Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12 (17 page)

“And you?” I asked Beth gently. “Where were you? Did you hear anything?”

Beth hesitated. “I wasn’t here either. I was—” She popped another tissue from the
box and I held my breath, waiting for another meltdown. “I went looking for
Kyle,” she said finally. “He’s gotten sort of wild. That’s why my folks sent him
here. They thought being out here isolated in nature for a couple of weeks would
be good for him, but he’s made friends with a guy from the construction crew and
he’s been sneaking out to do stuff with him. I was making the rounds at the
clubs and bars looking for him.”

“Did you find him?” I asked.

“Eventually,” Beth said. “I had to drag him out of a bar and I guess I made a
scene. He’s underage and they let him in, that’s not right! He’s furious with me
for embarrassing him, but I can’t think about that right now.”

“What time did you and Kyle get back?” I asked.

“It must have been around two in the morning. The music was still playing then
too,” she looked to Nadine. “That was a long time for them to be at it.”

Nadine shrugged. “Not for those two.” She turned up both hands as if she couldn’t
think of anything to add, then rose. “I’ve got to clean up after those
crime-tech people. Nasty fingerprint dust all over everything.” She swiped at a
smudge on the counter and started to unload the dishwasher. “They don’t show
this part on the TV shows—who has to clean up their mess. And Beth, would you
ask your brother to stop leaving drinking glasses in his room. There’s one
missing from this tall set Darby likes.”

“Sorry, yes, I’ll remind him,” Beth said, her voice a study in misery.

Nadine looked as if she wished she could call that one back. This was, after all,
no time to be worrying over kitchenware.

“So the crime techs are done here?” I asked.

“In most of the house,” Nadine said, running the faucet to get hot water. “But
they’ve got the atrium sealed, we’re not allowed in there.”

“I don’t think I can ever go in there again,” Beth said with a shudder.

 
As it turned out, Beth didn’t have a choice. An hour later Sheriff
Neal Pierce showed up with Deputy Fowler trailing behind him. Sheriff Pierce had
already called my shop and learned I was here and seemed mighty pleased. “Saves
me sending Deputy Fowler to fetch you,” he said.

Deputy Fowler—Jared, I corrected in my head—nodded briskly, but when the sheriff
turned away he gave me a warm smile and again I felt relieved knowing Darby had
an ally in law enforcement.

“I’d like each of you to walk the crime scene with me,” the sheriff said, making
me shudder as Beth had earlier. “Miss Blackwell, we’ll start with you since you
know the house best and were first on the scene.”

When the two had left the room Jared again let the professional veneer drop.
“Darby’s holding up okay,” he said, glancing toward the door. “He’s upset, and
hungover, but he’s in a good frame of mind. Beth, he asked me to tell you not to
worry. He’ll be home soon.”

When it was my turn to go into the atrium, Sheriff Pierce handed me booties to
put over my shoes and instructed me to put my hands in my jeans pockets and keep
them there so I wouldn’t be tempted to touch anything. I wanted to hate the man,
but he seemed kind, like everybody’s favorite uncle. “I know you’re a friend of
Brenner’s, and I know you want to help him,” he said. “Just answer my questions
as honestly as you can. The facts have freed as many men as they’ve caught.”

Just like in the movies, a chalk body outline was traced on the stone of the
atrium floor and onto the edge of a rug. I coughed to mask a renegade chuckle
and was relieved when the sheriff steered me toward Darby’s record room.

“I’m not going to be any help to you here, Sheriff,” I said. “I’ve never been in
this room.”

“Never?” he asked, frowning.

“Not since it was under construction. This was Darby’s private realm.”

The sheriff took my elbow, guiding me around a couple of small numbered easels on
the floor. I spotted stains on the carpet. Blood?

“Well, maybe you can help me with this,” he said. “These records here,” he
pointed to a stack on the countertop, “match up with the list you gave Deputy
Fowler yesterday, so I take it these are the ones that caused the dispute?”

With gloved hands he started to hold the albums up to me, one by one. “Maybe the
deal went sour again after you left. The records ended up back here in what
you’re telling me is Brenner’s private room.”

“Those are probably not the actual
same
records,” I said.

The sheriff looked puzzled.

