MURDER IN RETROSPECT (Allie Griffin Mysteries Book 5) (4 page)

              Allie nodded.

              Jimmy smiled.

              "What?" she said.

              "We're on a date. Like, out in public."

              "Get over yourself, Jimmy."

              "And I'm talking about semiconductors. You're in your own personal hell right now."

              "I'm doing ok, thank you very much. How's your soda?"

              "It's perfect."

              "You know anyone who works at that place? MTS?"

              Jimmy shook his head. "I knew a couple of guys but not personally."

              "Do you know if the manufacturing plants have quality control?"

              "They'd better. A lot of these places have military contracts. But I’ve heard from people that military brass aren’t electronics geeks, and they're easy to double-talk. I heard a story about a military inspector doing the quality control thing and he's walking around, asking stupid questions about the process. And this guy, this geek engineer, suddenly says, 'Lieutenant, we get a multisecond pulse of sixty picofarad carbonite coming in at a rate that substantiates the metallic load necessary to placate a trans-coordinate hyposurge.'"

              "Wow."

              "I know, sounds great, but it's complete gibberish."

              "Get out."

              "Totally serious. All made up. So he says this and the Lieutenant says, 'Outstanding, carry on.'"

              Allie erupted into laughter. There was a hidden wealth of charm inside Jimmy Welles. She was sad more people didn’t see it.

              "These guys can be geniuses, but they're not infallible. And quality control can slip by the wayside if a guy gets lazy. And as I just explained, it can be glossed over pretty easily. These guys are doing the Lord's work. Ain't nobody gonna tell them their jobs."

              "Jimmy, why are you telling me all this?"

              "I'm just saying this is how something can go terribly wrong in a hospital generator. You get a guy who's lazy, get him to screw up a line of semiconductors, maybe add a questionable ethic or two, and that guy will ship those puppies out without even bothering to care about where they end up. Don’t forget, these parts often go through middlemen—wholesalers who deal in these things and sell to independent contractors. No one knows if they’re going to wind up in a hospital or some guy's home project. A faulty part can end up in a hospital. It's not against the laws of nature. It shouldn’t happen, but that's one way that it can."

              "Jimmy?"

              "Yes, Allie."

              "Why is it that every time I talk with you, I get a lesson in life that makes me feel incredibly anxious and paranoid?"

              "Just remember there are good people out there doing good work. The bad ones are few and far between. Anyway, makes the good ones extra nice to be around, wouldn’t you say?"

              "You're a treasure, Jimmy Welles."

              "I know. So is this soda."

              She met Beauchenne on Sara's Bridge, the creepiest covered bridge in all of Vermont.

              It was their designated meeting place whenever Allie was needed for assistance. Or when Beauchenne needed to talk to her candidly. Situations regarding the latter never seemed to come up, but Allie was needed more and more these days as a deep background consultant to the sergeant, as Beauchenne saw firsthand just what the investigative wing of the Verdenier Police Department was capable of, which wasn't very much.

              "Talk to me," she said.

              "Talk to you? Is that any way to greet your favorite cop?"

              "Well, you're awfully chipper tonight."

              "Let's just say I get that way only in certain kinds of company."

              "Oh, you dirty little sweet talker, you. Well Frank, you called me here for a reason. And somehow I don’t think it was so that you could admire my eyes in the moonlight."

              "You're right. It's this case involving Hawkes."

              "Ok. What about it?"

              "It's not what, it's who. Tomlin. You know they have on record an altercation between your husband and Hawkes from back in the day?"

              "You're kidding."

              "I wish I was. The two of them had it out. Witnesses testified that the two of them argued in the hallway and then took it into a conference room. A couple of interns eavesdropped. They said it sounded like it was gonna come to blows. You know anything about that?"

              "My God, Frank, I had no idea."

              "Well, this happened about a week before Tom died."

              "Oh my."

              "Yeah, me too. You know, this is just the sort of thing Tomlin would love to sink his teeth into. It would confirm his suspicions about you."

              "Well that's typical. Confirmation bias."

              Beauchenne looked at her quizzically. "What now?"

              "Confirmation bias. You have a theory and look for things that will explain it, and disregard evidence that doesn't, instead of looking at the evidence and forming a theory based on what you observe. I've been doing my homework, Franklin."

              "You sure have. Well, ok then. Confirmation bias. It's exactly what our magnificent Detective Tomlin has and what he's in no danger of getting rid of. Right now, he has no idea about this argument, but he'll come across it soon enough, and I want you to be prepared when he does."

              "I'm not scared of him."

              "Well, I'm glad to hear that."

              "Frank?"

              "Yes?"

              "Is there something else?"

              "There is. The Hawkes case has something peculiar about it. Now I don’t want you to go crazy on me here. I'm just reporting it. Ok?"

              "Talk to me, Frank."

