by Robin Cain
The front door opened and Frank greeted him before he was able to ring the doorbell.
“Hello, detective.”
“Hello. I’m sorry to disturb you again. I was driving past and thought I’d stop and see if we couldn’t find something on this Tyler Holmes connection. Is this a good time?’
Mr. Campelletti didn’t appear to be in very good shape. He had only come to town the other day to ID his wife’s body, but he looked like had hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in weeks. His eyes, now sunken into his gaunt-looking face, had the vacant look of a soldier who had been at war too long.
“Uh, sure, detective. Anything you need. Come on in. I was just going out in front to get some air.” Frank wheeled out of the way to allow Frost to enter. Carol was standing just inside.
“Oh hello,” she said. “I’m Carol, Mr. Campelletti’s assistant.” Frost noted she looked like she had been fighting in the same war.
“Detective Frost,” he said, reaching out to shake her hand. He turned back to address Frank.
“Mr. Campelletti, I just need to see what I can find. May I have another look in that office?”
“Of course you may. Do you need anything from me at the moment?”
“No sir, I think I can find everything I need.”
“Alright. I’m just going to sit outside for a bit and clear my head before this last group of calls I have to make.” Frank turned to Carol, “Will you please take him to Sadie’s office?”
“Detective, please don’t hesitate to ask if you need anything,” Frank offered as he slowly wheeled himself out of the room.
“Come this way, detective. I’m kind of new here, so I don’t know how much help I can give you, but please feel free to ask for anything you need. I’ll help in any way I can.”
“You’re new?”
“Yes, I’ve only worked for the Campellettis... well, for Frank now... for a week.” Her eyes filled with tears as she added, “In fact, this is my first time up here.”
“I’m sorry.” Frost could only imagine how she must have felt, trying to deal with all that had happened in the last few days.
“This has just been awful. She seemed like such a nice lady. Frank is just devastated. He’s holding himself together pretty well, but I am so worried about him. First he finds out Sadie is missing, then he got that upsetting call the other night and it seems he hasn’t gotten any sleep ever since.”
“The upsetting call about his wife you mean?”
“Oh, yes, that was upsetting of course, but that wasn’t when it started. The day he found out Sadie was missing he got some other call that very same night. It seems it’s been one thing after another. I think this call was about his company and some employee of his. I’ve overheard bits and pieces of some of his conversations. I couldn’t help it. He was yelling into the phone.”
“What was he yelling about?”
Carol lowered her voice to a whisper and stepped closer. It was obvious she didn’t like discussing her employer.
“I think it was something about computer stuff. And a ‘traitorous bitch.’ I couldn’t help but hear him shouting that morning. The whole neighborhood probably heard him. I got up and closed his office door to give him some more privacy because I felt badly about listening, so I missed most of the conversation.”
“That’s understandable,” he told her. “You said that was before Mr. Campelletti found out his wife was found?”
“Yes, he got that call Monday night.”
“Did you get any feeling it was somehow related to Mrs. Campelletti’s disappearance?”
“Oh gosh, I didn’t ever really put two and two together. He didn’t seem too concerned that Sadie hadn’t been seen. I mean, he didn’t seem to suspect anything was wrong, but the phone call he got really worked him up. He was on the phone the entire next morning. I rarely saw him. But maybe he was also making calls about Sadie. I can’t actually say. Like I said, I’m new and I’ve tried to stay out of the way.”
Frost made more notes in his notebook. “Now Carol, you said you were new here. Did you replace someone?”
“Yes. The other assistant was fired a week or so before I was hired. I don’t know much about her. I do know her name was Vivian.”
“Do you know why she was fired?” Frank continued to write.
“Well, I get the impression she was, well, that she was a snoop.”
“A snoop?”
“Yes, Mrs. Campelletti told me she had ‘stuck her nose in their business one too many times.’”
“Did you know what she meant by that?”
“Well, I have the same bedroom as Vivian did and, when I was moving in, I found something underneath the mattress.”
“What kind of something? What do you mean?”
“They were copies of Mrs. Campelletti’s old travel itineraries stuffed in a notebook. Dates on the itineraries were circled. The note-pad had crazy rambling sentences written in it, kind of like a diary. I couldn’t and didn’t read much of it. I gave it all to Mrs. Campelletti to see. It all being under the bed struck me as very odd... very odd. Anyway, Mrs. Campelletti got very upset when she saw them. That was when she told me about Vivian and why she was fired. But she’s never talked about her since.”
“Do you remember what any of the things in this notebook said?”
“Well, Mr. Campelletti’s name was in there a lot, just kind of scribbled in different ways throughout. Dates and times were written. Lots of things were blacked out by smeared ink. It was all kind of eerie, if you ask me. And, like I said, I handed it over to Mrs. Campelletti as soon as I found it. At first, I didn’t know who it belonged to or what it was.”
“What about Mr. Campelletti? Did he ever discuss Vivian with you?”
“He has only really ever referred to her during his physical therapy sessions, just as an example or something. I don’t know. He didn’t seem to make a big deal out her one way or the other.”
