Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 05 - Trouble on the Doorstep (17 page)

“What else would it have been?” he asked, puzzled.

I just looked at him.

“You mean he thinks it was on purpose?
Does he know who did it?”

I wanted to reach across the counter and slap some sense into him.
“No. He just doesn’t want to assume it was a hit and run. Help me out here.”

He shook his head slowly.
“If I thought I knew something important, I would have told Sgt. Morehouse.” He thought for moment. “There was this one guy. He was just walking back out the door when it happened. I was already looking toward the sounds, and I thought he stood there for a couple seconds, looking at the car.”

“You think he knew the car, or the person?” I asked, my face getting warm.

“It was so fast, I don’t think anybody saw the driver. But the guy left before the ambulance even left.”

“Did you tell the police about him?”

“Sure. They said anything I remembered would be important.”

“And..?” I asked.

“And what?”

“Were you able to describe…Hey, don’t you have security cameras?”

“Yeah, but they mostly point at the cash register.”

I was getting more frustrated by the moment, but I kept going.
He had clearly forgotten he wasn’t supposed to talk to me. “What did the guy who left look like?

“He was maybe five-ten, or five-eleven.
Kinda chunky, but not really. White guy.”

“How old?”

“Not as old as you,” he said.

Clearly diplomacy wasn’t part of the customer service training.
“Your age?”

“Bit older.”
The bell above the door dinged and a woman with two school-age kids walked in. “I really gotta get back to work.”

I thanked him and walked slowly to my car.
I was turning the key in the ignition before I realized the man he was talking about was probably Eric Morton, and the clerk seemed to think Eric had really looked at the car.

I FINALLY DISMISSED THE idea that Eric had gotten a good look at the car that hit Steve Oliver.
It had happened fast, and Eric said he had gone straight to Steve. Plus, if Eric had a clue who the driver was he’d have called the police, even if he didn’t stick around right after it happened.

I was stirring a large pot of clam chowder.
George and Scoobie and maybe Ramona were coming for supper, and then the guys and I were going to an All-Anon meeting. I was, anyway. They alternate between AA and, for Scoobie, Narcotics Anonymous.

The oven held one of those frozen loaves of bread you buy ready to put in the oven, and when it was done the brownies would go in.
I had put the empty soup cans in the recycling bin in the basement, in case Scoobie and George wanted to assume the soup was homemade. Ramona would know it wasn’t.

With each swish of the spoon in the soup I was more worried.
I had waited too long to tell George that I had the bid information from the files at Silver Times and from Steve Oliver’s figures. He was going to be really mad.

Maybe I could pretend I’d snuck into Silver Times last night.
No, that wouldn’t work. He stayed here last night. I would have told him once we were together.

If Lance Wilson had a disreputable bone in his body I’d tell George Lance had gotten the information and given it to me.
Lance wouldn’t go for that. And George would never fall for it
.

Lance was the only person who knew I had my hand-scratched list of a lot of the estimates.
Of course, Fred Brennan knew, but it didn’t seem that he was going to tell anyone. I had reason to know that Lance could keep a secret. Maybe I just wouldn’t tell George. Besides, maybe he’d get the figures another way. He seemed perfectly friendly with Mrs. Springer. Maybe she’d let him sweet-talk his way into her filing cabinet.
Not likely
.

I heard the key in the lock at the door that was near the breakfast room, and Scoobie yelled who it was as he opened the door.

“Smells good,” he said as he came through the swinging door into the kitchen.

“Thanks. I’ve been over a hot stove all afternoon.”

“Like
that
would happen,” he said, and sat at the oak table.

“Did you talk to Ramona?” I asked.

“She decided to go to her yoga class.”

“That’s too bad.”

After I’d stirred the soup for about half a minute, he said, “Are you okay? You’re never this quiet.”

I tried to look surprised by his question.
“I’m good. You know, it’s all just…”

“A lot,” we said, together.

