Open Season (Joe Gunther Mysteries)

by Archer Mayor

  That was a depressingly good point. I knew Ski Mask had used us to start the ball rolling, but I had flattered myself into thinking he needed me personally, and that I might have some control over him as a result. But Frank was right; as far as Ski Mask was concerned, any cop would do.

  The revelation made me doubt everything I’d come up with so far. Maybe he was a disgruntled former juror, or the Huntington Arms manager, or someone hired by Mrs. Reitz’s daughter, or even a crony of Davis’s. The whole thing was as clear as mud, and I was beginning to feel I was drowning in it. I sure as hell wasn’t going to mention the private eye from Burlington now.

  Curiously, it was Brandt who came to the rescue. “Of all our options, one does seem to stand out. If you took those blood samples or whatever down to the guy Hillstrom recommended and had them analyzed, that would at least give us something concrete to work with.” He looked directly at me. “Has anything else surfaced at this point? Anything about the Phillips shooting or the other stuff?”

  “Nothing. Dead ends all around.”

  “Frank?”

  Murphy angrily shifted his weight in his chair. “This whole damn thing only started a couple of days ago. We’ve barely scratched the surface.”

  “But we have interviewed everyone involved that we know of, right?”

  “So far.”

  “And we have eliminated the obvious? Insurance, revenge, robbery, jealousy, whatever.”

  “It may be there. We just don’t see it yet.”

  Brandt looked at the floor for a few seconds. “I agree with Frank about letting Harris out of the bag too soon. We would look like morons if you came back from testing Hillstrom’s samples with positive proof that we have the right man behind bars. Find out what you can as quickly as possible—and I’m talking a couple of days at most here—and then we’ll see where to go next.”

  He slid off the filing cabinet and walked over to the door. “By the way, Frank, don’t feel like a sitting duck here. Technically, I headed the Harris investigation. I was given all the facts and had all the options. If there has been a screw-up, nobody’s going after you. I can promise you that.”

  Murphy nodded and watched him go. He waited a few seconds until we both heard the hallway door close, and then he let out a snort. “He can’t promise anything if they fire him first.”

  I stood up. “I wouldn’t worry, Frank.”

  He gave me a deadpan look. “It’s not your problem, is it?”

  12

  I LEFT FRANK BROODING and called up Dr. Hillstrom from my office. She said she would have all samples and slides on their way within the next few hours via state police courier. She also said she would call Bob Kees and tell him to expect me some time tomorrow. I mentioned that the chief had given me only a couple of days and she burst out laughing. The best she could do, she said, was to pass that along and hope Kees had an abundance of Christmas spirit left over.

  I was almost out the door when the phone rang. “Joe?” It was Gail.

  “Hi. What’s up?”

  “I just saw Katz’s screaming headlines. I was wondering how you were doing.”

  “I’m okay. He didn’t do too much damage. It would have gotten out anyway and he missed the jury connection. I would guess he’s just talking to his buddies and sewing that together with what we release anyhow. His real trick is the hysterical undertone—you know, stuff like, ‘police don’t deny’ and ‘informed sources speculate’ and ‘there are possible connections.’ ”

  “Speaking of hysteria, have you heard from the town fathers?”

  I hesitated. Her tone was suspiciously neutral. “Am I hearing from them now?”

  She chuckled, which was a relief. It was a little early to start getting heat from the politicians, at least at my level. “You might. I wanted to let you know they’re getting pretty worked up—they feel they’re being left in the dark on purpose. Some of us got together a half hour ago, and I had the distinct impression that if I’d mentioned the words ‘Kimberly Harris,’ it would have been like dropping a match into a swimming pool full of gasoline. It gave me quite a sense of power.”

  “Yeah, over my job. Try to control yourself, okay?”

  “Seriously, Joe, Mrs. Morse especially is really on the warpath. She wants Brandt called before a special session, and Cutts and Pearly are starting to think about it. If Katz does make the jury connection, that’ll be the match. How are things going?”

  “We’re digging. It’ll all hinge on getting some more forensic stuff out of Connecticut. There’s an expert down there that might help us out, but it’ll take a few days.”

  She was quiet for a few moments. “God, I hate these things. I wish they’d leave you alone—we would leave you alone, I should say. I really feel like telling them off sometimes, and I’d do it if you and I weren’t… well, you know. It kind of ties my hands; I can’t be too partial.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Her voice was suddenly stronger. “Well, hell. I’m probably just being too sensitive anyway. Mrs. Morse is always stirring them up; now’s no different. She’s not going to get them to do anything for a few days at least, unless your friend in the mask pops up again. Then you will be in trouble, or at least Brandt will be.”

  “I’ll let him know he’s walking on egg shells.”

  “Oh, he knows that—that’s what phones are for. I shouldn’t even have bothered you about all this.”

  “Hey, I appreciate it. Makes me feel good to have a spy on the board.”

  “A lot of good I am.”

  “Don’t let it get to you, Gail. That’s not why you’re there. We’re all big boys and girls.”

