The Dead of Night

by Jean Rabe

  “Alfonso who?” Something about that name played around in her thoughts.

  “Lattimer. Alfonso Lattimer. He died November twentieth last year.”

  “Okay. Sure,” Piper said. “What about—”

  “I think Mr. Thresher was murdered. And maybe Lattimer was, too. Yeah, I think Lattimer, too. Probably.”

  “Murdered? I’ll meet you now and—”

  “I’m in Evansville. I’m finishing up, and I’ve got dinner plans tonight, some old college friends passing through here, and I’d hate to throw away the chance to reconnect. Mr. Thresher is going back in cold storage. Mr. Lattimer’s been in the ground for many months. Besides, I want to go through my notes, lose some sleep over it. I’ll come by your office. Eight okay? I’m not good much earlier.”

  “Eight’s fine,” Piper said. “Murdered?”

  “Pretty sure,” the coroner returned. “Pretty awful, huh? Let’s keep this to ourselves until we talk it through. Until we see if I’m right.”

  “Yeah. Absolutely to ourselves.” Piper felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. “Thanks, Dr. Neufeld. Have a good night with your friends.”

  She stood, unsteady. “Murdered,” she said, the word feeling like rotten cabbage on her tongue.

  Piper heard a whisper of thunder. It would be only fitting if it rained today.

  The door had been locked at Mark’s house; she’d had to break in. While she’d waited for the coroner she’d checked the place. Everything had been locked, except the dog door. There’d been no sign of foul play. No sign of a struggle. No blood. No sign of strangulation. But she hadn’t checked the basement. Diego had probably done that. “Sudden cardiac something-or-other” the coroner had said at the time. But now she was saying murder.

  He’d been ninety-four, a good run.

  Maybe Dr. Neufeld was wrong. Ninety-four, that was a long life. Not many people made it that far. But Dr. Annie Neufeld was good.

  Murder.

  What had the coroner found? And who was Alfonso Lattimer? Someone to find in the county directory. Someone to…

  “Wait.” Piper visualized the list of the genealogy club members that had been in Mark’s address book. Three names had been crossed off.

  Melanie Taylor

  Bruno Something-or-other

  And Alfonso Lattimer

  “Shit.”

  Someone was driving Melanie’s car, had followed her and Mark the Shark, had been parked on the street outside her apartment one night, had been across from the antique shop she’d stopped at, mud so thick she couldn’t read the license plate. Melanie to Mark to maybe Alfonso Lattimer.

  Piper’s head pounded.

  There was something vile swirling, that had caught Alfonso Lattimer and Mark Thresher and maybe Melanie Taylor. They had all been members of the genealogy club, they were all elderly. Had Melanie been murdered as well?

  “Who the hell?” Piper hushed. She walked back to the office.

  Who the hell would kill Mark the Shark?

  And why had the boy who’d been buried on the bluff not had shoes?

  34

  Thirty-Four

  Tuesday, May 8th

  “Do you think he’ll take it?” Piper was in her office, a quarter after seven, drinking coffee with Oren, who sat on the other side of her desk.

  Oren shook his head. “Meredith would be bored here. Despite the bones on the bluff, our meth problem, he’d be bored. Big city cop, he’s used to a different pace.”

  “He might be bored,” Piper admitted.

  Oren shook his head again. “He would be bored. And he’d be uncomfortable. Our county’s white, that’s just the way it is. He’d be out of place. Feel out of place.” He held the coffee with his right hand. His left held a granola bar that he took a bite of. “But he’d also be excellent. I dunno, the blue-haired bat,” at this he lowered his voice. “She helped by bringing in all those trashy books.”

  “I hadn’t known Meredith’s wife was an author. Never thought to ask much about his family. I was just interested in his experience.”

  “I just wanted the high points, his busts, conviction-rate follow through in the courts.” He finished the granola bar and washed it down with more coffee. “Mentioned Esme Meredith to my wife last night. She got all excited and pointed to her bookshelf. Saw Rainy Days and Romance on the top shelf. Turns out she’s a member of Sylvia D’s book club and is doing the group read on Love’s Blistering Embrace.” He gave a clipped laugh. “Hope he takes the job. My wife would be tickled.”

