Murder Had a Little Lamb (28 page)

Dr. Goodfellow pondered my question, meanwhile pouring herself another glass of sherry.

I watched while she downed it with alarming speed.

“I have no idea,” she finally replied, keeping her eyes focused on her glass instead of on me.

After she filled it one more time, I noticed that the bottle was now empty.

“Dr. Popper,” she said suddenly, “I believe our business
is finished. If you don’t mind, I have some important things to attend to.”

Like making an emergency run to the liquor store? I wondered cynically.

But I simply nodded, then rose to my feet.

“Thank you for coming in,” she said, her eyes clouded and her voice distracted. I had a feeling she was in the habit of saying that every time someone was about to leave her office—no matter what had brought that person there in the first place.

“Thank you for your time,” I replied, sounding just as mechanical.

As I left Dr. Goodfellow’s office, I was certain there was plenty the sherry-sipping headmistress wasn’t telling me.

Yet I had to acknowledge that she’d told me quite a bit—most notably the reason for the break in Nathaniel’s friendship with Claude.

Once again, Nathaniel’s ambitiousness had reared its head. This time, it appeared to have been at the expense of a friend.

But while the two had suddenly found themselves embroiled in a cutthroat competition, I still didn’t have a very good sense of who Claude Molter really was.

Had he been another one of Nathaniel’s unfortunate victims, just like that poor scholarship student, Wilhelm or Willard or whatever his name was, who had been thrown out of Schottsburg for a crime that Nathaniel had committed?

Or was the violinist’s ambition as ruthless as
Nathaniel’s—so much so that it could have even driven him to kill?

I was glad that Sunny was coming over to the cottage that evening to help me in her ongoing quest to get me organized. And while my original reason for asking her to put in a few extra hours had been to help banish some of the loneliness now that Nick was gone, I now anxiously awaited her visit for another reason.

Given what I’d just learned about the rivalry between the two Worth School teachers, I was more curious about Claude Molter than ever—and she was just the person to delve into his background.

“I’ve got another job for you,” I informed her the moment she showed up on my doorstep. “Something else related to Nathaniel’s murder.”

Her eyes grew as big as Oreos.
“Now
do I get to go on that stakeout?”

“Sorry. More computer work.”

“Whatever,” she said with a shrug, sinking into a chair at the dining room table and whipping out her laptop. “It’s all for the cause, right?”

“Exactly. Sunny, I’d like you to find out whatever you can about the Worth School’s music teacher. I’ll tell you everything I already know about him …”

Once she’d written down the few facts I related, she asked, “So is this guy a suspect?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I replied vaguely, not wanting to influence her research.

“Oh.” Picking up on the disappointment in her
tone, I quickly added, “I forgot to mention that he’s a count.”

“A count? Like in romance novels? And all those movies about English history? Wow!”

“He
may
be a count,” I corrected myself, glad that her enthusiasm had returned. “That’s one of the things I want you to find out.”

I left her to her research while I spent some quality time with my animals. I took Max and Lou outside for a romp, held a petting-fest with my two kitty-cats, and had one of the most interesting conversations I’d had all day with my blue-and-gold macaw. I also checked everyone’s water dish and handed out treats like Santa Claus. For a while, at least, it was all good.

When I couldn’t wait any longer, I sidled over to Sunny. She was hunched over the computer, the expression on her face anything but triumphant.

“Have you managed to find out anything about Claude Molter?” I asked anxiously.

Sunny frowned. “I thought I was good with computers, but I’m starting to wonder.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, puzzled. If there was ever anyone who was meant to be part of the computer age, it was Sunny.

“I keep trying to find something—anything—about a violinist named Claude Molter, but I keep coming up dry. I even tried a bunch of different spellings. I still can’t verify anything you told me about his history.”

“What happens if you Google ‘Claude Molter Prague Symphony Orchestra’?” I asked. Frankly, I was still having a hard time understanding why Sunny
was having such difficulty tracking down information about such a prominent musician.

“Why don’t I show you?” she offered.

