by Gayle, Susie
I look at Sarah. She smiles and nods once.
“Yeah. Okay,” I tell her. “That.”
Karen smiles brightly. “Great! Whew. Super glad to get that off my chest. Now, what did you want to ask me?”
Oh, right. I forgot for a moment, in the wake of that heartfelt apology, that we were still dealing with a woman who may or may not have killed a guy.
“I spoke with Steven today. He told me that you threatened Jeff two days ago.”
Karen shrugs a little. “Yeah, I did.”
“What did you have to threaten him with?”
“Oh, nothing really.” She laughs a little. “It was an empty threat. See, he let it slip that he overspent on that stupid parquet floor, thinking that it would make Anna happy. I called his bluff. I think he was lying about where the money was going. I did some research on his little home improvement projects, and he was spending way more than he should have been.”
“So you don’t actually know what he was spending it on?” Sarah asks.
“Nope. I figure it could have been a gambling addiction, or maybe another woman… who knows? His checkbook ledger was not at all helpful. The entries were all marked as made out to cash; not a single mention of a person or business.”
“You peeked in his ledger?” I ask, and then realization strikes. “That’s where you went when you claimed you were using the bathroom… you snuck into the home office to look at his checkbook.”
“Why not just tell Anna and have her look into his finances?” Sarah asks.
Karen shrugs her shoulders as if to say, duh. “Because, she’s my best friend. What if it turned out to be another woman? Is that how you’d want to find out?”
“I guess not,” Sarah murmurs.
“So Jeff’s business was failing, but he was still spending crazy money on home improvement projects to try to make Anna happy,” I muse. “He didn’t want her to know how much he was spending… and he was claiming to have done the projects himself…”
Suddenly a light bulb goes on in my brain and I gasp a little.
“Oh my god. I think I know what’s going on.”
“What?” Sarah and Karen ask in unison.
“No time to explain!” I dash for the door, but then I double back, open one of the dog kennels, and scoop up the schnauzer Cheese. “Oh, wait. I need this.”
“Will, where are you going?” Sarah asks, exasperated.
“I’ll be back soon, promise!” The two of them look at each other, confused.
To be fair, there probably is time to explain, but if I’m wrong, I don’t want to look like an idiot, or possibly put more suspicion on someone else unfairly… and if I’m being honest with myself, I really hope that I’m wrong.
CHAPTER 15
* * *
I drive as quickly as I can to the hill and screech to a stop in front of the Abernathy house, throwing the SUV into park. I scoop Cheese under one arm and hurry up the walkway. I alternate between ringing the doorbell and banging on the door with a fist.
Inside, Oliver goes nuts, barking and barking at the noises.
I press the little black button under the speaker and say, “Anna, it’s Will. Please let me in. I just need a minute.”
“Go away,” the intercom crackles.
“I’m not going anywhere until you let me in,” I tell the speaker.
“Good god, can’t you people see that I’m grieving?” she says harshly.
I wince a little. What I’m about to say isn’t very nice, but might be my only chance of getting into the house. Knowing that Anna is all about appearances, I press the button and tell her, “It certainly doesn’t look to me like you’re grieving. I mean, you didn’t even cry over Jeff, not once.”
There’s a long moment of silence. Then the deadbolt slides aside and Anna throws the door open, staring daggers at me. “How dare you say something like that! You don’t even know me! I swear, if you don’t leave—”
I sidle past her and into the foyer. “Just one minute, please…”
Oliver the German shepherd comes skittering around the corner, barking furiously. I set Cheese down, and the schnauzer takes off into the living room. Oliver forgets all about me and chases the smaller dog.
Anna stares at me, shocked by my intrusion. “If you don’t leave right now,” she says dangerously, “I will call the police and have you arrested.”
“Anna, what do you do for a living?”
The question throws her off. She blinks a couple of times. “What?”
“Your job. What do you do?”
“Get out!”
I put my hands up, palms out, and say, “Just tell me, and I’ll go.”
She scoffs. “I’m a civil engineer. I work in Portland. Now get out of my house!”
“I bet you work long hours, plus the commute… you’re probably gone most of the day, right?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Think about it a second. Did you ever actually see Jeff doing any of these pet projects he claims to have done for you?”
“I…” Her fierce gaze softens a little, and her eyes flit back and forth. “No, I didn’t,” she admits. “I would usually come home when he had just finished.”
“Then how do you know he was the one doing them?”
“Because,” she says, “no one else was here. And he’d be dirty and sweaty, like he was just working…”
“Or,” I suggest, “maybe playing with the dog?”
Her expression goes slack, all the anger draining away and replaced by confusion. “Why is this important?”
