Death Takes Priority (6 page)

It seemed fruitless to keep debating myself, taking both sides over a single thin envelope. And how ironic that one of the most complex post office issues I'd ever had to deal with had arisen in North Ashcot, and not in Boston, where we handled a huge amount of mail daily and where you could stop at the post office to buy a greeting card, have a passport photo taken, or pick up a burial flag for a vet.

North Ashcot offered phone books; that was it. And not always.

I was dismayed by the lack of local response when I had needed a ride from the tea room earlier today, but I couldn't bring myself to call Linda in Boston for advice. The last thing I wanted was for her to think I couldn't handle my new job. She'd have my employee forms back in the HR active file in minutes. My own training and experience had to be enough to solve this problem. I hadn't had to review decisions regarding privacy rights in a while, but I recalled a few cases and even some of the history as it pertained to the postal service.

I corroborated my memory with an Internet search and found that, indeed, fourth-amendment rights had been
extended to mail during litigation in the nineteenth century. Unlike the decision for a person's trash can, for example, the ruling for mail was in favor of privacy. Drop your trash into a container and push it onto the sidewalk, and the contents were fair game, all privacy bets off. The box from your last Thai takeout was now anyone's bounty. But once a person glued an envelope shut and dropped it into an official mail repository, he was judged as having the expectation of privacy, even though he might have mailed the letter on the same sidewalk, a few yards from his trash can, or in front of a long line of people in the post office.

For a “dead letter,” however, there was a kind of dispensation for postal personnel at the recovery center to open the letter, to search for clues as to the letter's origin or destination. We often referred to them as the detectives of the postal service.

My cell phone rang. Linda Daniels, with perfect timing. In spite of my attempt at bravado, I wanted nothing more than to discuss the letter to Scott/Quinn with her.

We set up a Skype call and after a bit of juggling, we were face-to-face, or computer-camera-to-computer-camera.

“I'm working late, subbing out here in South Station and I need a break,” she explained.

I surveyed the scene behind Linda on my laptop screen. Her back was to her window, overlooking a T station, part of the oldest mass transit system in the country, and a convenience I'd taken for granted nearly every day I'd lived in Boston.

“Anything new in North Ashes?”

I ignored the timely slur and told her about my disastrous lunch and the subsequent discovery of a murder victim at
the edge of town. I heard and saw her gasp and immediately clarified that it wasn't I who'd found the body.

Linda gasped again anyway. “Still, that's a lot more than petty theft. Or even grand theft. How are you holding up? You should have called right away.” Linda's words came out in a rush, her face moving closer and closer to her camera. I could feel her concern and was sorry I hadn't called the one person I knew would always be there for me.

I took a breath and told her the rest of the Scott James/Quinn Martindale story. “So now I have this letter. Well, it's in my desk at work.”

“And it's calling to you. You have to make a decision, Cassie, and get it off your mind. Not that I think there's an easy answer. But in this case, you actually know the destination of that letter. And the general policy is, if you can deliver it, do so. You're probably the only postal employee who knows where it was meant to go.”

“That's my point. Can I just call this a fluke of circumstance and deliver it? And if so, to whom? To Scott or to Sunni, since he's in her custody?”

“I'm thinking,” Linda said. Though she wasn't there now, I had a mental picture of her in her shiny office in downtown Boston, her red-soled designer shoes on the floor under her desk, her perfect navy blue jacket on the chair behind her. Unlike me, Linda could look as put-together and sharp at the end of a day's work as she did at the beginning. “If Ben were still running the office by himself, or had chosen not to call the letter to your attention, he'd have sent the letter off to a recovery center, to be dealt with by designated postal staff, right?”

“Right, but what if there's some evidence in the letter or
maybe the letter itself is evidence, whether exculpatory or incriminating. You know how much volume the recovery office gets; it could take forever for this letter to come to the top of their list. Meanwhile, anything could happen to Scott. Shouldn't I bring it to the attention of the police who are holding him?”

We went a few more rounds on the protocol for letters written to people in interrogation rooms. Was Scott technically a prisoner, whose correspondence, in either direction, was up for grabs? Unless it was from his lawyer. But Sunni had told me he didn't have a lawyer. The questions made my head hurt. I needed to call it quits until the morning. Tomorrow, I'd look more carefully for a return address or informational postmark on the ordinary, size ten, white business envelope; there was nothing more I could do tonight.

Linda and I ended with a meeting of the minds—I should take the letter, unopened, to the police, in the person of Chief Sunni Smargon, and let her take it from there. Only the police knew Scott's official status and rights.

