Murder on the Bucket List (12 page)

“I don't know. We're becoming famous as the skinny-dipping grandmas. We should show them what we're made of.”

Francine rolled her eyes. She gathered up her leftovers and her purse. “Let me go first. You can show them whatever you want.”

eighteen

The assessor's office wasn't
located in the courthouse but in the county government center a few blocks south. Francine and Joy decided to walk. As they headed down
Washington Street, she filled Joy in on her morning encounter with Jake Maehler's trainer, Brady Prather, and how she was now thinking about asking Mary Ruth to go with her to the gym the next day at three o'clock. “It'll be after the luncheon, and she shouldn't have to do the dishes, not after preparing all that food.”

“I agree. The rest of us will do dishes. You focus on getting her to go.”

“So you think she should? I feel like I'm using her.”

“You are, but it's for her own good. We need an excuse to talk to him, and Mary Ruth would feel so much better if she lost weight. The stress of owning a catering business in this economic downturn is partially to blame, but still, if you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of your business.”

That was harsh
, Francine thought. Mary Ruth was the only one of their Bridge Club who still worked. Joy dabbled in things that were communication-oriented and the others volunteered at various organizations, but only Mary Ruth had a full-time job. She was a longtime divorcee, and catering was her only source of livelihood. Who knew how any of them might have overindulged under the same circumstances?

As they approached the government center, Francine couldn't help thinking about the center's history. Originally built as Danville's first high school in 1927, the three-story red brick building had served as an elementary school in the 1960s before being remodeled into the Hendricks County Government Center in the 1990s. Now it housed all the non-justice functions because the courthouse could no longer accommodate all the offices.

“The west face looks just like the old high school,” Joy said.

“It does, doesn't it? I always have to remind myself that this is where I have to go for county business, not the courthouse.”

They located the assessor's office on the second story. A middle-aged clerk with an abundance of pendant jewelry recognized them immediately and came over. She gushed a little about them being on television. Joy basked in the glow for a few moments, then asked how to find out who owned any particular piece of property in Brownsburg.

“If you have the address, it's extremely easy. You don't even need to come in. We have all that stuff online.”

Francine had wondered if that wasn't the case, but the thought of going to lunch at the Courthouse Grounds had been appealing.

“Could you show us?” Joy asked. “We're interested in the building at 179 Adams Street.”

“Sure.” The clerk spun the monitor around so the women could see what she was doing. “You just go to the county's web page, then click the auditor's office.” She did that, and another screen came up. “Now you see this area here where you can request information about property taxes? You just type the address and press enter. What was the address again?”

She repeated it. The clerk typed it in, hit enter, and a whole history of the property appeared on the screen. Sure enough, the first record showed who owned it, Larry and Alice Jeffords.

“It's a rental property,” Joy said. “Do you have any records that show who rents it?”

“Not that I know of.” She scrolled down checking to see if there was something she missed.

The records went back into previous decades. “How far back do the records go?” Francine asked.

“As far back as we can trace them. For some of the properties, we can even track them back to the organization of the county, but those are in a different database.”

Without prompting, the clerk returned to the home page and then clicked into an old map of the county. The center of the screen showed the Danville area. She scrolled over to Brownsburg. “If you put the cursor over any of the properties, you can find out if we have any original information on who owned it.”

“Interesting,” Joy said. “One of the things we wanted to find out was whether anyone had accessed the information on this property recently. We'd hoped they'd have to do that through you, and you'd be able to tell us.”

The clerk shook her head. “No, with the information online, anyone could have visited the site and we wouldn't know.”

Francine was fairly confident
someone
had the ability to trace it. If the police could track down criminals through their Internet usage, the information they wanted had to be logged somewhere. The question was, who could find it for them and how difficult would it be to persuade that person to do it?

The women thanked the clerk and walked back to the car. Before Francine started it up, she pulled out her cell phone. She called up the county's website and began to scroll through the information on Larry's rental property.

Joy watched her. “What are you doing?”

