3 Murder In The Library

by Steve Demaree

“And you want me to meet you there and give it a going over, too?”

  “It shouldn’t take long, Louie. After we find it.”

  “You mean you don’t know where it is? Why don’t you find it, then call me.”

  “No, no, Louie. It’s in the closet. It shouldn’t take long to find it.”

  “Okay, Cy. I’ll meet you there in thirty minutes.”

  Lightning made tracks for the Colonel’s house. Louie would really be put out with me if no one was home and we couldn’t get in. I had a key to the library, but not the house.

  Lou and I arrived at the house, and luck was with us. The front door was open with a robbery in progress. Just kidding. Trish was in the living room and ushered us inside. I asked her who was home, and she said that only herself and her grandmother. Everyone else was out for at least the morning. As we were talking, Martha shuffled into the room.

  “Oh, hi, Cy, Lou. What brings you here? Do you have some news for me?”

  “We might have a breakthrough in the case. I’ve another man joining us in a few minutes, and I need to ask you and Trish to go to your rooms until we’ve checked something. I’ll come and get you when we’ve finished.”

  Neither the young woman nor the older one gave us any trouble or spewed a barrage of questions. Both complied with our wishes and withdrew immediately to the stairs.

  “I don’t think it’ll take long,” I called out as the two women mounted the stairs.

  I heard a car pull up outside and looked out the window. Louie didn’t waste any time getting to us. I opened the door and waved to him. He waved back, and then reached into the car to retrieve some equipment.

  I knew Louie liked to spend his Saturdays with his family, as often as possible, so I didn’t waste any time..

  Quickly, I showed Louie the closet, then stepped aside so that he could see what he could find. Lou and I waited until Louie finished.

  “Sorry, Cy, but I couldn’t find anything. Could it be another closet?”

  “It could be, but I’d like to try something else first. Let’s step back into the closet.”

  “That’s a small closet, Cy. I’m not sure I want to be in it with you.”

  “I promise not to tell anyone.”

  “Very funny, Cy. Okay, what do you know that I don’t?”

  I led the way, stepped into the closet, and twisted and pulled the bracket in the back. The wall slid away.

  “Before you check anything else, let’s take a look at the passageway. It’s possible that the Colonel’s clue meant go through the closet to the passageway. He just didn’t have time and enough books of the Bible to spell it all out.”

  Louie looked at me as if my brain were in its sleep mode.

  It took a few minutes. The camera was well concealed, but we found the panel that hid it. The wood fit so well together that Louie didn’t notice a thing until he got within two or three inches of the panel. Once he discovered it, he slid his fingers around until he found the place where the panel unscrewed and lifted out. Behind the panel, Louie found a camera that made him slobber with envy. Louie called it state of the art. I called it a small, well-concealed camera.

  Within minutes, Louie had printed a series of pictures, all of which were of the Colonel, or a long-haired man I’d never seen. Not only had we discovered who killed the Colonel, but we had discovered how. By studying a series of pictures, we followed an unsuspecting long-haired man as he entered the passageway through the closet, took out a blowgun of some sort, slid a poisonous dart inside, created an opening in the library wall, inserted the blowgun into the opening, and blew the dart. The assassin continued to watch until he was sure his quarry was dead. Then he yanked a string until the dart slid back through the hole in the wall. He reached into his pocket, removed a plastic bag, and carefully slid the dart into the bag. Then he recovered the hole he had made in the wall, turned to face the camera he knew nothing about, checked to make sure the coast was still clear, and left the passageway. Because I knew what had taken place on the other side of that wall, I shed a few tears. Louie withdrew to allow Lou and me a few more moments of mourning.

  After a couple of minutes, Lou and I stepped out to join Louie. Louie reentered the passageway with us to see what else he could discover. While Louie searched the wall hunting for the wood that covered the hole that was large enough to admit a blowgun, Lou and I selected one picture and mounted the stairs to see if either of the two women could identify their loved one’s murderer. I wasn’t ready to let anyone know how the murder was committed, just in case someone who lived in the house knew about the passageway, had committed the murder, and would later give himself or herself away. See, even though we kept referring to the murderer as a “he,” we knew that the murderer could have been either a man or a woman.

