Murder on the Mind (28 page)

“Let go!” Sharon yelled.

Overlapping images of Sharon and Sumner—Sharon and Claudia—assaulted me, squeezing the breath from my lungs. Feelings of fear, anger, and triumph bombarded me.

The boy leaped forward, punching me on the thighs. “Leave my mommy alone, you bad man.”

Face twisted in fury, Sharon wrenched away from me, shoved me, sent me tumbling backward down the steps—only the rickety rail saved me. She grabbed the boy, slammed the door. The deadbolt clicked in place.

Muscles quivering with shock, I pulled myself upright. Gasping for breath, I forced myself to move.

To get the hell out of there.

Headed for the car, breaking into a jog for the last ten yards.

Yanked open the passenger side door.

Scrambled in.

“What happened?” Richard demanded.

“Go! Now!”

The tires spun in the gravel as he gunned the engine. The Lincoln jerked down the drive and onto the highway heading west. Numb, I sat there, staring at nothing, the fingers of my right hand clamped around the door’s hand grip just to keep from trembling.

“Jeff!” Richard’s voice was stern.

“She killed him, all right,” I blurted. “He showed her a copy of the lab report. The one that told him the hair sample he’d provided did not match his DNA exactly. And he knew. He knew! So he came out to her house to confront her. Told her she wouldn’t get another dime out of him. If she wanted money, she could go to the boy’s father. She could go to Rob for money.”

“Good grief,” Richard muttered.

The images began to sort themselves out in my head.

“She bent down, grabbed—” I had to concentrate to understand. “Grabbed a brick from the barbecue, slammed it into his skull. The kid went berserk. She thought she’d killed Sumner. When he wasn’t dead, she flipped out—decided to have some fun with him. She’s strong. She dumped him in the back of the station wagon, took him out to Holland, cut off his clothes with her deer-skinning knife, let him squirm in the snow, all the time taunting him. He didn’t believe she’d actually do it. He begged her to stop, but she only laughed. The kid got out of the car, ran across the snow—shrieking, crying. She screamed at him to get back in the car. The kid was terrified. She crouched down, cut Sumner free, told him to run. Then she took aim with the bow.”

“Jesus. You got all that from just touching her?”

“More.” I shuddered again, frozen to my toes. “I have to assimilate it.”

He pulled into the parking lot of a diner along the road. By then my initial panic had subsided. I grabbed my envelope and followed him inside. At nearly three in the afternoon, the place was deserted. Richard pointed to a booth near the front, and a waitress in a white uniform and black apron came to the table. “Coffee and apple pie for both of us,” Richard said.

“
A la mode
?” she asked hopefully.

“Plain.”

She frowned, but hustled off.

“I don’t want anything,” I said.

“Shut up and do as I tell you for once.”

I shut up.

The pie was typical diner fare. The filling oozed out of the crushed crust, making it look as though someone sat on it. Stale, too. The coffee was bitter.

“What else?” Richard prompted.

“Sharon was screwing both of them. Rob because she thought she loved him, Matt because she wanted to save her father’s construction company.”

“Did Rob know at the time?”

“I don’t know. But his father paid her, supported the boy. Something must’ve happened.” I thought about it for a moment and realized what I’d seen for myself. “Sumner noticed the boy had his wife’s nose. To confirm his suspicions, he had the kid’s hair DNA tested, comparing it with some of Claudia’s as well as his own. Because it matched factors from both of them, the test proved it was Rob, not Matt, who fathered Sharon’s son.”

“How do you know that?”

I pulled out the wrinkled envelope. “I found this in his desk the other day.”

Richard studied it. “This doesn’t prove anything.” He handed it back.

“Not by itself. But it wouldn’t be hard for the cops to get a copy of the letter. Our Ms. Walker had strung Sumner along for over four years and, with the gravy train about to end, she wasn’t about to let him have the last word.”

“What about Sumner’s wife?”

“Sharon went after his estate. No way was Claudia going to let her have any of the money. But she’d underestimated Sharon. Thought she could reason with her.”

I sipped my coffee. “It bothers me that Rob Sumner called her. Told her I might be out to visit her. Why would he do that?”

“Maybe he’s afraid of her,” Richard suggested. “He, of all people, knows what she’s like. He may suspect she killed his father—and his mother.”

“He knows something,” I agreed. I thought about it for a moment. “Maybe he wants her to get caught. She’s practically living in poverty. She could go after him for child support now that his father isn’t paying her. Maybe he wants her out of the way. So he called her to make her angry—”

“At you,” Richard finished. “He may have deliberately set you up as a target.”

“How? Sharon only knows my name. The cops and Sumner’s family know I don’t work for the insurance company. But only Detective Hayden and Sam Nielsen know where I live. I haven’t left much of a paper trail here in Buffalo . . . yet.” That last word seemed to hover over the table like a prophetic curse.

We sat in silence for long minutes. Dishes clattered in the kitchen. Static-laced Muzak came from a speaker in the ceiling.

Richard indicated the plate in front of me. “Eat up.”

I did my best, but neither of us could finish.

“Where to?” Richard asked once we were in the car.

“Let’s get this envelope of stuff to Detective Hayden. After that, I don’t want anything more to do with Sharon Walker.”

* * *

It was Hayden’s day off. I tried his home phone number and found him in. He wasn’t exactly happy to hear from me, but told me to come over anyway. He lived in one of the older neighborhoods in Orchard Park.

Two boys’ bicycles, covered in fresh mud, were clashed on the soggy ground in the front yard. The basketball hoop over the garage door had no net. It started to rain as I knocked on the side entrance door. Richard looked morose and huddled into his jacket. I knocked again, and a matronly woman answered. “Mr. Resnick? Won’t you come in? My husband is in the den.”

