Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 02 - Dead Ringer

by Toni L. P. Kelner

  “What was that?” Richard asked.

  “It sounded like a gunshot,” Thaddeous said.

  There was a second shot, and even I heard this one. “What was that?” I asked.

  “Thaddeous thinks it was a gunshot,” Richard said doubtfully.

  “It came from upstairs,” Thaddeous said. “We better check it out.”

  Joleen looked up nervously. “Shouldn’t we call Ralph and let him handle it?”

  Thaddeous stood deliberately. “You go ahead and call him, and Richard and I will have us a look. You two wait here.”

  “You know me better than that, Thaddeous,” I said, following him to the elevator. I pressed the “UP” button, and stepped inside as soon as the door slid open. “Are you coming?” I asked.

  “Well, I’m not staying down here by my lonesome,” Joleen said, and she took Thaddeous’s arm. “Besides, I know Thaddeous can take care of me.”

  “And Laura will take care of me,” Richard said with a grin meant for me alone.

  “Let’s try Mr. Walters’s office first,” Thaddeous said, and pushed the top button.

  No one spoke as the elevator slowly creaked its way up to the fourth floor. The hall was dark, but a light showed from the open door to Burt Walters’s office. Thaddeous held up one hand for silence, but there were no sounds other than our breathing. Then he slowly stepped out.

  “Hello,” he said softly. “Anybody here?”

  There was no answer.

  “Hello,” he called more loudly.

  “I guess everything’s all right,” Joleen said. “Let’s go back downstairs.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said and stepped up next to Thaddeous. I felt Richard’s hand on my shoulder, just letting me know he was there. Then, as a group, we stepped forward.

  There was a sharp smell in the air. “Gunpowder,” Thaddeous said. He stepped ahead just a bit so he could peer into the office ahead of us. “Mr. Walters? Is that you?”

  I was just behind him, and looked to the left as he looked to the right, so I saw it first. A man was lying face down on the plush carpet. An ugly puddle of red flowed out from under his body.

  I tugged at Thaddeous’s sleeve, and he turned and saw the body.

  “Jesus!”

  “Is he dead?” I asked.

  Thaddeous knelt down in front of the man and looked at him closely. “He’s not breathing.”

  I forced myself to kneel on the other side and take the man’s wrist. It was still warm, and that helped at first, but made it all the worse when I couldn’t feel a pulse. I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Joleen said, as she tottered towards a chair.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Richard said. “We have to call the police. Joleen, go downstairs and call.”

  “I’m not going down there alone,” she said. “What if whoever did this is still in here?”

  I had forgotten all about the shots we had heard, forgotten that someone must have shot this man while we were downstairs. I said, “She’s right. Joleen, use Mr. Walters’s phone, but be careful not to touch anything else. Call Ralph at the front gate and tell him to make sure no one leaves.”

  Joleen dialed the number, and stood there for a moment. “There’s no answer! He got Ralph, too.”

  “He’s probably just making his rounds,” Thaddeous said. “Let it ring a while longer.”

  Endless seconds went by, and then Joleen’s face relaxed. “Ralph! Are you all right? Ralph, someone’s been shot in Mr. Walters’s office. No, this isn’t a joke. Ralph, you listen to me!”

  “Let me,” Richard said. He took the phone, and said, “Ralph? This is Richard Fleming. There’s been a shooting. We found a body in Mr. Walters’s office.” He paused. “We don’t know who it is, but the main thing is that whoever did it may still be on the grounds. Call the police, and be sure to watch the gate and make sure no one gets out before the police get here. The four of us will wait up here. Have you got a gun, Ralph? Is it loaded? Well, load it now, just in case.” He hung up.

  We stood there a minute, not able to take our eyes from the body.

  “Who is it?” Joleen asked.

  “I can’t tell,” Thaddeous said. “It’s not Mr. Walters.”

  No, the dead man’s coloring was right, but he was both too tall and too thin to be Burt Walters.

