Setting the Stage for Murder

by Robert W. Gregg

  The garage and the parking apron behind the house were empty. Carol preceded Kevin up the back porch steps, being careful not to look too interested in the house which sat about one hundred yards further up the hill. She assumed that Mr. Farris was observing them, or would be shortly when he realized that a police car had pulled into the drive. She would deal with Farris later.

  Neither Carol nor Kevin had given a great deal of thought to just what it was that they expected, but the sight that greeted them when they entered the house was impressive by any standard. The mudroom through which they entered led into a modern kitchen, complete with a central island and a long breakfast bar with three stools. Beyond the bar, and in full view from the kitchen, was a spacious living room, the walls of which were covered almost to the ceiling with paintings and photographs. This gallery ran all the way around the room except for a fieldstone fireplace and a wall-length picture window through which they could see the lake far below.

  They spent the next few minutes orienting themselves. A room which had obviously been Gerlach’s study and music room contained a grand piano, an oversized teak desk, and a comfortable-looking leather chair which appeared almost large enough to seat two people. Unlike the living room, its walls were decorated with posters and artfully framed playbills, all attesting to Gerlach’s background and interest in opera. Next to the big chair stood a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. Kevin studied the titles of the books and concluded that with but a few exceptions they all were about music and primarily about opera.

  While Kevin was admiring Gerlach’s library, Carol disappeared into his bedroom. It, too, had a large picture window overlooking the lake, and the art on the walls, like that which had greeted them in the living room, consisted mostly of vivid watercolor paintings. Each of them carried the artist’s name, printed in bold letters in the lower right-hand corner. The name, of course, was that of Harley Gerlach. While the subject matter of these paintings varied somewhat, the majority were landscape scenes with lots of blue water and seasonal foliage that ranged from the bright greens of late spring to the fiery reds and golds of autumn. His range may have been narrow, but he really had talent, Carol thought.

  But what interested her most about the room was the fact that it looked much larger than it was. And the reason for this illusion was that the ceiling was mirrored from wall to wall. The result was that the number of Gerlach’s paintings on the walls appeared to have doubled. More importantly, and this must have been Gerlach’s purpose, the occupant of the room’s four-poster bed would have a strikingly dramatic view of himself—and of his partner, if he were sharing the bed. Carol had heard enough about Gerlach to assume that he had frequently shared the bed. She wondered if any members of the Brae Loch opera company had been among those he had entertained beneath that mirrored ceiling.

  Ten minutes and six rooms later, Carol and Kevin found themselves back in the living room, exchanging impressions of the late Harley Gerlach’s house. They had made no attempt to search for anything, and were not even sure what they might be searching for. But the time had come to do more than admire the view, the art, and the other furnishings.

  “How do you want to do this?” Kevin asked.

  “I suppose we need to go through his effects, anything that might give us a clue as to his extracurricular activities. Who, when, where—that sort of thing. But first, I’m going to tackle the kitchen. Doc Crawford says the autopsy showed that he’d just eaten a lunch of spaghetti and meatballs. I’d like to find out if he had lunch here or if he ate out. Shouldn’t be hard to get an answer to that question. Why don’t you start with the study.”

  “Okay. Just let me take a look at these pictures first.”

  Kevin was peering at a row of photographs that, unlike most of the others in the living room, were of people rather than landscapes.

  “Guess I was wrong about that,” he said, straightening up. “I thought some of my opera people might have had their pictures taken with Harley, but if they did, those pictures aren’t here. I’ll check out his darkroom before we leave.”

  Carol went into the kitchen to look for evidence that Gerlach had had a lunch of spaghetti and meatballs on Tuesday. Kevin went into the study to look for—what? He hoped he’d recognize whatever it was if he found it.

  He was still rummaging through the desk drawers when Carol reappeared.

