Say No to Murder

by Nancy Pickard

“Oh,” Geof said. I had the feeling that because he was in a pastor’s study he refrained from saying what he was really thinking. “Terrific. Another door.”

  But while Hardy’s announcement caused him vexation, it produced an audible sigh of relief among the others. Up until the other door came into the picture, our committee offered the only likely suspects. A second door opened, so to speak, the field.

  “Well.” Geof’s shoulders raised in a disgusted shrug. “I’m going to have to ask for your understanding and patience. I’d like to talk to each of you separately before you leave today. Your Honor, why don’t we start with you?”

  Barbara said bitterly, “There goes the election. I can see the headlines now: MAYOR SUSPECTED IN CHURCH MURDER. Me and my big mouth, Hardy. Why couldn’t I just let you have the damn grave?” As she followed Geof out the door, she turned to look back at her fellow committee members. “I would consider it a personal favor,” said the mayor to the assembled civic leaders, “if one of you would confess, preferably one of you Democrats.”

  chapter

  15

  I was the last to be called into the sanctuary to be questioned. Being last left me alone in the church with Geof and Ailey, all the other committee members having gone home and all the other police officers having finished their distasteful chores. Even Atheneum McGee had departed in more than a spiritual sense: the only remaining trace of him was an outline on the floor where he had fallen, and a surprisingly small spilling of blood.

  I sat in Hardy’s high-backed chair at the front of the church; Geof’s long legs were sprawled out in front of him as he sat beside me in the assistant pastor’s chair. Ailey Mason rode the choir rail like a cowboy on a horse.

  “Well, this in one for the books,” Geof said to Ailey. “What’ll we say to his relatives? The good news is your cousin didn’t die in Vietnam; the bad news is he didn’t live long enough to tell you so.”

  “What have we got?” Ailey asked rhetorically. “As far as I can tell, Ms. Cain here is the only person who stayed in one place the whole time.” His glance at me was no more or less friendly than usual. “At least she says she did.”

  “You’re our ballast, Jenny,” Geof said. “You’re the only rock in the moving stream of suspects. My God, they’re a peripatetic bunch! Not one of them can stand still for more than five minutes at a time. They were in and out of that choir room like flies. To the John. To the drinking fountain. Outdoors for a smoke. Indoors to use the phone. Downstairs for a cup of coffee. Into the John. Back to the choir room. Drop in on you in the study. Meet in the corridor to confer. Back into the choir room. Back to the John.” He threw up his hands. “I think they’ve all got urinary infections.”

  “That’s disgusting,” I said, and tried to laugh.

  “And the door was always locked,” Ailey said.

  “Sounds like the title to a murder mystery,” I said, “And the Door Was Always Locked.”

  He ignored me. “The lock was thrown so that every time somebody closed the door, it locked from the inside. That means the killer could have done it anytime he happened to find himself alone in the room with McGee.”

  “Or,” Geof amended, “he might have waited at that side door with the cross, until he heard everyone else leave the room, then gone in and killed him.”

  “How’d Mary get in that last time,” I asked, “if the door was locked and the only person inside was dead?”

  “She and her husband have keys to the church,” was the simple explanation from Geof. “When she knocked repeatedly and no one came to the door, she opened it herself.”

  “The way I see it,” Ailey hypothesized, “is that the killer could have ingressed either through the front or the side door, but he must have egressed through the side door, then come around the sanctuary to join the rest of the committee in the pastor’s study.”

  “I know who the killer was,” I said.

  They looked at me expectantly.

  “Just look for the bureaucrat among the group,” I advised them, “and you’ll have your killer. Only bureaucrats ingress and egress; everybody else goes in and out.”

  Mason flushed, but Geof laughed.

  “This seems to support Webster Helms’ feelings about sabotage,” he said. “Because McGee was killed only after he agreed to leave the project and the town out of it and to seek redress from his relatives. And no, Jenny, redress is not something you do when you ingress.” He smiled. “But I digress.”

  “What do you think of Hardy’s feelings about a racial motivation?” I wanted to know.

  “I think it’s an idea,” he said neutrally.

  “So was the notion that the Earth is flat.”

