Murder at the High School Reunion (12 page)

“9-30-55.”

Those were Lou’s first words as he got in Lightning
and buckled his seat belt.

“I think your watch is a little slow. I’ve got 9:42.”

“I wasn’t giving you the time, Cy.”

“Then, what are you doing, Lou? Giving me your locker
combination after all these years? Or did you rob a bank a while back and
you’re letting me know where the money is in case you keel over before I do.”

“Those numbers are today’s clue.”

“And we still haven’t decided what yesterday’s clue
means. God seems to be getting a little ahead of me.”

“Cy, I hate to break this to you, but God’s always well
ahead of you. Besides, you’re the one who says these messages come from God.
You may be right. Like I said I don’t hear any voice, just a thought. But just
in case you’re right, do you want me to tell God He’s moving too fast?”

“I wouldn’t do that. He might do something we don’t
like. I guess we just need to ask Him for more wisdom.”

“Or more patience.”

“Before we get into today’s clue, let’s talk about
yesterday’s. I Googled Jennifer Garner. Hatchet-faced, oh you wouldn’t believe
how bad she looks.”

“You’re right, I won’t. Mrs. Eversole was taking out
the trash when I got in last night. I asked her if she knew who Jennifer Garner
is. Even she told me how good Garner looks. Do you know she used to be the star
of some TV show? Mrs. Eversole is still mad at the network for taking it off.”

“Your neighbor was on some TV show?”

“Not my neighbor. Jennifer Garner.”

“I know she was on some TV show. I don’t know if it
matters whether she was the star or not. Anyway, that TV show, in case you
don’t know, was called
Alias.
She also appeared in some things called
The
Invention of Lying, Catch Me If You Can,
and
The Pretender.
”

“And you think that one of these things she appeared
in or on will help us solve the case?”

“Well, maybe. At least after seeing Garner, I know she’s
not some suspect in the Witness Relocation Program.”

“She does look good, doesn’t she, Cy? And if she wants
to relocate, she might try my neighborhood.”

“How would you know how she looks?”

“Well, you wouldn’t let me come over to your house
while you Googled her, and when Mrs. Eversole invited me in, and asked me if
I’d like to see one of her shows, well, I couldn’t disappoint Mrs. Eversole.
She’s such a lonely woman.”

“So, where were you and Jennifer in your dream last
night?”

“On some deserted beach. And you?”

“Well, part of the time lying around the pool at some
resort, holding hands, but every now and then Garner faded out and I was stuck
in a rowboat with my next-door neighbor.”

I knew that would make Lou laugh.

“Cy, you need to treat your neighbor better. Maybe if
you do, she’ll invite you over to watch TV, like Mrs. Eversole did me.”

“Oh, she’s invited me over often enough, but I don’t
think she wants to watch TV. By the way, since you and Mrs. Eversole are on
such good terms, why don’t you ask her what she thinks of Jennifer Aniston?”

“What did you do, Cy? Google every woman in the
world?”

“No, just the Jennifers, and I didn’t Google Jennifer
Aniston until after Sam recommended her to me.”

“Sam? Have you been discussing this with him?”

“I just wanted to see if you and I and those who live
out in the wilderness are the only people who’ve never heard of Jennifer
Garner.”

“And what did Sam have to say?”

“Well, he has some of those TV episodes on DVD, too, and he’s seen some of her movies. Actually, I think he said all of them.”

“She makes movies, too? Mrs. Eversole didn’t tell me
that.”

“Well, maybe she’s saving that for your second date.”

“Cy, Mrs. Eversole is eighty-two.”

“In that case, I wouldn’t waste a lot of time before
you ask her out again.”

All of our back and forth about Jennifer Garner meant
that we arrived at the shoe factory where Betty Gail Spencer worked before we’d
had a chance to get serious about what the previous day’s clue meant. Oh, well!
We did have the rest of the day to mull it over.

+++

I let Lightning rest in “Visitor Parking” while Lou
and I went inside the small factory where Betty Gail Spencer worked. I showed
my credentials to someone at the front desk, who headed off to find someone in
authority. I went through the process again, told the manager why we were
there, and he led us to the area where Betty Gail Spencer worked. He then
excused himself and allowed us to go about our business. We talked with Mrs.
Spencer’s immediate boss, who called over a couple of people who worked in the
same area she did.

“Miss Collins, how well did you know Betty Gail
Spencer?”

“Well, we worked together for over four years. I guess
I knew her fairly well. We never did anything together away from work, but we
talked almost every day.”

“What kind of person was she?”

