A Bias for Murder

by Sally Goldenbaum

  The three women walked along the stone path that wound around the side of the house. Tall windows were flung wide open to catch the cool breezes of early fall, and the sounds of furniture being moved along with sanders grinding away on the hardwood floors poured out onto the grass.

  Po shook her head, thinking of the amount of time she put into preparing for a simple lecture. How can Adele have planned and arranged all of this in such a terribly short time? Is it something that had been in the planning? But it couldn’t have been. No one suspected Ollie’s early demise. Perhaps if the money is right, she supposed, a phone might be all it would take to rush in work crews. That and an incredible organized person at the helm. Adele was proving to be exactly that.

  “There’s Adele,” Leah said as they reached the back corner of the house. Spread out in front of them was a veritable park, thick stands of trees, a pond in the distance, paths and birdfeeders everywhere. Leah pointed to a gazebo nearly hidden in a grove of dogwood trees. Bright light cut through the branches and streamed paths of gold across the brick path.

  Standing on one of the gold bricks was Adele, deep in conversation.

  “Who’s with her?” Po said, squinting in the sunlight as they walked toward the gazebo.

  No one answered, but as they followed the winding path, their steps were slowed by Adele’s voice, loud and clear—and definitely not happy. The painter had underreported what they were hearing around a thick band of mulberry bushes.

  “Foolish, brazen young woman!” she hissed. “How dare you come to my home uninvited? And telling me about my brother? My brother. I’d like you to leave immediately. If I have to call the police, I will.”

  “But, please, Ms. Harrington. You need to understand,” a softer voice replied. “I only want to help. Ollie was my friend. A good friend. He was terribly troubled about something. He should not have died.”

  The woman’s words were muffled in emotion.

  “This is my house, and you are not making sense, young lady. Ollie didn’t get upset about things. He was calm. Placid. Do not ruin his memory this way. You are out of line.”

  “Ollie was a decent, fine man. I know that as well as anyone. He was filled with goodness. And…” her voice was choked now. “And he was healthy. His heart was healthy. You know that and so do I. Ollie had no reason to die.”

  Just visible beyond the bushes and trees was a long narrow hand lifting in the air. Then just as abruptly, Adele let it fall to her side. She looked away from the woman, beyond her, to where the three women were trying unsuccessfully to be invisible. For a brief moment, she appeared disoriented, but in the next moment, a practiced smile spread across her long face. Not warm, but civil, cutting into the anger and pushing it aside.

  “Good afternoon,” Adele said evenly, stepping away from the woman. She glanced at a thin gold watch on her wrist. “You’re on time, Leah. That’s good. And Po and Kate, you are welcome as well.” She walked down the three gazebo steps toward them, leaving an uncomfortable woman standing awkwardly behind her.

  The younger woman was watching Adele walk away. Her face was tightened in anger, her hands clutching a battered backpack. For a brief moment, Po was afraid she was going to fling it at the back of Adele’s head.

  But instead, the ponytailed woman walked down the steps quickly, nodding politely at the three women and brushing past Adele Harrington. She stopped for just a second, a blush of embarrassment coloring her cheeks as she met Leah’s smile of recognition. She started to speak, then pulled the words back and hurried along the path toward the house.

  Po watched her walk away. Someone from the college? She looked vaguely familiar to her. But a brown ponytail and ordinary figure, jeans and a backpack bespoke of dozens of women she passed in Dillons Market or Marla’s bakery or walking near the Emerald River every day.

  The woman had slowed her step near the driveway. She paused, looking toward the garage as if expecting someone. Then Po noticed movement, too, and spotted a small familiar figure coming down the back stairs of the garage apartment.

  Old Joe Bates. Po smiled, feeling relief that he was still around. Perhaps there was a softer side to Adele Harrington.

  Joe was looking at the younger woman, smiling and waving her over.

  But in the next instant, at the sound of Adele’s voice, his head shot up and he stared at the small group walking toward the house.

