The Homicide Report: A Nell Matthews Mystery (InterMix)

by JoAnna Carl

  “Is that right, Bob? I didn’t know that,” he said.

  Bob kept talking. Mike kept nodding and sympathizing. And I heard a noise. There was someone on the porch. Maybe two people. Whoever it was was quiet, but I could hear them.

  I thought Mike could hear them, too, because he raised his voice.

  “Listen, Bob,” he said. “You have some very valuable information here—the detectives really need to have it.”

  Bob looked shy in a cross-eyed sort of way. He made a gesture with his left hand, and it nearly threw him off balance. He used that hand to grab Martha’s shoulder to steady himself, and he threw his right hand out for balance.

  He didn’t seem to realize that he’d taken the knife away from Martha’s throat.

  “Bob, sit down,” Mike said. “You’re obviously exhausted, and I need to go over this material with you again. Then you can go to sleep.”

  Bob obediently slumped into the second kitchen chair, but he kept hold of Martha’s shoulder, and the knife was still held at the ready. Not near her throat, but close to her side.

  “Bob, I need to get a pad so we can write this down,” Mike said. “I’m afraid you’re so tired you’ll forget part of it. Why don’t we get Nell and Martha to make us a pot of coffee?”

  “Coffee?” Bob’s eyes almost closed, but he forced them open.

  “Yeah. Strong, black coffee.”

  Bob nodded slowly. And I expelled the air I’d inhaled when Martha fell in the front door. I think I’d been holding my breath since that moment.

  Mike motioned. “Nell, you and Martha go into the kitchen and make us some coffee.”

  “Sure.” I took another deep breath and walked toward Martha. Mike wouldn’t want me to get too close, I told myself. After all, I was the one Bob was really mad at. It wouldn’t do any good to swap me for Martha. So I stopped three or four feet from her.

  “Come on, Martha. You’re the coffee expert.”

  She tore her gaze from Mike and slowly turned to me.

  “Coffee?” Her voice was a whisper.

  “Yes. Come on.” I held my hand out to her.

  She looked back at Mike, and he nodded encouragingly. Martha stood up slowly, and Bob’s hand fell off her shoulder. She held her hand out to meet mine, and I yanked her into the kitchen.

  I didn’t know what Mike wanted to do next, but I didn’t think it would be to make a list of people who hated Martina.

  The door from the kitchen to the garage was standing open. I didn’t hesitate. I hustled Martha right out that door into the garage.

  “Coffee?” Martha said weakly.

  “Forget the coffee! Mike wants us out of there!”

  The door to the backyard was also open, so we edged past the front of my car and went outside. Then a figure loomed up out of the dark, and Martha and I both screamed. I screamed again before I realized it was a uniformed officer.

  “It’s okay, ma’am!” he said. “The gate’s open. We’ll go out through the front.”

  Martha was close to collapsing, so he grabbed her other arm, and we almost dragged her through the gate that led to the front yard. As soon as we came around the garage I saw Arnie running toward us. He met me with a big hug.

  “You called the cops!” I said.

  “Once Mike got me into the kitchen, where the phone is.”

  Three patrol cars were parked in front of the house, and a fourth one was just pulling up. But there were no sirens, no shouts, no slammed doors.

  All the noise was coming from the house. There was a lot of excited talking and yelling. And I could hear Bob Johnson sobbing.

  Martha was sobbing, too. I put my arms around her, and Arnie hugged us both.

  “Martha, I’m so sorry you got involved in this,” I said.

  “Nell, I was so scared!”

  “Did he hurt you?”

  “He just twisted my arm. I’d been to a party and came in late. He was hiding behind Brenda’s car, and he ran up on the porch and grabbed me. He wanted you, Nell!”

  “Seems as if I’m real popular lately.”

  “But you weren’t there! Nobody was there. Brenda went out with Chuck, and I expect she’ll stay over. And Rocky went to see his folks. He won’t be back until tomorrow. This guy made me drive him over here. He knew the address and everything! Because I’d told him this afternoon!”

