Old Secrets Never Die

by Lois Blackburn

“Calm down, Lucinda,” said Horton, reaching over to touch her shoulder. “You can get through this; let’s take one step at a time. You’ve got help to deal with this now–Dottie and Tom…”

  “Oh, yes, Tom will be a big help! He doesn’t even seem to care that Hiram is dead. You won’t believe it–one of the first things he asked me on the way over here is can I help him now with a loan to get his furniture business going. How can he think that way? Doesn’t he even care about Hiram, or ME?” Lucinda collapsed forward, elbows on the desk, holding her head in her hands and sobbing.

  The two men exchanged glances.

  “Let’s take a little break,” Jankowski said, rising with a nod to the reporter. “I’ll have Dupre get some cold bottled water from the cafeteria upstairs. I usually try to keep some down here, but I’m out. Lucinda, you just sit and relax for a few minutes.”

  “No, let’s keep going. I need to learn to hold myself together–I’ve got a long way to go.” She straightened up, took a long, deep breath and slowly exhaled.

  “Well, okay,” Jankowski answered, with a shrug to Horton as he sat back down.

  Lucinda began talking, reliving the day she drove to Vermont to talk to Tom about his and Hiram’s argument. Her anger at him not being home when she got there showed anew as she retold it. Obviously, his inconsiderate behavior when he got to Woodstock fed the flames of her annoyance. She breathed deeply several times, fighting new tears, as she spoke slowly, seeming to watch her last two days’ activities in her mind like a movie on a screen.

  When she stopped, she looked up to the ceiling, held her neck muscle as if in pain. “I guess that’s it,” she said, with a sigh. Silent tears ran down her face like ice cream off a waffle cone when she looked at Jankowski. She took a new tissue from her pocket.

  “Thank you, Lucinda,” said Horton. “We have just a couple more questions. Do you think you can continue or would you like a break now?”

  “No, let’s get this over with,” she answered.

  She confirmed that a large Oriental rug used to be in Hiram’s office-library. But it was sold recently, she thought within the past month, but they could check this against Hiram’s records, just like the gun cabinet inventory.

  And she verified that their back door was always unlocked, which she said had taken some getting used to. It was totally different from the Philly area where crimes occurred daily and people locked and double locked their doors, even ten years ago.

  Mark asked Lucinda whether Hiram had mentioned anything about a man he talked with recently in Essex–a scruffy-looking guy, maybe someone looking for a handout.

  Lucinda said Hiram rarely discussed anything about his business travels–that was one reason she became suspicious about another woman in his life. Scruffy would well describe some of his military buddies who used to visit him at the VA hospital, but it was a long time since they’d seen any of them, she recalled.

  “Just one more thing, Lucinda,” Horton said, watching her. “We’re going to meet our forensics chief at your house when we’re finished here, and we’d like you and Tom to come along to see whether anything is missing. We won’t stay long, just walk through, and we will not be going into the office-library. Do you think you can handle that today?”

  Lucinda dropped her chin to her chest and closed her eyes. She slowly shook her head, then opened her eyes and answered, “Better get back on the horse, eh? Yes. Well, Dottie will have to take us. Tom drives a Miata, a two-seater, so we left that back at the motel. I guess I can do that. It’ll give me a chance to get a change of clothes, too.

  “While you interview Tom, maybe I can get some courage by talking to Bashia and Dottie. I’ve never actually met Bashia, even though she’s been in my home a few times.

  “Dottie tells me she’s a real go-getter kind of gal. I guess she was the driving force behind them going down to Essex and deciding they felt I was wrong about Hiram having an affair. I hope she can convince me that he really wasn’t. I still can’t quite believe I was wrong.” She smiled weakly as she rose and left the room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Pretty quick recovery, don’t you think?” Horton said when Jankowski returned to his office after escorting Lucinda to the break room. Tom Litchman had excused himself to the men’s room down the hall with Constable Lupe tagging along.

  Richard Dupre returned, juggling a dozen water bottles to the countertop above Mark’s dorm-size refrigerator and cut them loose with his pocketknife. He held one up and said, “Any takers?”

