by Jessica Beck
“Maybe he suspected whoever was there was going to try to kill him, so he wanted something to defend himself. What better spot than around all of this heavy metal?”
I shrugged, and then I stepped back out into the front room again.
Grace asked, “Are you getting squeamish on me, Suzanne?”
“No, I just want to see something,” I said. I looked around the room for something else that might be used as a weapon. Within three feet of the door to the iron room, I found an old tool, a heavy wrench that would have served as a better bludgeon than an ancient iron. “Why didn’t the killer use this instead?” I asked as I picked it up. It wasn’t quite as heavy as an iron, but it would do the job just fine.
“Maybe they didn’t want to be seen from the outside?” Grace asked as she pointed to the windows facing the parking lot. “Or maybe Dan was already back there looking at something else when the killer came in.”
“I’m starting to see why the state police think this was just part of another robbery,” I said.
“How so?”
“In one scenario, Dan is upstairs. He comes down to investigate when he hears a noise, confronts the burglar, and then tries to get back upstairs. The thief panics, chases him, picking up an iron along the way and bashing him in the back of the head with it. But for that theory to work, we need to find the stairs that lead to the next floor.”
I walked back into the iron room, being careful to sidestep where I thought his body might have been found, and then on to the next space, where stacks upon stacks of old magazines, newspapers, and books were on display. From there, I finally found the stairs tucked away in one corner of the next room, one that contained nothing but doorknobs and hinges. There was enough ancient hardware in there to outfit a dozen homes. “This must be it,” I said as I put a hand on the newel post but didn’t ascend. Instead, I stood in front of the steps and looked around. “If I were coming downstairs in a hurry to investigate a noise in the front of the building, I wouldn’t go through the iron room or flee that way, either. The most direct route is through here,” I said, walking out of the hardware room and into one that held shelves of Depression glass, of all shapes and colors I could imagine. “This leads straight to the front door, whereas the other route veers off to one side.”
“Maybe he wanted to sneak up on the burglar,” Grace suggested.
“I suppose it’s possible, but if that were the case, how could Dan have been struck down so close to the front? Besides, there’s another reason that won’t work.”
“Why is that?” Grace asked.
“If Dan was fleeing, guessing from where the body likely fell, the killer would have had to reach around him to grab the iron before he hit him with it,” I said as I demonstrated what I was talking about.
“I know you’ve got an image in your head, but I still don’t see it.”
“Stand right here,” I said, pointing to the spot where his body must have lain.
“I don’t know about that, Suzanne. It’s kind of creepy.”
“I’d do it myself, but then I couldn’t show you what I have in mind. Come on. It will only take a second.”
“Okay,” Grace agreed reluctantly as she stood where I directed her to.
Once she was in position, I moved closer to the front, the place the killer had presumably chased Dan, at least in the official theory of what had happened. “See? To get to the shelf holding all of the irons, I’d have to reach around you. These pokers are much closer, and they would make better weapons, too. Why use the iron, then?”
“I don’t know,” Grace said, stepping quickly off the spot where she’d been standing. “Are we surprised their scenario doesn’t work?”
“A little,” I said. “Inspector Black is supposed to be some kind of hotshot. How could she miss this?”
“Maybe you’ve got it wrong,” Grace said.
“I’m willing to hear what you’ve got in mind.”
“What if the killer circled around? He’s breaking in, and he hears a noise himself. It’s Dan, so he goes around the corner to trap him from behind.”
“How would he even know that he could get back here? If this was random, then chances are good that he wasn’t here earlier.”
“Okay, how about this, then?” Grace asked. “What if he already had the iron nearby when he saw Dan? That would mean that he wouldn’t have to reach around to grab it.”
“So, he just picked up the iron ahead of time for a souvenir?” I asked her.
“Don’t be sarcastic; that’s my forte.” She stepped back up front and looked around. “Suzanne, look around. What is this place missing?”
It only took me a second to get it. “Anything made from cast iron,” I said. “You might be right. The iron could have already been here, and if what you’re saying is true, it was closer than the pokers, too. That makes sense.”
“Thanks, but it still doesn’t help us any. We’re working on the premise that this wasn’t random, remember?”
“That still doesn’t make your theory any less valid,” I told her. “The killer confronted Dan in the front room and then threatened him. When Dan tried to get away, he got an iron to the back of the head for his trouble. That means the murder probably wasn’t premeditated.”
“Because the killer didn’t bring a weapon with him,” Grace said.
“Or he did, but then he decided to use something else to muddy the waters.”
“If that’s what happened, then it worked. We’re no closer to learning his identity than when we stepped inside.”
“Maybe we should go upstairs and see what we can uncover up there,” I suggested.
“It’s as good an idea as any I have. Lead the way,” she said.
