March Street Mayhem

by Estelle Richards

  We went to an open teller’s window. The teller was young and smelled of honeysuckle.

  “I’d like to see the manager, please,” Maxwell said in a voice just above a whisper.

  Her eyes grew large, and she gave us a quick nod before picking up the telephone and murmuring a few words into the receiver.

  “Mr. Richmond will be right with you.”

  Soon a man with upswept silver hair and a dark gray suit appeared from behind a door marked No Admittance. “Chief Shield, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “Mr. Richmond,” Maxwell shook the bank manager’s hand. “This is Kelly Bordeaux.”

  I nodded to the banker. I’d been banking here all my life. As a child, I’d imagined that Richmond took my saved pennies home with him at night.

  “If we could discuss the matter in your office?” Maxwell continued.

  “Of course.” Richmond motioned us to follow him in the smooth manner of a seasoned professional.

  The office he led us to was as old fashioned as the lobby. He sat behind an antique desk and gestured at the visitors’ chairs. We sat, and Maxwell took out his notepad.

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions about the prize money for the bingo jubilee.”

  “Of course. The bank was very happy to sponsor such a worthy local organization.”

  “When did the bingo society receive the cash?”

  “About an hour before the start of the jubilee.”

  “Did they receive it here at the bank?”

  “No, I brought it to the bingo hall.”

  “You carried it yourself?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Were you alone?”

  “No, the head of the jubilee committee, Shirley Morris, came with me.”

  “What denomination of bills were used?”

  “I suggested hundreds, of course, as the most portable and inconspicuous denomination. But Mrs. Morris said she wanted a treasure chest full of cash to display. At first she suggested ones, but I managed to talk her up to tens. I was glad she asked ahead of time, so I had the opportunity to request extra tens from the reserve.”

  “Do you have a record of that request?”

  “Naturally. But I must ask, what is this all about?”

  I sympathized with Richmond, but Maxwell continued his questions, leaving the banker in the dark.

  “Were they new bills?”

  “Yes.”

  “In sequential order?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a record of the serial numbers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. We’ll need a copy of that as well as a copy of the request form.” Maxwell gave the banker a thin smile. “We don’t mind waiting here while you get those copies.”

  Richmond stood, his smile stiff. He executed a half bow before leaving the office.

  When he was gone I turned to Maxwell. “What is this all about?”

  He leaned in and spoke very quietly. “The money in the bingo society’s prize chest is counterfeit.”

  Chapter 8

  It was hard to go into work at the café after my visit to the bank with Maxwell, but Antoine, the new owner, was counting on me. When he bought the café, he’d confided that he’d always wanted to run a café but didn’t have any experience. I promised to do everything I could to help him, and while he’d been learning fast he still relied on me.

  During the dinner rush, every table seemed to be gossiping about either the bingo hall murder or the rain of cash on the highway.

  “This meal came directly from heaven,” one diner told me when I collected his bill.

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

  “No, not like that.”

  I raised an eyebrow at the implied insult to the chef. “What do you mean?”

  “This right here,” he snapped the ten dollar bill taught between his fingers. “I got this on the highway. Money just floating on the breeze. Our lucky day.”

  A thought occurred to me, and I made sure to hold on to that ten, substituting other bills for it when I went to the cash register.

  It was nearly the end of the night, just a few minutes until we could lock the door. Everyone felt tired, ready to clean up and go home. The front door opened, sending a cool autumn breeze into the café. I winced, dreading the last minute customers who would inevitably want to linger over their meal.

  I pasted a professional smile on my face and turned to greet the late diners. To my relief, it was Maxwell standing there.

  “Come in, come in, would you like some coffee?” I said, rushing over to him.

  “Love some.”

  He turned a chair around to perch on it backwards. I got him the coffee.

  “Good news,” he said. “Your sketch came up with a match from NCIC.”

