An Owl's Whisper

by Michael Smth

  Eva sighed. “It was poor Crickette…Hille. A friend’s final gift. Out of her mind with pain, she threatened to tell everyone what I’d been. In an instant, the past I feared more than death turned from lock to key. Why hadn’t I seen it before? I told Stanley what I’d done and it changed everything. I suppose you could say Hille, in losing her own life, gave me mine.”

  “Yes, poor Hille. Poisoned with cancer, but first poisoned with lies.” He shook his head. “Did you know that HM, before fleeing Belgium as the December offensive failed, told Hille he suspected you’d betrayed the cause and ordered her to liquidate you? As I recall, the words he wrote on his order were slit the Owl’s throat.”

  Eva’s look wasn’t anger or shock, but sadness. “Poisoned with lies—yes, we all were.”

  Wallener asked what Henri meant about betraying the cause. Eva told him matter-of-factly about geese with foxes’ teeth and the night Pruvot died, but she insisted she was no hero. When he told her what he knew about Henri Messiaen’s fate, she showed no reaction.

  About Crickette’s life in America, Eva told Wallener everything. She ended by saying, “To her credit, when the pain became too bad, Crickette thought first of her husband, Max. I think what mattered most to her was making his pain less by masking her suicide.”

  Wallener opened his mouth to reply, then closed it. After a moment of silence, his shoulders sagged and he said, “Perhaps.”

  Jess had been at the diner for an hour when Wallener came in, his overcoat buttoned up and a muffler wrapped around his neck.

  Jess looked up from the newspaper. “Done?” He thought Wallener looked drained, like a cowpoke who’d spent a long, cold night in the saddle.

  “Yes. Done. Sheriff, thank you for your kind hospitality and your help.” He removed his hat and bowed.

  The gesture was of another time and place, but Jess found it a charming anachronism. He stood and touched a finger to his forehead in quasi-salute. “So, you got what you wanted?”

  “Wanted?” Wallener sighed as if he was considering the word. “Perhaps more than I wanted. Some things are hard to hear. And harder to say. In any case our conversation is ended.”

  Jess cocked his head and squinted at him. “Is Eva OK?”

  “It is difficult for her to return to such times.” Wallener swallowed. “But yes, Mrs. Chandler is OK, very much so. As I understand your term OK. She now returns to home.” He shook Jess’ hand. “So, tomorrow I take my leave on the morning train.”

  “Ya know, Wallener, ’bout forty years ago you and me did our damnedest to kill each other over there in France. I’m tickled pink neither of us succeeded. How about if you come on out to our place for supper this evening? I’ll drink a good pull of rye whiskey to French soil unstained with your blood and you do the same, if you’re so inclined. Then for eats, it’s my wife Carrie’s rabbit stew. Folks say it’s so good the critters line up, hopin’ to be part of it.”

  “I would be honored and pleased,” Wallener said. “I’ll only ask that you make no mention to your wife of the specific matters into which I inquired.”

  Jess nodded. Then with a pained expression, he added, “One last piece of business to get out of the way, so this evenin’ can be purely social.” He glanced around the café. “Might be best we head back to my shop ’fore I bring it up.”

  Sitting with Wallener in his office, Jess fidgeted for a moment, then said, “I got a job to do here, professor, so I need to ask if you see any ties between what you came here lookin’ for and Crickette Conroy’s death?”

  Wallener squinted at Jess. “You said your suspect was an old man with no connection to my research?”

  After inhaling deeply, Jess blew the air slowly out of his pursed lips. “He’s one suspect, all right. Got him a motive, but a pretty tight alibi, too. There’s someone else, though. Someone I hate suspectin’.” Jess frowned and unlocked his desk drawer. He took out Crickette’s notebook. “Probably shouldn’t show you this, bein’ that it’s evidence. But I reckon a feller can justify it, your expertise and all.” He slid the photograph of the couple with baby Hille over to Wallener.

  Wallener looked at both sides of the photo and shook his head. “So many lives ruined.”

  “These notes of Crickette’s are what I really need to ask about. Wrote this just before she died.” Jess put on his specs and traced the words with his finger. “I thought OUR dirty black secret was a trump card, but Eva threw it in my face. Was a blinding flash so much to ask? Henri, I remember NBH. Then she leaves some space and writes in big letters, TODAY EVA THREATENED TO DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO SILENCE ME.” Jess set the notebook on the table and tapped it with his finger. “Black secrets sounds like your bailiwick. I wish to God you could tell me how this doesn’t mean what it sounds like.”

