Setting the Stage for Murder

by Robert W. Gregg

  “You’re asking me to do this at today’s inflated gas prices?” Kevin asked with a smile. “Just kidding. I’ll do it as soon as we get back to the cottage and my car. But you’re still assuming it was Conklin who had lunch with Gerlach. We don’t know that.”

  “We’ll know, one way or another, after I show Conklin’s picture to Ginny. I’m betting it is Conklin, although I’m damned if I know why they’d ever sit down to break bread together.”

  _____

  By shortly after noon, they knew two things. One was that a roundtrip between Brae Loch and the interlake road nursery, at five miles per hour over the posted speed limit with a ten-minute stopover at the nursery, would take 46 minutes. The second thing they knew was that it had indeed been Arthur Conklin who had lunched at The Cedar Post with Harley Gerlach. Neither Ginny Smith nor Jill Fenton, their waitress, had any difficulty identifying him.

  “I’d recognize him even without all those funny little trees,” Jill said.

  CHAPTER 44

  The fact that Conklin had dined with Gerlach the day of the latter’s murder did not suddenly transform the nursery-owning cellist into Carol’s prime suspect. Quite to the contrary, it might suggest that he didn’t belong on the list of suspects at all. The fact that they had gotten together for a midday meal at The Cedar Post could indicate that they had decided to let bygones be bygones, that they had been brought together by the passing of time and a common love of music.

  Carol wasn’t sure just how she felt about this mysterious luncheon ‘date.’ One thing she was sure of was that she couldn’t now give her other suspects a pass and concentrate exclusively on Conklin. One of those other suspects was Sean Carpenter, whose grievance with Gerlach might be more recent than Conklin’s. She would have to speak again with Heather Merriman and see if Sean had said anything to her about Gerlach having played a role in denying him a place in the Metropolitan Opera chorus. Supportive of Carpenter as the young woman had tried to be, she was more likely to tell her the truth than Sean himself.

  “Miss Merriman,” she said when Heather answered the phone, “this is Sheriff Kelleher again. I’m sure you must be tired of hearing from me. I thought maybe you’d already gone back to school. The college semester seems to start much sooner than it did when I was in school, even before Labor Day.”

  “I guess I’m lucky. We don’t have to be back until the sixth. But I don’t suppose you called to talk about college.”

  “That’s true, although I’m glad you can squeeze a few more days out of the summer. Something’s come up that I need to talk with you about. Don’t worry; it has nothing to do with you. But we do need to talk. And once again I’m not in a position to drive over to your place. I was hoping you could drive to Cumberland. This afternoon would be fine, but if that doesn’t work, could you come tomorrow?”

  “If it has to be, I’d rather get it over with. When would be convenient?”

  “How about two? I’m working at the office. If you like, we could go across the street to Mayes and get coffee. Or ice cream.”

  “That’s very kind, but I’d rather just answer your questions and head back home. I’ve got a date tonight.”

  “So be it. I’ll see you at two.”

  A date? She hoped it wasn’t with Carpenter. The thought that it might be troubled her right up to the time that Merriman arrived at her door.

  In spite of the fact that she had assured Heather that their discussion would not be about her, the young woman looked uncomfortable. Even nervous?

  “I propose to keep this brief,” Carol began. “I know that Sean Carpenter spent a lot of time with you this summer.”

  “Only at Brae Loch when we were rehearsing,” Heather interrupted. She was obviously anxious to make it clear that their relationship was limited to the opera.

  “Well, yes, that’s what I meant. And I assume that the two of you talked about many things.”

  “May I ask you a question, Sheriff?”

  “Of course,” Carol replied, curious about what the question would be.

  “You want to ask me about the note that Mr. Carpenter sent to Ms. Redman, don’t you?”

  Carol was about to say that, no, that wasn’t what she had in mind. But she bit her tongue.

  “Did you want to tell me about it?”

  “Professor Whitman mentioned it when he told me about Ms. Redman’s death, as I suppose you know.” Heather had apparently figured out that the professor and the sheriff were more than casual acquaintances. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot ever since. The professor didn’t say Mr. Carpenter wrote the note, but it doesn’t take a genius to realize that he did. It bothers me that he wrote that note. It bothers me a lot. I mean what kind of a man would do something like that? Threaten another person, someone who’d never done him any harm, just because he thought she was in love with me. There was nothing between me and Ms. Redman, nothing at all. But Mr. Carpenter was jealous of her. Can you imagine that? Jealous of a nice woman who happened to be a lesbian and had maybe wanted me to be her partner. I say maybe, because we’ll never know, will we?”

  Carol listened, fascinated, to this revealing monologue. The Heather Merriman of Wednesday morning, so anxious to keep a promise to Sean Carpenter, had disappeared, her place taken by someone who had clearly lost all respect for him. She had even repeatedly referred to him as Mr. Carpenter, as if to distance herself from him.

  “You know, Heather, we don’t know that Carpenter wrote the threatening note.”

