The Main Line Is Murder

by Donna Huston Murray

  So I took a bracing breath and opened the bottom left drawer of the three file cabinets behind Joanne’s desk.

  Relief. The files were still there.

  Again "P" for Philbin. Again a few sheets of paper, forms this time, and finally an application for life insurance. "Emily Philbin beneficiary. 419 Elm Drive, St. Davids, PA."

  I shut the drawer and slumped from my crouch to a yoga squat on the floor. Wiped sweat from my face with the sleeve of my jacket. Stood up and prepared to leave.

  Out in the lobby a group of people moved swiftly into view. Four policemen, Rip, and Bryn Derwyn's Director of Development, Randy Webb.

  No more leggy stride or cocky verve; damp clumps of wavy, blond hair bounced against Randy’s waxen forehead. His eyes had dulled, and his lips trembled.

  “Keep it moving,” urged the officer holding tight to his arm.

  I glimpsed the handcuffs as they went by.

  Chapter 15

  THE THREE POLICE cars took turns backing up and pulling away as if they had jammed many a school driveway and were demonstrating their efficiency. They left behind an ominous quiet.

  Standing on the sidewalk with Rip and Joanne and the few others who had witnessed Randy Webb's arrest, I felt stunned stiff and frightened.

  "Is he charged with murder?" I asked just to be sure.

  "Oh yeah,” Rip confirmed. “What else?"

  I shook my head. "Sudden," I said, voicing the worst part of my fear. "Too sudden."

  Newkirk must have uncovered new evidence—damning evidence—of Randy's guilt. But what? And how convincing could it be? I'd discovered the body. I knew how little there was to go on. Even if they found Randy's hair on the floor or traces of his clothing stuck to the shovel, how did that help? He regularly worked in that room. In fact, he probably bought the shovel and put the bow on himself. When the fundraising for the gym was completed and the construction about to begin, he would probably get the honor of handing it to the Chairman of the Board.

  Behind us, more staff members had infiltrated the lobby, chattering like children. To comfort us both, I wanted to grab Rip's hand, but I made do with a longing look. My husband stared unblinking down the driveway. A multitude of students and faculty members would have seen the police remove Randy, and those who hadn't witnessed the arrest would know about it within seconds. Soon Rip would be contending with panic and rampant rumors and who knew what else. I touched his arm. "See you at home," I said.

  He looked down, but not at me, nodded and finally gave me an unnerving glance. Then he strode back into the school. The slow-closing door effectively shut me out.

  I ordered my legs to walk to our house, ordered my hands to work the key.

  Inside I drank decaf and ate something, I'm not sure what, and listened to gibberish on the TV until about ten-thirty when the phone rang.

  "Got anything for sandwiches?" Rip asked without preamble. I sighed with relief, ignoring the bad, concentrating on the good. He was turning to me.

  "Sure," I answered.

  "Valley Forge Park about twelve?" he suggested.

  "I'll pick you up," I said, knowing the tension must be unbearable if he wanted to flee so badly.

  At exactly twelve I pulled my car up to the front door of the school. Then, reluctant to let anyone in on Rip's temporary escape, I walked across the grass and tapped on his office window. Two mid-sized girls gawked at me like goldfish, pointed at the window, and hastily finished whatever they were saying.

  Rip stood, retrieved his coat from his closet, and ushered the students into the lobby. Through the door, I could see the two girls, heads bowed, their friendship galvanized by the brave act of actually speaking to the Headmaster together.

  With a heavy sigh, Rip climbed into the car beside me. I put the Nissan into gear and fed it gas. Rip and I said nothing for a mile, but I could sense my husband's tension by his breathing, the twitching inside his clothes, the way he held himself.

  We left stoplights behind. Rip held my right hand when I wasn't shifting. Large homes close together gave way to larger homes farther apart, their yards sculpted with perfectly proportioned shrubs and trees. Most of the fallen leaves had been relegated to back yard mulch piles. Overhead the sky was muted blue, softened with thin winter cumulus clouds. Tree trunks were dark with dampness, bricks deep red, white siding a gentle pearl gray. Rip watched the scenery as his thoughts slid by, and soon his breathing slowed, his back curved into the bucket seat, his head tilted, and I relaxed.

