by Archer Mayor
“Who ya lookin’ for?”
He spied the name “Redding” above one of the five doorbells near the front door.
“I got it,” he told them, and quickly pushed the button.
To his surprise, the front door lock immediately began buzzing, while the speaker above the bell remained silent. Gratefully, Spinney pushed the door open and stepped into the building.
It wasn’t as hot as he’d expected, the hallway’s windowless gloom being forever spared the sun’s direct onslaught. But it was dark, and he stood there blinking for a few seconds, his sense of vulnerability now expanded in scope.
“What d’ya want?” a woman’s voice asked, directly but not unkindly.
He squinted up the hallway to a shadow outlined against a door opening. “I have an appointment with Adele Redding.”
The voice was clearly surprised by his gangly appearance. “You the cop?”
“Yes.” He motioned toward the shield on his belt.
“Wow,” the voice said, its amusement clear. “That, I never would’ve guessed. Come on back.”
Lester walked slowly, not sure what he might stumble into on the way, and approached a small, squarely built gray-haired woman who emerged from her surroundings like a photograph surfacing in a tray of developer.
Face-to-face, he stuck his hand out. “Lester Spinney. Vermont Bureau of Investigation.”
Her handshake was surprisingly firm. “Adele Redding. Come inside.”
He followed her through a cluttered, dark entryway and along a narrow hall before turning a corner into a bright, sun-filled living room whose windows were crowded with stacked shelves of healthy plants. Lester wasn’t to know this, not having been to the Wilmington house of Adele’s daughter, but the propensity for successfully growing things evidently ran in the family.
The contrast between this virtual greenhouse and the gloomy corridor brought him up short. It also gave him a much clearer view of Redding’s face, which, despite its smile, was etched with grief.
“I’m really sorry for your loss,” he blurted out.
She seemed to understand that his words came from deeper than their blandness suggested.
“Thank you,” she told him, gesturing to an armchair. “Would you like something to drink? Or to use the bathroom?”
He shook his head, sitting down and draping his jacket across his knees. Despite the warmth, there was a pleasant breeze wafting in from the windows. Through the clutter of plants, he could make out a small backyard and an alleyway beyond a wooden wall. The room was filled with old furnishings, carefully framed pictures, and assorted treasured objects ranging from vases to family photos to a dark, heavy grandfather clock. None of it was expensive, but the place was clean and tidy and proudly maintained, which seemed to reflect the woman, who took a rocking chair next to a basket full of knitting to face him.
“You’re here about Michelle,” she began. “Like I said on the phone, I’m happy to tell you what I can, but can I ask something first?”
“Of course,” he said, having expected this.
“What did she die of?”
He didn’t avoid the predictable question, and now, having met her, he also didn’t worry about sugarcoating his answer.
“Mrs. Redding, I’m afraid she died from too much propane in her system.”
Her brows furrowed. “Like from a stove?”
“That’s right, or a gas leak of some sort. We’re still looking into that.”
Her hands sought each other out on her lap and curled up together for comfort. “Oh, my goodness. I thought . . .”
“Yes?”
“Well . . .” She hesitated. “That she might have just died. You know?”
“Of natural causes,” he suggested.
“Yes.”
“So this comes as a surprise?” he asked gently.
She frowned and considered that. “You’re asking if she was suicidal.”
“We know she was sad about Archie,” he said, using Morgan’s first name on purpose, increasing the moment’s intimacy.
Adele looked down at her hands, as if checking to see what they were up to. “She was sad,” she told them, “but I never thought she was going to do that.” She looked up, her expression drawn, as if guilty. “We spoke every morning.”
Lester felt sorry for her. “I didn’t say she did, Mrs. Redding. We’re still investigating.”
“But how else?”
He held up his hand. “I’m also not saying she didn’t. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to torture you with this. We simply don’t know right now. That’s one of the reasons I’m here.”
She pursed her lips and nodded. “All right.”
“We understand Michelle was in financial straits,” he said as an opener.
“She was, yes. I was trying to help with that, as much as I could, and I know her friend Linda was, too. They were talking about moving in together, into Linda’s place.”
“Because of the troubles with the landlord?”
Her expression darkened. “Yes—horrible man.”
Lester chose to hold off on that for the time being. “Was Michelle at all upbeat about living with Linda?”
“They liked each other a lot. They had some experiences in common.”
“The alcoholism?”
Adele ducked her head down again, and Lester worried that he might have overstepped here. “We’ve interviewed several people already,” he said vaguely, hoping that would spread the guilt around a bit. He knew from Gunther’s notes that Adele had also struggled with the bottle.
“Yes,” she finally murmured. “I was worried at first that’s what might have killed her.”
“We have no evidence of that,” he said.
“Good. I’m glad. She’d been doing so well. She never joined AA, like Linda told her she should, but she seemed to have come up with her own way of dealing with it.”
“That’s saying a lot,” Lester commented. “What with Archie dying, the money running out, and the troubles with Archie’s father, the pressures to slip must’ve been huge.”