  “Shouldn’t we turn him over and look?” Joleen said.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “There’s nothing we can do for him, and it might disturb the evidence.”

  We stared a while longer, but I started to feel sick and noticed that the others were looking a little green, too.

  “Why don’t we wait in the hall?” I suggested. “The police will be here soon.”

  The others nodded, and we waited by Mr. Walters’s secretary’s desk. Richard stood behind me and put his arms around me, and I leaned back and closed my eyes. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I guess so. You?”

  I felt his nod. “It shouldn’t be too long,” he said. No one else spoke while we waited.

  Chapter 3

  As far as I could tell, we had been waiting for about twenty minutes when the phone on the secretary’s desk rang. We all hesitated, but I finally answered it on the third ring. “Hello?” I said cautiously.

  “Laura? This is Ralph. Junior Norton and Mark Pope are on their way up. I just wanted to let you know.”

  “Thanks, Ralph.” I hung up the phone and told the others, “The police are here.”

  A minute later we heard the elevator head down to the first floor, and a minute later it returned. Junior Norton, Byerly’s police chief, was a head shorter than her deputy Mark, but there was something about the way she walked that showed you who was in charge. Both she and Mark were wearing their usual uniform of khaki pants with navy blue piping and navy blue shirts, but Junior was wearing battered cowboy boots while Mark had spit–polished oxfords.

  Junior said, “What’s the trouble here?”

  “The trouble is that there’s a dead man in there,” Joleen said, sounding more irritated than upset. She pointed toward Walters’s office.

  Junior nodded, showing no more surprise than if Joleen had pointed out a cat stuck in a tree. “I better check it out.”

  Junior probably wasn’t gone more than a minute before she stepped back out. “He’s dead all right. Do any of you know what happened?”

  “Of course we don’t,” Joleen said indignantly.

  Junior held up one finger. “I’m not accusing, I’m only asking. Mark, I want you to take these folks downstairs and find them someplace they can sit for a spell. Then call the county office and ask for some help. Tell them that an unidentified man has been found dead, and remind them to get a hold of the coroner. Then call Ralph and tell him not to let anyone but the county police in. Then call my mama and tell her that I’m going to be late for dinner.”

  Mark took in most of the instructions without looking bothered, but he didn’t look pleased at having to call Junior’s mother. “What about Burt Walters? Do you want me to call him, too?”

  Junior grimaced. “I’d best call him myself.”

  Mark nodded, and started to usher Joleen, Richard, Thaddeous, and me into the elevator.

  “On second thought,” Junior said, “I want Laurie Anne to stay up here with me for a minute.”

  Richard didn’t look happy about it, but I pushed him toward the elevator.

  “I’d offer you a seat,” Junior said as soon as they were gone, “but I don’t want the crime scene folks to fuss at me.”

  “That’s all right,” I said.

  “Laurie Anne, why is it that I only see you in Byerly when there’s been a murder? If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were some kind of jinx.”

  There wasn’t much I could say to that. The last time I had been in town, I had insisted that my grandfather had been murdered, despite the lack of evidence, and then proved myself right by catchin
g the murderer.

  “So what happened?” she asked.

  I explained how I had been drafted to rescue Joleen’s hard disk, and that we had been downstairs at her desk when we heard two gunshots. I assured her that we hadn’t touched anything on this floor other than the telephone. “And the dead man’s wrist to make sure he was dead,” I added.

  “How long did it take y’all to get up here?”

  “Maybe two or three minutes. No more than that.”

  “And no one could have taken the elevator down without your seeing him?”

  “No. Joleen’s desk is right there at the elevator.”

  “I don’t suppose you thought about someone staying downstairs to watch the door.”

  “We didn’t know anyone had been shot yet,” I said defensively. “Besides, Ralph was out there. Why didn’t he see anything?”

