A Capital Offense

by Gary Parker

  Connie put the ring back and moved to the next drawer. Underwear filled it almost to the brim—simple white, size medium. Nothing fancy about Jack when it came to the essentials. She searched through all the drawers one by one but found nothing unusual in them. Just clothing, all the normal stuff a normal guy wore every day.

  Finished with the dresser, she pondered what to do with all the clothes. Give Daniel what he could wear, then the rest to the church’s clothes closet.

  Leaving the dresser, she moved through the bathroom to the adjoining closet they shared. Inside the closet, she moved to the belongings on Jack’s side. With the house too small to have separate closets for husband and wife, she and Jack shared the space. Better said, Jack had carved out a small niche from the lion’s share she used. But he never seemed to mind. He usually wore the same thing anyway—a pair of khaki slacks with a blue or white button-down shirt. Usually, he refused a tie during the week, dressing up his shirts only with a vest or a sweater in the winter. Simple lace-up black shoes covered his feet during the week.

  Only on Sunday did he dress more formally, and he had two suits for that—a navy one and a charcoal gray pinstripe, which he wore with a pair of black tasseled loafers. Jack never saw a need for any more than two suits. She had buried him in the navy one. The pinstripe looked lonely hanging by itself in the closet.

  Connie ran her fingers down the sleeve of the pinstripe. Jack looked so handsome in it, a starched white shirt underneath, one of his many ties giving it color. She pushed the suit back to see the ties and smiled. Jack enjoyed ties. She bought the rest of his clothes, but he bought his ties. Stripes and paisley and geometric and cartoons—he loved them all.

  “A tie is a man’s plumage,” he often joked. “Wear a good-looking tie and no one ever notices the suit.”

  Connie ran her fingers through the silky-feeling ties. They included colors from every stripe of the rainbow. A tear edged into her left eye. She took a deep breath and fought to bottle her emotions. No one would ever know how much she missed him. For several seconds, she stood still and remembered the joy of those Sunday mornings when Jack stepped out of the closet wearing a new tie. That happened often in their marriage, and every time it seemed like heaven. But no more. Connie’s shoulders slumped. She would let Daniel pick out the ties he wanted to keep, then give the others away. No reason to let them hang in the closet.

  Exhaling, Connie left the ties and began to sort through the rest of Jack’s possessions. Shirts, sweaters, vests. A couple of pairs of walking shoes, an old pair of golf shoes, and the two black pairs. Four hats sat on the top shelf—two baseball caps, one golf visor, and one straw job he wore when he worked in the yard.

  As she surveyed Jack’s belongings, a thought came to Connie that she had never previously registered. Jack didn’t own much. In fact, as she thought about it, he owned almost nothing. Except for his collection of books, you could practically toss everything he owned into a . . . well . . . into a suitcase if you wanted. When they got married, that’s exactly what he did bring—one suitcase, no furniture, no television, nothing but a few clothes like the ones that now hung in his closet. As long as she had known him, he had been that way.

  Connie recalled Jack’s office. Though Andy had given her the box, she would still need to check there too. But, even before she did, she knew she wouldn’t find much. It, too, would offer only sparse evidence that Jack had ever lived there. If people knew Jack by what he left behind, they wouldn’t know much about him. He could vanish in a day, carrying everything he owned as he went.

  Reaching to the shelf to pull out the box from the store, another notion intruded. She knew almost nothing about Jack’s family background. What kind of childhood had he had? Jack said so little about his parents. She had passed it off over the years as a child’s vague memories. But was that all?

  What about the fire that killed his parents? He seldom spoke of it and then only briefly. She had always assumed he didn’t like dredging up sad memories. But was that really it?

  Connie pulled out the cardboard box and told herself to calm down. Her imagination was getting away from her. Or was it? Was it her imagination running amok or was something deeper going on here, something she couldn’t imagine, something evil?