  “I know that. There’s just something about all this that makes me nervous for some reason. A man in a mask, that whole Kimberly Harris thing cropping up again… It’s creepy. I had nightmares last night.”

  I hoped to hell she wouldn’t find out what I’d almost had last night. “We’ll get to the bottom of it soon—not to worry.”

  · · ·

  My first stop of the day was the bank where Kimberly Harris had kept her account, at least according to the apartment manager. If true, I was in luck; it was the same bank Ellen had worked in when we’d met and where I’d maintained ties with people who were now high in the ranks. The head of Records, Peg Wilson, had been a bridesmaid at our wedding.

  I found her in her office, standing on a chair watering a plant.

  She looked up when I knocked and spilled some water on her desk. “Joe, look what you’ve made me do. There’re some Kleenexes in the top drawer.”

  I mopped up the puddle and helped her off her perch. She put down the can and gave me a hug. “Gosh, it’s been a long time. I haven’t seen you in months. No… more; it’s been a year. It was last Christmas. You ought to be ashamed of yourself—a whole year. It’s enough to make a girl feel neglected.”

  “What about Tom?”

  She waved her hand. “He’s just a husband. I need a handsome bachelor on the side.”

  “Well, I hope you find him.”

  She held my face between her hands, as a mother might a child’s.

  “You look pretty good to me, big boy.” The smile faded slowly. “Actually, you look like death warmed over. What’s wrong?”

  I kissed her and sat on the edge of her desk. “I just missed a night’s sleep. I can’t pull it off like I used to.”

  She settled back in her chair. “Ugh. Tell me about it. I have to spend half an hour every morning in front of the mirror just to look alive.”

  “You do a great job.”

  She patted my knee. “Flatterer. What do you want?”

  “Did Kimberly Harris bank here?”

  She looked at me for a full count of three. I could almost hear the files turning over in her head. “Yes.”

  That I found refreshing. No comments about the murder, digging up dead bodies, or why-do-you-want-to-knows. Just a straightforward answer. Peg was one of my favorite bureaucrats. She also
had a machinelike memory. “Are her records still available?”

  “No court order, right?”

  “Right.” She got up. “You’re a bad boy, Joe Gunther. Grab a magazine.” She left the room and I picked up an issue of something called Banker’s Quarterly. I had just gotten to the biography of BQ’s Banker of the Year when Peg walked back in. She put a folder on her desk and said, “I have to go to the bathroom. I should be about ten minutes, so please do not touch anything on my desk, okay?”

  “Got you.” She left, closing the door behind her. I picked up the file.

  It was a computer printout, naturally, several sheets long. Kimberly Harris had banked here for a little over a year. She hadn’t made great use of her checkbook, opting instead to write checks for large sums of cash and then presumably working from a kitty. That was unfortunate, in that I couldn’t trace her daily activities, but it did show me someone who was in a good position to leave at the drop of a hat. Most people I know who are settled in a community don’t walk around with rolls of hundred-dollar bills in their pockets.

  I was also able to identify four stages of her financial life. The first was brief and pretty skinny. It made me wonder why she’d bothered to open an account in the first place. Within a couple of months, however, regular income started pumping in—a biweekly transfer of funds from another account at the bank owned by Charlie’s Pharmacy—presumably a paycheck. The third period was a transition. Charlie’s paycheck was augmented by cash deposits of four thousand dollars a month for several months. Lastly, Charlie dropped out of the picture, leaving only the mysterious, and hefty, monthly allotments. These lasted until her death.

  That was all. I closed the folder and sat back. What the hell was going on? I now knew for sure that Willy Kunkle’s sensitivities, not to mention Frank Murphy’s, James Dunn’s, the Board of Selectmen’s, and everyone else’s, were going to have to be abused, to Stan Katz’s delight. I was going to have to sneak a peek under the lid of this one and run the risk of blowing it off.

  Peg walked back in. “Are you satisfied now?”

  I surreptitiously slid the folder onto her desk. “I’m more informed; I can’t say I’m satisfied.”

  She sat down and picked up the file, idly leafing through it.

  “Do you remember if any cops came by for that after she died?”

  She looked up, surprised. “Oh, yes. It was what’s-his-name—the rude one.”

  “Kunkle?”

  “That’s right.”

  That was something. But it made me all the more anxious to find out what the official conclusions had been about the four-thousand-dollar payments.

  I thanked Peg and left the bank. The day was as brilliant as it had started out—cold and sharp and brittle. The snow creaked underfoot. People marched about, laden with rejected Christmas presents, peeking out between scarves and wooly hats. Most of the pre-holiday tension had been replaced by the return of everyday life.

  Charlie’s Pharmacy was around the corner on Elliot Street, only a hundred feet from the bank. It had a long, thin railroad car layout that made me wonder if somebody hadn’t just put a roof and two doors on an alleyway. It was pleasant and cheery, however, its first few feet cluttered with magazines and card racks, the rest given over to the usual hodgepodge that makes drug stores the next best thing to the old five-and-dimes. Muted classical music hovered overhead, a distinctive if trendy touch that reminded me of Hillstrom’s office.