  “Poison,” Wallener hissed. “Yes, I make a living studying poison and how it spreads. And this truly is poison. You read words, abbreviations, that catch my ear. Henri and NBH. Sheriff, Henri was the agent HM whom I mentioned earlier. A vile and ruthless man. HM was a member of the Silver Daggers, whose motto was Wenn sie sterben müssen, nehmen sie die Bastarde zur Hölle mit. They shortened it to NBH, for the important words nehmen, Bastarde, and Hölle. The motto translates to English so—If you must die, take the bastards along with you to hell.”

  Jess’ eyes opened wide. “Take the bastards with you,” he echoed softly.

  Wallener raised a finger. “Confidentiality urges silence. But truth and justice demand I say more. The records show that for acts against the Nazi cause, one Eva Messiaen was marked for death by HM. Crickette Gigault took her orders from HM.” He made a fist. “Implicating Eva in murder. Obeying HM’s order. They are one in the same.” He crossed his arms and glared at Jess.

  “Think I get your drift. Thanks, professor.” Jess brushed his eye with his thumb.

  Wallener stood next to Jess and put a hand on his shoulder. “Only by chance did we both survive the woods of Belleau. And by chance did I come here just now. Chance, sheriff—we should stand in its awe.” He patted the shoulder softly. “I think we’ll both sleep well tonight.”

  Knowing Heads From Tails

  Wallener made quite a dinner guest. The man appreciated good food and a good laugh. He got along pretty well with neat rye whiskey, too. Said it paired up sehr gut with his pipe smoke.

  But even while sharing food, drink, and laughter with such a fine fellow, Jess worried that not much had changed: Even if Crickette had been out to get her, it didn’t mean Eva was clean. If Crickette couldn’t have killed herself, she was murdered—someone else was involved. And at the moment, Eva was the only someone else he had. There was also the note he’d found in Crickette’s dead fingers. Revenge is planned, not something you pull off, scribbling damning lines moments away from death. Besides, what could It was Eva mean other than the obvious?

  Jess saw Wallener off on the Burlington liner the next morning. On the way back to his shop he passed Doc’s office. He stopped for a moment and gazed at the name Fletcher, painted in black letters with gold trim on the glass of the door. As he stared, things Doc had said about Crickette at the death scene and after the post mortem traipsed across his mind. One of them, with the blast she took, it would’ve been over quick, looped over and over like a needle stuck on a phonograph disk. Then it hit him. He dashed inside.

  Jess had to wait while Fletcher finished seeing Mrs. Dirks about her sugar diabetes, but he did get to go in ahead of three other patients by telling the receptionist he’d come on official business. Without taking off his coat, he pulled a chair close to Doc and sat. “You told me Crickette died pretty quick after the shotgun blast, right?”

  “Pretty damn quick—like probably before she hit the ground. Merciful that way.”

  “You said probably. Any chance she coulda wrote something after she was shot?”

  “Why ya asking? See Harry written in the snow that night?” Doc shrugged. “S’pose anything’s possible, but that shotgun blast damn near cut the wo
man in two. I’d give a million to one she couldn’t have written a single letter.”

  Jess jumped out of his chair. “Doc, you just shot a mess of holes in one helluva piece of evidence I been wrestlin’ with, and I’m pleased as Punch you did.”

  Doc glared at Jess. “Pleased I torpedoed your investigation?”

  “Always thought that evidence had a tinny ring to it. Led me down a dark alley. Real dark.”

  “What evidence, Garrity?”

  “Sorry. Police business.” Jess tipped his hat. “Adios, pardner.”

  He turned to go but paused at the door. “There is one more thing. You said Crickette was begging for mercy. ’Cause she had powder burns and pellet wounds on the left arm. But I didn’t see any wound on her left hand at the crime scene. How does that figure?”

  “Jeeze, Garrity, I dunno. Maybe she wasn’t begging for mercy…what if she was struggling with the killer? Grabbed the barrel, trying to fend him off. That’s when she got it. That would explain the clean hands.”

