Murder at the High School Reunion (13 page)

I awoke the next morning, lay there until the cobwebs
had flown from my brain and I remembered what was on our agenda. Lou was coming
over for breakfast. We were going to mull over the case, see if we could make
any sense out of what we’d learned so far. Lou wasn’t coming until I called
him, so I had plenty of time to do whatever I wanted prior to that. I began by
spending a few minutes in prayer and devotional reading. Since Lou and I would
be eating together, I peeled a banana, ate it as I drank a glass of water, and
prepared to Wii. I’d Wii, then shower, then call Lou.

I continued to set new record highs in Advanced Step,
while I struggled along with the same low scores in many of the other
exercises. So that I wouldn’t get too full of myself, I clicked on Yoga and
tried the Tree exercise. I’d remembered to put a chair within lunging distance,
so I didn’t hit the floor when my leg gave out before my cartoon drill sergeant
called time. I was feeling particularly good, so I tried a couple of new
Balance Games. I continued to be unbalanced.

I showered, dressed, and then gave Lou a call. He
picked up on the first ring, as if he had nothing to do except wait for my
call. I hung up, unlocked the front door, and opened it a little so Lou would
know to come on in. Then, I went to retrieve the notes I’d made on the case,
which I’d placed on the dresser in my bedroom.

I picked them up and had just about gotten to the
bedroom door when I started to suspect that all wasn’t right. Two more steps
showed me that something was very wrong. I looked down to discover a ball of
white fluff trotting down the hall in my direction. I’d lived next door to that
ball of fluff long enough that I knew it was incapable of opening any of my
doors by itself.

“Miss Humphert, you had better not be in my house. I’m
coming out shooting. And if that mutt of yours so much as touches my pant leg,
it will be the first to go.”

“So, you’re taking off your pants, Cyrus.”

“No, I’m taking off your head.”

I made it to the living room and saw that I would have
to fumigate. I might even have to burn the couch. But first, I would throw out
what was slithering on it.

“Oh, Cyrus, it was so nice of you to leave your door
open for me. Twinkle Toes noticed first.”

“Miss Humphert, if you don’t get up right this minute,
I’m going to call the police.”

“Oh, Cyrus, don’t you remember, you are the police,
and believe me, you won’t need any help. You’re man enough for me. You can even
handcuff me if you wish.”

I leaned over, and shouted at her.

“Up! This minute!”

I did this at the exact time Lou opened the front
door.

“If I’m interrupting anything, I can come back later.”

“Oh, Cyrus, I didn’t know it was going to be a
foursome. I’ll call my sister Hortense right now.”

“No, you’ll leave right now.”

She didn’t make a move, so I called downtown and had
them send someone out.

“Oh, Cyrus, will there be more people coming? I didn’t
know this was going to be a party. I thought it would be just you, me, and
Twinkle Toes.”

“This is your last chance to leave.”

Heloise Humphert turned to Lou and said, “I think he’s
talking to you.”

What seemed like well over an hour was only five
minutes. A black-and-white pulled up and an officer I didn’t know except by
face came to the door. Lou motioned him in, and I let him know that my
next-door neighbor had entered my house without my permission. My neighbor
peppered him with some of her gobbledegook from the fantasy world in that mind
of hers, but the young officer held up well.

It didn’t take my neighbor long to find out we were
serious. She pleaded with me, but I needed to teach her a lesson. When she
fought off the officer and resisted arrest, he had no choice but to take her to
the floor and cuff her hands behind her back. When the officer led her to the
car, she kept crying and hollering, “My baby! My poor baby! I want my baby!”

That poor baby, the one who tried to bite the officer
who was handcuffing its owner and anyone else who tried to restrain it, yipped
and yapped and jumped around the room. When Lou saw where things were headed,
he called the humane society to come and pick up the mutt. They got there in
time for Heloise Humphert to see that her baby was being taken away, too.

Lou and I stood on the front porch until the
black-and-white disappeared out of sight. I called downtown, talked to my good
friend Lt. George Michaelson, and asked him to make sure she received the third
degree, which included questioning Miss Humphert with a bright light shining in
her face, and her spending time in the same holding cell as the drunks who had
come in the night before and had not yet been released. Then, I told him to
hold her until she stated that she would never set foot in my house again.

+++

I sat down, physically and emotionally spent. It was a
couple of minutes before I realized that I’d sat down on the same couch that
woman had slouched on. I expected to break out in a rash any second. Lou, on
the other hand, was in a different state of mind. He couldn’t stop laughing,
now that he was sure that I was out of danger.

“Just keep it up. Your day is coming.”

“No, Cy, I don’t want her. She’s all yours. Can’t you
see how much she loves you?”

“That woman needs to donate her brain to science.”

I sat there, exhausted.

“Cy, I can see what this has done to you. Do you want
me to fix breakfast?”

