Setting the Stage for Murder

by Robert W. Gregg

  Mercedes got up to deposit her now empty coffee cup in the dishwasher. It was time to take a shower, to wash away these troubling thoughts. Perhaps she was overdoing her anxiety. Maybe the note was not from Carpenter. Maybe it had nothing to do with her interest in Heather Merriman. It might even be a prank. She doubted it.

  As the noon hour approached, Mercedes Redman went into what she called her music room, took out her violin, and began a familiar ritual. She would relax by playing a favorite unaccompanied piece by Bach. It was while she was tuning up that the doorbell rang. It couldn’t be Marcia, back from what she had said would be a long bike ride, because Marcia had her own key. No students were scheduled, and Sunday was not a day on which solicitors or pollsters typically came to the door. Mercedes was annoyed at this interruption in what she viewed as an opportunity to exorcise her worries about the note.

  To her great surprise, the person at the door was Heather Merriman. Under normal circumstances, Mercedes would have been delighted to see her. But not today, not with the threatening note still on her mind, not with Marcia due back in another hour or two at the most.

  But Mercedes was genuinely fond of the girl and still interested in developing a personal relationship with her. It never occurred to her to send Heather away.

  “What a nice surprise,” she said. “I’ve been hoping you might find time to visit me, but I never expected to see you today. Come on in.”

  “I should have called first, I know. But I was over this way, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take you up on your offer to see your apartment.”

  “There’s not a lot to see, as you’ll see for yourself,” Mercedes said as she led Heather into the living room.

  The apartment was a small one, and her statement that there wasn’t a lot to see was technically correct. In addition to the living room and kitchen, there was but one bedroom, a single bath, and a room which could have served as a study or a guest bedroom but which Mercedes had turned into a studio where she gave lessons and herself practiced the violin. But in another and more important sense there was quite a lot to see.

  Heather asked if she might look around, but she had already started a self-guided tour before Mercedes could respond. She did it out of an innocent curiosity, but it immediately became apparent that what was interesting about the apartment was not the paucity of rooms but what those rooms contained. Especially the bedroom. It had not been straightened up yet, and the result was an unreconstructed snapshot of the personal lives of Redman and someone else. And that someone else was obviously another woman.

  Heather stood in the doorway, with Mercedes behind her in the hall, looking at an unmade bed with two sets of pillows, each with the impression of the head and shoulders of whoever had slept there the night before. The closet door stood open, the clothes on their hangers revealing that two very different people with very different tastes shared the room. Some of those clothes were similar to what Redman had worn during rehearsals at Brae Loch, simple, with subdued colors and eminently practical. Other clothes, occupying their own section of the closet or draped over the room’s only chair, were flamboyant in both color and style. Beneath the dresses and slacks on the hangers were two contrasting sets of footwear. There were at least three pairs of knee-high boots, two of them in dramatically bright colors. The pairs of low-heeled black and brown walking shoes next to them paled by comparison.

  Heather turned away from her cursory appraisal of the bedroom, suddenly aware that there were little indicators everywhere that told the same story: She had been correct in her suspicion that Mercedes Redman had a lesbian partner.

  “Let me make you some coffee,” Mercedes said, steering Heather back into the living room. The damage had been done, as she knew it would be the moment she saw Heather at the door. It would no longer be possible to pretend that she lived alone. It might no longer be possible to persuade the girl to move in with her, to take Marcia’s place. In all probability, such a relationship had never been in the cards. Nonetheless, Mercedes experienced a moment of almost painful regret.

  Heather Merriman had made the trip to Ithaca to tell Mercedes that she would not be changing colleges or accepting the offer to share the older woman’s apartment. But now that she was there, now that her suspicion had been turned into fact, she realized that she was less comfortable saying what she had come to say than she had expected to be. She was even embarrassed to be there, an intruder into someone else’s private life. Someone she barely knew, someone who had been kind to her and whose kindness she may have misinterpreted. How could the woman have been coming on to her when she already had a partner?

  “I promise not to stay long,” she said in response to the offer of coffee. “But I’ll have one cup with you before I go.”

  She waited in the living room while Mercedes tended to the coffee in the kitchen. The bookcase across the room from the couch interested her. Most of the books seemed to be about history, with an emphasis on the age of enlightenment. History was not one of her better subjects, but reading the titles of these books increased her respect for Mercedes. She was in the process of taking a biography of Rousseau off the shelf when the coffee arrived.

  “You’re welcome to borrow anything there that you like,” Mercedes said as she set Heather’s cup on the coffee table.

  “Thanks. Maybe I will.”

  Having decided not to talk about what she had planned to talk about, Heather was relieved to have something else to discuss. She apologized for being historically illiterate and listened attentively while Mercedes spoke about the influence of enlightenment philosophers on America’s founding fathers. Heather found herself thinking that her own professors had rarely made their subjects sound so fascinating.

  Not surprisingly, the conversation soon turned to music, and Heather had just asked for an opinion on Mozart’s operas when the door opened and a woman wearing biker’s gear walked in.

  “What’s going on?” she asked as she took off her helmet and put it on top of the bookcase.