  “Yeah.” Piper set down her coffee. “Your granddaughter apartment hunting?”

  A nod. “Since that house she was going to rent has been declared uninhabitable. I have her boxes in my garage. Not that she’s got all the much. It’s probably all clothes. Had to move my boat out, though.”

  She went on before he might argue about her hiring Millie. “Dad—I haven’t told him yet, but I’m moving out. I was going to anyway, need some space, you know. A little distance now that he’s cancer free again. The apartment above his garage is furnished. Washer, dryer. A couple of big closets that would accommodate Millie’s clothes. Do you know if she’s a fan of That 70s Show? Orange shag, green appliances.”

  “I hated that show,” Oren said. “Don’t care for sit-coms, except I liked Home Improvement. I liked that one.”

  “Mention it to her. I suspect the rent would be reasonable, especially if Dad knows she’s your granddaughter.”

  “Ha! I suspect she’ll take it. I know she doesn’t want to pay another week’s rent at the hotel, and she won’t stay with me. When are you moving?”

  “This coming weekend, I think. I don’t have all that much stuff.”

  He finished the coffee. “About you hiring her and—”

  “Dr. Neufeld!” Sylvia D’s high voice cut him off. “Should I—”

  “I can show my own self back,” the coroner said as she stepped into Piper’s office. She was wearing a dress, a cornflower blue one with a full skirt that came to her knees, a patterned scarf around her waist as a sash. She had on jewelry and makeup. Piper hadn’t seen the coroner with makeup—and in a dress—before. “Oh good, Oren’s here, too. You both should hear this.” She plopped her purse next to the empty chair. “Be right back. Coffee fresh?”

  She came back with a cup and started talking as she sat. “Hunch, feeling, gut instinct, whatever you want to call it. I’m pretty sure Mark Thresher was murdered. I can’t prove it yet. Maybe I won’t be able to prove it and that’ll be up to you. Yes, his heart stopped—sudden cardiac event was the first thing I listed in my report. And I’ll stand by that, because that’s what happened. But—”

  “But what?” This from Oren.

  “But Mark Thresher had a pacemaker. Not an unusual thing for a person to have, especially an elderly one with a history of heart issues. Alfonso Lattimer had a pacemaker, too. Again, not an unusual thing. Alfonso was ninety-two. And he died of a sudden cardiac incident. Not unusual for two old men with pacemakers to die of heart problems.” She drained half the cup of coffee in one long gulp. “What did you do? Switch brands? This is actually pretty good.”

  “Piper bought—”

  Again she charged forward. “Same brand of pacemaker.” She finished the cup and set it on Piper’s desk, missing the coaster. “An older model. I’d taken them both out, the pacemakers. Lattimer’s was still in a box on the shelf in the morgue. Good thing. It let me send both off to the state. Will send. I’m going to the post office right after this. Look, honestly, it wasn’t their age or the pacemakers or any of that. What got me looking was Sheriff Blackwell’s comment Friday about Mr. Thresher having his bank account drained.”

  Piper started to ask a question, but the coroner kept going. “My wife, Bebe, she’d handled Lattimer’s estate, was the executor of his will. She said that people thought all of his money went to pay the nursing home. He’d been in the home about six months before he died, but it was assisted living, not as expensi
ve as full-blown nursing care. He’d still kept a car and drove to restaurants and his club meetings. Bebe said Lattimer had owned the used car lot in Chandler, and got a windfall when he sold it, redid his will then to include some nieces and nephews. He should have had plenty of money. But when the time came to dole it out to the relatives, Bebe discovered his money markets and bank accounts were essentially empty. A few dollars left in each one. She was basically a pro-bono executor, if there is such a thing. Bebe didn’t make a cent. There wasn’t even enough money to bury him. The family handled that, the burial, and the old fart’s club chipped in and bought the gravestone.” She looked at Piper. “Your dad would remember the collection taken for the gravestone. He’s a member of the old fart’s club, right?”

  Piper nodded.

  Dr. Neufeld came up for air, looked back and forth between Piper and Oren, and when neither one commented, she continued.

