“Why didn’t she quit?” I asked. “She was an excellent cook and easily could have found work elsewhere.”
“I can answer that in one word: blackmail.”
“What are you saying?” Wayne stood and walked over to him. He stopped in front of Simon and shook his finger in the man’s face. “You dare to speak such things about my best friend?”
Simon took the man’s finger and bent it downward. “Even now you’re lying. He was not your best friend. Sit down or I may have to tell them about you.”
“What? What do you mean by—”
“That’s a good idea, Wayne. Please sit down, and let’s allow Simon to tell us.” Burton stood between the two men. He took Wayne’s arm and led him to a chair.
Simon came farther into the room and stood near the fireplace so he could face everyone. “I will tell you the truth. Elaine was a criminal. If she had displeased Roger, he would have made certain that her next place to live would be a prison cell, and for a very long time.”
Ten
“Surely you’re mistaken,” Amanda said. “I can’t possibly believe that Elaine would be some kind of criminal.”
“It’s true though,” Jason said. “Dad told me this earlier today—a little bit anyway.”
Stunned looks filled several faces. Burton didn’t appear surprised.
The room had a slight chill. Or maybe it was just something I felt. I sensed that we were moving into a new phase of the investigation—a deeper level or something. Thunder rumbled in the distance. We could no longer hear the pounding on the roof. The rain had already moved on.
“Please tell us about Mrs. Wright,” Burton said. “You can’t hurt her now.”
“I’ll tell you what I know, but I never learned the entire story,” Simon said. “She told me parts of it at different times, but I know a few details.”
For several minutes, Simon related a story about an armed robbery that had taken place in Brunswick, the nearest city from Palm Island. “A man robbed a bank and walked away from the counter with a large sum of money. A woman customer tried to stop him. He shot and killed her. He raced from the bank and jumped into a waiting car. The car sped off. The driver wore a dark hood, so no one knew who it was.”
“Elaine Wright was the driver?” asked Paulette.
He nodded. “They caught her brother several days later. They recovered less than half of the money, but he refused to name the driver or divulge the whereabouts of the rest. Somehow Roger found out that Mrs. Wright was the driver.”
“I know how Dad found out,” Jason said. “Mrs. Wright’s brother is Doug Burns, and he worked in the cannery. He needed the money for an expensive procedure for his daughter. She had some rare form of cancer, and there was an experimental treatment available. He hadn’t worked in the cannery long enough to have insurance, and there was also something about a preexisting condition.”
Between Simon and Jason, we learned that the police tracked down Burns before he could send the money to his former wife. “When they caught Burns, he turned over every cent he had.”
“You mean they didn’t recover all of the money?” I asked.
Simon shrugged. “He gave Mrs. Wright several thousand dollars. She never told me the amount. The prosecution threatened the death penalty unless he revealed the name of the driver—who would also be charged with murder and armed robbery.”
“In desperation, he pleaded with his lawyer to contact Dad for him,” Jason said. “Dad went to see him.”
“And what did Roger do?” I asked.
“He paid for the medical procedures—some kind of transplant—it was successful, and the daughter is doing well. As for Burns,” Simon said, “he received a death sentence, and Roger either couldn’t do anything about it or wouldn’t. He’s still alive and, so far, he’s lost every appeal. The governor definitely will not commute his sentence to life in prison.” Simon paused and cleared his throat. He brushed his arm across his face, but not before I saw the moistness of his eyes.
He liked Elaine—I could see that. I wondered if he had been in love with her. Simon would never answer, even if I asked, but there was one question I could ask. “He said Mrs. Wright. Is there a Mr. Wright somewhere?”
“No. They divorced. She had been a highly successful chef with an impressive business in Savannah.”
“That explains why she was such a fabulous cook,” I said.
“She was a hard woman—really tough,” Simon said. “But she had begun to thaw. Not a lot, but some. I think we were friends. At least, I tried to be her friend.”
Yes, I believed that he loved her—or at least liked her a lot. The tone of his voice made it obvious to me. I glanced at Burton, and the slight raising of his eyebrow made it clear that he caught it too. That Burton is uncanny; he should have been a therapist.
“If Burns had informed them of the identity of the driver, they probably would have commuted the sentence.” Simon shook his head. “He refused and said he would never tell. Roger told Elaine he would give her a job, and he expected her to serve him well for four years. At the end of that time, he promised to return all the documentation of her guilt, help her establish a new identity, and move to another part of the country.”
“But that wasn’t right,” I said. “She was a criminal.”
“Yes, she was.”
“Hey, that’s like TV, isn’t it?” Lenny said. “You know, the criminal escapes punishment for the crime and dies in another . . . Oh, I . . . Sorry.”
Reginald shook his head. “You’re not only despicable, but you’re also an idiot.”
“Now you understand why Elaine never would have quit, no matter how harsh he became. Besides,” Simon said, “she had less than five months on her sentence. Her Harden sentence. That’s how she spoke to me about it.”
