Conundrum

by Susan Cory

  By mid-morning Iris was in her office sketching design ideas on yellow tracing paper superimposed over her “as built” drawings. Her first schematic design meeting with Lillian Butterworth was scheduled for the next day. She liked to present several possible solutions and discuss their merits before zeroing in on one to develop. If she had time, she’d freehand some perspective sketches to help Lillian visualize the options.

  Bent over her drafting table, she started at the sound of the the phone. “Reid Associates.”

  “Oh, Iris, it’s C.C.. Do you have a minute?”

  “Sure, what’s up?” she tried to sound calm, remembering that C.C. was a possible suspect for Norman’s murder.

  “I just read Norman’s obituary in the Times yesterday. God, I’m so freaked. What is it about this GSD class? Are we cursed?”

  “It is pretty incredible.”

  “Have you heard anything from the police? Do they have an idea who’s been doing this?”

  “Not that I know about.”

  “I’m calling because I’d like your advice. There’s something I remembered and I don’t know if it could be important. It’s something Will said to me last month. I thought I’d run this by you since you seem to be playing Nancy Drew.”

  Why was everything C.C. said to her mildly insulting? “Okay. What was it?”

  “He asked if I thought Norman might want to be an investor in a school he wanted to turn into condos in San Francisco. He wanted to ask him about it at the reunion.”

  “That sounds pretty innocent to me. Norman could always say no.”

  “Well, he went on to say he had thought of some way to convince Norman to back him.”

  “What do you mean ‘some way to convince him?’” Iris was trying to control her impatience.

  “That’s just it. I wasn’t really paying much attention.”

  “Well how did he say it? Did he sound devious or earnest?”

  “Um, self-satisfied.”

  “What leverage could he possibly have had on Norman?”

  “That’s the exact word he used—leverage.”

  “But Will never made it to the reunion, so how could he have discussed anything with Norman? And now they’re both dead, so the killer must be a third person”

  Iris saw Sheba lumbering over with a ball. She avoided eye contact. “Could someone have wanted to prevent Norman from investing with Will?”

  “They were both killed, so do you mean someone who wanted to buy the school himself?” C.C. asked. “Maybe it looked like a lucrative deal and someone was trying to eliminate the competition.”

  “By murdering them—even someone who was merely a potential investor? That sounds far-fetched,” Iris said.

  “ I don’t think Will was that savvy about making money. I doubt that he could have stumbled on some project that would inspire that level of greed.”

  “Still, this is a connection between two murder victims that the police won’t know about unless Rachel’s mentioned it. And she may not even know about it. You need to call Detective Malone. He’ll need you to give a signed statement about it. I can give you his number. He’s the one who’s putting the pieces together.” She retrieved his card from under the answering machine and read off the information.

  “Can’t you tell him, Iris? You’re already involved.”

  “It would be hearsay coming from me. Will spoke to you. Besides, I’m staying out of this now. Are you coming up on Saturday for Norman’s funeral? You can make an appointment to talk with Malone then. Two birds, one stone.”

  “Funny. I hadn’t been planning on flying back up there. I’ll think about it. Bye.”

  Iris cracked her knuckles as she mulled over the phone call. What leverage could Will have thought he had on Norman?

  Chapter 35

  A few hours later Iris finished her final sketch. She decided to go through the pile of receipts that Claire had asked her to verify. She had worked her way to the middle of the pile when she came upon a manila envelope that said Linc on the front. Claire had thought that these were receipts from the tile subcontractor, Iris remembered. She unwound the twist string and out fell a cassette. Huh? Why would a sub be submitting this? Seeing nothing else inside, she looked for a label on the tape. No label. What the hell was this and why was it on a cassette? She didn’t even own a cassette player anymore. They’d all either broken or been tossed out with the advent of CDs. Damn. Should she just return it to Claire and let her figure out its relevance to the Lincoln renovation? Now she was starting to get curious.

