5 Murder at the High School Reunion

by Steve Demaree

  “I wouldn’t do that. He might do something we don’t like. I guess we just need to ask Him for more wisdom.”

  “Or more patience.”

  “Before we get into today’s clue, let’s talk about yesterday’s. I Googled Jennifer Garner. Hatchet-faced, oh you wouldn’t believe how bad she looks.”

  “You’re right, I won’t. Mrs. Eversole was taking out the trash when I got in last night. I asked her if she knew who Jennifer Garner is. Even she told me how good Garner looks. Do you know she used to be the star of some TV show? Mrs. Eversole is still mad at the network for taking it off.”

  “Your neighbor was on some TV show?”

  “Not my neighbor. Jennifer Garner.”

  “I know she was on some TV show. I don’t know if it matters whether she was the star or not. Anyway, that TV show, in case you don’t know, was called Alias. She also appeared in some things called The Invention of Lying, Catch Me If You Can, and The Pretender.”

  “And you think that one of these things she appeared in or on will help us solve the case?”

  “Well, maybe. At least after seeing Garner, I know she’s not some suspect in the Witness Relocation Program.”

  “She does look good, doesn’t she, Cy? And if she wants to relocate, she might try my neighborhood.”

  “How would you know how she looks?”

  “Well, you wouldn’t let me come over to your house while you Googled her, and when Mrs. Eversole invited me in, and asked me if I’d like to see one of her shows, well, I couldn’t disappoint Mrs. Eversole. She’s such a lonely woman.”

  “So, where were you and Jennifer in your dream last night?”

  “On some deserted beach. And you?”

  “Well, part of the time lying around the pool at some resort, holding hands, but every now and then Garner faded out and I was stuck in a rowboat with my next-door neighbor.”

  I knew that would make Lou laugh.

  “Cy, you need to treat your neighbor better. Maybe if you do, she’ll invite you over to watch TV, like Mrs. Eversole did me.”

  “Oh, she’s invited me over often enough, but I don’t think she wants to watch TV. By the way, since you and Mrs. Eversole are on such good terms, why don’t you ask her what she thinks of Jennifer Aniston?”

  “What did you do, Cy? Google every woman in the world?”

  “No, just the Jennifers, and I didn’t Google Jennifer Aniston until after Sam recommended her to me.”

  “Sam? Have you been discussing this with him?”

  “I just wanted to see if you and I and those who live out in the wilderness are the only people who’ve never heard of Jennifer Garner.”

  “And what did Sam have to say?”

  “Well, he has some of those TV episodes on DVD, too, and he’s seen some of her movies. Actually, I think he said all of them.”

  “She makes movies, too? Mrs. Eversole didn’t tell me that.”

  “Well, maybe she’s saving that for your second date.”

  “Cy, Mrs. Eversole is eighty-two.”

  “In that case, I wouldn’t waste a lot of time before you ask her out again.”

  All of our back and forth about Jennifer Garner meant that we arrived at the shoe factory where Betty Gail Spencer worked before we’d had a chance to get serious about what the previous day’s clue meant. Oh, well! We did have the rest of the day to mull it over.

  +++

  I let Lightning rest in “Visitor Parking” while Lou and I went inside the small factory where Betty Gail Spencer worked. I showed my credentials to someone at the front desk, who headed off to find someone in authority. I went through the process again, told the manager why we were there, and he led us to the area where Betty Gail Spencer worked. He then excused himself and allowed us to go about our business. We talked with Mrs. Spencer’s immediate boss, who called over a couple of people who worked in the same area she did.

  “Miss Collins, how well did you know Betty Gail Spencer?”

  “Well, we worked together for over four years. I guess I knew her fairly well. We never did anything together away from work, but we talked almost every day.”

  “What kind of person was she?”

  “Well, she changed not too long ago. Used to be, she was kind of quiet, mainly talked about her husband and her home life. Then she got to where she started to complain about him.”

  “In what way?”

