Elected for Death

by Valerie Wolzien

  Brett, who had returned to the body and had knelt on the floor, got up quickly and addressed the intruder. “No one is saying anything to the press at this time, Tom.”

  “So why don’t I just look around and see what conclusions I can draw on my own,” the younger man replied, a personable smile cutting across his pale face.

  “Why don’t you just wait right there and I’ll talk to you myself as soon as I have a free moment,” Brett countered.

  “You’re offering us an exclusive?” the young man asked quickly.

  “You’re the only journalist in sight,” Brett answered, turning back to his task.

  At that moment the young man seemed to notice Susan for the first time. He smiled at her and, after glancing back at the podium, made his way to her side. “Interesting, isn’t it?” he asked so quietly that she could hardly make out his words.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said, thinking that interesting was one of the last words she would use to describe a murder.

  “Well, no matter how personal a tragedy it is, a political assassination is always big news.”

  “A what?” Calling Ivan Deakin’s death a political assassination was a completely new idea to her.

  “What exactly would you call it when a man is killed for his political beliefs?” He looped his leg over the back of a chair and plopped down, apparently oblivious to the chair’s creaking protest.

  “Why do you think that’s why he was killed? People are killed for all sort of reasons, personal as well as professional.”

  He frowned, crinkling up his light blue eyes, and Susan realized that he was, like a messy and overenthusiastic puppy, terribly appealing. “Of course, that’s true,” he admitted slowly. “Was there anything in his personal life that would cause someone to want to kill him? His bio said he was divorced.”

  “His bio?”

  “There was a brief bio included in his press packet.”

  “What else did it say?” Susan asked. She didn’t think Jed had made up a biography to give to the press.

  “Just the normal stuff. Schools attended, professional experience, volunteer positions. You know the type of thing.”

  “Sure.” Susan paused. “So you’re a member of the press.” Who else, after all, would be dragging all this equipment around?

  “Want to see my press pass?” he asked proudly. “I’ll probably have to get it out to show the police.” He was fumbling around, trying to remove his wallet from a pocket underneath his well-weighted belt.

  Susan sensed that he wanted to show it to her, so she carefully examined the piece of paper he held out.

  “It’s not the best picture in the world,” he began.

  Susan, who had noticed that he wore the same clothing in the photograph as he was wearing now, was checking out the date. The identification had been issued just a few weeks ago. “It’s almost new,” she said.

  “I just graduated from college in August,” the young man answered. “Not that this is my first job. I worked while I was going to school—at the college TV station—and I did some freelance work. And I held a summer internship at a public station in Boston, too.”

  “You’re very well qualified,” Susan said. “And it’s wonderful that you got a job right out of college. These days—”

  “It’s in the contacts you make along the way. One thing leads to another,” he said earnestly, his hair falling into his eyes as he leaned toward her. “Like I had this internship, and one of the men on the staff there knew about this station, so, when I began looking for work, I called him. Three months later I had moved to Hancock and had this job.” He took back his card and held out his hand. “I’m Tom Davidson, by the way.”

  “Susan Henshaw.” She shook hands, noticing that he was employed by the public-access channel.

  “How do you do? Hey, you’re the woman who is always involved in murders here in town, aren’t you?” he asked, obviously excited by her name.

  “Yes. But if you don’t come from around here, how do you know about me?” She felt a little thrill, wondering if her fame had spread all the way to Boston.

  “I’ve read the back issues of the Hancock Herald for the last ten years since I’ve been working.”

  Since he had only been working for a few weeks, Susan was impressed.

  “So how did you know about this before I did?” Tom Davidson asked.

  “I was in the audience tonight. And I was waiting around afterward for my husband when all the police cars showed up—”

  “Your husband wasn’t with you? Say, is he the Jed Henshaw who is running on Tony Martel’s ticket?”

  Susan just nodded.

  “Son of a gun. So you have a personal connection to this murder.”

  “Well, not really,” Susan insisted.

  “But you’d admit that it’s more than likely that politics is involved, wouldn’t you?” He was fumbling around with his belt as he spoke.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I just want to make sure my tape recorder is going. And you wouldn’t mind if I turned on the video camera, would you?”

  “But I would. I don’t have anything to say about this,” Susan insisted.

  “She certainly does not.”

  Relieved to hear her husband’s familiar voice, Susan smiled. “Jed. I was waiting for you,” she explained, turning around.

  “What’s going on? Why are all the police cars out front? It looks like someone died in here.” He looked closely at his wife. “Susan? What happened?”

  “Ivan Deakin died,” she said quietly.

  “Would you like to make a statement, sir?” Tom offered the microphone that he held in his hand. “It will only take me a minute to change the battery on the camera. This will affect the election and—”

  “I certainly do not want to make a statement. And I think right now we should be considering the personal loss involved when someone dies unexpectedly rather than any political question—”

  “He was murdered, Jed.” Susan didn’t want to tell him like this, but she was sure he should know immediately.

  “Murdered? How? How do you know?” He glanced at the podium, obviously stunned by her words.

  “He was poisoned. I saw him,” she added, nodding.

