by Kate Wilhelm
“Not a damn thing,” Charlie said. “Is the house within your jurisdiction?”
He nodded. “City limit extends to the state forest up there.”
“Do you have to report to the sheriff crimes and misdemeanors that occur in the city?”
“No.”
“Let’s put that a different way,” Charlie said. “Do you report crimes and such to the sheriff?”
The chief sat forward with his hands on the desk and said, “Not unless it’s necessary. Get to it, Meiklejohn. What do you have?”
“I’ve been hired to determine if Eve Parish’s death was a premeditated murder.”
Engleman shook his head. “Not enough. Sheriff Wade DeLaura already thinks that’s sewn up.”
“He’s wrong,” Charlie said. “I understand that the death of Andrea Briacchi Marshall twelve years ago was listed as accidental, and that’s wrong, too.”
Chief Engleman studied Charlie for a long time, then shook his head. “What do you know about that death?”
“Just enough to know it was not an accident.”
Abruptly Engleman stood and walked to a window behind his desk where he faced out. “That was before Wade’s time. Sheriff Ben Spirelli was here. He made the call.”
“Did you agree with it?” Charlie asked.
“I had questions,” Engleman said after a long pause. He returned to his desk. “It was Saturday night,” he said. “Marshall was writing his book back then, working late hours. She, Andrea, ran out of cigarettes and decided to go to a convenience store to buy a pack before the store closed at one in the morning, and he went out to walk the dog. Folks on the lakefront saw the car lights go down the hill and into the lake and raised the alarm at twelve thirty. It took hours to get divers down there and they identified the station wagon. At first we thought it was Dorothy Dumond in it, and Tom Hawkins and I went up to the house to tell Earl and Andrea. Then Dorothy came out of her bedroom and Earl went tearing off upstairs with us following. Andrea wasn’t there, of course. He, Earl, broke down like a little kid. Incoherent, babbling, sobbing, in shock. Dorothy got Doc Hennessy up there and he put him to sleep with a shot. Their hatchback was in the driveway and neither he nor Dorothy knew that she had taken Dorothy’s station wagon. And that’s where it started and where it stopped.”
“It sucks,” Charlie said. “Where was Marshall when she left? Where was the sister?”
“He was up Crest Drive, walking the dog. A neighbor up there, Harvey Wasserman, had stepped out to have a smoke and he and Marshall were chatting when Harvey saw the taillights going down the street at about twelve thirty. That’s all he could tell, just the taillights. He owns the Bon department store and the Regency Hotel, seventy-three or-four now. No one doubted his word then or ever. There was no reason to doubt him, just a neighbor. Dorothy watched television until eleven and went to bed, the way she does every night. Her keys were on a table in the foyer of the house. No one knew why Andrea took the station wagon, or even that she had taken it. There was a little insurance, probably not enough to pay funeral expenses. Dorothy thought it was suicide, or that Andrea was meeting someone, or God knows what else. The sheriff decided it was an accident.”
“Marshall didn’t miss Andrea when he finished walking the dog?”
“The car was there and he said he heard the television in the bedroom and thought she was watching a late-night movie, and he didn’t bother going in. He just went into the room they called the study and went back to work on the book he was writing, and later fell asleep in there on a futon they had.”
“And you had questions, and still have questions,” Charlie said. “So do I, Chief. So do I.” He listed the questions he had voiced to Constance and with each one, the chief nodded.
“Meiklejohn,” he said when Charlie finished, “questions without answers can stay with you for a lifetime. When you have answers, let me know.”
“Up at the Bainbridge house,” Charlie said, “that family is looking for a bunch of cashier’s checks that have vanished. Five million bucks worth of checks. That’s the fortune.” He told the chief what all they had done to try to find them, then shrugged. “More questions without answers, so far.”
