What did I really know about Ashley Crutcher? She was younger than me, maybe late twenties. She was nice, smart, and not the worst writer in the group (that would be Roscoe). If I were listing acquaintances of mine most likely to shoot their husbands, she wouldn’t make the top ten. It could have been a tragic mistake - her estranged husband returned to the house unexpectedly, and she shot him thinking he was a burglar. But Erica Slade would have been out front with that story practically before the cops arrived on the scene. I feared a darker truth. I texted Linda: Probably a sad story of spouse abuse.
That shows you what I know. Ashley had a very different story to tell, one that never entered my head.
II
That was on Monday. The next day I was in my office working on preparations for St. Benignus Day festivities on Friday and Saturday when Oscar dropped into my office.
Not surprisingly, the Feast of St. Benignus of Armagh on November 9 is a big deal at St. Benignus College. This year we were honoring St. Patrick’s favorite disciple with a two-day blowout. Friday night was to feature a concert with Irish dancers accompanied by Mac on his execrable bagpipes. Saturday, the actual feast day, the campus would host a Celtic Festival most of the day, then Mass in the late afternoon, followed by an alumni dinner with an address by an Irish-American cardinal who had been prominently spoken of as a papabile - potential candidate for pope - in the conclave earlier in the year.
The enthusiasm with which Sebastian McCabe entered into the St. Benignus Day festivities struck me as somewhat lacking in humility, given that November 9 also happened to be his forty-second birthday. But who ever accused Mac of being humble? I was just texting his wife, my sister Kate, to ask whether she could hide the bagpipes when Oscar appeared.
“Howdy, Jeff.”
For a moment I was speechless. Oscar’s baldhead was covered with a tam-o’-shanter. On his big noggin it looked wildly out of place, like wool socks on a cheerleader. When I finally recovered, I said, “What brings you here?”
He sat down, uninvited but welcome. “Oh, you know, I was in the neighborhood and just thought I’d stop by.”
That smelled fishy. “You never stop by.”
“Oh, hi, Oscar.” Popcorn, who’d been down the hall on a potty break, stood in the doorway. She unconsciously straightened her dyed blond hair. Oscar’s eyes lit up. So that was it! I knew Oscar hadn’t come by just to pass the time of day; he was here to make time with my assistant.
“Hello, Aneliese.” He hauled his well-padded body out of the chair.
Aneliese! This was even more serious than I thought.
“Do you want me to leave you two alone?” I didn’t try to keep the acid out of my voice. “Maybe draw the shades on my way out?”
“Actually, I’m kind of here on business,” Oscar said sheepishly.
“Of course.” Popcorn shifted into business mode. “I’ll make some fresh coffee.”
I’d been trying to convince her for six months that she didn’t have to make the coffee now that she’d been bumped up to assistant director of our two-person office, but she insisted that she’d never had to make the coffee - she wanted to do it. So she disappeared.
Well, actually, she just walked away. I watched Oscar watching her, almost five feet of feminine wiles and administrative competence. Poor guy. I had a feeling he was going to chase her until she caught him.
“What kind of business, Oscar?”
He dragged his eyes back to me.
“Oh, it’s this Crutcher case.”
“There’s a case?”
“Sure there is. The man was shot dead in his own house.”
“Actually, he didn’t live there anymore.”
“Still, his name was on the mortgage.”
“But Ashley must have been making the payments if he wasn’t working. TV4 said he’d been out of a job for months.”
Oscar waved that away. “Let’s not get bogged down in details. I’m taking a more psychological approach here.” Good grief! Had he been watching Columbo again? “What were Mrs. Crutcher’s mystery stories like, the ones she wrote for that writer’s club you’re in?”
“I wouldn’t call the Poisoned Pens a club.” What would I call it? I’d never put a noun to it. “And how do you know about that?”
“Oh, you know, small town, word gets around.”
