yet again about one of my siblings. At times they could all be mad as hatters.
Kate said, “You can’t honestly think Melissa Higgins had anything to do with Jerry’s murder. And John Labott? He wouldn’t step on an ant.”
“Someone thinks he could do a great deal more than that He’s coming by today, so I’m going to ask him myself.”
“Has anything else happened?” Mom asked.
I stood and said, “That’s right, I forgot you all don’t know about the telephone message I got last night.” I relayed it to them, along with my belief that one of the folks I’d been talking to had felt the urge to threaten me.
“So where does that leave you?” Kate asked.
“Like I said, I want to talk to John to see if there’s any truth to the rumor I heard about him. Molly’s got her people looking at the tape, but I’ve got a feeling that’s going to be a dead end. The voice was disguised pretty well. Other than that, I’m going to keep digging and see what rocks I ran turn over.”
Louisa came in just then and said, “Can someone relieve me? I’m starving and I can smell that chicken in the shop. Hey, I didn’t know we were having a family meeting, too.”
“We’re just chatting,” Mom said levelly. “Kate, take the floor so your sister can eat.”
Louisa said, “She can deal with John Labott, too.”
“John’s here?” I asked. “I need to speak with him.”
“Help yourself. He’s constantly looking at me like he wants to say something, but he never manages more than hello and good-bye. It’s driving me nuts.”
I walked out with Kate, and while she waited on the single customer in the shop, I pulled John aside. “Hi, John, do you have a minute?”
His smile was warm and open. “All the time you need. Like I said before, I’ve got some great new molds to show you today.”
“Good.” I started walking toward the back door, and John asked, “Aren’t we going to your office?”
I’d originally planned on exactly that, but I’d suddenly come up with another idea. “It’s such a pretty day I thought we’d talk outside.” I needed to get him on the back steps where Jerry Sanger had been murdered, since I wanted him off balance for the questions I was going to be asking.
As we walked through the production line, I said, “I hear you two didn’t care for each other.”
He looked at me oddly as we moved to the back steps. “What are you talking about, Ben?”
“I mean Jerry Sanger. He was killed right there where you’re standing, you know.”
John avoided my look. “I hadn’t heard where it was, just that it was somewhere around the shop.”
“I found him right where you’re standing,” I said, though in truth he was off by a couple of steps.
John hurried off the steps and stood on the concrete landing below. “Have you been drinking or something? I don’t understand why you’re acting like this, Ben. I thought we were friends. This is getting too weird for me.”
I hated doing it, but I had to keep reminding myself that I was looking for a murderer. If I bruised a few feelings on the way, I’d find a way to make up for it down the road. “How do you think we feel, having someone murdered on our back steps? We don’t appreciate it, and we’re going to find out who did it, whether the police manage to or not. So tell me, is it true you wanted him out of the way so you’d have a shot at my sister?”
“I can’t believe you’re even thinking that, let alone saying it out loud.”
I stepped closer to him. “But is it true?”
He backed up and hit against the loading dock. “Of course not.”
“Then why did someone tell me this morning that the reason you hated Sanger was because he was dating Louisa?”
Now John was getting mad, I could see it in his eyes. “Dating? You call that dating? He was using her, and whether you know it or not, your sister deserves better treatment than that.”
“And now that your competition’s gone, you’re willing to be the one to supply it, is that it?”
John looked fiercely at me and said, “What’s gotten into you, Ben? You’re not like this.”
“I am when it comes to defending my family. I need to know, for my sake as well as my sister’s. I’m going to ask you one last time. Did you have anything to do with Jerry Sanger’s murder?”
“No, I didn’t,” John said, spitting out the words. “I’m going.”
“What about your sales pitch?”
He frowned, then said, “It can wait until someone else is free. I’m not much in the mood to deal with you right now.”
He walked away with his fists clinched, and for a second, just before he left, I thought he might take a swing at me.
If his indignation was feigned, he was doing an excellent job of it. Or was the reaction I’d seen just from being named a suspect? He had reason to dislike Jerry Sanger if he was jealous of the man’s relationship with my sister, but did he have motive enough to kill him? And if he had dispatched his rival, why hadn’t he made any effort to ask Louisa out now that the field was clear? There was certainly no reason for him to wait, not if he’d committed the murder to be with her. I wasn’t ready to take John Labott off my list of suspects, but he wasn’t in the top three. I left those slots open for Monique White, Heather Kent, and Steve Erickson. In John’s tier of suspects, I included Melissa Higgins and the rest of my family, including Louisa. They were all possible, but not that probable, in my book. I didn’t see any of them killing the salesman, but members of my family aren’t strangers to rash behavior, and it was possible, whether I wanted to admit it or not.
I walked back into Where There’s Soap, and Kate r asked, “Where’s John?”
“He had to go,” I said. “He left out the back way without at least trying to talk to Louisa first? What did you say to him, Ben?” I wasn’t about to admit that I’d just browbeaten the man.
“I didn’t say anything. He just
didn’t have any more time for us.”
“Ben,” Kate said, tapping her heel on the hardwood floor.
So denial wasn’t going to work. “Okay, I may have said something to him about Jerry Sanger’s murder.”
“Benjamin Perkins, do you honestly think that man has it in him to kill someone?”
I held my hands out, palms upward. “I don’t know, Kate, that’s why I’m asking so many questions. Just be glad I haven’t focused on the family yet.”
That certainly got her attention. “What do you mean by that? Were you actually serious earlier?” I regretted the comment as soon as I’d said it, but there was no backing down with Kate once I had. In a steady voice, I said, “We’re all overprotective of the family. Can you honestly say that if you thought someone outside the family was destroying one of us, you wouldn’t take steps to correct it?”
She looked shocked by the very idea of it. “I’d try to protect someone I loved, but murder? Do you think any of us is capable of it?”
“Kate, I’m not accusing anybody of anything. But somebody killed Jerry Sanger; he didn’t splash that lye on himself and then throw himself down the back steps.”
“You know what? I’m not at all sure I want to talk to you right now either,” she said.
“Join the club: the line forms at the rear.”
Kate said stiffly, “Maybe you should work with Bob and Jim and Jeff for the rest of the day.”
I didn’t expect a lot of thanks for what I was doing, but I wasn’t going to take abuse for trying to get my sister off, either. “Don’t worry, I’ll teach my class and then I’ll get out of here.”
Kate said, “Ben, I didn’t mean ... wait...”
I wasn’t in the mood for apologies. “Sorry, I’ve got to get ready for my class, but if you’d like, I’ll schedule you for another lambasting session when I’m finished. In the meantime, I’m going to see what I can do to get our sister off the hook.”
I shouldn’t have been so abrupt with Kate—I knew she was just trying to help—and I’d known since she was three days old that she was more sensitive than the rest of he Perkins kids. She cried at long-distance telephone commercials; why in the world hadn’t I considered that and kept my mouth shut? Then I had compounded the mistake by walking out on her and not giving her the chance to make peace. Sometimes I acted like the baby of the family, even though chronologically I was the oldest. I decided that after my class, I’d have to find a way to apologize to Kate and make things right, but at the moment, I wasn’t in he mood to be around anybody in my family.