Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 04 - Country Comes to Town

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by Toni L. P. Kelner


  “What about Dee? I let her believe that I already knew her secret when I didn’t have the first idea of what it was. At least Inez doesn’t realize that I know about her herpes, but Dee knows that I know about her and Philip. I don’t have any business knowing about either of them. Of course, I won’t tell anybody other than you, Thaddeous, and Michelle, but can Dee be sure of that?”

  “If she knows you, then she knows she can trust you,” Richard said firmly. “So does Jessie.”

  “Great! I’m just the person they should be trusting. I worm my way into their company just so I can find out my friends’ deepest, darkest secrets.”

  “Let’s not forget that one of these friends killed another one of your friends. Great right, little wrong—remember?”

  “I’m not sure it’s a great right, either. What difference does it make who killed Philip? After what he did to Dee and Inez and Jessie, and what he probably did to the others at SSI, maybe Philip deserved to die.”

  I shocked myself when I said that, and I guess I shocked Richard, too, because he didn’t say anything for a long time.

  Then he said, “Every time we’ve found a murderer, the murderer has said that the victim deserved to die. Do you think Slim Grady deserved to die? Or Small Bill Walters? Or Melanie Wilson? Did your grandfather deserve to die?”

  “Don’t you dare put Paw in the same company as Philip Dennis!”

  “It’s not the company Paw’s keeping that worries me. It’s the company you’re putting yourself into that I’m concerned about.”

  “I’m not a murderer.”

  “No, but you seem willing to let a murderer go free.”

  “Since when is catching murderers my reason for living? Boston has a perfectly good police department—let them handle it.”

  “Do you think they’re going to find out who killed Philip? Are they even looking?”

  “That’s not my problem.”

  He hesitated again. “I don’t know how they taught things in your church, but in my church, I heard about sins of commission and sins of omission. Killing Philip was a sin of commission, but I think your not trying to catch the killer would be a sin of omission.”

  I had to count to ten in binary three times before I trusted myself to answer him. And even then, I came awfully damned close to slamming down the receiver before I spoke. The only reason I didn’t is that I was afraid if I did, it would change things between us in ways I’d never be able to change back.

  Finally, all I could say was, “It’s not fair, Richard. I didn’t kill Philip. And I don’t betray people like he did. But I’m having to drag myself through the dirt like he did to find his murderer. It’s just not fair.” I wasn’t crying, but I was as close to it as I could be and still be talking.

  Softly he said, “I know it’s not fair, Laura. I wish Philip had never shown up on our doorstep, or that I was there to do this for you. But he did show up, and I’m not there. And I don’t think you can leave this thing alone. If you do, I’m afraid it’ll hurt you worse than anything Philip did to the others.”

  “It was so much easier in Byerly,” I said. “I was helping my family. I’m not helping anybody here—nobody really cares if Philip was killed. And why should I avenge his death? He doesn’t deserve it.”

  “Do you remember MacBeth?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “The night MacBeth and Lady MacBeth kill the king, all hell breaks lose. Thunder, lightning, hail. This was Shakespeare’s way of showing us that nature itself was offended that MacBeth violated the rules of chivalry by killing his liege, and the rules of hospitality by killing a guest in his home.

  “That’s how I see murder, Laura: an offense against nature and an offense against man. When somebody kills a friend, there should be thunder and lightning. From what you’ve found out, Philip was with somebody he trusted, and that person returned his trust by hitting him over the head and leaving him to die in the snow. If I had a mad dog, I’d kill him myself before I’d let him die like that.”

  I remembered seeing Philip at my apartment. Then I remembered Detective Salvatore showing me Philip’s body. Philip had done terrible things, but what his killer had done was even worse. Philip shouldn’t have died like that. Had he lived, maybe he could have made up for what he had done. I didn’t think it was likely, but it was possible. Now he’d never be able to, and the killer carried that on his conscience. I wasn’t about to carry it on mine.