  “You saw him die?” Tom Davidson jumped in.

  “No, but—” Susan began.

  “Would you mind leaving my wife alone?” Jed said, suddenly angry. “She’s just had a shock. She shouldn’t be asked any questions right now. Especially not by the press.”

  “Fine. Is Tony Martel still around?” Tom stood up.

  “I don’t think so,” Jed answered. “He left right after you interviewed us. I imagine he was planning on going home. Which is what we should be doing,” he added to his wife. “Chad will be home and I want to talk with him about the college recommendations he needs to get.”

  Susan suspected this was an excuse to leave, but it sounded like a good one, so she stood up. She could give Brett a call tomorrow and he would tell her about Ivan’s murder. Or at least she could ask. “It was very nice talking with you,” she said to Tom Davidson. She might not be running for first lady, but she knew it was smart to be nice to the press—no matter how lowly the office or small the newspaper. “Have a good evening and good luck with your new job.”

  “Good night,” the young man had just enough time to say before Jed tugged her through the door.

  “Why are we in such a rush? I thought we agreed to let Chad handle these things by himself,” she said, trotting by her husband’s side into the dark.

  “That was just an excuse to get out of there. I have to call Anthony. He should hear about this from me and not some young reporter.” He strode off in the opposite direction of Susan’s car.

  “Where are you going?” she called out.

  “To make a call on the car phone. You don’t need me to walk you to your Cherokee, do you?”

  “Of course not,” Susan said rather sarcastically, watc
hing her husband’s departing back. “Especially since I might as well hang around here if I’m not needed at home.”

  And she turned and walked back into the Women’s Club.

  Tom was obviously not a young man who let the grass grow under his feet. He was back at the podium talking earnestly to Brett. Susan noticed Brett was looking worried. Since everyone was occupied, she decided to do a little investigating on her own. Somewhere around here there was a way to get up to the balcony.…

  There was, she discovered, a stairway on the far right of the foyer. She climbed up quickly and found herself in a small vestibule. Directly in front of her was a large room furnished with a massive mahogany refectory table and a couple of dozen leather and mahogany chairs. A faded watercolor of the building she was in hung on the wall opposite her. On either side of the painting hung commemorative plaques with tiny brass plates on their surfaces. A long sideboard stood along one wall and the other was glass from the waist up. Susan walked over and looked down upon the scene below. More people were arriving, trying to walk to the podium without being accosted by Tom Davidson on the way.

  Susan continued to explore. She left the room where Jed had listened to the speech—through, she assumed, the square speakers hanging in the corners—and reentered the vestibule. A door led to the long hallway that crossed the back of the building over the vestibule. Like the room she had just left, it was glass from the waist up. She walked across quickly, wondering how she would explain her presence if she ran into the caretaker toward whose apartment she assumed she was heading. There was a door at the end of the hallway. A brass plaque, larger than those on the wall of the room she had just left, explained that the apartment belonged to the caretaker of the Hancock Women’s Club. It suggested that she knock if his presence was required. She didn’t.

  She returned to the hallway and headed for the stairs. She was halfway down when she heard someone call out, “Who’s there?”

  Assuming the question was directed at her, she ran down quickly and stuck her head back into the room. “It’s me. I—” She realized where she was standing. “I was just using the ladies’ room.”

  She wondered if her lie had been so obvious; Brett was walking over to her with a frown on his handsome face. “Susan, did you see Mr. Deakin die? Or drink from his glass? Or anything like that?”

  “No,” she answered, shaking her head.

  “Then why are you here? The only people who have any business being here are those who are material witnesses to Mr. Deakin’s death.”

  “I was waiting for Jed.”

  “Jed’s still here?”

  “I was looking for him. I guess he’s gone home,” she said. After all, she didn’t actually have proof that he hadn’t.

  “It’s late. Maybe you should join him.”

  Susan didn’t even bother to say good night. She had helped Brett solve murders in the past, so why should he be acting like her presence was only an irritant? She noticed Tom Davidson standing in the back of the room, where, she imagined, Brett had banished him. She pulled gloves from her coat pocket and headed for the street. She was so angry that she didn’t hear the footsteps behind her until she was almost to her car.

  “Wow! Are you a runner or something? I was afraid I wasn’t going to catch up with you,” Tom Davidson said, panting.

  “Are you all right?” Susan was amazed by this lack of stamina in such a young person.

  “Yes. I have asthma. This time of year is always difficult for me. Don’t worry, I have an inhaler if it gets too bad.”

  “But why were you trying to catch up with me? I told you that I wouldn’t make a statement and I haven’t changed my mind in the last fifteen minutes.”

  “No, that’s not it. This is off the record,” Tom replied, still breathing heavily. “I did want to ask you a question, though.”

  “You can ask, but I don’t know that I will answer.”

  “Did you see who was up there when you were on the second floor of the Women’s Club? Did you see who was walking around?”

  SEVEN

  “Why was he so sure there was another person up there?” Kathleen asked, pressing the fast-forward button on her television’s remote control. A very blurry Barney zipped around the screen. Susan, whose children were almost grown up, thought the purple dinosaur was adorable. Kathleen, who had lived through every episode of the Barney show at least a dozen times with her son, Alex, hoped the animal would be found politically incorrect before her younger child became interested in watching television.

