The Homicide Report: A Nell Matthews Mystery (InterMix)

by JoAnna Carl

  Bob swaggered out to his Harley, threw a leg across, sneered, and fired one final salvo at me.

  “Funny how you and the boyfriend turned up every time something went wrong with Martina,” he said.

  Was he accusing Mike and me of being involved in Martina’s death? I stepped forward, but Bob kicked the starter on the cycle, and its noise drowned out any reply I might have made. He revved the motor and dug out. Mike and I were left standing on the porch, staring after him.

  “Jerk!” I said. “Paranoid jerk!”

  “As a psychological diagnosis, I’d say you’re absolutely correct,” Mike said. “Now let’s find out if Arnie recognized him.”

  Mike led the way to the kitchen, and we met Arnie coming in from the garage.

  “Did you get a look?” Mike said.

  Arnie nodded. “Yeah, the window worked fine, and I’m sure he didn’t see me.”

  “Was he the same guy you knew in Michigan?”

  “It’s hard to say. If he spent the past twenty years in the weight room, it could be the same guy. He’s a lot bulkier. And his eyebrows are heavier.”

  “If the guy in Michigan was a complete jerk, I’d say he has the same character flaws,” I said. “What was that final crack he made? Funny how the boyfriend and I kept turning up whenever something happened to Martina? Mike wasn’t there the night Martina was killed. Not until afterward.”

  “I didn’t catch what he said,” Arnie said. “But I thought he was referring to Martina’s boyfriend.”

  His comment clicked on a light bulb inside my head. Was I missing something?

  “Martina’s boyfriend,” I said slowly.

  Arnie was frowning. “Did Martina have a boyfriend? It’s hard to believe.”

  “She had a friend. I’m not sure just what their relationship is,” I said. “He’s a salesman for some printing-supply company. He apparently saw her whenever he was in Grantham. And he happened to be around recently.”

  I turned to Mike. “And the most suspicious thing is—he actually seemed to like Martina and to be grieved at her death.”

  “That is . . . singular,” Mike said. “Nobody else seems to be sad. Everybody was upset. They were horrified. But no one was grieved.”

  “Martina apparently trusted him. She had given him the yearbook that had Arnie’s and Alan’s college pictures in it. Said she wanted to ‘keep it out of circulation.’ ”

  I thought about it a moment. “Or that’s what he claimed. I guess he could have simply wanted to call the yearbook to my attention. He could have used the whole thing as a ploy to get me to find the picture of Arnie, figure out that he was really Alan. Maybe he was trying to underline Arnie’s link to Martina’s death. Even more than the shoes.”

  Mike nodded. “It’s certainly worth looking into.”

  I realized that Arnie had turned away from us and walked over to the sink. He was washing his hands.

  “Salesman,” I said. “Salesman? Arnie, you said that my mother’s reputation began to go downhill in Jessamine the night some salesman took you all out to dinner.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Do you remember that salesman’s name?”

  He tore two paper towels from a roll under the cabinet. Then he turned around and sighed deeply. “He had an ordinary name,” he said. “Smith.”

  “Smith?” I breathed the words. “Dan Smith is the name of Martina’s friend.”

  I quickly described Dan Smith. Of course, his description meant little to Arnie, thinking of a salesman named Smith twenty years earlier. The salesman Smith in Michigan had been a big guy. He might have had curly hair. Maybe. Arnie stood sullenly and didn’t say much.

  “If it is the same guy—and Smith is, as we all know, the commonest name in the English-speaking world—he didn’t have anything to do with your mother’s death,” Arnie said.

  I opened my mouth to ask how he knew, but Mike was ahead of me.

  “Smith?” he said. “Was he the one you followed to Chicago?”

  Arnie nodded. “When I got to Chicago, I called his office. Pretended to be a customer. He’d been in Cairo, Illinois, the day Sally was killed. That’s maybe four hundred miles from Jessamine. Smith was not in Michigan.”

  Mike was frowning. “But you had suspected he was?”