  “Well, maybe you don’t, but I do. Don’t get me wrong, Sheriff. I have no proof. But he warned me to stay away from Ms. Redman, told me that all she wanted was to lure me into her bed. I suppose I worried that he might have been right, but when I heard about the note, it all began to fall into place. He was the one who wanted to lure me into bed. This married man who was willing to cheat on his wife was actually jealous of a woman he saw as competition. I’d been flattered by his attention, I guess, even if I knew nothing would come of it. But now I find it disgusting.”

  Heather sounded disgusted, but she looked relieved to have shared her feelings with the sheriff.

  “Do you think that Carpenter could have killed Ms. Redman?” Carol asked. “That if he was the one who threatened her, he then carried out his threat?”

  “I thought she died of a heart attack,” she said. “But, yes, I think he could have killed her. He just wasn’t behaving rationally.”

  There was no point in pushing that issue further. It was time to turn to the reason Carol had asked Heather Merriman to come over to Cumberland.

  “I think we’ll know soon enough what really happened to Ms. Redman,” she said. “Actually, the reason I wanted to talk with you wasn’t that note. It’s about a conversation you had with Mr. Carpenter. When we spoke earlier in the week, you mentioned that he’d once auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera chorus and that he’d told you he should have been accepted. I’d like to hear more about what he said to you about that.”

  Carol anticipated that Heather, in her newfound disappointment in Sean Carpenter, would have no qualms talking frankly about what he had told her.

  “What is it you want to know?” Heather was trying to adjust to this new line of questioning.

  “I can understand that he was unhappy about being rejected. But did he ever tell you why he thought he didn’t make it?”

  “Yes, he did,” she replied. “He said that Mr. Gerlach was among the people conducting the audition, and that he had voted no.”

  “How did Mr. Carpenter know this? I mean did he learn it at the time he auditioned? Or did Mr. Gerlach say something just this summer?”

  “I’m not sure what happened at the audition. But I didn’t get the impression that he’d ever met Mr. Gerlach until this summer. Anyway, something must have happened to remind Mr. Gerlach that he’d heard Sean audition. Do you mind if I call him Sean? Mr. Carpenter sounds like someone I hardly know, when actually I know him too well.”

  “Whatev
er you wish,” Carol said. “So I take it that Gerlach told Carpenter that he’d had a hand in keeping him out of the Met chorus. Gerlach, being Gerlach, was rubbing it in.”

  “That’s what Sean said. He was really pissed. Here he was, years after the audition, being reminded of it by the man who cost him a job he really wanted.”

  “You didn’t mention this when we spoke the other day, Heather.”

  “We were talking about Mr. Gerlach’s murder, weren’t we? And who might have been at the college that afternoon. If I had said something about Mr. Gerlach having screwed him, that would have given Sean a motive for murder. So I thought I’d better be quiet.”

  “But you’re telling me about it today. It still could give Carpenter a motive for killing Gerlach, couldn’t it? I asked you if you thought Sean could have killed Ms. Redman. Do you think he could have killed Mr. Gerlach?”

  “I don’t want you to think I’m accusing him of Mr. Gerlach’s murder when I tell you what he said about the audition,” she said, weighing her words carefully. “So, no, I don’t think he killed Mr. Gerlach. But the other day I was protecting him. Today I think he should look out for himself.”

  You should have let him do that from the beginning, Carol thought. But she could appreciate the young woman’s dilemma. Or what she had perceived as her dilemma before she found out about Carpenter’s note to Redman. That had been a rude wake-up call.

  Carol thanked Heather for her candor and once again said that she should keep an open mind regarding the cause of Redman’s death. She promised to let her know if the autopsy clarified things.

  “You said you had a date tonight,” Carol said as Heather got up to leave. “When you mentioned it, I have to confess I hoped it wasn’t with Carpenter. I think you’ve been telling me that I needn’t have worried.”

  “It’s with a boy you’ve met, Chris Ellis. The guy who’s an assistant to the provost at Brae Loch.”

  When she left, Heather Merriman was wearing a broad smile.

  CHAPTER 45

  Had Kevin only lost a laptop, it was unlikely that he would ever see it again. But he had lost both the laptop and Harley Gerlach’s photo album, which immediately reduced the number of possible thieves to a much more manageable number. In fact, he was convinced that he knew exactly who the thief was, and he was determined to pay her a visit and demand the return of both items. She had been clever, masking the theft of the album by taking the laptop as well. But she had been too clever by half. There were others who might have had a motive for stealing the album. But he could only think of one person who knew that the album was in his possession, and she would even have been wrong about that if he had returned it to the sheriff’s office as he should have. Her name was Lauren Helman.

  After a leisurely Sunday breakfast, Carol had had a small crisis of conscience and dealt with it by going to church. It was the perfect opportunity to pay Ms. Helman a visit. If she, too, had gone to church, he’d wait for her. Kevin was in no hurry. His problem was how to regain possession of the album and the laptop without arousing the curiosity of Mr. Helman. Much as he was annoyed with the woman who had violated his home and his property, he could appreciate her fear that her husband would discover her infidelity. As he drove toward Yates Center, he formulated a plan that he hoped would allow him to recover the album and the laptop without inadvertently revealing Mrs. Helman’s secret to her husband if he happened to be at home. En route he stopped at a roadside stand and picked up some sweet corn and tomatoes.