  With a shiver, she sat down in the floor of the closet and placed the box in her lap. Opening it, she searched inside. The bag containing drugs rested on top. She pushed it aside, pledging to get rid of it as soon as possible. But where? She would deal with that later.

  She started to thumb through the rest of the stuff. She found a stack of newspaper articles, several yellow with age, others more recent. She smiled as she read the articles—one about the tenth anniversary of the Good Books Store, one telling of a prominent author signing books there. Another stack chronicled Jack’s battle with the riverboat people, the formation of the committee to oppose gambling, his appearances at city hall.

  Eager to finish, Connie didn’t take time to read all the articles. Instead, she dug underneath the newspapers and touched something round and smooth. Jack’s baseball!

  She yanked the ball out and held it up for inspection. Jack truly loved this ball. Though she and the kids couldn’t really afford this gift, a man celebrated a fortieth birthday only once, and it fit Jack so well.

  Reading a few of the autographs, another tug of tears threatened, and she rolled the ball around in her hands for a moment, then flipped it back into the box. Within five minutes, she had moved through the rest of the collection without turning up anything significant. A whistle, a new golf glove, half a pack of chewing gum, a framed eight-by-ten of the family taken a year ago at the church, and a smaller picture of Jack and Wilt Carver on a fishing trip last fall. Nothing more.

  Disappointed, Connie stood, shoved the box back on the shelf, and left the closet. Walking deliberately, she reentered the bedroom and moved to the nightstand by Jack’s bed. She had intentionally saved this for last. Jack left his ice cream bowls here when he finished eating every night. He lay whatever book he happened to be reading on it when he turned out the light. He kept his Bible here, pulling it out to read every morning before he took his walk with Connie. If memories weighed a pound apiece, Jack’s nightstand would weigh at least a ton.

  Gritting her teeth, Connie stepped to the nightstand and opened its one drawer. She saw his Bible first—frayed at the edges. She lifted it out and thumbed through its marked-up pages. Every day of her married life, she saw Jack reading it. Yellow marker highlighted so many pages she wondered if he left anything unmarked.

  Gently, she lay the Bible on the bed and riffled through the rest of the drawer. Nothing else of importance there. Pennies, a couple more golf tees (did those things breed or something?), a broken watch, a pad for phone messages.

  More and more frustrated at not finding anything helpful, she squatted and opened the twin doors on the front of the nightstand. Behind the doors, she found a stack of books. A few recent best-sellers. Beneath the books, a pile of magazines, Publishers Weekly, Christian Retailing, Writer’s Digest, some of them now outdated. Quickly, Connie pushed the magazines aside, eager to get the search over.

  To her dismay, she hadn’t found Jack’s notebook. But it made no sense for anyone to have taken it. It had no value to anyone but Jack and his family. Had it somehow fallen out of the backpack and dropped to the bottom of the Missouri? But how had it gotten out and not the others? Weren’t the clasps on the bag still hooked when they found it? She would need to ask— She spotted a manila folder in the back page of the last of the magazines. Yanking out the folder, she tossed the magazine aside. Hurriedly, she tore open the sealed top and pulled out the contents. It contained a second envelope, this one smaller with a bank logo printed on the front. For a short instant, Connie studied the name of the bank. The Bank of St. Louis. They didn’t have an account at the Bank of St. Louis. Or did they? Nothing would surprise her anymore.

  She wondered why the police hadn’t found this. But they h
adn’t spent too much time at the house. Already convinced they had a suicide on their hands, they had no reason to really tear the place up.

  Carefully, but not calmly, she concentrated on the envelope, opening it and unfolding the one page she found inside. It was a bank statement with her name and Jack’s printed on top. One canceled check fell onto the bed. She picked up the check and studied it. It was written on February 22 and payable to a “Mr. Reed Morrison” in the amount of $10,000.

  The check in one hand, she read the statement again, checking the balance in the account. $15,072. The money left over from the loan, plus a touch of interest. It had to be.

