Addressed to Kill

by Jean Flowers

  “Don’t give me that. You set us up. How did you know I wrote those letters?”

  I thought back as I often did when on a campus or in the company of a young student. I was no longer startled by their extreme self-confidence and their willingness to take on anyone who challenged them. Even the chief of police, I guessed, though I’d never fear for Sunni’s ability to maintain her authority.

  “You must have felt very strongly about your ex-professor to write those letters.”

  “A lot you know,” she said.

  “You didn’t write them?”

  “I didn’t write them for me. They were for somebody else.”

  Was Norah using the standard alibi of petty criminals who claimed they were holding the gun or the drugs for a friend? My expression seemed to have given away my disbelief. “But you did write them and send them to Professor Somerville?”

  “Do you know how it will look if my parents find out I was summoned to the police station?” she asked.

  We’d both been hopping slightly from one foot to the other, to prevent frostbite. People passed us by, walking around us on the grass on both sides of the path. Several gave us strange looks, but we’d kept our voices normal and most were too focused on keeping their blood circulating and spending as little time as possible in the outdoors. But I wasn’t aware of the cold so much as the strong feelings Norah’s selfish attitude was calling forth from my entire body.

  “Is there something you’d like me to do for you?” I asked, since she wasn’t answering any of my other questions.

  “Yes, mind your own business. No wonder the post office is going out of business.”

  That did it. I’d had about enough of this cheeky girl, barely out of her teens. I took a step toward her, forcing her to move back.

  “Even if you don’t care enough about who killed a faculty member at your school, aren’t you at least interested in finding out if there’s a murderer on your campus?” I raised my voice, enough to grab her attention. Or do you have one of those foolproof apps on your phone that will protect you from harm? I wanted to add. “If you know something about those letters, Norah, I suggest you report it now. This is not a classroom where everything is theoretical, or a video game. It’s real life.”

  “I’m . . . I’m just saying—”

  “A killer has struck down a man who was a father and a teacher on this campus. A young man the same age as you has lost his dad. Don’t you feel any responsibility to help find out who did this horrible thing?”

  It might have been the longest reprimand I’d ever uttered, but it seemed to have had some effect on the brazen young woman. She’d gasped, pouted, stuttered, and hunched her shoulders, in turn, and repeated the cycle during my extended speech. “I guess I didn’t think of it that way.”

  “Of course you didn’t, but you’d better start.”

  She nodded in a way that I understood to be sincere.

  I took a long breath and led Norah into the close-by Student Union Building, where we took seats on a bench in the lobby.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” I said.

  I couldn’t imagine better preparation for delivering a presentation to Norah’s peers.

  * * *

  What Norah poured out made sense in a college-kid kind of way. Morgan, the alpha girl of the math majors, brought up to think she was a real princess, was so put out by her physics teacher’s treatment of her that she wanted to retaliate in some way.

  “She wanted to make him sweat,” Norah said, summing up the letter project. “But she was afraid he’d recognize her handwriting.” She took a deep breath and fell silent.

  “So you volunteered to write it for her?” I prompted.

  “More like won the lottery. Or lost it, I guess.”

  “All the math majors knew about the letters?”

  “Most of us,” she said, by which I assumed she meant the cool kids.

  I wondered how they thought Dennis would recognize anyone’s handwriting. Didn’t those science and math classes use only symbols and numbers and keyboards? I couldn’t imagine homework or quizzes requiring long handwritten essays, but that was irrelevant at the moment.

  “You know what you have to do next,” I said.

  “Do my parents have to know all this?”

  “I’m not sure. But I do know that the chief of police is more than fair, and if you tell her the truth, you’ll have nothing to worry about.”

  “Can I tell her you sent me?”

  I nodded, suppressing a laugh.

  We went our separate ways after about a half hour, ending our talk with an unexpected hug. I walked away wondering whether invoking my name with Sunni would work for or against Norah.

