Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 06 - Behind the Walls (23 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN?”
Fiona and I asked the same question, but while my tone was demanding hers was almost sobbed.

“Jolie.”
Dana’s voice was firm as she stood by Peter and Arman, one hand on her gun. “What’s going on?”

“Arman wanted me to look for more hidden stuff.”

“Did you invite him here?” Edgar asked.

I shook my head.

Dana pulled her handcuffs from her belt. “We’re going for a short ride.”

Arman let himself be handcuffed.
I would have been willing to have him get a lecture and be sent home, but the word murderer kind of changed the tone in the room.

Arman rode in the police car and Fiona and Patricia rode to the police station with Peter.
Patricia was still crying when they pulled away.

Scoobie and I were silent for the first minute of our drive.
Then I asked, “Did you know the alarm panel was in the linen closet?”

“Harry saw me get off the bus a few blocks from here and gave me a ride over.
He told me to keep my fingers in my ears if the security guys were still testing. I thought it might be there, but all you needed was a reason to get to it, wherever it was.”

“Smart.
You think he would have hurt us?”

He shrugged.
“Doubt it. Didn’t want to find out.”

We parked on the street instead of in the small police lot, and followed Peter and the sisters into the police station. Dana and Edgar must have taken Arman in a back way.

I glanced at Peter as the five of us stood in the small waiting area. He wore a grim expression and looked nervous. Fiona had her arm around Patricia, whose sobs had turned to sniffles.

The door to the secure part of the police station opened and Sergeant Morehouse looked at all of us.
“You five, sit in the captain’s office.” The officer on duty at the front desk held open the door and we followed Morehouse down the hall. I heard Dana’s voice from the small conference room, whose door was closed.

Captain Edwards, whom I barely knew, was not in his office.
Morehouse gestured to chairs around a conference table, and as we sat he gave me a grim look. No teasing about me getting in trouble.

“All right.
What the hell is this guy talking about when he says one of you killed Clive Dorner?” He looked at all of us briefly, one by one.

“It was an accident,” Peter said, softly.

“My God,” Fiona said. She touched his shoulder.

Patricia put her head on the table and bawled, “Arman said I couldn’t tell you!”

Morehouse used his small notebook to hit the table and no one said anything. He pointed at Peter. “Explain.”

Peter took a breath.
“I was meeting Fiona at her house, and she was late. I thought the blinking light on the answering machine might be her, so I pushed play. It was that ass…jerk, Dorner. He leaves this long message about how he’s going to make Fiona’s money turn to gold or some…stuff like that. And he says he’s found a perfect house and tells her when to meet him there.”

“This is the day he died?” Morehouse asked.

Peter nodded.
“I erased the message and called Arman, and we went to the address on Ferry. I forget the number. I just wanted to tell him to leave Fiona alone.”

Morehouse nodded.

“Dorner was really angry that we came instead of Fiona. He didn’t want to tell us what he meant about Fiona’s money, but I got in his face and he said she’d given him three thousand dollars. Three thousand dollars! The bastard said he was going to at least double her money. Like he was betting on horses.”

He looked at Fiona, who looked as if she was about to cry.
“I took it out of my 401(k),” she whispered.

“We both, Arman and me, started yelling at Dorner.
He starts telling us you need to spend money to make money, and he wants to move past me to leave. I stood in his way. He shoved me and I shoved back. We did a couple more shoves, and he falls backward, and hits his head on the kitchen counter.” Peter put his fist to his mouth. “Then he just…fell.”

“And what, you don’t know how to call
9-1-1?” Morehouse asked, his voice rising.

“There was no…you could tell he was dead.
I checked for a pulse in his neck, on his wrists. His eyes just…stared.”

I couldn’t help myself.
“So you set a fire?”

“Quiet, Jolie!” Morehouse said.

“We talked about what to do. I wanted to call, Arman didn’t, but it’s my fault. I didn’t need him to make up my mind. But he kept talking about prison.” Peter looked at Fiona. “We were going to get married. And then I thought of those other fires that no one can figure out…” his voice trailed off and he put his elbows on the table and hands over his face.

