MURDER on the ROCKS (Allie Griffin Mysteries Book 2)

by Leslie Leigh

  "Because they’re all losers."

  She slapped him on the shoulder. "Because they’re all losers, exactly."

  "Need anything else?"

  "I need to go for a walk," she said.

  3.

  "Ms. Griffin?"

  She knew that voice. It set off an alarm inside her that made her want to run. She turned around and beheld the short, balding form of Detective Harry Tomlin coming toward her across the track.

  "You got a minute?"

  "I'm trying to get in a little exercise here."

  It was a half-truth. A brisk walk on the high school track was good exercise, yes, but it was also a good place to get some fast, deep thinking done. There was something about the movement, the pumping blood, the rhythmic breathing, that got the brain juices going at maximum speed.

  "It'll only take a moment. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions. It's about your husband's death."

  "Go on," she said, doing absolutely nothing to mask her impatience.

  "I was just wondering about the inquiry into his death. Sudden heart attack, in the middle of an operation. Tragic."

  "Yes, a lot of people cried."

  He opened his mouth and no words came. And then, "Yes, well I know there was an inquiry, because he had been on heart medication."

  "People have heart attacks even when on medication."

  "Oh, absolutely. Hey, listen, we're all mortal, right? And when it's your time, it's your time."

  "That's very good, Detective. You should make an e-card out of that."

  He twisted his face slightly. "Yes, well, I was just wondering, if there was any slight oddity surrounding his death, why there wasn't an autopsy performed. Would you know the answer to that?"

  "No, I wouldn’t. But if I had to guess, I'd say it would be because, maybe, and I'm just taking a wild one here, just grasping at straws, maybe there wasn't any oddity surrounding his death at all. That's all I'm saying. Call me kooky. The guy was surrounded by doctors when it happened."

  The detective gave a perfunctory smile. "Alright. Thanks. Oh hey, how's the cat?"

  "The cat? My cat? She's lovely. How's yours?"

  "The missus and me don’t have any animals. I don’t like them. Except on my plate, if you know what I mean." He gave a slimy, open-mouthed chuckle.

  "You eat cats?"

  His chuckle disappeared. "Uh, no. No, that was just a joke. Your cat still have diabetes?"

  "Still has it."

  "Still giving her those injections, right?"

  "Still jabbin' away." She mimed the action with her right hand.

  "You, uh, your husband, what kind of heart medicine was he on again?"

  "What kind of medicine?" She looked the detective dead in the eye. "Love."

  Tomlin screwed up his face.

  She slapped his arm. "Just kidding! Avapro."

  He rolled his eyes. "Any of it leftover, by any chance?"

  "Nope. Gave it all out last Halloween."

  "Alright, Ms. Griffin—"

  "Oh, are we through? I'm so glad. This way I can get in my exercise without you asking me any more ridiculous questions insinuating that I somehow had a hand in my husband's death. If you want my help solving this one, detective, as you so desperately needed during the Tori Cardinal case, you can just ask. Otherwise, get yourself probable cause and a warrant. Oh, and a magnifying glass. I hear that helps if you don’t have a clue."

  The detective's face had turned a shade of candy apple red that classic car owners would kill to achieve. He breathed heavily through his nose as she walked away, her heart pounding, her temples about to explode.

  Getting rid of her anger was her main focus now. So much for problem solving.

  She took out her phone and shot Beauchenne a text:

  "Did you know swordfish swim alone?"

  He texted back: "I'm sorry to hear that. See you later."

  4.

  "I need your help. Like, I really need your help here."

  Sara's Bridge never seemed so desolate as it did now, with not even a breeze blowing through its rafters, and the dark, cloudy sky muting any light that would have illuminated Beauchenne's chiseled features.

  "What is it?"

  "Promise me you won’t freak out."

  "Oh God..."

  "Promise?"

  "I promise."

  "Ok." She paused to let the butterflies settle. "I have a bank account number. I even have an ATM location where this bank account number was accessed."

  "Oh God..."