  “I know, Martha. He came by here and made trouble earlier,” I said. “But Mike and I thought he’d settled down.”

  “Some time in jail will settle him down,” Arnie said. “With related charges.”

  “Charges?” Martha still sounded dazed.

  “Kidnapping. Assault with a deadly weapon. Maybe a few other things,” I said.

  Three cops led Bob out. He was crying as they stuffed him into a patrol car.

  Martha shrank against me. Mike came out of the house. He hugged Martha. “You were great, Martha! I know it was really hard to stay calm while I did all that talking and questioning. You handled it exactly right.”

  Tears kept running down Martha’s face, and her teeth were chattering. I led her back into the house.

  As I stepped through the empty frame of the storm door, I heard one of the patrolmen: “Well, Mike, I guess this solves the Gazette’s murder,” he said.

  “Maybe,” Mike said.

  “Murder?” Martha’s voice was more frightened than ever. “You mean, that guy already killed somebody?”

  “He’s a suspect,” I said.

  I still had trouble picturing Bob as a killer. I’d interviewed the guy about his motorcycle club, for heaven’s sake! He’d convinced the editors that middle-aged, wholesome, hardworking people who rode motorcycles purely for fun were worth a story. I’d thought he was a dull member of a dull group, not far removed from R.V. owners or square dancers or bird watchers or Internet freaks.

  How could a person like that go berserk and kill people?

  It didn’t seem possible, but he had threatened Martha’s life. I’d seen him do it. And he obviously did have a drinking problem. Maybe Martina had pushed him over the edge. Maybe he really had kicked her down the iron staircase, then slammed her face against the concrete floor until she died.

  But Bob had been drunk when he kidnapped Martha. He hadn’t been drunk the night Martina was killed. I’d talked to him that night. He’d come down and offered to help with first aid before he’d seen how serious Martina’s injuries were. I’d seen no sign that he’d been drinking.

  Besides, he’d been surprised that Mike’s storm door had been broken. So maybe he wasn’t the guy in the ski mask who had shot it to bits.

  I put off any conclusion on Bob’s guilt or innocence, and we all tried to comfort Martha. She definitely wasn’t ready to go to bed, and taking her home didn’t seem to be a good idea, since there was nobody there. I’d read that milky drinks were calming, so I dug through Mike’s cupboard and found some lumpy sacks of instant cocoa. I heated some water and made Martha a cup. Arnie made coffee.

  Martha got her natural poise back rapidly. As Arnie put a cup of coffee on the kitchen table, she held out her hand. “I’m Martha Henry, one of Nell’s roommates,” she said. “You helped save my life, but I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  Arnie looked at me. I looked at Arnie.

  “Martha,” I said, “this is my dad.”

  The conversation got crazy after that. For ten minutes we’d try to explain how Arnie and I found each other; then for ten Martha would talk about being kidnapped again. During the next ten we’d talk about the murder at the Gazette and how Bob Johnson could fit in. The four of us sat around the kitchen table, drinking coffee and cocoa and talking hysterically. At least, Martha, Arnie, and I talked hysterically. We absolutely babbled. Mike sat by and egged us on, like a good little amateur psychologist.

  Martha kept apologizing for giving Mike’s address to Bob that afternoon.

  “I’m so sorry!” she said. “He said he worked for the Gazette, and he seemed perfectly sane.”
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  “It’s okay,” I said. “He could have found the address in the city directory anyway.”

  “My phone is unlisted,” Mike said, “but that’s because I don’t want a lot of unscreened calls. My address is no secret.”

  When Martha finally wound down and was ready for bed, he gave her two choices. She and I could sleep in the king-size bed, and he’d take the couch, or the three of us would go over to the house near the campus.

  “You’re not going to be alone for a while, Martha,” Mike said. “Not a good idea.”

  She gave a shaky laugh. “I’ve stopped trembling.”

  “Trembling is okay. Tremble all you want. But it’s good to have company while you do it. We’re all going to hang around until you’re sick of us.”