I watched the screen of Sunny’s laptop as she typed in those very words, her fingers flying across the keyboard.

“As you can see, plenty of listings come up,” she pointed out. “But the only one that links Claude Molter to the Prague Symphony Orchestra is his biography on the Worth School’s website.”

We must be doing something wrong, I thought with confusion.

“What about Googling ‘Count Claude Molter’?” I suggested.

“Same thing.”

Once again, Sunny’s hands flitted across the keys, and the very words I’d just uttered appeared inside the search box on the Google page. As soon as she hit
ENTER
, a full page of listings came up. But the only one that referred to anyone named Claude Molter as a count was the music teacher’s biography on the Worth School’s website—a biography that he had either written himself or someone else had written based on information about his background that he had provided.

“It’s almost as if there was no such person as Claude Molter before he joined the Worth School faculty,” Sunny observed.

“I don’t understand,” I said, more to myself than to Sunny. Yet the uncomfortable knot in the pit of my stomach told me that I actually did understand. Perfectly, in fact.

“I found something else that’s kind of strange, too,” Sunny went on. “There’s this guy named Carl Dougherty—”

“Who’s that?” I asked anxiously.

“From what I’ve been able to piece together by looking at different websites, he’s someone who grew up in Ohio. I should probably warn you that this is so far out there that it’s probably meaningless. But according to information I came across on a bunch of other websites, he sometimes went by the name Claude.” Uneasily, she added, “It seems he also had a thing for some composer named Molter.”

Her words tightened the knot even further.

“Let me tell you everything I learned about the guy,” Sunny went on. “He graduated from high school in a small town called Delaware, the birthplace of Rutherford B. Hayes. You know, the nineteenth president of the United States?”

Personally, I wouldn’t have been able to name which president Hayes had been. But he wasn’t the person I was interested in at the moment.

“I found a website that was set up a few years ago by some of the school’s graduates who were planning a reunion,” Sunny continued. “It had a chat room, and I found a bunch of comments written by people who went to school with Carl. It seems that once he hit his junior year or so, he started asking people to call him Claude.”

“How do you know that?”

“Here, I can show you.” Sunny clicked keys until the chat room she’d mentioned appeared on the screen.

“Hey, does anyone know whatever happened to Carl Dougherty?” someone named CheerleaderForever had written.

A person named LoveMyHarley had written, “You mean CLAUDE Dougherty, don’t you? Our junior year, he started telling everybody to stop using his real name and start calling him Claude? LOL. I heard he went to music school somewhere in the Midwest but ended up dropping out.”

Someone else, ClevelandColleen, had written, “Remember his obsession with that composer nobody but him had ever heard of? Boy, that was weird. He even dressed like him for a while. I can still picture that crazy white shirt with the billowing sleeves!”

One more student from Rutherford B. Hayes High School, someone known as SoccerDad, had responded with a four-word sentence: “The composer was Molter.”

The knot was on the verge of turning into an actual cramp.

“This sounds like it could be our guy,” I told Sunny in a strained voice.

“That’s kind of what I thought, too,” she agreed. “I found out some information about Molter, if you’re interested.”

If I’m
interested?
I thought. But I merely said, “Sure. What did you find out?”

More flying fingers. “Johann Melchior Molter was a Baroque composer from Germany. He wrote during the 1700s, turning out orchestral music, chamber music, and concertos. He hung out with some of the biggest names from that period, including Vivaldi and
Scarlatti.” She paused, meanwhile scanning the screen. “Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. The guy was an accomplished violinist, too.”

So much for Sunny’s claim that she’s not as good with computers as she thought, I mused.

Yet while I was impressed with her skill, I was more focused on the information she’d gleaned from her laptop. In fact, it was making my head spin.

“I could show you what this Carl Dougherty dude looks like,” Sunny offered. “Or at least what he looked like when he was eighteen.”

“How can you do that?” I asked, growing more impressed with her abilities with every passing second.