  Jess pictured the end of the gun barrel in Crickette’s left hand. “I reckon.”

  “Now if that’s all your cockamamie questions—scoot. I got patients to see.”

  Crossing the street to his office, Jess found a shiny new quarter in the snow. My lucky day, he thought. He was whistling as he pushed the coin into his watch pocket and went inside.

  Jess leaned back in his chair, considering what Doc told him. If Crickette died instantly after she was shot, clearly she’d written It was Eva on that pink slip of paper earlier. So, unless she was a fortuneteller, it couldn’t mean the obvious. But if not that, what? It didn’t seem likely she wrote it outside in a raging blizzard. She must’ve scribbled it at the house before leaving. With Max there. He might know something about it. Jess decided to call Max, but he’d have to tread carefully—he didn’t want to have to explain It was Eva.

  It took eight rings for Max to answer the telephone.

  “Sorry to bother you, Max. I was just wonderin’ about something. Might’ve happened just before Crickette left the house the morning she died.” Jess shifted the receiver to his other ear. “She didn’t jot something on a slip of paper, did she? A reminder maybe? Or a note about Eva doing something for her?”

  “Don’t know of her writing anything about Eva. Like I said before, she told me Eva was coming over. When you asked about a suicide note, I believe I mentioned those love notes we used to write each other. She called ’em billets-doux. Ain’t that the sweetest word? Didn’t I tell you I wrote her one after she went out the door? Hid it with her hairbrush? That ring a bell? I did it ’cuz I thought I saw her writing me one before she left.”

  “You saw her writin’ something?”

  “Thought I did. We’d write these billets-doux and hide ’em for each other to find. Half the time she’d put ones for me in the sugar bowl. I called ’em sugar from my Chérie. I wrote mine on blue sheets of paper and she used pink ones. Before she left that last morning, I spied her writing on one of her pink sheets and figured it was a billet doux for me. Only I never found it.”

  “Whether or not you found something on paper, Max, I’m sure she wrote a love note to you on her heart that day.” Jess surprised himself, coming up with that.

  “That’s what I figure, Jess. Thanks for saying you think so, too.”

  After he hung up, Jess took a moment to let it all sink in. The two damning pieces of evidence against Eva, Crickette’s journal and the note clutched in her lifeless hand, now had more holes in them than Swiss cheese. But Eva wasn’t out of the woods, not by a long shot. Because, no matter how Crickette did it, by getting her friend to pull the trigger, she both ended her own suffering and put Eva behind the eight ball—since the law doesn’t look kindly at being a party to murder, even if you were duped and/or pressured into doing it.

  Jess sharpened three pencils and took out a yellow pad of paper. He put on his specs and wrote out where his investigation stood on evidence and suspects.

  Key Evidence

  Crickette’s journal entry: An attempt to frame Eva? (NBH, Wallener)

  Note in Crickette’s hand: Written at the house before she left. More NBH

  Muzzle to wound distance: 2-3 feet. Trigger to wound distance: Over three feet, too far for self-inflicted.

  Suspects

  Max: Had a motive, but alibied—not at crime scene. (bum foot) Not a suspect.

  Stranger on the road: Mickey Platt (alibi, no motive) Not a suspect.

  Harry Scurfman: Motive? Yep. Alibi? (Home sick, Eva verified) Hard evidence for/against? No. Suspect? Maybe, he’s Harry Scurfman, after all.

  E: Motive? Maybe (help a sick friend) Alibi? Not while traveling from Harry’s to Conroy’s. Hard evidence for/against? Not a shred. Suspect? Only as accomplice. Maybe duped, but that wouldn’t draw much slack under the law.

  Crickette (suicide): Motive? Yep (lots of pain). Alibi (Definitely at crime scene but couldn’t have pulled the trigger) Hard evidence for/against? Fighting for her life when shot. And a shady past. Suspect? Could she do it without help? Probably not.

  Jess felt miles away from cracking the case, but he’d made progress. He’d get there if he kept plugging away. He stared at the yellow paper. His fingers found the quarter from the street. “Heads it’s murder, Tails suicide,” he muttered. He tossed the coin into the air and caught it. It was tails. Jess circled the word Probably in the last line on his yellow pad.

  He mentally sifted the facts every way he could. He’d ruled out some possibilities, but to solve this murder he’d need to rule some in. Determine if his forensic coin was showing heads or tails. He hoped his eye was sharp enough to tell them apart.

