3 Murder In The Library

by Steve Demaree

  Finally, we were making progress on the puzzle. I didn’t want to leave it, but I did want to reward myself for identifying one word. I jumped, hurried to the kitchen, and yanked a Hershey bar from the fridge. I plucked a knife from a kitchen drawer just in case surgery would be needed before I ate. Meticulously, I slipped the candy from its outside wrapper and freed it from its white cocoon. I studied it. Did the Hershey bars of my childhood contain more almonds, or did it just seem that way because I was younger then. It didn’t matter. I had more bars where I found that one, and I wasn’t about to melt the candy, add some almonds, and freeze it again. I studied my favorite of all the food groups, and turned it so that it would allow me to eat the most chocolate without overstepping my bounds of one almond at a time. I bit into the chocolate, slid it into my mouth, and waited for it to melt. Surely there will be Hershey Almond bars in heaven.

  I closed my eyes and began to think. Had I made a mistake oh those many years ago by not leaving town and going to work for Hershey straight out of high school? Would I’ve been able to eat more candy if I’d chosen a different vocation? I’ll never know, unless I run into someone who’s worked for Hershey.

  I continued to fantasize until I heard the sound of snapping fingers in front of my eyes. I opened them and realized that the sound of snapping fingers was caused by a sergeant snapping his fingers.

  “Excuse me, Prince Chocolate. But would you like to help me with this puzzle, or do you want me to claim all the credit?”

  “Okay, Lou. One word down and three to go. Let’s see where we are now. All the firsts were gone, and there were no seconds and thirds to pull us through. The other words must be harder. Okay, Lou, we know that none of those letters can be in the third or fourth word, so let’s see what we have there.”

  EAMC

  FIRST

  LRE

  LLES

  The good feeling that overcame me was short lived. I felt we were about to solve the puzzle. I felt wrong.

  “Okay, Lou, any other ideas?”

  “No, Cy, other than it’s obvious that words three and four are missing some letters. And they’re going to be missing even more.”

  “You mean someone’s going to come in here and steal some letters?”

  “Yeah, we are.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, look at the letters. One ‘L’ may go in the third word, but both ‘Ls’ may go in the fourth. The ‘R’ definitely goes in the third word. But the ‘E’ goes in one or the other. The ‘S’ is definitely in the fourth word.”

  “Huh?”

  “Oh, never mind, Cy. We’ll figure it out in time.”

  I looked at my watch. I couldn’t believe it was almost supper time. I was still getting used to daylight-savings time. It wasn’t that long ago when it was dark when Lou and I went to supper each night.

  Lou and I didn’t want to get frustrated, so we agreed to save the rest of the puzzle for the next day. Besides, the next morning it would be two days since I’d talked to Sam. I imagine he’d found something we might find helpful.

  Lou and I stood up, stretched. We were tired from all of our running around two days in a row. I slapped him on the back and we headed out the door to the Blue Moon.

  +++

  “Well, if it isn’t Frick and Frack. How’s the world treating you?” Thelma asked, as we opened the door and gazed upon her smiling face.

  “The rest of the world doesn’t treat us quite as well as you and Rosie.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, and I’m even sorrier to give you the bad news.”

  “Don’t tell me this place is closing.”

  “In a matter of speaking, but only temporarily. A good friend of mine is very sick, and I’m going to spend a few days with her, nurse her back to health. Rosie will still be here in the daytime to see that you get a couple of good meals, but the place will be closing at 4:00 each day.”

  Lou and I glanced at each other and were able to read each other’s mind. If the place was going to be closed for dinner for a few days, Lou and I had to make up for it by eating a little more that night. We ordered like two offensive linemen, and ate accordingly. We were almost finished before Lou realized that our feast meant he would have to go home and Wii again. When we were finally able to get up from our stools, I took Lou home, then zipped home and stumbled into my house without my next-door neighbor being aware of my return.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I woke up tired. I rolled over and it dawned on me that it was Friday morning. Not only was it Friday morning, but it wasn’t a retired Cy Dekker Friday morning, but a go-to-work Lt. Dekker Friday morning. My friend was still dead, and we hadn’t found the killer. It was time to tackle the puzzle, or whatever we had to do to bring the Colonel’s murderer to justice.

