Rogues Gallery (12 page)

Shopping completed, I circled around to Serena Mason.

“Mac says he knows who stole the necklace and where it is now,” I informed her.

She smiled, her hazel eyes showing relief. “And Mac's always right, isn't he?”

“That's a bit of an exaggeration.”
He has terrible taste in neckwear, for one thing. He likes bow ties.
“But he does have a good track record as an amateur sleuth.”

“I bet he couldn't do it without you.”

“That's an even bigger exaggeration.”
Actually, I'm just being modest. You're quite perceptive, Serena, in addition to all of your other admirable qualities.

Mac's tour of duty as Santa ended at one o'clock, although the craft show continued until four. I rounded up Triple M, Kate, and Lynda on the stroke of one.

“This should be interesting,” Serena said.

“I'll be glad when it's over,” Triple M said glumly. She must have been thinking something along the lines of “nothing good can come of this.”

We filed into the back of the room where Santa was holding forth, with Nicholas at his side, just as my nephew climbed onto his father's lap. His siblings were too old for this. Rebecca, thirteen and a half, was out caroling with a boy. Amanda, two years younger, was probably pouring over college catalogues or inventing time travel.

“I want a BB gun,” Brian announced.

This struck me as a poor opening gambit for such a good chess player. Most Santas would have responded by telling him he'd shoot his eye out with such a present.

“Handgun or rifle?” Mac asked. I was too wrapped up in looking at my sister to hear the answer. From the look on her face, father and son were both in trouble.

Brian wasn't the last supplicant, although we were already past the official closing time for “Breakfast with Santa.” Mac stayed to hear three more kids while I became increasingly impatient to hear his solution to our little mystery. Lynda, sensing my angst, took my hand and squeezed it.

Finally, with a wave and a parting “ho ho ho,” Santa made it clear that he was finished until the next Holiday Fest. Parents and children exited. Kate said she would take Brian home. I suspected that he was in for a lecture on the way.

“Hello, Serena,” Mac said as the other three of us gathered around him next to the Christmas tree.

Serena shook his hand. “Hello, Mac. You were a wonderful Santa, and I know you're a great detective, too.”

Wasn't it a work of art the way she delivered the compliment and the prod in a single sentence? No wonder she's the town sweetheart.

“I asked Jefferson to bring you here because I wanted to deliver your necklace to you from its place of concealment myself,” Mac said. “Consider it a Christmas present.”

“Thanks. So ... where is it?”

Mac turned to the Christmas tree. Or, to be more precise, he turned to Nicholas, who was standing in front of the Christmas tree. “Excuse me, Nicholas.”

The lad moved over, his freckled face turning red.

Mac reached his hand into the branches of the tree and pulled out a rope of pearls. At a casual glance, all that anyone would have given, they blended in with the popcorn. “It's been here ever since I suggested that you search your suspects, Jefferson.”

Call me dumb, but I didn't get it. “How could any of the three come in here and put the necklace in the tree without being seen?”

“None of them did. Nicholas did.”

The twelve-year-old's face went through a range of emotions before settling on panic. “Did not!” he yelled. “Why are you picking on me?”

Lynda and Triple M were crestfallen. Nicholas didn't do injured innocence with any conviction at all. For myself, I was too stunned to be disappointed. His mother was dead and he had said he had no girlfriend. Who would he have given the necklace to? Or was he under the illusion that he could sell it?

“When I asked Nicholas whether he stole the pearl necklace, his affirmation of innocence was totally unconvincing,” Mac said. “I only asked the question pro forma, but his reaction screamed guilt. Having a son and two daughters of my own, I know the signs.

“When you went away to search the suspects, Jefferson, Nicholas - consumed by the guilt feelings natural to most first-time thieves - assumed that we would eventually suspect him after that proved fruitless. So he had to get rid of the necklace. As I turned my attention to my duties as Santa, I must confess that I did not see him place the necklace on the tree. However, I noticed that when you made your report, Nicholas never looked at you. He looked past you - at the Christmas tree.”

“You can't prove it!” Nicholas cried.

Mac shrugged. “I suppose that is not necessary. Serena primarily wanted her necklace back, which she has. She was not so interested in assigning guilt or prosecuting the offender. However, I will note that the necklace was placed just on a level with your arms, Nicholas.”

“Oh, Nicholas,” Lynda said. “Why?”

He bit his lip, eyes downcast. “I wanted it for you. I didn't have enough money to give you a present.”

For Lynda? You little home-wrecker!

Lynda bent down, held his shoulders, and looked him in the eye. “No girl worthy of a gift would want one that's stolen, Nicholas.”