The tidy, dated kitchen reminded me of a set from a sixties sitcom. The aroma of meat loaf and boiled potatoes filled the air. An unfrosted chocolate cake, cooling on wire racks on the counter by the sink, added to the sense of unreality. We followed her through the orderly house to the den. She ushered us inside and closed the door behind us.

This was obviously Hayden’s domain. Family photos were scattered over the walls, including a large color portrait of Hayden, his wife, and two preteen boys. Bowling trophies shared shelf space with a clutter of books, magazines, and other memorabilia.

“Still joined at the hip, I see. Sit,” Hayden commanded. “I don’t like my weekend interrupted,” he warned without preamble.

“With any luck, you’ll never see me again after today.” I handed him the envelope.

“What’s this?” He lifted the flap and dumped the contents on his desk.

“My case against Sharon Walker.”

“Who?”

“The woman who killed Matt and Claudia Sumner. It’s kind of a long story. I hope your meat loaf will keep.”

I repeated what I’d told him at the police station earlier that week, catching him up with the events that had occurred within the past few days—leaving out the part where Maggie and I found the second victim. While I spoke, he pawed through the envelope’s contents. He didn’t ask where I got the copy of Sumner’s calendar, and I wouldn’t have told him. Richard handed over his handkerchief with the fabric swatches.

Hayden leaned back in his Naugahyde swivel chair. “All circumstantial. You haven’t got a thing I can go to the D.A. with.”

“I know that. But once you subpoena the lab report, that alone should give you a new angle to investigate.”

He picked up the envelope. “Where’d you get this?”

“Sumner’s office. It was jammed behind one of the drawers in his desk.”

“And what were you doing there?”

“I had permission. Ron Myers can vouch for me.” I waited, and when he said nothing, “Well?”

“Well, what? There’s nothing here. No case.”

“Will you at least look into it?”

“Yeah. But it won’t come to anything. Guaranteed. Sumner slept with a number of women, but he was usually discreet. He was being blackmailed. He withdrew fifteen hundred dollars from his savings account every month for the past four years. That is, until this past month. He didn’t pay and was killed for it.”

“It wasn’t blackmail. He considered it child support.”

“Whatever,” the detective said.

“And you don’t think a woman could’ve killed him?”

“Arranged to have him killed? Certainly. Doing it herself? That’s another matter, especially considering how it was done.”

“Don’t be such a chauvinist, Hayden. This isn’t the turn of the century, and Sharon Walker is no dainty little female. She can probably bench-press more than all three of us put together.”

“That doesn’t prove a thing.”

“Then what about her car? It matches the one Paul Linski saw.”

“By his own admission, he doesn’t know for sure if he saw it on the night the body was dumped.”

“What about the carpet fibers? She carted Sumner from Holland to Orchard Park in the back of her station wagon. There had to be fibers on his wounds, in his lungs, or under his fingernails.”

Hayden continued to glare at me.

I let out a long, quavering breath, trying to hold my anger in check. I’d wasted my time and his.

“Well, you keep all that stuff, Detective. It isn’t doing me any good.” I stood. “And if the case is still open in a year or two, maybe you’ll be willing to take it under consideration. Come on, Rich, let’s go.” I paused at the door. “And thanks for telling Nielsen about me. My tax dollars at work.”

I opened the door and started back through the house. Mrs. Hayden stood at the counter, assembling her layer cake. I walked past but heard Richard murmur, “Nice to meet you,” on his way out. He always did have good manners.

The door closed behind him, and he followed me to the car. The drizzle had turned into a steady downpour. We got in the Lincoln and sat.

Richard turned to me. “I’m sorry, Jeff.”

“What for? I didn’t really believe he’d go for it. To tell you the truth, I’m surprised he didn’t throw us out.” I took a breath to steady my shaky nerves. “I’ve done my civic duty. I reported what I know about a crime. If Hayden chooses to do nothing about it, it’s out of my hands.”

“I just hope you haven’t set yourself up as a target.”

Me, too, I thought.

Richard silently fumed for most of the ride back to Amherst, more depressed about the situation than I was. Time to lighten the mood.

“Did you see the basketball hoop on Hayden’s garage?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Whatever happened to ours?”

He frowned. “Grandmother had it taken down the day you left for the Army.”

“But you put it up.”

“I did it for you. She never bothered to ask me if I’d like to keep it. Shortsighted of her.”

“Why?”

“It made it easier for me to take the job in Pasadena. That stupid basketball hoop was the tenuous connection I had with you. She wouldn’t understand that you could mean something to me. When it came down, it was the first step toward my freedom.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I was just a possession to Grandmother. She’d won me from Betty. She saw your leaving as another victory. The job in California was my way out, but not without a lot of guilt. I wasn’t there when Grandfather died, and I wasn’t there when she died two years later, alone. Curtis found her in her bed.”

“Did you come back to Buffalo?”

He shook his head. “What was the point? There was no one to come home to. I made all the arrangements by phone. I’ve never even been to her grave,” he finished quietly, his gaze locked on the road ahead, his expression unreadable.

I remembered then what Brenda had said to me the day I’d returned to Buffalo:
It means a lot to him
that you’re here
.

“You think we could get another one?” I asked.

“Another what?”

“Backboard. I won’t be in this brace forever. It might be fun to play some one-on-one again.”

He risked a glance at me, his smile tentative. “Sounds like a great idea.”

I think we both knew then that I wasn’t ever going back to Manhattan.

CHAPTER 23

That evening, I spent over an hour out in the garage, rummaging through my boxes. The cold and damp seeped through my jacket. I was ready to give up my search when I finally found what I wanted. I scrounged some tissue used in packing my stuff, and wrapped the small object. I hoped Richard would like it.