The April Fools' Day Murder

by Lee Harris

  “Do they have a bearing on his murder?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you can figure it out. Mom and I talked last night about what you said about the gunshot wound. I can tell you it didn’t happen while Mom knew Dad, and that’s a pretty long time, like almost half a century.”

  “Then it happened earlier. And your mother’s probably right. He was in the war. He may have gotten shot.”

  “Dad has an old friend who lives in New York. They were in the war together.”

  “Interesting,” I said.

  “And they’ve been friends forever. Maybe he knows something that Mom doesn’t know. Will you talk to him?”

  “If you’d like me to.”

  “Good. I’ll call him when I get home and set something up. I don’t want my mother to know. She’s very upset, as you can imagine, and she doesn’t need anything else to worry about. My brother is enough of a worry at this moment.”

  “Is there a problem?” I asked innocently.

  “I hope not. It’s just that he’s not available and he should be. I don’t know why he’s working so hard when his father has just died and his mother is grieving. It seems to me there are times that you set aside your work and put your family first.”

  I agreed with her but I didn’t want to break a confidence. Maybe he just didn’t want to be around his wife, I thought. “I understand he didn’t get along with your father.”

  “That’s true.” The pancakes came, fragrant and warm, and she paused till the waitress left. “They look good, don’t they?” She smiled and started buttering hers. “Roger and Dad never saw eye-to-eye on anything. If Roger wanted to read fiction, Dad thought it should be nonfiction. If Roger wanted to study German, Dad thought it should be French. I know these seem like petty disputes, but in my family they were magnified. Dad wanted Roger to become a doctor or lawyer; Roger majored in history and then kicked around for a couple of years doing nothing. My father thought that doing nothing was about the worst thing a young man could do. They stopped speaking to each other around then and they never really started after that.”

  “What did Roger do eventually?” I asked. I assumed he had a job. The house he owned cost a fair amount of money, not to mention the apartment that only his wife and I knew about.

  “He went back to school and became a civil engineer. He said he wanted to build bridges and highways. But those first years were pretty boring and mundane and he left the company and got a degree in business.”

  “It sounds as though he’s got himself a lot of education.”

  “He does, but he doesn’t use most of it. Or maybe he does in a way. He’s had a number of jobs with different companies, and I think he’s done better every time he moved. He works in White Plains now, which isn’t too long a drive, and he’s been with them long enough that I think it’s permanent.”

  “When did he meet Doris?”

  “In his kicking around stage. She worked after they got married and he went back to school. She’s a nice person and she’s been good to my parents. Roger is lucky to have her.”

  The conversation was making me uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure anyone in Roger’s family was very lucky. “Is he coming to the funeral?” I asked.

  “He’ll be there.” I had the feeling she had said something like that to him in the same tone of voice.

  “Do you know if your father left a lot of money?” I asked.

  “Probably. I suppose you want to know who he’s left it to.”

  “I’m just looking for a motive.”

  “I’m sure my mother has control of most of it right now. Neither Roger nor I really need any money. My mother will be well taken care of, which is as it should be. Roger didn’t kill my father, Chris. There was no reason to. Whether Dad left him anything or not, it wasn’t enough to make a difference. And although Dad did his best to push Roger around when he was young, Roger learned how to live with that. He became his own man.”

  “I find it strange that Roger chose to live in a town so close to your parents.”

  “Roger grew up here. When he got the job in White Plains, this was a perfect place for him to live. Doris liked Oakwood from the first time she saw it.”

  I had no argument with that. I loved the town. It was small enough to get around, big enough to have the schools and libraries that were important to me. And most of all, it was on the Long Island Sound, where we could enjoy the beach and the water in summer. “And he was near his mother,” I added.

  “Yes.”

  “I know about the accident, Toni. Doris told me.”

  “It was so terrible.” Her voice had dropped to nothing.

  “What’s the name of the man you want me to talk to?” I asked, anxious to change the subject.

  “Harry Franks. He’s coming to the funeral tomorrow morning but he doesn’t want to go to the cemetery. He’s getting on in years and isn’t all that well. He said he’d stay in the house and wait for us to come back. That would be a good time, I think, to have a private talk with him.”

  I finished off my pancakes and poured a second cup of coffee. “I can pick him up at the church.”

  “Good. I’ll call you.”

  I let her leave first. I went back across the street to Prince’s and bought something. When I got back outside, Toni had driven away. I wanted to check some things out around where the Platts lived and I didn’t want her involved. I drove to the nursery, situated just below the Platt house and on the other side of the road. I parked my car in their lot, got out and walked over to the road.

  You could see the Platt property clearly from this vantage point. It wasn’t that far away but it wasn’t a place you would arrive at accidentally. I started up the road, keeping myself behind trees as much as possible. I figured that if I couldn’t see the house, no one in the house could see me. I darted from tree to tree, coming ever closer to being even with the house. Unless someone were looking out a front window—or the garage, I thought—I was sure I was close to invisible.