  “So, it was Lattimer’s squeezed bank accounts that did it, the sheriff here mentioning Thresher’s money had been siphoned. Two old men with pacemakers, sudden cardiac incidents, money drained. Same model of pacemaker. Too many coincidences. I don’t care if they were past their expiration dates.” She leaned forward and tapped an index finger on the edge of Piper’s desk. “So I hit Google right before I called you yesterday. A hunch, you know. I’d remembered reading something sometime back, needed to jog my brain. Google is my friend, cemented it. Found the big FDA warning. Certain brands of pacemakers are vulnerable to hacking. They have a transmitter that’s part of a home monitor. The monitor connects the pacemaker to a wireless RF signal. The monitor can be hacked to send modified commands to a patient, shocking the patient, throwing off the heartbeat. I saw a monitor in Mark Thresher’s den, on the hutch above his computer. There are patches for those pacemakers, the ones Thresher and Lattimer had. But you have to be online and connected to download the patches and prevent the hacking. If neither one of those men downloaded the patches—and I’ll bet they didn’t—then they could have been hacked. Like their money markets and bank accounts could have been hacked. A sophisticated crime for this county, wouldn’t you think?”

  “Murder,” Piper said flatly.

  “Yeah, I’ll bet its murder. Both men,” Dr. Neufeld said. “You’re going to ask me about Melanie Taylor. She had a cardiac incident, too, but she didn’t have a pacemaker. I don’t know if she had a will. If she did, Bebe didn’t handle it. I don’t know if she was missing money when she died. You’ll have to dig into that.”

  “Someone has her car, Melanie Taylor’s,” Piper said, looking at Oren. “I need to find the Celica.”

  Dr. Neufeld stood. “I don’t know how long the state lab will take with the pacemakers. Gotta be a way to tell if they’re hacked, right? I know pacemakers keep logs of what they do, the state lab could access that, find the hack that way. Honestly, I don’t know all that much about stuff like that, but I’m crossing my fingers and toes that the state lab does. Two elderly men, same model of pacemaker, money drained. I wonder how many more old farts in that club have pacemakers. You better pray they’re not models on the FDA’s list.” She reached into her purse and retrieved a printout, waved it, and then handed it to Piper. “Those are the models the FDA is worried about. Maybe you should show that around to the genealogy club. I gotta run. Post office and breakfast with Bebe and her son. He stopped here on his way to Indy.”

  She stood in the doorway. “Oren, congratulations on your granddaughter being hired here. I’m sure she’ll be a great deputy. The beginning of Shavuot, let’s get your family to my place for dinner. Bebe and me will cook, and will make sure there’s lots of dairy, finishing with ice cream and more ice cream—we’ll stay up all night with the Torah.”

  Then she was gone and the only sound was the scanner squawking from another room.

  35

  Thirty-Five

  Piper read her notes.

  “Mark Thresher, pacemaker, sudden cardiac incident.

  “Alfonso Lattimer, pacemaker, sudden cardiac incident.

  “Melanie Taylor, no pacemaker, heart failure—daughter said there was some ‘very odd spending via her PayPal account to the tune of twelve thousand dollars,’ but who’d otherwise left an estate valued at four hundred thousand.

  “Bruno Gradicki, who died a year and a half ago of lung cancer at the age of seventy-one and left a comfortable estate.”

  “Gradicki. His parents owned the skating rink that burned thirty years back,” Oren said. “Gradicki Skate and Date.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Thirty years back. You weren’t breathing yet.”

  “Those four. Those are the deceased genealogy club members.” She turned to the list and accompanying margin notes from Mark Thresher’s address book. “The other club members—all still breathing.” She pushed the list across to Oren.

