Death Come Quickly (18 page)

“My goodness,” I said. I was surprised. “But if it wasn't suicide, then how—”

Now that she had gotten started, she was going on, with a rush. “The thing that made up Frank's mind, y'see, was that Mr. Bowen didn't leave a note for him or let on in any way whatsoever that he was thinking of doing something so serious as killin' himself. Frank just kept saying that, over and over. ‘Dick would've cued me in,' he'd say. ‘He wouldn't leave like that without saying good-bye to me.'” She looked down at her pudgy fingers, pausing delicately, selecting a neutral phrase. “Frank and Mr. Bowen were . . . best friends, y'see.”

“Ah,” I said and nodded. “Ah, yes, that's what Ruby said.”

She sighed. “Of course, everybody knew what was going on between them. But back then, folks didn't talk about s-e-x the way they do now. Gay marriage and all, right out in the open. Which is good, if you're asking me for my opinion. To each his own is the way I see it.” She cast a pious look upward. “Whichever way God made us, that's whichever way we are, and He wouldn't want us trying to change it.”

“I heard it was carbon monoxide poisoning,” I said. “Mr. Bowen sat in his car in a closed garage with the motor running. But you don't think that's how it happened?”

Florabelle eyed me for a moment, as if she were deciding how much to say. “Well, that's the way they
found
him,” she said at last. “Sitting in his car in that garage, stone-cold dead, and his car outta gas, after running for who knows how long, hours probably.” She stopped, biting her lip.

“I see,” I said encouragingly, and waited for the
but
.

After a moment, she came out with it, in a different, edgier voice. “But that's not to say that he got in that car on purpose, you know. In order to kill himself, I mean. Somebody else could have put him there, couldn't they? Not saying somebody
did,
” she added hastily, correcting herself. “Just saying they
could have
. Of course I might be wrong.” She picked up her glass and swigged the lemonade. When she put it down, her fingers slipped and it clattered on the tabletop. “But I don't think so.”

Well. This was too big to deal with right now. I filed it away to consider later and went on to the issue I had come to discuss.

“When I saw the video, I was struck by something you said at the end of your segment, Florabelle. You said you thought somebody wanted to make Dick Bowen look guilty—the same person who killed Christine Morris. You said you had a pretty good idea who it was.”

Florabelle was chewing nervously on her lip. “I guess I'd better learn to watch my big mouth. Not since the trial has anybody asked me what I thought about that killing or how I felt about Mr. Bowen. So when the girl turned on her camera, it was a chance to say what I was thinking, which maybe I shouldn't have.”

“The police didn't question you at the time?” No, probably not. They wouldn't have any special reason to talk to Bowen's coworkers, other than to determine his demeanor the morning after the murder. Thanks to the enterprising efforts of Barry Rogers, the cops had already uncovered all the evidence they needed. They wouldn't want to hear anything that might contradict or complicate their theory of the crime.

Florabelle shook her head. “Only to ask me if I'd noticed anything out of the ordinary about Mr. Bowen that morning.” She turned to the dog and clucked with her tongue. Mimi got up, stretched, and jumped delicately from her chair to the sofa, settling close to her mistress, who stroked her silky fur. She went on, “After the girl packed up her camera gear and left, I started thinking about how much I said. I was sincerely hoping she'd take that part out. About the killer making Mr. Bowen look guilty.” She looked up at me. “Do you think maybe she would, if I asked her?”

“You could try, I suppose,” I said cautiously. I wasn't going to tell her that Gretchen and Kitt had decided to scrap their project. I wanted to keep the pressure on.

Florabelle pushed out a gusty sigh. “Well, I sure hope she will. Like I said, me and my big mouth.” She picked up her glass again and drank down another gulp of lemonade. “I wouldn't want somebody to get the wrong idea. I mean, I wouldn't want anybody to think I know something when all I do is suspect it.” She looked down at Mimi and brushed a piece of fuzz off her ear. “How come you're asking about all this, China?” She picked up a small comb from the table and fluffed the dog's silky tail. “You're not fixing to go back to lawyering, are you?”

