The Question of the Felonious Friend (26 page)

Sandy, protesting that she “had two children coming home from school in an hour,” was led out the door by two officers. She was not handcuffed but the officers did hold her arms as they walked.

Billy Martinez had already left, escorted by the other two uniformed policemen. He had said very little, reiterating only that Mr. Robinson had tried to kill him, which was not technically true but would have been if the scenario had been allowed to play out according to the entrepreneur's plans.

“A lot of it will have to do with how much of the profit Ms. Webb was getting, I would guess,” Hessler said. “If she was getting rich off this business, prosecutors and juries are not going to look kindly on her. Using her brother, a kid with a disability … ” He said the word
disability
as if trying to sound it out phonetically. “That's not going to help either. He could have taken the rap for the murder if you hadn't shown us the evidence, Hoenig.”

I do not do terribly well with direct compliments. “You would have found it yourself sooner or later, detective.” I believed that to be true, although I would have probably wagered on “later” rather than “sooner” if bets were being placed.

“Wait a second.” Ms. Washburn, having listened to the conversation, was beginning to piece together some of the information she had not been given in advance. “How did you know to be here, detective?”

Hessler looked puzzled. “What do you mean, how did I know?” he said. “Your pal here called me two hours ago and said I should be outside with some cops in case the ‘scenario,' as he put it, didn't go as well as planned.”

Now Ms. Washburn folded her arms and looked at me, although I was not returning her gaze. “And how did you know exactly when to come in?”

I undid two buttons on my shirt and pulled the collar to the right to reveal a mechanism taped to my skin, which had been extremely uncomfortable throughout this visit. “I am wearing a wire,” I told her. “The detective came and put it on me when you were at lunch.”

“You waited until I was away? Why?”

I could feel myself blush. “It was necessary for me to remove my clothing,” I said.

“Samuel.” Ms. Washburn shook her head in what Mother would have said was disbelief. “You are in your own way quite the gentleman. But this was a dangerous situation and I was walking into it. You can't not tell me that stuff.”

Detective Hessler raised his hands palms out as if surrendering or being robbed in a motion picture about the American West. “I'm not getting involved in this,” he said, stepping away. “I stopped doing domestic situations when I got my shield.” He went to the entrance and looked out, presumably surveying the uniform officers. I heard two car doors close. He turned toward me. “EMTs are here. Your leg.” He gestured to us to leave the store.

“I apologize for not keeping you completely informed,” I said to Ms. Washburn. I have been told that apologies are an appropriate (if often insufficient) tool for those times when a person does something for the right intentions but in doing so hurts another's feelings. “It was meant to protect you. I did not expect the situation to become violent, and if you knew I was wearing the transmission device that could have made things less manageable.”

“Wait a second,” Ms. Washburn said, her face probably registering wryness. “You lied. You told Robinson you weren't recording the conversation.”

That struck me as odd. “You have heard me say things that were not entirely true before,” I reminder her. “But in this case I was not lying.”

“You said you weren't recording him,” she reiterated.

“I wasn't. The police officers were recording. I was merely the transmission device.”

Ms. Washburn reached out to touch my arm and I instinctively flinched. She stopped her hand. “Sorry,” she said.

“It was an impulse,” I told her. “It should not be taken personally. I have a difficult time being touched.”

“I know. We should get out of here.” Ms. Washburn pointed toward the door. We started in that direction, careful of the broken glass on the floor. “So you called the cops two hours before we left, huh?”

We walked out into the sunshine and saw the remaining two police cruisers, with Sandy Clayton Webb and Billy Martinez in the two back seats, pull away from the street. Hessler was standing next to his unmarked car talking on his cellular phone.

“After all, Ms. Washburn,” I said. “It never hurts to have a little backup.”

She laughed, then pointed. “There. The ambulance.” She was supporting me a bit on my left side, although I was not aware of a serious limp on my part.

We walked to the waiting ambulance where a male Emergency Medical Technician was emerging from the rear of the vehicle. “You the one who got shot?” he asked.

I felt the beginning of some pain in the affected leg. “Yes, but I do not believe it to be—”

Then I made the mistake of looking at my lower left leg, and saw blood—not very much, but certainly a result of the wound—leaking through my trouser leg.

And I lost consciousness. I do not have difficulty seeing blood. Unless it is my own.

Twenty-Nine

Tyler Clayton sat in
Mother's overstuffed chair and manipulated the screen on his tablet computer. Tyler had not yet fully regained his vocal speech, still somewhat shaken by the events that had led to Richard Handy dying from a gunshot wound and his sister, Sandy, being arrested.

My left leg, bandaged but not especially painful, was elevated per doctor's orders on a stool I had brought from home. The less said about my fainting, the better, and Ms. Washburn had not mentioned it since I had awakened in the Emergency Room at St. Peter's University Hospital in New Brunswick, where I had spent ninety minutes being treated before my discharge with what the attending doctor called, “One of the more superficial gunshot wounds I've seen.”

“Why did Tyler have the gun with him if he had never expected there to be violence?” Ms. Washburn asked Mason Clayton, who was seated in the other client chair at our Questions Answered office. I was behind my desk but Ms. Washburn had walked out in front of hers and was leaning on it, closer to the client.

