A Slaying in Savannah (24 page)

I was bothered by the fact that Roland Richardson hadn’t told me that he was present the night of Wanamaker Jones’s murder. It seemed to me that he could have offered that at the outset. I made a mental note to query him about that lapse.

I went to the edge of the park and waited until a vacant taxi came along. As we drove back to Tillie’s house, I thought of my meeting with Captain Mead Parker. Obviously, things had changed dramatically in the Savannah police department since Sheridan Buchwalter’s days on the force. For one thing, it was now the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department, a merging of the Chatham County and Savannah city police that had taken place in 2003. Detective Buchwalter had described a racially tense and divided department, a state of affairs that thankfully no longer existed. Captain Parker was a black woman, as were the two officers at the desk when I arrived. It was good to see that sort of racial progress taking place, made more significant in a distinctly Southern city like Savannah. That reality was the only uplifting thought I had during my brief trip to the house.

Chapter Nineteen

I’d no sooner walked into the house than the phone rang. Mrs. Goodall answered and said it was for me.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Fletcher, it’s Captain Parker. I was wondering whether you’d like to witness the testing of the revolver you delivered to me.”

“Yes, of course I would,” I said. “When will you be doing the test?”

“This afternoon at five, at our regional crime lab.”

“I appreciate being invited,” I said, surprised that I had been. I’d left Captain Parker’s office concerned that the police wouldn’t be especially cooperative. Obviously, I’d misread her. “Just tell me how to get there.”

“I’ll have you picked up at four. You’ll be at Mortelaine House?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

I was standing in front of the house that afternoon when a marked squad car pulled up, driven by a uniformed female officer. I’m sure the sight of the official white car with SAVANNAH-CHATHAM POLICE emblazoned on its sides caused a few curtains to be parted in neighboring homes, and generated speculation about whether something nefarious had occurred at Miss Tillie’s mansion—again. I looked back and saw that the Grogans were witnessing the scene through one of the front windows of the guesthouse.

“Mrs. Fletcher?’ the officer asked as I opened the rear door of her vehicle.

“Yes.”

“I’m Patrol Officer Lee. Captain Parker sent me to bring you to the crime lab.”

“I appreciate being picked up,” I said, climbing into the backseat and closing the door behind me.

She navigated traffic, including the many slow-moving sightseeing trolleys that seemed to be everywhere, and proceeded around Calhoun Square past “The Book” Gift Shop, headquarters for everything related to
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
by John Berendt, whose wildly popular book, helped along by Clint Eastwood’s film version, put the city on the tourist map. We followed Abercorn Street out of the downtown area until it became a highway running south, passing all the vestiges of the inevitable suburban sprawl, including restaurant and clothing chains, numerous large signs promising instant cash for a variety of reasons, and the Oglethorpe shopping mall, one of Melanie Goodall’s favorite spots.

We turned off onto a road whose sign read MOHAWK STREET and continued on it until reaching a series of low buildings on the left. Signs indicated that they housed the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and one of its divisions, the Coastal Regional Crime Lab.

Officer Lee pulled into a parking lot and turned off the engine. I followed her through a door into the lab, where she was greeted by a large man with a pleasant smile who introduced himself to me as Charlie Elison, the laboratory manager.

“The others are already here,” he said. Officer Lee and I fell in step behind him through a series of doors to a room where every flat surface was covered by thick black foam shaped like the bottom of an egg crate. Captain Parker was there with two other people, a uniformed forensics officer and a casually dressed young man who was in charge of tool-mark testing. His name was Richie Gollub.

I sensed that my unexpected presence caused a modicum of unease in the room, which Captain Parker put to rest. “Mrs. Fletcher is here in Savannah to . . .” She glanced at me, and I detected a small smile on her lips. “She’s here to look into the murder of Wanamaker Jones forty years ago.”

“I read about you in the paper,” Gollub, the tool-mark expert, said eagerly. “You were mentioned in somebody’s will.”

“The victim’s fiancée,” I said.

“Right,” he said. “There’s a million bucks riding on it for you?”