He didn’t find out from one of the other members or they would have answered his question. I sure didn’t want to be the one to tell him about “Die Like a Dog,” Ashley’s short story about a wife’s revenge on her husband’s unkindness to their pet. That wouldn’t help Ashley a bit. Somebody, especially Oscar, could get the wrong idea. Surely Ashley hadn’t intended to kill her husband. Had she?
“So what were her stories like?” Oscar pressed.
“They were mysteries.”
The chief snorted. “I know that. Oh, thanks, hon.”
Hon? Popcorn had handed him his coffee first, in a mug with hearts on it. They smiled at each other like two lovers in a sugary TV commercial. I felt a stab of jealousy, not the romantic kind. Popcorn and I had been working together a long time, like Batman and Robin or the Lone Ranger and Tonto or Sherlock Holmes and ... Never mind. When she gave me my mug of decaffeinated java, I murmured a “thanks” without looking at her.
“What I mean is this, Jeff,” Oscar continued. “Were Mrs. Crutcher’s stories the blood and guts kind or the light-hearted murder kind or what?”
I shrugged. No big deal, Oscar. “They were the forgettable kind, I guess, because I can’t remember them. Why is it important?”
Popcorn sat down in the other chair. Oscar managed to keep his eyes on me.
“The kind of stories that she writes would say something about her mind-set, like whether she had violent thoughts or maybe even how she felt about soon-to-be-ex-husbands. It’s important because Slade is hell-bent on nailing Ashley Crutcher for this.” That would be Marvin Slade, the Sussex County prosecutor and former spouse of Ashley’s attorney.
Shocked is too mild a word for my reaction to this news. “Nailing her? For shooting Crutcher in self-defense? Or is it a battered wife deal?” That still hadn’t been clarified in the morning’s Observer & News-Ledger story. Reporter Johanna Rawls had been no more successful at reaching Erica Slade than TV4 had been.
Oscar shook his head. “Neither one, according to Ashley. She swears up and down that she didn’t fire a shot and the gun didn’t belong to her.”
“What!”
Oscar kicked back the coffee like it was a shot of bourbon. “Yeah. You probably heard the nine-one-one tape. She says was still upstairs in her bedroom, talking to the dispatcher, when the shot went off downstairs. The prosecutor doesn’t believe her. Who would?”
“Me, for one,” I said. I stick by my friends.
“Why would she make up a wild story like that when all she had to do was claim it was an accident or self-defense?” Popcorn asked.
Oscar regarded her. “Who knows why a dame does what she does? Women are illogical.” No, he didn’t say it, but he would have if Popcorn hadn’t been there. I know Oscar. Instead, he fudged it with, “Obviously, she didn’t think this through very well. Nobody’s saying she’s a master criminal.”
“Is it really a smart political move for Marvin Slade to go all hard-ass on this one?” I mused. “His party already has a problem with female voters. If he takes this to court, he’ll be going head-to-head with his ex-wife. And Ashley will look very sympathetic in the witness box, whether jurors actually believe her story or not.”
But the politics didn’t concern Oscar. “I just do my job, Jeff.” He looked at Popcorn again and repeated, “I just do my job!”
“Well, I think she’s innocent,” Popcorn declared, staring daggers at Oscar.
“That’s up to a jury to decide, Aneliese.
”
Ignoring that, she appealed to me. “You’re not going to let it get that far, are you, Jeff?”
This looks like a job for Sebastian McCabe! “No, I guess I’d better not.”
III
So if I wanted to be a hero to my assistant, I had to get Mac off his duff to find the real murderer (if there was one) pronto. No problem. It would be far harder to stop Mac from getting involved. All I had to do was find him, which proved to be harder than I expected.