“I'm looking back over the history of Larry's property. The clerk whipped through it pretty fast.”

“It was just a gas station, wasn't it?”

“No. More like a small machine shop of some kind. I have no idea when it was built or what they made or if there was anything on the property before it.”

“What for?”

“Just curious.” She tilted her head back to read the assessed value through the bottom part of her bifocals. The value last given seemed low for a commercial structure, but she didn't know how those kinds of things were priced. She could only compare it to the assessed value of her house, and she knew the two were very different. She scrolled down to the bottom of the page. “I was right. It says here the property was built as a machine shop in 1928. Its square footage then was less than a thousand feet.”

“That's about what it is now, isn't it? It doesn't look very big.”

“One addition was made, in 1972. It doubled it in size to something over two thousand square feet.”

Joy seemed surprised. “Over two thousand? It doesn't look that big from the outside.”

“Nor from the inside. I remember walking through the building with the police the day we found the body. It can't be much bigger than a thousand.”

“Then where's the other thousand?”

Francine thought a moment. “Basement?”

“You were there. Did you see a basement?”

“It wasn't obvious.”

“How long has Larry owned the building?”

She scrolled through the listing again. “He bought the property ten years ago. No mortgage company involved. The structure's purpose changed to commercial storage. And the property is now classified at a thousand square feet.”

“Where did the extra square footage go?”

“Wait. I read that wrong. One thousand square feet is commercial garage; the remainder is commercial storage. But where's the storage and what's being stored there?”

“I bet Jonathan would know. You should ask him about it. Doesn't he prepare the paperwork for Larry's property taxes?”

“I'm pretty sure.”

“Well, there you go.”

Francine put away her phone and started the Prius. The two women were quiet as she negotiated the heavy traffic on US 36. She reached Dan Jones Road and turned north toward Brownsburg.

In her mind she kept going back over the trip she'd taken to Friederich's shop with Jud, Jonathan, and Alice. She mentally re-paced the area and compared it to her home. She was certain it couldn't be more than a thousand square feet. There was no attic, so there must be a basement. But if the owner before Larry had dug a basement for the property, even in 1972, lots of people would remember it. Had there always been a basement, but maybe unfinished, so the original owner never claimed it? But if there was a basement, why hadn't they seen an entrance? And why had Rob Seneff at the Chamber avoided talking about the building?

Francine thought about the videos of the building she'd watched. The cameras only covered the area they'd been in. If there was a basement, why would Larry not have cameras down there?

And then there was the fifty-minute gap. Someone came back into the building to get one of the midget cars and was in there a long time. Could that have anything to do with a basement?

Francine did not want to suspect Larry, even if he was secretly back in town at the time. She was certain there must be a logical explanation that would clear him. Friederich knew about the cameras. He must have told someone else. Otherwise, who would have known how to get past them?

She couldn't help but think that one single event, the mysterious re-entry into the garage, held the key to why Friederich had been killed.

nineteen

Francine found the light
flashing on the answering machine when she returned home. The missed call was Charlotte. She sounded excited about information she'd dug up and wanted to talk immediately. Francine returned the call right away.

“What took you so long?” Charlotte asked. “Did you get a chance to question Brady? What did you learn? I've talked to Jeff Kramer, the reporter. Well, not actually him, but his editor, and I've been to see Jud. We need to talk. When can you come over?”

“Watch your blood pressure, Charlotte. I went with Joy to Danville to find out what we could about the property Friederich rented. I've got more questions now than I have answers.”

“Isn't that the way it always goes? The answers I get only produce more questions. The facts in this case fit together like the season finale of
How I Met Your Mother
did with the other episodes of the show. I keep looking at the clues and thinking: How does this make sense?”

Francine wasn't sure she understood the analogy but then Charlotte watched way more television than she should. Her DVR was perpetually 90 percent full.

“So, can you come over?” Charlotte repeated.

“I'm tired of going other places today. Can you drive over here?”