“Once I knew where he went to high school,” she replied matter-of-factly, “I went to a second website,
Classmates.com
, and tracked down his yearbook picture. Here, let me find it for you.”

I watched as she whizzed through a few more web-pages until she finally located the one she’d been looking for.

“Here he is,” she announced.

She hadn’t needed to tell me. Staring back at me was what looked like a much younger version of Claude Molter. His hair was darker and shaggier and his skin was as free of creases as a freshly ironed shirt. But a few things hadn’t changed at all—most notably, the fire in his eyes and the arrogant tilt of his head.

It was Claude Molter, all right. But in those days, his name had been Carl Dougherty.

And he wasn’t from anywhere even close to Belgium. He was a graduate of Rutherford B. Hayes High School in Delaware, Ohio.

“Aside from the guy’s yearbook picture, there’s not much else here on
Classmates.com
,” Sunny said, her fingers still skimming along the keyboard. “This website wasn’t nearly as helpful as the other one. There are just a bunch of postings from people who went to high school around the same time—”

“Wait!” I cried. “Go back!”

“Wha—?” Sunny’s dancing fingers had hit a key that had taken the screen away as quickly as it had flashed before my eyes. But in that second or two, I had zeroed in on a name that made my blood run cold.

“Can anybody tell me how to get in touch with the graduate of your high school who became a music teacher at a private school in the New York area?” the posting read.

It was signed Willard Faber.

M
y heart pounded so hard in my chest as I stared at that name on the computer screen that I was certain Sunny could hear it.

Maybe she couldn’t, but I guess she could see the look on my face.

“Jessie?” she asked, frowning. “Are you okay?”

“Willard Faber,” I read aloud, still peering over her shoulder. Breathlessly, I added, “I think that’s him.”

“That’s
who?”
she demanded.

Even though I could see how puzzled Sunny was, I simply asked, “Do you know how we can we find out more about him?”

“I think so. At least I can try.”

I kept my eyes on her laptop as she clicked on the keys and brought up the Google home page. Her fingers flying, she typed in W-I-L-L-A-R-D F-A-B-E-R.

She hit
ENTER
, and a page full of listings instantly came up.

“How about this website?” I suggested, pointing at one of the URLs that had come up. “Wait—maybe we should try that one.”

“You know what?” Sunny said brightly. “Why don’t I work on this while you make us both a cup of tea?”

I got the hint. So I dutifully padded into the kitchen, leaving Sunny to work by herself. After all, the last thing I wanted was to turn into Dorothy Burby.

Five minutes later, I returned, this time bearing two mugs of tea.

“Got anything yet?” I asked anxiously.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” she replied. “At least I think I found his address. Willard Faber—at least
this
Willard Faber—lives on Long Island. The address I found for him is on Vanderbilt Road in Seawood.”

“Wow.” As usual, Sunny had worked her magic. “Let me write it down …”

I just hope it’s the right Willard Faber, I thought the following day as I drove to Seawood. My stomach was doing flip-flops, thanks to a mixture of both apprehension and hope.

This could turn out to be another dead end, I warned myself. Chances are there’s more than one Willard Faber in the world. And even if he turns out to be the same one who went to prep school with Nathaniel, that still doesn’t mean he’ll be able to tell me anything useful.

Or be willing to.

Still, my hopeful side won out as I turned onto the
street that the Willard Faber who Sunny found on the Internet lived on.

Given the fact that his street was named after Vanderbilt, I expected to find a row of mansions. Or at least one of those upscale condominium complexes, the kind that has a gatehouse at the entrance, complete with a living, breathing guard.

Instead, a few hundred yards ahead I spotted a cluster of one-story garden apartments that looked as if they’d seen better days. The three U-shaped buildings were made of red brick interlaced with dingy mortar. The concrete steps that led up to the front doors were cracked and chipped, making them appear to be begging for a makeover. The three courtyards all looked as if the landscaper had specialized in crabgrass and weeds.

If Willard Faber’s real estate choices are any indication, life hasn’t treated him all that well, I thought grimly as I knocked on his door.