  I grabbed some napkins and a bin of silverware and sat at the table across from him. If I could do some side work while we talked, I wouldn’t feel like I was shirking.

  “A thief out of Chicago. Name of Kevin O’Leary. He got out of prison a few months ago.”

  “You think he’s our killer?”

  “Maybe. He’s got a history of theft by fraud, but nothing violent.”

  “Do non-violent thieves often switch to murder?”

  Maxwell frowned. “Sometimes. Not often. But who do you like better for it, one of your grandmother’s friends?”

  “Hmm. What else do we know about this O’Leary?” I rolled a set of silverware extra tight and had to remind myself to stay calm.

  “NCIC says he always works with a partner. Guy called Jared Michaels.”

  “Maybe our victim? They had a falling out over the money?”

  “It’s a good theory, but Michaels is doing three years in Illinois.”

  “Oh.” I rolled some more silverware and thought about that. “Anything new about the prize money?”

  “Everything Richmond told us checks out.”

  “You have the serial numbers?”

  Maxwell nodded.

  I took the crisp ten dollar bill out of my apron pocket and put it on the table.

  “What’s this for?”

  “I just wondered, is this from the sequence of bills from the bank?”

  Maxwell took out a sheet of paper from his pocket and unfolded it on the table, carefully smoothing out the creases. He studied the serial number on the ten and the writing on the paper.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “Is it from the prize money?”

  “Kelly, where did you get this?”

  “A customer paid for his sandwich with it. He said he found it on the highway. Does it match?”

  Maxwell’s frown deepened. “It matches.”

  “I thought it might. What if the prize money was genuine, but O’Leary switched it for counterfeit?”

  “That would fit his M.O. Good work, Kelly. I have to go. We need to catch this O’Leary. If he’s moved from theft to robbery-murder, he’s a very dangerous man.”

  “If he’s the one that dropped that money on the highway, then at least you know which way he was headed.”

  “Or which way he was headed last night.”

  “Aren’t there traffic cameras on the highway?”

  “Sure are. I’ll call the highway patrol.”

  We smiled at each other. Then I stood up and waved a napkin at him. “Time to shoo you out so I can close up. You’ll let me know if you catch him?”

  Maxwell smiled. “You bet.” He slurped down the last of his coffee and headed out the door. I locked it behind him. With a sigh I flipped the sign to closed and turned off the exterior lighting.

  After I finished closing, I still had to take Buddy on his nightly walk. I would tell the good dog all about my sleuthing. He was a good listener, even if his responses were seldom more than a little woof of approval. And at least he didn’t gossip.

  When I got home, Grandma Iris was waiting for me with her walking shoes on, and a jacket with a neon strip across the back.

 
; “It’s reflective,” she said, pointing at the stripe. “For nighttime visibility. If drivers around here can crash cars full of money, you can’t be too careful as a pedestrian.”

  “Shouldn’t you be going to bed?”

  She bent down to scratch Buddy behind the ears. “It’s hard to sleep sometimes.”

  “Sometimes? Like when there’s a murderer around?”

  “Maybe.” She clipped the leash to Buddy’s collar. “Are you ready? Some exercise should help.”

  I sighed and opened the front door. We walked into the night air, which Buddy sniffed thoroughly.

  “I might have some good news about the murder,” I said.

  “Did you catch him? That’ll show Shirley Morris.”

  “He isn’t in custody, but I think we’ve identified him. And he left town, so you can sleep a little easier.”

  “Who is it? Not the minister, I hope, or Mr. Flowers, or...”

  “Nobody local.”

  “Oh.” Grandma Iris looked disappointed.

  “Did you see the guy dressed in black hanging out backstage? He’s got a record.”

  Grandma Iris brightened. “I did see him. He was definitely up to no good. I said hello and how about the weather and he didn’t even ask how I was doing. Can you believe that?”

  I smiled. There was nothing more suspicious in a small midwestern town than refusing to make small talk.

  “When do you think they’ll catch him?” Grandma Iris said.