“As I understand it, Sandy told Tyler to bring the gun because she was afraid there might be some danger at the store. I guess it was what Raymond Robinson told her to do.” Mason glanced at his brother, something he was doing with some frequency. “Is that right, Tyler?”

Tyler looked up. He did not look at Mason, Ms. Washburn, or me. Instead he looked at Molly Brandt, seated next to him in a folding chair, her eyes never leaving his face. She nodded at him and he nodded back. “Yes,” Molly said.

“Did Tyler know Sandy and Robinson were running the black market sales through the Quik N EZ?” Ms. Washburn asked Mason.

Before he could answer, I cleared my throat. It did not especially need to be cleared of any obstruction. This is a way to indicate that you would like the group's attention without merely blurting out one's thoughts.

“Ms. Washburn,” I said, “Tyler is here with us. You can ask him the questions directly even if he is not answering you with words. He can hear and understand.”

Ms. Washburn nodded and looked at Tyler. “I'm sorry, Tyler,” she said. “I didn't mean to ignore you.” Tyler did not look up from his tablet. “Did you know about the black market sales?” Ms. Washburn asked.

Tyler's lips twitched a few times before he managed to say, “No.”

I stood up and walked to the other side of my desk, facing Tyler and Molly. “Where did you think the one hundred dollars each day was coming from?” I asked.

Tyler could not say the name, so he wrote on his tablet computer and turned the screen toward me.
Sandy
, it read.

We had called Mason after leaving the Quik N EZ and gave him the answer to his question, which he had already gotten from Detective Hessler—it was probably Mason we had seen the detective calling on his cellular phone when we left. When Ms. Washburn called, Mason was on his way to post bail for Sandy, whose lawyer, T. Harrington Swain, had simply ended Tyler's case when the charges against their younger brother were dropped and used the retainer he'd been given to start defending Sandy. He suggested that a plea bargain was much more likely in Sandy's case but that until something was arranged and the issue of prison was settled, Sandy's children would be living with their father.

So now, three days after the arrests at the Quik N EZ, Mason and Tyler (plus Molly, who had apparently attached herself to Tyler and would not do anything independently) were gathered at Questions Answered for what Mother, who had declined to attend, called a “post-mortem,” which seemed appropriate only in the case of Richard Handy.

There was no point in asking Tyler where he had thought Sandy might have gotten the hundred-dollar bills he'd been giving Richard Handy to silence him; it was clear at this point that Tyler's concept of money was at best a little nebulous. Besides, in police interviews Sandy had provided the answer herself.

“She said she'd met this guy Robinson through her brother's job and thought he was the answer to her divorce,” Hessler had told Ms. Washburn and me after taking our statements at the police station. “But he was mostly interested in his work, not so much her, and as it turned out, mostly in making sure her brother delivered a hefty tip every day. Your pal Sandy decided she'd become part of Robinson's work so he'd be more interested, and that ended up with her investing what savings she had in the black market scheme and storing some of the merchandise in her attic. The one saving grace for her is that she never had any of the firearms in her possession or the Feds would never let her out of jail. She only had some cigs and a few cases of Johnnie Walker blue label that Robinson was selling to special clients.”

“So Sandy is telling all,” Ms. Washburn noted.

“Hell hath no fury,” Hessler said. This was a reference to
The Mourning Bride
, a play by William Congreve from the late seventeenth century, although Hessler was unintentionally paraphrasing the actual quote, which is, “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned.” Still, he had gotten his point across.

“Had she been communicating with Mr. Robinson after Tyler was arrested?” I asked. “Was she calling him when I saw her leave Billy Martinez's house?”

“Probably,” Hessler answered. “She was trying to get Robinson to set up good old Billy as the shooter and get her brother off the hook, but that wasn't the plan. Tyler was afraid he'd send his sister to jail if he told the truth, so he just stopped talking entirely. And Billy knew we figured he hadn't shot Handy, so he wasn't going to drop a dime on his boss.”

I asked Hessler if Billy would be in prison for a long while, and he tilted his head in a gesture of uncertainty. “He had stuff in his house. He knew what was going on. And he was there when Handy was shot, probably knew it was going to happen. That was the difference with him, withholding evidence in a murder. Sandy knew stuff but didn't know there was going to be a killing, and she wasn't there when it happened. Billy was. I don't know what kind of deal the prosecutor will offer him. If he's necessary to get Robinson, he might do okay.”

There had been no further word of plea bargains over the next three days. Mason looked at Tyler in the Questions Answered office and sighed. “He's still working through all the stuff that's happened,” he said to Ms. Washburn and me. “I'm not sure he understands that he didn't get Sandy in trouble; Sandy got Sandy in trouble.”

Again, I pointed out that Tyler was present in the room and cognizant of what was being said about him. Mason looked sheepish—that's what Mother would call it—and nodded.

Mason stood up. “I guess that finishes our business here,” he said. He reached into his pocket and produced a checkbook. “What do we owe you for answering the question, Mr. Hoenig?”

Ms. Washburn said what I was preparing to say: “You don't owe us anything, Mason. We owed you a free question.”

