The Question of the Unfamiliar Husband

by E. J. Copperman

  When I could, I angled my eyes upward. And there I saw Jennifer LeBlanc, Rachel Vandross, and Hazel Montrose staring at me in the doorway. I knew Ms. Washburn was behind me, armed with the two-by-four.

  But Hazel was holding a pistol.

  “This isn’t good,” Ms. Washburn said, and I heard the two-by-four hit the restroom floor.

  Thirty-one

  I found that I do not respond well to being tied up.

  Using the second roll of duct tape I had brought with me, Hazel supervised while holding the pistol on Ms. Washburn and me as Jenny secured my hands behind me on a support post in the center of the OLimited offices. The tape was uncomfortable, sticky against my skin, and the angle at which my arms were being held required a flexibility that even my twenty-seven exercise sessions each day had not brought to my shoulders.

  “It hurts,” I said to no one in particular.

  Rachel was securing Ms. Washburn to a similar post less than seven feet away. Ms. Washburn, looking angry, was not speaking at all, and I could only assume her anger was directed at me for involving her in this question. I did not blame her for being angry.

  “Shut up or we’ll tape your mouths,” Hazel said. “I’d prefer not to, but I will.”

  Amy stood to one side, holding her pregnant belly, her left thumb curiously close to her mouth. In my mind’s eye I felt she should have been holding a red helium balloon. She said nothing and her face was devoid of expression.

  “How can the rest of you cover for her?” Ms. Washburn asked. “Look what she’s done. Look what she’s doing. She killed one of your own. How can you just stand by?”

  I shook my head. “That tactic will not be effective, Ms. Washburn,” I said. “There is no point. Not one of these women will ever testify against any of the others, and they have good reason not to.”

  “Didn’t I tell you to shut up?” Hazel demanded.

  “My apologies, Hazel,” I said. “Or should I call you Sheila? Or Terry? How do you decide which name to use on any given day?”

  “That’s it,” Hazel said. She looked to Jenny. “Tape his mouth.”

  But Jenny did not follow her instructions. “You’re Terry?” she asked. She seemed genuinely surprised. “I thought there was no Terry.”

  “She’s not Sheila?” Amy asked at the same moment. “I’m confused.”

  The only other one of the women who seemed not the least bit fazed was Rachel. “Why are we tying them up?” she asked. “What’s the point? So they heard us talking. Doesn’t mean anything.”

  My hand, if it were free, would no doubt have begun flapping again. Had I not been so “cautious” as to paint over the surveillance cameras, the two men in the Ford Escape might be heading up the stairs to the OLimited offices at this very moment. It was, actually, somewhat curious that they were not, given that they must have seen me block the camera lenses.

  “You’ll see.” Hazel, seeing Ms. Washburn and I were securely incapacitated, lowered the gun and walked to Rachel. “Just keep your eye on the spaz.” She handed the pistol to Jenny. “Use this if you have to.”

  My failed attempts at self-control in the restroom had left me discouraged. My forehead hurt. I felt the urge to flap both hands and my jaw tightened. The same thing was happening again, but this time I was tied to a post and at the mercy of a woman who had no doubt killed before.

  Ms. Washburn, her face serious and angry, stared at Hazel. “You went out to dinner with him last night,” she said. “Didn’t you understand who you were with?”

  Rachel looked at Ms. Washburn, then at me, and grinned. “You went on a date with him?” she said to Hazel.

  “It wasn’t a date,” Hazel said from across the suite. I could not turn sufficiently to see her, but I could hear her voice. I felt anger swelling in my stomach and my head begin to shake. My upper lip curled into an unintentional sneer. “It was a way to get the idiot off track, and it worked.”

  My failure was complete. I had intended to use the social occasion with Hazel to get information from her, and she had used it to successfully manipulate me. Now Ms. Washburn was going to be hurt or killed because I had been blinded by … what? An attraction to Hazel Montrose? Was that what had happened? I wanted to scream in anger, but I knew it would be met with derisive laughter and I could not let that happen.