“It was an accident,” she said softly.

“Not the fire,” Morehouse said, abruptly. “I’m reading you your rights, Peter. At this point, you’re under arrest for arson. You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you…” He finished the standard litany.

I’d never heard it said other than on television.
I felt numb, and from the look on Fiona’s face, she did, too.

Lieutenant Tortino had apparently heard Morehouse, and he walked into the chief’s office.
“What the…?”

“Dorner,” Morehouse said.
“Death could have been accidental, fire wasn’t.” He looked at Scoobie and me. “You know about this?”

We both shook our heads without saying anything.

“Go sit in the waiting room. You two know?” He looked at Fiona and Patricia.

“Fiona didn’t,” Patricia said, sitting up straighter.

“Waiting room,” Tortino said to Fiona.

“I’d like to stay with…” she began.

“Maybe later,” Morehouse said.

Fiona stood.
“I’m calling her a lawyer. And Peter.”

“Excellent idea,” Tortino said.

“THIS IS
ONE OF those times you’re glad you have a word like surreal in your vocabulary,” Scoobie said.

We were still in the uncomfortable outer waiting room an hour later.
Fiona had walked back to the secure area with the two lawyers. This meant we didn’t have to make small talk or comfort her. She’d grown more upset by the minute, certain that Peter would never have hurt anyone if he didn’t see himself as somehow defending her.

“Would you ever have guessed?” I asked.

“Nah,” Scoobie said. “Peter is a Mister-Chamber-of-Commerce type.”

I smiled slightly.
Scoobie rarely trusts anyone he views as part of the establishment. I have debated telling him he will be part of it when he graduates from college.

“It was an accident,” I said.

“The death, maybe, not his decisions about disposal of the body.”

I grimaced just as Dana walked out of the office area and motioned that Scoobie and I should go to the counter.

“Fiona wants you to go tell her mother what’s going on.
She says you’ll know how to do it.”

“Oh boy.”
I thought for a moment. “Sure. Tell her we’ll uh, be gentle.”

“Not really any sugar coating this,” Dana said.

MRS
. MURPHY’S EXPRESSION was wary when we entered her apartment. “Elmira Washington says my girls are at the police station.” She said this before we were all seated.

Damn that woman.
She must pay people to feed her gossip
. “They’re fine, really.”

Scoobie rolled his eyes at me, but Mrs. Murphy wasn’t looking at him.

I stood next to Mrs. Murphy as she settled in her chair. No sense in her falling over if she was nervous.

I sat across from her.
“It’s not really about them. It’s more about Clive Dorner.”

“That bastard,” she said.

I almost fell onto the floor instead of parking myself in a chair facing her. “I’m sure you aren’t the first to…” I stopped, remembering an earlier conversation with her. “I thought you said you didn’t know him. When I was here before.”

Mrs. Murphy looked at me and looked away.
Then she met my gaze again. “I only met him a few times, when he was a little boy. He was always wheedling something out of Norman. Ice cream, a toy from an auction table. Norman said he bought them for him, of course.” Her tone was bitter.

“What difference did it make?”
I asked, my tone becoming angry. “Why did you lie to me?”

“Jolie,” Scoobie said, gently.
“Pretend she’s Aunt Madge.”

Mrs. Murphy smiled at him.
“You’d be good for her.” She nodded at me.

Scoobie’s expression didn’t change, and Mrs. Murphy turned back to me.
“I’d already talked to him before you came by that day. I told him his uncle’s estate owed me money. The next thing I knew, he had called my daughters with some lame-brained idea of investing with him. Same brat behavior as when he was a kid.”

“Couldn’t you let them know what he was like?” I asked.

“Patricia listened, Fiona saw dollar signs,” she said. “And then the girls said they had all those old files, and Peter said that we could probably prove that Fitzgerald stole those things. I told him that was fine, but not to take too long. I figured that moocher Clive would steal or sell anything of value he could find in Fitzgerald’s house.”

Mrs. Murphy leaned back in her chair as if all this was as exhausting as walking a mile with her walker.