  Less than a half hour until my talk. I wondered how many other unscheduled meetings I might have to fit in.

  * * *

  The news had reported a low of thirty-five degrees today. Whoever gave information for their “feels like” poll submitted thirty-one degrees; I would have said twenty-one, with a slight chance of freezing even a cup of coffee.

  I arrived at Mary Draper Hall, my cheeks dried out, nose aching, tears streaming down my face from the cold. A small buffer zone right inside the doors was overheated, as was standard for New England buildings in the winter, but the lobby was well-balanced for temperature. I loosened my scarf, removed my outer jacket, and took a seat to catch my breath. And to pull my thoughts together.

  I sat in front of a portrait I’d missed the last time I was there. In a large framed painting, Mary Draper sat wrapped in a black shawl over a black dress. Her face was somber, and her lace cap lay on black hair that was pulled back tightly, making me wonder if her forehead hurt. A white lace collar at her neck was the only relief on the dark canvas.

  I didn’t have much time to myself. I’d hardly pulled out my sheaf of notes and photos when Mercedes bounded in, a blue paisley cape flapping behind her. I could have sworn the highlights in her hair today were blue also. Did she really take the time to match her hair with her outfit?

  “I saw you ahead of me on the path,” she said. “I’m glad you’re early. I want to apologize for my behavior yesterday. Completely uncalled for.”

  “Everyone is on edge,” I said.

  “Thanks for not rubbing my nose in it.” She removed her gloves and stuffed them in her leather tote, then blew her breath into her hands. “And about the lighthouse itself,” she continued.

  “I’m happy to give it to you. I have it in my briefcase.” I’d packed it this morning, in case Mercedes did another one-eighty, demanding I return it to her.

  Mercedes shook her head. “It was silly of me to want both. But I was thinking. You know, it was a favorite spot for Dyson and his parents when Charlene was alive.”

  I got the message. “That’s a great idea—for you to give it to him,” I said.

  Mercedes blew out a great breath. “Yes,” she said. “That would be lovely. But it doesn’t have to be me. You can give it to him.” She took a seat next to me and leaned in. “Who do you think did it, Cassie?”

  I couldn’t very well tell her about TNMHJ, where the middle letter represented Mercedes herself. “Me?” I asked, as if it were an outlandish thought to assume I had a clue or an opinion about Dennis’s murder, let alone an inside track with the police investigation.

  “Come on, Cassie, it’s not a secret that you’re the eyes and ears of the chief of police and that she talks to you.”

  “We’re friends,” I said. “We have dinner together sometimes.”

  “Oh, of course. It’s not that she’d be sharing anything more than fat quarters with you.” When I gave her a curious look, she reminded me, “I used to be part of the quilting group, until . . . until I got too busy.”

  My devious mind went straight to Dennis Somerville. Had they started dating at the time Mercedes dropped out
of the quilt group? Had she then harbored bad feelings about the man who interrupted her life and then broke up with her? Or did she break up with him? Not a question I could easily ask.

  Mercedes stayed put on the bench and made another appeal. “You’ll let me know, won’t you, if you hear anything at all?” She apparently knew better than to wait for an answer and made a final pitch. “The sooner they find who did this to all of us, the sooner we’ll be able to move on.”

  I couldn’t have agreed more.

  I sent Mercedes on ahead of me while I wrote a quick text to Sunni.

  Norah on her way to you.

  Norah wrote for Morgan.

  I wished I knew what the nasty notes and their true author had to do with Dennis’s murder. At the least, I had to reconsider my acronym, TNMHJ. The N for Norah might have to be eliminated, the M for Mercedes might turn into M for Morgan. That left TMHJ—T for the three thieves, M for Morgan, H for Hank, and J for Joyce. I tried not to let the other twenty-two possibilities in the alphabet cloud my thinking.