We signed off with the familiar Skype chirp.

I had one more task to see to before bedtime: Search for Scott James and Quinn Martindale on the Internet and see if the names collided. And a related task, search for a mother accused of murder.

Usually, whatever the question, I'd be on my laptop clicking around the various online-pedias for information, specious or otherwise. Why hadn't I rushed to perform this search? I could only guess that I wasn't sure I wanted the answer. I quit stalling and went for it.

An hour later I was no closer to the truth about my lunch
date. Pulling a Scott James out of the more than half a billion hits was hopeless, as I'd expected. Too bad I wasn't trying to find the songwriter or the snowboarder at the top of the list. It occurred to me that I was bumping against a deliberate play by the man—choosing a name that made it impossible to single him out.

Isolating a Quinn Martindale wasn't much easier, however. I scrolled through the first of only half a million options, many of them female. I flopped back as far as I could on my rocker, nearly slipping off, headfirst.

Another washout was my search for Scott's mother, the murder suspect in San Francisco. If I'd even heard correctly, that is. I scrolled through stories of ongoing investigations, but neither victims nor suspects in homicide cases were identified. Was Scott's mother the woman who was accused of shooting a neighbor in a South San Francisco brawl? Or the woman arrested in a case called the Road Rage Murder on a freeway out there? Without at least one other fact, like the date of the crime or the arrest, or the weapon, I had no way to narrow my search. Not even the San Francisco newspaper site was helpful, reporting only the most recent incidents. The crime I was interested in might have happened last week or ten years ago.

I closed my laptop. The evening stretched before me.

I needed a hobby. In college, I'd given knitting and crocheting a shot, but I was hopelessly impatient to do well at either one. One dropped stitch or twisted loop, and I gave up.

Oddly, I'd never tried stamp collecting, but I ruled it out quickly. A friend at one job I had was a collector and was
in a constant state of stress over whether he could afford to acquire a triangular issue, or how much his Falkland Islands sheet was worth. When I'd asked, “Shouldn't a hobby be relaxing?” he'd given me a strange look.

Hobbyless, I settled for a large bowl of ice cream and the opening scenes of a crime drama on television to distract me from the insurmountable task of learning anything concrete about my newest almost-friend. On the television screen, the heroine of the drama, a prosecuting attorney who'd received a threatening phone call, walked into a dark, deserted parking garage late at night, her high heels tapping on the pavement, ominous music in the background. I clicked the remote. OFF.

I got up and paced my small house. Picked a dying leaf from a houseplant that Aunt Tess had nurtured. Put a load of clothes in the washer. Checked the locks on the windows. (Cheesy as it was, the creepy music had gotten to me.)

In Boston, entertainment had surrounded me. I simply had to walk out the door to a concert, an exhibit, a club, a ball game, or a gala sponsored by any of a number of organizations. Why had I even bothered to pack my little black dresses, some sleeveless, to show off the small rosebud tattoo on my left shoulder, others meant to hide it? In North Ashcot so far, I'd gotten by with my uniform during the day, sweats in the evenings and on weekends.

Now I might have to create my own diversions. Maybe Sunni's quilters would take me in. Or maybe I could learn gourmet cooking. Or any kind of cooking.

I had a flashback to a chat with Adam last year.

“You should take cooking lessons,” he'd suggested.

“Why?” I'd asked.

“So we'll be able to hold our own with important parties once I'm launched . . . Why are you laughing?”

“I'm picturing Old Ironsides in the Charlestown Navy Yard. You know, launching a big ship.”

He'd frowned, an expression I'd witnessed often. “I'm serious. You've seen the lavish spreads the partners in my firm put out. You think that's all accidental? There's this underlying competition to have the most people talking about your dinner party the next day.”

“I know some really great caterers.”

“Not the same.”

“You don't think your fancy friends use caterers?”

That conversation might have launched his eventual plan to have parties without me. Too late now to start a culinary hobby.

An ice-cream snack can last only so long, and I was soon back to my mental list of concerns. The sketchy UAA letter wasn't my only problem. There was the matter of the phone books. I had no idea if and when Sunni would release them to me. If I never got them back, I'd have to arrange for replacement books. Who should pay for them also had to be negotiated. Since it was only a little after nine o'clock, I felt a call to Wendell Graham wouldn't be an imposition. He'd given me his cell phone number to report any problems, and this qualified. The best outcome would be if we could handle this problem locally. If Wendell was busy, I could leave a message, and put half of a check mark next to that item.

