Setting the Stage for Murder

by Robert W. Gregg

  “Like I said, it was wrong of me. Things were so hectic; we were all in shock. Rumors were flying.”

  “Rumors?”

  “Yes. Everybody sitting there in the auditorium, no one knowing anything—it was natural, I guess, for people to start speculating about what had happened to Mr. Gerlach.”

  “Did you have a theory?” Carol asked.

  “No. Not then or since.”

  “So you thought I might misinterpret an admission that you’d had lunch with Gerlach. Okay. But later, let’s say sometime in the next day or two, after the confusion of that first evening was past, you might have called me to tell me about the lunch. Why didn’t you?”

  Conklin shook his head, again with a rueful smile.

  “I guess that I just tried to block out of my mind what had happened that terrible day. You know, forget it, go on with life the best one can.”

  Not a very convincing explanation, Kevin thought.

  “Let me go back to the lunch, if I may,” Carol said. “My understanding has been that you and Gerlach were not friends. That’s hardly surprising, inasmuch as he had had an affair with your wife. I would think that something like that would be hard to put out of your mind. So how does it happen that you decided to have lunch that day?”

  Conklin straightened up and moved forward to the edge of the couch as if getting ready to give a speech.

  “I’d thought long and hard about what had happened between Harley and Helen. It had hurt me, very deeply. I can’t deny it. But it has been a year since it happened. Helen was gone. There was nothing I could do to bring her back. There didn’t seem to be much point in carrying a grudge forever where Harley was concerned. He had moved on. Why couldn’t I? There we were, both doing what we loved to do: playing and singing music. It was a shared pleasure. Somehow it seemed to me that it was time to forgive. So I asked him to join me for lunch, figuring we could make a fresh start. I didn’t expect to become his friend, start playing poker with him or anything like that. But I thought we could talk like civilized human beings, put the past behind us, enjoy doing Puccini together.”

  “Had you broached the subject with him before that day?”

  “No, that just happened to be the day when I finally decided to do what I’d been thinking about much of the summer.”

  “You had decided that Harley was no longer ‘the nigger in the woodpile,’ right?”

  “Yes, and I regret that remark more than you know. I wish I could apologize to the members of your company, Kevin.”

  There’s been lots of time to do that, Kevin thought. What stopped you?

  “How did Gerlach take the olive branch you offered him?” Carol asked.

  “Just fine. I think he’d been ready to do it for some time, but was afraid I’d rebuff him. In fact, he got all emotional. Almost maudlin. He drank a lot, as Kevin knows, and I think he was so touched by what was happening that he drank more than he should have.”

  “So you drove him back to the college after lunch?”

  “I did. He didn’t seem to be in any condition to drive. So I dropped him off at the college and went on home by way of my interlake road nursery. I’d have been glad to drive him home, but we had the dress rehearsal that night and he’d have been without a car to make it back to Brae Loch. And I did have to get to the nursery. When I let him out in front of Wayne Hall, it was the last time I saw him alive. I still can hardly believe that he died on the same day we’d said we’d let bygones be bygones. What a terrible thing. A real tragedy.”

  Kevin was waiting for Conklin to pull out a handkerchief, dab his eyes, and blow his nose.

  Carol still wanted to go over the rest of Conklin’s afternoon, so she reviewed his earlier statement with him, step by step. His answers to her questions were fairly consistent with what she had learned from the nursery managers. But they did not add up to an ironclad alibi that would have made it impossible for him to have killed Gerlach.

  “What do you make of his story?” Carol asked as they headed back to the cottage.

  “It’s possible that it happened just the way he says,” Kevin said. “Wouldn’t that be something, Janet Myers and Arthur Conklin both trying to make up to the man who had messed up their lives. And doing it right about when Gerlach gets himself killed. But I’d be careful of Conklin. I was watching his face as much as I was listening to what he had to say. And his face was nothing but a mask.”

