Stiff Penalty (A Mattie Winston Mystery) (27 page)

B
renda drove me the one block to my office—insisting that it was safer than walking—and pulled into the underground garage. After making sure the garage was secure, we got out, and I let us in with my key fob. The place was dark and empty, which used to spook me when I first started working there but no longer did. The dead don’t frighten me anymore; only the living do.

We headed for the library, though I did stop and sign us in at the front desk. I got on my computer, accessed the shared file system, and pulled up the record for Derrick Ames. Once I had his file open, I navigated to the demographic page. Then I took out my cell phone and dialed a number I found there.

The woman who answered spoke English but had a thick German accent. “Hallo, dis is Gertrude Ames speaking.”

“Mrs. Ames, this is Mattie Winston. I work for the medical examiner’s office in Sorenson, and I’ve been involved in the case regarding your son’s death.”

“
Ja
,” she said.

“There is some new information that has come up, something that sheds new light on the case. Would you mind if I asked you a question or two about your son?”

“Is dat really necessary?”

“I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t. And it might mean your grandson is innocent.” I knew this last bit was taking a big leap, and a potentially dangerous one if it turned out I was wrong, but I felt it necessary to be honest about things if I had any hope of enlisting her help.

“Vat do you vant to know?”

“I understand that you and your husband came here from Germany just before your son was born. What language did you speak around the house when he was little?”

“Vee spoke Deutsch . . . German mostly, but we learned English before we came and we taught it to Derrick when he was still young.”

“So Derrick’s primary language was German?”

“I guess so,
ja
.”

“When your son was waiting for the ambulance, just before he died, he uttered the word
payday
, or something that sounded like that. Does that mean anything in German?”

“
Payday
?
Nein
. I do not know dis word in Deutsch.”

My hopes sank. Then Gertrude added, “I would think maybe he was spelling something because
pay
is how you say the letter P and
day
is how you say the letter D, but those letters don’t spell anything.”

I ran the letters through my mind, trying to connect them with something, but came up empty. Then an idea flashed. “Mrs. Ames, would you do me a favor and run through the alphabet in German for me? Slowly, please.”

She did so, no doubt thinking I was crazy when I made her repeat the first letter three times. But by the time she was done, I was more convinced than ever that Jacob Ames was innocent. And I had a whole new direction to go to find Derrick’s killer.

My next call was to Alison Miller. When that was done, I looked up an address and told Brenda, “I need to go to the Ames house.”

“Should we call Detective Richmond?”

“No, no need. He’s busy anyway. And I’m not actually going to Derrick’s house. I just need to talk to his neighbor to clarify something.”

“Okay,” she said, but she looked worried.

Ten minutes later we were in Derrick’s neighborhood. “I need to go with you,” Brenda said. “Hurley made me promise not to leave you alone or to let you walk around outside by yourself.”

“Sure, come on then. I’m going to talk to Janet Calgary, the woman who heard Derrick’s last utterance.”

We got out of the car and walked up to Janet’s house, which was right next door to Derrick’s. As we approached, I noticed that the two homes were separated in the back by six-foot privacy fencing. I rang Janet’s doorbell, and when she answered she looked at us with a puzzled expression.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’m Mattie Winston with the ME’s office, and this is Brenda Joiner, a Sorenson police officer. May we come in for a minute? I’d like to ask you a few questions about the night Derrick Ames was killed.”

“I’ve already talked with someone else and told them everything I know,” she said.

“I realize that, but I need to clarify something.”

She considered this for a few seconds and then stepped back, waved us into the house, and closed the door.

“I wanted to ask you about what Derrick said right before the ambulance and the police arrived,” I explained. “When you found him in the street.”

“Like I said before to the other officer, all he said was the word
payday
.”

“Yes, Officer Feller told us that. He also said that Derrick let out a sigh right after he said the word
payday
. Is that correct?”

She nodded.