“No more lawyering for me.” I chuckled. “My shop keeps me pretty busy these days, and I like what I do there. Let's just say that I have a . . . personal concern in this matter.”

“A personal concern.” She looked up at me, pushing her lips in and out, much more businesslike now. In her voice, I heard something of the professional woman she had once been, perhaps not all that long ago. “I wonder just what kind of personal concern you'd have. Ms. Morris was killed a long time before you came to Pecan Springs.”

I decided it was time to tell her the real story. Part of it, anyway. “Karen Prior, the faculty member who was supervising the girls' documentary film, was killed this week—mugged in the mall parking lot. She was a friend of mine.”

Florabelle put down the comb. “I saw that on the news. But I didn't know it had anything to do with that video.”

“Nobody knows for sure,” I said. I added vaguely, “The police seem to think there might be some sort of connection. I thought I might learn something from the film, so I watched it—part of it, anyway. That's how I came to see you and Mimi.” I leaned forward and repeated myself. “You said you thought the killer of Christine Morris framed Dick Bowen, and that you knew who that was.” I watched her intently. “
Do
you?”

“I don't see how that could have anything to do with a parking lot mugging.”

“Neither do I,” I confessed.

She was silent for a moment, chewing on my question. “If I tell you,” she said finally, “what will you do with the information?”

“I don't know,” I replied. “As you say, it was a long time ago.” I didn't say that there is no statute of limitations on murder, although I could have.

She thought about it some more, then made up her mind. “Well, I'll tell you, China, although I still don't see what the connection could possibly be. That woman who was killed—Christine Morris—liked nothing better in this world than making folks mad at her. She went around with a string of enemies rattling along behind her, like a dog with a bunch of tin cans tied to his tail. But so far as I know, there was only one person with a serious reason to want her dead. That was her husband, Douglas Clark.”

“Why?” I asked. “What reason did he have?”

“Christine was digging around, looking for some money he didn't mention when they were getting divorced—money that should have been declared in the financial settlement and wasn't. She wanted her share, and she was bound, bent, and determined to get it.”

I thought of McQuaid's investigation into this same matter. “How did you find out about that?”

Her answer was so simple that I had to try not to smile. “My niece, Jerri Rae, worked in Charlie Lipman's office.” She gave me a quizzical look. “I guess you know Mr. Lipman. He was Christine's lawyer during the divorce.”

Well, of course. Attorney-client privilege is expected to extend to the paralegals and other office staff, but it often doesn't. Lawyers have a big stake in keeping their mouths shut, and they do, as a general rule. The paid help—especially if they think they're seriously underpaid—have no stake at all. There's no way to keep their tongues from wagging, short of pasting duct tape over their mouths or locking them in the closet at the end of the day. The authorities would frown on that.

“Are we talking about a lot of money?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I never heard any of the details. But it had to do with some kind of big real estate development—multiple millions of dollars, Jerri Rae said. I have no idea how much of that money Clark would've had to hand over. Mr. Lipman told Christine that if they could prove he'd hidden it intentionally, Clark would have to pay a big fine, maybe even go to jail. But then all of a sudden Christine Morris was dead, and her ex was home free.” She gave me a sideways glance. “You see the point I'm making?”

“I see,” I said. “It sounds like Douglas Clark might have had a million-dollar motive for killing his ex-wife. But I don't get the second part. Why would Clark want to frame Dick Bowen for the murder?” If Bowen himself hadn't killed her, somebody
had
framed him, using his golf club and wearing his shoes—both apparently easy pickings from his unlocked garage.

“Well, because.” Florabelle's mouth tightened and she sat up straighter on the sofa. “Because Clark was scared that Mr. Bowen was going to blow the whistle on his building code violations.”

I blinked. “Code violations?”

“Yes. That was after the balcony collapse. Which of course wouldn't have happened if Mr. Bowen hadn't taken the money in the first place.” She pulled down the corners of her mouth. “Now, I am not for one minute
excusing him for what he did. It was wrong, pos-o-
lutely
wrong. But that doesn't alter the fact that he was a wonderful person. He just made a mistake, that's all.” A long, heavy sigh. “Unfortunately, after the first one, he made a few others.”