  * * *

  Like most things I wasted energy fretting over, my presentation went better than I’d expected. The John Donne quote, More than kisses, letters mingle souls, drew smiles and murmurs of pleasure from the crowd of students—about fifty, I estimated—giving me a boost of confidence. I gave due credit to Sir Rowland Hill and made swift work of the positive effect of fast, inexpensive postal communication on the masses in Victorian England. I hoped I didn’t sound too preachy. My goal was to provide background that would give the layperson an understanding of the importance of the postal system in social reform. “A power engine of civilization,” as Hill had called it.

  Why did it seem like a century ago that I’d sat in a similar classroom, thinking I already had most of the answers to life’s big questions, giving half an ear to what a professor was saying in most courses? Behind me now was a fancy whiteboard, but somehow I could have sworn I smelled chalk, as if this lecture hall carried with it the odors of each preceding year.

  At some point, I abandoned my notes and relied on my own experience of an exciting profession. I gave a shout-out to one of the many postal museums, in Washington, D.C., and reported on a special exhibit Linda and I had seen that included an anthrax-laced letter addressed to a congressman. The examination and decontamination processes carried out by postal inspectors had rendered the letter and envelope nearly illegible, but it had been fascinating to see nonetheless.

  The same was true for the handcuffs on display, which had bound the wrists of one of the nation’s most wanted criminals, the Unabomber. The cuffs had been snapped on the perpetrator as he was brought out of his Montana hideout in the late nineties, and later given to a postal inspector in recognition of his work on the case.

  My gaze landed on Mercedes and I had to push back thoughts of the letters Dennis Somerville had brought to my small post office. Why hadn’t I been able to help him with his tainted mail? It was not a headliner case like an anthrax-laced letter or a manifesto, but a postal situation that was worthy of help, and I’d refused it.

  The fact that my friends let me off the hook for the refusal, and that the letters still hadn’t proven to be connected to his murder, did little to ease my conscience. I wouldn’t be able to rest until I knew for sure. I chided myself for not asking Norah the last name of Morgan, the instigator of the mailing. Surely, Sunni would have uncovered it, and a lot more about the young woman, by now.

  I returned my attention to the student body and talked a little more about the role that postal workers played in investigations such as the conviction of white-collar criminals in illegal financial schemes.

  “So these inspectors are, like, cops?” asked a young woman in the front row, without raising her hand.

  I was glad for an excuse to extol the impressive forensics capabilities of the USPS and wondered why it remained such a secret, when they were involved in mail-screening for high-profile national political and sporting events.

  When attention started to wane, as evidenced by cell phones being accessed surreptitiously, I threw it open to Q and A.

  Q—from a tiny woman with a pixie haircut: “What’s the weirdest thing you were ever asked to mail?”

  A—from me: “A box of bees.”

  I followed up the surprised laughter with a summary of the packaging requirements for shipping bees, highlighting queen honey bees, which may be shipped by air transportation, accompanied by up to eight attendant honeybees.

  I wondered what the students would think of the pages of regulations for shipping poultry and live scorpions.

  Q—from the young man next to the tiny woman: “What’s the biggest thing you ever mailed?”

  A—from me: “Bricks, up to two hundred pounds by one person.”

  The students seemed a little too interested in the practice of sending bricks as a form of protest to junk mailers. The restriction on weight had been instituted after a builder in Utah overwhelmed the post office by sending a bank—an entire building’s worth of bricks, fifty pounds at a time, for a total of forty tons.

  I glanced now and then at Mercedes, sitting in the front row, and was bolstered also by her smiles of approval. In spite of what I deemed a successful presentation, I was happy when Mercedes stood and announced, “We have time for only one more question, ladies and gentlemen.”

  A young woman with a laptop in the center of a cluster of students raised her hand. “This is a history question,” she began.

  I heard Mercedes whisper, “Finally.”

  “Who was the first female postmaster?” the woman asked.

  “A very good question, and not as easy as it sounds to answer, but I’ll give it a try. At first there were no records of women in the postal service.”

