Death by Nostalgia

by Andrew Stanek

  “Alone?”

  “Alone.”

  “And did you see your sister, Adriana, at any time?”

  “No.”

  There was another silence punctuated by scratching noises as Alder jotted down some additional notes. Felix took advantage of the gap to sneak in another question.

  “About these tunnels beneath the apartments - how would one enter them?”

  “There are a ton of entrances.”

  “Allow me to rephrase. Unless Adriana’s body was moved, which presently seems quite unlikely, she must have died in the bunker. How would she have gotten into the bunker?”

  A puzzled look crossed Jack’s face as he thought this over. “I don’t know. Most of the entrances, like the staircase, are inside the construction yard. I can’t imagine she could have gone there, could she?”

  “Are there any other ways in?”

  “There must be,” Jack answered slowly. “But I don’t really know. I never got to know the tunnels as well as the others. I think they must have thought I was too little to go stomping around with them.”

  “Did you see anything else suspicious?” Alders cut back in suddenly. “Anything at all you wish to tell us about?”

  Jack slowly shook his head, and with a sigh and few final questions about contact information, Alders dismissed him. When he had gone, Alders sat down heavily in his chair and shook his head.

  “He’s lying. We know he’s lying about being with the rest of the crowd at the time of the demolition. He doesn’t appear there on the video.”

  “Mmmm...” Felix answered vaguely. He was staring at a cell phone, rifling through its contents with gusto. “Nothing of great interest in here, I’m afraid,” Felix said. “Except... here we have something interesting...”

  “Is that Jack Kettering’s cell phone?” Alders asked, outraged.

  “Yes, he left it on the table-”

  “He DID NOT leave it on the table-”

  “I must go give it back to him. Just after I send myself a copy of this photograph. He has Instagram, you see?” Felix remarked, showing him the app. “Much faster to send photos. Admittedly I haven’t taken any with this phone, but you understand my point. I’m trying to teach you good practice.”

  Alders bristled at this “advice,” while Felix sent himself the picture, then left the room. Though he was still inside, Alders caught Felix yelling, “Mr. Kettering! You dropped your phone!”

  When Felix returned, Alders was looking particularly sour, but Felix ignored him.

  “I printed out a copy of the picture,” Felix announced. “It’s from yesterday.”

  He slid the photo onto the table. It was a picture of the construction site before the towers were demolished. Apparently, the photograph had been taken right up against the perimeter fence, as there was no sign of a crowd or indeed anyone at all, except for a bunch of burly construction workers.

  “Listen to me,” Alders said ferociously, “you are not to steal anything from suspects.”

  “Have you noticed that this crime has a distinct whiff of nostalgia about it?” Felix asked, again ignoring him. “It’s all about what happened in the past and history. Adriana called them all to this place where they grew up together. She died where they used to have their secret base when they were children, which happens to be an ancient bunker. They haven’t seen each other very much since they were children, and their disputes are things that happened when they were small. Yes, it seems to me that this is all about nostalgia. But there is no such thing as death by nostalgia.”

  “There such a thing as death by gunshot, and that’s what we’re investigating. Someone was hiding behind those wooden boards, Felix, and that someone pulled the trigger and killed Adriana Kettering. It wasn’t nostalgia or anything else that killed her.”

  Felix shrugged. “Believe what you like, but my instinct tells me that the cause of Adriana Kettering’s death was something from the distant past.”

  “Your instinct also drives you to pick people’s pockets,” snapped Alders. “Now our next suspect is coming in to speak with us soon, and if you steal anything from him, I’ll have you locked up!”

  Chapter 4

  The next interviewee was Davey Kempt. He walked into the interview room running his fingers through his wind-tossed dark hair with a look of distinct preoccupation.

  “I can’t believe anyone would want to hurt Adriana,” he said before Alders had the chance to ask anything. “What’s the point of killing her?”