“So she wouldn’t have killed him would she?” I asked. “If she had stayed with Roger that long—”
“And he promised to turn over the evidence to her,” Simon said. “I don’t know what that evidence was. Elaine never told me, but she did say he had shown it to her. But I think I know.”
“Then tell us,” Amanda said.
“I think it was a confession written by Doug Burns, in which he detailed everything.”
“Why would he do—”
“In return for the money for the surgery,” Wayne said. “That sounds like one of Roger’s methods. Humanitarian—at a price.”
“So the obvious inference is that she knew something about Roger’s death,” Burton said. “Perhaps she saw the murderer. Is that possible?”
For what seemed like minutes, no one said a word. Simon cleared his throat and said, “I know one thing that none of you knows. And this may help move things along. I know why Mr. Harden invited each of you. I know why it was just the twelve of you.”
“I’ve wondered about that,” Burton said. “Why was it just us? Why us together? Why not others?”
“Each of you has something to hide. Each of you has a secret—a secret known only to Roger Harden.”
“A secret?” Amanda asked. “What kind of secret? Do you mean blackmail or something like that? If you do, then surely—oh, you can’t be serious.”
“I know what I know,” Simon said.
“I think that’s true,” Jason said. “I don’t know for certain, but Dad as much as hinted at something like that. He said that for years he had enjoyed pulling the strings and making all of you his puppets.”
“What did he mean by that?” asked Wayne.
“Suppose you tell us which strings he pulled in your life,” Jason said.
“I resent that statement.”
“You may resent it, Mr. Holmestead, but it’s still true.”
“It is not true. At least it is not true in my case.”
“I suspect that it is true for each one of us,” Jeffery said. “It is true in my life. He certainly pulled my strings. Okay, here is the truth, and I’m ready to confess. Besides, I’m sure that one way or another,
it will come out—I can honestly say I’m not the least bit saddened because he is dead. I detested Roger Harden.”
Even with that last sentence, Jeffery said the words with no inflection, and I almost missed the meaning. “Detested?” I heard myself ask.
“I’ll say it another way then: I hated the man. I’m delighted someone finally got rid of him. Am I clearer now?”
Eleven
“You say you hated Roger—and you say that as casually as if you were saying there will be rain tomorrow or—” Amanda choked and couldn’t finish. Jason hugged her and soothed her.
“Why don’t you explain?” Burton interjected. He sat next to Jeffery Dunn and stared into the passive face.
“For thirty years he blackmailed me. Can you understand my feelings—thirty years? Thirty years ago, Roger came to see me at the university. He held my dissertation in his hand.”
“And that means?”
“He had learned that it was—uh, that it was not original.” His hand felt around his toupee and gave it an unnecessary tug. That must have been a nervous habit.
“You mean you copied from someone?”
“Absolutely not. It was original research; however, Roger knew I had paid someone else to write it for me.” He hung his head. “I was quite busily involved in private research, you see, and I didn’t have time to do both, so—”
“Yeah, right!” Jason said. “The truth is you paid someone to write it for you because you weren’t smart enough to—”
“That is a malicious lie! You are a detestable boy, you know.” He shook his head. “But it is true that I hired someone to write it for me. I have no idea why, but she informed Roger, and he confronted me. And I have paid for my indiscretion every day of my life. Oh, not at first. No, no, no. He said he wanted to help me, and I agreed. But first, of course, he insisted that I sign a confession—a signed confession that he had prepared and that he promised to destroy if I ‘lived a satisfactory life.’ Those are the words he used—a satisfactory life—but he meant he wanted to hold the confession over me.”
Tears filled his eyes. He reached up once again to straighten his toupee. “He was a deceptive man. That’s what makes him so evil. At first, he was kind and I thought he was a great friend. He used his influence, and after my second year of teaching—which is unheard of at our university—he arranged for me to get tenure.”
“And you liked that?” Simon said.
“I confess that I did. But I had no idea what a price I would have to pay. I became a servant to that man. If I didn’t do everything he asked—everything, even trivial things—he said he would expose me.”
“What did he ask you to do?” Burton asked.
“Mostly meaningless things. I frequently came in answer to a summons to his home in Clayton County and later, after he moved permanently, to this island. Five times he asked me to break into the university’s computer system—which I did. He never asked me to change anything. He simply wanted to know confidential data. I supplied him with information about the university staff and, well, about anyone else I heard about. Eight times he had me break into the president’s personal email. I became his personal messenger to pass on gossip or any kind of private, sensitive communication. He was detestable.”
“Which would give you a strong motive to kill him,” I said.
He shook his head. “Absolutely not. I came here to confront him—but not to kill him.”
“We have only your word for that,” Wayne said. “I think you need to give us more convincing information—some proof of what you say.”
We waited while Jeffery cleared his throat and shifted his skeletal weight several times. “I am fifty-nine years old, and at the end of this school term, six weeks ago, I became eligible for retirement.”
“So you thought you could make Roger back off?” I asked.