  It was nearly eleven o’clock when he pulled into the now familiar house on East Lake Road. Two cars were in the drive, which meant that both of the Helmans were home. It was Mrs. Helman who answered the door. The look on her face gave her away. She was frightened, as well she might have been.

  Kevin spoke quietly but firmly.

  “Please step outside and close the door.”

  She did as he asked.

  “I have come for my laptop and for a photo album which you stole from my cottage last Thursday. I would rather that you not waste my time pretending that you weren’t anywhere near my place. If you are afraid that your husband may wonder whom you’re talking to, tell him that I am stopping by to bring you some produce from a roadside market. I have some corn and tomatoes in my car. Just bring me the album and the laptop and I’ll be on my way.”

  “But this is—”

  Kevin gave her no time to say whatever it was that she was about to say.

  “Don’t say anything,” he said, making no effort to disguise the fact that he was angry. “If you don’t want your husband to hear of your relationship with Harley Gerlach, you will do as I ask. The laptop is mine and I want it back—now! And you will be in real trouble if you don’t give me the album. It is potential evidence in a criminal matter, and the sheriff wants it back immediately. Tell your husband anything you wish, but get me the album and my laptop. Do I make myself clear?”

  Lauren Helman, now afraid to speak, motioned toward Kevin’s car. He got the message. He collected the corn and tomatoes from the backseat, and handed them to her. She disappeared into the house and returned three minutes later, carrying a roll of newspapers.

  “It’s in here,” she said as she gave him the papers. “The picture of me is gone. I tore it out and burned it.”

  “That wasn’t a very good idea,” Kevin said. He unrolled the papers enough to make sure that the album was there, as she had said it was. He briefly thumbed through it, satisfying himself that the other photos were intact.

  “And now where’s the laptop?”

  Mrs. Helman looked anxiously over her shoulder, but Mr. Helman had not appeared at the door. He was either preoccupied or not especially curious.

  “It’s in the trunk of my car,” she said. She went over to the car, unlocked the trunk, and removed the laptop, hiding it with her body as she transferred it into Kevin’s possession. It had all taken no more than four minutes.

  Kevin slid behind the wheel of his car and leaned out the window.

  “I don’t know how you managed to enter and leave my house without any of my neighbors seeing you. And I don’t want to know. I trust that you won’t be doing things like that again. You are a very lucky woman that your little escapade hasn’t had more serious consequences. The sheriff will be most displeased when she finds that the picture is missing. She may want to pay you a visit herself.”

  “What do I owe you for the vegetables?” she asked.

  “Enjoy them. There’s no charge. And no, I won’t be pressing charges for the theft. Like I said, you’re a lucky woman.”

  Kevin pulled onto East Lake Road and headed north. Lauren Helman was still standing in the driveway, clutching an empty roll of newspapers and watching him drive away.

  _____

  They had agreed that if he was able to recover Gerlach’s photo album, Carol would take it with her and have a talk with Janet Myers. Of course she might not be at home, in which case the meeting would have to be postponed to another day. But it turned out that Janet would be at home, so after a quick lunch with Kevin, Carol left for Southport. She wanted to know whether Sonia Pederson had been right about Janet’s change of heart about Gerlach. Perhaps the album could help her answer that question.

  Carol had thought a good deal about what Pederson had told her, and, quite frankly, she had had trouble crediting it. How could Myers welcome back into her head, and maybe even her heart, a man who had not only carried on with other women when he was married to her but had also apparently continued to do so over the years since their divorce? She did not strike Carol as a patsy, a weak woman who could put up with this kind of emotional abuse. Indeed, as recently as the night after Gerlach’s death during Carol’s first interrogation of the woman, she had made no bones about the fact that she disliked him heartily. Kevin had cited incidents which added to the picture of a woman who had had her fill of the womanizer to whom she had once been married.

  But at the same time, Carol found it hard to believe
that Sonia Pederson had imagined everything Myers had shared with her. It was possible, of course, that Pederson was by nature a romantic, someone who was concerned that Charles and Janet Myers were falling out of love, someone who was unconsciously overreacting to a word or two here, a wistful expression there, in order to satisfy her own conviction that love will find a way. It wasn’t likely, but it was possible.

  Carol hoped that showing Janet the photos in Gerlach’s album might stimulate responses which would clarify her role as a suspect in Gerlach’s murder.

  Once again, Charles Myers was not at home. Janet explained that he was at the office. On Sunday?

  “Yes, he always seems to be behind in his work. He puts in dreadfully long hours. He has become a workaholic. His health has become a worry.”

  Carol did not want to talk about Charles. She wanted to talk about Harley Gerlach.

  She had carefully removed the photo of Janet and Harley from its place on page one of the album before leaving Kevin’s cottage. She set that photo down on the coffee table in front of the couch where they were sitting, sipping their iced tea. Janet leaned forward, studying this snapshot of their life back in the days before their divorce. She left it there on the coffee table for several seconds, although it seemed like much longer, during which time she said nothing.

  “Where did you find this?” she finally asked as she picked it up and settled back on the couch with it. Janet’s face had registered nothing, neither antipathy nor pleasure, as she studied the picture.