“I always loved that show,” I said a little wistfully.
“I used to see the reruns when I was a little kid,” Ren said. “It was pretty good but changing your name because of it? That’s plain bizarre. Their whole marriage was bizarre.”
“What do you mean?”
“For starters, Kate dated other people and he dated other people. Why be married if you’re still going to date? Most husbands and wives wouldn’t tolerate that. I know my wife wouldn’t and neither would I.”
“I guess it was pretty popular back in the 1970’s. Open marriages.” I was only a child then but I remembered whispered stories about neighborhood couples who had open marriages. “So did everyone know about their open marriage? Everyone on the newspaper?”
“Sure. It wasn’t a secret. What puzzled all of us was who in their right mind would ever date Kate. She wasn’t exactly a beauty and her personality would never be described as sparkling but she kept finding guys who wanted to go out with her. It had to be her money.”
“There are a lot of people who will do anything for money,” I agreed.
“Even date someone like her.” Ren shuddered. “I was brought up never to speak ill of the dead but Kate has to be the exception to that rule since it would be hard to say anything nice about her, dead or alive. The woman was a horrible human being.”
“She wasn’t too pleasant,” I agreed, “but I can’t believe her husband killed her. He would have had to come into the newspaper and done it here.”
“Why is that surprising? It would make sense to kill her here instead of at their home. That would have been incredibly stupid. Have you ever seen that place? It’s all white. The crime lab technicians would have had a field day there. This way it looks like some disgruntled employee whacked her.”
It might have been my imagination but Ren’s eyes seemed to have taken on an odd glint and for a second I felt almost frightened of him. He looked possessed or obsessed or simply totally pissed off even though Kate was never going to order him to fix the plumbing or a sentence in one of his stories or anything else ever again. “True,” I agreed, “but why? I met him the other day and he seemed quite distraught. Maybe distraught is the wrong word but he did seem to be a little sad over losing her.”
“Yeah, right. So sad that he won’t be able to enjoy spending the money she left behind that’s all his now? I don’t think so, DeeDee. Most murders are committed by family members and spouses are high on that list. He did it.”
“Hmmm….” I said. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”
Ren leaned forward into his cubicle and I leaned into mine but my mind was no longer on the interview with the pediatrician magician. It was on Ren and the pure hatred I saw in his eyes when he talked about Kate. She had picked on him and he did seem on edge much of the time when Kate had been alive. Now he was a lot mellower. Maybe he had killed her. The plumber’s helper taped to her mouth seemed like a sure indicator that whoever had done the deed had an axe to grind, although it did strike me as a bit obvious if Ren had done it since everyone knew that he was the building’s on-call plumber. It seemed more likely to me that someone was trying to frame him but the police had talked to Ren and as far as I knew nothing had come of it.
Glancing at the wall clock, I saw that it was almost time to go home and find out what Tyler had learned. One thing was certain: I was getting closer to finding out who killed Kate although I still had absolutely no idea of who the murderer was.
“Ren,” I said before I left.
“Yes?”
“How did you hear that Kate’s husband was being questioned?”
“Bob Meredith told me. He heard it on the police scanner and went down to the police station to get the story. It’ll be in tomorrow’s paper.”
“See you tomorrow,” I said to Ren as I left the newsroom.
“How’s the column coming?”
“I’m getting there,” I assured him.
“I can’t wait to read it. Remember, Friday at five is the deadline.”
“You’ll have it.”
“Tell me everything,” I instructed Tyler a little while later. As soon as I’d gotten home I prepared a huge meal of eggs, sausage and hash browns for Tyler, operating on the theory that the smell of the sausage cooking would wake him up. I’d been right. He’d stumbled down the stairs just as the toast popped out of the toaster. I have to say that I couldn’t blame him since everything smelled delicious. My sniffs of ‘Fat Off’ must have worn off because not only was I back to my old appetite level, I was also no longer losing weight but I was more than okay with that. I’m not much of a gambler and the risks of taking ‘Fat Off’ and getting skinny were too high for me. Grabbing a sausage off Tyler’s plate, I asked, “What did you learn?”
