Shots in the Dark (4 page)

Because it was the weekend, most of the core regulars in the group were present, but I saw a few new faces, too. I was greeted with a chorus of cheery hellos as Cora pulled up a chair for me next to her. As soon as I settled in and propped my crutches against the wall behind me, she leaned over and whispered in my ear.

“Your boy checks out. He is who he says he is, and I can't find any bad stuff about him.”

“Good,” I said with a smile. “Because I think I'm putting him on the payroll as of tonight.”

Cora gave me a cautionary look. “Is the rest of the staff going to be okay with that, you think? I mean, so soon after Gary and all.”

I shrugged. “They're going to have to be. I need the help.”

Cora switched gears, nodding toward the unfamiliar faces in the room. “We have two new folks here today,” she said, her voice still low. “I got their names and checked them out. I'm pretty sure they aren't reporters, but be careful with what you talk about.”

I nodded my understanding and prepared for introductions, but before that happened, yet another new face entered the room. Nothing about her looked extraordinary—she was pretty, but in an everyday kind of way—yet I sensed something as I watched her walk in. It didn't take long for my instincts to prove reliable, because within a matter of minutes our newest arrival introduced us to our next case, which would turn out to be the most interesting one yet.

The weekends were when the Capone Club was at its fullest, and they were also when we got the most new people wandering in. Most of the newcomers expressed an interest in participating, and they were treated with polite wariness by the others initially. Local reporters had tried to infiltrate the group several times, so whenever anyone new showed up, they were asked to provide an introduction and to say why they were there. Until Cora, with her computer sleuthing skills, could do a background check, the group would stick to posing test scenarios or discussing crime solving in general, never offering up information on any of the real crimes we were or had been working on. This had a tendency to weed out the vast majority of the newcomers, most of whom were curiosity seekers or lookie-loos who never came back again.

So far, the only person who had come back after the initial visit, and after he passed Cora's muster, was Stephen McGregor, a physics teacher at a local high school. He was present on the day in question, and I later learned who the two first timers in the group were: a man in his forties named Greg Nash, who worked as a local Realtor and who had known Ginny, and Sonja West, who said she was the owner of an upscale hair salon named Aphrodite's, located a few blocks away.

The latest newcomer—the one who had entered the room shortly after I had—introduced herself as Sandra Middleton but offered up nothing more. That was enough for Cora, who started typing away on her laptop. I invited Sandra to have a seat, and she took an empty chair next to Sam, setting the large purse she was carrying—though actually it looked more like a messenger bag—on the floor beside her. As soon as she was settled, Holly asked her what she did for a living.

“I'm between jobs at the moment,” Sandra said with a sad little smile. “I love mysteries, and I heard about your group, so I thought I'd check it out.”

Cora's quick machinations on the computer revealed that Sandra's interest in the group was likely due to more than a love of mysteries. “You're related to Benjamin Middleton,” she said.

Sandra nodded, looking sheepish. “I am,” she said in a very soft voice that triggered a faint herbal taste in my mouth. She sighed and flashed an apologetic smile, shifting in her chair. “Okay, the real reason I'm here is that I'm hoping your group can help me. Benjamin is my brother, and he's in prison, convicted of the murder of his wife, Tiffany.”

“How do you want us to help you?” I asked.

“He didn't do it,” Sandra said with absolute conviction. “He's innocent. I know he is, but I need someone to help me prove it.”

I and the group were typically skeptical of innocence claims—an all too common theme among criminals—and Sandra wasn't the first person to come to us with such a plea. But I learned the hard way that sometimes those claims were true, because it turned out that Gary Gunderson had done time for a crime he didn't commit.

Because of the publicity surrounding me and the Capone Club, the core group had a discussion not long ago during which we agreed not to take on any active, ongoing investigations and to consider only cold or concluded ones. My relationship with the police was dicey enough as it was. I didn't want to antagonize them further by interfering in an active investigation, and the cops who participated in the group from time to time had warned us that if we interfered in an active investigation, it could get us into some serious trouble.