  "Now, you promised you wouldn't freak out."

  "Go on."

  "I need to know if you can help me get a picture of the guy who used it." She handed him a slip of paper with a printout of the info.

  "Oh, Allie."

  "Freaking out again."

  "No, no. I'm just... I can’t believe you got this. This is illegally obtained, isn’t it?"

  "Ok, we also agreed you wouldn't ask things like that."

  "Never mind, I don’t want to know."

  "Please. I need this."

  Beauchenne appeared to be staring off into space. It was hard to tell, for all she saw was a vague outline of his face.

  "I'll make you a deal," he said, finally. "If I get you this, and if this somehow leads to your identifying a suspect, you're going to have to find a way to make it legal. You're going to have to back it up legally. Understand? In such a way that it can’t be questioned. You hear me?"

  "I hear you, Frank."

  "I'm serious. Honestly, I don’t know how you'll manage to do such a thing. But I guess if anyone can do it, you can."

  "Well," she said flirtatiously, "there may actually be a genuine compliment in there somewhere."

  "Allie, I'm serious."

  "Back it up legally. Ok. Done."

  He folded the piece of paper she and Jimmy had printed out and tucked it into his breast pocket. "Meet me back here tomorrow night," he said solemnly.

  5.

  The bartender was at his station, a rag tossed over his shoulder, his elbows on the bar, chatting it up with a patron. The afterhours rush had begun, and the place was in the midst of filling up with thirsty quarrymen. The smell of rock dust in the room was like so much cologne spattered over a thousand heated necks.

  "Hey, look who it is. How are you, beautiful?"

  Allie put her bag on the bar. "I need something to calm my nerves and I left my yoga mat at home."

  "How 'bout a Rock Hammer?"

  "Sounds good. Do me a favor and hold the stone."

  Dougie motioned to the man at her left. "Biggie here's a quarry rat. He was telling me the news."

  "What news?"

  The bartender looked over his shoulder. "You didn’t hear? They arrested a guy today."

  "What?" Even with the country music blaring on the jukebox, she'd screamed loud enough to turn a few heads.

  "Earlier today," said the man called Biggie, an older man, five-foot-five, with a barrel chest and arms as thick as smokestacks. "Came down to the quarry and led 'im out in cuffs."

  "Who?"

  "The cops."

  "No, who'd they get?" Please, she thought, please don’t let it be Matson.

  "Guy called Matson. Walter Matson."

  Allie slapped her hand on the bar. "Damn it!"

  "Friend o' yours?"

  "No, well, sort of. But I can tell you he didn’t do it."

  Dougie placed a tumbler on a napkin in front of her. "They found a murder weapon." He looked at Biggie. "A leg from a chair?"

  "Table," Biggie corrected.

  "Table leg. Had his prints all over it."

  "No way," Allie said, her gaze shifting between the two men. "There's something seriously wrong here."

  She whipped out her phone and texted Beauchenne's number.

  "swordfish swordfish swordfish swordfish!!!!!"

  She bit her lip and said, "I'm no longer thirsty. Here. Keep the change."

  "Come again," called Dougie as she walked ou
t into the early evening, a dagger shooting straight toward home, and then to Sara's Bridge.

  6.

  Waiting for eight o'clock to come was an exercise in ninja-like patience. Allie resigned to spend the interim hours in a swirling mix of confusion and frustration.

  "So not right, Dinah," she said to the cat. "They framed him. Dupond, Bennett, they framed Matson. He's going to have to out himself and Lord knows what that will lead to. And what's this with fingerprints?"

  The cat meowed hungrily.

  "I know! I can’t believe it either. I'll tell you this though: our lovely Frank Beauchenne, esquire, is going to have a ton of explaining to do, believe you me."

  The hour finally came for the explanation. She paced Sara's Bridge, too angry to be scared. When Beauchenne's car pulled up, her blood raced, and she could keep it in no longer.

  "Alright, you," she yelled, not even waiting for him to exit fully from the vehicle. "You know Matson isn't guilty, and you know it's not a damn table leg either."

