“Good to have them on your side,” Roger agreed.
The beginnings of a smile played around Cody’s lips. “I get it. Thank you. All of you.”
Betsy, looking remarkably Farrah-like with her new hairstyle, was the one to get the proverbial ball rolling. “Glad to help. We’ve already dug up quite a lot about old Sam. Ibby has it all on paper for you. But listen. I heard something new about Sam Bond at the beauty parlor today.” She picked up her pencil, stabbing the air with it. “Shall I just blab it out or are we supposed to put everything in writing?”
“Just blab—I mean, tell us about it, please,” Roger said.
“Tell us about it,” Ray echoed.
“Okay.” Betsy leaned forward, both elbows on the table. “Here it is. Sam Bond, in addition to being a name-dropping, social-climbing weasel, was also a lying cheat.”
“How so?” Louisa asked.
“One of the women getting her nails done—gel coat of course, a yummy lavender shade—anyway, she said that Sam wormed his way into the men’s Friday night poker game at the yacht club, and her husband told her that they had to ban him for cheating. A card cheat. Can you believe it?” She leaned back in her chair. “Then the shampoo girl told us when she was a waitress at IHOP they used to laugh at him because when he was eating with someone else, he’d leave like a fifty-cent tip and the other guy would leave two bucks, and when he thought no one was looking, he’d switch the tips around so it looked like he left the most. What a weasel. Then somebody said that he also used to cheat on his late wife too, but she didn’t give details, so I don’t know if that counts. Before I left, one of the older ladies—she was getting a weave—said that she’d gone to school with him and back in the seventh grade he used to sit behind her so he could copy her math answers.”
“Kind of establishes a pattern, doesn’t it?” Roger said. “Thanks, Betsy.”
“Along the same lines,” my aunt said, “perhaps it’s a small thing—but rather than pay some fairly substantial library overdue fees, Samuel Bond was in the habit of having students check out books for him.”
“Weasel,” Betsy said.
“I’ve already told you that Sam has been dealing with some financial difficulties recently,” Louisa said. “But he apparently expected some sort of windfall was forthcoming. According to some local bank scuttlebutt, it has to do with a publishing venture.”
Cody frowned. “I know about that one,” he said. “I’m kind of involved in it. But I’m sure it’s not going to be a significant moneymaker.”
“Yes,” I said. “Alan Armstrong told me about it. It’s a student handbook. A how-to book on taking exams, doing research, that sort of thing, right?”
“Right,” he agreed. “Alan and Sam and I co-wrote it. Fortunately we finished it before Sam—um—passed.”
“I spoke with Edwin Symonds this afternoon. He said the same thing.”
He didn’t smile. “How do you know Eddie?”
“Friend of Louisa’s,” I said.
Ray and Roger looked back and forth between Cody and me as though they were watching ping-pong—identical heads moving in unison.
“Edwin Symonds?” Roger asked.
“Eddie?” said Ray. “Where did you find him?”
Louisa handed Ray a slip of paper. “I brought along his phone number for you.”
“We had a meeting with Pete Mondello today,” Roger said. “He told us Eddie Symonds works right here in Salem. He’s a dancing school teacher at the Tabby.”
“Merengue,” said Betsy.
“Of course. Merengue,” Louisa agreed.
Cody did the ping-pong look between Louisa and Betsy.
Aunt Ibby snapped her fingers. “Now I remember. No wonder the man in Louisa’s picture looked familiar. Rupert introduced me to Mr. Symonds at the Tabby some time ago. Later he helped out with a bookmobile promotion. Seemed like a nice fellow. You say Pete knows him too?”
“Where is Mondello anyway?” Ray glanced around the table. “Isn’t he supposed to be here?”
As if on cue, the front doorbell chimed “The Impossible Dream.” I hurried to let Pete in, hoping he’d be able to bring some order to the table tennis tournament going on in Aunt Ibby’s dining room.
Chapter 24
“Sorry I’m late,” he said, pulling me close for a kiss. “Is everybody here?”
“Yep. Everybody. Aunt Ibby, the Angels, and the twins. Also, Cody McGinnis.”