  +++

  I did all my preliminaries, then rushed to the phone, hoping to learn something that would bring the case to its conclusion.

  “Good morning, Sam. Now that you’ve had a few days off, I assume I can expect more from you this morning.”

  “No and yes.”

  “You mean ‘yes and no?’”

  “No, I mean no, I haven’t had a few days off, and yes, I do have more for you this morning.”

  “Well, then let’s dispense of this chitchat and fill me in.”

  “Well, I let you know what I found out about the so-called ‘in crowd’ the other day. Now, let’s talk about those whom we know had something against your friend. First, Michael Belding. He’s the one who said Col. Hardesty kept him from teaching at the university. He is still in town and still bitter. One source told me that Belding told him the other day that he, Belding, might throw a party because the old man finally died.”

  Sam’s words made me want five minutes alone with Belding. Then I remembered the Chief’s words and the scripture I’d read just a few minutes before. Sometimes it was tough being a cop, and tougher being a Christian.

  “Belding teaches at the county high school. As far as I can tell, he’s never gotten in any trouble there. Maybe he was biding his time until he got a shot at your friend, the Colonel.

  “But he’s not the only one with a reason. Remember Daniel Terloff, the student who most people feel threw the bucket of paint against the Hardesty house? He’s left the area, but I’ve heard from two or three sources that he comes back to Hilldale on occasion, and each time he visits he cruises by the Hardesty house, and he’s not trying to decide if he wants to send them flowers.”

  “But you haven’t been able to find out where he spends most of his time?”

  “One guy told me that Terloff lives like a hippie in the woods. What woods, he didn’t know.”

  “What else do you have?”

  “Well, we can eliminate one suspect, Carla Bauerman, the one who said Col. Hardesty kept her out of grad school. She had trouble dealing with that, started drinking a few months later, and one night she drove off the road and hit a tree. Not on purpose. But that doesn’t matter. Her mother, Carol, had had cancer for a couple of years and died from it a couple of months later. Her dad, Carl, the drama teacher at the local high school where Carla lived, resigned at the end of the school year and moved to New York City.”

  “New York City? Did you try to find him there?”

  “I did. Bauerman became an actor, and I located four actors who knew him. One became a good friend of his. He said that Bauerman stayed there a couple of years, developed wanderlust, and ended up in California a year or two later.”

  “Were you able to locate him in California?”

  “Not yet. However, he was there. Yancy Trueblood, the actor I was telling you about, has gone out to see him a couple of times since he’s been there. One time was last year. Trueblood said both times Bauerman lived in an apartment, but a different apartment and a different city each time. Trueblood said he talked to one of Bauerman’s neighbors the last time he visited Bauerman and found out that Bauerman had just moved to that apartment a week before Trueblood arr
ived.”

  “Anything else for me, Sam?”

  “Of course, Cy. I’ve been busy. I found out what plumber and what pest control company serviced the Hardesty’s house this year. Both check out in a way. A-1 Plumbing sent Robert Collins a couple of months ago to repair a leak under the kitchen sink. Collins made only one trip, the company received no complaints. Collins has been with them for fourteen years and has had a good record with the company.

  “I called Dunleavy Pest Control. They had a man, Tom Johnson, out a couple of times to rid the house of ants. Johnson worked for the company for a year, but quit a couple of weeks ago, told them he was leaving town, but he might be back in a few months. Johnson said something about receiving a call from his sick mother. I asked for any information they had about Johnson. They gave me the name of a former employer in Indiana. I called and checked. Tom Johnson worked there. I sent them a picture of our Tom Johnson to make sure it was the same guy. It was. He worked there for two-and-a-half years before coming here. They said he was a good man, but that from time to time while he worked there he had to leave to attend to his sick mother. He came back each time until he quit and came here. I have no idea why he quit the job there to come here. The man I talked to both places said he was a good worker, knew his stuff.”

