Murder, Take Two

by Carol J. Perry

  “In a manner of speaking, yes, but I’d phrase it differently.”

  “Like, how?”

  She paused in her cat-scratching, prompting a pink-tongued cat-lick of her fingers, furrowed her brow for an instant, then smiled. “How’s this? I’ll tell them that a couple of Boston TV executives are looking for some creative people—the kind who think ‘outside the box’—to help with an important project.”

  “You amaze me,” I told her. “That’s the absolute truth. Sort of.”

  “Word choices, my darling child,” she said. “It’s all about word choices.”

  I shook my head in admiration. O’Ryan climbed back onto the desk, watching as my aunt picked up her phone and pressed a key. “Hello, Betts?” she said. “If you’re available tomorrow evening—sevenish—for an hour or so, Maralee and I have an idea for something that’s right up your alley.”

  She made two more similar calls, then leaned back in her chair wearing a look of satisfaction. O’Ryan stretched, yawned, then—maybe bored with the conversation—vacated his desk position and trotted out of the room. “Done and done,” she said. “Now we have to sketch out a presentation of sorts. Catch them up on all they need to know about the case so far, and point them in the direction of digging up any deep dark secrets Professor Samuel Bond may have had.”

  “I think maybe we’ve found the perfect snooping crew. Louisa knows everybody who is anybody just about anywhere. Betsy could charm the Supreme Court out of their robes—let alone gather dirt about an old professor. You are the research expert and word master. Mr. Pennington will be our Daniel Webster, and I’ll dig around in the media world.” I was excited. “Let’s get started.”

  “Have you had dinner yet?”

  “Mac and cheese.”

  She gave a well-bred sniff but didn’t comment on my choice of cuisine. “I think O’Ryan has repaired to the kitchen for his happy hour snack. Shall we join him?” My aunt gathered up a few papers, pulled a couple of college-lined notebooks from a desk drawer, and together we walked through her living room and out into the big warm kitchen.

  “Maybe we should have tomorrow’s meeting here,” I suggested, pulling out a captain’s chair and sitting at the round oak kitchen table. “This table has always been a great place for brainstorming.”

  She smiled, poured some special treats into the waiting cat’s red bowl, put two wineglasses on the table, and took a chilled bottle of Moscato from the refrigerator. “And for homework and school science projects and cupcake decorating and writing Christmas cards . . .”

  “And for making wonderful memories,” I said. Aunt Ibby had raised me in this house after my parents died together in a plane crash when I was only four. After my race car driver husband, Johnny Barrett, died in a terrible accident and I’d come home from Florida, she’d made the third floor of the house into an apartment for me.

  “You’re right,” she said, pouring wine into our glasses. “But for right now, it’s Snoop Station Central.” She pushed one of the notebooks and a pen to my side of the table and kept the other in front of her.

  “To Snoop Station Central,” I repeated, and we raised our glasses in a toast.

  At that moment we hadn’t the slightest idea of what kind of mess we were getting ourselves—and our friends—into.

  Chapter 3

  Our meeting preparation session took over an hour. We did it in a sort of outline form—with Roman numerals and all. It felt a little high schoolish, but as my librarian aunt pointed out, it still is a truly efficient way to put thoughts in order. I said good night to my aunt and left via her kitchen door. I carried my outline copy upstairs with the cat darting ahead of me on the narrow, spiral-like back stairway that opens onto my living room.

  O’Ryan entered through his cat door while I used the old-fashioned, knob-turning way. When I stepped inside, he was already curled up on his favorite zebra-print wing chair, pretending he’d fallen asleep waiting for me. He gets a kick out of doing that. I went along with the gag, tiptoeing past him and down a short hall into the kitchen. I tossed my copy of the outline onto the table, next to my grocery-list notepad and the laptop. Kit-Cat showed eight-forty-five. Plenty of snoop time left in the day. It was even still a little bit light outside.

  I ducked into my bedroom, pulled a pair of red satin pj’s from a bureau drawer, and headed down the hall to the bathroom. The pj’s were loose and comfortable, and if Pete happened to drop by after his shift was over, they were kind of glamourous looking too. About twenty minutes later, showered, shampooed, makeup-free, and satin clad, I slid into a Lucite chair and prepared to get to work.