“Well, she changed not too long ago. Used to be, she
was kind of quiet, mainly talked about her husband and her home life. Then she
got to where she started to complain about him.”

“In what way?”

“Oh, she’d say things like, ‘Duck doesn’t ever want to
go anywhere. He’s an old stick in the mud. All he does is work and go fishing.”

“Did she ever say anything about how her husband
treated her?”

“Oh, she said she had him wrapped around her little
finger. If she’d so much as pout, he’d go out and buy her whatever she wanted,
if it didn’t cost too much.”

“Do you have any idea if he ever hit her?”

“If he did, she never said anything about it. And I
never saw any bruises on her face or arms.”

“Did she change in any other ways?”

“I’ll say she did. She started going out bar-hopping
after work, without her husband. She’d laugh about picking up men. I told her
she’d better watch herself. One night, she went to a bar with one of the guys
who works here. Floyd, the one over there. Every Friday just before we got off,
Floyd would come by and say, ‘Hey, ladies, I’m going bar hopping tonight.
Anybody want to go with me?’ He did it mainly as a joke, and we’d all laugh and
tell him we already had a date. Then, this one night, Betty Gail up and says,
‘Yeah, I’ll go with you,’ and Floyd said, ‘Ain’t you married?’ and she said,
‘Yeah, you got a problem with that?’ and Floyd, ‘I guess not.’ That next Monday
morning Floyd came in and said, ‘I’ll never do that again.’”

Lou and I didn’t seem to be learning much about Duck
Spencer, but what Miss Collins said seemed to agree with everyone else. We
excused ourselves and headed over to talk to Floyd. We learned his last name
was Hampton, and when he found out who we were and why we were there he moved
away from his work and the people around him so we could talk more privately.

“Mr. Hampton, I understand you went out with Betty
Gail Spencer one night.”

“Oh, yeah, but I’m not sure I’d call it going out
together. It was a standard joke that I’d walk by and tell the ladies I was
going bar hopping every Friday, just before we got off. Most of the time, I did
nothing of the sort, but there were times I’d go somewhere for a drink before
going home. Well, this one night Betty Gail offered to go with me. I said,
‘Aren’t you married?’ because I knew she was. She said something about that
didn’t matter. Did I want to go, or not? Well, I decided to cover my backside,
and told her okay, but we needed to drive separately. I didn’t want her husband
to catch us out somewhere and beat my face in. I’d never met him, so I didn’t
know if he was twice my size, or not.”

“Had you heard that he was a man who settled things
with fisticuffs?”

“I didn’t know anything about him. I didn’t even know
her that well. She worked over on the other side. We just smiled and said, ‘hi’
each day, when we passed each other. Well, anyway, I took her to a nice place,
and we had a drink. We hadn’t been there long, when she said, ‘I don’t like
this place. It’s too stuffy. Don’t you know any place else?’ Well, I’d heard of
this one bar, sort of a western kind of place, and I asked her if she wanted to
go there. She said ‘yes’ and she followed me to it. Well, that was a mistake.
She started drinking, and she couldn’t hold her liquor. I never have over two
drinks anywhere I go, but she didn’t stop with two. She got drunk, and when I
quit paying any attention to her, she started hitting on some other guys, even
got up on the mechanical bull to get their attention. Well, she fell off that
thing, threw up all over herself. I felt responsible since I was the one who
suggested we go there, and I went over and told her it was time to go. She said
it wasn’t. Anyway, the bartender and I convinced her to call her a taxi.”

“How did she act that next Monday?”

“I saw her, asked her if she got her car okay, and she
laughed, and said, ‘Yeah, Duck and I went to pick it up on Saturday. I asked
her if her husband was mad, and she said, ‘He blew a gasket,’ Then, I asked if
that meant he hit her or tore things up, and she said, “Naw, Duck isn’t like
that. He just hollers a lot.’ Well, he must have really started hollering a lot
because before long she started going to bars two and three times a week. A
couple of times she came in here all hung over, and once she almost lost her
job over it. That’s about all I know about her.”

I thanked Floyd Hampton for his help, and Lou and I
turned to leave. I didn’t think we’d learn anything else if we stayed there.

“Well, Lou, what do you think?”

“It sounds like she was quite a character.”

“Yeah, everyone says the same things about her. Same
about her husband, too. Everyone seems sure that he wouldn’t do anything to
hurt her.”

I wondered if that was true, or if the reunion was the
straw that broke the camel’s back. Maybe time would tell.

“Well, Lou why don’t we get back to Jennifer Garner?”

“I wish we could.”

“What do you think of those things I told you she was
in. Do you think one of them is supposed to help us solve this thing?”