  Alders asked him all the standard questions. Name - David Kempt, Age, 30, profession, insurance salesman, and so on. Felix stood by the door and listened to this stream of information, obviously and impassively uninterested.

  “When was the last time you saw Adriana Kettering alive?” Alders asked.

  “When was the last time I saw Adriana Kettering alive?” Davey repeated carefully. “Around noon yesterday. She’d called us all to the apartments to have some kind of last get together before the old place was demolished.”

  “Why do you think it was so important to her to have a ‘get-together’ before the demolition?” Felix asked.

  “Why? I dunno. Adriana was kind of like that. I’m sure she wanted to have a reunion. I mean, I guess she thought there was some unfinished business between us. We kind of separated with a lot of bad blood.”

  “Bad blood?” Alders asked quickly.

  “Yeah, well... this was more than ten years ago, but Vicky wasn’t speaking to her because they had a falling out over Peter Ulverson. Pete, I don’t think he ever much liked either of them, and he sort of drifted away from us. And Jack’s never liked me. I give him a hard time. None of us ever liked Mr. Hamilton but we all liked Mrs. Hamilton. Vicky in particular hated Will Hamilton, and Will Hamilton hated her. Hated all of us, really. I don’t know why.”

  “You said you couldn’t think of anyone who’d want to harm Adriana?”

  “Adriana? No. Never. Can’t imagine it.”

  “Did you have frequent contact with her or any other members of your group - meaning yourself, the Ketterings, the Hamiltons, Victoria Melbrush, and Peter Ulverson?”

  “Vicky, Jack, Adriana, and I spoke to from time to time. Pete I completely lost contact with when he joined the army, and the Hamiltons I don’t think I’ve seen for about a decade. Adriana, though, yeah - I saw her sometimes. As a friend.”

  “How would you describe her?” Felix asked.

  “Adriana? She was smart. Ambitious. She was really the only one of us who ever made anything of themselves. I mean, she became a doctor, didn’t she? And I think she wanted to start her own practice. Another thing, she had a great memory. If you told her something a year ago she’d remember it word-perfect. It must be how she made it through medical school.”

  “And the last time you saw her was at your get-together yesterday? What did you do afterwards?”

  “I went to get some lunch from the fast food place across the street.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “I dunno. Until after the demolition.”

  “A witness saw you standing on the far side of the construction site before the demolition.”

  Davey’s expression suddenly became stony. “Your witness must be wrong.”

  Alders fixed him with a stare.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t want to reconsider that statement?”

  Davey seemed to shiver slightly but crossed his arms.

  “I was eating lunch. Ask around the fast food place. They probably remember me there.”

  “Alright. And what did you do after eating lunch?”

  “I hung around for a while. I ran into some of the others. The Hamiltons and Jack, I think. They were saying that Adriana was late. Eventually I offered to drive the Hamiltons home and I did. Then I went home.”

  “Did you see any of the others between those two meetings?”

  “No.”

  “Do you remember Adriana talking about going to visit the bunker?”<
br />
  “Yes, but I thought we’d talked her out of it. I have no idea why she wanted to go visit the bunker. I mean, I guess it was sort of like wanting to go visit an old playground.”

  “And do you have any idea how she might have gotten into the bunker?”

  “What do you mean? She used one of the entrances, I imagine. Those old tunnels have a lot of entrances.”

  “But she would have needed an entrance not inside the construction site,” Alders pointed out.

  “I’ll bet she knew an entrance she could have used,” Davey said with a shrug.

  “But you don’t know of an entrance like that?”

  “No,” he answered firmly.

  “Did you see, or do you know, anything else that you’d like us to know about?”

  “No.”

  After a few more cursory questions, Alders dismissed Davey Kempt.

  “Something I don’t like about this case is the lack of motive,” Alders said, drumming his pencil against the table. “Who would want to kill Adriana Kettering? From both Davey and Jack, we’ve heard that the only person with a grudge against Adriana was Victoria Melbrush, which had something to do with a fight over Peter Ulverson. So, what is our guess about what happened? Adriana calls everyone for a reunion. They happen to encounter Peter Ulverson. Vicky sees her chance to renew her relationship with Ulverson. She lures Adriana to the bunker at the right time and shoots her with the rifle? Murder by a spurned love rival?”