  Finally I stood where I was exactly opposite the front door of the big house. The garage doors were closed but they had likely been open last Saturday when Willard was killed. How would I approach so that he would not see me?

  I walked farther up the hill, still using trees as my cover. Then I stepped out into the sunny road, crossed over, and started down the hill toward the driveway. I imagined the older man standing on the concrete floor of the garage, looking down at whatever he was working on. It was chancy, but by walking across the grass I could probably have made it almost to the garage before he looked over and saw me.

  As I reached the driveway I saw the mailbox. Most of the houses in Oakwood are set fairly far apart and mail is delivered from a truck, not by a person walking. The Platts’ box was a plain, old-fashioned metal box, similar to the one we have at our house. Something about it made me stop. The box was significant, I was sure of that, but how?

  And then I remembered. When I had arrived at the house last Saturday, the red flag was up, signaling that someone had left mail to be picked up. Maybe the mailman had seen something.

  I walked back down the hill to the nursery, got into my car, and drove to the post office.

  “Bernie’s the guy,” the supervisor said after I had asked who delivered to the Platts up on the hill. “But he won’t be back till he’s finished his route.” He looked at his watch. “Probably not till four.”

  “Can I call him here?” I asked.

  “Yeah sure, but it’s kinda busy here when the guys come back. You could come over and talk to him.”

  “I’ll do that. Thank you.”

  I picked up Eddie and we spent the rest of the day together until four, when I drove us to the post office. The man named Bernie was already back from his route, and he came out to the area where the boxes lined the wall to talk to me while Eddie peered through the boxes at whatever was behind them.

  “Yeah, I do that house. It’s at the end of my route, that and the nursery. I heard wh
at happened. Terrible thing.”

  “I was there earlier in the afternoon on Saturday,” I said, “and I noticed that the flag was up. That means you hadn’t gotten there yet. I wondered if you might have seen anything as you drove by, anything going on in the garage.”

  He thought about it. “They never put that flag up last Saturday.”

  “It was up in the early afternoon. I was up there and I saw it.”

  “That’s really crazy. When I got there, I can tell you the flag was down. I got their mail together, opened the box, and there were all these letters they’d left for me to pick up. I thought it was strange. They always put the flag up when they leave something for me. But that time they didn’t. Mrs. Platt, she doesn’t drive, so if she’s got mail to go, and she has a lot of it, she leaves it for me.”

  “How do you know she doesn’t drive?” I asked.

  “She told me. Long time ago. I been doing that route for years. She asked me was it OK if she put the mail out for me and I said sure, but don’t expect it to go out today. She didn’t care. She just wanted it picked up.”

  “So the flag wasn’t up but she had left mail.”

  “Right. Like I said, it was a little bit strange.”

  “Was the garage door open when you drove by?”

  “I really didn’t notice. It could have been.”

  “Did you see anything unusual?”

  “Nah. I just dropped off the mail and took off. That was my last stop. It was Saturday and I wanted to get home.”

  “Do you remember what time it was when you got there?”

  “Musta been almost four.”

  “Did you see a car parked in the driveway or on the road near the house?”

  “No. I would remember because I make a U-ie just above the house and come back down. There was nothing there.”

  “Thanks, Bernie.”

  I knew the red flag had been up, and if the Platts had left mail in the box, it should have been up. It was possible that one of the drama society kids had pushed it down just for fun, and I would have to ask them—all fourteen of them, I thought—if one of them had done it. If they hadn’t, then it seemed to me that Mr. Platt had been murdered before the mailman drove by, and the killer had put the flag down so he wouldn’t stop unless he had something to deliver. The killer could have supposed there was a chance that the Platts had no mail that day and that the mailman just drove up there to make his necessary U-turn and to check for outgoing mail. If Bernie had passed by a little before four, Willard Platt must already have been dead.

  At home, I called team one first, as they were the last group up to the house, and asked about the red flag. Two of them remembered it had been up. Interestingly, they were the two riding on the right side of the car. The driver, Ronnie, and the person behind her had not noticed it at all, which wasn’t surprising. The mailbox was on the far side of the driveway.

  I decided not to call the other ten students. If the flag was up when the last team got there, it had to mean that the killer put it down.

  As I worked on dinner, something came back to me about Saturday. When I had found what I thought to be Willard Platt’s lifeless body on the lawn, I ran to the front door and rang and knocked, calling for anyone inside. No one had answered.

  Winnie Platt had told me afterward that she was in the back room we had sat in and thus had not seen anything going on in the front. But not seeing and not hearing were two different things. I put down my vegetable scraper and called her number.

  Toni answered. I explained what was troubling me.

  “That’s not surprising,” she said. “Mom has a hearing problem in one ear. If she was sitting with that ear turned toward the front of the house, she wouldn’t hear the bell. I’ve been standing a few feet from her and asked her something and she didn’t hear a word.”

  “So she could have been there and not only didn’t hear me but also didn’t hear your father if he called for help.”

  “That’s right. In fact, she talked about that last night, whether he had called her and she hadn’t heard. She was troubled to think that might have happened.”