“Wait a minute, Florabelle. ‘If Mr. Bowen hadn't taken the money'?
What
money?”

She looked at me as if I ought to be smart enough to understand this without having it spelled out for me in so many words. “Mr. Bowen was the city building inspector.” She spoke with an exaggerated simplicity, as if she were explaining this to a third-grader. “Douglas Clark was in the building business. He had to get Mr. Bowen's approval on his plans and engineering documents, and on the new construction, once it was built. Everything had to be according to code, start to finish. Pecan Springs was a lot smaller then than it is now, and Mr. Bowen was the only building inspector. He had the final say-so on every project, start to finish. Once he signed off, it was all A-OK.”

And then a lightbulb went off in my brain. Duh. Of course. What we had here was your basic shakedown racket. Bribery, subornation, corruption.

“So Dick Bowen was shaking him down—Douglas Clark, I mean.” At her frown, I turned it around. “Douglas Clark was paying Dick Bowen to keep him quiet on some infraction of the building code?”

“Yep.” Her mouth quirked at the corners. “That's how it was. But make that multiple infractions. Multiple payments. While it was going on—two years, maybe three—it amounted to a lot of money. I don't know how much, but I'd say in the tens of thousands, maybe more. All of it in cash.”

I was beginning to put it all together. The house that Dick Bowen lived in, in the best part of town—well above his pay grade as a city employee. The money he donated to charity. The contributions he made to the Friends of the Library, the financial help he offered to people in trouble. Why, the man was a modern-day Robin Hood! He took bribes from Douglas Clark in return for closing his eyes to the code violations in Clark's construction projects—those cheaply built duplexes, substandard apartment complexes, shoddy strip malls—then turned around and gave the money away. Not all of it, of course. He lived in that nice house, in a neighborhood he couldn't afford without the money he took from Clark.

“Were other developers involved in Bowen's bribery scheme?” I asked. “Or was it just Clark?”

Florabelle's response was prompt. “So far as I personally know, the only deals he made were with Clark. If there was anyone else, I never heard about it. And I think I would have.”

Yes, she probably would have. Florabelle seemed to know everything about everything else. I pictured her with her ear to a keyhole, or her hand over the receiver while she eavesdropped on a phone call, or sorting through notes on Bowen's desk. With Florabelle in the office and in her prime, there would have been no secrets.

“Did you actually see the cash changing hands?”

“Once or twice. I saw the permits, too.” And then, fending off the question she knew was coming, she said, defensively, “And if you're thinking I was in on the payoff, you can forget that. Nobody paid me a cent, not Douglas Clark and not Mr. Bowen, either. I'm just a nosy person, and maybe a little suspicious. I like to know what's going on around me. When I was working in that office, I listened hard. I did a little digging. I learned things I wasn't supposed to know. But I didn't take any money, and that's a fact.”

“But you could have blown the whistle,” I reminded her, “either when you first saw the payoffs or later. It doesn't bother you that you didn't step up with what you knew?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “Well, yes, it did. Especially after that balcony collapse. That was when Mr. Bowen decided he'd had enough. I overheard him telling that Clark he wasn't taking another dime.” Her housecoat had crept up and she twitched it, covering up one white, dimply knee. “But of course I wouldn't have wanted to do anything that might hurt Mr. Bowen. He was doing such good, for so many people. A real role model, as they say.”

I frowned. “Balcony collapse?” It was the second time she'd mentioned it.

She looked down at her arthritic fingers, flexing them as though they hurt. “I guess that was before your time. It was one of the student apartments that Doug Clark had built on Pedernales Drive, over near the campus. Some girls were having a party and several of them went out on their third-floor balcony. It pulled away from the building and dumped everybody three stories down onto the concrete parking lot. Luckily, nobody died, but a couple of girls were hurt pretty badly. Their bad luck.”