  I found one of the back ways into the vast national park I'd recently learned, then wound around past bunkers made of dirt, past small clusters of short, squat log cabins caulked with mud and straw, up to an empty, U-shaped parking area with a huge bronze statue of a guy on a horse overlooking a distant sloping field ending with woods. To our right a portion of park was reserved for flying remote-control airplanes, but none of the hand-built toys were up today. No buzz, scarcely any sound at all but a bit of breeze against the car windows and the ffff of the Nissan's heater. I parked facing the long view and kept the engine running.

  "It's Pearl Harbor Day," Rip remarked. December 7. So it was. I gave the reference a nervous laugh. Gallows humor.

  After a silence, Rip said, "Newkirk came back again."

  "Oh? I don't suppose he told you why he arrested Randy."

  Rip turned toward me. "Actually, he did. He said Elaine Wrigley saw Randy rushing out the back."

  I inhaled an especially deep breath before I asked, "Fifth grade? Ten years old going on forty?"

  "That's the one. She finally told her mother what she saw, and her mother called the police. But—this is the best part—the kid was positive Randy was wiping blood off his hands."

  I shivered. Elaine Wrigley made me shiver even when she wasn't accusing adults of murder. "This is bad," I said aloud.

  "No shit," Rip agreed.

  "What else did Newkirk say?"

  "He said Randy's prints were on the shovel—big surprise—but put all that together with public pressure and Newkirk felt he had no choice."

  "You think Randy's guilty?"

  Rip shook his head slowly. "I really don't know. But I can tell you one thing. Something weird is going on with him."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Because the reason Newkirk came back was to pump me about something Randy said. The only thing he said without his lawyer. He told Newkirk that Richard found a new donor to replace D'Avanzo, mainly so the school didn't have to use Longmeier Construction. Randy wants Newkirk to check out Eddie Longmeier."

  I stared at the winter-green grass interwoven with thatch. On one of the farms we passed, horses had been grazing.

  "What did you say?"

  "That it was news to me. Then Newkirk, the sonovabitch tells me, 'That's what D'Avanzo claimed, too.'"

  "He spoke to Michael D'Avanzo?" I was truly shocked. Donors of D'Avanzo's generosity were few and far between. They were also highly mercurial. Being questioned by the police regarding a murder investigation was more than enough to turn Randy's story into reality. Just the possibility of Newkirk costing the school more than a million dollars spiked my temperature.

  "What I can't figure out," Rip continued, "is why Randy pointed a finger at Eddie Longmeier. What possible connection could there be between him and Richard?"

  "His wife," I blurted.

  Rip shifted to face me square on. "Where the hell did that come from?" he asked.

  "When we first got here, I used to practice remembering the names of people out in the parking lot."

  "So?"

  "So one morning I was looking out the kitchen window and I saw Randy and Richard talking to an absolutely gorgeous woman. Long black hair, a short skirt, orange T-shirt, and no bra. I found out later she was Tina Longmeier, and she'd been delivering some blueprints to Randy. Anyway, she was flirting with both men like, well, let's just say she was very suggestive. And the men! The gleams in their eyes could have lighted New York."

  "So?"<
br />
  "So what if it wasn't just play? What if Tina delivered?"

  "I'm not sure I'm following you."

  I huffed with exasperation. "What if Randy wanted the police to pick up on Richard and Tina without implicating himself? He'd suggest they check out Eddie Longmeier, right?"

  "I don't know, Gin. Where are you going with this?"

  I played my trump. "I saw Randy and Tina pulling away from a clinch. In the copier room."

  "What were you...what...Are you sure that's what you saw?"

  I thought it through again and realized, again, that my conclusion was more intuition-based than fact-based. "I saw a couple of people moving away from each other and blushing. I had the impression they'd been...close."

  Rip shook his head. "Doesn't mean a damn thing."

  I shrugged. "It could. Especially now that Randy is accusing Eddie Longmeier of having a motive to kill Richard. What if Randy tried to cash in on Tina's offer and failed, but Richard succeeded?"

  "What kind of sandwiches you got?" Rip asked.

  Pierced, I said, "Liverwurst." Privately, I was glad to see him wince.