  An outburst of comments from several female students followed.

  “Of course, there were no records.”

  “It figures.”

  “All the work and no credit.”

  I let them go on a few minutes before I added a few facts to what was becoming a feminist rally.

  “Women would pinch-hit for a male worker—a father or a husband. Benjamin Franklin’s sister-in-law Elizabeth worked in a general store that also held a post office, but she wasn’t officially called a postmistress. I can give you references to a few well-known women in the early days: Lydia Hill—no relation to Sir Rowland—Mary Katherine Goddard, Adeline Evans—”

  Mercedes stood up again and interrupted. “I’ll have Postmistress Miller give me a list of references for you. Let’s thank her for giving her time today with a round of applause.” She joined the clapping, leaning over to me. “You went ten minutes over and no one left,” she said. “A minor miracle.”

  “But I’m just getting started,” I said.

  “You have to leave them wanting more.”

  I wished there were a way to thank John Donne for giving me the push I needed. Or maybe it was my live friends, like Linda, Ben, Sunni, and Quinn, who’d done it.

  18

  Mercedes flew out the door to keep an appointment in town. She fell short of giving me a high five or a fist bump but uttered complimentary words about my presentation and smiled an I owe you as she left. Several students stopped to thank me personally on their way out of the classroom. All in all, it was such a pleasant experience I wanted to do it again.

  A small seating area near a window outside the classroom looked inviting as a place to unwind before braving the cold. I settled on an extra-wide chair and turned my cell phone on. I scrolled through texts from Quinn (I’ll bet you were terrific) (I wished I hadn’t discouraged him from attending), Linda (I can hear the applause from here) (She would have done better), Ben (I’m sure you did us proud), and Sunni (Lunch 12:30 here) (Uh-oh, more like a summons than an invitation).

  I checked in with Ben and was promised no unpleasant surprises when I returned in the afte
rnoon.

  “Did you do good?” he asked.

  “I think so,” I said. “I’ll tell you some of the questions when I see you.”

  He filled me in on his shift, noting that there were still a lot of valentines coming in and informing me that he’d issued warnings about the late arrivals. I regretted that I missed a visit from the postmaster at South Ashcot with a request for a larger post office box for mislabeled mail. There was long-standing animosity between him and Ben, for a reason I wasn’t privy to, and I hoped Ben hadn’t set him off. Only a small creek divided the towns, and I felt it was important to be neighborly.

  “Don’t worry,” Ben said. “I told him we had no more large boxes and got him to rent two of the regular size.”

  “Nice work,” I said, not really sure.

  Though I didn’t know what Ben’s attitude had been during the negotiation, I had no right to complain, no matter what. He was making it possible for me to indulge in a couple of what college kids called extracurricular activities, the kind that got you a cool yearbook entry but weren’t necessarily a plus in one’s professional life.

  “I’m glad your talk came off well.”

  “Thanks. I’ll see you after lunch,” I said, thinking I really had to get him a present, more than a box of his favorite donuts this time.

  I packed my things and walked down the long hallway, my only disappointment being that I hadn’t come through for Sunni as far as discovering anything useful for the murder case went. Unless you counted bullying a student into turning herself in for facilitating a written attack on a professor. Hours spent on campus and all I had was a snow globe and a couple of interactions with faculty and former faculty. I looked out the windows onto the campus pathways as I passed empty or partially full classrooms, but not even Hank Blackwood was there to hassle me this time.

  When I arrived at the exit, I reconsidered making my way to Patrick Henry Hall, the math and sciences building. I was relieved to realize I didn’t have time for that round-trip and still make a twelve thirty lunch with Sunni. I couldn’t face another one-on-one with Gatekeeper Gail, and I didn’t see how it would do me any good. I expected she’d give me some kind of reprimand, as Norah did, claiming I’d set her up or tricked her into giving me information, which, of course, was true in both cases.