“I’m afraid so,” I said.

I glanced at a table dominated by a sophisticated microscope connected to a computer screen. Lying next to it was the revolver that had been discovered behind the wall in Tillie’s house.

“I’ve never witnessed a ballistics test before,” I admitted, “although I’ve visited other labs where tool-mark testing takes place. I’ve seen them match a screwdriver used to pry open a window with the marks on the window itself, and there was also the mark left by a pair of clippers on the hasp of a padlock that had been cut through.”

“I’m sure it’s no different than this lab,” Gollub said as he picked up the revolver and walked to a corner of the room where a huge barrel, at least ten feet deep, stood. “Ballistics testing is just a glorified form of tool-mark testing,” he explained as the forensics officer handed each person in the room a set of sound isolation earphones, the kind used at airports to muffle the roar of jet engines for those working on the ground. “The water in the tank is eight feet deep, enough to stop a bullet fired into it.” He laughed. “When I test a rifle or other long gun, I have to stand up on that platform to fire down into the tank. So far, I haven’t fallen in.”

“Even with your earphones on,” Mr. Elison said, “it’ll still be pretty loud. Whenever he tests a weapon in here, the whole building shakes. You can stand outside the door if you prefer.”

“This thirty-eight special is at least sixty years old,” the tool-mark specialist said, turning the weapon over in his hands. “Small, too. You don’t see too many of them.”

We all donned our earphones and stood back as he aimed the revolver into the tank. He pulled the trigger. The lab manager had been right. The report was painfully loud despite the protection for our ears and the sound-muffling thick foam on the walls. It seemed to linger in the room for a very long time, along with the acrid odor of gunpowder.

Gollub retrieved the bullet from the tank, dried it, and placed it under the microscope. “The bullet I’m comparing this one to is the one that killed Mr. Jones forty years ago,” he said. “I’m looking to see if the grooves on the one I just fired match up with the grooves on the original.” I watched with fascination as the twin images of each bullet appeared on the screen, side by side. The grooves made on the bullets as they spiraled through the gun barrel came into focus, and he rotated one bullet, seeking to find similarities in the markings. A minute later, it was obvious even to my untrained eye that the marks matched perfectly.

“Both bullets came from that same gun,” the specialist announced. “They’re identical.”

“Now, the question is who fired that weapon and killed Wanamaker Jones,” I said, more to myself than to others in the room.

“We couldn’t get any prints off the weapon, except those that probably belong to the plumber,” the forensics officer said.

“That’s a shame,” I said.

Captain Parker thanked Elison and Gollub, and we walked together from the building. “It seldom goes easily,” she said once we were outside. “At least we have the weapon that was used.”

“One step at a time,” I said. “I want you to know, Captain, how much I appreciate being included like this.”

A sound that passed for a laugh came from her. “To be honest, Mrs. Fletcher, I’d love to see you solve this murder. It would be nice to close the books on it. Besides, I’m getting a kick out of it. Miss Mortelaine was a true Southern eccentric to have done what she did in her will.” Her laugh was more full-fledged this time. “I wish you all the best,” she said. “Give a call anytime you think you’ve come up with something.”

I watched her walk away and join the forensics officer at the car in which they’d arrived. Officer Lee and I got into our car and she drove me back to the house. As I was about to get out, she said, “So you’re the lady I read about in the paper.”

“Unfortunately, yes,” I answered.

“Everyone was talking about you at headquarters,” she said. “We even have a couple of side bets on your success—no money, just bragging rights.”

“Which side did you bet on?”

“I bet against you, but now that you found the murder weapon, I’m thinking I’ll go change my bet.”

“I appreciate your confidence in me,” I said, wishing I felt the same way.

She started to laugh and shook her head. “You have a nice day, Mrs. Fletcher,” she said as she put the car in gear and pulled away, still shaking her head.

I certainly understood her amusement, and found myself also shaking my head as I went up the steps and entered the house.