              "You're getting that tone—"

              "Just talk to me, Frank."

              "Ok. The news reported this as a strangulation. And it was, sort of."

              "What do you mean, sort of?"

              "I mean that the man was sitting in an easy chair when it happened. And someone had gone around to the other side of him and wrapped a rope around his neck and pulled hard. They used all their strength and possibly all their weight to do it."

              "Their weight?"

              "I knew you'd pick up on that. Yes. The angle of the rope burns. What does that tell you?"

              "Well, maybe the killer wasn't very tall or— Wait, did you say rope burns?"

              Beauchenne had a glimmer in his eye. "That's what I said. What's strange about that?"

              "What's strange is that you didn’t say bruises. In cases of strangulation, the first thing forensics would look at would be the bruises."

              "Very good, Allie Griffin."

              "And so when you say, 'sort of,' you mean there
were
no bruises."

              "This is why I love you."

              "I love you too. So he had to have been strangled after he died. There wouldn’t be any bruising that way. Just burns."

              "That's exactly the case. God, I wish you worked for us."

              "Huh. There's more to this. Talk to me."

              "Toxicology found Colchicine in his system."

              "Never heard of it."

              "Used to treat gout. Hawkes was a sufferer."

              "Toxic levels?"

              "That's just the thing. They weren't exactly toxic levels. They were close. Then again, they were within the range of a prescribed dosage, if on the high end. Either someone poisoned him and wanted it to look like a strangling, or someone strangled him not realizing he was already dead from a Colchicine build-up in his system. We're not sure."

              "I'm guessing he'd been on the stuff for a while?"

              "Yup."

              "And Colchicine is easily found in hospitals, in case he wanted more," said Allie.

              "Yup."

              "There's more, isn't there?"

              "There is."

              "Talk to me."

              Beauchenne removed his hat and rubbed the top of his head.

              "I know that," said Allie. "You're stalling because you don’t want to tell me something."

              Beauchenne took a deep breath and said, "We found a note. It was hidden, but we found it. Tomlin found it."

              "And...?"

              "Inside a book of crossword puzzles. Whatever puzzle Hawkes was working on when he died, he scribbled your name as one of the answers in the Across section. It didn't go all the way to the end of the boxes. The penmanship was jagged."

              "Written in a hurry."

              "Possibly."

              "Frank?"

              "Yes, Allie?"

              "Look how calm I'm being."

              "I see and I'm impressed. But you look like you're about to blow."

              "And why not?" Allie said, feeling something like a rubber band snap inside her. "I’ve got this detective with Milton Bradley credentials looking for anything from watermelon rinds to bookmarks that will implicate me in the murder of my husband, whom I happened to have loved dearly. And now I got this tyrant of a dictator of a bully of a hospital dean murdered and my virtual fingerprints are at the crime scene. Someone is framing me here, either the aforementioned detective, who frankly is too stupid to be flipping burgers without a degree, or the aforementioned hospital dean who faked not knowing who I was when he saw me because he was too much of a coward to face me after all these years of being glad to be rid of my husband. So yes, Frank, I'm about to blow. But I'm going to keep my cool, now, for you."

              "I appreciate that."

              "Can I borrow your gun?"

              "You may not."

              She drummed an agitated beat on the rail of the bridge and bit the inside of her lip.

              "Allie," Beauchenne said calmly, "this doesn’t look good, but we're going to get to the bottom of this."

              "Who's we?" she said, burning a glare out into the open field.

              "You and I."

              She looked at him. He was deadly serious.

              "That
we.
"

              He smiled. "Yes, that
we
. Ok? Now, I can get in a little trouble, you know that. More than a little trouble for bringing in an outsider to help with this. But you have two advantages and that's why I need you. Number one: You have memories, and while no one's memories can be trusted, I feel more comfortable about trusting yours than anyone else's."

              "And number two?"

              "I think you're smarter than Tomlin."

              "So is your average mud snail."

              Beauchenne chuckled. "You're also funny as hell. And you're smarter than I am. Happy?"

              She couldn’t help but stare into his beautifully dark eyes and smile right back at him.

              "It's about time you admitted it," she said.

              "And because you knew better than to ask me for it, here."

              He handed her a manila folder.

              "What's this?"

              "It's a picture of the crossword puzzle."

              She took it gratefully. "You’re a good man, Frank Beauchenne. By the way, how about dinner sometime?"

              "I'm free the night after tomorrow," he said with a smile. "Where?"

              "Chez Griffin. Homemade Italian wedding soup and grilled veggie sandwiches with balsamic vinaigrette?"

              "Now why would I say no to that?"