Mason's brow furrowed. “A free question? Why?”

I walked over and addressed Tyler directly. “We gave you an incorrect answer to your question, Tyler.”

Tyler looked up and his eyes met mine, the first time that had happened since the shooting had been reported.

“Richard Handy was indeed your friend,” I said. “He wanted you to know that.”

I removed the Tenduline, which Hessler had returned since it had no relevance to the murder prosecution, from my pocket and offered it to Tyler. Tyler reached for it, saw what it was, and drew his hand back quickly.

“It's cursed,” Molly reminded us.

“Not so,” I told them. “I have done some research on the supposed curse. The legend states that the Tenduline will have the power to predict a violent act, and if one were to believe in such things, its presence in Richard Handy's pocket before he was shot would prove the point.”

Tyler sat back farther to better distance himself from the die. “But,” I went on, “once the death had taken place, the legend clearly notes that the Tenduline is drained of its status as an omen. It becomes an item of great protection and value.”

I again held the die out for Tyler. “Richard wanted you to have it so he held it out toward you when he died,” I said. “He was your friend and he wanted you to be protected.”

Ms. Washburn made a sound that might have been a sniff.

Tyler, staring at the item in my hand, took a breath. Then he held out his own hand in front of mine. I placed the Tenduline in his palm without making contact hand-to-hand. I knew Tyler would prefer not to be touched.

It took him seventeen seconds to summon the words. “Thank you,” Tyler said.

He, Mason, and Molly left shortly thereafter, Mason continuing to offer payment and Ms. Washburn insisting that was not necessary. I was less adamant but understood her point.

We settled back into the chairs behind our respective desks. I began work on a question I had been asked before Richard Handy was murdered, one regarding the use of a cellular telephone in an airport restroom and a talking mynah bird. It was unusual but not especially interesting, I had discovered. This was one I'd answer for the money more than the intellectual challenge.

Ms. Washburn was quiet for a moment, then opened her desk drawer and extracted an envelope. She stood and brought it to my desk. “Would you notarize something for me?” she asked.

I had obtained a notary public license as an exercise when researching a question four months earlier. It was an astoundingly simple process to become a notary public, so I had merely filled out the form online and then paid the necessary fees. I had never intended to act as a notary, but for a close associate like Ms. Washburn it would certainly be simple enough.

“Certainly,” I said. I had ordered the necessary ink stamp and eschewed the device which creates a raised seal on a notarized document since that is not required in the state of New Jersey. I retrieved the ink stamp from my desk. “What may I help you with?” I asked.

“My divorce decree,” Ms. Washburn answered, taking the document out of the envelope and turning to the first necessary page. “I need to sign it and send it back with a notary seal.”

She signed in numerous places while I watched to be sure she was not doing so in the wrong spots; of course she was not. Her attorney had marked the places to sign very obviously so a woman even considerably less intelligent than Ms. Washburn would have clearly known where to sign.

“I thought you were not certain about the divorce,” I said as she signed.

“I wasn't for a while but I am now,” Ms. Washburn replied. As with many legal documents, signing and initialing in the necessary areas can be time consuming. She continued with her work.

“What made you decide to go ahead with the divorce?” I asked. I have been told that my voice has less inflection than most in conversation and I was relying on that quality to hide any interest I had experienced in relation to Ms. Washburn's marriage.

“A lot of things,” she answered. “For one, Simon was seeing another woman even as we were talking about reconciling.” She stopped and looked me in the eye unexpectedly. “But you knew that, didn't you?”

I have some difficulty lying to anyone, but with Ms. Washburn it would be almost impossible. “Yes,” I said.

She nodded and went back to signing. “And you didn't say anything.”

“I felt that it was not my place to do so.”

Ms. Washburn nodded. “You were right. You made a good choice, Samuel.” Another set of initials was left at a designated line. “And what really did it was when you saved my life.”

That did not sound helpful to me. “I was not thinking about your marriage when I knocked you down,” I said.

Ms. Washburn smiled, but there was something added to the smile I did not understand. “No, you weren't,” she said. “But I thought about Simon and what he would have done in that situation. He would have dove, all right, but not to save me. He would have leapt out of the way of the gun, in the other direction, and let me get shot.” She sighed. “That's not my idea of a marriage.”

She signed on the last page. “I think that does it.” She placed the document on my desk and pointed at an area on the page. “That's your spot.”

I signed and stamped the document in the appropriate area and handed it back to Ms. Washburn, who placed it back in the envelope. “I'll take this back to the lawyer's office on my lunch break,” she said.

“Feel free to take the time now if you'd like to do it sooner,” I said. “I will not adjust your paycheck for the time.”

Ms. Washburn laughed and nodded. “Thank you,” she said. She started toward the door to our office, then stopped and turned back toward me. “Just one thing.”

“Yes?” I asked.

“Would you come here for a moment, Samuel?” she asked.

That seemed an odd request, but I saw no reason not to comply. I saved the document on my computer screen and stood, then walked to the center of the office where she was standing and holding her divorce decree in her hand.

“Yes?” I repeated.

Then Ms. Washburn kissed me.

the end