  The reporter shook her head. Jankowski accepted a bottle, twisted the cap open, took one gulp and set the bottle on his desk. Horton waved off the offer. Dupre began to lay the bottles in the fridge.

  “Thanks, I think I will,” said Tom Litchman, grabbing a bottle as he walked in past Dupre. “I don’t suppose you have anything stronger–I’m kidding, I never drink before noon.” He looked around, noticed the attractive young woman looking down at her machine and bowed deeply. He laughed weakly and slid into the chair, one hand deep in his jacket pocket.

  “Tom, wouldn’t you like to take your jacket off? We might be here a while,” said Horton.

  “I’m comfortable,” answered Tom.

  “Suit yourself. Well, please tell us your whereabouts and activities during the past few days, say starting Sunday when your mother called to say she was coming to visit you,” Horton said.

  “Well, she probably told you I’m starting a new furniture business and I was out at the site when she called. A couple of my friends said they’d help me when I’m ready to clean out the place, paint and all that, so I drove out there to see what I’ll need for the job,” he began.

  When Horton said he didn’t realize Tom was already committed to the new business, Tom sat up straighter in his chair, thrust his chest out and glanced at the court reporter again. “Oh, yeah, I’m ready to get it going soon.”

  “Did your stepfather’s death have anything to do with your timetable on the project? Your mother said you asked her how soon you could get some money from her.”

  “Oh, she misunderstood. Of course, Hiram’s untimely passing is a terrible thing. I’m here for her and I’ll help her in any way that I can. I just think a branch of New England Antiques would go well in my town–what’s so special about Essex anyhow?”

  Horton looked at Jankowski across the desk. They kept their faces blank but each could read the other’s thought that this young man fit his mother’s description, “center of the universe”. Horton repeated his request for information about Tom’s activities.

  “Well, I was at my store site for a couple hours, until after four, then I decided to stop for a drink at the Beck ’n Call. The owner is a good friend of mine and he’s helping coach me on some business matters.

  “We got to talkin’, me and him and his head waitress that I like. I lost track of time and totally forgot about my mother coming up to see me,” Tom said. He looked at Jankowski, as if he just noticed that the trooper was taking detailed notes. “This woman is married, so I only see her there but she’s a good egg and we have lots of laughs. We just talk–she has family problems. You don’t need her name, do you?”

  Jankowski held his pen above the paper and waited without answering.

  “It’s Jenny Lewis, L-e-w-i-s,” Tom stopped, looked at Kim Barnes again, then continued, “But you don’t need to talk to her. Trip Beck is the owner. His name is really Jonathan Edward Beck III, so they always called him Trip, like triple. He’s my buddy. We talk about everything.”

  “So you were talking to Trip and Jenny until the wee hours Sunday night?” asked Horton.

  “No. They weren’t very busy, so Jenny left early. Trip always closes anyway and she had to go someplace Monday morning so he let her go early, maybe around eleven.”

  “What time did you leave? Your mother said she didn’t hear you come in.”

  Tom shifted, rearranged his jacket and hesitated before answering.

  “I don’t know. You
know, when you live alone and don’t have to report to anyone, you don’t look at your watch every time you turn around. I left when Trip was taking the tray out of the cash register to go to his office in the back–it was late, maybe one.

  “My mother wouldn’t hear King Kong crashing through the door ’cause she listens to music with earphones when she sleeps and it’s not lullabies. I’d have to rap on her shoulder or yell for her to hear me.

  “You’ll have to take my word for it. Or, call Trip–he’ll tell you I was the last customer to leave.” Tom leaned over, reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a bright red book of matches and slapped it on the desk like it was a game-winning card.

  “Here’s his number and he’s probably there already ’cause he stocks the bar every morning. Reach the phone over, I know the number by heart–I’ll call him.”

  “We can handle it. Did you talk to him since Sunday night?”

  Tom reached for his water bottle, shook his head and took a swig.

  Horton stood and said that he, Jankowski and the court reporter needed a break. He told Tom to step outside where the constable was waiting.

