She dreaded running that electronic gauntlet when her turn came. She supposed she could leave by the back door—no, then the children would have to come through the house. It might not be so bad, though, if only they didn’t have to see their mother’s room. Maybe even less frightening than being forbidden to enter their own house entirely.
I hope I can get some of their things for them, she thought. A sudden silence told her that the washer had finished spinning. Maybe she ought to put the laundry in the dryer.
“Well,” said Fred beside her, “what did you think?”
“About Daniel? I thought he was used to being suspected of doing something wrong.”
He looked at her with the raised eyebrows of respect. She dared a question.
“He sounded genuinely surprised about the oboe, as if he’d forgotten all about it. Is it really missing?”
“We haven’t found it. You’d think she’d have it ready, if she knew he was coming. Of course, we haven’t found the murder weapon, either, unless it’s an ordinary household knife. We’re going through every drawer in the house. It’s not on Daniel. He asked us to search him and we did.”
“And he did call you.”
“Well, he couldn’t be sure someone hadn’t seen him. Discovering the body is an old one. But he did volunteer to answer questions after we read him his rights.”
“Not to change the subject, but does everything really have to stay as it is until you solve this?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Does the family have to get out and leave everything behind? I was thinking that would be awfully hard on them.”
“We’ll probably seal her room for a few days. I imagine they’ll want to be somewhere else until it’s cleaned up. We can’t do that yet.”
“What about clothes and things?”
“They can take what they need. Why?”
“I thought while I’m waiting, maybe I could finish the laundry in case they’ll need it. I wouldn’t mind.”
“What do you mean, finish?”
“I heard the washer shut off when Daniel left. I could put the things in the dryer, if that’s okay.”
“I’ll see if they’re done in there yet.”
In a few moments he beckoned to her.
“You go right ahead.”
After the living room, an orderly kitchen was only to be expected. Something was simmering in a Crock Pot and the dishes in the drainer were covered with a clean towel. An ironing board stood ready, the iron plugged in but not turned on. Dampened rolls in a wicker basket took Joan back to her young married days, before new fabrics—and new attitudes—had changed everything. Well, she’d volunteered; she might as well iron the stuff before it mildewed. Inspecting the contents of the basket briefly, she set the iron on Cotton to heat.
When she opened the lid of the washer, she thought for a moment it was empty. Centrifugal force had flattened the two bulky items against the tub’s perforations, embossing little round bumps on their terry cloth surfaces, which she saw when she peeled them off the sides and tossed them into the dryer.
A sudden thought stopped her hand before it touched the knob.
“Fred,” she called.
He came with that rapid but unhurried walk she’d seen earlier.
“Look at these. They’re wet.”
“You expected dry?”
“Fred, I’m serious.”
“You’d better tell me.” A certain I’m-being-patient-with-this-nonsense tone.
“Fred, this tells us she was still alive about forty minutes ago.”
The respect was missing from his raised eyebrows this time.
“Sure,” she insisted. “I used to have almost the twin of this machine. Set like this, it takes about forty minutes from start to finish. I heard it when I came in and I told you just now when it went off. Maybe Daniel heard it, too, without hearing it, if you know what I mean. Remember, he said he thought she couldn’t hear the doorbell?”
Now he was nodding. He reached into the dryer and shook out a large white bath towel and a blue terrycloth robe with a hood.
“Forty minutes, you say?”
“Mine would take that long. A little less, maybe, if she set it to wash six minutes instead of twelve. You can’t tell that. Most of it is the filling and spinning time, though. This one is set on regular, extra high, with a cold wash and cold rinse—the things are cold, aren’t they? That usually takes longer than a warm rinse, because water comes in from only one faucet. It’s easy enough to check. Just start it. It won’t matter whether there’s anything in it or not.”
“We’ll do that. I think, on the whole, you’d better not dry these. I’ll keep them. We might need a statement from you about hearing the washer.”
