by Jean Flowers
“We all are.”
“I’ll bet it’s really hard for Wendell’s sister Wanda right now. I saw you with her today.”
I nodded. “Uh-huh.”
Why was I surprised? Everyone saw everyone in North Ashcot. It annoyed me, however, that in one private moment for Wendell and his killer, no one had been watching. Where were all the busybodies then? What were the chances that no one had been snooping around Wendell, collecting gossip, during the murder? Maybe they’d seen the murder take place, but were too afraid to come forward. My opinion of my fellow townsfolk was deteriorating.
“I wonder if she has a clue about who might have killed him,” Tim said, leaning on the white plastic tub. “Wanda, I mean.”
I extracted the tub from under Tim’s arms and moved it to the floor where I could rifle through the flyers more easily. “Everything seems to be in order here,” I said. “I’ll have your receipt in just a minute.” I was getting to be an expert at not buying into the gossip game.
A short line had formed behind Tim, and I shifted my gaze to Mrs. Hagan, the next customer. Tim moved to the side and eventually walked off. For a minute, I thought he was going to invite me to lunch first, like every other curious citizen in town. If he was put off by my surly manner, so be it. I made a point to be sweet to Mrs. Hagan, though, who was free of animals today and simply needed extra insurance on whatever was in her large padded envelope bound for a post office box in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Mrs. Hagan was in a sharing mood. She pointed to the zip code on her envelope and said, “My niece went to college out West ages ago and never came back.”
Smart girl.
The next time the phone rang, I saw NAPD in the caller ID window. Uh-oh. Could one be arrested for breaking a date with a police chief? I tried to remember what excuse I’d given her in my message. A vague “something’s come up” I thought. I hadn’t exactly lied; something really had come up.
“Did you enjoy your lunch with Wendell Graham’s sister?” Sunni asked. I stuttered through another excuse until she stopped me. “Don’t worry about it. Wanda can use a lot of support right now and I’m glad she feels she can talk to you. I suppose she wants me to deputize you.”
Too close for comfort. I was glad to see a customer arrive at that moment. I had to put the chief of police on hold even though it might mean another punishable offense.
I dealt as swiftly as possible with a young man’s special delivery letter to the Division of Motor Vehicles in Utah. Each time I sent through a personal mailing like this, it occurred to me how much trust is placed in the postal service. Many people in town knew that Josh, standing in front of me, had just returned from being best man at his friend’s wedding in Salt Lake City, but how many knew that he’d had some kind of run-in with the traffic laws? I made it a point to handle the transaction with a smile and no comment, and clicked back for Sunni.
“It’s busy here right now,” I said, which was more of a lie than “something’s come up.”
“Can I take you to dinner?” I offered.
“Sure. Shall I be prepared to defend myself against incompetency charges from Wanda?”
“She’s grieving,” I said.
“She should focus on that.”
“I’ll pick you up around seven and we’ll head to a place in Pittsfield. Italian okay?” I asked.
“Okay, except let me drive. I have a hard time giving up control.”
“I’m good with that,” I said, wondering if we were still talking about cars.
Just my luck that three more customers came in, turning my “busy” fib into the truth.
* * *
When Ben stopped by a little after three, I thought I’d messed up another date. Lately, it had been hard to keep straight which appointments I’d made and which ones I’d broken or forgotten.
“Just stopping by,” he said, clearing it up for me. Ben didn’t walk behind the counter, but stayed in the lobby and leaned over next to the scale.
“Something on your mind?” I asked him.
“I know it was kind of unfair of me yesterday, when I started to talk about Wendell and the whole flag-lowering issue.”
“Whatever do you mean by ‘unfair’?” I teased.
Ben grinned. “I don’t like speaking ill of the dead, is all, and it’s not as though I know anything for sure. So can we just forget I said anything?”
“Or you could tell me, and then I could forget it.”
Ben laughed. “Boy, you young people sure are quick on your feet.” His turn to tease.
“Will it make a difference if I tell you that his sister already has suspicions that Wendell was involved in something illegal?”
“That true?”
I crossed my heart. “You must be the only one in North Ashcot who doesn’t know I had lunch with her today.”
“Oh, I knew that. Timmy Cousins told me. He didn’t know what you talked about, though. But what could it have been besides her brother?”
I was hoping my entrée to the subject, creds from Wanda, might entice Ben to share what he knew. If he knew more than Wanda. If Wanda was right. If. If. If. I was not enjoying the role of detective.
I had a real job to do and I was falling behind. Not that I would ever be late with my collections. But, this week so far I’d been delinquent in so many areas—keeping up with memos and updates from management, freshening the postal products displays, making sure the lobby was neat and clean, digging out the seasonal decorations. Besides those regular duties, I was still fielding queries from my former job in Boston, and had a backlog of several e-mails to answer in that regard. I was tired thinking of it all.
“Help me out, Ben. Wanda wants me to look into things. She’s hurting and a few insights into her brother’s life would go a long way toward helping her make sense of his death.”
“I know they were pretty close, the brother and little sister,” Ben said.