  “Oh, she’d say things like, ‘Duck doesn’t ever want to go anywhere. He’s an old stick in the mud. All he does is work and go fishing.”

  “Did she ever say anything about how her husband treated her?”

  “Oh, she said she had him wrapped around her little finger. If she’d so much as pout, he’d go out and buy her whatever she wanted, if it didn’t cost too much.”

  “Do you have any idea if he ever hit her?”

  “If he did, she never said anything about it. And I never saw any bruises on her face or arms.”

  “Did she change in any other ways?”

  “I’ll say she did. She started going out bar-hopping after work, without her husband. She’d laugh about picking up men. I told her she’d better watch herself. One night, she went to a bar with one of the guys who works here. Floyd, the one over there. Every Friday just before we got off, Floyd would come by and say, ‘Hey, ladies, I’m going bar hopping tonight. Anybody want to go with me?’ He did it mainly as a joke, and we’d all laugh and tell him we already had a date. Then, this one night, Betty Gail up and says, ‘Yeah, I’ll go with you,’ and Floyd said, ‘Ain’t you married?’ and she said, ‘Yeah, you got a problem with that?’ and Floyd, ‘I guess not.’ That next Monday morning Floyd came in and said, ‘I’ll never do that again.’”

  Lou and I didn’t seem to be learning much about Duck Spencer, but what Miss Collins said seemed to agree with everyone else. We excused ourselves and headed over to talk to Floyd. We learned his last name was Hampton, and when he found out who we were and why we were there he moved away from his work and the people around him so we could talk more privately.

  “Mr. Hampton, I understand you went out with Betty Gail Spencer one night.”

  “Oh, yeah, but I’m not sure I’d call it going out together. It was a standard joke that I’d walk by and tell the ladies I was going bar hopping every Friday, just before we got off. Most of the time, I did nothing of the sort, but there were times I’d go somewhere for a drink before going home. Well, this one night Betty Gail offered to go with me. I said, ‘Aren’t you married?’ because I knew she was. She said something about that didn’t matter. Did I want to go, or not? Well, I decided to cover my backside, and told her okay, but we needed to drive separately. I didn’t want her husband to catch us out somewhere and beat my face in. I’d never met him, so I didn’t know if he was twice my size, or not.”

  “Had you heard that he was a man who settled things with fisticuffs?”

  “I didn’t know anything about him. I didn’t even know her that well. She worked over on the other side. We just smiled and said, ‘hi’ each day, when we passed each other. Well, anyway, I took her to a nice place, and we had a drink. We hadn’t been there long, when she said, ‘I don’t like this place. It’s too stuffy. Don’t you know any place else?’ Well, I’d heard of this one bar, sort of a western kind of place, and I asked her if she wanted to go there. She said ‘yes’ and she followed me to it. Well, that was a mistake. She started drinking, and she couldn’t hold her liquor. I never have over two drinks anywhere I go, but she didn’t stop with two. She got drunk, and when I quit paying any attention to her, she started hitting on some other guys, even got up on the mechanical bull to get their attention. Well, she fell off that thing, threw up all over herself. I felt responsible since I was the one who suggested we go there, and I went over and told her it was time to go. She said it wasn’t. Anyway, the bartender and I convinced her to call her a taxi.”

  “How did she act that next Monday?”

  “I saw her, asked her
if she got her car okay, and she laughed, and said, ‘Yeah, Duck and I went to pick it up on Saturday. I asked her if her husband was mad, and she said, ‘He blew a gasket,’ Then, I asked if that meant he hit her or tore things up, and she said, “Naw, Duck isn’t like that. He just hollers a lot.’ Well, he must have really started hollering a lot because before long she started going to bars two and three times a week. A couple of times she came in here all hung over, and once she almost lost her job over it. That’s about all I know about her.”

  I thanked Floyd Hampton for his help, and Lou and I turned to leave. I didn’t think we’d learn anything else if we stayed there.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Well, Lou, what do you think?”