“Come with me. I have a hunch.” I march out of the foyer. Behind me, she grunts in frustration, closes the front door and follows. We pass by the entrance to the living room, where Cheese and the dog formerly known as Crackers roll around on the white carpet together, play-fighting. Then we head into the kitchen, where I open the door to the basement and head downstairs.
The basement is one large room, as most basements tend to be, with concrete walls and exposed beams. Except the Abernathy’s basement is in mid-construction; two-by-fours have been laid out and riveted into the concrete, and in a few places walls have been framed.
“He was working on finishing the basement?” I ask.
“Yes. Just another project... he was going to make it into a workout room, with a wine cellar over there in the corner,” Anna tells me. “Will you please just tell me what’s going on?”
I go quickly to the far corner, where a sizable built-in wine rack stores about sixty-something bottles. Mere feet away are the concrete stairs that lead up to the Bilco doors.
“I told you,” she says, “they squeak horribly—”
I push the bolt aside noiselessly and heft one of the steel doors open. Sunlight from outside streams in as the door opens smoothly and easily.
Anna looks astonished. “I… I don’t understand.”
“You will.” Man, I really hate that I’m right. I take out my cell phone and make a call.
“Chief Mayhew,” Patty answers.
“Chief, it’s Will Sullivan. I know who killed Jeff Abernathy.”
“Oh?” Patty says. “So do we. Forensics just came back. We’re on our way to get him now.”
CHAPTER 16
* * *
The next morning, I sit in Chief Mayhew’s office in the police station, in an uncomfortable guest chair, once again feeling like a kid in the principal’s office. A moment later, the chief comes in, looking tired and not at all in a pleasant mood.
She sits across from me and folds her hands on the desk, regarding me evenly.
“Uh, hi Chief.” I smile. “Did you… get him?”
She nods. “He tried to run. We got the state police involved; they put up some road blocks and put out an APB for his plates. It only took a few hours to find him.”
“Good. Did he confess?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Then why did you call me in?” I add meekly,
“Am I in trouble?”
“No, Will, you’re not in trouble.” She takes off her brimmed hat and sets it on the desk. “I want to make this brief, because I’ve got a mountain of paperwork to handle. I know how we figured it out; forensics found Steven’s DNA on the rope that was used to kill Jeff Abernathy, skin cells embedded deep enough to suggest the force required to strangle someone. What I want to know is how you figured it out without any of that.”
“Oh.” I shift in the chair. “Well, uh… Karen told me that Jeff was overspending on the home improvement projects he was claiming to have done himself. But Steven said that Jeff wasn’t very handy, and Anna had never actually seen Jeff doing any of the work. Putting that together, I figured it was unlikely that Jeff was doing them; he was paying someone to do them and taking credit. Meanwhile, Steven mentioned that money and time were tight. Money was tight because he and Jeff shared a lot of the same clients. Time was tight because he was spending all his time doing projects at Jeff’s place. I’m guessing that Steven’s business took the same hits that Jeff’s did, and he was probably going under, too.”
She raises an eyebrow. “And all that led you to believe it was murder?”
“Not exactly. It was also the timing; when Karen left the living room, she saw Anna in the kitchen, and then when she passed back through she saw Anna again. Sarah said that Karen was only gone about a minute, which means that Anna—the only other viable suspect, since Karen admitted that she’d snuck into their office—wouldn’t have had the time to get to the shed, kill Jeff, and get back inside without being seen. Steven, on the other hand, had plenty of time, and it wasn’t exactly a stretch to think that he might have fixed the door leading outside.”
“Hmm.” Patty leans back in her chair and scrutinizes me. “What about motive?”
I stifle a smile. It feels like she’s testing me, especially since it’s likely that she already knows all of this. “I’m a little fuzzy on that part,” I admit, “but if I had to guess… Karen mentioned that Jeff was writing all his checks to ‘cash,’ and if he overspent, then maybe a couple of those payments to Steven bounced. If that happened, Steven would have no way to pursue Jeff for the money; no paper trail and no way to take him to court.”
Patty puts one finger on her nose and points at me. Then she opens a desk drawer, takes out a pamphlet, and slides it across to me.
“I have to say,” she tells me, “I was a little annoyed at first with your tendency to be involved in these things. But you seem to have a knack. Here.”
I take the pamphlet. On the front of it, in big white letters, is MPIA, and below that are the words “Maine Private Investigators’ Association.”
She shrugs. “Give it some thought. There are some classes involved, but you’re pretty good at this stuff.”
I take the pamphlet and slide it into a jacket pocket. Me? A private investigator? I own a pet shop, for Pete’s sake.
But then again, I did kind of solve three murders inside a year. (With a little help, of course.)
“Thanks,” I say. “Um, hey, is he here?”
“For now,” she says. “He’ll be transferred this afternoon.”