The group's decision hadn't come easily. The members were desperate to look into the deaths of both Gary and Lewis Carmichael, since they had known both of them. Lewis, in fact, had been a part-time participant in the Capone Club. On the surface, Lewis's death appeared to be a mugging gone wrong, an unfortunate case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Aside from Duncan and Mal O'Reilly, my purported new paramour, only Cora, Frank, Joe, and I knew otherwise. I feared other group members might become targets of the letter writer if they dug too deeply into either Gary's or Lewis's death, so with the secret help of Duncan, and some in-your-face advice from the local police, it was made clear to the group that current, ongoing investigations were off the table.

I did my best to reinforce this as subtly as I could, and in away, Sandra's arrival and plea aided me in that endeavor. The case fit our initial parameters since it was closed, with the presumed culprit sentenced and behind bars. I hoped that the distraction of a new case would get everyone's minds off of Gary and Lewis for a while and keep the group from doing anything stupid. But I also was wary of giving Sandra Middleton any false hope.

To Sandra, I said, “We'll be happy to hear you out regarding your brother's case, and perhaps even look into it. But you need to understand that we don't offer any promises. If at any time we feel like we should drop the case, we will.” I paused and looked around at the others in the room, hoping I was playing it right and didn't seem overeager. “Does everyone agree?”

There were a bunch of nods and a couple of murmured assents.

Sandra smiled meekly. “I understand,” she said. “Thank you for even considering it. I don't know who else to turn to, and when I heard on the news about how your group managed to solve a couple of other cases recently, I thought you might be able to help.”

“Let's start by hearing your thoughts on the case,” I said. “Convince us it's worth pursuing.”

Sandra looked perplexed. “My brother is innocent, and I need help proving it,” she said with a shrug.

“I understand that,” I said, giving her a patient smile. “But we need a little more than your admittedly biased opinion on the matter.”

Cora, hands poised over her laptop, prompted Sandra for more information. “Tell us the details of the case as you know them,” she said. “Start with some background information about your brother and his wife, and then tell us what your brother says happened on the night in question.”

Sandra sucked in a deep, bracing breath before she spoke. As she began to talk, Cora typed away, taking notes so we could review the details later. “Ben met Tiffany four years ago, when they were both students at Northwestern,” she began. Her voice was lilting, rhythmic, even, and its soft tones threatened to lull me to sleep. “Ben and I come from a middle-class family. My mother is a nurse executive, and my father is the CFO of a big trucking company. We aren't what I would call wealthy, but we never wanted for anything, either. Tiffany Gallagher, however, came from money, and lots of it. Her father owns and runs the Gallagher Shipping Company, and he's estimated to be worth several hundred million.”

A few eyebrows in the room arched with this information, but no one said anything, so Sandra continued.

“When Ben first met Tiffany, he didn't think she'd give him the time of day, but something clicked between the two of them right from the get-go. Her father wasn't happy about it. He did everything he could to try to break them up, but Ben and Tiff were meant to be together. They loved one another. There's no way my brother would have killed her.”

She paused and looked at the faces in the room, her expression begging us to believe her.

Sam said, “I don't mean to discount the fact that you know your brother better than we do, but you have to admit that your opinion is bound to be biased. So why don't you tell us what you know about the facts of the case, things like when, where, and how the crime occurred.”

Sandra nodded. “It happened almost a year ago, on February fifteenth. Ben and Tiff were coming back from Door County, where they'd gone for a weeklong getaway to celebrate Valentine's Day and their second wedding anniversary. They'd stayed in an isolated rental house along the shore of Lake Michigan, and on the day Tiff was killed, they were headed back home. It was late in the day. They had originally planned to stay another day, but a snowstorm had come through the night before, and there was another, bigger one coming in the next morning. So they'd decided to leave around five or so, because they wanted to get home before the roads became impassable.

“Ben said they headed out along a narrow back road that led to one of the more main roads, but it was slow going because it was dark already and there was a brisk wind that stirred up the snow, whiting things out at times and creating big drifts on the road. After crawling along for about ten minutes, they came upon some guy standing in the middle of the road, flagging them down. Ben stopped and rolled his window down, thinking the guy might be hurt or in need of help in some way, but the next thing he knew, the guy was sticking a gun in his face and yelling at him to get out of the car.

“Ben grabbed at the gun without thinking, and after he grappled with the guy for several seconds, the gun fired twice. Ben said he continued to wrestle for the gun for several seconds after that, and then the man suddenly let go and ran off.” She paused and grimaced. “That was when Ben realized Tiffany had been shot. She was hit in the head and died instantly.”