  “Jessamine is in the middle of the Dutch country. There were more people named Van Something-or-other in Jessamine than there were Smiths. When I knew a Smith had been registered at that motel when our car was spotted—” Arnie shrugged. “He was the only Smith I could think of. But I guess a lot of motels have a bunch of pseudo-Smiths registered most nights.”

  He walked into the living room and dropped onto Mike’s leather couch. “Now, after twenty years—I can’t even remember what that Smith guy looked like.” He picked up the television’s remote control from the coffee table. “Mike, do you mind if I turn on ESPN? I’ve got to think about something different for a while.”

  “Sure,” Mike said. “There should be a basketball game.”

  I suddenly felt very sorry for Arnie. His life had been a mess, that’s for sure. But I was still angry with him, too. He’d brought it on himself, and he’d given me a lot of misery, too.

  I turned and went into the kitchen. I began picking up the debris from our McDonald’s lunch.

  “Doing the dishes?” Mike had joined me.

  “Might as well. Seems as if we’ve talked the situation into the ground. I’ve got nothing left to say.”

  “We’ve said a lot, true.” Mike handed me a plastic garbage bag. He kept his voice low. “But it’s all been cow.”

  “Cow?”

  “Yeah. You know, like college classes. For cow class exams you regurgitate lots of facts. For bull class exams, you give ’em opinions.”

  “My opinions are free, and worth what you pay for them. Which one would you like to have?”

  “Mainly the one about how you feel.”

  “How I feel?”

  “Right. All these years you wanted to know why your dad went away, why he left you. Now you know. Has it made things worse?”

  I glanced through the kitchen door into the living room. With the television on, Arnie couldn’t hear us. But I kept my voice low, too. “I feel sorry for him,” I said.

  Mike nodded. “He hasn’t had much of a life.”

  “He was less than thirty when my mother was killed. Now he’s nearly fifty. He’s spent the most productive years of his life dodging the law, living under another man’s name. Alone. He’s been good at his profession, yet he’s been afraid to go for promotions, afraid to join larger newspapers, afraid to stay in one job too long.”

  Mike nodded. He reached out and took my hand.

  I kept whispering. “The life has kept his salary low, his benefits minimal. He probably doesn’t have an IRA. He isn’t vested in any retirement program. He’s never dared marry again.”

  “Alone. The word really expresses the way he’s lived.”

  “All those years I’ve been so angry and grieved because he’d left me, but I never realized that when he went, he’d doomed himself to a pretty miserable existence.”

  I drew back into the corner of the kitchen. I couldn’t see Arnie from there.

  “Mike, did he really do it for me? To keep me from testifying against my own father, from sending him to prison? Or to the electric chair? Or did he do it for himself? Because the risk of prison was so frightening he’d abandon his child—and his own identity—to avoid it?”

  “I can’t answer that,” Mike said. “Probably Arnie couldn’t answer that himself.”

  “There isn’t any answer!” I said. “I always think that if I knew this or that—if some particular event occurred—it would answer all my questions. But it never does. More questions keep coming up.”

  Mike came back into my corner of the kitchen. “I don’t have any answers,” he said.

  “I could use a hug.”

  “Those I have plenty of.”

  A
few minutes later, I questioned Mike’s shirt pocket. “What about Jim?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What’s Jim’s opinion on all this?”

  “He hasn’t told me.”

  “I know, but you two read each other’s minds a lot. What do you think he’s up to? Does he buy Arnie’s story? Does he think he’s innocent?”

  I looked up at Mike. His face had assumed its blandest expression. That meant he wasn’t going to tell me anything.

  “Arnie’s cooperating. That means a lot,” he said. “But, Nell, don’t bond with Arnie too quickly. Okay?”

  I held my head against Mike’s shirt pocket until the tears quit stinging my eyes. When I finally started to pull away, Mike began to whisper urgently in my ear:

  “Listen,” he said, “I’m sorry I had to fib to you about my trip to Michigan. But when Arnie called me, he made it clear that he was on his way out of town. I couldn’t think of any way to keep him here—he wasn’t officially wanted in Grantham—except to promise I’d look into the current status of the Michigan case. And I couldn’t think of any place to stash him except here. And that meant—”

  “You didn’t want me dropping over. Sorry your plan didn’t work.”