  At noon, he needed a break. Maybe have lunch, see what Carrie was up to.

  On the drive home, Jess reckoned that unless he could explain how Crickette could’ve killed herself, Eva was in the soup. She admitted stopping to get the Conroy’s mail, so she’d been at the crime scene alone. Near the time of the murder. All circumstantial, but damning nonetheless. He’d have to question Eva. Maybe put the heat on her. He hated the thought of that.

  It was Monday—that night he’d have spaghetti for dinner—and the tangy aroma of tomato, garlic, and basil filled Carrie’s kitchen when Jess arrived. After a kissed hello, he stirred the simmering saucepan. He brought a spoonful of the sauce to his nose and inhaled. “Dang that smells tasty. I do like my Monday nights.” He took his usual chair at the kitchen table.

  “You should have called. I’d have had a sandwich ready.” Carrie opened the fridge door. “Looks like it’s liverwurst or liverwurst.”

  “Liverwurst’s fine. On that rye bread, if you got it.” Acting nonchalant, Jess hummed the Toreador Song from Carmen, tapping his finger on the table to the beat.

  Carrie shook her head and pulled the only loaf she had from the breadbox. “Jessie, we both know darned well you didn’t come home to serenade me. If you want to talk, fire away.”

  “Come on dearie, can’t a man come home just to gawk at his pretty wife? Without her suspectin’ him? Wasn’t goin’ to bother you with shop talk, but since you put it that way, maybe I will.” He walked over and gave her a gentle swat on the rump. “Don’t wanna disappoint you.”

  “You’re lucky I have a high tolerance for foolishness. So?…What’s up?”

  Jess took out his sheet of yellow paper. “Been tryin’ to savvy just what it is I know and don’t know about Crickette’s death.” He put on his spectacles. “For now, I’ve boiled it down to three suspects. There’s Harry—he’s got motive but not opportunity. There’s another suspect I’m not gonna name. They might have a motive. Maybe acted as accomplice. But I doubt in my heart they could or would do anything like this. I just—”

  “Now you got me all curious.” Carrie put a plate with his sandwich in front of Jess. “Ain’t proper to bring up stuff you don’t plan to finish talking about.”

  “Forget suspect number two. What’s really eatin’ me is a third suspect. Cri
ckette herself.”

  “Crickette?” Carrie looked incredulous. “Thought you and Doc agreed this wasn’t suicide.”

  “We did. Before. Can’t see how she could have done it herself. But if I could, it’d be the simplest explanation. And I wouldn’t need to suspect anyone else.”

  “Simplest is usually right. But why would a suicide worry about covering her tracks?”

  “I’ve learned some things about Crickette.” Jess bit his lip. “Dirty things. Like tryin’ to set somebody up. And that ain’t all. Guess it boils down to this feelin’ in my gut that maybe she did do what facts say she couldn’t have.”

  “You know, Jessie, they used to think the earth was flat. There’s two kinds of facts. Ones you know and ones you only think you know. Those last kind can really get you in hot water.” Carrie unfolded a red and white check napkin and covered Jess’ sandwich with it. “What kind of sandwich you got under the napkin?”

  Jess looked surprised. “Well, liverwurst on rye, I reckon.”

  Carrie pulled away the napkin. The bread was white. “You reckoned because you asked for rye. Asking for don’t mean getting. Turns out the only bread I have is white.”

  Jess stroked his moustache with his thumb. “Sounds like you’re sayin’ a smart sheriff would be figurin’ it don’t look like Crickette killed herself rather than that she didn’t.”

  Carrie grinned. “At this point, don’t look like sounds safer to me than didn’t.”

  “Yeah, safety first.” He took a bite of sandwich. “So, you tellin’ me the earth ain’t flat?”

  Carrie threw the napkin at him. “Yeah, Arthur Godfrey said so on the radio today.”

  After lunch, Jess left the house and headed for the Chandler place. It was early enough that the girls wouldn’t be home from school. And Stan would be working. His lunchtime talk with Carrie had him wondering what he really did know about Crickette’s death. Eva had been closer to her in some ways than Max. Maybe she was hiding something. Or maybe she held the key to the case without knowing it. Either way, he had to talk to her. Alone.