Angel Food and Devil Dogs - A Maggie Gale Mystery

by Liz Bradbury

  After Leavitt left, I poked around the computer music hook ups, electronic piano keyboards, digital speakers, and the large microphone in the middle of the desk next to the phone.

  The computer typing keyboard was gone, the police had taken it to check for fingerprints. I found an extra one in a different office, plugged it in, then booted up Carl’s computer and scanned his files. I reviewed Carl’s suicide note, it was the same as the hard copy Bouchet had handed out.

  In the top drawer of the desk, I found a very powerful laptop computer next to a nearly full box of Devil Dogs snack cakes. I opened one of the plastic packages of Devil Dogs and sniffed it while I copied all of Carl’s written files and program information from the desktop onto the laptop. The snack cakes were a little stale, but as I hadn’t had dinner, I ate the whole package of three. I didn’t think Carl would mind.

  I managed to open the Voice Transcription System program and accessed the files. I copied them onto the laptop; the voice transcription software was already loaded into the laptop.

  The Voice Transcription Program would read any text out loud in a voice selected by the program user. One would read any text to the tune of “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Why would anybody need that, I wondered. By using this program, Carl could read all his student’s papers by just having the computer convert the text to voice or musical sound. He could hear emails using it and he could check his own typing to be sure he hadn’t made mistakes. This was one of the ways it was possible for him to function in a college full of sighted people.

  Carl could also use the program as a text translator. He could talk into a mic and the words he said would come out as text. Cool. I looked around the room to see if there were any software manuals with directions on operating that program. The software books were all in a stack in the corner. They weren’t anything Carl could use, but if he had a problem, the College tech people could come in and access them.

  I found the one for the Voice Transcription Program and flipped through the five hundred or so pages of simple directions. There was no way I could figure this out tonight. It was getting very late.

  I couldn’t access Carl’s email without his password. I gave guessing it a shot, trying a few dozen combinations of letters and numbers that might have been important in his life, but no dice. I looked around his desk to see if he’d written it down. Mental head slap. He was blind. Maybe he had a Braille reminder. If he did, it wouldn’t do me any good. It was almost midnight. I put Carl’s laptop and the software manual in my shoulder bag, left Carl’s office snapping the padlock back in place, then passed through the large dark recording studio en route to the elevator.

  I decided to go to the top floor and see the balcony where Carl Rasmus met death. The elevator door opened into darkness on the sixth floor. Carl had killed himself in the middle of the day, but it would have been darker for him than this was for me. The balcony Carl Rasmus fell from was reached by a pair of locked French doors off the hall. I didn’t have the key. Peering through the glass, I could make out the four-foot cement railing that probably bruised Carl’s legs.

  Could it be that he’d just rode up there and jumped? How did he even know there was a balcony there, anyway? Where did he get the key? How did he know there wasn’t a huge awning under the balcony that would break his fall? The whole thing seemed implausible. If someone had pushed him, though... I looked up and down the hall.

  All the killer would have to do was push him off, then walk over to the stairs. There were plenty of ways to get out of the building. Killing a blind man wouldn’t have been that hard to do... but Carl had left a suicide note in a locked room ... and that I couldn’t explain.

  Chapter 11

  I walked home. The snow had stopped and the wind was less than a whisper. The city lay quietly nestled under a white blanket. I was carrying Carl Rasmus’s laptop, which I may have removed from his office illegally, but I’d take my chances with that.

  I remembered watching Kathryn Anthony talking in the Quad. I realized that I’d had a pang of jealousy when I’d seen her gently touch Jimmy Harmon’s arm.

  You might be sweet on that girl, I teased myself.

  The small parking lot in front of my building had already been plowed out by the maintenance service. They’d done a fairly good job, but the space they made through the snow pile to the building entrances was pretty narrow. I had to turn sideways. Sara would complain to the landlord, and the landlord would be me.

  I was planning to work out for about an hour, have a bowl of Jessie Wiggins’ homemade chicken soup and then go to sleep as fast as possible. My 9:00 AM meeting with Skylar Carvelle was coming up fast.