  When we returned with no more answers than we came with, we discovered that Louie had found a well-concealed place where the murderer had used some type of saw to remove two round pieces of wood, and then after they had served his purpose, he returned them to their original places in the wall. Lou and I looked through the top hole into the library. The hole, cut just below a shelf that held books, looked right across the library in front of the desk, to the door on the other side. The hole below stood just above a series of books. Obviously, the murderer had cut one hole to see through, and another one to insert his blowgun, or the similar instrument that he used. He or she had made two trips, one to cut the openings and leave the note, the second to commit the crime.

  We thanked Louie for his help, allowed him to rejoin his family, something I wished I could have done for the Colonel. After taking a few more minutes to recompose ourselves, we remounted the stairs to the let the women know that the house was once again theirs. Both thanked us for what we had done, even though we hadn’t yet solved the murder.

  Since no one else was home, we decided to wait until Monday to show our pictures around town and hopefully identify the Colonel’s murderer. Lou and I told Martha we were beginning to get somewhere, hugged the two women goodbye, then left for my house to go over what clues we had and make plans for Monday. We had made progress. We had pictures of the murder being committed. But somehow I felt that we still had a ways to go. I had little confidence that anyone would be able to identify the person in the photograph.

  Chapter Nineteen

  We knew a little more as we drove to my house. The murderer was either the hippie from the woods, Daniel Terloff, or someone wearing a disguise. My guess was the disguise. The other would turn the case that had been difficult to solve into one that ends swiftly. Well, as swiftly as we could bring it to a conclusion, having no idea what woods Terloff was in.

  When we arrived at my house, my next-door neighbor wasn’t within strangling distance, so we hurried inside, eager to get to work. At least we had no more puzzles to solve. At last it was down to business as usual.

  I laid some candy on the table, Lou tossed down a couple of bags of M&Ms. The way we did it, it looked like the card game was about to begin, and both of us were about to ante up.

  “Okay, Lou, let’s look at what we have. We now know who was murdered and how. We have no idea why, because each suspect had a different why. Anything you care to say before we begin?”

  “I’ll let you lead, Cy.”

  “Okay, let’s start with the easy part. Our murderer is either someone who looks like the man in the picture, or someone in disguise. If it’s the first, I’d cast a vote for Daniel Terloff, the guy who’s now living in the woods. We need to check with Sam on Monday, find the name of someone who knows Terloff, and see if Terloff looks like our unkempt man.”

  “Of course, Cy, there is the remote possibility that someone who knew the Colonel way back when could have grown long hair and a beard.”

  “That’s true, Lou, but, if so, more than likely it is someone we don’t have on our list. The Colonel mentioned only three people that he’d had a problem with, and one of those is dead. Besides, I doubt if Carla Bauerman could’v
e grown a beard. The other suspect is still here in town, and I doubt if he’s altered his appearance. I’m inclined to think that the murderer is someone in disguise. If that’s true, then the most obvious person is Carl Bauerman, the bereaved father of Carla, who left his teaching job, hightailed it to New York City, started an acting career, stayed there a while until he uprooted himself and headed to California. The problem is that while he has moved around in California, we have no evidence that he’s been in our area, or even left that state.”

  “Nor, Cy, do we have any evidence that Terloff has been here? And another thing, why would Bauerman need a disguise? No one here knows him, and I think we’ve done well to include him as a suspect. As far as we know, even the Colonel never met him. We never heard anything about him threatening the Colonel. Just that his daughter and wife died near the same time, and he became distraught and left the state to start a new life. Remember, we’ve gone back a ways to find these people. I doubt if any of them would think he’d be recognized if he showed up looking like himself. The people I think would need a disguise are the ones someone would recognize, because they are in and out of that house on a regular basis or at least live somewhere in Hilldale.”