  “Laura? Are you still there?”

  “I’m here. Thank you, Richard.”

  “For what?”

  “For being right.”

  He let loose a big breath, and I wondered if he had been holding it while waiting for me to answer. “I was just thinking that I must be insane for trying to talk you into doing this instead of trying to talk you out of it. If anything happens to you because I’ve convinced you to keep going—”

  “It won’t. And if it did, it’d be a whole lot better than what would happen to me if I did nothing.”

  “I wish I was there. Maybe I should cancel the trip.”

  “No,” I said emphatically. “How long have you dreamed of a chance like this?”

  “Not as long as I dreamed about having a wife like you.”

  I smiled in spite of myself. “Granted, but you’ve got me now, so you can pursue those other dreams. I’m being careful, and I’ve got Thaddeous and Michelle to look after me. If the two of them aren’t enough to scare off one little murderer, then I don’t know what is.”

  “Mad Dog Thaddeous?”

  “Something like that.”

  “But you’ll be careful? Not just physically—don’t let what Philip did get to you.”

  “I’ll try not to. Paw used to say that God never gives anybody a burden heavier than they can carry. I guess I just forgot that for a little while.”

  “I might add, ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ ”

  “Hamlet?“

  “Spiderman. But it’s a great line.”

  “Good night, Richard. I do love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Chapter 32

  I hung up and had just enough time to get something to drink before the phone rang. “Hello?”

  “Laura? This is Jessie.”

  “What’s the matter?” I knew that something was wrong because I could just barely recognize her voice.

  “It’s Murray. There’s been an accident.”

  I felt that chill my Aunt Maggie claims comes from somebody walking across my grave. “Is he all right?”

  “He’s dead, Laura. He fell down the stairs at the office and broke his neck.”

  It took a while to get the whole story out of her because she wasn’t very coherent. It turned out that the cleaning crew had found Murray’s body and called the police. Then the police had called Murray’s family and Jessie.

  As far as the police could tell, there had been some snow or ice on the stairs, and Murray had slipped and lost his balance. His body was on the landing between the third and fourth floors, but his hat was on the sixth, meaning he must have fallen three flights.

  “Jesus, Jessie,” was all I could say. “I just can’t believe it.”

  “First Philip, and now Murray. What is happening to us?”

  I wanted to tell her that it was all just a horrible coincidence, that the two deaths had nothing to do with one another, but I couldn’t say it because I didn’t believe it. As Richard would have said, there was something rotten in the state of Denmark.

  Still, I comforted her as best I could. I tried to get her to come over to my apartment so she wouldn’t be alone, knowing that Thaddeous wouldn’t mind being crowded, but she didn’t want to leave her cats. I settled for making her promise to call if she needed me, and for promising to be at work early the next day to help her do whatever it was that needed doing.

  Thaddeous and Michelle came in carrying a pizza box just as I hung up the phone. Both of them knew me well enough to see immediate
ly that something bad had happened, and I told them what Jessie had told me.

  “Another one,” Michelle said. “Tell me you don’t think it’s connected with Philip.”

  I just shook my head, and Thaddeous said, “If this is a coincidence, then I’m a Yank—a beauty queen.”

  “All I can think of is how I wouldn’t walk down the stairs with him my first day back at SSI. If I’d gone with him today, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “And maybe you’d have a broken neck, too,” Thaddeous said. “Whoever it was ain’t shy about killing, that’s for damn sure.”

  “You’re right,” I said, but I was having a hard time believing it. I just felt so bad about suspecting Murray after having known him all those years. The fact that the murderer was likely somebody else I had known for years wasn’t much comfort.

  “You cut that out,” Michelle said, shaking her finger at me. “It wasn’t your fault! Now, have some of this pizza we brought you. You need to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I said, but I followed them into the kitchen, and when Michelle heated up a piece in the microwave and put it in front of me, I did eat it. Of course, with the two of them watching me, I didn’t have a whole lot of choice.