  The cat was under the table, maybe asleep and maybe still faking it. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference. I’m not sure, even as smart as he is, that O’Ryan realizes I can see him through the clear tabletop. I looked at the notes I’d made on the grocery pad. Not fancy, not efficient, but as a matter of fact the words lined up nicely with Roman numerals I, II, III, IV. And V. I decided to start with I: Cody McGinnis.

  I put his name into the laptop. What popped up was a serious case of TMI, most of it repetitive rehashes from newspaper articles. Not particularly useful. I decided to use Aunt Ibby’s pitch to the girlfriends. “Think outside the box.”

  I typed in “Tabitha Trumbull Academy of the Arts—Salem History.” Bingo. Up came the course description and requirements for attendance. The Tabby doesn’t have a lot of requirements and doesn’t give degrees. But it does give folks an opportunity to study dance, or music, or literature, or painting, or animation, or acting—or any number of other artistic pursuits. Many of the students are retirees, like the Temple twins, who’ve had to work at a regular job most of their adult lives, but always yearned for something else. Some are young working people who attend evening and weekend classes to broaden their personal horizons. Some of my television production students, like Roger and Ray, have gone on to work in the TV industry, and one young woman who studied acting at the Tabby is in Hollywood making movies.

  Cody McGinnis had labeled his course Salem’s Rich History—It’s a Lot More Than Witches! Intriguing, I thought, and so true. He’d broken it up into semesters. Early Settlers; The Maritime Trade; Artists, Architects, and Adventurers. Samuel Bond’s untimely passing had occurred immediately after Cody had completed teaching a course he’d called “I Love a Mystery—Salem’s Most Famous Murder.” McGinnis had apparently spiced up each of his courses by including field trips in the itinerary. The Early Settlers segment included a tour of the Pioneer Village in Forest River Park, where visitors saw what Salem might have looked like back in 1630. Maritime Trade students had a trip to the Salem Maritime National Historic Site with its historic wharves and buildings, along with the reconstructed tall ship Friendship, telling the stories of Salem’s sailors, privateers, and merchants. Those interested in Artists, Architects, and Adventurers had museum visits and a walking tour of Chestnut Street, reputed to be the most architecturally perfect street in America. But the field trip that drew my interest most was the candlelight tour of the mansion on Essex Street where Captain Joseph White had been murdered—it’s known now as the Gardner-Pingree House, and it’s open for tours. Here the young associate professor had given his students a close-up look at the scene of the gory 1830 killing, including a step-by-step description of how the assassin had entered the old man’s room, via a window.

  Pete had dropped a hint or two that Cody McGinnis and the professor had had some differences. He’d not been specific about it, and the newspapers had barely touched the subject. During a standup outside the courthouse, I’d managed a shouted question at one of McGinnis’s lawyers. “What was the argument between Cody and the professor about?” I’d yelled.

  Much to my surprise, he’d answered me. “A simple disagreement between colleagues. No big deal.”

  I added the word “disagreement” to my grocery list notepad, giving it a Roman numeral VI, then frowned. It was a good thing the twins were paying for Cody’s defense
lawyers. I doubted that he could afford them, since he was working at the Tabby because he needed the money. How well were his parents set? I had no idea. Some of these questions would have to wait until the twins arrived.

  I went back to the outline, put a capital letter A under Salem History, and printed “Captain Joseph Smith’s murder,” then put the same words onto the subject line in the laptop. Plenty of information there. It’s a good story, after all. Some literary scholars believe that both Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe used aspects of the White murder. Hawthorne wrote about the murder of Judge Pyncheon in The House of the Seven Gables: “an old bachelor, and possessed of great wealth.” Poe, in his 1843 “The Tell-Tale Heart” has his fictional murder boast “how wisely” and “with what caution” he killed an old man in his bedchamber.

  My concentration on this historical carnage was interrupted by my buzzing phone. Text from Pete. “Feel like ice cream?”