  “It would have except for Marceline. Durn ’er.”

  “Well, you nearly had a puddle on your hall carpet when I opened that bedroom door and saw Arnie in that back bedroom.”

  We began to laugh then. It wasn’t funny, but we needed a laugh. So we had one. Then Mike went outside and moved the cars around so that mine was hidden in the garage and his truck was sitting in the drive. He and Arnie pretended to watch the basketball game and then a golf match. I read some book that I don’t remember the name of, and we all waited to hear from Jim Hammond.

  Jim didn’t show up until four and I was wondering if Mike had anything I could cook for dinner. Boone wasn’t with him, but Jim was carrying a file folder full of papers. Arnie leaped to his feet and had the television off before Jim got inside the door. Jim pulled up a straight chair and sat facing Arnie and me on the couch.

  “Okay,” Jim said. “Here’s what we found out. So far. First, that Cadillac drove off the Premium Used Cars lot late Friday night—all by itself—and was found abandoned in the courthouse parking lot Saturday morning. Since the courthouse isn’t open on Saturday, it was sitting there in solitary splendor, and some patrolman spotted it almost as soon as it was reported stolen. Dwayne Marsh had ID’d it as the same one he saw in the apartment complex. And since it has a new scratch in one fender and a new dent in the bumper, I think we can assume it’s also the vehicle that chased Nell later on Friday.”

  “Stolen?” I was disgusted. “That leaves us nowhere, then.”

  “It confirms what we already knew,” Jim said. “This guy is smart. The lab is checking the car over—but I expect you’re right, Nell. I doubt we’ll find a fingerprint or a lock of hair or somebody’s driver’s license under the seat.”

  Jim opened his file folder. “As for the personnel records of the Gazette—well, they’re not real complete. People don’t always put down their entire employment history when they sign on the payroll. But we found out a couple of things.”

  “Did you check on Bob Johnson?” Mike asked that one.

  “We checked the union records on him,” Jim said. “And it looks as if your surmise is right. He first joined the printers’ union as an apprentice in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Place of employment, Jessamine Journal.”

  “All right!” I said.

  “What about this salesman? Dan Smith?” Mike asked.

  “We called him in to make a routine statement,” Jim said. “And he was perfectly open. Said he had handled a territory in the Midwest twenty years ago. It included Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Missouri. He remembered the murder of Sally Matthews very well—thought he remembered Alan Matthews. But that was twenty years ago. He said he probably wouldn’t know Alan if he fell over him today. He said he had no idea on the final disposition of the case. We didn’t enlighten him.”

  “Apparently I wouldn’t know him, either,” Arnie said. “Nell says he’s been around the Gazette Building plenty. I never gave him a second glance.”

  “How long had he known Martina?” I asked.

  “We’re looking into that,” Jim said. “Trying to figure out just what their relationship was. He says they were simply old friends. He first knew her as his wife’s college friend. From the University of Missouri.” Jim shuffled through some more papers.

  “Who else did you find?” I asked. “We’d already figured out both Dan Smith and Bob Johnson.”

  “Only one more,” Jim said. “But we’re not through looking.”

  “Who was the other one?” I asked.

  “It’s the building manager.” He turned to Arnie. “Think back to Michigan. Does the name Ed Brown ring any bells?”

  Chapter 20

  I gasped so hard my ears popped, but Arnie didn’t even blink.

  “Not a bell,” he said. “The name Ed Brown means nothing to me in connection with Michigan. In fact, it doesn’t even mean anything to me in connection with the Grantham Gazette.”

  “Ed Brown is the building and purchasing manager for the Gazette,” I said. “He has dark hair, and he’s usually walking around officiously, holding a clipboard.”

  “That guy? A lot older than he looks?”

  “He’s the one,” I said. I turned to Jim. “He looks young; then, when you get up close, he dissolves into an old guy. What does he have to do with Michigan?”