He bore the wet things off. Joan sighed. She hitched up her jeans and wiped her forehead. Testing the iron’s sizzle with two wet fingers, she unwrapped the first blue cotton bundle and set herself to a chore she hadn’t faced at home in months.
Ironing wasn’t her idea of fun, but it beat sitting in that painfully neat parlor doing nothing while the police carried out their routine. She welcomed the physical task that left her mind free even as she resented the man who would expect his wife to iron cotton work shirts. No, that wasn’t fair. Wanda probably chose them herself. They went with the doilies.
By the time the uniformed officer came to tell her that Mr. Borowski had come home, she knew something didn’t make sense. Thinking about it was like trying to get a good look at one of the little floaters in her eye. When she’d aim at it, it would slide off in the opposite direction, only to swim back annoyingly into her peripheral vision where she couldn’t focus clearly.
13
Stanislaus Borowski kept repeating himself.
He stood in the middle of the living room, his arms outstretched and his calloused hands squeezing the air in front of him. Sweat stained his familiar blue cotton shirt.
“She was fine when I left home,” he was saying. “How’s a guy supposed to know a thing like this is gonna happen? They call me for some overtime. She’s fine, the kids are fine, I go. A man’s gotta work, you know? Why’d anybody do a thing like this? How’m I supposed to know? My God, they didn’t even take the cash off the dresser. Why’d anybody want to do a thing like this?”
“We all want to know, Mr. Borowski,” Lundquist said. “We want to get the person who did it.”
“How’s that gonna help me, huh? Where’s that leave me? How’s that gonna take care of the kids? My God, she was fine this morning.”
From the kitchen doorway, Joan recognized his outraged disbelief and overtones of guilt. Clothed in pious words, or expressed as openly as this, it was a part of grief she knew all too well. She had reacted to Ken’s death with stunned silence and tears, but the monologue inside her head would have shocked many of her friends.
She waited for a cue from Fred. It came.
“Mr. Borowski, this is Mrs. Spencer. She knew your wife and is willing to take the children home with her today, while you get your bearings. Would that help?”
He seemed to notice her for the first time. He dropped his hands.
“Thanks, lady, but no, thanks. I’ll call my sister.” He wheeled around to face Fred. “Where are they, anyhow?”
“Your neighbors say they went to the park a couple of hours ago. We have a man looking.”
“I gotta find ’em. You do anything you want to about that damn killer. I gotta find my girls.” He charged out the front door, ignoring the crowd.
Fred motioned to a plainclothesman. “Stick with him, Joe, and phone in when you know the kids are safe. We’ll talk to him later.”
Churning inside, Joan found her purse and left.
Hours later, Lundquist unlocked his own door. The smell hit him first, and the phone started ringing before he made it to the kitchen. He knew what was coming, but it was worse than he had imagined. Both ways.
Tucking the receiver between a shoulder and an ear, he
began scraping dough off the tabletop and floor. “Hello.”
“Fred, where on earth have you been?” Catherine’s voice combined whining and demanding into one shrill tone. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Pushing seven?” He peeled the once-wet towels off the stickiness overflowing his two-foot wooden proofing bowls and resisted the temptation to throw the scrapings back in. Sure, the bread would be sterile after an hour in a hot oven, but no one would tolerate finding even a sterile hair in a sandwich.
“I came by to pick up the bread two hours ago and I’ve called every fifteen minutes since. What do you think you’re doing?”
“Well, Catherine, I’ll tell you. I think I’m doing my job. We had a little emergency today.”
“I’m coming now.”
“No, wait.” He caught her before she hung up. “Don’t. I didn’t bake it.”
“You what?” Her dismay deafened him.
“I didn’t even get it into the pans. I’m sorry. I should have warned you sooner.”
Risen and then fallen back on itself, the bread would be dry at best. Edible, maybe, if he skipped the second rising and baked the loaves immediately after shaping them.