  “Marcia, I’d like you to meet Heather Merriman. We were together in that opera production over on Crooked Lake. Heather, this is Marcia Kane.”

  Mercedes made no attempt to explain who Marcia Kane was or why she was in the process of making herself at home in the Redman apartment. But it was quite obvious that this was the woman who lived there with Mercedes, the woman who wore the colorful outfits now hanging in the bedroom closet when she wasn’t dressed for bike riding.

  “Miss Merriman,” she said, acknowledging the stranger on the couch. She turned immediately to her partner.

  “I thought you’d be ready. The show, remember? We’re going to the matinee.”

  “There’s plenty of time,” Mercedes said. “Why don’t you go ahead and shower. It won’t take me long.”

  “I hope so. I can’t stand to be late.”

  Heather had been listening to this brief colloquy with interest. The woman named Marcia had not exactly been unpleasant, but neither had she been particularly friendly. Or cordial. Heather wondered if she had been witness to a typical exchange between the two women or if the hint of tension in the air was due to her own presence in the apartment.

  Ms. Kane disappeared into the bedroom without another word, only to reappear in a robe a few minutes later and head for the bathroom.

  Anxious to minimize any feeling of uncomfortability on Mercedes’ part, Heather got to her feet and said she’d have to be going. Redman made the polite disclaimer, but didn’t try to stop her. She did remind her about the book she was going to take, but didn’t urge her to come back.

  It had been the briefest of visits. Mercedes had never mentioned the note that she assumed had come from Sean Carpenter. Heather had never mentioned the reason she had come to Ithaca. And neither of them had commented on the fact that Marcia Kane had made no effort to conceal the fact that she was unhappy to find a strange woman having coffee with her partner on this Sunday afternoon in August.

  CHAPTER 27 />
  Carol’s attempt to learn more about Janet Myers’ whereabouts the day of Harley Gerlach’s murder had been a disappointing failure. Moreover, it had taken several hours of her time on Sunday afternoon, making it necessary to defer the conversation she had hoped to have with Mercedes Redman until another day. Most of the neighbors were at home, but they had nothing to add to Janet’s own account of what she had done and when the previous Tuesday. She had said nothing to any of the neighbors about her plans, and no one had seen her either drive away or return home. The Myers house itself had been empty, and once again no one in the neighborhood knew where either Janet or her husband was. Somebody, she thought, will surely tell them that I was asking for them. She wondered what they would make of that news. It would depend, of course, on whether Janet had visited the Brae Loch campus the afternoon Gerlach had been killed. And on whether she had told her husband the truth about what she had been doing that day.

  By Monday morning Carol had more or less gotten over her frustration with what had largely been a wasted Sunday. She had even set aside the Gerlach case for the moment to catch up on other business in her in-basket. It was while she was listening to Officer Grieves trying to justify how he had handled an angry motorist over the weekend that her secretary announced a visitor who wished to talk to her about the murder at Brae Loch.

  The young man who came into her office gave his name as Christopher Ellis, a student at the college. He acted nervous and it took a few minutes before he summoned the courage to tell the sheriff what had prompted his visit to her office.

  “I’m not sure that what I’m going to tell you is something you don’t already know,” Ellis said, “but I figured I ought to say something. You know, just in case.”

  “We always welcome help from our citizens,” Carol said. She wondered how this young man, who claimed to be a business major at the college and an assistant in the provost’s office, could be in a position to provide useful information regarding Gerlach’s murder, but she was willing to listen.

  “It’s like this,” he began. “Last Tuesday—that’s the day the man from the opera was killed—last Tuesday I had to go down to the boathouse, and when I did I saw one of the people from the opera down on the beach. His name is Carpenter. I thought I should say something because the rest of those opera people weren’t around, just this guy. There wasn’t anything going on they needed to be there for, not until that night.”

  “Why do you assume this might be important?” Carol asked.

  “Well, I couldn’t imagine any of us killing that man. You know, any of the college people. I mean, why would we? It probably had to be one of the opera people, and here was one of them, hanging around near where it happened.”

  “I can see you’ve given quite a bit of thought to this,” Carol said. “And what you say makes sense. We looked at it just the way you did. We asked all of the men and women in the opera where they’d been that afternoon. Now let me ask you another question. How do you know this man you saw on the beach was someone named Carpenter?”

  Ellis looked flustered. It was a question he hadn’t expected.

  “I think I’d heard someone call him that. Maybe I’ve got it wrong. But it was someone from the opera. I’d seen him around.”

  This was an unsatisfactory explanation, and it was obvious that Ellis knew it.

  “Mr. Ellis,” Carol said, “I’m glad you came by. Your information may be important. But I don’t think you got the man’s name wrong. I think you know it was Mr. Carpenter, and I want you to tell me how you know that. Did you talk to him? Did someone point him out to you?”

  “I’d met him before,” Ellis said.

  “Oh, and how was that?”

  Reluctantly, Christopher Ellis told of his earlier encounter with Heather Merriman and Sean Carpenter on the beach, explaining that it was Miss Merriman who had introduced them.