Once we found it, Dan’s bedroom surprised me. I’d been expecting an extension of his shop up there, the walls cluttered with old movie posters, large porcelain animals sitting on shelves surrounding his bed, and trinkets galore littering his dresser top. Instead, it was the epitome of simplicity. The bed was disheveled, as though its owner had been suddenly roused from his sleep, something that matched Inspector Black’s scenario more than it did mine. There was no bedspread or quilt on it, just a plain white set of sheets and a solid-blue blanket. The nightstand as well as the dresser were both Shaker-influenced pieces, yellowed pine furniture without any ornamentation whatsoever. There wasn’t a single bit of artwork hanging from the walls or shelves of any kind. It reminded me more of a monk’s cell than it did a junk dealer’s living space.
“Is this what you expected?” Grace asked me.
“No, I’m shocked, but it kind of makes sense.”
“How so?”
“Think about it. If you had to live with that chaos downstairs all day, wouldn’t you want someplace plain and simple to get away from it all?”
“I suppose,” Grace said as she moved to the dresser. “Let’s start looking for something that might help our investigation.”
I’d been a little queasy about going through a murder victim’s things when Grace and I had first started detecting, but I’d quickly gotten over that. After all, it occasionally happened that within someone’s most intimate and private spheres of their lives, we found glimmers of what might have led to their untimely deaths.
We didn’t find anything of interest there, though.
As for good news, at least the search hadn’t taken us all that long.
“What about his closet?” I asked.
“That’s next on my list,” Grace said.
“I’ll go find the kitchen and start looking there,” I said, “since the closet isn’t big enough for both of us.”
“Let me know if you find anything,” Grace said as she started going through Dan’s pockets from the clothes so neatly hung up inside.
“You do the same.” I left the bedroom and quickly found the small kitchen D
an used as a part of his living quarters. It wasn’t much more than a hotplate, a dorm-room minifridge, and a microwave oven. Four mismatched plates and utensils were in the small cupboard by the card table where he most likely took his meals. It was no wonder that he’d eaten at the donut shop and the diner so often. If I had to prepare and cook a meal in that poor excuse for a kitchen, I would have probably done the same thing myself. I almost dismissed the plates when, for the sake of being thorough, I pulled them out, each in its own turn, and looked closer at them.
To my surprise, between the third and fourth plates, a slip of paper fluttered out and landed on the scarred hardwood floor at my feet. What could it possibly be?
Written on the back of a discarded blank envelope in block letters, the message was clearly ominous. “YOU JUST LOST YOUR LAST CHANCE WITH ME!”
What did it mean, though?
“Grace, can you come in here for a second?” I called out.
“I’m not finished with the closet yet,” she replied.
“Trust me, you’re going to want to see this.”
She came out of the bedroom, and instead of explaining to her what I’d found, I just held it out and showed it to her.
After reading the message, Grace asked, “Where did you find this?”
“It was stuck between two plates,” I said.
“Flip it over. Is there any indication what was originally in this envelope?”
“No, it’s pretty generic.”
“I wonder how old it is,” Grace said.
“Why do you ask?”
“The label has glue on it. I haven’t used one like that in ages. All of mine have a strip of adhesive on them. You peel off the waxed-paper strip, and it’s self-sealing.”
“I still use this kind myself,” I admitted. “They’re a little cheaper than your fancy ones.”
“The company provides them,” Grace said, and then she looked a little more closely at the glue. “There’s not much on this, is there?”
I looked and saw that the machine that had laid the glue down must have been running low, because there were several skipped sections of adhesive. “I don’t know what it means, though.” Flipping it back over, I said, “This can be interpreted as a threat from anybody we suspect at this point.”
“I don’t see how,” Grace said.
“Think about it. If Belinda wrote it, it could mean that she was breaking up with him. On the other hand, if it came from Jeffrey Frost, it might mean that he was tired of having his offers rejected.”
“And what if it was from William Jecks or Benny Flint?”
“William could have been trying to intimidate Dan somehow, and this promised an escalation from conversation to violence.”
“My, you surely have an active imagination, Suzanne. What story fits Benny?”
“Maybe he felt cheated by Dan, too. If we believe William’s story, then Benny and Dan had a blowout fight before the junk man was murdered.”
“And if we choose to believe Benny, William is the one with the motive.”
“Until we figure this out, neither one of them is getting off our list,” I said, tapping the envelope with my hand. “I know what I have to do now, but I don’t want to do it.”
“What’s that?” Grace asked me.
“I have to tell Inspector Black about this,” I said.
“Why? She had every chance of finding it herself. I don’t know why it’s our obligation to share anything with her. After all, she bumped your husband out of a job here.”
“If I asked Jake what to do, what do you think he would say?”
To Grace’s credit, she didn’t even have to hesitate before she answered. “He’d tell you to call her. That still doesn’t mean you have to do it.”
“I’m afraid that it does.”
“Okay, hold it up for me again first,” Grace said.
“What did you have in mind?”
“I want to get a few shots of it with my phone before we turn it over to the police,” she explained.