I hoped I could eat. I knew I couldn’t fix anything. I
needed to get this incident out of my mind so Lou and I could concentrate on
the case. I sat frozen to that couch until Lou hollered and told me breakfast
was ready. I summoned whatever strength I had and stumbled to the kitchen to
find a plate containing an omelet with peppers and onions, and two slices of
bacon. My hand shook as I poured myself a glass of water and sat down to eat.

Since we were alone, there was no problem discussing
the case, but I needed a few more minutes, so we discussed more mundane things
while we ate. At least Lou had quit spewing out his jokes about me and Heloise
Humphert.

In order to function better, I changed the subject
from myself to Lou.

“So, Lou, how did your date with Mrs. Eversole go?”

“Just one episode, Cy. And Cy, I could go for Jennifer
Aniston, too. She’s hot.”

“Watch yourself, Lou. I don’t want you to get burned.”

“Oh, by the way, I had to go back to my place and
Wii.”

“Jennifer Aniston did that to you?”

“No, Mrs. Eversole did.”

“Lou, from what I’ve heard of Jennifer Aniston, she
doesn’t look anything like Mrs. Eversole.”

“No, I mean Mrs. Eversole baked some homemade cookies,
and I couldn’t refuse her. She’s so nice. But just to make sure I’m not packing
the pounds on again, I went back to my place and Wiied for fifteen minutes.”

“What kind of cookies were they?”

“Macadamia nut.”

“Oh, Lou, you should’ve Wiied for twenty minutes.”

“Nope, I weighed this morning and I’ve lost another
two tenths of a pound.”

“Yeah, but I lost four tenths.”

“But you’re a lot bigger than I am.”

“You’d better watch out. I’m gaining on you.”

“Don’t you mean you’re losing on me?”

Lou and I talked a few minutes about the Wii, and the
two Jennifers. After we allowed the food and the mood to settle, we turned our
talk to the case at hand.

“So, Lou, what do you think?”

“Well, I checked out Jennifer Garner pretty good last
night, and the more I think about it, the more I think our clue has to do with
her show
Alias.
It’s what she’s best known for.”

“Yeah, but God knows everything she’s ever done.”

“But He knows we don’t.”

“But He also knows that now we’re armed with Google.”

It seemed like both of us were taking both sides of
the argument, even though we weren’t arguing.

“Okay, Lou, let’s say you’re right. What do you think
‘Alias’ means?”

“The only thing I can come up with is what we talked
about before. Someone in this case has an alias. The only way that can have
anything to do with anyone other than the custodian is that one of our suspects
is leading a double life.”

“Let’s travel down that road for a minute. Which one
would you say is most likely?”

“Well, I would hope it’s the librarian. The life we
know about must be very boring.”

“Well, maybe not to her, and that’s what matters.”

“Do you think maybe that one of the others might be
involved in something illegal, and maybe that Spencer woman caught him or her?”

“Maybe she found out something about someone when she
was bar hopping and started blackmailing that someone.”

“That doesn’t seem likely, either. Let’s move on to
something else. My guess is if the janitor is the one who’s actually someone
else, Sam will be able to find out for us. Is it possible that there’s someone
who’s a suspect that we haven’t thought of?”

“I thought about that last night, too, and I couldn’t
come up with anyone. How about you?”

“No, it’s not me. I really am Lou Murdock. And I’m not
leading a second life, except in the world of Google.”

“Let’s try something else. Let’s say that it’s not
Alias
,
but the one that has to do with lying.”

“I don’t think that’s it, because I think that most of
our suspects have lied to us. They can’t even agree as to who was with whom
when they went out looking for Spencer’s wife.”

“Why would someone lie if he or she wasn’t guilty?”

“Maybe to protect a friend.”

“Could be.”

“Maybe we should take each person one at a time, in
the order we talked to them.”

“Okay, first was Walter Gillis, the new janitor. He
seemed to be telling the truth. And as far as we know, he didn’t know either of
the victims. Of course, I reserve judgment until we hear from Sam.”

“What about Rose Ellen Calvert?”

“Well, I can’t see why she’d do it, other than the
reason that she definitely is the kind of person who didn’t like anything about
Conkwright, and she wouldn’t approve of a woman going out without her husband,
or a woman bar hopping.”

“Judge and jury kind of motive.”

“Right.”

“Well, at least that’s something. And some of the guys
did say she left the cafeteria. We’ll have to follow up on that.”

“What about Duck Spencer?”

“Was he mad enough at his wife to kill her? It’s
obvious that he hated Conkwright, but then everyone hated Conkwright.”

“What about the old janitor?”

“Earl Spickard. Well, he definitely knew both of the
victims. The problem with him is that he’s the one guy who seems to have an
alibi the whole time he was at the school.”

“Maybe we should check with some of the others, see if
they can tell us anything about Spickard’s movements.”

“That leaves us the two married couples.”

“And that’s the way I think of them, the two married
couples. I don’t see either of the wives doing anything like this, even though
it only involved shutting a door and locking it, but still they had to think
that those two would die in time if left in the freezer.”

“Well, there is the possibility that one or both of
them did it, told their husbands what they did, and asked their husbands to let
those two out after they’d had time to cool off and sober up, and then the
husbands didn’t let them out.”