Francine got no argument from Charlotte, who pulled into their driveway five minutes later. Francine watched her hustle to the front door, wielding her cane like a third leg extending from her hand. But by the time Francine had the door ajar, Charlotte had slowed to a crawl. They all knew Charlotte was more mobile than she let on; they just allowed her to maintain the illusion that her handicap slowed her down.

“That was quick,” Francine said under her breath.

“What was that? Sometimes I think you mumble on purpose.” Charlotte maneuvered around her and made her way into the great room.

Francine's house was one of the Colonial brick homes in the subdivision, two stories with all of the bedrooms upstairs and most of the living areas downstairs. When the three boys were young, it had almost seemed too small. The house was full of life then, with schoolwork and sports and the boys' friends over all the time. Now two of the bedrooms were guestrooms and Jonathan's office occupied the other. They'd talked about moving to a smaller place, but they loved their neighbors. As long as they were healthy and could deal with the stairs, they decided they would stay. They'd remodeled to keep it updated—the great room had been a family room and a living room before they knocked out the wall between them—and it was this room Charlotte loved. She nabbed her favorite Italian leather armchair and set her purse next to it.

“Sit,” she told Francine as though it were her own house. “We need to compare notes.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a notebook. “You go first.”

Francine sat on the couch across from Charlotte. She started at the beginning, with her meeting at the gym that yielded little information from Brady. “The good news is I'm meeting with him again tomorrow. The bad news is, I sort of promised him Mary Ruth.”

Charlotte slapped the knee that hadn't been replaced. “That's a good one. Why ever did you promise him that? You'll never get Mary Ruth in a gym unless you tell her there's a chance she could cater an event there. And she'll never believe that. I bet they don't even allow carrot cake in that Brownsburg gym.”

“I was thinking of an ambush after the catering event tomorrow. Maybe rush her into the car and whisk her over to the gym before she has a chance to think about it. Joy is in on it, and she's all for it.”

“I don't know. Mary Ruth is short and wide and has a low center of gravity. I'm not sure even with all four us working together she could be budged. But it's worth a shot. You're sure that's the only way you'll get him to talk about Jake Maehler?”

“He's all business. We need to dangle the prospect of a new client in front of him if we're going to divert him into a conversation about Jake.”

“You said you also saw Joy …?”

Francine recapped Joy's trip to the Brownsburg Chamber of Commerce, and then backtracked to their lunch at the Courthouse Grounds. When she finished covering their conversation with Darla Baggesen, Charlotte stopped her. “Sara wants to go live with her father? Why would she want that?”

“Why wouldn't she want to go live with her father? Maybe she's closer to him than she is to Darla. If I were Sara, I know I'd want to live with my dad.”

“True. Darla is obsessive about Sara's racing, worse than a soccer mom at times. I think Darla keeps her on a short leash too. Maybe she clapped one of those bracelets around Sara's ankle like they put on sex offenders, to keep track of her when she's not around.”

Francine snorted at the suggestion. “You're exaggerating. Anyway, with these new smartphones, Darla wouldn't need an ankle bracelet. She could just install an app to keep track of where Sara's phone is. Kids don't go anywhere without their cell phones.” She thought back to the Courthouse Grounds when Darla said she needed to check in on Sara. She'd looked at her cell phone and left abruptly.
Had Darla seen where Sara was and it worried her?
Francine decided to switch topics. She prompted Charlotte about her trip to see Jud.

“There was something about Friederich's dead body that bothered me, especially knowing he was murdered. Do you know what was missing?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Blood, Francine. There was no blood.”

“You're going to tell me it had been drained, like a vampire, aren't you? Have you been reading Charlaine Harris again?”

“No. But it begs the question, how did he die? I asked Jud about it.”

“Did he tell you?”

“Amazingly enough, he did. He said he wanted me to understand that this was a murderer who knew what he was doing. Friederich was blood choked.”

“He was what?”

“It's like choking a person to stop them from breathing, only they choke the carotid artery so blood doesn't reach the brain.” Charlotte touched the carotid artery on the left side of her neck to demonstrate. “All it takes is firm pushing until they pass out, and then holding it longer until real damage is done.”

