The Question of the Felonious Friend

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The Question of the Felonious Friend Page 10

by E. J. Copperman


  That reminded me that I had still not heard from Sandy Clayton Webb since Tyler’s arrest, and that was odd.

  “I’m glad you understand,” Ms. Washburn said.

  “Of course.”

  I noticed Ms. Washburn turning right on Easton Avenue in Somerset, the opposite direction one would take heading for the Questions Answered office. “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “To see Simon,” she sighed.

  Sometimes it is difficult for me to understand the “neurotypical.”

  Standing now in his rather bare apartment in Edison, Simon Taylor peered at me as if deciding something. He put his hand to the stubble on his chin and stroked it as if trying to assess if he needed a shave. “How come every time I hear about my wife working with you, somebody’s been murdered?” he asked.

  “Ex-wife,” Ms. Washburn corrected.

  “Not yet, you’re not.”

  Ms. Washburn turned away. I could see her face but Simon could not. It was not a difficult expression to decipher. I looked over at Simon, and his expression was considerably less predictable—he looked surprised.

  He was what would be considered a physically attractive man, given societal standards. He stood approximately six feet tall, had dark hair and eyes, and had no visible blemishes or scars. I am not the best judge of aesthetics, so I trusted that Ms. Washburn had found him to be at least reasonably handsome. Beyond that, I knew few details about their marriage, and knew only that Simon had not been pleased with his wife’s decision to work at Questions Answered, although she assured me that was not a cause of their impending divorce.

  “Our work does not often involve this kind of question,” I said. “But in this case, it would be extremely helpful if you could tell me about this die.” I felt it best to redirect the conversation back to our purpose in coming here.

  Simon looked at the die I was extending in my hand. Then his eyes looked back at the woman who, as he had pointed out, was still his wife. His features softened. “Let me see it,” he said, and took the die rather abruptly from my hand. I am not fond of having people touch me, particularly those I have not met before, but I did not have time to react. I believe my hand might have withdrawn a little quickly, but I am not certain.

  He examined the item closely inside the bag. If it was determined to be significant to the question of his death, I would make sure Detective Hessler was given the die for the police laboratory to analyze. If it were simply another die from a game of Swords and Sorcerers, there would be no need for that.

  “It’s not one of the standard dice from the game sets,” Simon said. “It’s the wrong color and some of these runes are in a font I don’t recognize. How serious was the guy who owned this about S and S?”

  This was the subject of some debate. Ms. Washburn and I had discussed the die on the way to Simon’s apartment, to which she informed me he had moved after she had asked him to move out of their home in Cranford. She was, she said, in the process of trying to sell the house and find a place to live closer to the Questions Answered office.

  In the car, she had vacillated about the importance of the die in our attempt to answer the question at hand. “We don’t even know if it’s Richard’s,” she’d said. “Tyler plays S and S. The die could be his.” It occurred to me that even after she had decided to drive to her husband’s home, Ms. Washburn was attempting to find a reason not to do so.

  “It is possible,” I had admitted. “It is also possible that the die belongs to a third party of whom we are not yet aware. If the killing was related to the game, as the presence of the die might or might not indicate, someone from either Tyler or Richard’s Swords and Sorcerers group might be the guilty party, or at least involved. So we don’t know about the ownership of the item yet. Perhaps your husband might be able to shed some light on that issue as well.”

  “Yeah,” she sighed. “Maybe he can.” Then she drove without speaking for the rest of the trip.

  Simon Taylor looked over the twenty-sided die (which I had examined more closely) in his hand. “How serious?” he asked again.

  “I am unable to answer that question with any assurance,” I said. “We are not sure who might have owned the die.”

  Simon’s lips curled. “Figures.” He turned the die around in his hand. “It’s not someone who’s casual about the game,” he said. “Somebody who plays once in a while wouldn’t go out of his way to get customized dice made special, even if they had to order them online from a catalog. They’d just use the ones that come in the box.”

  “Tyler Clayton plays Swords and Sorcerers with people online, not with the other people in the same room,” I said. “Would that make a difference?”

  Simon nodded. “It could. If he’s not the SM, he might not need to have dice at all.”

  His use of game jargon had confused me. “The SM?” I asked. I had heard the letters used in a different context that seemed to have no significance under these circumstances.

  “Sword master,” said Ms. Washburn, who had turned back to face her husband and me. “The person who basically runs the game.”

  “So that person, whomever it might be in Tyler’s group, would keep the dice?” I asked.

  Again, Simon Taylor nodded, but I noticed he was paying more attention to Ms. Washburn than to me or the item in his hand. “It’s even possible to play online using virtual dice, so you wouldn’t need the real ones at all.”

  I turned toward Ms. Washburn. “We have to find out who Richard Handy was playing the game with,” I said. “And we need to talk to the members of Tyler’s group.”

  Simon shook his head. “Look—people who play S and S aren’t the freaks the media wants you to believe. I can’t imagine anybody getting killed over a game.”

  I understood the problem that people who are different might face when fighting the image of media perceptions. Some members of the public believe everyone with an autism spectrum disorder acts in the same fashion. I believed our encounter with Tyler Clayton, so far, had proved we do not.