Meanwhile, Popcorn and Oscar clearly weren’t on the same page regarding the innocence of Ashley Crutcher. Well, that wasn’t my problem. Or was it? I didn’t want Popcorn grumping around about it; that might affect her office efficiency. More importantly, she was as much my friend as she was my co-worker, and so was Oscar. After he left - the parting was a little stiff, but maybe that’s just because they had an audience - I thought of making some insightful comment to Popcorn about the course of true love never running smoothly. (At least, it didn’t for me.) Then I realized that she’s fifty-one years old, a widow, a grandmother of three, and undoubtedly wise to the ways of love from reading those lurid Rosamund DeLacey romance novels. She should have been giving me advice to the lovelorn back when I needed it.
I tried calling Mac three times over the next couple of hours, both on his office phone and on his smartphone, but without success. I chalked that up to committee meetings because I knew he didn’t have a class today. After lunch I tried again. He picked up on about the fifth ring.
“McCabe here.”
I know that. I called you. Who else would be answering your cell phone?
The background noise sounded like the Fourth of July.
“What’s the racket?”
“Gunfire.”
Of course. How did I not know that?
“I am taking a late lunch hour at The Bull’s Eye. I have just arrived. Please join me.”
I would have argued, but talking over the gunfire was too much effort. I told him I’d be there in five minutes.
The Bull’s Eye Gun Shop & Shooting Range is located in a strip mall in the newer part of Erin. It’s far enough away from campus that I decided to drive my classic (i.e., ancient) lime green Volkswagen Beetle there instead of pedaling on my bike. Mac puts in an hour or two there from time to time, shooting at a target with his Colt .32, for which he has a concealed carry permit. He says it helps him think when he’s plotting a mystery novel. That may even be true. But I think he also harbors the illusion that someday his ability to shoot may actually matter. If it ever does, I don’t want to be there when that happens.
It was a crisp fall morning with the sun shining brightly, by no means a bad day to be playing hooky from the office. I wished I could just keep driving along the river - or better yet, north to Cleveland and my true love. But that didn’t happen.
At one-fifteen in the afternoon, The Bull’s Eye wasn’t exactly hopping, but it wasn’t deserted either. A handsome woman of about thirty in an expensive leather coat was leaning over the sales counter when I came in, intently listening to a healthy-looking sport with curly brown hair and a faint mustache. He pointed out all the fun features of a .38 that seemed to be scaled down to fit her female hand. Seeing the sales staff was tied up, I looked around on my own. I’d only been here with Mac once before, for research back when I was writing my still-unpublished Max Cutter private eye novels.
The front portion of the business, where I stood, was a sporting goods store masquerading as a cozy lodge. Stuffed heads of deer, moose, and boar looked down from the paneled walls. A television set was mounted in one corner of the room, and an American flag decorated the other. The only firearms on display in racks were the Thompson Center Hawken rifle kits (American-made, the box said) and the long guns (some in camouflage colors). The handguns were behind the counter. But everything else in the store that pertained to weapons, from ammunition and Bianchi leather holsters to pistol perches and recoil pads, were on open shelves. Then there were what you might call accessories - expandable batons, blackjacks, mace, and tie tacks shaped like little handcuffs.
When the man at the counter was finally free (because the leather-coated woman had left with a gun in her purse), I put down the paralyzer tear gas I’d been studying and went over to him. He was wearing a blue polo shirt with the store’s target-themed logo printed on the front. The shirt was unbuttoned, leaving tufts of hair sticking out.
“Yes, sir?” he said with a “here to help you” smile.
“A friend asked me to meet him here. He’s about this high” - I indicated with my hand - “and about this wide and he has a beard.”
He chuckled. “You mean Professor McCabe?”
“That’s the one.”
He handed me a set of electronic earmuffs and told me to go on back to the target range. I remembered the earmuffs from my previous visit. Ingeniously, they let you hear most sounds, such as conversation or the ringtone of a cell phone, but block out all sounds above 86 decibels, most noticeably gunfire.
There were only three or four shooters on the range, but they’d been busy. The air smelled of cordite, although it wasn’t permeated with the foggy haze of gun smoke that you might expect. Apparently that’s filtered out these days.