Her voice yammered on as if one batch of sourdough were the be-all and end-all. He half-listened while punching down what hadn’t landed on the floor. The dough didn’t fight back. It lay in the bowls inertly, without elasticity. There was no point in letting her go on.
“Catherine, I really am sorry. There’s nothing I can do with this stuff. The best I can offer is to stop by Brackett’s for you. Their cottage cheese dill bread is good, and their pumpernickel.”
“Forget it. I’ll manage.”
He pulled the receiver away from his ear just in time. Even at arm’s length he could hear her slam down the phone. He suspected her of smashing it onto a table before hanging up. It wasn’t the first time. The next step in the dance, he knew, was for him to arrive on her doorstep with flowers and apologies. Poised to rush off to her party, she would accept with a devastating graciousness that stung worse than the anger she was dishing out now. Not tonight. He wasn’t up to being devastated.
He dumped the dough into the wet garbage. Let Milligan’s pigs party tomorrow.
When the phone rang again, he didn’t bother to hide his fatigue. “Yeah?”
“Fred, it’s Joan. Am I interrupting your supper?”
“No, I just walked in. Problem?” He leaned against the wall, afraid to sit down.
“I’m all right. I’ve been thinking about Wanda and I may have figured out a connection. Would you like to come over? We haven’t eaten yet either. There’s plenty.”
“I’m on my way.”
She fed him first. One look at his face had told her that much. Andrew, too, seemed to recognize Fred’s weariness. He kept up a line of patter that required little response, avoiding what was on all their minds.
Over coffee in the living room, Joan finally brought it up.
“Did they find the children, Fred?”
“Oh, sure. They were on their way home. Borowski broke it to them and took them to their aunt’s. They’re pretty tough.”
“He was taking it hard. You don’t suspect him, do you?”
“We did, of course. There was no break-in. No sign of an intruder. Nothing was stolen, not even her grandmother’s silver from Poland. She wasn’t beaten or raped. She probably let the killer in. The door was open and the screen was unhooked.”
Joan thought with a sinking feeling of her own wide-open house. Fred went on.
“The neighbors say she was careful, but she seems to have trusted the killer enough to walk into the bedroom while he was there. There’s no sign of force. Sure, we suspected him. According to the neighbors, their home life wasn’t all that peaceful. Actually, they said she did most of the yelling. If he’d been killed, I’d have to be looking at her.”
“I wondered if she was hard to live with. I was thinking more of the kids, though.”
“It doesn’t matter. Stan Borowski spent the morning fixing a broken water main across from the post office. He was on a six-man crew from seven-thirty until we found him. He’s clear, short of putting out a contract on his wife, and that I don’t see.”
“No. Fred, the oboe is the obvious connection, isn’t it?”
“Which we don’t have.”
“Which the murderer probably took. Even if it was Daniel. When Andrew carried the paper, he knew every shortcut and garbage can on his route. Daniel could have hidden the oboe somewhere. The case isn’t all that big. If Wanda called him as he said she did, he’d have to come back. For all he’d know, she might have told someone else he was coming, and then not showing up would be something he’d have to explain away.”
“And the weapon might be with the oboe,” he said. “Could be.”
“It might have been with it all along.”
“Come again?”
“Fred, have you ever seen a reed knife?”
“A reed knife?”
“It looks a little bit like a straight razor, but it doesn’t fold up. At least the ones I’ve seen don’t. You know, those double reeds on oboes and bassoons cost a small fortune, and they’re so unreliable that most players cut their own. It’s the only way to get them the way they want them. They almost all shape them, even if they buy them ready-made. A real snob like George wouldn’t dream of that, though.”
“I never got past a number two Rico sax reed in the marching band.”
“Sax and clarinet reeds are cheaper. Not so many people bother. But good players work them over, too, and when they get one they like, they save it for performances.”
“You think Petris had a reed knife with his oboe?”
