The Homicide Report: A Nell Matthews Mystery (InterMix)

by JoAnna Carl

  “That’s right. I came out to get the paper, and it was open—just a few inches. But I’d seen Mr. Ashe loading up his car the day before. I knew he was out of town. I called his name, but nobody answered. That’s when I called the manager, and she came over to look. She called the police.”

  She turned to Arnie. “They really made a mess in there. Dwayne and I—we could help you clean it up.”

  “I’ll help him,” I said. “But that’s awfully nice of you.”

  “Well, he’s been a nice friendly neighbor,” Mrs. Marsh said. “Polite. Took in a package for me when UPS just dumped it on the porch and anybody might have taken it.”

  “Did you see anything odd around the complex Friday night?” Mike said.

  “I wasn’t outside at all,” Mrs. Marsh said. “Never so much as looked out the window. Just fixed supper, then bathed the baby and got Dwayne off to work.”

  “What time does your husband go to work?”

  “He leaves at ten. He works the night shift at the tire plant. They report at eleven, get off at seven. It’s a thirty-minute drive, and he likes to change to his work clothes out there.”

  “Did he mention seeing anything out of the ordinary?”

  Mrs. Marsh laughed. “He never notices anything unless it’s got four wheels and a carburetor. He’s a car nut. You could ask him, but all he talked to me about was an antique Caddy.”

  Of course, we all jumped to attention at that.

  “A Caddy?” I said. “Do you mean a Cadillac?”

  She laughed again. “Oh, yes. He said it was a dandy. Silver gray, big as a battleship. Cruising through our parking lot. He said it was in prime condition and was worth a lot of money. He said what year it was—sometime in the sixties.”

  She turned to Arnie. “You see lots of old cars in this complex, but not too many that might be worth money!”

  “Is your husband sleeping?” Mike asked.

  “He was.” A deep voice echoed from inside the apartment, and a large black man came to the door behind Mrs. Marsh. “Who you talkin’ to?”

  “I’m sorry!” Mike said. He went into an ingenuous, boyish act. “We woke you up. I work the midnight to eight a.m. shift myself, so I know what a pain in the rear it is when somebody interrupts your sleep.”

  “The police are here to look after that burglary,” Mrs. Marsh said to her husband. “This is Mr. Ashe’s daughter. And this is Mr. Svenson.”

  Mike reached for his hip pocket and produced his badge. “I’m a patrolman for the Grantham P.D.,” he said. “But I’m not working on this case. I’m here as a friend of Arnie and his daughter. Your wife said you saw a strange car cruising the apartment Friday night.”

  Dwayne Marsh frowned. “You mean that Caddy? Sixty-one, silver gray, with moon hubs. I sure never saw it around here before.”

  “Did you get a look at the driver?”

  “No. The windows had heavy tinting. It was a specialty number. Had a custom paint job and a lot of fancy trim. Be worth having just to let it sit in the driveway. Let everybody drool all over the fenders. Sure wish I had the money to buy it.”

  Mike grinned. “Cars like that don’t come on the market very often.”

  “Oh, it was for sale. Had a dealer’s tag.”

  I practically did a somersault over the railing I was leaning against. Arnie gasped, and even Mike looked up sharply. Dealer’s tags! Whee! That could narrow the search for the old Cadillac quite a bit. And it might narrow the search for the driver.

  Dwayne Marsh didn’t recall which dealer’s tag had adorned the Cadillac’s rear bumper, but there couldn’t be too many lots in a city of 350,000 that handled reconditioned Cadillacs more than thirty years old. If the tag hadn’t been stolen.

  As soon as the technical crew was through with Arnie’s apartment, he and I started putting books back on the shelves. That was the main damage the intruder had done. He hadn’t pulled things out of the kitchen cabinets, hadn’t shoved the mattress onto the floor, or ripped the stuffing out of the couch.

  “Well, whatever he was looking for wasn’t very small,” I said.

  Arnie grunted. “Looks like he threw a tantrum,” he said.

  Arnie owned shelf after shelf of science fiction and fantasy, mostly paperbacks, I noticed. Then there was a bookcase full of history and one of biography, featuring a lot of newsmen—Walter Cronkite, Eric Severeid, Edward R. Murrow. All the newspaper people I’ve ever known own a lot of books. And we also patronize libraries. If we didn’t like to read, I guess we wouldn’t be in the news biz.