  •Paul Blackwell, longtime sheriff and Democrat

  •Sylvia D

  •Lamar Odon

  •Gary Frank

  •Billie Attkinson, named for William Frederick Attkinson who moved to Rockport with his family in 1849, got a good education, and bought 375 acres of farmland

  •Megan Cappa

  •Emily Johnson

  •Kayla Clodfelder

  •Stomp Barnett, descendant of William Wesley Barnett who was born in Spencer County in 1842, enlisted in the First Indiana Cavalry, came back to farm, operate a livery in Rockport, and father five children

  •Anthony “Breemy” Breem

  •Tina Steger, sometimes a Republican

  •Janet Collins

  •Chuck Schleevogt

  •Biggie Hamilton, great-great-great-grandnephew of Bart P. Hamilton, one of eight children who honorably on June 29, 1865, mustered out of the Twenty-eighth Regiment Indiana Volunteer Infantry and went on to father twelve children because apparently they did not have birth control or self-control back then

  •John Rasor, descendant of Spencer County Commissioner James Rasor, an exclusive Democrat who only advocated the principles of his party, and whose daughter Mary wed John H. Huffman and produced two offspring

  •Steve Kaiser

  •Janice Snoddy

  •Carolyn Tibbetts

  •Bruce Schrock

  •Jake Bocce

  •Missy Fable

  •Paul Mooney, grandson of Ed Mooney who worked in a coalmine

  •Sully Sullivan

  •Steve R

  •D.L. Stebo, prominent Republican and local folklorist

  •Mercy Hershey

  •Al Bingemer, barbershop quartet member from a very long line of distinguished barbershop quartet singers

  “John Rasor,” Oren said. “He has a Huffman connection. I want to talk to him, too. Him and Chuck Schleevogt.”

  “Dad says not all the members show up at every meeting, but hopefully we’ll get lucky.”

  “At least Schleevogt said he’d be there.”

  Next, she pulled up the list of computer club members Zeke the Geek had provided.

  •Ezekiel Whitman, president

  •Mike Vola

  •Gregg Hommer

  •Chris Stiver

  •Cassidy Keaton

  •Neville Mooney—Piper wondered if he was related to Paul from the other list

  •Gerald Roland

  •Larry Pinscher

  “JJ is at the high school. I gave her this list of names. She’s talking to the principal, seeing if any of those kids have been in trouble—or are likely to do some computer hacking. Ezekiel wasn’t much into ratting on his friends, but said he didn’t believe any of them would do something like that.”

  Oren rubbed his chin. “School records, they’re funny about that. Parents’ permission, need warrants for records, all those things. I don’t think you’re going to learn—”

  “I know, but JJ’s husband is the athletic director, or still will be for a few more days. She thinks she has an ‘in,’ and volunteered to exploit
that. Maybe get a finger pointed toward who we need to get warrants for. No way will a judge give us warrants on all eight students.”

  “Maybe JJ’ll get lucky. It’s often who you know in this world,” Oren said. He tapped a name on the old fart’s list. “And I hope Chuck Schleevogt there can tell me something about Neal Robert Huffman. Hope he remembers. John Rasor, too, maybe.” He shook his head. “You really think a high school kid swiped money from Thresher? Helluva lot of money.”

  “And from Lattimer, and maybe used Taylor’s PayPal account. Sent me nasty email, spray painted the car. Yeah, I do. The kids in that computer club have access to those people, several of them bring their laptops, maybe share their passwords so the kids can help them with things. Yeah, I think it’s one of the kids. Maybe more than one.”

  “So the question with most any crime is ‘why,’” Oren mused. “With the kids, that’s an easy one to answer. Money. Money is the ‘why.’ Always follow the money. Money buys dreams. So you just need the ‘who’ and the ‘how,’ Piper. The ‘why’ is the money. Everybody wants money—more money, and more money.”

  He’d called her Piper, a first. Always before it was Sheriff or Sheriff Blackwell, proper and impersonal, if he called her anything at all. Were they finally making a connection, over coffee and dead men and sixty-five-year-old bones?

  “With the bones,” Oren continued, “the ‘who’ and the ‘how’ are important. But not so interesting as they ‘why.’ Why would someone kill a nine-year-old boy—”

  “Who was dressed up to play sheriff on Halloween?”

  “Yep. I want Chuck Schleevogt and John Rasor to tell me something. Tell me why.”

  The “tell me something” wasn’t lost on Piper. She knew Oren considered the bones his case, even though she’d been the one who literally stumbled onto it. If he was right about the identity, it really was his case. She hoped he could close it. She hoped she could find Mark the Shark’s thief…and maybe murderer. Maybe it was the same person. That would be a win for her and Oren.