Nicholas looked up. “Am I going to be arrested?”

“You should be so lucky,” Serena said. “You're a ward of the court, if I remember correctly.” She glanced at Lynda, who nodded. “I think I can arrange it so that you and I are going to spend a lot of time together. You may wish you were in jail.”

Somehow I doubted that.

That night Lynda and I decorated the tree in our apartment, accompanied by Frank Sinatra singing Christmas carols. It was a real tree, at Lynda's insistence. My cost-benefit analysis of buying an artificial tree and amortizing the cost over ten years as compared to buying a new one every Christmas had made no headway at all.

It was our first Christmas as a married couple, and would turn out to be my last in the apartment where I had lived alone for so long before we married. The ornaments that we had acquired as single people over the years would join forces on the tree, along with new ones that we had bought as a couple.

“The ironic thing,” Lynda said, adding an ornament of a goose with a blue gem around its neck as Frank urged us to have ourselves a merry little Christmas, “is that Serena would have given him the necklace if he'd asked. Or, if he insisted, Nicholas could have bought it from her for what you paid him. The pearls weren't real. She just bought the necklace today at the craft show.”

I shook my head. “The poor little guy wasn't exactly Raffles, was he?” Maybe it's because Nicholas was a redhead like me, but I was in a bit of a “there but for the grace of God” mood.

“Mac said the fact that he's such a terrible liar means that he doesn't have much practice at it. He's lucky that he picked Serena to steal from. She'll give him so much love and discipline that he won't go wrong again.”

“I guess I should be jealous of my rival for your affection,” I said lightly.

“In that regard you have no rival, Jeff Cody.”

That called for a non-verbal response on my part. I moved toward Lynda, but she was looking around distractedly. By this time the small tree was laden down with ornaments and we had moved on to the rest of the apartment. Empty boxes were all around us on the floor. “I can't find the mistletoe,” Lynda said.

I wrapped my arms around her womanly form and whispered in her ear. “Who needs mistletoe?”

A Cold Case

I

“And this is the kitchen.”

That explains the refrigerator, the stove, the microwave ...
Why do real estate agents always feel they have to point out the obvious? I made a mental note to ask my father.

Cecily Almond, a tall, willowy woman with café-au-lait skin and golden hair done up in a Cleopatra hairdo, ignored my unspoken sarcasm. “All the appliances are staying. The owners have already moved into a condo. That's why they're so motivated to sell. I'm also the listing agent on this one, so I know the situation very well.”

“I love the island,” Lynda said.

This was looking promising. It's not often you find a beautifully preserved arts and crafts house in Erin, Ohio, with a state-of-the-art kitchen. In fact, this was the twenty-seventh house we'd looked at since getting serious about finding a home of our own. And it was conveniently located on Campion Lane, only about a ten-minute bike ride to my office at St. Benignus College and an even faster drive for Lynda to get to her workplace downtown.

Lynda and I had agreed early on in our engagement to live in my carriage house apartment on Sebastian McCabe's property for a transition period, and then buy a place. Now it was late April, we'd been married almost eleven months, and we were looking for a house big enough to hold the children who so far had stubbornly refused to make their requested appearance. This one had four bedrooms and two baths.

Call it superstition, but I had a nagging feeling that our first kid was waiting for us to get a house before showing up. So that was a strong incentive to buy sooner rather than later. Besides, the housing market was starting to pick up a little bit, and prices with it. If we waited too long, we might miss that sweet spot of low prices and low interest rates that homebuyers had been enjoying over the past few years. So we called Happy Homes Realty, the biggest locally owned real estate brokerage in Erin, and started spending a lot of evenings and weekends house hunting with the energetic Cecily Almond. We were already pre-approved for a mortgage loan at Gamble Bank.

It was a beautiful spring day, just made for cold drinks on the porch and baseball on the radio. Lynda was dressed in a bright yellow blouse and short white culottes. The effect against her dark skin and honey-blonde curls pulled back in a ponytail was stunning. I also looked rather cute in my “SARCASM - Just Another Service I Offer” T-shirt and shorts, if I do say so myself.

As the son of a Realtor - my dad owns his own firm in Virginia - I've always been interested in old houses. Lynda doesn't care much, so long as the insides are new. So this looked like it could be the perfect domicile for Jeff Cody, Lynda Teal (Cody), and To Be Announced.

“There's even a big freezer chest in the utility room,” Cecily said, with a “surely that seals the deal” attitude.

“You should like that,” Lynda to me. “You always want to save money by buying in bulk.”

Don't act so enthusiastic! That pumps up the price!
I tried to look skeptical.

