Tip a Hat to Murder

by Elaine L. Orr

  “I don’t have time for this. You’re aware of the murder, or did your headphones plug you into another dimension?”

  “Who died? On campus?”

  Elizabeth thought Wessley sounded deliberately uninterested. “Ben Addison, at the diner.”

  He stood up. “Ben!”

  She remained seated. “You knew him well?”

  “No. No, I just ate there. He was always there. Is the diner open?”

  Until he’d asked his question, Elizabeth had thought Wessley’s I’m-above-all-this facade had been permeated. “No. When did you last see him?”

  Wessley sat back down. “After a soil conservation class, so two days ago.”

  “See anybody threaten him? Ever?”

  “No.”

  Wally Kermit’s voice came from the kitchen. “Chief, the little ass…jerks painted it and the damn thing’s still wet.”

  She nodded at Wessley. “Wait here, please.”

  Elizabeth went through the dining room into a galley kitchen that had a small table by the door that led to the backyard. The table was piled with beer bottles, half-eaten pieces of pizza and, inexplicably, a pink plastic pony.

  She opened the screen door and stepped onto the stoop. Officer Kermit had returned to the yard and was wiping his hand in the six-inch high grass, trying to get rid of green and dark yellow paint.

  Monty sat cross-legged on the ground, smiling slightly. Next to him was an open can of green paint.

  “Just leave it. Monty here can bring it by the station when he comes down tomorrow morning to appear before Judge Harrison on an underage drinking charge.”

  Kermit straightened. “Do I get to testify?”

  “Sure.”

  “You mean,” Monty asked, “like I’m in trouble?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  AT SEVEN PM, ELIZABETH SAT in her office studying crime scene photos. Her long day, which included paperwork for the two underage drinking citations, couldn’t end until she felt certain she understood everything possible about Ben’s murder.

  Though her desk in the small office was similarly proportioned, it held several clear evidence bags, each closed with a slider. The items in the bags had all been processed for fingerprints, but most were Ben’s. Since the bags included his order book, pencil, and phone, that’s what she expected.

  The phone was from a month-to-month service. She would see what records were available, but Elizabeth wasn’t hopeful that there would be death threats or something equally obvious.

  Sergeant Hammer had taken elimination prints from Marti and Nick before they left the station. Nick’s were the only other ones on the order book.

  Elizabeth hadn’t expected the murderer’s to be easily discerned. Every regular customer might have prints on a booth. Still, she had officers checking unidentified prints through the State Police Criminal History Information Database.

  The kitchen’s fingerprint-free door crossed her thoughts. It seemed likely that the murderer was the one who had wiped the kitchen cabinet where the spare key had been kept.

  If a regular at the diner, the killer might feel safe with any prints near the counter or booths, but not in the kitchen. If not a routine patron, why would they be in the kitchen? Why would any customer be there?

  Was Ben at the cupboard when the killer came in? Perhaps the killer didn’t get what they wanted and saw the key as a way to get back in. That seemed improbable.

  Why steal the key? Why would the killer want to go back? Unless their daily routine forced them to return, most criminals didn’t want to spend time at a crime scene.

  Elizabeth put on a pair of latex gloves and reached for the bag with Ben’s order book. She flipped through it slowly. Most orders could be written on one page. The food and drinks were listed, and Ben added a large initial at the top of the page. Likely this designated the name of the customer.

  At times, he appeared not to know the name, because he would write something like “At 1.” Elizabeth assumed that each table had a number, though numbers weren’t posted anywhere.

  G appeared every few pages, probably for Gordon Beals. SQ was surely Squeaky, and Alice’s name was spelled out.

  Near the beginning of the thick book was an order Elizabeth recognized as one she had placed weeks ago. WDH, M and C/side. Well-done hamburger, mustard and catsup on the side. A large CP was at the top of the page. So, Ben had thought of her as the chief of police more than Elizabeth. Not that it mattered.

  She frowned. Because of the picketers, Elizabeth had not been in the Bully Pulpit for more than two weeks. It seemed odd that her order would still be in a current book.

  Ben probably used multiple order books. Or perhaps he simply didn’t often take the orders himself. It wasn’t likely that reviewing other books would yield anything, but Elizabeth made a note to check for them next time she went to the now-closed diner.

  She thumbed through approximately twenty blank pages, finding nothing until almost the end of the book. Several pages had neat lists of initials down the left side, a number next to them, then two or three initials, then two numbers separated by a slash.

  It didn’t take a genius to know she held a bookie’s list of bets. The usually single initials at the left margin she’d have to try to identify. Probably the bettors. Likely the second column, which was simply a number, represented the amount of a bet.

  The team names were obvious. SLC would be St. Louis Cardinals, PP was Pittsburgh Pirates, BO was Baltimore Orioles. NY could be any New York team, but was probably the Yankees, because NYM was below it, likely New York Mets. WS would be the White Sox.

  Elizabeth was not a huge baseball fan, but the season was closing in on the playoffs. Baseball discussions were ubiquitous in a town so close to the St. Louis Cardinals, who were expected to be the National League champion. At least their more vocal fans mentioned this in the police squad room, the small bowling alley, and the town’s two grocery stores.