“DeLaura thinks that the young Bainbridge guy killed Parish,” Engleman said. “Marshall gave him an earful. Seems he spotted Bainbridge giving her a hard time at the supermarket. He had stopped to give her a lift and to finish an interview she had started when he spotted them arguing outside the store. He intervened and Bainbridge grabbed her hard and forced her to walk with him. Apparently she told Marshall that it was okay, he was an old pal or something, but he said she looked afraid. He left, circled around, and saw them going up to her apartment, and he assumed they were more than just old friends and let it go at that. Her arm was bruised where he said Bainbridge had grabbed her.”
“Marshall again,” Charlie said. “That sucks, too, Chief. Bainbridge met her that afternoon in a scenario much like the one Marshall gave, but with the characters reversed. Marshall was giving her a hard time and Bainbridge stepped in. At the concert Bainbridge was with his aunt, left long enough to get her coffee, and that’s all. She took him back to the state park where he’s been camping out. What was the cause of death?”
“Trauma to the back of her head. Something like a lead pipe. She must have been sitting down with her head bowed forward for it to have broken the brain stem the way it did.”
Scornfully Charlie said, “DeLaura thinks he went back to the park, found a lead pipe, and returned to town on his bike and found her conveniently waiting for him? Or maybe he thinks Bainbridge carries a pipe with him all the time. Crap!”
“I don’t know what he thinks,” Engleman said. “But, Meiklejohn, this town’s loaded with sections of rebar with wrapped handles for smashing car windows. After Andrea’s death, folks heard that the electrical system in the car went out, the windows and doors were locked. Even if she was alive when the wagon hit the water, she couldn’t have gotten out. Eddy Fromeier runs a car repair shop and he got the idea to sell rebars with handle grips to break out car windows if the electrical system fails. He sold a bunch of them, dozens before it petered out. They’re under car seats all over town. My wife has one.”
Charlie waved it away. “How would an outsider know that? Was Andrea Briacchi banged up? Head wound of any kind? Did they test for toxins, drugs, anything?”
“She was banged up some,” Engleman said. “Accounted for by the last of the drop into the water, ten, fifteen feet. No drugs, no alcohol, nothing like that. She drowned, Meiklejohn. Maybe she was unconscious when the car went under, maybe not. But she drowned.”
“It still sucks,” Charlie said.
“There’s one more thing, Meiklejohn. Last night Dorothy Dumond and Debra Rasmussen saw Parish go into the park. Dorothy said she kept looking over like she was looking for someone. Someone waved to her and she ran across the street toward him. Dorothy couldn’t see who he was, only his hand waving. He was wearing dark clothes, standing back away from the light. Dorothy said there was a woman on the swings and she was watching that way, too. She thinks that woman saw the same thing she did.”
“Where was Marshall?”
Engleman shook his head. “I don’t know, and DeLaura isn’t likely to ask.”
“Are you going to ask?”
Engleman stood and walked around his desk. “It’s out of my hands,” he said. “Sheriff’s case, not mine. Now, if we’re done here, I have a little work to get to.”
Charlie heaved himself up and stretched. “You’re dead on about the chair,” he said going to the door.
Chief Engleman paused with his hand on the doorknob, then reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He removed a card and handed it to Charlie. “In case you come across anything I can use.”
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.” Charlie
pocketed the card and walked through the anteroom, waved to the receptionist as he went out into the sunshine. He glanced at his watch and decided to give Constance at least another hour with Jenna and the tapes. “Heigh ho,” he said under his breath, got in the car, and headed back to the Bainbridge house.
#
The whole crew met him like a swarm of mice going after a piece of cheese, all of them asking questions or voicing complaints and fears. Down the hall, Charlie could see Alice at the kitchen doorway, and even Paley had stepped from his makeshift office into the hall.
“Knock it off,” he said brusquely to Lawrence, who was tugging at his arm and jabbering at him. “I’ll be right back. Take a couple of chairs to the library and we’ll have a conference.”
Ignoring Paley, he strode down the hall to the kitchen, where Alice was pretending to be busy at the sink. Without approaching her, he snapped, “Don’t you so much as poke your nose out of the kitchen while we’re in the library. It will cost you a nice cushy job if you do.”
