Monument to the Dead

by Sheila Connolly

  I knew we had a rather generic finding aid—basically a simple list—for the items related to him that had come with the loan of the collection, but it was probably too vague to be of much use. Our staff processors were all very busy dealing with implementing our new database (Nicholas) and cataloging the FBI collection (Rich and Alice). Maybe I’d save the research for myself. We weren’t in a rush, and it had been a while since I’d spent any quality time in the collections. Besides, I rather liked what I knew of Edwin, and wouldn’t mind finding out more about my marble friend. I’d start by pulling out the original inventory now, to see what it could tell me about the Forrest Trust and its holdings.

  Somehow I managed to get through the afternoon without obsessing about Marty’s whereabouts too much, though I’ll admit that I flinched every time the phone rang, holding my breath until Eric forwarded the call to someone else. Not the most efficient way to get anything done, but luckily the chores I’d assigned myself didn’t take much focus.

  Shortly before five, however, I looked up—and saw Marty standing in the doorway. I bounded out of my chair, and practically threw myself at her.

  “Marty, where the hell have you been? We’ve been going crazy!”

  Marty appeared bewildered by my reaction. “I thought most of the time you were happy to get me out of your hair. Why the big fuss? You heard about Edith’s death?”

  “Yes, of course. James called me as soon as he found out. We worried that maybe you were next. I even got James to let us into your house to check, just in case.”

  Marty gave one of her unladylike snorts. “I’m touched. I was with cousin Harbeson.” When I continued to stare blankly, she clarified, “Edith’s brother. They shared the family house.”

  “God, Marty, you could have let James know. Or me.”

  Marty looked contrite. “Sorry. I wanted to get over there as quickly as I could, and then I had to deal with Harbeson.”

  James had mentioned a brother. “Where was he when Edith died?”

  “He’d been playing golf at his club yesterday, and he stayed on at the bar with some friends. He came home late. He thought Edith had fallen asleep on the couch, so he just went upstairs to bed. He wasn’t exactly sober. When he came down in the morning he realized she wasn’t breathing, and he called me. I told him to call 9-1-1. Then I headed out there, fast. Harby doesn’t . . . handle things well. The police came, then the medical examiner; he pronounced Edith gone and carted her away. Harby wants me to help with the funeral.”

  “I’ve got to tell James,” I said, picking up the phone. When he answered, I said without preamble, “Marty’s here.”

  “I heard. I’m coming over. Stay there.”

  I hung up, feeling happier than I’d been all day. “Will Harby talk to James?” I asked Marty.

  “About Edith? Why not? Harby knows Jimmy—they’re cousins, too.”

  “Marty, I still don’t understand how you could just disappear like that, without telling us. You know that Edith was on the list of board members?”

  “Of course I do. That’s one reason I needed to get out there. I didn’t want Harby to screw up any evidence, if there was any.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “I never had a chance to look. By the time I got there, the police had arrived and Harby was dithering, so I had to take charge of him, and by then it was too late to look.”

  “And what did the police think?” I was pretty sure I knew the answer, but I had to ask.

  Marty’s expression was bleak. “Natural causes.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Luckily there were few people around when I went down-stairs once again to let James in, since it was after five. Otherwise someone might wonder why an FBI agent kept dropping by every other day. I had resisted the urge to tie Marty to a chair so she wouldn’t disappear again. Instead, I caught Shelby before she left for the day and told her that Marty was in my office and to keep her there until James could talk to her.

  James didn’t look happy. “Is something else wrong?” I asked as soon as I saw his face.

  “No, not really. But each”—he looked quickly around to make sure he couldn’t be overheard—“incident makes it look more and more like a serial killer, and there’s still nothing I can do. At least Marty’s all right. Did she tell you where she’d been?”

  I gave him the elevator version on our way up to the third floor. Once I finished, I leaned against him, just a bit. He laid a hand on my shoulder. Neither of us said anything more, but this probably qualified as high passion within these stately walls.

  Marty and Shelby were bickering when we reached my office. On seeing James, Marty jumped out of her chair. “What are you, Jimmy? My keeper?”

  “Marty,” James said with admirable self-restraint, “we had reason to think that something might have happened to you. We were worried.”

  “Jimmy, I’ve been taking care of myself for years. Since when do I have to account for my whereabouts every hour?”

  “Since someone started killing your friends, and now a relative,” I said.

  “Oh, no,” Shelby gasped.

  “Oh.” Marty’s pique evaporated. “Sorry, I hadn’t looked at it that way. You know, when you live alone, you get used to not having to answer to anyone.”

  “I do know,” I said. On some dark nights, I wondered how long my rotting corpse would lie in my house before anyone noticed.

  “So what are we doing here?” a chastened Marty asked, sitting down again.

  “I don’t think you need me for this discussion,” Shelby said. “I’ll just take myself home now, shall I?”

  “I’ll see you in the morning, Shelby,” I replied. She knew I’d fill her in then.