  A rapping sound coming from the direction of the kitchen interrupted her thoughts. Through her office’s framed opening she could see Ellie and Raven at the kitchen door.

  “We just finished a yoga class and want to drag you to the Paradise for a coffee break. It’s gorgeous out! Oh, here’s my favorite doggy. How’re you doin’, little girl?” Raven squatted on the floor and rubbed Sheba under the chin. The dog was on her back in a second.

  Twenty minutes later, in the Paradise, Iris and Ellie ate sfogliatelle with their iced decaf lattes. The shell-shaped Italian pastry was a house specialty. Raven stuck to chai and a muffin. She asked Iris, “Did you ever have the yoga teacher who tells you to imagine a marble getting sucked into your belly button? What was her name, Mom—Summer? Autumn?”

  “The marble’s supposed to go through the belly-button, I think. Why does that image bother you so much?” Ellie asked. “She’s just trying to give us visual types a way to use the correct muscles.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense as an image,” Iris said. “Why doesn’t she just say ‘suck in your gut’? But forget Spring, or whatever her name is. I want to tell you about the phone call I just had from C.C.”

  “Is she going to put Norman’s house in the magazine?”

  “Yeah, I think so, but that’s not why she called.” Iris told them the leverage story.

  “That is so weird—Will thought that he had something to hold over Norman’s head? It’s got to have been something from 20 years ago. Why would he wait until now to use it?”

  “Maybe there was nothing he wanted from Norman before this and all the reunion hoopla jogged his memory.”

  “Hmm. This might be important. But do we believe C.C.? She might be making this up. Neither Will or Norman is around to object.”

  “I’m wondering how can we find out about her whereabouts on Sunday. I tried to talk her into coming up for the funeral so she could tell the leverage story to Detective Malone. Maybe I should go to this funeral myself. I did just finish designing Norman’s house and I did find his body.”

  “Uh-huh. Why do I think it’s curiosity rather than loyalty driving this sudden change of heart?” Ellie glanced over at the coffee counter. “Do I want another pastry? Better not. Maybe Will told her what this leverage was, so she killed Will and tried to blackmail Norman with it herself. When he wouldn’t give in, she killed him.”

  “Oooh—I like that. It’s very tidy.” Iris said. “I could see her killing Norman, but I don’t know about Will. I think they really were friends. By the way, do you have a cassette player? I found a tape among the Lincoln receipts that I should probably check out.”

  Raven was listening avidly, trying to get up to speed on the cast of characters. “I have an old boom box somewhere in my room. I could dig it up for you.” She looked around and asked loudly “Where’s Luc? I want to meet the hunky chef.”

  Louise, overhearing, grinned. “He’s in the kitchen,” she called over to them. “You can go on back. I’m sure he won’t mind.”

  Iris had never seen the Paradise’s kitchen and wasn’t sure that she wanted to walk in on Allegra and Luc unannounced. But Raven had scrambled to her feet and dragged her mother by the arm so Iris followed.

  The kitchen looked like it belonged on a submarine. It was small, gleaming with stainless steel, and highly organized. Tom Waits growled incongruously over the sound system. A woman stood with her back to them, stirring something on th
e stove. Luc was cleaning some type of bivalve at another work counter. He looked up and beamed. “Ladies, welcome!”

  Before he could continue, Iris blurted out, “Louise sent us back so Raven could meet you.”

  Luc rubbed his hands together under the faucet, wiped them on his apron, then offered one to Raven. “Nice to meet you.” He gestured to the woman beside him. “And I’d like to introduce all of you to my new chef, Allegra.”

  The woman looking up to greet them resembled a cherubic Italian grandmother.

  Iris and Ellie exchanged quick glances then both smiled warmly.

  Chapter 36

  By Thursday afternoon, with Barb’s help, Iris had tracked Jim Bennett to an eco-tech firm in Cambrige’s Kendall Square neighborhood. Proximity to M.I.T. had spawned a veritable village of research-and-development companies. The lobby receptionist had her name on his list, so Iris was directed to a bank of elevators. She was disgorged directly into a large open-plan office filled with walled-off cubicles. There was no internal receptionist, so Iris popped her head over the closest partition.