That seemed to bolster her a little. “Maybe Linda and I made the difference.” Her eyes suddenly welled up. “I felt so bad about that part of her problems. I used to drink when she was little and needed me most. I failed her and I passed that on to her, too. A terrible thing for a mother to do.”
“You were there for her later,” Lester soothed her. “And she obviously really appreciated it. Linda said your daily phone calls were a big help.”
He wasn’t actually sure of that but figured it couldn’t hurt.
It didn’t. Adele smiled wanly. “That’s nice to know.”
“Tell me a little about Newell Morgan,” Lester finally said. “Why did things go so wrong there?”
She made a face. “Michelle said it was envy—that he hated his own life and wished it was more like Archie’s.”
“Was Archie’s life that wonderful?” Spinney asked innocently. “I don’t know much about him.”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t on that level. He was a school custodian. He didn’t have big dreams. He was just happy being alive. What Michelle meant was that they had each other. All the father had was anger. He hated everybody.”
“But he still let them live in that house. Why was that?”
“Michelle said it was just so he could have a free workman to fix it up until he could sell it out from under them. He charged them rent on the one hand and expected Archie to improve it on the other, free of charge except for materials. And Archie did good work.”
“Sounds like Michelle wasn’t too thrilled with the deal.”
“She loved the house and she loved Archie. She told him what that man was up to, but I think Archie needed to think his father loved him, too. She said Archie lived one day at a time, and I guess if you do that, other people’s motives don’t matter as much.”
“Except that they did after Archie died,” Lester suggested.
He paused, thinkin
g back over what he’d read about this case so far.
“Was that all it was?” he asked. “The house? I mean, was that the only reason Newell went after Michelle so hard once she was alone?”
Adele gave him a thoughtful look. “You’re wondering if he propositioned her.”
“Yes.”
She touched her chin, as if considering a single item from among many. “I’m not sure. It was the one thing I wondered about that she never told me.”
“You never asked?”
“No, no,” she said with some emphasis. “That’s not the way these talks went. You have to understand, it took a long time for us to get where we were.”
“A lot of history?”
She let out a short, humorless laugh. “A lot of bad history. Like I said, I was not a good mother. I did my best to be one.” She paused, as if eavesdropping on some inner piece of dialogue, before adding mournfully, “Too little, too late.”
Lester didn’t know enough to argue the point. There was, however, one last question that Joe had requested he ask.
“Mrs. Redding, this is going to sound a little weird maybe, but did your daughter have any trouble smelling things?”
Adele looked at him with her eyebrows raised, startled out of her melancholia. “Yes. She couldn’t smell much at all. She got really sick, years ago, landed in the hospital and everything. They said it was the flu, but I’m not sure they knew. Anyway, whatever it was ruined that part of her breathing system. I forget all the words now, but it was a known condition.”
She paused, thinking back, and then asked in turn, “Why?”
This time, Spinney lied, not wishing to drag her back once more to the source of her sorrow. He feigned taking a glance at the notepad he’d been consulting. “You know? They didn’t tell me. It was just a detail I was supposed to ask about.”
But it was more than that, and as he took his leave shortly thereafter to return home, it was the one piece of information that kept coming back around in his head.
Joe stood at the door of the converted schoolhouse once more, revisiting the scene that now seemed so familiar and yet ancient. No trace of the cat droppings remained, apart from a single faint floor stain. The plants were the worse for wear, ghosts of their former selves. And the air, because of the closed windows, was stale and vaguely musty. No one had been inside the place since the state police sealed it shut that first day.
With him this time, also reminiscent of ghosts, were white-clad crime scene technicians, outfitted from booties to hats, who methodically traveled through the building gathering whatever scraps they deemed relevant.
It was a formal requirement, given the case’s upgraded stature, but Gunther didn’t expect much to come from it. Any fingerprints would probably belong to people who had legitimate access. There’d been no gunfire, so no holes or errant bullets were there to discover. There was no reason to think any bloodstains would surface, and he and Doug Matthews had already gone through the papers.
DNA was always a possibility, however remote, but he remained doubtful of any context it might fit. Supposedly, Michelle had been living alone for half a year. Nevertheless, wearing a crime scene suit himself, he returned to the attached bedroom, where any such evidence was most likely to be found.
There, to his surprise, he discovered David Hawke standing on a stepladder, taking a bird’s-eye photograph of the oversize bed. The room had utterly lost its intimacy, not just with the absence of its occupant but with the addition of so many intruders.
Hawke was the forensic lab director and therefore not a man to be found often outside the office. Joe waited until he’d taken his shot before commenting, “You know, many a private eye would love a vantage point like that.”
Hawke looked at him and laughed. “Hi, Joe. Wow. Why didn’t I ever think of that? You have a devious mind.”
He carefully climbed back down the ladder, watching his awkwardly dressed feet on the steps.
“You find anything of interest?” Joe asked. The bed’s covers had been pulled back to reveal the bottom fitted sheet, which, to his eye at least, looked pristine, if a little wrinkled.
Hawke shrugged. “Nothing at odds with a single woman living alone, and nothing to challenge the findings I read in your report.”