  Martha decided to stay at Mike’s, and we all went to bed about three a.m. I didn’t sleep much. I heard Arnie moving around, and Mike’s couch creaked, so I don’t think they did, either.

  We were all still in our sleeping places when the phone rang at nine-thirty, but Mike caught it after the first ring.

  I got up, washed my face, and put on his robe, then turned the bathroom over to Martha. I found Mike in the kitchen.

  “Boone called,” he said.

  “Oh? Any new crisis?”

  Mike frowned. “Not exactly. They got a warrant first thing this morning, and he went over Bob Johnson’s house.”

  “Boone’s up early. Did he find anything?”

  “Yeah, he did.” He was still frowning.

  “Are you going to tell me what it was?”

  Mike turned and leaned against the kitchen counter.

  “He found a set of Gazette coveralls, the kind the maintenance workers wear.”

  “That’s an odd thing for a pressman to have. Their uniforms are a blue shirt and pants.”

  “There was an even odder thing about these particular coveralls. They had some kind of reddish-brown stains all over them. And Bob Johnson claims he doesn’t know where they came from.”

  Chapter 23

  I stared at Mike. “Do they think they’re bloodstains?”

  “Could be. Maybe not.”

  “How soon will they know?”

  “They’ll get them to the lab this morning. Should have a preliminary report by noon. Thanks to the Gazette connection, they’ll go to the top of the list.”

  The Grantham city-county crime lab, like crime labs all over the world, is always behind. Sometimes detectives wait for weeks for reports on evidence. But because Martina’s death had happened in the Gazette Building, because a news medium was involved, because the publisher had called Chief Jameson, the case was getting priority treatment. I felt a twinge of guilt, but I didn’t let it bother me. Any prominent citizen—president of a bank, CEO of Grantham’s biggest manufacturing company, president of the city’s biggest union, college president—they’d all get the same treatment our publisher did. Crimes that involved people like these were high-profile cases, and they were simply going to get more attention, just as cases involving movie stars or politicians get more attention from the national press and television.

  By the time I’d absorbed Mike’s information on the possible bloodstains, everybody was out. Martha and I decided we’d go home to our own shower and wardrobes, and Arnie began to talk about leaving, too.

  “Since all the cops seem to know where I am,” he said, “I guess there’s not much point in my cluttering up your house, Mike. I need to get over to my own place and start straightening out the things we left yesterday and moving the stuff in the car back in.”

  So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours that I had trouble remembering that Arnie’s apartment had been ransacked.

  Mike nodded. “I’m pretty sure you’re off the hook, Arnie. You’d probably better stay in town, but this new development on Bob Johnson—”

  Arnie squinted his eyes suspiciously. “Do you think Bob Johnson is guilty?”

  “I’m pretty sure he’s not. But I think it lets you off the hook with the Grantham P.D. for the moment.”

  “I can feature Bob Johnson killing Martina real easy,” Arnie said. “But we’ve been figuring that the same person killed Sally.”

  “You don’t think Bob did that?”

  Arnie shook his head slowly. “I spent twenty years being afraid my wife had a boyfriend. Maybe it’s just ego, but I don’t picture Bob Johnson appealing to her.”

  I thought about it. Bob wasn’t particularly attractive, that was true. But it’s hard to tell. When Arnie told about the disasters that had fallen on him and my mother in Jessamine, Michigan—well, if my mother had been unfaithful, she might have merely been trying to get even. She might have taken up with the first guy who seemed interested, just because she’d been mad at Arnie and at Jessamine.

  Besides, it’s hard to tell just who will appeal to the opposite sex. One of the ugliest guys who ever worked at the Gazette was a certified lady-killer, a lover with a line that had ’em swooning at his feet. And one of the plainest girls I knew in college always had a lot of guys calling her. None of her girlfriends ever saw what she had that the rest of us didn’t. I’d decided it must be her aroma, some hidden attraction that drew men the way female roach hormones attract male roaches. If she bottled it, Estee Lauder would pay millions for the rights.

  Did Bob Johnson have “it,” whatever “it” is? Or had he had it twenty years earlier? I couldn’t even guess.