  “I don’t know. Maxwell was going to call the highway patrol, try to find him on the highway traffic cameras.”

  She shook her head. “All that high tech stuff. Oh, that reminds me, I got my phone back.”

  “Good, Nancy met you at the café?”

  “No, it was Shirley.”

  I frowned. “Why did Shirley have all those pictures of Nancy’s dog on her phone?”

  “Who knows, they are friends after all.”

  Buddy paused for a long smelling session by a tree at the edge of the park. We waited while he sniffed all around the roots and trunk, then lifted his leg to add to the odor conversation. I watched the sweet bulldog and tried to imagine why Shirley would take pictures of her friend’s dog and not her own. Something about it seemed off.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I took it out. Maxwell.

  “Did you catch him?” I said into the phone. “Uh, I mean hello. Did you catch him?”

  “Hello to you too,” Maxwell said. “State police picked him up.”

  “Did he confess?”

  “No. They said he seemed shocked to hear Cunningham was dead, and then clammed up and requested a lawyer.”

  “Hmm. Thanks for telling me.”

  We hung up the phone and I relayed the news to Grandma Iris. It was good news. But inside, something was still bothering me about the case. Kevin O’Leary was a thief, but was he really our murderer?

  Chapter 9

  The next morning, nerves still unsettled, I went to the police station. Officer Williams showed me right into Maxwell’s office. Maxwell looked up in surprise.

  “I didn’t expect to see you this early.”

  I shrugged uncomfortably. “Something still feels off about the case.”

  Maxwell shuffled through a stack of paper in his inbox. “Could be you recognized our phony Fremont Cunningham.”

  He came up with the page he was looking for and slid it across the desk. It was a scientific report on a DNA test. I scanned down the sheet, trying to make sense of it.

  “What am I looking at?” I finally asked.

  “We did a DNA test on the deceased. Got some interesting results.”

  “Hmm.” I studied the page more closely. “Francis Rourke, prison record in Illinois. Is that how he knew O’Leary?”

  “We think so. But look at the bottom of the page. Place of birth.”

  I looked, and did a double take. “Starling? But that’s only twenty miles down the road.”

  “He’s local. Or he was. Graduated from Starling High School, shortly before they consolidated into Marchville Unity.”

  When Maxwell and I were in high school, Starling still had its own school, and Marchville Unity High School was still just Marchville High. By the time Maxwell’s kid sister had graduated, it was Marchville Unity.

  I considered Francis Rourke’s face when I’d seen him on stage as Fremont Cunningham. I have a good memory for faces, especially if I’ve drawn them, but I didn’t think I had seen Rourke before.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s it. Does he still have any local ties?”

  Maxwell tilted his head. “Does it matter? We have our perp.”

  “Did O’Leary confess?”

  Maxwell took the DNA results page back from me and put it back in his inbox. “No. He’s still lying to us. Claims Rourke was alive when he last saw him.”

  “What if he’s not lying?”

  “Kelly – how do I put this – you’re not a cop. Criminals lie. That’s what they do.”

  I felt my face heating up. “You’re making assumptions. There could still be a killer out there.”

  Maxwell straightened the edges of the papers in his inbox, not looking me in the eye.

  “Please, dig a little deeper. You have to notify Rourke’s next of kin, right? We could start there.”

  Maxwell sighed. “Fine. But I’ll have you know this is police time that could be spent investigating a dispute about trash can placement on Cherry Street.”

  I laughed, a surge of relief in my breast. “Thanks, Maxwell.” I stood up.

  “And you can sit back down. If I’m going to work on this, you can very well stay and help out.”

  “Fine, I will.”

  “Good.”

  “Good.”

  We stared at each other a second, holding back a laugh at ourselves.

  The door opened and Officer Williams stuck his head in. “Chief, you should see this.”

  We followed Williams out of the office and into a little room with a media cart set up like I remembered from school, a heavy TV on the top shelf and a DVD player and VCR on the lower shelf.