  “That’s what I like about you, Lou. You’re always complicating our job. Besides, if we wait a while, if things go like they usually do, we’ll have a couple more suspects come Monday.”

  “So, what do we do now?”

  “Well, Sam is looking into the suspects who don’t live in Hilldale. We’ve got the ones who do. I want to leave the family alone for the time being and look elsewhere. While I plan to leave them alone, I want to stop by tomorrow after church and show this picture to everyone who lives in the Colonel’s house and to the other people on the street. I want to see if the next-door neighbor, Downey, thinks this is the man he saw enter the Colonel’s house. My guess is they are one and the same, but I want to know what he has to say. Also, I want to show the picture to the other neighbors, see if any of them have seen this guy on the street. If that doesn’t do us any good, we’ll check the street behind the Colonel’s house. Could be that our murderer cut through the back yard and down the driveway to keep from being seen. It sounds logical. Remember, Mark Blakeman, the student who saw someone when he was delivering pizza, said that the guy came from around the side of the house. Besides, most murderers don’t park in front of the house or in the driveway of the place where they plan to commit murder at least not on a street like this, and in the daytime. And not if the murder was premeditated, and I believe this one was. Let’s see if anyone recognizes the guy, or at least if anyone has seen him before. To save time, I’ll take one side of the street and give you the other. We’ll each take a copy of the picture and have at it. It’ll make for a long, tiring afternoon, but more people are home on Sunday than any other day.”

  “And after that?”

  “Well, provided neither of us knock on a door and the woman who answers says, ‘Where did you get such a good picture of my son?’ we’ll sleep on it until Monday morning. Then, I’ll call Sam to see if he has anything else on any of our out-of-town birds, then, after breakfast, we’ll visit A-1 Plumbing and Dunleavy Pest Control, see if anyone recognizes the man in the picture. If Robert Collins is there when we visit A-1, we’ll talk to him. I’ll check with Sam to see where Tom Johnson, the pest control technician, lived. We’ll talk to some of his neighbors, show them the picture, and see if they recognize it. I don’t know how much we can get done in one day, so we’ll play it by ear. We also have Michael Belding to see. I want to make him nervous, so we’ll show up at the high school at the end of the school day. We know he had it in for the Colonel, so I won’t spare him anything. I just won’t do anything that’ll get us in trouble. That leaves us Blakeman, Earl and Myra Hoskins, and the Colonel’s friend, Joe Guilfoyle. We’ll see Blakeman right after class, and save the Hoskins until they get off work for the day.”

  “It sounds like we’ve got a busy several days ahead of us, Cy. We’ll need plenty of candy.”

  “I’d think so, unless our murderer comes to us and confesses. Of course, we might pick up something when we start showing the picture to our suspects and might find someone who knows the murderer. Maybe someone will give himself or herself away when they see we have a picture of them committing the murder. Maybe someone will try to divert suspicion to someone else by saying that the picture looks like it could be so-and-so in disguise.”

  “So, what do you plan for us the rest of today?”

  “Rest and relaxation, my friend. How would you like to call up the girls, see if they want to accompany us to The Feed Bucket tonight?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “The girls don’t mind if we stack three plates high with food for every dainty one they half clean.”

  After I said that, I wondered if Lou would have one of the dainty, half-clean plates.

  +++

  Our dinner invitation, late in coming, was accepted, and I took Lou home to relax, to get his mind off the case for a while. I returned undetected by my neighbor, plopped down in my recliner, eager to finish reading The Alpine Advocate. After a brief nap, I picked up where I’d left off. The town of Alpine interested me, tucked away in the mountains of Washington state. Daheim’s book, the first in a series that travels through most of the alphabet, much like Sue Grafton’s does, introduced me to the characters of a small town, and a murder that took place there. The protagonist is a woman who owns the small-town newspaper. If offered a choice, I’d choose Carolyn Hart’s Death On Demand protagonist, who owns a bookstore devoted exclusively to mysteries. Still, if the book held up, as I figured it would, Alpine was a town I wanted to revisit. I just wouldn’t want the rigors of putting out a newspaper.