  Connie relaxed slightly. At least she could pay off a large part of the loan with this. But why had Jack taken it out in the first place? And why a secret account in St. Louis?

  Puzzled, she rested against the bed. Who was Reed Morrison, and why did Jack pay him $10,000? Only Reed Morrison could answer that. But where could she find him?

  On a whim, she flipped the check over. Reed Morrison’s signature and an address and phone number stared back at her just as she had hoped. The bank had made him give an address and phone number before it cashed the check.

  Her heart thumping like a piston in a race car, Connie rushed to the phone on her side of the bed. Dialing information, she reached an operator.

  “Yes,” said Connie. “Can you tell me what the 702 area code is for?”

  “Sure, hold a second.”

  Connie bit her lip.

  “That’s Nevada.”

  “And a 207 exchange?”

  “That’s Las Vegas.”

  Connie put the phone down. Nevada, Las Vegas! Jack wrote a check for $10,000 to a man living in Las Vegas! What in the world did that mean?

  Stunned, Connie forgot the search for Jack’s notebook. Instead, she picked up the phone again and dialed the number on the check. The phone rang four times and then a computerized voice spoke.

  “The number you have called has been disconnected. Please hang up and try again. If you think there is a problem with the number, please call your operator.”

  Hanging up, Connie didn’t even blink. Somehow, it all made sense. It would have shocked her more if Reed Morrison had actually picked up the phone.

  CHAPTER

  13

  Monday morning dawned bright and sunny, the first real warm day of the spring. By the time the kids left for school, the temperature had reached sixty and the Weather Channel said to expect a high of seventy-eight. Glad for the warmer weather and strangely energized by her Sunday afternoon discovery, Connie decided to make a fast trip to St. Louis to the bank. If all went well, she could get there, close out the account, and return to Jefferson City by the time Daniel and Katie came home from school. Her plans set, she threw on a black skirt, a blouse the color of a sunflower, and a pair of black flats, and headed her van east.

  By the time she reached Interstate 70, she had rehashed her options several times. Until she knew more, she wouldn’t tell Tyler about the bank account or about Reed Morrison. Since neither necessarily related to Jack’s death, she didn’t want to cloud Tyler’s work with extra details. Most important, she didn’t want Tyler to know about the money in the St. Louis bank. If he decided to shut down the investigation, she needed that money to hire someone to find Jack’s killer.

  Wondering how to do that, Connie watched the miles speed by, one highway stripe after another. She could call a private detective. But how? Just go to the phone book and find one in the yellow pages? She didn’t know, but she would find out if Tyler backed out on her.

  She had made that decision Sunday night. No matter what Tyler did, she planned to keep the investigation going. She couldn’t drop things the way they currently stood—Jack dead and his reputation in danger. Thank God the word about the alleged affair hadn’t escaped yet. A charge like that could destroy a person’s name forever, no matter how innocent the accused.

  Grateful for that blessing, Connie sped east, St. Louis drawing closer and closer, less than an hour away now. Her mind kept churning, considering her next steps. Though hazy in specifics, she had a direction. She would take the $15,000 out of the bank in cash and hide it at home. The police might get curious if they heard she had opened a new account in Jefferson City and dropped that much money in it.

  The next step called for her to tell Tick about the alleged affair and ask him for the name and address of the woman who claimed it. She hated to take advantage of a friendship, but she saw no other option. If he wouldn’t give her the information, she would simply ask him to take her to the woman so she could confront her. If nothing else worked, she would do something she didn’t want to do. She would ask Tick for his password into his police computer. With that password, perhaps she could find the woman without his help. She hoped she wouldn’t need to put her friendship on the line that way. But a dead husband made a woman consider unusual means. Though not sure what she would discover by visiting the Columbia address—she didn’t believe for an instant she would find the woman there— she still had to try. She had to meet her alleged rival face-to-face.