  “Not exactly a convincing version of events, is it?” Felix asked.

  “No,” Alders agreed reluctantly. “Admittedly, I haven’t met Vicky Melbrush yet, but unless she’s borderline psychotic, I can’t see her killing Adriana just like that.”

  “Or unless there’s more to this story than we’ve heard.”

  “Maybe. But I know one thing: either Davey Kempt or Jack Kettering is lying to us, or maybe both. Right now, I’m inclined to believe it’s Davey Kempt. I think he was loitering around the back of the construction site, and I think he was there because there’s a way into the tunnels nearby.”

  “Entirely speculative at this point,” Felix pointed out.

  “Maybe. We should make another search of the grounds later and find the other entrances to the bunker. I’m going to try to locate more information on Adriana. Her bank statements might be a good place to start. Also, can it really be true that no one has the blue prints or plans for these tunnels? I’ll try to dig them up.”

  “Suit yourself,” Felix answered with another shrug. “But for my part, I think I might have something to help explain the lack of motive. I’ll have to see the scene of the crime again, of course.”

  Alders did not question Felix further, as the Hamiltons had arrived. Reva Hamilton was called in first.

  “Oh it’s terrible, terrible what happened to poor Adriana? Shot, was she? Absolutely awful, atrocious, I can’t believe it.”

  After all the answers to Alders’ standard queries - Reva Hamilton, 54, teacher, and so on - Alders moved to interrogate her, but Reva seemed to launch into her life story before he had the chance to ask a question.

  “I’ve known all of them since they were just babies, of course,” Reva said quietly. “Adriana longest of all. She was always a smart girl, a pretty girl, but she got into such trouble. I never knew there were all those awful weapons in that bunker. If I did I never would have let them go near the place, but they used to have such fun there. I remember little Peter Ulverson used to put on those big boots and helmet and pretend he was a soldier. Look at him now! He’s really in the army. But I never thought there was any harm to it, of course-”

  “Mrs. Hamilton,” Alders interrupted with a cough. “I do have some questions to ask you.”

  “Oh, yes, of course, dear. Please go on.”

  “Thank you. First of all, when was the last time you saw Adriana Kettering alive?”

  “Oh, it was at that little gathering we had around noon. It was this wonderful idea of Adriana’s, you see. We’d have a big reunion for old time’s sakes. She invited us last week and I thought it was such a splendid idea. I thought I was going to have an awful time trying to convince Will to come but he agreed fairly quickly, though he was a bit - a bit grumpy about it. Will never liked the old apartment buildings on twentieth street, you know, says they’re a blight on the community, but Adriana and Jack are practically family and everyone else are old friends, so we just had to go, but Will, you know, he sort of lost his temper because of something that Melbrush girl said, and there was a bit of, well, a scuffle, I suppose, and that sort of ended everything prematurely.”

  Alders waited patiently for her to finish.

  “And after this scuffle, what happened?”

  “Well, we all went our separate ways. I do hope you won’t think the worse of my Will for it. Victoria, she always had a bit of an acid tongue, never knew when to stop talking, always insulting people terribly, but she’s a good girl deep down. She just had a bit of a hard time growing up.”

  “But what happened?” Alders repeated patiently.

  “Oh, yes, of course. Well, Will and I went back to our car and waited. Will shouldn’t get angry, you know. It’s not good for his heart. And he’d had too much sun. So I took him back to our car-”

  “By ‘our car’ you mean Adriana’s car?” Felix asked suddenly.

  “No, no, our car. We drove down to the construction site ourselves but our car broke down just as we pulled into the parking lot. I don’t know what was wrong with it. There was rather a lot of smoke. We told Adriana when she arrived and she promised to drive us back.”