“Do you think I could talk to him? Just for a minute?”
Patty squints at me for a long moment. “One minute. That’s all.”
***
Steven sits on the tiny cot bolted to the side of one concrete wall of the holding cell, with his head in his hands. He looks up when he hears my footsteps, and I can see that he’s been crying.
“Hi, Will.” He smiles a little. “I guess this is kind of a surprise, huh?”
“Yeah, it is.”
He wipes his eyes and sniffs once.
“So what’s your deal?” I ask him. “All the crying over him… are you just secretly the world’s best actor?”
“No.” He shakes his head sadly. “I never meant to kill him. I just meant to threaten him, maybe hurt him a little. I mean, he owed me a lot—thousands. I’d already missed two mortgage payments; I would’ve lost my house, the business was going under. I confronted him, and he told me that I wouldn’t see another dime. He just didn’t have it. So I attacked him. Money makes people do terrible things.”
“But then you tried to resuscitate him,” I remind him.
“Yeah, I did. When I left the shed, I was freaked out. I had no idea he was dead; I thought I’d strangled him unconscious.” Fresh tears form in his eyes. “Trying CPR, that was a real attempt to save his life.”
So Steven’s grief and tears and his statement to me—“I found my best friend dead”—were all legitimate, even though he was the one that caused it.
He clears his throat. “Hey. Would you do me a favor? Would you tell Anna that I’m really sorry, and that I never meant to cause her any pain? And Karen, too. I tried to point you in their direction. That was pretty awful of me.”
“Sure. I’ll tell them.” Not like I think it’ll do much good, of course.
“Thanks. I really am a nice guy, most of the time.”
“I’m sure. See you around, Steven.”
CHAPTER 17
* * *
“You sure you want to do this?” I ask Anna, holding the pen out to her.
“Yes. I’m sure.” She takes the pen, signs the adoption papers, and scoops Cheese up in her arms. “This way, Oliver will have someone to play with while I’m away at work.” She laughs a little. “Cheese and Crackers. So stupid. Come on, buddy, let’s go home.”
Sarah and I watch as Anna leaves the pet shop with her new dog. She puts her arm around my waist and leans her head on my shoulder. “That was nice,” she sighs.
“Yeah, it was.”
“You still owe me a fancy dinner.”
“I know I do… Cupcake.”
“No.”
“Muffin?”
“No.”
“Dumpling?”
“No! Come on, let’s close up and go to the Runside.”
“Okay… Sugar-Plum.”
“I’m ignoring you.”
***
At the Runside, we meet up with Sammy and the four of us—Rowdy included—take a booth and order a round of drinks as we fill Sammy in on all the details of the last day and a half.
“So let me get this straight,” he says. “You solved the murder, but if you’d just stayed out of it and waited a while, the cops would have done that anyway?”
“Well, yeah. Sort of,” I reply. “But I said that like five times, that we should just let the police handle it.”
“You did say that,” Sarah admits.
“So, in reality, did you actually solve it?” Sammy asks. “Or did they?”
“We both did. There’s no need to diminish my efforts.” I take a long sip of a Whale of an Ale. “Besides, it wasn’t all a waste. Cheese got adopted, and we got some much-needed closure with Karen.”
“Speak of the devil,” Sammy murmurs.
I turn in my seat to see Karen enter the Runside and head to the packed bar, seeking a seat.
“Will,” Sarah says softly, her eyes pleading with mine.
I groan. “Do we have to?”
“Will,” she says again, this time like a warning.
“Oh, fine.” I wave to Karen until she spots us in our booth at the corner, and I wave her over. She approaches somewhat sheepishly, like an uninvited guest at a party. I try to sound pleasant as I ask, “Would you like to join us, Karen?”
“Um…” She looks from me, to Sarah, to Sammy. “Sure. That would be nice.”
***
“See? That wasn’t so bad,” Sarah remarks as we head out to my car to go home.
“Sure it wasn’t.” I try to sound grumpy, but the truth is, it really wasn’t. I open the back door to let Rowdy in and then get into the driver’s seat.
Sarah pulls down the visor to take a glance in the mirror and something flutters down into her lap.
“What’s this?” she asks
, opening the pamphlet.
“Oh, just something Chief Mayhew gave to me earlier. I don’t know. She said I should think about it.”
“Private investigation, huh?” She leafs through it.
“What do you think?”
“I think you’d be good at it.”
“Really?” Admittedly, I haven’t given it much thought since I stuck the pamphlet in the visor that morning. “But what about the shop?”
“The shop’s doing fine with the two of us.” She shrugs. “Maybe you could make me full-time.”
“Huh. Maybe. I guess I’ll think about it.” I smile a little, considering how much things can change in the course of just a day.
THE END