  “No offense to Ralph, but sneaking by him wouldn’t take a whole lot of effort. Even if he was paying attention, that booth isn’t placed for him to see everything he ought to see. I think we can assume that whoever it was went down the stairs when he heard you coming up the elevator, and snuck out. Did you see or hear any signs of anyone else being in the building before you heard the shots?”

  I shook my head, and then asked, “Do you think it was murder?”

  Junior gestured at the body. “I don’t see any gun, so unless he hid it after he shot himself twice, he had some help.”

  “Right,” I said, feeling foolish.

  “How come you didn’t turn him over?”

  “I didn’t want to disturb anything until you got here.”

  “Good thinking.”

  That made me feel better.

  We heard the elevator rising again. “That must be the help I asked for,” Junior said. “Head on back downstairs with the others. I hope you haven’t got any plans for this evening, because I expect you’re going to be here for a while.”

  When I got downstairs, Mark asked me to join the others in the mill’s break room. I did so, hugged Richard soundly, and said, “I told Junior what happened. She said we may be here for a while.”

  “I don’t know why,” Joleen said. “We don’t know what happened. We don’t even know who it was who got killed.”

  Thaddeous patted her hand. “Junior’s just doing her job, honey. I’m sure she’ll let us go as soon as she can.”

  “Well, it better be soon,” Joleen said. “I’ve got a—I’ve got plans for tonight.”

  After what Vasti had said about Joleen, I had a nasty suspicion that Joleen’s plans included a man other than Thaddeous. Why was she going out with Thaddeous, anyway? It was darned convenient for her to start dating a man just before his cousin the computer programmer came into town. Had she invited herself to the reunion just as a way to get to me?

  That sounded conceited, but the fact was that there weren’t a whole lot of folks in Byerly who would have known how to repair her hard disk. If Joleen hadn’t enlisted me, she’d have had to tell Burt Walters. Paying an expensive consultant to do what I had just done would not have pleased Burt Walters.

  It was a good thing we had eaten heavily at the reunion, because we spent a good two hours in that break room. Every once in a while, a police officer would wander in to get a Coke from the vending machine, but no one spoke to us. Richard, Thaddeous, and I talked about nothing in particular for a while, but eventually we ran out of things to say. Finally Mark came back in and said, “We can take your statements now.”

  “It’s about time,” Joleen said, and flounced out. The rest of us followed more calmly. A county police officer took us aside one at a time, and questioned us. He didn’t ask me anything Junior hadn’t, and I gave him the same answers I had given her. Then Mark took us back upstairs to Mr. Walters’s office.

  Police officers were busy measuring and photographing everything in the office while Junior watched. The body had been moved onto a stretcher and covered with a sheet, and the place where he had been was outlined with tape.

  “We got their statements,” Mark said.

  Junior said, “I’m going to need y’all to come down to the station tomorrow and sign a copy of those statements.” We nodded, and she went on. “Now that we’ve got the body turned over, I want you to take a look and see if you recognize him.”

  I swallowed hard, and Richard took my hand and squeezed.

  Junior gently lifted the sheet over the body, and folded it down below his chin. Fortunately he didn’t look particularly grisly. If I had seen him under other circumstances, I might have thought that he was just sleeping.

  “I don’t know who it is,” Joleen said and turned away. “Can we leave now?”

  “Let the others look for a minute,” Junior said. “Thaddeous?”

  He looked hard at the man, but then shook his head. “He’s a stranger to me.”

  “Richard?” Junior said.

  Richard said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before.”

  “Laurie Anne?”

  I started to shake my head. Then I said, “I’m not sure.”

  “Take your time,” Junior said, and I studied him for a while longer. “Do you think you know him?”

  “No, but … He does look awfully familiar, Junior. Something about the chin, and the nose. I just can’t place him.”

  Junior waited patiently while I kept looking at him. “I just don’t know.” I looked up, meaning to take a minute to stare into space and try to remember. Instead I looked down again, and then back up. “I don’t believe it.”

  “What?” Junior asked.

  “Look!”