  Ms. Washburn, however, changed her expression to one of smug satisfaction, if I read it correctly. “That’s what you think,” she said.

  Hazel walked back into my sightline carrying some dusty newspapers she must have collected elsewhere in the office suite. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, trying to sound casual and failing to the point that I could easily read her inflection.

  “It means Samuel knows everything. He knows who killed Oliver Lewis and who killed Cindy Maholm and he knows it because you weren’t nearly as clever as you think you were.” Ms. Washburn smiled a knowing smile at Hazel. “Maybe the spaz is smarter than you.”

  Hazel regarded her and her face showed something other than complete confidence. That gave me the moment I needed to gather my thoughts. Ms. Washburn had stepped in at the crucial moment and found the way to calm me down, just as I should have known she would. It clarified my thoughts. My hands stopped trying to flap. My breathing became regular and even. My jaw relaxed. I knew what was necessary.

  I had to buy time, and not much of it. Just a few minutes would be enough. Luckily, I had just enough accurate, irrefutable data to fill the time.

  “I really don’t think so,” Hazel said.

  Amy, who still seemed baffled by the rapidity of the events before her, squinted as if she were looking from far away. She said nothing, but she was watching Hazel and then me in succession. She appeared to be trying to determine which one of us she should believe.

  Jenny, her face unhappy, walked to Hazel. “This is pointless. We should cut them loose and get out of here.”

  “That’s not the plan,” Hazel told her.

  “There was no plan,” Jenny said.

  “There is now.”

  Hazel began taking sheets of the dry, yellowed newspaper and crumpling them, then dropping them on the floor. And in that moment I knew her plan. Fighting the fear that was welling in me, I blurted out, “All four of you killed Oliver Lewis.”

  Jenny, her face white, turned toward me in one jerky motion. Rachel, who was walking toward the window, stopped dead in her tracks. Amy opened and closed her mouth three times.

  Hazel did not react at all, but kept dropping crumpled newspaper sheets on the floor. The next one landed within eighteen inches of my right hand.

  “They did?” Ms. Washburn asked. She looked quite surprised indeed.

  “Yes. I should have seen it earlier, but I was counting incorrectly. There were four assaults on Mr. Lewis’s body—the cut throat, the knife wound to the ribs, the suffocation, and the poisoning.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” Jenny argued.

  “There are four of you and four separate methods of murder, even if the poison was the one that actually caused Mr. Lewis’s death. If I had not been counting six scorned women because of Cynthia Maholm and the elusive Sheila McInerney, I would have realized each one of you had a signature modus operandi. No doubt it was Hazel with the razor cutting his throat. I’d guess Amy held the knife, based on the fact that it was a shallow wound. Ms. LeBlanc probably held the plastic bag over his head to suffocate him. And that leaves Rachel Vandross to administer the poison that actually killed Mr. Lewis.”

  “Ha,” Hazel said. Nothing more.

  Amy’s hand went to her mouth. More and more, she looked like a pregnant child. And I knew then that I’d gotten two of the perpetrators wrong, but I did not correct myself.

  In films and television programs, heroic characters who are bound to a chair or other object always manage to wear away their bonds or find a sharp
object to saw through them with what appears to be an extremely uncomfortable motion. I could not move my hands enough to erode the duct tape, nor did I have a jagged piece of glass or pocketknife to cut it. Clearly, I was not a heroic character, and it was bothering me. But I saw flaws in the armor of the women, and if I could keep them talking long enough, I could prevail.

  Unfortunately, that seemed unlikely.

  Hazel had dropped all the pages of newspaper she’d been holding, and the bulk of the debris was now scattered close to Ms. Washburn and me on the floor. Given that the OLimited offices had not been swept (other than by me), let alone cleaned, in months (a rough estimate), it was not difficult to determine her intention, and it was not a pleasant one.

  “Everybody out,” she ordered. “You’re not going to want to be here for this.”