“Or maybe the husbands locked them in, planning on
letting them out after Spencer arrived, but then Spencer talked them into
letting them stay in there, or else he promised to let them out, but he
didn’t.”

“You know, I’ve got a feeling this one might be
tougher to prove than any case we’ve ever tackled.”

“You could be right.”

We sat there, not sure what to do next. If only Sam
would solve the case for us. We were quiet for a few minutes, until Lou broke
the silence.

“Oh, Cy, I almost forgot. I haven’t told you today’s
clue. Try Googling.”

‘“Try Googling’ is today’s clue.”

“That’s right.”

“Did He by any chance tell you what to Google?”

“No, that’s it. Maybe we should try Googling all of
our suspects, see if we find out anything more about any of them.”

I approved of Lou’s idea, and Lou drew a second chair
up to the computer. I started with the janitor. Nothing. Maybe he isn’t who he
says he is. I moved on from there to Rose Ellen Calvert, the librarian.

“Aha! We have something.”

A few minutes later, it turned into a double aha, as
we delved into the private life of the librarian. It turned out that the woman
spent time on Facebook, and the photo she used there wasn’t a picture of her,
but of someone younger and better looking. I clicked and went to Facebook. The
woman had friends. Lots of friends. Most of them male. All of them from
somewhere else. And some of what she’d written to them was a little
flirtatious. It gave me a whole new opinion of Rose Ellen Calvert, but it
didn’t increase her likelihood of being a murderer, just a liar.

A few minutes later, we’d Googled all the people we’d
talked to. None of the men showed up on Google. All of the women did. Most of
them on Facebook, but none of the others were flirting with men on there.
Actually, we did find some of those men’s names on there, but in every case it
was someone by that name who lived somewhere else. None of them were our
suspects.

We still had nothing. We decided to see if we could
find anything on the victims. There was nothing on Betty Gail Spencer, but a
lot on Jimmy Conkwright. We studied what we found for over an hour, but found
nothing that could tell us a thing about who might have murdered him.

“Cy, I’ve got an idea. We Googled Jennifer Garner, but
we never checked on 9-30-55. Why don’t you key that in and see if anything
comes up? Maybe it’s like Jennifer Garner. Maybe it has nothing to do with any
of our suspects, but it could take us a step closer to solving the case.”

I couldn’t believe that I’d forgotten to Google the
second clue. Maybe that’s what God was telling us to do.

I keyed in the numbers, looked at what came up, and
smacked myself in the head for taking so long to get there. September 30, 1955 was the day that film icon James Dean died. While Dean has no more to do with our
case than Jennifer Garner, we were meant to read the clue. Dean, like Miriam
Van Meter, died in a car wreck. In both cases, the car was a sports car,
although the make and models were different.

I turned to Lou.

“Well, what do you think?”

“Maybe it means we’re supposed to look for someone who
might hold a grudge because Conkwright’s drunken carelessness killed Miriam Van
Meter.”

“You mean that Conkwright might have been killed
because of something he did a long time ago, not that night?”

“It’s possible. At least it gives us something else to
look at.”

I grabbed the phone book and looked for any Van Meters
who might be listed. There were only two. I dialed the first of the two
numbers. It rang a few times and then went to voice mail. I tried the second
number. Another voice mail. Well, it was the middle of the day, almost lunch
time.

“What do you think, Lou? Think a lunch break might
increase our brain cells?”

“I doubt that, but we probably should eat soon. You
realize we forgot our mid-morning snack again?”

I must be turning over a new leaf. I’d completely
forgotten about eating. My mind was totally on the case.

I went to the kitchen, opened the cupboard and lifted
out two tins of sardines.

“Sardines okay with you, Lou?”

“I haven’t had any in a while, but I love them.”

I tossed some spinach in a sauce pan with water and
let it heat while I opened the refrigerator door and plucked two shiny red
tomatoes (actually orange ones) to have with the sardines and spinach.

We ate lunch and sat back and let it digest. Each time
one of us came up with another idea, we rushed to the computer to Google it.
None of them led to anything. Maybe Google only knew about the clues God gave
us.

When nothing turned up anything and frustration began
to set in, Lou and I took a break to Wii. I was amazed at how much better Lou
was at everything. I only beat him at Advanced Step. He scored much higher than
I did on the Balance Games. He bested me a little on Yoga. We refrained from
attempting anything on Strength Training.

We were having so much fun we didn’t realize how much
time we’d spent there. It was 3:47 when I looked at my watch. I remembered that
we forgot our mid-morning snack and made sure that we ate our daily regimen
that afternoon. I gave Lou a spoon and a plastic container of almond butter
made at the grocery. We washed that down with water, and then I dashed to the
refrigerator and palmed two apples. Well, I grasped one in each hand. I tossed
one to Lou. We both still had our cloth napkins from lunch, and they came in
handy, since we were eating juicy, red delicious apples.

We cleaned up from our snack and were trying to think
of what to do next when the phone rang. It was Sam.