  I gathered the mail in the foyer and trudged up the stairs to my loft, but when I reached the second floor landing I noticed a note with my name on it taped to the door of my office.

  All it said was, “Maggie, List on Evelyn’s desk.”

  Inside Martinez and Strong Law Offices, I scooped up two sheets from the front desk. A handwritten note from Sara on one of them said, “Maggie, please run this list. It’s from Daria’s party.”

  The list had about 40 names. How did Daria ever fit that many party goers into her tiny apartment? Apparently Sara wanted me to send this list to my fact checkers to see if any of these people had been charged or convicted of violent acts.

  In my own office, I faxed the list off with a note of explanation and my pin number for the service. I made a notation on my calendar. Credit results should be back by Friday evening. More extensive information would take longer. If any of these people had been guilty of rape or sexual assault in the past, it could help get Mickey off. The whole procedure only took about ten minutes. I locked up and resumed my climb to the third floor.

  I’d finished converting my loft to living space a few weeks ago. The hard work to get it done over the last six months had paid off and I was unabashedly proud of myself for the way it had come out. Fun to come home to it, but right now I was a little too tired for full-fledged appreciation.

  As I unlocked the door a nagging feeling I was forgetting something tickled my conscience. In the back of my mind I knew there was something else I was supposed to do. What was it?

  I hung my jacket on a peg near the door and sat down at the kitchen table, staring off into space. Visions of Kathryn Anthony clouded my concentration. Even after everything that had happened yesterday and all the information I’d gathered today, I just kept coming back to the way she’d looked at me when we’d met. Maybe it was all my imagination, but the look in her eyes seemed very personal.

  I wish I could call Farrel and talk to her about all this, I thought.

  It was too late to call her though... too late to call Farrel and Jessie and besides... they’re away doing an antique show. Oh shit! They’re away and it snowed... and I have to shovel their walk! I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten. I’d even reminded myself when it started snowing. What a moron. Now I’d have to go back out in the cold. Damn!

  I put my new parka back on, grabbed my keys and leather gloves, and went back out into the night.

  Farrel and Jessie lived on Washington Street on the south side of Washington Mews. In fact, they have two rowhouses next to each other that they joined into one. When you live in Washington Mews, you ultimately succumb to the propriety police. Mews people can be painfully rule-oriented. It’s like a cult. It’s considered impolite to leave snow on the sidewalk in front of your house in Washington Mews. So the Mewsians, including Farrel and Jessie themselves, lobbied City Council to pass a law that requires all residents of the historic districts of the city to shovel their walks down to the pavement within 24 hours of the snow stopping. There’s even a $35 fine.

  Because Farrel and Jessie have two houses combined into one, they could get a $70 ticket! Even more serious, was the danger of the disdain of their neighbors. A disdain meted out in side-ways glances and turned up noses. It could be a stinking black spot on their reputations for years.

  There are a
lot of gay and lesbian families in the Mews, and they often seem to be the most insistent on rule following. Gay and lesbian homeowners who began buying and restoring Mews homes twenty years ago had rescued this neighborhood, like so many historic areas all over the country.

  The snow had just stopped a few hours earlier. If I could get there before too many pedestrians walked by, I could get the four or five inches of powder off the sidewalk before boots trampled it into an icy packed down mass.

  What the heck, I shrugged, half an hour of rapid shoveling and I won’t have to work out. I glanced at my watch. It was 1:10AM. There shouldn’t be anyone out at this hour on a Wednesday night, just after hours folks like vampires and guys like Herman Munster.

  It was just over a block to Farrel and Jessie’s house from my building. By the time I was half way there I’d decided a vampire would be flying rather than strolling and that Herman Munster had that hot-ride-hearse, so the sidewalks would probably be empty.

  Things seemed different in the Mews, like a world apart. I stopped for a minute to appreciate the rare beauty of the snow. It was clean and pure white. A bright full moon had risen in the southeast in counterpoint to the rest of the night sky, which was as soft and dark as black velvet. Overhead was a shoal of a thousand stars. It was impossible to look at any point in the northwestern sky and not see a dozen tiny dots of light. Some were beacons in the recognizable patterns of constellations, others almost too small to discern individually, were like a fist full of shining grains of sand flung by a Greek god onto an inky background.