  Junior followed my gaze to the life–sized portrait of Big Bill Walters, hanging over Burt’s desk as if to constantly look over his shoulder. “Junior, am I crazy, or does that man look like Big Bill Walters?” I said.

  To be specific, he looked a lot like Big Bill had when that portrait was painted. I knew that Big Bill’s hair had gone from salt–and–pepper to solid grey a long time ago, and that he had just a bit a of paunch now, but if it had been twenty years earlier, I would have sworn that the dead man was Big Bill Walters.

  Junior looked for herself, and said mildly, “He does favor Big Bill, doesn’t he?”

  “Favor him?” Thaddeous said. “I’d say that he was a dead ringer.”

  Chapter 4

  “Has Burt Walters seen him yet?” I asked Junior.

  She shook her head. “I called him right after we got here, but he was out somewhere and couldn’t be reached.”

  I would loved to have stayed around to see Burt’s reaction when he got there, both because of the aggravation of a murder in his office and to see if he knew who this man was, but Junior didn’t need us for anything more.

  She did ask us to keep quiet about the dead man’s resemblance to Big Bill until she could talk to the Walters family, but we both knew that it was a losing battle. Several other police officers had heard me when I realized it, and the word was going to get out pretty quickly.

  After that, Junior thanked us politely for our time, reminded us to come in sometime the next day to sign our statements, and firmly bade us farewell.

  It was just as well. Joleen was chomping at the bit to leave, and asked Richard and me to drop her off at her house rather than go back to the church for Thaddeous to get his pickup truck and drive her home himself. She did thank me for helping with her computer, and even kissed Thaddeous goodbye, albeit briefly.

  “Ain’t she something?” he said as we drove off.

  “She sure is,” I answered.

  Thaddeous went on to describe Joleen’s charms until we left him at his car. Then he said, “I appreciate your helping out with the computer, but I sure am sorry about getting y’all into that mess.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Thaddeous,” I said. “We’ll talk to you later this week.”

  “What do you think of Joleen?” I asked Richard, once Thaddeous was out of earshot.

  “She sure is something.”

  “Th
at’s what I thought, too. Poor Thaddeous.”

  The phone was ringing when we came in the door at Aunt Maggie’s. She stopped on her way to answer it, and said, “You may as well get it yourself. It’s probably for you.”

  I picked up the receiver. “Burnette residence.”

  “Is Laurie Anne Fleming there?”

  “This is Laura Fleming,” I said.

  “Mrs. Fleming, this is Hank Parker at the Byerly Gazette. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about the body you found at Walters Mill this evening.”

  “That was fast.”

  “We regularly monitor the police bands.” He proceeded to ask the same set of questions that the police had, and I gave him the same set of answers. I did fudge about why the four of us had been at the mill, saying only that Joleen and I had been comparing computer techniques. After all the trouble I had gone to to save her data, I didn’t want her to lose her job now. Not while Thaddeous was still smitten, anyway.

  Parker pushed hard when asking if I knew who the body was, even asked for a description, but in deference to Junior’s request, I pleaded ignorance. I suspected he already knew something and was just hoping for confirmation. Finally I told him goodbye and hung up.

  “That was Hank Parker from the paper,” I said.

  Aunt Maggie nodded. “That’s the fourth time he’s called looking for you.”

  “How did he find out about the shooting so quickly?” Richard wanted to know.

  “He said he heard it on the police radio,” I told him.

  Aunt Maggie snorted. “He heard it from his mama, is what happened. Mark Pope’s mama is Hank Parker’s mama’s sister. So he gets all the news right quick.”

  “I don’t know what he’s in such a hurry for,” I said. “The Gazette won’t come out again until Wednesday.”

  “He’s just nosy,” Aunt Maggie said. “Working at the paper only gives him an excuse.”

  “Did he tell you what happened?” I asked.

  “He gave me the short version, and I heard you tell him the rest. They don’t know who the dead man is?”