“Here, take a look,” Cecily pressed.

She marched into the little utility room, just off of the kitchen. We followed. We were standing right behind her as she opened the freezer chest ... and screamed at the top of her lungs.

The body of a woman lay crammed within, on her side, in a fetal position.

II

“Her name was Olivia Wanamaker,” I said, “and she was another Happy Homes Realty agent.”

“That name sounds familiar somehow,” Sebastian McCabe rumbled.

“She was also a member of the Erin City Council,” Lynda informed my notoriously apolitical brother-in-law, “and not the most shy. Where Olivia went, controversy was sure to follow. And men, too.”

Meow.

We had assembled late Sunday afternoon for cocktail hour, along with my sister Kate, in Mac's study. I've spent a lot of time in that man-cave over the years, some of the happiest moments of my bachelorhood, and wedding bells haven't changed that.

“Oscar said there's not much doubt she was bludgeoned to death with a frozen fish,” I said. Lynda and I had only looked at the body long enough to see that she was petite, well dressed, and a bloody mess before we phoned 911. We'd stayed at the house another hour or so after Erin's chief of police arrived on the scene, and then we'd made a beeline for the McCabe house.

Mac, his bulky frame settled into his favorite wingback chair, apparently found this thirsty work. He took a pull on his mug of dark ale before he spoke again. “What kind of fish?”

You're just showing off!
I refused to ask why he wanted to know.

“Salmon,” Lynda supplied. “Why do you want to know?”

“I like fish. I have even gone fishing.”
I know. I was with you. It wasn't a pretty sight.
“The murder weapon suggests an unpremeditated act, of course. The murderer apparently struck with whatever happened to be handy - ‘apparently' being the key word.”

Kate got up to get dinner started, but paused in the doorway. “Didn't the
Observer
have a string of front page stories a while back about Wanamaker tweeting jibes at the mayor and other City Council members during their meetings?”

Lynda set down her Manhattan. “Yeah. It was about a three-day wonder - at least, as far as the paper goes. I doubt if the mayor ever forgot, though. For all her perfect coiffure, she's not a ‘forgive and forget' type.”

Mac, knowing Her Honor quite well, raised an eyebrow as if he had just been given a five-course meal for thought. But he didn't comment on that. Instead, he asked, “Who owned the murder house?”

“We don't know,” I said. “Cecily just said it was ‘a motivated seller,' which means somebody who needs to sell in a hurry and is willing to let the house go at a good price.” I brightened. “Hey, Lyn, maybe we can get an even better price because of the murder.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Well, at least this is one murder where you three don't have to get involved,” Kate said. She disappeared into the kitchen.

“Yes.” Mac stroked his beard. “We don't have to get involved. What a relief.”

I would have bet my 403(b) and my IRA that he was trying to think of a way to get involved. But as it turned out, that was no trick at all.

We were just inside the door of our apartment after a dinner of overcooked spaghetti and turkey meatballs when Lynda's smartphone rang, a very no-nonsense ringtone that sounded like a telephone. She looked at it before answering. “It's Rawls.”

Johanna Rawls, a young member of the small reporting staff of
The Erin Observer & News-Ledger
, was working on the paper's story about the body in the freezer. She must have wrestled news editor and former crime reporter Ben Silverstein for the honor. Although Lynda was no longer on
Observer
masthead, having moved up the corporate ladder, Tall Rawls looked up to her as a role model and kept in close contact.

“Hi, Johanna. Great idea! I should have thought of checking that myself. And what did you find? What? Well, yes, that is interesting, and good to know. Thanks for calling.”

Lynda had the strangest look on her face, as if she didn't know what to think. “Johanna checked the county auditor's online records to find out who owns the house with the body. The names on the deed are Ralph and Grace Pendergast.”

III

“April is the cruelest month.” T.S. Eliot wrote that. He must have known Ralph Pendergast.

On Monday morning, the day after discovering Olivia Wanamaker's brutal murder, I was stewing in my office about Ralph's most shameful move yet, and I don't mean owning the murder house: He wanted me to fire Popcorn, my indispensable administrative assistant.

I should have seen it coming. We'd gone through round after round of budget cuts since Ralph arrived at St. Benignus College two years earlier as provost and academic vice president. He had been brought in by the board of trustees to get the college's fiscal house in order. Ralph is an economist by academic training. (No wonder they call it “the dismal science.”) He's also an economizer, with the accent on the “miser.” Everybody loved our long-time president, “Father Joe” Pirelli, but even I had to admit that he'd always run a rather loose ship. Eventually the trustees had forced him to turn over the day-to-day operations of that ship to Captain Bligh.