It wasn’t a bad idea. After taking pictures of the front and back of the envelope, Grace frowned at the result.
“What’s wrong?”
“The glue doesn’t show up at all,” she said. “Do you want to try it with your phone?”
“Mine is a lot less sophisticated than yours is,” I said. “Dan has a copier downstairs. I wonder if it works.”
“Do you think it might pick up the glue patterns?”
“It might. Besides, what do we have to lose? I’m going to do everything I can to get an image of it before I turn it over to the inspector.”
“You do that,” Grace said. “After you make your copies, call Inspector Black.”
“What are you going to be doing while I’m doing that?”
“I still have a closet to finish investigating,” she said. “It may not be much, but it’s all I’ve got at the moment.”
I left Grace upstairs and headed down to try out Dan’s copier. At least it started to warm up when I turned it on. After going through a prolonged preparation time, I made a copy of the block-lettered threat.
It came out beautifully.
However, when I tried to copy the back of the envelope where the skipped adhesive was, all I got was a faint shadow of the glue. I wasn’t even sure that it was significant, but I knew if I didn’t at least try to get an image, I’d never have the chance to do it again. Inspector Black didn’t strike me as the type of person who would be willing to share information with me. That was a change for me, since Jake, and Chief Martin before him, had at least been willing to cut me a little slack in my investigations, though it had taken my mother’s husband longer to warm up to me than it had Jake. Setting the dial all the way to the darkest setting, I made another copy. Sure enough, the glue showed up in freakish dark shadows, along with a great many other imperfections in the paper. I was about to look at them more closely when there was a knock on the front door of Aunt Teeks.
It was Jeffrey Frost, and he wasn’t smiling as I walked to the door to see what the developer wanted.
Chapter 10
It was hard to tell what he wanted, but knowing the man even as little as I did, I realized that he wasn’t there to congratulate me on my inheritance. Maybe he wouldn’t be so argumentative if the state police inspector was there. Holding up one finger to him, I pulled out my cellphone and called my husband’s office. I didn’t have a direct number for Inspector Black, but maybe Jake had it.
To my surprise, a woman’s voice answered. It took me a moment to recognize who it was.
“Inspector, have you commandeered my husband’s office?”
“Ms. Hart, I have to work from somewhere, and he’s not using it at the moment. Call him on his cellphone if you want to talk to him.” Then she hung up on me.
I redialed the number, doing my best to keep my temper in check. When she answered, I said, “As a matter of fact, you’re the person I was looking for. I found a clue that might lead to Dan’s murderer.”
She was silent for a moment before she spoke. “Why are you even looking into this? You’re a donut maker, not a detective.”
“I also happen to be the executrix of Dan’s estate,” I said, trying to keep the fierceness I felt out of my voice. “I was just doing my job when I found a threatening note. You must have missed it when you were here earlier.” Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have tweaked her about it, but at that point, I was no longer in the mood to play nice.
“That place would be impossible to inspect in a month,” she said. “What did you find, and where was it hidden?”
After I told her, she said dryly, “You’ve already gotten your prints on it, I suppose.”
“To be fair, I didn’t know it was a clue when I picked it up,” I said. “After that, I was very careful about how I handled it. Would you like to see it
yourself, or not? I don’t have all afternoon. There are things I need to do here before I leave for the day.”
“Don’t go anywhere, and try not to touch anything else,” she barked out at me, and before I could answer, she hung up.
It was probably just as well. I have a feeling she wouldn’t have been too happy about whatever I might have said in reply.
At that point, Frost banged on the door. “Sometime today, Suzanne.”
I shook my head in disbelief. Did I have a sign on my forehead that said I would tolerate rudeness today, or was it something in my voice or even my general disposition? I had to take a modicum of garbage from the state police inspector, but I didn’t owe the developer anything.
“Coming,” I said with my most saccharine smile. It was one I reserved for only my most obnoxious customers at Donut Hearts.
After pretending to fiddle with the lock for a few long seconds, I finally opened the door and stepped outside, blocking Frost from coming in. “What can I do for you?”
“I just heard you inherited this firetrap,” he said.
“Not exactly,” I answered.
“Are you saying that my information is bad?” The developer couldn’t believe it, and I had to wonder who his source was. News must have travelled pretty quickly for him to know about it already, and I had to ponder whether the young attorney had shared the information with him. I wouldn’t put it past her, but then again, I’d already established my dislike for the pretty young woman.
“I’m the executrix of Dan’s estate, but whether I inherit anything depends on whether any assets remain after I’ve paid the specific bequests first.”
Frost nodded, and a smile reappeared. “Then I’m the answer to your prayers. I’ll give you ten percent more than this entire place is worth on paper, right here and now, and you don’t have to mess with any of it.”
“Who’s to say what it’s worth, exactly?” I asked him.
“You’re kidding, right? This place is in bad need of a fire,” he said. “The building and everything in it isn’t worth more than a thousand dollars. It’s the land I want.”