  “I think it would be a good idea to have a talk with that girl who waited on them at The Post. She must have overheard them, gotten some impression of whether they seemed to be burying the hatchet like Conklin says they were.”

  When they arrived at the cottage, neither Carol nor Kevin was convinced that Arthur Conklin had recently lost his new best friend.

  CHAPTER 50

  Carol had departed for her office in Cumberland at ten of seven, anxious to be in her seat in the squad room before any of her fellow officers came strolling in. She was well aware that there was talk behind her back about the ‘Whitman effect,’ and she had decided that this would be a good morning to demonstrate that she was still the same old sheriff.

  Kevin, in the meanwhile, had not bothered to shower and dress until it was almost time for Heather Merriman to arrive. He had picked up the Berlioz biography after breakfast, and had lost track of the time until an unanticipated FedEx delivery reminded him that it was already 9:40. He had no need to try to impress Heather, but he didn’t think it was a good idea for her to find him in his bathrobe, face unshaven and hair uncombed, at ten o’clock.

  He had just tucked in his shirt and slipped into his sandals when the doorbell rang.

  “Good morning, Kevin. See? I got it right. Do you know that none of my professors would like me to call them by their first names? You’re special.”

  Kevin chose to take it as a compliment.

  “My students don’t usually call me Kevin,” he said, “but our little Brae Loch company hardly qualified as students. Anyway, I’ve been called worse things than professor. So, what’s on your mind? I’m curious.”

  “I’ll tell you, but first could you possibly let me have a cup of coffee?”

  “Of course,” Kevin said. He ushered Heather to a chair on the deck and retreated to the kitchen to reheat the breakfast pot.

  “Now,” he said, as they settled into their seats, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “I just bought a recording of Gianni Schicchi, and I wanted you to hear it.”

  Kevin hadn’t known what to expect, but this surely wasn’t it.

  “That’s very thoughtful of you, Heather, but don’t you suppose it’ll take quite awhile? I’m afraid I have some things I have to do.”

  Actually there was nothing urgent on Kevin’s agenda for the morning, but at the moment he found the prospect of listening to a recording of the opera he had so recently hoped to stage at Brae Loch depressing.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean the whole opera. I just wanted to play a part of it. Okay?”

  At this point Kevin was more than a little curious. They took their coffee into the cottage, and Heather popped the CD into Kevin’s player and forwarded it to the track she wanted him to hear.

  “Now listen closely to this, please.”

  What followed was the brief passage in which Schicchi explains his plan to impersonate the old man. That passage finished, Heather shut the set off and turned to Kevin.

  “Who does that sound like?”

  “Like Schicchi.”

  “Yes, I know, but think about his voice. Does it remind you of anyone else who sings Schicchi’s role?”

  “Well, it doesn’t sound like Mr. Gerlach did, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “You’re right. Of course I knew you would be. I didn’t really think much about it until I listened to my new CD. But when I did, I thought back to the day Mr. Gerlach died. And to the day I told you I heard him singing in that practice room backstage in Wayne Hall. But I’m sure it wasn’t him.”


  “Can you slow down a bit? You’re telling me that it wasn’t Mr. Gerlach you heard that day?”

  “That’s right. At least I think it is. I’ve always known that different artists sing the same roles differently. My voice teacher tells me my sound is more like Kiri Te Kanawa’s than Leotyne Price’s. I think she’s just trying to give a boost to my confidence, but I know what she means. Remember how people used to compare Pavarotti to Domingo, one voice called silver, the other bronze, or something like that. Even if they were both doing the same aria, like Nessun dorma.”

  “I’m with you. The voice you heard that day, there was something about it that makes you think it was somebody other than Gerlach.”

  “The problem is that when I heard Schicchi’s music coming from the practice room, I just assumed it was Mr. Gerlach. After all, he was our Schicchi. Why would it be anyone else? And that room is partially sound-proofed, so it wasn’t as loud or as clear as it might have been. But now I think I made a mistake. In fact, I’m really quite sure of it. And I knew I had to tell you.”