As a nurse, Francine understood what Charlotte was saying, but the act was so heinous. “Someone deliberately stopped the blood from reaching his brain so he became brain dead?”

“That's how a blood choke works. Of course, when someone uses it in a cage fight or a wrestling match, they let up after the person passes out so the blood can get going again to the brain and there's no brain damage.”

“But it's so … calculating.”

“Or to the killer it came naturally, like in a fit of anger. Jud says he thinks Friederich tried to fight back. There was skin under his fingernails, like he'd clawed at the person who killed him. The coroner is checking for DNA samples.”

“I can't believe he told you all that, Charlotte.”

“I'd like to say I pulled it out of him with brilliant investigative questions, but he was getting ready for a press conference and I think he was practicing on me. I did soften him up first, though. I told him about our luncheon tomorrow and asked him to be there.”

“I thought it was going to be a neighborhood watch program. Jud doesn't handle those.”

“Hear me out. At first he tried to push it off on the Support Services division, so I told him he should consider it professional courtesy. I told him the guest list included the people who'd returned to the scene of the crime when we gave tours and that we would be using the luncheon for a dual purpose: showing off Mary Ruth's skills and interrogating a list of possible suspects. That was when he agreed it was a good idea.”

“Just like that?”

“Okay, he did get a little angry that we haven't stopped investigating. But after I reminded him that at least I was keeping him informed, he seemed better about it. Still suspicious of my motive, but he said he'd come. Then he drop-kicked me out of there to go to a press conference. Said he was trying to get the press under control.”

Francine hoped he could tame the media circus Marcy had created around the Bridge Club and put the focus back squarely on the murder itself. “Speaking of the press, what did you learn from the reporter—I can't remember his name.”

“Jeff Kramer. I couldn't get hold of him, but I did talk to the editor. The best thing I learned from her was the reason Jake claimed it was sabotage in the first place.”

“Which was?”

“Rumor had it that Friederich was building a car for another racer before he hooked back up with Jake. When Jake's car gave out so close to the end, he believed Friederich had done it on purpose to give one of his rivals a chance at victory.”

Francine thought a moment. “Jake came in fifth. Four people finished ahead of him. Were any of those … ?”

“… linked to Friederich? My question exactly. The editor said Jeff couldn't uncover a single thread connecting any of those racers to Friederich. All of them had cars that had been built by their mechanics.”

Francine was confused about why Charlotte found this somehow significant. “What did he make of the rumor, then?”

“Uncertain. The editor said it could be no one yet understands the connection between Jake's rivals out on the track and Friederich. But for Jake's first thought to be sabotage, Jake must have some kind of information no one else has, information that accounts for him assuming the failure was deliberate and then getting angry.”

“I can believe it. But Jake's anger should make him a prime suspect. Wouldn't that give Jake a stronger motive for killing Friederich?”

“Yes, but the reporter argued that if we assume Jake knows more than he's telling, then the question remains, who was Friederich building a car for? Answer that question, and you have another suspect. At any rate, the editor said Kramer told her he wasn't giving up on it yet. She promised to have Kramer call me when he returned to work. I guess he'd taken a few days off and she hadn't seen him.”

Francine's cell phone rang. She looked at the number. It was Jonathan.

“Are you alone?” he asked.

“No.”

“Is it Charlotte?”

“Yes.”

“Get rid of her and then meet me over at Alice and Larry's house. They want to talk to us. Or rather, Larry wants me there, and Alice insists that you be there too.”

“Okay.” Francine looked up. Charlotte was watching her. This would be a problem.

Jonathan must have read her mind. “Just tell her you have to meet me to sign some papers—personal papers.”

Francine told her that. Charlotte gave her a disappointed look.

Jonathan said, “Now say, ‘right now?'”

“Right now?”

“Good girl. Now see her out. I don't know for certain, but I think Larry and Alice are getting close to being honest with each other. How that involves you and me, I guess we'll learn.”