  She pulled a book of matches from her purse.

  Ms. Washburn gasped.

  “Won’t you at least explain why Cynthia Maholm had to die?” I pretended to beg. “That is the one part I haven’t surmised on my own.” I actually had, but if I could get Hazel to pause for a minute or two, it might be enough.

  “I don’t see any reason to tell you,” she answered. “You’re not going to be alive in fifteen minutes.” She opened the book of matches.

  I decided to proceed as if that last exchange had not occurred. It’s difficult in human behavior to ignore anyone who is speaking, and that might be sufficient to stop Hazel for the vital time period.

  “Oliver Lewis was running illegal operations with this office as his front,” I said. I noticed the other women had not yet followed Hazel’s instructions, and were staying in the offices. They, at least, seemed to be listening, and Rachel in particular was intent on what I was saying, eyes narrowed to slits. “It was apparently making more money than any of you acknowledged, and was keeping you all in fairly comfortable lifestyles without, except for Hazel, a visible source of income. Your divorce settlements naturally could not include illegally earned funds, so all of this money was coming to you without the need to pay taxes, which only made the operation more lucrative in practice.”

  “I never thought about the tax thing,” Amy noted.

  “Amy!” Jenny shouted again.

  “Mr. Lewis’s mistake was in marrying and divorcing so often, and in not keeping his business interests secret from his wives. He corrected that last mistake with his final wife, Cynthia Maholm, but as the marriage went sour, as you knew it would, you contacted her and told her about his intentions. You came up with the idea of contacting me as a witness, told Cynthia it would be a staged ‘suicide’ that would scare Mr. Lewis, and then you killed him. But Cynthia hadn’t expected that and she balked. So you found a way to dispose of her too.” I was certainly taking more time than Hazel wanted me to, but I heard nothing outside yet, and was becoming discouraged.

  “I didn’t even know Cindy was dead until tonight,” Rachel protested. “Don’t blame me for that. I didn’t want to have anything to do with any of this.”

  “Yes, you did,” Jenny snorted in response. “It wasn’t your idea to kill Ollie, but you were sure fine with it once the plan was brought up.”

  “You were all there, or was it here?” I asked. “I thought there might be some sign of the event when we first entered these offices, but in the rubble of the place, we were unable to find anything.”

  “We went to Ollie’s house,” Amy said obligingly. “But you don’t understand. He was a really bad person.”

  Before Jenny could object again, Ms. Washburn, who was not straining against her bonds (probably assuming correctly that it was a futile waste of energy) kept the conversation going; she knew what I had in mind.

  “Well, he certainly didn’t treat any of you ladies well,” she said to Amy. “Is that what you mean?” It is always a good idea under such circumstances to ask a question. It requires an answer and that provides extra time.

  “Oh, that was just the beginning.” Amy actually sat on the floor next to Ms. Washburn, which was a serious mistake considering the difficulty she would have standing up again. She folded her hands under her chin. “He made you feel like the center of his universe, but then he cheated on us. He stole money from us—with all he was earning, can you imagine? He would come around with new girls even while we were still married!” She regarded Ms. Washburn. “Are you married?”

  “Yes,” Ms. Washburn admitted.

  “Well, how would you feel if your husband did something like that?”

  Ms. Washburn’s faced blanched a little. “I … I’m sure I’d be very angry.”

  I nodded in her direction; she was doing well.

  Hazel must have seen the nod. “Get up, Amy!” she shouted. “We have to set the place on fire and leave!”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Amy reached her hand up, and Jenny helped her stand, gingerly. Amy dusted herself off. She looked back at Ms. Washburn. “I’m really sorry we have to do this.”

  “You don’t,” Ms. Washburn told her.

  The idea seemed to be a revolutionary one for Amy. “Sheila says we do.”