“I learned that Kutrate Kemicals is a freaking awesome place to work,” Tyler told me. “I love it there!”
While that was definitely good news, it wasn’t what I wanted to hear at that moment. “That’s great, honey; I’m really happy to hear that but what about Fritz and Kate? Did you learn anything about them?”
“I sure did. Is there anymore toast?”
“I’ll get it for you.” Tyler’s been eating like he’s half-starved ever since he turned ten and I knew that he’d be a much better source of information on a full stomach. After putting two more pieces of toast into the toaster, I turned and looked at my son expectantly. “Well?”
“Well,” Tyler said, “did you know that Kate stole some of Fritz’s top secret stuff and was blackmailing him?”
“No! Are you serious? How did you find that out?”
“One of the other custodians told me. Apparently everyone knows about ‘Fat Off’ even though it’s supposed to be top secret. Kate was doing an expose on it and on Kutrate Kemicals and she was using Fritz to help her.”
“Did he know that she was using him?”
“I don’t know,” Tyler said. “Maybe.”
“Did you hear anything about them being business partners?”
“No. Were they?”
“I’m not quite sure what they were to each other.” Leaning back in my chair I thought hard as I watched Tyler eat. So Kate had been doing an expose on Kutrate Kemicals. A sour thought hit me. Kate had been mighty curious about Jane and her job at Kutrate. Was that why she hired me? It made sense—a lot more sense than the far-fetched notion that I was hired because of my yearly Christmas letter writing samples I’d submitted along with my resume. A wave of disappointment washed over me but I got over it pretty quickly. Maybe that was the reason I’d been hired but my job had morphed into something full-time and I was getting better at it every day.
“What are you thinking?” Tyler asked. “You’ve got that million miles away look in your eyes.”
“Just wondering about a few things.” I shook myself out of my fog. “Do you think you can find anything else out about how Kate was going to blackmail Fritz?”
Tyler shrugged. “I’ll keep my ears open. I’m sure I’ll hear something sooner or later.”
“You really liked working there last night, didn’t you?”
“Why do you sound so shocked?”
“Well…” I smiled, “you’ve had quite a few jobs in your twenty-some years on this planet.”
“Not that many,” Tyler replied, “and most of them sucked. This one isn’t rocket science but I did like it last night. I like moving my body, keeping busy and it was nice not to have to deal with a lot of people, you know?”
“Yes, I do. I like people but they can get exhausting.”
“You’ve got that right.” Tyler finished his coffee. “Time to take a shower. Thanks for the breakfast, Mom. It was great.”
“Thank you for all the information you found out.”
“Did it help?”
“It gave me some idea of what direction to go in.”
“Yeah? What direction would that be?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” I told him. “Hopefully Fritz will
come out of his coma and will be able to shed some light on this whole thing. He was about to tell me something big right before he passed out.”
“Is Jane still interested in him?”
“I think so. She’s been at the hospital every night.”
“Well, I hope he’s a good guy. She’s had her share of losers.” Tyler got up from the table and carried his plate over to the dishwasher. As I watched him, I thought about what he’d just said, about Jane having more than her share of losers. It was true enough but did I really want her to get together with Fritz—provided he came out of his coma? True, Fritz had a good job and if he could get a better deal with Kutrate Kemicals over ‘Fat Off’ he was going to be a very wealthy man, but I wanted more than just a good provider for my only daughter. Jane could provide for herself. What I wanted for her was love, the same kind of love that Steve and I had for each other. Would she be able to find that with Fritz Scheider?
My cell phone rang and I picked it up. It was Jane. “I was just thinking about you,” I said.
“Mom?” Jane sounded excited. “Fritz came out of his coma! He’s going to be all right and he wants to see you!”