  "Just hold on, Allie."

  "Oh no, sir, you hold on. How could you let this happen? They arrested an innocent man on trumped-up charges and you just stand there—"

  "Allie! I'm suspended!"

  She froze, mid-sentence. "What?"

  "Dupond caught me running the stats on your ATM guy. Said he gave me fair warning to keep out, which really he didn’t but I can’t argue, and he put me on temporary suspension without pay. Two hours later they made the arrest."

  "Oh God, Frank... I don’t know what to say. I'm sorry."

  "No, I was sloppy. Anyway, here." He reached over, grabbed a folder off the passenger's seat and handed it to her.

  She looked at him and he nodded. She opened it.

  "Get out. This is the guy?"

  "Name's Chernow. Roger Chernow. He's got priors."

  "But you said Dupond—"

  "One of the guys owed me a favor. I had him sneak this out for me."

  "I could kiss you so hard right now."

  "Not tonight, honey, I have a headache."

  "You poor thing. I've messed up your job."

  "I could use the time off, to be honest with you. But you have more than one problem on your hands. It seems your buddy Bennett Reilly called in a tip about a table leg he – quote, unquote – found in the woods behind his house. They went down there to pick it up and that's when he told them about Matson. Showed them the blackmail note and everything. Told them to dust the thing for prints. Tomlin brought it to Dupond and Dupond gave the ok. They have an accident report from Verdenier Granite written in Matson's own hand. The spelling mistakes match. It's all circumstantial of course, but it's obviously enough for Dupond. He wants this thing done with."

  "What about the prints? Where'd those come from?"

  "You can transfer prints. It's not easy, but someone with a little time on his hands and a lot to lose by not doing it can do it. One method would be to pick up a lump of clay that Matson had handled. They've probably struck clay a number of times. You pour hot silicone into the prints, wait for it to cool, peel it off – instant fingerprints."

  "So it was Reilly all along. It had to be."

  "Allie, I didn’t say that. This is speculation. You need proof."

  "It had to be him! What, he just suddenly happens to find a murder weapon? According to you, he didn’t trust his hitman to dispose of the evidence."

  "The hitman is there, on that photo I gave you. You said it yourself. He received money before and money after. I believe you about that. Reilly obviously wanted someone framed for this. He wanted Matson. I think that much is obvious."

  She looked at the picture he'd given her in the folder. It was hard to see by the light of the moon, but she could make out that Roger Chernow was balding save for the temples, which looked gray, and that he seemed to have a very large crease across his forehead that was too big to be a natural wrinkle.

  "Tell me about this guy."

  "Has a history of extortion. Beat the rap once. Either been lying low or he's very good at his job. Either way, I'm not comfortable with the thought of you crossing paths with him. Think of another way."

  There was something in Beauchenne's voice that conveyed a desperation she'd not heard in it before.

  She stared again at the picture. This man was a possible killer and it made her shudder. He looked like a typical villain out of central casting.

  And that gave her the idea for another way.

  She texted Del that she was on her way over.

  7.

  Del's flat reflected the kitschy tastes of its occupant. Broadway posters and framed Playbills with scribbly autographs on their covers adorned the walls. And then there were the Styrofoam heads with wigs, and some without, lined up like a headhunter's trove; and there were the multicolored draperies and campy figurines and here and there a remnant from some bygone vacation – cheesy mementos from places like Niagara Falls and Howe Caverns – mugs and statues made cheaply and hastily for tourists.

  "I am so glad you came, dahling," she said in an uppercrust British accent. "Benjamin and I have been shopping all day and were dying for a bit of respite from the drudgery of it all."

  "Are you finished?"

  "Not quite. But what brings you here?"

  "Well, you’re not going to believe this, but I've got an acting job for you."

  She resumed her normal voice. "You do? What, where, who, and how much?"

  Allie smiled sheepishly at her friend and bit at her finger.

  "Oh," Del said in full anticipation of the coming anti-climax. "Another alley gig?"

  "Sort of. What did you mean by 'not quite'."