  Jonathan Edward Beck, III answered the phone on the second ring, confirmed that he owned the bar and knew Tom Litchman very well. “He’s one of my best customers. I miss him when he’s not here. We have a lot in common. I was sorry to hear his old man died–guess he wasn’t his real father and they weren’t the best of friends, but it’s sad anyway.”

  Beck told the officers, listening on the speakerphone, that Tom had been in his bar two nights earlier. “Sunday night? Yes, he was here until I started to close up. He even helped me set chairs up. I had let my server off early so Tom gave me a hand.”

  Lately, Tom had been full of conversation about finally getting into a business he would be good at, Trip Beck told them. “Because his old man was in antiques, Tom said he was gonna combine old and new furniture and make a killing in the Putney area. You know how people get carried away? Well, Tom believes his every idea is a winner. I get a kick out of seeing him get excited about something. He’s usually a pretty low-key guy.”

  Horton thanked Beck for talking with them about Tom Litchman’s whereabouts two nights ago. He motioned to Mark, raising a finger to signal for him to take over.

  “This is Trooper Jankowski, Mr. Beck–I’m taking notes here. I just want to recheck. You’re saying that you are absolutely certain that Tom Litchman was in your bar this past Sunday?”

  “Right. He’s here almost every night and we were at his beck and call all night,” Beck laughed. “That’s where I got the name.”

  After they hung up, Jankowski went out to summon Tom. Horton excused himself, saying he needed to talk to Dupre. Kim Barnes quietly resumed her position at her machine.

  When all were back in place, Horton told Tom his friend, Trip, had verified his presence in the bar that night. “Obviously, you two are pretty close,” he said, watching Tom’s reaction.

  Tom smiled broadly for the first time. “I told you he’s a good friend–to all his customers, not just me.”

  “But I’m wondering why you didn’t answer your phone when your mother called you? She said she called your cell phone a few times. Don’t you keep it turned on when you’re out?”

  “Of course. It’s such a great new toy–I love it, wish more people had them, but I’m one of the first among my friends to use one. I’m sure everyone will have one hanging on their belt before long. Wish I’d invented it.”

  “So why didn’t you answer it? She said you knew she was coming before dinner.” Horton thought Tom was stalling on this question and wondered why. He knew that lack of service was a common problem with cellphones in rural areas–Tom could easily blame the phone.

  “Well, Trip doesn’t allow them in the bar,” he said. “Really! He says he wants a captive audience, wants his customers to talk to each other–not someone on the phone who might entice us elsewhere. He’s really picky about it. Weird, eh?

  “He tries to make a joke of it, saying he wants to be the only ‘Beck at our call’. I humor him ’cause he’s my friend and I don’t get that many calls anyway. And actually, I was so wound up thinking and talking with Trip about my new business, I kind of forgot my mother was coming up.”

  Detective Horton smiled, watching Tom squirm in the chair. Tom still hadn’t removed his loose jacket.

  “Okay, Tom. Let’s talk about something else,” said Horton. He asked the young man to describe his recent visit with Hiram Lazarus and what he had told his mother about it Monday morning that made her leave so quickly to go back home.

  “Sometimes she gets her nose out of joint over nothing. I told her that argument wasn’t as big a deal as she thought,” Tom answered. “I wanted Hiram to loan me some money to get my furniture store up and running–he said no and I got mad. I guess I’m just like him, with his explosive Middle Eastern temperament. It rubbed off in all my years in his household of furniture with price tags on it–how would you like that?

  “I’ll tell you, it’s a pain. You don’t want to bring friends home and see that–they don’t believe it when you tell them you have to change clothes when you walk in the door so the furniture says clean for customers. What a way to live. But my mother went along with it, whatever Hiram said was law. She always took his side. I’m not sure if she really loved him or was afraid of him.”

  Tom paused to take a drink, wiped his brow and ran a hand through his curly hair. Finally, he stood and removed his jacket.

  “All I wanted was a little help–I thought he’d be happy that I wanted to sell furniture…like a chip off the old block. He said if I got it going for a year on my own, maybe–maybe he’d give me a few antiques and see what I could do with them.