  “It sounds like she was quite a character.”

  “Yeah, everyone says the same things about her. Same about her husband, too. Everyone seems sure that he wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.”

  I wondered if that was true, or if the reunion was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Maybe time would tell.

  “Well, Lou why don’t we get back to Jennifer Garner?”

  “I wish we could.”

  “What do you think of those things I told you she was in. Do you think one of them is supposed to help us solve this thing?”

  “I’m not sure. I remember one of them says something about lying, and another about deception. Personally, I think that several of our suspects are guilty of that, but I’ve seen that freezer door, and it only took one person to close it and padlock it.”

  “Unless whoever it was had to corral them and throw them in. Then it might take two people.”

  “I don’t think that’s the case.”

  “Why’s that, Lou?”

  “Because both victims prints were on the freezer door, as if they unlocked it.”

  “But it takes only one person to unlock a padlock.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  “What do you think about the word ‘Alias’?”

  “I think it means someone has another identity. And if that’s the case, it has to be that new janitor. Everyone else knew each other. None of them could have aliases.”

  “From what we’ve heard, the one most likely to have a second identity was Betty Gail Spencer.”

  “What about those still living?”

  “Do you think one of them has a second identity?”

  “And the two victims found out about it? I doubt it. I’m more inclined to think that if someone has a second identity, it has something to do with that new janitor.”

  “But, supposedly, he didn’t know any of these people. He’s the only one who didn’t, which makes him the only one who definitely didn’t have a motive.”

  “Well, that does it. The current janitor is our man. Should I swear out a warrant now?”

  “Cy, I don’t think it’s nice to swear.”

  “Then I’ll at least wait until I hear back from Sam and find out if this guy is who he says he is, or not. Let’s move on to today’s clue. What do you think about it? Is it the combination to a safe or a lock, or a date?”

  “I’m not sure if it’s either, although a combination lock makes more sense. Could it be that someone’s been blackmailed, or someone has something valuable put away somewhere?”

  “I’m more inclined to think that it has something to do with a date, except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If it is a date, the year is 1955. Neither of our victims was alive back then, and none of our suspects were either, except for the retired janitor, and he was just a kid. too young to have done anything wrong.”

  I looked up to see that Lightning had stopped in a residential neighborhood. There were two little boys starring at us from across the street. I got my bearings and realized that we had arrived at Mrs. Edwards’ house. Who knows how long we’d been there, and how long those two boys had been starring at us. I smiled at them. They frowned back at us. I got out of the car, and the two boys took off running.

  Lou and I approached Mrs. Edwards’ house. There was no doorbell, so I knocked on the door. A younger woman came to the door. She couldn’t have been Mrs. Edwards, and might have been too young to be her daughter.

  “May I speak to Mrs. Edwards, please?”

  “I’m sorry, but Mrs. Edwards passed away this spring. My husband and I just moved in last month.”

  “Do you know anyone on the street who might have known her?”

  “Well, there’s Mildred next door. Everyone smiles when they see us, and says ‘hi,’ but she’s the only one I’ve spoken with. She knew Mrs. Edwards, but I’m not sure how well. She’s at the grocery now, though. Left about thirty minutes ago. Stopped and asked me if I needed anything.”

  I thanked the young woman and turned away. As we walked down the steps, I perused the street, looking for cars. There were only a couple, and each of them was a few doors away, in two different directions.

  “Left or right, Lou?”

  “Oh, I prefer to be right rather than left.”

  “I mean which house do you want to try first?”

  He shrugged his shoulders, so I picked the one that was on the same side of the street we were on. No need walking any extra steps that the Wii wouldn’t give me credit for.

  We arrived at our second house, and I knocked on the door. An elderly woman answered the door, a woman old enough to have known Mrs. Edwards for a long time.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t live here, and my daughter’s not at home right now.”

  She smiled quickly and shut the door.