  “She’s the one you shouldn’t trust,” I told the other three. “Hazel is the most devious of you. She managed to infiltrate a crime scene cleaning service so she could see what I had surmised after Oliver Lewis was left on the floor of my offices. She might have had the original idea to kill Mr. Lewis in the first place. And she is the one who killed Cynthia Maholm.” I knew that was not true, but I needed confirmation on a theory.

  Again, they stopped and stood still. Hazel had me in her gaze, and I averted my eyes; her look was one of terrifying anger.

  “You have no proof,” she said. “None.”

  It has been observed that people who are guilty, when confronted with their guilt, first defend themselves by saying there is no proof. But I knew Hazel was playing the role of the killer now and I had to see my plan through.

  “That’s because there is none,” I responded. “I was lying about that.”

  Ms. Washburn gasped slightly but said nothing. She looked at me. I had to look away. It is difficult for me to admit mistakes. I especially dislike being seen as imperfect to Ms. Washburn, who seems to believe I am especially intelligent, although my IQ is barely in the genius range.

  What was important, however, was to observe the other women when I said, “One of the others killed Cynthia. Was it because she was threatening to tell the police about what happened to Oliver Lewis?”

  “Of course not,” Hazel answered. “Now, enough. I have to burn you up and then get on with my life.” Once again she reached for the matches.

  Having observed, I had one last tactic to try: “So it was Amy. I had suspected, but until this moment, I did not have it confirmed.”

  Hazel stopped her motion and the other women looked at her.

  “Cynthia Maholm died of an overdose of Reglan, a drug commonly given to pregnant women for nausea. The person who would obviously have had access to that would have been Amy. And when I suggested that you were not the culprit, Hazel, each one of you stole a glance at Amy.”

  “Amy?” Ms. Washburn was clearly shocked.

  “Yes. Interesting how appearances can be deceiving, but I pay little attention to appearance. It made sense that all the women had a stake in Oliver Lewis’s illicit fortune, and each one had a grudge against him,” I explained. “But when Cynthia Maholm was killed, it was a panicked act, something unplanned, by one of the WOOL members who did not consult the others. Hazel did not mention Cynthia’s death when we went to dinner last night. If she had known, she would have said so, if only to distance herself from the crime. She didn’t know it had occurred.”

  Hazel stopped and moved her mouth but said nothing.

  “Amy was the real mastermind, wasn’t she? I’ll bet Oliver Lewis isn’t even really the father of her child.”

  Amy walked over to me, looked
me in the eye, and in a voice unlike the one she had been affecting since I’d met her, said, “Of course he wasn’t. But that’s enough. Light them up, Hazel.”

  I believe this time there would have been nothing I could say that would have distracted Hazel from her task, but the sounds I had expected throughout this entire ordeal became audible from the stairwell outside the OLimited offices. Loud footsteps were getting louder as they approached. From my position I could not see the window, but I did see blue and red lights reflected on the walls of the offices.

  Ms. Washburn drew in a long breath. “Finally,” she said.

  The four WOOL members looked around the room in disbelief as a voice came from the direction of the door: “Police! Open the door!”

  “We are in here, officer!” Ms. Washburn shouted.

  Amy turned toward Jenny and said, “Shoot them.”

  Jenny looked at the pistol, then at me, then at Ms. Washburn, then back at Amy. “Forget it,” she said. She handed the gun back to Amy.

  I wished she hadn’t done that.

  But Amy seemed more astonished and angry at Ms. LeBlanc than intent on shooting Ms. Washburn and myself. “What did you say?” she asked. Clearly, she knew what Jenny had said, but the question is sometimes asked as a pejorative, a way to disagree with the statement just made. I believe that was what Amy was doing at that moment.

  Jenny did not answer, and Amy raised the pistol in her direction.

  “She’s got a gun!” Ms. Washburn shouted.

  In less than a second, the door to the offices opened forcibly, and behind it was a police officer in uniform, his leg still raised from kicking the creaking door in. I expected the door had been unlocked and could have been opened easily, but police officers do enjoy some drama, I have observed.