“I’m not sure. I remember one of them says something
about lying, and another about deception. Personally, I think that several of
our suspects are guilty of that, but I’ve seen that freezer door, and it only
took one person to close it and padlock it.”

“Unless whoever it was had to corral them and throw
them in. Then it might take two people.”

“I don’t think that’s the case.”

“Why’s that, Lou?”

“Because both victims prints were on the freezer door,
as if they unlocked it.”

“But it takes only one person to unlock a padlock.”

“You’re right about that.”

“What do you think about the word ‘Alias’?”

“I think it means someone has another identity. And if
that’s the case, it has to be that new janitor. Everyone else knew each other.
None of them could have aliases.”

“From what we’ve heard, the one most likely to have a
second identity was Betty Gail Spencer.”

“What about those still living?”

“Do you think one of them has a second identity?”

“And the two victims found out about it? I doubt it.
I’m more inclined to think that if someone has a second identity, it has
something to do with that new janitor.”

“But, supposedly, he didn’t know any of these people.
He’s the only one who didn’t, which makes him the only one who definitely
didn’t have a motive.”

“Well, that does it. The current janitor is our man.
Should I swear out a warrant now?”

“Cy, I don’t think it’s nice to swear.”

“Then I’ll at least wait until I hear back from Sam
and find out if this guy is who he says he is, or not. Let’s move on to today’s
clue. What do you think about it? Is it the combination to a safe or a lock, or
a date?”

“I’m not sure if it’s either, although a combination
lock makes more sense. Could it be that someone’s been blackmailed, or someone
has something valuable put away somewhere?”

“I’m more inclined to think that it has something to
do with a date, except for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“If it is a date, the year is 1955. Neither of our
victims was alive back then, and none of our suspects were either, except for
the retired janitor, and he was just a kid. too young to have done anything
wrong.”

I looked up to see that Lightning had stopped in a
residential neighborhood. There were two little boys starring at us from across
the street. I got my bearings and realized that we had arrived at Mrs. Edwards’
house. Who knows how long we’d been there, and how long those two boys had been
starring at us. I smiled at them. They frowned back at us. I got out of the
car, and the two boys took off running.

Lou and I approached Mrs. Edwards’ house. There was no
doorbell, so I knocked on the door. A younger woman came to the door. She
couldn’t have been Mrs. Edwards, and might have been too young to be her
daughter.

“May I speak to Mrs. Edwards, please?”

“I’m sorry, but Mrs. Edwards passed away this spring.
My husband and I just moved in last month.”

“Do you know anyone on the street who might have known
her?”

“Well, there’s Mildred next door. Everyone smiles when
they see us, and says ‘hi,’ but she’s the only one I’ve spoken with. She knew
Mrs. Edwards, but I’m not sure how well. She’s at the grocery now, though. Left
about thirty minutes ago. Stopped and asked me if I needed anything.”

I thanked the young woman and turned away. As we
walked down the steps, I perused the street, looking for cars. There were only
a couple, and each of them was a few doors away, in two different directions.

“Left or right, Lou?”

“Oh, I prefer to be right rather than left.”

“I mean which house do you want to try first?”

He shrugged his shoulders, so I picked the one that
was on the same side of the street we were on. No need walking any extra steps
that the Wii wouldn’t give me credit for.

We arrived at our second house, and I knocked on the
door. An elderly woman answered the door, a woman old enough to have known Mrs.
Edwards for a long time.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t live here, and my daughter’s
not at home right now.”

She smiled quickly and shut the door.

No sooner had we turned away from the house than the
two boys who had run away reappeared from around the corner of her house.

“Does too.”

“Does too what?” I asked.

“Does too live there.  My momma says she says that
anytime somebody suspicious, like a salesman or a preacher, shows up at her
door. Men selling TV dishes and stuff like that are thicker’n thieves around
here. And momma says that from time to time some people come by in pairs trying
to convert us to their religion. Momma calls them alternative religions. She
don’t take much stock in them.”

I wondered if I looked more like a salesman or a
preacher. I also wondered how thick the thieves were in that neighborhood.

“What’s your name?”

“Momma says that we’re not supposed to give our names
out to strangers.”

“And your momma’s right.”

I took my badge out to pacify the young boy who was
the spokesman for the duo.

“See, I’m a cop.”

“Momma says fake badges are easy to come by, too.”

“Well, tell me this, Son. Did you know Mrs. Edwards?”

“I don’t guess there’s no harm in answering that. Is
she the old lady who keeled over not too long ago, the one who lived in the
first house you went to?”