  Before Po could wave a hello, Joe turned and walked back to the garage, beginning what seemed to be an arduous trek up the stairs.

  “We didn’t mean to interrupt,” Leah was saying to Adele.

  “You didn’t interrupt. We have an appointment, do we not?” Adele lifted one brow. She made no reference to the unpleasant encounter they had witnessed, and instead, waved them toward the house. “I want you to see the bedrooms. They’re in a state of disrepair right now, but the colors are important. I think you will be able to feel the warmth and ambience and plan your quilts accordingly.”

  Po looked back once more. The young girl was gone. And Joe had finally reached the top of the garage stairs.

  They walked through the French doors at the back of the house and around dozens of paint cloths and cans, ladders and boxes, and finally up a magnificent staircase to the second and third stories of the house. The place where guests would soon be catered to in the finest way.

  “Amazing,” Leah said, looking up at the elaborate carved moldings and high ceilings. “This is a beautiful home.”

  Adele nodded as she led them down a hallway. “There are twelve bedrooms, and each will have its own bath when finished. My father’s study alone is large enough to be made into three of the rooms.

  Po looked into one of the rooms, where a small sitting room would welcome guests before they entered into the bedroom beyond. It might have been a sewing room years before, or a nursery. Although some rooms were now stripped of furniture and rugs, and others were in a transition state, Po noticed some with personal items—books and pictures and writing materials cluttering tall secretaries and dressers and walnut armoires. A closet door, slightly ajar, showed dresses and silk robes hanging on hangers as if waiting for someone to wear them. She imagined it must look exactly like it did when Adele was a girl living at 210 Kingfish Drive. It looked like Ollie had left some things untouched, perhaps finding comfort in signs of his family.

  As they wandered in and out of the rooms, Po wondered which one had been Oliver’s. It was at the back of the house, she knew, because he often told her about standing at his window at night and seeing the stars reflected in the backyard pond.

  “Oliver never wanted me to touch a thing after our parents died,” Adele said, as if reading Po’s thought. “As a result, the house is jam-packed with things. He never discarded anything. Every drawer is full. I am working away at it, little by little, but it will take years. It’s like a massive garden allowed to grow unweeded and unwieldy.”

  She moved down the hallway and ushered the women into a room at the very end. This room was smaller than the others, and simply furnished with a single bed between two large windows, a dresser, several bookcases, and a desk. A large telescope was positioned in front of one of the windows, pointing toward the sky.

  Po walked over and looked at the books on the shelves, mostly astronomy texts and readings about nature, all arranged alphabetically with their spines lined up perfectly on the shelf. “This is Oliver’s room,” she said quietly. “I can feel him here.”

  Adele stood right behind her, looking around. “This was the only room in the house that he would sleep in from the time he got his own bed. Oliver was as bright as they come, but a slight disorder made some things difficult for him. But you probably all knew that. Some people may have attributed his social interactions to being slow, but he was anything but. Ollie was brilliant.” Her voice fell off, and she looked around the room, memories weighing visibly on her face. She picked
up a book from the nightstand next to Ollie’s bed. “Loren Eiseley, Immense Journey,” she read.

  “I always thought of Ollie as a kind of Loren Eiseley,” Po said. “Part philosopher, part scientist. He had such a lovely way of describing the most complicated astronomical things.” She looked at his desk, neat and orderly, a cup holding pencils on the side, a yellow pad of paper, and in the center of the desk, another book with a title that intrigued her: A Plain Man’s Guide to a Starry Night. The cover looked new. She picked it up and leafed through it. New or not, Ollie must have liked it—the book was filled with underlined sentences and notes in the margins. She put it back in its place.

  Adele looked around the room, taking in the neatly made bed, the bookcases, the straight-backed chair. She looked at Po with an unexpected softness in her eyes. “Whatever the design of the quilt you make for this room, it must have stars on it,” she said softly. Then she straightened her shoulders and walked briskly out of the room. Kate and Leah followed her down the hall.