“Did you hear of any falling-out Mrs. Campelletti had with her or any problems when she left?”
“No, not from the Campellettis, but Janie, Mr. Campelletti’s assistant, told me that Vivian was really quite hostile when she came in to pick up her last check. Mr. Campelletti had made arrangements for Vivian to come into MineWare to get her last paycheck so Sadie wouldn’t have to see her.”
“Hostile—how?”
“Janie said Vivian had nothing good whatsoever to say about Mrs. Campelletti.”
“Anything specific mentioned?”
“Well...” she hesitated. “I hate to be a gossip.”
“I’ll keep it to myself,” Frost assured her.
“Janie said Vivian kept referring to Mrs. Campelletti as a slut and a cheater and the like. And I guess she kept going on and on about how dear and kind Frank was. Janie thought the way Vivian had referred to Mrs. Campelletti was unusual and thought it even odder that Vivian would talk about Frank the way she did. Janie also told me that she suspected Vivian had developed some feelings for Frank. Regular little soap opera, no?”
“I understand,” he told her. “Now Carol, this is a difficult question, but had you ever seen or heard any behavior by Mrs. Campelletti to make you understand why this Vivian would have called her these names she did?” He was trying to be as delicate as possible.
Carol put her hand up to her mouth in alarm. “Oh, no! Never. I didn’t mean to infer that she was—oh my, no! This is just what Janie said she said. I’ve never seen Mrs. Campelletti do anything like that.”
“And there was nothing you’ve seen or found or heard that would indicate there was anything between Frank and this Vivian?”
“Oh, no. Again, this was all just what Janie told me. Frank has never said anything,” she told him, vehemently shaking her head.
“I understand, Carol. Please understand that it’s just my job to ask these questions.”
“Please don’t share any of this with Mr. Campelletti. I would hate for him to hear that I talked about all this, esp
ecially now with his wife being murdered. The poor man is under such strain.”
“I understand. And I appreciate your help. If I could ask one more favor... could you please find a full name and phone number for this Vivian, so I can get some more information on her?”
Carol assured him she would and then led him back to the office.
Frost stood quietly in the doorway to the office and took a second to get his bearings. Did Vivian getting fired have anything to do with this? Was it worth murdering someone over? Recalling an old case in which a woman had buried a butcher knife in her husband’s back after he had read the Sunday paper before her, he figured anything was possible. It didn’t take a whole lot for some people to snap. He wondered if that could have been the case here.
Frost had already taken a brief look in this office before, but he needed to look for something more specific. He spotted the Rolodex on the desk and began slowly thumbing through it, looking for anything that had some reference to the case. Tyler Holmes’ cell number was buried in the back, incorrectly filed. The listing didn’t actually say Tyler Holmes. It simply said Tyler—cell and a number. Things were looking like the two of them were a little bit more acquainted than simply through business.
He set the Rolodex back on the desk and spotted something written in a corner of the desk calendar. The calendar page was still set to August and, in tiny block letters up in the left-hand corner, the name “Tyler” had been printed and then outlined several times. It reminded Frost much of what he absentmindedly did while on the phone—doodling a name over and over again while talking to or about a person.
Next to Tyler’s name, in larger letters, was the name “Sam” and it had been crossed out. Frost took more notes as his instincts whispered to him again. Now having found something along the lines of what he had come for, Frost left the office. Carol was just coming down the hallway.
“I called and got Vivian’s full name and number for you. It was Dean—Vivian Dean. Janie said she didn’t really know her and that she had come from out of state. “Also,” Carol hesitated to underscore the importance of what she was about to say, “Janie said she never liked Vivian from the beginning. She said, and I quote, ‘She seemed like trouble.’”
“Okay, great, thanks.” Everyone is a detective now. “Is Frank handy? I do need to ask him some more questions after all.”
“Why don’t you have a seat in the living room? I’ll go get him for you.”
Minutes later, Frost heard the wheels of Frank’s chair approaching.
“Did you find anything that will help?” Frank quietly asked.
“Hard to tell right now. I just have a couple more questions. Do you have a minute?” With Frank’s permission, Frost continued. “What can you tell me about this Vivian Dean who used to work for you?”
“Vivian? Well, Sadie fired her a couple weeks ago.”
“Can you tell me why?”
“Well, yes, she was poking around in our affairs and Sadie couldn’t stand it any longer.”
“How did she take it?” Frost had never known a firing to be a good thing. Carol’s information had to lead somewhere.
“Well, I was at work the day when Sadie fired her. I didn’t find out until after the fact. She was pretty worked up afterwards, but she didn’t really say anything about how Vivian handled it. I would assume she was mad. I mean, who wouldn’t be? But, like I said, I wasn’t there. I had my assistant contact Vivian and have her come to the office to pick up her last check. After that, we never saw her again.”
“Did your wife say anything else about Vivian? Like the exact reason why she fired her or anything?”
“Well, Sadie told me Vivian had a copy of my personal travel calendar and then lied to Sadie about having it or something, but that wasn’t really the only thing. Sadie had suspected her of listening in on phone conversations, reading our mail—stuff like that.”