“No kidding? Angels and twins sounds like a baseball game. Cody’s here too? Interesting.”
“It’s getting that way.” I returned the kiss. Pete’s back was toward the hall tree. I couldn’t help looking over his shoulder. The lights and colors showed up right away, melding into Old Jim’s picture of the blue book in Eddie’s hand—only the man’s hand had turned into a red handprint—a bloody red handprint. Then, blink. It was gone.
Pete held me at arm’s length, looking into my eyes. “You okay, babe?”
“I’m okay,” I told him. “Seeing things in the damned mirror for a second. I’ll tell you about it later.” (“Seeing things.” That’s what Pete calls my visions.) We started through the living room. “Pete’s here,” I called as we headed for the dining room. Everybody shook hands and greeted one another. More crackers and cheese and another bottle of Merlot appeared on the table. The three cops, the three snoopers, the prime suspect, and I got down to the nitty-gritty business of solving a murder.
Pete’s presence at the table didn’t seem to affect Cody one way or another. Pete announced that he’d refrain from commenting, but if no one objected, he’d sit in as an observer. No one objected. It turned out to be a good thing that Cody was present. He was able to answer some of the questions we—the Angels and I—had wondered about from the start. For instance, how did Cody’s ladder get from his tool shed to Sam Bond’s house? Cody’s answer was a simple one. “That tool shed is a literal shed behind my mom’s place,” he said. “It was my playhouse when I was a kid. My grandfather built it. It has one window and a rickety unlocked door. There are some old lawn tools in there, a few garden rakes, extra hoses, two or three wooden ladders. Nothing valuable. No power tools or anything like that. I guess anybody who knows it’s there can borrow anything they want to from it. I have no idea when that ladder went missing.”
“Seems pretty darned circumstantial to me,” Betsy said. “Isn’t it, Pete? Darned near anybody in Salem had access to that shed, it seems like.”
“It is circumstantial,” Pete agreed.
“Cody’s prints are on it, and it was found at the scene of the crime,” my aunt said.
“Correct,” Roger said.
“Right,” said Ray.
“And what about his prints on a glass in Bond’s house?”
Roger raised one hand. “So he drank there occasionally with Bond and a couple of other professors and the girl. Nothing strange about that at all.”
“The shoe prints? What about that?” Louisa asked. “Has anyone determined that they were in fact his shoes?”
“I can answer that one,” Ray said. “The prints are definitely from his Nikes.”
I saw Pete nod in agreement.
“Oh my.” My aunt’s tone was one of surprise. “That wasn’t in the papers.”
I was surprised too. “That seems more than circumstantial, doesn’t it, Roger?”
“It does.” Roger looked at Pete. “And it justifies the charge. But since Cody is innocent, we need to find the explanation for it.”
“Can you explain it, Cody?” Betsy’s voice was firm.
He looked down at the table. “I can’t. It’s not as though I wear them every day. I don’t work out nearly as often as I should. But I’m sure I would have noticed if they were ever missing from my gym locker when I was there.”
“There were traces of soil on the sneakers. Forensics is analyzing the dirt,” Ray said. “It’s likely the killer wore them. We know it wasn’t Cody, so who was it?”
Actually, we d
on’t exactly know it wasn’t Cody, do we? I could tell immediately that others at that table shared that thought. All of the Angels, including my aunt, sat up a little straighter in their chairs, seeming to physically distance themselves from Cody McGinnis.
O’Ryan, though, had a different reaction. He left his spot beneath my chair and circled the table, then leaped gracefully and gently into Cody’s lap. I had no doubt the cat believed the man was innocent. Good enough for me.
“Doesn’t Cody have any sort of alibi for the time Bond was killed?” I wondered aloud. “The paper said he spent part of the evening at the Tabby.”
“I did,” Cody said, stroking O’Ryan’s fuzzy head. “Then I went home. Nobody saw me. Nobody called or texted or knocked on my apartment door. I have no alibi for most of that night.”
“Then somebody saw somebody with a ball cap like yours near Bond’s place,” Aunt Ibby said.