  “I’m very glad you did. It may be important. You are convinced that it was someone other than Gerlach singing Schicchi’s music. Do you have an idea who that someone else was?”

  “Yes, but I’m not at all sure. I’d never heard him singing Schicchi’s part, and like I said, the sound was somewhat muffled. But there was something about that voice that was definitely familiar.”

  “That’s okay, Heather. I’m not asking you who it was, only who you think it might have been.”

  “I think it was Mr. Rosetti.”

  “But as far as we know, he wasn’t even on the campus that afternoon.”

  “Then I must be wrong. Maybe I thought of him because everyone knew he would like to have been Gianni Schicchi, although I guess that doesn’t make much sense.”

  “But you said there was something in the voice that reminded you of Mr. Rosetti. You seem to have a very good ear. I’d recommend that if the sheriff asks you to tell her what you’ve told me, be honest with her. Say it sounded like Rosetti. Don’t second-guess yourself just because you’ve heard that he wasn’t there that day. You don’t know that, and the sheriff may not be one hundred percent sure of it either.”

  “I don’t want to get Mr. Rosetti into any kind of trouble.”

  “That’s a noble sentiment, Heather, but it isn’t you who would be getting him into trouble. It’s like Mr. Carpenter. You didn’t want to get him into trouble either, so you lied to the sheriff about whether he was with you that Tuesday. It’s the same with Mr. Rosetti. If either Rosetti or Carpenter is in trouble, it will be trouble of their own making.”

  Before she left, Kevin asked Heather if he might borrow her CD of Gianni Schicchi.

  “I’d like to play it through, just to see how a professional performance stacks up against what we sounded like. I’ll get it back to you in a day or two. The Lauretta on the disc won’t sound just like you, but I’ll bet you hold your own with her.”

  “You’re just trying to flatter me.”

  “It’s always more fun when flattery is based on fact, Heather.”

  After she had gone, Kevin considered the significance of what he had learned so unexpectedly that morning. He was willing to bet that Heather Merriman was right about the owner of the voice coming from the practice room two weeks earlier. Which meant that Paolo Rosetti had been lying to Carol about what he had been doing that day. And that she might well have been right that he had left his boat at Ben’s Marina and walked to Brae Loch the afternoon of Harley Gerlach’s murder.

  CHAPTER 51

  While Kevin was absorbing the implications of Heather Merriman’s second thoughts about who had been practicing Gianni Schicchi’s music, Carol was seeking more information about the Gerlach-Conklin lunch at The Cedar Post.

  Her call to The Post elicited the good news that Jill Fenton, who had been their waitress on that fatal Tuesday, was on duty again that very day. The lunch hour would officially begin at 11:30, so Carol planned to be at the restaurant at 11:15. Fenton would probably be setting up her tables. Carol could question her while she was getting ready for the lunch-hour crowd.

  Ginny Smith was not working the bar that day, but Carol shared a cheery hello with the man who was on duty and quickly spotted Fenton, who was standing next to a service station and chatting with one of the other waitresses.

  “Miss Fenton, may I have a word with you?” she said.

  The young woman excused herself and followed Carol to a table on the far side of the room.

  “Is there something wrong?” she asked. Jill Fenton had never had any trouble with the law, but here she was in the company of the sheriff of Cumberland County for the second time in a single week. The first time she had been asked whether the man in the picture the sheriff showed her was one of the two men she had served at a corner table on a recent Tuesday. She had found it exciting to be able to help the sheriff. This time she was uneasy. Had she made a mistake? Had the sheriff found out something which contradicted her identification of the man?

  “No, no,” Carol assured her. “We just need more information, and I hope you may be able to help us.”

  Fenton relaxed and told the sheriff she’d do her best.