  James waited until Shelby had left before beginning. “All right, here’s what I know. Edith Oakes was found dead on a couch in the parlor this morning by her brother, Harbeson.” Marty nodded, presumably because that fit with what she knew. “The medical examiner collected the body and his preliminary determination was natural causes, but he was persuaded to carry out a more detailed examination. I asked him to look for a couple of specific drugs.”

  “Persuaded? Wouldn’t he have done that anyway?” I asked.

  “Given Edith’s age, not necessarily. As they did not in the other cases, initially.”

  “Jimmy, how did you hear about her death?” Marty demanded.

  “You know I’ve been watching for deaths that fit the profile.” He didn’t add any further detail.

  “You knew about Edith’s board service, James?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I looked at your list. Marty, when did you get involved?”

  “This morning, as soon as Harby found her. He had no idea what to do, so he called me. I made sure he’d call the police, and then I told him I’d be over to help him, and that’s where I’ve been ever since. It finally hit him that she’s gone, which is why I was there so long. It never occurred to me to turn my cell phone on or to call you—I had my hands full with him. I’m sorry you had to worry.”

  James was staring over our heads. “So there’s no crime scene to speak of.”

  Marty gave a short laugh. “Sorry, buddy—nothing useful.”

  “What now?” I asked.

  James sighed. “I’d like to talk to Harbeson, face-to-face. Was he going to stay at the house tonight or with friends?”

  “Home, as far as I know. His only friends are golf and drinking buddies. You planning to go right now?” Marty said.

  “The fresher his memories, the more likely they are to be accurate. Will he be drinking?”

  “Probably,” Marty said glumly. “I don’t know what you’re going to get out of him. You know Harby—he’s vague at the best of times, which this isn’t.”

  “I have to try, Martha,” James said.

  “Can I come?” I asked, feeling left out. “After all, I’ve never seen the house, and I might notice something that you wouldn’t.” A lame excuse, but the best I could come up with.
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br />   James looked at me, and I could swear his mouth twitched. “I’ll take you home afterward. Since we’ll be so close anyway.”

  “That would be fine,” I said demurely.

  Marty snorted. “I’ll let you two figure things out. I’ve had enough of Harby for one day. How any grown man can be so useless . . .” She shook her head. “Tell him I’ll see about the funeral arrangements in the morning.”

  “I’ll do that. Why don’t you call and tell him I’ll be stopping by shortly? And please, keep your phone on.”

  “Yes, Jimmy, I will keep my phone on at all times, until you catch this bastard. I liked Edith. She had a great sense of humor, and I know she wasn’t ready to go. And I will lock my doors and watch myself on the street. I want to be around to see you do the catching.”

  “Then let’s head out,” James said. Marty and I gathered up our things and followed him meekly.

  We dropped Marty off at her house, since it was more or less on the way out of the city to Harbeson’s house in Wayne, and waited at the curb until we saw Marty enter through her front door before pulling away.

  “How well did you know Edith?” I asked.

  “Not very,” James said, navigating the traffic easily. “I mainly saw her at family gatherings, when I was growing up. She was what you would call a ‘character,’ and her brother, Harbeson, was like the moon in her orbit. Neither ever married. They inherited this big barn of a house in Wayne—I think it has eight bedrooms—and have lived there all of their lives. Harbeson never had to work. I don’t really know what he does except play golf, or at least talk about it. They’re the last of their generation. I’m sure they never expected their story to end in murder.”

  “How very déclassé,” I said sarcastically. “The right people don’t do murder.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m glad Marty is all right. I wasn’t overreacting, was I?”

  He sneaked a quick glance at me. “I don’t think so. Better safe than sorry. And that applies to both of you.”

  On a good day, the drive might have taken forty minutes; this was not a good day. We arrived at the Oakes house in Wayne about six thirty. It occurred to me belatedly that we hadn’t eaten, and most likely Harbeson hadn’t either. Should we ask him out to dinner? Or order in pizza?

  Harbeson must have been expecting us, since all the lights on the ground floor were blazing, even though it was still full daylight. He opened the door as soon as we set foot on the steps leading to the front door.

  “Come in, come in. James, thank you for coming. And this must be Miss Pratt? Marty mentioned you were to accompany James.”

  “Nell,” I said, and extended my hand. He took it and pumped it several times, stopped, then started again, as if he had forgotten he’d already done it. “Can I get you anything? I don’t know what there is in the way of nibbles. Edith always looked after that. I can offer you a cocktail,” he said eagerly.

  “Harbeson, please don’t bother,” James said carefully. “Can you tell me about what happened?”

  “I need a cocktail first. I won’t be a minute.” He disappeared toward the back of the house, leaving James and I standing in the broad front hall.

  James led the way into the front parlor. The furniture looked as though it could date from the original construction of the house, a century or more earlier, and ran toward plush-covered horsehair. Dreadfully unyielding and uncomfortable stuff, horsehair, but virtually indestructible. A long settee stood in front of the large-screen television.

  James nodded before I could ask. “That would be where they found her.”

  I could hear Harbeson bumbling around somewhere in the background, and the clink of glass on glass. I looked around the rest of the room: every surface was covered with knickknacks and mementos, all miraculously dust-free. Nothing was knocked over or looked out of place.

  “This is your crime scene?”