“Doesn’t mean a thing,” Roger said. “The papers picked it up because of that old eighteen-thirty case—where one of Dick Crowninshield’s accomplices was spotted outside Joseph White’s house the night he was killed.”
“They recognized that man because of his hat,” Louisa said. “I looked it up. There truly are remarkable similarities between this case and the Joseph White murder.”
“Too many similarities to be coincidental,” Betsy said. “And they match up with the course on Salem history that Cody teaches at the Tabby.”
I thought about the bloody handprint I’d seen so recently in the mirror, and about the bloody scene Joseph White’s housekeeper had seen on that long-ago morning. Too many similarities to be coincidental? I wondered what River might have to say about it. Pete, Aunt Ibby, and River are the only people who know about my so-called gift. Pete doesn’t like to talk about it. Aunt Ibby reluctantly accepts it. River, being kind of psychic, likes, accepts, and loves talking about it. I knew that visions in a mirror had no place in this conversation. I decided to call River. ASAP.
There was quite a bit of discussion about the tell-tale sneakers, which according to the police definitely belonged to Cody and definitely had made the prints beneath the window at Samuel Bond’s house. Nobody came up with an explanation of how that could happen if Cody wasn’t there.
The broken shot glass was the accepted explanation for those bloodstains in the old man’s bedroom, although the reason for Lucy Mahoney’s presence there in the first place raised questions. No answers.
Betsy, Louisa, and Aunt Ibby each contributed a few more snippets of gossip related to Sam Bond, and my aunt told once again about her poodle-sitting friend who’d overheard two men arguing, and about Bond’s new passport picture. Roger asked for names. By eight o’clock we’d exhausted the cheese, crackers, wine, and most of the conversation.
Aunt Ibby invited everyone for a potluck dinner, but the twins and Cody were due back at Phyllis’s house, and Louisa and Betsy had “other plans.” Pete and I accepted as usual. We said good night to our friends, and accompanied the twins and Cody to the front door and the women to the back door. Then Pete and I settled ourselves comfortably at the kitchen table while Aunt Ibby popped the rolls into the oven.
Murders—both old and new—and phantom bloody handprints could wait. For now there were steaming bowls full of coq au vin, hot rolls, apple pie with vanilla ice cream, and coffee.
We’d all be dealing with reality soon enough.
Chapter 25
When Pete and I, full of good food and with a bag of leftover rolls for breakfast, eventually climbed the front stairs to my apartment, it was nearly time for the ten o’clock news. “Want to watch my interview with Edwin Symonds?” I asked as I turned on the kitchen TV.
“I guess I’m about to,” he said, smiling.
“I haven’t even seen the fully edited version myself,” I said. “I think I did okay though. He was a pretty easy interview. Seems like a nice guy.”
“He’s for sure the mysterious editor, right?” Pete sat at the counter, facing the TV, and I sat beside him.
“He is. Mr. Pennington recognized him from Louisa’s pictures. But, know something? I mentioned that I’d spoken with Symonds before you got here, and Cody didn’t seem too pleased about it.”
“What’d he say?”
“He didn’t actually say anything, but he had kind of a stony face.”
“Stony face doesn’t mean a thing. The man is facing a murder charge,” Pete said. “Can’t expect him to look happy about much of anything.”
He was right, of course. “Before we watch the interview,” I said, “there’s a part of it we left out.” I told him about the book in Eddie’s hand—with his fingers covering most of the title or whatever the words on the cover were. “It has something to do with the thing I saw in the mirror tonight.”
“Want to tell me about it?” Pete reached for my hand.
“Yes, I do.” I faced him, glad for his gentle touch. He knows I don’t enjoy the visions. “In the mirror the man’s fingers were replaced with a print. A bloody handprint.”
“You think it has something to do with the girl’s bloody prints on Bond’s bedroom wall?”
“Maybe. Or maybe it has to do with Joseph White’s blood. I don’t know what to think,” I admitted. “You have any ideas?”
“It’s likely that the killer wore gloves of some kind,” he said. “The gloves would be bloody. Does that make any sense?”
“Maybe. I think I’ll ask River what she thinks too. She’s good at symbols. She’s probably at the station by now.”