“That’s the one.”

“Yeah, I knew her. She was a nice old lady. Always
called my momma any time she baked cookies. Told her to send me down. She let
me bring P.J.”

The other boy smiled when he said this. I assumed that
meant the other boy was P.J.

“Did anyone live with Mrs. Edwards?”

The boy laughed.

“Naw, she wasn’t that kind of lady. She’d make sure he
married her first.”

“No, I mean like her daughter.”

“Naw, she lived alone. She baked a lot. I miss her.”

I didn’t figure that I would learn any more from these
two young tikes, so I told them goodbye and Lou and I set off to the other
house with a car in the driveway. The two boys followed us up the street,
crossed the street when we did, and stood behind us in the yard when I knocked
on the door.

Another young woman opened the door. Before I could open
my mouth, the spokesman for the younger set opened his.

“Momma, these two men have been pumpin’ me about poor
old Mrs. Edwards. I didn’t tell them nothin’ exceptin’ that she made cookies
for me.”

Before anyone could utter another word, I introduced
myself and Lou. The young woman did likewise.

“Mrs. Perkins, we’re looking for someone who might
have known Mrs. Edwards twenty years ago, like a neighbor or her daughter.”

“I don’t think anyone else on the street has lived
here that long and her daughter died of cancer a couple of years ago.”

“Any friends you might have heard her talk about
who’ve lived in Hilldale for twenty years or more.”

“Sorry, I can’t help you there. She was really
neighborly with a couple of people on the street, but I never noticed any cars
stopping at her place.”

I thanked her for her time and turned to leave. The
household spokesman followed us.

“Hey, Mister, I knowed you was all right.”

“Knew you were all right,” his mother corrected.

"Yeah, but I knowed it first, Momma.”

The boy’s mother looked at me, smiled, and shook her
head.

When we got back in the car and shut the door, Lou
turned to me and said,

“Well, Cy, that looks like a dead end.”

“I’m not so sure. How would you like to go back and
ask that boy what he and P.J. were doing on the night of the reunion?”

+++

“Cy, what are our plans for this afternoon?”

“Nothing set in concrete. I can’t really think of
anyone else to talk to until we learn a little more. It’ll be sometime tomorrow
or the next day before Sam gets back with me on what he’s learned. Sometime
before that I want the two of us to get together at my house and mull over what
we know so far. Why did you ask, anyway?”

Lou turned to me with a sheepish grin on his face.

“Well, Cy, I figured I’d be better able to do my job
if I had a computer. I thought I might go shopping this afternoon. The problem
is, I don’t know anyone to hook it up for me. Should I pay the place where I
buy it to do that?”

“You could check with my yard boy Mark. He knows all
about computers. He hooked up mine, my Wii, too. It’s summer. You can probably
catch him at home.”

+++

We drove to my place. I went in and called Mark. He
told me he’d be happy to fix Lou up, even had me put Lou on the phone so he
could recommend where Lou should get his computer and what kind to get. Then he
told us to call when Lou got home.

I invited Lou to stay for lunch, Then, I ended up
going shopping with him, even though I wanted to rest, read, and Google. That
saved Lou from driving and allowed me to learn a little more about computers. I
ended up buying a thumb drive, just in case I wanted to store something
somewhere other than the hard drive. So far, I’ve saved very little to the hard
drive. I’ve spent most of my computer time on the Internet. One day I overheard
someone say something about a Facebook and a Farmville. I might check those out
some day, but for the time being I was giving myself to Google.

We had no problem finding the computer Mark
recommended to Lou, and he turned down all the other things the salesman said
he needed. Lightning offered her back seat for Lou’s purchases, and we headed
back to his place. I helped him carry his things in and had an opportunity to
meet Mrs. Eversole. Lou asked her what she thought of Jennifer Aniston and she
invited Lou over that night to watch
Friends
together. I assumed that
was either a movie or a TV show that Aniston was in. When Lou found out it was
a TV show, he agreed to come over, but he could watch only one episode because
he wanted to play with his new computer. Mrs. Eversole said that was fine with
her.

I left Lou with his computer and his date and headed
for home. I too planned to spend some time with Jennifer Aniston, and Jennifer
Garner. I could handle ogling and Googling two babes. I wanted to read too, but
I didn’t want to get too far ahead of Lou, and I didn’t figure that Lou would
be doing too much reading that night. When a boy gets a new toy, the boy has to
take time to play with that toy. I shook my head at what was happening. A year
before, I would never have figured that Lou and I would own computers and Wiis.
What next? Surely we weren’t going to succumb to the cell phone craze.