  The two women were sitting in Kathleen’s family room, watching the tape Kathleen had made of the previous night’s events. Kathleen had dozed off before the show last night and had no idea that Ivan Deakin had been killed until Susan appeared on her doorstep a few minutes earlier. Now she was hearing about Tom Davidson’s last meeting with Susan.

  “He claims he saw the shadow of someone walking across the hallway between the apartment and the large room at the top of the stairs.”

  “How did he know it wasn’t you?”

  “I asked the same question. Apparently he had no trouble recognizing me when I walked across the passageway. He only saw this other person’s shadow. He claims this other person was following me.”

  “Male or female?”

  “The other person? I don’t know. In fact, I don’t think anyone could tell. He just referred to it—or him—as another person.”

  “Oh. And you didn’t see anyone else?”

  “No one. I thought maybe the caretaker was up there, but Tom had asked the club women who were on hand and they said the caretaker’s out of town this week.”

  “And why does he think this has anything to do with the murder? Couldn’t it be that someone was curious and wandering around just like you were? Isn’t he jumping to conclusions?”

  “Probably. He’s young and enthusiastic and he’s driving Jed nuts. We were talking about it when Jed finally got home last night. He says this Tom Davidson follows the candidates around looking for a scoop like a newspaper reporter in the old movies.”

  “That would drive anyone crazy.”

  “I think he’s sort of charming.”

  Kathleen grinned. “He’s a little young for you, isn’t he?”

  “I was thinking about Chrissy!” Susan protested.

  “Since when has she asked you to find boyfriends for her?”

  “You’re right. Since never. Wait! That’s Bradley Chadwick!” Susan pointed at the screen.

  Kathleen pressed the pause button and then rewound to the beginning of the program. The two women leaned forward and peered at the television. The scene changed to behind the building and Tom Davidson appeared, hair as unruly as ever.

  “We’d like to thank our viewers for their kind attention and we will reschedule this program as soon as Mr. Deakin notifies us of the new time for his announcement. Our coverage will continue with interviews with the other two mayoral candidates and some members of their tickets. First, Dr. Chadwick.” He turned his back on the camera and Bradley Chadwick walked into view.

  “I’d like to make a statement, Tom,” Bradley began, probably unaware of the fact that the camera had dipped south, cutting off the top of his head and centering the picture on his tie’s knot. “Ivan Deakin called this meeting to announce what he claimed to be a solution to the problems the Landmark Commission has caused in our lovely village of Hancock. You can see exactly how disorganized his event was, how poorly planned—so poorly planned, in fact, that he was unable to even make his announcement. I think this bodes ill for his plan, his abilities, his very candidacy. I think we can all agree that any ideas put forward by Mr. Deakin can be counted on to be incompetent at the very least. We used to say that a man who cannot run his family should not be allowed to try to run the country. That is all I have to say.” He ended abruptly, turned, and walked out of camera range.

  “Thank you very much, Dr. Chadwick,” Tom jumped in. “And now we have asked Mr. Martel to make a
short statement. If he would like to.”

  The camera swung around to the left and Anthony Martel was seen, clearing his throat.

  “This should be good,” Susan muttered.

  “Hmmm.” Kathleen realized that she might be being unfair. The only time she had gone to hear Anthony Martel speak, she had fallen asleep.

  “Well, I think the first thing I would like to say, initially, is that I’m very sorry we didn’t get a chance to hear Ivan Deakin’s plan. It behooves each and every one of us in Hancock, citizen and candidate alike, to listen to all opinions and suggestions about the Landmark Commission conflict. A solution will come only when everyone’s ideas and feelings have been considered. However …”

  “Does he always go on like this?” Kathleen asked, putting down her empty coffee cup.

  Susan shrugged. “Terrible, isn’t it? He’s fine when someone has prepared a script; otherwise he runs on and on during public statements. Jed thinks it’s just nerves. It’s too bad, because he really alienates people who probably agree with his viewpoint.”

  “So now that Ivan Deakin is dead, the voters of Hancock have a choice between a pompous bore and a verbose one?”

  “Don’t forget. The verbose bore doesn’t want every house in town built before 1939 to be under the jurisdiction of the Landmark Commission.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting that there wasn’t a real difference between the two—”

  “Only that the candidates are among the most boring people in town,” Susan finished for her. “Wait!” she interrupted herself. “There’s Jed! He’s going to say something.” She bit her lip and leaned forward, intent on listening to her husband express his sadness over Ivan Deakin’s inability to make his announcement and recap the platform on which he and the other candidates on Anthony Martel’s ticket were running. The whole thing took less than a minute.

  “Susan!” Kathleen cried when the camera had moved on to someone else. “He’s wonderful on TV!”

  “He is, isn’t he?” Susan was pleased and more than a little surprised. After almost twenty-five years of marriage, she couldn’t remember having seen her husband speak publicly more than a half-dozen times, and never on television. “I guess we should listen to the other candidates.”