  "We'll get to that in a minute. I'm assuming you heard about your friend Matson?"

  "Yes, and it's messier than you can possibly imagine. We've got a murder weapon with forged fingerprints – which, by the way, is the wrong weapon altogether; we've got a hitman with money coming to him for a hit he never made; we've got Bennett Reilly in cahoots with the cops to nail an innocent man; and to top it all off like a big, fat cherry, we've got a ton of incriminating evidence all inadmissible due to the fact that it was obtained by virtue of a hacker two mouse clicks away from the FBI's most wanted list."

  "Oh my," said Del.

  "Right, and so I need you to do me a favor."

  "Done."

  "You don’t know what it is."

  "I don’t have to. I trust you."

  "You do?"

  "Of course."

  "Why?"

  "Because close your eyes."

  "I'm sorry?"

  "No favors unless you close your eyes."

  Allie did as she was told. She heard Del leave the room, heard her commanding from somewhere else in the house to keep her eyes shut, and heard her return and plonk something heavy upon the kitchen table.

  "Open."

  Right before her, a murder weapon.

  #

  When Allie returned home, it was time to make one of the most important calls of her life. She looked at the clock: 4:15. She had to hurry. Folks in Verdenier Granite's financial headquarters probably didn’t work past five.

  8.

  "Hi there. Me again. Can I come in for a second?"

  Bennett Reilly looked peeved. "Do you have to now? I mean, I'm a little busy and a bit frazzled. I apologize."

  "No apologies. I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about your, your guy with the blackmail note? I think I may have an ID for you."

  His demeanor changed from frazzled to focused. "Oh. But didn’t you hear the news?"

  "Yeah, I heard. Matson was arrested, but I just received some new information that I think you'll want to hear. Can I come in?"

  "Come in, please."

  She stepped in to the familiar home, her duffel bag hoisted over her shoulder. "I'm sorry; I was just at the gym and was in the neighborhood. Forgive my appearance. Can I put this down? I've got my weights in here."

  "Sure."

  "Thank you." Sh
e dropped the bag with a clunk. "Phew. I try to tell myself that carrying it around is actually a good thing. They say you should carry the weight bag around to and from the gym, just to get a couple more reps in. I don’t buy it. But here I am anyway."

  "What can I do for you?" he said curtly.

  "Uh, yeah. I was thinking about what you said about the guy Matson. And so I went down there to talk with him."

  "You didn’t."

  "Yeah, I did."

  His voiced rose in anger. "Why did you do that? That was irresponsible and, if you don’t mind me saying, stupid."

  "I do mind you saying and I assure you I took every precaution."

  "I'm sorry," he said automatically. "What happened?"

  "Well, funny you should say. Listen, can I get some water? I finished all of mine."

  He huffed out an impatient breath and led her to the kitchen. There he handed her a glass.

  "Oh my, thank you." She drank long and hard. "Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you. Where did you get these glasses? They're beautiful."

  "Honey got them. Do you mind getting on with your story?"

  His cell phone began ringing.

  It's about time, Allie thought.

  He stared at the number as if trying to place it, then answered the call.

  "Yeah."

  Allie could just make out Del's shrill voice on the other end.

  "Hi, is this Mr. Van de Kamp?"

  He started at the name. "Uh, I'm sorry, who?"

  "Mr. Van de Kamp?"

  "Uh, I-I'm afraid you have the wrong number."

  "Is this..."

  He confirmed his phone number. "Yes, but there's no person by that name here."

  "Sir, this is Molly Feisdeck from Chittenden County First National? We have a 401K payout check here in the amount of three hundred and twenty-five dollars for a Mr. Van de Kamp?"

  His eyes widened. "Wait, what? Who is this?"

  "Sir, this is Chittenden County First National?"

  "No, I mean how did you get this number?"

  "Sir, this number is listed as the primary contact number on Mr. Van de Kamp's employee contact sheet?"

  Bennett Reilly froze.

  "Mr. Van de Kamp? Sir? Hello?"