I'd entered Wendell's number into my smartphone contacts list during his memorable visit, and now called it up.

I heard three rings, and then a pickup.

“Yes, hello.” A vaguely familiar male voice.

“Is this Wendell?” I asked.

“Who is this, please?” Rather formal. Also, higher pitched and younger than Wendell's voice.

“It's Cassie Miller. I wanted to talk to you about a problem with the phone books.”

“Hey, Cassie. This is Ross. Officer Ross Little down at the station.”

Had I punched the wrong numbers? It wouldn't have been the first time. My fingers were much too wide for the spatial allowance on phone pads. This was one step away from an accidental butt dial.

“Sorry, Ross. I guess I made a mistake. I was trying to reach a friend.”

“Who were you trying to call?”

Nice of him to care. “Wendell Graham. I must have punched the wrong numbers.”

Ross sighed, making me believe that he was overly concerned about my simple phone call. “No, you didn't do anything wrong, Cassie. This is Wendell Graham's phone. We have it.”

A pause, while I tried to figure out why Wendell's phone would be at the police department. Probably Ross was trying to decide how much to tell me. Had Wendell, my erstwhile prom date, lost his phone, or was he also being detained? Finally, Ross broke the silence. “We just reached his family about an hour ago, Cassie, and we'll be releasing the information momentarily.”

“Is something wrong with Wendell?” I asked, with friendly
curiosity since we were on a Cassie-Ross basis after our road trip earlier today.

Ross cleared his throat. “We've identified our shooting victim as Wendell Graham.”

I drew in a sharp breath, and felt my phone slip from my hands.

M
y phone seemed to take on a life of its own. Or it might have been the sudden onset of perspiration that caused the device to slip onto my lap and down to the floor. I retrieved it and addressed Ross.

“It was Wendell's body? The one that was found—?”

Ross sensed my difficulty and broke in. “I'm sorry to tell you this way, Cassie. Did you know him?”

I shouldn't have been surprised that the twenty-something Ross didn't know our history. “Yes, we were friends in high school.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot you used to live here.”

“Did you just find out?” I wanted to ask, “Are you sure?” but it was just as well that I didn't challenge my local police. I was too confused to take it all in, anyway. Wendell was murdered. Scott was being questioned. Did Scott even know Wendell? I remembered what Sunni had told me about
Scott's two names and his telephone number being on a piece of paper in the victim's pocket. Now that I knew who the victim was, things made even less sense.

Ross had continued and I tuned in to hear him explain further: “The victim's younger sister was his only local family, but he had another sister in Maine, and a brother in Florida. We wanted to make sure they'd been contacted before making it public.”

“Why?”

“Because the family has to be notified before—”

Apparently, I was pretty far gone, assuming Ross had been following my mental wanderings. “No, I mean why do you think Scott is connected—”

“I really can't discuss anything else, Cassie. I'm sure you understand.”

“Yes, sorry.” I was about to hang up when another thought came to me. “Can I visit again tomorrow and talk to Scott? He asked me to come back.”

“I'll have to check with the chief, but I don't see why not.”

Happily, my business persona kicked in, as if I were trying to keep Ross a satisfied customer. “Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate that and thanks for letting me know.”

I hung up and sat in the dark for a long time, holding my phone. Maybe it would ring and someone would tell me it was all a mistake. I could hit redial and this time I'd reach Wendell. It wasn't hard to reconstruct a world where Wendell was alive and Scott was driving me to the tea shop for lunch. A big rewind.

Before I went to bed, I started the process of deleting Wendell Graham's name and cell number from my contacts list. I don't know why I thought I had to complete that
project, but, just as suddenly, I had to stop. I couldn't bring myself to do it. It felt too much like killing Wendell all over again.

*   *   *

I've had a few fitful nights in my life. When the call came that my parents had died in a car accident on the way home from a Christmas shopping trip, I was at the sixteenth birthday party for one of my friends. Thus, two special events lost their glamour forever. There were less traumatic events, like receiving the “It's over” texts from Adam (not even doing me the kindness of “It's not you; it's me”), and various other disappointments, large and small. Now news of Wendell's murder inched its way into my mind, inserting itself onto the list of tragedies, forcing me to accept it, keeping me from sleep. I reminded myself over and over that Wendell and I weren't close anymore and hadn't been for many years, that currently we had only a business relationship, and even that was slight. It didn't seem to matter to my mind and body. I tossed and tossed.