  “It’s entirely possible the game had nothing to do with Richard’s death,” I said. “It is just an object that was found at the scene. He might have had it in his pocket.”

  Simon twirled the die in his hand again. “It’s got a nice feel to it,” he said. “And the runes. That’s the part that’s weird.”

  “Why?” Ms. Washburn asked.

  “There are a couple I don’t recognize, and that shouldn’t happen,” he said. “Even if the style is different, the shapes should be standard, like the ones I use.”

  “How are these different?” I asked. The hieroglyphics on the item were meaningless to me, so his assessment would be valuable.

  Simon took his time considering. “Well like I said, the font is different. This is more ornate. It’s not as readable, but that doesn’t seem to have been important to the person who ordered this dice.” I suppressed again the urge to correct his misuse of the word. “It’s possible this wasn’t used in a game, that whoever bought it just wanted it to look cool.”

  That was a concept I did not completely understand. “If the die was not being used for its intended purpose, what value would its design have among game players?” I asked.

  Ms. Washburn smiled slightly. “Simon has an electric guitar he doesn’t know how to play because he thinks it looks cool,” she said, her expression indicating she might be teasing. “It’s how he used to attract girls.”

  Simon Taylor’s face seemed to soften. Until now he had been avoiding eye contact with his wife, looking at her only when her attention was focused elsewhere. Now their eyes met. “Worked once,” he said.

  Ms. Washburn looked away.

  Concerned that the conversation was drifting from the central point, I asked Simon, “Where would someone buy a die like that one?”

  “There are places. Mostly online. I can send Janet
some links in her e-mail.”

  I would have thought Ms. Washburn, who had been resistant to contact her estranged husband, would have balked at such a suggestion, but she nodded. “You know where to find me.”

  “One last question, Mr. Taylor,” I said. Simon, who had been smiling as if at a private joke, looked over at me and his expression became more serious. “What is your favorite Beatles song?”

  I made a point of not looking at Ms. Washburn after asking the question, and kept my attention fixed on Simon. His eyes narrowed, and then he looked in Ms. Washburn’s direction, thinking. “‘Here, There and Everywhere,’” he said.

  I could not accurately determine anything about his personality from that answer because it was clear he was lying.

  But Ms. Washburn, whom Simon was watching, put her hand to her mouth.

  It was disturbing to me on a number of levels: First, it was for my business that Ms. Washburn had suggested coming to question her husband, so any potential reconciliation would be at least partially my responsibility. Second, the idea that Ms. Washburn could be so easily influenced by a man whom she had grown to mistrust was somewhat disturbing in our business.

  But the thing I found most upsetting was that I had glanced just for a moment to the right, down the hall into Simon’s bedroom. I had not intended to absorb any information; Simon had no bearing on the question we were answering other than the technical help he volunteered.

  During the half second of my look, however, I had noticed that Simon’s bed was not made, his dresser drawers were open, and his socks were strewn about the room and on the rug, not necessarily in pairs.

  And there was a blue brassiere hanging out of one of the drawers.

  “We have several areas of research to pursue,” I told Ms. Washburn when we were back at the Questions Answered office. “When your estranged husband sends you the list of possible sources for the Swords and Sorcerers die, we can determine if that item is unique or something that might have been mass produced, even if just for a limited run that would appeal to certain specialists in the game. That might lead us to someone in Richard’s group.”

  Ms. Washburn sat down at her desk and immediately engaged her computer. She had chosen not to use a MacBook Pro like my own, being more proficient in the Windows operating system, which is not as efficient but offers more compatible software. She immediately began hitting keys on her keyboard.

  “What else will we be looking at?” she asked.

  I wanted to ask her about the visit to Simon Taylor but was at a loss to determine how that subject should be broached. After having announced quite definitively that she was divorcing Simon and having filed the necessary papers, which were in process, her demeanor in Simon’s apartment had been confusing. Once he had begun to make obvious effort to appeal to her, Ms. Washburn had seemed amenable to his attempts, which was counterintuitive. I could ask Mother about the dynamic later, but even talking to her about marriage was somewhat uncomfortable, since my father had left us when I was at such an early age.

  Complicating the matter, of course, was the information I had that I assumed Ms. Washburn did not, which was that her husband had certainly entertained in his bedroom a woman who one could only assume was not terribly fastidious about her underwear, and certainly had not been wearing it for at least some of the time she was there. That would probably be pertinent information going forward, but I was not certain whether it was my place to mention it. I couldn’t even decide whether to discuss the matter with my mother, who would understand the marital institution better than I but who might find the subject matter disturbing, especially coming from her son.

  Indeed, I was not completely sure Simon’s behavior would be a problem. Ms. Washburn might simply have been trying to be civil with her ex-husband and had no intention of reconciling. And while they were in the process of divorcing, it was likely any extracurricular affairs he had might be irrelevant.

  But it had worried me, and it was now becoming a distraction from the question at hand.

  For now, I decided, I would continue to refrain from talking to Ms. Washburn about her marriage or her divorce. Perhaps I would do some online research on the subjects later to better understand the emotions involved.