  The man behind the prescription counter, the only other person in the place, looked up. “Can I help you find something?”

  “That might take the fun out of it.”

  The pharmacist grinned. “I know what you mean. I bought this place for the same reason: I’ve always loved drug stores. Of course, they were a little different when I was a boy.”

  I walked up to the counter. He was an older man, probably in his seventies, with more hair than I had and a pair of unnaturally clean gold-rimmed glasses. They sparkled in the overhead light. He seemed as custom-fitted to his job as an elf to a toy shop.

  “Are you Charlie?” I knew he wasn’t, but it didn’t make sense to me to come on like Big Brother.

  “Oh, no. That’s kind of an inside joke. Before she died, my wife used to kid me that my only ambition in life was to own a store on Main Street and call it Charlie’s.”

  “You almost made it.”

  The other man laughed. “Just a few yards to the corner. Oh, well, that’ll keep me dreaming. My name’s Floyd Rubin, by the way.” He stuck out a clean, pink hand.

  “Joe Gunther.”

  “Glad to meet you. Is this the first time you’ve been in?”

  “No. I’ve come here once or twice before. You’ve done a nice job—very cozy.”

  “Thank you; that means a lot. I’m not too sure of myself as an interior decorator. Of course, I had a lot of help.”

  “Well, it’s nice,” I repeated. “Actually, to tell the truth, I’m kind of here on business.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, I’m with the police department. I wanted to ask you about a girl who used to work for you named Kimberly Harris.”

  Rubin’s face turned in on itself in sorrow. He lowered his head.

  “Oh, dear.”

  I was surprised at the strength of his reaction. The loss was obviously still quite fresh, as it might be with a sibling or a parent, or a lover. “When did she work here?”

  “She quit three Aprils ago, at the beginning of the same summer she died. She said she planned to spend the whole season outside, just to prove you could get as good a tan in Brattleboro as you could in the Bahamas. She said she’d be like a billboard for the suntan lotions I sell here.” His voice died with a murmur and he sat tiredly on the stool behind him.

  “It sounds like you were very close.”

  He looked up and smiled, but he took a long time answering.

  “I think we were friends. That’s rare for someone my age.”

  I remembered from Peg’s file that Kimberly was raking in cash by the time she left Charlie’s. “She must have saved a bundle to take the whole summer off.”

  Again, he hesitated, but this time he merely seemed pensive.

  “I never thought of that.”

  “How long did she work here?”

  “Just under a year. She came in for some lotion. I think if she had a vain spot, it was her skin—of course, it was quite beautiful. Anyway, I had a sign in the window asking for help and she took the job, right on the spot. She worked out very well.”

  “Why did she leave?”

  “I don’t know.” Again the long pause. “She never told me.”

  “Do you think she was happy working here?”

  “I thought so. She always said that. I believed her.”

  I felt like I was eavesdropping on a man talking to himself. “Did she ever come back to visit after she’d left?”

  “No. I saw her once, on the street, but she didn’t see me. She was very much her own person.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He was sitting slumped on the stool, his eyes on a far corner of the room, his hands on his knees like two carefully placed artifacts. I felt I had a gold mine of information here—the first person who could tell me what Kimberly Harris had been like in life—and yet I sensed I would end up with little to show for it. He was staring, self-absorbed, into a private pool of grief. The facts of his relationship with Kimberly Harris, what I most wanted to hear, were as immaterial to him as the dawn of the next century.

  “What did you say?” he asked.

  “You said she was very much her own person. What did you mean by that?”

  “She was very private, very much in control. She seemed to have a great deal of purpose in life.”

  “Did she ever talk about her past?”

  “Not once. I’m afraid I cornered the market there, like most old men.”

  “Did she have any friends? People who would come in and visit, or maybe people she’d see a
fter hours?” He shook his head. “No. I don’t know what she did with her spare time. Weekends were special, but I don’t know why.”

  “How do you mean, ‘special’?”

  “Towards the end of her stay here, she began asking for three-day weekends. I was happy to oblige because she always made up for the lost time immediately. To be honest, I put that sign in the window for temporary help; I don’t do enough business to justify a full-time employee. So her weekends were no burden to me.”

  “She never said what she did during those times?”

  “I never asked. I wanted to be her friend, not her guardian. She sensed that—at least I think she did.”

  “Would you be able to pinpoint those weekends?”

  He hovered closer to earth—the lure of a physical reality. “Of course. I have time sheets for all my employees—even for myself. It would take a little time to dig them up, though. I could do it tonight after closing, if that’s all right.”

  “That’s fine. I’d appreciate it. By the way, did the police interview you at the time of her death?”

  “Yes. I’m not sure I was much help then, either.”

  “You’ve been a help. It’s difficult talking about someone you loved who’s died.”

  It was a long shot and it missed. He focused on me very carefully, a man on the alert. “I didn’t say I loved her. I was fond of her. Her death was a waste.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry—I misunderstood. I might be gone for the next couple of days, but I’ll be back to pick up those time sheets, okay?”

  He smiled, but there was less friendliness in his eyes. “I’ll have them ready.”