  Po stood at the door for a minute, then looked at the narrow flight of steps just outside Ollie’s door. A small landing with a window that looked over the backyard was visible before the stairs continued out of sight.

  The steps that led to the kitchen? she wondered. The steps that led to Oliver’s death?

  “Portia, are you coming?” Adele stood in the middle of the hallway, looking back at her.

  Po turned back and smiled. “I was thinking about Oliver.”

  “And what were you thinking about him?”

  “I was thinking that falling on those narrow stairs was a tragic way for him to die.”

  “But maybe fitting. An accident. Oliver’s life, in a way, was an accident.”

  Po was startled by the unexpected anguish in Adele’s voice. “Ollie was a good man. I doubt if he ever thought about his life as an accident,” she said.

  “I agree with Po,” Leah said. “Ollie had a purpose to his life, especially these last few years. He spent time writing, and he had interesting conversations with students and faculty. He had a good life here, Adele.”

  Adele focused her attention on a Thomas Hart Benton painting leaning against the wall, not yet rehung after the wall was painted. Finally, she pulled her eyes away and looked at the three women now standing behind her. “Well, I hope so,” she said, more to herself than the others. Then she abruptly began to walk down the hallway, ushering them back down the main staircase.

  Adele moved through the back doors and out onto the veranda. “Breakfast will be served out here in nice weather,” she said. “Would you like to have a cup of tea?”

  Po glanced at her watch. “We’ve stayed longer than we intended.”

  “Eleanor’s party,” Kate yelped.

  “I’ve kept you from something?” Adele asked, her brow lifting.

  “No,” Po assured her. “It’s not until this evening. We’ll be all right.”

  “All right for what?” Adele asked.

  Po was uncomfortable. She felt fairly sure Eleanor hadn’t invited Adele. She hadn’t been here when the invitations went out. And her brother had just died. Inviting her to a party hardly would seem appropriate.

  “Canterbury University is having a small reception tonight at Eleanor Canterbury’s home,” Leah explained. “It’s done periodically to recognize faculty in one way or another.”

  “Who is being recognized?”

  “Tonight it’s faculty who have recently received awards or published something,” Leah said. “Publishing is important to Canterbury, now that the college is a university.”

  “Publish or perish,” Adele said.

  “Kind of,” Leah said. “Anyway, it’s nice to recognize people who have done good work. And making a reception out of it can be a subtle push for others to follow.”

  Adele listened to Leah intently, a frown creasing her forehead. Then she shifted her attention, looking beyond the women, her thoughts seemingly moving on to other things. Finally she waved her hand in dismissal. “All right then. Please keep in touch with me about the quilts and your progress,” she said. “And—”

  A rattling noise near the driveway drew their attention to the garage. Joe Bates was pushing an old wheelbarrow filled with dirt across the walkway, the wheels wobbling and clumps of mud falling onto the brick pathway.

  Adele’s fingers curled into fists and her voice grew hard. “An eyesore,” she muttered. And then, without another glance at her guests, she walked quickly down the patio steps and across the yard toward Joe.

  For a moment, Po felt the need to beat her to her prey and to scoop old Joe Bates up and out of the way of Adele’s anger. But before her resolution could take shape, Adele approached the man, her hands flying through the air and her muffled words burying him in a deluge of complaints.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Kate said, heading down the side steps toward the driveway and their car. “We might be Adele’s next target.”

  Po looked back. Adele was still ranting, but Joe Bates seemed to be oblivious to the onslaught. He was looking beyond her toward the pond, as if seeing something there that brought him pleasure.

  Chapter 5

  Po dropped Kate and Leah off and checked her watch. Enough time to get over to the library and pick up a new book on Kansas quilting circles that Leah had spotted and reserved for her. Women’s work and projects during wartime was fascinating to her and had dominated her magazine and journal writing in recent years.