“And Mr. Campelletti, did you get any impression during her employment that Vivian had feelings toward you, one way or the other”?
Frank squirmed in his chair when posed the question.
“Well, Sadie seemed to think so and, yes, I guess I would have to say Vivian was a bit informal with me at times.”
“Informal?”
“Yes, she’d tell me personal things that were really nothing she should have shared. During therapy sessions, toward the end of her employment, I got the sense that her massages were becoming more—how do I say it? More intimate?”
Frost looked at him quizzically.
“I mean, she seemed to be crossing the professional line, seeming to care too much.”
“And did you share this with your wife?”
“No, by then Sadie was already so irritated and fed up with her, I didn’t need to add to the problem. I knew Vivian’s time with us was quickly coming to an end.”
“Did Vivian have any reason to think your relationship with her was anything more than one of a professional nature?”
“Good God, no! She was nothing to me but an assistant.”
Reasonably certain now that Vivian Dean had her own agenda, Frost changed the line of questioning. “Okay. What about this Tyler Holmes guy I asked you about earlier? You still have no recollection of his name?”
“No, none. I know I’ve never met the guy and I can’t recall Sadie ever mentioning him. Who is he?’
“He’s a local guy who owns a construction company. We have reason to believe your wife knew him. I just found his name in your wife’s Rolodex and...” Frost tried to choose words that suited the moment. “We have reason to believe your wife was murdered in a home he was building down the street.”
“Down this street?”
“Yes. We located her rental car a little while ago and it was parked there. When we searched the house, we found evidence of a murder. The facts point to it very likely being our crime scene.”
Frank’s eyes, already lifeless from the preceding days’ events, now went stone cold. Frost waited the few moments it took for him to speak.
“Have you located this Holmes fellow?”
“No, sir. We have no evidence yet that he is personally involved in the crime but we do plan to bring him in for questioning.”
An older gentleman who Frost assumed was the Campelletti’s caretaker suddenly appeared in the hallway. Hands in his pants pockets, looking like he didn’t quite know what to do with himself, he clumsily addressed Frank.
“Uh... Frank... I don’t mean to interrupt, but I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation from the kitchen.”
“That’s fine. What is it, Charles?” Frank asked, turning around to face the caretaker.
“Uh... I... You are asking about Tyler Holmes? I know Tyler.”
The incredulous look on Frank’s face conveyed his displeasure at discovering there was so much he was not aware of. Normally a man who liked to be in total control, he didn’t take well to suddenly being thrown into this position.
“You do? Well, for God’s sake, who is he?” Frank asked, clearly indignant.
“He’s a friend of Miss Sadie’s, sir. He’s a caretaker at a house down the street, I think. He’s been here a couple times when she was in town.” His words didn’t hint at anything out of the ordinary.
“Do you know the last time he was here?” Frost asked.
“Um... no. He hasn’t been for a long while. I ran into him a month or so ago and he asked about her. Seemed a little upset, though, when he found out she had been here and he’d missed her.”
“Anything else you can think of that might help?” Frost asked.
“Well, now that you mention him, I did hear Miss Sadie say his name on the phone during a call she was on the day she disappeared. I was out sweeping the porch, so I don’t know if she was talking to him or about him. I just remember hearing his name. I was coming in and out while she was on the phone, so I didn’t really pay attention, but I remember thinking how he’d feel better if she went to go see him this time. If you ask m
e... he seemed a little smitten with her. But I... I don’t think he’d ever hurt her. He seemed like a very nice young man.”
“Smitten?” Frank was clearly flabbergasted.
“Uh, yes, sir... sorry, sir. I just figured it might be important.”
Charles was clearly upset that he had had to be the one to say all this for the first time.
“Don’t worry about it. You did the right thing. Thank you,” Frank tried to assure him, though it was obvious he was unable to digest what he’d just heard.
“Yes, thank you,” Frost added, “Do you know any of Tyler’s friends or associates?”
“No, sir, I don’t. I only saw him the few times here and the one time I ran into him in town.”
“Anything else of you can remember that happened that day?”
“Well, she raced out of the house after she made her phone calls. She seemed a little upset about something but, when I asked, she said everything was okay. She left and I finished up what I was doing and then I left as well. When I got here Monday morning, as I said to Mr. Campelletti, Miss Sadie was nowhere around. Later in the day I got a call from one of the roofing companies that had been scheduled to meet with Miss Sadie on Saturday, telling me they had come but no one had been home. I made a few phone calls and learned no one had seen her like they were supposed to. I looked around and it seemed no one had been around all weekend. That’s when I finally called Mr. Campelletti.”
“And Mrs. Campelletti didn’t say where she was going, or who she had been talking to, when you last saw her?” Frost asked.
“No, but her car was here when I left and it was gone when I came back on Monday,” Charles said.
“She didn’t take her car when she left, but it wasn’t here when you came back?” Frost asked.
“No, sir. It was sitting in the driveway when I left but it was gone when I came back on Monday.”
“Did you see or hear anyone pick her up?”