“What did this guy with the gun look like?” Cora asked.

“Ben said he was wearing a hooded parka and had a knit cap on beneath that. He also had a scarf wrapped around his lower face, so Ben wasn't able to provide much of a description. He said the guy was white and his eyes were brown. Ben thought he was tall, around six feet or so, because of how far the guy had to bend down to stick the gun in the window.”

“Not much to go on,” Joe Signoriello said. “What did your brother say happened next?”

Sandra leaned forward in her seat, her elbows resting on her knees, her hands laced together. “Ben said he tried to call for help, but there was no cell service there. So he drove on as fast as he dared given the conditions. It was ten, maybe fifteen minutes later before he reached a part of the road where he had some kind of cell signal. He called nine-one-one, and an officer was dispatched out to the scene. Ben said they told him to wait where he was. He did, but he didn't want to, because he realized the cops weren't going to get to him very fast given the road conditions, and he didn't know where the guy with the gun had gone. He worried the guy might try to come after them again. He wanted to keep driving along the road, thinking that would get him to the cops sooner, and get Tiffany help quicker.”

She paused again and looked down at her hands with a sad expression. “He said that's what he was thinking, but he admitted that some part of him knew at that point that Tiffany was beyond help. So he stayed where he was but remained watchful and vigilant, ready to bolt if he had to.”

She straightened up, placing her hands on the arms of her chair and taking in a slow, bracing breath. “The cops met up with him some ten or fifteen minutes later, and an ambulance arrived shortly after that. The paramedics pronounced Tiffany dead there in the car, and the cops put Ben in one of their cars to get his story. I don't know how long they were there, but at some point the cops drove down the road with Ben to try to find the spot where the guy with the gun had first appeared. But Ben was unable to pinpoint the exact spot because the wind had drifted the snow, changing the terrain and covering up any tracks.”

She gave a wan smile then. “The rest you can more or less figure out. The cops took Ben to a local station and questioned him into the night. They released him the next morning, and he rented a car to drive home. One week later he was arrested for Tiffany's murder. The cops said they didn't believe there was an attempted carjacking. They thought Ben killed Tiffany and made up the story about the guy with the gun.”

She looked around the room, gauging the various reactions. Several seconds of silence ensued as everyone digested the story. Some of the folks in the room—Joe, Frank, Carter, and Sam—studied Sandra Middleton. The others looked at anything but her.

Carter finally broke the silence with a new question. “What evidence was there against your brother?”

“Well, for starters, the cops said the gun was traced back to some thug here in Milwaukee, who admitted to selling it to a man two weeks before the shooting. And supposedly this guy identified Ben in a photo lineup as the man he sold it to. The cops theorized that Ben and Tiff's marriage was falling apart and the trip was a last-ditch effort to try to save it. Knowing that it might not work, Ben had a backup plan, because he realized he might lose out on the Gallagher family money if he and Tiffany divorced. So when things didn't go so well, he decided to kill Tiffany instead and make it look like a carjacking gone wrong.”

Sandra paused again and studied some of the faces in the room. “That's not what happened,” she insisted. “Ben loved Tiffany so much. She was his life. If you could have heard him talk about her the way I did, you'd know there's no way he killed her.”

Sam shrugged. “Money is a powerful motive,” he said. “And it wouldn't be the first time intense love turned to intense hate.”

Sandra shook her head vehemently. “Ben wouldn't hurt a fly. And I mean that literally. When we were kids, we had this cabin up north, on Lake Superior, that my parents took us to every summer. The place had no air-conditioning, so the windows were open all the time, and despite the screens, tons of flies always made it inside. My parents hung those sticky fly strips all over the place. I can remember Ben standing beneath one of those strips, staring up at a couple of flies that were stuck to it and still alive, still moving. He looked so sad, and when I asked him what was wrong, he told me he couldn't stand seeing the flies suffer like that. It bothered him so much that he actually got a kitchen knife and tried to scrape one of the flies from the strip and set it free outside.” She paused, a half smile on her face. “The fly died, anyway, and Ben cried for it.”

Several people in the group looked skeptical.