Anyway, the belt-tightening had gotten down to the administrative assistant level. First, retirees weren't replaced. That worked out quite well. For the most part their middle-management bosses took on the extra work without complaint, just happy to have a job in this bad economy. The next step was to offer an anemic early-retirement package. That didn't get as many takers as hoped, so now the Administration (AKA Ralph) was looking at layoffs. Ralph hadn't actually told me that Popcorn's head was on the chopping block, but a sightless person could read between the lines.

He had dropped into my office and closed the door on the previous Friday afternoon, just before the start of the weekend.
Nothing good can come of this
, I thought. Oh, there was a time when Ralph thought I was well meaning and at least semi-intelligent, salvageable if only I could be pulled away from the influence of my brother-in-law. But that time was long since in my rear-view mirror.

“Hello, Cody.” He helped himself to a seat. Since it was Casual Day, he was wearing a blue blazer instead of his gray suit. I had on khaki pants and a St. Benignus polo shirt, pushing the brand. “I've been looking at the numbers for your office.” Ralph shook his head mournfully, causing the light to glint off of his rimless glasses. “It seems to me that we're spending a lot of money for what we get out of it.”

I stifled a laugh.

“You must have the decimal points in the wrong place, Ralph. This is a shoestring operation. You do realize that the Office of Public Relations and Marketing is just Popcorn and me? And that we handle media relations, marketing, branding, the website, and social media?”

Ralph seemed to study the pencil that he held between his two hands. “Oh, yes, you're in charge of that weeter, or whatever it's called.”

I could feel my face turning the same shade of red as my hair.

“Well, I'm sure you're a busy fellow,” he went on, “although I've never kept it a secret from you that I feel you could do a better job of media
relations
given your
connections
.” Low blow. I've never been able to convince Ralph that Lynda's position as editorial director for Grier Ohio NewsGroup, immediate parent company of
The Erin Observer & News-Ledger
, doesn't give me the ability to kill stories that spoil his breakfast. I mean, how in the heck was I supposed to suppress the one about the tenured finance professor who was arrested for passing more than a hundred bad checks? (She's now undergoing therapy for a gambling problem.)

“At any rate, Cody, a lot of people around here have learned to answer their own phones and type their own letters.”

But not you, Ralph.

“I already do that!” I exploded. “I can see where this is going and you'd better not go there.” Sometimes I descend into clichés under pressure. “Popcorn runs the Facebook Fan Page and posts about half of our tweets. Plus she keeps track of everything so we know what to tweet about.”
Women's basketball, for example, a major program about which I am clueless.
“It would be physically impossible for me to do everything I do without her.”

That was all true, but it wasn't the whole truth. I didn't have the nerve to say that Aneliese Pokorny also covers me when I'm out of the office in the middle of the day on some madcap assignment for Sebastian McCabe, and that she could - truly, no exaggeration - run the office much better without me than I ever could without her. In fact, maybe I should resign and become a full-time househusband, a stay-at-home dad to those kids who would appear once we had the house. Surely Ralph would see that Popcorn was my natural replacement.

Lynda makes more money than I do anyway. Popcorn, on the other hand, is a self-supporting widow, though how she does it on her meager salary I'll never know.

“Well, perhaps you need to set priorities.” I noticed that the point on Ralph's pencil was almost as sharp as his nose. I felt like yanking it away from him and drawing a mustache on his face. Okay, that's pretty weak, but I'm not a violent man. I don't even write two-fisted private eye novels anymore. “Perhaps not everything that you're doing needs to be done,” Ralph forged on.
Yeah, try being a college, even one as small as ours, without a Facebook page.
“I haven't made up my mind yet, I'm still looking at the budget, but I didn't want you to be surprised when I do.”

That means he's made up his mind
, I reflected gloomily on Monday morning. Well, maybe the murder in his empty house would keep him too busy to move forward with the plan.
Fat chance, Jeff.

“A penny for your thoughts, Boss,” Popcorn said as she set a mug of decaffeinated coffee in front of me.

“You'd demand your money back.”

“I know what you're thinking about.”

“You do?” I looked at her carefully. Almost fifty-one years old, dyed blond hair, just under five feet tall and just this side of plump, Popcorn didn't look worried.

“Sure. It's in the paper.”

She sat on the chair in front of my desk and handed me the day's edition of
The Erin Observer & News-Ledger
, with the seventy-two-point headline:
A COLD CASE
and the more informative subhead:
Councilwoman's Body Found in Freezer
. The story carried Johanna Rawls's byline. I call her Tall Rawls because she's very Nordic, at least six feet tall even without her three-inch heels.