  She pulled into the faculty lot and parked her car—a luxury that being married to a past university president afforded her—and climbed the wide fan of steps leading up to the massive library doors.

  Jed Fellers pushed open the door from the other side and braced himself against it, holding it open for Po.

  “Good to see you, Po. What brings you to our hallowed halls?” Jed shifted beneath the weight of an armful of books.

  “Books, Jed, just like yourself. Speaking of books, I hear your first book is coming out. Congratulations. Is this research for number two?”

  Jed laughed. “Maybe down the road. Definitely not now. I’m just trying to keep one step ahead of my students. That’s a major task in itself. Canterbury has some smart kids.”

  “I hear Ollie Harrington was a friend of yours. And from what I know of him, he was one of those bright students.”

  Jed’s smile faded. He nodded. “Ollie was many things to me—an assistant, a student, mostly a friend, I guess. He was…he was a breath of fresh air around here. He brought a charisma to a class. Such an honest guy, and certainly unique in his approach to the heavens.” Jed looked out over the green lawns, now colored with small piles of falling leaves. “I’ll miss the guy.”

  Sadness played across Jed’s long features. Po wondered if Ollie had been aware of those he had touched. She suspected not. He was the twin less noticed, the second born, the one who had to work harder to make his place in life. But he had done a fine job of it. “From what I hear, you played an important role in his life,” she said. “I would say you both benefited from the relationship.”

  Jed didn’t answer, but he leaned over and lightly kissed her cheek. “Thanks, Po.” He turned and slowly made his way down the library steps.

  Po watched him through the thick glass of the door. His head was low, the books a weight in his arms. Now and then he’d look up and acknowledge a student’s wave or greeting, and then continue on across the quad. Once he stopped and picked up a Frisbee that landed at his feet, tossing it back to a student and bowing slightly when she cheered his finesse.

  Ollie was missed. But life went on. Po turned away from the door and walked into the main room of the library. It was busy today, and then Po remembered that midterms were probably around the corner. Some of the reason for Jed’s burden of books, she supposed. She walked over to the reserve desk where Leah had left the book Po was looking
for.

  A pleasant-looking woman looked up and smiled as Po approached. She wore jeans and a T-shirt, her brown hair pulled back and held in place with a bright blue elastic band, her large framed glasses attractive. She looked familiar. And then Po remembered why.

  Immediately the woman’s smile faded. She looked down at the desk, embarrassed.

  “Hi again,” Po said. She looked at the nametag pinned to the woman’s T-shirt. “Halley Peterson,” she read. “I’m Po Paltrow.”

  The woman nodded. She looked even younger up close.

  Halley adjusted her glasses and managed a small smile. “I apologize for that conversation you must have heard today. I saw you with Professor Sarandon. She’s great, by the way. But I wasn’t so great today.” A slight blush colored her cheeks.

  “You were fine and I’m sorry we eavesdropped. It was unintentional.” Po wanted to ease her worry, to tell her she understood how difficult Adele could be. And to ask her more about her friendship with Ollie. She knew from Leah that Halley had returned to college belatedly and worked on campus to help pay her tuition. Leah had seen her with Ollie several times, but why she was at the Harrington home was a mystery.

  Halley pushed her glasses into her hair. “Today hasn’t been one of my best days. But Ollie Harrington was a good friend of mine. He spent a lot of time here in the library. Did you know him?”

  “Yes. I don’t live too far from the Harrington place. I used to visit Ollie. He was a good man.”

  “Yes, he was. And he would have loved a decent burial with his friends around him, telling Ollie stories. Missing him but grateful for knowing him. But Adele Harrington. His sister—” Halley broke off mid-sentence. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I barely know you. You may be a friend of hers and I’m totally out of line speaking like this, Mrs. Paltrow.”

  “Please, Halley, call me Po. And I understand. Adele elicits strong responses in people. It’s clear you cared about her brother. And maybe once the body is released she will reconsider a memorial.”