I nodded. “From back when I met her, when she was just a kid.”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot about you and Wendell way back when.”
I let out a resigned sigh and waved my hand. “That’s okay. Everyone forgets I ever lived here.”
Ben reached his long arm over the counter and rubbed my shoulder. “Things have been tough on you, too, huh?”
I hadn’t meant to whine, but a supportive hand on my shoulder felt pretty good.
“Part of it’s Boston’s fault, you know,” Ben said.
I looked up and met his watery blue eyes. “Meaning?”
“A lot of people around here resent Boston and the east coast of Massachusetts. If you were going to go AWOL after high school, it would have been better if you hadn’t headed for Boston. Chicago would have worked. Or even some place in New Mexico.”
“Because?”
“People see the capital as draining our resources and neglecting our needs. The state legislature is supposed to be for the whole state, right? But we don’t get our fair share; funds are diverted to take care of Boston and Cambridge, all those famous cities to the east, as if the Berkshires and Western Massachusetts didn’t exist. A few years ago, the state dismantled towns out here to reroute water for Boston. And the Big Dig? Let’s not even go there.”
“How come I never realized this?”
“You were a kid when you left.”
“Thanks, that was useful. Now I’ll just think of myself as a traitor and not expect much.”
“Yup. You should have found a college in Vermont or Rhode Island. Reentry would have been easier.” Ben laughed at his own wit. “Back to Wendell Graham and his hobbies.”
“I don’t want to pressure you, Ben. It’s Sunni’s job to figure all this out anyway.” I moved away from the counter and took my seat at my desk. The next minute, Ben came through the door from the lobby and took the seat next to me.
�
��You’re going to find out sooner or later. Might as well hear it from me. Though it’s really not worth all this fuss.”
Ben planted his feet on the side of my desk and used the leverage to push his long body back, to the limit of the swivel chair. I’d seen him perform this maneuver successfully many times, but I still worried that one day he’d push too hard and end up head over heels on the floor.
“Comfortable?” I asked.
He smiled. “Better than my expensive recliner at home, but don’t tell my niece. She bought it for me. So, there was a time a while back, maybe last year, when one of the phone company customers had a problem with his bill. He was charged for two lines and he was only using one. He went on a mission to find out what happened, even though the charge for the extra line was cancelled. The guy ended up blaming Wendell for fooling around with his lines.”
“You mean, like listening in?”
Ben shrugged. “Could have been.”
I didn’t get it. “Wendell was wire-tapping a telephone company customer?” The image of Wendell in a trench coat and fedora, prowling around undercover as a spy, wasn’t working for me.
“Could have been that, or maybe using the guy’s line for something else. There’s a lot you can do on a rigged phone line. I remember Wendell was a wreck, but then Timmy got involved and the whole thing went away.”
“Tim Cousins?”
“Yeah, I call him Timmy. He was just a little kid when I met him. I knew his father.”
“Does Tim work for the phone company, too? I thought he was an architect.”
“You’re right. It was his father who worked on phones. Passed away now. But Timmy was having phone lines installed in his new place at the time. It all got straightened out as far as I know, and I can’t imagine it had anything to do with Wendell’s murder.”
“I wonder why Wanda didn’t know this.”
“It’s not like anyone went to jail or anything. It was over in a flash, is the way I remember it.”
“Wanda didn’t mention Tim; she thought Wendell might be involved in something with Derek Hathaway.”
Ben rolled his eyes. “You mean just because he owns a piece of everything from here to Albany and back?”
“Apparently so.”
The arrival of a customer cut our conversation short, but I felt we’d probably taken a small incident as far as it could go. Ben jerked up from the chair. “Hey, Buster,” Ben said to one of our senior customers, “caught any big ones?”
Buster plopped his package on the counter. “Yep, and here they are. I’m sending them to my buddies in Maine, where it’s too cold to fish.”
Ben pretended to smell the package, and there ensued a little fishing/post office/old guy humor. I was elated when Ben turned and released me for the day. “I’ll take this,” he said. “In fact, I can close up if you want. You look like you could use a break.”
Nothing sounded better than a little downtime before dinner with the chief of police.
* * *
I left the post office before four, carefully planning my schedule before Sunni would arrive for the drive to Pittsfield. Thanks to Ben’s generosity, I’d have time for a stop at the market and a phone call to Linda. I hadn’t spoken to her since Monday, and unless Wendell’s murder made the news in Boston—the evil Boston, as I’d been made aware—she wouldn’t know about it. The idea of forgetting everything and taking a nap also sounded good.
I had mixed feelings about dinner with Sunni. I had to figure out how to interrogate a professional interrogator without her knowing it, even though she’d already admitted she expected it. Talk about impossible. I might as well just ask her my questions outright. Either way sounded daunting. I hadn’t anticipated how tricky it would be to be friends with a cop. We were still feeling our way around these obstacles and I hoped the relationship would survive.