  “Do you know where I could find Jim Bennett please?”

  The man stood up and yelled out “Jim! There’s a lady here.” Then he resumed frowning at his computer monitor, ignoring her.

  A tall, pale man with large aviator glasses scurried in through a door at the rear of the room.

  “Sorry. Sorry. I was back in the lab.”

  “I appreciate you meeting with me, Mr. Bennett,” Iris said, as he led her to a small conference room.

  “I’m not sure there’s much I can tell you about Norman Meeker. I read about his death in the papers. You said that you went to architecture school with him and designed him a house. Were you friends, then?”

  “Well, no, I wouldn’t put it like that. I was just asking Barb how Norman had become interested in this field. It seems to draw people with either a more technical or a more altruistic background than Norman had.”

  Jim snorted.

  “No pussyfooting around the truth! I like that. You’re absolutely right, Ms. Reid. Norman’s main interest in all these brilliant inventions was their bottom line. I had the chemistry and engineering background to develop some of them. Others were way too far out there to be practical. Mind you, this was in the early nineties. The twenty-first century may have caught up to some of the ideas by now.”

  “But I don’t understand where the initial concepts came from. You speak as though you didn’t generate them yourself.”

  “Ah, I see your confusion. ‘The mystery of the blue notebook’ is how I used to think of it. Norman had gotten his hands on a notebook that was filled with brilliant scribblings. At first, he tried to pass it off as his own work. He’d even hang out in the lab talking with the technicians about various experiments. But it was clear the guy didn’t know a thing about science, much less the kind of visionary theoretical stuff that was in this notebook. I wish I could meet whoever actually wrote it. Hell, I’d hire him in a minute. The ideas all focused on ways to harness nature to solve environmental problems that hadn’t even reached most people’s consciousness as issues. For example, he was postulating ways to convert various waste products into energy sources or fertilizer. The idea of using the earth’s core temperature to heat and cool—that was from the notebook. Whoever wrote it was a genius.”

  “You said that you first saw this notebook in the early nineties?”

  “That’s right. Norman had just graduated from the B school and asked me to team up with him. That notebook launched Norman into the eco-entrepreneurial big time. He kept it under heavy wraps in his office safe when he wasn’t allowing me little peeks at it, a few copied pages at a time. My job was to work out the manufacturing details to make the ideas feasible. We had no trouble getting venture and angel funding for projects like this. Those guys lapped it up. But I eventually got my fill of working with Norman. His paranoia and need for control got to be too much for me, so I went out and started my own firm. It was a valuable experience, though. It jump-started my own thinking about these issues.”

  “The worth of this notebook—what kind of money are we talking about?”

  “The inventions that came out of those ideas must have brought Norman profits in the billions. This field is enormously lucrative as oil becomes more of a political weapon in the Middle East.”

  Iris sat thinking for a minute. Profits in the billions. That’s worth killing for. She needed to put this all together. Rising to leave she said, “Well, thanks for your time, Mr. Bennett.”

  “Um, maybe I could just ask you a question?” His ears were turning bright red. “Do you have Barb’s phone number? I’d love to call with my condolences.”

  Iris read it off to him without mentioning that Barb was far from distraught. As she left she brooded on the fact that there would never be any more ideas coming from the author of that notebook.

  Chapter 37

  “Sheba! Walkies!” It was amazing how that word energized the dog, getting her to leap up mid-snore out of her den inside the fireplace. Iris relied on this daily stroll under the ancient trees, gazing out over the calm reservoir, to get her thoughts in order. Something had been tugging at the corner of her consciousness for most of this Friday morning.

  Earlier, she had presented three schemes to Lillian Butterworth, showing sketches of each one and discussing pros and cons. But even as she helped her client choose which design to develop, she could feel a part of her brain racing on auto-search.