  “I assume.” James was scanning the room.

  “Anything seem wrong to you?”

  “No. It’s always looked like this, as far back as I can remember. Woe betide you if you moved a china dog on the end table. Edith would notice as soon as she walked into the room.”

  “James, why do you know this? How much time did you spend here?”

  “Not a lot, but those few occasions are seared in my memory,” he replied.

  Harbeson finally returned, clutching a tall glass with a few ice cubes and a lot of tan liquor. I could smell it from where I stood. “All set. Please, sit down.” He looked around the room as if he had never seen it, hovered for a moment over the settee, and then drifted over to another chair and dropped into it. James and I claimed smaller chairs that proved rickety when sat upon.

  “Do you mind telling me what you found when you came home last night?” James began.

  Harbeson shook his head, staring at the glass in his hand. “Terrible thing, terrible. I arrived home about nine o’clock, I think it was. I’d been over at the club, met some friends, and we got to talking, and I kind of lost track of time. I’d been out all day, and I’d missed lunch, so we ordered something quick for dinner. When I got home, I let myself in the back door and called out for Edith, but she didn’t answer. No, she didn’t.” Harbeson stopped and took a long swig of his drink. Then he gave a start and began speaking again. “I thought maybe she’d gone up already, but it wasn’t all that late, and then I thought maybe she’d fallen asleep watching one of her shows. She does that a lot these days. I came in here and saw her on the couch, covered with an afghan, so I didn’t disturb her. When I came down this morning, I saw that she hadn’t moved all night . . . and she wasn’t breathing. And then I called Martha, and she told me to call the police.”

  “You did fine, Harby,” James said gently. “How did Edith look?”

  “Just like she always did. As though she had just lain down and gone to sleep. Well, her mouth was open and she was drooling a bit, which wasn’t like her. She was very careful about appearances.”

  “Nothing knocked over or spilled?”

  Harbeson shook his head. “Not that I noticed, but then, Edith always tells me that I don’t notice much of anything.”

  It broke my heart that he kept referring to his sister in the present tense. Despite what Marty said, he clearly still hadn’t processed that Edith wasn’t coming back.

  “And the back door was locked when you came in?” When Harbeson nodded, James went on, “What about the front door?”

  He nodded vigorously. “It was locked, too. I had to open it for the police.”

  “Had Edith said anything about not feeling well?”

  “Not at all. She’d had a quarterly checkup only a few days ago, and she was lording it over me that she was healthier than I was. She said the doctor had told her she could live to be a hundred. We had an uncle who lived to be 103, you know. Smoked a cigar after dinner every day of his life. Do you like cigars, Jimmy?”

  Harbeson’s glass was already half empty, and his attention was waning in direct proportion to what he consumed.

  “Not particularly, Harby. Did Edith have many visitors?”

  “People who came to see her? Not really. She’d outlived most of her friends, and the ones who are still around can’t drive anymore.”

  “Had anyone come around lately? Pollsters, salespeople?”

  “I don’t think so. Not while I was here, but I’m at the club most afternoons. I’ve got a foursome, and we get in nine holes when the weather is good, and play bridge when it’s raining. Wait . . . there was something . . .” Harbeson squinted as if the act of thinking was painful. Then he brightened. “I know! There was a cup in the dish drainer.”

  “Why did you notice that?” James asked.

  “You know Edith. It was a cup she hated. It was from a set that belonged to our aunt Prudence, part of her wedding china. Edith said the handles were in the wrong place and it made the cups hard to balance. I don’t know what would have possessed Edith to use one of them. And if she h
ad washed it, she would have dried it and put it away. She always did. She was particular about things like that.”

  I allowed myself a small spurt of hope: maybe the killer had left something of himself behind on the cup? Fingerprints? DNA?

  James must have been thinking the same thing. “What did you do with the cup, Harby?” James said patiently, as if he was talking to a child.

  “Well, I put it away. That’s what Edith would have wanted. And . . . I didn’t want to go back to this room, with Edith . . . you know. So after I called the police, I cleaned up the kitchen a bit, just to keep busy, and I had some breakfast. And then they rang the doorbell in front and I let them in.”

  James and I exchanged a glance. If the cup had meant anything, it was worthless as evidence now. I could just see trying to convince the police that Edith had been murdered because there was a cup in the kitchen, from the set she disliked, and it hadn’t been put away.

  “Mr. Oakes, have you eaten since breakfast?” I asked. I worried about him pouring liquor into an empty stomach.

  Harbeson smiled at me. “Oh, yes, Marty made sure I had plenty of food. And I have some lovely frozen dinners. I just love those little compartments, you know? So neat and tidy, and nothing to clean up after. You’re very sweet to worry about me, my dear. Who did you say you were? Do you work with Jimmy at the FBI?”

  Marty may have told him I was coming but not why. “No, I’m a friend of Jimmy’s and Marty’s. Sometimes I help Jimmy out.”

  “Marty was so helpful today. Was that today? She’s going to take care of Edith’s funeral, and contact all our relatives and friends. She’s very good at that. Are you sure I can’t offer you a drink? Or a pot pie?”