  Jim Hammond started talking. “Okay,” he said. “I’m getting a warrant so Boone can examine the Gazette’s personnel records. Ditto the union records, to check on the printers down there. But how about you? Did you recognize anybody down there? Was there anybody you’d known before?”

  “You mean from Michigan?” Arnie asked.

  “Right.”

  Arnie lit another cigarette and shook his head. “Not from Michigan. Some of the Gazette people I’d met at press association meetings and such. Jake Edwards, for example. There’s one guy I’d worked with in Texas. But as for links with Michigan, no.”

  “So nobody jumps into your mind right off? Nobody seemed familiar?”

  “No.” Arnie exhaled smoke. “Nobody I wasn’t able to place as having met somewhere else more recently. But Michigan was twenty years ago.” He rubbed his head. “And of course, I deliberately changed my appearance. I’ve got a receding hairline, true, but I’m not this bald. But everybody changes in twenty years. It might be somebody I knew fairly well, but they just look different now.”

  The plan Jim decided on was this: Arnie, Mike, and I were to go back to Mike’s house and hide out. Mike said he’d fix Marceline somehow so that she wouldn’t call the cops if she spotted Arnie.

  “And, Mike,” Jim said, “you get Arnie to reminisce. Remember who he knew in Michigan. Who worked at the newspaper. Who he knew in the community. Who a young, unhappy housewife might have liked.”

  We had our instructions. Mike, Arnie, and I drove through the McDonald’s drive-through, then went back to Mike’s. Mike pulled the truck into the garage and shut the door. He went directly over to Marceline’s to enlist her in our effort to keep Arnie under cover.

  Arnie and I went into the house, and I unloaded the hamburgers and fries on the kitchen table while I tried to get my nerve up to ask the question that had been bugging me since I first heard Arnie’s story. But once again I didn’t get a chance. Arnie disappeared into the back bathroom. By the time he came out, Mike had come back from talking to Marceline.

  “I enlisted her as a spy,” Mike said. “She’s going to keep an eye out for strange vehicles. And keep her mouth shut.”

  “Think she will?”

  “We can hope. I’d rather have her spying on somebody besides me.”

  Mike began to quiz Arnie about his Michigan acquaintances as we ate. Arnie listed off the staff members. Most of them had been women.

  “We had a crazy soc editor—it was still called society back then. Her name was Florence something or other. She kept a list of when all the couples got married, then compared it to the birth date of their first child. Nosy gal, but she knew everybody in town. We had a young police reporter who went on to better things. J.P. Sutherland. I saw his name on a wire story a couple of years ago. I think he’s head of the A.P. bureau in Nashville now.”

  There had been only a half dozen editorial staffers at the Jessamine Journal—one sports, one soc, three reporters, and Arnie.

  “How about the back shop?” I asked. “Or advertising?” I’d worked for a smaller paper. I knew that the departmental divisions that mark a paper the size of the Gazette wouldn’t be evident in a smaller paper. If you have four hundred employees, you’ll know only the ones you work with. If you have twenty-five, you’ll know all of them.

  “The ad manager—he was a piece of work,” Arnie said. “His name was ‘Google’ Bernard. Always wore a snappy hat of some
kind. He actually had a straw boater for summer. I always suspected that he drank a lot on his off hours.”

  “Did Sally ever show any particular interest in anyone who worked there?” Mike said.

  “She laughed at Google, I remember. Thought he was ridiculous. He was the company clown.”

  “Anybody else she didn’t like?”

  “She didn’t know anybody very well. I remember she made fun of one of the back-shop guys. A scrawny kid. He rode a motorcycle with a tag that said ‘Put something exciting between your legs.’ Stupid. She said he was a walking inferiority complex. But that was before he bought her drinks at the Elks Club.” He rolled his eyes derisively and took a long drag from his cigarette. “Bobbie Johnson was his name. Bobbie with an ‘i-e.’ ”

  “Bobbie Johnson? That sounds—” I gasped. “Bob Johnson! We have a pressman named Bob Johnson!”