  “That’s better. Now here’s another question, and once again I’d appreciate an honest answer. Was Miss Merriman there on the beach with Mr. Carpenter when you saw him again last Tuesday?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Carol said in her sternest voice. “But that’s not what you said a moment ago. You said that Carpenter was the only member of the opera company you saw that day. But there were really two people, weren’t there? Why didn’t you mention her, too?”

  “I didn’t want to get her into trouble.” It was, at last, a straightforward answer, and the one Carol expected.

  “As it happens, Mr. Ellis, Miss Merriman had already told me she was on the beach most of Tuesday afternoon. In fact, as I suspect you know, she spent many rehearsal afternoons on the Brae Loch beach this summer. So what I’ve learned this morning is that you don’t want me to suspect that Miss Merriman had anything to do with that murder over there, but that you are willing to let me believe that perhaps Mr. Carpenter did. You like Miss Merriman, don’t you? And you don’t much like Mr. Carpenter because he likes her too? Isn’t that about right?”

  The Brae Loch business major denied that this had been his motivation, but it was not a convincing denial.

  Before he left, Carol had softened her criticism of Ellis and again thanked him for coming forward with what might be useful information. After he had left she considered the fact that Heather Merriman had readily admitted to the fact that she had been sunbathing at Brae Loch while someone was strangling Harley Gerlach in nearby Wayne Hall. But she had said nothing about the fact that Sean Carpenter was with her that afternoon. Did this mean that she was more interested in Carpenter than she had admitted? More interested, and hence more protective of him?

  It was now imperative, she said to herself, to have a serious talk with both Merriman and Carpenter. Not together, but one at a time.

  CHAPTER 28

  The summer had gone by too quickly, thanks to the demands of preparing for the presentation of Puccini’s opera. Kevin’s usual swimming regimen had been one of the casualties of those hectic days from June until mid-August. In less than two weeks he would be heading back to the city, and if he were to do any swimming there, it would have to be at the health club. He had a membership, had had one for several years, but he didn’t much enjoy the chlorinated pool and typically found that he swam less regularly there than he did at the lake. There was no way to make up for lost time, but there was nothing to prevent him from taking full advantage of the few days that were left before Labor Day.

  The investigation of Gerlach’s murder had given him little to do. In the week since it happened he had done only two things that might be construed as contributions to the solution of the case. He had visited Gerlach’s house twice, first with Carol and then by himself. On the first occasion he had found the album containing pictures of the women Gerlach had entertained since moving to Crooked Lake. On the second he had found a scrap of gum wrapper that might or might not be important. His second contribution, the importance of which was also not proven, was the result of his conversation with Arthur Conklin’s neighbor. He had learned that Conklin had briefly been under suspicion of having caused the death of his wife—the wife who had confessed to an affair with Gerlach.

  It was fairly early on Monday morning that he set off on what he thought of as his long swim, one that took him to the end of Blue Water Point and around the bend into Mallard Cove. The lake was almost entirely free of boats at this early hour in the morning, so he could concentrate on the question of who had killed Harley Gerlach rather than worry about close encounters with careless boaters. He swam at a moderate pace, testing muscles too little used of late, and enjoying the cool water.

  Kevin was frustrated, and his swim had become a form of therapy, helping him cope with his bad summer. First no opera. And then no real opportunity to help solve the crime that had brought the opera to its untimely end.

  He felt better for the exercise when he finished his swim, but he was still discouraged about the way the summer was ending. He wanted to be doing something to he
lp Carol, but the one thing he had agreed to do, tracking down the unknown women pictured in Gerlach’s ‘harem album,’ looked like a mission impossible. Where would he start? He had no better idea now than he did when he first saw their pictures.

  The hell with it, he said to himself, as he finished toweling off. He’d forget about the murder investigation and go into Yates Center to stock his depleted larder.

  It was nearly an hour later, and Kevin was pushing a cart down an aisle marked household supplies at Jacob’s Supermarket. He tossed a box of garbage sacks and some dishwashing soap into the cart and consulted his shopping list. When he looked up, he saw that he was about to run into another shopper turning into his aisle.

  “Sorry,” he said, disengaging his cart from hers. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “No problem. Neither was I.” The woman spoke in a deep voice and gave him a pleasant smile. It was a lopsided smile. He knew he’d seen it somewhere before. Warm, friendly, one corner of her mouth turned up more than the other. It’s rude to stare, he thought, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the woman’s face, a near perfect oval under nearly jet-black hair. He was sure he knew who she was, but he couldn’t place her.

  They went their separate ways, and it was while he was pondering the choices in the cereal aisle that Kevin remembered where he had seen the woman with the lopsided smile. Her picture had appeared in Harley Gerlach’s album. He left his cart in the aisle and hurried to the front of the store. He quickly scanned the checkout lines, finally spotting her just as she was making her way to the exit.

  Kevin wanted very much to talk with her, but he faced a problem with no apparent solution. He could catch up with her, ask to talk with her, and then be rebuffed the minute he mentioned Gerlach’s name. What would he do if she simply got into her car and drove away? And that is almost certainly what she would do. He realized that he had been so sure he wouldn’t be able to locate either of the two unknown women in Gerlach’s photos that he hadn’t given any thought to what he would do if he did find them.