Murder & Sullivan Read online

  “After that, I just don’t know much.”

  “Anyone come over to help you get settled in that frame?”

  “Nope. Didn’t need help.”

  Fred nudged him with another couple of questions, but Eads didn’t add anything he hadn’t heard before, much less anything inconsistent with his and everyone else’s stories. He thanked him and headed for the car, waiting until Eads picked up the ax again before turning back. “I forgot to ask you about that fight you had with Liz MacDonald the night before Putnam was stabbed.”

  Eads swung and missed, burying his ax in the dirt. His tan face paled. “You leave her out of this! She don’t have nothin’ to do with it!”

  “You know that for a fact?”

  “I know Liz. She’s a nurse, for God’s sake!” As if that cleared her of suspicion.

  “But you’re not.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” His voice rose.

  “You were jealous of her and Putnam. You once threatened to kill him if he didn’t stay away from her.”

  “We were married then.” Low, through clenched teeth.

  “And you wish you still were. She throw you over for him?” Fred asked conversationally, but watched him carefully—Eads was, after all, still holding the ax. He raised it high, only to swing on another log. Thwack.

  “No. I did it to myself.” Thwack. “I cheated on her, and she never gave me another chance.” All the anger had drained out of his voice, and he looked at Fred with sorrowful eyes. “It like to killed me, though, watching her moon over him.”

  Driving back into town, Fred thought how different his own situation was. When Linda left him, she left town. He didn’t have to watch her feel her way into relationships with other men. He supposed the divorce had gone as smoothly as such things ever did. At least there were no kids, and no alimony, not in Indiana. Just a hole in his life, a numbness, until Catherine’s sparkle charmed him, before the jealous, backbiting ways he’d eventually backed away from surfaced. No wonder he was pussyfooting around Joan. With her warm smile, not that the rest of her was a punishment to look at, she made him feel safe, as if she cared for him the way he was. So far, though, for all he teased her and enjoyed her company, being with Joan was like being with a good friend. Maybe she didn’t think of him as a man. No, he knew better. But maybe he ought to leave it at that. He never wanted to find himself in Chris Eads’s shoes.

  The man didn’t seem murderous so much as miserable. And Fred still couldn’t picture him stabbing someone in the back. Barring new evidence, he moved Eads far down on his list.

  He pulled up in front of Joan’s house now, knowing she wouldn’t be home, but hoping to catch Yoder. He found him near the back, working on the posts that supported the long wraparound handrail. But Yoder, like Eads, added nothing to his earlier story. Fred leaned on the railing.

  “Tell me about the sword fight. Who started it?”

  “I don’t know.” Yoder kept his eyes on the post. “Nobody, really. We were both picking up our swords—I think we needed to do something like that. We were all kind of jittery.”

  “Someone must have been extra jittery. And after the fight? Where did Ucello go?”

  “I saw him climb into his frame before I climbed into mine.” Yoder looked up, his eyes intense. “He didn’t do it, Lieutenant. He couldn’t have.”

  “Were you watching him after you climbed into yours?”

  “No, but he was at the far end from David. Don’t you see, it’s just not possible.” Yoder’s voice was earnest, and he tapped the railing with “just not possible.”

  “But he can’t say the same for you.”

  “Well, no. I don’t guess he can. I don’t know who was watching me.”

  “We have a witness who says you were helping one of the others with his supports,” Fred lied without blinking.

  “Someone said that?” Yoder raised his eyebrows. “He must have meant during rehearsal.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then he’s wrong. I forgot my tools here on Friday. But we didn’t need them. Nobody had a problem.”

  Fred looked at him. “Tell me something, Mr. Yoder. Is it true that an Amishman never lifts his hand against another man?”

  “People bait them a lot to find that out.” Not a direct answer.

  “And how do you respond?”

  “That’s a different question, Lieutenant.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I grew up Amish, it’s true, but I left. People don’t bait me like that anymore.” But you’re doing it, his eyes accused.