“Darby’s a hard-core collector,” I said. “He’d never have sold off an album if he
didn’t own a duplicate in better condition. I imagine he pulled the records and
sorted them before we got here yesterday. Those are likely duplicates. Didn’t
you find the others out in the atrium?”

The sheriff didn’t answer. He started to examine random albums from the shelves.
“He’s got six of these,” he mused, showing me a Jethro Tull
Aqualung.

“Probably a quadraphonic and a stereo on the blue label and maybe a green label
with the different studio address. Could be a Japanese or British release in
there as well. Then, of course, he’d have his playing copy.”

“So you’re telling me there are fine points to this collecting thing,” he said.
“These,” he swept his hand to take in the room, “are different from the crates
of musty old albums I see people peddling at the flea market.”

I nodded. “Yeah, except sometimes you find a prize in those musty crates. But you
have to know what to look for. Not every album is collectible.”

Back out in the atrium I looked around but didn’t spot the stack of albums that
had set all this in motion. I thought about telling the sheriff how generous
Darby had been in making amends for the broken deal, to show Darby was an
honorable guy, but I thought it might sound desperate. The sheriff asked more
questions and at some point I realized he was doing a solid reconstruction of
events, retracing to fill in details. I was grudgingly impressed. Finally he
asked me if I saw anything that seemed out of place or noteworthy.

“That,” I said, pointing to the turntable. “That’s odd. Darby would never have
stacked records like that.”

Sheriff Pierce frowned. “Isn’t that the point of these things? You stack five or
six records and it changes them automatically?”

“For casual listeners, yes, but when the top record drops onto the stack they
scrub against one another. Darby’s fastidious about his records.”

“Would Nicholson have done it?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “I mean, I didn’t know Noland all that well, but he’s—he
was—a pretty serious collector too. And anyway, like the record room, this
turntable is strictly Darby’s domain.”

 
Beth insisted we stay at the house and directed Dave and me down a
long hall to the guest wing where I’d stayed a couple of times in the past. I
was struck again by how spread out the house was. Beth and Darby’s bedroom, as
well as Nadine’s, was in a twin wing on the opposite side of the public rooms.
Even if anyone had been home last night they wouldn’t have heard anything. We
seemed miles from the atrium.

After Nadine brought us a stack of towels and started the trek back to her own
room Dave came in and flopped on my bed, spilling what he’d garnered from his
afternoon of nosing around.

“First off, the consensus on Noland is that he was basically a nice guy, but he
had a flare for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, and a habit of pushing
people’s buttons. That little dust-up yesterday with Ted Mayhall, the inspector,
wasn’t their first. And it was no secret he was hard on his foreman, John
Daws.

“Well, there you go,” I said, “people with motive.”

“Yeah, but he and Darby have mixed it up a few times too. Publicly. I gotta tell
you, Session, it looks bad for Darby.”

A shiver went up my spine. I told Dave what I’d found out from Nadine and Beth
and about my walk-through with the sheriff.

Dave scratched at his two-day growth of beard and mulled this over. “Time of
death was between nine and eleven last night.”

I looked him a question.

“Got a friend in the lab,” he drawled. “So maybe that puts Nadine elsewhere—and I
say maybe. But does it clear Beth? She say what time she left here?”

“No!” I said. “Are you crazy? Why would either of them want to hurt Noland
Nicholson? Beth’s all peace and love; she couldn’t hurt a fly. Nadine
either.”

“Not even to protect Darby?”

“Protect him from what?”

Dave shrugged. “Still some holes in the theory.”

“Still some holes in your head,” I snarked, but he’d planted a seed and despite
myself I felt suspicion growing.

“I wonder what time Kyle went AWOL,” I mused aloud.

“Ten minutes till ten he was out at the main road waiting for a kid named Nate
from the construction crew to pick him up.”

“Wow, you have been busy,”

“Young Nate’s got himself a little fencing enterprise going. Kyle told him he’d
bring him some ‘good stuff,’ but he didn’t deliver. Said he couldn’t get to the
goods and promised to have another go at it.”

“Why in the world would this kid Nate tell you all that?” I asked.

Dave flexed a neck muscle. “I can be very persuasive. And anyway, he might have
gotten the impression I was with the SBI.”