              The next day, she sat in her house with a can of Fresca and a glass with ice and she took the photo of the puzzle in her hand and stared at it closely. There was her name, clear as day, written in the jagged scrawl of a man leaving a clue to his own murder. But there was something else here that caught Allie's eye. There were two other entries in the puzzle, one at 51 Down and one at 59 Across. 51 Down read MARSH. Allie's name had been built upon the A in MARSH. Underneath her name, at 59 Across, was the word TEST intersecting MARSH at the letter S
.
Both TEST and MARSH had a jagged scrawl similar to the one that formed her name in the boxes in between.

              Something clicked; something she knew wouldn’t have clicked in Tomlin's mind. Tomlin wasn't the type that snuggled with crossword puzzles on a rainy day. Allie was. She needed to see the rest of this puzzle.

              She got out her phone and texted Frank Beauchenne:
I can go for some seafood tonight. Swordfish at 8:00?

             
There was a tinge of excitement in communicating with Frank via their designated code.

              A moment later:
See you there.

              Allie thought for a moment, then texted:
I need to see the big picture.
It was a longshot, and she hoped he was sharp enough to pick up on it.

              A moment later:
I can help with that.

              She smiled. He was a sharp one, Sgt. Frank Beauchenne. So much more suited to the role of detective than that idiot Tomlin was. Frank was close to retirement though, and cared little about closing out his career with all that on his back. Still, she thought, it would be interesting being the wife of a detective. They could open a private investigation practice together—

             
That's enough, Allie
, she told herself.

#

              She had to meet with Beauchenne in an hour.

              Fine then. An hour.

              Then why was she so restless? She had an hour. An hour to make sure her hair looked as good as it could look. She'd been lucky in the gray department. Her hair was dark and silky and what few grays she had were buried nicely within the rest of them. She studied herself in the mirror and ran a hand through it.

              She found she fussed over herself like this only when she was meeting with the sergeant. Of course, she found him attractive. There was no question about that. And she knew he found her attractive. And she had an hour to make herself ready. Fine then. An hour.

              So again, why was she restless?

              Eyeliner, that's why.

              She glanced at the clock again, the third time in five minutes. Then she opened her eyeliner.

              Nothing. Bone dry.

              The Walgreens carried her brand of eyeliner. If she hurried, like, really hurried, she could pick some up and apply it in the parking lot.

              And that's what she did. It was an invisible force that brought her outside to her car and threw her in the front seat and started the thing up, revving and then tearing away toward the drug store. Some invisible guiding hand had made sure she had taken everything she needed—handbag, phone, wallet—the essentials. She didn’t remember saying goodbye to Dinah. She'd make it up to her later with a prolonged snuggling session in front of the TV.

              It would be nice if Frank could be there with her. She missed having someone with whom to slog away the late night hours in front of the TV, cuddling and sharing laughs and eventually dozing off onto his chest.

              She shook her head.

              No time for such thoughts. She needed eyeliner.

             
So you can look extra sexy for the cop
.

              "Yeah," she said to her dashboard. "So? There's nothing wrong with that. He's an attractive man, and there's nothing wrong with using my looks and a bit of flirting to get what I need."

             
Even if what you need is a bit of late night couch cuddles in front of the TV?

             
"Alright, that's enough. Look at me, I'm arguing with myself. Isn’t that what they say is the first sign of craziness? Mom used to say that. 'Nothing, Mom, I'm just talking to myself.'" She mimicked her mother's voice. "'Well, as long as you're not arguing with yourself.'"

             
Well, Mom, are you happy now? Your daughter is crazy. Crazy in love.

             
She turned on the radio. A Nina Symone song came on, one she never knew the name of, but one she'd always love to sit back, close her eyes, and soak in the sultriness of it when it came on. She allowed herself that luxury now—save for the closing of the eyes.

             
You need those. You have to paint them up and bat them at the Sarge.

              She found herself smiling. As she always did when she thought of Beauchenne.

#

              They didn’t have her brand. They had something similar. She was wary about using something similar. Wasn't it better to go with nothing at all?

              She grabbed it off the shelf.

              "We oughta stop meeting like this."

              She turned around and saw the paunchy Detective Harry Tomlin grinning at her, a six-pack of Yoo-Hoo in his hands.

              She smiled at him. "For the kids? Or are you making some sort of redneck Brandy Alexanders?"

              The detective chuckled. "Ah, Griffin, you are a card, you know that? A real card."

              "Yes, so they tell me. Oh, by the way, Detective, how are you doing on that case you’re building against me? Bet you found a whole lot of my fingerprints on the scene."

              The detective's smile disappeared and his eyes shifted away from hers. "You're in the clear, Griffin."

              "Oh, that's quite a surprise, because I remember distinctly poisoning that man and then strangling the dead body with a rope that I left behind—you know, because I know nothing about forensics and all."

              "Are you through?"

              "Are you?"

              "Ok, Griffin, it's obvious we don’t like each other."

              "Was it that obvious?"