  Arnie cocked his head in my direction. “What are we going to do about Nell?”

  Mike frowned. “I don’t know what to do about Nell. That guy may still be after her.”

  I cleared my throat. “Would you all mind including me in this conversation? After all, it’s my hide we’re talking about here.”

  “Sure,” Mike said. “What’s your opinion?”

  “I think that I’m in the clear as long as Bob Johnson is the prime suspect, if—big if—if I act as though I’m sure he did it.”

  Mike frowned, but I went on. “As you said last night, the only reason we can think of that someone might want to kill me is to keep me from telling something the guy thinks I know—whatever the hell it is.”

  “Right,” Mike said.

  “If I resume my normal life and tell everybody around me that I’m sure glad they arrested that terrible Bob Johnson who’s been trying to kill me . . .”

  Arnie nodded, but Mike was still frowning.

  “Then the guy ought to realize that I don’t know anything, I didn’t see anything, I’m not going to tell anything, and he has nothing to fear from me. Which is the truth.”

  Mike didn’t look convinced.

  “Mike, I can’t live my whole life locked up in your house,” I said. “I really think I might be safer if I go back to living my regular life. Provided I spread the right story.”

  We kicked it around. Mike offered to get me a bodyguard from O’Sullivan Security. Mickey O’Sullivan, who owns the firm, was Mike’s dad’s best friend and is now his mother’s boyfriend. “Mickey would give us a cut rate,” Mike said.

  “I’m not having a cut-rate bodyguard,” I said. “It’s the Secret Service or nothing.”

  “That I can’t arrange.”

  We finally compromised on the first move. Martha and I waited until Mike showered and dressed. Then he followed us over to our house and checked the place—top to bottom—before we entered it. We locked the front door and pulled the curtains and shades on the windows that faced the street. Then Mike headed out the back door, the one we use to reach our parking slots.

  “You and Martha keep your doors locked and don’t let anybody in,” Mike said. “I’ve got to check in with the sergeant. I may have taken all the leave time I’ve got.”

  “Does that mean you’ll have to go to work tonight?”

  Mike shrugged. “It’s likely. I’ll call you.” He kissed me gently. “Stay put, kid.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just smiled, and I locked the door behind him. Then I took a shower, got
dressed, and went to work.

  I knew Mike wouldn’t like it, but I went anyway. I was more and more convinced that my analysis of the situation was right. If I could spread the word that I’d told the police everything I knew about Martina’s death, then I ought to be safe.

  And I wouldn’t be silly. I would ask the security guard to walk me to my car. Maybe I’d even ask Arnie or Mike to follow me home that night. I wouldn’t wander around the building alone. If I left the editorial floor, I’d be sure I was accompanied by some other staffer—somebody I knew hadn’t been in that basement the night Martina was killed.

  I knew they’d get the newspaper out whether I showed up or not. I’m not that important to the workings of the Grantham Gazette. But I had another reason for wanting to go to work. If I was down there, I might learn something. People would ask me about the events of the past couple of days. Talking about it would inspire gossip. I could unobtrusively find out more about the three men we knew were connected with Michigan. So I went to work.

  I even went an hour early, so I could talk to anybody who wanted to talk—spread the word that I thought Bob Johnson was guilty. I stopped in the break room and told a couple of people that. Then I went upstairs to my desk. The first thing I did was read the Gazette’s coverage of Martina’s murder, three days’ worth. J.B. and Chuck had done okay. They’d also covered the chase scene with the Cadillac and the shooting that did in Mike’s storm door, quite properly pointing out that the same Gazette staffer who’d found Martina’s body, me, was the one who got shot at.

  The previous night’s episode with Bob Johnson had happened after deadline. They’d have to write that up for the next day’s paper. I might get to copyedit it myself.

  My presence during the afternoon shooting was handled tactfully. Arnie and I were described as “two friends” of the police officer who occupied the home. My presence at Mike’s house after midnight—which was bound to come out in the story about Martha’s kidnapping—was going to be harder to explain to the newspaper-reading public.