The side doorbell rang and Scoobie went to let in George. I was glad Aunt Madge had given a key just to Scoobie. She’s known him since he was a little kid. Though she’d read George’s articles in the
Ocean Alley Press
for a few years, she only met him in the last year or so. At least for now George can’t walk in unannounced. I like the guy a lot, but I’m not ready for that level of intimacy. To say nothing of surprise.

I could tell from his tone of voice that George was irritated about something. When he and Scoobie came into the kitchen, he said, “You wouldn’t believe what Fred Brennan said to me.”

Uh oh.

“He said one person outside of Silver Times has the bid information, and if I were a good reporter I’d figure out who to ask.”

“That’s weird,” I said, feeling my face flush. I turned back to the stove and stirred with new energy.

I heard him plop his notebook on the table and sit down.
“He thought he was really being funny,” George said.

“You have a different definition of humor?” Scoobie asked, kind of quietly.

I turned to look at him and he raised one eyebrow at me.
He knows. He can’t know. But he knows me.

“I have a sense of humor,” George said, exhibiting none.
“I just think that lard-ass isn’t funny.”

“The bread smells done. I’ll get it out of the oven,” Scoobie said, and he took some pot holders from a drawer near the stove.

“I’m gonna hit the head,” George said, and walked toward the back hallway.

When he was sure George could not hear him, Scoobie said, “What have you done?”

“Me? Why would you ask that?”

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but whenever you’re fibbing you ask a bunch of dumb questions.”

“I haven’t
done
anything,” I said, trying to sound as if I took umbrage at his remark.

“I don’t think Brennan would be baiting George unless he had a reason,” Scoobie said.

“I don’t know the man well,” I said.

Scoobie started to slice the bread.
“Okay, I’ll only ask one more time. And I’m asking as your good friend, not some guy you know from Java Jolt or something. Do you have information on the bids?”

“Damn it, Scoobie!”
I looked at him directly. I was going to bluff, but I couldn’t. Instead, I looked away.

“Cut me a big slice of that bread,” George said as he walked toward us.

I WAS SITTING IN the All-Anon meeting trying to look as if I cared what anyone else was saying.

“And then I realized,” said a woman across from me, “that I simply needed to take care of myself.
I can’t control my husband. Now that I’ve kind of figured that out, I can begin to see how the kids and I can have a good life whether he’s drinking or not.”

I was going to have to say something after the next two people talked.
Not have to, but most people do give a kind of update. Or something like that. I tried to think of something innocuous to say. I certainly didn’t want to talk about anything important.

Now that Scoobie pretty much knew I had gotten — okay, stolen — the information on the Markham repair bid at Silver Times, I needed to decide how to tell George I had it. I wasn’t the least bit worried that Scoobie would tell George, but George would eventually be able to see that Scoobie was out of sorts about something with me.
At that point George, insistent reporter that he is, would start to bug me about it. I do not always respond well to pressure.

The man next to me had started talking.
“Our reading today started with the sentence, ‘Confusion can be a gift from God.’ That really struck a chord with me…”

A gift!
He thinks it’s a gift? I’d pay real money to be less confused today
. The man had stopped talking, and everyone was looking at me.

“I can relate to the confusion part,” I said.
No one smiled. “I’ve been, well, not just confused, upset about what’s gone on in the last couple of weeks.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t understand why people get so angry that they kill each other. I mean, I wanted to kill my husband when I found out he’d gambled away all our money, but I didn’t really think about
how
to do it. I was just really mad.”

A woman catty corner across from me at the table gave a kind of rueful smile.
At earlier meetings she had talked about how her husband rarely made it home with his paycheck without first stopping at a casino. She once asked me if I really had put Robby out of my mind, or if I was just acting. She didn’t ask in the meeting, because you aren’t supposed to interrupt people. As irritated as she had made me a couple of times, I figured she probably knew what I meant today better than some others in the room.

“I guess most of you know that I found Eric Morton’s body in the Cozy Corner a few days ago.”

Several heads nodded, and the woman on my left patted my arm for a second.