Dave flashed a badge at me. From this distance it looked like a proper State
Bureau of Investigation credential but if the kid had bothered to look closer
he’d have seen it was bogus.

“You’re going to get in trouble with that one of these days,” I said.

“But not this day. Anyhow, the kid was probably lying about some of it.”

“Is he, like, bad news? Capable of violence?” I asked.

Dave sighed. “Nearly everybody is, given the right circumstances. Could be he’s
in just deep enough to start thinking he’s a tough guy who can beat a rap. Or
maybe he’s a scared punk who thought he was caught and started blubbering.”

“Any idea what Kyle was planning to bring to him to fence? Maybe it was the
albums? Sheriff Pierce wouldn’t tell me, but I think they may have gone
missing.”

“Naw, the kid swears he doesn’t know what Kyle was gonna filch.”

I paced. “So, there are other people who could have done this, and who might have
had a reason. Do we know where any of them were when it happened?”

Dave ticked off the lineup. “Ted Mayhall claims he was home, watching TV, alone.
John Daws flat-out refused to answer questions about his whereabouts. And
according to Nate, he picked up Kyle before ten, but he was mad and ditched him
once they got into town. You’ve got Nadine and Beth’s story. So no, we don’t
really know where anyone was—except Darby.”

I felt my spirits sag. “Well, Sheriff Pierce needs to know all this about Kyle.
For Beth’s sake I hope it turns out he didn’t get mixed up in something that
caused Noland’s death, but like the sheriff says, we need all the facts.”

“Yep,” Dave said. “Word on the street is the sheriff’s hot to get this one in the
bag before the real SBI comes in and big-foots the case. We don’t want any
rush-to-judgment deal going down here.”

 
The next morning I walked out away from the house toward the tree
line to make the call. I didn’t want to risk being overheard, and anyway, the
view of the mist-shrouded blue-green mountains was spectacular and somehow gave
me hope.

“Don’t suppose there’s any sense in asking how you’ve come to learn all this,”
the sheriff said after I told him what we’d learned about Kyle and Nate.

“I’m just passing on information—the facts, like you said, Sheriff.”

“And I thank you. But I’d appreciate it if you and your erstwhile SBI friend Dave
would let me do the investigating from here on out,” he said, firmly but not
unkindly. When I didn’t reply he added, “There’s not much that goes on in this
county that I don’t hear about sooner or later.”

Wow, “erstwhile”? This was no yokel. I promised him earnestly that we’d stay
completely out of it, hung up, and jogged back to the house. Dave and I had
concocted the plan the night before. The minute Beth left to post Darby’s bail
I’d find Kyle and question him—without Dave. Intimidation wouldn’t work with
this kid and I can at least feign a caring touch. I was quite confident I could
get the kid to talk.

I was quite wrong.

Kyle turned belligerent before I even got the first question out of my mouth. He
ordered me out of his room and slammed the door right in my face.

I looked up and saw Jared at the end of the hall and was relieved it wasn’t the
sheriff catching me interfering in the case. I met him halfway down the
passage.

“I’m assuming the sheriff told you what we found out about Kyle?” I said, jerking
my thumb toward the kid’s bedroom door.

“Yeah,” Jared said, “I’m here to question him. Did he tell you anything?”

“Nada,” I said.

“Maybe I’ll have better luck,” he said. “I’m pretty good with young punks. Maybe
because I used to be a young punk myself,” he said, and there was that nice
smile again.

I was momentarily distracted by the way his tanned skin crinkled around his blue
eyes. Geez, what would Dave say about that! I shook my head to clear it.

“Kyle was planning to steal something, I know that much,” I said. “Maybe he took
those albums Darby was selling to Noland. He knew they were valuable.”

“And untraceable, no way to prove those particular records were Darby’s even if
we caught the kid red-handed with them. Everybody around knows Darby’s records
are valuable,” he said. “He was always going on about his latest find. Kid
probably thought that gold one alone was worth a wad of cash.”

“Yeah, people tend to get all excited about records stamped on colored vinyl.
They’re not all that rare, but a neophyte like Kyle wouldn’t know that.”

“Exactly.” He clasped my shoulder lightly. “Let’s hope this leads somewhere—for
Darby’s sake.”