  Raven’s Sherlock Holmes quote floated into her mind. If you eliminated everything that was impossible, then whatever remained, however improbable, had to be the answer. Adam had stolen Carey’s backpack. It must have contained Carey’s notebook, the place he scribbled down his brilliant ideas, ideas like the ones that made Norman’s fortune. Norman kept a notebook with brilliant inventions in his safe and mined their ideas for new products to manufacture under his firm’s name. So Adam probably sold the notebook to Norman. That much made sense. But in the present day, she could imagine a motive for Norman to kill Adam, to try to hide his connection to the stolen notes of an inventor who had died under suspicious circumstances. This theory would jibe with Norman’s recent campaign for respectability and prestige. Or maybe Adam was blackmailing Norman for more money. He probably compared how much Norman had paid him many years ago for the notebook to the billions that Norman had managed to make off it since then.

  Ellie, Mack and Raven had been out at a movie the previous evening, but Iris had stayed up half the night putting this much together before coming to a stumbling block: These were both reasons for Norman to kill Adam, not the reverse. Norman was the golden goose and it was unlikely that he would expose Adam for theft, because he would implicate himself as well.

  Did C.C. fit somewhere into this puzzle? Was she its mastermind? And if Adam was involved, did that mean that Alyssa was too? If there were four of these prima donnas working together, how did they ever keep this plot hushed up for all these years?

  What about Will’s murder? Maybe that was tied to his being Adam’s roommate. If Rachel was to be believed, Will was not involved in the theft of the blue notebook—but he might have connected the dots. Maybe someone assumed that he had been involved. Yet both murders used the same weapon, a hypodermic needle containing an uncommon drug. Since the murders happened two days apart, the chance of a copycat killer finding out exactly what the weapon was and reproducing it that quickly seemed unlikely.

  Carey must have been murdered so his notebooks could be stolen. But why not just hire him for his ideas instead of killing him? He probably wouldn’t have agreed to work for anyone else. Or maybe the theft was opportunistic after Carey actually did become disoriented while drugged and fall off the balcony.

  Sheba had stopped walking and was rolling on the grass, massaging her back. The dog liked to punctuate her walk this way. Iris sat on a nearby bench, brain cells churning. Adam seemed to be the key to these murders. How could she get mo
re information about his movements? She wanted to know more about his alibi for Friday. Maybe she could trade information with Detective Malone. But what did she know that he didn’t?

  She leaned back against the rough wood bench and let the weak June sun warm her face. An idea formed.

  Chapter 38

  “Hi, Arturo? It’s Iris Reid. I got your phone number from the Reunion book, but I didn’t see you there.” From her office chair, Iris preemptively tossed a toy pig into the living room for Sheba.

  “Oh, hey Iris. Yeah, I meant to go, but at the last moment, I had to bail. I came down with the flu last Friday. I’m only starting to feel human again today. What did I miss?”

  “Just doddering, middle-aged versions of the same crazies from two decades ago. Oh, and a couple of murders. Will and Norman.”

  “Oof, I read about that in the papers. God. Have they found out who did it?”

  “Not yet. Do you believe it— two of our classmates?”

  “What do you think—it had something to do with the reunion? The papers didn’t say much. I’m not feeling too compos mentis with all this flu med I’m on. Tell me, what’s really going on?”

  “I don’t know, Arturo. I was there Friday night. Will never showed up. Then Norman was killed on Sunday. I actually found the body because I was supposed to help him with some punch list things for his new house.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I read that. You were his architect. Nightmare city for you.”

  “I can’t figure out any connection between the two of them, can you?”

  “No, they weren’t really friends. I don’t remember Norman having any friends other than Barb. Oh, those two got married, didn’t they? She must be torn up about it.”

  “Not really. They were divorced. Did you talk with anyone from the reunion? I remember that you and Adam used to play squash a lot on the Dunster House courts.”