Chapter Nineteen
“You gave me one heck of a scare,” I gently scolded Fritz from my chair next to his hospital bed. Fritz was ghostly pale which made his black hair look even darker. He had an IV going into one arm but other than that he looked all right. Tired with huge circles under his eyes, but all right. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I was hit by a truck,” Fritz said weakly. “My stomach hasn’t felt this bad since I had botulism poisoning when I was nine years old.”
“Was it—were you poisoned?” I asked, eyeing the IV. “I thought you were choking on something.” Fritz gestured toward the open door and made a motion for me to close it. After it was shut, I went back to my seat. “What is it?”
“It was poison,” Fritz whispered. “Bernard Morton poisoned me.”
“How do you know it was Bernard Morton?” I whispered back.
“Who else could it possibly be? Bernard knows that I’m unhappy with his handling of ‘Fat Off.’ If I’m out of the picture permanently then he no longer has to deal with me.”
“But murder? Isn’t that a bit extreme?”
“Not when it comes to money. I believe he killed Kate Weston too.”
“Why?”
“She was blackmailing him. She knew about ‘Fat Off’ and she knew about the potential problems with it. She threatened to do an expose if he didn’t pay up.”
Wait a second. I figured that Kate had been blackmailing Fritz, not Bernard. Then again, it would make a lot more sense for her to go after the big bucks. “And what would those be?”
Fritz lifted a weak hand and waved it back and forth in the air. “A whole lot of environmental impact problems. They’ll be solved eventually but Kate wanted a piece of the action or she was going to spill the whole story in the Kemper Times. She said it would earn her a Pulitzer. I suspect she was going to take money from Bernard and still write the story. Kate wasn’t weighed down by too many scruples.”
“Wow,” I breathed, unable to imagine the people who gave out the Pulitzer Prize ever giving the Kemper Times an award for anything. “Kate was a lot more ambitious than I realized.”
“She was a greedy, selfish woman who would stop at nothing to get what she wanted. We were business partners when she gave me money to do independent research but that ended when her talons became too sharp for me to handle. I told her I needed freedom from her micro-managing ways and she threatened to tell that fathead Bernard Morton that I was doing research on the side.”
It sounded to me like Fritz had more of a reason to get rid of Kate than Bernard Morton did but I wisely kept my mouth shut. “So how did you break away from her?”
“I told her we were through, that’s how!” Fritz’s energy was returning. “She was angry, of course, and believe me, anger did nothing to improve her looks, but she agreed that we were no longer business partners.”
I was stumped. How was what Fritz was telling me supposed to help me? There was no way that I believed Bernard Morton had snuck into the newspaper, killed Kate while the rest of us were there, and then snuck out unnoticed. Fritz was simply overwhelmed with his hatred of both Kate and Bernard. But there was no need to tell him that, not in his condition. I patted his arm gently. “You need to concentrate on getting better,” I suggested. “We can talk more then.”
“Yes,” Fritz agreed, his head dropping back on his pillow. “We’ll talk more when I feel better. Next time take notes, DeeDee. I want to make sure you’re getting all of this down correctly.”
I smiled at Fritz and then got up to leave. I was at the door when Fritz spoke again. “I know I’m right about Bernard Morton, DeeDee. Please don’t let me down. Nail his murdering, thieving hide to the wall for me.”
“I’ll do my best,” I promised. With that, I tiptoed out of the room.
“Fritz is wrong,” I told Steve about twenty minutes later. We were taking a walk around the neighborhood and I was filling him in on what Fritz had said to me. “It can’t be Bernard Morton. That’s too farfetched.”
“It does seem a little unlikely,” Steve agreed. “Besides, I thought the police had arrested Kate’s husband.”
“I don’t think he was arrested. They were talking to him as a person of interest. He hasn’t formally been charged with anything. Yet.”
Steve sighed deeply. “You don’t think either of them did it, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Who do you think killed Kate Weston?”