  “Besides the die, our best bets fall into three categories,” I said in answer to her question. “We have the two Swords and Sorcerers groups. We can get the names of Tyler’s co-players from Sandy or Mason Clayton, or perhaps from the hard drive on Tyler’s computer. If Tyler gains his composure to the point where he can speak again he might be very helpful indeed, but we don’t know if or when that might happen.”

  “What are the other two categories?” Ms. Washburn asked.

  “Second, there is Richard Handy’s Swords and Sorcerers group,” I said. “But that will be more difficult to research. We need to find out if Richard had any family members in the area who might be able to shed some light on his acquaintances. A third line of inquiry would be interviewing the other Quik N EZ counter employee, Billy Martinez, whose contact information Mr. Robinson provided. And there is another avenue I had not considered until now.”

  Ms. Washburn looked up from her screen. “What’s that?”

  “Tyler Clayton’s social skills group.”

  Eleven

  Sandy Clayton Webb called back that afternoon at 3:26. She explained that she’d been dealing with Tyler’s legal defense and attending his arraignment, during which bail was set at $250,000. Sandy and Mason were attempting to raise the required funds but so far had not been able to do so. She said Tyler was not any more communicative than he had been since Richard’s shooting, and “staying in jail isn’t helping him do any better.”

  “What can you tell me about his social skills therapy?” I asked her.

  For reasons I could not identify, that seemed to confuse Sandy. “What?” she asked.

  I repeated the question. Ms. Washburn, watching from her desk, raised an eyebrow.

  “I don’t really know that much about Tyler’s therapy,” Sandy said after a moment. “That’s really more Mason’s department; he drives Tyler back and forth most weeks. Why are you asking about it?”

  “It is a possible area of research,” I explained. “It might have some significance in Richard Handy’s death.”

  The silence this time lasted eight seconds. That is a much longer time for a lull in conversation than it might seem. In my own social skills therapy with Dr. Mancuso, I once timed a period of silence at twenty-two seconds, although Mary McWaters, sitting next to me, insisted the interval was at least two minutes. It was not.

  “You think Tyler really did shoot that guy at the convenience store?” Sandy sounded shocked. “You think you can find evidence of that by asking Dr. Shean about his group sessions? I thought we hired you to prove that Tyler is innocent.”

  “Your brother Mason hired us to answer the question of who killed Richard Handy,” I reminded her. “I approach the process without any prejudice. The facts lead us to the correct answer, not the desired one.”

  Ms. Washburn stood up carrying a piece of paper in her hand. She brought it to my desk and set it in front of me.

  It read, You don’t always have to tell all the truth.

  “But you seem to be trying to prove that Tyler shot him,” Sandy said again. “That’s what you think, isn’t it?”

  “I have not yet formed an opinion,” I said, wondering why Ms. Washburn would want me to conceal some facts from a client. How would I decide which ones to withhold? We would have to discuss this at length later, I thought. “I feel it is best to explore every area which might lead us to some more illuminating facts. Can you tell me the names of the other people in Tyler’s social skills group?”

  Ms. Washburn turned her head sharply and looked at me, brow furrowed. I nodded in her direction; yes, I was aware we already had that information. It was Sandy’s reaction that
was the important piece of information being sought here.

  It was swift and clipped. “I’m not going to violate that confidence,” Sandy said. I believed her voice was taking on what Mother would consider a “cold” quality. I was not sure how speech could be measured for temperature and even knowing that was an expression some people used did not help me understand it more fully. I did get the impression that Sandy was not trying as hard to sound friendly as she had before. “Those people didn’t ask to be subjected to your questioning, Mr. Hoenig. They have enough problems as it is.”

  The use of the word problems was most significant in my mind. Sandy clearly thought of her brother and others like us as damaged, in some way not as whole as the neurotypical majority. It was stored away in my mind for later. I was not sure knowing that would lead to a swifter or more accurate answer to Mason’s question, but at this stage the point was to gather information, not to analyze it.

  “Very well,” I said. “Can you answer this for me, then: Why would Tyler put one hundred dollars in the tip container when he went to buy a cold drink from Richard Handy, and where would he gain access to that amount of money?”

  Sandy’s voice was little more than a whisper. “Tyler tipped that guy a hundred dollars?”

  “He did, and the casual nature of the gesture indicated that this was probably not the first time it had occurred. I wonder if this was a habit of his. Do you know if he had a bank account he could tap into, and why he might want to bestow that kind of gift on Richard?”

  “I have no idea,” Sandy replied. “You’ll have to ask Mason. I’m sorry, Mr. Hoenig, but I need to go now.”

  “Can we continue this discussion later?” I asked. Sandy was one of the few sources I had who could tell me about Tyler and his behavior before the shooting. Cutting the conversation short was telling, but it was not helpful to my answering the question.

  “I’m afraid not,” Sandy answered, which surprised me. When people are impolite, as when they abruptly end a phone conversation, there is usually either a good reason or some indication that the person is angry. Neither was the case this time. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call me again.”

 

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