I stopped at the market on the way home for some real food, and contingency snacks in case the trend of having visitors continued. I ended up buying a chicken, once again longing for the time when I could pick up a cooked chicken dinner, complete with mashed potatoes and vegetables, within a block of my apartment. I figured it wouldn’t kill me to prepare a chicken from scratch, and it might even taste better. For backup, I piled my cart with cans of tuna, cookies, crackers, and an assortment of cheeses. I threw in some ginger ale, in case my digestive system couldn’t handle the shock of good nutrition.
Each time I pulled into my driveway, as now, I had the same thought: One of these days, the garage would be free of furniture and packing boxes—some on the way in, some on the way out—and I’d be able to use my garage for its original purpose of storing a vehicle.
Loaded with bags, I walked around to my front steps, careful not to trip in the dark. I felt him before I saw him—Quinn Martindale, taking the tall paper bags from my arms.
Maybe I didn’t need that downtime after all.
11
Quinn, who’d probably been waiting—for the second night in a row—on my front steps, traded me three bags of groceries for one UMASS sweatshirt, mine, looking cleaner than it ever had.
“I wanted to get the hoodie back to you as soon as I could,” he said.
“I’ve really missed it,” I said.
We fell into a comfortable banter while Quinn helped put things away. He picked up the chicken, tossed it like a football, from one hand to the other. “My specialty,” he said. “Need help cooking this?”
“Sure, great,” I said, then realized I already had dinner plans. “Uh . . . maybe tomorrow night?”
“Sorry,” Quinn said. “I didn’t mean to invite myself.”
“You just beat me to it,” I explained and told him my reason for putting him off this evening.
“You’re having dinner with my jailer,” he said, but with a smile.
I set out my newly acquired crackers and cheese and convinced him that we had time for a snack before I had to leave. And, yes, he could slip out the back if Sunni arrived early to pick me up.
“Aren’t you concerned that someone might have seen your name and number in the directory? Someone at the telephone company office, for example? I would have expected you to split as soon as you learned your contact info was out there in the phone book.”
“Don’t leave town,” he said, in a voice that I assumed was meant to sound like Sunni’s. “Remember?”
“She said it like that?”
Quinn nodded. “Even though she spent some time checking out my mom’s situation, and admitted that it’s clear I’m not a suspect back there. I guess she’s still trying to find an angle, something to charge me with until she can find a connection between me and Wendell Graham. I can see her point in a way. Why would the guy have my names on a piece of paper in his pocket?”
I didn’t know, but it occurred to me that I should have asked Wanda that question. I was pretty sure I’d have a chance to talk with her further, like when she’d ask me to report on my progress as an investigator.
“Do you know Wendell’s sister, Wanda, by any chance?” I asked Quinn.
“No. Should I?”
“She’s a graphics designer. I thought you might have run into her. Maybe she made business cards for Ashcot’s Attic?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. But, you know, this has been a good lesson for me. I’m not sure I’d leave town anyway, even if the entire North Ashcot police force weren’t on my tail.”
“All five of them?”
“Two at a time,” he said. “The worst thing that can happen now is that someone comes from San Francisco and slaps me with a subpoena. I’ll just go back and do what I have to do.” My confusion must have shown, because he waved his hand. “Let me start again. My mom is innocent, but she told me things about her relationship with her new husband that might sound like she had motive. The prosecutor is bound to ask me that question and my tes
timony would go against her. I also have some credibility issues if Mom’s defense attorney were to call me. As her son, I’m a very unreliable witness anyway, as far as a jury is concerned.”
“It sounds like lose-lose.”
“You got it. Which is why I’m here. To make it harder for the prosecution, which stands to gain if I have to testify. But now I’m thinking that they’re not going to take a chance on cross-examining a witness when they don’t know what the witness is going to say. So unless I go around telling everyone what I just told you, they have no idea how I’d answer their questions.”
“No wonder I didn’t go to law school. Too complicated. And meanwhile, the trial is going on?”
“It is. Leaving town, taking a new name for a while, was my idea, and I’m starting to think it wasn’t a very good one. I get reports almost daily from my mom’s attorney, a man I know I can trust.”
“Was there anything in the letter I gave you that would help you figure out what to do?” Hint, hint.
“As a matter of fact, it might have. I have a contact now and I’m working it out.” He might have noticed my frown and heard my sigh of frustration at the wishy-washy answer, because he added, “I know I’m being vague, but I have to be right now.”
He hung his head in a way that said he was considering saying more. At least that’s what I wanted to think. “Okay,” I said, unable to stay ticked off.
“It’s ironic, isn’t it—fleeing one murder trial where I could be a witness, and I end up with the threat of another where . . .” he began.
“Where you might be the defendant,” I finished. There seemed no hope of having my curiosity satisfied. At least Quinn hadn’t ignored my question completely. But what was I doing entertaining someone so slick at revealing only as much as he chose? Was I that desperate for company?
“I’ve thought about it a lot,” Quinn said, back to his initial track. “It’s crazy. And I was so careful not to interact with law enforcement around here. My driver’s license is the same, as I’ve told you. I didn’t change the registration. I just made sure I kept to the speed limit, and I was lucky enough this past year not to run a light or bump into anyone. Things were going fine.”