  +++

  At 6:30, right on schedule, Lou pulled up in front of my house in his 1957 red Chevy. While he never admitted doing so, Lou either polished it or had someone do it, because the car shined anytime I cast my eyes upon it. Even the white interior gleamed in the light. By 7:00, we’d picked up the girls and were on our way to The Feed Bucket.

  +++

  Each time we double-date, we drop Betty off first afterward. Each time, I walk her to the door, we tell each other we enjoyed the evening, and then give each other a slight embrace. Lou, on the other hand, would get a peck on the lips before he returned to the car. While he did so, I’d slip out of the back seat of the car and open the passenger’s side front door, while pretending I wasn’t watching the romance on the front porch. While I felt good for Lou that he had someone, each time I saw him and Thelma Lou hug or kiss, I couldn’t help but think what could’ve been if my Eunice had lived as long as I.

  +++

  I was quiet that night as Lou drove me home. If he’d have asked, I would’ve lied and told him I was thinking about the case.

  When I got home, I was grateful I had a few more pages to read in Daheim’s book. It would keep my mind off Eunice.

  Chapter Twenty

  I always sleep a little later on Sundays. I am able to do that and still get to church on time for an ample supply of donuts, and for Lou and me to deposit ourselves in our customary seats on the back row of the church. I’d found out a long time ago that our pastor was loud enough that he could be heard on the back row. And both Lou and I attend church to receive God’s message through the sermon. We don’t go to be seen, or to drum up business. In our line of work, church isn’t the best place to drum up new business, and neither Lou nor I are eager to acquire any more business.

  On that Sunday, six days after the Colonel was murdered, I listened as our pastor talked about Zacchaeus. The scripture that Sunday was short, just ten verses from Luke, but our pastor’s message was powerful. I almost wished my next-door neighbor was there, on the other side of the church, to hear it, too. Almost. I still had some growing to do. It was hard for me to love my neighbor, and whoever it turned out murdered my friend.

  +++

  I wasn’t used to working on Sunday
. Lou and I did it when necessary, but we didn’t make a habit of it. Because Sunday work was unusual for us, both Lou and I’d forgotten God’s message for us that day. I mean the message that had to do with the case. Actually, Lou hadn’t forgotten it. He’d merely failed to tell me, but then we never discuss business until after we leave church. We do our best to focus on the church service up until then.

  We were about to step into The Rocking Horse Café when Lou remembered he hadn’t shared that day’s message with me. Even though no one else was around, he grabbed me by the sleeve and pulled me aside.

  “What’s the matter, Lou? See someone you know? Or did you suddenly decide you want to eat somewhere else?”

  “Maybe I decided that only one of us knows today’s message.”

  “Oh!” I exclaimed. “Shoot.”

  “It is impossible to see what you have not seen.”

  “Really? Care to explain? Does this mean that we are to forget about the long-haired man in the picture? Or that neither the next-door neighbor nor the pizza delivery guy actually saw anyone enter the house?”

  I looked at Lou. He stood with his hands on his hips, and the look on his face wondered if I’d ever learn that he never knows what the clue means. At least not at the time he receives it.

  I stepped around my partner and opened the door to the Rocking Horse. I perused the menu then reflected on the clue of the day while I waited for my food. Suddenly, the clues were getting as difficult as the ones in the puzzle. Had God decided that Lou and I were ready for tougher problems? If so, I begged to differ.

  +++

  Neither Lou nor I saw any reason to canvass the entire street. We weren’t running for election. Not every vote counted. I doubted if anyone at the far end of the street would’ve seen the long-haired man with the beard. In a way I felt like Richard Kimble, but then I wasn’t being accused of the Colonel’s murder. I merely wanted to find our murderer, even if he or she was bald. We would check the few houses around the Colonel’s house and do the same on the street behind, provided we hadn’t solved the case by then.