Murder in the Library (12 page)

+++

Now we had had three people
who’d seen the long-haired man. Only one of them saw him on a different day.
Did that mean that the long hair and beard wasn’t a disguise? Or that our
murderer did a trial run? Could it be the day he made the hole in the wall and
left the note? Only time would tell. But with each new witness, I became more
convinced that the long-haired man wasn’t a figment of Downey’s imagination. A
pizza delivery driver offered some credibility, but a man who saw the
long-haired man up close for a few seconds told me there was a long-haired man
in the neighborhood, and on at least two occasions. What that meant, I had no
idea.

+++

It took all afternoon to
complete our canvass. I wondered how local politicians, who do door-to-door
canvassing, ever get to most of their constituents. It didn’t matter. I had no
plans to run for any office.

After a brief
conversation, Lou and I opted for an early dinner at Burkman’s. If you want a
good steak in Hilldale, Burkman’s is the place to go. And both Lou and I wanted
a good  steak  that  night  to  gather  enough  strength for the next day, and
I wanted a couple of good desserts to replace the calories I’d burned going
door-to-door.

Depending on the
restaurant, both Lou and I like our steaks medium or medium-well. Don’t bring
me a steak that looks like something the dog will eat. And don’t bring me one
that resembles something that has been sacrificed to God. I want a juicy, but
not bloody, steak, fit for human consumption. I didn't want to make a pig of
myself, so I bypassed the sixteen ounce Porterhouse and selected the fourteen
ounce New York strip, instead. Lou started to order the six-once sirloin, but
one look at me told him he had to order one that was at least eight ounces.
Both of us ordered baked potatoes. I passed on chives, whatever they are, and
sour cream. I told our server to be liberal with bacon bits and cheese and
throw in enough butter for them to swim in. Our server laughed, not because she
was making fun of me, but because she admired a man who knew which food groups
to eat, and how much of each was just enough. Lou too ordered a baked potato,
but with a small amount of butter. I know our server wanted to shake her head,
but wanted a tip even more. For our other side item, both of us chose baked
apples. I decided to wash mine down with sweet tea. Lou chose an orange cream
soda.

One item on the menu
caught my eye, and I suggested it to Lou. I felt it was calling our names, and
he agreed. When it came time for dessert, we tried something called Chocolate
Pudding Cake Extreme. On the bottom was a yellow cake, filled, and I do mean
filled, with chocolate pudding. A caramel sauce drenched the top and sides of
the cake, and whipped cream engulfed the entire delicacy. Walnuts were
liberally sprinkled on top, and a cherry looked on from above. It looked so
good that I ordered a double helping. I was glad that I had no more walking to
do that day. If I knew the new Lou, after eating a measly amount of his
dessert, he would go home and do some of those Wii exercises. Poor thing. He
was going to have to wash his clothes in hot water, just so they could fit him
again.

As soon as the
anesthetic wore off enough that Lou and I were able to take up our beds and
walk, we left Burkman’s, knowing that the Chocolate Pudding Cake Extreme would
call us to return soon. As would the steaks. Well, at least one of us.

+++

With Lou deposited in
his nest and the night still young, I picked up a copy of Parnell Hall’s
A
Clue For The Puzzle Lady.
Cora Felton and I had little in common. She smoked,
she drank, she’d been married several times, and she didn’t do puzzles. She
did, however, solve a murder every now and then. So, we had one thing in
common. I was about to get to know Cora a little better, and I suspected that
she’d be good for a few laughs along the way.

+++

As is many times the
case, a good meal soon leads to a bad nightmare, which means my next-door
neighbor and I were about to come face to face, without actually doing so.

In my dream, Lou and I
were walking from house to house, handing each person a picture. At each house,
whoever answered the door returned the picture with the same comment, “No, I’ve
never seen anyone uglier.” Finally, I looked at the picture and realized why. I
had in my fat little hand a picture of my next-door neighbor. At one house, I
held the picture at an angle with caused the picture to reflect in the mirror
inside the house, and the mirror broke. If I hadn’t been a policeman, I
would’ve been dead meat at that house. When I looked down, I discovered that I had
a second picture of my neighbor. In this one, she looked much better. She had
long hair and a beard, and the hair was combed so that it covered her face, and
exposed her ears instead. I couldn’t say much for her ears, but at least they
looked better than her face. Just before I woke from my nightmare, I knocked on
a door, and the woman who answered was accompanied by a varmint that looked
like the one next-door to me. When I showed the woman the picture, the varmint
snatched it from her hand, chewed up the picture, and spit it out. I looked
down at the picture pieces that lay on the carpet. Finally, my next-door
neighbor looked better.

I awoke Monday and
immediately groaned. It wasn’t a day to read. It wasn’t even a day to work on
our puzzle. It was a day to drive all over everywhere and question anyone we
saw. One look at our list told me it would take us more than one day to
complete our agenda. I wondered where we would be at the end of our travels.
Would we have any more idea who had murdered the Colonel?