Going back to the library he stopped at Paley’s door and said, “I’ll be in to talk to you in a few minutes.” Paley had backed up into the room and was standing at his desk, his mouth almost a lipless line and his jaw displaying a visible tic. Charlie closed the door and continued on to the library.
Ted had seated himself in one of the comfortable chairs, and regarded Charlie with an unfriendly look. Stuart was hunched over in a straight chair with his head in both hands, and Tricia was standing by the bookshelves across the room. She was pale, her hands shaking as they clutched each other. Lawrence, near the door, watched Charlie with a remote, unwavering gaze.
“Sit down, Tricia, before you fall down,” Charlie said, motioning toward the other comfortable chair. He pulled a straight chair around and sat astraddle on it. He said to Lawrence, “If you see either Alice or Paley in that hall, give me the word. Where’s Pamela?”
“Me?” Lawrence asked, not quite mockingly.
“You. Tell me.”
“She ran out like a rabbit as soon as the sheriff stopped asking her questions. She yelled that she was done with the crazy Bainbridges and their stinking, cursed money and hightailed it out.”
“All right,” Charlie said. “From the start after the sheriff got here. Still you.”
“He took Stuart first, in here,” Lawrence said. “A deputy got our names, addresses, where we’re staying in town, phone numbers, even license plates numbers. And we milled around until Stuart came out. Then it was Tricia’s turn and on down the line. The last one he grilled was Pamela, and she decided she’d had enough and took off as soon as they left.” He paused, then added, “And he had a talk with Paley.”
“Okay,” Charlie said. “Stuart, pull yourself together. What did you tell them?”
Stuart moved his hands and sat up straighter. He looked as if he had been kicked in the stomach. “Exactly what I told you, exactly what happened. He didn’t believe a word of it. He kept asking when I’d met her before. Did I visit her in New York? Had we been in touch through Facebook or a dating service online? Did she visit me in Florida? On and on like that. Charlie, this is craziness! She was in school in New York. I was trying to save our business in Florida, and take care of my father and pay bills. God knows, I didn’t have time for a long-distance romance, or even an at-home romance!
“It’s how they play the game,” Charlie said. He turned to Tricia. “What did you tell him?”
“What I said before. We were together except for a few minutes when Stuart got me coffee. I picked him up at about seven thirty and took him back to his camp in the state park after the concert. He kept implying that if I hadn’t checked the time when he left for coffee and when he came back, I couldn’t be sure how long he was gone.” She moistened her lips and said in fainter tone. “He had a tape recorder. He implied that a caring relative, a loving aunt, might say or do almost anything to protect her nephew. Charlie, he practically accused me of lying.”
Suddenly Lawrence yelled, “Boo!” Grinning, he turned to Charlie. “Alice, back down in the rabbit hole.”
“Good. Now listen, Tricia, and you too, Stuart. They have your words on tape, and they’ll probably question you again, maybe more than once again. As long as you stick to the truth they can’t trip you up and use your own words against you. Now, what did any of you say about the house, why you’re hanging around?”
“What we said before,” Ted spoke up for the first time. “Condition of the will, deciding on an item, wrangling over the car.”
“Did he ask about a hidden fortune?”
“Sure. I think he had about four different ways of phrasing it. We said the will made no mention of anything like that.”
“Well,” Charlie said, “I learned a few things.” Succinctly he told them what he had gotten from Chief Engleman. “The only new bit is that Dorothy Dumond claims that Eve Parish was looking for someone who waved her over. Dorothy Dumond,” he explained, “is Earl Marshall’s sister, a pillar of the community, whose great-great grandfather was a cofounder of the college, and so on.”
“Dear God,” Tricia said with a moan. “That’s what you predicted. That Earl Marshall might have a different story.”
“Obviously he wasn’t going to put himself in the villain’s skin,” Ted said. “It doesn’t take a crystal ball to anticipate that.”
“A real question,” Lawrence said, “is what did Pamela tell them.”
“And what did Paley have to say?” Charlie said. He stood and turned the chair around. “I’ll go ask him.”