I didn’t answer my husband for a few minutes. I had my suspicions but I wasn’t sure if I was ready to voice them out loud, not even to Steve. “Let me chew on it for a while,” I requested. “I have an idea but it’s almost as farfetched as Bernard Morton being the killer. There’s something I need to find out before I know if I’m right or not.”
“What’s that?”
“If Fritz was really poisoned or not.”
“What difference would that make?”
“I’m not sure,” I said slowly, “but it might confirm that who I think is the killer really and truly is the killer or at least it will knock Bernard Morton out of the running. He’s a creep but I just don’t see him being a murderer and I don’t see how he could have possibly gotten poison into the food Fritz ate at the Coffee Hut. I was sitting at the table the entire time unless he snuck back into the kitchen and did it there. But why would he? Fritz is paranoid when it comes to Bernard.”
“If it wasn’t Bernard, then who killed Kate?”
“I’m working on that one too. One thing I do know for sure: the woman had a whole lot of enemies.”
Steve shook his head. “I don’t know that I want you working at that newspaper anymore, DeeDee.”
I hugged his arm close to me. “You know what? Neither am I. I like full-time work and everything but I think I’d like to find something a little slower paced, like being the receptionist at a senior living home. I couldn’t possibly get into trouble there.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Steve replied.
“He wasn’t poisoned. Well, not with poison. It was food poisoning,” Tyler informed me a few hours later.
It was almost midnight when my cell phone rang. I grabbed it off my nightstand and headed downstairs before it woke Steve. “Food poisoning? From what?”
“Apparently he had fish tacos for lunch yesterday at that new Mexican restaurant at the mall and there was something wrong with the fish. A whole bunch of people got sick.”
“So Bernard Morton didn’t poison him.”
“You didn’t really think he did, did you, Mom?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Fritz sounds like a disgruntled employee to me. From what I’ve heard about Mr. Morton he’s not the greatest human being in the world but he’s not a murderer either.”
“I agree.”
“So that isn’t m
uch help with who killed your boss, is it?”
“It narrows the field and that’s a help. Thanks, honey, for letting me know so quickly. How’s your night going?”
“Awesome. I can play my music as loud as I want and no one cares. I love this job.”
I wished I felt that way about my job. As Caroline had predicted on my first day at the newspaper, it was game over for me. There was too much work and too few people and the pay really did stink, even at twelve dollars an hour. I was so tired when I got home that I wanted to take a nap before dinner. Maybe the time had come for me to start thinking about another profession, something that suited me a little bit better. What that might be, however, I didn’t have a clue.
After ending my call with Tyler, I wandered into the living room and sat in the dark for a little while, not to ruminate on my pathetic work history but to try to think through what had happened to Kate. I really didn’t think that Bernard Morton murdered her. It had to be someone at the paper which meant that the list of suspects was pretty small. There was Jeff, Caroline, Ren, Frank, Bob, and Sam. Oh, and Natalie. Lou Grant Weston was also a possibility but a long shot. He was a little too obvious. Staring out through the front window into the dark night, I tried to imagine each of my co-workers doing Kate in. Kate was a tiny thing so I was sure that any of them would have been able to strangle her. Wincing, I thought about how horrible that had to have been for Kate, having her life squeezed out of her. After a little more thought I decided that I could probably strike Natalie and Caroline from my list. It would take a fair amount of strength to keep Kate quiet while she was being choked and Natalie, in spite of her youthful appearance, was around fifty and Caroline was a string bean who probably wouldn’t have been able to choke Kate and keep her from screaming.
Unless they worked together. What if whoever killed Kate had a partner in crime? One to hold her mouth shut and the other to strangle her? Oh, boy. With my co-workers, that would most likely be one time when they showed some team spirit and cooperation.
Black and White and Dead All Over: A Midlife Crisis Mystery (Midlife Crisis Mysteries) Page 21