  We ate in silence, Rip's the brooding kind, mine the slow burn. When it was time to mollify each other, I asked, "What about Randy's work?"

  "Oh, shit," Rip exclaimed. "He was doing a mailing, going after tax-deductible donations before the end of the year. Damn. Now they'll be late."

  "Anything I can do?" another of my blind offers. I really ought to curb that habit.

  "Yeah," Rip replied, his own eyes sparkling for the first time in ages. "You can do the mailing."

  Yippee, I thought. Stuffing envelopes.

  "You need to hand-write messages on about a thousand solicitations. Thanks, babe. You're a lifesaver."

  "No problem," I mumbled through a mouthful of liverwurst.

  Rip finished eating first and resumed brooding wherever he'd left off.

  "Penny for your thoughts," I pressed.

  He gazed through the windshield far into the distance. "Just wondering," he said.

  "About?"

  "Richard Wharton and another donor. Whether what Randy said could possibly be true."

  "How could it be true? D'Avanzo denied it." Although...D'Avanzo might lie to deflect suspicion from his son-in-law regardless of whatever unpleasant politics were involved, even if it cost him a huge donation he no longer wished to give.

  "I don't know, babe. I just have this prickly feeling that Wharton was scheming behind my back again."

  Valley Forge was the most famous encampment in the world, where George Washington's ragged troops were drilled into a cohesive unit capable of defeating the British. I looked into my husband's green eyes, eyes no longer idealistic, no longer naive, eyes committed for the duration regardless of the possibility of defeat. I looked back at those eyes and felt my resolve tighten into a fist. I knew several things I could discreetly do to help, provided I did them in a hurry.

  Only one of them involved stuffing envelopes.

  Chapter 16

  AS SOON AS I dropped Rip off, I headed for the nearby village called St. David's.

  Emily Philbin's address was a little difficult to find until I noticed some reflective house numbers attached to a split-rail fencepost. Apparently, she lived in a tidy square gatehouse with burgundy shutters in front of a similarly trimmed stone monster with a creek and plenty of trees. Unfortunately, the two-lane road they were on dropped off steeply on both sides, so there was no place for me to pull over.

  While I crept along at fifteen miles an hour, irritating the Type-A personality behind me, a woman emerged from the gatehouse and climbed into a blue car with peculiar round headlights. Emily Philbin was on her way out.

  Further infuriating the car behind me, I whipped left into the first driveway a hundred yards down the road. Then I backed out and headed back toward Emily's place. If she intended to run errands in town, I was in position to follow her. If not, I was screwed.

  Emily dutifully turned left directly in front of me.

  At the light on Lancaster Avenue, she steered her little roadster, or whatever it was, left toward Wayne. I followed.

  An elderly man shuffled diagonally across the intersection of Wayne Avenue and Lancaster, crossing my left lane before Emily's right. Not wishing to outdistance her by much, I eased right and slowed as if I needed to turn into Santander Bank. Emily scooted around me.

  I soon rejoined her lane because of the traffic mess at the Farmer's Market, then I waited two cars behind while a Volvo tried to cross the oncoming lanes into McDonald's. When Emily stepped on it, I prayed that the driver in between us was vegetarian.

  "Yes," I cheered.

  We continued past Spread Eagle Village, a lovely shopping complex I can't afford; past Braxton's in Strafford, my favorite dog supply store; on past Lancaster Avenue's bunch of car dealers and the place where I got our mower fixed. A sign proclaimed that we were now on "Lincoln Highway." Same road, new name—the Main Line shell game.

  At the Dalesford Station traffic light, Philbin's ex remained centermost in front of a large white appliance truck. I calculated that a hatchback with a "Kids on Board" sign might be marginally faster pulling out than a truck full of refrigerators, so I lined up behind Mom. Bad guess. The truck managed to tailgate Emily into the right lane, while "Kids on Board" slowed to ogle a man leaning against a telephone pole who appeared to be asleep standing up.

  Finally, it was a sprint parallel to the railroad tracks into Paoli. Once there, Emily Philbin immediately turned into an Acme shopping center and parked around the corner from the grocery store at the end of a row of shops. With no extra slots available, I simply stopped behind her car and watched to see where she went.