He packed his camera into a black plastic suitcase and snapped it shut, resuming: “I always hate it when we get called in so long after discovery.”
“We didn’t know it wasn’t a natural.”
“I know, I know,” he said. “I wasn’t complaining. I also read how this all played out—plus,” he added with a smile, “a few little birds are already adding some interesting political tidbits. I wonder who Hillstrom’s new boss is going to be? Rumors are, Freeman resigned so he wouldn’t have to fess up to some huge skeleton in his closet. Big mystery.”
Joe laughed. “Forget it. I’m not touching that. Was the stove the source of the propane?”
Hawke shook his head, still amused. “Very good. Nice, elegant change of subject. Okay, yes, the stove fits as a possible source. How’s that?”
“There’s another one?”
Hawke led the way into the big room and over to the linear kitchen, speaking as he went. “Not that we’ve found, but that doesn’t mean a portable one couldn’t have been removed. You have to start thinking like a scientist, Joe.”
He stopped before the stove and pointed at its row of control valves. “These are all off, the gas tank out back is three-quarters full, consistent with the delivery schedule, and the pilot lights are on and burning.”
“Meaning that if the stove was used to kill her,” Joe interpreted, “not only did the killer turn the controls back off, but he relit the pilots, too.”
“And opened the windows,” Hawke added. “Probably ran the ceiling fans, too, to speed things up.”
Joe turned to look at the long bank of windows across the room. “That does make you wonder, doesn’t it? Why bother? Why not just blow out the pilots, turn on the gas, and walk away?”
“So the house doesn’t explode,” Hawke said simply.
“Right,” Joe agreed. “Which would make sense if you had a vested interest in it.”
“Or were just a neat and careful person, which this one was.”
Joe looked at him inquiringly.
Hawke smiled. “I think we figured out how it was done,” he explained. “Follow me.”
They went out the back door at the end of the kitchen, stepped off the small, cluttered porch there, and circled back along the outside wall, eventually reaching two small, curtained windows located near where the stove was situated inside.
There Hawke stopped, pointing at a large cylinder of propane gas, whose feeder line vanished through the building’s wall. “Our theory right now is that the killer cut the gas here initially, which knocked out all the pilot lights. He used a wrench or some mechanical device to turn the valve. We found the tool marks. He probably did this while the victim was in the bathroom, getting ready for bed, which—what with the noise of running water and all—would have isolated her acoustically from any sounds he was making, or from any sounds the cat might have made in reaction.”
“But just turning the gas back on and letting it seep in through the pilots wouldn’t have been enough, would it?”
“True,” Hawke agreed. He crouched down and pointed out four small, deep impressions in the dirt. “A stepladder,” he explained. “We matched these holes to the ladder we found on the back porch.” He glanced up at the window beside the tank. “The gas gets turned off, the pilots go out, the gas gets turned back on, the killer climbs the borrowed ladder, leans in through the window, which is unlocked, reaches across the top of the stove, turns on all the valves, and then sits back and waits. The victim continues doing her thing in the bathroom, steps out into the bedroom, does whatever she does, eventually feels woozy, sits on the edge of the bed, and is overcome.”
“Plus,” Joe added, “I just heard back that she had no sense of smell.
”
Hawke’s eyes widened. “Anosmia? Really? Interesting twist. Well, that would definitely explain it. I was wondering about that.”
He straightened and returned to the back porch, pointing out the small stepladder that Gunther hadn’t noticed earlier. “In any case, our bad guy replaces that, enters the building, which, I gather, was usually unlocked, opens the windows, runs the fans, shuts the valves, relights the pilots—”
“Hey, Dave,” a voice shouted at them from near the woods at the property’s edge. “I got it.”
They both turned to see one of the technicians pointing down at a small pile of dirt at his feet.
“Thanks, John,” Hawke answered. “Be right there.” He then turned to Joe and finished his sentence: “. . . and buries the dead cat that crapped all over the place before it died.”
Joe’s eyes widened slightly, as if suddenly recalling a long-forgotten tune. “Man, that cat’s been driving me nuts. Georgia.”
“First thing I asked myself when we got here,” Hawke agreed. “That’s why I had John go looking. Georgia, huh?”
“After Georgia O’Keeffe.”
They began walking toward the tiny burial site, which the technician was documenting with a camera of his own.
“Oddly sentimental thing to do,” Joe wondered aloud, “especially fresh from killing a human being.”
“Yeah. People are funny that way.”
Joe suddenly stopped and looked back at the house. From where they were, they could see down the length of the exterior wall to the gas tank and the small window.
“What kind of shape would you have to be in to do that little stunt?”
“Reach in through the window?” Hawke asked. “You don’t have to be a gymnast. But somewhat agile. It is awkward, and the trick was to be quiet, even with the bathroom walls and the running water acting as a muffler. I think that’s why he didn’t just walk in—that and Georgia, who might’ve made a fuss.”
“So a fat man on disability is unlikely.”
“I’d say so,” Hawke said.
“On the other hand,” Joe went on, “a familiarity with the layout and Michelle’s routine was key, all the way down to the kitchen window’s location and when she was most likely to use the bathroom.”