  “I hope that’s all. Sam. I’m having trouble keeping track of all of this. Let me see if I’m right. We have a plumber who seems to have no motive, and an exterminator who doesn’t seem to have one, either, but has disappeared. Three people who were angry with the Colonel, one of them dead, one of them still resides in Hilldale, and another one of them has disappeared. Besides that we have the father of the deceased girl who is supposedly now somewhere in California. See what you can find on the ones who aren’t not in Hilldale. Lou and I will tackle the ones here.”

  +++

  I spent so much time on the phone with Sam that I was a little late picking up Lou for breakfast, but hardships such as these are sometimes part of the job.

  +++

  Lou opened the car door and slid onto the seat next to me. Well, not right next to me. There was an ample space between us. Not as ample as if Lou and I were malnourished, but ample, just the same, and more ample than was true a couple of months ago.

  “So, God’s messenger, what words of wisdom did He share with you today?”

  “I can tell you’re in one of your moods, Cy. But first let me share that I neither gained nor lost weight, so I need to eat a little less than yesterday. Now, to you, are you in one of your moods?”

  “No, just finally able to hear some incriminating evidence against someone who doesn’t live in the Colonel’s house.”

  “Like what?”

  I filled Lou in on what Sam had shared with me. It still didn’t tell us who was or wasn’t guilty, but it was something. When I finished, I realized that Lou still hadn’t told me what today’s message was.

  “The cereal that floats.”

  “The cereal that floats. What cereal floats?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t we go to the grocery and buy a box of each of them, and see which one floats. With our luck, it will be like those letters that may be in the third word of our puzzle, or may be in the fourth. Who knows? Maybe most cereals float.”

  “I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we ask Rosie?”

  A few minutes later, we arrived at the Blue Moon and pumped Rosie. While more than one cereal floats, both Lou and I knew which one was our clue when she mentioned Cheerios. Lou and I had forgotten about those three Os in our puzzle. And what about that arrow clue? And how hard would it be to come up with those four missing letters, none of which we knew?

  I was a little more excited eating breakfast that day, if it is possible for me to be more excited over one meal than another day’s meal of basically the same food.

  We were headed to my house afterward. Lou and I didn’t linger as long as usual. Maybe we were going to learn the identity of our murderer.

  +++

  We plopped down at my dining room table, opened the Bible to Obadiah. There we found three cards, two with +2 written on them, the other with +3.

  “Any ideas, Lou?”

  “I’ll have to remember to beat you to the punch next time. You always ask me when you don’t have a clue.”

  “So, you want to ask me when neither of us have a clue. Well, Clueless, let’s see what we can come up with. Obadiah starts with an O. Two of these cards have +2 on them. Now, it doesn’t make any sense that the +2 means two books over, because the Colonel could’ve just as easily put these cards in that book, so let’s look at “O” plus two letters. That takes us to “Q.” One of the few things I can remember about our travels through the Bible the other day is that no book starts with the letter “Q,” so it makes sense for the Colonel to put the “Qs” in Obadiah. But since there are no “U’s,” unless the “U’s” are among the four that fell out, and there is more than one “Q,” let’s say there are more “Q’s” to give us “cuse,” like part of “accuse.” We might have “first accuse.”

  “Why would it make sense to first accuse anyone, Cy?”

  “How would I know? Do you know any other “cuse” words?”

  “Yeah, excuse.”

  “Is that your way of telling me that you think we have not yet found the key to the buried treasure?”

  My partner’s silence sent me back to Obadiah. And the +3 card. If I was right, there wouldn’t have been a +3 card, because +3 takes us to “R,” and the book of Ruth starts with “R.”