“I know he had one. I saw him using it.”
“And this knife would be strong enough—you didn’t see her, did you?”
“They look plenty strong to me. You could check Sam’s or Elmer’s.”
“Is the whole orchestra armed to the teeth?”
“Hardly. The other bassoonist probably has one. The clarinets might. Why would they want to kill Wanda?”
“Why would anyone? This isn’t narrowing it down. If the knife was in the oboe case and she had it out for Daniel, anyone could have used it. For that matter, a sharp pocketknife could probably have done the job.”
“I keep coming back to that oboe,” she said. “Maybe somebody wanted it. Maybe that’s why they were both killed.”
“Who would want an oboe?”
“I don’t know, but it’s gone. Of course, it might not have been the oboe at all. The murderer could have taken it so we wouldn’t notice that the knife was missing. Maybe George was killed for some other reason and Wanda was too close to him. If she saw something important and remembered it, that would make her too dangerous. Maybe she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Can you draw me a map? Where was everybody when Petris collapsed?”
She tried. It was all out of proportion, but it did place the violins on the conductor’s left, with the firsts on the outside and the seconds next to them. On the far right, she put the cellos and beside them, the violas. In the inner circle of the fan-shaped orchestra, she drew the first stand of each of the strings, except, of course, the basses, who stood at the back. In the second row were two cellos, John Hocking, Joan, Sam Wade, George Petris, Wanda Borowski, another flute, and four violins. Behind herself, Joan remembered a space not quite big enough to protect her ears from the trumpets. Behind Sam sat the demoted lady bassoonist; behind George, Elmer Rush; and to his right, the clarinets. Across the back row were the basses, the tuba, Nancy and the other trombones, the horns, and, on the far side, the tympani.
Fred led her again through the story of George’s collapse and the end of the rehearsal. Nothing new.
“Do you remember where any of these people were when the refreshments were being served?”
“I’ve gone over it a dozen times in my mind. About all I can t
ell you are some who didn’t have any.”
“That might be a start.”
“John didn’t leave his seat. He’s dieting. His daughter was doing homework. The horns were practicing and so was one of the trumpets. I could find out which one, but I’d guess it was the first. Sam stayed put, too, thank goodness. I would have been the first casualty if he hadn’t been there to catch me when I tripped on my own big feet. A lot of people went outside to beat the heat, but I don’t know how many of them stopped at the table. The concertmaster was out, I know. He took his sweet time coming back. Not much help, is it?”
“Was Petris one of the ones who went out?”
“I don’t know. Not for long, if he did. He did have a drink. I think Nancy said Glenda Wallston served him.”
“Oh, she did, did she?”
“You’ve heard that story?”
“Not from you,” he said.
“I told you there was gossip.”
“There sure is,” Andrew said. “I heard about Lisa Wallston from Jennifer.”
“I’ll look into it.” Fred didn’t tell them what Daniel had already confirmed.
“Fred, I don’t believe half the things I’ve heard about George,” Joan said. “You’d think death would make people kinder, but it seems to do just the opposite.” She tried to sip from her empty coffee cup and put it down absently. “It’s obscene to go digging into his life like that.”
“This isn’t just death, Joan. This is murder. If you’re right, then those three children are motherless because someone wanted to kill George Petris. We don’t know who that someone is or what he might do next, or why. It doesn’t even matter what was true about Petris. What matters is what someone out there believes. What would be obscene would be to hold back anything now that might help prevent still another murder.”
“You don’t think …” Her voice trailed off.
“I do think. I think you’re right about why Wanda Borowski was killed. I spent the afternoon talking with people about her. Family, friends, neighbors, even her priest. Nothing. If there’s no connection to Petris, I’m lost, and the only one I can see besides Daniel and the oboe itself is the orchestra. I think any one of you could be in danger, especially the people who sat near enough to Petris to see whatever she might have seen.”
Murder in C Major Page 9