  No sooner had we turned away from the house than the two boys who had run away reappeared from around the corner of her house.

  “Does too.”

  “Does too what?” I asked.

  “Does too live there. My momma says she says that anytime somebody suspicious, like a salesman or a preacher, shows up at her door. Men selling TV dishes and stuff like that are thicker’n thieves around here. And momma says that from time to time some people come by in pairs trying to convert us to their religion. Momma calls them alternative religions. She don’t take much stock in them.”

  I wondered if I looked more like a salesman or a preacher. I also wondered how thick the thieves were in that neighborhood.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Momma says that we’re not supposed to give our names out to strangers.”

  “And your momma’s right.”

  I took my badge out to pacify the young boy who was the spokesman for the duo.

  “See, I’m a cop.”

  “Momma says fake badges are easy to come by, too.”

  “Well, tell me this, Son. Did you know Mrs. Edwards?”

  “I don’t guess there’s no harm in answering that. Is she the old lady who keeled over not too long ago, the one who lived in the first house you went to?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Yeah, I knew her. She was a nice old lady. Always called my momma any time she baked cookies. Told her to send me down. She let me bring P.J.”

  The other boy smiled when he said this. I assumed that meant the other boy was P.J.

  “Did anyone live with Mrs. Edwards?”

  The boy laughed.

  “Naw, she wasn’t that kind of lady. She’d make sure he married her first.”

  “No, I mean like her daughter.”

  “Naw, she lived alone. She baked a lot. I miss her.”

  I didn’t figure that I would learn any more from these two young tikes, so I told them goodbye and Lou and I set off to the other house with a car in the driveway. The two boys followed us up the street, crossed the street when we did, and stood behind us in the yard when I knocked on the door.

  Another young woman opened the door. Before I could open my mouth, the spokesman for the younger set opened his.

  “Momma, these two men have been pumpin’ me about poor old Mrs. Edwards. I didn’t tell them nothin’ exceptin’ that she made cookies for me
.”

  Before anyone could utter another word, I introduced myself and Lou. The young woman did likewise.

  “Mrs. Perkins, we’re looking for someone who might have known Mrs. Edwards twenty years ago, like a neighbor or her daughter.”

  “I don’t think anyone else on the street has lived here that long and her daughter died of cancer a couple of years ago.”

  “Any friends you might have heard her talk about who’ve lived in Hilldale for twenty years or more.”

  “Sorry, I can’t help you there. She was really neighborly with a couple of people on the street, but I never noticed any cars stopping at her place.”

  I thanked her for her time and turned to leave. The household spokesman followed us.

  “Hey, Mister, I knowed you was all right.”

  “Knew you were all right,” his mother corrected.

  “Yeah, but I knowed it first, Momma.”

  The boy’s mother looked at me, smiled, and shook her head.

  When we got back in the car and shut the door, Lou turned to me and said,

  “Well, Cy, that looks like a dead end.”

  “I’m not so sure. How would you like to go back and ask that boy what he and P.J. were doing on the night of the reunion?”

  +++

  “Cy, what are our plans for this afternoon?”

  “Nothing set in concrete. I can’t really think of anyone else to talk to until we learn a little more. It’ll be sometime tomorrow or the next day before Sam gets back with me on what he’s learned. Sometime before that I want the two of us to get together at my house and mull over what we know so far. Why did you ask, anyway?”

  Lou turned to me with a sheepish grin on his face.

  “Well, Cy, I figured I’d be better able to do my job if I had a computer. I thought I might go shopping this afternoon. The problem is, I don’t know anyone to hook it up for me. Should I pay the place where I buy it to do that?”

  “You could check with my yard boy Mark. He knows all about computers. He hooked up mine, my Wii, too. It’s summer. You can probably catch him at home.”

  +++

  We drove to my place. I went in and called Mark. He told me he’d be happy to fix Lou up, even had me put Lou on the phone so he could recommend where Lou should get his computer and what kind to get. Then he told us to call when Lou got home.