Now and then through the night, I fell into dreamland. Images from my past and present collided and I saw Wendell in his prom tux, fighting with Scott over the phone books. At some point, the inordinate amount of attention I'd already spent on the “why” of Scott's phone book theft took over. In my half-awake state, I dreamed up a story where Scott had learned about an ad appearing in the current issue of the directory, offering a valuable piece of furniture, and he wanted to be the first and only one to make an offer, so he collected all the books before anyone else could see the ad. Cue the fight scene with Wendell, and I'd solved the mystery
of who killed Wendell. Except that I went back and forth between Scott-of-course and of-course-not-Scott. Trying my hand at detective work. And fiction.

*   *   *

I arrived at work on Tuesday morning, my head aching, my eyes burning. Two large mugs of coffee had barely made a dent in my state of awareness.

That my first “customer” was a baby wallaby needing weigh-in helped a little. The tiny cousin to the kangaroo was a protected species in some countries, but its caretakers, Carolyn and George Raley, assured me that this particular wallaby, called Aussie, was destined for a zoo within the state and would not be siphoned off as a pet, nor would we all be arrested for endangerment. I was glad I was on hand to deal with the small animal, since Ben was not as open to the various wildlife that passed through our office.

When he first realized I'd been accommodating local service animals, as I now called them, Ben had said, among other negatives, “Next thing you know, this office will be nothing more than an annex to a petting zoo.”

“Slippery slope is not a valid argument,” I'd said, mimicking a long-ago class in critical thinking. But some weeks, like this one—with two animal appointments already, and Mrs. Spenser's ailing cockatoo due to come in tomorrow—I saw his point.

Ben had agreed to be on call today in case I got the go-ahead to visit Scott. I promised him he'd have to deal only with good, old-fashioned human-type mail and mailers.

The Raleys were always careful not to hold up the line with their weigh-ins, and made sure to have postal business
to conduct, even if it was just buying a roll of stamps. But before they slipped away with Aussie today, Carolyn leaned over, her gray waves falling on her forehead, and whispered to me, “Everyone says you were at the crime scene with the killer. Is that true?”

“Tell everyone they'd better not mess with me,” I said, with a wink.

In general, Tuesdays were less busy than Mondays, but this morning each customer took a little extra time at the counter to interrogate me or give me a taste of their own gossip. As far as I could tell, the police hadn't released Wendell's name yet, and I wasn't going to be the one who did. I thought of his siblings, two sisters and a brother, as Ross had mentioned. His sister Whitney, I recalled, was a few years older and had already graduated from high school by the time Wendell and I entered as freshmen. It took a moment, but I came up with his younger brother's name, Walker, when I remembered that they were all Ws. His younger sister had been a pesky nine- or ten-year-old who'd followed Wendell and his crew around. I smiled as I remembered how she would pretend to lose something like a string of beads or a stuffed animal and mobilize Wendell and the rest of us for a search.

Sometimes I was glad to be an only child, to avoid not only a clever name game, but especially the pain of losing a sibling.

I developed a standard response for my customers' questions: “I guess we'll have to be patient until there's some kind of announcement.” Then, I shrugged and pouted as if I, too, were longing for news. No scoop here.

One customer, the same striking redhead who'd offered
me stale muffins—Wanda Cox, if I remembered correctly—was particularly aggressive, and this time I was captive behind the counter. As I totaled her stamp purchases (who buys thirty-five dollars' worth of small-denomination stamps?), she badgered me with questions.

“I'll bet you were freaked out when your date turned out to be a murder suspect,” she said, when I didn't respond to her first remarks.

“Your total is forty-three dollars,” I said. I piled her newly stamped envelopes together for the collection box, inserted her loose stamps into a thin paper sleeve, and handed it to her.

“Would you like to talk about it?” she asked, placing a white business card on the counter in front of me. I noticed she'd had time for a mani, if not a pedi.

I slid it back toward her. “Unlawful during business hours,” I said, and tilted my head to welcome Mrs. Hamilton, next in line.

I thought how easy it would have been to cash in on Scott/Quinn's detention and Wendell's murder and enjoy celebrity status in town, perhaps pretending I knew more than I did. I imagined a full calendar of luncheons with so-called friends, movie dates, a book club membership, and my name on everyone's list of party invitations. It wasn't hard to take a pass on the idea.

With the citizens of North Ashcot zeroing in on me as information central, I decided to follow my backup plan for lunch: a peanut butter sandwich, apple, and cookies from home, eaten at my desk. It seemed like ages, not just twenty-four hours, since I'd left for lunch at the tea shop with Scott. I closed the lobby and retreated to my work.