  She flipped through the pages again. With the number of bets and teams noted, this was not just a playoff or World Series group of bettors. What the hell was Ben doing? And who on the police force knew?

  Elizabeth liked her all-male crew, though she looked forward to a couple retirements so she could hire people closer to the age of the college students. And another woman, if the applicants worked out that way.

  The men didn’t seem to mind a female chief. She’d told them the first day that she had a great sense of humor but mockery and cheap shots weren’t humor. Basically, anything off-color was out. Maybe they minded being told to leave some of the raunchier jokes out of the station.

  But would they deliberately keep something important from her? Illinois gambling laws were very specific. The lottery and charity gaming were permissible, casino boats of course. And now the gaming parlors popping up everywhere. You could lose money while you snacked.

  Technically, not even in-home poker parties with nickel bets were allowed. No police department she knew of paid attention to poker or bridge games, or occasional office pools during big sporting events. A lot of larger employers specifically forbade them, but they didn't call to report employees if they discovered an NCAA bracket form.

  But essentially creating a gambling club, that was too big for police to ignore. She didn’t think her officers would, but she needed to find out. If she couldn’t trust her cops, she had a big problem.

  Elizabeth went back to Ben’s order book. She needed to focus.

  It seemed to her that Ben wrote down only the name of the bettor’s projected winning team, followed by the odds. That would mean the list would only be good for a short time, since baseball teams played several times each week.

  She frowned. How did he keep track of which bets went with which games if he didn’t write down the opponent? No pages had dates.

  Elizabeth’s initial conclusion was that Ben saw his betting clientele often. They might bet on a Monday morning and be paid that afternoon or next morning.

  She went
over all the pages again. Assuming initials in the left column represented a unique better, he worked with a fairly small group of gamblers. Most were single initials, but two had two initials. One of those was AH, the other was BH. Did they represent two people with the last name beginning with H, or was his system more complex?

  Elizabeth had not known Ben well, but he never struck her as terribly bright. If she was lucky, the single initials stood for first names. G appeared most often. Gordon Beals would probably not be happy for a second interview.

  Tabulating all the numbers that she thought listed bet amounts gave a total of $770. What period of time did that cover, and where did Ben keep the money he took in?

  Was $770 enough to cover the winning bets? If not, would someone kill Ben because he couldn’t pay out?

  Frustrated, she shut the order book. That list could have been from six weeks ago. Ben might not have had twenty-five dollars in a pool at the moment.

  Money wasn’t always the motive for murder.

  CHAPTER TEN

  WEDNESDAY MORNING BROUGHT sunshine and a brisk fifty degrees. The air smelled clean as only an overnight rain could make it.

  As she drove from her apartment in a converted Victorian home, Elizabeth took in the largely quiet streets. Middle and high school buses had already delivered their cargos. She passed four blue-jean clad kids, maybe ten years old, walking near the town's only elementary school.

  No one would guess that a man had been murdered yesterday only a few blocks away.

  Elizabeth reached her office at seven-thirty. She was usually there no earlier than eight because she liked to stay until six-thirty or seven each evening.

  Daytime was largely uneventful. After supper, families argued or parents threw empty, or full, cups of Gatorade at their kids’ soccer coaches.

  She didn’t get the paper at the apartment she shared with the huge tortoise-shell cat she’d inherited from the former tenant. The feline liked to shred the pages.

  What bothered Elizabeth most when the cat created the artful ribbons of paper was that it walked on the wet shower floor with its newsprint-stained paws, creating a trail of sooty prints. Kind of like a crime scene.

  The Logland Press article she read at the station was shorter than she expected. She had authorized Hammer to give the editor basic crime scene information and stress that the police wanted the public’s assistance. Jerry Pew apparently hadn’t interviewed anyone other than Squeaky, who had no information to provide.

  The paper spent as much time bemoaning the expected loss of another downtown business as it did on the murder itself. “Must be bad for economic development,” she muttered.

  She was going through Ben’s order book again when Calderone rapped on her door jamb.

  “Hey, Tony. You doing okay?”

  He nodded. “Never thought the odds of finding a body on the job were great, but always knew it was possible.”

  “True.” Elizabeth pointed to a chair opposite her small desk. “You need something?”

  He didn’t sit. “Naw. Just came in to tell you two of the students from the debate team are out there. Want to talk to you. What should I tell ‘em?”

  Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. “They know I’m here, right?”

  He nodded. “According to them, they staked us out so they’d know when you got here.”

  “Great. I’ll come out.” She stood. “Check on those security tapes, would you?”

  “Yep. The guy said he’d have them this morning. Probably somebody has to drive to Carlinville to get them. He’s kind of a one man show.”

  “Whatever we need to do.”

  Calderone left, and Elizabeth took her time before going to the counter. She poured a few ounces of water on a philodendron plant that sat in the middle of a card-table sized conference table, then took another swig of coffee from her mug.

  Two members of the Sweathog College debate team leaned on the far right side of the counter that separated the public from officers. The open spiral notebooks and poised pens in front of them made Elizabeth think of third-graders about to copy a math problem from the chalk board.