  “Ah. And if they did?”

  “I would still find it hard.”

  “Hard to take, or hard to fight back?”

  “Both.”

  27

  A very great deal may be done in a day!

  —LUDWIG, The Grand Duke

  Life went on. It wasn’t that people stopped talking about the murder, but they hadn’t found anything new to say about it for days. It began to fade into the background.

  Thursday morning, Esther called the senior center with the message that Joan could pick up her purchase anytime.

  Annie Jordan was the volunteer answering the phone, knitting between calls, while Joan sat across the desk from her and caught up on correspondence. No good fairy had yet donated a computer to the center, but she managed what they needed with an electric typewriter and an inexpensive desktop copier.

  “I’ll tell her,” Annie said in a businesslike voice, and then at a level that could be heard clear across the activity room, “Joanie, your order’s ready at Bridal Delights. You and Fred finally getting serious?” Warmth rushed to Joan’s face, and she could feel all the eyes on her.

  “Thank you, Annie,” she said. “But it’s not for me.”

  “Esther said it was monogrammed.”

  “That’s right.” She kept her face straight. “I finally found the perfect source of gifts for the board of directors.” One of the men in the bridge group guffawed, the others chuckled, and she was off the hook.

  She meant to pick up the handkerchief on her lunch hour, but when one of the noontime workers didn’t arrive, the center was left shorthanded, and Joan ended up ladling apple dumplings for the senior nutrition project—what Annie called “eats for old folks.” By afternoon, having made her own very tasty, if borderline nutritious lunch out of a glass of milk and an apple dumpling, she was charging through typing the last of the letters at a speed she couldn’t maintain.

  “Rats!” she said, and crumpled another letter with too many typos. “You’d think I could at least goof on the first line, instead of practically at the bottom of the page.”

  “Don’t be so picky,” Annie said. In between knitting and answering the phone, she was addressing the envelopes in a beautiful clear hand. “You’ll never notice it on a galloping mule.”

  Joan threw the crumpled page into the wastebasket, rolled another sheet of letterhead into the old machine, and started hitting the keys harder than she needed to.

  “Why don’t you have a computer?” Charlie Nikirk stood in the open doorway of her tiny office.

  “No money, I guess,” she said.

  “Time’s money—for people with jobs, anyway.”

  “I don’t think that means me, Charlie. They don’t pay me by the hour.”

  “That’s not what it means,” he said. “If you didn’t have to spend all this time retyping, you’d be doing something else worth a lot more.”

  “Tell it to the board. No, that’s not fair. I haven’t even asked the board for one.”

  “There you are. If you don’t ask, the answer’s no.”

  “I suppose. Trouble is, right now I don’t have time. These letters need to go out this week, and it’s already Thursday.”

  “What did I tell you? Time’s money.” He wandered off to the pool table, and Joan sat thinking.

  Maybe that’s why Professor Ucello ignored the data point that didn’t fit his theory. He was in a hu
rry to publish and thought he didn’t have time to go back and find out what it meant. That wouldn’t make what he did right, but it sure would make it easier to understand.

  By the end of the day Joan had come close to the quota she’d set herself.

  “I couldn’t have done it without you,” she told Annie. “Being able to ignore the phone made it possible, not to mention the envelopes.”

  Annie shrugged it off. “I think a lot of you, Joanie. I was glad to help.”

  “Well, you certainly did. I’m going to scoot out a little early, take these letters to the post office. Then I have to talk to a painter about my porch before supper. That’ll have to be quick—I play Ruddigore again tonight.” She’d been surprised when she first heard they planned a Thursday night performance, but Alex said they’d have out-of-towners to fill the seats, and now, with all the publicity from the murder, she was sure they would.

  “Don’t forget to stop at Esther’s.” Annie grinned at her.

  “Oh, you! I really did order a nice gift from her, Annie. After today, I’d get you one, too, if she weren’t so darned expensive.”

  “Uh-uh. Don’t bring me anything from that place. I’d be embarrassed to go out in public in it, even if it didn’t show.”