“Couldn’t hurt to ask,” he said, and pointed to the screen. “Here comes the news.”
Phil Archer does the ten o’clock newscast—mostly local events and high school sports. Buck Covington comes on at eleven with national and regional headlines, along with investigative reports. That leads into River’s midnight show—Tarot Time with River North.
Phil led with Scott Palmer talking with the mayor about the possibility of reestablishing the start-of-summer picnic for school kids at the Salem Willows, followed by some film of the latest under-the-city tunnel entrance a homeowner had discovered in his basement. There was a teaser about my interview, then a Stromberg’s Cove restaurant commercial. Scott’s piece about Cody being released on bail followed and took only a few seconds. Marty was right. I would have milked it for more. Finally, there I was in the Tabby’s new Starbucks with Edwin Symonds. I looked okay. Eddie in spandex looked fabulous. I listened to myself asking questions and Eddie answering them. Was Old Jim right? Did I have reporter’s instinct? Should I have pushed a little more on the broken shot glass episode? Was the fact that Eddie had been one of Professor Bond’s students important—or another coincidence? Is anything about all this a coincidence? I watched Pete’s face. “Well,” I asked. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re a damn good reporter,” he said, “and getting better all the time.”
“You do?”
“Of course I do.” He ruffled my hair. “Do you think I’m trying to talk you into bed?”
“That’d be too easy,” I said, leaning into his shoulder. “But seriously, whenever I watch an interview like that one—one that’s important, not a pet store or a crystal shop—I always wonder if I should have been more aggressive. Pushed harder for answers. Like I wanted to ask Eddie who his and Cody’s dates were, but I thought it would be rude.”
“It might have been,” he agreed. “Fortunately, I didn’t have to be polite when I questioned him. I guess I can tell you Lucy Mahoney was Cody’s date. Eddie had brought along one of his ballroom dance students—a lady of impeccable character and a ton of money.”
“I’d guessed that Lucy was with Cody. I gather that Eddie’s date isn’t a person of interest?”
“Clean as a whistle,” he said. “Symonds admitted very frankly that he likes older women with money. No law against that.”
“True,” I said. “I guess he was kind of hitting on Louisa when they were all in Alaska.”
; “No surprise there,” he said. “I think I’ll hit the shower while you call River about the hocus-pocus stuff.”
I called River’s number. She picked up right away.
“Hello, Lee. I saw you on the news. I’m almost ready to sign up for dancing lessons!”
“Mr. Pennington says the classes are popular. Maybe you and I should go together,” I said. “Meanwhile, I need your advice about a vision.”
“A bad one?”
“Kind of unpleasant,” I said. “More confusing than bad, I guess.”
“I have time. Shoot.”
I told her about the book I’d seen in Eddie’s hand and about the blood smears in Professor Bond’s room. “I think both of those images got mixed up in my brain,” I told her, “and what I saw in the mirror tonight was a bloody handprint where Eddie’s fingers were on the blue book. What do you think it means?”
“What matters is what you think it means.” Her tone was serious. “I think it’s possible that you think your new friend Eddie may have blood on his hands.”
“That never crossed my mind,” I protested. “Honest, it didn’t!”
“Maybe not your conscious mind,” she said. “Any other visions lately?”
“There was a brief one in the car mirror—it showed the blue book with a red stain on it. And another one had the Knight of Pentacles riding on a giant Monopoly game piece.”
“Knight of Pentacles,” she repeated. “Dark hair, dark eyes, red gloves. I don’t get the giant game piece though.”
“It’s a display piece at the Toy Trawler. I’d done a segment about it.”
“Gotcha. It seems as if all of the recent visions point to one person, doesn’t it?”
“Seems so.” I agreed reluctantly. “But I like Eddie. I’d rather it was Alan or even the girl, Lucy.”
“What about Cody McGinnis?” she asked. “Doesn’t Pete think it was him?”
“I guess he has to. But the twins are so sure their nephew is innocent that I have to believe in him too. And Eddie Symonds seems so positive that Cody couldn’t have done it. We met Cody in person tonight, and he seems like a nice guy who’s in a tough position and is scared to death.”
Murder, Take Two Page 14