  I texted back, “Chocolate chip,” then put the laptop, notebook, and notes in my room, replacing them with ice cream scoop, bowls, and spoons. About twenty minutes later O’Ryan scooted out from under the table and dashed for the living room. That meant Pete had pulled his Crown Vic into the driveway. I heard the cat door flap. That meant O’Ryan would meet him on the back steps. I headed down the hall to the living room too, pulling the door open and waiting for both of them.

  I hadn’t seen Pete for a couple of days, and his kiss told me he’d missed me too. We eventually made it to the kitchen without melting the ice cream. Pete put his jacket in one end of my bedroom closet where he keeps a few things for when he stays overnight. He stashed his gun in one of the secret drawers in the bureau while O’Ryan climbed onto the bed, turned around three times and lay down, his usual nighttime ritual.

  I put a scoop of vanilla into Pete’s bowl and a scoop of chocolate chip into mine. “Are you extra busy with the McGinnis case?” I asked.

  He smiled. “Not exactly extra busy. Normally busy. Why do you ask, Nancy Drew?” He always thinks it’s funny when I say “case” and compares me to that famous girl detective.

  “As a matter of fact, I do have a reason,” I told him. “Did you know that Cody is Roger and Ray Temple’s nephew?”

  He looked surprised. “I didn’t know that.”

  It was my turn to smile. I love it when I know something that he doesn’t. I told him about the phone call from Roger, without mentioning the part about my snooping, of course. “The twins are coming to Salem in a few days. They’re convinced that Cody’s innocent. I guess they’re planning to prove it somehow.”

  “I wish them good luck with that,” Pete said. “It doesn’t look too good for the guy right now.”

  “Got any other suspects?”

  He shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Most everyone seems to think the old professor had no enemies at all. Is it true?”

  Pete frowned. He could tell I was snooping. “Obviously he had at least one,” he said. “Are you being WICH-TV-reporter curious? Or friend-of-the-suspect’s-twin-uncles curious?”

  “Maybe a little of both,” I admitted. “Come on. Nobody is that nice. He must have ticked off more than one person. He taught college kids, for goodness’ sake. Most anybody with a bad mark blames the professor.”

  “Sure. But would that be enough reason to fracture somebody’s skull, then stab him around the heart a few times to be sure he was dead?”

  I made a face. “Yuck. Messy. But Pete, one of Cody’s lawyers said the problem with Professor Bond was only a disagreement between colleagues. That it was no big deal. Was it? Do you know what the problem was?”

  “Yes. McGinnis told us about that right away. The first time we questioned him. Before he even had a lawyer.”

  I wondered again about that legal team. I was sure they hadn’t come cheap. I decided not to push my luck by asking Pete about them yet. “Can you tell me what the disagreement was about?”

  He was silent for a moment, helped himself to another scoop of vanilla. “I can tell you this much. It was a big deal to Cody McGinnis. I think he’s still pissed about it.”

  “Uh-oh. That makes him look more guilty, right?”

  “Sure. Got any chocolate syrup?”

  “Yeah. In the fridge. Top row inside the door. Was it something that could get a person killed?”

  “Offhand, it didn’t seem like it to me. But people get killed for dumb reasons every day.” He poured chocolate onto his ice cream and extended the bottle to me. “Want some?”

  I pushed my bowl forward. “Maybe a smidge.” I waited for him to continue with casual observations, hoping for something negative about the departed beloved professor—something I could relay to the twins. Didn’t happen. He savored his ice cream silently for a few clicks of Kit-Cat’s tail, then changed the subject.

  “The chief gave me a couple of tickets to the Sox–Rays game for next Wednesday night. Want to go?”

  He knew I’d want to go! I lived in Florida long enough to become a Tampa Bay Rays fan, while he remains ever loyal to the Red Sox. “Absolutely,” I said, my mind momentarily derailed from the objective. “I’ll fix it up with Mr. Doan to be sure I can have Wednesday night off.” Bruce Doan is the WICH-TV station manager, and also a Sox fan who believes time off for a home game is more important than a dentist’s appointment any day.

  “Good. You’re not going to wear your Rays hat, are you?”

  “Of course I am. But listen. Does Cody McGinnis have enough money to pay that team of lawyers I saw going into the courthouse?”