+++

I was still savoring the
previous night’s delectable dessert and I wasn’t ready for green eggs and ham,
so as soon as I heard my friend pick up the phone, I said, “Sam, this is Cy. I
just wanted to see where your travels on my behalf have taken you.”

“Oh, I haven’t been
anywhere, Cy.”

“But you’d better have
let your fingers do the walking.”

“Well, that, and other
people. Okay, here’s what I’ve learned since we’ve talked. Nothing. Well, not
exactly nothing. I’ve found a lot of places in California where Carl Bauerman
isn’t. Some places where he’s been, but he hasn’t stayed in any of them any
longer than six weeks, or however long a play lasts. He has spent time out
there in recent years, but he keeps moving, as if he doesn’t want anyone to
catch him. Still, everywhere he’s been, he’s been a consummate actor and a
model citizen.”

“When is the last time
anyone saw him?”

“Well, none of the
people I’ve talked to have seen him in over a year, and that was his friend who
visited from New York. I’ve found places where he’s lived, but every neighbor
tells me the same thing. They never saw him. Yet he did live there, and he
showed up when it came time to practice or star in a play.”

“I assume you have
police out there who are working for you?”

“I do, and in each case
they’ve shown a picture of Bauerman, and a picture of the long-haired man with
the beard who was seen entering your friend’s house. In each case, the person
has identified Bauerman, and in no case has anyone seen that long-haired man
out there. Bauerman has definitely been a lot of places, but that other guy is
native to our area.”

“What can you tell me
about Bauerman?”

“Just what I’ve told you
before.”

“How old a man is he?”

“If he’s still living,
he’s fifty-five.”

“Are you saying he
could’ve died?”

“Yes, but, if so, he
died within the last year or so. He was seen up until then.”

“How big of a man is
he?”

“Well, the people we
talked to say he is average height, and slender.”

“Do you have any
pictures of him?”

“Just distance shots.
We’ve blown them up, but they’re not that distinctive. I do have a picture of
him the last year he taught at the high school. Will that do you?”

“It’ll have to. Lou and
I will stop by to pick it up later. Anything new on Terloff?”

“Not yet, only that we
know he’s still in the state because enough people see him from time to time,
but always in a different place.”

“So, he’s here, but not
here. Are any of these places close to Hilldale?”

“Not really, but close
enough that he could get here within a couple hours or so. I haven’t talked to
anyone who has seen him here lately.”

“Can you get me a
picture of him, too?”

“You can pick that up
with the other one.”

“Anything new on Tom
Johnson, that pest control tech?”

“I thought you were
checking up on him, Cy.”

“Lou and I plan to check
out the place where he worked. I want you to see if you can find out anything
else about him before he went to work for that place in Indiana, and, if Lou
and I don’t come up with something, I want you to see if you can follow his trail
out of town.”

“So, is my work done?”

“You wish. I’ve got a
guy here, Bob Downey, the next-door neighbor. He’s been here a little over two
years, but I’d like for you to see what you can find out about him before he
came here.”

“Do you know where he’s from?”

“Here, there, and
everywhere. But he did give me the name of one guy he worked for, and three
women he has scattered across the country.”

“Ex-wives?”

“Not according to him.
Just women he knew that he stopped in to see whenever he was in their area. I
don’t know if I told you or not, but Bob Downey claims to be a retired trucker,
only he retired early. He says he’s forty-four, and retired a little over two
years ago.”

“You’ve got a strange
group, Cy. Guys from late twenties to mid-fifties, and all over the place. Some
of them live near here, others way across the country, and all of them are hard
to find.”

“I found the next-door
neighbor okay. It’s just those guys you’re looking for that can’t be found.
You’re not losing your touch, are you, Sam?”

“Are you ready to have
someone else do your dirty work?”

“Not on your life. Just
giving you a hard time. Just like you do me.”

“Well, you do have a
picture of your murderer, Cy. You’d think you’d find him by now.”

“We don’t know for sure
that this guy is our murderer. It just seems that way. I’ll let you go. We’ll
stop by later and pick up those pictures.”

+++

I was about to slip out
the back door and drive away before my next-door neighbor could see me. About
to. God must’ve been looking out for me, because I did something that morning I
seldom do, unless the weather is bad. I lifted one of the blinds, and looked
out the door. As I looked down, I saw the toe of a shoe, a shoe that looked
like it might belong to an ugly woman. Did the scourge of the earth plan to
jump me as soon as I opened the door?

I sneaked away, headed
to the front door. Surely, she couldn’t be two places at once. She wasn’t. Her
mutt was. I backed away from the door. Drastic times called for drastic
measures. I picked up a roll of duct tape, eased over to the door, and opened
the door slightly. The curious mutt eased its nose over to the door. I opened
it a little wider, bent down, and grabbed the dog, shut its mouth, and started
wrapping it in duct tape. I lifted the trespasser, took it back to its own
front porch, where I found its leash, and hooked the leash over the front
doorknob.