  “Yes. Although I am not forgetting about the phone calls you and he received. Maybe they’re connected to all this, or maybe they were just the work of a lone crank.”

  “I suspect all cranks are lone,” I said seriously, “even when they’re in a group. What other motives do we have?”

  “Other motives have we none,” Geof sighed.

  “So who was alone in the room with him at any time?” I asked.

  “Do you really think that anybody is going to tell us that?” Ailey asked sarcastically. “We figure he was probably killed in the last five minutes before your whole committee was gathered back in the study. And during that time . . .”—he pulled out a little notebook, flipped it open and studied it—“Shattuck says he was getting a drink of water in the hall. Sullivan was having a smoke on the front steps. Pete Tower was calling his taco stand. Mary Eberhardt was in the study with you, and her husband had just left there. Jack Fenton was getting a cup of coffee from the canteen in the basement. The mayor was on the phone to her press manager. That little architect was in the men’s room. And we know where you say you were.”

  “And,” I added, “Miss Scarlet was in the study with the revolver, Colonel Pickering was in the conservatory with the rope, and someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah.”

  Geof laughed. “That’s about it.”

  “Did anybody have blood on him? Or her?”

  “Please.” Geof was still chuckling. “If they did, do you think we’d still be here? And no, we didn’t find any splinters from the cross stock under their fingernails,” He suddenly sobered, remembering where he was and what he was doing. “We’re just funny as hell, aren’t we?”

  “Geof, while my committee was running hither and yon, where were you and the other cops?”

  “Not,” he said disgustedly, “outside the side door to the choir room.”

  “Well, where do you go from here?”

  “Home,” he said. “Ailey, get something to eat, then find out where McGee was staying while he was here in town. Check with the station to see if they found a motel key on him, and if they found his car. Then go through all his stuff to find the name of a wife we ought to call. It’s damn sure his other relatives won’t be any help, since they think he’s dead.” Geof shook his head. “He is dead. This is complicated.” He tugged at my hand, pulling me to my feet. “Come on, Jenny, let’s go home and I’ll get a quick sandwich. McGee’s not going to be any less dead for my going hungry.”

  We walked down the center aisle together, each lost in thought. I was musing over how . . . odd . . . the day had been: a stranger appeared out of nowhere, then disappeared into the great beyond. He came, he tried to conquer, he died.

  “Odd,” I said aloud. Then I realized I was staring straight into the face of Ailey Mason who had preceded us down the aisle.

  He looked hurt.

  “Not you, Ailey.” It being a church, and Sunday, I smiled. He registered surprise, then smiled back.

  It was the day’s only miracle.

  chapter

  16

  “Do you believe that story Atheneum McGee told?” I asked Geof on the way to his house, “About how he was blown out of a cave in Vietnam and wandered in the jungle? Do you think that really happened?”

  “Who knows? We’ll check with the army
to get their version of what happened to him. We’ll see if they think his story could be true.”

  “It’s possible, I suppose.”

  “It’s also possible he went AWOL and he used that story to cover his tracks.”

  “Yes, but if he lied, he took an incredible chance that the army would catch him. I mean, he couldn’t have spent that money in the brig. I wonder if they could have executed him for desertion?”

  “Ah-ha,” Geof said wryly, “at last, a motive.”

  He turned into his drive.

  “Come to think of it,” I said, “we don’t know much . . . even if he was Atheneum McGee.”

  “What do you know about him, Jenny?”

  “Not much more than you do, I expect. At the time of the sale of Lobster McGee’s property to the developers, there was a question as to whether all the heirs had been properly notified. Atheneum’s name came up then. I remember because his name was so odd. And the lawyers had to check carefully to be sure he hadn’t left any heirs of his own when he died, supposedly, in Vietnam.”

  “Did he?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  We walked quickly up to his house. Within minutes, we were seated across from one other at the kitchen counter, eating braunschweiger on whole wheat.

  “I wonder,” I mused aloud, “if the army, or whatever branch of the service it was, actually declared him dead. Or just presumed dead. He made it sound as if a sergeant had identified a body as his and shipped that body home to be buried by the other McGees.”