  Elizabeth remembered the pair from the day before. Charles Potter was a senior who, for a reason she could not imagine, had decided to major in English at an agricultural college. Patricia Bender had been the most strident member of the team, and her posture said she had not changed overnight. A long, brown ponytail was held in place by a rubber band, and she stood ramrod straight.

  “Good morning,” Elizabeth said, “what can I do for you?”

  “We’ve been deputized by National Public Radio,” Charles began.

  “Not deputized, delegated.” Patricia scowled. “They don’t have a station here, so they asked us to cover the murder.”

  Elizabeth barely suppressed a smile. The NPR station in Springfield, Illinois covered some local news, but it was usually about who was arguing about what at the state house. She knew they did not have a crime reporter.

  At least none of the radio’s staff claimed that specialty on the station’s web page. She’d gone to the site last year after they did a story on the “unique campus of Sweathog College.” Even in rural Illinois, no other college had a hog barn along the route to morning classes.

  Elizabeth smiled. “I like that station. Who are you working with?”

  That seemed to stump them, but Patricia covered by naming the man who most often read the local news segment.

  Elizabeth supposed they could have spoken to him, but doubted anyone at NPR had asked students for reporting coverage. It wasn’t as if the college had a journalism program.

  “We’d like to talk in your office,” Charles said.

  With her friendliest smile, Elizabeth said, “No need. Not a lot to tell yet.”

  “Our questions may be very personal,” Patricia said.

  “Go ahead.”

  Charles and Patricia exchanged a quick look, and she spoke. “Do you have any suspects?”

  “Or a person of interest?” Charles added.

  “As you know from our conversations yesterday, we interviewed a number of people who were in the vicinity of the Bully Pulpit when Ben was found.” Elizabeth picked up a pencil and piece of scratch paper from the counter and drew a square, which she labeled BP.

  She pointed at the square. “This is the diner, and across the street,” she drew an arrow, “was where your group was standing.”

  They nodded, not taking their eyes from the paper.

  “Given that the blinds were lowered from inside the diner just before seven,” she tapped the paper, “there was nothing to see from across the street.”

  In great detail, Elizabeth repeated everything that had been in the Logland Press that morning. No suspect had been found in the diner, and no one had seen anything suspicious. She figured the more she talked the less likely the duo would be to say she’d not been open with them.

  Patricia frowned. “So you don’t know anything?”

  “Not much. You hear anything?” She regarded each of them.

  Charles leaned partway across the counter and jabbed a pen toward her. “We heard you went to the frat house yesterday.”

  Elizabeth calmly put her hand on his pen and guided it to the counter. “I’m sure you didn’t mean to act in an intimidating manner.” Before he could sputter, she added, “I did. It was an unrelated matter.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Charles said.

  Without changing her expression, Elizabeth asked, “What did you hear?”

  “That you asked about…” Charles began.

  Patricia nudged his arm. “We’re asking her.”

  Elizabeth smiled. “I went there to tell them to bring back the traffic cone I heard they stole from in front of the diner.”

  Patricia did an exaggerated shrug. “A man is murdered and you cared about a traffic cone?”

  “It was placed there because the diner was off limits to the public. We needed that barrier, and I was damned if I was going to l
et a few frat guys make the city spend fifty bucks.”

  “But you talked about the murder,” Charles insisted.

  Elizabeth figured only Wessley and good ol’ Wally Kermit would remember any conversations well enough to relay them. And she wasn’t too sure about Wally. “Everywhere I went yesterday I asked people if they had seen or heard anything unusual near the Bully Pulpit about seven AM. Anyone telling you more than that is pulling your leg.”

  Patricia frowned. “We heard you had a lengthy interview with…fraternity officers.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “Nope. Talked to everybody there for a minute. Sounds like someone’s seeking their fifteen minutes of publicity.”

  When Patricia and Charles exchanged glances, she added, “If you hear anything, pass it on, okay?”

  As the door closed behind them, Elizabeth heard Patricia say, “I told you to let me do the talking.”

  Hammer sniggered from behind her. “I figured anybody doing a story would talk about us locking them up yesterday.”

  Calderone spoke from near the coffee pot. “I heard the college was pissed that they all got pulled down here because they were rowdy. Wally Kermit said the dean of students talked to some of them about the school’s conduct policy and threatened to pull scholarships.”

  “Jeez,” Elizabeth said. “It wasn’t that big a deal.” She headed toward the coffee pot. “You guys get a locksmith over there to change the exterior door?”

  Hammer nodded. “Coming about eight-thirty. Yesterday he had a tooth pulled.”

  Elizabeth did an internal eye roll. “So it was unlocked all night?”

  Hammer sniggered again. “Grayson stayed there. Brought a lawn chair. The reclining kind.”

  “Wasn’t he on duty last night?”

  “Well, yeah, but we figured you didn’t want anyone in there,” Calderone said.

  Hammer added, “He woulda left if there were calls.”

  “And maybe slept?” Elizabeth headed for her office without waiting for their responses.