A blond woman with muscles came out of a stall and strode past me, a look of satisfaction on her young face. She was carrying a big gun.
Mac was in the next stall, firing away at a cardboard target bearing the image of a male head and shoulders in silhouette. I noticed that Mac’s aim had improved since the last time I’d been here with him. If he ever got attacked by a cardboard target, he’d have nothing to worry about. Now I had a problem. Coming up to him and tapping him on the shoulder didn’t seem like a good idea. The man had a gun in his hand! Fortunately, he saw me coming out of the corner of his eye. He lay the Colt pistol down on the counter in front of him and, turning around, motioned at the gun as if offering me an opportunity to shoot. I held up my hands in a protesting gesture. I’d gotten out of here that one time without wounding myself or anybody else, and I don’t like to press my luck.
Mac shrugged and made a “follow me” gesture. We went out a side door.
“Are you quite sure, Jefferson, that you do not - ”
“I’d love to, but I’m a man on a mission.” Like the Blues Brothers! Maybe I wasn’t working for God, but I liked to think that we were at least on the same side. “Popcorn is counting on us to help Ashley Crutcher. And I guess Ashley wouldn’t mind, either.”
He raised an eyebrow. “The details in the News-Ledger were sketchy, but I assumed the death of her husband was a tragic accident.” Mac knew her from the Poisoned Pens, about as well as I did.
“I’m pretty sure you’ve told me on more than one occasion to never assume anything.”
I gave him the lowdown on what we’d learned from Oscar, ending with my quasi-assurance to Popcorn.
“I hope you have not overpromised, old boy.” Mac sighed. “Well, the situation is serious, but not urgent. I shall finish shooting.”
So, with ear protectors back on, I was forced to watch my brother-in-law darned near obliterate the target, putting holes practically on top of holes. After a half-hour or so of this, we walked out together and turned in our ear protectors.
“How’d it go, Professor?” the guy at the counter asked.
“I had a splendid session, Carson! I finished my next novel. Now all I have to do is write it.”
Carson looked puzzled. “Well, that’s good, I guess. But the important thing is that you can defend yourself if you ever need to, like Mrs. Crutcher did.”
A funny feeling crept up my spine, and it wasn’t a pleasant one. “You know Mrs. Crutcher?”
“Oh, sure. She’s been a regular in here lately.”
IV
We met with Ashley Crutcher and Erica Slade in
Erica’s office the next day. By then I’d convinced myself that there was nothing damning about Ashley target shooting - lots of women do it. But I wasn’t sure I could convince anybody else. Marvin Slade and the entire readership of The Erin Observer & News-Ledger, just to pick random examples, might see this as proof of cold-blooded practice for killing her ex after somehow luring him into his former home. For that reason, I’d been careful not to mention The Bull’s Eye when I talked with Lynda on the phone before going to sleep.
Erica’s office is a former Episcopal chapel on Water Street. Undersized for a house of worship, it had proved too small for its brief incarnation as a trendy pub called The Sanctuary. The pub owner also had a few other problems, legal ones that had caused him to hire Erica. She’d taken his equity in the building as part of her fee. As an office it was spacious for one person, with plenty of room to expand the practice later. The building still had the stained-glass windows - and the bar. Nice touch, I thought.
We sat around an oval table in a conference room.
“Thank you for allowing us to speak to your client,” Mac told Erica.
“Yeah, it was really swell of you,” I added, “especially since you know damned well we’re just trying to save her derriere.”
Maybe you can’t tell, but I was a bit miffed. Not only was Ashley a friend, but I thought Erica was as well, which is why I called her Erica. Most people call her Slade, which fits her and drives her ex-husband nuts as a bonus. He hates it that she still uses his name. I hadn’t known her that well when she defended first an innocent suspect and then the real murderer in that 1895 murder business, but Lynda and I had later enjoyed numerous late dinners and discussions with her at Bobbie McGee’s Sports Bar.
Rogues Gallery Page 17