  “If he had only been presumed dead,” Geof said, “they would have had to wait seven years to have him declared officially kaput.”

  “Wasn’t his peat-uncle Lobster declared dead on the basis of a presumption? I mean, they never found his body, did they? But nobody waited seven years to say he was dead. If they had, we wouldn’t be building Liberty Harbor now.”

  “I’m trying to recall.” Geof picked up a piece of braunschweiger that had fallen onto his plate. “Seems to me that was a case in which it was pretty clear as to exactly what had happened. The Coast Guard said he drowned, I don’t remember how they knew. But it must have been like what happens when an airplane crashes: they’re ninety-nine percent sure they know who was on board, and it’s pretty obvious what happened, so they feel safe in declaring that passenger John Doe died in the crash, even if his body was burned to a crisp and blown into the next state.”

  I put down my sandwich. “Please.”

  “They must have been equally positive about Lobster,” Geof continued imperturbably. “Or maybe they found his body. Maybe it washed up in Freeport.” He smiled and swallowed the last bite. “I don’t remember. It wasn’t a case that landed in a file folder on my desk. Listen, I got my own dead body to worry about, fresh and on view. His great-uncle is no concern of mine.”

  He removed his plate to the sink, rinsed it and placed it in the dishwasher. I had Wife Number Two to thank for that good training, previous wives not being without their uses to the next woman in a man’s life.

  The phone rang.

  “I’ll get it,” he said.

  “Yeah, Ailey,” he said next, then he listened for a few moments. “What do you mean, no car? How’d he get to church? Did you check the cab company? They didn’t? No buses out that way on Sunday. He must have walked. Yeah, right, or hitched. So what about the motel?”

  Again, he listened.

  “Hell,” I heard him say, “do we at least know where he came from? All right, hang tight. I’m on my way.”

  I walked him to the front door.

  “Well,” Geof said, “he had a wallet on him with an Illinois driver’s license in another name, but that’s no surprise. If he was hiding from the army, I’d expect that. But he also had an old ID card with his real, name on it.”

  “Atheneum.”

  “Yes.” He patted his pockets for his car keys. “That wallet was all he had on him, Ailey tells me. No car keys, no room key. Hell, maybe he walked all the way from Illinois.”

  “And slept in the park?”

  “He smelted like he slept in the men’s room.” Geof leaned down to give me a quick but imaginative kiss, I closed the door behind him, kicked off my high, heels, and curled up on the living room floor with a pile of Foundation applications.

  Denied. Denied. Maybe.

  My eyes lifted from an application that put forth a proposal for teaching French and German for travelers to the inmates of our state penitentiaries. I scratched my foot, but it was something in my brain that was itching. I forced my eyes back down to the typewritten application. I wondered which foreign phrases the volunteers would teach the prisoners. “The pen of my aunt is on the table” might not be nearly so useful as “I have a gun. Give me the money and the keys to your car.” Denied.

  I looked up again, to stare out the window into the front yard. It was brown and dry. How did Atheneum McGee know that a sergeant had identified another body as his own?

  I dumped the applications off my lap and padded to the phone. Though I had asked for Geof when I was connected with the police station, I had to settle for Ailey Mason.

  “Ailey,” I said, “where, exactly, in Illinois was Atheneum McGee from?”

  “Springfield,” he said grudgingly. “Why?”

  “Thank you,” I said and hung up. I looked up another number in the phonebook and, hesitating only a moment to ask myself if I was sure I knew what I was doing, I dialed it.

  “Yes?” a woman’s voice replied.

  “This is Jennifer Cain.” I gave her a second to place me. “I’m the woman who accompanied Detective Bushfield to your house when your husband died.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Mrs. Reich, I think you ought to know that Atheneum McGee was murdered this afternoon in the Church of the Risen Christ.”

  I heard her breath taken in sharply.

  “He’s dead?” And then, for the first time in our short acquaintance, Annie Reich expressed emotion. “Damn him! What about my money!”

  chapter

  17

  Her house had altered in the week since her husband’s death, and so had she. At first, we noticed only that the newspapers had piled up on the walk, and no one had hauled the empty trash bins back to the garage from where they leaned against each other on the curb. But then she met us at the door, a different woman.