  The old-fashioned streetlight globes on their ornate copper columns were dimmed by little white caps. Bushes and tree branches seemed dusted with talcum. Every car parked along the sidewalk sported a new white ragtop. The snow on the park lawns in the center of the Mews was as smooth as fondant icing. The deep powder muffled every sound. Even my own footsteps made only a quiet chuffing as I moved along.

  Farrel and Jessie keep a snow shovel in their foyer from November until April. I had keys to their house. Though Cora Martin was taking care of their cats, Cora was not expected to shovel. I’d do her walk as well.

  After letting myself into the house, I had to disarm the burglar alarm quickly. This is a stressful job because a loud beeping ticks off the seconds you have to enter the special code before the alarm decides to let out with its screaming horns, buzzers and sirens. I managed in time. The alarm system in my building is much easier to use. Much more forgiving.

  I petted the jet-black cats as they wound around my legs.

  “Hi boys.”

  Griswold said, “Merf.”

  Wagner said, “Ow.”

  I grabbed the shovel and went back outside and began to toss large fluffy scoopfuls aside. There was no wind at all. It was still and quiet. The only sound was the scraping of the shovel as I cleared down to the pavement. Inside, Griswold and Wagner jumped to the front sill to watch me. I waved to them. Griswold stretched his paws over his head on the window glass as though he was waving back.

  Just three cars went by during the forty-five minutes I worked. I stopped and leaned on the shovel for a time to gaze around at the job I’d done to see if it would pass Mews muster.

  Down the street, I could see someone coming toward me on the sidewalk from the east end of the Mews. I could tell it was a woman by the way she moved and by her silhouette against the unshoveled snowy sidewalk, behind her. She’d passed 11th Street and was just a few houses away. Before I could possibly be sure on an intellectual level, I knew in my soul it was Kathryn Anthony. My heart began to race and I strained my brain to think of something charming to say. She might remember me, or she might think I was some late night crazy, armed with a big garden tool. In instances like this, when hoping to impress, it’s always best not to scare the person to death by popping out of the dark, wielding something that could be mistaken for a giant ax.

  Her face was turned toward the center of the Mews. No hurry, just moving steadily along. As she got nearer she passed under a streetlight. She was wearing her calf length dark tweed coat and her red scarf wrapped once around her neck, then tossed over her shoulder. No hat, hands in her pockets, boots with a medium heel. She must have been wearing a dress or skirt because I couldn’t see pant cuffs below the hem of her coat. This was a pretty formal outfit for what must now be about 2:00 AM. Maybe she’d been on a date and was just coming home. I had mixed feelings about that.

  She was fairly close when she turned and saw me. There was no one else on the street. She hesitated. Then she saw the shovel and figured I must be a Mews homeowner on a late night quest to fulfill my civic shoveling responsibility.

  I said, “Good evening Dr. Anthony, it’s quite late for a moonlight stroll.” Oh crap, what a pompous thing to say. Don’t be a jerk, stop trying so hard, my internal voice yelled.

  She stopped, smiled, tilted her head to the side a little and said, “Oh, please call me Kathryn. Nearly two o’clock in the morning is no time to be formal. It’s very late for shoveling sidewalks too... is this where you live?” she said looking up at the house, in a voice that caused my stomach to flutter.

  I looked too, like I had to see whether it was my house or not. Geez, take a deep breath and stop being an addlepated teenager.

  “No, it belongs to some friends of mine. I promised I’d shovel their walk while they were away and I didn’t think I’d have time tomorrow.”

  She nodded and took some steps nearer, then said, “It’s not really too cold is it? It’s so still.” She paused to look again toward the center of the Mews. Then she said with a tired sigh and a hint of amusement, “After a day like this, I just needed to go for a short walk and I couldn’t resist seeing the moon on the crest of the new fallen snow.”