  I studied Obadiah. I don’t mean I read the book, but I flipped through it. Short book. Very short book. But long enough to have three “O’s.” I closed my eyes to think. Why would the letters in one book have +2 and +3 written on them, while none of the other letters had anything written on them, except one that fell out. One of them was the card with the arrow.

  It was almost lunchtime when it hit me.

  “Lou, I think I’ve got it.”

  I could tell from my partner’s reaction that he didn’t believe me.

  “No, really, Lou. Look at this. Have you asked yourself why the Colonel put the ‘O’s’ in the book of Obadiah? It’s the only “O” book in the Bible. But, it has only one chapter. So what if the ‘O’s’ in the clue have to do with the second, third, or fourth word? The Colonel had no choice but to put +2 and +3 on the card. Let’s try this, and see what we come up with.”

  I constructed our four words again. This time with O’s included.

  EAMC

  FIRST

  LREOO

  LLESO

  I sat with my mouth agape. I had never known such a brilliant discovery to lead nowhere. Lou was amazed.

  “I have to hand it to you, Cy. You’ve really cleared it up. Do you want to me put out an APB on Lreoo Lleso?”

  I looked at my partner and stuck out my tongue. His laughter caused me to laugh, too.

  We needed a break from the puzzle, but it was too early to venture to the Blue Moon. If I were to go to the Blue Moon and see someone sitting on my stool, I’m not sure I could handle it.

  “Okay, Lou, forget the puzzle. Let’s look at what else we have. We have our good friend, the Colonel, dead. Sometime Monday afternoon, someone got into the library some way and shot the Colonel with a poisoned dart. At least that’s the way it seems at this point. Our murderer may be a long-haired hippie seen by the next-door neighbor and a student delivering pizza. The only hippie on our list of suspects is Daniel Terloff, one of the Colonel’s former students. We have family and friends with no alibis for the time of the murder. We have workmen who were in the house at some point and could’ve stolen a key. We have neighbors, one who is fairly new to the neighborhood. And we have others with grudges against the Colonel. So, Lou, what do you say?”

  “Let’s take another look at that puzzle. I want to try something to see if it works.”

  I wasn’t ready to tackle that puzzle again, but I abided by my friend’s wishes.

&
nbsp; “Okay, Lou. What is it you want to try?”

  “Let’s include only the letters we know that go in each word.”

  “We did that before, Lou.”

  “Yes, but that was before we placed the ‘O’s.’”

  “You’ve got a point. What can it hurt?”

  EAMC

  FIRST

  ROO

  SLO

  “This time I think I’ve it, Lou. It says, “Mace the first room slowly. Now who can you remember who maced the first room? Quick, now. We might be able to make an arrest.”

  This time my partner stuck out his tongue.

  “Now, Cy, let’s add a letter or two to the third and fourth words. We know that those two words contain an ‘L’ and a ‘E.’ If we add the ‘L’ to the third word as we now know it, we could have “rool” or “loor. If we add the ‘E’ too, that doesn’t make it any better.”

  “If we move the letters around and add a ‘C,’ we could have ‘color,’ for whatever that is worth.”

  “I’d think ‘color’ would be a wasted word. It doesn’t give us anything, Cy. The Colonel didn’t write in complete sentences, so if he wanted to direct us to a certain color, I think he’d use that color as one of the words.”

  “I think I agree with that. So, let’s go on to the fourth word. We could have ‘sloe,’ which is a word, but not one the Colonel would use here, or ‘lols.’”

  “The first one could also be spelled ‘lose or ‘sole,’ but I don’t think either of those is our word, either.”

  “What else do we have?”

  “Well, there’s always the arrow. Any idea what that stands for?”

  “I’d say it’s trying to point us in the right direction, and right now I think the right direction is lunch. What say we grab something to eat and tackle this later?”

  “I make a motion that nominations cease.”

  “I second the motion. Meeting adjourned.”

  +++