  “Maybe. Seems some of his students started a GoFundMe page and have raised quite a bundle of money for his defense.”

  I was surprised. “I didn’t know that. He must have a lot of friends.”

  “He’ll need ’em. He’s not exactly Dick Crowninshield.”

  Richard “Dick” Crowninshield, the son of one of Salem’s wealthiest, socially prominent families, was the alleged perpetrator of the 1830 murder of Captain White.

  “True,” I agreed. “But your prosecutor isn’t exactly Daniel Webster either!”

  Chapter 4

  Pete was up in the morning, dressed, shaved, and ready for the day before I woke up—as usual. My alarm clock jingled at seven, and I awoke to the smell of coffee brewing and country music playing on the radio. He poked his head into the bedroom. “Want to go out to breakfast? I can’t find much of anything in the refrigerator.” That was usual too.

  “Good idea,” I said. “I’ll be ready in a jiff.” I padded out to the kitchen, reached up for a good morning peck on the cheek, picked up my waiting cup of coffee, and looked around for the cat. “Did O’Ryan go downstairs already?”

  “Yep. Sniffed at his empty red bowl and headed for greener pastures at your aunt’s place.”

  “That’s what I usually do too,” I admitted. “But a restaurant breakfast with you sounds even better.” I showered, dressed, did minimal makeup in a hurry, and by eight o’clock Pete pulled the Crown Vic into the parking lot behind our favorite breakfast place. It doesn’t have a name. It’s in an ordinary-looking two-story house on a side street with no sign except a vertical neon OPEN sign in the window. We’re regulars, like most of the customers, so the waitress, calling us by our first names, led us to our favorite booth at the back of the long room.

  By the time our breakfasts—ham and eggs for Pete, veggie omelet for me—arrived, I’d already restarted the conversation about murder. “Do you think Roger and Ray will actually be able to help their nephew?” I asked. “I hope the guy is as innocent as they believe he is.”

  “Not going to give up, are you, Nancy?” Pete said, shaking his head with a grin. “Okay. Yes, they probably can. They’re good cops. Both of them. They have the old-school methods down pat. They’ll chase tips down every alley. They’ll dig up every scrap of evidence. They’ll ask questions lawyers never thought of. Yes. Cody McGinnis is lucky to have them on his side. Now can I enjoy my breakfast without feeling like I’m a chara
cter in ‘Nancy Drew and the Case of the Murdered Professor’?”

  I gave up. For the moment. “How ’bout them Rays?” I said.

  Pete dropped me off in the driveway behind the house on Winter Street. We managed as good a kiss as is possible while leaning across the radio- and radar-crowded console between us and agreed to call each other. O’Ryan waited for me on the back steps and followed me into the hall. I knocked on Aunt Ibby’s kitchen door. “Come on in,” she called. “It’s open.”

  “I have a few minutes before I have to leave for work.” I said. “But I want to catch you up on what I’ve learned so far—even though it’s not very much.”

  She looked up from her morning paper. “All ears.”

  “Pete says that whatever the disagreement was between Cody McGinnis and Professor Bond, Cody is still angry about it.”

  “Does Pete know what it is?”

  “Cody told the police about it first thing,” I said, “and no, he didn’t tell me.”

  “Too bad. But the twins will have that information anyway.”

  “Uh-huh. Another thing. Pete says that Cody’s students at the Tabby have raised quite a lot of money for his defense.”

  “No kidding. He must be a good teacher.”

  “I checked the course curriculum, which looked wonderful to me. Complete with field trips.” I’m a great believer in field trips and sometimes took my own Tabby classes on several memorable ones—not always in a good way. “He even took them to the scene of the original crime.”

  “Captain White’s bedroom?”

  “Yes.” I sighed. “If the Bond murder closely duplicated the White murder, well, there was hardly anybody else in Salem so familiar with the details.”

  “Except maybe anybody who’d paid close attention to McGinnis’s class,” she reasoned, “or read one of the dozen or so books that have been written about it.”

  “Doesn’t make sense that he’d commit a crime that pointed so directly to himself, does it?”