I got a pressed smile in return. Not exactly what I had hoped for, but given the circumstances, I was willing to take that.
Sheila gave me a quick kiss and left. I made sure that the pets had water and toys out, and then I headed out as well.
The Wagner house was easy to find. I remembered the Gillespie home and by all accounts, the Wagners lived next door. There was a large, rather modern looking structure next door that I suspected might be their house.
I knocked on the door and waited. I’d noticed that there was a large empty box of kitty litter outside of the house, and so I knew that my patter regarding my services would be welcomed here. A woman answered the door. She was older with a shock of white hair and fine, paper-thin skin. She looked at me through her bifocals as she asked, “What do you want?”
I went through the normal spiel about talking to animals and offering a free trial to the family if they were interested. She listened and smiled. She had the appearance of a gullible woman, which would be perfect for my line.
“Come on in,” she said, opening the door wide. It was a wonder that she hadn’t been killed, I thought as I entered. She showed me to the living room where we took a seat. A calico jumped up on my lap as soon as I got comfortable. The tabby was on the large side with a gut, but she seemed to well cared for. I noticed the presence of scratching posts and toys in the room along with a litterbox in the kitchen. I made a quick mental note of all these things, adding them together to come up with a very spoiled cat who needed to cut back on her treats.
Mrs. Wagner asked a series of questions about the cat. I tried to be as honest as possible, telling her that the treats were delicious, but made it more difficult to stalk and hunt which all cats like to do. The cat just rolled over and stretched, which didn’t exactly make my case. Mrs. Wagner laughed and scratched the cat behind the ears a few times.
I wondered how to switch the subject over to Frias when Mrs. Wagner said, “Who are you and what do you really want?””
I started to stammer, but she interrupted me. “If you don’t tell me now, I’ll press this button to dial 911, and we’ll let the police sort it out.” Her face was grim now, the nice old lady look gone. I muttered under my breath about taking things at face value and decided what to do.
She definitely lived here alone, but I’d been upfront with her about me and my business. That meant that even if I did leave, she could easily find with – or the police could. I decided to come clean about the matter and see what that got me.
I explained that I was looking into the Frias murder, and that it was a family matter. I told her that her name had come up as a client of Frias, and I was hoping to learn more about the maid and what she was like. Even though I had one possible motive, it’s a rare person who hasn’t angered more than a few people in their lives. I could come up with at least four suspects if I were to drop dead right now.
“You should have just said that. I much prefer when people are upfront with me,” she said, dropping the button back in her pocket. It was out of sight, but still easily reachable if my story turned out to be fabricated.
“So what can you tell me about her?” I asked, settling back down into my seat and feeling somewhat more comfortable than before.
“Not a nice person at all. In fact, she was rather retched.” The old woman sat there peacefully as if talking ill of the dead was something she did frequently. Maybe she did, but I was rather surprised. All of the articles I’d read about the homicide painted Frias as a saint. Now someone else was telling me an entirely different story.
“How so?” I asked simply, hoping that my few words would not stop her admissions.
“Spying on us all the time. My husband never believed me, but she went through our drawers. I swear that she even took some coupons from the envelope where we kept them. Lots of little things. Of course, we don’t have anything to hide, but if we had, she would have used it to get something I’m sure.”
“Did you ever talk to your neighbors about her?”
She rolled her eyes. “Mrs. Gillespie felt like I did, but her husband wouldn’t hear of it. He thought she did a wonderful job and it was hard to find good help. That much at least was true.”
“So were you surprised by her murder? Had she ever indicated that someone was threatening her or she was involved in anything that was illegal?” I was pleased that I’d come clean with this woman. This was by far the most productive interview I’d had since I started working on this case.
She took a deep breath. “You must think I’m awful. No, she never did anything illegal, and most of our conversations were about the particular things I wanted her to do. We didn’t share stories or recipes. However, I would not have been at all surprised that if she had found something in her cleaning searches that she would have used it on us. I know that type.”
“What about the neighbors?” I asked, wondering if Frias might have been blackmailing them. It would make a great motive, but still that perfect alibi stood in the way.
“What about them?” she asked.
“Did they have something to hide that she could have used?”
The old woman shrugged. “That’s not exactly something you would tell the neighbors. If you’d kill to hide a fact, then you’re certainly not going to tell anyone about it. I could see that happening with them, though. They always seemed so happy. I could never trust anyone who smiled all the time.”
I had to wonder what type of witness she would be, if that was her idea of evidence. Smiling wasn’t exactly illegal. However, I did know what she was talking about. I’d met people who always had a smile plastered on their face, and yet underneath that lie all kinds of trouble.
Susan had, apparently, been like that. She’s been bubbly and happy until she just disappeared one day. No one in the family had known enough about what went on under the surface to stop the chain of events that had occurred.
I just nodded. “Any idea on what they were hiding?”
“Not really. It was something about the husband most of all. He was always the most chirper. I could have called him to chat at 4am, and he would have been pleasant and happy to talk to you then. If someone called me at that hour, I’d have cursed them out and hung up.”