  “How was your dinner?” I asked, wanting to talk about anything else.

  Michelle looked at Thaddeous and smiled the cutest smile. “Very nice. You never told me Thaddeous knew so much about history.”

  “Didn’t I?” Actually, I hadn’t known that he did.

  “The Civil War—I mean, the War between the States. And the World Wars, even Korea and Vietnam. He knows all kinds of interesting things.”

  “Michelle’s just being polite,” Thaddeous said. “I must have talked the whole time, and she was nice enough to listen.”

  He was looking at her, and she was looking at him, and it was time for me to go away. I finished the last of the pizza and said, “I’d better get some sleep. Jessie asked me to come in early to help make arrangements. I think it’s more for moral support than for anything else, but I said I would.”

  “You’re not going back to that death trap!” Michelle said. “Two people have already died there.”

  “Philip died here,” I reminded her, “and I’m not moving out of my apartment. Besides, there’s still a murderer on the loose. Now, more than ever, I have to find out what’s going on.” My conversation with Richard had convinced me of that even before I heard about Murray.

  “Laura, are you crazy? Thaddeous, tell your cousin she’s crazy.”

  But what Thaddeous said was, “Michelle, you’re wasting your breath. If there’s one thing I know about Laurie Anne, it’s that she’s going to do whatever she thinks is the right thing, no matter what anybody else says.”

  “You’re both crazy!” she said.

  Thaddeous just nodded. “You might be right. But if I can’t stop her, and I know I can’t, I’m going to see what I can do to help her.”

  She looked at him, then at me, then back at him. Then she said, “I guess I’m crazy, too. What do we do next?”

  I said, “I thought I might sneak a look at Murray’s desk, maybe find something there that will help. His being killed must mean he knew something, or had discovered something.”

  “That sounds like a winner,” Thaddeous said. “Why don’t you go on to bed, and Michelle and I will see if we can come up with any other ideas while I take her home on the subway.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Michelle said.

  “I’m not about to let you ride alone at this time of night. Not with strangers sniffing around and people dying.”

  I left the two of them arguing and went to bed. Maybe they’d finish fighting it out soon enough that they’d have time to neck a little.

  Chapter 33

  Never had I seen Jessie in the state she was in the next morning. Her eyes were so red and there were such dark circles under her eyes that I knew she hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep. Murray’s death coming so soon after Philip’s had nearly done her in. And I was all too aware that our own confrontation the afternoon before hadn’t helped her any.

  I felt almost guilty that I had slept reasonably well, but then, Murray’s death didn’t really sink in for me until I saw his office with its ridiculous stack of papers and no Murray. The only reason I didn’t start crying was that I knew Jessie needed my help.

  As soon as the family called to tell us the time, we posted a memo to tell the rest of the SSI employees that the funeral would be the next day. Then we ordered flowers from the company. Next was a surprising amount of paperwork: insurance and tax information and I’m not sure what else. It probably could have waited, but Jessie was bound and determined to do it all right away. I figured that keeping busy was the best thing for her, and other than to bring her cups of coffee and doughnuts, I left her alone.

  In the meantime, the rest of the SSI crew had started to arrive. Jessie had called Vincent the night before but hadn’t tried anybody else. That meant that as anybody but Vincent arrived, I had to go through the whole story again. I couldn’t help but watch each person’s face, hoping to see some sign of guilty knowledge, but all I saw was shock.

  The police showed up around ten. I wondered if Detective Salvatore was going to get involved, but then remembered that he was with the Boston Police. Since Murray had died in Cambridge, it was a different set of cops. This crew didn’t seem to see anything odd about Murray’s death. They did want to establish who had seen Murray last, but apparently it was just to fill out the paperwork.