  Something about this didn’t make sense to Alders. “Why didn’t you call a tow truck?” he inquired.

  “We did, eventually, but I told Will that we should have Jack take a look at it when he arrived. Jack used to be a sort of car person, you know, a mechanic or something like that, and Will agreed - but anyway... After we got back to the car and we’d gotten out of the sun for a minute, Will said he was getting a bit hungry and I said I’d go get some lunch from that fast food place across the street and Will asked me to pick something up for him while he went to look for Jack to see if he could do anything about our car-”

  “You went to the fast food restaurant across the street?” Alders asked sharply.

  “Yes, dear, I was just saying that.”

  “What time was this?”

  “A quarter to one, maybe. There was a bit of a line. They said something in their kitchen had broken down. I was still there when we heard the big explosion, when the apartments came down. It was such a disappointment for me to see them go. So many memories in those apartments. I used to go down into the tunnels to try to find the children, you know. I used to be so worried that they’d gotten lost.”

  “Did you see anyone you knew while you were in the fast food place? Or at any other time?”

  “Oh, no, I don’t think so.”

  “And this was right across the street from the apartments?”

  “Yes, yes. Anyway, as I was saying, I got some of the food to go and came back and Will was back. He looked a bit - out of sorts, you know, a bit ruffled. He’d been feeling under the weather all day. I think it’s the sun, it doesn’t really agree with him, and he said he hadn’t been able to find Jack and we ate lunch, and when we were through we went to find Adriana so she could drive us home. She never arrived though, because of course the poor girl was dead, but we weren’t to know that, so Davey drove us back, and Will called a tow truck to get our car this morning. They got it fixed in about an hour once he made it to the garage. I think he would have done it yesterday but with everything going on-”

  “Yes, thank you, Mrs. Hamilton,” said Alders impatiently. “Now, can you think of any reason that anyone would want to harm Adriana Kettering?’

  “Harm Adriana? Dear me no. That’s what I was saying. Certainly no one in our little group. We were all the best of friends.”

  Alders raised his eyebrows.

  �
�Well, I mean, we’d had our differences from time to time, but we really are all friends. No one would ever want to harm Adriana, not a hair on her head, and certainly not kill her.”

  “And is there anything else - actually, specifically, did you see anything suspicious yesterday?” Alders asked, apparently reconsidering his usual line of questioning.

  “No, no, not at all,” Reva answered.

  Alders dismissed her hastily.

  “She was a bit long-winded but she told us something very important,” Alders remarked quietly. “If she was in that fast food place and she didn’t see Davey, then Davey wasn’t there. She seems to me like the type to remember running into an old friend. Probably talks their ears off, too.”

  “So you believe Jack Kettering when he said he saw Davey on the far side of the construction site?”

  “Yes. Absolutely.”

  “And do you believe he killed Adriana Kettering?”

  Alders shook his head. “I can’t say just yet, but I know that Davey is lying to us. And there must be a reason.”

  “I agree with you there,” Felix replied lazily.

  William Hamilton entered the room next. He was a big man with a large, bushy mustache that reminded Alders strongly of Chief Breckinridge, though his mustache did not have the bearing of dignity and importance that the Chief’s projected.

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions,” Alders said quietly.

  William gave a gruff sort of an affirmative response. He answered Alders’ opening questions rapidly. William Ronald Hamilton, 55, real estate developer.

  “Mr. Hamilton, I understand you attended the demolition of the old housing projects buildings on 20th Street yesterday?”

  “That’s right. I’m glad to see them go. A blight on the city, that’s what they were. They dragged down property prices in the entire region. Probably in the whole city. I went to the demolition because I wanted to see them destroyed.”

  “It was our understanding that you attended the demolition because you were invited by Adriana Kettering to a kind of a reunion.”

  Mr. Hamilton snorted. “I suppose. I doubt I would have gone if it weren’t for that, but I wasn’t too keen on it, mark my words. It was my wife’s idea.”