I thanked for her time and walked to the house next door. This place had been the Gillespie house years ago, and I rightfully assumed that someone else had moved in. There were two cars in the driveway and several toys belonging to small children. I knew that I’d gain nothing by walking the steps that the killer had taken that night. The evidence was long gone, and the police record was the only remaining way to see the clues.
That reminded me of the two missing interviews. I pulled up one of the two names and did a quick search on my phone. The first one was an impossibility. The last name of Jones combined with a common first name left me with more names than I could visit in a month. I had the time, if I really wanted to. Susan had been gone for years, and technically there was no rush on the matter except in my eyes. Now that I’d learned this much of the truth, I wanted the rest of it immediately.
The second name was Xanthus, which proved to be the only one in Toledo, or the entire state of Ohio from what I could tell. I called and verified that they’d be available in a few minutes. I got a lot of cooperation, mainly because I didn’t correct their statement that I worked with the police and had a follow-up interview on a cold-case file.
I drove back towards my neighborhood. I wasn’t all that far from where I’d grown up, and I knew the streets well, so I was able to pull up alongside the house in less than fifteen minutes. The home looked like it had been lived in by the same owners for quite some time, so I guessed that they had been here at the time of the murder.
A younger woman answered the door. She was pretty in a non-descript sort of way. She had long brown hair that curled slightly at the ends. She had small features that enhanced a meek appearance. She just opened the door a few inches to me.
“Yes?” she asked.
“I’m the guy who called earlier,” I replied. I explained that I was reviewing an old murder, and that the interview with Mr. Xanthus had been lost, and I was hoping to recreate it.
She smiled. “That would be my father. He was a delivery man before he was injured.”
“Can I talk to him?” I asked, getting an uneasy feeling about her preface to her comments.
She nodded. “I’m not sure how much you can get out of him. He’s great some days and not so good the others. He was delivering one day, and a drunk driver hit the truck. He was knocked out of the truck and struck a pole. He’s having a fairly lucid day, so you can try.”
“Would it be better if I just spoke to you?” I asked, wondering if the report had been pulled after the injury, when they could hope that Mr. Xanthus would not be able to recreate his testimony. Even if he could talk to me, there was certainly no way that he would be allowed to testify in court with a head injury. Even if I learned something, it could never be entered into the record for the case. His memory would be too unreliable.
“I don’t think so. He’s having a good day, and you won’t notice anything until he starts to get tired. You’ll see. Just let me know when that is, and if you still have questions, I can try to answer them.” She gave me a smile as if to say that this wasn’t a fun job, but it was a necessary one. I understood now why I was such a welcome guest even if I was asking questions about a murder. My attendance with him allowed this woman a break of some sort.
I went in and saw an older man sitting in a recliner chair. The back was upright at the moment, and the man in it looked alert. He had dark eyes and his hair had been cut short, which showed the scars of his accident. His face was wrinkled and he carried jowls that looked more like saddlebags on each side of his face.
“Mr. Xanthus?” I asked. The eyes glanced my way, but didn’t seem to bother much with me. “My name is Griffin Fitzpatrick. I –”
“You’re the brother of that girl – the one that disappeared,” he said with certainty.
“I am.” I immediately felt a surge of embarrassment flood over me, and I was back to being that kid who didn’t want the notoriety associated with her disappearance. I felt at once singled out and left in the shadows of my sibling. I knew that this had to end sometime, and now felt good to me.
“What can I do for you?” he asked. “I don’t get a lot of visitors these days.”
I explained that in reviewing a cold case, we’d noticed that his statement to the police had been missing and that we were trying to verify what had been in that report. I told him that this was nothing official, but we were just trying to reviewing the evidence and see what we could uncover.
“The Frias case? I guess it has to be. That’s the only statement I ever made to the police.”
I nodded. “That’s the one, yes.”
“My evidence – such as it was – consisted of the fact that I’d delivered a package to the Gillespies’ home the night of the murder. I dropped off the package at 6:45 at the house and the police were interested in what I saw.”
“Were the Gillespies home already?” I asked. I was thinking that perhaps the perfect alibi wasn’t quite so ironclad. “Did you see the family somewhere?”
“No, no sign of them. Mrs. Frias answered the door and signed for the package. She took it inside with her, and that’s the last I saw of her.”
This seemed to be important information. I wondered how and why the information report had been lost, or if it had been taken. “So this was about 6pm?” I asked, thinking of the timetable for Susan to be at their house. She would have had to leave no later than 6:10pm by my schedule.
He shook his head. “No, not at all. It was closer to 7. By my guess, it would have been around 6:45 or 6:50. I didn’t see the family though, and the newspapers had said that they’d got home at 7pm. So I guess I just missed that killer. Glad I did too.”
I stood there, staring at him. My entire theory had rested on facts that weren’t true. I wasn’t sure what to think.