              "But let me ask you something. Why is it that we don’t have a single first-degree homicide in this town for, oh, literally as long as I can remember, and ever since you butted your nose in and decided to become Jessica Fletcher—"

              "I'm a little young for that, thank you very much."

              "You know what I mean. Ever since that first one, that Tori Cardinal—and she was murdered in your very own house—"

              "I was there."

              "Precisely. What I want to know is: Why is it that all these murders are suddenly happening one right on the heel of another like that? I mean, doesn’t that make you wonder some? And don’t you think you oughta cut me and my boys some slack when we go to investigate these crimes and find that your name always seems to come up sooner or later? Think about that, will you, Griffin?"

              He started to walk away, Yoo-Hoo in hand, pausing only to check out an assortment of ballpoint pens in a display bin, when Allie called out to him.

              "Apophenia, Tomlin."

              "Pardon?"

              "Apophenia. Also known as a clustering illusion. Uneven patterns are mistaken for true, meaningful patterns. It happens all the time. Nothing to be ashamed of."

              "Huh," said the paunchy detective, throwing down the pens and walking away without another word.

              Back to the eyeliner. Not her brand. Better than nothing.

              She applied it in the car, feeling somewhat okay with the results. She looked at the clock. Just enough time to get to Sara's Bridge. Perfect.

              Halfway there, she noticed something she would never have noticed on any other occasion. She noticed it now because that's the way the universe works sometimes.

              Case in point.

              Her car’s temperature gauge was climbing slowly yet steadily toward overheating.

             
Don't panic, Allie. Remember what Dad taught you.             

              Vermont was approaching the winter months. Not a problem for native Vermonters. The service stations offered some great deals on winterization jobs. Allie was meaning to take the car in one of these days.

              The real problem was the fact that the days were relatively warmer than they had been in recent times. And Allie had been hypnotized into thinking she didn't need the winterization service, not just yet. But another, more seriously immediate effect of the warmer days was yet to impact her. For in order to combat the overheating, she did what her dad had taught her to do when she was just first learning to drive: In the event of overheating, crank the heater. The car heater will draw the heat away from the engine.

              So she did just that. And it worked.

              She pulled up to Sara's Bridge, completely ignorant of the incredible effect that ten minutes of car heat blasting at full force, coupled with said heat irritating the eyes and facilitating the production of tears can have on substandard eyeliner.

              There was an eerily warm wind picking up that night that foretold of bad news ahead. It whipped through Sara's Bridge, whistling through the rafters. Beauchenne stood there, a mysterious figure peering out over the dried-up landscape. She was grateful he was always on time. She hated the thought of waiting in this place alone, what with the legend of Sara's ghost wailing in the night.

              She approached him and saw that he had a manila folder in his hand.

              Beauchenne nearly gasped when she approached.

              "What?" she said.

              "What happened?"

              "What do you mean?"

              "Your face."

              She blinked twice, felt the unfamiliar sensation, and then put her finger to her left eye.

              Upon drawing it away, and then upon analyzing the inky smudge across her fingertip, she felt the blood drain from her face.

              Later on, thinking about this very moment, which the universe in all its sadistic humor had failed to black out from her memory, she realized that the blood draining away from her face must have indeed accentuated the zombie stains around her eye sockets.

              She had a feeling how bad it must have looked just by the way Beauchenne was avoiding looking at her.

              "I can’t believe this," she said.

              "I wouldn’t worry too much about it," said the sergeant, obviously hemorrhaging internally trying to squelch the laughter.

              "I am mortified."

              "Would it make you feel any better if I gave you this?"

With that, he extracted another photograph of the crossword puzzle from the folder and handed it to her.

              "I assumed you wanted to be able to see the clues," he said, reaching into the inside pocket of his coat. "Here, this might come in handy."

              He handed her a tiny compact magnifying glass that slid open and closed.

              "Neat!" she said.

              "Have fun with that. Oh, and here." He handed her a handkerchief from his back pocket. "Unused, I promise."

              "Thank you."

              She wiped diligently at her eyes and looked at him for approval.

              "Better," he said. "The raccoon look wasn't suiting you. So take a look at that. What are you looking for, may I ask?"

              "I'll let you know when I find it."

              It was hard to read, but it didn’t take her long to realize what she'd suspected.

              "The clues don’t match the answers," she said.

              "Show me," said Beauchenne, leaning in.

              "Look at the clue for 51 Down. It says
blank
,
dash
, and then the word
Unis.
That's French.

              "I know," said Sgt. Beauchenne. "My father's French."

              "Of course! Beauchenne!"

              "The answer should be
Etats
," he said. "
Etats-Unis
. United States."

              "Excellent,
mon ami
. Now look at this word here: TEST. The clue says
blank
and then
Hari
. Obviously Mata Hari, the famous World War I spy. So MATA should go right here instead of TEST."