“No, not that. You see, I went to the president just before the end of the term. I confessed to him what I had done—about the dissertation, I mean. He doesn’t know about anything else. I certainly never told him about Roger’s extortion.”
“And the result?” Burton asked.
“The president said I could retire and there would be no repercussions. I had to endure a stern lecture by him. I think he was glad to get rid of me. He has never liked me very much, and it was an easy way to push me out of the system without any problems for him. I accepted Roger’s invitation so I could spit in his evil face.”
“Did Roger know why you agreed to come?”
“No, although I whispered to him during teatime that I wanted—that I needed—to talk to him privately.”
“I heard him say that,” Amanda said. “Roger said he would see him after dinner.”
“It was a little more than that,” Jeffery said. “In fact, it was rather—how shall I say? Cryptic. He said that he had a significant announcement to make at the end of dinner. If I still wanted to talk to him, I could do so after that. I wondered if he meant he would expose me—”
“So that would have given you a motive,” Paulette said.
“Au contraire. It absolves me. I had nothing more to fear from him. I was ready to confront him, yes, and tell him how despicable he was. In fact, I looked forward to telling that old devil that I was no longer his slave.”
His words were powerful, but typical of the man, they were spoken in such a monotone he might have discussed a feature he had seen on TV.
“I did not kill him,” he said, and then he raised his voice and emphasized each word: “I did not kill him.”
“Thank you,” Burton said. “Dr. Dunn, I appreciate your honesty.” He patted Jeffery on the shoulder as he might gently touch a child. Burton looked around at the rest of us. “Is there anyone else who wants to speak?”
“I’ll tell you,” Beth said. “It’s all written down someplace. And if someone has that information, I suppose it will come out.” She told about her life before she got on television. She had never been married, and she had used recreational drugs regularly. Because of her drug use—and she insisted she had never been addicted or been in rehab—she had served a year in prison for “selling myself,” as she put it.
She changed her name to Beth Wilson with forged documents. “Roger found out, and I have no idea how he learned the truth. That was nearly a year ago. Since then, he has controlled my life.”
As I listened, I felt sorry for her. Maybe I had been jealous of her gorgeous hair and smooth skin. As I listened, I realized that she hid a lot of pain behind that constant smile.
Burton thanked her for being honest with all of us.
“You might as well speak up,” I said. “You all have something you’re holding back.”
“Okay, you might as well hear my story now,” Lenny said. “I’m not proud of what I’ve done, but it’s over, and I didn’t kill Roger.”
“Make us believe that,” Reginald said.
Twelve
“Tell us your story,” Burton prompted Lenny.
He looked around at us, dipped his chin, and said, “I told you earlier that I was a literary agent, and that’s true. Or perhaps it’s better to say that’s what I called myself in those days. I had an office in Savannah and a post office box and even a toll-free number.”
He put his hands together, palm against palm, held them up to his chin, almost as if he were a child at prayer. His green eyes looked so sad. For the first time, I felt sorry for him, and I didn’t even know what he had done.
“I called myself a literary agent. I worked mostly through the Internet. I paid for those huge pop-up ads that told people I could help them publish their book. Very slick, very professional looking. Why wouldn’t they be? I paid plenty for them to look first class. I used the ploy that everyone has at least one book inside them. You probably saw the ads.”
Because none of us seemed to know about them, I think that disappointed Lenny.
“Uh, well, I actually ran a scam,” he said. “Yes, it’s true, I did. I cheated people.”
> I stared at him. Did he think we wouldn’t believe him capable of such a thing?
“It worked like this. They read my ads that said I would get their manuscripts to a publisher and help them get published. They paid me five hundred dollars to read the material, because I assured them that’s how I’d know how and where to sell it.”
“I know how the rest of that goes,” Reginald said.
“Maybe you do.” Lenny explained that even without reading a story—he never looked at any—he told every want-to-be writer that his or her manuscript still needed work. “I told them they had great ideas but the book wasn’t publishable as it was. I made a big point of saying that the material had great potential but it still needed professional fine-tuning.” He stopped and smiled at all of us as if he expected us to applaud his brilliant scheme.
No one responded.
Lenny sent each one a personalized letter (meaning he inserted a personal note here and there on his form letter) and said he worked closely with an editing service. He was in Savannah and the editing service was supposedly in New York. That was the come-on, because the material was sent to a Manhattan post office box and then forwarded to Lenny’s sister, who also lived in Savannah.
“My sister did edit—a little—before she returned the manuscripts in large packages to her friend who picked them up at the same Manhattan post office. Each of them was addressed, stamped, and mailed from New York. We wanted to make sure the clients could see a Manhattan postmark on the envelope. Clever, right?”
Again, no one responded, and once again he looked deflated.
Lenny wrote the client and said he had received an edited copy from the editing service and made the clients an offer. For a thousand dollars, he would send their manuscripts to twenty publishers; for twenty-five hundred dollars, he would send it to fifty.
Everybody Loved Roger Harden Page 8