“Can you tell me how he sighed? Do it the way he did it.”

Janet Calgary looked at me like I was crazy.

“Please, humor me,” I said.

She rolled her eyes, shrugged, and said, “Okay.” Then she mimicked Derrick’s sigh. “Aah.”

“Great!” I said. “Now I want you to listen very carefully to what I’m about to say and tell me if it sounds like what Derrick said.” I paused for a beat, and then said, “
Pay-tay-aah
.”

She nodded. “Yeah, that’s about right.”

“Thank you. Now I have one other request. May we look at your backyard?”

“Sure, I guess.” She made a face that suggested she thought we were eccentric if not full-out crazy, turned, and took us to the back of her house where, as in Derrick’s place, the kitchen was located.

I walked over to her back door and opened it.

“Mattie,” Brenda said in a cautionary tone.

“It’s okay, I’m not going outside.” I reached over and switched on the backdoor light. “You have a gate at the back of your fence.”

“Yes, the utility companies made us put one in. Something about an easement.”

“So Derrick’s fence has one, too?”

“Sure, everyone in the neighborhood does.”

“Great, thanks.” I shut the door and looked over at Brenda. “That’s all I need. You can take me home now.”

As we left, Janet Calgary was watching us through her front window. By now I’m sure she was convinced we were crazy.

“What was that all about?” Brenda asked.

“I have an idea who killed Derrick Ames.”

“I thought the son did it?”

“I don’t think so.” I then filled her in on the discovery I’d made with the video camera.

“So who did do it then?” she asked when I was done.

“I don’t want to say yet. I’m not absolutely sure, and there’s been enough false finger-pointing in this case already. I need to wait for Richmond to look over the thumb drive they found in Derrick’s house. If we’re lucky, it will contain the evidence we need.”

I took out my cell phone and called Richmond to let him know what I was thinking.

“I have an idea, and I want you to hear me out,” I told him. “Janet Calgary said that Derrick’s last word was
payday
, and that he sighed right after that and then passed out. I talked to Derrick’s mother earlier to see if the word
payday
or something like it meant anything in German. She said no, but then she said that it could be letters.
Pay
is how you pronounce the letter P in German, and
day
is how you pronounce the letter D. But
tay
is how you pronounce the letter T and if you say
pay-tay
really fast, or really breathless like Derrick was, it could sound like the word
payday
.”

“Okay, but if he was saying the letters P and T, what does that give us? The P. T. Barnum Circus? It doesn’t spell anything, and I can’t think of anything relevant it stands for.”

“I know, but here’s the other part of it. The letter A in German is pronounced
aah
, like a sigh.”

It took Richmond two seconds to put it together. “PTA? Of course! He was involved with the PTA.”

“Yes, and so is Mandy Terwilliger. In fact, if you remember, she told us she’s their treasurer. She said she once worked as a bookkeeper, remember?”

“Okay, but I’m still not seeing where you’re going with this.”

“Derrick Ames was a math teacher. He knew numbers, and he would have known basic accounting. What if he discovered there was money missing from the PTA’s fund? Who’s the most likely candidate for taking it?”

“Mandy?”

“Yes! She’s living above her means. I had Alison Miller look into her finances, and the settlement Mandy got when her husband died was for fifty grand. That amount of money won’t last long or go very far because she has half of it set aside for a college fund and only works part-time. How can she support herself and two kids on that kind of money? How does she afford that fancy little convertible she drives? What if she siphoned money from the PTA fund and hoped no one would find out? But then Derrick did. Maybe he saw something when he was at her house, or maybe she said something during the time the two of them were dating. Whatever it was, he figured it out. That’s why he told Jacob he was going to break up with Mandy. It also explains the text message he sent to Mandy that said they needed to talk.”

“Okay,” Richmond said slowly. “I’m with you so far. But how is it that no one saw her leave Derrick’s house?”