What’s my next step?
I asked myself as I went up to my room, slid off my shoes, and sat by the window. The answer came to me. I found my cell phone in my handbag and dialed Seth Hazlitt’s number. I felt very far from home at that moment, and needed to hear a familiar voice, even via long distance.

Seth, as always, was generous with his time, and our talk reassured me. I’d needed an objective ear, someone unacquainted with the people in Savannah, who presented a bewildering picture of their relationships to each other and to the victim. Wanamaker Jones had been as thoroughly rejected in death as he’d been welcomed into their homes and their hearts in life. Without doubt, he had considerable personal charm, which allowed him entry to areas that would have been denied to others who were less talented. Yet, the completeness with which they had locked arms and refused to permit the authorities a glimpse into the circumstances leading to his demise was, to me, baffling. It was almost as if they were embarrassed to have been taken in by a charlatan and were not about to let that weakness be made public.

I used Seth as a sounding board for my theories and laid out for him the little I thought I knew.

“I can’t help you, Jessica,” he said, “but seems to me you have a pretty good handle on the situation. Ought to be able to wrap it up in a week or two.”

“I hope you’re right. I keep thinking that somehow I’m missing something.”

“You’ll find it. You always do. And make it quick, please. My cookie jar is almost empty.”

Chapter Twenty

Mr. Basker, the plumber, was scheduled to come back in two days to close up the open-ing that had exposed the cause of the leak. The extra time was allotted to enable the police to inspect the site where the murder weapon in the Wanamaker Jones case had been found. The Grogans were ecstatic, sure that Jones had turned on the water to make his presence known. And for all I knew, they might have been right. No one had come up with a reason for why a shower, buried in the wall for forty years, would come to life. What unseen hand could have twisted a rusted tap, allowing long-dry pipes to flood with water, spurt out the showerhead, and fill the basin until it spilled onto the dusty boards and flowed down to the ceiling of the study?

The plumber, who was the most qualified to hazard a guess, remained mystified.

Mrs. Goodall clucked over the mess in the hall and muttered to herself about people coming back when they should have stayed dead.

I was inclined to be philosophical. While I couldn’t quite convince myself to credit the ghost of a dead man with helping me find the weapon used to murder him, I had no other explanation. I was willing simply to accept my good fortune in discovering what Detective Buchwalter had called “the smoking gun.”

The Grogans, aglow with their success, took the open wall as an invitation to focus all their electronic detection devices on what they bragged was solid evidence of paranormal activity. As a consequence, my sleep was accompanied by clicks and whirs outside my closed bedroom door as Artie and Samantha attempted once more to commune with the spirit complement of Mortelaine House through a hole in the wall. To be perfectly honest, I found the noise and the knowledge of their presence less unsettling than the eerie sounds in the house when it was supposedly empty, and more palatable than the Grogans’ previously unannounced investigations in the middle of the night.

The dining room was vacant when I went down to breakfast late the next morning. The Grogans had returned to the guesthouse to sleep off their all-night research, and General Pettigrew was nowhere in sight. I took a muffin from the buffet Mrs. Goodall had set up, picked up the local newspaper, and wandered down to the kitchen, where I found the housekeeper preparing crab cakes for supper. Melanie was sitting at the little wooden table, typing on her laptop computer. In typically chic fashion, she wore dark blue jeans and a black pullover with a squared collar, which framed the multiple strands of beads around her neck. At least six thin gold bangle bracelets adorned her wrist and I wondered how she typed with them. When I wear a bracelet, I usually have to remove it if I sit down at the computer.

“Mama, did you know that when Miss Tillie put in the new bathrooms, she covered up the old ones?”

Mrs. Goodall caught sight of me coming into the kitchen and nodded. “I really don’t remember, child. That was a long time ago.”

“Good morning,” I said. “May I join you?”

“Hi, Mrs. Fletcher,” Melanie said. “You can sit next to me. I was just asking my mama about the bathrooms.” She scooted her chair over to make room for me at the table.

I put down the newspaper and the plate with my muffin and took the seat next to hers. “Are you still working on the report?” I asked.