As I stood there, he looked at me again. “Yeah, I remember your sister’s case too. Did I ever tell you that I met your mother?” The words that had been strong before were now winding down until it was nearly a mumble. I wanted to hear more about how he knew my mother, but I knew that I would have to come back another day for that. I called for the caregiver, who gave me a grateful smile, and let me out before heading back to take care of her charge.
I left feeling entirely out of sorts, about this case and personally too. This man had shot down my entire theory of the crime. If he’d delivered a package to the maid at a few minutes before 7pm, then there was no way that Susan could have seen the murder an hour earlier. So what had happened at that time to make Susan leave town? I wasn’t even sure anymore that the two crimes were related. Was I just spinning my wheels in hoping to connect the two cases? My premise had been a chronological connection. Susan had begun to call the bus station the day after the murder. It seemed inconceivable that the two things were not connected. It would take a huge event to make a 13 year old girl want to leave her home and family. Murder seemed the most likely event, seeing a murder and running away seemed even more likely. I thought about where I could have gone wrong. Susan couldn’t have been at the scene of the crime at 7pm, which meant she saw nothing. If she saw nothing, then perhaps the two crimes were unrelated.
I wondered if I’d gotten so used to solving crimes in my life that I saw everything as a crime. The old story of everything looks like a nail when you’re a hammer. Of course, dating a detective only served to make the situation worse. I wondered what Sheila was doing right now. She was likely busy with her own cases, and not in a place where she could listen to me talk about a cold case. I would have to wait for a better time.
Then Mr. Xanthus had known my mother. How exactly did a deliveryman meet people like that? I didn’t remember getting many packages from any delivery services. So I wasn’t sure what he could have been referring to? Had he perhaps talked to my mother about the Frias case? I had more questions than answers still.
There was still the missing interview. I wondered if perhaps Sheila could help me locate information on the ubiquitous Mr. Jones. I called and surprisingly she answered. “What’s up?” she asked, not bothering with any type of real greeting. I wondered if that was just her manner or if she was hiding my identity from her colleagues.
“I need some help. There’s a Robert Jones listed as a missing interview on the police file for the murder investigation. I was wondering if you could find him for me? Google isn’t any help at all on this one.”
She laughed. “Sure. I’ll do it when I get back to the office. I’m out in the field at the moment. How goes things with that case?”
I told her about Xanthus and how he’d shot my theory down without knowing it. “I’m lost at the moment.”
“When your theory doesn’t fit the facts, then you need to change the theory. Just because you like a theory doesn’t mean it’s right. Let go of that, and you’ll be able to come up with the right solution.”
“Easy for you to say. You guys have had it for the last dozen years and haven’t figured it out.”
“A fresh set of eyes can see what others cannot. Sometimes looking back on things is better than seeing them at the time. You can see what’s happened to people, and you can see what’s gone on in the meantime. All that makes a difference.”
I nodded and got into my car. She was right, of course. If the times were accurate, then Susan hadn’t seen a thing. That meant she’d left for another reason, one I still had yet to uncover.
I’d barely made it home when Sheila called again. “I’ve got the number for Jones.” It wasn’t a local number, so I wasn’t sure where it was. I thanked her and hung up. She hadn’t made any plans to see me and didn’t say a word about missing me. I wasn’t sure what her feelings were at the moment, but after I finished this quest, I planned on straightening out matters with her – as best I could
.
Spurred on by the thought of being done with this, I dialed the number. It rang and rang with no answer. Figures, I thought. I was in the mood for action, and yet no one was there.
Since I was already on the phone, I located and dialed the number for the Gillespie parents. They had moved off the coast of Mexico, and this late in the evening for me, they should be wide awake and hopefully ready to talk.
Fortunately, a woman answered the phone this time. “Hello,” she said with the slightest hint of an accent. I wondered how long they’d been down there.
“Mrs. Gillespie. My name is Griff Fitzpatrick. I’m from Toledo. I had a few questions, and I was hoping you’d answer them for me.”
“You were Susan Fitzpatrick’s brother,” she said without hesitation. It was a statement with no hint of uncertainty in it.
I thought about correcting her verb tense, since Susan was alive and well, but I didn’t. I was more flabbergasted that these people who lived on a remote island in Mexico knew who I was. The infamy seemed never-ending.
“That’s right. You remember the disappearance?” I asked.
“Yes of course. It was big news at the time, and so unexpected.” Her voice covered some noise in the background, but I couldn’t determine what it was. Another voice perhaps or the television.
“I was actually calling about the murder of your maid,” I said.
“Why?” Her voice seemed genuinely shocked as if she’d never thought that someone from her hometown might want to know about the murder in her home.
“I think that the two events, the murder and the disappearance, are linked in some manner. I was hoping to learn more about the murder to see if I could find any connecting points.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. While I knew that service could be terrible, I suspected that she was thinking over what I’d said. When there was no reply, I finally asked, “Are you still here?”
“Yes.” The word came out soft and weak.
“Did I upset you?” I asked. I wanted to see what had provoked her silence.
SLEEPING DOGS (Animal Instincts Book 6) Page 7