  Past those two steps, Connie imagined herself doing one more thing. She saw herself going to Las Vegas to visit Mr. Reed Morrison. If she didn’t find the woman, and she suspected she wouldn’t, then Reed Morrison gave her one final chance to unravel this mystery. She didn’t know if he had anything to do with Jack’s death, but her instincts told her he did. More than her instincts really, her logic.

  Looking back, she could see that Jack had gotten awfully quiet in the last weeks before his death. Obviously, something preyed on his mind. Averse to debt, he took out a big loan and wrote a check to a man from Las Vegas. In addition, he bought an insurance policy worth a million dollars the day before his fortieth birthday. Something foul seemed afoot, and Reed Morrison wore the only shoes that could take her to the source of the riddle.

  The sign to Lake St. Louis loomed ahead, and Connie glanced down at the address on the envelope lying in her briefcase beside her. The address on the envelope registered a west side location, 2264 Old Lindbergh Lane. Apparently, Jack had pulled into the first bank he found on the side of St. Louis closest to Jefferson City. Glad she didn’t have to drive downtown, Connie took the exit and turned right onto Old Lindbergh. Reading the numbers on the buildings on both sides of the road, she spotted the bank’s towering form several blocks ahead.

  Within minutes, she parked, smoothed down her skirt, repinned her bangs from her eyes, and checked her makeup. Then, taking a deep breath, she climbed from the van and walked inside. With the account statement in her briefcase, she moved quickly through a short line. At the bank window, she smiled at the teller and wondered if a cash withdrawal for $15,000 required any special forms. Maybe not. Large to her probably meant little or nothing to the bank.

  “Can I help you?” asked the teller.

  Connie nodded. “Yes, I need to close an account.” She opened her briefcase and read off the account number. “The account is 7694762.”

  The teller clicked a computer keyboard. “I show the balance as fifteen thousand one hundred and four dollars and sixty three cents.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You want to withdraw it all?”

  “Yes, in cash, if possible.”

  “Can I see some identification?”

  “Sure.” Connie pulled out her driver’s license and handed it to the teller.

  After a quick examination, the teller handed back the license. “How do you want this? Hundreds, thousands, what?”

  It took Connie a second to realize what he meant. “Oh, well, whatever . . . hundreds I guess.”

  “It’ll take one hundred and fifty hundreds,” the teller said, obviously wanting to do something else.

  “Uh, well, give me ten thousand in thousand-dollar bills and the rest in hundreds. Can you do that?”

  “Sure, that’ll be fine. It’ll take a minute. I need to go to the vault.” The teller stepped away from th
e window and disappeared around a corner.

  Connie exhaled quietly and propped on the counter, trying to relax. She noticed sweat had popped out on her forehead and she felt a bit light-headed. For some reason she felt like someone might be watching her, then realized someone was. Banks used surveillance cameras on a regular basis. Scanning the walls behind the teller windows, she spotted a number of small black lenses staring down. She stared back, wondering if she appeared as scared as she felt. She hoped not.

  The teller returned from the vault and placed a stack of money on the counter.

  “Okay,” he said. “Lets count these for you. One, two, three, four . . . Going to Vegas?” The counter stopped to lick his thumb.

  “Huh?” Connie asked. How would he know that?

  “Getting all this cash. Must be going to Vegas.”

  Connie laughed. “Yeah, something like that.”

  The teller counted again, flicking through the cash one bill after another. “Five, six . . . ”

  He finished with the thousands, then started with the hundreds. Connie jerked and glared at the walls behind the teller! The surveillance cameras! They should have Jack on them the day he came in and opened the account!

  Glancing side to side, she wondered how long a bank kept their videos, if they put them in a vault or taped over them. Could she somehow get the tape of Jack? She didn’t know who to ask, but she definitely planned to find out. She might learn nothing from it, but it would at least give her one more chance to see her husband. If for no other reason, she had to get— “Okay,” said the teller. “That’s the full amount. All ready to go.”