  “I’m ninety-nine per cent certain that he ate his lunch out someplace. The breakfast dishes are still in the sink, and there’s no sign of anything that looks like spaghetti or meatballs anywhere—on the counters, in the wastebasket, in the fridge. Which means we’re going to have to draw up a list of places in the area of the lake that serve lunch on Tuesday, find out if any of them served what he had for lunch, and see if their staff can remember him being there.”

  “Why is it so important?”

  “Probably isn’t. But it’s just possible that we can recreate his schedule for Tuesday if we know where he ate and how long he was there. Maybe identify people who saw him.”

  She came over to the desk and looked down at the pile of files Kevin had pulled out of the drawers.

  “Find anything yet?”

  “Come on, Carol. I’ve only been at this for five minutes. Here, why don’t you start on the files. I want to go through the bookcase. You want to know where he was for lunch on Tuesday, and I want to see if there’s anything that can tell us what he’s been up to over the last few months, even years. And with who.”

  “With whom, Kevin. Whom. You’re the teacher, remember.”

  Kevin gave her a wry smile and handed her a batch of files.

  For nearly a quarter of an hour, Kevin perused the shelves of the big bookcase, intrigued by the impressive collection of volumes in the field he had shared with Gerlach. He was briefly considering borrowing a couple of the books when he came upon what looked like a scrapbook, wedged between a pair of treatises on baroque opera.

  It was a scrapbook, and it contained photos, neatly mounted and labeled. The photos were all of women, most of them with Harley beside them. Some had been taken elsewhere, in places and at dates not identified in the labels. In fact none of the pictures bore dates. But four of them were relatively recent because they had been taken in the house on the bluff, the house Gerlach had lived in for only a few years, the house Carol and he were searching at that very moment.

  There were only thirteen photos in the scrapbook, one to a page, which left most of the album empty, still waiting for the women who would grace its pages. Kevin quickly skimmed through the album. The last picture was of a woman he knew. It was Mercedes Redman. She was seated on the couch in the living room, her hands folded in her lap, smiling at the camera. She was wearing a pant suit which Kevin had seen her in on several occasions over the summer. She looked at ease, her smile a natural one. Beneath the picture was a single word, written in black ink and bold letters: Mercedes.

  “Carol,” he said as he walked over to the desk. “Look at this.”

  She quickly skimmed the pages of the album.

  “Gerlach’s harem, right?”

  “That’s what it looks like. But I can’t be sure. The only one I recognize is Redman.”

  “Redman and Myers. Look here at the first page. Isn’t that Gerlach’s ex-wife?”

  Kevin studied the picture of a brunette, probably in her thirties, standing next to a fireplace, her arm draped across the mantle. The setting was not one he recognized, but the woman, on closer examination, did look vaguely familiar.

  “You think that’s Myers?”

  “I do,” Carol said. “She’s older now, of course, wears her hair differently, but I’m pretty sure she’s the ex-wife, the one who’s living in Southport and was a member of your cast.”

  “It makes sense, I suppose. If this is an album of Gerlach’s conquests, she’d be in it. Unless it’s just his extramarital conquests. But why are we assuming these are the women he’s had affairs with? There might be another explanation for the scrapbook. W
hen Redman told me about seeing Gerlach, she made it very clear that there was no affair. If we’re to believe her, they never went to bed together.”

  “Why should we believe her? It looks to me as if Gerlach’s scrapbook tells a different story. It’s a case of she said, he said. Anyway, I can’t see why he’d create a scrapbook like this unless it was to keep a record of the women he’d seduced. It’s too selective, too chronological. Here’s Myers, the first of thirteen, which she might well have been. And Redman’s the last, and that sounds right because they only met this summer. I’ll make you a bet that back there on page two or three is the woman Gerlach was involved with when he was married to Myers. The cause of their divorce.”

  It does make sense, Kevin thought. And if Carol is right, then there’s another woman in the album we should be thinking about.

  “I think I told you about the conversation I overheard one evening at rehearsal. Between Myers and Conklin. Conklin made it clear that it was Gerlach who had destroyed his marriage by taking up with his wife. And her name is Helen. Or was Helen. She apparently died not that long ago—confessed to her affair with Gerlach before she died.”