“It seems that Fiona may have invested a small sum with Dorner.” I watched her carefully as I said this.

Her shoulders almost sagged.
“Fiona didn’t tell me, but after Dorner died she told Patricia, and Patricia told me.”

I hated to tell her something else that would upset her, but better from me than a reporter or nosy resident in her place.

“There is an issue regarding Clive Dorner’s death.”

Her tone was sharp. “What kind of issue?”

Apparently Peter and Arman were with him in the house, and…”

When I hesitated, Scoobie picked up. “There was a shouting match, and it didn’t end well for Dorner.”

Mrs. Murphy looked from Scoobie to me.
“Do you mean those two boys had something to do with Clive Dorner’s death?”

“It appears so, but I don’t think they meant to kill him,” I said.

“That man should burn in hell. But I’m sorry if he got a head start on it if it means Peter and Arman are in trouble.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I STARED AT THE CEILING for a full minute when I woke up on Wednesday. Part of me felt really bad for Peter. He was trying to help Fiona. He hadn’t meant to kill Dorner.

The rest of me knew that cover-ups never work, and even if they did, he should have done the right thing and called an ambulance and the police.

So, Fiona’s boyfriend was looking out for her and Patricia’s boyfriend seemed to have been looking out for himself.
I could see Fiona and Peter getting through all this and staying together. But if Patricia was smart she’d dump Arman. On the surface it might seem as if he was looking out for her financial future, but Scoobie was right. Arman was a bully. She couldn’t possibly want him around her kids.

I showered and dressed and walked down the back stairs to Aunt Madge’s kitchen.
I was determined to move back to my own house today. It must have been Arman on my back porch, and he wasn’t going to try to get in my windows anytime soon. Besides, Pebbles didn’t like being locked in the bathroom overnight when I was gone that long. If she was going to be Jazz’s full-time companion, I needed to keep her happy.

I could hear Aunt Madge in the breakfast room talking to her guests.
I didn’t see Jazz, who had run downstairs when I opened the bedroom door a few minutes ago. A closer look around the room showed she was sitting in between Mister Rogers and Miss Piggy, who were on their rug by the sliding glass door. She cocked her head at me, probably daring me to pick her up to take her back to my house.

The
Ocean Alley Press
was on the table with the headline clearly visible. “Local Murder Solved.” I scanned it quickly. The focus was on the reason that Peter and Arman met Clive Dorner in the house on Ferry Street, and that both men maintained that Dorner’s death was an accident. There was a quote from the fire marshal about the fire and another from the medical examiner, that one saying that Dorner was dead before the fire started. It was not clear how they started the fire, but it wouldn’t have been hard to get the old house to burn.

After giving background information on Clive Dorner and noting that he was the nephew of the murdered Norman Fitzgerald, the article mentioned that the two men were brought to the police station from a home on
Bay Street.

I groaned as I kept reading.
The rest of the article rehashed the “attempted burglary at the same house on Bay Street” and said that the burglar was thwarted by Reuben Harris, whom the article identified as “the Peeping Tom who had troubled Ocean Alley neighborhoods for months.” Not mentioned was that he had been across the street when he called the police about the burglary.

My cell phone chirped.
I answered it without looking at caller ID, and was sorry I had not checked.

“So,” Lester said, “did the Peeping Tom see much?”

“He was across the street.”

“Yeah, but maybe he’d been at your place first.”
There was a definite chuckle in his voice.

“Lester, I don’t need this.”

“I’m just sayin’…” he began.

“I’ll catch you later.”
I hung up.

I CAPTURED JAZZ to take back to my house by tricking her with canned tuna. Pebbles seemed glad to see her, and I left them sitting next to each other in front of the couch. Fortunately, Pebbles was a bit too hefty to jump on it in the deft manner Jazz did when she thought I wasn’t looking.

The house I had to appraise was large and I spent an hour and a half taking measurements and trying to avoid talking to a very chatty homeowner.
When I pulled up to Harry’s house so I could enter data into the appraisal software I wished I had stayed away longer.

