Rogues Gallery (17 page)

Piper rushed on, as if afraid that Mac would press her for details. “I also know that she had an appointment with him on the morning of the day her body was found.”

“What kind of appointment?” Lynda asked. Her journalism genes were kicking in now.

“I don't know exactly what was going on, but they'd reached some kind of crisis and the purpose of the meeting was to settle it. I thought maybe she wanted to break it off.”

“Do you remember her exact words?”

Piper paused. “It was something like, ‘I'm going to end this even if it's the end of me.'”

“That sounds definite,” I said.

But Mac shook his head. “The ‘this' could be the relationship, but it could be something else - it could be a misunderstanding, or a behavior pattern, or a deception, or any number of other things.”

“Maybe so,” Lynda conceded, “but the ‘end of me' part sounds ominous no matter what she meant by the other part.”

“Should I tell Chief Hummel?” Piper asked.

Let's see: Do we want Oscar to know that the victim was stepping out with an older man and seemed determined to cut it off at a meeting the day her body was found, fitting in perfectly with his conviction that Ralph was the most likely suspect?

“Only if he asks,” Mac advised.

“He probably won't,” Lynda added, “unless he gets onto the boyfriend angle and works it, or has Gibbons work it, with everybody associated with Olivia. But Johanna Rawls will want to ask you about it.”

“Isn't she the reporter at the
Observer
who wrote about the murder?” Piper shook her head vigorously. “I'm not talking to a reporter. I don't want my name in the paper.”

Good girl!

Storm clouds gathered over Lynda's pretty visage. Understandably, she wasn't a bit happy about Piper's professed media shyness. It put Lynda in a pickle. She still had newspaper ink running in her veins instead of blood, but she was a journalist without being a reporter. Anything somebody says to a reporter, unless they've first reached agreement that it's off the record, is fair game for quoting. But etiquette says that rule doesn't apply to talking with people higher up the pay scale.

As an employee of
The Erin Observer & News-Ledger
's parent company, Lynda was more like the publisher who comes back from the Rotary Club meeting with a heck of a story, but tells the troops they have to confirm it on their own and leave him out of it. That happens all the time, by the way, and not just in small town America. It's even more awkward when the publisher is on the board of trustees of say, a museum, which has done something controversial and nobody at said institution will talk to the publisher's paper.

“Well, gosh, how time flies!” I observed. “I guess I'd better be getting back to ... whatever I'm getting back to. Nice seeing you again, Piper! Good luck.”

Mac and Lynda murmured polite goodbyes and we were soon out of there.

“Cheer up,” I told Lynda as we hit the sidewalk. “Johanna is pretty sharp. Maybe she'll get a line on the boyfriend on her own, something even more solid, like a name.”

Lynda raked both of us with a withering glance. “It's not Johanna I'm worried about. It's you two.”

Mac's “
Moi
?” expression wouldn't have fooled a three-year-old.

“You didn't just happen into Happy Homes today, Mac. You guys have been poking into the murder, probably asking questions all over town, haven't you?”

J'accuse!

“All over town would be a considerable exaggeration,” Mac said.

“Don't get all legalistic, Mac!” My beloved whirled on me. “And you! Why didn't you tell me what you were up to?” Lynda Teal (Cody) is the most even-tempered of women, even though she is half-Italian, so I was ill-prepared by experience for this tsunami of emotion. What I saw in her gold-flecked brown eyes wasn't anger, it was hurt. And that hurt me. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”

I want a lawyer!
At least I had Mac. He broke my awkward silence with our defense.

“I believe that what Jefferson is trying
not
to say is that we were rather boxed in by a request from the person who asked us to make inquiries. This person, our non-paying client as it were, is most eager that our involvement on behalf of a third party not be known.”

“That's true,” I confirmed.
Although it's almost impossible to follow what he just said.
“Plus, it only happened this morning that this person contacted us. I didn't have time to break down and tell you what I wasn't supposed to tell, which I'm sure I would have sooner or later - probably during dinner or pillow talk. You know I'm terrible at keeping secrets.”