  So that answered that little puzzle. I told Toni I would be at the church to pick up Harry Franks tomorrow morning.

  10

  Thursday morning Eddie went off to nursery school. He had gotten an invitation to go to a friend’s house for lunch and play afterward, so I was free to talk to Willard Platt’s old friend without worrying.

  I drove over to the church at ten-thirty, not sure how long the funeral would last, and parked across the street so as not to get involved in the many cars that would travel to the cemetery. When the doors opened and I heard the music, I got out and stood beside the car where I would be visible. A moment later the casket and the family came out. Toni saw me immediately. She said something to her mother, who stood beside her, and crossed the street.

  “My brother didn’t come,” she said.

  “Oh, no.”

  “Just didn’t show up. It’s worse than that. Doris said he never came home last night.”

  “I’m so sorry. You don’t need any of these complications at a time like this.”

  “We’ll deal with it somehow. Come with me. I’ll introduce you to Harry. Then I have to run.”

  We crossed the street and Toni brought a small, thin man over to where I was standing. He had sparse gray hair and wore a tweed coat. I could see a black tie knotted on his white shirt. He looked sad and tired and older than Willard Platt.

  “Chris, this is Dad’s old friend, Harry Franks. Harry, this is Chris, the woman I told you about. She’ll take you to the house.”

  “Fine, fine,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”

  I put my hand through his arm and led him across the street. He seemed frail, almost bewildered. When he was in the front seat, he sighed and stretched out his legs.

  “I’m glad this is a car. All the ladies in this town seem to be driving trucks these days. They’re a bitch to get into.”

  I smiled. “I’m happy with a car, Mr. Franks. Can you get the seat belt OK?”

  “Oh yeah.” He pulled at it and clicked it in place. “Call me Harry. It’s what I respond to.”

  “OK, Harry. We’ll go back to the house.”

  We left before the line of cars had finished forming. I noticed the mayor and his wife get into one, and I remembered what Jack had said about Willard Platt demanding a bond and landscaping for work the town did near the Platt house. Were he and the mayor on good terms in spite of that? I wondered.

  “Nice town,” the man next to me said. “Last time I was here, Will and Winnie took me out to a great restaurant somewheres along here. And I slept in their guest room. Felt like a king. It’s bigger than my whole apartment.”

  “It’s a beautiful house,” I agreed. “How long have they lived here?”

  “They built it after they were married. Gotta be a long time ago. You hear what happened?” He turned to me.

  “No. What?”

  “Roger didn’t show. Can you believe that? Didn’t come to his own father’s funeral.”

  “Maybe you can tell me a little about their relationship.”

  “Doesn’t matter what their relationship was. Your father dies, you come to the funeral. I didn’t always get along with my old man, but when he died, I was there. And it wasn’t for the money because there wasn’t any. He died and I picked up his debts.”

  I turned up the road to the Platts’. “I agree with you. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “I don’t understand it. I just don’t understand it.”

  I turned into the driveway, thinking I would be better off with the car on the road when the time came to leave, but I didn’t want this old man to have to walk. As I came to a stop at the closed garage, he unbuckled his belt and opened the door before I could get to him.

  “I got the key,” he said, taking it out of his pocket.

  We went inside and hung up our coats.

  “Winnie
said to put the heat up,” he said, walking into the living room. “I got it. Seventy OK for you? Winnie says it goes higher than where you set it.”

  “Seventy’s fine.”

  The living room was huge but the furniture was arranged so that we could sit in a small area just made for a few people.

  “You want to talk to me about Will.”

  “You knew him longer than anyone else.”

  “We were poker partners in the war. Made a lot of money between us. It wouldn’t sound like much to you, being as you’re so young, but to us it was more than we’d ever seen in one place at one time.”

  “Did you meet in the army?”

  “Navy,” he corrected me. “We were sailors. You should’ve seen us in our uniforms. We were really something.”

  I found myself liking this man very much. “Would you like something to eat or drink?” I asked, not sure I could find anything.

  “A cup of coffee would really hit the spot.”

  “Let me see what I can do.” I got up and went to the kitchen, Harry trailing me. There were stacks of dishes and silver on the round table we had sat at the other day, in anticipation of the guests who would return after the visit to the cemetery. A coffee maker stood on the counter, and in the refrigerator I found several pounds of coffee. I measured that and the water and turned the machine on. In a minute we could smell the results.

  I took two cups and saucers from the table and poured for us. “Anything to eat?” I asked.

  “Coffee’s enough. Thanks. You’re a good girl to do this for me.”

  Back in the living room, I opened my notebook. “Do you know if Willard was shot during the war?”

  “Never. Neither was I. The good Lord was watching over both of us, but don’t ask me why. We didn’t deserve it any more than anybody else. We saw a lot of fine people die, young fellas that would have been fine old men if they’d been luckier.”

  “I’m glad you and Will made it,” I said. “What did you do with your poker winnings, or did you spend it while you were in the Navy?”