“Well, we already know that Mandy could sneak over there any time she wanted to when she was supposedly doing deliveries for the florist shop. What if she came over there a second time that evening, thinking Derrick was looking for another round of afternoon delight, but instead he confronted her with what he discovered? They argued, he threatened to expose her, and she grabbed what was handy and stabbed him. Maybe she went for the knife first, and when that didn’t kill him right away, he tried to grab her. They wrestled, and that’s when she stabbed him with the fork. That silverware drawer got dumped when Derrick fought with his father. You can hear it on the video. So the fork was likely easy to grab.”

Richmond said. “I like it. Keep going.”

“Derrick probably collapsed after that—there was that pool of blood on the kitchen floor that suggests that—and Mandy thought he was dead. She took his laptop, thinking there might be incriminating evidence on it and ran out the back door. All the houses in Derrick’s neighborhood have gates at the rear of their backyard fences. Someone could easily sneak in or out that way without being seen. Then she sent a text message to Derrick to make it look like she was at work and didn’t know anything about what happened. She showed up at the crime scene to see what we discovered, and maybe to find out what we were thinking, and she put on that whole woe-is-me show for us. Remember how scared she looked when she heard he’d been taken to the hospital? We assumed it was because she was worried about him, but maybe she was worried about herself. She needed to get rid of the laptop, so she wiped the hard drive, cleaned her fingerprints off it, and tossed it in the Dumpster behind the school. She was at the school three days a week, so she would have known the Dumpster was there and had easy access to it without rousing suspicion. And if she heard that Jacob had been arrested, disposing of the laptop in the school garbage would point the finger at him as much as at anyone else.”

“Okay,” Richmond said. “So how does the thumb drive figure into it?”

“I’m hoping it will have evidence of the missing money, either some financial sheets or receipts, or something that proves there is money missing.”

“It’s a reasonable theory,” Richmond said when I was done, “but we’re going to have to wait until tomorrow to get a look at that thumb drive. Jonas sent it to the lab in your office, and the tech guys aren’t there now. I called Arnie to see if he could get hold of it, but he’s afraid to go in there and mess with anything since the evidence from your case is in there, too. So I called Henderson, and he agreed that until your case is officially closed, it would be better not to have Arnie mucking around in the lab when his guys aren’t there. Henderson said he’ll have someone come in tomorrow and look at the thumb drive, but his tech guys are commuting here from Madison, and he doesn’t think it’s necessary or important enough to make any of them drive here tonight.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah, damn. But we have time. If you’re right, Mandy thinks she got away with it. She’s not going anywhere. So get some rest, and we’ll tackle this again tomorrow. I’ll call you once I hear back from the tech guys.”

“Okay.”

Brenda drove me back home, and as soon as I had some privacy, I called Hurley to check in and see how things were going, hopefully mend the wound we created earlier, and bounce my theory about Mandy off of him.

“I’m sorry your birthday was such a bust,” he said. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“No need. I’m sorry you’re having such a hard time with Emily. Did things get any better after I left?”

“I suppose,” Hurley said, sounding totally unconvincing. “Her mood improved, she talked to me some, and she promised to try to do better.”

“That sounds encouraging.”

“Except the mood change didn’t happen until after I told her you were gone.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh. You were right, she needs help,” Hurley said. “I’m going to talk to the school and see if they can hook me up with a good counselor for her.”

With that out of the way, I switched to the subject of the Ames case. Hurley knew where I was headed with my idea before I had explained even half of it, and he agreed my scenario was not only possible but highly plausible. His enthusiasm for my idea and our ability to easily get past the earlier spat and move on had me feeling better about things.

After we hung up, I got ready for bed and had to struggle to get into my pajamas, which had gotten painfully snug. I looked down at my stomach and swore it had grown overnight. I finally settled for sleeping in my underpants—which were also getting a bit snug but were stretchy enough to accommodate me for now—and a baggy T-shirt. Clearly my wardrobe needed a bit more updating.