  “Tough day?” I asked leaning on the shovel, trying to be calm and not trip over it.

  “Boring, frustrating, tedious, parts of it were pointless... Oh! I sound like such a malcontent,” she laughed.

  “Are you just coming home? Now? From work?” I asked in amazement.

  She shrugged, “I had meetings all day. Tonight, I was reading graduate thesis proposals in my office. I wanted to finish because I just couldn’t go on with them for another day. So I stayed late.”

  “Is this a solitary walk?” I asked gently.

  “Are you done shoveling? Would you like to walk with me? You’re welcome to.”

  I thought dramatically, Is the sun hot? Did the Titanic spring a leak?? Are the worst homophobes, conservative ministers who cruise men’s rooms??? But I answered evenly, “That would be nice. Just let me put the shovel back in the house.”

  Chapter 12

  I sped up the steps, leaned the shovel back in its place in the foyer and patted Griswold and Wagner goodbye.

  Griswold said, “Merf.”

  Wagner said, “Ow.”

  I tried to re-arm the alarm efficiently, but set off the blaring horn for a split second. It gave off one piercing whoop, which probably woke everyone in the Mews. I hoped, since it was only one honk, that maybe all the Mewsians would think they had had a collective epiphanaic dream and then all go back to sleep.

  When I got back outside, Kathryn asked in surprise, “What was that noise?”

  “Um noise, you mean like an earsplitting blaring horn? I didn’t hear anything,” I replied with a grin.

  “Uh huh,” she laughed, “I didn’t either.” Dimples made her amused face radiant. My God she was gorgeous, I could barely stand it.

  “I’m not very good with their house alarm. They just changed it to a more sophisticated system, which as far as I’m concerned means more complicated to use. The Wolf Alarm 5000 Company monitors it. They should change their name to the Cry Wolf Alarm.” We both turned in the direction she’d been walking and continued along the sidewalk side by side.

  She said, “I just talked to my father on the phone yesterday. He keeps getting telemarketing calls from security alarm companies. He was so pleased with himself, he told me he’d hit
on the perfect foil to their sales pitch. When they say they want to sell him a burglar alarm, he tells them he’s against them, and when the salesman asks him why, Dad says, ‘Because I’m a burglar’.”

  I laughed. “Where does he live?”

  “Portland... Maine, near my brother.”

  “And your mother?”

  “I don’t hear from her much, she lives in Georgia.”

  Her tone signaled don’t go there, so I didn’t say anything but, “Uh huh.”

  We were at the middle of the western end of the Mews. There was a beautiful rowhouse with a grand piano visible in its dimly lighted front window. On the far wall, over an ornate fireplace, was a dark Pre-Raphaelite painting with a tiny spotlight over it. We both stopped to look, as the owner had obviously wanted passersby to do.

  “The piano looks like it wants to be played,” she said, “I wonder if anyone ever does or if it’s just an ornament... there’s no music on it.”

  “Do you play?”

  “When I have time. I don’t get many chances to play an instrument like that though. It’s not exactly something you can tote around with you.”

  “Maybe you should take up the harmonica?”

  “Probably a good idea... or maybe the kazoo,” she laughed lightly.

  “Or the sweet potato... what’s the other name for that?”

  “Ocarina?”

  “There you go... handy for purse or pocket... but not quite the same tone as a baby grand.” We walked a little more slowly, looking at the façades of other 100 year old homes. “Are you living in a Mews rowhouse?” I asked.

  “Oh, I wish. I’m subletting an apartment in the Hampshire from a faculty member who’s on sabbatical. I had to get a place in a hurry and I needed something furnished, so I took it for a semester with an option for next semester if I choose.”

  “Do you like living there?”

  “It’s OK,” she said conversationally. “The building does have charm. Vintage Nick and Nora Charles. The thing that’s most odd is living in someone else’s space. Every bit of the place is covered with Joe’s things, and he has a lot of them. Every inch of wall space, every bookshelf, every drawer and closet has his sensibility. He does have good taste, but they’re not my things. Which makes me feel like...” she paused trying to think of the right word.