One down, and one to go.
Then I sneaked back to my house, slipped inside as quietly as possible, washed
dog smell off my hands, and slipped out the front door, again. I tiptoed across
my yard and the yard of my neighbor on the other side, eased around the house,
until I came to an opening in the backyard hedge, an opening that allowed me to
open Lightning’s passenger side door, without being seen from my back porch. I
locked Lightning’s doors, inserted the key, and started my vehicle.  I managed
to back most of the way out of the driveway, before the evil one rounded the
corner and rushed toward Lightning. It looked like I was going to have start
leaving bear traps in my yard, just to get in and out of my house each day.

I pulled down the street
and stopped. That woman figured I was gone for the day, so she rushed to my
front porch looking for her watchdog. I didn’t pull away until I’d watched her
struggle as she tried to pull duct tape off a mangy mutt.

+++

“What kept you?” Lou
asked me, as I pulled up in front of his building, and he opened Lightning’s
door.

“Enemy invasion.”

“You mean your neighbor
broke into your house?”

“Almost,” I said, and
then I proceeded to tell him about my early morning activity.

“You might want to stay
away from your house for a while. The ASPCA might be paying you a visit.”

“I didn’t hurt the
varmint. My neighbor’s the one who yanked the tape off.”

+++

I’d had such a harrowing
experience I’d forgotten to ask Lou what God’s message was. We were in the Blue
Moon at the time. Lou took his finger, dipped it in his syrup, and wrote
“Houdini,” then made it disappear. It was a few minutes before I could follow
up.

“So, Lou, does this mean
that one of our locals is going to disappear?” I asked as soon as we left the
restaurant and secured ourselves in my car.

He gave me his “you’ll
never learn” look.

“Well, it could be that
we’ll learn something about someone who’s already disappeared.”

Lou’s look didn’t
change.

I remembered that the
college student who delivered the pizza on the Colonel’s street got out of
class just before 11:00. I drove up to his building, just as someone abandoned
a spot in front of the building next to his. Was it to be our lucky day?

A few minutes later, Lou
and I returned to Lightning with a confession from the college student. I wish
it were that easy, but of course, it wasn’t. Like two others before him, he
said he thought it was the guy he saw, but he couldn’t testify to it. That was
okay. So far we didn’t have anyone for him to identify.

+++

We left the campus area
and drove to Sam’s house.

“It took you that long
to eat breakfast?”

“No, Sam. Some of us
have more suspects than others.”

“Well, at least yours
are easier to locate.”

“You mean you haven’t
found anyone since this morning.”

“No, they’re all too
busy playing hide and seek.”

We cut the chitchat, and
Sam handed me pictures of Terloff and Bauerman.

“This guy isn’t some
long-haired hippie,” I said, as I looked at Terloff’s picture.”

“Both of these pictures
are around ten years old. Evidently, Terloff wasn’t at his campsite when Olan
Mills called about a recent special.”

“You mean Olan Mills is
still around?”

“I’ve no idea, Cy. You
might try Googling them.”

Sam laughed, knowing
that I’d never Googled anyone, nor did I’ve the means to do so.  At least now I
realize that Googling is something you do on the computer. That way I don’t
look too stupid. Okay, maybe I do to some people.

++

I took the pictures and
Lou and I headed to A-1 Plumbing. As expected, Robert Collins was out on calls.
I showed the woman behind the counter my credentials and pulled out the
pictures.

“Is either of these men
Robert Collins?”

“He doesn’t look
anything like either one of them.”

“And I assume you’ve
never seen either of these two men?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“Well, do you have a
picture of Collins I can have?”

“Just a second. I’ve to
check with Mrs. Abney.”

The woman left, then
returned with an older woman.

“May I help you
gentlemen?”

I went through the
identification process again and asked for a picture of Collins. I told her
that I didn’t think he was the person I wanted, but I needed a picture of every
person who had been in the Colonel’s house. Reluctantly, she complied.

+++

Lou and I entered
Dunleavy Pest Control. A young man in a uniform approached us. “May I help
you?”

I identified myself.

“Is there something
wrong, Officer?”

“There’s something
wrong, but I don’t think that Dunleavy Pest Control has anything to do with it.
I’m inquiring about a former employee, Tom Johnson.”

“Yes, Tom worked here
until a few weeks ago. Is he all right?”

“I don’t know. I’m
trying to find him, but I don’t know what he looks like. Is either of these two
men Tom?”

“The one guy’s too
young, and Tom would never have long hair or a beard. Tom had more of a Marine
look.”

“Do you have a picture
of him?”

“We should have one
somewhere. Let me check.”

He returned with a
picture and said something that was foreign to me.

“Ah, the miracle of
computers. I found a picture of Tom and printed it for you. Here it is.”

The man was right. Tom
didn’t look anything like our long-haired suspect. At least not as far as his
hair was concerned.  Tom’s hair was short, and he had no facial hair. And his
chest and arms were larger. Terloff was a skinny guy. So was Bauerman.

“I’m looking into
something that happened at the Hardesty place on Cherry Hill Lane. Could you
tell me how many visits you made there, what man made the call, and the dates
of those calls?”

The man sat down, hit a
few buttons on his computer, jotted something down for us, and returned to the
counter.

“Here you go.”