Elmira
Washington was sitting on the top step of Harry’s porch. She stood as I parked my car and waited until I was at the bottom of the steps before she spoke.

Elmira
is a kind of squat woman whose stiff, short gray hair makes her look like an aging drill sergeant. “Now what? If Fitzgerald is dead and Mary Murphy’s son-in-law is in jail, who’s going to prove those auctioneers stole from me?”

I walked up and did not stop next to her as I took out the keys and put them into the lock.
“I think Norman Fitzgerald was the only thief.”

She followed me into the house.
“Maybe, but somebody owes me money.”

“I suppose Mrs. Murphy will still make an effort to be awarded money from the sale of the business.
Maybe you can talk to the lawyer who represents the Dorner cousins. Ask that you be reimbursed from their portion of the sale revenue.” I kept my back to her as I turned on my computer.

“That lawyer’s a young pipsqueak,” she said.

I did not tell Elmira she was an old complainer. “That may be, but there’s not one thing I can do to help you.”

She sat in Harry’s office chair.
“People all over town are saying that you found some jewelry in that house. Where did it come from?”

I sat in my desk chair and swiveled to face her.
“There was some hidden in the house. I don’t think it’s worth a huge amount. Peter and I were going through auction files to see if we could identify who it belonged to.” This was not exactly our purpose, but she didn’t need to know we were looking for evidence of other Fitzgerald’s thefts. And of course Peter hoped we would not find any prior owners.

“What files?”

I gave myself a mental head slap. “Mrs. Murphy had a few old records. They weren’t for all the auctions.”

“I need to see those right now.”
Elmira stood and picked up her purse from where she had placed it on Harry’s desk.

“
Elmira, to see those you’d probably need to work with an attorney. Stuff brings almost nothing at an auction. Is it really worth a lot of legal fees to get maybe twenty-five dollars?”

She looked at me.
“They were worth a lot more than that.”

“Maybe.
But at an auction people try to pay less than something is worth. I just bought an antique chest of drawers for not much more than one hundred dollars. It was probably worth two to three times that.”

“I still want my money.”
She had a very stubborn expression.

“Suit yourself.
I have work to do.” I gestured to my computer and did not get up to escort her to the front door.

I HAD SPENT ALL of Thursday and this morning planning for tomorrow’s fundraiser. Part of this entailed telling Scoobie there was no need for a practice session with the liquid string.

The article about the fundraiser that was in the Friday morning paper led to a lot of calls with questions about the upcoming party.
One woman who couldn’t come wanted to donate a box of canned goods, so I was waiting for her at the pantry. It was good that I stopped by. Even though it wasn’t a distribution day, there were several bags of donations at the door. I lugged them in and started stocking shelves.

When Reverend Jamison first talked me into running the food pantry about sixteen months ago, I hated the idea.
Since then I’d worked it into my schedule pretty well and learned about a side of Ocean Alley I didn’t know much about. There were many people who couldn’t buy fries on the boardwalk whenever they wanted to, people whose food stamps didn’t stretch to the end of the month.

There was a knock on the door and George peered in.
“I saw your car.”

I opened the door and stepped aside to let him in.

“Did my article get you a lot of food?”

“It did.
I didn’t think about that.”

He glanced around the room and picked up a bag of food to sort.
“I’ve been thinking about Fitzgerald. With Dorner dead, I bet we never find out who killed the old guy.”

“You really think Dorner did it?
He seemed to really like the guy.”

“Yeah, but he was a sleaze.””

I smiled. “Plenty of those around.”

“Yeah, yeah.
But he needed money.”

I thought about that.
“It just doesn’t make sense that he’d kill him on my porch. He’d have lots of less obvious places to do it. What about Arman?”

“Nah.”
George looked at a can of Brussels sprouts and made a face.

“You don’t think he’s that big a bully?”

“I don’t think he knew enough about Fitzgerald’s thefts to try to badger the old guy. Plus, I did my own badgering. Morehouse told me that Peter and Arman have good alibis for that night.”

“So, we may never know who killed a man on my porch.”

I hated that thought.