  Joan dropped the letters in the post office first and decided it would be no trouble to stop at Esther’s before the painter arrived. If she was late, he could look at the porch without her—it was outside, after all.

  The window display hadn’t been changed. This time she heard a bell tinkle faintly somewhere in the back when she opened the door. Esther Ooley came toward her, hands out.

  “Joan! So good to see you again.” As if they were old friends. “Come see what Susie has done for you.” She led Joan to the counter and brought out a flat white box with Bridal Delights embossed on the lid. Opening the box, she unfolded the tissue and waited. It was like a curtain call.

  “It’s lovely,” Joan said sincerely, glad to be able to applaud. “I’m sure Margaret will be pleased. Please tell Susie for me that I think she did a beautiful job.”

  Esther stroked the linen and folded the tissue back over it. “You did want it gift wrapped, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, please.” While she watched Esther measure and cut the elegant paper, Joan wondered how much Fred had asked her. “I suppose you had to talk to the police after David Putnam was killed.”

  Esther’s fingers stopped. “Wasn’t it awful? Awful about the murder, of course, but awful for the rest of us, too. I was exhausted by the time I got home that night.”

  “Oh? That’s right, June is your busy month.” As if the rest of us weren’t busy, Joan kept herself from saying out loud.

  “Well, yes, and then the police kept coming back. Johnny Ketcham is an old friend. He knew better than to wonder about me. But that Lieutenant Lundquist just didn’t let up. He wanted to know where we all were before the second act, and I had to tell him I was too nervous on opening night to pay attention to much of anybody else, except Duane Biggy, of course—we played the first scene together. The lieutenant came back later and asked me about the chorus, but honestly, I don’t see how any of them could have done it. They all went in ahead of Duane and me, and he didn’t let any of them come upstairs until the last possible minute. You heard how he was.”

  “Did you go up early?”

  “No, of course not!” Her hands fluttered. “The lieutenant asked me that, too. How could he suspect me?”

  “He has to suspect everyone.”

  “I suppose. Even if I had gone up, I don’t know what I could have seen. There was always such a confusion while they were running back and forth between the props and those picture frames. And then so many of the ghosts look alike, I could mix them up. Do you think Duane cast blond men on purpose, for the family resemblance?”

  “I doubt it. I think he was lucky to get that many good singers in a town this size.” Joan looked at her watch.

  “Oh, dear, I’m keeping you.” Esther went back to wrapping. “I don’t know why anyone would want to kill David. He was such a lovely man.”

  “He was a judge. They do make enemies.”

  “I guess.” Esther curled narrow strips of white ribbon. “The only case I ever heard about was settled out of court.”

  “Really?” There had been one like that on her list, Joan remembered.

  “My neighbors took Virgil Shoals to court when their new foundation turned out to be defective. They were fit to be tied.” That was the one. “They said he didn’t reinforce it with enough rebar, and they even did tests on the concrete and proved it wasn’t up to specs. He blamed it on Sands Building Supplies, his subcontractor. They said it was his fault anyway. They settled for some huge payment, but they had to promise not to talk about it to anyone. They’d already talked to me, though, and I didn’t promise. About the only thing I don’t know is how much he paid them. They sold that house for pennies on the dollar and still had enough to build a new one twice as nice, I know that much.” She tied the curly strips into a cascade that dwarfed the handkerchief box and tucked it into a plastic Bridal Delights bag with handles. “There you go. I hope she likes it.”

  “Thank you,” Joan said, and accepted the bag. “I know she will.”

  Walking home, she mulled over what she had just heard. Had David known the outcome of that case? Even if he had, that wasn’t a reason for Virgil to kill him—he chose Virgil to build the new addition on his house. He must have had some faith in him.

  I don’t, she thought. I’ll bet he used the same crummy subcontractor for Henry’s leaky basement. But that doesn’t make him a killer.

  Walter Rice was chatting with Zach when she got home. Two young blond ghosts, Joan thought, looking at them. Esther’s right about that.