  Williams picked up a remote control and pressed play. The TV lit up, showing us traffic cam footage from the highway entrance at the edge of Marchville.

  “What are we looking at here?” Maxwell said.

  A few more cars passed the camera, then Williams paused it and pointed at the screen. “There. That’s O’Leary.”

  Maxwell nodded impatiently. “We know he was on the highway.”

  “Look at the time stamp.”

  “20:57,” Maxwell read. “And?”

  “Cunningham, I mean Rourke, was still alive at nine,” I said, “calling bingo.”

  Maxwell closed his eyes and massaged his temples. “You were right. He can’t be our killer.”

  Williams shrugged. “Sorry, Chief.”

  “No, that was good work.” Maxwell gave him a terse nod and led the way out of the little media room.

  Back in his office, we stood side by side and studied the murder board in silence.

  After a minute, I put my thoughts into words. “Rourke was local, so he might have local connections. Maybe the bingo game wasn’t the reason for the murder, but just the location. Does he still have family locally?”

  Maxwell nodded. “Parents still live in Starling. Ready for a road trip?”

  I took a deep breath. “Will I be intruding?”

  “In death notifications, the death is always an intrusion. They probably won’t even notice you’re there. Come on.”

  I spent the twenty minute drive to Starling looking out the window at the fields. Golden ripe grain still stood in some, while combines harvested others. A time for everything, but Rourke’s time had come too soon.

  The Rourke house in Starling was a tidy white cottage on a street full of small houses. Their neighbors on the left had a rusting station wagon up on blocks in the driveway. On the right was a house with peeling green paint and a For Rent
sign in the weedy yard. The Rourke lawn had been mowed down to nearly putting green smoothness, and no weeds dared show their faces.

  Maxwell opened the screen door and knocked firmly on the white front door. After a moment the door opened and a woman in her sixties peered out at us in confusion.

  “May I help you?” she said.

  “Are you Mrs. Rourke?”

  A line appeared between her brows. “I am.”

  “Is your husband at home?”

  “He’s in back.”

  “May we come in?”

  She moved imperceptibly back and Maxwell stepped inside. I followed him.

  “Honey! Can you come out here?” Mrs. Rourke yelled.

  She motioned us into the living room. We sat on two dining chairs placed on either side of the TV.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  We declined. A second later Mr. Rourke walked in, drying his hands on a paper towel.

  “What is it?”

  “Please have a seat,” Maxwell said, indicating the sofa across from us.

  The Rourkes sat down.

  “I’m Chief Shield of the Marchville Police Department, and this is Miss Bordeaux. We’re here with bad news about your son Francis.”

  “Our Frankie?” Mrs. Rourke clutched her husband’s hand.

  “What’s he done now?” Mr. Rourke growled.

  “He’s dead. The victim of a homicide two days ago in Marchville.”

  Mrs. Rourke dissolved into tears while her husband sat as though turned to stone.

  “Do you know of anyone who would have wanted to hurt your son?”

  Mr. Rourke glared at us, jaw set.

  Mrs. Rourke sobbed, then hiccupped. “Kayla.”

  Maxwell took out his little notepad and wrote a note. “What is Kayla’s last name?”

  “It might still be Rourke,” Mrs. Rourke said with an angry laugh. “As soon as Frankie went away, she shacked up with someone else, but I don’t think she ever bothered with a divorce.”

  “Do you have her home address or phone number?”

  “We don’t speak. But if you want to find Kayla, you can check the Starling Starlight Lounge.”

  The Starling Starlight Lounge was easy to find. It perched next to the main street of Starling like a vulture waiting for a faltering animal to fall and be picked clean. A neon Open sign told us that the lounge welcomed day drinkers. We walked in to find a handful of men in feed caps sitting at the bar, two old men playing pool at a six foot table, and a skinny bottle blonde behind the bar.