“It was really, really horrible, and sometimes I worry that whoever did it will come back. I try to remember that worrying doesn’t change anything, and stuff like putting more locks on the doors is better than thinking about it all the time.”
I stopped, to figure out what to say next.

“But all the stuff in these pamphlets,” I gestured to a couple of pieces of literature on the table, “doesn’t help me right now.
I’m just really mad and…worried.” I didn’t add that my worry was mostly about secrets I was keeping, not murderers.

There were a couple of what I guess were supportive murmurs, and I just shrugged, indicating that I was done.

When I left the building I had no better idea how to confess my pilfering than when I’d walked in.
And people say they get serenity going to these meetings
.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

GEORGE HAD A REALLY early meeting, so he left about six forty-five on Thursday.
This was after he made a couple of snide comments about what he thought about the Optimist Club inviting speakers for so early in the morning, and his editor wanting him to cover a seven o’clock meeting.

I sat staring at the computer screen in Harry’s office, not seeing anything.
I really didn’t care if Nat Markham took some money off the top of his contract with Silver Times, or if Fred Brennan got a cut, too. If the people who lived there were too dumb to demand any kind of accounting for the money they poured into the place in rent or leases, what did I care?

I did care if Nat was so desperate to get that money that he was willing to kill for it.

Bill Oliver had called when I first got to the office to tell me that the police had tentatively decided that Steve’s death was a hit and run, and that they would “devote every possible resource” to any new leads. Bill didn’t expect any, and neither did I.

My decision was whether there was anything I could do to figure out who killed Steve and Eric.
Somehow, that seemed easier than telling George that I had had information he very much wanted and withheld it from him. If the killers were caught, George would never need to know. At least I recognized how convoluted my thinking was.

In All-Anon they talked about there often not being one “right” decision.
In this case, it seemed that the least bad decision could be to talk to Nat and Andrew Markham. If I went to their homes or office, they could hardly shoot me. Talking to them seemed safer than breaking into files or otherwise ticking off Fred Brennan, who could probably get the police to arrest me without making much of an effort.

So, half an hour later, I was in my car, outside Nat’s office.
It was in a small commercial strip that had been considered a modern shopping center forty years ago and now was shabby. I thought I remembered that Lester Argrow had had a for sale sign in front of the center not long ago, but it was gone.

I took off my real estate hat and contemplated Nat’s office.
The lettering for Markham Construction was faded, and there were large rolls of blueprints sitting in the window. He must have another lot or warehouse somewhere, as he clearly couldn’t store any construction equipment in this little parking lot.

It was an overcast afternoon with a sharp wind, and the interior lights were on.
Because it was such a small space I figured I would see him if he were in there. A pickup truck with the company name was parked on the street, so he was either in what was probably a small space behind the glassed-in office, or he’d walked somewhere.

I wanted to talk to him, but still wasn’t sure how to start a conversation.
It didn’t seem like a good idea to barge in there and ask Nat if there were any knives missing from his kitchen. Or if he had borrowed Aunt Madge’s set. Or if his car had gone haywire outside the Silver Times entrance.

I could have started with his father, but as a murder suspect, Andrew Markham just seemed too illogical.
He’d made his money, he was highly thought of throughout town and, as far as I could tell, had nothing to gain by his son getting the Silver Times contract.

True, it seemed he was helping Nat through the bidding process.
If he had any idea of Nat’s dire financial straits — and if he didn’t earlier, he did now — then having Nat win the contract could mean less of a financial donation from the elder Markhams.

I looked at the time on my mobile phone.
I’d been sitting there for almost half and hour. “This is ridiculous,” I said aloud.

Five minutes later I was about to put my key back in the ignition when Nat came out of a small sandwich shop three doors down from his office.
Head bowed and hands in his pockets, he looked defeated. I could almost feel sorry for him if I didn’t think he could be a killer.

As he pulled open the unlocked glass door I got out of my car.
I had decided to start the conversation by thanking him for his advice at the hotdog eating contest. Where I’d go from there I had no idea.