  It turned out that Inez had been the last one to see Murray, or at least, the last one to admit to seeing him. She’d spoken to him on her way out, but everybody else said his office door had been closed when they’d passed by. Everybody but Jessie and me, that is. Jessie had left early, of course. As for me, I couldn’t remember if I’d seen Murray after the meeting with Neal or not. Some investigator I was.

  Even after the cops left, nobody was doing much work. Instead, we all congregated in the break room, drinking coffee and talking listlessly about Murray. Time spent together like that can help, but I’m not sure that it did this time. We were too much in shock to get anything out of it. I finally suggested to Vincent that he close the office, and he agreed that it was the best thing.

  Jessie said she wanted to stay a while to finish up something, and since I didn’t want her there alone, I told her I’d stay, too. Besides, I still wanted to take a peek at Murray’s desk.

  I felt like an intruder when I went into Murray’s office and sat down among all his papers and reports. The eeriest part was the smell. Not to sound rude, but most people have their own scent. With Richard out of town, I was particularly attuned to his and had found myself hugging his pillow as I went to sleep. I had never noticed Murray’s scent before, but it was still strong in his office, a mixture of coffee and papers and the faintest trace of some aftershave I didn’t recognize.

  Even though I hadn’t been that close to Murray or even liked him particularly, I felt terribly sad to be there when he was gone. I was mad, too. I could almost understand killing Philip—I couldn’t understand anybody wanting to kill Murray, unless it was to protect himself or herself, and that just wasn’t a good enough reason.

  I had told Michelle and Thaddeous the night before that my guess was that Murray had found out something about Philip’s death. This was part because of the timing of the death, and part because of who Murray was and where he had been killed. The question was, what had Murray found out? I was hoping there would be something in his office to tell me.

  I started with the papers on his desk. The stuff on top was mostly printouts of code, and the first thing I checked for was the date they had been printed. It seemed likely that Murray must have found out whatever it was in just the past day or so. All of the printouts I saw were at least a week old, so I decided they weren’t the answer.

  The table where Murray kept his computer was also piled high with papers, as were two
bookcases and a chair. There were even stacks on the floor behind Murray’s desk and under the computer table. Some of these printouts were months old, and none of them looked terribly important. Certainly nothing looked like a motive for murder.

  I opened the lap drawer on the desk, but found nothing except the usual assortment of office supplies, showing nothing more important than the fact that Murray liked red felt-tip pens. The second drawer was filled with diskettes, but they were marked as backups, so I didn’t think I needed to mess with them. The file drawer made me laugh out loud. With all that paper everywhere, the file drawer was empty.

  That was so like Murray that it brought tears to my eyes. I was wondering if he had kept a box of Kleenex among the stacks of paper when I realized somebody was watching me from the open office door.

  “Neal?” I said. “I thought everybody but me and Jessie had gone home.”

  “I’m all that’s left. What are you doing?”

  “Just being morbid, I guess,” I said. “It’s hard to believe he’s gone, isn’t it?”

  He nodded, but didn’t step inside. “At least it was quick. The police said that they don’t think he suffered at all.”

  I closed the file drawer. “Should we pack up his personal things?” There wasn’t that much personal there. A coffee mug with a Far Side cartoon, a couple of photographs stuck on the bulletin board, and a paperweight were all I saw.

  “Jessie said his family would be here tomorrow morning to do that,” Neal said.

  “Just as long as Jessie doesn’t have to. She’s in pretty bad shape.” Noticing how pale he looked, I added, “It’s been hard on everybody. Are you doing okay?”

  “I’m all right,” he said unconvincingly.

  I didn’t like the way he was standing there not meeting my eyes as he glanced around Murray’s office.

  “Come on,” I said, getting up and firmly closing the door behind me. “Let’s get Jessie out of here.” Sometimes the best thing for an upset person to do is to focus on somebody else, and it seemed to work on Neal. He literally pulled Jessie away from her desk and put her coat on her. While I made sure that lights were off and doors were locked, he called a taxi and got into it with her, promising to make sure she got home all right.

 

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