  “I know it’s now more than two weeks ago that you served those two men we talked about earlier. But I’d like you to think back if you can to that day. What can you tell me about their conversation? Do you remember anything that was said, anything that might tell us whether they seemed to be in a good mood? Or maybe a bad mood?”

  Jill Fenton’s face took on a worried look again. She can’t remember, Carol thought. Damn it!

  “I don’t think so,” Fenton said after thinking about it for a moment. “We were busy, and I was trying to remember orders. Besides, the boss doesn’t like us to eavesdrop, so I try not to pay attention to what people are talking about.”

  “I understand, and it’s okay. But don’t you have some feeling about whether the men were getting along? You know, sometimes two people sit and eat and hardly ever say anything to each other. Other times they carry on an animated conversation.”

  Another pause as Fenton considered Carol’s question.

  “I guess you’d say they talked quite a bit. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”

  Carol was ready to let it go when the waitress’s face lit up. She’d had an idea.

  “Maybe the Listers could help. They’re a couple who come in here a lot, and I remember that they were having lunch that day at the table next to the men you’re talking about. I don’t know much about them, except that they’re always very pleasant and leave good tips. Brady, he’s the owner, might know how to get in touch with them. I think he’s here. You could ask Jerry—he’s the bartender.”

  “I think I will,” Carol said. “Thanks for the suggestion. Have a good day.”

  Brady Traber was in the office behind the bar. Carol was surprised to realize that she had never met him or seen him mixing with the customers at The Post. She was wondering whether he was preternaturally shy or had simply chosen to let his bartenders be his glad-handers. But when he greeted her, she thought she understood why he might have spent most of his time out of sight in the backroom. He had a bad speech impediment, so bad that she had to concentrate to understand him. In all likelihood he was self-conscious about it.

  But he rose to the occasion, telling her that the Listers’ names were Bernard and Elaine and that they lived on the east side of the lake some five miles north of Southport. He was sure that their phone was listed in the small local directory. “Nice people,” he said, “regulars in this place, always welcome.”

  The Listers were not at home, so Carol left a message asking them to call her, explaining that she would like to speak with them about somebody they might have seen at The Cedar Post recently. She tried to sound matter of fact, but didn’t leave any details. She didn’t want them to have worried the issue and rehearsed what they would say when she talked w
ith them. When she left for the office, she could only hope that they hadn’t gone out of town. She wanted to see them just as soon as possible, preferably that very day.

  A man who identified himself as Bernie Lister called the sheriff’s office at a little after four. It was arranged that Carol would drop by at their cocktail hour, which meant 5:30 or thereabouts.

  Carol rapped on the Listers’ cottage door promptly at 5:30, and was invited into a pleasant if overly busy house. The walls and various surfaces were covered with framed pictures of generations of Listers, or people whom Carol assumed were relatives, past and present, of Elaine and Bernard Lister. It was the husband who answered the door, but it was Mrs. Lister who selected a chair for Carol and offered to fetch her a gin and tonic.

  “It’s what keeps us going on these days,” she said. “Do you like yours with a wedge of lime?”

  “No thanks,” Carol replied. “It sounds good, but I’m on duty, so I’d better take a pass. I promise not to take but a few minutes of your time. By the way, it was Brady Traber down at The Cedar Post who gave me your names. He speaks very highly of you, was sure you’d be glad to help me with my problem.”

  “We certainly will do what we can,” Mr. Lister said, “but I don’t know what it is you think we can help you with.”

  “Of course not,” Carol said, making mental notes about this seemingly affable middle-aged couple. Mrs. Lister had prematurely grey hair, and Mr. Lister, the shorter of the two, was nearly bald. But both of them appeared to be in good condition. She thought they looked like marathoners.

  “It has to do with a lunch you had at The Cedar Post awhile back,” she continued. “Two weeks ago yesterday to be exact. I know that it can be hard to remember a particular day, but I was hoping that you could recall that Tuesday and tell me a bit about two men I understand were sitting at an adjacent table.”