  “A little guy?” Arnie said.

  “He’s short, but I wouldn’t call him little. He’s the one you had a fight with when he yelled at me in the newsroom. He’s muscle-bound. And he does ride a motorcycle.”

  “Maybe we ought to tell Captain Hammond about the names being the same,” Mike said. He went to the phone, and I thought about Bob Johnson. Bob Johnson, who had yelled and snarled at me, angry because I had told the police someone left a box of rags soaked in blanket wash in the hall outside the ladies’ room. He’d cleaned the press, Bob had said, and he hadn’t left rags in the back hall. And Bob Johnson had been among the group of pressroom guys who’d been taking their dinner break when I went down the circular stairs and found Martina’s body.

  “This could solve Martina’s killing,” I said. “Bob Johnson was on duty both nights when she was attacked. And he had been in the basement area both times. He definitely fits the ‘where’ and the ‘when.’ ”

  But Arnie was frowning. “I guess he could have killed Martina,” he said. “But even if it’s the same guy who worked in Jessamine, I can’t believe he killed Sally. First, your mother laughed at Bobbie Johnson. Called him the ‘pipsqueak.’ She would never have gone to a motel to meet him—for any reason. Second, the Gazette’s Bob Johnson may have been on duty when Martina was killed, but he was also on duty the night your mother was killed. I’m sure he didn’t sneak out that night. That was the end of the cold-type era. Only the punchers—the girls who set the type—had computers at the Jessamine Journal. The type was printed up from film, and Bobbie and one other guy pasted it up on grid sheets. He was back there with his X-Acto knife all evening. Had to have been, or we wouldn’t have gotten the paper out on deadline.”

  Mike said good-bye to Jim Hammond and put the receiver back on its hook. He still had his hand on the phone when it rang.

  “Hello,” he said. “Oh, hi, Martha.”

  Martha. One of my roommates.

  “Yes, she’s here,” Mike said. “I’ll call—” He broke off and listened, frowning.

  “Who is it?” he asked. “Just a minute.”

  He lowered the receiver and looked at me. “Martha says some guy on a motorcycle threw a fit on your front porch. Demanded to talk to you. Claims you’re causing him a bunch of trouble.”

  “Who?”

  Mike looked grim. “Well, he told Martha his name was Bob Johnson.”

  “Bob?” I was completely astonished. I’d never seen Bob away from the Gazette. Why had he come to my house? “What is he doing, reading our minds? His name just came up a minute ago!”

  Mike spoke into the phone again. “Thanks for the warning, Martha. We’ll look out for him.” He hung up.

  “Arnie, you’d better be ready to hide in the back room. It seems Bob Johnson is on his way over. Harley hog and all.”

  His statement seemed to be a cue. Right at that moment I heard a motorcycle revving as it turned the corner onto Mike’s block.

  Chapter 19

  “Oh, Lord! He’s already here!”

  The last thing I wanted was a face-off with Bob Johnson. I’d already done that.

  And now—if he was the same Bob Johnson Arnie had known in Michigan—I knew he might even be a murderer.

  “I don’t want to talk to him,” I said.

  Mike put his arm around my shoulders and hugged me against his side protectively. “You don’t have to,” he said. “You and Arnie go into the back bedroom. I’ll run him off.”

  I felt a rush of relief. If there was anybody who could get rid of an irate pressman, it was Mike. He could use his well-trained persuasive abilities to talk him into leaving. And if that failed, he could use his well-trained muscles to pound him into the porch. Mike could take care of Bob Johnson without breaking into a sweat.

  But as the rush of relief ebbed, I realized that turning Bob Johnson over to Mike was not a good idea. I was a grown woman. I was already mad at Mike and Arnie for doing things that affected me without telling me what they were up to. I’d been fighting for the right to take care of my own problems. It wasn’t time to back down now.

  So I pulled away from Mike. “Thanks,” I said. “But if Bob Johnson is coming over here to see me, I’d better talk to him.”

  “Don’t be silly!” Arnie jumped up, nearly knocking his chair over. “You don’t need to deal with this jerk! I can—”

  “No!” I said. “I grew up while you had your back turned, remember?”