  Kevin turned to page ten of the album and pointed to the picture of a slender blonde who was posed in almost exactly the same place as Mercedes Redman was for her picture. Beneath the photo was the woman’s given name: Helen.

  _____

  A little over an hour later, Carol and Kevin had completed their search of the house. It had turned up nothing more of interest—nothing in the study, nothing in the master bedroom, nothing in the darkroom. Except for the breakfast dishes in the kitchen sink, the house was in immaculate condition, much as if it were ready for a real estate agent’s walk through with a prospective buyer.

  Carol had been struck by the absence of a computer. It appeared that Gerlach had been something of a Luddite, unwilling to adapt to technological change. While there were a few CDs in a cabinet in the living room, most of his record collection was on an earlier generation of LPs. And there was a turntable to play them on. But the absence of a computer simplified their search for clues of the life Gerlach had led. There would be no undeleted e-mail correspondence, no electronic evidence of whom he talked to, what was on his mind, what he had been doing.

  “I’m going up the hill to talk with Francis Farris,” Carol announced. “Grieves thinks he knows more about what Gerlach has been doing than he lets on. I think I should see him alone. He’d only wonder about you being with me, and I don’t want to have to explain. So why don’t you stay here, give me a chance to question him.”

  If Kevin was disappointed that Carol wanted to see Farris by herself, he didn’t show it.

  “No problem,” he assured her. “I’d like to look over Harley’s books. It’s a collection to die for.”

  So Kevin selected a book he hadn’t heard of on the contribution to opera of Hector Berlioz and took a seat in the huge chair in the study. Carol set off from Gerlach’s house to talk with Francis ‘Jeff’ Farris, who at that moment was on his balcony watching her through his telescope as she climbed the hill.

  CHAPTER 18

  “Mr. Farris?” the sheriff called through the screen door. She had knocked several times, but no one had answered or appeared at the door. She knew he was at home, having seen him on the balcony as she walked up the path from Gerlach’s. Grieves had told her about the elevator, so she knew that coming down from the upper floor would not pose a problem. What was Farris doing? Was he trying to avoid her? He had surely seen her, much as she had seen him. Perhaps he had decided that he didn’t want to talk to an officer of the law. But why would he be reluctant to talk with her?

  Carol decided that she should be a bit bolder. She pushed the screen door open and walked into the house, calling out his name again as she did so. It was then that she heard a humming sound from somewhere ahead of her in the house. The elevator, she thought, and momentarily she heard the clang of its door opening. A few seconds later, Jeff Farris wheeled himself around the corner into the kitchen.

  “Did I keep you waiting?” he asked.

  “No,” Carol said, choosing to be pleasant. “I just thought maybe something was wrong.”

  “No, no. I just don’t get around that fast.”

  Farris did not elaborate, and Carol wasn’t interested in having a discussion about it.

  “I’m Sheriff Kelleher,” she said, “and you’re Francis Farris. My colleague spoke to you the other day, and I thought it would be a good idea to come around and introduce myself. I think Officer Grieves told you why we are here. Your neighbor, Harley Gerlach, died on Tuesday. It happened over at Brae Loch College where he was rehearsing for a program they were putting on. Unfortunately, he didn’t die from natural causes and it wasn’t an accident. Somebody killed him, and we’re trying to find the person who did it.”

  “You surely can’t think it was me,” Farris protested. No expression of shock over the loss of a neighbor, just a protestation of innocence.

  “No, Mr. Farris, I’m sure it wasn’t you who killed him. But we need information, and he doesn’t seem to have any family or relatives upstate. So I’m asking around, trying to find out who knew him, who can tell us something about the people in his life. You seem to be his closest neighbor, so I thought maybe you could help us.”

  “I wish I could, but I’m afraid we haven’t seen much of each other. I’ve never been in his house, and he’s never been in mine. Not very neighborly, I’ll admit. But I don’t get around very well, and—well, it just didn’t work out.”