Apparently being a good husband is more than just remembering to put the toilet seat lid back down and squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom.

Lynda shook her head. “I should have known you boys couldn't stay out of this.”

IX

By the time I got to my office the next morning, which happened to be Shakespeare's birthday, Lynda and I had reached an understanding that she wasn't going to be surprised like that again. Lynda isn't one to stew over things, so that was that. But I decided I'd better make reservations soon at Ricoletti's Ristorante, or at least The Roundhouse, just to seal the deal.

It was the day before Olivia Wanamaker's funeral.

“Oscar knows who did it,” Popcorn said with an unmistakable note of pride in her voice as she handed me a cup of decaffeinated coffee.
That can't be good.
“He said he talked to him yesterday.”

“Who is it?”
As if I didn't know.

“He just chuckled and said to ask you.”

“How very cagey of him.” How much should I tell her? With Popcorn keeping company with Oscar, although she remained coy about that, maybe I shouldn't let her have anything we didn't want the chief to know. But I didn't want to get into the same kind of trouble with her that I was in with Lynda.

“Can you keep a secret? Even from Oscar?”

She sat forward eagerly. “I barely know the man, Boss.”

Right.
But I told her everything, including the older boyfriend stuff from Piper Lawrence. At the end of my summary of the case against Ralph, Popcorn was gaping.

“I can't believe he'd do a thing like that.”

“Mac doesn't seem to think he did. Anyway, I know that Oscar had an interview scheduled with Ralph, but I didn't get debriefed on the outcome. I was tending to the home fires last night, so I haven't talked to Mac. Maybe he knows more.”

“Call him.”

I did so.

“I was just about to call you, old boy,” my brother-in-law boomed. “Yes, I spoke with Oscar. Apparently our beloved provost's stuffed shirt got a little stiffer under Oscar's rather aggressive questioning.” Popcorn, who could hear Mac halfway across the room, smirked. “In short, I gather that Ralph's injured dignity did not serve him well and he overplayed his hand.”

“And that, naturally, only made Oscar all the more suspicious.” I groaned. Obviously, Ralph needed a communications advisor.

“I have a class this morning.”
How unusual for a tenured professor.
“However, I am available starting at eleven-thirty. I suggest we both take an early lunch and visit Mr. Sam Wanamaker, the widower.”

“The funeral is tomorrow. Isn't that a little tacky?”

“Sadly, there will never be a better time, Jefferson.”

I wasn't happy about this little plan, but I agreed to it. Mac was going to do it anyway, and he's even more dangerous if he doesn't have adult supervision.

The Wanamaker house was in a new development just inside the city limits. When I had first come to Erin, it had been farmland. Now it was all McMansions for Altiora Corp. executives and others in their income range. Apparently the Wanamakers did quite well for themselves. Although they had no children, they lived in one of the larger houses on the street, two stories in a mock Tudor style, all brick. The landscaping was flawless, of course. That was Sam Wanamaker's business. He had met Olivia on the job five years ago at the annual Sussex County Parade of Homes home show.

We rang the doorbell, waited, rang it again. Finally a big man answered, not fat but tall and bear-like. He had short, golden hair that glittered in the sunlight, as did the equally golden frames of his glasses. He was wearing a Wanamaker Landscaping golf shirt.

The door was only open about halfway. Mac took the lead.

“Mr. Wanamaker? My name is Sebastian McCabe and this is my friend and brother-in-law, Thomas Jefferson Cody. We are sorry - ”

“I know who you are. You're that mystery writer from St. Benignus, the amateur detective.” He turned to me. “And you found Liv's body in that freezer.” I wouldn't go so far as to say he was choking back sobs, but his eyes were wet and there was a catch in his throat.

“That is accurate so far as it goes, Mr. Wanamaker. Jefferson and I - ”

Wanamaker opened the door all the way. “Come on in. I think I could use your help.”

Whoa - didn't see that coming!

The Wanamaker residence could have been a model home - or at least, a model house. The chairs, the couches, the little tables, and even the paintings were all showroom quality, and perhaps all for show. It was hard to believe that anybody actually lived there.