  The once immaculately coiffed hair now hung in lank strands, and when she pushed them carelessly back from her eyes, we saw dark rings under her arms. Those eyes that calmly observed us were still a deep, clear navy, but they evidently no longer saw a need for personal hygiene. Annie Reich had not recently bathed or changed her clothes.

  “Come in,” she said to Geof, Ailey and me.

  We stepped into a room in which Endust had not recently been sprayed. A magazine lay spread in the middle of the floor. There was a half-eaten cheese sandwich on the arm of a sofa and a glass of the omnipresent iced tea tilted precariously against the lower edge of a fireplace. Some of it had spilled, some time ago, leaving a dried, dark pool on the carpet The house, too, smelted—of things left in a refrigerator too long, of toilets not flushed at once. So, I thought, even she had a time of grief and forgetting, and sympathy began to well within me.

  She led us again to the misnamed family room. Again, she brought sweetened iced tea, but the glass that held mine was dirty, and I set it aside. For a strange, suspended moment, we stared at her while she gazed back, placid as a nun, showing no signs of the mild dismay she’d expressed to me over the phone.

  “Mrs. Reich,” Geof said, finally, “was your husband a sergeant in Atheneum McGee’s platoon in Nam?”

  “Yes,” she said calmly. “How did you find out?”

  “At church today,” I said, “McGee told a wild story about having been blown out of a cave in Vietnam. He said his sergeant had identified another man’s body as his, McGee’s that is. I wondered how McGee would have known that, if he was unconscious, as he claimed he was, not to me
ntion having supposedly been blown yards away from the site of the explosion. The only way he could have known that was if he had watched it happen, or if he went AWOL with the help of that sergeant, or he found out about it later.

  “I eliminated the first possibility because I didn’t think he would have been able to get near enough to know exactly what his sergeant was doing. That left possibilities two or three, both of which seemed to imply that his sergeant knew he was still alive. At that point, I remembered that the only record your husband had was a military one, and that you were from Springfield.”

  I took a chance on germs and sipped the iced tea.

  “This being Massachusetts,” I continued, “I thought you meant Springfield, Mass. But of course there are other Springfields, including the one in Illinois. Detective Mason confirmed for me that Atheneum McGee had, indeed, come to Poor Fred from there. So that placed him and your husband in the same city at the same time.

  “Then I thought about your presence in church today. Why were you there, I asked myself. I couldn’t believe you were a member! And you don’t strike me as someone who would go out of her way to witness a spectacle. You sat in the back row. So did McGee. What’s more, he arrived at the church without a car. He didn’t take a cab. There’s no bus service out there on weekends. And the police failed to trace him to a local motel or hotel. So who took him to church this morning? Who put him up for the night?”

  She didn’t volunteer the answer. Talking to her was like communicating with a slab of uncooked dough. She sat there, large and white and pasty, her chest rising and falling with even breaths. Her eyes were raisins, with the life dried out of them.

  “I called you on a hunch,” I admitted, “but if it had been a horse race I would have put down money to win. You took him to church today, didn’t you? He stayed here in this house with you, didn’t he?”

  She nodded that massive head, smirking a little.

  Suddenly, she burst into speech. “Ansen told me that Atheneum and another man were caught behind the lines by ground fire. They holed up in a cave, just like he said, but it was only for a night before the platoon came back to get them. Anyway, the morning before the platoon came back, the other man stepped out of the cave to look around, and he stepped on a mine. Ansen said it blew his face off. When Atheneum saw what happened, he saw his chance to escape from duty. There wasn’t much left on the body to identify it as anybody human, so Atheneum threw down some things that would identify the body as his. Like they’d been blown off him, you know. So when Ansen came back through with the rest of his men, looking for them, he only found the one body. He said they were in a hurry, they were being shot at, I think he called it ‘strafed,’ and they couldn’t stop and check dental records.” She smiled briefly, but the joke was hers alone to enjoy. She made it worse by adding, “as if there were any teeth left to check. Anyways, Ansen thought it was McGee. Why shouldn’t he of thought that? And he thought the other soldier had been taken prisoner. That’s what he reported when he got back to base, and he believed it at the time.”