  “He went to college at Western Michigan University, in Kalamazoo,” Jim said. “He’s one of the few Gazette employees who has a complete résumé in their personnel files. He majored in business, and he was an older student. He was in his mid-thirties when he graduated. And all through college he worked full-time in Jessamine, Michigan—at the cannery.”

  “The Triple A Fruit Company,” Arnie said. “Jessamine’s major employer. But strictly seasonal.” He took a drag from his cigarette. “I think I met the manager—owner—one of the bosses. I don’t remember meeting anybody else from Triple A.”

  “Brown says he remembers that the newspaper editor’s wife was killed, but he couldn’t come up with a name. Any chance your wife knew him?”

  “I guess Sally could have met him someplace,” Arnie said. “At that Elks Club, if nowhere else. You didn’t have to be a member to go there as long as you stayed in the bar and the dining room. Just the lodge room was off limits to the public. For that matter, there’s no reason the membership list couldn’t have included Ed Brown.”

  Ed Brown. I went off into a cloud, remembering my run-in with him the previous afternoon. He’d been searching for something in the newsroom on a Sunday afternoon, when the newsroom would ordinarily have been deserted. And Ed’s reaction to my unexpected appearance had certainly indicated that he had thought he’d have the place to himself. He’d been angry about something. He had frightened me. I’d been delighted when J.J. Jones showed up and I was able to get away from Ed.

  But Ed Brown had been angry even before that episode. He’d been angry the night Martina was nearly asphyxiated, when he had said he expected her to sue the company.

  “Ed Brown hated Martina,” I said.

  Belatedly, I realized that I’d spoken aloud, interrupting something Jim Hammond was saying.

  Jim shifted his body so that he faced me. “Beg pardon?”

  “The one time I ever talked to Ed Brown about Martina, I really had the feeling he disliked her a lot,” I said.

  “Nobody seemed to like her,” Jim said.

  “This was way beyond eye rolling and ‘that Martina,’” I said. “This was into serious loathing.”

  “He didn’t seem to feel that strongly about her when he talked to me,” Jim said. He turned to face Arnie again. “By the time you all were in Jessamine, Brown had worked his way up from the fruit-sorting line to payroll clerk. He says he remembers talk about the ne
w newspaper editor because he had a Southern accent.”

  “But Arnie’s from Kansas,” I said. “He doesn’t have a Southern accent.”

  “It doesn’t sound Southern in Grantham,” Arnie said. “But when I moved to Jessamine, I’d been in Amity for nearly ten years. I did sound Southern to those Michigan people. Sally and you and I were real outlanders up there. I was busy at work, getting out in the community and meeting people who wanted to get along with the newspaper. But Sally had a genuine problem. Everybody acted as if we were freaks.”

  He kept on talking to Jim, but his remarks had once again reminded me of what I wasn’t saying. What I was afraid to say.

  I was still mentally gnawing my nails when Mike reached over and touched my arm. “Did you say you needed to go over to your house and get some clothes?”

  “I do have to go to work tomorrow. And I’ll be glad to cook dinner if we pick up something at the grocery store.”

  “We could go now,” he said quietly. “While Jim’s here.”

  That made Arnie’s situation obvious. Mike and Jim were not prepared to leave Arnie alone. He might be “cooperating,” but they were keeping him on a short leash. As I climbed into Mike’s truck and fastened my seat belt, I gnawed another nail—not just mentally this time. Arnie was in real trouble.

  I’d finally found my dad, after twenty years, and Mike was going to make sure I didn’t lose him again. Even if he had to see that he was locked up for the rest of his natural life.

  “Who gets Arnie first?” I said. “This state or Michigan?”

  Mike squeezed my hand. “I don’t think things look quite that black,” he said.

  I asked him why not, but his answers were evasive.

  When we got to my house, the old two-story near the Grantham State campus, it was deserted. I knew Martha had a seminar on Monday afternoons, and Brenda was probably out with her fiancé. Rocky’s bar is closed Monday nights, but he was gone, too. The only signs of life were the kitchen light, left on permanently to guide everybody in the back door, and the blinking light on the answering machine in the upstairs hall.