I picked at my sandwich and at routine tasks—checking the vacation-hold log, tracking an insured package that hadn't reached its destination in Minnesota, verifying a new shipment of commemorative stamps. I wanted to take care of as much as possible before cutting out, if the opportunity arose.

When the phone on the desk rang, I jumped, as if it were the middle of the night and I'd been sound asleep. With all my fantasies this morning, that description wasn't far off, though the real time was only fifteen minutes past noon.

“North Ashcot Post Office,” I said, a little shaky.

“Cassie? This is Sunni. Can you break away for a few minutes to come down to the station today?”

“Sure. I'll call Ben.”

“The sooner the better; but definitely before two o'clock. I can't hold him longer than twenty-four hours.” The NAPD had a smart chief. She knew there was only one “him” who mattered at the moment. Only one who was alive, anyway. “Will that time frame work for you?”

“No problem. Thanks, Sunni.”

I considered waiting a couple of hours until Scott was released, but what if after twenty-four hours he was charged, instead. And he might have lawyered-up by then, as they said on television. I decided not to take that chance.

Ben was ready for me, as usual. He'd probably been sitting by the phone since before service hours began.

“I'll be there to open at one-thirty,” he said. “Do what you have to do to help out that nice young fellow.”

Ben's comment took me by surprise. I wanted to ask, “Which young fellow, Wendell or Scott?” but I knew there wouldn't be a short answer.

Whichever side Ben was on, I wished I'd thought to pick up some cupcakes, his current favorite snack. I'd have to remember to stop at Hole in the Wall before I returned. In the meantime, I'd leave my cookies for him.

I finished up one more loose end Ben didn't need to be bothered with, then gathered my jacket and purse. I opened my desk drawer and picked up the letter addressed to Quinn Martindale. Another debate, brief this time,
Cassie v. Cassie
, but I ended up following the policy Linda and I had discussed.
When you can deliver, do it
. I stuffed the envelope into my purse. Surely I couldn't be violating any rule, delivering it to the police.

*   *   *

Confident that Ben would be on time at one-thirty to wield his mighty power at the retail desk, probably in a freshly dry-cleaned sweater, I left the office around one o'clock. My spirits were lifted by the thought that I was on my way to an excellent espresso, though it would have been better if I were headed for the coffee shop down the street and not a coffee system surrounded by mugs with an NAPD shield.

I hoped the walk to the police department would clear my head. I was lucky that the streets were deserted. Everyone was at lunch, I figured, and hurried along to take advantage of the timing. When I got to the corner where Tim Cousins's church-home stood, I recalled his strange visit last evening. It wouldn't have taken much to convince me that the incident was really just part of my dreams. The do-it-yourself builder was nowhere to be seen now, and I wondered if either of us would make an effort to have lunch as we'd promised. My guess: Tim was like all my other new
so-called friends, wanting information, and once he'd satisfied that need, one way or another, I'd be history. No love lost.

I was past questioning whether I was on my way to see Quinn Martindale or Scott James. The seven hundred million hits on the latter name must have been a big draw for someone wanting to change his identity.

I flashed back to the crafts fair in the community room over the weekend, remembering how he'd taken great pains to avoid Sienna, the official photographer. When she announced her goal to have photos accepted by a special newsletter in Springfield, he'd offered to give her a break by taking over and shooting photos of her with the crafters and customers. Sienna with the show organizers. Sienna with a woman who bought the largest ceramic bowl in crafts show history. Sienna with everyone but himself. A good way to avoid having your image on file. I never want my photo taken either, so no bells had gone off.

I arrived at the police station, slightly irritated by the man who'd deceived me. Not the first to do so, but the most recent. From now on I'd think of him as Quinn. No benefit-of-the-doubt mental slashes to include his fake name. I was ready to face Quinn Martindale and get some answers.

*   *   *

Now that I knew my way around the police station, I walked through to the area in front of Sunni's office. Two desks on either side of her door were staffed by two of her four officers, the day shift. A civilian was stationed near the entrance, but not during lunch hour it seemed.

I sat on a short bench in front of Ross Little's desk while
he completed a phone call. I'd taken my e-reader with me and pulled it out. Thrillers and spy novels were my favorite genres, but nothing on my device could match the real-life crime drama I was witnessing. In fact, was a part of. I closed the reader and tried to relax.

“Hey, Cassie,” Ross said, finally hanging up. “Sorry you had to come all this way.” I thought he must be teasing me about the three-block walk from the post office, but it was no joke. “Scott—I guess I should say Quinn—was just released.”