  Arnie looked as if I’d kicked him, but I was too busy psyching myself up to care. While we’d been exchanging opinions at the top of our voices, the sound of the motorcycle had grown louder. It sounded as if it was in Mike’s driveway. Then it had stopped. Bob Johnson was at that moment walking to Mike’s door. Decision time was here.

  I gulped, cleared my throat, and headed for the front door. Mike was muttering behind me, “Arnie, go into the garage—” I didn’t hear the rest.

  Keep calm, I told myself. Calm. Bob rants. Bob raves. You keep calm. That’s the scenario.

  I swung the wooden front door open and found the burly fist of Bob Johnson right at the end of my nose. He’d been ready to knock when I opened the inside door. Of course, the fist was on the other side of the glass in Mike’s storm door.

  Startled, Bob stood immobile. I opened the storm door, forcing him to step back. And I went out onto the porch. I certainly wasn’t inviting Bob Johnson into Mike’s house.

  “Hi,” I said. “My roommate called and said you were on your way over. What’s up?”

  “My dander’s what’s up!” Bob kept his fist raised.

  “I can see that. But what do I have to do with your dander?”

  “I just spent a whole morning keeping away from the police! And it’s all your fault for telling them that crap about the rags.”

  “Bob, I had no idea the rags had anything to do with you. I simply told the truth.”

  “Well, now it’s time for you to drop that story and for you and your boyfriend to let me off the hook!”

  He shook the fist and looked over my shoulder. I realized that Mike was standing in the doorway behind me, holding the door ajar. I admit I was glad to see him. Even cops call for backup when they’re in a confrontational situation.

  “Look,” I said, “I don’t know what the detectives are up to. I certainly don’t give orders to the Grantham Police Department. And Mike doesn’t, either. He’s only a patrolman—”

  “Huh! Everybody knows his dad was chief! He’s in with the top dogs—”

  “He may know a lot of them, but he’s careful not to mix in cases he has nothing to do with,” I said. “Neither of us has any influence on the investigation into Martina’s death.”

  Bob Johnson stepped back a step and put his fists on his hips. He stood there angrily.

  It occurred to me that a little flattery might go a long way about now. “I have no idea why they’d want to talk to you,” I said. “Except that you are so experienced. You know everything about how the pressroom works. The routine. Maybe they just want some background.”

  Bob’s eyes narrowed.

  “They’r
e probably going to want to know who had access to the locker room. Who could have taken those shoes. If any strangers were seen down there Thursday night.”

  Bob pouted. “They asked all that stuff Friday,” he said. “They asked everybody. This time they’re looking for me. Only me.”

  “Well, I can’t explain that,” I said. “But the best way to get along with detectives is to answer their questions. Stop dodging them! Go down to the station and tell them you’ve heard that they’re looking for you and you’ll tell them anything you know. That will make you look innocent.”

  Bob shuffled from side to side, and I realized he was scared.

  “That bitch Martina!” he said. “She’s causing more trouble dead than alive! And she caused plenty then.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She got me fired!”

  “Fired? But you’re still—”

  “Not here! In Missouri!”

  “You knew Martina at another paper?”

  “I was pressroom foreman. She was on the desk. She told the publisher she’d smelled liquor on my breath.” Anger lit his features and beetled his brows. “Nosy bitch!”

  He needed calming again.

  “I’m sorry that happened, Bob,” I said. “I’m sure it was frustrating—her word against yours.”

  “I got fired the day after Christmas! Over one lousy cup of eggnog. And one stupid joke that she didn’t like. It took me months to get on at the Gazette, and then she turns up here!”

  “I never saw her speak to you,” I said. “She may not have even remembered you from Missouri.”

  “Oh, she remembered. Stupid, giggling bitch. Made some remark about ‘holiday cheer’ the first time she saw me in the break room.”

  Now, that was news. I’d had no idea Bob Johnson had any special reason for disliking Martina. She had been at the Gazette around ten years, so Bob had been hugging this resentment to himself for a long time.

  Making this revelation seemed to have calmed him down a little. He listened as I again urged him to talk to Boone or Jim or whoever the detective was who’d tried to reach him. I even glanced back at Mike, and he backed me up. Told Bob to go down to the Central Station and get it over with.