  Walter handed her a written estimate that seemed reasonable. She accepted it at once—Zach had recommended him, and that was good enough for her.

  “How much more time will you need?” she asked Zach.

  “I’m about done. I’ll just drop off my bill tomorrow. There’s a couple places still need sanding, but Walt could do that. I’d like to do it myself, stretch this out another half-day. I’ve really enjoyed working for you. But Virgil’s been pressuring me. He’s got a ton of jobs lined up. He’s a hard man to work for, but he’ll keep me in groceries the rest of the year.”

  “Better you than me,” Walt said, punching Zach lightly on the arm. Zach laughed and punched him back. Like a couple of kids, Joan thought.

  “When can you start?”

  “First thing in the morning, if you want. I’m just coming off another job.”

  “Good. I’ll see you tomorrow. Bring your paint chips, and I’ll choose a color.” Knowing they all had to be fed, dressed, and ready to perform in less than two hours, Joan was glad to have it settled so quickly, and a little surprised when they went back to the conversation her arrival had interrupted.

  “Anyhow, the cops came back and talked to me again,” Walt said. He perched on her new railing while Zach put his tools away. “But when you didn’t see a thing, you can’t tell them much. And I didn’t. I don’t know who would kill Judge Putnam.”

  “Me either,” Zach said.

  “Now if someone knocked off old Virgil, I’d think it was you, for sure.” Walt laughed so hard at his own joke that he lost his balance on the railing, flailing at the air before falling forward onto the porch, instead of much farther backward onto the ground. Sprawling on the new boards, he sent Zach’s toolbox skittering past Joan’s feet and off the edge of the porch.

  “Why’d you have to do that?” Zach yelled at Walt, and jumped after it. The tools had scattered.

  “Sorry, old buddy,” Walt said, scrambling to his feet. “I’ll help.”

  “Get outta here,” Zach said, and gave him a shove that looked less friendly than the light-hearted punches they’d been exchanging, but Walt ignored him and started picking up tools. Tight-lipped, Zach turned his back on him.

  Jo
an went to help. Fortunately, most of the tools had landed on the front steps rather than disappearing into the grass. Sure that he would prefer to put his own things away, she passed them to Zach, who had already picked up his box. Like the box, most of his tools looked old. Many had handles of woods she couldn’t name, and some looked hand carved. Had he done that himself?

  “Look what this one did!” Walt called, and pulled a red-handled awl out of the grass, where it had stuck like a lawn dart. He handed it to Joan, who gave it to Zach, but not before seeing how different it looked from most of his tools. Newer and more commercial. An expression she couldn’t name flickered across Zach’s face, and then he turned his back to her and dropped it quickly into the box. A few minutes later she spotted a second awl at the bottom of the steps, a shorter one with a dark wooden handle, which clearly belonged with the others. She thought Zach stowed that one away even faster. By now, he and Walt were hurrying. Maybe they’d finally realized how tight the time was getting.

  “That’s it,” Zach said to Joan. “See you tonight.” He stashed the tools in his truck. Walt tipped his painter’s cap to her and climbed into his own truck, and they were gone.

  Joan walked slowly up Zach’s steps and into her house. Why did he have two awls? And where did that red one come from? The police hadn’t found an awl in David’s toolbox, she remembered that. She hadn’t seen David’s tools, though. Were they a matched set? With red handles? Ellen would probably know, but she didn’t want to alarm Ellen. The police would know. They had sent all David’s tools to be tested for blood—or maybe not all, at that.

  She hadn’t seen any blood. This is silly, she thought. This isn’t evidence. Why shouldn’t Zach have two awls? They were right out in the open. If he were a murderer, wouldn’t he hide the weapon, not just throw it in with his own tools?

  What better place to hide it? her inner voice argued. He wouldn’t know that anyone was even looking for it. The police haven’t released that information. For all the killer knows, they still think the dagger killed David. He’d feel perfectly safe.