  She locked up, snapped her keys into a dark brown handbag, and walked rather regally into a hairdresser's. She wore a gray wool coat over a muted plaid skirt; I could tell because the coat didn't quite cover the skirt. While I drove, I had been reflecting that her appearance was at odds with what I knew about her, which was that she had given her ex-husband far more trouble than he could handle. Evidently, even hellions get old, for that's all Emily Philbin looked like to me—an elderly woman in an overcoat purchased during a previous decade.

  When I was certain about her destination, I found a parking spot two rows over and zigzagged through the rows to the hairdresser's.

  The reception area contained a boy of about four scribbling into a coloring book, also a woman behind one of those tall desks hairdressers provide for writing checks while standing up. The woman's hair was shiny and black and about two inches longer on the right than on the left. On her it looked interesting.

  "Help you?" she asked.

  "I don't have an appointment," I admitted. "I just want to speak with Emily Philbin if I may. She just came in."

  "You must mean Emily Walker. She doesn't use Philbin anymore."

  "Yes, of course." My insides squirmed. This wasn't my usual approach—to anything.

  "Right around the corner."

  I thanked her and glanced around the rosy room at each of three occupied work stations. Straight ahead lay a blue manicure area containing a few sinks with reclining chairs. Emily Walker was nowhere in sight.

  "Around there," insisted the receptionist.

  Through an alcove on the right another room contained two customer chairs, a row of hair dryers, and one sink. Mirrors doubled the bountiful flower arrangements and gave the place the aura of a stuffy, backstage dressing room.

  Emily sat in a customer chair while a woman in a stylish taupe outfit and comfortable shoes tucked a towel around her collar.

  "Are you Emily Philbin?" I asked discreetly, as if I didn't want the hairdresser to hear. "I mean Emily Walker?"

  Emily glared at me. "Why do you ask?"

  I fluttered a little. "It's just that I need some information about your ex-husband, and you're really the only one who can help."

  Emily's glare became more heated. "Who exactly are you?"

>   The hairdresser fluffed a dark blue plastic drape around her client's shoulders while casting me a sharp glance.

  "I'm Ginger Struve Barnes. Jeremy works with my husband."

  "Works for your husband, don't you mean?"

  "Well, yes."

  "And what exactly is it you want from me?"

  "Just a couple questions really. Jeremy caused a scene the other night..."

  "Do you have to do this now?" the hairdresser interrupted. She was a slender, pretty thing with honey-blonde hair twisted high and wispy tendrils flattering her neck. Her eyes were brown and skillfully made up, but no amount of mascara could disguise their hostility.

  "Yes, I do," I stated with extra volume. "This happens to be extremely important."

  The hairdresser saw my raise and called my hand. "I am giving Mrs. Walker a permanent here, and I don't need you interfering with my schedule. Why don't you make an appointment to speak with the lady some other time?"

  A permanent, as I recalled, involved sitting for about twenty minutes with stinky solution on your head. "Emily," I addressed my target, "do you mind if I come back for a few minutes after you get your curlers in?"

  Emily's mouth twitched beneath hard, old eyes that didn't often smile. An age spot darkened her left jaw, and her nose flared wide around its unusually round tip. With a face like that a permanent was mostly for morale. Yet the eyes caught and held your attention. Sensual, wily, and fascinating, they conjured up visions of gypsy campfires.

  "Kelly, it's all right," she mollified the younger woman. "I'd just as soon get it over with."

  Kelly had drawn out a flat band of Emily's gray hair. As she tapped her customer's shoulder to demand one of the square tissues Emily held in her hand, she fixed her eyes on mine Clint Eastwood-style. "Come back in half an hour." Somehow she managed to make reaching for a pink plastic spindle to clamp on another woman's head look arrogant.

  I checked my watch. "Thank you," I told Emily, who grunted and offered Kelly another tissue square.

  Since I didn't especially want to wait in the reception area, I bought myself some hazelnut-flavored coffee and a croissant in a French bakery across the way. There were tiny round tables, uncomfortable wire chairs, and wide store windows for watching the parking lot traffic. Not particularly enthralling, but my mind was on the prospective interview with Emily anyway.