A bell above the door tinkled as I entered, and Nat looked up from a set of architect’s drawings he had just rolled onto the desktop. He eyed me for a couple of seconds before saying, “What brings you here, Ms. Gentil?”

“Mostly to, uh, thank you for the tip about the hotdog contest.” When he looked perplexed I added, “The one about having a set of hotdogs for each contestant, or some of them would be at a disadvantage.”

He laughed, but there was no humor in it.
“If that’s why you’re here, I’ll eat fifty hotdogs myself.”

For probably the thousandth time I wished I didn’t flush when I was angry or embarrassed.
“That’s only part…” I began.

“Came to gloat, did you?” he asked.

“Gloat?” I probably looked as confused as I felt.

“That your friend Lance Wilson got the board to put a hold on the contract award.”
He said it as a sneer.

“I didn’t know,” I almost whispered.

He snorted. “Get out.”

His rudeness emboldened me.
“I didn’t know about that. Lance doesn’t ask my permission for anything. And it’s not why I came.”

He took a step closer to me.
“Would that be to test your little theory about me killing people to get a contract? You can’t honestly believe I’d do that.” Nat Markham’s voice rose sharply.

I took a couple of steps back and was stopped by the door.
“It wouldn’t be logical,” I said, realizing it was ludicrous to ask him about the bid he made for the contract, and if I said the word ‘murder’ he’d probably come after me.

“Logical?”

“You’d be the first suspect. You wouldn’t…”

“Get out!”

He walked another step closer to me and I turned and pushed opened the door, happy to be breathing the sharp cold air rather than feeling the wrath in the office I had just left.

I WENT TO THE COZY Corner to walk the dogs before going to the courthouse to look up recent sales to use to finish the appraisal for a house I had visited earlier in the day. I felt like a total fool for going to Nat’s office.
What were you thinking?
One of these days I would learn to be more patient.

But not today.

As I flipped through some of the recent sales in Ocean Alley I decided that as soon as I finished writing up the appraisal back at Harry’s office I would call Lance. He must have something more than my scribbled notes to go on, or he would not have asked that the contract award be stopped.

I had just turned on the computer in Harry’s office when the lights went out.
“Damn it.” In a town Ocean Alley’s age none of the electrical transmission lines are buried, so every thunderstorm brings power outages to some part of town. It wasn’t thundering, but the wind had picked up even more in the last hour.

I started to put papers back in folders when I heard the distinct sound of a door in the back of the house being opened.
In books it will say that someone “froze” when they heard a noise or were otherwise startled. Not me. I almost threw myself into the small closet at the far end of the office.

My fingers were pushing the buttons for 9-1-1- before the person was halfway down the hall that led from the kitchen to the office.
My name pops up on caller ID. I wouldn’t be able to talk, but maybe if I dialed 9-1-1 enough someone would think to look at Harry’s when they didn’t find me at the Cozy Corner.

I closed my eyes and kept my hand on the interior door knob as I dialed again.
The person, who had now moved into Harry’s and my joint office, was moving some papers around on the desk.

“Her purse is still here.”

I didn’t recognize the voice.

A more recognizable one, Fred Brennan’s, I thought, said, “She’s in here.
Look around.”

My heart was pounding in my ears.
With a sense of dread I fingered my phone, suddenly anxious to turn it off. If the 9-1-1 operator tried to call back it would ring and give away my hiding place. I saw the light come on as if it were about to ring, and just got the off button pushed in time.

Now come on, if I don’t answer you’ll have to look for me
.

I could hear Brennan moving around the office.
He opened desk drawers until he got to the bottom drawer that Harry keeps locked. He tugged on it and grunted as he seemed to stoop to look at it. Then he stood and started rummaging in the center drawer of the desk.

The other person came back in the room.
“If she’s in here, she’s hiding pretty good.” It was a younger man’s voice, and it had a much stronger New Jersey accent. “Come on, we gotta go.”

With two quick steps Brennan walked to the closet and pulled open the door.