“Have a seat.” Wanamaker pointed to a pair of sturdy-looking chairs, each wide enough to support Mac, while he arranged himself on a more delicate reproduction antique love seat.

“How can we help you?” Mac asked. When he sees an open door, he barges right through it.

“You've come about Liv, my wife.” The Golden Bear apparently was not one to mince words. “You're looking into the murder and it's not hard to guess why.”
It's not?
Wanamaker smiled bitterly. “It's irresistible, right? Have you seen what the tabloid TV shows have done with it?”

“Fortunately, no,” Mac said.

“They've got a lot of cute names for it, like they're having fun with it. The Body in the Freezer. The Case of the Cold-Cocked Corpse.” Wanamaker shook his head, not quite believing what life had brought him. “I talked to Chief Hummel on Sunday and then again yesterday. I'm sure he's a good man, but I'm not sure he's the right man - not for this case. He seems to be fixed on the idea that the owner of the house did it. The owner's probably just some nice guy who has nothing to do with it.”
You may have that half right, Sam.
“I'm glad you want to find the man who killed my wife. Find him, prove it, and make sure he pays.”

“We didn't actually say - ” I began.

But Mac was in no mood to split hairs.

“Why ‘man'?” he asked.

“What?”

“You said ‘the man who killed my wife.' Why do you assume that it was a man?”

Wanamaker shrugged. “I don't know. The way she was killed, I guess. I just said it, I didn't really mean anything by it.”

“Not at a conscious level, perhaps,” Mac conceded. “However, the fact that you dismiss the likelihood of Ralph Pendergast's guilt and yet you automatically used the male pronoun for the killer suggests to me that your subconscious mind has a preferred candidate for that role.”

Wanamaker seemed to think a bit before his face brightened. “Hey, how 'bout a beer?” It was a safe bet that he'd already had a few, judging by the rosiness of his face and the overly careful way he was speaking.

I declined with thanks, but not Mac. “I am never one to discourage generosity.” Later, he claimed that he'd merely been trying to establish rapport with an important witness. I think it more likely he was trying to establish rapport with a cold bottle of Edmund Fitzgerald Porter.

We followed Wanamaker into the kitchen.

“When a woman is killed, the husband is usually the first suspect,” Mac observed. “You are fortunate indeed that in this case Oscar is going down a different road, especially since - forgive me for bringing this up - your marriage...”

He left the sentence uncompleted. Wanamaker slapped an opened bottle of beer into his hand. “We had some problems. I guess that doesn't go unnoticed in a town like this. But I loved Liv. She had a softer side that a lot of people never saw.”
Like the other side of a nail file?

“And you think perhaps the other man might have killed her.”

Wanamaker gulped his beer. “Oh, jeez, are people talking about ‘the other man,' too?”

“Not everybody,” I said helpfully.

Mac glared at me. “A woman who shared confidences with your wife told us. She did not know the man's identity. However, she said Mrs. Wanamaker hinted that her paramour was a much older man.”

Wanamaker shook his head. “I don't know for sure who it is either. He didn't leave his calling card, and Liv wouldn't tell me. But if you're asking me, I think it was that stuffy, self-important, boring Tony Lampwicke from WIJC. He interviewed Liv on his radio show not long ago. She seemed to be captivated by his phony intellectualism - you know, stuff like ‘next week we look at the exciting new generation of Bantu poets.'” Wanamaker's imitation of Tony's cultivated Oxford accent was spot-on and amusing.

But my head was reeling. Could this be true? Sure it could. All of a sudden I had a flashback to Cecily saying that Sam smelled pipe tobacco smoke in the Wanamakers' bedroom. Ralph didn't smoke a pipe (or anything), but Tony did. Tony wasn't exactly an old man, only in his early forties or so, but maybe that was old to Olivia.

Why hadn't Piper known about this from working with Tony? If anybody knows whom a man is seeing, it's his administrative assistant.

“How long do you think this had been going on?” I asked.