  “I understand. But I’m sure you can see his place very clearly from up here. I wonder if you can tell me anything about the people who’ve visited him, let’s say recently, this summer.”

  “I suppose your colleague told you about my telescope. But I’m not nosy. Like I told the officer, I use the scope for birding. Wonderful habit. You should give it a try.”

  “I might do that if I can find the time,” Carol said. “Look, I’m not being critical of you. But I can’t believe you haven’t observed Mr. Gerlach’s house, people coming and going. I know I would have. It’s the natural thing to do.”

  Carol decided that she didn’t want to dance around the issue of Mr. Farris’s respect for his neighbor’s privacy.

  “Let me put it this way. I’m investigating a murder. I need all the information I can get, and I think you’re in a position to give me information. I can’t believe you haven’t seen things down there at the Gerlach house. I want you to tell me about them. I don’t want you to try to decide what’s important and what isn’t. I’ll make that decision. So let’s go up to your balcony, and then you can tell me what you’ve seen—make that whom you’ve seen—and when.”

  Carol walked quickly over to the elevator, leaving Farris to follow.

  “Nice view, just like I thought it would be,” she said as they reached the balcony. She didn’t need to wait for Farris to train the telescope on Gerlach’s place. It was already pointing directly at it, and the grill on the back porch she saw as she looked through the scope was so close it looked as if she could reach out and touch it.

  “Perfect. You could see whether Mr. Gerlach needed a shave, couldn’t you? Or whether a female visitor was wearing a ring? Right?”

  “I guess so,” was the weak reply.

  “Now, when was the last time you observed someone coming to visit Mr. Gerlach?”

  “It was Tuesday,” he said, having made the decision to cooperate with the sheriff.

  “And what can you tell me about this visitor?”

  Grieves had already told the sheriff that it had been a woman and that she had been driving a dark car. Carol was confident that Farris could flesh out this unsatisfactorily vague description.

  “It was a woman, middle aged, well dressed.”

  “What do you mean by middle aged? Forties? Fifties? Sixties?”

  “Well, I’ve got a sister who’s in her early fifties. I’d say this woman was around that age
, maybe 55 at the most. That’s a guess, you know.”

  “Okay. And you say well dressed. What was she wearing?”

  “Jeans and a white blouse. They looked like good quality clothes. In fact, she looked like someone who had an eye for fashion, you know, one of those women who always dresses smart.”

  “Hair?”

  “Graying just a bit. But neat. And cut fairly short.”

  “Did you notice anything else about her?”

  “Only what she drove up in. It was a black BMW. Here, I’ve got the license number written down.”

  Farris turned around until he could reach a small rustic Adirondack table next to the railing. He pushed aside a bird guide and picked up a small spiral notebook.

  “Here it is,” he said, and read off the number he’d seen on the New York license plate.

  “Let me have a look at that,” Carol said, as she took the notebook out of Farris’s hands.

  “Hey, you can’t do that, it’s private.” Farris had only reluctantly agreed to cooperate with the sheriff, and he was now making clear his opinion that she had gone too far.

  “Oh, I think I can, Mr. Farris. You surely don’t want me to charge you with obstruction of justice. As far as I know, you haven’t done anything illegal, but that could all change if you don’t cooperate with my investigation of Mr. Gerlach’s death. Do you understand?”

  A very unhappy Francis Farris nodded that he did.

  “You seem to have a lot of potentially useful information in this notebook,” Carol said as she leafed through it. “You should be pleased to be able to help us law enforcement types.”

  Farris lapsed into a sullen silence while the sheriff studied the notebook.

  “Now this is interesting,” Carol announced. “The last entry before the one about the lady in the BMW was made on August 10th. You say Gerlach and a woman drove up—two separate cars—around 8:30 in the evening. That the woman was driving an old Studebaker. That they went into the house and stayed there for about an hour, when the woman left by herself. There’s not much here about the woman. Do you want to add to what you wrote that night?”