“Good luck with that,” Ted said. “He’s acting as skittish as a new calf. If he sees one of us getting near, he dives back into his lair and closes the door and probably locks it.”
“No lock on that door,” Charlie said and walked from the library, down the hall, and into Paley’s office.
“This situation is untenable,” Paley said in a high-pitched voice as soon as Charlie entered. He was sitting at the desk so stiffly it looked as if a touch would topple him. The tic in his jaw was even more noticeable than it had been before, his skin had taken on a wet-clay color, and his lips had all but vanished. “It was a travesty from the start, and now this. It’s over. There’s no point in even trying to maintain the terms of our agreement—” The words tumbled out almost too fast to follow.
“Mr. Paley,” Charlie said, cutting in, “knock it off. You’re in this all the way, exactly as the family is. What did you tell the sheriff?”
“I told him the terms of the will.”
“Did you mention the checks?”
“Of course not. No checks are mentioned in the will. Meiklejohn, we can’t have all those outsiders coming and going. They know something’s going on here. What if they want to conduct a search of the premises?”
“You’re an attorney. Make them get a search warrant, show cause. My God, what did they teach you in law school?”
“It wasn’t how to conduct myself in the midst of a… a debacle. That’s what this has become, a debacle. It’s insane. It’s time to end it all. Let the Bainbridge family do whatever they want.”
Charlie turned toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Paley cried. “You have to help me here! You know this is meaningless now.”
“I’ll see you later,” Charlie said and left him. He walked past the library, where the family was still huddled, and on out to get into his car. “Time’s up, Constance.”
15
WHEN THE THIRD AND LAST TAPE FINISHED, Constance stood and walked inside for wine and two glasses. “Would you prefer more coffee?” she asked, returning to her chair on the balcony.
“Wine,” Jenna said without hesitation. She had hardly moved and had not uttered a word while the tapes were playing. Now and again her hands clenched and she closed her eyes tightly, and once she made a
soft moaning sound, but she had listened through them all.
Constance poured and they both sipped wine for a minute or two without speaking. Then Constance asked “Did Eve mention Dorothy Dumond to you?”
“A couple of times,” Jenna said. “It was a coup to get to interview her, we both thought, before the fact. But she said Mrs. Dumond didn’t like her, that she sort of warned her off Earl. At first she thought Eve was a tabloid writer or something. Eve went there just to buy a desk, and ended up with all the furniture in the study. Desk, futon, that armoire, chair. One hundred dollars. A steal, she thought.”
She repeated everything Eve had said. “Mrs. Dumond didn’t even go into the room with her. She claimed she could still smell cigarette smoke, that it gave her a headache. But that wasn’t a real interview,” she said vehemently. “Mrs. Dumond just wanted to get in her version of what makes Earl Marshall tick. A sensitive, loving, gentle little brother with endless empathy! My God! Didn’t she have eyes, ears? Is she that blind?” She stopped, drew in a breath, and said more quietly, “I never even heard of him or Andrea until Eve began to talk about doing the thesis.”
“You didn’t read his novel?”
“No. I was in college when it came out, with no time for novels. You know how that goes. There’s a copy in the apartment, but it’s marked up too much to try to read.”
“I have a copy. You can take it to read it if you’d like. In the first interview with Earl Marshall, there’s a change in Eve’s voice, isn’t there? Did you catch it?”
“Of course I did! When he came on too fast about how pretty she was, she didn’t like it. She said he was embarrassing her, and she meant it.” She had started in a vehement, almost strident tone, but her voice, her posture, everything about her changed. Her voice dropped and she leaned forward and seemed even more intense. “Constance, it’s more than that. I know her voice, how she sounded when she was happy, or angry, or any mood she ever had. She changed from something like neutral but interested, pleased, to distrustful and distant. She wanted to like him, you could hear it in the beginning when they were laughing, but she went from that to—I don’t know, as if she was confronted with something she didn’t want to be near. It got more pronounced as the interview went on, especially toward the end when he talked about the movie, how it made a ton of money. She hated that. He didn’t seem to notice that she had come one hundred eighty degrees from where she had been at the start.”