  “Well, we went around and around and finally he told me he couldn’t–yeah, couldn’t but I heard ‘wouldn’t’–help me because he had a big project of his own going. Big deal! Why didn’t he say that in the first place? He never wanted me to succeed, just wanted to be the big chief himself.

  “He said he was working on a major expansion project for his store in Essex. So I said I could run the Essex store for him and he laughed…his big, loud horselaugh. He said he knew I’d run it into the ground if I touched it. He had a mean streak in him, I tell you.

  “I couldn’t stay in the same room with him when he said that. I was so mad…” Tom’s face and his bald patch were beet red. He paused and looked from Horton to Jankowski, then lowered his voice. “But, you know, once I got out of there I realized that was the wake-up call I needed. I’d do this project on my own, let him grow his Essex store all he wanted–I’d be even bigger on my own in Putney, with or without antiques.

  “Maybe that’s why he shot himself–you think? Maybe he decided he couldn’t make the big project work and he’d already told me, and probably a bunch of other people, about it. He had a big ego and wouldn’t want to back down–show his inadequacies, I guess the shrinks would say.”

  A knock on the door signaled the arrival of a young man in a navy jump suit carrying a black tool kit bearing the forensics lab insignia.

  “You must be the fingerprint tech,” Horton read his name tag. “Justin, we have several customers for you, one here and two down the hall. Go ahead down and we’ll be there in a few minutes.

  “Tom, we would like to get your fingerprints since you’ve been in the house recently. Is that okay with you? By the way, do you have a key to Hiram and Lucinda’s house?”

  “Sure, it’s okay, I guess you have to ask, eh? But I haven’t been back to Hiram’s house since. And yea, I got a key but they never lock it so I don’t carry it,” he began rummaging in his pockets, pulling out another book of “Beck ’n Call” matches, a chapstick, a roll of antacid tablets, a few coins, and a chain with one lone car key.

  Horton raised his eyebrows as he looked at Jankowski, who nodded and stood up.

  “I guess that’s it for now, Tom. Let’s all go down the hall,” Jankowski said,
grabbing Bashia’s coat from the rack.

  Benny Lupe followed as they walked to the break room. Constable Dupre had disappeared on an assignment from Horton.

  The three women looked up from the table, now strewn with the remnants of their stay. “We were wishing one of us had a deck of cards in our purse. We could have played some rummy,” said Dottie, flipping her long hair out of her line of vision.

  The fingerprint technician began unpacking his equipment at an empty table nearby. Horton introduced the young man and said, “When Justin is finished, we’ll caravan out to the house and see if Lucinda or Tom can tell whether anything was stolen when Hiram was killed.

  “Bashia, you’re excused for now. Dottie, as the chauffeur, you’ll have to stick with us. It won’t take long, you can probably get back to town in time for a late lunch.”

  Mark winked at Bashia when he was sure Greg’s back was turned. He helped her on with her coat and squeezed her shoulder. She smiled at him, mesmerized as she always was by his steel blue eyes that matched his trooper’s uniform. Then she whispered close to his cheek, “Call me later. I need to tell you something important.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “State Police, Woodstock, please hold …” The phone had jangled for the third time before Mark’s key clicked the door lock open, so he ducked under the counter and clumsily stretched across the desk to grab it.

  “It’s me–Bashia. I have to meet a prospective client soon and I wanted to talk to you first. Sorry to be such a pest, but I thought you’d be back from Hiram’s before now.”

  Mark punched the speaker button so Greg could hear the conversation. Greg hung Mark’s heavy wool jacket along with his own and sat down across the desk. “We’d have been here sooner, but even we need to eat sometimes. What’s so important, my friend? Greg and I are both listening.”

  “I’m very suspicious of Tom Litchman. When he was with Dottie and me before you talked to him, he kept going on and on about how he disliked Hiram his whole life, that Chad was always the favorite son, and so forth. According to Tom, Hiram was a total skinflint who barely kept the two boys properly dressed.